Blink And Miss It But Someone Pointed Out Bucky’s Shamelessly Checking Sam’s Ass Out Here

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.

tag list: @beefrobeefcal @iamasaddie @rebel-held @dilfgestivo @joeldjarin @kamcrazy123 @hellowoolf @rexamongthestars @stevie75 @luxurychristmaspudding @noisynightmarepoetry @mewantpeepaw @pedritoferg @evolnoomym @annoyingmarvelreader @joelsdagger @natalieispunk @mermaidgirl30 @untamedheart81 @galway-girlatwork @pinkiec6-rubi @wand-erer5 @arminsbf @shivispunk @gigistorm @theoreticalfreak @vinceelser @always-andromeda @path0logicalpeoplepleaser @old-logan-and-old-joels-slut @atjlovverr @zliteraturehoe @k1l4ni @hjzghi-blog @xkyxkyxxlylcylulucuflfluclu @kay1805 @alex-does-art-things (if your name is crossed out, it won’t let me tag you!!)

You know what the problem in the fandom is? You know, and you do know already.

It's racism, it's always been about racism.

You'll see white writers ready to die on their hills over certain tropes that cater to the young white masses, but when it's pointed out that the moodboards are mostly thin white women, or that even though it says 'x Reader', you'll find a silky haired, pink cheeked fmc within the writing 9 times out of 10? Crickets. So silent you can hear a pin drop.

If its x Reader, then everyone is supposed to be able to relate, and that doesn't mean blank slate either because that's where the racists can slip in to the role comfortably, blank slate can still be white coded. What does it mean if you come across an 'x Reader' fic that specifically states that reader is BIPOC but you don't read it because you 'can't relate'? You don't have to think too hard about it honestly, because you already know.

So why is it the norm that people think it's okay the other way around? BIPOC readers have had to acclimatize and adapt their way of reading for years in order to be able to absorb themselves in a fic. Accepting it when it states 'readers hair can be put into a messy bun', 'ran his fingers through your hair' 'pink stiffened peaks'. This shouldn't have ever had to happen, but it did and its still happening to this day in the big 2025 when the world is on fire and the governments are dividing people into 'us and them' once again.

This place is supposed to be an escape from all that.

Why can't you relate to an x Reader fic where it clearly states that reader is BIPOC or at least coded as such? Think about it and sit in that discomfort.

Where is the same energy from months ago where people were reblogging anti racism resources and making statements about making their blogs inhospitable to racists? It's gone. You'd rather not upset your white moots and treat your Black and brown moots as disposable, over what? Over fanfiction? Okay then.

It's not 'policing what people can and can't write' that's dismantling the fandom. If you don't like it, don't read it, first and foremost and someone having a differing opinion on a trope isn't censorship or 'bootlicking the patriarchy', by the by.

It's racism, but you already knew that.

Yall... i know its nice to use gifs on your fanfics, but if youre not using the gif extension that is provided by tumblr, maybe please mention/credit the user who made the gifs? Like i dont mind people using my gifs but i HATE when people repost them without asking or giving any credit.

And you know whats worse? When other people use the gif extension, and my gif appears, but its from the user who reposted my gif...

So please, for the love of god.... Credit. The. Gif. Maker.

I am tired fam...

Sugar on the Rim vol. I

bruce wayne x afab!reader

aka the billionaires new friend

warnings: implied that reader is a virgin, age gap (bruce is older than reader), mentions of sex, smut in next part

You twist the stem of the wine glass around between your fingers slowly. Your chin rests atop your knees as you stare vacantly at the tiny puddle left of the drink. You could go refill it, but then you’d have to go back out to the main room and man…you really do not want to do that. So you’ll sit here, swiping your tongue across the bumps of the roof of your mouth as if it's a fascinating new discovery.

The creak of hinges has you shooting upright, your back thumping against the stair step behind you. You’re not immediately sure how to act as though it’s normal that you’re sitting in the stairwell outside the fundraiser rather than in it, fraternizing with old and new money alike. You freeze, trying to relax your posture so it doesn’t look like you’re alarmed at the sight of another person, but not so relaxed that you look as bored as you are.

Your neutrality stutters when you glance up to find the host of the fundraiser. The billionaire host of the fundraiser. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire host of the fundraiser. Your posture straightens right back up and your mouth snaps shut as you make eye contact.

Should you stand up? 

No, he’s rich, not royalty. 

You are in his house though—

He looks you over contemplatively, “I don’t know you,” It’s not accusatory, rather he says it like it’s something interesting.

You perk up at that, immediately formulating reasons to justify your presence. “Oh, uh, no—” the words nearly spill out of your mouth all at once. You clear your throat, “I’m just a plus one for my boss—”

“Who’s your boss?” he asks, relaxed. 

“Arthur Mullins.”

He looks to the side, squinting, “Mullins…he’s the executive at Williamson Industries, yes?”

You nod and he returns the gesture, slower, like he’s processing through something. “I’m Bruce,” he says warmly after a moment, holding his hand out to you.

You nod before you can even think to get any words to come out, “I—yeah, I know,” you accept his hand, shaking it as you tell him your name.

There’s a slight glint in his eye when he hears your name, and he repeats it quietly to himself. “A pretty name.”

“Oh, it’s just…” Just your name. But rather than fill him in on that fascinating tidbit, you let the sentence die off.

