#dune wrestling | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gutsby · 8 months ago

Text

If You Like Piña Coladas

Pairing: Neighbor!Joel x Reader

Summary: You secretly make Joel a profile on Hinge. Then he shows you exactly why he doesn’t need one.

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected p-in-v. Oral (f!receiving). Foodplay (i.e., Joel fucks you with a fruit popsicle). Girthy, unspecified age gap. Mentions of blood.

Note: Loosely inspired by ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’ by Rupert Holmes…minus the part about mutual infidelity LOL

Word count: 8.0k

Joel Miller had been on his own for too long.

The least you could get him was a date. Or even just laid.

Likes: Long walks on the beach

Actually…he hadn’t seen a coastline in ten years, at least. You backspaced slowly and then lowered Joel’s phone.

What did that old grump like to do, anyway?

In all the years you’d been living next door to Mr. Miller, you hadn’t seen him take pleasure in much of anything besides mowing his lawn, rolling his eyes, and screaming like a fiend alongside your dad at whatever game was on.

Likes: College football. Quality time with friends :-)

Nope. Corny as fuck. Backbackbackback.

You wiggled your thumbs over the keyboard in muted concentration. You knew you didn’t have much longer. Joel was currently engrossed in one of the three things he loved most—mowing long, careful rows through his backyard—and you were supposed to be watching the season finale of the Mandalorian while he did. That had been the pretext of your visit, anyway. It’d been a little over an hour since he’d stepped outside and a little under thirty since you’d let your curiosity get the better of you and seized his phone, so you figured he’d be back soon.

You had to think of something witty, and do it quick.

Feeling inspiration strike a second later, you typed:

Likes: Piña Coladas. Getting caught in the rain. Making love at midnight in the dunes on the cape.

Perfect. Easy. Everybody loved that song in the ‘70s.

Having thus put the finishing touch on Joel’s profile, you leaned back and let out a contented sigh. You scrolled. Flicked through photo after photo of your very own hand-picked selection and smiled, feeling proud.

You’d started him off strong and suave with a picture from Tommy’s wedding, wearing a tux that fit him well. Then a cool, casual snap of him at a brewery. A photo taken out on the lake, life jacket snug and showing off a sliver of his broad, bare chest. Then a picture of him at your graduation—you made sure to crop yourself out—followed by a candid shot of him playing dress-up with his niece. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that all the yet-unknown, lovely folks of Hinge would eat this shit up.

You set the radius to 100 miles. Beefed up the age range and gender preferences to include virtually every living soul over 30, tweaked a few more prompts to be cooler, then scrolled through his newly-minted profile. Again.

Oh, and— shit, wait.

Quickly, you toggled to the phone’s settings and disabled all notifications for Hinge. Then you grabbed the app and wrestled it somewhere deep within all the utilities ones that no one ever used. This had to stay hidden for now.

And, just as you stretched your thumb to make a couple last changes to his page, the back door thundered open.

Joel stumbled in, half-hunched. Rubbing his face with a towel and treading slow, heavy steps through the living room. With your heart about to burst from your throat and your impulses blown to shit, you panicked and crammed his phone in your shorts—like, in them.

Joel’s phone was just then settling above the groove of your ass when the man collapsed on the loveseat across the room. Instinctively, you drew your legs to your chest as Joel groaned and pulled the towel away from his face.

“The beast is at it again,” he declared, expression grim.

Before you could ask who ‘beast’ might be, he clarified:

“Marlene’s shit-for-brains labradoodle won’t quit diggin’ holes under my fence. Whole thing’s gonna fall if he—”

You didn’t mean to be rude, but you had to tune out the rest of what he said; your butt squirmed against the sofa as your neighbor’s phone traveled perilously down and took partial lodging between your cheeks. Then stuck.

There was no way you were getting caught like this. One stray phone call or text and you would have the world’s most jarring ringtone buzzing straight up your ass. And a very uncomfortable conversation with Joel, to be sure.

So, while he droned on about the chaos being wrought by the paws of old Sparky, you nodded to the window.

“Aw shit, Mr. Miller…did he just…dig up another?” You feigned surprise as you stared over Joel’s shoulder at a hole that didn’t even exist. Then, when he’d jumped to his feet and growled ‘No fuuuuuckin’ shot’ as he made his way over to the window, you acted fast and pulled the phone out of your ass and stuck the old, cracked thing on top of the coffee table where it’d been last and stood.

Before he could see—or say—anything else, you seized your own phone and made a swift beeline for the door.

Shouting over your shoulder, probably sounding like a fucking lunatic but not particularly caring either way:

“DAD’SCALLINGMEGOTTAGOMISTERMILLERBYE.”

And you left. You had no desire to explain your baseless, bullshit observation or why his phone was currently covered in a thin sheen of sweat from your butt.

You’d never seen so many roses in your life.

Joel Miller could legitimately give the whole Bachelor franchise a run for its money with all the goddamn virtual flowers he’d been getting from his Hinge admirers.

It’d been a week before you’d finally gotten the chance to abduct his phone again and check his ‘likes’ for yourself. Honestly, you hadn’t been expecting much—Joel was hot, but more so in a niche-ish sort of DILF-sexy way. You figured he’d be more of an acquired taste, really.

Once you’d scrolled through just over a hundred different messages, you realized at once how wrong you were.

‘GNAWING at the bars of my enclosure.’

‘Daddy? Sorry. Daddy? Sorry, I mean, Daddy?’

‘Need you in a way that is concerning to feminism.’

‘Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.’

And that was truly just the tip of the iceberg when it came to all the wild, chaotic, and horny messages Joel had received over the last week. You couldn’t believe it.

You got to firing off responses as fast as you could. Sitting cross-legged on the back porch while your dad, Joel, Tommy, and a dozen other neighbors were busy grilling burgers and soaking up as much sun as possible.

The only other person who hadn’t joined them was Tess.

She peered over your shoulder and fought back a laugh.

“That man is a fuckin’ menace to society, I swear.”

“No, we’re a menace to society. All about team effort,” you corrected her as you typed up a lightning-quick ‘Hey ;-)’ to each message, fingers moving fast.

“He doesn’t even know you’re doing this!”

“He will soon enough,” you mumbled. Grinning. Then, “Mission’s not over until that old man gets his dick wet.”

You’d probably made it through seventy or so replies and got to go back-and-forth with a couple hot prospects by the time you heard footsteps trailing up the steps—heavy ones that you instantly recognized as Joel’s. Without another word, you exited the app, turned the phone off, and chucked it to Tess, who placed it discreetly onto the porch railing where Joel had left it.

That phone really should have had a passcode on it.

Two weeks later, it did.

You saw it as soon as you’d slid your thumb up the screen in the comfort of Joel’s living room—over at his place pretending to be watching your Star Wars spin-off again—and you felt your heart jump up in your throat.

Your passcode is required to enable Face ID.

Since when the fuck did your neighbor have a passcode? Or even know how to make Face ID a thing? Or use it?

These questions and a dozen more were thrumming through your skull when you heard the screech of the back door once again. This time, instead of taking his sweet time on his yard work, Joel had only been gone five minutes. You swallowed a scream and did that dumb, reflexive thing you had before: shoved his phone in your shorts and thrust yourself back into the couch.

Practically shaking when Joel stepped into the room.

Of course, he wasn’t sweaty. His shirt wasn’t smudged with flecks of dirt or swaths of green from the grass outdoors, nor were his Wranglers the slightest bit muddied. He was perfectly clean in a plain white tee, jeans, and boots. You couldn’t help but notice how tight the short sleeves of his shirt hugged his biceps, and then you realized it was because his arms were crossed.

Joel regarded you with a look as long and as careful as the rows he was supposed to be mowing out in the middle of his backyard right now, and he let out a breath.

“Guess what,” he said.

“What?” you squeaked.

Your eyes widened without meaning to, and when Joel plopped down on the sofa beside you, you felt a shiver pulse through your body. Joel stretched his big, wide, denim-clad legs out as he leaned back, and you had to force yourself not to jump when his knee struck yours.

“I’ve gotta brush up on my Gen Z lingo,” he announced.

Wh— okay? What the fuck?

Just as you opened your mouth to speak, and feeling the slightest twinge of relief at this declaration, Joel started to tug something out of his pocket. It took you several seconds to see it, then a couple more just to work out what it was, then Joel was squeezing it. Flipping it open.

An old Motorola Razr? When did he get that?

“See, I, uh— met a girl last week,” Joel resumed, plainly careless in the way he fingered the thing in his grip.

Your chest tightened. Had he really?

“She’s a little on the…younger side. You might know her.”

Oh shit. Was Joel banging one of your friends?

You swallowed hard and nodded for him to continue. You pretended not to notice when he flipped the phone open and left it that way—starting to thumb through the keys to do something on it. You fought the urge to take a look.

To distract yourself, you watched his face instead. It was lax.

“She said somethin’ kinda funny last night, and I—” Joel paused to let out a breath of a laugh, and you nearly broke down to steal a glance at what he was looking at.

Narrowly, you resisted. And it was a lucky thing, too—the next thing you knew, Joel’s gaze was fixed right on you.

“Y’know what she said to me?” he asked.

“What?”

Joel blinked. You probably should’ve heard the click of a little button on the phone he was holding, but you didn’t.

You did feel the vibration of another phone under your ass a second later, though. That one was unmistakable.

That one was Joel’s.

Out of one more stupid, senseless instinct, you coughed. Loud. Like the momentary scratch in your throat might reasonably mask the sound and sensation of a small hunk of metal buzzing between your butt and the couch.

It didn’t, of course. You sat and stared at Joel as it rang.

Slowly, he brought the Razr to his ear. At one corner of his mouth, you could discern the first inklings of a smirk.

“Wanna answer that?” he hummed, nodding to your rear.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

You weren’t sure how you even had the strength to do it, but you reached back and plucked his phone out of your shorts. With your gaze still stuck to his, you answered it. Put it to your own ear out of habit—and a little bit of fear.

“Hello?” you said, stupidly.

“Hey.”

The second you heard Joel’s voice rumble out beside you on the couch and across the line, your heart dropped. Ironclad confirmation of all you didn’t want to believe.

You squeezed his phone even tighter and sincerely hoped the man couldn’t hear the wild, erratic beat of your heart as it throbbed and thudded in your chest. The noise was almost too loud for you to hear anything else, too fast-paced and frantic to discern another word until:

“Can you tell me what a ‘Hinge DILF’ is, darlin’?”

You rose to your feet, scarcely even realizing it.

You had to get off of that couch, had to get away from him and come clean, as calmly as you possibly could. The phone fell out of your grasp just as he ended the call.

“Shit— Mr. Miller— I-I-I-I can explain.”

Swiftly, suddenly, Joel recovered his phone from the floor. He set the other device aside and propped his feet on the coffee table, lounging a little more comfortably now that he could scroll the phone at his leisure. Before he did, though, he made a point to wipe the screen.

“Nothin’ I love more than ass sweat on my phone.”

Your cheeks heated to a thousand degrees.

You wished the ground below your feet would open up and swallow you whole. It was like you were floating somewhere over your own body, unable to move or speak. From this vantage point, and still paralyzed with fear, you could see Joel opening Hinge on his phone.

“Crazy how long the stuff sticks,” he mused aloud, starting to peruse his likes, “When you got up and high-tailed it outta my place that first day, I thought I must’ve been seein’ things—what with how wet my phone was.”

You would’ve closed your eyes in utter resignation if you’d had the strength. Joel had known this entire time.

The old man continued to scroll, cavalier as ever.

“I figured ya might’ve been havin’ some…personal time of your own on my phone—maybe your old man blocked PornHub on the home WiFi or somethin’—but then I kept diggin’ around…” As Joel spoke, his actions seemed to mirror his words, and he was really scoping out the app. Combing through profiles and roses and streams of old messages that you had sent, then shrugged to himself.

“…and all I found added up to jackshit,” he concluded.

This time, you managed to meet his gaze when he looked back up, but really, you hardly saw him at all.

Joel was smiling.

“I did see a text, though.”

He waved his phone, where a few messages were visible, though not legible, to you. You didn’t try to read them.

“‘Welcome to Hinge! Reply ‘C’ to confirm your phone number and get started,’” Joel rattled the first one off.

Of course you’d forgotten to delete the fucking text.

