about me: i'm ray, 28, she/her, pan. this blog is 18+. minors dni. my writing may contain triggering topics so please be sure to check the content warnings at the beginning of each fic before reading.
𝄃 requests are open 𝄂
find the themes/characters/shows/films I'd currently love to see requests for below the cut. list will change with hyperfixations ⇣
⤷ ANGST, HURT/COMFORT, INJURY, AND CHRONIC ILLNESS
⤷ SHORTS/BLURBS
for when I don’t have time to write full fics
⤷ RESIDENT EVIL
leon s. kennedy, carlos oliveira
⤷ ARCANE
vi, sevika
⤷ THE LAST OF US (TV OR GAME)
joel miller, tess servopoulos, abby anderson (game only), tommy miller (show)
⤷ THE WALKING DEAD
rick grimes, daryl dixon, glenn rhee
⤷ STRANGER THINGS
eddie munson, jim hopper, and steve harrington
⤷ THE WITCHER III
geralt, yennefer, ciri
⤷ ASSASSIN'S CREED VALHALLA
fem!eivor
⤷ MCU
bucky barnes, yelena belova, kate bishop
⤷ LOST
sawyer
⤷ BUFFY
spike
⤷ TED LASSO
roy kent, jamie tartt, dani rojas, and sam obisanya
⤷ DOCTOR WHO
nine, ten, eleven, thirteen
things i don't write ⇣
⤷ SMUT WITHOUT PLOT
i'm happy to write steamy scenes with plot
⤷ INCEST, PEDOPHILIA, RAPE, ETC.
⤷ NON-ROMANCE
e.g. where the characters are just related to reader
⤷ REAL PEOPLE OR MINORS
I only write fictional characters of 18+. not the celebrities who play them
⤷ I CAN WRITE TRIGGERING THEMES
e.g. mental illness, abuse, death etc. but please note i will do my best not to romanticise them
words: 3.7k
warnings: 18+. MINORS DNI. I MEAN IT. TLOU2 spoilers, fem!reader, canon-typical trauma & violence. discussions and imagery around suicide. angst angst angst
synopsis: arriving at the motel is a relief. running into more clickers is not.
an: okay this is my fav chapter yet and there's about to be smut next chap so ya'll better look alive
You make it to the motel just after dark, the sky a velvety violet that casts the L-shaped building in front of you in eerie darkness. You find yourself inching closer to Abby, her warmth prickling your arm.
“Seems quiet enough,” she says, like she knows you're wary. It’s getting annoying, how well she reads you, especially when you feel lost with her half the time.
“Wait. Do you hear that?” you ask, cupping your ear.
She stops, suddenly returning to that severe sharpness she wears so well. In the darkness, she’s all chiselled stone, shadows gathering in the hollows of her cheeks and light glancing off that bump on her nose you’d quite like to kiss. Her hands fall to her gun, holstered at her hip. “What?”
“Those screams. It's the sound of my blisters rejoicing.”
She huffs, hands falling back to her sides. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’m hilarious and you know it.” You itch to poke that dimple at the corner of her mouth, the one currently tugging up as she tries not to smile, but how, exactly, could you ask her if that’s okay?
“Well, don’t get too excited yet. We’re gonna need fuel, and these cars look like they’ve been here a long time.”
It’s true. There are a handful of cars in the parking lot, all of them worse for wear. One of them has a flat tire, another smashed windows.
“I love your optimism,” you grumble. You’re tempted to take your godforsaken boots off right here, right now, heels torn and bloody and the bite on your ankle smarting with every step.
“Contagious, isn’t it?” She peers into the first car, the smashed one, covering her arm to reach into the glove compartment. “Already been raided.”
“What gave it away?” You crunch over the broken glass and head to the Jeep closest to the motel rooms. Maybe Abby’s optimism is contagious, because there are a few dust-covered jerrycans in the back. Nobody’s been here for a while. You pick up the first, just to check they’re not empty, and the liquid sloshing inside makes your heart sing with relief.
“One problem solved,” you call, waving a can.
She joins you, teeth flashing with an unbridled grin. It’s the first time you’ve seen it, and it travels right to the pit of you, laying down roots you want to tend to, watch bloom, if only she’d let you. She drops her pack into the back like she’s already made her choice, then bends to examine the wheels. No flats.
“You think expecting there to be keys would be too much to ask?” you question.
“Think I might be able to hot-wire it if not.” She rolls her shoulders in that way that makes you tingle, scouring the buildings around you. “We should stay here tonight.”
“Yes we should. You owe me a nap.”
A roll of her eyes. “I was thinking more along the lines of searching the place, see if we can grab any supplies.”
“I search, you sleep.”
