#ill be fine after this month i just need to catch up

[derkattun]

i think i need help

im behind so much and if i want to stay above the red im gonna be working this month with absolutely no days off, which ive already been doing to the point of burnout. i just need enough to get myself through the month, while still working myself. ill update my goal with both what im making myself and with whatever anyones able to send in. please, im busting my ass for what feels like pennies atp

300/2000

further goal updates will be in the replies

ca / corvysmores

vn / chaotic-corvid

dm for pa

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

.

[reidrum]

if you keep asking | s.r

pairing: spencer reid x fem!bau!reader

a/n: this was requested with “if you keep asking me i’m not gonna be okay” or smth along the lines 😭 i am a glutton for hurt/comfort fics so if yall have any more requests send em in :)

summary: in which you’re trying to keep it together when you hear some detectives talking ill of you, and spencer isn’t gonna have it

cw: hurt/comfort, self deprecation, insecure!reader, bitch ass detectives, protective bau my heart, use of she/her pronouns

wc: 2.2k

_______

the bau team was filing into the bullpen after landing from their last case in seattle, everyone making a beeline for their desks to get a head start on their reports so they could go home faster. everyone, except you. it felt like you were on autopilot, remembering your last known movements and just repeating them for as long as you could.

the case in seattle was rough to say the least. the unsub’s mo seemed to change every minute, making any progress the team made obsolete. the only thing that seemed to be somewhat consistent was where the unsub was taking his victims, which meant the geographical profile was the most important part to solving the case, a task you and reid were assigned to.

it started off fine, you both had found the comfort zone of where the unsub would strike next to figure out how to catch him in the act. except the next time he struck it was completely out of the predicted range, and this time a kid had died. no one could have anticipated that happening. it didn’t make the loss hurt any less.

the team knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault, humans are unpredictable, and that includes serial killers. spencer made sure to tell you specifically that it wasn’t your fault, he knew how you’d get if someone didn’t tell you.

his efforts went to utter waste when you walked by a room at the precinct with detectives whispering about how “you fucked up the whole profile, that’s why that kid died” and “it’s clear you make the team stupider, how did you even get into the fbi in the first place?”

it wasn’t the first time your abilities were in question. you were the newest member of the team, having only transferred six months ago from cold cases. you may be new to the field, but there was a reason hotch chose you personally for the bau.

you tried hard to prove yourself, despite pretty much everyone saying your skillset was enough proof. you’d stay late to finish reports, do extra research on cases to help garcia narrow her searches faster, and you spent countless hours at the training range.

you were a worthy agent, anyone who knew you or read your resume knew that. but right now, you felt like the smallest person on earth, an imposter. what the hell were you even doing here if you couldn’t save him.

you shouldn’t be allowed to feel relief that the team caught the unsub, not when there’s blood on your hands.

the bad thoughts swirling in your head causes you to stall your motions when you’re putting files away, gaining the attention of morgan, “you alright, sweet cheeks?”

“i’m good morgan, don’t worry.” you lie effortlessly. if he can tell you’re lying, he doesn’t mention it and turns back to his work.

taking a deep breath, you stand up to go to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, when you run into jj finishing up making her own, “i was just thinking about you, i got this new creamer i think you’d rea-, hey, are you okay?” jj starts but ends concerned.

you try to focus on metronomic tick of the clock so you dont escalate, “i’m fine j,” you laugh unconvincingly, “what creamer did you get?”

she ignores your question, “because i know that was a tough case, and if you need to talk about it with someo-“

“jj, drop it, please.”

the blonde’s face drops a little at your sternness, but respects your space and offers you to try the creamer before returning to her desk. you feel bad for snapping at her, but the growing guilt within you is giving you apathy, and you can’t bring yourself to care at this moment.

you linger in the kitchen so as to avoid any more concerned faces, and you’re left to your own devices that are slowly overtaking you.

unbeknownst to you, spencer had been watching you since you all landed back in quantico. he kept his distance, mostly because he knew how overwhelmed you get at confrontation, especially about your emotions. he was the same way, a man of logic getting befuddled by emotion was enough cognitive dissonance to last a long time.

he knew it was different with you. you had a way of internalizing everything in your surrounding, a downfall to your endless empathy for others even if they never deserve it. he could explain the logic behind your beliefs, and hopefully use facts to help you relax, but that was the other thing he knew about you; you were stubborn. asking for help is something you hated doing, and if it wasn’t on your accord to be asking, it was even more detrimental to your mood.

so when he watched you duck out from the kitchen and push past the glass doors of the bullpen, he knew you were reaching the head of your doom spiral quickly.

spencer got up from his desk, “i’m gonna go check on her.”

jj nodded, “just be mindful spence, something feels different.”

they’d all been on cases that hit a little too close to home, how could they not when all they do is rid the world of the evilest of evildoers. but after a good cry, a rant to a teammate, or even an emergency therapy session, even the worst of the scum could be washed away.

something about the way you’ve been acting since they landed seemed like those fixits aren’t going to work this time.

he let out a sigh in response and walked out of the bullpen, realizing he didn’t actually know which direction you went in. assuming you’d want to be alone, he thinks the bathroom might’ve been a viable option for you and heads towards it.

the nice thing about the seventh floor is that it’s only for the bau, the bullpen was where the team spent most of their time but outside the doors there were so many empty rooms being used for storage.

so as spencer walked towards the bathroom in the hopes of finding you, his ears pick up on a tiny sniffle a little ways before it. he stops in his tracks, hoping he was just hearing things. but another pained sob rang through the door on his left, and he knew he’d found you.

he rapps the door a few times, softly calling your name, “hey, it’s spencer…can i come in please?”

you were on the other side sitting at one of the abandoned desks with your head down, but shot up at hearing spencer’s voice, “i- i’m fine i just needed a minute. i’ll be back in like two minutes, i promise.” you angrily wipe at the tears pooling on your face, grateful that you took your makeup off in the plane.

“honey, that’s not what i asked,” he starts, “is it okay if i come in?

your heart clenches at the term of endearment as you stare at the door knowing he was waiting for your okay to come in, and you start to internally weigh your options. you could let him in, and let him in to do whatever comforting you know logically would help. or you could lie, and feign ignorance to the end.

don’t they say ignorance is bliss?

you make sure to wipe the last of your tears and your runny nose before practicing a few fake smiles so it didn’t look like your face was frozen in sadness for the last thirty minutes. turning the knob you swing the door open, borderline creepy smile on your face as you greet the man, “hi dr. reid! was there something you were looking for?”

he furrows his brows at your complete (fake) shift in mood, but he comes in and shuts the door behind him, and moves to stand a few feet from you, “what’s going on?”

“nothing spence, i’m fine.” you insist.

spencer thinks if you could be more see through you’d be a windexed window. you’re avoiding eye contact with him, picking at the skin of your thumb, he can see your nose is red most likely from all the tissue blowing, and your eyes are still puffy and lined with some unshed tears still. you are so clearly breaking at the seams, like an old childhood teddy bear with stuffing falling out the sides yet hoping you can offer some semblance of stability despite your state.

“you don’t look fine, honey. why won’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

his words almost make you falter, and you think the walls you built so high are starting to chip down. “it’s not a big deal spence, i-,” a hiccuped breath gives you away, “i can deal with it on my own.”

spencer instinctively shortens the gap between you two, “you shouldn’t have to. i just wanna help you.”

“but i’m oka-“

“no you’re not.”

there is only one tiny thin thread left holding you together. “well,” you take a deep inhale and your voice gets impossibly small, “if you keep saying things like to me i’m not gonna be okay.”

“that’s why i’m here.” he says softly.

you look up at him with the biggest glassy doe eyed look he’s ever seen, and it’s like spencer can hear the snap of the thread in real time when he watches your face absolutely crumble. he doesn’t hesitate to pull you into his embrace, allowing him to hold your head down in the middle of his chest while his other hand smooths up and down your back in comfort.

“i know, shh, hey it’s okay, i got you.” he comforts.

your hands wrap around his waist beneath his suit jacket and you keep your face buried in his chest, inhaling the musky vanilla scent of his cologne mixed with the fresh laundry detergent smell letting it ground you back to him.

“i’m sorry.” you cry.

“don’t say that,” he hushes, “is it about the case?” you nod in his embrace, “we talked about it remember? there was nothing we could have done. we did everything right, sometimes it just doesn’t work out, you know that.” he moves his hand to tangle in your hair and rub your head.

“i- i know,” you say through labored breaths. you take a big breath before admitting the true reason for your anguish, “when we were about to leave, i walked by a room with some detectives talking about how i ruined the case and that…i’m the reason the kid died.”

“what?” he pulls back to look you in the eyes hoping to find any indication that you didn’t believe those poisoned words, “we both worked on that geographical profile together, the whole team agreed it was accurate and acted accordingly. what happened was not your fault. at all.” he emphasizes the last two words.

“yeah but…i don’t know maybe i could ha-“

“stop. you can’t do that to yourself. we did what we could with what we had, the burden of that child’s passing does not fall on you. we were only able to find the unsub’s hiding spot when you figured out he’d been going to the same gas station since the murders started.” he reinforced to you.

“they said that they didn’t know how i even got into the academy in the first place, and that i make the team stupider.” you quietly added.

spencer felt the rage consume his body, already planning the ways he was going to obliterate seattle pd. he cradled your head to look at him in the eyes, “listen to me. you are an important asset to this team. you make this team better at what they do, you make me better at what i do. you mean so much to me and the team okay? please don’t forget that.”

he swipes at a fallen tear on your cheek as you tell him between sniffles, “thanks spence…” you hope he understands the sentiment and love you’re trying to exude to him, even thought you’re unable to vocalize it.

“you gotta tell me if something like that happens,” he softly scolds you, “i’ll make sure they lose their fucking jobs.”

you’re about to speak when he cuts you off, “and don’t tell me that we should be the bigger people, because once the rest of the team hears about this, they’re all gonna be fighting over who’s gonna kick the shit out of them.”

you let out a tearful giggle, “you sound really funny when you curse.”

he scoffs, “what the hell, i do not!”

“you sound like a baby duckling that just learned how to say fuck.”

he starts to guide you out of the room and towards hotch’s office so you can recount what happened, “ouch, i’m hurt. i’d like to think the pistol and fbi badge i carry makes me intimidating.”

you giggle again, and spencer puts aside his rage to revel in the fact that you’re feeling better.

when hotch learned of what happened he immediately called seattle pd to file a motion to get those detectives fired, and the rest of the team were secretly praying for a case in seattle again so they could, as spencer predicted, kick the shit out of them.

[miley1442111]

weird facts- s.reid

a/n: intended for fem reader, but imagine what you like:)))))))))

summary: you finally meet spencer's friends after a very long time, it's just... they don't know about you

pairing: spencer reid x reader

warnings: general cm topics, talk of murder, kissing, suggestive

Spencer felt ill. You weren’t picking up any of his calls, weren’t answering any of his texts, and you hadn’t been seen for a whole 24 hours. According to your friend who was staying over at your house last night, you had gotten a call from work and it meant you had to travel, but it was meant to be within the country, so why weren’t you answering?

“Pretty boy?” Derek called from across the bullpen. “We’ve got a case.”

Spencer quickly followed Derek into the conference room, even if his mind was elsewhere. It sadly, was a mass-murder scheme that they only had a few hours to figure out. 

“Oh yes,” Hotch said under his breath. “We have some help, these are Agents Riley, O’Callahan, and Dr. Y/l/n. They all work with unsubs like these everyday and the doctor here has a lot of background from her time overseas. Please use their help and expertise,” he stated before getting up and ending the meeting. The office was buzzing with movement, but Spencer was too awe-stuck to see you in front of him to move, or really notice the rest of the world around him. It had been 5 months since you’d seen each other in person. Both of your jobs made it practically impossible to see each other more than a few times a year but neither of you minded, you loved each other. 

“Earth to Spencer Reid!” Derek shouted at him and finally broke him out of his trance. 

“Yes?!” He startled, ripping his eyes from your figure immediately. 

“Can we focus on the case please? Not the pretty doctor,” Derek shot you a wink and you rolled your eyes, still unaware of Spencer’s being there because of your engrossment in your files. 

“Yes, fine!” He hissed, beginning the geological profile. 

“Spencer?” You ask, shocked at his being there. 

“Hey honey-” He smiled sheepishly as you wrapped your arms around him in a comforting embrace. The rest of your team and his all looked on, deeply confused. Spencer placed a soft kiss onto your cheek as you smiled. Spencer was over the moon, you were here. You were in his arms. 

“You two know each other?” Agent Riley said with a smirk on his face. “Is that the boyfriend?”

You pulled away despite wanting to hold on longer. You picked back up your casefiles with a contented smile. “Shut up Riley.”

Spencer’s face was red as Morgan, Prentiss, Jj, and Rossi all looked at him in shock. 

“My man,” Derek smirked, giving him a less than soft slap on the back. “Congratulations, how new is it?”

“It’s been 4 years, 77 days, 5 hours and,” He took a split-second to look at his watch. “And 47 minutes.”

Everyone’s jaws dropped more. 

“You’ve been dating him for 4 years?” Agent O’Callahan practically shouted. “We only heard about him for the first time last week!”

“Can’t anyone have privacy anymore,” You muttered, diving into yet another casefile. 

“I have to ask you everything about this-” Derek turned to you but you cut him off. 

“No, you have to build your profile,” You reminded him. “Ask me everything when we catch these fuckers.”

They didn’t need to be told twice.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You sat in the crowded bar, Derek on your right and Spencer on your left, his hand holding your thigh under the table.

“So, he tells you all the weird facts he tells us too, right?” Derek laughed, entertained by your relationship. 

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “But I enjoy ‘weird’ facts.”

Derek nodded his head. “You two are seriously perfect for each other,” he smiled. You could feel Spencer squeezing your thigh, his hands getting sweater by the second. 

“He definitely spits out random facts during sex,” Derek said to the blonde woman next to him and Spencer awkwardly cleared his throat, knowing his own tendencies to not shut up, even in the bedroom. You laughed along with them, not actually giving them an answer. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You walked home with Spencer’s hand in yours. You had successfully caught the unsubs, you had stopped the attack, and now you had time to spend with your brilliant boyfriend. 

“Your friends care about you a lot,” you said as you walked down the dark street. Spencer chuckled.

“They like you a lot,” he admitted. “Probably more than they like me.”

“Spencer, Derek looks at you like you’re his little brother, stop it. They’re just happy that you’re happy,” you smiled. “You are happy, right?” You asked, standing outside his apartment block. 

Spencer chuckled at your question, like he could be anything else. You were the kindest, smartest, and most incredible person he’d ever met. You cared and loved him so deeply. You were his everything.

“I’m more than happy,” he smiled before pressing a kiss to your lips.. His glasses slightly hit off your nose but neither of you minded, his hands began to explore as you pulled away and grabbed his hand, pulling him upstairs his apartment block, ready for another night of ‘weird facts’. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

criminal minds masterlist :)

navigation for my blog :) (criminal minds, marvel, top gun, obx+)

[chocum]

yea tattoo artist choso but .. what abt tattoo artist geto

congrats on 1k btw!

eee thank youuuu 🙈🙈 i’m souuurrr happy you requested geto bc i’ve been wanting to write abt other characters. AND THISS got out of hand lollll ( 1.5k ) idk what came over me i just word vomited all over my phone… & it’s unedited

— tattooartist!geto x reader // mentions of smoking, m masterbation, fleshlight, cum eating, kinda pervy geto idk he tells reader to take her shirt off when she doesn’t need to so, nipple play, v in p, mentions of overstim, creampiee

suguru geto is one of the most, if not the most popular tattoo artists in your area— hell, probably even farther than that. just to book an appointment, there’s a waitlist not including the months and months he’s already booked for. so when you finally get that confirmation email after waiting for what felt like years, you physically jump up, rushing to get ready and go to the parlor

“i don’t have anyone today under that name, sorry”

suguru pushes a strand of silk black hair behind his pierced ears, the dragon tattoo on his hand moving as he does so almost like it’s taunting you.

“what? i got an email today i just-” your hand reaches into your purse slacked over your shoulder to pull out your phone and prove your appointment was today, but when you go back to check, heat spreads across your cheeks faster than ever.

the date said next month

“ya had the right day i’ll give you that” and he’s laughing. not at you but because you’re cute, he thinks. pouting, growing hot from embarrassment. “i’ll tell you what..”

he leans in and you can smell the smoke that lingers on his breath mixing like some sort of love potion with his musky cologne, his pierced eyebrow quirking, browned eyes staring into yours with puffy lips wet from licking, “i can squeeze you in tomorrow. was supposed to have an off day but ill help a pretty girl like you out, how’s that sound?”

and you’ve never nodded faster. smile pulling at your glossed lips, drawing his to get trapped underneath his teeth.

“here i’ll give you my number, i’ll text you the time ‘n stuff later”

with that, you leave his parlor, your number scribbled on the back of some old receipt next to your name and a heart.

geto’s no better than a man. no better. he goes home that night and texts you as soon as he’s tucked into bed.

hey this is suguru btw.

your phone vibrates on your nightstand, and you smile at the notification. it almost felt unreal, someone who felt so unreachable, someone like geto in your phone, texting you first.

hey!

he catches himself smiling at the message too, his mind trailing back to seeing your pretty face when you walked into the parlor. the way you looked around doe-eyed like a little deer in headlights. looked innocent, and he liked that. maybe a little too much, his dick twitching against the fabric of his boxers.

he only talked to you for a few minutes. barely even held a conversation, but god did you look good. can’t blame him for getting like this.

what time is good for you? like i said, im supposed to be off but had no plans so any time is fine.

your thumbs dance across your keyboard as you think of what to say in response. you’re nervous. and if you knew he was jerking his cock, you’d be even more. his hand slowly .. very slowly rubbing his leaky tip, his head full, overflowing and bubbling with thoughts of you. what are you doing right now? are you in bed too? squeezing his warm balls, cupping them, teasing himself, imagining it’s your sweet little hands.

is 6 pm okay?

the little buzz drags him from his thoughts.

yea. see you then, pretty.

the simple little pet name makes you feel like you’re going to explode. so warm all over your body, and you wish you could just time travel to the next day and see him already.

geto brings the palm of his large hand to his face, lolling his tongue out to lick long stripes on it, shivering at the feeling of his own piercing before wrapping around the base of his thick cock, stroking himself only two times. this won’t do.

he reached for the pocket pussy he keeps nested deep in his drawer. leaning over to let spit fall and dribble into the clear toy before rubbing it on his tip.

groaning, “shiiiiittt” his hips bucking up as he slowly lets it sink down— body twitching at the feeling of all the little bumps and ridges massaging his sensitive cock.

“fu- fuck juuuust like that, mhhhm”

imagining he’s inside your tight little walls, squishing him like he’s meant for you, snug and tight like a puzzle piece.

his chest heaved with every snap of his wrist, spit sinking out and ringing out the base of his cock leaking down to his heavy balls, “feel so fucking good baby”

so fast he’s already shooting into the toy, whining because it’s not you. wishing it was you, your warm walls probably feel so much better. probably sound so cute taking him from behind or from the front, your eyes locked onto his.

he came so much it’s leaking all over himself. so messy and dirty and he brings the toy up and licks it all out, shoving his tongue inside the rubbery walls to flick and clean it up.

“shit”

the next day came too slowly. to you but especially to suguru. he went to the parlor an hour earlier to open and tidy up, pulling his raven locs into a ponytail, letting a few stray strands fall and frame his face, counting each and every second.

and then he hears it. the little ding as the door opens, you push it open smiling up at him as you walk through and you look even better than he remembered. and he’s trying so hard to keep his composure.

he nods at you, giving you a small smile, “so what did you want to get, and where?”

at your reply he freezes, his hands almost crumbling up the paperwork he reached for you to fill out — “my chest”

“your chest?”

he parrots you. then he repeats it in his head a few more times. picturing you pull your little top up.

he can tell you’re not wearing a bra with how your nipples perk up and poke through the flimsy, almost see-through fabric.

you nod your head, mhm sounding and bubbling past your lips.

god, you’re going to be the death of him.

after you finish with all the paperwork, he pulls you into the back making small talk asking about your day. and you indulge, asking back, finding comfort in the normality of your conversation. he’s different from what people painted him out to be and you felt relaxed in his presence.

even more when he offers you a seat, cleaning it off before slipping on some black gloves. his hands almost bulge out, his knuckles poking through the latex.

“can i see the design?”

you pull up the picture on your phone and he hums, “and you said your chest, right?”

again he repeats it, almost as if it’s a mantra he’s using to calm his nerves. calm his dick.

you just nod, “do i need to take my shirt off?”

and well no you don’t, not yet at least, but he says yes, reaching forward to do it for you because he’s just so sweet, right? so nice and caring, and welcoming.

and he only wraps his lips around your tits to soothe you, right? sucking, letting his teeth sink into the buds, the silver ball tracing over them. his other glove-clad hand cupping them.

sinks his cock into you just cause he wants to take care of you, right? he could tell you wanted it soo bad. your thighs pressing together so tightly when he pressed his lips against your chest with a soft, “suguru please”

“mhm let me take care of you, pretty girl, spread em, hold yourself open f’me— uh huh, juuust like that.”

your little arms shake and tremble, hooking around the back of your knees as he pushes into your tight cunt. and fuck, he was right. feels so much better than his toy.

“fuuuckk found your spot, baby, ‘s right there? yeah feel good right there?” he rolls his hips up, brushing against that spot, his thick tip kissing it, making your body twitch.

“yes— fuck yes feels so good”

right about you sounding so fucking good too— his cock twitching inside the solitude of your pretty slimy walls. shivering at how you suck and milk him so well, so tight and warm. so fucking warm. feels so good he’s already close, but he wants to keep making you feel good, keep hearing you, and if he was to fuck his cum into you, overstimulating his needy cock to do that, then so be it.

“inside” you whine out at how he twitches, his stokes sputtering and faltering as he languidly pushing into your sopping pussy, leaking all over him, so wet.

“ohh — fuck ohfuck” and it pushes him over the edge, bottoming out to overfill you, make you nice and creamy ‘cause you deserve it. deserve it for being so good, making him feel so good.

letting his head fall onto your shoulder sweat sprinkling his forehead as he empties himself for you. for your pretty pussy, all for you.

[highvern]

YUCK

Pairing: Kwon Soonyoung x f!reader

Genre: fluff, suggestive moments

warnings: mentions of illness/body fluids (snot, vomit), avoidant attachment from reader, Hoshi best boy

Length: ~2.9k

Note: more of this couples bc im crazy thank u @gyuswhore

series m.list: Houdini [s], Green Light [s, f], Talk [a, s, f], Casual [a, s, f], Mine [s], espresso [f, s]

m.list

This blog is intended for 18+ only! Minors/blank blogs will be blocked.

