#it just feels dishonest and shit
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goatboard · 10 months ago
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hi
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rings-of-power-realm · 2 months ago
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Thank you Robert Aramayo for being a better person than the entire internet. It was a beautiful scene and you and Morfydd handled it perfectly 💚
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Seing more drama on palworld of all thing because its hitting its 2 week playerbase drop off that every steam game hits and more people are using it as slander. I understand palword had an unusually hard drop but its the second most played game of all time on steam AND IT DOESNT HAVE FUNCTIONING MULTIPLAYER this is to be expected people are finishing the game and the devs havnt gotten pvp or multiplayer fleshed out yet cause its 3 people. I understand SOME of the plagarism arguments especially that palworld took HEAVY artistic inspiration on some of the pokemon but to this date there has been no actual evidence of models lining up or polygons matching, it has to overlap 1 to 1 it cant just "fit inside" thats silly, objects dont always have set ratios and sizes when modelling.
TL:DR please watch this video by a youtuber i really like who will explain it in better terms. https://youtu.be/wmudV7_CvNE?si=i0CixtVWwBcdJd6P
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cowboy-robooty · 2 years ago
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imma be real guys i did not enjoy auf wiedersehen sweetheart at all that was some gay shit fr i downvote that fic
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sawvidae · 1 year ago
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are there any patreon pin clubs that actually reliably ship out pins every month
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reinemichele · 11 months ago
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I was about to edit that post to rescind something I said, only to realize I was misremembering what I typed
Basically I thought that I typed another "I'll talk about this other thing tomorrow/in the near future" & I wanted to take it back bc while I Do plan on talking about it... (one of my biggest shortcomings is keeping people at a distance and not opening up, so I always feel guilty for that and try to push myself to leave my comfort zone even when my instincts scream not to)
... I need to ease myself into it, not do it during a time of grief, and remember that the last time I let people find out about these parts of my childhood, I was 11-13, so I can't just speedrun my way through making the information available, both for my well-being and others'
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the-rogue-mockingjay · 1 year ago
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Emotionally I'm not feeling any one way or the other atm but these racing thoughts and racing heart and leaden feeling in my stomach are making it quite difficult to do anything :/
Friendship breakups/shakeups are the wooooorrrrrrst I'm losing my mind
If anyone needs me I'll be lying on the floor waiting for my head to stop throbbing
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kisskuni · 4 months ago
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“who did this to you?”
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↳ he finds you injured / “who did this to you?” trope - [diluc, kaeya, wriothesley x gn!reader]
tags: injuries + mentions of blood/reader gets hurt. swearing. threats to kill people lol.
notes: wooo first genshin post.. i need to catch up on this game
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diluc ━━━
the way adelinde stood outside of the winery, hands playing nervous with each other and shifting her weight, told diluc that something was wrong. his brows were pinned as he approached her.
“everything alright?” he asked, trying to keep his voice even and calm but there was a hint of worry underneath. something was wrong. something was definitely wrong.
adelinde cleared her throat before speaking, “y/n arrived about half an-”
diluc didn’t need to hear the rest. he moved past her and into the house, calling your name as he moved up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. he was already rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt; what exactly was wrong he didn't know, but he was more than willing to get his hands dirty.
he knocked on the door to your shared room only once before clicking the door open. there was a nurse next to the bed, but she wasn’t tending to you at the moment. she looked a little startled as he entered, but he paid her no mind.
he was kneeling at your bedside in a second. the nurse had taken a few steps back to give him space. he held your hand in his, his lips pressed against your knuckles.
“are you okay? what happened?” he asked, a little breathless, his eyes moving over you. there was a bandage wrapped around your abdomen, but he didn’t see any other injuries.
you nod and swallow dryly. “yeah… yeah ‘m alright.”
"bullshit." he mutters under his breath, eyes wandering over the wound. he wants to get a better look at it, but he knows the bandaging is fresh and he doesn't want to disturb it.
"i'll be fine, diluc... honest."
"who did this?" he asks, his voice suddenly a lot lower than before.
"...what?"
it almost startles you, the way small, almost unnoticeable flames flicker along the skin of diluc's forearms. his voice is calm, but strained, when he speaks, "who?"
"it was just some treasure hoarders, i'm-"
"where?"
"they're dealt with, diluc."
he stares at you for another few moments, eyes watching your face as if searching for some sort of sign that you were being dishonest. finally, he shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens them again. this time, when he speaks, his voice is much softer and caring than before.
"do you need anything?"
"i'm okay. some water, maybe?"
"of course," he hums, moving to press a kiss against your forehead. "just get some rest."
kaeya ━━━
you were supposed to be back an hour ago.
and yet, you weren't back.
he hates that he's pacing, hates that he feels so helpless. he should go find you. he should tell jean he's leaving, that he's not going to work for the rest of the day, that he's going to the outskirts of mondstadt to-
"kaeya!"
his head snaps up, his gaze falling to you. you were limping, why were- oh. there is a gash across your hip, bloody and staining your pants almost black, fading into red at the edges.
he's at your side as quickly as he can be. he's holding your shoulders, a silent plea not to move, not to put weight against the wound.
"shit- what happened? who did this to you?"
you swallow thickly, panting slightly. "just- i ran in to some people-"
"what kind of 'people'?"
"people that got taken care of, kaeya. i promise."
he stares at you for another few moment, a muscle ticking in his jaw. then he nods and moves to your injured side. he grabs your arm to drape it over his shoulders and around his neck, his other arm wrapping around you and pulling you into him.
"we're getting you inside, and safe, and then i'm going to make sure every last one is properly dealt with."
you shake your head at him, but don't say anything. you're grateful for the support on your leg and you weren't about to complain. slowly, he helps you hobble back to the city and slowly deposits you into an infirmary bed.
a nurse ushers kaeya away, and he spends the next twenty minutes pacing outside of the building, his arms crossed. finally, the door opens, and the same nurse sticks their head out of the door, "kaeya? you can come in."
he moves back into the building, maneuvering around people and equipment to kneel at your bedside.
"hey..." he says softly. his hand comes up to your face, back of his hand running affectionately across your cheek. "you feeling alright?"
you give him a small smile. "i'm fine."
"you are," he affirms. "but i still intend on finding the sons of bitches."
you frown at him, though it holds little heat. you study him for another moment before you give him a resigned sigh, "near cape oath."
he presses a kiss against your forehead, already standing up, "i'll be back before dark, my love."
wriothesley ━━━
wriothesley did not consider himself to be a violent person.
today, he was about to be.
it was the way you stumbled into his office, looking so worn out, blood draining down your face and down your chin. your lip was busted and a gash broke the skin near your temple, crimson trickling down your face and dripping onto his floor.
he’d been by your side before you could even utter a word, letting you lean against him and forcing you to sit on the floor. his thumb ran over the blood, as if trying to convince himself that this was real. that this had happened. likely in the fortress, no less.
had it been? no. there was no way. no one would harm someone so blatantly important to the duke… right?
he was pulled from his thoughts by a gentle grumble from you.
“give me a name.” he said, without really thinking about it. his voice was stern, and cold, and left no room for argument.
“what?” you blinked hard, seemingly trying to ground yourself.
“shit.” he cursed under his breath, helping you stand back up. why the hell you had come looking for him before medical attention, he’d never know.
still, he held you against him and helped you to the infirmary, whispering sweet affirmations under his breath the whole way. his string of ‘you are gonna be fine’s and ‘everything is gonna be alright’s dissipates as he slowly lowers you into an infirmary bed.
he straightens, arms crossed over his chest and a scowl twisting his face.
“who did this to you?” wriothesley asked again, this time more firmly.
you shake your head. “is… okay, wrio-”
“give me a goddamn name.” he asks again, and then his voice softens. “please.”
you watch him for another few moments before nodding and letting the person’s name fall from your lips. a muscle in his jaw ticks. he looks down to one of the melusines.
“i’ll be back in an hour. you tell me if they so much as twitch a finger weird.” he orders. he doesn’t wait for a reply, his jaw set as he moves out of the infirmary.
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bredforloyalty · 2 years ago
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i'm so conflicted i hate all of this so so much
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headspace-hotel · 2 years ago
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facts about The Fear, after 20 years of life with her
The Fear is NOT:
an intruder, invader, or some other entity from "outside" You
inappropriate, wrong, or incorrect
a responsibility
a punishment
"irrational" or otherwise able to be understood through a relationship to "rationality"
an "inaccurate" representation of reality
The Fear IS:
an innate part of you
extra-rational—she exists outside and completely independent from "rationality" and does not respond to being judged according to that lens
self-love—her purpose is to protect you and keep you safe
self-sufficient—fear is a 100% whole, complete entity that doesn't "represent" or "reflect" something else
earnest—fear is always a 100% real experience that is exactly as it is felt, and, needing no comparison or reference to any external reality, it is not "dishonest" or "inaccurate"— it asserts a claim about only itself
subversive [not quite the word I am looking for but it will have to do]— is not necessarily beholden to social and cultural norms of what should be feared, how much, and how you should respond. She does not stop existing in the absence or suppression of vocabulary to describe her.
a demand for care— she does not just communicate to you but to the community you are part of; she calls attention to an obligation that this community has toward you, to make sure that you are safe within it and that your experiences are heard and understood.
yeah, so, i've had severe anxiety for my whole life and the way it's been treated and dealt with, and the way I've been taught to understand it, has really fucked me up so I am trying to lay the groundwork for understanding it differently
I think it's pretty fucked up that we're taught to see anxiety as deceptive or inaccurate. Now, obviously the images or projections in my fearful thoughts do not usually "reflect reality," but I have come to see this as...not particularly important?
Teaching an anxiety sufferer to restructure their thoughts to dismiss and contradict "irrational" fear is, in my opinion, the same as teaching a chronic pain sufferer to restructure their thoughts to dismiss and contradict pain with no clear physical source. You might as well speak of "irrational" pain, and pain has the same relationship to rationality that fear has.
"Irrationality" is a quality assigned to fear that is judged by an outside observer, or by the collective cultural biases and hang-ups of a society, as not appropriate to a given situation. This is total fucking nonsense and we should be talking about that, because...well, the first reason is that it implies some kind of fixed standard for what fear ultimately is and isn't for. i like to tell people to watch one of those Coyote Peterson videos where he's going to get a tarantula hawk wasp to sting him, because he's obviously having a strong physical fear response, even though he knows it won't kill him. Is it "rational" to fear suffering and not just death? How much suffering? Sit with that one a little while.
The second reason, which is even more convincing, is that the "rational" brain is not consulted at any point, ever, when a person feels afraid. It's just a response. The fear response is not routed through the conscious, sapient, reasoning brain. And thank God, because if we needed to hear back from an upstairs executive before we could decide whether to run from a lion, our species would be extinct.
Techniques like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy were absolute fucking shit at making my life any better, but fantastic at wrecking my ability to identify my own emotions, because Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety basically amounts to trying to brainwash yourself into thinking you don't feel the emotions that you do. It's a really neat way to develop bizarre psychosomatic symptoms and start experiencing anxiety through constant body pain, swollen lymph nodes, and digestive issues.
For an institution that pathologizes having "alters," psychiatry sure loves to encourage a suffering person to view normal and ultimately good parts of themselves as distinct, intruding entities to be shoved in a closet somewhere.
And yes. Fear is ultimately a good part of you, a part of you that loves you.
What began to set me free was feeling that acid terror and sickness and rage course through my body and realizing—really realizing—that I was being illuminated with this ancient, powerful force driving me to LIVE.
I want us to make it. I want you to live.
And you know what, I want me to live too.
I abandoned the doctrine of calming down—Lord knows it had never worked anyway—and started really just exploring and existing in the Fear.
How did that feel? Bad. Very very very very very bad and really not productive or helpful at all initially. Which was unavoidable. Necessary. She had been frantically clawing to communicate with me for so long, and I had been shutting her away, silencing her, resenting her presence in my psyche. I started trying to show gratitude toward the signals my body gave me. I started trying to show gratitude toward her—and i guess the Fear was a Her now, this just seemed more respectful.
And it seemed like nothing happened, but several things happened.
I stopped searching for validation. That was a big one. At some point I just...stopped needing a "reason" or justification for the fear I felt (trauma???? neurodivergence???? neurodivergence trauma????) and the fact that I experienced it became completely sufficient and satisfying to me. So much guilt and confusion disappeared.
I also became steadily more confident about my own boundaries, particularly in regards to recovery.
It's awful now that I think about it, but I think I felt this sense of almost moral obligation towards "recovery," as if I needed to "overcome fear" to be Courageous and Virtuous. It made me feel crushing guilt to feel any hesitation about this.
But then this started to change. It became more real to me that was the only person affected by the steps I did or didn't take toward recovery, and there was no moral dimension to it. A therapist couldn't put me in a box I wouldn't willingly go into.
Freedom from these judgmental frameworks is really important to me. I think that I always hated the idea of getting "better" because it seemed like "better" would mean just getting better at submitting to things I was afraid of while everything felt just as bad as it always did on the inside.
And on some level—even though I could never put it into words at the time—I violently hated the idea of "recovery" from some of my fears because it seemed like the ultimate denial of agency. I didn't want to "become okay with it"—the possibility felt dehumanizing. It felt awful.
And I realize now that this is because The Fear represented something I needed to have a right to. Many of my most life-destroying fears centered around things being done to my body, and if I could have pressed a button and been no longer afraid, I wouldn't have, even though it would have spared me so much suffering, because...I needed it to be okay to want agency over my body. I needed it to be right. The Fear, in this case, was a demand that my body be treated as sacred.
I realized that there were many cases where The Fear was a territorial claim of sorts, a demand that certain needs be honored and met—She needs this. This is FUCKING non-negotiable.
And it really...prompted me to look backward on my life and see The Fear differently: not as a responsibility I had failed to shoulder (me?? a little child??? responsible?? Responsible for being brave, when every day felt like facing a firing squad?????) but as a collective responsibility
Because I was not alone in those memories—I was surrounded by adults that saw me suffering, and often dismissed, ignored or ridiculed it. The Fear grew larger and larger; why?—to protect me. Because teachers, nurses, doctors, and camp counselors did not do any of the thousand thousand things they could have done to make that little girl feel safe. Because my well-meaning parents praised me when I was "brave" but I, a little kid, literally couldn't communicate how awful it always felt.
The Fear was not there to torture me. The Fear was and is doing her best to keep me safe. It's not wrong, there's no need for guilt. It just is.
It doesn't feel good. But maybe one day it will feel better.
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zairene · 1 year ago
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hey girl i loved your dazai relationship headcanons SM, can I please ask for a version with Chuuya? YOUR WRITING IS LITERALLY AMAZING.
AS A BOYFRIEND. chuuya nakahara
* ˚ ✦ synopsis: how chuuya nakahara would be like as a significant other.
* ˚ ✦ genre: headcanons !
* ˚ ✦ warnings: spoiler free + a fem reader is also very heavily implied / stated !
* ˚ ✦ author’s note: sure you can ! and ty so much that means a lot <333 i did write as y/n still in the ADA, if you don’t mind !
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chuuya nakahara, the hot-headed and impulsive young man who you were interested in when you first met him.
he’s very arrogant when it comes to his abilities and his remarkable skills revolving around the port mafia. he may talk a lot of shit, but he can still definitely beat your ass at any time any day, no doubt. and this personality does NOT come off as pleasing to women, hence his failure in the romance department. so, when he realized that you weren’t immediately disgusted with him after knowing him for such a little time, he already developed some appreciation for you.
with chuuya, there is also a lot of patience with him too—but not in the way you would think. chuuya had a difficult time trusting you. chuuya despises dazai, and it’s very well known, and knowing that you were a part of the armed detective agency and was on dazai’s side put him off. yes, even in their years of rivalry and multiple times of working together, he just doesn’t find himself truly trusting him or you.
it’s not like you weren’t trustworthy or showed signs of being dishonest, he just knew that if he became too vulnerable with you, it would open up an opportunity for you to betray him and he doesn’t do well with betrayal. he knows that it’s not impossible to gain his trust, so he respects you at first, but he keeps his distance.
so yes, you have to chase him, he doesn’t chase you.
think of the trope of, she falls first but he falls harder… sort of.
this started with subtle flirting from you, very subtle to the point where it had him going insane on the fact whether or not you were interested in him. it’s not like he could go to someone with advice so he was seriously stressing himself out over it. there were times even when dazai pointed it out but chuuya would brush it off as dazai trying to poke fun at him.
after you did it multiple times, he finally decided he would reciprocate it because it’s not like he didn’t like you, he was just surprised at the fact HE DID? so, the one time he came back with an even risker line with you, you were shocked. this had you excited because you finally had some type of confirmation that he liked you! now the next step, asking him out.
it was hard catching him in his free time with being the port mafia’s strongest martial artist. he was constantly sent out on missions and meetings. just to your luck, you found him strolling the streets one random day, and that encouraged you to just go up to him knowing this moment would not occur again.
this confession was just you talking and him staring at you with his widened eyes and his lips slightly parted. and when you were done speaking, he could only spit out one thing. “yeah… yeah sure.”
and that started your relationship with him!
i honestly don’t believe it would be filled with arguments, at least not real ones. because the PETTY ARGUMENTS you guys have is an hourly occurrence. no joke. the playful banter between the both of you is amazing, but his competitive spirit can get overwhelming and it causes petty arguments. at this point, you kinda just believe that he likes to hear himself talk.
i feel that the biggest problem you would have in a relationship is his major trust issues. mentioned before, he doesn’t do well with shady or shifty behavior. this doesn’t pair well with situations where you want to have a surprise party for him for his birthday, but he’s under the impression that you’re doing something behind his back that isn’t as innocent as it is.
the product of this is arguments and a lot of breaks between you two. he’s not difficult to talk to, but incredibly difficult to get to, if that makes sense. it would take a lot for him to believe that you’re being truthful. you can sense he takes loyalty very seriously, so after the birthday party incident, you took a mental note that surprises don’t sit well with chuuya and to make sure to not do them again.
other than that, your relationship with him is pretty smooth!
however, he also has his moments where he makes weird comments toward you trying to suggest that you’re “inferior” to him and that you can’t handle yourself. he always feels like he has to protect you or things will go downhill even when you have proved countless amount of times that you were extremely capable.
those times when you have to give him a reality check and bring him back down to earth for a second. his apologies are him bringing you a bouquet and a long talk about how sorry he is why he made those comments and how he would never make them again. you forgave him and he really stood by his word! he always gave you credit when it was due, maybe too much sometimes, but you can tell he was sorry.
other than that, some general things would be that he isn’t a big fan of PDA. he doesn’t hate it but doesn’t prefer it. he wouldn’t mind if you just held his hand or kissed him on the cheek (maybe lips) but would much rather save everything else for in private. he’s all for separating his work life from his relationship with you, especially since both of your workplaces are against each other. he’s very awkward when it comes to intimacy, but once you’re together for a while he likes it, especially getting home after a very rough mission that day.
he likes to act like he hates pet names, even the silly ones you give him, but he likes them. he would never admit that you calling him pookie bear makes his heart happy each time.
overall, chuuya is a pretty good guy who has his moments. he can be painfully unaware of himself and his actions sometimes so you have to handle the liberty of telling him off and putting himself in his place when it’s needed. but don’t worry, he never takes it to heart when he realizes he’s wrong. he loves you and as the relationship goes on, he learns to trust you a little more every day.
