Din Djarin X F!reader, Western AU

Shoulders are built for sinking your teeth into

The Dreadful Need in the Devotee Masterlist - Completed

Summary - During your Uncle Robert's Royal Procession, you find yourself enraptured with Ned Starks' bastard son. While Jon has never dreamed so vividly until your arrival, a thread seems to exist between you and him, pulling you together.

Luckily for you both, your father Tyrion has decided you need a sworn sword.

I’ve messed with canon and aged everyone up, so we start our story off with y/n being fifteen and Jon being sixteen, then go from there!

Ch 1: The Little Lion Ch 2: The Bastard Son Ch 3: Cyvassse Ch 4: Greensight Ch 5: The Tourney of the Hand Ch 6: The Chamber of the Little Lion Ch 7: Within Lannister Grasp Ch 8: Secrets Revealed Ch 9: Enter Stage Left: House Tyrell🔥 Ch 10: Aftermath Ch 11: Roseroad Ch 12: Weirwood Ch 13: The Queen's Nameday Ch 14: The Son of the Morning Ch 15: Duality of a Lioness Ch 16: The Young Wolf Ch 17: Northern War Camp Ch 18: The Fall of the Lannisters Ch 19: Post War Revelry Ch 20: The Lion and the Star🔥 Ch 21: As Time Unfurls🔥

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all of a sudden, i need to see southland

SHAWN HATOSY as DETECTIVE SAMMY BRYANT Southland (2009-2013)

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

The Mirage of a Goodbye

Here is my story for @almostfoxglove 's angst writing challenge! The moodboard gave me some trouble while I thought about what I could write, but once the ideas came, it was fun to write it, and a little heartbreaking too. It's been a pleasure to participate. I hope anyone who reads it will like it.

@schnarfer, thank you so much for being so wonderful and sharing your thoughts with me! They have been tremendously helpful and appreciated. And to my friends @thundermartini @encasedinobsidian and @joelmillerisapunk for always being so supportive and sweet. Love you all!🫂♥️

Masterlist // AO3 link

pairing: din djarin x fem! able-bodied reader summary: Forgiveness and healing are heavy words. They come with a price, one that may be life-changing tonight. word count: 2700 tags/warnings: medieval au, angst, did I say angst?, a good dose of angst, grief, mentions of death, established relationship, eight years gap (if it can be considered an age gap), mentions of pregnancy, reader has no description other than having hair, no use Y/N

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

The sound of the pestle grinding against the mortar, the constant, uninterrupted motion, is almost numbing. A reprieve. Bathed in candlelight as the moon rules the sky, and insomnia is her cruel fellow. Seizing her focus while the food, her maid's last attempt to nourish her, lies forgotten on the table in front of the hearth as she stands in the alcove where her healing tools reside wearing only a nightgown. 

Her body is cold as ice. It has been since the day he abandoned her, and nothing is powerful enough to warm her. 

The rotation of her wrist, pulverising, transforming the blend of herbs into a mixture to combat infection, mutes the cacophony in her mind, offering a solace -the safety her chambers haven't been able to provide. 

It puts a halt to the endless reminiscence in the spare seconds that had invaded her dreams, building in exchange a wall of loneliness sinking its claws around her, tall and wide. Unapproachable. Ripping them beyond recognition as the week-long celebrations for the anniversary of the end of the war became grief and death, turning them into a void shell. The musings of an innocent girl who had yet to experience the world's cruelty in its fullest, not being a mere spectator trying to aid anymore, but proof of how all souls are victims of it. 

"My lady." 

The voice is low and gruff, his, with a cadence ingrained in her core; it's impossible not to recognize it the moment it reaches her ears despite the caution infused in it. 

It doesn't come alone, though. It's accompanied by his hushed steps, tiptoeing into her room, softly sealing the secret door they had discovered many years ago - a covert entrance used countless times to spend time together, seeking privacy and hidden from the outside world. 

“The prodigal son has returned.” 

She turns to stare at him, at Din, memorizing the details that make him whole. Real. Not the mirage that had been her companion while he was gone, poisoning her mind, experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. Hurting, raging, and mourning in equal amounts. Becoming a raw creature, seething with longing, so much it ached; hating him beyond words, hating herself for trusting him, for hoping she'd be someone's first choice for once. Believing she'd never see him again as the days spanned, becoming weeks, lifetimes of misery and penance. Crippled. Barely surviving the vipers at court, learning a role she had never expected to have bestowed upon her as the loss tried to devour her, paying for a sin she hadn't committed.

He's dressed in dark leather and with no trace of his armour tonight, the obsidian scales embellished with hints of gold she had gifted him after becoming the General of her father's army, of the realm's army.

His frame has not changed. Strong and beautiful, sturdy, flooded with life, luring her with his chestnut curls. Tall and broad as the day he vanished three months ago, as she remembers him under her touch, caressing his soft skin, bronzed and scattered with scars and freckles. Gripping her hips, helping her take her pleasure atop him, encasing her body amidst the sheets, feeling safe. Treasured. His weight, caging her, burning alongside hers, dancing, adoring her with his cock sheathed inside her, splitting her, inebriated by the passion, the ecstasy growing till exploding, claiming her with his seed.

“Are you preparing one of your remedies?”

“I’d say so," she states, cutting, a vicious chuckle ripping her tone, refusing to accept his attempt to break the tension between them, thick enough to leave a bitter metallic taste on her tongue.  “Why? Do you also think it's beneath me to prepare them now? That I shouldn't care?"

The firstborn. The boy. The heir. The future king. 

Those had been her older brother's titles -pushing her to exist in his shadow since she was born eight years later than him. She’d learned to accept it, watch her absent parents cherish her in their own way but do nothing to mask their preference. Favoring him, spoiling him, giving him their attention and praise, whereas she was handed to nursemaids and tutors without an extra thought. Not growing resentful and even becoming grateful, happy and keen, valuing the lack of pressure on her shoulders, the freedom it provided. Allowed to learn and become a healer, to prioritise love over political alliances in a marriage, and not be chained, used as bargaining flesh.

A sentiment she had been sure about. But Din’s presence only accentuates her doubts, every decision she has made since her future imploded.

Her heart longs to mend, run to him, bury her face on his torso, and breathe his soothing scent -the hints of rosemary from the soap she prefers merged with his musk- feel his arms envelop her, squeeze her hard, and never let go, allow him to ground her like only he knows how to do. But she doesn't surrender, steeling herself, fuelling her anger, folding her forearms over her chest to prevent herself from reaching for him, staring at him in silence, expectant, purposefully making him uncomfortable.

“No, I… I brought you something.”

The tension in his frame bleeds to his words as he approaches her, maintaining his distance. Insecure, hovering around the table as he sets down the bundle he's carrying, shrouded in a thick cloth.

The shape is foreboding, straight, and long, causing a pricking sensation that traverses her from the base of her spine to her neck as she unwraps it, recognising it instantly. A sharp blade black as coal, with an angular hilt carved with an engraving she doesn't require to see to be certain it's there. The will be done. Branding it, bestowing a name almost forgotten, a myth considered lost long ago. The Darksaber. A blade of kings, of worthy rulers blessed by the Gods.

“What have you done?” She demands. The pain of his betrayal stabs her, slicing her heart, and making her recoil in disbelief and rage.

“It’s yours.”

“Mine?” 

“It’s my gift to legitimise your reign," he offers, raising his palm, trying to hold hers. But she moves backward, using the table as a barrier, swatting his attempts, her pain blinding her to the damage her rejection provokes.

“It’s not. This is a curse. Tradition…”

“You’re breaking tradition. I thought…”

“You thought? How could you? The only way to yield it is by winning it in combat. You know it.  Everyone knows the legend. What have I done to deserve this?”

“I only wanted to help,” he implores, failing, interrupted by her reproaches.

“Help? How? By leaving when I needed you the most?" Her finger points at him accusingly, being both judge and executioner. "The only reason the Lords accept me as their Queen is because I’m the only option. And you go and bring this? No one would believe I’d best you. They are going to declare it’s a favor from the Gods.”

“I…”

“Is this your attempt to get the crown without bloodshed? You would have more than enough shore. The Armorer and his cohort still think the crown should have gone to your father, not mine.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Color me surprised," she scoffs, "your actions are speaking quite loudly. Perhaps I should do that, give you the crown, and be free from everything."

“What do you want from me.” It's just a murmur, begging, reverberating in the walls like a roar, as intense and dangerous, silencing her

She wishes to curse at him, wound him, scar him as much as he has done to her. Send him away, sentence him, banish him from her presence, enforce the power she has now, the one she's still getting used to, but she doesn't. His solemn countenance, sad, haunted, the lack of sleep in his stare, glassy with unshed tears, the intensity in them, the one perpetually existing in his gaze, make her shudder and lift the veil of her sorrow.

They are one of her earliest memories: his eyes. Brown, filled with kindness and childlike wonderment. He’s unremarkable to many, low born, easy to forget, to pass over, undeserving of a second glance. The eyes of an orphan, the son of the king's brother-in-arms, who had perished leading the rebellion that had granted her father the throne, adopted by the new king and raised with his children, sharing the age with her brother. She had forever been aware of the truth, conscious of their uniqueness from the beginning. 

Honest, trustworthy, pools to his soul that matured as he grew and developed new shades. Magnificent. Protective. Always looking at her with respect, sometimes teasing but never mocking, attentive, knowing of her worth independent of her sex, by being herself. Bewitching her, lavishing her with the attention she deserved, allowing her to bask in it as much as she desired, encouraging her to do so, constantly seeking her, falling in love in stolen moments. Infatuated and passionate as they kissed, losing their innocence together, sharing countless nights in the sanctuary of her rooms, asking her to marry, promising to never hurt her or give her motive to doubt his loyalty.

“The truth.” Two words, simple, easy to voice, yet massive and terrifying to answer to, decisive. “It was naïve of me to presume you'd still want me, but you left. You looked me in the eyes announcing my father and brother’s death, kneeled like everybody else, declared me queen, and left.”

“I’ve never stopped wanting you. You must believe me, but it was not appropriate for me to approach you. Appearances…”

“Fuck appearances! We were an open secret. People may not have proof of the depth of our connection, but they know what we meant to each other. I had convinced Father. He planned to announce our betrothal that day. Once you returned from the hunt.”

“I tried to later," he admits with remorse embedded in his expression, "but you were talking with Lord Vanth.” 

“You thought I’d stray?”

“No. Never, but it made it impossible to ignore my shortcomings.”

“What?”

“I’m no politician. I don’t understand the court's intrigue. I’m a warrior. I’m not good enough for you, a Queen.”

“Don’t you think that’s why you’re the right one? Why I'd choose you over anyone else,” she offers, her tears falling, rolling down her face like rivers, unstoppable. “I know it’s selfish to ask, but the only way I can confront it, not be destroyed by the Crown, is if I have someone as loyal and faithful as you. The warrior you are, who has the army’s fealty and respect. A shield. A sword. A friend who will see me and not a tool for power, who will not muffle me to aid his own ambition but support me. A Consort I love and who loves me just as fiercely.”

“I…”

“Why did you leave?” she requests, gentler, still not giving in.

“I got scared. I couldn’t breathe, so I went to our tree.” Her hope grows at his confession, loud, taking root in her chest, blooming. "We haven't been there in a long time.”

“Oh.” 

She stays still as he approaches her, tracking his movements, holding his gaze, gasping at the first contact. His skin grazes hers, grabbing her fingers, restoring the warmth she had been bereft of, infusing her lungs with fresh air.

“I was remembering our moments there and sensed this pull in my gut as if someone were calling me. My father’s voice echoed in my mind, urging me to do what we said we'd do as kids. Crack the riddles and find the Darksaber.” 

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

"Because I wouldn’t have been able to leave you." The rawness is proof of his honesty, letting him tug her closer. "It sounds insane, and perhaps it was the fear taking control, but I couldn't ignore it. It took me longer than I intended, but I found it.” His mouth curls at her response, the obvious wish to question for more details. "I’ll tell you everything," he promises, pecking her knuckles slowly, relishing in the action, the privilege. “Once I touched the hilt, all fell into place. I wasn't scared anymore. I was sure where I was meant to be. Beside you. Always." His lips grace her again, worshiping, resting his other hand on her lower abdomen. "I saw you. I felt so proud. You looked so beautiful. Powerful, holding the saber for everyone to see, with the crown in your head and your belly swollen, carrying our child.”

“What?” As soon as he says it, she knows it's true, suddenly remembering how long it has been since she last bled, no longer able to claim that her tiredness came from her lost sleep, from the myriad of tasks she had to face each day, no longer able to assume her nausea was a present from her anxiety, deny what her body had known for weeks, no longer able to restrain her fears.

Her heart gallops against her ribs as her palm lands close to his, not touching, forming a protective barrier with only a few inches between them.

How could she be a good mother when her own had been so lacking? When she barely knows how to reign. Who she is. How to embrace her identity now. When the terrifying prospect of having to do it alone seems so certain at this juncture, and the worry of being pressured to renounce her child for being born out of wedlock looms in her mind.

“Will you forgive me?" His question is a plea, a whisper slipping from his mouth with sorrow infused in his irises as he cradles her cheeks, kissing her forehead, and his thumb caresses her cheekbone. Ensuring her attention and belief in him as he keeps talking. “You’re not the only option. You’re the best one, better than your father was, and better than your brother or me could have ever been.”

It’s easy to believe him. Understand his motives and feelings. Forgive him despite needing time to heal. To picture them together, facing every challenge as a team, turning the Realm into a better place to live, safer and prosperous, raising the child in her womb and any other they would be blessed with, being the parents they never had, growing old, and creating thousands of memories.

“I’m sorry. I tried my best. Don't ever forget that I love you.”

It's a vow sealed with a secret barely contained, with a grievous hue alluding to a deeper significance in his visit. Pushing her to move, raise her hands to his chest to pull him closer and taste his lips, ask what worries him, what he's yet to voice, and share his burden. But a sudden knock on the door distracts her. It opens with urgency before she has time to welcome the intrusion, showing the concerned expression of one of her guards. 