Two and a half months of hooking up with a guy who may or may not be a furry and things start feeling…comfortable. 

You’ll pretend until the day you die that every time the weekend rolls around you won’t end up naked in Soonyoung’s bed. Or your own. Usually it is your own because he has more roommates than you and yours leaves to stay at her boyfriend’s until Monday night which means there is no need to keep quiet (which you and Soonyoung both struggle with but you refuse to acknowledge that fact). 

It allows for many nights bent over the kitchen counter, Soonyoung’s chest hot against the back of your thighs as he works you up with his mouth. Or occasional nights on the couch after you both are too into each other to make it upstairs to your room, planted firmly in his lap while pinning his hands to the cushions. There's also the nights he drags you straight to bed and demonstrates exactly what all the pictures you took while tucked away in the privacy of a gross bar bathroom did to him. 

You’re pretty sure Soonyoung has picked up on your game by now because instead of asking ‘if’ he’s taken to asking ‘when’ he can come over. And it's annoying that it doesn’t really annoy you at all.

Soonyoung comes over on Friday nights and leaves Saturday afternoon, except when he shows up on Saturday mornings and stays well into Sunday night. Or the occasional weekend where you remember who you are and show up on his door and leave three hours later with cum still drying on your thigh as you walk past his roommates still pregaming in the living room.

Except now it's Friday and you’ve got nothing on your mind except for the inside of a toilet bowl and the cool tile of the bathroom floor.

Call it food poisoning or maybe the flu, but you’ve been in and out of sleep since the early hours of dawn. Shivering on the floor, the only company you have is a pile of dirty clothes. Even the crack of light under the door is too much stimulation for your illness-racked brain to tolerate.

“Y/N?” your roommate calls from the other side of the darkness, out in the hallway where it's safe from whatever curse is making home in your gut. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay home? I don’t mind.”

“I’m fine,” you groan. Your words couldn’t convince the deaf but you try anyway. 

She responds but it slips right past because another bout of nausea takes hold.

You manage to fall asleep at some point, clammy on the floor with aching hips. Maybe an hour or maybe ten minutes. It doesn't really make a difference because you still feel like shit when the door opens and the hall light burns through your retinas.

“Hazel, I said I’m— What are you doing here?” you croak from the floor. 

Soonyoung stairs down at you, face soft with something that might be worry but it’s probably just the fever melting your brain. “You look like shit.” 

“You always know just what to say.” The usual snark isn’t there, replaced by a pathetic helpless whine of discomfort because all you want is to curl up and die. “Did you come to insult me or…?”

“Hazel let me know you were sick and usually sick people need medicine and soup so I brought that and this tea my mom used to give me as a kid.” 

“Are you trying to cure me so you can get your dick wet?” 

“No. If I wanted to stick my dick in a Petri dish I feel like there are easier ways to go about it.” He kneels right next to you like he isn’t the slightest bit concerned about catching the plague brewing in your immune system. A cool hand cups your cheek, thumb gentle at your temple where a dull throb has haunted you all day. You lean into the comforting touch without much thought.  “When was the last time you showered?” 

“I don’t know. Like two days ago?” 

“Yeah, I can smell that. Alright my little germ cell, let’s get you cleaned up.” 

His arms snake under yours, dragging you from the floor even with your muscles limp. It takes more maneuvering but you don’t bother helping. If he wants to play not-so-sexy nurse and patient then that's his problem. The warmth of his sweater is welcome though. 

“Is this some weird fetish thing?” Nose buried in Soonyoung’s chest, it comes out in a jumble. “Because I can’t handle this and the furry stuff.” 

“Yes, caring about your health is a fetish for me. Really gets me off knowing you’ve been a good girl and taken your vitamins.” 

“I knew it.” you whisper. “I’m not calling you daddy if that’s what you want.” 

Soonyoung laughs and the movement sends another bolt of pain through your skull. He tuts over your responding whimper and what may be his lips press to the side of your head briefly. It’s warm and comforting, the beat of his heart lulling you into the first satisfying rest since you woke up. Your hands bunching the front of his shirt are desperate for anything to keep you steady. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t release you while setting things up for a shower; accommodating for your weight with a slow shuffle and more placating coos against your hairline every time you protest a sudden jostle. The chill of the bathroom fully sets in when he pushes down your sweats and shucks off your snot stained sweater before tossing away his own. If you weren’t barely functioning it might even be impressive that he’s kept you in his arms the entire time.

“If you’re trying to fuck me, I hope you don’t mind snot.” You blow your nose against the curve of his neck just to be a bitch. 

You feel more naked under the stream of water than you ever have, which is ironic given you’ve had Soonyoung face to crotch more times than you can count. Something about the non-sexual nature of nudeness, feeling the least sexy you ever have while he scrubs you down with gentle hands, turns your stomach more than before.

“I’m not trying to fuck you,” he laughs again; a thousand volts straight to the heart. “Don’t worry.” 

You pop out of hiding, hurt by the idea. “You don’t want to fuck me?” 

Soonyoung’s face is soft, cheeks round and hair already damp to his forehead. He isn’t disgusted by the puke on your breath or the sweat matting your hair. Or if he is, he hides it well. “I always want to fuck you but right now I’m trying to make sure you don’t die.” 

You dive back into his shoulder, mind numb to anything beyond the silky feel of hands washing away days of ick. You’ve felt his hands on almost every part of your body but right now they lack the characteristic urgency from those moments where you can’t get enough of each other quick enough. He’s touching you the way he does in the glow of the moon after you’ve both been satisfied, when Soonyoung thinks you’re asleep and you let him as every curve and dip and hill of your body is covered in gentle strokes like he’s committing you to memory.

“I can do that on my own,” you argue. 

The facts aren’t stacked in your favor right now but it’s the principle: you don’t need him to take care of you. You can handle it on your own. He’s only here because you let him.

“Oh, I know. Now close your eyes so I don’t get soap in them.”

He cups your face, thumbs rubbing away the sweat that's been caked on since morning. Then it’s a rough washcloth doused in the scent of your face wash but you swat it away in favor of the calluses on his fingers. If you weren’t a dead woman walking he’d never get a chance to be this close. 

How is it more terrifying for someone to wipe away your boogers than let him see you naked multiple times a week? A question knotting your stomach into tight pieces as Soonyoung hums some tune you don’t recognize like he’s more than happy to do so.

Your brain stops working after so long; too exhausted from everything to think more about what this all means. Not even the familiar flat press of his front against yours can incite a response beyond content. All the world shrinks into the pitter patter of the water swirling around the drain, and the parts that are warmed by Soonyoung and the parts that are waiting to be.

When you come back to awareness, the waters off and he is whispering something into your clammy forehead.

“Hmmm?” 

“I said, it’s time to get out.”

More shuffling gets you back into your room where the mattress takes your weight while he digs around for fresh clothes. You roll onto your side, clad in a towel and nothing else, resound to fall asleep then and there.

“Alright, arms up,” he commands. 

You try to pull away, diving back into the pillow soaked from your hair but Soonyoung gets you up at the waist, maneuvering stiff limbs patiently.

“Do you have an armpit fetish too?” you ask with the collar stuck around the top of your head. 

“And you call me a freak?”

Next is pants, and it takes a few tries for you to even consider being helpful. Soonyoung lifts each leg individually, working the fabric as far as he can. Then a few dramatic grunts from coordinating your entire body weight but you’re back in a clean pair of pajamas and tucked under the covers. Soonyoung didn’t rise to any more of your snide remarks about being naked. He simply avoiding your bare skin like it’d burn. Not even his favorite thing about you (boobs) gets any attention, just a few chuckles and more kisses into your temple.

You melt into the plush mattress, hidden beneath a pile of blankets from the cruel world that cursed you with new realizations you're not prepared for just yet. 

Eyes closed the entire time, you hear Soonyoung leave without so much as a goodbye. In theory it’s what you want. Exactly how you prefer; you alone, him somewhere you can pretend all the confounding feelings don’t exist. You didn’t even want him to show up in the first place, but now that he’s been here and you’re horrifically aware how nice it feels to have someone take care of you. You miss him. 

And as soon as the pit opens up, you hear someone shuffling down the hall coming towards your room.

“Alright, once you eat something you can sleep.”

The thought of food tightens your stomach more than the fact he didn’t leave you but he’s right. You need fluids and you’re not strong willed enough to get them yourself.

After the first few bites, you feel a little more human and less like a walking sack of shit. With it, the discomfort of this entire ordeal rears with a new vengeance. 

“Why are you here?” It sounds like an accusation.

He doesn’t even miss a beat. “Because I like you.” 

Soonyoung says it matter of factly, the same way the sky is blue and water is wet, while shoving another bite into your mouth.

You’re too exhausted for a fight right now; not with the only person making a real effort to keep you alive, but the instinct is strong after years of low expectations and plenty of disappointment.

“Why?” 

“Because I just do.” 

Your eyes meet over the spoon. He doesn’t look annoyed or perturbed or even angry. He likes you whether you like it or not. 

“I don’t date.” 

“Okay,” he agrees, wiping at the spill dripping from your chin.

“You aren’t gonna argue?” 

“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’ and your need for confrontation with it. “You don’t wanna date? That’s fine. I’ll take whatever I can get, even if that’s spoon feeding you on your deathbed.” 

You take the next bite before commenting, “You’re so weird.” 

“I like you too. Now open up for the airplane.” He makes the noise and the medicine twists your brain into actually finding it funny. “How are you pretty even when you’re blowing your nose on my shirt?”

“Deal with the devil.”

He passes you a cold cup when you brush away the remainder of the soup. One sip is all it takes.

“How did you know I like the orange Gatorade?”

“I asked Jun to give me June’s number and she gave me Hazel’s number and I asked while I was at the store.”

“You went through all that trouble just to buy me the right Gatorade?” you snort.

“It really wasn’t any trouble.”

It isn’t but it’s more than anyone else has ever done for you. The fresh wave of nausea has nothing to do with your cold.

“I’m tired,” you tell him. 

The mess is cleaned up in silence. You pretend to fall asleep and Soonyoung lets you until he’s shoving more medicine your way. 

You shake your head, failing to refuse because Soonyoung is doing that dumb airplane nose again and when you cough up a laugh he shoves the spoon in your mouth and you’re left with no choice but to swallow.

Then he’s up and you watch through heavy eyes as he gathers his things. You’ll blame it on the drugs loosening the clutch you have on your emotions later.

“Where are you going?” you ask with faux apathy, negated by the fist tangled in the hem of his sweatshirt in case he evaporates away.

“Home. Unless…you want me to stay?” A tug at the sweater is your answer to that horrible thought. “Oh, thank god – I was getting sad.”

You roll over, offering him your back to curl around. The muscles tensed around your spine soften when he does. 

I sleep better when you’re here.

You won’t tell him that but Soonyoung stiffens for a moment and the fear you’ve said the wrong thing creeps in where fatigue hasn’t rooted just yet. But a kiss to your covered shoulder and a hand under your sweater, flat against your stomach so you stay as close as possible calms the thoughts enough you can drift off.

It’s strange. Having the heat of his body at your back without the limpness of a good fuck still coursing through your veins to thaw the parts that hate pillow talk and the stickiness that come with it.

What's even stranger is that you don’t really mind it all. If anything, it’s actually pretty nice.

Taglist: @tomodachiii @cvpidyunho @miniseokminnies @ddaengpotate @arycutie

@gaebestie @primoppang @gyuguys @mine-gyu @doremifasire

@missminhoe @toplinehyunjin @crvs4vldtn @prettygyuuu @sliceofwoozi @writingbarnes

@dokyeomkyeom @christinewithluv @minwonfairy @idkjustlovingbts @wobblewobble822 @futuristicenemychaos

© highvern. copying/reuploading/translating my work anywhere is strictly prohibited.

[starboye]

pairing: drew starkey x male reader

request: can i request a drew starkey smut with size difference, drew being taller and more buff than the reader? could the reader be, like, a popstar and he and drew finally see each other at an award show after months of being apart so they sneak off to the bathroom and drew eats the reader out like it’s his last meal?

warnings: smut, ass eating, cursing, fluff

it had been weeks since you and drew got to see each other, yes you guys face timed every night but that wasnt enough for you or him, you both needed each others bodies, to feel the other more than the need for oxygen itself.

and you finally got what you wanted when you saw drew walk into the building where the award show was being held, you ran into his arms and hugged him tightly "i missed you so much" you say into drews chest "i missed you too but do you really wanna mess up your suit on you big night" drew chuckles "i dont care about the suit drew" you reply with a smile "yeah well id like my boyfriend to look good" he says fixing up you suit a little.

you pull drew in for a quick kiss and pull away as to not bring to much attention to yourself "what no real kiss for me"drew joke playfully pouting "well i wouldnt wanna bring the most attention to us" you say "then why not take this somewhere more private" drew adds grabbing your hand and taking you to the bathroom and locking the door.

"drew whatre you doing" you question suspicious of his motives "this" drew says leaning over to kiss to, his hands sliding down to your waist and his large body frame pressed against yours as you melt into the kiss, drew then pulls out the kiss to catch a breath "wanna.." he hints "we couldnt, i have to be up in like 10 minutes" you huff "which gives me 10 minutes to do some stuff" drew says kissing down your neck.

"no drew i wouldnt wanna mess up my suit, do you know how hard the guy said he had to work to get this perfectly right" you say admiring the stitch work of the suit "well then ill be extra careful not to ruin it" drew smirks before lifting you up onto the bathroom sink and starting to make out with you.

"drewww" you whine "c'mon just give me five minutes and i'll have you back out there looking like nothing even happend" he says sloppily kissing your neck "fine, but if you mess this suit up im gonna kill you" you huff "i promise i wont" drew says removing his blazer and then going to his zipper "nope" you sternly say stopping drews hands "come on just the tip" he tries persuading you.

"you yourself know thats a lie, and youre not getting cum on this" you say "fine" drew complies but an idea pops in his head, he picks you up and pushes you against the bathroom wall before sliding your pants down along with your underwear "drew" you say trying to figure out what he's doing "suck" he orders putting his two fingers in front of your mouth and you obliged while still curious on what hes doing.

he then pulls his slick fingers out of you mouth once theyre wet enough and brings them down to your entrance "drew" you say once more before he slides them into you, he pulls you into a kiss to silence the loud moans you let out as he pumps his thick fingers in and out of your hole "you like that" drew asks in between kisses "yes" you say breathy.

"just a little more" drew says opening you up a little more with his fingers before pulling them out leaving your hole open of his next move, he squats down with his knees not touching the floor as to not ruin the suit, he admires your hole a little, you could feel is breath passing over your ass before shoving his face in, his tongue thrusting in and out of you.

"fuck" you moan covering your mouth as to not be too loud "god you taste so good" drew breathlessly says pulling back for a minute only to go back to eating you out "ah dr-drew" you stammer dropping your head onto the wall "yeah" he says, his focus fully on your ass "please go faster" you beg arching your back slightly "dont have to ask me twice" he smiles eating you out even faster.

he lays small smacks on your ass and gropes it roughly to draw those sweet moans out of you "c'mon baby let me hear the pretty voice of yours" he smirks as his tongue slides into your hole making you let out a pretty loud moan "yeah just like that, think of it as vocal warm ups" drew says "drew m'gonna" you trail off as you take your dick out of your pants and cum on the bathroom wall.

"good boy" drew smiles pulling out of your ass "did you do that just so i could cum" you ask "yeah you looked stressed out about your performance so i wanted to help you calm down" drew smiles standing up and kissing you, your back firmly placed against the wall as drew kisses you deeply "you know i love you right" drew asks "i love you too drew and thanks for the calm down" you chuckle "youre welcome" drew sweetly says kissing you one last time.

"wait but what about you, you didnt get to cum" you ask worriedly "oh dont worry we'll deal with that once the shows over promise" he smirks putting his blazer back on "okay then" you say pulling your pants back up and buttoning them, you and drew both clean the up the mess you made in the bathroom before walking out.

you both make your way to your table with all your friends, drew greets all of them as the award show starts, after the awards are given out the host calls you up to preform your song, as you get up drew grabs you hands and pulls you into a soft and sweet kiss "youre gonna do amazing" drew says before you leave.

as you preformed you kept glancing at drew, giving him seductive looks while biting your lip, and you knew the moment you finished your show drew was gonna drag you to the nearest hotel and fuck you the whole night, but you also knew you were gonna enjoy every second of it, you know you gotta make up for lost time.

[winterbuckwild]

@flowercrowngods So sorry...

"Hey Robin, I think we have been missing each other, been a while. Just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Hope you are having a great day. Guess ill..er...catch you later."

It had been nearly a year since he'd actually spoken to Robin. She'd gone to college across the country, so excited to finally get away from Hawkins; away from all the drama and trauma and pain, and Steve couldn't fault her for it. She was smart she had a dream and she was following it. And he loved that for her.

The phone calls started at a few times a week. Quick ones because they were both pretty broke, but it quickly became once a week when classes started. Every fortnight during exam season, and then an elaborate game of phone tag for a good three months when his shifts and her classes didn't match up.

Around month 7 he had sort of...given up. It had made him feel like a bit of a stalker in the end, his three phone calls to every one of hers, leaving shorter and shorter messages on her machine. He still wanted to talk to her every day, to tell her about the good things that had started happening to him.

How he'd gone to the library to figure out a sink issue and was too broke for a plumber and found out that he was pretty good with his hands. That he'd enrolled in trade school and was excelling. That he liked someone and he thinks it could be serious.

That the person he liked was a guy and that he was kinda scared and kinda excited and wanted someone to talk to about it. That the guy was Eddie of all people.

He wanted to gush about Eddie the way she used to with Vickie. That his hair was soft and his eyes were soft and his hands when he touched Steve were perfect and kind while his dimpled grin was wicked and promising. That Eddie was brave as fuck making the first move and patient with Steve's minor freak out that he was going through alone.

Eddie had helped him instead.

So it had been three months since Steve had tried calling, and he hadn't had a single message. No calls that he knew about and his machine worked fine. His number hadn't changed. He left the message as closure really, leaving a space in his heart for the friendship that changed him for the better, a friendship that he would always be grateful for. That he would always cherish.

But he couldn't keep waiting around, banging his head against that brick wall. He would always be there if she needed him but, well, she didn't really, did she? Not anymore.

He hung up the phone and grabbed his van keys. He'd traded in the beemer a month ago since he would need the space for tools eventually and it was like shedding that last little part of King Steve. The final nail in that coffin and he felt an odd sense of relief.

He was meeting Eddie before class, they were going to grab some lunch beforehand and then after come back and start packing up the apartment. Steve was moving in with him and he couldn't be more excited about it. He'd told Eddie that and the other man had beamed at him, just as pleased.

He didn't think about not having anyone else to tell.

[to-thelakes]

Reader and Luke not being together yet (even tho theyre both stupidly in love with the other (duh)) and reader falls asleep on Luke in the jet after a rough case!!

statistical anomaly

pairing; luke alvez x fem!reader

summary; after a case drags you to the jet late at night, you fall asleep on luke's shoulder but not before overhearing him talk about you

warnings; fluff, tired reader, team being absolute chaotic little gremlins, spencer reid (my beloved <3)

notes; i saw this and despite how ill i feel (nothing is new there, literally been dying for six months straight(not actually, just feels that way)), i was kicking my feet and giggling because STOP, i need this and want this in my life. so, i may have written a little drabble hehe, is it edited? no. is there mistakes? probably, i'm tired. but the thoughts of luke alvez never stop so enjoy

(also i made this before a case instead of after bc i just honestly, idk, i just did, so whoops but same vibes)

masterlist

It was late when you were called in for a case. You had just got home, texting Luke that you were home safe (like you always did) when Garcia called. She profusely apologised for calling you in so late but then asked you to come back. You did, without question. It wasn’t Garcia’s fault and there were lives to save; even if you were exhausted. 

A soft sigh escaped your lips as you settled into the jet. You were sat around the table. Luke was next to you and Emily and Reid were sat across from you. You all had the case files out, the laptop with Garcia on it was on the table too. Emily began to run you all through the case, preliminary discussions passing quickly without much of a word from you.

You were exhausted and your brain was lagging behind so you knew it was better to stay quiet for now. Once you were done, everyone slipped away into their own little group. Reid and Emily were discussing the case while you simply closed the case file. Luke glanced down at you.

“Everything okay?” He asked softly. You ran your hand across your face before you nodded your head but you weren’t convincing him or anyone. He gently took a hold of your wrist, resting it against the table, “Do you want a coffee?” He added after a moment. You shook your head.

“I’m fine, really,” You attempted to convince him but he wasn’t. He glanced around before his gaze returned to you, “Talk me through the background,” You requested. Luke looked at you for a moment and he eventually gave in to you. You were giving him the eyes and he couldn’t ever resist that. So, he began to read through the background that Garcia had managed to compile.

You really tried to listen but listening to Luke’s voice was calming you down. You felt the exhaustion seeping back in and you let your head rest against Luke’s arm. He - obviously - didn’t have a problem with it. Any excuse to have you close was good enough for him. He loved holding you, touching you, keeping you close.

“Did you get any of that?” He teased softly, noticing how your eyes had fallen closed. You mumbled something but he didn’t catch any of it. You were clearly exhausted and so he shuffled so that you could rest more comfortably against his shoulder, “I’ll wake you when the flight lands,” He whispered softly into your ear. You hummed happily in response before you let sleep take you.

It was hard for Emily and Reid not to notice. Reid was the first to suspect that there was something going on between the two of you but whenever he brought it up, he was shut down. But the rest of the team were catching on now.

“You know, a friendship, on average, takes 21.9 months to turn romantic,” Reid stated and Luke lifted his gaze up, cocking an eyebrow, “But you’ve been friends for nearly three years, so you’re both a statistical anomaly,” He added. Luke tried his best not to shift but it was clear that he was baffled by Reid’s sudden statistics.

“Reid,” Emily warned. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Reid to talk because she did enjoy hearing him but she didn’t want to make a situation out of this right now. They had other things to worry about.

“Nothing is going on between us,” Luke responded. A scoff escaped Emily’s lips involuntarily and Luke’s head snapped towards her, “I’m letting her sleep,” He defended. Emily tried to distract herself from this conversation by looking at the case file but she was still gonna be nosy.

“You let her touch you more than anyone else on the team. You also regularly watch her while she’s working and you’re much more engaged when she speaks and you’re more likely to defend her when one of us fights against her theories. You might not have something going on but you clearly love her and she loves you,” Reid stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Luke’s eyes widened and he glanced down at you before he looked back at Reid.

“How do you know that?” Luke asked, the emotions warring in his chest as he tilted his head to the side slightly.

“Oh, she told me,” A smile appeared on his face and you bit your lip as you still rested against Luke’s shoulder. You had been asleep for a little bit but Reid and Luke speaking had roused you from the brink. You had been silently listening but Reid noticed you begin to smirk slightly.

