#vic's fics!

[netherfeildren]

Busy, Dying. Part 1;

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: In an in-between place called his life, Joel Miller is alone. In search of a cure. In need of a miracle. In want of God.

Can I interest you in a cure for loneliness? She'd asked him in a language without words. Taking it is the easy part. Letting her go is impossible.

-OR-

an a/b/o soulmates AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No Outbreak AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Soulmates AU, Infidelity, Cheating, HEA!!!!!, Angst, Fluff & Smut, Mating Bites, Knotting, Heat Sex, Breeding Kink, Group Therapy, Social Experiments, Basically puppy training for unsocialized Alphas, And by God that man will be house trained by the time she’s done with him!, Complicated family dynamics, Discussions of self harm, Depression, Existential Angst, Author returns not with a whimper but with a KNOT, I wrote this in a very unserious state of mind beware 

A/N: Gray November, I've been down since July - but we're so back, baby. I’ve missed this so bad. I’ve missed you all, I won’t drone on and on. I hope you enjoy, and please talk to me in the comments. Update me on what I’ve missed, let me know how you’ve been and what’s happening in your life.

A great heartfelt thank you to all of my wonderful friends who so supportively cheered me on while I struggled to write this. Sincerely the best people I know. 

Love you all madly.

Word Count: 6.5K

Read on AO3

Part 1;

The old linoleum tiles are the most peculiar shade of puce, and Joel has realized that there is someone sitting at the back of the room who smells… strange. 

More brown than purple—an ugly color. There’s something about it that fascinates him.

The woman that is currently speaking tells of her husband; it’s the only tale she has to tell. She’s been doing it for weeks, and they all know it well by now. Older, omega, the woman, and at the latter and less comely stage of life. Most of them here can say the same. They usually give their names, those that get up to share—although it’s never a requirement when you attend, it is highly encouraged—the sharing, he means—but he never pays much mind to them—the names, that is. That’s not what he’s here for after all—to make friends. Although, he does see how that’d be the initial assumption. 

Joel Miller is here for something more specific.

Six weeks he’s been showing up to these things now, and he’s yet to take a turn. He tells himself he’s working up to it. 

What that specific thing is…he hasn’t quite figured out. He’s listening for it, though, and intently, even if he does skip over the names. It’s the details of what they’re telling that matter to him. The hows and intricate whys of what it is that brought them here today.  

Her youth had been spent on a drunk, the woman is saying—her husband—and he’d been cruel to her in those days when there was still currency to spend in the form of her vitality. Joel nods at the puce—yes, he thinks, that’s usually the way of it. But later, there’s more to the story she reminds her audience, he drank himself into a fit, and had never been right since. The cruelty had been taken away from the marriage after that, and she’d been put in charge. 

“But I wonder,” she says, “If sometimes I don’t miss it, the way he’d been,” —if the reason she was here now, with all of the rest of them that were just like her in their own unique ways, was that she’d been left lonely after her cruel husband had been exchanged for a sick one. 

Joel nods again and wonders what sort of face the woman wears as she confesses but doesn’t bother to check. No matter, he knows they’re the same. If not in designation, then in heart. 

It’s easy, that thing, he does it too, to wish for the bad. To want to hold on to it, the thing that hurts. Addictive, even, in some cases. Missing it is easy. 

It’s why he’s here. 

And it’s what they promise you. In their flyers and pamphlets, when they stand on the corners of streets talking people up wearing that look in their eye and that slouch in their step, when they smell it on you—or in the lack there of—a mate or a purpose.

Welcome to our meeting. We’re here to find the cure for loneliness. 

That’s what they promise you when you come here. 

It’d been that word: loneliness, actually, that had caught him. L-O-N-E-liness. There was something attractive about it to him. Not a label but a state. 

You see, it was like this: Joel had seen a therapist once, several years ago, against his will and at the behest of another, who’d said all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. 

“You sound depressed, Joel,” the therapist had told him. 

He’d worn horn rimmed glasses and had a shiny bald head he could see the reflection of the overhead lights in. And worse—the non-scent of a beta which told him they’d never understand each other in the ways Joel longed to be understood. He’d—not hated him, necessarily—but felt an immense apathy for the man; more so than the regular apathy he felt for most things in his life. 

“I don’t know what that means.��� 

“Very, very sad,” was the official diagnosis.

Joel hadn’t liked the sound of the word. The label. He did not like that a word so succinct could be ascribed to him and all that had happened to him in his life. There was no word for it. It just was. 

But there was something different about a state of aloneness, which if attributed to himself, he could accept. He had been left alone, in ways. It was a tangible thing he could look around a room inside of himself and recognize. 

They’re meetings, is what this place is—encounter groups this coalition offers where lonely demi humans can come to congregate, discuss their aloneness, what had led them to such a state; their lack of attachments, connections, mates—alpha, omega. Held in the basement of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury street, right between his shop and house, although they never talk about religion which he likes because he doesn’t believe in religion. 

God is still under review. 

He wonders if the Catholics wouldn’t have them. 

Sitting forward in his seat, the metal folding chair that always leaves his back aching something fierce, he presses his elbows into his knees to distract with alternative pressure. Focusing on his fingers woven together between his spread legs, he tries to pay attention to the man who’s stood up to speak now. Older than himself, late sixties, no children, no family, no nothin’; he’d run them all off. 

But Joel is distracted. 

The smell is stronger now. Stranger too. Something full bodied, but metallic like rust, astringent bleach, built in a way that forces saliva to pool heavy between his suddenly aching gums. A mask that sits atop something of a much different chemical architecture—that’s the strange part. 

Or—no. The back of his neck itches, and Joel lifts a palm to cup his nape, quell the sting, feel the tender mark. No. The strange part is not the illusion of the smell. What it is, actually, is that he’s fairly certain what he’s smelling is someone else's blockers. Something which he’s positive he’s never consciously noticed on another person in the thirty plus years since he’d presented as an alpha. 

He has, suddenly, the quite intense urge to peek over his shoulder, certain that he’ll be caught smelling things he has no business smelling. That there will be someone just there, breathing down the nape of his neck with accusation on their tongue—boo!

Silly. But he’d known today would not be a good day. 

It’d started off wrong. The milk had gone sour overnight, the check engine light had come on in his truck, all his socks were suddenly mismatched with not a single pair to be found, and his usual route to work had been waylaid by some freak accident. A tree split in half, one side into a house, the other into the road. Not a sign of lightning in the sky all night long. 

Perhaps he might be compelled to believe in God after all. 

Joel does not like it when things are out of order or out of the ordinary. His life was organized in a way that never caused him strife or excess. And it was not that he was stuck in his ways, only that he enjoyed his routine and disliked when things were not as they should be. And this—whatever it is he’s smelling, whoever—is not as it should be. 

The older gentleman, an Alpha too, is still speaking. He had a daughter, has, who no longer speaks to him. Won’t even take his money. He’d had a long career in government that’d filled him with greed and paranoia and a radical view of life that refused to align with the way young people saw the world now. Perhaps he’d tried to change at certain times, but he was old and set in his ways. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to change as badly as he should have when he still had the chance to. Happily stuck in the past. His wife had died, and his daughter had gone away from him. Too tired of his mediocrity as a father to give him another chance. 

The man sounds like he feels sorry for himself. Like he thinks himself the victim, and this one, Joel does look up at. He looks old and worn down, heavy beer pouch and thinning hair and sagging jowls. A sad and lonely man. Joel wonders if that’s how he looks to the other people in this room, as well. 

“No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.” Joel blinks, looks at him more closely, tries very hard to find similarities between themselves. But no—not quite right, not the thing he’s looking for. Their plight is different. This man is not alone, he’s got his weakness to keep him company. 

