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miller-lookforthe-lite · 4 months

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steps: part one

joel miller x f!reader

rating: M

words: 6.6k

summary: Westward bound, and your steps are uncertain. Your hands shake, and it's hard to keep the food down. Joel thinks he might know why. (or, how accidents sometimes lead us to our fates.)

tags/warnings: unplanned/(unwanted?) pregnancy, thoughts and discussion of abortion, vomit, canon-typical violence, nightmares, hurt/comfort (u already know what it issss) - please heed the warnings, as these may be triggering to some! MDNI

read on ao3

a/n: here she is boys here she is world. My first TLOU and my first x reader, all in one. this one means something to me, hope it does to you too. part two coming soon

The road is twisting around a bend when you make Joel pull over. He eases as gently as he can off the asphalt, the dense, looming forest closing in around you in the twilight. You swing open the door and barely stick your boot in the grass before you’re emptying the contents of your stomach into the ditch. The skin of your throat burns and your nose reeks, the scent of it is everywhere. Hands on your knees, you heave until nothing is left. You wipe off your mouth with the back of your hand and catch a glimpse of an eagle high above in glowing sunset, what’s left of it to see anyway. You put your hands on your hips, give yourself a second to breathe. In and out, in and out before you have to look at the crease between Joel’s eyebrows, the question hidden under his tongue.

You turn back around and pull yourself up into the beat-up black pickup. Ellie’s faint snores from the backseat almost impress you, her ability to sleep through a loud bodily function steadfastly enduring throughout your journey. A light breeze trickles its way over your spine before you can shut the door and your hair stands on end. You reach for the seatbelt and chance a glance at Joel. He’s making no move to shift back into drive. He frowns at you with that question in his gaze, his wondering brown eyes flicking between your own like he might be about to crack open his dry lips and ask, but he’s snapped out of his reverie by a gunshot off in the woods. He wastes no time, throwing the truck back into gear and pushing onward down the road, resting his hand on your denim-clad, gooseflesh thigh.

Your destination is Wyoming, some Western mountain-filled land that you’d never seen, but had come to know well through old faded maps and silent wishes in your companions’ eyes. Weeks ago, before everything had happened, before Ellie, before losing Tess, Joel had confided in you in a rare moment of quiet that he had always wanted to visit. “The Grand Tetons,” he had muttered darkly. “Thought they might be nice. Guess Tommy did too.” You hope it’s nice. You try hard to tell yourself this, that the beauty of the natural world will make up for its horrors, that there’s something beyond shuffling Infected and the Raider country you currently roam through. You picture a haven in your most secret dreams; maybe a bunker, secluded, serene. Stocked with nonperishables. Perfect for weathering a wretched existence.

Sometimes you convince yourself the truck was a bad idea. It’s loud and gasoline isn’t always so easy to come by, but you’re still too far away. Several weeks skirting broken and ancient infrastructure, and you’ve made it west but not to the West, not the mountains, not the cold like you know must be coming. It’s still too warm, the trees are too deciduous. You have the ridiculous impulse to fan yourself.

You lean your head back against the seat to let your fantasies play out behind your eyelids. There you see Ellie, chattering away with some long-forgotten board game under her arm and plenty of food in her belly. Joel, shaking his head but with eyes glistening joyfully. You, not having to pretend that you aren’t terrified, not running, not pleading, not shaking. Not sick.

A gunshot strikes through the air not far away, pulling you from your daydream. You glance over at Joel, but his eyes stay firmly on the road and his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel.

“Are they close?” Ellie whispers from the backseat, and you start, not even realizing she had stirred. You shoot her your most half-hearted smile and reach your hand back. She threads her fingers through yours absentmindedly.

“We’re okay. We got plenty of gas left. We’ll be out of here before they can even shoot again.”

Ellie’s eyes are wide, she wants so desperately to believe you, and you want so desperately for her to believe. To give her this, one breath of relief.

“Okay,” she murmurs, not releasing your fingers until the night has shifted once again to day.

“Come on!” laughs your brother, egging you on from his perch across the rooftops. He and your younger sister are soaked through, having already braved the icy downpour, the leap across buildings. You laugh along with him until you shift your gaze to where he’s looking. The other crumbling rooftop is empty. Your sister’s not there.

“Brandon, what…?” When you turn your head to look at him, he is gone.

You blink, and you’re in his fancy new office in the FEDRA headquarters. He’s older, just been promoted to some kind of private. He’s ruffling your hair and you’re mad, you know you were trying to say something important, something that would help him, and he’s brushing you off again. “Fuck off, asshole!” You can see the force of your words hammer through the air as you say them. The blast blows Brandon off his feet and he hits the wall, his head snapping to the side. He hits the floor with a thump and lays there without moving.

You open your mouth to shout but your sister’s face is in front of you. You’re in a back alley in Boston, it’s cold, so cold, and you’re so worried. “What did I tell you?” You know to say, grabbing her shoulders and shaking a bit.

“This is the right thing. This is right,” she insists, and your heart sinks.

“This is stupid,” you hiss. “They’ll kill you, Katie. FEDRA will kill you. Whatever war Marlene thinks she’s fighting - it’s not yours to fight - it’s not yours to die for —”

A harsh laugh splits from her throat, and you’re shocked to hear such bitterness pour from the mouth of the little girl you helped to raise. “What the fuck else am I supposed to do? I’ll die anyways, it should be for something, it should be —”

She was too loud. She raised her voice too much. She gave away your position. A shot rings out and the heavy weight of your sister collapsing knocks you to the ground.

You’re lying on the ground with Brandon. Dust chokes the air. Something heavy lies across your legs. You push as hard as you can, but it doesn’t budge. You grunt with the effort, but the thick air fills your lungs and you gag. You blink soot out of your eyes and turn your head to Brandon. He’s so still. Whatever’s lying on your legs is almost completely covering him. A trickle of red spills from down the corner of his mouth. Your lungs are filled with ash, dust, panic, terror. You try to say his name, but your lips can’t move. Brandon, your baby brother. Brandon. Just as you hear the big metal object creak, shifting for the first time, the air clears.

You’re standing in a dark hallway, dilapidated wallpaper peeling into its yellow crest all around you. Sobs and groans echo throughout the dim, and your feet carry you to the doorway. A make-shift hospital bed, a woman lying in it. You creep forward to see her face, to see your mother without her breath and her blood standing still. You reach for her, at the same time scurrying away, as far away as you can get.

You jolt awake with a scream, deep and entrenching. There’s a hard, calloused hand over your mouth in an instant, and you vaguely register that Joel is hissing at you to stay quiet, but you can’t control the wracking of your body, the panic coursing through your veins. You come back to yourself slowly, realizing there’s no blood on your hands, just Joel’s arms around you, just a thrashing heartbeat that threatens to beat you to a pulp. You’re pressed up against his chest in the bed of the truck, Ellie on your other side whispering frantically at you to calm down. It’s still dark out, but you can hear machine gun fire in the distance. You twist your head to look at him, reach out your hand to touch him, need to make sure he won’t disappear too. He’s real and solid, and his eyes glitter with apology in the moonlight. Ellie presses into your other side, arms coming around you in her sweet child’s embrace, and you’re ashamed that she’s had to witness your despair, that she is the one who shoulders your burden. Joel takes his hand off your mouth when he’s sure you won’t make any more sound, but holds you closer still, like he knows what you dreamed and is afraid of the same thing.

You met Joel for the first time when he was asking for directions. A weathered, haunted look in his eye, like he’d rather be doing anything other than asking the girl distributing rations which way around the construction detour to the South End, but a Boston native like yourself couldn’t resist the urge to demonstrate your own knowledge. That’s how you unknowingly wound up leading him straight to Robert’s new basecamp setup, an itch creeping up your spine once you realized what his intentions were. Stupid, you had thought, stupid to think nothing bad could happen in broad daylight, that he was beautiful so he was safe. So stupid.

It was there, when one of Robert’s fucking goons tried to rob the two of you at gunpoint, that Joel realized you had extra rations in your bag, rations that you had stolen from the distribution center — “They’re for my sister,” you protested —and that you had something more to offer him than just the best way to Richmond Street.

You set up a deal of sorts, after he had wiped his hands of your assailant’s blood. You stashed two extra cans per shift in your pack, and brought them to him. In exchange, he kept the gnashing teeth of the city’s smugglers’ off of Brandon’s back, offering your little brother a protection that his FEDRA school never could.

It was through this deal that you met Tess, that you had loved her, too — She took care of things in a way you had always wished you could, but without fucking up, like you did. She was calm, and powerful, and knew she was right, always. Joel looked up to her, too, even if he was too hurt to ever show it.

