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sixosix · 8 months

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SLEIGHT OF HAND | LYNEY

summary you will not let lyney get to you. unfortunately, lyney already got to you the moment you met eyes. after all, what is a magician if not an expert in stealing hearts?

or, local sumeru architect goes to fontaine looking for inspiration and comes out of it with three rainbow roses and a crushing magician.

warnings 13+, gn!reader, follows the fontaine archon quest, so there are major spoilers throughout the entire fic! MURDER (lyney trial spoilers) + feminine french pet names ough + bff!Aether loml + sweet talker lyney + KISS SCENE (suggestive)

notes 8K words. thank u to my french bff art @aanobrain who said lyney is a magician he would say mon lapin 🤧❤️ + other various french pet names. thank u to ellie hyomagiri & earthtooz too for hyping this up, my supporters…

“500,000!?”

Sumeru streets are always bustling with its people—from children skipping around the neighborhood to frantic scholars who zip back and forth before returning to their homes when the moon is high. However, the sun is beating down on everyone right now: street vendors are making a profit, dogs are barking as they play fetch with laughing children, and you stand across the blond traveler and his floating companion.

You wince at the volume of Paimon’s shrill voice, inciting bypassers to send miffed glances your way. Embarrassed, you cover the side of your face with a hand, whispering, “Is—is that not enough? I can—”

“No, no, it’s not that!” Paimon’s arms flail around, eyes blown comically wide. “It’s just, you know, more than what we earn from our daily commissions combined!”

“Oh, I see.” you nod, relieved. “Well, I can lower—”

“No, no, no, no,” Paimon interjects hurriedly, and even the traveler shakes his head. “Pleasure to do business with you! Paimon and Aether, at your service!”

“Really?” you can’t believe your luck—the traveler himself agreed to escort you to Fontaine! Or does it count if Paimon agrees on his behalf? “That's a relief. Even Katheryne of the guild had a strange expression when I posted my commission.”

“It’s probably because of the amount of zeroes you might’ve accidentally put,” Paimon murmurs.

Aether tugs on her foot as if warning her. “We'll be leaving soon. Are you prepared?”

“Oh, yes. My stuff’s over there by the bench, you see?”

Aether and Paimon’s faces simultaneously fall. “All of that?” Paimon starts counting it, gaping when she has four little fingers held up.

They sure complain a lot. “You can still back out.”

Aether takes a deep breath, making his way over to your luggage. When he brushes past, you hear him chanting 500,000; 500,000; 500,000 under his breath. He wordlessly carries all of them, his chest puffed and expression grave.

“They’re heavier than I thought,” Aether wheezes out as Paimon flits worriedly around him. “How long are you going to be staying in Fontaine?”

“Oh, just a day or two, maybe,” you say, taking pity and taking one bag from him. “Most of what’s inside are art supplies.”

“Ah,” Aether says.

“500,000,” Paimon reminds him.

“We’re close,” Paimon says, flying back to where you and Aether are still walking behind, him heaving and you offering water now and then. “I saw a huge ravine-looking view! It was like a city on a waterfall!”

“R-Really?” Aether puffs out a breath, sweat rolling off his temple.

You tried prying some of your bags away from him when it seemed like there were monsters up ahead, but he refused instead to fight them with one hand on his sword. He still won. You guessed that he was trying to make traveling easier for you, yet all you felt was immense worry.

“Are you feeling okay, Y/N?” Paimon asks, floating beside you. “You look unwell.” You should ask your companion that, instead.

“I’m a bit nervous. After all, it’s my first time traveling outside of Sumeru.” You smile, patting her head. She doesn’t seem to mind, beaming back. “But I need to get out of my comfort zone to be better, right?”

“That's right! Paimon has a feeling you’ll enjoy Fontaine!” You and Paimon glance at Aether when he heaves a heavy breath, yet he only waves the pair of you off with his free hand. “Before you know it, you’ll be itching to travel again once you’re back in Sumeru.”

“I'm only there for work. I just need to learn a lot, and then I'll enjoy it.”

“Still a student through and through, huh…”

“I can see it,” Aether chimes in, looking all too relieved to rest his arm finally. “I can see Fontaine up ahead.”

You feel the cool breeze brush against your face, a refreshing change from the past hours you and the other two have been trudging through the desert. You could strip off layers and dive if you could. You can make out the harbor even miles away, pouring water out like an endless waterfall stretching for miles.

Arriving in Fontaine is introducing yourself to the rustle of layered skirts, the water-kissed smell, and citizens left and right babbling about tragic endings and thrilling climaxes.

Aether sets your bags on the floor with a heavy exhale. Paimon feeds him with another jug of water.

“I guess we’re here now.” You pull out a heavy pouch you’ve been keeping in one of the bags Aether had been holding over his shoulder. Paimon takes it with greedy, greedy hands. “Thank you for keeping me safe and carrying my luggage, Traveler— are you even listening to me?”

“There’s a girl over there,” Aether says, now staring ahead.

You and Paimon turn to look; sure enough, someone is standing by the edge, looking forlornly over the water. Half of her foot is off the platform, making Paimon fidget.

She gasps. “She isn’t going to jump into the water, is she? Maybe we should go check on her…”

Halfway through Paimon’s sentence, you gathered the courage to speak to the girl with the cat ears.

“Hey, miss.” Her ear twitches. “Is something the matter?”

She turns, looking faintly surprised. If you weren’t so close to her, you wouldn’t have been able to tell there was a change in her expression. “I'm fine. thank you.”

“Oh.” Now things are a little awkward. “Is there something in the water you’re looking at? You might slip if you keep tipping forward.”

She peers below, unworried—silent.

“As long as you’re okay, I guess,” you sigh, awkwardly hovering above her shoulder when realizing it might come off strange if you touch her. “I’ll leave you be.”

Her lips twitch, something close to a smile. You don’t stick long enough to admire it, heading back to Aether and Paimon and shrugging at their inquisitive looks. “She says she’s fine.”

“I think it’s time for me to separate,” you say. “I want to take all of it in as much as possible. Paimon has my payment. Thank you both so much for keeping me safe.” Mostly Aether, though. But Paimon was there, emotionally.

“It’s no problem,” Aether says, his smile warmer than when you first met him. “Stay safe out there. You can look for us if you need anything else.”

“I don’t always pay 500,000 for each of my commissions.”

Paimon wilts. Aether flushes, stammering, “Not what I meant.” You laugh heartily as they wave when you walk off to the aquabus, hopefully, prepared for what Fontaine will give you.

Your sketchbook is a page away from completion when you hear about a magic show at the Opera House. Not that it was hard to miss—everyone and their grandmothers were prattling about nothing else but the entire day.

Fontaine is known for its love for dramatics, but the twins they keep mentioning must be a one-of-a-kind spectacle to have half their region’s population speak about them so reverently.

After wandering for hours, taking in the endless sights of fresh water streaming and grand castle-like modern buildings, you find yourself in the Fountain of Lucine. You’ve heard of Fontaine being somewhat titled the ‘City of Love,’ but seeing couples surrounding each nook and cranny of the tourist spots was still astonishing.

(You console yourself by thinking that there’s something romantic in sketching frantically while the rest of the crowd are sucking faces.)

To your luck, you spot three familiar heads in the fountain plaza.

Aether senses you before you can even say anything, glancing to the side and smiling when you wave at him.

Paimon flutters excitedly. “Y/N! We didn’t think we’d see you again this early. You look like you’re glowing.”

“Was it that obvious?” you laugh sheepishly. “Fontaine is beautiful; I couldn’t even stick too long in one place before I see something else that catches my attention.” You look to the girl you met earlier, who nods politely. “Hello. Are you three acquainted now?”

“Mhm!” Paimon says, hands on her hips. “This is Lynette! She’s inviting us to the show they’re holding here!” She gasps, “Speaking of—”

“Ah,” Lynette says quietly, “I couldn’t get an extra ticket. I’m sorry.”

Lynette is the magician you keep hearing about? With her seemingly reserved personality, you wouldn’t have guessed it. “Oh, no, it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Paimon,” Aether speaks up. “They gave you your ticket, right? Why don’t you just float next to me or sit on my lap?”

Paimon’s eyes sparkle. “Great idea! That way, I can give my seat to Y/N, right?”

“You guys…” Your chest feels warm as Aether hands you one of the two tickets in his hand. “You really didn’t have to.” Is this what 500,00 gets you? The loyal companionship of Aether and Paimon?

“It’s a good idea,” Lynette says. “My brother wouldn’t want you to miss the show. He’d be devastated.”

“If you insist, then I suppose I can’t refuse.” Aether and Paimon do a cute little cheer. “But I need to return to the hotel; I can’t be watching a magic show carrying all these.” Surely Aether can understand.

Later, with your hands finally empty and charcoal-free, you rush back to the Opera Epiclese, the person standing guard kind enough to open the doors despite being a minute late.

“Welcome, one and all, to the Opera Epiclese!” The audience roars with cheers as the spotlight illuminates a figure on the center of the stage. You hurry to your seats, brushing past Aether and Paimon. “I am the star of today’s show, Lyney.”

Lyney bows, then stands upright with a Cheshire cat grin.

The thunder of the crowd’s applause is deafening. If you weren’t able to see it, you’d think that you hadn’t been clapping at all—senses numbed and your fixed stare all on the boy on the stage.

Your eyes catch on the small braid on the side of his head before the gleam of his eyes hypnotizes you.

He’s handsome, you think dizzily at the back of your head.

“Don’t blink,” he says, his voice lower as if meant to be a whisper, “or else you might miss it.”

The show proceeds. A dove soars away from inside as he flips his hat; you flush at hearing the soft laughter that slips from him after. The cards that materialize out of nowhere descend to the floor. His fingers shuffle the cards while talking to keep the audience satiated; they fly off his hands, yet he doesn’t lose focus, stretching them mid-air with a sleight of hand. They fall apart and come together neatly and precisely.

His stage presence is demanding. It would be as if Lady Furina herself would accuse you of committing a crime if you were to look away for even a second.

Then, when he scans the crowd, busy twirling his cards in his fingers, his gaze catches your awed ones.

Something in the air shifts. Or maybe it’s that it slows.

A card slips from his grasp. A mistake. He blinks and breaks eye contact, laughing heartily to play it off. But you don’t believe it—not when you swore your limbs locked in place as well when lilac drilled into your soul.

You breathe, hands bracing against your chest. What was that?

You would’ve played it off as something you imagined if not for Lyney continuing to glance at you occasionally. His slip-up had been forgotten, as though it was all part of the show.

(Is it also part of the show when it seems he’s unable to tear his eyes off of you?)

Of course, the twins prove their worth. They showed you exactly why the people of Fontaine adore watching them through theatrical magic, cards in their sleeves, and defying logic.

You’ve shuffled to the edge of your seat as Lynette disperses into bubbles and comes back alive. You’ve held your breath as Lyney emerges from the box across he was in a moment earlier.

You’ve also been witness to the murder of Cowell.

CRASH.

The shatter of glass resounded along with the horrified gasps of the audience. Sickeningly enough, you could almost hear the crack of bones if you hadn’t been crying out in alarm. Yet, as they gape and shriek over the sight of a limp arm popping out, you find your gaze tracing back to Lyney, who stands motionless in front of the box.

When Lady Furina points fingers and has everyone siding against him, the guards escort the audience from the Opera House. All evidence presented left Lyney in a spotlight unlike his performance: with a disgusted and unamused crowd. Even you have to agree that it isn’t looking well for his case at all.

Yet all you can think of as you leave the room is that Lyney looked as terrified as everyone else was—much too raw of an expression for someone to accuse him of anything at all. He looked young and scared.

(His hands were shaking.)

The rest of your Fontaine trip is admittedly duller when you’re a little more familiar with its city and don’t have a yapping little fairy and a capable Traveler by your side. It’s hard not to hear chatter about the events that went down: Lyney’s trial, Aether volunteering to be his lawyer, and the truth behind the real murderer.

It solved a case beyond the murder of Cowell. Fontaine sure has its mysteries, and the crowd sure loves them as they would a magic show.

You keep your hands busy. Last night, you found yourself thinking back to the magic show, to deft fingers weaving through cards, to violet eyes that kept on flickering to you. By the time you snap back to reality, you’ve subconsciously drawn shapes and lines that suspiciously look like the magician himself: the curve of a smile, piercing eyes, and you entranced by it all.

Flustered, you crumple his face staring back at you out of sight. Yet you can’t bring yourself to throw it away.

You shove the last bit of garlic baguette in your mouth to furiously bat these unwanted thoughts away.

“Isn’t that Y/N?” Paimon’s voice is unmistakable, a short distance off.

You jump out of your skin, spinning to see Aether and Paimon waving and walking over to you. You thought they'd already left Fontaine after that; you wouldn’t blame them if they did.

“Y/N! We haven’t seen you since the Opera House performance,” Paimon exclaims, twirling around your head like a thrilled fly circling a trash can.

You hold onto her back, hoping she’ll stop making you dizzy. “We were escorted out before I could say goodbye. I couldn’t watch the court trial but heard it all turned out fine.”

“That’s right!” Paimon nods proudly. “Paimon helped a ton during it; you should’ve seen it! What have you been doing?”

“I found a fellow architect while visiting the cafe nearby, and we chatted for hours,” you say, remembering that your voice is hoarse for that reason. You also don’t tell them you couldn’t get a certain magician off your mind. “I learned a lot. I don’t regret coming here one bit.”

Paimon says something else that you’re sure you’ve nodded absentmindedly at while your gaze wanders over to the two familiar people a few feet behind, watching you three with cat-like eyes—and it’s not just because of Lynette’s unique features.

“Those are the magicians, right?” you gesture behind Paimon and Aether as if you haven’t already familiarized yourself with their faces.

Paimon nods. “Uh-huh. You should introduce yourself! They look like they want to talk.”

Something about that feels foreboding. “Um, no, it’s fine. I don’t want to be rude and interrupt your conversation.”

“No,” Aether says firmly. He seldom speaks; you might as well play along if he says so. “Besides, Paimon is right. Lyney wants to talk to you, you know?”

“Oh, yeah! He kept mentioning seeing someone sitting beside us! And it couldn’t have been Neuvillette because he said it was an unfamiliar beauty that bewitched this weak magician’s heart.” Paimon nods, even recalling how he’s enunciated each syllable theatrically.

“I’m sorry?” you blurt. “Lyney recognizes me? What did I do?”

“Paimon thinks it’s because Lyney is curious about who Lynette met! He was like that with us, too.” Paimon changes her pitch to match Lyney’s. “Are these your friends, Lynette?”

Aether’s eyes feel like they know something you don’t. “It won’t hurt to strike up a conversation with Lyney. He’s been shaken up since the trial.”

There’s something unspoken hidden in his words. “What does that mean?”

Paimon doesn’t wait for an answer, grabbing you by the arm and dragging you to where the twins are waiting. Aether chuckles as he jogs behind.

“Paimon, Aether,” Lyney says, almost sly, “You haven’t introduced us to your friend here.”

“Paimon can do it!” She floats on top of your head and does a bit of jazz hands. “This is Y/N, the one who commissioned us to escort them from Sumeru up to Fontaine.”

“Generously,” Aether adds.

It’s a little embarrassing to have the legendary Traveler and Paimon introduce little old you to a famous magician such as himself, but his grin is still excited.

“From Sumeru?” Lyney repeats, smiling wider when you nod—as if that crumb of attention is enough for him. “I see.”

He performs a bow around the same height as where your hands rest; he takes one, kisses the back of your palm, and smiles against your skin. “I’m Lyney, and she is my sister, Lynette.”

“It’s nice to see you again.” You smile at Lynette, who nods in return. Lyney straightens to look at his sister.

“We met when the Traveler and Paimon just arrived at the harbor,” Lynette sighs even without looking at her brother.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” you say, meeting Lyney’s eyes. The spot where he kissed is still warm—tingling. “Your show was incredible, despite what happened. I’m glad that the truth revealed itself.”

“Thank you.” Lyney’s gaze sharpens. “I saw you at the performance, yes. I was worried for a second you might steal the show if you were to come up on stage.”

You blink. “Are you saying—”

Lyney grins, “I apologize that the night had to end that way; it must’ve been horrifying. Say, what if I give you a little show right now to make it up to you?” Did he make it up to each one of his audience, too?

This is not a man acting “shaken up,” as Aether put it.

“You really don’t have to.” You glance at Aether and Paimon, silently asking for help; however, they’re too far gone, urging you to say yes with gestures and encouraging nods.

Lyney tilts his head, demanding your attention on him once more.

You sigh. “I would love to see it if you don’t mind.”

“Of course!” Lyney looks like he’s the sun bursting personified. “It would be a pleasure, ma chérie. Not to worry, it’s nothing life-threatening. I just need you to focus on me.”

Not that it’s hard. The others have become a dull buzz in your mind as Lyney holds your gaze. “Okay.”

Lyney smiles, much softer, satisfied. “Good. Now,” he tips his hat, “recently, I’ve received a little lesson from someone about the language of flowers. Are you familiar with them?”

“Not in Fontaine, no,” you mumble, watching his hands closely. You were expecting a rabbit to hop out of that hat any second now.

“Shame. But I suppose I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.” Lyney snaps his finger, then deposits his hand inside his hat. “Hmm… Oh? Something’s not quite right. Would you mind looking into this hat for me to see if the flower is here?”

You hesitate. The hat is so close to him.

Swallowing, you nod, leaning in to inspect his hat at a careful pace. All you can sense is the faint scent of heat Lyney is emanating, the breath you two share, and the pounding of your chest. You swear you could also hear his, matching yours.

“The hat’s empty.”

Lyney smiles wider. “Yes, perhaps because you already have it.”

You jump back in surprise, your hands patting your body to see where he could have snuck the flower in. With your frantic movement, the flower falls off from what seems to have come from your head—Lyney catches it.

His mouth carves into a smirk, leaning to invade your personal space, his free hand coming up to tuck hair behind your ear. “Careful.”

Your face is burning. Plucking the flower out, the delicate and tender pink sears into your palm. “What does this flower mean?”

“What does it, I wonder?” Lyney whispers thoughtfully. “I suppose you’ll have to tell me once you find out.”

And when he inclines backward, it feels like you can breathe again. Time flows normally, and the people passing by seem much louder than before—as though you’ve surfaced from underwater.

Lyney clears his throat. “Shame I haven’t prepared myself a grand show for you, but I suppose that would call for another time, wouldn’t it?”

Lynette is looking at Lyney as if he is stupidly amusing.

“Thank you,” you say, burning, burning. “For the show, I mean.”

“That was a little weird,” Paimon whispers to Aether, but she is terrible with keeping volume and has everyone turning to her with varying expressions. “P-Paimon means that was good! Wow, Lyney! Isn’t that a different flower you gave us? That’s the flower Charlotte was talking about, right?”

“Rainbow rose?” Aether supplies.

“Yes! It means—”

“Ahem.” Lyney is quick to interrupt. “Lynette and I must take our leave now, if you don’t mind. It was fun catching up with you two.” You have to hold your ground and not look away when he hones in on your figure. “And it’s a pleasure meeting you. Don’t be a stranger. Look for me if you want more.”

His smile is a little devilish, you now realize.

“Bye,” Lynette says blankly, following after her brother, who seemed to be hurrying to exit.

His ears were red.

“You’re still staring.”

“I am not,” you rebuke hotly, flailing to cover Aether’s mouth with your hands. Yet all it does is bring your attention back to where Paimon and Aether are staring—the rainbow rose on your person.

Paimon and Aether yelp when you drag them away despite Lyney having already left the scene.

“Hey—! Don’t just go dragging Paimon around like a balloon like that! Did Lyney get to your head that much?”

“He did not.”

Paimon tilts her head, frowning. You shy away from her worried gaze, glaring at the flower instead. You still don’t know how Lyney managed to get it there; you hold it to your chest, where your heart is racing miles per minute because of his stupidly smug smile.

“What does this flower mean, Paimon?”

Paimon seems elated to be of help. “Easy! Charlotte told us that Rainbow Roses mean ‘passion’ and most notably ‘romantic encounters’!”

“Passion,” you curse. The rose seems as if it is staring back innocently, unknowing of the turmoil you’re going through because of it. “Romantic encounters.’ ugh.”

You can still remember how Lyney’s eyes twinkled as you felt his breath against your face.

“Ooh, he thinks he can trick me. He thinks he can affect me just because it pleases him to do so. I’ll show him. I’ll show him! I am not a blushing maiden!”

“You’re already very affected by this,” Paimon says, yet it’s lost by your newfound determination. Two can play at this game.

You’ve definitely been staying in Fontaine longer than what you told Aether and Paimon, but you can’t leave yet. Not when you found yourself walking to a flower shop to purchase a vase, fiercely digging through soil, turning gentle when your fingers reach for the Rainbow Rose. Not when you see it in the corner of your eyes as you try to sleep, and you find yourself daydreaming about a charming violet-eyed virtuoso.

It’s for research, you excused lamely at the hotelkeeper who didn’t ask why you’re extending your stay. In truth, not that you’d tell anyone. It was because you were hoping for another grand show from him. A farewell show for you—closure.

If you were to travel back home and get too drunk to think straight, Kaveh would learn about your crisis (romantic awakening?) and laugh at your face.

In hopes of looking for your Fontaine architect friend, you spot Lyney instead, on the side of the street surrounded by cheering kids. They clap and jump, and Lyney laughs. “One more, one more!”

“Again?” Lyney does an exaggerated sigh. “I’m starting to run out of cards in my sleeves. I’ve guessed my entire deck from your hands by this point!”

“But, Mr. Magician,” one of them whines, pouting up at him and blinking, “we want to see more! We want to know how you do it!”

“Alright, how about this, hm?” And then Lyney peers right at you. Ironically, you’re the one startled when you’ve been watching that entire spiel, and he hasn’t acknowledged your presence beforehand. “Y/N, would you mind giving these children a little show with me?” He gestures for you to come closer.

“What show?” you ask suspiciously, taking slow steps in case he pulls out another flower out of nowhere.

“You don’t have to worry,” Lyney laughs. “Will you be my assistant for this show? You are very familiar with this trick.”

“Please, we want to see!”

You falter at the little kids’ excited grins, especially when paired with Lyney’s pout and round eyes. “Okay, tell me what to do.”

His eyes do the little gleam again. “Stand in front of me, mon lapin.”

Your heart is skipping beat after beat, making itself known as you shuffle until Lyney is directly behind you.

“Relax, chérie, you just need to stand still.” It’s a little hard to relax when you feel his breath against the back of your neck, but you won’t give him the satisfaction of admitting that, so you keep your chin high and relax your shoulders. “Good.”

He begins to speak louder to his awaiting audience. “I know it’s hard to keep your eyes off this beauty before me, but watch the hat for a surprise, alright?”

He flips it for his little audience, one hand resting on your waist and the other extended to hold his top hat. The proximity is almost suffocating. You watch with bated breath, and they complain about it being empty.

“Oh, is it?” Lyney hums, twirling the hat until it’s flipped upside down, presented right before you. “Perhaps I need my assistant’s help.” You snap out of your daze when you realize he’s talking to you. “Y/N, do me a favor and show them the flower inside.”

You reach inside the hat and, much to your surprise, feel a stem. You pull it out; the Rainbow Rose stares back at you, almost mocking you, saying he did pull out a flower out of nowhere. It's this trick again.

The kids gasp in awe and confusion—it’s all the same for Lyney, who snaps his fingers and creates magic like he was made to. Like magic was for him to summon with his hands.

“What? It was empty!”

“Where did that come from? I was watching Mister Magician’s hands the whole time!”

“Are you a magician, too?”

“No,” you say lamely, holding the rose, feeling Lyney still patiently standing behind you. Heat crawls up your neck. “No, I’m not. It’s all Lyney.”

“It’s all me,” Lyney echoes in amusement. “You’re quite magical yourself.” Finally, he spares you, pulling away to stand beside your figure. He doesn’t take the rose back—maybe even give it to one of the children. He knows exactly what he’s doing. “That’s enough for today. The sun is setting, and your parents might get worried.”

