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hoseoksluna · 15 days ago

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THE BALL OF LIGHT, ii. | jjk

pairing: friend!jeongguk x fem!oc

genre: angst

word count: 4.2k

summary: inside jeongguk's apartment is where you meet the possibility of life.

pin: ball of light / taglist: join / discord: join / masterlist: run

cp: ao3 / wp

warnings: mentions of smoking and vaping, described nudity, oc feels a lot of emotions and she's overwhelmed, guilt.

note: i really enjoyed writing this chapter and it opened my eyes actually to where it's going. i hope you like the chapter as well. writing about jungkook is my biggest comfort. i feel at home. i love you, guys. happy reading. don't forget to tell me what you think. i'd appreciate it if you tell me ur expectations. <3

side note: i also want to update my taglist because i feel like most of the people i tag haven't allowed themselves to be tagged on this app. if you want to be tagged in my works, let me know. in comments below or my askbox.

It seems as though Jeongguk is still turning your words over his heart once you arrive at his apartment and the sullen grayness of his personal space greets you. A certain pensive look, embellished with a wrinkle between his brows, paints him in the shades of stark reclusiveness, the unapproachability of that façade the blue highlights that make the current inertia of his usual hyperactivity uncannily animated. It’s an oxymoron, the stillness of his being, despite the fact you very vividly sense the turmoil happening inside his chest.

Turmoil must be second-nature to him. Almost like a friend.

You don’t know what to say. The downturned corners of his mouth are so engraved into your vision that when you look away, you can still see them. Sad and pouty, caused in most probability by the truth you uttered. War happens, Jeongguk, if Yoongi and I see each other outside of the walls of our home. Those were the most heart-felt, authentic words that were flung out of the chambers of your heart because—yes, if Yoongi were to know that you smoke one cigarette a day with a boy with a nicotine-addiction, a motorcycle and a tendency to go back to people who have spread agony down his lungs like the white fumes of his cigarettes, he would get up from the kitchen table and grab the nearest knife, start a war for your dream that, according to him, got interrupted by temporary, meaningless things.

But Jeongguk isn’t meaningless. You thought for the longest time that he was temporary, but his lingering presence through high school and now through uni convinced you of the opposite. You believe now, now as he bends at the waist to place a pair of pink, fuzzy slippers with a yummy fried egg on top in front of your icy-cold, socked feet, that he has more shape—the eyes of an angel born wrong, born human, the mouth of a saint that fears to say the wrong thing—than your dream does.

Your dream doesn’t have a face.

Your dream doesn’t have a meaning, either.

Yoongi knows this, pretends he knows the contours of that dream when he tells you to go study. Pretends he knows the color of its flesh, all the greens, purples and blues, when the only words he throws your way are of commanding nature. Come eat. Go shower. Go study. Don’t. You can’t recollect the last time you had a genuine conversation with him that did not include those very words.

It’s exhausting. Your bones are burdened by it—by being treated as a student and not as a human being. But you ignore this because you respect him, hold him in high regard because of his own burden, laid heavy across the length of his shoulders that have become too thin, too skeletal, that have once been broad, beautiful and ogled by those, who had the luck to encounter him.

He doesn’t go to the gym anymore, to fill the mass of his muscles with exercise. He works long hours doing food delivery to fill your tummy instead.

And it’s hard—balancing your respect for him and your ostensibly inner desire to go in search of the things you read about in your books. You can’t help but expect to dig them out, selfishly, in Jeongguk. The kind, now somber, boy who has been by your side for so long. With words and simultaneously without.

Would Yoongi understand? Doesn’t he, also, have a need for company?

You push those thoughts away and focus on the clandestiny. On Jeongguk’s frown, on his adorable pout, on his emotions. Because perhaps in it you shall find your destiny.

Jeongguk walks forward and you swell with the guilty need to fix what you’ve broken, to glue back the pieces that put together his traditional cheer. The tree in you shivers in cold. Your own bones are still frosty like that bus stop you both escaped from. But glancing at the span of his shoulders, drooped and rolled forward, the guilt expands, making you think that maybe you shouldn’t have said something, despite the fact the truth made a dent in the birdcage you have been dwelling in since the death of your parents.

He empties out his pockets. Wallet, keys, phone, a pack of cigarettes, lighter and a pink, fat vape that you’ve never seen him smoking before. He places those essentials on the kitchen counter, stretching his hands backwards and ridding himself of his beige hoodie. The T-shirt he wears underneath rides up, exposing the smooth and muscled skin of his back, and your throat dries up at the sight. The tree stills, pacified by the movement of his shoulder blades. It puts a spell on you, this innocent yet consumingly heated view of a male’s body, one that continues burning down your body even when he grabs a hold of the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it down.

Somehow, the act made it hotter.

Your fingers wrap around your throat, a habit of yours that helps you compose yourself, ground yourself in the severity of the moment. Jeongguk reaches his hand towards the kitchen counter again and as you swallow with great difficulty, he fills his lungs with that scented fume before discarding it.

It isn’t until your breath comes out in pathetic staccatos that he turns around. Large eyes heavily lidded, clouded by that white smoke as he exhales. He purses his lips, dimples on full show, in order to make the smoke thinner. And that, the eye contact while blowing out the fumes, his full attention on you, the element that you’re here—in a boy’s apartment, all alone, for the first time, that warms up your bones, the frost melting away. You feel your body form little pearls of perspiration, overwhelmed and so suddenly overheated by his boyish beauty.

He’ll never know—just like Yoongi. He’ll never know what he does to you.

“I’m gonna make you some tea so you can get warm,” he says, softly, and shuffles his feet towards the brightly lit kitchen. You hear the water running, the clapping noise of the kettle being shut and then the boiling bubbles, but you’re frozen—red-hot and frozen—in the place you’re standing, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to be a normal human being. “You’re free to take a shower if you want.”

A headache pierces through your undeveloped frontal lobe. Nothing about this is normal to you—being over a guy’s place, using his shower and his towel, drinking his tea. Being at home all the time never prepares you for this and while you feel so out of place, it also evokes the feeling of thrill.

This is thrilling.

And it should stay feeling that way, but your guilt eclipses it so quickly. Your guilt and your self-pity. Due to Yoongi, due to the fact that this should feel normal and that you should act normally. How many girls must’ve been in your place and how well they were able to talk to him and accept his kindness and hospitality without being weird about it.

You run a hand down your face. Feel like crying. Feel like screaming. Feeling like slapping yourself so you snap out of it and act normal. Yoongi flickers in your chest, however, and you’re reminded that you should let him know where you are. Usually, at this hour, you’re settled in your cage. Right there in the corner, the only warm spot because you sit there all the time. But you’re not there. You fit your body through the slivers, your feet rubbing against the different, more warmer floor than the one inside your birdcage, while your wrist remains chained to the center.

Your bus, the number 59, never came. Jeongguk’s, number 60, was the last one that came due to the thickness of the snow and he said that you should get on with him so you don’t freeze on the bus stop. I’ll drive you home on my bike, he promised. I got a helmet for you. And you agreed, despite the fact your thumb was ready to dial Yoongi’s number, because it came natural to you to follow a male’s order.

You scratch your fingernails through your scalp, waking yourself up from the stupor, and you take a deep breath. You’re here and you’re safe. Jeongguk is the safest person you can go behind Yoongi’s back with. These are the words you internally repeat to yourself as you lift one leg and the other, watching where they take you.

You wind up at the very edge of the counter where all of Jeongguk’s essentials lay scattered. You go to study all the charms hung over his keys when your fingers, somehow instinctively, take a hold of his pink vape. Light and pink, fitting just right in the palm of your hand. Your clandestine habits are invariably seen by Jeongguk, however.

“Don’t puff on that,” he says, pouring the boiling water inside the kettle over your cup of tea. A Christmas-themed one, evidently for adults only. The taupe Gingerbread man has a raging, bare boner that sticks out to the side whilst his hands are lifted, cheerfully, in the air. Your mouth parts, blush coloring your cheeks in dusty pink, and your brain, bizarrely, connects the Gingerbread man’s emotion to Jeongguk—both emotions, in fact. So bizarrely that anger begins to grow in you because a picture of Jeongguk’s own happy boner pops up before your eyes. Big, hard, leaking. Your stifling heat descends to your lower regions and you have to rub your eyelids in order to stop seeing it, your cheeks scalding, embarrassingly hot. “It’s not good to mix it.”

Without asking, he places one spoon of sugar inside that obscene cup, stirring it diligently. And the clinking noise rams a clapping monkey inside your brain.

You’ll die. From this headache, from the heat, from how irresistible this boy is.

You’ve never felt this way before towards him. Never seen him in this lustful light before. And you don’t know what to do—it’s towering you, so much bigger than you and you have very little strength to stand up to it.

It’s not good to see your so-called friend like this.

Jeongguk brings the cup over to you, placing it before his stuff. The Gingerbread man faces you, smiling ever so gleefully, and the blush of your cheeks deepens within this proximity. Jeongguk takes his vape from your hand and puffs on it—and your brain remembers what he just talked about.

“But you mix it,” you say, your words dripping with confusion, and Jeongguk places the device back into your palm, the tips of his fingers brushing against your flesh. You regard it as intimate, that brief physical contact, and it speeds up your heartbeat.

That touch-starved you are.

“I shouldn’t, but I do,” he responds, his pretty eyelashes static, unblinking, those macadamia chocolate pools of his penetrating your pupils. “I try to stick to just one from time to time, but my nerves are asking for more.”

You look down at the pink device, imagine it’s his hand that you’re closing your fingers over. Think his explanation has zero backbone, and so your confusion drips on.

“Nerves?” you inquire, a wrinkle appearing between your brows akin to his, even though his has been smoothed out. It seems his act of service to you is slowly easing his sombreness.

Jeongguk doesn’t want to elaborate, though. He flicks his eyes towards the cup and nods, just once, encouraging you to drink. You let out a quiet huff of a scoff. Consider it strange that he’s so unwilling to expand on this matter when he has shared with you in the past the reason behind his smoking habit. Trauma from his relationship with Ka-eun and the difficulty of his field. What else is behind those nerves of his that you can’t know about?

You follow the trace of his gaze towards the cup, feeling smaller than you are. Incompetent, inexperienced for the vivacity, immensity of his life that looks nothing like yours. Your pointer finger pokes out, clicking against the emerald green handle.

“Am I supposed to really drink from this?” you murmur, meaning it as a joke that would fix what you cooked in this situation, but it comes out much sadder than you planned, the hollowness from all of your lacks coating your vocal cords.

Jeongguk scowls and turns the cup around, his brows springing upwards as he glances at the naked and aroused Gingerbread man. You begin to anticipate his laughter that would make you feel worse about yourself, but it never breezes through.

Actually, Jeongguk apologizes. Makes a big deal out of it.

“My God,” he sighs, adding your name, running his fingers through his hair before he puts the cup away, but you stop him by enveloping your fingers across the warm, naked skin of his forearm. His eyes widen en route to yours and he holds the misting cup in his hand, immune to its hot temperature. The good ones don’t get burned, your mother would say with hatefulness whenever your fingers would get burned by steaming cups and hot running water in the sink, and she proves you right in this moment. You bet she smiles in her grave, seeing from the afterlife that you are indeed bad while the others are good. “I didn’t notice. I have one just like this, but he’s dressed. I thought I’d pulled out that one. I’m sorry.”

But you’re not scandalized by it. As a matter of fact, you like the little Christmas man—there’s something oddly comforting about his own comfort in his sexuality, smiling as gleefully as he is. What you said was a stupid joke, one that shouldn’t have left your mouth.

“No, I don’t mind. It’s fine. It was just a joke,” you say, hurriedly, sweeping your eyes over his in the same pace whilst he remains calmly staring at you, a steady stream of thoughts filtering through those features of his that you wish you knew the contents of.

You always said you’d die for knowledge, and right now you’d die to discover what he’s thinking about, looking at you the way that he is.

He flattens his lips. “I’ll make you another one.”

He turns around and you yelp your disagreement, cupping your hands around his. And the greater intimacy of this physical contact consumes you whole.

The heat grows, your spine wet with perspiration. Jeongguk swivels his head back, the shorter pieces of his hair swooshing past his forehead, landing on those pretty, pretty eyelashes. And it’s his turn to part his mouth, for blush to creep up his pale cheeks, and your heart—it melts.

You’ve never held hands with a boy before. And right now, you’ve come very close to doing it. In fact, the tender grip bears the resemblance of hand holding and you can’t take it.

A pained, indistinct pout quivers on your lips. A characteristic expression of yours, which conveys that something has hurt you. Your mother would give you a hard time because of it and that’s how you learned that you do it. That’s how you learned how to fleetly hide it, too.

This is the closest you’ll ever get.

Tears rush to your waterline. You blink it away, stretching your lips into a little, neutral smile. The scent of cinnamon and cloves from the tea hits your nostrils and from the edges of your palms, you feel how hot the cup really is. It sobers you up quite rapidly.

“It’s hot, set it down,” you breathe and don’t let go of his hands until Jeongguk complies, the pensiveness back to shadowing his face, but he’s not unapproachable, not at all. The entirety of his dispirited and contrite aura is welcoming, pastel blue instead of that grayish undertone, and he looks at you as if you held the entire world in your palms and he was content with just being near it, silently hoping you show him grace and give it to him.

But that’s not you. You’re too small to cup this world. Too stupid, too unfledged.

It’s him who’s flown around it, deeply acknowledged with it. Who’s smart, who’s a full-fledged bird, unlimited and unhindered.

It’s you who should be looking at him like that and drinking from his vulgar cup.

And you shall.

“I’ll drink it, it’s cute.”

He doesn’t trust it, though, and that’s the scar Ka-eun carved into the flesh of his mind. You brush the pads of your fingers across it, however, when you take the scalding cup to your lips, blow on it and take a small, hesitant sip of it. And the wintry taste of cinnamon and cloves, it is the sap to your tree.

You hum in delight, taking another sip, even though the temperature burns the tip of your tongue. You watch as Jeongguk’s brows twitch and as a certain glimmering glint of endearment laced with unbelief fills his eyes with the canvas of stars. He straightens his spine while you swallow, his lungs inhaling and exhaling slowly but surely.

It is a sight to behold, the entirety of his boyish beauty. And you hate that you regard him this way, that your forced visit caused this because you’ll walk out of this door with a longing entwined around your heart.

A longing for him to be yours.

You set the cup down, cradling it in your palms, your sweat clinging to your body. Jeongguk averts his gaze and rubs his chest, roaming his eyes everywhere but on you, landing on the pink vape you placed on the counter before almost-holding his hand.

But he doesn’t take a puff of it. Not this time.

And you want to heal that scar of his even more. Only because he pushed you very close to the things you read in your books and always wanted to experience.

“I think the tea tastes so good because you made it in this cup,” you chirp, tenderly, giving him a genuine smile, one that Jeongguk doesn’t reciprocate. That one corner of his mouth doesn’t lift, the long cleft of his dimple doesn’t appear. Your heart trembles for a brief moment. In a foreign kind of emotion that feels like fear but isn’t because the turmoil in him rages on and you’re useless. Completely and utterly useless in your efforts.

His stare is deadly, marked by the depth of his thoughts.

“Why did you say war happens if you and your brother see each other outside?” he asks, his tone low and grumbling.

A frightening question. Because no one has ever asked you that. Because you’ve never had the chance to answer such an intimate, personal question. Because no one has ever cared about your home situation.

The trembling of your heart reaches your entire body and you hide your hands behind your back. Lament that you can’t cradle the cup. Lament that you can’t drink it and postpone your response. Lament that you don’t have a normal life. One worth talking about happily, that is.

You don’t know what to say. How to begin, how to string the words together in a way that he would understand. And it’s not that you fear that he will judge you; it’s that you fear that the way he looks at you, regards you will forever change.

You were never the cool girl and you never were the weird girl, either. Somewhere in the middle you stand, solitary and detached, regardless.

You open your mouth, willing the words to spring out of you on their own, without any careful thoughts to cover them.

“Yoongi wants me to live a life that doesn’t look like this,” you start, mirroring his tone, unable to look him in the eye. You sense the demons of your guilt and your ungratefulness cornering you, coming closer and closer—and you can’t walk away, you can only speak.

Jeongguk, however, is quick and curt with his following question.

“Like what?”

The pearls of your perspiration thicken on the planes of your throat, which constricts. You blink, thinking that you don’t wish to offend him with any formulation of your sentences. So you go around it, hoping he understands. The demons inch closer—and you can’t breathe.

Jeongguk doesn’t blink, focused intently as he is on the emotions written on your form. It creates a delicate, yet protective ring around you that keeps the demons outside. And he lessens your strange fear owing to that.

“He wants me to focus on school and focus on my dream while he takes care of everything else. It was a deal he made between us. I study, he works. Nothing else,” you continue, and Jeongguk bites his lip, nodding in understanding as he glides his eyes down your face to your sweat-coated neck. For some reason, that little act of his acknowledgement dispels those demons—and you no longer feel guilty, you no longer feel ungrateful because Jeongguk validated those emotions, didn’t scrunch his nose at them. And that heals, little by little, your wounded, flightless bird wings.

“What does your dream look like?” he asks once again, and you wonder at the formulation of his question. It’s not what’s your dream; he’s asking for a description of the biggest mystery of your life.

And you chuckle, humorlessly. Jeongguk flicks his gaze back to your eyes, seemingly not knowing what to expect.

“That’s the thing,” you say. “I don’t know what it looks like, and Yoongi doesn’t know either.”

The roundness of his eyelids spasms, as if the truth you just uttered irks him. The validation grows and buds of blossoms sprout open, in the middle of this sunless winter, upon the twigs of the tree within you.

“He doesn’t know what your dream is and yet he decided how you should live,” Jeongguk scoffs, shaking his head, and you marvel at the light bursting in your sternum. It is the sun to your growth, to your tree’s growth.

A moment of bliss that is too brief, for you begin to sense an uncompromising responsibility to stand up for your brother. He means well—he’s doing it out of the love and kindness of his heart as the root of this declared problem is literature.

And literature is your life. It’s all you know.

You begin to say these words, but Jeongguk interrupts you.

“I understand, but you need to live a life that you want to live,” he rasps, standing taller than he was a minute ago, greater and powerful than he ever was. That confident and assured he is in his opinion and you gawk at him as if he were a cult leader, about to change the course of your life. Maybe, just maybe, the cinnamon tea was the kool aid—and you want to drink again, but you’re ashamed of the trembling of your hands. “And if you feel like you’re indebted to him, you shouldn’t. You’re an adult. It’s your life, it’s not his just because he’s older.”

Your throat dries and you risk it all, enveloping your fingers around the cup. Jeongguk’s all seeing eye notices your movement and his powerfulness drops. He sighs, rubbing his eyes.

Bare, bare you are all for him to see. For anyone for the first time in your life—and at this point, you don’t even know how it makes you feel.

Where light and so many emotions were inside you, emptiness falls like fine dust. You’re reminded of that one sentence in White Nights and, quietly, you reflect on it while your fingers tremble on.

My God, a moment of bliss. Why isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?

Jeongguk makes space, like the ring of protection he created around you, by taking a few steps back and leaning against the counter. He crosses his arms over his chest and simply looks at you, reads your body language, and lingers at your hands. At the fact you don’t drink. At the fact you don’t speak. At the fact that nothing will ever be the same after this conversation.

When he asks his last question, he softens his voice. His demeanor, too. Allows his arms to plummet down to his sides. Sags against the counter.

“He doesn’t know we’re friends, does he?”

Something that resembles a cry leaves your mouth and you’re so shocked by the freedom of your emotions that your hand leaps to cup your mouth, as if to hold back any more outpouring. That is your reaction.

Jeongguk’s is more earth-shattering.

By his instinct, he lengthens his spine and his hand… his beautiful, strong and veiny hand jerks towards your direction, as if to catch your hand, prevent it from hiding your outpouring—or as if to catch your outpouring alone.

And it is so heartbreaking to you that you mutter the first thing that comes to your mind and run away.

And you don’t realize where you are until you get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. A mascara tear stains your cheek in blackness, and the smallness of the bathroom encloses around you.

You want to wash it away. Feel like the decision is yours to make, a right one at that. Feel like it’s the first step in the new way Jeongguk bestowed over your life by his wise words. And so you undress.

And you don’t lock the door.

And you don’t hear your phone ringing ten minutes later.

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @jjk7k , @tkslovechild , @euphoricmyth, @cinmmongirl , @ririkookiemonster , @perfectiondazesworld , @https-mei , @bangtansonyeondanue , @jungkoock , @cinmmongirl, @hoseokkie-caeks , @kam9404 , @fr0ggieth1nk , @parkinglot-nights

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a-dinosaur-a-day · 1 year ago

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I know it's such a highly popular dinosaur but are they any interesting facts about the Tyrannosaurus Rex that isn't well known? I still love the Rexes wishing more dinosaur media treated it in the same way nature documentaries treat modern carnivores as animals just trying to surive and not just ripping up every living thing they encounter.