When she had asked you to come on a special run outside the walls, you were hesitant — several years into your partnership with the smugglers, and you’d only ever been outside of Boston once, to make a drop in Lincoln and get to meet that charming Frank that you’d heard grinning over the radio so many times. It was important, she insisted, a cargo like nothing they’d ever transported. A kid. You said yes, mostly because by this time you didn’t have anyone left to take care of, not the way you longed for, the way you knew how to.

You loved Ellie from the start, loved her spirit, her bite, so much like Katie in her fierce determination, and the ache of remembering didn’t hurt so much as Ellie’s grin helped. You guided her down the road like you knew you were meant to do - to give, to lead, to provide. Tess was more hesitant, but would always answer to Ellie’s curiosity, and always with kindness underneath her brusk.

Joel, of course, didn’t say much. Even after years of handing him can after can of crushed tomatoes, of deliberately brushing up against his fingers just to feel that shock of cool air when he pulled back, he didn’t even say much to you. You knew some things; you knew that he was from Texas, that he had had a brother who used to work with him and Tess, but who left. Who called once but didn’t any more.

You wound up knowing more about Ellie than Joel, strange given the amount of time you had passed with each of them, so much more with Joel, but so much fuller with Ellie. Her secret, her golden Immunity hung its mantle like an axe above each of your throats. It made Joel angry - it made Tess hope. It just made you wonder.

When Tess died, lighting her own pyre to ensure your safety, and Ellie’s and Joel’s, you felt even stronger the pull to shield your traveling companions. Tess was another mark against you, and you wouldn’t let her, or whoever was watching you fuck all these things up, see you fail again. So you tucked Ellie delicately under your wing, and she came willingly, so desperate to be talked to and known. You tried with Joel, too, but your urges competed. He wanted to protect, you wanted to control — you exchanged heated words at the hardest of times, but the journey didn’t stop for your obstinance, so they faded away as the Eastern coastal plains rolled behind you.

—

The End of the World chases you so all you have left to chase is euphoria. It’s some desperation to feel wanted, you know, and you’re sure that he’s just desperate to feel anything at all. That’s how this thing between you started, sparked from argument tinder and nurtured by lonely swollen nightfall.

After all this time, you know he cares about you. You know. He loves you. It’s clear in the way he’ll step in front of you when he perceives a threat, how he always makes sure you and Ellie have taken your first bite before he takes his. He loves the way a leader loves, by leading.

But he doesn’t love you like you loved him, not like when you led him down a Boston street like you knew the world, like when he pushed a bullet from its path to you on that first day, and every second and shattered heartbeat in between.

So you chase this parallel sensation as hard as you can. You chase his fingers, his tongue, his quiet exhales behind trees and in the dark, across a clearing, behind the truck. You try to pretend, however long it takes to find release, that somewhere beneath his rough and his scorn he could feel something for you.

—

Joel pops open a bag of stale, questionable chips and the smell explodes throughout the cab of the truck. He fishes out a few with fingers long and thick and the holds the rest of the bag over to you, but you can’t bring yourself to look at it. You turn your face away and put your hand over your mouth. You think you might vomit again, but Joel’s furrowed brow, his telltale sign of anxiety, appears unbidden in your mind. Nothing’s wrong, really, nothing is, so you hold it in.

You hear him give the bag a little shake. “Hello? Are you gonna take some?”

You manage to look back over at him, but can’t open your mouth lest the scent hits your taste buds. You shake your head mutely.

He frowns. “You have to eat something.”

“Not now,” You wave away, like your insides aren’t churning.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Ellie declares, swooping in to snatch the bag and chomping loudly on her prize.

—

“What is that? Over there?” Ellie sticks her head between the two of you in the front to point over the front dash. There’s a strange movement in the trees, a foreign shape marring the landscape. As you get closer, it comes into view. Two figures sway back and forth amongst the trees.

“Drive,” you breathe. “Keep going.”

“What is it?” Ellie demands, a current of panic running thick through her voice. “What’s—”

“Stop,” Joel says harshly. “Ellie, don’t look.” He presses his foot firmly to the peddle, but he can’t drive anywhere but past them. Bile rises in your throat. You hear him swear softly when the girl clearly refuses, but you can’t make yourself look away, either.

The image burns into your mind long after you’ve passed them, and you’ve crossed state lines, and the sun has set. Two bodies, suspended from rope tied round their necks. One is a young girl, small body, youthful cheeks, hanging dead from a tree. The body next to her is her older carbon copy, it must be her mother. They dangle in the wind.

Ellie finds her voice, however hoarse, sometime later. “We should have stopped.”

Joel grunts. “No time.”

Your mouth is dry. You say nothing.

Ellie sniffs in the backseat, and you can’t help but feel that it’s another mark against you.

You’re so fucking tired of this shit. Every day’s the same, you wake up and think you’re gonna hurl. You smell anything other than clean air and feel the same. You almost can’t remember what it feels like to be not-nauseous, to be free in your body and have it do the things you want it to do.

You just want to feel something good, anything ever again, so you push Joel down in the backseat early one morning while Ellie still sleeps outside and cover his mouth with yours. He don't complain, seemingly content to lie back against the ripped plastic seats and massage the skin at your hips with his thumbs. You sigh into him, convince yourself that this is what it felt like before your body betrayed you, before you couldn’t move without the urge to empty your stomach. His tongue moves with yours, against yours, for yours - you don't know. You push your hips down against him, more for yourself, the rough denim of your jeans pressing wickedly between your legs. He drags a rough hand up under your shirt and tugs aside your flimsy bra, squeezing your breast in his hand.

A sore, tugging pain radiates from where his hand squeezes, and you moan into his mouth. He brings his other hand up and squeezes both of your breasts, harder, rolling the tips between his fingers, and you think you might burst. They feel heavier hanging off of you than they ought to, more burdensome than you recall. The pain builds and builds with your panic as he continues to knead - if you tells him it hurts, he’ll stop. You need him not to stop.

You grab his shoulders to pull him up into a sitting position and untangle yourself from him to turn around. You shuck off your jeans as best as you can in the cramped cabin.

You brace yourself against the window, the dawn light just beginning to filter through the trees. His hand slips down to hold you, wet and wanting, and his teeth scrape the top of your spine. “Good?” He asks, like he somehow always does. You want to say no, not good, so bad, but you’re all that’ll make it better, you’re it, I don’t know what’s wrong, but you’re right, please don’t stop —

You don't trust yourself to look back at him. “Yes,” you breathe.

He lines up with you, sweetly mouthing at the strip of skin your neckline exposes. You try to pretend the pain in your chest is gone when he slides into you from behind. This is how he likes to do it — no faces, as many clothes as possible, as few words. He’ll check that you’re okay, and then silently rush to his finish, blessedly pushing you over the end with him. For once, today, you’re grateful for his preference. This way he can’t see the tears you furiously swipe away.

—

You come across a small market store not far from the Missouri border. It doesn’t take long to scope the area out. There aren’t any people, just like there isn’t much food. Some gum and pre-packaged cakes that make Ellie scrunch her nose in distaste are on a bottom shelf in the back, so you throw them in the bag. It’s not much, but you’ve only got crackers and a few cans left in the truck. You’re not so much able to refuse anything. The thought of eating the cakes sends your stomach for a spiral, and you squeeze your eyes shut for a moment. Not here. Not now.

Ellie notices, of course. “Woah… are you okay?”

You force your eyes open and give her a tight-lipped smile. “Yeah. Just dizzy. Let’s get going.”

Right as you’re about to leave, another truck screeches out of the trees and into the parking lot. The headlights shine through the glass door straight into your eyes. Joel sucks in a breath. The truck pulls to a stop not far from yours and four men get out, all covering their faces, one with a machine gun pointed towards the sky.

“Fuck,” you whisper, Joel grabbing your arm and whisking you to the back before you finish speaking. Ellie’s already crouched down behind an empty shelf, her lips set in grim determination but her grip on her pack shaking.

Joel taps you to get your attention, jerking his head towards a back door. He moves slowly, gesturing for you and Ellie to follow. The shift of his jeans and the crack of his knees make your heart beat even faster. The bell above the door rings and heavy footsteps follow into the space. The three of you freeze, and through the gaps in the metal shelving, you see them.

Tall, brutish. All four armed, and deadly. Their neanderthal brays pierce your eardrums.

“Who’s here?” Calls one while the others cackle and titter. Right, the truck. They would have seen it.

“Come out, come out…” One of them jokes, knocking over a display by the door with unnecessary grandiose.

Ellie clutches onto your sleeve, her wide eyes begging you for an answer. Joel’s the one that gives it to her. He points at you and Ellie, then down at the ground. You stay. He points to himself as he pulls his rifle around his front, then over to where the mean are kicking around the front counter. I go. He locks eyes with you and nods his head to Ellie, then the back door. Get her out of here.