She snorts, freckled nose wrinkling. “You can’t actually expect me to agree to that.”
“Worth a try.” You suppress a yawn, untying your sweater from around your waist to slip on as the air finally cools. You don’t know what it is — the blanket of darkness, the silver full moon above, Abby’s steady presence and light-hearted quips, the smell of the fresh-baked earth — but you feel… peaceful. Exhausted, and sore, and restless with that flip-flopping in your stomach Abby brings out of you, but the heaviness of the morning has been burnt away in the sun, and you think maybe the thing with Cal just another thing you’ll survive.
Easier with her here, tension broken. Mostly. There’s still a thickness between you you’re trying your hardest to ignore, for both of your sakes. The kiss can’t happen again, she’d said. You’ll respect her wishes, even if you wish, despite your better judgement, you could taste her, touch her, just once more.
“There’s gotta be a decent bed somewhere in here,” she decides. “Need to make sure there’s nothing crawling around inside first, though.”
You’d like to think if there was, it would have shown its face by now, but some of the rooms are shuttered up, impossible to see into.
You take out the gun she gave you, making sure it’s loaded and turning off the safety, just in case.
Abby’s head snaps to you. “What are you doing?”
“I feel like the answer is obvious.”
“You’ll wait out here.”
“What am I, your fucking dog?” you question, voice laced with a hint of resentment. You’re tired of feeling weak, even if you also appreciate how safe she makes you feel. Even if, for once, it’s nice to have someone else bandage your wounds. “No, I won’t. We can get this over with quicker if I take half the rooms.”
Abby’s posture stiffens, and you see that soldier in her now, all subtle movements you might not have noticed before. The way her chin is always level, eyes straight ahead. The way she is always so poised around her gun, like it’s an extension of her palm. The way can stare you down with all the ice of a blizzard. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna let you—”
“Let me?” You raise a brow. “Look, you might be my chaperone, but I still have a little autonomy left yet. I’m not incapable of taking care of myself, and honestly, it’s beginning to feel a little insulting when you act like I am.”
Her jaw tics, knuckles whitening over the grip of her gun. You wait for her to argue, maybe say you seemed pretty damn incapable when Cal kidnapped you and bled you dry, but after a long inhale, she tips her head. “All right.”
“Wait… really?”
Humour dances around the edges of her eyes. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to keep arguing with you. Just do me a favour and don’t fucking get hurt this time.”
“If I stumble across any more cults, I’ll be sure to run the other way,” you mutter dryly. When she only stares flatly, you ask, “Too soon?”
“A little, yeah.”
“Noted.” You head over to the furthest door, which doesn’t actually have a door at all, and then give Abby a mock salute.
“Give me a shout if you need me.”
“Have you ever considered that maybe you might need me?”
“Nope.” With that, she marches away to the other side of the motel, where the sign leans lopsided over half an upstairs window. If you weren’t exhausted, you might have made an effort to have the last word, but your skull is stuffed with cotton and you just want to lay down.
So you grab your torch from your pack and begin your search. It’s clear after just a few rooms that the place has already been picked over, though some of the doors are sealed tight. You listen, just to make sure there aren’t any guests, living or otherwise, in them, before smashing the windows and climbing in. As hoped, these ones prove a little more fruitful, and you manage to pillage some expired instant coffee and granola bars. One room even provides you with a paperback: a thriller, but you can’t afford to be picky about genres.
You’ve almost made it to the inner corner when you feel it. That prickle, faint enough you could chalk it up to your imagination, skittering up your inner arms like ants. You pause, listening, and then, when you’re met with only silence, scoff at yourself.
That thing Abby said is still in your head, but you can’t sense the infected. You refuse to. Besides, the place is clear.
Still, a hollowness expands in your stomach, and your feet force you out of the room, back into the night, just to make sure.
“Abby?” you call.
The prickling turns into a burn, like someone’s holding a lighter to your scars, and you move forward with a steady thrum of dread ricocheting behind your ribs.
“Abby? Everything okay?”
A gunshot startles you back a few paces, and then you don’t think, just run, following the inhuman snarls and moans drifting somewhere ahead. You scan every room along the way, but she’s not there, not anywhere, and your chest is caving in, suddenly, at the idea you might be left here alone, that you might lose her before you ever really got her, that she is not here, not anywhere—
The squeals of infected grow nearer, and you feel it now, that tug, leading you to them like a lasso too tight around your stomach. It hurts, but fear overpowers it. You stumble to the first block, the main building, shoving past broken glass still stuck in frames and rushing up a set of stairs behind the reception desk. Dust shudders down at the loud thumps above, and then you hear Abby swearing, more gunshots, a strained yell.