They pout and slump their shoulders, but Lyney has this older brother's sternness to him that has the children scurrying back home anyway.

You then realize having to stand in front of Lyney was unnecessary.

The flower is warm. Lyney’s eyes slip to yours.

“I didn’t even have to stand in front of you like that,” you complain, heart inclined to race off your body.

“Yes, but I feared that I would slip up again if I were to catch a glimpse of your face,” Lyney admits smoothly. His lips curl into a smirk when you stare wordlessly. “What? Don’t believe me? I had to improvise when I saw you watching from afar.”

“A great magician such as yourself? Making a mistake? I doubt it.”

“You already have such high expectations placed on me, chérie,” Lyney says, his smile easy, but his ears are a little red, poking out from his hair. “That’s no good. With no audience, I’m just plain ‘Lyney’ to you.”

“No trickery? No cards up your sleeves?” you play along.

Lyney doesn’t miss a beat. “No, though I do have a few more roses begging to be held by your hands.”

“They can keep begging.” Lyney grins wider when you glance down at his hands. “Do you give them off to everyone you meet?”

“Who do you take me for?” Lyney isn’t offended; he laughs, delighted. He is preening under the sunset—or maybe it’s your attention. “Of course not. At least, not like this.”

You stare, unimpressed. “Sure.”

“So cold, chérie,” Lyney sighs, plucking the stem from your fingers to slot it behind your ear. It seems he likes doing that. “Here I am, trying to get you to warm up to me, and you treat me like this.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be going back home soon anyway.”

Lyney’s expression shifts into something more unrecognizable, his eyes dipping down to somewhere below your nose. “Oh. Avoiding attachment?”

You nod.

He grins, and he’s still so close. He knows how to entrance his audience, pulling you in until you forget to resist. Always watch the hands; yet Lyney could be digging a dagger to your side at this moment, and you wouldn’t even notice.

“I’m flattered you even want to avoid me because you know you’d get attached,” he purrs, tilting his head. Is Lyney just big on personal space?

“Don’t assume,” you retort. “I know how guys like you think. Even a magician as great as yourself can’t trick someone who’s already seen through it.”

“It would be easier if it were just a trick, wouldn’t it?” Lyney sighs, much to your confusion. “I take it that someone has told you what this flower means?”

You’ve nearly forgotten all about it. “Yes.” You find yourself unable to look directly into his eyes. “I know.”

But even with that, you can still feel his heavy gaze, pinning you down and threatening the strength of your knees. You suppose it comes with being a performer—watching his audience carefully, pinpointing each micro expression to say the right words.

“There doesn’t have to be any attachments.”

“What are you trying to say right now?”

Lyney’s reaches for your hip, sharing your gaze like he doesn’t know how to do anything else. “That you enamor me. That I am holding back from wanting you. I know you feel the same—you can never hide anything from a magician. But if you’re concerned,” he mumbles, “then this doesn’t have to mean anything. You may call it infatuation.”

You want to laugh. Or maybe you want to cry. Most of all, you want to nod helplessly, wrap your arms around his neck, and give in. It’s hard not to when he looks at you like that. “You want me that bad?”

“I almost want to disagree.”

“Almost?” Lyney gets closer, and you stop him with a palm on his chest. “We’re outside.”

Lyney grins. “Have you forgotten what Fontaine is also known for? No one would bat an eye. Love is in the air, and all that.”

“Absolutely not.”

“So still you’re letting me?”

You laugh this time. Letting him, as if you aren’t the one itching to pull him close and find out what he’s like behind the curtains. “Are you asking me as plain old ‘Lyney?’”

Lyney brightens, clearly pleased there wasn’t a ‘no’. “Yes.”

“No tricks?”

“No tricks. No strings.”

You let him lead you away into some dark alleyway. He kisses you like he was longing to do so all his life. You have only met him that fateful day, not even a week ago. But you claw at him like you get it—like he’s ruined you for anyone else the moment you shared gazes in the Opera House.

Romantic encounters, you quietly recall as Lyney swipes a thumb over your aching bottom lip.

You don’t see Lyney the day after that. And for some reason, it makes the itch worse. (Perhaps it’s because you’ve gotten a taste and can’t get enough.)

It’s mostly your fault, the sudden disappearance—you’ve cooped yourself up in the hotel room, buried your face in pillows, and screamed. You berate yourself for giving in, but another part of you—one that’s louder than any other thought in your head—wants to do it again. Wants to hold his handsome face in your hands and have him kiss you breathless. That was nothing like you had ever felt before.

You groan. It’s another new day. You might as well make some progress with your portfolio.

There’s a Café you’ve been visiting more often than not. Ordering a drink and spending a good chunk of your day sketching the view. Instead, you find yourself staring at Aether, Paimon, and Lynette seated at one of the tables.

Lynette’s eyes flick up to yours as she sips tea. She murmurs something to the other two, and you watch with amusement as Aether and Paimon’s heads snap to face you.

You let your gaze wander, eventually landing on Lyney, who is reciting his order with his charming-act-on smile, who is present because of course he is. You want to turn and run away, but that’d be letting Lyney win, and you’re nothing if not stubborn and prideful.

“Y/N!” Paimon greets once you’re within earshot, kicking her feet happily. “Good morning! What are you doing here?”

“Breakfast,” you reply, waving at them. Aether pulls a chair from the other table and gestures for you to sit. “Did I interrupt something?”

“Nope!” Paimon swipes a fork from the table and digs in on the Ile Flottante, leaving nothing for Aether. “Lynette and Lyney told us about another show they’re holding to make up for the previous one.”

“Mouth full,” Aether reminds her, a little too late as the Ile Flottante spews from her mouth.

“Really now? Maybe I can pay properly for a ticket this time,” you laugh, nodding at Lynette. She smiles faintly, hiding it behind the rim of her cup. Lynette sure is the polar opposite of her twin brother.

A shadow looms from behind, the silhouette of a figure with an unmistakable top hat. You tilt your chin and see Lyney peering down at you with a sweet smile. You will yourself to keep your gaze focused on his eyes only and nowhere else below the nose.

Speak of the devil…

“Sweetheart,” Lyney says instead of exchanging pleasantries like a normal person.

“Lyney,” you reply in kind. Then you look away upon realizing that Aether, Paimon, and Lynette had been silently watching the exchange with muted, stunned expressions.

Lyney, holding a tray of drinks and food in both hands, scoots the chair next to yours with his ankle. “I wasn’t informed that Y/N would be joining us,” he says, setting the drinks and plates down like a waiter with a flourish. “You can drink mine. Let me order another.”

You hold onto his wrist as he makes his way back. He turns to you, surprised. “Let me at least pay for my own breakfast.”

Lyney grins, delicately withdrawing from your grip. He places a loud kiss on your hand. “Don’t worry about it.” And then leaves, because he can’t take no for an answer.

“Is it just me,” Paimon starts as you resign yourself to finishing Lyney’s drink (It’s your favorite, the one you always order), “or is Lyney acting weird around Y/N?”

Aether laughs. “There's definitely something going on. Don’t end up staying too long in Fontaine, now. What was it you told us? ‘A day or two’.”

You huff, your face turning unbearably warm. “Shut up, you two. I am here to do research, not to find a summer fling.” You’ve already failed, but they don’t need to know about that.

If you were to touch your lips with your fingers, you’d think of no one else but Lyney’s hands on your hips and his mouth swallowing your words.

Lynette clears her throat, a quiet but noticeable thing. “Don’t be fooled by my brother, Y/N.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m still keeping my safe distance.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean. Don’t be fooled by my brother.” She stares at you from the rim of her cup—something about that has you listening obediently. “No matter what he tells you, he always cares too much. No matter what you may think, he always gets hurt first.”

“That’s not…” You can’t imagine that. From the start, it’s always felt like he was the one who could do what he wanted.

No tricks.

Lynette is his twin, after all. She knows him best.

No strings.

Defeated, you sip on the straw with the same fervor of an aggravated hilichurl, and that’s the end of that.

Conversations during breakfast are much lighter when Lyney returns with a full meal as his treat. Celebration, he says. Celebration for what? Who knows? Lyney winked, but his glance directed to you said enough.

“You say that you don’t want to get attached, but you’re awfully close to the Traveler, of all people,” Lyney says offhandedly once the others have left for their own matters.

You lean against your seat, grinning. “Are you jealous?”

He doesn’t say anything, instead upturning his nose as if scrambling to regain control. You laugh, oddly endeared. Lyney turns his head away, trying to hide the smile that curls his lips upon hearing it.

“Hey,” Lyney says seriously, reaching for your hand. “Where have you been yesterday?”

“Why? Missed me?”

And because he’s Lyney, he takes his time kissing each of your knuckles. It’s more intimate than the whole ‘no strings’ arrangement you agreed on, but you suppose Lyney thinks that any physical attention is free reign. “What would you do if I said yes?”

“You’ll be fine,” you say slyly. “You’ll have to get used to it if you want to risk your heart just to get laid.”

He rolls his eyes, tugging you closer. “I’m not risking anything to get laid. Do you think so lowly of yourself, chérie?”

“Isn’t this all there is to it? Physical attraction,” you ask, genuinely confused.

Lyney blinks. “Of course, but—” His eyes flicker down, and his words trail off.

When you speak, you feel your breath bounce back from his skin—a testament to your proximity. “Lyney,” you whisper. For what? Urging him to continue? Urging him to close this distance? You’re not sure, either.

You have so much to ask. What do you mean? Why can’t you finish your sentence? Why don’t you just kiss me already? But it’s hard to speak; Lyney’s name is all you can think of.

You whisper his name again. His grip on your hands tightens and loosens, a frustrated frown creeping up his brows.

Your hand shoots out to reach for the back of his head and give in. He flinches for a second before relaxing completely.

His lips almost taste sweeter than his words. Almost as sweet as how he finds purchase on your waist and holds your chin during every kiss.

You pull away to breathe, missing how he leans closer to chase after you and pouting when he can’t. “Yeah. That—That didn’t have to mean anything. I just wanted to know what it felt like again.”

“Yeah.” Lyney licks his lips, his gaze unable to tear away from where yours are swollen. “Yeah, I know. You taste like my drink.”

Really, no one’s surprised you gravitate towards each other again, feeling like you’re soaring and melting into a puddle at the same time. Lyney doesn’t touch you where you both know would cross the line, but he grips near possessively to what he can, as if breathing you in and worshipping your skin.

You know after this, he’d go back on stage, fooling his audience with what’s invisible to the average eye, as if this never happened. You know this because this is your deal: satiate the feverish attraction you have with each other and leave once you’re satisfied. (But you also know that you’ll be thinking of his touch and his lips while you stare at the vase beside your bed.)

Lyney is a magician, first and foremost.

He hooks you in, and keeps all your attention to himself like he’d die without it. Then he disappears with a snap of a finger. He’s finished his trick, leaving you befuddled in your seat with more questions than answers.

As you drift off to sleep, all you can think of is that there are two roses now.

“Brother.”

Lyney looks up from where he’d been entertaining Rosseland, seeing Lynette with a stern face. “What? What happened?”

Her tail flicks. “You said you weren’t going to get attached.”

Lyney exhales softly, his eyes slipping shut. “I’m not.”

Lynette finds herself smiling softly. “I may just be your assistant, but you can’t lie to your own twin.”

He buries his face in his hands. With his sight gone, images of your face while whispering his name flash in his mind. His eyes fly open, mortified, his whole face red. “I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t think it’d be deeper than that.”

He was the magician in this, but it felt as if you were the one who tricked him instead.

It’s been two weeks since you first arrived in Fontaine. By this point, you’ve grown more familiar with its views than your own city. Having Aether, Paimon, Lynette, and even Freminet around doesn't make it any easier for you to feel at home.

And then there’s the Lyney Situation. You meet up most nights, more than that when he’s free from shows. He keeps seeking you out, and you keep letting him in. There was one night where Lyney spent the night instead of heading straight to the door—and those nights turned into two, then three, and then he finds any excuse to keep doing it.

It’s not like you could stop. He told you look for me if you want more, and you always want more, because how could you not? Lyney treats you like he’s never had to take care of anything more precious but still manages to render you breathless like you’ve never experienced thrill the way he gives it to you before.

But you still have to go back home. And Lyney still has his own life, has his secrets. He feels untouchable even when your arms are wrapped around his neck.

No strings attached can still work for summer flings, doesn’t it? And what are summer flings, if not just that?

Lyney hovers above with his hands caging your face. He’s grinning so wide—and you’ve seen all kinds of smiles on him with your time spent together, but it was never this genuine.

“You’re bad for me.” He says it like a confession, a prayer.

You raise an eyebrow. “What did I do to you?”

His hand trails down until he’s rubbing shapes on your hips. “Make me feel like I’m myself whenever I’m with you.”

At your silence, Lyney clears his throat. “But it’s not like that, don’t worry. I just mean—”

And how does that even make sense? He pours his heart, then later reveals it’s nothing but a decoy to keep this facade realistic.

“Oh,” you say.

That was the final act you’d been waiting for. The final trick—the farewell show.

And so you pack your bags—shoved your sketchbook back inside, face forward, and promise not to look back. Leaving Sumeru hasn’t even been this hard.

Aether and Paimon shouldn’t be surprised if they find you missing; they’d been the first to know that your stay in Fontaine isn’t meant to last forever. And you’ve warned Lyney about this. Avoiding attachments? It felt more like running away from your problem.

Lyney is a busy man on his own; you’re nothing but some architect from a different region who happened to get caught up with him at the right time.

You sigh and call for the aquabus.

A hand clasps around your wrist, pulling you to collide against a familiar chest. Lyney’s eyes are wide, almost insane. Sweat clings to his forehead, and his breath comes in frantic pants.

“W-What—”

Lyney’s eyes search your face. Or maybe it’s him trying to convince himself that you’re right there, in front of him. “You didn’t even tell me.”

“I—I’m sorry—”

“Were you just going to leave like that? Don’t you think I at least deserve a farewell?”

“Lyney, I’m sorry. I know, that was stupid.” You haven’t seen him with an expression like this before—so raw and broken, begging to be glued together with your hands. “I didn’t want to formally say goodbye because I knew I'd want to stay.”

“That’s stupid,” he repeats in agreement.

You breathe shakily, eyes scanning the stunned crowd. What’s The Great Magician Lyney doing here? Holding some stranger in his arms? That must be what they’re thinking.

“How did you even know I was leaving?”

Lyney’s eyes cut down to his hand, gripping a crushed rose. “I was paying a visit to an empty room.” Embarrassed, he tries to toss it away, but you take it before he can.

You wordlessly place it in its home: the spot behind your ears. You don’t tell him that the two other roses he gave you serve as bookmarks in the sketchbook you’ve used all up in Fontaine. Where you’ve drawn his face more often than not.

Lyney groans in frustration, his hands curling around your waist. “Is staying so bad?”

“It’s not like I’m leaving forever.”

And then you notice Lyney’s hands. They’re shaking uncontrollably, not unlike how it did during that incident—and with it came the frantic exhales, as if natural human breathing alone is already hard enough for him.

“Oh, Lyney,” you say softly. You drop your bags and embrace him fully.

He doesn’t hesitate in pulling you closer, burying his face on your neck. “Don’t—don’t,” he gasps, “don’t just try to leave like that.”

It’s hard seeing Lyney like this. He’s usually so composed and easy-going. He gulps in a deep breath, and his voice cracks as he calls for you. This must be something out of his control—something deeper than the back of his stage.

“Y/N,” he whispers.

“Lyney,” you call back as gently.

He swallows your surprised noise with his mouth, moving against you like you’re his last meal on Teyvat. He’s still shaking, but it has subsided the longer you stay pressed against each other. You’re not sure if it’s his Pyro vision or if it’s your skin burning at the thought of Lyney’s skin against yours. It’s searing.

This is different from the last kisses you shared.

Passion, you think dizzily, breathless from his hunger. This is passion.

“What was that for?” you ask, embarrassingly winded.

Lyney brushes his thumb over your bottom lip. He looks sad. As though he only comes alive when you’re with him. “A kiss to make up for your absence in the following weeks.”

“I can always come back,” you say. “No, I will come back. I promise. I just need to get home for a bit.”

“Okay.” Lyney nods, exhaling heavily. “Yeah. I know, I understand. Once you come back, come straight to me, alright?”

“Of course.” You lean in to kiss his cheek. You’ve never done it before because it always came off too intimate. And judging by the blush that explodes on his face, he thinks the same.

It all doesn’t matter. The line has been crossed days ago; you’ve just been turning away from seeing it.

He kisses you again. Then again. “Have a safe trip,” he says in between kisses. “I almost wish you commissioned me to escort you, regardless of the price.”

“What, you want 500,00?” The aquabus has arrived; Lyney grips you a little tighter, childishly willing himself not to see it.

“500,000 kisses, and more.” Lyney rests his forehead against yours, his captivating eyes keeping you still, the way it always does. “But you can give me that when you come back.”

( Before they were taken away from the stage for an investigation, Lynette comes up to her brother and asks, “What happened back there, Lyney? I thought you were about to twist your own fingers.”

He is unsure how to tell his sister that he saw your awed expression and nearly lost his wits.

“It was nothing,” Lyney admits, his face growing hot at recalling his slip-up.

It wasn’t out of embarrassment, no—not when the memory of your wide-eyed beaming expression and how his mind blanked along with the skip of his heart plagued his mind.

“It was nothing,” he repeats numbly. It’s not. It was the start of something. )

a/n ok just a quick rant this fic BROKE ME. it was like every other day i hated then loved writing this fic. im not used to writing fics this long so pacing is not my forte </3 but i just feel proud of myself for finishing this so HOPE U LIKED IT. if ure still reading until here ily ❤️

more a/n two lyney fics and two kissing scenes. i can’t even lie to myself. everyone can tell.

more more a/n it was halfway through writing this fic that i rewatched the magic show and only noticed lyneys hands were shaking and i GOT SO SAD OMF 😭😭😭😭

#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #lyney x reader #lyney x you #lyney x y/n #lyney fanfiction

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puppetmaster13u · 5 months

Text

Prompt 106

Dan absolutely despised his parole at first, but honestly this is a blast. Sure, he’s stuck in the form of a cat, a kitten even, but he’d found an absolutely wonderful companion. Partner. Ally? Baby Chaos Lord? He’d work on it.

Klarion is just happy to have found such a great familiar, he even named them Teekl II, which is a great name thank you very much hero-babies! So now he has two Teekl familiars, and Teekl II always gets so gleeful whenever they successfully pull a prank! He even has his own fire magic which is so fun!

Danny is not happy to get thrown into another world, stuck as a kitten. He’s also not pleased to have found a sick baby liminal, but fine. If this is what he’s supposed to deal with then he’ll deal with it! Even if he has to be a familiar for a teeny tiny bit of time. It’s fine, and the dude has a pocket he can peek out of on his coat.

Jason has no idea where this kitten came from but the Pit is being surprisingly chill about it. Something about a baby? Whatever, he’s made the furball a little matching outfit and they like to sit in his pockets and peer out. No idea how Cat Hood is making the shadows all spooky now or why the eyes went from blue to green, but whatever.

Ellie is utterly delighted in this situation. She was just wandering, but now she’s a lil fluffy kitten, and ended up landing on this kid’s head. This magic kid’s head! He even has a talking tiger friend too! So cool! She’s definitely sticking with him! This will be so fun!

Billy was worried about making sure the kitten got food, she’s so tiny! Mr Tawny is a big help though, and apparently she’s his familiar now that he’s given her a mortal name? He doesn’t fully understand but apparently she’s connected to his magic now, if the shouts from the gods are anything to go by. Look, an electric cat is cool. Pakhet is amazing, and Fawcet thinks it’s adorable that Marvel has a kitten clinging to his shoulder

#dcxdp #dpxdc #prompts #feline familiar au #Hilariously none of them know the other is in the world #Ellie was just wandering #Dan is on patrol #Danny was messing with portals #It'll be hilarious the first time all 3 meet and do the spiderman meme with their cats #Dan looks like a tabby cat but silver-blue #Ellie is a black tuxedo cat #Danny is black with a white head #they're all magic now #Dan: No I am not parenting this lil shit- shut up #Ellie: Haha magic lightning go brrr #Danny: He hasn't tried to murder me and made me a jacket so that's cool #Why yes they all Can go big if they want #Very Big in fact #So hopefully no one threatens their partners #They may be new to this whole familiar schtick but they'll be the best at it they swear #klarion #teekl #dan fenton #billy batson #captain marvel #ellie fenton #jason todd #red hood #danny fenton

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ohraicodoll · 1 year

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DESPERATELY NEED FERAL READER WITH EP 8 WITH AN INJURED JOEL AND KIDNAPPED ELLIE…….. I KNOW OUR CRAZY QUEEN WOULD KILL EVERYONE ♥️♥️♥️♥️

Yall asked for it lol

Violent Delights Joel Miller x f!Reader The Last of Us 6.7k Words/ 3rd POV Feral Reader Masterlist Summary: They took her kid and she was getting her back. Warning: Graphic depictions of violence and torture

She woke up with a start, having drifted off unknowingly after trying to keep watch, a sense of disorientation as she tried to figure out where she was and what was happening. The basement. They were still in the basement, the cold leeching any warmth from the walls and floors, the haggard breathing of her companion her only company. It’d been over 48 hours since she last slept, since Joel was hurt and they’d had to drag him into the house and patch him up. He wasn’t in good shape. Joel was so close to death’s door, it terrified her. They were so close to losing him and she had never felt more helpless.

She could still hear his pained groans, the glazed and blank look in his eyes, as she put pressure on the bleeding hole in his stomach just a couple days before. “Don’t you dare die, Joel. You still have to make shit up to me and you can’t do that dead. You can’t leave us again.” He’d tried to tell them to leave him. To go back to Tommy’s and leave him behind, the stubborn asshole. But Ellie managed to find the first aid kit and they’d sewn up the hole, wrapping it best they could with the little supplies they had. She knew it wasn’t enough. There could be shards left from the baseball bat, they weren’t the cleanest, nothing was sterile. She didn’t even know if something internal had been damaged. But it was all they could do. They’d been so focused on getting to Colorado they’d been using their food storage rather than hunting over the past week. Now it was biting them in the ass, their supplies dwindled. She’d managed to briefly go out and hunt down a rabbit, but game seemed scarce and leaving meant leaving Ellie and Joel alone. Without Joel, it was hard to sleep, look after Ellie, look after him and keep him stable, look after the fucking horses, and hunt. She was overwhelmed. So sleep went out the window. She took watch when Ellie was asleep, went and tried to hunt and scavenge the nearby houses when she was awake, and kept an eye on Joel in between taking care of the two horses in the garage. But at some point she’d fallen asleep finally, fallen deep and hard enough that she hadn’t noticed Ellie slipping the rifle from her hands and leaving the two adults alone. A small scribbled note was placed on her lap on a piece of what looked like newspaper, “Be back soon -E.” She scrambled to her feet, looking around and cursed herself. Joel was still breathing steadily but his brow was covered with sweat from the infection he was staving off. Both their packs were against the wall but Ellie’s was gone and the panic that took hold was like a lightning bolt. It stole the breath from her lungs. Ellie was gone, Ellie was gone, Ellie was gone- it was a racing thought that circulated over and over again. Her main purpose, main job, and she’d fucking fallen asleep.

Her heart jumped further at hearing footsteps above her head, the slight creak and shift in the old wood, a door slamming…then it all came out in deep relief as she recognized the light shuffling.

Ellie raced down the steps, cheeks pink from cold and wind, and breath huffing out in a rush as she entered the basement.

She grabbed the girl immediately, shaking her by the shoulders with the vestiges of panic still in her blood, “Where did you go, Ellie? You weren’t supposed to leave!”