“Stop talking about me, please,” You mumbled, your tone thick was exhaustion. Luke’s eyes widened and Reid chuckled softly, “I’m trying to get some sleep.” Luke looked down at you and then back at Reid and he seemed completely dumb-founded. He was at a loss for words. It was cute and that is why you just let yourself settle back down and go back to sleep. You needed it.

<3

[kayewrite]

Maybe this time

genre: exes to lovers (?)! angst with happy ending!! word count: 2.6k

Han Jisung x reader!! han x fem reader

wherein; Two old friends reunite and reminisce about their shared past. As they reconnect, they wonder if time can bridge the gap they left behind. Will their bond pick up where it left off, or will this meeting pave the way for a new chapter? maybe this time…

(i really want to write this before and glad i finally made it i hope you like it!!)

ps: im sorry i dont really make another part in my works because i want to leave it as open ending and let my readers continue the story on their own. but if i have time and decide to make, ill promise ill make one (especially 'want so bad')

but i hope you enjoy reading because i love making this fic. thank youu. love lots :) please love this as much i love it

Life… is beautiful.

Even if it is full of pain, sadness, and hurt.

Even if it is full of tears, there are also moments of happiness, smiles, and gladness.

Life is a roller coaster. It lifts you up, then plunges you down, only to rise again. When you step into the cart for the first time, you know it will bring a whirlwind of emotions—fear, joy, anxiety. You know from the start what to expect, yet you still take the ride because deep down, you believe it will be worth it in the end.

You smile as you finish writing the last sentence in your book, the final period punctuating months of dedication and passion. It's done. After all the hard work, the late nights, and the self-doubt, it's finally finished.

You stand up, stretching your back with a satisfied sigh, and decide that a reward is in order. You change into your exercise outfit, slip on your earphones, and set the timer on your watch.

30 minutes.

You head out, jogging through the park outside your apartment. The weather is perfect—a gentle breeze, the sun filtering through the trees, a few people scattered around, minding their own business. You focus on your breathing, your feet hitting the pavement in a steady rhythm, the world around you fading into the background.

As you reach a shaded path, you feel the need to pause and catch your breath. You slow down, resting your hands on your knees. Suddenly, a hand lands on your shoulder, startling you.

You jump slightly, turning to see who it is. The surprise on your face deepens when you see him.

He’s breathless, his chest heaving as he holds up an index finger, gesturing for a moment of silence. “I’m… sorry,” he says between gasps. “Give me… one second… to catch my breath.”

You stand there, stunned. The face in front of you is one you haven't seen in years.

It’s Han—your first love.

“Nice to see you again,” he finally says, a grin spreading across his face.

You’re speechless for a moment, your mind racing to catch up. “Han… I can’t believe it’s you!” The shock wears off, replaced by a wave of warmth and nostalgia. You reach out and hug him, the familiar scent and feel of him bringing back a flood of memories.

He laughs, hugging you back and patting your shoulder. “I saw you while I was driving and I had to stop. I called out to you, but then I realized you had earphones on.” He chuckles, still slightly out of breath.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” you exclaim, pulling back to look at him properly. “I’m so surprised to see you! How have you been?”

“I’m fine, doing well. It’s so good to see you again.”

“Me too!”

The moment feels surreal as if you’re in a dream. You find yourselves sitting in a cozy café, sipping your favorite strawberry latte while he enjoys a slice of red velvet cake. The scene feels like a perfect snapshot of your reunion, a peaceful moment in the midst of life’s chaos.

Han was your first love, the boy who held your hand when you were just 13. Back then, you both thought you understood love—childish dreams of the future, talking about getting married, and planning a life together as if you knew what it all meant.

You smile, lost in the memories of those innocent days.

-

“Let’s get married,” he had said one time, both of you sitting on a bench, holding hands.

You stopped munching on your favorite snack, looking at him. His eyes, filled with affection, sparkled like they held tiny beating hearts. If this were an animated movie, there would be hearts popping out of them.

“Yes, when we’re adults,” you replied with a smile, leaning your head on his shoulder.

“That’s a promise, okay?”

“Yeah, a promise.” And with that, you linked pinky fingers, sealing the promise with the innocent trust only kids have.

-

“How are you?” you ask now, your eyes locking with his. The happiness in his face is contagious.

“I’m doing well, healthy and living life to the fullest.” He smiles, and it’s the same smile you remember—genuine, warm, unchanging.

“I’m glad to hear that. Really,” you say, feeling the warmth of his presence spreading through you.

“I’m really glad to see you too. How about you?”

“I’m doing fine, healthy as well. Life hasn’t always been easy, but I’m at a point where I’m happy and living my best life.”

“Thank God for that,” he says, his voice full of sincerity.

Hearing those words from him makes you both sigh, a shared sense of relief washing over you.

“I saw you on TV. You’re a famous writer now. You don’t know how proud I am of you,” he says, his voice full of admiration. “I’m glad you achieved your dream.”

His words hit you deep, emotions welling up. “Thank you.”

Being a writer had always been your dream.

-

“When I grow up, I want to be a famous writer. I’ll write books that inspire people,” you had said, lying on the grass, looking up at the stars with Han beside you. You held your pen up like a magic wand, closing one eye as you imagined the future.

“And I hope you achieve that dream,” he had said, taking your hand and holding it tight.

You had smiled at his words, feeling the warmth of his support.

“What about you? What do you want to do when we grow up?” you asked, turning to look at him.

“Me?” He had looked at you, then back at the stars. “Aside from being with you, which is my ultimate dream, I want to become an engineer.”

“An engineer?”

“Yeah… I want to build a big house for us. A really big house.”

You had felt a pang of emotion then, knowing how much he longed for a family and a place to call home.

-

“And you, Han?” you ask now, watching as his smile grows even wider.

“I’m now a licensed engineer.”

“Oh my God, really?!” You can’t contain your excitement, jumping up from your seat to hug him again. “I’m so proud of you, Han! You finally achieved your dream.”

He laughs, happiness radiating from both of you as you hold each other.

“I’m proud of us,” he says, hugging you back tightly.

You pull away, a little embarrassed by your outburst. “I’m so sorry, I just got so happy to hear that, Han.” You sit back down, smiling shyly.

“It’s okay, I’m really happy for us too.”

Han goes on to tell you about his work. He’s the engineer responsible for a new apartment complex in the city. That’s why you crossed paths again. As he talks, you listen intently, your heart swelling with pride for the man he has become.

You nearly tear up as he shares his journey—the hardships, the trials, the long years of studying. He worked hard, from kindergarten all the way to college, never losing sight of his dream. And now, he’s living it.

“I’m finished talking about me. Now, let’s talk about you,” he says, turning the focus back to you.

You fall silent, memories flooding back. You remember the times when you almost gave up on your dream, when no one bought your books, and your work gathered dust on the shelves. You remember walking through bookstores, seeing your book in the corner, covers nearly torn from being ignored.

You remember the despair, the feeling that maybe your dream was just that—a dream. But then, something changed. A light entered your life, lifting you up, guiding you to where you are now. It was hard—so hard—but you persevered, and now you’re here, a successful author with stories that touch people’s hearts.

Tears fill your eyes as you tell him this, the emotions too strong to hold back.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away,” you laugh through the tears, wiping them with a tissue he hands you.

He’s still a gentleman, just like he always was.

“I’m glad for you,” he says softly.

“I’m glad for us,” you reply, feeling a profound connection to him, even after all these years.

-

“What will happen after we achieve our dreams?” you had asked him once, walking together along a tree-lined path. It was fall, and you kicked at the leaves, watching them swirl in the breeze.

“We’ll get married. I’ll buy you the shiniest ring in the world,” he had said, his voice full of determination.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it’s not the shiniest ring in the world… I’ll still marry you.”

“For real?”

“Yes. You’re the only one I want to spend my life with. You’ll build our big house, and I’ll be the most famous writer in the world. We’ll be happy together, forever.”

“And you’ll still wear the shiniest ring in the world because that’s what you deserve,” he had said, holding your hand and kissing it gently.

“I love you,” you had mumbled, your heart full of emotion.

“I love you too.”

And under the falling leaves, you had kissed him for the first time.

-

The conversation between you both gradually trails off, leaving an unspoken tension hanging in the air. The café's ambient sounds—the quiet clinks of cups, the murmur of distant conversations—fade into the background. It feels as though the world outside has paused, allowing you both to be suspended in this fragile moment. You’re unsure if he remembers the past as vividly as you do, but meeting him again has stirred memories you had long buried. The memories of the happy moments you shared, the laughter, the dreams—it all comes rushing back with a bittersweet intensity.

There’s a question burning in your heart, one that you’ve held onto for years. But as you open your mouth to speak, the words falter on your lips. You hesitate, the weight of the past pressing down on you. You’re not sure if you should ask—if you even have the right to.

-

"Let’s break up," you had said, your voice trembling as you turned your back on him, trying to hold yourself together. The words tasted bitter, foreign, as they left your mouth.

"Why?" His voice had cracked, laced with confusion and desperation, forcing you to turn and face him. The sight of his pleading eyes, full of pain, made your resolve waver.

"I don’t know. I don’t deserve you. I don’t love you anymore…" The lie felt like a knife twisting in your chest, each word cutting deeper. You couldn’t look him in the eye, knowing that the truth would betray the facade you were trying to maintain. "And… we’re leaving. We won’t be coming back."

You forced the tears to stay at bay, but when you heard the way his voice cracked, the dam you had built burst. The tears you had tried so hard to hold back streamed down your face, unstoppable.

"Why would you do that to me?" he had asked, his voice barely above a whisper, full of hurt.

"I don’t know. You should find someone else to achieve your dreams with. I have things I need to focus on in my life too. I don’t want to spend my life tied to you," you had said, forcing yourself to face him as you delivered those final, hurtful words. The look in his eyes as he bowed his head, defeated, had nearly broken you.

He was only a boy then, but he had known what love was, what it meant to make someone a part of your life. You had been his life, his future, his everything. How could he continue when the one person he wanted to build that life with had just walked away?

And so, you had left him, without looking back, disappearing from his life as if you had never been a part of it.

-

But now, years later, here he is, sitting in front of you, smiling as if nothing had changed. He’s happy to see you, proud of the person you’ve become, despite the hurtful words you once threw at him. And that, more than anything, tears at your heart.

A single tear escapes your eye before you can stop it, and you quickly wipe it away, hoping he didn’t notice.

"So, do you have a family now?" The question slips out, carrying with it the years of wondering, of what-ifs.

"I…" he begins, but before he can finish, the door of the café chimes, and a beautiful woman walks in, her presence commanding attention. She makes her way to your table, and you watch as Han stands up to greet her, the fondness in his eyes unmistakable.

"Honey…" he says, and your heart skips a beat. The word echoes in your mind, heavy with implications.

Honey?

Confused, you watch as they hug each other warmly, the scene playing out before you like a slow-motion reel. It feels surreal, like you’re watching from a distance, even though you’re right there.

"Honey, this is my friend I told you about," Han says, introducing you with a smile. He then turns to you, his eyes meeting yours. "This is my fiancée."

Fiancée.

The word hits you like a punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of you. You force a smile, accepting her hand for a handshake, even as you feel a pang of pain in your heart

She sits down, joining your conversation with an easy grace, and you can’t help but notice how happy they are together. The way they look at each other, the subtle touches, the smiles—it’s clear that they’re deeply in love, a love that’s mutual and uncomplicated.

you look at the shiniest ring they were wearing.

You’re glad for Han. He deserves this happiness, this life he’s built. He’s finally living his dream, the dream that you once shared but were never meant to fulfill together. He’s found someone to continue that dream with, someone who will stand by his side as he builds the future you both once imagined.

The hurt lingers, but it’s softened by a genuine happiness for him. You’re happy that he’s happy, because that's what he deserve: happiness

Your thoughts are interrupted as the café owner sets your additional drinks down on the table. “Here’s your order,” he says. You murmur a soft thank you, still trying to process the whirlwind of emotions.

“No need to pay for your drinks,” the owner adds with a warm smile. “It’s on me.”

"No, I insist on paying for us," you replied, trying to cover up the flutter of in your chest.

"It's fine, babe," he said, chuckling as he gently pressed the matter.

"Really, it's okay," you laughed, looking between him and Han, who were both clearly confused by the exchange.

"Ah, by the way, I forgot to introduce you," you said, standing up with a smile. You gestured to the man beside you. "This is Hyunjin, the owner of the café."

"Hello, I'm Hyunjin," he said, extending his hand for a handshake. "I'm her boyfriend."

Han's eyes widened in surprise, his confusion evident as he looked between you and Hyunjin.

You laughed at Han's bewildered expression, and soon the table was filled with lighthearted laughter once again.

Life, you thought, was indeed full of surprises and plot twists. Just when you thought you knew how things would turn out, the unexpected happens.

But despite the twists and turns, one thing remains true: life is beautiful.

[sukiipjs]

✮ I DONT WANT TO

°:. *₊ ° . ☆ °:. *₊ ° . ° .•

↳ nick sturniolo x masc reader

↳ words - 866

↳ summary - nick coming over to help you not give into the urge of relapse. (short little thing 👽)

↳ contains - crying, much talk of self harm, depression, use of y/n, pet names (baby), idk

↳ song - candy by alex g

°:. *₊ ° . ☆ °:. *₊ ° . ° .•

°:. *₊ ° . ☆

my breath begins shaky, i sit on my bed, leaning against the headboard, banging my head back against the wall. my hands cover my mouth as i try to catch my breath and be quiet as tears stream down my face.

i don’t know what’s happening, the urge is just getting stronger. two months clean, two months, i don’t want to start this over i’m doing so good.

i lean my head down, taking my hands off myself and gripping them into my hair. my knees are bent up by my chest. i try to keep the thoughts down but i know there’s a blade right beside me, so easy to just grab. but i’ll regret it tomorrow, it’s not worth it, i keep telling myself.

my shirts off, my left arm of healed scars out in view. new ones could come at any point, i’d be so easy to do, i’d be so worth it to do… i cry and cry, now banging my head into my knees trying to do anything but give in that bloody urge.

a light finally shines in my head, nick. call nick. i take my hands off me, leaning over to grab my phone… that sits next to that blade. i open my phone, quickly going to call nick, i bring my phone to the side of my face as it rings, waiting for him to answer.

he finally answers after i call him one or two more times, it’s almost midnight so i don’t blame him. “mm.. y/n, you good?” he groans, i hear his blankets shifting on the other side as i try to speak, my voice being caught, being weak. “i- nick- nick please come over,” i manage to get out words, my breaths are short and fast, i wipe my palm on my eyes, trying to swipe off some tears.

“what? why? are you okay? what’s wrong?” he sounds more alert now, more awake as he hears the tone of my voice. “just come over please- i need you okay,” i curl back into myself, knees to my chest, one of my arms wrapping around my legs and the other still holding my phone. “okay, uhm- i’ll be there soon okay? you’ll be okay, yeah?” i nod, though he can’t even see me.

“mhm,” i mumble out, i hear his sheets ruffle again, i assume he stands out of his bed, “here uh, i’ll call an uber and i’ll be out there as soon as i can okay? do you want me to stay on or?” i hear nick still walk around, “you can get off, ill- uh- i don’t know, i’ll see you soon?” i sniffle as nick asks if i’m sure again, but i say i’m fine, i can wait.

we get off and i stay on my bed, waiting for him as i continue crying into my palms. trying to breath, trying to distract myself, trying again, not to give into the urge.

after a few, i hear my door open and nick shout my name. i lift my head from my palms, wiping off my eyes. nick bursts into my room, seeing my crying and panicking on my bed, the blade right next to me on my bedside table. “y/n…” he says softly as he comes onto the bed next to me, quick to wrap his arms around me tightly.

“you’re okay… you’re okay” he say softly, his head resting in the crook of my neck as he slowly rocks me back and forth, one of his hands stroking through my hair. i hold myself onto him too, my head resting by his neck, tears dampening on his shirt.

he moves himself back so he can look at me, “what’s wrong baby…” he asks softly, his hand now on the side of my face, his thumb rubbing tears off my cheek. “i don’t know nick, i just- i don’t want to feel like this… i don’t know what’s happening… i thought i was getting better. i don’t want to nick, i don’t want to…” i cry out, pushing my head onto him again. “shh, you’re okay… i’m with you, i’ve got you. you’re doing the best you can, i know it” his hand brushing against my head, fingers ruffling through my hair more as his chin rests top on my head.

“i- i don’t want to.” my body shakes onto his, his arms squeeze onto me tighter. “you don’t have to okau? i’m here… i’m here for you…” he slowly leans us down, so we lay down on my bed. his arms still holding me as he gives my cheek a kiss before nuzzling his head onto my neck. “i love you so much and i’m here, you’re going to be okay and i’ll help you any way i can.”

i turn to my side, facing nick as i also hold onto him, “i know… and- i love you, i really really love you,” our foreheads press together, as i finally begin to catch my breath more with nick here. we move our bodys, my head beginning to rest on his chest as nick starts falling asleep already, me after him.

☆ °:. *₊ ° . °

taglist : @slutforchriss @mattsleftnipple03 @mattsdinosweater @ccolleenn @mixvchelle @leah-loves-lilies @sturn-wrld @redz0nez9 @cheriematt @freshloveforthefit @nickuniversity @whore4matt @txssvx @teenagetrash00 @matty-bear @venusbabysblog @m0r94n @junnniiieee07 @miloisdone1 @rottingwithglitter @clemlament @tvylorswiftt @krosseyedkori

[mkkk12345]

Student Crewel x Reader headcanon/fic

This is set when Crewel was still a student at NRC, reader is a first year and Crewel is a second year.

Its 3 am I don’t know what I am doing please take my offering and feel free to request I guess. 

- There's no doubt about it he is a Pomfiore student

- Because of his unique and fabulous fashion sense he became the house-warden in his first year

- Back then he did not dye his hair white it was solid black

- As the house-warden he is smart, he has perfect grades to go along with his looks

- In his free time, you could likely find him sketching out new fashion designs for his next show

- Did I forget to mention that he is already an established and renowned fashion designer?

- As a house-warden he is strict not as bad as Riddle but similarly to Vil he requires everyone to look their best at all times

- You and Crewel met in his second year when you were in your first year

- Upon seeing you in the hall of mirrors he would firstly critique your ceremonial robes seeing that although your looks were good my god u did not know how to put that thing on… he can fix you… I think?

- He had mixed feelings when you were assigned to Pomfiore

- Only once you had been sorted into his dorm did he begin to really think about your ill fitting ceremonial robes

- On one hand, he had never seen someone like you before

- On the other hand… there was a lot of work to be done regarding your choice of clothing

- Your first interactions with him were likely right after the ceremony 

- You were talking to a couple of first years before being sent off to your dorms when you heard the clicking of footsteps quickly approaching you

- This is followed by your ceremonial robes being adjusted along with murmuring about how troublesome it's going to be with you in the dorm

- Once you arrived at Pomfiore you found out the one who had been fussing over your clothing was nonother than the house-warden himself Divius Crewel

- Although all the fussing over you was annoying at first as you slowly got to know him things became slightly better

- Once you found out that he was a famous fashion designer all those times he held his sketchbook up to compare to you finally made sense

- Now whenever you catch him doing this your face would flush and you would quickly turn away 

- When you start doing this he is confused, you use to at least acknowledge his presence when you looked at him but now what? Don’t tell him he was about to lose a future model of his?

- After a month of this happening he decided to confront you about it

- Of course, at first you denied anything like this even happening but as the conversation continued an unexplainable hint of pink surfaced on your cheeks

- And that's when he pieced everything together 

- With a smirk on his face, he decided why not torment you for a little longer before confirming his suspicions 

- “Say Y/N why don't we continue this conversation in my room there's something else I must discuss so let's leave it at this for now, shall we? We cant be late for class can we now?”

- Your friends practical dragged you to your next class that day as you continued to overthink everything he had just said

- Once all school activities had ended you slowly inched your way back to the dorms and to the grand doors of Crewels room

- Your shaky knock on the door was met with an annoyed “come in” from Crewel

- “Ahh why if it isn't my dear puppy”

- Your dead 

- On the floor even

- What did he just call you??? Puppy???????

- While you were too stunned to speak he continued

- “I needed to discuss some work-related things with you, would you like to model for me in my next show?”

- What? Did you just hear him correctly?? He wants YOU to walk for him?

- “Are you sure Divus? I mean I've never done anything of the sort before and-”

- “Look dear it either you walk or this show doesn't go on I did design this collection with you in mind after all”

- That smirk god damit that smirk 

- “Fine, I can't let work like yours be thrown into the shadows after all.”

[jackmanbj]

pinkie

summary: you and urban have been together for 3 months, you ask him to pay for your nails but only in one condition.

you- urby babyy!

urby🎈- yes baby?

you- you know i love you so, so, so, so much right?

urby🎈- what do you need babe?

you- can you please pay for my nails? ill give you head after

urby🎈- ill pay for them only if you get the base the color of my tip😂

you- jesus you get on my damn nerves, send me a picture of the tip so i get the exact color wyatt.

urby🎈- love you more.

‘urby🎈 send one attachment’

you took the picture and zoomed in making it unnoticeable on what it was and headed into the nail techs house.

you went into your nail techs house and ran into her room jumping on her bed and cuddling into her.

“bitchh!”

“girl your smushing me!!” she wheezed out as you slid off her.

“ANYWAYS!” “what style you getting?”

“ok uhmm..my man told me he’d pay for my nails IF i get his tip color..”

“AHHH BTICH YOU DOING IT??”

“uhm of course. so the base is going to be the tip color, and on top of the base i want pink frenchies, then i want flowers no french on my thumb, middle and index.”

“well gotdamn, but alright lets go.”

you both got up and started making your ways into the room she does nails at.

you and your nail tech are very close, so you both sat down while she did your nails and just talked about any and everything, your boyfriends and mostly people who you both didnt like.

half way through your nail set urban called you.

your nail tech answered and put it on speaker for you.

“urban dont say anything embarrassing, your on speaker.”

“babe you tell your nail tech everything, ill be surprised if she doesn’t know how big my dick is at this point.”

“I DO!” kenya (the nail tech name) yelling into the phone.

“BABE WHY!”

“oopise!”

you quickly but carefully hung up on urban while you and kenya laughed together.

after about 30 minutes urban knew it was about time to pick you up being as thorough you had to catch an uber because he was busy.

urban picked you up and paid kenya as you hugged her goodbye.

urban got into the car after you and immediately asked to see your nails.

you showed him as he grinned ear to ear noticing it was the exact color match and his initial was on your ring finger.

“baby we gotta put these nails to good use huh?” you looked down at your nails before looking back at urban.

“only if you pay for my new wig install, AND, you have to pick me up and bring me ‘cause the uber felt weird!”