You shoot as soon as you see the first infected, then the again with the second, two clickers falling to the ground in front of a panting, blood-splattered Abby.
“Are you bit?” you question frantically, rushing to her. You don’t think to look for more, don’t pay attention to the warning still humming in your veins, don’t scan the shadows, this fear and her wide eyes taking up all of your focus, because if she’s bit, if she’s—
“No. I’m fine. I’m—”
A shadow pounces on you seemingly from above, sending you both toppling. Your gun slips from your grip as you land half-beside, half-atop Abby on the floor, teeth snapping in your face..
It’s big, bloated, heavy. Heavy enough to keep you both pinned with its lower half alone. You kick out, but your boot only hits thick, hard growths that barely move, as though the fungi has solidified, somehow. The clicker – or maybe it's too big to be considered that — shrieks in your face, the stench of rot fanning over you, but then its attention seems to flick to Abby, who is pinned by both your body and the infected’s.
It goes to bite her, grizzly mouth stretching wide, and there is nothing either of you can do — until your arm lodges free just in time. You cover Abby’s face before yellowed teeth meets her skin, and they instead sink into yours on the arm that isn’t yet scarred. Or wasn’t. The pain has you crying out, but the distraction gives Abby enough time to wrestle her knife free from the clicker’s clawing hands. She thrusts it into the clicker’s bulging eye, and you kick out again, forcing it back just far enough to catch your breath.
Still, it isn’t enough, the clicker rising onto its knees as Abby yanks you to your feet.
“No!” you say when she tries to push you behind her, because she isn’t immune, she isn’t safe—
The clicker halts as though there is an invisible wall between you and it, head cocking like a dog waiting obediently for orders.
You grapple to the floor for your gun, finding Abby’s instead, but right as you go to pull the trigger, she stops you.
“Wait. It’s… it’s listening to you.”
A guttural, hungry snarl falls from the clicker at Abby’s voice. Your chest rises and falls with violent heaves as you try to understand.
She’s right. The clicker is looking right at you. You step in front of Abby, gun pointed to its head.
“It stopped,” she whispers. “You stopped it.”
No. God, no. You should be relieved, maybe, but those empty eyes crash through you like a wrecking ball. Because you can’t deny it now. You can’t pretend the itching under your veins isn’t real.
You are one of them. Just enough like them that they don’t recognise you as something to be devoured.
Maybe, with all those bites, all that infection, you’re half monster.
Your hands shake, teeth chattering in the new silence. You step forward, and it…
It steps back. It’s such a human gesture, you want to retch. You feel it again, that emptiness, the loneliness, the vicious hunger that will never quite be satiated, not for all the flesh in the world. A miserable existence, tucked in a void only other infected can reach.
And you.
You pull the trigger, because the alternative is staring into a soul too much like yours.
The clicker falls, and the burning under your skin lets out a content sigh before ebbing.
“That was the last of them,” you whisper hoarsely.
Abby seems stunned into silence, lips parted, face pale.
She looks at you, for the first time, the way everyone else does: like you’re something else, something other.
It was inevitable, you think, but it still feels like you’re standing in the ruins of a place that, for a moment in time, was safe. Yours.
Gone, now.
It’s too long before Abby can rip her gaze away from your fear-stricken face. Only then does the realisation hit: you’re bleeding, again. Bit, again. This time, for her.
Her gun falls to the floor beside her. “What the fuck did you do?” she whispers shakily.
She doesn’t understand any of it. Why you would lunge in front of her, why you would let it bite you instead of her, why it would listen to you.
“I… I don’t know.” Your eyes are wide, face leeched of colour, and she wants to kiss you. Unfortunately, she wants to yell at you more. She steps back, and you wince like it hurts. “I don’t know what that was. It’s never happened before. I… I didn’t do anything, I swear. I’m not… I’m not one of them.”
Tears draw lines over the dirt on your cheeks. They break her. They knit her cognisance back together again. They make her angrier.
“I don’t… I don’t mean that!” She grabs you without thinking, thumbs digging tight into the flesh of your forearm, just below the bite. Your skin is hot, and a fleeting fear runs through her that you’re out of luck. Maybe you’re not immune to every bite. Maybe, one of these days, you’re going to succumb to the infection that keeps finding you, and it would be her fault. “I mean this!”
“It was… It was going to bite you.” A frown knits your brows together. “It almost got you.”
“You should have let it.” She’s all wolf, snarling with bared teeth too close to your face, red slashing her vision in two. She doesn’t know why, not really.
Not until you say, “Abby, this can’t hurt me, but you could have been infected!”
Like you’re not one big, walking open wound. Like there isn’t blood painting your arm slippery, hot crimson. Again. Like it means nothing, being covered in all this violence.
