#and i'm not infallible. i still want more from relationships that i like that maybe i'll get too

[doux-amer]

Thinking about it, it's not that I was lonely or anything growing up. I had a lot of friends and people I had fun with and talked to a bunch, but due to the way I was brought up, I wasn't able to really deepen and nurture those friendships. It's something that's impacted me to this day and at one point in my life, I became aware that some friends were not as close as I told myself they were except one particular moment, this wasn't because they did anything shitty (and that shitty thing wasn't done out of malice or intent), but it's that thing when you're young and you call everyone your close friends and you grow up and you realize lol, no they're just friends! And that's okay!).

And then I learned to see relationships I had with people very objectively (for the most part! I'm only human) which helped me be a more balanced adult and why I don't particularly get upset that certain friendships fade. That's just part of life, and when you're an adult, it's even harder to maintain a certain intensity and intimacy in friendships and a certain amount of interaction. I don't know if this is weird to say, but I think that's why I get taken aback and it means a lot to me when I have to recalibrate my perspective on a relationship because a good friend actually values what we have more than I expected.

Obviously, this is uncomfortable and bemusing when you know for a fact that their perspective isn't accurate and they're implying there's an intimacy there that in fact isn't, but when it's someone you care about and they level up the friendship like that...I'm not explaining things right. It hasn't happened much tbh even if I obviously had and have friends who have appreciated and celebrated our friendships and that means a lot too, that you know where you stand and you never have to question it, but there are some friendships where you realize oh...I mean a lot to this person. Oh, this is how much I mean to them or they like me this much?

#this probably makes zero sense because i'm writing this stream of consciousness style without editing lol #it's not that i don't care for friendships that i realize aren't that deep #because there are friends whom you have fun with and friends whom you do certain things with. work/school friends. social friends etc. #i really like people! and care about people! but i'm also aware of where we stand #and i respect that. this makes me sound like i'm a neutral distant observer lol #although sometimes this does get in the way of developing relationships further #and i'm not infallible. i still want more from relationships that i like that maybe i'll get too #but yeah. sometimes a friend drives all the way to your house to drop off a letter #before you go on a flight to live in another country for a while #even though that friend was ''objectively'' speaking someone you can categorize #as a school friend because we never hung out outside of school #and you last saw them at graduation and they're out of your life #but they decide they'd write you a plane letter and hand deliver it to you despite never dropping by before #instead of emailing/dming/snail mailing it #sometimes a classmate invites you to his house and it's supposed to be for a school thing #but then you end up talking for hours so that his parents come home and it's almost time for dinner #and your mom keeps calling your phone because of that and he says something that makes you realize #whoa. i didn't know you understood and appreciated me like that. you SEE me #and then instead of saying bye he'd walk you home and then we didn't shut up then #a friend who let you crash at her place which was super gracious #but hey we were college kids! except then she mentioned she wished you stayed longer #and she wished she could take you on a road trip into the beautiful irish countryside to show you her home #and do that all for you and i think of all the opportunities i lost #and opportunities that were interrupted and i think what if because i don't have opportunities like that anymore #i am both glad that i'm able to not feel hurt about overinvesting in relationships #and frustrated at how i get in my own way because you got to take the leap! #instead of letting things be where they stand. ANYWAY feeling grateful for those who #took a leap with me and went beyond sometimes without realizing what they did was bigger than they knew

[softlyspector]

Born lucky, under a bad star.

Summary: Joel has always been lucky, in the worst of ways.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13k (sorry)

Warnings: game!Joel, major spoilers for tlou part 2, angst with a happy ending, major injuries and recovery, anxiety, depression, relationship healing, mentions of death, mentions of violence, suicidal ideation

Disclaimers and A/N: Though this fic was based around some events in tlou part 2, almost all of the canon after the divergence from the canon timeline is thrown out. This fic is also based entirely around game events, characterization, and canon. This is honestly one of the most difficult things I've ever written. It took months and many many drafts, but I'm very proud of her. I hope you love her too, she was a labor of love.

As always, thank you for reading! I would love to know your thoughts! Please please please, be sure to leave feedback!

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red. - Kait Rokowski.

The lights of the clinic are so bright they’re blinding.

Your hands are still shaking, covered in Joel’s blood. It’s been hours since you returned to the safety of Jackson’s walls but there’s still a frantic, frenetic energy in the air. Everyone is shaken. It feels a little like a thousand year old tree has been felled, like a giant has been swung at and leveled, like something monstrous and infallible has been brought to its knees. 

You’ve seen it happen before. Rebar right through his belly. It should have killed him. It would have killed anyone else. You’ve pulled more bullets out of Joel than you would care to count, and swaddled him in probably several football fields worth of bandages over the years.

Still, nothing like this.

Because Joel has always been lucky, even when he hadn’t wanted to be. 

Lucky, in all the worst ways. 

That fucking rebar, you think bitterly. It should have hit at least one organ, should have severed his fucking spine. But it didn’t. He walked it off, really, mostly, at the end of it all. 

This though — to see him tortured, beaten, bleeding to death slowly—

Your edge of your vision tips black, like your mind is already refusing to go back to that room, like you’ll pass out if you think of it for too long. 

A part of you wonders if maybe it’s your fault. Maybe you forgot to stick lavender in his pocket before he left that morning, like you always do.

Someone pushes the door open, snow swirls in against the tile. Voices, rising and falling. The cold that rolls through the tiny waiting room is frigid. 

It’s still so red, his blood, even dried and crusted around your fingers and up your wrists. 

Tommy is still bleeding and even Maria hasn’t been able to convince him to sit down and let someone look at him. No, all attention needs to be focused on his brother. Anyone with any medical know how, has to be with Joel. 

You agree. 

Tommy, you, anyone else—can fucking wait. 

Ellie is sitting next to you, looking just as numb and shocked as you feel, her fingers twined with Dina’s. 

The chatter reaches a crescendo. Something about the worsening storm, something about tracking folks with that big of a headstart through a storm like this one, something about the rapidly deepening darkness, night coming on, something about well who could do something like that anyway? Who the fuck would we even send? 

The quiet that follows is painful. 

Joel. 

Joel is the one you send. Joel is the one that could get a job like this one done, the one that could track people through a blizzard with a dogged determinism, with pragmatism and infallibility. 

“What did they want?” Someone asks the room at large. You aren’t sure who asks, you can’t make the shapes in the room resolve into people you know. “Why us? Why Joel? They wanted something right? Who were they?” 

You and Tommy look at each other, Ellie makes a half muffled, pained sound beside you. Joel crossed a lot of people, maybe there wasn’t any sense in guessing. 

No one answers. You look at your hands again and wonder if the crimson will ever fade.  

Someone says your name and you look up. A coat is tugged over your shoulders. You didn’t realize you were shivering and you don’t know what happened to your own coat. One of the patrolmen is looking at you, his name slips your memory but Jesse is standing behind him, Maria on the other side. 

You feel the ghost of Ellie’s hand against your arm. Odd, you think distantly, because she hates you. She has for a long time. 

“What happened?”

You look around, but Tommy isn’t where he’d been standing just a moment ago. Did they ask him, too? 

There’s a dark hole in your memory. 

“I don’t know.” 

And it’s the truth. 

There’s no one more dedicated, more involved, in keeping Jackson safe, than Joel. 

Aside from Tommy, maybe.

Joel is an effective killer, like an executioner with a mission. It’s the thing that scared Tommy the most about his brother, and it’s also the thing that had kept him alive long enough to get his second chance in Jackson. It’s the thing you have always loved most about Joel, the violence born of necessity. 

And, you suppose, that’s what he’d been. Dispatcher, destroyer.  

Protector. 

At the heart of it all, the meat of it is, that it had always been that with Joel. It had always been in the name of protect, provide, survive. He never shied away from telling you of his days as a hunter, or, something close to a hunter. And even then, it was keep Tommy alive, it was survive until Boston, it was we needed fucking food. 

Survive and provide and protect. 

Joel. 

Jackson had been wary of him, at first. The stories of his dealings with infected and raiders alike at odds with the way he moved in the commune, with kindness and a certain gentleness, a competency and dependability, with something so soft in his gaze when it came to that little girl he arrived with. 

That reticence and worry had dissolved as quickly as it had come. 

They describe him as quiet and funny, because he’s prone to good natured teasing. They describe him as fierce and short to anger, because no one can say a word about him or his. They describe him as wonderfully dependable, ask Joel for something on a supply run and you would have it in short order; sigh about the state of something in your home and it would be taken care of, fixed, the very next day.

Jackson loves Joel.

Especially that softened up, gentle creature that had emerged in the wake of everything that had happened between Boston and Jackson. Joel had always had a soft interior, trotted out in brief glimpses over the years, but the shell he wore had been so thick and sharp it was near impenetrable, nearly unknowable. 

Ellie is around plenty in those first couple of weeks after. She even takes to sleeping on the living room couch. She doesn’t say much to you or Joel, hardly anything at all, but she’s there and you figure that’s what matters. It seems like she isn’t sure what to say, and desperate for the connection that nearly shattered. 

The first few days when Joel comes home from the clinic, someone knocks on the front door every couple of hours and you open it and have the same conversation over and over and over again. It’s always people worriedly asking after Joel’s wellbeing, dropping off food, expressing their anger that something like this could happen to one of their own, that it could happen to someone so widely and wildly beloved.

When the knocks finally stop coming, and you can convince Tommy to go home to Maria, before Maria has to walk over and collect her husband again, you take the stairs slowly up. 

You’re exhausted. You hardly sleep and when you do, you have nightmares of Joel. Formless, mind numbing dreams that you can never remember when you wake up gasping. You aren’t sure if Joel dreams of it, too. He’s always mumbled in his sleep, eyes flickering behind closed lids, so it’s hard to tell. 

And he hasn’t really been coherent enough, awake enough, to ask, anyway. 

“Hey,” Ellie says when you round the doorway into the bedroom, lowering the comic book in her hands. She’s beside Joel, sitting on your side of the bed, back against the headboard. “Sleeping again.” 

“Was he awake?” 

“A little. Drank some water.” 

Despite the tension of the last few years, you know she’s thinking of another time that Joel had slept a lot, injured and only half alive. 

Now isn’t like then, but in some ways, it’s worse. 

You nod and take a seat at the edge of the bed by her feet. “That’s good,” you reassure her. “It’s a good thing that he’s sleeping. He needs it.”

Ellie just holds up the comic in her lap and then jerks her chin at the box on the bedside table, Joel’s glasses and book about space pushed aside. “I, uh, found them in the study.” 

You shrug. “He always picked up any he found on supply runs.” You watch her from the corner of your eye and then shift your gaze to Joel. The slow rise and fall of his chest is reassuring in its steadiness, though you hate how still he is. 

The skin by his temple is puckered and red, the stitches a neat little row up to his hairline. It still looks raw as a live nerve, the swelling extending to his eye, purple and shadowed in a dark bruise that trails down his cheek and jaw. 

“He never said—” She stops and shakes her head. “So stupid.” 

“Well,” you scoot closer and pat her extended leg. “You didn’t exactly want to talk then. We tried giving them to you, once. Left them outside your door. They got a little rained on.” 

“Yeah,” she says, mouth twisting to the side. “Some of them are. . .can’t fucking peel the pages apart.” In that moment, she sounds like that little kid you left Boston with, being told not to touch something and doing it anyway.

That might have been when you fell in love with Ellie, watching her snap at Bill, and watching Joel react like any father would. It had come back to him so quickly, so naturally. 

There’s a long pause in which Ellie flips rapidly through the comic book and doesn’t say anything, her fingers nervous. She looks how you feel — exhausted. “Why don’t you go get some sleep in your own bed?” You ask, reaching out to twitch a fallen lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “You’re just across the yard. If anything happens, you’ll know.” 

She looks up at you, eyes flicking over your face. “I was fucking mad at you too, you know,” she whispers suddenly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You drop your hand and shake your head before looking back at Joel. He sleeps deeply now, deeper than you thought possible for someone like him, even drugged and injured. 

There’s a knot tangled in your chest, that only tightens further with her question. “It wasn’t my place. He didn’t. . .he didn’t say anything to me about it for a long time, either. Wouldn’t explain what happened while we were separated. He told me the same lie. And you were going to be mad at me, too, no matter what. It had to be between the two of you.” 

“And you think he was right,” she accuses hotly. 

“And,” you level your eyes to hers, “I think he was right.” You dip your head. “I wouldn’t change anything, Ellie. I wouldn’t. You know Joel wouldn’t either. You matter more than that.”

Her bottom lip trembles for just a second. “Even knowing this happens?!” She gestures around the room, maybe just the situation at large. 

Some of the tension knotting up your shoulders bleeds away. “He’s still here. It’s not too late.” She glances away and sucks in a harsh breath. You wait until she meets your eyes again. “And Ellie, it is not your fault. It’s not. None of it.” 

“It almost was.” Her voice is strained. “Too late.”

You shrug. “He knows you care. Trust me, he does.” 

She scrubs roughly at her eyes with the sleeves of her hoodie. “Yeah, uh, well, I’m still gonna sleep on the couch.” 

“Why don’t you just stay right here, then? With Joel?” You ask and stand. “I’ll take the couch tonight.” 

It is the ultimate admission of how scared she is, that she does not argue, doesn’t even try to.  

For the first few weeks after the attack, Joel is in and out of consciousness. He sleeps much more than he’s awake.

And, it’s hard to tell, at first, why he’s sleeping so much. The pain medicine? That carefully doled out, nearly impossible to come by miracle drug — was it just knocking him out? Was he just sleeping because that’s what his body needed? Or, was it something deeper? Brain damage? 

“He’s fucking. . .old!” Ellie says to you one morning around a mouthful of toast. It’s kind of odd, how easily she’s taken to old routines. And how weird the old routine is, because the third piece of your puzzle is missing, sleeping. “Old people take longer to heal, right?” 

Right. 

But he’s also Joel. And he isn’t that old. 

It feels wrong, that he’s so still and silent. 

“It’s not—” Her fist opens and closes. She sets down the toast in her other hand on the plate and turns, pacing the length of Joel’s kitchen, fidgeting with her fingers as she goes, white morning light slatting over her. You eye the toast. It’s hard to get her to eat, these days but you figure most of one piece is better than nothing. “His leg. It’s not infected or something, right? We’d know if it was.” 

“It’s not infected,” you agree. When your own hands start to shake, you set down your mug, afraid to drop it or spill hot tea all over the floor, and make Ellie even more anxious in the process. 

You don’t like to talk about it. You don’t like to think about it. The memories are like a hot brand. 

The staircase creaks with the heavy thud of footsteps, before Tommy appears in the kitchen archway. You’ve always thought Tommy and Joel resembled each other, but now you see similarities in the kinds of expressions they make, too, the quirks in their movements that only siblings could share, and Tommy is sometimes a little hard to look at. 

“Heading out?” 

“Yeah, he’s, uh, sleepin’ again.” He leans against the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest.

Ellie doesn’t say anything, just slips past Tommy and heads up the steps. Tommy looks after her and then back at you. “She won’t say it but she doesn’t like leaving him alone,” you explain. 

Tommy nods and then pushes away from the door to settle at the kitchen table. “Well, I don’t like the idea of it either. Good she’s with him.” He tips the chair onto its back legs and tilts his head. “How ya holdin’ up?” 

“Probably about as good as you are.” 

He huffs a bitter laugh. “Yeah. Maria told me you want off partols.” 

You swallow and look away from him as you take the seat across from him at the table. “I - I know we’re down people already but I can’t. . .Tommy I can’t even look at the goddamn gate without feeling like—” You shake your head. “I just don’t think I can do it. I’d get somebody killed.” 

“All right,” he says, not unkindly. “We’ll figure it out. It’s okay.” 

A burn starts at the back of your eyes so you stand again and swipe your fingers against your cheeks. “You want coffee before you head out?” 

“Nah, save that for Joel.” Then, “How you think this is gonna go? When he’s awake more?”

“I don’t know. You’d know better than me.” 

Tommy laughs. The chair scrapes against the linoleum as he stands. He looks tired, and worried. It’s an odd look on him. It isn’t like Tommy at all. You and Tommy have always bonded over teasing Joel. There’s none of that now. 

“Like hell. You’ve spent the last fifteen years with him, not me.” 