T. rex is actually one of the best studied (non-neornithine) dinosaurs ever, period. In fact, writing all the interesting facts we know about it is... more work than I particularly want to do right now, lol.

some things off the top of my head:

it wasn't built for moving fast in terms of miles per hour or whatever, but they were built for extreme cursoriality in other ways. Essentially, T. rex and its relatives were built for turning, quickly, on a dime. And they moved faster than the herbivores they were chasing. So these were animals built for short, surprise attacks on their prey. And ballet dancing

T. rex had the best sense of smell... ever. Like, ever ever. And its eyesight and hearing were good too. It had a fairly large brain for where it is in the dinosaur family tree, as well. Essentially, this was a dinosaur built to take in as much sensory info as possible, to pinpoint prey as quickly as possible.

T. rex aged kind of like people! IE, the process of going from infant -> sexually and skeletally mature adult takes about the same amount of time, with similar stages happening at similar times. So, T. rex had an awkward teenage phase! They were tall, but very skinny and lanky, and many researchers think that different ages of Tyrannosaurus filled different niches, with bigger rexes eating larger prey and the teens eating smaller faster dinosaurs.

That said, there's lots of evidence for familial groups and social life in Tyrannosaurs, based on fossilization patterns and footprint records. So it's very likely they took care of their young, and hunted in groups.

did they have feathers? no idea. they're big enough to have lost them for thermoregulation like many other dinosaurs did. they are in a group that have some big feathered animals, though, like Yutyrannus. Maybe babies had feathers and adults lost them. Maybe adults kept them some places and not others. We do know that there are parts of the Tyrannosaurus adult body that had scales. Beyond that - whether feathers were present too, or not - we don't know.

it was not skeletally sexually dimorphic. however, we do know that some tyrannosaurs were female because the fossilized when they were in the process of making eggs. during this process, dinosaurs - including living birds - deposit extra tissue in their bones called medullary bone. This tissue stores calcium to make eggshells from later. It's only present in actively ovulating female dinosaurs. So, we know some of our fossils were making eggs when they died!

the arms were small, yeah, but they were VERY strong. these weren't vestigial organs, yet, though their shortness was mainly due to the strengthening of the neck muscles. T. rex interacted with the world primarily with its head and jaws. The arms would have been helpful with holding on during mating, or possibly for display.

it wasn't a scavenger. it was an opportunist. No predators today avoid easy meals - life is all about minimizing energy spent to get more energy. But obligate scavengers tend to be flying organisms, ones that can cover huge distances, in order to find enough carrion. T. rex was definitely a predator, and had to hunt occasionally, but wouldn't turn up its nose at an easy meal.

T. rex lived all over western north america, right at the end of the age of dinosaurs. It was one of the most successful nonavian dinosaurs, ever, and would probably not have gone extinct so quickly if there hadn't been an asteroid.

#tyrannosaurus #dinosaurs #t. rex #palaeoblr #paleontologist ama

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millerstolemyheart · 6 months ago

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Pairing: Joel Miller x M!Reader

Warnings: Broken ankle, pure smut, blowjob (reader receiving), anal, gay gay gay gay

A/N: There’s absolutely not enough gay Joel Miller fanfics out there, so I guess I’ll add my own to the mix? Note- I do this for fun, so I don’t proofread a lot. I just wanna add more filth to the world ✨

Summary: Reader gets injured on patrol with Joel, and Joel refuses to leave his side.

Closer

Snow crunches under your boots as you trudge through the forest, the frigid winter air stinging your cheeks and making each breath feel like pins and needles are going down your trachea. The bitter wind howls through the barren landscape, carrying with it a cold that cuts straight to the bone. You tighten the pitiful excuse for a scarf around your neck, the woolen fabric offering little protection against the relentless Wyoming chill. Each breath is a reminder of the harsh reality of your world. Without thinking about it, you glance ahead at Joel, who trudges forward with the kind of grim determination that has kept you both alive many times before.

The trees, bare and skeletal, reach towards the heavy gray sky with gnarled branches, their bark coated in a thin layer of frost. It seems as if the woods themselves are frozen in time, awaiting the thaw of spring to come. Unfortunately, you have several more months before warmer weather approaches. It had been a long winter already, and the food stores were beginning to dwindle. You were lucky Tommy’s patrol brought down a few elk last week, enough to keep spirits going for at least a little while longer. Still, you couldn’t help but worry about the months to come.

“Eyes open,” Joel grunts ahead of you, as if sensing your wandering mind. His voice is almost lost in the wind, but you’re familiar enough at this point to understand what he says, or grunts… He’s a man of little words, playing his cards close to his chest. You’d practically begged Maria to send someone, anyone else these morning patrols. The idea of spending hours alone with the most reclusive man in Jackson wasn’t something you longed for. Plus, Joel seemed rather disinterested at the idea of having an unfamiliar body to take care of. Nevertheless, here you were, four months later- still trudging through the snowy underbrush, eyes peeled for movement.

“You keep your eyes open,” you grumble under your breath, confident the howling wind will disguise your quip.

You could swear you hear a snort of laughter from the man ahead of you, but it’s hard to tell with the wind howling so obnoxiously in your ears. Still, the possibility causes the corner of your mouth to tug upwards into a smirk. It had been a game of yours for a while, trying to force a laugh out of Joel. You’d seen it happen before on rare occasions. A chuckle here, a smirk there. It was a strange thing to watch Joel’s permanently-furrowed brow smooth itself out, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling deeply, mouth upturned. It suited him.

Without thinking, you find your eyes studying Joel. The way the softly falling flecks of snow stick to his salt-and-pepper curls. The broad muscles of his shoulders sway in time with his steady pace. He moves confidently and quickly, no doubt just as ready to return home as you are. You’re about two miles out from the gates at this point, passing the river that welcomes you into familiar territory once more. A sigh of relief escapes you, tinged with the strangest feeling of disappointment. It’s not that you enjoy freezing your asscheeks off in negative temperatures, though… There is a quiet familiarity to the routine. It’s easy to be around Joel. Less to think about. It’s as if his presence brings a calmness, something solid to hook your focus into. You were aware these feelings meant trouble, but at this point… what didn’t?

Joel slows his pace as you pass the river, no doubt feeling just as relieved to be in the home stretch. He reaches a comfortable pace a few feet from you, eyes cast forward. The steady clomp of his boots falls into time with your own.

“Almost there,” he comments, shooting a quick glance in your direction. He knits his brow together, eyes scanning your red cheeks. “Y’alright?”

I’m lucky the cold sting of the wind hides the blush that creeps into my face. “Yep. Nothing I love more than freezing my dick off in this beautiful Wyoming hellscape.”

Joel snorts under his breath, bringing a pleased smile to your lips. One point for Y/N…

“What about you, old man?” You suddenly tease, testing your luck. You watch as Joel turns a sharp amber gaze in your direction, jaw clenching. But he’s unable to hide the twinkle in his eyes. You arch a brow, waiting for his response.

Joel simply adjusts his rifle on his shoulder to a more comfortable position with a grunt. “Old man could still kick your ass…” He grumbles, eyes locked on the horizon, scanning from right to left.

You break into a genuine grin, falling silent once more as you both make your way step-by-step towards home. 1.8 miles. 1.6 miles. 1.5 miles. It’s a relatively quiet day besides the howling of wind and the crunch of snow under your feet. Not many people are crazy enough to brave the northern winter; though, you maintain your daily patrols, unwilling to take the chance and end up losing the first place you’ve found to be safe in a long time.

It’s almost too uneventful these days… You catch yourself thinking just as your foot hits a hidden patch of ice. You hear the snap before you feel it, a sharp pulse of pain shooting its way up your leg as you tumble down, hitting the ground with a hard thump. A soft cry makes its way from your throat, practically losing itself in the wind.

Before you can figure out what happened, Joel is kneeling beside you, eyes scanning you diligently, hands hovering above your wounded leg. “Sh, sh sh…” He consoles. “Y’alright?” He checks your head for injury, and you swat him away, hissing through your teeth at the radiating pain in your ankle.

“Fine, Joel,” You grunt. “Didn’t hit my head, just slipped. I… I think it’s broken.” You attempt to move your leg, the pain causing your vision to go white for a split instant. “Shit!” You’re over a mile away from home with no horses, and the weather seems to be picking up. Wracking your brain, you clench your jaw. “Go to town, get help. I’ve got my rifle.” Staying here by yourself isn’t the most appealing of ideas, but you know you can’t walk.

You see Joel bristle as you suggest parting, and the man releases an annoyed puff of air in the form of a small cloud that dissipates above your heads. “Go to town, my ass. I’m not leavin’ you out here to freeze to death.” His eyes are locked onto yours, a warm coffee-color that reflects the dull glint of sunlight off the freshly fallen snow. You feel your body give an involuntary shudder and mentally blame it on the pain.

“Well unless you’re hiding a horse up your ass, you don’t have a choice,” I counter, tilting my head in a clear challenge.

This only seems to strengthen Joel’s resolve. He silently stands, towering over you for a moment. In this instant, it seems as though he may actually turn and leave you lying there. Why does the thought of that make your stomach hurt? However, his intentions make themselves clear when he steps behind you and locks his thick arms under your knees and behind your back. With a deep grunt, he straightens up, you locked tightly against his chest like a baby. The move is dizzying, and you unintentionally grip his shoulders in response. “Woah! Joel! What are you doing?”

“Deal with it,” he grunts as simply as that. He begins to take gentle steps back on our route towards town, paying attention to any unlevel areas of ground. You barely feel the motions of his stride, but you’re hyper aware of other things now. The warmth of his broad chest radiating out and thawing your aching muscles. His steady breathing, gentle puffs of air on the top of your head. The thump-thump-thump of your heartbeat. And most of all, the deep crimson shade that’s taken over your cheeks as you’re forced into an incredibly-humiliating position of vulnerability. You want to protest, to hit him, to force him to drop you and leave you on the frozen ground to avoid being spotted like this. However, you can’t deny the surge of warmth that spreads through your belly as the man carries you effortlessly over the landscape.

Joel purposely shoots you a glance, sensing your discomfort. “Y’alright?”

“Shut up.”

“Big words for someone gettin’ a free lift,” he shoots back, clearly enjoying the upper hand. There’s a hint of arrogance in his tone that makes you want to slap him and then kiss him. It sends a shiver down your spine, something not lost on the older man. You sense the vibration of a chuckle in his chest, but he stays silent, maintaining a clear and careful path back towards Jackson.

“This is humiliating,” You whine, throwing your head back and letting the snow fall directly onto your face.

“Quit your complainin’. Freezing to death ‘cause of pride would be humiliating.” Joel tightens his grip. “And for Christ’s sake, help me out here. Hold on or somethin’.”

You clench my teeth, biting back a groan while you throw a hesitant arm around his shoulders, other hand holding on to his jacket. It’s the least intimate position you could possibly contort yourself into, and yet it still feels like you’re playing “damsel-in-distress.” You should have seen the ice coming, should have been more careful. Now you were definitely off patrol for a while. A shadow falls over your face at the thought of someone else taking over your patrol slot with Joel.

“It hurtin’?” Joel asks softly, voice taking on a careful tone. When you glance up, he’s concerned, eyes flicking down to study your swelling ankle. “We’ll be there soon.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” You close your eyes, finding comfort in the darkness away from your present situation. “Thanks.”

A low rumble is all you receive in response, his chest humming an approving noise. The steady rocking of his pace sends your head falling back against his chest every few steps, colliding gently with the hard muscle. Being this close, you can smell his natural Joel smell. Like old sawdust and pine. It’s a comforting scent that you’ve grown used to on patrol, sneaking careful inhales without Joel noticing. You could only imagine the taunts you would receive if he ever suspected. He knows about your sexuality at this point, but he’s never made a case of it, electing instead to carry on as if nothing changed, which you appreciate. In return, you refrain from asking about his personal life, only engaging when he has something to share, which is rare.

“You fallin’ asleep on me?”

Joel’s drawling voice wakes you from your daydream, your eyes shooting open to find an amused, maybe even cocky smirk. You feel your cheeks redden again. “No, shut up.” You feel like a child in his arms, completely helpless. It’s a far cry from how you’ve worked hard to prove yourself, both to the community and to Joel.

Joel just chuckles and continues his trek. Within minutes you spot the familiar walls of Jackson on the horizon. Your body relaxes a bit knowing your ordeal will be over soon. With a sharp whistle, Joel has them opening the heavy wooden gates, carrying you inside. You begin to squirm, ready for Joel to release you, but he just lifts you higher into his grip and continues walking, ignoring the looks from the gate patrol. “I’m takin’ you to the infirmary,” he states, resolute.

You open your mouth to protest, but something about his steady determination feels… good. It has a warmth pooling in your core again, eyes careful as they scrutinize Joel’s rugged expression. Deciding it best not to argue, you just nod silently and look forward as he walks you both to the nearby infirmary. It’s a quiet day today, most people holed up inside their homes to wait out the falling snow. The infirmary only has a few people flitting in and out, and Joel is confident as he makes his way inside towards an available cot. “Slipped on ice out on patrol,” he explains calmly when the nurse makes his way over to you.

“We’re gonna have to cut these pants off,” the nurse explains apologetically, eyes flitting to your swelling ankle. “I hope you have more.”

You roll your eyes, unable to help yourself. “Great. Just great.” You sigh and nod, giving silent permission for the scissors to be brought out. Joel backs up, giving the staff room to work, though his eyes remain fixed. They study your calm diligence as your favorite pair of pants is hacked away, your ankle red and inflamed. His cheeks appear almost tinged pink when he realizes he’s gazing, and he quickly averts his gaze to give you some privacy.

You, meanwhile, are too busy mourning the pants to notice how Joel’s eyes flicker across the hem of your underwear before shooting down to the tile floor. If you had noticed, you may have also seen the way his breath catches in his throat, or how his pupils dilate. But no, you’re busy watching as the staff treat your ankle, setting and wrapping it, and giving you a small amount of pain medication to take on your way. They don’t have any extra pants around, so they wrap you as best they can in a thick fleece blanket, making you look like the world’s most insane upper-midwestern mermaid. You don’t miss the twinkle in Joel’s eyes when he sees your new outfit.

“Well that sure is somethin’ ya don’t see every day…” Joel muses, one side of his mouth curling up into an amused smirk.

“I swear to god, Joel,” you groan. “Can you just help me get home?”

Joel raises his hands in mock defense. “Alright, alright. But you’re coming with me.” His voice carries with it a sternness that dares you to challenge him.

“With you?” You squeak out, surprised.

“Ya can’t walk. Not at least for a few days.” He scratches the back of his head, and if you didn’t know any better, you would think he appeared sheepish. “You got hurt on my watch, and that makes you my responsibility.”

Your face falls slightly. So that’s it? I’m a responsibility? I feel my jaw clench. “I can’t take care of myself, Joel.” The statement is pure bullshit. He and you both know you’d be frozen into a human popsicle if it weren’t for Joel’s stubbornness. “I’m not anyone’s burden.”

Joel’s eyes narrow as he takes in your reaction, the defensive hurt evident on your face. It doesn’t take him a second to kneel down next to your cot, eyes serious. “Hey now…” His gaze is a magnetic force, pulling your focus up to those eyes of his. Those damn eyes…

“You’re no burden,” he declares matter-of-factly. “I’m just lookin’ out for ya. We’re… we’re buds, right?”

Buds? You blink. Since when does Joel consider you a friend? You must have worn your surprise on your face, because Joel continues on.

“Yeah, buds. Whatever. Shut up. Just let me bring you home with me for a couple days, alright? I could use the company. Ellie’s out on a supply run for the week anyways.” His eyes soften, seeming to implore me. But his mouth is still drawn in that classic Joel expression.

“I…” You feel your suspicion begin to dissipate, replaced with surprised confusion. “Fine.” Your voice is soft, careful even. Of all the times you’ve fantasized about Joel bringing you home, this was never one of the scenarios.

Joel nods silently, but his body hums with a pleased glow. He stands, takes the medication and pockets it before glancing back down at you.. “Ready?” His arms twitch to take you up again, but this time he refrains from doing so until he’s sure you’re expecting it. “Promise I’m just a short walk away this time.” He shoots you an uncharacteristically cheeky grin.

You feel yourself nodding before you even consider his words. Joel takes you up to cradle you once more, this time making sure the blanket around your lower half is wrapped securely and won’t be lost in the increasingly-strong winds outside. You barely notice the frigid temperatures this time. Between the adrenaline from your ankle and the warmth flooding your body from Joel’s arms, it could be springtime. Luckily, there’s nobody wandering outside to spot this display of vulnerability, and Joel is able to bring you to his home within the next few minutes.

The air inside is warmer, but still chilly, as he sets you on the couch. He wordlessly moves to the fireplace and gets a good blaze started. The heat from the flames fills the room with a comforting warm and steady glow, already making you forget about the storm outside. You find yourself holding the small bottle of pain pills from the infirmary. “Take your meds,” Joel commands, eyes studying you for a moment before he turns and disappears into the kitchen.

“Aye, aye, Cap’n…” You mutter, twisting off the top and popping one. At least we have medication now. The town supplies were steadily growing, but this winter was bound to be harsh. It was a good thing the reserves could last you for weeks… Your mind wanders while Joel fusses about in the kitchen, returning with two cups of coffee. The aroma fills your nose, making you almost forget about the dull throb in your ankle for just a moment.

Joel wordlessly hands you a steaming mug and takes a seat in the chair across from you. His gaze is steady as he takes in the sight of you laid up on his couch. His expression is hard to read, but it seems as though he’s pleased about something.

Narrowing your eyes, you interrupt the silence. “What?”

Joel shakes his head with a low chuckle. “You’re cute when you’re all indignant.”

The words hang in the air like balloons. It’s as close to a flirt as you’ve ever heard from Joel, and directed at you??? You feel heat rise to your cheeks, and you swallow thickly. “I- er… I-”

“See?” Joel shakes his head, releasing an amused puff of breath. “You can’t stand being taken care of, can you?”

Your cheeks burn, embarrassed. That’s not entirely the truth. To be perfectly honest, you wanted nothing more than to sit back and let Joel take care of you. To protect you. To provide for you. But that isn’t the way the world works. People don’t just take care of others without expecting something in return. You knew Joel wasn’t the type, not anymore… but the bias remained firm. “I… This isn’t a place where you can rely on someone else,” You finally choke out.

Joel studies you carefully, considering your words, before responding.

“This place? With me?” He grows serious, expression softening. “You ain’t gotta worry about that, hot shot.” His teasing term of endearment makes my shoulders soften, a familiarity amidst all this new territory and the rearranging of boundaries that comes with it. Joel points to my ankle. “That. That’s no joke. You could make it worse. Hurt yourself. I still need you on patrol when you get better.” His mouth twitches up into a tiny smile. “Next time you can carry me. I promise.”

The joke prompts a laugh out of you, the mental image of you struggling to lift Joel into your arms a sight to behold. As your body shakes with laughter, you spot Joel with a pleased grin, his plan to break down your walls already working. It was a strange game you played. Each with your own walls and defenses, each with your own strategy of navigating the other’s. Here, in Joel’s home, you felt those walls attempt to erect themselves again, your body’s way of protecting itself against threats. And your developing crush on Joel was the biggest threat of all.

***

One day turned into two days, and two days turned into two weeks. Your ankle was slower to heal than you would have liked, and crutches would have been no help on the icy terrain around town. Joel demanded you remain at his home, long after Ellie returned. The teen regarded you laid up on the couch with an amused smirk. “It’s about time,” she remarks, a teasing grin playing on her lips.

Joel shoots her a dark glower, and she backs off, hands raised in defense. “I’ll be upstairs.” She shoots a final smirk directly at me before turning on her heel and bounding upstairs to go do whatever it is that teenagers do. Joel sighs, shaking his head and grumbling something about kids. You, however, are still stuck on Ellie’s comment.

“What did she mean by ‘about time?’” You ask.

Joel looks up from his hands, brow shooting up. “Er, who knows? Have you met Ellie? Who knows what she’s sayin’ half the time?” He tries to play it off, but you’ve spent enough time around Joel to know when he’s bullshitting. Still, though, you don’t care to dig too much, so you try and change the subject. “Joel? Would you mind grabbing the ice pack?” The request is simple. Usually, giving Joel something to make him feel helpful is the quickest way to dissolve any lingering tension.

Like clockwork, Joel rises and moves to the kitchen with a silent but relieved nod. When he returns, he makes his way to the couch and takes a seat, pausing to move your legs into his lap. He’s gentle as he moves you, taking care to support your weight evenly. Even the ice pack feels feather light when he presses it to your ankle. This had been your nightly routine for the past week, as Joel argued that you weren’t “icin’ it proper.” This had also led to more indignant protesting and a lot of red cheeks before you finally gave in.

You let out a tiny, relieved sigh as the ice pack soothes your injury, eyes falling closed. “Thanks, Joel…”

Joel grunts in response. “See? Feels nice to let someone finally take care of ya.”

You chuckle, butterflies fluttering about in your belly at his words. “Yeah, yeah… You know, you seem to like this more than you should.” Your tone is teasing. “Maybe you shoulda been a doctor.”

