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munson-blurbs · 1 year ago

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Single Dad!Eddie x Fem!Reader Series

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Summary: Will's birthday party brings back some familiar faces and gives Eddie the perfect opportunity to make amends with Corroded Coffin, but an unexpected interruption might have him hurtling towards his old ways.

Warnings: some dirty talk (18+ only just in case), drinking/drunkenness (everyone is over 21), pregnancy and labor complications, mentions of past bullying

WC: 8.2k

Chapter 14/20

Divider credit to @saradika Special shoutout to @storiesbyrhi and @corroded-hellfire for helping with the fluffy sections and making this piece strong.

Afternoons at Hawkins Preschool are predictable: storytime on the carpet is followed by the kids’ pack-up routine, and once all belongings are shoved into their proper backpacks, they file out the door to go home.

Predictable is good. It’s safe. And it certainly doesn’t include a fire drill half an hour before dismissal.

Herding nine children through the bustling hallways and trying to ensure no one is left behind is overwhelming enough. Factor in the ear-splitting alarm and the surge of adrenaline pulsing through your students once they re-enter your classroom, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for chaos.

Instead of fighting a losing battle to keep the kids calm and quiet, you’d opted to plunk them down with myriad art supplies and called it a day.

Now, after the last student had been picked up, you and Will are left cleaning the mess they’d made. Broken crayons are scattered across the tabletops, there’s Play-Doh of various colors stuck to the floor, and gold glitter—when did you even acquire glitter?—dusts every surface.

“Seriously…who thought that that timing was a good idea?” Will grumbles, tossing a Crayola stub into the crayon basket. He adopts a nasal, mocking tone. “‘What would help out our teachers? Oh, I know—let’s interrupt their dismissal routines!’”

You laugh despite your own exhaustion. Somehow, you’ll have to muster up the energy to tutor Harris tonight.

Will reaches into the cupboard to grab his car keys, turning back around with a smile that he only offers you when he needs something. “Could I ask you for a little favor?”

There it is. “How little?” You cock one brow as you clip a stack of papers together.

“Eensy weensy. Miniscule. Microscopic–”

“The more you say it, the less I believe you.”

“Okay, okay,” Will acquiesces, twirling his keyring around his forefinger. “So, for my birthday thing on Saturday…a bunch of my childhood friends are gonna be there. Mike, Dustin, Suzie, Lucas, Max, Jane…” he lists them, ticking off each name on his fingers. “Anyway, I was hoping that maybe you could talk to Eddie about a Corroded Coffin reunion? I know they’re on a hiatus or whatever, but if anyone can convince him to play, it’s you.”

He’s not wrong; you’re the most likely person to get Eddie to do, well, anything. But asking him to make amends with Danny and Gareth and getting their band to play a gig three days from now seems like a mountainous task.

Will is staring at you, hands clasped together pleadingly. He’s too optimistic for his own good, and you can’t help but give in.

“Fine, I’ll try. But–hey, don’t get excited yet,” you warn when he pumps his fist in celebration. “‘Try’ is the key word here. I’m not making any promises.”

Your admonition goes unheeded as Will already considers it a victory. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” You give him a small, tight-lipped wave as he dashes out the door. You and Eddie were already planning to attend the party; you’d spent part of last night scouring an art store for the perfect gift. And he and Jeff were back to being thick as thieves…maybe this could work.

“All right, Mr. Harris,” you say with a laugh, hurriedly placing tiles of various shapes in front of him. You need to make the most of the few minutes you have left until Eddie arrives. There’s a soft, familiar flutter in your stomach as you think about seeing your boyfriend, but you know you can’t compete with him for Harris’s attention. “Can you find the…trapezoid?” The inflection in your voice makes it sound like a much more exciting task than it really is, and you hope it’s enough to wrangle his focus.

Harris pokes out his tiny pink tongue as he assesses the tiles. He initially reaches for the blue rhombus, but as soon as his little finger touches it, he pulls away as though it’s on fire. “No…that’s not it.” You tuck your lips into your mouth to suppress your amusement as he thoughtfully taps his forefinger on his lips. A solid ten seconds pass before he triumphantly snatches up the correct tile. “Got it!” he beams, showing off the red trapezoid in his hand.

“You did! You got the trapezoid!” You hold up your hand for a high-five, frowning when he shakes his head. His overgrown curls brush along his eyebrows, and you wonder if it’s your place to suggest that Eddie take him for a haircut. “No high-five?”

“Nuh-uh,” Harris protests, now swiveling his whole body in defiance. “I want…tickles!” He holds his arms out, leaving his torso wide open.

Lips pursed in faux consideration, you lower your voice to a hushed whisper. “Hmm…I think that warrants a visit from the Tickle Monster!” You flex your fingers so they resemble claws; he instinctively scrunches up in anticipation, arms tucked into his stomach. You let out your silliest wicked cackle as your fingers dig mercilessly into his sides in pursuit of his most ticklish spots. Delighted peals of laughter emanate from his chest, and you don’t stop until the buzzer rings, signaling Eddie’s arrival.

Harris’s eyes get wide, mischief dancing behind his pupils. “Do you think the Tickle Monster should get Daddy?” he asks, keeping his voice low despite it only being the two of you.

“Oh, absolutely.” You buzz Eddie in while formulating the game plan aloud. “I’ll grab the pizza and you go on the attack. Once the food is secured, I’ll join you.” You stick out your pinky, and he wraps his own around it.

“Ms. Sweetheart?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

His words turn your heart into a chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven, ooey gooey and destined to crumble if handled too harshly. “I love you, too, Harris,” you manage, blinking back embarrassing tears. The flood of emotion is absurd; he probably tells his stuffed animals that he loves them with the same fervor, but you can’t deny the adoration with which he looks at you.

He flings his arms around you in a hug, squeezing tight. Face pressed to your ribs, his words are muffled but still audible when he says, “I don’t know why Daddy says it’s hard to say ‘I love you.’”

He doesn’t have time to further elaborate before Eddie’s knocking on the door. “Special delivery for my two favorite people!” Your heart beats faster with the knowledge that he’s on the other side, that you’ll be able to sneak in a kiss or two.

You and Harris share devious grins, the little boy emulating your monster-esque stance from earlier. He creeps behind you on his tiptoes, and bites back a giggle when you slowly open the door, counting down from three under your breath.

“Hi–whoa!” Eddie stumbles back as Harris barrels into him, little fingers dancing across his lower stomach. You quickly snatch the pizza box from Eddie’s grasp and place it on the table before darting back to where his son has ambushed him. You start on his bicep and let your nails travel upwards until they reach the crook of his neck.

“I’m under attack!” Eddie yelps, twitching this way and that way in a meager attempt to protect himself. “I bring you pizza and this is how I’m repaid?” He easily scoops Harris into his arms, flinging him over his shoulder. Harris lets out an exhilarated squeal, carelessly kicking his sock-clad feet into his dad’s chest. “Jesus, little dude. You’re getting too strong.” Wincing slightly from the pinch in his back as he places the boy on the floor, he gives his tush a little pat and tells him to wash up for dinner, reminding him to use soap and water.

As soon as Harris scampers off into the bathroom, Eddie’s grabbing you by the belt loops of the wide-leg jeans you’d changed into when you got home. One hand slides around your waist and the other finds purchase on your cheek as he kisses you deeply, keeping a listening ear out for the telltale pitter-patter of Harris returning.

“Missed you,” he murmurs into your mouth, and you shiver at the intimacy this closeness brings.

You laugh quietly, biting your lower lip. “We just saw each other this morning,” you remind him, sneaking in another quick peck.

Eddie shakes his head. “Y’know what I mean. Can’t do this while you’re on the clock,” he counters, shifting his grip so both hands rest on either side of your face. You think he’s going to kiss you again, but he just gazes into your eyes. “Shit, you’re so fuckin’ pretty. Couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you today.” He rests the slope of his nose on yours, only snapping out of his trance at the sound of Harris rapidly switching the faucet on and off. “Let me go check on him before this place is underwater,” he whispers, giving your own ass a smack as he shuffles towards his mischievous son, a cheeky grin deepening his dimples.

You do your best to compose yourself, heat creeping up your neck and into your face. Busying yourself by placing pizza slices onto paper plates does little to distract you; it’s as though every neuron is dedicated to flooding your brain with Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

The way the pads of his fingertips brush against your cheeks when he holds your face. The plush moisture of his lips when he kisses your forehead. The tickle of his brown tresses when he nuzzles into you and takes a deep breath, finally able to relax after a long day.

“Are you expecting a guest?” Eddie pipes up from the kitchen entrance. A perplexed frown overtakes your lips until he gestures to what you’ve laid out in front of you: four slices of pizza, two plain and two with olives, on four plates.

Your vision gets a bit fuzzy with tears when you realize what you’ve done. “No, it’s, um…” Nostrils flare as you huff out a short puff of air, hot under your nose. “Force of habit, sorry.” You’ve been so diligent about only serving three slices, but your preoccupation with his touch had your mind drifting from the task at hand.

It takes him a moment to process what you mean, but when he does, his face falls. It was for Grandma. “It’s okay,” he says, cringing as the words leave his mouth. Because it’s not okay that you’re sad; it’s normal, but frustration still tugs at his heart that he can’t take it away.

It feels wrong to return the slice to the box, so you leave it where it is. Eddie balances the three plates, sliding a plain one in front of Harris. The boy digs in hungrily, sauce caught on the edges of his smile.

“How was work?” you ask Eddie, grabbing a napkin from the pile in the center of the table. It’s a simple question, one that people ask each other all the time, but it stirs up a warmth inside of him. It’s you asking him, fostering a domestic routine that he could follow for the rest of his life. He’d walk through the door of your house, wiping his shoes on the welcome mat you two had picked out together. The kids–Harris, plus another Little Munson or two–would practically knock him down trying to greet him, and he’d engulf them in bear hugs before reaching out to you, kissing your forehead with a murmured, “there’s my girl.”

“Eds?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, it was good.” He stumbles over the words, trying to clear his head of the fantasy he’d conjured up. “Lotsa paperwork, y’know.” He takes a bite of pizza, chewing thoughtfully. “What about you?”

You shrug, watching amusedly as Harris sinks his teeth into his slice and manages to pull all of the cheese off of the crust in one fell swoop. “The usual. The kids are learning about springtime, so Will decided to do a craft making flowers using finger paint and their handprints.”

“Sounds messy.”

“Oh, absolutely,” you agree with a weary grin, “but it was super cute, and Will is great with all that art stuff.” You excuse yourself from the table to get the water pitcher and three glasses, stopping when you remember your TA’s request. “He also asked me if a certain local metal band could play his birthday party on Saturday…?”

Eddie pauses mid-chew, nearly choking on his food. The cheese seems to congeal in his mouth when he tries to speak. “Um, I don’t know about that,” he finally manages, nervously massaging the back of his neck. “I haven’t talked to Danny or Gareth since…”

“I know, but you said you wanted to make things right with them,” you point out. “Maybe Jeff can test the waters? See if they’re ready to talk to you?”

“Maybe.” He averts his gaze, staring at the pizza slice without taking another bite.

You don’t want to further push the subject in Harris’s presence; instead, you turn your attention to the little boy. “Anything fun happen at school today, Har?”

“Nah,” he responds automatically just a half-second before his eyes light up. “Actually, yeah! My friend Charlie ate a bug at recess today!”

“Ew!” you exclaim, wrinkling your nose in pure disgust, as Eddie simultaneously poses the question, “what kind of bug?”

“An ant,” Harris answers his dad nonchalantly, as though ant-eating is an everyday occurrence. Perhaps it is, which is even more unsettling.

“Did you eat any bugs?” You’re afraid of his response; you’re unsure why you even asked in the first place.

To your relief, he shakes his head, a forlorn look on his cherubic face. “No, I couldn’t catch any in time.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” you mutter, turning back to your original task of getting something to drink. Though if the topic of bug consumption continues, you’ll need something much stronger than water.

Could Corroded Coffin play again?

It’s a thought that consumes Eddie for the entirety of his drive home, barely able to listen to Harris yammering about how there’s a coin in his jacket pocket that he doesn’t remember putting there. He throws a few lackluster mhms his son’s way and hopes he’s too distracted by the mystery coin to catch on.

We’re getting the band back together. Well, if Jake and Elwood Blues could swing it, maybe he could, too.

He waits until Harris is asleep to call Jeff. Getting his son to do his bedtime routine is easiest on Wednesday nights; he’s usually exhausted after a full day of school and tutoring. The one time that Eddie could use an excuse to procrastinate, Harris is out like a light.

Go to voicemail go to voicemail go to—

“‘Lo?”

Shit. “H-Hey, man,” Eddie begins awkwardly. “How’s it going? Viv doing okay?”

“We’re good. She’s ready to have this baby already. I reminded her, ‘just two more weeks,’ but then she told me to ‘fuck off’ until I’m the pregnant one, so…” he chuckles, more nervous than amused. “Everything good with you? Harris?”

“Yeah, we’re fine. Just, um,” he struggles to find the words, blurting out the first ones that enter his brain. They come out in a rush before he can stop them. “Do Gareth and Danny still hate me?”

Jeff takes a sharp breath in; his reaction does nothing to temper Eddie’s nerves. “They never hated you. They were just…disappointed? Jesus, I sound like my mom.”

Eddie misses his friend’s anecdote, too wrapped up in his head to fully pay attention. Somehow, disappointed stings worse than the prospect of being hated, especially when the people he’s let down are ones who used to idolize him. “Do you think there’s a way they could be…undisappointed in me? Like, enough to forgive me and maybe play a gig this weekend?”

There’s an extended pause, and then a one-word response: “Christ.”

Eddie can picture Jeff rubbing his eyes in exasperation, and he scrambles to explain. “Will Byers–you remember him? He was in Hellfire; had that weird bowl cut thing going on?”

“Mhm.”

“He’s having a birthday thing at the Hideout on Saturday and asked if we could play. Just a coupla songs.”

Jeff thinks for a moment; Eddie can hear him drumming his fingers on a nearby surface.

“Why don’t you come over tomorrow night around…6?” he ventures. “I’ll invite the guys and we can…I dunno, figure something out.”

“Thanks, man. I owe you.” He’s about to hang up when he remembers to ask, “Can I bring Harris?”

“Of course.”

“Har, slow down!” Eddie’s barely unbuckled his son’s car seat before Harris has wriggled out of the sedan, bolting straight for Jeff’s door.

“But I haven’t seen Uncle Danny and Uncle Gareth in forever!” he laments, reaching the house far faster than Eddie. He stands on tiptoes and rings the doorbell like a madman, forefinger jamming into the button at warp speed. “Uncle Jeff! It’s me!”

Jeff opens the door with a huge smile. “Mini Munson!” He scoops the boy up into a hug. “What’s new with you, little dude?”

“I got a wiggly tooth!” Harris exclaims, jutting out his jaw and pressing his tongue against the front center of his mouth. Sure enough, the baby tooth moves slightly forward, and he giggles. “Daddy says the Tooth Fairy’s gonna come and leave me a dollar,” he matter-of-factly reports. He peeks his head over Jeff’s shoulder, squealing and squirming out of his grip when he spots the two men sitting on the couch. He flings himself onto the sofa and plunks himself down into Gareth’s lap. “Hi!”

“Hey, kiddo!” Gareth chirps. “You’re getting so big.”

“‘M five now. I had a birthday party because I turned five.” He splays out his palm to offer five fingers.

“Did your friends go?”

“Yup!” Harris beams at the memory. “An’ Daddy an’ Grampa Wayne an’ Ms. Sweetheart.”

Danny furrows his brows. “Who’s Ms. Sweetheart?”

“She’s my almost-mommy. Daddy has to fall in love with her first.”

“Is that so?” Gareth smirks at Eddie. His teasing look is the first crack in the wall that has separated the men for the last six months, and though Eddie is thoroughly embarrassed, it alleviates some of his anxiety.

“Uh, Har Bear, why don’t you go hang out with Auntie Viv while I talk with the guys?”

Viv holds out her left hand, looking utterly exhausted. Her right hand rests on her bump, eyes sending a telepathic message to Jeff that they have five minutes—ten minutes, if Harris behaves well—to come to a solution before she needs a break.

Silence filters into the room as Eddie fumbles to address the mess he’s made. If Danny and Gareth are here, they’re at least willing to listen to him, which is honestly farther than he’d assumed he’d get.

He remembers what Harris said about apologizing; technically, what you’d taught him about apologizing: the act of saying sorry, not merely implying it, makes a world of difference.

“I was an asshole,” he starts. It’s not his most eloquent statement, but it certainly gets the point across. “Not just that night at the Hideout, or at our last practice. I was an asshole for a long time before that. And…I’m sorry.” It feels good to say it; it feels even better that they’re nodding, seeming to believe him. “You guys didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”

Of the rest of the band, Gareth is the one to speak first. “I guess I’m just wondering, why? Why be an asshole to us? We’ve always been there for you.”

“I know.” Eddie fiddles with a thread hanging from his t-shirt, pulling on it until it snaps off. He shoves it in his jeans pocket, not wanting to mess up Jeff and Viv’s place. “Honestly…I’m not sure, but I think it’s because you guys are everything I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?” Danny asks, tone heavy with disbelief.

“In high school, I was the one you looked up to. The person you wanted to be like. And then I had a kid with some random chick I thought I knew but barely did, gave up my dreams of being a musician, and started selling weed again just to scrape by. And here you guys are. Jeff,” he motions to the friend leaning against the sofa’s arm, “you have a baby on the way with the love of your life. And all of you have goddamn college degrees and jobs that you don’t despise and don’t require you to hide from the law.” He shoves his ringed fingers into his jacket pockets, lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. “And I was nothing.”

Gareth scratches at the upholstery with one finger, absorbing everything he’s just heard. “You know we never stopped looking up to you, right?” He gives a short laugh when Eddie’s eyes widen. “Yeah, man. Leaving Chicago so you could take care of Harris? Putting your kid before yourself? That’s pretty badass.”

Danny nods. “Ed, if there’s someone here to look up to, it’s you.” Both he and Eddie visibly relax. Shoulders drop from their hunched positions, thin lips unfurling into smiles. “No matter what you went through, you never gave up. Even if it almost killed us,” he adds wryly, referring to all of the sleep-deprived Corroded Coffin practices fueled by black coffee and pure adrenaline.

“No fancy diploma can teach us how to stand up for ourselves, or how not to take shit from people, or how to be a dad,” Jeff pipes up from where he’s standing. “We learn from you, man.”

Eddie’s cheeks burn at the compliments, unsure how to accept them. He’d walked in expecting to have to beg for forgiveness, and they were the ones reassuring him. It’s now or never, and he forges ahead while he still has the courage. “Do you…can we get the band back together?” Can we be friends again is the underlying plea, but it’s too vulnerable a statement to make. “We’ll keep it low-key, I promise. Work, family, anything comes up…we can cancel or reschedule. And I won’t be a dick about it.”

The three other men look at one another, nod and turn back to Eddie with smart grins and mischievous glimmers in their eyes.

“On one condition.” Gareth crosses his arms over his chest, smirking as he sinks back against the couch. “You tell us all about this ‘Ms. Sweetheart.’”

The Hideout, normally dingy and coated in a film of sticky ale, has been decked out for Will’s birthday party. Helium-filled balloons in every color bob along the low ceiling, vibrating with the thumping bass of the old sound system. Crepe paper streamers–purple, Will’s favorite color–sway gently with the air that rushes in from opening the door. This has to be Marshall’s handiwork, and it brings a smile to your face. If anyone deserves a partner who fawns over him, it’s Will.

You spot him surrounded by a group of people as the bartender slides a row of tequila shots across the bar and into their eager hands. While they’re distracted by alcohol, you take the opportunity to dart towards the backstage area.

Eddie’s there, digging around for his lucky pick. You wrap your arms around his waist, fingers pressed into the soft dough of his tummy.

“Hey, Rockstar,” you murmur against his neck, kissing just below his earlobe.

He turns around, jaw dropping when he sees you in a maroon slip dress. The heels on your feet have you two inches taller than usual, and he has to shift where his gaze normally lands to meet your eyes.

“Fuckin’ Christ, baby,” Eddie practically growls, kissing you deeply. One hand presses against the small of your back while the other grabs the plush of your ass, kneading it in his palm. “You’re so fuckin’ sexy. How’m I gonna go out there and play with you looking like that?”

“I’ll make it worth your while.” You giggle when he offers up a bemused smile. “If you do a good job tonight, I’ll give you a reward.” You let your fingertips graze over the metal teeth of his pants zipper, feeling him twitch at your light touch.

“You’re dangerous,” he winks, delivering another kiss; this time, he gives your lower lip a little bite when he pulls away. His kohl-rimmed eyes draw you in just as they did that first night you’d met, but now you dive into them without the fear of drowning.

A tactful “ahem” from the now-open doorway startles both you and Eddie, having been floating in an embrace that’s equal parts comfort and desire.

“Sorry to interrupt the lovefest, but we’re on in five,” a man’s voice calls from the doorway. You turn around to see the other three Corroded Coffin members standing there, amusement evident in their expressions.

“You must be Ms. Sweetheart,” one of the guys, soft curls resting atop his head, pipes up. His tone is teasing, but not mocking; the nickname is said with admiration and affection. “I’m Gareth, by the way.”

“Danny,” the one with tight, wiry curls offers, giving a small wave.

Jeff just shrugs. “You know me.”

Eddie grabs his guitar, slinging the strap across his body. His pants’ fly is tight, and he wills himself to calm down before it’s time to perform. He hasn’t worried about being hard on stage since he was nineteen, but thoughts of your bodies perfectly melding into each other has him subtly adjusting himself as he turns his back to his bandmates.

“See ya out there, baby,” he says before pressing a quick kiss to your cheek. The brief contact between you has you biting your tongue in self-beration for suggesting that the band play tonight. All you want is to dance with him, allowing the steady flow of alcohol to dull your inhibitions as you pull him impossibly close. Not caring who sees or what they think.

But this night isn’t about you or Eddie. It’s about Will, your TA-turned-friend who has kept you sane amidst your adorably chaotic students and their decidedly less adorable and more chaotic parents. He wanted Corroded Coffin to play his party, and that’s the least you could do for him.

Will’s already teetering between tipsy and inebriated, breath tinged with the scent of tequila as he introduces you to his friends.

“This is my amazing boyfriend, Marshall.” He smacks a wet kiss to the man’s cheek. “And these are my friends from growing up: Dustin and Suzie, Lucas and Max, and Mike and Jane.” His face melts into a sappy grin as he leans on Marshall to hold him up. “You guys! We’re all in looooove!”

“Jesus Christ,” Dustin mutters, rolling his eyes and shaking his head before turning his attention back to you. “Can we get you something to drink?”

Will raises his empty glass. “I’ll take another–”

“Not you.”

You manage to sneak in a quick conversation with Max, Suzie, and Jane before Corroded Coffin starts their set. Max is finishing up her Masters in English literature at New York University, set to graduate in two months. Suzie programs for NASA, and though Florida is a far cry from her home state of Utah, she loves her job. And Jane is a social worker at a local adoption agency, the cause close to her heart, as she was adopted by Chief Hopper years ago.

“Damn,” you laugh, taking a small sip of your vodka soda. You’re having so much fun that you don’t even care that it’s been watered down. “You’re all such badasses!”

Your admiration of their collective girl power is cut short by the sound of Corroded Coffin taking the stage. It’s as though they’d never taken an extended break; just picked up right where they left off. You cheer so loudly that there’s a pinch in your throat, but you push past it. It’s more than applause. There’s so much tucked away in your yell: I’m proud of you; you’re a rockstar; you’re my person forever, if you’ll have me.

“Hello, Hawkins!” Eddie bellows into the mic. There’s no missing the grin on his face. He’s happy. He’s in his element. He’s where he belongs.

“No way!” Lucas exclaims, awestruck as he turns to Will.

“Dude, you got Corroded Coffin?” Mike mirrors his friend’s excitement. He slings an arm around Will’s shoulder and pulls him in for a side hug. “This is fuckin’ awesome!”

“The first song of the night goes out to our guest of honor, Will Byers!” Everyone hoots and hollers as Eddie plays the opening chords to The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go. Eddie told you he remembered that the song was one of Will’s favorites growing up; his older brother had gotten him into the band. Sure enough, Will’s bopping to the rhythm, singing every word, albeit quite off-key.

Corroded Coffin plays a few more songs from their usual setlist, nerves dissipating with each note, before Eddie speaks into the mic again.

“This next one is for my beautiful girlfriend,” he announces, eyes gazing into yours. “Baby, if my teachers looked like you, I actually would’ve gone to class.”

He nods at Gareth, who starts playing an incredibly complicated beat. As soon as you hear it, you feel your cheeks heat up. The rest of the guys join in on their own instruments, and Eddie oozes bravado as he sings.

“T-Teacher stop that screamin’ Teacher don’t you see Don’t wanna be no uptown fool.”

Max leans in to you and whisper-shouts, “I’ve known Eddie for years, and I’ve never seen him so…happy.”

Lucas overhears his girlfriend and adds his two cents. “That’s because we’ve never seen him in love.”

Warmth spreads all over your body, but it’s not from embarrassment. Allowing yourself to believe that Eddie loves you—is in love with you—opens a door you’d deadbolted until the time was right. You hadn’t wanted to rush things, but the jolt of exhilaration following Lucas’s statement means you can’t deny it any longer: you love Eddie Munson. You’re in love with Eddie Munson.

“Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad I'm hot for teacher I've got it bad, so bad I'm hot for teacher.”

Will takes the opportunity to twirl you around, and you laugh as you spin amongst new friends, your drink threatening to spill over the sides as he turns you faster.

“Hey! Thank you, by the way!” he shouts, probably a bit louder than he needs to.

“For what?”

“For getting Corroded Coffin to play!” He jerks a thumb towards the stage, stumbling a bit as he does. He’d managed to sneak another tequila shot when his boyfriend left him unattended to use the restroom, and it definitely shows. “And for, like, being there for me.”

You give him a hug, immediately understanding the full implication of his statement. “I’ll always have your back,” you promise, filled with the mingled buzzes of alcohol and belonging.

“I think of all the education that I've missed But then my homework was never quite like this!”

Eddie jumps off of the tiny stage and into the crowd of nine twenty-somethings, each at various levels of tipsiness, and reaches for you to pull you close to him. He’s sweating from constantly moving around and the stage lights, his fingers slick with perspiration as he laces them with yours. Jeff picks up the rhythm for the lead guitar while Eddie kisses you, soft and slow and sensual. He loses himself for a moment before hopping back up to join the rest of the band.

As Corroded Coffin wraps up their Van Halen cover and stops for a quick sip of water, there’s a small commotion behind the bar.

“Is there a Jeff Reynolds here?” the bartender calls out, phone receiver in hand.

Jeff gives a little wave, eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s me.”

“Someone named Jess on the line? Says your girl is in labor and you need to get to the hospital.”

“Holy shit!” Danny claps a hand to Jeff’s back and grins. “C’mon, man! Let’s get you outta here!”

