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alloftheimagines · 2 years ago

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tess servopoulos | birthday

MASTERLIST | TAGLIST | KO-FI

words: 2.9k

warnings: 18+. minors dni.

smut with plot. fingering (reader receiving because we all know tess is a giver). hurt/comfort. apocalypse-induced depression, mentions of death, corpses, grief. reese's chocolate is consumed.

request: Can I request something for Tess?! Something domestic with hurt/comfort and I little bit of smut if you are comfortable with it, I just LOVE your writing and I know that you would do an amazing job 🥺.

You hate birthdays. There was a time, of course, when that wasn’t the case; a time when your family got together with gifts and cake and candles and songs, cameras flashing, barbecue smoking, sun setting over your garden so the banners you'd protested against glinted. But there is nothing to celebrate these days, least of all today. There are too many memories, too many ghosts following you wherever you go. Flashes of your first post-outbreak birthday, when your sister had tried so hard to find a cake that she’d been beaten for breaking curfew, and instead of a party you’d wiped blood from her face. Of course, that wasn’t the worst one. Not even close. The year after, she was gone and you were making your way from city to city alone, birthday all but forgotten until you’d arrived at a QZ and saw the date. Ever since, you’ve tried to ignore the passing of time, tried to avoid anything that reminds you of the person you were before all this began. It’s too painful.

Still, it’s impossible not to be swallowed by grief each year. Impossible not to pay attention to that burning emptiness in your chest that was once reserved for good things. Normal things. To top it off, your day was awful. You’re exhausted, nauseous, and debilitated by a pounding headache that came on amongst the heat and smoke of the day. A day spent piling bodies up like they weren’t once people. You’d come across a kid who’d looked just like your late niece, and suddenly you were battling anxiety. You still are, eight hours later. You sit now in your apartment with the lights off, paralysed on the couch because you don’t have the strength to get up and collapse onto your bed. You’re afraid that sleeping will only bring more memories, and you can’t handle any more.

It doesn’t surprise you much when the door opens, and you know without looking that the silhouette at the threshold is Tess. You close your eyes, dread seeping through you. You don’t usually let her see you like this, but since you spend most nights together these days, it's no longer easy to avoid her.

“Hey. Why are you sitting here in the dark?” She flicks on the only lamp in your apartment, standing between the kitchen and the living room. When she sees you, she pauses in her tracks. “Y’okay?”

“Hm-mmm.” It’s the best attempt at a lie you can offer, and it seems to satisfy her for just a moment as she kisses your forehead.

But then she frowns, her touch on your clenched jaw lingering as her scrutiny scorches your face. “Wanna try that again?”

“I’m just tired,” you say. “How’d the job go?” Considering she appears unscathed, you can only assume well. It’s another reason she’s here most nights; easier to sneak into your apartment after curfew than her own a couple blocks down.

“Fine. Good as can be expected.” She shrugs and sits down beside you, still unwilling to look away. After kicking off her shoes, she begins smoothing your hair off your face. Her touch is gentle, which once surprised you but now doesn’t.

Your breath hitches in your throat at the warmth it brings, even now. Instead of chasing all of your feelings away, though, it only intensifies them, and you find a lump building in your throat.

“Hey.” She takes your hand and kisses your knuckles. “Talk to me.”

You can only shake your head, closing your eyes in fear that your tears will leak out otherwise. You know she wouldn’t judge you, but it still makes you feel weak. Tess has always just carried on, never buckling under pain or exhaustion. You… You have more nights like this than you’d care to admit, usually brought on by the corpses you carry day in, day out, and the faces you mistake for others'. You’ve tried to find a different job, but you’re still relatively young and able, and that means you’re stuck in manual labour until your back gives out or you croak.

Tess sighs and pulls you into her chest, placing kisses into your dust-caked hair. “I know. Birthdays suck, right?”

You’re so surprised that the tears are staunched for a moment, and you pull away to glance up at her. “How’d you know?”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s on your ration card.”

Still, the fact she’d taken notice at all… well, for a moment, a flicker of something easier to cope with rushes through you.

“I got you a present,” she said, digging through her shirt pocket — and pulling out a pack of your favourite chocolate, Reese’s. “It may or may not be two years out of date, but it’ll have to do.”

“Tess…” You take the chocolate, relishing in the way the plastic packaging feels against your fingers. You haven’t seen chocolate in a hell of a long time, and the sight of the bright orange and the promise of peanut butter cups inside makes you want to cry. “How the hell did you get this?”

Tess shrugs. “I have my ways.”