He smiles kindly anyway, “What are you doing in here? Party’s out there, or so they tell me.”

“I…I’m hiding in here,” you admit sheepishly.

He leans in towards you slightly, lowering his voice. “I’ll let you in on a secret—so am I,” he smiles at you like it’s easy.

Your grin matches his, “It’s your party,”

“That’s why I need to hide.” He tilts his head, “Doesn’t give you much of an excuse though, does it?”

“I don’t know anybody here.”

He puckers his bottom lip contemplatively, “Your boss.”

You shake your head, “I’m just his assistant. I’m pretty sure he just brought me as a precaution in case he needed a designated driver.”

He laughs at that, “Based on the way I’ve seen Mullins’ attempts to operate, his assistant would have to be a hell of a lot more important than just a designated driver.”

Well, he’s certainly right about that. Your boss doesn’t exactly “have it together” per se. He’s an unorganized man with little to justify his importance in Gotham, so he tends to insist on taking on more responsibility than he has any business having. Not to mention, he’s a bit of a try-hard and you’re constantly left to sweep up the pieces of his reputation that he shattered himself. Not to say he’s necessarily unprofessional, he just will do anything and everything to prove he belongs in any given space. It’s honestly a bit exhausting to watch. It’s more exhausting to try and convince him that the exchange went well afterwards.

You nod slowly, eyes on his shoes. “Mr. Mullins has…a unique approach to business. It does usually leave me fairly busy, I’ll give you that.” You take a quick deep breath, plastering on a fake smile. “But that means I occasionally get to go to fancy parties where I don’t know anyone, so..”

“Well then it sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” he ribs, “Or don’t you agree?”

You smile coyly, “I would never be so bold.”

“I don’t mind boldness. For example, the reason I came in here is because he spotted me.”

You laugh at that, “Mr. Wayne—”

“Bruce.”

“Mr. Wayne,” you suppress your smile as you pause, choosing your words carefully. “I think he’s just networking.” He doesn’t have the money to give.

He nods surely, “He’s definitely just networking.” He really doesn’t have the money to give. You allow just the faintest wisp of a smile to adorn your face as you look down again.

You check the time and realize that you’ve been hiding away for too long and that if he hasn’t already, your boss will notice soon. You sigh quietly to yourself, “I should..”

He turns his head to the closed door where the chatter can be heard from beyond, sighing in defeat as he shakes his head looking back at you. “So should I.”

You feel a bit insecure as you stand, the gown you’re wearing is pretty but it is very much affordable and you’re sure someone as wealthy as Bruce Wayne would know the difference.

If he does notice he makes no deal of it, motioning you forward gallantly to walk ahead of him.

He follows after you, hands behind his back. “Would it be rude of me to ask you to distract him while I run for the bar?”

It’s busy, even for a Sunday afternoon, and you have to sidestep past someone nearly every step you take. You stick next to the windows of the line of boutiques down the road, trying to balance window shopping and not bumping into other pedestrians.

You're in a nicer district of Gotham, truthfully an area you don't quite belong in. So far you’ve only managed to find a couple shops that weren’t several ranges above your budget. 

A call of your name has you blinking rapidly and turning around as if you’re lost. It doesn’t take long for you to pick the six foot two billionaire out of the crowd and it’s only half a second longer before you realize he’s walking towards you. A few people collide shoulders with you as they move past thoughtlessly, no regard for the personal space of the idiot that stopped in the flow of traffic.

You let him approach a couple feet closer before you ask him, “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Wayne?” The presence of his figure in front of you allows for a break from being bumped into, as he seemingly makes for a far more easily seen and intentionally avoided target.

He sways a bit, “Bruce. I’m not sure yet,” he looks down to the couple of bags you’re holding, extending his hand out. “May I?”

It takes you just a moment to move past your surprise at the request, allowing him to hold them for you. “Are you in a rush?”

You shake your head quicker than you meant to, “No, I—not at all,” he gestures his head forward, allowing you to walk before him.

You traipse ahead in silence for a moment before deciding against biting your tongue, “What exactly is it you’re not sure about?”

He raises his voice a bit so you can hear him over the crowd, “Whether or not you’ve got plans on the 19th.”

You look back at him, “What’s on the 19th?”

He stops with you as you admire a set of jewelry inside a window display, “We’re hosting a gala for something or something else, hopefully less boring than the fundraiser.”

You blink, “You’re inviting me?” He nods. “Why?”

“I could use someone who wants to be there even less than I do.”

He said it so casually it takes you a second to even register his meaning. You blink, face contorting defensively, “That’s not—” you can barely make out the smile on his face as he continues on walking.

You shake your composure back together and trail after him, rushing to catch up. “I don’t think Mr. Mullins would be very happy to hear that I’m attending a business gala without him.”

He shakes his head as he scans over the crowd, “He can’t fire you for that.”

“He’ll try.” He would. A petty little man, he is. 

He scans across the rows of clothes leisurely. “Well, then he can speak to me about it. Besides, it wouldn’t be for business.” And then he just lets that sentence linger.

It takes you a moment to recover from those words and begin to start processing the world around you again. After a few more feet down the sidewalk he pulls you gently to the side by your lower arm, out of the rush of traffic, and looks at you dead on, “What do you think?”

You try not to waver under the weight of the eye contact, “I don’t…uh, I don’t really have…” you look down, hoping to get the message across without actually having to say the words.

