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becauseicantthinkwritings · 1 year

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Teeth

Part 11

Masterlist

Warnings: Canon typical themes, Billy mentioning his past, voyeurism/exhibitionism, masturbation, *slow nod* dumbasses.

A/N: Apologies if you're vegan/vegetarian/don't eat beef, I usually try to make these things neutral, but in this case, panthers are carnivores and that had a factor in the meal I chose.

Special dedication to @blanchedelioncourt for those two cute checkmarks you see beside my name. Thank you so much my love 💖

He liked meat.

He'd confessed to you on the drive home that he could never pass up an opportunity to indulge on a nice piece of steak, or even fish.

You liked the idea of preparing a filet mignon for him, but with no cuts at home, you'd quickly ordered from the nearest meat supplier, thankful that with today's technology, same day delivery was possible.

You'd agreed on a plan, he had to go to his place to get cleaned up, and he'd be at your door around seven.

Since he wasn't a fan of green beans or broccoli, you decided to do sautéed potatoes, and maybe a few glazed vegetables.

It was exciting, preparing a meal for him, you found enjoyment in the planning process.

The meat arrives at your place at the same time you do, and you examine it, making sure it's high quality, desperate to impress your boss, coming over to your home.

My friend, you correct with a smile, pulling out ingredients and beginning prep work as you close the door behind you.

You spot him, moving around in his place while you work, and you're happy that you decided to have your curtains open, even if to just catch tiny glimpses of him on occasion. Seeing more of him could never be a downfall.

Your mind jumps to the panther, and you let out a blissful sigh, feeling so unbelivably safe for the first time in a long while.

You've just finished with the potatoes and vegetables when there's a knock on your door.

Calm down, you tell yourself, when you realise your hands are clammy with anxiety.

"Hey." You say to him easily, letting him in. He's dressed down in a long sleeve burgundy sweater and jeans, and you definitely try your hardest not to devour him with your eyes.

You'd been able to shower too, tugging on one of your more casual dresses, the comfort and length of it managing to emphasize how much this was not a date. If it were a date, you'd be more inclined to wear something shorter, maybe tighter, but your loose dress hopefully showcased just enough without advertising too much.

"You look nice." He follows up, after saying hello, and you smile and return the compliment...casually... like friends would.

"I'm almost finished. How would you like your steak done?" You ask him, while busy fussing over your potatoes.

"Rare, but, you know you don't have to, right? I would have been fine with pasta."

You have to look away from him, bite your tongue so that you don't say something snarky or flirtatious.

"I wanted to." You respond easily, heating up your cast iron pan.

"Where did you learn to cook?" He asks, coming up next to you to study the little layout beside your stovetop, the garlic and rosemary prepped and ready to go.

"Online," You admit, looking up at him with a little smile, "It wasn't too hard to pick up, I really like eating."

"Good," He murmurs, reaching for a rosemary stem, breaking it in half and bringing it up to his nose to take a deep inhale. Your insides curling tight at how close he is, you want to lean in and press your head to his chest.

"You're so good at so many things." He murmurs absentmindedly, and it's not the heat of the pan that warms your face this time.

The steaks smell delicious as they cook, and Billy hovers over your shoulder, asking questions that you're very happy to answer. You even explain to him the steak finger test, explaining by touching his hands, how you'd know the meat is at the desired readiness.

He takes in information easily, doesn't get defensive, or act as if he already knows. If he has a question, he isn't afraid to ask you.

You might love that about him the most, how easy it is to be around him. There's no condescention or ego in the way, there's just him, and you, and conversation enough to fill the room.

When everything is plated, you reach for the cast iron pan to place it in the sink.

You grab a cloth, wrapping in around the handle, picking up the pan easily.

On the way into the sink, the hot handle grazes your fingers.

You hiss before your body even registers the pain, your fingertips screaming in brutal betrayal at being scorched.

He's beside you instantly, opening the tap to pull your hand under the cool stream.

"Ow, oh f-" You stop yourself, humming in pain.

One of his broad hands is against your back, rubbing in an attempt to soothe as he tries to care for your hand.

You try hard to resist swearing, and eventually he notices.

"You can say 'fuck' if you want, I don't mind."

You look up with him, a pained smile of resistance plasterd onto your face.

"Come on, say 'fuck' for me."

"Fuuuucccckkk." You draw out, letting the frustration of your pain out in one breath.

He laughs, you find yourself smiling along.

"See? We're friends, you can swear in front of me, I'll even go first so that you don't feel shy about it."

After a moment of baited anticipation, he opens his mouth.

"Shit." He says.

"Bitch." You respond, making a game out of the crude words.

"Asshole." He follows up.

You giggle, speaking without too much thought.

"Cock."

The air seems to freeze, holding still, ever patient to pass judgement on whether you've gone too far.

He leans in a little, till your noses are near touching, you can feel your body coiled tight at his proximity.

"Pussy." He whispers, and you feel the ascension of your soul to high heaven.

He doesn't allow the atmosphere to grow awkward with your stunned silence, he pulls your fingers from under the cool water to examine them. There's no pain anymore, and definitely no real damage done.

"Do they still hurt?" he asks.

"N-no," you answer, "It was nothing serious."

Billy nods in understanding.

"We should eat." You utter, doing your very best not to stutter and succeeding.

You offer him a glass of zinfandel, and you take one for yourself before sitting across from him. The wine is ruby red, and though it's advertised as a sweet wine, you don't find it very sweet at all.

You cut your meat slowly, waiting patiently for him to cut into his.

You sigh happily when you see the inside of his steak is an almost perfect rare, appreciating that you came very near the desired colour.

You try not to stare at him, or make him uncomfortable as he brings the first piece up to his mouth.

You're vibrating with worry as he takes his first bite, looking politely down at your own plate and waiting for a response.

A low groan spills from him.

You look up in surprise at his face as your toes curl at the rough sound. It goes right down to your cunt, pulsing with desire since he looked into your eyes and whispered that filthy word earlier.

His eyes are closed, his fingers wrapped tightly around the fork as he chews. Your heart pounds as you realise that his current state of bliss has been caused by you.

He opens his eyes, fixes them right on you.

"That is fucking delicious." He says, his voice low and gravelly as he picks up a piece of potato this time.

You sigh in relief, cutting into your piece next, excited to taste what he does.

It is good, you hum in appreciation as you eat it, relieved, that you managed not to mess this up.

It's only been one meal, and yet somehow, Billy has found himself captivated by you.

No other relationship had ever blossomed so quickly, or made him feel this safe in his vulnerabilities.

Being around you was as easy as breathing, he could laugh, and say the first thing that came to mind and not have to second guess himself because you were so welcoming.

He wonders if all of you would be welcoming to him.

The panther takes the opportunity to insert vivid thoughts of your parted thighs, images of your slick cunt ready for him to take.

He could scent it, between the savoury notes of the meal, was the sweet call of your arousal.

You wanted him, he knew it, and he wanted you too.

He holds himself back from acting on it, doesn't want to destroy the little pieces of friendship he's managed to gather with you. He doesn't want you to think that any of this was motivated by just sex.

"Will you tell me more about growing up?" You ask, three-quarter way into the meal.

He almost chokes on a carrot.

"It's.... not the best story." He responds.

"Oh, it's fine if you don't want to talk about it. I didn't mean to pry."

But he wants to. He wants to tell you about it.

"My mother dropped me off at a fire station when I was born. I have no idea who my father is."

"I'm sorry."

He shakes his head.

"Don't be, she was an addict from what I understand, might have been worse for me if she kept me."

You smile sadly at him, reaching across and covering his hand. He looks down at the touch, before turning his hand upwards so that your hands are clasped together.

"The group home wasn't all bad, just lacking you know? A decent family, but with all the important parts missing."

You squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back.

"I ran away when I was fifteen, kind of just jumped from place to place, living off scraps, sleeping wherever was safest, and then I met Frank a couple of years later."

Billy grins.

"Frank saved my life, and then we joined the military together. Gave me a rough brotherhood I didn't know I needed. Served for ten years and here I am."

"Wow, that's quite a story," you murmur, looking deep in thought.

"Why did you run away?"

He swallows, looks away from your inquisitive eyes.

"You know, I just got tired of them."

"Oh."

He shrugs.

"Yeah, well I hope your childhood was better."

You smile.

"Maybe so, I mean, comparatively, but not without its own problems."

He nods in understanding, eager to hear more.

You're almost done with the story of your childhood when there's an odd knock on your door.

Nine taps, with a short pause each third tap.

Your eyebrows draw together in confusion.

"I hope you don't mind, I ordered dessert." He says, standing up, and walking to your door.

He opens it, and you watch him accept a little cloth parcel from the person on the other side of the door with a nod of his head.

Curiously, you slip off your seat and approach him as he closes your door. When he turns, he finds you right before him, examining the item in his hands.

"You ordered dessert?" You ask, confused beyond measure.

"I wanted to surprise you, and I couldn't pick it up before coming here, so I had it delivered downstairs and brought up. I hope that's okay?"

Surprise me? You think, an odd feeling of delight swimming inside of you.

You smile, reaching for the box that he gives easily, and you place it onto your counter, taking care to unwrap it gently.

Your mouth parts when you catch sight of it. It's a lemon meringue, with a strawberry layer beneath the toasted marshmallow fluff, and a beautiful strawberry topping all of it off.

There's only one pie, but it's about the size of your hand, definitely large enough for the two of you to share.

"It looks amazing." You comment, tilting your head to examine the toasted brown waves of the marshmallow fluff.

"It is, I got it from one of my favourite dessert places. The chef's ex-marine, like me."

You smile up at him, grabbing two spoons from your kitchenette and taking the pie into one hand.

"Couch?" You offer, no room for arguement, you ease yourself onto the soft seat, trying your best not to topple the dessert.

He sits beside you, and you turn to face him, offering a spoon in his direction.

"I've never had a meringue before, but I always wanted to try it."

"Is that what you call it?" He responds, "I usually just ask for the lemon pie."

A sound of humour mixed with pain leaves the back of your throat.

"You're lucky they get your order right," you say with a laugh, "One day, you might just get an actual lemon pie."

He hums, taking a small spoonful of the meringue and tapping it against your spoonful.

"Well, here's to getting what you want."

It's an odd toast, but you follow his lead and put the spoonful of dessert into your mouth.

The first flavour you get is the delicious sweetness of the marshmallow and strawberry, the sweet citrus tang of the lemon follows next and the crust rounds all the flavours up into a delicious and fruity finish.

"Fuck." You sigh, closing your eyes for a long moment and simply basking in the flavours that melt right into your mouth.

You don't look up at him, taking another hasty spoonful before sinking right back into your circle of bliss.

You hum at the flavour, the tangy strawberry slices below the marshmallow fluff adds a very interesting taste.

"Sorry." You murmur, absentmindedly to Billy, lost in the flavour.

"For what now?" He asks and you smile.

"For being weird."

He hums.

"Honestly, I'd say the dessert had the desired effect."

"Yeah, if making me fall in love with a pie was the goal."

"So you admit it's a pie, then?"

You let out a little chuckle, looking up at him. He raises his eyebrows at you as he takes another spoonful into his mouth.

"I never said it wasn't a pie!" You shoot at him, "I'm just saying, there's a difference between what you ask for and what this is."

He leans in, teasingly, your heart stutters as he gets closer.

"And yet somehow, I always get what I want." He comments, and you gulp.

Up close, he notices that a few strands of your hair a clinging to your face and are almost in your mouth.

The raises a hand, it hovers over your cheek and you try to keep breathing and not drool while you're at it.

"May I?" He asks, and you nod your head quickly, before he even has a chance to decide against it.

His fingertips are gentle on your cheek, brushing away the strands in small swipes. You sigh at the relief of subtle irritation, giving him a small smile.

Your breath finally stops when he cups your face in his hand, and you feel your eyelids droop. His hand is warm, against your feverish cheek and he's so close that your noses brush.

You mind is screaming at him, with urgency, the words kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me, are chanted inside your head.

He does not kiss you.