“And I know my memory’s all but gone to shit, but I didn’t remember ever replying ‘C’ myself, so then—”

“It was a joke,” you choked out, cutting him off.

Joel cocked a brow. He leaned even further back in his seat and crossed his feet. You were already vomiting words before he could attempt to get one out himself.

“N-Not a funny joke,” you clarified, voice shaking, “Fuckin’ stupid as shit, I just wanted to see— y’know— me and Tess were talkin’ ‘bout how hard it must be…in your…in your fifties— it’s just hard finding somebody.”

Joel didn’t know what you were trying to say, and his face showed it. You didn’t know what you were saying.

“So you think my sex life is a joke?” Mr. Miller quipped.

“NO!”

You hadn’t meant to say it so loudly. You quieted down:

“No. I didn’t…no. I just wanted to see who would…”

“…wanna fuck me?” he finished, blunt as ever.

If your face had been hot before, surely it was about to burst into flames right now. You didn’t get like this—not around Joel Miller, not around anybody—but here you were, chest constricting with humiliation and shame, wishing you were anywhere in the world but the place you were, and Mr. Miller was smiling, he was still smiling, and it was all you could do to just stand there and…stare.

And wince when tears started to prick at your waterline.

As if this day couldn’t get any more mortifying, you were actually crying in front of your neighbor, nose stinging and beginning to leak. Stupid, stuttered gasps leaving your lungs like you’d just learned to breathe yesterday, vision blurring the man in front of you and then dimming, momentarily, as you brought your hands up to your eyes and tried to shield this wretched display from his view.

You paced a couple hasty, blind steps away. You pressed the heels of your palms so hard into your sockets that stars started to dance behind your lids and a pain began to stab your brain. You continued to sob. It was just then dawning on you that you’d have to make a run for it now and never set foot near this man’s property again. You’d have to lock yourself away, never get to go to a barbecue again, probably face a restraining order from Joel and—

“FUCK!” you shrieked.

With all the grace of a giraffe on roller skates, you tumbled over Joel’s end table and took a nosedive into the floor. Your hands had no choice but to fly out in front of you in an effort to break your fall, and of course, they had to land on a lone, stray beer bottle on the ground.

One lovely little container of Corona Extra went splintering under the weight of your whole body, and briefly, before the thing exploded beneath your palm, you swore you could’ve heard a tiny, self-righteous voice:

‘¡La Vida Más Fina!’

Fuck you, Corona.

You’d never been more embarrassed in your life. Even if the bottle had managed to roll far enough to nick just the edge of your hand, slicing a minuscule strip of skin beneath your thumb, you still wanted to cry even harder. You looked pathetic, crumpled up beside this man’s couch with your wrist pinched between your fingers and your tears paving two steady streams down your cheeks. Hedged in by a field of shattered glass, you cast a look around yourself and whimpered. Then cursed. And cried.

You heard the shards around you crackle and snap even more when a pair of boots stepped in and crushed them.

Joel made easy work of your deadweight frame—your body hanging limply in his grip as he hoisted you up to your feet. Your vision was still as bleary as it had ever been, nose running and stinging and still struggling to take in breaths, but Mr. Miller’s hold was steady. He guided you into the kitchen and straight over to the sink.

Water ran. Wounds stung. A couple more sobs clawed out of your throat while Joel held your hand under the faucet, dabbed a paper towel across your hand to dry it off, then disappeared, momentarily, to retrieve what you assumed would be a first aid kit from the other room.

Instead, Mr. Miller returned with a fifth of Maker’s Mark. You eyed the bottle of whiskey in his hand and grimaced.

“N-Nuh-uh,” you blubbered, emphatic, “No way, man.”

“Uh, yes way, man,” Joel mimicked your voice, nose scrunching for dramatic effect as he elevated the pitch, “Like, you totally need this antiseptic so you don’t die.”

“I don’t s-sound like that!”

“I don’t so-o-und like that!”

Of course your neighbor couldn’t be assed to show an ounce of compassion to another person for more than two minutes. He drew closer with the whiskey. When he grabbed your wrist, you huffed and shook your head.

“That’s gonna hurt. I don’t want it.”

“Oh, cry me a fuckin’ river.”

Though as soon as he’d said it, the man winced a little. Maybe that had been a bit too harsh. You sniffled hard.

“Fuck you, Miller— I-I was doin’ you a favor!” you spat.

Tears and snot becoming the fuel for part of your newfound indignation, you shot Joel a look and scowled. You wrenched your hand out of his grip and made a point to rebuff the bottle of liquor as you moved back, shaking your head again. Mr. Miller stood there and watched you.

“Only time you ever leave this fuckin’ house is when you’re hangin’ out with my dad or your brother, you haven’t got shit else to do around here but mow that fuckass lawn and jerk off— I was tryin’ to help you out! Get you laid like any normal guy would like, but no, no— you’ve gotta go and be the world’s biggest ASSHOLE about it, just like you are with everything else. I’m sorry.”

Deep down, you were and weren’t remorseful at all.

You were sorry you’d gotten caught, ate shit over a side table and got your palm fucked up by a bottle of beer.

You weren’t as sorry that Joel seemed to be regarding you as a joke now—something to tease and poke fun at. Trying to pour his makeshift disinfectant over your cut and force you to obey his orders because you were just too dumb to figure it out yourself, then mock your voice.

Then watch you with tightly knit brows, eyes scanning your face with a skepticism that was almost palpable.

Condescending old fuck.

“What? Ain’t got nothin’ to say to that?” you seethed. Emotions running high—and humiliation momentarily usurped by anger—you stared him down and dared him to speak. You didn’t care what he thought of you now.

If it had been in your interest to care, you probably would’ve looked a little harder at what the man’s body language was communicating to you in the meantime. What his mouth was evidently loath to say, his hands and feet hardly displayed the same reticence: he set the bottle aside and stepped closer to you. He stared back.

It wasn’t until he’d approached near enough, had closed the space between your body and his with barely more than an inch or two to spare, and glowered down at you, face frozen with a frown, that your brain got the hint that he might not be the type to chicken out. Or back down.

He reached behind you and opened a cabinet.

“A favor,” Joel echoed, and you could tell he was trying his hardest not to replicate your intonation as he said it.

He’d just marginally checked his douchebag predilection, was closing the cabinet door beside your head and was starting to rock back on his heels, when a little cylindrical glass swung low in your line of vision. Joel held the tumbler loosely, then lifted it and pointed with his pinky.

“You,” he said, accusing, “fuckin’ suck at those—favors.”

Your stomach clenched at the sight of a slight, impish smile just then starting to frame the sides of his mouth. The featherlight grip he kept fastened on the glass, the ease of his stance, even the jab of that stupid, rough finger, still pointing at you, all bordered on nauseating. You fixed him with a pitiless look as he leaned in again.

And when his knuckles brushed your side, you tried not to flinch. You arrested his gaze without a word and let the smug, sun-tanned, sweet-as-shit-pie son of a bitch have his fill ogling you back and closing in on the bottle.

“What? Having half the tri-county population on Hinge ready to suck you off isn’t really your style?” you jeered.

Joel popped the cap and poured his drink. He shrugged.

“They ain’t you.”

As casual as if he’d just told you the weather forecast for the week ahead, his favorite place to eat, or the mundane specs on a construction project he’d been saddled with for months. Nothing of note. Nothing unknown. Just a routine admission of truth that sent your head reeling.

“You wh— w— well that’s—” you stammered, equal parts astonishment and exasperation as he continued to feed you steady, unrelenting doses of that look: “GROSS!”

You were standing stock-still, forced to watch that blip of a grin morph into a full smirk, slowly. He had to be joking.

“You are…fucked in the head, Miller. That’s not funny.”

Now you were the one pointing. Joel was drinking.

“—and I’d never in a million years even think—”

The side of your palm began to throb. It bled.

Blood was trickling down your wrist, roaring like thunder in your skull as your heart thudded away, impatient.

Impatient.

Impatient, impatient, impleeeeeeeeease fuck me, Joel, PLEASE!

Your libido a filthy, rotten traitor to all the rest of your better sense, you continued to stand there and suffocate on words like something akin to acid reflux in the throat. Your thighs snapped together, your back collapsed with equal force against the rigid set of cabinets behind it, and slowly, almost excruciating this time, you felt the pulse between your legs give way to a bout of warmth.

That cockhungry slut governing your bodily functions was actually getting wet for this asshole, and you were powerless to the effects of her wily, DILF-lusting ways.

“Gross,” you uttered out loud, again, reflexively—face overlaid with a look of horror as the heat began to pool.

And, as though the man had been endowed with the gift of infrared vision, or else just an external thermostat to gauge how hot you’d gotten between your two sweating legs, Joel brightened. His gaze flirted down to that soft, unseasonably tepid spot with a knowing look and then—

“Gross,” he parroted back. The smile behind his eyes said he wasn’t disgusted at all, just teasing some more.

When he pinched your wrist to get back to the business of blotting out blood with a paper towel, he kept that smug look painted across his creased, ancient face.

“‘S’that why ya made a Hinge for me? ‘Cause I’m gross?” Mr. Miller applied pressure to the still-bleeding cut, then directed your other hand to hold the paper towel in place.

You shook your head.

“No,” you started, trying not to wince before he turned. Again, the man ambled out of the kitchen, only to come back momentarily—finally—with a long-awaited bandaid.

“I mean…yeah, you’re a perv, but that’s beside the point.”

Joel exhaled a little harder through his nose. He pressed the underside of your palm again, ensuring the bloodflow had stopped, then swapped the napkin for the bandage. The adhesive might’ve been in place for two seconds before he was retreating again; this time, to the fridge.

“Then what was the point?”

Joel yanked one door open. You glanced over your shoulder to the one that led out to the back porch.

The longer you stayed, the harder it would be to go.

Go.

GO!

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly.

From where you were standing, you weren’t sure why you’d decided to make Joel the profile in the first place. Your curiosity, for one thing, had been one hell of a persuasive motivator to getting you scrolling on Joel’s behalf, but why did you care one way or another if your neighbor was drowning in pussy or enduring Sahara desert-levels of dick deprivation at his big age? It sure as fuck wasn’t your business to care, and nothing about Joel Miller had ever intrigued you consistently enough to venture an inquiry about his personal life before, so…

“Why?”

Joel was looming overhead again, the force of his presence like a fist through your chest. In an effort to steady your breaths, you turned your gaze away from his.

“I should go.” You couldn’t have dodged his last question more clumsily, or pathetically, if you’d tried, “It’s…late.”

Outside, the midday sun was still high in the sky, and there was nowhere in the world you had to be, Joel knew.

“Okay,” he said at length.

Then he leaned in closer and held something out.

“At least take one for the road, alright?”

And he was smiling, almost kind.

You looked down and—shit.

There it was, clear as day: a creamy piña colada popsicle.

The sneaky, conceited motherfucker had remembered what you’d written in his dating profile. You winced.

You accepted the cocktail popsicle without a word.

‘Thanks’ or ‘You’re a fucking pig, Miller’ likely would’ve sufficed for a farewell on any account, but by then, you were far too shell-shocked—and frankly, incredulous—of everything that had just transpired over the course of the last thirty minutes. You didn’t thank Mr. Miller, nor insult him by likening him to swine or any other thing; you left.

Your feet carried you fast out of his house.

Down the steps of his back porch, across pristine, power-washed concrete, past seemingly endless beds of hibiscus blossoms, marigolds, cape plumbago, and those god-awful periwinkle plants—who the fuck enjoyed gardening in a heatwave, anyway?—you practically sprinted away in a fugue state until the toes of your shoes hit the edge of your lawn, then you stopped.

“FUCK!”

You’d forgotten your phone.

It felt as though your body were turning in slow motion, and for a second, you seriously considered abandoning the device altogether and begging your dad for another. Then you set your sights on the wide, uninviting exterior of the back of your neighbor’s house, the place you’d just been hauling ass to escape, and almost rolled your eyes.

Joel was leaning back against the frame of his open back door, arms crossed, expression smug as he watched you.

It was extraordinarily difficult to throw a half-decent punch at a man while wielding a popsicle in your hand.

“Give it back!” you barked.

“Give what back?” Joel grinned, easily side-stepping what struck him as neither a punch nor a slap—in fact, the hit never struck him at all. He laughed as it missed.

“You know what.”