“fine, mamas you know you’re spoiled?”

“im not!” “you are babes, you dont like to drive, you do pay for nothing, you dont work, AND YOUR A PILLOW PRINCESS!!”

“one i dont even know how to drive! two, you never let me pay! three, you work i take care of the house. plus you dont want me to have to work. AND IM NOT A PILLOW PRINCESS FOR THE LAST TIME WYATT!!!”

“ok baby whatever you say.”

urban kissed your cheek and started driving.

you on the other hand opened up your passenger seat had your name in pink cursive with glider in it.

“urban, this is so cute! your going to make me cry..”

“glad you like it ma, i got more surprises at home, just wait.”

[octuscle]

Support dude, it’s me again, Mike. I hit you up so much I feel like I should pay you. And hey if you need that, I’ve got you just tell me. I owe you a shit ton, dude. Since you last helped me, Jack and I tied the fucking knot (and had a hell of a honeymoon haha hadn’t gotten so many noise complaints since high school) and I even moved into his place. Real big and nice like, would make a suburban man cream his pants and even a socialite would do a double take. For as filthy as he can be with me, big boss knows how to fucking live.

But I wouldn’t be hitting you up if everything was all sunshine and rainbows, eh? (Though one of these days I might convince Boss to let you in on our thing for a night or two, just to say thank you if that’s a thing you wanted wink) One of the neighbors apparently doesn’t like it so much when I invite some of the guys at work over for our, let’s call em team bonding events. He bitches and moans about how loud and rowdy we get and how it’s ruining the value of the neighborhood. I almost kicked his ass the first time he came by all bossy and shit, but Boss told me he was President of their HOA or whatever the fuck and that I couldn’t. So I’ve been trying to ignore the prude but if he comes over and ruins another good night I might lose my cool and I don’t wanna let down Boss like that.

Any way you can make the neighborhood meet our lifestyle choices better, dude? I don’t wanna give up this lavish living so soon, it’s nice as hell. But I don’t want it to change me. I wanna change it! Ain’t no reason we can’t live it up without being able to get down if you catch my drift. Can you help me?

I have not invested so much time in my favorite customers, so that you now become adapted suburban bourgeois. So it's time for me to take care of your neighbor. He may be the president of the HOA, after all. But that doesn't give him the right to regulate your private lives. But I could add a little spice to his.

Actually, the boring buffer is not a visitor to the gym. Thank God. So at least you have peace from him there. But today he feels like working out his muscles. And of course, when he enters the locker room, you run right into his arms. And the slimy ass-kisser can do nothing but shake your hand in a friendly way, as if you were best friends. Oops, sorry that your towel slips down.

Normally you are hard as granite when you come back from training. At the sight of your neighbor, the 8 inches dangle limply between your legs. He still seems impressed. To warn your man, you send him a quick message about what to expect during his workout. And write him that you are already preparing everything for dinner at home. "Everything is fine, stallion! daddy wont b disturbed during his workout. Ill b home in 2 hrs"

Your neighbor is blocking the very stations where Jack wants to work out. He has memorized the gym rules and points out every pissy infraction to your husband. In the beginning. But the more Jack sweats, the more musk he exudes, the hornier your neighbor gets. And slowly he starts to change. Actually, sleeveless tops are not allowed in the gym. You both don't care. And your neighbor now too. With the white wifebeater he looks almost like Jack's gym buddy. And he's starting to smell like one, too. It's hard to believe that just a few minutes ago he was the overgroomed suit guy. His armpit hair is sprouting. He obviously hasn't been to the barbershop in a few months either. He stops regimenting your husband. The two of them start working out together as if they've been doing it forever. Steve (your neighbor) can't get enough of having Jack's sweaty workout shorts hanging in front of his face during the bench press. His bulge gets bigger and bigger. And the damp spots in his shorts aren't just from sweat. Jack asks if it's not time to go to the locker room. Steve replies that he was already afraid that Jack wouldn't even ask.

"is it k if i bring a pal 2 dinner" texts Jack. "he 1't want much mor then ur cum and mine." "then he shud bring big appetite" you reply. Shit, this time when Steve shakes your hand, nothing is limp between your legs. Enjoy the evening with the president of the HOA to the fullest!

Pics all found @thelockerroomblog

[magpiepills]

Hey!

It’s been a few weeks.

I miss y’all. I can’t remember now how much I’ve shared about my personal life. I try not to share too much but I think sometimes it can be helpful.

TW grief, loss of a parent, sappiness, my eternal love and gratitude below the cut

Some of you know that last year one of my parents was diagnosed with stage four cancer. They got treatment, but we knew that survival wasn’t likely. For the last month, I got to spend a lot of time with my family and my parent through the end of their illness and it was rough. Really rough at times. Writing was my outlet and distraction until it wasn’t enough any more. I’m grateful for that.

My parent is gone now and I feel like I’ve been spit onto shore after getting thrown around in the waves for a long time. I’m catching my breath. I want to catch up on my reading and reblogging and loving on my friends. I owe you all more than I can repay for continuing to check on me, for tagging me even when I haven’t been able to interact, for reaching out, for being kind and understanding. It really does mean so much to me.

First and foremost, my forever loves- the magic sluts: @arcanefox207 @redhotkitchen @sparklefarts38 @exquisiteserotonin @pink-whiskey-woman

@youandmeand5bucks @legendary-pink-dot @for-a-longlongtime you eight are the most wonderful, genuine, kind, loving women and I can’t believe my luck that I get to know you and bask in your warmth. When I’ve whined and ranted you’ve let me, you’ve been my soft spot to land when I needed to feel like life was normal and fine, when I just wanted to ignore everything. When I was afraid of being alone at the hospital, you kept me company and reassured me! I can’t begin to express my love for you. I’ve never felt so known and seen and embraced. There’s never been judgement or competition or comparison, just love and permission to be our real selves. All because we were horny over the same dude who doesn’t know we exist. What are the odds? What did I do to be worthy of this? I’ll never know.

@nerdieforpedro @mermaidgirl30 @schnarfer @cvntclip @mountainsandmayhem

@morallyinept @secretelephanttattoo @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @yorksgirl

@sin-djarin @milla-frenchy @vivian-pascal @pascalssbabyy @strang3lov3

@kewwrites @pimosworld @joelmillerisapunk @sheepdogchick3 @bubble-pop-eclectic

I know I’ve missed some of my friends. If you’ve tagged me in you posts, your tag games, messaged me here or on discord, if you send me a sweet ask, or something lighthearted, or something horny, you’re included. You’re all wonderful. You’ve all had a positive impact on the way I’ve gotten through the last seven months. Even when I had a meltdown back in the spring and flounced, you welcomed me back and let me carry on like normal. From the bottom of my heart, thanks. I hope if you’re ever having a bad time, that I can be there for you, too.

In conclusion, I didn’t know that being a fan of one guy and posting shamelessly about it online would turn into something like a lifeline when I needed it most.

When I say I love you I really do mean it.

[rise-my-angel]

Perilous Companions

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Length: 24.7k

Warnings: Depictions of violence, mention of suicide, non graphic torture, hostage situations, heavy angst, angst/hurt comfort, trama related flashbacks, smut, oral (m and f receiving), p in v, canon divergence

Notes: This ones a big boy with some big things happening. Not everything will make sense yet as its part of a bigger unfolding narrative, and certain moments are intentionally skipped over for the same reason. Knowledge of the 2nd game not needed as its not canon. A lot of nerves went into making and posting this one, so I hope it doesn't disappoint you. Sequel to Melancholy Interlude, part of the Confused Warmth series.

It was a cruel joke that you were this ill. If you had to trace it back, you think you may have been bitten by a mosquito at some point. Of all the things you could catch, you were falling apart from something as small as a bug bite. You were always scared of being bitten by any sort of insect as a kid after your neighbour had come home from school talking about how you could get sick and die from one bite.

Your only saving grace being that a cordyceps infection didn’t incubate for this long, and as far as you were aware, didn’t result in how bloodshot and feverish you were nor did it result in vomiting a liquid disgustingly close to black. You had guessed for a while that in the old world the man in front of you had either was a scientist or worked somewhere in that field. 

Whatever research your current companion had done though clearly didn’t encompass all illnesses, but at least you finally were sick long enough he wasn’t constantly terrified you’d turn. Neither you or the rambling man pacing above you had any clue what to do about it, but he somehow seemed more worried then you. Looking at the map in his hands as he ran his mouth non stop. 

You had insisted you were fine until about ten minutes ago when you felt dizzy and would have completely collapsed onto the ground if Seth wasn’t there to fail to catch you in time, at least before you hit your head. Travelling with someone wasn’t what you wanted, you had been alone for months but you felt awful when a bumbling, older, tearful man came across you asking for help getting to his wife near Salem. Only to have him confess when you got sick that he was just lonely and wanted company. 

Now you were just too exhausted to get angry. Letting him travel with you as he desperately tried to make you like him despite your very purposeful choice to stay away from any people. Briefly you had wondered if he was a plant, tricking you to walk you into a trap right back to the place you were running from. Part of you still wondered that, but now you were too sick to do anything about it. 

“We’d have to go to every clinic just to see whose there, but that’s way too big to check.” Seth’s messy hair was flopping around with every spin in place he did, the rhythmic movement distracting your already fuzzy brain. “You said no to everything else I suggested, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” 

Your head smacking back against the tree you were currently sat up against shook your spinning vision even more. Squeezing your eyes shut you let out a shaky breathe that burned your esophagus as it flowed upwards.  There was an extremely expired pack of gum a few kilometres back when you were sifting through an old abandoned store front. The bile still coating your mouth had you hating yourself for passing that up now. 

“You sure we can’t go to Boston?” One eye blinked open, a kaleidoscope of orbs floating in your vision as Seth’s figure stood right in the suns path. He was standing with the map crinkling in his hold as he looked hopeful at you. “They have doctors, it’s an actual city they’ll have medicine won’t they? We can get you a bed and everything. We’re practically right there, you can see the walls from the top of one of those hills for god sakes.”

Your fingertips tapped against the grass beneath you as your jaw clenched. Forcing yourself up, the tree worked as a main support for your legs that trembled from the exertion. The man seemingly perked up at your slowly approaching self. He stared at you, your name coming out as a question when you got within a few feet. “Is that a-” 

Jumping back, Seth gasped as you ripped the map out of his hands. Your face flat as your eyes shifted to the side to stop yourself from glaring. “A no...I’m guessing it’s still a no.” 

Your legs wobbled as your vision spun trying to read it. Kneeling down you rested it over a bent knee as your finger followed a path you already were dabbling in planning out. “You ever been in a QZ before?” 

Looking up at him, Seth had a shifting and sheepish face akin to something like guilt. “I spent some time in one for a while, a little bit in Boston.” Your heart skipped a beat, forcing your gaze down to the destination you had in mind willing away the swirling anxiety. “That’s why we need to go though. I have friends there, they can help you- wait where are you going?” 

The beating of your heart pounded erratically. You wanted to be alone for this very reason, you had no idea what kind of friends were waiting for him, or you, in Boston of all places. There was no one you knew anywhere near such an area, so you walked away. In the opposite direction of his suggestion. 

Seth called you again, “I thought you needed to rest.” 

Pace picking up you pulled the other strap of your bag on both your shoulders properly. “I’m going west.” Pairing up with this man was foolish, heading in the complete opposite direction of where you were headed was even more foolish. 

His voice was getting more and more grating. “We just came that way, didn’t we go to Massachusetts for a reason?” 

Heading down a slight hill full of ragged dirt clumps and drop offs only bang around the blurring migraine in your head more. It wasn’t killing you yet, so you just didn’t bother stopping for it. “No, you wanted to go to Salem, I wanted to be alone.” 

Sputtering, Seth wailed his arms as he slipped and tripped over his feet down the hill with a grace that only assured you that he’s likely spent his entire life in and out of some halfway sizable apartment Fedra probably threw his way. “I was just trying to help.” 

Your mind was already made up. You’ve been trying to get out of this state for months and everything kept pulling you back in. But their unwillingness to let you go spoke a different story, the people you’ve encountered since that have tried to trick or lead back to that room you ran from. 

Seth was saying something, but you tried to tune it out until he was too loud. The sun was setting in a gold that shined off of the decay around you. Travelling the outskirts was longer, a much longer path but if you were being honest with yourself? Just because you were more scared of what other people were capable of, doesn’t mean the shrieks didn’t haunt you every time they echoed through the emptiness. 

It didn’t take long for Seth to overtake your strides. Longer legs and too much energy compared to your muscles begging to sit once more. You so desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t true, that maybe just once since that day you could meet one person who you didn’t have to leave your guard up for. But you couldn’t. 

You were the only of your kind they ever seen, and it didn’t matter who told them what. He had his sights set on you and so did everyone else. Were they hoping to pull you back because they were too stubborn to give up? Or were they truly so delusional that they just didn’t care. The arguments you spied on seemed to tell you something divided them greatly but at this point you didn’t have anything to go off of. 

You had enough scuffles with them to know they were willing to be violent to get you. You knew why they wanted you and it was a fate that terrified you. You saw the remnants of what they had before you, and now? It was a fate you knew would be worse. Their willingness to beat the air out of your lungs had you supposing that having you in one piece wasn’t required.

It was only months ago when a few men came across you as you realized that it wasn’t just a small group that were involved. Somewhere along the lines, three men in the fireflies approached you and when you refused to even hear them out? That’s when they left you with a fair few more scratches then you gifted to them. 

Bruised and covered in mud from being kicked down a steep forest hill, you could hear the small group of men on a radio, but their words overpowered in your head from noise. The only words made out from what you could hear past the ringing the fall had smashed into your head. “....I don’t care, just tell say it’s Owen...” 

More static noise blasting out as you sunk your nails into the muddy hillside pulling you upwards onto your knees at least. Biting your lip so forcefully it had cracked and drawn blood by the next morning, you held the cries of pain back as your muscles strained to drag your body behind a tree. 

Tears streaming down your cheeks, you cradled your side now dripping blood from the ripped open fabric once covering you. The other occupied with gripping your shoulder tight as each twitch of your body shot a current of pain through what might be a strain.

Finally a response over their radio rung out, your jaw tensed as you breathed deeply in and out your nose. “..can make it in a few days...yes ma’am....Gran-” Was it the distance cutting his voice off, or was it your own heavy breathing invading your senses? You didn’t know. It was hard to focus. 

You didn’t know if you wanted to go back for real answers, or if a part of you still clung to seeing the man who had his hired thugs strap you to a chair as soon as they got their hands on you. He barley even looked at you like his own, and neither did his partner look at you anything but a specimen. 

You being this sick wasn’t the plan, and you knew making it wherever they were headed in one piece wouldn’t be easy. Not even sure if any of them would be there anymore by the time you got there. They had working cars afterall, and you only had two feet. Already your head was dizzy, but it felt wrong to turn away, leave it alone. You could just run from them, head far North until you reach the border and forget all of this. 

But you couldn't. They should have gotten what they wanted, so why wasn’t it enough? 

Now though, in the early hours of the morning, it was impossible ignore what you had heard the next few subsequent nights. Listening to this man ramble on what was no doubt some kind of radio. Foolish enough to think that you’d feel comfortable sleeping anywhere near him now he assumed he wouldn’t be heard or caught. Sprinkling hints of a deception that became harder to push away. Someone far more collected and confident then the bumbling coward presented to you. It chewed and gnawed in your mind throughout that night. 

He didn’t see you coming, knelt down faced away before having his body grabbed by the back of his shirt and tossed a few feet to the ground. Flipping onto his back, he stood up slowly to see you feet away from him. Exhausted and pushed to an edge. He tried placating it but only got as far as your name before you cut him off. 

“Why do you want me to go to Boston so badly?” You pulled from something attached to your belt, a thick yellow rope long and flopped down to the side. 

Seth’s face slowly melting off it’s aloof bravado. Something deeper inside brewing that you only felt your body tense at. “I don’t know what-” 

The voice waver made you a lot less brave but the force which you shoved it out masked it. “You led me there even after I told you no. What’s in Boston you’re so eager to get to?” 

There was an entirely new man in front of you, someone more poised with sunken eyes. As if whatever this facade was became too useless to keep up. This wasn’t a stumbling fool, but someone hiding too much. “We don’t need to do things this way-” 

You weren’t buying it though. Wrapping both ends of the rope around your hands, but kept low enough to give him hope to talk first. “Don’t make me ask you again, Seth.” 

His voice grew softer, as if to entice the part of you that wanted to grant sympathy. “It’s about you.” His gaze on your covered arm, and your heart beat harder. “I knew your Jerry and your father from the old days. They discovered a problem during testing, but you already had gotten out before he could look into it for himself.” 

You didn’t even need to ask about ‘they’. He knew them, and apparently your guess of some kind of scientist was correct. Both of them treated you like cattle once they had found you. The ghosts hovering over your life. “What problem?” 

“He never told me, and when your father died I didn’t think it mattered anymore. Left Jerry to pick up the pieces without his expertise. He’s replicated the work as much as he can, but the only thing your father told him only made him that much more desperate to find you. He’s a doctor not a scientist.” 

Maybe you should have been angry, upset. Dropping that on you as if you should already have known, but on the other hand it might be for the better. Jerry was cold, and uncaring. Your father was entirely too emotional, perhaps closer to disturbed than anything. “I gave them everything they wanted, what’s he desperate for?” 

The lack of blinking put you on edge even further. A look as if trying to figure out the very thing he was describing. “That I don’t know. Research has been kept under very tight watch, especially now.”

“And my father, what did he say?”

Seth’s eyes glazed with a troubled conflict, and a sorrow in his voice that told you he knew far more then he was telling you. Flashes in his eyes that spoke of a truth that sat unsettled within him. 

“He said this is the end. He said that we are all finished, and he took his own life.” 

The trickery, the trouble in his eyes, how this all kept relating back to that day. Your father taking his own life though? Something inside of you shifted unsettlingly, and not quite a loss for family. If you had even a modicum of faith in your father, you had none in his partner. “What I still don’t get is what you were planning to do with me. I mean what use would someone like me be to a lying con like you?” 

A debate flourished in his head, saying no words as he almost looked through you. The now calmness in the air, quiet and dulcet tones between you echoed eerily in your voice. You needed him to speak, you needed to know. “What do you think your last breath will feel like, Seth?” 

Eyes shutting for the briefest of moments, he let something echo in his veins. Words slipping from him in a level of defeat. “There’s a woman. A firefly-” 

“I’m already running from the fireflies-” Nothing but a bunch of make shift mercenaries playing at a war they’ve never even started to win. 

Seth shook his head, “Not this one. She’s a leader, has real goals she wants We can trust her, she can help.” You instinctively gnawed at your bottom lip, unwilling to believe in him. “Now if you come with me to Boston, I can get you to her.” 

Shaking your head, you bled distrust from every pore. “What’s her name?” 

His shoulders sagged as he sighed. “Please don’t make me tell you that,” the tightening of the rope between your hands squeezed as his eyes flickered from you to it and back again. “Marlene. Her name’s Marlene. She’s a good woman, your father trusted her.”

More then a few seconds passed. The wind flowing through the luscious trees nearby, and the grass grazing along the empty land. The peace nowhere near the small bubble you stood. “Why wouldn’t they have just told you what the problem was. If you worked with them, I mean. Bit odd.” 

Seth’s head tilted, a softness pleading with you as your name murmured from his mouth, “I’m on your side. I’m one of the-” 

Something snapped inside of you. Almost a scream inside your heart shouting at your survival and it consumed your vision within seconds. He wasn’t a fighter, you wrapped the rope around his neck with little defence. 

Within a second you kicked him to the ground, a struggle tumbling in the quiet grass as you flipped onto your back. The pull burning your wrists and your own legs trying to keep him down. His struggles and groans eating away at your hearing. 

You could only look down at your hold for seconds, nothing close to a fight back from a man who didn’t know how seek out for a real fight. Your breathe was forcibly rhythmic, in and out deeply as your head tilted back as you pulled. Breathing the sounds of struggle away as your eyes fell upon the nature.  

The leaves blowing on a tree, large and flourishing in the emptiness that ravaged around it standing tall and bright. The wind flowing like a calm around it like it was wishing to entrance you. Your breathing desperate to keep a deep even as your mind pushed away the burning pull on your wrists. The sight of the trees colours striking against the rest of the field hiding the groans below. 

You took your mind elsewhere, you weren’t strong enough to keep yourself in the moment. A life on the outside didn’t make you capable. It just made the struggling figures on an open ground dragging the life out of a man who knew more then you’d ever know, feel like a kind of memory you couldn’t live with if the trees didn’t exist.

Nothing like that existed here and now though. The barrel sights down to a man who helped play his part in many fights that these people didn’t deserve to be a part of. 

Once someone too sure of his own bravado, now faced you wide eyed and swallowing panic. His hands at first positioned in front of his torso as Joel approached you both, his knuckles turning white from how tightly he was pulling and twisting the coarse rope in his hands. You wanted to see the trees in that rope but you only saw the purple imprints on your wrists that had stayed with you for days. 

But it wasn’t someone tricking you to your death at the other end. It was people you wrapped a new life around, and the only ones who cared about you in return. Owen pleaded. “Come on, please. I’m not going to do anything, do you really need all this?” 

Your hands hesitated, grip on the shotgun so harsh for so long it your arms had started to shake. “I’ll behave, let’s all be reasonable here.” Barrel only lowering enough that it’s aim left the eye line of Owens head. Low enough that he had the gall to leap towards you as if having any chance. Before you could even register how startled you jumped, Joel had grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him face first into the bar counter beside you. 

Owen’s head up enough to growl in anger, “Fuck you-” only to be slammed down into the wood with a crack of a bone splintering in the air. 

Yanking his arms behind his back, Joel tightened the mans own ropes around his wrists, leaving him just enough room before his circulation, or lacktherof, would turn his hands blue. The mans head yanked back with blood dripping from his nose and smeared down his face and painted the dark surface. Your fingers twitching on the shotgun aimed uselessly to the ground as your shaking breathe vibrated into your very chest as Joel hissed into his ear. “You try anything like that again, I’ll break a lot more then your nose.” 

Owen groaned but said no more. Shoving him towards Tommy, Joel only looked a his bloody face for a second longer before taking four strides over and all but shoving the chair out the mans reach. Stumbling onto his knees, grumbling unintelligible swearing as Joel burned a deep anger into his face and slinking it up to Tommy in unspoken words. 

Tommy himself seemed more hesitant. Taken back by something he had no way of seeing coming. You didn’t know how much of the other week Joel had even told him about. He at the least didn’t particularly care enough for the strangers well being to let him sit anywhere but the cold floor. He was more on the edge of confused, Joel saw you trying and failing to mask the shaking feeling of silent fear and that look washing over your eyes only had his blood run hot. 

