#no song rising spoilers please | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hiraeth-sonder · 7 months ago

Text

Kept Dove - Purgatorio

Yan!Sunday x Reader

Even if a bird with clipped wings can only fly so far, it is a freedom nonetheless

TW: pseudo-incest, suicidal behaviour, stalking, general manipulative and toxic behaviour

//Characters may be OOC, please go easy on my glass heart. Spoilers for the 2.0 story quest but also I may not remember things correctly so- Not at all accurate to future patches/lore. Excerpts from the Song of Songs.

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

Through veiled curtains and under warm lights, you tug your socks up with a careful hand, your eyes tracking the movement through the large mirror across you. The soft sheer fabric ascends your leg, trailing up and up until it reaches exactly above your knee. Just the slightest askew, you check once more, turning your leg and watching how the edge on your inner leg dips down, sneaking your finger under the garter to readjust its height. When deemed satisfactory, you reach for your sock garters, clipping the metal fasteners onto the ends as the upper ends hang limply by the side of your leg. You do the same meticulous routine for your right leg, putting your legs together to ensure that they are perfectly even.

Hung on a hanger was a blouse, with no evidence of wrinkles or lint. Gingerly, you slip it off and let the cool fabric caress your bare skin, once again peering into the mirror to straighten the ends only to carefully push every little fabric-covered button through equally miniscule openings. It hugs your form perfectly when finished, tailor made to adhere to your body like a second skin, with bishop sleeves to be held together with custom cufflinks. You do so, deft fingers piercing the fabric with the golden optics before clipping the ends of the shirt with the once hanging garters.

Your skirt comes next, prudent and pure. You step into it and bend ever so slightly, bringing it up to your waist to fasten the button that would keep it closed. It is only now that you pad across soft carpet towards your lineup of shoes, from sensible flats to respectable high heels, of shined leather to patent, fit for any occasion. You hook the backs of a pair of heels with your fingers, making your way back to your vanity to slip them on. It is now that you turn your attention to the perfumes decorating the front of the gilded mirror, each of them gifts handpicked by your siblings, bottles easily distinguished by your sister’s fondness for winsome designs and your brother’s partiality for elegance. You uncap a lacquered white glass bottle, the airy and floral aroma that comes from the nozzle is one of their favourites.

There is a light knock at your door, a gentle rap of knuckles against hardwood. It is merely a courtesy, he has no real need to announce his presence when you have long known he would come. Your eyes do not even have to glance at the ticking clock, the knowledge of the minute hand’s exact position of twenty minutes to eight a matter you have grown familiar with over the years.

“Come in.”

Familiar, practised steps barely sound through your room, a few strides until a silhouette appears behind you. Letting out a soft breath, your eyelids flutter close as you turn your head away from the mirror. “I’m afraid you have little to help with today.”

“I merely wanted to check on you,” Your brother’s voice is delicate, even in your mind there is a kindness to his lilting rise.

A sigh escapes your lips. ‘Check on you’ can mean all matters of things, whether it truly does entail merely checking on you is a test only known to him. Your eyes open upon the slightest hint of movement, watching through the mirror as gloved hands pull your hair back, reaching for a tie to bundle it up into a half-bun. The action in itself is practised and skilled, moreso a reminder of how many times he has performed such on the women of his life, it sends an inexplicable grief aching in your heart.

He lowers himself to your level, and as the warm lights cast an intimate gleam upon his features, you get the day’s first look of your brother. Golden eyes softened in gentle fondness, or perhaps some amalgamation of it, cool steel locks lay in perfect formation as his soft wings unfurl to reveal his stately countenance. There is a soft smile pulled across his lips, yet for some reason you must wonder why that tightness in your chest exists so.

“Happy?” You manage to croak out, still fraught with his full attention on you.

Sunday tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, clearly admiring his work as he hums, “Very much so, you look quite comely like this.”

You glance at yourself in the very mirror that has aided your preparation, the small wings at the back of your ears hang downward in some odd shame, the sharp tips of your halo glinting with a keen shine. The dark wings flutter lightly, and that recurring shame seems to bubble back to the top of your mind everytime you are reminded of their existence. A corvid among songbird and dove, a stain in their otherwise blemishless perfection. A pathetic excuse for a halovian, you had little sway, little influence, little image. Your very existence was a means to uphold their depiction.

You were just the child taken pity upon, the mutt picked up from the side of the road to house and feed. Thus, you are an extension of them, whatever you do, however you look, it all went back to them. You sometimes wonder whether they know how much you pale in comparison to their light.

All too quick to shove such a treacherous thought to the back of your head, it would be a cold day in hell before someone pries that thought from your brain. He casts you an inquisitive gaze, one you wave off with your ascent from the chair. Your steps, three steps slower, accompany his longer strides, padding out from soft carpet to thudding wood.

Leaving the mansion is always some arduous task, and you suppose that there is no one to blame but your brother for all the fuss that needs to be sorted out. Twisting hallways, confounding rooms, even the little sandpit of the Golden Hour, it made it so that leaving required his notice, lest you end up arbitrarily lost. Of course, this also meant that you were severely limited in the times you got to leave the mansion, since he always had so much to attend to in the day. And it is not like you refuse to learn, but rather that you cannot learn its ways that you remain unaware. Furthermore, it is exactly because that he does so much that you find it hard to even bring up your grievances about such a matter, how could you? So even if you yearn to see the world far beyond what he has allowed you to see, you very often keep your mouth shut and play at content.

As you emerge from those familiar depths, a wing raises itself to shield your eyes from the sudden influx of bright lights. Penacony, the city of dreams they call it, but to you, it has been nothing more than an incandescent lie. Why else would your sister leave?

It is then you see her, with her flowing light blue hair and her familiar visage. Her attire remains the same as all the advertisements you see with her face plastered on them, her halo tilted to the right and the gems under her left eye in flawless position. Yet, in your heart, your most sincerest of affections borne from years of companionship, you know that it is not her. There is nothing that would infer this thought, the locum in front of you a perfect copy in all matters, but you cannot help but deny the image in front of you.

Turning to Sunday, a slip of your true thoughts revealed through the furrow of your brow, “Who is this?”

“A fool, nothing more,” He spares you a glance, but says nothing else.

“Will she listen?”

It is only then you manage to meet his gaze, not a second more and not a second less, his voice is placid, revealing nothing even now, “You trust me, no?”

“Of course, but I just worry…” Your plea seems to go unheard, and you wonder whether you were even meant to come along if it meant you would only receive this kind of treatment.

“Shall we depart?” He offers to the ‘Robin’ in front of you, dignified courtesy and trained care. You remain behind, watching on. His voice rings in your head, the only part of him you get, “Fret not, dear sister, all will be well.”

In your heart, something twinges with an acrid twist. Though this ‘Robin’ is clearly some cheat, he still treats her the same, still has that leak of affection. You have always known that he never took to you the same way she did, he could try to play at siblingly affection, could try to interact with you the same way he did her, but you knew that he never meant it. The daily check-ups, the gifts, the occasional contact, it all means nothing to him, and in the end, is that not what he does best? Lying with a sweet smile on his face, tempting you with a delusion all the while he wishes for nothing but your descent. The only one he could never perform such deeds to was his own sister.

Yet even in front of a fool, with the face of your sister, you could feel no hatred towards her. Because she has never done anything to warrant such, not when this dream of theirs is one you have done everything to uphold, not when she might have been the only light in your life. So even if what stands before you is a fake, even if you do not know what your brother has planned, you will keep your mouth and play at content.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

In the end, he had never even told you where the day’s itinerary would take you, so when you had found yourself in reality’s Reverie Hotel and met with an interesting situation, you had much to restrain from expressing. A group of four people you have never truly seen before and a man from the IPC, seemingly engaged in a difficult matter. They do not seem to notice your approaching footfalls, neither does Alley.

“Alley, just a moment,” Sunday speaks up, gentle yet assertive

“The Family cannot allow guests to enter a dream while bearing burdens.”

The crowd, now aware of your presence, shifts their attention. The grey-haired youth catches your attention, so clearly out of place yet seemingly intertwined, you can only ponder why. Still, it is not as if their gazes remain on you, rather it would be more accurate to say that they were never on you in the first place, positively enraptured by the natural radiance

“Speak of the devil, look who's here! It's Sunday, the most handsome man in Penacony! Along with the singer renowned across the universe: Robin!” The blond, who you vaguely recognise as hailing from the IPC introduces the two of them with a flair, clearly playing up the flattery.

‘Robin’ turns to face him, an amused smile playing at her lips as her eyes crinkle in mirth, “He said you were the most dashing person in Penacony, how interesting.”

An older man and a red-haired woman stand before you, their expressions shifting to alert, yet they are paid no mind.

“I’ve kept you waiting, Mr. Aventurine. This way please, let us speak in private,” Your brother offers, a request that is taken with a courteous quirk of the blond’s lips.

Your ‘sister’ instead takes charge of caring for the rest of the guests, “Astral Express guests, please come this way and rest your feet.”

It is by now that you have completely mentally checked out of the situation, your presence clearly not noticed nor ignored. Though you yearned to return and perhaps sleep the rest of the day away, your feet automatically flanked the guests of the Astral Express so as to guide them, your eyes following after the grey-haired youth who seemed to yearn to run after Aventurine. Oddly, they do not do so, obediently following after the pink-haired woman.

You keep your posture perfect and your expression pleasant, not quite hearing but watching, eyes tracking lips so as to turn your perceived attention to whomever was speaking at present. Your ‘sister’ still enraptures, no matter the truth of her nature. Your ears pick up the vague mention of an apology, her hand held to her chest in polite regret. It is only when the redhead’s lips, a woman you believe is called Himeko, move in a manner that seems to be directed to you that you tune back in, a pleasant smile still painted as you meet her gaze.

“And who’s this? I don’t suppose we’ve met before, have we? Ms..?” She offers, playing at cordiality though it is clear she may be a little on guard.

Your lips move to answer far faster than your mind, practically instinctual. The response you get is kindly, one you are not sure is genuine but it makes your head rush.

The older man, Welt, calls your name, a sound that feels like it should belong on his tongue. There is a familiarity to it, the kind you would hear from an older relative. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

The rest of them start with their pleasantries, and for some odd reason, your chest tightens with a yearning. You had watched them band together earlier, seen the way they interacted with one another and even through your haze, could all but feel the amity between them. These were people who were bound together by chance, people who have simply decided to become this family and not only played the roles, but might as well be actual family.

“Thank you, it's a pleasure to meet all of you as well.”

‘Robin’ seems to fade into the background, a sight you are not used to, but this fool’s interest in you is not a matter you are too worried about. Rather, the new-found attention you found yourself under was now almost overwhelming, too much yet not entirely unwelcome.

“If we’re not overstepping, may I ask how you’re affiliated with Mr. Sunday and Ms. Robin?” Himeko’s voice is sweet in your ears, a soothing sound.

“They’re my siblings, my older brother and younger sister to be exact.”

The pink-haired youth you believe is called March 13th, is almost all too excited at that answer, yet it dies to wonder, “That’s cool! But why haven’t we heard about you before?”

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m merely not as noteworthy as them….” Your play at humility is almost entirely accepted, a notion you are at least glad for. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice your brother’s approach, a signal to return back into the background. With a hand to your chest, you bid your exit, “If you’ll excuse me.”

It is another haze that clouds over you when your brother arrives to slot himself into the conversation, one that once again seems to block out the words spoken.

“I apologise for taking up everyone's precious time, and we shan't keep you any longer. If you need anything else while in Penacony, The Family stands ready to serve,” He hums, genteel and ever flawless.

‘Robin’ follows suit, her hand to her chest as she continues the courtesy, “May your dreams be beautiful and pleasant.”

Your eyes fall upon the Astral Express, and though your heart knows what can only be imagined can never be brought to reality, you could not help but wish that you had never been brought in to your siblings. Perhaps in another life, perhaps in a dream far more beautiful and pleasant than this one.

“May your dreams be beautiful and pleasant.”

You were tired, so very tired. If Penacony truly was the world of dreams, yours must be some sick joke for your life to turn out this way. Given this glimpse of what could have been, how could you even bear to keep living in this illusion?

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The marble railing is cold against your bare feet, one wrong step and you’ll be sent careening off the side of the building, falling into a never-ending abyss. In the distance, playing on the record player, was the vague lilt of your sister’s voice. You could barely hear it through the wind, yet the very fact that she was there, truly or not, was more than enough. You have all but memorised her every song, humming along as though she was with you.

In a thin nightgown, you have long been free from the confines of your strict dress, hair let loose and face bare. Any matter that once adorned your form has been stripped, left exactly where they belonged in your room as your legs danced along to the melody. Chasse, a whisk and a natural turn, your arms wrapped around some imaginary partner, it all came to you without little thought, merely letting the music guide your form. You have never danced before, never thought yourself fit to, only read about the basics in a book a time forgotten, but you think you enjoy it. Perhaps in your next life you will be a dancer, no matter the fame, it would be something you could do without fear of tarnishing another’s image.

Caught in your reverie, you are scarce to hear the knock on your door, the heave of heavy wood and the quick steps to the open balcony. Through the flowing curtains and under the starry night, your brother still looked nothing more than empyrean, regardless of the unnerved furrow of his brow and the dilation of his pupils. You do not stop from your actions, continuing to let your body move along the wind.

“What are you doing?” He manages to utter, not as gentle yet cautious.

Humming, you return his question with another, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Your dearest brother, the man who allows himself only the most minute interaction with you, the man who would not even meet your eyes beyond the confines of your home, though his words sounded as though they came from a more composed man, the slight tremble to his voice told you more than enough.

“Dear sister, you won’t die even if you take such drastic actions.”

“You’re right, but at the very least I’d be soporose, no?”

There is a pained edge to his voice, visage finally broken out of that placid facade, “I don’t enjoy these words you’re saying.”

“When have you ever?” You laugh, eyes crinkled in levity as a smile pulled across your lips. Bare feet halt from their untethered sway, leaning to meet your brother’s gaze. Your words crawl out from your throat, hoarse from use yet elated nonetheless, “I’m sure that if I were to even look into that head of yours, those few thoughts you dedicate to me would be nothing but pure odium.”

Perhaps you would have been less inclined to disparage your brother once upon a time, more desirous of his attention for once, yet it is now you could care less. His focus means nothing to you now, not when he could not even bother to do so when it mattered most. Even if he threw himself at your feet and begged you to come down, you find it hard to believe you would listen in this state.

Sunday’s voice is soft, yet simultaneously it is the loudest you have ever heard it, “You seem so convinced that I do not care for you, have you ever read beyond what your eyes tell?”

“Would you let me?” The air in your lungs feels faint, turning your voice breathy as tears strangely dew at your lower lashes.

Would he even let you witness such? Let himself become vulnerable and open his tempestuous mind for you to pick and pry? You do not even believe he has allowed any other to come so close. Yet perhaps this is what you need to quell that storm in your chest, the last nail in your coffin, your last reason confirmed.

He nods.

Through dark veils and cloudy bubbles, you see it. The truth of his neglect, the reality behind his constant avoidance, his performed favouritism, all of it some cruel and horrific attempt to distance himself from emotions deemed iniquitous. All those times the clock would read seven forty, all those times you believed him to arrive on some schedule, that damned bird had been in your room all the while. Tucked away in some corner too high for you to notice, it stood watch at all hours of the day, keenly broadcasting your most natural state to him as if it were nothing more than the daily news.

What a monster love can be, its dark shadow following you everywhere, in your most private and public moments, you have never been alone. Longing to embrace, alabaster hands ghosting over skin and breath fanning across bare chest, desiring to possess, to keep that object of yearning within a gilded cage and to tuck the key away. Twisting yet ever rigid, covetous and desirous, it is no wonder that your very existence should always be tied to him. There is no you without Sunday, no crow without dove, for what is a pious man without his conflict of sin?

“I love you,” He pleads, finally raw and true, finally directed to you. His face twisted in pure desperation as he approaches you, with his arms outstretched as though to compel you from your perch, your brother practically begs, “So please, stay with me.”

Beneath your gaze, beneath you, he is but a wretched thing. You never thought him stupid, yet for him to think that this was enough to wipe the slate anew, you must have overestimated him.

You bark out a harsh bite of laughter, void of mirth and filled with scorn, “Do you expect me to just forgive you just like that? A measly ‘I love you’ and years of indifference can just be forgotten?”

“Sunday, you’re nothing but the last etching on my grave.”

Your feet leave the cold marble, tipping off into the unknown abyss below as a breeze flies through your wings.

Your sister’s face flashes before you as your eyes flutter shut, her soft smile the one thing keeping your head clear and your limbs limp. You hear her sing, even past the rushing wind. Your dear sister, the one person who had been keeping you looking forward to another day, her crooning voice that played from the record player in your room, it is now you hear her clearer than ever.

A bird that has never flown can only fall when thrown down, wings unable to catch the wind and soar from its cage, yet it is because it has never flown that this feeling is still a kind of freedom. And as your skin pebbles from the chill and your hair flows along your descent, you have never felt any freer, even if it is only for a brief moment.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

Through lace curtains and under warm light, a hand caresses your leg as it tugs white socks ever higher. Soft fabric clinging to your skin as he raises it to your thigh, far too intimate, far too familiar. He does the same for the other leg, knelt at your feet with his head bowed, the socks are nothing but perfectly aligned as per his preference. The garters hung around your waist, silken material his own hands placed upon you, he grasps the clips as he attaches it to the socks, ensuring he does not blemish your skin beneath.

Your arm raises when he brings the blouse, silky and smooth. Sunday lets the cool fabric kiss your arms as he buttons each clasp, meticulously pushing them through each miniscule opening. Another piece he had ensured would fit you without fault, it followed the natural lines of your form without fail. He smooths the shoulders down and presses a kiss to the top of your head, moving to pin the sleeves with optic shaped cufflinks. Coaxing you from your seat, he has you step into your skirt, brought up to your waist and clasped neatly. Your shoes, perfectly shined heels tailor made for only you, are slipped on and buckled. Even the sweet florals of your perfume, another white lacquered glass bottle he gifted all those years ago, is applied by his hand.

His dear sister, someone he has tried so hard to keep at an arm’s length, someone he has done nothing but debase in that torturous head of his, now stands before him, obedient and adoring. Far too tempting to keep away, his arms move to embrace you, resting at your waist.

Instinctively, your arms raise to wrap around his neck, weight leaning against his hands as he bows his head to press a kiss against your lips. You accept him languidly, your eyes fluttering close as he brings your bodies to but a fingertip’s distance. It almost seems meant to be, how they move against each other in a rhythm known only to the two of you.

“I love you,” He murmurs against your lips, the words leaving him so naturally that if one were to tell him that he could finally utter these heavy words to you, that him of the past would have merely waved it off. “More than you could ever know.”

“.....love…”

“..you….”

Your wings flutter shyly around your two faces, as though to hide away from the rest of the world, even your halo trembles ever so slightly, an endearing act as you try your best to convey your affection to him. Still, that does not discourage you from attempting to cling onto him.

He smiles, pressing another, more chaste, kiss to your lips to tide you over. Recovery has been hard for you but he finds he quite enjoys having you so feeble for him. Barely able to even form full sentences through telepathy, it meant that he would be able to hear your sweet voice much more often. You were no songstress, but it is your humming that truly provides him with succour. Furthermore, having you so dependent, so keen for his help, it only serves to soften his heart.

To reintroduce you to the rest of Penacony not as his sister, but as his dearest lover has been easy, and he can only thank his foresight for keeping your very existence so negligible. You would finally get what you have always yearned for, no matter what lies you told yourself, his full and utter adoration, demonstrable and undisguised. Lest you try to leave him once more. So he will keep you in this cage with him, care for you and love you so that beyond reasonable doubt, you shall have no desire to spread your wings once more.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

#honkai star rail #hsr #hsr x reader #sunday x reader #yandere honkai star rail #yandere sunday #hsr sunday #yandere #yandere x reader

201 notes · View notes

rosekeu · 11 months ago

Text

[ Moonlight on the River ]

Sypnosis: The final battle came way earlier than you expected, and amidst all the chaos, your lover got wrapped up in its twisted fate. How were you supposed to react when you couldn't do anything to save the boy you had loved since childhood?

A/N: manga spoilers, implied death, hurt no comfort, angst. 1.7k words. listen to moonlight on the river by mac demarco or space song by beach house.

[ ao3 link ]

”Gojo, please you need to listen to me. Please, you don’t get it.” You violently sobbed, gripping your mentor’s wrist, pleading with him to listen. His eyes swept over you making sure you weren’t hurt.

Blood began to drip from the gash on your neck as you paused to take a couple shaky breaths trying to calm your nerves. “Please, you can’t kill him. I need him. He’s still Megumi.”

“You can’t do this to me…please Gojo.”

“I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT HIM PLEASE!” He stayed silent. You waited for him to say something, anything.

You stared back at him, clenching your fist as your eyes darkened, “I don’t care what happens to me, I need him back no matter what.”

You glanced at the figure looking past Gojo, it was wearing Megumi's face and body but the rest belonged to the evil man, the curse, who destroyed the place you used to call home. The same man who stole your friend's humanity away. Even more tears began to fall down your face as you turned to Gojo with a defeated expression, sadly still containing a miniscule glimmer of hope. A tiny part of you hoped that your lover could return safely. A tiny part of you naively believed.