“Your grace, the General has come back.” 

Her jaw opens, ready to state the obvious and acknowledge the man before her. But when she looks, her hands are empty, raised in the air with nothing to grasp. She’s standing alone, bewildered, frozen, staring at the void where he had been seconds ago as Ser Mayfeld continues informing her, and dread invades her.

“He was found unconscious atop his horse in the stables. He has a serious wound on his thigh. The fester has reached his blood, and the healers don’t think he’ll survive.”

The glint of the blade invading the corner of her eye, lying where Din left it, ensures her sanity. No godsend. Damnation, trying to take her man, demanding a price she's unwilling to pay.

Awakening her from her stupor as the pestle calls for her. Giving a new meaning to the tug she had sensed earlier, not only a seek for comfort in the motions and aromas of the healing herbs anymore but a forewarning of the need for a salve to clean the infection.

She seizes it, feeling its weight on her palms, her mind enumerating what she will need, trembling, almost knocking down the other tonics on the table, grabbing them in a rush to throw them in her satchel. And starts to run.

He deserves to live, to be a father. And her child deserves the father she knows Din would be. Stern only when forced to, gentle, patient, silly in private, fun, dotting, attentive, and loving.

She refuses to yield. It cannot end like this when the future is close enough to graze it.

She won't let him go without a fight. He must survive.

Npt (because there was interest in my WIP Wednesday!) @whocaresstillthelouvre @milla-frenchy @jennaispunk @604to647 @pascalssbabyy

@yxtkiwiyxt @aurorawritestoescape @secretelephanttattoo @baronessvonglitter @burntheedges

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The Golden Oath (to decide)

- Summary: The lion falls in love with the daughter of the Mad King, which starts a domino effect that eventually collapses the realm onto itself.

- Pairing: targ!reader/Jaime Lannister

- Note: This story doesn't have a place in my schedule, as it's still being written. But, I may continue to drop a new chapter here and there unexpectedly. Thank you everybody for your support. ❤️

- Rating: Mature 16+

- Previous part: to take a chance

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @oxymakestheworldgoround @howtodisappearcompletely3 @joyfulyouthlover @viyannaiya @mortallyblueninja @nestvrn @wuluhwuhmaster @loafersrs @annoyinginfp-t @simpsonsam @barnes70stark @angel6776 @mrsnms @butterfl1ies @lordofthunderthr @idenyimimdenial @jsprien213

The road narrowed as the procession climbed the last hill, the sun now high above them, its light muted beneath a veil of thin cloud. Dust rose from the hooves of their horses, and beyond the crest of the hill, the ruins of Summerhall slowly came into view—a broken crown of stone and ash, half-swallowed by creeping vines and the passage of time.

Jaime had heard the tales, of course—whispers passed between pages and knights of the court, stories of fire and madness and the fall of a dream long dead. But no telling had prepared him for the solemn quiet that blanketed the ruins like a shroud. Even the birds had stilled their songs, and the air held a heaviness that pressed into the lungs, as if it remembered everything that had happened here.

He rode close to Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Barristan Selmy as they descended the last slope, the guard fanning out behind them. Crumbled columns reached skyward like fingers of a dead god, scorched stone blackened from old flames. What had once been a great hall now lay in splintered ruin—arches collapsed, hearths hollow and cold, no roof to shelter what remained.

Jaime said nothing as they dismounted, the leather reins firm in his grip. His gaze swept over the shattered remnants of the palace, noting where the fire had burned deepest—walls half-fallen in on themselves, the marble tiles cracked and blackened beneath moss and decay.

Ahead of them, Rhaegar and Y/N walked side by side, the prince’s hand light on her back as they passed through what had once been the grand entrance. There was no ceremony in the way they moved, no announcement of their intention to separate from the group. They simply passed beyond the threshold of the ruins, the pale folds of her cloak disappearing behind the stone arch with graceful finality.

Jaime’s brows drew together as he watched them go. He remained where he stood for a long moment, eyes lingering on the dark space where they had vanished.

He shifted slightly, then turned to Ser Barristan, who was tightening the strap of his vambrace, his expression unbothered as if this had been expected.

"Shouldn’t someone follow them?" Jaime asked, his voice low but firm. "It’s not safe. These ruins—"

"They will be fine on their own," Barristan said, cutting him off gently but with the steady weight of authority. He didn’t look at Jaime as he spoke, merely adjusting the leather binding with practiced ease. "They’ve come here before, and they come for their own reasons. We are here only to ensure they return."

Jaime frowned, glancing toward Ser Arthur, who stood beside a jagged pillar with one hand resting casually on the hilt of Dawn. The Sword of the Morning gave Jaime a glance, then nodded faintly.

"Summerhall is sacred to the prince," Arthur said. "And to her."

Jaime’s jaw clenched. "And what is it to you?"

Arthur tilted his head slightly, as if considering the question. "A ruin. A reminder. Nothing more."

But Barristan, older and less inclined to philosophical detachment, gave Jaime a longer look, his eyes unreadable beneath the line of his brow.

"You care for her," he said quietly.

It wasn’t a question.

Jaime’s breath caught, just for a heartbeat, before he set his jaw and looked away. "I respect her," he said simply.

Barristan’s mouth twitched, just faintly, before he turned his attention back to the guards dispersing among the trees.

"You’re not the first."

Jaime blinked, caught off-guard. "What?"

The older knight’s tone remained neutral. "To see her. To want her. To wonder if what you see in her eyes is meant for you."

Jaime stared at him, something unsettled curling low in his chest.

"But you must understand something," Barristan continued. "She is the king’s daughter, yes. But more than that—she is his."

He didn’t say the prince’s name. He didn’t have to.

Jaime looked once more toward the ruins, now silent and still beneath the rising sun. He could almost imagine their voices echoing within the blackened halls—hers low and warm, his soft and distant like a harp played in an empty chamber.

And suddenly, Jaime felt as though he were standing outside something he had never truly been invited into.

He said nothing more, only stood there beside the stones, waiting for a glimpse of silver and violet to return from the ruin of dreams.

The light dimmed as you stepped beneath what remained of the old stone arch, the world outside muffled the moment you and Rhaegar entered the hollow shell of what had once been a palace built for joy. Vines crept along the broken walls, their green fingers winding through cracks left by fire and time, and shattered marble tiles crunched under your boots as you moved further inward. The air here smelled of ash and earth, of something old and buried, something that clung to the bones of Summerhall like a final breath that refused to leave.

Rhaegar walked just ahead, his footsteps slow and careful, not out of fear, but reverence. He did not speak at first, and neither did you. This place had always demanded silence when you came together, silence not out of respect, but of understanding. It was as though the stones themselves remembered the cries that had risen here the night it burned—Aegon’s last dream, kindled in fire and ended in smoke.

You followed him through the collapsed doorway that once led to the hall of the fountain, or what remained of it. The basin was cracked and blackened, half-swallowed by moss, and the marble dragons that once spiraled around its rim had lost their heads to time and heat. You stepped beside him, your cloak brushing the crumbling stone, and you looked not at the ruin, but at Rhaegar.

His expression was distant, his eyes tracing the outlines of what had once been. His hands, usually so steady, hung at his sides, his fingers twitching now and again like a man playing invisible strings. The silence had stretched too long, so you broke it first, your voice soft.

“You’ve grown quieter here.”

His gaze didn’t shift. “It’s quieter here,” he answered, though it wasn’t truly an explanation.

You glanced around, the ruins swallowing you both in shadow and memory. “You used to say this was where you felt closest to what came before.”

Rhaegar nodded slowly. “I still do.”

You watched him for a long moment. His face looked older today. Not from time, but from weight. From thought. You could see it in the lines that hadn’t been there last year, the deepening shadows beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who had already lived through the prophecy he was meant to fulfill.

He finally looked at you. His eyes were strange in this light—flickering between indigo and stormcloud. “Do you believe in destiny?” he asked you, quietly, as though afraid the ruins might answer for you.

You drew in a breath, letting it settle before answering. “I believe we shape it,” you said. “Even when it’s written.”

He turned from you again, his jaw tight, the tension spreading through his shoulders. “Mine is already written. In scrolls, in books, in flames.” He shook his head slowly. “And every step I take, I feel it binding tighter around me.”

You moved closer, your voice barely above a whisper. “But not alone.”

Rhaegar went still, and for a moment you thought he might close off again like he always did when the subject crept too close to his heart. But instead, he turned toward you fully, his eyes burning now—not with rage, but with something deeper. Fear.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “Not of what I must do. Not of what I will become. I’m afraid I’ll have to walk it without you.”

His words hung there, suspended between ruin and memory. You had heard his fears before, but never so plainly. Never so bare.

You reached for him, your hand settling gently against his chest, where his heartbeat pulsed like the soft rhythm of a distant drum. “You won’t.”

He swallowed, and for the first time, his posture seemed to break. “The future takes things,” he said, voice hoarse. “Even when they’re not ready to be taken.”

You let your forehead rest against his shoulder, your fingers curling into the fabric of his tunic. “Then we will make the future yield.”

He exhaled shakily, his arms coming around you slowly, as though afraid you might vanish if he moved too fast. He held you against him, and you could feel it now—the quiet tremble beneath his stillness. Rhaegar, the silver prince, the one who carried songs and sorrow alike, was simply a man here. A brother. Yours.

“Don’t let go,” he whispered.

“I never have,” you answered.

And in the stillness of Summerhall, surrounded by what had burned, you held onto one another like the last unbroken thing.

The sun had crept higher into the sky, tracing shadows across the broken stone and brittle grass of Summerhall. The ruins lay still, undisturbed save for the occasional gust of wind that whispered through the hollowed walls and stirred the remnants of a palace long dead. Jaime stood near the edge of the old courtyard, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the scorched archway where the prince and princess had disappeared nearly an hour ago.

He was growing restless.

His horse had long since cooled beneath the shade of a tree. The guards lounged or kept idle watch. Ser Arthur, patient as ever, sat with his back to a blackened pillar, his head tipped downward as he thumbed through a small leather-bound book, utterly unbothered by the passage of time. But Jaime… Jaime was coiled tight.

He didn’t realize he was scowling until a voice beside him stirred him from his brooding.

“Patience is a virtue for knights,” Ser Barristan said lightly, walking toward him with his helm tucked beneath one arm. His hair was tousled slightly from removing it, but his eyes were focused and clear beneath the weight of years. “Though I find fewer and fewer of the young possess it.”

Jaime didn’t look at him at first. His eyes remained fixed on the ruins. “It’s been too long,” he said flatly.

“They’ve been here before,” Barristan replied, as if that answered anything. “And they’ve always returned.”

Jaime shifted his stance, fingers drumming against his arm. “She’s not just some wandering lady from the Reach,” he said. “She’s the king’s daughter.”

Barristan raised a brow. “And you think the prince would let harm come to her?”

Jaime glanced at him then, just briefly. “I don’t think anything. That’s the problem.”

For a time, they stood in silence, the breeze rustling the scorched grass around them. Then Barristan spoke again, this time more carefully.

“You train like a knight. You fight like one. But your thoughts, Jaime…” He paused. “They’ve drifted elsewhere, haven’t they?”

Jaime didn’t respond.

“You asked me once,” Barristan continued, “what it felt like to wear the white. To take the vows. You were only twelve, and you looked at me as though I’d been made of stories.” A faint smile ghosted his lips. “But now you hardly speak of it at all.”

Jaime turned to him, slowly. His jaw was tight. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it.”

“But not the same way,” Barristan said quietly.

Jaime exhaled through his nose, staring at the blackened stones beneath his boots. “I never wanted Casterly Rock. That was meant for Kevan’s son. Even when I was a boy, I knew my father would see me as a sword first and heir second.” He glanced up at the sky, his voice lower now. “But I never imagined I’d want anything else.” He looked toward the archway again, his gaze distant. “Now I do.”

Barristan regarded him, his expression unreadable. “You would give up the Kingsguard. Give up your name. Your legacy. For her?”

Jaime didn’t hesitate. “For her, I’d try.”

The old knight was quiet for a long time. Then, he stepped closer, his voice dropping.

“I have seen many men fall in love with dragons,” he said. “Some from afar. Some from within. It rarely ends well for any of them—especially the ones without wings.”

Jaime turned to him, meeting his gaze evenly. “I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.”

Barristan sighed, the weight of experience settling in his shoulders. “Then pray, for both your sakes, that this fire does not burn you alive.”

Jaime said nothing. His eyes drifted once more to the ruins.

And still, you did not return.

The solar in Maegor’s Holdfast was stifling despite the breeze that whispered through the high windows. The red and black tapestries, embroidered with dragons in flight and fire, hung heavy on the walls, absorbing the heat and amplifying the sense of confinement within the chamber. The air smelled of warmed parchment and perfumed oils, a rich, cloying mixture that clung to the skin. But it was not the heat or the scent that unsettled Tywin Lannister—it was the man seated on the carved wooden chair beneath the Targaryen crest, idly turning a jeweled ring around his finger, his violet eyes glittering with something between amusement and disdain.

Aerys Targaryen had not yet descended fully into the madness that would one day consume him, but the change had begun. It was there in the long silences between his words, the sudden flickers of suspicion behind his gaze, the way his mouth twisted when he smiled, as if the act required effort. And yet, he was still shrewd. Still cunning. Still dangerous.

“My king,” Tywin began again, his voice measured, every word deliberate. “You’ve made your views clear regarding my daughter. If you will not entertain the match between Prince Rhaegar and Cersei, then I ask you to consider—”

“You ask,” Aerys interrupted abruptly, his tone light but edged like a blade. “You, Tywin Lannister, who once served as Hand of the King, who now returns with gifts and golden children in tow, asking for my blood to be mixed with yours.”

Tywin didn’t flinch. “It would strengthen both houses.”