Jeff freezes up; hands clammy as he grips the guitar’s neck. “Can you drive?” he asks Eddie.

Eddie recognizes the fear in his friend’s voice. The selfish part of him wants to refuse to take Jeff to Hawkins General. He could easily plant his feet on the stage and keep playing, claiming that ‘the show must go on.’

No, he silently chastises himself, Jeff needs me. He needs me and I’ll be damned if I let him down again.

“Of course,” Eddie says, trying to force a relaxed disposition. It doesn’t matter; Jeff is too overwhelmed to notice the obvious effort.

“Take my car,” you offer, keys already dangling from your fingertips. “Eds, I can take yours and pick up Harris from Wayne’s tomorrow.” It’s easier to swap rides than to uninstall and reinstall the carseat, so you’re perplexed when Eddie shakes his head.

Two words slip through his lips, soft but pronounced: “Need you.”

Dustin catches wind of the situation and insists on watching Harris until you and Eddie can come back home, claiming he needs to squeeze in as much uncle-nephew bonding time as possible before returning to Florida.

“Henderson, it’s late; don’t let him stay up,” Eddie warns as he tosses over his car keys.

Dustin tries catching them in one hand, but they hit the center of his palm and fall to the ground. “But the best part of being an uncle is breaking the rules!” he laughs as he scoops the keys off of the floor. “By the way, I’m not drunk; just a shit baseball player.” Still, Eddie’s sigh of relief is audible when Suzie plucks the keyring from Dustin’s hand.

With Harris taken care of, you turn your attention to your boyfriend. Eddie’s face is flushed pale, and you’re worried about him behind the wheel. “Want me to drive?”

He nods and grabs onto your hand as you lead the two men to your car. Eddie’s doing his best to keep Jeff calm, reminding him that the doctors and nurses have everything under control until he gets there.

“I’m gonna be a dad,” Jeff murmurs, a disbelieving chuckle permeating the otherwise silent car. “Holy shit.”

Eddie can’t help but smile back. “It only gets crazier from here.”

The bright lights of the hospital’s waiting room are anything but soothing, especially compared to the dimly-lit bar you’d just left. You speak to the receptionist, an older woman with a tired smile and red-rouged cheeks, explaining the situation as she pages Jess while Jeff and Eddie take a seat.

Jeff’s voice is nearly impossible to hear despite the stillness of the room. “The baby was breech at Viv’s last appointment.” He clocks Eddie’s confusion and elaborates. “Feet first, instead of the head. If they didn’t get into the right position and the doctors can’t, I dunno, flip ‘em around? They’ll have to do a c-section.” Long overdue tears spill over his lash line, and he makes no attempt to swipe them away. “I just wanna fix it and I can’t.”

Helplessness. It’s a feeling Eddie knows all too well. He spins a ring around his finger, exhaling softly as he considers a response. He can’t say it’ll be alright, because he has no idea whether or not it will be. He and Jeff both know that.

“No matter what, I’m here for you.” Eddie’s gaze flits over to the receptionist’s desk, where Jess has now arrived and is waving her brother-in-law over. “You’re up.”

But Jeff remains in his chair, hands shoved under his thighs as though they’re glued to the seat. “I…I don’t know if I can do this. What if something happens to Viv or the baby? How can I…?” He doesn’t allow himself to complete the sentence, to finish the thought.

Instinctively, Eddie puts his hands on Jeff’s shoulders. He can feel them trembling slightly as his friend heaves another shaky breath. “Listen to me. You’re gonna do this. You’re gonna go in that room and watch your girl give birth to your baby. Because if you don’t, you’re gonna regret it for the rest of your fuckin’ life.” He glances around and lowers his voice. “I know you’re scared, okay? I get it. And once your kid is safely here, we can talk about it. But right now, you need to pull it together and go be a goddamn dad.”

Jeff nods, finally acquiring the physical stability to stand. “Thank you,” he whispers, clearing his throat and wiping the wet stains from his cheeks. He starts towards Jess before turning back to Eddie. “Could you stay until the baby’s born? If you have to get home to Harris, I understand…”

There it is: his out. He can easily use his son as an excuse, despite the fact that Dustin and Suzie were perfectly capable of babysitting him. He can hightail it out of here and never look back. He can crawl into bed and feel sorry for himself for having to step foot in a godforsaken maternity ward again.

“Yeah. I can stay.”

Nearly an hour passes with Eddie’s head resting on your shoulder, relaying what Jeff told him. Identical knots form in your stomachs as the seriousness of the complications sets in. You don’t say a word as he speaks; you just try to shift without disturbing him. The cushion on the chair back, worn thin, digs into you uncomfortably, but you don’t dare move too much. His vulnerability is a deer that will scamper away at the slightest startle.

You think he’s fallen asleep until you feel his soft lips on your cheek, a muffled, “mine?” against your skin. You note his phrasing; it’s careful and unsure, a symptom of being in his own head for far too long.

“Of course I’m yours,” you whisper back, pressing a kiss to his scalp. “What’s got you asking such silly questions?”

“I don’t like this.” It’s an answer and non-answer all in one.

“Being in a hospital?”

He shakes his head, frizzed curls tickling the crook of your neck. His forehead is sticky with cooled perspiration. “Waiting to see if the baby is okay.”

The realization hits you like a punch to the stomach, immediately hollowing you out. The last time he went through this, it was when Harris was being born. You can’t think of anything to say, so you just nuzzle in closer to him and exhale.

“Why do I feel like this?” Neither of you are sure if he’s asking you, himself, or the universe. “‘S not the same. Viv’s not using drugs; Jeff stuck around the whole time…”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s not how this stuff works, y’know?” You adjust your position so you can look into his eyes. The whites are stained red with worry and exhaustion. “Your gig got interrupted, just like when Harris was born. And there's uncertainty now, too. It’s normal for these kinds of memories to get dredged up.” Your palm rests on his cheek, thumb gently stroking the skin as you ask, “can you try to get some sleep?”

“But what if Jeff needs—”

“I’ll wake you up if he needs you,” you reassure him, settling back into the chair. You lean your head against the wall; the heaviness in your eyelids battles the anxious fluttering in your stomach, but it seems as though sleep is winning.

Eddie’s hand finds your forearm, rubbing up and down the gooseflesh that has appeared courtesy of the air conditioning blasting through the building. Shrugging off his jacket and resting the leather fabric over your shoulders, he can relax once he’s reassured that you’re comfortable. He assumes his previous position, using your shoulder as a pillow and falling asleep gradually, body jostling itself awake from the unfamiliar sleeping arrangement. Eventually, you can hear his soft snores; for the first time tonight, he’s peaceful.

You could tell him now, a whisper under your breath that he’s unlikely to hear. I love you, Eddie. I’m in love with you. Your lips part in anticipation, but you snap them shut. You’re delirious and overwhelmed; Lucas’s throwaway comment about Eddie being in love is rattling around your brain. If you say it and Eddie hears you…

You keep it to yourself for now, letting your body rest while still supporting Eddie’s head. Tomorrow is a new day, with a new life brought into the world. Love—if that’s even what this is—will have to wait until then.

The soft pink of breaking daylight streams through the windows when Jeff wakes Eddie up six hours later, shaking him by the shoulders.

“What the fuck?” Eddie grumbles, wiping the sleep from his eyes. When he registers where he is and the potential urgency of the situation, he sits up straight, head filling with fuzziness from the sudden movement. He wouldn’t call the evening restful, but he’d managed to doze off for longer than he’d expected.

“It’s a girl!” Jeff announces, beaming from ear to ear. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, bursting with enthusiasm and emotion.

As soon as Eddie’s vision clears, he’s on his feet and pulling his best friend in for a giant hug. When he steps back, he realizes that he and Jeff sport matching misty eyes. “Dude, you’re officially a dad now. You have a daughter!”

“I have a daughter,” Jeff repeats incredulously. His eyes cloud with tears, and he blinks them away as he peers over at the empty seat next to Eddie. “Did your lady go home?”

Eddie swivels around, so caught up in the moment that he hadn’t realized he was alone. She left. She left without me; she didn’t want to stick around and deal with–

“Did Viv have the baby?” Your excited voice penetrates through his intrusive thoughts as you stroll in from the hallway. The makeup around your eyes is smudged; you’d tried to wipe some of it off in the bathroom, but water and thin hospital paper towels are no substitute for makeup wipes. “Sorry, I had to pee.”

Eddie smiles at the sight of you, still wearing his jacket. He hopes his sigh of relief is concealed by Jeff’s exuberance. “A girl. Six pounds, ten ounces.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Wanna meet her?”

“Of course!” You and Eddie begin following him down the corridor. “Wait, is Viv feeling up to having visitors?” You’re mildly ashamed to admit that, in your eagerness, you’d forgotten about the baby being breech and the possible c-section.

Jeff nods. “I think my daughter’s gonna be a gymnast, ‘cause she’d flipped herself back around between the appointment and last night.”

There’s no masking Jeff’s pride when he says my daughter, and it makes Eddie want to hug him again. “That’s amazing,” he murmurs. There’s a small pang in his heart, a bead of resentment that Harris’s birth didn’t go so smoothly, but it’s unimportant right now. His best friend just became a father, and he refuses to let his own hang-ups take away from this moment.

“Hi,” you whisper when Jeff opens the door to room 1007. Viv is propped up against pillows, exhausted but happier than she’s ever been before. Your gaze is immediately drawn to the hours-old bundle in her arms. “How are you?”

“Sore,” she replies truthfully, brushing her forefinger against her baby’s closed fist, “but the epidural was a lifesaver.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you tease, unaware that your words have Eddie’s heart skipping a beat at the idea of you bearing a little Munson. “Is it okay if I hold her?” You don’t want to intrude on the new mother’s bonding time, but your insides turn to mush when the baby opens her tiny lips and yawns.

Viv carefully places the newborn in your arms, and you gingerly adjust to support her head. Eddie swears that you holding a baby, in that dress, wearing his jacket, is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. “Did Jeff tell you her name?” Viv asks, stifling a yawn. When you and Eddie both shake your heads, she smiles and glances at her partner.

He clears his throat, suddenly bashful. Eddie forces himself to tear his gaze from the way you smile and coo at the baby and look over at Jeff. “Her name is Nicolette,” he starts, “but that’s a big name for a little girl, so we figured we can call her Ettie, and she’ll kinda…share a nickname with you.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide, convinced he heard incorrectly. “You…I’m her namesake?”

“Mhm,” Jeff confirms, the grin never leaving his face. What neither you nor Eddie know is that they had had a different name picked out, and had fully intended on using it until the first time Jeff held their daughter. It filled him with a feeling of wholeness, of being complete, and it strangely had him thinking of his best friend. Without Eddie taking him under his wing, he might not even be here to experience this.

It was only by chance that he had stumbled upon Hellfire Club during his freshman year. He was running from Billy Hargrove and his posse, who were determined to beat the hell out of him simply because they could, and had ducked into the drama room to protect himself. Eddie had taken one look at his face and immediately recognized the expression of fear and defeat from being incessantly bullied. “You know how to play Dungeons & Dragons?” he’d asked, and when Jeff had managed a nod, he’d pulled up a chair and motioned for him to sit down.

Being Eddie’s friend, being part of something, gave him a reason to keep going. To live. And in that instant, he vowed to teach his child to extend kindness toward any misfits who need a place to be themselves.

“What about Nicolette?” he’d asked Viv. “Ettie for short.”

You turn to Eddie now, continuing the steady rocking rhythm that keeps Baby Ettie calm. “What do you say, Mr. Namesake? Wanna hold her?”

There’s a brief flash of panic that floods through his veins; he hasn’t held a newborn since Harris. He’d always worried about dropping him or tripping and falling. Truth be told, he was terrified until his son could hold his own head up.

It’s similar, but not the same, he reminds himself, shuffling even closer to you so you can safely transition Ettie into his arms. She stirs slightly in her swaddle but doesn’t cry.

“Hey, little lady,” he says, a delicate smile dancing on his lips. “I’m your Uncle Eddie. The coolest uncle you’ll ever have, for the record.”

“Harris is gonna love her,” you add, heart swelling at the imagery of him cuddling up to his newest cousin.

“Babe?” Viv pipes up from the bed. “Can you grab me something to eat? ‘M starving.”

“Yeah, of course.” Jeff turns to Eddie. “Come with me? I think Viv needs to feed Ettie, anyway.”

Viv extends her arms and Eddie begrudgingly hands the baby to her. Ettie’s so adorable and small, and it makes him yearn for the days when Harris was that little. Maybe not the sleepless nights or the lack of head control, but the scent of baby powder, the toothless smiles, the way he would fall asleep in Eddie’s arms to whatever song happened to be on the radio. Harris Munson might have been the only infant to be soothed by Twisted Sister.

The two men make their way to the hospital cafeteria, sneakers squeaking along the freshly-waxed linoleum tiles.

“I, um, I’m really proud of the way you stepped up for Viv,” Eddie says, eyes trained on the floor. “You’re a great partner. I feel like I should be taking notes.”

Jeff laughs, shaking his head. “That's where my expertise ends. I have no idea how this whole fatherhood thing works.”

“Wanna hear a secret?” Eddie leans in, shifting his weight onto one foot. He doesn’t wait for his friend’s response to divulge, “none of us do. We’re just…” he waves his hand aimlessly, “…figuring it out as we go.” And making plenty of mistakes along the way, he silently adds.

“I don’t know how you did this alone,” Jeff puffs out an incredulous breath. “I mean, I know you had Wayne’s help…” he trails off, not needing to further elaborate on the missing parent.

“Yeah, me either, man. I’m just glad I’m not alone anymore.”

Jeff stops walking, turning to face him. There’s the unmistakable look of pride that manages to make itself prominent despite his evident exhaustion as he says, “You really want this with her, don’t you?”

“Yeah, man,” Eddie chuckles. “It’s like, for the first time, I’m not just thinking about just me or just Harris. I’m thinking about us as a family.” The dinnertime conversations, the gentle ribbings, the tenderness that seamlessly weaves itself into vulnerable conversations.

“She’s good for you,” Jeff agrees. “And you love her.”

“I mean, I—”

“That was a statement, not a question. You love her.”

And in a single breath, Eddie lets go of the fear he’s been clutching to like a life preserver. The one thing he hasn’t allowed himself to say aloud because it makes it so real, so fucking real.

“I love her.”

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#eddie munson #eddie stranger things #eddie x reader #eddie x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson smut #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things #tui

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huboi · 11 months ago

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᭨ ⃟⃜㊙️. THE ITADORIS’ ू✙˚💬 ̳͟͞͞. 📁💢

CHAPTER 1 : EYE-TO-EYE

★ — NEXT CHAPTER

LINK TO ᭨ ⃟⃜㊙️. THE ITADORIS’ ू✙˚💬 ̳͟͞͞. 📁💢 MASTERLIST

╰┈➤ summary; one friday afternoon, you come face-to-face with a man covered in tats. when at the counter, a small voice politely asks ‘papa’ for a cookie…

╰┈➤ includes; gn! barista! reader, single dad! sukuna, child! yuji, extreme fluff, sukuna is 28 (had yuji at 18), reader is early 20s’ so somewhat of an age gap

╰┈➤ a/n; consider this mini series as a 1k follower special! I’m so stoked I made it this far, tysm for all the support throughout the years <3

╰┈➤ taglist; @alluresenses, @ryomku, @slaysksmska, @vduxx, @yanelis-world, @cloudy51, @gangeyes, @khaleesihavilliard, @valen-yamyam16, @craxy-gezel @kunasexygf, @sukunamylovexoxo, @mazzd4 (if you wanna be added just hit me an ask :3)

THE GENTLE TINKLE of the bell alerted you of a new costumer, causing you to turn around away from the coffee machine ready to greet said customer with a smile and polite welcome, only for your body to stiffen in reflex.

the man that now stood in front of the counter had an eerie aura to him. he wore a black wife beater, the tight clothing highlighting the muscles that lay beneath the clothing, his arms covered in black tats, the muscles making the tats seem extra prominent. his grey sweatpants may be baggy, but you guessed that underneath lays muscular legs and thighs that could easily crush a watermelon-

snapping out of checking out the hot, dangerous looking stranger, you gave him a strained smile at him, hoping he couldn’t sense your nervousness. a small voice saying “papa, can I please have a cookie?” startled you. two little chubby hands cling to the counter, a mop of fluffy pink hair peeking at the variety of cookies on display.

“oi you brat! you’ve already had dessert at chosos’, I don’t need you bouncing off the damn walls when we get back,” the man grunted, arms crossing against his chest, which made his man tits more profound.

“hey, how about this; you can have a hot chocolate instead of a cookie?” you suggested, smiling at the cute little boy in front of you.

facing his father, yuji proceeded to plead him with the signature puppy dog eyes whilst a continuous chorus of pleases left his mouth.

sukuna sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before he mumbled out “one hot chocolate for the brat and black coffee for me,” causing yuji to throw a little celebration, squealing in delight and hugging sukunas’ slutty waist, literally jumping with joy.

the sight plastered a small, genuine smile onto your face, unbeknownst to you, causing a blush to form onto sukunas’ usually stoic face, heart pounding in his chest at this new feeling.

when they found a table to sit at, you began making their drinks. whilst brewing sukunas’ coffee you thought to yourself why only the father was out with his son, is the mother out of the picture? do they take turns with custody over the child? is he simply having some father son bonding time?

you choose not to pry over it, it’s none of your business anyways. it’s kind of comical seeing such a scary, dangerous looking guy with a cute little kid. you have to admit though, the kid’s cute, even though he’s just a carbon copy of the man, but cuter.

when finished with their drinks, you quickly carried them over to their table, noticing how yujis’ face seemed to brighten up at the sight of you carrying his sweet drink. you placed their drinks onto the table, yuji thanking you with all his might whilst sukuna mumbled a small ‘thanks’ in response.

“hiya! i’m yuji and this is my daddy sukuna!” the boy greeted before you left back to the counter. you decided to stay and talk to the kid a bit, since it was near closing time and no other customers seemed to be coming in.

“hi yuji, i’m (name), it’s nice to meet you,” you smiled, ruffling his hair, causing him to let out little giggles at the gesture. sukuna sat back idly watching you interact with his son.

‘mmm, they interact well with yuji. I haven’t had any luck with any partners, especially when they find out I’m a father. his mother was a piece of shit and didn’t even want yuji in the first place, she left me with the brat when he was born’ sukuna thought to himself, maybe he could try shooting his shot? earlier he did notice you eyeing him up and down like a piece of candy, so maybe you’re interested?

“oi brat! quit annoying them!” sukuna berated yuji, testing out the waters to check if you really did want to talk to yuji because you wanted to or if you felt obliged to.

“nonesense! he’s not annoying me, a cutie such as him could never annoy me. I love kids, they give me so much joy. your dad sure is a lucky guy to have you isn’t he?” you grinned, pinching his chubby cheeks in the process causing him to whine out in retaliation.

internally sukuna is smitten, he’s never seen anyone treat yuji with such love, other than choso. maybe you are the right one after all? the problem is, how can he ask you out without making a scene? (the scene being yuji making a huge fuss over him having a partner for the first time since his mum)

“do you have a pen by any chance?” the sudden sound of sukunas’ deep voice sent a small shiver down your spine. “yup, just give me a second sir” you curtly responded, rummaging through your breast pocket before grabbing a pen and giving it to the tatted man.

sukuna grabbed a napkin from the table and hastily scribbled down something before placing the pen back onto the table and practically chugging his coffee.

“brat you finished with your drink?” sukuna asked the little munchkin “noooo, need more time!” yuji cried out. you simply took his cup and placed the coffee into a take out coffee cup, giving it to him so he could drink it on the way back.

“thank you!” yuji bowed, before taking his dads’ way larger hand into his own tiny chubby one. you simply watched as they walked out of the shop, the gentle tinkle of the bell indicating that they’ve left.

you spotted the napkin sukuna wrote on, numbers scribbled along with a small ‘my number : if interested text me and we can go on a date’

you became flustered, feeling your heart flutter at the thought of seeing the attractive dilf once again. maybe you’d text him tomorrow, as you’re usually free on Saturdays as the shop closes earlier at 12:00.

you’re surprised that sukuna was interested, he didn’t show much interest during your interaction. he’s going to be a hard guy to read.

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ive-been-timebombed · 2 months ago

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CHAPTER FOUR

Big emotional moments here.

Oh Danny knew he screwed up the moment he appeared back in his throne The line that went out the door was gone also. Most likely the ghosts sensed the emotions Danny projected onto his haunt and the ghosts scattered not wanting to deal with the nervous and scared ghost king.

He wasn’t thinking when he disappeared at the loud crash! He left his son in a mess! Oh no! But his kid wasn’t scared when he left. So the glass breaking was normal? Oh how he wished he could go back and time and take care of the kid.. but he couldn’t no matter how much he begged Clockwork he knew that. Not to say he didn’t try.. Clockwork didn’t even let him watch his kid grow up.

Danny should visit his baby later. When the helmet thing is off. He can take care of the core problem as he does so. His baby doesn’t know who he was. He didn’t leave a picture or anything with Catherine but the kid did mention something about a picture.. maybe he should go as human? So the kid doesn’t realize he’s the same ghost! Perfect idea!

________

Jason was furiously typing on the laptop. He was searching all he could about ‘The Ghost King’ ‘Phantom’. The only thing coming up was Pariah Dark and a autocorrect to Fenton when he typed a bit too fast.

The link that came up with Fenton said something with ghost so he clicked it. That led him into a black hole of information that just seemed biased. He read all the articles published by the scientists. Then in 2006 they started mentioning a ghost.. a certain ghost that Jason was just looking for.

FENTON WORKS

All the information and weapons you need about ghosts! We are happy to say we have figured out what exactly what ghosts are! This site is made by the Fenton Family.

(Picture of a family of 4. A bigger man than Jason himself in bright orange. A fit woman in blue with ginger hair. The older teen with ginger hair like her mother and a cyan headband. Then a younger teen with black hair like the father and frankly skinny considering his parents.)

Click here to read more

Click here to buy things

Click here to contact us

Jason learned a lot of information about Phantom and the Fentons.. Jason now just needed to find a way to summon the ghost once again and make him talk. The ghost seemed nice and not destroy the world just because he could type of being. Then again Jason wasn’t the most.. sane? Normal? Person to ask about what is normal and not normal. He would ask Dick but he was still likely drugged and concussed. He didn’t want to deal with that. Not to mention Dick also wasn’t normal.

___________

“What the ancients..” Danny muttered looking at himself in the mirror. He transformed back to his human form not even a hour ago and he’s already regretting it. He still looked like his 20 year old self. He didn’t age a day from when he first transformed. The clothes were even the same he left in.. he could only pin point a few differences on his body. Like the more ghostly attributes. The pointer ears, sharper teeth, and paler skin.

Danny knew he should’ve shifted between forms more but it just didn’t seem right without the kid next to him..

—————

“Daaaa! Deeee!” A child’s yelling pierced the air followed by a loud crash then a giggle.

“I’m coming! I’m old- okay. Accept it while you still can.” A young man’s voice came followed by a black hair with white on the back young adult. The man had icy blue eyes and a scar on his bottom lip. The child the man was talking to looked like him.

The child had curly black hair not a hint of white unlike his father. Darker blue eyes that seemed to shine when he saw his father. Chubby cheeks and stubby fingers. The kid was wearing a shirt that had the words ‘I’m just outta this world. Floating by the stars’ surrounded by stars. Along with jean pants and a gray jacket. The shoes stuck out due to the bright yellow color of the rain boots.

“Oh don’t give me that look.. I know I’m only 20! You make me feel 50 years older than I am. Specially with all your sass.” Danny put his hands on his hips and looked down at the kid.

“Aunt Cathy say it comes from you.” Jason put his hands on his hips and looked up at the kid.

“I know it did. I can’t blame anyone else but myself and it’s horrible.” Danny huffed sticking his tongue out at the child which was followed by the kid doing the same to the young adult.

Suddenly the mood changed and Danny’s expression changed into a more somber one. He couched down and looked at the kid.

“Jason, you know how I sometimes leave you with you Aunt Cathy?” Danny felt horrible. His core hurt and he wanted to hug the child and not let go.

“Yeah? But Daddy always comes back so I ain’t scared!” Jason grinned moving forward and putting both hands on the adults face.

“Jason what I say about the hands and other peoples faces?” Danny brought his hands to the kids and pulled the hands off his face but didn’t let go of the kids hands.

“Not to do it.. but don’t worry! I only do it to you!” Jason hopped on his feet unable to stay still like any child.

“Okay, you’re such a bully.” Danny deadpanned, “This is serious Jason, I don’t think I’m coming back this time.”

“What? No. Daddy you gotta come back. You can’t leave .” Jason looked up at his father not really understanding the situation .

“I don’t want to kid but I want you safe and I’m not that.” Danny pulled his son into a hug burying his face into the curly mess that was on top of Jason’s head. He stood up picking up the toddler his arms surrounding the other in a tight hug.

Danny knew it was stupid to say this while he still had the child. He should’ve just left the kid at Catherine’s and not return. But then he thought about the kid getting all ready to come back to him waiting at the door with his to big backpack only for him not to return. He didn’t want that for the kid. He didn’t want his kid to be sitting in front of the door sad because he couldn’t understand what was happening and why his father wasn’t there. He wanted just a bit longer with his child.. even if it was in tears.

————

Jason was sure he had the right man. The scar was exactly the same. It was a line on the bottom right lip the that split into two at the bottom. He didn’t know what to think of the being.. his father? From what his Ma told him. Catherine not Shelia. His father was a good man. A bit too sarcastic for his own good but it also made him funny. He had weird ways of saying things. Never used a saying right or just made it his own. He had a slight lisp and had an accent. Couldn’t cook to save his life and hated toast. Hurt himself with stupid things but was incredibly smart. Could turn a microwave into a gun in a hour alone.

Jason wondered if he got some of those qualities.? Before he died and turned into a monster. Dick always said he had a lisp and used some words wrong. Like fruit loop and ancients.. apparently he used one as an insult and the other as a replacement for some words.

@boopjuice

#danny phantom #dc x dp #dad danny #ghost jason todd #more so ghostling then ghost but meh #ghost king danny #red hood #yikes I haven’t posted in forever.#I tried my best to make the two year old actually a two year old.#but I only have a one year old for an example.#in other words I refuse to use my cousins children as examples cause their sweet but #dang the headaches they give me.#womp

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motherofagony · 1 year ago

Text

A HEART FOR EATING // vol. 2

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: post outbreak!joel x f!reader setting: jackson, wy (think tlou pt. 2 minus the golfing) rating: mature, 18+, minors dni word count: 8.7k series summary: a vicious raider attack robs you of human connection and lights a fire of destruction in your life in jackson. joel's fixated on you, and your lives tangle. revenge becomes a needful thing. chapter summary: you take care of joel after a patrol injury, but you suspect there's more to it than he's telling you. the atmosphere shifts as you and joel grow (begrudgingly) closer. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), protective!joel, brief masturbation (f!reader), praise kink for two seconds, blood, bodily injuries, needles (reader gives joel stitches), dissociation/triggers, alcohol, angst, sexual tension intensifies, The First Kiss™, soft!joel vol. 1 // vol. 2 series playlist a/n: we're picking up speed, folks. world-building is my weakness, so i hope you enjoy this nonetheless. honorable mention goes to the readers in the trenches, waiting patiently for joel to [redacted] reader senseless until she [redacted] all over his [redacted]. thank you for the love on the series so far. taglist: @ghostwritesthings, @widowssbite, @p3rkerr, @eternallyvenus, @punkshort if anyone would like to be added/removed to the taglist (or if i missed anyone), please send me a DM!