“I would rather be infected than see another fucking scar on your body!”
You recoil. If she could see, breathe, think, she’d lower her voice, find a way to talk to you that isn’t all bite and venom, but god, there’s adrenaline crashing through her, and you could have gotten hurt so much worse, and she can’t keep watching you fucking bleed.
You need to understand that. “You have enough already. I won’t be the reason you get another. These aren’t fucking tattoos, they’re wounds, and you’re covered in them! Do you… Do you even know how fucking…” She tugs at her hair, turns away. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I’m sorry if another bite in my collection disgusts you, Abby, but—”
“You think that’s what this is?” She whips around, bristling. Grabs your arm again like if she forces you to look at it, you might understand. “I can’t see you get hurt again! Do you understand that? You’ve been through enough, and I’m… I’m not worth it! You act like it doesn’t matter. It does! Every single one of these bites matters, and this one, this fucking one” — she’s tugging, your elbow jostling against your ribcage, and yet you’re limp in her arms — “could have been avoided. Just this one.”
You look at her like she’s a stranger. “You think it would be better if I let it bite you?”
“I had it handled—”
“No, you fucking didn’t. Neither of us did. We needed an opening, and I gave us one.”
She shakes her head, but she knows you’re right. Of course she does. She glares down at the bite, tears clogging her throat. Another fucking wound, another burning under your skin, another tendril of infection sinking into your veins, into your brain. Another piece of you taken. How many more should you have to lose? How many before there's nothing left?
She’ll never forgive herself for letting you get hurt under her care, twice. For being just another person who has used your body as a shield, a weapon, a salvation, even if she never would have asked you to. Nobody should have to shed this much blood, least of all you, with your stupid jokes and your devastating sincerity and…
“I don’t care what happens. Don’t ever do that again,” she says coldly.
“Fuck you!” you spit, and it hits her like a fist to the gut. “I’m done with this faux self-righteous bullshit. You don’t get to tell me if you’re worth protecting or not! I decide that!”
“You’ve decided nothing since the moment you got that first bite!”
“But I decided this, tonight!” you yell. “To you, this was death. To me, it’s just another bite! What would I do if you were infected?” You step closer, shuddering with fury now. Something stirs deep in Abby’s core, bringing her back to her body. A body she is certain is now yours, or at least, it should be for the sacrifices you’ve made. “You think it would be better for me if I had to watch you turn, kill you, then try to get to Avalon alone? You think I’d be better off losing you than getting a few more marks to add to the collection? You’re out of your fucking mind.”
She says your name, but you’re clearly not done.
“No! You have a family to go back to. You don’t even know how lucky you are. What about Lev? You think he'd be okay if you never got home?"
Abby's resolve shutters at his name. If she doesn't make it home...
"Like hell was I going to let it be you instead of me. And like hell” — your voice lowers, causing a shiver to run down Abby’s spine — “am I going to stand here and let you yell at me for it. You’re not the only one who can take care of people. It doesn’t make you smart or brave to think you’d be better off sacrificing yourself for me.”
The taste of acid on her tongue has her scowling. She meets your eye, all ice and fire and war and rage. “The way you’re sacrificing yourself for everyone else?” she utters slowly.
“That’s different and you know it.”
Maybe, but not to her. Not when she can already feel your loss like a blade between her ribs.
“I’m going to tell Roe about what I saw tonight.” Her voice is serrated steel, leaving no room for argument. “I’m going to tell her that she can’t do the brain surgery until she figures out how this connection between you and the infected works.”
Your bottom lip begins to tremble. “Is that your way of punishing me?”
She scoffs, because god, you still don’t get it. “It’s my way of keeping you alive!”
You falter, like you don’t believe her. Every pulse of her heart draws her back to you, and she can’t keep doing this. She can’t keep fighting with you when she aches for you, when she needs you.
“Abby—”
She swallows whatever protest you were about to make with a kiss, and this time, she doesn’t pull away.
You gasp into her mouth, and she can taste your tears, your fear, your anger. It feeds her, fuels her, makes her feel like a person again rather than a feral, broken thing that never should have been let out into the world. Your sweater bunches in her fist because she is still so angry, but mostly, she is desperate to know you’re here, real, alive.
After moments of surprise, you kiss back, tongue finding hers in a battle that has already been lost. You’re dragging blood across her clothes as you hook your arms around her, and she doesn’t care. She needs you as close as she can get, and this, melding with you, is her only way to settle the terror and the dread and the rage inside her. She is a drought and you are rain, finally soothing the most cracked parts of her.
She drives you over the fallen clickers until your back hits the wall, roving your jaw, throat, as her hands find your hips and squeeze. Your fingers curl at the nape of her neck, back arching so she can explore your collarbones with a hunger so fierce she almost growls.