The teenager paused, eyes frantic and a little wild, but a tough set to her lips as she shook her head, “I went hunting and you needed sleep! I had to, but look! I got Joel medicine!” Ellie took the bottles out of their wrap, quickly moving away from her and kneeling down to Joel, beginning to lift up his shirt before she could even get a good look at what she had. The wound was ugly and discolored and she could hear him groan at the small touches. Her mind was still caught up in the panic of discovering the girl was gone and she quickly snatched the bottles away before the syringe was inserted. “Where did you get this?” she asked, turning it over in her hands. Penicillin. Two whole bottles of penicillin, practically liquid gold in their world, and Ellie had managed to get it while she slept. The teen looked nervous and tried to snatch it back, but she was quick even if she was exhausted and pulled her hand away, “Please, can we give it to him first and then I’ll explain?” Her eyes were so big for her face, cheeks pink. Her desperation to help Joel was evident. Ellie knew how bad he was doing and believed she held the cure to it all in her hands. She could only sigh and hand it back over, instructing her to give just a fourth of the bottle and to tap the syringe. Joel would probably have a heart attack if he knew she was letting the kid give it to him, but she knew Ellie had to do this herself. It was her win and she had to feel like she was the one saving him so she let her. But then they both stared, her knowledge only getting them that far. “Where the fuck am I suppose to put this?” Ellie cursed, looking at the wound and Joel’s arm, eyes switching between hers and his closed ones, “Fuck, how are we supposed to do this?” She cursed herself. Her medical knowledge was mediocre. Stitching, cleaning wounds, pulling out bullets, the basics they needed. Infections and medicine she had no clue about, “Just give it to him in his stomach. As long as it enters his blood stream, it should be fine.” At least, that’s what she thought. Ellie winced and inserted the needle, Joel giving out pained groans as it sunk into the sensitive area. They both watched the plunger empty the contents and then she pulled it out, trying to clean the needle the best she could. They only had one syringe and would have to reuse it. “And now we wait,” the teen commented and looked at his face as if at any second he would be magically better. He would wake up and smile and tell her good job. But he didn’t, staying silent on the small makeshift bed. “No, now you tell me where you went and how you got that,” she bit out, sitting on the other side of Joel to face her. Ellie winced and looked down at the small glass bottles in her hand, “You needed to sleep and we needed food. I know you think you can take care of all of us, but you can’t and I wanted to help by trying to hunt.” “That’s not your responsibility-” “It doesn’t matter. I wanted to help,” Ellie cut her off but then sighed, “And I did manage to actually get a deer…but I ran into these guys...” Instantly, she was on high alert, eyes searching everything that was visible and checking her for any wounds, “You ran into people and you’re barely telling me!” “I know!” the young girl argued back, hand resting on top of Joel’s, “They found my deer before me and said they were from a group with starving women and children. They offered to trade for half the deer and said they had medicine. I did everything I was supposed to! Got them to drop their guns, unloaded their rifles, and had them back away. One went to get the medicine and I kept the gun on the other.”

“So you gave them half the deer and they gave you the medicine then just let you go?” she asked and clenched and unclenched her fists. Ellie wouldn’t look so nervous if that was the whole story and she wasn’t nearly tired enough to have been dragging half a deer carcass back. Shrugging, Ellie grimaced and refused to meet her eyes, “That was the deal…but they knew who we were. The people that attacked us at the university belonged to their group and this guy started talking about how one of theirs had been killed by a crazy man with two girls. He knows that was Joel. I don’t know why he let me go, but I think they’re looking for us.” With a curse, she quickly stood, hands on her hips and pacing in a tight circle, “Fuck. Fuck. And they didn’t come after you?”

“No, I think they let me go because I was a kid.” She doubted that. People rarely were that charitable, even to children in this world. Especially a child with a gun and an attitude like Ellie’s. The unspoken words were there though. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t come for her and Joel though. Ellie may be deemed innocent but the two of them were problems and only one of them was in commission currently. But what could they do? They couldn’t move Joel in his state. They couldn’t leave him behind either. They were stuck. “Okay. Maybe if they let you go they don’t plan on coming. Maybe they think both of us are injured if you were out on your own and won’t come,” she lied comfortingly and tried to speak the words into existence, knowing the kid was probably feeling guilty and needed some hope. They needed rest, needed to breathe for a second, and panicking now wouldn’t help. It took a while to relax enough to let the adrenaline fade away.

Ellie laid down, exhausted, tucking into Joel’s side as she had the past couple nights and resting her head on his shoulder. He subconsciously leaned into her, still alive for now. Her heart ached at the sight, the way they held each other in their own ways. She didn’t have the strength to get after the girl more or uproot them out of precaution. They were all exhausted and Ellie had somehow managed to bring hope even if there was a cost.

She sat down by the stairs, flipped her knife between her fingers to keep her awake and focused, and watched the two sleep with her heart in her throat.

The men would come. Now that they knew they were in the area, they would come and they were stuck in this spot until Joel was better. There was no way they could get him on a horse and move him now without undoing all the healing he’d done. A thousand scenarios went through her head, sleep now a distant memory in the face of the panic and anxiety plaguing her. How was she supposed to fight off a group and keep them both safe?

She couldn’t. That was the reality of the situation.

The thought hit her over and over again like a blow to the chest, the knife turning between her fingers. _________________________________________ Morning came and she could see Ellie’s disappointment that the medicine hadn’t instantly woken Joel up and made him all better. To ease her mind, they gave him another dose, trying to make the bottles last before shoving the remainder in their bags. They were out of food, the rabbit she had caught two days ago long gone without a way to store it. Joel still wasn’t eating or drinking and she worried that even if they got the infection under control, his body wouldn’t be strong enough to get better. Things were bad. The possibility of Joel dying was a constant chime in her head. It felt like a mockery that he had left and came back only to be almost taken from them permanently. She was angry. He wasn’t supposed to be the one that took the hit. It had been meant for her but he’d pushed her out the way as the bat swung, breaking on the tree, and then tackled the guy. If it had been her, Joel would know what to do. He could take care of them both or at least would have the strength to leave her behind if necessary. She wasn’t sure she could. She was failing him. Failing them both. The basement was suffocating, pressing in on her, and she took the opportunity to go tend to the horses, leaving the girl and her unconscious companion to the pressing weight of disappointment. Her body was beginning to ache from the lack of sleep and food, joints protesting her movement, but she reached down and scooped snow into the small metal bucket for them to get some water. Soon the horses would starve too or be too weak to carry them. Death was creeping up on them. Looking over the neighborhood they were held up in, she sighed at the obvious foot steps leading up through the streets before beginning to methodically cover what she could. Ellie knew better than to leave a trail but she guessed in her hurry to get the medicine back to Joel and get away from the men she had forgotten. And as birds took off in a rush further down the road towards the wooded outskirts, she froze and her heart thundered in her ears.

She felt fear run through her as her thoughts from the night resurfaced and became reality, a living nightmare. They were coming. They had waited for daylight to search them out and were coming now. She knew it, could feel it, and they were out of time. Quickly covering what she could and making false tracks from the other houses, she ran back inside and flew down the stairs to the basement taking two at a time. No time, there was no time. Ellie startled at her rushed appearance and the way she flew across the room to the rifle and her own pack, “What’s happening?”

“Those men you saw are coming,” she huffed out, grabbing the rifle and checking it was loaded before looking around the room as if she could find the answer there.

Turning to Joel, Ellie began to shake his shoulders as if he were merely sleeping and not borderline in a coma, “Fuck. Joel! You have to wake up, Joel. Joel, wake up! Wake the fuck up, Joel!” But he only gasped, pained whimpers leaving his lips, eyelids fluttering.

She bent down and grabbed Ellie by the shoulders, forcing her to look into her eyes, “Ellie, I need you to listen to me. I need you to take the horse and run.”

“What? No, what about-”

“You run and I’ll follow behind and try to pick them off,” she interrupted, voice adamant, “They’re going to search every house and they will find us eventually. I can’t hold them off like this. I need to know you’re good first and if we’re away from here then it will take the focus off Joel.”

“You want me to go without you?” Ellie’s eyes were wide with fear and her heart ached at the sight, but there was no time.

“I’ll find you,” she promised and dug her fingers tightly into her shoulders as if she could sink the words into her skin, “I will. But you have to go now. We’ll block the entrance to down here, give Joel some time.”

Ellie pressed her lips together and nodded, running to grab her backpack and last minute grabbed one of the larger knives they had. Running back over to Joel, the teen knelt down and placed it on his chest, forcing his hand to grab it. She let her while grabbing the rest of her stuff and placed Joel’s pack into a small cubby under the steps to make it less noticeable.

“Okay, look at me,” Ellie whispered to him while he only groaned in reply, “There are men coming, okay? I’m gonna lead them away from you, Red is going to help get rid of them. But if anybody makes it down here, you fucking kill them. You got it?”

“Ellie, hurry,” she bit out, peeking out the small window along the top of the wall. “Joel, do not fall asleep,” the teenager pleaded desperately, squeezing his hand around the knife. She could see his eyes partially open, see his lips trying to move and his fingers twitching trying to grasp the knife. But Ellie finally got up quickly and rushed up the stairs. She went to follow after her and paused, staring back at the unconscious man on the floor. A part of her whispered that this could be the last time she saw him alive. One or both of them could be dead if this didn’t go right. Heart in her throat, she ran back to him and kneeled, kissing his forehead and grasping his hand. “Stay alive for us, please, Joel,” she whispered, squeezing the hand around the knife, but getting back up and running up the stairs. She tried not to look back. Both of them moved the tall kitchen cabinet over the door entryway to the basement, trying to shuffle things around to not make the spot obvious before heading to the garage. They got both horses out, grabbing what she needed from hers and sending silent apologies to Tommy before forcing it to gallop away in the opposite direction with a sharp smack. The other she saved for Ellie to ride, closing the garage door behind them. They’d figure out transportation later when they were out of this mess, but they needed the guys off their trail and two different horse tracks would help. With quick hands, she helped Ellie climb up onto its back.

Shakily, she bit out, “You ride hard and fast and loud. They’re going to come after you but if you go fast they won’t catch you and I’ll hit them from behind. They only know for sure about you right now. Do not look back, Ellie. I’ll find you once it’s safe, I promise.” Ellie was shaking but tried to put on a brave face, nodding and holding onto the reins. She wanted to hug the girl, tell her it was going to be okay, but she wouldn’t lie to her. Not now. The men were close, she knew that. She patted the rear of the horse and nodded a final goodbye, beckoning her to go forward. Her heart screamed to not let her go, that it was safer with her than alone, but they were backed into a corner and she had no choice. They wouldn’t win in a shootout and losing meant Ellie would die. So she watched as the girl rode away down the street away from her, turning until she was completely out of sight, and tried not to flinch at the gunshots that came soon after and the yells of men. She tried to shut off the part of her that wanted to panic, to react and worry. That wasn’t the part she needed to listen to at the moment. Running as far as she could, crossing over fences and staying against the walls of the house, she followed the sound of loud hoof beats and chased after them as they chased after Ellie. Her ears caught on one of them screaming that she was to be left alive, but that didn’t ease the worry in her. Being captured alive wasn’t always a good thing. One of the slower men chasing Ellie fell the furthest behind, wheezing in the cold and trying to clamber in the dense snow. Her own knife in hand, she ran and jumped onto his back, using both their weight to send them forward onto his front behind the cover of some of the shrubs.

He hadn’t been expecting to be attacked from behind and it took him a moment to try and struggle, to lift his face out of the snow to breathe, and she took advantage of that by stabbing deep into the back of his neck. He groaned, the sound muffled, and she pulled the blade out and sunk it in again and again with a growl. The snow was staining red around them. He stopped moving. One down. She stood and took off, the cold biting into her lungs and stealing her breath. The terrain was hard and the one kill had put her farther behind the group, forcing her to cut across more backyards to catch up, but she could only hope Ellie had done what she asked and was out of range. She could catch the rest of them once they scattered. But then a gunshot rang out close by. The sound of a horse’s cry ripped through her, tore her soul to shreds, and she knew if she lived beyond the day she would hear that sound forever in her nightmares.

She ran. She left all care of stealth behind and ran fast and hard, dodging trees and fallen branches and then ran faster when another gun shot rang out. The chest felt like it was being cleaved open by the panic, fear gripping her tightly. They wouldn’t have shot her. They wouldn’t have killed her. She was a kid, they wouldn’t-

And then she watched from the trees as the group surrounded Ellie who was on the ground, her horse unmoving not far away, and a tall skinny man picked her up and began to walk away with her. She raised the rifle, looking down the scope, and cursed as the men separated and began to head back into the neighborhood. No doubt to continue their search for Joel and her.

She could see Ellie’s face through the scope, the loll of her head, but she was gripped too closely to the man’s body. He was walking further and further away. Two sides of her screamed. Leaving to go after them meant abandoning Joel, but staying behind meant leaving Ellie. She wanted to press the trigger, shoot, but knew it was too risky with Ellie in the man’s arms. She could so easily accidentally kill the girl if she was one inch off and her hands were too shaky from exhaustion to be precise. Only some of the group was going back, the others looking like they were continuing to scout the area.

She knew what she had to do, what Joel would tell her to do, but the reality of it felt impossible. If they found Joel, he’d die for sure. But she wasn’t sure she could live with leaving Ellie.

The men with the girl were getting farther away and a choice had to be made.

So she swallowed the sob in her throat and let the rage she felt consume her completely, push her forward, and followed behind the group to where they would take her kid. __________________________ It was getting harder and harder to follow along as the wind began to kick up a notch. She needed to see where they were taking Ellie, but she was tired and the cold was sinking in, her body struggling to keep going. And as they entered the town, it was getting difficult to avoid being seen. Too many buildings, too many open areas, and she didn’t know who could be watching. She knew they had entered one of the nearby buildings, but wasn’t sure which. The clock was ticking in her mind, Ellie’s life on one hand and Joel’s on the other. What good was she if she couldn’t save her people? Blood crusted on her fingers as she entered the first of the buildings quietly, finding a back entrance. It was dark but she could hear voices nearby as she found herself in some kind of storage room, the cold still reaching her through the walls. She wasn’t used to carrying the rifle. It had always been Joel’s weapon thanks to its weight, her preferring knives or a small pistol or even a bow when she could find one. So when she crouched down to ease her way over to the swinging door leading further inside, she winced when it thudded and scraped against the floor, the sound so loud in her ears. The voices paused and she froze, eyes wide and watching the door. There was shuffling and she quickly backed away into a darkened corner, pulling her knife out. Steps came closer and she held her breath, trying to calm her racing heart. The door swung open and she could see a man enter, beard a little rough and looking a little ragged, cheeks red from the cold. He frowned, looking around, gaze shifting over what he could. He turned to look at the back door, back facing her, and only then did she realize she had tracked snow inside and it hadn’t quite melted. Lunging, she stuck the blade deep into his lower back with all her might and threw her arm around his neck, choking him hard. A cry of pain tried to leave his lips, breath cut off, and he struggled wildly. She twisted the knife, feeling blood coat her hand. “Where is the girl?” she hissed, jerking the blade deeper. He sobbed and made pathetic mewling sounds of pain, voice wispy from lack of air, “Please, I don’t know-” She twisted, hearing the squelch of flesh tearing, “The teenage girl your buddy grabbed, where is she?” The distinct smell of piss lingered in the air and he sobbed out, “I don’t know! Oh god.” Steps were coming close again and she growled, keeping her grip on the knife buried in his body and shifting her arm away from his neck to hold the back of his collar. He wheezed in air, blood starting to bubble from his lips. The door burst open and the distinct sound of a gun rising echoed in the tiny room, only to pause as she held the man in front of her like a shield, mostly hidden by his body. “Howard-” A woman’s voice. All the people who had attacked them had been men.

She wouldn’t have the information she needed. With a growl of frustration, she shoved the body at her, letting his dead weight hit her and trap the woman against the wall. She let out a startled cry and the delay gave her just enough time to unholster her pistol and shoot her in the head. The numbness that was a twin to her rage had sunk into her skin, blanketing her all over. She’d search the buildings, one by one, and kill whoever she had to to find her kid. She didn’t care. Stepping over the bodies, she moved into the area they had been in before she drew their attention and paused, icy horror filling her. A leg was in the process of being cut apart, small chunks set aside and being wrapped up as if to store for later. It was a kitchen, most likely used to prepare food for stage, large makeshift smokers and pits along the back unused. The ticking clock in her mind sped up as the reality of what she’d uncovered hit her. Cannibals. These people that had taken Ellie were cannibals. A strong hit to her back sent her stumbling forward and clattering to her knees. She grunted and scrambled forward as a stomp missed her, hitting the ground instead. There’d been someone still in the room and she’d been too distracted to notice.

Rolling onto her back, gun still in her hand, she aimed and managed to shoot the knee out of her assailant as he raised a butcher knife. He crumpled to the ground with a cry and she got to her feet slowly, gun raised and trained on him.

The guy was younger, but thin and haggard looking. His bravado hadn’t fully left him though as he stared her down, anger in his eyes, “You fucking bitch. You blew out my fucking knee.” He tried to get up but she aimed at his head, making him freeze. “I’ll shoot the other one too if you don’t shut up and tell me where the girl you kidnapped is,” she snarled, adrenaline helping to keep the firearm steady on him. His nose wrinkled and he spit at her, brow furrowed.

Stubborn. Younger guys were so stubborn.

She pulled the trigger and watched his other knee explode as the bullet met his target. The man screamed and she quickly knelt down, shoving her hand over his mouth and placing the still warm barrel against his forehead. Tears leaked out his eyes, making little dirt tracks through the grime on his skin.

“Where the fuck is she?” she screamed into his face and the sound was almost inhuman, gravel and fury warping it almost into a howl.

But he only shook his head, eyes defiant. Frustrated, she stood, looking at the meat cleaver in his hand and the human leg on the table. She didn’t have time for this. Ellie was out there and the situation was worse than she thought. Not even meeting his eyes, she raised the gun and shot him in the head. He wasn’t going to give her any information.

She raced back outside through the back door she had entered, heart in her throat and a panicked scream wanting to leave her lips.

The storm was picking up as an idea hit her. If she searched each building, there was no guarantee she’d find someone with information in time. She had to draw their attention. Maybe lure them out. They had wanted Ellie alive for the moment. If she could distract them, it may buy her time.

Chewing her lip, she kneeled behind the building and swung her pack around to dig through it. Her hand wrapped around a small glass bottle that had been carefully secured in the middle of her clothes and yanked it out along with one of her old shirts. They’d been saving it for emergencies, using it to sterilize what they could, but she needed it for something else now. Her face stung from the cold wind and her hands shook, but she managed to tear cloth and shove it into the liquor bottle, saturating the fabric, before she put her pack back on and stood.

Time to make a big fucking distraction.

Blocking the wind with her hands, she lit a match and watched as the tip of the cloth burned bright with flames.

With a snarl, she tossed the molotov through the window of the next building, ducking down and watching as the flames exploded inside. Screams and shouts followed, telling her there had been people inside, and she waited for more voices to join them. Someone would investigate or come outside.

Like clockwork, a man rushed out into the cold and she gripped her bloody knife at the familiar face. One of the men that had come back with Ellie. He cursed and ran through the snow, yelling that he was going to grab the fire extinguisher next door while the others scrambled to put the flames out. She followed, quiet, lava flowing through her and teeth bared. She couldn’t even feel the cold anymore.

The wind blocked any sound she made as she rushed after him into the alley and lunged, shoving him into the cold brick wall with a loud crack. She growled and grabbed his hair, gripping it tightly and smashing it into the bricks once then twice. He tried to push away and turn, but she kneed him hard in the spine, driving him to his knees. “Where is the girl?” she snarled into his ear, knife to his throat. Blood poured down an open wound on his forehead, one eye blinded by red, as he finally took in who had grabbed him, “fuck you,” “Wrong answer,” she yanked his hair and slammed it into the wall again. When he went to raise his hand to fight her, she stabbed the blade through his hand and into the ground. His screams were carried away by the wind and snow, the shouts of his group telling her they were still distracted by the fire. “The girl your group grabbed,” the words were all razors and broken glass, almost the sound of an animal snarl, “Where did you take her?” He sneered at her, trying to put on a strong front through the pain, “That bitch is probably soup by now.” She stepped on the knife, the blade so far in his hand the hilt was pressing against the back, “I can make this last a fucking lifetime. Your choice. Where-” “Please, don’t-” Frustrated, she ripped the knife out and placed the tip just inside his mouth, “Last chance. Where is she?” The tip clinked against his teeth and he hung his mouth open to avoid being cut, his beard a mess of blood and spit and green eyes wide with fear finally. She tried not to feel satisfaction as seeing that, understanding setting in for him. He lifted his bloody hand and tried to point across the street, stuttering out, “Steakhouse. The fucking steakhouse. David has her in there.” She looked at him, eye swollen, and blood coating the front of his face, clearly terrified.

Slowly, she took the blade away, watching his lips wobble with sobs and slight relief. Then she slit his throat, continuing to move behind the buildings even as his blood sprayed out and soaked her clothes and his pleas gurgled and quieted.

The steakhouse was a few more buildings down across the street, “Todd’s Steakhouse” still written on the sign out front. The storm was a blizzard now, sharp stinging snow hitting her skin and turning the blood on her into patches of ice. There were yells, panicked screams, and she wondered if they had found the bodies. If they had found the blood and chaos she had left in her wake.

But with a destination in sight, she had let her guard down and she cursed herself later on for it. Arms wrapped around her torso, crushing the rifle into her back, and she kicked at the air as she was dragged back against a brick wall.

“You fucking bitch!” Screamed into her ear and she was tossed to the ground, teeth clattering from the impact.

A kick landed in her stomach and she grunted, the air leaving her lungs, but she had enough sense to grab onto the leg and cling to it. The move caught the man off balance and he tripped, falling to the ground next to her. Her blade was somewhere in the snow and she struggled to dig around for it, sharp steel nicking her fingers as she found it only to be thrown onto her back.

The man climbed on top of her, straddling her waist, his weight so heavy and her pack on her back making the move crushing. She grit her teeth and bucked, thrashing to try and get him off of her. But he only grinned, pulling back and decking her in the face. Stars lit up behind her eyes, a high pitch ringing all she could hear as pain exploded through her head.

He pulled back to punch again and her fingers found the cold metal in the snow. She wrapped her hand around it, feeling the sharp steel cut into her palm as she grabbed it by the blade instead of the hilt, and stabbed it into his lower throat. She didn’t stop, only switching to pull it out by its handle this time, and stabbed again and again, blood reigning down onto her.

With a howl, she shoved him off of her and sent a final stab into his face, snow soaking into her and pain a radiating heat. Everything hurt and it was an effort to get up and roll onto her side, staring at the decimated body next to her.

She spit blood on him and stood. There was smoke coming from all around her, the fire having caught from the molotov and moving on building to building. Across the way, smoke could be seen from the steakhouse and she swallowed her pain, letting adrenaline carry her to the front doors. Her hands shook as she tried the handles, pulling again and again but they stayed locked and shut. Growling, she threw her shoulder into it. She was so close. She had found the place and was so close and a locked fucking door was all that was keeping her away. Her breathing was quick and frantic as she looked over the front and tried to reason that there had to be a back door or an employee entrance. Her hands skimmed the wall to try and keep upright, knowing soon the exhaustion and pain would take over, but she tried to push it back. Ellie had to be close. She needed to keep going a little bit further and then she’d get her kid and they’d go get Joel.

Her steps stumbled and she pushed off the wall, screaming at herself to stay steady. There, she could see the back door. Plain and wooden, easy enough to shoot the lock off and get inside. With shaky fingers, she unhooked the rifle from her shoulder, the weight of it almost unbearable, and took two shots to get the lock blown off. Her legs were shaky as she climbed the few steps and opened the door, smoke pouring out. She coughed and tried to wave it away, stepping inside and feeling the heat. She had taken only a few steps into the building and stopped, hearing a familiar voice. “Red?” Relief flooded her, eyes instantly filling with tears, as Ellie emerged from the smoke not too far in front of her. Ellie was there, hair a mess and half tumbling out of her ponytail, blood splattered and smeared all over her face and clothes. It took her a while to realize she was standing there, actually standing there, watching as the girl stumbled forward and wrapped her arms tightly around her waist.

