#it had around 70 chapters | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lilacgaby · 25 days ago

Text

‧₊˚ what are we?

...nothing. right?.₊˚⊹

convienence. a means to end. that's all this was for both of you right? when katsuki is fed up with the crazed fangirls who just won't leave him alone, he works out a deal with you. it was just coincidence he had a huge crush on you.

☆pair. 2ndyear!katsuki x reader. tags. fake dating!trope, fluff, reader is academically flopping for a bit, pet names, cursing, fighting (verbal), happy ending wc. 6k

ღnote. sorry that this took so long lol! i wrote this in chapter form if you'd like to read it here, but this one shot is the same thing.

post-war brought troubles for a lot of the students in class 1-A. especially bakugo katsuki.

he had to completely relearn how to write with his other hand, had to learn how to fight without injury to it.

and he had to learn to deal with his crazy amount of fangirls.

his fight had been broadcasted, the manner in which he pushed himself to the very brink broadcasted to the world. his victory brought spoils, though not in a way he expected.

he didn't expect to be chased down the hallways every morning, to have a line of girls wanting his autograph as he ate. he didn't expect to be gifted things, things they just assumed he liked, but couldn't be farther from the truth.

luckily, you seemed to like chocolate. he found refuge these days sitting on the roof floor of U-A next to you during lunch, passing you the chocolate gifts he'd been given.

he hated chocolate. but to be honest, he loved seeing you smile.

"thanks 'suki." you said for the nth time, picking the best chocolates out of the box and leaving the gross ones alone.

"yeah." he sighed, glancing at you occasionally as he moved to support the weight of his head with his hands. he found himself speechless around you often. words failing as he leant into the comfort of your presence.

you were about to say something, he thinks. your mouth was open though the blaring of the bell cut you off. "oh, let's go 'suki." you said, holding your hand out to him.

he took it, letting you pull him up and holding onto your hand for just a second too long. you dumped the rest of the chocolates in a trash can and made your collective way down to 1-A. you laughed at how he seemed to try and hide behind you, eyes darting around for the general course girls who seemed to have nothing better to do than follow him around.

they didn't come though. he saw a group of them but when they saw your proximity to him..

they left him alone.

a lightbulb went off in his head, he mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. as he sat in class, eyeing your seat between momo and jirou, he thought about how he'd ask you.

test papers were being passed out, graded ones. "yo man," kirishima started, looking over his paper, "what'd you get?"

katsuki scoffed. "what do you think? another 100, easy as shit."

kaminari groaned beside him, "you're cheating or something! i got an 80."

"that's high for someone like you!"

"hey!"

"aw man, i got a 70. you're so manly bakubro!"

"yeah, guess i am."

katsuki tried to resist the turning of his head, he really did. but he wanted to know what score you got, if you did well. though from the expression on your face and the way momo patted you on the back,

not to mention the red ink used all over your paper. he knew you didn't.

"man this totally sucks!" you exclaimed, your hands clutching the paper of your test. "i studied and everything, i don't even need math, im a hero for crying out loud!"

jirou's teases and momo's comforts faded into the background as he only focused on you, and the nagging feeling for him to help you.

with another ring of the bell and a sigh from mr. aizawa, katsuki left early to try and beat the crowd of girls who seemed to pounce on him.

he didn't though, he found himself at the entrance at U-A, almost to freedom when the crowd pointed at him, "that's him! i can't believe it!"

"dynamite, an autograph please?"

"hey- don't be so casual. it's lord explosion--"

"who cares? i want a photo!"

at that, they chased him. all his progress down the stairs and through the halls was gone as he was led right back down to class 1-A. he stupidly lead himself right back into a corner.

his head darted around, until he noticed a tuft of familiar hair in the classroom. you hadn't left? oh well, he needed your help and quick.

you were sobbing internally, looking over your horrific test score with a sad expression. a 70? you might as well just drop out now.

as the hours of studying you'd done for waste passed over in your mind, a noise caught you off guard.

he had burst in, making your deflated form jump off the desk. "katsuki, don't scare me like that!"

he rushed over to your side, grabbing your hand off where it was hanging limply on the desk. "be my girlfriend for a second."

the words barely even processed in your brain before you were being manhandled off the desk, your mind rushed to catch up. "wait-- wha-"

before you knew it you were led towards the door of obsessed fan girls. his hand was intertwined tightly with yours, a slight flush on his face.

"listen up." he started, making his fans shush eachother. "my girlfriend hasn't been appreciating all your bullshit. and neither have i, so for the love of god stop it already."

he pulled you alongside him, "move." a path opened for the two of you, letting you two through. he walked you to the entrance, no words spoken between the two of you until you stopped infront of the lockers where you'd keep your shoes.

"[name]-- uh." he took a breath, his heart sped up rapidly around you. it sped up at the simple tilt of your head.

"so. if you help me with this shit, i'll tutor you.

or whatever."

a hand was behind his head, his averted eyes now focusing on you as he awaited your answer with baited breath.

you had an expression of thoughtfulness on your face. your finger on your chin as you looked up to the ceiling to think.

'have everyone think youre dating a cute boy and get a tutor?'

the pinkie of your hand shot out, a closed eye smile on your face. "i'm in!"

a soft smile graced his lips, his pinkie intertwining with yours and sealing his fate in more ways than one.

because you really did have him wrapped around your finger. literally and figuratively.

"let's go to my room so we can talk over it!"

you really were going to be the death of him.

it's not like he'd never been to your room, just not in a situation like this.

not when he'd declared himself your boyfriend an hour earlier, not when his hands were sweaty with his nervousness, and not when you'd agreed so hastily to be his.

he wondered if you'd accept if anyone else asked you. if izuku or todoroki had been facing this situation instead of him.

"'suki?" you patted the side of your bed next to you, "sit with me."

he sighed, the thoughts disappearing from his mind at your words. he really was whipped for you.

"yeah, yeah. i'm goin'" he sat beside you, oddly stiffer than normal. he held his own hands as he waited for you to say something.

"okay, so, we should have like-- a plan or something right?"

"a plan? what the fuck for?"

"like so we don't get caught faking this or whatever. if they find out your fans will just come back running, no?"

he shuddered at the thought. "yeah, don't wanna deal with that shit."

"right? so the first part of our plan, is that everyone has to think we're dating. cool?"

katsuki's mind was racing. cool? more like the best thing that would happen to him. he felt as if everyone knew of his crush on you.. except for you.

being to say he was all yours and that you were all his, even if it was a lie..

"yeah, it's cool."

"great, that's really the only thing we had to establish. we hang out a lot anyways so, we'll just have to be affectionate or something to seal the deal."

his heart jumped at the idea of hugging you, wrapping an arm around you, holding hands with you in public. the ghost of a smile came over him.

"right."

"cool. so nothing else matter--"

"we're starting your studying shit tomorrow. the next test is next week, so we don't have time to play around [name]."

"ughh. i wish you forgot about that." your head fell into your hands. "i hate math, what do i even need it for?"

"advanced math, nothing really. but estimates are important in hero work. estimating time, the abilities of your body, the amount of civilians, all that stuff."

"you're such a nerd."

"hah?"

he continued explaining the importance of math to you despite your grievances. his finger was pointed in the air, you swore you could see the need emoji popping over his face.

your eyes closed, the weight of the day, your grade, and the thought of studying alongside a nerd like katsuki tiring you to no avail. you yawned, laying your head on his shoulder.

you could hear the thumping of his heart, the racing of his blood in his veins. it rocked you to sleep, "wake me up later, m' a take a nap." you mumbled against his shoulder, before falling asleep.

his mouth shut, eyes peeled on your body that now clung to his side. his face grew hot, when did it get so hot in your damn room?

he tried his best to stay awake, to let you nap and wake you up in the morning. but as the clock hit eight o clock, the time he was supposed to head back to his dorm.. he found himself stuck in place.

not by an invisible force, not by some obligation. it was only the thought of wanting to be with you, next to you. wanting to let the comfort of your weight next to him drive himself to sleep.

so he did. he fell asleep, letting his head lay on top of yours, holding your body closer to his. shutting his eyes.

the light of the sun woke him up first, you didn't close your blinds yesterday, and the sun shined brightly,

directly into his face. he groaned, his voice deep from sleep as he peeled himself off of you. he was confused from fatigue, wondering why he was still in your room.

he felt an arm around his waist, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes to see it was you who was holding him close. he thinks you were using him in place of your huge teddy bear, the one laid neatly in the corner of your bed.

his heart rate quickened once again, wanting to go back to his room, but fighting the urge to stay looking at you.

an absentminded hand moved a couple strands of your hair out your face, pinching your cheek when he got bold.

you don't wake up, he sighed a breath of relief. 'til he felt your body start to stir, you pushed your head more into his chest, your eyes finally starting to open slightly.

"oh? g'morning kat'." you were sleepy, your words slightly slurred and muffled from how you were pressed against him.

"you slept here?" you asked, pulling away from him as you moved to stretch your upper body.

"uh-- yeah." he was once again lost for words at the sight of you, your shirt slightly pulled up from how you'd slept, your hair messy from the lack of a protective style before sleep.

"sorry for waking you up then, 'suki."

"no, i was already up. i just didn't wanna wake you."

"well, you failed." you joked. "anyways, you should get out of here soon, if iida sees you he'll probably flip out and tell mr. aizawa."

"right."

"let's walk to class together!" you clasped his hands in yours. "okay?"

you were going to be the death of him once again. "okay."

you let go and he got up, ruffling his hair slightly and looking back at you who sent him a small smirk and wave. before slowly walking out your door. he did his best to keep his movements quiet and minimal.

he was at the elevator, before uraraka walked out. shit. "bakugo? what are you doing here?"

"uh.. got lost."

her face scrunched in confusion, a knowing smile on her face after a second. "right.. tell [name] good morning for me."

".. tell her yourself." he got into the elevator, already seeing the grin in uraraka's face as he went up a floor to his room.

the same grin everyone greeted him with as he went to sit next to you in the common room, having made you some breakfast. he and you were all ready, you had refreshed your hair from when he was playing with it, simple makeup and your uniform ironed. he admired you while he ate his meal.

"ah, thanks 'suki."

"mhm."

you moved to whisper in his ear, "why's everyone looking at us?"

"fuck if i know."

"so you two lovebirds aren't gonna say anything?" denki said, putting his hands on his hips as he looked you two over.

"'bout what?"

"that you two are totally dating!" mina exclaimed, pointing at you. "and you didn't say anything? wow [name], i thought.. we were closer than that." she mock fully cried.

katsuki was about to say something, you cut him off though. "i thought everyone knew?" with a tilt of your head, a question mark almost visible from the blank expression you wore.

the class only sighed, kirishima shrugged his shoulders. "yeah, we should've guessed. i mean bakugo had a obvious crush on you for the longest."

"yeah, good looks man." sero gave him a thumbs up.

"tch. let's go [name]." he sat up, placing his and your finished dishes in the sink before you followed behind him.

"right! bye guys!"

you grabbed his hand as you walked out the door. nobody was around, there was no need to keep up appearances now.

but that didn't stop him from holding your hand tighter.

and that didn't stop you from clinging even more to his side.

it seemed you two were now together all the time. a clingy couple is what you seemed like to your friends, and more importantly his fans.

at lunch he could now be in the cafeteria again, you were stuck his side as you ate, an arm around you as you shared his food, insisting his cooking was better than the U-A food.

you were caged in by his body, you really did just look like a sappy couple to everyone.

during class, he was caught glancing at you. a lot. he'd roll his eyes and pretend nothing even happened, but everyone knew he was far gone.

during training, as you sparred you noticed he was going harder on you than before. some would think that because you were his crush he wouldn't get so aggressive,

too bad katsuki only wanted to push you harder, get you to show the strength he saw you unleash on those villains in the war. he wanted you to be stronger beside him, if he was number one, he'd want you to be ranked closely to him, because he knew you were strong enough.

that didn't mean it wasn't any more hard to fight him, the man was a maniac.

"you can chill out you know!"

"what? can't take it?!"

"no, slow your fucking roll!" you barely dodged his other attack, just barely moving out the way as he threw an explosion in your direction.

you now had met the conditions to use your quirk, comeback. by generating a max of 8 orbs, they'd absorb energy that you could use back for your offense. the only downside?

melee attacks couldn't be absorbed at all.

a kick to your legs sent you to the ground, you dispersed one of your orbs with the explosion stored inside of it.

"be nice and let me win!!"

"no."

he dodged your attack and pinned you to the ground. he won.

"you're so mean 'suki." you shoved him off you, making him grunt. "a good boyfriend would've let me win!"

a nagging voice in the back of his head was telling him he wasn't yours, you weren't his, and that he was only doing this for his convinience.

"well, i guess i'll be a better one next time."

even that voice couldn't deny that the way he cared for you wasn't anything less than real. that even if this relationship was fake, that he was undoubtedly yours. that the way he held his hand out to you, lifting you as gently as he could fathom.

"wanna go again?" he asked, a boyish smirk on his face.

"you know it!"

your plan of tiring katsuki out with exercise didn't work, so you found yourself in his room at his desk. showered and wiping the dew off your neck with a towel, you sat in front of him with a book splayed open.

he was hammering topic after topic into you.. statistics or something? you weren't really paying attention, you were more interested in the bulge of his muscles out of his tank top.

his words were a blur when you suddenly found yourself reaching a hand out to feel his muscle,

your hand squeezing it.

'firm. hm.' you thought, until he pulled you away, an incredulous look on his face. "this is why your class ranking keeps falling [name]. focus!"

"how can i focus with you in front of me? it's like dancing a donut in front of a cop!" you whined, face planted onto his desk.

"you're.. insane."

"you love me though, don't you?" the words slipped out of your lips without a second thought, your face flushing slightly. "oops, sorry! almost forgot you arent my like-- real boyfriend!"

he swore he heard a bit of disappointment in your voice, felt a bit of reluctance in your movements as you pulled away at him, saw a bit of longing in your eyes.

"uh.. yeah. 's fine. let's just.. take a break." he said, motioning over to lay on his bed and do nothing for a little while.

if you would've told him a couple months ago that he'd be sat, face to face, body next to body, hands awkwardly close to each other as you remained in silence. you'd had a movie on in the background, something stupid he thought. not like he payed attention to it at all.

it was comfortable, being around you. he'd be a liar if he said that he didn't like the fact that everyone now thought you were his and vice versa. not just his fans, not just yours, but your mutual friends. family.

"do you wanna try again?" he asked after a while, voice soft and his hand moving to rub his eyes. it was his bedtime, eight o clock sharp, but he'd break it for you.

"hm? to be honest no." you moved to face him. "you look tired anyways 'suki, you should sleep."

he grumbled, his eyes closing slightly as he slowly swatted your hand away from his face, his grip lingering on your wrist.

"right." he yawned. he didn't know if it was the sleep or impulse, maybe a mixture of both. but he pulled you closer to him. making you crash against his chest with his head in the nook of your neck.

"stay." he uttered, his breath flush against your neck making the hairs stand up.

"katsuki?" you thought you were dreaming. you'd move to pinch yourself if you weren't being pinned down by him.

"please?"