Aerys’s laugh was brittle, too loud for the small room. “Ah, yes, strength. That is always your language, isn’t it? Not honor, not duty—strength. Power. Gold.”

Tywin’s jaw tightened. “Jaime is a capable boy. More than capable. And he is your daughter’s equal in birth, if not in name. I merely ask that you consider the benefit of promising her to him.”

The king’s fingers stilled against the ring. His gaze narrowed, lips curling slightly. “Your son is a squire, not a prince. And she is not yours to have.”

“She is the daughter of the dragon,” Tywin reminded him calmly. “And Westeros is watching. It would do your House good to remind the realm that alliances can be made outside the bloodline.”

“Outside?” Aerys repeated, his tone suddenly biting. “You would dilute the blood of the dragon with lion’s blood. Do you think me a fool?”

Tywin met his gaze without blinking. “I think you a king who must preserve more than his name. Isolation breeds weakness. The other Great Houses grow in power with each generation. Your own family grows thinner.”

Aerys stood then, his movements sudden, graceful despite the long folds of his black and red robes. He moved to the window, his back turned, his posture tense.

“They speak of me in whispers,” he said, voice low, almost musing. “They say I’ve grown strange. That I fear shadows and keep to myself. That I hoard wildfire between the walls.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Do you believe these things, Tywin?”

“I believe your enemies want others to believe them.”

The king turned slowly, his expression twisting into something smug. “Let them believe what they will. Let them fear. They have always feared Targaryen fire. That is how we keep the throne. Not with Lannister gold.”

Tywin remained silent, letting the pause settle between them before stepping forward.

“And what of your children?” he asked softly. “What of the girl? Will you have her remain unwed while the world speculates? Or will you—” he stopped short, letting the weight of his next words hang unspoken.

Aerys’s eyes narrowed. “Speak plainly.”

“You mean to wed them,” Tywin said. “Your son and daughter. That is why you refuse all other matches. You’ve planned this.”

The king’s silence was answer enough.

Tywin’s mouth tightened. “You would close the Targaryen circle again.”

“As it has always been,” Aerys said, chin lifting. “As it must be.”

“You will isolate your House,” Tywin warned, voice low. “Already the smallfolk whisper that your line is touched by madness. You think to silence them by marrying your children? You will only make it worse.”

Aerys smiled slowly. “Let them whisper. So long as they kneel.”

Tywin’s eyes hardened, but he said no more. The game had been revealed. The king had made his choice—years ago, it seemed—and now he merely waited for others to fall into place, like pieces on a board whose moves only he could see.

But Tywin Lannister had not come this far to play someone else’s game.

He bowed stiffly. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

And with that, he turned and left the solar, his steps echoing through the stone hall, the cold realization settling in his chest like a knife: he had brought his son here hoping for a crown.

And found a dragon’s den instead.

The sun had long since set below the hills, and the pale orange glow that had lingered in the sky gave way to the violet hush of evening. Summerhall, in twilight, seemed quieter still—its broken walls softened by the dark, its jagged lines blurred into silhouette. The stars stretched wide above the ruin, scattered like shards of glass across a velvet dome, and the moon had begun to rise, thin like the edge of a blade.

You lay beside Rhaegar in what remained of the old courtyard, your cloak spread beneath you to keep the cold of the earth at bay. The moss beneath your fingers was damp and fragrant, tinged with the scent of ash that never seemed to leave this place. Beside you, Rhaegar lay silent, one hand behind his head, the other resting lightly between you both. His silver hair spilled across the ground like a halo of light, his profile illuminated by moonlight that caught the delicate line of his jaw, the quiet slope of his brow.

You watched the stars in silence for some time. Here, without the press of court or the ever-watching eyes of nobles and lords, the world felt still. The only sounds were the rustling of the wind through crumbling stone and the occasional call of a nightbird far off in the trees. It reminded you of your childhood—of stolen moments in the city when your brother played his harp and you sat cross-legged at his side, dreaming of nothing but the sound of his music and the warmth of his voice.

Now his voice came again, softer than the breeze. “They’ve been speaking of Dorne again,” Rhaegar said.

You turned your head toward him. “The council?”

He nodded slowly. “I heard Lord Mooton speaking with Grand Maester Pycelle before we departed. They believe Elia Martell would be a suitable match. That Dorne’s alliance could stabilize the southern houses.”

Your chest tightened. For a moment, you said nothing, listening to the distant sigh of the wind moving through the hollow halls. Then you reached over, gently brushing your fingertips against his sleeve.

“They speak,” you said quietly, “but they do not decide. Father does.”

Rhaegar did not look at you. His eyes were fixed upward, toward the stars. “And what if they begin to turn Father against himself? You’ve seen it too. The way they whisper about his temper, about his judgments. They speak as though his mind is already slipping.” A pause. “They will try to take the choice from him.”

You sat up slightly, leaning your weight on your elbow as you looked at him fully. “Rhaegar. He will never allow them to dictate your match.” You touched his hand. “And he will never give me to another. He’s made that much clear.”

He turned to face you now, his indigo eyes shining faintly in the starlight. “Sometimes I fear that Father’s devotion to us is the very thing they resent most.”

You didn’t deny it. You knew well how the lords of the realm watched you both—how they saw your father’s favoritism not as love, but as danger. But you also knew that no one could pull the reins from Aerys Targaryen’s hands—not yet, not while fire still clung to his voice and his will remained unbroken.

“He may be many things,” you said, gently, “but no one tells him what to do. No lord in Westeros, no whispering maester, no cautious courtier. Not even Tywin Lannister.” You smiled faintly. “Especially not him.”

Rhaegar exhaled through his nose, something like amusement breaking the tension in his brow. “Tywin would flay himself before bending to Father’s whims. And yet he still came to court with two golden offerings.”

You laid back down, folding your hands over your stomach, your voice thoughtful. “He must be desperate, to think you’d marry Cersei.”

“She speaks with all the charm of her father,” Rhaegar muttered.

You laughed softly, your breath a cloud in the air above you. “And Jaime?”

He was quiet for a moment. “He watches you too closely.”

You said nothing, though your smile lingered. Then you reached for his hand, threading your fingers through his, the pressure light but warm.

“Let them speak,” you said. “Let them scheme and guess. At the end of it all, it is you and me. And it has always been.”

He turned to you again, his gaze softening. “And you’ll stay with me, even when the road darkens?”

You nodded without hesitation. “Always.”

A moment passed. Then Rhaegar sat up slowly, brushing dust from his sleeve. “We should return,” he said. “They’ll be wondering.”

You rose with him, adjusting your cloak against the chill. “Barristan will pretend not to be concerned. Arthur will say nothing at all. But Jaime…” You looked to him sidelong. “Jaime might have been counting every minute.”

Rhaegar offered no response, but his eyes narrowed faintly in the dark.

Together, you turned from the courtyard, walking side by side through the broken halls of Summerhall, leaving the ashes of dreams behind you.

Night had fully claimed Summerhall by the time you and Rhaegar returned to the camp. The ruins behind you seemed to sink deeper into shadow, their scorched stones swallowed by darkness, leaving behind only the cold scent of ash and old earth on the air. The clearing where the retinue had made their camp was quiet, lit by low-burning fires ringed with coals, their flickering light casting soft amber hues across the edges of the tents and the faint glint of polished armor.

You walked beside your brother in silence, your cloak drawn close around you, the night wind tugging softly at your pale hair. The firelight caught in his profile as you stepped into camp—the quiet set of his mouth, the unfocused distance in his eyes. Yet there was a stillness in him now, a quiet centering that had not been there when you arrived. Whatever had weighed upon him earlier in the day had eased, if only slightly.

The guards took notice of your return without fanfare. They moved as soldiers often did—observing everything, commenting on nothing. But as you approached the central fire where Ser Barristan stood speaking quietly with Ser Arthur Dayne, the old knight lifted his head, and the conversation stilled.

“My prince,” Barristan said with a slight bow of the head. “Shall we begin preparations to ride at first light?”

Rhaegar gave a small nod, pulling his gloves tighter. “Yes. We return to the capital tomorrow.”

“Very good,” Barristan replied, his gaze flickering toward you for the briefest moment, his eyes unreadable. “The men will be ready.”

You inclined your head to them both and turned to step toward your own tent, the warmth of the fire briefly brushing against your skin as you passed it. But you could feel it—a gaze lingering—not from Rhaegar or the knights, but from the edge of the firelight.

Jaime.

He was crouched beside his tent, working a leather strap between his gloved fingers, pretending to busy himself with tying down the flaps, though they had long since been secured. His brow was furrowed, a deep crease between his eyes that suggested concentration, but his posture betrayed him—too still, too tense, his head lifting slightly with every soft step you took.

You paused by the water basin outside your tent, letting your fingers brush the cool metal rim, and for a moment, neither of you moved. You didn’t look directly at him, but you felt the shift of his gaze—the flicker of green eyes that never strayed far from where you stood.

He had barely spoken since you and Rhaegar left, but the weight of his silence was louder than words.

Behind you, the camp settled further into quiet. The guards rotated shifts, and Ser Arthur began checking over the horses tethered nearby. You heard soft conversation in Dorne-accented Low Valyrian between two of Rhaegar’s retainers, muffled by distance and night.

You turned slightly toward your tent’s entrance, then paused and glanced back—Jaime was still watching.

Not openly. Not boldly. But in that careful, cautious way of a young man who wasn’t sure if what he felt was allowed to become anything at all.

And you—you were no stranger to being watched.

But something about the way he looked at you was different. Not hungry, not proud, not with the entitlement so many lords’ sons carried when they gazed upon a princess.

His gaze held wonder.

And perhaps, quietly, a question.

You turned your head and disappeared into the dark canvas folds of your tent, saying nothing.

But even then, behind your closed eyes and the rustle of your cloak as you unfastened it, you could still feel him watching.

The canvas walls of Jaime’s tent creaked softly in the night wind, the faint rustle of fabric barely louder than the rhythm of his breath. He lay flat on the modest cot, boots pulled off but the rest of his clothes still clinging to him, his cloak bundled beneath his head in place of a proper pillow. The air was cold against his skin, and despite the small brazier burning low in the corner, the warmth did little to reach him. He stared at the sloped ceiling, its folds of cloth illuminated faintly by the dying glow of the coals. Outside, the camp was quiet—sleep had claimed most of the men, the guards walked their rounds in silence, and the sounds of the forest beyond Summerhall’s broken stones whispered with night creatures.

But Jaime could not sleep.

Not for the cold. Not for the discomfort. But because of you.

Every time he shut his eyes, he saw you standing in the starlight—your hair pale and soft, trailing like light down your back as you passed beneath the old archway with Rhaegar. He saw the way you looked when you returned: calm, but distant, as if your mind had not yet followed you back from the place the two of you had gone. You hadn’t spoken a word to him. You hadn’t needed to. Your silence had done more than any conversation might have.

And yet he couldn’t shake the image of you standing near the water basin, pausing just long enough to let him see that you knew. That you had always known.

He shifted onto his side, drawing the cloak closer to his neck, staring at the shadowed flap of the tent’s entrance. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could bear keeping his thoughts caged. Rhaegar had claimed your time, your attention, your closeness, but Jaime couldn’t allow himself to be silent forever. He didn’t know if what he felt was foolish. He didn’t know if it was dangerous. All he knew was that it was real.

And that he wanted more.

Tomorrow, they would leave Summerhall. Return to King’s Landing, return to the games of court and whispered alliances, and you would vanish back into the castle’s halls, where you moved like a ghost no one dared reach for. If he didn’t speak now—if he didn’t try—then he would lose whatever slender chance he had to be near you.

He sat up slowly, running a hand through his hair. The fire in the brazier cracked softly, casting long shadows against the canvas walls. He breathed in, the scent of smoke and dust heavy in his lungs, and exhaled through his nose.

“I’ll speak with her,” he said aloud, his voice low and certain in the darkness. “Before we ride.”

Even if it led nowhere. Even if it only confirmed that her thoughts lay with Rhaegar, as he feared. He had to know. He had to offer more than stolen glances and half-smiles over firelight. You were not a dream he could afford to let drift further away.

The wind picked up outside, tugging gently at the corner of the tent. Jaime lay back once more, closing his eyes not in sleep, but in resolve.

Tomorrow. Before the sun rose high and they turned their horses north. He would find you.

And he would speak.

The first whispers of dawn spilled pale across the landscape, turning the edges of Summerhall's ruined stones from charcoal to ashen gray. Mist still clung low to the ground, curling between the hooves of restless horses and coiling around the boots of squires hurrying to break down camp. The metallic clatter of buckles, the flapping of canvas, and the murmured commands of men folding their tents into neat piles filled the air with the quiet energy of morning.

You stood near your tent, your cloak drawn close against the chill that came before the sun. The ruins behind you were dark and still, but the sky above had begun to shift—faint streaks of rose and amber blossoming at the horizon. The fire had gone out some time ago, leaving only a cold ring of stones and scattered embers, but you hadn’t moved far from it. There was something peaceful in these last quiet moments before the ride began. Something final, too, as if Summerhall, in its silence, was saying farewell.

And then you heard footsteps behind you—deliberate, hesitant.

You turned your head slightly, and there he was.

Jaime Lannister approached with his cloak thrown loosely over one shoulder, his golden hair slightly tousled, his sword strapped at his hip. He wasn’t in armor yet—just the traveling leathers, scuffed and dusted with the ash and soil of yesterday’s ride—but somehow he still looked the part of a lord's son, every inch the lion trying not to stalk too loudly.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice softer than usual. Hesitant, but not unsure. “Did you sleep well?”

You offered him a faint smile. “As well as one can in a ruined palace.”

That drew a small chuckle from him, and he took a slow step closer, as if gauging how close he was permitted to stand. He looked out toward the morning haze with you, his eyes catching the first hints of yellow that filtered over the hills.