The one thing Joel had fought like hell to keep out of his repertoire of issues. He’d run from even the possibility of it as soon as she was dead, left Texas straight for the Northeast and from thereafter, everything he’d done, he’d done with a staunchness of character. If at the end of it, that staunchness was made up of apathy or numbness or dissociative fury, well, then at least he wasn’t still that man who’d been too weak to save his daughter. 

That counted very much in Joel’s book. 

An overabundance of cold numbness, little anger, everything a static haze—an abstinent winter. That was his whole life. But then, look at him now, he was here, wasn’t he? He’d taken that brochure handed to him on that last warm Tuesday weeks ago as he’d headed back to the shop from lunch. 

Hello, sir. Could I interest you in a cure for loneliness? The young omega had said. 

It’d started like anything—an experiment or a desperate ploy. The monotony had been steady going the past few years, getting older, colder. He’d grown hard and solitary around his wound, loneliness spread like a fungus, and he’d longed for any sort of change. 

“A cure…how?” The terrible shrink had come to mind.

“Oh, nothing to fret over.” The young man had a nice smile, Joel remembers. Kind and straight toothed. Honest in the way that a stranger knocking on your door to sell you a Bible seems honest. “We call it an encounter group. People come, share, tell the tales of their designation and their lives. In the end, the result is different for different people. Some move on to a second step if they need more. Others find what they’re looking for just through the connection of sharing. But no matter the result, you’ll see, you’ll be cured. Promise.” He’d winked, smile deepening, giving him an appreciative once over at the end of his spiel. Joel had blinked back, surprised, confused, but curiosity peaked enough he’d obsessed over it for three short days before he’d found himself stepping into the molted incense smell of the belly of a church so dimly lit he was sure not even God peaked in this sad space any longer.

“It’s that easy?” Joel had asked, childlike in his throat-strangled hope.

“That easy.”

It seemed the smile had been honest enough to sell him the Bible. 

The scent insists upon itself as the older gentleman finishes up, and Joel’s nose tickles with whatever it is it’s whispering at him. He wants to get up and walk out, run away, but suddenly his gut is tight and hot, and he isn’t sure he can actually stand up without disgracing himself in front of all these people. A wash of agonized heat moves through him, confused at what’s suddenly happening to his body. 

“We have a newcomer today sharing for the first time,” Maria, the woman who leads the group, says at the front of the room. “Everyone give her a warm welcome, it’s her first day and already she’s brave enough to jump on up here.”

There’s the shuffling of bodies in their seats, a cleared throat, the man sitting behind Joel breathes so loudly he thinks he’s gotta have some sort of medical condition, the puce turns more hideous by the second, and his own heart is beating so hard in his ears the rush of blood is dizzying. He feels each thump of the thing against his breast bone in some sick imitation of a fist begging to be let out. 

The new voice begins as nothing but a murmur. 

An introduction—he misses the name. His breathing goes shallow, he’d tip over in his seat if he didn’t have both boots planted firmly against the puce. The voice gains strength and with it, Joel wishes he’d been paying attention from the start. He didn’t get to hear her name. 

It’s a girl.

She’d run away from home in the spring of her sixteenth year to join the opera, she tells them. Had come upon the city in roaring spring and thought the rest of her life would be exactly like that, pure novelty in bloom, nothing like what she’d left behind. And was deeply disappointed when the reality was nothing such. 

And Joel hears it, that disappointment in her voice at what she’d not been able to find after searching for it so religiously. This is what makes him look up at her. This, unlike all the others, he thinks he can relate to—just by the sound of her voice. The search for a thing lost which can never again be found. The fruitlessness of it all. 

At that first vulnerable, terrified glance, she’s already staring at him, eyes catching like hooks. 

He blinks once, twice—color—is sure he can hear the movement of his eyelashes passing through the air, the stick of his lids meeting—color—bright. This is it.

That wash of heat turns into a blaze, every single bead of sweat blooming on his brow is a tell evaporating into the ether. This is what he’d sensed from the start of the evening. Maybe even from the moment he’d seen that split maple. 

“My mother always said I needed to be stronger, bolder, not so sensitive.” She looks away from him now. “I grew up in an angry house where you had to fight tooth and nail not to be overrun. Because of this, I left it at a very young age, and it was the greatest fight I could muster, abandoning that house of anger. I found myself something to bring me what I thought would be joy, a job and a city, and for a time, it was enough. But starting your lonely life so young…it’s hard.” After a pause of breath, “It’s been hard.”

“And it’s made me never want to have to—exert myself,” she says, searching for the right words, smiling when she finds them, and Joel has the urgency to smile back. “Now, I never want to have to be strong. I never want to have to try. I want to only be the way that I am. If that’s weak or sensitive or whatever it might be at any given moment, I don’t care. I don’t want to have to fight. I never want to be in an angry house again. I want someone who’ll see this in me and understand and never make me work for it, that they would give it to me willingly, easily, without me having to ask. Do you understand?” She looks about the room, and he hopes her eyes will land on him again, and even though they don’t, he feels she’s speaking directly to him. He nods, the hook of her temptation cast beneath his chin. “This is a fantasy. And it makes for a lonely existence. This idea of how I need it to be for it to be right—love.” She looks down at her hands folded atop the podium where they go to stand at the front of the group and share, and he wills her gaze to find him amidst the crowd again. “It’s so difficult. And this might seem very bad to you, weak willed, but it’s not. It’s only very honest. Which can never be a bad way to be.” That’s why she’s here, she tells them.

Finally, she looks back at him, and it’s that loneliness of two people amidst a crowd, facing one another, knowing themselves mirrored against the other and yet still disparate. There’s something indecent about the way she looks at him in front of all these people, the way he, in turn, looks back. A little bit like finding your own face on a stranger's body in a crowded room. Color rises to his face, and she gives him that same elusive smile from before. 

He’s the one to look away this time. 

As the crowd disperses for coffee and pastries after the last of the speakers, he searches for her. He needs to ask her name, feels as if he’s some blighted creature without it, swears he’ll never forgo attention during a meeting again if he can fish it out of her.

He finds her at the dessert table, Maria at her side and a hand at her shoulder. Something of a thank you is being imparted between the two women. The girl is saying she’s grateful for the welcome, grateful that they’d found each other. 

Joel has things to be grateful to Maria for, too. His brother, mainly. It’d been pure chance that Joel had met her here, that she knew Tommy also. She’d met his brother on a summer trek to Wyoming where they’d become friends and had kept in touch afterwards. The woman has a thing about her that ingratiates people by sheer force of will. Perhaps it’s that she’s an alpha, too. Perhaps it’s just the charisma and wide smile. The fact that she has a countenance that takes no shit from anyone, that makes demands of a person whether they’ve got any give or not. But whatever the case, they’d realize their connection through Tommy, and she kept Joel updated on his brother whom he’d not spoken with in many years. 

Watching the two women stand together and share that easy thanks that Joel so urgently owes, and yet which he cannot voice, he feels, suddenly, so angry. So awkward. So humiliatingly inexperienced. So unable to grapple with the pain of human contact, the fascination of it, the humiliating necessity. 

That decade old anchor weighing him in place and the guilt of even thinking of it as such. 

I feel decrepitly alone and odd, he thinks. And how strange, no? He was a normal man. He has a normal job. He lives in a normal house. Unexceptional in every sense. Everything in his life had been ordinary up until that one great tragedy. And then, as if none of the before had ever existed, it was as if everything afterwards was one great landslide of wrongness. The filth of it slinging mud all over his life so that nothing had ever been right after her. 

So that now he cannot even approach this girl whose name he needs to know, and Maria, to whom he owes the last surviving connection to his brother. 

As Maria turns to go, she gives him an encouraging nod, sending him into an agony of shyness. She’d sensed him hovering. 

The girl remains at the dessert table, perusing the pastries. He can see her fingertips dancing over the golden, sugared confections, before she settles on a plain, glazed donut. He watches the bend of her elbow, bringing it to her mouth and thirty seconds later, the empty hand reaching for a napkin. He can’t help the huff of laughter it draws from him. 