"..okay." your words barely matched your actions. you cuddled more into him, pulling him impossibly closer as you melted into eachother.

a blanket was thrown over the two of you. you fell asleep in his arms, the beating of his heart matching yours as you breathed a sigh of realization.

you were horribly in love with katsuki bakugo. and he was with you.

your 'fake' activities as a couple were coming along a little bit too easily to the two of you.

feeding him a snack in his room as a joke, him finding out he kind of liked being babied, him blackmailing you so you shut up.

all couple things. normal couple activity.

you didn't even have to continue those things behind closed doors, but it just came so naturally. it seemed wrong not to do it.

it seemed wrong for him not to sling a hand over you, not to hold your hand when it was so close to him, not to move the stray strands of hair and tuck it behind your ear.

it seemed wrong for him not to save a spot for you at lunch, not to wake up a bit earlier and slip out of your sleepy grasp to prepare you a meal alongside his.

not to make some breakfast for you, light or heavy, depending on what he'd learned you preferred.

not to walk with you to class, even walking with you to go see your general studies friend in the morning, leaning against the doorway with a smile on his face as he watched you rave on about a show you'd watched recently.

why wouldn't he do it if he could? why shouldn't he watch your favorite shows just to have things to talk to you about?

he found himself fighting to stay focused during your study sessions now too. he found himself noticing things about you, the smaller things.

how you'd flip your hello kitty pencil around while you were speaking. how you'd bite your lips in concentration, your expressions of disbelief when you actually started getting things correct.

he'd have to cover his hand with his face. you were just too cute.

sometimes he'd even get distracted mid sentence. he was explaining simple things over again, just to make sure you knew what it meant.

but it was hard even keeping eye contact with you.

"so, in this problem x would be.. uh.." he went silent, his mouth open but no words escaping.

"x would be what? 7?" you showed your page of work to him, with a nervous smile. "if it's not right tell me already! i know im kinda dumb, it won't hurt my feelings too bad i swear!"

he looked down back at his page. mentally slamming his head onto the table, before recovering. "yeah, no you're right. you got it."

you slammed the work onto his desk, "finally! then we can break now right?"

"yeah, 'guess so."

"let's do something fun. take a walk, my legs hurt from sitting." you pulled him up by his hand, dragging him to his door. "hurry up!"

he couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped him, you really reminded him of just how young you two were. how he was just a high schooler with a huge crush, how--

"why are you looking at me like that? are you sick?" you placed a hand on his forehead, making him promptly rip it off. a scowl quickly replaced the smile that been on his face moments prior. "no i'm not. let's go."

you walked hand in hand, the sunset the background for your 'date'.

the last few days, he'd been nervous to bring up what was happening between you. he was nervous to ruin the odd relationship you two had, he didn't want to lose you. he thought the things you two had been doing crossed the line between friendship and lovers.

you didn't have to do any of this. though he was sure you knew that already.

"math exam's tomorrow."

"don't remind me! you totally ruined the moment you know."

"you'll pass. i mean, i was your tutor after all. if you fail with me as a teacher? you are a lost cause."

"that's not nice to say." you ripped his hand away from yours, crossing your arms on your chest. "thats really messed up 'suki."

he leant down to face you, the sun goldening you two in its wake as he grew a cocky smirk on his lips. "oh really?"

"yes really."

"n' what're you gonna do about it?" his face was barely an inch away from yours. with a glance to his lips, he moved closer.

he barely pecked you, before he heard a loud, obnoxious idiot speak from behind him.

"[name] and bakugo are totally making out over here!"

denki and kirishima were looking at the two of you, a glare crossed over katsuki's face as he basically dragged you with him back into his dorm. he was about to leave you at your dorm, the hallway empty since curfew was around the corner.

he held your hands in his, running his thumb over the knuckle of yours. he intertwined your fingers, only letting go after a while.

he tilted your head upwards with his two fingers, wordlessly asking for permission. moonlight now struck you two as he moved in.

uninterruptedly, he kissed you. deepening it with a pull of the hand, holding you against him.

he let go after a while, his internal clock signaling it was almost time for curfew.

before he left, he whispered to you. "i don't.. really care what we're labeled. and if this shit is real or not.

i just want to be close to you."

he turned, walking to the elevator. leaving your breathless, with your heart in your throat.

no more words were spoken between you two, not as you screamed into your pillow, and not as he stared up into the ceiling of his room.

you passed that math test. and each assignment that went with it.

the end of the year was now coming quickly, of the school year that is. you and katsuki still kept up your 'act', the activities now stretching to dates after school mixed in with your study sessions.

one's that'd leave the touch of katsuki on you more than the touch of knowledge. but it was working nonetheless.

it was all good between you two, an eternal honeymoon it seemed. after all, by now it had been at least seven months since this began. your class ranking was higher, he no longer had to worry about strolling through the halls, it seemed nothing could get in your way.

well, besides two things.

one: the fact that you two were scared to label in between yourselves yet, too bashful to call him your boyfriend and you his girlfriend in private, yet proud fully admitting it to others.

two, the girl currently straddling him with no regard to you whatsoever. your entire cafeteria table was staring at her, looking at what katsuki would do to move her off.

but when he didn't immediately, didn't immediately curse the girl out and push her off him? you did the job for him.

you yanked the girl by her hair, sending her to the floor with a tray of food falling onto her body. all attention was on you as you stared at katsuki, your mouth agape in anger.

"what the fuck bakugo?" you ignored her, even stepping on her leg slightly as your hands were agitated, your whole body was. you didn't even know why you were jealous. this wasn't real, it never was, he was just playing his role too well.

you should've known katsuki would go too far. he always did.

"babe-- it's not what you think-"

"then what was i looking at? and don't call me that. don't- don't fucking call me anything. we're over."

you knew to him that probably meant something different. you acclaimed the despair in his eyes to the loss of protection, to the loss of ease as he walked in the halls and the lack of paparazzi that'd ask him questions on his love life.

but to him it was so much more.

it was those things, yes. but it was more so the thought of losing you. the thought of the affection over the months being nothing but a memory and not his future. the thought of not having you close to him.

the thoughts of becoming nothing to you, less than a friend.

he didn't know why he didn't move, it was like he physically couldn't. the look in the girl's eyes, the grip she had on him, the weird smile. he recognized her as one of the girls who usually would be in the crowd following him around.

"you don't mean that." his voice sounded more desperate than it had in the whole time he'd met you, more longing slipping through than he intentioned.

but the sun's casting light had moved away from you, casting you in a shadow. "i do mean it. fuck you."

he was going to run after you, to chase you as you slammed your lunch tray into the trash. heading up to the rooftop to he alone.

but a hand, mina's, pulled him back. "i think.. you did enough bakugo."

she went after you instead, promising to bakugo she'd check on you.

fangirls were one thing? but a messy public breakup where you were never really something in the first place? surprisingly worse.

he'd been more snappy lately, his aura making the girls around him keep their distance.

he'd become quieter, closed off. you didn't come to eat lunch with him anymore, obviously. and he didn't go up to the rooftop to join you.

he didn't know how to speak to you, how to explain what happened, how to say that he was sorry.

he ran the scenario in his head a million times, thinking over the girl's quirk that had forced him into place. but it sounded so convenient, like he was lying.

but since your entire relationship was based off of one, he didn't know how to approach the topic in the first place.

a week. a week passed before he could muster up the words to speak to you.

a week of being ignored in the hallways, side glances and being walked off on. a week of not having you by his side, not having you to talk to, to study with,

to kiss.

you were alone on the rooftop, eating silently as you felt a presence behind you. you saw his hair in the shadow and sighed, placing your plate onto the floor next to you. "what?"

"let me talk."

"...fine."

he breathed a sigh, hands balling as he forced the words out. "i know what you saw. and i know it was bad, but listen. that.. girl. she had some quirk on me or something."

he paused, seeing as your movement shifted. he took the fact that you didn't leave as a sign to continue.

"i couldn't move, i would've. you know that. but, it was right for you to be fucking pissed. i'd be too.

and i know, this is my fault in a way. i've been.. a fuckin' loser about this." his hand went up to support his head, his eyes averting from where he felt yours eyeing him.

"i needed to ask you out, officially i mean, a long time ago. it was wrong of me to use you-"

"it wasn't like that and you know it." you moved now to face him, you taking his hands in yours once more.

"what are we? to you i mean."

"right now..

we're nothing, right?"

your eyes widened, his eyes came back to look at yours.

"what?"

the words settled between you, it sent a cold shiver down your spine at the implication.

"wait-- fuck i'm messing this shit up. i mean, we're, not anything right now. we weren't anything."

your heart sank, eyes falling to the floor though your hand still held by him. your bleeding heart was in his grasp too, it was apparent.

"but,

i'd like to be? if you'd have me."

he squeezed your hand tightly. "i, i think i did this all out of order. but, would you go out with me?"

you let out an anxious laugh mixed with emotion. relief? despair? you honestly didn't know. tears burned the corners of your eyes.

"you're-- you're real weird, you know that?"

"is that a no."

"no, it's a yes. i think."

"ya think?"

"you don't get to question me!"

"yeah, whatever." you shared a laugh of relief together. he held you, moving away to bring something out of his pocket.

a small bento box for you.

you gasped at the sight of it, it was so cute. "thank god! i hate this school shit." you sat down, patting the side beside you, prompting him to sit down.

"wow, a heart? don't tell me you like me or something katsuki."

instead of deflecting, of telling you to buzz off, of shoving you lightly, a small smile came over his lips once again. after a beat, he laughed boyishly.

"you caught me."

...

he patted your back as you choked on the heart shaped seaweed.

your first date was cute, a small picnic with the country of musatafu as your backdrop. it was weird, this scene had played out between you two various times. in his room, in public, in private, to everyone else you two had just recovered from a messy breakup. and yet,

your stomachs were filled with butterflies at the affection between you two.

your rank was high, the dates were endless between the two of you now. study dates, just going to cafes, mundane things became more when you were by each others side.

years passed, and your poor dorm was going mostly unused. you'd sleep in his bed most of the time, actually- you'd spent most of your time in his room. he even cleared out a section for you in his closet despite the fact that yours was perfectly fine.

graduation came along, your careers came rushing at the two of you.

you were the top rated woman hero, and he was number one. just like he dreamt, just like he imagined the future would be for the two of you all those years ago.

you were picking out some drinks from the vending machine, a pocky hanging out your mouth as you decided between two flavors.

you finally chose, having two drinks in your hand for you and katsuki when he suddenly dragged you into an alleyway, grunting when he pushed you against the wall.

deja vu? maybe, you felt like you lived through this before, the same mindless stampede of girls rushing past.

"i told you to clip down your hair."

"shut up. don't they even care that we're married now? why do they fucking bother?." he sighed, annoyed as he lightly grabbed the can out your hand, his frustration not matching his actions.

"well, maybe we need something that'd make it even more official." a lightbulb went over the both of your heads. you faced each other, a streetlight letting you see the slight pink tint of his cheeks.

"a ca-"

"a baby."

you laughed, keeling over at the sight of his face that grew impossibly red.

you went home, hand in hand, the photos of the two of you together making rounds in the media again.

but as you laid with his head laid on your lap, your head rested comfortably against the furniture you'd chosen for your home?

you couldn't help but feel like everything worked out perfectly.

and with the new addition of your family laid sleeping on top of katsuki's chest.

tags (can't tag orange :c): @k0z3me @darhinadadragon @maddietries @amayaaaxx @i-the-fluffo @irenne-stans @hisonlyobsession @dead-fish-soup @pretty-sparkle-bomb @matchat3a @yura-4life @djlance-rock @zuzukusna @hiimsaraandyou @uy242c

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wintrwinchestr · 3 months ago

Text

strangers | part 1

summary: following in the footsteps of a girl you once knew, you decide to up and leave home one morning without looking back. when you find yourself to be tired, hungry, and alone in the middle of nowhere, you're thankful when a kind stranger offers you a ride, a warm meal, and a place to sleep for the night. he only tells you about himself in bits and pieces, but he seems trustworthy enough, and what you don't know can't hurt you, right?

!!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, talk of death/murder and blood, mommy & daddy issues, brief talk of domestic violence, lying/gaslighting, manipulation, f-receiving non-con somnophilia (no sex, but groping, fingering, dry humping, kissing, and choking), degrading language toward victims, pet names (baby, darlin', sweetheart), some joel pov, no ellie/sarah but tommy has an unnamed daughter, somewhat inspired by "strangers" by ethel cain, takes place in illinois/ohio/indiana, vaguely set in the 70s/80s, this part is mostly introduction/storytelling/yapping, please respectfully let me know if i missed anything and i will rectify the tags

word count: 9.8k

a/n: i started this as a oneshot way back in november, and then it sat abandoned for a very long time. thank you to my lovely friends @polaroidpascal and @chippedowlmug for encouraging me to finish it, and also bestie kiers who never hesitates to match my freak. also thank you to the many writers who made me feel inspired to write something dark and not give a fuck what people think about it. i hope you enjoy this joel he's a freak and i love him and if you say anything mean about him i'll send him after you <3

divider by @saradika

series masterlist/moodboard

read this chapter on ao3

part 2

Ruby Carpenter.

You had spent all day trying to remember her name without really knowing why. Maybe it’s because as the sun sets on what would be the first day of your junior year at the nearby state school, you wonder if she ever made it to one of the fancy ivy leagues she had always aspired to attend. You wonder if she’s even still alive.

Ruby had disappeared a few years ago now, the summer after your senior year of high school. For nearly a year afterwards, her missing posters remained stapled onto every telephone pole and stuck onto every store window around town, until the paper began to disintegrate and the ink began to fade. In that time, you couldn’t even make a quick run to the grocery store without being confronted by dozens of replicas of her yearbook photo printed onto the sides of all the milk cartons. Despite all of the efforts to find her, including several search parties and a decent amount of statewide media coverage, everyone had just stopped looking for her, eventually. Even the police. Even her parents.

It was decided that she had probably just run away, and you can’t entirely blame her, but you can’t imagine why she would, either. You remember her perfect head of blonde ringlet curls that shone a yellow gold in the sun, and her bright blue eyes that turned fiery in her more passionate moments during classroom debates. She had every boy in your grade wrapped around her finger, was the teacher’s pet in every class, and it wasn’t even a question whether she would win prom queen your senior year. She was always sweet to you, always complimented your outfits or your makeup or your art projects with a genuine lilt in her voice and a kind smile, so you could never bring yourself to hate her even though it would’ve been so easy to. You figured she was going to cure cancer or become the president after you had all graduated, which is why you never really stopped wondering whatever happened to her that summer. She was beautiful, with boundless potential and a bright future ahead of her, why would she have just given it all up?

Everyone around town knew Ruby, or at least it seemed that way. But maybe nobody ever really knew her as well as they thought. Maybe she’d had a secret boyfriend all that time who whisked her away that summer, maybe she had decided to try drugs and fell down a rabbit hole that she couldn’t claw her way out of, maybe she had finally figured out that the only thing this town would ever be good for is holding people back. Maybe she did just wake up one day and decide to run without ever looking behind her.

Maybe you should do the same.

With your dad long gone now and your step-father doing a piss poor job of filling in the hole he left, following in Ruby’s footsteps has sounded like a better idea with each passing day. Rob isn’t even really your step-father, anyway, just your mom’s sorry fucking excuse for a boyfriend. The guy’s already been married upwards of three times before, why try for another one? He’s a lazy son of a bitch who can’t hold down a job at a fast food joint for more than a couple of weeks at a time, who sleeps every second of the day that he’s not chugging through a six pack, and who leaves marks on your mother uglier than his fucking face.

