#+ if its all staticky | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luxaofhesperides · 5 months

Text

Accidental Bride Sacrifice ; requested by @starlightcat04!

Danny has long since gotten used to the feel of summonings. They don’t happen often, but sometimes the right components are put together to force him into answering, and he’d have to go as the new Ghost King.

Which no one told him was a thing! He hadn’t protested too much about the whole Ghost King deal when they finally told him about it after he graduated high school. It gave him a good excuse to ditch life in the living realm and not worry about college or a career, and let him really embrace his ghost side.

The summonings are a problem, though. They always feel staticky and bad, like a dumpster that just got struck by lightning. The taste of iron on his tongue, a clear sign of blood being spilled, lets him know that it would be one of end the world for us summonings, because some people can’t put in the effort to do it themselves, apparently.

But this time, the summoning feels different.

Danny pauses, eyes going unfocused in the middle of his conversation with Jazz. He had been looking forward to spending the week with her, now that she’s on winter break, but his luck is as bad as always.

“I’m being summoned,” he tells her, cutting off her rant about a transphobic professor she had.

“Oh, no. Do you need me to do anything? Should I go with you to beat up whoever it is that’s summoning you?”

Danny tilts his head to the side, considering. The taste of blood is noticeably absent. In fact, this summoning pull doesn’t make him feel sick at all. It makes him feel warm, as if he’s just been wrapped in a hug.

“No,” he says. “I think I’m good. This one feels different.”

“A good different?” Jazz asks, worry clear in her voice.

“Yeah. A good different. I’ll come back soon, okay?”

“Alright. Be careful, Danny.” Jazz pulls him into a quick hug, then steps back to watch as Danny stops fighting the pull of the summoning and disappears into a swirling white rings that flashes into existence behind him, blinding her for a moment, and is gone when she manages to blink the spots out of her vision.

For a minute, Danny drifts in a void of stillness, traveling through the realms as the summoning draws him closer to the correct realm. And then he’s rising out of the ground in a dark building made of concrete, candles of green flame scattered all over the place.

“Great One!” someone in a hooded cloak cries, raising his arms in jubilation. “Our calls have been answered!”

“I’ll fucking kill you!” a mechanical voice yells from farther back. When Danny looks past the cultists’ heads, he spots a man in a red hood and leather jacket chained to a pole, along with a bunch of other people in strange costumes tied up, desperately trying to free themselves.

“Silence!” The leader of the cult, or who Danny assumes is the leader, snaps at the hooded man and gestures to the people off to his left. They force another costumed person forward, this one in yellow armor. He can see the blood running down their face from beneath their helmet and from their nose, dark lines of blood cutting through their brown skin.

The cultists throw the armored person forward, forcing them to kneel. Then they bow to Danny and step back.

“Great One,” the leader says, voice unpleasantly reverent and grating, “Welcome to the mortal realms. We offer you this sacrifice to feed your strength. He will make a fine general for your undead army in your crusade to rid this world of its filth.”

The people in the back begin shouting all together, panicked voices overlapping, and Danny is left staring down at the cultists in shock.

The summoning had felt so nice. What the hell was this? He did not sign up for another ‘end of days’ insane cult. He just wanted to be hugged.

His silence makes the cultists nervous. They begin to shift uneasily, whispering to each other, and the leader clears his throat, then pulls a large crystal dagger out of his cloak. “We shall prove our devotion to you through an offering of a hero’s blood!”

And then he moves towards the sacrifice and Danny snaps out of his shock to yell, “Wait!”

The entire room freezes. Even the costumed people in the back go still.

Danny winces, then tries to smother his power, make himself more palatable to the humans of this dimension. “Wait,” he says again, and he sounds closer to human now. If he could, he would drop his ghost form entirely, but he knows better than to endanger himself like that. “What, exactly, did you summon me here for?”

The cult leader stares at him for a moment. “To… To rid the world of filth and allow your loyal followers to spread word of your power. You will be worshiped again, Great One, and serve as a reminder to man that Death shall always prevail.”

“Okay, I get that, but I was talking more along the lines of the summoning. What ritual did you use? What specifically were the summoning requirements?”

Normally, he’d be able to figure it out himself, but these cultists didn’t use a summoning circle. So they did something else, something less visible and therefore harder to figure out, in order to bring him here.

A woman standing off to the side speaks up, stepping forward hesitantly. “I had pieced together a few summoning spells from this book to bring you here. You had to accept our chosen sacrifice to your side in order for the summoning to work.”

“Hold up that book for me, please?”

She does, and Danny flies down to grab it from her hands. “Point out which lines you used,” he says, already reading a few of the words written down. It’s definitely ghostspeak written down, which should be near impossible for living humans to translate without being skilled in magic.

“Ah, these ones.” She points to each line, reading them out for him, and Danny starts understand what, exactly, went wrong.

“Is there a problem, Great One?”

Danny returns the book then floats over to the sacrifice and picks him up. The costumed people make alarmed noises, but quietly quiet down again when all Danny does is move him away from the cultists.

“Okay,” he says, “So. The lines you used to summon me were not translated properly. What you interpreted as ‘accepted to stay by the king’s side in loyalty and strength’ is not meant to be, like, him being part of my undead army or whatever. It’s a royal marriage vow.”

“They married us?” the sacrifice shouts, disbelieving. The cult leader buries his face in his hands and sighs.

“My deepest apologies, Great One. We meant no offense. We simply wanted to aid in your destruction of this depraved world.”

Danny scrunches his nose and shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not gonna fly with me. I do not do the biding of random people, especially those who are ready to murder innocent people for no reason. Frighty, if you would.” He snaps his fingers, calling up Fright Knight who always enjoys getting to torment the people who summon Danny for murderous reasons.

Fright Knight appears in a swirl of darkness and screams. Shadows swallow the room, and when they recede, no cultists remain.

“Thanks, Frighty. Have fun with them. I need to figure out all… this.”

Fright Knight bows to him, then disappears. Danny lets out a breath, then floats down lower to be eye level with the sacrifice. “Hey,” he says gently, with a smile, “I’m so sorry they did this to you. I’m Danny. What’s your name?”

“Du— Uh, Signal,” the sacrifice says, sounding rather dazed.

“Signal,” Danny repeats. “Like… a traffic signal?”

“No. I mean, maybe? But it is Signal. That’s my hero name, not my real name.”

“Oh, you’re a hero!” His getup makes more sense now. Danny checks him over for any signs of injuries. So far, only his head and nose seem to be injured, but his wrists are tightly bound behind his back. Carefully, Danny calls upon his ice and shapes it into a sharp knife, then cuts through the zipties.

He helps Signal up to his feet, floating by his shoulder. “All good?��

“Yeah, man, all good. Let me just get the others free.”

“Oh, I can do it!” Danny flies over to the other costumed people, who must also be heroes. All it takes is one link in the chain being frozen and broken for the entire thing to go lax, allowing them to free themselves. Hooded guy spares Danny a single glance, then hurries over to Signal to check on him. The other three, a man with a blue bird across his chest, a blond girl with a yellow bat outline on her chest, and a guy with bandoliers and a golden bird emblem, all watch him warily as he floats back towards the center of the room.

“So,” the blue bird man says, “If they summoned you with a marriage vow, and you accepted, does that mean you’re planning to steal Signal away from us?” He’s smiling, but it’s not a nice smile.

“No! I had no idea they did this! I am so sorry you all got caught up in this. You most of all, Signal.”

Signal shrugs, nudging hood guy away from him. “Nah, man, it’s all good. This is definitely the better outcome.”

“I don’t know, being married off isn’t really a good thing.”

“Hey, at least they married me off to a decent guy.”

“You don’t know that,” Danny says, “What if I’m secretly evil?”

“If you were secretly evil, you’d be destroying the world right now. I think you’re fine.”

The blond girl waves at him, demanding his attention. “Quick question! They were calling you ‘Great One’. Are you a god or something?”

“Not really? I’m the Ghost King. So I’m a ghost who rules over other ghosts and also a majority of the Infinite Realms.”

She nods as if this is all totally normal for her, then shoots Signal a grin. “Congrats on bagging a king! Not the worst way to spend a night, right?”

“Can you break the marriage?” blue bird man asks, the lines of his shoulders tense.

Danny awkwardly rubs the back of his neck, not looking any of them in the eye. “I honestly don’t know. I can look for a way! But I genuinely have no clue. This was unexpected.”

“But you accepted.”

“I didn’t know what I expected! It just felt like a hug, and I wanted a hug! I thought I was being summoned for something nice for once!” Danny curls up, bringing his knees up to his chest, and hides his pout behind his hands. He knows he’s being childish, but he can’t help but be upset that he couldn’t have this one good experience from being Ghost King.

It’s always responsibilities and death cult summonings and fighting ghosts who don’t think he should be king. Sure there have been some good things, but they’re comparatively few when looking at all the other stress and pain that comes with the crown. Sue him for wanting to have a nice night for once. Hell, at this point, he’d take being summoned to help with some kid’s homework, because at least then he could have a quiet night helping someone.

“Hey, man, can you come down here?” Signal asks.

He wants to stay out of reach, hiding himself away for a bit longer, but Signal is his new, surprise, accidental husband, so Danny lowers himself to the ground and peeks through his fingers to look at him.

He tenses when Signal hugs him, soft and warm and comforting. It takes a moment for him to realize what’s going on, and then he’s melting into Signal’s embrace, dropping his hands to wrap them around Signal’s back.

Distantly, he can hear the other heroes talking quietly amongst themselves. He blocks out the sound as much as he can, determined to enjoy this hug while it lasts.

Which is… fairly long. Signal makes no moves to end the hug, so Danny closes his eyes to really savor the moment.

“So,” Signal murmurs into his ear, “As newlyweds, how about we get to know each other a bit better before we start working on fixing all this?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let’s ditch these guys and take some time to ourselves.”

“I promise I’ll get this fixed,” he says, just to make sure Signal knows. “Genuinely, I am so sorry to have married you through an old Realms vow when you had no say in it.”

“Hey, if it lands me a very nice, very attractive king, then I don’t mind at all. I could have done without the murderous cultists, though.”

Danny huffs out a small laugh. “Oh, for sure. Thanks for being so cool about this. Want me to fly us out of here?”

“Yes please,” Signal says. Danny smiles and tightens his grip on Signal, then lifts them both up. “I’ll see y’all later! Have fun with the rest of your patrols!” he calls out to the other heroes, who start shouting at him.

Danny flies them right out the roof before the other heroes figure out a way to kick his ass. The city they’re in is smoggy and dark, tall buildings rising up into the cloudy sky, and police sirens ring through the air. There’s no where that looks like a particularly nice spot to land for a conversation, so he asks Signal where he’d like to go and follows his directions from there.

They end up phasing through a building, then into the floor, which leaves them in what Signal calls The Hatch.

Danny takes a quick moment to freak out over being in a hero’s secret hide out, the composes himself and finally pulls away from Signal.

“So,” he starts, looking around The Hatch and taking in the giant computer, the workstation, the motorcycle farther down the way, “What did you—Woah!” Danny spins around, slamming a hand over his eyes the instant he realizes that Signal is taking off his helmet, leaving his face bare.

It’s not like he’d know who Signal is anyways, being from a different dimension, but it’s the principle of the matter.

Signal laughs when he sees Danny’s attempt to keep from looking at him. A warm hand wraps around his wrist and gently pulls it away. “It’s okay, Danny, you can look,” he says. “It would be pretty weird if my own husband didn’t know my face.”

Slowly, giving Signal to change his mind, Danny opens his eyes. He moves his gaze up, going from Signal’s armor to his face, his very cute face and his warm brown eyes, and Danny stares for a moment.

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi,” Signal says, fondness coloring his voice. “My name’s Duke. Are all Ghost Kings as cute as you?”

“Duke,” Danny repeats. “Hi. Um, no. The last one really sucked, actually, which is why I fought him. He was so bad the Infinite Realms didn’t want him anymore, so though I technically didn’t beat him in single combat, it was enough for the Infinite Realms to kick him out and get me on the throne.”

“Man, I can not wait to hear more of your stories. Think we got time for that while we search for a way to undo that marriage vow?”

Taking his chance, Danny says, “Sure! It’s a date.”

He’s awarded by Duke’s bright smile and idly wonders how long he can keep them married. Hopefully long enough for them to get into a real relationship where he can propose properly. And then he can get Jazz’s blessing too—

“Oh shit,” Danny realizes.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I need to tell my sister or she’s going to actually kill me.”

Duke winces. “And I should probably tell the others before Spoiler makes a mess of things… B is not going to be happy with me.”

They share a despairing look, already dreading the amount of scoldings they’re both going to get. He’s not looking forward to it.

“...Put it off until tomorrow?”

Duke nods. “Yeah. That’s a tomorrow problem. For now, how about a late dinner?”

“Sounds perfect.”

. . .

[send me a ghostlights prompt!]

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #dpxdc fanfic #dp x dc fic #prompt fill #my writing #dukes pov is just: u're abt to be sacrificed. u're mildly concussed. a cute guy glowing like the north star saved u and is now ur husband #he's had a night but all in all it ended pretty nicely!#they're gonna work together and just hang out while trying to undo the marriage summoning ritual and find they're super compatible #and then in a few years they'll be marrying each other for real :)#thanks for the prompt!!

2K notes · View notes

sweets4dolls · 3 months

Note

SHAKING YOU SWEETIEE i luv luv your works, n i wass just wondering. would u mind maybe writing a scenario for vox with dollification? i think his hypnosis powers would be just great for making reader into an obedient doll for him that he can dress up pretty, take anywhere n fuck whenever cuz she's just a dumb dolly <3

ofc if this isn't to your tastes or its uncomfy for u pls skip!! i never wanna overstep ur boundaries. have a wonderful day!!

𝒹𝑜𝓁𝓁

pairing: vox + fem!reader

content warnings: smut, dollification, doll kink, doll pet names, dumbification, hypnosis, car sex, dubious consent, not proofread

notes: LKSDJF UR SO RIGHT, u are such a sweetheart have an amazing day and night ily <3 MWAH

it all started when you first came to hell, crashing just by the v's tower, close enough for vox to happen to see as he was walking outside, just about to go attend an event somewhere else when he saw you.

you were a cute little thing, and he had the time to spare to go and greet you before heading off, so he walked over to you, introducing himself, as it was obvious you had just gotten to hell.