Joel hums in amusement. “Hmph. Nah, not for everyone, just… just you.”

The words are like an atomic bomb set off between you. Your eyes flutter open, finding Joel staring at the fire like he can’t believe what he’s just said. His muscles are rigid, the kind of frozen that appears when you’re hiding from something out on patrol. All you hear is the crackling of the fire and the steady beating of your heart in your ears. “Me?” You finally manage to gasp out.

It’s the reddest you’ve ever seen Joel. His eyes shoot from the flames to your face, and he releases a long, steady stream of air. He seems to be accepting his fate. “You.” With an awkward clearing of his throat, he focuses back on your ankle, adjusting the ice pack. There’s a tension in the air now, thick enough to cut. For a moment, you worry you’re misinterpreting things, but when Joel glances up at you, the truth is evident. He has something deeper on his mind.

“Y/N, I…” Joel treads cautiously, appearing hesitant to say the wrong thing. One of his hands cups your other ankle, lightly enough to be felt but not strong enough to keep you still. “I’m tired.” He clenches his jaw, determined. “I’m tired of dancin’ around this shit. I’m gettin’ too old for this.” He finally twists his head, gaze locking onto yours, challenging. “I care about you. More than I thought I would. More than I should. More than you probably know.” Those puppy dog eyes of his are relentless. “I like ya.”

Talk about atomic bombs.

You can’t suppress the sudden trembles that crop up across your body. All the feelings you’d been fighting with for so long are making their way out of the floodgates. All these months of patrol with Joel, of sneaking secret looks and dreaming of moments like this. The time spent in his home has only driven you closer and intensified those feelings. You’ve been growing to enjoy feeling taken care of, and Joel does it oh-so-well. “Joel…” You breathe, heart racing.

The man pauses his doctor routine to meet your eyes, and for the first time since you’ve met him, you see fear. It’s almost disconcerting. His hands remain close, ready to remove themselves at your word. He worries he’s gone past the point of no return now.

“I want you.”

The words send a shudder through Joel’s body. His breath comes out quicker, and his eyes take on a gleam of desire. It’s as if a weight has been loosened from his shoulders. Gently… tenderly… he leans closer, arm coming to steady your head in his giant paw of a hand. He pauses inches away, warm brown eyes searching yours earnestly. You feel his breath on your face, the heat of his body both heavy and comforting. The scent of his soap and that natural Joel smell that you crave so deeply.

“Please…” You breathe, afraid to blink lest the moment end.

“Gladly…” Joel closes the distance between you, capturing your mouth in a sweet, tender kiss. He’s surprisingly gentle, but you can feel the raw power in his body, barely kept at bay from sheer resolve. His scruff tickles your face, and it makes you shiver with delight. Emboldened, you take your hands and cup his cheeks, running your thumbs over the short, prickly follicles. Without meaning to, you release a low whine into his mouth.

Joel’s grip tightens, and he deepens the kiss, his tongue exploring the seam of your lips. When you part them to grant him access, you can feel his grin. Joel’s hands move down your torso, settling at your waist. His lips are soft and warm against yours, tasting slightly of whisky. It gives you a heady rush, your own hands fumbling at his chest to undo his top shirt buttons. You find his hand gripping your wrists, eyes on fire with utter desire.

“Are you sure?” His voice is calm, but it's tinged with a slight tremor, as if he’s on the verge of something.

“Joel…” You gaze up at him. “I’ve wanted you for so long…” The admission makes your cheeks burn, but you can see the pleased look on Joel’s face. Without another word, he scoops you up just as he had on the way back from patrol, heading to the stairs. He wordlessly strides up to the second floor, turning down the dark hall and entering his bedroom. As he gently sets you down on the mattress, he presses a gentle kiss to your ear. “I’m gonna take good care of you tonight, Darlin’,” he purrs.

You shiver, the anticipation spreading throughout your limbs. You cast a glance up at Joel, your expression one of hunger and desire, but also of vulnerability and trust. Joel seems pleased by this, and he rises once more to begin removing his shirt. You watch intensely as the worn fabric shrugs its way off of broad shoulders, sliding over python-like biceps and hitting the floor with a muted thump. Joel stands bare chested in front of you. Your eyes rake over his thick, strong neck, leading into a broad, muscular chest that dissipates into a softer tummy. Flecks of salt-and-pepper chest hair dot his torso, the heaviest concentration gathering in a condensed line heading from his navel and disappearing into his jeans. You swallow thickly, eyes locked on his belt. Your fingers itch to remove it yourself, but you force stillness while Joel continues his show.

His thick fingers have his belt out in no time at all, dropping his pants to the floor. Arousal floods you at the sight of his (presumably) heavy cock straining against the black fabric of his underwear. Even restrained, it was impressive. You felt your mouth fall open as you directed your gaze back up to his eyes. They were diligently trained on you, studying your body language like he was out on patrol. He steps free of his pants and approaches carefully, swinging a leg up on the bed to prowl up your body.

His heat blankets you in warmth, his weight a comforting feeling. Boxing you in with his forearms, he settles lower and kisses you softly. “This okay?”

You nod wordlessly, fingers already moving to your shirt buttons. Joel catches you and chuckles low, sitting up on his knees to help you out. Between the two of you, your shirt is off quickly. Opened up like plaid angel wings underneath your trembling frame.

“So beautiful…” Joel murmurs, settling back down and pressing soft, aching kisses to your chest. His beard pricks your skin, sending fire rushing down to your already straining member. He feels so warm and solid atop your body. The sensation is an unfamiliar but welcome one. Hesitantly, you clutch Joel’s rippling shoulder blades, admiring the tautness of the skin underneath your fingertips.

Joel’s lips find a particularly sensitive spot on your neck, making you buck softly, a low whine crawling its way out of your throat. “Oh!”

Joel grins wolfishly against your neck. “Oh?” His lips attack once more, teeth grazing the soft, supple flesh. “Does someone like that?” He nuzzles against the sensitive spot, breath hot and ready. His callused hands clutch and grip you tightly in place. “Sensitive, aren’t we?”

His teasing tone makes your heart flutter. It feels so good to give into this side of yourself, one that isn’t afraid to moan and squirm and show vulnerability. Something about Joel’s presence makes you feel it’s okay to let go and come fully undone. It’s a primal urge, a desire for truth. For something raw and exposed.

Joel’s hands pause on your sweatpants, teeth nibbling at my earlobe. “May I?” He growls.

You whimper once more, and Joel gives a low grunt of approval before undoing the drawstring and slipping them down over your hips. “You’re beyond beautiful like this…” He coos in praise, fingers trailing lightly over your exposed flesh. “I’ve wanted this for so long…” He leans down to press a tender kiss to your lips, leaving you dizzy.

Joel begins making his way down to help y fully shimmy out of my sweats before returning to hook his fingers into the waistband of your underwear. He shoots you one final look for consent, refusing to budge unless you give him an answer. You give him a nod, raising your hips to make it easier. Within an instant, your underwear is gathered around your ankles, and Joel is admiring you, fully exposed, beneath him.

His eyes lock onto your erection, currently bobbing and twitching, aching for any kind of contact. His tongue flits out and licks his lips before he shoots you a cheeky look. “Big boy…” He grins.The comment sends you blushing yet again, to which Joel responds with a hungry chuckle. He softly takes his hand, wrapping around your base, eyes meeting yours with a look of pure lust. The pressure makes you moan involuntarily, and your eyes squeeze themselves shut.

“Eyes on me,” Joel growls. “I wanna see you when I make you scream my name…”

Your eyes fly open, heart pounding so loudly you worry that Joel himself can hear it with his deaf ear. The commanding tone comes out of nowhere, sounding similar to how Joel presented himself to you during your first few patrols together. This time, however, it makes you even needier. “Joel…” You whimper.

Joel’s response is to grin and then wrap his lips around the head of your cock, sinking down and enveloping your arousal in his warm, velvety mouth. The sensation is like fireworks going off inside of your groin, and you can’t contain the moan that rips its way out, reverberating through the home. Thank god Ellie was out for the day.

Joel brings his mouth off long enough to shoot you a smirk. “Good boy…”

You shiver uncontrollably, lost in the throes of desire. You need more, and you need it now. Joel seems all-too-happy to comply as he envelops your cock in his mouth once more, this time taking you all the way to the base. He swirls his tongue around your shaft while one hand massages your inner thighs, fingers working their way lower and lower. It’s an overwhelming feeling, and your eyes practically roll back in your head. ��Fuck!”

Joel moans his approval around your cock, the vibration sending even more pleasure rushing through you. He bobs his head up and down, intent on making this about you first and foremost. And oh, did he want you to come undone for him…

You cry out, overwhelmed by the sensations, tangling your fingers in his curls. He only increases his efforts, spurned on by your responses. You can feel the heat in your belly coiling and tensing, bringing you closer and closer to the edge of white hot bliss. You struggle to come up with the words to warn Joel. “J-Joel! I… I’m gonna… I-”

Joel brings his head off your dick, swiping his tongue down the side of your shaft. “What are you gonna do, Baby?” He purrs.

I whimper, bucking softly, arching my back into his touch. “Please… I wanna cum…”

The burning request makes Joel shiver, and a dark glint twinkles in his eye. “Oh, don’t worry, Darlin’...” He ignores your weeping cock and prowls over you like a panther until his eyes are locked right above your own. “I’m gonna get you there.” He gently grasps your hands and brings them to the waistband of his boxers. Sensing the intention, you eagerly hook your fingers in and lower them, freeing his cock. It swings down like a battle ax, heavy and swollen with desire. The sight makes your breath catch in your throat, already anticipating the feeling of him stretching you out.

“You want this, Darlin’?” Joel murmurs, hand brushing your cheek delicately. The motion causes you to turn your eyes back to his, fervent with lust.

“Y-yes…” You nod, hand reaching down to softly wrap around his hilt. The action makes Joel stiffen and gasp, sending a thrill through you. You hold him for a moment, eyes heavy through thick lashes. “Do you have… do you have any lube?”

Joel chuckles and reaches over into his nightstand drawer. “The perks of being on scavenge teams.” He withdraws a small bottle of something and returns to hover over you, slathering his fingers in the substance. “You ready?”

You nod breathlessly. “Please, Joel.” The request is simple but laced with need. The anticipation was killing you. You watch with careful eyes as Joel lowers his fingers, teasing his first digit near your entrance. His eyes lock onto your own, a silent command. You obediently hold his gaze and bite your lip when he begins to probe his way inside of you. You can’t help the shaking, nor can you help the soft moans. Joel fucking loves it, eyes shining with pride at each sound he coerces from your body. It’s been a while since he’s been with a guy, but it’s good to know he still has it. And this wasn’t just any guy… This was “Y/N.”

The sensation of Joel’s finger inside of you is soon joined by two, both working in tandem to stretch you out. It’s been a long time since you’ve done this, but Joel is patient and careful. He wants this to feel good for you. Nothing makes him more aroused than knowing he has that effect. And it’s been a long time for him as well.

“Joel… more!” You cry, bucking your hips. The feeling is too good now, and it’s all you can do to keep from thrusting yourself down on his fingers yourself.

“That’s it, Darlin’... Doin’ so good for me…” Joel purrs, introducing his middle finger to your hole. “So fuckin’ tight…”

His words have you gasping for air, clearly their intended effect, as Joel gives a pleased smile and presses a kiss to your lips. You kiss him back hungrily, teeth clashing, tongues fighting for dominance. Joel wins out, and you succumb to his touch willingly. It’s an easy thing to let go and pass him the reins at this point. He’s shown enough evidence at this point that he knows exactly what you need, even if you didn’t know yourself.

“That’s right, angel… let yourself go…” He encourages, shifting his hips to bring himself up close to your entrance. “Gonna make you feel so good…” He gently removes his fingers and aligns the head of his pulsing cock with your hole. He lets out a low hiss, his eyes squeezing shut. “Fuck… gonna make me feel so good…” His eyes open once- more long enough to lock gazes with you- before he grasps your thighs in both hands and gently pushes inside.

You cry out at the sensation of being stretched out by something larger than his fingers. “Fuck, Joel!” He feels massive, and it’s just the head. It really has been a minute.

Joel shushes you softly, leaning forward to pepper your face with kisses. “Doin’ so good, Darlin’...” He buries his face in your neck. “We’ll stay right here… long as you need.” His voice is steady and patient, but his body trembles with the effort of keeping himself only just inserted in you. The restraint is perhaps one of the hottest displays of affection you’ve seen in a long time.

You bite your lip, forcing yourself to relax more. “Just… kiss me… and take me…” You beg softly, willing Joel to look back. When he does, his expression is of amusement and arousal. He brings his face closer, lips finally meeting yours with a tenderness you’d come to expect. “Gladly…” He moans, and then he begins pushing the rest of the way inside of you. You gasp into his mouth, feeling his tongue swipe at your teeth in a carnal display of possession. He bottoms out and continues to kiss you, hands cradling the back of your head, hips locked into place. “You… feel so… good…” He groans. “Fucking hell…”

You whimper, allowing yourself to get used to the feeling of having Joel buried inside of you, stretching you out and filling you up. “Oh… Joel…”

Joel growls as you moan out his name, lips claiming yours once more in a passionate display of affection. “Fuckin’ love hearing you say my name like that…” He snarls. “Might have to keep ya around.” His hand grips the side of your ass roughly, but his eyes still carry that same tenderness underneath the arousal. You can feel your blood roaring in your ears at this point, carrying with it the pressure of wanting your release.

“Joel…” You whimper again, testing out the waters.

Joel groans, hips moving forward and pushing him impossibly deep inside of your walls. “Fuck, Darlin’... You don’t know what you do to me…”

You force back a pleased smile long enough to find his warm toffee gaze once more. “Please, Joel… I need you.”

Joel’s breath catches in his throat, a bead of sweat dripping from his temple. “Well, shit, sweetheart. That’s all you had to say.” He begins to pull out softly, stopping before he’s fully extricated, then pumping himself back into you with a resounding smack of skin against skin. The sound is absolutely obscene, and it makes Joel pick up the speed. His hips move quickly, back and forth, finding a rhythm that has the bed creaking and headboard knocking against the wall. You find your nails digging into Joel’s back, leaving small angry crescents across his back. The sensation makes him hiss and bury his face in your neck with a muffled howl of delight.

“Let me hear my name, Darlin’,” he pants, rhythm building, wanting to hear the delight he’s giving you.

Your good leg wraps around him, pulling him deeper. “Joel!” You mewl, vision obscured by heavy lids. With your legs around him, Joel is deeper than ever, the pressure of your tight walls around him almost too much to bear.

“Fuck…” He swears, his thrusts becoming more urgent, the sound of skin-against-skin filling the room. His lips seek yours, hungry and desperate as he guides you both to the brink. His chest is slick with sweat, a testament to the intensity of his actions. “Cum for me, Angel… Cum with my cock inside you…” He murmurs against your lips, his movements erratic, his own climax impending.

You feel yourself teetering over into that blissful oblivion as he shifts his hips one final time and begins hitting your sweet spot. The pleasure is blinding, and even though you’re sure you’re practically screaming his name, you can barely hear yourself as you reach orgasm. You’re sure you’ve never cum so hard in your life. As you do, you tighten around Joel’s pistoning cock, and he’s unable to prevent from filling you with his seed. You gasp at the sensation of load after load of Joel’s cum filling you, hot and thick. Joel shakes with the tremors of pleasure as he pumps out the last of his load, finally collapsing on top of you in one big sweaty mess.

“Goddamn…” he breathes, still impaling you with his cock.

You’re at a loss for words, reality slowly setting in as you realize you and Joel have just crossed into uncharted territory. But with the man’s comforting weight on you, arms wrapped protectively around your torso, you find it hard to be anxious. That’s a first. You find yourself speaking first after several moments of introspection.

“Did you mean what you said?”

Joel pauses at your sudden interjection, finding his eyes making their way over your bare torso and up to your gaze. “Did I mean what?” He asks. “Specifically?”

You feel a familiar tinge of embarrassment. “That you care for me…” You look away.

Joel hums a disapproving tone and reaches out to gently tilt your chin back to face him. “Of course, Darlin’. I’m not just trying to get my rocks off here, though…” He glances down at himself, still fully embedded inside of you. “Mission accomplished,” he grins cheekily.

The relief floods your body, easing tension you didn’t realize you were carrying. “Oh… good.” A faint smile crosses your lips. “I meant it, too.”

Joel gives you a small smile, hand reaching to caress your cheek softly. You lean into his touch, craving the gentle contact in such an intimate moment. “Good.”

You lay there for a while before Joel shifts, slowly removing himself from you. The sensation makes you hiss, and Joel himself groans until he’s finally extricated from you. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “Gonna get a shower goin’. I’ll come help you up when it’s ready.” And with that, he gives you a tender kiss on the lips and rises to pad off into the bathroom.

You remain on your back, gazing up at the ceiling and marveling at the turn of events. What does this make you? What will Ellie think? What will Tommy think? Hell, what will the town think? Anxieties plague your mind until Joel returns, and he can sense your discomfort.

“Hey now… what’s the matter?” He rushes over, sitting on the side of the bed and checking you over. “I didn’t hurt ya, did I?”

The comment brings a smirk to your face. “Only in the best way,” you chuckle. The joke relaxes Joel, but his eyes still carry concern, so you continue. “I guess… just wondering what people are gonna think, ya know? I know it’s stupid, but…” You trail off, looking down.

Joel’s hand takes yours, giving it a reaffirming squeeze. “For starters, I think people got bigger problems than whatever we do with ourselves.” He smirks. “God knows Ellie will have lots to say, but she’s the one that’s been ridin’ my ass about asking you out for the past three months.”

Suddenly, her comment (“It’s about time…”) makes sense to you. “Oh…” Then a blush crosses your face. “Months???”

Joel grins unexpectedly, ducking his head and running a hand through his curls. “Guess it took me a while to work up the nerve…” He looks sheepish.

“I broke my goddamn ankle!” You find yourself laughing suddenly, amused at the stupidity of it all. “We fight monsters out there almost every day, but we couldn’t even bring ourselves to just get a damn drink?”

Joel’s eye catches yours, the wrinkles at the corner growing deeper as his grin widens. “Well, how about it?” He asks, hand clutching your own and turning it over to inspect it with gentle eyes.

“How about what?” You tilt your head.

“That drink?” Joel’s gaze flicks up once more. “I’d say I owe you a few.”

You bite back a pleased smile, your heart swelling. “It’s a date.”

Joel grins, pleased, before ducking down and crushing his lips to yours in a passionate kiss. His delight is palpable, and it may be the first time you’ve seen him this way. It seems he has as much opening up to do as you. But… as you feel his warmth and steadiness around you, you know that it’s only inevitable. Your ankle will eventually heal, and you’ll return to patrols with Joel. Things will go back to the way they were except for in the one way that matters most. Joel is never, ever, taking his eye off you again. And that’s a promise.

#joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x reader #joel miller x male reader #Joel miller x m!reader #smut #fluff #pedro pascal #I’m obsessed with this man #joel tlou #i need him carnally

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eldrith · 1 month ago

Text

ғʀᴏᴍ ᴇᴅᴇɴ ; ᴘᴀʀᴛ ғᴏᴜʀ.

ɪɴɴᴏᴄᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴅɪᴇᴅ sᴄʀᴇᴀᴍɪɴɢ ;

jacaerys velaryon x fem!reader words: 9k synopsis: jacaerys falls for a woman in aegon's garden. notes: sorry abt the delay but here is part four! def an introspective chapter but things are ramping up for the last part chapter warnings: freaky ass dreams — death. allusions to smut, finger sucking, making out. lore. religious imagery/symbolism, slight suicidal themes surrounding death as a concept (message me if u have questions), manipulation, tarrgaryen slander(my fav), arguments, creepy imagery, blood & gore. food as allegory. basically everything as allegory atp.

THE VOICE FINDS HIM IN THE SHADOWS OF SIGHT.

“Jacaerys?”

It lurks; not unlike those looming memories which throb in the back of his mind with each passing day, eyes sullenly cast out the casement of his window upon the breathing garden below – it lurks within some hidden recess of his mind, waiting for him to stumble so unwillingly into its notched crosshairs.

“Jacaerys,” the voice calls. It is a voice he knows well.

Blanketed by a sky of bruises, Jacaerys looks up to those thundering blemishes which impede low into the air; He is here for something.

Returning his gaze to the earth, he stalks with burning muscles, lungs cinched by the brutal kiss of iced wind.

There is a sharp snap to his left; a twig, some withered old limb of a growth long past felled – it echoes sharply along the field, into the empty bones of those which litter upon the wildgrass. The gasp falls from his lips and plumes out, trickling into the cold night air.

With a spin of his gaze, the garden lurches – no – the battlefield; no, indeed some apprised paralyzation of both.

Jace stares incredulously at the scorched earth, smoldering shards of burnt stakes and wrought iron – and the smell, some decaying rejection of earth, some burnt and putrid soil which still squelches when he drags his boots over mangled fallen vines.