Tilting his face to the side, Joel caught your gaze the hard set steel of his expression still peeking a deep concern for you behind it. His brown eyes gestured downwards to the shotgun in your grip, covering one of your hands with his own, the way it overtook your small ones with such warmth had you wanted to flip your palm to hold onto it, but you just let him slide the gun into his own possession. Holding it upright around the short cut barrel. 

Ever the vocal one, Ellie spoke up first. “Who are you?” She was stood still, arms crossed over her chest with a stare that could sear a hole in the floor. Her body now against the table, blocking any view of the towns layout from the strangers prying eyes. Tommy stood to his side, back to the wall and eyes to the door while Joel stepped away from your side. 

Watching him crouch down in front of the man, you yearned for the grace of someone more worthy. A gun to a mans surprised back peering right through whatever facade he would spit out were you not there. You had felt brave until he turned to face you. Owen’s face painted with fearful shock but yours only seethed with undiscovered ire. Whatever in your body that didn’t shake, a tingling flooded where ever nerves were attached. 

Owen’s stare towards Ellie was suspicious. Dots connecting in his head, he raised an eyebrow as he returned her stare. “How about you go first, then I have my turn?” 

“Hey,” Joel’s voice rumbled out tight and controlled, just like his unwavering posture. “You look at me, not her. Got it?” Owen didn’t answer quick enough, meaning not instantly, which only got him grabbed by the jaw, Joel’s fingers squishing parts of his cheeks in like a blooded up fish. “I said got it?” 

Owens brows furrowed in a grumble but he nodded. “Good. Now answer the question.” His kept his promise, he didn’t look back at Ellie. Just you. Empty eyes with a smile that had been smeared onto his skin like a goo. 

“Or you could just tell them, you already know my name afterall.” 

Your nails dug into the skin of your palms, scratching and clawing to keep them from shaking. In a world where you knew how to stand your ground, maybe the words would come up out of your mouth. Only they didn’t and you weren’t standing your ground, you weren’t sure your heart would calm enough to give that chance. 

Joel yanked his head back over to face him, face even sterner then before. “I asked you.” 

No one was impressed with the eye roll. A childish act for a tied up man, “Owen. Like she said.” When Joel didn’t let go of him, only gripped tighter did he remember to act like a grown up. “We used to know each other, had a couple run ins didn’t we?” 

You couldn’t see Joels eyes flit back as if he could see you behind him, but that yearning never left his heart. You were supposed to be at his side, not trapped in place by whatever memory this man dragged into town with him. “This is not-”

“He’s a firefly, or was.” Part of you was happy Owen hadn’t seen you in over a year, missing the slight waver in your voice as you forced it to come out in one go. All three of them had completely different reactions. 

Ellie was confused. A group in her life held a complicated relationship with her, one that she suspected wasn’t wholey truthful with her, but never had the chance to put her finger on it. Tommy was braced for either side of things. His eyes never straying from the sight in front of him but one foot of his stood out towards Ellie, as if to intervene. 

You didn’t need to see Joel’s face to know what he was feeling. Crouched down, his shoulders and back were set and so tense you could see it through his jacket. His hand dropped to his thigh with a thud curled into a fist. Those brown eyes washing over to a black as his nostrils flared as he kept a wild within him. 

No doubt lost in what you have found yourself in many times, flashes of light passing your eyes as images that keep you up at night taunt you. You found yourself pacing towards him, hand reaching out to him, but hovering in place at the prospect of sneaking up on him. But just like you felt with him, Joel didn’t need to hear or see to know you were near him. 

He just felt you already, taking a deep breathe as his back stretched back, giving your hand the chance to simply push forward and grasp onto the back of his collar like he knew you would. “What’s a firefly doing in our town, sneaking up on my own.” Joel was seconds away from bearing his teeth, if he remained just a strange intruder that was one thing. But none of you had any delusions about what having someone like this here could mean. 

“Just looking for a friend is all. Big state you know? Gotta check all the corners.” Joels fist curled in more as you curled your fingers into his collar. The two men eyed one another before Joel made to stand back upright. Letting go to give him space, it was only snatched back by Joel’s empty hand. Keeping it tucked to his chest, to turned so both your sides leaned against the bar. His warm breathe heating the skin of you face still doused from the cold outside. 

Eyebrows raised, you could read the question unsaid. Nodding yes, you bit the inside of your cheek. “Don.” Your eyes on his chest, Joel turned his body partway to gesture Ellie to take the shotgun from him. Sometime later, Joel would feel pride of how confidently she took it into her hold and held it to Owen. Perfect form like he taught her. But now that wasn’t anywhere near his mind. 

His now free grasp held onto your hip and pulled you at an angle, hiding your gazes from the man flickering his eyes around the room. Fingers stretching from under his, you wrapped them into the top of his shirt peeking through. Unable to decide if you could handle being the subject of this kind of intensity from Joel. “Don mentioned travelling with them for a while, I didn’t know he stayed with them after..” 

Joel cupped the side of your cheek, turning you up to his face. He meant to say something, meant to comfort or suggest but your own genuine unease pressed against the heart under his chest. A vulnerability that he spent weeks trying to coax from you from the quiet safety of your room together, but now on display for someone that Joel felt the growing urge to slam face first into a wall, leaving a mark he wouldn’t come back from. 

For only a moment you let yourself feel it. Shutting you eyes, Joels hand warm and soothing in your heart as you let the uncertainty flow over. Letting it drip from you head to your toes, melting off as it reaches the floor. Finally you flickered your eyes up to Joels. “I’ll talk to her.” Joels head whipped around, eyes blazing at the mans suggestion. “I’m not gonna kneel here and spill my guts to all you bozos-” 

The other two pairs of feet in the room both shifted a foot forward. A “Watch yourself” sounding from Tommy at the same time as Ellie’s far less decorum of “Shut the fuck up.” 

Shuffling in place, you could tell Joel was grappling with the idea. A deep protective instinct that threatened to overtake him should anything happen to you. “I’m not leaving you alone in a room with one of them.” 

Your cheek pinched between your teeth just a tad to sharp, your mind salvaging for any hint you have a plan in mind. But you don’t, and Joel knows you don’t. Because he doesn’t have one either. Your eyes drifted to Owens tied up frame, gesturing your chin over in debate, Joel doubled down.

“They’re better talkers then they are fighters out here. I’m not worried what he’s going to do, I’ll chain him to the wall if I have to. It’s what comes out of his mouth I don’t trust.” Something within you sensed something coming. Like the polarizing fear sweeping through you when Don had walked into town was a child’s bad dream compared to what your anxiety begun to brace for. But you agreed. 

That part of you which could no longer pretend as if you felt anything but racing nerves in your veins wouldn’t admit it, but you were eternally relieved to have Joel. You faced people like Owen, the fireflies always them versus you. Always running, stealing and sabotaging behind their backs it would weigh less on your chest to have someone in your corner, helping you up onto equal landing. 

Jaw clenching, Joel’s eyes pleaded a different story. One of a man dreaming of finding a small life with you and Ellie, and having to shove down the urge to burn everything to the ground just to keep you three in that harmony. But the fireflies played a different game. One that burned into Joel’s core, and one that froze yours over. 

Sending a shiver down the length of your spine as his thumb gently rubbed over your bottom lip, he was holding himself back from kissing you. Brown eyes flickering to your lips as his fingertips flexed where they sat on your body as if resisting pulling you into him. 

Sarah echoed in his head. Holding you in his arms on the porch as you told him unequivocally that she would be proud of who he is, but he didn’t feel proud now. Joel felt like control was slipping away from him and the last time that happened it ended in a bloodbath. 

You didn’t like this look on Joel. His handsome features warped by a painful conflict behind, firm and set as if nothing he was preparing to let nothing to get past the stone walls. You wanted him relaxed, soft. The kind of look he gave you that very morning. A smile that you’re not sure you’d ever seen yet. A soft one, a sleepy glaze in his eye and that very thumb rubbing over your bottom lip only then he moved it to help pull you out of sleep with his own lips. 

Anxiety shocking your limbs, jolting them like electricity while Joel was reliving the nightmares the people just like Owen brought on him. That quiet bubble of lips and skin against each other under the sheets Joel wanted you to call your own? That morning seems to not exist anymore. 

One of your hands drifted around, trailing on the inside of his jacket along the thin layer of his shirt, nails tracing towards his stomach as both of your eyes begged for even one kiss. Something to keep you both here and grounded. You weren’t going to give the satisfaction to Owen though. 

So you let yourself out of Joel’s hold. His hand sliding from your waist only until you were to far to stretch out to. Owen’s eyes were far less confident as you approached him. His laboured breathing the only thing in the air as you crouched in front of him. 

“You talk to both of us. Or no deal.” If you were someone else, you would have sounded firm. Sure of your conviction and unafraid of the coward in front of you. Not the weaker almost out of breathe hesitancy it came off as. 

Owen narrowed his eyes at you. “And if I say no?” 

Joel was what you tried to sound like. Deep and threatening, no room for doubt or barter as he came up behind you. “I dump you outside of town face first, hog tied in the snow.” 

Warm large hands pulled you up with one of them now refusing to leave your side. Owen conceded just as Tommy called Joel. Gesturing over to the sight of people beginning to mill about like nothing ever occurred inside the building. The man wasting no time as he hauled Owen up uncaring of the stumble he felt from the aggressive jostle. 

Owen stood crookedly against the bar, as Tommy circled his finger for him to turn around. “Ellie.” Joel beckoned her, a hand out for her to hand the shotgun over. Glancing between it and you, her face fell flat as she rolled her eyes giving it to a tiny smirking Joel at her petulance. 

No sense of personal space as he dove right into the small bag at your side for the ammo he assumed was in there. Loading it for you, he draped the strap over your shoulder. “Me and Tommy’ll handle getting him out of here. You two head back to the house, it’ll take us a while to move him.” 

Owen’s wrists rubbing together at the redness already scratching into them, Tommy added “I got a feeling he’s not against making a scene if we walk him through the middle of the street.” 

Neither you or Ellie were keen on leaving the two of them to handle it on their own, but you gently pushed her forward to grab her jacket. Joel turning you to face him as he cupped your cheek once more. There was something at the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn’t let itself out. A disruption you both felt in your bones just when he was finally putting a life together. 

Gently grasping his wrist, you turned his hand, pressing a kiss to his palm and watching him stiffen and breathe force itself from his lungs harder. A rage inside him that you knew he didn’t want to relive, or even expose you too. You couldn’t form the words, you knew what you felt but your tongue wouldn’t take them in. You just wanted him to know that it was alright.

The disgusting turmoil you brought upon his family hadn’t made him turn you away. His own would never do the same to you. There wasn’t anything Joel could do that would destroy what you were trying to pretend wasn’t a stem of blossoms flourishing into unconstrained winding petals.

But now? Watching Joel share muted words with an agitated Ellie, both struggling to let the other walk away? Wondering if it was mere coincidence that it was Owen who was here, or if you dragged them to your doorstep. 

Your mind far off, preoccupied in the possibilities going unconfessed. If this was your fault, if you brought this on them, then Joel should hate you. You deserved it. No reason could form in your head as to why he should support you, he’d done enough. 

You didn’t know what to bring to this relationship, and now all you have started bringing is burden upon burdens. Nothing to go on, all you could assume was that love wasn’t supposed to be sharing the brunt of the others problems. 

You were selfish for letting him bring you home that day, and he was stupid for going after you in the first place. The gruesome mark on your side should have stayed there. Ripped open and bleed out until you wouldn’t get back up from that blood soaked room anymore. 

Fed up, Ellie grabbed your arm with a shout of your name. Turning you towards her, eyes narrowed in exasperation. “Where are we going? Joel said-” 

Mouth opening then closing, your peeked at the people around you some glancing at the Ellie’s sudden outburst. It didn’t even dawn on you until now how far into town the pair of you had gotten. You couldn’t do this here, not in front of all these people. You couldn’t breathe around a crowd closing in on you. Swallowing the swarming cloud threatening to engulf you. “I need to get something, okay?” You grabbed her hand on your arm, squeezing it for a moment. “It’s important.” 

She didn’t say much as you both walked into the now mostly empty house. You wasted no time, making a bee line to your bedroom as Ellie paced around. Taking in the lack of any feeling home. You had brought hardly anything over. A bag or two at most. Neither she or Joel had much when they arrived, but they finally had started to feel like a home, like a place in the world once long forgotten. You arrived with nothing, and you still had next to nothing. 

Ellie couldn’t help but wonder. Is that what life on the outside was like for you? To truly have nothing to find joy in? The clang of wood caught her attention, dragging her over to your old bedroom. Your body knelt on the ground tearing out part of the floor only to reach in and rag out a small box. “So what are we doing back here?” 

Hands pausing mid movement what would you even say? What Joel was keeping from here was nowhere near the kind of lie you were keeping from both of them. The lie you tried to throw away the day you set foot in this town. Fingers slowly wrapping around loose drawings scattered at the bottom, you shuffled them together, throat tight as you tired to find careful words. 

“Something he might be after.” Head lifting up you saw the question form on her tongue. “It’s complicated. I’m not- I don’t know how to explain it.” Right now at least. 

“You could try. I mean I’m complicated.” Your head dropped again but in a breathy laugh, Ellie always managing to let that bemused attitude slip through no matter what. 

Tilting your head to the side a smirk played on your lips. “Yeah, we seem to be a house full of that.” Slipping the drawings into part of the journal, you sucked in a breathe with your eyes blinking shut for as long as you exhaled. Chucking the box back into the hole you lazily threw the wood down. Nothing left in there to hide under hammer and nails. 

Ellie’s face was stuck in hesitation when you stood back up. Her eyes looking to the journal you pressed tight to your chest then back to your own face trying to appear neutral. “Is that what he wants?” 

Lungs constricted and coiled more in your chest. Best case scenario likely being this was all he travelled here for. “Stay in your room, when we get back.” Your head shaking just once as your face tightened and scrunched up. “I’m not asking Ellie. You’re not going anywhere near him.” 

Her arms waved in the air, voice raising just like outside. “I’m not just gonna hide in my room like a-” 

“You don’t think Joel’s going to tell you the exact same thing?” Inside hoping you weren’t coming across as harsh. But you didn’t know what Owen was going to say, or what was going to happen to get him to say it. Ellie deserved a normal life, and none of this was apart of that. 

The house was silent when you both got back. Not a creak or muffle as Ellie charged in first. An annoyed attitude to match such a flat expression unwilling to even keep the door mostly open. Your grip on the journal adjusting and reajusuting multiple times as if letting for a fleeting moment would sweep it out of your possession. 

Opening the door the rest of the way, you were silent as you watched Ellie stand in the middle of the room. Her body turned towards the only closed door, eyes wider and sunken in with a deeper hesitation then before. You could see Joel leaning back against the counter, arms crossed with eyes harsh and narrow at the same direction. 

“He’s in there?” Half her torso twisting to watch Joel nod once. “Is he-” 

“Still tied up. He’s not going anywhere.” An edge cut through his voice, restraining an emotional you knew was a battle to bury back down. “As long as he’s here you’re going to-” 

Head dropping as did her eyes. “Stay in my room. I know.” She didn’t bother taking her jacket off out here, just step by step towards the hallway there wasn’t even a blink. Suddenly the prospect of staying as far away from him as possible didn’t sound like a punishment. Stopping in front of the door, she looked back to Joel with her teeth gritting in an anxiousness. “What are we going to do with him?” 

There was no response. Joel’s shoulders squared as he exhaled through his nose harshly. Brown eyes just glued between her and the door as his head brewed with thoughts you couldn’t possibly imagine. 

Neither of them said anymore. Ellie turned to open her door before taking one last peek at the shut one not far from her own. Keeping her in the dark wouldn’t last, but right now wasn’t time. Not for Joel, not for you. 

The quiet air didn’t dissipate with her departure. An uncertainty floating between you and Joel, his eyes now following the way yours stared at the door. Unlike Ellie though, your own blazed with a knowing fear. Murmuring your name, Joel gestured for you to come over to him. 

You didn’t reach out for him the way his hand did for your waist. Pulling you closer, Joel stood up straight with a deep breathe. Eyes flickering to the door and back, brows narrowed still. “The hell does he want with you that he tracked you all the way here for?” 

It felt like a blame, even if it wasn’t one. What did you to do drag something else into his life? Your grip on the journal in your hand didn’t go amiss. Nor did your casual shrug fool him. “If he’s still a firefly he either only wants me..” 

“Or that?” Joel raised an eyebrow towards your hands as his own pulled your retreating body back into him. “Hey. I’m not prying, but if you’re in danger I need to know about it. Now.” The sternness in Joel’s voice carved something deep inside you as did the fierceness in his bright eyes.

Your jaw clenched as the defeat just piled up. His eyes followed as your hands dropped to your sides before you tossed the journal aggressively onto the counter behind him, but your arms returned to cross your chest protectively. “They know about me. Like-” 

His large hand squeezing just above where the mark sat on your side. His eyes squinted in confusion at what was in your hands. “What does a book have to do with it?” Heart lurching in your chest, you pried yourself from his hand but found yourself unable to move entirely from his warmth. One palm pressing into your forehead as the other sat on your hip. 

“It belongs to them.” Your chin cutting over to it. Jackson was supposed to heal over those memories, but that wasn’t the plan of whoever watched your life over. “I stole it from them, Owen took it back from me, I stole it from him so on.” Head raising into the air to push the sting in your eyes down even when your shaky breathe gave it away just as much. “Either they only got their hands on the book, or lucky enough to try and drag me to Boston because Marlene just can’t give anything up.” 

“Marlene?” Joel leaned into you, pulling your face to look at him by your chin. Your own lost ones stark against his heating fire as he said your name. “She was the one looking for you?” 

You stammered, watching Joel run a hand over his face. Dots connecting in your mind, your mouth fell open slightly as a tangle of disjointed words tumbled out. “Yeah she wanted me.... and you were in Boston. With Ellie.” A story you knew the details to but didn’t stop to wonder how deeply intertwined it’s words were.

This time it was Joel who fidgeted his body back and forth, jaw so clenched it might snap as both his hands found his hips. “Ellie grew up in there, and that’s where I lived when Marlene got me to take her, or forced my hand was more like it. She was adamant someone needed to get her to one of their stations out west when she couldn’t.”

Joel’s head snapped to you as you started putting it together. “I’m assuming she didn’t specify west meant a hospital in Salt Lake?” 

Running his hand down his face again, Joel finally leaned back against the counter. “I didn’t know the extend of where I was taking her until Ellie mentioned a cure. By the time I got her there, it was almost to late when I found out what the fuck they were about to do.” 

Blood racing in your veins you hated where this was going more and more. “Because she knew you’d never do otherwise. She seem desperate?” 

All you needed was his nod of yes. You felt incredibly stupid. The details Joel had already shared, what Don told you, what had happened what was in the journal itself. That’s why they left you alone after all that time. She found Ellie, and dumped her off with people who couldn’t possibly know what Marlene was handing her off for. 

You weren’t sure how long you had been silent, but Joel cupped the side of your neck urging you to come back to him. You were quicker on the draw then he was. “We need to find out what he’s doing here. Now.” 

Soothing you, his breathe grazed your face as he leaned his forehead onto yours. “I can do this alone, you don’t need to see this.” 

Sliding your fingers up to hold his wrist gently, your eyes as soft as your touch felt opposite of how much Joel’s nerves sat in his fingertips. “You said we’re in this together. So we do this, together.” He took one last moment to hold you against him still with a hand at the back of your head. 

Pulling back he grabbed something you couldn’t quite see from behind him, sliding it into pocket inside his jacket before you could make it out. His hand stayed in the middle of your lower back as you both approached the door. The journal left alone on the counter the reasons to keep it in the shadows leaving you moment by moment. 

It should have satisfied you to see fresh blood now on his face. Two distinct cuts clotting over on his cheek, drifting down to see his frame tied to a chair looped with more then one restraint. Hands bound to the arms of the seat, a redness that too was blood on his fists. You wanted to feel smug at how rough he looked, but it did nothing to soothe the racing of your heart. 

Owen barley looked your way when he saw Joel follow in. The harsh shut of the door behind him making the bound man jump. A rag drenched in droplets of blood and sweat tied around his mouth explained the no noise as you walked in. A sprinkle of suspicion that his newfound red paint was a result of putting far more of a struggle up then he could handle the consequences too. 

The air around the three was charged with such a heavy weight you felt as if it could crush you flat. Your vision as it turning white flashed, the slamming pain skyrocketing from your body to your head as it rattled against the cliff side. The blood on your face felt as if it had never been washed off as you looked at the still red stained ones on Owen. 

Yours weren’t bound to the arms of the chair. No yours were wrapped behind you, phantom sensations of the metal digging into your skin as it gave way to a snapping bone. Memories you’ve never spoken of,  ones you wanted to bury deep. 

Joel had spoken, and you didn’t even catch it. Muffled voices quiet and rumbling as your brain forced itself into the present. You had barley moved from just feet inside the room. Joel stood tall over him with the rag now dragged down from his mouth spitting as the words came out. “What? I can’t just pop by to visit a friend? See an old pal? Isn’t that right? Good ole Don?” 

Snatching his jaw, Owens cheeks smushed together as Joel forced it to lurch forward to his knelt over figure. “Hey, you’re not talking to her. Just me.” His voice was even, but unseen to your place behind him, Joel’s features stood sharp, a dark in his eyes that worked it’s way into his bones from weeks of torment on the people he loves. “Start with what Don was here for.” 

Joel’s hand dropped as he stayed at his eye level Keeping the mans only view of him. The condescension in Owen’s voice circulating Joel’s bloodstream in an angering trail. “Small town living.” 

He gave him no response. A stone walled stare leaving the pure nothingness in the air force someone to fill it, only neither you or Joel would do so. 

“He’s an idiot, who knows what he was doing here. I just haven’t heard from him is all, a guy can’t worry for his friend apparently.” You knew Owen wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. Part of you wondered if he just didn’t realize why Don was nowhere to be found, or if he was dumb at playing dumb. 

Joel’s hand flexed as he turned his head. Barley enough to even look beside him until moving back trying to not shift focus to you. Keeping Owens focus or Joels focus away he wasn’t quite sure of. “This can end right now. But if you keep bullshitting me, I promise you’ll wish it did.” 

Owen opened his mouth and closed it more than once. He was a footman. Strong, not pragmatic. A fear not unlike one you’ve felt countless times in your own eyes doubting himself as Joel stared at him. Only letting a few more seconds pass before Joel’s face twisted in anger. Bracing his palms on his thighs Joel pushed back upright. 

Stepping uncomfortably close into his space, Joel tugged the gag back over his mouth, but was nowhere near done. You couldn’t tell what Joel had pulled from his jacket until rusting pliers braced themselves onto the nail of Owens index finger. 