Of course, you’d gone back. Of course, Joel had tried to play dumb and pretend like you’d never left your phone behind at all. And of course, he hadn’t budged until you’d threatened to shove your left foot so far up his ass his dentist would be picking toes out of his teeth for weeks.

‘Violent little thing, ain’t ya?’ Joel had replied, chuckling.

Then, when he’d attempted to brush you aside with a patronizing wave of his hand and an admonition to run on back to daddy and quit buggin’ me, all bets were off. You’d aimed right for center mass and nearly dropped your frozen treat with how hard you’d shoved his chest.

That was how the conversation had started.

That was how the so-called ‘altercation’ had come to be—Joel easily swatting you off and indulging you no further than to chuckle and laugh and taunt you like an older brother who was faced with a sibling half his size—and all the while, your injured hand was throbbing again. White, sticky rivers of melted popsicle now trickled down your wrist instead of blood, and you were just as pissed.

“Listen—” Joel began, catching a fist meant for his face.

“Gimme my fuckin’ phone, Miller!”

“—you—”

“Can go to hell.”

“—owe me.”

“Owe you?!”

You stopped. Your weak, one-handed assault was halted just long enough to peer into Joel’s eyes, and the gaze that met yours was solid. Sincere as you’d ever seen it and blinking slow as the chocolate browns of his irises moved lower over you. Whether they were drinking you in, sizing you up, or merely plotting your demise by calculated turns, you could have been no more certain, or prepared to hear, what came out of his mouth next:

“Wanted to do me a favor, didn’t ya? C’mere.”

And the next thing you knew—or felt—was one thick finger hooking into your belt loops. One swift tug in his direction, another light push toward the old wood railing to your side, and then more fingers crowding in, crawling over, seizing the coarse denim material and pulling hard like the thing was the single most annoying impediment.

“Take these off,” Joel grunted.

You were too stunned to move. Even breathing felt like a chore, every last sense elevated to impossible heights, it wasn’t surprising at all when Joel just went and did it all himself. In a blink, your shorts were yanked down and then dropped to your ankles, your legs guided backward in shuffled steps, and then, nearly tripping in the fabric at your feet, you fell back, ass smacking the flat railing. You winced at the warm, knotty texture of the cedar beneath you and, out of habit, shot the old man a look.

Joel cocked a brow in response, likely already knowing what that glare from you was intended to convey, and instead of giving voice to any words himself, just sank.

Lower and lower and lower, until his knees were the only things holding him upright on the floor before you and his hands were pressing—melting—into your thighs.

Audibly, his kneecaps cracked.

You couldn’t help but giggle.

While Mr. Miller’s mouth moved dangerously close to a place you should’ve been appalled to see him go, all you felt capable of doing in that absurd moment, it seemed, was laugh. You gripped the thick white column beside you, scooted back slightly until you were in a comfier seated position, then snagged your lower lip between your teeth to contain the sound, but it was of no use.

Joel was both drooling and scowling between your legs.

“That funny, huh?” he managed in a low, ragged breath, “Sound’a some crackin’ joints on a man as old as me?”

“Yeah,” you said. Smug, for once.

Admittedly, any other normal person in your position would’ve been concerned with about a million different, more pressing issues—namely, your neighbor and dad’s best friend sticking his face between your legs—but really, after all the frivolity, commotion, and fucking insane behavior the two of you that day, it was like your brain had logged off and left the body to its own devices.

You didn’t mind that for right now.

When Joel’s tongue grazed the space between the cusp of your panties and inner thigh, you really didn’t mind.

Fuck it. If this was the favor he’d wanted after all, so be it.

As if reconsidering the foray of his mouth for the time being, Joel tilted back a little: just far enough to get his hands on your underwear and start tearing those down your hips too. One short, hot puff of air from his lips was a bliss unto itself, and your knees instinctively kicked up. With the thin white fabric barely halfway down one calf, you hooked your ankle over Joel’s shoulder and cursed.

“My daddy’s gonna kill you for this, Mr. Miller.”

And, for what felt like the thousandth time, Joel smiled.

Bigger this time, as if to show he didn’t really care at all what the man next door was liable to say or do about his present endeavor as long as he got to stay. You let him.

He pressed a kiss to your slick, puffy lips and hummed.

“Fine by me.”

Without another word the tip of the man’s tongue glided up the length of your slit and curled in, drawing your arousal between his lips in a hungry sort of kiss, and then sank even deeper. Going nose-deep in just one go, the old man looked positively obscene burying his face so far inside; his features alone a cruel, unseemly sort of fixture between legs as smooth and supple and warm as yours—how did a man so many years your senior get to be so lucky?—and somewhere further, in the darkest recesses of your mind, the sight sparked desire. A hunger, really.

Seeing that silver, stubbled chin getting drenched in your wetness, the weathered lines of his face growing even deeper with each new movement of his tongue, the strain in his neck with muscles that were firm and taut and so visibly aged with decades and decades of life—

You adored it.

A man Joel’s age never looked more out of place and still somehow perfectly fit for the space between your thighs.

You lowered the hand that was cradling your popsicle, braced your weight against the railing with the other, and then pressed on either side of his skull with your legs, quiet moans tumbling one after the next off your tongue.

“‘S’all for me?” Joel breathed, licking and suckling kisses along your clit, “This sweet, needy pussy’s all mine?”

“All yours.”

You scarcely recognized the sound of your own voice. Your legs were shaking. Though you loved to see him make you come undone, piece-by-piece, you also couldn’t bring yourself to stare a second longer, stimulation too great and his tongue too good.

If he kept going at a rate like this, you’d have no choice but to cum, and you didn’t want to be done just yet. Or ever. You refocused your gaze to look down and tell him as much, when your mouth fell open around a gasp, rather than words, and the weight in your hand fell away.

Swiftly, Joel took the popsicle in his own grasp and slid it down to the vicinity of his lips and tongue, now grinning.

The thing was half-melted by now, having sufficiently soaked half your forearm and leaving a vague, sugary aroma in its wake, but it was still intact. Still unlicked—unlike you—and still perfectly cool and light and long. The off-white hue was almost taunting in the way it winked and caught rays of the sunlight shining behind you, and as the man slid it even lower, you jumped back.

“Joel,” you hissed.

“What?” he hummed.

“That’s not—” You blinked, swallowing a moan.

“Not what?”

One warm, callused hand pressed the tip of the frozen thing to your bundle of nerves—the first contact it had had since Joel’s tongue—and you let out a low whine.

Even after all that time in the sun, the popsicle seared your soft, wet, aching parts with a biting cold you’d never thought possible. It sent waves of a strange, trembling pleasure coursing through your lower half and left your head with no choice but to moan. And fist Joel’s hair in a vice-like grip when he angled the wooden stick lower.

Suddenly, the white, sticky head slipped from your clit to the rim of your yet-untouched entrance, and that made your muscles leap to attention once again. You cursed.

“Not what, honey?” Joel pressed, with affection—and as he did, sank the tip of the popsicle deeper inside you.

“Th— that’s not—” You were shaking your head, racking your brain for any trace of the English language and failing miserably, “Not…doesn’t…g-go there, fuck.”

Joel sank the pretty, dribbling popsicle another inch inside your pussy and sucked a whistle through his teeth. If your senses weren’t as raw and utterly shot as they were, you likely would’ve seen the expression on his face transform from one of pleasure and amusement to awe, eyes darkening at the sight of your hole opening wider.

“That’s it, baby, take it,” he cooed, voice low.

Another couple soft utterances of ‘Joel,’ and your legs only parted wider. Free to grip his hair, the railing, the column beside you, or just the insides of your own palm as the icy sensation sank inwards and into your body, you whimpered. Your hips, instinctively, bucked toward the source, and you heard Joel’s groan join your sounds.

He withdrew his new toy just far enough to make you mewl for him again, then drove it deeper. With the friction of that, a stream of white went trickling out.

Joel couldn’t help himself; he flattened his tongue against the stream and licked you clean from the spot where he’d split you open to the cusp of your clit. He circled that place over and over, worked the object in his hand even further inside and back out again, then, getting a taste of your arousal with the white, wet, sticky-sweet juices starting to mix together, he moaned.

It was a guttural sound, something just shy of the ‘feral’ demarcation but at least ten steps ahead of desperate. You relished the gruff, throaty sound reverberating from his lips to your cunt, the way your walls fluttered around it and for him, and were just about to throw your head back and grind your hips even harder when it stopped.

Joel stopped. He started to get up.

Quickly for him, but slow as molasses from your point of view, the man straightened from his place on the hard wooden floor and expelled a breath. His chest heaved, and his torso twisted to one side, momentarily, to get the strain out of his back as best he could. From where you sat, the spattering of grey in his beard seemed to glisten even brighter with the sheen of your arousal now sticking in it. He wiped his chin and reached in between your legs.

“Got any favors left in ya, sweet pea?” he smirked.

Fortunately for you, it didn’t sound like a question at all, and didn’t appear to be intended that way, as the next second had Joel pulling the largely-spent popsicle out of your slick and straight into your mouth. He didn’t inquire whether he could push it down on your tongue and make you taste your own cunt on the thin wooden stick, but the smile on your lips assured him that was fine by you.

Nor did he ask for your permission to flip you around, bend you over his porch railing, and take your hips in his hands. You were still sucking down the last traces of sugar and citrus and a vaguely tangy taste when you felt the head of something else prod your soft, wet folds.

Much bigger—and warmer—than the thing that had breached you before, Joel nudged at your hole with the tip of his cock, coated the head of it in light, gentle circles, and sucked in a breath. He didn’t have to ask, and you didn’t need to answer; he just parted your walls with the force of one steadying thrust, and the pulse of that sharp, dizzying pleasure was back in an instant.

Shared this time, and manifesting in sounds from you and Joel alike: you gritting the stick between your teeth and managing muffled cries of his name and whatever expletives you could scream, Joel with ragged breaths.

For a man who ostensibly hadn’t fucked since the Clinton administration, he was off to a pretty good start.

Joel gripped your hip even tighter and started to saw his cock in and out of your dripping, pliant hole, his other fist finding purchase in your hair for more leverage. His thrusts were shallow enough at first to get you used to the new stretch, and you could feel him making space in a way no man’s girth ever had before. You couldn’t see his face, but you imagined it had come to settle into a mix of guilt, rigid composure, and pussydrunk pleasure.

“Good girl,” Joel murmured behind you. Then, groaning, “Good fuckin’ girl, keep squeezin’ my cock just like that.”

You felt a slap on the ass and the speed of his thrusts pick up in turn. Your mouth fell open in a moan, and the stick on your tongue almost slipped out of place when, shortly, Joel leaned over your body and pulled you back. He snagged the popsicle stick between his teeth just in time to get your back flush with his front—in perfect position to get fucked against the nearest column.

Breaths coming out in short, ragged grunts in your ear, Joel teased the side of your face with the stick, then nudged it back in your mouth. You sucked it softly.

“One more favor, baby?” he panted against your cheek.

You nodded, not knowing what it was but that you wanted to be the one giving it. Joel pulsed inside you.

With every stab of his cock, every string of your wet, messy, combined arousals making the most profane noises imaginable between your body and his, you were squeezing him tighter and teetering on release. Joel’s hand snaked down between your legs, and just as the head of his cock nudged against that spot, you keened.

“Any favor?” Joel groaned and nipped at your earlobe.

The heft of his stomach and chest made for a warm, sturdy place to start rocking your hips, greying peach fuzz at the base of his belly a small comfort as you writhed against his body and whined that you’d do anything, anything he wanted, as long as he let you cum.

Joel’s middle finger found your clit, and you nearly screamed at the welt of pleasure coming to a head. Again, the popsicle stick tumbled out, but neither one of you could be bothered to try and keep it in this time.

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

The man behind you didn’t even attempt to conceal his grin as he leaned closer, hugging your body to his while he circled your clit and fucked you harder, lips straying every now and then to press a kiss on your shoulder. He plunged his cock deeper and was met with a squeezing, leaking mess trickling down his length and onto his balls, growing louder with each new wet slap against your ass. The old man was a tease, but he couldn’t hold on forever.

“Wanna fill you up,” Joel groaned.

“Cum inside?” you murmured.

You were barely able to tilt your chin to him, but when you did, he held it—made you look him in the eyes and, for once, give your unequivocal permission to do it then.

And you did.