Crimson leaks from wounds within the thickened tendrils of vined earth; bloody gashes which ooze with some putrid ichor, thick with the unmoving wind as they glaze over the sharpened blades of fallen soldiers, bearing black or verdant sigils.

Bodies lie, mummified in overturned black – matted with rotten leaves, blooms kiss the corpses which twitch with the final rattle of esse.

A yelp from a skeletal mass below the curving hedges, and Jace lurches in fear: Hair of silver, a gown of gold, a third eye between her brow; the familiar shadow of his youth is petrified under the curling grasp of blackthorne before his very eyes, a malicious whisper in the unmoving gloom as her eyes glaze with some ancient kismet. And with a sickening turn of her head, paled lips move, beetles crawling and scuttling into the shadows. “The fruit is poisoned from the tree of kings,” his aunt whispers to him from lifeless lips; her third eye blinking, bloodshot, pained.

He staggers back, though quickly schools himself, ignoring the sharp pain in his head and the clench of fear twisting his gut. He is here for something.

A thick dread curls in his stomach when he eyes the smaller shapes of three boys – two pure of hair, and one with the very same mopped curls which sprout tangled with the vines of earth; and a young woman, slumped and scorched, her hands outstretched in protection of them. He does not allow himself to glance any longer at the bodies.

Jacaerys’s heart thunders, his shoulder catching on a sharp thorne as he bursts through a corner, gasping for breath as it chokes him. You await him, somewhere in the depths of this battlefield, and Jacaerys fights his own mind from conjuring visions of you, slumped and decaying just as the rest of them – just like each of the spoilt veins which spill and fertilize the soil below.

Your voice comes to him as clear as a whisper in the corner of his mind. Boots sink into the soft black soil – vines, dark and sharp things, wrap around the weary leather of his boots; crimson armor disappears beneath the decay, swallowed in the yawning gluttony of fate, whispers whistling through the hedges which tower around him. “… And what you made, what we’ve made… look at it all. It is art. A stroke of brush upon my kind, used soul.”

The hair upon his nape stands once more; the voice, curling around each bend of his mind, leaking hunger, enticement. An unnatural rhythm in the shadows; serpents, scales emerald and venomous, within in the depths – they blink with a single eye, gaze mocking in a glint of cobalt sapphire; and he runs.

The garden stirs with his dreading heart; littered bodies scalded and ashed, billowing in irrecoverable bursts below his footfall when he staggers past. Daisies sprout, jagged and thorned, from scorched wildgrass; peeking their shy petals through slats of disintegrated armor, singed by death.

The voice follows him, though when his gaze snaps to the statue, The Thorned Dragon looms larger than he’d recalled. A ragged gasp escapes his throat.

There, its spiny throngs are curved rather unnatural – bent into a labored revolve, the dragon swallows its own tail; horns jagged and unforgiving, piercing into its own soft underbelly with a silent, deafening roar. “Your blood – come in fire, leave in ash.”

The words scrape within the pounding agitation within his mind – and, unable to cast out such unpropitious omens, Jacaerys staggers towards the iron casting, eyes widening in a thickened breath.

And it is then that he discovers a lump of darkness curled upon the base of the Thorned Dragon; with a jagged lurch towards the fineries which litter the vines below, a crawling horror builds within his throat.

Pale skin, finer than his own – a necklace of Valyrian steel, a gown fine and black with scorched marks of death – and that very crown, swallowed and corroded below a stiffened grasp, stilled marks of clawing fingers through the earth.

Ravens black as the night peck at the flesh of the very body he once came from.

It is sickening – bone splinters beneath such scrutiny, a terrifying crack which leaves Jacaerys with a drop of dread spreading through his body. “You breathed life into my breast…”

The Thorned Dragon watches the Prince stumble away; the end of the garden nears, its fallen horses singed with banners of the very beast which brought about their end. Jacaerys retches, but is met with a river of red, blue, green; pouring in a sickening slip from his lips unto such a pale palm – with a panicked gasp, he sputters.

Slithers of white flicker in the shadow; a cleansed breath, as his heart leaps – some safety from the poisoned earth, from the poisoned resolution of the very blood running in his veins.

“And I bleed because you feel the pulse within my veins, within the roots below.”

And then, after a moment of frozen muscle, a familiar laugh from the depths behind him – he knows better than to turn, instead leaping with a gasping panic, lurching towards the gates which slink away from his fingers with a sickening leer.

“They await your lead. Go to them, choose them…” Dread tugs his gut, shaking as he chances a glance behind his shoulder – but it is no longer Aegon’s Garden.

Flashes of mountains, of sprawling moors, of valleys and seas and Keeps of red and hearths dying out; of stony cliffs, of the frigid, withered talons of death from afar – “Jacaerys Targaryen. The King Who Will Be.”

It is not a name he has been called before you – and it is a name which now splinters into shards of glass within his lungs, piercing his heart and seizing him with some lick of doom.

Sick, Jacaerys stumbles away – the circle turns, some ominous and self-abhorrent whisper within his mind reminds him; The circle turns, yes –

Limbs above him, bowing low in a weep; and those very fine fruits, glistening and blushing in the moonlight. Their scent, heavenly even in such a fuzzy state – and a memory of lips, salaciously pressed to the flesh, tongue darting out…

His hand shakes as he reaches towards it, heart thundering as he hears footsteps approaching; a panic within him, knowing he has not enough time.

Not enough time.

But he stops short:

From the blossoms come something thick – blood, no, ink – no, something which stains the earth with sin. Emerald and crimson, staining upon the blooms which wilt and curl away as if struck by a bout of chilling breath.

The footsteps arrive behind him.

JACAERYS JOLTS WITH A SHARP, DRIED GASP.

Tallowed wax has weeped hours in wait of his silenced patience; a slumber rather calm in exterior, though when he awakes he drives a kneecap into the bottom of the table, gasping in a sharp, drowned way.

Syrupy, gasped blinks – Jacaerys inhales the breath of a man submerged in some iced seas, alone and choked of any respite from the final wink of existence.

“Taking a catnap, are we?”

He jolts once more; and a laugh, hearty and trickling, echoes in the stone drum – it is not a haunting sound, nor is it in any notion a fetching one – but rather one as familiar as his own kin. It is his own kin.

Baela rounds the stone table, regarding Jacaerys’ stirred frame; he, with tired and rather disturbed eyes, glances with a fainting stare of vexed provocation. “Gods,” He finally breathes, the whispers of dreams far too present in his sharply pained mind. “I can’t even recall falling asleep.”

She wears her dragonriding gown – an invitation to accompany her of which he’d turned down earlier this morn.

The days grow on and so does, it seems, Jacaerys’ blistering headaches; indeed, Vermax has taken ill as of recent, and it would be a poor choice to try and take him flying under such circumstances. Scale rot, they’d said – a quite rare instance, recorded only one other time by a maester many, many years before and ruled farce by account of him turning mad and taking the black not a moon after.

Jacaerys fights quite hard to avoid her stare.

There is a worry in Baela’s gaze that has long since befallen the faces of many who walk such halls; but Jacaerys knows well, it is a superficial concern; it is the worry of a soldier falling ranks, of a lady retaining her favor as a knight mounts for jest, of a stableman watching a horse with a limp.

And still, she says nothing of it.

“Well,” She mutters instead with a light smirk; Jacaerys meets her stare with a blink. “You act as though you saw a spectre.”

It is only with her words of innocent jest which he recalls the depths of his dreaming torment; Perhaps I have, he reminds himself – in a flash of Lucerys, curls shining against hedges of bursting green and pink, of slithering vines. Or, perhaps, he sees it each day – in gowns snagged around branches, in the glinting hunger of a gaze, in a sharp smile curling around the juices of a ripe fig.

He clears his throat, eyes returning to the parchment softened with age– tracing over the mark indented where his cheek had rested in a fitful slumber moments ago. His mind has grown numb in the battle against the aching pains; he has rendered himself, in the days since that fateful night under the fig tree, rather recluse and solitary. And with time came confusion, then acceptance, then bewitchment, and now… some paranoid, brewing anger.

“I suppose I grew weary with Maester Layn’s prose,” Jacaerys attempts for a joke; yet when his gaze reclaims the handscript scrawled in increasingly maddened flutters, droning on and on for pages until the final third of the journal is left blank, there is a deep unsettling stir within his stomach.

“-Layn?” Baela repeats – she truly is a well-studied girl, Lady Laena made sure of such a thing with both her daughters – and her brow furrows. “The Mad Maester?”

Jacaerys nods absently, closing the leather rather abruptly in a flash of wariness, thumbing the page he’d earmarked in haste. “Apparently so.” He affirms rather distractedly. There is a paranoia which rises from its dirt grave within his chest – grasping with hands unseen, his stomach and throat begin to tighten.

With a gentle nod, Jacaerys stands once more; bones tired and weary, he grasps the Old Maester’s journal with a jolt and excuses himself from Lady Baela. “I should retire. Such reading has rendered me spent.”

It is clear that she is unused to his curt discussions as of late – though never quite close, the cousins have spent considerable time together in the days of their siblings’ absence, and Jacaerys has never been one for much recluse. Times change, perhaps.

Jacaerys minds to not brush her as he walks past, though her words stop him.

“– And?”

He slows to a halt, blood churning and words of confession dancing on his tongue; the journal is heavy underarm – it pulls him towards the sinking stone floor, below it, down to where the beasts, ancient and warm, stir underfoot.

Half-turn of head when he glances her way – Baela needs not elaborate; He has known her a good part of this life to understand the words which lie unsaid within her throat.

The words burn through the parchment within his arms; Truth, they whisper – but he merely clenches the journal closer to his chest. “And… It was as they say.” He lies through his teeth, and is surprised to find no remorse within his heart.

Jacaerys can only think of one thing; one laugh, one smile, one voice which tells him of love and devotion – of the voice which lives in the very garden Maester Layne studied and then lost his mind over those many years ago – and so Jacaerys nods towards the wall of stone, unable to face his cousin behind him:

“He went mad.”

THERE WAS ONCE A TIME JACAERYS WALKED THE HALLS OF HIS HOME.

Halls of warmth, where any such whispers of doubt or dishonor would slide off the backs of boys much younger than Jacaerys is today; where he and his brothers, dark of hair and high of chin, would spar in yards, would laugh at feasts, would bow to their grandsire, would toss small bits of venison to their maturing mounts.

And it is not necessarily the shift of land beneath feet – of bay harbors of blackened water shifting to sliding dark sand and island-whipped wind; for no matter where he rests his head to slumber, the scent of ancient smoldering smoke lies intrinsically tied to his bloodline – eternally.

No matter the name he bears, nor the blood pulsing in his veins, nor the castle he walks; Jacaerys cannot any longer find that home.

Halls long and empty; cold, unbearingly so in those moments he sees a flash of his brother – the face carved from his own – in the mirror, in passing hedges, in the shut of eyelids.

And long past are days where glory was within reach – what gods so austere would allow for a bastard to follow her place, now that any with a drop of Valyrian blood might stake a claim? These days, it has grown quite clear: unreal are the dreams once so very tangible – when the throne was occupied by a rather lively grandsire, when Jacaerys was placed upon his knee, was told whispers of glory and fate; when he watched dragons dance over the horizon of King’s Landing no larger than the nail of his last finger, patiently awaiting the day Vermax might grow fierce enough to carry him into those very clouds.

Dragonstone is his birthright, just as much as King’s Landing is; and he has long watched over this small dominion, long wondered how it could be that such a place of blood and ash could yield any other result than just that. The circle turns, after all; The dragon eats its tail.

And just as such, Jacaerys sits with Aegon’s Garden in the periphery of his vision.

A stray breeze blows curls to tangle in the curve of his lashes – a sweep of shaking fingers, and the words of Maester Layn seem to dance upon the parchment below.

In some desperate fear a few nights past, Jacaerys had ripped and scoured Dragonstone’s histories for any mention of the Garden; and such search has yielded merely the ramblings of a maester to the second of Targaryen kings, a maester who went mad and took the Black not a year into his time upon the Island.

And yet remains his personal accounts in the library – easily left out of such gilded Valyrian histories – a dusted old tome, one which likely has not seen the light of day since Aenys I was a young boy. Some old crone’s ramblings; though Jacaerys feels his skin crawl as the words worm their way into his mind and whisper into his memory.

The Dragonlords settled these lands when the bailey was merely a plot of saplings; and Aegon’s Garden not yet a Thing but a overturned burial plot of the old gods, volcanic ash and sprouts of wildgrass.

And their own gods, heavy with the weight of wings which crumble towers and burn ships – things meant to remain untouched by hands so human and tainted with sin.

It matters not what I might try to guide in the ears of men who believe themselves more than such; From the first, they have been marked for suffering.

And what greater curse is there than to eternally live and yet still to die? They leave the lands to take more; and yet with each victory, their souls wither.

This garden watches; it sows, reaps, sows.

Their fate, I fear, is that of slow decay.

Philosophies of men long before his own time is something Jacaerys has studied twice over in his preparations for the crown – and yet a most unsure settling feeling, the offense which simmers in his Valyrian veins cools only with the uneasy sense of verity through words so sharp.

The handscript, from moons after the last entry in the journal; scribbled, uneven – written in maladies and interspersed with recipes for tinctures, and cures for maddening headaches.

An inkling of fear worries down his spine at the observation; and though the words instill some ominous cognizance in the back of his mind, his hungry eyes continue on. Ravens call shrilly from above; a short breeze gusts the scent of fruit from beyond the wall to the east.

…And as the star reminds us, it was through the Stranger's envy which death and decay entered the realms of the Andals; still, perhaps, that hatred lingers in the soil foreign and familial, growing within veins of those who dare believe themselves any step above others.

That is to say, those who pulled themselves unto the backs of ancient beings, who deem themselves of the very same molten flesh – and who will, in circle’s turn, eat the flesh of their very own to stay upon the helm.

The fruit of their seed, oh that cursed fruit – it falls, and will always fall, from that tree of kings; will always bloom rot across the lands.

Yes, each drop of spilled blood from the wombs of dragonlords bear the mark of fate. A curse, yes — yet what is a curse but the gods’ way of shaping fate into flesh?

Jacaerys startles as a raven lands upon the stone bench beside him, watching with beady eyes of black; when he glances back to the parchment, the words seem to tremble and pulse with his own heartbeat. Unease drips through his mind, the iced shock of the mad words written before him dousing him entirely.

Targaryens. Gods among men, they say to themselves – but gods do not bleed.

Gods do not rot.

The words swirl, their tendrils dragging down the parchment and staining Jacaerys’s fingers; they spin, they bloom, they whittle, they die and are reborn in his mind; a circle forever turning as he looks up towards the open casement of his chambers high, swallowed in half by the storming of clouds which gather above.

Is he going mad?

There are naught but a plethora more questions he must ask now; but to whom, he wonders – the raven beside him wails, fluttering before taking flight, towards the garden to the east. Dread welcomes him, a sharp friend.

Jacaerys watches the bird’s dark shadow become swallowed by the mass of overgrowth which curls and climbs atop the gate ahead; it is clear, now, where he must go.

There are no more people left here to answer his questions; his mother, too locked upon in her own horizon – Baela, measuring her own squared shoulders to fit into the mould of their Queen; Daemon, far away in the riverlands doing whatever he may please; Maester Gerardys, too enraptured by the foolish beliefs of an aged past. You are no more affected by this than the blooms are affected by a blink of clouds over the sun; you, in your slinking shadows and wild words, your beckoning laughter and spinstry dreams.

Jacaerys knows in a corner of his mind; as a sower knows when it is to snow, Jacaerys knows it is you who has sent him mad, who spins your web of death and life and whatever monstrous thing lies between. You understand, this taunting limbo which suspends him between a life long-dead and a life unreachable.

The journal is abandoned upon the bench.

Crows screech; the gates to Aegon’s garden creak.

THE ANCIENT ROT SEEPS IN.

It curls in a way he’s never quite taken note of; dirt paths which twist and gnarl, vines which ooze with a sweet scent once so enticing – Jacaerys stalks warily through the strangely thick air, ignoring the prickle on the nape of his neck as he walks.

A familiar waltz, this has become – though he is not, as it seems, in the mood for a dance.

It is not long before the garden settles with him. A slow breath, an exhale as he passes the entrance and comes across the Thorned Dragon; a beautiful thing – as beautiful perhaps as you are, in that odd way.

Your name upon his lips, he wonders if you hear the way his voice trembles, how the fear and worry and resentment leak through his tone.

He sees first a snag of your hem; slinking around a corner, a snap in the twigs that sends his heart thundering.

A faint memory of hunting in the woods with his grandsire when he was just old enough to hold a bow; the final look within the gaze of a stag before it was taken from the realm. Its heart, faster and faster until it slowed and, finally, stopped.

He follows the sound of swishing fabric, of footprints long lost in the rotted earth; blinks within his mind, words written in a panic unto parchment a hundred year’s past. What greater curse is there than to eternally live and yet still to die?

He calls your name. Once, twice – on and on, but still you evade him, disappearing just as he catches a glimpse of you, snapping twigs and slithering past vines as he stumbles blindly, seeking answers to questions not yet formed upon his tongue.

Anger pulses in such a pathetic chase; though still he gives in, desperate to hear it from your lips, just if only to confirm the truth: That he has no one. That you are no one.

The rot finds itself within his bones – and, when he brushes his hand against the leaves of a passing vine clung around a woman half-devoured by the sun, a soft giggle floats through the shrubbery.

A delicate, almost musical rot – a giggle he knows so well by now, one which sends a pang of anticipation and some deep horror through him. He remembers that stag, the way its eyes watched, unmoving down the point of the arrow; and the fluid snap on its neck when it crashed into the wood with an arrow through its throat.

His grandsire’s laugh, delighted, amused. A life, once more rotted away by that tree of kings.

Joints within his neck pop once more when he whirls to the sound, unease drifting into his bones when the laugh finds his ears again – but brighter, much more familiar; his stomach drops.

Luke. A laugh once more, as if they were once more lost in that youthful catch-and-seek game, a rustle from a hedge, the drowning cough of lungs long since failed. But Jacaerys is no longer a young boy – and neither is Lucerys.

Rage, that long-hidden beast, stirs. It is a cruel, cruel twist for you to play such tricks upon him. It is one thing to plague his mind with silly visions, to haunt his lips or his fist or his heart; though it is not the same to taunt such grief over his head.

Enough of it; just ahead, the wisp of a shadow moves, and he sees you dart into the brush.

Rage – that sharp, sudden, ancient rot; it pulses through him, just as harsh and true as his own heartbeat. He’s upon your trail in a moment; though the twists and turns grow confounding, and Jacaerys feels an ache of worry grow within his chest.

Another glimpse of shadow; you, arm-in-arm with a boy; Lucerys is before him.

Lucerys walks with you – he is tangible, as fleshed, as smiling as you.

It is then that he stumbles into the clearing.

The olive tree, once more; and there, looming above his heaving chest, are the watchful eyes of the woman in the statue, her lover torn and dying within her arms – an arrow through the shoulder, one splintered and rotting from his throat.

And yet there, at the roots of that very tree, you alone repose – eyes closed as if in a dream, bathed by the light of day broken through the looming branches twisted and gnarled.

Anger surges at the sight of you, calm with a near smile upon your lips; yet still you have it, he thinks. You still carry the resentment, sorrow, that loneliness which seeps through your visage, which plagues even a face as brilliantly haunting as your own.

“This is how low you might go, then?” He calls out into the garden, fuming. “You lure me here with memories of the dead? Playing your little tricks, to bring me here?”

You stir at his sharp voice, a whip in the calm of the day; the crows have long since flown, and only you remain.

You sigh into the tree above you, eyes opening in that pearled absence before returning to your lovely hues; he is struck with your raw beauty, how you seem to coax his footsteps towards you even in his ire. “Life, death…”

Your voice is faraway once more, as though pulling the petals from a flower and watching them flutter to the earth. “Sometimes I wonder if they’re truly so different.”

“You’re cruel,” He spits; pain, grief, anger swirling raw in his heart - you’ve heard the tales - of course you have. Everyone on the island knows of his brother’s fate at the hands of the Kinslayer. It is a cruel thing, to play tricks on him in the way you do.

You do not flinch at his outburst; a shifting shadow, you stir somewhere beneath the tree. “Jace,” you nearly purr, the pity in your tone stoking the fire within him further. He shakes his head.

“I did not come to be led through this wretched maze like a fool.” He snaps, and his voice nearly echoes in the eerie calm of greenery.

Your eyes snap to him, nearly shocked; as if you were not the figure leading him through the hedges and rows of wilting anemones. “Jace-” you begin once more, as if retrying for your first attempt to console him, rising upon your bared feet; a memory past of nights ago, that poisoned sweet of your lips, the kind stutter of breath as he’d pulled you closer to him, felt that heart beat – however falsely – against his palm.