You nod, a calm determination washing over you, dampening your racing heart. You grasp Ellie’s hand in your own and count silently in your head as he sneaks towards the Raiders on bended knee, though you’re not sure what for. He starts to lift his gun, your signal to pounce on the back door, when suddenly a tidal wave of nausea pours over you, dousing you from head to toe, swirling your insides and turning the room upside down. You don’t stand when you’re supposed to, not when there’s shouting and gunshots and Ellie yelling and tugging you towards the exit. It’s hard to see, it’s hard to breathe. All you can feel is the acid rising to your lips.

The three of you barely make it out alive.

He slams his foot on the gas petal and the tires screech as you careen out of the parking lot. You stay turned around watching the world disappear behind you, ignoring Ellie’s eyes that bounce between your face and the trail of dust you leave behind. You fly down the road, faster than he’s dared to go before. After several miles, you let yourself collapse back into your seat, facing the front. You let out a breath, trying to focus on a single point on the dashboard in front of you, trying to quell the dizziness, this sensation that the world is spinning off of its axis.

“I don’t think they’re following us,” Ellie supplies. She’s quiet for a minute, then adds, “they won’t, right?”

Joel don't reply. You chance a glance over at him to find him fuming, his jaw locked in place and his eyes glued to the road. His arms bulge like they do when he’s tensed up and not even realized it. His grip on the steering wheel threatens to snap the plastic.

His ire fans the flames of your own. Something wild in you pushes you forward, nudges you to ruffle the lion’s mane, some alien urge that you’ve no name for. “Think we’ve got bigger fish to fry in the car with us,” you mutter.

You can hear his jaw pop. “Oh, like a delinquent that can’t stand on her own two feet?” You flinch like you’ve been stung. You want to sting him, too. “What, you’re just gonna pass out every time we’re in a life-or-death situation?”

“I didn’t pass out,” you snap. “I just got dizzy. It wasn’t a big deal, you asshole.”

“Until it was,” he seethes, still careening down the road. “Until you had to run, with her, and you couldn’t fuckin’ see straight. You didn’t think to say something beforehand?”

“What would you have done differently, then?” You hiss, suddenly overwhelmed, not ready to be on guard again so soon. He’s saying things that make sense. You’re losing. Again. “Asked them nicely to leave us alone?”

“Might’a left you in the truck, might’a had a different plan if I knew the person I was relying on was gonna choke, fucking Christ —”

Your heart clenches at the word rely so you scoff to hide it. “Fuck off.” What if he hadn’t been able to take them down, to get you all out of there? What if you had cost Ellie her life? You’re raising your voice and you know that won’t help anything, but your vision is still swimming and adrenaline is still coursing through you and you don't know what else to do with that combination.

“I will not!” Joel’s shouting, and you start. He’s never shouted at you, not once, not even on that first trip to Lincoln when you almost got caught sneaking back into the QZ, not even when you survived and Tess didn’t, not even when you made him give himself to you over and over. His foot is letting up off the gas petal and the truck slows down, like he knows if he puts his foot down the way he wants he won’t be able to stop and he’ll drive you all off the edge of the world. “You got sick a few weeks back, too. What, you got bit or somethin’ too? Think I’m worth tellin’ about an aneurysm, a heart attack—”

“It’s only sometimes,” You snap, shaking with rage or sickness, you don't know. “I’ll be fine in thirty fucking minutes. It keeps happening.”

His foot is on the brake, a sudden screech against the road as the truck skids to a stop. You jerk back in your seat. “What the fuck, Joel?” Ellie exclaims.

“What are you doing?” You hiss. “We need to get further away—"

He stares straight ahead at the road, chest heaving, face impassible. “How long?” He breathes.

You glares. “How long what?”

“How long has it been goin’ on?”

“I don’t fucking know, Joel, a couple weeks? I—”

He doesn’t listen to the rest of your sentence. He’s out of the truck, slamming the door behind him before you can blink.

You glance back at Ellie, who looks deeply uncomfortable, and sigh. “Gimme a second.”

You unbuckle and follow him outside, a few yards into the treeline, urging your shaky legs onward. “Joel, get back in the fucking truck, this is insane —”

“You won’t eat.” His interruption is pained as he stops in his tracks, face pointedly looking out at the trees, not at you, not at you. “You’re not eatin’. And there’s the nausea, then soreness, dizziness -"

“What’s your fucking point?”

He takes a moment to respond, jaw working itself to bits. When he finally turns to look at you, you realize his expression isn’t as stoic as you thought. “When did you have your last period?”

Your heart stops beating in your chest. You sneer to hide it.

“Girls who don’t eat don’t get their period, dumbass-”

“When?” He demands.

Your veins are full of icy frost, not blood, blood would move and cycle and make you feel alive, this just makes you feel still, frozen, gone. You close your eyes. “I - I don’t - I don’t know. I don’t know. But it hasn’t come, for a while. It hasn’t come.”

After a moment of silence you hear the sound of Joel moving back to the truck, closing his door more gently behind him this time. You don’t remember your ghost feet floating back to your side, not wanting to find out what would happen if you kept him waiting too long. Your fingers shake as you buckle back in. Ellie, for maybe the first time since you’ve met her, doesn’t say a word. The world begins to move forward again. You grip the door next to you so tightly you think your fingers might fall off. You don’t remember falling asleep like that, but when you do it’s a sweet, welcome relief.

—

When you wake up, it’s dark out, but the road outside is wider than you expected it to be, having stayed mostly on backroads and service paths. The only light comes from the truck’s headlights and the moon shining up above.

“Where are we?” You murmur, stretching out the aching muscles of your back. Ellie seems to have joined you in slumber, slumped awkwardly against the door behind you.

Joel’s hand slides over the top of the steering wheel. “Nearby Kansas City,” he offers.

You become more clearly awake at this. “The QZ? Why do you wanna head so close to it?”

He rubs the steering wheel again, drawing from it some kind of power to speak. “Figure we stash the truck somewhere, enroll at the gate as refugees. Get what we need, get out.”

“What we need?” You’re still confused.

“A doctor,” he says. “It’s nearby and you need a doctor. So.”

You’re at a loss. You can’t keep up with the implications, with the unspoken, terrifying truth of the question he’s asking you, he’s been asking you. You open your mouth, but the sounds are weak to your own ears. “But — it’ll take too — Wyoming, we have to — and Ellie — and Tommy —”

“We’ll get to Wyoming,” he promises. “First we check on you.”

Something bubbles up in your chest and you shift in your seat, too afraid to ask but too afraid to not know. “Are you angry?” You venture, keeping your eyes on what little of the road you can see in front of you.

You can see him puff air through his lips from the corner of your vision. “I do generally like to know about things before they became an immediate issue, so next time —”

“No,” You say too quickly, and he stops, looking over at you. “I mean, were you mad about - you know, if I am” — you choke on your own spit, can’t bring yourself to say the word — “If I am, are you angry with me?”

Your voice sounds too small to your own ears, this isn’t the You you know, but you don't remember how to be that girl anyways, don't remember how to survive without him. If he’s not with you, and if what he thinks is happening is happening, this could be it for you, this could be his final straw, too much baggage, not giving enough, not —

“You, what? Listen, no, I don’t —” He takes his foot off the gas. The truck slowly but surely rolls to a stop, so starkly contrasting the abruptness of its earlier halt. He shifts the car to park, not even bothering to pull off the road like he usually does when you stop for the night. You can feel him looking at you but you can’t bring yourself to look back.

You sit like that in the quiet for a minute before he speaks. “I’m afraid,” he confesses to you like he worries the night sky will hear his secret. “I’m afraid and I’m sorry that I made you think I was angry. I’m not angry. You ain’t done nothin’ wrong. You understand? Nothin’."

You don't realize you’ve begun to cry until his arms are reaching over the center console to pull you into his lap. A mess of limbs and you find yourself between his solid frame and the steering wheel, his arms holding you like they do when you sleep, but this feels different, this feels tighter, this feels dangerously close to touching the reason you shake, the reason you burrow yourself into him at night.

“We’ll be alright,” he promises so fiercely it startles your eyes dry. “You’ll be alright. I promise.”

It’s late at night in the QZ a few years earlier, dim street light beaming through the dusty window. You sit with your back against the rotting drywall, Joel with his against the couch. You’re waiting for Tess to get back with a drop from a new partner, something she said felt “promising,” but that she wanted to handle with caution. The two of you would always listen to her, so you’ve stayed behind, but you’ll also always worry for her, so you stay awake into the early hours of the morning just to see the promise of her wellbeing slip through the doorway.