"hello there, sweetheart, are you alright?" he said with a honeyed voice as you look up at him with worried, vacant eyes. "I-i'm so sorry, where am I?" you stammered out.

and like that, he knew you'd be a perfect little thing to have on his arm during this event, so he tells you quickly, "you're in hell, darling," making your eyes all glossy before he quickly whips out his hypnosis, making you stop - he didn't want that tender complexion all ruined before he dragged you off to this business event!

quickly, with the hypnosis still on, he convinces you that it'd be a whole lot safer if you come with him. hazily, you nod your little head, taking teetering steps towards him, nearly falling until he offers you his arm to lean against, making him chuckle as he guides you to his limo.

once in the limo, your figure slumps against him as your lovely inane eyes scan over the interior of the car as vox tells the driver to go grab some outfits from velvette that would fit your pretty figure, in a shade of blue that would match him, of course.

"thank god that ribbon in your hair already matches," he murmurs out loud, toying with a strand of your soft hair.

he couldn't believe his luck, a pretty little thing like you, all fresh to hell that landed just as he was about to go to a meeting, still too alienated to want to be let alone in this new setting yet, someone easy enough to keep compliant.

not taking too long, the driver shoved some cutesy little baby blue dress into the back with you and vox as he started driving.

"now, darling, let's get you out of this dirty thing, hm?" he says, not really asking as he moves to shrug it off of you, before you start to inch away from him, "w-wait, I-"

"don't worry honey, just be a good doll for me and play dress up, hm?" he says, voice going staticky as he uses hypnosis to make you docile once more as you nod your head yes, letting him take you out of your battered clothes, leaving you in your panties and bra.

"god, I picked a good one," he mumbled to himself, feeling himself stir at the sight of you in your near-nakedness, before to deciding in going in a another direction.

"actually, little doll, you don't mind if I give you a kiss, right?" he says with a smile, knowing that you'd be ready to do anything he told you. nodding your head no, all shyly as your hair shakes around you, the pair of you practically giving off the stereotypical version of a little boy playing with dolls.

"that's it, be a dumb doll for me," he says as he leans in, pressing a kiss against your hot waiting mouth as his hands mess with the clasping of your bra, finally wrenching it off of you in between kisses.

"mm, and pretty underneath too," he states as he resumes his kisses, now traveling down your neck and chest as his hands flick over your chest, up until his mouth reaches the bands of your panties, a claw moving to slice through them, taking them off so he can see your wet little cunt.

"oh, that's a good doll, all wet for me already? its like your dumb little brain doesn't know how to do anything else," he snickers as he circles your clit a few times with a finger, earning soft mewls from your lips.

"I know, feels so good, doesn't it doll?" he mumbles as he unbuckles his belt, freeing his cock as you respond with a shy "y-yes," face warm as you do.

naked, except for that darling velvet ribbon in your hair, vox brought you up to his lap, sinking you down slowly on his cock, making him groan as he feels you, all tight around him as he finally fits all of himself in.

"that's it doll, take me like that," he says as he turns on the hypnosis once more, "ride me, won't you doll?" he says all sweetly, making your hips move against his.

with pupils blown out, your hands find his shoulders as you lift yourself up and down on his cock, feeling the burn of him stretching you as you take him in and out.

"you like that? you like that doll?" he murmurs as you whine and nod your head as you continue to ride him until your thighs burn and your movements slow.

taking notice of this, he pushes you down, the pace instantly changing to a much faster one as he pumps into your pussy, fitting into you deep enough to hit your sweet spot over and over until you cum all over his cock.

once he finishes too, he pulls out, admiring the way your hole drips his cum and spasms around nothing, missing the fill of his cock.

"might just have to keep you forever, pretty doll."

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel smut #vox x reader #vox smut #hazbin hotel vox x reader

876 notes · View notes

softlyspector · 8 months

Text

Sage

Summary: Joel finished your tattoo but staying in each other lives is easier than he thinks. A late night phone call reminds him of how easy it is to lose something too.

Read the beginning: You put aside your touch aversion for a tattoo from Joel.

Pairing:��tattoo artist!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~10.6k

Warnings: slow build, no outbreak tattoo!au, angst then comfort, the 'believes they're hard to love, loving them is like breathing' trope, reader has issues with touch and is mostly touch adverse (joel's workin' on that though), description of a past abusive relationship, undefined unresolved previous trauma, insecurity, anxiety, Joel gets to have both his daughters in this

A/N: I can't tell you how happy the love for this series has made me. You’re all my heroes and this is dedicated to all of you.

Once again, we’re ignoring canon and pretending like Joel can draw for this fic, thank you. Editing this was a labor, so if there are any mistakes blame my tired eyes. Thank you for reading! As always, I would love to know your thoughts! Please please please, be sure to leave feedback!

“Joel?” Your voice is staticky in the dark.

He’s used to answering the phone half awake in the middle of the night, shadows still strung between the wings of his window. Between bailing Tommy out of jail when he was younger and rescuing Sarah and Ellie from sleepovers they didn’t want to stay at, he’s answered the phone in the shy hours of the very early morning more times than he can count.

In the few months he’s known you, though, you’ve never called him, not once, let alone in the middle of the night.

“Joel?” The connection crackles and your voice wavers. “Can you hear me?”

It’s then that his mind catches up with him, digs its heels in and kicks to life. He hadn’t said anything beyond a cranky, irritated hello? after the shrill ring woke him and he blindly groped for the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hey, yeah, I can hear ya.”

Maybe he has the good sense to answer you, but he’s not awake enough to consider the why of the call yet. He’s glad to hear your voice, though.

It’s like a sweet little song in his ear when he hadn’t gotten to see you at all that day.

And lately the days he doesn’t get to see you are a rarity.

Most days, you stop by the studio but some days he meets you for coffee, or goes on a drive with you, or insists on teaching you to fish. You’ve been at a few Friday dinners with his girls, though not all of them because you fold yourself up tight and try not to intrude. Most Sundays find you arriving early at his door with pie and coffee from Flu’s, which you eat on his front porch in companionable silence before the heat of the day can settle in.

“I’m sorry,” you say. Your voice trembles and Joel feels like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over him.

He lurches up in bed so fast that spots dance in his vision and a spear of pain slices through his shoulder, raking iron hot nails into a years old injury. “Sweetheart?” A knot of protective worry forms in his chest, lights a fire in his belly. “What’s goin’ on?”

The moon casts a thin, pale beam of light across the foot of his bed, growing brighter by the second as his eyes adjust to the darkness. But then you continue and the protective feeling only grows, and then goes hard with an icy ferocity. “Sorry for calling so late and bothering you with this but I don’t—I didn’t have anyone else I wanted to call.”

Your voice breaks on the last word, the creaking in your mouth splintering across the line. “Can you…I don’t—” There’s a little pause in which Joel can hear your footsteps as you pace and the quick sound of your breathing. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Joel pulls himself out of bed and shucks on his jeans that had lain crumpled on the floor where he left them and then pulls on the first shirt his hand touches when he yanks open a dresser drawer. “What’s goin’ on?” He asks again. “Where are you?”

“Ugh—” You swallow thickly, sounding inexplicably embarrassed. “It’s nothing, really. I’m-I’m being stupid. I shouldn’t have called.”

He can practically see you fidgeting, looking down, shaking your head. Can practically feel you thinking of hanging up the phone, nervous doe eyes darting around like you’ve done something wrong.

“Don’t sound like nothin’,” he grits out, his voice coming out harsher than he means it to. “What happened?”

You’d gone down to Austin to visit some friends for the day. It’s why he hadn’t gotten the chance to see you.

Your ex slips suddenly to the forefront of his mind, who was the goddamn reason you’d moved out of Austin in the first place. Then all the myriad of other terrible things that could have prompted you to call him so late flash through his mind.

It only serves to make his chest burn.

“You still in Austin?” Again, his voice comes out angrier than he intends. He pulls open his bedroom door and moves down the hall, not bothering to flip on any lights.

“No. I’m at—I’m at home,” you stutter.

He pauses in the front entryway, wallet and keys dangling from his fingers, one foot halfway into a shoe. “Home?”

“I’m—yeah, home. I just…I came home and the street door was open. I thought maybe the neighbors just forgot to close it when they were bringing groceries in or something, but then the security light wasn’t coming on and my apartment door is open too. It’s probably nothing, Joel, don’t bother with—look I’m sorry for—”

He’s frozen for a moment. The cavernous black hole of your front door looms, the teeth of the darkness sharp and wanting.

The street door, despite his best efforts to augment it, is notoriously difficult to get open. If it was open when you got home—

If your apartment door was open too—

“I’m sorry for calling,” you say again when he doesn’t answer, your voice small and anxious. “I think I might have been robbed or something. I just. . . I didn’t want to call anyone else,” you repeat. “I’m afraid.”

Afraid.

It’s a cold word.

Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket and getting his boots all the way on, he tugs his own front door open. “Don’t you move a goddamn muscle. Do not go inside. Go back down to the street.”

“Joel—”

“I’m serious,” he all but snarls. “Now.”

“Okay,” you agree. Your voice is tight, choked. “Okay.”

“I’m gettin’ on the road now.”

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer for a minute, just listens to your breathing as he gets in his truck and turns the engine, phone squished between his shoulder and ear. The drive into town is only about ten minutes. You should be alright in that time.

“You there?” Your voice is breathy. You sound a little like you might have been crying and he wonders how long you waffled in front of your door, trying to decide whether to call him or just go inside by yourself. “Joel?”

“‘m here.” He turns off the long dirt road that leads to the ranch. “Yeah, I’m here, honey. Stay on the phone.”

“Okay,” you murmur. “Thanks,” you say again.

The word doesn’t register. His mind is already with you, imagining you standing alone on your street, or worse, with folks lurking around the corner waiting to do you harm. It’s an insidious image that he knows isn’t based entirely in reality. “You alone?” Despite his thoughts, he can’t imagine anyone out on the streets of the tiny town at this hour.

“Mm. Just me.”

“Good. Stay away from that door,” he grumbles.

“Bossy,” you accuse lightly, the soft attempt at a joke.

He doesn’t laugh. The drive feels like it's taking too long, longer than the ten minutes it normally takes.

He steps on the accelerator and his mind wanders to all the other times he’s been called, into the dark or otherwise, because his people needed him. To the hospital once when Sarah had broken her ankle at a pool party, to the high school when Ellie’d gotten into a fight that ended with a blood spattered hallway and broken nose.

Those were the worst calls, drives. That was when he felt most helpless, like he was stuck in quicksand. There were just things that he couldn’t protect them from. He couldn’t be there every second of the day, he couldn’t always be with them, and that had always grated.

Most assured him the anxiety would fade as Sarah got older, but it never did. It hadn’t even begun with her. It was always there, that protective anxiousness. It had gotten exponentially worse with Sarah’s birth, a tiny life he was responsible for, a tiny life that was so delicate.

And then—Ellie. At least with Sarah he’d had some piece of mind. But Ellie, like Tommy, had a knack for trouble. Too many times she swung in the back door with bleeding knees and twigs stuck in her hair and a scrape over her cheek. It wasn’t always a fight, sometimes it was just climbing a tree she had no business being in, racing her bike against kids twice her size, and unlike Sarah, she had no sense of preservation.

“Are you hurt?” The question burns in his mouth. He doesn't mean to ask it.

“Hurt—” you start, sounding surprised. “No. No, of course not. I’m okay, Joel. It’s just the stupid door. I’m just—I told you I’m just being stupid. Listen, just—”

Joel knows what you’re going to say, and he should tell you that you aren’t being stupid, that it was good you called him; that he wants you to call him, all the time, but especially when you need him.

Instead, he snaps, “Don’t move.”

Your voice cuts off.

His eyes strain past streetlights and empty, open fields, past the copse of trees that marked the start of a forest where he’d seen a trio of deer a few weeks before, like some kind of omen.

In the distance, the town comes into view. You don’t say anything but he listens to the sound of your breathing, the calm in and out that reassures him that you’re okay, that you’re there patiently waiting.

When he turns down your street, you come into view, standing beneath a streetlight in front of your building. The security light above your door flickers weakly, but otherwise remains dark. “You see me?”

You turn and lift your hand. “I see you,” you say, voice crumbling and soft. The golden light pools around you, casts your shadow behind you like a ghost, or an angel. But you’re there, you’re safe, he can see you, and some of the tension melts off his shoulders. “Gonna hang up now,” you say.

“All right,” he agrees.

The line goes dead.

Joel is angry with you.

It’s the only thought that sticks, barbed and fanged and catching, in your mind. It burrows into the top of your spine and makes your whole body go rigid with fear.

Joel is angry with you.

Joel, who’s always been sweet and kind. Who introduced you to his family with affection in his voice, took you fishing and always tossed the fish back when you looked so mournfully at them, who pointed out birds and deer to you quietly and with a practiced ease, who lets you read on the green leather couch in his shop and asks your opinions on the designs he’s working on that you often wish were for you.

But you’ve never really fucked up before. You’ve never made him angry.

This, calling him out of bed in the middle of the night, would give him plenty to be angry about. It would give him something to blame you for.

The truck rolls to a stop, headlights flaring out, and dread forms a knot in the back of your throat.

Before you can open your mouth, to head off his foul mood and explain, Joel is out of the truck and his hands are cupped around your shoulders, then the sides of your face.

You flinch at the suddenness of it and then tense but Joel doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes darting over your body like he expects to find you gravely injured. He doesn’t normally touch you so abruptly and the feeling of his hands on your skin makes tears burn behind your eyes.

He looks pretty in the moonlight. His eyes are cast dark and shaded as they search yours, his pupils so blown out the brown is consumed. You aren’t sure what he’s looking for. “You all right?” He asks, the comforting scent of him wrapping around you. He smells like rosemary and pine, like sawdust. You think distantly that he must have been working on some project earlier in the day.

And sage. He smells like protection.

His thumb slides over your cheek slowly in a vaguely self soothing way.

You resist the urge to twist out of grip, trying to remind yourself that now isn’t then, that he isn’t him.

Your body remembers though, remembers what it’s like to taste fear.