Tilting his head with an eyebrow raised, Joel was giving him a warning that Owen didn’t take. Just shaking his head with a muffled string of what sounded like petulant swearing. Joel held it to him, breathing heavy as whatever conflict in his head won out, forcing himself to act on that conclusion before a softer part of his subconscious wanted to talk him out of. 

A few years into the outbreak you had watched a number of members from your group screaming not dissimilar to the muffled ones before you. You had been pressed inside the back of a desk. Your only sight the dilapitating square of wall in front of you, but the wood surrounding you felt as it it made it echo. Warped, distorted screams as it was followed by a cracking. One by one the cracks followed screams that rasped into sobs. 

It was a sound and sight that for a while, was the scariest thing you’d ever seen. A body unconscious from either shock or blood loss as scattered puddles of blood and teeth lay strung about. You didn’t dare look how many were left. There were enough teeth on the ground to know not enough to matter. 

You had thought to yourself, never again did you want to be anywhere near something like this. But that was before you were tormented with screams, screeches and searing rips into your skin and clicks that stabbed into your brain until you felt numb to the fear. 

Owen didn’t sound quite like any of it. More like a strained groan trying to push down the agony. Your nails digging into your palm with each silence between Joel’s growling voice. Blood asking to drip down from the nails you still had, unlike the man who took his only chance to speak with his gag off, to try and spit at Joel. Much more swearing came from that rip then whatever your nails scratched into your palm. 

The red made it look worse then it did. Comparing to what the world outside proved it was capable of, Owen would live. Live without having to change who he was entirely. Your side told you not to feel bad and it was a hard voice to ignore. Your forearm throbbing in rhythm. Neither of those were a fate anyone should feel, but you had. And so did she. Those were far worse.

Owen wasn’t just connected to Don, it didn’t just trace back to you, and Joel had enough of keeping that thought out of it. “Look at me. Hey-” He yelled more this time, nostrils flared as he grabbed Owen by the throat to force him to look. 

Owen looked dazed, swallowing hard as his eyes fluttered in and out of pain. “You this embarrassed someone got the jump on you in front of your girl?” 

A roaring current zapped through Joels nerves, his hand tightening his hold on the mans throat. “Fine, you’re in my position. Someone breaking into your home? Rope in his hands, sneaking up on you and your daughter behind your backs?” His voice snarling at the edge of breaking into something Joel could lose control over. 

But you didn’t give either of them a chance. Your footsteps banged into the floor, heart pounding but unwilling to break eyes with Owens attention, now on you as he heaved in pain. Joel didn’t move, forcing his snarling heaves back down.

Hand curling into a fist around the pliers. It didn’t matter what Owen’s plan was. Joel covered all of Ellie’s sides, and so you would cover his back. You didn’t bend down to their place near the ground. You wanted Owen to strain up in the pain to look at you. “You read the journal, right?” 

Joel’s heart tempered down, but didn’t have the willingness to look anywhere but the man bleeding in front of him. Nothing had happened, but the threat was enough. Men like this, people like them? Joel would make sure they had no right to even look at Ellie. They get to keep their lives, their families and there was no comprehension in Joel’s mind to ever appease that they tried to tear apart his for their own gain. Tear his family back to shreds, keep their own when they had no heart or soul as they tried to do it to his. 

Unlike him, you didn’t bother with the intimidation, it was never a word given to you anyways. Letting it your hand brush the wrist attached to where Joel’s was, brushing your thumb over the vein you could reach, Joel finally let the mans airway free. Desperate to keep himself here, it only switched places. You felt his hand, large and close to bruising as he held part of your calf. 

Owen heaved and you let him. He wasn’t a solider, he had no obligation to withstand this, and both you and Joel knew that. You let Joel push Owen to the edge as long as you held him back from the cliff when Joel himself got to close to falling alongside. Broken at the bottom, splayed on jagged rocks you spoke softly to him. 

“Owen. I asked you a question.” He glanced from Joel to you, but finally kept it mostly on you when Joel didn’t move a muscle. “How much of the journal did you read?”

And there it was, his bloodshot eyes jumping to your forearm. In another world, maybe you’d smile, smirk, enjoy the torment. But neither you or Joel did. This was his family, and he was protecting it regardless of the cost. 

Nodding, you didn’t really even register doing, but your eyes sat wide. “It didn’t say anything about this,  I imagine.” One hand slip the side of your shirt up. 

Forearms heal better then the sides of a torso, and yours still looked like a horror. The colour, the scarring still healing with skin bitten and torn into and no disillusion as to what it was from. “Do you think you’re bite will look like this? Or rot to something else entirely.”

Would you do it? No. Humans deserved the fate of other humans. No one deserved what you and Ellie had barley survived. It was more then teeth, it was a blood curling terror like a radiation poured into your body along with it. But Owen didn’t know that, all he knew is someone in the fireflies inflated your reputation to dangerous. And that certainly wasn’t the image of hope Marlene tried to frame it in, no only one other person would have given Owen that idea. 

You wanted to crouch to look him properly in the eye, but you dared not interrupt the iron grip Joel had on your calf. So your fingers curled into the side of his jacket collar, one the front of his shirts were familiar with on quiet, peaceful nights. “Don could have told you if his own bite didn’t tear into his neck. Bring you to him if you don’t believe me.” 

“No, n-no,” There was the crack Joel had broken in. 

“Then tell us the truth. If you’re here for the journal, we can talk about that. But of you’re here for me then that’s a new problem.” 

You could feel Joel’s hand slid up your calf, less desperate and tight but now more all encompassing. A need to feel you there without risking his attention elsewhere. But that didn’t matter. The attention wasn’t about you at all. Owen looked defeated at you before sliding his eyes to the thing you feared putting at risk the most.   

“We weren’t looking for you. We were sent to look for him.” Your fingers curled into his jacket more as your heart beat so fast you felt it in your throat. A penetrating cold shivering from your heart and outward. “Fuck, no one even knew where you were until now I guess. A few of us have been scouting different nowhere towns looking for a Joel Miller. Just a wild fucking coincidence I guess.” 

Joel’s voice was controlled, forcing words out slowly and clearly. Low almost like a whisper. His eyes the opposite as they fell dark and falling down a hole of realization. “Whose us?” 

Owen gnawed at his lip before relenting. “Anderson,” Joel tilted his head needing him to elaborate, but you knew. You knew it was a divine force that kept you from falling back. “You know the doctor, the fucking hospital? We’re not with the fucking fireflies anymore, just got a few of us together when she finally learned your name. You killed her dad, so? Fair’s fair.” 

Joel stood up, the room silent as your head spun it’s contents. Turning to you, his face was lost in an overwhelming blast of emotions. Yours was flushed, a shiver running your entire body as you looked at him.  This wasn’t even about you, and that scared you even more. You couldn’t just walk away to get rid of this for them.

Joel grabbed your wrist on his jacket, holding to keep you close. He seemed to grapple with something before turning to shove the gag back in Owens protesting mouth and dragging you out of the room. 

He pulled you closer to the main room cupping the sides of your face urgently, pulling you into his space as you tried to rationalize it. “She can’t, you..I won’t let her.” 

Joel muttering your name almost commandingly as he almost smoothed over your skin to quell the panic. “Hey, hey- it’s okay eyes on me.” Your nails almost dug into his chest as you shook in his hold with a skin prickling combination of distraught and a back blowing whoosh of determinating protectiveness. “Nothing is going to happen. Nothing’s going to happen to me, not me, not any of us.” 

Your soul felt like screaming on the inside. “I’m not going to lose you, not for this. I won’t leave anyone to-” 

Joel pulled your lips into his, a harsh and rough collision that took not just your breathe out of your lungs but his. His own brushing against yours aggressively, pulling back only enough to have you hear him.

“Together. Anything we do, we’re doing it together. You don’t want to leave me? Good ‘cus I’m certainly not leaving you or her. I didn’t do what I did, only to get ripped away from her as soon as we finally started becoming something.” 

Joel kissed you another time, telling you to stay out here. Just for a minute before turning on the spot and slamming the door back behind him. A sharp anger on his face that you decided wasn’t worth holding him back from. 

Your back pressed against the wall, palms shoving pressure onto your forehead as you realized just who was looking for Joel. If it was her, then she’d come looking for Owen. If Joel didn’t hesitate to go find you the day you took off, then she would come looking for Owen the second it was too late for him to reasonably not come back. 

At some point you had slid onto the floor right next to Ellie’s door. This was it. She needed to know about that day. But it wasn’t what Joel did that was the lie going to hurt, it was the truth you had to come to terms with too. The truth all Joel did, was save her from and the pain he thought he was keeping from her was nothing. 

You could see the journal still sat on the counter at the other end of the room. He’d tell her, then you’d tell them. Somewhere in the back of your head you registered a thud, but it was too faint to drag you back into the light. 

The quiet creak of Ellie’s door however, was just that. She had heard enough to know what was happening in that room, but none of you were disturbed by it. Ellie had been through more then what Joel had done in those last ten minutes with Joel himself. Her eyes were tensely trained on the door when she almost jumped at the sight of you. 

“Fuck, make a sound or something next time.” Laugh, smile give her something but you couldn’t. Everything was about to be laid out on the table, and your nerves were crippled with the nightmare of losing Joel, losing her, for it all. “What happened?” 

Both of your heads shot up as Joel finally came back out. A redness on his hands that you knew were smears of the mans already dripping blood inside, it didn’t look bruised so at least it wasn’t that. You could only see inside the room enough to see the chair awkwardly moved over with Owen muttering to himself along with it as the door shut. 

All three of you looked at one another before Joel looked at Ellie with a seeping guilt in his eyes, “We need to talk.” Ellie’s eyebrows raised in worry but nodded. 

“Not just you. I mean, she needs to know.” Ellie’s face darting between you both now confused, “But you both need to know something else. You talk to her first though.” 

Ellie looked lost and anxious, “What the fuck is going on?” 

Joel’s hand smoothed over the side of Ellie’s head, his heart melting at how instinctively now she leaned into his embrace without realizing. Any of you losing this would be catastrophic. “Give us a minute,” his head gesturing to you. “Then we’ll talk.” Looking between you both, she finally conceded. Joel unable to take his eyes off of her until the door shut completely once more. 

Holding his hand out, he pulled you up onto your feet and gestured to the main room before either of you said a word. Wavering looks swimming in both of your eyes and hearts beating just as loudly as the other. “She-” Joel cut himself off with a sigh, handing his head with his hands on his hips. “I wanted to find the right words first. Not spring it on her like it doesn’t matter how I say it.” A strain in his voice you wanted to honey over.

Though you weren’t sure he was really telling you, not past your nerves. Running a hand down the length of his face as his eyes stayed shut. You were in the same boat, how were you supposed to tell the only family you had how much of a lie they were both sold on. How would they feel knowing you were a sliver of that story? 

Maybe you shouldn’t have unpacked that bag, your old empty house feeling more and more like the isolation you belonged in, but Joel didn’t deserve this feeling. He’d been through enough, he’s done enough. Softly muttering his name, he dropped his hand back to his hip but still was trapped behind his eyes.

This time whispering his name, hands very gently reaching out to cup the side of his face, thumb tracing against the coarse facial hair. His larger hand circled your wrist. “Give me your worst case scenario.” His eyes darting up in narrowing, an incredulous look but you kept your hand softly on him. “What would be the worst reaction she could have?” 

It was clear he’d thought too much of just that, because his answer was instantaneous. “She hates me. I lied to her about all of it, and she resents me for what I did, and for lying to her.” A part of your heart cried at hints of agony his eyes looked at you. “I don’t know if I could handle that. Not now.” 

Joel deserved to hear one thing, but right now you think he needed something else more. It was surprisingly easy to pull such a tall giant man to lean down into you. His hands both squeezing you waist as his forehead rested on your shoulder. Winding one arm past his neck you kept him there as you raked your hands through his hair as the other ran your palm shallowly against his torso down closer to his stomach. His deep breaths the only thing in your ear as you let him feel the worry for just a moment. 

Let him process what’s being forced onto him so suddenly. You didn’t let go of him as you softly spoke into his ear minutes later as his breathing steadied against your skin. “Do you know why that will never happen?” Hands gripped you tighter, you were starting to speak his silence. “That kid loves you. You’re her whole goddamn world even if you can’t see it. She was sold on a lie that got sold onto you. You were the only person who did the right thing, probably one of the only people who ever put her well being before someone else.” 

Joel found enough of a calm to lift his head, steady movements in his chest as he rested his head against yours. Face still twisted and tearing apart with nerves. “I still lied to her.” 

When you first met him, you’d never have said anything close to what came out of your mouth in the firm meaning you spoke. “You lied to yourself, Joel.” His eyes widening, a hurt treading on them that needed to be satiated fast. “When you think about that day, do you see what you did or why you did it- no don’t try to tell me otherwise. Because that’s exactly what I see.” 

Your hands sliding down to his own waist, “There’s not a single time I’ve heard Ellie talk about everything that happened that doesn’t end in her finding a way to tie it back to something you did for her. Marlene wanted to dump her life off on lies, and you kept her from it because you love her. What lie do you think’s going to hurt more? The one you couldn’t even admit to yourself, or the one people like them just for a chance to get her into a slaughterhouse.”  

Pulling your arms away from him, you gave Joel the chance to stand on two feet. The thoughts clearly mixing and repelling against one another as he followed your lead. Giving his body a chance to breathe on his own, his eyes on nothing while the mind behind brewed and boiled. Slowly you stepped away, the time it took getting to where the journal had been tossed feeling like a lifetime. 

Your hand paused as you slid it towards you. Eyes flying over the well used pages stuffed with fresher notes in your own once manic scratchings. Heart felt beating in your chest, you had to do it, but it wasn’t your place to say it. You had to let them be together. They could call you whatever they wanted, but you were still just on your own. Joel was her father now, and that’s the love she’s going to desperately need the most. 

Biting the inside of your cheek, you quickly moved things. Putting your own notes in one pile and storing it right at the front. It had to be done before regret slipped in. Snatching it off the table you didn’t hide it on your person this time. It hung in the hand at your side, as you looked at his face once more. 

No lies between you. Even if it sacrificed the adoration he watched you with. Both of you moved slowly as you handed it over to him, grateful he didn’t open it right away. “There’s nothing I could say that isn’t already in there.” 

Joel’s head tilted as he looked at you with doubt. “Neither of us is trying to exclude you.” 

Nerves burning on fire, you shrugged. “It’s still your life before me. Don’t open it until after. She needs you first, not this.” Watching his eyes bounce between the journal and you, the defeat crawling over sitting heavy in Joel’s stomach. “I think I pretty much summed it up, my notes in the front.” You pointed to the obvious white sheets contrasted against the stained darker ones. “But it’s still all in there.” 

Neither you nor Joel said the words. The grief of losing it before becoming real a fear you needed to steel yourself with once more against as Joel stood before you. Himself holding it back from spilling out of his mouth, especially with that dissonant look in your eyes. 

Selfishly, you have yourself what could be a final indulgence of his warmth. Your hands pressing flat onto his chest wishing those warm brown colour of his eyes would stay with you forever. “You’re not a bad person, Joel. Ellie knows that, so stop thinking that she will.” 

His eyes skipped down to your lips, choosing to pull you in with his fingers under your chin. Small and chaste with the taste of restraint from losing yourself in the other. Pulling back only enough to give you air, “Didn’t realize this is what it would take to get this much out of you.” 

Your heart leaping into a breathy laugh as he too lightly laughed into another kiss. Everyone always had something to say the second you ran your mouth for more than a few minutes didn’t they? 

Control slipping, you had to gently push him back before he let go of it entirely. You didn’t watch as he walked away, didn’t watch as he went into her room. The click of the door was a trigger. The air in the room heavy and constricting, as the walls surrounded you. You couldn’t be in here, you couldn’t listen to whatever would happen it was suffocating you. You didn’t deserve to be anywhere near them, not now, not for this. 

Not sure if either of them heard the front door shut, you walked out into the now significantly darker sky. Lungs filling with air you could stand as if the house was drowning in water. You didn’t get too far, just far enough to throw your back against a brick wall, sliding down as you lifted your head into the late winter sky.

It was a strange thought that passed through you, wondering what she’s heard about you since. If she was still with the fireflies then she knows all to well the man power wasted at trying to get you back.

Like the faces that followed you with every stabbing pain, she no doubt remembers your face perfectly. One of the hands now resting on your knees twitching as it relived a pain. 

The blood dripping down your bottom lip from how hard you bit into it, holding back your voice as the bones in your hand snapped, slipping from the metal handcuffs forcing your arms behind the chair. The chain clanging together as you retched them in front of you, barley making it off the chair as your upper body leaned in on itself, shaking as you snapped the bone back barley staving off a cry.

The darker the sky grew the further down the dilapidated, dripping hall your memory travelled. You had caught her coming around the corner, nearly jumping as she turned to see you. It was easy to see the blood on you was your own, but it was even easier to see what sat on the forearm with the fractured hand. Red skin and stiff hanging at your torso, you had it unknowingly tilted where the ripples of an infection she couldn’t possibly guess was long past it’s prime. 

You didn’t know if all of them here knew, a pathetic excuse of a firefly mid stop with too much empty space for them to even think of how to use it. Hell, at the time, you didn’t know a single of them were fireflies. You just knew him, your father, and now her. Judging by her face, wide eyes stepping back as an urgency fell over her face, she didn’t know the person here was you. The familiarity between you didn’t mean anything close to it’s beginning.

It all took no more than a few seconds. One of her hands reached behind her for what you had seen from the side was a gun as she begun to shout out someone’s name that you didn’t give her a chance to spell out. You had done it before you even heard it, arm stretched as the sound of the shot hit your ears after it already casted blood into her stomach. Something inside you wanted to stay, by the time someone else reached her it could already be too late. 

But that would’ve been your fate if you didn’t leave. You fell into their laps by accident, but wasted no time in trying to find a use for you that didn’t involve keeping you around. It was the first time you stole the only resources they had, you. And the first time having you get away, ate at Marlene’s desperation to force you back from that day onward. You didn’t even know Marlene’s name until that day in the field, but you new who she was all too well now.

Front door slowly shutting was followed by the slight thud of boots against the wood of the porch. Head snapping up you saw Joel looking out with a squint, his shoulders looking less risen and tense then he had all day. You however, shot up so quickly your feet almost stumbled you back over if not for your hand braced against the brick beside you. 

It was too far to see his expression, but it wasn’t always the best way to determine what was going on inside Joel’s head. Let him come to you, you told yourself. Constantly going to him, invading his life, disturbing their privacy was all you provided. 

He had on a different shirt then before, this one looking much warmer then what was on you. Part of you wondered just how long you had been out here alone. If the sky had anything to say about it, it might have been far longer then you knew. 

Now though, being out in the snow? A lack of anything substantial for winter weather having Joel’s eyes look at you, not knowing if in simple concern or judgment. Standing a foot or two away from you, Joel answered the question he saw you open your mouth to ask. 

“You were right.” Your back sagged against the brick, this time though your legs finding the strength to hold you up. “Turns out having your whole life upended hurts a whole lot more then being lied to about getting her out of it.” His voice was shoved out in a gruff kind of pain, his eyes fared no better.  Bright but not in a shine you yearned for, a pain, an upset that sat heavy in his heart. Just because it didn’t devastate their relationship, doesn’t mean it wasn’t devastating in every other sense. 

You swallowed harshly as you nodded. Nothing even in your throat to say, scared to look to long at him, missing the needing stare he gave you that shined in the growing moonlight. Your voice just weak and cracked, “And you?” 

The sigh he let out was loud. Arms crossing his chest he paced to put rest his back against a close by tree. The increased distance between you growing larger, you didn’t know how intentional it was. “I said something when she first told me what Marlene wanted with her. They’ve talked about cures all the time and none of them worked. Everyone wanted me to believe in it, in her so badly.” 

Clenching his jaw you could see the frustration build and build. Making you feel like you understood without any idea of how to comfort it in a meaningful way. “But she’s a kid, not an answer.” 

You yearned to reach out to him, his eyes glazing somewhat as he looked from the night sky, to the ground and back to you as a darker tone resurfaced in his voice. “She didn’t deserve to be treated like some miracle. She needed someone, anyone, to give a shit enough to protect her. Even from them.” 

For once you stood still like a stature while Joel kept shifting his stance or his shoulders. “I don’t know if I even believed it when I went back for her. All I knew is it didn’t matter what they wanted, she didn’t deserve that and I couldn’t live with it.”

Your fingernails chipped away at the brick behind you, “Sometimes desperation makes you dumb. Doing bad things because they deluded themselves into thinking as long as they accomplish something then they can keep feeling as if they’re winning.” Sighing out raspily you hoped he couldn’t hear it. “Couldn’t get me anymore, so the second she found a new one? Getting her on that table was all they a cared about.”

“Even though they knew it wouldn’t work.” Joel pushed up from the tree, letting his hands fall to his belt loops trying to close the distance. “Didn’t matter what the truth was, everyone wanted her to be the one to set all of this right. All I could see was a girl who wanted to have a life. Didn’t matter to me what anyone else wanted, I’m not sure it ever did when it came to Ellie.” 

Silence fell between you, that feeling in your throat coming back up like it wasn’t able to stop. Your heart falling over at the pain filling his features. “I’m sorry.” 

Joel scrunched his face at you. “You’re sorry? For what?” 

Throwing your hands out, you for once found yourself starting any kind of argument. “What do you mean what? How about everything I do somehow keeps coming back to fuck you and Ellie’s lives up.” 

Joel’s own voice started to match in a frustration level. “Wait- you haven’t done anything.” 

Rolling your eyes to the side you struggled to understand what he was even trying to do. “Right, because you’re lives have been so much more peaceful since I showed up and for some reason you just let me hang around no matter what I’ve done.” 

Joel tried to come towards you but you just pushed off the wall and circled around to stay away. “I-”

At least it was growing dark enough that Joel couldn’t see the redness in your eyes. “He came looking for Don, Joel. Don never checked in because I killed him, he never even mentioned them. If he was here looking for you, he stopped giving a shit about you the second he saw me. Maybe if I just let him-” 

Joel’s anger wasn’t at you but it sat visibly steaming on his face as he tried stepping towards you, but you just stepped away again. “No. I’m not even going to fucking entertain that idea-” 

Your head pounded, every modicum of sound screaming as it flowed into your ears. “Well I am, so maybe you should for once, Joel.”

Running a hand over his mouth, you knew he was either going to yell or going to try and come closer, but at the moment you couldn’t tell which one you wanted less. “What do you want from me? Blame you for everything that ever goes wrong? Pretend I don’t want you in my life?” 

If he was growing angry, you deflated it by turning to face him. Not quite yelling, but certainly not quiet either. “No, you’re just supposed to not want me in general.”