You’re picking at your fingernails, something Katie would always turn her nose up at you for, “makes ‘em look ugly,’ she’d say, but everything’s ugly here so you might as well match. Katie’s on your mind just as much as Tess - she’s been gone from your shared residence more often since Brandon died, you think she can’t stand to see the hallways you once all ran through together as children. You worry for her, too. Her great love for a woman named Marlene and ceaseless ardor for Marlene’s cause put her in more danger everyday. She’d do anything for the Fireflies, plant any bomb. Maybe even the one the killed Brandon. Neither of you are sure, and you definitely never talk about it.

“Will you quit?” Joel’s gruff voice startles you out of your spiraling reverie, and you realize blood has started to seep from around some of your cuticles. “Fuckin’ — fidgeting’s makin’ me nervous.”

“Sorry,” you say, not really meaning it but feeling sheepish nonetheless. Joel intimidates you; he’s quiet, and strong, and definitely beautiful, and maybe knows something about life, maybe too much about life, maybe that’s why he’s so dour all the time. However, sitting here on the floor, waiting for your shared comrade’s return, you feel emboldened or delirious from the witching hour. You open your mouth before you can stop yourself.

“Didn’t know you got nervous.”

He scoffs abruptly, a sound you might almost have called a laugh in another life, and runs his fingers over his mouth absentmindedly. The streetlamp glow slants across his cheekbones just so, and in this dilapidated, peeling living room, he looks almost otherworldly. “‘M always nervous.”

He doesn’t say anything more, settling back into his friend The Silence, and you don’t believe him. He doesn’t look nervous, doesn’t pluck at his own feathers like you or move to fill the time.

“About Tess?” You venture, high off of his conversation, elated at his breath expelled in your direction. It feels like something, it feels like anything, and you’ve been dying - Katie’s never around anymore, the other girls at the food bank are even more dried up and sullen than you, and Tess, beautiful Tess with her clever wit and grounding roots isn’t here - you need more.

Joel casts you a sidelong glance. You suddenly wonder if you remembered to run your fingers through your hair this morning. It surely looks a mess. You go back to picking at your nails. The blood feels warm and soothing. “Yeah,” he acquiesces, eyebrows raising slightly. “But she can handle herself.”

Your heart races. “I know! I didn’t mean to say she couldn’t. I just —”

He holds up a hand to quell your ramble, and you crumble to his command. “I know. We still worry.”

You exhale long, arduous. “Yeah,” you agree softly.

He taps his finger on his knees, joins you in your fidgeting realm, his feathers pluck, his callous peels. “Don’t you got someone waitin’ for you?” He says suddenly, and you know he knows these things about you, but it’s a shock to hear him acknowledge it.

“My sister. And no. She doesn’t come home much these days. ‘Sides, I’d rather be here anyways.”

He narrows his eyes at you. “What’s she doin’ away at this hour? Isn’t she younger?”

The hair on the back of your neck stands up, and for a moment, your hackles raise. “She’s a grown woman. That’s her business, not mine.” As if it’s your fault that she’s joined up with a vigilante guerilla. As if it’s your fault that you don’t know where she sleeps these days, or if she gets enough to eat besides the times she comes to pick up the extra cans you still steal her. She is younger than you, he’s right, and you tried to provide, tried to take care of her the way your mother had tried to before she passed, before the outbreak, even. You were only 8 when the world ended, and your mother had died just a few years later. The only thing that had kept you and Katie out of military school was the older woman across the way who lied and said she was watchin’ over you. It hadn’t worked for Brandon, though. He was too young for anyone to care for, and was rocked right into the deadly cradle of FEDRA.

Joel pauses for a second, quietly contemplative, before nodding. “Suppose you’re right.”

Your breath drops back down into your stomach. If there’s anything you and Joel Miller would ever shake on, it would be leaving others to mind their own.

You wonder what his life must have been like before. What sorrow left him this way, bewildered and cold and fortified as the QZ itself.

“When did Tess say she was getting back again?” You say to fill the space, to fan the coals of a conversation long dwindled.

“Said she wasn’t sure.” He’s annoyed, you can tell. “Said it could take the whole night, or longer. Were you even listenin’?”

You purse your lips, and the apology slips from you without your own permission. A longing to stand your ground far outrun by the desperation for his voice, for his grave countenance continued. “Sorry. I don’t remember things like I’m supposed to.”

Your voice catches in your throat at the last few words, and you have to look away from him, have to blink a little faster than perhaps is natural. You’re not just talking about Tess’s debrief, you know.

You don’t expect it when he replies. “I remember it all.” A quiet confession to the night draft through the pane, shaking the dust on the counter. You look back to him, eyes wide, and his tongue peeks out to wet his cracked lips. It’s like he knows, he knows what you meant, and he can see right through you and this flimsy excuse for skin you wear, this flimsy excuse of a girl you are. He sees you, and you feel like the recipient of a crown jewel, a treasure held close to your heart for this little bit of him that he’s allowed through, this morsel of self that’s scrapped so haggardly to his surface.

His eyes lock with yours, his face set suddenly with a grim determination. “Listen, she’ll be alright. We all will. I mean it.”

You nod, his earnestness permeating your jellyfish shroud, spineless, maybe he could prop you up. Maybe he’s doing it now. You turn back to your nail beds to shred until the early morning sun brings Tess home with it.

#joel miller x reader #joel x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #joel miller fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfictioin #joel miller #joel x f!reader #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #tlou fic #tlou fanfic #tlou

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beautifulmars · 9 months

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HiPOD 20 Jul 2023: Channel within a Valley in Northern Arabia Terra

This channel is located within a large valley in the Northern Arabia Terra region of Mars. The channel is several thousand kilometers long and continues westward where it terminates in a depression on the surface.

The valley containing this channel measures 1.5 km across, while the channel itself spans just 200 m. Several rock layers are visible along the channel walls, and dunes fill the channel floor. The channel cuts back and forth across the valley floor, which suggests surface water was present in the valley over long time periods.

ID: ESP_079084_2170 date: 10 June 2023 altitude: 296 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

#mars #nasa #science #geology #landscape #astronomy #space

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wanderingnewyork · 1 month

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Looking westward from the Marcy Avenue Station on the J/Z and M lines, #Brooklyn.

#nyc #newyorkcity #brooklyn #Marcy Avenue Station #Broadway Brooklyn line #new york city subways #elevated subways

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deadboyfriendd · 2 months

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In My Hand

This belongs to the Wild Horses universe, a culmination of blurbs between Eddie and Desert Artist!Reader. Based off of the Gutterballs fic by @dr-aculaaa , based in her Sunday Morning universe!

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady

Seamstress for the band

Pretty-eyed, pirate smile

You'll marry a music man

Ballerina, you must've seen her

Dancing in the sand

And now she's in me, always with me

Tiny dancer in my hand

The thing they don’t mention when you hit Interstate 10 heading westward through Tucson is: there is a vast expanse of nothingness you have to clear first. It is mind-numbing. It is beige. It is open for miles and Eddie fears it may all be a mirage– or that he will drive into a painted-on hole in the side of a mountain and flatten himself.

No one warned him about the low desert, the beige-ness is all of his utter disdain for it. He pictured red-rocked Sedona, some girl in a flat-bed pickup waiting for him with tanned skin and a backless top. Not this. Mid-february it it was already warm. He thought he could see the mirage warp on the horizon, even when it was broken by the beginnings of buildings coming into his foresight. It is late after-noon by now, sun burning hot and angry but not yet pushed towards that precipice of cooling. He felt it begin to warm his neck past comfort where the black shirt lay across the flat of his back.

This bar was a dive, for sure. Not unlike his home bar. Reclaimed wood that was probably old fifteen years ago and waxy bar tops that stayed sticky despite the mildewy wetness of the rag that was being passed over it. The bartender was a gruff-looking man, whom Eddie assumed knew how to make two variants of drinks– pulling capped lids off of bottles, or straight liquor, over ice if you were lucky. Eddie took the former, settling himself over a barstool, his guitar in case resting against his knee.

“No open mic night here, ‘m afraid.”

“You know of anyone looking?” He’d asked, solemnly hoping for some semblance of tips to get him to the next town.

“Backtrack the frontage a few miles, you’ll turn back on to a county road that takes you out towards Texas Hill. You’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em. They’re about your type,” He’d said back, taking one last look at him up and down.

He placed a few dollars on the bar top, telling him to keep the change as he headed out.

By now, the sun leaked saturated hues into a nitrate sky. Just as the bartender had said, frontage road, county opening, and right out in the middle of the desert lay a congregation of vans, campers, and RV’S. Desert Hills. He’d said in his mind, smugly. A smattering of old, second-hand cars and the marring of people to match. The irony of this all had been incredible. A bus, painted green, was parked sideways across the front of the congregation, a drop-cloth, hand-painted sign reading, “Howl at the Moon”.