He glances into the store window next to you and raises his eyebrows, “Well then I’d say we’re in the right place.”

You can’t manage to tell him that this store is definitely far too expensive for you, walking through the door as he opens it for you, albeit apprehensively.

Well. Up close window shopping is more fun anyways. 

The spotless white of the floors and walls has you intimidated, and just as much so by less by the no doubt designer clothes lining the walls. The saleswomen all look pretty highbrow themselves, hair up in tight buns and uniforms chic.

You only break from gawking at the store to look behind you at Bruce. You note the way his eyes roam around blindly, looking for something and clearly having no means to narrow down where it might be. You take one more glance around, immediately finding the women's section with no such difficulty. 

“This way.” You say, nodding your head over to the left. He recovers nicely and lets you lead the way towards the section of dresses. You peer back at him, “You don’t seem like someone that does much of his own shopping.”

Thankfully, he laughs at that. “Well, special occasions.”

You keep your gaze ahead this time, asking as casually as you can, “Is this a special occasion?”

He hums in consideration, “I’d say so.”

You stop upon approaching the dress section, taking in the immediately stunning display of options. 

“What are you doing up here anyways?” you ask, hand brushing across a particularly plush dress.

“Ah, I was headed to a meeting.”

“Oh,” you frown, looking at him. “Don’t you need to go?”

He shakes his head with a puckered lower lip, “No.”

A few seemingly heiresses roam down the aisle mindlessly, not caring much that you’re in their path. 

Bruce sees them before you do, knowing well that they were not going to excuse themselves. “Sweetheart,” he nudges you gently to the side, closer to him as the group passes. His hand remained open-palmed and flat as he guided you to the side, seemingly very careful not to touch you with uninvited boldness. Though you’re quite shaken by the chivalry of the gesture, a brazen touch wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.

As your arm brushes against a rack of clothing your gaze follows, met with something rather appealing.

Bruce is quick to notice you admiring the sleek black dress that looks like something you’d see a model wearing on a runway. “You like that one?”

“It’s nice, yeah,” you murmur, not really thinking. You flip the price tag over and your face drops. “It’s $800.”

He nods thoughtfully, “We can find a nicer one,” he says, though it’s clear he knows exactly what your problem with the price tag was.

“I can’t—” you restart, “I would never have a reason to wear something this nice again.”

He shakes his head coolly, “That’s alright.”

Your shoulders drop and your head tilts seriously, “It’s not, though.”

“You like it?” He looks you in the eyes, his own searching for a truthful answer.

“I mean, of course, but it—”

He nods affirmatively, “Then we’ll get it. Problem solved.” He turns his back to the rack, casually observing the rest of the store goers. “Pick your size.”

Apparently not one to argue, you thumb through the row until you find one that should fit. 

You sigh, realizing that you’re running out of time to mention that you don’t have $800 to spend on a dress. “I can’t—”

“You don’t need to,” he says simply as he takes the dress off the rack and drapes it across his arm, making his way towards the salescounter.

You try to stop your mouth from hanging open as you follow, “It really is okay, I don’t need—”

His grin cuts you off, just in time for you to hear him mutter, “Sweet girl..” to himself. You stop right in your tracks, feeling very thankful that he’s not looking at you right now because you’re certain the look on your face would give you away.

He still doesn’t face you as he calls out, “Come on,” as he continues on.

Obviously you’re not stupid. You know what type of intentions a billionaire playboy must have with a younger girl that he doesn’t even really know. However, if said billionaire is offering to buy you a pretty dress…no, you’re not sleeping with him because he bought you a dress—of course not—and you’ve made absolutely no promises to do so, so what’s the harm in letting him? Really?

And yeah, maybe it’s a plus that he’s not bad looking, but how is that your fault?

You stand a bit awkwardly next to him as he puts his card in the machine, not even glancing at the outrageous number, and declines the offer for the receipt.

As you exit the store together and stand at the doors as he hands your original two bags back to you along with the new shiny black one that on its own looks like something people would pay for.

“You will be there?” he asks, eyes more hopeful than you were prepared for. 

You nod, gesturing the bag up, “Well you just bought me the dress.”

He shrugs that off, “I would’ve bought you the dress anyways.”

You linger in the midst of the ado wearing a dress that you feel far too overshadowed by, fidgeting with the half empty wine glass in your hand. Unfortunately, this time around you were invited by the host of the event and it would be extra rude to run away and hide. That doesn’t stop you from considering it, though.

A hand sliding across your lower back has you momentarily startled, and for reasons you couldn’t quite verbalize, you’d naturally assumed it was Bruce. The disappointment rings strong when you turn around to be met with the sight of an even older man, who looks considerably wine drunk. 

“Hello there, Miss.,” The words themselves are polite but the salacious smile on his face and the way his eyes have no trouble roaming your body gives you a solid idea of what this conversation is going to entail.

“Hello,” you fake a polite, tight smile and shift your attention to the rest of the room. 

This does nothing to deter him, as he takes a sizable step back into your line of sight. “Having a nice time?” 

The man is clearly from money, if his attire didn’t give it away his attitude sure did. There’s an heir of entitlement around him, like he’s inherently deservant of your attention—a quality you were notably surprised to not have found in Bruce. 

You give him your faux-smile again, this time tighter but half a second longer for the sake of politeness. A rookie mistake.

“Can I buy you a drink?” He asks, gesturing to the bar.