She doesn’t deserve to be treated that way, of course, but it’s not like she’s winning the “mom of the year” award any time soon, either. She’s never even been nominated. She’s forgotten just about every one of your birthdays, been the reason you’ve never had any friends come over, and in her most recent offense, blew all the savings you had put away for your last two years of college. Which is why you’re not spending tonight celebrating being one year closer to at least having an official-looking piece of paper to show for yourself. Instead, you’re using the rattling of your bedroom window unit and the booming bass of your radio to drown out yet another drunken screaming match between your mother and the guy she lets live in your house now, watching the world outside pass you by and knowing that if you don’t do anything about it now, you’ll never make it out of here. You’re thinking about Ruby Carpenter, hoping she found somewhere greener and more promising and was able to make something of herself, far away from here. And you’re thinking that this rusted orange sunset is the last one you’ll ever see from your bedroom window.

It’s decided, then. You’re leaving, first thing tomorrow.

—

You’ve only gotten a few hours of sleep by the time your alarm clock chimes to life at five o’clock on the dot. You’re quick to silence the shrill beeping with a swift swat of your hand, careful not to wake anyone else in the house. The sun has just barely begun to stream in through the blinds of your bedroom window, but it illuminates the room just enough for your eyes to land on the backpack you had stuffed full of a few changes of clothes last night, waiting for you by the door.

You don’t waste any time stripping off your pajamas and pulling on just about the only clothes left in your room that aren’t in your bag. You’ve got your teeth brushed, face washed, and hair tamed in all of about ten minutes, too anxious to spend even one more unnecessary second in this house. You swing your backpack over your shoulder, pull your bedroom door open at just the right speed so that the hinges don’t squeak too loud, and tiptoe delicately down the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky floorboards that you know like the back of your hand—the one three steps from the top, the one at the landing about halfway down, and the very bottom one.

You land softly when you leap over that tattletale bottom step, successful in the most difficult part of your escape plan so far. Rob is passed out on the living room couch in typical fashion, his mouth full of crooked teeth hanging open as his grating snores permeate the calm morning air. He’s still got a death grip around an empty beer can, even in his sleep, and your mother will likely be the one to toss it into the trash for him, useless fucker that he is. You aren’t going to miss either of them, and you imagine they’ll just skip trying to replicate the first half of the aftermath of Ruby’s disappearance altogether—no posters, no search parties, no police. You’ll just be gone, one less mouth for your mother to feed. Though, you’d been mostly feeding yourself since you were tall enough to slide a couple of bills across the counter at the corner store down the street, anyway. You’re ready to disappear, the same as candle wax when it burns, the same as the end of a rainbow, the same as Ruby Carpenter.

You don’t bother looking back when you shut the door behind you, content to leave it all behind just as the sun begins to rise and set the sky ablaze. By the time it sets again tonight, you hope to be in a different county, in a different state, anywhere that isn’t here. The rest, you’ll just have to figure out when you get there, wherever “there” may be.

—

You had only realized about an hour ago that you’d forgotten your cheap digital watch in the drawer of your bedside table, where it’s laid unused for the past couple of months, because who needs to tell time during the summer? You never had anywhere to be, never had to get to class or turn in a paper by a certain time, so it’s just been collecting dust since you had unclipped it from your wrist on the last day of spring semester. It sure would have come in handy right about now, when you have no fucking clue what time it is. The sun had disappeared behind the hills several mile markers back, so it must be… eight o’clock? Ten o’clock? Fucking midnight? You have no idea. What you do know is that you’re exhausted, hungry, and your feet hurt like hell. You aren’t really sure what you expected, the reality only just now setting in that you don’t even have ten bucks to your name anymore, thanks to your narcissist of a mother. The crumpled up bills you do have in your pocket are hardly enough for a goddamn sandwich, let alone a motel room. The cool night breeze raises goosebumps on your skin, and you swear you can see your fucking breath, even in the middle of August. You wrap your arms around yourself just as tears begin to prick at your waterlines, and you let them fall as you collapse onto the scratchy patch of dead grass on the side of the freeway, not a park bench or a bus stop or even a gas station in sight for God knows how many more miles.

You sit cross-legged, elbows propped up on your knees so that your hands can support your weary head, the skin of your palms becoming slippery with salty tears as your crying just doesn’t seem to stop. The road you’ve found yourself on seems relatively low-trafficked, the heaving sounds of your sobs accompanied by more cricket chirps and rustling wheat than rumbling tires. But a few high beams do streak across your vision every once in a while, coloring the backs of your eyelids a flaming scarlet.

After several minutes, your tears seem to dry up on their own, your body likely too dehydrated now to produce any more. You wipe the moisture from under your eyes with the back of your hand, sniffling as you gnaw at the skin of your bottom lip and debate if you should just turn back now, give up on your stupid little plan (or lack thereof) and just call the whole thing a loss, pretend it never even happened. Your mother and Rob won’t have even noticed you’d left.

Just as you pull yourself back up to your feet, set on at least finding somewhere that isn’t the hard ground to sleep on tonight before you make your way back home tomorrow, the warm headlights of an old pickup truck are shining bright in your eyes. You put your arm up to block them as the truck slowly squeals to a halt in front of where you’re standing, and you squint your eyes at the driver as your vision adjusts.

“You need a ride, sweetheart?” A man asks in a gravelly voice, and you can still hardly make out what he looks like. Based on the southern accent you pick up on, he doesn’t sound like he’s from around here.

“N-no, thank you. I’m okay,” you respond shakily, taking a nervous step back from the stranger and his rusted pickup.

“You sure? Looked like you were cryin’ over here, like you might be lost or somethin’.”

“‘M not lost, I know where I’m going.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s that?��

Shit.

You take a guess.

“Um… the motel down the road,” you reply, tilting your head in the direction you had been walking in.

“There ain’t a motel down there, sweetheart. Ain’t nothin’ in either direction for miles, ‘s all just farmland out here. Reckon you’ve already figured that out, though.”

You pause, unsure of what your next move should be. He knows you’re lying, knows you’re alone with no fucking idea where you are or where you’re going. You could run, but even that shitty truck of his could catch up to you in a matter of seconds. You take another step back, swiveling your head around to look up and down the road as you try to figure your best way out of this.

“Just lemme give you a ride somewhere, darlin’. There’s a diner just off the exit, ‘bout twenty miles up ahead. Could take you that far, at least, get you somethin’ to eat,” he offers. A warm meal does sound pretty good right now, and you suppose you aren’t exactly in a position to refuse his help.

You think on it for a second. “What’s it called? The diner.”

The stranger huffs. “Moody’s.”

“What do they have?” you challenge.

He sighs. “It’s a fuckin’ diner off the side of the freeway, darlin’. They got greasy food and black coffee, ‘s about all you need.”

You don’t say anything.

Then, after a beat—“They got some kinda sloppy mess they call the Thunder Burger. ‘S got onion rings and shit on it. Ain’t half bad.”

You have to admit, he’s passing your pop quiz with flying colors. His answers have been too quick, too specific for him to be lying to you. There’s a pretty solid chance this diner does exist, and that he’s been there before. The man hasn’t said anything that’s indicated he wants more to do with you than to offer you a ride and some dinner. He’s probably just somebody’s harmless grandfather, anyway, judging by his motheaten flannel and gray-stricken beard you can see now that you’ve approached his truck a few paces closer.

“Okay,” you concede, your stomach growling loudly as the man leans over the bench seat to pop open the passenger side door for you. You shrug off your backpack and climb into the cabin, clicking your seatbelt into place as you situate yourself on the cracked leather seat.

“All set?” the stranger asks.

“Mhm,” you hum, finally getting a better look at the man you might just owe the rest of your life to after tonight. For being somebody’s grandfather, he’s… kinda handsome. Really fucking handsome, actually, in a rugged sort of way. He’s got warm amber eyes that sparkle even in the dark of night, a kind smile that completely disarms you in an instant, and a splintering scar across the bridge of his nose that somehow only adds to his good looks. You try to suppress your own grin as you look away from him quickly, opting to focus on fidgeting with one of the fraying edges of your denim shorts instead. Even in your peripheral vision, you don’t miss how his eyes shift from your own to the exposed skin of your thighs. He doesn’t say anything, just clears his throat as he shifts gears and steers his truck back onto the road again.

He lets the next few minutes pass in comfortable silence before asking, “You got a name, sweetheart?”

You tell him, and he flashes another charming smile at you. “I like that, ‘s pretty… Well, I’m Joel. Sure you were wonderin’. Now you ain’t gettin’ a ride from a stranger no more, are ya?”

“Yeah, I guess I’m not,” you giggle, and you’re surprised at how comfortable you feel with him. “So… you’ve been to Moody’s before?”

“Handful of times, yeah. When I’m passin’ through.”

You nod. “So you come up here, like… for work or somethin’?”

Joel chuckles. “Or somethin’. You never even heard of the damn place, so… reckon you don’t find yourself out here very often, do ya?”

“No… ‘M not even really sure where ‘here’ is, to be honest. I just kinda… started walking.”

“Ah… a runaway, then, are ya?” Joel asks, with an appreciated amount of understanding in his tone rather than judgment. “‘M sure your folks are missin’ ya right about now, must have your boyfriend worried sick.”

You scoff at that. “Fuck no. They probably don’t even know I’m gone, won’t even bother trying to come look for me. And I don’t have a boyfriend, so…”

“Damn shame. ‘M sorry about that, sweetheart,” Joel comforts, placing a large calloused hand on your thigh. It makes your breath hitch, but his touch isn’t entirely unwelcome. You let him squeeze once at the plush of your leg before he replaces his hand on the wheel, and your cunt spasms out a little fluttering pulse against the seam of your shorts, despite yourself.

The rest of the drive to Moody’s is relatively quiet, save for the gentle crooning of an old country singer emanating from the cassette player on the dash. The soft singing and steady strumming of a banjo combined with the muffled chugging of the truck’s engine is enough to lull you to sleep, especially after the day you’ve had. You know that just about every mental alarm bell you have should be screaming at you to jump out of the car, to run, that sleeping alone in the dirt would’ve been a better decision than getting into this strange man’s—Joel’s—truck, but you’re too tired to hear them. He smells good, like woodsmoke and pine and cinnamon, and if he wanted to do something awful to you, he probably would’ve done it by now. So you trust him, for now at least, and let your lashes fan out against your cheeks as your head falls back against the cushioned headrest, coaxed into sleep by the lullaby of tires against pavement and fingertips against guitar strings.

—

You only rouse when you feel the truck come to a stop about half an hour or so later, slowly blinking your eyes open against the bright neon sign that reads “MOODY’S” in bold capital letters. Your jaw stretches wide as a yawn overtakes the muscles, and you hear Joel’s southern drawl replace the one from the cassette as he shuts the engine off.

“Mornin’, sleepyhead. Not too tired to eat somethin’ now, are ya?”

Another unpleasant-sounding rumble from your empty stomach answers for you, loud enough for both of you to hear this time. The air puffing out of the diner’s kitchen smells strongly of fatty bacon and rich coffee, just like Joel had promised you the place would offer. Although the digital clock on the dash read just after 10:30 before you fell asleep, you’ve never craved breakfast quite like you do right now. You absentmindedly lick your lips as you imagine the sweet and savory—and more importantly free—meal that could be waiting for you beyond that blinding beacon of a sign.

“Well, alright then. Let’s get some food in ya before you keel over, hm?” Joel says as he exits the truck, landing on his feet in the dirt parking lot with a soft groan. He waits by the hood for you to meet up with him, and you walk up the couple of steps to the entrance together. He holds the door open for you, and you offer him a shy ‘thank you’, to which he responds with a soft spoken ‘welcome, sweetheart’. You stand shyly behind his broad form as he asks the hostess for a table for two, and she leads you to a green leather booth tucked into the corner of the diner. She hands each of you a sticky laminated menu, the pages a charming mess of clashing colors and faded pictures and retro-looking fonts, then departs with a promise that your waitress will bring the two of you some water as you take your time deciding on what you might like.

You light up upon reading that Moody’s serves breakfast all day, and that they can make you exactly what you were hoping for—a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with sides of bacon and hashbrowns. You can’t help but smile to yourself as you wiggle in your seat, excitedly anticipating the waitress to come back around so you can order.

“Whatcha so excited about over there?” Joel asks, eyeing you from across the table as he glances up from his own menu.

“Nothin’, I was just hoping I could get some pancakes, and they have ‘em on the menu,” you explain giddily. “I’ll probably get some coffee, too, really complete the whole ‘breakfast for dinner’ thing.”

Joel huffs through his nose. “Decaf, I hope. ‘S the middle of the goddamn night, sweetheart. Gonna be bouncin’ off the walls in the room later, hardly get any sleep.”

He’s right, you suppose. But wait—“What room?”

Joel shrugs casually. “There’s a decent motel another exit or two down, figured they could probably get us a couple o’ beds for the night. But, ‘m sorry, shouldn’t have assumed—”

“No! No, it’s okay.”

Is it? You only met the man less than an hour ago, and you already agreed to let him give you a ride before you even knew his name. You suppose you hadn’t really thought about what would happen after he bought you dinner, but not thinking ahead seems to have been a theme today, hasn’t it? You remind yourself that he’s only been kind and respectful to you so far, save for that placement of his hand on your upper thigh soon after he picked you up. But that could’ve just been a friendly, paternal gesture, right? And he said a couple of beds, when he mentioned the motel, which seemed to imply that he plans on the two of you sleeping in separate beds, maybe even separate rooms. You’ve found yourself having to make yet another somewhat reckless decision tonight, but one that would be in your best interest to say ‘yes’ to, at this point. What other option would you have if you declined his offer?

“Don’t really have anywhere else to go, so… yeah, okay. Motel sounds good. And decaf it is, I guess.”

Joel’s apologetic expression quickly morphs into a satisfied smirk. “Good girl,” he praises. You like how the words sound coated in his thick drawl, even though you probably shouldn’t. You shift where you sit as that familiar fluttering sensation returns to the seat of your panties, just for a moment. You’re grateful that the waitress arrives at the booth not a second later, cheerily introducing herself as she sets down a glass of water for each of you. When she asks if you’re ready to order, Joel gestures to you as if to say ‘ladies first’, and you politely prattle off your request. You make sure to emphasize that you’d like your coffee decaf, and ask if she could please bring some more of the little cups of vanilla creamer to the table. “Not a problem, honey,” she replies, and Joel winks at you as she asks what she can get for him. He orders the Thunder Burger he had told you about earlier, and a black coffee, which he doesn’t request to be decaf. The waitress leaves the two of you alone again with an ‘I’ll have that right out for ya,’ and you let your eyes follow the calming baby blue color of her dress as she glides her way back to the kitchen. When she disappears around the corner of the bar, you take the opportunity to study Moody’s other patrons. There isn’t another young person in sight, mostly just men around Joel’s age with similarly heavy bags under their eyes, likely truck drivers indulging in their first hot meal of the day within the diner’s comforting wood-paneled walls. You wonder if that’s how Joel knows about this place, because he “passes through” this area on long hauls across the midwest. You open your mouth to ask him if your assumption is correct, but he cuts you off before you can say anything.