“You’re ruining me,” she mutters into your skin, hot and soft and hers. Her palm moulds to your thigh, and if she just moved higher—
“I’m scared,” you admit. “I’m scared I’ll infect you.”
She freezes. Softens. “That’s not how it works.”
“I don’t just mean this.” You nudge her back to look at her, and she catches your tears with the trembling pad of her thumb. It's hard to know where that need to fix things ends and her lust begins. it's one and the same: with you, she's nothing but want, in all its forms. “There’s something wrong about this, Abby. About me. I don’t know if you should even be touching my blood, or…”
“You can’t hurt me.” Her voice is gentle, whispered into your skin.
“No, I can. Like I hurt Cal and those other people. Either people walk away from me, or I make them wish they had.”
She moves your hair out of your face gently, swallowing down the pain your words brings. This is why she wants to protect you. This is why you shouldn’t have to protect her.
“I’m not them.”
You bite your lip, more tears falling as you look at the mess around you both. The three bodies scattered across the hallway. You lower from your tiptoes, and her lips brush your forehead gently, a desperate plea to just let her stay wrapped in this, in you.
“No, Abby,” you whisper. “You’re far more dangerous than them.”
And then you slip away, holstering your gun as you disappear back down the staircase.
Abby plants her palms into the wall where your warmth still resides, gritting her teeth. You’re right. She is dangerous, especially when it comes to you. And you are, too, because you could ruin her. Not with infection. With anything but infection.
This is not the journey she’s supposed to take, but she’s afraid she’s too far in to go back now.
thinking about angsty tony has been crushing on avengers! reader for a while, but hasn't said anything about his feelings until reader is injured on a mission + tony is faced with the possibility that he, very well, could lose reader, so it's an angsty confession where he needs to have her and they probably (definitely) bang 💌 p.s. i love, absolutely love-love-love, your writing.
✨More Than a Crush✨
Author's Note: Hiii Nonnie!!! Sorry, this took sooooo looooong!! I absolutely love a simp Tony. He totally deserves to be loved right back! I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it! Let me know how you like it!!
Trigger Warning: | angst | idiots in love | mutual pinning | SMUT | car sex | p in v |
Word Count: 3.5K
| Masterlist | Taglist |
It was supposed to be a mere crush. Tony didn’t intend for it to turn into something more than just that.
Especially given that he was twenty years your senior.
Why would you even think of him like that?
Why would you look at him like that?
He was an older man, with demons that weighed down on his shoulders and kept him up all night as he tinkered away in his lab to avoid the inevitable nightmares that came to him whenever he tried to sleep. To you, he was just a mentor. A helping hand. The leader of your team.
Yet, he couldn’t overlook the way you laughed at his jokes. How he remembered you loved drinking steaming hot coffee in the mornings—just milk and two sugars, usually accompanied with a pastry from the corner bakery you loved. How you bit your lip when you were concentrated on a task; how you easily remembered small details of conversations you’d had before and brought them up without the necessity of a reminder.
You were just kind, that was all it was—or at least, that’s what he was telling himself.
Endless were the nights where he saw you, his fellow Avenger, come stumbling into the common room after a night of drinks. It was always the same ritual: you went out for the night with your friends, he waited for you to come home, and then he would take you to your room.
“You’re such a gentleman, Tony. Pepper is so lucky to have you,” you had said one time around 3:00 AM when you came in, heels in hand and reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke.
He smiled politely, knowing that even if you were drunk, you would remember every word he would say; and boy, did he really want to speak his mind. But life has a funny way of bringing people together, often through the most jagged of edges.
A mission trying to take down Madame Masque and her A.I.M. minions went rogue in the worst way possible.
The high-pitched whine of repulsors and the rhythmic thud of heavy artillery echoed through the crumbling shipyard. Tony was mid-flight, barking orders at the team, when the world seemed to slow into a terrifying, singular focus. Masque had been cornered, but she wasn't alone; a prototype A.I.M. energy disruptor was hidden beneath the floorboards, humming with an unstable, violet glow.
You were the closest.
You had moved in to secure the perimeter, your focus entirely on the tactical layout, unaware that the ground beneath you was a ticking bomb of experimental radiation.
"Get out of there! Now!" Tony’s voice cracked over the comms, a raw, desperate sound that didn't belong to the billionaire genius.
He pushed the thrusters to their absolute limit, the suit screaming in protest as he dove toward you. He reached out, his metal fingers just inches from the fabric of your tactical vest, but he was a second too late.