“–Enough.” He snaps, taking a step back as you float to him, blinking your doe-like eyes at him, tilting your head. A predatory thing, he realizes with an ache of his gut – your mimicked, shy pose so perfected from hours of standing alone in such a garden – a perfect view of his casement from here, perhaps lying in wait for his company, just as he does yours. “What cruel jest is this?” He spits, eyes searching the pits of your own, watching your face slide from disoriented to distressed.

“What do you mean, Jacaerys?” You wonder – that sweet, worried way you bite your lip, sickly hands outstretched towards him; it broils the anger which festers sharp within him. It is incredulous that he stares at you, rage knotting in his chest at your soft, unassuming tilt of head – a practiced innocence gleaming in the daylight.

The stuttering heart, the barely-present touch; all which once sent his heart thundering, which now sets his jaw rigid and tense.

“No,” He hisses, stepping back from your outstretched palm, “I am not some foolish boy, fresh and untested, to be swayed by the honey-sweet looks of some– some serpent.” He spits, voice breaking as the wound beneath his anger slips.

There is such pressure; that sharp ache which has festered in his inconsolable worries of the Dragonseeds and word of their claimed dragons; the dooming presence of fate which grasps at his collar, which threatens to drag his mother and their line into the depths with it. In circle's turn, they will eat the flesh of their very own to stay upon the wheel.

The voice jolts him from his thoughts to find you, wide-eyes, and parted lips. A falter, some falling from that delicate mask to something raw, something glinting between a dark hunger and a maliciously deceiving kindness.

“You should not dare call me such vile things.” You utter, face downturned, dark. And your hand drops; a murmur from you, cold and sweet as winter’s breath. “You’re being cruel. Serpents should be the least of your worries, my Prince.” You whisper.

It is ominous, the words you mutter; as though you know some ancient thing, some thing which breathes with the pulse of life below soil. A flare of disbelief, his mind numbing and muddling by the moment as he stands, staggered under the olive tree, sweet blooms lulling through the afternoon air.

"I, the cruel one?” he trembles; words spilling, half-strangled in his throat. “Do you think me blind? That I don’t see what you do — how you laugh in the shadows, whisper in my dreams? That I don’t feel your hands, each night, when I-” He shakes his head, “I…” He trails off, watching as you sway before him, defeated, head low as a chastised child.

And that faint voice he does not yet seem to have known – yet fervent, insistent: it was through the Stranger's envy which death and decay entered the realms of the Andals.

In his grief torn mind, he wonders. Is it his name? Is it the legacy of his House, so tall it scrapes the heavens; the stories of old, of Valyrian magic which pulses somewhere faintly in his muddied veins? Do you bewitch him simply for the chance at the riches piling upon the throne, of his future seat – of the fine fabrics, the reach beyond even the kingdoms? Do you, after all he’s told you of his mother, of his father – of the realms; do you truly wish for anything other than to take what he has, all that he has? And that name – that blood, that lineage so cursed; Is that truly all he is?

“What is it you want from me?”

What do you want, he pleads – though his mind whispers, soft and sullen, do you want me?

“I care not for any such things you carry to offer,” Your voice, melodic and haunting as you bite away at beading tears that slide down your smooth cheeks; a faint inkling of alarm in the back of his mind, straining to recall if he’d even spoken any of it aloud – but as you wipe a heavy tear from your lashline, the thought dissipates.

“I want to…I wish to have you.” Your voice warbles, lip wavered; it is a glassy thing, such a gaze, and his heart begins to soften wearily with the small sniff you allow yourself in your wilting figure.

And gods above strike him, Jacaerys’ heart skips; a warmth of want, of love – the thing he’s yearned after for the better of his young life. It is with effort that he swallows down the anger which has bubbled up with fear and foreboding; Because you are still a slight, sweet thing – a kind being, a sprouted blossom in a field of ashes. There is no fear here, he understands. There is just loneliness.

And, always so willing; your lips press together in wait as he gathers his thoughts with a shaky sigh, knowing such anger misplaced will be a burden to all. It’s only a fig, Jace.

But it can’t be; in his heart, a twisting truth – you could not love such a broken man; nameless, unwanted by his own kin, untrusted to fight the war being waged for his own birthright. Forgotten and lonely. He inhales shakily, nodding in some dreadful acceptance.

“I am not yours to torment.” His heart still thunders with the agony of glimpsing Luke just moments ago; some heavy acceptance lifts from his chest, a burst free from unknowing. An acceptance warm and chilling alike. He sniffs, clenching his fists so they do not begin to tremble.

“If you’ve lured me here to bury me in specters and shadows, then… you may do as you please.” He levels you with his own watery gaze; in which you swim, haunted and despairing. Perhaps his words are a final leap, some grasp of hope that perhaps you will confirm what he knows in his very heart to be true: that you have love, and that you hold it only for him.

“-But do not come to me with lies dressed as love.” He whispers.

And your face falls; softness in your eyes growing fragile as the petals upon the flowers which wither near your feet. Your shoulders, slumped as you let out a shaky breath, some dejected misery which sprouts from your frame and blossoms into a pitiful shutter.

A moment until you straighten, eyes meeting his wetly and trickled with a spark of disbelief.

“You truly believe such lies spun by men long since in the past?” Your voice shakes – each word, a draw of blood that seems to spill from your raw, tender heart. “That I would bring you pain, that I– that I would wish such suffering upon you? All you’ve done, I-” you lip trembles in that awfully disheartening way; Jacaerys represses such urge to gather you in his arms under the midday sun, to press his lips to the soft glint of your hair.

You shake your head, leaning upon tipped toes as if to tell him a secret, your hands clenched by your side until they rise to wipe the tears from your wettened eyes. “I do nothing by means of envy or greed – I just – I wish to be with you.”

Pain, that icy sting; it cowers him, breaks him until a tear slips from his lidded gaze and skids over his cheekbones, fertilizing the rotted earth below his feet.

And though he believes your very truthful words, there is a sapling which was planted those many years ago when he stepped foot unto the island; that very warning whisper that has tried to break free from the recess of denial and ignorance, that has danced on the tip of Maester’s tongues and perhaps anybody else who dare open their eyes enough to see.

The truth is that there is something unnatural about Aegon’s Garden; there is something unnatural about you.

“This place… it’s rotten.” He finally speaks it, and it is as if the word goes silent; away are the crashing of waves, merely the rattling of your bones when you inhale sharply, blinking at Jacaerys with wide, piercing eyes.

And in that fear, that germinating sapling which turns upon itself under the watchful glare of the outside world, Jacaerys continues. The words fall from his tongue; leaves of a felled oak.

“The garden, the tree – even you, hiding, lurking in the shadows – It’s…” He shakes his head, unwilling to continue such cursed words; but still it lingers in the back of his mind, pressing at his tongue and stirring the dread in his gut.

And that journal, so hastily concealed for generations of Dragonlords rising from the earth and leaving to the capital; years upon years of upturned earth, of that circle which eats its own tail – that hatred lingers in the soil, growing within veins of those who dare believe themselves any step above others.

Jacaerys faintly begins to wonder when he started having thoughts which were not his own; and, indeed, when these vines began to slither overtop his boots, piercing their thorns into the leather worn with time. Have I gone mad? he wonders – not for the first time.

“Say it.” You snap. “If you mistrust me so, then say it.”

He is brought back to the garden by your icy, venomous glare – bristled, perhaps, by his such accusations in the disturbation of your day; and he, in a strike of defiance, in the last grasp of honor towards his duty, his life, his destiny – says it.

“You are rotten.” He finishes, chest light at the heavy drop of his words.

Whatever snarl you’d worn drops immediately in a sickening slate of blank visage.

The world stills once again; he is sharply aware of your stare, eyes gleaming – and the air so stagnant, so earthy, of the fact that you’ve not drawn a single breath since; and a dread slowly creeps into his gut as you level your own gaze upon him.

“Am I?” You whisper, the faintest twitch of fury within your sharp gaze. “Does the decay not spread from its roots, Jacaerys?”

You take a step forward, and Jacaerys finds himself suddenly pressed against the statue behind him; a glance and a sharp, startled fear that pierces him as two pairs of lovers’ eyes meet him, stony and cruel.

You press on towards him, stalking with a viciousness that begins to cloud his rationality. “Tell me, where is your mother? Where is your father? Where is that Kinslayer uncle of yours? Where is the Queen Who Never Was?”

His throat is thick with a lodged breath; dread stirs within him, that sickening truth as you continue, slinking towards him with the practiced pace of a huntsman with a bow. “You spread like disease – all of you. Children burn, homes crumble – the world a crushed flea under your boot, a decaying whisper of power they all quarrel to grasp.” Your words are a whip in the wind that has gathered – and the stormy roll of sky has plagued the shoreline, boasting of a disastrous storm upon nightfall. “And all for what? For some fate that was written long before even this garden had a name?”

Jacaerys stares at you; the way your fingers twist – gnarled and as thorned as the vines themselves – around his forearm; when, exactly, had you grasped him?

“And Jacaerys… you, sweet Jace. You will be a fine king. The finest of them all, perhaps.” You promise and the words are golden and gilded in glory; your eyes shine with the reflection of a throne leagues away, of a life after this island, forgotten under layers of rotting overturned earth.

He lurches, fighting the bile within his throat at the thought of the word – the word he’s known to one day inherit for his whole life: King.

He shifts, pulling away from the trancelike gaze that spills from your visage and begins to infect his mind. Fuzzy, he swears he sees figs growing fat and juicy from the olive tree behind you; that he spots a shadow lingering high above the hill in the distance, watching from a windowscape.

A conscious return of that very hunger, that salacious, depraved craving for the sharp pain of the words you leverage; that same desire which curls and licks its maw at the thought of the figs, of you.

“They see you for what whispers have rumored behind your shadow all your life, don’t they?” Your words are treasonous; Jacaerys’ jaw clenches. “And is it true – you do not let the words taint and disrobe you, do not let the truth unravel you until all that is left is your kind, used soul?”

His throat is thick with fear, with dejection; what inkling of truth, what window into his mind have you struck that lets his own thoughts spill from your beautiful lips? “You do not know of what you speak,” He fights meagerly; though he is weak, and your words are as harsh as they are soothing to his lonely heart.

“Dragonlords,” You spit ruefully, and Jacaerys is struck in a hazy trance of fear and hunger. “Rotting this world from the inside out – and the people are left to wither in the ruins.”

An image in his mind’s eye – Sharp Pointe, smoldering and dusted in ruins. A garden, a battlefield; all, desecrated. And that hissing sharp from your lips, that aching pulse which triples when you level him with a stare so very hateful. “I am free from all of that here. Here, it is sacred – names matter not. It is only peace, and sweet blooms of eternal summer. Here, the earth feeds itself, the circle turns, the blood comes in fire but leaves in ash-”

Stopped dead-cold, Jacaerys starts. “-What did you just say?”

You blink up at him, as if gone from some odd trance – and plush lips flounder, some flickering amusement dying in your gaze under his stare.

“Repeat it,” He urges, mind swimming in fear.

And in a horrifying moment, you smile – too wide, too sweet, too hungry.

You smile, and a burst of crows scream through the sky; you smile, a sinister lurking glint within; you smile, and the roses surrounding you begin to wilt away. You smile and his heart stops cold.

But just as it came, it drops – and with a blink, that filmy haze that had overtaken your rigid muscles melts, and you’re left; the delicate petals of a flowered girl, shaking your head slightly up to him as the sun beams down a chilly breath of light unto your face.

“I don’t… I can’t recall.”

With a blink, your eyes meet his and they are pure, free from any such emotion, nor turmoil; instead, you float before him in your sweet sway.

Jacaerys feels the shift within the air, watches as you slip on some masque that you hope he does not detect – but his hair stands on end.

You smile ever so kindly, eternally; his hands tremble, though still, after it all: Still, he wishes to remain there with you, in that smile.

“Forgive me, my Prince, I- I seemed to have lost myself. I’m so terribly sorry.”

The sun has clambered its way out from the sheets of clouds above; in a ray upon you, your hair glows – and despite the dread, the dubiety which swarms his mind, Jacaerys cannot help the small smile which crawls upon his lips, weary and hesitant as it is.

A cursed girl, you are – this, he cannot deny; but, a voice whispers in his mind, what is a curse but the gods’ way of shaping fate into flesh?

And gods, your flesh, so alive and shivering under his touch; you, your cursed smile and that flickering laughter that follows through the garden. That tantalizing fear, the unease which grips him and makes him feel alive – which makes him bloom.

With that slip, fades the memory of why indeed he was so upset in the first place; scared, perhaps, of some small spook? Your eyelashes flutter atop your cheeks, you breathe the fresh air as a painter does to canvas, your fingers playing with his own – and he dares chastise you for it? Guilt swirls in his chest, and he knows that he must gather himself lest he do something unbecoming.

The thought of such strikes him. He must return to the castle, it is much past the hour. The council waits.

“I must go,” He murmurs, jaw tensing as your eyes flash in that possessive jump; though you meekly nod, eyes casting towards the earth, where vines have retreated to the statue behind him. “I’ve to go to council.”

The breeze carries the floral scent of your hair. “Come back later.” You ask – though it is more of a command, one which sends a chill down his spine. And perhaps it is simply that; being wanted, to be loved or cared for simply because he is himself – it causes him to nod gently, caressing your icy cheek with the back of his fingers.

Jacaerys shivers at the devotion in your eyes, that swimming, searching gaze of eager affection. His palms find your own, and that distinct hunger – for the fruits which linger throughout the garden’s smells – reclaims him.

“I wish not to frighten you, Jacaerys.” You whisper – and it is in this sentence that he finds some kind of understanding – for you, nor he, wish to speak aloud what harrowing things he knows to be true; this garden rots, and somewhere within it, so do you.

“I only wish for some company.”

A pang of regret echoes within his chest – what sharp tone and tongue he’d taken with you today, when all you wished for was a hand to hold and a voice to speak with. When all you wished for was him, as he wishes for you.

“You do not frighten me,” He lies through his teeth, and perhaps he looks away intentionally when he sees that sinister grin flash over you in a shadow of a moment; though when he returns to your visage, it is clear and sweet as the day is bright. “If I could…” A swallow, biting his lip in knowledge of what he is about to admit. “If I could, my love, I’d stay with you.”

You shake your head with a slight desperation. “You can,” You whisper, a sudden, light pressure of something held up towards his chest – and Jacaerys needs not look into your palm to see the handful of fruits within your grasp, held out in offering.

Still a hunger, a desire courses through him – here, it is only peace – but he instead shakes his head once more. “My mother needs me,” He whispers, chest burning with a decision; though gods ruin him if he dares leave you alone again. A clench in his heart at your rejected nod, though you smile smally.

Your palm, cool as winter’s kiss, cups his jaw; with a sweet kiss to the corner of his lips, you whisper to him. “You are quite wonderfully made, Jacaerys. Your mother is lucky to have such a son.” You whisper dreamily; a faint memory tugging in his mind as some daze settles the ache of his mind. “I am truly quite fond of you.”

His eyes flicker, and when you press up to kiss him upon the lips, he feels a torn longing to remain with you, just a moment longer.

There is a war to be fought, he reminds himself – and he chooses his family; he chooses his mother, as she would choose him.

And he leaves you in the garden.

IT IS UNNATURAL, JACAERYS THINKS, TO LEAVE HIS MOTHER’S CHAMBERS SO OFTEN WITH TEARS IN HIS EYES.

Perhaps, any other night, he’d have remained to continue his plea; though now, his hands tremble and his throat burns with unshed emotion, legs carrying him quick through the suffocating walls of the Queen’s apartment.

There is no true beauty to the end of the day – not now, not after he’d left each bruised, battered word within his mind upon the cold stone floor before her. There is nothing left for him now.

Perhaps on a sunnier eve, Jacaerys would think with a smile wry and amused, how he seems to find the garden when there is nowhere else to go; yet tonight, he knows.

You are the place to go – and the garden, with its whispers and watching eyes, with its churning familiarity; that is what he so seeks as he stumbles once more through the gates, too beside himself to brother with pretense.

The sharp gathering of his mother’s visage after his watery plea; a choice, one which twists a rusty dagger and pulls the final thread of sanity which he’d so foolishly clung to.

He calls your name for only a few moments before you appear.

Just as the day he met you, at the end of the hedgeway, lingering in that odd, half-standing lilt you oft regain when you suspect nobody is looking; and your hair wild and loose, covering your visage as you hide.

A relief it is to see such a face, even as you slither from the shadows with a breath of his name.

A relief it is to finally be where he wants to be. Where he is wanted.

His knees crumble to the earth before you, and you go down once more with him.

Your hands fall to his arms, pulling you to him; and in that motion, in the lack of breath he takes in pressing himself into you, he wonders if you know. Somehow, you know what he is feeling – for you wipe his tears with an anguished expression, as if you’d been within those walls when he’d begged his mother not to pursue it.

A beg, delivered as some grasp for what once was, what may now never be - a gaping anxiety, one which has festered and built his entire existence - and has just spilled over and bled onto the thin tapestry of life stitched and remaining between him and his mother.

And his mother - the Queen - staring back at him, face hardening with each breath he took, trying to repress the sting of choice. She’s made her choice, he thinks - she has chosen herself.

He has chosen her time and time again, forsaken everything for her; and she has made her decision.

It is with barely a few words Jacaerys chokes out, whimpered and anguished, any semblance of explanation; though you sit with him through it, brushing his curls back and letting him gather his thoughts in the quiet dying light of the peaceful garden.

The fiery death of the sun lingers even as night sky begins its flirting tease; streaks of fading plum which kiss into the ocean far away.

Time passes with quiet peace.

Jacaerys’ breathing is calm. A numbing tranquility seeps through him, his breaths falling from his lips with your own, humming a gentle lull under the statue. The vines have fallen to their sleepy, weeping ways; the night comes, and after some time, you rise in your white gown and offer a hand for him.

The sun sinks its bloody bite into the coastline when you lead Jacaerys into the winding path; a mournful glow, with leaning flowers and wilting willows of vines which weep with his own sullen emptiness.

His hand shakes within yours – but your grasp is strong and sure, squeezing just once as he lingers past the maiden statue, the serpent coiling up her leg.

She is so very tragic in the waking moon’s light. His voice is raw when it comes, wistful, absent. “It always seemed as though she was made in your eyes.”

Your gaze slides from the statue – a serene visage with a lilt of envy – and your grip tightens upon his own.

“Men see what they wish to see.”

Your words, a distant echo of a long-forgotten conversation – you pull him along the path with a small glance back at the statue, as if wary it follows behind him. “If I may speak truthfully,” Your tone wilts with the betrayal of envy, “I would find it rather lonely, lying there moon after moon.”

Jacaerys is rather accustomed by this time to your odd words; and though he registers the odd resentment with which you spit the sentiment, he only watches you – perhaps concerned that, in a way, you might be fading to the clutch of time as well.

And so he leaves your words in the floral air of the garden; a stronger smell than most at this hour; and the blaring ache within his mind eases when you finally lead him to the clearing he’s dreamt of ceaselessly since his first visit.

The fig tree blossoms as if it is the first spry wink of spring.

Flowers blooming, dripping leaves of ambrosial scent which yield to plump fruits, even in the mooned night; divine, he thinks with a slow churn of pleasure within his veins. This place is divine.

A cloak of warmth over his shoulders – the weeping branches as he ducks below, staggering fuzzily under the alluring hunger which churns within his gut.

And in some miserable way, perhaps Jacaerys clings to the promise you’d laid: He comes here, you’d said, to the fig tree. Lucerys. Though his brother does not appear before his eyes, nor does the pain of fate – instead, a pleasant calm which placates his edged nerves.

A place rather tucked away from the harshness of fate, the fig tree seems to keen into his frame; and though his grief has spilled over, in your gaze he finds a warmth, a patience.

Your hand, slow as if approaching a wounded stag, brushes away a strand of hair which tangles within his lashes – a pang in his chest at such unknowing kindness, at such genuine, aloof acceptance. The proof is there for all to see – and yet, you, seeing; you do not mind. You never have.

Whatever composure he’d managed to hold is shattered within the raw affection he now feels; and with a shaky breath, he slumps against the trunk.

“What troubles you, my love?” Your voice a melody, the vision behind his closed eyes of a sickeningly hungry smile unmatched by the sweet tone of voice. It clutches him; to be wanted.

And what if one of your baseborn, silver-haired dragonriders decide that he wants to rule the Seven Kingdoms?

“My mother,” he confesses in a whisper, voice tight; wounded flesh of heart bleeding raw from his lips. “She willingly strips my claim to legitimacy in search of her own war.”

Your brows furrow in that way he has etched to memory – and with a shaky lift, he soothes away the furrow with his thumb, swiping his fingers gently across your visage.

It is with the blossom of nightshade with which you keen into his touch; a bloom of affection, desperate as you sigh. Just as so, your fingers press gently into his scalp, carding through his curls; the ache in his mind is eased, a fuzzy hunger, some euphoria washing through him.

“Jace,” you murmur, voice incredibly distant, “She is blinded by the fate of… distant songs, of distant omens. But I see you. I’ve always seen you.”

There is something odd about your tone; some revel, an ancient knowledge that brings hairs to end upon his nape – but he closes his eyes, leaning into your touch for some comfort.