You’ve always hated flying.

In the great before, the stone ages of family vacations and things to look forward to, fears were singular and planes were yours.

Your family never had a lot of money, not really, but on the special occasion of a death in the family, you’d find yourself trapped to a seat in a metal tube. Going nowhere but up. Sitting through safety instructions that came from smiling, lipsticked mouths that were only hypotheticals until they weren’t.

It’s like a rollercoaster, your dad would say, amused in the way only a dad can be and sleeping through damn near anything in the same fashion. It did nothing to calm the knocking of your knees, to quell the flip of your stomach as you climbed higher and higher until you couldn’t see anything but cotton ball clouds.

It was always unnatural to you that something so heavy could float, that you were supposed to go on doing human things and drinking your ginger ale and munching your pre-packaged snack option. As if you weren’t being hurled into the sky with no one walking you through it.

As if the plummet onto tarmac meant no harm, just completely normal erratic braking that felt a lot like the moments before a crash.

There was no control — it was in someone else’s hands that you never saw. And as you fell, you were supposed to say thank you, that’s exactly what I paid for.

This is your version of the oxygen mask. This is you putting yours on before you help Joel.

You’re on your knees digging through your med bag, thumbing through bandages, checking for a quick count of gloves, antibiotics, wash cloths. You fumble with the zipper, fighting with the tremor that starts in your forearms and liquifies into your wrists. There isn’t much in the way of supplies unless you ransack what’s kept in storage, but there’s no time, and you’re not sure of what you’re about to walk into.

Waiting any moment for a scream, or the blast of a gun when they realize Joel’s not Joel anymore.

And it isn’t really a big possibility in the grand scheme of things, if you consider that he would’ve likely turned on the route home. But it’s still there, tickling the back of your head, nudging your navel uncomfortably. Nothing’s impossible.

You of all people know that.

You linger in your living room, giving a final sweep. Worst case, you can run back for what’s forgotten, but something about the idea of abandoning a vulnerable Joel – if only for a minute – doesn’t settle right in your stomach.

Before you can stop yourself, you’re shoving a bottle of whiskey into the bag, the only anesthetic on hand. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you need to score back some points.

The steps leading up to Joel’s house are sturdy, and you imagine it’s because of the pride he takes in what’s his. Before this, his house was just another skeleton of roof, foundation, windows, and siding.

The kind of houses you pass by every day that are rife with familiarity but you don’t know what it’s like to see the people inside eat dinner, brush their teeth. Fight. Fuck.

Fresh paint from only two seasons ago, reinforced porch posts. A swing. It’s weird to see permanence in this day and age, but his intention to anchor himself and grow roots here flutters meaningfully inside you.

It’s always been a sacred thing to you, you don’t know why. A place you’d never dreamed of entering, but dreamed about what it would smell like. A pair of boots haphazard by the front door, small piles of organized chaos, of collected tangibles. A you never know if you’ll need this in one corner, a saving that for a rainy day shelved in another.

So when you raise your hand to knock, you feel like an intruder, an unwelcome invasion of privacy. And you don’t know why you knock at all, you nearly think better of it given the circumstances, but you’re testing the atmosphere, hoping for voices inside instead of a struggle.

Ellie’s swinging the door open, relief smoothing out the lines in her forehead when she sees you. Her presence seems to answer any unspoken questions you had about Joel being infected, and you don’t voice them to her when you can see unrest in her antsy legs.

“Hey. Sorry for the wait. He alright?”

Her teeth are worrying her lip, probably more traumatized by the sight of him than anything. A few strands of hair have freed themselves from her lazy half-bun at the base of her neck, caught in the crossfire when she ran her hands through it, you think.

“Yeah,” Ellie breathes, committing to it. “Yeah, he’s okay. Bleeding stopped, nothing seems broken. Just needs stitches, I think.”

It sounds more to convince herself than anything else. There’s a foreign fragility to her, and you hate it.

“He tell you what happened?”

The question strikes a nerve. Ellie’s shaking her bowed head, scoffing in a half-laugh that doesn’t touch her eyes. Her hand wraps around her knuckles, cracking slowly in an effort to alleviate the tension that’s reached a fever pitch inside her.

“He won’t tell me, says it doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t have gone alone anyway, he was bein’ a dick. ‘I wanna think, kiddo - need t’clear my head,’” she mocks in a gruff, rolling pitch, the perfect dosage of Texas.

It levels you, potent. Are you the thing Joel needed to clear his head of?

You’re weirdly longing for it, but being flicked away like a bug, peeled away layer by layer from him isn’t something you want.

There’s hope that you’re contagious. That you’re haunting him and lurking in the darkest corners of his mind like an apparition like he has yours. And maybe there’s hope after all, something left to salvage.

But you play dumb, furrow your brow a little too expertly.

Ellie’s measuring you, and there’s a glimpse of worry but she hides it in a way that you wouldn’t know what you were looking for if you hadn’t already found it.

“Anything you wanna tell me about the other night? He was pissed when he left,” she tacks on quietly.

You go a little slack-jawed. You don’t even know how to put it into words, and you couldn’t tell her what it meant even if you tried.

What’s there to even say?

“You know what, none of my business,” she says, her hands lifting in tired surrender when you don’t answer, ignoring your near-sputter. “But you’re not off the hook, just make sure the old man doesn’t croak. And tell him he scared the shit outta me.”

You exhale and hope it doesn’t read too much as relief. You’ll have to answer to her later, but at least you might have an answer to give.

“Handful of salt in the wound, rub in circular motions – got it. Tell Tommy I’ll catch up later.”

Your shoulders scrape affectionately as you nudge past each other, and you cast a wide look at the periphery of Joel Miller’s house. The feeling of unwelcome disappears, and if anything, you’re being tugged further inside. Imagining what it’s like to be a fixture, an adornment in his weird little life.

Nooks that you assumed would be messy are neat, coiffed even. There’s that unavoidable smudge of secondhand all over the furniture – mottled ever so slightly, aged uneven in places that only an apocalypse can do. But it’s an otherwise tidy existence. Another surprise from Joel that you’d never pick up on if you only witnessed him nursing a drink at the bar.

An oak bookshelf props itself at the bottom of the stairs and it rivals your own, dust gathering in thin lines where he’s repeatedly shelved this, reread that. There are paintings hung decisively on most of the walls, breathtaking rural landscapes of wherever.

You’re lugging the bag upstairs, counting your breaths with each step. The whiskey rattles mutely against the first aid tin, and it’s a toss-up now of who you really brought it for.

The landing mirrors the ground level, a purposeful littering of tchotchkes. Doors line the second floor, some closed, some ajar but not inviting, and you realize you have no idea which one you’re looking for. You sway uninvited by the bannister until you hear the unmistakable hiss of breath between clenched teeth, then a soft moan as his weight shifts.

And you’re stepping inside a room – his bedroom – warmed in the soft beginnings of sunset. Joel’s sprawled asymmetrically on his bed, eyes pinched shut, delirious with blood loss but already looking substantially less like a corpse. A damp rag settles just above his brow, and the handiwork of Ellie.

There’s an unrecognizable hurt in him, wounded in ways that he shouldn’t be capable of.

He doesn’t give any indication that he knows you’re here until he’s rasping out something weak disguised as stern.

“I ain’t bit. Shut the door behind you.”

Your mouth goes dry.

“How did you –?”

Joel just huffs in response, as indignant as his body lets him be.

“You see anyone else here? They might as well’ve jumped out the window, as fast as they dumped me ‘n left. I ain’t stupid.”

You accept that and drop the pretense, pursing your lips with a nod. He doesn’t seem that offended, knows it’s just the nature of the beast.

You move over to his bedside, unpacking the bag quickly on a side table, looping your metaphorical stethoscope around your neck and switching gears into a mode that’s strictly doctoral.

Yet, there’s still that hum beneath your skin, the fizzle of unfinished business. It’s thick in the space between you, in the way he flicks his gaze at you lazily. You’ll let him foster the anger, giving it a home. You can be the martyr he says you are.

This new lens feels calmer, almost professional. Your nerves are still firing rapidly, and your composure is forced, but it’s better than nothing.

You drag a chair from the corner up to Joel’s bed, not letting your eyes wander too far into the depths of the space. You don’t have time to dissect the idiosyncrasies of his life. Not yet.

He still hasn’t opened his eyes, but you get the sense that he’s tracking your every move. His limbs are concrete, the tendons in his forearms so tense and coiled like any and every movement is forbidden.

“Joel.”

He grunts, a pained translation. Still no effort to move.

“I need to take a look at you,” you say patiently, bargaining like you would with a kid. “Wanna tell me what hurts?”

Another grunt, softer this time. He motions vaguely, weakly to his head, then the left flank of his abdomen.

You already know what you’ll find under the rag on his head, and it bodes well that the bleeding looks to have stopped. His stomach wound, on the other hand, was enough to bleed through two layers.

“Alright. Lemme see.”

A muted whimper echoes in his throat, so uncharacteristically that it tugs on your heart. Still statuesque, unmoving.

Your fingers are deft, careful as they unbutton the first, second, third buttons of his flannel. Joel’s stock-still, and his breath comes in sharp, slow waves through his nose. Your own breath kind of sits in the back of your throat, and you pretend with a hurried exhale that you weren’t just holding it.

Your fingers reach his navel on the last button, and you’re gently tucking each panel of his shirt under him on either side, focusing too hard on not touching him. It feels like something is somersaulting low in your stomach.

You can’t even dare yourself to look at his chest, his stomach. The patch of hair leading down to the band of his pants.

Get it together. That’s not what this is.

An angry gash looks up at you, thankfully clotted with dried patches of blood. It’s about two delicate fingers long, a nasty slice. It looks clean, abrupt in shape but suspiciously manmade. Not too deep, but not superficial enough to heal without some assistance.

And thank god, not nearly as bad as you thought it would be.

Joel’s looking at you now through heavy lids, wary of you, but something like fear touches the corners of his eyes. You fight to stay medical, methodical in your diagnosis. No emotion slips out, nothing allowed in.

You sit back calmly, letting loose a sigh. Not letting yourself bathe in the intimacy of the moment, in the way he’s staring.

“You need stitches,” you announce simply.

“Like hell.”

“Joel.”

He’s scowling, a hurt animal pissed at its own vulnerability. Silence passes like a ship between you, and for a moment, you think he’ll really fight you on this. He can’t hide anything when he’s like this, the weighing of his options evident in the tick of his jaw, the pathetic pinch just in the center of his brows.

“Fine,” he grits out. “Make it quick.”

This fucker.

You’re rolling your eyes, unceremoniously tugging the rag from his forehead. The cloth is red but not soaked, just twinged pink around the edges. Joel curses, just an octave above unintelligible.

His hand is shooting to the cut near his hairline and you’re smacking it away before he can pollute it.

“Lay still, fuck’s sake,” you chastise. “An infection’ll put you out longer than a few days. Unless you have a puzzle you been meaning to get around to?”

The faux-threat calms him immediately, and the shift in restraint doesn’t go unchecked. He doesn’t say another word, but you catch a glare and a twitch of his mouth.

You make quick work of cleaning him up, squeezing rubbing alcohol on a clean towel and scrubbing patient circles through the mess of dried blood. Joel releases sharp noises you can only describe as growls when you get too close to the border of his cuts.

It’s primal, a dog asserting dominance with his leg caught in a trap.

You try to lose the attitude, and it’s difficult when your patient hates you, doesn’t hate you, won’t clarify either way.

There’s a hint of purple that’s developing like fresh film on the mountains of his knuckles that doesn’t go unnoticed. Places on the most taut peaks of flesh where his skin has split, marred with scrapes that look like indents of teeth. And in the right light, there’s a discoloration of something in the same family splayed on his ribs.

And that… you know that when you see it. Even if everything else can be explained away.

“You wanna talk about it?” you say quietly.

There’s an intermission where he doesn’t respond. Too long to be the truth, too short to come up with a lie. And you know he’s been waiting for this question, might’ve already thought of a story.

“Got clumsy,” Joel recites. “Tripped on some stairs that were caving in, hit my head.”

“Bullshit.” And it’s a statement, not an insult. It doesn’t cover why he has a certified stab wound in his side.

Another stretch of silence, lack of defensiveness, makes it clear that he knows you know. But he doesn’t elaborate, and for whatever reason, you don’t push it.

And maybe it’s enough to acknowledge this sort of thing for now. You can stow it away, let it keep you up at night. Draw parallels where there possibly aren’t any. If he’d run into a human thing, he’d be much worse off, right?

Just like you were.

You take care in lining up the supplies to stitch in neat order beside you, mulling over each step in your mind. Stalling, maybe.

You pull the whiskey bottle out of your bag by the neck and nudge Joel with the cap.

“Something to take the edge off.”

He kind of hesitates, but there’s a tenderness. Recognizing it as an act of mercy, a peace offering.

There’s nothing said, but he takes the bait, spinning off the top and swallowing a messy mouthful. A drip escapes through the corner of his mouth and slips into his beard.

You can feel the taste of it blossoming on your tongue.

He grunts his thanks and keeps a steady grip on the neck of the bottle, and the network of veins in his forearm unwind.

You clamp the needle, laced through with something thicker than thread but not quite medical grade. Joel exhales a shaky whine when you pierce the skin, and his fist grips the sheets when you twist clockwise to push the needle through to the other side.

“You’re doing great,” you murmur.

The needle weaves over the cut, greeting the other side. You pull it through and up, and his lower lip trembles, sweat beading his forehead.

“First one done,” you say, praising him but also yourself.

Joel’s still clenching the linens on the bed, ignoring you and hiding out in his own mind somewhere.

You don’t tell him that you’ve only ever practiced on fruit, that your suture knowledge comes exclusively from the one medical text you have and endless hours of TV you grew up on.

Silence envelopes you again, heavier than before if possible. The pressure waxes and wanes like nighttime waves, licking the shore between you. And it’s not angry, just something… else.

“Some house you got,” you note casually as a distraction, like you’re commenting on the weather. It comes off relaxed enough, though any conversation between you feels like flossing a crowded mouth.

His eyes sharpen, and you think it’s in excruciation, but there’s a twinge of apprehension. You straighten for a moment, hands fixed mid-stitch, and roll your eyes.

“Okay, cool it, Home Alone, I’m not casing the place.”

Joel takes a turn rolling his eyes. You swear that you see his mouth twitch again, but you hang your head, dabbing a cloth where pinpricks of blood form.

You try again.

“I like your paintings.”

You dare to look up, and his mouth is in a tight line.

“You like my paintings.” he repeats dully, not a question. Joel’s as cynical as you, and he thinks it’s a jab, not sincere.

“You’re not gonna make this easy on me, are you?”

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

Now’s as good a time as any. You sigh at that.

“Look, the other night wasn’t my finest moment. It didn’t need to go that way,” you mutter, leaning on the concentration of sewing up Joel’s skin. Otherwise, you might feel too strongly, dissect your word choice with an uncomfortable linger. “Sorry. I know you were trying to help.”

He goes rigid as your second stitch meets a third. The bottle tips to his lips again, and you wonder if it’s an act of liquid courage. You boldly hope so.

“Nah, I shoulda kept my mouth shut. Been thinkin’ I needed to apologize anyway,” he admits, and you know he’s happy you made the first move. You can already feel him loosen, but maybe it’s the alcohol. “You ain’t a martyr, y’know.”

Oh.

The needle hooks into the final sliver of skin, your handiwork tightening into a neat line. You sit back, wiping your brow with the ungloved section of your wrist. It’s a treaty, a handshake at the very least.

“Actually, I think you hit the nail on the head with that one,” you smirk, olive branch fully hanging between your teeth now. “Keeping up the charade is so exhausting.”

Joel presses out a pained half-laugh, and you feel something crumbling between you.

You tie off the last stitch, trimming the excess thread off the knot. The clamp clatters into the tray, and you give it a final once-over before peeling a large rectangle of bandage from your kit and pressing it gently over the wound.

“All done,” you quip, peeling your gloves off. “Didn’t even have to amputate.”

“Not too bad,” he grunts.

“I’ll add it to your tab.”

While you’re riding the high of approval, you stand and move to the foot of the bed. Joel’s boots are still on, laced messily.

And for some reason, you don’t even ask permission, you just start untying, tipping them off and lining them next to one another on the hardwood.

He doesn’t say a word. Out of confusion, maybe.

You scoot your chair and makeshift flatlay along with you, positioning yourself at Joel’s head. That look is back, a side-stare that steals your breath.

That look that knows you could absolutely ruin him, and he’d either thank you or kill you.

The pads of your fingers brush back the hair from his forehead, still slightly matted with blood. It’s a surface cut, but crescent-shaped and easily hidden by a curl of brown, peppered with grey. Butterfly closure it is.

No signs of a concussion show themselves. At least there’s that.

“You might have a scar,” you murmur. Being this close to Joel makes you feel like you’re wearing two layers too many.

And he hasn’t broken the stare, not even minutely.

“Add it to the collection,” he says lowly, not an ounce of self-pity.

Your eyes flash to the scar near his temple. You’re exercising full-on restraint not to ask him about it. But it’s not the time, something you could try to pry out of him later. And knowing there’ll be a later makes you relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw.

He’s nice enough to pretend not to notice, or he’s in too much pain to mention it.

You dab the damp rag around the border of his cut again, mopping up any excess. You reach for the isopropyl.

“You might wanna take another swig,” you warn. And he obeys, down the hatch and white-knuckling through it.

“Good boy,” you’re murmuring automatically, and it just slips out.

Your mouth falls open just so, and Joel’s coughing, clearing his throat against the burn of whiskey. You’re pleading with the universe that his cough was close enough, loud enough to cover the words, but his face has turned a shade of red that’s probably rivaling the heat that reaches your ears.

Good boy? Jesus Christ.

If there was ever a heightened moment of being fucking touch-starved, it’s this.

You make haste with the disinfectant and place the closures over the cut. The bloodied towels and scraps from the DIY surgery are cleaned up, tied neatly into a plastic bag. And now, this is the part where you run and never face him again.

You’re already making plans to board up your windows, maybe have Ellie deliver your meals solely through a slot in the door.

But Joel’s pain is overriding everything, and he’s sunken even further back into the pillow, his head lolling to prop on his shoulder. He’s whispering a weak thanks that’s incoherent at best. You tug the blanket up and over him.

You grab a glass from downstairs, fill it to the brim with water and bring it to him. He groans at the sight, petulant.

“I’m not leaving until you finish this.”

His lifts his arm for it, scowling. “Gimme the damn thing.”

Satisfied, you hand it over and watch him drink it down, his throat bobbing in a hearty gulp. Your gaze can’t help but snag on it.

You have got to get the fuck out of here.

You come back with a refilled glass and sit it on his bedside table, close enough within reach. The medical bag is packed up and ready, sagging slightly in areas where you’ve emptied it. It knocks against your already-knocking knees, and you’re grateful to use its weight as an excuse for how blurred you feel.

“I need to talk to Tommy. You gonna be alright for a bit?”

His eyes are closed again, on the outskirts of rest, but his mouth pulls up in the ghost of smile.

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere, sweetheart.”

And you hope he means it.

—

You track down an unsettled Tommy, finding him pacing in the back of the general store. He’s restocking some shelves but not quite – there’s an gross pairing of tinned fish and fresh eggs sitting on a display that’s unappetizing at best.

“He’s okay. No bite,” you add lowly, acutely aware of how many pairs of ears are in the store. “But he needs to be monitored.”

Tommy slackens, rubbing his eyes that are full of exhaustion and bruised with worry. Index finger and thumb stroking the respective tails of his mustache one, two, three times as the gravity of that strikes him.

He loops you into an embrace, and it’s kind, full of ease. The smell of firewood and smoke tickles your nose. His worry evaporates then, and honestly, so does yours.

“He doin’ alright?”

You chew on that for a moment and nod. There are complications, but nothing to do with Joel’s health.

“He was pissed about the stitches, but I didn’t have a choice. Cut was pretty deep.”

“So… he tell you what happened, then?”

There’s that question again. You feel like you should have an answer, but if he wouldn’t clue in Ellie, you sure as hell wouldn’t be.

Like squeezing blood from a stone, your dad used to say.

“No,” you lie instinctively. You don’t know why.

But it isn’t really. Not if you don’t know the full truth yourself. There’s just something about Joel’s omission that makes you feel entitled to find out first.

“He said he fell down some stairs,” you amend, “just didn’t say where or how.”

Tommy offers you the same look that Ellie gave you – a raised brow coupled with a touch of disbelief.

“If you say so.”

You shrug, playing it as cool as’ll come natural to you. “You know Joel. Doesn’t want to make a fuss.”

He chuckles, shaking his head and rolling out his shoulders that you know have been holding tension. He believes that, at least.

“Sounds like you know him, too.”

—

A few days come and go.

Ellie takes on a lot of the recovery, but she doesn’t like messing with stitches — creeps me the fuck out that you did that without puking all over him, she claims — and she’s eager to substitute for the patrol routes while Joel’s down and out. You offer to step in, with a totally normal and selfless motive.

If she thinks anything else of it, you’d be the last to know.

Your new itinerary consists of changing Joel’s bandages, cleaning up through his hissed breaths and every goddamn it. Twice a day, morning and night and sometimes in closer intervals, but never approaching the cusp of any boundary.

Joel’s fiercely independent, swatting your hands when you try to help. Donning a clean flannel in the space between your lunchtime visit and your nightcap, despite you telling him that he shouldn’t be pushing his mobility.

That said, he’s marginally better about following doctor’s orders, drinking the water you leave on his nightstand but neglecting the pills that would stop him from coiling in on himself like a ready spring. And he doesn’t say it but you know it’s because he thinks it’d be a waste.

You trade regular formalities at first, each of you standing behind your respective walls, daring the other to toe a bit closer.

Joel doesn’t ask, but you bring him some short stories to pass the time and he devours them. You didn’t think much of it other than just straying past the point of being nice, but your heart sings a bit at how he leaves his shell at your coaxing.

You learn Bradbury is his favorite, but when he finishes The Most Dangerous Game, it’s the most he’s ever spoken to you in one sitting, astounded at the perfectly tied bow of an ending, asking you questions that only the author could answer. But it’s a marvel to witness, something you think about when you’re cleaning stables or washing dishes.

He’s unraveling for you, a loose thread tugged too hard on your favorite sweater. He talks of the places in the paintings, sometimes abruptly, like he isn’t sure what his cue is or if he has one.

Mentions of pre-Jackson when there was so much uncertainty and isolation, but it was coupled with those types of watercolor skies that you couldn’t paint if you tried.

These little pieces of him that make him whole – it’s like you’re both in on the same secret. And Joel isn’t doing it to lighten the tension, to be nice; that isn’t his brand of politeness. He just revels in the holy act of confession with you as his witness.

You come to learn that his room is modest, different from the rest of his house. Clues of hobbies sprawled on his desk – leatherworking tools and hand drawn blueprints that you can’t get a good look at with just a sidelong glance.

There’s a dusty stereo tucked at the back towards the wall, and you picture a content Joel, sketching new plans for a porch swing or some small addition while old bluesy country croons from the speakers.

You like this daydream, placing him in something lighthearted where his only worry is that he’s losing daylight on yardwork.

The two of you talk about little bits of everything and nothing. Reminiscing about sending snail mail, discussing what you think places like Italy look like now. How close you came to crossing an ocean in another life.

Tonight, you have a night terror that clings to you like wet denim. Stop-motion, nonsensical. Your head ricocheting into concrete, hitting your temple just so. Flashes of the people that used to be your parents, your friends.

And just as the life drains from you, blood seeping onto the floor and into spidering cracks, you wake up a flailing mess.

You practice your routine, twisting on knobs of lamps and plugging in the twinkling lights hanging around the perimeter of the living room. You press your cheek to the floor, checking under your bed for monsters for good measure.

Bleary-eyed, you’re climbing back under the covers, pulling them snug up to your chin.

There’s a neediness crawling its way through your organs with a one-way ticket south. The juxtaposition of fear mingles with an otherness, and it anchors itself to Joel.

You never cared for a protector, still don’t, but the eagerness that sprouts from him to defend your honor — and for nothing in return — magnetizes you on a cellular level.

Your fingers are dipping into the band of your already-damp underwear, taking inventory of what the thought of him does to you. Body on auto-pilot. A pool of dripping neediness, so slick that you’re coating your clit in excess and rubbing in tight circles.

He doesn’t even have to touch you, and it’s pathetic.

Images of Joel’s beard scratching your thighs swirls behind your eyelids, your hand gliding between the glistening of your folds. Fingers crook inside you, dipping into the last knuckle, and you’re choking on a gasp, already on the edge.

You wish they were more calloused, thicker, with length that can hit the spot that’s desperately out of reach.

You wish they were Joel’s.

It takes only a minute, some curling and pumping of your wrist to make it quick in case it’ll only ever be a fantasy. The wet noises of your arousal are nothing short of obscene, and you’re coming loudly, sharply on a string of moans.

In some ways, you think, you have already died.

And fuck. It’s so poetic it makes you sick.

—

On the fourth day, Maria sends you to Joel’s with some stew — two hearty containers that're meant for the both of you.

She’s been taking her shift at his place, carrying over containers of this and that to keep him fed. You wonder how often she takes on that role anyway, sans injury. You don’t peg Joel as the type to eat three square meals a day of his own accord.

Tell Joel I can’t make it tonight. Gotta do inventory.

She makes no room for elaboration, so you don’t ask. But you thank her with a hug, and you could swear that she’s giving you a conspiratorial smirk.

When you knock on Joel’s bedroom, he gives a new, warm invitation, coated in subtle hospitality. It’s a far stretch from the unaffected what? you might’ve received a week ago.

You place the stew down on the bedside table, along with some bowls and spoons you plucked from his kitchen. He just looks up at you from his bed, uncertainty reaching the lines of his forehead.

“It’s all Maria,” you explain and he hums, catching up.

“Explains a lot,” he mutters.

You eat quietly for a little over ten minutes. Joel’s flannel today boasts a rich navy, buttoned up to the top but not far enough to hide the sprinkling of hair that peeks through.

He catches you staring and pins you with a dark glance.

“You afraid of the dark or somethin’?”

Joel’s ask cuts through the air, and your spoon stops mid-route to your open mouth. It’s so out of the blue that it stuns you momentarily.

“Sorry?”

“You turn the lights on at night.”

What you thought to be private moments of fear were actually on display for all to see.

For Joel to see.

And the memory of your thighs trapping your hand as you came over and over again on your fingers… you’re grateful to at least have had some decorum to draw your bedroom curtains.