You dare not ask what those might be, afraid of what and who she might have paid just to make you happy. Instead, you hug her, breathing in her musky night-air scent as your eyes begin to throb. You’re going to cry, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

“Thank you,” is all you can whisper shakily.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Tess replies, drawing circles at the nape of your neck. “D’you eat tonight?”

Warily, you shake your head. As happy as you are about the chocolate, you’re not sure you have the appetite for anything. Better you save it until you’ll really enjoy it.

“It was a hot day. You need something to keep you going.” She pats your thigh before getting up and searching your cupboards. There isn’t much; you’ve been getting by on shitty rations despite all your work, and Tess is usually the one to stock up on food with whatever she gets from smuggling. “What are you in the mood for?” she asks now. “Spaghetti? Mac ‘n’ cheese? We’ve still got that bread I picked up yesterday, too.”

You don’t know how to tell her that you don’t want any of it. That eating something from a tin, or even a stale loaf of bread, just makes you remember those burgers your dad used to burn on the barbecue, or the cake your sister made special. For one night, you just need to not exist. You need to turn the light off again and forget. But with Tess here, you can’t, and you can’t ask her to leave now. Not during curfew.

“I think maybe I’m just going to get an early night,” you decide on. “Is that okay?”

Tess turns from the cupboards, that same look of concern hardening her features again. She takes a moment before responding. “I hate it when you shut me out, y’know.”

Guilt eats at you, and you run a hand across your face — but you know it isn’t fair. Tess is honest, blunt even sometimes, but she holds her cards close to her chest too. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t know either. I’m just… I’m worried, and I want you to let me in. I mean, is this about me? Do you not… want me here right now? ‘Cos I can leave—”

“You can’t leave, Tess. It’s past curfew,” you snap.

“If you want me to fuckin’ go, I’ll go.” Her voice is suddenly hostile, and it takes a moment for realisation to dawn. She’s reading your behaviour as rejection, coldness.

God, it’s been a long time since you’ve had to think about how your actions impact the people closest to you, mostly because you haven’t let many people near. But Tess wormed her way in, first into your bed and then into your heart, and… shit, she brought you fucking Reese’s. She deserves better than to think this is her problem.

“That’s not what I want,” you say, voice cracking as you realise how true it is. As much as you’d like to sit in the darkness, she makes everything better. Easier. You don’t want her gone. Not ever. “It’s just hard. You know that. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have anything left of me by the end of the day, and today of all days…” You swallow as the first tear falls, knowing it won’t be the last. “I always want you here, but sometimes I don’t know how to be here with you.”

A wrinkle burrowed between her brows, and she stepped closer to you like a deer she was afraid to scare off. “That’s all you had to say. I just need to know what you’re thinking, feeling, y’know?”

“Okay,” you whisper.

She pulls you close again, this time not letting go. Your arms curl around her solid frame as her fingertips move across the length of your spine, up and down. You let your tears fall then, and they dampen Tess’s hair, her shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Tess soothes. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“Can we turn the light off?”

“Of course.” She moves slowly to the lamp. “Where’d you wanna sit?”

You contemplate and decide to go across your apartment to your bed, climbing under the thin, moth-eaten sheets. The last thing you see is Tess’s kind face before the apartment is bathed in shadows again. She slips into a strip of moonlight to grab your chocolate from the couch and then joins you, her presence warming the cold bed.

“C’mere.” She holds her arm out, and you snuggle into her chest, lacing your legs between hers. With her arms around you, she peels the chocolate wrapper apart and takes out one of the peanut butter cups. “Have to eat chocolate on your birthday. It’s the law.”

You let out a subdued laugh and take the cup if only to please her. “You have the other one.”

“They’re yours. Save it for tomorrow.”

“You have to share chocolate on your birthday,” you deadpan. “It’s the law.”

Tess rolls her eyes but takes out the other cup, nibbling the corner before letting out a groan. “God, I’ve missed these things.”

The sweet, nutty smell reminds you of old memories. Theatres and picnics and long car journeys. “My sister ate so many of these that she threw up once,” you confess, smiling at the thought of her aggressive sweet tooth. “Outside the movie theatre, too, with everyone watching.”

Tess grins. “Yikes.”

“She still got another three packs on the way home.”

Her chuckle vibrates against you, and for a moment, things don’t feel so heavy. You’re able to think fondly of that time, rather than with bitterness and loss. You can think of your sister, miss her, and yet still somehow breathe. You take a ginger bite of chocolate and another wave of emotion hits you, but you stay upright in the force of it. You have Tess to hold onto.

“As good as I remember,” you admit.

Tess only hums, stroking your hair with her free hand.