“I’m okay, thank you,” you say, gesturing your wine glass up.

A momentary flash of irritation crosses his face, but to his credit, he does a better job recovering from it than you would have expected. Though, that’s not really saying much. “Well, pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be all alone here,”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Both of your heads snap to the side, finding a much more welcome surprise than you’d previously received. 

Your counterpart's posture straightens immediately, “Mr. Wayne,” he fawns, “What a lovely event you’ve thrown. I’m sure the Bernsteins will be appreciative.”

Bruce hums, eyes narrowed slightly. “You are…”

The man startles and rushes to finish off his sentence, “Alexander Watson, senior executive to the accounting department for the research wing of the company.”

He nods slowly, no recognition actually present in his eyes. “Ah. The research wing of the company that just blew fifteen million dollars on prototype self-operating cell phones.”

You’re trying hard to fight the smile creeping up on your face.

“What exactly is a self-operating cell phone?”

Watson’s face drops, hurrying to justify his approval of the proposal’s funding. As he rambles, Bruce’s gaze lowers to where Watson has once again placed his hand on your hip, though he’s not close enough to you for it to rest fully or naturally. You don’t know him well but you can say confidently that he doesn’t look pleased. 

He looks back up to Watson, attitude challenging. “Surely you’re not poking around where you’re unwelcome?”

Watson stutters at that, blinking and shaking his head quickly. “No, no, of course not! I was just hoping to provide the young lady with some company. That’s all.”

“And so you have.”

“I—,” about two steps behind in this conversation, Watson finally decides to retreat, “Yes, good evening, Mr. Wayne.” He bows his head and shuffles away back into the crowd.

“Mr. Wayne,” you smile knowingly, turning to him. “How are you?”

The hardness of his gaze fades quickly as he takes in your appearance, quite liking how you wear the dress you’d picked out.

“Things are looking up,” he smiles, “You look lovely.”

 “Thank you,” you glance over to where Watson has made his way to the bar, likely about to down an entire glass. “Mr., uh, Mr. Watson makes quite the impression.”

His smile turns a bit sullen, “You know last year he tried to convince the board that battery-powered battery chargers were going to be the next big thing?”

You blink, tilting your head, “Thought you didn’t know who he was.”

His eyes are fixed on the wall as he tugs the corner of his lip down, knowing he’s been caught but not really caring. “I’m sorry to have been away for so long, it seems everyone needs my attention at these things.”

“At the gala that you threw? I’d imagine so.”

He rolls past that smoothly, “You’re having a good time?”

“I am,” you say with a confirming head bob.

He regards the room with a numb expression, “You know, I think I’m getting bored with all of this.”

You smile at him, brow furrowed, “It’s only been an hour.”

He looks at you, eyes wide. “It’s only been an hour?” He’s exaggerating his surprise to make you smile, and it works.

“I think we should go,” he says lower.

You stare at him, bemused. “You still have a whole room full of guests.” 

He shrugs, “They’ll filter out on their own eventually.” 

He clocks your hesitation easily, accurately noting it to be more out of politeness than actually wanting to stay at the party. “What, you’re not ready to leave?”

You look around at all the mostly old, posh guests, disinterested small talk evident all across the room. You take a breath, “Alright, yeah. Let’s go.”

He smiles and leads you out a side door and through a corridor that’s significantly longer than you’d expected. 

“Do you always ditch your parties this early?” you ask, following closely.

He makes a sharp right at the next doorway, “If I can manage it.”

You look around at the high wooden ceilings and grand furniture. “Aren’t some of them friends of yours?”

He shakes his head, “My friends aren’t here.”

You frown at that, “Then why do you throw them at all?”

“Why did you show up last weekend?”

You nod slowly, understanding. “It’s your job.”

He returns the nod, adding, “Only difference is, there’s not a chance in hell you get paid enough for the work you do for Mullins.”

For the sake of maintaining your wishful facade of professionalism, you’re going to not acknowledge that incredibly accurate statement. Instead you smile politely and continue on walking. He seems to get the implication, returning it with an even brighter adornment.

“Well, money’s money,” you say wryly.

His smile fades a bit, “You shouldn’t have to worry about things like that.” 

You shrug, “A day in the life,”

He looks sullen upon hearing that, with more sympathy than you’d have expected from someone of his stature. He’s done nothing if not surprise you, though.

“Here,” he says, taking hold of the handle of a glass door. It opens to a garden, lit up beautifully by the moon and outdoor light. A fountain sits in the middle, water rhythmically gushing out of the top and trickling down the sides. The bite of the Gotham night air burns at your cheeks a bit and you find yourself thankful the dress you’d chosen is so long.

Bruce leads the way to an expensive marble bench positioned nicely in front of it, allowing you to sit first before following suit. Your hands find a place in your lap, clasped together awkwardly in an attempt to find warmth through contact.

It takes Bruce less than ten seconds to stand, remove his suit jacket, and drape it over your shoulders before sitting back down. The material is thicker and warmer than you would’ve expected, surely reminiscent of the perks of being owned by a billionaire.

He doesn’t look at you to acknowledge the grateful expression on your face, simply carrying on like it didn’t happen. “Was hoping it was warmer,” he murmurs.

Your focus momentarily goes to the icy cold stone of the bench under your thighs, initially finding it uncomfortable before deciding the coolness actually felt quite soothing. You remove your gaze from the gray stone and turn your head to find Bruce already focused on you.