“Um.” You dig for a way to say nope, I’m actually just a pussy and I see things that aren’t there. Also, I was touching myself thinking about you last night. “No, just nightmares.”

Every inch of your skin feels like it’s searing. A bead of sweat makes a slow descent down your spine to your tailbone. You laugh lightly to deflect.

Joel’s mouth thins into a tight line.

“It’s nothing,” you promise.

“Ain’t nothin’,” he snaps. His brows are knitted in fury, misdirected. But you get it.

Your stomach is rumbling, but you’ve effectively lost whatever appetite you had. The bowl finds a space on the side table, and you’re pulling your knees to your chest protectively, thumbing at the fray on the cuff of your jeans.

You don’t mean to scowl, but you can’t help it. You can’t even meet his eyes.

Joel’s sighing, his own bowl discarded on the nightstand, grazing the lip of yours.

“Look, it’s not my business,” he starts, choosing his words carefully, “but that kinda shit worries me.”

When you do look up, he’s rubbing his beard with rigid fingers. You should feel nice and fuzzy that he cares enough to point it out, but it’s just embarrassment instead.

That, on top of everything else, you can’t even get through the night without waking up in a cold sweat.

“I know how it looks,” you say in surrender, “but I swear I’m fine.”

You can imagine what it would feel like to really mean it; it’s just on the tip of your tongue. There is a defiance there, it’s just struggling to find a way out.

“You sure about that?”

You let your feet touch the floor, straightening out your legs and busying yourself with smoothing the creases in your pants.

“You worry about everyone else like this?” you muse, hoping to redirect.

Joel’s scratching the back of his neck, eyes fixed anywhere else.

“Always worried about you.”

If you were any farther away, you wouldn’t have heard him.

Outside, kids are yelling, playing tag. You watch in jealousy, can almost hear the crunch of their boots and their tiny, inconsequential conversations. It takes you longer than intended to give a response, and he waits, patiently. Just trickles a look from the crown of your head to your hands to your face. Searching for a reaction.

“You’re about ten months late, Miller.” And you’re smiling briefly. You mean it as playful, but it’s colored with sadness.

His eyes glaze, and the wheels are turning, wondering if that also means too late.

“Didn’t want you to think I was takin’ advantage of the situation. And I thought Max —” Joel bites down on the name.

“Fuck Max,” you spit in disgust. “That was never a thing.”

You don’t have to make eye contact to see that he’s pleased by that. He hums in the back of his throat. Resists a shit-eating grin. From the looks of Joel connecting the dots, you don’t need say much else.

“Yeah, well. We all failed you,” he insists. “I failed you.”

It sets an incredulous spark in some hidden part of you. Nails cut into your palm, your fists balling harshly. Everyone else? Sure, you’d give him that. Jackson spit you out, with the exception of a select few.

But Joel?

“You saved me.”

“Not good enough,” he says under his breath.

—

The next day, you let yourself inside, already learning the language of Joel’s house when you press a little extra weight against the door to seal it shut when it sticks.

It’s quiet, on the cusp of 8, and you wouldn’t be surprised if Joel’s on the brink of sleep.

The sun’s long settled over the mountain, so there’s not much in the way of guidance.

It’s dark, but you expected it to be. You draw the curtains one by one, moving blindly from room to room yet knowing exactly where your feet are. It strikes you as odd, a visitor keeping pace with an unfamiliar house.

But if Joel’s anything, it’s predictable. Unfussy in the way he keeps out of the way, even in his own space. Takes pride in it, sure, but lives in a way that demands nothing but cherishes everything, even the absence of something.

Meaning there’s nothing too unexpected, too risky in its placement. He doesn’t take up too much room in the event that it’s gone tomorrow.

When your hands fumble for the switch of the living room lamp, the bulb springs to life and bathes a wary Joel in light. Sitting on the couch, slouched with residual soreness, but waiting.

For you.

“Jesus, fuck — what the fuck, Joel —”

“You’re late.”

“— sitting in the fucking dark like a lunatic —”

He puts a hand up to stop you, as if to press your mute button.

“I didn’t fall down any stairs.”

Your hands have risen to your chest in the shock of him there, and you’re gripping your shirt in the way he had almost a week ago. You don’t miss that little detail, so much so that you struggle to piece together what he’s saying.

It punches you abnormal; you kept so busy with leaving the subject alone that it slipped your mind that he lied.

“Sit down.”

You’re obedient and you don’t know why. You find a seat across from him, pulling up a stool that’s meant for feet, not your ass. Something crackles beside you, and the embers of a dying fire glow and warm to the left of you.

Your leg crosses over your knee, creating a 45-degree angle that you rest your elbows on. “Yeah, I gathered as much, thanks. You’re a terrible liar.”

Joel’s just eyeing you. And it’s not in a way that sizes you up, more of a calculation of what to say next. What to give away. There’s a beat of this, then another, then another.

“I thought ‘bed rest’ was pretty self-explanatory.”

You’re growing impatient, filling the room just to do it. You both know what happened, and maybe that’s what’s needling at you. That you’re the one person who’d understand the most, but the one person he doesn’t want to know.

It feels wretched and seething, knowing something but not enough.

“I’m gonna need you to cut to the part where you tell me what happened, Joel.”

At that, Joel drags in a breath and leans deeper into the couch. His gaze has moved to somewhere far off, burning into the drawn curtains like he can see outside, can see directly into the window of your kitchen. And with sudden clarity, you realize that he could — it’s a clean diagonal stare.

Are you afraid of the dark?

How many times has he sat in this very spot, taking in the show, watching you make tea, watching you read, watching you stutter and shake with sobs? Witnessing the onslaught of a nightmare?

Touching yourself? Watching you undress?

You aren’t the voyeuristic type, just uncaring to the point of defenseless. But Joel keeping an eye on you in this way is the coup de grâce that does you in. There’s no question now of whether he cares.

“I took Mountain View, headed for the outpost. Not much up that way lately, maybe one or two infected every once ‘n a while,” he says, and it’s unsettling that he’s talking in a way that could be to anyone or no one at all. “Thought I’d stop at the pharmacy on the way up, check that off, too. ‘Cept I wasn’t the only one with that idea.”

He pauses only to crack his knuckles for effect. Fingertips splay on his spread knees, and what seemed so fragile earlier, watercolors of bruises stretching from ligament to tendon, seems threatening now.

“One was lootin’ in the back, didn’t hear me come in. I thought he mighta been alone ‘til his friend followed me in,” he pauses, lost in thought. “Got into it with him.”

As if on cue, the gory split-skin of his hands flexes. Offensive wounds.

You were right, but you wish you weren’t.

“His friend came up from the back, ‘n they took turns for a minute. Long enough for me to get a good look. I ended up takin’ out the shorter one, other one was gone before I could get up.”

Joel doesn’t lift his head, just his eyes. The skin around them crinkles in sinister shapes, lids disappeared, lashes nearly touching brow. You know it’s not anger directed at you, but it’s shrinking you back down into an armchair, your fingers digging and clawing at the fabric without recognizing it.

“Know what’s funny about that?”

You don’t think you can answer with the desert that runs through your mouth. And whatever it is, it’s anything but.

“Not a lot of activity along the outposts this way, unless it’s infected. Everyone else comes straight through to Jackson. The logs say we’ve only run into two groups of raiders in the last five years along the patrol route,” another pause for emphasis. “And one of them was ten months ago.”

Something catches in your chest.

And then there’s a dam that breaks, pure relief. Relief that Joel’s seen the thing you’ve been pointing and screaming at while everyone else shrugs their shoulders and squints.

Then — panic.

Ice sneaks into your veins. The tips of your fingers run numb. It strikes you that you’re standing, that the foot stool is tipped on its side.

He doesn’t move, but there’s a contained rage in his eyes and his voice. A temper bubbling now that you’ve confirmed what he suspected.

“He have any tattoos?” Joel asks roughly.

There’s a flash of stars, hand-poked, bordering on downright sloppy.

“Who?” You say dumbly, but it’s obvious what he’s referring to. He’s seen it, too, and he’s seen it this week.

“You know who.”

You do.

You could draw it from memory if he asked.

Your weight becomes too much for your legs, and you collapse back down, this time into a chair that supports your amoeba-like state as everything in you turns to jelly.

“They’re getting closer. We were in Teton, so if they made it this far —” you jumble out, not sure if it’s just meaningless vomit to his ears. By his solemn nod, it isn’t.

He’s up and out of his seat with a wince that’s not as severe as before, his eyes careful on you, on your hands that you’re gripping together tightly to keep them still.

The isolation of his side is evident in the way he closes the space between you, but he masks the grimace as best he can. There’s a reprimand in you somewhere that he should be resting, lying down at least, but you know it’s pointless.

“Hey.”

He’s kneeling as much as his flank will allow, a pain in his eyes that isn’t for himself. Those fingertips scale the cliff of your jaw, ghosting as if he’s afraid to overstep. They’re prodding you to meet his eyes, and when you do, he drops his hand like he’s been burned.

It connects fiercely to a memory that you try to hold in your hands. A snowy, reminiscent one that slips through like a ribbon of smoke.

“Ain’t gotta worry about him. I’ll take care of it.”

You laugh, a real one that’s stained with sarcasm.

“What does that mean?”

Joel softens now, and the shift startles you. He thinks for a beat before answering.

“Whatever you need it to mean.”

It feels incomprehensible that anyone would willingly put themselves in danger for you, even adjacently, but then who noticed you were missing that day? Who led the pack, found you bleeding out?

The weather was violent, incoherent — a lost cause, a needle in the proverbial haystack. He already toed the line of a dangerous, potentially fruitless rescue mission.

And you never even thanked him.

“Why?” You ask it for the second time in as much as a week. It’s disjointed in conversation, but he knows that you need this answer.

“You remember how you were before?”

And for a split-second, you try.

There are glimpses, a rickety reel of kids tugging on your pant leg as they beg you to join them during recess, a glittering spray of laughter with Ellie as empty beer cans and discarded guitars litter her living room floor.

Of your friends’ faces on too many relaxed, sunny patrols, sometimes forcing them into a detour into the abandoned record store through Alpine so you can see what’s left.

Dinner in warm houses like Tommy and Maria’s, so full to the brim of love and potatoes and mead that you stumble on down to your house with cheeks burning and tuck yourself in with all of the lights off.

Visions of Joel that are fleeting, taped in frames on a film strip, but friendly exchanges.

But it’s a faceless narration. The accident wiped clean of any room for interpretation. Any visitation with these memories. You can place yourself in them, but can’t for the life of you feel tethered to her.

Frustrated, eyes watering, you shake your head.

“That’s why.”

Now he’s holding your jaw like he would some fragile thing, slotting his thumb just under the pulse thrumming in your neck, feeling the echo of it in his hand. There’s a silence, as if he’s straining to hear, to know the sound and syllables of your livelihood. You wish he’d press harder, bring you to the precipice of pleasure and death.

If only to know what it feels to be glass in Joel Miller’s hands, to be given the taste of death after he’d given you the gift of life all those months ago.

Your heart is hammering against your ribs. You know he can feel the adrenaline in your pulse point.

“Joel,” it falls out as a whisper, and you hate how good his name feels in your mouth.

He’s looking at you with empathy, thumbing through the pages of every agony you’ve succumbed to. It’s new and buzzing, knowing that there’s nothing you’d ever have to explain to Joel. No reasoning or fine print for how you are, he just knows. And he stays anyway.

A tear tracks a salty line down your face and it meets the pad of his thumb, an easy swipe.

And there’s a surge low in your throat, seesawing with satisfaction and the tell-tale lump of more tears if you lean in hard enough. Joel never shows his hand, the last to fold, but it feels a lot like you’re the prize he was waiting to throw cards down for.

So, you lean. Concave cheek into his calloused hand, tears without sobs leaking between his fingers down into his sleeve. The weight of only the world — your world, plural and shared — pushing you into him. The cataclysmic release that you’ve been aching for.

Your head is against his chest, cheek pressed against flannel because he’s guided you there. And it’s nice, you think, nice that he’s being a gentleman about the whole thing.

A gentleman just finger-combing through your hair, tucking it behind your ear.

It’s serene, and you’d happily make a home there and fall asleep if it wasn’t for the hammering of your heartbeat. You know he can feel it, and your quickened breath is the cherry on top.

Joel levels your faces, and his fingers are deja vu on the braille of each ridged cheekbone. He’s waiting on a cue, a line to be given to him from offstage, but you see flames licking through each darkened iris.

Something keeps holding him back, keeps holding you back. He’s too careful, afraid of cutting his hands on you. And in exploring every facet of that, it’s because he doesn’t want to bleed on you, not because the sharpest parts of you could hurt him.

You keep telling yourself it’s foreign and you’re strangers to one another.

But is it? Are you?

As if he’s reading your mind, Joel closes the distance in one fell swoop, and he kisses you.

It’s clumsy at first, in the way that clumsy is when you’re learning each other’s mouths. You taste the dregs of whiskey, of something wanton, and every unspoken word that’s ever misted between you. Years of forming smile lines and the prickle of his unkempt beard against your chin, taste the stories of every scar.

You’re tangling with him, lips pressing urgently against Joel. His tongue’s expert but gentle when he dips it inside your mouth, and you’re swapping breathless sighs. You can only imagine what he’s tasting of you, what flavor he’s been dreaming of.

His hands are still at either side of your face, thumbs pressing sweetly into the bony part of your jaw. Joel’s stilling the unrest in you that’s put its bags down and refused to leave. It quiets, tips a hat and walks out, leaving a welcome calm in place.

There’s a chasteness, but you know he’s just as desperate and hungry as you are. Wanting to claim, to devour each other entirely. And it’s not lost on you that he’s on his knees, hands clasping your face in prayer like you’re some communion he’s drinking from.

He engulfs you, and you’re moving together, fitting together like you were poured from the same mold. Joel’s fingers have moved to thread through your hair, one of his hands cradling the back of your head and tugging just barely.

Enough that magma pools in between your hips.

But he slows, letting loose a low groan into the heat of your mouth. It’s helpless, like he’s accepted he can’t swim and has submerged his head underwater.

And when you finally break apart, Joel’s pupils are dilated, on the cusp of black. Your collective breaths are uneven. He looks at you in awe.

“Been wantin’ to do that for a long, long time,” he’s saying, but you can barely hear him. Not when your heart is catching up with the rest of you, roaring above everything else. His thumb skates over your bottom lip, and the instinct to unhinge your jaw for him shouldn’t be there, but it is.

Maybe this sort of suffering is worth it, if it’s Joel you’re suffering for.

If you weren’t in trouble before, you sure as fuck are now.

#my writing #ahfe #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us #the last of us hbo #jackson!joel #joel miller #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #a heart for eating #joel miller x f!reader #the last of us smut #motherofagony

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phoward89 · 9 months ago

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Series Masterlist

Chapter 3:

“You can't work here anymore, Y/N. You're fired.” You heard your boss, Doula Ada, tell you as soon as you said goodbye to Coryo (who was on morning patrol duty again) and entered the apothecary shop.

Your face fell. Fired?... “But why? I've been doing everything you've told me to.” You asked Doula Ada as she crushed up some herbs, to make a salve or remedy of some sort, with her mortar and pestle.

“With Belladonna's upcoming marriage to Juris, well, she needs to be working with me. I just don't have the room for two apprentices.”

“But I was the top of my class in the school and you said-” You began to protest, only for the older woman to shush you with a sharp-tongued, “I said I don't got no need for you anymore girl. Now go home or go find yourself a man to take care of ya.”

Taken aback by the herb woman’s brusque behavior, you quickly made your way to the door and exited the apothecary shop. Unknown to you, Coryo was waiting in the wind to swoop in and be your hero. To walk you home and be your shoulder to cry on.

Even though he's the reason you're fired and crying in the first place.

But to him that doesn't matter. It's just a small, minor detail that's not important. One that you'll never find out about, that's for sure.

Just as you were making your way down the cobblestone street, apothecary book tucked under you arm, a looming presence appeared by your side, towering over you. But by the long, lean shadow swallowing up yours, you knew it could only be Coryo. He is, after all, the tallest man you know.

“What's wrong, darling? Why're you leaving the apothecary shop after just arriving?” The platinum blonde peacekeeper asked.

Despite already knowing what was wrong, he wanted to seem like he was concerned about your plight. He was, after all, your man and a good man always takes time out of his busy schedule to check on his girl; to see what's wrong with her. He was just doing what any proper Capitol raised young gentleman would do, inquire about their special lady friend.

Looking up at your new friend, tears brimming your beautiful eyes, you told him, “Doula Ada fired me because she doesn't have room for both me and her daughter, Belladonna, to work at the shop.”

“Oh, my little dove, don't cry. It'll be alright.” Coryo assured you, as your tears began to fall, while pulling you into a hug.

And that embrace sure did make people stop and stare. The folks could understand a peacekeeper taking up with a merchant class girl while serving their 20 years in the district, but what they couldn't wrap their heads around was why a peacekeeper would lower themselves by getting involved with a Seam girl. People from the Seam were poor. So poor that they couldn't afford the second or in the word poor.

The Seam was considered the lowest of the low of District 12, the bottom of the barrel. So, a peacekeeper openly embracing a Seam girl and in the middle of the Merchant's Sector was considered taboo. A district blasphemy of sorts.

He kissed your forehead, causing the baker to nearly have a stroke from where she was peeking out of her shop window. And when he smiled wide and bright at you, the butcher nearly cut a finger off as he spied out his shop’s large front window.

“How ‘bout you help me with my patrol, darling? Walk with me for a bit, yeah?” Coryo suggested, craving a moment with you by his side. You're just so sweet, so kind, and he needs you- needs that around him. He wants to show you off to the entire district, let them see how he can cheer up his girl just by being by your side.

He truly was a bit off his rocker in love with you, but you had no clue about that. All you saw when you looked at him was the prettiest boy you've ever seen in your life, with a brilliant pearly white smile, who seems to go out of his way to befriend you. Something that you thought was sweet.

“I dunno, Coryo. I don't wanna get you in trouble.”

“You won't.” He quickly told you, wanting to chase away any fears you had of strolling around the Merchant Sector with him for a bit.

He really wanted to spend time with you, since he wouldn't be able to see you until he got a day off or his next weekend pass. Coriolanus felt that the more time he spent with you, the more in love the two of you would become. Yea…he was a bit of a clingy, stalkery, obsessive, possessive, delusional romantic. But at least he was a romantic, right?

Coriolanus hasn't seen you in 3 days, 3 damn days, and it's driving him crazy. The last time he saw you, you walked with him for a little bit while he was on patrol and it was heaven. You two talked and laughed about nothing and everything. But the best thing about that stroll was everyone in the Merchant's Sector saw the two of you together.

Something that made Coriolanus' possessive and obsessive tendencies towards you soar happily. He was proud to show you off as his girl; his future wife. He couldn't wait to dote on you; take care of you.

Coriolanus was raised that proper Capitol gentlemen take care of their women, support them and love them. That a good Capitol man spoils his girl; doesn't let her lift a finger. That a gentleman will keep his woman in the lap of luxury; will do all the work so that she doesn't have too. That all she does is have to worry about looking pretty, attending social events, and pleasing her man.

Of course, there's women in the Capitol that choose to have careers, but more women are socialites and housewives. And that's what Coriolanus plans to mold you into. His loving, kind, housewife; his little socialite that he'll spoil til the day he dies.

Only problem is that he's a peacekeeper grunt. His pay’s acceptable for a comfortable life in the backwater district of 12, but it's nothing to write home about. He knew that to properly take care of you; support you, that he needed to rise in the Peacekeeper ranks. That he needed to become an officer.

So, that's why he signed up to take the upcoming officers aptitude test. Coriolanus wanted to better himself not just for his need to get back to the Capitol, but also for his need to take care of you. He needed to be successful and have a good paycheck to take care of you the way you deserved. He wanted to spoil you, buy you your heart’s desires, and the only way to do that was with money.

Coriolanus was excited to tell you about his upcoming officers exam. He was hoping that the news would impress you; assure you that he's worthy of supporting you.

Talk about impressions, Coriolanus was currently buttoning up the jacket of his dress uniform as he stood in front of the small communal mirror in the barracks. Sejanus, his bunkmate and, for a lack of a better word, friend, just stared at him like he'd just lost his marbles.

Opening up his footlocker and grabbing a few bucks, Sejanus looked at Coryo, and asked, “Why're you wearing that for, Coryo? We're about to go off base with weekend passes, shouldn't you be in your fatigues?”

Coriolanus walked over to his bunk, only to grab his hat and pick up a small sack. “I'm wearing my dress uniform, Sejanus, because I'm spending the weekend with my girl and I want to make a good first impression on her family.”

“Uh…I don't think Lucy Gray and the Covey care about that.” The District 2 born peacekeeper told his friend, watching as the man slung his sack over his shoulder.

“That songbird 's not my girl. My girl's a sweet little dove.” The platinum blonde remarked while placing his dress hat on his head, completing the dashing look his dress uniform gave off.

“Oh…but I thought you liked Lucy Gray?” Sejanus pried, holding his weekend pass in his hand while crossing the room with his friend.

“But I love Y/N; I'm going to make her my darling wife.”

Sejanus forced a smile, one that didn't quite reach his eyes, as he patted Coryo on the shoulder. “That's good, Coryo.” In fact, the broad man didn't think it was good at all. He thought it was a bit concerning that his friend had waved off any and all feelings he had for a girl he risked everything to save, only to take up with an entirely different girl- declare intentions of love and marriage too.

Maybe Capitol born and bred people were just wired differently than different folks. Who knows. But Sejanus did know that all of his efforts looking for Lucy Gray were for nothing. At least he made some rebel contacts, some friends that supported a cause he believes in.

Bringing down Panem and the Games; having unity, justice, fair treatment, and human decency for all no matter if they're District or Capitol.

“I'd be honored to be your best man, when the time comes.” Sejanus told Coriolanus as they exited the barracks.

Like hell Coriolanus was going to have Sejanus stand up next to him as his first man. He didn't plan on having a lowly wedding in the districts, but a grand affair in the Capitol. His delusional Grandma’am would have a stroke if he had Sejanus Plinth as his best man. He supposed he can ask Festus Creed to be his best man, or maybe not even have one at all. Nothing says that he has to have one.

Coriolanus knows that you most likely won't have a maid of honor, unless he charms Clemmie into doing it. Eh, he'll worry about that whenever he's back in the Capitol, planning the wedding with you. At least he knows that Tigris will be more than happy to design your wedding dress.

But now's not the time to worry about that. First, he needs to meet your family and pass that officer's test.

The poor residents of the Seam were staring at Coriolanus with fearful and strange looks. It wasn't common to see a peacekeeper decked out in their dress uniform walking the streets of the Seam. No, the only time peacekeepers came to the Seam was to topple houses doing random checks to look for contraband and rebel literature, also to round up residents and cart them off to the prison on the base- never to be seen again until it was time to send them swinging on the hanging tree.

So…

Safe to say, residents of the Seam were both leery and mind blown at the sight of Coriolanus in their section, walking down the street as if he owned it. Both young and old alike silently prayed that the peacekeeper wouldn’t bother anyone.

If only they knew the real reason Coriolanus was in the Seam. Oh wait a minute, everybody in the Seam’s about to find out soon enough…

When Coriolanus reached your house, a large smile spread across his face. He couldn't wait to see you. He's gone too long without seeing your beautiful face, your kind smile.

Yea…

Three days is such an eternity…

Walking up the creaky wood rot porch and over to your front door, Coryo missed the neighbor girl, a songbird, exiting her house and seeing him. She saw his profile and instantly recognized him; was ready to call out to him, but stopped herself whenever you answered your door, causing the finely dressed peacekeeper to scoop you up into a hug and press a peck to your lips.

The little songbird shook her head, only to take off towards the meadow with her guitar in hand- she couldn't bear to watch the happy exchange between her neighbor and the Capitol boy turned peacekeeper- who she once thought was a good man.

Ashlie was making dough for a simple fry bread (all that your family could afford to make with the sorry excuse of grain that you're able to acquire) and you had just pulled a wildberry pie out of the oven, setting it on the windowsill to cool, whenever a loud knock sounded at the front door.

“Y/N, go get the door!” Your brother called out from his armchair, where he was already a jar and a half in of moonshine during his only day off.

You quickly went to the door and opened it, only to smile as you saw Coryo standing in front of you. He was dressed up in his formal uniform, sack slung over his shoulder and hand full of flowers (a small bouquet made up of a couple roses and some wildflowers native to District 12). Before you could even say hi or invite him in, Coryo pecked you on the lips (stunning you a bit) and wrapped you in a tight, but warm hug.

Resting his chin on top of your head, he confessed, “I missed you, my sweet darling girl.”

“You missed me? But it's only been 3 days since we saw each other.” You told him, finding it a bit odd that your new friend misses you so much after such a short period of time. Was that normal, or was that a Capitol thing? Or was it because he wanted more?

But you didn't want to give your hopes up. You just met; became friends the other day. Besides, a boy like Coryo Snow- pretty with his chiseled jaw, platinum blonde hair, and crystal blue eyes- always fancied themselves sweet on girls like Lucy Grey or Belladonna (the exotic Covey beauty and a flaxen haired merchant girl). Boys like him never gave girls like you, girls from the Seam, a second glance.

“Yea, 3 days too long.” He retorted, burying his nose into your hair to breathe in your scent. A scent that seemed to smell like fresh blooms and vanilla. Reluctantly pulling away from you, he offered you the small bouquet. “If we were in the Capitol, I would've made you a bouquet from the roses my Grandma’am grows in her rooftop garden.”

“These are nice, tho, Coryo.” You assured him with a kind smile while taking the offered flowers.

Coryo fell even more in love with you, watching you take the bouquet (which he felt was a pathetic thing compared to what he'd be able to give you in the Capitol) with a smile. His heart swelled as he watched you smell the flowers, your nose lingering at the couple of roses he demanded the florist stick into the bunch of wildflowers.

Yes, you'd flourish and grow in the Capitol. With his love and tender care, he'll turn you into a prized rose. His darling rose that everyone will envy, but only he has. A rose that he'll love; who'll love him in return.

Coryo knows that, sooner rather than later, he's going to gift you his mother's shawl and her compact. As a way to show his love and commitment to you. But also to mold you into what he knows you're meant to be.

His perfect, sweet, kind, darling rose. His wife who'll comfort him and love him during good times and bad. The mother of his children who'll sing to them and nurture them.

“I'm glad that you like them, darling, but you do deserve better flowers and, once I pass my officers exam, I'll be able to afford them for you.”

“You're taking an officer's exam? When, Coryo?”

“Next week.” Coriolanus proudly said, his baby blues shining with joy.

Before you could say another word or invite Coryo in, your older brother, Rein, appeared behind you with his half-empty jar of moonshine in his hand. Tipping his jar towards your ‘friend’ he asked in a deep grumble, “This officer bothering you, sis?”

“No, Rein.” You shook your head. Looking between your older brother and the blonde peacekeeper, you announced, “This is Coryo, a new friend of mine.”