Watching the unknown creature with her back turned, he peers down the length of himself. Wood stain marred t-shirt, old work jeans and scuffed boots, he’d come straight from the shop. Looking back at her, she seems perfectly packaged and pristine. The two of them, different as chalk and cheese. He tells himself he shouldn’t do it, turn around and go, leave her alone, as he steps up beside her at the table. 

Immediately, there’s the heat of her skin, the smell of her shampoo, and he realizes, and it’s silly because it should’ve been obvious from the get go, she’s an omega. The epiphany, not that she is one, but that he’d been too stupid and oblivious to notice, leaves him feeling vulnerable and angry. 

Any sort of hello that’d been coming alive on his tongue immediately dies. And he’s about to make a run for it once again when she speaks up from beside him, “Would you like a donut?” Her small fingers are dancing over the pastries, searching once again. “I haven’t had one yet,” she lies, “I can’t decide which looks best.” 

The dancing hand pauses over a golden brown puff pastry, seemingly coming to a decision, when she turns to look up at him. The scent of her isn’t just shampoo, not just the blockers he’d shockingly picked up on before, sharp, burning his nose. It’s her skin now, too. The dry sweat from hustling under her coat to make it to her first meeting on time salted along her limbs. Hot, sweet almonds. The shocking vermillion of the morning’s split maple comes to mind. He can smell her.

“A puff pastry?” She presses, quizzical crook to her brow at his silence and glower. “I think you really need something sweet. It’ll make you feel better.”

He wants to agree, to say he also thinks he needs something sweet. All he can manage is a short grunt because she smells…indescribable. Honeyed musk, something heady, like she herself had just got done baking, straight out of the oven and full of sugar into his waiting mouth. 

That earlier anger, it kicks up a notch. Why isn’t he fucking saying anything? 

She shrugs, as she lifts the puff pastry to her mouth he finally manages sound. 

“You stink.”

He doesn’t know when he became such a liar.

A pause, mouth open, straight, white teeth ready to bite into the fluffy sweet bread. He can see her small, pink tongue, and it makes him go a little woozy.

He might be losing his mind. 

She’s got elegant eyebrows that shoot straight up her smooth forehead. The look of her skin is glorious. “Excuse me?”

Now, there seem to be too many words spilling out of his mouth. “You need better meds or somethin’. Need to sort your shit out. Can’t go gallivanting about the world smellin’ like that.” Oh god, shut up. 

“Excuse me!” She takes a huge bite of the pastry. “I do not gallivant,” she shoots back, mouth full of sugar and Joel goes hot everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” she demands, the pursing of a prim little mouth as she chews, eyeing him maliciously. 

He hasn’t the damndest clue. 

She is not wary of him in the slightest, which in turn tells him he needs to be wary of her.

Another large bite, inexplicably she extends her free hand towards him—potentially going into shock and entirely out of his depth when he takes it, the vulnerability of tendon and muscle soft beneath his strength—offering him a firm shake. She gives him her name. 

In that moment, she has a look about her that tells him she’ll bite back if he isn’t careful, even if she hurts herself in the process. 

And now he knows you. 

-

“We might as well acquaint ourselves if you’re going to insult me. Don’t you think?” Peering up at him, he’s tall, well over six feet, and broad shouldered. Older, distinguished, but in a rough way, hewn oak, gray. “Are you typically this rude? Or is this a special occasion?”

Incredibly handsome. 

“I’m being serious.”

“I do not stink. No one has ever said that to me, and my blockers are quality. It must be a you problem.” The puff pastry really is very good. And this man really is very handsome. Coming here today was a good idea. 

One of the girls from the theater had suggested it, handing you a pamphlet with Looking for the Cure for Loneliness? emblazoned across the top, and even though she’d done it kindly, any other person would’ve taken the implication as an insult. Hey girl! No offense, but we all in the company think you’re super weird and have you heard about this support group for losers? Kind of like Omegas Anonymous!

Those hadn’t been her exact words, and you hadn’t taken offense. After the initial agony of embarrassment, you’d warmed to the idea. You’d heard of groups like these before. Congregations of demi humans where one could come to find community or connection. Be it socializing or support for people struggling with their designations and all that they implied, they served their purpose. And anyways, you weren’t in a position to be nitpicky. 

It’s true, you’re alone. 

So alone, in fact, that even the people around you could tell. Strangers, coworkers, your roommate and her girlfriend. Like some noxious cloud of loneliness following you around virtue signaling the desperate need for love and companionship and understanding you’re so in need of. 

You increasingly saw yourself as a dancer on her toes, trembling delicately all over, vying desperately to survive to the end of the song. A monster with too many heads. A Cerberus of the richest caliber. 

Two or three would’ve been acceptable—heads—but you'd long surpassed that and moved on to something unrecognizable and unpleasant. Desperately in need of a solution. 

“Maybe you’re the one that stinks. Maybe it’s your upper lip.” And voila, the monster makes her debut. 

“My—” The rude alpha, obvious, that one, lets out a choked sound, a deeper wash of color immediately flooding his cheeks. You dip your head sideways, appraising him as you polish off your second pastry. He has pretty bone structure, masculine, and after he’s done choking and spluttering, he can’t help but laugh a little bit. You see it. 

Beneath a mouth that looks forbidding, perhaps even a little cruel, you can sense that he is not an unkind man. 

Yet you’re not so green that you can’t recognize the gnawing hunger of loneliness in others. There’s always a reason people find themselves in places like these. His face, edged with the weariness of age, makes this obvious. He has good reason for subjecting himself to this. 

Reaching for the lovely eclair you’d been deciding between earlier, you take a large bite of it. Almond cream and a thick layer of icing on top, humming happily as you chew while he stares at you like the three headed dog. 

You hold the dessert out towards him, offering. Palm up, he shakes his head no, slightly disgusted look on his face. 

“So. You come here often?”

He blinks. “Really?” Patronizing look on his face now. 

“Why not? I am actually interested to know if this is worth my time.”

He rolls his eyes. Oh, he’s fun. “Yes, I come here often. Every Friday, for the past two months just about.”

“And you like it?”

“Is this the sort of place one likes?”

“Oh, come on. You never know what you might find.” He watches your mouth as you finish the eclair, swallowing hard. “Anyways, I think the world is kind of over out there. Don’t you? Might as well make the best of it in here.” 

Thumb pressed against the edge of the table, he looks down, suddenly awash with shyness once again. A shy alpha, who’d of thought. 

“What did you used to do?” He asks, motioning at the crowded room full of chatting alphas and omegas. You wonder how many of them will go home together for a fuck after this. 

“When?” You ask, sure he means in lieu of this group, if you’d ever had another form of demi human community. 

“Before this.”

“Before this? Nothing.” Smiling at him, certain he isn’t picking up on your teasing. 

“Nothing?”

“Nope. I’ve always been here.”

“But— Don’t you…I thought...” He’s cute, shaking his head like you’re just too confusing to sustain. “You sing, right?” He pivots. 

“Sing? Me? Whatever made you think such a thing?” The sly look on your face goes completely over his head and slides to the rest of the sweets. If he wasn’t watching, you’d have another. 

“You said. You said you’re in the opera,” he gruffs back, looking visibly aggravated now. 

Such fun. 

“I’m a supernumerary,” you concede as you turn, making your way to an old relic of a pew along the far wall, tragically abandoning the desserts. 

He follows as you go, sitting a respectful distance beside you. 

“I don’t know what that is.”

“We’re the actors that fill the stage at the opera.”

“No singing?”

You shake your head, flirting with him. “I’m a wench, I’m a courtesan,” You bat your lashes, fingertips pressed coquettishly beneath your chin, “Part of a harem. I’m every woman you’ve never known. It depends on the opera.”

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

“I started as a stagehand when I first got to Boston. Worked my way up.”