“Fine,” you reassure him again and pull back slightly. “I just—like I said, it’s nothing. It’s stupid. I just got spooked. I—Joel I’m sorry—”

Joel doesn’t seem to hear you as he releases your face, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there. He grips your elbow instead and leads you to the passenger side of the truck. “You stay here,” he says. “‘M gonna take a look around. Give me your key.”

There’s a protective violence around him, a current of energy that makes you wary, that you don’t want to be on the wrong side of.

“You—Joel, please, listen—” You attempt to shake his hand off, panic clawing at your chest. You’re too tense to be touched, too anxious he’s about to snap at you.

Joel has never raised his voice at you. This fear isn’t one that should rest with him and that frustrates you even more. It makes you feel crazy and unbalanced and like you don’t know who’s really in front of you.

Still, it’s your fault, after all. It’s your fault he’s here, and maybe that’s good enough for him to start.

His eyes are like hard, dark flint, like chips of glittering amber, glinting in the pale moonlight that washes out his skin, highlights the circles beneath his eyes.

“Just stay here,” he repeats. His voice is hard when his eyes flash up to yours. “I’ll only be a minute.” His hand still cradles your elbow as he pulls the truck’s door open, thumb sweeping over the ridge of bone there.

His hand feels tight, even though it’s probably not. You tug your arm gently out of his grasp and take a step back. “I’m not going to stay here,” you try again, gathering your courage and tipping your chin up. “It’s my apartment. And I don’t want you to go alone.”

Joel stares at you, brows lowering over his eyes.

Anxiety beats a nervous, familiar pattern against your ribs, hollowing out the well of your lungs. You bite back the urge to apologize to him again, but he clearly doesn’t want to hear it since he hasn’t responded to it yet.

He is angry with you, and you don’t like that. But you try to remind yourself again that Joel is not your ex, that in the months you’ve known him, he’s never made you feel unsafe, or like you couldn’t disagree with him.

But it hadn’t been like that with your ex at first either, and your body is not listening to your mind.

“Jesus Christ—” he grits out then stops, the words long and deeply accented in his mouth. You do your best to swallow down the squirming worry souring your belly. “Fine. Just—behind me.”

You aren’t sure how to deal with Joel like this, he’s always so soft and kind and easy with you.

And you suppose he’s being soft with you now, he’s just—

Angry. He sounds mad; he must be pissed off. Probably because you’ve called him out of bed in the middle of night for no good reason, really. You should have just plucked up the courage to go inside by yourself. It’s likely you’ve called him down for nothing.

“Okay,” you relent. “Behind you.”

He doesn’t answer and shuts the truck door. Instead, he moves toward your building without preamble, decidedly not looking at you.

Seeing the street door wide open when you got home had scared you, the security light not blinking on had terrified you, and then Joel’s constant worries had drifted into the back of your mind, cloyingly poisonous.

He hates that you leave your windows open and trust the town you live in. He hates anytime you mention that your neighbors leave their door unlocked, even as a joke.

Ain’t safe, he always said, you don’t do that.

It was never a question.

He worries about you standing on the street and struggling with the door. He worries about you getting robbed or worse. You always rolled your eyes, because it was always fine and Joel was a serial worrier.

But that had been all you were able to think of as you stood there on the street.

Somehow, you’d convinced yourself to go inside after a few long minutes. You’d debated just going inside too, when you found your apartment door open but the fear had eventually won out.

Joel’s broad shoulders disappear into the dark entryway before the stairwell light flares on. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and jeans. He looks rumpled and soft and painfully domestic. His jeans are pressed with creases, the laces of his boots undone. The t-shirt stretches across the plains of his back, tight against his shoulders. His hair, normally carefully brushed, is mussed. A lick of gray hair sticks up off his forehead.

When he stops in front of your apartment door, you have to repress the urge to smooth it back, to press yourself into his side in silent askance for comfort you’re not sure you deserve.

“I’m sorry,” you find yourself saying again. “Really,” you continue, trying to ignore the dread building colonies in your lungs.

Nervous now, you realize, not because you might have been robbed, but because Joel is angry with you.

But, like all the other times, Joel doesn't acknowledge your apology. He pushes the door open and flips on the light just inside the door.

Your apartment looks the way it always does, homely and calm. You can’t see a single thing out of place, but that doesn’t stop Joel from searching through it anyway.

For the next few minutes it's quiet as Joel moves slowly around your little apartment. It’s messy, messier than usual. And when he pushes your bedroom door open, you feel embarrassment crawl up the back of your throat.

Because this is the first time he’s seeing your bedroom, also a mess, and you realize you wanted that to go differently.

He’s only ever had cause to sit at your tiny kitchen table, your sofa, before.

The floor is strewn with clothes, your bed is unmade, half your jewelry is out of its box and strung across your dresser. Used glasses and mugs sit on your bedside table that you’ve yet to take to the kitchen, your desk is a mess of old receipts, record sleeves, discarded pens, and stacks of books.

You wince when he pushes aside your curtains and slams your window shut, the one you always left open for Paprika, before he opens your closet door.

When your throat tightens, you leave him to your room and sit on your couch instead to wait.

Inexplicable shame and embarrassment melts around your heart. You try not to think of yourself as a bother to him, not exactly, anyway, and not anymore. But it's hard in this moment when he sounds so upset, so irritated with you.

Over the last few months, being around Joel and being. . .kind of something, something indefinable and light, to each other, you’ve realized it wasn’t just the tattoo. The tattoo your ex gave you, branded you with, was just the final nail in the coffin.

Now is a good reminder of that, that you’re sitting around waiting for Joel to tell you how useless you are, to break something, to snap at you.

He won’t, you know that. Somewhere inside you, you know that’s the truth.

But your body does not understand that. You’re coiled as tight as a spring, hands fisted in your lap as you wait for the other shoe to drop, for his concern to evaporate when he realizes there really is nothing wrong.

Anxiety burns bright in your belly, echoes in the stiff cut of Joel’s shoulders, the way he stalks around your apartment, checking increasingly more absurd hiding places until he’s satisfied that you’re alone and the door is locked.

Joel pushes aside the clothes hanging in your closet, gets on his hands and knees and looks under your bed, and finally peeks in your bathroom.

He feels calmer, better, now that he knows you’re safe and unharmed, that you’re there in the living room with the front door locked and your bedroom window shut.

Which reminds him of that damn cat you sometimes let into your apartment, and doesn’t seem to be around.

Joel trails back to the main room, ignoring the details of your bedroom—the clothes in piles on the floor, the few books strewn across your bed and desk with pens sticking out of the pages, the soft cerulean and cream blankets draped over your bed and on the chair in the corner. He shouldn’t get to see those things, not like this at least. “Where’s your cat?”

You blink and turn to look at him over the back of the sofa. You have one of the brightly colored, crocheted shawls over your shoulders and had been staring at his painting. The one he gifted you a few weeks before and that you don’t know is of you. The doe with bees dancing around her ears.

It’s an okay painting, but you adore it.

“What?”

“Your cat,” Joel grumbles. He’s yet to meet the cat, who always made himself scarce whenever he happened to find himself in your apartment. “Paprika, right? He’s not inside. He okay?”

He doesn’t want to go searching alleyways in the dark for the orange tabby but he’ll do it. For you, he’d do it.

“Oh,” you frown. “He’s not really mine,” you shake your head and shift your eyes from his. You look anxious and drawn. It’s like a lead weight in his stomach, to see fear and uncertainty spilled across your face. “He’s fine. I just feed him sometimes. He comes and goes when he likes.”

Joel hesitates. “You sure?”

“I—” Your eyes flicker over him before you look away again, your expression closing up. “Um,” you shift uncomfortably. Your shoulders are tense. “Yeah. He doesn’t—he doesn’t really need me.”

Something about the way you say it breaks his heart.

There are a lot of things you don’t see clearly about yourself, and your worth, your importance, is one of them.

“Thanks for coming by,” you say eventually when he doesn’t reply and rounds the couch to sit next to you. “I really didn’t mean to bother you.”

Joel reaches for you, carefully slots his hand in the crook of your elbow. You tense and he sweeps his thumb over the inside of your arm, soothing you the way he always does. His eyes drift down to your tattoo, the one he gave you. It looks beautiful on you. So beautiful he’s drawn up half a dozen other designs just for you.

He’d draw forever, if it meant getting something just right for you again.

It leaves something warm in him, that you like the tattoo so much.

“I think everything is all right,” he admits. He expects you to relax with that reassurance but your arm goes impossibly tenser beneath his touch. “I don’t want you stayin’ here tonight.”

The words fall out of his mouth. They’d been twisting circles around his mind since he picked up your phone call half an hour before, but now they spill out, desperate. Anxiety warps his voice into something hard, something tainted with acrid vulnerability that he hates.

He doesn’t know if you hear it, but you go still and swallow thickly. You tug your arm away from his hand and rub the inside of your elbow.

Your eyes meet his, wide and weighed down with something hurt. His pretty little doe, afraid. He suppresses the urge to tell you it’s all right, that he’s got you.

“But it’s all fine, isn't it?” You ask, like that matters at all, like the night isn’t long.

“Guess so,” he concedes. “But I ain’t leavin’ you here alone tonight. I can’t.”

Your frown, lips parting gently as you stare down at your lap.

“I’d feel better if y’stayed with me,” he continues when you don’t answer, his voice still laced with irritation. He clears it, tries to make it softer but the worry lingers, infects, roots down in him like you have, bright as sunshine, sweet as tea and bumblebees on a summer evening. You make him sick with worry and he needs to know you’re safe. He needs to see you, real and right in front of him. “Tonight.”

“Better?” You look up again, confusion tugging your brows up. “Why?”

Joel fists his hands on his knees. His knuckles strain against his skin, the flesh white with tension. It pulls hard until something starts to ache, and he has to wonder if that’s how you always feel. If your skin feels like a thousand tiny needles are prinkling at the underside of your skin.

“Yeah,” he says, his accent deepened, kinked and hard. “Better knownin’ you’re okay.” His voice doesn’t raise in volume, but you still flinch. You try to pass it off as a shiver but he sees it, finally sees what you see, what you’re so clearly waiting for.

The thought alone makes him want to curl inward, crawl inside his own heart and shield you there. Makes him sick with unease.

And his suspicions are only confirmed when you duck your head, tuck your hands beneath your thighs, and start again, “I’m sorry for bothering you. I really didn’t mean to drag you out of bed for nothing.”

Joel isn’t sure what to say to that as he realizes you’ve been apologizing repeatedly since he got there.

It makes him hate himself, because you’re so clearly afraid of him.

The silence stretches, moonlight pools on your thighs and around your calves from the kitchen window, competing with the low yellow of the floor lamp. You fidget with a loose thread on your jeans, fingers plucking nervously at it.

“It wasn’t—” He shakes his head. He can’t think of a way to reassure you. “You think it was nothin’?”

“Well,” you glance around your intruder-less apartment. Like it’s all the damning evidence you need. “It was. I shouldn’t have called.”

Joel curls a gentle finger beneath your chin and tips your face up, making an effort to have his voice as gentle as he possibly can. Like you’re that deer again, the one that’s familiar with him and yet still wary, still watchful. “You all right with that? Comin’ home with me?” You reluctantly lift your eyes to his and give a mute nod. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry,” you burst out again, soft eyes fringed with worry. “I—”

“Hey.” Joel doesn’t let you look away from him, smoothes his thumb against your chin. Your skin is soft there, and you don’t try to pull away again. “I always want you to call on me. For anythin’. It wasn’t nothin’. I’m glad you called me.”

You blink at the sincerity in his voice. Some of the tension around you fades. “I ain’t upset with you,” he says, just so you’re both clear.

You pull your face away from his hand, and he knows your skin feels stretched too thin, tight and uncomfortable, because you scrub at it again with your hand.

Joel lets his hand drop to the space between you. “Stay with me tonight, darlin’.” he pleads, not sure he’ll be able to make the drive home if you say no. “In the mornin’ we’ll come back here, see if anything is missin’, and I’ll change the locks.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine, Joel,” you try again. “It’s okay. I’m safe here.”

But that isn’t good enough. He needs to know you’re okay and he can’t do that if you’re in this damn apartment alone with locks he no longer has any kind of faith in.

He doesn’t want to try touching you again, not when you’re fidgeting and anxious and pulling away. Guilt ties knots around his lungs when he thinks of you flinching, how often he’s touched you without thought tonight. “Look at me,” he says instead. “Look at me, baby.”

You lift your eyes to his, your gaze hooking into his, desperation he can’t place lingering in your expression. “I’m proud of you, for callin’ on me. But I won’t rest knowin’ you’re here alone.”

You frown. “Proud?” This time, you reach for him.

Your hand is warm and soft, the brush of your fingers against his palm like homecoming. “Yeah.” And then, again, “I’m not mad. You did good.”

He can’t tell if you believe him, but you agree to stay with him anyway.

You’ve been to Joel’s house more than a few times and each time, it’s more familiar than the last.

Joel’s touch is on everything there. His girls’ lives are fingerprinted on every surface, his life and his family pressed into each fold of the house. The walls sigh with memories that have been collected and transported from Austin, wrapped in tissue paper and delicately given a place to live. Somehow, it always smells like sage has always just been burned.

There are a pair of sheep and a goat that command the acres of land around the ranch. “I’d like a couple horses,” he’d said the first time he brought you over and showed you around, months before. A couple weeks had passed since you’d had breakfast with him and his girls for the first time, and you were already dangerously attached to him. “But that’s money and time I don’t have.”

“You should get chickens,” you’d said, petting one of the goats through the wooden fence, squinting at him through autumn sunshine.

“Chickens?”

“Mhm. For eggs. Cost less money than horses and there’s nothing like fresh eggs.”

Joel had only looked consideringly out over the field. “Chickens for horses,” he’d laughed a little, the sound dry and pleasant, like he found you a peculiar kind of amusing. “There’s an idea.”

The driveway is long, the world far away. Late autumn air drifts in the truck’s open windows, warm with dry heat. The fingers of bare trees reach toward the sky, skeletal and thin, clenched around the outline of the moon.

The ranch always feels like a home, like a refuge, and in the night it seems like a fortress. He parks the truck beneath a leafless oak and kills the engine. You listen to it pop as it cools in the darkness.