Instead, he pulls back, rough palm slipping from your cheek leaving a coolness that wasn't there before.

He checks his watch.

"It's getting late, I should go."

You try to curb the disappointment inside of you by eating the last spoonful of tart.

"Yeah, sure." you say after, standing and piling the spoons onto the few dishes in your sink before washing your hands.

You open the door of your aparment for him.

"I'll see you in the morning?" He asks.

"Mhmm," You hum the affirmative, "Take care." You add in after a moment.

He gives you a nod, and then he's gone.

You wait, back pressed to the door till you hear the elevator outside ding as it reaches your floor. You're patient for a few more moments before you move, grabbing a throw pillow from your couch and screaming into it out of frustration.

Panting, you give the pillow a little punch for good measure.

What an infuriating man he was, tormenting you this way.

You lie there, with the pillow over your face for a few minutes after the frustration has left your body in a fatigued mess.

The lights clicking on in his home catches your attention.

You hated him.

He made your blood boil, he made your body ache, he made you wet and he took no acknowledgement of his actions.

You reach up, under your dress, tugging your panties off in one swift move, kicking it away to be worried about later.

You groan when your fingers meet the soft edges of your dripping cunt, ready and eager for the pleasure it so deserves.

You suck in a deep breath, arching your back and reaching up to unclasp your bra with sticky fingers, pulling it from below your dress before tugging the straps of your dress down.

You sigh happily, breasts exposed to the open air as your fingers meet your cunt once more, sliding up to brush against your clit, you gasp in surprise, truly unaware of how aroused you really were until now.

You wished he would have kissed you, you think about the filthy way he'd dip his tongue into your mouth and explore. His mouth would taste like the lemon meringue you were sharing, he'd groan into your mouth hopefully, like he was tasting something worthwhile, the way he groaned over your cooking earlier.

You sigh, one hand worrying your swollen bud, while you raise the other to pinch at an unsuspecting nipple. Your breath hitches, losing sight of your surroundings as a sharp wave of bliss overtakes for a moment.

The pillow near your face slips off the couch in your shaking frenzy, and it opens up your line of sight to the windows of his apartment.

You groan, imagines him looking at you while you play with yourself, imagining the filthy words he'd say if he could see you.

You turn your head from your exposed window, facing the couch instead so that you can imagine more clearly that he's watching you.

You tug your dress higher, the wetness between your thighs threatening to spill over and stain your couch.

You think about the way he'd hold you to his body, tight, without any room to breathe or pull away.

What would it feel like to sink down onto his cock? Your breath hitches at the thought. Of having him rock you slowly on his lap, his teeth in your shoulder, your dress undone and barely hanging onto you.

You want to cry from how badly you need him.

You turn your head back to your open window.

There he is.

You shudder out a sigh, working your hand faster between your legs.

You can't see much, the lights behind him casting a shadow over his frame so that you can't see much more than his silhouette.

You know he can see you clearly though, your lights are still on, and you're sure every inch of your body is illuminated for him.

You gasp, tilting your head back, the hand on your breast moving to fist the soft couch tightly as you slowly reach your peak.

Your back arches, and your orgasm slams into you. Your thighs tremble, your entire body shaking, all you can focus on is your clit, circling it just right to prolong the orgasm.

Your nipples tighten further, and you only hesitate for a second before you push two fingers into yourself.

You almost scream, automatically clapping your hand over your mouth as you rock two fingers inside of you.

You remember the way he'd said the word 'pussy' not too long ago.

You turn your head, he's still there.

Enjoying the show? You think in his direction, and when you focus a bit more on his shadow, you notice very subtle movements of his arm. You raise your head to focus on him.

Oh god, is he-

Fuck, he is.

He's touching himself while he looks at you.

You hiss, the very thought of him encourages your hand to move faster, with more force between your legs.

Fuck me, you beg in his direction, I don't want to be your friend anymore.

You let out a long sigh, your fingertips just grazing that blissful spot inside of you.

You lose focus of everything the next time you cum, gasping, trembling, struggling to do anything more than feel the absolute bliss flooding your system, so much pent up frustration caused by being around him being released from you on each breath you take.

You sigh, pulling your fingers out of your dripping center, turning in his direction to look over at him.

One hand pressed to his window, you watch his head drop, his open palm fold into a tight fist, the fast movement of his arm slowing into soft strokes.

He must have orgasmed too.

You smile, tugging your dress up to hide your breasts from his view. You know you should move to clean up soon, the wetness of your arousal growing uncomfortable between your thighs, but your eyelids droop instead, looking at him as he looks at you as you drift off to sleep right there on your couch.

You wake up maybe an hour later, sitting up, and yawning, glancing at his dark window for a second before ambling your way to your bathroom.

You go to bed naked, sheets wrapped around you, too drowsy to worry about your modesty.

A/N: Happy Friday! Here is a photo reference for the dessert.

#werepanther!billy russo #monster!billy #monster!billyrusso #monster!billy russo #billy russo #billy russo x reader #ben barnes #billy russo x female reader #my writings #the punisher #billy russo smut

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miller-lookforthe-lite · 4 months

Text

steps: part two

joel miller x f!reader

rating: M

words: 7k

tags/warnings: unplanned/(unwanted?) pregnancy, thoughts and discussion of abortion, UNSOUND MEDICAL PRACTICE/ADVICE, description of injury, canon-typical violence, hurt/comfort, not proofread i'm literally so sorry - please heed the warnings, as these may be triggering to some! MDNI

part one | read on ao3

There are no doctors in Kansas City. There’s nothing left of the QZ, in fact, besides a group of raging militants who have taken over and are hunting for the very two boys you happen upon. Henry and Sam don’t have much, but they have a relentless ambition, and Joel must see that as reason enough to go with them.

As you journey through the tunnels underneath the city, you get sicker. It’s clear to you now that this is not some nightmare you can wish away, not like one of your silent demons. This is real, and here, and now, and if you’re not pregnant, you’re dying. You’re not sure which would be worse.

Ellie finds out while she’s kicking a soccer ball with Sam, because Joel lowers his head to inquire to Henry about a pregnancy test and is a lot less fucking quiet than he ought to be.

Her head snaps towards them and you scowl at Joel, burning his entrails with your eyes, picturing his slow demise, then feeling even more sick at the prospect, taking it back, praying the Deity didn’t hear you think it so it won’t come true.

“What the fuck?” Ellie exclaims, her head whipping to you. “You —” Her head swings back to Joel almost cartoonishly. “And you? I thought — ew, gross, but holy shit — I thought Tess —”

“Ellie,” you warn quickly, trying to jump ahead of Joel’s ire, because that definitely also happened and you know he’ll never tell you why or why you happened after.

“Enough,” Joel snaps, and the room hangs still. Even Sam, though no one has bothered to bring him up to speed, can tell that the tension simmers low, and he abandons the soccer ball in favor of curling up by the far wall.

Joel turns back to Henry. “You know where I could find one or not?”

Henry shrugs. “All kinds of shit stashed in here, man. Take a look.”

Ellie’s gaze is burning into your skin, but when you turn to look at her, you only see a quiet understanding in her eyes, a Knowing too old to live in a body so young. She plops down in the seat next to you while Joel and Henry are off rummaging through the bins on the far side of the bunker, and her huff troubles a strand of her hair. You reach forward to tuck it out of her face. Her mouth is set into a grim line.

“Is that why you’ve been sick?” She murmurs, her voice betraying her fear.

Your heart clenches. You didn’t want her to have to feel the way that you were feeling. She shouldn’t have to shoulder it, shoulder you, but you don’t know how else to be with her but truthful. Her face so open, so honest, begs nothing less in return.

“Yeah,” you say, and she reaches out to grab your hand. You blink back sudden tears that choke your throat and crowd your lashes.

“It’ll get better then,” Ellie says, knee bouncing. “The sickness. I heard that it gets better after a while. And you won’t have to yack every time we think about cooking beans. So that’s a plus.”

You can’t help but smile, still feeling hot and slippery with shame, but hope shines through, minuscule and persistent. “I hope so,” you whisper.

—

When you leave the motel, Ellie’s the one to lead the charge. You follow her, leaving Joel gazing down at the graves he just dug. Henry and Sam are under those piles of dirt, and you can’t help but think that it’s some kind of curse that surrounds you, the same deadly spirit that befell Tess.

Ellie thinks it’s her fault, a strangled confession pulled out of her that she knew Sam had been bitten but tried to save him. You know that feeling, know the despair it leaves behind, but you’re not quite sure how to reach the place she’s gone to.

A plastic-wrapped stick sits in your pocket, has for days, but you’re too scared to do more than make sure it’s there, palming reassurance. Henry had slipped it to you before he died, not saying a word, but there was kindness in his gaze. There was a care you didn’t know people still had for other strangers. Your heart aches.

Along the road, it’s been hard to find food. Joel had shoved what he could from the bunker into his bag, but there wasn’t much in the way of nonperishables - the Kansas City militants had already taken care of that. He let you have the last of the crackers, but you can’t help the pangs of hunger that wrack through you late at night, curled up in a ball on the ground, your back to some tree or to him or to Ellie, one of them always wrapped around you, always watching. You can’t help the dread that follows either, that you swallow like the air that feeds you these days.

Joel feels it too. You know he does, but he’s better at hiding it. He’s acting strange lately — delicate — not something you’ve ever known him to be. He guards you when you’re sleeping, but can hardly look at you in the daylight. Where he’s started to let his eyes wrinkle at Ellie’s teasing jibes or stupid puns, he slams his lid shut when you deign to speak your piece. He offers you a hand to help you over a ridge, and always, always throws an arm in front of you when he thinks something sinister lies ahead, but then swiftly pulls away like the boil of your blood burns him too.

After six days have passed, you go behind a tree and pee on the stick. It’s not hard. All you fucking do is piss these days. What is hard is remembering the hands that touched the test before you - a dead man’s fingers before they pulled a trigger twice, him and another child. Is that the price you pay? One child’s life for another? What kind of sign is that — what kind of life is this? What kind of world to bring a baby into?

Two lines glare back at you. You muffle your sob into the heel of your hand.

—

Your teeth are clattering against each other, your violent shivering overtaking any autonomy you once had over your limbs.

You’ve set up camp underneath a rock overhang, and your breath comes out in puffs. Ellie’s pressed as close to you as she can get between the layers of your coats, the extra flannel that Joel had wrapped around her hanging loosely off her puffy-coated shoulders.

You’re in Nebraska, as far as you can tell, wide open plains stretching as far as you can see, the foothills offering little respite from the biting prairie wind, but you take what you can get under the boulder’s meager shelter.

Joel hasn’t stopped moving since you decided to set up here; he’s tearing up jerky pieces, distributing them to you and Ellie and only pushing one between his lips when you glare, he’s coiling some rope, he’s pushing a tarp under some stones to provide some cover from the ceaseless wind. You wish you could bring yourself to get up and help, but you don’t know how much help you’d be, not with the illness still permeating your veins, your trembling uncontrollable.

When Ellie figures out that she can’t fix it no matter how she lends her heat to you, she speaks up where you couldn’t.

“We need a fire,” she wheezes to Joel, eyes flicking to you even though she tries to hide it.

He sniffs, doesn’t look up from his tarp-maneuvering. “It’d blow out,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

Your desperation pushes you to chime in. “We could at least try. Under the tarp, or maybe the rock would shield it enough —”

“It won’t,” Joel snaps, and he still won’t look at you. He clearly intended to stymie your words, but now that you’ve started, you can’t stop.

You get up from your spot next to Ellie and wrap her firmly in the blanket from your pack. You stumble on shaky legs over to where Joel continues to fiddle, continues to fuss. “Let me just fucking try, Joel, we’re freezing, we can’t—”

You reach for the flint that you know is in the bag he holds. Your gloved hand brushes his, layers of cloth and unspoken and Too Spoken between you, and still he pulls away like he’s been burned. You freeze, watching him quickly shift to a different task, turning his collar further up against the wind.

“Fine,” he mutters.

You don’t know why it hurts so much to curl up next to the fire that night.