“How’s it work? Lines or somethin’?”

“No lines. No anything. I’m a background actor—an extra, basically. If anything, I’m given some simple choreography direction, laugh, sigh, show fear, horror, shock. Whatever. I’m playing pretend without actually having to do anything.”

“No working for it.”

Your smile melts to blandness. So he’d been listening, then. 

“Did you want to sing?”

“No. I wanted to be a supernumerary.”

“Strange. I’ve never heard of that,” he repeats.

“You did say, yes.” Now, the smile turns auspicious. Everyone’s here for something. “What do you do?” Perhaps this is it for him. 

You eye the rest of the congregation, at the far exit, there’s a large alpha helping an omega into his coat. 

“Got a shop, furniture, woodworking and such.”

“You make things?” He nods. “Ah, a man of creation.” 

Sitting back to take him in, he’s got the beginning insinuations of silver speckling the dark hair at his temples, a well groomed beard, and large, intimidating hands. 

His small huff of laughter is bashful, tinged with something disappointed. “No, nothin’ that grand.” And he’s got an accent heavy at the ends of his words, not Bostonian. Southern.

“But you know, I wanted to say…”

“Yes?” You press when he loses his courage, leaning towards him, inhaling deeply. 

“Well, that I know what you meant earlier. Sometimes I can be the angry house.”

You blink once. Sit back. “I see.” 

“It’s hard work. I have to try every day at it.” 

Hard work being the house, or not? Two opposite sides of the same coin. 

“How do you stop yourself?” You cast a line, fishing for his character.

“Don’t know. Keep myself cold, I think.”

“That’s no way to be.”

“No. It’s not.” He sounds amused. You want to bite him.

Everyone’s here for a reason. 

“Ah, well. Perhaps that’s what’s brought you here then,” you say, twisting the toe of your sneaker against a scuff on the old hardwood, leaning forward on your palms wrapped around the edge of the pew. 

“Maybe,” he says, but a sort of pained, exasperated sound follows it. Your hung head turns to peer at the handsome face, and he’s already looking at you. 

There’s something animal afoot. Perhaps in terms of designation, sure, of course, like the rest of the alphas and omegas here. Your designations weigh heavily in the air. But also intrinsic to your two personalities. You feel you know him. That the two of you might have the same sorts of problems, desires. And as you stare at him, you think you may be equally measuring each other’s character, finding that similarity in one another. 

His eyes move quickly between yours, over your face, and you can tell that prolonged eye contact isn’t his norm.

He has the most surprising set of bright hazel eyes like river stones. 

Suddenly, you feel desperate to pull out a flicker of sexuality in the man, hear it in his voice. Sure, that with him, the experience would be entirely different, exhilarating. Perhaps a challenge. He seems to be more quiet and more patient than any other man you’d ever come across, but also more stern—taking in that soft mouth held so firmly. Far more remote too, by the far away look in his gaze. You want to see how he could be moved and what the sight of it would look like. 

“Maybe not,” he finally continues. “I’m looking for something, I think.” 

“Something like what?”

“Someone like me.”

“An alpha?”

“No,” he looks away, cringing. The word out loud seems a shock to him. “Did you listen to the woman at the start—missing the bad thing? I struggle…with that. Holding on, not letting go even when I know I should.”

You’re at an age now which sometimes makes it hard to realize or accept that what you’re living is your life. That it’s been time to grow up. That you have to remember to move forward when it’s your turn in line. 

Which is to say, that you understand him—the difficulties of knowing when to hold on and when to give up.

“Sometimes you hurt yourself because you don’t have anything else to do. Sometimes, because the alternative is much worse.”

“Holding on ‘cause there’s nothing else to do?”

“Sure. Or you’re used to it.” You’ll be gentle with him, you decide. He’s in need of gentle handling despite the stern face; not a puzzle so arbitrarily solved. And those eyes are still so bright, he doesn’t seem like he needs any more hardship.

“Don’t know why I’m tellin’ you this,” he says, accent heavy. 

“Well you did come here for a reason. Didn’t you?” Discreetly, you slide closer to his side, but he doesn’t notice. Apparently lost in the realization that perhaps this was what he’d come here for, to talk to someone, to have someone listen and relate. You’re almost positive he’s never gotten up to share with the group before in all his time coming to the meetings; doesn’t look like the type.

“I came here because I’m going to take better care of myself,” you tell him. “I’m going to try harder.”

“Harder at what?” He blinks as if attempting to come out of a dream.

“Everything. I don’t want to end up like my parents; drunk, angry, alone. I’m scared of it. I’ve avoided at least two of them.”

“I’m afraid of getting older,” the dream moves in his eyes. “That I’ll forget,” he says, but you don’t ask what.

All of a sudden, he seems very real. The swells of grief and loneliness moving through him so similarly, so close to the surface. 

Springing up, you turn to face him and he follows to stand too. You can hear the crack of his knees unfolding, and when he lifts his left palm to stifle a gruff cough, the band of gold around his finger is paralyzing. 

All of a sudden, he’d seemed like what you’d been looking for here too. There’s laughter coming from the church rafters. 

“You’re a widower?” He wants to forget, he’d said he wants to let go. 

Hadn’t he?

But instead, “What? No.” You stare pointedly at the ring, and he looks down at it also. “No,” he repeats. 

“So’re you looking for a fuck, or what?” You try and hold back the bite it comes with, but you can’t.

“No. No. That’s not what I’m looking for.” 

You don’t understand, impaired by your youth, you forget you’d chosen to be gentle with him. “Maybe it’s what you need,” you tell him, turning towards the exit before you can watch him cringe.

He follows at your heels, grabbing his coat from the hook by the doors before he’s stepping out after you into the fall blister. It’s cold and wet and glorious out. 

“Don’t you have a coat?” He demands.

“Nope.” You start walking towards Arlington Street and the park. 

“Did you walk here? It’s freezing out.”

“I did,” you turn back towards him, still moving, and he starts to follow. 

“From where?”

“Downtown.”

“Where?” He scowls at your uncooperation, the married man. Alpha. The truth was that he’d smelt strange to you too. Like no one ever had before. As glorious and shocking as the cold. Like if snow had a scent. Disappointment churns in your gut alongside the excitement at the sight of him stalking after you. 

“I don’t think you know it.” Your backward walk is interrupted as a hurrying stranger bumps into you, sending you staggering. Watch it, the Boston snark spits. The alpha turns to scowl, heavy boot forward like he’s half a mind to follow after the person you’ve just inadvertently assaulted. 

And it occurs to you, “You didn’t tell me your name.” How silly of you. You’d been so distracted you’d forgotten to ask, and what if you never see him again after this? What if you can’t muster the courage to come back again next week? What if he can’t?

“It’s Joel.” 

You think it sounds right. 

“I might—know it.” Where you’re headed to. You smile at the dog with a bone. The disappointment pulses. “Is it far?” He presses. You shrug, looking over your shoulder. You’re going to lose yourself in the garden for a few hours, forget about him. “Why don’t you drive?”

“I like to walk,” you tell him, turning back. 

He looks at you like he doesn’t like the things you say much less the way you say them much less the way you’re grinning at him. Perhaps he can see the disappointment and is disturbed by the sight of it, but the possibility seems too altruistic. 

“You should try it sometime, Joel. You might like it too.”

His huge body seems to be shivering in the cold. 

“I think…” The look on his face has turned suspicious now. He takes a step towards you. “You’re very strange. And you’re very young. I don’t think we should be friends.”

Your heart gives a demanding thump. “We’re not going to be friends.” When you’d first spotted him in the crowd, the strangest feeling had come over you. A tug behind your belly button, a scalding heat at the back of your neck, at your wrists. Perhaps it’s merely imagination, the look of disappointment you think you see on his face right before you turn away from him to continue on walking. “And I’m not that young anymore.”