“Is she alright?” Gojo asked Yuuji, who wasn’t standing too far away, still avoiding your piercing gaze. “Except for the gash on her neck, there’s only a few bruises on her so she should be okay…for now.”

As Gojo started to free himself from your grip, he threw Yuuji a knowing look. And suddenly, you were trapped in Gojo's arms. “No, no, no. GOJO! PLEASE NO!” You struggled in his hold, but he only tightened it in response

"Everything will be okay.” Your mouth fell open as your eyes widened. You could feel your chest tighten as the panic rose within you as Gojo’s hold on you tightened. “Just leave it to me.”

You begged him to change his mind, desperate to get away, but his expression was unwavering.

“LET GO OF ME! PLEASE!”

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” You pleaded, tears streaming down your face, hoping that your desperation would somehow break through to him.

As Gojo walked towards Yuuji he handed you over to him. The boy with pink hair had a strong hold on you while wearing a solemn expression.

“NO! PLEASE GOJO ITS MEGUMI!“ You started screaming out to your teacher once more, your voice breaking. Despite your agony, Yuuji knew this was for the best. It was the right decision for you to suffer.

"PLEASE, I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT HIM!” Your words were ignored as the King of Curses fought with your teacher, while using the body of your lover as a puppet. You could feel the desperation rising inside of you as the fight progressed. You felt utterly helpless when you realized that your pleas had been ignored.

“Yuuji. Let me go, I need to stop him.” You seem to be in dire need of anything to occur. Something that is going to alter Megumi's destiny. since you were aware that one of them would die if they got into a duel. There was a sense of impending disaster hanging in the air, pressing you to do something.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

You attempted to escape his hold, thrashing in his arms but it was in vain as his grip on you only tightened. Yuuji led you to the sidelines where the rest of your comrades were watching the battle take place. You cried out in pain, anger, and most of all sadness.

The raven haired boy you grew up with was going to be killed.

You never got to say goodbye.

There were so many unspoken words between the two of you.

You needed more time.

You needed a chance to unravel the tangled emotions and express what you truly felt.

The weight of those desires lingered, leaving a deeply rooted seed of regret. But alas, moments slipped through your fingers like sand, and now all that remains in the haunting presence of what could've been.

You needed to hug him one last time.

You needed to kiss him one last time.

As if pleading with the universe

You needed to see him smile again

You needed to hear him laugh again.

You needed to touch him again.

Would the universe make you forget his face after all this was over? Would the universe grant you the mental peace of fading memories and erase the pain which would linger in your heart? Or would it be a cruel and unforgiving reminder, tattooing his face deeper into your mind, tormenting you with what might've been?

Unfair. Unfair. Unfair

Why did it have to be him?

Why did fate choose to intertwine your paths, only to keep you both apart? So many questions and no answers, only leaving you to wonder about what a cruel twist of destiny the world had granted you. In the midst of the chaos all around you, thoughts of you and him kept flooding into your mind.

“The stars... they look really nice tonight–” You spun around to face Megumi. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” He but he was too busy focusing on you, instead of those stupid stars. To him you were much prettier.

He acknowledged the beauty of the stars. But compared to you, they were a dull contrast. You shined brighter than any star imaginable.

He cast a long glance at your lips before the two of you locked eyes. Before you could respond, he captured your lips in a passionate kiss. He cupped your face with one hand and wrapped the other around yours. You couldn’t help but smile as you melted into his touch.

Another memory rang through your mind.

Fushiguro sat with his back against the wall, statue-still and cold. You reached out to hold his hand but he quickly withdrew.

You tried again but he said. “Don’t.”

His voice was laced with contempt. After today's mission, you were injured severely. And even though all of you came back alive, he couldn't spare himself from the guilt of not being by your side.

“Don’t what?” you asked, flatly.

His jaw locked, and he stared at you with empty eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

He glances at your bruised arms and fist. “I don’t–” He started and then he looked at the bandage that wrapped around your head and the limp you seemed to have on your right leg. “I don’t know what to–”

So that's what it was about. Your injuries…He wasn't mad at you.

He was mad at himself.

You place your hands on either side of his face with a firm hold. “Stop it.”

His eyes still avoid my gaze like the plague. “It’s not your fault. Everyone got a bit roughed up–”

He cut you off. “You were injured the most out of everyone else. And we were just facing a grade 1 curse, imagine if it was a special grade.”

You paused and pondered, what would've happened if the curse was special grade? Well, it didn’t matter now. The important thing is that you were alive and breathing. “There’s no point in thinking about that now. Stop torturing yourself.”

Megumi’s expression didn’t waver.

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were there when I needed you to be.” You said, hands sliding off his face to hold his hands. “I can take care of myself.”

“I swore I would be there for you and I wasn't. I swore to keep you safe and you weren't.” His words pierced your heart like a dagger. You wanted to reassure him that you were okay. That a few injuries meant nothing to you. And that it shouldn't be to him.

“I’m–”

“You were terrified.” His voice was filled with turmoil as he interrupted you. “When you called out to me, I’ll never forget your voice.”

Before he could keep going, you gently placed a finger on his lips, silencing him. "I understand why you’re upset," you whispered softly, "But please trust me when I say that I am stronger than you think. Plus after a few days I’ll be as good as new!” You smiled, and you leaned in to kiss him.

As your lips met, you could feel the mixture of relief and longing in the kiss. It was a bittersweet moment for Fushiguro, as he realized that while he was relieved to have finally expressed his concerns, there was still a lingering sadness knowing that he could have done something to change the outcome.

That was the first time you had seen him so worried about something or someone. “I love you.”

Punches were thrown at the concrete, causing the ground to tremble, and you were pulled back into reality. Yuuji was still holding you in his lap and Yuuta was healing you in the meantime applying his reversed cursed technique.

You grabbed him unexpectedly, mumbling softly, “Yuuta... I need him back...” He smiled sadly at you.

“I need to tell him that I love him one last time...” Your voice breaks at the idea and your eyes well up with tears. Yuuta’s hand cups your cheek, thumb caressing it gently.

“He knows.” Okkotsu reassures you, healing all your wounds successfully,“I promise.”

With a trembling voice, you whisper, "I don't know how I'll go on without him." The weight of your emotions hangs heavy in the air, as if silently begging for a miracle to bring him back.

Your face loses all emotion as you wrap your arms around Yuuji’s neck. To help you feel a little better, he holds you close and gently rocks you back and forth. You experience defeat. You can’t help but let your sorrow and regret consume you. As you bury your face in Yuuji's shoulder, you feel a mix of comfort and despair. The weight of your emotions becomes unbearable, leaving you feeling completely helpless. It's as if the world around you has come crashing down, and all you can do is surrender to the overwhelming grief. Your will to live escaping your bloody grasp.

"I’m home, there's moonlight on the river. Everybody dies."

#megumi fushiguro #megumi x reader #jjk angst #angst #megumi angst #fushiguro megumi #jjk fushiguro #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #jjk spoilers #manga spoilers #rose cries ૮(˶╥︿╥)ა #gojo satoru #yuuji itadori #yuuta okkotsu #itadori yuuji #satoru gojo #Spotify

264 notes · View notes

offtorivendell · 10 months ago

Text

My thoughts on the Bryce, Azriel and Nesta HOFAS bonus chapter...

Disclaimer: as suggested by the title, the following discusses the Walmart HOFAS bonus chapter featuring Azriel, Bryce and Nesta. I haven't read the main text, so it won't feature anything related to that, but there are massive Maasverse and HOFAS spoilers ahead regardless. Please beware.

These are just my initial thoughts, not expanded upon in any substantial way and, as usual, I could always be way off the mark.

Also, yes, fair warning that I'll be mentioning the ACOTAR characters a lot. If that's not your jam, and you'd rather avoid any of the possible implications of the crossover, then I'd give this post a miss. On the other hand, if you're interested in how CC/HOFAS may affect Prythian going forward, please read on.

Music:

The Stone Mother song has me 👀 especially as the stone and water were "talking" at the start.

@cassianfanclub and @wingedblooms have already posted about the Stone Mother (here and here); @ladynightcourt3 has found the Phrygian goddess Cybele, also known as the "Mountain Mother," who sounds very relevant.

That being said, am I crazy to think Elain could have been listening in? Is Azriel stone and Elain water? His stone siphons - which Elain called beautiful, did she hear their song, as kin? - and Elain possibly as water? Was she using salt water to boost her powers, or a reflection pool to scry, and keep tabs on her sister and friend?

Or is it the space between linking worlds? Are the old gods talking?

Alternatively, could stone be referring to Nuala and Cerridwen, who are capable of manifesting stone around themselves and others (ACOTAR).

Is this what SJM meant when she said we'd see Elain in "some form" in the next book?

@psychee92 said she wished that SJM had somehow included Mr Brightside, and now I wish the same; even a mention of indie rock. 😭

Josie and Laurel - "He/god will add/increase" "(laurel) trees/victory"? Elain? Lol sorry, but it's either giving gardener, or Elain killing Hybern.

Wraith-like harmonies? After the description of Josie and Laurel's voices? It's crack, but is it a metaphor for Nuala and Cerridwen?

The musical similarities between what Juniper dances to and Prythian's music?!

Azriel's humming/singing made the shadows dance, once more suggesting that shadows dancing is a response to power, not mate bonds

The music Az liked was death metal. Could this link to any sort of metal artefact, like an iron crown for grounding? Or wyrdstone jewellery?

The glass coffin?

"Nineteenth century literature presents the glass coffin as a prison within which sleeping women are frequently mistaken for dead or vice versa." (Source). It's giving Sleeping Beauty (credit to @elriell for the OG SB theory), and a little Snow White.

Check out this tale from The Brothers Grimm, which sounds... suspiciously relevant to Elain.

@cassianfanclub also suggested that it's giving necromancer vibes, and I'd love that for Elain.

Feyre once said she could sleep for a hundred years after coming back from the Prison, right before going to the Hewn City in ACOWAR. After Elain had left the room, and before Feyre went to check in on her to find her "asleep—breathing."

Let's not forget Elain's assistance in rescuing the human COTB, Briar, from Hybern's camp.

Will Elain prick herself while weaving?

I was tired enough that I could barely summon the breath to ask, “Do you think the Cauldron made her insane?” “I think she went through something terrible,” Lucien countered carefully. “And it wouldn’t hurt to have your best healer do a thorough examination.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “All right.” My breath snagged on the words. “Tomorrow morning.” I managed a shallow nod, rallying my strength to rise from the chair. Heavy—there was an old heaviness in me. Like I could sleep for a hundred years and it wouldn’t be enough. “Please tell me,” Lucien said when I crossed the threshold into the foyer. “What the healer says. And if—if you need me for anything.” I gave him one final nod, speech suddenly beyond me. I knew Nesta still wasn’t asleep as I walked past her room. Knew she’d heard every word of our conversation thanks to that Fae hearing. And I knew she heard as I listened at Elain’s door, knocked once, and poked my head in to find her asleep—breathing. - ACOWAR, chapter 27

Azriel specifically said Nesta "beheaded" Hybern, after looking down at Truth-Teller.

This is not Azriel giving Nesta credit for the assassination. If anything he's hiding Elain's involvement.

I've said before, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has done so, but I would expect Azriel to protect his LI with silence, whoever they are.

He had to have been thinking about Elain, who I've theorised could now/soon be known as "The Shadowsinger's Knife" after she became the "knife in the dark" in Azriel's place at the end of ACOWAR.

The young girl sitting on the mushroom:

I'm still looking into the carving of the young girl sitting on the toadstool with the hound sprawled on the ground beside her, as I find it really interesting. My initial thought was that it seemed like a convenient place to drop a mention of a garden-like fairy carving with a hound right after Bryce had quizzed Azriel about his hypothetical mate, or lack thereof (Elain being both heavily associated with plant life, thanks to her "little garden," as well as dogs, after Nesta called her one in ACOSF).

I also wonder if it has anything to do with the Czech tale that amanita muscaria - while psychoactive/toxic - are said to protect from lightning and other ill fortune. If this is correct, it reminds me a little of the markings - wyrdmarks - on the Archeron cottage.

I don't know where Bryce and co were walking, as I have only read this bonus chapter and the prologue, but given it was carved on an underground wall, and I suspect that there are underground portals in at least the Hewn City and the Prison, and maybe the waterways... could it have been for protection against the invading lightning Asteri? Or did the Asteri (Daglan?) put them there to protect against Thunderbirds, or whatever Hunt is?

Miscellany

Maybe Bryce hadn't been sent there by Urd? Who then? Was @silverlinedeyes right all along?

The mention of pleasure halls seems like a call back to Azriel's bonus chapter, but it's also likely that they aren't all brothels (see Rita's).

Azriel listening closely about Nesta now liking being Fae; he could extrapolate her responses to Elain. Maybe she's no longer miserable, and in need of their pity. And maybe she's changed her mind from ACOFAS, when she said to Feyre "I don't want a mate, I don't want a male."

Azriel said "no" to whether or not he has a mate rather quickly. Hmm... the shadowsinger doth protest too much?

It's also potentially important that Nesta said "yes, WE are" curious about Azriel's mate status. Her, Azriel and most of the fandom! 😂

"Okay, okay," Bryce said. "But it'd be cool to know something about your world. Or about you." They were both silent. Bryce asked Nesta, "You have a mate, right?" She nodded to Azriel. "Do you?" "No." Azriel said quickly, flatly. "A partner or spouse?" "No." Bryce sighed. "Okay, then." Azriel's wings twitched. "You're incurably nosy." "I think that's the nicest thing you've said about me." Bryce winked at him. "Look, I just... I'm curious. Aren't you?" Azriel didn't answer, but Nesta said, "Yes. We are." - HOFAS, Bryce, Azriel and Nesta bonus chapter

All in all, while there were no overt mentions of Elain - and really, why would SJM do that in a series that wasn't Elain's own - imo we got the Elain-shaped holes in the text that I was hoping for, and I can't wait to see if there are any more in the full book.

#hofas spoilers #hofas bonus chapter #bryce azriel nesta bonus chapter #crescent city spoilers #hofas #hosab spoilers #acotar cc tog crossover theory #bryce quinlan #azriel shadowsinger #nesta archeron #elain archeron

190 notes · View notes

phr0gg13 · 10 months ago

Text

Do Not Wait.

Luke Castellan x Reader

Synopsis: You and Luke have always been close, and so when the guy you trust most in the world decide to backstab the people you call family, you are torn in two. Warnings: Spoilers for the series! Angst, I dont think pronouns were used for the reader! (Please let me know if they were!) this story could be read as platonic or romantic feelings, I was inspired by the song Do Not wait by the Wallows!

It was a cold night when Luke came to see you, almost as if the gods knew what was in store. He had came up to you at dinner and asked to speak in private. You followed him to a secluded spot in the woods of Camp Half-Blood, there was an opening that showed the sun setting. It was like a painting, almost as if Apollo had painstakingly taken the time to think about each stroke of sunlight and how it would hit just right on Lukes face. How the clouds would form to be the most beautiful colors and how it would feel like a movie scene. Your heart was racing as you looked around. It was so pretty here, you and Luke were secluded and you wondered what he wanted to tell you. You were nervous and also excited to hear what the Hermes boy had to say.

"Please don't think I'm crazy when I ask you this (Y/N)...." His hands found your cheeks and he caressed them gently. Almost as if you were made of porcelain. Your heart was racing, thinking of every possible thing he could want to ask you. "Luke, I wont think you are crazy.... What's up?" You replied sweetly. Luke felt a small twinge of regret hit him, but he was already to far gone with his plan.

"Come leave camp with me." The words were like a slap in the face. You let out a small breath of air, the same way you would when someone says a terrible joke. "You're joking right? Why would we leave camp?" You were confused, it didnt make sense. Luke was happy at camp, he had you and Annabeth. He had all his siblings. Why would he want to leave? "Because, (Y/N)," his grip on your face got tighter, it was like he was afraid you would leave, "The gods... They don't care about us. They never have and they never will.".

"Thats why you want to leave camp? Because the gods are selfish and act like gods?" You were in disbelief, "Luke where would we even go? What would we do?". He sighed and looked deep into your eyes "There are people who want to take the gods down, who can provide us with the means to show the gods not to forget us. We can finally speak out against them, do something to stop their childish ways!.". You shook your head, "Who...?"

"Kronos has been visiting me in my dreams, he wants to build an army to fight against the gods. He wants me to help." Luke smiled at you when he said that. It made you sick, you took his hands off your face and looked at him with a hurt expression. "Luke, you can't be serious? We need to tell Chiron and Mr.D about this! If Kronos wants a war... Who knows who else will follow him? How many titans will rise up against the gods? It could be catastrophic, Luke. World ending!!".

Luke shook his head, "We can't tell Chiron, we can't tell anyone. Not yet, Kronos isn't strong enough to fight." You shook your head and looked away, why was this happening. You noticed the sun was almost set, everything was dark and you felt like your heart had been ripped out of your chest. "What about Annabeth?" Your voice broke as tears threatened to leave your eyes. "What about your siblings, your friends?!". Luke sighed, this wasn't how he had planned it going, "They will understand once we tell them. Once we show how strong the army is!." Luke kept going on about how everyone would join him and Kronos. He just kept talking, trying to make you join him. "Luke!".

You looked at him as your tears flowed down your face. "I am not joining you. I can't, this place is my home! These people are my family! I don't care about the gods, I don't need anything from them. I am happy and content with staying at camp.". Lukes expression dropped, it switched from heartbroken to numb in seconds flat. "Fine... But you can't tell anyone my plan. Not yet...". You turned your head and rolled your eyes, about to object to his demand. Yet he had pulled out a sword from a nearby bush, he had planned it all out. Your reflexes kicked in immediately. Quickly you pulled off your bracelet that turned into your sword. A gift from your godly parent. Ready to fight against Luke.

The two of you often trained together and so you both knew how the other fought. Though Luke was still faster and stronger. He also studied your flaws when fighting, he knew how to abuse them. This resulted in him tripping you on the ground. Your sword fell out of your hand and you tried to crawl to grab it, but Luke stepped on your wrist. You cried out in pain, "I'm so sorry (Y/N), but you made me do this..". Luke raised his sword, and for a moment you thought he was going to hit you with his blade. You thought your best friend was going to kill you, yet he maneuvered his sword to where the hilt was pointed at you. He landed a blow to your head and you were out cold. Luke set you up on your back and put his jacket he was wearing over you. He cried, but not because of the choice he made. He cried because of the choice you made. He walked off to go find Percy....

You had woke up with an insane headache, you were warm and in a bed instead of on the cold ground of the forest. You looked around weakly and saw Annabeth and Grover sitting in chairs nearby. You were in the infirmary. You noticed that they were talking to someone else, another person in a bed. One of the campers who was working in the infirmary noticed you were up. They quickly got you some water and asked how you were feeling. You told them about your head and they nodded. You had a concusion... Eventually Chiron and Mr.D came into the infirmary. They started to ask you questions of what happened to you. You told them all you remember and they both looked at eachother. Chiron shook his head, he had a remorseful look on his face.

"Chiron, where is Luke?" You asked as you noticed his jacket on a nearby chair.

"Luke is missing. We assume he is now working with Kronos..."

Your already broken heart was crushed as you heard those words. You are left wondering how long your best friend had truly been gone for.

#percy jackson #luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan x you #angst #fanfic #percy jackson fanfiction #pjo tv show

148 notes · View notes

the-steambird · 1 year ago

Text

[ 011223 EDITION ]

GENSHINBLR — NOVEMBER, 2023 EDITORIAL

EXTRA! EXTRA! Over here, dear reader! As we enter the twelfth month of the year, read up on what’s happened this past month of November on Genshin Tumblr!

From your Editors: Crow and Ely.

COLLECTIVES — November Events !

TRENDING! || From Journalist @meidnightrain

1989 Event — 21 songs to 21 fics with the Genshin characters; A celebration to the release of Taylor Swift’s 1989 album, with fluff, angst, and hurt / comfort galore! Our journalist Meisha takes us through the re-recorded album with various Genshin characters X GN! Reader ranging from Aether, to Furina, and many more in between!

NEWS FLASH! || From Editor @yuellii

Fontaine : Dark Blood — A supernatural-themed event to continue off the spirit of Halloween in November; Dark Blood follows three separate one shots of vampire Neuvillette, werewolf Wriothesley, and puppet Lyney X GN! Reader. Our editor Ely executes horror through her writing, so readers, please heed her warnings carefully in each fic!

COLUMN — Individual Spotlight !

LET TWO EYES BE UNDECEIVED, Lyney / By Editor @rainswept

Summary from the editor: Growing up with you by his side, falsities were always something Lyney could see through. He preferred not to use them, not for a long time — but once you were gone and he and Lynette were left without someone to do the group’s dirty work, he forced himself to inherit the way of living you left behind.

“So excited for this one! Editor Crow’s been showing me their progress—honestly such a must-read for Lyney fans when it comes out, teehee.” — Editor Ely.

YOU’RE SO RED, ARE YOU OKAY?, Furina / By Journalist @definitelynotaneulasimp

A comedic review by Journalist Henry, in which the Archon of Hydro attempts at a date, but all goes wrong when she develops a terrible case of hiccups. Rumor has it: This fic is a part of Henry’s 1.5k Followers Event!