“He’s your brother.” 

“And you’re the love of his damn life.” He pauses and leans on the counter next to you. 

That makes your mouth twitch, the pleasantly warm feeling in your chest consumed in the next second by a lancing pain that can only be an approximation of grief for someone and something that still breathed. 

“I just can’t help worryin’,” he continues. “This might be enough for us, but not for him. If Joel can’t ever do anything again—”

“He just needs time, Tommy,” you cut him off quickly. Not able to stomach the thought. “We’ll figure it out. He’ll figure it out,” you say with more conviction than you feel. “We can probably figure something like a prosthetic out. People have been making them for thousands of years. We can do it. It’ll be fine. But it’s going to be different.”

Tommy’s right. You’ve spent the last fifteen years with Joel. You aren’t sure who you are without him anymore. You aren’t sure you know how to get along without him anymore. And you never want to have to find out. “He’s alive,” you finish with a nod. “Everything else, we can figure out.” 

He nods. “You think we shoulda went after ‘em?”

“Maybe. But this is more important.” 

Before he goes, Tommy wraps you in a hug. “So long as you and that girl stick around, it’ll be all right.”

“Ellie’s been playing the guitar up there,” you answer. 

He nods and pulls back, one big hand clapping down on your shoulder. “See? Things might be all right yet. Always told Joel she’d come around eventually.” He releases you and heads toward the door then. “And get some sleep. Y’look terrible,” he calls over his shoulder. “Orders from Maria.” 

For the first time in weeks, Joel wakes with some semblance of clarity. The bedroom is warm and dark, the tiniest pool of light washing over the form next to him from a little light plugged into the wall.

It’s the nightlight he found for Ellie when they first got to Jackson and her nightmares gave her more grief than she cared to admit to. 

His whole body aches. He feels sick. 

The sharpness of the pain is disorienting. He’s only been awake in brief, muddled flashes, the dulled fingers of drugged pain lancing through him and consuming most of his thoughts. He’d only been awake long enough to eat or drink or be helped to the bathroom like some kind of damn—

He remembers Tommy at his bedside. He hears the ghost notes of music in the air, your voice in his ear, the gentle slide of warm fingers over his skin. He remembers Ellie reading aloud, curled on her side next to him, like she used to do when she was younger, like when they’d stop for the night on the road.

That can’t be right, though. She hasn’t done that in years. She wouldn’t do something like that. Not anymore. 

You’re next to him now, face tilted against the edge of his pillow. It’s hard to make you out in the dark, the shape and slope of your features hidden in the dim light. 

When he says your name, you twitch, the slightest wrinkle to your nose, the tiniest spasm of your fingers against the sheets. “Darlin’,” he tries again. His voice grinds, catches and snags around his teeth. It feels like he hasn’t spoken in years. 

He reaches for you and it’s agony, because his shoulder must be broken. His ribs contract painfully right, like the shrapnel of the bone is digging up into his lungs, piercing his heart. But your skin is soft and warm, pliant, beneath his fingers. It smells like you’ve been burning sage again. He wants to burrow his fingers beneath your skin, you’re so warm. 

The cut of your cheekbones are sharper, the angle of your jaw reminds him of winter in the QZ, winter traveling with you and Ellie. Discolored circles line the space beneath your eyes like little hollows. You look exhausted, wan. 

You blink, slowly at first, then more rapidly. “Joel?” Your voice is a whisper, like the dark is stealing it away. 

Your fingers slide through the backs of his against your cheek when you shift closer, so careful about it, until you’re pressed to his side. “Joel,” you repeat, eyes sliding shut, forehead against the edge of his sore jaw.

He breathes you in, the warm scent of your skin, the smells of hearth and home, lavender and sage and woodsmoke. He closes his eyes for just a second when you shift up and tilt your forehead against his, breath whispering against his chin. “Joel.” 

“You all right?” His voice still sounds rocky but clearing it doesn’t seem to help any.

Slowly, you sit up, hand still in his when you pull it away from your face. “You’re asking me that? You’re kidding, Joel,” your voice creaks. You’ve never really been a crier, but there’s a thickness in your mouth, softening out the vowels and snapping at the consonants. “Are you - We didn’t want you to be in pain. But you’ve been sleeping for so long, we gave you a lower dose so that—” 

“I feel okay,” he interrupts your fretting, sweeping his thumb against the back of your hand. “Considerin’.” 

You swallow and nod. “Hungry?” You glance at the window, where a gray, pale morning light is starting to leech into the room, the color of dirty snow. 

“Yep.” He wishes you’d keep your eyes on him. “If you’ve got somethin’ ready.” 

“We have anything you want,” you assure him. “Anything.” 

Joel nods and attempts to push himself up next to you, chest and shoulder aching something awful. He bites back a groan but it still pushes past his teeth.

“Careful,” you say sharply. Before he can protest, you’re up and around the bed, one hand behind his back. “Your shoulder is broken in a million places.” 

“A million?” He grunts. 

“Three.” 

“That ain’t a million.” 

You don’t laugh and your hand doesn’t move from his back. “And broken ribs. Now lean back.” He does as you ask, real careful about it so you don’t worry.

An odd feeling creeps up inside his chest, dulled by the lighter dose of pain medicine coursing through his veins. It ain’t just a sick feeling, but something else. A helplessness, maybe. It feels wrong, in more ways than one. 

Joel becomes acutely aware of what he already knows, every single injury, the graveness of them. He knows about the broken shoulder and ribs that had to be reset, torn skin that had to be stitched together, that he has internal bruising but by some miracle no internal bleeding. His face throbs suddenly, his temple tight with pain. He feels his heartbeat behind his eye and in the swelling in his cheek. 

And, the worst of it, leg amputated to just above the knee. Sick crawls up the back of his throat. He doesn’t dare look. 

The feeling in his chest swells until it chokes him. 

Helpless, useless — something hard and fanged digs into his mind. It feels like grief, but what is he supposed to be mourning, exactly? 

Everything, maybe. 

His whole damn life. 

“I’m fine,” he grunts suddenly. Sharply. “Quit fussin’.”  

He feels like fucking crying. 

“Just - shut up, Joel,” you snap back. “You almost fucking died.” 

A fist curls around his throat, warm and tight. He almost can’t breathe through it. “Yeah,” he croaks, voice breaking the word in two.  

“Yeah,” you snarl. “So shut up and let me fuss.” 

You turn and leave before he can say anything else, footsteps rapidly descending the stairs. Voices trundle up, creased and folded, rising but muffled. You’ve always been mean when you got scared, ever since Joel can remember. You were mean as hell when he first met you, a hissing kind of frustrated, new to the QZ and new to trying your hand at smuggling. 

You’ve softened up over the years. He hasn’t seen you like this in a long time, maybe not since you got separated in Salt Lake City. 

More footsteps, this time heavy, stomping, coming upwards. 

Ellie appears in the doorway a second later. Her hair is messy; her eyes are wild. She’s in sweatpants and a shirt that’s too big for her. She looks tired but unharmed. The knot tangled up around his lungs eases just a little. “Hey, kiddo.” He tries not to sound surprised. 

Her eyes flick over him and then away. She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t leave either. Instead she picks up a book from the corner of the dresser and settles in the chair across the room. 

A firm but unyielding presence. 

He closes his eyes, tips his head back against the wall, and tries to push down the feeling of failure rising in his throat like a tide. 

Joel’s fingers are clumsy. 

He can’t walk, can’t work, can’t do much of anything without irritating every ligament and tendon and bone in his body. 

But even worse than that, he can’t remember how to play the guitar. 

And nothing makes him feel so helpless as that. 

Even after not playing for twenty odd years, the notes and the placement of his fingers on the strings and frets had come back easily to him, almost like he’d never stopped playing at all. 

Now, it doesn’t. 

In part his shoulder is to blame. Even nearly healed, it’s stiff. But the other part of it is that he can’t remember how to play. Every note seems wrong, and he can’t decide if he’s hearing it wrong, if there’s something wrong with his hearing, his perception, or if the note really is just wrong. 

Ellie plays for him, instead. 

It’s easier than talking. Neither of them are really good at that, anyway. He’s just glad she’s around at all. 

He can’t help but think of that last conversation he’d had with her on the back porch, that she wants to try to forgive him, even if she thinks she might never be able to. He supposes this is her way of trying her hand at that.

Sometimes he wonders if it would be like this if he hadn’t almost died, if he wasn’t collecting sympathy from everyone like there was some kind of shortage. Maybe that conversation on the porch would have meant nothing, otherwise. 

The thought hurts him, no matter how glad he is that she’s there. 

One evening, pretty late, as snow peppers down through the early winter black that curtains the window, she stops playing. 

The living room is quiet, aside from their breathing and the crackle of flames in the fireplace. 

“I was going to invite you over to watch a movie.” 

The metallic twang of the last note she plucked hangs in the air. 

“I was - I was going to fucking ask you to watch a movie with me. That night. One of those dumb action movies you like. Like the ones we used to watch, remember? Curtis and Viper 2.”

She doesn’t look at him. She stares at her fingers, idly, nervously, twisting the tuning pegs of the guitar. “Think I saw that one before,” he answers, voice a little choked. “Pretty good.” 

Ellie rolls her eyes and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. “Yeah, you would think so, old man,” she replies eventually but still doesn’t look up, her mouth twisting to the side. “I just - don’t want you to think I’m only here because you—” She shakes her head, and props the guitar against the wall before she stands and paces the room twice, toying with her fingers in that way she always has. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to you. Even when I was really mad.”

“Ellie,” he says but she doesn’t seem to hear him. “I know.” 

“Anyway, I meant what I said.”

“Ellie.”

“I wanted things to get better. I wanted to try. I was going to.” 

“Ellie.” 

She spins suddenly toward the front door, one hand on the back of her neck, rubbing awkwardly. “I gotta get going.” 

“Kiddo.” This time she turns and finally looks at him. The scent of pine and smoke fills the room. The red of the flames flash across her face, so serious and anxious. 

When they first came to Jackson, they spent a lot of nights on the couch together. His neck always ached the next morning from sleeping upright but he’d never complain about it. Then the distance between them had grown, and he doesn’t know when the last time something like that had happened. 

But that same distance is slowly shrinking now, even if things might never, never be the same again. 

So many times when he looks at her, he still sees that fourteen year old kid. He’d had the same problem with Sarah, looking at his twelve year old and seeing her at five and eight. It was just how it went, being a parent. 

“I know, Ellie,” he reassures her. “I do. It’s all right. Even if you didn’t mean a word of it, it’s all right. I meant what I said, too.”  

And even though she said she needed to leave, she nods and sits down again. She plucks a few notes out on the guitar when she pulls it back into her lap. 

“D'ya still wanna watch it?”

She does. 

Joel is whittling.

It is decidedly not going well. 

He’s too distracted for it. He never realized how much pressure settled on his shoulder, how much it pulled at the muscle around his ribs, from doing something as simple as this, and he doesn’t like the nausea that comes with the pain. 

But it’s something he can do, so he does it. 

It’s snowing outside again, wind raking against the siding, rattling the window panes. There’s a thin stream of air coming in around the window’s frame, cold. 

His hands are chapped and raw, blood pooling at the seams of his knuckles. 

The fix would be easy enough, but everything he needs to do it is in the basement. And the basement is a near impossible location for him to reach, so he puts up with it, hands growing more frustrated by the second because he wants to fucking fix it. 

You use the office, his work space, often enough, and it’s one thing for him to be cold and uncomfortable, but another thing entirely for you to feel that way. 

But he can’t make it down to the living room without help these days, let alone down two flights of stairs to the basement, and then back up them, too.

“Joel?”

He glances over his shoulder to find you standing in the doorway. You have a pair of shears in your hands. 

“Still want me to cut your hair?”

He wants to do it himself. But you’d offered earlier, because you’ve been doing it for him for a long time, for years and years now. And he’d always liked it because your hands are kind with it and you’re better at doing it, anyway. But now it just feels like one more thing he can’t do for himself, one more thing he’s relying on someone else for, and that makes guilt and shame choke him. 

Joel can’t seem to do a damn thing, not for himself, but, worse, not for anyone else either. 

“Joel?” You ask again when the silence stretches until it’s uncomfortable. “I don’t have to; you can do it yourself.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s all right, darlin’.” You start forward when he labors up from the chair, teeth gritted, but quickly stop when he meets your eyes, warning you away with a glance. 

You don’t say anything else, just back out the door and pad down the hall to the bathroom. 

He isn’t sure if your feelings are hurt or not, all his focus directed on hauling himself upwards and then limping down the hall with one crutch under his arm. Feeble threads of pain lance up his leg, centering in his joints, the hinge of his knee. The space under his arm is sore too, from the crutch, even wrapped in cloth. 

Joel is used to pain. He’s used to temporary aches, the sharp stab of healing wounds, the quick rip of a bullet or knife through skin, chronic pains from age and long healed injuries. On cold days, his side aches something fierce, like that rebar never really came out of him. 

But this pain is different, without origin, and he’s having a hard time adjusting to it. Or maybe he’s just having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this is not a healable injury, at least, not in the way he wants it to be. 

For the rest of his life, he will be disabled. He’ll never get back to himself, never be what he once was. 

The bathroom light is gold. It washes his skin into a better color, not so pale and strained and pained looking. 

He hates looking in the mirror now. Joel never considered himself particularly good looking, never thought about it much, really. And, for most of his life, looks haven’t really mattered anyway. 

But seeing his reflection now is a reminder of his failures. It’s a reminder of everything he can’t do.

His whole body is nothing but reminders. 

He is a patchwork quilt of scars. 

He doesn’t know how you can stand to look at him. But you just brush your hands through his hair when he leans the crutch against the counter and sits heavily on the stool you dragged upstairs. 

The bathroom is thick with the scent of lavender and earth. Every winter it turns into a makeshift greenhouse, all the plants that can’t survive the winter dragged inside for the season. 

The feeling of your hands through his hair is soothing and the tension in his shoulders slides away. 

“I can do it myself,” he grumbles, despite himself, and without conviction when you run a comb through his hair. 

You hum under your breath, not really paying him any mind. You know he doesn’t really mean it. Even if he feels like a fucking burden for it, it’s something you’ve always done for him, so it’s a little easier for him to accept. “I know. I like to.” You tilt his chin up and Joel steadfastly avoids looking in the mirror. “Besides, I’m better at it. You take to it like it’s a hack job.”

The trim doesn’t take long, since he keeps his hair longer anyway. It’s mostly an excuse for you to rake your fingers through his hair. 

“The window needs fixin’,” he says when you slide in front of him and set about trimming his beard without asking. That’s fine, too. “I know you been, uh, kinda cold in that room.” 

“It’s not so bad,” you say when you finish with him, brushing your fingers against his cheeks and then through his hair. You smile, eyes crossing his face, tracing his features like a well known map, before you twitch a lock of hair away from his forehead. “You gonna fix it for me or what?” 

“Mighty big ask of ya,” he grouses, irritation itching at the edge of his mind. 

You’re still smiling faintly, touching his face, the curl of hair behind his ear, the scar along his hairline and then the one over his nose. 

“I just can’t see how,” you say and Joel almost snaps. He wants to. He wants to say you don’t fucking get it, that you don’t want to get it, that it’s different now. He wants to say he’s not the man you’ve always known, that shit ain’t as easy as it’s always been. He can’t do shit for you, anymore, and isn’t that the reason you’ve stuck around all these years? 

But then you continue. “I left that damn caulking gun on the side table three days ago.” 

“You what?” 

You shrug. “Thought you might have noticed it too. And I’ve always been so bad at that stuff.” 

The guilt that settles in him is heavy, but familiar. The shape of it is different, but it's still like shrugging on an old coat, it’s so natural and intimate.

He must be destined for some kind of failure, born under a bad star, something.

Everything he touches falls apart, no matter what he does. Everyone he holds dear, leaves him, one way or another, somehow. His mama, Sarah, and then Tommy, and then Tess. Most recently Ellie, though maybe things there were being mended. Maybe you were next, soon as you came to your senses. 

Joel has spent most of his life taking care of people. And when he wasn’t taking care of people, he was moving, working. He hardly ever sat still. He didn’t have time to sit still. 

Not before the outbreak, and certainly not after. 