Your brother's Seam grey eyes grew into the size of saucers. He looked between you, the flowers you were holding, Coryo, and the sack slung over his shoulder.

Coryo, wanting to make a good impression with his future brother-in-law, stuck his hand out for a handshake and politely said, “Sir, I'm Private Coriolanus Snow, of the esteemed Capitol Snow family. I'm scheduled to take the officer's aptitude test next week and, I assure you, my intentions with your sister are nothing, but honorable.”

Of course his intentions are honorable, the man wants to marry you. Take you back to the Capitol with him and fill you up with his babies. Oh, and not exactly in that order either. But, nevertheless, Coriolanus wants to make you Mrs. Snow; one day First Lady Snow.

Your brother looked at Coryo's large, calloused, outstretched hand and then turned his eyes up to his face. Rein had a mask of indifference painted on his dark, stubble coated face as he pointed his mason jar at Coryo and gruffly said, “Fuck you.”, before pivoting on his heel and storming back to his chair- all the while shouting, “My stupid fucking sister’s taking up with that dead General Crassus Snow’s fuckbag son, Ashie!”

You heard something break in the house and your heart dropped into the pit of your stomach. Your sister-in-law (well, she was your brother's girlfriend, but same thing at this point since they've been together for so long) was so startled by your brother's outburst that she broke something the family can't afford to break. And your brother's reaction to your new friend was horrible.

The things he said…

Oh no, how embarrassing and cruel.

Frantically you apologized, afraid that Coryo would up and leave over your brother's nasty greeting, “Coryo, I'm so sorry for what Rein said. He shouldn't have said that, any of it.”

“Well, I admit, Y/N, that I was hoping to make a better impression on your brother, but I'm not going to let his little outburst chase me away from my darling girl.” Coriolanus told you, his attitude unwavering, as he placed his hands on your shoulders- gently rubbing them in a soothing manner.

Picking up on the phrase ‘my darling girl's, your brain suddenly put two and two together. Coryo wanted more than friendship, it seems. “Your girl, but I thought you just wanted to be friends?” You asked, just to make sure that your sudden revelation was right.

“I'm going to be a peacekeeper here for the next 20 years, Y/N. Of course, you're my girl. I don't want to be alone here, plus once I become an officer-” Coryo began to say, only for Ashlie to pop up and interrupt him with, “Um, can you two not discuss any future plans right now? Rein's upset enough as it is and, Y/N, I need you to help me with the dry bread.”

“Okay.” You sighed while at the same time Coriolanus said, “Like it or not, Ma’am, I'm not going anywhere. In fact, I'm staying here, in your home, with my darling rose for my weekend leave.”

“On the other hand, why don't you two talk a walk; go to the nearby meadow or something? Then you can meet up with me and Rein at the hob tonight.” Ashlie suggested, yanking the flowers out of your hand and ushering you out the door and slamming it shut behind you before either you or Coryo could say a word.

Well, looks like his plan to impress your family failed. But at least he impressed you, and really that's all the truly matters. As long as his lover's impressed then he couldn't give a flying fuck about the Halvir family. They could fuck off; go take a walk to the hanging tree for all he cared.

Coryo impressed you, made you smile with love and pride when you saw him in his uniform and, truly, that's the only thing that's important to him right now. That you view him as a hero.

Even tho in reality he's the anti-hero and your family knows it.

Tags: @kuroosbby001 @purriteen @poppyflower-22 @meetmeatyourworst @whipwhoops @bxtchopolis @readingthingsonhere @savagenctzen @ryswritingrecord @erikasurfer @tulips2715 @universal-s1ut @thesmutconnoisseur @squidscottjeans @sudek4l @wearemadeofstardust0 @mashiromochi @gracieroxzy @belcalis9503 @shari-berri @aoi-targaryen @whiteoakoak @spear-bearing-bi-witch @gisellesprettylies @loverandqueenofdragons @qoopeeya @mfnqueen1 @permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88 @v-love @swiftieblyth @joyfulyouthlover @nowitsmissing @edb954 @astarborntowrite @diannnnsss @devils-blackrose @gentle-aesthetic-bby @elizabeth-nobennet @harvey-malfoy

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macbethsymphony · 6 months ago

Text

The Swordsman and the Blacksmith | Chapter 25

Roronoa Zoro x Reader

Chapter wc: 5.6k

Chapter rating: NSFW

Content/Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Fem!Reader, Enemies to lovers, SLOW slow burn, SMUT

Summary: Your skills as a blacksmith have made you desirable to both the government and pirates. You know you have to leave this island if you want to escape your fate, but that doesn't make the choice of leaving any easier. Roronoa Zoro is intrigued by your skills as a blacksmith. Your work is like nothing he's ever seen before. Unfortunately, you're hot-headed and he's rude and you both definitely hate each other.

Chapters [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]

Masterlist

Slowly crossposting from AO3

Chapter 25: Harmony

You’d both been awake for a while, the soft patter of rain against the windows providing a comforting backdrop to the tranquil morning. Neither of you spoke. Lost in your thoughts, the silence was warm. Your head rested on his chest, the gentle thud of his heartbeat a soothing lullaby that threatened to lull you back to sleep as his hand traced delicate patterns on your back.

You nestled closer, melting into him somehow more than before. His fingers traveled down along your spine before roaming back up, settling at your nape, tangling in your hair. The sensation was both grounding and comforting, a silent communication. You shifted, legs intertwining with his as you looked up at him, your eyes finding his.

He tilted his head, lips meeting your forehead in a tender kiss. The warmth of the gesture sent a ripple of contentment through you.

“You know,” you started, your voice still thick with sleep. “About Yokubari, I’m not opposed to letting you try again once you feel you’re ready... And about Wado Ichimonji,“ you trailed off for an instant looking for the right words. He quirked an eyebrow, evidently amused at the thought that you were already thoroughly thinking about swords the moment you woke up. “If you’re not ready to let me study it, I can wait.” You felt the low rumble of his chuckles beneath your palm as you carried on. “I know it’s special to you, our deal doesn’t really matter.”

He smiled down at you. Your breath caught at the sight. He was pretty like that. You could see the almost imperceptible freckles on his cheeks, the warmth in his gaze, the satisfaction on his lips.

“You don’t have to wait.” His hands roamed down against the curves of your body, stopping at the back of your thighs, right before the slope of your rear. His fingers dug into the softness of your skin as he pulled you closer, shifting you so you settled perfectly on him. His lips almost caressed yours as he spoke on, “My swords are yours.”

You frowned at his words. “I’m serious, Roronoa Zoro.” You pushed yourself up, palm firm against his chest as your gaze locked with his.

He snorted and your frown deepened.

He lifted himself to his elbow, lips meeting yours gently. “So am I,” he murmured, words not far from lost against the backdrop of rain and shuffling sheets.

“No, really,” you protested in a small whine as his hand tangled in your locks once again, as his teeth sank into your lower lip, begging for more. “This is a serious matter.”

He sighed when he realized you weren’t backing down, his breath hot against yours. He slowly sat up, dragging you along so you straddled him. He considered you for an instant, back leaning on the headboard. A chill passed you as you felt the covers fall away from your shoulders, soft cotton caressing bare skin.

For a moment you thought of pulling them back up but the heat in his gaze as he took in the sight unashamedly stopped you, warmth flushing your skin instead. He reached for his swords at the side of the bed. You hadn’t noticed he’d moved them there in the exhaustion of the previous night’s activities. His grip instinctively found Wado Ichimonji, stare never leaving you in the movement.

“Here.” He presented the sheathed sword to you. “As I said, my swords are yours. You can study it.”

Your fingers traced almost reverently the lacquered wood, your eyes sparkling in anticipation at the thought of delving into the intricacies of the steel. Your attention flickered back to him. “Are you sure? You said it’s special.”

He looked distant for a moment but neither his smile nor the resolve in his gaze shifted. “It belonged to a childhood friend,” he started to explain as his fingers wrapped against yours. “We made a promise.” He glided both your hands along the scabbard, stopping close to the guard. “That one of us was going to become the world’s greatest swordsman.” His smile faltered, sorrow flickering on his features. “But she died when we were still young.”

“I see.” You didn’t offer sympathies for you knew he wasn’t looking for pity nor consolation, you all had ghosts in your past.

His hand dragged yours to the hilt. “You can study it.” He slowly started to unsheathe the blade.

“Now?” You asked in bewilderment, although unable to hide the hint of excitement in your voice. The metal gleamed in the diffused morning light, your eyes glued to it. You bit the inside of your cheek as you tried to suppress the giddiness steadily rising at the thought of studying the sword. Your gaze flickered back to his. “But I don’t have my notebook or anything to write down my observations.”

He chuckled, hands leaving yours, settling on your thighs as he leaned further against the headboard. “You can study it again later,” he said with a cock of his head, amusement clear in his tone. “I want you to tell me what you see.”

You quirked a skeptical eyebrow at his words. “You better not be lying, swordsman,” you mumbled with a squint to your eyes. “I swear if you keep this sword away from me later…”

You expertly sheathed the blade, a clean slate to start your observations. With a deep breath, you centered yourself as you held Wado Ichimonji with a reverence born of admiration. You distantly felt Zoro’s hands drift along your outer thighs, thumb drawing soothing circles, but the sword demanded all your attention.

Your eyes trailed alongst the pure white of the scabbard. “It’s an elegant sword,” you muttered as the tips of your fingers examined the brass fittings. “Beautiful in its simplicity.”

He hummed as your hand glided to the hilt. You traced the guard, it was thicker than you would usually go for, heavy against your palm but flawlessly flowing with the balance. “Does the weight of the tsuba impact how you handle the sword?” You asked him, attention flickering back and forth between the sword and the swordsman.

“Not really,” he answered, touch traveling to your waist, coming back down.

You smiled as you noticed the teeth marks in the silk wrappings of the handle. “Fair, I haven’t even unsheathed the blade and I can already tell the balance is flawless.” Your fingers traced the tight knots, nails catching in the dips and dents left behind by the countless battles he’d fought. “You know I can rewrap the handle for you, the cords are hanging on by a thread in some places.”

Zoro’s low laughter rumbled through his chest. “You think I’d let anyone rewrap my sword’s handle, witch?” he teased, amusement twinkling in his gaze

You couldn’t help the smirk breaking on your lips. “Not just anyone, swordsman.” You rolled your eyes. “I’ll have you know I have every qualification to do so. But I understand if you want to keep it as it is. Every mark tells a story, right?”

His fingers continued their soothing pattern on your waist, skin against skin. “Exactly,” he agreed. “But you’re right. It is hanging by a thread, and if anyone’s to rewrap it, it might as well be you.”

You gave a satisfied nod, unable to deny the warmth that coursed through you at his words. Your attention returned to the sword. In a slow motion you unsheathed it, gently dropping the saya at your side.

Your breath stopped at the sight of steel, heartbeat quickening. “Wado Ichimonji,” you whispered, tips of your fingers tracing the groove separating the deep black and pure white steel in perfect balance. “Straight line through the path of harmony.” You gave it a twirl, eyes moving to the sharpness of the edge. “Magnificent. It holds its name well.”

You balanced it on the tip of your finger a marveled smile gracing your lips as you took in the perfection of its balance.

Your thumb caught on the edge, a bead of blood forming from the small cut momentarily diverting away your attention from the sword. As you brought it to your lips you noticed how his hands roamed across your stomach, your ribs, stopping short of the curve of your breast. Noticed the lust in his gaze, the growing stiffness against your ass.

“Now, now, swordsman.” You smirked against your finger, tone teasing. “Does seeing a naked woman handle your sword turn you on?”

His smirk matched yours. “Maybe it does,” he admitted, his voice holding something primal in its depths.

It sent a burgeoning heat between your legs. You moved to set aside Wado Ichimonji, not wanting to risk any damage to the blade but his hand stopped you.

“Don’t.” He brought the sword back between the two of you. His hands slid down your sides, gesture deliberate and possessive as he pressed you more firmly against him, pinning your hips in place. “I want to hear you continue.” One of his hands shifted lower, thumb tracing your slit. His smirk widened as he felt slick against his fingers, felt you twitch as he found your clit in soft circles.

”I won’t sully Wado Ichimonji’s reputation this way,” you protested.

He simply continued to look upon you, his gaze not leaving yours.

”This blade was forged by the great Shimotsuki Kozaburo, swordsman,” you carried on, voice faltering slightly. “It is a legendary blade, just as much as Shusui is.”

Still nothing, obstinacy evident on his features.

You stifled a whine as you considered it. He pressed a little harder, touch begging for more sounds of pleasure. “You’re impossible,” you complained in a mewl. Your hips almost bucked in answer to his teasing but his grip was firm, grounding you in place. He continued and your eyes fluttered close. Only when he was satisfied by the shameless moan leaving your lips did the intensity of the pressure he exerted on your bundle of nerves relent.

“Go on,” he demanded, the circles against your clit barely perceptible.

“Shit swordsman.” You opened your eyes, drinking in the hunger in his. You swallowed hard at the lust painted on his features, the allure of curiosity mixed with the pulse of desire. “Fuck, fine.” It took all your efforts for your attention to settle back on the blade, low waves of pleasure threatening to divert your focus at any moment. “Its simplicity is deceiving,” you started once again with a determined nod, voice shaky. “It’s the perfect blend between form and function.”

He hummed in encouragement, prompting you on.

“You see how the blade is perfectly separated between the bright white of the sharp edge and the dark black of the shinogi-ji, the dull edge, by the bo-hi, the blood groove.” Your fingers traced the delimitation with reveration. “It tells us a great deal about the steel contents. Mild steel can be made into a bright white like this by cold rolling it. That means the steel was rolled below its recrystallization temperature.” You were overly aware of the heat of his gaze on your lips as you carried on. “This process produces steel that is much harder and of higher strength than steel that is hot rolled.”

You felt his nails dig in the plushness of your flesh, the pressure of his thumb against your clit slowly increasing.

“T-the black half of the blade,” you stuttered, your train of thoughts lost to you for a moment. “The black half of the blade is more of a mystery. At first, I thought it might have been heat treating or a chemical finish. But—” he lifted your hips, fingers sliding inside you with ease. “— fuck swordsman.”

Your hips rolled and your head lulled back for an instant, a needy whine escaping your parted lips.

“Continue,” his voice dripped with satisfaction as he compelled your attention back to the blade.

He curled his fingers, the squelch loud in the silence and you let out a string of profanities, mind going blank. Still you carried on.

“But the separation between the two is too sharp for it to simply be a treatment applied to the steel.” The sword shook in your hands as you twirled it around, bringing it closer to your gaze, attempting to observe further. “Then I thought, maybe it had already started becoming a black blade.”

You let out your haki, probing at the dark steel almost tenderly. It took all your efforts to keep your concentration steady, to allow the black tendrils to flow along the intricate layers, the carefully crafted blend of ores. “Stunning,” you breathed out as you delved deeper.

“What is?” He asked. His voice caught in his throat as the words left his lips, worship thick in its gruffness as he continued to look upon you.

“While there are residual traces of haki, the difference in color comes from a truly brilliant mix of metals.” You let go of your haki, the world suddenly fading into insignificance as pleasure slowly threatened to take over the edge of your mind.

“The amount of skills to achieve such beauty.” Your voice rose an octave as you struggled to continue. “An outstanding display of mastery.”

He rolled his hips against yours and your nails dug into the silk cords of the handle, undoubtedly leaving small crescents alongside the teeth marks etched into it. “S-shit, Zoro. I-I can’t,” you whimpered, as he lined the tip of his cock to your entrance.

His touch trailed up, igniting embers in its path. His slick fingers caressed your cheek lightly before brushing against your lips, moving the malleable flesh to his desire. You could faintly taste your arousal as his hand traveled back down.

The hand at your hips slowly started guiding you down along his length. Your moans mixed together in damp air as he sheathed himself fully inside you.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this?” he murmured, touch sliding along your arm, joining your trembling hand which barely held onto Wado Ichimonji. “The things I wanted to do as you studied Shusui.”

Your gaze locked with his, your mouth opening in protest. But the raw desire painted on his face stopped you.

“Please,” he whispered, the plea uttered so low it was lost in the rhythm of the rain.

“The Hamon is a suguha, a straight temper line. Fitting of the balance and harmony the blade demands.” The string of words left you quickly, your lips moving instinctually as your mind bordered on the edge of ecstasy.

“Good,” he praised, his tone filled with pride and desire. “What else?”

Your hand started trembling almost violently, the katana waving in the air dangerously before his grip settled it once again.

“A straight Hamon usually has some amount of irregularities due to the natural properties of the clay. But if you look closely, you’ll notice that the line is almost perfect. It indicates that the clay used was strained repeatedly in order to reduce the number of impurities.”

His fingers dug into your flesh painfully as his hips stuttered against yours. He moved you slowly, your walls fluttering around him and a low moan on his lips.

Your eyes closed and your mind went dizzy as you struggled to keep your breath under control. “The mastery needed to create such a perfectly straight temper line is baffling. When attempting to create a suguha, the thickness of the layered clay needs to be perfectly uniform in order to achieve harmony between strength and resilience. It must have taken hours if not days to achieve this level of perfection, all the while juggling the dampness of the clay.”

His hand shifted from your hip, his thumb meeting your clit once again.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you cried out. “Fuck.” Your mind felt blank and fuzzy, and the tightness at your core was delightful. “The edge is sharp, immovable, ready to cut through any obstacle in its path.” You were struggling to put words in the right order. “Strong, determined, unyielding.”

Your grip left the blade, fingers instinctually finding purchase on his chest, nails digging as your back arched and your thighs trembled as you teetered on the blissful edge. You dimly registered Zoro carelessly setting aside Wado Ichimonji, his hand quickly tangling in your hair, bringing you close, your breaths mixing, your noses touching.

”I want to feel you come around me.” His tone was low, primal.

“Zoro,” you gasped his name, a prayer on your lips as the world faded into oblivion, your toes curling as rapture took you over.

He swore under his breath as he felt you twitch around him, deep moan intertwining with your high-pitched cry, your trembling lips barely brushing together.

“Make me a sword,” he demanded as you came down from your high. His hands went to your sides, caressed the curves of your breast, dropped to your hips once more. He moved you with more purpose this time around chasing his own pleasure, drawing out a soft gasp from you at the sensitivity of the sensations.

“You already have three perfectly good swords, swordsman,” you mewled, your fingers exploring the ripples of his chest before threading along his neck, tangling in his short locks, nails digging in his scalp.

“Make me a sword,” he demanded again.

He slowly dragged you up and down along his cock and you rolled your hips, matching his flow.

”I don’t make swords that won't be used.”

He smirked at your stubbornness, peppering kisses along your jaw, unto your throat. “I’ll use it.”

You frowned at that. “You already have three swords,” you reiterated with a huff, your tone clipped with annoyance. “And you only have two hands.”

In a flurry he switched your positions. You felt the softness of the mattress against your back as he kneeled between your thighs, the roughness of his fingers upon the plush flesh of your ass as he lifted your hips to meet his. You instinctively wrapped your legs around his waist as he pushed back into you in a languid motion, the entirety of your weight on your shoulder blades.

”I’ll find a way to use it,” he said as he slid back out to the tip. “Make me a sword.” He punctuated the statement with a snap of his hips.

The angle made you see stars, your breath catching and your moans sticking to the back of your throat. “I-I-“ you started to object once more, but he didn’t waste time into setting a ruthless rhythm, hard, fast, rough, just the way he liked it. The sentence on your lips died, instead staggery gasps and pleas flowed in the silence.

”Make me a sword.” His eye traced your features, drank in the pleasure painted on them, roamed to your breast and the captivating way they bounced with each of his thrusts.

You smiled at the entranced look in his gaze, rolling your hips and meeting his, one of your hands going to your nipple, pinching and rolling, your back arching even more than before. You let out a deliberate moan and his movements stuttered for an instant, a desperate grunt disappearing too quickly in the air.

He smirked at your brazenness. ”Make me a sword.” His demand was now almost a chant. He somehow picked up the pace, his fingers finding your clit once more.

Your breath stopped and you stiffened as the world seemed to turn around you, your eyes shutting tight and rolling at the back of your head, the promise of orgasm in your reach once more.

”Breathe,” he reminded you, the movements on your clit softening.

And you let out an unsteady sob, your body both seeking his touch and wanting to back off as your lidded gaze met his again. You frantically twitched around him, your shaking thighs trying to close further against his hips. You were so close.

He stopped.

His smirk was almost maniacal as his stare took in the myriad of expression that crossed your face. You opened your mouth to say something but he cut you to it.

”Make me a sword, witch.” His fingers dug in, inevitably leaving fresh bruises as he himself struggled with restraint.

”You can’t be for real,” you barely managed to utter. “You already have three incredible swords. There’s no way I can make you a better sword than those.”

He let out an annoyed click of the tongue at your words.

“I want you to make me a sword.” His gaze was intense as he spoke, making sure you understood what he said before his thumb started moving against your clit again.

”Fuck,” you cried, toes curling, head rolling from side to side, hands tangling in the sheets until your knuckles became white.

For a moment you marveled at the mastery he held over your body, the way he held effortless control over you, the raw strength that allowed him to shift and dominate you in any way he desired. But your thoughts faded into nonexistence as he started pounding back into you, and tears of pleasure threatened to stain your cheeks.

“Make me a sword,” he punctuated each of the words with a sharp snap of his hips.

But even in rapture and even as your mind struggled to cling to reality, your stubbornness remained intact.

”You don’t need another sword.” Your voice was unsteady, shaky and drawled out. You were close, the ruthlessness of his fingers on your bundle of nerves making you see double.

”For fuck’s sake, witch,” he let out an annoyed growl, stopping again. “Can you stop being stubborn for once in your life?” His brows were furrowed in concentration, beads of sweat threatening to ripple down his skin. He was close too but just as obstinate as you to get what he desired.

You cried out in a staggered sob as your pleasure was denied once again. You could feel your slick drip down your thighs, your ass. Your walls twitched desperately against nothing. “You’re being an asshole, swordsman.” You twisted and writhed in search of any sliver of friction.

He smiled, cocking his head cheekily. “Then stop being stubborn and agree to it, witch.” His earrings glinted in the movement.

He easily slid back inside, his pace deliberately torturously slow.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you couldn’t help the swears flowing out of your lips, his hold on your waist was firm, keeping you locked in place, at his mercy. ”Fuck, fine.”

His smile turned triumphant as you relented. “You’ll make me a sword, witch?” He asked for confirmation, as he softly pinched your clit, shifted the pattern.

You contorted in his grip, your body searching to contract at the slightly too harsh stimulation. The sheets around you twisted, coming undone at the corners of the bed. “Yes, fuck, yes I’ll make you a damn sword, you bastard.”

“Good,” he huffed, almost relieved and relenting the pressure on your clit faintly, allowing the tightness at your core to build more steadily. “So fucking good for me.”

His pace picked up, unsteady now that he’d achieved his goal, his own breaths ragged and heavy. Your name passed his lips again and again, deprived and demanding of your attention.

“Come for me,” he urged, his voice holding a desperation that sent you spiraling over the edge. You cried out, pleasure crashing over you in waves, your body shuddering in his grasp. Your back arched on the verge of the unnatural, your legs yielding their hold around his waist, shaking uncontrollably, your thighs seeking to close themselves. He followed moments later, a deep guttural groan as he found his own release.

He dropped down next to you, satisfied smile on his exhausted features, the bed bouncing in the carelessness of his movement. His hand caressed the dampened skin of your abdomen mindlessly as both of your breathing slowly stabilized.

”So.” You turned your head to face him. His eyes were closed and the happiness on his face made your heart skip a beat. “What kind of sword do you want?”

“Dunno,” he mumbled sleepily. “I trust you.”

”You can’t ask me to make you a sword like that and not give me an inkling of what you want, swordsman,” your tone was tinged with a growing frustration.

Zoro opened his eye lazily, a small smirk playing at the corner of his lips. "I just want something that feels right," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Something that feels like an extension of me. Just like Wado Ichimonji… or Shusui. Whatever you deem best for me."

You sighed, rolling onto your side to better face him. "That's a lot of pressure, you know. Creating a sword that perfect."

He shrugged, eye closing again. "You'll figure it out. Your swords are near perfection."

His unwavering confidence in you sent a feeling unknown through your chest. You reached out, tracing the line of his jaw, the scar on his eye with your fingers. "You have too much faith in me, Roronoa Zoro."

He caught your hand, pressing a kiss on a healed scar marring your palm. "Not enough," he countered, his voice soft but firm. "You're an amazing swordsmith, you know that?"

Your heart fluttered at his words. "You're just saying that because you're half-asleep. I still have a lot to learn."

He chuckled, pulling you closer. "Maybe," he conceded. "We’re all forever learning. But I mean it."

“At least give me something to work with, swordsman.” You shifted up to your elbows, your tone serious. “A blade style, the length, fuck even the color of the handle’s wrapping is fine.”

He sighed, your annoyance somehow starting to rub on him. “Told you a trust you.” He leaned up catching your lips, attempting to shut you up, his teeth biting and his tongue lapping, demanding entry.

There was a knock on the door. The sound startling you both.

“Open up,” Nami shouted. “I know you’re in there.”

You felt the rhythm of your heart quicken as you tried to scramble out of bed. His hand grabbed your wrist stopping you.

“Just ignore her,” he said gruffly, not bothering to move.

Nami knocked again, louder than before.

You wrenched your wrist out of his hand with a scoff. “You can’t be for real.”

“(Y/n)” The navigator’s tone held a warning. “I’ll get the innkeeper to open it if you don’t.”

You blanched, knowing the threat was not empty coming from her. Your eyes went wide as you took in the state of the room, the clothing strung all over the place, your ruined underwear on display. Fuck, it reeked of sex.

“Nami,” you shouted getting up and falling down with a thud to the floor as your legs gave in. “Shit, give me a sec.”

Zoro laughed softly observing you struggle to gather yourself. “Need some help?”

You glared at him, picking up the skirt at your knees and rose back up unsteadily. “Get fucking dressed, swordsman,” you barked at him as you watched him stretch comfortably into the cushiness of the mattress.

You pulled on the short garment, fingers trembling against the zipper tab and your back straightening and your thighs clenching as you felt hot seed drip down between your legs. He chuckled, contemplating you for a moment longer before he decided to comply.

You scanned the room in search of the rest of your clothing. “Have you seen my shirt?” You asked him as he zipped up his pants.

A wicked look passed his gaze, but he seemingly abandoned the idea. “Here.” He threw you his overcoat.

You looked at him with a bewildered expression. “This isn’t my shirt, swordsman,” you stated.

He snorted. “It’ll do a better job at covering you up than that skirt or your shirt.” He gave your thighs a pointed look.

Heat rose on your cheeks as you slowly caught on. “Fuck.” You hastily wrapped yourself in it.

He moved to open the door, not bothering with covering himself up more than the bare minimum.

“Just fucking wait a minute,” you shouted at him, opening the window in a hopeless attempt to air out the room.

He ignored you. The creak of the hinge was loud in your panicked ears. You quickly gave the comforter a fluff, hoping to hide the blaring wet spot on the sheets.