Want more Genshin women content? Definitely check out Henry’s own blog for characters like Ei, Navia, and more!

GOODNIGHT, Various Genshin Men / By Journalist @strawberrylabs

Did you know: Lyney, Freminet, Kazuha, Venti, Cyno and Childe have voice lines about you, dear reader?! If you’re having trouble falling asleep, hear what these characters have to say all about you!

A SIMPLE MISSION, Neuvillette / By Journalist @alaboadoa

Rumor has it: The Duke and the Iudex were caught whispering privately about you?! Read as Journalist Soph gossips all the juicy details about their conversation—it seems Monsieur Neuvillette might have a crush on you!

Just recently released: Journalist Soph also just recently released a new entry for Ayato, “INK TO PAPER.” Both of these works are featured in her 1k milestone event!

ONE CHANCE (PT.2), Various Genshin Men / By Journalist @ayaboba

“You give them one chance. How do they use it?” Journalist Anya returns with Kazuha, Lyney, Wanderer, and Zhongli—all who have just one last chance with you. Be sure to also check our her part one of this entry with Alhaitham, Diluc, Neuvillette, and Wriothesley, linked in her entry!

WHEN THEY LOSE YOU, Various Genshin Men / By Journalist @yrbladie

Ayato, Diluc, Kaeya, Neuvillette, Zhongli — ever in the mood for angst and no comfort? Then Journalist Naeris delivered us painful excepts on five different Genshin men and how they act after ( spoiler! ) losing you.

With Journalist Naeris also being on the rise and joining the writing train, be sure to check out all the other works she has published this month, as well!

FEATURE — The Editors’ Favorites !

YOUR SHADOW UNDER THE ILLUSORY MOON., Lyney / By Journalist @dulcesiabits

“this piece genuinely moved me. journalist liya’s writing is beautiful, and out of hundreds — maybe even thousands — of works that i have read, this has remained my favorite. it had me hanging on every word and i could genuinely feel the emotion put into it — her word choices and the way she conveys the scenes are profound in a way i cannot hope to describe. the ties and parallels part one has with PART TWO are so smart, too. hands down the most immersive and touching writing i’ve ever had the pleasure to read.” — Editor Crow.

JEALOUS-!, Ayato / By Journalist @jinxlixir

“LOVED this one! Takes place in a modern school AU with Ayato as the student council prez, and reader as his vice prez! The concept is every hopeful cliché, and Journalist Jinx did an amazing job characterizing Ayato so well—this one definitely stayed in my head for a while!”

“Not to mention: This little snippet is a continued concept of Jinx’s OTHER AYATO PIECE, one that’s much longer and written excellently!! I was practically squealing the whole time I read it… Ignore my tags if you decide to scroll through the notes.” — Editor Ely.

THE-STEAMBIRD is a Genshinblr Newspaper that posts news on the latest fanfiction and fanart! Editorials are published on the 1st day of every month, compiling your favorite works, featuring sections for journalists (writers) and photographers (artists).

Every month, from the 2nd-24th, we are in the nomination process. Writers and artists can nominate works they would like to see featured on The-Steambird for the month using our form!

#🗞️ — ꒰ news ! ꒱#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #neuvillette x reader #lyney x reader #ayato x reader #furina x reader

294 notes · View notes

deanbrainrotwritings · 1 year ago

Text

— THE LOVE LETTER COLLECTION : PART ONE

SUMMARY : being a dreamwalker, seeing every universe, having a hot boyfriend. there’s a million perks to that. this is the sad version.

PAIRING : dean winchester x dreamwalker!reader (f.)

CHARACTERS : rowena macleod, sam winchester

WARNINGS/TAGS : explicit(18+), angst, fluff, almost-smut, talk about depression, low self esteem, thoughts about past prostitution

WORD COUNT : 11k

A/N : title from a jamie's elsewhere song. this fills the time travel square on my @jacklesversebingo card. inspired by loki season two, please don’t change by Jungkook, and the spider-verse movie. no spoilers. This is written from Dean's perspective and in first person (it was fun but tough) X

I couldn’t sleep tonight.

It’s normal.

She’s asleep next to me, breathing slow and quietly. Her chest rises subtly with each breath. Her lips are parted, just slightly.

Her soft hair is splayed over the pillow like the rays of a sun and she’s facing me. One of her hands rests on her stomach and the other is bent upwards beside her, her hand resting in a loose fist by her neck.

Her steel necklace rests haphazardly over her neck. The chain is thin and fragile. Glimmering in the faint light coming through the opaque hotel curtains. A tiny and thin, rectangular centrepiece is lined with miniature gems and suddenly stops leaving a centimetre free of plain steel, and it rests in the dip of her collarbone.

She’s quiet tonight. Laying still, unmoving. I smile at her, resist the urge to touch her smooth skin or brush her hair away from her shoulders. She wakes up easily, a light sleeper, the cutest one. I’m surprised my staring doesn’t wake her.

Memories move in and try to overcast my mind. At least she takes me away from the darkness that threatens to consume me. Right now, I’m focused on her and the way she breathes.

I try reminding myself of what I have right now. Her. Sam. Cas. Jack. That’s all that matters. I won’t even remember why the feelings overflooded my chest, poisoning my mind, breaking me down until I’m down. In the morning, when the sun shines and pours through the window, I realise it isn’t so bad. When her soft voice flows into my ears, when the flowery aroma of her intoxicates me, when her warm touch comforts me, when the sweet taste of her lips makes me forget what I had been worried about at night.

It’s always the same. Like her, I learned to live with the pain.

She moans softly beside me. Not a sexy moan. It sounds irritated at something. I turn fully onto my side to face her, panic makes my stomach sink. I frown and my train of thought is lost as I wait to see if she’s having a nightmare or not.

She mumbles something I can’t understand, but she doesn’t seem to be in distress. She turns over onto her side, facing me fully. Strands of her hair fall gracefully over her face. I move back slightly but her arm lands in my waist, trapping me in place by entwining her legs with mine. I squirm when her elbow pokes my ribs and I reach out at last, caressing her cheek. With a few whispers of her name and some gentle prodding, she shuts up and her eyes flutter open.

She groans gently and whispers my name, adorably disoriented. I chuckle and lean forward to kiss her forehead before she could even fully wake up. She hums anyway, satisfied and scoots closer to me. Her soft legs slide against mine again; it makes me warm.

She’s moving up on the bed, too, and slides one of her arms under my neck to pull me closer. I willingly go and I grin as soon as my face is pressed against the top of her breasts. I breathe her in and close my eyes. Her skin smells amazing and she gently starts scratching my scalp with her nails. I moan quietly when a shiver runs up my spine and I keep her in place with one arm wrapped around her waist from beneath her.

I move my other hand up to her jaw to tip her head back to kiss her neck. I can hear her breath hitch and she starts to squirm, her thighs become tense and they start to move against my own. When I thread my fingers through her hair and tug weakly, she rolls her hips against mine.

She’s breathing heavier already. I love how she reacts to me.

Heat blooms in my stomach, my cock twitches, and my insides clench instantly when she wraps her arm around my shoulder and then pulls my own hair. I grunt softly against her neck, but she’s pulling away. Her nose bumps against mine and she finds my lips with her own, soft and warm.

I hold her tighter, lowering my hand to squeeze her ass. She smiles against my mouth and I do, too, nibbling on her bottom lip. I move her hair away from her face before sliding my hand down her shoulder, teasingly bringing the strap of her bralette down. She arches her chest into me and I lean down to latch onto her nipple once I get the soft material beneath her chest.

“What were you dreaming about?” I ask curiously. My warm breath hits her wet nipple and she shudders. I slid my hand out from beneath her to play with the hem of her underwear. Slowly, I let my hand sneak into the front.

“Uh,” she trails off distractedly, she attempts to hold me in place against her breasts. I didn’t have any plans on doing anything besides that, but I pulled away on purpose to watch her open her eyes and complain about my inactivity. “Hey, why’d you stop?”

I smirk at her and I pull my hand out of her underwear to hug her, pressing a kiss against her shoulder. I roll over on top of her, holding her in place with my hips against hers. “I wanna know what you dreamt of. You were moaning and movin’ around,” I explained with a frisky grin, trying to make her think that I’m assuming it was a wet dream.

She frowns instead and asks, “did I wake you?” She cups my cheeks and my face softens as I look down at her. I shake my head and I drop kisses along her face until I hear her laugh quietly. “You should’ve woken me if you couldn’t sleep,” she murmured.

I shake my head again and she rolls her eyes, pushing me away to turn her back to me. I follow her immediately to kiss her cheek, to make her not be irritated at me. She’s smiling before I even land a kiss to her face and I grab a handful of her ass instead, squeezing in retaliation.

“I was just gonna grab my phone,” she lies and laughs. She starts to wiggle around and almost fails to laugh quietly, trying to get me off her when I tickle her neck with kisses. I let her go eventually and she immediately reaches for her phone on the nightstand. Her screen turns on when she tilts her phone towards herself, a photo of me naked flashes my face and I get flustered, taking the phone from her after she whined, “it’s gonna be four?”

I stare at the photo in surprise. The photo was cut off at the bottom, barely showing my hip bones, hiding what she had been doing to me. I remember that day, it was our anniversary. We spent about two days together. She was giving me a handjob and she convinced me to let her take a couple of pictures. Who am I to deny her that?

Let’s just say there are more photos and a video.

“Hey! Give it back,” she pouted, wrapping her small hand around my wrist. I ignore her, and move away from her sneaky hands as I blush when my eyes trail back up to my face on the photo. I look like I’m about to orgasm.

“That’s a photo of me,” I stated bluntly. I unlocked her phone curiously and lo and behold, it’s a picture of me fucking her. My stomach clenches, I’m thrilled, even my cock starts to harden at the sight of me standing on my knees, my hand is splayed over her pelvis and my thumb is on her clit.

“Oh, I thought it was a photo of Henry Cavill,” she answers flatly. I feel my heartbeat rise and I bite my lip, I focus on her more than on myself, even if most of what I can see is me. I couldn’t decide whether to look at her in front of me or to keep staring at the angle she took the photo from.

“Shut up,” I mumble, fascinated by the high quality of her photo. I had used a pillow to angle her hips upwards. I was holding her leg up by her ankle and she had her other leg thrown over my hip… the sounds she made that day, they were unforgettable.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” She asks suddenly, snapping me out of my horny daze. I look over at her and watch her bite her lip shyly. “I can change it, it was a joke… mostly.. at first, because now I enjoy looking at it. It’s not very convenient when I’m around other people though…” she rambled thoughtfully.

I don’t say anything and I set her phone down on the pillow. I pry her legs open with my hand and I slip my fingers inside her underwear, teasing her wet labia, tracing her entrance, and then I lift my wet fingers up to ghost them tortuously over her swollen clit.

“You like looking at it?” I smirk down at her. She bites her lip harder, staring up at me in attempts to look innocent as she nods at me. Her eyes shut momentarily and she starts to wiggle her hips impatiently. “What happened to you? You were so shy when we started dating,” I tease, making a ‘v’ with my fingers. I slide my hand down to cup her pussy, her clit brushes against the sides of my fingers and she gasps softly.

“You made me a slut. A horny one,” she whines playfully.

“You’re not a slut,” I laugh, brushing my lips against her cheek.

“Have you seen how I dress now? I feel so hot when I’m with you,” she admitted breathily. I blush at her words and my stomach flutters.

“Wearing sexy clothes don’t make you a slut, angel,” I reassure her and push my middle finger into her. She feels warm. I can feel the texture of the inside of her against my fingers and it turns me on. She’s wet and I love the feel of it every time I pull my finger out of her. “I’m not gonna stop you from doing what you wanna do. Or tell you how to dress. Or call you a slut when you wear… sexy clothes to seduce me. Besides, you look hot as hell to me all the time. And if I make you feel hot enough to wear somethin’ that you usually wouldn’t wear, I think I’m doin’ a pretty damn good job at being your boyfriend.” She’s speechless, either from the way I curl my finger inside her or from the words I just spoke to her. “You are seriously horny though. What’s up with that? You act like I don’t fuck you enough.” I say that and I add another finger inside her.

I stare as her head rolls to the side. She bites her lip, arches her back, and her legs spread open some more. She’s so sexy without even trying.

“I dunno about that one,” she murmured, “I think you’re so fuckable when you do stuff for me like you’ve read my mind, when you say stuff like what you just said right now.. when you’re.. you,” I smirk and lean in for a quick kiss. “I want to feel you everywhere. All over me. All the time. I’ve never wanted for someone as badly as I want for you. I’ve never needed someone as badly as I need you. You make me feel. I want to… I dunno… match you when it comes to sex... You’re.. everything.”

There’s something about the way she says it that drives me crazy. I somehow understand everything she’s trying to say and I pull my fingers out of her.

I need her.

“Fuck,” I whisper, pushing her underwear to the side. I move up her body, but Sam starts to groan beside us. I whine quietly and drop my forehead on her shoulder, releasing her underwear.

I feel her deflate underneath me, too. She apologetically plays with my hair and kisses the top of my head. I melt into her, trying to steady my heart, cool down my body, and make my dick soft at the same time.

“Have you ever had a dream where you hide something and you wake up thinking: ‘what if it’s actually there?’ And you know it’s dumb but you just have a feeling it’s not, and then you’re disappointed because it’s not there when you look?” Her attempt to distract me works. I lift my head and I furrow my brows at her very specific question, but she’s looking at me earnestly so I resist the urge to laugh.

“I don’t think so, no,” I answered her question thoughtfully. After a few moments, as I continue to think about her question, I move off her and lean on my elbow while gazing down at her. “Why? Is there somethin’ you’re tryna tell me in a cryptic way?” I smirk and she pouts.

“I don’t do that,” she replies with uncertainty. I can tell she’s going over any possible situation where she’s been cryptic without even noticing.

“Uh, you do it sometimes,” I say with a laugh. She frowns and then ignores me. It makes me want to kiss her.

“Well, I’m trying to tell you my dream,” she explains. I’m about to tell her to continue, but Sam’s tossing and turning stops, and he speaks to us sleepily.

“You guys already awake?” Sam yawns, I look over my shoulder and I watch him stretch.

“Yeah,” I answer, then I lay back down on my back.

“Unfortunately,” she answers with a sigh.

She starts to get out of bed and I frown. I move over closer and wrap my arm around her waist, pressing kissing along her back. She chuckles and doesn't move away from when she bends down. I can hear her rifling through her duffle bag and I let her go when I feel her stop. I take her spot, lay on my stomach and bury my face in her pillow to inhale the smell of honey and jasmine from her shampoo.

I hear her jump slightly and I slide my arms under the pillow, lifting my head to watch her pull her jeans up. I smile dreamily as I watch her slide them over her ass. When she bends over, I’m a hundred percent sure she’s putting on a show for me. She rolls the bottom of her jeans upwards into a cuff so they don’t drag across the floor.

“Need to use the bathroom, Sam?” She asks him innocently, but she’s looking at me with mischief in her eyes. I smile and hide my face in the pillow so I don’t laugh or moan.

“I’ll use it after you, go ahead,” he tells her, ever the gentleman. She says a little ‘mmkay’ and I can hear her step closer to me. I peek at her and watch her lift the sheets over my body. She kisses the nape of my neck before she leaves and I resist the urge to act like a girl when she does it.

“Was she having a nightmare again?” Sam asks, his voice is laced with concern. I turn to look at him, the sun starts to light up the room, and I watch as he puts his shoes on. “That one with the axe killer was terrifying. She couldn’t sleep for days after it,” Sam reminisces with a grimace on his face.

“She didn’t have a nightmare,” I reassure Sam. I feel relief, the same as the sigh Sam releases when I respond, and I sit up.

Sam opens his laptop and his brows furrow as he stares at the screen. But his question takes me back to that night. I think about it like it just happened. I didn’t know what to do, neither did Sam, at first, because as soon as I’d touched her thrashing body, she’d fallen off the bed. She had a bruise on her cheekbone afterwards to show for it.

She never woke up when it happened, not until I picked her up off the floor. But even when she opened her eyes and saw me, the monster pulled her back into her dream and continued to chase her.

I remember Sam trying to help me as she tried to wiggle out of my grip, her dream bleeding into reality. She was strong for such a small woman and she slipped repeatedly from my grip and into Sam’s. We held her down on the bed instead and waited for her to wake up on her own.

I’d never been so afraid for her before. I’d never had my heart broken by her like that night when she immediately broke down crying upon waking up fully, holding onto me tighter than she’d ever held me before.

I cleaned the cuts on her legs and her back, I tended to the rope burn on her wrists. She was covered in bruises. I was grateful that she didn’t have anything broken or a deadly wound. But her mind was broken. It is broken. She was depressed for a few days after it had happened. I couldn’t help her in any way, but I was there for her the entire time.

It happens sometimes, more back then than it does now. She’d dream about something and it would break her. She falls apart and I help build her up—like she’s done for me a million times before. The dreams, nightmares, take a toll on her because she can’t do much in terms of helping out.

I feel like she’s a little more numb to it now. Like the depression got old. Like it’s just the same old emotions that have tried to drown her before. I’ve seen it with admiration and a bit of humour. The spite she feels when they come up after years of feeling controlled by it. I’ve seen her at her lowest and I’ve seen how resilient she can be—even on her own.

She tells me now when she doesn’t feel right, but she sounds more irritated by it than actually brought down. Sometimes she repeats or mocks whatever dark thought crosses her mind out loud and it’s half-funny. I still reassure her that it’s not true, just in case she’s pretending to be strong, just in case they’re sounding too true to be a lie.

If it’s really bad, I can tell because she goes mute. I let her cry once she opens up to me. I hold her and I let her feel it until it passes. There’s no point in trying to be positive sometimes or pushing down her feelings when they’re there for a reason. She lets it out and then she feels embarrassed because she wonders how she could think it was true. It’s a cycle, one I’m used to feeling myself just as much as she is.

It’s harder for me than it is for her to open up. I’m not used to it. God knows I want to tell her, but the words turn to a knot in my throat and my tongue gets heavy as they rest there. I’m afraid I’ll burden her, even when I try to reason with myself that I’ve never felt like she was a burden for having feelings, it doesn’t help. Because she’s herself and I am me. Still, I think she’s learned to understand me, even in silence.

I love her.

She steps out of the bathroom with a cute flowery top and a green cardigan after about six minutes and I smile at her. She gleefully twirls her way to me with a playful, “hey, Sammy. Morning, handsome,” and quickly kicks off the slippers she’s wearing to jump on the bed. Sam laughs quietly and goes into the bathroom now that she’s done.

I immediately bring her in for a kiss. My fingers tangle in her hair and I moan when her tongue prods at my lips. I can taste her minty breath when her soft tongue slides into my mouth. My hands fall to her waist; hers rise to my face. She kisses me passionately, her fingers thread through my hair and she holds me in place. She starts sucking my tongue into her mouth and I don’t even know what to call the sound that came out of me. I grab onto her tightly, my head feels fuzzy, my body is warm and tingly everywhere as she devours me. When her tongue runs along my top teeth, I have to resist the urge to bite her tongue but she begins to trace the roof of my mouth and pushes my mouth closer to hers with her hand on my jaw.

When she pulls away, she’s breathless. Like me. A string of saliva breaks between our mouths when she gets off me and I wish we could linger on it, but I’m too dazed to bring her back. I know my hair is messy and I lick my mouth to taste her again. My eyes are fixed to her movements, I know I look dumb as I continue to stare at her while she digs through her duffle bag.

Her hips sway when she walks across the room and she bends over the table slightly to open the curtain. She has a small pink bag, and takes out a green hand mirror to use as she gets ready. I inhale and try to compose myself while she fixes her eyebrows.

“Can we talk about your dream so I’m not horny all day?” I asked, getting out of bed to get ready, too. She laughs and wiggles her brows experimentally. She seems satisfied and then takes out a lash curler.

“Okay, yeah,” she agrees with a smile, but quickly glares at the lash curler. She inhales sharply before nervously bringing the metal thing to her eye. I can tell she’s freaking out with its proximity, and I grin when she has to take a deep breath after pulling it away before trying again.

I take my jeans out of my own duffle bag and start to put them on while we talk, and I ask, “so you dreamed you hid something and you think it’s real this time?” She curls her lashes at last, three times for a few seconds and then she moves on to the other eye. She bats her lashes at the mirror and then she stares down at her bag thoughtfully.

“Yeah, it’s in your duffle bag, but I didn’t put it there. I watched someone else do it and they told me to find it when I wake up,” she explains with a frown, then she frowns harder. I stare at the bag and open it up but I don’t see anything strange. “I’m gonna be mad, too, because I’ve hidden awesome stuff that I want to have—when I dream sometimes, and I’ve never found them.” I chuckle quietly and shake my head, but I start rifling through it to find whatever she could be talking about.

“Why is it important that you find it?” I ask curiously and dump everything inside onto the bed. She takes out a pink bottle and gets the wand out to place a few wet dots of pink on her lips. She presses them together to evenly spread the colour and then puts two smaller dots on her cheekbones.

“I don’t know yet,” she trails off and closes the tint. She then evenly rubs the hue over her cheeks. “He told me that once I get it, he can tell me,” she puts the small pink bag away in the duffle bag again and gets on the bed on her knees to look for it with me.