You were startled to find Joel’s lips crashing against yours in the next second, mouth overwhelmed with the remains of your own taste, his tongue, and a series of relentless, hammering thrusts. It was only a matter of moments, then, before your resolve gave way and his followed suit, and the waves of pleasure between you both manifested in ropes of sticky, hot cum painting your walls. Joel held you closer, as though needing to feel his seed as he fucked you through it, groaning when he felt it start to move with each sharp, stuttered thrust.

You panted in his mouth coming down. You kissed him back. You almost couldn’t believe the sensation between your legs, soon to come dripping out and undoubtedly bound to make a mess all over the floor of Joel’s porch.

Equally unbelievable was the fact that you’d just fucked your neighbor in broad daylight, outside, with Marlene’s house directly to your left and your own on the right.

You stared out at the sprawling expanse in front of you—Joel’s impeccably kempt yard, one of the reasons why you were standing where you were just then—and, as you’d found yourself before, you felt the urge to laugh.

Not on account of Joel’s old, ailing knees, this time.

Clearly, the man still trying to catch his breath behind you suspected that that might’ve been the case, though, because you felt him shift his weight and grunt, lightly.

“What’s so funny? My knees crack when I cum, too?”

You could feel the smallest of scowls start to take shape, muted momentarily with kisses that he pressed on your cheek, and others, still more teasing, down your neck.

You let him, unfazed and still giggling. Then pointing.

It seemed Joel was loath to detach his lips from your neck—or his cock from the place he’d just stuffed full—but when you lifted your finger to indicate a direction toward the side of his backyard, his senses perked up.

There, along the white picket fence between his yard and Marlene’s, was the furry, merciless, lawn-destroying labradoodle that had been plaguing Joel’s life for years.

The man was out of you in an instant. He yanked his jeans up even quicker, tucking his dick back, clumsily, into its place in a fit of rage, then cupping his hands:

“WILL YOU FUCK THE HELL OFF, SPARKY?!”

#REMEMBER - JUST BECAUSE JOEL PUTS A POPSICLE IN YOUR P*SSY DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD DO THE SAME IRL!!!! I’M SO SERIOUS #PLEASE PROTECT YOUR PH AND DON’T PUT SWEETS DOWN THERE LMAOAKSK #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller imagine #joel miller one shot #joel miller #joel miller tlou #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfiction #joel tlou #the last of us fic #the last of us #tlou

1K notes · View notes

joanofarcisdead · 2 years ago

Text

it’s him. lesley dune

not to wrestlepost on main but there’s a guy who looks like all the lsdudes smushed together and i don’t know how to feel about it

#🥀🗡️#ls dunes #eventual wrestling tag

36 notes · View notes

wife-of-all-dilfs · 10 months ago

Text

the five stages | f. odair

masterlist

summary: a journey back to a golden period of time of polaroid pictures, white knitted sweaters, and lively sea-green eyes. why? because in the present, those same pair of eyes are ruthlessly unrelenting and you have no other chance of their escape.

pairing: finnick odair x fem!reader

warnings: heavy angst, vomiting, implied smut, depression, maggots, hallucinations, relieving fluff, mild horror. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, so I won’t be adding any more warnings, sorry y’all. this could be very triggering so please read at your own discretion. some descriptions are quite graphic!

notes: I’m super proud of this one—it’s sorta based off “little talks” by of monsters and men and “on the nature of daylight” by max richer. this fic probably won’t get many views, so I’ll be incredibly grateful for any—if any at all—type of engagement! <33

word count: 8k

The bedroom was cold; dark; empty. Empty even though I still resided in it.

My alarm had gone off two hours ago, yet I hadn’t moved an inch. When I finally turned my head to the side, I found that the space beside me was vacant. Cold; dark; empty—I reached out my hand anyway.

Thirty minutes passed before I wrestled myself out of bed and started making breakfast downstairs. The otherwise warm and flavourful plate of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast left my mouth feeling dry and my throat lodged.

It used to be one of my favourite meals. At least, when he was around.

Dishes were piled in the sink, dirty and untouched. I sat on the couch, pondering whether today was the day I would finally get to cleaning them. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. We always did that together. I wondered—if I left them in the sink long enough, would he return? Even just for five minutes to help me put them away? One month and seventeen days had passed, and yet I still entertained this thought religiously.

I wasted an hour running circles round the same contemplations before deciding fresh air, as cliché as it was, might do me some good.

Grey clouds concealed the sun’s warm golden light when I stepped outside, but that was fine—I didn’t like anything golden anymore. But he would want me to leave the house at least once a day, so that’s what I would do. I would go down to the beach beside our—my house and feel the sand collect between my toes as I walked to the water’s edge.

But wasn’t that where he was when it happened? Wasn’t he in water? Didn’t those things pile on top of him? Didn’t they sink their fangs into his neck and tear at his flesh until he was blown to…

Bits of egg, yoghurt and stomach bile sat at my feet. My legs buckled, and I collapsed to the ground in a sandy, tear-stricken heap. Since my lower body had refused to cooperate any longer, it took me until midday to crawl back up the dune and to my front doorstep.

Fuck. I needed to rest.

“I need you to rest, sweetheart.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” I whined. “I’m not sick.”

Finnick placed a bucket on the ground beside the bed. The room smelled of lemon disinfectant—a joy I often found in being sick… That is, if I were sick, which I was not. I must have drunk spoiled milk or eaten something bad during breakfast. Nevertheless, Finnick was not having it.

“You’re throwing up everything you manage to get down, and you’re shivering like it’s the middle of winter,” he said adamantly, tucking the comforter up to my chest. “It’s summer, and you’re very much not fine.”

I sat up, ready to heatedly debate the subject, but the room began swirling, and my ears were hissing like a staticky television channel without a signal. A quiet whimper buzzed in my throat as I hunched forward. Damn him, I was sick.

The mattress dipped as Finnick sat beside me. His hand was on my back, rubbing it soothingly as he used his other hand to tuck away the curtain of hair concealing my face. I huffed, half in annoyance, half in an attempt to suppress the nausea rising in my throat, and then sunk back against the pillows.

“Not sick, she says,” he jested, smiling down at me. I rolled my eyes, though unable to hide the weak, betraying smile creeping across my lips. “Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he said, a gentle command. “I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

The wooden flooring welcomed me with hard, cold arms as I hauled my sandy body through the front door. Images of fangs, bloody flesh, and panicked sea-green eyes flooded my mind.

More breakfast, more bile. No lemon disinfectant.

My knees were folded beneath my body; my body was hunched over my knees. I was sobbing now, so hard that I threw up again (was there even anything left in my stomach at this point?), creating a thick puddle of vomit and tears beneath me. Cries and gasps for air bounced around the house. To call me a mess would be an understatement. I was a disaster. A disaster wrapped up in an unmendable tragedy with a ragged, threadbare ribbon barely holding me together.

And in case I wasn’t aware of this fact, the floorboards were so shiny that they mirrored a reflection of myself. My hair was a being of its own, all wild and unkempt, and my face was another story entirely—a red, blotchy thing I wasn’t too interested in delving into.

But the most unsettling aspect had nothing to do with me, it was that there was someone else in the reflection. Two green balls of light were glowing above my head.

Dishevelled golden hair…

Dimpled cheeks…

My forehead was pressed to the floor as I screamed.

“I don’t want to make you sick as well,” I said, contrarily enjoying the feeling of Finnick’s skin warm against mine, hot blood flowing through his veins.

A day had passed since I first became unwell, and the sickness had continued to wreak havoc inside me.

We were both under the thick covers, our limbs tangled together as he held me atop his chest. (my body didn’t register the scorching summer temperatures. I actually felt as though my core temperature was a few degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, Finnick was characteristically toasty warm. It was perfect for me, but not so much for him, evident in the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead. Nevertheless, he made no complaints).

My body rose and fell with each breath he took. I was trying to inhale whenever he exhaled in a weak attempt to prevent the festering sickness in my body from entering his, and though it was a futile gesture, I did it anyway.

“In sickness and health, remember?” he said.

I smiled. “We’re not even married.”

“Yet, you mean,” he countered. “I plan on spending the rest of my life with you, sweetheart. You know that.”

My heart fluttered at the thought of spending an entire lifetime with him—waking up in each other’s embrace each morning, the warm sunlight peeking through the blinds of our bedroom; Finnick calling me “Mrs. Odair” or “My wife” at every opportunity because doing so made us both giggle like two moronic, love-struck teenagers; and being unable to prevent the deep smile lines on both our cheeks as we age, a constant display of our perpetual happiness.

“Sixty more years of having and holding you,” he continued with a gentle musing in his tone. “For better or for worse... For richer or for poorer.” He then stroked the side of my face and brushed away the sweaty strands of hair sticking to my forehead. “In sickness and in health…”

“…Until death do us part,” I finished, my voice slow with fatigue.

Two fingers sat beneath my chin and tilted my head upward. My eyes connected with Finnick’s. They were soft. Heartfelt.

“Not even then. I’ll love you beyond the grave,” he murmured. Then his lips were slowly curving into a pensive smile. “When we’re both ghosts and haunting the next owners of this house.”

I was now smiling, too. “I’d hoped you would say something like that.”

How could he lie like that? There was no we. There were no next owners. There was only me, alive and alone in a comatose house. And mind you, I was sane enough to know that it wasn’t actually his ghost haunting me, though I wish I weren’t because having that knowledge was even worse. It meant he was truly erased from existence.

“Go away,” I whispered to the reflection on the floor.

He didn’t. His vacant green eyes kept staring down at my crumpled figure.

I shot off the floor and spun around, hot tears streaming down my face. “Go away!” His face remained expressionless. He looked like himself, only colder. “You said sixty more years! You said we’d be together!” I mindlessly picked up and flung a small picture frame at him, only for it to pass through his body and shatter on the floor behind him. “Why did you lie to me?!” My voice was frayed with fury, though underlined with grief.

He said nothing, did nothing. All he did was watch.

My legs buckled, and I was on the floor again. I was whispering, half-sobbing, the same question over and over until the words slurred together. “Why’d you lie? Why’d y’lie?” The only time I stopped was when my tongue grew too heavy to move anymore.

To my surprise, he eventually came and sat beside me, remaining cold and silent—as I too had become.

Glass fragments from the picture frame were scattered across the floorboards. The photo within had fallen out and, ironically, drifted towards me. I didn’t bother acknowledging him as I moved onto my hands and knees and began crawling forward—my palms slicing open and blood seeping out—until the photo was in my hands. My shins had granules of glass pricking into them, but I couldn’t feel the pain; all I could do was stare at the memory in my hands.

The picture had been taken in District Thirteen, a day before he signed up for… the mission.

I was drifting in and out of sleep when a sudden bright flash lit up my eyelids.

“Oops.”

Heavy eyes fluttering open, I was met with a small camera pointing down at me, which was being held up by a lengthy muscular arm, which was connected to an even more muscular and broad shoulder, which was connected to—okay, sorry, I think you get it.

“Finnick!” I shrieked, pulling the covers over my naked figure.

He laughed, the vibrations rumbling deep within his chest, beneath my ear. A soft whirring sound accompanied the polaroid sliding out of the camera, its black film hiding the doubtless embarrassing picture beneath. He placed the film on the sheets beside him, letting the photo develop in darkness.

“I was supposed to cover the flash,” he said, still chuckling.

I rubbed my eyes, which were twinkling with little sparkles of light. “I think you blinded me.”

“Lucky you,” he jested. “You’re finally free from my repulsive exterior.”

I started to reach for the picture beside him—“You’re an idiot”—but then he was rolling us over until his arms were pillared on either side of my head and he was hovering above me.

His hair was a mess, a testament to the night before (and very early hours of the morning), and he was sporting a beautiful, lazy grin. “Yeah? Well, you’re engaged to an idiot,” he said, tilting his head in an arrogant manner. “So what does that make you?”

The sea-glass ring hugging my finger gleamed in the lamp’s dull light as I reached out to touch his face, my fingertips brushing along the edges of his pronounced jawline. Tangled strands of hair and a beaming smile were reflecting back at me in his eyes. No one had ever loved anyone as much as I loved Finnick—disregarding the one exception that was staring down at me.

“Blinded by love,” I whispered.

Brief yet poignant emotion trickled through his features, his eyes. Then, like a flick of a switch, he covered it up and lowered his face into my neck, groaning the words, “So corny.”