“This place,” he said after a moment, “it reminds me of somewhere else. Somewhere I haven’t thought about in years.” He glanced at you. “When I was a boy, I used to sneak out of Casterly Rock with Cersei. There was an old watchtower at the edge of the cliffs. Crumbling and forgotten, like this. We’d pretend we were dragonlords there—two brave warriors building a kingdom out of sea stone and wind.”

You looked at him, surprised by the honesty in his voice. “Did you take turns being the dragon?”

He smiled, sheepish. “No. Cersei was always the dragon. I was whatever she told me to be.” He laughed to himself, then rubbed the back of his neck. “But it was quiet there. And for once, no one expected anything of us. No father, no maesters, no banners. Just salt and air and... her laughter.”

He seemed to catch himself then, the softness in his tone drawing back slightly. His gaze returned to you, and something shifted behind his eyes—a vulnerability poorly hidden behind his usual ease.

“I never thought I’d come to like a place like this again,” he admitted. “But I do.”

You tilted your head gently. “Because it reminds you of home?”

Jaime hesitated, then shook his head. “Because of you.”

You felt the breath in your lungs pause, just slightly.

He cleared his throat, not looking at you now. “Forgive me, I’m… not particularly good at this sort of thing. I’ve never had to… speak this way. Not to anyone.” He glanced at you again, briefly, and then away. “I never had to try.”

Your brow arched faintly, amusement glimmering behind your eyes. “That sounds like something someone says when they’re used to being adored.”

He smiled, a little crooked now. “That’s just it. I’ve been flattered before. Admired. Not… seen.” He gestured vaguely toward the ruins, toward the day beginning around you. “Not like this. Not like here.”

You studied him, the way he stood half in shadow, half in light, fighting the urge to retreat into something easier. Something more familiar. But his voice was honest. His words clumsy, yes—but sincere.

“You don’t need to charm me, Ser Jaime,” you said gently. “You only need to be yourself.”

He met your eyes then, and for the first time since you’d known him, there was no trace of performance.

“I’m trying,” he said.

You nodded, then turned your gaze back to the horizon. “Then try walking with me. The day waits for no one.”

Jaime stepped beside you, falling into stride as you moved toward the others, the low light stretching long across the earth ahead.

And for the first time, you let him walk beside you.

The soft crunch of grass and soil beneath your boots was the only sound between you and Jaime as you walked back toward the center of the camp. The sky had begun to blossom with the full colors of morning—rose, amber, the faintest tinge of lilac streaked across the eastern horizon. The chill of night still lingered in the air, but there was movement all around now. Squires moved briskly with saddles and gear, guards were tightening straps, checking bridles, and shifting into the formation that would carry the procession back to the Red Keep. Horses stamped the earth impatiently, their breath curling in the morning light, and the scent of fresh leather mixed with the familiar tang of steel.

Your mare, Moonveil, was already saddled and waiting, her dappled coat gleaming with dew. She nickered softly at your approach, ears flicking toward you, and you reached out instinctively, brushing your fingers along her neck. Jaime’s stallion was tethered nearby, his chestnut coat well-brushed and gleaming, already restless under the weight of his light armor.

Rhaegar stood just ahead with Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Barristan, his back partially turned as he spoke quietly with the two Kingsguard. His hair caught the rising light and glimmered like frost, his profile calm as ever—still, poised, as if he belonged not to the world around him but to some dream yet unfolding.

As you and Jaime approached, his voice paused mid-sentence, and his gaze lifted—not to you, but to the young lion walking a step behind you.

Rhaegar’s eyes settled on Jaime for only the briefest of moments.

Not a glare. Not a challenge. Just a look—cool, unreadable, assessing.

And then he looked away, disinterested.

If Jaime noticed the dismissal, he didn’t show it. He stepped ahead and moved to his horse, checking the girth himself even though the stablehands had already seen to it, clearly needing something for his hands to do. His jaw tightened for only a moment, just enough for you to notice, before he composed himself and turned to mount.

Rhaegar’s voice drifted toward you a moment later, soft but audible.

“We’ll take the south road through Bramblebend,” he said to Ser Arthur, mounting with effortless grace. “It’s quieter. And I would not have my sister ride through the capital’s filth upon our return.”

Barristan nodded. “It will add time, but not much.”

You moved to mount Moonveil, and as you swung into the saddle, you felt Jaime’s eyes on you again—brief, searching. He said nothing as he settled onto his stallion beside you, but the silence that hung between you now was different than it had been days ago. It was not the quiet of uncertainty, but of something beginning to take shape, fragile and unnamed.

Rhaegar rode at the front of the procession as always, Ser Arthur flanking him at one side, Ser Barristan falling into position near the rear. You remained near the center, Jaime keeping close, though now with a careful distance—never too near, never too far.

The ruins of Summerhall receded behind you, swallowed slowly by the trees and the mist.

None of you looked back.

But you felt the shift beneath your ribs—that this ride home would not be the same as the ride here.

And the lion at your side was no longer watching you as an outsider might.

He rode with the intent of a man who had made a decision.

And was waiting for you to see it.

---

fuuuuuuuuuuck

Dear Toxi,

At your suggestion, I used Resistbot to contact my congress people and representative and asked them to vote “no” on the SAVE act. If you can, I would love for you to write something about Raider Joel and Sweet Pea. They are my favorites. Thanks for all your great writing and your activism!

Thank you for your activism and ask. glad to provide raider. 🫡🖤 SAVE act | 5calls | resistbot | ask event: blorbos for democracy

Feast

raider!Joel x f!reader | 1.9k words

WARNINGS: 18+ PWP, 🐱 eating extravaganza, a little forceful, dubcon overstim, PIV, cockwarming, dark fluff, a bit of angst, light somno, Raider Joel needs a permanent hug. NOTES: Morning after Bodies / The Kiss but can read alone. Ty @iamasaddie for the gorgeous pic, ty @milla-frenchy for listening yrs before i write it sometimes, ty @dark-scape and everyone who supports me 🖤 🖤 Joel miller masterlist

You begin to wake up with Joel's hair tickling your breast as he works his way down your body, dragging his lips over your skin. After spreading your legs and resting them over his shoulders, he presses his open mouth to your hip, then inner thigh. 

His inner thigh kisses get closer and thirstier, sucking at your skin, capillaries bursting with pleasure as they rise to the surface to be seen by only him. Marked for no one but Joel. He noses your cunt and dips his tongue for a taste, then his tongue presses hard into your warmth. You moan quietly, feeling everything, but you're still so tired. It was a peaceful night, restful, but hard to shake the heavy slumber. 

You want to be in his arms, but his big hands holding your hips while he plunges face first into your cunt… It's so good, his arms can wait. The day can wait. The morning light filtering through the clouded window can wait as long as need be while Joel Miller takes his time. 

He laps at your pussy, then sucks at your clit. He flicks his tongue and feels you squirm. He reaches up and palms a breast as he eats your pussy like he hasn't had a meal in days and this might just sate him for the week. 

You throb, and pressure builds in your front, in your blood. His lips and tongue possess your pleasure center. His beard scratches your inner thighs, and you spread your legs further, beginning to squirm slightly under his touch. He looks up for a moment, but his eyes are behind a haze of pleasure, and yours are still closed. 

“Ugh,” you moan and your hips lift into his mouth. 

“Mm,” He grunts into your pussy and continues to play with your clit. He flicks his tongue, sucks hard, and listens to you unravel, closing his eyes, losing himself in the primality of consuming you for his pleasure and yours.

“J-joel,” you breathe, not loud enough for him to hear.  Need to feel his lips on yours again. His lips on… your other lips. The ones on your pretty face, the ones that whimper his name, this time asking, “Joel?” with no reply, only a crescendo of pressure swelling in your core. 

You drift back to the night before, the moment your mouths connected…. you float there with the swelling pressure as your buoy, until the riptide pulls you under, into the ghost of his mouth taking yours, and the pleasure breaks in a crashing wave. Tumbling over your senses, it rolls you onto the shore of his bed, soaked and trembling, gasping for breath with his head between your legs as he swallows your peak. 

The taste of your pleasure, your climax only makes him more voracious. While you're bathing in the high, he licks at your entrance, sucks and swallows. Plunges his tongue into you, searches for more. He tilts his head, fucking you with his tongue from different angles.  He’s a starving canine licking marrow out of bone. 

He brings his thumb to your cunt and holds it there on the spot that makes you whimper with the slightest pressure.  He fucks you with his tongue, then flattens his fingers and rubs at your clit, rolling it it in short quick strokes, building another fire in your belly with his tongue in your core. His thick fingers work you like a tap, drawing more of your arousal to coat his tongue. 

“C'mere,” you whimper, and he doesn't let up. His tongue thrusts into you. He laps over your entrance, up your slippery seam, before plunging his tongue in again, with his hand still aflutter. You squirm and he sucks, and then you're coming against his face, and he moans against your throbbing clit, then nudges it with the strength of his tongue and seals it with an open kiss.  His mouth breaks away to gush, “good girl.” 

Your legs tremble over his shoulders like a gelatin dish carried by heavy steps to the kitchen table where a hungry mouth waits. He holds one thigh, thumb and fingers pressing into the soft flesh over your muscle, and gives it an aggressive kiss, lips smacking as he pulls away and sets his eyes on the feast between your legs again. 

“Can you come here?” You ask, and he glances up at you with his mouth planted between your legs again. 

“It's, it’s too much. I can't,” You whimper. It feels like you could pee, like you could lose complete control. Does he hear you?  

“Joel, Joel,” you repeated. 

He sucks below your clit, flicks his tongue up against it before sucking again. He closes his eyes hard, and his hand comes to your breast.

“come here,” you echo and it comes out strained, stretched by pleasure, pulled apart by him.  You try to sit up, try to use your lower body to nudge him toward you, toward the pillow, but he forces you down, holds you firmly in place. You begin to lift his hand off your breast to break the spell, to get his attention, and his hand seizes your wrist.

Your resistance only makes his mouth more aggressive in its quest to swallow you again. 

You give in.  

He feels you relax, glances up, then interlaces his fingers with yours and it feels all better. The tension leaves your back and legs, your neck relaxes, your head sinks into the pillow. All the tension melts, flowing down to your center where it builds in your depths for a third time. 

His lips break away with a rumbling breath. 

“One more, baby,” he pants, “one more.” 

His tongue runs through your folds, up one side and down the other, circling your juicy hole, then giving it a suck before returning to your clit. 

His hand tightens its grip on yours, so large and commanding. Tight and firm, his palm flexes, his fingers press into the slopes between your knuckles.

His hips rut against the bed as he fucks you with his face. The movement of his ass, the telltale. rhythm of his hips and his tongue together, it tickles something in your solar plexus, opening you with a desperate need to be filled.

His head between your legs dips and pushes his mouth harder in rhythm with his hips against the bed. Tongue, hips, tongue, hips, suck, hips, suck, harder. With a pit opening in your center, you beg, “I need you inside.”  

You find yourself jealous of the mattress, wishing you were the fitted sheet that he was rutting against. Nevermind how many hours you were treated to the same push of his hips. How many nights. Nevermind that his face is buried in your cunt. You want him inside you. 

 A tear rolls down your temple.

You whimper his name, and he takes a breath to promise, “One more and you can rest, baby.  One more.” 

You can do it. You can do it for him. With tension coiling in your depths, with one hand in his, and the other in his hair, you watch his eyelids hover half open, then close with the soft rake of your nails across his scalp. 

Your hips lift with his hungry touch and he moans into your cunt. 

A growl escapes his chest; warm, damp air against your lower mound. The coil winds so tight you fear the snap as you begin to crest. But when the tension breaks and springs you open, the rush of release makes you glad he hadn't stopped. It floods every inch of you with a sizzling buzz.

It makes your body dizzy, and it makes you sleepy. He laps up all your arousal, all your release, everything he can, his hips still moving in rhythm. He slowly fucks the goddamn mattress with you quivering against his tongue. 

And then, finally, he’s done. He licks his swollen lips swallowing more of your taste. His neck and face are pink, the lower half is shiny. His breath is heavy, and so is yours as you recover. 

“I'm comin’, sweet pea,” he assures you. He lets go of your hand to prowl up your body.

He hovers you, and you glance down at his stiff, leaking cock, angry with so much blood and need it can hardly contain. It bounces heavily against your belly, right where you want it inside. 

He reaches down, aligns your bodies, and your breath hitches as he slides into you with a powerful thrust, plunging nearly all his length through your soft walls. He packs you full, just like you wanted. You're tired, so tired, and your face becomes peaceful as you're made whole. 

“You can rest now, baby,” he pants. With his length sheathed in your soft warmth, he slides a hand under your shoulder, pulls you against him, and eases you back into how you were sleeping - on your sides, facing each other. With a grunt, he hikes your leg up so he can bottom out fully with a sigh. 

An aftershock squeezes his shaft, making him shudder. He strokes your face, possessively cups the back of your head, with his thumb on your temple, then he brings his face to yours and kisses you once again.  With your mouths joined, he breathes through his nose, kissing you deep, letting his tongue slide into your warm, soft mouth, feeding you your own taste, collecting more of you for himself. Another spasm echoes from your walls, and his hips jerk. His lips break from yours with a groan, and his cock throbs, erupting warm and heavy.

Deep, so deep.

His pelvis tilts trying to inch ever further into you like he could fill your whole body up if he tried, and maybe he could. But he remains almost completely still as his balls empty into you through the twitch of his cock. 

He interrupts his shaky breaths to kiss you for a few seconds, lips clinging to yours. Then he pulls back to look you in the eyes and asks, “You okay sweet pea?”  

“Yeah,” you whisper with a nod. He holds you, and the rhythm of his breathing feels like a lullaby. 

“Let's stay in bed,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” you whisper in agreement. 

You're wrapped in his arms, full of his cock, almost back asleep when his arms twitch and tighten around you.

“Are you okay?” You ask. 

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. ‘Course I am, sweet pea.” He kisses your forehead.  But unease grows beneath the peace he feels, slow as cordyceps and just as real.