—

When you stop to make camp a few nights later, you decide you’ve had enough of this, this awkwardness and separation that your revelation had caused you. After Ellie’s been asleep for an hour, her soft breaths quiet in the dark, you push Joel behind a tree before he can protest, grab his face with your hands and pull his mouth to yours before he can remember that you haven’t spoken, haven’t talked about it, have only worried in silence. He grunts, the sound vibrating pleasantly against you, before pulling back, only a little, the slightest breath of distance. His eyes are locked on yours, so close that you can’t see straight, can only see brown brown brown, can only drown in it.

“I don’t…” he says softly, one hand on your wrist and the grabbing for your waist, turning you, pushing your back into the rough bark, but so gently, so gently it prickles and scrapes and wounds.

“Why not?” You say like you haven’t noticed how he’s been treating you differently, like he doesn’t know what to say to you, like you aren’t the same person you’ve always been before all of this. Like you aren’t praying praying praying that he won’t make you beg.

(He doesn’t.)

—

It’s dusk when you stumble upon a still-smoking pile of ash, the crisp wind spiraling it up to the conifer fronds above, dancing its warning like a specter. It makes Joel stop in his tracks. His shoulders, ever broad and imposing, are tense.

He spins on his heel and almost knocks right into Ellie, who trails mindlessly behind him.

“Dude!” She protests.

“We’re goin’,” he hisses under his breath, grabbing onto the handle of her backpack to drag her along with him.

You have to pick up your pace to keep stride with him, bounding through the trees. “Joel—”

“Don’t,” he snaps, releasing Ellie’s bag. She remains next to him without issue or question. “We gotta circle back to the road. Ain’t safe if there’s more people out here.”

“The road?” Your skin is warm, your breath coming short, but you keep your voice quiet as his, startled to stir the crunching leaves beneath your tired boots. “Joel, we got off the road ‘cause there were people —”

“I know why we got off the road.” His countenance is fierce, his resolve steely, but he still won’t look at you.

“It’s safer with the cover,” you insist behind him, a furious ire bubbling in the back of your throat. “Here we can — we can —” You’re gasping for air now, and Ellie notices, her steps faltering. She tugs on Joel’s jacket, wordlessly. You have to stop and brace your palm on the rough bark of the oak that shelters you, your vision narrowing to a tunnel of blurred, black edges and brown sodden ground.

You don’t know how he got there, but he appears in front of you, one hand gripping your bicep and the other pulling your own hand to his heart.

“Breathe,” he commands softly, and you try, you really do, but you know he sees the truth of it.

You’re fading, ability dulling quicker than an overused knife, and you can feel the panic crest in your mind, the sting of liability pricking at your consciousness.

“Sorry,” you struggle to say. He just takes an enormous breath, the cavern of his lungs expanding and exhaling underneath your hand. You follow the mountain of it, the in and the out and up and down, and it makes it a little easier to see again.

You drag your eyes up to meet his, shame and exhaustion omnipresent parents in your expression. He looks blown wide open, sad, maybe worried, but mostly so, so certain.

His grip on you tightens. “Let’s stay in the woods,” he whispers his acquiescence. You feel no kind of victory. You want him to argue with you, not the dark circles printed onto the skin under your eyes. That can’t be all you are now.

Joel tenses suddenly, eyes flicking from you up to the edge of the tree line. You think he’s about to grab you and Ellie and run when you hear a muffled shriek from behind him, his broad form blocking your sight. He whips around to reveal two women, one with golden-red hair and one with a knife to Ellie’s throat. Ellie struggles and swears and writhes. You freeze.

The golden-red-haired woman has a revolver pointed at the two of you. You can’t see Joel’s face, but you know that he’s furious. You almost hope it’s with you, hope it’s because you caused him to turn his back, to lose his focus. You want him to feel the way you feel.

“Quit it,” hisses the taller woman that has a hold on Ellie, like she’s speaking to an incessant fly rather than a young girl at her mercy.

“Let her go,” Joel says lowly, calmly. There’s no questioning a tone like that. “Then you and I can talk like adults.”

“We don’t want trouble,” the golden-red-haired woman responds smoothly, her fist around the revolver begging argument. “Just hungry. Just lookin’ for food.”

You don’t even think about whether you should, whether Joel has a plan. You keep your eyes on Ellie as she continues to squirm. She’s afraid, but maybe not as much as she should be. Her confidence in you crushes you. You dart forward to Joel’s bag, unzip it from where it rests on his back. You pull out the measly offerings - two more pieces of jerky wrapped in flaking paper. An old health bar. Some roasted acorns you had made that taste like bitter ash. You throw the food at their feet. Joel doesn’t stop you.

The woman holding Ellie narrows her eyes. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” you plead. “You can check.”

You shoulder off your own, lighter pack and toss it to them. Joel glares at you, his fingers clearly itching towards his own gun tucked in the back of his pants, but you glare right back. Not with Ellie’s throat under a blade, you try to tell him with your fear.

The golden-red-haired woman bends down slowly to rummage through your bag, revolver still pointed your way. Joel shifts his weight while the woman looks down and she cocks the gun without even looking up, clicking her tongue in admonishment. Once she deems your supplies as paltry as you had claimed, she stands up, kicking the bag over, and slipping your meager offerings into her pockets. “Fine. Elaine, let her go.”

Elaine’s eyes flash like she’s considering an argument, and you try to calculate the distance from your hand to Joel’s gun, from the bullet to the spot between Elaine’s eyes, and the speed her lithe wrist would need to flick the knife across Ellie’s life.

Your action is decided for you when Elaine relents, shoving Ellie out of her grasp and forward to the forest floor. You’re there to catch her in your arms, her gangly limbs knocking painfully against yours, her furious demeanor tempered by your trembling.

You pull her back with you towards Joel, scrambling on the ground, and look up to see he’s drawn his gun. “Get movin’, then.” He bares his teeth at them.

Elaine moves to back away, but the other woman hesitates. Elaine nudges her shoulder with her own and hisses. “Madison.”

Madison looks between you and Joel as he helps you and Ellie up like she’s trying to decide something. Ellie seethes with derision and you have to clutch her to keep her from springing back towards her captors, this time on the attack. She only settles when she realizes she can’t lash out without hurting you, her fury still spitting but her face turning into your collarbone, probably more for your sake than her own. You rest your palm on her head. Joel’s got his free arm wrapped around you, too, sandwiching you and Ellie tight to his side.

Madison seems to decide and opens her mouth. “You know the way to Jackson?”

Elaine halts her retreat, brows furrowed and eyes clenched.

Joel holds his gun steady. “Get out of here.”

Madison continues to speak like she didn’t hear him. “Settlement out in Wyoming. My brother was headed there with an old army buddy. Heard they take people —”

She cuts off at the click of Joel’s safety. His finger rests on the trigger. He doesn’t say another word, just bores into her with eyes of molten lead.

Madison nods, and before you can blink, she and Elaine are gone. You’d almost believed you’d dreamed them up if your stomach didn’t turn at the thought of your reserves, now depleted.

Joel doesn’t let either of you move for a good ten minutes, his gun still raised and his arm still around you both. Ellie’s breathing has evened out and she turns her head up to look at you. You run a hand through her ponytail. “Okay?” You whisper. She nods, lips in a hard line.

You let her burrow herself back into you and look up at Joel. His thoughts race too fast to hide from his expression, and when he finally lowers the gun, he steps forward to grab your pack and swing it over his own shoulder.

His jaw grinds itself to dust as he stares at the ground, and it occurs to you what he might be agonizing over.

“Army buddy in Wyoming? Joel—” Your breath catches before you can really ask him. He looks up at you with hardened eyes and nods.

You let out a shuddering exhale, still rocking, rocking Ellie in your hold. The word rolls acidic off your tongue. “Jackson.”

—

It’s Jackson you’re headed for when the first shots ring out. You’re following the faded lines of a dusty map, hoping for the best. It’s brought you to a small town, several wooden buildings lining what must have once been a comfortable main road.

It’s not even that your guard is down, either — Joel had been antsier than ever after the run in with the women, especially since Ellie’s life had been on the line. She grumbles against his insistence, but you think she’s secretly appreciative of this mangled care, this devotion that no one before has extended to her.

They still get the jump on you, though, because they’re trying to get the jump on someone else. You glean somewhere during the shootout that it’s two opposing groups, both vying for the others’ resources. One had been holed up in the last building in town, the last one Joel had to clear before giving the signal. The other had been over the hill, peering down, waiting for their moment to ambush. They had thought Joel, ransacking and searching, was their target. It probably hadn’t mattered that he wasn’t.

You hear the shots before you know any of this, before you see anything that happens, so you follow protocol and grab Ellie and duck down behind a crumbling outpost, pushing her head under your cover. You peek over to see a torrent of people flooding out of that last building, the one Joel had been headed towards. Their guns are pointed away from you, up towards the peek where the last shot echoed from. Their shouts are incoherent, and your eyes search frantically for Joel. There’s no sign of him by the building, but there is a blooming red scar on the ground where he had been standing.

You feel a hand on your shoulder and spin around, knife raised high. It’s Ellie who stops you, grabbing around your middle, and swearing under her breath when she sees who’s startled you.

Joel’s managed to sneak around the back of the houses towards you, clutching his arm to his chest. Blood pours from between his fingers. His jaw is set as solidly as stone, and he jerks his head back towards the foothill you came from. He wants you to sneak back unseen, you’re sure, but you can’t focus on anything but the red viscous that flows from him, the life force, the cellular beat, and you feel it in you, too, you have that same blood growing in you, in your body, in your stomach, eating you alive to keep itself growing —

You reach your hand towards him, and he jerks back. All you can see is your hand, frozen in the air. He and Ellie must exchange words, something, but you don’t hear, the pounding of your eardrums too raucous, the rushing of your own tremulous blood overwhelming. He turns and crouches in on himself, hunched in pain or stealth, you don’t know. He runs on sure and quiet feet back towards the trees. Ellie only goes when you start behind him, like she’s not sure you can be trusted to follow.

—

You make it about half a mile up the side of the mountain before Joel’s using the trees to keep himself upright, the heft of him only supported by the roots at your feet. It’s Ellie who ends up stopping him and sitting him down, back against a bristled trunk. You waste no time falling to your knees beside him, whipping off your pack. Your hands shake as you riffle through it for the tweezers, for bandages, for anything that might help him. If only he still carried around oxy.

You pull out a small glass bottle of amber, stomach-churning liquid. Joel finds it in himself to shoot a judgmental glance your way, before his eyes are rolling back in pain. He keeps his arm clutched to his side.

“What?” You hiss. “It’s not like I can drink it anymore, of course I still have some.”

You flip the cap off as quickly as you can and pry his good arm away from the wound. It’s still bleeding profusely, an ugly, obscured fissure in the perfect planet of his skin. He makes a high sound in the back of his throat when you pour the moonshine over the wound, but his lips stay pressed tight together. When you’ve got it as clean as you can manage, you grab the tweezers. You can see the metal still buried in his flesh plain as day. You’ll have to get it out.

“Can I help?” Ellie flutters anxiously at your side, her hands lifting and retracting with directionless adrenaline.

You nod towards your bag. “Grab the bandages, then cut them into three strips for me.”

She doesn’t waste any time, and you turn back to Joel.

His skin is sallow, and sweat crusts his brow. You reach up to wipe some away with your thumb and his eyes flutter. “I’m gonna take it out.”

He nods, breathing heavily, expression unreadable. “I know.”

You search his eyes for any kind of direction, anything that would help him that he’s too reticent to admit. When you find nothing but grim determination, you grab the strap of your pack and offer it up to his mouth. He understands, and takes it gingerly between his teeth.