She carefully grabs my shirts, unfolds them and folds them perfectly again before putting them inside my duffle. She does it over and over with my help, until I grab a flannel and out falls a white rock shaped like a tiny white planet.

“Aha!” She exclaims, just as Sam steps out of the bathroom, confused.

“What’s that?” Sam asks, walking over to us to analyse what she grabs excitedly from the bed.

“It’s a rock,” she grins happily. She must forget that Sam doesn’t know what’s so important about it or why I have it in my stuff, so I explain it all to him as I finish folding the rest of my clothes.

“Is that like an infinity stone or something?” I ask when Sam starts inspecting the white rock. She breaks, a soft laugh lights up her previously serious face, and she’s looking at me with the brightest eyes. Sam, on the other hand, ignores me.

“I can do some research when we get to the bunker,” Sam offers, handing her the rock, but she shakes her head.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Dream-Dean told me to take it to Rowena and I have to tell her that she has to use it on me,” she explains to us. I narrow my eyes at her when she says that to Sam. She was completely vague about the person she dreamt of at first, but now she’s saying I gave it to her in a dream? Or at least some other version of me did.

“And what, you trust this… uh,” I laugh bitterly, jealousy makes my face hot. “Dream-Dean? Seriously? He could be using my body to manipulate you.” She opens her mouth and then she closes it. She’s watching me. I know she’s trying to find a way to explain without sounding like I’m right.

“He was in my dreams,” she explained slowly, “and he didn’t look like you do now. He was more of a uh, hot, aged up version of you.” That did not make me feel any better, but I couldn’t deny that it was funny and flattering. I don’t feel as hot anymore, not since I’ve aged, but knowing she thinks otherwise makes me flush.

“Hot? Am I not fucking hot right now?” I ask playfully, staring straight at her. She gets flustered and she starts to stutter as she begins to deny what I’m saying.

“No.. you are hot- Shut up,” she grumbles. Her face is red and I smirk at her.

“Guys, please,” Sam interrupted, “let’s focus.”

“Yeah, stop flirting, babe, we need to focus,” I shake my head with a fake frown. I turn to Sam and resist a smile, even though he lets out an irritated sigh at the two of us. I can feel her behind me, I feel a tingle of thrill run up my spine, but steady my voice when I ask, “how does something from your dream appear in our world?”

Sam must think it’s a good question because he turns to look at her with a curious face. I feel her hand land at the small of my back, I can feel her warmth spread over my body, and then it moves away, leaving me cold, but I don’t expect the way she swats my ass.

“Uh… quantum physics?” She says, unsure. That distracts Sam from the way I jump, he acknowledges it, but ignores me to focus on her words. My ass stings a little, but honestly, even I’m intrigued by her words. “Pfft, I don’t know, I don’t remember anything from my physics degrees,” she snorted sarcastically.

“My general knowledge of that is the Ant-Man stuff,” I tell her with a serious face. She smiles affectionately, amusement glitters in her eyes, and she forces herself to look away when Sam comes up with a plan.

“I can get another hunter to take over the case,” Sam suggests, “Rowena’s a call away, we can head back to the Bunker while she meets us there.”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

“Is there anything special about this rock?” Sam askes Rowena, looking across the table as the redheaded witch uses her finger to read a few lines from the giant book. She picks up the rock, then tilts her head and her curls follow the movement.

“Well, it’s just Scolecite,” Rowena started, “but I can feel something very powerful inside.” Rowena takes the stone and brushes her thumb over the orb, then she carefully gazes past me. “Where did you say you got this from?”

I look behind me, and she has the cutest, wide-eyed look on her face when she looks up from the sandwich she’s eating. I bite my lip and smile at her, then I turn back to Rowena. “A… uh… alternative universe version of me gave it to her. Why?”

“It feels different,” Rowena pauses to think. “Everything in our world has a certain.. signature. This feels like it doesn’t belong to our world. It makes more sense to me now that I know it’s from another universe.” I nod slowly, trying to make something of that information. I wipe a hand down my mouth and I lean back, giving my attention to my favourite person in the whole world.

She passes the rest of her sandwich to me quietly and I eat it. It somehow tastes better than the one I made for myself, and I made both of them. She gazes at me as I eat, but she asks Rowena, “you can use it on me, though, yeah? It won’t be a problem?” We look away at the same time, Rowena looks amused and then she recollects herself.

“I can,” she confirms, then cautiously asks, “are you sure you want that?” It makes me worried suddenly. Was I really gonna let my girlfriend use some magical, dimensional rock we know nothing about just because some older version of me told her to?

“Should we not?” I ask earnestly.

“I’ve never done anything like… this,” Rowena admits, pushing the book slightly towards me, “it’s possible everything will go right, but it will be extremely painful. This rock is a vessel. It’s holding something massive and powerful inside, and I’ll be putting that inside her.” It makes me more nervous when she explains it like that. Is that why she didn’t want us to do research before, because she knew there were risks? I abandon the sandwich as it begins to make me feel sick, but I’m interrupted from asking more questions.

“Dean, it’s fine. All of you, please,” she said exasperatedly. “I’m going to do this and I’m not changing my mind. I’m sure and I can handle anything that happens, okay? And if I can’t, we can stop, but I’m trying again.” She was looking straight at me, but my eyes were glued to the sandwich that was making my stomach upset.

“I don’t get why you suddenly trust the guy,” I say quietly.

“It’s you, Dean, if I’m going to trust anyone, of course, it’s going to be you,” she replied steadfastly.

“Okay, but it’s not me.” I look at her and plead that she doesn’t go through with it.

“I know that you’re afraid, Dean, and you’re usually right about stuff like that, but I’m sure of this, okay?” She puts her hand behind my neck reassuringly. Her hand is cold and it makes me shiver, I shake my head.

“You’ve made up your mind, darlin’, that’s fine with me,” Rowena told her. I get up and I stare at everyone at the table in disbelief, but the only ones who look at me are Rowena who I know is curious about what will happen and my girlfriend who’s stubbornly made up her mind, but Sam doesn’t look at me, and I know he agrees with them.

“Seriously? We’re gonna do this knowing jack shit about this goddamn rock and what it’s gonna do to you when you use it?” I scoff and Rowena opens her mouth to explain something I won’t understand, but I turn away from them because, unlike them, I won’t be convinced otherwise.

I get to my room, but I don’t even know what to do with myself now that I’m doing nothing. I pace for a while and then I stand there. I look at the stuff that I keep in my room, the stuff I use to make these concrete walls feel like home. I don’t hear anyone behind me, I know they’re waiting for me to cool down before they come find me. I assume they’re preparing everything for the spell in the meantime.

I go to the box that sits on the floor at the foot of my bed and I kneel down to open it. Only I know what sits way at the bottom. One of the perks of doing my own shit without being told, is that I get to hide stuff because my girlfriend doesn’t need to clean my stuff when I’ve already done it.

I pull out an unsuspecting, small wooden box from the bottom. When I open it, three rings glitter in the light of my room, it makes me nervous. I feel butterflies in my chest as the white gold glares at me, the diamonds on the one in the middle sparkle almost magically. I can’t let her jeopardise everything, but I can’t bear how it’ll change us if I stop her. It’s one thing to date her, but marriage is a whole other story. It’s eternity, at least to me, and I don’t think anyone would want that from me.

I’m fucked up in ways I can’t change, in ways I can’t ever say. Unless it’s some random person I’ll never see again, some person I don’t go home to. I know I’ve hurt her by doing that. I itch for hunts if I go two weeks without one, but I complain about wanting a normal life. I have a drinking problem I don’t address. I get angry at the ones I love, sometimes it’s blown out of proportion on my part. I make stupid decisions for the people I love, end up destroying the world more than once, or I willingly give myself as a sacrifice. Sometimes it’s not even out of courage, sometimes it’s the microscopic size of my ego, the nonexistent love I have for myself, or the fact that I want to give up.

I hide my pain behind jokes and laughs. I’d rather leave and sabotage something good rather than risk being hurt. I’m trapped in a cycle I can’t break out of, not the way the love of my life has. I’m stuck in ways I was treated by my father, my enemies. I believe every hurtful word and I can’t see myself the way her and Sam do.

I like questionable shit. She thinks it’s cute, sometimes she thinks it’s hot, but I’m not fucking normal. I do questionable shit. Not just the hunting and the killing. I have blood on my hands, seeped deep into my soul and into my mind. I have nightmares and flashbacks that don’t go away.

I’ve whored myself out for money, for food, for Sam, because my dad asked me to on cases. I feel disgusted with myself sometimes. I wish I’d waited. Sex was great when it happened, I liked it, it took my mind off shit in my life, but afterward it’s horrible. When they left or I left, it was the grossest feeling. Even if I stay ‘till morning, it ain’t the same. As much as I’d like to say casual sex is healthy and normal. I can’t say that’s the case for me. It was worse when I started dating her. I felt unworthy, I don’t even think she cares about who I fucked in the past, but I do.

I know all these things are bad and I can’t fucking change it. I don’t know how to stop it, I don’t know where to even start with myself. I’m too fucked up, I think so, I can’t be fixed. I can’t possibly make her happy forever. I’ll fuck up along the road. She probably won’t forgive me. I never expect her to.

I hear a knock on my door and I close the box, casually putting it back inside before getting up. My knees creak and I feel old suddenly, tired, too. I turn around to face the woman I love most. She has the softest look in her eyes and her lips form the saddest smile.

I still wonder if she can see how ugly I am.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” I tell her, sitting down on the box. Her eyes flicker down to my shoes and she sighs, then steps forward.

“I never expected you to,” she murmurs. She wraps her arms around my neck and I bury my face in her stomach.

We stay that way for a while. She feels warm and comfortable, my hands rest on her hips and my thumbs brush beneath the cropped, white shirt she’s wearing. Her skin is soft and warm, I know she appreciates Cas’ healing, choosing to erase any damage from monsters we’ve encountered. She smells sweet and expensive, the scent of her perfume lingers on her clothes, it’s familiarity makes me warm inside.

I pull away to look up at her. She watches me curiously, her eyes drift over my face, and she looks content as she does it. I take her wrists shyly, I kiss her pulse like she’s done to me a billion times before, and I quietly admit: “I just can’t trust him, I’m afraid you’ll get hurt or something worse. I can’t do it. I can’t let you do it without knowing everything...”

“I know that,” she tells me. There's a hint of irritation in her voice that hurts me, but then she gets down onto her knees and takes my face in her hands. “I can’t control how you feel, Dean, I can only control how I feel, and I need to do this.” She explains it to me as gently as she can, and while I can understand where she’s coming from, I just don't care. I’d lock her in the dungeon if it meant she wouldn’t do it, but I know that’s extreme. I know she’d hate me for it, I’d hate to be controlled that way again, too. That’s the only thing that stops me. “Dean, please be with me when I do it,” she begs softly.

I want to cry and break something out of frustration. She’s stubborn as hell, just as much as I am. Instead, I grab her face and I kiss her roughly. She moans lowly, surprised by the suddenness of my affection, but she returns my kiss. I pour into her how much I hate this idea, how much I need her to listen to me, how much I love her.

When I pull away, she chases my mouth to continue the kiss, and I can’t deny her. She matches my possessiveness when I press my lips against hers again. I can tell what she's trying to say with the way she effortlessly slides her tongue into my mouth, tugs my hair, and draws a deep grunt from my chest. Her kiss is intoxicating and I suddenly regret teaching her everything she knows.

I pull away with so much effort and I pant against her wet lips. Her nose brushes against mine when she pulls back further to gaze at me. She returns with a smile and kisses the corner of my mouth. “If something happens-”

“It won’t,” she interrupts me. She kisses my jaw and I tilt my head in the direction that she pulls my hair.

“But if it does… I love you,” I confess, my voice raspy. Her lips freeze on my pulse and I feel my body go rigid. I know I’ve told her before and she’s reciprocated, but I still, always fear she won’t return the sentiment.

“If you only say that when you think we’re gonna die, I’d prefer that you never say it at all,” she said quietly, pulling away from me. I watch her sit down with an unreadable expression on her face and I wonder what she’s thinking as my heart sinks into the very hands that rest openly on her lap.

“Guys, everything’s ready,” Sam says softly from the door. We both look up at him and we nod without saying a word. He hesitates, watches us carefully, his clever eyes gather information, and then he walks away.

I help her up off the floor and the air around us is thick. There’s a distance between us and I wonder how fucked up we are that I don’t even know how we got to this point when just a few seconds ago, I had my mouth pressed aginst hers. I know that the problem goes deeper than just what’s happening now, but I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss the stuff that bothers her.

I feel a little hope spark in my chest when her hand brushes against mine, even though it hurts, I hope she doesn’t take it from me. Her slim fingers tickle my palm and I clasp her hand fully inside my own, walking with her slowly to where Sam and Rowena were waiting in the library.

Everything was shifted around the place, once we got there. The tables were pushed against the shelves so that there was a big open area now where Sam placed a plastic sheet over the wooden floor, to allow Rowena to paint marks over it for the spell. The air smelled spicy and flowery, tickling my eyes, the smoke made the library grey, and I felt sick again.

“Okay, I need you to lay down in the centre and hold the rock right here,” Rowena demonstrated to her once we stepped inside the library.

She did as Rowena asked. I felt more and more anxious as the minutes passed, but soon, Rowena was chanting some magic words in another language while Sam inspected what was happening like a good little apprentice. If anything went wrong I was ready to jump in and stop whatever the hell kind of spell they were working on. It would be reckless, but I can’t stand the thought of her getting hurt.

Nothing happens for a few minutes, but the rock starts to glow in the centre of her chest. It begins to crack, pure white light breaks through, and I look over to her face to check that she’s alright, but she looks more sleepy than in pain. I can tell she’s not really here by the empty look in her eyes she gets when she’s bored or deep in thought.

Despite the lack of discomfort in her face, I can’t seem to relax. I just know something will go wrong, it always does. I see Rowena move back slightly and I look over at the witch with concern before looking back at my girlfriend who’s surrounded by the right of pure white cloud that looks like a whole galaxy of bright dust with gold and opal.

It’s not until Rowena begins to aggressively chant her spell that I visibly start to freak out. It reminds me of possession, the way the cloud of smoke starts to rise to get inside her. The white rock bursts and sends pieces of itself flying across the room before it dives right into the centre of her chest where the rock had been before.

I can hear her start to cry and there’s suddenly pulses coming from her. She scrambles up suddenly and I walk towards her to help her get out, but Sam stops me with his hand wrapped tightly around my elbow. I freeze and watch helplessly as she hunches over while she sits on her legs, as if her stomach was hurting.

“Don’t fight it,” Rowena announced in between incantations, “control the way you feel.” I can hear her sobs and I yank my arm from Sam’s grip with a glare. When I get closer, Sam doesn’t stop me. She shouts and I can tell she lets go completely. Suddenly it’s like the polarity reverses, it just stops and it sits there before it begins to move inside of her faster, and it ends just as quickly.

It’s quiet now. I gaze down at her cautiously and I step forward as the glow in her chest dims and I can see that she’s crying. Tears are running down her face, but she looks up at me blankly.

“Are you okay? Did it hurt?” I ask her tenderly, kneeling down. I take her wrists and I can feel the erratic beat of her heart. I search her eyes and she’s smiling now, like that didn’t just happen.

“No, I’m fine,” she laughs softly. I break a smile, but I’m still worried, and I cup her warm face in my hands, wiping tears from her red cheeks.

“You’re crying,” I whisper, kissing her forehead. She pulls away and takes my hand to examine my wet thumbs. She looks at them with confusion and then wipes her wet eyes, seeing for herself that she’s definitely crying.

“Those aren’t my tears,” she tells me. Before I can say anything, I see the floor beneath us suddenly transform into hexagonal shapes, showing small places I’ve never seen before—like photographs.

“Dean!” I hear Sam shout, but then the woman in my arms yelps when it starts to fall apart underneath us and we fall through. There’s nothing around us when we're falling and we cling to each other. Suddenly, there’s another hexagonal thing in the middle of the dark abyss and we start to fall through it—inside a building instead. I’m certain we’re gonna die.

But as we get a few centimetres above ground, I tighten my grip around her small body and we stop. There’s no impact, no pain, no sound. I open my eyes and I see the marble floor as it grazes my nose and then we fall the last distance with no problem.

“See? Nothing bad happened, you are wrong sometimes, Dean.” I look up, away from the woman underneath me whose head is tilted up towards the familiar voice with a smile on her face. I see myself. Definitely an older version of me with stubble—almost a beard—and longer hair. He’s wearing a black turtleneck and a black coat. It looks fucking awesome, but I think this guy was flirting with my girl in her dreams, so I glare at him instead.

“Who are you? What is this place? And what did you do to my girlfriend?” The guy only laughs, he’s not looking at me, he’s looking down at her. She’s looking at him like she’s his biggest fan in the world, but under the silent stare it’s like there’s some inside joke I’m not a part of and I feel so irritated.

“I’m you, from a future that doesn’t exist anymore,” he starts, finally looking at me, “this place is.. well, mostly I watch the multiverse, I can see all the timelines, make sure no one’s in danger. The most important job is preventing God from doing what he did before.” I look around at the room we’re in. The walls are black—architecturally speaking, everything is geometric. The lights are dim and there are destroyed statues along the walls in the hallway. The floor is dark red, shiny, but only acts as a rug would. The ceiling is tall, almost endless, and I’m sure there is actually no ceiling at all. “As for what we did to her..'' he trails off and bites his lip. “Long story short, we gathered your variants before they were killed off by Chuck and we put their souls in the rock. When you absorbed it, it made you powerful, not a soul-bomb like Dean. I’m talking about your dreamwalking abilities,” he explains to her.

“We who?” I ask. He’s about to answer, but I’ve got a million questions running through my mind the longer he talks and the longer I’m here. “How many variants, or whatever, is that, then? Also, what do you mean she’s more powerful?” She reaches out for my wrist and I look down at her, but I can’t calm down, I can’t slow down. I have no idea where we are or why they want her here. “And what does Jack think about all this?”

The older me laughs and shakes his head at me. It pisses me off. He’s handsome, but I’ll punch him anyway.

“Come on, I’ve got a meeting soon,” he told us, then started walking down the seemingly endless hallway. The doors opened strangely, one door slid upwards, but behind it was another door that sunk down into the floor. When we stepped outside, everything was black, there was a faint white light in the distance and the body of what looked like a leviathan. Not the ones we know, but the things without a human meat suit.

“Is this the future or something?” I ask. It’s all terrifying. I look down and see there’s a whole other level, and it’s all connected like a maze or a labyrinth. The floor we walk on to the next pyramid-like building is an opaque crystal structure that I know is thick as hell, but I’m scared shitless anyway. There’s no wind blowing, not even a sound, but when the older version of me speaks, his voice bounces strangely around us.

“Uh… see that bright light? That’s the beginning of time, all of this here, is the end. We’re technically in between,” he clarifies.

“So… wait, she can time travel?” I ask, somewhat delighted at the thought.

“Yeah, dreams are the easiest way to time travel,” he chuckles, “I use Baby to time travel. It’s my personal, sexy TARDIS. Thanks to Jack, but he regrets that now.” He laughs heartily at that and I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty jealous of the fact that he’s upgraded to a time travelling Impala. “Anyway… uh, there were only twenty six other variants of you,” he tells her. The small number shocks me, but I don’t dwell on it for long because she doesn’t seem phased. I’ll have to talk about that with her later. “And that portal you fell through? That’s what your abilities do now. When Jack would use your abilities, you could see them like picture frames in your mind, but now you can access them at any point, whenever you want.”

I look above and I can see there’s still more monuments above us somehow floating in the air, or maybe they’re being held by another structure, but I’m not sure. If we weren’t outside, risking our lives and falling off the walkway, I’d be amazed by this place. Whatever it is.

“As for what Jack thinks of this place,” he laughs heartily and looks at us. I can see sadness in his eyes, he can’t hide his emotions from me, but I don’t think he cares about that because he doesn’t look away. “I think I annoy him so much he doesn’t even care what I do anymore, besides he can’t destroy this place. It’s God-proofed. As for you, he won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“I don’t understand why you want me to be powerful,” she wonders out loud to him after a while. We’re standing by another door, this one opens like elevator doors, and the room is brighter. There’s gold, sparkling gems, and giant jewels scattered on the floor.

“I just wanted to find a way to keep you safe indefinitely,” he told her with a shrug. I pause for a moment, maybe he’s not as bad as I made him out to be. This whole time I was busy thinking he was endangering her, but he might actually be trying to keep her safe. I still think there’s something romantic going on, considering that it’s me, considering that he’d go through all that trouble to keep her safe. I wouldn’t do all that for just anyone. “I’m always checking on you, making sure you’re safe. I honestly spend so much of my time focusing on you instead of the whole multiverse,” he admitted bashfully. “I don’t think that’s a problem, but.. I think I’m in love with you enough, and you’ve already got your Dean. Also… I have people depending on me to focus on the job, which is way better than hunting, honestly,” he laughed nervously.

I narrowed my eyes at him for admitting that. He doesn’t seem phased because I look over and she’s blushing, trying to act normal. She’s never had a reaction like this to any other man who’s hit on her, but now that it’s someone who has my face, she’s acting the way she acts with me when I do it. I know she can’t control it, it’s me after all, but it makes my chest burn with jealousy.