Smoke and fire was all around them, but she couldn’t care because she had Ellie and they were both alive and safe now. With shaky hands, she managed to direct them back out of the building and into the cold, fresh air. Her promise rang in her ears and she whispered them out loud as she clung to the girl, “I found you. I found you. I’ll always find you.” And she had, but not quick enough. She knew that something awful had happened, that Ellie was now one step closer to being what her and Joel were. The tough exterior had crumbled away and all that was left was a shocked girl who’d had a piece of her soul cleaved away. Her nose was busted and she knew that look in her eyes, the horror and pain at doing something ugly but necessary. Ellie’s lips were shaking as she looked her over and she was so focused on the girl she almost didn’t see Joel coming around the corner. Joel, standing and whole and alive, coming towards them like Ellie was a gravity well pulling both of them towards her. His eyes met hers and the relief was bright, even if she was dripping in blood. But Ellie hadn’t noticed the shift in attention, hadn’t heard his steps, and when he went to grab her she bucked and thrashed in his arms in sheer desperation. So much like her, a wild animal fighting not to be caged. Her heart tore apart, shredded to pieces, at the painful screams then broken sobs as she realized who was holding on to her.

Joel only kept whispering, “It’s me, it’s me, I’m here.” “He- I-” she stuttered, eyes glazed and searching both of theirs. Joel held on with all his might, trying to ease her, gentle words soothing. And the girl crumbled, falling into his arms and clinging to him tightly as much as he was clinging to her. His eyes met hers and she let the exhaustion hit her and carry her towards them, falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around them both. All three of them, blood soaked, finally home with each other.

______________ Feral Reader Taglist: @alouise20 @faceache111

#joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x feral reader #joel miller #joel miller fanfic #joel miller x female reader #the last of us fanfic #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfic #tlou fanfiction #joel miller x oc #tlou ellie #ellie the last of us #tlou #the last of us #feral reader #series: feral #raicodoll writes

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softlyspector · 9 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

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bits-and-babs · 1 year

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𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐁𝐨𝐲 || 𝐉𝐨𝐞𝐥 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Previous Joel Fics: Mule [5.1K], Atta Girl [10.2K]

Summary: Ellie steals one of Bills magazines and you and Joel decide to see what the fuss is about.

Word Count: 3k

CW: Possible spoilers for episode 3, but I haven’t seen it! Based on the game. Heavily inspired by my bestie @foxilayde. A much lighter fic than the last few, a little bit of dry comedy, a little bit of playful Joel, but also a little bashful. Consumption of porn magazine, companions to lovers(?), p in v sex, fingering. Not proof read.

Tease: “Can feel you squeezin’ me. You gonna c** for me?”

“N-Now Ellie, that ain’t for kids-“

“Woaaah!” Ellie had exclaimed, holding up the magazine rustling in her hand by her fingertips, her arm outstretched to take in the whole double page, “How- How the hell would he even walk around with that thing?!”

That had piqued your interest, eyes snapping up to the rearview mirror. Ellie was giggling, grinning from ear to ear as Joel turned in his seat to snatch the paper emblazoned with PLAYGIRL in red lettering from her hand.

“Would you jus’-“

“Hold your horses!” Ellie had insisted, “I wanna see what all the fuss is about!”

You hadn’t said anything at the time, chuckling at the way Joel’s cheeks flushed as Ellie asked all kinds of inappropriate questions. It was only when she discarded the pornographic magazine on the floor of the truck at the end of her smutty inquisition and fell asleep on the back seat upon Joel’s insistence that you made a note of where she had dropped it in the footwell.

Joel, having stopped to rest, slept in the front seat. His head tilted forwards; a gentle snore indicated he was out cold. With some courage and a little luck, you managed to grab the magazine without waking either of the sleeping duo and exit the truck.

Settling back in the bed of the pickup truck now and minding how uncomfortable it was to lean against the metal, you set a flashlight against the floor, open up the worn pages of the filthy magazine and chew nervously on your lower lip.

Of course, you weren’t to judge Bill for his sexuality. You never had before the outbreak, and there certainly wasn’t any point in being a bigot when the world had ended. In fact, thumbing through each crinkled page, you can’t help but thank Bill for his impressive collection of smutty male pages.

Each page had a collection of pictures and articles on everything from the ‘best sex positions for your zodiac signs’ to ‘average penis size of men around the world’. Clearly photographed in the 80s, based on the moustaches alone, each man photographed in a multitude of poses was muscular, slathered in oil, and donning the tiniest speedos while exhibiting the most prominent bulges beneath the aquablade fabric.

Ellie was right, how do they walk around with those things?

One, in particular, caught your eye; the sunset-orange speedos sat snug against the globes of his ass. The muscles in his back were defined, rippling with each of his poses. They were so clear beneath his golden tan you could probably label each picture like an anatomy textbook. He was pretty, and he made your face warm up.

“That your type?” A gruff, rumbling voice makes your body jolt in shock, inhaling a petrified gasp.

Joel had stepped out of the truck while you were distracted by the glutes and pectorals of the gorgeous male models, catching you off guard as he walked up behind you. He crossed his arms over his chest, biceps straining the sleeves of his denim shirt.

“Mhm- N-No! No, I was just reading about how standard American men have a less-than-average dick length,” you lie smoothly to cover up being caught red-handed, using some of the data you had read a few pages back. “What about yours? Is your moody personality compensating for something?”

“You ain’t funny,” he answers flatly, refusing to rise to your childish jabs as he climbs up into the truck bed with you. You catch a glimpse of the pistol buried in the waistband of his jeans, and your pulse races faster than it had with any of the round bums you’d seen in the pages.

“I’d say I’m hilarious. It’s the trauma of experiencing The End. It builds chara-cter,” you ramble, only stuttering when Joel manages to pry the glossy papers from your hands. His eyes scan over the page with a look of disinterest.

“But outta date, don’t you think?” He grumbles in that grumpy, man-child way he does that always has your eyes rolling into the back of your head. He’s pointing at the very 80s-style porn staches.

“Dunno, wouldn’t exactly call your facial hair ‘trendy’,” you scoff, watching him flick to the page titled in bold capitals: EXCITING SEX TRICKS TO TRY!

It’s ridiculous. You’re both grown adults, and it’s not as though the two of you were born during the outbreak. You’d both been through high school, and no doubt had sexual partners before Cordyceps took hold of the world. However, the prospect of talking sex with Joel Miller was mortifying.

You can feel the heat creeping up your throat as his eyes scan the sections of information with such indifference that you’re almost sure that he’s bored. Perhaps he was. It wasn’t as though you had caught him taking some time to himself during your great journey.

Joel is so lost in the writing that you allow yourself a moment to take in the slope of his nose, the slant of his cupid's bow framed by his greying moustache. Beneath his creased, frowning brow, his long lashes surround the deep brown of his eyes as they flick back and forth across the page. He was a handsome man. Was there no one waiting for him back in the Boston QZ? He’d never sa-

“The fuck is guddlin’?” Joel speaks out, shocking you from your thoughts with a start. You blink slowly, probably looking really fucking stupid as you choke on the words stuck in your throat when Joel looks up at you with a quirked brow.

“I-“

“I mean, I know guddlin’ in a fishin’ sense,” he interrupts, pointing to the page and prodding it with the tip of his finger, “Not in a-… Not in this sense, though.”

“Does-… Does it not explain?” You ask him quietly, your mouth suddenly very dry. Joel gives a light shrug, his eyes wandering over the page in search of a definition.

“Oh- Here,” he points out. He takes a second to read, his tanned skin tinged with pink as the words sink in. “Uhm… It’s- Well, it’s-“

Poor Joel looks as though he’s seconds away from an aneurysm attempting to explain the bizarre sex act without actually saying it. You scoff, snatching up the crinkled magazine and reading over the asterisk in small print at the bottom of the information page.

‘To insert one's finger(s) into a woman's vagina to pleasure her digitally while simultaneously having penile-vaginal intercourse with her.’

You pause, your lips parting as you look at Joel with a weak laugh. He’s rubbing at the back of his neck, eyes cast somewhere on the horizon in an attempt to avoid your own. He’s as embarrassed as you are, it seems, clearing his throat with a weak chuckle.

“Well,” he mumbled, eyes flicking to the magazine, “Must’a been good for it to end up in that.”

You nod slowly, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you glance down at the black and white print that appears to all blur together in embarrassment. “Mhm.”

You can feel your pulse between your thighs, your skin tingling beneath what you assume is Joel’s gaze. It’s crude, utterly filthy, but you can imagine the stretch, the feeling of his weapon-calloused fingertips coaxing your g-spot as he slowly sinks into you.

Slowly, with trembling hands, you close the magazine with a nervous laugh, discarding it with a half-hearted toss over the edge of the truck bed and onto the roadside. “Stupid shit anyway…”

Your aimless comment is met with silence, and you’re far too humiliated to face the notion of looking at Joel. You imagine he thinks you’re insane, having caught you reading and enjoying this filth.

“… Take it you ain’t tried that before?” Joel’s gruff voice cuts through the sound of the crickets in the surrounding grass, and you can’t help but laugh, simply shaking your head and avoiding his gaze.

A delicate brush of skin against your ankle sparks something raw up your spine. You look at it quickly, seeing Joel’s fingertips tracing the rough circumference of the joint beneath them. Your skin prickles pleasantly, and you look up at your partner- your smuggling partner- through your lashes.

His expression is firm, but his eyes betray his outward calm display. They’re flickering between your lips and eyes, his exhale slow as he attempts to force out some words he appears afraid to put out into the atmosphere.

“Do you… Do you wanna try it?”

It’s haphazard, delivered clumsily, and so utterly unlike Joel. You can see the cringe in his expression when the sentence settles in the air, and your heart lurches when you see he’s sincere. That he wants you and that he’s letting you know after years of hiding it from you.

God, you don’t even give him another second to doubt himself. You’re scrambling into his lap, straddling it and pressing your mouth to his in a kiss that hurts more than it pleases, his teeth scraping your lower lip and your tongue tracing his own.

You can feel it through the thin, worn denim of his jeans, the jump of his cock when you settle your crotch down against the seam. His hands are vicious, grasping handfuls of your thighs, your ass, your hips. He could bruise the shape of his fingerprints into you, and you’d thank him, would beg him to put you through the pain again to brand you as his.

He groans out your name into your mouth, but it sounds more like a growl rattling in his chest. You’re fumbling in the low lighting with his belt buckle, the clinking of the clasp bringing you relief when you free Joel’s hips from their leather confines. It’s almost frantic, the pace you set as you try and fail, try and fail before you successfully pop the button of his jeans and yank them over his hips. There’s not enough time to rid him of them completely, so Joel settles with the waistband resting just above his knees.

“C’mere,” Joel husks, his lips brushing yours as he speaks and forces your cargo pants over your hips without even bothering to let down the zip. It hurts a little, smarts, but it sparks something desperate in you when you realise it’s pulled down your underwear too, leaving you exposed to his gropes.

One hand grasps the globe of your asscheek, giving a brutally harsh squeeze. The other sinks between your thighs. Joel’s groan of delight when he finds the insides of your thighs soaked causes your cunt to throb before he’s even touched it.

"Is that all me?" He asks you, his voice dipping to a deep, spine-shuddering hum. He sweeps the calloused pad of his index fingertip up the inside of your thigh and through your pussy lips. You can hear the wetness there when he notches against your clit, when he sinks the very tip of his fingers into your entrance. "That all me, or did you like the pornstache more than I realised?"

You usually would scoff in Joel's face, tell him to stop being so ridiculous and self-absorbed, but he's slowly circling your frayed bundle of nerves with his thumb, and your jaw is slack. You can't even think of a witty retort, just grasping feebly at the collar of his denim shirt.

"I'm gonna take what I want from that lack of response," he fills the silence for you, an infuriating smirk settling on his lips as he sinks his fingers inside of you.

The lack of resistance and eagerness from your cunt catches you both off guard, Joel groaning in delight as you take the length of his digits so easily. "Fuck~”

You whimper out Joel’s name, thighs trembling on either side of his lap as he coaxes his fingers towards him inside of you and wasting no time in finding the spot that would bring tears to your eyes.

“Ah,” he breathes, a smirk playing on his lips when he sees your torso crumple inwards as his touch brushes something electric inside you. “Ah- that’s it, ain’t it?”

It’s pathetic. You want to answer him, even sob out wordlessly as the wave of pleasure crashes through you at the delicate touch, but your words are stalled in your throat as Joel circles that sensitive wall inside you with his nimble fingers.

“C’mere,” he growls, seeing your expression contorted desperately and deciding he can’t wait much longer. One hand is still busy with building your orgasm, and his other clumsily pulls down his boxers and exposes his ruddy length.

Joel gives you barely a moment to absorb what it is you see, managing to process the pink tinge to the velvet skin of his cockhead and the smear of precum that glistens under the low lighting before he’s hoisting you over him, knees on either side of his hips.

It’s filthy and disgusting and raw, the way he uses his free hand to sweep his cock across your clit. It sparks something dangerous deep inside your abdomen, another wave of increasingly unmanageable bliss that wraps around your spinal cord and constricts your lungs. You barely choke out his name, your fist punching his shoulder as if to say, ‘stop teasing!’ before Joel sinks into your wet heat with a broken rasp of your name.

Tight. Everything is coiled up so tightly inside you as the width of Joel’s cock-head pushes past your entrance, your walls swallowing him and squeezing him as he sinks in slowly. Your fingernails are digging into his shoulders through his denim shirt, tears of bliss welling in your eyes as he fills you completely. All the while he continues to circle and poke and prod at your g-spot, simultaneously building up your orgasm and wrecking you.

“That’s it,” he husks, breathless as he helps you settle down to the hilt of his dick. He’s nudging your cervix, and you feel so impossibly full that your body is trembling around him, pushed to its absolute limit as your tears stream down your cheeks. They drip from your chin, leaving deeper wet stains across the faded blue of his shirt.

Then he’s shoving his hips upwards and into you, and it’s like you can’t hold onto him tight enough. You’re scrabbling for some kind of grip that can brace you against the simultaneous stimulation of his thrusts and his fingers circling something mind-numbingly raw inside you. The rusty parts of the van creak beneath the motion, and between your slurred curses and weak cries of his name, you’re trying to warn him to be quiet, not to wake Ellie.

You can barely manage to coax him on, eyes rolling back and forehead falling forward onto his shoulder as you give in entirely to the creeping orgasm that picks up your spine.

“C-Can feel you,” Joel stumbles over his own words and laughs, his cock twitching inside you as he continues to drag in and out of your abused pussy, “Can feel you squeezin’ me. You gonna cum for me?”

You want to slap him. Want to make him walk to Pittsburgh with this cocky attitude, this cavalier facade that is so unlike his usual brusque persona. Instead, you’re keening for him, nodding your head against his collarbone and squeaking out your best impression of a ‘yes, Joel, please, please!’

Shit- it’s coming. You feel it racing through you before he even delivers his devastating blow. You think it can’t get any more intense, that it can’t feel any better than this, until he’s pushing his hips upwards and manoeuvres his hand to brush his thumb against your swollen, sensitive clit.

The print of his thumb doesn’t even make it a full rotation before your orgasm comes roaring forwards, slamming through your body to the point it’s almost painful in the best way. You’re quick to smother your scream of his name, biting down hard on the denim fabric at Joel’s throat and releasing the devastating shout of his name into the fibres between your teeth.

Poor Joel stumbles with how hard your body clamps down on him, his galloping thrusts reduced to sloppy stutters of his hips as a grating, pained groan rattles through his ribs beside your ear. Distantly, you can feel him pulsing inside you, filling you until his cum is spilling down the sides of his cock.

“God-“ He chokes out, voice catching in his throat as you heave for breath. It’s not as though he has the energy to lift you from him, still buzzing. You’re somewhere else entirely, vision blurry and consciousness far outside the dermis walls of your body.

Slumped against Joel, you focus on breathing. How do you do it again? In and out… In and out. It’s embarrassing, the way he’s left you unsure of essential bodily functions. The ease with which he’s numbed your mind and body.

Ironically, though, he makes it easier to find your way back to yourself. His steady, albeit heavy, breathing ticks like a metronome, easing you down from the impossible high you’ve ascended beneath his touch. He smells like salty sweat, like mud that cakes his boots and the truck's tyres.

“You think maybe we should pick that magazine back up?” Joel mumbled into your hair, oddly quiet and almost shy despite the blunt delivery of the query.

Pausing, you glance up at him through your lashes and catch a tinge of embarrassment on his cheeks. He’s staring down at the sidewalk next to the tyres, no doubt eyeing up the pages strewn across the cement flags.

“… Well,” you whisper, voice hoarse, “You never know what survival skills we might need. With your blueprints for Molotovs and upgrading weapons and my articles on ‘bizarre sex positions’, we’re bound to survive the apocalypse-“

“Alright, darlin’,” Joel attempts to speak you down from your amused ramblings, made awkward by the crudeness of the conversation once again.

“I mean, what the fuck is the ‘Pretzel Dip’?”

“Fuck if I know,” he admits with an air of chagrin.

“… You’re not much of a playboy, are you Miller?”

“Shut up and put your pants on.”

END

@hoeneey @howaboutcastiel @welcometostayingawake @syrma-sensei @ethanhoewke @polaroidpetal @foxilayde @bookfrog242 @wh0reforbucknasty @zakizigekwe @ahookedheroespureheart @buckys-other-punk @anxious-sappho @alexloveskili @captainrexstan @astroboots @knights-power @southcrnbelle @niallsbunny @hold-our-destiny @vermillionwinter @stormkobra-5 @erenbissexual @alwritey-aphrodite @maggotzombie @deadpige0n @bakerstreethound @whatthehekko @cottagebunny9 @bit-dodgy-innit @peachyproserpina

#joel tlou #joel x reader #joel the last of us #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #joel miller fic #joel miller #joel miller imagine #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller the last of us #joel miller x reader #the last of us #hbo the last of us #tlou fanfiction #tlou #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fic #1k+ club

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ma1dita · 3 months

Text

buddy system

a ‘partners in crime’ installment - luke castellan x dionysus!reader

words: 4.2k

summary: (pre-established relationship) The one where he comes with you to rescue your twin brothers, Pollux and Castor. A weekend 'quest' teaches you a lot about Luke, and about yourself too. Luke Castellan x fem!Dionysus!reader

a/n: um i cant apologize for this word count and ive been looking at this for too long so fuck. Anyways do yall think Luke felt bad when he found out Castor died in battle because of his army in this universe? just me?? okay :) also trouble gets a cool magic item that makes an appearance here, kinda works like polyjuice but with smoke

(posted 2/7/24 betad by lovely ellie @lixzey might edit again when i get some sleep)

—

“No. You might be my father, but you’re crazy, man!”

You’re standing in D’s office at the Big House, and what was supposed to be a short talk before the counselors’ meeting has turned into a full-blown argument. It’s hard to focus on anything other than the words leaving your godrent’s mouth.

You’re going to pick up your little brothers.

“Those two statements are both true, kid. You’re old enough to understand that!”

They need your help.

“You’re really letting your 16-year-old daughter drive down to Florida by herself to pick up some kids she’s never met? Won’t even send me with any quest companions, or like, Grover?” you say exasperatedly, before slumping down into a seat.

“Think of it as family bonding! They’re great from what I remember. You all need to get along anyway.”

Whether it was jealousy or the sudden urge to be petty, you impulsively grab your dad’s Diet Coke and chug it, crushing the can with your fist as a tiny act of rebellion.

Another one appears on the desk and you chuck it over your shoulder. Mr. D sighs as he conjures another one, to which you do the same thing.

“I can do this all day, kid.”

“So can I, and you know if I do, we’ll be sitting here until I’m 40,” you say expectantly, tapping your fingers on the hardwood surface of his desk.

“What do you want?”

The keys to his car are a start, as well as extra pocket money—but there was something, or rather, someone missing to make sure this weekend goes as smoothly as possible.

Your smirk widens at your father, and he wonders when you’ve gotten good at playing his own game.

It’s like looking into a mirror but his worst nightmare manifested as a teenage girl.

—

There are only two things Luke can think about when he hears the sound of your laughter.

The first is that, unlike your angelic singing that could rival the Muses, your laughter takes after the sound of a maniac, an incredulous crescendo that only something curated by Hades in the deepest pits of Tartarus could produce. It was almost madness-inducing, and it went off in his brain like you were a siren (although he means the kind used for weather advisory, he too gets lured in by your laughter each time he hears it like he’s lost at sea).

Second, as he watches you storm down the lawn of the Big House, your anger brewing something comparable to a Category 5, he raises an eyebrow and thinks, well this ought to be good. Or entertaining at the very least.

“You,” you growl at him, guttural and sharp like the finger you jab into his chest, “we’re going on a quest!”

“Me?” Luke blurts, eyebrows furrowing at you.

A loud groan echoes through the grassy space between the house and the counselors as everyone looks up to see Mr. D dragging his hands down his face at the sheer thought of his daughter causing him more gray hairs.

“That’s not what we agreed on, kid!” “If you want any of your children to come back to this hellhole in one piece I need backup!” “There’s more of you?”

Both you and your dad glare at Luke now, like he’s interrupting a private conversation.

“Since when do you like asking for help, princess?”

Mr. D’s arms are crossed over his chest as he speaks to you. Though your height severely differs due to the wooden steps of the Big House, the air is palpable with fear only an Olympian could invoke, reminding the counselors that the man wearing the ugliest Hawaiian shirt known to humankind, is in fact inhuman. You, however, are standing tall in the freshly-cut grass in your combat boots with wrath that could rival Ares’ as you stare your father down like the rest of them wouldn’t get struck into the next lifetime due to your impertinence, as Annabeth loves to call it. She looks up at Luke, with her eyes conveying that she thinks you must be clinically insane, but he knows that already so he shrugs.

“I’m not asking for it, I’m demanding it. Besides, he’s like my ESA,” you say, then taking Luke by surprise as you grab him by the wrist and drag him off the front lawn. You think you can hear Beckendorf and Clarisse bite back chuckles.

“Someone tell Rodriguez he’s in charge of 11!” you yell into the air, and words of affirmation and good luck are muttered in response.

“Don’t I get a say in this, trouble?” Luke says playfully, tugging at your arm lightly but unresisting as you sigh and pull him along. Who in their right mind says no to a long weekend away from this place? Monsters and demigods be damned.

“No. Besides, they’re gonna need more luck than we do.”

“Liam, I don’t know why she trusts you, but if my daughter dies, I’ll make sure you’re next!” Mr. D yells out to your retreating figures, and all of the counselors turn to face him realizing that without you, well… that means he actually has to be in charge.

“So what’s the meeting supposed to be about, Annabelle?” Mr. D says, looking at Annabeth only knowing that she’s supposed to be the smart one—and the small girl sighs.

This is gonna be the longest weekend yet.

—

You’re speeding down I-95 with the windows down and the wind brushing through both of your hair. While Luke watches you from the passenger seat with the road signs blurring past his periphery, he also notices that it’s the first time in a while that he’s seen you this carefree. With both of you taking up counselor positions a few months ago, and your dad appointing you to be in charge of all of them (because why have a counselor for a population of one), there’s a lot about you that’s grown up in the two years you two have known each other. But what type of demigod gets to enjoy their childhood anyway, right? Luke can only remember bits and pieces of his.

“How do you even know where we’re going? I can barely read the signs,” he asks.

“Cool blessing from my stepmom. Ariadne’s chill. We talk sometimes and she likes that I keep D in check, so now I can never get lost,” you grin toothily, violet eyes flickering to meet his.

“Was it true what your dad said? That you trust me?”

His voice is a bit louder than it should be over the wind tunnel that blocks out the sound of the radio as the air whips in and out of the car.