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(📦) — BUNGOU STRAY DOGS TAGLIST // @4nthonyyliving
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bloomfish · 8 months ago
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It's so weird that in angel s5e2 they do a little flashback to Spike's blaze of glory moment in the last episode of Buffy... but they leave out Buffy saying "I love you". It's such a blatant omission, the ONLY omission from that scene, that it feels totally deliberate and kind of dishonest. Considering a lot of the Spike and Angel moments in S5 revolve around their jealousy and rivalry towards each other, and a LOT of that is to do with Buffy like... Why would you leave it out? It's a pretty big moment for Spike's character in general.
As far as I recall they don't even mention it, they just mention the fact that Spike and Buffy have had a lot of sex compared to bangel's ONE disastrous time (that they remember) but it does kind of cheapen it for Spike. A big motivation for him not leaving LA could have been him not wanting to hold Buffy to her words, since he clearly doesn't believe that she loves him (even though she does, as per Whedon). He presumably thinks she only said that to make him feel better in his final moments, because she wouldn't have to actually follow through on her words. Which is sad. But it makes much more sense as a motivation than the weird 'it cheapens my moment of glory' excuse like since when does spike give a shit about that
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ghoulfuckersincorporated · 1 month ago
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Can we get a fic with John Hancock with a shy, innocent virgin f!reader? I feel like he would just go feral with corruption/breeding kink and possessive/jealousy?! Like just wanting to ruin her for anyone else and mark her from other ghouls. Bonus for fluff as well. I love the idea of him falling for her softness and trying so hard to be a gentleman out of respect, thinking she deserves better while internally he’s thinking the nastiest filthiest shit.
(Also maybe you could do a Howard version sometime? I know you get a ton of requests so if not it’s fine, but I'm curious how he would be too) Either way, thank you ❤️ your blogs amazing and I appreciate it!
Carnal Lessons
Pairing: John Hancock x Virgin!Female Reader
Word Count: 19,965 (yes, for real)
Warnings: very sexual pining, loss of virginity, corruption kink, reader's first "real" orgasm, absolutely perverted thoughts, mutual and consensual drug use, shotgunning, discussion of addiction, canon-typical violence and bigotry, descriptions of wounds, mild exhibitionism, finger fucking, mutual masturbation, oral sex (male and female receiving), cock piercings, possessive sex, manhandling, hair pulling, breeding kink, slightly dishonest creampie, jealousy, self-hating John.
Notes: It's finally here! This thing absolutely refused to free me from its clutches, so I'm incredibly happy to have it all finished up. Thanks for the submission, Anon, and thanks for your patience while I worked through the forty-ish page fit it induced in me. I tried SO hard to keep this to a reasonable length (as I said, there's almost never a time when I'm not shooting to keep to around 5,000-7,000 words), I swear, but this idea really needed some room to develop. Please enjoy the first long-form piece on the blog that doesn't feature Cooper Howard in the lead role! As for the idea of doing a version of something like this with him in the future, someone else sent in a very similar ask that's been earmarked for just that.
Reader is a former vault dweller but is explicitly not Nora/the Sole Survivor. Post-Institute destruction.
John McDonough had always been more accepting of vault dwellers than most folks. A certain curiosity towards those who came from such different circumstances than him in youth had slowly grown over the years into some form of sympathy, even pity. There were those who looked down on the people who spent their lives hiding away in those armored chambers, saw them as craven and weak, but John found himself sympathetic to anyone who valued safety and stability for themselves and those they truly cared about. A hard-lived life of barely scraping by and sleeping in the gutter for years had granted him a thankfully varied perspective of the world around him.
When you'd first stumbled your way into his life, he had been very understanding of your plight; after all, you weren't the first poor schmuck that had left their vault, their safe little settlement, only to discover just how truly dangerous the streets and crumbling high-rises of Boston could be. You'd arrived in rough shape, though not the roughest he'd seen by far. Hell, you'd even managed to limp your way into Goodneighbor's front gates before collapsing, a bit of fortitude that had almost certainly saved your life.
Naturally, as the mayor, word of the collapsed, bloodied vault dweller laid out on the ground outside Kleo's had filtered up to him rather quickly, and his innate curiosity had gotten the best of him. Fahrenheit had tucked the information in between a few other pieces of news, seemingly hoping to keep it from garnering too much interest from her friend and boss.
"I think I'm gonna go check it out." he replied, rising from the rickety couch where he'd been perched, taking in his second-in-command's daily brief.
"I know you, Hancock. Maybe you shouldn't." she said, eyeballing him.
"I have no absolutely idea what you mean by that." he retorted haughtily before disappearing down the stairs and out the door. He made his way across Scollay Square, nodding to and greeting a few folks who spoke to him, cutting a wiggling path to the Rex where he'd been told they'd set you up in a room to rest after patching you up as best as they could. Seeking out the room number he'd been given at the desk, he was surprised when he poked his head around the corner to find Daisy still hovering over you a bit.
"Heard we might have a new friend. How're they doing?" he asked, leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets. The merchant turned, smiling politely at him and straightening her jacket.
"Hey, Hancock. She's doing much better now, fortunately. Poor thing will probably sleep for quite a while, though. I'm shocked she made it through." she said, taking a half-step back to reveal your unconscious form on the bed. "Tough for a vaultie. Though, I suppose I said the same about Nora."
He hadn't fully heard a single thing she'd said after she'd stepped away, completely distracted by the realization of what Fahr had actually meant. When she'd had told him she thought it was best he didn't come down, he'd assumed it was a joking remark about how he'd disappeared for months the last time a vaultie had popped into their lives, but now he truly understood what she'd been getting at when she'd remarked about how she "knew him".
You were breathtakingly gorgeous, even battered, limp, and filthy like you were. Soft in all the right ways, from your statuesque face to what parts of your body he could see unobscured by the old sheets. Your vault suit was unzipped and yanked down to the waist to expose the dirty tank beneath, the swell of your breasts rising and falling gently as you slept. Your skin and hair were so perfect looking under the sweat and grime that he felt himself overwhelmingly drawn to caress you somehow, his palms itchy. He'd been around the block a time or two, and he'd met plenty of gorgeous men and women, but something about you was immediately captivating, almost haunting.
After a moment, he came back to himself, making abashed eye contact with Daisy once more to find that she was studying him closely. Of course, the older woman knew him well enough to figure he didn't have ill intent towards you, necessarily, but she recognized that glint in his eye as he gazed at you, and it made her hesitant to leave the room before he did, her instincts too strong to be ignored. Hancock, for all his vices and shortcomings, was quite adept at reading a room and quickly picked up on her thoughts.
"Well, I'll let her rest. If you see her up and around later, send her my way so we can chat, yeah? I'm sure she's got interesting stories." he said, trying his best to sound lax and casual. The other ghoul nodded silently, already turning her attention back to you as he turned to leave. Rounding the corner right out of the Rex, he ducked into a narrow alley and lit a smoke, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes with a sigh, trying his best to turn his mind to other topics. It had taken longer than he'd care to admit, but he finally succeeded and returned to the day's business.
When you'd eventually awoken, he'd been very pleasantly surprised to find you chatty and rather accepting of your surroundings for someone who had lived underground their whole life. You were kind, agreeable, though shaken by your ordeal, obviously; he guessed that you'd likely seen plenty of other wild shit on your way in, and that a semi-regular (if a little unsavory) community of folks who mostly just happened to be ghouls wouldn't be that high on the list of things that would trip you up badly. Incredibly thankful for the assistance you'd been given when you'd first showed up, you quickly proved him correct, eager to work, to help out, to find a place where you could fit in.
Early on, you did a lot of running around for Daisy and Kleo, searching for things that had been requested from them, but you'd quickly grown tired of prospecting and shifted to more community-based work, something that only endeared you to him more. You mentioned casually at one point that you'd been something called an "irrigation technician" back home, so it was no surprise that he often found you knee-deep in dirt, picking at weeds, evaluating soil and water quality like it was second nature to you.
Everyone around the neighborhood loved you, almost too much for his liking. More and more, he found himself asking you to do completely made up tasks, or things that were already an assigned job, just to make sure you weren't spending too much time getting close to someone else when he was too busy to hang out with you. It left a bad taste in his mouth to think that he might miss out on the chance to get close to you because of nothing but circumstance when it had been circumstance that brought you into his life to begin with.
Eventually, he'd gotten a bit of that familiar wandering itch, deciding to pack up and make the trip to visit Nora in Sanctuary. He'd invited you to come along with him, both interested to see what his two favorite vaulties would think of one another and hoping for an opportunity to get more personal with you. Besides, he wasn't naive. He couldn't leave you behind and expect you to still be available when he came back, that he knew; Edward Deegan had been in town far more often since the Cabots had left, asking around for you more than once, and he knew that the older man had a certain reputation...not that he had room to judge.
He also knew that he wasn't the only one to worry about.
Thankfully, you'd agreed to come along, openly eager to see more of the countryside and secretly eager to spend more time with John himself. His plan to get closer to you ultimately worked, and far better than he'd expected, but not for the reasons he'd anticipated.
The trip from Goodneighbor to Sanctuary wasn't terribly long, a day or two at most depending on your urgency. In fact, travel times all over had seemingly reduced as the roads had grown slowly safer, busier with the increased presence of the Minutemen and those who felt aligned with them. He had even noticed several trading caravans, though heavily guarded ones, making their way south, something he hadn't seen in years.
Unfortunately, he'd gotten a little lax, perhaps a bit distracted towards the very end of the trip and the two of you had been ambushed just as you'd entered the outskirts of Concord. He hadn't anticipated raiders so close to Sanctuary; in his overconfidence, a small pack of them had managed to get the drop on the pair of you, nailing him with a single round to his shooting arm from some distance before quickly hemming you in from uphill. Fortunately, he was both quick-healing and more than familiar with fighting in pain; his resilience, combined with your own strength and ability to pick several off yourself at a distance, quickly thinned their numbers, leaving each of you dealing with one or two stragglers.
Hancock had been retrieving his knife from the windpipe of the final one standing against him when he saw you fall out of the corner of his eye, your weapon tumbling a few feet away across the split, buckled asphalt. He immediately threw himself towards you, sizing up the burly raider who loomed over you as you attempted to roll out of his reach. The hulking motherfucker pivoted on one foot towards you, crushing the arm that was reaching out for your fumbled pistol under his filthy boot and snapping the bone with a sickening, audible crack. The agonizing cry that left you was sharp and heartbreaking.
Somehow, he'd teleported the ten feet or so that he needed to close the gap between him and the man raising his laser rifle towards you. He couldn't consciously recall a time when he'd moved with such urgency. The blow he delivered to the back of the guy's head with the butt of his shotgun caved in his skull cleanly and dropped him near instantly like a sack of rocks, but John still unloaded two shells into what was left for the satisfaction, his entire body vibrating with adrenaline and worry as he turned to you.
You were either attempting to sit up or curling upwards in pain, neither of which seemed especially comfortable as your mouth laid open in a silent scream. He acted as quickly as possible, gently moving your guarding arm away from the injured one to examine it. Thankfully, the bone hadn't pierced the skin, but the angle your hand sat at made his stomach roll, along with the way you began to whimper and hyperventilate. Wanting to move you out of the open before he administered one of the doctor's bags he kept with him, but distrustful of the surrounding houses, he scooped you up into his arms, wincing along with you as you cradled your limp limb against your chest. Holding his breath almost all the way, he trudged up the hill until he came across the Red Rocket truck stop, settling you gently on the old work bench.
"I'm real sorry, but this is probably gonna hurt, kid." he said, allowing himself the far-too-intimate gesture of pushing your hair away from your face, cradling your wet cheek for a split second. "When we get to Sanctuary, we'll get you something for the pain, alright?"
You nodded, eyes clenching tight as you extended the injured extremity towards him as best as you could. He was as gentle as possible patching you, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving you suffering completely, even for just the short walk across the bridge and up the hill. Eerily quiet despite what he was certain was fairly great pain, you let him do whatever he needed.
It had taken longer than he'd have liked to carry you to the short rest of the way to Sanctuary, his pace encumbered by his fear of jostling or mishandling you.
"It's fine. I can walk the rest of the way." you'd protested halfheartedly, your unmarred arm wrapped tight around his neck as you held yourself up as best as you could. However, you made no move to extract yourself from him. He'd pointedly ignored the handful of inquisitive looks the two of you had received as he'd carried you past the guard posts at the end of the bridge, quickly seeking out the settlement's little clinic building.
Nora, mayor in her own way, had almost immediately heard of your arrival, and found him smoking on the crumbling curb outside, staring off at the old gas station on the horizon absentmindedly.
"Is your lady friend alright?" she asked, lowering herself down beside him and holding out a semi-cool beer.
He smiled at her, almost full-strength, and reached out to warmly shake her hand. His friend looked a little older now, her time in the Commonwealth and her mountain of accrued responsibilities taking their own toll, but she appeared wiser (and more content) for it.
"She'll be fine. If I'm honest, I probably didn't need to rush her up here like that, but, eh. I panicked a little." he replied, cheeks warm as she appraised him with that knowing look. She didn't dig further, thankfully one of his few friends who had ever mastered the art of discretion. John was glad to see her, certainly, and tried his best to focus on their conversation as they caught up a bit, each sipping their drink, but his mind was inside with you.
Soon, she was pulled away, but promised to check in again before disappearing down the street, leaving John as he had been: worrying away on the stoop.
After the doctor had checked you over, fully re-set your arm, and given you another stimpack, along with a sling, the ghoul had helped you to a cot in an empty room at the back of one of the semi-restored houses. He'd offered you Med-X, eager to alleviate the pain he could see lingering, but you'd just shaken your head wordlessly, a nervous glint in your eyes as you sized the syringe up, your breathing still rather shallow and shaky as you sweated lightly.
"You're worrying me here, sister. I'm begging ya to just take something. I know you're healing up, but..."
"I'm fine, John. Really. I just need to rest a few more hours and it'll be healed enough to not hurt so badly." you huffed, resettling your limbs along the bed to allow him some room to sit beside you. You calling him by his real name, the one no one ever called him, didn't even really register.
"I've got some booze." he offered, embarrassed at how desperate he felt to get you to somehow accept what little help he felt he had to offer. "Or weed? Would you try that? I know you're hurting."
There was a different sort of hesitation in your gaze at that, your arm still cradled close in your sling as you stroked over it absentmindedly, protectively with your good hand.
"I really do just need to tough it out a bit longer." you replied, though your tone was a little softer. "Plus, I don't like to drink, and I don't exactly know how to smoke weed."
He chuckled at that, relaxing just a little.
"Not much to know. Inhale, hold, exhale." he said, smiling warmly at you. "I've got a joint if you wanna try it."
You were quiet for a long moment, taking a deep, steadying breath in the cooling twilight.
"Are you gonna light it?" you asked.
And he did, taking a puff or two himself to get the thing burning properly before handing it to you, showing you how to pinch it between your thumb and forefinger and watching with rapt attention as you lifted it to your own mouth.
"Easy!" he said as you pulled hard, the end of the joint glowing bright as it burned. Unsurprisingly, you began to cough wildly a moment later, cheeks wet and shoulders shaking hard as you hacked and gasped, desperately pushing the smoldering little cigarette back at him so you could wipe at your face. Resisting the urge to chuckle at the relatability in your tear-streaked mug, he patted your shoulder gently. Taking another puff himself, he leaned against the wall behind him, giving you a few minutes to collect yourself and find your voice once more.
"Wow." you said eventually,
"Feeling it?" he asked.
"Definitely. Also, that really hurt."
He tittered a bit at your glassy-eyed look, genuine relief washing over him as he took in your relaxing posture and slow, even breaths. Knowing that you wouldn't fess up to still hurting, he didn't ask your status, taking comfort in the knowledge that you were at least somewhat relieved of your pain as he fully settled in beside you, sitting up with his back against the moldering wallpaper.
"If only my friends back home could see me now." you chuckled, playing absentmindedly with your fingers. His stomach dropped a bit at that, always frozen in captivation and fear of stopping you somehow when you got to talking about home in any substantial way, which was so rare.
"Can I ask why you left? Of course, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." he asked, each word an uneasy labor to force out as he fiddled with one of his rings.
You were quiet for a moment, just long enough that his retraction was ready to launch off of his tongue when you finally responded.
"They wanted me to get married and I wasn't ready." you explained simply, following up after a moment with a very hesitant "Well, it wasn't just that. They wanted me to get married and start immediately popping out babies and stuff. Had a guy picked out for me and everything. I just couldn't go through with it. It didn't feel right. You know?"
John faltered for a moment, genuinely unsure if he did know what you meant. Sure, he was familiar with the feeling of being expected to fall into a certain role and failing, or rejecting the system that wanted to put you into that box completely. He knew what it was like to feel at odds with those who felt they knew what was best for you. But, through all of that, he'd been able to make his own choices, even if he sometimes wished he could go back and make different ones.