A parable of lepers-by-day, though, by night they would peel back the sore to reveal fresh skin and a strong voice. Here, the day started when the sun went down. There is a fire in the center burning hot with blue flame at the nucleus. A sun in which you orbit as a celestial body.

You are dancing around the fire a liquid dance with no rhyme or reason. It’s fluid in motion and like ribbon in deliverance. You are brilliant, a mass of curls that sway, not as many strands, but a brilliant unit, breaking off into parts that fall over your shoulders and back again. Draped in patched together masses and adorned in turquoise– barefoot in the dune of soft sand with no fear or reverence in what hides beneath.

“What’re you gonna do with that guitar, Mister? Ya gonna be a rockstar?” You ask, all pretty eyes with lashes that kiss at the corners.

He nods, smiling as you take his hand to pull him towards the mass. “That’s the plan.”

“You can be anything you want here.”

The moon peeks out over the east mountain and you howl in punctuation. It’s a wild and unruly thing, almost like you. It pierces his ears and fills him with warmth. Something stirs in his stomach. Like champagne. You deliver a few light-hearted slaps to his chest in the midst of his, encouraging a loud, crackling howl that bellows from deep within him. It fizzles out in laughter.

Something about the pitch of your laugh and the dusting of stars across a gradient purple sky makes something move in slow motion and, somehow, it makes him wonder how soft your hair must be at the roots.

“Well maybe you can play that guitar for me sometime. We’ll make you into a real rockstar.” You tell him, gesturing to the guitar propped against a hay bale. Across the front reads: This Machine Slays Dragons in a hand-lettered font.

It feels stupid to try to shake your hand, he realizes this after he offers it. You take it anyways, “My name’s Eddie, by the way.”

“Well, Eddie.” You pull your culmination of silver squash blossoms from your neck, chiming a lovely song as they move to rest around his neck, “I knight thee. This land is your land.”

You smile at him, all teeth. “Hope we don’t have any dragons come around.”

“Or fascists.” he shrugged

“Or fascist dragons.”

“Then we would really have a problem.”

#eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things s4 #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson oneshot #eddie stranger things #eddie munson headcanons #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x reader

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marthawrites · 1 year

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A Gift for the Queen

Daemon Targaryen x Rhaenyra Targaryen x fem reader

word count: 2.8k+

About: It’s Rhaenyra’s birthday eve and Daemon surprises her with an unexpected gift.

Includes: f/f and m/f/f content. explicit sexual material. Daemon is kind of an asshole okay I don’t make the rules

Note: hello reader! this is my first time writing a 3-way and it was fun! I hope you have fun reading it too! huge shoutout to all the content creators and writers on this platform because you’ve all honestly been the ones to inspire me to jump on HoTD fic ships ♥

"Alright, now what is it you've been so excited to show me?" Rhaenyra asked coyly, one side of her mouth curling into a little grin.

"Your birthday present of course," Daemon exclaimed with brightly mischievous eyes, gently gripping his wife's face so their gazes were level. "I don't mean to brag, but...,"

"...you saying that makes it clear you are bragging, husband," she answered before he could finish, amusement clear on the entirety of her features.

"What I was saying," he paused, briefly rolling his eyes. "I do believe this will be the best gift I've given you. Top three, at least." He seemed in higher spirits tonight and that alone could be considered suspicious. It was the rogue prince, after all. "Sit there on the edge of the bed. Close your eyes. Ah-ah, keep them closed. There...," he drawled the last word. "Stay and don't open. I'll know if you do." Beneath her shielding hands she felt his mouth on hers in a departing kiss.

The door latched closed behind him and silence hung in the room for what seemed like a little too long. She was just about to peek between her fingers when the soft shuffle of footsteps outside the door flexed the fine muscles behind her ears. An odd kind of silence followed, as well as the solid latch and lock of their door.

"Open."

Hands slowly fell from her eyes: the sight that met her sent an equally confused and intrigued flash to alight her shadow-flecked features.

You.

Daemon stood behind you, hands resting atop your shoulders as he presented you to Rhaenyra. You'd be lying if you said your breath didn't start to come a little quicker, pulse beating in your chest a little faster. The Targaryen Queen sat before you clothed in nothing but a finely made sleeping gown; silver hair down and loose in a lovely muss of waves. You smiled. Shy.

"What is this?" she asked arching a delicate brow.

"A kitten," Daemon answered simply, head tilting to inspect your profile. "The prettiest whore in all of Westeros," he added, the backs of his fingers brushing down your cheek and jaw. "A sweet little thing for you to play with, and her you. For your birthday, of course yes, and for me to watch." He lifted his chin and tilted his head deeper, looking between your blushing cheeks and his wife.

"My my, husband, you weren't lying," Rhaenrya cooed as she leaned back on her hands, inspecting you now too. "Now this is a surprise I wasn't excepting. I thought perhaps a bracelet, or earrings, maybe a necklace... but this?" The Targaryen Queen smiled, chest rising with slower, deeper breaths, now.

"She's come with those too." Daemon's hands left your shoulders and reappeared in front of you, dagger flashing in hand. "I made sure of that." Your shoulders tightened, neck and collarbone flexing in unison as the King Consort's dagger flashed orange with reflected light from the fireplace. The whisper of his steel caressed down your chest, your abdomen, curving westward along a thigh as he cut through your nicest silk. You quivered. He finished with a deliberate tear of that silk, the sound ripping through the heavy air. "See?"

Around your waist glinted your favorite jewelry: a thin string of silver. It sparkled in the warm light of the couple's bedchamber. Silver bracelets adorned your wrists and ankles, and you even wore a few on your fingers and toes.

"Your grace," you said with a little curtsey, skin already pebbling with excitement. With your chin tilted down you looked at Rhaenyra through your lashes. This job paid your debts and filled your belly – you weren't new to it – yet you found yourself anxious standing naked and on full display in front of Daemon and Rhaenyra; a night other women might quite literally die for.

"Go on and play. I'll be just here," Daemon said by the shell of your ear, gesturing a thumb over his shoulder to a nearby large and handsomely crafted chair. He gave your ass a good slap and stepped away, smirking tauntingly to his wife.

"I haven't got to play like this in so long," Rhaenyra said smoothly. You held her gaze as you walked forward closing the space between you two in only a few steps.

"Neither have I. Men are so greedy," you replied softly, pouting. "Always men and never ladies. Especially ones so brilliantly fair," you added, carefully straddling over her lap before looking over your shoulder to the now comfortably seated man. “Does he often watch you?” you asked genuinely.

“That--” she replied, fingering over your polished silver belt. “--Is something private and not for you to know,” she finished, tugging you closer by the belt.

“Of course, your grace,” you whispered, arms lifting to gently rest around the tops of her shoulders. Your eyes shuttered closed as you brushed your lips against the other woman's mouth. Warm fingertips traced up and down the fullness of your thighs, coaxing you closer. You slipped your tongue passed Rhaenyra's lips and were welcomed to find her own. Eagerness tightened your core.

“Mmh,” she moaned softly into your mouth, your skin dancing in goosebumps. “You are much softer than my husband,” her hands pressed up your bare belly, fingers splaying wide as she groped upwards to your rounded breasts. She squeezed with gentle pressure, feeling and testing your reaction before pinching the nipple of each to perking attention. “Sometimes I forget just how soft,” she smiled and turned her head to expose the fullness of her bare neck. Inviting.

Behind, Daemon made a low sound at the theatrics; the motion was for him more than it was for you, after all, and even if you didn't catch on he knew it. There was little else in the world he loved more than the slender curve of his wife's pale neck – holding, squeezing, biting, kissing, it was one of the few things that drove him wild with zero effort.

You kissed tiny kisses down the offered skin, tongue trailing here and there as you lowered. She shrugged out of her nightgown and Daemon shifted where he sat, beginning to strip off the layers of his own clothing. Before long you and Rhaenyra were tumbling on the bed together. Limbs tangled, hands rubbed, fingers gripped, mouths ever busy with swelling, blushing skin.

“Sit on her face, my love. Let me watch you ride this harlot's mouth until you come undone atop her,” Daemon said lowly, sultry, speaking in high valyrian for only his wife to understand; chest bare as he began pumping himself through his opened pants.

You hadn’t a clue what he said, only that the sound of it made your already aching core somehow yearn even more. Judging by the spark in Rhaenyra’s eyes it was something she happily approved of.

Rhaenyra smirked and laid you flat on your back. In a couple quick motions she was straddling over your face, leaning back on her hands as she supported herself before your mouth.

