sorry about the watermarking, but people constantly repost/use my art as substitute content for other homelander ships or selfship stuff, so i’d rather be careful at this point 😭
Does Madelyn say "my sweet boy" any other time in the show that I'm simply forgetting? The tone sounds different in the hallucination. Sounds like they rerecorded it. Is Elizabeth Shue coming back in more "flashbacks" despite not being listed in the cast in imdb? /delusional hopes
Idk if you're caught up on the boys season 5 but spoiler warning just in case!
What did you think about Homelander's hallucination with Madelyn?? I noticed you draw her with angel features (wings, halo, etc) so when she literally appeared to Homelander as an angel I was like "omg Kaye predicted this?!?" I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Honestly I’m kind of emotional reading this 😭
I haven’t posted much Homewell content lately, so the fact that you still remember my work and wanted to talk to me about this… it really means a lot. It genuinely gives me such a strong sense of belonging. I love Homewell fans so much — it really feels like a little family.
And yes, I did watch it.
I don’t even know how to explain it but I got weirdly emotional — like almost tearing up?? I never expected to see Madelyn again in Season 5, even if it’s just a hallucination.
But honestly, I wouldn’t call it a prediction. I remember back in Season 4, when Butcher had hallucinations of his wife, I joked with a friend like:
“OMG why does Butcher get to see his wife but Homelander doesn’t get Madelyn?? I NEED Homelander to see Madelyn before he dies (which, let’s be real, his survival chances are basically zero).”
And then… it actually happened 😭 LOL
That said, I still kind of want more…
Like I want Homelander, in his final moments, to see even more of Madelyn — almost like a life flashing before his eyes — and maybe even die in her arms (even if she’s just a hallucination). Because in his entire life, Madelyn is probably the closest thing he’s ever had to something that resembles “love” or “safety”… even if it was never real.
Wow I didn’t expect to say this much, sorry for rambling 😭
But this really gave me motivation again — I feel like I want to draw more Homewell now.
Thank you so much for your message, it really meant a lot.
Homelander's relationship with Madelyn Stillwell is a mirror of his psyche. It is no coincidence that when he looks at his portrait he sees and hears her, and her "I see you" in episode 5 can be interpreted as "I see right through you, Homelander."
It is no coincidence that her eyes are endowed with symbolic meaning in the context of their "complicated, intimate.." bond. It is her eyes that he burns with lasers reaching the brain that manipulated him with such phenomenal skill and power. Madelyn owns his apologies (“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” – three times!), his childish, very innocent smiles, his tears and his orgasmes (infantile sexuality). I'm sure he was afraid of her and felt extremely vulnerable around her. He was only sure of himself when she was wearing a lot of fucking explosives... Yes, she lied to him about his son. I think the reason they hid his son was for fear of repeating the greatest mistake (failure): they raised Homelander in a laboratory. But if we give a family to Ryan, isolate him from everything that can provoke an aggressive response, we will not get a second Homelander. Moreover, Homelander should not be allowed to raise his son like his own kind! That is, we can't let him get close to Ryan. Homelander doesn't "blame" Madelyn for this lie, he doesn't kill her because of it. The more important thing is that he realized that her words like “I love you I swear you means everything to me” or “I’m proud of you…” were “full of shit”. After all, his fundamental desire is to please, to be good enough, yes, you can say he wanted to be loved and this is the most important thing, but It would be more accurate to say that he wants to be lied to. Homelander as he really is (a monster) was created by humans. If people don't lie to him, they will only be afraid. It cannot be otherwise: there is no love for him in the whole human world, there is no acceptance without fear, and fear is something that does not agree with love, the real love does not start with fear. The relationship with Stormfront was a narcissistic extension, very successful though. They were based on his self-image (god and monster), but it did not explore his vulnerable sides, the depths. Madelyn (as a foster mother) was essentially taking care of him, her lies were a balm that tied together the torn parts of his psyche. He could get satisfaction in which his aggressive impulses were not involved, such as in a sex scene with her. This is an illustration of his form of existence that he rejects by killing Madelyn mistaking it for false, for imposed, although it constituted him. Her death is the beginning of his end. His dream of a family was a narcissistic castle where he could hide as was his relationship with Stormfront. And although he has never stopped feeling those vulnerable parts of himself (which reacted especially painfully to Ryan), he has considered them pathetic since her death. He hates himself. It hurts.