"I know what it's like to feel like you need to just get away, for sure." he replied after a hopefully-not-too-long pause.
You nodded slowly.
"So, uh...did you leave, or did you run away?"
There was a long moment of silence, and you didn't look at him when you answered, your voice just a little bit quieter.
"Closer to the second thing."
He nodded, hesitantly placing his hand on your knee in a gesture of comfort, smiling when you placed your own hand over his.
"Was he ugly?" he joked after a moment, earning a gentle laugh from you.
"Nah. It wasn't him. It was all of them, you know? And me, I guess." you replied, eyeballing the stars through a hole in the roof.
"Yeah, I hear you."
He held the joint out to you once more, but you declined, directing the thing away with a smooth turn of your hand.
"You sure you don't want some more? One hit isn't very much, even if it feels strong right now. Probably won't last long."
"I don't wanna hog all your fancy drugs." you responded facetiously, grinning just a little. "Plus, I think I'll literally hack up my own windpipe if I take another drag off of that thing. It's so..."
"...hot-feeling? I could shotgun it to you." he offered, trying to ignore the way his cock stirred at the confused look on your innocent little face. "It means you inhale my exhale. Makes it way less harsh. Only if you wanna, though."
"And it still works? The, uh, smoke, I mean?"
"Yep." he smirked.
"Hmm. Yeah, let's try it." you agreed, much calmer than before as you sat up a little taller and scooted close to him, your hips touching as he filled his lungs with smoke once more.
"Alright," he explained, words strained as he held his breath, "put your lips to mine and take a deep breath in."
You leaned in closer to do as you were told, you cheeks dusted with a tinge of blush as he closed the short distance between the two of you. Softly, he touched his mouth to your own, holding his lips open as he slowly, steadily exhaled. Hesitating for a moment, you eventually caught on, and surprisingly managed to take a rather generous inhale.
What surprised him more, though, was when he moved to pull away and you leaned in again, only to kiss him in full, your lips wrapping around what remained of his own instead of just sitting there. It began as a lingering peck, but after you pulled back a few inches to exhale, coughing much less this time around, he leaned in again, hand moving to cup the back of your head as he held you tight. You'd slept close to one another before, but that was the first night you'd chosen to sleep in the same bed, cuddled close and both content.
From that moment, things began to genuinely progress between the two of you, your relationship quickly blooming from a warm friendship with occasional flirtatious banter into something that was becoming quite serious, at least in terms of the relationships John had had in the past.
You were a flirt, but not in the forward, raunchy way he himself often was. No, you were a much sweeter, more playful sort of tease, and while he quickly found your affection high up on the long list of things he had a major fixation for, it also hampered him in its own way. It made him feel like such a creep to make more forward advances towards you when your own 'moves' tended to be more romantic in nature; hand-holding, soft kisses, chaste cuddles. Granted, he tried to keep in mind that your lack of experience may have made you less inclined to start or say things, less confident to put yourself out there; you often came across as eager, but nervous. He kept that observation to himself.
You were also a rather remarkable person, driven by how much you wanted to help people and make the world you'd found a better place. He found it almost funny how you tried your best to make it clear that you weren't one of those vault dwellers, though you sort of inherently were. As much as you liked to deny it, to insist that all of the "we must rebuild and lead America when we retake the surface" talk they'd drilled into your head where you'd grown up hadn't taken root, he saw some of it in you, in the way you were so eager to help run things, start up new settlements, provide assistance with improvements that would make life better for everyone.
Perhaps you'd decided to embody those values in a different way than you were taught, but it certainly came across as leadership behavior to him. Nora must've seen it, too, the two of you becoming quickly and warmly acquainted, you eager to help her out in any way you could and her with plenty of tasks that could use more hands. One of those tasks, funnily enough, was deciding what to do with the still-untouched Red Rocket. Too small to really be a proper settlement, it was decided that it would be emptied out and sized up for stability and how easy it would be to wire the place. He also insisted on a new guard tower at that end of the bridge to keep an eye on any Concord stragglers. Though, not too close to the building.
The two of you spent the next week or so cleaning the place out together, hauling away rotted junk and evaluating the old building's guts and foundation, which were pleasantly intact overall, much to his surprise. Nora stopped by when she could patch together any significant time alone from the few minutes here and there that she often had between tasks, offering assistance and extra supplies to stock the place up with. Knowing her, she'd long seen right through him and his feelings towards you; his suspicions were all but confirmed when she remarked that it was "quite the little home the two of you were building together".
Occasionally, she would bring Shaun along with her, introducing him to you after a couple of months of feeling you out. For the sake of his cherished friend, John treated the boy as normally as possible, even playing with him a bit when he requested it. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't force himself to let go of his lingering wariness of the whole thing. Yes, he was happy that Nora had her son back in whatever form it may be; he had seen firsthand how devastated she had been without him.
After all, that was precisely why he found himself so suspicious when she'd told him about the young synth boy. John had never been a parent, himself, but he knew Nora's heart, knew how deeply her love for her child lived inside her; it was exactly the sort of loss that could be easily exploited. She insisted that the Institute wasn't something they needed to worry about any longer, but he sometimes questioned her confidence in this. The facility itself may have been gone, but there was no way of knowing that all of their plans and orchestrations had been annihilated alongside it. Hell, if they'd been worth their supposed salt, they'd have been smart enough to guarantee that exactly that wasn't possible, that they would still be able to continue their work somehow. Shaun had showed up at too perfect a time, in his mind, and for that, he constantly kept one eye on the child who seemed to genuinely like him, calling him "Uncle John".
It was rather clear to him that you noticed the wall he kept up between himself and the kid, but you didn't prod much into it, and for that he was grateful.
The weeks continued to pass by, the Red Rocket becoming your sort of base; close enough to Sanctuary to be useful, far enough away to have some privacy for yourselves.
"We should really get you some actual armor and people clothes, y'know." he said one evening, reclining back onto the little bedroll he'd been using while you two searched for a proper bed and staring hard at your ass as you rummaged through your things. "That suit might protect you alright, but it's like wearing a target on your back."
And it's way too distracting to me, frankly, he finished silently, perfectly envisioning himself accidentally wandering off a cliff to his demise because he was too fixated on your various assets waggling around in that damn suit.
Fortunately for him, you actually agreed, long past growing tired of the perception of naivete and vulnerability that the suit drew to you. Though, he knew you were rather attached to the thing, one of the few slivers of home you carried with you always. You feared it being stolen if you left it behind somewhere, and he understood, helping you rig up a really good hiding spot in the Red Rocket ceiling tiles. The clothes you eventually started to wear around were, thankfully, less well-fitted than the vault suit, scrounged up pairs of jeans and threadbare tees, old button-ups and road leathers you tried your best to keep oiled and stretched.
However, when you felt truly comfortable (and weren't helping with some of the more intense work around the settlements), you'd often wear one of a couple of dresses you'd managed to trade for or scrounge up in your adventures, button-up things that hung well past your knee, but took the "form fitting" issue the vault suit had and multiplied it. Not only did the things emphasize every one of your sweet curves just the right way, they exposed the soft, strong flesh of your arms and legs, the line of your elegant throat as it disappeared into the swell of your breasts. As much as he loved to see you dressed so nicely, almost otherworldly beautiful in just how much you didn't fit into the dingy, decrepit background, it made it difficult for him to focus on any one task. Frankly, it made it difficult to focus on anything but the thought of hiking the flowing skirt up around your hips and having his way with you.
Simultaneously, it made him hypervigilant of exactly how others carried themselves when they were around you.
It had been irritating enough back home to have to deal with the Neighborhood Watch guys tugging you aside to whisper little bits of info to you, Ham's gaze lingering on you as you two passed into the entrance of The Third Rail, the number of people who had always wanted to talk or dance with you when you got inside. Caravan guards and traders trying their hardest to tail the pair of you on the road, pursuing your attention hard.
But once the two of you had begun spending a great deal of time around Sanctuary, the problem only intensified, increasing directly with the number of smoothskin men around who obviously did not see him as any sort of threat. Though he couldn't quite determine if the way they wrote him off was intended to be more emasculating or generally dehumanizing, John remained on his best behavior, both for your sake and Nora's, unwilling to embarrass either of you by association. Regardless, he was infinitely relieved when the former lawyer began to ask the two of you to start running errands to other nearby settlements. Sure, his patience was often tested again as soon as you reached whatever your new destination was, but the alone time in-between stops was incredibly regenerating for him, eager to get his hands on you whenever he could.
This was particularly true at night.
Often the settlements you were visiting weren't all that far away, but the two of you would usually choose to bed down for the evening somewhere on the roadside before turning up, both of you giddy at the unfettered access to one another, the privacy to discuss and say whatever you wanted. More than anything, though, he was desperate to feel you, to kiss you, to have you cuddled up against his chest the way he liked, and he was too nervous to paint you with the scarlet letter of ghoul alliance to be all that handsy during the day. When the sun fell, though, you were all his.
At no point did you explicitly tell him that you were a virgin. You didn't really need to, frankly; the way your lips and hands fumbled nervously against him, your lack of confidence to lead in this single situation, communicated all he needed to know. He wasn't especially surprised, anyway. The place you came from sounded pretty buttoned-up the way you described it, but you were also just a fairly guarded person in general; warm, friendly, but not overly eager to let anyone too close without a thorough sizing up. Fortunately for him, he somehow fit the specs.
It didn't take long for the two of you to start properly fooling around, much to John's partial chagrin. He hated to feel like he was rushing you, but at the same time, his self control completely evaporated into thin air the moment you stripped down to your skivvies to relax. He'd been hooked on you from that first kiss and the withdrawals were some of the heaviest he'd felt.
The first time he watched you come apart on his fingers, it took every ounce of strength in his irradiated body to not pin you down and fuck you until you literally couldn't handle any more. It was the most erotic display he'd ever taken in, the way your exposed chest flushed and heaved, your big, wide eyes brimmed with overwhelmed tears. As you'd crested into your peak, his hand buried in your panties while the other supported your limp head, you'd cried out so loudly he'd had to cover your mouth, soaking his fingers as your body twitched and jerked tensely.
"Holy cow." you'd gasped a moment later, a light sheen of sweat delicately clinging to your face and chest. "I wasn't aware I was doing that wrong."
"Well, I dunno about wrong..."
"Wrong, not as good as you, whatever." you dismissed, waving your hand at him playfully. "I hope you know that that's gonna be your job from now on."
"Is that right?" he grinned lasciviously, leaning down to kiss you on the cap of your bent knee and forcing himself to not firmly plant his rapidly growing head between your thighs. "Since when do you delegate tasks?"
"Oh, don't be that way, McDonough. We're all taking on extra responsibilities for the good of everyone." you replied diplomatically, your cheeks rosy as you rearranged your limbs to lie along his body.
He laughed genuinely at that, wrapping an arm around you and moving to recline himself. The small tent the two of you had set up was filled with your sweet musk, and he strategically angled his hips away from you so you wouldn't feel how completely stiff he was as a result, petting your hair as you drifted off to sleep. John was no stranger to knocking out for long periods himself, usually to will away a nasty come-down or hangover, but he found himself staying awake longer and longer to watch you, caress you. He thought it a much more worthwhile use of his time.
A while later, you'd been sent to the settlement that'd grown up at the center of the former drive-in theater a bit down the road from the Abernathy place. You were rather enamored with the place, both because of its historical use and because it had a fairly interesting crop setup, attempting to squeeze the most use out of what parts of the ground weren't paved. Personally, he felt less welcome at this place than he often did at other settlements, though other settlements coincidentally also seemed to have more ghouls already living there. However, when you wanted to stick around for a bit, caught up in helping work out some kinks with their crop watering system, he didn't object or complain, happy to see you happy. He'd simply make himself scarce during the day, often scavenging or patrolling the outer edge of the place and leaving you to socialize and play in the dirt, which is where he found you upon his return one early fall evening, the air growing chilly as the breeze blew through the little farmyard.
"How was your day?" you asked as he approached, sitting on the steps of the ramshackle barn the settlers had constructed and knocking mud off of your boots and the cuffs of your pant legs. The sun was quickly sinking behind the ridge at your back, darkness beginning to envelop the edges of the place.
"It was great. Camped out watching the ridge for a while, so I'm pretty stiff. Wanna go for a walk with me, stretch your legs?" he asked, rolling a loose cig in his fingers before jamming it between his lips. Smiling, you nodded silently in agreement, sweeping the remaining dust and debris from your pants after you stood before moving to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, the two of you making your way northwest towards the other end of the paved lot. You chit-chatted a bit about the day's events, what each of you had accomplished. When you reached the decrepit building that made up the old movie screen, he took a pause to lean against the stained wall, finally lighting up his smoke. You busied yourself staring up at the stars quietly, leaving him to study you closely as he puffed away at the thing.
"Have you gone up top yet?" he asked eventually, exhaling the last of his cigarette through what remained of his nose as he tucked the butt into his pocket.
"No. Can you? I thought they had a guard post up there so I've been keeping away. I get so embarrassed when I get in the middle of their patrol routes." you asked, an excited glint in your eyes as you fiddled with the ends of your hair.
"They don't man it at night. Can't hardly see nothin' from it in the dark, strategically, and it's too hard to wire anything up there. Plus, anything happens and you're pretty far away, all things considered. Nor' says they're building a guard tower soon. Wanna take a look? Might still be neat."
You nodded enthusiastically, quickly reaching out to thread your fingers into his and tug him along, the slightly sickly glow of your Pip-Boy flashlight illuminating your way along the mostly intact path. The pair of you climbed the old metal stairs together, hand-in-hand, slowly making your way up to small walkway along the top of the massive screen.
He had been a little surprised that you'd never heard of a movie theater like this before you'd come here for the first time, since even he'd at least read about them once or twice (and vaulties often seemed to know so much more about the pre-war world than people from up-top), but Nora had gotten a kick out of showing both of you what remained of the massive projector in the decayed building at the far end of the lot, explaining to you how the whole place had worked back in the day. The wonder in your eyes had been adorable, and you'd spent quite a while afterwards talking about the few movies you'd watched growing up. It was rare for you to talk so much, so openly about where you came from, even if what you were talking about wasn't necessarily consequential information; he'd spent most of that night holding you in his lap, staring at you dreamily while you mused and remembered until you fell asleep.
"Wow. You can see so far!" you exclaimed quietly as you mounted the final step, pulling away from him by a few feet to look out across the scene. "Well, I bet you could see way further during the day. But still. How cool, John!"
He smiled, watching as you tested the strength of the hand rail before leaning against it cautiously, your head sweeping back and forth as you studied the inky horizon, dotted occasionally with flickering signs of life. There was a melancholic tang to the warmth he felt as he took in your excitement, your joy; this sort of small pleasure shouldn't be so novel to you, and it broke his heart just enough to color the moment.
Letting that feeling fall to the wayside, he leaned back against his own portion of the railing for a minute or two, fishing out the Jet container that sat in his pocket beside his smokes and hitting it quietly a couple of times. The pleasant, buzzing feeling of intoxication wrapping around his consciousness sent his head falling back laxly, lids heavy as he studied your silhouette against the moonlight, the lines of your body and the dancing form of your hair in the slight breeze. The smell of you in the air.
Nuzzling up close behind you after a beat, he wrapped his arms around your waist, pressing his cheek to your temple as he held you close. His heart sped up further, already racing from the amphetamines coursing through him, when you relaxed into his grip, the back of your head resting along his shoulder. The two of you had been enmeshed in whatever your little entanglement could be called for a bit, and you didn't ever seem uncomfortable with him, personally, but sometimes more intimate contact still made you a bit skittish.
For a few minutes, he appreciated the view along with you, rubbing your sides softly, massaging the dip in your lower back where you often complained of tension after a long day. Eventually, however, his hands wandered further, grazing softly over your breasts and smirking at how you sighed in response, lips sliding down to tuck against your throat. Between his physical adulation and the growing chill of the dark, your nipples pebbled quickly, his fingers alternating between playing with each of them, setting you to squirming against him. He toyed along your belt line for a beat, forcing your attention to where his touch was landing as he gently unbuttoned your pants and slid his hand inside.
"It's alright, I gotcha." he assured you, supporting your stiffening form easily as his index finger teased over your swollen peak through your underwear, feeling a growing wet spot that made his core ache.
"I'm dirty, John." you murmured, voice hushed with embarrassment, your face and throat just a bit warmer under his lips.
"You think I'm clean?" he teased in response, nibbling at your earlobe.
The slightly worried fidgeting you were doing continued for another minute or so, but the more the damp patch expanded under his touch, the less nervous you seemed; still high-alert, but drifting further and further into his touch. Soon, you were relying on him to support most of your weight as your hips moved themselves back and forth against his hand. He could feel, see the signs of you approaching your orgasm, but dragged his fingers up and down the length of your slit a few times to tease you, to drag out the moment. The tension made you whimper sharply, teeth closing around your lower lip in an attempt to silence yourself.
"Better keep it quiet, cutie. You'll get us caught." he murmured, low and close to your ear; the shudder that broke down your spine, vibrating through your back and into his chest, was delicious.
His cock was aching against your backside, throbbing with anticipation, and it was unbearable. Head spinning, his hand that had moved to knead absentmindedly at your hip slipped further to press at the back of your thigh, pushing your knee skyward until your foot caught on the lower bar of the rail, balancing your leg there until you took over, bracing it there yourself. This new position granted him more reach, his fingers swiping lower along your now slightly exposed entrance.
"Mm, John." you whispered. A warning.
"Trust me, baby." he breathed in reply, stroking over the velvety soft spot a few more times before moving his fingers back to your needy clit. He wanted to sink his fingers deep inside you, to feel you wrapped around any part of him in that base, primal way, but resisted the temptation, sensing your hesitation.
Your more open stance also granted him easier access to roll your bud between his fingers, and quickly you were dancing along that knife's edge once more, your heat and sounds and smell all overwhelming him at equal speed.