“I gotta admit, sweetheart, I’m curious… The hell was a pretty thing like you doin’ out in the middle of goddamn nowhere tonight? I mean, I know you’re a runaway ‘n all, but… shouldn’t you be one o’ those college party girls or somethin’? ‘M sure you got plenty of friends wonderin’ where you are.”

You sigh, shaking your head as you distractedly pick at a splintered piece of wood at the edge of the table.

“I was in college. Was supposed to be going back again this year, but… my mom spent all the fucking savings I had left for the rest of it on fixing up her dumb boyfriend’s car. It’s just been sitting in the fucking lawn all summer, sure as hell not being used for something useful like going to the job he doesn’t have. That bastard…” You say the last part under your breath through gritted teeth.

“Shit… Tha’s a tough deal, baby, ‘m real sorry to hear that,” Joel comforts. “But y’know, everybody’s got mommy ‘n daddy issues, don’t mean you just up and start walkin’ all by your lonesome, not even have any idea where you’re goin’.”

“Well, it wasn’t just that. There was… nevermind, it’s stupid.” You slump into the cushioned booth, silently cursing yourself for even bringing it up.

“What is it?” Joel pushes, sitting up straighter to show you that he wants to listen, wants to get to know you. And God dammit, he might be the first person you’ve met in a long time who actually seems to care about what you have to say, as strange as it is. You flick your eyes up to his face, and he’s wearing a sincere gaze that convinces you to continue.

“There was this girl I went to high school with. She disappeared a couple of years ago, nobody ever found out what happened to her. People figured she probably just ran away, and I thought… I dunno. That maybe she had the right idea, leaving that place behind. I always held onto this hope that maybe she was still out there somewhere actually doing something with her life, that maybe she just changed her name or something and disappeared on purpose.” You pause. “I guess I just thought I might be able to do the same, if I left.”

“I see…” Joel muses sympathetically. “Maybe I oughta give you a lil’ more credit, then. Must’a been tough losin’ a friend like that, not knowin’ where she ended up.”

“I mean, Ruby wasn’t really my friend. She just—”

“Hang on. Ruby, you said?” Joel interrupts, his eyes suddenly looking a little wild.

“...Yeah. Her name was Ruby. Ruby Carpenter.”

—

Fuck.

Joel has to adjust himself under the table, his dick now hardening uncomfortably in his jeans at just the mention of her name. He remembers Ruby, remembers chuckling to himself when he realized the irony of her name matching the color of her blood, remembers watching the news coverage of her disappearance in this very same diner, those handful of years ago. She was a sweet thing, he remembers this, too. It was a shame she had ended up being such a fighter, that she had to get put down the way she did. But she shouldn’t have thrown that fucking rock at his face, called him a sick fuck and a freak as she made her pitiful little escape attempt. Joel is lucky that all he came away from it with is that ugly little scar that mars the bridge of his nose. He can’t say the same for her.

“Why? You heard her name before?” You ask him, an unfortunate little twinkle of hope in your eyes.

“Maybe.” Yes. “Sounds a lil’ familiar, might remember hearin’ about it on the news or somethin’.”

That goddamn news coverage sure as hell taught him a lesson. Joel had spent months trying to keep the cops off his fucking tail after he had dumped her body on some forgettable patch of land behind an old decaying barn. He had even gotten pulled in for a fucking interview at the station in what he now presumes to be your hometown, where they had questioned him for an hour or so about her disappearance. He still isn’t sure how he talked his way out of that one. Ruby might not have been good for much else, other than pissing him the hell off with all of her pathetic crying and begging to just please, please let me go back home, but she did help him perfect his craft, he can give her that much. It’s because of her that Joel makes certain now that any girl he picks up doesn’t have anybody who will miss her or plaster her face on every local channel or send out goddamn search parties to find her. Girls like you.

You’re just so perfect, it would be so fucking easy for him to make you disappear for good, it’s almost comical. It had hardly taken any convincing at all to get you to climb into his truck, had taken even less to get you to agree to go to some seedy ass motel with him that might not even exist, for all you know. It does, but you didn’t even try to test him about it this time, just put all of your trust in him like a stray puppy would to the first person to pick it up off the street. That is just about what you are, he supposes. So far, you seem like the perfect candidate to become his little captive pet. If you keep it up, maybe you won’t meet the same fate as the rest of them. He’d told himself he’d be done after the last one, anyway, his body too old and achy and slow now to chase after the ones who put up a little more fight, like she had. She’d nearly escaped, made it a decent way through the woods and almost reached the main road before tripping on an exposed root and snapping her ankle. He remembers how weak and scared she’d looked before he’d used his knife to put her out of her misery, and it makes his dick twitch. Joel doesn’t plan on snuffing you out, not right now at least, since you haven’t given him a reason to. But his fingers still twitch where they rest on the table, moving out of instinct as he can’t help but imagine what they’d look like wrapped so tightly around your little throat. Would you cry? Would you beg? Would you pray? Would he have to glide his blade across your vocal chords just to get you to stop screaming so fucking loud? He wonders.

“Oh… Was that one of the times you were just ‘passin’ through’ for whatever reason you haven’t told me yet?”

Joel hadn’t realized that his eyes had been unfocused for so long, or that he’d been holding his breath, or that his hand had been squeezing his glass of water so hard he’s glad it hadn’t shattered. The airy sound of your voice brings him back to reality, and he huffs a light chuckle as he fixes his face into a more pleasant expression.

“Yeah, ‘spose it was.”

You roll your eyes at him playfully. “Come on, Joel. I just told you, like, my whole sob story. I feel like I deserve to know at least one thing about you now.”

You have a point.

He gives in. “Fine. I got a brother, used to come through this area when I’d pay him a visit. That good enough for ya?”

You cross your arms. “No. What’s his name?”

“Tommy.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Like me. Little younger. Little uglier.”

You laugh at that.

It makes Joel smile.

Maybe you could be the one he’s been looking for all this time. Too bad he had to waste so many others before he finally got to you.

—

The waitress comes back to your table soon after that, with your steaming plates of delicious-smelling food and hot mugs of coffee balanced expertly on a large plastic tray. She sets them down in front of the pair of you with a cheery smile, and you thank her happily when she doesn’t forget the extra sickeningly sweet cups of creamer you had requested. Joel doesn’t take his eyes off you once during the interaction, not even to feast his eyes upon the monstrous burger now sitting before him, not even as he thanks the waitress for delivering it to him. His lingering gaze makes you feel a little warm, but it could just be from the heat radiating off of your plates.

“What? You’re not getting a bite of mine, if that’s why you’re looking at me,” you tease, already getting to work putting the sugary creamer to good use.

Joel just shakes his head, his caramel colored eyes still never leaving you as your coffee begins to resemble their hue. “No, ‘s not why.”

“Whatever,” you reply through a giggle, making a poor attempt to hide your girlish grin behind the lip of your white ceramic mug.

The two of you eat your meals in relative silence, mostly enjoying each other’s company and basking in the relaxing ambience created by silverware tapping against porcelain, hushed conversations, and the local country station playing through the old radio sitting on the counter. The reception is a little spotty way out here in wherever the hell you are, so you can’t quite tell what song it is. But Joel seems to know, judging by the rhythmic bouncing of his knee under the table that creates little circular ripples in your coffee. Maybe you’ll ask him what it is later, how he knows it, if you can listen to it again in the truck together. He doesn’t seem to be as much of an open book as you’ve already given yourself away to be, and you respect that about him. It doesn’t make you any less curious, but you resign yourself to getting to know him better in the small doses he’s willing to offer you.

You decide to begin a mental list of all the things you want to ask him later, knowing that by the time you make it to the motel tonight, you’ll be far too exhausted to do anything more than just collapse onto the springy mattress and sleep until you get kicked out of the room the next morning. You almost wish you hadn’t listened to Joel’s request for you to take your coffee decaffeinated tonight, and you still aren’t quite sure why you did. It just feels so strangely easy to give into him, to trust him, to let him make decisions for you. You suppose that’s what you’ve been needing all this time, someone to guide you and understand you and at least pretend like they care about you. Joel has shown you more concern and care and protection in the last hour or so than either of your parents have pretty much your whole life. And he’s good at this, making you feel wanted, making you feel like somebody, even in subtle ways, just by looking at you.

“A’right, why don’t you finish up, darlin’, ‘n we’ll hit the road again. Practically usin’ your pancakes as a pillow over there.”

“Oh, sorry,” you apologize sleepily, waking yourself up enough to make quick work finishing off your plate and your last few sips of coffee.

“Nothin’ to be sorry ‘bout, sweetheart. Lord knows you need some rest, won’t be too much longer now,” Joel assures, fishing a few tens out of his faded leather wallet and placing them on the table. He slides to the edge of the booth and stands himself up with only a few pained noises as he straightens out his back, then offers his hand for you to take. You use it as leverage to pull yourself upright, and your hands linger in each other’s hold for a few seconds longer than they need to. The hostess thanks the two of you for stopping in when you pass her by, and Joel opens the door for you again as you leave Moody’s. He opens the truck door for you, too, and promises you that the motel is just another couple of minutes down the freeway. You make an effort to stay awake in your seat this time as Joel begins the drive, opting to gaze out the window and focus on trying to make out the sparkling constellations above the treeline. You smile privately at the moon when you find that she’s following closely behind you just as she always does, bright and full.

She doesn’t leave your side until you reach the unassuming little roadside motel, which to your gratitude, proudly displays their vacancy on the flickering sign in the parking lot. It doesn’t look like a five star joint by any means, but you know it will serve its purpose just fine. Joel instructs you to stay in the truck while he goes about getting a room for the two of you, and you don’t object. He’d insisted that you didn’t need to be on your feet any longer than you already had been today, and you were too tired to argue with him even if you wanted to. When he returns, he taps lightly on the passenger side window so as not to startle you from the half-asleep, half-awake state you’ve found yourself in, and swings your backpack over his shoulder as he helps you out of the truck. He leads you to the room at the end of the row, and the door takes some finessing of the key and a shove of his shoulder to open. Joel flicks on the light, and you let out a disappointed-sounding ‘oh…’ when it reveals your accommodations.

There aren’t two beds like you had assumed Joel was going to request. There’s only one.

Joel catches your reaction. “‘S this gonna be alright? I know it ain’t the Ritz Carlton, but—”

“No, the room’s fine, it’s not that. I just thought… I just assumed that… I didn’t know it was gonna be, like… just the one bed.” You try to explain your discomfort as gently as possible, without seeming ungrateful for everything Joel has done for you tonight.

He looks at you sympathetically. “I know, I ain’t tryin’ anythin’, I swear. Guy told me it was the last room they had, jus’ figured it was better than nothin’.”

You offer him a soft smile, but your eyes must still look a little wide as you begin to nervously pick at your fingernails. Joel continues, “I can take the chair if you want, darlin’. Get the bed all to yourself, how’s that sound?”

You visibly relax at that, your shoulders deflating as your smile becomes a little more genuine. “Okay, that’s good. Thank you.”

“‘Course, sweetheart. How’s about you take a nice hot shower, rinse off some o’ that dirt you picked up from walkin’ all day… Don’t suppose you got some suitable clothes in here for sleepin’ in?” Joel asks, handing your backpack off to you.

You shake your head. “Just some jeans and t-shirts, and another pair of shoes. And… y’know, some underwear, and stuff.”

Joel pinches the bridge of his nose, then rubs his fingers across his forehead exasperatedly. “I swear… it’s like you didn’t think there’d be a tomorrow or somethin’, girl. Christ.” Joel looks out the window to his truck parked just outside. “Tell you what, think I got somethin’ in the truck you can wear. Why don’t you see if they got anythin’ on the TV tha’s worth a damn, ‘n I’ll be back, alright?”

You nod, “Okay,” then set your backpack down on the drab carpet in favor of picking up the remote perched in front of the small square television. You sit yourself down on the edge of the bed as Joel leaves the room, and begin to flick through the few channels that aren’t just a screen full of snowy static.

Local news. Commercial. Game show. Commercial. Documentary. Commercial.

Eventually, you land on what seems to be one of those old black-and-white western shows that you can never remember the name of. You only know that the reruns used to play on Sundays around lunchtime, because Rob would always be half paying attention to it with a beer in his hand when you and your mom would get home from church. For how adamant she was that you attend every weekend, she sure never called him a harlot and a sinner for not wanting to go with her. You’re not sure she had ever even tried to get him to go, but he probably didn’t own anything decent enough to wear, anyway. Whatever, fuck them. The show seems like the kind of thing Joel would like, so you let it keep playing.

He comes back a moment later with a small stack of folded up clothes, tossing them over to where you sit on the bed. You unfold what he’s given you and examine them—a pair of simple pink cotton shorts, and a white tank top with a ditsy floral pattern scattered across the fabric. The clothing is a little more revealing than you’d like, but you figure you’d be a hell of a lot more comfortable wearing them to sleep than the denim shorts you have on now.

“These are… great. Thank you, Joel. But…” you snicker. “Should I be concerned that you have a very convenient supply of girls’ clothes in your truck?” Joel scoffs. “‘S for when I got Tommy’s kid with me, smartass. He’s got a daughter, few years younger ‘n you.”

“Okay, well, I dunno how I was supposed to know that, but… as long as you don’t have a girlfriend who’s gonna come after me for wearing her clothes.”

Joel only chuckles in response, his attention suddenly pulled to the TV.

“Gunsmoke, huh? ‘S a good choice, definitely what I’d classify as ‘worth a damn’.”

You smile to yourself, and his approval makes that warm fluttery feeling return to your belly. “I didn’t even know what it was called, just seemed like something you’d like.”

He turns back to you. “That obvious, huh? ‘S just ‘cause I’m old and southern, ain’t it?”

“Maybe a little,” you admit, making a pinching gesture with your hand.

Joel nods as he makes his way over to the armchair on the corner of the room, collapsing onto it with a groan. “Well, why don’t you go ‘n get yourself all changed and cleaned up, ‘n if you’re quick enough maybe we can finish the episode together and then get some shuteye, hm?”

You swiftly unzip your backpack to retrieve one of your clean pairs of underwear, then bound over to the small bathroom with them and your new change of clothes in hand. It’s not the most spotless one you’ve ever had to use, but you’ve honestly seen much worse. You rinse off quickly in the steaming shower, using the scratchy motel-provided washcloth to scrub the dirt from your legs, stuck to you with the sweat you worked up from God knows how many miles of walking today.

Today. You can hardly believe it hasn’t even been a full 24 hours since you left home yet. It seems like you’ve already known Joel for days, maybe even years, as silly as it sounds. You wonder if he might just take you in after this, or if he’ll have had enough of providing for you after just one night. He seems like a man of limited means, and he’s already given you so much. If you’re brave enough, maybe you’ll ask him tomorrow, when you get to the ‘so… what now?’ part of your time together.

For now, you step out of the shower and dry yourself off with an impossibly scratchier towel, then pull on your panties and the tank top and shorts Joel provided you with.

Jesus, how much younger is Tommy’s daughter?

The shorts just barely cover your ass, and there’s a sizable gap between their waistband and the bottom hem of your top. The thin, white material of the shirt only serves to accentuate the way your nipples poke through the fabric, but you suppose there isn’t anything you can do about that.

