He Could See It In Your Eyes, The Way You Looked At Him. Youd Bring Him Somewhere, And Hed Let You. Youd

He could see it in your eyes, the way you looked at him. You’d bring him somewhere, and he’d let you. You’d crawl in his lap, and he’d let you. You’d let him do whatever he wanted to you, and he’d let himself devour you whole. He wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it. 

Help I love him already! So caring and full of yearning. 😭❤️❤️❤️

crash - part i [(ex)step-father!marcus moreno x f!reader]

chapter summary: Marcus Moreno has always been too generous for his own good. When his ex-stepdaughter calls, desperate for a place to live for just a few months while she gets settled at a new job, he can’t possibly turn her down. rating: M (for now) warnings: [angst, stepcest adjacent, alcohol use, very weird parental issues happening here, age gap (reader is 25 at the time of the story, Marcus is 50), Marcus calls reader lovebug, Missy does not exist, Marcus reflects on borderline inappropriate behavior while he was still reader’s step-father, sexual tension, mentions of Marcus’s deceased wife, Marcus is Catholic and full of guilt] wc: 2.7k a/n: please go to @ezrasbirdie-updates to be notified of updates! All my love and adoration to @mothandpidgeon for betaing, and to @swiftispunk for possibly being stepdaddy Marcus's biggest fan. This is mostly set up, but things are pretty juicy from the beginning. In part 2 things get…a little insane, actually, but just a gentle reminder: this is the definition of DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT. This is a character from a children’s movie and I have done questionable things to his personality and morals. Do not read this and get mad about it. We good? Okay great, please enjoy!! masterlist | series masterlist | marcus moreno masterlist | part ii

“You could stay with Marcus.”

You look up from the drink you’d been savoring the dregs of and scrunch your nose. “Marcus? Your ex-husband Marcus?”

She scowls. “Don’t make that face, honey. You’ll get wrinkles.”

At twenty-five, you know better than to listen to your mother’s advice on anything, whether it be aging or a temporary living situation, but times are desperate and you’re running low on options. 

No one told you how difficult finding a job would be even with a master’s degree, and you can’t work retail forever if you want to move out of your mother’s house. When an office in San Antonio proper offered you an entry-level position with good pay, you’d jumped on it, not thinking about the two-hour commute

from the small town your mother had moved to after her divorce, and of which you were a temporary resident. After a month turned into a year, however, it felt a lot less temporary. 

You start your new job in three weeks. The mid-range, affordable, within-walking-distance-to-your-new-job with an in-unit washer and dryer apartment won’t be available for two more months. 

You are not giving up that apartment. 

Over the last few days, you’ve been frantically searching for a solution, eventually resigning yourself to traveling four hours a day until the apartment is ready. But this is an interesting idea, this Marcus thing. 

“What’s wrong with staying with Marcus?” she asks. “You always got along with him.”

The ice in her mojito melts like a film student’s first attempt at a timelapse, the condensation pouring rivulets down the side of the glass as the Texas heat penetrates the shade of her patio. It matches the sweat beading at your temple. You sigh and wipe it away as you consider the unexpected option—you wouldn’t mind unfettered access to that pool of his in this heat. 

“And you’d be okay with that?” you ask, incredulous. She laughs, swirling her pink squiggly straw. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

The divorce had been—allegedly—an "amicable and mutual" decision, though you’ve always suspected it was more one-sided than your mother would ever admit. No one wants to be the heartless bitch who dumped Marcus Moreno, widower and leader of the Heroics. 

Rarely had you ever thought of him as your step-father. By the time they’d gotten married—papers signed and vows said in front of a judge under the sickly yellow lighting of City Hall one Friday morning in December—you’d already finished your first semester of college and turned nineteen. 

It was only a few days later, after your first Christmas with your new step-dad, that butterflies took residence in your gut and stayed there, fluttering in the most unruly manner every time Marcus smiled in your direction. You didn’t know what to make of these new feelings, or how to manage them, or if, perhaps, there was something wrong with you.

It wasn’t as if you could ask anyone else about it. 

Eventually, though, you managed to convince yourself that you weren’t used to positive feelings towards a father figure. Your brain had confused that paternal affection with a crush because it didn’t know what else to do.

Psych 101 was really paying off. 

Rationalizing made those feelings more bearable, and so you clung to your reasoning. You even let that affection grow and morph into something that felt like love after a while. 

Marcus was so sweet. 

At first you didn’t trust his whole thing, suspecting it was part of his superhero persona. He’d drop it eventually and become just another asshole your mother brought into your lives without so much as thinking about how you might feel. You paid him little mind in the beginning. Marcus Moreno was not the first long-term relationship she’d had since she divorced your deadbeat father, and you’d been sure he wouldn’t be the last. 