You start to say something, though you’re not sure what it would’ve been, when he brushes his thumb over your bottom lip, pulling it down.

Well, he certainly knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?

His eyes stay on your lower lip as he murmurs, “You’re a pretty girl, you know that?” 

God, he’s a professional.

You look up at him and refrain from saying anything, waiting to see if he follows it up with something that will make you regret agreeing to coming out here with him.

He doesn’t.

You shift, moving your hands off your lap to rest on the stone under you. “You can’t just do this—”

He smiles and lowers his chin to look you in the eyes, “Then what can I do for you?”

“You—” you blink rapidly, “Stop it.”

His coy beam persists, “Stop what?”

You raise your gaze up to him ever so slightly, a pouty expression across your face that you’re trying to sell as serious. “You’re trying to make me nervous.”

“Do I make you nervous?” He tilts his head down further, a ghost of a smile echoing on his lips, “I don’t mean to, sweet girl.”

Your eyes drop to the ground, biting your tongue. “Yeah.”

His simper grows, “I’m serious. I’d hate to scare away a new friend.”

You laugh at that and he perks up a bit at the sound, “What? We’re not friends?”

You cock your head to the side, “You’re the one who said none of your friends are here.”

He hums, “Maybe I spoke too soon.”

“You think so?” You should probably stop flirting so much. 

“Yeah,” he leans in a bit closer, “I do.”

“Why’s that?”

“Maybe I want to be your friend,” his hand finds a place atop yours. 

Your eyes flicker across his face as he closes in, “What if I don’t want to be yours?”

His eyes are on your lips, “I’m sure we can work something out.”

You take a slow deep breath, “Your intentions are blurry.”

He smiles lightly, amused. “We’ll have to clear that up then, won’t we?” His lips are inches away and his voice is soft as he says, “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

You look up at him eyes wide, barely processing his words as you nod. He gently grasps your jaw in his hand, tilting your head up. His other hand finds the back of your head, holding you in place as he kisses you with intention. Your hands hover in the air for a second before holding onto his forearms. 

He breaks the kiss only to give you another sweet one right after. Your mouths remain close when it’s over, eyes still shut, trying to catch your breath. You stay like that for a moment until he kisses you once more on your cheekbone before pulling away. His hands drop to rest on your knees, the weight of them gentle.

He hums lowly, “Sweet thing..”

Being under the heaviness of his gaze leaves you feeling vulnerable. It’s starting to get you concerned with the potential levity and implications of kissing him. The expectations.

“You…” you stare down at where his hands meet your skin, not quite sure that you actually meant to start that sentence. 

“What?” he frowns, brow pinched. Your chin lowers further as your mouth forms a tight line. He shakes his head, “No, it’s alright. What is it?” he asks gently.

It takes a surge of willpower for you to get the sentence out, “You just want to sleep with me..”

He frowns harder at that, pulling back a bit. “No. I’m…” he sighs, “I’m not trying to lure you in just to toss you out right after.”

That makes you look up again. His voice has a sincerity to it that you weren’t prepared for. 

He continues, “I would like to, yes. Yeah. You’re beautiful, of course I would, but..” he looks down at his hands before looking back up at you, “No, that’s not the most important thing to me.”

You break eye contact again, thinking over his words. If that’s not the most important thing to him, what is? You can’t think of what else he could possibly want from you, a billionaire who could have anything he wants..the only thing you could have to offer in his eyes is sex. 

Right?

He exhales, “If you want to leave, I’ll call you a car. No hard feelings.” He nudges your chin up gently so you’ll look at him, but he gives you the freedom to fight against it if you wanted to.

You let him move you.

“I don’t want to leave,” you tell him, looking into his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Whatever you want,” he says it like it’s automatic. You physically can’t help but roll your eyes at the corniness of it. He doubles down, though, “Seriously. Anything.”

You smile in disbelief, shaking your head.

“Alright,” he returns your smile, straightening, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Do you need a ride home?”

You blink at him, “I’m going home?”

“You are,” he nods softly, “Do you need a ride?”

“No.”

He nods again, more like he’s working through something in his head. “Okay. You’re going to go home and think through what you want. If you decide you want to, come back here next Saturday.” he stands up, extending his hand out to you, “Then you can let me know what else you want and we can get to work on that too.”

You start to shake your head, “I can—” 

He drops his chin seriously, “Think on it.”

You relent easily, taking his hand and coming to a stand.

“Alright?” Again, his question is genuine. He does really want to know if you’re on board with this plan. 

Already going against his request, you agree without a thought, “Okay.”

He starts to lead you back over to the garden door with a head nod and a kind smile.

It ultimately was not a decision you had to think very hard on.

You’d considered every scenario of how this could play out and none of them ended with regret as far as you could guess.

You’ll still admit though, there was one scenario you had missed, apparently, which is why you were immeasurably confused when you showed up and he invited you to play chess.

He’s not wearing a fancy three piece suit this time, but his clothes are still very nice. With the sunlight peeking through the windows, you’re able to see the manor more clearly than you had been the other night. It really is a beautiful home, clearly very old and charmed, but there’s a lot of little details of character and history scattered around. There’s portraits and photographs of his parents from when he was young and furniture decorated with trinkets all throughout, kept absolutely spotless and dust free. Everything is neat and tidy but there’s still traces of the house being lived in with the patched throw pillows and worn carpets. Still, it’s very, very placid.

