#nocturnal animals imagine

[justjakescharacters]

Look at that face! This story is what Edward deserves.

Favorite Feeling

Relationship: Edward Sheffield x Reader

Fandom: Nocturnal Animals

Request: Yes by @thebasementgirl

Warnings: Fluff

Word Count: 830

Masterlist: Here

Jake Gyllenhaal & Co. Masterlist: Here

Summary: After a long and hard day, Edward’s favorite thing is the cuddles on the couch with a movie and a bowl of ice cream.

“Honey! I’m home!” Edward called, setting his coat on the hanger by the door. He heard shuffling inside the small home, but it warmed his heart to hear it. Soon, a figure came out from the kitchen, wearing an apron and a smile.

“Hi baby! How was the meeting?” The woman questioned as she wrapped him in a bear hug. Edward leaned into her embrace and took a moment to inhale the scent of her perfume and shampoo.

“It went amazing. They really liked the new book and now we’re in the process of printing copies. And I owe that all to you, honey.” Edward leaned back, keeping the woman in his arms, and dropped his head down to capture a kiss from her. His wife pressed her lips against his more, while her arms squeezed him tighter. Unfortunately, the couple had to come up for air at some point, and she took that as her cue to lead her husband into the kitchen.

“Well, tell me all about it. I’m proud of you, Edward. Really proud.” She once again busied herself around the kitchen, and placed the final touches on dinner.

“Well, my editor finally got my final copy to me last night. He was suppose to have it for me a few days ago, but I’m just glad I had it before my meeting this afternoon. Anyways, publishers loved the premise, and offered me ten thousand copies immediately which was nice. We’ve still gotta talk more stable numbers but, it’s a start. How was your day, honey?” He shifted in his seat and rested his forearms on the table in front of him.

“Hmm, what did I do today? I honestly felt like I haven’t done much, to be entirely honest. Got a little bit of laundry done. Which reminds me, your favorite shirt is back in its spot.” Edward’s smile got instantly wider at the thought that his favorite shirt was back in its spot in their closet.

“Umm… what else? Oh, I finally finished my painting. But I can’t show you until it’s cured. But yeah, I’m super excited. Got a couple online orders done, but other than that, it’s been kind of a lazy day.” Finally, she placed a big bowl of pasta in front of Edward. He muttered a quiet thank you, before she bent done to place a kiss on his head. That was one of her favorite things about the man: his hair. It was perfect in every way to her, and she loved to take a deep breath with her nose buried in it. Grabbing her own bowl and a plate of cheesy garlic bread, the Sheffield’s, husband and wife, tucked in for dinner.

It wasn’t too long until they found themselves on the couch after a long chat over dinner. The bowl of vanilla ice cream sat in front of them on the coffee table as they passed the spoon back and forth. She was tucked underneath his arm, and kept trying to burrow deeper into Edward’s side. The man chuckled softly as his wife tried to move further into his side.

“Honey, if you dig any deeper, we’d be in the same body.” He said humorously.

“That’s fine by me. Then we’re always together.” She chuckled back, causing the man to laugh even more. He pulled her closer, and dropped a kiss to her forehead. The sweet gesture made her relax fully. Edward leaned forward and stole another bite of the sweet and creamy treat, but quickly refilled the spoon when his lover opened her mouth in acceptance. But when he went to grab another bite of ice cream, he noticed that it was all gone. She pouted next to him but neither one made any effort to get up and get more. Leaning forward, she grabbed the remote and turned on a random movie on some random channel.

The movie didn’t matter so much in that moment as the moment did. The tranquility of laying in their lover’s arms after a long day. Silence surrounded them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The comfort of knowing that their spouse was there was enough to fill the void of talking. A dead weight fell on Edward’s chest, and a wholesome sight greeted him below. His wife had fallen asleep on him, in the middle of the random movie. This was it. This is what he had always wanted out of his marriage. Someone to love him and support him, and yes, even sometimes falling asleep right before their usual bedtime. Someone for him to pick up and carry to the bedroom after turning the TV off. Someone to gently tuck into bed next to him, and watch with a full heart as she slept peacefully. Someone to fill his head with the most beautiful images to make his dreams, and ink in his novels.

Yes, this was what he always wanted out of life. Of marriage. This was his favorite feeling.