“Listen, dude, I get that you’re all fucking awesome with your costumes and running this place, but stop hitting on her, okay?” I ask sarcastically with a tight smile.

“Dean,” she scolds me. She grabs my sleeve, tugs lightly, and she looks so fucking adorable right now, it’s making it hard for me to stand my ground.

“No, okay,” I groan exasperatedly, tugging away from her. “What the fuck, guys? I mean… seriously. Nothing in our lives is normal, but this shit is literally- I don’t even know what to make of any of this! It’s fucked up, you’re in love with her and you’ve never met her? What the hell?” I tug at my hair and then I slide my hands tiredly down my face.

She blinks up at me like I just told her the most insane conspiracy theory and I sigh. Her face softens and she hugs me instead of saying something. She nuzzles her face into my chest and I hear her breathe me in. Her arms are tight around my waist and I finally return her embrace, I kiss the top of her head, and my entire body releases the tension I’ve been keeping inside me since we started talking to Rowena.

“I get it. It’s me and you don’t even trust yourself,” the other Dean begins, “but when we sleep, we dream about each other's lives. We dream of her.” She pulls away from me and I force myself to look away to consider his words. “All of us. In every universe, every version of you. We see how close to happily ever after you are with the kindest, loving, most caring woman to exist in the entire multiverse. We want what you have, as fucked up as everything else in your life is, you’ve got this one good thing. And you do so much to fuck it up. You don’t have to trust us, but trust that she’ll stay with you.”

I think quietly to myself. As much as it irritates me, I should put myself in her shoes, too. She has to deal with hundreds of girls flirting and throwing themselves shamelessly at me and she never makes a big deal out of it. It’s because she trusts me that she doesn’t give a shit what they say or do. She jokes with me when they give me their numbers, claiming she’ll give them a call when she needs someone to babysit me. If they flirt, she’ll teasingly repeat it and bother me about it for the rest of the day. Whatever it is, she laughs and makes the best of something people would feel generally insecure about. That’s because at the end of the day, she’s the one I’m sleeping next to, she’s the one I’m waking up to, she’s the one who spends every second of every day at my side.

Nobody can compete with that.

The sound of doors opening thankfully breaks the silence. I don’t have to admit he’s right, but I look down at her in my arms, and her eyes tell me she knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“Sir, I’ve been look-” another voice that sounds like mine breaks us apart and I’m only half-surprised to see myself wearing that stupid Ken Doll suit Zachariah dressed me in for kicks to prove a stupid fucking point. “Oh…” Like the older version of me, he gawks at the woman who’s standing in front of me.

“Dean, this is.. well, this is ridiculous actually, I don’t gotta introduce us,” older Dean chuckles. The younger looking version of me has a cart with cardboard boxes and he continues to bring them towards us. “Also, don’t call me sir, we’ve talked about this,” he adds good-naturedly with a smile and a shake of his head.

“Uh, sorry. Hi,” Ken-Doll steps closer to her and, of course, my woman is on cloud nine. “Wow, you’re way more beautiful than I dreamed,” he breathes out. I puff my cheeks trying to hold back saying something snarky in response. But all self-control nearly leaves my body when she fucking giggles shyly and rubs the back of her neck.

“Okay!” Older Dean did something before I did, and the spell between Ken and my lover broke. “Did you get the files for Lush?” He asks Ken-Dean, giving me the side-eye, as if to tell me to cool down. I swear every version of me has gotten on my nerves without me having to meet any of them.

“Yeah… uh, yes, we’ve got her background, which universes she actually exists in, her status, what’s she’s currently doing, what she can do… y’know, the basics,” Ken informs him. Older me takes off the top of one of the boxes, sifts through files, and nods his head proudly.

“Great, so the team you’re leading? It’s all good?”

“Yes, we’ll be focusing on this case for the time being, keeping an eye on her,” he discloses, “we all agree she could be a danger to the timeline.” Both me and her are completely absorbed in the conversation they’re having. I’m curious about whatever the fuck they’re doing and why all those words sound so badass in a sentence together.

“We’ll talk about that later.”

“Right, the meeting, let’s walk together?”

Older Dean gave me a tight smile and I followed them both with my quiet girlfriend by my side. I should relax, there’s no harm in being in love with someone so long as they don’t make a move and I have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to her. She’s still standing next to me, her hand finds my wrist and I tug her into my side. She stumbles and laughs softly, letting me put my arm around her shoulders while she wraps her arm around my waist.

In just a few minutes, we walk by a whole bunch of me’s wearing soldier-like uniforms, they’ve all got numbers across their backs, a logo of a shooting star with the words ‘THE MONUMENT’ on their chest. Despite having been serious, they cracked upon seeing her, too. Their faces carried little smiles after passing her and her cheeks were red from all the attention she was getting.

“So, do we get chosen by Jack or how does this whole thing work?” I ask, trying to get her attention away from the hot soldiers. At least I know she’s attracted to me in every shape and style.

“Jack has no power here,” the older me reassured us again. “Typically, after the variants lose everything or once they die, they’re given the option to come here… we’re never surprised that they prefer to be here, surrounded by the rest of us, getting a chance to be closer to you.”

“Can’t be easy facing each other, knowing how you are,” she says astutely. I was thinking the same exact thing.

“Yeah, well… you changed all of that for us,” this time Ken spoke up. She looks up at them attentively and a little smile tugs at her lips.

There’s another me leaning against the wall by the door we’re about to go into. He’s smoking a cigarette and he’s covered in tattoos. I can see them peek out of the neck of his t-shirt, both arms are covered in sleeves of art, and he smirks as soon as he sees her. I roll my eyes, I know what to expect from every version of me that I see. Especially if they feel some sort of gratitude towards her for undoing all the horrible things they were put through against their will.

“Fuck, baby, look at you,” he praised. He even has the audacity to take her chin between his fingers and angle her face in his direction. She averted her gaze shyly, but I can tell she melts into him, especially when he brushes his thumb gently across her lip. He bites his own and I think about how lucky they are that she loves them because they’re alternative me’s. “At least one of us got lucky.” He let her go gently and took another drag of his cigarette before getting out of the way to get inside the room with us.

“Which Dean is that?” She asks quietly, but I can sense a bit of excitement in her tone. I squeeze her against my side as a warning, but she snorts at me.

“The original Dean Chuck had in mind,” older me replied, holding the door open for a few other ‘variants’ of myself to enter after us.

“Hot,” she hummed flagrantly.

“Sweetheart,” I beg quietly. It makes both the older and younger me laugh.

“Dean, it’s the truth, but I’m messing with you,” she laughs, too.

“You’re unbelievable.” Still, I can’t stop the smile on my face.

“You’d do the same if you were in a room filled with a bunch of other variants of me,” she reasoned, dragging me over to where there were empty seats. It wasn’t next to the older me, or Ken me, or tatted me. Next to her was a variant of me with a beard, a plaid neckerchief like a cowboy, wearing a tactical vest. Next to me was an alternate version of me wearing a black t-shirt with a firefighters’ logo.

Now that I’m sitting here looking at every variant of me around the hexagonal table, I start to realise this is literally a room filled with her sex fantasies of me. I can recall having worn most of these costumes when we have roleplayed for sex. She would dress up in something sexy for me, too, it was our thing.

I leaned towards her as the older-me started talking about that Lush chick Ken-me had been talking about. She leans into me to listen closely to what I have to say. “D’ya think they’ve seen us have sex?” I whisper discreetly. I notice the way her eyes widen and pink starts to glow over her cheeks. “Maybe… think they’ve had a little love session with their hand thinking of you? I don’t doubt it..” I whisper crudely. She shifts in her seat and I feel so smug now, I grab her rolling chair and I pull her closer.

“I bet they’re always thinking of you. Even after bangin’ some random chick, they wish it was you in their bed. They’re probably single on purpose, miserable with anyone that isn’t you. I would be. I’d never be able to settle down with anyone as long as I dream of you. I’d be happier alone than with some girl I like halfway, knowing my whole heart and soul belongs to you and you alone. Ever across the entire multiverse. I’d choose you.” I press my lips to her warm cheek, then I let my mouth move over hers to kiss her properly. She tilts her head in my direction and accepts my tongue into her mouth when I tease the seam of her lips.

“Dean,” I hear older-me’s voice. I pull away from her mouth and I lick my lips, staring down at her as she tries to recompose herself. Everyone is staring at us and I know they’re definitely me because they don’t even look away when I catch them.

“I’m not sorry about that,” I say smugly, “you all wanna do it anyway.” I feel her hand squeeze my thigh and I stay quiet, but so does the rest of the room. After a few minutes of silence, older-me starts to talk again about a plan of action in case Lush gets out of hand. I lean forward again and I ask her one last thing, “you want them to fuck you, don’t you?”

She blushes harder somehow and she takes the cold glass of water in front of her to cool down. I don’t need her to answer verbally, her body language is enough to tell me just what she’s thinking. My brain starts to imagine ways I could fulfil her fantasy when the bearded-me talks to her and asks, “did the boss tell ya what he did, then?”

He appears more thoughtful about the question he asks than like he wants to gossip. The question piques my interest and I lean towards him. He’s watching us closely, there’s no jealousy or envy, his presence is just full of love and respect like every other me has exuded since we’ve crossed paths. “‘S nothin’ we all wouldn’t do,” he defends, almost as if he thinks I’m trying to get proof that this place is too good to be true. Like a true me, he suspects I’m waiting for the shoe to drop.

“What did he do?” I asked, hoping I didn't sound urgent. The three of us lean in as subtly as we could to hear each other.

“He disintegrated his whole timeline by saving you.”

➥ the love letter collection : part two

taglist

@rominaszh @livingdeadmak @lanassmarty @murdockscumsock @zepskies @candy-coated-misery0731 @kellynickelss @stxrgazer03 @epsilonsagittarii @lyarr24 @spnfamily-j2 @jessllianaquilesrolonworld @globetrotter28 @deansbbyx @lickmybawls @jackles010378 @winchstrdean @deanwinchestersgirl87 @the-achievementhunter @laylaackles @deanfreakingwinchester @k-slla @madzzz0797

main masterlist

dean winchester masterlist

jacklesversebingo23 masterlist

do not steal, plagiarise, translate, or republish my work on another platform

#dean winchester x reader #jacklesversebingo23 #dean x female!reader #dean x y/n #dean x you #dean x reader #dean winchester smut #dean winchester #supernatural

185 notes · View notes

vgtrackbracket · 4 months ago

Text

Video Game Track Bracket Round 2

Bio-engineering from Rain World

youtube

vs.

The Only Thing I Know for Real (Maniac Agenda Mix) from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

youtube

Propaganda under the cut. If you want your propaganda reblogged and added to future polls, please tag it as propaganda or otherwise indicate this!

Note: The propaganda contains spoilers for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

The Only Thing I Know for Real (Maniac Agenda Mix):

This song is about Jetstream Sam and how disillusioned he has become to fighting, especially after losing to Senator Armstrong. Sam only knows how to kill and has no reason why he's killing. It mirrors Raiden (the main character) who fights people for justice and to protect the weak, Sam fights just because.

Every single boss fight in Metal Gear Rising is all instrumental until you hit "critical" points in the fight, when the vocals come in. Not only does it make the scene feel even more epic, the lyrics apply to both the boss being fought AND the game's protagonist, Raiden. In this case, it's about their loss of identity, feeling that they have to fight all the time and sometimes that's all there is to them, and yet when the thrill of the battle is over their doubts and inner conflict still remains. Sam (the boss you fight) actually showed up and fought you at the beginning of the game, a battle you are scripted to lose. There are no lyrics during this fight, because Raiden isn't at a point where he can face up to him yet; they don't understand each other, and Sam even tells Raiden that he denies his weapon its purpose, because the sword Sam uses is a family heirloom destined to bring justice until he was misguided/strayed off the path he thought he'd be on. Their conflict starts at this point and it rises until you finally fight Sam as the second to last boss. There is also a moment where Raiden disarms Sam, but the fight goes on. The lyrics cut off abruptly in this moment, and they only continue when Sam picks his sword up again. People theorize this is because without his sword, this whole conflict of whether he's using his weapon for what it was meant to or what he thought he would disappears (since he's no longer using it), and maybe if he would stop fighting or if he tried to follow his ideals again and not just fight for the sake of fighting, he'd resolve those doubts. We'll never know because he does die 😔 but as every other boss in MGR, he parallels Raiden, maybe the most aside from the final boss (in my opinion lol) & the way the soundtrack reflects this, as well as characterizes him greatly, AND generally goes hard as hell is honestly amazing. Play MGR yall

78 notes · View notes

rafeyscurtainbangs · 3 months ago

Text

Please Please Please - Rafe Cameron Short Story (Part 4 of 6)

+18 Minor DNI

Older MobDealer!Rafe x Female Reader

⭐ NEW DROP ⭐

+18 Minor DNI

3584 words

⚠️ smut heavy chapter; could be read as a one shot if you start at the bottom of part 3 (pink text) - please scroll to the bottom if you're just reading for angst ⚠️

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Warnings contain spoilers: blood, cheating, swearing, name-calling, threats, and mentions of killing partner, kissing, general violence, smut warning, fingering, oral sex (male receiving), unprotected sex, rough oral, cum play, mentions of illegal drugs, guns, ownership kink, pet names.

a special thank you to @drewstarkeys-world for beta reading! I'm always looking for beta readers if you are interested

Loosely based on the song and music video Please Please Please by Sabrina Carpenter 💕

✨"Fuck, princess," he moans loudly, “What are you doin’ to me. Huh? Y’gotta stop makin’ this so hard.”✨

Sexual content in pink if you want to avoid that 🩷

Reader's POV:

"Shit..." He breathes as you work your way down, nails scratching along his deep v-lines to the stiff bulge in his designer slacks, watching goosebumps spread across his tanned skin. You palm his cock, long and thick, far bigger than any you've ever had, pressed firmly against the tight fabric on his thigh. Rafe moans and groans at the feeling, breathing faster than before. “It’s a strip club, princess. You gonna strip for me too?” He pants through a lusty smile as you rise on your heels.

“Yes, baby.” You reach behind your back, lowering your zipper, peeling off the bodice. Rafe's mouth parts, a needy moan falling from his lips.

"Oh god," he mumbles, eyes transfixed on your breasts, caressed in lace. You were ready, your curves hugged in a brand new bra and panty set just for him. Turning around you pull your zipper lower, right below the V of your thong, your ass swallowing up the rest. You tug your dress over your hips, letting it fall to your heels. “I don't know how much more I can take,” Rafe groans as he widens his thighs, yanking his shirt the rest of the way off, tossing it toward the No Touching plaque with a sleazy laugh. “Shit doesn't apply me, now does it?” Rafe asks as he stretches his big arms along the back of the leather couch.

“‘Course not, daddy,” you smile, giving him a cheeky wink before bending over, letting your hands run down the length of your bare legs to your ankles, strapped in heels. His large, rough hands move up the valley of your thighs. He grabs your hips, and leans in, pulling your ass even closer to his face. You bring your hand between your thighs, tracing the wet lace. “You can do whatever you’d like to me. M’yours after all,” you smile as you snake up, turning toward him. Rafe takes your hand in his, kissing the top before taking your fingers between his lips, tasting you. He moans around your fingers at the taste, eyes rolling back. “Sweet?”

“So fucking sweet.”

You reach down, tugging at the leather of his belt. Rafe takes his cue, pulling it the rest of the way open as you reach behind your back, unhooking your bra. Rafe pitches his hips, yanking his pants down his muscular thighs, letting them bunch at his ankles. You look down at him, eyes widening as you take him in; black, skin-tight boxer briefs bunched up slightly on his leg. His shaft and head stick out the bottom, strangled in cotton, leaking from the tip, dripping slightly down his inner thigh.

"Holy shit," you whisper, as you trace his dick softly, making his muscles flex, rubbing his precum into his swollen tip as he observes, dick pulsing with each brush of your fingers. "So fucking big, baby." You hail, cleaning up the rest of the mess, bringing it to your glossed lips before sucking it clean.

"Yeah?" He smirks, fully aware, quick to pull his boxers down as well; his heavy cock smacking his toned stomach. “That okay, princess?”

"Is that okay?" You repeat his words, giggling dizzily at the ridiculousness of the question as Rafe expels a deep laugh that has you dripping too. He pulls you closer, leading you to straddle him, your soaked core presses against his hot body. "I need your cock so bad, Rafe. You have no fucking idea." A deep moan roars in his throat as you wrap your fingers around the base of his thick dick, holding it straight, marveling at it in your hand. You tap it against your body, the size of him reaching slightly above your belly button.

Rafe gaze drifts from your eyes to your panties as you slip them to the side, running your fingers through your soaked slit. "You are the most beautiful fuckin' thing, y/n," he hums. Rafe reaches down, ripping one side, then the other. "Your body… Fuck. My girl looks so damn good. Holy shit," he pants as his large hands cups your soaked cunt.

Your hands are rest on his chest, feeling his rapid heartbeat underneath. He's safe. Tears well in your eyes, feeling more in this moment than you had in a long time; safe, worshiped, loved. You move your hands a little higher, hooking both around the back of his neck as you start to roll your body. Rafe's eyes roam slowly, taking in every curve. He loosens his grip on your hips, allowing you to take control, still maintaining contact. You work in slow rhythmic movements, swiveling and screwing your hips into him, giving him a private dance.

You start to bounce up and down, ass slapping against his lap. "Holy shit," Rafe huffs, his hooded eyes fighting to stay open as he watches your tits. Rafe slips his hands around to your ass, spanking one cheek, then the next. “You need my cock, baby?” He asks, desperately, unable to take much more teasing. “You fuckin’ do. Shit. Where do you want it?”

"My pussy, baby. Can I ride you?"

"You wanna ride me, sweetheart?" He groans, wrapping his hands around the back of your neck, pulling you toward him. “Here, princess? You sure?” He asks as his smile stretches along your lips.

"Mmm... Please," you mumble before sucking and biting his lip. Rafe's mouth crashes into yours, kissing you as you rise a little higher, taking hold of his length.

You brush Rafe's cock through your soaked silk, swirling slowly around your entrance. Your mouth parts with his as you widen your thighs, feeling him start to stretch you out. You take all of him, whimpering as you sit flat on his lap, feeling like he's splitting you in two. "Fucking hell, y/n," he groans in pleasure. Rafe's eyes fall shut, head falling back as you clench your walls around him, hugging him tight. "Pussy feels too good, sweetheart. Are you okay?"

Rafe’s beautiful blue eyes lock on your. His focus sending shivers down your spine; your tears, slip down your cheeks. Rafe pulls back slightly as you drag back up, letting out a drawn-out moan as he sees his cock a mess with you. "Feels so good, baby,” you mewl.

“You're doing so good for me. Taking me so well," he hums, gliding his thumbs along your cheeks, catching your tears. "You'll never need anyone else, I swear princess. I gotchu."

He's got me.

You feel a surge of emotion coursing through you, more tears start to build, not just tears of pleasure, tears of overwhelming joy. A choked cry trips from your lips as you go to respond. "I don't want anyone else, baby."

Rafe grabs your hips, pulling you close, breathing rapidly against your lips. "What's goin’ on, princess?"

"I'm really, really happy, Rafe... I'm sorry,” you sniffle.

“Why are you sorry, baby?” He chuckles nervously, his voice breathless as he tries to get you to calm down.

You take a gasping breath, his beautiful loving eyes doing nothing but pulling out more emotion from you. “I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done for me. I can't believe what you did for me-”

"You're my girl, baby. You are all that matters to me. I keep you safe. You keep me grounded. I love you. You love me. Don't be sorry. This is the happiest day of my life.” You smile blissfully, hearing his sweet words, throwing your head back to blink back tears. "We have to stop, princess."

Your stomach falls, eyes widening; cheeks blazing with embarrassment. You pull back quickly, matching his gaze. "Wha-What? Why?" You stammer, feeling your heart shatter.

“Don’t get upset, baby. Please,” Rafe soothes as he tucks your hair back, looking at you with adoring eyes. “I just - I want to take you out tonight, share a bottle of wine, some dessert, bring you back to the penthouse, and make love to you on our bed. I don't want our first time havin’ sex to be in a champagne room at your ex's strip club. You mean too much to me.”

“You mean so much to me,” you whimper, cleaning your tears with the back of your hand. You wrap your arms around his neck, leaning into his lips.

“I love you, y/n.”

“I love you, Rafe.”

“I know you do, baby.”

“Our bed?" You whisper through a soft smile.

“Our bed, princess.” Rafe’s hands drift down your body, resting on your hips again. He squeezes them a little tighter; tension building again. Rafe guides you to grind your hips, urging you to ride his fat cock before reluctantly rocking you to a lull.

"Are you sure you want to stop," you ask through a sniffled giggle.

"No," he answers flatly, making you laugh. "I can't believe I'm sayin’ any of this shit. You broke me.”

You chuckle and smile, cockwarming him as you run your hands through the hair at the nape of his neck. His eyes fall lower, studying the shape of your body in his, catching the way the wetness of your pussy pools at the base of his throbbing dick, thinking about just how messy he could get you.