”What is it?” He asked unceremoniously, not veiling his annoyance at the interruption one bit.

“Nami, sor-” you stumbled behind him, the words dying on your tongue as you took in the sight. Nami, Luffy, Robin, Franky, Usopp, Chopper. They were all standing before your door.

“So you did make up,” The navigator spoke first, her tone dripping with amusement.

Luffy grinned, his eyes wide with curiosity. “Why didn’t you guys come back earlier if you already made up?”

Robin’s knowing smile widened as she took in the scene. “We thought you two might still be fighting.”

Chopper looked the both of you over, his eyes lingering on the bruises and marks peppered all over your skin. “Did you guys fight a wild animal or something?” He asked with genuine curiosity, already reaching in his bag for bandages.

Franky audibly snorted.

”We’re fine, doc,” you quickly reassured the little reindeer. “We didn’t fight anything.” You uttered the words at the same time a Zoro cheekily said, “You could say something like that.”

Usopp’s eyes darted around the room, taking in the state of disarray. “Uh, maybe we should give them some privacy,” he suggested nervously, blush slowly rising on his cheeks as he tugged at Chopper’s arm, stopping him in his tracks.

Franky let out a hearty laugh. “Nah, nah. We should at least get to have SOME fun too.”

You felt your face burning with embarrassment. “What do you all need?” you asked, trying to sound composed despite the circumstances.

Nami crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk. “We just wanted to make sure you two were okay. And maybe give you a hard time.”

Robin chuckled, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “It seems like you’ve both been quite… productive.”

“Seems like you guys had a SUPER night,” Franky added.

Nami’s smirk widened. “We need to leave soon. The repairs are done, the weather’s clearing up, and we’re moving out.”

Zoro nodded, seemingly unperturbed by the intrusion. “We’ll be there.”

You groaned, hiding your face in your hands. “Can we please just get ready and go?”

With a satisfied nod from Nami, the crew started to disperse, but not before she gave you a sly wink. “Don’t take too long,” she warned. “If you’re not there by tomorrow morning, we’re leaving you behind.”

As the door closed, you turned to Zoro, who was watching you with a lazy grin. “You’re impossible,” you muttered, trying to suppress a smile.

He shrugged, pulling you close again. He kissed your jaw, down your throat. Pinning you against the door. You dimly heard Franky’s booming voice from down the corridor. Something about everyone owing him a thousand berries.

His hands shifted the fabric of his overcoat, fingers gathering the mix of his cum and your slick as he held you more firmly. His gaze was blown with lust as he brought them to his mouth, licking them clean.

“You love it,” he said leaning forward, capturing your lips, the taste of your arousals heavy on your tongue as he deepened the kiss.

Despite yourself, you couldn’t argue with that.

You smirked against his lips, playfully switching the both of you, pinning him to the door instead. He quirked an eyebrow but he indulged you in whatever you planned on doing.

”Nami said to be there before tomorrow morning.” You glanced at the window, the soft glow of the afternoon sun shining through the light rain clouds. Your fingers skillfully undid the button of his pants, pulled down the zipper before diving in and meeting his hardening cock. He let out a shaky groan, his head slamming back against the wood of the door as he gazed down at you amusedly. Your thumb passed his tip and the moan that escaped his lips was downright addictive. “I think we have plenty of time, swordsman.”

When you finally made your way to the Thousand Sunny it was with Zoro carrying you on his back and Wado Ichimonji in your grasp as you pointed the sword in an attempt to direct the swordsman to the ship. The sun was low on the horizon, slowly rising for the new day. His overcoat was wrapped around your shoulders and he strode unbothered by the light rain and droplets rippling on his skin.

Your voices were loud as you approached, clearly stuck in a habitual standstill.

“You can’t just tell me to make you a sword and not give me a single guideline,” you almost yelled at him, pointing the katana left.

“And I already told you I trust you,” he retorted turning right.

“For fuck’s sake, wrong side, swordsman,” you sighed, hitting his shoulder lightly. “The ship’s in fucking view.”

He turned.

”Now do you want a chokuto style blade or a tachi or a wakizashi or something else entirely,” you huffed and punctuated each of your suggestions by flailing the sword around.

“Whatever you deem best,” he answered noncommittally.

He passed the gangplank of the Sunny.

“You can’t be for real,” you complained, gesturing him to go back. “What about the handle, do you want silk? Leather? A specific color?”

“I like silk,” he mumbled under his breath, the loud thuds of his footsteps against the wood plank almost eclipsing his words.

“Fucking finally,” you shouted in victory, somehow excited now that you had a detail down, even though it was an extremely minor decision. “What about the color? Hm?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, readjusting his grip on you with a small hoist. “I don’t know, green?”

“Green, huh?” You pondered, the image of a sword already starting to form in your mind. “I like green.”

“You guys!” Luffy beckoned you to him. He was excitedly bouncing on the balls of his feet as he looked at the log pose. “You’re finally back.” The pirate captain pointed at the violently flickering needle.

Nami sighed in defeat.

“Look how fast it’s going,” he mused. “I wonder what’s there!”

His infectious laughter made you smile, a wave of happiness and contentment washing over you. You supposed it was the start of a new adventure.

-The end

a/n: Thank you for reading to the end! I hope you have enjoyed this silly little story of mine as much as I have enjoyed writing it! I’m not going to lie, I will miss these two idiots so much! Ahhhhhh I’m getting teary eyed thinking about it. I can imagine them bickering in punk hazard, their bodies switching! And I can imagine the sweet fluffy downtime these two would get on the polar tang, interacting with the heart pirates as they head to Wano. And oh the whole learning about new smithing processes in Wano, maybe even learn how to smith seastone! Anyways I find it bittersweet to have to let them carry on in my imagination but I think this is a good place to stop. I may or may not write a few bonus chapters for this story, explore some events in different arcs. So keep an eye out for that if it’s something you’d like to read (you can even request some and I’ll happily indulge you!) Thank you again for reading 💕

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Masterlist

#the swordsman and the blacksmith #Roronoa Zoro #one piece x reader #Roronoa Zoro x reader #roronoa zoro x you #roronoa zoro x y/n #zoro x reader #charlou writes

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lucozadehulahoop · 2 years ago

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Star-crossed. Lo'ak x fem!human!reader

This was originally posted on my side blog @thankeywa. It's a brand new blog and tumblr thinks it's a bot so it's not giving it visibility. Please go give it some love, I want all my avatar!related stuff to be on there.

PART 2 HERE PART 3 HERE PART 4 HERE

I know that literally nobody asked for this, but I've noticed a disturbing lack of Lo'ak fics out there, so I've decided to give my input. I've had a story in mind for a while now, and I needed to get it out there. It will be a reader insert to make it more accessible, but it's somewhat based around an original f!character, so I apologize for that in advance if it gets too specific.

WARNINGS: Lo'ak is 20 years old in this and so is the reader, I do not write about minor characters. There will be eventual mature themes in this so MINORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS WORK.

For everyone else, if you like my writing, please let me know if you want to be on the tag list for future installments and SEND ME REQUESTS (head canons, imagines, sfw/nsfw, ecc.) ! I love that shit.

words: around 1.200

summary: reader is a human left behind on pandora, she grew up with the remaining humans who'd been aloud to stay on the planet after the war and has been friends with the Sully clan her entire life. She and Lo'ak were best friends until he began to pull away from her in their teen years for seemingly no reason. This story is about them reconnecting on the day of her twentieth birthday, and dealing with the feelings they have for each other and the obstacles that come with them being from two different worlds.

TW for this chapter: angst, smoking (don't do it, ever), brief mentions of alcohol, brief mention of war and death, brief mention of child birth, reader can breathe on pandora.

Y/n looked at the 'birthday cake' made out of cookie rations that Norm and Max had made for her. No matter how many years would pass, her dads always knew how to get creative.

"I'm twenty years old, you guys don't have to keep throwing me a birthday party." She reprimanded them softly, though her heart was filled with joy. Y/n was so thankful to have people in her life who cared enough to make her day special every single year.

"Considering you spent most of your early existence tied to test tubes to stay alive, we're merely celebrating the scientific marvel your continued survival has been." Norm joked, raising a beer, and y/n shoved him, before blowing out the single candle that had been meticulously re-used each year. It was a wonder how there was any wax still left on it.

"What did the birthday girl wish for?" Max asked, reaching for a dried-up cookie and cringing slightly at the taste as he chewed on it slowly. "The whole point of a birthday wish is to keep it to myself... or it won't come true. Honestly, I question your two's knowledge of Earth's traditions." y/n shook her head, before taking a celebratory sip of alcohol.

Norm and Max left eventually, back to the main base. They were more than capable of piloting a helicopter those days, and y/n was all grown up. More than capable of living by herself. What once had been an avatar lab, smack dab in the middle of the forests of Pandora, had been converted into her home. Pandora's rapidly repopulating fauna had surprisingly left her residence alone, well... mostly. There were still some creatures who couldn't help but keep themselves away. And by creatures, she meant Spider. Y/n was also friends with actual people like Neteyam, Kiri, Tuk, and... Lo'ak. Truth be told, she didn't know whether or not she and Lo'ak were even friends anymore. They'd been thick as thieves for as long as she could remember, always getting him out of trouble and fixing him up after a scuffle with his siblings. But then, around her sixteenth birthday, he'd started pulling away, and y/n had never understood why. They'd had a big fight about it, bottom line, he hadn't wanted to be around her anymore and y/n had to accept it.

"Open up! It's fucking freezing out here!" Came Spider's loud voice followed by an incessant banging on the door that immediately pulled y/n out of her reverie. "Alright, alright..." she laughed a little as she went to let them all inside. The Sullys were always insisting on spending birthdays together, even though some of them were now getting too big to even fit inside her 'home'. Neteyam had to walk around with his back bent forward, and Kiri knocked over quite a few things before they made it to y/n's main living space, which was more or less Na've-proof. "Happy birthday!" Tuk hugged her and y/n struggled not to feel crushed by the embrace. Even the littlest Sully was now nearly as tall as her.

Y/n let them all inside, already giving them dirty looks at the sight of gifts. "I told you guys not to..."

She stayed on the doorstep a little longer, gazing out into the night, desperately hoping one last uninvited guest would turn up. She felt Neteyam's hand on her shoulder. "He's not coming. I tried to talk to him but he was being a skxawng as usual..." Y/n blushed, not really wanting Neteyam to know she was pining for his younger brother. "Oh, right! I was—just checking you were all here..." she closed the door and they both went back to join the others.

___

"Alright come on, your mom is going to kill me if you get back late and I don't have enough space in here for all of you. Spider would have to sleep outside." Y/n teased, trying to let Tuk understand it was time to go. "Hey!" Spider protested at her lighthearted jab, but knew it was time for them to get going. Nobody wanted to get on Neytiri's bad side. Y/n hugged them all goodbye and thanked them for the presents: Tuk had made her a lovely drawing, and the others had collectively made her a rather beautiful necklace, which she immediately wore. Y/n waited on her doorstep till she could no longer hear the sounds of her friends chatting, and then proceeded to do two incredibly dangerous things: she sat outside of the protection of her bunker, all alone in the cold Pandora night air, and lit up a cigarette.

She'd discovered a terrifyingly endless supply of cigarette cartoons back at the base almost a year prior, and as soon as she'd tried her first one, she'd gotten addicted. Y/n hadn't told Norm or Max, of course, as it would have broken their hearts, especially because of how fragile she was. Y/n's mother had gone into labor in the aftermath of the battle for Pandora between the Na'vi and the Sky people. The soldier had lost her life giving birth, but her baby had survived, taking her first breath in the inhospitable Pandora air. Norm was convinced Eywa herself had kept her alive, had given her the ability to take in the air that hadn't previously failed to kill any other human. Sure, it had come at the price of being particularly fragile her entire life. And how was y/n repaying that gift? By cutting her miraculous existence short more and more each day. Thankfully, it was a while since she'd been used as a test rat, or had check ups of any sort. As far as the Sullys were concerned... they were way better off not even knowing what she was doing to herself.

A sudden rustling in the trees instantly made y/n alert and she didn't waste any time getting back inside. She showered, and shamefully hid her smokes somewhere her dads or the Sullys wouldn't look. When she had nothing else left to do, y/n forced herself to crawl into bed, placing a hand over her necklace. Her wish to see Lo'ak hadn't come true in the end, and while not surprising, it still hurt like hell.

"A pack of viperwolves? Seriously, Lo'ak?" Y/n groaned in frustration as she cleared her table for her best friend to lie on.

"I thought I could take them." He hissed as she doused him with disinfectant. "Yeah, well, you know human medical treatment hurts like a bitch, so it's either my way, or you're going to have to fess up to your parents about what you did." Y/n tried to sound cold, but she'd always been too soft on him.

When they were younger, and Lo'ak still hadn't grown to be double her size, they would often fall asleep together in her bed. "You don't have to keep doing this shit to prove something, you know?" She whispered to him one night, turning over to look at him and gently touch his face. "Your parents love you. And so do Neteyam, Kiri, Tuk and Spider. Lo'ak, I— we— don't want to lose you."

Y/n was almost asleep when a loud 'thud' coming from outside woke her. Something was moving on her roof, or rather, someone... Y/n didn't show whether she was dreaming or not as she looked out the window and locked eyes with Lo'ak, because the second she did, he seemed to slide off the top of her bucker, falling down into the grass below with a loud groan.

He'd probably just woken up half of the animals on Pandora.

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heiznx · 5 months ago

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BOOK 6 TWST THINGS I GLOSSED OVER

THINGS I WANT TO SHARE (note) i'm only finding out about this now while i'm reading the masterlist here, since the wiki hasn't updated yet and i skipped book 6 in the eng game, because i used a translator to read book 6 in the jap before it came out in eng. some information are already well-known and some are things i already knew, but i decided to take note about anything i thought was noteworthy!

RIDDLE ROSEHEARTS

Chapter 66, Tower 2, Part 5 — Riddle became a dorm leader on his first year.

Chapter 66, Tower 3, Part 8 — Riddle said that he confiscated exam study guides, made by Azul, in Heartslabyul. — He thinks that Azul couldn't compete with him in terms of academics because Azul has too much on his plate, while he devotes himself in his studies.

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 17 — According to Leona, Riddle can cast a spell so fast and that he could lead a group and fight on the front lines with his fire power, but sees it as a double-edge sword because of his stamina and his temper but he has a confidence to be a leader.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 19: PTM-456 — Riddle misses Grim

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 20 — He started taking special lessons when he was 3 — When his mother was pregnant, she was already preparing all necessary materials to ensure Riddle will grow up to be an exceptional mage. — Riddle is not sure whether he is a prodigy or if he earned his talents because of how he grew up. — He studied in a private school when he was young and wasn't able to skip grades despite his intelligence because it wasn't a 'norm' and his school didn't allow it. — He also said that he saw no point for him to skip grades either because he needs to be 24 years old to be a medical mage. — He originally was supposed to be a medical mage once he graduates, but he MAY be having second thoughts because he developed an interest in law after becoming a housewarden.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 22 — Riddle's cape can cover two people and block a bit of light.

Chapter 69 — Riddle hasn't taken his magical device licensure exam.

LEONA KINGSCHOLAR

Chapter 66, Tower 2, Part 13 — Leona's Unique Magic: King's Roar, can turn ice to dust.

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 25 — Leona has a refined palate, he doesn't like dry, stale rations. — He drinks sports drink.

RUGGIE BUCCHI

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 21 — Leona says that he doesn't think Ruggie's magic is as good, but he's aware of what he is lacking and doesn't hesitate to use Leona to make up for it; Ruggie doesn't see it as anything shameful.

JACK HOWL

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 21 — Leona views Jack as someone pretentious, and says that Jack doesn't have what it takes to lead yet so Jack comes to Leona when things gets too out of hand. — Leona finds Jack's honesty adorable.

AZUL ASHENGROTTO

Chapter 66, Tower 2, Part 5 — Azul became a dorm leader at his second year.

Chapter 66, Tower 3, Part 8 — Azul considers Riddle as an academic rival. — His overall ranking often goes from top 2 to top 10 — Even after book 3, he still has his backroom 'consultations'. — Riddle said that Jade mentioned Azul goes off campus on day offs under the pretense of market research.

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 17 — According to Leona, Azul is a quick thinker and knows how to put himself in an advantageous position. Leona assumes Azul struggled living in land, but Leona says that Azul sees it as a strength.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 17 — He (possibly with Floyd and Jade as well) were trained in Sunshine Lands (a place where a prince of Sunshine Land married a princess from the Coral Sea and was founded by the mermaid princess) and said that he couldn't find a 'catch' in the organization and he put in an application there as soon as he was accepted in Night Raven College.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 20 — Azul started learning the basics of magic when he was 8, and he was taught by his mother and grandmother who were both mages. — His family was not entirely pressuring him in studies thus him being lax about it until he was in middle school.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 22 — He was raised in the deep sea so his eyes could adjust to the darkness.

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 25 — Azul doesn't feel upset when fighting against Ortho and Idia's dreams because he knows well enough that someone has to make a sacrifice to make it come true — One of his dreams is to be a valedictorian, opening a second Mostro Lounge branch, starting a delivery business, selling tableware, running a hotel, and getting into the leisure industry.

Chapter 69 — Azul has never driven a magical wheel.

FLOYD LEECH

Chapter 67, Tower 3, Part 17 — Azul said that Floyd often forgets to take his doses to keep his human form (transfiguration potion), and says that it's normal for him to hear Floyd saying "Hey, my ears are fins again!", or "My fingers grew some webbin'!"

JAMIL VIPER

Chapter 67, Tower 2, Part 25 — Leona calls Jamil: Snake. — Jamil admits to Leona that he always judged people around him as stupid, incompetent, lazy, or good-for nothing, but says that that was just what he wants to believe. He admits he has more to grow.

VIL SCHOENHEIT (FT. ROOK)

Chapter 66, Tower 1, Part 4 — He can separate his feelings and duties as a dorm leader and his personal thoughts and emotions.

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 16 — When Vil first got in Night Ravel College, he started turning down long-term acting offers to focus on studies, but had to act in some plays and movies because they got sequels.

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 17 — Vil first met Rook on the school gardens. — Vil never gave Rook the time of his day but Rook kept reaching out to him and pointing out things Vil internally chides himself for. — He didn't catch up to what Rook talked about for five hours about his own play.

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 19: PTM-854 — He is curious what he would look like if he took a form of a phantom because he thinks phantoms are the manifestations of their greatest desire. — He remembers what his phantom looked like. — He admits to unconsciously thinking about beauty about being youthful and may have feared aging.

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 25 — Vil acknowledges that the Shroud brothers wanted 'normalcy' but was willing to destroy their dreams for his own.

ROOK HUNT

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 20 — Rook found the Mirror's sorting agreeable thus stayed in Savanaclaw, but thought he would learn more about 'beauty' in Pomefiore faster so he transferred. — He talked to Vil about his decision in transferring from Savanaclaw to Pomefiore, but Vil couldn't talk him out of it. — According to Vil, Rook stuck out like a sore thumb when he entered Pomefiore because his hair was long, thick, unkempt, and he also had freckles in his cheeks and nose. — He never bothered using sunscreen or skin care so his cheeks and nose were always bright red. — He would go all-over the place in sweatpants with frayed hems or jeans with torn knees, but would fix his attire a little when going to an operas and concerts with dress codes. — Vil once picked out an outfit for him because Vil believed that a beautiful stage deserves beautiful audiences.

EPEL FELMIER

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 19: PTM-859 — Rook said that Leona praised Epel's broom/flyting skills in the club.

GRIM

Chapter 66, Tower 3, Part 9 — Grim is 70cm. — Epel said that Ace and Deuce told him that Grim hates his nails being trimmed.

Chapter 67, Tower 1, Part 19: PTM-735 — He has long nails. — He often scratches on Heartslabyul's couches.

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gyjo-enthusiast · 7 months ago

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special case. ch.2

retired!nanami x younger!sorcerer!reader

summary: during field training, each student is assigned one semi-grade 1 or higher ranked sorcerer. after the last student is left without a mentor, her professor pairs her up with his old, retired grumpy friend.

reader is in their 20s (attending college), afab!reader, fem pronouns

tags: fluff, eventual smut, colleagues with benefits (is that a thing?), age gap (reader in early 20s, nanami in mid 30s), virgin reader

previous chapter: special case. ch.1 | next chapter: special case. ch.3

jujutsu kaisen masterlist | masterlist

chapter summary: during the first day of field training, you successfully defeat a high-grade curse alone. after lunch though, there seems to be a problematic fight when you should be watching your mentor fight a cursed spirit.

proofread: yes

word count: 1 269 (4m 45s)

song rec:

jumping through the unusually dark alley, you hunted the cursed spirit your mentor had mentioned earlier. it was fat and sleazy, but its legs were skinny and it ran as if its life depended on it. and it did.

reaching under your coat, you quickly whipped out your cursed weapon and followed the blob of sorrow and hatred. it was a long, although fairly light, double-edged sword with a fancy hand-decorated handle.

nanami was quite surprised at that, being a cursed tool user himself. he thought all the young guns had to be top notch and have their own special techniques, not to mention domain expansions, to get into jujutsu college. even then, he'll wait for a bit more before judging, just to see how well you're going to do.

of course, you did not want to disappoint - you could not - after all the trouble he's going through just for the sake of teaching you. leaping forward, you swiftly cut off two of the monster's six legs and started chipping away at its skin.

'not bad,' you thought to yourself, small smile making its way to your face as you tried to keep up.

"not bad," a voice suddenly said behind you, making you almost stumble, "keep it up, l/n."

oh, you were not letting this curse get away from you, the slightest of blushes appearing, both from the praise and the excessive physical activity.

speeding up to quickly finish the job, your sword - purposefully named severance - slickly severed the cursed spirit's head, along with some of his gross dark shoulder hair. some of its remains got splattered on your shoes, but that could wait.

hastily returning to nanami, you asked: "how did i do, sir?" to which you got an approving nod and an expression which you could only assume was one of consideration.

you looked around, just to make sure nothing was creeping out there, and then you finally started cleaning up your shoes.

"l/n," you heard after a bit, "you're quite skilled i take it."

you smiled awkwardly, "you can call me y/n. and i wouldn't consider myself 'skilled' exactly," your mentor nodded. "everybody has their ups and downs when it comes to fighting. maybe i've just been lucky to survive!" you laugh it off as a horrible joke, hoping he'd smile at the very least.

"yes.. me too." he looks at you with guilt in the eyes as he continues, "although i do think you have the potential if you keep this up." he sends a soft smile your way.

"thank you, sir."

"just stay strong and focus, all in your own time," nanami focuses up and starts walking.

"of course," you follow up behind him, "where are we going to now?"

"well, it's already 11:32. it will take a bit to find a good place but for now, let's eat somewhere before we continue," he turns his head to talk to you and then immediately looks ahead once again.

to be honest, you didn't even believe he ever took any breaks on the job, let alone ate lunch. nevertheless, you couldn't wait to treat yourself after that satisfactory exorcism.

you spent a while looking for an adequate place to eat, ultimately deciding to take a seat in a simple yet homely bakery. both of you bought their signature bread, silently enjoying the view of the street.

with no words needing to be spoken, you observed how nanami acted with nobody but you around. he was stoic, but once every few minutes his expression softened.

after lunch, when nanami checked his watch, you both set out to find another curse. this time though, you'll be the one watching - and learning - from none other than your mentor.

'this curse is way stronger.. what's going on?' you thought, being careful to watch nanami's flank as well as keeping an eye out for him. it's not that he would need it necessarily, but better be safe than sorry.

your mentor bashed at the curse with his weapon, except it was hard to get a decent hit in while also guarding. at this point you felt useless, only watching from afar. wanting, no - needing, to help nanami, you took a step forward, suddenly remembering the words he spoke before you approached the curse.

"i won't need help, don't worry. if i do, i'll call for you. just defend the fight from weaker curses," his voice rang in your ears as you froze in place.

not wanting to disappoint, you stood still and helped the only way you could - that was to be ready to strike down any curse that approached.

and in a trice, you heard a roar behind you.

"y/n! above!" nanami shouted your way before turning back to the problem at hand.

you turned your gaze to the sky and sure enough, there was a cursed spirit. it was dropping down so quick you barely had any time to react and dodge.

just before it thwacked onto the ground, it pulled out its tiny wings, slowing itself. when it was sure it wouln't hurt itself, the bizarre flying cursed spirit fell to the ground, briefly not being able to move.

you were gobsmacked, not fully processing what had just happened.

"snap out of it, i got a lot going on here! i can't defeat both of them y/n," nanami breathed out, his energy surely running low from not fighting for such a long time.

and snap you sure did, just maybe not out of it.

"are you insane?! you just almost killed all of us, including yourself!" you shouted, discarding your cloak. unsheating severance, you let your canines shine in the afternoon sunlight, grinning out of your mind.

your mentor, as any person would, thought this remark was aimed at him, so he briskly sent you a look. that was until he saw the animalistic expression you wore, that changed everything.

slashing your sword in the curse's singular eye, you noticed it was being sinked in, almost like into quicksand. you laughed and revealed another weapon hidden on you, that being foulblade. as the name suggests, it was a blade the opponents didn't expect, so they might call it a foul. you pulled it out only if severance was not available at the moment.

with the newly sharpened shorter sword you started cutting across the monster's body, mainly face, leaving behind ugly scars that were soon to be removed completely, as you stabbed it in the heart and exorcised it. you felt cursed energy overflowing within you at that moment, having to calm yourself down.

when you came to your senses, cleaning your blades, a few minutes later, nanami approached you from behind.

"are you okay, y/n?" he rested a hand on your shoulder. startled, since you didn't even sense him coming, you just nodded. he sighed, "i dealt with the curse, we're done here for the day, okay?" he reassured you.

"okay.. sorry about," you paused, now fully remembering what happened, "sorry about that." you finally finished your sentence, guilt filling up your eyes, hands shaking as you stood up from where you were sitting.

"don't apologise, nothing happened. you saved me after all is said and done," your mentor removed his hand, went in front of you and tilted his head back at you. "let's go."

"where? i thought we were done," you muttered quietly, still being shaken up by the whole situation.

"to my house," he casually declared, continuing with his statement, "or do you want to climb up the hill up to college dorms every day?"

a/n: if you made it this far, i’d like to thank everyone who is enjoying this so far, i never thought my work would actually reach someone. so thank you so much for reading, stay safe and have a great rest of your day!

#nanami x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #x reader #kento nanami #jjk nanami #nanami kento #Spotify

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racefortheironthrone · 2 years ago

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BOE, the Messenger(s), and the Trillionaires

Introduction

I’ve been doing a re-read of the Locked Tomb - although technically it’s a re-listen, because I like the audiobooks - and I stumbled across a particular passage that hadn’t stuck in my memory before that made me rethink my understanding of the origin of Blood of Eden. Ever since Harrow the Ninth and especially since Nona the Ninth, there’s been this common interpretation that the BOE are descendants of the trillionaires who abandoned Earth and that’s why John is at war with them. I’m not so sure that’s true any more.