Your hands won’t stop shaking as you level the tweezers with the hole in his arm, so you balance your forearm across his chest. His great, heaving breaths push you up and down. You place the two tapered points of the tweezers as best you can on either side of the bullet, having to dig through some flesh. Joel keens under you. “I’m sorry,” you mutter, over and over, a mantra that pulls you forward into the next several minutes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

It takes several attempts, and probably a whole lot more damaged surface area than appropriate knowledge would have allowed, but you’re able to finally wiggle the bullet out of its warm home. The silver pelts to the ground and bits of Joel’s muscle, along with a whole torrent of blood, flow from the pulsing circle. Ellie’s there with the bandages and you throw your whole body weight into pressing them against his arm. His eyes roll into the back of his head, you think he might be shrieking through the fabric at his teeth. “Just have to stop the bleeding,” you tell Ellie, or Joel, or maybe the wind. “It’s okay. It’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, it does, or at least it slows. You remove the soiled, rust-colored fabric from Joel’s arm and wrap it up with the remaining bandages, but not before pouring more of the alcohol on it. He sobs, eyes squeezed shut, and Ellie clutches on to his uninjured shoulder, her eyes wild with fear.

“No sepsis, Ellie, that’s why,” you pant, breaking off another portion of the bandages with your teeth to secure it. His breathing calms when he seems to notice Ellie pressed up against him, her trembling fingers pulling the fabric from his mouth and pressing her face to his chest. His good hand holds her to him, clinging with a strength you’re relieved to see remains.

You go to wipe your filthy hands on the grass when you notice a spare bit of Joel’s gore on your thumb. You crawl as far away from Joel and Ellie as you can manage before spilling everything in you onto the bushes. You dry heave long after your stomach is empty.

—

You lie awake several nights later. Your back throbs against the unforgiving forest floor, your blanket wrapped around the top of you instead of padding the ground. Ellie snores softly on your right side, the tender puff of her breath singing through the frosty air. You wish you didn’t begrudge her the rest, a better person wouldn’t, but no matter how tired you get you can never seem to quiet the racing of your mind when the sun goes down.

You turn onto your side to see Joel lying next to you, flat on his back, eyes wide open towards the night sky above. He looks almost comical, bundled up to his throat and arm crossed across himself in an awkward approximation of healing. He spares you a brief glance, raising an eyebrow but saying nothing before he turns his gaze back to the branches that bow above you. He’s keeping watch best he can, but his injured arm is still in a sling, which means he can’t wield the rifle properly. He’s to wake you or Ellie if anything happens. You all know you’ll probably wake in the morning curled together like a three-pod cocoon, the greater threat to your person the chill of the wilderness.

You see your breath crystalize in front of you, even in the dull silver light of the moon, but you can’t see most of his face. He turns it from you, shrouded in shadow, like he does the rest of himself. You never know what he feels, never know where you stand. He had said he didn’t blame you, but it’s hard to believe him when he clearly harbors some kind of sorrow.

You don’t know if its the faux anonymity of the dark that gives you the courage or the delirium that your baby secretes into your bloodstream, but you almost feel inspired to ask him. Instead, you open your mouth and stick your whole entire foot into its waiting orifice.

“What did you think about abortions? Before the outbreak?”

The harsh of your whispering disturbs the tranquil blanket of night. He doesn’t move, doesn’t answer. His eyes don’t even shift to indicate he’s thinking about it.

“Because,” you rush to cover your clumsy footsteps, “you were from Texas. Everyone always said — I mean, I’m sure there were people everywhere that—”

“I don’t know.” He saves you from yourself, his cool, clean baritone soothing your spiked and frayed nerves. The baby pounds its fists against your insides braying like it had heard the word you uttered. You feel sick.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No,” Joel continues, turning his head to look at you. “I mean, I don’t know because I don’t think I paid enough attention to that kind of thing. Sarah’s mom never even — considered — so I didn’t — ” His voice catches in his throat and he looks away.

You knew about Sarah, but not from him. Tess had whispered to you one putrid Boston night about his past, about Texas, about a daughter that hadn’t made it, which she only knew about from Tommy, but you’d never heard him say her name. You feel the scorching lick of shame about your heart, not having even considered what your current state would mean to him. One child, stripped away so cruelly from him, and here you were implying you’d thought about doing the same to another, but then again — maybe that’s what he’d want. To nip it in the bud, to end the pain before it could start.

You take a shuddering, bracing breath, but your voice still comes out meeker than you wish it would. “My sister told me about it. She said there was a place you could go in the QZ, some woman in the Fireflies. I don’t know how,” you admit, “but I kind of wish I did.”

“No,” he snaps, and you shrivel. “It never works out, especially not now. It would just kill you.”

You acquiesce. It makes sense. It seems too good to be true, a relic of medicinally sound days-gone-by.

“Sorry,” you say again, at a loss for anything more.

“Will you quit?” He huffs, and he surprises you, reaching out his good hand to latch onto yours. “Enough apologizin’.”

You can’t stop yourself from pulling his gloved palm even closer to you, into your chest, curling around it like you’re supposed to want to curl around this thing inside you, this parasite that eats away at you, this child you’ll evict from its warm, safe home, whether you want to or not.

He notices your reticence, turns on his side to face you, to coax your bile out of you.

“I feel sorry, though,” you whisper, blinking furiously, finding it hard to look right at him. “I don’t want it. I think I hate it, and I ought to feel sorry for that, right? That’s so awful, Joel. I’m so awful. But I’m so — I can’t —”

You shudder, and it’s like turning off. The tears you felt like crying halt their rise to the surface, and your breath slows. The blade of the hurt dulls, pricking instead of slicing, fading. It’s hard to hear him when he responds, hard to feel the gruff hand he lifts to cradle the back of your head. It only comes back into focus when he insists.

“Hey, listen to me.” He shakes you a bit, and with Herculean effort, you lift your heavy eyes to meet his. His expression is intense, pinched, and so, so beautiful.

“You’re not wrong, you’re not bad. I know this is hard. I know,” he shakes you again when your eyes start to glaze.

“Joel,” you breathe.

“Listen,” he says, fingertips pushing into the firm of your scalp, and you notice faintly that he’s abandoned his sling, that he’s pushed his pain aside to reach for you. “You’re doing better than you think you are. I see it, I see you fightin’. You’re not failing, darlin’. Not on my watch.”

You feel yourself nodding, not knowing where the internal command came from. “I know, Joel.” How do you tell him? How can he not understand that you trust him, just not yourself and your rotten, black heart?

He exhales harshly, searching your eyes for doubt, for something other than this flatness you feel settling over you. He gives in when he can’t find it, but his hand keeps rubbing your head, and you lean into it, relishing in the prick of his calluses. “Okay,” he says, then closes his mouth, opens it, shuts it again. His indecision pulls you back to the forest, back into the body you now share with another.

“What?” You venture, and his eyes alight, enthused to have found you in there.

“You ever been to Texas?” He says quickly, and he doesn’t blurt things, but maybe he did just then.

A startled laugh escapes your lips. The world shifts into focus, and the world is just his eyes, boring into yours. “Probably not. I don’t think we travelled much before the outbreak. Boston’s all I remember, besides a few summers in Maine.”

He lets out a low whistle, eyes flicking over to Ellie to make sure his sound hasn’t bothered her. She remains still, burrowed in the confines of her dreams. “Pretty different from Texas, then,” he says, and you laugh again, realer this time, easier.

“Colder,” you agree, “Even in the summer. We always had to bundle up next to the coast, even in July.”

“Nice though?” He prods into your memory with an iron poke, trying to keep you awake, keep you alive. Guide you ashore. The granite slopes wade into your mind, crashing waves and evergreen needles, a creaking Cape and damp, mossy mornings.

“Yeah,” you agree. “Really nice. Pretty quiet. Not many people, mostly just the deer and the gulls.”

His eyes flash, some emotion you can’t name, but it feels like it fits in the still blanket of space between you. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad place for a baby.”

You think of a child, toddling through the sand, tossing rocks into the water at your ankles. You think of a quiet life in a cove town, small but big enough for the three of you. You think of scribbled drawings on an antique fridge, of fatherly pride and big hands sweeping up a little girl, throwing her over his shoulder. Her lovely laugh peeling through the dunes.

You can’t help but smile. “Maybe you could have built us a cabin or something.”

He grins then, a real, full smile lighting up the planes of his face. You want to reach out and stamp it into your skin, hold this moment, suspend it in simplicity. “Big order for that. Think the invoice would be pretty intense. You plannin’ on compensating the vendors properly?”

You snort, curling his still-captured hand under your chin. “What, the baby’s not enough? Plus, your memory’s shot. Rural real estate isn’t anywhere near expensive as those city slickers liked to run you for.”

“I guess a nine month gestation is payment enough,” he says, and you feign to smack him, beaming.

“Three beds, three baths,” you continue. “One for us, one for the baby, one for visitors.”

He sucks in through his teeth. “Steeper and steeper, these costs. And it’s oceanfront, too?”

“Balsam fir,” you babble, the picture forming so seamlessly in your mind. “So it always smells clean. High ceilings — and a skylight! So we can still see the stars.”

Joel’s nodding, eyes shining. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Whatever you want. I owe ‘ya that much.”

Your heart skips a beat. You feel a giant spark smolder in your chest, so you tuck yourself into Joel’s side to share it with him. He carefully folds you into himself, stretching around the subtle curve of your abdomen that’s recently manifested.

Something unnamable pulses through you, through the bump, over to him. Before you drift off, you convince yourself you might have seen it in his eyes, too.

—

One stormy night in Boston, you’re helping Tess pack a couple of bags. The thunder cracks and you shiver, mind wandering to Katie, to where she might be sleeping that night, if she’s wet, if she’s cold. Tess hasn’t said much to you, her mind on her next move, her next haul; she’s particularly preoccupied with Joel’s absence, you think, but you don’t say anything. When her grim determination sets the precedent, there’s no getting around it. You wouldn’t want to pry, anyways.

She’s the one to finally break the silence. “He say anything to you before he left?”

You had been here at their place earlier in the day, while Joel was packing up to leave. He hadn’t said a word, had just brushed by you on his way out, your shoulder buzzing from the brief contact.

You shake your head. “No, I don’t even know where he was going.”

Tess hums, eyes flitting from the door to the radio against the wall. “Well, whatever. We can’t wait around all night. You hungry?”

Your stomach gurgles in response, carving deeper into the hollow pit of your abdomen. “Yeah,” you say, like there was ever any other answer.

Tess heats up the green beans with ham you had brought that day from your shift at the pantry. The corner of the can is dented, which is why no one cared that it had gone missing, but Katie had started rejecting the dented ones recently, saying botulism was a silent killer the Fireflies couldn’t afford to barter with. Your palms sweat. You’ve eaten so many like that, it’s probably fine. But what if this was the time it wasn’t? What if Tess ingests your poison and you’re the thing that kills her, after all she’s been through?

She doesn’t seem to care, dumping portions into two bowls and leaving the rest in the beat up tin pot on the stove. You both slurp in silence, letting the wash of sodium rush over your gums. You should have thought to add pepper, but getting up again feels too much like an inconvenience, and maybe a slight on Tess’s preparation.

You’re both jolted from complacency when Joel bangs through the front door, throwing it shut behind him and shouldering into the nearby bathroom before either of you can stand up.

“Joel?” Tess calls warily.

A moment of silence, then he responds. “Just a minute.” His voice is strained, slightly raspier than usual.

Tess immediately knows something is wrong, and you know because of the look on her face. “Fuck,” she mutters, and pitches towards the cabinets underneath the sink. She tosses you a couple of rags. “Will you go hand these to him, or get him to sit the fuck down? Where’s the disinfectant?” She starts muttering under her breath while she rummages around and you stand there uselessly, rags flowing limp between your fingers.

“Will you relax?” huffs Joel, emerging from the bathroom and moving stiffly to the kitchen table. You can’t help but gape at his complexion marred with bruising, the ugly discoloration above his eyebrow and around his jaw swelling to a reddened burst. Blood drips down his nose, around the contour of his rugged angel lips, then down onto the rotten floorboards underfoot. He sits, unable to hide a wince and a grunt, or maybe not trying. You’re still frozen.

Tess whirls by you, slipping the rags from your hands and settling next to Joel with a bottle in her hand. She wets one of the rags, then starts to dab at his face. He halfheartedly bats her hand away for a second, until she glares, then relents and lets her clean his face.