"Fuckk… Maybe just a little more," Rafe breathes as he holds your hips a little firmer. You let out a flighty laugh, unable to fight your happiness as you see just how insatiable he is for you, following his lead as he works you on his hard dick, hitting the perfect spot each stroke. You meet his thrusts, grinding to the beat of the song. Your wetness slicks his cock, dripping down his balls and making him shiver. “I - Fuckin’ hell,” he mutters. “Mmpfh. We have to stop,” he chides, his movements still keeping time with yours, the man doing anything but stopping. "Bounce, baby."

His groans and praise fill your ear— cologne and sex fill your nose. You steady yourself on his muscular chest, nails digging in slightly as Rafe watches your body move, eyes trained on you like you're the only thing he sees. His bottom lip tucks between his teeth, brows pinched together.

"St-Stop," he stutters, making you giggle devilishly again. He slaps your ass as playfully as punishment for exposing his weakness. You.

“Rafe!" You squeal with delight as he manhandles you to your back, your pretty pussy still stuffed full of his cock. He rolls his toned hips, skin striking skin as he fucks in and out.

"Fuck, princess," he moans loudly, “What are you doin’ to me. Huh? Y’gotta stop makin’ this so hard.” His ruddy head brushes against your g-spot; body pressing and grinding against your puffy, sensitive clit. Your back arches off the leather seat, stopping Rafe in his tracks.

"Enough..." He grumbles, rolling his eyes, fighting off every primal urge to continue as he scolds himself. The muscles in his neck, arms, and chest flex above you as he physically fights himself back. “M’gonna-” he growls in frustration, letting his words trail off. “I’m going to have you screamin’ all night princess. I'm gonna fuck you to sleep. Then I'm gonna eat you awake. I swear to god,” he groans as he buries his body in yours, pouting pathetically.

Rafe pulls back and you grab his cheeks, kissing him deeply; expelling a breath as he pulls out. You gasp as he stuffs two fingers deep instead, curling them slightly. "Yes," you whimper, your eyes fluttering shut. Rafe ramps to your tempo again. Your little whimpers and cries become more frequent and breathless by the second. "Mmm... Rafe. J-Just like that," you beg.

He lowers himself to your neck, kissing you wetly as his big fingers rut in and out. “Mmm… Princess, you're that close. Huh? Almost came on my cock. Didn'tchu? You’re so damn wet. So… Fuckin’… Soaked…” He grunts, punctuating each word with a push of his hand, letting his large palm clap against your clit, his digits bullying your g-spot again and again. "Gettin’ so tight around me, princess? Are you gonna cum," he hums, his old money drawl thick as he thrust his body against you with each movement too. You open your eyes, pouting your lip, consumed fully with pleasure as blissful tears fall this time. “Cum for me-”

“Mmm—Fuck, Rafe!" You cry out his name, pussy pulsing around his long fingers. His eyes roll back as you make a mess of his hand and thighs.

“Ugh, that's it, baby…” He sighs, envious of his own hand as he works you through it with his fingers. Your wet pussy squelches obnoxiously, making the blonde smile smugly. He catches your rapid breathing, hand tracing up the center of your body, slipping between your lips, letting you suck for a moment. You swirl your tongue around his digits, cleaning yourself off his gold ring.

“That was so good, baby,” you mumble drunkenly as Rafe attacks your neck with his soft lips before landing on your own. “Am I gonna get to thank you before dinner?” You plead as you glide your tongue along his bottom lip, catching a hint of his blood.

“These lips around my dick, baby? Sounds like heaven,” he mutters between kisses. You meet his lips one last time, moving to his jaw; a little further to his neck. Rafe’s eyes follow the trail of wet kisses, lowering with you, watching you as you drop to your knees, slotting yourself between his strong thighs. You lick a line up the center of his toned stomach, tracing the divot of his abs.

"Mmm... Yes, baby," he praises you as you wrap your hand around his cock, watching as his hazy eyes shut softly. You sweep your tongue along the bottom, feeling every ridge and vein, working your way up to the tip as his fingers drift into your hair. Rafe follows your guide as you work down his shaft inch by inch, pushing yourself to see how much of him you can take. His warm tip kisses the back of your throat. You can feel the blood pumping in his cock on your tongue. You fuck his aching cock deep into your throat, vision clouding as tears gather in your eyes.

Your warm tears roll down your cheeks, making Rafe smirk. "Good girl," he groans. "Look at you. Shit." Rafe's hips jostle, the muscles in his thighs tightening under your hands. Popping off his cock you kiss his tip before opening your mouth wide, slapping his dick against your tongue. "So fuckin' perfect." Rafe pitches his hips, dick driving into your throat, taking you by surprise. You relax your throat as he picks up pace; the squelching of spit, groans, and muffled moans fill the champagne room as he pumps deep. You gag on his cock, making his eyebrows furrow. "Gonna cum. I'm going to fill that pretty mouth. Are you ready, baby? You going to be a good girl n’take it?"

“Mhmm…” Your voice comes out in a garbled mess as Rafe throws his head back, praising your name; his heavy load coating your throat as he cums hard. You drop your hands, gripping his thighs, feeling his muscles clench.

"Fuckkk, baby" he groans, wiping a glaze of sweat off his forehead; blonde fringe clinging to his skin as he looks back at you in awe. You swallow and suck lightly, drawing off him slowly. "Co’mere, princess," he says, pulling you back onto his lap. “That was so damn good,” he praises as his eyes drift open slowly, greeting yours as he holds you in his arms. "You are so beautiful, y/n... Every goddamn inch." He whispers.

"So are you, baby.”

“I’ve never had anything like this, y/n. I've never had anyone like you,” he mumbles as he presses a kiss against your forehead. “M’always gonna keep you safe. M’always gonna take care of you, baby.”

“I know you will,” you whisper, with a confidence that has his heart melting even more. The song changes overhead, as even more time passes, the two of you lingering at the crime scene, with a gun in hand, too consumed in the moment to consider the risk. “We better go," you whisper.

He chuckles and sighs. "Nah, princess. A few more minutes…” Rafe draws you close and you cuddle in tight. His big hands trace the curve of your spine, before binding around your waist.

“I love you, baby,” you whisper.

“I love you more… You’re mine,” he breathes through a satisfied breath.

“Yours.”

⨯ . ⁺ ✦ ⊹ ꙳ ⁺ ‧ ⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . * ꙳ ✦

The doorman draws the door open for the two of you, quickly shutting it; closing off the chaos of the Charleston nightlife. A dark, exclusive speakeasy; the rest of the restaurants in the area long closed by now. You look around, elegant plates and rolled cigars; men in tailored suits with beautiful women hanging on their arm sipping dark liquor in rocks glasses. You step to the side, waiting for the hostess.

You can feel Rafe’s stare out of the corner of your eye, sending tingles through your body. He steps a little closer, wrapping his arm around your waist, his heavy hand and the smell of him blurring your senses. You focus on his soft and slow breathing as his fingers toy with the satin material at your hip.

“Right this way." The two of you follow her through the dining room, disappearing into an even more intimate location in the back.

“Here you are,” she smiles, gesturing to the booth. Rafe helps you in before sliding in close. He relaxes into the seat slightly, thighs widening. Just like he was earlier in the night, giving you butterflies. You feel the warmth of his body against your bare leg, his knee resting lightly against yours, making him smirk. “Bottle of red wine?” He asks you as soon as the waitress arrives.

You smile and nod. “Whatever you want, baby. Just not this,” you tap on the menu, illuminated by the soft candle light, your manicured finger pointing to the Tokara Telos. Rafe nods, choosing a bottle twice the price instead; ordering dessert as well.

“Sweet tooth, Mr. Cameron?”

Rafe lifts your hand, kissing the top. “Mmm… Mhmm.” He smiles and winks. “S’why I'm addicted to you, princess.”

The waitress comes back, uncorking, pouring two glasses before stepping away. "Cheers," you bubble, clinking your glass against his.

The two of you sit back and relax, sipping the rest of your wine, so decadent and smooth between bites of chocolate cake. It’s all so beautiful, plush booths and mahogany finishes, tobacco smoke rolling, adding to the ambience. Everything looks expensive, including the people in it—mobster and gangsters; kingpins. Your eyes drift higher, catching the ruby red chandelier hanging overhead as Rafe lips meet your neck, kissing you softly.

Chills fall down your spine; his strong hand squeezes your thigh. He slips the tips of his fingers just under the hem of your dress, rubbing your skin softly. You feel a warmth fall over your body—a light pulse between your thighs. "Fuck, y/n," he breathes, watching your hand move, feather-soft touches over the outline of his length, stiffening and pressing against his zipper. Rafe leans over, meeting your ear, breathing softly. "You ready to get out of here, baby," he hums as you your cheek against his.

“Rafe Cameron?”

Rafe lingers for a moment,swallowing thickly the next, doing his best to remain calm. The two of you were too distracted even to notice the team of police officers who’d stormed the premises. “Can I help you?” Rafe asks as he reaches into his pocket, handing you the keys again; a silent conversation, ‘remember the plan’. Your emotions start to build again, throat and chest tightening. “What’s this about, officers?”

“You’re being arrested for possession of illegal substances with the intent to sell. And, possession of an illegal firearm.”

Rafe sucks his teeth and scoffs, relaxing in his seat with a bothered grimace, waving them away as he hears the accusations. “You got the wrong guy.”

“We have a Mercedes in valet with 500 grams of coke and a loaded AR-15. The vehicle is registered in your name-”

“I bought that car this mornin’. Shit’s not mine,” he spits as his face reddens with rage.

“It was in your car. Sir-“

“That shit’s not mine!” Rafe booms, slamming his giant fists against the table, making the china and glasses clatter and clang. The officers raise their guns, pointing them directly at the two of you. Rafe quickly catches the horror in your eyes. You look away as tears roll down your cheeks, catching stares and whispered conversations between the few guests around you. “I’m tellin’ you,” he breathes deeply self-soothing before turning his eyes to the officer, “that is not mine.”

Rafe rises to his feet, drawing the rest of the eyes around you to him, the man towering over the two officers as he turns around, presenting them with his wrists behind his back, remaining stoic. You slip out of the booth, rising to your feet, standing chest to chest with him as they lock him in cuffs.

“Go to our place, princess. Please don’t leave until I tell you to. It’s going to be alright,” he whispers. You nod frantically, knowing they will pull you away if you get any closer. Depending on how heavy-handed they are with you, this possession charge could turn into murder fast.

If looks could kill the officer reading him his Miranda Rights would be gone. Rafe was serious, there was no one else he trusted to keep you safe, now you were alone. Your beautiful night changed course fast and he felt the sting of that loss as well. The only place the two of you wanted to be was together.

“I love you,” you whisper through sniffles.

“I love you too, princess.”

Part 5

For fic drops please follow and turn on notifications for @curtainbangs-updates

my masterlist 🔮

tag list

#rafeyscurtainbangs library 📚#rafe cameron x you #rafe cameron smut #rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron outer banks #rafe Cameron #Rafe #rafe smut #older rafe cameron #mob!rafe #rafe fluff #rafe angst #rafe cameron x female reader

269 notes · View notes

yeyinde · 2 years ago

Text

ATROPHY | Joel Miller x F!Reader

》 SUMMARY: It's her, him, and the beats in between. A slow simmer of sex to something more. Something he isn't quite ready for, yet knows he can't let go of. 》 WARNINGS: 18+ SMUT (mild); allusions to death, assault; female gendered reader, female gendered anatomy; minor game spoilers; Joel isn't bad at feelings – he just doesn't want them. Joel is tired™ 》 WORD COUNT: 10,9k

His grief, sorrow, the ones that he tries to shove into a box marked apathy, are worn in the crevasses that line his weathered face. Deep canyons make him look ages older than he is. He wonders if she can see them. If she can peel the divots back and uncover the festering sickness, the rot, that sits in the folds.

It's his own fault, he thinks, for stuffing his grief in the same place he keeps his worry.

》 NOTES: I did something different with my writing. It's still a Reader insert, but. I tried third person instead of the usual second. also, how this ballooned up to nearly 10k is lost to me since it was just supposed to be smut?? I had this clear image of older Joel laying in bed, his guitar leaning against the wall, catching the light of the sun as you slowly rode him, and now? I don't even know. ⤑The gif is mine. Please don't take or repost without permission

MASTERLIST | FAQ | AO3

Complacency is a death sentence in a world like this.

Lazy Sundays spent between the warm, damp sheets. Boredom. Afternoons strumming his guitar on the front porch. Sleeping in. Drinking at a saloon in town. Music. Laughter.

It doesn't exist.

Shouldn't.

And yet—

His guitar sits, abandoned, in the corner of the bedroom. The wood still carries the heat from his thumb this morning when he played a song alone on the porch. Eyes bleary, full of sleep, of rest, as he took in the varicoloured dawn cresting through the indigo sky.

Those same weathered, beaten hands that strummed the chords to Hurt are now occupied again. One perched on her hip, skin sateen soft and plush, full and warm and clean from the shower last night as she bears down on top of him in a quiet cadence, a muted, languid dance. The other cups the swell of her breast in his palm, nipple still damp from his hungry mouth, and flushed red from his teeth.

This should just be a fantasy.

A dirty thing in the recess of his mind when he has a moment to himself breathe. A thought, a whim. Something to needle away at the last vestiges of his consciousness when he sees her in the wild—vibrant, young, and free—and then sullied in the back of his head when he leans against a tree, and thinks of the dirt on her skin, the blood on her delicate hands, and how they'd taste under his tongue.

But this isn't a dream.

When he sleeps, he dreams in black and white. The only colour that bleeds through is red. Blood red. Pulpy and vicious. Ugly. Garish. It splatters across the pavement where he laid Sarah down, where he lost Tess, and everyone else he never promised to save and still couldn't.

He knows this isn't a dream when he blinks his eyes open, and she's there. Sitting atop him in a kaleidoscope of colour, drenched in ochre from the still rising sun. The only red is her blistered lips, the rough burn between her thighs from the scrape of his beard, and that sinful little tongue that slips between her teeth when he slides in deep.

And then—his eyes drop to her side—that ugly wound that cuts her flesh, ripped over the seam of her ribs.

He's awake. Lucid.

She's much too heavy to be something carved from fantasy.

He doesn't say this, of course—Joel isn't stupid, and for someone so considerably smaller than he is, she packs a hefty punch in those slender fingers that curl into a fist barely the size of an apple. The sharp jab of a rusted, blunt knife. Knows where to hit him, too.

He tucks it away, and lets his hands explore, feeling the tangibility of her weight, her presence, under the tips of his bloodied fingers.

(Broken on the same teeth that caused her to hurt.)

The knob of her hip bone juts out through her flesh, and he grazes it with his thumb, feeling the soft curve.

Real, he thinks. Flesh and bone.

He can feel the flutter of her racing pulse under his hand when he kneads her breast in his hand, and lets her nipple graze teasingly over the rough skin of his weathered palm.

The tight clench of her around him—pussy a perfect knot around the base of his cock, all pretty and tied tight like a bow—is another stroke of realism his dreams, nightmares, fantasies, could never imbue.

It's a present he's sullied more times than he can count, each touch another tally to the neverending number of sins that pile higher than the hollow skyscrapers in Boston.

Joel feels each breath that leaves her heaving chest. Each gasping hiccup of his name when she raises her full hips up, and then slide back down the length of him in a slow, languorous roll until he nudges against the seal of her womb, and steals the air in her lungs.

It's real.

A paradox, then.

One of those things that shouldn't happen, but is. Like her, and him, and everything else in between.

He knows what the others in town say when they see her—pretty and soft with a ginger touch and a sweet curl of a voice when she whispers his name. It doesn't make sense for her to be all wrapped up in him, following along behind like a shadow to a man who's cut from ashlar, and reeking of rot. Ruin.

He's calamity in ageing grey, and she's the ripe, forbidden fruit he's not allowed to bite. Poisoned apple. Cherry sweet.

(He wonders if they'd recoil once they saw that her insides were gnarled; acrid and sour; bitter melon. Lemon drops.

That she is far more like him than they could ever dream.)

They glare at him from the corner of their eyes when she swells like a lighthouse in the midnight gloam at the sight of him wandering back from patrol, eyes all bright and beaming, and beautiful—Christ.

She's a picture, he thinks.

One of those pinup girls he'd find in dirty magazines as a kid. When he and Tommy would sneak a peek behind the barn, away from prying eyes. A portrait of lust. Desire in high gloss.

A classical beauty—the type that would make men drown themselves at sea. A starlet in the golden age back when it mattered.

Writers' muse, maybe: she would have been the girl everyone talked about—the one that eluded the tortured artist, made him pine.

Hemingway would call her brutal.

Cat in the Rain.

(She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.)

He doesn't know much about poetry but he knows she's the type who could make a man want to stain his fingers in ink just to capture the curve of her lips when she smiled.

A vixen. Hellion. Lilith.

Her voice is a song when she says his name. A hymn.

Dangerous.

He doesn't know when this started.

Maybe, when they brought her in with the rest of the group she was travelling with. Beaten down, hungry. Clinging to life with frostbitten fingers.

Her eyes were flat; a stagnant pond. Lips a grim, blue line. Placid. Gone. She'd been out there for too long to ever find comfort behind walls, and he knows the feeling of trying to crawl out of your own skin when people stand too close.

She scoffed at the idea of this place, of sanctuary. Resentful and derisive. He could see the distrust in her clenched jaw, balled fists. This world was a whim—evanescent—and what they gathered from the rest of the group, survival hadn't been easy outside of safe zones.

Wall after wall fell, she said, tone flat. Blank. Haunted by ghosts still lingering in the canyons of her eyes. Stopped believing in stuff like this after a while.

Her eyes were stained—jaundiced and red, filled with burst blood vessels—and raw from how hard the edges of her knuckles had dug into the flesh of her eyelids. They spoke of sleepless nights. Ones interrupted by her own sense of survival, hyperarousal.

He knows the feeling of jerking awake whenever his brain starts to lull, to slip into that dangerous facsimile of security.

Pipe dreams. She wears her fatigue like its armour, wielding the brunt of her exhaustion like a shield.

(Sleep often feels like a bad habit for people like her, like him.)

But like him, it waned slowly.

The chips in her veneer cracked, split, and he saw the incipient filament start to seep in. Complacency. Comfort.

A few months in, she stopped being so defensive when they invited her out for drinks, and when they talked about dinner parties, and birthday celebrations. Derision was still a heavy weight in her distant gaze, clutched in bleached knuckles like a claymore, when she looked at them, a touch incredulous.

Joel understands the feeling.

The itch in your guts, the discomfort in your chest. It festers, doesn't it?

Children play close to the fences, making up games of tag, and hide and seek, as if those things with broken, pustulous faces weren't skulking within arm's reach just a breath away.

This whole place is a vacuum. The interior is covered in thick molasses; stuck in stasis. They pretend that birthdays and holidays matter. Dance around the saloon at night with drinks in hand. Pale ale. Old booze.

It's rigid in its structure: patrols that span the entirety of a day—from dusk to dusk in three shift increments—and daily checks of the fences, the gates. Trading with other communities. Rules. Regulations.

It gives the idea of safety. Of security.

(But the bruises on his hands and the gash in her side are proof that it's sometimes not enough.)

Slowly, though, as the days wore on and the fences stood proud and tall and secure, she softened. Tucked it away with a smile, and started saying, I'll think about it instead of clipped jerks of her chin, or nothing at all.

Joel doesn't know if she ever really did think about it like she said she would.

Broken promises carry a distinct sound. One he knows all too well.

She never showed up despite the invitations. Never came to celebrate.

She stood by the fence, and looked out, eyes wide, mouth flat. The coil in her shoulders, the tremble in her hands, reminded him of a trapped animal. Cornered, and tense.

She'll bite someone eventually.

(He just never expected it to be him.)

The tension didn't flee the crease of her eyes, but she tried to integrate herself into the fold, the community. Slowly. Slowly.

He took stock of her in the same measure he does everyone new who wanders in. Assessing. Watching. Cautious.

He could tell right away that she was a wildcard. A lit match slowly burning down the wick in a sea of gasoline.

Pretty, he finds, despite himself. Drawn in by her allure; a coruscating light in the middle of endless, unfathomable grey.

He catches sight of the weathered face that blinks back at him from the frosted windows, hazy and thick with condensation that make the grey in his hair, his beard, look startlingly whiter than it was ten seconds ago. It's a jarring reminder of who he is. What he's done.

It's not insecurity that keeps him from seeking her out, but self-preservation. Some people, he finds, just have this magnetism about them. A beacon. A light. A gravitational pull that drags you closer and closer.

And hers is purely primal. Animalistic. She smells of sex and sin and makes him think of object permanence when everything around him had been clouded in the sharp shade of ephemeral grey.

She's a fractured mirror. Medusa in the making.

Joel's always avoided broken glass.

(Ladders. Black cats. Cracks in the pavement. Pretty girls who swallow everything like a black hole—)

Too sweet, he finds. Forbidden fruit. Tart, ripe, and sugar dipped.

(He never had much of a sweet tooth, anyway.)

Through his observations—necessary, he tells Tommy when he catches the way Joel's gaze follows her around when she moves; limbs ballerina lithe, swan songs after dark: just because we let them in, doesn't mean we can trust them—he finds out everything he needs to know.

A rusted sign on the side of the road says, stay away. Danger in dulcet. Soft and sweet. A perfunctory bow in battle before the deadly blows come.

He oscillates between finding her both too soft and too hard, and it's the unknown that makes him wary.