My fingers were tangled in his hair, holding him close to me. “Liar,” I laughed. “You loved it.”

“I love you, which is why I put up with your corniness,” he murmured into my skin.

Even after all this time, my heart still leapt whenever he said those three words, even when he was being a jerk about it. I kissed the top of his head. “I love you, too.”

We laid like this for a short while longer—Finnick keeping his face buried in the warmth of my neck, his arms curled beneath my body; me playing with the golden waves of his hair that were somehow softer than my own. He was so heavy on top of me that it was starting to become difficult to breathe, but in no universe would I ever tell him to get off. It was a blissful sort of suffocation.

A sort anyone would snap a picture of just to keep as a reminder of how beautiful it feels to be smothered with love. With that being said, the picture that lay awaiting beside me was brought back to mind.

“Oh no,” I moaned, picking it up and taking a short glance at the developed photo. I covered my face with my hands, repeating the words, “Oh no.”

The photo was plucked from my fingers, and Finnick began humming contentedly to himself.

In the photo, my face had been nuzzled into his bare, muscular chest, eyes closed in sleep-drunken serenity, hair thrown over my shoulder and spilling across the pillow. My hand rested on his contoured stomach with just enough of my upper arm and low light to conceal my breasts. Finnick had a delicate hand draped over my waist. He was gazing down at me with a smile that was just… full of pure love.

I had to admit—it was a beautiful picture. Despite my initial disapproval.

“Beautiful,” I heard him echo my thoughts, his eyes still scanning the photo. Then his brows furrowed, and his head slightly inched forward as though he had just noticed something peculiar in the picture. “Oh, and you are too, I guess.”

My head tilted back against the pillow with an abrupt laugh. I shook my head, looking back at him. “I hate you.”

“Liar,” he said, leaning in closer.

His lips were on mine for what must have been the millionth time in the past few hours. The bedside clock announced that breakfast was soon approaching, though it was clear neither of us would make an appearance within the next hour (or two).

“You love me,” he whispered as he slid inside me.

And I did.

I really did.

The muscles in my cheeks were straining due to how hard I was smiling.

It wasn’t my idea to keep a picture of us half-naked in the entryway of our home. He always was a bit unusual like that. Completely unashamed of who he was and how he acted. Sometimes a little too boisterously, but that’s what I loved so much about him—how confident he was in his love for me, so much so that nothing else mattered, no one else’s opinion.

God, I love him so much.

Love…?

Wait.

That’s not right.

Shouldn’t it be “loved”?

And why was I smiling? I didn’t have anything to smile about anymore. He was gone. Our wedding never occurred. Our faces never wrinkled with smile lines. Our clasped hands never weathered with age. He was gone.

The polaroid slipped from between my fingers. My hands were covered in glass and blood, blood that had painted a dark red splotch in the middle of the shiny film. Figures.

After a short while of staring blankly at the scattered debris decorating the floor, I finally found it in myself to start climbing back onto my feet. My straightened legs wobbled and ached beneath me with the little energy I had. That’s what happens when you can barely stomach food anymore: no energy, always sleeping, always swamped by nightmares or bittersweet memories—at this point, they were one and the same.

Not a strand of gold or a fleck of green was in sight when I glanced over my shoulder. For now, at least. He liked making an appearance once or twice a day.

Pieces of glass crunched beneath my bare, stinging feet as I made for the stairwell. A mess for another day, I reasoned. Just like the dishes. Sticky red footprints stamped each wooden step I ascended, growing less prominent as I reached the second floor.

After taking a right down a short hallway, the encompassing walls littered with magnificent seashells and dried ocean flora, I turned the knob to the furthest room and entered. The floor was landscaped with mountains of clothes which drenched the room in a familiar, all-consuming smell. The scent kind of reminded me of receiving a warm hug, albeit from someone you know you should let go of in more ways than one.

His hair, golden and tousled, caught my eye as I passed the wall of string-hung polaroids in our… sorry, my bedroom. His smile was all dimpled and brilliant, and he had his tanned arms wrapped around my middle. Just moments after the picture was taken, he had tackled me into the water and rightfully earned a smack on the back of the head. In turn, he did it again.

But before that, we were both looking into the camera with the most joyful expressions—huge grins, bright eyes. Frozen in time.

I never let myself look too long at that picture anymore. And I never, ever looked into his eyes. Green used to be my favourite colour. I didn’t have a favourite colour anymore. It was safe to say I didn’t have a favourite anything anymore; everything favourable was a reminder of him.

I picked up a white knitted sweater off the ground and tugged it over my head, staining it with splotches of dark red. Knowing him, he would wear it regardless—whatever was mine, was also his, and was equally the same in reverse, even things as grotesque as blood.

Well, he would have worn it, I should have said.

The sweater had been specifically tailored for him. I remembered how the soft sleeves hugged his arms so well that every fluid curve of his biceps was visible, similar to a building wave before it crested. On me, the sleeves swallowed my arms whole, which I liked to think in their own unique way had also been unintentionally tailored for me, like someone out there knew one day I would need some way to drown in him when he was gone.

Finnick’s fingers tugged at the silk ribbons, unwrapping the opulent gift box that sat on our dining table. Capitol devotees would send extravagant parcels weekly, turning up in abundance on our doorstep. Sometimes Finnick didn’t even bother opening them; sometimes we opened them together just to get a good laugh out of whatever ridiculous item was inside.

He never, though, opened the perfume-scented letters marked with lipstick stains.

“Oh,” I said in surprise as he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of fabric, knitted and cream-white and intricate, though still simple. It was soft to the touch; thick enough to retain warmth. I held it up with two hands, admiring the hand-sewed threads of cotton. Whoever’s handiwork this was, it was nothing to laugh at.

Holding it up to Finnick’s torso, I smiled and said, “Try it on.”

“What?” He shook his head and smiled quizzically. “No.”

“Yes. I think it will look good on you.” I pressed it further against him with conviction. “Try it on.”

He tilted his head and exhaled deeply through his nose, giving me a begrudging, squinty-eyed look. From that, I already knew I had won him over, and watched as he snatched the sweater from my grasp and tugged his shirt off with one hand. I averted my eyes, feeling the tips of my ears flush with heat—we’d been together for over a year now; you would think I’d have grown accustomed to seeing him shirtless.

His head slipped through the neckline and he pulled the sweater down his body. I was right. It looked really good on him. Perfect, actually. The measurements were so precise that the fabric sloped off his shoulders like a compact mountain of snow. The thick-knitted collar dipped into a deep, uneven neckline that partly revealed his chest and made his neck look like a strong, contoured pillar. He looked at me expectantly, as though to ask, “Well?”

“It makes your neck and shoulders look really nice,” I blurted out, instantly cringing inside.

His expression contorted into something of amusement and surprise as he took a slow step towards me. “My neck and shoulders, huh?” he said, grinning devilishly. Oh, now I’d done it. Leave it to me to rocket Finnick Odair’s already atmospheric ego. “Anything else?”

I began backing away, but his prowling strides were so long that the space between us only shortened. When my backside hit the edge of the dining table, I knew I was done for.

“You know,” I began, avoiding his unrelenting stare. “I think it was just a momentary lapse of judgement.” He was closing in now, placing his hands on either side of my body to trap me in place. “It—It actually looks terrible on you,” I said, feigning sincerity and adding a little nod to help further my case.

His eyelids drooped as he gazed down at me, lips curving into that seductive smirk he had mastered long ago. “No takebacks,” he purred, voice low and gravelly. Dear God, I could only pray I wasn’t going to melt into a puddle on the floor. He always did this—took every opportunity to flirt and render me a stuttering, bashful mess. It was his favourite game to play. “This is now my new favourite shirt. All thanks to you, sweetheart.”

But, given the right timing and ever-wavering amount of confidence, I liked to play too.

I inhaled deeply, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray me. “Maybe you should take it off then,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “So you don’t ruin it.”

His mischievous expression revealed his next words before he even spoke them. “Maybe I will,” he said, and then he was tugging his sweater over his head, and I was tearing off my own. As his hands slipped beneath my thighs and lifted me onto our dining table, I prayed the wooden legs wouldn’t collapse under the weight of our next actions.

My fingertips ran over the soft, rippling patterns on the knitted sleeves, my arms crossed in a self-soothing manner. After that day, the sweater had become a sort of good luck charm—or so we agreed upon as we lay panting on the tabletop. He started wearing it to a multitude of events and parties in the Capitol (basically any place in which he needed a pick-me-up, a reminder of what he had to come home to, who he had to come home to).

He even wore it the day we got engaged.

So many happy memories were associated with this one white sweater. So many times, those cloud-soft sleeves were wrapped around my body, suffocating me in the scent of him—if nothing else, at least that remained.

The last time he had worn it was the day of the Reaping for the Quarter Quell; the last time our lives were ever semi-normal. I had fought tooth and nail to reach him before he was escorted onto the train, despite being ordered, “No goodbyes,” by one of the Peacekeepers. In modest terms, I had significantly decreased his chances of reproduction.

When I reached Finnick, he had brought me into a kiss so harsh and fervent that my lips were bruised the next day. He then yanked off his sweater, leaving his upper body completely exposed to everyone around us in complete disregard for his trauma-induced fear of doing so, and shoved it into my hands.

I had just stood there frozen in bewilderment, watching as he called out, “I love you, sweetheart!” Two Peacekeepers were forcing him onto the train, but he too fought for the last word. “Don’t forget—I’m always with you!”

That statement had never been truer than it was now. For better or for worse.

My vision unblurred as I returned to reality. Dismal, grey light was peeking through the shutters that formed the balcony doors, the daylight hours seeming to tick away at a snail’s pace. I used to wish for the days to be longer, for time to move slower, so I could savour the moments I had of happiness and sunlight which used to be plentiful.

Why do wishes only come true when you grow to desire nothing but the opposite?

Slothfully, I crawled onto the unmade king-size bed, my limbs crumpling and balling to my chest as the side of my head hit the pillow. The imprint on the mattress beneath my body didn’t match my own. It was much larger and broader. How long would it take for the springs to forget his body weight and recoil back into place as though he never existed at all?

I inhaled the sweater’s scent with every breath I took (and I tried not to wonder how long it would take for his scent to disappear as well) and hugged my arms around my waist. No pain was worse than the fleeting moments I forgot the embrace was my own and not his.

Hours passed, and so did the evening. A beautiful orange sunset hadn’t slipped through the shutter’s cracks because the clouds never dissipated. Night-time brought no consolation either. Not even the stars or moon made an appearance. Everything that once gave me a shred of optimism was hidden behind a veil of gloom.

I knew tomorrow wouldn’t be any different—the weather, my mood, his absence. Because the end of autumn was closing in, and the days were becoming bleaker. Trees would start shedding their leaves; the leaves would start to die.

I hoped I would too.

I was still curled up on my side, my body aching with stiffness, when my face began scrunching into this ugly, twisted mess of despair. My tears were slow yet heavy, synonymous with the day I had incurred.

But then something strange happened.

Someone called my name.

No. That couldn’t be right. I was the only one who occupied a house in the Victor’s Village; the others had either relocated after the war or were… dead.

But there it was again—my name, distant and eerie, yet spoken with a tone people often used to beckon over and aid a frightened, injured animal. My vision blurred, both from tears and concentration on the voice.

“Hey.”

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment my surroundings transformed into a kitchen, just that they had and that I was no longer in my bed but standing upright.

Ahead of me, in the distance, the sun was beating down on the crystalline water, and white frothy waves were cresting on the smooth, golden sand. It was a perfect day; not a cloud was in sight. The only blemish that smeared the blue sky was the reflection staring back at me from the window I gazed out of.

In my hands was a soup bowl and a damp dishrag.

“Sweetheart?” That once distant voice, concerned and beckoning, was standing right beside me.

Blinking, I snapped out of my daze and turned away from the window.

He stood tall beside me, despite being half hunched over the kitchen sink and scrubbing the last of the few dirty dishes stacked neatly on the bench top. His head was turned towards me, his enamoured sea-green eyes peering into my own as though he was searching behind them for what troubled me.

“Hey,” he spoke softly, standing up straight. His touch was warm and gentle as he reached for my hand, leaving soapy bubbles on my palm and fingers. “Where’d you go?”