Even in Jackson where the pace of the world is slower, he was always busy. If he wasn’t on patrol, he was on wall duty, looking after Jackson’s security. Or, he was fixing something for someone, building something, helping with the horses. If he wasn’t doing any of that, he was improving his house, he was working on a new carving, he was playing the guitar.  

Healing up, it’s involved a whole lot of sitting still and feeling useless. It had involved a lot of other people fussing over him. 

A lot of sitting still and feeling like he was failing everyone he knew. Like he had already failed everyone he knew. For all the effort he put into it, it would never be enough. He cares wrong, he loves wrong, and now he can’t even do that. 

He fails you in this, too. Of wishing he could accuse you of all the things he thinks of himself. 

Joel knows you think of it too, you just haven’t gotten frustrated enough with him to say it yet. You haven’t had the full weight of his broken, uselessness on you, yet. 

That day will come. There’s no way it won’t, because he can’t do for you what he’s always done, what he was put on this god forsaken earth to do. The one thing he’s always been able to do. Not just for you, but for everyone. Ellie, Tommy and his family, Jackson at large. 

It’s always been the thing he could point to and say look, this is why I am like this, this is why you need me, why I’m around. You survived because of me. Because I made sure you did. 

So he’s not worth much now, really, and all the promises he made you and all the promises he made to himself, he can’t keep them anymore. And isn’t that why you stuck by him all these years? Despite all his shortcomings? 

“Sorry, darlin’,” he cups your face in his hands, smoothes his thumbs over your cheeks, the hinge of your jaw. “I’ll get right on fixin’ that for you.” 

“I know you will. Thank you, Joel.” The full weight of your head tips into his hands, and your eyes slide shut. His hands are large against your jaw, scarred and calloused, harsh. Reminders, maybe, of what he used to be. He looks at the hollows beneath your eyes, the raw, worried skin of your bottom lip. 

You don’t sleep anymore and when you do you have nightmares. You hate to leave the house. And sometimes you flinch even when nothing is happening around you, like memories are snapping at your heels. 

He did all that to you, too. Terrible gifts he’s given and can’t take back.

When he glances back up to your eyes, you’re staring at him, a worried, anxious kind of look lodged there that he absolutely hates. 

“What?” He asks, smoothing his thumbs over your cheeks and then the delicate hinge of your jaw.

“Nothing.” Your eyes shift away from his, and you twitch in his grasp. He already knows what you’re about to say, because you’ve never gotten better at saying it, just like him. He doesn’t need you to say it, but you do anyway, and he hates how much he likes hearing it. It’s like a ray of golden sun. “I love you, Joel,” you murmur and hook your hands around his wrists.  

For a long time, you just look at him, the silence is heavy with unsaid words, but he isn’t sure which of you is the one not saying something. “That enough?” He eventually grunts. “For you?”

You frown. “Why wouldn’t it be? Do you think it’s not?” 

It shouldn’t be. All those promises stack up in his mind again, everything he can’t keep.  

“It shouldn’t be.” 

You pull his hands away from your face with a shake of your head and lean in to kiss him. Your lips part softly against his, the hitch of your breath sweet against his mouth. The heat of you is so close and intoxicating, it’s something he never wants to have to give up, not when your thumbs are pressed to the pulse in his wrists, and not when you taste like apple, honey. 

He shakes one of your hands away to wrap his arm around your back and pull you closer, until the warmth of your body is pressed securely to his chest. Your tongue slides against his, teeth nipping gently at his bottom lip. Something warm floods his cheeks and his chest goes tight. 

When you pull back, you tug on a piece of his hair then touch the blush pinking on his face. “You look real handsome, Texas.”  

He tucks his forehead against your collarbone, and you fold your hands against the back of his head. “It’s enough,” you say. “Always has been.” 

The next day, he finds that most of his tools have been relocated upstairs, either to one of the cabinets in the living room, or to the office upstairs. 

Either way, he no longer has to traverse two staircases down and back up. 

He isn’t sure when you had the time to do it, or why he didn’t at least hear you doing it. 

Joel’s chest swells with love for you, right alongside the guilt that does nothing but grow. 

He fixes the window. 

Some days are easier than others.

He has good days and bad, and some of the bad days are worse than others. He sows the feelings up inside himself, cocoons the bad away inside his chest. It’s easier that way. And it’s necessary now. It’s just another thing you’d have to deal with. 

He’s never been good at saying the things that needed said, anyway. 

He tries not to snap at you. He’s trying not to get mean, and he can’t just walk away like he used to be able to when his mind got messy. But he’s been failing because he wants you to fight with him, wants you to hate him. 

Joel wants you to say that he fucking failed, that he’s been failing his whole life at the one thing he was supposed to be able to do. The one thing he’s really good for. 

“Stop it,” Joel snarls one day in the spring, when you offer your hand down the steps to the living room. 

He doesn’t mean to snap at you like that, but he doesn’t take it back either. He’s in too much pain. And he doesn’t want to admit it. 

The smile slips off your face as you step back from him, a stoney expression sliding over your face instead. It’s routine, you helping him, and maybe that’s the problem. He grits his teeth, that look reminds him of Boston, reminds him of the time before you used to trust each other. 

“I ain’t helpless.” 

You raise your hands and take another step back, looking away from him as you do. 

The breeze that comes in the landing’s open window is cool. It isn’t quite warm enough for the window to be open but the house needs airing out after such a long winter, such a hard winter. The air is crisp with the scent of pine and the lavender hung in dried clumps above each doorway. 

“I know, Joel.”

When he looks at you, you visibly brace yourself. 

A wave of self-hatred so hot it burns immediately follows the guilt. But it also doesn’t stop the angry, frustrated pulse beneath the surface of his skin, pressing against the back of his teeth. 

“I don’t know why you didn’t just leave me there.” The words are bitter, poisonous. Accusatory. “You should have left me to fuckin’ die.”  

Whatever you might be expecting him to say, it isn’t that. Your breath catches hard. 

You can be cruel, too. He waits for your anger, the burn of words he deserves to hear, something mean and hateful but true. 

But the words don’t come; your anger doesn’t come. You just look tired and empty, sad. 

You pace the landing, the soft shush of your footsteps echoed by the creaking of the floorboards. Your silence pricks at him. He wants you to scream at him, blame him, for failing, for being so fucking stupid. 

“What if it was me?” 

Your voice is so low, he almost doesn’t catch your words. 

The quiet of your footsteps come to a halt. “What if it had been me, Joel? It could have been. It could have easily been me. They knew who you were. We’ve done a lot of the same shit. We’ve made a lot of the same enemies over the years.” 

Your hands are shaking, your breath comes in quick little pants. The acrid, bone aching feeling of cresting anxiety and panic floods the little landing. “Me and you and Tess, we were kind of a package fucking deal. So, what if it was me?” 

The breeze sliding through the open window feels different now. Colder, older, more brutal. 

“That’s fuckin’ different and y’know it,” he snarls. 

“Why?” Anger floods your face, the curl of your fingers harsh against your arms when you cross them. “Why would that have been different? Because you think I always need to be taken care of?” 

He doesn’t answer. He looks away from you, but he can’t go anywhere. He’s at your mercy and you both hate it.

Joel leans heavily against the wall, his right hand curling around his left wrist, a nervous, anxious tick he’s never been able to shake. 

“Tell me,” you beg. “Say it, Joel. How is it different? Why?” 

He shakes his head once, slowly, and doesn’t look up at you. “You can say it,” you continue, your voice eerily quiet. “You never trusted me to have your back.”

That ain’t it at all. 

It’s not your failure. It’s his, in every single way. He doesn’t blame you or Tommy or Ellie or anyone else. He doesn’t believe for a second that you don’t know that. 

It would have been better, probably, if he died. 

He doesn’t understand the guilt you feel. 

He can’t take care of you anymore, can’t protect you anymore. 

Worse, he can’t do that for his kid. 

If he’d died, maybe that final sacrifice would have been enough to make up for everything else. Maybe it would all just be done.

He’s the one breaking promises, not you, just like he always has been. 

Sometimes, when he thinks of Sarah, he can only remember her final moments. He can’t think of anything else but her blood, how red it was in the dark. He can’t think of anything else than what could have been. He can only see the halo of that mounted flashlight glaring into his eyes, his own voice pleading. Please don’t. 

If he’d just been shot, he would have died first, he wouldn’t have ever known how bad he failed in that moment. He would have died first, like a parent was supposed to. No good father should ever outlive his kid.

Maybe, this had been his second chance, to finally die first. 

Born lucky, bad star, like always. 

So, what would he do, if it had been you? He’d have taken care of you, just like you’re doing for him. But that is not anathema to him; that is just how things are supposed to go. It wouldn’t have been a failure. 

He’s no use to you anymore, no use to anyone.

He doesn’t say any of that. 

Instead, he nods. 

“You’re right.” He shrugs and pain splinters across his shoulders. “It would have been different.” 

Your expression flickers blank and you turn away. It would have been easier to stomach if you screamed at him, if you slammed a door. 

But you’re just quiet. 

Once, during the late autumn, when you were traveling with Joel and Ellie, you noticed Joel wasn’t eating. 

Food was in short supply. None of the houses or buildings you looted turned up anything edible, and wild game had been elusive for weeks as the weather turned wetter and chillier. 

You’d noticed him doing it a few times before, but nothing like then. Joel would dole out carefully rationed food and not allocate any to himself. The bags under his eyes deepened. His temper was shorter. He’d gotten pale and hollows appeared in his cheeks that meant he hadn’t been getting enough. Joel had always been huge, broad and strong and tall, with thick arms and thighs, but when he dropped weight, it always showed in those little hollows first.

Then, one evening, after clearing out a barn of infected, he’d stumbled, hand to his forehead, pale as you’d ever seen him. “Christ,” he’d mumbled. 

“Joel?” Ellie’s voice had pitched up with worry. She’d looked at you, and said, “He hasn’t been eating.” The words were all a rush, accusatory and begging for you to do something. 

“Ellie—” He’d growled. 

“I know she’s right, Joel,” You’d interrupted with a snap. “You think we wouldn’t notice? You think I wouldn’t notice?”

He’d gotten pissed off and marched off into the woods to the stream to refill your canteens. You’d given him a wide berth for several hours, making the newly cleared barn into something livable for the night with Ellie. When dark had started to set in you went after him, boots crunching through frozen leaves.

He’d been sitting by the creek bed, an inscrutable expression on his face. “We ain’t got enough,” he’d said, not looking at you. “You and Ellie need it more. I’m fine.” 

“But you're not. You can’t just not eat. You can’t take care of us if you aren’t okay, Joel.” 

The air had smelled like earth and decaying leaves and stagnant water and ice. The scent reminded you of better times, of apple cider and cinnamon and new beginnings, of autumn fairs and coffee shops. 

You’d sat behind him, pulled him against you for just a moment, chin on his shoulder, and said, “It’s all right to let me look after you, too.” 

You figure that even with the change in circumstances, things are still like that with Joel. He’s always doing the metaphorical equivalent of making sure everyone else eats first, even if it means he’s starving.

He’s never been one to give up or give in or let go. When Tess was bitten, Joel hadn’t wanted to leave her. He’d wanted to stay and fight. To fight a useless and unwinnable fight. That mindset was never going to fade.

You don’t speak for a few days. Guilt swallows the whole of your heart and leaves you dry and empty. Joel blames you, you think, even if he won’t say it. 

He comes to you late one night. 

It’s dark and the bedroom is overly warm. He sits heavily but without help at the edge of the bed. He’s getting better at that, even if he doesn’t think he is. 

His hair is longer and it falls into his face when he leans over you, fingers against your forehead and temple and then your cheek. 

“When I was real young,” he says. “My dad died. We didn’t have much money and my mama worked all the time.” 

You turn on your back and try to make his face out but his expression is unreadable. 

Joel hardly ever talks about his folks. 

“I got my first job when I was fourteen, to help with the bills. Money was better on account of half of it not bein’ drank away, but we still needed the cash.” Joel pauses and you scoot over. It takes a minute for him to find a comfortable position with you but when he does, he continues. His voice echoes against your ear, the beat of his heart pounds against your cheek. His chin rubs against your forehead, one large hand splayed across your shoulders. 

“Since she worked so much, I was always takin’ care of Tommy, of damn near everything else. And my mama, too, sometimes.” He swallows, and you feel the bob of his throat against your forehead. His chest is warm beneath your cheek, even through the two layers he always wears. “So I knew I was young when Sarah came along, but I didn’t really feel it. I took care of her and her mother, ‘til she went her own way. Just the way I always had.” 

The rise and fall of his chest is steady. He cups his free hand around yours and tucks your palm against his heart. 

“I know I’m not easy, in any sense of the word. I never have been.” A heavy tug of shame weighs his voice down. “Too mean and bitter, I guess.” There’s a long pause, and you want to protest but you’re sure if you interrupt, Joel won’t finish saying whatever it is he needs to. 

“So anyway,” he continues. “I try to make up for it. By doin’ what I always have, even if it means I end up alone. I wouldn’t change anything. I don’t know what I’m good for if—” His hand slides up your spine, thick fingers resting at the base of your neck. “And I can’t do it anymore. Can’t take care of ya. So, it woulda been different, if it had been you. Because it’s you we’re talkin’ about.” 

Joel goes quiet after that. His palm continues its nervous path over your spine. The bristles of his beard are soft against your temple. The rhythm of his breathing is still slow and even, but you feel the prickle of nerves in the way he touches you. 

It isn’t easy for Joel to say the things he feels, even to you, even all these years later. 

His body is so familiar to you, so warm and strong beneath you. Comfort, in short, in its purest form. 

You aren’t expecting him to say any more, but he does. “Things. . .they always have a way of fallin’ apart, in the end.” 

When you lift your head, he doesn’t look at you. You press a finger against the edge of his jaw, turning his head gently until his eyes meet yours. “Joel,” you touch your forehead to his. You aren’t good with words either, but you try. “You are more than that. More than what you can do for people.”

He’s quiet for a long time, eyes fluttering closed, his breath a calm pool against your mouth. “And I’m more than that? To you?” 

“Joel, if I only wanted some guard dog, I would have gotten one that could listen better.” 

He snorts, and a little of the tension melts away. “Yeah, I reckon you would have.” 

The dark is a warm cocoon of things less easily said in the light.

“Yes,” you say quietly after a long, peaceful silence. “Joel. You’re so much more to me than that.”

It’s late spring again. The Wyoming air is mild, and heavy with the scent of blooming life. 

Sage grows in dense clumps up in the mountains, deep between the ridges of the sharp peaks. The smell of it, earthy and crisp, chases itself on the breeze, all the way down to Jackson. It twines with the smell of flowers painstakingly planted along his front path. 

Arrowleaf. Goldenrod. 

Lavender, right by the mailbox, courtesy of some superstition held onto from before the outbreak. 

It’s thick, cloying, pungent. 

It’s overripe, rotting. It smells like death. 

It’s making Joel fucking nauseous. 

He squeezes your arm, a warning without words that he needs a break. 

It’s the smell. 

It’s the sun and the gentle breeze. 

He tells himself the sick, crawling pain mixing sourly in his stomach has nothing at all to do with his newly fitted prosthetic leg. 

Slowly, without a word, you turn and guide him back through his familiar backyard to the porch. 

He sits heavily on the steps, just inside the cool pool of shade, and pulls in deep breaths that rattle in his lungs and do nothing to stave off the dizziness, or the pain. 

Your hand slides up and down his back before your palm settles against the back of his neck and urges his head down between his knees. 

Joel feels like a fucking kid. His hands are shaking. 

“Damn thing is useless,” he growls after a minute when the nausea passes and he can lift his head, because it’s the only thing he can do, because it’s goddamn humiliating. 

Everything is, these days. 

You just bump your shoulder into his and hum low under your breath, used to his attitude, used to his bark that only sometimes has a bite. 

You’re patient with him, but tough, not willing to indulge his foul moods. “It’s just something you have to get used to,” you assure him. “It’s not going to be like before.” 

Joel doesn’t want to admit that he wants to take the prosthetic off. It’s like admitting defeat before he’s even gotten a chance to fight. 

And he’s tired. 

Exhausted, really. 

“Hey,” you dig your nails into his wrist. He meets your eyes, pragmatic, practical, his match in everything. “We aren’t supposed to go at it so hard anyway, remember? You did really well.” 