She's a caged animal. Everyone is just kidding themselves if they think she's domesticated.

Somewhere in the throng of people milling about, drinking and dancing like the world wasn't in shambles, she finds his gaze, matches his stare.

Most people looked away.

But she's not most people, is she?

No, she's dangerous. Pretty in a way that's entirely too ethereal for the broken remnants of what remains. Left behind. Mouldering until death claims its victims. Until the spores released from the earth itself burrow in the rucked lines of your head, sprouting up like flowering buds.

She makes men want.

And while the pickings might have been slim, Joel knows there are several (and maybe a little more) above him in terms of desirability. He's older. Gruff. Rough around the edges without any whim of changing, or scouring himself down so that his jagged pieces don't pop something as tender and sweet as her.

He doesn't put himself in the same bracket. Despite Maria's insistence, Tommy's needling, he isn't a bachelor.

Hasn't made himself available.

And he isn't.

Not since Tess. Not since—

None of that matters. He's too old to think about romance, about skin and sex, and warmth. And more.

The thought of it all leaves something sour twisting in the gnarled rot of what remains inside his chest.

Despite that, or maybe in spite of it, she comes to him.

(Somehow. Somehow.)

She asks him to dance, and the breathy tone of her voice tastes like a lit cigarette; it plumes nicotine in the air. Second-hand smoke. A contact high.

He finds it disarming when she laughs after he says no. Firm. Hard. Dismissive.

Not in your lifetime, sweetheart.

The unspoken stay away rang clearer than the echo of her laughter.

And that was that.

But she came back.

("If not a dance, then how about a drink?"

"Wastin' your time, sweetheart."

She grins, then, soft and coy. "Not much else to do with it these days besides chatting up a handsome stranger."

He pretends she didn't make him choke on his drink, and eyes her warily instead. Dangerous, he thinks. The type that just doesn't quit. One who is just small and malleable enough to slip inside the tiniest splinter.

Just like a raspberry, she'd rot fast. Festering. Clouded white and infectious. Worse, in many ways, than the parasites outside of the walls.

"Just don't get your hopes up." He settles on after a moment, a lull, that makes her blood-red lips curl up like the curve of those stupid hearts dangling overhead.

And hates that he doesn't really know if he's still just talking to her or the wandering eyes in his own skull when he says it.)

He doesn't know why she takes a liking to him of all people. Of all men. He might be out of touch with the reality they live in now, always on the fringes of waiting for things to buckle at the knee, and collapse into ash, but he isn't stupid. Oblivious.

Joel sees the way she stares at him. Open, wanting. Curious.

She shouldn't be. There's nothing in him—nothing left. His insides are polluted, gnarled. Ugly. A gurgling cesspit that doesn't know how to fix, only dissolve. Consume. He's acidic. Caustic.

Bad for anyone's health.

He can't keep anyone safe, and all he knows how to do anymore is push people away, and lie (and, lately, make Ellie so incensed with anger, she cuts him to the core and spills his choleric blood out onto the pavement where it hisses and sounds just like Tess).

He's a patchwork mess of a man sewn together with a churlish hand. The broken pieces are borrowed and maligned, but they sometimes feel like they fit when he shifts, and spits enough contempt to keep everyone else from getting too close, and—

It's enough.

(He likes it that way.)

But she—

His hands grip her tight sometimes—too tight—and the stains he leaves on her skin set his teeth on edge. It's too much like ownership. Possession.

(And he finds the colour that blooms on her flesh to be too fucking pretty to ever sit comfortably in the gnarled pit of his guts.)

"Don't worry, Joel," she whispers when she catches him staring at the marks he left behind. Dark and ugly. Contrition tastes of old nickels. "You won't break me that easily."

It's a bad decision.

But he was never known for his good choices, and when she fluttered her eyes at him, hand pressed to his chest like she were allowed to touch him, he crumbled.

She didn't give him much of a choice to fight back when all she asked for nothing but the warmth of his skin, and the taste of him on her tongue.

Pleasures of the flesh. It's easy. Simple. He fucks her behind the saloon, rough and dirty, and swallows the sounds she makes against the brick like they're just for him. He takes her home, and knows that when he's nestled between her thighs, it's as close to heaven as a man like him will ever get.

And then—it's over. She leaves. He pretends to sleep.

Rinse. Repeat.

It carries on this way for nearly two years. Distant, cold. He can't remember the last time he had anyone warm his bed, but it takes the edge off, the stress and pain of Ellie's distance, her mistrust, and hatred, and she asks for nothing.

She lets him grab her when he wants. Lets him bend her body into whichever shape suits him best, and says nothing about the fingerprints that he leaves behind, the astringent tang of rot when she slides out of his bed, his hands, and out the door.

He lays back, the same hand he used to grip the back of her neck when he fucked her into the mattress now resting under his head, and he pretends doesn't feel colder now than he did before.

There is no promise of forever. There's no promise of exclusivity, or monogamy, but he knows that she hasn't fucked anyone else since she got here, that those pretty thighs only ever parted for him, and he's too worn down to entice anyone else who wasn't looking for a sleazy fuck against a tree into his bed, anyway.

Complacency begets comfort, security, wants.

They settle down in their borrowed homes, in their borrowed beds, and think about making the most of their borrowed time.

In that, they yearn. Family. Togetherness. Everything they had before they tried to drag into the now. Forcing a square through a round hole. A mismatched puzzle piece into the slot it wasn't made for.

Sometimes, they get lucky and it slips through. It distorts itself into something different, and new, just to fit through the preconstructed crack.

Joel doesn't think about then. He thinks about now. A broken world no closer to resolution, absolution, than it was thirteen, fourteen years ago. There is no roseate veil over his eyes; everyone else can see it.

He isn't the type of man someone brings home. The one you push and push until he fits through the front door, and back into normalcy. Stagnancy.

And she's not the type of woman who'd ever try.

He likes that about her.

Poisoned candy apple. Pretty on the outside and rotted within.

There is no future outside of the way he fits inside of her, and this is as permanent as the blemishes he leaves on her pretty skin.

Then he dreams, and it's of her.

Lifeless, blue. The way her head splits open is beautiful in that macabre sort of way horrible things sometimes are. Flowers burst behind her eyes, petals budding out of the hollowed space that once made his chest stutter when the sun caught the crevasse of black that split from her pupil and bled into her iris. A small stream of ink.

The canyons of gradient colours are now filled with blooms of enoki. Red amanita curls out from her ears.

Where he once laid his palm over her chest is now a gaping hole flowering with a pulsing mass of candlesnuff and staghorn.

Death cap where her heart once beat.

Beautiful, he thinks, even as he howls her name.

He wakes up drenched in a cold sweat, and the curve of her name heavy on his tongue. His knuckles pop when he fists the damp sheets between his trembling fingers, but the ache feels good. The sting reminds him he's alive. Whole.

He's awake, but the nightmare doesn't end. The sight of her body lingers in the back of his head when he strums his guitar and plays a song for the demons within. He thinks of her when he forks over the expired box of condoms he found on a run, and listens to Jesse ramble about how Ellie is doing in exchange for the loot.

It's her he sees.

She blinks at him, eyes that same shade that sometimes makes his breath hiss between his teeth, and then her crown caves in. Forehead splits down the middle. One half stands where it was as the other falls over on her shoulder.

Fractals spill from the plumule that was once her brain stem until the two halves are bleached white like dead corals on a ruined reef.

The flowering toadstool quivers. What was once her—wit, charm; that uncanny ability to make him feel like the ground beneath his feet was crumbling—is a mass of spores. Polluted. Rotted.

Where she once stood is a puppet. Dead. Gone.

Her head tips. Ink spills from the putrefying blood vessels, congealing in the air. It spools into a circle. A black hole.

He lifts the gun, and feels nothing at all.

Everything he could have felt, feels, is syphoned into the needlepoint of no return, the place where she once looked at him, and said, I don't want anything from you, Joel. I just want you.

He wakes before he can see the aftermath of pulling the trigger.

A fluke, maybe. But it happens each night after that.

He knows, then, that there's no turning back.

Permanence doesn't belong in this borrowed home, but she somehow drags it through the foyer and into his bed, anyway.

She stayed over last night.

Joel doesn't think he tried to let go when he collapsed into the bed beside her, arms woven around her sweat-slicked back, locked tight like a pair of shackles that mean about as much as a prison or the law these days.

It was cold. Late. He didn't want her to walk back in the snow all alone.

That's all.

But Joel isn't a gentleman, and despite how much he wishes he wasn't, he's egregiously self-aware.

He knows he's in trouble when it just makes sense to keep her close. When it's easier to have her within arm's reach than it is to meet at the front door, and let her in.

(When he sleeps better if he can feel her burning skin on his.)

"You're thinking too much," she gasps, eyes lidded and heavy. Drinking him in.

Joel doesn't know what a pretty thing like her sees in a man like him.

He can't offer her anything except the cold comfort of a warm body, but even that is null. He knows there are younger men prowling outside her door, just itching for an opportunity to make her look their way.

(She never does.)

"Yeah," he rasps, the word sticking to his teeth. "Never been much of a thinker."

"Really? Ain't that a surprise."

His hand slips from her hip, palm swatting at the soft flesh of her ass. The sting makes her tighten around him like a vice.

"Watch your mouth."

The way she gasps his name, breathy and aching, makes him stifle a groan between clenched teeth, her voice rolling over him like warm sea breeze.

She's a lot, he thinks, and yet—she asks for nothing.

(Nothing but him. One of the things he can't give her. Won't.)

Still.

Her nails press into his damp chest, catching on the smoked dusted patch of coarse charcoal hair. Bracing herself against the swell of his ribs, and slowly rocked back into him, taking him deeper and deeper into her soaked, tight cunt.

The pulse in his neck throbs out of his skin, a tick she likes to press the flat of her tongue against and drink up the briny droplets of his sweat. He can see the want in her eyes when he catches her staring at the column of his throat, the way she bites her lip like it's a substitute for how badly she wants to sink those same teeth into his flesh. Mark him as her own.

Possession. Ownership.

Sometimes, he catches the glossy, rotund image of himself in the inky puddles of her pupils, blown wide with feverish desire, and he can see the same expression, the mien, captured in her startling hue.

Mutual want.

It's easier to give in sometimes. To let go.

He can't, though, and selfishly, he knows she'll never ask. She will bite your lip, the inside of her cheeks, and your tongue until it's raw and bloody before she lets the words slip through the gap of her teeth.

(He feels the rough, chewed ridges on velveteen flesh when he rolls his tongue between her ivory teeth, swiping over the insides of her cheeks; broken skin split and metallic—a testament to her own selfless desires.

He tastes it on his tongue long after she's gone. Wet pennies. Dandelion sour.)

It knots inside of him. She'd ruin herself before she asked him for more.

Maybe somewhere in his avoidance, his distance, she knows he's ruining himself by just giving her this much. Nothing, and yet—

Everything to him.

An impasse, then. Uncrossable when he's already two feet out the door.

"Joel—"

"I know, sweetheart," he murmurs, low. Rucked gravel. Falling rocks. It jars him how easily he responds to her. She says his name, and he'll drop anything in his hands to get to her quickly enough. "I know."

The wound on her side pulls taut when she moves. It draws his eye like a beacon. Makes him grind his teeth together until it sparks pain down his jaw, the enamel sawed to the raw nerve.

His hand slides over her molten flesh, trailing over the soft curve of her waist, until his thumb brushes the seam that keeps her insides from spilling out. The swollen, bruised skin is warmer than the rest of her body. Glossy where it tugs against the black threads keeping her whole.

Joel didn't go with her on this particular trade. She went with some new kid they'd picked up, all varsity grins and clean hands. He seemed so damned eager to get her attention in the pub. Her age, too.

Made a pretty couple, Ron said. Fucking loud mouth Ron.

He was supposed to go, but when the kid caught him in the corner, nursing a beer that sat in his guts like a stomach ache, and said, hey, man, can I take your spot? he didn't know how he was supposed to say no and still cling to the degrees of separation he wedged between himself and the world.

So, he raised his mug to his mouth, and forced himself to drink, to nod.

Knock yourself out.

The flash of sadness that flickered over her face meant nothing at all—nothing—but he felt something churn inside of his rotted guts. Atrophy, he thinks. He isn't meant for this. Doesn't want it. Need it.

She's a bigger liability the closer she gets. A slow-moving black hole consuming all of the counterscarps he dug until nothing is left but crossable rubble.

It's better, then, to cut it at the root before it infects the rest.

So, he does.

Maybe, he expected something different. For her to call this thing what it was, and then demand more of him, yell and scream and beg for the things he wouldn't give her—if only so he could break her heart into pieces, and force her to let go. To stop.

Force himself to do the same.

But she doesn't

It's a quiet acquiesce; a little more than a nod, and a grim line of her pretty mouth. Okay, it says. If that's what you want.

And that's what she always says, isn't it? If that's what you want, Joel. Whatever you say, Joel. Sure, Joel. Okay, Joel.

A spitfire in ochre. A bright lighthouse in the middle of the grey sea.

(The only person she dims for is him.)

Joel doesn't see her off. Doesn't say be careful or come back safe because words like those don't fit between his teeth. They aren't meant for the nothing between them. The chasm of everything she can't pry from his gnarled fingers.

She leaves with him.

He drinks alone.

Despite whatever nonsense Tommy says, spouted over rationed potatoes and deer meat stew, he isn't sulking.

"Let your girl go out alone? Unlike you, brother."

The way the words sat in his chest felt like an anvil.

"Ain't my girl," he muttered. He wanted to be angry but all he felt was numbness. "Ain't my anything."

It's Maria who gets under his skin when she scoffs.

"Joel Miller, you're the biggest dumbass I ever met, save for your damned brother. Gonna push a good thing away and die alone."

"No one asked you."

Maria tries to fill in the blanks of something that doesn't exist.

It peels back the gossamer from his eyes, and he sees, then, the way they skirt around him and her like it's something. As if his name is permanently attached to hers.

He pretends he doesn't feel the burn in Maria's glare when he doesn't see her off at the gate.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't.

He isn't there when she comes back, and hates, even more, that he feels something prickle inside his chest when Maria catches him near the stables, and says, I expected more from you, Joel.

It doesn't feel good when he bites back, that's your problem, Maria. Shouldn't have gotten your hopes up.

Joel lives in his vindication, in his pettily forced indifference. She hasn't come to see him, anyway, and he's sure that she and Varsity jacket are meeting at the pub for that date he'll never give her.

Doesn't matter, he thinks. And then, if only to burn himself in the flames, he adds: better this way.

She'll know when he's not there. She's smart like that. Know him in ways he doesn't think anyone else ever could. Ever wanted to.

(He hates it, and her, sometimes, for it.)

She'll understand. She might corner him one day with that dry ire dripping from the corners of her mouth, patronising and grim, and she'll do what she does best when she strips him bare and leaves him to rot.

Her eyes are cobra pits. Her teeth leak venom.

But she won't push.

It'll simmer out when she blinks, knowing that this is it, and she'll say: okay, Joel.

Okay.

He braces for it—hates that has to because that means something, something he isn't ready to acknowledge—and—

And it's all moot.

She never shows up at the gate.

It punctures something in his lungs when Tommy looks up at him, face ashen and worried, and says: "she didn't come back. They didn't come back."

It takes an hour to find her, left for dead and beaten within an inch of her life by the side of the road. A wound in her side—a gaping hole he swears he can see through. Milky bones poke through, drenched in red, and—

His heart doesn't stop, but a piece of it breaks off and lodges itself in his throat. He can't swallow. Can't breathe.

Something curls out from the moon-white line of her rib.

A bud, he thinks. Distant. Warbled. A saprophyte.

He has the image of her in his head. The same one he sees when he closes his eyes and falls into a fitful sleep.

Beautiful even as the cordyceps split her skull into blooming monkshood in hideous grey and plum. Pale and lifeless; a marionette on toadstool strings. A puppet in fluorescence.

"She's—"

Tommy's hand reaches down, fingers curling around the sprout.

Don't— not Tommy, too—

He pulls back, and Joel catches the tremble in his joints, the whites of his knuckles, when he spreads his fingers.

In the palm of his hand sits a leaf.

A leaf.

The bark that leaves his chest tears right through the clot in his throat. Rips him open from the inside out.

"A fucking leaf—"

He carries her back, and doesn't let go until the doctor is there, urging him out of the room.

"You'll get in the way."

He sees the looks they give him when he passes, but Joel never cared what people think.

Doesn't plan on starting now, either.

He's on the wrong side of fifty, and has more blood on his hands than the looted bars of soap could ever scour clean. He knows who he is, and maybe, maybe, knows what he wants, and Ron's loud mouth never meant much to him, anyway.

Joel gets a name when she's sleeping after surgery—lucky, he overhears, got there in the knick of time, any later and—and brings nothing with him when he leaves. He won't need it. Doesn't want it.

He finds them chatting over an open fire, and beats them to death with nothing but his bare hands.

He doesn't burn them. Doesn't bury them.

When he's finished, covered in blood and aching, and satisfied, he drives an ice pick through their skulls (the same thing, he finds, that caused the hole in her side), and leaves them to rot.

They say nothing about the blood on his shirt, or the broken, mangled fingers of his hand. He's content to leave them. To feel the agony as his broken bones split through cracked skin.

(He thinks of her—broken, blue—and clenches his hands so tight, the pain makes him blackout.)

He only lets Maria patch him up when she hisses about infection, and blood poisoning.

Says nothing at all about what he'd done, where he'd gone.

She doesn't ask.

When she's finished, she says: "woke up yesterday."

He knows. Still: "that right?"

"Gonna go see her?"

"Don't need me crowding around her bed."

"Maybe she, for some reason, wants to see your ugly mug."

"She tell you that?"

"Didn't ask about you, if that's what you're asking." She snorts. Shakes her head. "Both a'you are really perfect for each other, you know?"

"We ain't."

Her brow raises. Something prickles across her expression. "Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing," she shakes her head with a small smirk. "Just… didn't know you knew the word we, is all."

"We done here?"

He doesn't go to her.

Stubborn as an ox, she comes to him.

She says nothing about the bandages on his black and blue hands. Nothing about the way he can't make a fist through all the swelling. Her hands are soft, and warm, when they wrap around his. Small, delicate. A baby deer cupping the paws of a grizzly bear.

His eyes flash with something that tastes of the same rotten satisfaction he felt gnarled inside of his chest when the man who left her for dead on the side of a road wheezed as Joel broke his nose, and then battered the broken bulb into a messy, mushy pulp.

He didn't stop until grey matter leaked through the holes.

She knows what he did. He feels it in the way she stares at the black, swollen mess of his fingers. Bones broke on teeth, on a fractured skull.

He doesn't regret it. He doesn't even think he enjoyed it much, really.

It had to be done. Had to.

They took a life. Varsity Jack, she tells him. Stabbed in the heart when he tried to defend her with the same ice pick that ripped through her flesh.

Her tone is flat. Empty.

He sees bruises on her knuckles, those little fists were her only defence against them, and the red welt on the man's face makes sense now.

He feels proud.

She's not broken—battered, beaten, torn to pieces—but she still stands, whole, intact. Resilient. Strong.

(A survivalist. The only time she ever alluded to more was to tell him that he was worrying for nothing. That, above all, she would survive. Outlive him, even.

"What are you so afraid of, old man?" A cheeky wink. Her tongue dips out, and touches the upper corner of her lip. "I'm gonna outlive you, anyway."

God, he thought, he really hopes she fucking does.)

It doesn't surprise him to see her eyes cloud with anger, arsenic white, when she brings his hands to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles. Anyone else might have asked why. Said thank you, even.

She just murmurs, "I hope they suffered."

Saccharine sweet.

Rotten to the core.

He saw the same shade of calamity in her eyes when she wandered in, grim and distant, as the one that stared back at him in the mirror. Her complicity in this doesn't surprise him. If anything, he wonders if she's angry he left nothing behind for her.

The thought makes his lips quirk in a needle of something he hasn't felt in a long time.

"They did."

The words are uttered like a promise. His busted pinky twitches, and it makes her smile. A bloom of petal pink flowering across her face. Soft and tender. The swell of a sea mark burgeoning out in the gloom of grey.

And all for him.

Joel pulled her in close. Closer still.

(Too close, maybe, because now he doesn't know how he'll sleep without her by his side)

His thumb slips over the tumid skin poking out from tight, black sutures. The threads are the only thing keeping her together.

Beneath it is a bruise. Black. The tip of his thumb presses against the cresting peak. Knuckle to skin, it's a perfect fit.

(In all the same ways he and she aren't.)

"I'm okay, Joel," she whispers, and the thick, dulcified tone of her voice shakes him from the labyrinth of his mind.

It's his own fault, he thinks, for stuffing his grief in the same place he keeps his worry.

"Yeah," he intones, and he isn't sure if he's speaking to her, himself, or a god he hasn't spoken to since he was eighteen and Sarah got sick for the first time. Maybe everyone, all of them, all at once.

It makes her huff. "Am I losing you already, old man?"

"Ain't that old," he bites back, hips lifting when she slides down. It makes him nudge something that has her eyes fluttering, mouth dropping, slack. Her nails catch skin when they rake over his chest.

Sex has always been an outlet. A comfort. It blankets that part of his head that never quiets—failures, failings—and offers a respite from it all. Her weight on his hips, chest, thighs doesn't dull it all but buffers it.