His need had reached a fever pitch, your squirming and whimpering shooting sparks down his spine; this, combined with his already high proclivity for sexual behavior on Jet, was more than enough to send him wrestling his cock free through his suddenly unzipped fly. Your shirt had bunched up in the back, leaving a sliver of flesh exposed that he fixated on as soon as he'd noticed it. Stroking himself a few times in the cool air, he pressed closer, the pierced underside of the head dragging along your smooth, soft skin and making him hiss.
Feeling any part of your body against him like that drove him instantly mad, and he had to focus almost entirely on you to ensure that he didn't blow past you on his way to the finish line. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue, as you moved your hand down on top of his, pressing down hard, and soon stiffened completely against him, burying your face in his shoulder as best as you could to muffle your cries as you came apart; he followed you almost instantly, your sounds overwhelming him as he shot all over the ground.
The two of you savored the bliss of your aftershocks for a moment, clinging to one another, but quickly he felt you attempting to right your clothing, and he allowed you to pull away a bit. Probably smart anyway; neither of you had exactly been silent towards the end, though he couldn't hear anyone ascending the stairs.
"You alright?" he asked as he set to fixing his pants. You nodded silently, smiling shyly at him as you reached for his hand.
"Aht, watch out. Don't, uh, step in that." he murmured, guiding you to his side before you made your way down, passing by a couple people who side-eyed you on your way back to your shared bed, set up at the top of the projector room. Laid down for the night, your cheek on his sternum, he'd assumed you were asleep when you finally spoke up for the first time in a while.
"John." you whispered softly.
"Hmm?" he replied, eyes closed as his hand stroked your back.
You hesitated a moment, blush-heavy and squirming.
"Is your...ah..."
He allowed you some time to try and get your words out, but it was clear you were struggling.
"You don't have to be embarrassed, babe. Whatever it is, you can ask me. I won't be upset or anything." he assured, rubbing your shoulder gently.
"...is your penis pierced?" you finally whispered conspiratorially.
He was genuinely shocked into silence for a few seconds before breaking out in uproarious laughter, his head rolling limply to and fro as you giggled along with him.
"Wow, you could tell against your back like that?" he asked, rather astonished.
"I wasn't sure it's what I was feeling." you replied, sheepish. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be weird about it or anything. I just didn't know that was a thing that people did. Then again, I didn't know people pierced things in their faces until I met that lady at The Third Rail. Remember?"
He chuckled warmly at the memory, at your candor and the pink dusting your face as you sat up a bit, still looking at him curiously.
"You look like you wanna ask me more questions about it." he said.
"Did it hurt?" you asked quickly.
"Eh, it's been such a long time since I got it, I don't really remember all that well." he white lied, fully knowing he didn't remember how badly it hurt for entirely different reasons.
You nodded, the wheels in your mind clearly turning rapidly.
"Does it, uh..." The effort of forcing the uncomfortable words out of your mouth was clear on your face. "...does it have a function, or is it just for looks? Like, do you use it?"
"Oh, yeah." he grinned, ignoring the way he had started to grow stiff again.
You didn't ask for more elaboration on that front, but your mystification was clear, gaze wandering as the very faint smell of your arousal tinged the air. Eventually, you spoke again.
"What made you wanna get it?"
This question, shockingly, was the one that stopped him in his tracks. He'd told you not to be embarrassed when you'd first brought it up, the whole thing rather entertaining to him, but something about this specific inquiry agitated the ugly knot of shame that permanently lived at his core, his own face and chest suddenly feeling flush.
Was there even a way to phrase the truth that wouldn't just be embarrassing? What was the low-key way to say I was incredibly fucked up on Ultrajet at the time and it just felt like the right thing to do, so I did it myself?
There's only one thing he could think to say that wouldn't completely demean himself in your eyes, and it came out on the back of a halfhearted chuckle.
"Don't do hard drugs, kid."
Your face was unreadable in response to that, only for a heartbeat, but long enough to make him physically squirm in discomfort. But you simply chuckled in a satisfied, incurious way, laying a sweet kiss against his cheek before tucking in. He had trouble sleeping that night, but also found it tough to look too long at your sleeping face.
Eventually, you two made your way back northwest, making a very careful sweep through Concord as you went along. Both of you had jokes about what had happened last time; neither of you said a single word until you were turning into the crumbled Red Rocket lot anyway. The very first thing you did after you dropped your pack onto the ground was climb up and double check that your vault suit was still tucked away where you'd left it. When you were satisfied with what you'd found, you unpacked your things and asked if he'd like to go over to "town" and say hello. He agreed, ready for a stiff drink after how tense he'd been on the way back.
You held hands as you crossed the bridge, and it was a real labor for him to not actively gloat at the guards you always passed. After procuring a drink from the fairly well-stocked bar, he noticed you surrounded by the usual flock of folks who wanted to chat and exchange stories, so he stepped outside. Wandering over to where the handful of ghouls who'd taken up residence in Sanctuary usually hung out in the evenings, congregating beneath a little patched-up awning on some decently nice lawn furniture, he easily folded himself into the conversation and made himself welcome.
A few long anecdotes and one too many cigarettes later, the sun was beginning to dip behind the treeline to the west, and he figured it was time to make a reappearance and collect you. However, when he wandered back into the bar, grabbing another beer on his way through, he didn't find you. Exiting through the only other door, he cast his eyes downhill towards the waterfront and found you standing there with someone he never saw you alone with: Preston Garvey.
The Minuteman second-in-command wasn't a bad guy by anyone's report, nor an especially exciting one, as far as John could tell. He was friendly, obviously eager to help out and have a positive impact on things around him, but he was also far too close to you for the ghoul's taste, and his heckles were raised high as he quickly made his way towards you. His sharp ears picked up on the conversation in progress, his steps unconsciously light and quiet.
"...just don't want you to have to deal with that, you know? People can be so awful, and you don't deserve that."
"That's very considerate of you." you replied politely, your eyes seemingly glued to the ground. "But your concern really isn't necessary, I promise."
John had largely closed the distance between himself and the pair of you, lingering about ten feet away, just far enough out that he didn't draw Garvey's eye as he approached. He hesitated to move closer, though, afraid of how he may react if things didn't go his way. The sweating beer bottle in his hand was already clenched tighter in his grip than was likely wise. His entire body felt like it was made of lead, dense and frozen and so heavy that he was sinking into the soft ground beneath him.
"Well, I won't act like I know what's best for you better than you do. I just wanted to say that I think you're great, and that I think you deserve someone who will treat you just as great." the younger man finished up, taking another quarter-step into your bubble and placing his hand against your cheek for a beat. This, alone, was enough to make John apoplectic, but when Preston had the gall to slide his crooked index finger under your chin and lift it your face towards his, he lost it for a split second, the glass vessel in his hand suddenly exploding into a plume of tiny shards, a crumbled, wet, sharp mess remaining in his bloodied grip. Fortunately, you seemed to teleport a few steps back, your hands up in a bit of a defensive gesture.
Every non-existent hair he had stood on end in that moment, his entire body coated with goosebumps as the realization that he was about to make a grave, grave mistake settled onto him. The broken remains of the bottle felt far too useful in his hand, suddenly, and he tossed the whole dripping thing to the ground before turning and pounding sandy soil up the embankment and back across the bridge. John wasn't necessarily one to lose his cool like this often, but he knew well enough that he needed somewhere to direct this anger before it boiled over in a major way.
Shoving the door open, he stomped past the few pieces of furniture you'd dragged in, coming to lean against the old counter top towards the back, the one that you'd told him you'd like to get rid of. However, the two of you had been unable to figure out how to extract the thing because it was welded to the floor. For a few weeks, he'd been pondering how to remove it cleanly to surprise you. He'd been unable to come up with anything thus far.
Something about the presence of the thing only fueled his breakdown, and he delivered a vicious kick to the side of it, the metal and vinyl folding and splintering where his foot met the side. Typically, this little bit of destruction and catharsis would've been enough to quell him into stopping. But seeing the evidence of his anger and his lack of self-control only made him feel like more of a fuck-up, like more of the undesirable, unstable junkie he often saw when he looked in the mirror, and the resulting rage was blinding. Before he knew it, he'd wrapped his arms around the lip of the thing, yanking it once, twice, then a third time with all the strength at his command, until the whole thing broke loose from the base where it had been sealed to the floor. Bits of rusted-out metal and fat splinters of rotted wood clattered to the floor as he swung around, forcing it through the doorway to his right and throwing the thing as hard as he possibly could. It flew further than he'd anticipated, arcing rather high and crashing through the moldy awning of one of the Concord homes down the hill. There was skittering, the flapping of wings in response, frightened creatures fleeing the sudden sound as John stood there in silence, the burning in his muscles and the pain in his hands finally allowing him to focus on something other than his ears ringing in anger. After a long, dizzy moment, he turned and went back into the living room area, slumping against the wall as he studied all the metal shards sticking out of the floor where the counter top had been.
"I thought maybe you'd left." your voice came suddenly from the doorway.
"Nah, I wouldn't do that do you." he replied, trying his hardest to mean it, to not be exactly that type of guy. He couldn't make himself look at you. "Just needed to get away for a bit. Didn't wanna do anything stupid."
"Honey, your hand." you pointed out as you came closer, brow furrowed with worry as he examined himself; the back of his scarred appendage was bleeding somewhat generously, sliced by a nail or something similar in his momentary tantrum. He felt nothing about the wound, any pain he'd felt from what he'd done quickly leaving his body as the smell of you quickly filled the small space, further clouding his already racing thoughts. His beer bottle hand was already healing rapidly.
"It's fine. It'll be fine." he barely muttered in reply, reaching out to grab you just firmly enough by the wrist to pull you close enough that he could give you a thorough once-over.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
You nodded, eyes wide, hair wild and cheeks ruddy as you gazed back at him like a startled doe.
For once in his life, not using the Jet hadn't helped the situation, seemingly. His head still spun with conflicting emotions and thoughts, every muscle still wired with energy from the adrenaline and from your general proximity, making him fidget and grasp for words as his body rebelled, reacting strongly to you. He was drowning in your scent, the tang of your sweat, but it was realizing that Garvey's smell still clung lightly to you from your brief contact that was the final straw.
Your heart raced under your skin, your pulse flying under the press of his fingertips as he pushed you firmly against the decrepit wall. You exhaled harshly through your nostrils, hands coming to knot themselves into his work flannel as his mouth pressed forward with its assault on yours. He expected you to begin to push him away using the shirt for leverage, but couldn't force himself to pull back first through the blinding possessive rage he felt.
John had always been more of a “free love” sort of guy most of his life, jumping from partner to partner without much thought or care, and, because he'd never put much emotional investment or time into any particular partner, had never really cared enough about another person to feel possessive of them. Jealousy was such a negative, ugly emotion that he hated to waste any of his time on it, but the fire he'd felt in his gut from the moment he'd watched that asshole place his fingers under your chin to tilt your face up, obviously angling for a kiss, could not be ignored. This was the final straw.
He'd heard the whispers of the people around Sanctuary, around every settlement and trade outpost; the speculations about why a woman like you would choose to travel with a ghoul as a companion, why you'd spend almost all your time with him, how you were so comfortable touching and being touched by him. Criticism from shitheads about his own actions and choices rolled off of him like water off a mirelurk shell, valid or not, but it stirred him up fiercely to hear these people you'd worked so hard for, given so much of yourself to, judge you, as if they had any room. Some of the more hateful ones called you a fetishist and a freak when they thought no one else could hear, and if it weren’t for you specifically asking him to not start trouble around the settlements unless you started it first, he would have made those people swallow their own teeth long ago.
Preston had added himself to that list the moment he made it clear that he pitied you for your choices.
John hadn’t previously had much problem with the guy, save for noticing the glint in his eye when he spoke with you. He couldn't necessarily begrudge him his attraction to you, though; you were, after all, the most beautiful woman in the Commonwealth, hands down. Beyond that, you were kind, generous, hardworking, and terrifyingly smart. You’d give the clothes off your back to anyone who needed them, and would offer a stranger your shoulder to cry on if they needed. It was nearly impossible to not fall in love with you, just a little. He knew; he had tried and failed as miserably as he'd ever failed at anything.
The guy’s feelings themselves weren't the problem, though; the problem was that he obviously thought himself some sort of contender for your affections. Or, he was trying to make himself one. It couldn't be tolerated. Hell, replace him with Edward Deegan, that rat McCready, or any other random man plucked out of the ether...the conclusion was the same, regardless. If this trespass was allowed, every man in the Commonwealth who fancied you or cut of your under suit would feel comfortable trying to pick you up right in front of him, and it'd be nothing but trouble for everyone involved. John's tolerance for everyone else encroaching on what was his had finally run dry.
His mouth found the side of your throat, placing open-mouthed kisses and sharp nips the way he knew you liked in a beeline from your clavicle to your ear. When you squirmed, letting out an airy moan as you yanked him closer, he latched onto your pulse point and sucked, bathing the skin with his tongue hard enough to leave a spotted, wine-colored mark that you wouldn't be able to hide the next day. You liked that, too, but you’d never admit it out loud.
Well, unless he made you, maybe...
A low, drawn out moan escaped your mouth, your hands moving up to cup the back of his head, pulling him still closer. He obliged you, pressing the line of his entire body against you, making you feel his throbbing need against your belly, and you whimpered in response, your hands finding the top button of his flannel and beginning to work it open.
He paused his ministrations, reaching up to cup your cheek gently, your own fingers stalling for a single beat as he gazed into your eyes, trying to reassure you that he wasn’t upset with you. And he wasn’t. You hadn’t done anything wrong. But he was upset at that guy’s uncharacteristically bold actions, his disregard of his place in your life. The disregard of the others. The disrespect.
He needed to assert his place. He needed to show you how he felt.
Promptly, he resumed his ministrations. By the time you'd managed to undo the last cracked button, he’d left a huge, oblong purple bruise along the side of your elegant throat.
“John,” you whispered in between harsh breaths, your hands moving to yank the thin shirt over your head. “I want you.”
The tone of your voice was sure and clear despite how it trembled. When he fully looked up to your face, you were gazing at him dreamily, your brow furrowed with effort as your hips began to move, trying to find some friction against his. Just like the previous night, like every night, he could clearly see your desire, your trust, in the way you gazed at him. Still, though, a tug of guilt in his chest had him chastising himself as he hesitated; he should protect you and tell you to not do this. Not only because of the societal response you could expect for being with a ghoul, but because he was far from anyone’s ideal man. He didn’t deserve you. He wasn’t sure he could be everything you needed, and wasn’t sure a man even existed on Earth who could be all that a divine woman like you deserved.
Even knowing this, he couldn't pull himself away from you. The overwhelming desire he'd felt since the moment you'd met burned too hot in his gut, long transformed from a deep want to a need.
“John.” you repeated, slightly louder though just as winded, and it sunk in just how much you made it feel like his name again.
His head dropped to your shoulder, kissing across it placidly for a moment. Your hands traveled up his back, eventually moving up to grab the tricorn from his head and toss it onto the counter beside you. He felt the warm bloom of self-consciousness as you pecked along his bald head gingerly, your lips feeling extra plush against his ruined skin.
“This really what you want, sunshine?” he asked, forehead coming to rest against your own as his hands rubbed your sides.
You didn’t respond vocally, but instead reached out to stroke his cheek like he had yours, thumb swiping back and forth for a few moments. There was a silence, but a warm, comfortable one that wrapped you together in your own little bubble. When your eyes met again, he had his answer.
He led you by your soft hand to the next room, ditching his shirt, the two of you dropping onto the mattress in the corner, chuckling at the plume of dust that rose from the thing as you cuddled close. Your hands absentmindedly petted at him, one twiddling at one of the frayed tails of his shirt, averting your eyes. Soon, the unoccupied hand began to move down his chest, stroking the wiry muscle of his exposed torso. Your palm was warm and soft against him as you explored his chest, eyes following your hand as it slowly moved lower. He tensed a bit as your hand swept along his abdominals ticklishly, fingertips dipping below the waistband of his jeans. You hesitated a moment, your fingers retreating slightly to sweep back and forth along the upper seam, toying with the loose threads there.
John was radiating tension at the way you were touching him; you had never been quite this bold before, and his head swam with the overwhelming amount of emotion that he felt as your fingers began to dip below again, shyly. He was proud of you, knowing how much work you’d put into getting over your nerves to get to this point; at the same time, he was beyond touched that he was the man you’d chosen to share these milestones with. Both of these tender feelings made the overwhelming arousal he felt at your soft hands on his body a little embarrassing.
His breath caught in his throat when the tips of your fingers lightly brushed his erection, the sound odd. You froze, eyes moving to his to assess; he gave you a small head shake to convey that you hadn’t hurt him or anything, his usually silver tongue caught in his throat.
Given the green light, you slid your hand just a little further down, warm against the side of his shaft as you gently explored; your ginger poking and prodding was unpracticed, almost clinical, your hand trembling a little as you made him squirm. He was already rock hard, electricity sparking from where you touched him, and his frazzled emotional state didn’t help in the slightest. He gave a little grunt, trying to remain quiet and calm but feeling a mounting need to touch you, to kiss you, to hold you down against the filthy mattress and make you come undone.
He wanted you naked.
Generally, when you two got to fooling around, you were more than okay with him touching you both over and under your clothes, and you responded to him beautifully, making it easy to figure out what you liked and what you didn’t. However, you were often very nervous to fully remove your clothes when he made it clear he actually wanted to touch you. In the past several weeks you’d been so bold as to let him push up the hem of your shirts or open the blouse of your dresses to softly fondle and kiss your breasts, which you held and shielded with your hands when he wasn’t directly touching them, your face dusted with a dusky, embarrassed blush.
It hurt him terribly to see that you doubted your own beauty; if he had his way, he would spend every day from here to the next end of the world showing you how gorgeous you really were. But at the same time, the lingering shyness you demonstrated drove him wild.
A sharp inhale left his mouth when you suddenly wound your index finger lightly around the head of his cock, the softly calloused pad collecting some of the precum that dribbled from the slit and dragging along his piercing. You jumped a little at the sound, but when he looked at you in the dim light, your eyes were wide and the corners of your mouth were turned up ever-so-slightly in an expression of gentle confidence. He didn’t dare interrupt you, not wanting to risk throwing you off whatever wave you were currently on, instead tucking what remained of his lower lip between his teeth as you shimmied a little closer to him, the new proximity granting you a little more length of your arm to slide into his pants.