He never changes out of the suit. Sometimes after taking down criminals, still riding that adrenaline high, he just storms straight into Madelyn’s office. Blood everywhere, senses locked only on her, completely oblivious to the rest of the world.
Madelyn, smiling politely while panicking internally: I need to find a way to get him into the shower. Now.
Hi!! I use translator and don't quite understand how to communicate on Tumblr, but I want to say I LOVE YOUR HOMEWELL ART!!! Finding someone who also loves this pairing and even creates content with them is a miracle! I'd love to see more of your art and sketches, please keep drawing them 🥹🥹🥹
Your message made my day 🥺THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
English is not my first language either, but I’m so glad our love for Homewell can reach each other.🥰
It feels like a miracle to find another Homewell lover too.
Thank you for supporting my art and my silly sketches.
I will definitely keep drawing them. You gave me so much motivation 🤍
Homewell. Rated E. Warnings: Dubcon, mild humiliation, mind games, powerplays. Thanks to @kaye080499 for re-inspiring me (and many others I'm sure) about Homewell. No idea if you're into the dynamic depicted here, but I wanted to give credit where credit is due. Oh, and it's a Christmas fic. Merry Christmas. 4.1 k. (AO3 link)
Madelyn opens the elegant box Homelander handed to her and blinks, thoughts racing.
She's about to walk a tightrope.
Gently declining the gift will make him sulky and she hates, absolutely hates having to deal with days of his sarcasm and barbs and childish lashing out when he thinks no one else at Vought will hear or know.
Accepting this gift was going to cross a major boundary, and was going to make her life even more volatile than it is now. Madelyn lives in a man's world. She may not Homelander's boss in the org chart sense, but she needs to maintain a certain authority over him. If she gives in to him testing this type of boundary, who knows where she will be in six months' time. Maybe dead and gone without a trace, some of the darkest parts of her mind supply an answer to a question she meant to be entirely rhetorical. Regardless, she needs to handle this with poise and just the right reaction.
She lowers the box, fixing her facial expression into something as neutral as possible so he can't brace for what she says next.
"You don't like it…?" he asks, and thank god, her pause thinking about her next move was long enough to make him antsy and nervous, but not long enough to get him over the hump into irritated, defensive territory.
"No, Homelander, I don't like it." Her tone is severe even to her own ears, cold and flat. "How did you think this was going to go? That I'd be happy my work colleague is gifting me lingerie for Christmas? That I'd, what, strip down and model it here for you in my office?"
"I just– I thought women enjoyed that kind of thing…" he says, looking down at the floor. "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."
She tilts her head giving him a skeptical look. "You didn't mean anything by getting me the exact brand of lingerie that I like?"
Homelander's eyes rise back up to her face, clearly questioning why this particular detail was offending her.
"I know you can ogle anyone you like through your clothes. Maybe not everyone out there realizes," she gestures vaguely towards the wall to ceiling window and the New York night skyline visible through it. "Maybe not even everyone who works in this tower knows these things about you, but I'd have to be pretty naive and pretty bad at my job to not know why this lingerie is my favorite brand, and the correct size."
"I'm sorry," he grumbles. But he's not sorry. No– he still thinks he's in the right and she's being unreasonable and needlessly strict with him. She needs to push him more on the backfoot at this point. He always argues at first, she just has to push through it. The key to keeping him in line is not letting him walk away still thinking he's been unfairly scolded.
"It's not the looking that I mind. It's the fact that you think it's appropriate to bring to my attention the fact that you're looking."
"I'm sorry!" he repeats, voice rising in pitch a bit, and he grabs the box out of her hands, clumsily closes the lid as best as he can, before shoving his arms behind his back so it's out of her sight. "I'm sorry, okay? I just wanted to give you something you'd like. For Christmas, jesus. Sorry that I use my powers to try to figure out what to gift you. Sorry. It was stupid. Can we just forget about this?"