“You wanna explain yourself?” She murmurs lowly after a minute. Her voice spurs you into action. You want to help, want to stitch him together with your own sinew, dull his pain with a drug from your veins, but you don’t think he’ll take kindly to it. Tess has clearly done this before; even if she hadn’t, she’s comfortable, certain of where she stands with him. You can’t step into the space she takes up.

“Not really,” he mutters, a childish impatience squirming through him. You feel his own restlessness in your own feet; useless, you can’t just stand here. You turn to the stove, grabbing another bowl from the cabinet and doling him a portion of the sad green beans and ham. You grab the pepper, flaking a kick into his food that you’re sure he’s said he prefers, and turn to quickly set it down in front of him. Tess is done, grabs the rags to toss in the sink.

Joel seems confused. “We’re outta green beans.”

You grin at him, the flesh on your face feeling tight and out of place. “Good thing you’ve got a supplier.” You don’t say that you had stashed him a can extra even above your smuggling quota. You don’t mention it because you know he likes them better than any of the other shitty cans because they remind him of home, because they’re made down south, somewhere, because he can’t know that you know that about him, that you study him like he’s something worth knowing about. You can’t wear your love so openly like that, but you think he might see it leaking out of your porous heart anyways, because there’s a stern gratitude in his nod, in the bite he lifts to his mouth. Tess knows too, and squeezes your shoulder as she walks you out later.

“Thank you,” she says, “for doing that for him. He’ll never say it, but he’s grateful. I’m grateful. You’re a good kid.” Your heart beats faster. You can’t remember the last time someone said something like this, told you you were good, saw the care you hemorrhaged, and gave it back to you. You nod and head back to your own empty place, counting down the hours until you can see him again, until you feel like there might be a reason you’re here.

#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 fanfiction #joel miller #joel x f!reader #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #tlou fic #tlou fanfic #tlou

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bratzforchris · 2 months

Note

Maybe Jake webber with a poc reader ? i haven’t seen any :) 🫶🏾

Cooking

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Summary: In which Jake's girlfriend teaches him how to really cook

Pairing: Jake x Latina!reader

Warnings: None!

Word Count: 706

A/N: Thank you for the request! The race wasn't specified here, so I choose Latinx because I'm Hispanic :)

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Jake was very excited for multiple reasons. One, you would be joining him for a cooking stream, and two, he would finally taste the cooking you had bragged about for so long. You two had only been dating for about three months, and he was very excited to taste your food. Jake loved trying all sorts of foods from different places, and since you were Hispanic, you had promised him you would make some of the dishes you had grown up on.

“Hello!” he boomed, ever the loud talker. “Today I am here with my lovely girlfriend, Y/N,” Jake paused to wrap an arm around your waist and kiss you. “And she’s going to teach us how to make Arroz…con, con…Guandules?” he looked to you for approval, stumbling a bit over the Spanish words.

You giggled and kissed his cheek. “Close enough.”

“Let’s get started!” he exclaimed.

You and Jake bustled around the kitchen for a while, getting out ingredients and setting the water for the rice to boil. You would occasionally acknowledge the chat when they asked about your relationship with Jake. Even though you were still rather new to Jake and his whole career, you loved his viewers. They were extremely kind to you and so far were so supportive of your relationship.

“That looks like foreskin.” Jake commented as you dumped a can of kidney beans into a saucepan on the stove.

“Oh my god, shut up,” You laughed. “We have to eat this, y’know.”

The stream exploded with laughing remarks and comments about how it wouldn’t be a Jake video with a foreskin joke. You brushed your curly hair out of your eyes and laughed again, grabbing a variety of peppers and spices.

“Woah, babe. I’m a white man.” Jake said as you added sliced jalapenos with the seeds still attached into the beans.

“This is the way my mom always used to make it.” You hummed fondly, kissing Jake as you stirred the food and added a variety of spices, to include cayenne pepper.

“You’re probably gonna give me diarrhea.” he retorted, but hugged you from behind nonetheless.

You quickly combined the rice and beans and made two plates of food, handing Jake his to show to his stream. “Ta da!”

“Well, this looks amazing and Mama Bear is hungry. Should we do a taste test?” he asked the stream.

The chat was full of confirming remarks, both because they wanted to know how your cooking was, and because they were very eager to see Jake’s reaction after the amount of spice that had been added to the food. Being used to eating such spicy food, you really didn’t understand why everyone was freaking out, but then again, flavors and spice were a big part of Hispanic culture.

You both shoveled a bite of your food into your mouths, chewing thoughtfully. You swallowed with a huge smile on your face, quite proud of your dish. However, when you looked over at Jake, he did not appear to be having a great time.

“Holy fuck,” Jake panted after he painstakingly swallowed. “That’s so fucking spicy. What did you put in that?”

“You saw what I put in there.” You laughed, getting a good laugh out of his reaction.

Jake threw open the refrigerator door and grabbed the gallon of milk, immediately taking a swig from the carton. “Oh my god.”

“It’s not that spicy!” You and the stream were laughing at his predicament.

Finally, your boyfriend set the milk down, fanning his tongue. “My stomach is burning.”

“Poor baby,” You giggled, kissing his pouty lips. “So, did you like it?”

“It would be amazing…if it didn’t taste like I was eating out of Satan’s asshole.” Jake groaned, relishing in your touch.

“Chat, should he take another bite?” You asked.

“NO, he should not,” Jake picked you up and spun you around. “Thank you for the food, baby. I love you.”

The chat went absolutely wild over all your cute moments with Jake, and you knew the clips would be all over social media later, but for now, you just enjoyed the soft moment between you two and the utter love that came from sharing your culture with the man you loved.

#jake webber #jake webber smut #jake webber fluff #jake webber fanfic #jake webber fanfiction #jake and johnnie #johnnie guilbert fanfic #johnnie guilbert smut #johnnie guilbert #johnnie guilbert fic #johnnie guilbert fanfiction #johnnie and jake #the tinas #tara yummy #youtubers #fanfic author #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 fanfic

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jordie-gvf · 1 year

Text

GQ, josh kiszka

summary : josh and y/n kiszka do the gq couples quiz

warnings : language, allusions to sex

word count : 1.5k+

pairing : josh kiskza x fem!reader

enjoy

You and Josh had been together for quite a while now. When Greta performed at Helping Hands, You and Josh had been invited to do the GQ Couples Quiz. Josh really wanted to do it, to put your 9 year relationship to the test.

When GQ invited you two, they said to dress comfy, as you and Josh were going to be sitting in a bean bag chair together.

When you and Josh got into the car they sent, he was already excited to film.

“Do you think we’ll do good? I know you pretty well. But, do you know me?” he questioned you.

“J, we've been together for 9 years, married for 6, I'm sure both do fine.” you told him, and laughed.

The driver pulled up into the stages, Josh got out first, and grabbed your hand and led you inside.

The director led you two into a studio and you saw a giant LOVESAC waiting for you two.

Josh came up next to you and whispered in your ear, “Is this an excuse to have you on top of me?” and laid down in the bean bag. He patted his lap and said, “Come here, Mama.” and pulled you on top of him.

They handed you question cards and told you that they were rolling and were ready whenever you were. “I'll let my wife go first.” Josh said, letting everyone in the room know exactly who you were.

Josh looked into the camera as best he could with you on top of him and said, “Hi, This is Josh Kiszka and I'm here with my wife, Y/N Kiszka.” He paused and you both said, “And this is the GQ Couples Quiz!”

You read the first card out to him, “What is my favorite color?”

“Easy, anything neon. Look at her fucking nails, neon pink. But, she prefers lime green.” he looked into the camera and winked.

“Alright, he got that one. Is anyone keeping track of what he makes?” you asked.

He cut you off and said, “I'm gonna make them all. Im gonna get them all right.”

“Alright, next question. What is my signature dish I always make?” you asked him.

“Again, easy. Pork tacos. Almost every week when she plans the dinner menu, pork tacos are going to be on the menu. And it's my favorite.” he said.

“Correct, he got that right.” you told them.

“What is my best friend's name?” you asked him.

“You have two, Danny and Ronnie, would be their names. But you consider Danny to be more like our child.” he stated.

“That is very true. Danny is our child and we love him very much. Ronnie is his sister, in case anyone didn't know that, and if I wasn't married to him, I would be with her, just saying”

“Wow, you'd go for my sister instead of me?” he said, joking around with you. “Id consider it,” you said to him, only half joking.

“What is my love language?” you asked him, not expecting to know what that means.

“Well, acts of service and physical touch.” he said and raised his eyebrows and smirked. You lightly tapped him on the chest. “You're so gross, J.”

“No, but seriously. She cooks for me. Whenever I come home from recording and she can tell it's been a hard day, she runs a relaxing bath for me. I'm so in love with her, it's crazy.” he said.

You looked into his eyes and kissed him. You wrapped your arms around the back of his neck and he wrapped his around your waist. You read the next card, as best you could.

“What is my favorite way to de-stress after a long day?” you asked and started laughing. He raised his eyebrows again and laughed with you. “Well, what the doctor said,” he started to say. You told him, “That's your favorite way for me to de-stress, what's mine?” He said, “Usually, a back rub and a peach daiquiri.”

You nodded your head into the camera and said, “Correct. You're doing really well.”

“How many tattoos do I have?” you asked him.

“Oh god, I have no idea.” he said and rubbed his chin. “At least 1.” he said. You shrugged and said, “I don't even know how many I have. Give him a point”

“Can I make up my own questions? Is that allowed?” you asked the director. She nodded and you asked Josh, “What is my order at Mellow Mushroom?”

He threw his head back and said, “Fuck, hold on.” It took him a minute to get the name of it. “Either the Pacific Rim or the Buffalo Chicken,”

You gave him a high five and said, “Yes, good job. So you got all the questions right, so now it's your turn to quiz me.”

You laid back on the LOVESAC and let Josh lay on you now. He laid his head down on your stomach and asked, “What is my full name?”

“Joshua Michael Kiszka or Y/N’s sexy husband. Either one.” you said and scratched his head.

He got up and said, “Bro how did you know my whole name? Are we married or something?” he asked you, jokingly. He laid back down and said, “Yes, she is correct.”

“Who do I look up to?” he asked you. You said, “Ooh, there could be 1 of 2 people. Either Jake or your father.” he nodded and told them that you were correct.

“Ooh you have to answer this next question, I need to know what your answer is, okay? What is my favorite sex position.” he asked.

Your eyes widened and you looked down at him. “Well he always tells me he likes to look at me, so probably basic ass missionary but he also likes cowgirl.” you answered.

“She is very correct, I like both but prefer cowgirl.” he said and rubbed your thigh. “What are my favorite nicknames you call me?” he asked you.

“He likes Cookie, I call him Angel sometimes and he loves it. Um, he likes Joshie too, he hasn't gotten that one in a long time. Whenever Im mad at him its Joshua.” you said. “Yes Cookie is my favorite but you forgot one.” he said. You looked down at him and said, “Which one did I miss?”

“Daddy.” he said, in all seriousness.

“Josh, shut up.”

“Ooh baby, you better get this right, or I'm leaving. What is my favorite film?” he asked.

“I like how he said if I don't get this right that he's leaving, as if it's a hard answer. 2001: A Space Odyssey.” you answered, correctly.

He laughed and looked up at you, smiling at you. He asked you the next question, “What is my favorite part of your body?”

You looked at the director, “Who the hell made these questions?” you asked her. She shrugged and giggled, “No idea, all I know is it's not me!”

“I would say either my lips or my thighs? Maybe, I'm not sure?” you questioned your own answer.

“Who said it was physical? She has a very big heart and she's always been very giving. There was one time before we even started dating. Her and I were in the same theatre class and we hadn't talked before. My girlfriend at the time had just broken up with me before class, and this one over here, came over to me and asked if I was okay. I told her what happened and she hugged me. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a chocolate chip cookie and gave it to me. I knew right then and there, that we were going to be together forever. And that's also why she calls me Cookie,”

When he finished his monologue, the director spoke up and asked both of you, “How did you guys know you were in love with each other? What sparked your relationship?”