You’d known today was going to be a good day. Extra cinnamon in your latte, a late start to your morning, warm in bed, no rain in the sky despite the cloud cover. And your director, late for rehearsals after some freak accident had befallen the roof of his house.

“That’s what all young people say.”

Part 2;

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog

[vifilms]

ARCANE SPOILERS, EIGHTEEN+

vi being a confirmed munch! she would literally give the best, the sloppiest, nastiest, most beautifully divined head ever received. you’re telling me she wouldn’t get on her knees for her girl at any moment. vi is the type to insist, even when you’re desperate to get your hands on her, she aims to please and that’s exactly what she’s doing to do. doesn’t matter where you are or really when it happens, she’ll see it through. practically doing tricks on your pussy, her tongue fucking in and out of your coveted hole, splitting your split open with her tongue, slurping at every drop, coating her gorgeous face with your cum. powder blue eyes so dilated, they’re almost too dark to function. she looks at you through her eyelashes, needing to see the look on your face when you cum, greedy hands digging into the roots of her hair, pulling you even further, the tip of her nose teasing your clit until you’re coming undone for her as her mouth pushes you through the best euphoric orgasm you’ve ever had just to be met with “ready for another, cupcake?”

[cupozo]

Read @higgsbison's Tar and Tonic Water not too long ago it's such a good fic I love how it's written it genuinely made me laugh. love Jean's skills to death they're so delusional : ) Precipice being a congealed form... like fuck yeah that works so good for illustrating the repression. Jean's subconscious really said to the pit with you. but yeah, love the fic. with no expectations, I hope more chapters are written. Thank you for this food, I appreciate you higgsbison have some fanart

[zishu-arts]

SJCHSBCUSCBUSCB THE FREEVIC BRAINROT TOOK OVER

[baddestbittyontheblock]

måneskin fic recs

you are responsible for the content you consume‼️

✧*:·˚ hi everyone!! here is a list of all the fics that are my favs with tagged writers/authors ✧*:·˚

✧*:·˚ remember to like and reblog the works you enjoy in order to support each writer!! ✧*:·˚

✧*:·˚ however, make sure you read the information on each story themselves such as triggers & warnings ✧*:·˚

✧*:·˚ also, if you'd like me to remove your fic from this list, message me! ✧*:·˚

°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。

måneskin x reader: blurbs+headcannons+fics

୨୧ 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬

୨୧ 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝙤𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧

୨୧ a headcanon with må with you being a successful model

-they're wearing earbuds, blasting music into their ears when they remember the they left their phone charger in the bathroom. they don't know you're showering and can't hear you over the music...

୨୧ headcanons with må x fashiondesigner!reader

୨୧ a valentine’s surprise | SMUT, orgy, oral sex, anal play, double penetration, food play, spit play, alcohol  

-You’ve been feeling a little left out in your relationship so your four partners show their love to you with a surprise for Valentine’s Day. 

୨୧ Gettin’ Frisky With The Måneskin Members  | explicit content, gender neutral reader, switch!damiano, hard domme!victoria, vanilla!thomas, sub!ethan, freaky stuff, toys and s/m, oral (both ways), degradation, spit, pain play, brat taming, bondage, sinning cuz rock’n’roll never dies

୨୧ our favourite band with an S/O with bad menstrual periods

| talk abt periods, so dyphoria warning (we'll get back on the totally GN shit tmrw, just filling requests rn), lil bit of swearing and NSFW on Ethan

୨୧ how the members of Måneskin confess their feelings for you måneskin x gn!reader

victoria de angelis

·。🍓 my sweet valentine vic de angelis x fem! reader | Fluff

-Victoria's first Valentine's day celebrating with you is a bit chaotic but turns out better than expected.

·。🍓 date night vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut, fingering, oral (female receiving) and bdsm dynamics

-you and vic go on a date and it ends with fun at the hotel

·。🍓 hush, hush, cucciola. vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut

-you’re were asked to come over and help to calm Vic down after another disagreement during creating new song, and you find just the way to make her happy and peaceful again

·。🍓 pillow talk vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut

-your night trip to the kitchen gets interrupted by a strange noise, the results of your investigation are more pleasant then you could expect.

·。🍓 long stormy night damiano x fem!reader x vic | SMUT!!!, degradation, corruption kink, wax play, knife play, blood play, spanking, bit of fear play, unprotected sex, it’s just wild ok, i wanted to treat y/n

-It’s a last day of your small, a bit disappointing  gateway trip. The big storm is approaching, yet your evening takes an interesting turn when you bump into two hot Italians in the hotel bar

·。🍓 cold breeze, hot cheeks vic de angelis x fem! reader | angst, fluff 

-a rather cold October makes your blood boil as you and Vic attend Ethan's birthday party

·。🍓 i think I wanna hold you, but I'm not sure i'm allowed

vic de angelis x fem! reader | angst with tiny hint of smut

·。🍓 I'll show the  lovin' that you'll never get from a man. vic de angelis x fem! reader | angst, fluff, smut

-your friends finally meet your boyfriend, and even though nothing goes according to the plan, your night ends up being better than you could hope for, thanks to Vic

·。🍓 sweat and good grips vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut

·。🍓 the one with victoria’s boobs. victoria x gn!reader | fluff

-Victoria needs help taping her boobs for an upcoming performance. You get more than you bargained for.

·。🍓 the one where victoria wants to watch victoria x fem!reader x ethan | smut

��。🍓 “OPEN YOUR MOUTH.” victoria x gn!reader | soft smut

-along the lines of The one where victoria is patient.

·。🍓 “YEAH, WELL, IF YOU WEREN’T SO DRUNK MAYBE I WOULD.” vic de angelis x fem! reader

·。🍓 “I KNOW YOU CAN BE LOUDER THAN THAT.” vic de angelis x fem! reader

·。🍓 “GIVE ME ATTENTION.” vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut

·。🍓 say you'll see me again even if it's just in your wildest dreams vic de angelis xfem!reader | fluff, smut

-You're an up-and-coming actress, and Vic's best friend since high school. You have been friends and in love with each other for as long as you can remember. So when you have the chance to be together, it's magical.

·。🍓 baby said vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut

-you've been on a few dates with Victoria and you think things are going really well. You just wish you had known where the night was going beforehand- maybe you would have picked a table with longer tablecloths.

·。🍓 latenight devil vic de angelis x fem! reader

-victoria covers for you after you sneak backstage ahead of a Måneskin gig & invites you into her dressing room for an unusual encounter

·。🍓 forgive me father vic de angelis x fem! reader | smut, basically porn

·。🍓 the ocean's daughter swearing, alcohol consumption, drowning as a metaphor, smut

-while on holiday in italy, an encounter derails your life enough to make you pack up on a whim and move to the very city in which you first saw her — the ocean's daughter.

·。🍓 vic blurb

-doing domestic stuff with Victoria

·。🍓 a threesome with victoria and damiano! damiano x fem!reader x vic | smut

-reader is victoria’s partner and starts to develop a certain ‘obsession’ for dami, until vic decides to fix it.

·。🍓 vic de angelis fic victoria de angelis x fem!reader

-y/n is the other female member of the band, who has had feelings for vic for a while now, but was too nervous to say anything. one night after a concert in new york changes that after the bassist overhears a conversation between damiano and y/n.

·。🍓 thorns victoria de angelis x fem!reader | Mentions of smoking. Mentions of panic. Swearing.

-victoria meets her ex-girlfriend (Ava). The unplanned “date” upsets her and she decides to drink and smoke to cope. When she wakes up in the morning her best friend Y/N (who she also happens to have a crush on) is there to try and reason with her. 

·。🍓 lucid victoria de angelis x fem!reader

-It started with a spilled drink and ended with a clumsy kiss on the dance floor. A night out with friends takes an unexpected turn when you bump into the one person that's been on your mind for the better part of a year- the same stranger who stole both your chapstick and your heart.