The floor didn't just break; it erupted. A wave of concussive energy slammed into you, throwing your body upward like a ragdoll before gravity took over. You hit the jagged edge of a shipping container with a sickening, heavy thud and crumpled to the ground, motionless.
"No, no, no," Tony whispered, landing so hard the concrete cracked under his boots.
He didn't care about the retreating minions or the victory that was now hollow. He was on his knees, his hands trembling as he flipped the faceplate of his helmet up. The sight of you—so still, with a trail of blood blooming across your forehead and your breathing shallow and ragged—tore through his chest in a way no shrapnel ever could.
In that moment, the twenty-year gap, the professional boundaries, and the presence of Pepper all evaporated.
There was only the terrifying realization that he might lose the one person who remembered his coffee order and looked at him like he was more than just a suit of armor. He gathered you into his arms, his heart hammering against his ribs, terrified that the first time he finally held you, it was because you were slipping away.
“Tony, we have to take her to the medical bay ASAP,” Natasha’s voice cut through the ringing in his ears, sharp and authoritative, pulling him back from the brink of panic.
Tony didn't respond with words; he simply adjusted his grip, tucking your limp form against the cold, unyielding plates of his chest plate. He carried you toward the Quinjet with a terrifyingly focused pace, his boots clanging against the ramp. Inside, the sterile lights flickered to life as Bruce began a frantic dance of clinical precision, hooking you up to IVs and humming medical machinery that beeped in protest of your fading vitals.
Tony sat on a low bench nearby, the Iron Man gauntlets retracted to reveal his grease-stained, trembling hands. He reached out and took your hand in his—it felt impossibly small and cold against his own. He felt like it was his fault. The weight of every decision he’d made since they touched down on the mission site sat heavy in his gut, a familiar, acidic guilt.
He should’ve seen this coming. He was the futurist; he was the man who built shields around the world to prevent exactly this. But he had been too busy watching the way the sunlight caught the stray hairs of your ponytail to notice the trap Masque had laid.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the jet’s engines. “Don’t you dare leave me to drink that burnt coffee in the kitchen alone.”
He watched the steady, rhythmic pulse of the monitor, each beep a reminder of how fragile the thread was that held you here. He thought of the nights he’d walked you to your room, the scent of the city still clinging to your hair, and the way you’d praised his 'gentlemanly' nature.
He realized then that he didn't want to be a gentleman anymore.
He didn't want to be the mentor or the leader or the man who stood safely behind a glass wall while you took the brunt of the world’s cruelty.
He looked down at your hand, tracing the knuckles with his thumb, and made a silent, desperate vow. If you woke up—when you woke up—he wouldn't let the silence between you both remain.
Tony was tired of tinkering in the dark; he wanted to be the one you came home to, not just the one who watched you leave.
Natasha laid a hand on his shoulder, her touch light but grounding. “You know she’s strong, Tony. She’s going to come out of this,” she said. There was a look in her eyes—a knowing, silent weight—that suggested she saw the things he thought were buried deep. She was the closest to you, after all; she had seen the way your gaze lingered on him when his back was turned, and she knew exactly why he was falling apart.
As soon as the Quinjet touched down, you were transferred to a room in the medical bay. The sterile white halls blurred as doctors ran to your aid, shouting orders and checking monitors. Tony stood in the doorway, a ghost in his own home, watching the flurry of activity through a glass partition.
“You should rest. She’s in good hands, Tones,” Rhodey said, appearing at his side like a steady anchor.
“I feel like it’s my fault. Like I should’ve said something, done something,” Tony admitted, his voice cracking. He wasn't talking about the mission anymore, and they both knew it. Rhodey only gave him a sad, knowing smile and a firm pat on the back. He knew Tony better than anyone else—he knew the self-destruction that came with Tony’s brand of love.
“Tell her family, they need to know,” Rhodey added gently. “But you should change and shower first. You’re covered in soot and... well, you look like hell.”
Tony nodded absently, his legs feeling like lead as he retreated to his chambers. He stood under the spray of the shower until the water turned cold, trying to scrub the smell of ozone and fear from his skin. He pulled on a worn-out tee and a pair of jeans, but the comfort of the clothes did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.
He went straight back to your room, ignoring the exhaustion tugging at his eyes. The room was quiet now, save for the rhythmic, mechanical sigh of the ventilator. He sat in the chair next to your bed, finally alone with you, and took your hand again.
This time, he didn't let go.
“I’m a genius, or so they tell me,” he whispered into the silence, his forehead resting against the side of your mattress. “But I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been sitting here for months pretending I don’t see you, pretending I don’t wake up every morning wondering if today is the day I finally tell you that the coffee tastes better when you’re the one making it.”