Josh looked at you and let you go first. “We had only been friends for a few months before we started dating, I think it was like 3 or 4 months. His family was hosting a Christmas dinner a few days before the holiday. Sam and Jake had girlfriends, he didn't. He didn't want to be left out, so he called me a few days prior and invited me over. Josh, you have no idea how excited I was for that night.” you told him and the crew around you.

“I went out to a dress shop and they had nothing in my size, so I gave up. I had called him and told him, “I don't know if I can make it, I can't find a dress in my size” and his response was, “wear jeans and a t-shirt. I want you there with me.” and that sparked every single feeling for me. I ended up finding something to wear. I had on a pair of flare jeans with a soft blue sweater and white converse. I hated the way I looked. Josh came to pick me up at my house, and when I walked downstairs, the first thing he said to me was, “You look so beautiful, Y/N.” As soon as he said that to me, I knew that I loved him.” you finished off.

He looked up at you with tears in his eyes and said, “I love you, Mama.”

#josh kiszka x reader #josh kiszka fic #josh kiszka fluff #josh gvf #josh kiszka #greta van fluff #greta van fic #gvf fic #greta van fleet fic

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tf2-oneshots · 1 year

Note

heavymedic awkward confession please? with a side of first kiss and lots of fluff pretty please 🥺

Oooh i love them!

Warning: none

Rating: General

Breakfast at the base, especially during ceasefires, were as chaotic as can be. Nine men trying to squeeze around each other to grab milk cartons, toast, and fight over who gets to use the good pan first. It’s no help that the stove only holds eight burners, and today, everyone wants to cook at the exact same time.

“Stop shoving me! I gotta make my food right.” Scout huffs when Medic bumped into him for the third time. His eyes are locked on the three pancakes sitting in the pan. Never the best at knowing when to flip them, he’s making it his mission to get them perfect.

“I wouldn’t if I could. Pyro, you’re going to set off the fire alarm again.” He looks down at the too hot pan of scrambled eggs, popping from air bubbles every few seconds. Pyro muffles an annoyed complaint, stirring their food as smoke rises.

“Doktor, give Heavy bowl.” At the center of the conglomeration is the Russian attempting to finish his porridge. Although the strongest, the man was being hit in every direction by his coworkers. The continuous bumps nearly spilled Heavy’s raisins into Engineer’s sausage gravy.

Medic leans over to Sniper to reach, but right as he does so, the Aussie jumps back with a shout. His strips of bacon sizzled out of control, burning him with hot grease. The motion knocks Medic against Demo, who had just taken a pot of beans off the stove.

“Watch it!” The Scotsman swerves his scalding food away from the open flame only to crash into Spy. She screams, both in pain and disgust as hot beans spill onto her suit. The pot clatters to the floor, sending Spy backwards into Engineer.

He drops a jar of honey for her crepe right into the Texan’s biscuits and gravy, splashing said gravy onto several of the men. Medic tries to dodge only to slip on the bean covered floor. The doctor reaches out, grasping at whatever he can to not fall face first into multiple pans of food and fire.

“Ah!!” Two steps forward, and his face crashes into Heavy’s. Their lips press flat together, leaving the men stunned as the smoke alarm sounds. As Medic straightens himself, he realizes he never grabbed Heavy that bowl he needed.

“Uh…aheh, sorry…” Behind them, Scout drops several dishes as he hits the floor. He groans, sneakers coated in beans as Engineer fights the fire starting on the stovetop. Pyro merely cheers, completely unscathed as she enjoys her meal.

“Is okay…we should sit in living room.” The two leave the chaotic kitchen for the quieter space adjacent to it. They sit on the same couch with just enough room between them to not be awkward. Of course, they weren’t sitting too close for the same reason. Medic clears his throat.

“Was it weird to be kissed by me?” A hesitant question. The German smooths his pants to occupy his hands. Why do they feel clammy? The room is much cooler than the kitchen, and its just them. Right, just them….

“No, Heavy feels…happy with Doktor. Would not be upset by kiss.” The Russian tries to word himself just right. In his mother tongue, he could speak for days on how he feels about Medic. Even the best of poems and novels would pale in comparison.

“I wouldn’t be upset by it either. Heavy, for sometime I have felt…close to you. Aheh, very close. More than anyone else.” Medic moves an inch to test the waters. His hand lays in between them, silently offering itself to the other. A second passes before Medic feels a larger palm lay atop his own

“Heavy feels the same. I…love you, Doktor.” Love. That’s the right word. Heavy knew each version by heart in Russian. The passionate, the hesitant, the carnal, and many other ways to say the one word in English. If he’s certain of anything, its that this love is the romantic kind. The one he’s desired for years.

“Misha, I love you too. Oh, I feel like a schoolboy.” Medic covers his face to giggle. It’s as if he’s a child with his first crush confessing to him! The doctor squeezes Heavy’s hand softly and leans in.

“May we kiss again?” Eyes closed and lips puckered, Medic sat in wait. The couch creaks slightly, dipping beneath the shift atop it. Heavy brings Medic in close, kissing him on the lips. The world drowns out as they bring each other in close. Yeah, this is what romantic love feels like.

Hope you enjoyed this!! I love these two -H

#team fortress 2 #tf2 #tf2 requests #tf2 medic #tf2 heavy #heavymedic #red oktoberfest

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sirianasims · 4 months

Text

The new apartment only had three bedrooms, so while I did miss Shen and Tai, it was probably a good thing that they’d gone back home to terrorise Mt. Komorebi. At least we were still able to keep Jessica and Griffin around.

Griffin had been dating Daria ever since the party, and as she was vegan, he was working hard to expand his cooking repertoire.

I’d asked to join him. I wanted to be able to cook properly for myself – and to spoil Samuel with delicious food – and learning from a former chef wasn’t a chance I was going to pass up.

We spent so many evenings in the kitchen together, testing new variations on old favourites, and Griffin happily taught me proper knife skills and all his cooking tricks.

Daria would come by often, and it was pretty adorable to see how hard he tried to please her.

They seemed to have their own private language. Whenever they started throwing around words like “whipple” and “midnight black”, it was impossible to tell if they were flirting or discussing the relative merits of various types of heirloom beans.

Possibly both.

Samuel and I were really busy, him with his studies and me with my training. Most nights I’d come home to find him at the computer, mumbling about phalanges and metatarsals or looking up muscle groups.

I really wanted to take our relationship to the next level, but for some reason it was impossible for me to take the initiative. I’d spent so long reining in this want, trying not to let things go too far, and I no longer knew how to stop doing that.

I also still had that stupid fear.

What if I got pregnant? What if he left me, all alone with a baby?

Some memories never faded. So many nights during my early childhood I would wake up in our tiny apartment to the sound of my mother crying quietly in the other room.

A faint, heart-broken sound of desperation.

I could no longer remember what I used to do when it happened. Did I go to her? Did I hide under the covers? But the sound of her crying had never left me. And even as it happened less and less over the years, it didn’t fully stop until Conrad.

I was eternally grateful to him for that, for making my mother happy again.

I never wanted to be like her, all alone, raising a child who felt like a mistake. Like they were the very thing that ruined someone’s life.

But I also really wanted Samuel.

beginning / previous / next

#duchellilegacy #duchellichapters #duchelligen4 #freya duchelli #jessica clemons #samuel ward #griffin hart #daria moon #katherine wasn't having a great time for a few years there #lots of regrets

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rmoonstoner · 8 months

Text

***

Poisoned Empanadas

***

Pairing:

Moon Knight (Jake Lockley) x Spider!fem!reader

Spider-Man 2099 (Miguel O'Hara) x Spider!fem!reader

***

18+

Warnings:

Violence, strong language, mentions of death, mentions of depression, sexual themes, volatile emotions, dats a big boi, dats an angry boi, reader gets hurt, whumpy, hit-you-in-the-feels, why are they so sweet?

***

Summary:

Miguel goes out on patrol with you and your friends. Something noteworthy happens. We see a side of your ex that you don't get to.

***

Chapter 6 - Panades, Belize

This empanada is from Belize. Like many other Empanadas, they are usually crescent shaped and packed full of white fish and a variety of beans, sometimes with cheese and other meats. The shell is made of corn flour, giving it a yellow color, and is deep fried in lard until fully cooked and golden and crispy on the outside. It is typically serced with salsa made of onions, cabbage, and peppers.

***

The next morning.

Everyone was seated around the table, except for Stephen and Miguel. Stephen had made it clear that there would be a mandatory meeting this morning, before anyone was allowed to leave for the day.

"What do you think? Is the doc gonna find a missing Spider?" Gwen asked.

"Pffft. If that man is smart, he wouldn't dare leave." America laughed as she jotted down some quick notes for class without even looking up.

"I dunno. He broke my arm. It takes a lot to do that." Peter huffed. America stopped and looked up at Peter with a deadpan expression.

"He what?"

"Yeah, but it's fine. Stephen fixed me up as good as new. Miguel even apologized! I believe his apology was genuine."

"That's not good enough, Peter! He owes you, now. He broke into your building that you inherited from Tony. He beat you up and shattered your arm. You're lucky Stephen was available!" Gwen complained, while America hummed in agreement.

"Shhh, I hear them coming down the stairs!" You hissed at them both and you picked up your tea to feign like you were occupied.

Stephen had Miguel marching into the room in street clothing. Miguel was in simple blue sweatpants, some white sneakers, red socks, and a tight fitting black tee with a faded Led Zeppelin logo on the front. Miguel had a frown and he seemed to squint at the bright lights of the kitchen. He grumbled as he took a seat next to you and started to rub his eyes generously.

"Damn. You look awful." Gwen declared while looking at the large man that was hunched over the table.

"Mmmhmmm." Miguel huffed back. When he removed his hands, he was still squinting badly. He looked like he was hungover.

"He will be fine. He's light sensitive." Stephen said while the lights dimmed and the curtains in the kitchen windows closed. He set down a pair of red sunglasses beside Miguel and patted his back.

"These have special lenses. A friend of mine, Doctor Hank McCoy, developed them for a colleague of his. They should help with your sensitive eyes and also if you happen to have hellfire spewing from them." As he explained the glasses, Miguel snatched them up and put them on.

Stephen was quick to set the table for breakfast with a simple hand gesture and he motioned for everyone to dig in. The moment a steaming cup of coffee appeared in front of Miguel, he took it and guzzled it down. He didn't even make a face at the temperature, and merely sighed happily as the caffeine flooded his system.

Everyone ate and talked. Stephen and Peter were discussing the genetic testing he was doing at the lab, and how it was set back a few months for obvious reasons. One of which was sitting there, trying to be invisible. Gwen was helping America with her notes by making flash cards versions of them.

And that left you and Miguel to sit there awkwardly. Miguel was listening to Peter talk about his experiments. You sipped your tea and poked the food around your plate until it was eventually all gone. When breakfast was done and cleaned up, America left through a portal, while Peter and Gwen followed her.

"You're free to leave, if you want, but please remember that when I summon your presence, you better come running." Stephen said as he waved his hand dismissively.

You gawked at him. Whatever discussion they had, they certainly weren't letting on about anything they talked about. Miguel was quick to get up and leave, only stopping briefly at the door to say his goodbyes.

"So, uh… I'll see ya tonight? Sanctum roof?" You asked. He sighed and nodded.

"Yeah. The doctor said I have to stay within sight of one of you four. I assume that includes the black and red Spider-Man?"

"Yeah. He was the new kid, before I came along." You laughed and rubbed the back of your neck. Miguel chuckled and turned to leave.

"If I show up early, can we get pizza again?" He turned back to give you a dopey grin. You blushed and agreed.

"Yeah. We can get pizza." Miguel gave you that adorable fangy grin and he left before he said something stupid.

He made his way down the steps and towards the general direction to his hotel. Miguel's brain was filled with images of the night ahead.

The doctor had basically given him an old school vibe of; 'If you hurt my daughter in anyway, shape, or form, I'll blast you with my boomstick.' The daughter being you, and the boomstick probably being some sort of magic spell pulled from the depths of Hell or something.