“Well, I wouldn't say trust,” you drag out, leaning back against your seat with your eyes still on the road, “More like if I got abducted by a harpy, I think you could cut its wings off and give me a fighting chance at living.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t invite Mason to come,” he mumbles, and you smirk.

“Who?”

His hands are clenched in his lap as a blush brushes his cheeks, windswept in the rays of the late summer sun.

“Your boyfriend. Wouldn’t he be a better companion?”

Something about the older son of Apollo always ground his gears. It was even worse that you both would sing Broadway musicals together during his sparring sessions. Your harmonious voices echoing from the amphitheater aside, the repetitive grating feeling in his stomach reminds him not to go see Hamilton if he ever makes it out to the city.

“He’s not…” you huff, tapping your fingers on the steering wheel as you think hard on what to say next, “He’s nothing serious.” You pull the sun visor down as you squint, tilting your head in case he says something else, but you hear nothing. Luke’s staring at your side profile, unable to hide his grin at the new information, biting his cheek.

“Besides, he’s a fucking terrible shot. And you’re supposed to be the best, so I’ve heard. Who else would I want on this trip with me?”

He chuckles at this lightly, your words bolstering his ego.

“So you’ve heard.”

And for a second, the sight of his smile distracts you enough that the car swerves a tiny bit closer to the median. You both ignore it and keep driving.

—-

Hypnos increases his hold on your senses as you finally take a break somewhere in North Carolina, taking refuge in a dimly lit corner of a gas station parking lot. The old car reeks of greasy fast food and all the sugar Luke could get his hands on at rest stops (it was really cute to see him indulge in more normal things like sweets instead of swordsmanship), and both of your seats are leaned back, but it’s hard to get comfortable after having your butt in the same seat for several hours.

You readjust yourself again, making the car shake a bit as you turn over to face Luke.

“What’s wrong?” he mumbles through closed eyes. His head’s banged against the window one too many times, and it was starting to get annoying.

“Sorry. Just can’t sleep. Thinking too hard.”

He sighs, reaching over to toss your pillow into the backseat, and as you sit up, he rips your blanket off of you too.

“Hey!”

You go silent when you watch him make a makeshift bed for you, turning back with tired eyes as he gestures, “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

“I feel bad, Luke. You’re taller than me and your knees almost hit the dashboard.”

He rubs at his eyes, looking at you impatiently, and you know his body is calling for comfort too.

“I’ve slept in worse conditions, you gotta remember that, trouble.” The stories Annie used to tell you about the both of them sleeping on the streets pull at your heart, and as you crawl towards the back, you move before you think rationally–tugging on his arm.

“Come on over here.”

“You sure?” “Before I change my mind, yeah.”

You both move around trying to find a place both of you can be comfortable in, first starting with your heads at opposite windows, legs tangling in the middle before he laughs a little too hard at your fumbling and you launch your pillow at his face. Awkwardly, you climb over his legs into his outstretched arms, slotting yourself against his side as he pulls your hair up from getting trapped between his shoulder and your back.

It’s deadly quiet, and Luke thinks if you could move any closer to him, you might hear his heart thundering in his chest.

“You smell like french fries,” you grumble into his sweater, and his laughter shakes you like an earthquake, uprooting the faint traces of sleep in your mind.

“At least the monsters won’t find us. Gonna be harder when the twins get here. A lot of demigod smell to ward off.”

You don’t answer, and he thinks you may have fallen asleep until he notices your hand playing with the frays of his sweater.

“Trouble?”

“They’re really little,” you mumble, so low that he barely hears the hesitance in your voice.

“The monsters? Yeah, I fucking ho–” “Pollux and Castor. My…half-siblings, with really Greek names, and a mom that depends on me getting them to camp safely…” you trail off before your head jerks up to meet his eyes. It’s colder at night now, your bodies and the tiny throw blanket from your trunk providing ample heat even if his socked feet fight their way out from underneath.

“How old are they, nine?” He feels you nod against his chest before he continues, “I was nine when I left home.”

Your eyes get glassy at the thought of a smaller version of Luke, one who’s not all gangly legs and lean muscle—one much softer and innocent than the boy you lean your weight upon, running away from home to find a place he can belong.

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, the arm propped against the headrest wrapping around you and resting on your hip, tapping you to continue your previous thought.

“I don’t know how to do this, I guess. I’m ripping them from their home and I—” “You’re not some kind of monster y’know? You put yourself down too much sometimes,” he sighs, and he watches the windows slowly start to fog up, “What don’t you know how to do?”

Ignoring his question, you change the subject hoping to talk about something lighter, and far less revealing to the thoughts inside your head.

“Do you remember all of that? Going to school and chalking up the sidewalks on the way home, hopscotch and ice cream trucks… I don’t want to take them away from that.”

Luke ponders, digging through his brain for anything happy from his childhood, but through the years his memories started to collect dust in the back of his mind.

“I don’t remember much.”

“Gods, I’m sorry…”

Mason had told you of your habit of putting your foot in your mouth. You dealt in extremes, giving too much or too little, always saying the wrong thing—and it was the reason why things didn’t go further with the son of Apollo. As well as with the daughter of Aphrodite you saw briefly that told you you didn’t know how to love, not if you didn’t know how to share yourself with others (yeah that one hurt a lot).

Sharing.

That’s what you’re hesitant about.

“Don’t be. It was a long time ago now,” Luke mumbles, a beat of silence passing before he redirects the conversation like you did, “What don’t you know how to do, trouble?”

“How to share. Be a sibling. Someone likeable.”

Luke doesn’t mean to laugh at your expense, but he does, and you punch his stomach hard enough he gasps for air.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Everyone likes you.”

“Everyone’s usually scared of me because of D, or hates me because I take dessert privileges and write them up,” you say matter-of-factly, staring out the window above his head at the gentle shine of the moon on his features. It’s a crime for him to look so soft under the low light, and you realize you’re staring when he calls your name.

“No, you don’t get it—you’re the most selfless person I know. You give up sleep to sing to kids before bed, conjure juice boxes so they don’t pass out during training—I’ve seen you carry a kid almost as tall as you across camp because they broke their ankle. You’ve got a lot of love in that twisted heart of yours. I’d know… I mean—I have to share a lot… I’m basically an expert.”

You blink at him as if seeing him in a new light, and you realize then why you picked him to go on this weekend quest with you. Your heartbeat slows despite the show of vulnerability in front of him, and you understand now that Luke makes you feel safe. Biting your lip to hold back a sigh, you decide to just unload the rest of your thoughts, knowing that you’re in the hands of someone who wants to hold the weight. “I’m just used to being alone, I think. I mean who knows what we're like when we're alone but us, right? What a terrifying thought,” you deflect, and Luke closely watches the slope of your nose, down to the smoothness of your lips, unable to put the right words to how he’s feeling.

I know you, he thinks, and it's not as all bad as you make it seem.

“We’re never truly alone, y’know. Besides, even if you are, you still have me,” he says nonchalantly, and the warmth on your cheeks could generate enough heat to run the car for miles. Chuckling lightly as your eyes flutter closed, you know you need to rest before morning comes since you’re the only one between the two of you that can drive. You reckon you’ll teach Luke by the end of the year if he wants to.

“We’re getting pretty terrible at this enemies thing, Castellan,” you jest with nothing hard to back it, and a smile falls onto both of your lips.

“We were never really enemies, trouble. I just like getting on your nerves.”

Your laughs fall silent, settling into a comfortable silence, until his next words send you off into slumber as you listen.

“I remember my mom singing in the kitchen as she put peanut butter on my sandwiches. She'd act like she left the dishes out for me to wash, but let me lick the knife clean every time and I’d put too much soap and the sink would be filled with bubbles. I don't remember much else but that. Her kitchen. She smelled like…chamomile.”

A wandering hand pulls his free one into yours, holding it until sunrise.

—-

You push Pollux and Castor out the door before the sun rises after a short stay at their mother’s house, and as the engine heats up, you and Luke watch them say goodbye to her with the both of you thinking of last words with your own. The both of you ward off the hellhounds biting off at your heels for a few hours like how you deceived the police the day previous, a purple Zippo lighter in hand whose smoke grants temporary illusions wafting through the car, and it smells like grapes (thanks D!). The kids sleep most of the way, none the wiser and heavy with sleep and their emotions of leaving everything they’ve ever known. Your eyes flicker to their sleeping heads in the rearview mirror, ready to take them home.

Hours later, Luke decides to make you stop at a diner to get you a bit of rest, get actual food, and let the twins pee, and your head is bobbing slightly in front of your plate of food once he brings them back from the bathroom.

“You wash your hands?” you say tiredly, both Pollux and Castor shaking wet hands in your face in response, making you giggle before sipping at your coffee. Luke cut you off from Redbull yesterday, saying he was scared for your liver and saying you needed to drink something else for a bit. He bristles at the sight of you drinking more caffeine, and you smile as the mug touches your lips.

“You’re gonna kill yourself one day. At least your dad drinks Diet Coke.”

“Not by choice, though what a way to go!” you joke, and the twins giggle as the both of them gulp down root beer like it’s essential to their being. Luke sighs at the idea of you having two minions under your belt, who you’ll most definitely train to raise hell on Camp Half-Blood now that you’ve taken more of the administrative side of things.

“Is he your boyfriend, sissy?” Pollux, or maybe it’s Castor pipes up, swinging his legs under the table and you smile at the sound of the nickname, noticing the dimple in his cheek. Luke chokes on his burger, coughing until you elbow him.

“He’s more of my ESA,” you remark, and he still doesn’t know what that is, so he raises an eyebrow like your brothers do as they peer up at you from across the table.

“What’s an ESA?” Castor, you realize, who has no dimples, spits out behind munches of a pickle.

“Luke’s my emotional support animal.”

He eats the rest of your fries despite your confidence in that response, grumbling exactly how a resistant dog would.

As you’re paying the bill, a large shadow looms over the sunny disposition of everyone at your table—and then Luke shouts for everyone to cover their eyes. Glass shatters over you, revealing a hellhound the size of a minivan, and it pounces toward the twins, large teeth bared at their throats. Before Luke can pull his sword out, you whistle sharply and the sound whizzes through the air like a bullet as you toss the Zippo lighter at him as he’s pushing the kids to the car. Though he’s reluctant to lose sight of you, he wards them with an illusion, locking the doors despite their cries and he runs headfirst back into battle, you with your thyrsus and him with his sword, back to back.

“They okay?” you heave, jabbing at the red-eyed canine between the eyes as Luke pulls around to slash it across the neck, coming out of the tussle unscathed as you both watch it keel over at your feet into golden dust minutes later.

“Yeah. Are you?”

Though you originally found it funny, Luke does perform his job well, getting you to calm down as he holds you to his chest until you can breathe normally again.

“Mhm. Just scared me.”

The two of you run out of the destroyed diner and into the warded-off car before the police show up hand in hand as you escape without detection. As he falls asleep, Castor dreams that you two are Bonnie and Clyde like in an old Western movie he was definitely not old enough to watch.

—-

You’re finally back on the Island now, only an hour away from Montauk and Luke is getting restless in the passenger seat. He pulls apples out of his backpack, wiping them off with his shirt as you sing along to a Taylor Swift song playing on the radio.

And maybe someday when we’re older, this is something we’ll laugh about…. Foolish one… you hum, tapping the wheel to fight off your exhaustion.

Pollux and Castor are using their fingers to pretend to hop over obstacles in the smudged windows, babbling about something they did in class last week. The son of Hermes pulls out a pocketknife he nicked from a gas station this morning as he starts to cut the apples into pieces, putting some into a ziploc bag for the boys to share, and you smile at him, wistful at your trip nearing its finish line. If you weren’t enemies before this like he said, it’s crazy to consider him your closest friend. But he is, isn’t he?

His knuckles nudge yours over the console, pressing an apple slice into your palm.

“You know, Castellan, you’re sweet when you want to be. Shame you and that sister of Annie’s didn’t work out.”

Luke scoffs at the reminder of his ex, slicing another piece off for you to eat. She did say he had wandering eyes…always looking for you. He’s not going to admit that though.

“I just know you like your apples cut. Saw you battling it out with a butter knife last week. Couldn’t help but notice,” he says lowly like it’s normal for people to be that considerate about others, normal for him to care about you like that, a constant push and pull between you two.

“Hurts my teeth,” you mutter, and Luke chortles like you’ve told him something life-changing. Your hand bumps into his again, feeling nothing but his calloused fingers, and when you look up his cheek protrudes with the last slice.

“Tax,” he winks, and you’re delirious with this feeling that only he can bring you, almost comparable to being high.

The popstar’s voice continues to trill in the background, with my head in my hands, saying “How could I not see the signs?”

You both don’t realize you’ve stopped singing until Pollux pipes up asking for you to play Fireball by Mr. 305 himself.

—-

The car finally pulls into the driveway of the forest path and you’re all greeted by the campers holding blazing lanterns. Chiron, your father, and the nymphs are waving as the twins marvel at the fairy lights strung up along the way for a warm welcome.

“You’re alive,” your dad remarks, and this time he doesn’t say it in jest, sounding more relieved.

“I was in good hands,” you affirm, looking up at Luke amongst the noise of your cheering friends and the feeling that comes with calling this place home.

The boys are tucked in at your side, shyly looking at the crowd, Pollux holding your hand while Castor holds onto Luke’s, and Chiron calls your attention.

“I know you didn’t get your official announcement,” he starts, and you laugh at that, remembering the bubbles in the lake.

“Because I pulled a fast one on D.”

“Nonetheless, I would love for you to get recognized for your efforts. Dionysus. Storyteller, Herald of Chaos,” he continues by announcing your name, and then,” Pollux, and Castor– children of the grapevine, the God of Wine!”

The campers are kneeling and you look at Luke, who’s smiling from the ground beside you.

“Take a picture, trouble, it’ll last longer.”

“My children are home safe. And thank you, Castellan, for being a formidable companion. My deepest appreciation.” Mr. D sounds serious for once, pulling Luke up as he nods in respect.

It’s a crazy feeling to finally feel at home though you’ve been here for two years now. But you remind yourself quickly of why that is when you see Luke carrying Pollux on his shoulders as Castor latches onto his legs.

“You know, your family is a nightmare. You two hellions will fit right in,” he grins.

You can’t help but agree.

—

“I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you bathing in my eyes. I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you in my written words. The perfume of love cannot be concealed.” -Nizar Qabbani

ask to be added to general/luke taglists!

luke taglist (some won't let me tag, turn on my post notifs?): @kissingyourgrl @dorcas4meadowes @lorarri @andrewgarfldsgf @noodlesketchbook @10ava01 @poppysrin @ashisabitgay @timhalamet @liv1104 @leeknows-wife @mxtokko @bugcuti3 @luvvfromme @midmourn @2hiigh2cry @yuminako @niktwazny303 @lukecastellandefender @intergalactic-padawan @iliketopgun @annybah @dangelnleif @thegrinningghost @alyssajunelle @obxstiles @m00ng4z3r @visndcaitswhore @b0ok-lover @elegant-face-tree @this-barbie-is-having-breakdowns @amortencjja @idonevenknow1359 @maliaaaa @targaryenluvs @sakyira @dhdjdjjdhsjdiri @number-onekidqueen @nininehaaa @bradynoonswife @stevenknightmarc @hoodedhavok @happy-mushrooms @homebyeleven @anotherblackreader @too-deviant @liviessun @lilacspider @theadventuresofanartist @sucker4seresin @simpforsunwoo @zanzie @starrystormwritings

#luke castellan x dionysus!reader #luke castellan x reader fanfic #luke castellan x reader #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo x reader #luke castellan fluff #made by ma1dita ♥︎#trouble!verse #thank you for reading my love ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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nelkcats · 1 year

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King and Joker

The bats were confused when Joker announced he gained a companion. His partner (or sidekick) is strong and has too many powers but looks sad. They tried to ask him if something was wrong but he remained silent. Joker liked to call him "The King", but he insisted that he was only "Phantom". The clown didn't care and continue with the nickname.

"King Phantom" tends to ignore when civilians are evacuated, feign ignorance when someone tries to escape, and has offered the bats bandages and medicine a couple of times. But when The Joker is present he becomes completely desperate and aggressive, as if he is fighting for something.

On the other hand, Joker got a completely new weapon, it was a green sphere that produced lightning but Phantom winced every time he saw him use it. On one occasion Tim swore he heard him whisper "Ellie".

Danny was scared, Ellie was unstable and anything he did could be fatal. When he arrived in Gotham looking for her missing core he didn't expect to find it in the hands of a clown. The clown realized that he had something to bribe him (although he didn't know how important it was) and began to order him around.

Danny hated it, he held back most of the time because he was fighting humans, not revealing many of his powers. And he would have killed the clown a thousand times if it weren't dangerous for Ellie. Joker would never break away from the core by saying it was "good luck", and would lock it in a ghost-proof cell, which is probably where he found it originally. The halfa just wanted his the girl back.

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atinylittlepain · 1 year

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Easy Cowboy - A Joel Miller Story

Joel Miller x f!reader/f!oc

Joel Miller masterlist

The ladies around Jackson can’t seem to keep their eyes off Joel. While he seems oblivious to their advances, she’s prickling with a feeling she knows she shouldn’t be having. What’s a gal to do when everyone wants to take a ride on with her cowboy?

warnings | 18+ SMUT, angst, alcohol consumption, jealous and possessive Joel, and reader tbh

“You know, if you’re not careful your face could get stuck like that.” Ellie slaps a hard hand on her shoulder, startling her out of her eavesdropping. She’s been standing in the back of the makeshift town hall, watching folks trickle in for the weekly community meeting. She huffs at Ellie’s knowing smirk.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.” Ellie snorts, resting her head on her shoulder as she hangs off her arm.

“Oh, you don’t? You just always look like you’re about to strangle all the little housewives of Jackson?” She tries to soften her scowl, not quite sure how Ellie can figure her out so fast. She figures it must have been because of all the time they spent together on the road. Because the truth is, she would like to strangle some of the women of Jackson, at least sometimes. Like right now, as they’re eyeballing Joel, who’s standing at the head of the crowd with his brother, like he’s a goddamn piece of meat.

She had been listening in to their conversations, a few muttered desires of wanting to “ride that salt-and-pepper cowboy all night long” as well as some shared enjoyment of his “tight little jeans” that hugged his “equally tight little ass” just right. She hadn’t realized she had started shooting daggers at them until Ellie startled her out of her rage-induced reverie.

Ellie tugs at her arm, once again shaking her out of her thoughts, “you know, a whole gaggle of them has started coming around when we get back from patrol? They like to watch him dismounting. S’fucking gross, man. Can you imagine? Having the hots for Joel.” Ellie grins, tilting her head, “well, I guess you can imagine.” “Ellie, watch it.” The girl puts her hands up, muttering “alright, alright, geez” before she shuffles off into the crowd to sit with some of the other teens of Jackson. She’s been relieved to see her finding some companions in town, thinking back on that young boy, Sam, and how hard it had been on her to lose the sweet comfort of a fast friend. She on the other hand, has had less luck, all the women her age casting sideways glances whenever she comes around.

She’s heard the murmurings around town, mostly women’s gossip, calling her Joel’s “pet,” jealous scoffs at the way she and him move around each other, with each other, like magnets constantly coming back to contact. But she knows the truth. He’s not hers, not really. It’s mere comfort in closeness, familiarity. She had been with him since the beginning of this journey, been there for him. Through the loss of Tess, the trouble in Kansas City, and the whole road since. And even though there’s an understanding, an intimacy that runs bone deep between them, the sex has always been purely physical, just two bodies coming together again and again and again. She’d never ask him for anything more, the companionship is enough. But hey, who’s she to stop him from picking up a sweet little thing in town? Someone who’d cook him dinner, give him a back rub with soft hands that had never held a gun. Someone who wasn’t a whole decade younger than him.

She’s quick to block out these thoughts, bringing her attention back to the meeting that’s beginning. She watches Joel’s gaze scan the crowd as Tommy begins to talk about new security measures they’re working out. Even though she’s pressed up against the back wall, his eyes still find hers, but she’d be hard pressed to admit that her heart gives a tight squeeze when he offers her a sliver of a smile from across the room.

…

People are filing out of the hall, a few stragglers hanging around to talk to Tommy and Joel as well as the other leaders. She sticks at the back of the room, watching Joel look pretty uncomfortable in being forced to field so much conversation. Most of the people waiting to speak with him happen to come from the female half of Jackson’s population. She can’t help rolling her eyes at the way they hang off his crossed forearms. He keeps glancing her way, something pleading in his eyes, silently begging her to come give him an excuse to get the hell out of here. She’s enjoying watching him squirm just a little too much. Ellie sidles up to her again just then.

“You better go help him out, he looks like he’s about to blow a gasket.” She glances at the girl, fighting back a grin at her words.

“Suppose I should put him out of his misery.” She nudges into Ellie, earning a light laugh from the girl.

“You gonna go hang out with your friends tonight?” Ellie nods, they’re showing a movie in one of the old ski lodges.

“Alright, kid. Be good and–”

“Be safe. Yes, mother. I should be saying the same to you and the old man honestly.” She gasps at that, getting ready to chastise her, but Ellie is already slinking out of the building. That damn smartass.

She turns her attention back to Joel, who now has one of the women, she thinks her name is Katie, hanging on his shoulder and mumbling something in his ear. She scoffs, getting ready to shuffle over and save him from her mushy-gushy ramblings, but she pauses when she gets a better look at his face. He’s smiling. It’s small, but she knows it well. He glances at her briefly, but quickly shifts his gaze down to the floor, letting Katie continue to flirt shamelessly with him. For whatever reason, it’s enough to set her blood boiling. He’s a big boy, he can handle this himself. She quickly turns heel and stomps out of the town hall, heading straight to the bar.

…

She drinks way more than she knows she should. But, quite frankly, she’s too pissed off to care. Sure, she could put up with all the women throwing themselves at Joel, so long as he kept ignoring them. But it seemed like he had finally gotten the memo that he could have his pick of any of them, and that their little partnership, or whatever the hell it was, would soon be over. Well, fucking good for him then.

“You here alone?” She actually jumps a little off her stool at the intrusion before sighing and turning to whoever just startled her. She knows his name is Will, a young man who also works patrol shifts. He’s what people would have called a pretty boy, back before. Sort of floppy, sandy blond hair and soft blue eyes, dimples that crinkle when he splits into a smile. But she knows there’s more than meets the eye to this one, she’s been on a few shifts with him, and he can hold his own for sure.

She swallows another gulp of whatever it is they keep brewing before nodding.

“I suppose I am. Why? You wanna join me?” Her tongue has certainly been loosened by the drink and hell, if Joel gets to shop around, why shouldn’t the same go for her? Will smiles before sitting on the stool next to hers, turning so their knees are brushing lightly.

“How are you settling into town?” She quirks a crooked grin at him.

“Oh, just fine. Although I don’t think any of the ladies will be inviting me to their book clubs anytime soon.” Will laughs at that and it’s a sweet sound, one she thinks she could get used to. He leans in, whispering conspiratorially to her.

“Well, I think they’re all just a little jealous of the way you yank that man of yours around on an invisible leash.” She can’t help the laugh that bubbles up at that, a boldness sweeping through her that sends her leaning into Will even more, bringing her lips up close to his ear.

“Well, let me tell you, he’s certainly not my man.” There’s a heavy pause of silence.

“He’s not?” She leans back just slightly to look into his baby blues.

“Nope,” she pops the letter p, “but if you know anyone looking to be, what’d you say? On my invisible leash? You let me know, alright?” She’s going to regret everything about this when she’s sober, but for now, she’s letting her anger roll into lust. Will swallows thickly, eyes darting from her gaze to her lips.

“I think I might know someone, yeah.”

…

They’re a stumbling entanglement of limbs and sloppy kisses as they meander down the street towards her house. Her head is swimming in Will, drowning out the incessant chants of Joel’s name. It’s dark out as they near the porch of the house she shares with Joel and Ellie, none of the lights are on inside. He must be shacking up with Katie for the night, fucking good for him.