You’ve met new money plenty of times over the course of dealing with countless businessmen for Mr. Mullins but old money is something entirely different. You don’t really have a frame of reference here. New money is almost always brash and demanding, they like things done quickly and correctly the first time around. They’re usually not very interested in hearing what you have to say (even if it would save them a lot of trouble) and prefer it when the assistants women keep their mouths shut. Bruce has proven to be very different from these standards already and you’re not sure where to begin with placing new ones.

You’re about halfway through a second game, and while you’re not awful at chess, you get the impression that he’s easing up on you considerably.

You sit on the floor in front of a short coffee table, the game having no clear lead so far.

“I think this is stressing me,” you mumble, no actual weight behind your words.

“It’s just chess,” he says, not looking up from the board.

You watch him move his knight forward as you ask, “And that’s all we’re doing?”

“As it stands, yes,” he looks up at you, though you don’t return his gaze.

“Yeah,” you sigh, sliding your rook, “But later?”

“Later?”

“Well, you said...” you meet his eyes, “You said you wanted to sleep with me.”

He nods slowly, “I do. Is that alright?”

You consider it for a moment. You already knew that, if you really weren’t okay with it you wouldn’t have come here. And yeah, the idea makes you a little shaky, but in a good way.

“Yes,” you tell him, moving your queen forward two spaces.

“Are you sure?” he presses, moving to sit on the side of the table rather than behind it.

You do the same, sitting on your knees. “Yeah, I just..” you shift your weight, eyes wandering. “I’m not…overly experienced.”

He just smiles at that, like it’s endearing. Your words didn’t quite convey your meaning but your tone did. In any case, he understands the implication. “That’s alright, sweetheart. I’m not going to throw you in the deep end.”

You nod, looking down again.

“You’re nervous,” he comments.

“No, I’m—I mean, maybe,” your voice is barely a murmur by the end of the sentence.

He’s quiet for a moment, observing the way you fiddle with your rings. “What if we get you something pretty to wear? Something that makes you feel pretty. Whatever you want.”

He fishes his wallet out of his pocket, opening and pulling out a lump of cash without even looking. He holds the money out to you wordlessly and you can see from the bill on the outside that it’s at least a couple hundred dollars.

You shake your head instantly, “I can’t take that.”

He doesn’t put the money down but his eyes turn to begging. “Please. I just want you to feel good.”

“Bruce—”

He wavers a bit at that but it’s more of a falter than you’ve seen from him before so it’s easy to take notice of. “What?”

He shrugs barely, “I like when you say my name.”

Your eye contact holds for a moment and your resolve starts to shake almost instantly.

You exhale, “I’m not taking more than a hundred.”

“Two hundred.”

“Bruce.”

He smiles and picks out some of the cash and pockets it, handing you the rest. You don’t comment on the fact that it’s a hundred and fifty more than you’d agreed on.

You look down at the money in your hand like it’s a foreign object, shaking your head. “I don’t even know what to get.”

His thumbs start to rub reassuring circles by the bend of your knees, “Anything you want,” he tells you. “What do you like? Silk, lace, cotton, anything.”

You look up, tilting your head at him with a furrowed brow. “It doesn’t matter what I like, th—”

“It only matters what you like,” He says seriously, lowering himself to meet your gaze. “I’ll love it, no matter what you pick. Don’t worry about that.”

You lean forward a bit instinctually, “Okay.”

His eyes scan across your face in something that you can only recognize as awe.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you whisper.

“I want to kiss you again,” he says, voice even quieter.

Your eyes go to his mouth and you can only manage a nod, lips already parted.

He moves forward not a second later, kissing you with more fire than you’d gotten to see the other night. His hands grab at your waist, squeezing lightly as you hook one hand around the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

You hear the clatter of chess pieces falling over as he moves nearer to you, large frame leaning over you. You push up on your knees, meeting his lips up at his level. His hands caress around your hips as the kiss gets deeper.

You just start to fumble with the hem of his shirt when he takes your hands in his, pulling them away before breaking the kiss.

“Easy, sweet girl,” he smiles, nudging you back with little force.

You groan, “Why?”

He barks out a laugh at that, stroking your hips again. “I’m not fucking you for the first time on the floor.”

“Then let's go somewhere else,” you nod up towards the stairs.

He shakes his head, that soft smile still playing on his lips. “Not tonight.”

You sit back on your heels again, frowning.

He brushes your hair back, murmuring, “No. But for now, I'll kiss you ‘til you can’t think if that’s what you want.”

You really hope you didn’t perk up at that as much as you think you did.

part two

🌾🌽 i heard a rumor that if you like without reblogging your crops will be cursed but hey what do i know 🌾🌽

The Other Half Masterlist

Pairing: Bruce Wayne x Reader

Notes: Welcome back to accidentally-created-a-series-Monday

Not beta-read.

Rating: Explicit - 18+ Only

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, angst, fluff, explicit sexual content

Summary: You glance at the man, then freeze, eyes widening. There’s no way that the goddamn Prince of Gotham is on your counter right now. Luckily for you, he’s focused on the tie clips. Maybe he knows you’re staring and is just ignoring it. Maybe he’s just so used to the sensation that he simply doesn’t register it anymore. 