Madelyn looks at him, his face just a little bit red, his nostrils flaring with deep breaths because he's in distress– this evening did not go how he envisioned, clearly, and he's scrambling to find his footing again, try to assert himself, gaze cast on the floor. She needs to pull him back a little bit, keep him off-balance. Here's the trickiest part of this tightrope walk. She needs to give him hope again, reel him back in, but not lick his wounds. Not yet.
"You want to give me something I'd like for Christmas?" she says, and his eyes flick back up to her face, maybe faster than he wanted.
"Yes," he says, his voice quiet, unsure, almost as a question. He knows her well enough that he senses it might not be a straightforward request. But he watches intently as Madelyn leans back against her desk, pushes herself up with her hands and seats herself on its edge, her pencil skirt constricting her pose, so she crosses her legs, hands still on the desk on either side, nails painted a juniper green, not too matchy-matchy with her emerald green and red plaid outfit meant to commemorate what day it is, but still tasteful and understated. Homelander's eyes jump from the loose neckline of her blouse to her cinched waist, to what must be flashes of the red soles of her Louboutins, hanging in the air and moving impatiently as she taps her foot in mid-air. He returns to her face, remembering himself and realizing he might be caught staring. She knows she's posing for him, but it's still classy, and she has plausible deniability. She's just making herself comfortable. She may not be able to hear people's heartrates speed up or smell their adrenaline like her charge can, but she knows him well enough to see the signs of interest in him– interest he's trying his utmost to keep under wraps, having just been slapped on the wrist for trying to push their relationship into a realm where it doesn't belong. She needed him to let his guard down before saying the next thing, and sexually enticing him just a little bit accomplishes that.
"I want you to strip down."
Homelander doesn't make a sound. Doesn't move a muscle. Or maybe he moves a couple of muscles– his mouth scrunches up for a split second, and she's not sure that was under conscious control. She's pleased that he doesn't waste her time asking "what?", doesn't verify, doesn't say a thing before he starts to follow her request, slowly, mechanically.
She notes how his cock bobs around, flaccid, as he's working his pants and underwear down his thighs. He's too confused to be aroused, apparently. He folds his pants and puts them carefully on the couch, soon followed by his cape and his belt. He looks back at her, but wisely doesn't ask if he needs to go further, just anticipates her answer, takes off his gloves, and starts opening his chest flap and shrugging out of his top, unzipping his wrists before pulling his arms out of the sleeves one after the other.
He looks back at her after he's organized everything into neat piles. Madelyn wonders if he's so fastidious in his own apartment or if he's just terrified of making a wrong move in her office when he's already in the proverbial doghouse.
She's seen him completely nude before. She's punished him like this a couple of times over the years– for some of his larger transgressions. The first time she resorted to this method was after he took it into his head to argue with her in front of the board during a discussion ("You can argue with me in my office all you want, I will always listen to you. But outside these doors we present a united front. Do you understand how weak and ineffective it makes me look in front of all these board members? Do you want them to lay me off?"). He was in his early twenties then and he never repeated that mistake again. Another time it was because she woke up one night and saw his unmistakable silhouette right outside her curtained window. She's sure he still watches her sleep sometimes, but she doesn't want to be able to see him doing so, and she certainly doesn't want anyone in her nice Long Island neighborhood to report seeing a superhero hovering outside people's windows like a creep. All of this was for his own benefit, honestly. Her success was his success and vice versa. He seemed to know that she was looking out for him, in a way, because he always gets over his sulking.
Madelyn has deliberately stayed quiet, just looking him up and down, because although she's seen him nude a couple of times, it's still a rare sight, and his body looks a little different than when she last saw it a few years ago– more prominent veins on his hands, a little more flesh around his middle and thighs, and he seems to have taken to shaving his chest. He has an endearing insecurity about the way his body looks without the padded suit, crossing one arm over to hold the opposite elbow, then sliding it up to his shoulder, like he's a shy teenager and not someone in his thirties. Covering up his chest, trying to obscure the actual proportions of his shoulders as much as he can when there's nothing to hide his body behind.
"Stand up straight. I like how you look without the suit on," she says, her tone gentle and reassuring, as if this isn't the middle of a punishment at all, and watches him reluctantly draw his arms to his sides.
"Now put on what you bought," she says, as deadpan as she can.
This time Homelander does question her. "... What?"