He was, however, the first one who wanted to marry her. Maybe that should’ve been a clue that he was just like that; that he cared for and protected his loved ones because he wanted to and not because he could get something out of it. Your mother was not the type to understand that mindset. She wanted something out of everyone. 

But Marcus? 

He made you dinner. He did your laundry. He taught you to drive. More than once you’d awoken to him carrying you up to your room after you’d fallen asleep on the couch, rubbing his thumb across your back. It felt like love; well-worn and soft like the old t-shirts of his you’d steal to sleep in.

You suppose your mother’s right—you’d always gotten along with Marcus. 

You shrug. “I don’t know,” you say. “Just seems weird is all. Would he be okay with it?” 

She laughs again. “Why wouldn’t he? It’s not like you’re still some party girl coming in and out all hours of the night.”

Party girl. You’d spent the last seven years of your life in libraries, nose stuck in books and research papers, up to your ears in presentations. You can’t even remember the last time you went to a party. “I was never a—”

She throws her hands up because despite starting the argument, she doesn’t want to finish it.

Of course. 

“Fine,” you sigh. Your own drink sits unfinished, the sips you’d managed to choke down curdling with the conversation.  “I’ll call him, I guess.”

It’s just for a few months, you tell yourself. Maybe less. And you haven’t seen him or talked to him in years. 

You’re long, long past those feelings. 

Marcus never could bring himself to delete your number from his phone. Just in case you needed him, he told himself, just in case you were in trouble. Your toothy smile and sparkling eyes are still the last thing he expects when his phone rings in the middle of the afternoon. 

Marcus talks to your mother a couple of times a year, but never for long. How’s the weather, how’s your mother, did you ever buy that new place? He should stop picking up the phone; it isn’t as though they have anything real to talk about, and their superficial back-and-forths always leave him with an ache in his chest. 

He’d really wanted that marriage to work.

It was meant to be his attempt at moving on; at finding love after the sudden death of his late wife. The ephemerality of the relationship made it feel like more of a betrayal, as if he’d cheated instead of moved on, and guilt still lingered around his decision to sign that little piece of paper.

Was she ever in love with him, really? Was he ever in love with her?

Marcus liked being married. He liked commitment, he liked being the person someone could lean on. He wanted to share that with someone again while he was still young enough to appreciate it all. Your mother was a good woman with good priorities—he’d thought, anyway. She certainly had priorities, but they didn't necessarily include him. After a while, it turned out that her independence he’d admired so much was more avoidance of any sort of close, emotional attachment. 

He convinced himself that was fine, though. He could adjust, he could keep trying. She wasn’t the only one who might need him. 

You might need him. 

He’d wanted a child. He and Elisa always planned for it, but one day, Elisa was gone. Thinking about having a baby with anyone but her felt wrong, just like doing everything else without her felt wrong. But you were here, and you’d been dealt the hand of an absentee father, and maybe he could fill some of that void. 

Or at least, he could be there for you, if you needed him. 

Sometimes, though, he found himself looking. Watching you in the pool, averting his gaze when you came inside dripping wet, your body covered by a brightly colored beach towel, a present waiting to be unwrapped. He told himself it meant nothing when his eyes drifted up and down your body—you were a beautiful young woman, and you weren’t really his daughter, and he was, superpowers aside, just a man. He’d never actually act on those thoughts. 

Until he taught you to drive.

Your mother never had time, your father couldn’t be bothered, and you were just riding the city bus and walking to your classes. A pretty young woman relying on public transportation and friends for rides didn’t sit right with him. 

So when you came home after your freshman year in college, he bought you a car under the condition that you get your license by the end of summer break. It wasn’t a nice car, but it was new enough that he wouldn’t need to worry about it stranding you on the side of the road in the middle of the night. He’d done everything he could to ignore the way your breasts pressed against him as you’d thrown yourself into his arms in a jubilant hug.

Marcus finally got to know you in empty parking lots and deserted back roads. It was his biggest mistake, buying that car. He learned your laugh and your dreams and some of your silly, secret guilty pleasures. He learned your favorite music and movies, your favorite color, what you wanted to do with your degree. He knew that you wished your parents were more attentive growing up, that you were glad he was nice to you and good to your mother. 

It was that last bit that sent him to a confessional week after week. Marcus wasn’t usually so religious, and he feared judgment so much he only ever referred to you as a “younger woman,” but he had to get it off his chest. Even if he kept his hands to himself, he felt like he was doing something wrong. 

It hardly helped. All the Acts of Contrition in the world couldn’t make this right. 