You quietly crack open the bathroom door, and are somewhat relieved to find that Joel’s already fallen asleep in the chair. You do wish you could’ve finished the episode of Gunsmoke with him, but the end credits seem to be rolling already anyway, and you’d rather avoid being seen in your very ill-fitting pajamas. Although, you do wonder if he’d say anything, or if he’d just let his hungry gaze linger in silence again, holding himself back from touching you beyond a comforting pat on the thigh.

You pick the remote up off the bed and use it to make the TV screen sizzle to black, then tip toe over to the lightswitch by the door and turn it off, the room now completely shrouded in darkness. Joel snores softly from the chair as you blindly feel your way back over to the bed, pulling the covers back and nestling yourself underneath them. The bed is surprisingly comfortable, considering, and it doesn’t take long for your exhaustion to catch up with you. Your thoughts become slower and slower along with your breathing, and you’re asleep not even five minutes after your head hits the pillow.

—

The last room they had, yeah, right. You’re just the most pathetic little thing, aren’t you? You’ll believe just about anything that comes out of his mouth if he turns up the ‘southern charm’ dial a few ticks, throws in a feigned apologetic-looking expression for good measure. It’s sad, really. For you, anyway.

Joel fakes his snoring for another thirty minutes or so, until he’s certain you’re sound asleep. He had heard your breath even out almost immediately after you had tucked yourself in, but he had chosen to lay in wait for a little while longer, just to make sure you wouldn’t put up too much of a fight when he made his move. You don’t seem like the type, considering how you’d hardly argued with him at all tonight, like when he had convinced you to forgo the caffeine with your dinner. There’s a reason he wanted you sleepy and subdued tonight, but you didn’t know that. Joel likes how well you listen to him, how easily you do as he asks.

He also likes how warm you are, how small your body is compared to his own, the difference in size especially prominent now that he’s laying snugly against you, his front pressing firmly into the back of you. You don’t wake from his lumbering movement, only coming to slightly when you feel his arm slide underneath your body, his warm hand snaking its way beneath your tiny shirt to squeeze at your plush tits.

You mumble out a little “Hm?”, which he’s quick to quiet with, “Sorry, darlin’. Chair was too hard on my damn back. Just go back to sleep, ‘kay?” That chair felt like laying on a goddamn cloud compared to some of the other surfaces he’s found himself having to sleep on before, but again, you don’t know that, and what you don’t know won’t hurt you. You probably won’t even remember this in the morning, how his hard cock is slotted so perfectly against your ass, especially without the confines of his thick jeans holding him back. They’re discarded onto the floor now in front of the armchair, along with his flannel shirt and jacket. Joel holds you tightly against his bare, hairy chest as he circles a roughened pad of his finger around one of your nipples, smirking to himself at how quickly the bud hardens from his touch. He knew you wanted this, and the wet spot that the fingers of his other hand are teasing in the gusset of your panties is proof of it. How long have you been leaking for him like this? Had you been soaking the seat of his truck earlier today? Filthy thing.

You still don’t rouse when he pulls your panties aside and slips a finger inside your slick cunt, or when his grip on your tit loosens in favor of sliding up higher under your tank top, his hand coming to a rest around the base of your throat as he pumps his finger in and out of your tight heat. It would be so fucking easy…

But he can’t, he won’t, because you’re not like the others. You want to get to know him, you let him take care of you, you seem to like his company, and you don’t leap out of bed and call him a fucking perv and a dirty old man for what he’s doing to you. That’s what the others would have done. It’s what they have done. And they faced the consequences.

But you’re different. You’re not like them. You’re like him. A lost soul, that’s what you are. Nowhere to call home, no one who misses you or loves you or gives a damn what happens to you. Joel’s mouth had tasted bitter when he had told you about Tommy, or rather, lied about him. Joel hasn’t seen the fucker in years, certainly doesn’t pay him any visits or watch his brat, not since Tommy had learned the truth. You better not show your goddamn face around here ever again, you understand me? Tommy had spat at him. You’re fuckin’ sick. Only reason I don’t turn your ass in myself is ‘cause you’re my goddamn brother. But if I ever fuckin’ see you again, I won’t hesitate. Better make yourself pretty fuckin’ scarce ‘fore I change my mind. That might’ve been about the only time Joel had ever taken orders from his little brother.

That bitter flavor is cut by the sweet tang of you that he tastes on his finger now, so young and eager and fresh. The hand around your throat squeezes a little tighter, and Joel’s hips begin to move against your ass as he allows himself to suck wet kisses onto the skin under the hinge of your jaw. Softly, gently, so as not to wake you. He could come just like this, using your pliant body in your sleep, rutting himself against your still form with the taste of your pussy on his tongue and his fingers pressed against your pulse points.

He’s close when you stir again, making broken hiccuping sounds as you choke on your breath.

“Shh, shh,” Joel soothes. “You’re alright, sweetheart. ‘S just me. Just—fuck—hold still, go back to sleep, baby.” You let out a quiet whimper, squirming against him just a little bit, but return to your unmoving and silent state a second later. Joel finishes himself off quickly with another couple of shallow thrusts against you, his large hand still gripped around the column of your neck, trying to stifle his groans as he spills into his briefs. He removes his suffocating hand and keeps you pressed tightly against him for a while after that, tanned arms wrapped around your waist and breathing in your scent as he waits for you to settle back down.

When he’s sure he won’t disturb you again, Joel releases you from his hold and pads quietly back over to the armchair, redressing himself and resuming the position you had left him in. In the morning, if you do remember any of it, you’ll just chalk it up to a very strange dream, one fueled by the desire he knows you’ve felt towards him since he picked you up. You’ll be left with a strange assuredness that he feels the same way about you, without really knowing why.

But Joel will always know.

—

The digital clock on the nightstand only reads around 8:00 when you’re awoken by a beam of sunlight shining brightly against the backs of your eyelids, streaming in from the window’s lopsided blinds. You had gone to sleep with your back to Joel, but you find yourself facing him now. He looks kind of peaceful when he’s asleep, that permanent furrow etched between his brows finally smoothed out as he dozes. A small smile tugs at the corners of your lips, but they fall quickly when you adjust your legs and feel the cool dampness against your core, the sensation bringing back the memory of the dream you’d had last night.

It had felt so real, but it couldn’t have been, could it? There’s no evidence that Joel had really laid next to you last night, that he’d really touched you like that, that you’d wanted him to keep going. It must just be some kind of strange side effect of the affection you feel toward the man who had rescued you, more or less. You’ll likely just part ways after today, anyway, so it’s probably best to just try and forget about the whole thing, put on a fresh pair of underwear and pretend it never happened.

Joel is awake by the time you’re done freshening up in the bathroom, and he greets you with a raspy ‘Mornin’, sweetheart’ as you retrieve your backpack from next to the bed and shove your ruined underwear into the bottom of it. “You get some good sleep last night?” He asks, rubbing a hand over his eye.

“Mhm, the bed was nice, more comfortable than the one I had at home, honestly.” You finish zipping your backpack closed and sit back down on the bed, pulling on some socks and the lace up sneakers you had been wearing yesterday. “I hope the chair was okay, like, for your back and everything.”

“What makes you say that, baby?”

You pause in the middle of tying one of your shoelaces, turning to look at him with a confused pout. “Didn’t you…? I thought you had told me something about how the chair would be hard on your back. Like, last night.”

Joel frowns, shaking his head. “Don’t think so, darlin’. Chair was just fine.”

“Oh… Well, that’s good.”

Maybe it had just been a dream, then.

Joel hands you a few bills from his wallet, and tasks you with getting the two of you some breakfast from the gas station across the street while he cleans himself up. He tells you that he doesn’t eat much in the mornings, but that you can get yourself whatever you want, as long as you bring him back a carton of cigarettes and a black coffee. You obey eagerly, retrieving what he asked for and getting a pack of miniature powdered donuts and an equally as sugary coffee for yourself.

He’s just stepped out of the bathroom when you return to the room, and your face feels hot when you see him with his dark hair slicked back and wet from the shower. The few strands that fall onto his forehead as he laces up his boots almost make him look a little boyish, despite his whitened temples.

“Such a good girl, thank you,” Joel praises when you hand him his items.

You respond with a shy ‘You’re welcome’, but he doesn’t miss how you seem to light up at his words. You plop yourself down onto the worn-in chair that Joel had used as a bed last night, happily munching on your gas station donuts and sipping on your coffee. It all makes you feel warm from the inside out.

But you figure you should find out what the rest of today might look like before you let yourself enjoy the beginnings of it too much.

“So, um… We’re just gonna check out this morning and then… what?”

“Whaddya mean, baby?”

“I mean… are you just gonna, like… take me to the nearest bus station or something?”

Joel’s confusion is written all over his face, embedded deep into those lines between his brows. You could swear he almost looks a little hurt. “Why would I do that? ‘S that what you want?” He asks softly.

You try to backpedal a little, afraid you might’ve offended him or seemed ungrateful in your question. “I just thought it might be what you want. That you probably have somewhere else you need to be, like Tommy’s or—”

“No, I don’t,” Joel says definitively.

You pause. “Okay, so—”

“You ever been to California?”

His question stumps you for a moment, seeming so random in its nature. “No.”

“You want to?”

You shrug. “I mean… sure. Maybe someday—”

“Why don’t you come with me then, baby?”

You let out an awkward giggle. “...Come with you where?”

“To California. Come with me.” Joel’s tone is genuine but firm.

“Like, today? Are you sure?”

“I mean, we ain’t gettin’ there today, darlin’. But yeah, I’m sure. We both got nowhere else to be, do we? So let’s just go, we’ll see it together.”

You beam up at him, realizing that he’s being serious. Joel does want you, wants you to be his companion, maybe even something more that you’ll discover on familiar-looking back roads and in cities you’ve only ever seen pictures of.

“Okay,” you agree excitedly.

Joel nods. “Okay, then. Lemme go check us out ‘n we’ll get back on the road again. Burnin’ daylight already,” he jokes. He carries your backpack out to the truck for you, setting it down between your feet after he opens the door and helps you inside with a stable hand. It only takes a few minutes for Joel to hand in the room key and pay for the night, and then he’s back at your side. You begin to feel like that’s where you always want him to stay.

“So, where to first, baby? California ain’t goin’ anywhere, can take as long to get there as we wanna. We’ll go wherever you like, take your pick.” Joel leans across your body to dig a folded up map out of the glove compartment, handing it to you.

You examine it, your eyes darting across the dozens of dots with the names of cities next to them, some you’ve never even heard of. You point to one that you have heard of, but have never been to, because you’ve never even left the state you grew up in before.

“Um… how about Detroit? I’ve heard it’s nice, I think.”

Joel belly laughs at that. “It ain’t, but sure. You wanna go to Detroit, that’s where we’ll go. Buckle up, baby,” he instructs, patting your thigh. You oblige, and it feels good to finally know where you’re going, and that you’re going there with someone who cares about you, who feels safe, who wants you around. You also feel a little hopeful that maybe you were right about Ruby, after all. That you didn’t start walking for nothing, that you weren’t following some childish delusion, that if something as good as Joel had happened to you when you left, that maybe she had found herself on a similar path, ran into somebody good who took her wherever she wanted to go and helped her find someplace she belonged. Maybe she found her way out to California, eventually. What you are certain of is that neither of you ever have to go back to that town ever again, and that feels good, too.

And if it feels good, then it can’t be bad.

tag list: tag list: @beefrobeefcal @iamasaddie @rebel-held @dilfgestivo @zliteraturehoe @joeldjarin @kamcrazy123 @hellowoolf @rexamongthestars @stevie75 @luxurychristmaspudding @noisynightmarepoetry @mewantpeepaw @pedritoferg @alex-does-art-things @evolnoomym @annoyingmarvelreader @k1l4ni @joelsdagger (if your name is crossed out, it won’t let me tag you!!)

#my writing #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x you #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #joel miller smut #dark!joel miller #dark!joel x reader

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hadersversion · 3 months ago

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i had a long day but obviously there’s only one thing on my mind….if you guessed logan howlett, you’re correct! but if you guessed old man! logan, i owe ya a scratchy on friday ;)

but….

imagine old man! logan and a librarian! reader.

logan, laura, and charles moved out into the countryside in oregon. settling down in a nice cabin in the woods, town being a few miles away.

you lived nearby, all by your lonesome. you worked in town at the local library. charles brought laura in the one day, searching for some old book that you’re pretty sure they stopped printing in the 70s…but you didn’t want to let the old geezer down so you did some digging. you watched as laura walked around the building, eyes open in awe. it’s almost like she’s never seen a library before. she stopped in front of a child’s chapter book collection, eyeing it up.

“that one’s my favorite, you could borrow it if you want to. i’m sure your grandfather would let ya get a library card.” you winked at her.

she looked at you then the books, a small smile appearing. she grabbed the book and walked up to the counter with you, charles eagerly waiting to see what laura picked. you start to get laura’s library card ready, turning your back on the two.

“there you two are, got me thinking i lost ya out there.” a gruff voice said from behind.

you turned around, library card and book in hand.

“what the hells that?” he asks.

the man is tall, older looking. but nonetheless handsome. his broad shoulders being hugged by a flannel.

“a library card. for laura.” you smile, handing it over to her. “remember in two weeks you have to return it. or whenever your finished.” you said.

logan looked down at you, studying your kind demeanor. you’re cute, he thought, really cute. the large cardigan covering your body as glasses sit atop your head. but logan being logan, pushes down any feeling and huffs. “cars running, let’s go.”

charles and laura wave bye before leaving, you watch as the man pushes him out. his shoulders are tensed. his grey hair sticking up every which way and his matching beard needing a trim. but something about him intrigued you.

laura and charles become regulars at the library, constantly visiting and perusing the shelves. often spending hours just reading and enjoying the silence. and there’s logan, waiting around like he has something better to do.

“ya know, readings actually good for you? right?” you joke.

he rolls his eyes. “got more important things to do than sit around in this stuffy place all day.”

“grumpy.” you mutter, causing him to look over at you. “why don’t you go look for something? there’s gotta be something you like!”

he shakes his head. “doubt it.”

you grab his hand and pull him towards the shelves. “come on, give it a try.” you pour your lip.

his breathe hitches and his eyes burn into you. he’s never been this close to you. been able to smell your scent of a flowery perfume and bubblegum. his demeanor changes a bit, staring at your lips. if he was already thinking about you a lot, this was definitely not helping. “fine.”

you spend the afternoon looking for anything that will please this man.

“war books?”

“been there, done that.”

“art history?”

“do i look like an art professor?”

“maybe in a past time.” you wink. “hmm, cooking?”

he shakes his head.

“god, you’re so hard to please.” you go through each section. “the history of harley davidson?”

this piqued his interest. “let me see that.” he grabs it, pushing his glasses off his head and onto his face.

you could do a celebration dance. “told ya!”

“yeah, yeah. let me go find the kid and the old man to check this book out.”

logan starts joining the two on the library trips. he says it’s to find more books on automotives. but charles often teases him that it’s to see his favorite librarian.

he denies but even laura knows the truth.

the old man has a crush.