She leads Will up the steps to the front door, and as she fumbles with her key in the lock he presses up against her, leaving a wet trail of open-mouthed smacks along her neck that makes her squeal. Will huffs a laugh, spinning her around and pressing her up against the door, licking into her mouth. She pulls away with a wet click of spit.

“Shh, we have to be quiet, someone might hear us.” They both giggle before diving in for another writhing kiss.

“Well, wouldn’t that be a shame.” She lets out a shriek that she quickly cuts off by clamping her hand over her mouth. Will jumps back from her.

They both whip around to see Joel sitting on the bench seat out on the porch. His arms are crossed over his chest as he leans back, his legs kicked out and crossed in front of him. Even in the dim light of the evening she can see that he does not look very pleased with what he just saw. He stands with a sigh, slowly shuffling over until he’s standing right in Will’s space. He’s not much taller than him, but Joel still makes the other man look small with the way he’s scowling at him.

“Will, I suggest you go on home now.” Will’s eyes dart between Joel and her, hesitant to do anything.

“I said now.” Will jumps a bit at Joel’s harsh tone, taking one last look at her before shaking his head and stumbling down the porch steps and off down the street. She can’t believe what just happened.

“What the fuck, Joel?” He breezes past her, opening the door and turning around to look at her.

“The door was unlocked the whole time, by the way. Or are you really so drunk you couldn’t figure that out?” She’s dumbstruck by the venom laced through his words. He huffs before turning and going inside, her mutely following on his heels.

“Thought you’d be over at Katie’s, not lurking on the fucking porch.” It comes out as a grumble and he spins on her fast, looking totally confused.

“You must be real drunk, because you’re talking total nonsense.” She scoffs at that.

“Oh am I? So I didn’t see her practically chewing your ear off in the town hall?” Joel’s face falls, just for a moment, before he’s back to a furrowed scowl.

“Is that seriously what this is about? You’re jealous of some lady who I couldn’t give two fucks about?” They’re both up in each other’s faces now, arms crossed and pressing against each other.

“Fuck you, Joel. You seemed to be enjoying her attention just fine. And, for the record, I’m not jealous. But if you get to have yours I don’t see why I can’t have mine.” She sneers in his face but he looks like he’s about to explode, fists now clenched at his side.

“I am yours, goddamnit! And you’re mine. Not anyone else’s and especially not Will’s!” The tendons in his neck jump as he shouts at her, his eyes wild. It’s been a long time since she’s seen him like this, and suddenly she’s feeling really dizzy.

All she manages is a hoarse croak of his name before she’s keeling over at the waist and emptying the contents of her stomach all over his shoes and the floor. Through the dull ringing in her ears she hears Joel mutter a few choice curses before rather carefully toeing off his boots. He shifts over to her side and brings a warm palm between her shoulder blades, smoothing up and down the expanse of her back. She just hopes she got drunk enough that she won’t remember any of this the next morning.

…

Unfortunately, she receives no such mercy, waking up late the next morning with a throbbing headache and a very intact memory of everything that happened the night before. Joel had quietly helped her upstairs, shushing her groans as he cleaned her up, helping her out of her clothes and into one of his flannels that she had previously filched from him. He had even helped her into bed, the last thing she remembers before she passed out being him brushing her hair back from her face and muttering “get some rest, trouble.”

She’s completely mortified, and the only reason she feels brave enough to leave her room is because she knows Joel had a morning shift scheduled. When she creeps into the kitchen seeking a glass of water she finds Ellie leaning against the counter.

“Woah, so much for being good and being safe. You look like shit.” She groans, nudging Ellie to the side to grab a glass and fill it up.

“Thanks, kid. Feel worse than I look.” “Pretty sure that’s a statistical impossibility, but what the hell happened? Joel looked like he wanted to punch a hole through someone’s face this morning, like, more so than he usually does.” She glances at Ellie, choosing to take a long swig of water rather than answer her question. The girl huffs, stomping off with a muttered “no one tells me anything around here, jesus.”

Luckily, she has the day off from patrol, so she can spend it licking her wounds and avoiding Joel until he comes back tonight. She cleans herself up, taking a shower, still marveling that they get to have warm water. The rest of the day is spent simmering in a stew of her emotions. She goes to help out in the greenhouses, mostly because she knows Joel never goes over there. Unfortunately, that’s also where most of the women of Jackson work, and she can’t help but notice that their side eyes have transformed into blatant glares today.

She’s hauling sacks of soil when an overheard murmur makes her stop in her tracks. Did she just hear the word slut? She whips around, meeting the gaze of a pair of women.

“Excuse me, what did you just say?” The women share a look before both clearing their throats, the one finally speaking up.

“Oh nothing, hon. It’s just, Laura here lives across the street from you and Joel. She was telling me there was quite a scene on your porch last night.” The woman raises her eyebrows at her, a snide grin sliding across her face. She’s stunned speechless by these two birds’ boldness, but Laura seems to have something to add.

“A word of advice, sweetie. A real man like Joel needs a real woman, not some silly girl who’s messing around behind his back.” She drops the two sacks she had been carrying and they thud heavily on the ground, causing the two women to startle. She doesn’t stick around to hear any more of their advice, mostly because she knows that beating them up isn’t an option. She trudges through town, trying to hold back the tightness in her throat and the heat behind her eyes. It’s a race before the first tears fall, trying to get home before anyone sees her completely lose her mind.

Unfortunately, she runs right into Tommy, literally, smacking into him as she rounds a block. He holds onto her forearms as she stumbles back. She feels her stomach drop, because if Tommy is back, that means Joel is too. He tries to ask her if she’s alright, but she just shakes her head, shifting out of his grip and continuing her beeline home, scrubbing harshly at her eyes to keep from fully dissolving.

When she gets to the house, she sees no sign of Joel on the porch, a small mercy. She quietly slips upstairs, and can hear the shower running, choosing to shut herself into her room before promptly burying her face in the sheets on her bed. There’s no holding it back now, and she begins to silently cry. No real thought behind her tears, just a general sense that she’s royally fucked everything up. She doesn’t cry often, not in this world, and so it’s a short-lived fit, leaving her drained and curled up across her bed.

There’s a soft knock at her door, the sound of shuffling boots. When she doesn’t answer he opens the door anyways, tentatively stepping inside. She refuses to look at him, sitting at the end of her bed and drawing her knees up under her chin. She hears him let out a sigh.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ll live.” He huffs at that, walking further into the room and leaning up against the wall across from her.

“Good. ‘Cause I’m still pissed at you.” Her gaze jerks up to his face and she’s met with his steely expression.

“Why are you pissed at me? I was drunk, Joel, a-and really upset, ok?”

“No, it’s not ok. Christ– I– I thought what we had meant something, right? And you were just ready to throw that away? With Will? I mean– fuck– I-I don’t get that.” She raises her chin defiantly at him.

“What we had? That’s a load of horseshit. What did we have, Joel? Association by proximity? A warm body to curl up with? A half-decent fuck? No, you don’t get to keep me as your little hanger-on while you try out all the other flavors in Jackson.” He scoffs, grabbing fistfuls of his hair.

“Well, that’s real rich coming from you, considering you were getting ready to spread your legs for the first boy who looked your way.” She’s on her feet in a flash, taking one long stride to get in his space and slap him across his face, jerking his head to the side. He looks stunned as he holds his hand to his cheek.

“Fuck you, Joel. I’ve already been called a slut once today. I don’t need it coming from you too.” His demeanor changes instantly, brow furrowing.

“Who called you a slut?” She sighs, turning her back to him as she holds onto her arms across her chest.

“Baby?”

“Don’t baby me, Miller. And who else but two bitchy members of your little fan club. Why don’t you go talk to them? I’m sure they’d be more than happy to give you their opinions of me.” There’s a hiccup of silence that passes between them before Joel’s gently reaching for her, turning her back to face him. She won’t lift her gaze from her feet.

“You gotta help me out here. I just– I don’t understand what happened for you to– christ– when I saw you with Will– you’re killing me here, baby.” She finally looks up at him, resisting the urge to thumb away the deep frown on his face.

“Look, Joel. I can admit that what I did was stupid. I just– fuck– I know what we are, what we were– and I had no right getting so worked up seeing you with those women. But please, don’t keep stringing me along. I’m not gonna wait for you in your back pocket until you find someone better than me. I can’t do that.” He’s looking at her like she’s grown a second head.

“What are you talking about? I’m not fucking looking for someone better. I’m looking at you, goddamnit! I want you. Thought that was clear.” She scoffs.

“I think we have two very different definitions of clear then. Joel, we’ve never talked like this.” He throws his hands up in exasperation.

“I didn’t think we needed to talk like this! You and me, we understand each other. Didn’t think we needed words for us.” Her brain can’t help the chant it starts up of us us us us.

“Well, just a little communication would have been nice.” He sighs, shaking his head as he sits down on the end of her bed. She joins him, looking at where their thighs are pressed up against each other.

“Look, I’m sorry. I guess I should have been more– clear, about how I feel about you.” She glances at him.

“And how do you feel about me?” He just shoots her a look, brow raised.

“I’m actually waiting for an apology too y’know.” She huffs at that, dragging a hand down her face.

“I’m sorry for almost fucking Will. There, are you happy now?” He lets out a deep laugh and it startles her, the baritone thrum.

“Goddamn, Ellie may be right. We really are a pair of idiots.” They glance at each other, and a laugh is shared that feels like a door opening, like something new. Joel carefully slides one of his hands to lace with hers, clearing his throat.

“Y’know you’re it for me. Only want you. Christ, these women around town drive me fucking insane, so goddamn handsy. If I didn’t think it’d bug you I’d keep you under my arm all the time, maybe then they’d get the fucking message.” What she says comes out as more of a mumble, but Joel still catches it.

“That wouldn’t necessarily bug me.” He grins, dipping his head to meet her gaze.

“Oh, it wouldn’t?” She rolls her eyes, but shakes her head no.

“Hmm, I’ll keep that in mind.” He slings his arm around her shoulders, drawing her into his side and landing a kiss in her hair. It feels like the biggest relief ever. He huffs out another laugh, shaking her where she’s melting into his torso.

“Pfft, fucking Will.” She groans at him, trying to pull away but he just holds onto her tighter, muscling around her until she’s halfway sitting on his lap, twisting to look him square in his very smug face.

“ I think you would’ve been sorely disappointed by that kid. He wouldn’t have a clue what you like, what you need.”

“Oh yeah? And what exactly do I need, Miller?” He’s got a cocky smirk on his face, it’s a look she doesn’t often see on him. He shifts her on his lap some more until she’s finally straddling his waist, arms wrapped around his neck and thighs framing his hips. She gasps at the heady contact.

“You need me, honey. Same as I need you.” And with that he’s drawing her in by her jaw for a harsh kiss. There’s nothing sweet about it, all clashing teeth and stubborn tongues. They’re both still cooling off from the mutual anger and it shows in how they grab onto each other, licking into each other’s mouths and swallowing each other’s groans. He presses his calloused fingers into the sliver of skin between her shirt and her jeans, dragging her hips impossibly closer until she’s grinding into his hardness. He lets out a low thrumming moan at the sensation. She grins.

“You need me, huh, Joel?” He grunts, trying to dip his head into her neck but she pulls him back by the hair at the nape of his neck, drawing a low moan from him. She presses a chaste kiss to his lips.

“Why don’t you lay back for me, cowboy?” She can see the flush creeping up his neck as he huffs out a low laugh, but she means business. She pushes hard on his chest, tipping him back onto the mattress with a soft “oof” as she gets to work on the buttons of his shirt while he toes his boots off. She laves her tongue over each new inch of exposed skin, and by the time she gets to the bottom of his shirt he’s letting out the sweetest little grumbles. She noses along the waist of his jeans and he huffs.

“Such a tease.” She grins up at him, finally unbuckling his belt and harshly tugging it out from under him in a way that makes him startle.

“That’s right, baby. And I can do whatever I want. Because this is all mine, right?” She rests her palm on his stomach, feeling his rapid breaths rise and fall. He swallows hard, looking down at her with his hands crossed behind his head.

“S’all yours, darlin.” She knows she’s got him when he starts talking like that, his southern drawl melting his words and dripping slow like honey. He shudders as she lays one more open-mouthed kiss below his navel before finally undoing his jeans and shucking them down his legs along with his boxers. His cock immediately springs up to his stomach, dribbling pre-cum in the tufted hair there. She lays between his spread legs and noses up the length of him, just barely letting her lips brush against the tip. He grumbles under her teasing.

“C’mon, baby. Why don’t you go ahead and take what’s yours already, huh?” She grins at his almost pained expression, the crease between his brows and the little huffs he keeps letting out.

“Always so bossy. Lucky for you I’m in a giving mood.” He goes to speak again but is quickly cut off by a broken moan when she finally licks a broad stripe up the heavy vein of his cock before taking the head into her mouth and giving an experimental bob. She finds a rhythm, taking him a bit deeper each time until she’s swallowing around him in her throat in a way that makes his toes curl.

“Fuck– s’perfect– perfect mouth taking all of me. S’good, so good for me, baby.” He reaches for her, trying to card his fingers through her hair and guide her movements, but she immediately stops, grabbing his wrists and pinning them up by his shoulders.

“Uh-uh, no touching, Miller. You’re just gonna lay there and take what I give you, got it?” He looks frustrated that she stopped, that she’s demanding so much control, but he just swallows thickly and nods. She smiles and lays a quick peck at the corner of his mouth before sinking back down and returning to work.

He’s a writhing mess under her as she sucks him off, digging his hands into his thick hair to stop himself from reaching out for her. She can feel his thighs tensing where her hands are splayed and knows he must be getting close. This time, she’s surprised when he interrupts her, yanking her back by her hair and forcing her to look up at him.

“Alright, think you’ve had your fun. S’my turn now.” His movements are fluid and startling in their quickness as he sits up and effectively flips them until she’s splayed out on the bed underneath him. She gasps as his mouth and hands wander everywhere, making quick work of the buttons of her shirt before not so gently shrugging it off her shoulders and tossing it on the floor. He mouths over the fabric of her bra in a way that makes her back arch, giving him enough space to undo the clasp and slide it off her before dipping back down and taking a peaked nipple into his hot mouth. His teeth graze over the sensitive skin and she sighs out his name at the sensation. He grins up at her in a way that makes her want to smack him.

“This all mine, right darlin?” She lets out a breathy “yes” and it’s all he needs to hear to get back to work, starting to suck and bite harshly at her skin, leaving mottled bruises in his wake as he travels further down her torso. He makes quick work of her pants and underwear, shuffling them down her legs and tossing them aside, working his way back up to her center by dragging his mouth along the inside of her leg, nuzzling into the plush of her inner thighs. She can’t help the whimpers that start to crack in her throat under his ministrations. He hovers his mouth over the heat of her cunt, each exhale sending shivers up her spine.

“You’re lucky, darlin, you know why?” She furrows her brow at him, he just grins.

“Because unlike some people, I’m not a fucking tease.” With that, he’s licking a flat stripe through her folds that sends her hips arching up into his mouth. He’s holding nothing back, a sloppy haze of slick dipping from her entrance up to her clit. The sound of him devouring her is obscene laid over her drawn out whines. Joel knows her well after so much time together. Knows how she likes it, what she needs when he eats her out, when she needs him to slide his fingers inside her and give her something to clench down around, right as she’s teetering on the edge of release.

“Come for me, baby. Just like this. Show me you’re mine.” His low murmurs send a thrum through her core that’s enough to snap whatever resolve she had left as she comes undone around his fingers, shivering as he continues to lick at her. She finally pushes his face away from her with a gasp, becoming too sensitive to let him keep working at her.

He crawls up her body, meeting her for a kiss and she groans at the taste of herself on his tongue. She draws her knee up to his hip, using the leverage to flip him under her, straddling his waist and soaking his happy trail with her dripping cunt. His hands are kneading at the meat of her ass and she lurches forward when he brings one down in a harsh smack. She scowls at the smug look on his face.

“Don’t give me that look, baby. Still pissed about seeing you with that fucking kid.” She rolls her eyes, going to say something smart but her voice dies in her throat when he lands another slap, causing her to gasp out his name and bury her face in his neck. He kisses her temple sweetly, a stark contrast to the sting as he smacks her ass again. She thinks there’s going to be marks left afterward, though maybe that’s the whole point.

He finally lets up, once again gripping her ass in a way that makes the tender skin smart. She tilts her head to hold his gaze, pressing in for another kiss. He pulls away first, his breathing a bit ragged.

“You gonna ride your cowboy, baby?” She lets out a gasp as he laughs at the look on her face.

“So you have heard what those women are saying. Goddamnit, Joel–” he cuts her off with another hard kiss.

“Don’t give a fuck about what they’re saying. Just want you, now.” She presses her palms into his chest as she shifts her hips back, lining the tip of his cock up with her entrance before slowly sinking down. They’re both a mess of sighs and whines as she settles with him fully inside her. It’s always a stretch at first. Joel traces his fingers down her arms before wrapping his broad hands around the plush of her hips. She gives a few tentative rolls into him that sets his eyes turning back in his head. She slowly finds her rhythm, sinking down on him with each bounce and twisting her hips until he’s a panting mess beneath her. She rests the flat of her palm along the base of his throat and doesn’t miss the way his eyes widen at her movements.

“Tell me how it feels, baby, s’good for you?” Joel grunts at her question, his fingers flexing where they’re squeezing at her waist.

“S’fucking perfect. You’re perfect– fuck– take me so well, darlin.” He bends his knees and plants his feet into the mattress, the shift causing her to press forward until their chests are smashed together as he starts to thrust up into her. She lets out a broken cry at the brutal pace he sets.

“Fuck, Joel– n-need more– need you– need you to–” he shushes her, already complying without needing her to say it as he flips them over so he’s caging her in. He drags a long kiss out of her before sitting up and pulling out of her, making her whine at the loss.

“Want you on your hands and knees for me.” She doesn’t need to be told twice, flipping over and getting into position as Joel palms his cock behind her. She shudders when he presses up against her, just barely dipping back into her. She whines at his teasing, trying to draw him deeper but he squeezes her hips harshly.

“Patience, darlin. I’ll give you what you want. But I gotta ask you something first.” She glances at him over her shoulder, brow furrowed.

“Need you to tell me. D’you think Will could fuck you as good as I do?” She huffs at that.

“Joel, I said I was sorry– christ– just fuck me already.” That’s not what he wants to hear and he acts like he’s getting ready to pull away from her entirely. She stammers on her words she talks so fast.

“No, no! H-he couldn’t fuck me like you do. No one f-fucks me as good as you– please, Joel.” That’s apparently enough of an answer for him as he lines himself up and thrusts into her in one long stroke, pressing his hips hard against the swell of her ass. She lets out a long preening whine as he starts to thrust into her, slow but deep movements that make the bed shuffle up against the wall. His hands are roaming over her back, her sides, down to her hips, rough calluses making her shiver.

“Fucking made for me, darlin. Nobody else, huh? S’just you and me.” She lets out a breathy “yes” to his low rumbling words, fisting the sheets below her as she feels the pleasure starting to spill over once again.

Joel seems to notice it too, snaking one of his hands down her front to bluntly swipe against her clit.

“You gonna come for me, baby? Just for me, right? Not for anyone else?” She nods frantically, pressing her hips back into his with each thrust.

“Y-yes, Joel– fuck– s’all for you– only for you– p-please don’t stop– so fucking close, baby.” He curls over her, his broad chest brushing against her back as he brings his lips to her ear.

“Give it to me, baby. Come for me, right now.” That’s all it takes for her to seize up in his hold, pulsing around his cock and tumbling over that blinding edge of pleasure, a broken cry of his name the only sound she can get out. She bows down onto her elbows, pressing her cheek into the sheets as he fucks her through it, making the pleasure simmer almost painfully as his pace starts to falter too.

“Fuck– s’good for me, baby– you’re perfect.” His voice sounds nearly pained and she immediately knows he’s close.

“Want you to come for me, Joel. Let go for me.” He presses his forehead between her shoulder blades, rutting haphazardly into her.

“Tell me you’re mine, darlin. Wanna hear you say it.”

“I’m yours, Joel– p-please come, baby– come for me.” He curses lowly, pulling out but keeping a hand on the base of her spine as he strokes himself a few times before he’s painting her ass with his spend. The only sound as he comes is his breathless gasps of words.

“Fuck– I’m yours, darlin– I’m all yours.” It’s silent for a moment as they both catch their breath, Joel flops onto his back next to her and she splays out on her stomach, shivering at the sensation of his cooling come on her skin.

He glances at her flushed face, the twitch of a smile at his lips as he wheezes out a laugh.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, trouble.”

…

Ellie looks between the pair at dinner, seeming to be trying to figure something out.

“You two look pleased with yourselves. Something big must have happened between now and this morning when you were both so goddamn testy.” That earns her a glare from Joel. She holds her hands up in surrender.

“Hey, hey. I’m happy for you guys, seriously. It’s about time you stopped dicking around, gonna save a lot of ladies some serious trouble now that you’re officially together.” She quirks an eyebrow at the girl.

“What makes you think we’re “officially” together?” Ellie just shrugs.

“Well, usually you both make more of an effort to cover up the evidence, but from the looks of those bruises on both your necks I’d say you’re done hiding the obvious.” She swallows hard around her bite of food, glancing at Joel, sure enough spotting a trail of hickies peeking out of his shirt collar. She only feels a little guilty. Joel just huffs.

“Alright, kid, easy does it there. But, yes, just for the record. I guess, we– well, we– uh–” she stops his floundering, bringing her hand to rest over his on the table.

“You were right, Ellie. We’re together.” The kid gives them a smug look.

“I am both disgusted and happy for you.”

…

With everything finally out in the open, she feels no hesitancy in joining Joel in bed that night, curling up around each other in a tangle of limbs and settling on the brink of sleep. She glances up at him from where her cheek is resting against his chest.

“Joel?” His low murmur lets her know he’s listening.

“I wanna tell you something. And you don’t have to say anything back. But, I love you. You need to know that.” There’s a heavy pause of silence before Joel draws her into him a bit tighter, sighing over the top of her head.

“Feel the same way, darlin. Guess I’ve been in love with you for a while. Just a hard thing to say, in this world.” She breathes out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. He clears his throat.

“Hope you know I’m not letting you go now.”

“I know, cowboy.”

…

They both have a patrol shift the next morning, and as they step out onto the porch bright and early, she can see Laura across the street, sitting on her own porch and watching them pointedly. Just as Joel turns back to her after locking the door, she grabs him by the nape of his neck and spins them into an entirely too intense kiss for this early in the morning. When she pulls away with a lewd little pop, Joel’s face is painted with shock, his eyes darting from hers to her lips and back up again.

“What the hell was that for?” She just shrugs before taking his hand in hers and hopping down the steps. She waves to their neighbor with her other arm.

“Morning, Laura!” The woman doesn’t respond, primly looking away with a scowl on her face.

She doesn’t care though, not when Joel’s got his arm wrapped around her and his hand on her hip as they head off down the street for their shift. Might as well give the ladies of Jackson something to talk about.

#joel miller angst #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fluff #joel miller one shot #tlou fanfiction #the last of us #tlou

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nico-the-newt · 3 months

Text

Enemies to Lovers - Ellie Williams x reader

summary: you and Ellie had hated each other the moment you stepped foot in Jackson. Others disagree.

warnings: swearing, Ellie's a bit of a dick, mentions guns

You could honestly say that you had no idea how it happened. One moment you were scanning through the old, abandoned supermarket with Jesse for supplies, laughing at something stupid he had said. And suddenly, in an instance, you found yourself being ambushed by a hoard of runners.