It wasn’t until he sat next to you in the DMV for your driver’s test that he lost a fraction of the control he’d held onto for long. You were bouncing your leg, too nervous to sit still, and he meant to squeeze your shoulder. That was all he meant to do. Squeeze your shoulder, reassure you that you’d do fine, but his hand went lower until he hit your bare thigh. He heard your breath hitch, your bouncing leg slowing to a stop as he ran his his hand up, up, up until it skimmed the hem of your shorts. 

“It’s all right, lovebug,” he’d said, and you smiled, leaning into his side and taking a calming breath as he wrapped his arm around your shoulder, slamming his eyes shut and wondering just what the fuck he thought he was doing.

Marcus never let himself be alone with you again after that. It was too dangerous, whatever had crackled between the two of you in that fluorescent-lit government building, and he didn’t want to ruin everything. He’d already let it all go too far.

You’d tried to get him to come out on long drives again, but he knew what would happen if he did. He could see it in your eyes, the way you looked at him. You’d bring him somewhere, and he’d let you. You’d crawl in his lap, and he’d let you. You’d let him do whatever he wanted to you, and he’d let himself devour you whole. He wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it. 

So he’d refused, said he was too busy, ignoring the confused hurt in your eyes every time. The last time you’d asked, your voice had been small and pitiful, but still full of hope. Maybe this time.

“I go back to school next week,” you’d said. “I know you’re busy and all, but I thought maybe—since it’s been a while—”

“You don’t need me, lovebug, you’re doing great,” he’d said, his smile almost faltering as he watched your shoulders slump. But he’d done the right thing. You’d understand, eventually. He hoped.

“So, you want to come stay with me?” he asks after all the pleasantries are exchanged.

“Well, just for a little while. I understand if you can’t—I know you’re busy, but I’d stay out of your way and everything, and I’m totally more than happy to do all the chores or pay rent or whatever you—”

He interrupts you, guilty and greedy at the same time. You sound just like you did the last time you asked him to come on a drive with you. “You’re always welcome here, lovebug,” he says, the old nickname slipping out. 

“Really?” you ask, voice pitching high with excitement. “Oh, thank you so much, Marcus! Thank you!” 

He ignores the little flutter of pleasure in his chest as he hangs up. It’ll be nice to have someone in the house, that’s all. 

Marcus isn’t there when you arrive.  

You knew he wouldn’t be; he’s working late tonight. He gave you a four-digit code to get into the house—a new addition. The door used to take a regular old key when you lived here.

The house hasn’t changed much, though it’s a little more masculine in decoration. A lot of brown leather and muted grays, navy blues, olive greens. It’s clean and smells like fresh laundry, and you wonder how much time he spends here in this big house all by himself. 

At least, you think it’s all by himself. It occurs to you that you hadn’t asked if he was with anyone, but he probably would have told you if that was the case. Right? You strain your ears for any signs of life, but you’re met with nothing. Imagine running head first into some woman because Marcus forgot to mention he has a new wife.

The kitchen has some upgrades, too, stainless steel like your mother was always begging for. It gives you a petulant sense of satisfaction that he’d waited for her to leave. 

The fridge, you find out, is stocked with your favorite food. Or, well, your favorite foods from between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. You could do without Pizza Rolls nowadays, but it’s sweet of him to think of you. 

Of course he did, though. Still sweet. Still Marcus. 

It’s strange being back here. You moved around so much as a kid you never had any sense of home, but for some reason, the place you spent the least amount of time in feels the most like it.

You open the door to your old room and smile. He’d found bed linens in your favorite color. 

Despite that cozy warmth spreading through your chest, you can’t get too settled. Most of your belongings are in a storage unit across town, so it’s not like you have much to unload, but just the thought of having to re-pack all your clothes in a few weeks is exhausting. 

You spend the next hour waffling on what you’ll want to wear before resigning yourself to living out of your suitcase. You flop on the bed and put on some music. This mattress is much more comfortable than the one you have waiting in that storage unit. Maybe you can talk him into trading, you think, as you feel yourself drifting off.

When you wake up the room is dark, the only light streaming weakly through the windows. A figure leans over you, and for a split second, you panic at the hulking man at the foot of your bed. 

Marcus Moreno stands over you with an apologetic smile. 

“Hey, it’s just me, it’s just me,” he says quickly, flicking on the overhead light. You squint, groaning as your eyes adjust. “Sorry to scare you. I got dinner for us.”

He looks different.