A shaky breath as his lips press to your palm, fighting the sting of emotion. “Vermax has fallen ill inexplicably. Joff is gone. Luke…” His voice fractures at his brother’s name, the memory so sharp; some laden innocence he’d clung on to in his grief. A life, slipping thinner than sand through his fingers.

A familiar urge, one he cannot tamp as tears fall unbidden from his eyes; and you, with a soft gasp as he presses his forehead to your own cold one.

There is an itch low in his mind; a humming, a distant hunger which leaks through the cracks splintered in the remnants of his headache. The fig tree branches sway – above your head grows a beautiful purple fruit, heavy and bursting with rich life, with the churning cycle of soil, with earth, gods, fruit. Your skin freezes his own.

“I’ll do it.”

An unsettling urge within him – one not entirely his own, perhaps. Your eyes widen larger than the narrow sea.

A slow wettening of your lips as you shake your head, plush lips glistening and pinkened; Jacaerys yearns to see such pure sweetness dripping with the juices of those fruits once more, to feel your body writhe with his own, pleasure and hunger and you, you, you. You and him.

“Jacaerys,” your voice, gentle, wary; though your eyes scream otherwise, a sickening smile crawling across your faint features under the moon.

Your fingers, icicles upon his feverish skin, a balm over the hatred which coils dejected in his gut. Your lips part again, and he must resist the urge to bite upon such soft flesh, some monstrous hunger growing and spurting and whispering to eat, eat. Eat.

“You should not act so brash. Not when–”

“Just a taste, my love.” He interrupts, trembling yet unconvicted – desperate in his plea, as though a drop of the fruit’s nectar might heal the gaping misery that has spread at the harsh of the world’s truths.

Trembling palms slither around his shoulders, grasping him as you gather an untainted inhale, unspoiled.

And his eyes, glued upon your worried lips, your eyes blown wide in hunger, in that stirring way he felt last time he reposed under this very fig tree.

A sin, perhaps – but the most delicious, the most innocent of sin in a world so rotted and decaying.

There is a moment long suspended in air, in which your gaze burns into Jacaerys’ own. His heart races, growing more hungry by the moment, fingertips aching as he lets his hands explore your pliant flesh – over each soft fold of fabric, over each frigid expanse of skin. A divine touch; otherworldly.

Otherworldly.

He does not see you reach above you for the fruit – he does, though, see the flickering gleam in your eyes as you split apart the dusting blush of flesh; and he, forever enraptured with his desire for you, with your beauty, blinks as you hold up half the fruit.

Earthy, rich, forbidden – a sweet scent that lulls him forward, binding him with you as his eyes trace the glisten of the fruit’s nectar down your soft, sweet hand.

In a blink, he sees that horrid vision once more; shrouded silver in the moonlight, dark streaks blossom and spread upon your pristine dress with each breath you take; from your breast and stomach, it leaks out and begins to tremble your fingers. Blood, his mind whispers – no, dirt.

But your hand is held out, and in a blink the vision is gone; you’re before him with hopeful, hungry eyes and a bitten lip, unbreathing, unblinking.

Coiled, lying in wait.

He takes the fruit into his own grasp, marveling at the soft sensation, how hungry your eyes cling to his grasp.

Fingers milky pale in the moonlight glisten with the blood of the fruit; and he raises it, slowly until he can feel the chill of your breath kiss along his knuckles, see your tongue dart out in salacious hunger as you gaze moltenly between the fruit’s flesh and his own.

That hunger, that longing devours him whole as he stares. It is all he can do to swallow a thick rise of arousal as he desperately presses the flesh of the fig to your mouth, fingers lingering; firm.

You part your lips easily – so easy – and taste the sweetness; a cold sensation shivers down his spine, mind fuzzier with each moment as the juice drips and runs over his knuckles, chasing the tributaries of veins which split and run down his forearm.

Your hand catches upon his wrist, chilling as you moan at the taste.

His lips part, a burst of desire spiraling as his mind clouds, a ravenous hunger as you slowly slide into his lap with slithering skirts.

Jacaerys groans into the silence of the garden, unable to maintain his composure as you lean forward, pressing his fingers further into your mouth. Upon your tongue is the kiss of winter; and he watches, helplessly entranced as your tongue catches the last traces from his fingers – a simmering invitation when your eyes meet his own hungering gaze.

The rind of the fruit falls forgotten into the soil.

Your lips glisten so dark, he almost believes it is blood.

Your lips find his own.

A burst of pleasure, unbidden within his groin when your tongue presses to his – familiar, yes, euphoric; but satiating that hunger, yet multiplying it.

Jacaerys pulls you closer by your hips, fingers sticky with the remnants of the fig, his mind reeling with ecstasy at the taste of you, the taste of the fruit; the taste of the Garden.

In the heartbeat of silence when you pull away, his chest rises sharply – your breath kisses his own and he makes one final decision; with a glance back towards the castle, Jacaerys leans towards you once more.

His breath fans in a plume of fog – it is cold in the garden, with you so precariously in his lap, yet Jacaerys burns.

You wait for him with bated breath, the fruit hovering just before his parted, covetous lips.

Jace’s gaze does not leave yours when he leans forward and slowly takes the fruit against his lips, bursts of heat flickering with stabs of ice as you gasp, watching with eyes maliciously ravenous, glistened lips parted.

He breathes you in, gaze half-lidded as his tongue presses gently against the fruit within your grasp.

Your whimper is soft and yet it sets him ablaze; an ambrosial taste, one which leaves his mind spinning, any anguish previously thought melts away – it is difficult, he realizes, to determine where you end and the fig begins.

Softly, at first; grazing his teeth along your skin, shivering through his very spine when you shift your hips, sucking in an inhale of pleasure yourself – and the juices which slip down your own hand, which flood his mouth unlike anything he’s before felt.

Though it is not enough to break the skin of the fruit, and you grow impatient; if his eyes were any less lidded, perhaps he’d have seen the malicious hunger swimming in your sweet gaze.

You press the fruit into his mouth.

He bites.

taglist: @useralba @dipperscavern @softspiderling @lukehughes43 @rhea-ripley @writtenapoiogy @fyrewept @oldtowrs @bryscorner @chloe-petrichors @jottositto @earth4angels @divinesolas @hxtd @astrxq @housetargaryenloyalist @house-celtigar @v3lary0ns @vee-mage @princessvelaryon @princessbellecerise @still-jon-snow @elaena-aerrin @mckennah123 @smurfelle @alyssa-dayne @uhnanix @ficlovegirlie @cregan-starks @manhandlememando @inkandarsenic @cuntlips42 @franzelt @chimmysoftpaws

#jacaerys velaryon x reader #jacaerys targaryen x reader #jace x reader #jacaerys x reader smut #jacaerys x reader #hotd x reader #hotd smut #i hate tagging bro #eff this

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new-dinosaurs · 2 months ago

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Gondwanax paraisensis Müller, 2024 (new genus and species)

(Type femur [thigh bone] of Gondwanax paraisensis, from Müller, 2024)

Meaning of name: Gondwanax = Gondwana king [in Greek]; paraisensis = from Paraíso do Sul

Age: Middle–Late Triassic (Ladinian–Carnian)

Where found: Santa Maria Formation, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

How much is known: A right femur (thigh bone), along with several vertebrae and a partial pelvis from the same site. It is unknown whether the other bones belonged to the same individual as the femur.

Notes: Gondwanax was a silesaurid, a group of probably quadrupedal Triassic reptiles that often had adaptations for herbivory (though there is evidence that they also ate insects). Until recently, silesaurids were generally considered to be close relatives of dinosaurs instead of dinosaurs themselves, and I previously excluded them from coverage on this blog. However, multiple recent analyses have suggested that they might in fact be true dinosaurs, specifically early members of Ornithischia ("bird-hipped" dinosaurs), so from here on out I will tentatively include them within this blog's purview. In fact, some of those studies have found that most "silesaurids" may not have formed a unique evolutionary group, but instead a series of lineages with some being more closely related to later ornithischians than others.

Regardless of whether it is a true dinosaur, Gondwanax is one of the oldest known dinosauromorphs (the group containing dinosaurs and their closest relatives). Compared to other dinosauromorphs of similar age, Gondwanax more closely resembles later dinosaurs in having three hip vertebrae (whereas dinosaurs ancestrally appear to have had only two). It is unusual among dinosauromorphs in having a very small fourth trochanter, a attachment point on the femur for muscles that pull the hindlimb backward.

(Schematic skeletal of Gondwanax paraisensis, with preserved bones in orange, from Müller, 2024)

Reference: Müller, R.T. 2024. A new "silesaurid" from the oldest dinosauromorph-bearing beds of South America provides insights into the early evolution of bird-line archosaurs. Gondwana Research advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2024.09.007

#Palaeoblr #Dinosaurs #Gondwanax #Middle Triassic #Late Triassic #South America #Ornithischia #2024 #Extinct

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rainandandy · 3 months ago

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Hi! Could you do a Rain x reader fic where reader has a nightmare about Xenomorph chasing her and Rain comforts her?

Warnings: Angst, Xenomorph description, panic attack description

Word Count: 1142

Pairings: Rain Carradine X Fem! Reader

The pitch-black corridors of the station loomed around you, stretching infinitely into the darkness. Every breath you took echoed against the cold metal walls, a haunting reminder of the silence that had fallen after the others were lost. But this silence wasn’t comforting; it was the kind of silence that heralded something far worse.

You were alone. Or at least you thought you were. Every footstep, every laboured breath seemed amplified, like the sound was being consumed by something waiting, watching from the shadows. The shadows themselves seemed alive, shifting and curling like tendrils of smoke, threatening to swallow you whole.

Then, the hiss—a sound you would never forget, one that clawed into your soul and sent icy fingers of dread through your entire being. You whipped around, heart pounding, eyes wide, searching for the source. There it was, at the far end of the corridor, emerging from the shadows, its elongated head gleaming under the dim emergency lights. The xenomorph, its form a perfect amalgamation of terror, muscle, and predatory instinct.

You turned to run, but your feet felt as though they were stuck in molasses, each step dragging you down as if the station itself wanted to keep you there, to offer you up to the nightmare closing in behind you. The creature’s breath—hot, humid, rancid—was on your neck, closer with every heartbeat.

The walls began to close in, narrowing the corridor until it felt like you were squeezing through a vent. Panic surged through you, choking the air from your lungs. But worse, much worse, was the sight that stopped you cold: Rain.

She was ahead of you, in the narrow corridor, her face streaked with dirt and tears, a desperate look in her eyes as she reached out for you. But as you tried to move toward her, the xenomorph’s skeletal tail whipped around your leg, dragging you back, further into the darkness.

“No!” you screamed, your voice breaking with terror. You could see Rain’s mouth moving, but no sound reached you. The creature’s claws wrapped around you, its jagged teeth dripping with viscous saliva as it drew closer. You struggled, desperate to reach Rain, to save her, but your movements were sluggish, like fighting through a thick syrup. Rain’s eyes widened in horror as the xenomorph reared back, its inner jaw snapping out toward you.

Then it wasn’t you the creature was after. It lunged toward Rain, and you were helpless, forced to watch as it closed the gap between them in a heartbeat.

“RAIN!” you screamed, sitting up abruptly, your voice echoing in the small, darkened room.

Your chest heaved as you gasped for breath, the dream still clawing at the edges of your consciousness, refusing to release its hold on you. The room was silent, save for your ragged breathing and the faint hum of the station's life support systems. The small cabin you shared with Rain and Andy was a sanctuary now, but the dream had torn down all sense of security, leaving you raw and vulnerable.

You felt a hand on your shoulder, gentle but firm. “Hey, hey, it's okay. You're safe. We’re safe,” Rain’s voice was soft, full of warmth and concern.

Tears blurred your vision as you turned to face her. The moonlight filtered through the small window, casting a silver glow on her face. She was so close, so real, and it was that reality that finally started to pull you out of the nightmare’s grip.

But the terror wasn’t gone—it was lingering, seeping into your bones, making it hard to breathe. Your heart raced as if you were still running for your life. “I-I saw you, Rain… It was going to kill you. I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop it.”

Rain’s expression softened, her own heart aching as she saw the fear etched on your face. “Shhh, it’s okay. I’m right here. Nothing’s going to hurt you, not while I’m here.” She pulled you into her arms, cradling your head against her chest. “Listen to my heartbeat,” she whispered. “Just breathe with me.”

You tried to focus on the steady rhythm of her heart, grounding yourself in the moment, but the images from the dream kept flashing before your eyes. The xenomorph’s jagged teeth, the hopelessness of trying to escape… It was too much.

“I can’t…” you gasped, your voice breaking as a panic attack surged through you, gripping your chest like a vice.

Rain held you tighter, rubbing soothing circles on your back. “You’re safe,” she murmured, repeating the words like a mantra. “You’re safe, baby. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you.”

The comfort of her touch, the calm in her voice, slowly started to penetrate the fog of fear enveloping you. “I was so scared,” you admitted, your voice trembling as you clung to her. “I can still feel it, like it’s still there.”

Rain leaned back slightly, cupping your face in her hands so you could see her clearly. “But it’s not here. It was just a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. But that’s all it is.”

You nodded, though the tears kept coming, your body still shaking. “I thought I lost you.”

“You didn’t,” she whispered, her own eyes glistening with unshed tears. “And you never will. We’ve been through too much to let anything tear us apart now.”

Rain continued to hold you, her presence a balm to your frayed nerves. She kissed your forehead gently, her lips lingering as if she could kiss away the fear itself. “You’re stronger than you know,” she said softly. “We both are. We survived. And we’ll keep surviving. Together.”

The word "together" hung in the air, a lifeline that you grabbed onto with both hands. Slowly, the panic began to ebb, replaced by the warmth of Rain’s embrace, the solid reality of her presence. You let out a shaky breath, the nightmare finally starting to lose its grip on your mind.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over you.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Rain replied, her voice filled with love. “We’ve been through so much. It’s okay to be scared. But I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

You nodded, your body finally relaxing against her as the last remnants of fear slipped away. Rain held you until your breathing steadied, her touch never wavering.

“I love you,” you murmured, your voice barely audible as you started to drift off, the comfort of her arms pulling you back to sleep, this time a peaceful one.

Rain smiled softly, pressing another kiss to your temple. “I love you too. Always.”

As you fell back into a much-needed sleep, the lingering fear of the nightmare was no match for the reality of Rain’s love, her strength, and the promise that, no matter what, you would face whatever came next together.

#alien romulus #rain carradine #cailee spaeny #rain carradine x reader #marie raines carradine #alien #alien franchise #horror #wlw #request #fic request #requests open

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dilfdemolisher · 2 months ago

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SURRENDER - Vampire!Hannibal AU

Summary: Now with a better understanding for the need of blood, it's time for you to hunt for your own meals - Comments and critiques are encouraged.

Content Warning: DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, cannibalism, gore, manipulation, death, a pitiful attempt at gothic romance vibes

Word Count: 1.9k This a continuation of this post Eternal

The moon hangs like a distant, judgeful eye above you. The shadows stretch long and grotesque beneath the towering trees, their gnarled branches reaching like skeletal hands toward the heavens you’ll never reach. You stand at the edge of the forest, legs rooted in place. The wind sighs through the trees, carrying with it the heavy scent of rot and damp earth. But beneath that decay, your sharpened senses detect something far more seductive—something that coils in your chest with a cruel, insistent hunger.

Human blood.

The faint pulse of life in the distance, thrums against your consciousness. The hunger gnaws at you so cold and relentless, while you struggle to forget the curse that has claimed you. But Hannibal—he has no such delusions. His plans for you are far more insidious.

He stands beside you, still as death himself. Eyes, dark and fathomless, fixed forward. There’s a cold serenity in his gaze, a calmness that chills through your lacklustre-soul, as if the horror of what lies ahead is a trivial affair, that this shall be your new normal.

“You’ll soon understand.” His words, meant to offer comfort, instead suffocate you.

You swallow, your throat dry and parched, every muscle rigid. “I can’t,” you murmur. Though the words feel thin, you know they’re not truthful.

Hannibal moves closer, the chill of his presence palpable, a weight pressing down on your grave. “You will,” he replies, his tone not harsh but final; judgement day has passed long ago.

Weeks have passed since you last tasted blood, and now hunger is a living thing within you clawing at the walls of your resolve. You have fought it, tried to cling to some semblance of humanity, but it’s fruitless.

Hannibal watches you with unyielding eyes, “You’re starving,” he says, the observation as simple as it is obvious. “Why prolong your suffering? This is what you are now.”

The words dig into you like nails, the truth in them is undeniable, yet you shake your head, retreating a step from his unholy presence. “I don’t want to kill,” you whisper.

“You are no longer human, clinging to their morals is folly. You need to feed; that is what matters.” He says.

Your hardened heart hammers in your chest, but it is not fear that propels it—it is hunger. That endless, gnawing ache deep within your bones, a hunger that will tear you apart if left unsated. The scent of human life wafts through the trees again, an irresistible lure that tugs at the frayed end of your resolve.

“I don’t want to be cruel,” you pointedly stammer.

“There is no other way,” he says, his voice colder now, edged. “You feed, or you die. And the hunger... the hunger will tear you apart far more cruelly than I ever could.”

The night seems to press closer around you, a living, breathing entity that watches, waiting for you to fall, waiting for you. “I... I can’t...” The words barely escape your lips, trembling on the edge of despair.

“You can,” Hannibal murmurs, his gaze unrelenting, drawing you deeper into the abyss. His cold eyes hold yours in a vice grip. “Soon, you will understand. Murder is only itself when the perpetrator is as human as the victim.”

Your body begins to betray you. A shudder runs through you as your fangs elongate, unbidden, your instincts overtaking the fragile remnants of your will. The scent of iron calls to you and fills your senses until it is all that exists as Hannibal steps into the forest ahead of you.

For a moment, you stand paralyzed at the edge, your heart pounding against your ribs as if it, too, seeks to escape this fate. But then, as if guided by some unseen hand, your legs carry you forward into the black maw of the woods.

The silence is encompassing, broken only by the soft rustle of leaves beneath your feet and the distant whisper of the wind. Every sense is heightened, the cool night air dull against your icey skin, the scent of the earth rich and suffocating. And beneath it all—the unmistakable thrum of a human life.

Hannibal stops abruptly, his head tilting ever so slightly, his gaze fixed on a figure barely discernible through the trees. Your breath catches in your throat.

There—a man, alone. His steps are unhurried, his presence oblivious to the predators lurking. You can hear his heartbeat now, steady and strong, the rhythm of his pulse beckoning you like a siren's call. The hunger rises within you, sharp and terrible, clawing at your insides.

You try to hold on to some piece of humanity. He’s a person—a life, not just blood, you think desperately.

“No,” you whisper, your voice breaking as you step back, but Hannibal’s gaze is solid, implacable.

“You will,” he says, his voice like a death knell as he steps closer. His hand grips your arm, his strength inescapable as he pulls you toward the man. “He’s already dead; the moment we found him, his fate was sealed.”

Terror mingles with hunger as your legs move of their own accord, drawing you toward the pulse of life, the scent of blood filling your senses. You don’t want this. You never wanted this. But that no longer matters.

The man turns, his eyes widening in terror as he spots you. You wonder how inhuman you must look for such a response.

He stumbles back, his heartbeat a drum in your ears, but you are already on him. Your hands grip his shoulders as your fangs pierce his skin, and the warmth of his blood fills your mouth, intoxicating and terrible.

The hunger quiets, for a moment, the darkness receding as you drink deeply. Each drop of life you steal, a part of your soul crumbles, sinking into the abyss as a trade. His struggle weakens, life draining away beneath your hands.

When you finally pull back, gasping for breath, the man lies lifeless beneath you, grey and still. His blood stains your lips, warm and thick, and the weight of what you’ve done crashes over you in a tide of disgust; You’ve crossed a line from which there’s no return.

As you stagger backward, the taste of the man’s blood lingers on your tongue, the sweetness tainted by the bitterness of guilt. His body, crumpled and motionless at your feet, seems to stretch the silence around you into an unbearable void. You can feel the chill of the night air again, sharper now, as if the life you just consumed had momentarily made you mortal again.

Your hands shake, still stained with his blood, as you stare down at the lifeless form. You want to scream, to cry, to tear away the skin that now marks you as something monstrous. But your voice is caught in your throat, suffocated by the weight of what you’ve done.

Suddenly, Hannibal is beside you. He moves with that same eerie grace when he places his hand to rest on your shoulder, firm but not harsh.

“You did well,” he murmurs, his voice low and soothing, like the cool touch of a breeze after a storm. There is no cruelty in his tone now, no sharpness. Only a calm, unsettling tenderness.

“I—” You choke on the words, your body trembling. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, and you want to tell him that you didn’t want this, that you never wanted to be a killer. But no words come. All that escapes you is a quiet, broken sob.

Hannibal kneels beside you, his fingers gentle as they wipe away the tears that have begun to fall from your eyes. His face, pale and serene, showing no judgement, only understanding—a cold, distant kind of understanding that somehow twists the knife deeper.