"Just go take the stuff in that nice fancy giftbox you brought me and put them on."
"But… Madelyn…"
Homelander fidgets, but she won't repeat herself yet another time. His eyebrows knit upwards, he looks worried as he picks up the lacy, frilly underwear. That cut of underwear is meant not to cover the cheeks completely. She will never know how much they'd cover of Homelander's ass, because he can't pull them up far past his knees. He looks at her for her guidance.
"They'll rip."
"Keep them there then. Put on the bra."
Homelander obeys, picking up the brassiere and staring at it before trying to pull it across his chest, managing to wrestle his arms into its narrow confines, but he doesn't even bother trying to clasp the 30C bra in the back. He just stands with the panties halfway up his legs, squeezing his knees together, and the unfastened bra hanging off his shoulders, cups dangling in front of his pecs. She wonders if he knows that the body underneath the suit that he's so insecure bout actually looks incredibly muscular when he's trying to squeeze it into women's apparel.
"Looks like you got the wrong size," she says, tone gentle, indulgent, making sure not to sound mocking.
Homelander looks down at himself and shrugs his shoulders as much as he can in the pose he's having to hold.
"Well, don't worry about it." She hops off the desk and approaches him, and she sees him swallow hard and even move back just a little bit, wary of her next move. Homelander wary of her. Now that's a feat that makes her both proud and amused. She gingerly pulls the bra off his arms, and works the panties down his legs for him. She pretends not to notice how his body starts showing interest as soon as she's close and touching him, even though the excitement is right in front of her when she kneels down to help him step out of the panties.
She rises to her feet, tilting her head up to look at him, but he's looking straight ahead at the wall, pointedly not looking at her, probably trying to fight his arousal back down.
He does look down at her when Madelyn clears her throat, a strained smile on his face, maybe wary, maybe hopeful that she'll grant him some intimacy after all if she's gotten this close to him. She knows that this shy unsure exterior doesn't really negate the fact that he could pick her up and have his way with her, and it would cost him no effort– if he had the nerve to hold her accountable for how she's teasing him right now. She feels like one of those lion tamers sticking her head into a giant set of jaws to show off her control of the situation, somehow quite sure those jaws won't come clamping down and decapitating her.
"Return this one and get the right size next time," she whispers up at him, towards his ear even though she can't really reach high enough, even in heels. His breath hitches, and his body tenses. He starts getting dressed and walks out of her office in a relative hurry, and Madelyn realizes she hasn't finished some of what she absolutely has to get done before tomorrow.
~~~
This new VP of Hero Management position is wearing her out. There's just too much to do, now that she has to take care of so much more than just Homelander and his team (which she still has to micromanage from time to time because Ashley doesn't have the authority nor the institutional knowledge to do everything she used to). So Madelyn works late every day, and this day is no exception just because it happens to be Christmas Eve– still on a call with another workaholic based on the west coast when she sees Homelander saunter into her office uninvited. She gives him a wan smile but doesn't acknowledge him any further and glances at the clock on the wall. It's already 11 pm, and she does want to be able to leave this office sometime before midnight, so she dreads what he's come back in for.
She continues talking to the branch manager in San Diego, Homelander annoying her out of the corner of her eye, because he's looming over her desk. Thankfully he doesn't interrupt her. But Madelyn does almost choke on her words when after a couple of minutes of waiting Homelander seems to lose patience and turns sideways, pulls his pants down a few inches, exposing something lacy and ruffly and a gaudy bright red.
Madelyn raises her index finger as he turns back to face her, and she finishes out the call as quickly as she can.
"You already got them?" she asked incredulously. When she'd sent him out of her office earlier, she wasn't expecting him to take her seriously and do it. Maybe she doesn't know him as well as she thinks she does.
"Yep," he says, giving the last 'p' a playful pop with his lips.
"How did you get them at this hour? On Christmas Eve?" she revises her question.
"You asked for it didn't you? You were planning to take the day off tomorrow, and I assume you didn't want me visiting you."
She's floored. As intrusive, as unnerving as Homelander can be, he is incredibly hard-working and loyal to her. She should recognize that more often– the man lives for praise.