·。🍓 nightmares victoria de angelis x fem!reader | A description of a nightmare. Other than that all is fluff and comfort.

-When Y/N has a terrifying nightmare and wakes up screaming, Victoria is there to comfort her.

·。🍓 kisses and cake vic de angelis x reader | very fluffy, a little spicy

·。🍓 vic blurb vic de angelis x reader

-being in a punk band and having vic feature in a show (you know like thomas recently did with starcrawler) and her doing her scissoring thing on top of me and then when she extends and after extending a hand to help me up and pulling me into a very gay gay gay kiss smearing her lipstick on my lipstick and leaving a big lipstick stain on my cheek as well

·。🍓 birthday wish victoria de angelis x fem!reader | smut

-little birthday blurb

·。🍓 church crush vic de angelis x reader | kinky as kink abba; innocent/corruption kink, and idk, sacrilege?

-good girl!reader having a massive obsession on a not-so-good girl from her church.

·。🍓 proficiency test victoria de angelis x gn!reader | a bit of swearing + one (1) explicit and one (1) implicit mention of sex + i'm very much projecting (who doesn't) + shitty german

-vic decides to help you study. chaos ensues.

·。🍓 coming home victoria de angelis x fem!reader

-vic has had a long day but coming home to you lifts the uneasiness from her shoulders and she vocalizes just how lucky she feels that you are in her life.

·。🍓 because of you idiot! victoria de angelis x gn!reader | angst(I guess), romantic fluff

-Victoria suddenly comes distance, and you try to find out why.

·。🍓 fluffy blurb vic de angelis x reader

-(it's something about getting matching tattoos with vic)

·。🍓 fuffly/smut with victoria victoria de angelis x fem!reader

-fluffy morning/half smut with victoria. nipples playing.

·。🍓 your camera roll while dating vic vic de angelis x reader | fluff, smut

·。🍓 knowing your worth vic x fem/gn! reader | hurt, comfort

-Vic is there for you after a conflict with your parents.

·。🍓 the first happiest birthday vic de angelis x reader | fluff

·。🍓 crawling back to you vic de angelis x reader

-Vic once again finds her way back to you.

·。🍓 one of a kind vic de angelis x reader | fluff, mentions of sex

-Vic finds out just how rich the feeling of love can be.

·。🍓 “I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretend that it’s you!” vic de angelis x reader | fluff, angst

·。🍓 pt 2 hospital vic fic. vic de angelis x reader

·。🍓 “everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.” vic de angelis x reader | smut

·。🍓 the one where victoria is patient. victoria de angelis x fem!reader | smut

-you've been with Victoria for half a year. Maybe it's about time you pushed your fears away.

·。🍓 “Yeah, well, if you weren’t so drunk maybe I would.” vic de angelis x reader | fluff

·。🍓 “Give me attention.” vic de angelis x reader | smut

·。🍓 “We’re in public, you know.” vic de angelis x reader | fluff

·。🍓 “Wait, don’t pull away… Not yet.” vic de angelis x reader | fluff

·。🍓 "Take off your clothes, but leave the heels on." vic de angelis x reader | fluff

·。🍓 vic fic vic de angelis x reader

-A kiss that is leading to more, but is interrupted by a third party

·。🍓 vic blurb vic de angelis x reader

-Distracting kisses from someone that are meant to stop the other person from finishing their work, and give them kisses instead.

·。🍓 l'amore è più forte di ogni segreto: Part 1. victoria de angelis x fem!reader | angst, swearing, bad google translate translations, overuse of italics, mention of someone called ‘A’ - Damiano’s girlfriend

-unbeknownst to you both, paparazzi photograph you and Victoria while on your way back from a date night. When you find out in the morning, the two of you have very different ideas of how to handle the situation.

·。🍓 l'amore è più forte di ogni segreto - Part 2. victoria de angelis x fem!reader | angst, swearing, bad google translate translations, overuse of italics.

·。🍓 k is for kisses vic de angelis x reader

-You and your girlfriend, Victoria, both like to tease each other. Kisses ensue.

·。🍓 peculiar and beautiful victoria de angelis x gn!reader | angsty but also fluffy

-reader finds themself in a emotional rut. A few comments online, the constant youtube recommendations on how to be “perfect” have been making them feel some type of way, hiding away from the one person that can help them; Victoria

·。🍓 amalfi nights victoria de angelis x fem!reader | smut, pretty vanilla, softdom!vic, servicetop!vic, praise, kind of fluffy smut

-reader and victoria are for vacation in Amalfi. After a candle-lit dinner at the restaurant, after a long day of swimming and sunbathing, victoria just wants to show you her love.

·。🍓 afterglow victoria de angelis x gn!reader | mentions of sex

-reader meets victoria while traveling with friends. The two create a lovely summer fling and reader can not help but bask in the afterglow of victorias influence hoping to encounter her again.

·。🍓 homesick vic de angelis x reader | tw sickness, vomitting

-vic and the reader being on a long vacation together. One night the reader wakes up homesick and ends up being sick in the toilet, trying to be as quiet as they can not to worry vic too much. To no use, of course, as vic wakes up alarmed by the sounds of someone being ill in the bathroom and then goes to comfort the sick, guilty, crying reader?

·。🍓 vic fic vic de angelis x reader

-An accidental brush of lips followed by a pause and going back for another, on purpose.

damiano david

✧*: i want to dance on your body damiano david x fem!reader | smut 

-you and your bestie hit up a party when you start grooving with Damiano, and the dance floor chemistry carries over to his hotel room. That's where the magic unfolds, and you both go to cloud as he compares you to an angel.

✧*: i'm gonna fly straight to you damiano david x fem!reader | fluff

-you and Damiano are cuddled up in bed, brainstorming epic future adventures together.

✧*: i wanna paint your face like you're my Mona Lisa. damiano david x fem!reader | smut

-damiano takes you to see his new yacht

✧*: long stormy night damiano x fem!reader x vic | SMUT!!!, degradation, corruption kink, wax play, knife play, blood play, spanking, bit of fear play, unprotected sex, it’s just wild ok, i wanted to treat y/n

-It’s a last day of your small, a bit disappointing  gateway trip. The big storm is approaching, yet your evening takes an interesting turn when you bump into two hot Italians in the hotel bar

✧*: overthinking damiano david x fem!reader | swearing, alcohol, smoking, smut related things in general

-Your relationship with Damiano is going through a crisis and some jealousy. All becomes clear after a filed party and a steamy night. There is a bit sad, angsty beginning, smut in the middle and a bit of fluff in the end. So, we have the whole package.

✧*: welcome home damiano david x fem!reader | surprisingly fluffy but also smut

-after a long week all you need is a loving touch of your currently absent boyfriend. Luckily in the morning there is a very handsome surprise waiting for you, and this allows you to start your day in best way you could possibly imagine

✧*: 300,000 hearts damiano david x fem!girlfriend!reader

-where damiano sings a song about you he wrote in highschool, to a full arena

ethan torchio

ᑦ( •ᴥ• )ᐣ blush ethan torchio x reader | pure fluff

-a blurb of Ethan meeting his new makeup artist who's really kind and bubbly and he instantly gets a crush on them?

ᑦ( •ᴥ• )ᐣ a night in paris ethan torchio x fem!reader | smut+swearing

-you went on a tour with the band and Ethan enjoyed Paris the most. Having your boyfriend all happy and excited turned out to be better then you expected.

ᑦ( •ᴥ• )ᐣ "The way your eyes get darker when you get aroused, is making me lose my mind." ethan torchio x fem!reader | smut

-If acting unwise get's you places, maybe you're just pushing it to be on your knees.

thomas raggi

❤︎ ❥ "We passed 'just friends' about 20 fucks ago." thomas raggi x reader | angst, fluff, smut

❤︎ ❥ sanremo. thomas raggi x gn!reader | swearing, slightly sugggestive

-ever the supportive boyfriend, thomas indulges you in a sanremo 2023 watch party.