Three odd things seemed to occur at once: first, I flinched away from his touch, overwhelmed by its paradoxical unfamiliar familiarity; second, I felt an inexpressible relief from seeing him standing before me, seeing his cheeks painted with a soft pink hue as though blood-red roses were hidden just beneath his skin.

The third was an onset of disorientation. I couldn’t tell you why I felt disorientated standing in my own kitchen with the love of my life, just, simply, that I did. There was an answer—it was close by, right under my nose, yet unreachable. We did this every day, didn’t we? We would eat meals together and then wash up together. So, why did I feel so unsettled?

I shook my head, dispelling the confusion that muddled my brain. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened.” I laughed uneasily, without a hint of mirth.

He laughed too, not to poke fun or because he found my obvious turmoil amusing, but rather to comfort me, so I would feel less alone in my unease. “It’s alright,” he said gently.

Neither of us addressed what had happened; we simply resumed our routine of washing and drying in domestic silence. And as seconds turned to minutes, and as the sky remained sunny, I found myself smiling. All that mattered was that he was standing beside me and that the sun was beaming in the sky. So, I kept smiling.

After I finished drying the last dish, we began placing the plates, bowls, and an abundance of cutlery in their assigned drawers and cupboards, weaving past each other and giggling anytime we got in one another’s path. I was carrying a stack of white plates, eyeing the high cupboard they needed to go in, but before I could even attempt straining onto my toes, the plates were out of my hands and taken into another much larger pair.

The smell of sea salt and expensive cologne wafted from behind me as he towered over my shorter frame and placed the plates in the cupboard.

“I could have done that,” I said, smiling as I turned around to face him.

He had a playful glint in his eye. “Yeah, right. What are you, like, four feet tall?” he joked.

It was an extreme exaggeration since I was no way near that height, but I suppose everyone was miniature in comparison to him, being over six feet tall and all. I feigned open-mouthed offence, to which he gave the side of my head a quick, playful kiss of apology.

He then leaned against the counter with crossed arms. “Plus, when was the last time you actually put these dishes away? I’m surprised you even remember where they go.” He was grinning at me in a teasing manner, but every ounce of humour had drained from my body.

My eyes drifted to the floor.

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it—when was the last time I put the dishes away?

I couldn’t remember. In fact, I couldn’t remember what had happened this morning or the day before. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what we were doing before the dishes.

To be standing in a room, in a place you call home, and have a sense that nothing is in its right place, even though that is where everything has always been, is a disconcerting feeling beyond belief. To be perplexed by your own state of being—your existence—is even worse. I could almost describe it as a nauseating bout of vertigo.

My hands found the counter’s edge behind me, and I exhaled a shaky breath.

He stepped in front of me, one large and gentle hand reaching up to cup my jaw. “Are you okay?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling with shallow worry lines as he inspected my face. I hated that. I hated that I worried him so much. Sure, partners were supposed to lean on each other for support in a relationship (as he too did with me when needed), but I always felt so guilty doing so. Hadn’t he already suffered enough… pain in his lifetime? Who was I to cause him any more?

A sunbeam suffused the room, oozing across his face. The illumination lightened his eyes into a refreshing mint green, though, in contradiction, unearthed a pain that had been previously been concealed. Pain from what, I wasn’t sure. From concern regarding my unusual behaviour? Maybe a thought that was troubling him? Or perhaps he too was enduring a spell of confusion and had an inexplicable feeling that he was out of place.

Whatever his pain regarded, seeing it had rattled the deepest structures in which held my mind together.

It was then that I suddenly realised I hadn’t answered his question, so I gave him a wan “I’m-not-too-sure-myself” smile and then began slinking back to the sink window.

He followed behind me. I could feel him staring into the back of my head, could feel his brows draw together and his lips pull into a tight line, patiently waiting for a further explanation, though I wasn’t sure I could offer him one.

I hadn’t noticed before, but on the windowsill was a small picture frame containing a polaroid picture of us in bed—I was lying on his chest, half-naked and asleep, and he was looking down at me, smiling fondly yet with a sort of mischievous knowability. Running down the middle of the protective glass was a small, jagged crack.

I plucked the frame from the windowsill, inspecting the picture in my two hands. It seemed to uncover a place in my mind—once clouded by disorientation—I’d forgotten. Whether this place was real or imaginary was beyond me, but the fear I felt upon its recollection was incandescently genuine.

“Do you think,” I spoke tentatively, “people can have nightmares while they’re wide awake?” My thumb ran over the crack.

I might have heard him inhale a quiet, sharp breath, but it also could have just been the waves breaking on the distant shore. “Like a flashback?” he asked, an unidentifiable unease in his tone.

“No, not exactly.” I searched my brain for the right words, the right way to tell him how I was feeling, but it was difficult when I could only conjure vague fragments. And it was all I could do to tell it to him elliptically, as I knew saying the words in any other manner would shatter my heart.

“I had this vision,” I began, my words apprehensively staccato, “where I was somewhere else.” My eyes flickered over the picture. “Somewhere… bad. Everything was grey and heavy, and I was alone. Sometimes you were there, but you—you weren’t really you anymore.” I paused and looked up to find him staring at me in the reflection of the window. He looked pained; it was then suddenly hard to recollect a time when he didn’t. My throat started to constrict. “You were gone and…” my voice quietened to a broken wisp of wind, “you were haunting me.”

The room was silent.

He said nothing in response

The transparency of his reflection in the glass was so familiar—so haunting—and it was like another forgotten matter had been dredged from the depths of my mind. Stinging tears brimmed my waterline, and, due to my inability to bear the sight of his translucent appearance, I forced myself to turn around.

I glanced up at him, smiling weakly as I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head as if my need to apologise was nonsensical (even I was unsure of what I was apologising for), and he then pulled me into a tight embrace. His chin rested atop my head; my face was buried in his chest, and his arms held me like I was some dilapidated structure that relied on his support to remain upright. Part of me knew this sentiment was correct.

I expected his next words to be ones of consolation or reassurance, maybe an “I’m right here, sweetheart” or an “I’ll never leave you”. Instead, I felt his head turn and heard him say, “Think it’s going to storm?”

With a sniffle, I turned my head towards the window. The arms wrapped around my body tightened as if he somehow knew I would need the extra support. Because when I saw the wall of dark, opaque clouds rolling through the sky towards us, an unshakeable dread zapped through my heart.

My hands clung to the fabric of his cream-white sweater, which then brought to my attention that an inexplicable tingling sensation was spreading down the fingers of my right hand, numbing them.

Lightning flashed on the horizon, and the once serene waves began cresting violently on the shoreline. The dread grew.

Before my attention could drift too far, my name was called again.

I looked up to find those green eyes gazing down at me, swelling with tears. He was crying. Why was he crying? And why was his hair wet? His usually golden strands had darkened to a deep brown and were drenched with cold water that dripped onto my cheeks, and his hair was swept haphazardly across his forehead, a reflection of someone who had just endured an intense storm or had just been fighting for his life against a swarm of—of—

No.

My own eyes began to burn.

“It’s killing me to see you this way,” he spoke, every second word breaking and wavering in volume.

The world seemed to tilt on an axis. Return did the disorientation, ravaging my mind more violently now. “What do you”—My chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths—“What? What do you mean?” My lower lip was quivering, and my eyebrows were scrunched together in confusion. His words replayed in my head: It’s killing me to see you this way.

It’s killing me.

His hair was dripping—no longer with water, but with a thick, red substance that both dripped down and clotted on his skin. He didn’t look pained anymore; he looked like he was in pain.

It’s killing me.

But that can’t be right, can it?

It’s killing me.

Why?

It’s killing me.

Becausemy Finnickwas already dead.

I staggered backwards and out of his, no, this imposter’s arms. He stared at me as blood streamed down his forehead, pouring over his eyelashes and down his cheeks. I was going to be sick. This had to be some sort of cruel joke, a newly invented punishment from Snow. But that wasn’t right either: Snow was dead too.

“F…Fi…” I tried saying his name, my top teeth prodding the inside of my bottom lip, but I couldn’t make a sound.

He took a step towards me, and I almost stumbled onto the floor. “Remember what I told you?” he asked, though it sounded more like an urge.

I frantically shook my head. No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember anything.

Something dark and mountainous appeared in my peripheral vision, and an odious smell singed my nostrils. My head snapped to the left. Stacks upon stacks of plates and bowls mounded the kitchen sink, each crawling with maggots that were falling to the floor in white, wriggling heaps.

Nausea boiled in my stomach; horror brimmed my eyes.

I quickly turned away, my eyes meeting green again. His face was no longer stained with blood, and his hair was dry, shiny, and golden with life. I was as speechless as my face was drained of blood.

He took one more step toward me, but this time I didn’t back away, either frozen with fear or desperation for one last experience of closeness with him. My heart thrummed as he reached out to cup my face. It isn’t him, it isn’t him, it isn’t him, I repeated madly in my head. Oh, but it felt so much like him when his warm hand met my skin.

“I told you I’m always with you, sweetheart,” he murmured. And I knew engaging with him, in whatever form he took, affirmed my mental unwellness, but I couldn’t stop from leaning into his touch anyway. “Remember that.”

My cheeks were wet with tears. “I love—”

A bolt of lightning flashed, and thunder boomed throughout the house.

I was back in my bed.

My eyelids were heavy with sleep as they fluttered open. I felt detached, destabilised, and unsure of my existence in the world for I wasn’t sure which of the twoI was currently in. Real or fake?

A few minutes went by before I managed to get a grip on reality, which, in fact, was the real one. The Somewhere Bad. I pinched the corners of my eyes, not only finding them damp with fresh tears but also realising that my right hand—previously tucked beneath my head—was numb.

None of it had been real…

The entire time, my body was trying to alert me, to save me from the inescapable heartache I would feel upon waking. He hadn’t held me in his arms. He hadn’t cupped my cheek nor helped me wash the dishes. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere (not even in his own marked grave because there was nothing left of him to be buried).

Even despite seeing the familiar tall outline standing in the doorway, his features illuminated with each flash of lightning, I knew it wasn’t really him.

Rain was pummelling the roof, almost loud enough to subdue the perpetual rumbling of thunder (apart from the one sky-splitting thunderclap that had woken me). In another time, I would’ve been scared—of the raging storm, of my phantom lover who was watching from the shadows of our bedroom. But not now.

In recent months, I had found that no emotion, not even fear, surpassed the soul-crushing realisation that you have irretrievably lost the one thing you lived for.

On a defeated whim, and for the first time since his death, I let the singular, weighted word breeze past my lips.

“Finnick.”

It was a trembling plea, a desperate beckon.

And he indulged.

His footsteps were silent as he walked towards the bed. I couldn’t see his legs from my position, prompting me to wonder if he even had legs at all. Or did he only have legs when I could see them? That would then insinuate that if I couldn’t see him at all, he didn’t exist.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In my case, the answer was simple: no, it didn’t.

It wasn’t really Finnick. It wasn’t even his ghost. It was my mind.

He reached the bed’s edge, and I scooted over to my side of the mattress, allowing him enough space to lie down on his. His weight neither dipped nor shook the bed as he laid down and turned on his side to face me. His eyes were sad, and I’m sure mine were too. We stared at each other for a long, long time, long enough for my fatigued body to start playing tricks on me.

If I focused hard enough, I thought I could hear the sound of his breathing (the wind was picking up outside), feel the warmth of his skin spreading onto the sheets (the remnants of my own body heat were left behind each time I moved), and smell the musky scent of cologne and sea-salted hair (the sleeves of his sweater were tucked beneath my nose).

Maybe for a moment—just one sickly, self-indulgent moment—I could pretend it was really him.

I inhaled deeply through my nose. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you would haunt the next owner of this house,” I whispered as light-heartedly as I could, my voice obscured by the heavy rain pouring onto the roof.

He smiled, and it was one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful things I had ever seen. I think I might have given him one in return, though I couldn’t be too sure because the concept of smiling had become so foreign. The last time I was truly happy was… the last night we spent together. In each other’s arms, safe and warm and together.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

Cressida, whom I had only spoken to once in Thirteen when the war ended, was the one to tell me how it happened. Katniss was too personal, too close to him; Peeta’s instability rendered conversation futile. So, I had asked Cressida to tell me every detail—every expression on his face, every word he screamed. I don’t know why. Maybe it was so I could cling onto those last few minutes where he was still alive and breathing, despite dying and bleeding; or so I could replay the moment over and over in my head, as if somehow, someway, I could change his fate.