#logan howlett₊˚ෆ #marvel ₊˚ෆ #kaila’s drabbles ₊˚ෆ #wolverine #x men #logan howlett x reader #logan howlett #hugh jackman #old man logan #old man logan x reader

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ckret2 · 2 months ago

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Chapter 70 of human Bill Cipher pretending he's not the Mystery Shack's captive for ten minutes:

This happens!

Whoops, sorry, zoomed too far in.

This happens!

Way more important and exciting.

####

Bill lasted—based on the sun's position—about a couple of hours before this body's needs knocked him out of his meditative mindset. He sat up with a sigh, checked his tanlines—the stripes he'd drawn across his abdomen were already darkening into a nice, angry burn—and glanced over at the lake to see what the Pines were up to.

At the moment, Mabel was holding a foot-long wiggling, glittery, gold-scaled trout in a net and grinning proudly. Stan wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pointed at her in excitement as Dipper snapped a picture of them. Stan opened a cooler for her to drop the fish in. Mabel's face fell, and she hugged the fish protectively. Stan's shoulders sagged; but after half a minute of unsuccessful negotiations, he relented and pointed at the lake. She dumped the trout back in the water.

Bill clicked his tongue in disappointment and muttered, "If I'd thought they'd catch the golden trout, I would've told 'em that thing's like the holy grail to the Fishmasons." Stan probably would have insisted they keep it just so they could get something on Eugene. Bill wasn't emotionally invested in their feud; but the trout did grant three wishes. Bill could use that kind of power.

Oh well, he could tell them later. Maybe they'd get lucky and hook it again. Bill got to his feet. "Hey, old lady. I need to stretch my legs." Stretch his legs, look for entertainment, and forage for food—they were planning to be out here all day, but there hadn't yet been a grocery trip to properly stock his new fridge chest and he didn't trust Ford's nutrition pills, so he'd only brought along a bottle of hot sauce and a bottle of sprinkles and hoped he'd manage to find some food once he was here. (And if he didn't find any—well, at least he had hot sauce and sprinkles.)

"Okay," Abuelita said. She turned a page.

He put his slippers back on, dug his condiments and eye patch out of Abuelita's bag—his eyes were getting tired—put on the patch, and scanned the beach. "Hey. Looks like somebody's grilling hot dogs over there."

Abuelita made a noncommital sound of minimal interest.

"Hot dog might be nice," he said. "Looks like the grill's a biiit over thirty feet away, though..."

"Okay," Abuelita said again.

"So." He waved his braceleted hand demonstratively. "Shall we?"

"Eh. I don't want a hot dog." She slid the enchanted bracelet off and dropped it in the sand.

Bill stared at the bracelet, then stared at her. "What, that—really? You're just... really?"

"What am I, a cop?"

Good enough for him. "You're all right, lady." He wrapped the extra thread around his wrist, put on the second bracelet, and glanced at the Stanowar again to make sure the Pines weren't about to catch him off his leash.

The family was crowded around watching as Ford reeled in something heavy. He grinned excitedly as the hook dragged up a patch of soggy khaki fabric; and his smile vanished when his coat grabbed the boat with a furry hand. As the family scrambled to the far end of the boat, Bigfoot—wearing Ford's lost coat and a full set of scuba gear—climbed aboard the boat.

Ford punched Bigfoot in the face.

"Oh," Bill said. "Bigflipper. That'll keep 'em distracted for a while." Satisfied, he meandered up the beach.

He plastered on a bright smile as he approached the family with the hot dogs, veered around the husband working the grill, and walked right up to the wife sitting on a beach towel, eating a hot dog, and watching her kids play in the water. "Heeey, Wanda! What are you doing here! Look at you, you look terrific!"

The woman looked up at Bill from under her sunhat in bafflement. "I—hi? Sorry, do I...?"

"Sure, it's Goldie! Washington State! Fifteen years ago! We were in the same study group, remember? East Asian history? Honestly all I remember about the class is the other girls and that fifty percent of it was about Confucianism."

Wanda's eyes lit up, and then un-lit as she realized she still didn't recognize Bill. "Oh—heeey! Wow—sorry, guess I've slept since then."

"Don't worry about it, I'm just good with faces. Anyway, from what I remember," he jabbed a thumb toward the man at the grill, "at the time most of your attention was on Danny."

Wanda laughed again, a little more easily. "Right, god. I can't believe I made it through that semester with passing grades."

"Hey, you were still the only one in the group who could remember what order all those dynasties came in..."

Bill kept Wanda distracted for another couple of minutes with small talk about the study sessions he'd spied on out of boredom from a library stained glass window; and then, when he saw one hot dog had been set aside fully grilled and mustarded but as-yet unclaimed, he said, "But hey, I won't distract you anymore! Those kids look like a handful." While both parents turned to look at the kids, Bill snatched up the unclaimed hot dog, strolled down the beach, and called back, "It was good catching up!" That whole performance probably hadn't been necessary, he might've been able to time his loitering to swing by just as the hot dog was left unguarded; but it had been more fun this way. He didn't get to have a lot of conversations these days. Less where he felt like he was the one in control of the conversation.

He soaked the bun in hot sauce, dumped some sprinkles on the mustard, and took a bite while he glanced out at the lake again to see how the Pines were doing.

At the moment, Ford had Bigfoot in a chokehold from behind. Stan hit him with a right hook. Bigfoot kicked Stan in the chest with one immense flippered foot, and he tumbled backward into the lake.

Looked like none of them would be paying attention to anything on the beach any time soon. No need to go straight back to his cell. He scanned the rows of beachgoers sitting out by the lake, looking for fresh entertainment.

Bill's gaze fixed on one of the humans. One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong. Amongst all the tourists in their swimsuits, one man—standing ramrod straight, dressed in a black suit, holding a heavy black device with an antenna—stuck out like a sore pale thumb in a pitch black bandaid.

An agent from the Bureau of Covert Investigations. The "eagles." The same guys that had covered up President Quentin Trembley's existence, a brief sightseeing trip Bill had taken to Roswell via nuclear testing-induced dimensional rip, and the miraculous and disgusting resurrection of cult leader/possession puppet Silas Birchtree; and, the guys that had been trying to find Bill's portal in Gravity Falls since they'd detected it in the '80s. Bill wasn't the eagles' biggest fan.

But they'd never been a big enough potential threat or a big enough potential help for him to intervene in their operations. In the mid '80s, when the lead investigator in Gravity Falls had been putting together his case, Bill had considered pulling some strings and manipulating them into taking over the portal from Stanley, before concluding they'd be more likely to disassemble the portal than activate it and it was better off in Stan's clumsy care. But all the same, he'd kept watch over their operations.

And this, if he wasn't mistaken, was the lead investigator himself. Agent Powers. What was he doing here? Bill had thought the case was closed last year after Ford wiped their memories and sent them packing. Maybe Powers was here about Trembley? Depending on what the Pines had entered into the memory gun, the eagles might still remember that part of their operations in town.

Bill would kinda like to know where Trembley was these days. He studied the agent as he slowly finished his hot dog; and then he moved in.

"Hey there, agent!" Bill clapped a hand on his shoulder, making him start, and beamed brightly. "Welcome to town! What brings you to Gravity Falls?"

"Pardon?" Agent Powers gave Bill an appraising up-and-down look—threat assessment, probably—caught sight of his bikini top, and quickly looked him in the eye. "How did you know I'm an agent?"

"Oh, that's easy! I'm psychic."

Powers opened his mouth, paused, and then squinted skeptically at Bill.

"Just kidding. You've got an earpiece, a business suit at the beach, and the government's favorite car."

"Oh." Powers turned to glance toward where he'd parked. "Yes. I suppose so."

"Say! If you want a more covert vehicle, you oughta go to Gleeful Auto in town. You'll blend right in. Just tell 'em Mr. Locke sent you."

"Who's Mr. Locke?"

Right, Bill supposed he didn't look like much of a "Mr." at the moment. Humans didn't consider bikinis gender neutral for some reason. He took a split second to decide whether he'd get any practical benefits from trying to push past the agent's initial perception of his gender, and couldn't think of any. "Friend of mine!"

"Ah." Powers nervously looked Bill up and down again; then cleared his throat and glanced away, cheeks flushed faintly pink in the heat. "Right. Thank you, uh, citizen."

"No problem!" If Bill remembered his suits right, this agent was an easy target. Believed in "collaborating" with "local informants"; wasn't very good at the covert part of the Bureau of Covert Investigations. "You don't look like you're in town on vacation! Investigating anything interesting at the lake?"

"Well..." Powers flashed Bill a quick sideways glance before nodding vaguely toward a couple of people in dive suits further up the beach. "If you must know, we've picked up some evidence of the lake recently flooding its banks. Which is strange, because the amount of rain this area's received can't account for how high the water climbed..."

Not here about Trembley, then? "Flooding? Think there's any danger, agent? In our quiet, harmless little town?"

"No, no. Nothing like that," Powers said quickly. "But, I've said too much. I should go." He shifted his footing anxiously. He did not go.

What was that about? Bill glanced down at himself; he still looked perfectly human, didn't see anything that should make a government agent nervous. Was it the lack of shaving? Was that too Seventies Feminist for Mr. Government Suit? Was the eyepatch setting off his secret agent "Soviet supervillain in a spy movie" instincts? He couldn't have noticed Bill stealing a hot dog.

Should Bill press his luck? (Stupid question—of course he should.) "Say, you keep giving me these odd looks, agent! Anything you wanna say?"

His pink cheeks flushed darker. "Er, no, no ma'am. It's just, I uh..." He gestured vaguely toward Bill, "I... couldn't help but notice that your... sunscreen is a bit streaky."

Bill glanced down at his tan lines. Streaky? He thought the burn lines were coming out pretty crisp.

The agent went on, "I was wondering if you needed help applying it more evenly." It took a split second for him to realize what he'd just said; and then he went even redder.

Bill raised his brows. Huh. "Nooo, I'm great, thanks. It's supposed to look like that."

"Oh." Powers's brow furrowed in confusion. "All right." He nodded. "In that case, I really should be going, then."

"All right!"

But Powers hesitated again for a moment before finally moving up the beach away from Bill.

Well. Interesting. Interesting reaction.

He checked on the Stanowar again to make sure the Pines hadn't seen anything. At the moment—he squinted—they seemed to be playing poker with Bigfoot. He must not have liked Mabel's playing (unsurprising; she was an incorrigible cheat), because he picked her up and chucked her in the lake.

"She's fine," Bill muttered. "She's got her life jacket." They were good about that in this town.

He watched as Powers met up with the divers farther along the beach; and then he headed back to his towel.

####

Bill had decided his front was sufficiently roasted and was struggling to apply new sunscreen stripes to his back so he could flip over, when he overheard somebody say, "Oh hey, Toga Lady?"

Bill twisted around, already grinning in greeting before he'd even seen who was talking to him. "Heya!" It was Broken Heart and two of the others. Wendy's gang. Robbie, Tambry, and Nate. "What are you guys doing out here! You don't look like the beach types!" (In deference to the environment, all three of them had donned swim trunks and sandals; but that was as beachy as they'd gotten. Nate and Tambry were in black t-shirts advertising metal bands. Robbie was still in his hoodie. Robbie's legs nearly glowed white.)

"Hanging," Tambry said, one arm around Robbie's back and face glued to her phone.

Nate elbowed Robbie. "Dude, he's Toga Guy, remember?"

"Toga 'Lad' would be better," Tambry said.

"You sure?" Robbie asked. "Sh—he's kinda..." He gestured vaguely toward his own chest, realized that probably wasn't the best way to make his point, and finished, "uh... bikini."

"I don't want to spend my day arguing about whether I've got the right to go topless!" Bill got to his feet and planted his hands on his hips. "I could talk my way out of trouble with the police—it's the tourist parents I'm worried about." He pulled up one strap to examine his shoulder. "It's gonna ruin my tan, though."

They took in his tan in progress: several horizontal lines across his lower torso and upper thighs, a few disconnects vertical lines stretched between the horizontal ones. Tambry glanced up from her phone, snorted, and started typing faster; Nate said, "Dude, are you trying to make bricks like the triangle guy?"

Bill froze, mouth open. "Uhhh..." Sure, that was the objective—he just hadn't really expected humans to find it that obvious. Nosy little pattern-seekers. "I mean—"

"That's cool," Tambry said. "Stick it to the man."

Robbie had screwed up his face a bit, but at Tambry's reaction, he shrug-nodded and conceded, "Yeah, it's kinda punk, I guess."

Nate said, "Praise Bill or whatever, right?" He laughed. "Yeah, I thought about getting a tattoo of him. Up here or something?" He pushed a sleeve up above the snake tattoo wrapped around his left bicep to show the blank spot on his shoulder. "But my parents would flip if they ever found out. Maybe I should do the brick thing too, it's way subtler." Nate turned to the other two, lifted up his shirt, and said, "Hey Tambers, do you think I'd look cool with bricks around my waist?"

She didn't look up. "No."

"What if I got an eye on my chest too?"

"Let me think. No."

Bill watched this back and forth with wide-eyed stunned silence. Hold on. What? Praise Bill?

"Pfff, whatever!" Robbie rolled his eyes. "Hey, you're gonna regret getting a Bill tattoo once I get my sick symbol off the anti-Bill circle. It's like... giving me a permanent rock-paper-scissors win against you. For the rest of time."

Nate laughed. "Shut up, whatever man! The circle didn't even do anything."

"It would have! It was, like, glowing!"

"Heeey!" Bill stepped into the trio's line of sight again. "Right, yeah, praise Bill, by the way any of you wanna help me get my back?" He turned around to gesture over his shoulder. "Little favor between punk weirdos?"

"Yeah, sure." Tambry tucked her phone into Robbie's hoodie pocket and held out her hand for the tube of sunscreen. "Just continue the lines around your back?"

"You got it." Bill lifted his arms. "And try to keep the bricks evenly spaced."

"What is this stuff? Some kind of suntan lotion?"

"It's more like anti-sunscreen," Bill said. "By the way, you probably wanna wash your hands after this unless you want sunburned fingers." He wiggled his own fingers, which were faintly flushed from applying the first layer of sunscreen that morning.

"Hey, anti-sunscreen," Nate said, "you could call that, uh... sun-beam." He paused. "No wait, that's already a word."

Robbie laughed. "You're an idiot."

"Sooo," Bill said. "Is the triangle guy cool now? Not—not asking for any particular reason. Just curious."

"Oh, yeah," Tambry said. "Like half the school's decided he's our crazy anti-authoritarian counterculture chaos god now?" (Bill was adding that to his business card.)

Robbie said, "Somebody set up a shrine to him in a hollow tree stump behind the school. People started making animal sacrifices to him during finals week."

Nate said, "It's chicken nuggets and cafeteria tacos, but. Y'know. We didn't say live animals."

"Huh! Interesting!" Bill tried, unsuccessfully, not to sound too excited. He was hip with the youth. Who'd imagined! This was what he got for hanging out with the town's cops and politicans, he could've been exploiting this for a month. "But I think he prefers receiving gold!"

Nate laughed. "Dude, I'd prefer receiving gold, too. What we have is chicken nuggets and tacos."

"Fair enough," Bill shrugged. "By the way—if you want a Bill tattoo? The traditional style is to shave your hair and get his eye above your forehead, right here!" He tapped his skull over his brain's frontal eye fields. "It tells him right where to enter."