"You're wearing them right now?" It's a dumb question. She knows he is, by his self-satisfied grin. Being put on this mission completely brought back his sense of purpose, gave him grounding. He's no longer apologetic and shy.
He undresses, more rapidly this time, doesn't seem as concerned about his body being on view this go-around. Madelyn catches herself gawking. His cock couldn't fit entirely into the panties, but that was the only thing off about the fit, wrapped perfectly around his ass, only half of each cheek covered. The bra was even more mystifying.
"What the hell size is this?" Madelyn approaches him from the back, incredulous that it's clasped properly.
"LIke a… 42A I think I settled on?" he says, without moving, letting her make the full turn around his body. "It's the closest I could find. I tried a few."
"Where did you find these? At this hour!" She can't make sense of how he managed to do this before the evening was over.
"Just went right to the source of where they make these. It's morning in Bangladesh right now, you know. And they don't take days off apparently."
"You paid for them?"
"Yes," Homelander says, rolling his eyes. "I'm sure I overpaid and they were happy to have American dollars. What, you think I'd rob a place? "
"You've done less rational things," Madelyn says, but her mind is racing. Sometimes she forgets just how different his world is than hers. Of course. She told him to get some niche items. Of course he'd just fly across the globe to fulfill something she requested as a joke. Maybe she'll wake up to news tomorrow that the Homelander showed up at some obscure Bangladeshi sweat shop for no discernable reason. But that's a PR swirl she's willing to deal with and take full responsibility for. Chalk it up to last minute Christmas shopping, which wouldn't even be a lie.
"So do you like this better?" he asks, arching his back subtly enough that he probably thinks she won't notice. He's clearly fishing for praise, eager to get some leverage back in their relationship, and she'll have to give it to him. She's been quiet only because she's stunned. Who else in the world could revise a Christmas present error so promptly?
"You look amazing," she grants him, dipping her hand into his panties in the back. Maybe her inhibitions are down by this point in the night, without the help of any alcohol. She probably shouldn't be crossing this boundary, but she can't help it. She doesn't love him– certainly not in any traditional sense– but she does absolutely adore what he gives her and how hard he works for her. She's worked hard on her own, but her meteoric rise in Vought's ranks has a lot to do with who she was put in charge of early on in her career.
"Didn't know you were into this shit," he says, trying to sound aloof, cooly amused, but his voice rises in pitch and volume at the end of the sentence because she's come up behind him and hugged him, one of her palms grazing his junk, pretending to be an accidental touch.
"I am very much into someone going the extra mile for me," she murmurs as she runs her hands up his ribcage until she gets her fingers under the two bra cups and touches his nipples– nothing too lewd, but he gasps and his body shivers against her.
She almost wishes she'd requested something more ridiculous: garters, stockings, high heels, the whole nine yards.
"Madelyn, are you satisfied?" he asks her, and his tone is different than before, earnest, needing more affirmations and praise. Hasn't she given him enough?
"I will be when you finger yourself," she says.
He hesitates, reaches down and tentatively takes himself into his hand, but doesn't stroke up and down, await confirmation that this is what she wanted.
"I mean finger yourself," she says, releasing her embrace. "Here!" she adds as she swats him across his ass. She didn't swat hard. He wouldn't feel the difference anyway, but she's sure her hand would sting. It gets the point across.
She walks back around to face him. Was she pushing it too far? Would he wake up to the fact that she's treating him unreasonably at some point this evening? Not at this point, apparently, as he reaches back, hand delving into his underwear, his face giving away how uncomfortable he is with the proceedings but forging ahead anyway.
"Which finger are you using?" she asks, and Homelander winces.
"I don't think… it's not going in. I don't think I'm built for that."
"You might have to push harder. But you should probably get it wet first."
Homelander blinks at Madelyn, maybe wondering how it is that she got him to be on the backfoot again.
"Lick your finger," she says, not sounding impatient or angry, but a bit pedagogical, as if teaching him how to plumb his ass is a very important task. He takes her advice, eyes locked with hers as his middle finger disappears into his mouth and comes out glistening. "And now try it again."
His face has reddened a little bit, but he continues to do as she says, holding his breath and bracing, not realizing it would be easier to accomplish if he did the exact opposite.