Here’s why. In Nona, when the whole business with Crown/Corona infiltrating the barracks kicks off, there’s an interesting exchange between Camilla and We Suffer about the Oversight Committee that includes this statement:

“Hect, what you must understand about Blood of Eden is that we own things in common, we share responsibilities and resources in common. She could have moved these resources at will...but I must make one move at a time. And above all, I must place the safety of...Blood of Eden’s continuity...even above the mission.” (Emphasis mine.)

This took me aback somewhat, because the emphasis on militant communal ownership doesn’t really fit with the idea of “descendants of trillionaires.” I suppose one could say that it’s been ten thousand years, cultures change and drift over time...except that, as I’ll get into later, the BOE seems very very insistent on cultural preservation, so it would be a bit out-of-character if they changed that stance on this one particular issue.

And that’s what made me think: what if the BOE aren’t the descendants of the trillionaires? What if they’re the descendants of the non-trillionaires on the FTL ships?

East of Eden: A Theory About What Happened After the FTL Ships Jumped

So here’s the question that’s been percolating in my mind: once you’re out in space, why keep listening to the trillionaires, especially about the vital question of who owns the precious resources brought from Eden and who gets to decide happens next? There would probably be some residual cultural deference to the visionary disruptors, but the traditional answers of property law backed up by the state or men with guns paid to enforce the orders of the capitalists kind of break down when you consider that:

In John’s chapters (and verses) in Nona, we get an account of what happened leading up to and during the Resurrection: according to John, the trillionaires pulled a con job on the planet with their FTL ships, pretending that a fleet of twelve ships, each carrying a few thousand people (made up of “hand-picked guys” and “two hundred nominated people”), was merely the first wave of a planetary evacuation. As Mercymorn and others worked out, there were no future waves, no plan to come back and pick up more, the trillionaires had liquidated their cash and financial assets in favor of buying up material resources they’d need in space, and everyone else was being left for dead.

These twelve ships (possibly minus one, it’s not clear whether John managed to destroy the one he grabbed before it jumped) and the 20-odd thousand people on them must be the ancestors of exo-humanity as it exists in the myriadic year. But we know that of those 20-odd thousand people, only a “half-dozen” were the trillionaires. Everyone else was staff they’d selected to do the work of planetary colonization, plus a tiny group of people chosen by the governments of Earth Eden.

other than 200 randos who are likely to be recruited from the ranks of elected officials and upper management bureaucracy rather than Special Forces, the forces of the state are not only light-years away but also just got eaten by John Gaius.

it’s a bit harder to pull off the Jay Gould method when you’ve turned all of your cash into raw materials, there’s nowhere to spend cash in space, and it doesn’t take long for men with guns in that scenario to decide that the resources belong to them actually, because they have the guns.

While we know that some form of a market economy exists on New Rho and the other exo-planets, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oligarchical ruling class based on ownership of capital. Rather, we see a state of anarchy where there is no hegemonic entity but duelling centers of power. This suggests to me that the trillionaires’ power did not last very long after human settlement outside the solar system, possibly due to a (potentially bloodless) revolution in which the only surviving members of humanity just decided not to listen to six old (white) men and took their shit in order to survive.

In that scenario, I could see it being the case that the collective memory of communal ownership of property in the midst of a crisis could linger among a certain sub-population and provide the origin for this aspect of BOE’s internal culture.

So where did BOE come from?

Well, in large part it emerged as an organic response to John Gaius’ imperialist campaign against exo-humanity. As I noted elsewhere, John’s revenge against those who abandoned Earth in her hour of need is essentially a re-enactment of colonialism - the Cohort shows up with their overwhelming military might, forces the local population into subjugation with unequal treaties, imposes its language and customs, destroys the natural environment in a drive for short-term resource extraction, and then forces people into an endless cycle of being resettled on reservations over and over again - which makes a certain sick sense, in that it’s probably the worst thing that a Kiwi of Maori heritage could think of doing to their enemies.

He even goes to the extent of modelling the Cohort uniforms on 19th century British Army uniforms with the colors reversed, and coming up with his own gloss on the Christianity that was imposed on indigenous populations in the name of “civilizing” them. This campaign is only mystifying to outside observers like Augustine and Coronabeth because they don’t have the cultural context to know what John’s up to (in no small part because he’s used his necromantic powers and political position in order to suppress all knowledge of that context).

And thus, it’s not that surprising that John’s imperialism provoked anti-colonial resistance: when his Empire made contact with exo-humanity, to the extent that anyone still remembered him, it was as the horrific necromantic cult leader who murdered the ten billion and destroyed Eden, and now he’s come to finish the job in the name of collective punishment for the sins of six dead men, and by the way he’s bringing death and the defilement of the dead and the destruction of everything you’ve ever built with him. There probably have been dozens and hundreds of resistance movements - some local, some planetary, some multi-planetary - that rose up and got crushed over thousands of years.

So what makes BOE different from all other resistance movements?

The Messenger(s)

I want to go back a few thousand years and talk about what happened when the FTL ships managed to escape the solar system. While interplanetary colonization would always be an incredibly stressful experience even without a revolution, the fact that all of this was happening in the wake of John nuking Earth and killing the ten billion, then devouring the solar system, and their narrow escape from his wrothful grasp would have added an entirely different level of terror to the event - but also a new sense of responsibility.

Because - regardless of whether people on the FTL ships knew about the trillionaires’ supposed plan to abandon humanity on Earth or believed John’s accusations - they were now the sole survivors of humanity, the carriers of all culture and history. The ao3 author Griselda_Gimpel has a really good series of fics imagining the development of exo-humanity from the FTL ships onwards, and in one scene they mention the enormous sense of cultural loss that people on those ships would have felt when they realized that the internet was gone forever.

And this got me thinking: what if some nerds on those ships had that kind of profound reaction and decided to preserve as much of Earth’s heritage as possible? How would you do that with limited access to computer storage and humanity potentially scattering across multiple planets, and knowledge being lost forever with the march of time as the original settler generation died off and was replaced by new generations born outside the solar system? I think the answer is:

Oral tradition. See, one of the things that fans of the series have been talking about for a while is the implications of the myriadic duration of the Empire, what that would have done to language and culture in the Nine Houses and among BOE, how is it that people can still be speaking the same language or reading the same writing as from the time of the Resurrection, let alone remember memes and cultural references from the 21st century? This is a fair reaction from a Western perspective - after all, ten thousand years ago would be roughly 8000 BCE or smack dab in the Early Neolithic. Surely it would have been impossible for the memory of Earth to have survived that long.

But, as people have said, Tamsyn Muir is writing a very Kiwi series. And one of the things that is very distinctive about the culture of Aotearoa is the oral traditions of the Maori and Pasifika cultures more generally. While Maori oral histories go back to the 13th century CE when Aotearoa was settled, Australian Aboriginal oral tradition goes back as far as potentially 30,000-40,000 years. Oral tradition is not perfectly reliable, it undergoes drift and change over time, it can experience loss and disruption (from colonization, for example), but it can endure across millennia.

My theory is that these nerds on the FTL ships or their descendants dedicated themselves to the mission of cultural preservation through oral tradition, and thus the Messengers were born. And at some point, the Messengers met up with Blood of Eden and explained that John Gaius’ colonial campaign wasn’t just an unjustified act of aggression and imperialism, but an act of cultural genocide stretching back 10,000 years:

“I charge you with...the utter disintegration of institutions political and social, languages, cultures, religions, all niceties and personal liberties of the nations, by use of-”

“...they’re dead words--a human chain reaching back ten thousand years...how did they feel?” (Harrow the Ninth)

Somewhere around this point, then, BOE took as its mission the preservation of the Messengers, which is why they are given BOE bodyguards, why discharging a weapon in their presence is grounds for execution, and why they are both deeply respected and honored by BOE but kept away from sensitive missions and not necessarily kept in the loop on critical intel.

Why AIM is “They”

This part of my theory suggested an explanation for why AIM is called “they” by Blood of Eden, and why Palamedes Sextus sensed a necromantic implant when they “stumbled” into AIM at the school. We know that the Sixth House has been in contact with Blood of Eden for a very long time, and that Cassiopeia was not only responsible for the Sixth’s “break clause” but also was BOE’s “Source Gram.”

My theory is that Cassiopeia and the Sixth, being a bunch of librarian nerds obsessed with the preservation of cultural knowledge, would never have been entirely comfortable with taking John Gaius’ word for what happened during the Resurrection and what life was like on pre-Resurrection Earth. The natural place to look for an alternate source of documentation would be exo-humanity, and I think she/they went looking clandestinely and came across the Messengers and BOE. Somehow, they avoided killing each other and came to a modus vivendi.

I think part of this modus vivendi was an offer by Cassiopeia/the Sixth to provide the Messengers with an improved means of preserving their oral tradition: namely, a necromantic implant that would preserve the ghosts of dead Messengers and let them communicate with their successors, ensuring that the oral tradition could be passed down perfectly from generation to generation. After all, not only are the Sixth House spirit magicians, but they are specialist psychometricians who know better than anyone else how to pull information about and from the past from material objects, and it was Doctor Sex who gave Palamedes the idea for preserving revenant spirits after death by giving them a physical anchor.

Hence, AIM is they because they are a collective “human chain” of all the Messengers who came before them - they have the voices of hundreds of cultural preservations in their heads, telling them of all that was lost with the fall of Eden. No wonder they want to play school teacher and be “she” for a while.

Conclusion

TLDR: BOE aren’t trillionaires, they’re commie terrorists with a fetish for cultural preservation. So I guess this makes the whole war a case of leftist infighting, considered in the long run?

#the locked tomb #blood of eden #boe #aim #the messenger #the angel #ntn #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth #pash #our lady of the passion #the sixth house #cassiopeia #tlt

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plainclothesdisaster · 6 months ago

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Red Knight - Chapter 5

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Chapter 1

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“Gargoyles,” Danny proclaimed one night after theyʼd successfully captured a curse ghost.

Jason replied with an eloquent, “Huh?”

“Thatʼs what they kinda remind me of,” Danny spun the thermos in his hands. “The curse ghosts. They're like really messed up gargoyles.”

Jason thought about it and he was right. The curse ghosts were like if the gargoyles on Gothamʼs buildings had 20% more limbs and teeth and were made of goo instead of stone. Fitting really, for the embodiment of a curse on Gotham.

They perched on the roof of a building not far from an old tire shop where the curse ghost had reared its ugly head. A few gargoyles perched with them, thankfully all stone and completely motionless and definitely not cursed. Shadows crawled across them as occasional car headlights passed in the street below.

“The real question is if they're less nasty or more nasty than other curses you've fought?” Jason didnʼt know if Danny even had fought curse ghosts specifically before, but it seemed likely all things considered.

Danny paused, contemplating. “Every city has ghosts that haunt it. But none as bad as this, at least that I’ve seen. None that have such a distinct form. And none that have had such a strong effect on the living.”

“Arenʼt we special,” Jason grumbled.

Danny chuckled. “Very.”

“Good thing you came here to stop them.”

Danny frowned. “Well. Not exactly. If Stanford had accepted me Iʼd be bumping heads with the ghoulies under Alcatraz, but GU was my next choice.”

Jason’s train of thought came to a skittering halt. Danny wasn’t here to fight these ghosts specifically? He made it seem like taming the curse was the only way to keep Gotham from eating itself inside out. And it was clear that he was the only one actually trying to do something about it. Maybe the only one that could.

“Wait. Fixing the worst curse ever is just what you do in your free time between lectures?” Jason folded his arms.

Danny sighed. “Iʼm not a hero, remember? And I’m trying not to do ghost stuff full time. To do that I need to do human things. Like get a degree.”

“Who says you need a degree?” Jason’s voice pitched up, betraying his incredulity.

“NASA, definitely.” Danny wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead he tilted his head up to the sky, toward the few stars that dared to poke through the fog.

Jason bit back a laugh. He couldn’t be serious. Crime fighting- ghost hunting- whatever, it wasn’t something that you just did on the side. If there’s one thing Bruce taught him it was that civilian life was an afterthought, a persona that they had to play. Their real life, the life that mattered, was what happened once they donned their masks. And after Jason died he’d been freed from the responsibility of being a civilian at all.

Yet looking at the melancholy on Danny’s face he knew he was being sincere. It struck Jason that Danny had dreams, like real dreams, ones that didn’t involve stopping crime and saving cities and meting out justice.

It twisted something in his stomach. Dreams were a luxury Jason hadnʼt ever been able to afford. Not when he was young and fighting and stealing his way through the streets of Crime Alley. Not when he was fighting beside Bruce, desperately eager to fill the mantle of Robin. Not now, especially not now, when there was only the work of purging the rot from this city. The work that sent him back to the gutters and the alleys night after night, always looking down.

And there Danny was beside him, just as capable of fixing Gotham (or even more capable, he did begrudgingly admit), and it hadnʼt completely consumed him. He was still selfish enough to dream.

He was still looking up at the sky.

A pang of something like hatred smacked at the back of Jason’s teeth, ugly and hot. He couldn’t believe Danny’s selfishness. His naivety. Both incredibly stupid things to have in this line of work. And still Jason felt something else– a rumbling and an ache from the place under his heart. A pulling that tried to stretch across the space between them. He bit his tongue and shoved that feeling down.

Later that night when Jason couldn’t sleep he scoured the net for any more hits on Danny. He knew it would be easier if he just asked Tim for help. He bet that little creep could have the full dossier delivered within an hour, everything he wanted to know about Danny Fenton, but that would open Jason up to way more questions than he wanted to deal with. He still needed to keep this as far away from Bruce as possible for as long as possible.

His less than ideal search methods still yielded him a yearbook photo he hadn’t seen yet. The sister Danny mentioned– Jasmine Fenton. Turns out she was attending Stanford, psychology major. Stanford, where Danny could have been instead of Gotham. Fighting some other city’s ghosts. And Jason would have continued to be unaware of and unable to do anything about Gotham’s curse. Or his own.

He turned his attention to digging up anything he could on the Fenton parents. No real estate records, no taxes, not even driver’s licenses. But no death certificates either. Jason didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. What he did know is that they were equally as erased as their son.

He found himself drifting away from Fenton research and on to the question that nagged at him in a different way– how to predict where the curse ghosts would show up. The data from Danny’s thumb drive was already on his computer and he dutifully logged the coordinates and relevant details from that night’s encounter, another dot among hundreds on the map of Gotham.

Jason had already whittled through all the possible easy connections. Haunted places, typical goon hide outs, historic sites, even fucking ley lines– none of them had enough correlation to be a valuable predictor. Or even a decent lead.

As much as he had practiced taming his frustration, another fruitless night with no answers had him sulking. He felt certain that figuring out the curse ghosts would also help him figure out Danny. And figure out himself. He couldn’t deny that he hadn’t felt even a hint of the Pit’s clawing rage since his nightly escapades with Danny became more frequent. He considered Danny’s offer– to make the fix permanent. And Jason believed him now, that he actually did want to help.

But he couldn’t accept that offer. He wouldn’t. Not until he was sure what it really meant. Maybe if and when they solved the curse problem for good, maybe then he would accept Danny’s help.

But not yet.

“Try something for me.”

Danny stopped mid patrol loop of known curse hotspots. Jason followed his gaze and saw a curse ghost rummaging through a demolition site where a condemned apartment once stood.

“Blast it-” Jason pulled a gun, finger ready at the trigger- “Wait!” Danny held up his hands to stop him. “First, see if you can hold the energy back before you release it.”

Danny held his palms out over one another and a ball of familiar green energy formed between them in demonstration. “Let it build up and grow.”

He focused for a moment and the ball grew larger, spun faster. He widened his palms as the ball grew, crackling with potential energy. He let it linger just a moment before— a twist of his wrist and it dissipated.

“I don’t think it works like that for me.”

“Just try it,” Danny cajoled. “I’d be a bad ghost mentor if I didn’t try to teach you how these powers work.”

Jason rolled his eyes. This felt like some kind of test, and the way Danny looked at him with rapt attention all but confirmed that. Did he truly want to help? Or Did he want to gauge how much Jason could push the limits of this power? Still, Jason’s own curiosity won out in the end.

He began by focusing on the feeling he got when he shot his usual energy bullets, allowing it to prickle through his chest and underneath his skin. Rather than let it out immediately, as he’d always done, he did as Danny instructed and held it back. He focused on his pistol. As he did, a small green sphere formed at the end of the gun.

Slowly he fed more energy to it. It grew, just as Danny’s had, spinning faster. His heart accelerated at the same pace, straining against the pull of the power. He gritted his teeth. His head felt hot, like it did when he let his rage get the better of him. Danny’s eyes glinted, reflecting the green glow with impish delight.

The sphere grew to baseball size, then basketball. Then it grew larger than that, so large he couldn’t even see the beast he was aiming at anymore. Danny said simply, “Now.”

Jason pulled the trigger. A massive green fireball exploded out of the end of his pistol, burning across the pile of wreckage. The ghost finally looked up just in time to take the blast directly to its side. It wailed in terrible unearthly tones as the green fire swallowed it.

Danny whooped in triumph. Meanwhile, Jason’s knees wobbled and he fell to all fours in the dirt. He felt suddenly cold, in that terrible clammy way right after a fever breaks.

Danny looked over as if to share the celebration but his face fell as he saw Jason.

“Shit,” he said, kneeling next to him. “You okay?”

“Yeah I— yeah.” Jason panted, swallowing a few dry breaths.

Every time he’d used this power before, he’d let it out instantly, through his guns or his gadgets. He’d never actually let it sit or take the time to feel it properly. Now he wished he hadn’t.

Using that power felt like his worst memories of the Pit, unnatural and cloying like he could still feel the waters dripping off of him. It tasted like grave dirt in his mouth.

But as he raised his head he saw the damage he’d done. There was a fucking crater the size of his living room blasted through the remains of a concrete foundation. No sign of the curse ghost. He did that.

He laughed, all shaky breath. Maybe he could get used to it. He’d have to. He didn’t have a choice but to use it against the curse ghosts. He’d be useless in fights against them otherwise.

“Let’s head back,” Danny offered.

“Yeah.” Jason ignored the small tremor in his hand as he holstered his pistol and started to get his feet back underneath himself.

Jason was halfway to standing when out of nowhere he took a hit. A force crashed into his gut from behind like a cannonball and he barely registered a curse ghost underneath him- it looked like a rhino with way way too many horns- before it flung him ten feet across the demo site and sent him careening into the rubble. He tumbled over broken concrete and snarled rebar, hard-trained muscle memory kicking in to relax his muscles enough to not take the worst of it anywhere he didn’t want to.

He blinked the dizziness from his eyes as he settled. Fuck that hurt. He felt a trickle of blood running down his face. The helmet was padded just enough to protect him from concussions. Didn’t help much with the biological nightmare that was the human nose though. He took the helmet off to keep the blood from pooling in his mouth, leaving him in just his domino mask.

“Jason?” He heard Danny shout.

“Mmfine,” was what he managed to reply as he pushed himself up. It took him a few tries to find his legs. They were still wobbly from the expenditure of power before.

Across the demo field Danny fought the new curse ghost with his usual evasive style. His mouth a hard set line as he ducked beneath swipes from many-angled horns and he responded with blasts of his own, cornering the ghost handily.

Then his gaze landed on Jason and he paused, eyes wide.

His stance went rigid. He snapped around unnaturally fast to face the curse ghost, a total shift from his flighty movements from a moment before. His gaze was sharp, cast in stark shadows from the streetlights, and impossibly, dangerously green. He raised a palm toward the ghost, slowly. And then a nuclear blast went off.

Or at least thatʼs what it felt like. Jason lifted an elbow to shield his eyes from the blinding green light. Surprisingly it wasn’t hot. Instead it felt like the air pressure had been turned up, as if the whole atmosphere was somehow heavier around them, pressing in from all sides, making it harder to breathe.

It lasted only a moment. When Jason lowered his shielding arm there was no sign of the curse ghost. No other damage from the blast either. Just scraps of shadow floating on the wind, dissipating as they rose up.

Danny lowered his hand. A bit of a glow still lingered around him like a halo, a silver outline that shimmered on top of his skin. Jason’s heart raced drunkenly as he stayed rooted to his spot. He wasn’t sure he trusted his legs to move. Danny still looked at the empty space where the ghost had been, his gaze still burning with an overwhelming power. One that Jason was very thankful to not have directed at him. Still, something stirred in his chest like a tug on a wire. The sweet sharp tang of adrenaline saturated his fear. He wasn’t sure if he could stomach that oppressive attention, but a reckless part of him craved it.

Then Danny shifted his stance again. He seemed to shrink back into himself, the glow dimming to a level that passed as human. He turned to Jason with something like guilt on his face, no hint of the commanding presence he held a moment earlier.

“Are you okay?” Danny spoke gently, but his fists were still clenched.

“Yeah. Yeah Iʼm fine,” Jason replied before he even really took stock of his injuries, but as he did he saw he hadn’t lied. The bleeding from his nose had mostly stopped. It hadnʼt been that bad in the first place.

“I think thatʼs enough for tonight.” Danny breathed, finally, releasing the last of his tension. He wouldnʼt meet Jasonʼs eyes.

It had been a while since anyone had saved him. He didn’t have anyone who watched his back, hadn’t for a long time. Strictly speaking, tonight he would have been fine even without the save. Probably.

While he was thankful that Danny covered his ass, it also annoyed him that he thought he had to.

“Thanks,” he grumbled, and then finally Danny looked at him with soft attention.

“You’re sure you’re okay? If it’s a concussion-“

“I’m fine,” Jason said, using his thumb to brush away the drying blood under his nose.

Danny just looked at him with naked concern, his fingers twitching like he didn’t know what to do with them, mouth pressed in a firm line. He took a breath as if to voice another worry but Jason cut him off with a resigned sigh.

“Look, if you're so worried why donʼt you come back to mine.” If it got Danny to stop nagging he didn’t mind burning a safehouse.

Danny nodded, mutely accepting the invite.

Jason led him back to his latest safehouse, a corner loft of an abandoned building, only accessible by rooftop. The walk there had proved that Jason wasn’t hurt bad, though Danny’s eyes kept going back to the blood on his face.

Once inside, Danny sat down on the couch. It was the only real piece of furniture in the house besides his half-broken bed. Jason felt less like a shitty host because truly it was equally as dingy as the one in Danny’s own apartment.

“Want a beer?” Jason asked from the kitchen, as he finished up rummaging his way through some makeshift first aid. The slapdash brace on his nose wasn’t his finest work, but eh. It would heal fine. It always did.

“You drink?” Danny seemed suspiciously surprised. “For me the accelerated healing makes any normal alcohol consumption pretty pointless.”

Jason froze with his hand on the fridge. “Oh. Huh.” That would explain why he had to down a whole handle and a half to feel anything. “No shit.”

Zombie-like he pulled a six pack out of the fridge. He set it down on the coffee table in front of Danny as he fell onto the couch next to him.

A part of him had still not fully believed the whole half ghost thing. Fighting ghosts was one thing. Being one was another. The tech helped maintain the illusion quite well- he had ghost power cuffs that made him invisible and ghost power socks that let him float. That explanation was easy to swallow.

But no gadget could explain why wounds that should take weeks to recover from only took him days. Couldn’t explain why he didn’t get drunk.

But there was a good explanation. A simple one too.

He wasnʼt fully human.

Shit.

Jason grabbed a beer from the coffee table, popped it with his thumb, and downed it in one long pull.

“Batman doesnʼt like metas in Gotham.” He didn’t look at Danny. He wasn’t really even talking to him. He tossed the beer bottle to the floor.

“Weʼre not metas,” Danny said, a gentle echo of what he’d said the first night they met.

“It doesn’t matter. Meta, supernatural, itʼs all the same. All are a dangerous liability in this city. You- we- count.” Jason opened another beer. Downed it. Waited to feel any hint of the alcohol hitting him. Nothing.

He could, however, feel Danny looking at him. “Iʼm not afraid of Batman.”

Jason didnʼt look back. He fiddled with the empty beer bottle, tossed it on the floor with the other one. Of course Danny wasnʼt afraid of Batman. Jason had no doubts which way that fight would go if it ever came to it.

That was an awful image to consider– Batman getting his ass handed to him by some nobody punk in jeans– and all the more reason that Bruce should never know about any of this. The curse ghosts, Danny, Jason’s own burgeoning ghost powers- more secrets he had to keep. More reasons to keep all the Bats at arm's length.

And if they ever did find out? No way their shaky truce could weather that. It’d be another war.

“Heʼs- well, they all are I guess- kind of my family. All Iʼve got left of one, anyway.” The words spilled out. He didn’t want a war with them. He never had.

Danny let out a long breath. “Oh. Family.” He laughed a sad laugh. “My parents tried to kill me. Multiple times actually. I donʼt blame them– theyʼre ghost hunters and well, they looked at me and saw a ghost.”

Danny reached for a beer. He pulled out two and handed one to Jason. He took it. “So at least it canʼt be as bad as that with yours?”

Jason grumbled. “Judging by how it went the first time I came back from the dead? It will be an absolute shitshow.”

Danny clinked his beer against Jasonʼs and took a long swig. “I dunno. I think Bruce might come around if you give him a chance.”

Jason straightened his spine, suddenly alert, alarm bells ringing in his head. “Bruce?”

Danny deflated, suddenly sheepish. “Ah. Whoops.”

That all but confirmed it. Jason groaned. Just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, Danny somehow knew one of Gotham’s most dangerous secrets. “How did you find out?”

“You can probably guess.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “It wasnʼt hard with a little ghostly snooping. It was one of the first things I did when I got to Gotham. I wanted to know just to double avoid him, honest.”

It wasnʼt hard to imagine any number of ways Danny could have uncovered Batman’s identity. Heʼd recognized Jason with and without his mask, but he figured that was because Danny had a sense for ghosts and, well, whatever he was. He hadnʼt considered how easy unmasking the Batman would be for him even without that trick.

“If he finds out you know, you’re dead.”

“I already am. Besides, I thought Batman had a strict no-kill policy?”

Ultimately this changed very little. Just another nail in the coffin of the strict Batman avoidance protocol. Still, he wished Danny would be a little less blase about the whole thing.

Fuck it. In for a penny, he couldn’t un-learn all the ghost shit that had turned his life upside down. He downed the beer. Danny was right the first time. It didnʼt matter what Bruce thought. He couldnʼt stop them from fighting curse ghosts. And it was truly none of his business. Danny sipped his beer with a grimace. Jasonʼs heart twisted.

“How do you stand the taste of this stuff?” Danny asked, a hint of a smile.

“It’s not about the taste. It's about the feeling.” Or lack of one. Jason thought maybe he felt the slightest tingle of tipsiness, but it could just be placebo.

Danny looked at him with that same casual intensity. He could tell his eyes lingered on his half-broken nose. Still worrying over him. Why? Why did he care if Jason got hurt? Jason stared back, trying to get a read on any of the real thoughts behind Danny’s eyes.

The silence stretched out, wide open.

Danny broke it first. “Sorry, uh. I guess I should get going.”

Jason took a beat and remembered how to breathe. “You good? Donʼt drink and fly.”