He doesn’t want to admit that, either, that your praise washes pink in his veins, that he likes to hear it, thrives on it. If he’s doing right by you, good in your eyes, things can’t be awful as they might seem. 

That’s what he latches onto. Your pride. Your acceptance. 

“This was just the first time, Joel,” you continue. “You’ll get the hang of it.” 

He ain’t so sure about that, not with the way his leg aches. A leg that isn’t even there anymore, chopped off right above the knee, to save his life, apparently. It’s part of why it hurts so goddamn much. Feels like he’s pushing his calf into something it can’t fit in, like the long gone meat and bone are getting ground up into his thigh. 

But if he gets the hang of it, then things will be better. He’ll at least be able to move on his own. He might be able to find some way to work again. Wall duty was looking pretty good, because all you really have to do is sit there and watch the horizon and be able to shoot pretty well. 

There is hope in the future. There is hope in you reminding him of that, realistic to a fault, pragmatic to your core. 

And unlike Joel, you’ve never had it in you to lie. 

Joel tightens his hand on your forearm again, pressure on your sun warmed skin. It’s a poor substitute for the thank you that you deserve. You seem to get his meaning though. Your hand feathers through his hair again and the sun doesn’t feel so abrasive, and the smells of spring don’t seem so weighed down by death. 

“Ellie’s coming for dinner,” you offer. “Said she’s got a movie or a game or something that she wants to show you.” 

Yeah, so maybe the day ain’t so bleak as he thought it was. 

“All right.” 

You offer him a hand up, and slip your arm behind his back. He carefully drapes his arm around your shoulders, mindful, even now, of his weight against yours. “What a strong thing you are,” he comments, not able to stop the corner of his mouth from twitching. You look so determined.

It’s the way you always look, when put to task.  

You roll your eyes. “Lucky for you.” 

“Lucky for me,” he says, soft about it.  

The stairs are the worst part of getting back inside, but it's much easier than it had been before. 

It’s a relief to collapse into the couch and take the prosthetic off. The phantom pains still ache and stretch painfully tight, like the skin is being pulled taut, like there was a knot that just needed massaged out. He grits his teeth and represses the urge to reach down and rub sore muscle that no longer exists. 

It’s a relief to collapse into the couch, even if guilt punches him in the chest for it. 

It’s an even bigger relief when you press yourself into the space next to him. He doesn’t know how you stand it sometimes. How you can look at him and still not hate him for every mistake he’s ever made. 

“Knee always fuckin’ bothered me anyhow,” he comments, turning his head so his words brush against your temple. “Don’t gotta worry about it gettin’ stiff now, I reckon.” 

You reward him with a snort, the scrape of your fingernails against his cheek, a kiss. 

It’s easier to get around, with the prosthetic that he hates. 

But he’s slow. Slower than he’s ever been in his whole life. And sometimes, most times, it frustrates him. 

Being able to walk is one thing. It’s a fine thing. But he needs to be able to do more than that. Run, fight, shoot. A fucking pipe dream. But he’s back to building, carpentry, and that’s something at least. Something useful. 

Joel has tried asking you about that day, because he doesn’t remember a whole lot besides the pain. But your chest goes fluttery with panic, the rise and fall of it unfamiliar to him. You don’t get nervous. You never have, not over anything. 

But when he asks about that day, you mutter something about Tommy and blood, and he can’t get anything else out of you. Tommy does the same, eyes cast to the side, thumbs hooked in his belt, foot starting a nervous rhythm. 

He doesn’t understand what’s wrong with either of you, what the goddamn problem is. 

In some ways, Joel’s always thought you were tougher than him, a balance of brutal and rough and unforgiving with softened sweetness. Bash the skull of a hunter in with a metal pipe, then use your unsullied hand to stroke back Ellie’s hair, to offer help to strangers, to pat the nose of your horse gently. 

He would never want to be on the other side of the wrath you kept wrapped up inside your heart. 

But, now, you don’t leave Jackson anymore. You haven’t been outside Jackson’s walls since that day. 

Tommy tells him you can’t even bear to take a shift on the wall, which mainly comprised of sitting at the top of the wall and doing a whole lot of nothing, looking at the horizon, shuffling your feet to keep warm.

It’s unlike you. You love to patrol, just like him. 

That’s his fault, too. Your nightmares, your sleeplessness.

Ellie plays the guitar for him, even after he gets the hang of it again, even after he’s walking on his own again, the chords coming back to him easier and easier. They don’t have to talk much, that way. 

She’s still mad, but he almost died, and she’s willing to try with him. 

She comes over for dinner. She always brings a movie. 

It gets easier. 

And slowly, by the end of the summer, she smiles when she sees him.

He’s gotten the hang of walking again, which is never a sentiment he thought he’d have about himself. Joel always assumed he’d be killed before something like really old age could set in, or something like this, a disability he doesn’t want to learn to live with. 

It’s rained recently and the yard smells like perchitor and the ever present mountain sage. The grass is just a little muddy from the many loops around the yard. “You’re going to fall and break your neck, old man.” 

“Breakin’ my neck can’t be much worse than what it is right now. We ain’t goin’ around the yard anyhow. Now c’mon, put your shoes on, kiddo.” 

“It’s still raining,” she complains. 

“Means no one’s outside to see me humiliatin’ myself.” 

Ellie only rolls her eyes but does it anyway. He doesn’t need a hand anymore, but he’s shaky sometimes and despite your best efforts he’s still refusing a cane. But he also hasn’t been using the track in the yard in weeks.

That, and he actually has somewhere to be these days, figuring out better security for Jackson, looking after the patrol teams, assessing who was ready to be put into rotation. Managing is what he should be calling it, though he doesn’t care for it. He and Maria butt heads too often for it to be anything close to enjoyable. 

When they pass the mailbox, Ellie points to the lavender. “I never thought to ask about it before. It’s everywhere. Some nailed above the door and everything.” 

“Some kinda thing about protectin’ the home,” Joel explains. “Far as I remember, it protects from bad energy. Somethin’ like that.” 

“I thought that was sage?”

“Sage you burn,” he explains. “And we get plenty of that too. Whole damn house smells like it.” 

“Seems like the kinda thing Dina would do,” she says and then seems to realize who she’s said it to. But she doesn’t change the subject. “Didn’t take her for the superstitious type. Doesn’t seem like it really works anyway.” 

Joel shrugs. “She was before the outbreak, I guess.” He watches Ellie from the corner of his eye. She’s steadfastly not looking at him, but she also doesn’t usually say so much to him. “Didn’t have reason to think of it for a long time. Lavender wasn’t exactly in high supply in Boston.” 

Ellie nods.

“She used to, uh, put some in your backpack when she knew you was goin’ out. Same with me, always put some in my pocket.” 

There’s a long silence. Jackson’s streets are oddly empty in the pouring rain. Lights glow in the windows; inviting, homely. “She didn’t have to do that.” 

He shrugs and his shoulder only aches a little for it. “It’s just the kinda thing parents do, even if it don’t make any damn sense.” 

“Yeah,” Ellie agrees as the turn toward the center of Jackson. “You wanna stop in the Bison?” 

“Sure,” he agrees. “For a minute.” 

“Full schedule?” She teases. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your sunset years?”

“Well, gotta have something to fill up the days, kiddo. Maybe one day you’ll actually be able to keep up.”

She just scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

Joel tries not to smile.  

Being mobile again, busy again, feels good. 

It feels good, but it also means he’s in near constant pain.

He tells himself it’s good, that pain sharpens him, makes him better. 

Until he’s slumped on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, heaving his guts up from the ache in his leg. 

You find him there, sweaty and panting, with a glass of water in hand. Joel pushes himself upright against the wall with a sigh as you close the lid of the toilet and flush it before sitting beside him on the cool tile. 

“You’re overdoing it again,” you say, not unkindly.

“I ain’t tryin’ to,” he mutters and takes the glass of water when you offer it to him. 

“I know.” You cover his free hand with yours. “Wanna get up?” 

You smell faintly of peppermint, burned incense. 

When he shakes his head, you stretch to flip the light switch over your head. He’s plunged into darkness, alone, for just a moment, before you settle again. The warmth of your head against his shoulder feels stolen. 

For a long time, neither of you say anything. He breathes through the pain still crawling around his knee, the phantom flesh of his calf. 

“I was a goddamn fool,” he whispers into the silence. “You know what I was thinkin’ that day?” He’s not sure where the words come from, the confession. It feels a little like the words are being pulled up out of his body, yanked right from the center of his chest. 

“Tell me,” your nose is warm when it bumps against his collarbone. 

“‘Bout Ellie. How I’d want someone to help her, if she needed it. So I helped that girl. Almost got all of us fuckin’ killed.”

You don’t answer, not at first. But eventually, you lean into him and say, “If you want me to blame you, I won’t. I will never find fault in kindness.” Your thumb strokes his knuckles slowly. “Never. Especially not yours.” 

He brushes his mouth along your hairline, skin silken against his mouth. “Y’know when we was on the road, I was sure you’d get us killed. But y’always knew when to trust someone. How much to trust ‘em.” 

“I. . .” you start and then trail off, fingers squeezing around his. “I was always lucky, and I always knew I had you at my back. If I messed up, you were always there.” 

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the bathroom, and when he meets your gaze, he can see the glaze of tears in your eyes. You suck in a shaking breath and clear your throat but don’t continue. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there the same way.” 

“This ain’t on you,” he says. “Don’t think that. It’s me. It was a long time comin’ somethin’ would catch up to me.”

You settle in against him, one hand digging into the sore muscle of his thigh. The heat feels like, the flex of your gentle fingers even better. The pain that doesn’t exist fades just a little. 

“And for the record, darlin’, you were there the same way.” 

It’s autumn again when you go back onto the patrol rotation. There’s frost on the windows and on the spikes of overgrown grass in the front yard. He just got back from a night watch on the wall.  

You’re taking his old routes with Tommy, and you don’t tell him about it until the morning of. Not a fucking soul breathed a word of it to him, and he’s the one figuring out the goddamned rotations. 

And Joel realizes though he’d been worried about you not wanting to leave Jackson anymore, not even being able to go near the gates, he was glad you hadn’t wanted to. It meant you were safe. Even if he couldn’t keep you safe anymore, the walls of Jackson could.

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” you say before you leave, pretending like he can’t clearly see your hands shaking before you walk out the door.

He follows you onto the porch. He can’t remember what he says, just that you look upset and then hurt, just that you don’t say goodbye when you walk away and that you probably don’t have lavender tucked into your pocket like he always did. 

“Please.” A word he hardly ever says, a plea he never gives into. 

He says it to your retreating back as you pass the mailbox, but you either don’t hear him or choose to ignore him. 

Maybe he didn’t say it at all.

That day is hell. It’s long and pocketed with anger and anxiety. If something happens to you, he isn’t sure what he’ll do. He doesn’t like that you left him upset. 

Maria doesn’t entertain his outburst about it when he finally corners her after looking for her all morning. “She was ready.” 

“I didn’t even know we were considerin’ sendin’ her back out!” 

Maria just levels him with a glare that could freeze hell over. “That isn’t up to just you. And why do you think she didn’t want to tell you?” 

He’s at the stables with Ellie that evening when you come home, waiting. It’s cold and his leg is aching something bitter and awful but he doesn’t move and Ellie doesn’t suggest going back home because she knows he won’t hear it. Dina stops by and he listens to them talk. Ellie’s face softens when she looks at Dina, cheeks a soft pink in the fading light, ducking her head and fidgeting with her fingers. 

Joel tries not to pay them any mind, but it's hard not to find endearing. 

When you and Tommy get back, it’s full dark. He wants to throttle his brother for not telling him you were going back out on the trails, but it’s too cold for much of that. All thoughts of strangling Tommy fly from his head as soon as he sees you, because you have a smear of blood on your cheek and down your neck. 

“Goddamn it, what happened?” He demands, hands against your face before you’ve even fully dismounted. 

“I’m fine.” 

“That ain’t what I asked,” he sweeps his thumb over your skin, flakes of red shifting to the ground. The knot in his chest tightens as he watches it flutter through the air. “What happened?” He growls again. “Tommy?” 

“The usual, Joel,” you pull his attention back to you. “It was just cleanup. A couple of infected. Nothing.” 

“Uh huh,” he tilts your face one way and then the other. 

“Just some splatter.” You shrug and smile at him; your mouth twitches, and he realizes you’re teasing him. 

“Splatter,” he repeats flatly. “That ain’t funny. You ain’t funny. C’mon, let’s go home.” 

Ellie and Dina have disappeared with your arrival but they aren’t far; he can hear their chatter as they walk along the street toward the center of Jackson, the echoes of their voices reaching back towards him. “I’ll deal with you later,” he says to his brother. 

Tommy just raises his hands and says he’ll stable the horses. But he’s grinning and maybe that’s a good thing. It’s been awhile since his brother has seemed himself. It’s been awhile since the two of you have given him grief together. 

“Leave Tommy alone,” you say as you walk toward Rancher Street. You seem steadier than you had been that morning, more confident, more yourself. It isn’t a long walk back, even with his leg, though he limps worse than usual because of the cold. You wrap an arm around his waist, your fingers digging into his back pocket, body warm against his side. “We did good together today.” 

“Mhm. I’m sure you did.” 

“You mad at me?” 

“I wish you’d tell me,” he murmurs. “When you’re goin’ off to do somethin’ stupid. I need you to talk to me. Worried the whole goddamn day. You ain’t exactly in practice out there anymore.” 

You hum and then nudge closer to him. “Put your arm around me.”

“I’m fine,” he grunts, maybe a little harshly. 

“Joel,” you laugh and nuzzle your face against his shoulder. “C’mon. I’m cold and I had a rough day. Put your arm around me.” 

So, he does. And he leaves it there until you’re in the bathroom, sitting on the counter in front of him, lavender plants stacked in the sink behind you once again as the colder weather sets in. 

This is better. So much fucking better, than the other way around. This is right.

He cleans the blood away, finds the swell of a bruise on your shoulder and a cut lengthways over your collarbone. 

It’s easy enough to take care of. It isn’t as bad as what he’d been imagining all day long. 

He’s well in practice for this sort of thing, for bandaging and assessing wounds. 

“Sorry,” he says as he works. “For this mornin’.”

“Mhm.”

“I worried all day. Not much I can do now, if you get into a spot of trouble.”

“I handle myself fine. Tommy was there. He’s a good partner out there.” 

Joel grunts, dabs rubbing alcohol along the cut. “He is,” he agrees reluctantly. He supposes if you had to go on patrol with anyone, he’d prefer you go with his brother.  

You touch him as he works, fingers patting over his jacket, the collar of his flannel, the frayed edge of the t-shirt beneath that. “I had to go back out, Joel. You would have argued with me and I can’t be afraid and useless forever.”

“Useless,” he scoffs and unspools a length of bandage. “You don’t know nothin’ about that.” 

“Joel,” you say softly, exasperated. “Baby, you don’t know what it was like that day. I thought you were already dead.” Your voice trembles and you have to swallow harshly before you can continue. “Helpless and useless doesn’t even begin to cover what I felt. What I still feel.” You shake your head and cup your fingers around his. “I dream about it every single night and I still don’t really remember what happened. That scares me a lot.” 

He slides his thumb along the gauze, your eyes wide and worried when he meets them.“I’ll never be who I was, sweetheart.” His voice sounds mournful to his own ears. 

“You’re exactly the same man, Joel. I’m just happy you’re here and alive and you’re worried you aren’t alive the right damn way.” You shake your head. “I can’t ask for much more than what I have. Than what we do. Me and you. Ellie back in our life. A home. Food. Family. You,” you touch his jaw and smile. “Still here. Still taking care of me.” 

There’s a lump in his throat, hard as a stone. “Yep.” He coughs in an attempt to clear his voice but he sounds just as wrecked when he speaks. “Patrol musta been real good to y’today.”

You just laugh, and the sound of it is wet. “Yeah. It was. I thought it would be terrible but I missed it.” 

“I know you did.” 

“You should come on a ride with me sometime,” you say slyly. “I bet it’d feel good to be back in the saddle. You’ve always been a good shot from the back of a horse.”

He has. 

Maybe he should. 