Lightning bugs careen through the air, the low sounds of crickets and cicadas cascading on the breeze. “C’mon,” Joel’s voice is crinkled, washed in the gentle, pastel colored tones you know. “Let’s get you inside.”

Joel takes your bag from your hands and meets you on your side of the truck before you even have the door fully open, his hand pressed to your spine. You fight the urge to lean away, an anxiousness thrumming under your skin that isn’t familiar when it comes to Joel’s touch.

As you cross the driveway to his front porch you spot something through the dark, a new structure near the sheep’s fence. “Are you building something?”

He turns to where you’re looking. “Chicken coop,” he mumbles.

“You’re getting chickens?” You ask, surprised.

“Told me to, didn’t ya?”

You suppose you did, though you didn’t know he’d actually taken your suggestion to heart.

But he sounds annoyed again, so you let it go, let him push you ahead of him toward the house. Joel’s front door, unlike your own, opens without complaint.

His keys rattle as he sits them on the table inside the door. The living room light blinks on, a warm yellow that contrasts against the lightening blue sky beyond the front windows. Guilt swirls in your belly again. It’s so late that it’s now early.

If you weren’t so stupid, if you weren’t so useless—

The only thing you can be grateful for is that it’s a Sunday and Joel doesn’t have to rush to the studio after being awake all night.

A new, shame laden thought blooms, infects—maybe he felt he had no choice but to heed your call. Because you’re useless.

“This way,” Joel grumbles lowly in your ear, his hand on your hip, pushing you through the living room gently but forcefully, like he’s herding a particularly stubborn sheep.

You step away from his hand, and this time Joel notices immediately and drops his hand. “That’s okay,” you assure him. “I remember where the bathroom is.”

“You all right?” He asks. “I know you’re probably—”

“I know you said you aren’t angry,” you interrupt, fidgeting with your fingers. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things for me. You could have said no. You could have told me to figure it out.”

He stares at you, confusion pulling at the lines in his face. You have to lock down the urge to reach up and trace the delicate pattern of crow’s feet beside his eyes. “I didn’t want to say no.”

You blink, something warm worming its way into your heart, replacing the dread that had curled there like a snake, sharp with venom, waiting to strike. “You didn’t?”

“Sweetheart,” he says, extending his hand to you but not touching you. “I’d do it every night if I had to, if it meant you were safe. You don’t have to figure it out. Not alone, anyhow.”

“Well,” you say gently. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to every night.” Then, before you can help yourself, you continue, “I know you said you weren’t, but you just. . .you sounded angry.” You stop and think about leaving it at that but he would never understand you if you left him to guess. You want to be honest with him besides. You want him to trust you. “And I. . .my ex he—well, he would have been upset. He would have told me to figure it out.”

You fold your hand into his, still outstretched to you. The pads of his fingers are rough and familiar beneath yours. “I ain’t him,” he reminds you.

“I know. But it’s hard to remember, sometimes.” You take a long breath. “I always had to get ahead of it, y’know? Because I was always in the wrong. It was somehow always my fault.”

Joel watches you, his eyes knowing in a way you can’t decipher. He nods and instead of answering, he holds out your bag. “C’mon,” he says, voice soft, like the brush of wings. “Been a long night.”

When you’ve washed your face and changed your clothes and convinced yourself that Joel was telling the truth and that he would not mind seeing you in your pajamas—you trek back through the house to find him in the kitchen.

He’s sitting at the dining table, covered in Sarah’s textbooks from the previous semester and photo albums and mail, a bowl of fruit and a jar of honey, art supplies and the tiniest carving of a deer you’ve ever seen. You pause and let your bag fall to the floor before slowly approaching.

Joel’s shoulders are loose and soft, one hand relaxed and open on the table, the other curled around a pencil as he sketches in an open leather bound book.

He turns and closes the book before you can peer over his shoulder and see what it is he’s working on. “Hey,” he says, the cut of his voice back to what you know. It alights on you in a warm glow, chases the fog of worry from your mind. “You all right?”

It feels like the thousandth time he’s asked you.

“I promise I’m fine, Joel,” you assure, pressing one hand to the space between his shoulder blades. He leans back into your touch almost immediately, the tendon in his neck loosening. You rub your thumb slowly against his skin. Thick muscle flexes and releases beneath your hand. “Really.”

“It’s okay,” he says, glancing up at you. “If you’re shaken up.”

You pause and tilt your head at him. “Do you want me to be?” You ask, finally pushing that errant lock of his hair back down and into place.

“No,” he answers immediately. He stares up at you with big, sincere eyes. Your gaze flicks across his face, down to his mouth, and not for the first time, you find yourself wishing he’d kiss you.

Just like each Sunday morning spent on his porch, just like all those times he pointed wildlife out to you, his shoulder pressed into yours, his face close to yours when you turned to smile at him.

“Are you shaken up?” You ask, refocusing on the softness of his gaze.

Joel shifts in his seat and then reaches out to draw the chair next to him out. You let your hand fall from his back and fold yourself into the space next to him, wishing he’d tuck you into his side.

He doesn’t, because he’s Joel. Instead, he lays his hand on the table and lets you come to him, just like he always does, just like he always has.

A few weeks before, when Joel was driving you back to town, you’d seen a deer on the side of the road. She was beautiful with big, dark eyes and a smooth tawny coat. You’d pointed her out, watched the flick and twitch of her alert ears.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen such a pretty animal before. And then, behind her, two spotted deer, smaller, clearly younger, but no longer fawns, had appeared.

Joel, to your surprise, pulled over. He told you to stay put and then approached them slowly, so he could usher them back into the woods rather than spook them into the road. He hadn’t said anything to you about it and you hadn’t asked, but the act had stuck with you.

Now, his hand there on the table, you’re reminded of that moment. You’re reminded of all the moments like this one, where he patiently waited for you to come closer.

You reach out and fold your fingers through his. “Yeah, I was,” he admits and for a long while he doesn’t say anything else. You aren’t really expecting him to.

The light in the kitchen is warm and muted, a cold blue morning light beginning to grow on the other side of the blinds. There are pictures of his girls all along the wall beside the door that leads to the back deck.

Sarah and Ellie in high school graduation gowns and caps, Ellie bent over someone’s shoulder as she tattooed, hair obscuring her face and theirs, Sarah as a baby in Joel’s arms, Ellie as a gap-toothed child, tongue poking out of her mouth, Tommy and Joel with their arms around each other, fishing poles leaning against the truck behind them.

Joel is only in a couple of the pictures, the space on the wall reserved for the people he loved and not himself. You squint closer. “Joel,” you say, a spike of laughter in your voice. “Is that you? Did Ellie tattoo you?”

“Yep,” he says with a shrug. “Needed the practice.”

“I didn’t know,” you turn back to him and tighten your grip on his hand. You smile. “How many tattoos do you have that I’ve never gotten to see?”

His mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. “Guess,” he says, throwing your challenge from months ago back at you.

You roll your eyes and don’t take the bait. Instead you say, “It’s okay, you know? That you were shaken up. That’s okay. I’m okay.”

He watches you for a long moment before his eyes drop, and he watches your hands instead. His voice is carefully casual and even when he asks, “How long did you stay with him? After the tattoo?”

There’s nothing accusatory in his voice and it takes you a moment to realize Joel is asking about the tattoo on your shoulder, the one your ex permanently marked you with.

He’s asking about the Pandora’s box of your body, the cavalcade of emotions and fears that lived inside you.

You expected anger, to be screamed at for something out of your control, to be faulted for someone else compromising your safety, to be blamed for asking for help and wanting someone else to take care of you.

“The tattoo. . .” you trail off and swallow back the uncomfortable feeling that lodges itself in the back of your throat. “It was the last straw.” You look away. “I just didn’t realize it at the time. I thought all the other stuff—I thought it was my fault. It doesn’t make sense while it’s happening to you, I guess. You pretend it’s normal because sometimes things are fine and good. I was just stupid enough to wait until after he left me with something permanent to realize things were so bad.”

Joel doesn’t say anything for a minute but when he pulls his hand away from yours, your belly swoops painfully, a knot forming in your chest.

It’s a lot.

Your issues with touch, the relationship trauma you haven’t examined but locked away to burst to the surface while someone was trying to help you. The doubt that he even really wanted to help you, because who would?

But then he says, “It ain’t permanent. Look here.” He tips your chin up with a delicate tap.

You turn and watch him leaf through the leather bound book. He pulls out a sketch and hands it to you. The paper is thick, the edges of it rough and torn. You don’t say anything, not really sure what you’re looking at. The design is beautiful, in the same style as the tattoo on your forearm.

It’s so clearly for you specifically that it makes your heart cinch painfully tight.

“It’s a—we can change it however y’want. It’s a design for a cover-up,” he plucks the page from your fingers and turns it. “See here, there underneath is the original, best as I could remember it anyway.” It’s a coverup of the ugly fucking tattoo on your shoulder, the reminder, the painful, itchy grossness.

You stare at it, unable to form words, lips moving soundlessly as you take the page back, looking more closely at the details, at the clever ways he’d thought of incorporating the existing lines. He doesn’t say anything, not even when you turn and throw your arms around his neck, squeezing tight until his arms curl around your waist. “He doesn’t get to have you,” he says.

One broad hand slides up your spine to cup the back of your neck. It makes you feel small. In a good way, in a way that makes you close your eyes to stave off the tide rising in your chest.

He’d done that the last time he held you, too. When you’d melted into him in your kitchen and told him you were nothing but work. He’d whispered things like it’s okay and good girl in your ear then.

His fingers are warm and firm against your skin, rough and soft in all the right places. An ache forms between your ribs, juts up into your heart and splits you open.

“Thank you,” you say against his shoulder. “For everything.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for,” he says, his chest rising and falling with each word, like a symphony against your own body.

You bury your nose against his neck, let the pins and needles of touch fade away, replaced with the safety that Joel carried around with him like it cost him nothing. “I mean it,” you say quietly.

“I know you do,” he replies.

The morning light is golden now, bleeding in through the curtains in thin shafts, bars that cross you and Joel, still settled in his arms. It doesn’t feel wrong to relax against him, to let him rub your back slowly.

It doesn’t hurt, and you realize you don’t expect it to.

“You wanna sleep?”

“Maybe for a little while.”

You move out of his grasp, and then let him pull you along to his bedroom.

Joel’s room is darker than the kitchen, and it's easy not to think too hard about what’s happening as you slide beneath the sheets next to him.

It’s quiet, the whole world still and silent aside from the fan rotating slowly overhead.

You reach for him in the dark, curl up tight against his side. His arm slides around your back, tugs you that much closer. He’s still in his jeans but you don’t point that out because you don’t want him to move.

“One of my tattoos,” he says against your temple, when you relax into the safe circle of his arms. “Is over my heart.”

You contemplate that for a long time, trying to imagine what it might be. “A nice one? Or an Ellie apprenticing one?”

He chuckles. “A nice one.” You expect him to ask about your tattoos, and you’re prepared to answer, but he says instead, “It’s been a long time, since I’ve done this.”

Joel doesn’t specify what he means by this, whatever little thing has been growing between you. “Have someone in your bed?” You tease.

He doesn’t answer, the silence heavy, almost melancholy. His hand slides up your back again, the fabric of your shirt teasing up. You tense when his fingers brush against your bare skin, warm and gentle.

His hand moves away and tugs your shirt back down for you. You consider, maybe for the first time, Joel’s position. He’s only ever touched you freely, so needfully, the first and second times you’d been tattooed by him, and every day you’ve seen him since.

He plays by your rules and you have to wonder what he needs.

It’s been a long time, he’d said. He’s inched closer to you over a period of months, patience in spades wrapped around you like a safety net.

You trust Joel, you realize. Maybe you’d known it before but it sinks into your skin in that moment, folds itself tightly inside your soul. You want to let him take something he needs. “It’s okay,” you find yourself saying. “You can. . .it’s okay.”

He hesitates and you push one of his hands back to your waist. “I like it,” you assure him.

He presses both hands beneath your shirt so they rest against the small of your back. The span of his hands are broad, splayed across your spine, over the ridges of your vertebrae. “Sure?” He asks, but his nose is pressed against your temple, his body loose and molded to yours. “My girl,” you think he says, so quiet it’s almost inaudible, the words pressed right against your forehead in a kiss. “Good girl.”

It feels so nice, the intimacy without expectation of anything more, without feeling like something was wrong with you. It feels like the envelope of your heart may burst.

You tuck yourself tighter into the crook of his arm, nose buried against his shoulder. He smells so strongly of himself there, the natural scent of his skin and sweat undercut only slightly by the faded smell of his soap.

He sounds close to sleep, exhausted after the worrisome, anxiety fueled night you had accidentally caused him. “Joel?” He grunts so you know he’s listening, still awake. “My antler tattoo is on my ribs.”

“What?” His hands drift a bit higher. “Really?”

“Mm.”

So when his fingers trace over your bare skin, you close your eyes. The sensation is so nice. The earlier acrid wave of fear has passed and no needles stab at your skin. It tickles, it feels like wings against your ribs.

Want flutters alive, in your belly, between your legs.

His bedroom is warm and cast in faded, milky light. He shifts and pushes up the sleeve of his t-shirt, until the curve of his opposite shoulder and the expanse of skin beneath is bared to your eyes. “One of Ellie’s first,” he says. It’s a needless explanation, though you find the tiny outline of the dinosaur a little funny.

When you reach across his chest and touch it, Joel twitches, like he isn’t expecting you to. His skin is soft there. “It suits you,” you say as he digs both his hands into your waist again.

You trace your fingers over his chest and throat. You trace the line by his eyes and rake your fingers through his hair.

He leans into your touch and you feel like the world rests in your palm.

When he says, “I think I can feel yours.” You close your eyes and smile. It almost feels like he’s tracing the outline of it.

“You can’t.”

“I can,” he disagrees. “It’s real pretty.”

You want to offer to show him yours in return, but sleep and safety pull you under.

Joel’s room is empty when he wakes, and if it weren’t for the clear imprint of your body in the nest of sheets next to him, he’d think the previous night was a dream.

He’d think the comfortable way you curled into him was a dream.