“You are grieving,” he says softly, hand still lingering against your cheek. “But what you grieve for is the person you used to be—the human that you are no longer. What you are feeling now, this anguish, is only the remnant of a life that is behind you. A life that you must release.”

You shake your head, wanting to deny it, but his gaze holds you captive. He does not avert his gaze, nor does he look at the man you have just killed. His focus is entirely on you.

“There is nothing to fear in what you’ve done,” he continues, his voice like velvet wrapping around and cushioning your shattered thoughts. “You feel sorrow now because you cling to the illusion that you could have chosen differently. But in truth, there was never a choice.”

His words are meant to comfort, to soothe the storm inside you, but they only intensify the agony that twists within your chest. You shake your head again, your breath coming in ragged gasps. “I didn’t want this,” you whisper, your voice weak and broken. “I never wanted to be this.”

Hannibal’s hand moves to cradle the back of your neck, drawing you closer. His touch is cold, but not unkind. “None of us choose this existence,” he says quietly. “But it is the existence we have been given. And now, you must learn to live within it.”

The irony that he did this to you doesn't escape you, yet you can't bother to fight. You close your eyes, wishing for the darkness to swallow you whole, to erase the memory of what you’ve just done. But Hannibal’s presence remains steady and unrelenting.

You open your eyes, tears still blurring your vision. “Is this what my life will be now?” you ask, your voice barely more than a whisper. “Killing, feeding, and pretending that it doesn’t matter?”

Hannibal’s gaze softens, and for the first time, you see something like compassion flicker across his features. “It will be easier,” he promises. “In time, you will see the world differently, and the weight of these moments will fade. You will learn to accept what you are, and with that acceptance will come a freedom unlike anything you have ever known.”

His hand slips from your neck, resting briefly on your shoulder before falling away entirely. He stands then, silent and graceful. “You are stronger than you think,” he says, his voice still soft. “You survived your first kill. You will survive many more.”

The forest seems to hold its breath around you, the night itself waiting for your next move. The body of the man, now a lifeless shell, lies between you and Hannibal, a grim reminder of what you’ve become. But beneath the horror, beneath the grief, you feel something stir—a strange, unsettling calm.

It is not peace. Not yet. But it is the first hint of surrender.

Hannibal watches you for a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then, with a small nod, he turns and begins to walk deeper into the forest, his form melding with the shadows.

For a moment, you hesitate. You could stay here, with the corpse, with the horror and the grief. You could remain in the ruins of your former self, lost and broken.

But then, as if pulled by some unseen force once again, your legs begin to move, carrying you forward into the darkness after him.

The night swallows you whole, and for the first time, you don’t resist.

@burnt-sienna-soup-ladles

#the first paragraph of this fic is my favourite thing ive ever written #hannibal #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #mads mikkelsen #hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal x reader

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nsharks · 2 years ago

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a dark world (an ache to live) | simon "ghost" riley

summary: ghost fears death (because he has you). soap is there to make him a promise. tags: *ghost d words*, pregnant!reader/fem!reader, death, blood, gunshot wound, just angst a/n: this is very dramatic I'm sorry and it has nothing to do with my other fics. dad ghost is alive and well in those.

Ghost is quiet.

The Sergeant is not.

In middle-of-nowhere Russia, two souls trudge through the sleet. One leaning into the other. One talking to keep the other awake. With each step, their boots drag with more resistance. With each step, it becomes more of an impossible task for Soap to keep the weight of his comrade up.

Red footsteps follow.

Shimmering red. It catches the sunlight behind the clouds. It’s a crimson shade they are both all too familiar with.

Ghost, never one to accept help, now digs his gloved fingers into the Sergeant's shoulder for support. The heel of his other hand presses into the dressed wound at his torso, applying as much pressure as he can with his fading strength. Ghost’s deific strength— always a staple they could rely on, even at the worst of times.

But now—

His strength doesn’t seem to be quite enough. Not when the gauze has already been soaked through without mercy.

“Keep your eyes open, Lt.”

A grunt.

“Don’t think that’ll help.”

There’s something etched into the gravel of his voice that frightens Soap; a lilt of panic that he’s never heard from Ghost. Because Ghost doesn’t bloody panic, ever. Soap’s eyes flicker to the wound on his partner and he comes to a quick halt when he sees the growing stain on his uniform. He hisses a swear under his breath that pools smoke into the air.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Lt.”

Skeletal fingers pull back from the gore for inspection. They’re soaked and stained. Ghost is used to that— the red bones on his glove. Though, usually, it’s the blood of others.

“Gotta keep in every drop, ‘member?” Soap urges, and reaches over to press the wound for him. “Let me fix it up again. C’mon, hold yourself up for a sec.”

But Ghost only leans into a deeper slouch. The Sergeant stumbles from the immense weight of it.

“Would if I… could, Johnny.”

Soap doesn’t like that answer.

He keeps one hand on Ghost’s shoulder and abandons the wound with the other hand, only so he can dig through his med pack. Before he can grab the gauze, his Lieutenant is collapsing to the icy ground.

There’s nothing Soap can do to stop it.

“Alright, fuck,” the Sergeant hisses. He bends down. Ghost has slumped into a haphazard pile of muscled limbs and weighted tactical gear. “I’ll just take care of ya down here, Ghost. Stay with me, yeah?”

Frantic, urgent denial.

Soap drags the man’s legs out. Tries to get him more on his back so the wounded region is flat. He pushes up the bloodied shirt of Ghost’s uniform and swallows a lump in his throat when he sees the reality of it. So much blood— too much. He fumbles with the gauze but a lazy hand grabs his wrist.

“Don’t waste…” slurred breaths, “…my time with that, Johnny.”

“What do you—“

A tired scoff.

“M’dead weight. M’not… gettin’ back up.”

“We have to fuckin’ try.”

“Can’t… feel anything.”

“Jesus, think of Y/N. Think of your kid, Ghost,” Soap finally sputters out. He’s been trying his damned hardest not to think of you, nor the swell of your stomach that he noticed the last time he saw you. He worried he might fall apart if he did; he couldn't get them to help if he was broken.

“Tha’ is what… I want,” Ghost’s eyes dig shut. “To think of ‘em. So… don’t waste my time.”

A final order from his superior. One that travels through broken glass and shuddering ribs. The sunlight dips behind a grey cloud and they’re left together in this moment of gloom where time seems to slow down, two souls stuck in tar, and all Soap can do is obey his partner’s wishes.

Because he knows; they both know.

“Alright,” Soap mutters with a swallow of acceptance. He drops the roll of gauze. Moves a hand back to the bullet wound, presses it in vain, and nods his head. “Talk to me ‘bout them, Simon.”

Simon.

Ghost hears it. His real name.

A weak hand tugs off his mask. Underneath lays a face that his comrade has only seen once or twice before. Somehow, this face looks more like a ghost than the skull he'd ridden himself behind. A face with eyes that open in hollow, uncharacteristic fear. A face with pale lips that can move only enough to let out slurs.

"M'gonna have a son," Simon says quietly. Soap sees it now— the dribble of blood at his mouth. "She's... givin' me a son and I won't meet him."

"Jesus, Simon," Soap croaks. He reaches for his hand— holds it as a friend. A forlorn grip that Soap keeps close to his chest. "He's gonna be a good lad, alright?"

“I hope he... stays in school."

"Course, he’s gonna be smart.”

A weak smirk.

"Hope he gets... her looks. Not mine."

"I'm sure he will. She's beautiful, Lt."

"I know. Miss... her." His smirk fades. The notch in his throat trembles and bobs. Fear shakes out a whimper from him. "Wanna see her again, Johhny."

It seems only fitting, with his blood dripping onto the sleet, that the truth of him would drip out, too. A man rumored to be a beast lays here, whittled down to the version of himself only you ever got to see.

A version of himself that was afraid to die.

After years of aching for death's company, it has finally arrived. A reaper coming to collect him only after he'd changed his mind. For Simon ached for something else now: for you, for his family. He ached to come home and bury his face in your hair. He ached to touch his hands to your stomach and feel the fluttering kicks of life.

He ached to live.

And his comrade, with drying lips and salt in his eyes, could see this ache in each of his struggled breaths.

"Talk to me 'bout her, Simon," he begs, gripping his drenched shirt. "Somethin' good. Somethin' you love."

"Everythin'," his Lieutenant shudders. He doesn’t feel the pain or the cold. He just feels lingering adrenaline push out his throat in quiet spurts: “Her hair, her laugh... Fuckin'... hell. Love everythin'. Tell... her fo' me."

"I will."

"Tell her... Johnny. Don't want some," Simon softly wheezes and closes his eyes again. "...some random fuck doin' it."

"Fuck, I will," a wet promise. Soap wipes the salinity on his cheeks. "I'll tell her, Simon."

And soon a dark world begins to breathe into Simon's vision. He used to hang out in the darkness. Your light had gripped him by the shoulders and tugged him out. Now—

It finds him again. Old friends.

-----

A promise arrives at your door.

A solemn, dignified promise arrives with a folded flag, a sealed envelope, and a chain with two metal pendants: a dog tag and a ring. They clank together in his hand. And here, at the doorstep of his Lieutenant's home, a beautiful woman steps out with an unassuming smile and a hand rested atop the curve of her belly, and Soap doesn't even have the chance to say anything before your eyes gather the information you need, and the smile chips away into something horrific.

All you know how to do is scream.

And all Soap knows how to do is grab your hand, like he did for your husband.

#simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x reader #cod #simon ghost riley #ghost #call of duty #fanfiction #simon ghost riley x reader #john soap mactavish #angst #tw death #tw blood #fem!reader

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bzurk · 4 months ago

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don’t feel obligated to respond at all my beloved but i would looooove to know your thoughts on könig & knife/gun play <3

also i saw your funny number follower post, congrats!!! you deserve so many more i stg you’re one of the most underrated writers in this godforsaken fandom.

- Dad <3

My headcanon… König is not nice. He is an arrogant, proud and cocky man. He takes looking down on people to another level.

"And they said I couldn't be a sniper..."

“Let’s be honest… It’s better off in my hands.”

“Hands off, It’s mine.”

Like, he knows he’s big. He knows he’s scary. He knows he’s good at what he does. His broad shoulders and towering frame are weapons in their own right, constantly reminding others of their inferiority.

He relishes in their discomfort, in the way they avert their eyes and step aside.

He is not the same kid who was relentlessly bullied and harassed, shoved into lockers and ridiculed. He spent so much time alone, stuck in his head, thinking the world was out to get him, afraid.

It hardened him, made him antagonistic and cruel.

Covered by his mask, König could be someone else entirely.

This... side of his comes easily when he has you in his palms, malleable and docile, sharp edges dulled by fear. Something for him, and him alone, a precious treasure for his eyes only.

And once you're in his grasp, he can do whatever he fucking wants to you. He knows you won't talk back, won't deny him, not when he is so much bigger than you, when he could snap your neck with the flick of a wrist.

But he wouldn't hurt you. Not intentionally, anyway.

Threatening you, though? Proving just how much bigger and stronger than you he is? He thrives off it.

The cold barrel of his pistol gliding over your tongue and chipping at your tooth enamel, his name carved into your hip, bruises in the shapes of his fingers, his knife pressed against your throat-

Anyway, rant over- YOU MAKE ME WANNA WRITE FOR KONIG NOW grrrr

cw below the cut: predator/prey, knifeplay

The labyrinth swallows you whole, its corridors twisting like the coils of a serpent, leading you deeper into its grasp. Each turn is a gamble, a frantic bid to outpace the monstrous presence that dogs your every step. Your breath is ragged, each inhale a knife to the lungs, and your heart hammers a frantic rhythm against your ribs, urging you onward. You curse your shoes - sharp, sensible, and utterly impractical - biting into your feet like a predator gnashing its teeth.

The Minotaur breathes down your neck, a force of nature you cannot outrun. Every shadow is its claw, every echo its growl. You are a sacrifice in this man-made labyrinth, the gods demanding blood and fear as tribute. The offices you sprint past, once a sanctuary of mundane routine, are now twisted visions of horror. Desks loom like skeletal remains, chairs crouch like beasts ready to pounce, and the flickering glow of monitors watches with an indifferent gaze, a silent audience to your terror.

Time warps and distorts, stretching and snapping like the sinews of your aching legs. The world has narrowed to the staccato rhythm of your footfalls, the shrill wail of the alarms a discordant symphony, and the relentless pursuit of the creature behind you.

Desperation claws at your mind, a frenzied beast in its own right. You grab a chair as you run past, flinging it behind you with every ounce of strength you can muster. The chair crashes to the floor, an explosion of sound in the cacophony of the chase. For a moment, you hear the beast stumble, a snarl of frustration echoing off the walls.

But it's not enough. It never is.

The beast is upon you in a heartbeat, a shadow of rage and power that slams you against a desk with bone-jarring force, the collision of a heavy animal ploughing into your ribs, squeezing the air from your lungs and the panic from your head. Pain blooms through your body, and static takes your vision. Your lungs scream and scream and scream for breath to no avail, muscles spasming. The hit is like a system reset to your body, shutting down all of your functions only to reboot them in a heartbeat.

The Minotaur is faster. He is built from pure muscle and sinew, bulging and heaving under the blaring red lights, the silhouette reaching for the ceiling. He grunts and groans, breath expelled harshly in a facsimile of exhaustion.

The Minotaur steps into the blaring red light of the alarm, its glow revealing him in a series of sharp, fractured images.

What stands before you isn't a creature forged from myth and nightmare, but a man, a towering figure encased in the cold precision of tactical gear. His silhouette is all harsh lines and rugged edges, a mountain of muscle and sinew crafted for power and endurance.

A hood drapes over his head, its fabric heavy with the residue of shadow and blood, concealing most of his features, except for the sharp glint of his eyes; a glacial blue that pierces through the darkness. Those eyes hold no mercy, no hesitation, only the cold calculation of a predator who knows his place at the top of the food chain.

In one hand he grips a large combat knife, its blade gleaming wickedly in the crimson light, reflecting lethal intent. The knife seems like an extension of him, as natural as the breath he expels in harsh, rhythmic intervals. Every part of him speaks of discipline, of a man moulded into a weapon as much by choice as by necessity.

He regards you with an intensity that burns through the space between you, a look that speaks volumes without uttering a word. It tells of dominance and disdain, the arrogance of a hunter who has already decided the outcome of this encounter. And as you lie there, splayed and breathless, you realize that this man, this Minotaur in human form, is the living embodiment of your worst fears - a predator who revels in the chase and takes grim satisfaction in knowing that escape is futile, in knowing that he has won.

The Minotaur steps closer, his heavy boots echoing on the linoleum floor, each step deliberate and filled with purpose. His presence looms over you like a dark, oppressive storm, blotting out any hope of escape. He plants his feet on either side of your hips, a calculated move that pins you in place, trapping you beneath his imposing figure.

His eyes, those cold, glacial blue eyes, narrow slightly with amusement as he regards you - splayed out, wide-eyed and breathless, a deer caught in the headlights. He reaches down, his hand moving with a predator's grace, and grips the collar of your blouse. The fabric strains against his hold, and you can feel the cold, unyielding steel of the knife pressing into the hollow of your throat, its edge a chilling promise of violence.

"Pretty thing," he coos, his voice a low, rumbling purr that sends a shiver down your spine.

There’s a twisted satisfaction in the way he speaks, a predator savouring the fear that radiates from you like heat. His words are a mockery, dripping with condescension, as if your fear is nothing more than a source of entertainment to him. You can see his eyes crinkle with delight beneath the hood, the corners creased in a perverse kind of happiness. It's a manic joy, one that revels in the power he holds over you, in the certainty of his victory.

"You put up a good chase," he continues, almost conversationally, as if discussing the weather or a mundane day at work. The knife presses just a fraction deeper, piercing skin, a reminder of the precariousness of your situation. "But in the end, you know it was futile, don't you?"

His voice is a mix of admiration and taunt, a hunter acknowledging the prey's fleeting attempt at escape while relishing in its ultimate capture. There's a cruel satisfaction in the way he leans closer, his breath a ghost against your skin, warm and chilling all at once.

He relishes in your fear, in the way your pulse hammers beneath the thin barrier of skin, the way your breath stutters in your chest. It's a game to him, one he plays with expert precision.

You can see the madness in his eyes, a glint of something untamed and wild that speaks of a man who thrives on chaos and control, who lives for the thrill of the hunt and the inevitable conclusion it brings. And in that moment, you understand with terrifying clarity that you are at the mercy of a predator who knows no bounds, who revels in the dance of fear and power, and who will not be satisfied until he has claimed his prize.

His knife trails down, down, following the bead of blood as it trickles down the hollow of your throat.

“Pretty, precious little thing,” he coos into your ear, the fabric of his hood tickling against the sensitive skin of your tear-stained cheeks. His knife tinks as it hits your top button. “I will have much fun ruining you.”

You squeak when the sound of your button skating across the floor echoes. Followed by the next, then the next, then the next, until your soft belly is exposed to the beast and its hungry maw.

#call of duty #x reader #konig cod #konig x reader #reader insert #call of duty fanfic #call of duty modern warfare #bzwrites #cod konig #call of duty x reader #konig call of duty #konig mw2 #konig x you #knifeplay #knife k!nk #tw knife

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charcoaldustonmyfingers · 7 months ago

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Kinda oddly embarrassed to send this but oh my god your art is so pleasing to look at for some reason

I think it's just the soft shapes you use and how amazingly 3D everything tends to look?? Like the angles and proportions are just so perfect that I find it easy to imagine most of what you draw as a 3D model or something

And like I don't think I could nail it like you (maybe with time!!) But I am definitely taking inspiration from it because it DOES get me thinking about how you use shapes and angles and wonder if I could practice that because oh my god I wish I could absorb your art

Do you have methods or techniques to make it look so 3D? if you know what I mean? I tend to use grids to try and map out the shapes in a vaguely 3D plane, so I was wondering if you had tips kinda like that to share with the class? or if you're just winging it and it's a lot of practice?

Thank you so much!!! It really means a lot to me when others take inspiration from my art, it reminds me of all the artists I used to look up to and emulate when I was first starting out on MSPaint with a broken trackpad for a pen, you don’t have to be embarrassed! You’ll definitely be able to harness 3D space and create fantastic work, you’re already well on your way! Having passion and a desire to learn will take you far :)

My biggest focus whenever I draw is to make the characters feel real, as though you could reach out and enter the space they’re in to sit next to them on the couch. I’m so glad that I’m able to pull it off! Thanks for the rose, I’ll be sure to cherish it :)

As for my methods and techniques…

Drawing on a 3D grid plane is definitely something I do! Its perfect for comic panels or storyboards, to set the scene and ground characters or props to their environment.

I did a lot of classical study, that is life drawing and still life drawing, but simply using reference for buildings and anatomy also helps a lot and is a lot easier to find. I’d also sketch my hands, plastic animals, and my surroundings, as well as people watch for inspiration for character mannerisms or fashion. It’s useful to know a little bit about the inner workings of anatomy, as there are places were bone makes a person inflexible, while places with more muscle or fat are affected by things like gravity or pressure that change their shape. Drawing a flour sac to act out different emotions is a great way to practice weight and character acting!

Having studied animation, I did a lot of turnarounds to get characters consistent and able to be rotated in 3D space. It can be pretty tedious for some people, but it really does help solidify the characters’ shapes and design, and serves as great reference to look back on if you need it! If you don’t want to do something so stiff as a turnaround, simply drawing expressions and poses from dynamic angles helps too. I’ve found that breaking a character down into basic shapes that are easy to draw in a 3D plane also can help my anatomy and foreshortening be more accurate.

Most importantly, find something that brings you joy to draw! Every “traditional” method of study can be applied to things you like, so don’t feel the need to burn out thinking you can only draw the Mona Lisa or whatever. I’ve done anatomy studies on the Rise turtles to figure out their skeletal structure, and friends of mine have painted some mind blowing concept art inspired by Sonic and D&D!

I hope this helps some? Best of luck, and have fun! :D

Below are a couple of examples of some of my studies:

#ask #art tips #thank you!#it’s also definitely a lot of practice and winging it lol #i still don’t know how thighs and calves work sometimes

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molagboop · 7 months ago

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After referencing numerous diagrams, avian necropsy records, and my own prior knowledge of human musculoskeletal structure, I have devised speculative anatomical structure for Chozo.

We'll start small with my first attempts to properly chart basic skeletal structure from last year (seeing as how that's what I used as a jumping off point), then move on to the research-based stuff. I wanted to walk through the process of solving problems presented by the skeletal structure.

First we have a cursory look at the ribcage. Drafted June 7, 2023. Leaning into the more humanoid appearance.

New addition, May 2024: a first shot at sussing out wing bones. These bones need to be much, much larger to accommodate the full breadth of the limb: this is just a rough outline. The skeleton also needs to bear muscles that are strong enough to carry the Chozo in flight, hence the new protrusion on the chest: a keel. Two variants of this new breast came out of this drawing session: one with a large keel that extends below the sternum and one with a normal keel.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Human ribcages have this ridge along the bottom that the last six ribs are attached to (noted in grey on the image above). We're not doing that with the Chozo ribcage.