💞 If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

[thefiresontheheight]

"...while these [corporate re-education] programs have shown evidence of marginal positive effects (Meredithe et al.) and continue to be employed (Kine-Veck), they ultimately run into the same limitations as A.I. on interstellar hauls infallibly loyal to those possessing their security codes. That is, once outside effective communication distance companies cannot rely on any positive reinforcement. For this reason, it has been suggested that re-education instead focus on loyalty to the rest of the crew, rather than loyalty to the company." - A Proposal for Use of Romantic/Sexual Re-education on Interstellar Haul Crews, Delivered to the Board of VeckQwenZemco on New Armstrong, Mars, 2998 CE. *** The divorce come down and turn around was brutal. One moment your brain and biochemistry and hormones, all carefully wired by the re-education modules, make you fully believe that you have long been in a deep, committed, passionate relationship with the six to eight other people on the haul. You look at them and even though you know you'll only spend a few weeks of subjective time with them, maybe a month or two on a longer job, only a brief window out of cryo and not lagged by relativity, even though you know what you gave the company your written consent to do, your brain still loves them. Then you pull into orbit over Eridiani, or Luna, or wherever, you probably bang one last time, say your tearful goodbyes, and spend the next few weeks crying like you just lost the love of your life as the chemicals wash out and the deprogramming modules hit. The moment is over. But time spent on a company station meant time wracking up debt for oxygen, water, food. So, still on the come down, Reade looked for a course, signed the wavers, gave her consent, grabbed the meager belongings that had gotten her through seven of these hauls, now dating from over forty years ago given the time lost to cryo and near-light travel. File down to concourse-E. Begin again. "Here for the haul?" the skinny low-g kid of her in the line said. "Um, VeckGreenQwenZemco 3043-28897?" Reade sized them up. New kid. First haul. She could smell it on them. In a few hours she'd probably love them and have her brain inventing all sorts of bullshit justifications for the neurochemical feelings the company would induce in her in order to improve team cohesion and morale trillions of miles away from anyone else. In a few hours she'd love them for their optimism, their smile, their cheery attitude and all the questions. But not yet. Right now, still awash in the last break up, Reade savored the simple joy of being a miserable bitch. "Kid," she said, with a malicious grin, "you're gonna love me in a bit. But you're still gonna remember this so I want you to get a good earful of it before the re-education. I'm fucking hate you and hate that I have to do this and if I could I'd throw you out a fucking airlock." She pulled her headphones on and cranked the volume. It hurt, in her chest, and the least she could do was make someone else hurt with her. That freedom, at least, she had for a few more minutes.

#my writing #science fiction #original fiction

[ultfreakme]

Theres so much beautiful angst that can be written about clark and jon's relationship.

Clark losing his 10 yr old son only to find out that son is now 17. All the time and memoires that are now lost and can't be made.

Jon being traumatized by clark's from other universes. They have the same name as his father, wear the same symbol as his father, have the face face as him.

Jon waiting for his clark to save him but he never came.

Do you think Jon ever looks at his fathers face and sees the other clarks and not his father. Do you think he sometimes hates looking at his face because it's the same face that hurt him? Do you think he sometimes hates the symbol of his chest?

Gosh Clark not knowing how to react to and treat Jon is actually canon and he does miss it all, it's so obvious in the way he treats Otho and Osul. Clark loves Jon, he does, but it just isn't enough to cross this gap, this failure on his behalf to protect his son. Osul was about to get taken away in Action Comics and Clark gets furious because he let it happen once, he isn't letting it happen again.

Action Comics #1048

I used to headcanon that maybe Jon looked at the 'U' on Ultraman's chest to keep reminding himself that it isn't his dad, but there are some things you can't stop and memories like that are going to affect him no matter what. I don't get WHY they aren't letting Jon be traumatized, because HE IS. He's feeling alone and trying to reconnect in Action Comics and even in SOKE his motivations for his carefulness, and reuniting the flaming guy(Lachlan) with his family was about how he never wants anyone to be in his situation. I wish we got an entire arc focused on him processing, like let him express without being held to the impossible standard of Superman.

It's getting addressed as like a sub-sub plot in AC. He's trying to reconnect to Clark on his terms, in the ways they used to bond, but Clark and Lois aren't telling him anything clearly and are too busy for him. They're accomodating to the twins' trauma so they KNOW how to handle this but with Jon??? We never see anything more than "I'm so sorry that happened to you sweetie I bet it sucked you're so strong" and that's it. He's older but he's still seventeen. He's a teenager!

(painful, painful exhibits of Jon's discomfort and his attempts to go with Clois's flow)

I just, please check out axtion comics #1054 because Jon's a mess when the twins get kidnapped, and he's blaming himself saying it simply has to be him who rescues them because they got taken when they were under his care(clois left him to babysit them), and it's clearly because he's got this trauma, this mistrust and guilt and fear from the time he was under someone's care, waited for them to save him but they didn't come.

Also gosh Jon waiting to be rescued. It's clear he waited, and at some point he lost hope his dad's going to save him because then he started hoping for Nightwing. When he was 10, he idolized clark, saw him as infallible but he, at some point in the volcano, lost that trust in him.

I kinda do think Jon has some kind of....resentment, some negative feeling towards clark he can never express because he thinks he's the problem for his strained relationship with Clark, my heart breaks for him. He associates(or associated) being Superman with Clark not being around, he's got a complicated relationship with the 'S' because he's been considered an abomination, capable of future evil, a threat, and a danger. He doesn't want to be Superman with the same kind of passion as he did when he was 10. Now he's very careful with the title, and understands that people can fear it.

Which is why I think Jon alone having a changed 'S' is because perhaps, he's trying to stray further away from that image, and make it something his own. Hell, he's wearing black and red in 3/4 comics he appears in, instead of blue and red. Like he's distancing himself without really cutting off. And about seeing his own face, man it must be strange to go seven years without looking at yourself and finding a stranger in the mirror. It's like he can never, ever escape the marks the volcano and the torture left on him in any way.

Jon is such a tragic character and I really wish people would lean into it and explore that.

#jon kent #superman #superboy #riki asks #superman son of kal el #action comics #warworld saga #jonathan kent #clark kent #jon el #jonathan samuel kent #adventures of superman jon kent #aosjk #soke

[caatws]

If anyone got mad at you for calling Rocket a Raccoon they're not even worth taking seriously. Part of his arc was accepting he is in fact a Raccoon. How are people who supposedly love him missing that? He literally says at one point that his name is Rocket Raccoon.

Maybe it's because I've never been a huge Gunn fanatic the way some guardians fans are but I'm not understanding why people can't see he's not perfect or infallible when it comes to his writing. Gamora's called a green whore in vol 1 for no good reason. There's a whole running gag about Mantis being ugly in vol 2 that isn't all that funny or respectful to her character. Drax has his intelligence mocked for laughs in vol 3. I saw mcu fans up in arms about the Russo's making Thor a joke because of his drinking in EG but they think Gunn's writing is perfect. Many people were livid Natasha didn't get a funeral and only had her team talk once by the lake after she died. Gamora got no funeral, no moment of any kind from her team and nobody but Peter is sad she died. I love gotg but it's delusional to act like that's not a flaw.

I question if people watched vol 1 and 2 or IW before Gamora died. She had the second largest amount of screen time in all 3 movies. In vol 3 she has less screentime than all the main characters. In vol 1 and 2 she's the female lead with decent influence on the story. In vol 3 she's a side character with minimal development and her arc is understanding why her murdered counterpart had a relationship with Peter. In vol 1 the characters grow to care about her and this continues in vol 2 with multiple relationships built up. In vol 3 only Peter cares about 2018 Gamora and only Nebula cares about 2014 Gamora. In vol 1 and 2 Gamora was recognized as a prominent member of the Guardians of the Galaxy and you could find her included in a solid amount of merch as time went on. In vol 3 she's not made a member of the team, after the movie a lot of people don't consider her a hero and trying to find merch for her is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

This is only some of the issues and it's more than enough evidence Gamora's writing is not anywhere near the level it once was and her character is far less important in vol 3 than any other movie she's appeared in. If people want to argue with you they're lying through their teeth. Stay strong my friend!

Part of his arc was accepting he is in fact a Raccoon.

no bc literally i couldn't stop thinking abt this lmfaoooo

but yeah literally, gunn's writing when it came to the female and poc characters has always been....well it's Something. and it culminated in gamora's total demotion from co-lead of the franchise to estranged supporting character in vol 3.

i think what ppl are not realizing is that i would still have this same critique had any of the other characters esp the white and/or male ones had taken center stage like rocket did in vol 3 because of what had happened to gamora in iw/eg. like that was something that needed to be fixed or at the very least Addressed in some way, and whether it was rocket or drax or kraglin or whoever taking the lead in vol 3, i still would've been disappointed and frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement of the events of iw/eg (for Everyone too, not even with just what happened to gamora) and the lack of effort to at least give gamora her family back. and idk how many times i have to keep saying it, but just bc something is made to be in character doesn't make it a good story or ending for the character. like if gunn had written some grand tale where rocket just fucked off and left the gotg but made it in character would all these ppl be happy with that? doubt it!

#ty for this anon <333 #madibox

[quietly-by-myself]

for emery: 👕🚪😒👀

you tagged it for emery but i included some bonus ones! just ignore the below if you don't feel like em

for myndill: 🏷️🏃😒

for cassius: 🔒🏷️😒

For these asks! Also tagging the creator @emmettnet because he wanted to be.

CW: intimate/creepy whumper, nudity, implied noncon, victim blaming, possessive whumper, branding, tuberculosis, major character death (Cassius/whumper), lab whump

For Emery:

👕 - Is your Whumpee only allowed to wear what you choose? If so, what do you normally choose?

Emery looks at you with an unwavering smile. "Well, of course. He has nothing of his own." Emery chuckles a bit. "Nothing. Clothes are just an extra step. When he's in the basement, I prefer he doesn't wear anything. If I take him upstairs, I'll give him a shirt. He's so thin my shirts are like dresses on him, anyway. Sometimes, I have guests over. Then I'll give him a dress shirt and some pants. He's cute in that and everything, but he's cuter begging."

🚪 - Is your Whumpee allowed any sort of privacy?

"He's got the whole basement to himself. I don't monitor him down there or anything. And it's not like I'm down there all the time." Emery shrugs a bit. "I'm sure he listens to me."

😒 - What makes you jealous?

"I think what makes me jealous is pretty normal." He waves his hand a bit while he talks. "You know, I don't like other people touching Sacha. I don't like it when their gazes linger too long. Once, one of my men bruised him. Both of them paid dearly for that." Emery's smile turns into a smirk. "He's mine. If someone tries to act like he isn't supposed to do exactly what I tell him to, they'll have hell to pay."

👀 - What caught your attention about Whumpee?

Emery thinks about the question for a while. "He smelled like a beach. Not one of those ocean ones, but a freshwater one. Like the smell of the lake had been tattooed in his skin." He goes quiet again. "He was new. Untouched. No other man had his mark on him. He was thought dead, too, which is always more convenient for men in my position. But it was his smell and his attitude. He carries the silent ferocity of water. It's exactly what made him so much fun to break."

For Myndill:

🏷️ - Does your Whumpee have any markings that make it clear who they belong to? (Ex: tattoos, brands, scars, etc.)

"Cassius has a brand." King Myndill looks down at his glass of wine. "Of course he has scars, but I think my brand is the prettiest thing on him."

🏃 - What would you do if your Whumpee ever tried to leave you? Or what have you done if they’ve already tried?

King Myndill shrugged. "Cassius is gone now. From what Hakon tells me, he's dying of consumption. It suits him, in all honesty. It was easier to let him go after breaking him. He'll die with the memory that he wasn't infallible, which is infinitely more satisfying than keeping him until the consumption kills him."

😒 - What makes you jealous?

"Not much." King Myndill shrugs. "With Cassius, I don't mind sharing with Hakon. Sometimes when Hakon got the better of him, I was envious, but certainly not jealous."

For Cassius:

🔒 - Do you need to restrain your Whumpee at all?

"Sometimes, when Elijah is getting too feisty for my liking." Cassius thought for a moment. "He's also never still for lab work or punishments. I always have to restrain him for that."

🏷️ - Does your Whumpee have any markings that make it clear who they belong to? (Ex: tattoos, brands, scars, etc.)

"That's not my thing." Cassius wrinkled his nose. "Everyone knows he belongs to me where I am. Why should I mark him? It would just identify me if I have to release him."

😒 - What makes you jealous?

"With Elijah? Not much." Cassius shrugs. "When people get ahead of me, though, I hate them. When someone makes Elijah happier than I make him, I hate them, too. So maybe I get jealous when people are kind to him. It's more of a working relationship we have going on."

#shadow by my fireplace #emery #the dark side of the sun #cassius #king myndill #whump #whump writing #whumpblr #cw are above #possessive whumper asks

[squidkidnerd]

Operation Atlantis Notes - "An Inkling of the Past" (chapter 9)

Oh boy, this was a chapter. What can I say, this is basically like the semifinale of part 1. I've been pretty excited to get to this chapter, because it's the first time the darker elements I've been teasing since the beginning really come into focus. So, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I did writing it. And hey, I'm really on a roll now! I only posted last chapter a little over a month ago!

Now, I say I enjoyed this chapter, but really all the scenes got a major rewrite except for the turfing scene. That's okay, though, because I think my first draft was kinda just me writing to get it all out and hey. You can't edit a blank page. It's just interesting, because I usually finish my draft and send it right off to my betas, but this time I did some rewriting first. But, hey, it's here now.

The Title: Woohoo, the first time I'm actually talking about the titles! Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I really like chapter titles. They add such flavor and character to a fic that I adore. For Operation Atlantis, it's hard to pin down what they actually represent as a whole, but it's a... certain vibe, for sure. This one is one of my favorites because of the double meaning ("inkling" as a hint but also "inkling" as in a literal inkling). Splatoon loves it puns and double meanings, so I'm glad I got to honor the series and put one here.

Opening poem: So... if you read this and were like "Hey, this seems familiar..." that's because it is. It is literally a mem cake poem from OE copy and pasted straight from the wiki. The reason for this is, well, I simply couldn't write anything better. It so perfectly encapsulates the themes of this chapter and I LOVE the line "But is our fate to spray this hate?" It so perfectly encapsulates Three and Eight and why their ship is so compelling to me. Because, well, is it? Are the destined to be like Cuttlefish, Octavio, and countless other octolings and inklings and repeat the cycle of the past? Or, can they break free from it? Only time will tell...

The Nightmare™: This scene was fun to write. I really enjoyed referencing Inner Agent 3, and timing the beats of the fight to Calamari Inkantation worked really well. I think it's interesting, because the Inkantation has become a very clear ongoing symbol by now. In most cases it represents freedom and hope, but here, it's almost menacing. Up until this point, Eight has remained very separated from the Octarians vs. Inklings conflict that drove her down to Atlantis in the first place—she's read about it, but reading about something is nowhere near the same from directly experiencing it herself. She learns that brutally well in this chapter.

Flawed mentor figures: This is something I've quite enjoyed exploring in Operation Atlantis as a whole. Oftentimes in media, mentors seem infallible to their mentees, being infinitely wiser and more experienced. However, in both these scenes with Eight and Iso Padre as well as Three and Cuttlefish (well, more so the Three and Cuttlefish scene later on, but), we see that neither of them are perfect at all. Both, actually, make a similar mistake—they ignore Three and Eight's feelings. For Iso Padre, it's definitely less intentional, but still. Just something interesting I wanted to point out.

Three and Viktor: Oh look, it's Viktor! I gotta admit, this scene is here purely for future plot reasons and not much else. At least I got to introduce Three to Brellas? Idk. Also, more exploration of Three using turf as a coping mechanism! It makes sense, you know, because it's familiar to her in a place where everything else is unfamiliar. So, yeah.

The Incident™: Oh boy. This scene is something we've been building up to for a while, starting all the way back in chapter 6... maybe even earlier. And I've gotta be honest, it perfectly encapsulates Three and Eight's relationship at this point at the story. They're friends, but both of them are ignoring and even refusing to acknowledge the dirty laundry between them... but the thing about dirty laundry is you have to wash it or else it'll start to stink. And that's exactly what happens here. Eight might not realize it, but deep down there's a part of her that's scared of Three. And Three well... she's a scary person to Eight. Both of them are forced to realize this. I also really enjoyed calling back to the first scene with the ink colors and also with Eight's hands—in the first scene, she hallucinates that there's blood and orange ink on them, and here, there actually is. Cool.