He lies there, jeans cutting into his waist painfully, thinking about how easily you’d curled up next to him, how velvet soft your skin was. It makes him smile and he groans and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just like a kid,” he huffs. You make him feel young, like this is the first time and he’s a better man than he is.

But he’s starting to wonder if that’s what love is supposed to feel like. Off Balance and brand new and secure and like it had always been there and always would be, all at once.

Joel gets up slowly, shoulder and knees and back smarting as he does. He feels the ghost of your head on his shoulder, an ache forming along his collarbone from the weight of it resting there. His fingers snag on the blanket you must have thrown over him in lieu of your body heat.

He wonders where you’ve gotten to. Maybe you left, took an Uber back to town.

Then, he hears it; commotion in his kitchen.

And he remembers it’s a Sunday and that his girls have been visiting more often, ever since they figured you were around on most Sundays. That usually you stopped by with coffee and pie from Flu’s, and sat on the front porch with him.

The noise is nice, better than waking to a silent house which he’d never gotten used to after Sarah and Ellie moved out.

His girls and you, down the hallway, in the kitchen. There’s laughter, and then a shriek as something shatters on the floor, a flood of curses from Ellie that devolve into shushing and giggling.

The smell of breakfast food cooking slips under the door as he changes. In the bathroom he slicks his hair back into place with wet fingers and thinks about your fingertips fluttering through his hair and tracing the crinkles by his eyes of their own accord. He brushes his teeth and thinks about how gently you’d laid your hand between his shoulder blades, how you let him sleep with his hands pressed inside your shirt, told him about your antler tattoo. . .

The antlers on your ribs, spearing up through the cage of your body.

He wants to see it, trace it, wants to put his mouth against it. The urge to touch every inch of you siphons into his chest, the urge to curl you in close to him, to feel the plush curves of you against his side, in his hands.

He wonders if you’d let him. He wants to earn it from you, coax you closer and closer, as slow as he has to.

When he walks down the hall and passes into the living room and then the kitchen, he finds the three of you huddled around the breakfast table. Sarah’s head is lent against your shoulder and Ellie’s bicep presses into yours.

The three of you have your heads bent together, hungry eyes sliding over something on the table in front of you.

“Mornin’,” he greets.

You look up at him, doe eyes bright, crinkled at the corners, every doubt and fear from the night before washed away. “Morning, Joel.”

“Girls,” he nods, passing by the table, beelining for the coffeepot.

“We made breakfast,” Sarah says by way of a greeting. “How come you haven’t shown her all these designs?”

He does a double take at the table, to find most of the contents of his notebook spread across the wood.

Joel sighs hard through his nose and Ellie does have the grace to at least look sheepish, though it outs her as the instigator. “It’s not like you were ever gonna show her!”

“Jesus,” he grumbles, not looking at you as he grabs a mug from the cabinet, a little embarrassed at the sheer amount of them. “Well, now I won’t get the chance to, will I?”

As he pours coffee into his mug, Ellie gives a dramatic groan and Sarah says, “C’mon, dad, don’t be like that.”

He turns to find all three of you staring at him, and he can’t really be all that upset when your mouth is twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “Come sit down,” you suggest, “and I’ll tell you which one my favorite is.”

So, he gathers up a plate of eggs and bacon and toast and ignores the smirking of both his daughters, the knowingness in both their faces grating on him, and sits across from you.

He watches you page through design after design, months worth of work, all the way back to the beginning of summer when you’d first, finally, wandered into the studio. You push one across the table towards him, and then a couple more.

“That’s just about all of ‘em,” he comments around a forkful of egg.

Instead of responding to him, you turn to Sarah and say, “Maybe one day he’ll realize he’s a good artist.”

You insist on cleaning up after breakfast so Joel can have some time with his daughters.

The light buzz of conversation seeps in from the living room. Occasionally Ellie’s voice rings out, more excitable and louder than Joel and Sarah’s. You can’t hear what they’re talking about and you don’t want to.

A bit of guilt pools in your belly, a slight worry that Joel might be upset with you for letting his girls show you something they probably shouldn’t have.

You hope he really had intended to eventually show them to you, to share with you the beautiful things he made, whether he thought of them like that or not.

Joel’s home bursts with art, with craftsmanship and creativity, though he doesn’t believe you. He tells you the same things are true about your apartment and your silly little hobbies, and you suppose both of you have a little to learn in being as proud of yourselves as you are of each other.

When you’re wiping down the counters, Ellie and Sarah pass through to gather their things and say goodbye. While Sarah gives you an unexpected hug that you make yourself hang on for, Ellie rifles through a cabinet, pilfering it for stray snacks.

“He isn’t mad you saw them,” Sarah says when she pulls back, mischievous glint in her eye.

Ellie and Sarah are the same kind of troublesome, you’ve come to realize. Sarah is just better at hiding it. “Oh yeah?”

“He needs a little push sometimes,” she says delicately and with a shrug.

“More like a huge kick in the ass,” Ellie says. “You should have heard him before he even met you! It was like you were some kind of ghost or something. But it was like that after he met you too.” Her voice pitches lower and gruffer in tone, “Ellie, you’re goin’ to spook her. Don’t say nothin’ —”

“Alright,” Joel says from the mouth of the kitchen. “That’s enough. Get your ass back to Austin.”

You smile at Ellie, “You do a really good impression.”

“Told you, dude!” She says as she slides past her dad, Sarah following right after.

Joel just grunts and then calls after them, “Drive careful!”

“Bye!” Twin voices call out before the front door slams closed.

And then you’re alone with him, fingers still tangled in a dish towel.

Joel’s eyes soften when he looks at you, and you’re reminded of his hands beneath your shirt, the iron hot touch of his body against yours. You’re reminded of the lancing burst of want that sparked inside you with him.

Only with him.

Maybe because you knew he tried to understand, that he’d let you go when you needed it.

You open your mouth, not sure what you’re going to say, when Joel steps forward and tugs the towel out of your hands. “Don’t suppose you’d come outside with me? I want to show you somethin’. See if you might help me with it.”

“Sure,” you say.

Joel nods and when you brush your knuckles against his, he laces your fingers together.

Outside the air is warm in a distinctly autumn way, with the scent of sun in the air muted, the swirling chatter of decaying leaves on the breeze, the earthy scent of hay and soil.

You cross the porch with him and descend the steps to the yard. He leads you toward the chicken coop.

“When did you have time to build that? It’s new.”

“Been workin’ on it for awhile now. Just had Tommy help me move it here from out back.”

“Oh?”

“Was supposed to be a surprise,” he grumbles.

You lean into his arm, seeing your walk from the truck to the house in a different light. “Is that why you were cranky about me seeing it last night?” Joel starts to answer when you gasp and let go of him as two red-ish brown hens and a rooster round the corner of the coop. “Joel! You already got some?”

He mutters something about goddamn chickens showing me up behind you as you crouch to watch them on the other side of the fence.

“I did,” he sighs. “Look here.” He opens the gate and ushers you through to the other side where a hatch opens in the coop. “Go on,” he says, gesturing for you to look.

Two fuzz balls peer back at you from the depths when you peer into the hatch. “Chicks?” You say excitedly.

“Chicks,” he agrees mildly. “You wanna hold one?”

Without waiting for a response, he gently cups his hands around one of the yellow, fuzzed creatures and drags it out.

And you get the very real pleasure of seeing Joel Miller standing there in the morning sunshine, holding a tiny chicken to his chest. You laugh, and he says, “What?”

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The chick is transferred to your hands from his, light and airy, like something incorporeal sitting in your palms, peeping softly. When you look at him, Joel’s face is relaxed. “What did you want me to help with?”

He clears his throat and gestures to the coop. “Paintin’.”

“Weren’t you a contractor?” You tease. “Shouldn’t you be able to paint it?”

Joel rolls his eyes. “I mean somethin’ pretty. Like how you painted your table.”

“Oh,” you murmur, something warm settling in your chest. “That’s nothing special.”

“Mhm, just like how that painting of mine you like so much ain’t special either.”

You roll your eyes and offer the baby chick back to him. “Okay, I get it. I’ll help you paint it.” Joel tucks the bird back into its home, the peeping fading when he closes the hatch. “Joel,” you reach for his wrist. “I’m sorry about seeing those sketches.”

“You ever goin’ to stop apologizin’ to me for everything?” He asks, eyes alighting on you.

“Well,” you continue. “I am. Especially if you never intended for me to see them.”

He nods and squints into the sun. His boot scuffs against the ground. “I always intended you to see ‘em. They’re yours.”

“They’re beautiful.” You step closer to him, the hens clucking around your ankles, and draw his fingers between yours. It’s quiet for a moment before you take another step. Being around Joel is like being safely shaded, like sleeping in a protected wood. “Thank you for coming when I called. You didn’t have to.”

“I did, honey,” he disagrees. “I’ll always come when you call. Even if you think it’s nothin’.”

You nod and tip your chin up, watching his eyes. The sun makes the irises look honeyed. You glance away, swallowing down the words burgeoning behind your lips, all the things you want from him and want to say to him.

He shifts. “I’m sure you got other things to get to. Let’s go take a look at your apartment—”

“Wait,” you tighten your hold on his hand. “Not everyone would do what you did. Not everyone would put up with me the way you have. My ex didn’t. He probably made me worse.” You’re so close to him you can feel the sink and rise of his chest, you can feel each deep breath like it's your own. “But you make me better, you make me safe. So just let me say thank you for once.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t let you thank me for doin’ right by you,” he says, stubborn as a bull. “I know you need reminding. But you ain’t work to me. There’s nothin’ wrong with you. I haven’t been putting up with anything. I’d drive down there every damn night if I had to.”

You tilt your cheek into his hand when he cups your jaw. Joel’s eyes are flicking over your face, his expression tense and needful, wanting.

His eyes hook into you, intense and tawny, the breath is punched from your lungs.

Never.

You’ve never felt like this with anyone, like you could be stripped bear, like he could press his hands inside your chest and feel the slick beating of your heart in his palms and everything would still be okay. He’d catch you, he’d shield you, he’d figure out a way to mend you and help you, he’d look at your heart and put it back in your chest even if he wanted to keep it for himself.

When he leans in and kisses you, it feels like fragments of your soul are being pieced back together. Shards of yourself you hadn’t even known were dust reform, shine brighter.

He cradles you to him, the line of your body pressed against his. He’s muscled and soft and broad and so solid. He groans into your mouth, licks into you. There’s possession in the way he holds you, like you’re his and his and his and you always have been.

Joel tastes like coffee, because there’s nothing else he could have tasted like.

He’s so familiar and safe, like sage burning against the night, like a soft place to land in all the ways a person could be.

His other hand splays against your lower back, the tips of his fingers against the waist of your jeans.

When you pull back, lungs aching for air, he presses his forehead against yours and closes his eyes. His jaw is clenched tight, a muscle jumps in his jaw, like he’s afraid.

“I’m not that skittish,” you say. “I trust you, Joel.”

He opens his eyes, swipes his thumb across your lips. He looks like a man who’s patient, steady hand has finally touched something delicate and rare.

💞 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 #pedro pascal characters #joel miller #the last of us #pedro pascal #honeyed fic

2K notes · View notes

raginglesbian2006 · 2 months

Note

Hihi!

I enjoy your fics and I was wondering if I could request Alastor x reader where the reader paints Alastor's nails? Maybe reader paints their nails and wants to match with Alastor? Thanks for writing cool fics!

omg this is so good

Self-care day

"I declare today as self-care day!"

Every hotel resident looked at you with dumbfounded looks on their faces as they sat in front of you on the couch. Charlie cheered from the corner.

Angel Dust, someone you'd grown close to during your stay at the infamous hotel, rose up from his seat and said, "Ya heard her. It's self-care day. Shut your traps and get movin'!" You looked up at him with a grateful sigh.

You had joined this hotel when the extermination had been moved up. You were doing fine till then but panicked when you heard the news and immediately took shelter in the confines of the Hazbin Hotel. Much to your fortune, you were accepted immediately- by Charlie and Vaggie that is. Others...well...they took some time. But you made friends anyway!

Well... you couldn't call Alastor, your friend. He was more of an acquaintance...of sorts. A menacing smile you saw from time to time wander around the hotel. He managed to spook you a couple of times by randomly appearing behind you and greeting you with a loud and boisterous laugh. You almost fell down the stairs and cracked your skull open once, had it not been for Alastor's shadows preventing you from losing your balance.

"Now my dear, death at the bottom of the stairs of this fine establishment won't do well for its name, now, would it? What would the papers say?"

After the great war between the demons and the angelic exterminators and losing one of the best souls that had graced this hotel; everyone helped rebuild it to its former glory. Scratch that. It was more glorious than before.

So a day after, you had suggested to Charlie that everyone working at the hotel should deserve some rest. Quality time with themselves, if you will. Of course, Charlie was all in.

This is what led to you proudly presenting your idea in front of the denizens of hell residing in the hotel, including the literal king of hell. Alastor was nowhere to be seen as usual. He usually disappeared when called for hotel "activities" which he deemed "a waste of time."

Oh well.

At least your idea seemed to be going well for now.

Angel had pushed Husk and pestered him to let him comb his fur. He pinky promised not to make any sex jokes for an entire week if he let him do it. Husk eventually gave in which made Angel squeal in joy.

Charlie had put cucumber slices on Niffty's eyes since she refused to sit still and enjoy the face massage she had recommended. Needless to say, the little she-devil walked around the hotel lobby, with her eyes covered by cucumbers, bumping into the pillars again and again.

"Yay! Pain!" Niffty exclaimed, gleefully. Well, at least she was enjoying it.

Lucifer was teaching Charlie how to prune Vaggie's newfound wings. He was very particular with how it should be done and carefully guided Charlie through it. You absolutely loved to see them bonding.

You, on the other hand, were painting your nails. You'd noticed Alastor's claws before. You really liked the way they shone against the light. So thus, you'd resolved to paint your nails a bright red, like his claws were. Whilst you were amid your manicure, you heard the telltale static noise that announced Alastor's arrival wherever he went.

You watched as Alastor walked in through the doors of the hotel and stopped to see everyone, either on the ground or on the couch, indulging in some well-deserved self-care.

"Ah, I see you all are still not done with your... shenanigans, hm?"