"Oh, sweet! That's perfect," Nate said. "I can shave, get a tattoo, and just keep my hat on until my hair grows back. No one will ever know!" (Bill tried to imagine hair growing out of his eyeball, and wished he hadn't.)

Robbie said, "Hey, weren't the Pines like... not letting you go outside because you knew him or something? That's what Wendy said."

That wasn't the story he'd told her. He'd have to find out where she'd picked that up. "Or something. It was more because of dumb academic ego-measuring contests than anything to do with that."

"So, they finally letting you outside alone now?"

"Only for group trips." Bill pointed out at the lake.

The three teens squinted toward the boat. "Whoa," Tambry said. "Are they arm-wrestling Bigfoot?"

"Oh, yeah. It was poker earlier."

For a moment, all activity ceased as the teens watched the battle out on the lake. Nate sat in the sand and propped his chin in his hand. Figuring Tambry was done with his stripes, Bill plopped onto his beach towel to watch as well.

Bigfoot defeated Stan, and Soos switched places with him to try next. Soos lasted five seconds before Bigfoot flipped him into the water. Melody scrambled to help pull him back aboard as Bigfoot pumped his fists in the air victoriously. Bill snorted.

"Bad luck," Robbie said.

"I could beat him," Nate said. "Hey Robbie, think I could beat him?"

"Pfff, no."

"Bet Wendy could," Tambry said, recording through her phone as Bigfoot generously indulged Dipper and Mabel's attempt to take him on as a team. The guys murmured vague agreement with Tambry.

"Buuut anyway," Bill said, reluctant to let the conversation get too far away from himself, "yeah, I might've talked to the triangle guy a couple, several times."

"That's pretty cool," Nate said. "Hey, we oughta hang sometime, I bet Lee'd wanna hear about that. It'd probably drive Wendy crazy, but..."

Tambry let out a dismissive pff. "The triangle stuff's been driving Wendy crazy all year. She can take it."

"Not a fan?" Bill asked.

"Nah, she thinks the whole thing's creepy. Her and Thompson both."

"I think the whole cult thing's fine," Robbie said magnanimously. "As, y'know, one of the people prophesied to defeat him. If he ever really came back and caused trouble, we could handle it."

Bill tried not to roll his eye. Bold words out of a guy who, a couple of years ago, had left a plate of spaghetti in the woods to see if an "evil triangle" urban legend was true, and had thrown up when Bill dragged him into a dream state to show him just how true it was.

On Earth, urban legends about Bill tended to pop up and wither away in waves around the epicenter of his latest area of influence—like mushroom rings spreading away from a patch of ground they'd depleted of useful nutrients and left to die. Bill suspected the local urban legend Robbie had stumbled upon had been passed down in Gravity Falls for thirty years by teens misinterpreting Old Man McGucket's crazy ramblings about a "demon triangle" and "spaghettification."

He was always torn on whether to encourage or quash such urban legends: on the one hand, it was handy for humans to know he existed and was available for deals; but much less handy when they warned each other away from him. More than once, knowledge of him had nearly broken into the mainstream, and he'd had to put all his other plans on hold to focus on deflecting the whistleblowers' information into obscurity.

Apparently encouraging the spaghetti one had been the right move, if a year after his brief conquest of Gravity Falls the teens were offering him sacrifices rather than cursing his name.

Nate punched Robbie's arm. "Why would he cause us trouble? He's our chaos god, remember? We've given him offerings!"

"I like that attitude," Bill said. "Hanging out sounds fun! We'll... figure something out sometime." As soon as he found a way to make the Pines let him go outside without being surrounded by babysitters. Wouldn't that be humiliating, a full adult hanging out with teenagers and it's the adult who isn't allowed outside without a chaperone. No, that wasn't an option. If he came with an adult attached, they'd ditch him in a heartbeat for being too much of a drag.

The teens made their farewells and headed down the beach, Tambry and Robbie with their arms around each other again. Tambry wiped the anti-sunscreen off her hand onto the back of Robbie's hoodie.

As they went, they walked past Agent Powers—who was looking right at Bill.

Bill stared. The agent quickly looked away.

He didn't like that one bit. As he adjusted his position to lay face down on his towel, he said, "Hey, Dolores. You get the feeling we're being watched?"

"Hm?" Abuelita glanced up from her book toward Bill, then looked where he was looking. "Government." She made a disapproving noise and turned back to her book. "Nothing but trouble."

"You said it." Why was Powers so focused on Bill. He couldn't possibly be in any kind of trouble, he hadn't even existed until a month ago. And the eagles probably didn't know that, did they?

Nothing Bill could do about it in the middle of a beach trip. He propped his chin in his hand and checked on the fishing crew again.

In a fury, Bigfoot had ripped the motor off the back of the boat and lifted it over his head. The Pines family huddled together at the other end of the boat, trying to shield their heads.

A golden trout jumped out of the water, arced majestically through the air, and smacked Bigfoot in the face. Bigfoot stumbled backward and tripped out of the boat.

Hm. Maybe letting the trout go had been the right move. Bill shut his eyes and lay back down.

####

The sun was low and most of the beachgoers had gone home when the Stanowar chugged back to shore, battle-weary, disheveled, and dissatisfied. Except for Ford, who was wearing his sopping wet coat over his waders, holding one boot, and pleased as punch.

"Hey!" Bill shouted. "How'd it go!" He surreptitiously tossed half the bracelet over to Abuelita. She quietly slid it on.

Crankily, Stan yelled from the dock, "You didn't mention Bigfoot in a scuba tank!"

Bill shouted back, "Bigflipper wasn't there when I looked! What, did you expect me to check the entire spacetime continuum to find you the perfect fishing?!"

Faintly, he could hear Ford say, "See, I told you his proper name is Bigflipper."

Mabel repeatedly poked Dipper in the arm as they crossed the beach. Dipper flinched each time. "Ow, ow—Mabel. Cut it out."

"That's what you get for forgetting your sunscreen, bro-bro!"

Dipper's arms and face were bright red with a sunburn. "I didn't forget! I put it on at the beach, right before we left!"

Bill grabbed up Abuelita's empty water bottles and tossed them in the nearest trash can, along with the rest of his tube of anti-sunscreen before anyone could get a good look at it. He ignored the kids and said to Stan, "But it was a good fishing spot, right?"

Stan grumbled, but grudgingly admitted, "Yeah. Until tall, brown, and hairy showed up. We caught four fish! That's gotta be at least as good as the guys from the lodge, right?"

Bill winced. "Ooh. Sorry, they went by an hour ago with eleven fish."

Stan let out a roar of outrage and threw his fishing rod in the sand.

"Grunkle Stan, you don't go fishing to catch fish," Mabel said. "You go fishing to catch memories! Look at this!" She held up a bunch of photos. "This is a whole scrapbook spread right here! We caught sooo many memories."

"And my coat," Ford said. He was admiring his #1 Grunkle pen, which he'd taken from the coat pocket.

"I'd rather have fish," Stan grumbled. "All right, c'mon. Let's get..." He trailed off, looking past Bill. "Hey, is that...?"

Bill glanced back over his shoulder, and grimaced. Agent Powers and his protégé were watching them from the far end of the beach. Bill quickly turned back around. "Yep. Your old friends from last summer," he said. "They've been scoping out the beach all day. I don't know what they're here for—but you probably wanna get out of here." More importantly, Bill wanted to get out of here—but he didn't see any benefit to letting them know he was nervous.

"He's right," Ford said. "If they see us long enough to recognize us—and his memories start coming back..."

"Who are they?" Melody asked.

Soos whispered loudly, "I'll explain it in the car." Bill bit back the need to point out that whispering didn't make a difference as far away as the agents were.

"I don't get it," Stan said. "What are they doing back here?"

"You wanna go ask him?" Bill asked. Stan grimaced.

The Pines and Ramirez families piled back in their vehicles and headed out. Bill had the uneasy feeling that Agent Powers was focused on the Ramirez's truck as they left.

####

(How long have I been promising the Agent Powers plot, since like the May before last or something? Here it is!!

Next week, either we launch straight into the Powers plot, or I finally have the Axolotl chapters (it's chapters plural now) sufficiently edited and we do that first, because once we start the Powers plot there's no place for a break until it's over. Hopefully the Axolotl chapters will finally be ready by next Friday, but if they're not...... tough. It's fine though, you'll live.)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #agent powers #(also half of wendy's gang features prominently! but they're not in the illustration so i'm not listing them)#gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

Text

Neither the devil you know nor the devil you don’t

TONIGHT (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel (13hPT) and a keynote (18hPT) at the LOCUS AWARDS.

Spotify's relationship to artists can be kind of confusing. On the one hand, they pay a laughably low per-stream rate, as in homeopathic residues of a penny. On the other hand, the Big Three labels get a fortune from Spotify. And on the other other hand, it makes sense that rate for a stream heard by one person should be less than the rate for a song broadcast to thousands or millions of listeners.

But the whole thing makes sense once you understand the corporate history of Spotify. There's a whole chapter about this in Rebecca Giblin's and my 2022 book, Chokepoint Capitalism; we even made the audio for it a "Spotify exclusive" (it's the only part of the audiobook you can hear on Spotify, natch):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Unlike online music predecessors like Napster, Spotify sought licenses from the labels for the music it made available. This gave those labels a lot of power over Spotify, but not all the labels, just three of them. Universal, Warner and Sony, the Big Three, control more than 70% of all music recordings, and more than 60% of all music compositions. These three companies are remarkably inbred. Their execs routine hop from one to the other, and they regularly cross-license samples and other rights to each other.

The Big Three told Spotify that the price of licensing their catalogs would be high. First of all, Spotify had to give significant ownership stakes to all three labels. This put the labels in an unresolvable conflict of interest: as owners of Spotify, it was in their interests for licensing payments for music to be as low as possible. But as labels representing creative workers – musicians – it was in their interests for these payments to be as high as possible.

As it turns out, it wasn't hard to resolve that conflict after all. You see, the money the Big Three got in the form of dividends, stock sales, etc was theirs to spend as they saw fit. They could share some, all, or none of it with musicians. Big the Big Three's contracts with musicians gave those workers a guaranteed share of Spotify's licensing payments.

Accordingly, the Big Three demanded those rock-bottom per-stream rates that Spotify is notorious for. Yeah, it's true that a streaming per-listener payment should be lower than a radio per-play payment (which reaches thousands or millions of listeners), but even accounting for that, the math doesn't add up. Multiply the per-listener stream rate by the number of listeners for, say, a typical satellite radio cast, and Spotify is clearly getting a massive discount relative to other services that didn't make the Big Three into co-owners when they were kicking off.

But there's still something awry: the Big Three take in gigantic fortunes from Spotify in licensing payments. How can the per-stream rate be so low but the licensing payments be so large? And why are artists seeing so little?

Again, it's not hard to understand once you see the structure of Spotify's deal with the Big Three. The Big Three are each guaranteed a monthly minimum payment, irrespective of the number of Spotify streams from their catalog that month. So Sony might be guaranteed, say, $30m a month from Spotify, but the ultra-low per-stream rate Sony insisted on means that all the Sony streams in a typical month add up to $10m. That means that Sony still gets $30m from Spotify, but only $10m is "attributable" to a specific recording artist who can make a claim on it. The rest of the money is Sony's to play with: they can spread it around all their artists, some of their artists, or none of their artists. They can spend it on "artist development" (which might mean sending top execs on luxury junkets to big music festivals). It's theirs. The lower the per-stream rate is, the more of that minimum monthly payment is unattributable, meaning that Sony can line its pockets with it.

But these monthly minimums are just part of the goodies that the Big Three negotiated for themselves when they were designing Spotify. They also get free promo, advertising, and inclusion on Spotify's top playlists. Best (worst!) of all, the Big Three have "most favored nation" status, which means that every other label – the indies that rep the 30% of music not controlled by the Big Three – have to eat shit and take the ultra-low per-stream rate. Only those indies don't get billions in stock, they don't get monthly minimum guarantees, and they have to pay for promo, advertising, and inclusion on hot playlists.

When you understand the business mechanics of Spotify, all the contradictions resolve themselves. It is simultaneously true that Spotify pays a very low per-stream rate, that it pays the Big Three labels gigantic sums every month, and that artists are grotesquely underpaid by this system.

There are many lessons to take from this little scam, but for me, the top takeaway here is that artists are the class enemies of both Big Tech and Big Content. The Napster Wars demanded that artists ally themselves with either the tech sector or the entertainment center, nominating one or the other to be their champion.

But for a creative worker, it doesn't matter who makes a meal out of you, tech or content – all that matters is that you're being devoured.

This brings me to the debate over training AI and copyright. A lot of creative workers are justifiably angry and afraid that the AI companies want to destroy creative jobs. The CTO of Openai literally just said that onstage: "Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place":

https://bgr.com/tech/openai-cto-thinks-ai-will-kill-some-jobs-that-shouldnt-have-existed-in-the-first-place/

Many of these workers are accordingly cheering on the entertainment industry's lawsuits over AI training. In these lawsuits, companies like the New York Times and Getty Images claim that the steps associated with training an AI model infringe copyright. This isn't a great copyright theory based on current copyright precedents, and if the suits succeed, they'll narrow fair use in ways that will impact all kinds of socially beneficial activities, like scraping the web to make the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

But you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, right? For some creative workers, legal uncertainty for computational linguists, search engines, and archiving projects are a small price to pay if it means keeping AI from destroying their livelihoods.

Here's the problem: establishing that AI training requires a copyright license will not stop AI from being used to erode the wages and working conditions of creative workers. The companies suing over AI training are also notorious exploiters of creative workers, union-busters and wage-stealers. They don't want to get rid of generative AI, they just want to get paid for the content used to create it. Their use-case for gen AI is the same as Openai's CTO's use-case: get rid of creative jobs and pay less for creative labor.

This isn't hypothetical. Remember last summer's actor strike? The sticking point was that the studios wanted to pay actors a single fee to scan their bodies and faces, and then use those scans instead of hiring those actors, forever, without ever paying them again. Does it matter to an actor whether the AI that replaces you at Warner, Sony, Universal, Disney or Paramount (yes, three of the Big Five studios are also the Big Three labels!) was made by Openai without paying the studios for the training material, or whether Openai paid a license fee that the studios kept?

This is true across the board. The Big Five publishers categorically refuse to include contractual language -romising not to train an LLM with the books they acquire from writers. The game studios require all their voice actors to start every recording session with an on-tape assignment of the training rights to the session:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

And now, with total predictability, Universal – the largest music company in the world – has announced that it will start training voice-clones with the music in its catalog:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/umg-startsai-voice-clone-partnership-with-soundlabs-1235041808/

This comes hot on the heels of a massive blow-up between Universal and Tiktok, in which Universal professed its outrage that Tiktok was going to train voice-clones with the music Universal licensed to it. In other words: Universal's copyright claims over AI training cash out to this: "If anyone is going to profit from immiserating musicians, it's going to be us, not Tiktok."

I understand why Universal would like this idea. I just don't understand why any musician would root for Universal to defeat Tiktok, or Getty Images to trounce Stable Diffusion. Do you really think that Getty Images likes paying photographers and wants to give them a single penny more than they absolutely have to?