He looked up at your pale face, the blue light of the monitors casting sharp shadows over your features. “I think I’m too old for you and I’ve got a chest full of ghosts, but if you wake up, I’m done being the gentleman. I’m done waiting for 3:00 AM. I’m just... I’m just yours, if you’ll have me.”
It took exactly a week of Tony coming into your room, day after day, talking to you in the low, gravelly hum of a man who had forgotten how to speak to anyone else. He had barely slept, his brilliant mind reduced to counting the rhythmic blips of your heart monitor, hoping you would finally wake up and break the suffocating silence.
He was sitting there again, his chair pulled so close to your bed that his knees brushed the edge of the frame. He was holding your hand, his thumb tracing circles over your knuckles, a habit that had become his only source of comfort.
"You know, I forged a lot of things in my life," he murmured, his voice thick with a vulnerability he usually kept under lock and key. "Suits of armor, clean energy, even a legacy I’m not sure I deserve. But I can't forge a way to be okay without you. It’s pathetic, really. A twenty-year head start on life, and I still didn't see you coming. I love you. I’ve loved you since you first laughed at one of my terrible jokes, and I’m terrified I waited too long to say it.”
A small, faint flutter stirred against his palm.
Tony froze, his breath hitching in his throat. He looked up, and for the first time in seven days, the vacant stillness of your face was gone. Your eyelashes flickered, shadowed by the dim light of the medical bay, before your eyes slowly opened, clouded with sleep but unmistakably focused on him.
"Does that mean... I get the good coffee tomorrow?" you whispered, your voice a raspy, barely-there thread of sound.
A jagged, breathless laugh escaped Tony’s chest, a sound halfway between a sob and a cheer. "You get whatever you want. I’ll buy the whole damn bakery.”
He didn't wait for a witty retort. He leaned in, his hand moving to cup your cheek with a tenderness that felt like a prayer, and pressed his lips to yours. It wasn't a grand, cinematic gesture; it was soft, desperate, and tasted of relief and second chances. When he pulled back, his forehead lingered against yours, his eyes bright with a rare, shimmering heat.
"I meant what I said," he whispered, his gaze searching yours. "All of it.”
You managed a weak, lopsided smile, the kind that always made his heart do a painful somersault. "Good. Because once I’m out of this bed, Stark, you’re taking me on a real date.
No missions, no robots, and definitely no heels in hand at 3:00 AM.”
Tony let out a long, shaky breath, the weight on his shoulders finally lifting. "It’s a date," he promised, kissing your hand. "I’ll even be on time."
the day of your date with Tony finally came. You followed your getting ready routine with a nervous energy that hadn't sparked in years, selecting an outfit that felt like the truest version of yourself. When you finally stepped into the common room, the elevator doors sliding open with a soft chime, he was already waiting for you.
He wasn't in the suit of armor, and he wasn't in his grease-stained lab clothes. He stood there in a crisp, dark blazer, looking every bit the man who could command a room, yet his eyes softened the moment they landed on you.
He took you to your favorite restaurant, a small bistro tucked away from the prying eyes of the city, with a private patio that allowed for a conversation you both were dying to have. The air was cool, scented with blooming jasmine and the rich aroma of red wine.
“I never thought I had a chance. I always saw you with Pepper. I thought you both were end game,” you said, your voice steady despite the flutter in your chest, as the rim of your wine glass rested against your lips.
Tony reached across the table, his fingers sure and warm as he sought out your hand, lacing his fingers with yours.
“Sweetheart, Pepper doesn’t make me feel the things you make me feel. You see me for *me*,” he said, his gaze intense and unwavering. “With her, it was always about the mission, the company, the image. It was a partnership of handlers. But with you... you make me want to actually be the man everyone thinks I am. You make the silence in the lab feel less like a prison and more like a home.”
He squeezed your hand, a small, crooked smile playing on his lips.
“I spent years thinking I had to be the hero or the genius, but you’re the only person who looks at me and just sees Tony. I’m not going to waste any more time pretending that’s not exactly what I need.”
You looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the vulnerability he usually hid behind a wall of snark. The age gap didn't feel like a chasm anymore; it felt like a bridge they had finally found the courage to cross.
"Then no more pretending," you promised, leaning forward into the warm glow of the candlelight. "Just us."
Tony raised his glass to yours, the crystal clinking softly in the quiet night. "Just us. And maybe a significantly better grade of coffee in the mornings."
After dinner, you decided to take Tony out dancing, desperate to pull him out of his rigid routine and remind him what it actually felt like to be alive.
You both danced until the music felt like a pulse under your skin and drank until the edges of the world blurred into nothing but the heat between you. By the time you stumbled into the back of the sleek black car, you were never more grateful that Happy was the one behind the wheel.