[likesunsetorange]

smut week fic recs

since i normally always rec fics on my asks I thought I would put all the fics that I saw on twitter this week for @emsmutweek for y'all that might not be on there! just be sure to read all the tags for the fics!

undeterred lovers by @narcissussren (romeo and juliet au)

eremika smut week compilation by EREMIKAAOT (for day 1, 2, 4, 6)

midnight snack by @cxcassii (normie x gothkasa au)

the ashes of ash by thecivilunrest (bridgerton au)

nirvana's euphoria by @cxcassii (spin off from a slice of paradise — titan eren x mikasa)

dark knight by @dead-dolphins (knight eren x princess mikasa) (im almost finished reading this one i rec!!)

cinem 210 by @sunlightandsuffering (photographer x muse au) (dumb and dumber em i love them read this!!)

as above, so below by @cxcassii (nun x sucubus au)

on your knees by bittersweetserenity (day 2 au)

red by sheistheackerman (enemies to lovers - on medium)

casual by @cxcassii (fwb au) (LOVED THIS ONE)

tempt me by bittersweetserenity (artist x muse au)

stirring sight by @narcissussren (fashion designer x model au)

burning desires by sweetaria17 (boss x assistant)

mousai by @cxcassii (artist x muse) (i beta read this one for cass and its so fun I def recommend yall to read it!!!)

[faikittyy]

req: Lucifer + missing MC (OG!S1)

-------

It’s quiet.

That’s the worst part. Lucifer was expecting it to be a relief once you were gone. He was expecting to feel like he could breathe freely again. You occupied so much of his time, running through his mind so often he was surprised you weren’t exhausted when he saw you. He had to watch out for you constantly—making sure you didn’t get yourself killed by a demon (again), keeping you and Belphegor and Satan from causing him too much frustration with your stupid “pranks,” generally trying to keep you out of trouble.

It was exhausting.

Then you kiss him.

Then you leave.

Then it’s quiet.

Lucifer's brothers miss you too. Leviathan holes himself up in his room and doesn’t emerge for almost a month. Mammon goes on a shopping spree so intense that the packages he’s ordered from Akuzon (all unopened, even weeks later—the objects less of a goal than the spending itself) flood his room and spill out into the hallway. Satan and Belphegor’s pranks take on a somewhat malicious nature, as if they’re silently asking Lucifer, “why didn’t you make them stay?”

(Lucifer asks himself that sometimes, too.)

Lucifer never once shows his brothers the depths of his grief for you (because that’s what it is, isn’t it?). He doesn’t hide the fact that he misses you; they’d never believe him even if he tried. But he only allows them to see the shallows, never letting them wade deeper for fear they’ll find him drowning. He doesn’t have time to drown anyway; he has to keep charge of the student council and make sure his brothers’ vices don’t destroy them.

Lucifer never slacks in his duties. Never acts upset.

But he misses you.

Lucifer was the first to meet you, and the last to form a pact with you. He was the last to kiss you. To spend the night with you. He still remembers that night, will always remember it, keeps the memory tucked close to his chest in your stead. He remembers the shape of your body pressed against him, your laugh as you teased him that his bed was far too big for one person, your steady breathing as you fell asleep in his arms just before dawn. He remembers you looked so very beautiful and so very fragile in the faint Devildom moonlight. He remembers you.

And he misses you fiercely.

Lucifer’s bed wasn’t too big for one person before you pointed it out. Now, it is far too big and far too empty. Some nights Lucifer wakes, wondering why he feels terribly alone in its huge expanse. Beside him, the screen of his D.D.D. glows in the darkness. He reaches for it. Opens Contacts. His finger hovers over your name.

Then stops.

It’s too early in the morning. He doesn’t want to wake you, as much as he aches to hear your voice (aches to have you back with him, truthfully, the pain of his desire so solid in his chest that it feels as if his sternum will split in two). He’ll talk to you tomorrow, he decides. He sets the device facedown and rolls over, gazing across his bed (too big, too big, too big) and closing his eyes.

It's quiet.

[kuvwrlds]

victoria neuman is a WOMAN KISSER SHE KISSES WOMEN i know this for a FACT

[mystewion]

ok ok hear me out... old man... yuri? unless? 🙈

[viccyfics]

Loaded gun

Krupp is a retired military truck, and suffers from PTSD. The others have tried to help as much as they could after Krupp was hired.

But after a particular incident during a nightmare, Krupp realises he needs to leave before he hurts someone.

(oneshot of the lead up to how Killerwatt took over from Krupp and Purse)

Relationship: Krupp/Purse

Warnings: Gun violence, violence and blood, trauma, nightmares, flashbacks

words: 1768

READ ON AO3

[wetcatspellcaster]

In which Vic de Riva catastrophically misreads a situation, and decides to never do anything about it ever again.

[netherfeildren]

10:05 PM

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Joel is exhausted, you're there to make him feel better.

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: Post Outbreak; QZ Joel Miller; Somnophilia; Established Relationship; Friends With Benefits, kinda; Free Use; PIV Sex; Unprotected Sex; Creampie; Kind of mean and uncaring Joel, but at least he makes you cum; Rough Sex; Somno may or may not have been previously discussed, but she's okay with it happening; He's in kind of in a hopeless and numb state of mind (likely thing for Joel Miller to be)

A/N: idk man whatever i might look into religion after this

Word Count: 1.4K

Read on AO3

Ko-fi

10:05 PM

He’s exhausted.

That sort of tiredness that takes you away from yourself. The sort that takes away rest and peace and the ability to let go. Like you’ve crossed over the edge of the world where sleep is no longer possible, and all you are is sore and dirty and beaten, and you don’t think you’ll ever rest again. It’s just the too hard day, and the too hot sun, and a night that won’t ever end.

 And Joel is tired. 

He knows if he falls into bed now, he won’t sleep. He’ll stare up at the water stained ceiling, the cracks in the plaster deeper than the cracks in his mind, and he’ll find no rest and no peace and no forget, and all he’ll do is remember. 

Pulling his shirt over his head as he goes, he toes one unlaced boot off and then the other, the sweat damp cotton sticking cold and tacky to his back, and it peels off slow, a little disgusting, the grime of his shift all along his skin, in his hair, between his toes and under his fingernails and looking at you, the slow rise and fall of your shoulder as you sleep so peacefully, he knows he shouldn’t touch you, have you, know you. 

He doesn’t really care.

The button of his jeans, sticky, warm summer night air against his already hardening cock, and he watches you. You’re wearing a little white tank, worn and frayed and old as a long past life, ratty panties, too hot to pull the sheet over yourself, nothing but a sheen of sweat for cover. You’re beautiful in the way things aren’t beautiful anymore. Beautiful in a way that makes him not want you. But you’re here, and you’re his, and you give him things he doesn’t deserve, yourself, and Joel is a selfish creature now, bad and bristled in the way this new world demands, so he takes. 

All the time Joel Miller takes things. 

He doesn’t love you because he can’t, because he doesn't have it in him. But there’s peace here, or comfort, or something easy and silent and freely given. Understanding, maybe, which is all anyone can ask for anymore. He shucks his grime covered jeans and crawls over you, and he shouldn’t touch you, never should have, but he does because, again, he’s selfish, he touches you because you let him, because he has nothing else but this to feel good and man about. 

Hooking his fingers beneath the edge of your panties he pulls them down, slow and steady, watching the rise and fall of your ribs, steady heart in the steady rhythm of your breath. You’re still asleep, and he’s going to have you because he can, because you’re his without commitment or ask or demand. Because it’s easy. 

He pushes a soft thigh up high, opening you to his gaze and pulls your cheeks apart gently, dragging a gentle thumb up the crease of your sex as he goes. You hadn’t waited up for him the way you did most nights, and he’s grateful for this, grateful for the fact that you’d spare him from conversation, questions, wants. All the things he can’t give you and doesn’t even really want to because he doesn’t have any of that in him anymore. 