The sternum is the structure in the middle, which the ribs are attached to. See those two bones attached to the top of each side of the sternum, stretching away from the center of the ribs and forming sort of a capital "T" silhouette? Those are the clavicles. When you're drawing any humanoid form, the clavicles are an excellent landmark (and as I've been taught, the first place you should start on anatomy after you've laid out your pose, armature, etc).

It's also part of why wings are so difficult to suss out on Chozo skeletons. In birds, a bone that consists of a fusion of the two clavicles is a crucial part of flight: the clavicle bridges the gap between the ribs and the arms, and for birds, the wings are their arms. That's problem number one: effectively consolidating two pairs of arms on one torso.

We have a few bones to add onto the human skeleton in order to make flight possible for Chozo. First, we'll assume all bones are hollow. This makes them lighter, demanding considerably less energy to lift them off the ground in the first place.

I've modified the sternum to add a keel, which the base flight muscles are going to be anchored to.

First pass at revising the skeletal structure. I made a few modifications unrelated to the wings. The pelvis is similar to that of a human, though a little wider to accommodate egg-laying. I may end up reworking the pelvis entirely to make it more bird-like, but I'm more interested in making those wings fit at the moment. Chozo have a human femur/patella, and avian lower legs.

Here's a thing I slapped together in 3 minutes in January of last year to illustrate which bones are where for the layman. Onto different matters.

Skeleton, labeled.

Generally, the wings' humerus is attached to the scapulacoracoid, a bone attached to the keel that's sort of Y-shaped. That's how a real bird's shoulders are structured. Humans posses a scapula (shoulderblade), which has two protrusions: the acromion process and the coracoid process. The acromion process is where our humerus joins the shoulder. The coracoid process in humans is not exactly big enough nor ideally shaped to anchor flight muscles to.

At first, I had three ideas:

Invent a new bone attached to the keel that serves the function of the coracoid.

Modify the scapula to fit a new bone that anchors the flight muscles (the scapulacoracoid is analogous to the human scapula, after all).

Forego the keel and invent a bone on the spine that does the same thing.

To start, I added the furcula, a Y-shaped bone on the sternum, flanking the keel. Fun fact: not all birds have a furcula (better known as the "wishbone" in some parts of the world).

Real quick muscular structure layout sans flight muscles.

First pass at the flight muscles. Not the most accurate wing muscles in the world (neglected to depict the muscles near the tip of the wing, for one).

In this model of the musculature, a good deal of the flight muscles around the breast and torso are hidden by the pectoralis major, much like several non-flying human muscles.

Flesh applied over muscle.

Feathers applied over flesh.

That was my first attempt at constructing the Chozo skeleton. You'll notice the wing bone solution is inelegant. See, wings are analogous to arms. Their metacarpals are finger bones. In order to give Chozo both arms and wings, we'll need to deviate from both avian and human skeletal structures to make the pieces fit together.

I can't make the flight muscles stretch comfortably over the clavicle: that has the potential to impede motion in the arms. My first idea in the second round of flight bone shenanigans was to invent a second bone that fit between the spine and the scapula, like shoulder-bound plate tectonics (working name "scapula trellis"). I wasn't wholly confident that I could configure flight muscles in a logical manner even with this setup.

At one point I consulted Raven Beak's model. Note the patches on the back of the torso on the powersuit: that's where the wings emerge in phase 2. It looks like they're anchored to the scapula or an adjacent structure.

Barring the fact that his wings are absolutely ridiculous, I wasn't sure I could work with this. Gorgeous structures, but the feathers don't seem big enough to handle flight.

So I was left to brainstorm, and drafted up a few sketches for a second scapula to anchor the wings' shoulder joints to. I was more confident in this than I was the previous design, but I wanted to fish for ideas from other parts of nature.

Enter dinosaurs. Specifically, the Pteranodon with its shoulder girdle.

The addition of a shoulder girdle as an anchor for the yardarm (the term I'm using for the humerus of the wing, applicable only to creatures that have both wings and arms) seemed like a better solution. Positioning it below the scapula allows me to place the wings a little lower on the back, providing minimal interference between the two sets of limbs.

Whether we're rolling with the shoulder girdle or a second scapula, the intended result is the same: the wings have moved down on the back of the torso (personally, I'm digging the girdle, but the second scapula is on the table if anyone else wants to try their hand at this).

Muscles from the back, illustrated. Note the distance between the deltoid (shoulder muscle) and the wings. The shoulder girdle is situated in the lower-middle of the back of the ribcage.

A few notes: the acromioecstasia exists because the muscle that usually connects between the body and the patagialis longus on real birds is located on the pectoralis major. If I emulated that, we'd have flesh crossing over the deltoid to reach the front of the body, which would obstruct movement of the arms. We don't want that, so I moved that section of the wing to the back. We're compensating by adding additional musculature up front.

Wing muscles from the front. All three pectoral muscles are attached to the keel. The pectoralis medius is an extension of the pectoralis major, running beneath it and several other muscles. The pectoralis minor (also known as the supracoracoideus) lies beneath both the major and the medius. The pectoralis medius and major are responsible for the downstroke, while the supracoracoideus raises the wing between flaps.

Flight is very taxing on the individual. Power suit wearers actually have an easier time flying than non-wearers because the suit passively offsets the metabolic demands of flight with its own Energy.

It's important to note that these sizes are not necessarily "to scale". Chozo wings should actually be much bigger than my canvas permitted me to show. I had to keep increasing the size of the canvas on one of my files to accommodate a reasonable wingspan, but even that's not broad enough! I had to stop expanding the canvas for the sake of my CPU. If any muscles look too dinky or the scale seems off on some bones, that's why: I just needed to swiftly illustrate where things are.

A Chozo's total wingspan should at least be twice the individual's standing height. Any smaller and there's no lift.

I still don't necessarily consider the wings "solved": if any speculative biology enthusiasts want to weigh in further on the subject, feel free!

After laying out the bulk of the skeleton (and before solving the wing problem), I decided to go a little further in my studies. Thus, we have organs.

First, the digestive system.

The esophagus is self-explanatory. Food goes in through the beak, traveling into the body through the esophagus.

The crop is used to store food: this is where digestion begins. Many parents regurgitate mushy, enzymatic food for their children from the crop. Very nutritious and promotes growth.

The proventriculus is the first half of the stomach: protein bonds begin to break down here. Gastric fluid produced here aids the gizzard in mushing things.

The gizzard is where the bulk of food-crushing occurs. Breaks larger matter down through transfer between areas within the organ.

The liver and gallbladder are crucial in digesting fats. Real bird livers have two lobes: the left is smaller than the right. Two bile ducts from the liver connect to the distal duodenum: the right duct is connected to the gallbladder. Chozo only need one.

The duodenum is the start of the small intestine, running in tandem with the pancreas. Pancreatic enzymes created by the latter assist in completing digestion, processing sugars, etc.

Digestion is finished in the other sections of the small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed.

Chozo kidneys largely resemble their human counterparts. Connected to the lower half of the gastrointestinal system. Urate is disposed of through the cloaca, transferred from point A to point B by the thin ureters bridging the kidneys to the large intestine.

Bacterial fermentation in the ceca extracts nutrients from plant material that can't be digested through enzymatic breakdown. The ceca and large intestine also reabsorb moisture, forming the solid portion of indigestible waste. The ceca are larger in tribes that eat more fruit and other plant products. Mawkin ceca are fairly small: they live quite an active lifestyle, and plant matter supplements their all-rounder diet with meat as the foremost staple.

The large intestine is the end of the line. Renal and intestinal waste is ejected here. The end of the reproductive tract forks to the distal segment to facilitate egg laying. Mammals have considerably larger large intestines than Chozo to dry out waste before expulsion.

Next we have the respiratory system. The trachea takes in air and delivers it to the lungs. Unlike mammalian lungs, Chozo lungs are inelastic: they don't expand and contract. The air sacs do all the expanding and contracting: they're connected to the lungs through a network of bronchii.

The high metabolic rate required for flight demands a ton of oxygen, and Chozo respiratory organs are designed to do just that. The mechanics are fascinating but I won't take up too much of your time explaining the finer points. Wikipedia's write-up on the circulatory system of birds is a good place to start if you want to dive deeper.

The short version is thus: air enters through the nostrils, traveling into the bronchi through the trachea and syrinx (the syrinx helps Chozo vocalize). The bronchi deliver air to the lungs. When Chozo inhale, the posterior and anterior sacs expand: the posterior sacs take in fresh air while the anterior sacs fill with air that has already passed through the lungs. Air is constantly circulating through the lungs, and it's a one-way flow.

Parabronchii are microscopic tubes that run perpendicular to the blood capillaries. Parabronchii efficiently diffuse oxygen from the air into the blood.

The next image set deals with a few extraneous vital organs. I'm not going to illustrate the nervous system nor arterial network, just as I neglected to illustrate all the bronchi in the respiratory system. That's a lot of tubes!

The circulatory system is pretty standard, but it pulls largely from Dread. Here's the thing: in the pre-boss fight cutscene for Raven Beak (aptly named 0086_comanderorbital_video_artwork_01.webm in the files), we see him contributing to Samus' biological makeup. His heart is set firmly in the center of his chest.

This is anatomically accurate to real birds! Bird hearts are placed similarly in the center of the chest, flanked by the left and right lobes of the liver (linked image is a labeled black and white illustration of a dissected pigeon, showing most of the major organs).

The brain is exactly what you think it is. No, the most interesting part of this last image set is the harus.

The harus is an accessory to the lymphatic system. You'll notice its proximity to the respiratory system. Lymphatic capillaries accompanying the parabronchi network filter more harmful atmospheric molecules into the harus, which makes use of specialized cells to recycle these molecules in a process that synthesizes ATP. In addition to this, the harus helps maintain the body's proper pH levels in hostile environments. This organ is what allows the Thoha to breathe in Zebes' toxic atmosphere.

Headcanon time: the majority of non-powersuit related genetic alteration done to Samus Aran in her youth is related to this organ: her respiratory system was altered with the proper instructions to produce specialized harus cells on their own without needing to transplant the organ. Samus can breathe on Zebes because her lungs can perform the function of the harus while she breathes.

Full-size pngs for everything are available on Ko-fi and Patreon. The canvas for this project was pretty big because I wanted to be able to capture the scale of the wings somewhat.

ADDENDUM, May 16, 2024: Chozo should have a modified pelvic bone that more closely resembles a synsacrum, not a humanoid ilium: I am a fool and completely forgot to make alterations in that department.

#headcanons #chozo anatomy #chozo #raven beak #metroid #metroid dread #metroid dread spoilers #gotta give props to friend of the blog Ivory who reminded me of ATP synthesis and suggested a second liver of sorts

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bloodiedrogue · 9 months ago

Text

PROUD

SUMMARY: Halsin can’t help but indulge a bit after a particularly long day.

PAIRING: Halsin & Original Female Character (Elyra belongs to @bloodlessbhaalbabe)

WORD COUNT: 2,164

WARNINGS: 18+ sexual content, oral sex (fem receiving), light choking, overstimulation.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Wrote this as part of a trade with Mystical! First time writing Halsin so hopefully he isn’t too out of character???

MASTERLIST

The mood is low. As everyone stumbles tiredly through the veil of the Last Light Inn, even Halsin can feel the ache. A throbbing touch of pain radiating through his spine, spreading across the upper portions of his back like a violent wave.

Stepping past Jaheria who welcomes them back, he can’t help but groan and reach around to try and soothe the spasms that have begun to erupt. Pushing his thumb into the knotted flesh he tries his best to alleviate the pressure to no avail, prompting a huff to escape his lips that the elven woman beside him all but frowns at.

“You sore?” she asks, staring with such deep concern that Halsin has to look away and force out a soft smile to deter her from worrying. Knowing that if she doesn’t she’ll simply forgo her own struggles to aid him in his.

“I’m fine, Elyra.”

“Excuse me, Elyra?” Narrowing her eyes, she leans forward, placing her hands defiantly on her hips as she surveys his frame. Picking apart every section of bruised skin covering aching bones until she’s satisfied with her research, prompting her to huff. “You never call me that.”

Even he can’t help but grin at that. Well aware that she’s right. It’s always dear or heart or love —terms of endearment he wishes to whisper against her flesh in the heat of the night but is unable to do so thanks to his own goals.

Goals, he can’t help but silently curse as she steps towards him, instinctively arching her back in that flirtatious manner as she presses a hand to his chest.

“You’re delirious, Halsin.”

“What, for calling you by your birth name?”

Her eyelashes flutter as she nods, and it’s at the moment he thinks he might be dying. The lack of air in his chest causing a newfound pain to spread at the same time his heart fails to keep up its usual rhythm. All while his mind does somersaults trying to find a way to avoid the temptation of her beautiful lips pulling into a wide grin.

“How about I help you out with a nice massage, huh? We could go back to my room, smoke a little bit and just hang out?”

Right off the bat, he knows he should decline. Given the lack of control he already has around her on a good day, it’s obvious that if he were to allow himself the opportunity to get that close, he’d certainly give in. Resulting in yet another distraction on his way to break the curse.

Not that he considers her to be a particularly bad distraction. In fact, despite his thoughts sometimes telling him that she’s no good for him, he knows that’s not the case. Elyra is in fact very good for him. A woman so perfect that, even though those same thoughts are currently telling him to say no and to bid her goodnight, his body merely accepts her offer with a small nod. Allowing the woman to excitedly grab his hand and pull him up the stairs with such gracious ease that by the time he’s lying on her bed, stomach first, everything thought he’s ever had is gone.

“Does transforming into all those creatures ever mess with your bones?”

Lifting his head to laugh, he then cranes his neck to see her face twisting with focus. Her eyes narrowing as the pressure of her hands glide around his back —her lips pursing once she hits a particularly rough spot.

“I suppose it does wear one down after a long day.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I mean, could you imagine having your entire skeletal system just magically shift into something else? Gods, that would be so painful.” She cringes at the thought before her eyes suddenly widen, prompting Halsin to laugh again. “Wait, I guess you do know, huh?”

“Yes, very much so.”

“No wonder your muscles are all fucked up right now,” she points out, digging her palm into a particularly rough spot that has him instinctively groaning. A low guttural noise that he knows he shouldn’t feel embarrassed about, yet in the moment it’s all he can focus on.

“Sorry, should’ve warned you about that one. You’re real tight in the shoulder area.”

Clearing his throat, he’s suddenly too overwhelmed to continue, causing his body to shift to the side; her hands reluctantly moving away when their eyes inevitably meet. Pausing as he allows his weight to rest against the base of his forearm, unable to further move due to the fact that he wants to be closer.

More than anything, he wants to feel those calloused hands of hers wrapped around him, toying with his hair or fingers —pressing into the grooves of his chest as they descent to far less innocent lands.

Lands he has to force himself to forget about as he reluctantly pushes upwards, feeling the heat of Elyra’s stare become too much.

“Thank you for the massage,” he tells her then. And although he has every intention of shuffling off the edge of the bed and leaving, all he ends up doing is readjusting his position. Allowing his legs to extend and accidentally knock against her knee as she too gets on the bed.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem tense, big boy.”

Almost immediately, both of them know what she means when she says it. However, Halsin being too focused, fails to comment. Instead, averting his gaze as thoughts of her circle through his mind, granting Elyra enough time to crawl towards him.

And unfortunately for Halsin, it’s a sight he can no longer ignore. As her chest is practically exposed in full thanks to the angle, the only thing he can think about is touching her. Grabbing her waist and pulling her into his lap so that he can ravish her as thanks. Which is exactly what he does without even realizing it. His body and mind failing to connect until he feels their lips collide, prompting everything inside him to restart, realizing what he’s done.

He’s passed the threshold. Not only that, but he’s fully sprinted through the room too, winding up inside her bed with no desire of stopping once he feels her teeth snagging his bottom lip, playfully pulling the skin with a grin.

“Careful, my dear heart,” he warns her, but all she does is continue. Pushing him past the point of no return in the form of hands caressing his cheeks and a tongue that seamlessly slips through to touch his own.

Which prompts him to flip her onto her back. In one quick motion, causing her to wildly laugh and tug his hair, forcing him down to capture her lips. Neither one of them wasting time as he cages her against the mattress.

“See, I knew you were tense.”

Without warning, his hand glides down her side with careful precision. The pads of his fingers applying pressure to all her plushest parts before he inevitably lands on her inner thigh. “Seems you might be as well.”

Rolling her eyes, she gives his hair another tug, demanding more. “You haven’t even touched me yet, how would you know?”

He’s tempted to make fun of her then. To tell her that every waking moment he knows because she’s the most open person he’s ever met, but then he sees the way she’s looking at him. So desperately needy and tired of waiting. So completely set on what’s to come that all he can do is hum and pry his fingers from her thigh to push her skirt out of the way.

“Would you like me to touch you?”

And for once, she’s speechless. The words failing to exit her mouth as Halsin draws a long line across the fabric laid over her cunt. The edge of his knuckle pressing against her clothed clit, refusing to move until she nods her head. An action so simple, yet impactful that despite every part of his mind screaming at him to stop —to focus on what he came here to do instead of falling further into the loving palm of this beautiful woman— he refuses. Instead, guiding his hands to respectively brush her underwear to the side, feeling the heated flesh of her pleasure practically gush in his hands.

“More… please.”

Her voice is just as breathless as his lungs. As he runs his knuckles up and down her folds, gently burrowing the bones into her crevice, he can’t help but grin. Knowing that with just the touch of his hand, he’s somehow able to bring forth something new within her. Something needy and wild —a visceral wine escaping once he uncurls his hand, tentatively pushing a finger inside.

“Tense as ever, my dear heart,” he practically whispers, leaning down to kiss her face. Pressing his lips to her cheek, then her chin, stopping at the top edge of her neck to take a deep breath. “Why I can barely get a finger in without you clenching those walls of yours.”

In response, she twitches around him. Unable to deny his claims, he can feel her give in. The pulse of her cunt wetting his fingers. The way it practically sucks him in as he proceeds to slip another one in at the same time he nips her neck with his teeth.

“So smug, aren’t you?”

Suckling the wound, he grins against her before pulling back to look at his work. To see the warmth of her cheeks spread down to the base of her chest. The heat from his curious fingers eliciting more of a response than he intended to receive.

“Not smug. Proud.”

“Proud?” She lets out a laugh, bucking up her hips when he begins to slowly pump in and out, testing the waters further.

“Proud to call you mine for the evening,” he explains, his free hand rising to grip her chin so that he can brush a finger across her lower lip. “Also, proud to know that I can render you speechless with just a touch of my hand.”

“You should be pro—oh fuck.”

His thumb circles her clit as he chuckles, watching her head fall back. The red tone of her hair resembling a fiery halo sprawled out across the wrinkled bed sheets beneath them. “Sorry, were you saying something, my love?”

He can feel her defiance through the tenseness of her muscles. Both beneath and around his fingers. Every part of her threatens to retaliate until she feels his hand lace carefully around her throat, the pressure of his fingers stopping her in her tracks.

Which only spurs him on further. Feeling the submission she offers in response to one measly touch, it’s as if every thought he’s ever had about waiting is gone. The mere idea of it exiting his mind once he begins lowering himself down, staring at her curious eyes until they vanish behind the fabric of her skirt and all he sees is her cunt.

Swollen and dripping, it’s a sight that has him feeling ravenous. A hunger so foul stirring in his stomach that he fails to wait for permission, prompting him to practically rip the fabric from her hips and dive in.

And almost immediately, another groan slips out of him. The sound reverberating off her flesh in a way that has her bucking up again, taking back control. Forcing him to work that much harder as he grabs her hips, locking her in place. Prodding her folds with his eager tongue —playfully nipping her skin in between to tease and extend her pleasure.

He can tell she hates it. Or rather, hates the patience he’s thrust upon her as he builds her up only to stop and pull away, heavily breathing against her entrance as a way to further taunt her.

“You’re a —you’re a sick bastard, Halsin, whatever your last name is… I can’t remember right now.”

He chuckles against her clit before taking it in his mouth, suckling the flesh as he eventually pushes two fingers inside again, feeling her tense. Noticing the immediate build he’s once again provided when she begins to heavily breathe and lace her fingers in his hair, begging him not to stop. To please, never stop.

So, he doesn’t. Even when she’s shaking beneath him, every muscle in her body releasing the pleasure she desperately sought to gain from him, he continues. Brutalizing every part of her cunt with languid, pressurized licks and greedy fingers that pump and curl. His body providing whatever stimulations she requires and more until they’re both spent on the bed, heaving out breaths neither of them has enough energy to gain as he slowly crawls up to rest on her plush stomach, smiling at the way her eyes narrow in false annoyance.

“I’m almost mad at the fact that you’re good at that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s gonna make waiting for that cock of yours an absolute living hell. I can already tell.”

#proud #halsin fan fic #halsin smut #halsin x original female character #halsin x ofc #halsin x oc #summer writes

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