When your soft fingers curled all the way around his shaft, he nearly lost himself.
He cried out, the sound embarrassing and dragging out as you moved your grip on him up and down, slowly, hesitantly, his face burning with the shameful realization that he’d nearly cum in his pants like a teenager from a single touch from you. He was grateful his blush couldn’t be read on his tarnished skin as he dropped his face to your shoulder once more, placing a series of little kisses across the tan softness there as your blush began to work it's way down to your chest. One of his hands swept down your spine, caressing you softly as it slipped low and came to rest in the small of your back.
“Fuck.” he grunted, his jaw clenched tight as you continued your gentle ministrations, “I wanna see you, baby. Please.”
Your hand paused for a moment, giving a couple more gentle strokes before pulling back. When he lifted his head again, you were looking at him straight-on.
“Only if I get to see you, too.” you replied simply, your voice just above a whisper.
He was surprised at that; John had no real issues being a ghoul, but generally made it a practice to stay mostly clothed during sex for the ease of things (and, you know, just in case someone decides they don’t like what they see). His shirt was already hanging open, exposing his chest to you, but he went shirtless or open shirted frequently, both at home and on the road. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to you. He pulled back from you a bit to straighten up, his hands coming to work the fly of his jeans down as he gazed back at you, lips swollen and throat heavily marked where you sat, leaning back against the moldering wall.
“Deal.”
At that, you sat up more yourself, fingers slowly moving up to work the clasps on the back of your now well-worn bra loose. John stood and busied himself removing his jeans, taking a few extra seconds to fold them before placing them on the floor with his boots. As much as he wanted to stare at you, to fix his gaze on you and savor every moment of your undressing, he knew it would make you anxious or self-conscious, and willed himself to keep his eyes on the floor or the wall for a minute. When he looked back over, you were stripped down to just your panties, your knees drawn up to your chest, obscuring your breasts from his view as you watched him, waiting.
He felt a sudden and unexpected wave of self-consciousness as your eyes traced over his almost-naked form, straining to make out the details of him in the rapidly fading light. He was grateful that night was falling. Following your lead, he left his boxers on and returned to the bed, sitting down gently beside you. You responded by leaning towards him, leaning your head on his shoulder. A few quiet moments passed, the only sounds the creaking of the ancient place's frame and the wind in the trees outside.
"Nervous?" he asked, unable to help himself.
You nodded, but softly; he cupped your face lovingly, kissing you a few times and feeling you relax towards him just enough that he could maneuver you down onto your back. Giggling, your smooth palms ran along his own body in turn, coming to rest along the crown of his head as he laid kisses down your torso. An approving hum escaped you as he let his tongue lathe across one of your nipples, a hand teasing along your mound, but you froze up a bit when he moved towards your stomach. Feeling your tension, he pulled up just enough to look at you.
"I'm sorry. It's not you." you said, eyes avoiding his.
"I know it isn't, honey. It's alright. You didn't do anything wrong. Just relax, okay?"
Your eyes closed, hands petting at his head in soft affirmation as he dragged his lips along your soft skin, minding the few pale scars that decorated it. He could tell you were self-conscious about how soft you were in the middle, but he loved it, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the plushness. More than once, a simple little peek at your tummy when you were reaching up or changing had been enough to turn him on so badly he'd had to excuse himself for a bit. You'd be incredibly sexy pregnant, he often thought. Moving lower, he switched up and laid some playful bites along the inside of your right thigh, and you let out the most adorable little squeak.
However, when he let his lips ghost over your bare mound for the first time, a heavy shudder broke down your back, your other noises choking down to nothing. It took a great deal of self-control, but he managed to drag out teasing you for a bit, barely letting his breath tickle you before peeking his tongue out to take a small swipe at your folds. He deeply suspected that he wouldn't last long once he finally made it inside you, and he wanted to make sure you were completely satisfied before that happened.
Soon, the temptation to dive straight into you got to him, and he closed his lips around your puffy clit, lapping and bathing it with the tip of his tongue. You cooed at the sensation, grasping at the back of his head and grinding your hips forward. He grinned, delving deeper into your most sensitive place. Quickly, you were trying your best to fuck his face, rubbing your slit along his tongue and nose until he was forced to hold your hips down, wriggling and writhing until you were calling out his name and coating his tongue in your taste.
He was lightheaded from how much blood had rushed to his groin by the time he lifted his head from yours, giving you a second to breathe and regain your vision before pulling himself on top of you. Petting and stroking his favorite parts of you, he found himself lost in admiration for a long second, holding his gaze on your face until you finally looked back at him. There was an electricity in the air between the two of you, a magnetism drawing him in until you were close enough to share breath.
A terse little noise left your throat when the head of him first touched you, just barely laying against you, nestled in the fold where your thigh met the rest of you. Though he’d anticipated it (advancing to a “new step”, as it were, always made you a touch anxious and jumpy at contact, but John’s skin crawled at the idea that he might be doing something to you that you didn’t want), his immediate instinct was to pull away, to hold you and tell you that the pair of you didn’t have to do this, that he cared for you for reasons other than what he could take from your body, and that it would kill him if you didn't feel that. But the way you wrapped your arms around his narrow shoulders, burying that beautiful face against the weathered side of his neck as you tried to pull yourself closer, steadied him. You wanted this, and he wanted to give it to you.
He rested there for a minute or two, not moving, letting you adjust to his presence and listening to your breathing. It was shaky, and he dropped his chin to place a few kisses along the crown of your head, lingering with each. Slowly, he brought a hand to your chest and gently groped your breast, thumb circling your nipple tightly in the way he knew made you crazy, earning a couple quiet whimpers from your lips. You loosened your grip on his neck a little, relaxing back onto the bed enough to allow him to kiss you again, his mouth distracting you while his free hand slipped down to grip his erection, giving it a firm squeeze to alleviate the nearly unbearable pressure he felt as he slid it against you.
He broke away from you before he was aware what was happening, pulling his mouth back to moan as he really felt the silky wet heat of you against him for the first time. Pins and needles of pleasure bloomed up his spine and across his scalp; he was so close to what he’d been fantasizing about for almost a year, what he’d spent so many late nights and hazy jet-fueled afternoons jerking off thinking about. Again, he throbbed dangerously, threatening to blow his load before he was ready.
Forcing himself to focus, to come back into his own body a bit and retreat from the heady pleasure he was slipping into, he braced himself and slid the blunt head along your wet little seam, collecting your lubrication as he stroked over your clit, the swipe of the little metal bar making you shudder. To his surprise, while you were trembling and he could still smell fear pheromones in the air, you let out a moan, your hips shifting to work against his, rubbing yourself back against him. Seeing you growing bolder in your actions, compared to how anxious and tense you'd been before, made his heart and his cock swell simultaneously.
“Fuck, you’re so wet, baby.” he hissed, unable to keep a better handle on his filthy mouth; you responded with a sultry hum, seemingly appreciating his words but unsure how to respond. Your hips continued to cant against his, your breathing uneven, face pulled taunt in concentration. He groaned at the sight, rubbing himself against you a little faster. All the better if you came again before he slid home, he figured.
After another few minutes of continuing to stroke at your hard nub, you shuddered under him once more, moaning low and throaty as another rush of that shiny slick coated him. God, he’d been addicted to a lot of things in his life, but the best thing by far, and the only one he’d never be able to kick, was the sounds you made as you unraveled. No one else had ever heard your most intimate song, your sotto little moans and whimpers as you experienced feelings you'd been convinced you couldn’t feel before.
Pulling himself up from you just a little, his hand left his member and came up to brush your hair from your face once again, gently stroking your downy, flushed cheek as you worked to catch your breath. Never before had he wished he had a camera so badly; between your fully nude state beneath him, your kiss-bruised pout and throat, the wild crown of soft hair, and the way your deep, dark eyes beckoned to him as they slowly slid open, you were the most gorgeous sight he’d ever taken in. Cupping your face with both hands, he leaned in slowly, your eyes lingering on one another as he pulled you gently into another kiss. He wondered if you could taste yourself on his tongue.
For a few moments, he allowed the pair of you to fall back into you usual pattern of kissing; advancing, gently teasing, withdrawing before resurging once more like the sea. Slowly, his right hand pulled itself from your face, softly brushing the side of your breast and rib cage as it slipped further south. Fingers ghosting just barely over your mound, he gripped his aching cock where it hung heavy between you, giving a light squeeze around the shaft as he repositioned himself slightly, lining up. As the head of him nestled against your opening, you gave a small whimper, pulling back just enough to disconnect your mouths, lips brushing his as you spoke.
“John.”
He waited a long moment for you to say more, but you seemed unable to force whatever you wanted to say out.
“You ready?” he asked gently, voice a soft murmur against your mouth. His body was tense as he awaited your response, ready to pull back if needed, but you wordlessly cuddled up to him again and let out a deep sigh, wrapping your legs just a little tighter around his waist. Peppering your jaw and throat with small, distracting kisses, he pressed forward a bit, undulating his hips back and forth a few times until the head slipped fully inside. You tensed a bit, and he set to marking up the other side of your throat, drawing your attention and making you gasp and hum as he worked his way further inside.
When about half his length had been worked inside, he took a pause, sitting up a little higher to check on you, finding you staring shyly at him, worrying away at your lower lip. Your face morphed a bit when he gave a couple of thrusts of equal depth, and he watched you processing the new sensations, bringing his thumb to your clit again. Breathing heavily in response, you shuddered, and he let a low moan slip himself when you started to work your hips back and forth in a crude arc.
The way you were wriggling and clenching already beneath him set his hips to moving further, faster. Every muscle in his back and flanks burned with withheld strength, effort to not literally fuck you through the mattress, but eventually he'd built up to full-length strokes, using whatever bounce remained in the decrepit springs to move you easily back and forth along his length.
Taking in the bruising along the sides of your throat where he'd been kissing and sucking at your skin, John hummed approvingly, nuzzling you and taking a deep lungful of your rich scent. The lingering edge of his own smell that coated you turned him on more than he'd have thought, and he gave a much harder buck than he'd intended.
"Oh, f-" you gulped at the sudden stab before silencing yourself, the word he wanted to hear so badly teasing across his ears and sending him gnawing along your shoulder again.
"Go on, honey." he growled, his hips steadily picking up their pace, body pinning yours just a little harder. "Say it."
You didn't reply, your face as red as he'd ever seen it as his fingers moved to your abused clit again, earning a pitiful whimper as he began to rub at you again.
"Beg me to fuck you. I wanna hear you say it, baby. I need it."
"John...!" you gasped as he flicked the tip of his finger just right; however, he paused completely when you still refused to say the magic words, simply applying pressure near where you wanted it as he continued to pound away at you.
"Mmm." you whined, clenching around him over and over, those big eyes brimming with tears.
"Tell me."
"F-fuck! Fuck me, John! God!" you finally spat, everything tense and twitching and spinning as he fully let himself go, wrenching one of your legs up onto his shoulder and driving as hard into you as he felt he could let himself without splitting you in two, his fingers back at work. You squirmed under him at the almost punishing pace, fingernails digging firmly into his back; the pain made him growl again, and the sound was seemingly enough to push you over that edge, squeezing and fluttering around him fast and firm as you gasped and sputtered his name.
He was able to hold out for a few more strokes, his hips stuttering as the pins and needles creeping up his spine began to fully wash over him.
“God, baby, I love you.” he huffed breathlessly, overwhelmed and not giving you a moment to respond as his mouth crashed into yours once more. He couldn’t bring himself to feel bad or embarrassed for saying it; he did love you. He loved everything about you, and every day he loved you more and more.
Your reply, whether you'd fully heard what he’d said or not, was to throw your arms around his neck and kiss him back deeply as your bodies continued to glide across one another, yours faltering and growing limp as he crested the peak.
John had never really wanted kids before. He felt himself far too unreliable, too unlike someone anyone should look up to as a father figure. However, that didn't stop the most primal part of his brain from whispering to him how perfect it would be to knock you up, for everyone to see you full to the brim with his child and know that you were his and only his.
"Fuck, I wanna cum inside you." he growled, quickly following up with "I can't get you pregnant." when you made worried, bleary eye contact. Your responding whimper made his gut tighten, hot and sharp and so ready, but he also felt a sting of guilt behind his breast at what felt too close to a lie. Still, when you fluttered around him hard once more, it was the end, his head falling heavily into the crook of your neck, his moans filling your ear as he filled you completely, throbbing into you again and again as you clung to him.
He wasn't sure how long he laid there, almost all of his weight pressing down on you until he regained the presence of mind to hold himself up a bit. Both of you panted like you'd been fleeing for your lives, exposing your overheated skin to the cool air while still desperately holding one another. There was so much racing through his mind, thoughts and creeping worries, but his exhausted body rebelled, refusing to allow him to even sit up. You appeared similarly situated, fighting your way into a comfortable position across his chest before letting your eyes close heavily. Quickly, your breathing fell even and gentle, your hair wild as it laid across his ribs. Somehow, you still looked so innocent to him.
Quickly, he followed you into sleep, clutching you close with no shame, his mind fogged with the smell of him all over you.
-
It was the chill of the very early morning air licking at your slightly exposed back that began to rouse you several hours of deep sleep later, a shiver breaking out up and down your spine as you curled yourself up closer to the man beneath your arm, staving off having to pull away and get up for a few more minutes by sapping his ample body heat as he snored lightly, blissfully unaware. You drew in a long, deep breath, stretching your back as best as you could without moving too much as the very familiar smell of him filled your lungs; tobacco, cologne, and that slight smell all ghouls seemed to carry that was somewhat like an old book. It was a great comfort to you, and soon you felt yourself beginning to drift back off into the inky embrace of sleep.
However, just a few moments later you began to feel the nagging tickle of your full bladder beginning to protest your posture, the feeling rapidly becoming more urgent as you laid there, trying your hardest to ignore it. You huffed, cursing your incredibly regular bathroom schedule mentally. Resigning yourself to your fate, you gently rolled onto your back, giving you just enough space from your still snoring partner to slowly sit up and look around the formerly abandoned gas station.
It was early, the night still holding its grip on the room as the sunrise struggled to break its way through the windows. Grasping around, you found your Pip Boy, strapping it onto your arm quietly as you rose from the floor where the two of you had constructed your makeshift bed set, tucking the blanket around your partner’s still snoring form as you gave another shudder, casting a glance around the room again in search of your jacket. When you didn’t locate it immediately, you made your way for the door, grabbing John’s long red coat from the table near the door where he’d left it instead, wrapping it tight around your naked body as you quickly padded outside. It wasn’t worth waking John up early if you didn’t have to just to turn your flashlight on.
Winding your way around the corner of the place, eyes scanning your surroundings for any new threats, you quickly made your way to the tree line in the back yard, picking a concealed spot before bunching the coat’s tails up around your waist to squat.
You hunched there, nose and toes freezing in the crisp air, and closed your eyes, trying to hurry though your task but distracted by your brain’s undeniable urge to run though last night’s events again in your mind, to dissect each moment for meaning and for the ability to store the memory away for later.
There were so many moments you wanted to keep hold of, turning each one over carefully in your mind as you cleaned yourself up, your walk back to the Rocket much less urgent; the way he’d pressed you against the wall, the heat of his insistent kisses and gropes, the sound he’d made as he lost himself deep inside you.
The sound of his rough voice, cogent, but overwhelmed, as he’d told you he loved you.
Your pulse raced as you remembered how those words hit you, how you’d struggled to try to return them against his smothering kiss. You’d loved him for what felt like eons now, and you were indescribably excited to have broached this particular milestone, despite the mild lingering doubts that he’d only been lost in the moment when he said it. The closeness you'd been building ever since you'd been introduced had always felt so easy, so natural, and so foreign to you, that you concluded it could really only be love.
As your bare feet stepped up onto the front stoop of the place you'd begun to see as home, you could hear the familiar sound of John’s lighter striking, your pace picking up as you hurried down the short hall to see him sitting up on the dingy mattress on the floor, tossing the old gold-plated lighter a bit to the side, onto his folded pile of clothes. Gaze lifting to appraise your body lazily as his head turned to face you, freshly lit cigarette dangling loosely between his thin lips, he smirked at you as you hurried across the cold floor, coat drawn tight around you.
“Well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise.” he mused, voice thick with sleep as he took a long drag, his face briefly lit up by the red-orange glow of the burning tobacco as he slowly looked you up and down. “I can’t lie, wearing my coat’s a real hot look on you, babe. Then again, you could wear a tato sack and look just as sexy. You really don’t need to try.”
Your cheeks burned with discomfort at the positive attention you were receiving, but at the same time, you giggled and felt a warm sensation deep in your stomach, standing a little taller as you approached. Shifting down onto your knees as you saddled up beside him, you kissed him on the cheek and leaned against him, seeking warmth beneath the blanket.
“Cold this morning!” you exclaimed, chattering your teeth as you snuggled your head into his firm chest. John wasn’t a large man in terms of his general build, but the muscle tone he did have was deceptively strong due to his ghoulification. He chuckled at your dramatic show of discomfort, slinging his free arm around you to hold you close, leaning back to blow his latest drag away from you.
“Sleep good?” he asked, rough palm rubbing comfortingly up and down your back, making the lightest of scratching sounds against the old wool.
“Oh, like the dead.” you replied, eyes peeking open to look up at him. “Better than I think I ever have before. I only even woke up because I was chilly.”
“You did seem like you were out pretty good. I woke up for a few a couple hours ago to readjust a bit but I was out. Turns out having the most gorgeous woman in the Commonwealth laying naked across your chest is quite the sleep aid.”
You blushed again as he threw a wink at you, giggling as you sank down further under the cover, your head coming to rest in his lap, the bit of blanket over his groin bunching up at the back of your neck. John had always been very flirtatious with you; he was a flirtatious man by nature, sometimes using it to disarm people, but he was also honest, and you knew he wouldn’t tell you anything he didn’t mean. You could see his attraction to you, the affection he held for you in his deep, soulful eyes when he looked at you, too, and it made you feel genuinely beautiful and not just objectified for the first time you could ever remember.