**As of 3.23.24, this series is complete

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

Part Fourteen

Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen

Part Seventeen

Part Eighteen

Part Nineteen

Part Twenty

Part Twenty One

Part Twenty Two

Part Twenty Three

Part Twenty Four

Part Twenty Five

Part Twenty Six

the show was intentional

and yet people  keep acting like certain things aren’t canon. 

Lets lay it out:

They chose to give Robby a love interest. Not just a random hookup or a throwaway arc. No, they made her work with him. They made her someone he sees almost every shift. Someone he longs for during said shifts, casting her those heart-wrenching glances across the ER floor. And they didn’t stop there.

They gave them a backstory. One full of tension, complicated choices, heartbreak. We’re talking an abortion. A breakup. A one-sided breakup. You don’t write that unless you’re trying to say something.

If the show didn’t want to position Heather Collins as a central figure in Robby’s life, they would’ve just… not done all that? But they did. They crafted her with care. They wove her into the very fabric of his storyline, and into the rhythm of the show.

And yet… fandom and media refuses to see it.

Heather is more than “Robby’s love interest.” She’s pivotal on her own. She’s competent, compassionate, layered. A Black woman in medicine with her own trauma, her own ambitions, and yes, a deep, complicated love for a man who still looks at her like she hung the damn moon.

Stop overlooking her.

Stop pretending she doesn’t matter.

Because the writers made it very clear: she does.

And Robby knows it.

We know it.

It’s time fandom and the media caught up.

Welcome to my Masterlist 💌

hi, i'm murphy. my requests are always open - feel free to send any ideas or thoughts you have - i'll always read them all.

note - all of my fics are reader insert. no use of y/n. i don't write for real people, only characters <3

Last Updated - December 14th

❁ - over 1k notes

✯ - a series

Characters I Write For.

500 Follower Celebration Masterlist. 3k Celebration Masterlist. Valentines Masterlist. 5k Celebration Masterlist.

Moodboard Masterlist. My Ao3.

 ⊹ 　 ✫ 　　 · 　　 ✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵  　.　 ✦ * 　 ⋆ 　　 .  ✵ 　　　

Top Gun: Maverick

Jake 'Hangman' Seresin

The Orange. ❁

You and Jake share an orange. He's in love with you.

For Eternity. (Part 2 of The Orange.)

You and Jake share an orange. He's never loved you more.

North Star. ❁

It's New Year's Eve. Jake is tired of waiting.

I Know Places.

Jake always joked that he'd kill for you. One fateful day, he does just that.

Jake 'Hangman' Seresin & Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw

Why Choose?

A drunken game of spin the bottle gets a little heated. Why choose, when you can have both?

Mickey 'Fanboy' Garcia

Dr Cupid.

Mickey Garcia passes out in hospitals. Luckily, this time there's a pretty nurse there to catch him.

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Marvel

Bucky Barnes

Lessons in Love. ❁

Bucky didn't believe in love at first sight. Then he met you.

Honey Girl. ✯❁

The Universe shows you your soulmate when it feels like you need them most. When you least expect it, you're given yours - Bucky Barnes. Your dad's best friend. You can try to refuse it all you like; but the universe wants what it wants. There's no denying fate.

Trick or Treat.

You love Halloween. Bucky loves you.

Rest Had Seemed The Sweetest Thing.

Bucky's slowly learning that love isn't a finite resource. aka, Bucky's first Christmas.

Stucky

Letters to the Moon.

Steve is gone. The love you and Bucky have for him isn't.

Wishbone.

You meet Bucky and Steve while on the run. The three of you quickly learn that nothing is more violent than love.

Frank Castle

There's Always Tomorrow.

Frank knows you better than you know yourself. It's a blessing and a curse.

Multi Talented. ❁

Frank shows you exactly what you deserve.

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Criminal Minds

Luke Alvez

Wherever You Are. That's Where Home Is.

Luke might be a mind reader. Only with you, though.

Vice. ❁

Everyone on the team has their vices. It just so happens that yours is sat across the table looking at you.

Spencer Reid

Web of Lies. ✯

Spencer Reid has always been good at keeping secrets. You just never thought he'd keep one from you.

Cowboy!Spencer ✯

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Narcos

Javier Peña

Self Control. ❁

Javi keeps refusing himself what he wants. One night puts everything into perspective.

Yes, Mr President.

There's an endless amount of things you shouldn't do as the President of the United States. Defiling the Oval Office is definitely one of them.

Western Nights. ✯

You don't expect to bump into your dad's best friend Javier in a church basement on the outskirts of town. You also didn't expect to fall in love with him. Life seems to be full of surprises - and Javier was the biggest surprise of all.

Jealousy, Jealousy. ❁

Javier Peña doesn't share.

Two Murphy's and a Peña.

Javier knows Steve's sister is off limits. He's never been one to follow the rules.

After Hours.

You and Javier are stuck in the office in the middle of a heatwave. You're hot in more ways than one.

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Triple Frontier

Time. ❁

You get shot in Colombia. Frankie, Benny, Santiago and Will each have their own ways of helping you heal.

Tethered. ❁

The lines of friendship blur when you’re this close. Also known as - each of the times you’ve kissed Benny, Frankie, Santiago and Will.

Tranquility.

You're not good at keeping secrets from the boys. Turns out, Will isn't either.

Home Is Where The Heart Is.

They say home is where the heart is. Your heart belongs to the four boys you call your best friends. Also known as - four important times the guys told you they loved you.

Will Miller

Champagne Fuelled Confessions.