The truth is, each time your bodies are joined, he’s less sure how to separate them. He's not sure how to get out of that bed without you physically attached to him. Like a limb or a second skin, the thought of shedding you, even for a moment, makes his oxygen drop, unsettles his gut, has his pulse thrumming in his neck. 

“Just... always need more of ya, baby,” he mutters with a shift of his hips, then another deep breath. 

“You have all of me,” you whisper. 

"Yeah," he whispers and nestles your head under his chin where you can feel his thick swallow. 

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Thank you for reading 🖤 I have terrible anxiety with this series sometimes, there's so much I've scribbled and not shared. Your comments help a lot.

Please also consider sharing this fic - it's a great way to help resistance efforts by spreading the ask and links and enticing people who might otherwise scroll past this kind of information.

strangers | part 4

summary: you never would've snuck out of bed last night if you had known it would lead to this—becoming a pawn in joel's sick, depraved game, playing the role of both victim and accomplice. how can the sparing of your life feel so much like a death sentence? how can you ever forgive yourself when your hands are as soaked in innocent blood as his are? how can the kind, gentle man you thought you loved, turn out to be such a monster?

!!PLEASE READ WARNINGS, THIS IS A VERY DARK FIC!!

I've tried to label this fic as detailed and as boldly as possible. I will not be held responsible or bullied off the internet if you choose to read this potentially upsetting/triggering work of fiction anyway.

warnings: joel miller x f!reader, 18+, smut, age gap (reader is college-aged, joel is mid-50s), no outbreak au, serial killer!joel, dark!joel, !!GRAPHIC!! DESCRIPTION OF MURDER AND BLOOD, NON-CON PIV (gonna say rape just in case, reader does not verbally consent), JOEL IS A SICK FREAK WHO GETS OFF ON KILLING, lying/gaslighting, manipulation, stalking, heavy dose of Joel POV, fingering, pussy slapping, edging, breathplay, degrading language used in an unsexy way, consumption of blood, Joel comes on your face, brief mention of somnophilia, reader has hair long enough to grab, reader can be carried by joel, development of stockholm syndrome, pet names (baby, darlin', babydoll, sweetheart), story inspired by "preacher's daughter" by ethel cain, vaguely set in the 70s, please respectfully let me know if i missed anything and i will rectify the tags

word count: 11.5k

a/n: this is a dark one, folks. if i haven't lost you already, i might lose you after this one. if this is the stop you get off on, i'm okay with that :) thanks for coming along for the ride. we've still got places to go from here, i'll be glad if you do decide to stick around. i feel very fortunate that the conversation around this story has been positive and respectful and i look forward to keeping it that way <3

divider by @saradika

series masterlist/moodboard

read this chapter on ao3

The office looks so different in the daylight.

The key to the room you’ve been staying in is still the only one missing from the corkboard, but the previously empty coffee pot is now half-full of this morning’s brew, and the ominous ticking of the clock is now mostly drowned out by the sounds of an afternoon football game, playing loudly on the television in the little lounge. 

Joel has only let go of your hand twice since you left town—once to help you up into the truck, and once to help you climb back down. Your fingers have remained interlocked otherwise, even while he was driving, even right now, as you stand in front of the desk and wait for somebody to respond to the sharp sound of the little golden bell reverberating throughout the room. Joel hits his fingers against the top of it again, with a little more agitated force this time, but still, no answer.

“I know this ain’t a five star joint or nothin’, but goddamn…” Joel grumbles, leaning around to peer into the room where, by the sounds of it, a touchdown has just been made. “Hey, buddy! Lil’ help in here?” He shouts, and the sudden intensity of his voice makes you jump. The volume of the game diminishes almost immediately, and a scrawny-looking teenage boy emerges from the lounge, wiping Cheeto dust onto his jeans.

“Sorry about that, sir. Eagles game, you know?” the boy tries to jest, but Joel only hums in response. “Anyway, what can I help you guys with?”

“Was wonderin’ if you might know anythin’ about a girl named Chrissy who was workin’ the night shift in here last night?”

“Chrissy? Sure, she’s pretty new around here, but I’ve worked the mornings after her a few times… Why do you ask? Is she in some kinda trouble?”

Not yet, she isn’t. 

“Nah, nah, nothin’ like that,” Joel reassures, then maneuvers you to stand in front of him. “Quite the opposite, actually. She helped my lil’ girl out last night when she wasn’t feelin’ too well. We’re awfully grateful to her, ain’t we, sweetheart?” He prompts, nudging you in the back. 

You nod, but keep your head down, fiddling with the hem of your dress. 

“Oh! That’s right. She, uh, left a note on the coffee table in there, saying something about keeping an eye on the girl staying here, and the, um…” You flick your eyes upwards as the boy’s sentence trails off, and watch him look Joel up and down once, swallowing hard. “Yeah, just the girl. Guess that was you, huh?” You avert your gaze again quickly when he addresses you, feeling your pulse quicken in panic.

“Mhm, sure was,” Joel answers for you. “That was awfully… kind of her, bein’ so concerned like that. Anyway, we just thought we’d stop by, see if she was around so we could give her a proper ‘thank you’, but I take it she ain’t here anymore? Any idea where she might be this time o’ day?”

The boy expels a sigh, tapping his fingers on top of the counter while he thinks. “I mean, I don’t know her too well… But I know she’s got another job at this bar down the road, The Rattler Room. I think she trades her nights between that place and here, wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a shift there later tonight.”

“Well, how ‘bout that,” Joel says, clapping his hands on either one of your upper arms. “Guess we know what we’re doin’ about dinner tonight, don’t we, sweetheart?” Goosebumps raise on your skin even in the warmth of the office, and a nauseous feeling swirls in the pit of your belly. You feel somewhat fortunate that Joel wasn’t actually looking for a response from you, because if you were to open your mouth right now, you can’t guarantee that the minimal contents of your stomach wouldn’t come spilling out all over the muddy-colored carpeting. You would’ve never gotten out of bed last night, never tiptoed into this suffocating little room and asked the friendly-looking freckle-faced girl for help with your stupid idea—or hers, as Joel seems to think—if you had known that you would be putting more than just your own life at risk. You know what’s coming next, why Joel wants to hunt her down and stalk her like the predator that he is, and it’s all your fault.

“Let’s get goin’ now, baby. Thanks for your help, son, ‘s much appreciated.” Joel grabs hold of your hand again as he leads you out the door, and you nearly trip over the threshold as he tugs you across it.

He has a sick kind of spring in his step as he drags you back to the room, licking his chops and wearing an amused expression as he shucks off his boots and collapses onto the bed with a groan. You stand at the foot of the bed, frozen, as he grabs the remote off the bedside table and flicks the little square television to life. 

“Whaddyou wanna watch, babydoll, huh? Signal’s kinda spotty out here, but one’a these channels has gotta be playin’ an old Western or somethin’...” You just blink at him, dumbfounded, watching him surf through the staticky channels as if the previous five minutes had never happened. Joel had just started the countdown on the remainder of Chrissy’s life right before your eyes, and all he wants to do now is… kick his feet up and watch some fucking TV? 

“What do you mean, ‘what do I wanna watch’?” You ask, unable to hide the disconcerted edge in your voice.

“Baby, it ain’t a difficult question. Gotta kill time somehow, don’t we?” Joel turns his head in your direction as he addresses you, but otherwise keeps his eyes glued to the television screen, which now seems to be stuck on a snowy channel filling the room with loud, unsettling white noise. “God—dammit,” he curses, smacking the remote against the palm of his hand a few times. Your stomach churns both at the way he beats the inanimate object for its disobedience, and at his ironic choice of idiom.

“Kill time until… what?” 

Joel looks up at you from under his lashes, halfway rolling his eyes at you before giving up on his endeavor altogether and clicking the TV screen into darkness again. “Did you think I was just makin’ shit up last night? You’re gonna bring her to me. Not right now, ‘course. Later, when the sun goes down, we’ll head on over to that bar. I’ll buy you some dinner or whatever kinda shitty food they have, but dessert’s on you, you get me?”

Your vision starts to go a little dark around the edges, and you feel unsteady on your feet as the grim reality sets in that he wasn’t just prattling off some depraved fantasy to you last night, he wants to make it real. He wants to spear a hook through your abdomen and cast you out to sea, dangle you in front of something empathetic and pretty and fragile and lure her straight into his gaping jaw. You can hardly live with yourself as it is, the way you’ve already been so consumed with survivor’s guilt for the past twenty four hours that you can feel the physical weight of it on your soul. But actually being responsible for adding another girl to his collection, your hands just as soaked in her blood as his would be? It will fucking break you. It won’t just be the images of the polaroids that will haunt you, it’ll be the shattering sounds of their screams, the metallic scent of their blood, the nauseating visions of their contorted bodies that will be your own tangible memories now, seared onto the backs of your eyelids because you were there. You’ll never get a decent night’s sleep for the rest of your life, and you won’t deserve one.

“But… you—we can’t take her. It can’t be her.”

Joel sits back against the headboard, crossing his arms, like he wants to see where you’re going with this. “No? Why not, babydoll?”

You cross your arms back at him, widening your stance in order to look more sure of yourself. “Well… That kid. He saw our faces, right? When Chrissy doesn’t show up here again tomorrow night, the police will question him, and he’ll tell them that we were asking about her. They’ll know we had something to do with it.” 

Joel scoffs. “Yeah? Well, maybe they will. Then what’re they gonna do about it, hm? Two of us’ll be long gone by the time tomorrow night rolls around.” He knocks down your logic as easily as he would a house of cards, and you can’t think of anything else to say that might be able to convince him not to do this. The thought of it alone is like a drop of blood in the water, and once he’s gotten a whiff of it, there’s nothing you can do to stop the frenzy. 

“B-but—”

“But what, sweetheart? How long d’you think I’ve been doin’ this, hm? Think I don’t know the rules of the game by now?”

He has a point. Joel has managed to evade capture for this long, surely he isn’t going to start slipping up now. He probably has his ritual down to a science, knowing exactly which type of girl to take, the right place to get the job done, and how long he can stick around for afterwards before his face shows up as a crude drawing on the evening news. The only thing on his mind now is the exciting prospect of being able to get his rocks off in just a few hours, while yours is running a mile a minute thinking about the lifetime of trauma and guilt you’ll be setting yourself up for if you do this, how many different ways it can go wrong, and what could happen to you if it does. 

“Here, c’mere, baby,” Joel beckons, spreading his legs and patting his hand on the mattress between them. “You’re thinkin’ too much about this. Lemme show you how easy it’s gonna be, hm?”

He raises his brows at you when you don’t obey immediately, and you reluctantly crawl onto the creaky bed toward where Joel’s toned arms are reaching out to you. He grabs onto your waist when you get close enough and pulls you against him, situating you so that your back is pressed against his front. He wraps his arms around your middle, and rests his scruffy chin on your shoulder.

“You remember passin’ that bar on our way into town today, don’t you, babydoll? Had a big ol’ neon sign out front, a bright green rattlesnake waggin’ its tail back ‘n forth?”

“Um…” You close your eyes, trying your best to sift through the memories of everything you had seen during the drive. But it’s proving difficult, especially with the way one of Joel’s rough hands is sliding down your belly, finding its way underneath your dress and settling overtop of your panties. He begins to circle his middle finger around your clothed bud, and you hate the way it makes your breath hitch.

“C’mon, think for me, sweetheart. You remember, don’t you?” Joel prompts, a condescendingly teasing lilt in his voice.

A blur of neon green streaks across the backs of your eyelids, and you do remember, kind of. A divey looking place with a few motorcycles and pickup trucks parked out front, relatively isolated and unassuming aside from its kitschy signage.

“Mhm,” you hum, and it comes out more like a whimper. “I… I remember.”

Joel’s swirling finger picks up its pace, increasing the pressure against your clit as he continues to quiz you. “Yeah… And a few miles down past it, there was that abandoned lookin’ lil’ neighborhood, right? Houses were ‘bout fallin’ apart, all the yards were real overgrown… You remember?”

This, you can picture more clearly. It had reminded you of your own starved out hometown, every street lined with boxy two-story houses covered in peeling paint and climbing vines. Some of the homes so decrepit-looking, with their crumbling foundations and boarded up windows, and yet still with an assortment of sun-bleached children’s toys littering the front porch, a wind-chime still singing even if nobody was around to hear it anymore.

All you can do is nod in conformation, too afraid to make any more noises that might sound like you’re actually enjoying this, like it feels good, like you want him to keep going. Fuck.

“That’s where we’re gonna do it, baby. So you gotta listen real carefully, okay? Gonna tell you the plan, ‘n I want you to repeat it back to me, alright? Can you do that, babydoll?” Joel tugs your panties to the side as he questions you, exposing your damp core to the air conditioned room. “Fuck, look at that…” He muses, now using two of his fingers to spread your puffy lips apart and admire the way they glisten.

“Uh huh, I… I can,” you confirm breathily. 

Joe’s fingers travel downwards, focusing their ministrations around the rim of your leaky hole instead. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, sweetheart… Gonna head down there, park the truck ‘round the side. I’ll give ya some cash to go sit up at the bar, ‘n I’ll hang around in the back, keep an eye on you… You’re gonna chat up lil’ miss Chrissy, tell her all about how I snatched you up, made you mine, won’t let you leave my side… You’re gonna use your manners all pretty ‘n nice, and ask her to please, please take you back home, help you get away from that big, scary, mean old man who hurts you so bad—“ He presses a thick finger inside your opening, and you can’t help but moan at the burning intrusion. “Just don’t tell her how much you like it, huh, babydoll?” 

“Y-you… You want me to tell h-her… All of that?” You ask, confused that Joel would instruct you to tell her the truth, when so far, he’s been hellbent on hiding from the world who he truly is, only bearing his teeth when provoked, like a caged animal.

“Mhm, want you to tell her the truth, sweetheart, everything. Not like she’ll be able to do anythin’ about it later, hm?” Joel grabs onto your chin with his unoccupied hand, and shakes your head for you. “No, she won’t. Tha’s right, baby…” He laughs darkly, and you understand his intent now—to taunt you with an opportunity to finally be able to ask for help, to force you to pantomime what could be a real chance at escape, knowing that nothing will come of it. Joel begins to piston his finger in and out of you, and he holds you tightly against him as you squirm and sob.