John finished his cigarette above you, discarding the butt by tossing it in the little sack in the corner for trash and junk, before leaning down over you, peppering your hairline, then your forehead and cheeks, with soft kisses, his rough lips brushing you gently. Working his way slowly down your face, he paused when your mouths aligned, bringing one hand down to cup your cheek.
“Think I’ve got a joint already rolled in the right pocket of my coat. Wanna split it?” he asked, voice low and soft, just a hair above a whisper. He was so close that his lips brushed yours and his body heat soaked into your face like you were laid out in the sun.
“Sounds wonderful.” you whispered, leaning up to kiss him. His hand on your cheek slid around to the back of your head, cradling you against him as you smooched one another. In no rush to pull away, you stayed in his lap until he pulled back from you on his own before sitting back up, fishing around in the pockets of the old coat until you felt the little hand rolled cigarette, careful to not crush or bend it as you held it out to him.
“You wanna go first?” he asked, sifting through the pool of fabric beside him for his discarded lighter. “I’ll light it for you if you want.”
You thought for a moment, and then shook your head. You still weren’t confident enough smoking marijuana to not worry about looking silly. “Nah, I’m not sure I’m cool enough for the first hit yet.”
A warm, raspy chuckle met your ears in response as he placed the joint between his lips, hand cupped over his face as he attempted to light it. The slight breeze that danced across the floor kept catching the flame, bending it before snuffing it out. You drew yourself closer once more, bringing your own hands up alongside his, expanding the shield and allowing him to light it. He smirked at you as he drew in the first hit, holding it in deep as he held the smoldering joint out to you; you grasped it between your thumb and forefinger, feeling self conscious as you lifted it to your lips and inhaled a small amount. When you offered the thing back to him, he insisted you have another, so a second little puff disappeared up into the air.
“Taking awfully small hits there.” he teased as he accepted the joint back.
You blushed, looking down to the tattered blanket that covered your bodies haphazardly.
“It’s just really harsh and I don’t wanna die coughing!” you gave a little chuckle as you spoke. You toyed with a loose thread for a moment before continuing. “Do you think you could do that thing again where you, uh, pass it to me? It doesn’t make me cough nearly as much that way.”
He chuckled as he inhaled another hit, his voice strained as he held it during his reply.
“If you want me to kiss on you, babe, you can just ask. You don’t have to ask me to shotgun weed to you as an excuse.” he jested, leaning towards you, chin tilted down as he angled towards your mouth. You smiled at him as your lips met, his parting as you inhaled his exhale. This time, your lungs didn’t burn at all, but you could feel more of a head change as you pulled back, lips pursed for a long moment before exhaling the rich tasting smoke into the cool air, the tendrils dissipating lazily above your head.
Your hands slid further across the floor behind you, leaning back a little, head cocked in John’s direction, watching him as he took another hit. When he tilted his chin at you again a moment later, you accepted another kiss, another puff, your body sinking a few inches deeper into the pool of tingling warmth you were beginning to feel. Your eyes felt weighty, and your lids drifted closed for a moment in response to the general feeling of peace; when they opened again, he was raking his eyes up and down the exposed sliver of your torso and stomach that was revealed by the gaping, unbuttoned coat opening as you leaned back. Briefly, you felt the familiar urge to cover yourself, but you let it pass, trying to bask in your lover’s attention. You liked when he looked at you.
Things stayed like that between you for a while, the deep indigo of the room slowly fading into lighter hues of periwinkle as the warmth of the rising sun outside began to seep in, the world beginning its gradual awakening as the earliest birds began to sing in the distance. You shared more nips between you, the kisses after each stolen breath growing longer, deeper with each pass, tongues tasting one another languidly as you moved closer over time. The joint was growing short in John’s fingers, and you watched him evaluate it from where your head was resting on the point of his shoulder, your arms wrapped around the arm he was using to support himself.
“Probably one good hit left. Want any more?” he asked, taking a long inhale as the little roach lit up bright red.
You nodded silently, shifting up and scooting in more, hip to hip with him as your lips met once more. You kissed again, but this kiss felt different, the air electrified. Your body felt sluggish and heavy in the most pleasant way, a warm thrum building up between your thighs as you felt yourself begin to slick.
He pulled himself up, now free arm coming to wrap around your waist; you anticipated him pulling you a little closer, but instead, he used his strength to lift you with the one arm, gently swinging you into his lap and pulling a surprised little giggle from you, trailing into a slight cough as the last hit you’d shared left your lips and disappeared into the air. After a moment, you’d cleared your throat successfully and settled yourself, feeling your cheeks heat up just a little when the cleft of your ass pressed down onto his manhood through the thin blanket, finding it stiff. Your lower lip drew between your teeth as you slowly allowed your eyes to meet his, your arms winding around his neck as he smirked at you.
You exchanged a few more kisses, his hands slowly moving up your sides beneath the open coat, stroking you softly. Though his skin was rough and whorled, the radiation emanating from within producing an energy all its own, his touch was a great comfort and only made you relax further; there was no pain to be had from his hands, only pleasure, your body told you. Slackening further against his chest, you wound your palms up and down his torso, eyes following them, dipping your fingers lower and lower into the darkness under the blanket each time.
When John’s hands slowly ran back up, passing the sides of your breasts to tuck into the sleeves of the coat and sliding it ever so slightly down your shoulders, you made eye contact once more, his hands pausing as he looked at you, very clearly asking permission in the nonverbal way you’d come to develop. You hesitated for a breath before pulling your hands back, straightening your arms to allow him to tug the heavy garment the rest of the way off, laying it on the bedroll behind you as you leaned forward again, curling up against him as his arms wrapped around your bare back.
You still felt the unease, the trembling feeling in your stomach as you reclined nude in his lap, but to a much lesser degree than you ever had before, more a sensation of excited embarrassment than ashamed embarrassment, and you’d felt enough of the latter to know the difference. Leaning up just enough to look into his face, you smiled a little at him as his hands continued to stroke your back lovingly.
“How’s your ride, sunshine?” he asked after another few quiet moments passed, now stroking your sleep-mussed hair.
Grinning, you closed your eyes and leaned back the few inches you could for a moment. you felt pleasantly weighty and simultaneously floaty, swaying just a little as you hummed.
“I feel great. Good sleep and now this? I haven’t been this relaxed in quite a while.” you mused, bringing one hand up to cup his rough cheek, thumb sweeping along his thin lower lip. “Though, I don’t think last night hurt me on that front, at all. In fact, I have a theory about why I slept so well...”
Despite always feeling a certain degree of nervousness, exposure at your genuine expression of attraction, you tried hard to give the energy John gave you back to him, to reassure him that you wanted and...loved him as much as he did you. You always tried to return his flirtation in equal degrees, something you didn’t think he was quite used to. The hesitation you felt, the tension within holding you back when you wanted to love him loudly, enthusiastically, was a burden of your own and not one that you wanted to saddle him with. You knew that, as much as he may embrace and shield himself with his image as Hancock, wild, free-loving party-time mayor of Goodneighbor, in reality, John McDonough was really a very insecure man. Particularly after yesterday's events, which you were loathe to bring up directly, especially since he seemed to be in such an improved mood.
He smiled at you, wide and bright and genuine, very clear even in the still relative darkness of the room, leaning forward to kiss you again. Your legs wrapped around his hips tighter as the kiss deepened, pulling your bodies flush together as his mouth broke away from yous, trailing across your cheek, down your jaw and the column of your throat, settling in the hollow of your neck, bathing you with his tongue in that way that sent electric shocks down your spine. Combined with the tickling sensation of his heavy breath in your ear as he licked and kissed you, you quickly began squirming in his lap, flushing bright red in your hiding place against his shoulder.
The only thing that separated your bodies now was the thin fabric of the tattered blanket, and as you attempted to press yourself closer to him, you could feel him even clearer beneath you, prodding your inner thigh as you both slightly undulated against one another. To your surprise, you felt none of the typical seizing fear at the sensation, only more want; you buried your face further into his neck and let out a pitiful little whimper, hips grinding down harder.
John grunted in return, arms around you clenching just a little tighter as he throbbed noticeably against you. Your stomach tightened at this, the previously chilly room suddenly way too warm.
“John.”
His name left your lips for the umpteenth quietly, a tiny little huff of sexual frustration so quiet it barely touched your own ears, but seemed to reach his fine, as he squeezed you once more in response, holding you much firmer this time as his hips shifted beneath your own, arcing to rub himself along your increasingly sensitive seam. His lips left the spot they’d been tending to on your neck, nipping and sucking their way back up to your ear, breathless as he spoke to you in the hushed tone of a needy lover.
“Wanna go again?”
The question wasn’t just for show; no matter how insistently he was grinding himself against you, how desperately his hands may grasp you, you could say no if you wanted. No guilt tripping, no anger, no coercion. But knowing that only made you want him more, made you want to push away your option to refuse him even more insistently, even as you trembled in his lap.
Your lips found his throat, kissing at it sweetly and breathing wantonly to him, almost embarrassed by your own needy tone as you replied.
“Yes, please.”
Your body was loose and weighty as he lowered you down onto your back, the wool of his coat warm against your skin once more as he laid you down, the blanket falling away from his body and yours as you readjusted. He was kissing you again, rather chastely this time as his own warm body spread over top of yours, shielding you as he slowly kissed his way down your neck, across your chest, ghosting down across your breasts. As he moved his body further, he uncovered more and more of your own to the room, increasingly bright with the coming sunrise.
Pulling himself up onto his haunches between your feet, his hands stroked you gently as your heavy eyelids drifted shut. Rough palms brushed the sides of your breasts, cupping and groping them almost reverently, his breathing increasingly strained as his palms continued their southward exploration. You flinched a little as he brushed across the expanse of your midsection, which had grown softer during your time in Goodneighbor, but when he dropped his head to lightly kiss you there, you couldn’t help but giggle, gingerly cradling his head as he peppered your belly and hips with pecks.
Distracted by his gentle affections, you didn’t notice his other hand sliding up through the sheets before you felt him softly grab at the back of your thigh, sliding up over and across your hip as he sat up straight, leaving you pretty much entirely exposed. A little shudder ran up your spine, and you peeked at his face through barely open lids, watching him as he watched you. His left hand slid back up to knead and brush your breasts with his fingertips, swapping back and forth between the two as his right hand stroked the sensitive median between your naval and your mound. You bit back a giggle at the slight tickling sensation, instead giving a shudder as his fingers dipped lower, softly petting over the damp, dark curls that framed you.
Ever patient and ready to put in the work to prepare you, to move at your speed, he stayed that way for a while, paying thorough attention to your sensitive breasts while lightly teasing your apex, slowly re-acclimating you to his touch between your legs. As you slowly felt yourself building towards something, you relaxed, letting your thighs fall open further, and John took this as his sign to increase the boldness of his touches, sliding only the very tip of his long middle finger right down your slit. You gasped a little at the electric, but brief feeling of his rough finger pad ghosting over your swollen, sensitive bud.
Your eyes slowly slid back open, fixed on his face as he repeated these touches over and over for a few moments, his own dark gaze pinned on his hand as he stimulated you. Working to slick itself in response to his touch, your body gave a few little clenches around nothing, making you shiver as arousal wrapped around you in a ticklish gossamer curtain.
"I wanna try something." you blurted, garnering a sudden glut of confidence. John smiled at you curiously, pulling back enough to allow you some room to move.
You yanked yourself over him with far less grace than you'd have liked, but he didn't seem to notice in the slightest, his eyes glued boldly to the way your breasts bobbed and swayed with your moves. Peppering his mouth and face with kisses, you gave his chest a gentle push to urge him down fully onto his back. Your lips trailed down slowly, exploring the whorled skin of his chest, and he smirked at you, the tent he was pushing at you twitching. It was only now, this close and lingering, that you'd noticed he only had one nipple, the other simply absent along the plane of scarred muscle.
Pushing yourself further down his legs, your face came to around his navel and you pulled back to look at him, studying his reaction as you let your fingers play gently over his covered erection. A hiss flew from between his teeth, the sound vibrating just right down your spine and pushing you to grip him more firmly through the sheet, stroking back and forth slowly as you lowered yourself down onto your belly.
John was watching you incredibly close as his cock sprung into view, and it only spurred you on to run your tongue up the side of his shaft quicker, drawing a delicious shiver out of him. Your eyes locked with his as you dragged the tip up the underside, but by the time you closed your lips fully around the tip, his had screwed shut, his hands forming balled fists at his sides. Experimentally, you allowed your tongue to drag along the tip, doing small circles around it and tasting the slightly salty precum gathered there.
The piercing didn't feel as sharp against your tongue as you'd imagined it would, though it was an intriguing feeling nonetheless.
But John had other plans, it seemed, pouncing on you when you were most distracted, yanking himself free from your bewitching oral grip and pinning you down on your back once again. His hands were much faster and less gentle than the day before, eager and greedy and excitable as they groped at your breasts and tummy, slid wetly through your soaked folds. You tensed as he toyed briefly with your peak, but tensed more when he slid one, then two fingers inside you suddenly.
"Tease." he growled as he stretched you, his thumb playing harshly with your nub until you were nearly bowled over with a sudden orgasm nearly out of left field. The feeling of you tightening and gripping around his fingers must've been too much for him, as he was filling you for real before you were completely aware.
He wasn't nearly as gentle as he had been the night before, and the thrill knocked the air right out of you. The tempo of his thrusts was increasing with each passing moment, the blunt head of him beating against your tender cervix rhythmically as your body clenched and trembled around him, dancing on the edge of coming undone yet again. There was no hesitation from John as you let out a gasping shriek in response, your breathing uneven and shaky as your eyes struggled to focus. His hands gripped wherever he could reach with bruising intensity, the sharp, pinching pain of his fingertips digging into your thighs as he forced them open for him only adding to the pleasure you was feeling.
You felt his teeth ghost over your shoulder, replaced by his tongue as he seemed to grumble at himself chidingly. You let out a little whimper as you felt the sharp edge of his jaw disappear, your overstimulated brain fixating on the feeling of his teeth on your neck when he kissed you there. For a long time, you’d wondered what it would be like for him to bite you with real force. However, you couldn't ponder on the idea too long, interrupted by John's primal, almost absentminded growling.
“You know, if I were still human, I’d knock you up.” he said.
His words were low and hot in your ear as he drove himself in hard and deep once more, punctuating his statement with a growl. The words themselves frightened you, a threat to strip you of your autonomy in the name of staking a claim, the very thing that you'd given up everything to avoid. However, the fear, as well as the possessive connotation of the words, also brought forth another wave of arousal so intense that you tightened painfully around him, whimpering as he ripped you right to the edge of yet another orgasm.
He smirked at you, free hand moving to cup your sweaty cheek as he teased you with a series of half-strokes, body pushing insistently against your own; your face pressed back against him, leaning into his touch to ground you as you fluttered around him. However, that grounding touch was quickly ripped away as his grip moved to your waist, flipping you off him and onto your stomach so quickly it disoriented you, your grunts muffled into the grimy mattress.
There was a slick sound as he guided his leaking cock back to your entrance, your body tense as the head played across your slit. He bucked towards you wildly, and when he failed to properly catch, the little metal bar along the underside just barely caught against your bud in an unexpectedly delicious manner, once, twice, a sloppy third time. The sensation made you coo enthusiastically, tossing your sweaty hair and arching your back towards him like a cat at the peak of heat.
"Beg me, baby." he said, teasing across your entrance.
You felt an instant wash of heat up your spine and into your face, equal parts pure arousal and the most genuine sort of embarrassment, and the sadistic look in his own eyes didn't help. Though your brain was running on reserve power, distracted by all the amazing sensations and pulled in a hundred different directions by desire, you knew what he wanted from you, and you were just cognizant enough to squirm over it.
"Go on. Tell me what you want."
Another half-thrust, another teasing bump against your clit. You forced your ass as high in the air as it would go, your voice embarrassingly whiny and nasal when it finally broke free.
"Please, John."
He chuckled darkly at that.
"As much as I enjoy your manners, kid, I'm sorta looking for the opposite." he chuckled, letting the hand that wasn't gripping his erection play along your slit again. "Tell me."
He was teasing you as cruelly as he knew how, forcing you to feel the pressure of the leaking head just about to breech you without the satisfaction of actually following through, and that would have been enough to frustrate you into begging. However, his teasing around your clit had also grown in ferociousness, sending your hips desperately searching out his fingers, and it was more than enough to break you down.
"Please fuck me, John." you whispered.
"Sorry? Couldn't quite hear you." he smirked, and it pissed you off more than anything.
"Fuck me, John! Fuck me!" you demanded, voice slowly growing louder out of pure sexual frustration. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
The last word didn't properly land, stuttered by the way he suddenly slammed himself home again and nearly collapsed you completely, but you managed to brace yourself against the bed just as he began to rut into you with wild abandon. His heavy, warm balls slapped against your clit harshly, making you whine even sharper than before. Your own fingers fought their way between your thighs, rubbing tight and fast circles around your abused clit, and it made you quiver around him. The feeling made him growl harshly, and he actually nipped at the back of your shoulder.
"Where do you want it?" he asked.
Confused and partially distracted by your approaching orgasm, you didn't say anything at first, unsure of his meaning until he clarified a stroke or two later.
"Where do you want me to cum, baby?"
You didn't have the brain power to truly string together a sentence, but you did, shockingly, have just enough control to say exactly what he needed to hear to lose himself in you completely:
"Do it inside." you sighed, and it's all he'd needed to hear before absolutely exploding, gripping at you with bruising force and jamming his cock as deep as physically possible inside you. Like the night before, you could taste him filling you up, an electric, almost acidic tang lining the back of your throat as you felt your warm cunt overflow down your thigh.
Again, the two of you clung tightly to one another in the aftershocks, but this time felt different; there were no rivals, no threats to what you had here, only the presence of love and admiration and the pure, unadulterated desire to express those emotions physically. John pretty much immediately collapsed down beside you, his throbbing, softening cock still buried inside you as he held you flush against him, running his tongue along your sweaty, bruised throat and humming.