[missmagicalelf]

Castlevania Maria Modern AU💖

In the modern world Maria is living a modest life with her family(yes she has a dad in this one) and is just an ordinary high school girl she still has some memories of her previous life but she decides to spend more time with her family and friends and her cute little pets

[invinciblerodent]

getting a little bit obsessed with my "cottagecore throuple" here, because the more I think about it, the more disgustingly perfect and idyllic the whole thing is to me.

like... post-game, I like to imagine Shadowheart absolutely thriving. She's a city girl with a deep love for animals, and spotty- to nil memories, most of which are of the worst things to have ever happened in a dank torture-basement: of course a sweet, picturesque forest cottage (so far I like to think that Petyr would call it "The Hovel", even though it's by all means a cozy, nice hunter's lodge) would have her downright giddy, and she deserves every ounce of that happiness ever.

As I imagine it, when not enthusiastically learning all there is to learn about the quasi-self-sustaining life (that she had dropped herself into by shacking up with a literal forest ranger), she spends as much time outside as possible: walks barefoot in the tall grass, stops to smell every flower (and even plants quite a few, just by the vegetables), and lays in the soft underbrush for hours at a time- enjoying the sunlight caressing her face, enjoying a nice novel (and/or a cuddle with Scratch, the cub, or her boyfriend once he sits down for a moment), or just gazing up at the moon and stars in silent worship. She makes friends with every animal that crosses her path, too: SO many potions of animal speaking are consumed, it's absurd. (She's best friends with the chickens. Petyr has to start farming acorn truffles in the basement for her, and that even proves actually very lucrative- in town, that shit sells for like 10-20 gold a pop.)

She'd of course bring home everything that'll let her. Little wildflower bouquets and stuff at first, but also every critter: from juvenile racoons just weaned from their mothers (they look almost like kittens! how cute!), to elderly foxes that just want to curl up in front of the fire and warm their bones somewhere safe for a moment. She's having the time of her goddamn life, she's learning a shitton of life skills she was never taught (finally learning things not meant to make her better at hurting people!), and generally enjoying a life that, while still plagued by remnants of the past (night terrors, perpetrator trauma, loss, grief, pains both suffered and inflicted, all that great stuff), has her feeling actually content with her lot in it.

And with all this, Petyr is... very business as usual, or at least he's trying to pretend that he is. Having someone in what was his space for like 20 years is strange initially, but if there's one thing he's used to, it's adapting. Making things work. (Plus, he's like, happy, or whatever. In love. You know, that sort of rot.)

Then again, he's also used to only having to feed himself with the very little he has, not another (especially another who is inexperienced at this type of thing, and a second another who just... drops by sometimes, always unannounced and unexpected, but never unwelcome), which deep down does have him a bit (a lot) more antsy about not just being the self-appointed guardian of her happiness, but also just... their general survival.

He's keenly aware that winters in the wild are never especially easy, not when you're so far removed from the safety of a community- especially not the way he's used to being alone, without even magic to keep you warm and safe. Usually, he spends most of the year primarily occupied by preparing for winter, and even like that, there have been lean years: years when he got snowed in for tendays, when he did something stupid and all the careful prep went down the shitter, years he had to go hungry and learn to make do with next to nothing.

So he compensates for- (and distracts himself from-) that anxiety by making extra sure that the pantry is stocked to bursting with all the goods there can be, and they often head out into the woods to hunt and forage together- although he's not a great (or even a good) teacher, Shadowheart (usually Shadow, often Heart, lately Jen or Jenny in affection) does make what he used to do out of sheer need, into something also done for fun.

Hunting and foraging are fun now, and soon, the cabinets are overflowing with jars and jars of dry mushrooms, so much homemade deer jerky, jams and jellies and pickles galore... there's mead fermenting, and homemade soap curing before it can be used, firewood stacked to the height of a person... herb bundles, garlic braids, grain corn, and drying peppers are strung up on the rafters like fragrant fairy lights.

Meanwhile, I imagine that Halsin comes and goes as he pleases- not entirely unlike a beloved stray cat. He just shows up one evening as if he had left not tendays, but only a few hours ago, kicks the duff or mud or snow off his boots, and leans his staff into its habitual nook by the door. He sets whatever it is that he brought this time in its appropriate place (be it otherwise unobtainable goods from town, or just a little gift, a treat to enjoy together), and he sinks into the worn-out armchair by the fireplace that was declared his the first time he stayed.