Charlie gleefully said, "Al! Come join us! It's self-care day!"

Alastor let out a staticky sigh, "No my dear, as much as I would love to participate, I have better things to do." Charlie frowned but she expected this behavior from him.

Alastor was about to leave when suddenly Lucifer chimed in nonchalantly, "Maybe he's scared."

A sickening crack was heard. Alastor swiftly turned his head towards the king of hell, who was busy brushing his future daughter-in-law's wings.

"WHAT. DID. YOU. SAY?" Alastor's radio static rose significantly.

"I said," Lucifer emphasized, "Maybe you are just scared of a little massage... afraid of nail clippers. Oooh! nail polish, the sheer absolute horror!"

You chuckled at his theatrics and so did the rest of the hotel. Oh, but Alastor was not amused in the slightest. If looks could kill, Lucifer's head would be on a stick by now with the rest of his body torn to shreds.

"I can assure you, Your Majesty," Alastor's voice crackled, "I am not scared of the frivolous habits you indulge in."

"Oh?" Lucifer's smirk widened, "Prove it."

No one spoke except for Angel Dust, who whilst combing Husk's fur yelled out, "DRAMA."

You felt the air around you tense up. Alastor's grin widened even more, but you could feel it was his annoyance peaking at the king's suggestion.

Without a word, the tall deer demon started walking towards your direction.

Wait....that can't be right. Why is he walking towards you!?

Your eyes widened as he sat down right in front of you, on the ground, might I add, and spoke verbatim, "Now, would you be a dear and help paint my claws? Apparently I need to prove to that ditzy demon everyone calls "the king of hell" that I am not afraid of such puny little luxuries"

Your mouth moved once, without saying anything and then it moved again. You were basically looking at him like he'd grown seven heads.

Alastor's grin remained, "Chop chop now, my dear. My time is quite precious."

You nodded, unsure of what to do next.

"W-what color would you like for your claws to be painted, Alastor? " you spoke, trying to control your trembling, as you showed him your collection.

The demon hummed and chose a black nail polish. You took it from his hands and started painting his claws. If someone told you that one day you would be giving the radio demon a manicure, you'd have laughed at their face.

And look at you now, on the ground with the radio demon, painting his claws.

You expected him to be fussy with all this but he was surprisingly quite relaxed. He let you paint his claws with utmost sincerity and did not utter a word, the only sound coming from him being the eerie static.

This was quite unnatural of him. Not talking at all, that is. He is quite chatty almost all the time. You had to admit, it was nice to see this side of him.

You were so engrossed in your work that you did not notice that Alastor had asked you something.

"Sorry...can you repeat that again, please?"

Alastor reiterated, " Oh I just took notice of the color you chose to paint your nails."

You chuckled, "Ah well, I was inspired by the way your claws look naturally! They shine oh so wonderfully in the light. Red really suits you, you know."

He said nothing, except a hum and you resumed your work.

After the end of the little self-care day you'd arranged, you could see everyone look quite happy and relaxed. You smiled. You felt that you had accomplished something great and contributed to the smooth running of this establishment.

While you were feeling satisfied with yourself, you heard a pop behind you and there stood Alastor, with his newly painted claws.

"Hi! Do you like how it looks?" you asked.

"It is wonderful, my dear. I quite like the color. Thank you for indulging me," he replied, putting his hand on your shoulder.

Your face turned red under his gaze as you quickly looked away, "You know me, always up for helping my friends! Well, you must be busy. Let me not hold you up for long, byeeeee." Saying this, you rushed out of the lobby, away from his sight.

Alastor's mind lingered on one little thing you said.

"Friend...," he wondered loudly. He quite liked the sound of that.

A/N: Sorry for taking so long to reply to this. I hope you enjoy it!

#hazbin hotel #alastor #alastor x reader #hazbin hotel alastor #request

450 notes · View notes

comicaurora · 4 months

Note

Hi! I finally got the chance to read Aurora a bit ago. It's a wonderful story--all I was expecting and better! I was particularly amazed and delighted by the artwork and visual mechanics used to tell the story, so I wrote a post to yell about how cool it is and break some of it down. (No criticism, just praise.) I'm mostly a hobbyist, so I'm hoping I've done it justice.

That said: zero pressure to read it or respond to this ask. Normally I wouldn't send it since I tagged, but I know Tumblr's notifs are a mess and things get lost very easily. I've been in both the "one (1) word of praise will feed me for a year" and the "oh gods don't talk about my writing/art because anything that seems Off will break my brain" modes before, and I absolutely don't want to push or make you uncomfortable!

If you are comfortable, however, I wanted to ask about your use of what I'm assuming are Screen and blending modes in sound effect words. (I'm only guessing that's the technique, though, so I could be totally wrong about how it's done! I'm mostly experienced in image manipulation in Photoshop.) Making them semi-transparent over the actions is genius :) What inspired you to do that, and are there specific techniques you use to make it work?

Same questions go for using specific colors to distinguish different characters' words and actions. I really noticed it in the cave sequence with Falst and Dainix, since their colors are so vivid in the dark (ex. Falst's little swats and Dainix's swooping kick at 1.20.9). It lends excellent clarity to busy scenes.

Thanks! Have a lovely day, enjoy your break, and happy holidays <3

You're correct about the technique! "Screen" is the blend mode I use most often for sound effects. I stumbled on it mostly through trial and error - I love how sound effects add depth to a comic panel, but it's very easy for them to obscure the art in a way I find counterproductive, so "Screen" lets me put the sound effect directly over the origin of the sound while still letting it be visible through the word. Early chapters didn't have it as much-

Most of the sound effects in early chapters are just solid colors with reduced opacity if I'm feeling fancy. But I started figuring it out around chapter 8 and 9, because Falst is kind of a sound-effect-heavy guy, especially in his fight scenes.

In order to make sure they don't impede the visibility of the action, I'll often soft-erase the top or bottom half of the SFX to reduce its opacity while still leaving it readable.

I'll usually double that up with an outline on the SFX so it's still readable. This is an especially important consideration if the SFX goes over an area of the background that's very bright or glowing.

Color-coding the speed lines and SFX to the character or force causing them isn't a hard and fast rule, but I like using it (in part because it's a habit from the OSP illustrations, where every character has a single pop of color in their lineart) mostly because it sort of codes every sound to make it clear where it's emanating from, or the general feeling of the sound. Since I normally do character-colors for SFX, something like this stands out more jarringly-

Which it's supposed to, but a big lightning strike doesn't register as anything too worrying because it's just Tess up to her usual shenanigans.

It's also very useful for magic effects, because each form of magic has its own associated palette.

And when I had a very complicated fight scene in a dark environment, I used the texture pattern I'd already made for the monster to color its SFX, so when I Screened them onto the panels they didn't obscure too much while still communicating "this is something else."

Changing the weight, lined-vs-not-lined, and opacity of the SFX words also helps to communicate that not every sound has the same feeling. A strong motion is solid and aggressive, but a crackling, unstable sound is more ephemeral and staticky.

It's definitely been a process of learning as I go - looking back at the earlier chapters I can actually see when I first tried various tricks I now use regularly, like doubling and distorting an SFX to produce the effect of a camera-shaking impact. I haven't really seen any other comics that do it like I do, probably because most other comics follow a more traditional production pipeline where text bubbles and sound effects get locked into the composition early, before the inking stage, because traditional physical comics don't have digital-art layers to play with. Adding sound effects to a page is almost the last thing I do before exporting them, and that only works because digital art and layers allow for a ton of flexibility.

#asks #aurora #art stuff

370 notes · View notes

toruro · 8 months

Text

— ✧ scrawled in sand

inspired by hozier’s ‘all things end’

pairing. jeon wonwoo x reader

description: "loving wonwoo was like taking a breath of air. you don’t get to think twice before you inhale, and so you never thought twice about loving wonwoo. maybe that’s why he stitched himself a little too deep, and now you’re wondering when exactly did the thread cut loose."

genre: smut (18+ / mdni), break up au, angst w/c: 2.8k a/n: sorry ig. anywho! this is for @ressonancee my beloved ^^ and thank u @cheolhub for reading over this 4 me and @lovelyhan for beta reading c:

smut tags. fem bodied reader, fingering, pet names (angel), creampie

If there was anyone to ever get through this life With their heart still intact, they didn't do it right

Your friends tell you that you should have seen it coming.

They’re right, in retrospect—you should have seen it coming—but that isn’t so easy. It can’t ever be easy when you love Jeon Wonwoo, and that’s because loving Jeon Wonwoo is as easy as breathing.

You wonder if you let yourself love him too easily. Too much, you dare say, because you’re starting to realize that when you love too much, Wonwoo begins to stitch himself into the very walls that build up your life.

The needle must have pricked on your first day of high school when you saw him for the first time after summer. Loving him was easy then, because he smiled so brightly and patted your head so fondly you could melt into his arms. It must have sunk a little deeper on your guys’ first prom, when he asked you out with a poster and cheap flowers because it was the only thing his crappy life-guarding job could afford. Loving him was easy then, because he pressed his lips to your cheek and held you close.

Loving Wonwoo was taking a breath of air. You don’t get to think twice before you inhale, and so you never thought twice about loving Wonwoo. Maybe that’s why he stitched himself a little too deep, and now you’re wondering when exactly did the thread cut loose.

It couldn’t have been in college, no, because Wonwoo agreed to study in the same city as you in a heartbeat; because you made love for the first time in your creaky little dorm bed after kicking your roommate out; because through those four years, you were still breathing and you were still loving and that thread was so deeply rooted that it might as well have been a part of your soul.

Late nights on campus when you would sit in the library together and pretend you were studying. Pretend, because loving Wonwoo was too easy and one teasing glance turned into another before the two of you would be giggling like school kids until you were kicked out for being too loud.

Scurrying away with your bags stuffed with unfinished notes to makeout behind some building under the dingy yellow light of a lampost, his lips sucked your breath away, but that’s okay because even if you weren’t breathing, you were loving Wonwoo and that was more than enough.

It couldn’t have been when you moved in together after graduation, because that first night Wonwoo danced with you in your barren living room to the staticky radio the landowner left behind, and when he looked at you it was with flames in his eyes. You loved Wonwoo too easily, and so you forgot that all fires die eventually. Sometimes, when you close your eyes, you still imagine you can feel the embers.

You conclude that it must have happened slowly.

To love Wonwoo was to breathe, but you failed to realize that it is not always easy breathing.

You should have listened to your friends. Being high school sweethearts was a high—it was your peak, you realize now. You and Wonwoo were hiking towards a goal—to make this work—and somewhere along the climb you must have gotten lost.

Breathing was no longer easy because the air was thinning, but of course, that happens slowly. So slowly, you aren’t sure you’ll ever find out exactly when that thread snapped; you’ll only ever know when you finally felt its whiplash.

You wake up rather early for a Sunday morning. You’d like to blame it on the empty spot next to you, but you rather enjoy the extra space.

(You feel plenty warm on your own anyways.)

There’s a rustling outside your bedroom, coming from down the hall, and you aren’t quite sure what he’s doing.

(You’re even less sure if you’re bothered enough to find out.)

You glance at the time. 7:17. You figure you might make use of your early waking, slipping from beneath the covers to leave the room. There’s something heavy in the air when you do, and you feel it in every thudding step you take.

(Does he hear the rumbling as deeply as you do?)

“Wonwoo,” you call out, when you walk into the kitchen to find him pressed against the counter, mindlessly scrolling through his phone.

(When was the last time you called him “Won?” “Woo?” “Love?”)

“What is it?” he asks when you stand by the island, looking up from his phone, but the screen still stays on. You want him to turn it off, but then you think again.

(Why should he?)

Wonwoo glances back at his phone when you take too long to respond. You click your tongue and shake your head, turning away. “I forgot.”

(Ask me, ask me, ask me. Ask me if I’m okay.)

Silence follows as Wonwoo leaves the kitchen to grab a bag from the pantry. “I’m going to the farmers’ market now. It’s my turn this week.”

(When did you stop slipping into the car together, Wonwoo’s thumb brushing over your thigh as you sing along to the morning blues? When did you stop holding hands, skipping through the market, grabbing samples, and feeding each other through hushed giggles and soft-lipped kisses? When did you start taking turns?)

“Do you remember what you wanted to say?”

(If you held out your hand, would he take it?)

“Remember to get the tomatoes.”

(Loving Wonwoo is too easy, and maybe that’s why you never really noticed when you stopped.)

You imagine this would hurt less if there was a ring on your finger. It isn’t difficult to admit you married the wrong person, tied by legalities and social burdens pressed down on you.

It’s harder to say you’re bound by a love that once was.

It’s okay, in some ways; you’ve learned to live with it. Most days, you two work your way around the elephant in the room. But today, you’re tired. You’re so, so tired and it’s getting just a little too hard to ignore that the calf has grown into something much, much bigger.

Loving Wonwoo was like breathing, and now it’s hitting you that you’re at a loss for air. When you step through the front door, you think everything might give out.

Wonwoo sits on the living room couch on his laptop, and you aren’t sure what he’s doing, but you think it hardly amounts to any level of importance right now. “Wonwoo? Wonwoo?” you call out and there’s something in your voice—like you’re searching for him even though he’s right there—and Wonwoo just caves.

There’s worry laced into his tone when he calls your name and for a second, you think things have already been mended. The stitches feel as they have tightened and you let yourself dream that this will be your rebound, but then you realize that Wonwoo is only concerned because your eyes are welling with tears and you’re staggering against the wall, limbs trembling and lids heavy. He stumbles a little to get to you, and you think that Wonwoo always used to find it easy to come to you.

(When did things change?)

“Hey, what’s wrong? You’re crying—” When Wonwoo grabs your arm, you kiss him fiercely, not because you feel fiercely, but because you hope it will ignite something tonight.

Kissing Wonwoo is almost as easy as it was to love him. Years and years of his lips against yours and now it’s just like second nature, the way your tongues glide and prod into each other’s mouth. Wonwoo’s lips are chapped, and he tastes faintly of the coffee that sits on the corner table.

(Wonwoo likes to make it on the French Press, for 4 minutes and 15 seconds to be precise, with a dash of milk and 3 cubes of sugar.)