“I donʼt feel a thing,” Danny smirked. “Still, Iʼll walk.”

“You sure? You could always just crash here tonight.” The words spilled out of him before he could think better of it. He and Danny both froze, like the air has been sucked from the room. He stared at the empty six pack on the coffee table, swatting away any thoughts that dared surface, fighting the rising heat in his cheeks and desperately trying to keep his face blank.

“Itʼs okay,” Danny said finally, quietly releasing Jason from his turmoil. “Iʼll see you tomorrow?” Jason dared a look at Danny then. Warmth in his half smile like a sweater, a glint in his eye that made him feel lightheaded.

Danny stood and left, closing the door gently behind himself. Jason breathed out into the empty apartment. It felt suddenly cavernous and dead without Danny in it.

It shouldn’t mean anything but it did. Friends crashed on each other’s couches regularly, didn’t they? Jason didn’t have much experience with friends, if that’s what he and Danny were. This invitation certainly crossed that threshold. But he’d been careless. All the unknowns were still dangerous. He couldn’t let this be more than a working relationship. A partnership of convenience.

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Pain, tender and sharp, sprung up beneath them. He sighed at the comforting familiarity of it. Then he flopped face first onto his bed, alone.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dp x dc fanfic #dead on main #dead on main ship #jason todd x danny fenton #danny phantom #jason todd #dc x dp #red knight fic

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matttgirlies · 8 months ago

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Matt & Me 🎀

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

a story heavily based on Priscilla Presley’s Book “Elvis & Me” based in the 1950’s - 1970’s.

fem! reader x singer! matt

disclaimer!! - in no way am i saying matt would ever support or do these kind of things, for the sake of the book certain unethical things do happen at times.

warnings - age gap,, i think thats all

all of the songs and celebrities mentioned in here are from the time periods this was written if you are confused🩷

Chapter 1

It was 1956. I was living with my family at the Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas, where my father, then Captain, Joseph Paul y/ln, a career officer, was stationed. He came home late for dinner one evening and handed me a record album.

“I don’t know what this Matt guy is all about,” he said, “but he must be something special. I stood in line with half the Air Force at the PX to get this for you; everybody wants it.”

I put the record on the hi-fi and heard the rocking music of “Blue Suede Shoes.” The album was titled Matt Sturniolo. It was his first.

Like almost every other kid in America, I liked Matt but not as fanatically as many of my girl friends at Del Valley Junior High. They all had Matt T-shirts and Matt hats and Matt socks and even lipstick in colors with names like Hound Dog Orange and Heartbreak Pink referencing names of his songs. Matt was everywhere, on bubblegum cards and Bermuda shorts, on diaries and wallets and pictures that glowed in the dark. The boys at school began trying to look like him, with their fluffy hair and turned up collars.

One girl was so crazy about him that she was running his local fan club. She said I could join for twenty-five cents, the price of a book she’d ordered for me by mail. When I received it, I was shocked to see a picture of Matt signing the bare chests of a couple of girls, at that time an unheard-of act.

Then I saw him on television on Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey’s Stage Show. He was sexy and handsome, with his deep brooding eyes, pouty lips, and crooked smile. He strutted out to the microphone, spread his legs, leaned back, and strummed his guitar. Then he began singing with such confidence, moving his body with unbridled sexuality. Despite myself, I was attracted.

Some members of his adult audience were less enthusiastic. Soon his performances were labeled obscene. My mother stated emphatically that he was “a bad influence for teenage girls. He arouses things in them that shouldn’t be aroused. If there’s ever a mothers’ march against Matt Sturniolo, I’ll be the first in line.”

But I’d heard that despite all of his stage antics and lustful, tough-guy looks, Matt came from a strict Southern Christian background. He was a country boy who didn’t smoke or drink, who loved and honored his parents, and who addressed all adults as “sir” or “ma’am.”

I was an Air Force child, a shy, pretty little girl, unhappily accustomed to moving from base to base every two or three years. By the time I was eleven, I had lived in six different cities and, fearful of not being accepted, I either kept to myself or waited for someone to befriend me. I found it especially difficult entering a new school in the middle of the year, when cliques had already been established and newcomers were considered outsiders.

Small and petite, with long y/hc hair, y/ec eyes, and an upturned nose, I was always stared at by the other students. At first girls would see me as a rival, afraid I’d take their boyfriends away. I seemed to feel more comfortable with boys—and they were usually friendlier.

People always said I was the prettiest girl in school, but I never felt that way. I was skinny, practically scrawny, and even if I was as cute, as people said, I wanted to have more than just good looks. Only with my family did I really feel totally protected and loved. Close and supportive, they provided my stability.

A photographer’s model before her marriage, my mother was totally devoted to her family. As the oldest, it was my responsibility to help her with the kids. After me, there were Don, four years younger, and Michelle, my only sister, who was five years younger than Don. Jeff and the twins, Tim and Tom, hadn’t yet been born.

My mother was too shy to talk about the facts of life, so my sex education came in school, when I was in the sixth grade. Some kids were passing around a book that looked like the Bible from the outside, but when you opened it, there were pictures of men making love to women, and women making love to each other.

My body was changing and stirring with new feelings. I’d gotten looks from boys at school, and once a picture of me in a tight turtleneck sweater was stolen from the school bulletin board. Yet I was still a child, embarrassed about my own sexuality. I fantasized endlessly about French-kissing, but when my friends who hung around our house played spin the bottle, it would take me half an hour to let a boy kiss my pursed lips.

My strong, handsome father was the center of our world. He was a hard worker who had earned his degree in Business Administration at University of Texas. At home he ran a tight ship. He was a firm believer in discipline and responsibility, and he and I frequently knocked heads. When I became a cheerleader at thirteen, it was all I could do to convince him to let me go to out-of-town games. Other times no amount of crying, pleading, or appealing to my mother would change his mind. When he laid down the law, that was that.

I managed to get around him occasionally. When he refused to let me wear a tight skirt, I joined the Girl Scouts specifically so I could wear their tight uniform.

My parents were survivors. Although they often had to struggle financially, we children were the last to feel it. When I was a little girl my mother sewed pretty tablecloths to cover the orange crates that we used as end tables. Rather than do without, we made the best of what we had.

Dinner was strictly group participation: Mother cooked, one of us set the table, and the rest cleaned up. Nobody got away with anything, but we were very supportive of one another. I felt fortunate to have a close-knit family.

Going through old albums of family photographs showing my parents when they were young fascinated me. I was curious about the past. World War II intrigued me, especially since my father had fought with the Marines on Okinawa. He looked handsome in his uniform—you could tell he was posing for my mother—but somehow his smile looked out of place, especially when you realized where he was. When I read the note on the back of the picture about how much he missed my mother, my eyes filled with tears.

While rummaging through the family keepsakes I came upon a small wooden box. Inside was a carefully folded American flag, the kind that I knew was given to servicemen’s widows. Also inside the box was a picture of my mother with her arm around a strange man and, sitting on her lap, an infant. On the back of the photo was inscribed “Mommy, Daddy, y/n.” I had discovered a family secret.

Feeling betrayed, I ran to phone my mother, who was at a party nearby. Within minutes I was in her arms, crying as she calmed me and explained that when I was six months old, my real father, Lieutenant James Wagner, a handsome Navy pilot, had been killed in a plane crash while returning home on leave. Two and a half years later, she married Paul y/ln, who adopted me and had always loved me as his own.

Mother suggested I keep my discovery from the other children. She felt it would endanger our family closeness, though when it did become known, it had no effect on our feelings for one another. She gave me a gold locket that my father had given her. I cherished that locket and wore it for years and fantasized that my father died a great hero. In times of emotional pain and loneliness he would become my guardian angel.

By the end of the year, I’d been nominated to run for Queen of Del Valley Junior High. This was my first taste of politics and competition and it was especially trying because I was running against Millie Collins, my best friend.

We each had a campaign manager introducing us as we went from house to house knocking on doors. My manager tried to talk each person into voting for me and donating a penny or more per vote to a school fund. The nominee who collected the most money won. I was sure that this competition would jeopardize my friendship with Millie, which was more important to me than winning. I considered quitting but felt I couldn’t let my parents or my supporters down. While my mother was out looking for a dress for me to wear to the coronation, my dad kept reminding me to memorize an acceptance speech. I kept putting it off, certain I was going to lose.

It was the last day of the campaign, and a rumor began circulating that Millie’s grandparents had put in a hundred-dollar bill for their vote. My parents were disappointed; there was no way that they could afford to match that much money and even if they could, they objected on principle.

The night they announced the winner, I was all dressed up in a new turquoise blue, strapless tulle net formal that itched so badly I couldn’t wait to take it off. I sat beside Millie on the dais in the large school auditorium. I could see my parents with happy, confident looks on their faces though I was sure they were going to be disheartened. Then the principal walked up to the podium.

“And now,” she said, hesitating to heighten the suspense, “is the moment you’ve all been waiting for . . . the culmination of a month of campaigning by our two lovely contestants: y/n y/ln . . .” All eyes turned toward me. I blushed and glanced at Millie. “ . . . and Millie Collins.” Our eyes locked for a brief, tense moment.

“The new Queen of Del Valley Junior High is . . .” A drum roll sounded. “ . . . y/n y/ln.”

The audience applauded wildly. I was in shock. Called up to the stage to give my speech, I had none. Sure that I was going to lose, I’d never even bothered to write one. I walked, trembling, to the podium, then looked out at the crowded auditorium. All I could see was my father’s face, growing more disappointed as he realized I had nothing to say. When I finally spoke, it was to apologize.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m not prepared to give a speech, as I did not expect to win. But thank you very much for voting for me. I’ll do my very best.” And then, looking at my father, I added, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

I was surprised as the audience graciously applauded, but I still had to face my father and hear him say, “I told you so.”

Being elected Queen was a bittersweet victory, because the closeness that Millie and I once shared was restrained. Still, to me that crown symbolized a wonderful, unfamiliar feeling: acceptance.

My newfound tranquility ended abruptly when my father announced that he was being transferred to Wiesbaden, West Germany.

I was crushed. Germany was the other side of the world. All my fears returned. My first thought was, What am I going to do about my friends? I turned to my mother, who was sympathetic and reminded me that we were in the Air Force and moving was an unavoidable part of our lives.

I finished junior high school, my mother gave birth to baby Jeff, and we said our goodbyes to neighbors and good friends. Everyone promised to write or call, but remembering past promises I knew better. My friend Stephanie jokingly told me that Matt Sturniolo was stationed in Bad Neuheim, West Germany. “Do you believe it? You’re going to be in the same country as Matt Sturniolo,” she said. We looked at a map and found that Bad Neuheim was close to Wiesbaden. I said back, “I’m going over there to meet Matt.” We both laughed, hugged each other, and said goodbye.

West Germany

The fifteen-hour flight to West Germany seemed interminable, but finally we arrived in the beautiful old city of Wiesbaden, headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. There we checked into the Helene Hotel, a massive and venerable building on the main thoroughfare. After three months, hotel living became too expensive and we began looking for a place to rent.

We felt lucky to find a large apartment in a vintage building constructed long before World War I. Soon after we moved in, we noticed that all the other apartments were rented to single girls. These Fräuleins walked around all day long in robes and negligees, and at night they were dressed to kill. Once we learned a little German, we realized that, although the pension was very discreet, we were living in a brothel.

Moving was out of the question—housing was too scarce—but the location did little to help me to adjust. Not only was I isolated from other American families, but there was the language barrier. I was accustomed to changing schools frequently, but a foreign country posed altogether new problems, principally that I couldn’t share my thoughts. I began to feel that my life had stopped dead in its tracks.

September came and with it, school. Once again I was the new girl. I was no longer popular and secure as I’d been at Del.

There was a place called the Eagles Club, where American service families went for dinner and entertainment. It was within walking distance of the pension and soon proved an important discovery for me. Every day after school, I’d go to the snack bar there and listen to the jukebox and write letters to my friends back home in Austin, telling them how much I missed them. Drowning in tears, I’d spend my weekly allowance playing the songs that were very popular back in the States—Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” and the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”

One warm summer afternoon, I was sitting with my brother Don when I noticed a handsome man in his twenties staring at me. I’d seen him watching me before, but I’d never paid any attention to him. This time, he stood up and walked toward me. He introduced himself as Steven Wright and asked my name.

“y/n y/ln,” I said, immediately suspicious; he was much older than me.

He asked where in the States I came from, how I liked Germany, and if I liked Matt Sturniolo.

“Of course,” I said, laughing. “Who doesn’t?”

“I’m a good friend of his. My wife and I go to his house quite often. How would you like to join us one evening?”

Unprepared for such an extraordinary invitation, I grew even more skeptical and guarded. I told him I’d have to ask my parents. Over the course of the next two weeks, Steven met my parents and my father checked out his credentials. Steven was also in the Air Force and it turned out that my father knew his commanding officer. That seemed to break the ice between them. Steven assured Dad that I’d be well chaperoned when we visited Matt, who lived off base in a house in Bad Nauheim.

On the appointed night I tore through my closet, trying to find an appropriate outfit. Nothing seemed dressy enough for meeting Matt Sturniolo. I settled on a navy and white sailor dress and white socks and shoes. Surveying myself in the mirror, I thought I looked cute, but being only fourteen, I didn’t think I’d make any kind of impression on Matt.

Eight o’clock finally arrived, and so did Steven Wright and his attractive wife, Carole. Anxious, I hardly spoke to either of them during the forty-five-minute drive. We entered the small town of Bad Nauheim, with its narrow cobblestone streets and plain, old-fashioned houses, and I kept looking around for what I assumed would be Matt’s huge mansion. Instead Steven pulled up to an ordinary-looking three-story house surrounded by a white picket fence.

There was a sign on the gate in German, which translated as: autographs between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. only. Even though it was after eight o’clock, a large group of friendly German girls waited around expectantly. When I asked Steven about them, he explained that there were always large groups of fans outside the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt.

I followed Steven through the gate and up the short pathway to the door. We were welcomed by James Sturniolo, Matt’s father, a tall, gray-haired, attractive man, who led us down a long hallway to the living room, from which I could hear Brenda Lee on the record player, singing “Sweet Nothin’s.”

The plain, almost drab living room was filled with people, but I spotted Matt immediately. He was handsomer than he appeared in films, younger and more vulnerable-looking with his haircut. He was in civilian clothes, a bright red sweater and tan slacks, and he was sitting with one leg swung over the arm of a large overstuffed chair, with a cigar dangling from his lips.

As Steven led me over to him, Matt stood up and smiled. “Well,” he said. “What have we here?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just kept staring at him.

“Matt,” Steven said, “this is y/n y/ln. The girl I told you about.”

We shook hands and he said, “Hi, I’m Matt Sturniolo,” but then there was a silence between us until Matt asked me to sit down beside him, and Steven drifted off.

“So,” Matt said. “Do you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?”

I blushed and said nothing, not willing to reveal that I was only in the ninth grade.

“Well,” he persisted.

“Ninth.”

Matt looked confused. “Ninth what?”

“Grade,” I whispered.

“Ninth grade,” he said and started laughing. “Why, you’re just a baby.”

“Thanks,” I said curtly. Not even Matt Sturniolo had the right to say that to me.

“Well. Seems the little girl has spunk,” he said, laughing again, amused by my response. He gave me that charming smile of his, and all my resentment just melted away.

We made small talk for a while longer. Then Matt got up and walked over to the piano and sat down. The room suddenly grew silent. Everyone’s eyes were focused on him as he began to entertain us.

He sang “Rags to Riches” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and then with his friends singing harmony, “End of the Rainbow.” He also did a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation, pounding the keys so hard that a glass of water he’d set on the piano began sliding off. When Matt caught it without missing a beat of the song, everyone laughed and applauded except me. I was nervous. I glanced around the room and saw an intimidating life-size poster of a half-nude model on the wall. She was the last person I wanted to see, with her fulsome body, pouting lips, and wild mane of tousled hair. Imagining Matt’s taste in women, I felt very young and out of place.

I glanced up and saw Matt trying to get my attention. I noticed that the less response I showed, the more he began singing just for me. I couldn’t believe that Matt Sturniolo was trying to impress me.

Later, he asked me to come into the kitchen, where he introduced me to his grandmother, Minnie Mae Sturniolo, who stood by the stove, frying a huge pan of bacon. As we sat down at the table, I told Matt I wasn’t hungry. Actually I was too nervous to eat.

“You’re the first girl I’ve met from the States in a long time,” Matt said, as he began devouring the first of five gigantic bacon sandwiches, each one smothered with mustard. “Who are the kids listening to?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding?” I said. “Everyone listens to you.”

Matt seemed unconvinced. He asked me a lot of questions about Fabian and Ricky Nelson. He told me he was worried about how his fans would accept him when he returned to the States. Since he’d been away, he hadn’t made any public appearances or movies, although he’d had five hit singles, all recorded before he’d left.

It felt like we’d just begun talking when Steven came in and pointed to his watch. I had dreaded that moment; the evening had gone so fast. It seemed I had just arrived and now I was being hurried away. Matt and I had just started to get to know each other. I felt like Cinderella, knowing that when my curfew came, all this magic would end. I was surprised when Matt asked Steven if I could possibly stay longer. When Steven explained the agreement with my father, Matt casually suggested that maybe I could come by again. Though I wanted to more than anything in the world, I didn’t really believe it would happen.

a/n - thoughts on this story so far? all the fashion and technology and things is still based in the time period its set in but i promise it gets better as the story goes on! i know the age gap is crazy but back in the day it was normal and its the age gap in Priscilla’s book so i just stuck with it. I in no way support this at all🎀

Excerpt from: "Elvis and Me" by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Scribd.

This material may be protected by copyright.

#matt stuniolo fanfic #matthew sturn #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #sturniolo edit #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo x reader #sturniolo triplets #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #sturniolo imagine #sturniolo smut #nick sturniolo #Spotify

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sturniolo-rat · 8 months ago

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Chapter 1: Cherry Contact

A/N: If this flops, I’m going to cry😢 In loving memory of @newsourceofnonsense, she's not dead; I just like the memory of her.

Contains: smut, oral, fingering , exhibitionism, plot

TW: tell me if you find any

Chris and Y/N are two walking commitment issues that enter into a mutually assured attachment.

Everyone thinks Y/N is a book hoarder, but she considers herself more of a book collector. She has over 700 books that take up damn near her whole apartment. The collection consists primarily of special and first-edition books. It’s probably worth around $50,000, but she doesn’t care because she plans on keeping them forever. To fund her obsession, she works as a waitress at a restaurant that just opened up called “The Copper Kitchen.” her best friend, Dorset, is a freckle-faced white girl with short brown hair, green eyes, and circle glasses. She also happens to be a bartender at “The Copper Kitchen.” Currently, Y/N is outside of her apartment waiting for Dorset so they can carpool to work. When Dorset pulls up in her shitty car, Y/N is ecstatic because she has big news to share.

“Dot, I’ve done it!” she says as she hops into the passenger seat.

“Wh- what have you done?” She’s very concerned that Y/N has done something crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time. The last time something like this happened, she told Dorset that she got her ex’s name tattooed on her left ass cheek.

“I’ve decided to have sex with men again!”

Dorset is relieved. “OMG! Yes! We can finally fight over men again!” They laugh as she merges back onto the road to begin the short trip to work.

“Yep, I’m meeting a guy at the restaurant after my shift,” Y/N says proudly. She's been off men since her break up three years ago, and this new guy is the first not to give her the ick within the first week of talking. She knows meeting up doesn’t automatically mean sex, but she hasn’t had dick in 3 years and feels that she owes it to herself to fuck this man. It’s not like she’s interested in anything else from him. Romance is strictly off the table for her. She prefers to stick to smutty romance books and shitty Tumblr fanfics of perfectly romanticized versions of men.

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear all about your little hookup.” They part as they head to their respective jobs at the restaurant—time to deal with shitty customers who tip like assholes.

Twenty minutes before the end of her shift, the most obnoxious kids walk in. They’re not actually kids; they're about 20, but Y/N considers anyone under 22 a kid, and these guys seem incredibly immature.

“Hey guys!” Says Nick, holding up the camera. “Welcome to today’s Friday vlog where we will be…”

Matt takes the camera, “trying the food at…”

Chris gets into the shot and yells, “The Copper Kitchen!”

Nick hits Chris in the head “Don’t yell in my fucking ear!”

“Don’t hit me, Dickface!” Chris hits him back while Matt holds the camera and laughs to the side.

The Y/N comes up and loudly asks, “Is this your whole party?” She gives them a disapproving look.

Matt is the first to speak, “Yes, ma’am, it’s just the three of us today.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” said Nick and Chris in unison. Chris is noticeably more embarrassed than Nick is. He’s absolutely mortified to be seen acting like a child in front of such a beautiful woman.

“Thank you. Let me show you to your table.” She picks up three menus before walking them to their seats. Only when they’re all sitting and looking up at her does she realize that the three boys are triplets. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”

She points to Matt. “Root beer, thanks.”

She points to Nick. “Water, if you don’t mind.”

She points to Chris. “What’s the best virgin mixed drink you guys have?”

“I’m not sure, but you can never go wrong with a Shirley Temple. Do you want me to go ask the bartender?” She would love to tell Dorset about the sexy triplets that just stumbled in.

“Nope, we’re all good. I’ll take a Shirley Temple and a Pepsi.”

“Great. I’ll be back in a few with your drinks.”

Y/N practically runs to Dorset. Chris can’t help but watch her ass as she walks to the bar to order his drink. When she returns a few minutes later, she hands Chris his drinks last.

“Thank you for the Pepsi, but this…” he lifts the mixed drink and hands it to her. “is for you, miss…” he pauses to look at her name tag. “Y/N. It’s an apology for making a scene in your restaurant.” Nick and Matt are in shock over how forward he’s being. Chris has never really flirted in front of them before. It’s kind of weird, but they can see why he has so many girls in and out of his room.

“Well, thank you…”

“Chris.” he interrupts. “Please, call me Chris.” he gives Y/N a charming smile.

“Thank you very much, Chris. However, my shift is over, and Michelle will serve you for the rest of the night.”

“I’m sorry to see you go, miss Y/N, but I hope you have a good day.”

“Will do, Chris,” says Y/N before she walks away to sit across the room at the bar. She talks to Dorset about her date tonight while she waits for him. His name is Theo. He’s blonde with deep brown eyes, and from what Y/N can tell from sexting, he’s so fucking good at dirty talk. Unfortunately, he is 30 minutes late to meet her.

Chris has been relatively quiet for today’s video. He’s been distracted watching Y/N enjoy his drink and seeing her smile and laugh with her friend. She looks somewhat distressed now, and Chris can't help but think he’s found his opening. He makes the boys wrap up the video and leaves to get Y/N’s number.

He turns on his charm and sits on the stool next to her. “What’s got you so worried, miss Y/N.”

“Pretty sure I’m being stood up. I’m also pretty sure people under 21 can’t sit at the bar.”

“Who says I’m not 21? Maybe I’m here to buy you another drink.”

Y/N cocks her eyebrow as she calls her friend over. “Order me something then.”

Chris tries to think his way out of this. “Listen, you guys are friends, right? She’s just been stood up, and a handsome young man would like to buy your friend a drink. I’m sure if you just forget to card me this one time and let me buy her a Shirley Temple with vodka and extra cherries, it would make her night ten times better.”

“My hands are tied, Y/N. You’re my weakness.” she looks to Chris. “Dirty Shirley coming right up.”

“You’re fuckin’ smooth, aren’t you?” asks Y/N.

Much more confident than he was moments before Chris responds, “Yes, ma’am, I am. Now tell me all about the bad man who hurt you.”

“I’m not really hurt,” she replies, but Chris can tell she’s hiding something.

“No?” he questions.

Dorset comes with her drink, and Y/N takes a nervous sip. “Can I be honest with you?”

“Of course you can, Miss Y/N.”

“I’m not hurt. I was just really horny, and I got my nails done for this date, and not I can’t even touch myself at home because my nails are so sharp,” she says, completely embarrassed. She doesn’t make eye contact with him and focuses intensely on eating her maraschino cherries.

“I don’t mean to be too forward, but…” he leans in, whispering in Y/N’s ear, “ I think I can help you with that.” She doesn’t miss a beat. She takes his hand and drags him to the large family bathroom. Dorset claps and cheers them on openly as they make their way. Y/N makes a mental note to get her back somehow later.

She palms him through his pants, and Chris grabs her face, pulling her into a rough, hurried kiss. “Oh, fuck. You taste like cherries.” he hikes up her uniform skirt and rubs her over her panties.

“You have yourself to thank for that.”

He spins her around so he can watch her face in the mirror as he touches her. “You’re also soaked. Do I have myself to thank for that, too?” before she can say anything, Chris’s finger is spreading her lips apart and playing at her entrance.

She closes her legs in response. “Nope, not so fast. You gotta eat it first.”

Chris sinks to his knees. “Yes, ma’am.” he wastes no time. He spreads her thighs apart, slides her panties to her knees, and starts lapping at her clit from behind. He’s got to be quick because his brothers are waiting for him.

She bends over the sink, propping herself up on her forearms. “Oh, fuck!” she groans.

“Hush, Cherry. Don’t want to get fired for fucking on the job, do we?.” The vibrations from his laugh makes Y/N’s pussy shiver causing her to wiggle a little. Chris loves watching her ass jiggle. “Has anyone ever eaten your ass?” he parts her cheeks and gives her a playful spank. “You have such a cute little asshole. Do you mind if I try?”

“Yeah, you can try,” she says sheepishly, hiding her face from the mirror.

“Don’t worry, I won’t forget to give your clit some attention.”

“Oh, yes! Just like that!” Y/N cries out louder than she means to as his tongue explores her ass. He rubs her clit with the pad of his finger, and she lets out a breathy moan. Chris is hard as a fucking rock, and she’s making such pretty sounds. It’s torture not to touch himself, but he came here to help her out and needs to focus on making her cum.

“Yeah. Tell me how you like it.”

“Fingers, please,” she begs.

“Tell me how many you need, Cherry?”

“Two. Just two, please.” Y/N takes his fingers inside of her with ease. He searches for a moment to find that special spot of hers. “Right there!”

Chris is so happy with how open she’s been to him. The girls he’s been with recently have been so meek. She’s such a good girl telling him just where she needs him. He works his fingers into her faster, making sure to hit her G spot every time. Y/N starts pushing herself back on his fingers. Chris feels her pussy begin to tighten like a vice around him. “You’re such a good fucking girl. Cum for me, Cherry. Cum on my fingers.” her legs giveaway as her climax burns through her, and Chris has to hold her up as he tries to work her through it.

When her orgasm subsides and her vision comes back, Chris is on the floor holding her. She rests her head on his chest and says, “Thank you. That was fucking amazing.”

“Anytime, Cherry. I don’t expect any reciprocation today, but I feel I am owed your phone number.” He hands her his phone, and the new contact is already open.

“Of course, here’s my number, Chris.” she hands the phone back to him, gets back onto her feet, and pulls her panties up. She leaves without saying goodbye. Chris looks down at his phone and smiles at her contact name. “Y/N🍒 (Sexy Waitress)”

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