“You’re gonna work your magic on her, and she’ll take such pity on you, sweet lil’ lamb that you are, of course she’ll take you back home… You’re gonna give her directions to that row of houses, have her take you all the way down to the one at the very end of the street, ‘n I’ll be followin’ close behind in the truck the whole time. Two of you’ll get outta the car, and then—” He sinks a second finger into your warmth alongside the other one, and you make a pained little noise at the stretch, arching your back against him. “Then I get to have my fun,” he snarls into your ear.

You didn’t realize how much tension you’d been holding in your body until now, until Joel had begun using his skillful fingers to render it all down, along with any rational thought you’d had left. You want to fight, want to spit and bite and scratch and push yourself away from him and never let him touch you there again, but you can’t. Your limbs feel weaker and weaker as the muscles in your abdomen draw tighter and tighter, and all you can do is melt against him, let him siphon out all that worry and pain and trauma and replace it with pleasure, at least just for a little while. You’ll grapple with yourself about it later.

You can feel the rumble of Joel’s voice against the skin of your neck, but you don’t register what he says, too consumed by your own pleasure to hear him. You just continue to mindlessly buck into the movements of his fingers, until he yanks them free from your walls and issues a sharp slap to your aching cunt.

“I said, repeat it,” Joel hisses, and you yelp at the sting, your hips stuttering as they continue to chase after nothing.

“S-sorry, ‘m sorry, Joel, please—” You pant.

“You want me to keep goin’? You wanna come? Then repeat it back to me, babydoll, all of it, or I ain’t givin’ you shit. Need to know that you understand, that I can send you out there to bring me some fresh meat and you ain’t gonna fuck it up.”

“Okay, okay, okay, um… Fuck—” you curse as Joel slowly reinserts his fingers, resuming their beckoning motion against that spongey spot deep inside that makes you dizzy. “I-I’m gonna… Tell her… About you…”

“Uh huh, tha’s right… What about me, baby?” He encourages, his fingers working their way back up to the pace they had been moving at before he had deprived you of them.

You try to wade through the dense cloud of fog in your mind, your ability to think slowing down as the heel of his palm stimulates your clit with each rhythmic thrust. “T-that you, um… That you took me, you h-hurt me. And I’m gonna ask her to… To take me home—” “Good, good girl…” Joel praises. “Doin’ such a good job, almost there, babydoll. What comes next, hm?”

You take in a shuddering breath, closing your eyes tightly as you force your brain to recall the steps he had just walked you through. “I make her d-drive me to, um… To that house—”

“Which one, baby? Lots’a houses on that street, which one did I say?” Joel stills his movements, holding your pleasure hostage while he waits for your answer. You try desperately to twist around in his hold and continue to chase after your high, but his grip around your jaw remains ironclad. 

“The one on the… The corner?”

Slap.

“Ain’t what I fuckin’ said. You think I want everybody drivin’ by to be able to hear her fuckin’ screams? Try again.”

You cry out, your abused little hole constricting around nothing. You dredge the depths of your short term memory, desperate to come up with the right answer.

“At the end! T-the one at the end,” you shout, and you’re rewarded with the replacement of his fingers, petting against your walls with just the right amount of speed and force that he knows will have you seeing stars with just a few more strokes.

“There we go… And what’s the last thing I said, sweetheart, hm? Last thing I need you to do…”

You draw a blank, your head filled with nothing other than almost there, keep going, please, please, please. You whine, bracing yourself for another swat to your sensitive cunt as you force yourself to admit, “I-I don’t… Don’t remember.”

Slap.

A debauched, animalistic cry leaves your lips, one that you can’t bring yourself to feel embarrassed of at the moment. “Yes you do, baby. Not gonna let you gush all over my fuckin’ fingers ‘less you tell me. Think. Can’t do shit if the two’a you get to the house and just twiddle your thumbs in the car, can I?”

“N-no, I gotta… Get her out of the car… Right? Is that it?” You’re heaving, completely breathless and covered in the dampness of your own sweat and arousal. At this point, you think you’ll say whatever the fuck he wants to hear if it means he’ll reinsert his fingers and finally let you fall over the edge.

“That’s right, sweetheart…” The hand that was gripped onto your jaw migrates downwards, wrapping itself around your neck. He presses his thumb and forefinger into either one of your pulse points, and you feel like you’re floating as he resumes the movements of his soaked fingers, drawing your orgasm closer and closer to the surface again. “One last thing… Tell me what I’m gonna do to her, hm? Then you can come, baby,” Joel growls, and you can feel him pressing his hard length into your back as he does. 

His voice sounds muffled, like it’s coming from underwater, but it resonates clearly enough for you to understand what he’s commanding of you. A whine forces its way through your constricted throat as you plead, “D-don’t make me, please just—” “Say it, or you’re gonna be watchin’ me do it with an achy, unsatisfied cunt leakin’ all over the fuckin’ floor. ‘S that what you want?”

You don’t want to watch him do it at all. A more sensible part of your brain knows that this is all so wrong, that it’s sick and horrifying and completely deplorable, but the pleasure-seeking part of it doesn’t really care right now. Joel is playing with you like a doll, pulling your strings and posing your limbs as he molds you into his perfect victim. He’s breaking you down, slowly but surely, and although you can feel it happening in real time, he’s proven to you time and time again how defenseless you are to his manipulation, how just a few gentle words and swirls of his fingertips can have you falling apart against him, so that he can put you back together just a little bit differently than you were before. 

“N-no,” you whimper ashamedly.

“Then say it.”

You swallow, and you can feel the cartilage at the front of your throat moving against his hand as you do. “You’re gonna… Kill her,” you rasp through half-full lungs, the words hardly meaning anything to you at all with how close your release is, being dangled in front of you just barely out of reach.

“Sure fuckin’ am,” Joel growls through gritted teeth. “Gonna enjoy every second of it, too, ‘s been so goddamn long. ‘M fuckin’ starvin’ for it, babydoll, you got no idea… Can’t wait to watch that lil’ bitch bleed.”

You ignore his perverted rambling to the best of your ability, the rocking of your hips becoming more spastic as the movements of Joel’s fingers increase in intensity, alongside his own excitement.

“C-can I… Please, Joel—” you beg hoarsely, your own voice sounding distorted and far away as you fuck yourself on his hand. 

“Yeah, babydoll, come for me, such a perfect fuckin’ girl…”

Both of Joel’s hands maintain their pressure as the knot in your belly tightens, then unravels all at once. You come undone on his fingers, the motel room filling with the obscene sounds of your wetness and your pathetic mewling as you drench Joel’s hand. He shushes and praises you through your climax, his fingers only ceasing their onslaught once your twitching body finally relaxes and slumps against his broad form. 

Your skin feels cool, tingly all over as the blood rushes back into your head. Joel pulls you into his lap, bending your knees close to your body so that he can cradle you like a child. You must be crying again, because he’s using his knuckle to wipe moisture from underneath your eyes as you shudder against him, reality coming crashing down around you again all at once.

“You’re so good for me, baby, such a good girl… It’s gonna be just fine, you’ll see. It’ll get easier every time we do this, won’t seem so scary anymore…” Joel rubs your back and kisses the top of your head, and you let him believe that you are crying for fear of the brutality you’ll have to bear witness to tonight, and not because you’ve dared to feel pleasure at the hands of the person who will be doing the brutalizing. You feel so fucking ashamed in your post-orgasmic state, but you’re so dehydrated and exhausted that you don’t really have enough energy to scold yourself right now. 

Joel holds you close as he rocks your curled-up form, and you feel too weak to resist the way your eyes begin to flutter closed, the release of tension making way for your poor night’s sleep to finally catch up with you. 

“Get some rest, babydoll, gonna need it. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go,” is the last thing you hear before you allow yourself to succumb to the temptation of sleep. 

—

You were never supposed to find those polaroids. 

Could Joel have taken the precaution of dumping his box of jerkoff material into a ditch somewhere before you could ever get the chance to find it on your own? Of course. But he didn’t know if he might need it again, if he might someday find himself with another itch that only his little collection of keepsakes could scratch. He had kept them hidden from you for a reason, tried to toss them in the trash and convince you that they weren’t worth getting curious about for a reason—because things were going perfectly well, better than it had gone with any of them. Joel had never planned on adding your photo to the pile.

He had known you were different, that you were the one, from that very first night you’d spent together. You’d been nothing but polite, grateful, and appreciative, even when he’d slid beside you in bed and stolen a taste of all that sweetness you were made of. 

His whole life, Joel has searched for someone like you—someone to submit to him, to rely on him, to need him. That latter trait is the most important one, and the one that all the others seemed to be lacking. They liked feeling cared for and protected, liked bleeding his wallet dry while they spent a few weeks using him as some kind of rebellious experiment to piss off their parents one last time before they moved out of the house. But none of them ever made it very long before they decided that they didn’t really need him after all, that the fling was over, that the spark was gone, that they missed the shitty town he had picked them up from and wanted to be taken back. Ungrateful brats, they all fucking deserved it. And now they never get to go home, they get to rot in the fucking ground where their families will never find them, and he gets to keep their pretty pictures all to himself, asserting his control over them even in death. See how much they fucking need him now, when he is the one thing standing in between a cold case and a funeral.

Joel had known you wouldn’t end up like them, because you do need him. You have nobody, whether you’ll ever be able to admit it to yourself or not. You have no friends, no future, and no family, or at least not any left alive that actually care about you. You have no choice but to rely on him. Who knows what would’ve happened to you if he hadn’t stumbled upon you that night, looking so weak and lost and vulnerable and alone? There are much worse men than Joel out there, men who rape and kill just for the sick pleasure of it alone. At least Joel has some method behind his madness. It’s not like he’d invite a girl into his truck and immediately begin to fantasize about what her windpipe might feel like collapsing underneath his fingers.

Or, he didn’t used to. Not when he first started taking them. 

He’d thought the desire had just disappeared on its own, once he’d found you, his perfect little doll. Joel had meant what he said when he told you that he was going to be done after the last one. But then… Then he’d had you pinned underneath him last night, starving your lungs of air, your eyes red and watery as you’d begged for your life, and he’d realized that he missed it. He craved it. Needed it. The itch was still there after all, demanding to be scratched. But no matter how aggravating and persistent it may get, Joel had decided a long time ago that he’ll never use you to make it go away. It’ll never be you. Even when he’d had his hands wrapped around your throat, he’d never planned on finishing the job. After all, how could he ever live without you when he’d spent so long trying to find you?

And this is the one thing he needs you to understand—that he’s never letting you go. Joel had thought he’d gotten it through to you well enough last night, when he’d given you a taste of the consequences the others had suffered when they’d tried escaping. But you must be stronger than he’s been giving your credit for, judging by the way you still decided to fucking act up today with that dumbass little letter of yours. That’s okay, though. He can handle it. It just means you’ll take a little more effort to break down than he’d previously thought. If he can’t convince you that the only version of your life you were ever destined to live is the one with him in it, then he’ll just have to make you think that it’s your own idea to stay, to submit. He seems to have made some pretty good progress chipping away at your resolve today already. At this rate, he’ll have it whittled down to nothing in no time at all, and you’ll be right back to the pliant little babydoll he fell in love with all that time ago. The one who needs him.

You’ll come back around soon enough, when you finally realize that you don’t have any other choice.

So, maybe Joel is a little glad you found the polaroids. He wouldn’t have ended up here if you hadn’t, skulking around the pool table in the back of the Rattler Room, practically vibrating with anticipation and foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. He flicks his gaze between the end of his pool cue and where you’re perched at the bar on a cracked leather stool, occasionally catching your eyes when you look back at him nervously. Joel just gives you a nod and a wink every time, and it’s enough to make you turn back around and take another sip of your drink to quell your anxiety. 

You’re probably getting antsy because the two of you have been hanging around here for the better part of an hour, and Chrissy still hasn’t shown yet. But this is just one rule of the game—waiting. Patience. A predator doesn’t go in for the kill the second they lay eyes on their prey, do they? They have to study their movements, make sure they’ve got the little creature right where they want them, with their belly up or their neck exposed or their back turned, and then they pounce. You’ll learn the rules soon enough. With each of these little hunts that you accompany him on, you’ll learn. There may even come a time when you pick out the girls yourself, because you see it as an act of service, of love, satiating his hunger like this. 

The next time you look back at Joel, you move like you’re about to get up from your seat and walk over to him, but he gives you a stern look that says “Stay put.” He jerks his chin upwards, toward where his pretty piece of meat is now emerging from behind the bar. Joel wonders if you believe the web of lies he’d spun about her today, if they were enough to convince you that Chrissy had taken advantage of you, that she’d manipulated you, that she deserves this. He hopes that you do, so that her death might weigh a little less on your conscience, so that you’ll put up a little less fight the next time his itch needs scratching. 

God, that slender neck of hers is just begging for Joel’s blade. His upper lip twitches as he imagines the sight of her deep crimson blood dripping down her ivory-colored skin, her face becoming impossibly paler as her heart flutters out its last few beats before stopping altogether. Joel usually saves his knife for special occasions, when he needs the execution done quick and dirty before her screams wake up the entire fucking neighborhood, or in instances like his last girl, when she just needed to be put out of her fucking misery. But he might use it tonight, just because. Because he’s hungry. Because he’s so fucking hard he doesn’t think he can make himself suffer through the amount of time it takes to strangle a girl. 

Joel watches from the shadows as Chrissy seems to recognize you right away, reaching for your hands across the bar as she says something to you that he can’t make out. Judging by the pitied expression she wears, the way she leans into you, he guesses it’s something like, “I’m so glad to see you. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need help? Do you need me to save you from that big horrible monster who’s making your life so miserable?” Joel rolls his eyes at the imagined conversation. He sets his pool cue back on the rack and takes a seat at a small corner table, keeping his head low as he sips his beer, adjusting himself while he watches the way the tendons in Chrissy’s neck tighten and flex as she speaks. He can practically see her carotid artery pulsing underneath her skin, can already taste the iron on his tongue from the flecks of blood that will inevitably splatter onto his lips when he slices it open.