“Wonwoo,” you whine like your throat knows so well—hoarse and desperate just how he likes and tonight it works, because Wonwoo is wrapping his arms around your waist and kissing you deeper. His palms dig into your flesh so hard you want to cry—but you’re already crying—so you press your face into his neck and suck instead.

He groans into you, his hands slipping underneath the hem of your shirt, and so you move on to suck and lick against him again because you once loved the sound of his breathy moans and you’re convinced that if you hear it just once more, it might just make you fall right back in love.

It doesn’t, but you’re not really surprised. His hands are running all over your waist, your stomach, and still, it feels good, at least for now. You know Wonwoo knows how to make you feel good, after all, it was just that he never really did it anymore.

(No hard feelings though, because when was the last time you unbuckled his belt and palmed him through his boxers like you’re doing right now?)

Warm hands creep up, brushing over your hard nipples, pinching and tweaking between deft fingers, and you throw your head back and moan. You’ve always been a bit sensitive there, and as he roughly yanks the buttons of your work shirt loose, Wonwoo uses what he knows to his full advantage.

“Bedroom,” you breath out, tangling your fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck, tugging softly. If it hurts, Wonwoo doesn’t say anything.

(Has he ever told you if it hurts?)

He nods, limbs still tangled with yours as your feet follow the silent path down the hallways. You stumble through the door together and your back is hitting the mattress before you can even discern what is left and what is right.

(When was the last time your bed felt this warm?)

“Angel,” Wonwoo mumbles into your mouth, pulling away just an inch to slip the shirt off his head. “Angel,” he says more intensely this time, speaking from his throat and oh this will be your undoing, because you are no longer Wonwoo’s angel but for this moment, you two can pretend.

Shimmying your shirt and bra off, you leave it fall on top of Wonwoo’s on the ground before playing back down on the sheets and opening your legs. He’s got his hands at your waistband, yanking the pants right off your legs and something about the way the cool air hits your bare skin makes your ache run a little deeper.

“Wonwoo,” you mewl, reaching for his face so you can smash his lips into yours once more. He doesn’t taste much like coffee anymore. Now, he just tastes like Wonwoo.

(You aren’t sure which you prefer.)

“Oh fuck,” he moans against your cheek when he grinds down into you, bulge pressing against your thigh as your body grows warmer and warmer.

(Is this the fire you so desperately tried to light?)

With your hands caged around his cheeks, Wonwoo looks at you with heavy lidded eyes and you wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. There was a time where you could tell, but that time has passed and now you’re panting into his neck when he brings his fingers up to your soiled panties.

Rubbing against the nub over the slick fabric, your blood buzzes and your back arches into his touch, legs spreading and spreading until they have no further to go. “So beautiful,” Wonwoo tells you, thumb circling over clothed clit as your tits heave up and down in tandem with your harsh breaths.

(Beautiful, because you are beautiful. You’ll always be beautiful, but being beautiful will not always matter.)

“More,” you whine, thrashing against the sheets when his thumb is no longer enough. Hooking your finger under your panties and tugging it to the side, your core is all shiny and flutter and beautiful when it’s on display to Wonwoo.

His finger is in your cunt before you can plead with him again, because now is not the time to make you beg. It has not been the time to make you beg in a long, long time. One turns into two and soon you’re moaning incoherently as his knuckles plunge into you, caressing your warm walls so methodically one would think it’s ingrained into Wonwoo’s very DNA.

You feel yourself coming close to your end and so you wrap your fingers around his wrist to make him stop. He looks up at you and—oh, those eyes—his lips are on yours again, so your legs wrap around his bare torso as you roll around in the sheets.

If you think hard enough, it feels like one of those blissful mornings. The ones you see in movies, lovers entangled in nothing but kisses and souls as they exist in the world they’ve built up in their head. You imagine that could have been you and Wonwoo, if only you had found your way back home.

Soon, you’re pushing him onto his back against the headboard as he kicks off his pants and boxers, and there you are, climbing onto his lap, pressing your naked back to his chest. Settling the back of your head in the crook between his neck and shoulder, you lift your hips just high enough so Wonwoo can hold the fat head of his tip against your swollen folds, and you brace yourself.

There’s a mangle moan that erupts from both of your lips when you sink down, and for a second, you almost fall back in love. He’s filled you to the brim as you shake above him, adjusting to the size and you wonder if Wonwoo has always made you feel this full. So full you feel you might implode if you get any closer, but still, you dig your heels into the mattress and grind down anyways. If you’re going to burn tonight, you might as well enjoy this while it lasts.

Wonwoo’s throbbing inside of you, hands holding their iron grip on his waist as he helps you lift yourself up and then bounce right back down. You can’t see the look on his face, but you imagine he’s got his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, eyes shut, and eyebrows pinched together every time your cunt envelopes his cock.

“Angel,” he mutters into your ear when you reach one hand up to grab at his hair. One of his own large hands grabs at your tits, squeezing the soft flesh as your hips begin to swivel more and more erratically. Wonwoo teeths at your neck and collarbone, leaving splotchy red marks that you’re sure will bruise the next morning.

(No worries though, they’ll fade eventually.)

“Fuh … fuck,” you cry when your stomach starts to churn and your vision starts to grow bleary. It’s so much—so, so much, and you start to think that your body won’t be able to handle much more when your limbs grow limp. Wonwoo starts to fuck upwards and into you now, and the sound of skin slapping against skin leaves a ringing in your ears.

Just a little more. Just a little more. You’re sure Wonwoo feels it too, and thus his hips jerk just a little bit harder and his grip grows just a little bit tighter.

When you cum, it’s with Wonwoo’s name on your tongue. It’s broken and it’s strangled, but it is there and he soon follows suit, moaning about his beloved angel into your skin from behind as he spills his hot seed into you.

You’re both messy all over—sweat and cum and drool slips between your bodies and you should feel gross, but your body still trembles with the aftershocks of your orgasm and you find yourself reveling in bliss.

You sober up a few minutes later, but still, you sit in a haze.

Nuzzling into Wonwoo’s neck, you search for a fire—a spark of anything, really. Desperately, you rake for a glimmer of heat in his heart, and as you begin to grow colder and colder you drift.

Did you douse the flame? Months ago? Years ago? Or did it fizzle out on its own? You learn that you won’t ever know. Wonwoo probably won’t ever know either, so you figure if there’s one way you’ll spend eternity with him, it’ll be in ignorance.

You’ll start packing your things tomorrow. You’re sure Wonwoo will understand.

For now, he wraps an arm around your stomach and presses his mouth to your shoulder, and the soft brush of his lips makes you shudder. Your friends were right: all good things come to an end, but you figure that if this is how they come to a close, you don’t really mind.

And all things end All that we intend is scrawled in sand Or slips right through our hands And just knowing That everything will end Won't change our plans When we begin again

a/n. reading this over i was like owie why did they do that and then i realized that i wrote this and now i’m kind of wondering why i decided to do this to myself in the first place but it was fun so i don’t rly care

taglist. @xenkimmie @lesdevoeux @cheolism @namjoonbaby @listxn @scuzmunkie @binwons @lskjki @h34rts4chira @kazuhateez @imlilstitious @yogurttea @lynnxworld @jeanjacketjesus @meowmeowminnie @soonhoonietrash @caratlove10 @cottoncheol @synthetickitsune @ixayjun @leejihoonownsmyheart @dahliatopia @gyuswhore @hoeforcheol @5xiang @hajimelvr @miriamxsworld @lixiel0ver @josefines-things @mimisxs @kawennote09 @bbyjjunie @rubyreduji @marzmeltdown @todorokiskitten @98-0603 @hipsdofangirl @nikkixpenguin @minnie-mouser22 @minhui896 (strikethrough could not be tagged)

#wonwoo fanfic #wonwoo x reader #wonwoo smut #wonwoo angst #jeon wonwoo x reader #jeon wonwoo smut #svt smut #svt angst #seventeen angst #📝 writing

436 notes · View notes

its-warm-in-here · 3 months

Text

Teeth

Oh hell, I'm writing again. Let's see if this has legs, maybe I'll write a follow-up.

Alastor x !DeerDemon! Reader

Warnings: imbalance of power, cannibalism

The fact that he’s humming is the opposite of comforting.

Alastor’s room was, even compared to the rest of the hotel, bizarre. The whole foyer resembles a hunting lodge, complete with roaring hearth, mounted antlers and furniture made of bone. Nervous, you shift from hoof to hoof in the entryway, tail straight up and hair on end. If you crossed this precipes, you’d be in the lion's den. No matter how much he resembled other cervid sinners. This demon had killed and devoured countless others, and based on his furnishing, he had a particular fondness for deer. Instead of ending in a wall or window, the back of the room gives way to another realm. Like someone had punched a forest into the inbetween space of the hotel walls. You wonder how far back it went, or if there was even an end.

A staticky wail from the gramophone snapped you back to reality. The sound gave way to easy jazz and Alastor turned the music down a bit, that ever-present smile playing on his wide mouth. “No need to be shy, my deer. This shouldn't take more than a moment.” With a lip worry, you hesitate. Sure you’d said yes to this, but you’d expected a quick bite, just a sample, not whatever this performance was. Was he trying to put you at ease? Because he’s failing spectacularly. “Besides, it's quite rude to linger in doorways. Especially when you’ve already been invited in.”

With one last breath, you step into the room. Its distinctly cooler than the hallway even with the fireplace. It is probably due to having a literal forest embedded into it, but it makes you shiver. Still humming, Alastor loops around, shutting the door behind you and ushering you further into his abode with a hand at your waist. “I just...have never done anything like this before,” you mumble. He seats you at one of the two chairs. You’re pretty sure that the leather is elk hide. You hope it is an elk at least. Elks are assholes.

“Neither have I. Invigorating, isn't it?” Alastor chirps. Once more, he circles around, stripping that ever present, pinstripe coat off and draping it over the opposite seat. It catches you off guard, you’ve never seen him without it. Hell, you doubt that anyone in the whole hotel had ever seen him without it. Though, Alastor is hardly vulnerable. If anything, you’re even more unsettled than before. As if this was a relaxing experience for him. It's just a quick glance, just before he turns to face you, but you swear you spot the tuft of a red tail at the top of his trousers. That makes your stomach twist. Since arriving in the Pride Circle, not once could you have ever considered consuming another conscious being, let alone one that was alive and in the same vein of sinner.

Yet, Alastor seemed to revel in it.

Bouncing your knees, your hooves send a steady tapping rhythm through the room. “I don't know if I'd use those words exactly.”

“No need to be nervous. Im not set to devour you whole,” his hand comes to rest over your clasped fingers. The bouncing halts. “Never in all my time in Hell have I seen a sinner with quite an impressive regenerative ability. A little nip here-” fingers tuck your hair behind your ear, exposing the junction where your neck met your shoulder, “-will heal up in an instant.”

You rub the skin he’s touched, finally meeting those red eyes of his. “There’s a bit of a difference from getting hit by a drunk driver, peeling myself up like road kill and letting an overlord munch on me though.” Alastor’s eyes flash. This activity excited him far more than it should in your humble opinion.

“Well, if its boundaries that worry you, we can always make a deal instead, hm?” he leers, knowing full well that the deal might give some ground rules for whatever this fucked up relationship was, but would give him even more sway over you.

Jerking back, you jab him in the chest, “We’re starting with one bite. Don't push your luck, Alastor.”

He smiles, stands, then shrugs, “Well, let's get started then.”

With a huff, you undo the top few buttons of your dress shirt and half yank off the sleeve, wanting to avoid any unnecessary mess. Cool hands close over your shoulders and the skin to skin contact makes you jump. For someone who hated being touched, Alastor sure loved to make others uncomfortable using his own. There’s a flash of teeth and you feel the fringe of his hair at your cheek, then a moment of hesitation. It's in that you realize he’s smelling you. Anyone else this could be intimate, romantic even, but the underlying motivations are all the wrong kind of carnal. “If we're doing this can we--”

Alastor bites down, sharp teeth cutting deep into the meat of your shoulder. It's a sharp pain and a cry builds in your throat. You press your palms flat to his chest, ready to heave the Radio Demon off with all your strength. There's a swift pull at your flesh. You try to scream, letting the pain out, but Alastor’s hand closes over your mouth, muffling the cry. Scrambling further back in the chair, you try to cover the new wound, but Alastor still has you in a vice grip. His eyes are gently closed as he chews, small noises of pleasure like someone enjoying the first bite of a luxurious meal. God, it makes your stomach turn. The sheer amount of delight he was getting from literally eating you alive.

Still you can't help but wonder... How... do you taste?

The vial thought is pushed to the side the moment Alastor leaned in for seconds. “Whoa, hey!” you shove back, “One bite, we said one!” His teeth are already primed against your shoulder, pricking torn flesh, but he retreats, smug smile spread firmly in place. Best you can, you glance at your shoulder. It's a jagged bite, stretching from the line of your collarbone to the top of your trapezius exposing muscles and tendons. But not deep enough to reach bone. The wide gash is already beginning to knit itself together and the pain is fading with it. Letting out a breath, you fall back in the chair.

“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Alastor teases, tracing his thumb over the edge of the wound, threatening to jab the digit in. You swat his hand away and shoot a glare up at him. With a huff, you yank the sleeve back up and do your best to ignore the self-satisfied overlord.

“That hurt, you know,” you snap, righting your outfit.

“I barely broke skin!” Alastor insists with a sing-song voice, “And I doubt my nibble was much worse than that oncoming truck.” His tongue traces the line of his teeth. “That was quite a toothsome treat, my deer. Maybe next time we could make a full meal of it.”

“Next time...” your mind wanders to how much that could hurt and if there even should be a next time. The words are under your breath but his ears prick up at the utterance.

“If you’re interested in continuing with this little arrangement, that is,” he interjects.”But what kind of a deal maker would I be if I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.” Right! The whole reason you’d agreed to this whole verbal agreement in the first place. You hop to your feet, a playful smile spreading over your face. “So what’ll it be? Now, don't expect much from our little understanding, but I'm a man of my word. One simple request that is in my power, is yours.” Alastor gives his microphone/cane a twirl before his gaze narrows, testing you.