One of the others almost always then strolls by to settle wordlessly on his lap (if not both of them- that poor chair can barely take the combined weight), and just relax as his big, warm fingers slowly work through the knots and ties keeping their hair out of their faces, and, voice rumbling deep in his chest, he tells them all that has happened in Reithwin the past while.

The many smells of dinner and the comforting scent of pipe tobacco mingle with the fragrant herbs and the crackling fire then, and creates something that can only be described as the scent of home.

.............. and then all three just fuck absolute NASTY every day, in every configuration, and on every surface available for the next, oh, month or so.

[pureconancommentary]

First off, excellent talk from Agasa about Shinichi rushing into things being why he got into this mess to begin and why he's not really a mature detective. And it still takes a long time before he starts to take a breath and think things through before taking action. He's fully aware of our tiny detective's biggest shortcoming, and tbh it makes the Kudo parents actions later make more sense. Agasa probably told them that their son just keeps running headlong into danger.

Secondly, the security guard being killed is literally only brought up this once (and has another translation that makes no sense - 'tried to seize the robbers without knowing' is just - anyway it's saying the guard was unprepared or careless like Shinichi tends to be with his confrontations atm). But I suppose this is the best we get for a motive for why Hirota tried to take the money for himself. What was a big payout robbery accidentally involved the death of the guard, and Hirota was the getaway, so he tried to run first and lay as low as he could. We don't know any more details, we don't know if one of the three killed him or if, say, the BO had more involvement than just letting Akemi organize the robbery. So there's also a possibility that Hirota became more aware of other people at play who were more than willing to kill anyone in the way.

[justjakescharacters]

Just re-watched this episode last night! One of the best.

I need some Jake Gyllenhaal fan friends fr

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

Above the whirring of 300,000 cars each day on Los Angeles’s 101 freeway, an ambitious project is taking shape. The Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing is the largest wildlife bridge in the world at 210ft long and 174ft wide, and this week it’s had help taking shape: soil. “This is the soul of the project,” says Beth Pratt, the regional executive director, California, at the National Wildlife Federation, who has worked on making the crossing become a reality over the last 13 years. She says she’s seen many milestones, like the 26m pounds of concrete poured to create the structure, but this one is special. “To be able to put my hand in that soil and toss it on and know that we’ll be putting milkweed plants that will flourish for monarch butterflies, or picturing the first mountain lion paw print on that soil,” she says, fills her with hope. “It is wonderful to watch this habitat take shape.” The plot is a native wildlife habitat that connects two parts of the Santa Monica mountain range, with the hopes of saving creatures – from the famous local mountain lions, down to frogs and insects – from being crushed by cars on one of the nation’s busiest roadways. With nearly an acre of local plants on either side and thick vegetated sound walls 12ft high to dampen light and noise for nocturnal animals as they slip across, it’s an unprecedented feat of engineering. Imagination, too. The project began in 2022 through a public-private partnership that brought together many organizations to cover the $92m in costs, according to Caltrans, the state transportation department. Research shows that wildlife crossings save money because it limits animal interactions with vehicles.

[marcusspace]

Brotherly swap - part 1

In the quiet solitude of his dimly lit bedroom, Timothy McAllister sat cross-legged on his twin bed, surrounded by the silent guardians of his imagination—shelves crammed with comic books, action figures, and forgotten school textbooks. The digital clock on his nightstand blinked 3:42 AM, a silent sentinel to his nocturnal habits. Tim, a self-proclaimed nerd with glasses perched on the tip of his nose and a penchant for graphic t-shirts, was lost in the realm of his favorite anime series. His eyes darted across the screen of his laptop, his heart racing with every clash of swords and whisper of a forbidden romance.

A sudden noise jolted him out of his fantasy world—the unmistakable sound of flesh on flesh, muffled by a closed door. Curiosity piqued, he tiptoed out of his room, his socks making faint squeaks against the cold, hardwood floor. The noise grew louder as he approached the staircase, each step bringing him closer to the source of the mysterious sounds. The thirst that had plagued him earlier was forgotten, replaced by a burning curiosity that compelled him downstairs.

The kitchen light spilled out into the hallway, creating a stark contrast with the shadows. Tim peered sneakily, his heart pounding like a drum in his chest. There, at the kitchen island, stood Brad—his stepbrother, the epitome of jock perfection with a body sculpted from football and a swagger that made heads turn. Brad must’ve just stumbled home after a night of partying and heavy drinking. Brad is standing naked in the kitchen, clearly thinking everyone is asleep, his hand was moving rhythmically, fisting his impressive uncut 9-inch cock. The sight of Brad's muscles flexing, his abs rippling with each stroke, sent a jolt of arousal through Tim. He felt a pang of envy for the power Brad's body held, the ease with which it drew attention and desire.