His volume grew with yours, as did the sharp features on his face grew twisted and stiff. “Well I’m sorry, sweetheart. You don’t get to just stand there and tell me I’m not allowed to love you just because that’s what you expect out of me.” 

He didn’t realize what he had just said. And neither did you. The only ones who realized what Joel had just said, were the half awake birds on the treetops and the single pair of ears quietly listening from a far off window. 

You pressed your palm to your forehead, trying to will the headache away with the pressure. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Joel. I just-” 

Joel tried to come closer. His heart was turned up tonight, and between earlier, sitting on a way too low to the ground bed for his frame, running his hand soothingly over his what loose strands of hair splayed out from their ponytail as his little girl finally let that insufferably stubborn wall of hers fall down for once and cried into his lap. That everything that had finally brought them together was all based on a horrific lie that duped them both. Neither he nor her having any idea what to feel about it. 

It was too much for him, but nothing compared to the endless turmoil spinning behind Ellie’s eyes as they were laid out what this all truly was. Ellie had been through a lot, too much with him, but for once she let herself react the way she needed. She didn’t do anything, she shouldn’t be brave about it. 

Now he’s standing out in his front yard, watching you float around too many emotions for you to figure out what you even felt. Your voice wavering and how you kept stepping away if he came forward. To Joel, it was his own actions that brought this down on them, yet here you stood trying to force him to put every blame on you for just existing. 

“Can you just listen to me?” 

You wanted everything to stop, your lungs yelling at you and your vision feeling like it wanted to start spinning. “No, Joel-” 

His hands gestured uselessly in the air, “Why not?” hoping he didn’t sound angry, but sometimes he wasn’t quite aware enough to know how he was coming off to people. Especially if airing on the side of losing his temper. 

You told yourself not to cry, feeling a vile embarrassment if you cried in front of him right now. But your throat felt choked up, and barley managed to spit it out. “Because I don’t get it, Joel.” Everything in his face paused, taken back by what was about to spill out of your heart. 

“I don’t understand why you care. I’ve never understood it. I’ve done nothing but get in the way, and you keep just bringing me back when we both know your life would be a hell of a lot easier without me in it. I don’t understand why you keep me around or why you even like me. I just...I don’t get you.” 

Pressure build behind your eyes while the rest of you burned with humiliation. Being with Joel exposed parts of your soul that you never even thought to share with another, but the undeniable shake in your voice as you trailed off was twister of panic and tears that you tried to push down. Pretending it was anger. 

In anyone else, Joel would have taken it in a worse light. But the silence in him as he grappled with just how little you could see how he felt didn’t sit right inside him. He knew part of this between you both was somewhat new to you. What he didn’t know, is that in fact all of it was new to you. 

He was new in every way and now it all swirled on terrifying, your eyes staring at each other until you turned to go back in the house. In your frazzled mind, you hoped maybe Joel wouldn’t yell at you if you were inside. It felt different once you got there though. Countless houses you’ve walked into, abandoned, dilapidated, some in surprisingly good condition. Even your own small one in this very town. But something about being in Joel’s house felt different. Like a warmth spreading through your bones as you walked into the front door. 

Your palms sat flat against the back of the couch, trying to count how long your inhales were and focusing on the exhales. Slowly your heart tapered down, the walls around you stopped shrinking in as you hoped when your eyes opened once more the world would stop feeling like it was tumbling around you. 

Just seconds ago you felt like if Joel came anywhere close to you, that the weight of your emotions would implode on you. Yet as you heard Joel quietly following you into the house, you couldn’t help but follow where he was by the sounds he made as he walked in. 

It all just hit you too fast. Giving yourself no time to process so you chose the worst possible way to react. Too much of your lives were converging together and it kept brewing a storm that you once only had to deal with alone. Now there were actual people in your life who leaving would tear parts of you across the distances between them. The only life that had been in danger since you arrived was your own. Having the forces from yours come down to Joel wasn’t fair. He had no stake in this fight. 

He only did the one thing none of those people had the heart or the guts to do for another. And people like her had no right seeking out revenge for someone who wasn’t anywhere near close to what was toted around. Truly thinking about it, there was another person in this house who you know has his back too. 

Eyes opening you looked over to her closed door, this time at least knowing she asleep. Only time would heal what you finally had to expose her too. 

It was hypocritical of you, how the second two strong arms caged you in against the back of the couch, you leaned back into what you knew was Joel’s warm torso. He stepped in to press you closer to the couch so he could cover your hands with his, fingers linked as much as he could manage in this position. 

His chin rests on your shoulder as you both stand with the other against you, a quiet that is far more familiar and soothing then any kind of arguing. Joel must have been watching you, because as soon as you opened your eyes to speak, he leaned his mouth closer to your ear. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry again.” 

Letting you go, Joel pressed himself more into your back as his hands decide to rest more comfortably on your hips. His nose pressed to your hair you nod in agreement. “Guess I’ve scared you enough, only a matter of time until it was my turn to get it.” 

Your fingers dug into the couch more, but you still leaned into his touch head tilting back at his every move, even though he always found his way back. “I’m not going to bother telling you not to be. We both know listening to me isn’t exactly your forte.” Joel smirking against the side of your head at your face instantly falling in a playful offence. “I need you to listen to me this time, though.” 

One arm slid across your stomach, almost as if he knew your hands were itching to hold onto him in some way. His hold pressing you against him further at the feeling of your nails scratching along his arm slightly. Your nod not enough for him, “Out loud.” 

His heartbeat was so much calmer then yours, clearly having taken his jacket off while your back was turned the single thin layers between you meant you could feel him with every breathe. “I’m listening.” 

Joel’s own eyes were off in the distance, staring at the table he could see through the door frame. The kind of nerves he saw on you felt like an echo of that night. So wrapped up in how sure he felt, that he forgot how unused to all this you were. Not used to the feelings that came with finding yourself so close to someone you didn’t expect too. 

He knew all to well what that was like. The girl he felt in his heart like a father to, laying everything out on the line for. Ellie could look back on that day and joke about it. Trying to make a scene over how mistreated she was anytime he made her do a chore she’d turn back with a hand over her head lambasting the time he so callously threw her entire body into a wall. “Like a piece of meat,” she’d go on like.

Being told she’s nothing but cargo to him, not knowing the pure terror the day he could have truly lost her in more vile ways then he wanted to ever imagine. How it wasn’t the only day either.  A small name he only ever felt pain even thinking about slipping from his lips as he looked at Ellie, unable to deny what they had become and just how deeply both of them wanted to hold onto the other.

It was different for you, but he knew whatever family you had wasn’t even present enough for you to care to share. Spending a lifetime outside any kind of walls or city with any form of order, not until you walked into town that day. You were still getting used to him, just as he had to do with Ellie. 

“Maybe in another life, this might go down differently. Ellie decides she doesn’t trust me, I get caught off guard, or by some miracle that doctor even had a fucking clue what he was doing.” Both his arm around you and hand on your hip squeezed tighter. “But that’s not going to happen. We have each other, sweetheart. All three of us. You don’t deserve to be dragged back into this shit. And I’m sure as hell not leaving this world for that son of a bitch thinking he had any right to cut her open for some cure that doesn’t fucking exist. Who didn’t give a second thought about murdering the one other kid in my life who has ever felt like a daughter to me.” 

You could feel the tensity in his muscles, wanting to turn around you tried to twist but Joel kept you in place. Pressing his lips to the back of your head. “He deserved exactly what you gave him, Joel.” Pausing your minds were both torn between two growing factions, one of which had to be dealt with before the other. “She’ll try to get the jump on us. Think I accidentally taught her the advantage of actually sneaking up on people.” 

Joel’s voice was such a deep and bassy rumble in your ear that you couldn’t help your eyes flutter at the sensation. “Then she tries sneaking up on us. You with me?” Nodding in his hold, he muttered “Good girl.” 

Oh he did that on purpose. As soon as your thighs tensed, Joel smirked into your hair. “Joel, we’re supposed to be making a plan- this isn’t fair.” 

His chuckle was closer to your neck as he traced his nose down your cheek and jaw. “You saying I can’t do both?” The hand around your stomach started tracing over you, the way you’d run your hands through his air he traced over your front. When you didn’t respond right away, Joel’s lips pressed one more kiss right under your ear before nudging you with his nose. “We don’t have to do anything, sweetheart. It’s hasn’t been an easy day. I just want to pull you out of that head of yours.” 

This time as you went to turn in his grip he let you. Your hands finding a home on his waist as he kept his back on your hips. His hair somehow just as light and fluffy now as it was when you woke up that morning. Coaxing you awake with his kiss as your hands found his still messy sleeping hair. 

It was just as lovely now, the yellow tinged lights making the greys highlight the rest of the colour that suited him so beautifully. His eyes treading on a darker lust, but instead of a greedy tinge there sat almost a need. Something softer that not even a year ago he thought he’d never even consider wanting anymore. “What is it you want, Joel?” 

Just like he didn’t expect this to be something he ever would want, he almost would never have guessed how easily you got him to open up to you. He’s not sure he’s ever been like this with a woman, even in his old life. 

But you held nothing but an innocent generosity in your eyes, and Joel wasn’t about to part ways with that either. “Call me needy,” leaning to your face his nose trailed along yours as your eyes slid shut. “But what I want, is to feel how warm and tight you are for a little while.” 

Joel read your body like a book, could feel in the smallest actions, the certain pitch of a tiny gasp or the way your body seemed to tense up and shiver at the same time. You always struggled to tell him what you wanted, but he was working you through that. Joel was perfectly happy to take care of you, typically because what he needed matched what you needed perfectly. 

And talking wasn’t always the easiest way to get either of you out of your heads. Joel trying to lull you into his touch when you still hadn’t let go yet. “But if she-” 

One hand tilting you up to his eyes again,”How many does she have with her, if you were to guess?”

If this was about Ellie, there was no way she’d be involved. She wasn’t apart of the group, and there weren’t many people who would follow her on a revenge quest for the father instead of towards the girl they thought they finally had in their possession. “Maybe one or two others, besides him.” Your head nodded in the general direction. “Probably looked at a few different areas. Couple other smaller communities in the state that they would have looked at first. Likely didn’t realize anything was wrong until Owen didn’t check back in. Maybe a day away from here or so.” 

Joel looked through you as he went over something in his head, you guess you still weren’t that good at reading him. Not knowing what plan he was going over. His eyes met yours finally, dipping down to your lips before slowly dragging them back up. “We’re bigger, means she’s got to be more careful. In other words, you can afford to let me have you for a couple hours. Dead man’s final request and all.” 

Your face fell flat along with a weight settling back down in your stomach. “That’s not funny.” 

He shrugged one shoulder, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Is it?” The unamused look on your face still tinged in anxiety had Joel switch gears again. He didn’t find anything funny in joking about you or Ellie that way, so maybe it was fair you didn’t find jokes about him funny either. “Hey, I already told you. I’m not going anywhere. None of us are.” 

Biting the inside of your cheek you shifted your eyes off to the side before nodding. Feeling Joel press another kiss to the side of your head as he shoved you towards the hall. “Go, I’ll be right there.” 

In his room and in the hall you both lingered on something. Your fingertips trailing over the almost insignificant things on his dresser. Tiny pieces of Joel that if he were gone, wouldn’t really belong there anymore. A thought making you sick to your stomach. You’d rather she come for you, at least they could go back to their regular lives. 

Joels own fingers flipping through the pages. Knelt down he quietly had pulled the journal from where it sat close on Ellie’s bed. He let her discover it, he already knew what it would say, just in details that actually mattered. 

She went through most of the reactions she could, denial, anger, lashing out before she exhausted herself leaving tears the only energy she had left in her. It tore his chest right open exposing his heart to the cold air. They were the monsters and not only did they want to kill him all for a man who tried to take his own girl’s life but now the delusional lies they told themselves left her feeling betrayed and used. 

But it wasn’t just her was it? By some miracle some higher power gave Joel not one, but two things in this nightmare to hold onto. Sometimes it was frustrating, watching you unable to believe what he wanted to give you, but then again he wasn’t much different with Ellie was he? 

Ellie pulled him out of a darkness, and Joel had no intention of not doing the same to you. And he knew damn well Ellie felt the same. 

Standing in his room, it occurred to you that maybe you should try to be sexy, allure Joel to you or anything like that. You felt stupid though even thinking about where to start or if he would just roll his eyes at you for trying.

The door closing knocked a sense into you, realizing maybe he wanted you to be ready by now you almost flinched back before starting to pull your shirt up. Two large hands however covered yours as he pressed himself behind you. “Doing my job for me.” 

Your arms went willingly Joel stopped to pull your bra up over you along with the shirt, dropping it down into a messy pile. He wasted no time in filling his hands up with your breasts, almost kneading the plush skin as your back arched into his chest with a breathless gasp. He didn’t want you like this though, he wanted all of you. 

Using his thumb and index finger he tugged slightly at both your nipples letting you choke a moan back as he moved onto the rest of you. His taller figure leaned over you, the once presumed glare narrowing his features now rung in your head as an introspective train of thought, determined in whatever task even with his arms wrapped around your front skillfully undoing the button on your pants. 

A shiver ran down your spine as his mouth bent to press a feather light kiss to your neck so he could reach lower, dragging the zipper down and grasp the waistline. Your shivering from the winters cold air still floating through the room, you felt your limbs tingle as he mumbled into your neck, “Be good for me.” 

Slowly starting to pull both your pants and underwear down, Joel couldn’t help his greed, pausing to squeeze fistfuls of your ass almost too roughly before continuing to pull them off of you. Before he could do anything else, once you stood bare in front of him, you turned in his hold quickly. 

Sudden movement catching him by surprise, it gave you enough time to already start undoing his belt and zipper. Joel’s own plans caught in his mouth at just how easily you made him so unbearably hard just at your small careful hands trying to pull out his cock before he even has properly touched you yet. 

He didn’t let you get as far as the faint beginning of you moving your fingers to grasp at his own pants before snatching your hands. Your eyes wide as he held them in the air, his eyes dark with a mocking disapproval. “Now what did I say about being good for me?” 

That tingle in your limbs spreading through your heart out into your veins as you bit slightly at your bottom lip at his tone. Your hands fell loose in his grip causing him to switch to approval. Maneuvering you so he now was the one with his back to the bed, he held you at your hips walking you over to the bed. 

“Now, are you going to let me do something for you? Something new?” Your eyebrows raised in question, unsure to what he meant. You thought at this point you had done mostly everything or at least knew everything. 

Living outside of the walls didn’t exactly foster an environment eager to share or teach the fun side of sex, or you know, it in general in your case. “I-yeah.” Boy, how enthusiastic of you. 

Joel only smiled softly though, pulling your chin in to press a soft kiss before pulling you onto the bed with him. Joel the one laying with his back on the sheets, he guided you so your core sat pressed right against the bumpiness that blocked his cock under the open belt. Large warm hands running over and squeezing the plush skin he could grab at watching you slip your fingers to smooth over his stomach under his shirt. 

“Come up here, sweetheart.” 

You both had two different intentions. One being you assuming he means for a kiss, the other using his strong arms to pull your hips off his clothed cock and up his body. Suddenly your soft touch against his skin turned into a much more urgent press against his chest, “Wait, wait-” Joel kept you in place, but his eyes narrowed in concern at your tone. Your question confusing him somewhat. “What are you doing?” 

His tone slow and clear as he worry turned to a bit of confusion. “I’m just trying to taste you, sweetheart. Just like always,” 

Your fingers pressed into him more, causing him to sit up slightly as you looked hesitant and even somewhat embarrassed. “But why would I-” Your eyes casted down at anywhere but his face as you put the not so complicated clues together. “Why would you want it that way? Instead of you know, like we usually...” Christ you couldn’t possibly feel less attractive currently.

Joel raised an eyebrow, letting your hips back down without moving you away, his hands now smoothing over your thighs. “Because I really want my mouth on this pussy, sweetheart.” 

Your body tensed which he didn’t like at all. “Why would you, I mean wouldn’t you find that...” You hesitated on saying gross, having a feeling that wouldn’t be a word to go over well. “...uncomfortable?”

Joel’s hands squeezed your thighs as his head flopped back down onto the pillow. Unable to stop wondering what kind of encounters you had out there. You genuinely just didn’t know what he was trying to do, looking at him in the most confused innocent way he’s ever seen on you. “Jesus fucking christ, you’re going to kill me.” Barely mumbling under his breathe. Sitting up properly, he maneuvered you into his lap. “We don’t have to do it, but I really fucking want to.” 

Your hands tapping at his shoulders, you seemed to drop some of the embarrassment leaving just an uncertainty. “I just don’t get why you’d want to..can’t I just suck your cock?” 

Joel’s head dropping down onto your shoulder as he mumbled even more. Sliding his hand between your bodies, he felt a trace of your wetness, using what he could touch to slide up and rub into your clit. “We can do that if you want. Or we can do both at the same time.” 

This time you smiled, pulling back with a laugh as he joined keeping you from going too far off in his hold. “Okay that sounds even worse for you.” 

He let you get away with it this time. Joel pulled you into his lips, sighing as you let his tongue tease and slide into your mouth as he kissed you. The push and pull of his tongue against yours sending shock waves between your legs adding to what you already knew was making a mess. His kiss and his tongue always making you so lightheaded. 

Taking advantage of how lost you got in his kiss, Joel suddenly lurched forward, sending your back to fall against the rest of the bed as he crawled over top of you. Your hands finding their way to rake through his hair as he kissed you more. 

Joels hands unable to choose a spot to touch you, from your hips to thighs and back to to teasing your nipples, he tucked his head into your neck once more as he kissed the skin there. 

One hand of your leaving his hair, trailing down his broad back to his narrower lower side before sliding under to gently take his cock into your hand. His hands gripping his preexisting hold on your nipples tighter as he groaned. Joel covering your body so much made the angle not easy, but you ran your thumb over hips tip already leaking onto your hand. 

In a move that actually caused Joel’s body to jump, you suddenly smoothed your palm all over the tip of his cock, smearing the precum over it before sliding it down the length you could reach. Enough precum on you to fill the air with the slick sounds of his skin with each stroke. Joel moaned into your neck before trying to smother it with biting a mark into it. He was too long and too thick to cover enough even half of his cock, but your grip was tight and strokes fast but steady. 

Yanking your head to angle for his mouth, you gripped him tighter in pleasure at how his hold on your hair was so commanding.  Biting against your lips this time until you whined in need of a breathe. The feeling of his lips sliding across your cheek to right against your ear. “I want this pussy, not your hand.” 

Sliding own he pushed your thighs out to spread enough for his size. Giving you no warning for how quickly he moved his mouth over your clit. His hands never letting go of your spread legs with a bruising strength, his was shameless in how sloppy he was. Licking at your clit only to almost kiss it as he would your actual lips. The same soaked licks moving down to tease at your entrance, to your clit and back. 

One hand roughly shoved its way to your mound, pressing the heel of his calm into your clit soaked with you and his own saliva and rubbed short quick strokes. As one knee bent with your gasp, Joel used his free hand to greedily hold the soft skin of your waist before licking into you feverishly. 

Your back arched off the bed as a shock stabbed through you, sending a fiery pleasure into every stretch of your nerves. He licked into you with no cohesive pattern or approach, just drinking from you like a man starved for only one need. His rubbing into your clit lost in your wetness form how little he moved away from it, but deep in Joel he knew the slight burn of drier friction on your clit yanked cries from you. 

Your orgasm suddenly hit you with a force, “Oh fuck, Joel-” A white hot train flowing from your clit and soaked right into Joel who only added to the feeling as he moaned into your pussy. His grip already so tight he’d be able to see bruises once he was done with you. 

He never let up, “Fuck, baby.” Mumbling to himself as he licked more inside of you, letting his hand slide down to gather more from your core he realized just how unbelievably soaked you were. His tongue grazing up against a sensitive wall inside of you, he gave you zero time to calm down. 

The wet rubs of two fingers against your clit, harsh pushing and tight strokes the wet sounds filling the air alongside how relentless he tasted you. Your hands tightly grasping the sheets just above your head as your whole lower half arched closer to his mouth. 

Your heart beat widely out of your chest as the pleasure coiled inside of you without ever letting you recover from the sudden burst of your first orgasm. Your legs shook as he kept them bent by the knee, feet flat on the sheets as they were spread as far as he could manage. 

You didn’t even realize when one hand left your hip, his grip so tight it held a phantom sting in its departure. Joel’s own hips lifting up enough to start shoving his jeans down as far as he could manage without leaving your cunt. 

The groan vibrating through your body as he finally was free down to his knees and pressed his cock into the sheets adding to whatever mess he was pulling from you. You didn’t have words this time, just high pitched gasps and desperate attempts at his name that were interrupted by sharp jolts of pleasure almost bordering on pain. 

The flying burn of your orgasm this time felt like a flood passing the bloodstream. A needing warmth engulfing you as the white noise in your ears turned out whatever was passing by Joel’s lips. You missed it the first time, and now the second time. 

Joel didn’t realize it either. He knew exactly the feeling and why it made him take you with such a lack of control but neither of you were in the state of mind that night to hear it. 

You had just barley felt the final shocks of pleasure as Joel pulled from you. His face twisted close to a snarl as he impatiently pulled his jeans off the rest of the way. Grabbing the back of his shirts collar and throwing it beyond sight. 

His chest leading to such a soft stomach made his thick cock stand out between his legs. You touched the skin over his chest near his heart, but Joel couldn’t handle such a soft touch. Not right now. He couldn’t lay there and let himself feel your gentleness without something in his heart snapping. Instead, Joel yanked up your hips and sunk his cock into your folds. 

Your name moaned from his mouth, “Fuck, don’t- oh fuck.” You hadn’t come down yet, aftershocks of your orgasm overwhelmed your system as you felt his thick cock sliding into you. Clenching around him without trying to tease, you were still soaking his cock from your orgasms. 

Joel buried his face into your neck. One hand fisted into the sheets beside your head as he closed his eyes. Your arms wrapped around his neck, you paused mid motion as your rang your hands through the ends of his hair as one arm wrapped around your waist to keep himself tucked inside you but strong enough to keep you from moving. 

It actually took a bit before Joel tempered whatever aggression was overwhelming him. He wanted to do this for you, but now your touch, your cunt, your soft lips always speaking and pressing so sweetly against his? It tugged at his heart just as much as he took over all of your senses. 

The grip on your hair tempered down to cupping the back of your head. Joel moving to consume you in a less rough kiss, but the damage was already done to your swollen bitten lips. The plumpness just like his own without the greedy teeth markings. 

Your heart slowing down, but somehow still hard enough to feel in your chest at his touch. Joel pulled away, tracing his nose along yours. “Turn around for me, sweet girl.” 

Joel gently shushing comfortingly at you at your whine when he pulled out. But you complied. Joel’s mouth was open, panting as his hands clenched beside him watching you go willingly move to your hands and knees. But that’s not the closeness either of you truly needed. 