"Man, you smell sexy like this, all full of me." he murmured, teeth playing along your earlobe. "Y'know, Garvey's lucky his nose isn't as sensitive as mine. I'd take you out there and walk you by him a dozen times just to make a point."
"Oh, John. Don't mention it. It was so embarrassing for everybody involved. He really thought that little chin lift was going to seal the deal and I have to live with the knowledge of that for the rest of my life!" you replied, playfully clamping your thighs on his hand as your cheeks heated.
The smile he flashed you was a warm one, content and confident in a way you didn't often see from the older man. You weren't sure you'd ever known him to be this...gratified.
"I love you, sunshine."
"I love you, too, John." you smiled, settling back against his chest to resume the lazy morning you'd been sharing together before the distraction. Things were quiet again, the only real sound the breeze in the trees, shaking and dancing together joyously as they shaded your perfect hideaway.
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emblazons · 11 months ago
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"Dustin's non-conformist plot keeping him ideologically separate from his friends and Steve is something they just introduced in S4, idk why they would make him different than his OG self and then finally give him a plot related only to losing Eddie in S5" yeah...no.
Let's take a stroll through canon and talk about it.
forewarning: long / image heavy post
The lead up to Dustin hitting a "wall" about his non-conformity has worked its way into all the seasons leading up to this one in EXTREMELY clear ways, even outside of Eddie. Eddie is just the tipping point for that bent toward non-conformity traumatizing him.
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Dustin was one of the FIRST of the party to experience a desire to conform, which we saw when he got to know Steve, and then tired to emulate him using Steve's hair spray & embracing his (toxic) ideology about girls—
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—until he backed away from the "lie" of conformist confidence he was trying to project (post-rejection) & ended up encouraged by Nancy...and seeing how that upset the shallow girls even more.
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We start S3 with that "lesson learned" and immediately end up with a Dustin who calls people out on their bullshit in S3 and S4 when they were behaving like 'conformists' in regards to their romantic relationships + is true to himself in romance and his interests—
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—who then in Season 4 finds a specific kind of kinship with Eddie in particular, because he embraced the "non-conformity" in a way none of his friends had on the same level (including Mike in his own way).
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Dustin found kinship with Eddie not just because he looked up to him, but because he reflected back his own personality. They bonded over something Dustin had already learned for himself (that behaving in a way that is dishonest to your true self is not how you should go about your life) and held to it even to the point of challenging his best friends—
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—only to immediately lose him and that kinship in the most brutal way possible, when Eddie finds out about the supernatural shit that has been haunting him in secret and helps him fight it....only to then die right in front of his eyes.
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Like. Let's be so honest with ourselves. As brutal as him losing Steve (king of high school, struggling EVEN NOW because he doesn't know how to be his authentic self) would be...it would not have even a modicum of the same effect on him given his current self-perception. It would hurt, lets be clear...but it's not tied to his own sense of identity the way Eddie had become, and we even see it in how Dustin regularly calls Steve's mindset and his behaviors foolish throughout S3-S4.
The loss of Eddie ties into Dustin's sense of himself in a way that has been building up for 3/4 of the seasons we've had so far—and him being left with Eddie's last words to continue that non-conformity as the impetus for him feeling isolated from his remaining friends while being haunted by Vecna makes perfect sense narratively if you think about Dustin as a character on his own.
just...you know. Some food for thought lmao
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handsomewickerman · 1 month ago
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Some thoughts on Eddie Diaz vs. Fanon Gay Eddie
I wanna preface this by saying that i'm latino, gay, raised catholic, heard the phrase "you gotta be the man of the house" my whole life. So on paper the idea of "repressed gay Eddie Diaz" should be appealing to me, right? well not exactly and here's why:
when I started watching the show I was aware of buddie, but I never engaged with the fandom. It wasn't until Buck came out that I started interacting with it.
when you join any space online the algorithm feeds you the most popular stuff, in this case, all my 911 recommendations were buddie, at the time I saw the vision, after all I love queer rep! but after the date episode and all throughout the hiatus I realized something very quickly:
most buddies don't actually care about queer rep, they just wanted their ship to go canon.
this realization came after weeks of seeing them spew bi/homophobic rhetoric and claiming it didn't matter as long as they got buddie, some examples:
- saying they wanted Buck to play into the bisexual cheating stereotype.
- calling Tommy a groomer, creep and predator.
- being unable to fathom the idea that Tommy was just hanging out with Eddie as friends
- claiming Eddie being a pos shit to women was ok "as long as he's gay".
- the insistence that Eddie should only be read as gay (not even bi).
- the idea that Buck and Eddie should only be "gay for each other" and no one else.
(these talking points still get repeated and if anything they have gotten more hateful the more time has passed).
Buddies insisted that they could've made buddie canon every ep, but that's simply not true, even leaving the GA and network aside, if you watch the show without shipping goggles you'll realize how much work they'll need to write that arc for Eddie as well, and if you care about queer rep you would want him to have his arc too, right?
they also claimed that his religious guilt is "clearly tied to queerness" when in reality Eddie is one of the most stagnant characters in the show as his religious guilt is tied to his inability to secure a "traditional family unit" and be the "man of the house" he was told to be. He drove Shannon away (something he admitted), then lost her forever and hasn't been able to move on for 6 seasons. It all circles back to that guilt about Shannon, the expectations put on him and his feelings of failing her, his parents, his kid and himself. Could there be an space for queerness too? Sure, but that's not what the show has portrayed at all so far.
the heavy mischaracterization of Eddie, the choice to strip him away from all his flaws or excuse them, the character assassination and malicious reading of Tommy while engaging in homophobia, their inability to allow Buck to be his own character with his queerness having nothing to do with Eddie and the desire to have him play into negative stereotypes told me everything I needed to know about where these people who want to gaslight you into thinking that "gay Eddie and buddie is the only correct answer" actually stand when it comes to queer rep.
it is not inherently wrong to find relatability in Eddie as a queer person and read him as such, but it is incredibly dishonest to claim that's the only valid way to read him.
in the end, I should find Eddie more relatable as a character and truth be told? I do, but I find Ryan's desire to tell a story about men being vulnerable, emotionally open and close without having to question their sexuality or masculinity far more realistic and honest for the character and Ryan himself.
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verefex · 4 months ago
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Kraken's Cove
Short story where a stowaway meets the kraken himself, who turns out to be less scary than he initially thought.
Content warnings in the tags. Enjoy!
On a vessel cruising along the open seas, hid a stowaway. Tucked under a tarp in the dinghy that hung suspended by ropes and pulleys off the side of the traveling ship, a man rested quietly. After perusing the food, drink, and trinkets from the ship’s stores, he gathered up his haul in the small rowboat and hunkered down for the journey.
Swaying comfortably back and forth, suspended off the port side, Raphael, as the stowaway was named, was quite used to this sort of life. Sneaking his way onto sailing vessels docked at ports, he made his living by stealing. It was dishonest work, he knew that. But as he would often say, “pay your debts with the topsail”, fleeing across the wide seas was the life he was forced to choose.
Seagulls cried overhead as the ship’s wooden hull creaked and cut through the waves, lofty sails billowing in the sea breeze. The sun shined brightly in the blue sky overhead, not a storm cloud in sight over the deep, open ocean; a sailor’s dream.
That is, until a deafening impact sound is heard against the ship’s hull.
Almost immediately, the crew sprung to full alert, scrambling on the deck to man the sails and cannons. Raphael threw the tarp off of himself and held fast to the rowboat’s sides, green eyes wide under his headband and dark, wavy hair.
“That’s my cue.” He muttered as the ship’s crew prepared for attack, completely unaware of their rowboat quickly but silently being lowered into the water by the pulleys.
Raphael was no stranger to close calls and narrow escapes, it was often how he departed from his seaward journeys. From borrowing dinghies to diving into the foamy waters below and swimming to shore, he reveled in the calmness that came with the long journey. But for now, he was not about to go down with the ship.
“Kraken! It’s the kraken!” The voice of the captain bellowed from the decks. Raphael paused, holding fast to the ropes that suspended the rowboat over the disturbed waters below.
Now, it was common knowledge that sailors often told tall tales of sea monsters. Months at sea will do things to ya, was the common response, coupled with the solemn shake of the head. Ships went missing all the time, though that didn’t necessarily mean they were sunken by a leviathan.
And yet, as Raphael peeked over the side of the boat, staring deep below the waves and foam, he spied what could be described as nothing but an enormous snake.
A tentacle.
In a panic, Raphael grasped the ropes and shimmied the boat back up towards the deck, trying to get as far away from the water as possible. Though, as he approached the railing, his cover was nearly blown as a crew mate leaned over and pointed at the gargantuan form below the surface.
“Shit…” the stowaway hissed as he ducked back under the tarp just in time. His heart raced as he realized he was trapped between the deck of the ship and the watery grave just below.
The ship rocked suddenly, and the deck erupted in shouts as the monster’s tentacles surfaced, bright blue appendages thicker than a man was tall. Either side of the ship was grasped suddenly, one on each side, snaking upwards slowly.
Raphael peeked out from the tarp, unable to believe his eyes. The hull creaked and groaned under the weight of the massive tentacle that slithered along the surface, almost meticulously, like it was feeling around for something.
He was not about to stick around for this hellish leviathan to sink the ship. Such a giant creature would not be interested in a tiny rowboat, he wagered with little hope.
Two whacks from his cutlass, and the ropes were severed. Raphael held fast as the rowboat dropped off the side of the ship, plummeting to the ocean below. He landed with a painful splash that jolted his entire body, nearly stunning him for a moment.
The sounds of cannons above him startled him into scrambling along the seats and deploying the oars. He whipped the boat around and started rowing, watching as the enormous ship was dwarfed by another pair of tentacles rising out of the water below.
“Those old sea dogs were right, huh!” Raphael exclaimed as he rowed further and further away from the commotion of the fabled sea monster. As he had hoped, the leviathan busied itself with the ship, leaving him with another successful escape and quite a tale to tell once he reached shore.
However, as he rowed on, he grew quite tired of fighting the large waves with just two oars. He wasn’t sure if he had gotten anywhere by his own rowing, or if the currents and wind carried him. All he knew was the sailing ship was no longer in sight, and neither was any sign of a landmass.
With the sun still bright, the man grew weary, clad with only a black and white shirt, dark pants, and tall leather boots. He stowed the oars and covered himself with the tarp, shading his weathered skin from the sun as he sorted through his provisions.
“More than a week’s worth, so long as this thimble doesn’t sink.” Raphael said as he rationed the food and water that was already smuggled away for the ship’s journey. His only hope now was to find any sort of land or ship that would rescue him before his water depletes.
Since the act of rowing was tiresome and nearly useless against the waves, the stowaway, now captain of the dinghy, resumed the act of hunkering down under the tarp and letting the waves carry him wherever they may lead.
The rowboat drifted for hours, rocking this way and that, a tiny speck in the vast blue ocean. Thankfully the weather was calm and the temperature mild, though favorable conditions never lasted as long as you’d expect them to on the open ocean.
As the sun was nearing the horizon, painting the sky with orange and purple hues, Raphael uncovered himself and leaned back in the boat, taking small sips from his canteen and enjoying a rather unripe pear. He laughed to himself, thinking of how it’s possible that he was the only survivor from that ship, and they had no knowledge of him even being onboard.
As he finished off the core of the pear, Raphael felt an ominous rumble rattle his body. He grew tense and gripped the sides of the rowboat as he not only felt it, but heard it, somewhere deep under the waves. Something immense.
“Oh, no.” He said shakily as a cloud of bubbles erupted around the boat, a phenomenon that often occurred along with a large pod of whales preparing to surface. Raphael flung the oars out and rowed quickly away from the bubbling water, not about to let his dinghy be capsized.
The small boat did not get very far before something surfaced, not a whale or a tentacle, but a face.
A giant, human-like head surfaced before Raphael, as water poured down their dark blue-streaked skin. Bright yellow eyes peered at the castaway, set on a masculine face with long silvery-blue hair and an array of fin-like structures on either side of his head. A massive, towering head.
Raphael stared up in shock momentarily before letting out a terrified scream. First a kraken, now a giant? The odds were not in his favor today, though the oddities certainly were starting to pile up.
The giant, treading the water as he loomed over Raphael and his rowboat, tilted his head and let out a chuff, a rumbling puff of air. An enormous hand rose underneath the boat and lifted it in his palm just as wide as it was long.
The giant opened his lips and said ‘I mean you no harm’, but to Raphael’s human ears, all he heard was a deep, throaty rumble.
“Don’t eat me, don’t eat me!” Raphael merely shouted in response, huddling in his boat that was now captured by the steady hand of the giant. Enormous navy blue fingers with thick claws curved above his head, as wide as a tree.
The giant’s lips curved into a smile, yellow eyes glowing patiently. He held Raphael and his little boat in his right hand, lifted up and out of the water and closer to his enormous face.
‘I am not going to eat you.’ The giant growled. ‘It’s alright. You’re safe.’
“I-I don’t know what you’re saying… are you speaking? Can you understand me?” Raphael said from his captured boat. The man, dwarfed by the giant’s hand around him, stared quizzically at the giant’s glistening face.
‘Yes. Though you may not understand my words, I am speaking your language.’ The giant said calmly, closing his eyes as he nodded and mouthed his words in an exaggerated fashion. Raphael couldn’t help but notice the giant’s mouth was lined with sharp fangs, with a curiously buttery yellow interior.
Raphael started to feel a little more at ease in the ocean giant’s hand. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t drowned or eaten yet, but the mere premise of being held captive by the towering man was unnerving.
“It must be giant monster day. First a kraken, then you? A giant? A… god?” Raphael said as he gestured to the enormous man.
The giant, named Sithero, let out an airy laugh as he leaned back and lifted the tiny man in his hand higher above the water, giving him a better view of the leviathan’s body. The same blue tentacles that wrapped around the ship rose out of the water around Sithero’s torso, slithering about and swirling the sea.
Raphael stared down for a second, leaning over the side of the boat from within Sithero’s palm. The rest of Sithero’s body began to surface, and the giant angled his hand in a way that the human within could observe the massive length of his tail.
“...You’re the kraken? What on earth… you’re like a mermaid, a giant one… a giant mer… man? I suppose?” The human exclaimed as his eyes trailed down the length of the kraken’s body. He was covered in fine blue scales of varying shades, with his belly and chest lighter in color. From the waist down, his body became elongated, ribbed with hard scutes. He was so large, in fact, that Raphael wondered if he could see the end of his tail at all.
‘I’m Sithero. What are you called?’ The kraken rumbled as he raised his other hand and pointed a clawed finger at the human in his palm.
“What, what’s that about? Me?” Raphael said shakily as the very large kraken pointed and rumbled something at him.
Sithero smiled calmly and pointed at himself. ‘Sithero.’ He growled, emphasizing each syllable before pointing to Raphael again.
“Sss… Slith. Slither. Sith?” The human said, twirling his hands around as he sounded out the guttural growls.
‘Sith… air… oh.’ The kraken hissed.
“Sithero…” Raphael said, and the giant nodded in approval.
“Okay, we’re getting somewhere. Oh, I’m Raphael.” The human said, feeling more comfortable as their strange conversation went on. “Gotta say, I did not expect to be talking to the kraken that, um, attacked our ship.” He said, avoiding to the fact that he was a stowaway, not that Sithero would really care.
‘The ship is fine. I was just saying hello.’ Sithero growled a deep laugh as he waved his other hand in a greeting motion.
“Hello?” Raphael said quietly, waving back. Sithero smiled and chuckled at his new tiny friend.
‘Where are you headed?’ Sithero asked, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing to the vast ocean.
“Uh, I got here by ship. Now I don’t quite know where I am, or frankly, what’s going to happen to me.” Raphael sighed, stretching his arms backwards.
‘I know a place. You can rest there, it’s getting too dark for humans.’ The kraken rumbled and nodded gently, bringing his other hand up and cupping Raphael and his boat.
“I don’t suppose you have it in you to carry me somewhere?” Raphael asked hopefully at the enormous creature, seeing a glimpse of his own reflection in his eerie yellow irises.
‘Yes. But you mustn’t panic.’ Sithero rumbled as he opened his mouth slightly and rubbed his bright-colored tongue along the edges of his teeth.
Raphael winced, leaning away from the giant’s mouth that was quite close now.
“Woah. Hey. We’re on a first-name basis now, you can’t eat me.” He said, clutching the sides of the rowboat.
‘That’s not my intention. Truthfully, you will drown unless I do this… so relax.’ Sithero growled as he angled his head backwards and pinched the boat between his fingers, gently tilting it towards his open mouth.
Raphael, upon seeing the enormous yellow mouth below him, immediately began to panic and flail wildly in the boat that was slowly tipping. “HEY! Stop, stop!!” He shouted, eyes wide at the sight of the kraken’s fanged jaws.
‘If you don’t stop flailing, I might actually bite you.’ The giant growled and tilted the boat upside-down above his open mouth.
Raphael, as nimble as he was, managed to wedge himself under the rowboat’s seats before it was completely tipped over. He wrapped his arms around the boards with just his legs dangling, whimpering as his provisions fell down onto the sea monster’s tongue.
“Cripes…” The man groaned as he gripped onto the board like his life depended on it.
Sithero blinked, expression blank as he closed his mouth, tasting the tiny crates and flasks that fell onto his tongue. He eyed Raphael one last time before gently tipping the boat back upright.
‘Alright. Plan B.’ He rumbled before angling the boat bow-first towards his mouth.
“Don’t… don’t you dare.” Raphael blurted as he righted himself in the bottom of the boat before being plunged into the kraken’s mouth.
The man screamed as the entire rowboat was taken in, sides banging against the monster’s teeth that encircled the cavernous jaws.
Sithero calmly wedged the boat inside, using the tip of his finger to push the stern just past his incisors, which closed together. Raphael was completely sealed inside, along with all of his belongings.
The air inside the giant’s mouth was humid, smelling of seawater. Raphael hunkered down in his little wooden boat, eyes wide as he took in the situation. Though the kraken’s mouth was shut tight, the interior of his mouth glowed a faint, soft yellow. It was quite beautiful, Raphael found himself thinking, as the ridges of Sithero’s palate above him were dotted with bioluminescent photophores.