“He talked about you all the time,” she had told me. “Actually, I don’t think he ever spoke of anything but you. No one minded, though. While we were out there, no one ever really smiled, but every time your name was mentioned, Finnick would get this great big grin on his face, and it was impossible not to look at him and start smiling as well.

So, we all started asking questions about you: ‘What colour is her hair? Her eyes? Where did you meet? What are her hobbies?’—just to see him smile… A week passed, and it was like we all knew you inside out. It was all we could do to hang on to some shred of happiness, even if it meant talking about a girl who, to all of us, was a stranger.”

I was inconsolable after that.

She kept talking, but my sobs had drowned out most of her words, so much that I had asked her to retell me everything later in the day, despite inducing the same outcome. So, she told it to me again, just as she did the day after that and the day after that and so on until I returned home to District Four.

“He also spoke about how you never felt comfortable living in the Victors Village. He had this idea that the two of you would move somewhere far away, outside the borders of District Four, though he emphasised remaining by the sea was very important—something about how you looked while swimming during sunset and the water was all sparkly around you.”

At this point, she had been holding my hand, knowing full well how debilitating it was for me to hear. Then she had spoken with a quiet incredulity and a facial expression to match, as though she’d never encountered a love like ours before. “He wanted to build a house for you…”

He wanted to build a house for you.

And now he never would. Our love was too ephemeral for that to happen; destined to remain history; to be a memory.

Finnick's eyes stared into mine, the green hue now a dark grey from the overshadowing dimness of the room.

“I would’ve gone anywhere with you,” I whispered to him, placing my hand on the sheets between us. “I would’ve travelled thousands of miles away from this place. Would’ve lived in solitary, just the two of us, for the rest of our lives.” A warm tear tickled the bridge of my nose. His eyebrows scrunched together in shared anguish. “God, Finn, I miss you,” my voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

I contemplated crying, sobbing, screaming, or begging for him to come back, but I was just too tired. All my energy had been spent on grievance throughout the following day, and my eyes were growing heavier by the second as my body was sinking further into a state of relaxation.

Between slow blinks, I watched Finnick’s large hand move to rest atop my own, and at that point, I knew sleep would soon catch me because I swear I could feel his warm touch.

Images flashed through my mind—incomprehensible and melting together, yet somehow still graspable.

Sky blue water rippling with calm waves, the surface glittering in the setting sun. A white stonewall cottage fronted by soft, white sand and tall palm trees. Two plates of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast. Three pairs of footprints in the sand, one larger, one smaller, and another between them so delicately tiny I could fit them into the palm of my hand.

Sea-green eyes above me. Golden hair tangled between my fingers. Finnick standing in the wooden doorway of our white stonewall cottage wearing a cream-white sweater and rolled-up slacks. Finnick grinning deeply and then throwing his head back with laughter. Finnick standing in front of our bed, taking my hand in his and guiding me towards him. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick.

Finnick holding our child.

I was between worlds now, both indistinguishable from the other. My eyelids were drooping, and I was quickly growing insensate. Just before my eyes closed completely, I saw Finnick’s—he who wasn’t really my Finnick—lips move. It wasn’t in my bleak reality in which I heard him speak, but rather in my mind, and God, did his words offer the sweetest relief.

“I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

601 notes · View notes

kaiijo · 8 months ago

Note

Hello! I really like your fics and I saw your spotify event! I love Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridges too so, since you've already wrote Lover (really sweet and cute), I'll ask for "Went looking for a creation myth" (I Know The End is my FAVORITE song) with Zoro. Thank you very much! 😊

I KNOW THE END — RORONOA ZORO

roronoa zoro + went looking for a creation myth content: fem! reader, fluff, part of the spotify wrapped event notes: i’m so sorry this is so late! i hope you like it <3

as a pirate, there are few days you get to just relax and explore places you visit, especially given the particularly high bounty of yours and the rest of the strawhats. you struck gold when you docked in a small town that was amenable to pirate-visitors and very opposed to marine presence.

you, nami, and robin are lounging on some beach chairs the locals lent you. while robin’s deep in her newest book, one that’s bigger and thicker than her last one, you and nami watch as usopp, luffy, and zoro wrestle at the shoreline. usopp manages to get an upper hand on zoro, springing onto his back and covering his eyes. “now, luffy!” usopp yells and luffy’s launching himself towards the two. they all collapse, usopp and luffy laughing raucously and zoro grumbling and cursing beneath them.

“hello to the most beautiful women in the world,” sanji says as he approaches, balancing a tray of iced drinks. “care for refreshers? hibiscus and honey iced tea.” the drinks are a rich fuschia with a lemon at the rim and the sight makes your mouth water.

“thanks, sanji.” you take a drink and pass another to nami while sanji circles your cluster of chairs to get to robin, who doesn’t even look up as she flips a page and takes a glass.

“oi, lovecook, do we get anything?” zoro saunters up the dune, followed by luffy and usopp.

“no.”

zoro scowls before turning to you. “let me have a sip.”

“no!” you say, drawing your glass close to your chest. you can feel the condensation gathering at your fingertips. “get your own!”

“curly brows won’t give me one,” zoro says. “what’s the big deal, just let me have some of yours?”

“no, you always say you’ll only have a little and then glug down half!”

“isn’t a perk of a being in a relationship sharing things with your partner?’

you snort, “please, you’re the biggest hog of us all.” zoro glowers and you sigh, “fine, you big baby.” you hold out your drink and he goes to take it when you jerk your arm back.

“what now?” he asks.

“one condition.”

“what?”

you grin brightly, tapping your cheek. “a sip for a kiss.”

“you’re impossible,” he says, cheeks flushing but he leans down anyway and pecks your cheek. your own cheeks are warm and you’re not sure it’s from the sun.

you let him take a few sips of your drink before you say, “that’s enough, babe.”

“what? it was barely a drop! just a little more.”

“that wasn’t meant for you, mosshead!” sanji says, snatching the glass from him. he looks into the nearly empty cup and scowls at zoro before turning to you apologetically. “don’t worry, i’ll go whip up another, pretty.”

“thanks, sanji.”

“don’t call my girlfriend ‘pretty.’”

“don’t tell me what to do!”

“i’ll say whatever i want to you!”

you’re not surprised as you watch sanji aim a kick at zoro, your boyfriend immediately parrying. as they start kicking up sand, nami shouts, “ugh, can you guys do this somewhere else?” to their credit, they move their fight elsewhere (before nami has the chance to throw her discarded sandal at them).

she leans back in her chair and groans, “i don’t know how you put up with him sometimes.”

“patience,” you reply and she snorts.

“i don’t even remember how you two got together,” she says. “it was just like one day you were both single and then the next day, you told us you were dating.

you smile a little. you’re fond of the memory — the look of shock on the rest of the crew’s face was priceless, and predictably, sanji and zoro got into an argument about you and how zoro is the last person qualified to date you.

“how’d it happen, anyways?”

“what?”

“you and zoro?”

you try to think back on how it happened. it wasn’t like some sparks-fly moment like you’ve read in some of robin’s books nor some burning confession that was just bubbling up inside you. you remember the day he asked you on a date very well, though.

you were sailing on a calm part of the ocean, and it was a sunny day with a gentle breeze. luffy, chopper, and usopp were playing some card game that was rapidly devolving into a cheating match. nami was tending to her tangerine tree while franky and robin were deep in some conversation.

you and zoro had finished training in the gym and were lounging on deck. you basked in the warmth of the sun, on the verge of sleep, and you rolled over. you bumped into zoro and went to apologize but he just shrugged and pulled you in, letting you rest your head against his chest. “this comfortable?” he asked.

“yeah, you’re a good pillow,” you sighed, closing your eyes.

there was a brief pause before zoro said, “i heard nami and curly brows talking about the island we’re going to. said there was a nice restaurant there. want to go?”

“sure, that sounds nice. are you going to be able to play nice with sanji there?”

“i was thinking it would just be use. you and me.”

you crack opened a eye and glance over at him. he wasn’t looking at you but you could see some red creeping up on his ears. you cuddle into him. “yeah, that sounds nice.”

you turn back to nami and say, “i don’t know. it just felt right. natural.”

she seems content with your answer as she nods and leans back in her chair. you do too, closing your eyes, listening to the sounds of the waves crashing against the shore and your boyfriend’s distant yells.

#.𖥔 ݁ ˖ kaiijo writes #kaiijo's spotify wrapped event #roronoa zoro x reader #zoro x reader #one piece x reader #one piece imagines #one piece scenario #zoro x you #roronoa zoro x you #roronoa zoro fic #zoro fic #zoro imagine #roronoa zoro imagine

159 notes · View notes

youvebeenlivingfictional · 9 months ago

Text

left behind

Pairing: Gurney Halleck x Reader Rating: T Notes: Still simping for Gurney Halleck. Shocker. Set during Dune Part II.

No physical descriptions, no use of y/n. Not beta-read, so probably riddled with typos that I won’t find until I hit ‘post’.

Warnings: Angst; fluff; yearning; pining; they're in love, they're just idiots.

Summary: You’ve spent months fighting to honor all of your ghosts, but there’s no one whose memory you've tended to more than Gurney’s. On the evenings when your nightmares played keepaway with your peace, you reached for his memories first and held them the tightest.

He’s a far cry from the man that you once knew. You don’t recognize him for a moment—but as he grows closer, and the flash of his smile becomes apparent, your insides curdle and twist as if you've sipped the Water of Life.

And when Paul points you out—when his mouth forms your name, his gloved finger jabbed in your direction—you see the man's expression fall and muddle. You’re not sure what with: shock, disgust, confusion?

But before you can decipher it—before the man can take another step toward you or away from you, Chani is taking hold of your shoulder and guiding you away from the wreckage of the destroyed spice freighter. You don’t fuss or fight, or insist that you have someone to see, something to say. You still hardly believe your eyes. You don’t trust that what you've seen isn’t an effect of the spice, or a hallucination—one of those jinn that Stilgar warns you about when you go for walks alone at night.

It wouldn’t be the first time that your tired eyes have carved the likeness of the man you once loved out of dust and heat.

“If I’d known,” He tries, “I could’ve gotten you off of the planet. I would’ve—”

“I wouldn’t have left.”

“You still can, and should. You’d be safer on Caladan.”

“My place is with Paul.”

His grip is a vice as he grabs your wrist and roughly tugs you to face him. Your feet stutter and stall in the sand, annoyance rising in your belly. It’s only stoked by the righteous fury waiting for you in his eyes. He seems unaware or uncaring of the testy audience that his antic draws, the slowed steps of the Fremen around you; their shushes and tuts; their low, murmured chittering warnings in Chakobsa, filling the canyon with whispered threats.

“And mine is not?” He hisses. You study his face for a few testy, silent moments before you finally wrestle from his grip.

“I couldn’t say where your place is, Gurney Halleck.”

Sleep is uneasy. The stillness and silence of the dessert makes you fidget and squirm in your tent. You can only keep your eyes closed for a moment or two before they open again. You map the ceiling of the tent, mark its occasional fluttering in the odd breeze. You try not to think of the little centipedes, or the trapdoor spiders.

You fight not to think of the man just feet from you.

You’ve spent months fighting to honor all of your ghosts, but there’s no one whose memory you've tended to more than Gurney’s. On the evenings when your nightmares played keepaway with your peace, you reached for his memories first and held them the tightest.

You’ve struggled to keep every little bit etched into your mind: his voice, his smile, his laugh, the murmur of his balliset. You’ve remembered the slip of his hand over your arm, your back, your side as he corrected a movement in training. You've remembered the call of his voice over the battlefield, roaring over your pounding heart as you ran into hell together. You’ve fought to hold the last look of him in Arrakeen—the blend of passion and sorrow in his eyes as he charged the Harkonnens.

But you’d lost sight of him in the skirmish, and found your way to Paul. You’d been certain that so few of your fellow soldiers had survived, positive that any who had would have fallen into Harkonnen clutches.

Some nightmares draw up images of Gurney in their chains once more, fighting against his bondage without Leto there to free him again. Others have him limping from the shadows, bleeding, imploring and begging you to tell him where you had gone when he needed you most.