"Is it in?" she asks and he nods quickly. "And does it feel good?" she adds. He pauses and nods more slowly. "You like doing as you're told, don't you?" she queries onward. "You don't trust many people, but you trust me, don't you?"
He's nodding along to everything she's saying, and she wonders how carefully he's listening at this point versus just trying to get along and survive this situation with his ego intact.
She does something against her better judgement, but she can't help it. Maybe it's being tired at the end of a long day at the office, maybe it's feeling lonely during a week where she got more Best Holiday Wishes from colleagues than any friends or family, relationships that have stagnated over the years of her working harder and harder at her job. Maybe it's just boredom, but she feels like she needs connection almost as much as her charge does. She reaches forward, and touches him and he gives her exactly the hyper-sensitive, dramatic reaction she wanted– face turning up toward the ceiling, eyes squeezed shut.
"Keep working the back and I'll take care of your front," she murmurs softly, surprised at how her tone doesn't sound all that different from when she instructs him to work half of a roomful of VIPs while she tackles the other half, or to go out on a rescue mission while she makes sure to wrangle the right newsteams to show up on site to take pictures of the successful outcome. She loves having him as her right hand man. They have the perfect division of labor between them, the perfect team, and the perfect symbiotic relationship– he gets her glory, she gives him intimacy and a sense of belonging.
Madlyn feels a bit light-headed, these thoughts swirling in her mind even as she feels the warm, firm-soft length of him, warming and firming up more as she continues to touch him. She had vowed not to ever escalate it to this level– to have him strip down was one thing, but to touch him was quite another– but he caught her offguard, flying around the world like that to fulfill one of her silliest requests, because it didn't matter if she was joking or not. Homelander knows her well enough to know what will surprise and impress her.
She brings her left hand in, gently reaching for the balls spilling out of the ridiculous panties, and he groans when she gives them the lightest of squeezes, something between a grope and a caress, and Homelander throws his head back again, as if he wants to stare upwards instead of making eye contact with her. Maybe he's taking precautions for her sake, making sure that if he burns a hole through something it will be a ceiling tile and not her head. Her hand continues traveling back, massaging his taint in passing, almost as an afterthought but he jerks as if she's tased him. Her fingers keep going until she encounters his hand. He was true to his word– one of his fingers buried as deep as it could go into himself.
"Very good." she said, barely above a whisper, her finger circling around where he has lewdly entered himself, somewhere she wouldn't dare do, because she's not sure how much of this part of his body is under voluntary control.
"M-Mad-d..el.." he stutters, but nothing coherent follows. She finds it amusing that in all their years together he's never once tried to shorten her name for his convenience. But then she supposes she never shortens his either. She's distracted by these idle thoughts, and her hands are still fondling him when his hips suddenly jerk forward a few times and strings of come land on her forearms and her expensive winter dress.
"S-sorry…" he mutters, licking his dry lips as he looks down and surveys the damage.
"It'll wash out," Madelyn says, smiling, and reaching for the box of tissues on one of her bookshelves, and wiping off what she can. "Thank you for a lovely Christmas gift, at the end of the day." It really is the end of the day– almost half past 11.
He smiles weakly, legs looking a bit shaky, but continues standing in the middle of her office until she tells him he can get dressed.
Oh my god, thank you so much for this. I’m honestly incredibly moved.
Homewell fic has been so rare in the past few years, and this dynamic has always meant a lot to me, so seeing someone create something new for them—especially inspired by my art—really hit me harder than I expected.
I genuinely loved your take on them. I’ve always been drawn to a fox-like, clever Madelyn paired with a clumsy, painfully sincere Homelander. He’s so bad at love, but all he really wants is for her to love him a little more—and how could that be a crime?
He doesn’t understand romance the way normal people do, so when he gives lingerie as a gift I laughed out loud… and then when he went all the way to Bangladesh just to find a properly fitting set, my heart completely softened. That contrast is devastating in the best way.
Honestly, I think I’m going to forgive the entire world for this whole week just because of this fic. A terrible person’s sincerity will always be my favorite thing to explore, and you captured that feeling so well.
Thank you again for writing this, and for keeping Homewell alive. And a Christmas fic, too—what a gift. Merry Christmas 💙