The other Spiders were mentioned as well, with him being just as clear about not hurting them either. Miguel understood why. He did kind of severely damage Peter's arm.

But, the man made it very clear he wouldn't tolerate Miguel playing around with you if he wasn't serious, or if you weren't interested. Stephen said, no, he demanded, that Miguel was absolutely not allowed to come on to you first. No intentional flirtatious behaviour or comments, unless you initiated it first, any sex that could happen, he needed your explicit and coherent consent.

No drugs. No alcohol.

No consent. No sex.

It was terrifying and awkward for Miguel to sit there like a shrinking lump in a massive chair. He felt like some awkward and scared teenager in the fifties, and not a grown ass man from the not so distant future, with superpowers and a couple of doctorates.

The fact he was technically a doctor as well didn't even cross Stephen's mind. He knew first hand that having a doctorate didn't make you a good person. He was more worried about the kind of person Miguel was. Miguel didn't even know that yet. He had lost who he was and he was still figuring himself out.

Miguel suddenly smiled at the thought of the major loophole to the wizard's words.

If you initiated the flirting first, he could roll with it. Stephen didn't give him any sort of level to adhere by, except for explicit sober consent from you.

He had a sudden thought that you were still watching him through the window, and he stopped to look over his shoulder. You were there, up on the window where people normally shouldn't be, smiling, your face lighting up when he locked eyes with you and you began to wave in a silly manner. He waved back and felt his face heat up even more. The heat was threatening to sneak on down to his nether regions, but with a quick thought process change, he saved himself from a surprise erection.

What also helped that surprise erection disappear, were the sudden 'ooo's' and 'ah's' and kissing sounds coming from Lyla.

"Shhh. Stop it. Please?" He covered the faceplate of the watch with that deep heat in his cheeks returning full force.

"You like her." She giggled back.

Miguel didn't answer. He started to walk again and picked up his pace as he swiped away Lyla's face and began going through his messages. Stephen had given Lyla the app details and she downloaded the program. It was an app that Peter and the others had worked on for communications between the Spiders and the different hero factions they were a part of.

He saw he was added to three chats. One was the room for the Spiders, and it was named 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiders'. Since being added only that morning, there had been an overwhelmingly large amount of texts. He decided to wait until he got back to his hotel to check those.

Another was set to an unnamed chat that contained Stephen, America, Peter, and you. He assumed that was the house chat.

And the last chat thread had been started with just your name at the top of the box. That one made a deep grin form onto his face. It was a simple, yet funny greeting.

5:01am

You:

Hello there, handsome. It's me, the bane of your existence! Lol.

He happily replied and sent back a message.

9:23am

Miguel:

Haha, very funny.

As he was sending the message, he heard a car door open to his left. With a quick sidestep, he avoided the door. A man got out and slammed the door shut as he turned away from Miguel. His collar was up, hiding his face, while the man wore a newsboy cap with the rim over his eyes. The man lit up a cigarette and appeared to be leaning on the cab as he typed away on his phone. He was clearly agitated.

Miguel didn't want to have a hassle with some random guy right after leaving your presence, while still in full view of the Sanctum. He promised the wizard that he would behave himself during his stay here.

That cabbie brought the phone up his ear, and his voice went from frustrated and angry to calm and collected. He wasn't calm for very long, and he started to cry and rub at his face with his sleeve as he pleaded into the microphone.

"Hola. Last call for now. I'll try again tomorrow if I haven't heard from ya by then.-" The sound of that man's voice hit Miguel's ears and he felt a knot twist in his gut. He sounded so God damned familiar, and he couldn't place why.

*- I miss you, my pretty little star, mi estrella. Te extraño mucho. Please consider giving me a call. Te amo…"

And there it was.

The Spanish accent that sounded a little too close to his own. The jet black hair that was slicked under the back of the man's hat and over his olive skin. The little nickname he had heard clear as day in his dream. The one the grey suited man had affectionately referred to you as, right before Miguel took his place.

He took a quick glance at the license plate and subtly took a picture of it with his watch. He even got the man in the photo frame as well. After, he took a video of him typing away on his phone and he turned his head, as if he were about to look at Miguel.

Miguel was quick to speed up and leave, turning down an alleyway and going to his hotel as he shot you a text to message him if you needed him for any reason. The man only caught a streak of him leaving and thought nothing of it as he got back into his cab and drove off.

***

When Miguel left, you found yourself quickly clambering up the wall to the large circular symbol in the glass. You peered out the window to watch him walk away while Stephen chuckled and gave you privacy. You were sure you looked insane, like a gecko stuck to a glass tank, sideways, face close to the glass, but not exactly touching it.

Miguel's ass looked quite nice in those sweats as he was walking away. Your eyes followed him as his form got smaller and smaller. He turned around and saw you, which made you blush and bite your lower lip. You waved. He waved. You smiled. He smiled. He turned around and kept going, and your eyes lowered back down to his rear. It wasn't until he nearly collided with a car door, when your eyes darted away from that scrumptious bottom.

Your heart dropped.

It was Jake. He was wearing a scowl as he absently tossed a middle finger at Miguel for nearly getting in his way and he slammed his door. The sound was so loud, you could hear it. You even saw Miguel wince and quickly move away from him, but not too far as he stared at the audacity of the other man. It didn't look like he had seen Jake's face. If he did, you just knew he would have stopped dead in his tracks and confronted him.

You watched as your heart sped up, thudding harshly in your chest as Jake didn't even look back at Miguel while he pulled out his phone. You gulped as you heard your phone down on the table start to ring and vibrate against the old wood. All you could do was dumbly look down at it while it skittered about making a horrible buzzing noise accompanied with Jake's ringtone.

After six rings, it stopped and the lights went dim. You sighed in relief and relaxed, but then it started to buzz again. You let go of the window and dropped to the floor, eyes not leaving the device. You brought both hands to rest against the table as you leaned over it, glaring when you saw his name flashing across the screen, along with the one photo of his stupid face in that stupid hat of his that you forgot to remove from the phone contact list.

Again the phone stopped, and this time it went to voice-mail. The phone was quiet for a moment, until the voice-mail registered and the screen lit up while the phone vibrated to alert you to a new message.

You let go another heavy breath of air and relaxed, resting your head against the desk and sighing. Maybe he had given up, maybe he wasn't. You had no way of knowing.

However, you did know that Jake must have come back and seen the car missing. He must have panicked when he saw that the house was stripped bare of anything you owned. He was probably actively looking for you.

But he had no idea where you were, right?

Right?

You bit your lower lip and picked up the phone, going straight to look at the alerts and call history. You could see one from Miguel, but it had to wait until you inspected the ones from Jake, first.

Jake had actually called you five times. He left four voice mails. Before listening to them, you checked your text messages. He had sent you around ten of them, right after you had sent Miguel a message and put the phone down for breakfast.

***

6:37am

Jake:

Heya, doll. I'll be coming into town in thirty. See you soon. I missed you a whole lot.

7:02am

Jake:

You still like those Redbulls? I got a couple cases of the ones ya like.

7:07am

You have missed a call from Jake Lockley.

7:08am

You have a new voice-mail from Jake Lockley.

7:10am

Jake:

Is this a joke? Real funny.

7:16am

Jake:

Mi estrella? Hello?

7:21am

Jake:

I talked to the neighbors. They said they saw you packing and getting rid of things. Did you go to the school you were talking about? I must have forgotten.

7:29am

You have missed a call from Jake Lockley.

7:32am

You have a new voice-mail from Jake Lockley.

7:43am

Jake:

Where are you?

7:46am

Jake:

I found the sale papers for the car. Why did you sell it? Was there something wrong with it? Why did you sell it to Clint?

8:07am

Jake:

I called Clint. He said you sold it to him like two weeks after I left. Said you didn't need it and never used it. I'm not mad or upset. It's your car. I'm going to go grab some breakfast and call ya in a bit.

8:45am

You have missed a call from Jake Lockley.

8:50am

You have a new voice-mail from Jake Lockley.

9:13am

Jake:

I am getting worried, here. At least respond to me, so I know you're safe.

9:20am

You have missed a call from Jake Lockley.

9:27am

You have a missed call from Jake Lockley.

9:28am

You have a new voice-mail from Jake Lockley.

9:30am

Jake:

Please, sweetheart. Please reply. I know I said we were on a break, but I came back. I just had to see you. I have only a week, before I gotta go back. I'm sorry. Please, mi estrella?

The messages were sweet and sad. Your heart panged for Jake. He was acting lost without you. He wasn't even showing any signs of being angry. He was clearly worried about you and your safety.

You dialed up your voice-mail and waited to hear his voice.

"Hola! How is my beautiful girl, eh? I see a lot of empty space. What's going on here? Are you renovating? The mailbox is pretty full."

When the message finished playing, you frowned. He sounded nervous, like he was pretending to be optimistic and happy. You could hear the disappointment in his voice. You waited for the next one to play.

"Did you… Did you go to that university that you were talking about? Ya said something about a Stark scholarship a few times. It looks to me like… Like ya moved out. I hope not. There's literally nothing of yours left here, except the junk mail. Uh, anyways, please shoot me a call back."

Now his voice had melted into a hollow tone. You almost cried, but you held them back.

You remembered how violent and volatile he was towards others. Miles had seen him beat the crap out of a few people. Gwen had reported seeing him yelling at gang members... And both Peter and Stephen had some not so nice things to say about him. What if his next voice-mails were rude and belligerent?

What if he threatened you?

"Hola, sweetheart! I am just calling to be sure you know that I support whatever decision you are making. I know you're probably mad at me right now. I get that. That's okay. If you don't want to see me again, please just let me know. I promise I'll leave you alone, once I know that you are okay. Please?"

Your heart broke at his begging and pleading. His voice was cracking and he sounded like he was sniffling. Was he crying? He never did that around you.

"Hola. Last call for now. I'll try again tomorrow if I haven't heard from ya by then. I miss you, my pretty little star, mi estrella. Te extraño mucho. Please consider giving me a call. Te amo…"

By now Jake sounded quite depressed. He wasn't yet giving up, but for today he claimed that he was.

But wait… Did he just admit to loving you? You had to play the message again, and it made you feel both extremely good, and terribly sad.

Now you were crying as you set the phone down. You paced around the room for a long moment, then remembered he was just down the street. With a quick couple of jumps and flips, you got back up to the window and looked to see if he was still there. You completely missed your phone's muffled buzzing again as it sat on your sweater.

He was just getting back into his cab and you cursed to yourself. There would be no way to chase him down with the way he drove. You had a hunch he was looking around the city for any sign of you. You thought about telling someone of what you saw, but then that would just freak everyone out for no reason. You decided to wait and see what happened and kept it a secret for now. You weren't going to reply, not yet anyways, but he'd know you read the messages.

***

Jake was anxious as he walked through a park he used to take you to. It was close to the bridge, with his favorite taco truck near by. He always enjoyed looking at the lights up there. He once admitted to you that he would sit here and smoke weed while watching the Spider-Folk go about their business across the buildings in the night sky.

What he didn't reveal, was that he was there to specifically watch you. How he adored your outfit and the way you'd gracefully leap about with those lights, or swing with your webs. He missed coming out at night for his cabbie job, because he spent most of the night following you around, making sure you were safe.

He even kept his secrets to himself, secrets that would have made everything easier for the both of you if only you knew.

It was the middle of the day, and he sighed as he sat down on a bench with a couple of pork carnitas and watched the boats on the water go by. He chain smoked for a while and eventually went back to his car to drive around for a few hours. He didn't catch any sight of you, but he did see Bruce Banner walking with Natasha Romanoff, hand in hand.

That image made him feel smaller. He had that with you, and he just had to go and fuck it up by not being honest with you.

By nightfall, he found himself driving lazily down a strip of cheap motels with bars and pubs across the street. He wanted to keep himself occupied and his mind off of you, so he went looking for fares.