"She's not my enemy": This was a satisfying scene to write. Three's done a lot of growing in the past 9 chapters, from assuming all octolings are her enemies to realizing there's a bigger threat and then... now, this. She already told Eight this in chapter 8, but what makes so special here is that she's telling it to Cuttlefish, the man who instilled that idea in her in the first place. It's the first time she's telling him "No, you're wrong." So, for that reason, I like this scene. Three is finally calling him out on his bullshit! Somewhat! As soon as Cuttlefish (basically) threatens her, she backs down because well, she's scared that he might end up being right. But still, I'm proud of you, bestie. One step at a time.

"Do you know what it feels like to forget?": Another banger of a scene, this time from Eight. And well... what is there to say about this? We've been building up to it since the beginning. So far, Eight's arc has all been about finding her identity and asserting herself as a person, and well... here's the ultimate form of that. She's making a choice not for anyone else but herself. How will it go? We'll just have to see next chapter!

So yeah. To close out, I just want to mention something briefly about Side Order and its lore about sanitization and Eight's amnesia: I'm ignoring it. It's not canon to this AU. I've thought up something different a long time ago, and this already isn't canon compliant so I'm not changing it. Just wanted to clear that up officially.

Anyways... chapter 9! I can't believe we're here, honestly. Working on this fic over the past year or two has been rough, but I'm trucking along slowly but surely. Speaking of slowly but surely... after chapter 10, this fic will be going on hiatus. This is for several reason, the most major of which is that I'm burnt out and need to regain my motivation by working on other things. Those other "things" include Side Order fics! Yay! But rest assured, I will return to Operation Atlantis eventually. I really want to finish this story, and that's exactly why I'm going to take this hiatus. The last thing I want is to become so burnt out that I don't even want to continue anymore. So yeah. The hiatus doesn't have a set length yet, but probably to the end of the summer, if not longer. Not sure yet. But rest assured, neither me nor this fic is going anywhere!

And that's all. Happy Springfest!

#ari's updates #writing notes #operation atlantis writing notes #chapter 9

[rennyji]

stereotypical Christians

Christians like my parents really put me off from Christianity.

To my dad's credit, day in and day out, for more than a decade, he sits in our living room, morning and night, and prays aloud in his dialect.

But the things he asks or says, are so...textbook style...

The biggest problem with the stereotypical Christian is that they think God will zap away problems, in place of the individual doing the work themselves.

God helps those who help themselves. Then there's the other expression: You do your part, and God will take care of the rest.

An example from school days? You want to do well on a test. Studying for the test is your part. Maybe getting a good night of sleep or drinking coffee/eating a snack, to help you study is another aspect of doing your part. Where God does the rest? He ensures the test is not something ridiculous you cannot handle, maybe He'll work some extra credit into the test through your teacher, maybe He'll put your teacher in a good mood to be an easy grader.

My dad and me barely talk. Whenever we do talk, we get into an argument. There are language barriers. There is something screwing with his neurotransmitters in not being at their optimal. There are his high morals. There's the fact that he grew up in a different time and place/culture & country. He has a fixation that his role in our relationship is to advise, and that his advice is always right. What he doesn't realize is that No one is perfect, but my dad still thinks his role as a father, makes him infallible, regardless of what the topic is. How do you deal with that? It sounds like every typical dad, but with my dad, I think there's genuinely some screws loose in his head, where this mentality is not expressing correctly.

What does my dad ask aloud in prayer, while I'm sitting on a massage chair in the same room? (yes, a weird setting, context, setup...moving on...)

My dad asks that "make Renny a new believer (what does that mean?), make him into someone who honors and respects his parents (implying I don't and that I'm just randomly lashing out vs. anger/frustration - ***not even sure how I came up with this word lashing out - ***probably from mind controlling troubled kids show to push me in their agenda- when my dad is in fact, acting stupidly), make Renny stop saying nasty language to me when I advise him (implying he's not getting why I'm getting angry at his superficial advice)...

And he has the poor sense of judgement to say all this aloud, while I'm sitting in the same room, happening to do something different...

It makes me wonder at times, is he praying for show? Is he doing his own little bit of mind control? It just seems wrong to even assume this about someone who sits there morning and night for 10+ years...But then, he's using prayer as an excuse to not listen to his son, not talk to his son, not understand his son's problems and actively try to help him/console him...I cannot help but wonder if he's using prayer, said aloud, to make him come off as a saint, while outside of prayer, constantly putting me on the spot with what he thinks as sinful or plain wrong. For one thing, in that regard, my dad thinks my snacking with chips and gummy bears is sinful. This is despite 36 years of no diabetes and still getting by. He's not correcting his perception and mindlessly asks God to make Renny stop buying things or stop eating unhealthy foods. What is it to him or me or anyone, whether I eat gummy bears? I don't care about my size - if anything I look like a hulk. If some horny white woman in the orchestrator's want me thinner, not even in their wildest dreams would I consider them. But going back to my dad, The things this man focuses on are so "out there", it's disturbing he's even thinking it when I'm going through mind control/mind reading.

[undiscovered-horizon]

"Moving houses" - Yandere!Billy Russo x Reader

[TW: obsessive behavior/yandere trope + an allusion to sexual assault]

SUMMARY: [continuation to 'There's something in the shadows'] Sometime after Diane breaks things off with you, and you think your life is back on track, another calamity decides to happen. When your landlord suddenly decides to raise your rent way above what you can afford, Billy Russo is more than ready to help. His plan might just be infallible.

[Continuation: 'The art of deception']

Author's note: The people have spoken. This is long overdue.

Taglist: @tnrthings

"You alright there, princess?" He noticed how absentminded you have been throughout lunch, mixing your poke bowl with disinterest. Even the avocado slices were left untouched when he knew it was the first thing you ate out of the dish. Billy had asked you to lunch so many times it quickly became a habit that the two of you met every day, same hour and same place.

"I'll have to move out," you murmured while stabbing the innocent rice dish with your spoon. "My landlord raised the rent and now I can't afford my condo. I have barely two weeks to find a new place."

Billy was a reasonably good actor for a former soldier, something he probably picked up being a businessman, and so it was quite easy for him to restrain the excited smile that was begging to come out, to express his joy at the turn of events - everything was going his way.

How much a simple phone call can do!

"So what you gon' do?" he asked in a worried tone (really, where did he learn such convincing acting?). Billy knew very well what you were going to do, sooner or later. Failure was not an option, not to him.

"I dunno," you stirred your lunch with disinterest. "A few weeks ago I would have immediately called Diane, you know? Damn, I would even be happy for a prolonged sleepover with her." You sighed heavily. Billy tightened his grip on the fork he was holding, suddenly worried that the conversation was starting to derail from what he planned. "Now that I'm telling you this, I remembered that I run to Ashton yesterday. He started to ask whether Diane and I were good? Apparently, she had been acting weird with everyone before, you know...Don't take it personally, Billy, because I really like you, a lot actually but I can't help feeling like everything is so much harder without Diane. I miss that girl."

Annoyed, Billy made a mental remark to make sure Ashton takes a longer leave from work or his mother needs emergency medical attention. That guy was definitely running his mouth a little too much. Along with those thoughts came a wave of red anger at your statement: you missed Diane? That wench that stood between him and you? That would surely dissuade you from engaging in this relationship? Or, perhaps, you simply weren't seeing it yet, your judgment maybe was still clouded by the affection you used to have towards Diane.

Yes, Billy thought to himself, she will see it soon enough. It was necessary.

"Maybe I could couch surf?" You were thinking out loud. "I probably don't even know that many people."

You really were trying his patience, although unknowingly. Couch surfing? He would never let you sleep on someone's couch, no matter how well you claimed to know its owner. Billy knew human nature pretty well and that made him sure that there was simply no one on God's green Earth he would trust with your safety. Those people on whose couches you would sleep, how could he be sure they had good intentions towards you? No, it was a dangerous gamble and if it was you the gamble was about, he wasn't taking any.

"You can stay at mine," he said in the most neutral tone he could muster, which was quite difficult: the sole thought of having you sleep at his apartment was making him beyond ecstatic.

"I can't do that Billy, you already do so much for me," you vaguely shook your head as you spoke, which he found charming. "I just don't have the heart to abuse your kindness."

"I want to help you out, sweetheart," he answered.

For a moment you fell silent, thinking about his offer. Billy's eyes were stuck to you, watching your face for any indication of your decision. He had spent plenty of time playing out all possible scenarios of this conversation and preparing for each outcome. Feeling sure of himself and his subjectively infallible plan, Billy was relaxed - whatever conclusion you should come to, he knew how to make you move in anyway.

"I promise to move out as soon as I sign a lease."

No, you won't. You won't even get to that stage.

"You really are a successful businessman," you said slowly as you looked around Billy's apartment. It was worthy of being on the cover of some interior design magazine. "Maybe I won't move out," you joked, which earned a soft chuckle from him. How blissful ignorance can be.

Little did you know, that's exactly what's going to happen.

"Take the bedroom, I can sleep on the couch," he offered.

"No, Billy, this is your house! I'm not kicking you out of your bed."

"And you're my guest. I'll be fine."

"Can I at least help with the chores? I don't want to feel like I'm leeching off of you."

Although his initial plan did not involve letting you do housework, your sudden request made Billy imagine you making dinner while he comes home from work, which in turn made him question the integrity of the said former plan. The pet name "princess" that he had given you wasn't just a show of affection but rather what his obsession made him treat you like and that meant that, by default, you weren't supposed to be involved in any type of work. But the sudden conjuration of the domestic picture made Billy change his mind almost immediately.

"Alright," he said as his imagination, unattended, began conjuring new images of a homely life with you. It's not like he hasn't thought of those moments before, no, they were on his mind daily but now that you were standing in his living room, slightly embarrassed, his domestic fantasies became more real than ever.

You falling asleep on him while watching a movie; you wearing only his t-shirt around the house; him bringing you coffee in the morning, while you're barely awake...the possibilities were endless.

Evening came and Billy was reading a memoir of some secret military platoon during World War 2. Your footsteps on the hardwood floor surprised him as he thought you were already asleep. He looked up from his book as he felt the couch dip under your weight. You were wearing just a sweatshirt and leggings ending above your knees. Billy inhaled sharply, momentarily having to fight a primal urge to just take you. He was bigger, stronger than you, he could easily do it.

"Sorry for interrupting," you began in a sheepish voice. You placed a glass of whiskey he hasn't noticed before right in front of him. "But I really wanted to thank you before calling it a day. It means a lot to me that you're letting me stay, although you are a bit throwing me for a loop when you're already doing so much for me and want nothing in return...I don't know if I can ever pay you back, Billy."

"I don't want you to," he answered in a low voice. "I'm just glad I can help you out, princess."

You looked away for a moment, still feeling embarrassed about the entire situation. Billy's eyes remained glued to you, devouring the image of you being in his house, wearing pajamas and looking, to some degree, comfortable. Homely.

"Right, I should be going to sleep," you said quietly as you got up from the couch. "Gotta get me out of your hair first thing in the morning, right?"

Billy didn't answer. Instead, he smiled to himself, knowing that you're not getting out of his hair anytime soon, if ever. Now he just had to devise a plan to share his bed with you. Maybe he'll 'get drunk and accidentally fall asleep on the bed' one night?

#billy russo x reader #billy russo #scenario #imagine #marvel #fanfic #fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #marvel imagine #marvel scenario #the punisher #punisher #netflix punisher #punisher imagine #punisher x reader #punisher x you #billy russo x you #yandere!billy russo #dark!billy russo #dark billy russo #the punisher imagine #billy russo imagine #billy russo x female reader #billy russo fanfic #billy russo scenario #the punisher x reader #the punisher fanfiction #the punisher fanfic #the punisher scenario

[niicevibe]

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐨𝐬𝐮𝐤𝐞 + 𝐘/𝐍 𝐇𝐂𝐬

Hello again, everyone. I've come to you on this fine day with some headcanons for Sōsuke Aizen. I hope the things I provide to you on this god-like specimen don't disappoint; however, you'll be disappointed.

I... don't know why his was so hard to write for considering I simped for this man for a majority of the 2010s... so this is a little shorter than I'd wanted and I apologize.

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: manipulation, "subtle" emotional abuse; a mention of Stockholm Syndrome; a mention of n/sfw (kind of) for the sake of explanation.

𝐇𝐂 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐌𝐇𝐀, 𝐉𝐉𝐊, 𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡, 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐨, 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞 + 𝐂𝐒𝐌 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 (𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦…)

I can make an easy comparison and simply say that Sōsuke Aizen is like The Joker, but he's so much more than a man that wears clown makeup all the time. I won't even put this lightly because we all know how manipulative this man is -- manipulative, and hot.

And he's well-aware that you think that he is. Absolutely nothing gets by him and it never has. He probably knew you'd be attracted to him before you even knew. He's not very tied to his emotions, and in fact, he'll utilize them like a weapon because it's easier for him that way. But while this is the case, he wouldn't involve himself with someone unless you both shared similar ideologies.

Dare I say, he could even be demi-romantic and demi-sexual. I wouldn't doubt it.

He is not a man who would tolerate a weak partner, not that he'd be likely to ever consider you equals, but you'll need to at least be on a certain level that he can't consider you less than some sort of insect. There's a chance that any semblance of a relationship might turn out to be one-sided, or that you would simply exist for him as a form of amusement.

He is one hundred percent a sapiosexual -- someone who finds intelligence highly attractive.

We know that he's a deep down kind of person when it comes to his true emotions. He's good at hiding what he's truly thinking and feeling until he becomes painfully honest about them, something that's a rare feat, however, if you're around, he might just be a little less jaded about things. Maybe.

He's likely allowed you into his life as some kind of cover story, something to make blending in to his surrounding society more doable -- He doesn't need easier, not at all. He's planned things so far ahead into the future that he knows it's foolproof.

For example: Where was "he" when the Hollowfication events to place? With you, of course... working on tasks together...

It's hard to say whether Sōsuke would use his Kyōka Suigetsu on you, but he'd be that untrusting, I'm sure, so he'd hypnotize you anyway, just in case you'd even think about betraying him. Would he make it known to you that he's done it? Definitely. He's not going to bother hiding it, and he hangs it over your head like a pendulum.

You won't be an exception to his manipulation tactics. If Sōsuke wants something out of you, there's no method he won't use in order to get what he wants. He has no shame the attempt, either.

He's still, quite obviously, human. Soul Reapers are always so worried about their mortality; their infallibility; their egos drive them, fuels their souls. Sōsuke would argue this to his death, that he could never be so weak, that even being a Soul Reaper is so below him. But you've seen him through it all, through his sudden decision to enact such an insane plan, to seeing things to near-fruition. You know the truth.

Sōsuke isn't someone who desires to be vulnerable -- not in battle, not in any sort of a relationship. It's not in the cards, and it's not something he's planned for from a decade ago. The fact that he's decidedly candid with you? It's one of the biggest surprises of your life.

But you're so whipped by him that you'll take what you can get.

Though maybe it's even Stockholm Syndrome and not just "whipped" because, well, he's Sōsuke Aizen.

He still has a major superiority complex, and that won't go away any time soon. There's a high chance that he'll end up talking down to you if you decide to stick around.

If any affection that comes from the man happens to be genuine, you'll find him to be quite possessive. He's not a man of jealousy, nor will he ever be, but you'll be his, an object, a possession. Sōsuke won't ever make it so obvious that you are an object to him because he's just so charming.

You're one of the few people to use his first name rather than calling him "Aizen". Saying "Sōsuke" at him invokes a sensation of being equals, and he knows that's why you say his first name. He allows it, keeping you on the edge of feeling some kind of control.

The whole situation he's concocted might stress you out a little. Whether you're on the side of the Soul Society or on Aizen's side, you know there won't be a great outcome and so for the majority of the war, you try your best to remain a neutral party, for the sake of things.

Don't bother being overly emotional around Sōsuke; he genuinely won't bother to care of your feelings. If they happen to come out around him, he's likely to ignore them. You shouldn't bother seeking emotional validation from Sōsuke, either; you just won't get it.