Sometimes, and he’ll admit it because Joel isn’t a liar, honest to a fault, he’ll feel that faint whisper, dream pulse of desire, like a thing he knows exists somewhere in the world just not inside him that beats of  togetherness or commitment or love. Something that beats of all the things he knows you want but he can’t give. 

His thumb against your little clit, and he circles and circles against the warm, damp dryness. You’re not dreaming of him, no immediate well of slick desire, and through his haze, it makes him a little bothered, a little sad if he still had the ability to be sad. But he circles and circles, and you shift and whimper, and then finally, eventually, there’s that drip of want. Sticky and sweet and only for him because he might not love you, but he does possess you, and you’re only for him. 

You turn your face further into the pillow, hips hitching, cunt dripping, a deep sigh and his thumb presses in, tastes the well. You’re warm and hot and tight, and he slicks his thumb in and out of your cunt, fucking you slow and gentle, stretching you a little while you still refuse to wake for him. He wonders what it would be like to love you, to know you dream of him, to dream of you. He shoves your thigh higher, wet enough now, and lines his cock up. 

Joel is tired, but he has this, and it’s enough.

Cockhead notched at your entance, and one thing he does still love: the sight of his too wide head against your too small hole, the sound of wounded hurt you make when he shoves inside and makes you all his. And he keeps himself slow and gentle at first, he doesn’t want you awake, that’s not what this is, he only wants you his and for him, until he’s all the way pressed inside, deep enough for you to wake with hurt and you shift and wiggle and your hips arch like you want to escape or want more but it doesn’t really matter anyways because you’re caught and flayed now. 

“J– Joel?” Soft as a butterfly while your cunt flutters around him. “What’re you doing, Joel?” And if there wasn’t the moan of his own little whore in the sound of you, he’d think otherwise, but he knows you’re pleased to be woken so. You press and clench and stretch like a cat, spine long and lean and fluid, arms reaching for something he can’t and won’t ever give.

He swings his hips back, fucks in again, your cunt’s good and wet now, and the giving’s good as the take. “Don’t worry, baby. Just gotta come. You don’t gotta do anything.” He pulls back again, your pussy flutters and sucks at him, and you plant your hands against the apocalypse stained wall of this poor and sad room in a place that used to be called Boston and let him use you as he needs. Just gotta come in you, he tells you again.

And you might whisper that it’s okay, it doesn’t really matter if you do or don't’. He doesn’t need to know, he doesn’t need to care. Joel buries his face in your throat and loses himself in the wet of your cunt and the heat of your skin, the scent of your sweat, fingers clutching and twisting at your breast, and there's a sound of hurt or want coming from your throat. He doesn't care much about that either. Just take it, just take it, he says over and over. “Just lay there and take my cock.” The sound of your wet, sloshing cunt is the loudest thing in the whole dead world, and he loses himself in it. He counts his breaths, counts his not blessings, only you, and eventually, he fucks deep enough he hits your womb, that place he’s reckless and careless about, and you start to milk him deep. A moan of his name, Joel, sleep addled, love deluded, what else would excuse or allow treatment like this, and you come on his cock like you always do. Long pulls of a too easy, too delicious cunt, the contractions of your womb reverberating through every line of your muscles while you suck him deep and cry into the pillow. Joel swears and sweats worse than he did through his long twelve hour shift, grunting and panting above you. And when he anchors himself above you on locked, bulging arms to watch the drag of your red cunt around his cock, slicked with desperate want for something neither of you will ever have, the way your ass bounces and jiggles against his too rough thrusts, he comes too. Fills you deep and full to the brim, enjoys the spill of it around the place where he fills you, spills himself dry. And he doesn’t feel content, Joel, but he does feel satisfied, he does feel sated. And he tells you that you’ve been a good girl because he knows you like it and knows you deserve it. And if he presses a soft and gentle kiss to the wing of your naked and sweating shoulder, it isn't because he loves you, but because he needs you. 

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog

[setmeatopthepyre]

tommy begins my beloved!! ty for giving him the spotlight he deserves, hehe :3

💔 for the writing game

-autisticbucktommy

if there's one thing I'm gonna do in fandom, it's fixate on a side character and attempt to scoop out their trauma with a spoon (by which I mean it's happened twice. but this is also the second fandom I've written for ever sooo)

this got a little longer than expected!

-

💔 - the ex [cont. from this]

Victor implying he was dramatic probably should have had the opposite effect, but as it was, Tommy felt the last vestiges of his anger ebb away. What was left was an uncanny sense of being unmoored, rubbed raw. His eyes hurt, like he'd been trying to keep them peeled open against too-bright sunlight reflecting off of cloud cover below. Not enough oxygen, too much space. He was suddenly exhausted. "How? You're breaking up with me."

"That's just another perk of being gay, babe-" Vic caught himself, and Tommy grimaced, and Vic ducked his head in apology, and they both huffed slightly damp laughs out of sheer awkwardness before Vic continued, "We're so much more normal about staying friends with exes."

Tommy turned that idea over in his head. He wasn't sure he was supposed to feel as relieved as he did. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to believe it, either. He realized he really wanted to. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I mean, you've met Rick and Dan. Rick used to date Leo and they still get together to lose spectacularly at trivia every month." He raised his eyebrows as a thought came to him. "Actually, Leo and Cam were together for ages too. I actually fucking forgot about that because I'm so used to them just being friends. I'm not even sure they remember, to be honest."

"I don't think I could forget." Tommy said quietly, adding, "About us, I mean."

And god, that little smile still did things to him. He couldn't help but wonder if maybe Victor hadn't been completely right when he'd said Tommy being happy with Vic hadn't really been about Vic at all.

He wasn't sure it mattered, anymore.

"Yeah, me neither." Vic pushed at Tommy's arm a little. Affectionate. Friendly. "But what I'm saying is, you're losing boyfriend-Vic, and that sucks, I know." He rolled his eyes at himself, and Tommy couldn't help but appreciate the way he was trying to lighten the mood. "But you're gaining friend-Vic, and I promise he's pretty great, too."

"It's still weird when you talk about yourself in third person." Tommy pointed out. Quietly enjoyed the way Victor scoffed at him in mock-offense.

“Yeah, well, get used to it. Friend-Vic cares a little less about your opinion of him.”

"Friend-Vic is kind of an asshole."

-

thank you @autisticbucktommy!

[make me write]

[sporkberries]

A Tim, Helena, Vic, Kate, Renee team-up would kick ass. Mostly I want Helena and Kate to interact more and bond over their respective Questions :]

Okay i love this idea but it's also literally this

[vicsbasement]

Do you think Charles and Carlos will shed a few tears after Abu Dhabi?

I think they might, of course I do. I think Carlos is a very emotional guy even though he was brought up to be closed off about his feelings (and he really did his utmost to challenge those beliefs and he's shown that he no longer needs to be closed off to be taken seriously in this sport). And now with what we've seen from Charles? Oof. There *will* be tears. They were about to break in Bahrain and it's just the beginning of the year, anon. They will have to swap helmets by the end of the year and I'm willing to bet actual money in them hugging and mayble breaking during the hug. Yeah. I mean, in the car, during the whole chili debacle, I'd bet if Charles were to touch Carlos to reassure him, my man would've cracked. Because that's what I do, if I'm *this* close to crying and someone dares to touch me I break like a dam.

Or maybe they won't show the tears. Maybe. But I don't know, they were teary-eyed during Bahrain. I can't even start to think that they would be able to hold off crying until there's no cameras when their emotions are running that high, especially since it will be their last race as teammates. We will be crying, absolutely, and they probably will, too. 😅

[likesunsetorange]

“but it’s gonna be okay now, alright?” — deliveries of love chapter 17 | commission by lacampanule