“I’m sorry,” you continue, looking up at her. She has a fleck of peanut butter on her lips, and you use the pad of your thumb to wipe it away without really thinking about how intimate a gesture it is. “I know I seem cold and distant sometimes. It’s only because I’m trying not to break in front of you. We all have our shit, and you handle yours… so fucking well, Tess. I feel… guilty that I can’t always do the same. Like, if you can be okay, I should be, too.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “That’s the stupidest shit you’ve ever said.”

You snort through another mouthful of chocolate.

“I’m serious,” she insists. “I got why you’d close off on me before, when things were casual. But I’m not casual about this anymore. I need to know when you’re not okay. And for the record, the only reason I seem okay most of the time is because you make me feel okay. More than okay. I was so lost and empty before you. You reminded me how to live.” She wipes the tears from your face as you soak in the tender words.

“Well, shit,” is all you can murmur for a moment.

Another laugh burbles from Tess. “Yeah, shit.”

You shift against her to look at her properly, tracing the outline of her chin with sticky fingers. “I feel the same. Of course I do. You’re home to me now.”

Her smile falls slowly as her eyes glint, showing you all the things both of you are too afraid to say. It only occurs to you then, after twenty years of pain and suffering, that you’re allowed to feel something else. Something good. You want to, even. You lick your lips, putting down the chocolate to trace the outline of Tess’s stomach, right up to the swell of her breasts. Maybe you need the distraction. Maybe you just need to feel something other than fear. Maybe you need to show her just how much she means to you. Either way, your chest flutters and you adjust your legs between hers, moving higher until you feel the apex of her thighs against yours.

She knows what you need instantly and kisses you, roughly and softly, slowly yet hurried. She tastes like chocolate and peanut butter and she is rewriting your tragic little life, your loss and your grief, so that now Reese’s is this, her. So that now the taste isn’t bitter, but sweet.

“Let me take care of you tonight,” she says.

You can only nod, rolling over and arching your back as she begins to place delicate kisses down your neck, across your collarbone. It takes her eons to get to peel up your T-shirt and kiss your stomach, right down to the waistband of your trousers, but you bask in every moment because you know she’s trying to show you, too.

I love you, you want to say. I love you and it’s terrifying, because I could lose you. But you can’t, so you twine your fingers through her hair instead, pulling her back up to you to kiss her again. Feel her again.

“Please,” you plead, desperate for everything she can give. Anything to take you from the darkness.

Tess doesn’t need you to elaborate. She slips her hand under your waistband and presses gently on your clit, causing the heat in your belly to coil like a spring. Your breath hitches in your throat, and she swallows it with another kiss.

“I got you,” she’s whispering as she begins to circle that sensitive spot slowly. She sucks on your jaw, teeth nipping at your lobe as you arch into your pleasure. She draws your wetness up while sinking into your chest and caressing your breasts with her free hand, and you wish you’d had the forethought to take off your clothes. You’re in too deep now, too lost in the bliss to move an inch.

“Tess,” you breathe, hands tangling in the sheets as she slips a finger inside you, using her thumb to keep rolling across your clit. You buck your hips, and her eyes grow bright as she watches.

“Good girl. Take what you need from me.”

“You,” you say. “I need you. So much.” You’re no longer just talking about this, not even when she plunges a second finger into your sex and you gasp roughly. You begin to roll your hips, desperate for more. A tear slips down your cheek, this time not born from sadness, but something else. Something you can’t put a name to. You only know it consumes you in moments like this, when Tess is here, giving you everything, every piece of her.

“You’re so pretty like this,” Tess rasps, tugging your trousers down, down, until she can kiss your thighs. “So fucking perfect.”

You pinch your own nipple as you feel your climax build to bursting, moving faster, harder, against Tess’s fingers as they fill you up. Your walls clench against her when she nips at your skin. “I’m yours,” she’s saying. “I’m yours, baby.”

The words tip you over the edge, and you cry out, legs shaking, as you come hard around her fingers, whimpering her name over and over as you ride out the high. When your hips finally slow, you realise your cheeks are damp with more than just sweat, but you grow limp and lack the energy to wipe away your tears. Tess places a final kiss just above your clit, causing you to spasm again, before she returns to the pillow beside you. Her features are honey-soft, and she uses the back of her hand to dry your tears when she sees them.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” you say softly. “Just…” It’s hard to say, but you force it out because you want to. Because you need her to know. “I’m yours, too, y’know. I…” You can’t, even now.

You don’t have to. Tess cuddles up to you, tracing the shape of your brows and looking at you like you might be the only source of sunlight in this endless night.

“I know,” she says, and you know she does. Know she must see it on your face, too. “I know. It doesn’t need to be said.”

Your lids are heavy, and you let them close as your breathing begins to even out.

“I do, too,” is the last thing you hear before you dose off. A confession, an answer, a lifeline.

Yours.