You sighed at how much more gentle his touch was, moving you up to kneel your back against his chest just like earlier. His cock slid between your thighs, already soaked as it teased between your folds. “Just like that, I’ve got you.” 

One of your arms reaching behind to find a tender home in his now messy hair, while the other laid flat against the arm wrapping around your stomach. “Please,” You leaned your head against his shoulder as Joel rubbed your stomach and hip with his free hand. His brown eyes bright and so much less of a dark lust, replaced with a soft almost desperateness. “I want to feel you. Please? I can still take it, I just want you inside of me.” 

You felt so one note in your brain, but Joel dealt the killing blow when he pressed his lips to yours. Not rough, or commanding, just soft kisses that he struggled to part from. Finally moving to grip his cock, he pulled away and turned your head to look down. 

Joel slid his cock inside of you, not spending a moment to stop and let you adjust to his size. Just one smooth stroke that didn’t thrust into you too fast until you were sat totally full of his cock. “Always slide so well into you,” 

Your eyes squeezing shut at the sight, his cock was so thick watching it slide deep inside you was too much to handle. Your head leaned back against him, lungs stuttering at how drastic he was handling you now compared to mere minutes ago. 

Joel held you tightly against him, burying his face into your neck and shoulder as he started to finally slide his cock almost out of you. Your whimper at the prospect of him leaving you empty poking at something distressing in your mind. 

You weren’t sure he ever kept up a pace this slow. Your pussy so tight and wet around his cock, making the sounds of him pulling and pushing his cock in and out so much louder. How much you’ve already cum so much more obvious as he moaned into your shoulder. 

You couldn’t tell anyone how long you were there. Knelt back against his chest as his cock fucked into you, not even hard enough to call it thrusting. Your chest felt so constricted yet filed with a warmth that would be cozy if his cock wasn’t sliding right up against such a sensitive wall inside of you. 

Inside of you this time the coil was just a slow and calm. But the addition of how tight he already pushed your orgasm too had this build up flutter around you. It just slipped from your lips, the brave face you tried to fake in front of him, in front of everyone crumbled with his squeezing hands and slow slide of his cock inside of you. Something deep in your heart plead. “Stay with me, please. God, Joel- stay with me.” 

Your eyes were shut and Joels arms held you tighter. His jaw clenching, teeth gritted as his breaths came out in rasping pants. He pressed his lips into your neck and whatever part of your jaw he couch reach. “Always, sweet girl. I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere. “

Even as his cock throbbed inside of you as your walls clenched around him, as the burning orgasm threatened to overtake you once more, it all mixed together as you just whispered his name. The drag of his cock along the sensitive walls of your cunt pushed tears from your eyes. 

Gasps and breathless pleas let go of the stinging tears behind your eyes and cried down your cheeks as one final loud and wet push of his cock inside of you had whatever hold you had on him dig your nails into his skin. 

Your orgasm pulling a gasping sob from you. Just one, but loud enough in Joel’s ears to cover your mouth as your pleasure sung into his hand. Joel couldn’t take it any longer. His cock so desperate to burst, he moaned into your neck and finally came.

Your pussy fluttering around him, as his cum spilled inside of you. Thick and to both of you, never ending. He came inside of you more then he could remember, filling you with warm cum that didn’t stop the tears of your need. 

By the time you both came down, you had dropped more then Joel had thought. Your eyes barley open, as your struggled to catch your breathe. Weak nods to his questions, asking if you were with him, what you needed, weak thank yous to him just saying how perfect you fit him. 

He shushed in your ear when he pulled out, never letting both hands off of you and his lips somewhere close to yours. You both laid in bed for a while, both your bare, sweat covered bodies, your lower half a little more wet with cum then what he didn’t bother cleaning from his cock. He held you with his nose pressed into your hair waiting for you to come down before he even thought of getting up to clean you off. 

Your mind was fuzzy and your face felt the aftermath of tears but none of it had any regret. Your eyes were closed, fine with coming down in his arms as you faced one another. Slowly ready to peel your eyes open, you noticed he wasn’t at your eye level, his face in your hair. His breathing enough confirmation he hadn’t fallen asleep. 

You burned between your legs, the mix of rough and soft kept the memory of his thick throbbing cock inside of you. You knew you were covered in cum between your thighs but you didn’t have any reason to want to get rid of it anytime soon. 

You did however ask to do something Joel ignored. Smirking, you suddenly left his gentle pressed arms, down his body. He flipped onto his back reflexively to see what you were doing, before hissing out. 

Licking the tip of his cock before sinking down around the rest. His cock now soft but it still was coated in your orgasm and his cum. Joels moans were stuttering and needy as he cupped the back of your head, still bobbing up and down his length sucking him until his chest was ready to explode. He called your name in warning along with more strings of swearing through hissed teeth, “Jesus fucking christ, baby”, but you already were slowing down the second it bordered too overwhelming for him. 

Your mouth sliding down to press your nose into the coarse dark hair around his cock, before very slowly sliding back, making sure his cock didn’t leave you until you had sucked him clean. Only fair he gets even the slightest idea of how overstimulated he so greedily made you.

Sliding him gently out of your mouth you went to come back up to his level. Your hand cupped his soft length now resting between his legs before your palm moving to his stomach. Chest, and the cupping the side of his face as you rubbed your thumb along his facial hair.

Joel chuckled deeply in his chest, pulling your face to his with fingers pulling your chin as he kissed you. Pushing you back into the sheets with half his body over you as you shared a gentle kiss. “You are such a goddamn brat.” 

You smiled back, letting his tongue tease yours as you tried to find breathes into between the kiss. “Maybe. Just for you though.” 

He nuzzled his nose against yours then pressed a kiss to it. He didn’t say it, he so badly wanted to say it but so much of his emotions came out in times like this. He wanted to tell you in quiet peace, make sure you understand your heart belongs to him for the rest of his life. Telling you now, he didn’t want to risk you thinking it was just to keep you calm or not upset. 

Neither of you realizing he’s already said it twice this very evening. 

Only one of those times did it reach someones brain, but to their dismay, it was neither of you who even heard what came out of his own mouth. 

You spoke quietly into the night. Joel on his back as he kept his arms around you to rest on his chest. Sometimes you sat up enough to look at him properly, ensuring you both understood the plans, backup plans, and what might be the safest option. At least for in his home, in a town of innocent people. 

You needed Joel, but Joel needed you like he never even wanted from anyone else before. The concept of a deep need in his heart to keep a woman like you close in his arms like a lifeline would have been foreign not long ago. But then again, meeting Ellie changed a lot about what was going on in Joel’s head and heart. 

You took your time joining the two of them that morning. Still balancing intruding on what was no doubt an emotional time between those two, and wondering exactly what Ellie would even see you as. 

Joel for his part was as normal as possible, with an underlying closeness both he and Ellie stuck to each other with with a different kind of silent intensity. You did tell him your news would be the actually hurtful one. Ellie stopped moving her fork the second you turned the corner, a stare that almost felt judging but the slightest softening as she sniffed and forced her face impassive. 

Sensing Joel watching her carefully, Ellie glanced up at his flat expression with one eyebrow raised. Her own face falling just as flat. “What? I already used my crying quota for the week. And I’m not getting it all over my eggs either.” 

It wasn’t enough to jostle her, but Joel nudging the side of her head lightly before sharing a more serious glance with you. His eyes nodded over to a drawer in the counter, watching you for as long as he could follow. Neither of you wanting to make a scene about it in front of Ellie. 

Watching the their backs as you silently wrapped the your knife sheath around your waist, quickly covering it purposely with one of Joel’s jackets that sat just blow it on your thigh. He had taken it upon himself to sharpen your usual knife for you, not before stopping of course to comment on how shit it looked. Words of praise towards your equipment he was full of. 

You had found yourself alone with Owen when Joel was distracted. Ellie prompted out of the house from a Maria that gave Joel a knowing look. He had stopped by earlier to talk to them, and she agreed to keep Ellie out with her, purposely around a decent amount of people. 

A spark of need inside your heart telling you that he at least deserved water. He didn’t say much, but his eyes spoke for him. A surprise at being given any hospitality. 

Almost ending up giving him an entire bottle, you watched him with one hand hovering somewhat near his face. Looking between the water and his face, you tilted your head as you considered if you were willing to ignore the part of you that people like him tried to deprive you of. “If I take that off of you,” using your free hand to gesture to his gag, “Are you going to stay quiet?” 

Owen seemed exhausted, nodding his head almost lazily as your chest raised in a deep breathe. “You make any noise, this time I’m just going to stuff it right into your mouth.” There wasn’t much in the way of conviction in your voice, but as you slowly untied the gag he made no sound aside from catching his breath. 

Flipping the bottle against the cloth, you let it soak for a while on the cleanest side where it sat at the back of his head. 

Silence, Joel was used too. He lived in it, too much of it for a long time even. Even through the turmoil in his head, the quiet still helped him stay clear. Listening to any hint of a sound and knowing how to react to it. 

Probably why he didn’t search for you when he found himself seemingly alone in the house. If he had one distraction it was you, and an unshakable need to make sure he could hear or see your every step. The past few weeks had really set that tendency in motion. But he needed silence. And he heard it break. 

Getting the jump on him outside in the world was one thing, but this was his territory. Somewhere he could sense the slightest thing out of place. Joel just raised two hands slightly in the air. He knew it could be a variety of possibilities behind him, so he played ball. For now. “You really think I can’t tell when someone’s in my own home?”  

“Just turn around. Slowly.” 

Joel expected something not quite what he saw. Dark eyes and angry, willing to do anything for that ravaging vengeance inside. But no. The woman behind him wasn’t quite that. As if it was what she wanted to put on but there was an uncertainty in her eyes that made him narrow his. Her face was tense, looking over him with her arm outstretched as much as she could. Either keeping the gun as close to him as possible, or wanting to keep as much distance from him. 

“You live here?” 

Joel’s eyes darkened more at the woman. “You sure don’t.” 

“Just answer the question, you live here right? With a girl? Fucking, what’s her name, Ellie?” 

Sometimes anger worked in favour of the advantage, but not against him. Joel mastered the art of anger as motivation and there wasn’t a single second ever again did he want any of her kind of people saying that girls name. His face steeled at her, hands up almost just for show at this point. “Keep her name out of this. I think we both know who you’re looking for.” 

A realization dawned on her, and it only pissed her off that much more that he was having no reaction of fear. “You’re him right?” Joel cocked an eyebrow but nothing more. “The hospital, that was you right? You’ve got the girl, after everything you’ve done I can’t imagine you’d dump her off somewhere. People usually don’t ditch people they’ve murdered innocent people for.” 

Her own teeth started to grit as she spat her words out with eyes no doubt growing red. “You in the habit of cutting open a fucking child and calling yourself a good person for it?” 

Shaking her head, Joel could hear how hard she was trying to keep her breathing under control, her fingers on the gun twitching slightly and not from any kind of trigger fingers. “No right, you had no fucking right he was a goddamn person-” 

Joel’s hands started to lower, and yet it didn’t make her any more confident. The twitch turned into what looked like her hand shaking. “And she’s my daughter.” 

She shook her head, eyes falling in darkness to something much more complicated. “So what you get your daughter and I have to loose my own father for it? Fucking..people like you...” 

No doubt this was a plan much more confident in theory, because Joel risked a step forward as his face twisted more into something of anger she took a step back. Readjusting her aim with an unsteady arm. 

“Put your hands back up,” 

They remained just barley by his sides, “You think I’m gonna reach for something? ‘Cus trust me you even think about pulling that trigger and I’ll make sure you regret it.” 

Whatever laugh she let out was weak, but the tense look one could mistaken for crazed told a thousand different emotions. “I’m not stupid, I know you don’t have a fucking weapon on you.” 

The one he thought was in the room wasn’t. Getting caught off guard by her after getting caught off guard by it’s lack of presence. Ellie didn’t always put things in the right place after she tries to sneak them away. His voice was low, even, and absolute that it made her hair stand on end. “You really think I need a gun to kill you?” 

You don’t remember Grady being particularly smart. Loyal, good at following orders but missing the basic function of checking a corner. Crouching as he snuck into the room, he could see Owen knelt on the floor, blood on his face, chest, hands and a swollen eye as even his gag was blood soaked. What he didn’t see was you. 

One arm suddenly wrapped around his face, the fabric of it’s jacket shoved to muffle his voice as the other hand pressed a cold metal to the bottom of his head right at his chin. Unlike the shaky arm holding a similar gun at Joel, you had the advantage of having yours at least pressed right against the mans head. Grady didn’t feel the shake in your bones behind the straining muscle. 

Moving him closer to the open door, your heart pounded so harshly that you could throw up from the shaking pressure it put on you. You could hear her yelling, and a dangerously low cadence from Joel, but she was getting louder and angrier. 

And while you had this one and a knife strapped to your side, Joel’s gun sat tucked behind your back only realizing whoever touched it last, didn’t put it where Joel had clearly expected to grab it before being snuck up on. 

He was bigger, stronger then her. But if she shot first then it didn’t matter how much Joel could overpower her. She was yelling more, and so did your limbs shake. You were supposed to help have this under control, but she was looking for blood and Joel’s own gun wasn’t in his hand. 

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t shoot you dead right now you fucking bastard-” Joel must have said something in response, “Her dad for my dad it’s only fair,” 

You couldn’t stand there, you couldn’t let him deal with her on his own. You push an already aggressive dog to the edge, then she’s just going to go for the throat because she can. Plan B it was. Despite not knowing what that entailed. 

A hallway door was kicked open, and following right out was a man Joel didn’t recognize but by the confused anger on her face, she did. Deep down Joel wished the voice was Tommy. There was no hesitation the man could handle himself, and didn’t make Joel feel cold and petrified at having to involve you in this more. 

But you rang a warning shot at a higher part of the wall that had the woman jump in startle. What followed though, was a reaction that in a way reminded him of you. Likely an ironic association, because all that it took was you yell out who you were. Her eyes widened as the hand pointed right at Joel trembled. A washing devastation that surpassed mere surprise, something she didn’t expect and neither had Owen.

The man on the floor pressed himself up against the wall in fear as did a new unsettling emotion come over the woman in front of Joel. But you piled onto something that just dug deeper, 

Your voice almost a shout that shook in what Joel felt in his heart a terrified urgency. “You know who I am Abby, and what I’ll do to Owen and Grady if you don’t bring Joel to me.”

Whatever intimidation she felt from a man she considered a monster, Abby’s entire being shook. Her gun was on Joel but she could barley keep her eyes on him or on Grady just looking at her desperately for help. This wasn’t a normal fear, almost one that was like seeing a ghost she could only hear.

Her yell back was a rasping screech as she morphed her features into too much to keep up with. “You do anything, and I swear to god-” She’d what? Shoot the man in front of her and set you lose on her? 

You needed to scare her. Swallow the dizzying sickness in your head and the bile from eating at your chest. You couldn’t take the chance of her first instinct to act at Joel before you did hers. 

You shook as you pointed the gun at Grady, but you were hidden behind the wall from her sight, and the sting in your eyes couldn’t be used against you. Blood splattered all over the wall behind Grady's head, the booming shot and painted red had Abby flinch back. 

Joel didn’t move. A deep seeded anger at who his life was at the expense of burned his soul, but he didn’t dare risk letting it happen. If Abby was going to shoot, it sure as hell wouldn’t be at him or his own.

In barley a second, you holstered the gun so quick it could have missed and dropped to the floor. The knife at your side flew into your hand, gripping tight as you hauled Owen over in front of you, your knife pressed so much to his throat he made the most inaudible squawks of protest at the sharpness. 

Hauling him up partially on his feet, you pressed with better leverage. “Your boys next Abby- give him to me,” Your voice yelled, so loud it scratched your throat at the strain. It was violent and angry, and you only wished it made you feel it too. Instead you stood, braced against the wall with a knife keeping Owens battered self in your threat as your soul kept shaking and holding back the sting in your eyes. 

Abby’s jaw clenched as she swore, her yell echoing down the halls. “Fuck- okay.” 

It was the only choice for you and her. She wanted Owen back, and you needed Joel. A conflict in her eyes as she looked between the man now slumped over in the hall, and the darkness in a pair of eyes she never truly prepared herself to face properly. 

Abby’s eyes peeled off the sightless body to the open air between it and the door. “We make a trade. I bring him to you, I get Owen back and we leave. Got it?”

You looked to the side, knowing nothing was out the view you could see out the door anyways. “You touch him in anyway and I slit this throat. Got it?” 

One request was shouted back. “Toss the gun.” 

It wasn’t even a second later the gun banged far out on the wooden floor. You it turned out, weren’t the only one with a shaking fear of losing their companion. There wasn’t a soul in that house didn’t radiate that very perilous fear. Joel looked at Abby with his features sharp and penetrating. Her other hand having to rise up and join her hold on the gun just to keep it aimed at him. “This isn’t over you understand me?” 

Abby didn’t appear to know what scared her more. The threat of death you held at Owens throat, or just how terrifyingly cold Joel’s unblinking expression didn’t move from. This was supposed to be easy, kill some guy who shot her father for no reason. But standing here, motioning for him to walk slowly towards the hall? It was made clear that you and Joel weren’t regular people, and this was exposing itself to be something she didn’t remotely prepare for.

It felt like agony standing there, each creak of the floorboard screaming in the terse silence the only indication of life. Owen’s blood was seeping into your clothes and staining your skin at this point and there was next to nothing holding back the pressure behind your eyes. 

You wanted to be someone else. Someone brave, a person others would look at and say is some kind of fighter, someone a kid like Ellie would amusingly call a bad ass. But you stood holding a man at knife point trading his life for the man you love didn’t make you feel brave. Just scared. Scared beyond whatever danger you had been alone in the past, and sick to your stomach that it took up until now for you to feel brave enough to even think that word. 

They were outside the door, but you shook. Grip on the knife so tight you might have started hurting your own palm with the tight grip as you were hurting Owen’s neck with the blade. The bravery wasn’t even in your voice. “Joel first.” 

“Show me him. Let me see him.” 

You were done paying any kind of hero or savior. Instead just tearing the knife away and shoving Owen enough that he stumbled onto the ground. Hands behind his back still too bound to steady him. 

Joel was handed over first. Whatever passed between them unknown to you until a tidal wave hit your heart as you both reached for the other the second he came in view. Joel’s own expression harsh, nostrils flared as his rage was barley contained in his bones. His warm hands gripping your forearms as he looked at a watering overflow of something grander then fear pass your face as you looked him over for anything hurt. 

He cupped one of your cheeks as you took a deep breathe. Joel’s eyes narrowed in question, and you nodded. Hoping the shaking breathe you let you was only audible to one. His hand keeping your touch as it wasn’t leaving one of your wrists, almost keeping your mind back at his side as you turned the corner. 

Neither of you looked like the visage of bravery your actions spoke. Neither of you even tried. Abby’s eyes widened with a taken back sort of shock as she looked at you. A name she kept hearing and denying, but your face that of what she long remembered as a memory. A bite sharp on your arm before watching your gun raise as she fell back to the ground. 

She lived, and kept trying to deny that you could have either. But you both looked at each other, as she held her own gun to you. Resting one side against the door frame just to keep it steady, while your own hand kept the knife painfully tight. 

Joel stood behind you, and you felt him pull up your jacket slightly, resting the fabric to expose what you had hidden away behind you. Abby was staring at you and you back, she didn’t even see Joel’s hands moving near your back. 

Her words slurred together, teeth bordering on gritting from the force. “Give him to me.” 

Joel squeezed your arm holding the knife. Don’t move was his touch. Abby’s gaze continued to plaster all over you, and yours taking her person in, in a capacity she couldn’t possibly even guess now. Blood ringing in your ears hearing the shuffling behind you. Abby kept it on you now, a woman much more a fighter unable to tear her attention away from how entangled your lives became. 

Your own eyes stung. Unable to move or blink, looking at the very thing that confused you. Was her being here what scared you, or how very real losing the one thing that brought you to a purpose was becoming? 

As soon as Joel slightly pushed Owen, Abby snatched him with one arm and yanked him to her side, Owen barley keeping himself up despite his hands now free. Joel having undone them bringing him over. But as soon as he was out of his hand, he reached for your back once more. His arm smoothly pulling the gun, and now aiming it at Abby. She didn’t just try to kill him, now she had her gun pointing at you and it was pushing Joel to an edge he was close to forcing you to let him fall off. 

His instincts were quicker then hers, and he dared her to end it the smarter way, as opposed to joining the mess on the walls behind her. 

Her eyes flickered between the two of you, mind racing with questions not even she could understand at that moment. You weren’t supposed to be here, this wasn’t even about you. Blind to what kind of people she walked in on, she just looked at you and Joel unable to land on what to do. 

You could feel something vile rising in your throat, just as unable to grasp what was unfolding in front of you. Abby had no right to make this about Joel. Either she knew the truth and lost herself beyond the capacity of her own humanity, or she was left in the dark and didn’t care to turn the lights on herself. A fact you couldn’t feel okay with. Your voice was mostly just a whisper once you found the strength to push something forward. “This is really just about your father?” 

You didn’t need to hear the answer to that. You already knew by a confused pain in her eyes. Not understanding what else this could possibly be over. To her it was almost a taunt, her failure she was able to see through, but to you? A memory that no longer felt pushed away. A truth that was fighting tooth and crawl to attack you at your door. 

Owen leaned against her exhausted and bloody. Lowering her gun she glanced down to your arm, it was covered and there was nothing to see though. Remaining you a ghost. 

Her gaze flicked to Joel’s own aim, no shake or tremble to be found. Don described nothing more then some guy had done it, but the inflamed emotions boiling behind Joel’s eyes wasn’t the story she had been sold on. So they ran. Slamming open a back door you not to long ago ran out of just as harshly, also running from these very people but for drastically different reasons. 

 You didn’t register Tommy or Maria coming in, you only had the capacity to feel Joel pull you into his chest. One arm wrapped tightly around your stomach as you finally leaned back into him. Your eyes squeezing shut, you felt Joel gently take your knife from your fingers and put it back in it’s sheath as he spoke to Tommy. 

You grabbed the wrist that wasn’t around you, holding it just as he did when he first came back to you still needing him to ground you to the floor. These weren’t two worlds ever meant to mix. This was supposed to be a solace for him and a breather for you, but you combined your lives and now stood a mess painted with the looming of blood.

Was this your fault? And if not why couldn’t you have done something to actually end this? 

You thought back to the night you and Joel opened up to each other. How the worst emotion you felt was finding out how Tommy blabbed about your feelings for him by the very man you had the such a humiliating crush on. How letting him in was so scary to you back then. 

Would all of this have happened anyways? Or was letting him kiss you that night, pull you into his arms and he yours forever entangling your hearts in ways new to both of you the catalyst? 

If this was all your fault, would Joel end up despising you for not fixing this?