Your arms immediately looped around her thighs to brace both of you. Tongue rolled free from your mouth and you lapped upwards. Up and up. You kissed her clit before sliding your tongue across, around, and over it, feeling her already start to grind along with your ministrations. She knew what she wanted and you were more than eager to meet those demands. You alternated between sucking and lapping, sloppy wet noises accenting the growing radiance of her pleasure.

Daemon slowly kicked off his boots and pushed his pants lower upon his hips, dominant hand never leaving the leisurely pumps of his sizeable cock. Watching you please his wife in such a way was delicious torture and he endured it for the sounds she made atop you; blissful and elegant.

“Your Queen is about to cum. Don't touch her. Don't. Fucking. Touch. Her.” Daemon's voice rumbled, a cold threat, watching the way Rhaenyra's body began to move, began to tremble; breath hitched in her flexed throat. He saw your hands want to move before you even physically moved them, his warrior gaze keen of other's movements no matter how subtle. And you? You were just about to grip Rhaenerya's rolling hips as she ground along your mouth – from chin, to lips, to nose, and back down again only to repeat.

You dared not touch her. Not yet. Not until after she reached the peak of her pleasure. She was getting close. You could feel it. She clenched to the wild beating of her heart, clit swollen and throbbing against any part of your face it touched. Below, your own core echoed the Queen's, clenching around air as your hips squirmed in desperation for any type of friction.

Daemon focused on his wife, his gaze intense while his mouth hung half agape. Their bodies were so drawn to each other that the mere sight of approaching orgasm sent his balls tightening. Cock throbbing. Although his own hand couldn't even come close to her tightness, he fucked his hand in memory of her rippling walls. Her heat. Her glistening saturation.

Your obeyed stillness paid off and within the span of a few dizzying seconds, Rhaenyra's thighs quivered around the sides of your head. Her release was sweet and fiery, the dragonblood of a true born Targaryen evident in her very essence.

She gasped through her moans, head tilted back in bliss. An uncontrollable smile plastered itself on her face as she slid down to your chest, bracing herself carefully beneath your breasts. Both her hands grazed over your hair, petting, praising your mouth with breathless delight.

It was then a deep groan sounded from Daemon, eyes rolling closed as his cock throbbed wildly in his grasp. Chest heaved as orgasm claimed him too. Seed spurted up in ropes along his abdomen, hand easing in both pressure and pace, gaze slowly, lazily, lifting back to Rhaenyra

"It looks like my lord husband has a gift for you too, little kitten," Rhaenyra purred as she rolled from atop you, laying on her belly at you side. You were close enough to tilt your head into her, kissing softly and delicately to not overwhelm her tingling skin.

Daemon scoffed where he sat, thighs opening further and relaxing from their previous pleasure induced tightness. "A whore isn't deserving of my seed."

"Not even after she made me make such a mess of her lovely face?" Rhaenyra asked, brow arching.

Despite your work you blushed at the Queen's words. It's not as if you were inexperienced in what you did, but rather you'd never serviced anyone of their status. It intimated you.

"Not even then," he replied with a cocky glare, a predatory glint behind his cool eyes. Somewhere in your head you wondered if this is how a lamb felt right before it was dragged away by a beast. "If she wishes for such a gift she will have to eat it out of your cunt. Where, rightly, it belongs."

You shuddered in anticipation. A fresh wave of desire filled your belly and you saw a new playfulness behind Rhaenyra's gaze too.

"Pay him no mind, little darling," she said softly to you, kissing your jaw and neck, lowering still to press hot open mouthed kisses to the swells of your breasts.

"It should be I doing this to you," you breathed, shuddering and arching up into her, watching as she lapped at one of your firmly budded nipples. She drew it into her mouth, eyes fluttering closed. Your hands clasped behind her head, gasping.

"I want a taste too."

Daemons hand began slowly pumping along his half hard shaft again, collecting his own cum to lubricate his hand.

Rhaenyra noticed and squeezed your other breast as she kissed down your abdomen. "You spoil me, your grace," you simpered, head hazy. She bit the delicate skin along the inside of your thighs, wordlessly parting you open before her. She knelt, arms looping beneath your thighs to prop you up a little higher, silently admiring the silver belt around your waist. Dipping fully between your spread legs she licked you slowly, seeming to enjoy the rare treat of your eager core. The control of her tongue and lips sent you over the edge within the span of a few lecherous minutes, gripping the bedsheets as you arched and quivered beneath her.

Daemon couldn't hold back any longer. "Put yourself to use and lick your Queen's pussy as she rides me in front of you." His voice was a barely controlled command as he stood and stepped to the bed in quick massive strides; cock bobbing. He effortlessly lifted his wife and sat on the edge of the bed, urging her to straddle over his waist. With her back to his front she claimed the throne that was her husband's lap. "And while you're at it fuck yourself too, darling. You won't get the privilege of my cock but perhaps four of your fingers will suffice."

You obeyed fervently. Sitting up you stood from the bed, kneeling in front of the married pair. Right there in front of your very eyes you watched Rhaenyra somehow take all of Daemon, her swollen folds stretching lewdly around the invading length. You two moaned in unison and her husband relished the sensation of being wholly engulfed. Between your thighs you pushed two fingers into your needy hole. The pleasure was immeasurable against what Rhaenyra was experiencing, you knew that for certain, but it didn't stop you from trying.

"Lick. Listen like a good bitch and lick," Daemon spoke down at you, watching as you rode your own hand. You listened and leaned forward on your knees, tongue rolling free as you kept your gaze turned up to the couple before you. You simply stayed there and let your tongue slide up and down in unison with their fucking. Clit, reddened lips, shaft, balls, all of it. Meanwhile you continued to ride your own hand, climax quickly approaching.

"Will you lap my seed from her beautiful slit?" Daemon asked, breathless, big hands holding firmly onto Rhaenyras hips, pulling her up only to slam her back down. Obscene slapping sounds from their joined bodies filled the room.

Your gut filled with jealousy at the Queen's moans. The euphoria on her face seeped out of her pores as a sheen of sweat. You nodded with eyes still upturned, not daring to pull your tongue back into your mouth.

"Cum hungry whore," he hissed down at you. "No better than the cheapest most used street wench."

Rhaenyra appeared totally unaffected by Daemons filthy words. Either that or she truly didn't hear nor comprehend them as climax ravished the fullness of her body. Daemon moved one hand from her hip to grip around her thin neck, holding and claiming and possessive, biting the meat between her shoulder and slope of neck.

Your peak followed, pussy spasming around three fingers buried to their knuckles.

Daemon was the last to finish, savoring every second of his wife's crest. And, just as promised, he erupted into her to the point of oozing out, the white a stark contrast against her pink swollen cunt.

Rhaenyra was stimulated to the point of frenzy. As Daemon slipped from her body with an audible pop she came again as your mouth instantly latched where he left her gaping, completely sucking his cum from those hot depths.

Rhaenyra laid back on the bed luxuriously, body relaxed to a puddle as she looked between you and her husband. "Definitely in the top three birthday gifts."

"I think we'll keep her awhile, hm? What do you think of that, kitten?" Daemon directed the latter question you as he stood and strolled to a wash basin atop one of the tables. He soaked a cloth and rung it a few times before offering it to you. "Clean up, yeah?" He smiled, tamed mischief glinting behind his eyes.

"I'd love to stay longer," you smiled in return, mischief mirroring his. "You're lucky to have a wife like you do. I can see myself being comfortable here for as long as you both want." You wiped your face and hands before going to the basin, cleaning the cloth for Rhaenyra now.

Walking over to her you offered the cloth and she took it, cleaning herself up too. "I'm not quite done with you yet," she said with a soft smirk, pulling you next to her on the bed.

Once Daemon finished giving himself a quick rinse he joined you two on the spacious mattress, seemingly content to lay back with an arm bent up beneath his head. "Little doves."

You kissed Rhaenyra slowly, lazily.

The fire crackled all night and by the time dawn came there was little sleep had between the three of you.

thank you for reading! if you enjoyed, please consider a follow and reblog as I have plans to create and share more HoTD writings ♥

#house of the dragon #daemon targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #daemon x rhaenyra #daemon smut #smut #daemon x rhaenyra x you

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the-library-alcove · 5 months

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I was suddenly curious about something; I know of a few of the names of various Jewish groups, like Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Kaifeng (though that last only thanks to A Thing of Vikings), and I was wondering on the etymology and what other groups there are/were during the diaspora (I know there's a name for the Jewish folks who remained behind, but I can't recall what it was, except maybe it starts with an "m").

I enjoy linguistics, so I find the thought fascinating, but I also understand if it's not something you want to talk about.