The privacy partition slid up with a soft, mechanical hiss, sealing the two of you in a cocoon of leather and longing. Your lips found Tony’s with a hunger that had been simmering for months, and his hands, sure and demanding, pulled you firmly onto his lap. His fingers trailed a path of fire up your thighs, slipping beneath the fabric of your dress to find the slick, aching heat of your center.
“I want you, Tony,” you breathed against his lips, your voice a fractured plea as you felt his touch exactly where you needed him most.
“Gosh, sweetheart, you’re going to make me lose control,” he groaned, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register that made your toes curl. His lips trailed a path of heat down the column of your neck, his teeth grazing your skin, while his fingers deftly pulled aside your lace panties. “You’re so wet for me already.”
“You understand how hot you are, Tony. How many times I’ve imagined you slamming me against the workbench of your lab, or the nearest surface, whenever I watch you take that armor off,” you confessed, your breath hitching as your hips buckled instinctively against his hand. Beneath you, his dick was coming alive as you felt a twitch against your thigh.
“You dirty girl,” he whispered, his eyes dark with a mix of shock and pure, unadulterated desire. He shifted, his grip on your waist tightening as he realized just how long you had been harboring those thoughts. “I don’t think I can make it to the Tower without fucking you in this backseat first.”
“Then fuck me, Tony,” you urged, your hands tangling in his hair to pull him back down to your lips.
Tony pulled away for just a second, needing to make sure you truly wanted this. But the sheer look of desire written all over your face gave him all the confirmation he needed.
He didn't need to be told twice.
He reached for his belt with a frantic edge that was a far cry from his usual calculated grace. At the same time, your hands slid from his neck down across his chest—feeling the hardened muscles hidden underneath his dress shirt—until you reached the fly of his pants to free him.
The sight of his thick, rigid length made your mouth water. Tony just sat back, admiring your every move; he watched, mesmerized, from the moment you slicked your palm with your own spit to the second your fingers wrapped tightly around him.
A low grunt escaped his lips. He could easily get addicted to your touch.
His hands gripped your hips with a sudden harshness, squeezing hard enough that you knew there would be bruises tomorrow—not that you cared. You guided him directly against your slick slit, coating the swollen, pink tip with your heat.
“You’re killing me here,” he managed to choke out.
A triumphant smile touched your lips as you finally sank all the way down onto him, forcing a staggered, breathless gasp from you both.
“Tony,” you moaned, his name a breathless sigh at the sheer sensation of being filled. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against yours as his eyes fluttered shut, completely undone by the way you were squeezing him whole.
He didn’t know how he got this lucky. He had been pining over you for so long that having you here, in his arms, stretched tight around his cock in the back of his car, felt almost like a dream.
Except it wasn't. And the moment you started rolling your hips in slow, circular motions, he was brought crashing back to reality.
“I’m going to fuck you so good, sweetheart,” he growled. His hands slid from your hips to hook underneath your thighs, taking control and helping you lift and drop back down onto his throbbing length. You could feel every single inch, every racing pulse and rigid vein, and the overwhelming fullness made you see stars.
“You feel so perfect, like you were made for me,” he breathed against your lips, guiding your hips into a steady, rhythmic pace. The intensity built with each passing second, the desperate sound of skin slapping against skin filling the enclosed space of the backseat.
“I’m so close, Tony, please,” you whimpered against his mouth.
In response, one of Tony’s hands slid down between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit and rubbing in frantic, agonizingly perfect circles that turned your vision white at the edges. He wanted to give it to you, but hearing you beg for him brought him right to the brink of his own release.
“You sound so pretty when you beg,” he rasped, a dark edge to his voice. “I should’ve known months ago that I needed to have you begging for my cock.”
A low grunt tore from his throat as your walls clenched tightly around him at his words. Desperate, uninhibited moans fell from your lips as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. The tension snapped, and waves of a shattering climax rippled through your body. Feeling you come, Tony lost his own grip on his control, calling your name as he hammered deep inside you and followed you over the edge.
He held you tightly as the aftershocks rocked you both, keeping you pinned to his lap while he tried to recover his breath. Watching your chest heave with every heavy, ragged inhalation, he pressed a tender kiss to your sweaty skin.
“Never letting you go,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion.
“I don’t want you to,” you whispered, closing the small gap between you to pull him into another passionate kiss.
advertisement is so constant and everywhere i have to wonder if it even works anymore. im aware my bus stop probably has ads on it but i couldnt tell you what for. i hear 'this video is sponsored by' and i start skipping ahead until its over. u can probably argue theyre still getting in your brain by becoming part of the white noise but like idk man. im feelin really "when everything is ads, nothing is." right now.