A few hours in, he'd made a good chunk of money. A bunch of college frat boys needed rides up to a dormitory, and that took up most of his time to make three separate trips. He didn't mind. It was a fair and honest rate and they all tipped him quite well. One of them even handed him a bottle of whiskey and a bag of weed, before he stumbled off to his dorm.

Jake was just making a turn down Bleeker street when he noticed a sparkle of orange on the roof. His foot hit the pedal and he sped up to get closer. Once he was close enough, he parked the cab and got out to get a better look.

There on the roof was one of those portals he'd heard so much about. Jake frowned and watched as you leapt on through and set off some lights into the air. A moment later, a black and red Spider-Man was zipping towards the roof from the left, while the white Ghost-Spider came flying down from the right.

Jake's frown grew wider at the sight of that, but he was relieved that he didn't see the large Spider-Man. He was almost going to call you again, but when he checked his messages, he saw that you left him on read.

He sighed and almost gave up. He decided to have another cigarette and a drink from the booze he was given as he waited a few more minutes, before he would consider leaving you alone.

He was half way through his cigarette when a very tall man walked past him while talking to his watch. He was wearing a baseball cap, his hair falling out the sides and hiding his face. He was wearing sunglasses. At night. Jake raised an eyebrow, but the man was fully occupied. Whatever. He wasn't important. It didn't matter anyways, as the guy just dipped into the pizza place and out of sight.

His attention was caught by the OG Spider-Man walking through the portal, and you going back inside. He grumbled about that, hoping you'd come back out soon.

***

It was exactly an hour before the meet up time, and Miguel was patiently waiting in line to make the pizza order. He was getting what he got last time, while you had sent him a list of what everyone else wanted. There was an extra large pepperoni and mushroom for Miles and Gwen, a pesto linguini for the doctor, and two boxes of wings for you and Peter. After he ordered and got the food, he made his way back to the Sanctum.

On his short little walk, he passed by a cabbie faced away from him that was smoking and drinking a rye and coke in a can. The light was off on the cab, and the man looked exhausted as he blankly stared ahead and power smoked what smelled like weed to Miguel. He chuckled and passed by the poor tired man without another thought, without even looking at his face.

It was New York at night after all.

When Miguel arrived at the Sanctum doors, you greeted him and beamed at the food in his arms

"Heya, big guy! Good to see you!" You said while grabbing his arm. With a tug, you went trotting over to the library, Miguel happily following you and enjoying your hand on his bicep. The door closed itself and Miguel noticed, finding it creepy.

"Stephen! The food is here! Can you please open up a portal to the roof, again? His hands are full." You asked the doctor, who had been peacefully doing Sudoku a moment ago. He looked up at you, then at the bags in Miguel's hands, then raised a brow.

"Oh, uh, before we go up, here's your green pasta." Miguel quickly handed the man his take out box. Stephen's mouth just barely curled upwards, showing Miguel that the man was appreciative of the meal.

"Thank you. The others are waiting upstairs." Stephen said as he opened a portal and went right to work unboxing and eating his food with chopsticks that appeared from thin air. When you got through the portal, Miles stood up and pointed.

"That's the guy?!" He was not subtle, nor was he quiet about his shock and clear disdain for seeing Miguel's face.

"Yes, Miles. That's the guy." Gwen said as she grabbed his arm and tugged him back a bit. The young man was furious to see that face.

"Ya got some nerve, Lockley! Showing your face after what you did to her!" Miles hissed. In an instant Gwen had slapped her hand over his mouth and quietly apologized to Miguel. You decided to speak up and explain.

"Miles. This is Miguel O'Hara. This is not Jake Lockley. Yes, they look a lot alike, but this man isn't my ex. He is one of us. Please welcome him."

"Yeah. He's alright." Peter piped up. Miguel gave him a confused looking eyebrow raise at the lack of mentioning the broken arm. Was Peter just going to pretend it didn't happen? Either way, his calmness was bleeding through to Miles, and the young man calmed down enough to sit.

"Miguel will be patrolling with us from now on. I figure having a massive brick wall on the team will help out with all the smaller Spiders we have." Peter continued as he dug into the food.

Okay. So it did look like he wasn't going to mention the arm.

"What powers does he have?" Miles asked.

"Uh, the usual spider stuff. I have super strength, stamina, speed, agility, dexterity, durability… I can jump thirty feet, more if I absolutely have to. I have sharp fangs that secrete a paralyzing toxin…" He opened his mouth and showed Miles his teeth.

"... Oh, and I have retractable claws." He finished as he held his hands up to show his talons. Miles gawked then looked up at Miguel's face.

"What spider bit you? Did you see it?" Miles asked. Miguel's face scrunched up in annoyance.

"Uh… Well, about that… I did this to myself."

"What!?"

"Yeah… I was experimenting with genetics, and I had a sample of some superhuman Spider DNA, then an accident happened at work, and well… This happened. I bulked up over night, got taller, and I could see better… But I now have an intolerance to bright lights." He explained it like it wasn't a big deal. You suspected there was more to it, but you didn't dare ask in front of the others.

You just wanted to get through tonight.

***

"I don't understand. We have business to attend to, my son." A gravelly voice boomed through the silent night.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I have time." Jake's voice replied. The sounds of metal clicked and snapped, and a flame lit the dark alley up once again. His face was visible, a white stick stuck in the corner of his mouth as he puffed away.

"You have exactly seven days. Seven days, and you go back to Egypt, no matter what." The louder voice hissed, while the quieter and calmer man shot a death glare at the other.

"Mierda, get off my back. You know I'll get us back there in time."

"Are you sure? You said that the last time, and Steven woke up in a ditch, covered in blood, when he had just been at work for a double shift." The comment drew a string of silent curses from Jake as he tapped his cigarette.

"That was my mistake. I didn't get back before the sun came up. At least there was a dead deer on the road, so he just assumed he hit it."

"On his bicycle? Really?"

"Whaddya want from me? They still have no idea I exist."

"Uh huh. They also have no idea you've been dicking down a Spider for the last three years, while Marc's been married to Layla for half of that time."

"It doesn't matter. They broke up when she found out about you."

"That's what you think. Marc left of his own accord and he lied to her about me. Steven wants them to go back to her."

"Not gonna happen. I just know if Steven and Marc see my sweet Galaxy-Spider, they'll love her, too. They'll forget all about their Scarlet Scarab."

"What? You think they will just magically forget about their wife?"

"No, but they will choose her over Layla. I am sure of it. Besides, Steven only just found out about Marc and Layla. He's only ever kissed her once." Jake argued as he summoned his suit.

"Jake, my son… Will they not be furious to find out there's another alter, and that he's been in a committed relationship for this long, with absolutely no sign of it? You basically made Marc into a cheating scumbag, without his knowledge, and Steven by association as he's made it clear that he wants Layla."

"It's different. We are different. Different lives-"

"But will she see it that way? What about Layla? She doesn't deserve this shit, and she's Taweret's Avatar now. She is fully aware that Marc has DID." The old bird said simply. Silence permeated the air as Jake power smoked the rest of his cigarette. Khonshu cleared his throat, then continued.

"And what of your precious little star Spider? Do you think she's going to be happy to find out about Layla? Or that she's married to Marc?"

More silence as Jake refused to look at his boss.

"You really think she's just going to jump back into your arms after you left like that?"

"Of course she will, it's a silent understanding."

"Riiight. And this has absolutely nothing to do with that explicit nightmare you had the other night?"

More silence.

"You better keep the dark suit on, then. It's harder to see than your white and black suit." The loud voice rumbled.

Jake didn't reply as he snuffed his smoke out between his gloved fingers and threw the butt away. He straightened his jacket and adjusted his tie while looking at himself in the windshield of the yellow taxi.

"Mierda …" Once satisfied, a dark grey mask slowly materialized onto his face, stitching itself up over his left eye. He slowly removed his hat and threw it inside of the trunk of the cab, then turned to watch the Sanctum.

He saw four different colored lines zip across the sky to a tall building, while multiple blobs of lights were deployed in the sky. Soon after, five colorful shapes were dashing across the horizon. Jake scowled when he saw another, much larger Spider with them. He took a deep breath and set off in a run to follow them in the shadows.

***

The night was going…

Well, it was going.

Between the four of you, you managed to nab a few gangsters each and drop them off at the police station. You had performed nicely, and had even forgotten the fact that Miguel was a new addition to the team. He seemed to understand what you were doing and didn't need to be verbally told.

Miles was eager to show Miguel his own powers, by demonstrating them on the four guys, right before he had caught them, while Miguel watched them drop like electrocuted flies. Gwen wasn't eager to show off at all, and her and Peter had stayed by the group they had already collected. That just left three guys to round up, and you went after them once Miles began to tie up the ones he grabbed.

Miguel was quick to follow you. He waited for your signals, and he followed your nonverbal commands perfectly. When you pointed to two guys trying to make their way through a crowded street where people were leaving from the clubs and bars. They were obviously trying to blend in, and it almost worked, but your eyes spotted them easily, as did Miguel's. Unfortunately you didn't see where the third one went.

You each picked a side of the street, concealing yourselves in the shadows as you followed them to the bus terminal by the club owned by a local gang leader. If they went inside, you would lose them, and then it would be you and Miguel tucking tail and running.

Miguel found an opening and he gave you a look and quick gesture towards the one that was going around the back of the building. You nodded, and he shot off towards the man at a terrifying speed that sent vibrations through the pavement that you could clearly feel.

That left the other guy, now leaving the safety of the crowds at a run. He moved fast for a big and out of shape guy, but you were certain that you could catch him in time. You pulled some orbs of light into existence right in front of the guy to surprise him. He screamed and swerved away from the gang hideout.

Shooting a few webs at his legs, you managed to catch him. Just as the thrill of it hit your veins, you were hit over the back of the head and passed out.

***

Miguel had seen it all happen. He was tasked to take down the one guy, while she was sent to fetch the other. He made quick work of his target, and just as he was coming back around the corner, his target tied and slung over his shoulder while he kicked and squirmed, Miguel witnessed the third man come out of the hideout and run at the other Spider. Miguel dropped the guy in his grip and sped forward.

As quick as he was, he hit the guy, but he missed the trash can lid that flew out of his hands, hitting her directly in the back of the head. He watched in horror as she made a weak sounding sigh and went down like a sack of potatoes.

A blinding rage filled him as he clambered to the man that had caused the blow to her head. The thug skittered back, his face full of terror as Miguel snarled and grabbed him by the leg. With a heavy jerk, he yanked the man towards him and bit him in the leg. The man screamed and kicked at his face.

Miguel let him go, only to watch him stagger a few car lengths away and collapse to the sidewalk. The bite had taken its toll on him, and he was now out cold and twitching. Miguel figured it was safe enough to go check on the Galaxy Spider, but when he went back to the spot she had fallen, she was gone.

Miguel panicked.

If he came back without her, the wizard would certainly be pissed. Not to mention the other Spiders would be just as displeased. Miguel looked around, his eyes darting every which way. A glinting of some sparkles in the alleyway caught his eye, and he was moving towards them with as much stealth as he could muster.

"Shock, this isn't good. My first night on patrol with her, and she gets kidnapped!" Miguel muttered to himself.

"Perhaps you should be careful about this. Approach from the rooftop." Lyla's voice hit his ears and he scaled the wall immediately with his webbing.

Once on the roof, he made his way towards the other end of the alley. He was careful to remain hidden, but in efforts to do so, he couldn't get a good look at who was hauling her away. Every turn they made, he was always just one step behind, just getting a glimpse of the dark silhouette that held a sparkling Spider.

There were a few times he lost sight of them. Lyla couldn't pick up anything from the security cameras in the area, but his nose caught the scent of flowers in the air. He followed the smell. It was paired with whatever scent the man had, which smelled like some sort of designer cologne, mixed with cigarettes, liquor, and blood.

***

Series Masterlist

***

Notes:

I hope you are liking this story so far. Please let me know. Yes, I know I put she/her instead of you at the end. It's from his POV.

***

Special thanks to:

Beta readers/Ideas:

@einno-arko @theaussiedragon

Proofreader:

@iceclaw101

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