So Sephardi comes from "Sephard", the Hebrew name for Spain and the Iberian Peninsula. Ashkenazi comes from Ashkenaz, one of the descendants of Noah; in later rabbinic writings, his descendants basically went on to populate "the north"--first identified with the Great Steppe regions of what is now Ukraine and the like, and then moving westward over time in the writings, transitioning through the Slavic lands and then later to northern European regions in general (although how that transition in the rabbinic writings happened is a matter of some academic debate) so the Jewish populations who settled in those regions used that term as their population name, since they were dwelling in "Ashkenaz's lands".

The "m" group you're thinking of are the "Mizrahi", which literally translates to "Easterner" in Hebrew, and is an umbrella term for Jewish groups in the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike the Sephardi and Ashkenazi, the various groups now identified as Mizrahi didn't think of themselves as such, instead thinking of themselves as Yemenite Jews, Iranian/Persian Jews, Syrian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Bukharan Jews, and so forth. There are a LOT of regional subgroups, many of them small with unique traditions, grouped under that umbrella. (I personally wear Bukharan yarmulkes, despite being Ashkenazi, for the simple reason that they're large enough to fit comfortably on my abnormally large skull, and they're quite gorgeous!)

If you're curious on other groups, I'll direct you to this Wikipedia page, as it's fairly comprehensive and I'd just be regurgitating a fair chunk of it anyway:

#jewish #judaism #i love judaism

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Systems are linguistic conveniences. We chart out algorithms, and systems are largely human matters, matters of language, matters of human-created terms and formulas. But the world exceeds systems. This might not be acceptable to modern cosmo-perceptions. [...] [M]odernist thinking situates humans at the center of the room [...]. Climate action is [usually] composed within these epistemologies that tend to leave out, for instance, the agency of the world at large. [...]

For instance, the Anthropocene just says this is a planetary or cautionary planetary ethic, that we are all in this together and that all humans are at risk of losing their planet. But it doesn't say that African bodies, Black bodies have subsidized the Anthropocene, that Africa was the continent that they extracted mineral resources from, that air quality is dwindling every day, that the Niger Delta is suffering seven thousand spillages a year, that the World Health Organization does not go to Africa or Lagos to measure air quality, but it does so in London, New York, Seattle. It doesn't say who is paying. It just wraps everyone into this humongous hoop or heap and calls them human.

But many people have been denied access into "human". [...]

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When we're seeking out, anchoring, and grieving for climate justice, we're still dealing with the same powers. We're gathering at the foot of the nation-state, seeking giant corporations to be more responsible. We're giving them legitimacy and saying, "you have the power, so do something about this". [...] Protests tend to look like long, linear lines heading towards where power is. I think there is more power available [...]. So this is why I talk about fugitivity. [...]

And there's some embellishment, tricksterism, and playfulness there as well.

The human is a Euro-American creation. It is not just a concept; it's not just the bipedal figures that we associate ourselves with. It is a territory of acting and becoming and thinking. The human is the transatlantic slave trade. The human is the westward pushing of the pilgrims on the so-called new world to find gold [...]. The human is the extractivist politics that thinks we can build and build and build [...] in an ongoing fashion without stopping forever. [...] It is the dreaming that situates us as lords and masters. It is an algorithm, a cybernetic network, a forcefield.

And I think fugitivity, and rejecting the human, is about losing our way, meeting the world in a way that hacks that algorithm. What does the human, as in the city, as in the nation-state, invite us to do? What does it invite us to notice? And then how do we notice differently? [...]

---

This is not just me speaking. This is Spinoza, Deleuze, authors and speakers, decolonial writers that have been warning us for a long time that Blackness, for instance, is not about this adversarial quality, fighting for a place within white modernity. [...] It seeks cracks so that it can fugitively extricate itself [...]. I want to find other places of being in power with the world. [...]

The promise of that is surprise, fugitivity. Maybe just leaving the plantation is enough. Then we might find the magic in other worlds and other becomings. [...]

[L]et us slow down. Slowing down is losing our way. [...] It is the invitations that are now in the world at large, inviting us to listen deeply, to be keen and to be fresh and to be quick with our heels, to follow the sights and sounds and smells of the world, which is now no longer [...] [silent, unspeaking] as modernity would have us believe it is. It's now alive, it's alien and wanting us to do more than just save ourselves. So let us slow down and listen and maybe we might hear something magical. [...] Slowing down is a function of deepening awareness, noticing the others in the room. [...]

---

Words of Bayo Akomolafe. As interviewed and transcribed by Kamea Chayne. Published as “Bayo Akomolafe: Slowing down and surrendering human centrality (ep317).” Episode 317 of the podcast Green Dreamer hosted by Kamea Chayne. Transcript published online November 2021.

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12pt-times-new-roman · 7 days

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c3e92 pt. 1: the Bells Hells

Man, Matt really had to open with that somber tone, didn't he—

Orym immediately takes the lead, begins to guide them away from the city, away from the storms. It makes sense — the rest of them haven't experienced something like this before, the loss of a loved one, of a friend, in the heat of a battle when you can't stop for even a second to process what just happened.

Liliana can't go with them — if she leaves, they'll know, and she's more useful to them as an agent on the inside. If she goes, then the Bells Hells won't know the developments on the moon, won't know what's going on; but while she's here, she can relay that information back to Exandria.

In order to reawaken Predathos, there are boundaries that imprison it within itself, set up by the gods. The Ruidisborn are part of pushing through those boundaries, and are supposed to be what breaks the final one; without an exaltant vessel, Predathos can't step beyond its cage.

Liliana is not the only possible vessel — she is simply the strongest one. If she goes, then another Ruidusborn will take her place. She's communed with it, and she doesn't think that it wants them, wants mortals — it just wants to be awake, to be free. But they, and especially Orym, cannot take her word for it, because everything she knows about it is what it has told her.

Imogen makes the right call and clues the Bells Hells in to not telling Liliana about the secret passage. Liliana tells her that as long as Imogen is not on Ruidus, they can contact each other in dreams safely, presumably because she would be reaching out to Imogen beyond the eyes of the Weave-mind. She also tells them that the Weave-mind and Ludinus haven't been able to trust her because they cannot fully see within her mind. A wave of relief and heartbreak washes over her as Imogen tells her to stay.

Ludinus first made contact with the Weave-mind about three centuries ago (corresponding to the fall of Molaesmyr), and they both knowingly use each other to their own ends, each thinking that they'll have the final word. But Ludinus has been "following a path laid out for him by Predathos."

Liliana was at the conservatory in Jrusar when Ludinus found her and started to groom her to become an exaltant. He offered to free her and Imogen from the burden, but she didn't realize what was being done until she was already too deep in it.

"How can we get out of the city safely?" "Give me your hands." Liliana teleports them to the edge of the Bloody Bridge. "Find those who you can trust. Then, find me, when you need my guidance. I'll see you in your dreams."

As soon as they step through the bridge, they see that the interior is the same encampment. They bluff their way through, with the aid of a phantasmal force, and make it outside — there's evidence of recent battle here. There are "trophies," too — holy symbols and Vasselheim armor set out on pikes. They spot the familiar symbol of the Changebringer, looking off to an unknown horizon from a tattered cloak, and they take it.

Imogen sends a message to Keyleth: "We're back. We're at the surface of the Malleus Key, trying to find a way to get back to you." "Oh. That is wonderful news. I'll be at the encampment as soon as I can — can you get there safely? Oh. That's not how this works. Uh, I'll—"

The tension begins to fade as they make their way westward toward the encampment they first came from.

Ashton: "He'd been itching to do that since the day I met him." Orym: "But I've seen enough fights go south. If he didn't do that, we'd all be dead."

FCG made his death count, and they can all make it worth it — but Ashton can be angry, too. Those two things are easy to hold at the same time.

As for Liliana, they made the right call, not trusting her. She may have her reservations about Ludinus, she might not support him, but she's very much a believer of Predathos, of Ludinus' goal.

Laudna: "That bit she said, about how this is what you're designed for... it reminded me of FCG, but I also feel like I owe you an apology. I feel like I understood your mom, on a deeper level, in that moment; I think it's reminiscent of something I think we all struggle with, not being able to supersede that feeling of being designed. Controlled. Manipulated. But it also made my heart break for her. It feels like we've been very privileged to go on a journey guided by FCG to learn that we're more than what our creators intended for us, and I don't think she's had that." Laudna hits the nail on the head: any one of them could've been in Liliana's shoes. Until the shard incident, Ashton was. But they had someone, a group, to pull them back from the edge.

Ashton: "It made me very angry, and I don't like being angry. You're too fucking good for her. I hope she's right, I really do — I hope her ends are great, because these means are unforgivable."

Orym sticks one of Otohan's blades in the dirt. "That is the blade that killed my husband. She is not right." He walks away.