You come home drunk, and have something burning you need to tell Will.

Best Friend's Brother.

You've known Benny for years. You've had a crush on his brother Will for years, too.

Frankie Morales

Find You.

A bad date brings Frankie Morales to your door at the perfect time.

Rain Soaked Romantic.

Frankie will run across town in the rain if it means finally telling you how he feels.

Santiago Garcia

This Is The Way It Always Goes.

Santiago always comes crawling back. You convince yourself this is the last time - but you both know that's not true.

Precious Girl.

A chance meeting with your Dad's best friend at 2am.

Benny Miller

Adrenaline.

Ben needs a way to work off his post match energy. You.

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The Last of Us

Joel Miller

Pretty When You Cry. ❁

Joel realises his morals are fucked. You realise you like it.

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Succession

Stewy Hosseini

Clandestine. ✯

You and Stewy know it's wrong. So why, pray tell, does it feel so right?

Fully Clothed.

Being Stewy's assistant has its perks.

Consequence.

Stewy's actions have unexpected consequences.

Needy.

You've been waiting all day for Stewy to get home. He loves it.

Play Pretend.

The classic fake dating trope, with a twist.

The Place Where It All Began.

You reunite with Stewy at your high school reunion. Turns out, he's been waiting for you, all this time.

Risky.

The thrill of being caught makes it all the more exciting.

Kendall Roy

Me and You.

You quit as Kendall's assistant. He's been waiting for this day.

Illicit Affair.

You're Matssons wife. You're also in love with Kendall Roy.

Forced Proximity.

The classic only one bed trope, this time with your emotionally unavailable boss.

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The Bear

Carmen Berzatto

The Roommate Collection. ✯❁

A collection of fics based on being roommates with Carmen.

Vienna.✯

Everything is the same. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. Nothing is the same.

Carmen. ❁

Carmen. Your Carmen.

Denial. ❁

Carmy can’t keep pretending.

Mechanic!Carmen.

Inspired by that picture of JAW in a crop top.

Perfectionist. ❁

Your boyfriend being a professional chef has its perks. Especially when it comes to gingerbread houses.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

9-1-1

Evan Buckley

Lightning Strike. ❁

The two of you deal with the aftermath of Bucks trauma.

Fire Hazard. ❁

The story of your firehouse nickname - and Buck unable to handle you in a sundress.

That Old Cliche. ❁

You swore you’d never give in to the best man and maid of honour cliche. And then you met Evan Buckley.

Eddie Diaz

Best Seat in the House.

Blame it on the moustache.

Evan Buckley & Eddie Diaz

The Look of Love. ❁

You, Buck and Eddie are absolutely, undeniably, head over heels in love with each other. It seems like everyone can see it except for the three of you.

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Sons of Anarchy

Jax Teller

Heatwave. ❁

You cut Jax's hair. He can't keep his hands to himself.

Sundress Season. ❁

It’s sundress season. Jax can’t keep his hands to himself (again).

Filip 'Chibs' Telford

Teach Me How to Ride. ❁

Chibs is teaching you how to ride (in more ways than one).

Handled.

You and Chibs have been walking the line for a little too long.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Challengers

Two Can Play That Game.

You’re cheating on Patrick. You’re not proud of it, but it just… happened. Patrick’s cheating on you, too. He never meant for it to happen, but it just… did. Imagine the surprise from both of you when you find out that Art Donaldson is caught up right in the middle.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Steve Harrington

Cherry. ✯❁

The lines of friendship get a little blurry, one unassuming Friday night in December.

Someone Borrowed, Someone Blue.

An engagement party, your childhood best friend, one too many glasses of champagne. What could go wrong?

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Rivals

Declan O’Hara

Forbidden Fruit. ❁

That’s the thing about Declan - he always gets what he wants. It might be wrong… but it feels so right.

Shut Up and Drive.

It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? The one person who riles you up the most is also the only person that can calm you down.

Man of The Hour.

The sexiest thing about a man is his moustache morals.

Rupert Campbell Black

February Sky.

The highs are so high, but the lows are so low.

Golden Girl.

After years of keeping your private life private, everybody’s suddenly talking about your new boyfriend. When it rains, it pours.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

We all know what erectile dysfunction is but literally no one is ever taught what vaginismus is and it can cause people to feel extremely lost, broken, and cause people to take their own lives. Raise. Awareness.

CDrama Rant

i am watching <<Love Game in Eastern Fantasy>> and in episode 11 theres a guy who was lazy, had no self awareness and had as a result of this got his sect killed and is still hanging around the area to keep up a ruse that his sect unknowingly died protecting.

I'm not all the way through with the episode so theres still potential for him to grow and change after this but I find it so frustrating how he's just blathering on about how lazy, coniving and idiotic he's been in his pursuit of greatness and the person he's talking to not once calls him an idiot, nor has he by himself learnt anything from the decades(!!) he's spent in this rural village.

He's still scamming people for fuck's sake, but he's acting like hes doing this ultimate good and that out main cast is over-estimaiting themselves just like he did and they're going to cause trouble.

NEWSFLASH

You stupid bitch, no one else on earht could fuck up as badly as you've done.

HE'S SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING OMG

my fave fic writers have kept me sane through the worst parts of my life. you lot rock 🤙🏾

I fucking love fan-fic writers, you are the most precious people on this fucking planet and please, please, don't stop writing.