Calm the fuck down, Miller. It’ll be playtime soon enough.

The two of you talk for another minute or so, and Joel gathers that you must be reciting the lines he’d taken such care to teach you today. Chrissy’s brows furrow, her lips part, and she places one of her small hands over her chest as she listens, as if your rehearsed little sob story is just too much to bear, so tragic and devastating that it’s actually causing her physical pain to hear. She retrieves a paper napkin from underneath the bar, and hands it to you so that you can use it to dab underneath your eyes. Jesus, are you crying? You’re even better at this than he thought you’d be. 

Your shoulders shudder as you finish drying your tears, and Chrissy glances behind her at the clock on the wall, pausing to think for a moment before she turns back to you. Whatever she’s saying, she looks sure of herself, determined, and you nod your head on just about every other word. “Okay?” is the only one he can read on Chrissy’s lips, the last one she says to you before she begins serving the other patrons sitting at the bar. You continue to sip at your drink with your head hung low until she disappears into the back again, and when you swivel around in your stool, Joel is already staring at you. He makes a beckoning motion with two of his fingers, and you hop down from your seat, scurrying over to him as if he were whistling at a dog to come.

“She, um…” You start, checking behind you once to make sure Chrissy is still out of sight. “She said she’ll take her first break early, in an hour or so, and then… Then she’ll drive me home.”

A satisfied grin tugs at the corner of Joel’s mouth. “Alright, ‘nother hour it is, then. That wasn’t so hard, baby, was it?”

You shake your head, avoiding eye contact while you swirl your finger around the condensation from Joel’s beer bottle that’s collected on the lacquered table. You open your mouth like you want to say something else, but close it again quickly, seeming to think better of it.

“What is it, sweetheart, hm?” Joel prompts, curling a rough hand around the back of your bare thigh.

“I just… Wish it didn’t have to be her. She’s really nice.”

So were the rest of them, Joel thinks, until they tossed him aside like a chewed piece of gum. “Nice” doesn’t mean shit to him. Lots of girls are nice. And pretty. But they all fucking sound the same when they’re begging him to stop.

Joel bites his tongue, despite his supply of faux sympathy running dangerously low, and musters up what little there is left of it in order to give you the last little push that you need. “Oh, babydoll… You shouldn’t feel bad about somebody who did you wrong sufferin’ the consequences of their actions. I know she seems nice, but she ain’t a good person, baby, I told you that already—”

“I know, but—”

“But nothin’. It’s already been done, sweetheart, you gotta stop thinkin’ about it so hard. Just get back up there, hm? Be over before you know it.” 

Joel uses his grip on your thigh to spin you around, and sends you back up to the bar with a lewd swat to your ass. He stares at the way it bounces underneath the too-short skirt of your dress, and leans back in his chair as he takes another sip out of his sweating bottle. 

The next “hour or so” passes at such an excruciatingly slow pace, he’s stopped himself nearly a dozen times from flagging down a waitress and requesting another beer. He’ll have to make do with just the one, if he wants to be sharp, present, so that he’ll be able to savor every moment of both the hunt and the slaughter. Joel had forgotten how exhilarating the entire process is, how arousing it is to lurk quietly in the shadows, without the little thing having any idea that he’s there, until it’s too late. 

He bides most of the time by just sitting, staring, thinking. About if Chrissy will be more of a begger or a screamer, if she’ll waste any of her breath trying to plead with him and change his mind, or if she’ll just cry herself hoarse in hopes that somebody will hear her pathetic wailing and come to her rescue. Joel chuckles to himself when he remembers the one who kept insisting that “I have a boyfriend, you know. I bet he’s been looking for me, he’ll be here any minute now and he’ll fucking kill you.” Joel had doubled over laughing as he gestured around to the isolated patch of woods he’d dragged her out to, nearly pitch black and dead silent, save for the pale light of the waning moon and the sounds of her heaving sobs. “Oh, you got a boyfriend, do you? Tight lil’ virgin cunt was tellin’ me otherwise, but nice try, sweetheart,” Joel had taunted. Her photo was one of his favorites—a neck-down view of her kneeling form, featuring her chained together wrists and her filthy hands and knees, dirt-stained from how he’d taken her on the ground one last time.

Well, her first time. Whoops.

He’s got a white-knuckled grip around the neck of his empty bottle by the time he’s pulled out of his trance, the movement of two bodies up at the bar distracting him. Joel’s eyes refocus in time to see Chrissy draping her coat over your shoulders, ushering you out the back door after giving the room a once over. Not a very thorough one, considering she had basically looked right at him and didn’t seem to recognize him, but that’s more situational awareness than he can give most of the others credit for.

Too bad it won’t do her any good.

Joel feels like he’s got an electrical current pulsing through his bloodstream as he gets up from his seat, allowing the two of you a few paces’ head start before following in pursuit. He spots the flame of Chrissy’s red hair as she hurriedly helps you into the passenger side of her shitty Pinto, the door’s rusty hinges squealing loudly into the night. The back parking lot of the bar is poorly lit in contrast to the neon illumination from the rattlesnake out front, allowing Joel to slink behind Chrissy’s car and over to his own truck undetected. He situates himself behind the wheel, making sure to keep an eye on his rearview mirror as he rummages through his backpack and sets the tools he’ll need on the side of the bench seat that you usually occupy—his knife, a length of rope, and his camera.

Just like Joel had promised you earlier, he pulls out of the parking lot just behind the two of you, and keeps a close—but not suspiciously so—distance as he chugs down the poorly paved road, maintaining a speed-limit obeying pace and keeping his headlights off for good measure. He even refrains from having any music playing as he chases after you, the choice partly because he’s too dialed in to bother futzing with the tape player, and partly because he doesn’t want to risk making any noise that would raise even a modicum of suspicion, aiming to disappear into the shadows altogether for the next couple of miles.

Joel is nothing but a ghost, Death himself riding his pale horse into the silent dark, in pursuit of yet another sacrificial lamb to add to his flock. He’s lost count of just how many he has in his possession now, but he never gets tired of the way they bleat and cry and thrash as they struggle to escape his scythe. None of them ever seem to understand that they were each promised to him a long, long time ago, when Joel was already grown but they had only just been conceived. They’d been born onto a path that would eventually lead them directly into his waiting arms, where he would show them love and affection and pleasure and ecstasy and whether they were to reject his offerings or not, Joel would always take what was rightfully his, in the end. 

Joel holds his breath as Chrissy’s car approaches the intersection of the rundown neighborhood, but releases it when she makes the sharp left turn that you must have directed her to take. Good girl. He turns his own wheel more slowly, creeping carefully down the road until he finds a large, overgrown shrub to tuck his truck behind, out of sight from the two little creatures now exiting the Pinto and crushing mounds of dried grass under their tentatively stepping hooves. Joel kills the truck’s engine, his teeth chattering in anticipation as he swipes his tools from the seat beside him and slides himself out from behind the wheel. He reaches behind him to slot his knife underneath his belt, then begins his prowl towards the house with the rope and camera clutched in either hand. 

“No offense, but… You live here? Are you sure?” Joel hears Chrissy ask you, bending over to peer into a hole near the house’s foundation where some of the siding has rotted away. 

That’s right, stay down, just like that.

Joel is only a few paces away now. 

“W-well, it’s um… I h-haven’t really been here in a while, to be honest,” you respond, stuttering your way through the first lie you could think of in order to keep the charade going. You sound like you’re making it up as you say it, but that’s okay. Joel is closing in on his target now, it doesn’t matter if your trembling voice had set off the trap or not. Chrissy is already caught in it.

He’s so close he can smell the redhead’s rosy perfume that she had applied before her shift, can practically see the fine hairs raise on the back of her neck when she hears the snap of a dead tree limb coming from behind her. She lets out a little gasp, and whips her head around just in time to see Joel’s icy expression as he shoves a filthy boot into the back of her knee, making her yelp as she collapses onto all fours. Her hands scramble desperately for purchase in the thicket of dead foliage, but Joel is on her before she can regain her balance.

“Yeah, tha’s right… Down, bitch,” Joel spits, straddling her back and using his weight to push her body flat against the ground. “Hold onto this, babydoll, will ya?” He passes his camera off to you, not taking his eyes off Chrissy’s squirming form as you accept it quietly.

Joel grabs hold of Chrissy’s flailing wrists and wrenches them behind her back, squeezing her abdomen hard between his thighs as he does. “Hold fuckin’ still, ‘less you want me to break some bones while I’m at it,” he barks, but it does nothing to deter her futile efforts. She kicks and bucks and thrashes underneath him, making pathetic struggling noises as he winds the length of rope around her wrists, binding them together. 

“Get the fuck off me! Help me, get him off!” She pleads with you as she yanks against the rope and writhes around in the dirt. All you do is look at her with wide, watery eyes, your chest heaving as you clutch his camera in both of your small, shaking hands. “Are you with him or something? What the fuck is this? Help me, please!” Chrissy shouts, her voice terrified and guttural. 

“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” Joel growls into her ear, before pushing himself up off the ground and using his grip around the rope to pull her up with him. He wraps one arm tightly around Chrissy’s middle, and clamps the hand of the other one over her mouth. “She ain’t gonna help you, she knows better ‘n that... Did such a good job for me, sweetheart, such a good fuckin’ girl… Open the door for me so I can get her inside, now.” Joel watches the muscles in your throat constrict as you swallow hard, your eyes shifting from Chrissy’s terror-stricken ones up to Joel’s as you process his command. He smirks to himself when you do obey, the ribbons in your hair fluttering behind you as you scuttle up the stairs and wrench the door open. 

Chrissy is still shrieking incessantly into the meat of Joel’s hand as he shoves her up the creaking steps, and he supposes that he has the answer now to the pondering he was doing back at the bar—screamer it is. They piss him the fuck off the most, are probably most of the reason why his hearing isn’t as good as it used to be, and why he ends up using his knife more often than he’d like. Strangling is his preferred method—it’s more intimate, more hands on in nature, and makes less of a mess—but sometimes the cleanup is worth it if it means he can get them to shut the fuck up and quit shattering his eardrums with all their annoying fucking screeching that they know won’t do them any good. He’d made a good choice, sharpening his knife earlier while you were still asleep back at the motel this afternoon. Joel wonders when you’ll notice that you’re wearing a different pair of panties than the ones he’d made you come in, having tested the sharpness of his blade by slicing them off of you before cleaning up the mess you’d made with his tongue. 

Joel wrestles Chrissy inside the house, kicking broken glass and sloughed off sheets of yellowed wallpaper out of his path as he walks her into the living room. He turns his head as he instructs you to shut the door, and Chrissy uses the opportunity to bite into Joel’s palm and slam the back of her skull into his temple, hard enough to break the skin.

“Ah!—Fuckin’ bitch,” Joel hisses, forcibly shoving her onto the decaying hardwood floor. Chrissy tries to get up, but he presses the tread of his boot into her chest, keeping her down. He touches a finger to the side of his head, bringing it in front of his eyes to examine the droplet of blood that came with it, along with the indents in the flesh of his hand that are beginning to sprout little crimson beads. “Just fuckin’ askin’ for it, ain’t you?”

Joel looks over at you again, to where you’re standing with your back against the door and wearing the same deer-in-the-headlights expression as when he’d handed the camera to you. You have it clutched against your heaving chest, your eyes impossibly wide as you stare at the scene unfolding before you. He can practically see the gears turning in your brain as it cycles through the options of fight, flight, fight, flight, seeming to have landed on freeze instead. Joel observes you for a couple of seconds, waiting to see if one of your shaking hands will eventually snake its way back to the doorknob, but it doesn’t. Since you know what’s good for you, and all.

“C’mere, babydoll, where I can see you,” Joel orders, jerking his head into the room. Your eyes flutter out a few rapid blinks as you seem to shake yourself free of your petrified state, but your feet remain planted firmly underneath you. You’re standing so rigidly, with your knees locked in place, Joel is surprised you haven’t passed out yet.

“Can’t I just… wait in the truck or something? I’ll stay right there, I promise—”

“You know damn well I can’t take you up on any of your lil’ promises anymore, sweetheart. Besides, seemed awfully interested in how I do things last night, why the sudden change of heart, hm?”

You shift your weight, trying to come up with some excuse while you watch Chrissy try and fail to wriggle herself out from underneath the weight of Joel’s boot compressing her ribcage. “Just don’t do very well around b-blood, is all,” you squeak out pitifully.

Joel rolls his eyes, frustrated at the precious seconds you’re wasting by suddenly complaining about being a little squeamish. 

“Well frankly, baby, I don’t really fuckin’ care. You’re gonna have to learn to get the fuck used to it, I ain’t doin’ this with you every time. Get in here. You can face the goddamn wall, but you’re stayin’ put until this is over, are we clear?”

“Y-yes, Joel, thank you,” you concede shakily. Joel’s eyes follow you as you flit across the room, nearly tripping over chunks of fallen drywall before tucking yourself into a little alcove behind the fireplace and hugging your knees to your chest. 