And of course he looks different; it’d been a long time. That knowledge doesn’t make his appearance any less surprising—the salt and pepper in his hair and beard, new lines on his forehead and around his eyes. He’s also, somehow, more muscular, like he’s spent the last few years in the gym. His shoulders are taller and wider, biceps struggling against his t-shirt sleeves, forearms bulging as he reaches out to help you up and pull you into a long hug. 

“It’s so good to see you, lovebug,” he murmurs, holding you close like he’s missed you so, so much. “Marcus,” you murmur, face buried in his neck, and it all comes flooding back, like the last few years hadn’t even happened. He smells so good, like home, like safety, and you are, unfortunately, absolutely screwed.

dividers and support banner by @saradika-graphics

part ii

The Last of Us 1x01

Broken Vows

Pairing: Marcus Acacius x Temple Maiden!Reader

Summary: When Marcus receives word that he is to be sent to the arena, he must decide where his true loyalties lie.

Rating: Explicit 18+ (By proceeding to read beyond this warning, you are agreeing that you are 18 years or older)

Content: Explicit Smut (Possessive, Breeding Kink, Mention of Pregnancy, some hunter/prey dynamic)

Word Count: 1.8K

Masterlist

He wants to burn it. 

Wants to take the scroll and fling it into the flames, watch it disintegrate into nothing but smoke and ash and charred remnants of words scratched out in pretty gilded ink.

White and gold. How they love to dress it all up in white and gold. The emperors. The chariots. The parades. The decrees. Him.

Make it look like something sent by someone holy and they’ll forget it’s just a trick of humanity. 

He never thought they’d do it to him. And maybe that had been foolish. So fucking foolish to think his loyalty meant something, because now he realizes that he had been safer on his battlefield. Had been safer on his daily walks beside Acheron than he was strolling through the streets of Rome.

His fist tightens around the scroll, the paper creasing in his palm before he rolls it out and reads it again and again and again. As if the words may change. 

They’d condemned him to the arena. Sentenced him to death in their flowing decree that he fight for glory as if he hadn’t already grown up with a blade in his hand. As if he hadn’t brought them lands and riches and treaties on a blood-stained platter as their general. As if he hadn’t already given everything for Rome.

Well, almost everything. 

Marcus looks over his shoulder to the place where you sleep in his bed, and it’s the first time he hasn’t thought about how you look so right there. So perfect. So safe.

Who will protect you if he’s gone?

Gods, he doesn’t think he’s ever been afraid of death. Not really. Not until now. Now it’s this clawing thing, the lion waiting at the gate.

He’d thought… Gods, he had thought. After the last campaign, he had thought of being done, of finally giving in to the ache in his bones that told him it was time, of finally acknowledging the gray in his beard that you were so fond of tugging between your delicate fingers. He had thought of a different kind of life.

In truth, he had mainly just thought of you.

Every night he’d been away without your body curled next to his, every morning he’d woken to the cold reality of war instead of the warmth of your smile, he’d thought of you. Wanted you with a fierceness that rivaled the way he fought to return to you.

Just let me see her, he’d prayed to the gods. Just let me see her one more time.

Maybe he should’ve known they’d never be so generous as to grant his request without a sacrifice. Not after what he’d done. Why shouldn’t they steal from him? He’d stolen from them first.

You. He’d stolen you. 

Promised in childhood as a priestess to Apollo in much the same way Marcus had been promised as a soldier to Mars, you had bowed before him when he entered the temple that day, and his first impulse had been to place his hand beneath your chin, to lift your gaze so that you’d look at him.

He hadn’t done it, of course. Not that time. Or the next. Or the next. No one seeming to think anything of a general spending so much time on his knees as long as it was in service to a god. No one seeming to notice that his eyes were never on the altar.

There is a softness to the way you move. A gentleness to your smile that he was unaccustomed to after so many years spent surrounded by iron. Hearing it in his ears. Tasting it on his tongue. Maybe that’s why he’d undeniably craved something sweeter.

Maybe that’s why he’d followed you that night into the grove, chased you through the trees when you had smiled at him and ran. An ancient urge to pursue and to claim, his path lit up by moonlight as if Diana herself had blessed his hunt.

He knows you let him catch you. Let him fall from grace with you into a bed of grass and leaves and quickly discarded robes.

Maybe it had been wrong. To make you break your vow. To have you give yourself to him instead. Body arched like a bow as he held himself taut above you, as he savored the feeling of your skin and the soft sound of your moans. As he tried to go slow, as he vowed not to hurt you. He just wanted so badly not to hurt you.

“Marcus.” His name was a chant on your lips, your fingers fisted in his curly hair as he eased himself inside you that first time. A slow and careful advance inch by inch until he had taken everything you had to give, until you begged him to move while his mouth traveled over every accessible slope of bare skin. Worshiping you with the same kind of devotion he was supposed to have been paying to the gods.