Lots of things spring to mind. A bigger room at the hotel. A dance. Something to prank Angel Dust with. All the while you ponder, Alastor stoops, bending at the waist to make sure you knew you were being watched. A mistake on his part. Staring him dead in the face, you match his cheshire cat grin. “That's because I did this as a favor. I don’t need anything.”

“Come now, I’m offering this as a courtesy.”

“Afraid I'd hold something over you, Alastor?” you tease. He’s dangerously close now. Smug. Your lips twitch, but your smile stays glued. The miniscule respect he had in this moment would evaporate the moment it fell. “Well, I suppose there is one tiny thing I do want.”

Your hands dart to the top of his head, and fingers close over his ears. They are stiff but bend with a bit of pressure, and the fur is soft even as it bristles at your touch. For a moment, a breath is held and Alastor does not react, frozen in place. Then the world around shifts. Darkness closes in tight and any breath leaves the room. The gramaphon's soft music swells to an ungodly static. The corners of Alastor’s mouth twitch into an impossibly broad, neon grin, and the air around you buzzes with raw energy. The red of his eyes deepen to pitch black aside from two pinpricks of dial shaped irises. He does not move, but his shadow shifts, reshaping into something awful on the wall behind. In this moment he could snuff out your hellish existence.

Oh, to wield such power.

And you let go. Arms go up in surrender and you retreat a few steps. “And we're even.”

Just like that, the room snaps back. The strange cold ebbs away as pine and fire rush back into your nostrils. Your host relaxes, stepping back towards the exit and leveling a judging eye. It's a quick flourish, and his jacket is back in place. All the walls are back up. Alastor's face turns down just a touch before settling to a sly smirk and then he bends in a half bow. Not low enough to make you feel respected, but enough to put an end to the interaction. Your smile turns to pride as you mime the gesture. “That was surprisingly pleasant, all things considered,” you muse as you strut past him. Alastor may have finally gotten a chunk off you, that’d been something he’d been craving since you’d arrived in this place.

But you’d gotten something no one else ever had and lived.

Before you can step out of the room, Alastor’s hand closes over your forearm and you freeze. Terror courses through your veins. While there was no killing in the hotel, that didn't mean a powerful overlord couldn’t trap you in some pocket-torture dimension for overstepping. “I would suggest keeping this little exchange between us, hmm?” Nails bite into the meat of your arm, almost as sharp as his teeth. That grin is ever present, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. A threat.

You chew the inside of your cheek. Sure Charlie and Vaggie allowed for a few vices in the hotel, but this would probably be at the bottom of their list for team building activities. “Understood,” you say with a curt nod.

Alastor’s fingers drum once and he releases you. “Lovely,” the charismatic note bounces back into his voice, “Now, what do you say to some etouffee? It might be a bit early in the day but after that little appetizer, I’m positively ravenous for something more substantial.” With that, he sweeps past you into the hall.

#alastor #hazbin hotel #radio demon #alastor x reader #reader is a deer demon #alastor is a cannibal #dont like dont read #this is kinda gross #but so is the radio demon #sorry not sorry #asexual Alastor

258 notes · View notes

cherrychilli · 10 months

Text

18+

AFAB reader, established relationship, breeding kink, Steve and reader are trying for a baby, talks of ovulation and pregnancy, P in V sex, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, slight lactation kink implication.

A/N: I am ovulating right now and my mind is just 🐔🍆🐔🍆🐔🍆 I can't even begin to explain how badly the egg drop is affecting me. I don't even want kids but look at what my heat brain has concocted on this day. I'm in desperate need of some dick !@#$%^&*(

Robin takes one look at you when you enter Family Video that lazy afternoon, bell chiming above you as you swing the door open and she just knows. You're given away by your strappy yellow sundress fluttering high around your thighs, your cleavage a little fuller now and amplified by the tight bodice, your glossy lips and the sweet perfume you only wear on special occasions blooming softly around you.

Your eyes keep searching past her despite stopping at the counter to ask her how she was, nodding along a few seconds too long to confirm to her that you weren't really listening. "He's in the back", she shakes you gently by the shoulders to gain your attention. Her eyes are soft and her lips curve into an amused smile when she says it, showing you that she isn't offended by how distracted you are. "Thanks" you smile wide and apologetic before making your way to the back of the store. When you're out of sight she pulls out her cassette player with a sigh, popping in a tape and flooding her ears with the sounds of Blondie in the hopes of drowning out anything she'd much rather not hear.

Steve's seated in the little room where the tapes are wound back, chin propped in his hand, a blank stare set on the staticky little TV until Teen Wolf is ready to be ejected from the player and slipped back into its cover. He turns lazily towards the door when it opens, expecting Robin with a fresh stack of returned tapes to be rewound. He perks up when he finds you there instead in your dress, the look in your eyes a little wild.

You step inside, slamming the door shut behind you which causes him to jolt, tossing your bag to the side. Steve watches it thump against the wall and land underneath a fading poster of The Godfather, the top left corner coming loose from the sudden impact and curling over Marlon Brando's intimidating glower. Steve's about to question you when you pounce on the poor unsuspecting boy, yet to get a single word out. "Missed you" you whine against his lips between kisses, straddling his lap, grabbing fistfuls of that stupid green vest he had to wear at work and pulling his chest flush against yours. Steve's eyes are wide, hands flying to your back to balance you on his lap and keep the both of you steady in his chair as it creaks underneath your combined weight.

"Baby, baby-" he tries but it's nearly impossible to break away from you and the way you're grabbing at him like he might dissipate at any moment. He manages to get ahold on your shoulders, pulling you away from the rosy hickey you were in the middle of sucking onto his neck. "Babe, what's gotten into you?", he manages to sputter out, hair a complete mess from your fingers tugging at it but all it does is make him look even more enticing to you. Disheveled. Wide eyed. Chest heaving. Lips pink and kiss bitten.

"I need you", you nearly sob, the declaration tinting his cheeks with a light blush. "I'm so horny - I need you right now" you push through, returning to mouthing at his neck when he relinquishes his hold on your shoulders, hands slipping down to your waist. "Don't get me wrong" he strains with a weak laugh as your teeth nip between his neck and shoulder. "It's just that this is all so uh- sudden", he reasons, stunned by your intense reaction, and then with a creeping sense of realization, "The last time you were like this you-"

"I'm ovulating", you finished for him quick and blunt, rubbing his bulge over his jeans and shivering when he groaned in response. You had forgotten about it yourself with how busy the two of you had been with moving into your new shared apartment. The moment you had begun to suspect it this morning you'd ripped through boxes that were yet to be unpacked, pulling out the calendar to see today's date circled several times over in red. "Shit, are you sure?", his eyes lit up and his lips stretched into the brightest smile, knowing what this meant.

You rest your forehead against Steve's shoulder, breathing in his scent like you hadn't spent the morning burying your nose in one of his shirt's, filling your lungs with his woodsy musk while you ground your core against your pillow. "Yes, Steve- I wanna start trying", you mewl, face scrunching up a moment later. "Oh god, it fucking hurts", you whimper through another dull cramp deep in your belly, one of several that had been troubling you all day. Steve notices and places a wide palm over your stomach to soothe you, looking mostly sympathetic but there's something else behind his eyes too because the sounds you're letting out are making his jeans feel tighter. He returns your gaze when you place your hand over his, squeezing it as you spoke. "Pleasepleaseplease, Stevie- need your cock- need you to fuck me", you beg, eyes all teary. "Need you to make it feel better."

The move into your new apartment had shifted his attention as much as it had yours, the both of you agreeing to postpone your plans to start trying for a baby until you had finished settling in. He'd waited patiently for you to tell him when you were ready again, both of you too preoccupied by all the packing and dealing with your landlord to realize that the third phase of your cycle was nearing. And now, with you here, aching for him in his lap, his mind goes fuzzy with unbridled elation.

You gasp when he lifts you up, wrapping your legs around his waist, allowing him to carry you onto the table where all the rewound tapes were stacked. Your hip bumps the stack and it teeters before Steve shoves the tilting tapes off the table completely to make room for the two of you. "Sounds serious" he husks at you playfully but the heady look he's giving you tells you that he's hardly taking this lightly. He pulls at the front of your dress, straps slipping down your shoulders, letting your bare tits spill out.

He squeezes one, warm and soft in his hand, nipple stiffening against his rough palm. "Sore?", he catches the way your brows pinch together. "A little", you admit but his gentle kneading is easing that minor ache. "You're gonna have to deal with a lot more of that you know", he tutted, pinching your nipple gently between his index finger and thumb. "Shit, baby they're perfect already and they're going to get bigger... and full", he recalls, voice low and smoky. "Wanna see them leak". He murmurs the second part, probably unaware that he's said it out loud at all but you manage to catch it.

You whine, goosebumps washing over your skin at how easily he says it- how amorous he makes the perfectly natural bodily change sound. As quickly as he put the thought into your head, you're pulling his free hand off your hip and placing it on your other breast because you can't stand not having him touch you there too, sighing with relief with he squeezes it. "Gonna take good care of you when they're all heavy and you're too sore". You throw your head back and cry out when he dips down to take your nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, rolling the other between his fingers. "Oh god, Steve..." another wave of heat washes over you as buck your core against him, denim rubbing against your swollen clit.

His careful squeezes and attentive tongue feels like warm honey on your skin, the ache between your legs unbearable when he pulls away from sucking on your puffy nipples. "You sure? right here? in this room?", he knows it's a little ridiculous to double check now but even in the midst of the sexually charged haze he knows it isn't exactly the most romantic or ideal setting. Not at all where either of you had imagined you'd start trying. You don't bother looking around because the room hadn't mattered to you in the least. Grey and stuffy, made even smaller by all the tapes crowding it. It's lit poorly too, by a single overhead light that flickered on occasion and the little TV paused on Michael J. Fox behind the wheel during Surfin' USA. It wasn't the room that had mattered to you. Only the boy in it. "Yes, I want it right here", you make yourself clear with unwavering eye contact and a tone that told him that you were more than certain. You hooked a finger into the opening of his collar and tugged him closer, "and then again in your car and again when we're home and again after that...",you listed sultrily, your body screaming for release.

You successfully plucked at the remaining sliver of his self control, feeling the deep groan he lets out rumble beneath the hand you have pressed against his chest. He shakes his head with a weak chuckle, chestnut tresses hanging over his eyes. "Can't stop myself when you talk like that", he warns lightly, meaning it. "I don't want you to stop", you retort, meaning it just as much. With that he pulls your dress up over your hips and his jaw falls slack, "fuck, angel...". Any other time you might have felt embarrassed or even a little self conscious but not this time. You'd purposely stuffed your panties into your little shoulder bag before you arrived at Family Video just so you could show him how wet you were for him. How the thought of him fucking you full had made you drip down your thighs. "Steve", you're faintly aware of how hard you're clutching at his vest when he swipes two fingers through your sticky folds, intentionally brushing your clit to hear you keen, your nails threatening to pull the green stitching loose.

There's no more second guessing now. He pops his wet fingers into his mouth, coating his tongue with the taste of you before he works his belt off and lowers his jeans and boxers to pull his cock out, flushed red and leaking. You gulp when you see it, swallowing down the spit that had collected in your mouth because you've started to salivate. You widen your slick thighs for him as he lines up the fat tip with your hole, pushing inside with less resistance than usual with how wet you are but the stretch is still the same, your eyes rolling back because he's so big.

Finally

Steve clenches his jaw, temple dewing with sweat while staving off another groan. You're much warmer than usual. Add that to how soaked you are and the way you're tightening around him, practically sucking him in, he knows he wont be able to handle this for very long. "Fuck, not going to last too long- you're just so-"

"Me neither", you cut him off with a breathless cry, sounding just as wrecked, feeling like you've been close to the edge for a while now. Steve carefully lays you against on the table, pulling your legs over his shoulders as he reaches deeper inside you at this angle. "Steve, you’re so- fuc- oh", you babble when the lewd wet sounds of skin slapping against skin begin to echo inside the room. Your tits bounce with every thrust, the dull ache there forgotten with how he's pumping inside you, his tip bumping your cervix over and over. "Stevie, Stevie, oh fuck- I can feel you here", you place your palm a few inches below your bellybutton and he does the same, snaking his fingers underneath yours to feel the the unmistakable bulge of his cock. "Oh god, there's no way it wont stick like this- gonna get you pregnant, baby I promise- gonna fuck you so so full".

"Yes, p-please Steve put a baby in me", you whimper.

"Again", he pleads hoarsely, your words causing him to thrust harder. "say that for me again, sweet girl".

You choke on a moan, the pressure inside you building. "I want to have your baby, Steve- please"

He loved to hear you say it. Needed to hear you say it. Needed to know how badly you wanted it. "You're gonna look so pretty pregnant", he kisses your ankle, watching your cream ring around his cock as he plunges into you. "Can't wait until that bump starts to show- wanna see you all full of me"", he grunts, his thumb brushing over your clit in short, messy circles rubbing into the electric bundle until you scream. You don't care if Robin happens to hear. You can always apologize later. You don't care that all the tapes are in complete disarray on the floor. You can shove them off to a corner and pick them up some other time before Keith has a chance of finding out. And you don't care that your baby might be conceived in this little room because it means that you and Steve will finally be starting that family you've been hoping for.

You're right on the edge, a familiar tightness you'd been seeking all day growing more taut inside you, ready to snap. "I'mgonnacumi'mgonnacumi'mgonna-", your back arches as your orgasm shoots up your spine and washes over you with a surge of heat, your vision going white behind your eyelids. The moan you let out is nothing short of filthy and watching you come undone beneath him like that triggers Steve's own release. "Jesus, fu-" is all the warning he can manage to let out before he's spilling into you, your pussy pulsing sporadically with the aftershocks of your orgasm, milking his cock. Spurts of Steve's hot cum flood your channel and you sigh out at the feeling, chest heaving as the both of you recover.

Your eyes flutter open when he carefully lowers your legs off his shoulders before pulling out of you. You hiss, sensitive and sore but you already miss the stretch of his cock, wanting him back inside you again.

Steve tucks himself in his jeans, leaning over your spent frame to kiss you fondly. "So...", he cocks an eyebrow up suggestively, reaching into his front pocket to fish out his car keys and jangles them playfully in front of your face.

"One round down, three more to go, right?"

#steve harrington smut #stranger things smut #steve harrington #stranger things

530 notes · View notes