“Alright… Where was I?” Joel ponders aloud, removing his foot from Chrissy’s chest and crouching down to her level. He grabs a fistful of her shirt collar and yanks her back up to a sitting position, looking down at his bleeding hand and sighing before harshly slapping Chrissy across the face with it. Her head whips to the side from the impact, and he grips onto her bloodied face with his injured hand to turn it back towards him again. “Y’know, I don’t take too fuckin’ kindly to feisty things like you who don’t know their goddamn place. Ain't so gentle with bratty lil’ cunts who think it’s a good idea to fight back, leave their marks on me. Am I, babydoll?” He says the latter part a little louder than the rest, brushing the forefinger of his unoccupied hand across the scar on the bridge of his nose as he speaks. You don’t respond, but he can tell that you hear him, that you know what—who—he’s referring to. “Yeah, she knows… One of her lil’ friends gave me this pretty thing, can you believe that? Suppose she gave me that pretty thing, too.” Joel chuckles to himself at his own double entendre, gesturing to where you’re cowering in the corner. “Poor thing had a friend go missin’ a while back, never knew what’d happened to her. Trail was cold, but she decided to follow it anyway. And Lord, am I glad she did, ‘cause it led her straight to me…”

Joel turns Chrissy’s head this way and that in his grip, enjoying the way she squeezes her eyes tight and flinches as she braces for another impact. She whines and whimpers as his fingernails dig into her freckled cheeks, now smeared with his orange-red fingerprints. “W-why me, then? Why not h-her, how come she gets to live? J-just take her, let me go, I won’t tell anyone,” Chrissy sobs through her teeth, hardly able to move her jaw in Joel’s firm hold. He reaches behind himself and slides his blade out from under his belt, raising it up in front of her face. Her eyes go wide as she lets out a horrified noise, thrashing against him and crying while he examines the way the sharp edge glints in the moonlight coming in from the broken windows.

“Oh, sweetheart…” Joel muses, turning over the blade in his hand a few times before looking up at Chrissy’s terrified face, his expression shifting from something wistful to something sinister, cold. “It ain’t ever gonna be her.”

Joel cranks her jaw upwards and slides his knife across her throat before she can even expel an entire scream from her lungs, the piercing tone of her voice becoming wet and garbled in just a few seconds as she chokes on her own blood. It sprays through the slit in her skin, some of it splattering across Joel’s face and landing on his lips, before coming out as a steadier stream that spills down her pale neck and dribbles from the corners of her mouth. Joel watches on as she convulses and gags, her eyes rolling back into her skull before becoming dead weight in Joel’s grip, and she collapses onto her side when he finally lets go of her jaw, still agape with a silent wail. Her muscles spasm as she bleeds out, the ruby-colored liquid pooling underneath her head and saturating the ends of her auburn hair. Joel licks his lips clean as her wound pulses in time with the beating of her heart, the rhythm becoming slower and slower before fizzling out altogether. It only takes a minute or so for her body to still completely, her gurgling breaths eventually morphing into the death rattle that he’s come to recognize so well. Joel swipes his bloodied blade across his tongue before sheathing it under his belt again, glancing over to where you’re now rocking back and forth, your spine hitting against the fireplace’s stone structure with dull little thumps.

He stalks over to you, ignoring the startled yelp you make as he grips onto your upper arm and drags you to where Chrissy’s cooling corpse is lying in the center of the room. Just like he had done to her earlier, he pushes you onto your stomach and straddles your hips. Only this time, he rucks up the skirt of your dress and yanks your panties to the side, swiftly freeing his painfully hard cock from the confines of his jeans and slotting into you with nothing more than a mouthful of his own saliva to help him ease inside. “Oh, f-fuck, Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he moans, gripping one hand onto your hip and using the other—the one with a still-bleeding bite mark—to press the side of your head into the filthy hardwood, so that you’re facing Chrissy’s glazed-over expression while he takes and takes and takes. He doesn’t have it in him to be gentle with you, blinded by adrenaline and arousal as he uses you to get himself off. 

“God, you’re so fuckin’ tight when you’re scared,” Joel snarls, snapping his hips into your backside with such force that the clap of skin-on-skin echoes loudly throughout the empty house, nearly drowning out the sounds of your cries. You’ve got your hands splayed out on either side of your head, having dropped Joel’s camera when he’d forced you into a prone position. You make a disgusted gagging noise when the expanding pool of Chrissy’s blood reaches your fingertips, but you can’t pull away with Joel’s body weight holding you in place. You shut your eyes tightly as you sputter and sob, but Joel won’t allow that. He pulls you up onto your knees, pressing you against him and prying your eyes open as he holds your head up by a fistful of your hair. “No, no hidin’ from this, babydoll. You fuckin’ look at her… I do this for you, baby, you see? So that it won’t be you. I just get so fuckin’ hungry, I can’t help myself. I can’t fuckin’ stop. But as long as I live, I swear it’ll never be you. That’s why it’s them instead. You understand, sweetheart? I love you, babydoll, I love you so fuckin’ much.” Joel mumbles the last bit into the supple skin of your neck, sloppily kissing and biting into your flesh, until he isn’t sure to whom the iron taste that fills his mouth belongs anymore.

He gropes and grabs all over your pliant body, grunting curses into your wet skin while he uses your tight, warm hole like a toy. He’s practically been edging himself for the past several hours, starting from when he’d rubbed circles around your swollen clit and used the reward of your own pleasure to manipulate you into doing his dirty work. Joel is surprised he didn’t cream his jeans before now, the release of finally pouncing on his prey and the taste of her blood on his tongue almost enough to make him come untouched. His hips begin to stutter only a handful of thrusts later, but instead of allowing himself to spill inside you like he had last night, he slides himself free of your walls and maneuvers you onto your back, reaching for his camera.

“Smile pretty for me, babydoll,” Joel says, holding the viewfinder up to his eye while he jerks himself off over your used body, his knees planted on either side of your ribcage. The dazed expression you wear looks enough like a smile to satisfy him, and he snaps a photo as he paints your face with his come. Thick white ropes splatter against your skin, already smeared with the blood from his hand and the filth from the neglected floorboards, and you look like the most gorgeous fucking thing he’s ever seen—his perfect doll, his fallen angel, his most precious and favorite lamb, the love of his fucking life. “Startin’ a new collection today, darlin’, since I got rid of the other one… This’ll be the perfect one to start it out.” Joel removes the blank polaroid from the slot, and sets it back down along with the camera to give the image time to develop. He sits back on his haunches as he catches his breath, running his bloodied hands through his damp hair and zipping his spent cock back inside his jeans. Joel stares down at you while you blink slowly, looking ruined with your tangled hair spread out on the floor and your hands resting up by your ears in surrender. Your breathing is slow, shallow, and he trusts that he can leave you there to come back into yourself while he takes care of Chrissy’s body. 

Joel pushes himself back up to his feet with a groan, his knees cracking and aching in protest, and he walks around the first level of the house, peeking into different rooms until he finds one that used to function as a bedroom. There isn’t much left inside, but the wrought iron bed frame still has a moldy sheet draped haphazardly over the mattress. He yanks it free and bunches it up in his arms, carrying it back into the living room and spreading it out on the ground beside the corpse. Joel rips the top hem of the bedsheet from its seams, and wraps it around his injured hand before tying it off with his teeth. He rolls Chrissy’s stiffening figure onto the now-frayed edge of the fabric, tucking it under one of her arms to hold it in place before tumbling her down the remaining length of the linen. He performs the task monotonously and with little strain, as if he’s done so a dozen times, because he has. It doesn’t take very much effort to lift her onto his shoulder; she was already a wisp of a thing to begin with, weighing even less now that nearly her entire blood volume is soaking into the wood beneath where she had been laying.

Joel navigates to the back door of the house, kicking it open with his boot and letting it slam behind him. He walks several yards into the overgrowth behind the house, dodging low-hanging branches and stepping over fallen logs until he reaches a small clearing. He deposits Chrissy’s body onto an area of dried, yellowing grass, before returning to the backyard where he had noticed a dilapidated shed, nearly completely fallen over from several years’ worth of dry rot. Joel grunts as he pries the doors open, and yanks on a rusted metal chain hanging from the ceiling. A single light bulb illuminates the contents of the shed—a decades-old lawn mower, a few bags of grass seed, and some basic gardening tools, including exactly the one he was looking for. He brushes several thick spiderwebs out of the way before grabbing hold of the shovel, and lets it drag behind him as he treks back to Chrissy’s soon-to-be makeshift burial site. Joel digs a shallow grave, not wanting to take the time to complete the entire six feet with you still on your own inside the house, and uses his boot to send her cloth-wrapped body tumbling into the hole, where it lands with a dull thud. He stares down at her bloodied chrysalis, exhaling a shuddering breath as he revels in the final stage of his ritual.

Over the course of his life, Joel has done a lot of thinking about what exactly it is about the slaughter that he finds so titillating. On a particularly sleepless night several years ago, he’d finally landed on the transformation being what arouses him so. Taking a life is not unlike the procedure of sex, he’d realized—there is a start and an end, a before and an after, and an intangible, in between state, where the soul of the other person is slightly separated from their body, placed into the palms of his hands to do with as he pleases. There’s a reason the French came up with that clever little phrase—la petite mort—because sex and death are inexplicably intertwined, at least for Joel. He experiences such a rush, such a release, from taking part in the gruesome metamorphosis in which a girl is transformed into a body, that he can’t help but chase that high again and again and again, even though he always seems to forget that as much as there is the before and the during, there is also the after. 

That troublesome, uncomfortable after.

Joel shakes himself out of his stupor, tossing the shovel in after the body and doing a half-assed job of kicking the dirt he’d excavated back inside the pit. He scatters some fistfuls of grass and a few dead branches on top of the pile for extra camouflage, and then trudges his way back through the woods.

When Joel returns to the house, you’re in the exact same position he’d left you in, just as he’d thought you’d be. He approaches you slowly, crouching beside you and brushing some of your knotted hair away from your soiled face. Your eyes are frozen, as if still looking into Chrissy’s own glassy ones, and you don’t even so much as twitch when Joel pulls a rag from his back pocket and uses it to wipe his arousal and as much of the blood as he can manage off of your skin. 

“You okay, sweetheart? You with me?” Joel asks you, his voice barely above a whisper, as if trying not to spook a small animal. You look almost… shell shocked. Traumatized. Out of your own body. “Talk to me, babydoll, please.” He rakes his fingers through your hair for another silent minute or so, during which time you continue to lie perfectly still. Unblinking. Unflinching. A husk of a girl.

Joel sighs, reaching across your body to grab his camera and the now-developed polaroid. He shoves the latter into his jacket pocket, deciding that he’ll examine the image later, once he reconciles with the unfamiliar feeling in the pit of his stomach—something like remorse, he thinks. 

He slides his hands underneath your body, cradling you in his arms and carrying you bridal style across the living room, over the threshold, down the steps, and along the stretch of fractured asphalt until he reaches the truck. Joel sets you down on your feet so that he can open the passenger-side door, but your knees buckle underneath you almost immediately, requiring him to support your weight while he fumbles with the handle. He lifts you up onto your seat once he gets it open and buckles you in, and you don’t look anywhere except directly in front of you the entire time. Joel smooths out the skirt of your dress, now stained with dirt and blood, and shoves his camera into the backpack sitting at your feet before shutting you in. He crosses in front of the hood and retakes his place behind the wheel, taking a long look at where you sit nearly comatose beside him. You’re here, but you’re not. He doesn’t know where you are, or how to pull you back from it, back to him.

Joel fidgets with his keys, jingling them in his hand in an effort to fill the cabin with something other than a silence so loud it’s making his ears ring. “It’ll feel better in the mornin’. You’ll get used to it, after a few more of ‘em, I promise.” He places his linen-wrapped hand on the side of your head, pulling you closer to him so that he can plant a whiskery kiss in your hair. Joel lets his eyes flutter closed as he breathes in your scent, inhaling a stuttering breath. If remorse is truly what he feels, then that would warrant an apology, he supposes. But it would also require taking action to rectify the wrongdoing that warranted the apology in the first place, to make sure that it never happens again. And that, he cannot promise.

He pulls away from you, licking his thumb once to wipe a dried smear of blood from your temple. “You wanna get that old map outta the glovebox, babydoll? Decide where we’re headed to next?” Joel prompts.

Silence.

“I’ll take you anywhere you want, darlin’. Long as they got hot coffee and color TV,” he chuckles.

Stillness.

“Well… Alright, then. Next state over it is.” Joel sniffles, feeling around in the dark for the truck’s ignition cylinder, the engine finally sputtering to life after a few misses of the key. Your head falls against the window as the tires begin to rumble over the uneven pavement, and you don’t bother to reposition yourself, even though the sensation of your skull rattling against the glass must be uncomfortable.

Joel doesn’t steer the truck in any particular direction, just away. Away from here, toward the life together in California that he’d promised you, hoping that he can collect all your broken pieces and put you back together along the way.

As it turns out, there are two things that Joel needs you to understand—that he’s never letting you go, and that he will never be able to stop himself. As instinctually as Joel needs to blink, breathe, sleep, he needs to kill. He needs to spill blood and feel it underneath his fingernails and taste it on his tongue, needs to bite into the soft pink skin beneath white wool and feel the precise moment when a creature becomes nothing more than flesh and fur.

And he needs you. Joel cannot live without either one, he’s decided, and so he must be in possession of both.

He regrets the way in which he’s broken you tonight, but not the way that you will be reassembled in his image. 

Transformed.

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“ncuti wanted to go it’s not Russell’s fault”

okay, so he wanted to leave and end his run, that’s not the fucking point. the point is instead of giving the first black queer doctor in history a monumental final arc to match the monumental performance you center white characters, white storylines, and blow a kiss to the side of the fandom that didn’t want ncuti in the first place.

you tucked your racist fans into bed with a story about a white boy getting everything he ever wanted and a nice rose colored glass of nostalgia in case they get thirsty. they don’t have to worry, there’s no black man hiding under the bed, he’s gone, they’re finally safe.

so no, it doesn’t matter if ncuti told rtd he was leaving two minutes after they wrapped, he deserved dignity and respect and that was not present.

Why

I'm trying my best, I really am

why can't you take my word for it?

I know you think I'm a liar, but you were the one who taught me so well.

I'm trying my best, I really am

why do you keep beating me up about it?

I'm hard enough on myself without you adding on to it.

I'm trying my best

but you're not helping, you're just adding more pressure.

it's my life, you're gonna die and leave me alone with it, I know I have to do well, you're not helping.

I try my best

why can't you just be proud of me?