“Quit messin’ with me… are you gonna eat me or not?” Raphael shouted from within the giant’s mouth, gripping onto the boat as if it was about to rock back towards Sithero’s gullet.
Instead, he was rocked forwards as the kraken dove under the waves. The leviathan took his little friend along, safely sealed in the air pocket in his mouth. His enormous body arched past the waves as the end of his tail raised above the water, then was gone.
Sithero kept Raphael in his jaws for the ride, traveling swift and deep. Though his movements were heavy, he leveled his head carefully to make the trip as comfortable as possible for the human. Deep rumbles of reassurance echoed in his spacious mouth, where Raphael sat hunkered down on top of the giant’s tongue.
Time went on, and Raphael started to relax as best as he could in the humid mouth of the kraken. He hadn’t been swallowed, and instead remained on Sithero’s tongue as the giant carried him into the depths.
“I suppose… this is necessary. I doubt I can hold my breath as long as you.” Raphael said as he laid back in the boat, staring up at Sithero’s upper palate.
Sithero, after a short while, came to an enormous submerged cave. His long body just barely fit through the entrance as he slipped inside, using his limbs to push along the rocky sides to propel his huge body swiftly, until emerging into a large chamber.
The kraken huffed as water dripped from his hair, dispelling droplets from his nostrils as his head and shoulders surfaced from the seawater onto a smooth stone surface in an air-filled cave. He leveled his head and opened his jaws, allowing Raphael to finally breathe in fresh air after being trapped inside.
“Ah, freedom!” The stowaway exclaimed as he stumbled along the boat, looking out from the giant’s teeth encircling him and his vessel.
Sithero rumbled in amusement as he pinched the end of the small boat between his thumb and forefinger and slid it and Raphael out of his mouth. He carefully placed it on the floor of the cave and yawned, stretching his arms and back as he arched his head back.
Raphael, still adjusting to the dim light of the cave, fumbled about in his boat, rocking the frame a few times to determine the stability of the surface. He was painfully aware of the fact that he was surrounded by damp rock, the sheer mass of the kraken’s body as it towered above him in the darkness.
Tentatively, the man swung his leg over the the side of the boat and planted it on the surface. He stood on both legs, glancing around slowly.
“So uh, where did you bring me? Y’know I’m not terribly fond of spelunking…” Raphael said as he stared up at the huge, glimmering figure above him.
Sithero’s eyes and photophores that dotted along his body glowed in the low light. The giant hummed as he reached out into the darkness, rummaging through piles of debris. He picked out a lantern delicately between his claws, handing it to Raphael, who took it into his hands.
“Ah, you’ve got a hoard of some sorts?” The man said as the lantern lit up to his surprise, illuminating the immediate area. His eyes widened as he was greeted with scattered remains of ships, masts as tall as trees with the sails still attached. They were carefully placed against the wall of the cave, each one laid out in all its splendor.
The man’s knees began to buckle at the sheer sight of so many shipwrecks, displayed like trophies in the kraken’s lair. Accompanying the masts were the ship’s figureheads, the intricate carvings of ladies and dragons and other mythical beasts that adorned the bow of sailing ships.
“So… I can only imagine how these all got here.” Raphael said rather quietly as he swung the lantern around, only to be greeted by the enormous face of Sithero, who was peering at the man curiously.
“Geeze, you’re huge.” The man whispered as he held the lantern up to the giant’s face, who was smiling softly.
‘I collect them, that’s all. Better here than rotting in the water.’ Sithero rumbled as he reached out and picked up a mermaid figurehead, gazing at it fondly.
“They are quite pretty… I bet there are some famous ships that wrecked here. You know the navy would kill to get their hands on these, right?” Raphael uttered as he set the lantern in his rowboat and rummaged through his damp provisions.
‘They’d kill me regardless. That’s why I disarm cannons and harpoons when I visit sailing ships.’ Sithero uttered as he flicked a detached cannon along the surface of the cave with his fingers.
“Ah, I can’t imagine those would do much damage to something as big as you.” The man said as he heard the heavy clang of iron.
Sithero laughed, a deep rumble that shook Raphael’s bones. ‘I don’t underestimate humans! You little things can pack a punch.’ He growled as he leaned in close to the wary man, who stiffened up. The kraken’s breath tousled his brown hair, which was slicked back with a green and white bandana.
“… You’re so big, though. I mean, look. Your tooth is bigger than my head!” Raphael said as he pointed at Sithero’s lips, where a canine poked out.
Sithero curled his lip up to reveal the full length of his canine, which shone brilliantly in the lantern’s light. ‘This is true. I could bite you in two with one snap.’ The kraken growled as he clicked his teeth together, which sent a shiver up Raphael’s spine as he glimpsed those white teeth flashing in his vision.
“You don’t… plan to eat me after all this, do you?” Raphael uttered, feeling absolutely minuscule in his little wooden boat underneath the giant’s gaze.
‘That depends, do you consider the ride in my mouth as being eaten? It’s the only way you’ll be able to exit this cave.’ The kraken grinned as he licked his lips with his yellow tongue.
“Hey, I really don’t want to go back in there. I know it’s what kept me from drowning, but…” Raphael sighed, glancing at his provisions soaked with the kraken’s saliva.
‘Feel free to try another way out.’ Sithero growled as he looked down at the man’s supplies. Curiously, the giant picked up Raphael in his boat and lifted it up to his eye.
“Hey, easy!” The man yelled as he was rocked by the momentum of being lifted.
‘Is your stuff ruined?’ Sithero asked, eyeing the cloth sacks on the bottom of the boat.
“That’s just my food… well, what’s left of it. The bread is probably all soggy, but as long as the rum is there… aha!” Raphael exclaimed as he produced a green glass bottle filled with spirits. The man popped the cork and took a swig straight from the bottle, sighing happily once he removed the glass from his lips.
‘Humans are always drinking that.’ Sithero chuckled, holding Raphael in his wooden boat.
“I suppose they don’t make bottles in your size. Good thing, too, cause I’d be swimmin’ in it.” Raphael laughed as he kicked back in the boat and continued drinking.
Sithero couldn’t help but smile as he cupped the boat in his palm, eyeing the human inside of it. The giant tilted his head, observing the interior of the rowboat, suddenly getting an idea.
‘Come here.’ He growled, using his other hand to pinch Raphael’s upper body between his thumb and forefinger. The man exclaimed as he was lifted out of the boat and placed directly onto Sithero’s palm, holding tight to his rum bottle.
The kraken placed the empty boat on the cave floor and turned his gaze to the human in his hands, suddenly feeling very warm at how small and delicate he looked, laid out on his palm, barely half the length of his finger.
Raphael sneered up at the giant, briefly attempting to stand up before flailing and falling backwards, spilling a little rum on himself.
“Gah… you big beast... I didn’t ask to be in yer hands!” Raphael blurted as he wiped the rum off his shirt, glancing up at the giant’s piercing gaze.
Sithero merely chuckled, rumbling deep in the back of his throat as his soft gaze took in the man’s form.
“Ah, to hell with it. You’re pretty nice, for a sea monster. Besides, if I’m gonna be eaten, I wanna be drunk.” The man grunted as he sipped his rum.
‘You look very relaxed.’ Sithero uttered as he held his hands steady, with one cupped under the other. The giant was mostly submerged, with just his upper body resting on the rocky cave floor, propped up by his elbows.
‘I’ve never held a human like this. It’s… nice.’ He rumbled, awed by the sight of Raphael leaning against the base of his fingers.
“Ya keep looking at me like I’m… a doll or somethin’. S’weird.” Raphael hiccuped from his lack of inhibition.
‘Don’t tell me you have a problem with the way I interact with tiny things such as yourself.’ Sithero laughed. ‘I’m aware that humans consider me to be frightening and dangerous, while I personally consider humans to be delightful. I think you should be grateful that I’m holding you this way instead of drowning you a thousand feet under the sea.’
Raphael blinked, staring blankly up at the rumbling giant. By now, he was able to understand the enormous kraken’s growling manner of speech. However, the alcohol was slowing his cognitive thinking more and more each passing minute, leading him to respond with a simple “Fair enough.”
Sithero smiled, regardless, and cupped his hand loosely around the human as he pulled his hefty body further onto the cave floor. Raphael grumbled as he was closed in by enormous fingers while the giant made himself more comfortable, turning onto his back and propping his body up against the cave walls.
The kraken sighed as he leaned back, leaving his long tail submerged in the dark ocean water while his upper body relaxed and cupped Raphael in his hand, which rested comfortably on top of his stomach.
Raphael, in drunken bliss, hummed as he was held by the giant. He laid back in Sithero’s hands, his head nestled neatly between the cracks of his fingers. The man sighed, feeling the warmth of skin underneath him, the rush of the giant’s breaths and gurgling insides.
“Hey, I forgot yer name. Sithy.” Raphael muttered through flushed cheeks, his rum nearly gone. “You’re pretty swell. I ain’t got a home or family or whatnot, so this is a nice treat… s’like I’m in a fancy rich bed. Heh heh.”
‘Sithy, huh. I kinda like that.’ The kraken chuckled. He then leaned forward and carefully plucked the nearly empty rum bottle from Raphael’s hands with the tips of his claws. ‘And, that’s enough for you.’
“Gimme that…” Raphael groaned as he reached for the bottle, which promptly disappeared in the giant’s mouth.
‘Hmm.’ Sithero rumbled as he rolled the open bottle on his tongue, spilling the contents out and onto his taste buds. ‘You made it seem so much tastier than this.’
“It IS tasty. Don’t guzzle my rum!” Raphael grumbled as he wobbled onto his legs and attempted to scale Sithero’s torso.
‘Careful.’ The giant growled as the drunken man ignored him, stumbling his way up the firm musculature of his abdomen. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
“Gimme my bottle back…” Raphael slurred, clinging to the giant’s pectoral. The slope of the monstrous man’s chest proved difficult for the small, drunk human to navigate over.
Amused, Sithero leaned back all the way, laying flat on his back to allow Raphael to stumble along his body. With the bottle still in his mouth, Sithero tilted his head up and opened up slightly, allowing the determined man to see the prize within reach.
“Ya don’t take a man’s rum, Sithy…” Raphael grunted as he stumbled against the giant’s lips, feebly reaching into the open mouth with the bottle resting in the middle of Sithero’s tongue. With a gentle tilt, Sithero scooped Raphael inside his mouth with the end of his yellow tongue, rolling him onto the center.
Once Raphael got a hold of the empty bottle, he groaned, hugging it to his chest and rolling over inside Sithero’s mouth, curling up where he laid and promptly passing out.
Sithero, with his mouth slightly open, breathed evenly. His tongue quivered as Raphael’s small body curled up on top, unbothered by the saliva. He slowly shut his mouth, cupping his tongue to give the human space inside. He was so much smaller without his boat, something Sithero was painfully aware of. How easy it would be to swallow him whole, he thought.
‘Raphael.’ Sithero rumbled, his tongue shifting as he spoke, which stirred the inebriated man. Raphael responded with grumpy grumbles, no longer coherent or aware of his surroundings.
Sithero sighed, deciding that it was inevitable, now. After all, Raphael climbed right into his jaws.
With a tilt of his tongue, Raphael was slid down the center, his unconscious body passing the giant’s tonsils, entering his esophagus.
A gentle gulp, and Sithero tilted his head back and squeezed Raphael down his throat. The man groaned as he was swallowed, his body engulfed by wet flesh that slid him easily down the giant’s gullet, though not much could be done to slow his descent.
Sithero sighed warmly, placing the tips of his fingers against his neck as Raphael went down, forming a solid bulge underneath. The kraken growled, humming softly as the warm little human was taken into his innards.
After a little while, Raphael had been squeezed down the entire length of Sithero’s esophagus, where he was slid into a warm, wet chamber within the giant’s ribcage. The man gasped a little and moaned as he suddenly felt sick to his stomach after being tipped upside-down.
He had been swallowed, yet Sithero knew he was safe. The kraken’s stomach was multi-chambered to fill his enormous body cavity, with only the lower portion unsafe for passengers. Satisfied with the feeling of a warm, living body squirming in his belly, the giant set his head back on the ground and stroked his stomach fondly.
‘Nothing for you to stumble on and get hurt in there.’ Sithero uttered as he traced his finger along his abdomen. ‘Just don’t be mad at me when you wake up.’
Raphael passed out not long after, blissfully unaware of his surroundings, sleeping rather soundly and comfortably surrounded by soft flesh.
The night went on, though the two were far from the stars. Under the waves and buried under earth and rock, the underwater cave was a safe haven devoid of sunlight. Only bioluminescent plankton, algae, and jellyfish provided any form of light.
Sithero was first to awaken, his massive form turned onto his front as he arched his back in a stretch. The giant rumbled softly as he placed a hand on his stomach, feeling the tiny presence of Raphael inside, still fast asleep.
The kraken took the opportunity to gather the rest of Raphael’s belongings, placing them carefully into the wooden boat, along with some trinkets and treasures from the shipwrecks. He then picked up the boat and placed it inside his mouth, taking care not to swallow any of the tiny human objects.
Sithero slid his huge body into the pool of the cave, sinking below the surface and back into the tunnel towards the cave entrance. His yellow eyes adjusted to the light that illuminated at the end of the cave, indicating that morning had come.
Still holding the rowboat in his mouth, the giant emerged from the cave and swam upwards, surfacing along the rocky cliffs of the landmass above the submerged cave that he called his home. Gulls cried as the kraken’s enormous head scanned the coastline before heading towards a sandy beach.
Sithero huffed as he heaved his monstrous body onto the sand, removing the boat from his mouth and placing it gingerly on the shore. He blinked calmly, placing a hand on his stomach again, determining the best time to let Raphael out.
‘Are you awake?’ Sithero growled, patting his stomach. A soft squirming inside of him told him that the man was at least stirring, no doubt hungover.
“Ughh…” Raphael groaned, rolling in the glowing interior of the giant. He opened his eyes briefly, shutting them quickly when he was met with nothing but soft yellow hues.
‘As much as I don’t mind this, I think you need fresh air.’ Sithero sighed as he straightened his back and flexed his stomach, the soft folds compressing around Raphael as it pushed him upwards and into the giant’s esophagus. Not long after, Sithero leaned forward and allowed the human to slide into his mouth, completely soaked in saliva.
The giant held his mouth open, allowing the cooler air to fill the inside, chilling Raphael awake. The man woke with a jolt, eyes wide and dizzy as he took in the frightening view of enormous, sharp teeth encircling him.
“Oh, god.” He uttered, covering his eyes with his hands, incidentally bumping the empty rum bottle against his skull.
Sithero calmly tilted his head down and slid the human onto his palm, who was still clinging to the bottle. ‘Hmm, you got your rum back after all.’ The kraken chuckled.
“How… much did I drink…” Raphael groaned, tilting the bottle upside-down and dropping it in defeat. He wiped his forehead and neck, wincing at the gooey saliva coating him.
‘Nearly all of it. How do you feel?’ The kraken growled as he peered at the soggy man in his palm, expression softening at how disheveled he looked.
“I… I’m fine.” Raphael groaned as he rolled over in the giant’s palm, averting his gaze from the morning sunlight. “How long was I… in your mouth?”
Sithero blinked, unsure of how much Raphael remembered from last night. Did he have no recollection of climbing directly into his jaws and promptly going down his throat?
‘Ah, a good while. You should wash off.’ Sithero uttered as he turned and placed Raphael on the sand beside the water, who stumbled directly into the surf, submerging his entire body as he fell face-first.
Sithero watched the man slump into the ocean, jolting as he reached for him and promptly plucked his limp body out of the waves.
‘That’s one way to get clean, I suppose…’ The giant grumbled as he held Raphael between his thumb and forefinger, letting him drip onto the sand below.
“I’m awake, I’m awake…” Raphael groaned as he squirmed in the giant’s fingers. “You… ugh, you ate me, didn’t you?” He uttered as he pointed a finger at Sithero’s enormous striped face.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Sithero chuckled deeply as a tiny finger wagged at him.
“You swallowed me!” Raphael blurted.
‘Ah, that I did. Big difference.’ The kraken replied.
“What d’ya mean? I was in your stomach, you tellin’ me that’s not eatin’ me?” Raphael retorted, wriggling defiantly, though weakly.
‘You weren’t digested. Silly thing.’ Sithero rumbled as he set Raphael on the seat of his rowboat. ‘I intend to keep you safe, and that is what I did. Now settle down, drink some water.’
“What water? All I got to my name is…” Raphael trailed off as he looked down at the floor of the boat and saw that it was filled with a generous pile of assorted treasures, from necklaces and coins to daggers and swords. His green eyes glittered with delight.
“Is this all for me?” Raphael asked up at the giant, his tone vastly sweeter than before.
‘Yes, don’t go spending it all in one place.’ Sithero rumbled as he stretched up and glanced around, scanning the horizon for ships.
“I dunno what to say… this is all so… it’s enough to get me some land and my own ship!” Raphael exclaimed as he pored over the treasures. “How could I ever repay you?”
Sithero shrugged as he returned his gaze to the gleeful human. ‘No need, I enjoyed our time together, after all. I only ask that you visit me, should you find yourself in this area again.’
“That’s more than fair… are you leaving, then?” Raphael asked up at the giant, who leaned close to him and smiled.
‘Does Raphael want me to stay?’ The giant chuckled, more so when Raphael’s face flushed pink.
“I-I don’t wanna keep you… I also enjoyed our time together, though perhaps the rum is to blame for part of that…” Raphael said as he stared at the giant’s enormous lips.
‘Don’t worry, I know just what to do with a drunken sailor.’ Sithero winked, and Raphael’s heart sank into his chest.
“… Any chance you got rum on you?” He said shyly, rubbing his hands together in his lap as he looked up at the giant.
‘Sadly, no. Make sure you bring enough for me next time, though.’ Sithero said toothily as he tapped his enormous finger on the end of Raphael’s boat.
“So, tonight?” The man said, holding his breath in his chest.
‘Tonight.’
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