You have to be something of a constant interest to him, otherwise you won't even be in his sights. He wouldn't be an extremely passionate partner, with you initiating most of the interactions between you two. And, intimacy is rare. Seriously, expect very little of it.

Shunsui will allow short visits to Sōsuke during his stay in Muken, something that amuses the imprisoned man greatly -- Why bother? Seriously. He'd find it laughable whenever you show up, but you'll still give him updates on the Seireitei and its condition. But he did once call it his Soul Society. You're doing him an unnecessary kindness.

#sosuke aizen x reader #aizen sosuke x reader #sosuke aizen x y/n #aizen sosuke x y/n #sosuke aizen x yn #aizen sosuke x yn #bleach aizen #aizen x y/n #aizen x yn #aizen headcanons #aizen sosuke headcanons #aizen hcs #sosuke aizen hcs #aizen sosuke hcs #bleach headcanons #bleach hcs #🧺: bleach #✔: rated n for real nice

[shih-coulda-had-it]

I haven't pelted you in a few days so, Reasons they pretend to have a relationship: 03. asshole ex that Gran can't admit he still loves, combined with 27. Messy public breakup, Nana or En claims to be with Gran.

okay kitten i need you to remember that we Totally Agreed that musharino (mushahiko?) exes was on the table. and disclaimer, the nanahiko needs like 500 more words to really be explicit, but i made a promise to myself that i'd stick to less than 1k ficlets.

03. "my ex is an asshole, and I really don't want them to think I'm still in love." + 27. "i had a really ugly, public break-up at the office, so a week later, you start telling people that we're together so people will stop looking at me with sad eyes" | musharino (exes), nanahiko (implied) | wc: ~980

This one, I think, could use a summary blurb.

Sorahiko’s a U.A. teacher who has literally just lost all his hard-won reputation as an infallible pro-hero because Yoroi Musha ended their relationship in front of all the staff and students, but thank GOD (sarcastic) that Toshinori’s there to tattle to Nana.

//

There is truly one thing worse than Recovery Girl’s lectures about why Gran Torino shouldn’t be terrorizing his students and ricocheting off surfaces like his body was rubber instead of flesh: Recovery Girl expressing concern over his emotional wellbeing.

“Listen, Torino,” she sighs, after trapping him in her office over a (totally overblown) fractured rib. “You don’t just break up with somebody in front of the school gates. That’s like, some serious drama. Enraptured audience included.”

“It wasn’t,” he bites out, “serious.”

“Again, if that was true, Yoroi Musha wouldn’t have staged… that…”

Sorahiko feels his lip curl in distaste over the memory. The initial surprise of seeing Yamamoto’s ornate gear and red cloak standing tall at the U.A. gates; the quiet happy flutter of, ‘He’s visiting where I work!’, in his stomach while he hastily wrapped up the final period.

And when he’d met Yamamoto below, Sorahiko had been given a rude wake-up call.

//

“I don’t think this relationship is working,” said Yamamoto carelessly. There’s a sense that he’s rehearsed this, and there’s also no indication of remorse. “You need to move out by Monday, Gran Torino.”

“Wait,” said Sorahiko. “What?”

As the heavily-armored pro-hero surveyed U.A. with a clinical eye, Sorahiko scrambled to make sense of where he steered wrong. Yes, he’d known that Yamamoto was younger--a good deal younger, and better off, financially--but Sorahiko wasn’t being some--parasite--

Maybe he shouldn’t have moved in. He wasn’t the best roommate; he supposed he wasn’t even that good of a bedmate, either. Too absent.

“--just goes to show, that it already feels like we’re having a long-distance relationship,” Yamamoto continued, “and now that my career is poised to reach a wider demographic, I think it’d be best to part ways.”

“A wider demographic,” he echoed. He could hear the student body in the distance, chattering, stomping, laughing.

“Yoroi Musha is catching the eyes of those who appreciate our country’s history. MEXT’s own Agency for Cultural Affairs is promising to sponsor my next set of armor.”

“That’s--nice. Congratulations.”

“So,” Yamamoto said patiently, yet in a severe tone that he must have picked up from Sorahiko, “the image I need to present must be honorable. I have learned much from you, Gran Torino, but my path is not yours.”

Every word sounded so articulated, and apparently that translated to reasonable, because the bright orange eyes looked like they were expecting a response. An acceptance? Sorahiko struggled to put together an answer that wasn’t an expletive-laced rant.

“I can’t just move out by Monday,” Sorahiko finally said. Even if Shimura was willing to host him on her couch for a month while he hunted for a studio, the last-minute nature of this situation struck him as wrong.

“It’s not as though you own much.”

Well, that stung. Sorahiko bared his teeth at Yamamoto; his hackles rose; the students at the forefront of the pack had stifled their conversations into a gossipy murmur. It wasn’t like Yoroi Musha and Gran Torino were indistinguishable from other adults.

“Where does your salary even go? You’re a pro-hero and employed by U.A., so I imagine you’ve socked away enough money to not need mine.”

“Be quiet,” he hissed.

The money went to the Sky High agency’s rent; it also went towards Toshinori’s tuition. Shimura took care of the civilians’ pay, and she housed and fed Toshinori.

He’d gotten too comfortable with Yamamoto.

Quickly, so quickly it left Gran Torino himself with whiplash, Yoroi Musha’s mood flipped. “Why should I?” he demanded, the severity of his tone gaining a touch of wounded authority. His volume increased too. “Am I some dirty secret to be cultivated on the side? I provide you a home, with all that entails, and my love, for all the good it’s done me!”

Love? Sorahiko wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

He gritted his teeth as Yamamoto elaborated on all the G-rated ways Sorahiko had failed to reciprocate (because God knew all the ways Sorahiko had debauched himself for this arrogant asshole).

Humiliation settled rather firmly on Sorahiko’s shoulders as Yoroi Musha declared himself ruined for future loves, vowing chastity and a renewed passion for heroics: the purest ideal there was to have in this crumbling society.

And everybody clapped.

//

The student body’s grapevine flourishes; most of them believe the surface-level bullshit Yoroi Musha had spouted, if only because Gran Torino had gotten himself on their shitlist. On the other hand, Sorahiko’s colleagues eye him with nauseating pity.

Recovery Girl is the first to ask delicate questions; Principal Shi is the next to pry, but Sorahiko doesn’t mind her interrogation as much.

Easier to answer whether or not he’ll be distracted (nope) or singled out by tabloids (nah; Yoroi Musha isn’t that interesting of a subject to interview), compared to Toshinori’s single query made a week later: “Are you gonna tell oshishou that you had a boyfriend on the side?”

“She knew,” Sorahiko deflects.

“Okay, but does she know that you got dumped?”

“Nobody got dumped. Stop listening to gossip.”

Toshinori, being a judgmental sixteen year old, says, “It sure looked like being dumped to me, Torino-sensei.”

“What the hell do you know,” he grouses, and shoos Toshinori out of the classroom. Sorahiko needs, like, an hour and a half for the majority of U.A. to filter out of the grounds, and he’d like to spend it in some goddamned peace before embarking on patrols.

//

As it turns out, Toshinori knows enough to start trouble.

//

Shimura’s smile is tight with nerves, and attempting to be as reassuring as possible. This all makes sense, because for some reason, Shimura is in the teacher’s lounge, perched on the couch in civilian clothes with a steaming mug of coffee in hand (that’s his mug).

Sorahiko blinks, nonplussed.

“I knew it!” crows Sound-Off, lifting her own mug of honeyed tea in his direction. “I knew Yagi-kun was your son!”

#bnha #musharino #nanahiko #gran torino #torino sorahiko #yoroi musha #recovery girl #shuuzenji chiyo #yagi toshinori #all might #shih.txt #asks #proclaimersofheroes #behind the scenes: ym has already signed off on leaving his apt #(2) toshinori IMMEDIATELY tattled on torino to nana after their talk #(3) nana was going to leave it alone... maybe talk with gt later... #except toshinori pulled his trump card: torino looked SAD #and he was being SLANDERED by his classmates #and maybe a bit HARASSED by his colleagues for being UNFEELING #nana (recently widowed but don't ask me about kotarou yet): welp

[rainydayhues]

I think I'm finally (maybe?) starting to understand how Tumblr works! Reupping some of my overly long The Rookie/Chenford/season 4 thoughts below!

Hello! Long time anon lurker but it’s been a ~week~ and I am feeling the need to channel it somewhere! This is solely meant to be my thoughts/opinions on the Chenford discourse lately and to serve maybe as a point-counterpoint and offer an alternative perspective. Not meant to offend at all! I think we can agree the best way to fan out is multiple perspectives and thoughtful criticisms! I’ve enjoyed all the varying opinions over the past few weeks and thought I could maybe share some of mine below.

Season 4 in general - I’ve seen thoughts and agree that the show has seemingly struggled to find its footing and pacing in a post season rookie era. The mix of partners, wilder storylines, introduction of new characters (looking at you Bailey and Ashley!). I’m still enjoying the show but also taking it for what its meant to be - a lot of the writers/producers come from Castle which while a “dramedy” oft jumped the shark with crazy storylines and started to get a little hokey at times. I don't see this show as being a Chicago Fire/PD procedural so maybe that’s why this part hasn’t bothered me as much. I would still love to see some of the grittier storylines make a come back and a layer of serious/emotional character driven storylines. But as someone who watched Castle for years, none of this surprises me or bothers me much. I take the storylines with a grain of salt and instead choose to focus on the characters I love and ship.

Tim as a character - Lots of very valid analyses on his characterization and the changes he’s gone through. I will agree that I do miss a bit of the edge he had in earlier seasons but I’m not mad at the growth either! I will say, I don’t see him as some sort of flawless and infallible character. I think he struggled to find his footing as a new Sergeant, even just in roll call and the way he spoke. It’s something I think you see Grey keep an eye on. And yes, he over injects himself into the work and doesn’t know how to delegate at first, which Grey calls him on. He needs to learn how to positively reinforce his people as seen with the offering praise comment. I also think we have more to see when it comes to his relationship with his sister and father and I have a feeling he may still be learning to grow when it comes to those relationships. Basically, I’m not yet seeing him as some sort of pillar of morality BUT will agree that I do hope for some better storytelling for him.

Lucy as a character - Now this is a big one. I hear and see the critiques of her character serving as a plot device for the men or sidelines love interest who’s gotten to come across as immature. I struggle with this characterization. I think Lucy’s stayed pretty true to character:

1) She was always the hot shot, over achieving rookie who took a psych approach to a lot of her work. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she’d learn French to follow a case or petition to be Tim’s aide for a promotion. She had Angela take that case because the do-gooder in her couldn’t stand to see an elderly woman taken advantage of. She offers her perspective and friendship to Aaron and she’s still the warm and open person I believe we met in season 1. She was still tasked with solving the riddles and cracking the code proving her abilities to Grey once again.

2) Sergeant’s Aide -  I don’t think her “jealousy” in that moment was jealousy at not being picked by the teacher but moreso that she knew deep down that Tim liked working her, he admitted he’d miss riding with her. She knew he wanted to pick her and didn’t understand why he didn’t just say it (until he explains his reasoning). That whole interaction came across as “why don’t you just admit it, I know that you know we should be working together” to me.

3) The egg freezing - I know that this one upset some folks and again, not to take away from any of that. This is just my takeaway - as someone similarly aged to Lucy, I got her perspective. This is something that weighs on my mind but then I also think I’m too young to be thinking this way and that I have so much time ahead of me. I also understand asking for 1000 opinions and didn’t blame Tim for his pragmatic answer, it’s truly one way of looking at it. And yes, her mother was overly involved but also, mothers meddle! And from what we’ve seen of Mrs. Chen, moving in and reorganizing Lucy’s apt, offering unsolicited opinions on Lucy’s job, it seemed on brand. It’s not ideal but its something another character in Lucy’s life brought up. And my true takeaway here is that by the end, Lucy was empowered to make her own choices - she chose to get a consultation, not an appt to move forward but just something to get more information without commitment. Knowledge is power and therein lies her power/choice in my opinion.

4) Lucy’s arc - I genuinely think we haven’t gotten to Lucy’s arc yet. My guess is it’s more of something we’ll see in 4B, particularly with AH saying at the start of the season that Lucy still had more to learn about UC, etc. In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed getting to see her interact with Angela and Harper some more. Though, yes, if we’re going to pair Tim and Lucy together, let’s absolutely get some more shop content/convo!

- And finally, the Chenford of it all! Again, I see/hear/appreciate all the different takes on this. I think AH did not set out with the intention of this couple but chemistry and writing dictated that and took over. I’ve seen a lot of discourse on what the intentions of the writer’s room are when it comes to this pairing but I am firmly in the camp of it’s going to happen. I think that decision has been made and there’s no turning back. Yes, they’re absolutely slow rolling the rollout of it which I don’t appreciate. We don’t need more love interests but sure, fine, we can deal - if they give us the emotional depth of the Chenford friendship (which I still think we see/will get more of). AH reminds of me other show creators (DH from Chicago Fire) who never wants to commit outwardly to speaking or getting excited about a couple but I think at this point he’s on board. He says things like 3x14 was up for interpretation but then writes 4x01 with scenes of them thinking of each other from opposite rooms and of course Lucy’s “Tim please be careful”. It’s just unnecessary if there are no plans to circle back. Closing the loop and bookends are something I’ve seen and tracked often in procedural type shows like this (Castle and Bones to name a few) and I don’t think we got that episode and those scenes for no reason. I wish we’d get to a little bit more on that front and agree with many folks who have voiced that. But I really still believe this ship is sailing without question. I hope they are able to get us to a place of forward movement/emotional depth by the end of 4x09 and then continuing that (even if it’s with Ashley and fwiw, I don’t need it but if done well, I could see some good content coming out of it)

Anyways, overall, I probably have more thoughts but these were just the most immediate and if you made it this far, thank you and also, I'm sorry! I just had SO many thoughts and hoped to offer a bit of perspective from someone who’s actually enjoying the season so far and sees the light. Again, let’s all play nice and be respectful and share positive discourse! Let me know your thoughts if you’re so inclined!!

#chenford #the rookie #lucy chen #tim bradford

[camdentown-library]

For the emoji/name thing what about 🤬 and Dutch?

𝕺𝖍, 𝖆 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖋𝖊𝖑𝖑 𝖔𝖋𝖋 𝖆 𝖘𝖍𝖊𝖑𝖋, 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖎𝖙 𝖇𝖊?

Summary: Dutch seems like a stranger to you now and maybe it's time to take a step back.

Genre: angst

Pairing: Dutch Van der Linde x fem!reader

Strangers. That's what you and Dutch were now, two complete strangers.

After months of a rather passionate relationship, as if by magic you woke up from that disenchantment, as if that fascinating man had put a strange kind of spell on you.

How could you have been so stupid as to think that a man like Dutch Van der Linde could even remotely love you?

Did you not know, really, it was probably the fact that you were much younger than Dutch, he had more experience in life and knew how to turn the situation in his favor, on the other hand you were naive as a lamb, the perfect prey for a wolf like him.

The sun had now set on the field, and your miserable bag that collected all your luggage was now finished and prepared. Observing Dutch's tent once again, an annoying knot of resentment enveloped your throat: who knows how many jokes your teammates had made about your relationship?

You didn't need anyone's compassion, much less a fake act of do-gooding. You weren't a defenseless woman like others in the camp, you were able to defend yourself, know how to handle a gun and you certainly had more sense of direction than anyone around you. You would surely have started a better life again without any problem, perhaps on a ranch or in some modest county, on the other hand your fame could never be tarnished like that of your partner.

Dutch was on the verge of no return, while you ... well ... could still save yourself.

"YN! Darlin '! What are you doing?" the familiar voice of the gang leader caught your attention while without getting on the saddle you led your horse outside the perimeter of the field, without turning around to give him your look.

"I'm going shopping," you replied, lying very badly.

"In the middle of the night?" Dutch asked sarcastically, then took a big hit of his cigar and tossed it away.

"Yes, in the middle of the night" you repeated, not daring to slow down, while the man with the pitch-colored mustache began to speed up to be closer to you and not raise his voice.