Is he awake over there? Or has he learned to doze peacefully, to drift off to the shush of spice over the sands of Arrakis? Does he dream of Caladan, of her deep oceans and grey skies?

Does he think of you? Of your nights together in the barracks? Of sharing a drink?

You push yourself to sit up now, drawing a deep breath in through your nose as you fight to slow your pounding heart, to unpick the knot forming in your belly.

You try to hide from him in the company of others. Your place with the Fremen is far less precarious than it used to be, and they happily draw you into their conversations, keep pace with you as you walk. Whenever Gurney gets too close, they cast him a wary look and bunch in closer to you. It warms you as much as it makes you uneasy.

You’ve no reason to be protected from Gurney. He would never harm you, despite what his grabbing your wrist may have made them think. But you’re not rushing to correct them, either. And when you’re certain that you feel him watching you, you force yourself to refocus on the company of your friends.

The worn, high walls of Sietch Tabr are an unexpected respite. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that you’ll be able to slip into the crowd and elude the former Warmaster for just a little while longer. Hands pat you on the shoulder as you pass, murmurs of greeting washing over you as you venture deeper underground.

You want as much rest and quiet that this brief break will afford you. You’re certain that Gurney will keep close now that he and Paul have been reunited, and you can’t blame him—in his shoes, you would do the same. You have no intention of letting yourself be kept away from Paul, or away from the action, so you’ll have to brace.

“Did he hurt you?”

If the question had come from anyone else, you may deflect—turn away, start toward the next windtrap. But Chani’s question isn’t abrasive, despite its bluntness. You keep your eyes set resolutely on the filter that you’re removing, twisting it from its position and lowering it to your rucksack with the others that you’ve collected.

“A long time ago,” You finally admit.

“Does he know?”

“No.”

Chani’s silence is as heavy as her gaze. You just shrug, chasing her quiet curiosity: “It isn’t that easy.”

“Why not?”

“He wouldn’t understand.” Or care.

You hold your hand out for a fresh filter, and fit it once she’s passed it over.

“He’s a good man,” You add. “Smart, and strong.”

“The others think he’s a spy.”

“They thought the same of me.”

“...That’s true.”

“And the same of Paul.”

Chani falls quiet at the reminder, and the mention of Paul’s name. The two of you collect the remainder of the full filters, each stewing in your thoughts. You finally speak again as you make your way back to the sietch.

“Will you tell the others to lighten up on Gurney?” You cast her a sidelong glance just in time to see her lips purse contemplatively.

“They won’t take to him easily,” She argues.

“They should try.”

“You should lead by example.”

It’s your turn to purse your lips. You know that she’s right, and it irritates you. But you nod grudgingly. It shouldn’t be too hard to crack your own shell. For all of your pain and heartache, you have missed him. Your mind has been racing with memories since you first saw him again.

When you return to the sietch, he isn’t hard to find. Stilgar points you in his direction, and warns you not to waste your time or water on such an unclever man. The words, accompanied with a wink and a light pat on the shoulder, offer a much-needed lightness as you wind through the cool, quiet halls.

You don’t bother to try and sneak up on Gurney—there’s no point. He always was a vigilant tactician, as wise in the ways of his soldiers as of his enemies. His head tips toward you a touch as your footsteps grow nearer, but he doesn’t take his attention away from the mural on the wall.

“How do they get off?” He asks. The question makes you balk, briefly stalling your brain before you manage—”What?”

“Of the worm.” He gestures toward the wall, at the illustration of a small figure riding a sandworm. Ah.

“They slide off,”You tell him, “Or run the worm until it tires and slows.”

He grunts, nodding slowly. “You’ve learned a lot these last few months.”

“I’ve had to,” You admit, then amend: “We all have.”

Gurney nods again. “You seek me out for a reason, or were you just going for a walk?”

You’re tempted to lie. Gurney is no truthsayer and you were adept at concealing your true feelings from him once.

“I wanted to apologize.”

“For what.”

By the way that he says it, you know that he’s leaning digging the knife in, just a little. You can’t blame him; if you were in his place, you’d do the same. You draw in a deep breath, curling your nails into your palms.

“I…Should not have received you as I did when we found you in the desert.”

“You didn’t receive me at all.”

“And that is what I mean.”

You eye the floor as you feel Gurney turning to look at you, hold carefully still as you feel him approach you, your fingers still curled tightly into fists.

“If I had been able,” He says softly, “If I had known about you and Lady Jessica and Paul—”

“I know,” You whisper.

It’s a moment before he reaches out, taking hold of your hands. You pull in a soft, stunned breath at the touch; his hands are warm, and rougher than you remember. He turns your hands over, thumbs sweeping across the half-moons that your nails have dug in.

“There’s still time,” He offers, and before you have a chance to misunderstand his meaning, he presses: “To return to Caladan.”

You try not to let it sting you—the thought that this man has had you back for just a few days and is already chomping at the bit to be rid of you. Your fingers involuntarily flex, brushing against his where he holds you, still.

“There is,” You agree, “But as I said, my place is here, with Paul. Yours is, too.”

“Yes.”

You give one last, small nod before you draw your hands back from his. You take a step back, too, desperate to create space between yourself and Gurney. You clear your throat, tucking your hands into your pockets, out of reasonable reach.

“You should rest,” You offer. “Whenever we—Paul will want to get back out there as quickly as possible.”

You don’t give him a chance to respond. You turn away and stride back to where you sleep, forcing yourself to be secure in the knowledge that you’ve spoken, reconciled, and will move on.

Gurney is a good fighter, and a smart man. Your countenance has surely bounced off of him like sound from a wall. He’ll conduct himself in an appropriate manner, fight well, make his worth known to the others. You’ll approve of him publicly, encourage his company and conversation where you must, and hide from it where you’re able. You’ll still shield your discomfort, the embers of your misguided love in the sands of Arrakis, and burn your passion out in leveling and destroying Harkonnen soldiers and spice freighters.

Gurney always taught you to turn your feelings, your passion—any strong emotion—to guiding your fight, regardless of whether or not you felt in the mood for it when the need arose. You can do so now. You’ve always been a good soldier—and for him and his sake, you know that you will be the best.

Acceptance is slow. Gurney and Stilgar do not mesh quickly, but their shared belief and care for Paul keeps them on as even a footing as they can be. They still butt heads, still insist that they know better, but concede that Paul knows best. It makes for amusing conversation, watching the two bat their causes back and forth before ultimately yielding to your former trainee, Maud’dib, the Lisan Al-Ghaib. You try not to love it as you watch your wise Warmaster bite his tongue for Paul’s sake. You know that Paul appreciates his guidance, and, where it’s necessary, his compliance.

But when Gurney turns to meet your eye—to level an all-knowing look of ‘Can you believe this?’ or his imploration for back-up—you force your expression to a neutral set, merely arching a brow, as if to ask what he’ll do next.

You can see his frustration grow as you remain neutral, but you can’t bring yourself to side against the people that have accepted you and given you shelter for months. You’re certain that as much as it frustrates him, he understands, even if he doesn’t agree with you.

It doesn’t stop him from sitting beside you during meals. It doesn’t stop him from covering your back when you work with the others to take down Harkonnens, to level a freighter. It doesn’t stop the two of you from being near one another during briefings, or sharing knowing looks when you watch Paul and Stilgar disagree. Paul always was an ornery child, and it’s neither a surprise, nor an affront when he argues with authority. Hell—you wear it as a badge of honor, and you’re certain Stilgar does, too.

When you lose your pack in the midst of battle and your tent is destroyed, you know that you have other options. At worst, you could take an early watch, use the tent of someone that takes it on later. But Gurney’s hand pats against your lower back as he passes you, the words, “Come on,” Push out of his gruff mouth before you can even think to ask or argue.

You watch him go for a moment before you force yourself to follow. It’s been a long day of fighting, and you’re not willing to make it longer by nit-picking with him. You just follow him to his tent and duck inside. The two of you undo the clasps and fastenings on your stillsuits in silence. You take a little longer, hesitating and glancing back every few moments as you undo the suit. It’s been long since you’ve undressed near him, and even then you’re certain that he didn’t take notice. Now, the space is nearly cramped with the two of you, filled with the sounds of zips and pops. Once you’ve disrobed, you hurriedly change into your nightclothes—a flimsy, thin top and a pair of loose fitting pants.

By the time you turn to face him, Gurney has laid out the pad that you’ll both sleep on, cushioning you from the sand as you rest. He hasn’t taken up his place yet, and while you’d like to linger until he’s made himself comfortable, you force yourself to lie down and curl up on your side. You feel more than hear him settle beside you, the pad shifting slightly as he sinks down onto it. The two of you lay in the dark, still silence for a little while.

“...What happened to your balliset?” You can’t stand the quiet, and can’t bring yourself to ask about anything else.

“...It blew up.”

“Paul?”

“Mhm.”

“Damn.”

He huffs a soft laugh that warms you, and you smile.

“We’ll get you new one,” You promise before you can stop yourself.

“The Fremen don’t have one?”

“They have something like it. I’m sure you could learn.”

You hear him shift beside you, and squeeze your eyes shut as his warm breath brushes against your neck.

“Would you want me to?”

“...I want you to do anything that you like, Gurney Halleck.”

“Anything?”

“Mhm.”

You think that he’ll let it end there, and that he’ll let you both drift off into a peaceful sleep. Bu when his arm curls around your waist, you know that you won’t be able to sustain as you like.

You try to fight it. You want to be a rock in his arms, cold and unmovable—but when his arm winds around you, you melt into him like butter on warm bread.

Waking is slow. It’s accompanied by murmurs of Chakobsa around your tent, and the shushing of sand and spice around the tent. You sigh softly, shifting between the softness of the mat, and the hard body against yours.

You don’t dare open your eyes.

You can feel his lips and beard brushing tenderly against the curve of your jaw, his fingers flexing against your skin and curling in the hiked-up fabric of your top. You hum softly, tipping your head to the side and letting your forehead knock gently against his. You don’t know if he’s awake, but you’re not willing to open your eyes and find out. You expect him to draw back, to extricate his body from yours. And you wait to pull yourself fully from sleep, to draw your stillsuit back on and push away the sensation of being wrapped in his arms.

Neither of you make any such move.

His lips drift up a touch, pressing tenderly against the crest of your cheekbone. Your hand lifts as if on its own, smoothing against his rough cheek as a heady hum leaves your lips. Gurney’s grip tightens on your hip, pulling your body flush against his as his kiss brushes down to the upturned corner of your mouth. Your breath catches in your throat, fingers smoothing higher to curl in his hair as his hips roll gently against your side.

“Gurney.”

His name leaves you wrapped in a breath, wary that anything louder will wake him, truly wake him before you’ve had a chance to savor his touch. But he just groans, his nose brushing nuzzling as his lips sleepily find yours. You part your lips unthinkingly, tongues tangling as you trade syrupy-slow kisses.

It must be a dream—you've gone sleeping walking and been taken by a jinn. This has to be a trick or a trap—but as Gurney presses cloesr, covering his body with yours and spreading your legs wide to make room for him, you can't bring yourself to care, even if it is. You blink sleepily up at him as he draws away, holding your gaze as you gently comb your nails over his scalp. Your focus is only broken when someone taps on the top on the top of the tent, and Chani's warning of, "Breakfast," Breaks through.

Gurney glances up before his gaze flits to yours, awaiting your approval. You smile, giving a small shake of your head.

"I'm not very hungry."

Gurney's smile widens, eyes brightening with mischief as he lowers himself closer.

"Neither am I."

Tag list: @missredherring ; @fantasticcopeaglepasta ; @massivecolorspygiant ; @blueeyesatnight; @amneris21

@ew-erin ; @youngkenobilove ; @carbonated-beverage ; @moonlightburned ; @milf-trinity

@millllenniawrites ; @chattychell ; @dihra-vesa ; @videogamesandpoorlifechoices ; @missswriter ;

@thembosapphicclown ; @brandyllyn ; @wildmoonflower ; @buckybarneshairpullingkink ; @mad-girl-without-a-box ;

@winchestershiresauce ; @lorecraft ; @kmc1989

#Gurney Halleck x Reader #Gurney Halleck x You #Gurney Halleck/Reader #Gurney Halleck/You #Gurney Halleck fic #Gurney Halleck imagine #left behind

120 notes · View notes