Patrol had started off as it usually did when you were grouped with Dina, Jesse and Ellie. The four of you were walking down the old, dirt road to the abandoned supermarket that Maria had assigned you to patrol. As usual, Jesse and Dina were being coupley and affectionate - arms wrapped around each other, hands linked, noses bumping, as you and Ellie grumpily walked beside them, shooting each other looks and making snide remarks. The pair of you had had a strained relationship since your arrival in Jackson two years before. You thought she was rude and cocky. She thought you were obnoxious and demanding. In fact, the pair of you despised each other so much you weren’t even aware that you were very similar - personality-wise.

You still cursed Jesse for forcing you on patrol with Ellie. He and Dina had some sort of weird idea that you and Ellie secretly liked each other, enemies to lovers, as Dina put it. You had laughed in their faces.

“Not if she was the last person in the world,” you had scoffed, but that did not change their minds in the slightest.

When you finally arrived at the old building, you were extremely tired and grumpy. Ellie had spent the first ten minutes of the walk complaining about how late you had been that morning (she had arrived twenty minutes early to patrol just to give you a hard time), which sparked an argument that lasted for the rest of the trip. You could tell Dina and Jesse were completely over the pair of you and it secretly made you pleased to prove them wrong.

“Jeez, look at this place,” Ellie sighed in admiration when you entered the supermarket. You couldn’t deny that you shared her admiration. There was something so beautiful about the place being covered in vines and sunlight streaming in through a big hole in the roof, lighting up the entire store. You wouldn’t let that be known though.

“‘Jeez, look at this place’” you imitated in an annoying voice that sounded nothing like Ellie.

“Hey, what’s your fucking problem, man!” Ellie exclaimed, storming towards you.

“You are-!”

“Okay!” Dina called, coming between you and Ellie before the shoving and arguing began again. “This place is pretty big - why don’t we pair up and split off. Ellie and I’ll look on this side, you guys look on that side.”

Ellie shot a scowl at you, which you gladly returned, but you followed Dina’s orders nonetheless and trailed off after Jesse.

“You and Ellie need to chill,” he said, after a period of companionable silence.

“Ellie needs to stop being an asshole,” you grumbled, causing Jesse to let out a laugh.

“You’re just as much of an asshole as she is,” he chuckled, shaking his head in amusement and slipping a bottle of disinfectant he had found into his bag.

“No one is as big of an asshole as Ellie is,” you said pointedly. “Except maybe you~”

“Oof, low blow,” Jesse grinned, placing a hand over his chest in mocked hurt. “However will I get over that one?"

“Please, you’ll get over it,” you had laughed, finally starting to feel at ease for the first time that day. Unfortunately, the feeling had left as soon as it came due to a loud crash coming from the loading dock behind you.

“The fuck was that?” You muttered, instantly grabbing your gun and pointing it in the direction of the loading dock.

“Dunno,” Jesse hissed, drawing his gun too. When there was no other noise after a few minutes, you both slowly started edging your way towards where the original sound had come from. You practically hear your heart beating out of your chest. A cold bead of sweat dripped down the back of your neck and you almost found yourself holding your breath. However, the anticipation was all for nothing, as when you had poked your head around the corner, there was nothing there but old, dusty boxes and a rusty hand truck.

“Nothing,” you shrugged, a frown crossing your brow. “Weird.”

You stepped back towards Jesse, unaware of the runner that had been coming up behind you until its hands were grasping your shoulders and it was trying to bite your neck off. You didn’t even have enough time to be scared as several gunshots went off and caused our ears to ring like crazy and your vision to fog over.

“Come on!”

Jesse grabbed your arm and dragged you away from the area and back into reality. It was only when you could hear again and actually heard the screams and groans, along with the sound of rabid footsteps behind you, that you finally found control of your legs once more and began to run. Jesse and you crashed through a door and into a small office at the back of the store. Jesse pressed his body up against the door and you quickly copied, as there was nothing to barricade the door with. This is how I die. We’re gonna die. You couldn’t stop these morbid thoughts from bouncing around in your brain as you used all your body weight and strength to push against the door, despite the fact that the strength of the infected easily overpowered you and the door had begun to come off its hinges. You were certain they were about to break the door down completely, and was preparing for the worst, when you suddenly heard a series of gunshots outside, followed by some grunt and yells, and finally, silence. The pressure you had been fighting off against the door had stopped, though you and Jesse remained pressed against it for a few minutes - neither of you sure if it was actually safe. It was only when you heard Dina anxiously yell for the both of you that you realised it was over and cautiously moved back from the door - just in time for her to practically kick the door down and throw herself at Jesse when she realised you were both still alive. You closed your eyes and leaned back against the desk to catch your breath, completely oblivious to Ellie’s presence looming towards you at speed. It was only when she practically shoved you over and cupped your face to see you for herself that your eyes flew open and you stared at her, confused but not disliking the feeling of her hands on your face.

“You fucking idiot!” She exclaimed, letting go of your face and wrapping you in a hug. You were surprised at the contact but didn’t care and hugged her back, simply grateful to be alive and not bitten. And that Ellie was hugging you

“It’s okay. It’s over,” you sighed, rubbing her back comfortingly and raising your middle finger towards Jesse and Dina when you saw them smirking at the pair of you.

“Enemies to lovers,” Dina mouthed with a smug smile.

Part 2 can be found here:

#tlou #tlou2 #ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #ellie x reader #ellie williams imagine

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joelismiller · 8 months

Text

misunderstanding

joel miller x fem!reader

Word Count: 5.0k

Summary: you liked joel and you really thought he liked you back.

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, age gap (joel is in his fifties and reader is in her late twenties), angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, fingering, oral (fem!receiving), jealousy, protective!joel, violence if you squint, no use of y/n

A/N: hi everyone my name is ariel and this is my first post ! I have never written for joel before and i have never written smut so please go easy on me and enjoy ! <3 (oh also i completely made up the currency idk how that works😭)

It hurts, you think.

Having an attachment to a man who has seemed to lose the ability to comprehend on an emotional level how to form one.

An exception of course made for one goofy teenager named Ellie Williams, which you can’t blame him for—she is an easy kid to love.

You however still can’t help but feel a little envious of the fourteen-year-old even if it is a silly kind of jealousy. You just wish you could be close to him—know him like no one else does or has.

It started 6 months ago: you had been living in Jackson for a whole year after braving the world overtaken by Cordyceps alone.

Tommy and a group of other people on patrol found you near the edge of town looking right about to just give up and keel over and allow fate to take over and decide if you should live or die from that point.

After making sure you were not infected, Tommy scooped you up and managed to get you back to town where Maria agreed to help nurse you back to health and eventually make you an official resident of Jackson.

You were given a house close to Tommy and Maria’s and they gave you a job at the local clothing shop of sorts; really just a place to trade or purchase clothing, bootlaces, etc. You began to not just live, but enjoy living—a fate you never thought you would be able to see for yourself after the events of the last twenty years.

It was more or less a life of routine and monotony, but it was more of a life you had before which is what made it special.

Then Joel Miller came in and ruined all of that.

Six months ago he rode into town with his little brunette companion for a second time after briefly visiting a while before. He walked up to Tommy and gave him a firm hug while confirming your hope that he indeed would be making himself a permanent member of the Jackson community.

His house with Ellie was only a few blocks away which allowed for you to wake up a little early to see him leave on his way to patrol.

Now the interaction that started your infatuation with the grumpy old man was nothing too special; at least probably to the man himself. However, to you, it made a very old and foreign feeling form in your gut.

Butterflies erupted just at the sight of Joel Miller’s beautiful brown eyes that, depending on the light, either shined a light honey-brown, or dark and rich, like the coffee beans you used to brew your coffee that morning.

His hair reflected his age—a fluffy mess of brown with graying streaks and a patchy beard to match.

And his broad shoulders and strong looking arms made it so you wanted nothing more than to be wrapped up by him—consumed by him.

He looked awkward, you think, as he stood inside your shop looking around wordlessly. You decided to step out from behind the counter where you were going over some previous numbers for inventory to help the handsome man get what he came for.

“Hi there, can I help you look for anything specific?” you asked as you approached him slowly from across the room.

“Hi, um, I was just lookin' for a thicker coat than the one I already have—‘just got my first pay from patrolling.” He muttered, continuing to search the many tables and walls littered with all sorts of clothing items.

“Oh okay, for sure! If you just follow me they’re right over here.”

You began to lead him to a rack near the register which had a small assortment of heavy winter jackets. You were constantly selling out of them since Jackson was always cold no matter the season which is why there wasn’t a lot to choose from.

He took a look at the jackets and gave you a nod, “Thank you, um…” Joel trailed off as you breathlessly laughed and told him your name.

He repeated your name trying it out on his tongue; making you wish for nothing more than to hear him say it in his Southern drawl over and over and over-

“I’m Joel,” he stated simply and you gave him a smile and nod of your head, pretending like you hadn’t already done a bit of digging to find out the handsome newcomer’s name a couple months ago when he first visited.

“Well Joel, if you need anything I'll be back behind the register.”

You pointed over to the table with a broken old register that worked just well enough to store the currency the town came up with so there was an extra curtain of civilization despite the events that were anything but that.

You thought it was kind of stupid, but it worked and made people happy so who were you to say otherwise?

He nodded to let you know he heard you as you went back to your previous position: pretending the whole time you weren’t shamelessly ogling the rugged, big, Southern man mindlessly looking through the jackets.

He eventually settled on a nice tan one with flannel material on the inside lining with white fleece on the collar and cuffs.

You quickly looked back down to the inventory papers so you wouldn’t be caught staring when you heard his heavy footsteps approach the counter.

“I’ll take this one,” he grunted as he began to gather up some coins to give you in exchange for the warm, heavy jacket.

You quickly pushed his hand away to alert him that it wasn’t necessary, “You're new here right Joel?” You asked as he raised an inquisitive eyebrow and shook his head in agreement.

“Right, then consider it a welcoming gift—free of charge.”

You gave him a bright smile as he furrowed his eyebrows and tilted his head causing you to see the honey sparkle in his brown eyes under the bright store light.

“Ya sure? Jacket doesn’t look cheap,” Joel muttered, his gaze flickering to his boots.

“A hundred percent! You’re new and patrolling isn’t an easy job, accept it as a thank you for keeping us safe if anything,” you told him shyly, the smile never leaving your face.

He chuckled softly and nodded his head.

“Okay darlin’, well, thank you—much appreciated.”

You whispered a soft ‘yeah’ as his eyes looked over you, causing a burning feeling to spread throughout your whole body as if you were being branded. He gave you one last nod of his head as he began to turn around and leave the store.

Not to your surprise, an empty feeling immediately filled you in the presence of his absence.

You whispered to yourself to pull yourself together—that you’ve only met him once and that his effect on you should not be this intense.

It didn’t help however as every interaction after that caused your feelings for the large stand-offish man to only grow.

Whether it was a quick acknowledgement of each other when you happened to eat in the dining hall at the same time, or a wave of a hand when you left your houses at the same time in the morning as he headed to patrol and you headed to the store.

But your favorite interactions were when he would come into the store to maybe get a couple of new shirts for Ellie, or some new socks for himself.

Over time you felt him grow more comfortable around you as you did him. He would tell you about Ellie’s latest antics; swearing that the teen girl was trying to ‘send an old man to an early grave.’

You would giggle and tell him that he wasn’t that old and that Ellie was just a teen girl finally in a safe somewhat normal place where she can go to school and make actual friends.

“About that, I think I might needa talk with her teacher soon—she’s been missin too much school and heading off god knows where,” Joel confessed to you, a frown overtaking his aged features as his worry about his adopted daughter showed clear all over his face.

You shyly grabbed his hand across the register and gave it a small squeeze.

“Try not to worry about her too much Joel. She’s young and she didn’t get to have a normal childhood—It's only normal that school probably doesn’t matter too much to her after everything,” you explained hoping that your words may ease him a bit.

He didn’t respond right away, instead looking at where your much softer hand overlapped his bigger, calloused ones. An unreadable look came over his face before he gently took his hand away from yours and looked to the ground.

“Yeah you’re probably right,” he responded in that low tone of his as he slowly began to back up.

“I gotta go check and see if she made it home okay. It was nice seein ya.”

You barely were able to say another word, maybe apologize for touching his hand in such a careless way before his heavy boots were already heading out the door; the little bell ringing a hollow sound in your ears.

After that, you began to see less and less of Joel and it hurt to admit that it slowly felt like your heart was being ripped out of your chest.

You hated yourself for thinking that all your interactions meant something to him; that when he started to come to the store, not even leaving with anything but a conversation with you, that maybe, just maybe, he felt the same way you felt for him.

Every time you even attempted waving at him in the morning when you both left—he just grunted and looked the other way—pretending like you weren’t even there.

The store was for some reason busier than usual today and you closed up feeling drained and ready to sleep. The long shift accompanied by the hollow feeling in your heart Joel had left caused you to want nothing more than to curl up and forget all the pain in nicer dreams where things were better between you, things were different.

Joel would hold your hand in your dream and walk you to work, leaving a kiss on your cheek and a whisper of having a good day as you giggled and kissed him right back—whispering the same sentiments.

You were shaken out of your daydream on your walk home when you spotted the very man at the center of all your thoughts on the porch of someone's house, a woman’s house.

She was gorgeous with long, blonde hair framing her face perfectly, while she looked up at Joel with gorgeous, crystal, blue eyes. She looked older than you too, maybe even closer to Joel’s age.

They laughed about something before she was leading him inside her house as he followed suit; the door shutting in a finality behind them.

You felt a mix of jealousy and an even greater sadness than before filling your belly as you continued what felt like the longest walk home in your life.

As soon as the door closed you slid down the old wood as tears and sobs that you couldn’t stop wracked your body.

You just didn’t understand; what changed, what did you do to make him start avoiding you?

And you knew how hard it was for Joel to come out of his shell, so why did it seem so easy for him to talk and laugh with that woman?

After what seemed like hours, you finally picked yourself off of the ground and trudged slowly to your bed where you collapsed immediately upon impact with the old tattered sheets.

Instead of the usual happy dreams about Joel, tonight you were plagued with endless nightmares of him and the mysterious blonde woman; standing in the place you usually would in your dreams about Joel.

You woke up in the morning with a feeling of restlessness as you readied yourself for another long day of work.

After work that night you decided to go to the Tipsy Bison which was Jackson’s bar that you would usually frequent when your nightmares from the time you were on your own came back to haunt you.

Mindless images of a group of clicker’s taking from you the only person you had left in your life since the virus took over: your best friend.

After she was gone it was just you, and that period never seemed to completely leave your mind even after a year in Jackson.

After last night’s sleep, you definitely needed a drink you thought to yourself as you made your way over. When you entered you saw that it was a pretty busy night for the Tipsy Bison as you did your best to find a seat towards the end of the bar.

Once you took a seat, you gave the bartender your drink order and surveyed the area to see who else was here as you waited for him to deliver your alcohol of choice. Your breathing stopped and your eyes widened when you noticed a familiar group of people at a table closer to the front of the bar.

There in all his ruggish, handsome glory was Joel Miller, smiling widely as he talked with Tommy, Maria, and her.

You quickly swung back around to face where your drink was just set in front of you as you begged the burn in the back of your eyes to go away.

Fuck this, you thought as you downed most of the drink in one go, using your hand to wipe away the bit that escaped at the corner of your lips.

You did your best to ignore the person that was at the center of all your sadness; drinking and drinking until you felt a familiar buzz kick in and begin to cloud your thoughts.

Right when you were about to order another drink, a skinny, tall, blonde boy walked over to where you were seated and said it was on him as he handed over a couple of coins.

“You didn’t have to do that but thanks, I guess,” you muttered, hoping your disinterest was a sign that you wanted to be left alone.

He smiled wide in a way that caused you to shiver, and not in a pleasurable way like when Joel would grace you with the corner of his lip twitching up, releasing a breathless laugh; but in a bad, unnerving way.

“Anything for a girl as pretty as you.”

He winked which caused you to roll your eyes and once again look away from him. “I’m not interested but again, thank you,” you told him with a finality in your voice that the man—no—boy, didn’t take very seriously.

“Aw come on don’t be like that I just wanna have some fun with you,” he said in a sleazy manner as he reached out to grip your shoulder.

You quickly shook him off but in your drunken haze, you accidentally fell off your chair onto the ground—single-handedly causing the whole bar’s eyes to turn onto you.

“Godammit, now you're just causing a fucking scene,” the man snarled at you, causing tears to form behind your eyes as this man's actions as well as having the entire bar watching the now-forming scene.

And if the night couldn’t get any worse, you hear the familiar sound of boots coming up behind the man and it takes just one glance to confirm your suspicions.

“What did you just say to her?”

You heard a deep voice growl out, a look of pure rage overtaking Joel’s features as he stood right in front of the blonde boy’s face.

“Look man I didn’t know she was taken, I was just tryna have a good time, you know?”

An animalistic sound leaves Joel’s mouth before he takes the boy’s arm and forcefully grabs it until he's facing the bar counter and his arm is pressed deep into his back.

“It don’t matter whether she’s taken or not, you never treat a woman like that,” he snarls into the shaking boy’s ear.

“I never wanna see you come near her again, you hear me?”

He shakes his head wildly until Joel finally releases him and he scatters out of the bar. The anger on Joel’s face morphs into one of concern as he gently stretches out a hand to help you up.

“You okay, sweetheart?” He questions softly as you bat his hand away and attempt to stand on your own.

“M’ fine,” you mutter as you stand on shaky legs—about to fall over when Joel rests his big hands on your shoulders to steady you. He chuckles and curls an arm around your waist as he begins to slowly lead you out the door.

“You sure darlin’? Cause’ you seem a lil drunk to me,” Joel says amused at your hindered state while you frown up at him.

“Don’t you have to go back to your girlfriend,” you huff out, avoiding looking at the grumpy man’s features.

“Girlfriend?” He responds confused, not understanding what you were talking about until he catches your eyes drifting to Veronica’s face—Ellie’s teacher.

After the day he left abruptly from your store, he sought out Ellie’s teacher Veronica. They have been having weekly meetings about how Ellie was doing in school as well as her continuous efforts to ditch class.

There was absolutely nothing romantic about it, the whole ordeal gave him a headache—a subject he was too old to be stressing about.

Besides, how could he dare think about anyone else when you had him wrapped around your little finger?

When he first saw you at your clothing store and you gave him his jacket for free, he knew you would be trouble.

And trouble you were as he couldn’t stop himself from continuing to visit you just to see you and hear your comforting voice promise him that all his worries about his adopted daughter were normal.

It was actually your idea that maybe he should at some point meet with Ellie’s teacher. But when your small hand wrapped around his he got scared— scared this could become something real.

Everyone he has ever gotten attached to he’s lost and he already accidentally went and got attached to Ellie, he didn't know if he had it in him to do it to another person.

And on top of that, he was a bad man, he had done horrible things. You were also so much younger and prettier than him—a sweet, soft thing Joel didn’t feel he deserved.

But looking at your heartbroken face now as you looked back at him and then at Veronica, he knew he messed up. He should have never started avoiding you.

It was never the answer, but Joel had never been good at feelings, this much is evident.

“Come on sweetheart, let’s get you home.”

The walk back from the Tipsy Bison to your house was a pretty close one, your hose only being about five minutes away.

Once you were at your door with a Joel who did not take “leave me alone” as an answer, you struggled to get the key in the lock in your drunken stupor which the large man beside you thankfully helped with.

“Let me do that, sweetheart,” he muttered as his big warm hands covered yours and twisted the key, letting the both of you inside.

“Joel, I don't feel so good…” you said shakily as Joel uttered a “shit” and quickly hurried you to the bathroom which he found pretty quickly—his hands quickly opening the toilet seat and finding purchase in your hair as he held it back, allowing you to empty the contents of your stomach.

“Joel I’m so sorry,” you groaned as a tear fell down your cheek; your sadness, tiredness, and embarrassment flooded in all at once with help from the lingering alcohol in your system.

He shushed you softly and cradled you to his chest taking a second to rock you until your tears stopped and you felt well enough to stand.

“How bout’ you brush your teeth and get your pajamas on—I’ll make you some tea then we’ll talk, yeah?”

You nodded as he gently brushed your cheek with his thumb causing butterflies to erupt in your stomach as he made his way to your kitchen to attempt to find the ingredients and mug he needed.

You cleaned yourself up: showered, brushed your teeth, and put on sleepwear which helped you come back to a clearer state of mind allowing confusion to overtake you.

Why was Joel here taking care of you, wouldn’t his girlfriend begin to ask questions?

You weren’t allowed to keep worrying yourself with your thoughts as a knock on your bedroom door brought you back to reality.

“May I come in? Made ya tea,” Joel’s voice rang out into your room softly as you muttered a quiet, “Sure.”

Joel stepped into the room and handed you the mug which you took a generous sip of—the honeyed flavor soothing your throat and stomach.

“Thank you so much, Joel, for walking me home and taking care of me. I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t go apologizing darlin’ you have done nothin’ to have to apologize for,” Joel interrupted sending you a soft smile as he went to pick up your hand laying on your thigh, rubbing soothing circles into the smooth skin.

In a reversal of roles, it was your turn to pull your hand away as Joel frowned and you looked to the floor; he should have expected that after everything that’s happened.

“I guess I deserve that,” he chuckles sadly as your turn to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Well you have a girlfriend and I bet it would make her uncomfortable if she knew you were holding my hand, Joel.”

Joel couldn’t help the loud laugh that escaped him at your words which completely stopped when he saw your features form into one of anger.

“Why is that so funny? That’s why you stopped visiting and talking to me right? Because you found someone else.”

You didn’t mean for it to come out as bitterly or as venomously as you said it but you couldn’t help it. You have spent weeks suffering over his actions towards you and now he helps you home, takes care of you, holds your hand like nothing happened?

“M’ sorry sweetheart, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was laughing at you. It’s just that…” He trails off collecting himself. Joel sighs out your name and begins to tell you that Veronica is not his girlfriend and that she was just Ellie’s teacher.

He explains to you all about their meetings and that tonight was just him getting her a drink to thank her for all her help.

“I promise you darlin’ it wasn’t anythin’ more than that—don’t feel that way about her at all.”

You process all the information Joel just unloaded on you; and though you do feel relief, you still feel irritation and sadness as his complete throwing away of your friendship—abandoning you without a word. You tell him as much as he releases another sigh and looks down toward the wooden floor.

“Look, m’ not really good at this…” Joel starts, eyes flickering up to your face as he continues.

“But coming into the shop and talkin’ to you started becoming the best parts of my day, sweetheart,” he pauses to give you a look of sincerity and to try holding your hand again—and this time— you let him.

“And I was just downright a coward and instead of facing my feelings I shut you out completely and I feel so fucking awful darlin’ I’m so sorry.” He whispers, tightening his grip on your hand.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I'm hoping you can forgive me and that maybe we can try to be somethin. I don’t know if I’ll be very good at it and I’m so much older than you, but-”

You cut Joel’s rambling off by pressing your lips to his in a soft kiss. You begin to pull away when you don’t feel him kissing back, but he doesn’t give you a chance as he cups your head in a big hand and begins to kiss back with more fervor.

“Joel,” you whimper as he begins to lay you back on your bed, his tongue licking the seam of your bottom lip asking for entrance into your soft, warm mouth—which you immediately allow.

“Shhh, darlin’ will you lemme take care of ya? Wanna make you feel so good baby, make up for how bad I've been actin’.”

You let out a moan when you feel the rough denim of his jeans buck up into your soft sleep shorts making contact with your clothed cunt.

“Please Joel, need you so bad,” you whine as he starts to place kisses from your jaw down to your neck—slightly nipping and leaving a trail of small red spots in their wake, which he soothes with his tongue causing a high pitched whimper to leave your lips; beads of frustration beginning to gather at the corner of your lashes.

“I got you sweetheart, I’m right here, can I take this off?” Joel questions as he lifts the hem of your tank top.

You nodded quickly as he borderline rips it over your head, quickly latching a mouth onto one of your nipples as he massages the neglected one with his hand.

“Ohmygod-” you cry as he expertly flicks the bud with his tongue, soon moving over to the other nipple to give it the same treatment.