As we learned from George Orwell's avant-garde animated agricultural documentary Animal Farm, the problem isn't who holds the whip, the problem is the whip itself:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Entertainment execs and tech execs alike are obsessed with AI because they view the future of "content" as fundamentally passive. Here's Ryan Broderick putting it better than I ever could:

At a certain audience size, you just assume those people are locked in and will consume anything you throw at them. Then it just becomes a game of lowering your production costs and increasing your prices to increase your margins. This is why executives love AI and why the average American can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s anymore.

https://www.garbageday.email/p/ceo-passive-content-obsession

Here's a rule of thumb for tech policy prescriptions. Any time you find yourself, as a worker, rooting for the same policy as your boss, you should check and make sure you're on the right side of history. The fact that creative bosses are so obsessed with making copyright cover more kinds of works, restrict more activities, lasting longer and generating higher damages should make creative workers look askance at these proposals.

After 40 years of expanded copyright, we have a creative industry that's larger and more profitable than ever, and yet the share of income going to creative workers has been in steady decline over that entire period. Every year, the share of creative income that creative workers can lay claim to declines, both proportionally and in real terms.

As with the mystery of Spotify's payments, this isn't a mystery at all. You just need to understand that when creators are stuck bargaining with a tiny, powerful cartel of movie, TV, music, publishing, streaming, games or app companies, it doesn't matter how much copyright they have to bargain with. Giving a creative worker more copyright is like giving a bullied schoolkid more lunch-money. There's no amount of money that will satisfy the bullies and leave enough left over for the kid to buy lunch. They just take everything.

Telling creative workers that they can solve their declining wages with more copyright is a denial that creative workers are workers at all. It treats us as entrepreneurial small businesses, LLCs with MFAs negotiating B2B with other companies. That's how we lose.

On the other hand, if we address the problems of AI and labor as workers, and insist on labor rights – like the Writers Guild did when it struck last summer – then we ally ourselves with every other worker whose wages and working conditions are being attacked with AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Our path to better working conditions lies through organizing and striking, not through helping our bosses sue other giant mulitnational corporations for the right to bleed us out.

The US Copyright Office has repeatedly stated that AI-generated works don't qualify for copyrights, meaning everything AI generated can be freely copied and distributed and the companies that make them can't stop them. This is fantastic news, because the only thing our bosses hate more than paying us is not being able to stop other people from copying the things we make for them. We should be shouting this from the rooftops, not demanding more copyright for AI.

Here's a thing: FTC chair Lina Khan recently told an audience that she was thinking of using her Section 5 powers (to regulate "unfair and deceptive" conduct) to go after AI training:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

Khan has already used these Section 5 powers to secure labor rights, for example, by banning noncompetes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

Creative workers should be banding together with other labor advocates to propose ways for the FTC to prevent all AI-based labor exploitation, like the "reverse-centaur" arrangement in which a human serves as an AI's body, working at breakneck pace until they are psychologically and physically ruined:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

As workers standing with other workers, we can demand the things that help us, even (especially) when that means less for our bosses. On the other hand, if we confine ourselves to backing our bosses' plays, we only stand to gain whatever crumbs they choose to drop at their feet for us.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #openai #ai #llms #gai #generative ai #models #music #umg #universal music group #spotify #tiktok #creative labor markets #chokepoint capitalism.#copyfight

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dude1818 · 3 months ago

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Unsong

I read Unsong this week and it was incredible. The writing and humor has a strong Terry Pratchett feel, and actually the story itself is adjacent to a sci-fi Good Omens. Almost every chapter had a scene that was uproariously hilarious, and really, the whole book was mainly a vector for delivering an endless stream of incredible puns

The basic premise is that the world started to end in the 60s, when the Apollo program crashed into Heaven and cracked the firmament, allowing the divine light to get back into the world. This caused physics to start to break down and reintroduced angels and demons and magic. Jump forward to 2017, and there's a booming "applied Kabbalah" industry around computationally deriving the Hidden Names of God in lieu of other technological advancement. The A plot follows Aaron, a down-on-his-luck kabbalist who works in one of these Names factories and discovers a Name that would revolutionize discovering more Names. This kicks off a chase to gain control of it across what's left of the US

The B plot bounces around, but centers on the was between good and evil. Angels returning to the world also means the resumption of the war against the fallen angels, and also Hell is real again. The messiah was born in the 70s and led the war against the devil, but most of this half of the story is actually about his daughter training under the archangel Uriel in the 90s to keep the world running. Of course Aaron's discovering of a powerful new Name eventually grabs the attention of these powerful forces

Of course the actual minute-to-minute of the book is totally absurd. The first antagonist is the titular UNSONG, the United Nations patent office for Names of God. At one point they attract the Drug Lord and we learn about the War on Drugs: a sentient peyote cactus man took over Mexico with a drug-induced hivemind and tried to invade the US. Neil Armstrong ascended bodily to heaven, and then returned to "grant salvation to" (take over) LA. The higher level angel fights do word association with the concepts describing reality. It's all bonkers, and it all works so well

I'm leaving out so much, but I can't recommend this enough. And the overall question that keeps coming up throughout the book is the age-old question "why does God allow evil to exist anyway," and this is the first time I've seen an answer that actually makes sense. I don't think you could have gotten there from any other angle

#unsong #book review #fantasy books #science fiction

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rustedhearts · 11 months ago

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let it snow (70s!steve harrington x fem!reader)

summary: what happens when you're snowed in with your best friend (and there's a lot of sexual tension)?

uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.

✶ the only living boy in indiana ✶ christmas carols✶ the library

tags: fluff, mutual pining, best friend!steve

"oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we've no place to go: let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!"

— let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!, dean martin

somewhere in indiana. december, 1976.

“That snow’s really comin’ down,” Steve mused from his bedroom window.

You glanced up from your book, splayed on your stomach against his duvet. “It’ll be fine.”

Steve let his drape drop back into place over the window, frosted with ice and fogging with the heat from his radiator. He wandered back toward the bed, flopping beside you and jostling the mattress. You huffed into your current chapter.

“Not worried about missing your date tonight?”

You shrugged, flipping the page that you haven’t even read. “Eh. He’s kind of boring anyway."

"Well, yeah," Steve scoffed, twisting to lay on his back. The blankets bunched up with his shifting. "His name is Peter."

"Your name is Steve."

Steve's head snapped your way to sharpen his eyes in a glare. "Hey."

A slow, sideways smile plucked at your lips. You turned back to your book and stifled a giggle, though it burst free when his fingers poked your side.

"Wanna go in the basement? I need a light and Mom'll kill me if she smells it up here."

You closed your book around your finger and gazed at him over your shoulder. "They won't be home for hours."

"It lingers, sweetheart."

“Gross.” You scrunched up your nose and tried to ignore the pulsing ache in your chest. Bless the cold for keeping the heat from rushing to your face. “Don’t call me that.”

Steve rolled off the bed and to his feet, rushing the door and paying no mind to your distaste.

"C'mon, sweetheart," he called, already halfway down the hall. "We can dip into some of my dad's scotch."

So half an hour later, Steve was on his second Winston—the first stubbed out in the glass ashtray on the coffee table—and you were nursing a mug of scotch. Your mug had Santa on it, and you traced his beard with the edge of your nail as Steve fiddled with the stereo.

"Don't have any Christmas tunes," he'd muttered once you settled in the freezing cold basement. "But we can break out the winter music."

"And what do you consider 'winter music?'" you asked.

He lit up a Winston and clenched it between his teeth, already rifling through his baskets of vinyl. "Anything as cold and dreary as this damn town."

Now, Steve was bopping his hips to a jazzy tune found on a very old record from early high school. You remember the day he found it at the record store. It was during his "blue period," where all he wanted to listen to was jazz and blues.

You hid your grin behind another sip as Steve made finger guns toward the ceiling in time to the trumpet of the song, though a giggle burst forth into a gulp of scotch. His head snapped your way, one finger gun coming to pull his cigarette away.

"I hear your giggles, Miss. Grinch," he teased, swinging his leg over the back of the sofa to sit on the edge.

You swallowed down the pungent liquor, wincing when it stung. "I'm not a Grinch. I just don't like Christmas the same way you do, you know that."

Steve blew a cloud of smoke though his teeth. "Yeah, never understood that, by the way."

"Not for you to understand, Hair."

Steve narrowed his eyes at you, pointing the ashed end of his cigarette your way. "Don't call me that."

You quirked a brow, chin tipping up defiantly. "Or what?"

Steve cooly mouthed at his cigarette a moment more. He carefully slid down the back of the couch until he was seated near your socked feet, leaning forward to stub his second Winston out. As it died out in the mess of ash, Steve hooked his arm around your knees and yanked you close.

"Steve," you warned, voice knocked a pitch up. "Don't!"

It took everything in you not to spill your scotch as Steve's thin fingers prodded at your sides. He knew just what spots to press on, just where to squeeze and jiggle to have you twisting and writhing in a fit of laughter. The kind of laughter that had you aching with soreness. The kind of laughter that sent you back to infancy together.

Steve swooped the mug out of your hand and placed it on the coffee table before it could fall—but only so he could ignore your giggled protests to stop as the pair of you slipped off the couch. You tumbled to the hard floor together, a mess of limbs on concrete.

Soon, you were pinned under his heavy weight. His hands stopped tickling and rested stilly on your waist. They slipped under your sweater in the commotion, and now his palms braced your bare flesh without barrier. You could feel him between your legs—the sheer size of him, pushing your thighs apart and stretching them to sting. The outline of him pressed against his jeans.

The laughter subsided to breathless sighs. You gazed up at his pink-cheeked face, splotched with excitement. Your stomach was in your throat. The record stopped spinning some time ago, and now the empty scratch of needle turn crackled through the empty house. The end of your nose was frozen from the cold, but the rest of you was on fire pressed up against Steve.

Steve: your best friend.

"You're so soft," he whispered.

Your breath hitched. His thumb started to move in odd patterns under your shirt. You were suddenly and extremely aware of your hands around his arms—and how firm his biceps were under his sleeves. Every breath that touched your face smelled like Winston smoke. There was a tear in the rug underneath you and it was tickling your cheek.

"Th-thank you."

His thumbs continued. The breathing shallowed. The record spun on an empty track. His eyes were such a pretty color—or, an amalgamation of many colors all in one pretty iris.

You swallowed thickly, mouth suddenly dry. "I-I should go. Still...try to make my date."

Steve nodded, though he, too, was lost in your eyes. He never noticed how pretty the shape of your eyes were. How long and dainty the lashes were, how they brushed your cheeks with every blink. Did you know? Had you walked around with all this glorious beauty his entire life?

How could he have been so blind?

"Steve," you interrupted. "Get off me."

Steve scrambled to release you of his weight, rolling to his feet and brushing off his jeans. He helped you up—a gentle hand around your arm—and watched you grab your coat from the hook near the door. You've had that coat for years—the fur-lined collar and cuffed sleeves were full of lint and cat hair, and there was a button missing at the bottom.

While you were fishing for your gloves in the pockets, Steve moved the lace drapes over the back door and peered up the steps. There was about three feet of snow blocking the door, and as he watched, more piled over the staircase and across the yard.

"Uh...not sure you should go out in this," he announced.

You flicked your hair out of your face with mittened hands and huffed. "What?"

"The snow's pretty bad—"

"We live in Indiana, Steve. I've seen plenty of snow."

Steve dropped the snow and stepped away, arms folded over his chest. "Is Peter really worth getting stuck in a snowstorm?"

You cocked your foot out, mimicking his folded arms. "Maybe. He-he might be. I don't know."

It was the way his jaw tipped up at you, how his brows raised and nestled together, how his lip curled into a grin akin to the sixteen year old that never got told 'no.' It was the way your heart thumped in your ears with deafening force.

You weren't sure you could be around him right now. Not without wondering how his lips tasted. Not without wondering why he'd never told you he loved you.

"Really? What's his last name?"

"Good question. I'll ask him tonight." You rolled your eyes and whirled around, heading toward the basement steps.

If Steve wouldn't let you leave that way, you'd just go out the front.

"Hey—seriously, you're not going out in this."

"Oh yeah?" you huffed, stomping up the stairs. "Who's gonna stop me?"

A heavy arm hooked around your waist, knocking the air from your lungs with one quick pull. Steve hoisted you back down the steps, and it was only when he placed you back on your feet that you started kicking them. You got one good hit in the thigh before backing away to glare.

"What the hell is your issue?" you spat.

Steve threw his arms out—fucking Christ, his shoulders were broad. His hands were so big, and he had the prettiest pink flush to his face after all that play fighting and struggling.

"I'm not letting you go out in that."

It took everything in you to muster a squint and shoot it at him. You were sweating bullets in your buttoned-up coat.

"Well, I'm going."

Maybe you wanted him to grab you again. Maybe that's why you tried to push past him and dart up the stairs. Maybe you wanted to be chased, manhandled, held by those big, rough hands—Steve couldn't think of any other reason for your second attempt at escaping.

So, he snatched you up again. This time, you ended up dangling over his shoulder, and your feet were quicker to react this time. But your struggles were futile and adorable, and Steve chuckled when he brought you back to the cement floor and blocked off the stairs with a stiff body.

Once standing, you flicked your hair away again. Steve pushed his sweater sleeves up to his elbows. Cords of muscle flexed in his forearms—those strong, wide forearms. The scotch was starting to take effect. The room was getting smaller and hotter by the second, and you couldn't stop watching his lips grow pinker with heat.

"You have to stop touching me," you breathed out, so much softer than you wished it would sound. But you had no strength around Steve when he was at this proximity.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes, swallowing. He almost seemed in pain. "Then stop looking at me like that."

Your mouth ran dry. The room regained its frigidity in an instance. The sizzle of saliva down your throat passed between you.

"Like...like what?"

There was an ache growing in your chest that you were starting to resent. A hollow, weeping ache that squeezed with all its might when Steve looked down and shook his head.

"Nothing."

You watched him a moment. Scuff his shoes through the dirt on the floor. Wipe at his nose the way he does when he's nervous. Tuck his hands into his pockets and roll his shoulders. Meet your eyes only to duck away again.

"What if I...just go home?"

Steve scratched at the back of his neck, tousling his hair. "I'll-I'll walk you."

You nodded. "Okay."

Steve bundled in his coat and scarf, slipping on a pair of ratty old gloves before you pushed your way out the front door. Though you only lived a few houses down, it as a difficult trek. You had to hoist your legs with every step, kicking snow up the back of your jeans and under your coat. The wind whipped flurries at your face and numbed your mouth.

By the time you made it to your own front door, you were shivering and no less flustered than a few minutes ago. You turned around as you reached for the knob, finding Steve at the top step, waiting.

"Thanks for walking me."

Steve shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded. His smile was tight-lipped. "Sure."

You opened the door and slipped inside. Steve watched you kick the snow off your boots against the wall and shimmy your coat onto the hook. He watched you trudge to the steps and ascend them slowly, lost in the world of your own thoughts.

He stepped back and shuffled through the mound of white on your front lawn. He stopped in view of your bedroom window on the second floor, and watched the glass turn yellow in the lamplight. You passed in front of the window on your way to the bed.

Steve echoed a white breath into the air.

Maybe one day.

#rolly!#steve harrington #70s!steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fic #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington blurb #steve harrington au

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