"And where do you intend to go? On the other side of America? Because I see that you have packed your bags and in my tent there is no longer anything that belongs to you" the man began to explain knowing what topic he was touching.

"It amazes me that it took you so little Dutch. I could have sworn the bare minimum would have been after four days" you replied with a very sharp laugh.

"Okay woman, stop playing games. Come here and let's talk about it as grown-ups" Dutch said impatiently grabbing you by the arm so that you turn towards him.

"And what would you like to talk about, Van der Linde? About your next bankruptcy plan? About the next rich family you want to cheat without taking into account the lives of your buddies? Or ... I don't know you want to talk about Mary-Beth and how fantastic she is and interesting?" you asked then, throwing all your patience to the hell, you were in the middle of the bush, no one would have heard you if you lost your temper. Dutch raised an eyebrow in disapproval as he put both hands on the thick leather belt.

"Put your next words very carefully, little girl" he replied in a very dangerous intonation that you had rarely heard from his lips. A stranger certainly wouldn't have caught the difference between his annoyed tone and his normal tone, but you did and you knew what Dutch Van der Linde was capable of if he lost control of himself. But did that matter to you? Probably not anymore.

"Why? Because they could hurt your thin ego" you asked defiantly, then shaking your head, the grip on your arm tightened.

"Because you may not know what you are talking about" but of course, obviously for this occasion too your partner had prepared an infallible Socratic epic in favor of him.

"Really? For once I think instead I know perfectly well what I'm talking about, and please don't tell me that mine are whims of a child. Now let me have this arm Van der Linde" you ordered trying to unglue his strong and wide hand off, but Dutch didn't seem to give up.

"Really, Y/N? I instead see in front of me a frightened little girl who is running away from her problems instead of solving them as an adult and mature woman. You are probably doing it because you also know that this infallible pretext is convenient for you to leave your family behind" This was too much, how dare he tell you such a thing? You had done everything for the gang, you had donated so many supplies and money, you always wanted to come back with a mission accomplished and without mistakes. You wouldn't have let Dutch demean you like that just because for once, you had decided to take care of yourself.

Without even thinking about it, your hand flew over the man's face, leaving him a loud slap on the cheekbone. There was a deadly moment of silence and although you were shocked by your own non-calculating action, you took advantage of the moment to get on your steed.

"Fuck you, Dutch Van der Linde" you said indignantly and grittedly as you put your hat on your head, so as to cover your disappointed and hurt gaze. Whoever the man you loved was, you lost him in Blackwater or maybe in the freezing mountains of Colter "The truth is that I saw you for who you are, what keeps you afloat are still that bunch of deluded ones who follow you faithful as if I were the fucking Messiah. The time will come when all your tangles will come to a head, and I will watch from afar"

The man still shaken by that slap, felt the blood in his veins boil with anger, probably sprung from having lost his favorite toy, or because he was right after all, sooner or later even Dutch's faith would falter and like a house of cards he would collapse.

"You will have no protection out there, Y/N. I give you the chance to get off that horse and go back to the field, and I will forget everything that came out of that mouth of yours" the man proposed, placing both hands towards you, as if if he were trying to convince a person not to jump off a bridge.

"The only person they really want is you, Dutch. I'm not the one they want hanged" you poisonously commented, reminding him of the words and threats of the Pinkertons "Goodbye Dutch, remember. You could have had the most precious treasure in the world: a family. But your insatiability and your ego are taking you into the water and where it is impossible for me to save you" you threw him one last look, this time more melancholy "And I'm not going to sink with you" and with that last sentence, your horse started at a gallop, leaving the man you loved impaled like a fool in the middle of the bush.

He did not follow you, because on the other hand, he too knew that you were just an ornamental object in his tent, but how much pride do you have to put aside to just say "you're right"?

On the other hand, you did not turn around, even if the desire was so much, the cold wind of the night caressed your soft hair, while the stars illuminated your path, towards a new life. How much dignity would you have had to put aside to tell him one last time: "I loved you"?

Too much, and your pockets had long since emptied, like Dutch Van der Linde's heart.

𝕿𝕳𝕰 𝕰𝕹𝕯

𝕯𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖓𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖊? 𝕺𝖗 𝖉𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖌𝖆𝖎𝖓?

#rdr2 #rdr #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption imagine #red dead redemption imagines #red dead redemption 2 imagine #red dead redemption 2 imagines #dutch van der linde #dutch van der linde x reader #dutch van der linde x fem!reader #angst #breaking up

[stellocchia]

I really don't think they will, but I think it'll be very interesting if they incorporate the Syndicate's radio silence concerning Techno's imprisonment into the lore, even if it was not intentional.

(This is also bc I'm a bit ehhh abt the Syndicate having like next to no on-screen relationship moment and suddenly bam they're apparently ride-or-die)

Like Technoblade, the ever-confident man he is, starts to crack from how long his supposed friends are taking to do *anything* about his situation. And even when they break him out, he's still miffed bc even Philza, *his closest friend*, takes so long to act.

This isn't me just looking for angst, I just... Really want c!Techno to have character development. Just. Change a bit. See that he's not so infallible after all. Maybe kickstart something for c!Phil too. Idk. I really think c!Techno has big potentials as a character that's rly underexplored.

Again I don't think they'll do this bc the radio silence is partly bc of scheduling issues, and there's also cc!Techno's aversion to serious rp, but I still think it's a neat little idea.

I honestly think that them doing something like that is the only way I could start caring about the Syndicate again to any degree. Because, as things are right now... I just don't.

They're hardly a group! They interacted like, 3 times? And I'm supposed to think they're actual friends?

Like, am I just gonna have to accept that c!Phil, c!Techno's closest friends, took over a month to do anything about his friend being trapped? Probably. Am I gonna like it? No honestly. Especially if c!Techno has no reaction to it.

That said I can imagine c!Dream being like: "Man... even I had more visitors during my first month here. Didn't you say you had friends?"

And that's hilarious to me so I'm gonna ignore all of my frustration with the situation and focus on the fact that c!Dream could, if he wanted, get under c!Techno skin and get him into the mentality that they can only count on each other. It may be fanon, but I don't care!

#into-the-spirals-of-my-eyes ask #dream smp #syndicate critical

[n1kolaiz]

ENTJ + INFJ DYNAMIC

BSD MANGA CHAPTER 54-57 SPOILERS

Chapter 54 introduced Mushitaro Oguri, and his background involving Yokomizo was ever so intriguing to me. So unfortunately, here I am.

Mushitaro and Yokomizo's dynamic:

The 'Commander' meets the 'Idealist.'

Alright, I won't go into the details about the case of Yokomizo's death, because there's no way in hell I can explain it fluently at all. So if you need further reference to what these few chapters are about, popopretty's post would elaborate on the details and whatnot.

Before I start, here's a bit of little introduction to both individual characters:

MUSHITARO OGURI

Mushitaro appears to take a lot of pride in his ability, which contributes to his arrogant complex altogether. He had his own desires and goals, and lived out his days just to fulfil them.

His ability is called the 'Perfect Crime,' which allows him to erase any trail of evidence pertaining to whatever crime he had committed. Hence, he is also known as the 'infallible Detective-killer.'

Until Ranpo proved him wrongヾ(❀╹◡╹)ﾉﾞ

His personality type is most likely 'ENTJ,' the 'Commander.'

- ENTJs are known to have exceptional leadership skills. They are confident in themselves and what they do; basically, they don't have the tendency to second-guess what they are capable of. This explains Mushitaro's ambition to achieve his ends, and his ability goes the extra mile of complimenting his success rate greatly. Whether his motives or the end results were morally good or evil, it didn't matter to Mushitaro— as long as his wishes were fulfilled.

"With tyrants and demons, I'll make deal with a demon. That's in my nature."

- They're also quite outspoken with their opinions. It's a fairly minor detail, but this shows why he wasn't afraid to express the distaste he had for mystery novels to Yokomizo— including the extravagant ideas and serpentine stories his close friend based his life upon and discussed with him.

- The subtle insensitivity mixed in with an ENTJ's preference of logic over emotion highlights one of their core weaknesses: which brings us back to Mushitaro's ability to kill his friend. Say you were to put a person with a deeply compassionate heart, who's also very well in-tact when it comes to identifying emotions and being empathetical to other's feelings: would that person be able to kill a friend they'd known for so long? For the sole reason of making his last mystery novel a deathless enigma? This is very subjective perspective, but I believe that if Mushitaro was more of an emotionalist rather than a strategist, things would have turned out different for Yokomizo's eventual fate.

Side note: His insensitivity did, however, find its limit when he realised how devastating it was to have killed his own friend with his hands. Even though there's a wide scale that measures how insensitive a person can be, they are, in fact, still human beings capable of feeling. Killing someone dear to you is no easy task; there is a breaking point for the hardest of hearts.

SEISHI YOKOMIZO

Yokimozo, also known as Kindaichi, was a mystery writer who was very particular about detail and being exclusive, especially when it came to his works. His last wish he pursued to achieve before a terminal illness took his life was done by formulating a 'mystery that transcended reality.'

"I hate regret. So I've done whatever I've wanted to do. Up until now, it's been a satisfying life. But now… I've been given a time limit…Before then, I have to complete the ultimate mystery."

His personality type is identified as 'INFJ,' also known as the 'Idealist.'

- INFJ's are deeply creative and artistic, but they express it in various different ways. For Yokomizo, he portrayed his brilliant artistic skill through his writings revolving around mysteries and their compelling depths. The fictional character's namesake was also a mystery novel writer. Yokomizo was pretty well-versed with how mysteries worked and how their details ravelled themselves into elegantly, well-established riddles, which only added to his natural flair of writing.

- Generally, INFJs are reserved, but incredibly idealistic. Yokomizo was seen to be very abstract in his idea of thinking, and this is due to the fact that INFJs have a thing for pondering about life and the meaning behind everything.

"Mushi-kun, I bet you're laughing at me for destroying myself for the sake of mystery. But if that's the case, maybe there's no such thing as unshakable values. Maybe it's up to us to decide what to put value in and what to live for. After all, we have the right to turn our own decisions into our entire world. It is, foolishly enough, the greatest luxury afforded to mankind."

- As for their weaknesses, some INFJs are very hard to get to know. They are mysterious at times, which prevents them from being flamboyant with their thoughts and opinions. Yokomizo had a very lighthearted, mystifying nature, which made him a very interesting character altogether. Despite having a high regard for their intimate relationships— INFJs can be quite private. Mushitaro vaguely points out his self-contained, introverted mannerisms in this panel:

Now, I'll get to my point.

ENTJs and INFJs don't ideally match up, but when it comes to general friendships, there are a few details that suggest an accomodating dynamic between the two personality types. These qualities emanate from Mushitaro and Yokomizo's friendship with each other.

Opposites attract in most cases, correct?

Well, in this case, ENTJs and INFJs have a lot of similarities:

intelligent

intuitive in thinking

determined

goal-oriented

But the more numerable contrasting qualities is what really brings out the agreeable traits between Mushitaro and Yokozimo. Think of it as a system where two opposites mutually keep each other in check:

1. Mushitaro bases his life on the gaining his own needs and wants, and is very firm in his sense of realism, while Yokomizo is more focused on the deep, complexities of life itself. This may come off as impractical to ENTJs, but also compliments their coordination with INFJs. Realism limits idealism, but idealists can also expand the boundaries realists place themselves in.

2. INFJs accept people and ideas as they are, not willing to put others down just to prove themselves right. Yokozimo's tolerant behaviour stands in contrast with how authoritative Mushitaro is, especially when it boils down to his arrogance— he isn't afraid to spit his pride right into his opponent's face.

Kneel, detectives! I am the king of crime! No one can force me to sin and repent!

Just for laughs reference^

So it's safe to say that because Yokomizo had an acquired sense of serenity and open-mindedness, he was able to tolerate Mushitaro's extravagant, subtle histrionic characteristics, which were laced with his superior complex.

3. In the manga, Yokomizo speaks and converses with Mushitaro in a way that suggests that he is careful with his words. INFJs are gentle and generally sensitive to the needs of others, so they tend to be careful with what comes out of their mouths. Mushitaro, like most ENTJs, are quite blunt. This points back to how insensitive they come off, even if they don't actually mean it. So when it comes to Yokozimo explaining tales of mystery to Mushitaro, Mushitaro doesn't hesitate to mock Yokozimo; but because of how understanding Yokozimo is, he doesn't take Mushitaro's opinions too seriously to the point of discounting the value of their friendship, because he knew Mushitaro didn't use his words with the intention to harm.

If you were to place a more dominant persona in Yokomizo's position, I doubt that that person would be able to tolerate such behaviours. Then again, this is crucially subjective.

I suppose the main thing I wanted to point out was how ENTJs and INFJs balanced each other out by cancelling out each other's extreme traits, and keeping each other in the middle of the equilibrium altogether. But another thing I'd like to point out to sum up Mushitaro and Yokozimo's relationship was this: the fact that Mushitaro had to kill his own friend to grant his dying wish. Dying for someone or by someone's hands is easier than killing someone, especially if that someone is dear to you, no? I guess that's the part I can't fathom— it was the type of relationship that stood out way more than I had expected. Say, the roles were switched, would Yokomizo actually kill Mushitaro? Or would Mushitaro think of such an incomprehensible way to die in the first place? Or what if these two friends had different, more superior traits that coexisted in conflict all the time, would Yokomizo even depend on Mushitaro with such a task?

The speculations are endless, or maybe it's pretty straightforward. Though, I hope this made sense.

Okay, I'm done rambling for now. Thank you for reading!

#bsd #bsd analysis #bsd characters #bungou stray dogs #bsd spoilers #bsd manga #bsd mushitaro #bsd decay of angels #decay of angels #rats in the house of the dead #.daydreams

[alicedrawslesmis]

I think the musical's version is that Jean Valjean being good/morally ambiguous made him realize that the law may not be an infallible judge/barometer of a person's goodness, and that made him realize that his whole career may not have been Good after all, and that there may have been other cases like Jean Valjean's (maybe), and so he wasn't just punishing "bad people". "And must I now begin to doubt, who never doubted all these years..."

you see I want to believe that's the reason and this is the lyric people are pointing to the most

but the song has a lot of other conflicting lyrics floating around, like: 'there is nothing on earth that we share/ it is either valjean or javert' which would indicate that Javert has a deeper issue with being similar to Valjean (I mean this part is him trying to hold onto his old worldview, but wouldn't that be weird? if the point was just about morality why is he so mad that they're somehow alike? what's going on here? clearly there's more to it. Like the fact that he is like Valjean is appalling to him) (so I think, if we take the lyrics completely at face value, there's a disconnect between Javert and his own origin 'from the gutter') (also maybe there is a resentment at Valjean being happy with a child and Javert still being horribly alone)

and then there's the 'how can I allow this man / to hold dominium over me' which would indicate that actually he resents Valjean for having any control over him, and resents himself for 'letting' that happen (emotionally? was he incapable of causing JVJ harm?)

and there's the lyric 'is he from heaven or from hell?' in the last few verses, that would indicate that he maybe didn't learn to change his worldview, just changed where Jean Valjean fits into his worldview. (or, he is unaware of how to interpret the consequence of him being unable to actually go through with the arrest) (is this good? is this bad? what does that make of him?)

and so when he says 'I'll escape now from that world / From the world of Jean Valjean.' it appears to me that in the musical, Javert is in doubt less about his worldview, and more about his specific view of Valjean in relationship to himself.

I mean I do I think Javert looses his footing because of Jean Valjean. But pair this song up with stars, where he Vows to put Jean Valjean behind bars and the whole 'I've hunted him all these years' makes me think that the 'never doubted all these years' is more about doubting his capacity to go through with finally arresting him (this fits with the "Damned if I'll live in the debt of a thief! / Damned if I'll yield at the end of the chase.")

Idk man, every second I look at the lyrics the more I'm leaning to 'Javert had projected a lot of stuff on Valjean and it turns out he had him all wrong so he jumped off a bridge'

TL;DR: I think musical!Javert is no longer emotionally capable of existing outside the Valjean chase

#aggressively over-analises the lyrics of a musical from the 80s to distract myself from how long the vote count is taking #I think the musical likes Javert a bit too much #that's my general beef with it #but also I think Javert is pair-bonded with Valjean #that explains it all #long post #javert meta #suicide mention #Anonymous #answer