Chetney (/Travis) has a feeling about where Ludinus was; he turns to Everoa. She tells them that he's in Aeor. That's where he's been getting all these machines, the dispelling array, the influence for the keys, the war machines.

There are multiple layers of the Prime Pillar, and while they got through the first layer, the second was divinely-originated adamantine; when they discovered this, Ludinus left for Aeor to try and find a solution, but he hasn't returned in days. Something in Aeor, called the Dominox, was delaying his Aeorian excavations.

Aeorian technology had a unique understanding of how to unravel the basis of divine magic, which the Emperium needed to burrow through the shell containing Predathos. So Ludinus went in search of the Factorum Malleus within the depths of Aeor.

The glass on Ruidus is the remnants of Predathos' last form, the form it was imprisoned in. Its body was turned in to its own prison — the same thing that happened to Alyxian.

"There are moments in someone's life when they need to decide what to do next. I think this is one of them." Ashton needs to sleep, needs to break something — but in the morning, they'll all have some thoughts about who they're going to be next.

Orym breaks into tears, finally lets the facade slip to Imogen. "Every one of us makes our decisions through the lenses we see life through. I can't take mine down. It's not even about revenge for me; I'm just trying to honor what they signed up to do." Although they might not have seen eye to eye in the past, Imogen reassures Orym that he should have no doubts about her goals now; Liliana made her choices, and Imogen understands that now.

As Imogen leaves, Orym reaches out to Dorian. "We're home. Can you hear me? Northeast of Bassuras. Can you get there? I'm... struggling. Can you get here? Fuck, I miss you."

Matt asks everyone to leave the table, then he leaves, too.

Aabria sits behind the screen.

You know what? I think it's time to see the other half of the story.

I'm splitting this one into two parts! pt. 2 under the cut

This is most likely going to be my last summary-style liveblog post! I'll be reverting back to doing one-post stuff as things happen, it's just easier on me and my hyperfixation-addled interest that way :)

c3e92 pt. 2: the Crown Keepers

We open on the Crown Keepers plus Cyrus, not far from Kraghammer. They have been moving from village to village across the world to keep away from Poska. It's been nearly a month, and each of them have a cache of both money and brumestone. But two weeks ago, the Apogee Solstice began, and the Blightstar was lost from the skies of Tal'dorei.

Dariax's divine soul comes from a deity known as "the Observer." Even he, alongside Lolth, Melora, and the Raven Queen have felt fear from their patrons (though from the Observer, more a feeling of curiosity toward the world).

It was Orym's message that pushed the Crown Keepers to haste, trekking toward Zephrah. Even then, as they travel,

Dariax has no goal outside of a sense of kinship toward those he's traveled with, and a new sense of protectiveness over Opal. He's liable to stay at Dorian's side to follow in his footsteps. Protector.

Morrighan is like a horse chomping at the bit; she's been given new purpose from the Matron of Ravens, calls herself (and perhaps was designated) a champion. She feels distant from the Crown Keepers and allegiance to the Matron; the second she says bite, she'll bite, no matter who it is. She's multiclassed into paladin. Lying in wait.

Fy'ra Rai hasn't been fully lost or demoralized, but confused as to where she is most needed now. She remembers saying that not all family is blood, much family is chosen, so she's diverting her protective nature from her sister to the Crown Keepers, who the Wildmother pulled her to protect. She still feels the loss of her sister, Poska. Conflicted.

Dorian thought he wanted this scenario — freedom, adventure. But it's not the situation dragging his mood down; he's had more time alone, and he feels the group start to drift, and he's coming to an unsettling realization: he's missing something in this equation. It's something he ran from months ago, something he felt like he didn't have and wanted. He's starting to wonder why he's here, for the first time ever. From drifting to searching.

Opal is in a dream-like existence, where she's losing the thread. There are moments of clarity, and she works overtime to be more herself around the Crown Keepers then; she feels like if she can keep it together, then she has control. But much like when you're in that space between falling asleep and being awake, it's all confusing. In the moments where it feels more dreamlike, she becomes darker, unsettling and unsettled. Opal's dreams were the things that went first. It's not that she sleeps and has nightmares; every night for the past 2 weeks, she goes to sleep and wakes up exhausted, as if her body had been tensed and moving throughout the night, with no memory of the time between. Every dawn, if she reaches for Ted, she is exhausted. If she presses, she tells her little. It's not her fight.

Some days into this journey, something in Opal's mind breaks. She stops in the middle of the road, listening. Immediately, the Crown Keepers snap to attention.

Morrighan feels that same ineffable sense of purpose, the absolute density of presence, the pure light that she felt when she made the pact with the Matron — inverted. The same bestowment of power and purpose, tinged with something that curdles the stomach of the Matron, and so curdles Morrighan's.

Morrighan sees it in a crow's song before it happens, but Opal raises, levitates, then expands outward in every direction.

Matt slides over to the other side of the table, leaving Amy alone on the top table, and we launch into combat against Lolth-Incarnate Opal!

Opal hears the voice in her ear. "Hah. So sorry. I think... I wanted us to have a little more time to do this organically. But your sister keeps getting in my way. I don't care about my image; I care about my life. And what I need more than rehabilitation and public perception is a champion — a true champion. I need you to come with me, and I need to sever the ties that keep you with [the Crown Keepers]. They tie you to this place, they hold you back, and what I need is someone who works for me, who serves me. You accepted my crown, and now, the bill is due. Opal, Twice-Crowned, you will become my champion."

Morrighan update: She's an oath of vengeance paladin!

She hits Opal, but Opal takes none of that damage — Ted takes all of it. As the blade sinks in, it hits the dark shadow of something that looks like Opal but cut and muscled.

As Dorian beseeches her — "why are you doing this?" — the Opal that is acting responds, not the Opal that is within: "she doesn't know."

Off of a successful religion check, Fy'ra Rai asks the Wildmother first what she, Fy'ra, could do to stop Opal's transformation: remove the crown. Then, she asks what the Wildmother could do to stop it: why would I? As the third question, what does the Wildmother need from Fy'ra to help Opal? Why would I stop this from happening? The answer is not furious, it is fearful.

Melora, the Wildmother would not herself stop this transformation from happening. Opal donned this crown willingly, and these are the consequences; why would the Wildmother intervene? And further, the Wildmother is afraid of the Blightstar, of Ludinus, of Predathos. Why would she stop the exaltation of the champion of the gods? It's not like the Prime Deities and the Betrayers have never been united before. It's not like the circumstances weren't almost precisely the same.

Lolth speaks again: "What are you willing to do? I will make her mine. Are you willing to kill her? I will not die to that." They see a flash of red.

Then, as Morrighan picks up one of the clusters of crystals surrounding her, something inside Opal's mind shatters — a memory rises, then breaks and fades. There's a story, told to the pair of them shortly before their mother disappeared, when they were three years old. There's a word: "evalux." A splinter-group, mis-matched eyes. "A long time ago, a group of people found something called a Beacon. They learned from it about some great entity or god, a concept that sought to know itself, to understand via experience the world of Exandria. It split itself apart. This one was found far away. These people that worshiped the Luxon found and created magics within themselves to split their own souls apart so that they could learn who they were via observation." Opal was a child, torn in two, learned what she liked and loved and knew through observation of Ted — and so, Opal and Ted are entangled. Opal understands herself because she understands Ted; she is not lost to her, she is her. They are something rare and magical — a memory, rare and lost forever in the moment of knowing.

Matt: "I'm gonna go ahead and cast bless at 2nd level—" Aabria: "GOD DAMNIT"

Cyrus the Himbo my beloved — "BROTHER, I CANNOT SEE. Should I shoot an arrow??" "NO—"

As they pick up the gems surrounding Opal, they each see a memory. The one that Fy'ra picks up is from a week ago, a village hardly more than a hamlet, a mixture of cold and humid and quiet. In an inn, in the memory, they bump in to each other — Fy'ra is holding the two pars of the once-whole tiger eye, moving them between her fingers like worry stones. "I told you it was... important to heal things with [Ted]. I've always known that [my sister] is... my sister, but she's always been a bit of an asshole. But I never thought that she would want to kill me."

Fy'ra and Opal find common ground, being the one whose asshole sister is trying to kill her and being the asshole sister (respectively). As they do, Fy'ra looks to the crown digging into Opal's skin. "I don't know what is happening to you, but you can trust me to fight for you as if you were my sister, too."

(guys please watch this instead of reading my recap, the humor here is so much better than I could ever transcribe—)

The episode ends on the Crown Keepers breaking away from Opal and fleeing as she pursues.

#critical role #note watches c3 #critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3 #critical role c3 #critical role liveblog

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