Arousal pools in your gut as Joel groans, beginning to leave kisses from your sternum, down to the soft skin of your belly, and right to the hem of your sleep shorts.

He leaves a soft kiss there and looks up to you to ask for permission to take them off. You nod vigorously but he shakes his head and leans down more to press a kiss to your clothed core, emitting a loud gasp from your mouth.

“I need words darlin',” he states, glancing back up to you as you vocalize your permission. Joel wastes no time in taking your shorts down in one quick motion once you say yes—leaving you in your white lacy panties.

He runs a finger over the damp spot in your panties and then brings his arched nose close to the spot to breathe you in as well as to lick your folds through the cotton, his nose perfectly bumping your clit in this position causing you to squirm and moan his name.

“Joel please,” you begged as he pulled away and began to run soothing circles into the soft skin of your thighs.

“Please what baby, tell me what you need,” he demands as you try to buck your hips up to his mouth, but he won't let you, strong hands keeping you in place.

“Your tongue Joel I need your tongue,” you whimper but he shakes his head.

“Where do you need my tongue, baby? Gotta tell me if you wanna cum, sweet girl.”

You whine in embarrassment and look down to see Joel Miller with the smuggest smirk you have ever seen.

“I need your tongue on my pussy Joel, please take off my panties and use your tongue,” you beg as he chuckles and gently removes the white lace—quickly stuffing it in his back pocket before you can see.

“Good girl baby, that s’all I needed,” he murmurs as his tongue comes into contact with the bare skin of your folds causing you to gasp his name and grab his salt and pepper hair to hold him against your cunt.

“Oh my god Joel that feels so good!” You cry as his tongue moves from licking solid stripes against your folds to suckling gently on your clit, as your legs threaten to squeeze around his head.

“Fucking Christ sweetheart, you taste so good, can’t get enough of you,” he groans as he continues to lick into you—the coil in your tummy beginning to tighten but you need more to get you to your high.

“Mmm your fingers Joel, please I need your fingers,” you groan, causing Joel to growl against your pussy, the vibrations only heightening your pleasure.

“Okay baby, think you can take two, huh?” he murmurs as he presses several small kisses to the inside of your thigh.

You whimper a small “yes” as he gathers your slick on his middle and ring finger—the burn you feel from the sheer girth of his fingers stretching you open fades into a dull bliss.

“J-Joel I’m close,” you alert him as you buck into his face and fuck yourself on his fingers.

“Yeah, baby? C’mon then cum for me sweetheart, let go,” Joel coos gently and that’s all it takes for the coil in your stomach to snap—a stream of your slick gushing out all over his face and onto the scruff of his beard.

He continues to lick you through it until you're shuttering and mewling from the overstimulation. He pulls away with a large grin on his face as he reaches down to kiss you passionately, the sweetness of your fluids on his tongue making the kiss that much sweeter.

He wiped the rest of you off of his beard before giving you small pecks all over your face until you were giggling and he was chuckling.

“I am sorry y’know,” he whispered in that silky smooth voice of his. You cupped his cheek with your hand, rubbing circles into the scratchy skin.

“I know.”

Joel got up to get a wet cloth to clean you up. He then took his time putting your sleepwear back on—leaving gentle kisses and massaging every inch of your body he could see.

He ended up spending the night as you curled into his strong arms as he stroked your hair until he felt your breathing even out as slumber took over you.

He stayed up and watched you for a while until he soon fell victim to sleep; the thought of him finally being able to be completely happy despite everything was a comfortable thought, and it was all because of you.

#i hope you guys like it omg #pedro pascal #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #tlou #the last of us #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #tlou x reader #joel miller x f!reader

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sixosix · 10 months

Text

cw injuries, desc of blood, scara patching reader up, profanity bc its a sixosix fic AND it’s scara, wc 500

for @scarahearts the craziest scara main

“so annoying,” wanderer hisses under his breath, cursing again. his breath is on your skin, almost as scorching as the scowl he’s wearing. “infuriating. is your hobby getting on people’s nerves?”

“is your hobby degrading your patients?” you retort, then yelp when he tightens the bandage a little too hard. “ow— fuck you!”

he smirks smugly at your defeated glare, but it fades quickly and back to a frown when blood seeps from the cloth.

you murmur and fidget, “sorry for inconveniencing you.”

his gaze snaps up, sharp. that was probably the wrong thing to say.

“thanks for helping me…?” you try instead. he rolls his eyes.

wanderer stares at your plastered arm for a moment too long, eyes tracing the curve of your elbow, where blood is seeping and staining the once beige bandage dirty red. he then sneers, a snarl of teeth; you can almost see in his eyes where he’s replaying the exact moment you were picked up and thrown to the ground.

you almost want to say that shouki no kami did the same thing to you (read: the balladeer himself), but you have a feeling that those canines aren’t for show, and he’ll end up biting your arm off or something.

you’re startled out of your skin when he suddenly grabs your chin with his hand, rough and demanding you to get a clear view of his displeased expression. ...and yet the grip he has on your injured arm is gentle. a mess of contradictions, a push and a pull, a scowl and a brush of skin—hate, and love.

“when will it get in your fucking head—” he enunciates each word by pulling you closer and closer to him, until your faces are a heavy breath away, “—that you have travel companions for a reason? am i just for show? a doll for you to show off?”

instinctively, you back away, a little bit of fear racing in your heart at the familiar hostile face he’s making. “it’s not that! it’s— i wasn’t— thinking.”

“right. because nothing ever goes in that pretty little head of yours,” wanderer muses, readily agreeing.

“hey,” you fume, face burning.

“you disagree? prove me wrong, then.” he still doesn’t let go of your face. and although puppets do not need to breathe, there’s warm air shared between the two of you where his lips are in close distance with yours. “prove to me that you aren’t forgetting i can fight just as well as you. that i am completely capable of protecting myself and you.”

“that’s not…” you want to say that your little incident didn’t involve any of that, but his gaze is fierce. you realize that it may not be your intention, but it might be what came off to him. “...okay.”

after a beat, you add; an afterthought, “you don’t have to protect me. you saw that i was able to beat their asses easi—” at his unimpressed stare, you correct yourself, “—with a bit of slipping here and there. still, i won.”

“not without an almost severed arm.”

without thinking too much about it, you say, “let’s protect each other, then.”

surprise flits across wanderer’s expression before it settles into something like muted satisfaction. “don’t make it a promise, so you can’t break it.” it’s the closest you can get a ‘yes’ out of him.

im gonna be honest i dont know where this came from like i literally tokd myself if im gonna write a genshin fic itll be HEIZOU. but this bitch held me hostage at 2am with a phone and google docs open — and then i made it happen fr for ellie cus we both lost our minds over the scara art in the 3.8 stream

#606:GENSHIN #??#genshin impact x reader #scaramouche x reader #scaramouche fluff #scaramouche x you #genshin impact x you #wanderer x reader #scaramouche drabble #x reader #genshin x reader #wanderer x you #kunikuzushi x reader

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love-toxin · 8 months

Note

Ellie i want astarion to fuck my mouth

im SO sorry queen i had to make the meow meow a lil emotionally vulnerable while im at it pls forgive me 🐸

(cws: gn!reader, vampire fuckery, bg3 spoilers, oral (m! receiving), teasing, possibly ooc astarion bc im only starting act 2 LOL, jealousy sex, deepthroating, a touch of feral/rough sex, facefucking, astarion is so in love it makes him look stupid <3)

word count: 3.9k

Once again, an evening spent with your mind somewhere else is interrupted by something you weren't expecting. The fire gleams from the pit and washes warmth across your face, a glow cast over your skin as you sit with your fingers white-knuckling a cold mug. Your companions are off on their own save for Scratch, who despite being a bit furrier than the tavern's normal patrons sleeps quietly at your feet. It barely took any convincing to let him in considering the rather stellar reputation you've earned yourselves–not to mention you're sharing a spot around the hearth with a couple frizzy-haired barbarians and a Tabaxi bard strumming out a tune on her lute. All seems peaceful, the noise just relaxed enough that you can let your mind wander about all manner of things. Ponder all sorts of worries you have yet to deal with on your adventure.

But it seems you're destined for an interruption. The back of your neck prickles from nowhere, a chill slithering coldly down your spine…from the corner of your eye you spot him, his pale hand vanishing behind a door on the second floor of the inn.

He's watching you. That's your cue, his methods of distraction always seeming so trivial and out of the way–he could always just come over and tap you on the shoulder. But Astarion likes the chase and isn't much of a fan of sincerity, so it's only natural for you to pass your half-empty mug off to one of the barbarians, get a bumbled shout of gratitude and a slap on the back, and slip away from the night's bustle of the tavern to thump your way up the winding stairs. All four of the rooms have been rented out by you and your party but one will sit empty tonight–aside from your gear, you're fairly certain your room will be unoccupied as you find other sleeping arrangements.

Tap tap. Just in case there's danger looming too close to comfort, you and your partner have a particular signal. Just as your knuckles come away from the door the tapping echoes back, tap tap, and you smother a grin as your fist closes around the knob for you to step inside.

The oak door thuds behind you at once and clicks softly as the latch falls in place. Nothing but the ire of a god or a drunken ogre could interrupt you now….but there's not much to interrupt if there's only one of you here, and as your eyes sweep the simple room you don't spot hide nor hair of your darling creature of the night. You've got a teasing remark on the tip of your tongue, ready to let loose-

"Don't. Move."

-But before you can even take a breath, there's a blade's edge digging into your throat and a cold, lean body pressed up against your backside. Effectively caught between a rock and a hard place. Prey. Astarion's whispered commands, however deep and punctuated they are, only send shivers of delight through you rather than true fear–and you find yourself struck with a dumb grin, not at all immune to the soft touch of his lips as they graze your tender neck from behind. He's got his arm pulled so snug around your waist it feels more like the grasp of a lover than a robbery, but that's because it is.

"Light on valuables, huh?" You tease over your shoulder, your hands braced against his arm as it holds the knife so dangerously close to your pulse point.

"You aren't. Show me what you've got, or I'll look myself." He murmurs back, breath cool as it puffs shallowly against your skin. It's somehow sweet when he tries to be so hard-to-get with you–maybe, you wonder, he doesn't yet realize how attached you are to him despite all you've been through already. Enough that you don't feel the bite of harsh, real danger in your peripheral, which sooner leads him to loosen his grip and push you forward with a palm on the base of your spine–all while tugging the knife out of the way, of course. If you asked him, he'd say it's because it would be a waste to spill such divine blood all over the ground.

As you turn yourself around to face him, you come eye-to-eye with the glaring tip of the knife yet again. Astarion is half-dressed, a bit disheveled, looking as though he's on the cusp of needing a drink again. Those carmine-coloured eyes echo some deep, violent desperation, one that shakes his voice as he commands you with total sincerity to strip.

"Will you join me?" You ask, your voice tinged with adoring hope. It irritates him, hope. Usually, at least. Usually it doesn't rub him as wrong when you're the one with hope in your heart, but evidently tonight is different if his scoff is anything to go by.

"That depends." His gaze flits away as he worries his lower lip between his teeth, not as careful about nicking it with his fangs as he usually is. Something surely must be wrong if he's acting so strange, especially since nothing has happened lately that's seemed to upset him…at least not that he's told you. It could be something else entirely, or something you don't have any idea about. Once he meets your eyes again, the hand he's gripping the dagger in lowers slowly. It was just a prop, after all–never a real threat. "...So long as you don't forget who you pledged your love to. Me. I won't stand for all this…this nonsense I've seen of late."

You cock your head in reply with a raised brow, questioning and curious of what on earth he could be referring to. Astarion rolls his eyes but it's most assuredly a gesture to mask how weak your sincerity makes him, your honesty painfully boring but, at the same time, endlessly endearing. With a sigh he tosses the knife aside in an arc, the handle flipping over blade for it to fall perfectly on the tip, sunk half an inch into the table by the bed. He's got his attention locked on it for long enough that the shuffling of fabric is what turns his head back towards you, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips on instinct as he watches your clothing slip off your positively tantalizing figure.

"We're gonna have to pay for that, you know." Whatever you're saying goes right through both ears, the way your giggles shake your shoulders being all that he can focus on right now. He can barely tear his eyes away once you've wiggled out of your bottoms, and you're swift to remind him of his stare when you cheekily throw the travel-worn trousers in his direction. But all he does is grab a handful of them and press them to his face, not soaking in the scent as much as the undeniable warmth from just coming off your legs. They're only an introduction, however. They're tossed right back at you without pause, and fall to the floor in a heap that Astarion carelessly steps over to get to you. To get closer. He can never really get close enough, ever.

Even an inch away from you, though, your love does nothing to close that last shred of distance between you. Where he was eager to touch you just a few minutes ago, now he keeps his hands down like he's nervous about grazing you with just his fingertips. But despite that you can clearly see how he keeps eyeing your lips, so if he won't meet you the rest of the way, you simply have to do it for him. A quick peck on the chin is too much yet not enough–he endures a noticeable quiver through his body that he tries to stifle, but he can't resist raising a hand to your neck and tilting your head higher, just enough that you won't miss this time when he plants his mouth on yours. Deeper this time, much deeper, with his tongue making an appearance to slither from a cold embrace to your unbearably hot one.

You'd love nothing more than to take it further right here, right now, but there's something stopping Astarion that you'd like to get to the bottom of. Just as he's getting a little lost in your kiss, his eyes shut and fangs scraping at your delicate tongue as it moves with his, you break it off with a warm hand pressed to his chest and bring him back to your unspoken question.

"Azzy, what's wrong?"

"Don't call me that," He snaps back suddenly, brow furrowed in immediate annoyance. He doesn't move away though–clearly you're a bit too enticing for him to rethink the embrace he has you in, nor the fact that you're bare and warm for nobody else but him. "So childish. Or did you simply forget my name already?"

"I could never forget you. Now tell me what's wrong, Az. You're acting weird."

This time, he just shoots you a glare that could kill you on the spot. It's damning, his fury terrifying enough written so plainly on his face….but it also stirs up something within you that won't be sated by words alone.

"Last time, darling. I'm warning you. And it's nothing. Just…" A shake of his head sends his perfect curls flying about, each one falling back into place more perfectly than he's coming across right now. "...I wish you had been around when I was alive. That's all."

"What do you mean?"

"The others are all…alive. Breathing. Warm. Some of them look at you like–like you aren't with me. Like they could sweep you off your feet without even a thought." He says it with so much defeat in his tone, so gently with so soft an edge that you almost can't hear it with the muffled sounds of the tavern under your feet. It's rare to hear him sound so…sad. It's a bit odd to think, but he often comes off younger than he is when he speaks this way. "Maybe, if…if I was with you, then…" He huffs, flinching away from your hand as it grazes his cheek. Yet, within a moment, he's turning back and nuzzling his face into your palm like he can't get enough, his hand coming up to brace your delicate wrist as if he's afraid you really will pull away from him. "...If I was with you, maybe I would never be what I am now."

"But I like who you are now." You insist, the smile slowly returning as it creases the edges of your lips. "I love you, Astarion. I mean it, I always will. Forever."

"Forever is a very long time, my sweet." You shoot him that naive look like you don't really get the gravity of what you're saying. You don't, on second thought–you haven't suffered through two immortal centuries like he has. "...Fine. You love me? Prove it, then."

His tone grows dark, as does the once-vibrant colour in his eyes. Something swirls about behind them like a shadow in the water of a blood-red lake.

"On your knees."

Huh?

"I said," The air grows hot around you despite the chill of his body on yours, a purr rising in the back of his throat as he pushes very gently on your shoulder. "Get on your knees."

And with his command hanging in the air, you follow so obediently you give him a pleasing shiver down the length of his spine and back. You sink down to the floor in one long, fluid motion, barely breaking eye contact as you brace yourself against his pale thighs. They don't even need your touch to come undressed, his pants falling with his thumbs hooked into the waist and tugged down just as easily as you did. He wastes no time in stepping out of them and kicking them away, but he doesn't really have the option to when you're already mesmerized by the image of what lies beneath–once the tip of his flushed, heavy cock sprung free of catching on his belt, you had your gaze glued to it like it's the first time you've ever laid eyes on him.

"I'll never get tired of this view." He smirks, all pompous and smug with no idea of the test of self-control he's about to face. Because although you may be the one beneath him, where you belong in this scenario, the haze over your eyes as you stare openly should be enough of a tell that your mouth is already watering. Astarion's gentle humming hits your ears as he takes himself in hand, tugging out a few slow strokes for your entertainment before he settles on holding it by the base, and guides it down towards your lips. He's so pale everywhere else that the ruddiness of the rubbery head is almost uncanny, but the pale pink blush that spreads throughout gives his flesh such a delicate look that you can't help but dive right in.

One slow, tentative lick up the tip, and Astarion has it written all over his face–he isn't going to be finished until you've got some bruises, that's for sure. You try another and he finally gets a grip on your head, fingers woven through your hair to keep you steady and to calm his trembling hands. Those soft kitten licks are always his weakness, each one a bit braver and deeper but peppered with hot little kisses in between. You press them all down the shaft and back, smearing the stiff flesh with spit and giving him a tongue bath that feels like it never ends–not that he wants it to, though. Those shaky breaths overhead are a telltale sign otherwise.

"More," He purrs, half-needy and half-demanding in the same breath. You kiss over his knuckles that still grip the base of his shaft, and can't help but smile up at him as he quietly taps the head against your lips, tap tap. Twice he knocks and begs silently for entry, and soon he releases a sigh from the depths of his belly as you swallow him down and welcome him in. "Show me what I deserve."

Astarion certainly doesn't need to tell you twice, he barely needs to tell you once. As soon as he's settled snugly where he belongs, he lets go of the grasp he had and watches in awe as you swallow. Every inch he thinks you can't take more of disappears inside your mouth, slid further and further until he starts to curve into the bend of your throat and loses the last vestiges of his willpower. All his strength saps into you like his teeth on your flesh–where he stole your power in your blood, you take it back just as easily with a flick of your tongue and the incessant squeeze of your throat.

"Getting impatient? Already? We've only just begun, love." You can feel the heat of his eyes shift as they turn further downward, no clothing able to serve as a boundary to hide the needy grind of your thighs together as you kneel. The reaction of your body to his rather lewd commentary doesn't help you either, and in one sweep of his gaze over your exposed figure he can see everything you're thinking like it's written across your skin in ink. "Don't stop rubbing those legs together. Show me just how badly you want me, darling."

It might be more embarrassing if you didn't know Astarion had seen it all already, and that he would most definitely be seeing much more of everything below in the future. The fact that you trust him with those fangs around all your sensitive areas is touching…and it also means he trusts you enough to be a little rougher when you're returning the favour. You've degraded yourself to a humiliating extent by being with him, by getting down on your knees for him no less, and with him wrapped so tight and cozy in your throat he's got a look like he's ready to make himself at home.

With a moan slipped in between the pauses, your beloved curls his thumbs down behind the shell of each ear, his palms laid flat against your temples so he won't let go so easily. The drawing back is easy, his cock parting less and less of the space inside until he's barely brought it back to the tip–but just as you're getting in a taste of his salty sweat and bitterly rich arousal as it sits heavy on your tongue, Astarion flashes you a wink and braces your face for impact as he thrusts back in. Your heat coddles every inch of him and shakes loose a string of raspy moans from his chest, while the scrape of your nails against his thighs and your soft, squirming tongue pressed flat against his girth only has him burning hotter. The first time is a tight fit for sure, but as he enters into a steady rhythm of pulling out and gliding past your sweet, stretched lips, each buck of his hips grows smoother and it gets easier with time. Sooner than either of you expected, you barely have to focus at all–you can sit nicely and let your attention wander up to his lusty gaze, idly suckling at whatever he manages to stuff inside for as long as he's able to keep it there.

"I know it's on your mind already, but tell me I'm beautiful, my sweet." Astarion croons like a cat to a mouse, speaking so sweetly like he isn't still ravaging the most tender areas of your throat, and fucking away any possibility of you speaking properly for the next little while. And he shows no signs of stopping, your squeaky, muffled moans as he grinds the heft of his cock against your tongue too delicious for him to think about it. But eventually he does, managing somehow to pry himself off of your beautiful, fucked-out, spit-slicked face to give you a chance. "Go on. Speak."

"Please," You croak, head hazy and your face dark with warmth. "You're so beautiful, Astarion, please. I love you."

"Will you love me forever?" You nod, the answer barely a hair's breadth from your swollen lips.

"For eternity."

Astarion takes a moment, a pause that lasts a lifetime or more, but the genuine joy that starts to spread across his smile could keep you alive for a century of centuries. It's not one you see often or ever see, but that makes it just as precious as any gold or treasure you might come across in your lifetime.

"...Eternity it is then, darling." One of those cold hands moves to stroke your hair, his touch fleeting yet his grip tight with desire as you lean in for a kiss–not on his lips, but rather the tip of his dick, of which is absolutely soaked by your influence…and of his readiness for the end, as you can see by the veins pulsing up the sides and the whole length twitching with anticipation. You can feel those little spasms through your tongue as it meets his slit, Astarion's chest heaving and fangs glinting as he gives in to the urges to nestle himself back inside. As much as he wants a proper kiss, he'll get one as soon as those frantic hips slow completely instead of picking up speed as he meets your delectable heat again. He could be using you for his pleasure alone for another two hundred years, and in your endless desire to please him you're not sure you'd oppose it–you know for a fact that once the centuries had passed, Astarion would be spending twice as long with his head down between your legs.

"One day, I'll tear that wretch of a vampire's heart out through his stomach," Astarion growls out of nowhere, suddenly sounding completely feral in the span of a moment. The ferocity with which he's fighting the tightness of your throat increases too, thought not much more than he already was–if you touched your neck you would feel the bulge of him sunk so deep he can see it, the rise and fall of that soft flesh tightening the knot in the pit of his belly. "-And we won't ever spend a day apart. I swear."

All you can do is ride with the pace he's offering, your throat cinching tight like a coinpurse the more he rams it with the full strength of his hips, nails digging into your scalp as he batters you rabidly without ever losing his grip. Soon, his query of "Ready, darling?" barely meets your ears, your attempt at not choking on each thrust and somehow sucking in a breath here and there too important for your survival.

And in a matter of moments, you're granted reprieve while also left hollow and empty at the same time, Astarion's fist yanking you back by the hair as he sucks in a huge, deep breath into his lungs. The twist of his other hand stroking himself down to the last few beats comes close to your face, your soft gasps for air the perfect background for your name to trickle out of Astarion's mouth–and with such a deep moan it rattles you through your blood down to your bones, you kneel and wait eagerly as your partner lets everything go for you. His balls tighten and squeeze as the pressure of that knot inside him snaps, and he watches with a devoted gleam in his eyes as you wear every rope of pearly cum he milks out for you in that orgasm that shakes him to the core.

"Look at that," He murmurs, voice nearly as wrecked and raspy as yours will be by tomorrow. "Painted like a canvas fit for the gods. Gorgeous."

If he could, he would save this image of you in a frame forever; your sweet, smiling face marred with the essence of him, your hair pulled back by his sweaty fingers but your eyes filled with so much love. Love, genuine and sincere, your giggles loopy and tired as you come down from the high, yet without any post-sex remorse that he fears each and every time you climb into his bed with him. It stays the same when he cleans you off and persists even once you kiss him, knees so wobbly you fall back into the sheets with the slightest push. You won't ever let him free, kiss after kiss pressed to his cold mouth as he climbs over you. Your ankles hook over his waist before he knows it, your smile desperate to be wiped off your face again once he chases that heat for the second, third, fourth, fifth, tenth time, until the sun rises and you're reminded of the downsides of entertaining a lover who never needs rest.

You might tell him you love him again when morning comes, despite the exhaustion tugging down your eyelids and the sweat pouring down your aching back. You probably will, knowing how naive and sincere you tend to be even when you shouldn't. Even so, this time…Astarion might not be able to pretend he doesn't feel exactly the same way.

#astarion #astarion x reader #baldur's gate 3 #ellie writes #anons #3k

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