You were just such a lovely, pretty thing. Sighed so sweetly for him when he hungrily kept his mouth to your cunt until you cried out into the cool night. Trembled so perfectly when he put you on your knees, one hand splayed across your lower back as he worked himself back inside the tight heat with a satisfied grunt at the sight of you taking him so well.

When he laid down with you in the field after, his body wrapped possessively around yours as if to hide the prize he’d found, it was the first time he ever remembered feeling peaceful. 

And it made him reckless.

He’d always been reckless with you in a way he’d never been as a commander, in a way that no one would have believed of the decorated soldier they knew. But he’d been even more so in the weeks and months that followed. 

Pulling you into dark corners in the temple. Following you out into the fields. Sneaking you into his quarters, his room, his bed.

There he could lay you out on his fine white sheets, strip you bare, keep you close. Your body pressing eagerly against his as he pulled you beneath him on your belly and pushed into you deep, his teeth scraping along the nape of your neck as you whined. 

On those nights, you would be slick with the oil he would massage into your skin, with the sweat of exertion, with his release where it painted the skin of your stomach, your ass, your mouth. Again and again like a ritual until he had no choice but to wash it all away and take you back.

“Need a little more, my sweet girl,” he would murmur to you in the early morning hours, rousing you from sleep so he could have you one more time before he carried you to his bath. “Need you to take just a little more.”

And you did. You always did, gripping him so fucking tight even as he kept you in his lap and let your slick cunt clench around his cock while he lazily stroked your naked back. While he made sure you ate. Made sure you were warm. Cared for. Loved. 

He hadn’t known much of that in his life. And neither had you. But he could give it to you now. He could take care of you. Make you smile. Make you laugh. Make you his in a way that nothing so pure had ever been his. He could… he thought he could. 

Such a fucking fool. He had been such a fucking fool. He should have known. He should have known he wasn’t free of the game just because he wanted to stop playing.

Ever since he’d come back all he’d thought about was how much he didn’t want to lose you. About how sick it had made him to think of you here alone without him, how exposed it made him feel to know there was no one guarding the thing he valued most. 

He had planned it out so perfectly on his return. Had thought through every strategy, every tactic, every favor that he could call in to make a scandal involving Rome’s commanding general and a temple maiden disappear. 

Whatever the price was he would pay it. To your family. To the temple. To the gods. He would let his status be a shield. His position a form of armor. He would not allow you to be taken away from him.

He hadn’t considered that they could simply take him away from you instead.

As if suddenly gripped by the same fear, you stir, shifting to your side, arm outstretched for him as your expression creases into a frown in your sleep. Your face is still puffy, cheeks tear-stained from the way you’d sobbed when you’d seen the scroll.

You hadn’t asked him not to go, not even when you’d cried so hard you could barely breathe, not when you’d let him hold you and tell you how sorry he was. You hadn't asked him because you knew that there was no question of him going if he is a man of honor, and despite what he’s done, you still believe he is one. 

He’s not so sure anymore.

You settle back into a fitful sleep, and his gaze traces every rise and fall of your body until he lands on the sheets pooled along your stomach. A crescent moon of white linen that cups the protective soft swell of your abdomen before he places his palm there. 

You could be carrying his child now. Another child of Rome who would be sacrificed to the amusement of a higher power in the same way her parents had. It’s not a certainty. Not yet. But Marcus hasn’t been as careful since he came home from the front. Hasn’t been able to get himself to pull away when the two of you have already spent so much time apart. 

Even tonight, the evidence of how weak he is when it comes to you is still sticky where he’d watched it drip between your thighs. A sign of the way soothing your cries had turned to something more frantic. An instinctive need again to lay claim before what’s his can be torn away. 

A need to protect it. Even if it means he breaks his vow, just as you broke yours. 

Marcus sets the scroll aside at last, exchanging it for a heavy bag of both your things that he slings over his shoulder. There are soft clothes and a long dark cloak that he places on the bed for you, already wearing his own but still hesitant to wake you until it’s time to run again. This time, you can’t be caught.

He’ll kill anyone who tries. 

Before he brushes his thumb across your cheek and whispers your name he takes one last look around at the gold-tipped life they believed would keep him at heel.

The emperor can take it. The gods, too. He’s sacrificed enough.

fucccckkkk i wanna cover 2003 joel in oil and massage his shoulders and get into the shower w him and wash his hair and kiss his skin and suck his **** and help him relax after working so hard in the hot sun all day because i’m his wife and that’s what he deserves

PEDRO PASCAL photos that boost my serotonin level [pt. 2]

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