White noise in his ears when her nails rake over his skin. The scent of her clings in the air around them—sex, kerosene, cinder, ash: the scent of a wet forest after a wildfire scorched the earth—and clots out the fetor of decay, of mildew, and moss, the earthy tang that reminds them of death. Of them.

It's a distraction. Distance in skin, sweat, and heat.

It's just sex, just—

"God, Joel," she gasps loud, sharp, when he pitches his hips into her, blunt and unforgiving, and hits deep. Carves out the shape of him in her soft, fluttering flesh, and tries not to get lost in the thick scent of her.

It dusts over everything until he still smells her even when she isn't here.

Temporary made permanent.

It's the very thing he runs from finally catching up. He feels the graze of fingers ghosting over the nape of his neck when he looks at her, poised and centred above him. Aphrodite in flesh and bone. Her fingers prickle his skin with their sharp tips, and the indents left behind are soothed over when she gasps his name like it's something special. Meaningful. An orison murmured in the quiet box of a confessional booth.

The curtain rustles.

"Yeah," he grunts, low and filthy; the noise sticks in the back of his throat when he feels her tighten up around him. A little apple-sized fist of pleasure. He flexes his thighs, hands grasping her tight, and knows he's going to keep her here again tonight. "Fuck, sweetheart—"

The way she moves is liquid. Mercury. He watches, eagle-eyed and enraptured, as she squares her shoulders, and takes him to the root. The base.

Her presence in his life atrophied his defences until they lay scattered on the sheets that reek of her. In the folds of his pillow where he rests his head at night. The featherlight wood of his guitar when she leans over his shoulder, and says, play me another one, Joel.

He's a dog without an owner. A stray mutt on the outskirts of town, wandering through the city in search of sustenance.

She's the one who keeps feeding him. Lays out a dish just for him, and scratches her nails behind his ears until the curl of his lips subsides. A slow broiled trust. He stops showing her his canines, his claws, when she shows him the vulnerable curve of her neck, and lets him mark her skin with his touch.

Joel will mourn her the same way he does everyone else—achingly empty, and tearless—but he thinks, now, that he might think of her once, and then never again. He's selfish. Always has been.

(Can't afford not to be when she looks better bearing his mark. When he sleeps easier with her breath in his ear.)

Just sex. The words are weak in the back of his head, and he feels the shaky resolve begin to crumble, chossy wobbling under unsteady feet, when her head falls back in a mockery of prayer, the utterance of his name heavier than the sins on his shoulders. Just sex. Just—

The grille falls, and shatters into smelted pig iron at their feet.

—it's just her, him, and the beats in between. A slow simmer of sex to something more. Something he isn't quite ready for, yet knows he can't let go of. Won't. Not now, not ever. He won't give her anything, nothing but the touch of his hands, and the weight of his body, but it's juxtaposed to the worry heavy in his chest, the anger still lacing the broken bones in his fingers when his thumb brushes the curve of her wound.

It splits in her ardour. The bottom scab tugged too much, lifting from broken flesh.

Ichor pebbles on the seam. It pools an angry merlot against the indigo scab, but when it slides down her flesh, it's Phlegethon red.

His thumb catches it. It's warm, and sticky. He smears it over her quivering belly, and fights the urge to try and lick it clean. Knows, somehow, it would taste of Lethe.

Joel's teeth ache when he grinds them together, tongue lashing across the ivory seal. He's thinking too much—abstracts, concretes; they blur together in a cacophony of want, take, run, hide—

Keep.

"It's okay," she says again, as if all his secrets laid bare. As if the talons digging into his flesh somehow tapped a vein, an artery, that leads directly to his stem, and she's syphoning the thoughts in his head with the same ease that she steals the breath from his lungs. "It's okay, Joel. It's—"

She doesn't finish. Her words are shorn, bitten at the grain when he reaches up, holding her around the waist, and brutally fucks into her weeping cunt with the finesse of a starving man invited to a feast fit for a King.

It jostles her. Breasts swaying, head bobbing back and forth as he nearly lifts her off the bed with the force of his thrusts.

The brutality of it screams one shrill echo of it isn't. None of this is okay. None of it.

She's chiselling him open until he's a raw wound exposed to the unforgiving air. Until he bleeds and thinks of her. Until the only sound that drowns out the terror raking across his synapses is her voice when she murmurs his name.

"We're fine, Joel—," it carries the flavour of axiom. Aphorism when she says: "we'll be okay."

She trembles over him, muscles straining to keep up. This isn't her taking; despite being perched above him like a queen astride her throne, she gives. Lowers herself the way he likes. Circles her hips until he sees white behind his eyelids.

The weight of her feels like an anvil. The heat is enough to liquefy his bones.

"Keep goin'," he rasps the words out—a strange limbo of being both an encouragement and a demand. It lacks the bite it had before, when he'd bend her over and fuck her until he was satisfied, until the howling in his head, and the ache in his bones was eased with the soporific gossamer only sex could give him. "Just like that, pretty thing—"

It's a slip. An accident.

Her rhythm stutters. Her ribs expand wide under his palms; ballooning up so much he wonders if she's trying to burst them at the seams or float away. Irrational, of course. Sex makes him stupid. Makes him hungry and needy, and has him feeling like he's almost, almost human, and—

He holds on a little tighter.

Pretty thing. Her lips form the words in a soundless exhale. Pretty thing. She's used to him calling her all sorts of sobriquets smeared in a palpable stroke of derision. It's not contemptuous, but he makes his mockery of it clear with the flout in his tone. Sarcastic, caustic.

Sure thing, beautiful. If that's what you want, sweetheart. Go on then, gorgeous.

She always wore the same sour twist to her lips, the exaggerated eye roll. The heavy huff.

It was never flirtatious, never complimentary.

This—pretty thing—is the softest he'd ever regarded her.

He watches her throat bob when she swallows, eyes tracing the nervous flutter as she struggles to grasp the concurrency of his words, the way he said them. Their meaning. It flickers through those depths that threaten consumption whenever they dust over the length of him. Thinking. Thinking.

They were always abstract, but his words are concrete, and she isn't sure how to carry the heavy cinder he drops on her. Her fingers are used to the ephemeral weight of his scorn; the delineation of distance—unspoken but unignorable. Unequivocal in its separation.

"Wow," she breathes, tremulous. She grasps at normalcy but he can see how much those two words have rattled her. She swallows again. Eyes narrowing. Viper pits. "Getting soft in your old age, huh?"

Joel isn't ready to acquiesce.

He pitches his hips up, letting her feel the solid length of him—blunt, burning iron—and feels his chest flutter when she whines, head dropping back as he bludgeons into her core.

"Fuck, Joel—"

He isn't soft. Isn't malleable. He's made of carbonised grief, anguish, despair. Reinforced with volcanic clinkers running rivets of apoplectic fury.

He isn't soft. Isn't what she deserves, or needs, or should even want—

But the way she says his name is pyrolysing.

Cinder. Soot. Ash.

He spent so much time holding firm against the walls to keep her out, he never bothered to filter the air he breathed. She clots in his lungs. The scent of her builds. A mass forms. Metastasises inside of him.

Her hands fall there, palms drawn to the steady thump of his beating heart. It drums under her skin, a stuttering rhythm that makes her own chest swell with her shaky inhale.

His slide, rough skin scraping over her soft flesh. She burns hotter than the acorn stove in the corner of the room, and he feels the heat simmering in his veins. Scents the sulphur and volcanic ash in the air when she leans down, bending at the elbows to press her lips against his. It's chaste, as far as their usual kisses go. Biting and vitriolic. As if being sweet, tender, was forbidden.

Maybe it was. He doesn't know what he'd have done if she kissed him like this back then. Honeyed rich, and molasses slow. It tastes like smoke but reminds him of the rock candy he'd make at home with Tommy when he was young.

She moans into his mouth when his hands slip around her waist, her thigh. He holds her steady, and rocks up into her to the same tremulous beat as her clumsy, fragile kisses. The vibrations buzz on his bruised lips, and the tingle of her voice washing over him makes his cock twitch inside of her.

The press of him, unyielding and firm, against her soft, soft walls makes him grunt. Another noise pulled into the cacophony of them. It's lower than anything he's ever made before. New. Novice.

Fucking her now feels marginally different than it had only yesterday. It's raw. Vulnerable.

He thinks of a slow burn. A candle wick.

Wonders, then, if she feels it, too. This rawness that sits in his thundering chest; a scraped-out, hollow feeling that draws in more and more of her until the crater is filled with the essence of her sweat, the heavy breaths she tries to stifle in her throat to keep kissing him like she'll never get the chance to again.

And that must be it.

This isn't what he normally gives her—bruises and bites, beard burns over the delicate softness of her flesh; he leaves her kiss-bruised and drunk off of the taste of him, malt-heavy and whisky sour.

Intimacy is saved for moments when she cums around him, tightening up like a strung bow in his archer's hold; when she squeezes herself into the nook of his shoulder, whimpering as he fucks her through her high, and chases his release in the spasming clutch of her willing body. When he cums, painting her stomach, her thighs, her ass, with the stain of his spend, the only physical proof he'd been inside of her, and smears the wet mixture of them on her heated flesh, still buzzing with the aftershocks of her orgasmic haze.

It's reserved for the microcosm carved from their shared release, drenched in the glow of the chemical slurry that saturates their brains, releasing endorphins until they feel nothing but the buzz of each other. Skin to sweaty skin. Each breath a gasp.

He lets her linger in these soft moments. This singular dissonance sits incongruously with everything else between them. But then she shifts. The microcosm that filmed around them bursts.

She slips away after he does, slowly leaning over to pull on her discarded clothes, and wipe the stain of him from her body.

His fingers itch for a cigarette when he watches her through lidded eyes as she stumbles around on fawn legs.

She always hesitates for a moment. Joel often wonders if she's waiting for him to ask her to stay.

He never does. She leaves.

(Rinse. Repeat.)

But now—

"Easy, now," he murmurs, tongue slipping through the gap of her teeth to chase her taste. "Don't rush this, sweetheart."

Everything about this is unlike him, and she moans her disquietude into the scant space between them, brow knotting together when her stitches pull, and he leaves a bloodied trail across her waist, knuckles split and bleeding anew.

They're both bloodied, he finds. Drenched in each other's sweat, spittle, and blood.

It makes dizzy. Makes his fingers dig into her flesh, holding her closer to his heaving chest as he takes. His hips raise off the bed—a clumsy slant into her welcoming sex, and he feels her shudder when he hits deep, cock nudging that soft place inside of her that always makes her forehead crease.

He can't see it when she leans down, peppering wet kisses across his grey beard, and painting hard through her nose when he presses the flat of his palm against the base of her spine and fucks into her with sharp, unrhythmical thrusts.

"That's it, take it just like that—," he grinds the words off, and tastes the condescension in his tone.

In response, she bites down on his pulse point.

Another break in the routine. The rules lay scattered around them, smouldering embers of this incipient beginning to something neither of them is ready for.

Her hands wiggle out from between their chests, bringing them closer together than before, and when she tangles her fingers in the damp curls behind his ears, he swears he can feel her heartbeat echoing through his ribs.

He spears himself into her faster, seeking that place he knows will make her melt—

"Joel, oh—ah, fuck—"

—and once found, he cruelly angles the head of his cock into it, rasping out words of patronisation into her ear.

Good girl, he says, and groans when her cunt tightens around him like a nautical bow. Taking me so good. Gonna cum for me? Gonna cum around my cock—

He can feel his release brimming up like a fever in his veins. White-hot and arctic cold. It sets his nerves on fire, and the pressure of her around him makes him see pure white.

He thinks of church on Sundays when she chants his name like a hymnal—Joel, Joel, Joel—and finds nirvana when she sinks her teeth deeper into his flesh, unmarked and unclaimed until now. He'll have the perfect impression of her teeth embedded in his skin, and thought alone makes that gnarled spool inside of him loosen.

Joel is taken by surprise when she cums—voice a shaky, shrill howl of his name, and the sound of it, the blood that stains his beard when she turns, baring her teeth and pressing them flat to his jaw, makes him grunt. It's raw. An oozing wound.

She flutters around him like the beat that echoes through his bones, and feels a hunger inside of him grow.

The uncoiled knot inside of him rears, once dormant and dead to the world, now gnashing its jowls at the hands that prodded it from its slumber. Rapacious. A black hole when it yawns.

The town knows she's his. Has since she sidled up to him, all soft smiles and viper eyes, and asked him to dance, for a drink, and what's a handsome man like you doing in a place like this? Got anyone I should worry about, Joel? Wanna dance? Wanna fuck—

And they know, now, that he's hers when he carries her in his arms, and knocked his forearm into the necks of anyone who tried to pry her from his clutch.

They know. They know, but it's not enough.

He wants to mark her, stain her. Leave her with the permanent smear of him on her pretty skin.

Fuck—

This wasn't supposed to happen, but the keen awareness comes much too late.

He fucks the frustration into the tight clutch of her willing, forgiving, body, and tries not to come apart at the seams when she mewls his name like he's just as much of a burden to her as she is to him. Bankrupt. Bereft of the walls and the rationale that kept him lightyears away from everyone else around him (until Ellie, the hospital—this place that reeks of stagnancy and burrowed into his marrow), he crumbles in her hold once more.

His release hits him like a sucker punch to his gut, and the force of it makes him ache.

He doesn't pull out like he always, always, does despite the contraceptive she has, and spilling inside of her spasming cunt feels too much like heaven for him not to come apart at the seams. For him not to shatter into pieces when she pulls him closer, and murmurs, that's it, Joel. That's it—cum for me. Just let go, I got you—

And for the first time in a long time, he does.

It's an awkward assemblage of limbs that don't fit together, bodies that are too incompatible, but he tugs her down onto the mattress beside him, and makes it work. She rests the flat of her palm over his sweat-slicked chest, nails raking through the dusted grey smatter of hair on his chest. The inside of her thigh is wet with him, with her, them, when she slides it over his hip.

Her head rests on soft tissue where his arm and shoulder meet, ear nestled into his armpit. His arm around her back, fingers resting on the curve of her elbow. It's then, when he finds his thumb brushing small circles into her dewy skin, that he realises what this is.

Cuddling, he thinks, a touch derisively, in the apocalypse.

It was never a burning release, the aftermath of that intoxicating chemical bath of endorphins, oxytocin, and then a quick until next time.

Being trade partners for most of the scheduled shifts—his brutality, and her knowledge of survival made them a perfect match outside of this clumsy moment of intimacy—meant that she often stayed for a few hours afterwards discussing plans, and who to barter with next or the places they haven't yet scavenged. Lying naked beside each other, shoulders sometimes brushing as they spoke—that was the extent of their post-sex ritual.

This, he knows, is new. Different.

It has the same cadence as last night when his massive hand swallowed her wrist in his palm, and he said, just sleep here, but it's a syncopation. Lighter, somehow, than the gruff way he demanded her company, the brutal divot between his brow.

She moves, slow and languid, and for a moment he thinks about letting her leave. Repairing the chasm that crumbled between them into heaps of broken ruination and anguish, her hand brushes his when she pulls away, and he knows he won't.

For such a massive presence, she's surprisingly small in his grasp. The bump of her wrist bone fits snug against the broken, swollen knuckle of his middle finger when he folds his hand around hers.

The hitch in her breath, the rapid flutter of her pulse beating against his too rough, too worn palm are the only measure of her hesitation, her confusion.

They're not themselves in this moment.

The moor around him collapses. A sinkhole forms.

He clings to her and drags her under with him.

The words won't form on his lips. His throat is bereft of what he feels in his marrow, unable to utter them aloud, to make them real. As if speaking his burgeoning desires is somehow worse than a death sentence.

Wanting in this world is dangerous, and ruinous, but when Joel sees the dawning realisation buoying to the surface in those unfathomable black holes, he knows there's nothing more worrisome, more deadly, to him than her insatiable appetite. Her desire for more.

More—

And just him.

Something in her gaze splinters. Cracks. Her shoulder slump in something that tastes of the same defeat that taints the pinch in his brow.

"You are getting softer, Joel Miller," she takes a stab at a joke but her hands shake too much for it to land properly. "Who'd have thought all it would take is old age and mortality—"

"Shut up," he grumbles, and fights the thrum of satisfaction that spumes in his veins when she lays back down beside him. "Didn't hear you complainin' this much five minutes ago."

"Yeah, well—" her hands settle on his chest, fingers carting through the damp, matted hair. "There's a reason I'm always on top, you know. Worried you might throw your back out."

"You say that like I haven't already."

Her chin scraps over the soft flesh where his bicep meets the curve of his shoulder, eyes bright in the morning sun that smears rays of ochre across the bridge of her nose.

She's pretty, he thinks, and feels that same gnawing in his guts, that same hunger, when she dips, and presses a kiss to his skin.

"Poor baby," she coos, brows drawing together in mock sympathy. "I can't believe a little missionary ruined you so badly. Guess I should take better care of the elderly."

"Wasn't the missionary," he huffs. Her skin is soft, tacky, when he runs his fingers over her shoulder. "It was carrying your heavy ass home."

"Did my heavy ass snap your hips, too—"

"Christ," he bites out, but it lacks any heat. "You just never shut up, do you?"

He hears the click in her throat when she swallows.

"Guess you'll just have to shut me up, won't you, old—"

He presses his lips to hers, and steals the goading words from her quivering mouth.

"Call me an old man again, and I'll spank your ass, little girl."

The condescending tone is thick, but where he expects her indignation over the same words spoken to her by everyone else when she said she wanted to go with him on runs—stay here where it's safe, little girl—it instead makes her suck in a sharp breath between her teeth. He feels the vacuum of it against his lips, and blinks up at her.

"Did you like that—"

"No," she snaps, and drops her head to his chest. "God, Joel, you really know how to ruin a moment."

"Is that what this was? A moment?"

"Yes," she volleys back. "You don't think it was?"

He swallows down the tang of panic that salts his tongue, and presses his lips to her crown instead.

"Ain't much of one, was it?"

"We'll make a better one," she murmurs, the lilt of a promise heavy in her words.

When she settles in his fold, cheek laying flat against his chest—hiding her embarrassment he tones with a particular thrum of fondness so sweet it makes his teeth ache—he folds his arm over her shoulder, keeping her tucked into the bracket of his body.

She's too small for him to ever be a perfect fit. Too hard inside that pretty little head for him to ever wiggle through. Too soft for him not to ruin her completely when he holds her too tight in his hands that overlap in a way that sometimes makes him dizzy, feverish with want, with fear.

She doesn't click in the same way Tess does—did.

A silent agreement of unspoken distance. Never ask for more, it hissed because you'll be brutally disappointed. Never hunger because you won't ever be satiated. Don't yearn. Don't want. Don't, don't, don't—

No, she doesn't click. She doesn't fit. Not with him. Not at all.

(Tess left him whole.

She devours.)

Consumes.

Her eyes are black holes, and ever since she looked at him through the fanned ring of her lashes, and said: you won't break me that easily, he's been standing on the edge of her event horizon waiting for that perfect singularity to swallow him whole.

(He thought her pull would happen quickly. Instantaneous.

But she's been ripping him apart the entire time; morsel after morsel until all that remains is raw nerve. Scraps.)

A slow descent into comfort, kinship.

She's on the same plane of existence as Tommy, Ellie. Maria, too, he supposes, a touch begrudgingly. His circle widens, expands. The bubble encompassing her, too, and he knows that he'd mourn her in the same hushed breath as the rest.

I'll outlive you, old man.

(He's never wanted something more in his life right now than for those words to come to fruition.)

For the first time since the walls reared, since the gunshot that still echoes in his ears like a reminder of his sins, his failures, Joel thinks of tomorrow. And the one after that. And after that.

He thinks of her, and them, this, in the afternoon. Over old stew. Tommy's laughter. Maria's knowing glances. Ellie's anger. Her scorn. Distrust.

Wasting the night away in the bar that's always several octaves too loud not to make him tense, antsy. Watching her dance around the room, ballerina nimble with a sprinter's pace. Listen to her joke and laugh with the men who look at her a touch too long, and a shade too intense, and—

Bringing her home after. Back here in this small house where he rots. Where he plays his guitar as if the chords of Hurt would ever be enough to drown out the bullets and the bloodshed. The clicks, the groans. The scent of moss, and fungus.

Taking her to bed in the sheets that hasn't stopped smelling like her since he fucked her three times over Christmas until she sobbed into his pillow, and begged him for respite. When she brushed the grey hair from his temple with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling despite the ease in her grin, and the polynya in her eyes as she regarded him with more than just desire. More than just sex and sweat and the comfort that comes with losing yourself to the chemical high of another body tucked into the crevasse of your own.

She doesn't fit. She doesn't belong.

But fuck—

He knows he's gone when he can't imagine her anywhere else.

"Sure," he says, and wonders when she let herself into his life, into the gnarled remanants of his chest. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."

(He only dreams in black and white, but when he closes his eyes and dreams of her, it's in a startling palette of browns, reds, and blues.)

#UMMMMMMM #this ended up becoming bigger than i expected #it was honestly supposed to just be super quick smut as an intro to me writing Joel and now it's a Thing #Joel Miller #Joel Miller TLOU #joel tlou #tlou #joel miller x reader #joel x reader #joel tlou x reader

876 notes · View notes