Tim's mouth went dry as he watched Brad's hand work over his shaft, the precum glistening under the soft glow of the pendant lights. He couldn't help but think about the fantasies he'd had—fantasies where he could experience Brad's body for himself, where he could feel the strength and virility that seemed so far out of reach. But this was real, and Tim knew he should look away. Yet, he remained frozen, his own hand inching down to his crotch, his cock hardening at the sight of Brad's unabashed pleasure.

With a jolt of reality, Tim realized he could be caught staring. He bolted back upstairs, his cheeks flaming with a mix of embarrassment and arousal. His tiny cock strained against his pajama bottoms, demanding attention. He rushed into his room and slammed the door, his thoughts racing. He felt so ashamed—how could he be turned on by his own stepbrother? It wasn't just the taboo; it was the stark contrast between Brad's jock body and his own lanky, unathletic frame.

Tim flopped onto his bed, his hand trembling as it found its way into his pants. He couldn't stop thinking about Brad's cock, the way it had filled his hand so completely. He began to stroke himself, imagining what it would be like to have that kind of power, that kind of presence. He thought of Brad, sweaty and spent after a grueling football practice, his muscles begging for relief. The fantasy grew more vivid—Brad, helpless and needy, turning to Tim for comfort.

Tim's hand moved faster, his breath hitching in his throat as he pictured Brad's face contorted in pleasure. In his mind's eye, Brad's handsome features were a mix of surprise and gratitude as Tim took him into his mouth, his tiny cock forgotten in the face of his stepbrother's overwhelming manhood. The fantasy was intoxicating, a heady blend of the forbidden and the desired. His hand was a blur, his strokes becoming more erratic as the image of Brad's cock grew larger and larger in his mind.

With a strangled moan, Tim came, the sensation of release flooding through him like a tidal wave. He didn't bother to clean up the mess, too lost in the aftermath of his climax to care about the sticky residue on his hand and stomach. He lay there, panting, the room spinning slightly from the rush of adrenaline and embarrassment. Eventually, his eyes grew heavy and he succumbed to sleep, his last thoughts a jumble of Brad's body and his own secret longings.

The next morning, Tim woke with a start, his body feeling... different. He sat up, and the world tilted alarmingly. He reached out to steady himself, and his hand encountered something unfamiliar—his own hand, but it was larger, more muscular. His eyes shot to his reflection in the mirror opposite his bed, and what he saw took his breath away. He was in Brad's body.

Tim couldn't believe it—his fantasy had come to life. He rolled out of bed, his new muscles protesting the movement with a delightful stretch. He stumbled over to the mirror, his legs unaccustomed to the bulk of Brad's muscular frame. His eyes widened with wonder as he took in the sight of Brad's reflection. The broad chest, the rock-hard abs, the powerful arms, and the proud erection that jerked in response to his touch. He tentatively reached down to grasp Brad's cock, his heart racing as he felt its heavy warmth in his hand.

Tim couldn't resist exploring further. He flexed the bicep, watching the muscle bulge and dance in the early morning light. He ran his hand over the flat expanse of Brad's stomach, feeling the ridges of his abs, the trail of hair that led to his groin. He stepped closer to the mirror, his gaze lingering on the reflection of Brad's face, now his own. He touched his cheek, the stubble rough against his fingertips. His hand trailed down to Brad's chest, feeling the thump of a heart that was now his, the thrill of power surging through veins that had never felt so strong.

With one hand, he began to stroke the cock that was now his own. It felt alien, yet incredibly arousing. The sensation was magnified, as if his own desires had been amplified by the sheer size of his new member. His other hand roamed over the landscape of Brad's body, tracing the contours of his broad shoulders, the firmness of his ass. He couldn't believe the sensation—his fantasy was playing out in real life. He was the jock now, the one with the power to turn heads and command attention.

Tim's eyes remained glued to the mirror as he jerked off Brad's cock, watching the way it moved in his hand, the way his new body responded to his touch. He felt a thrill of power as he manipulated it, watching the shadows play across the muscles he had once envied from afar. The hand that was once so inexperienced now moved with surprising confidence, guided by Brad's own body's instinctive knowledge. He felt the beginnings of another orgasm build, a warmth spreading through him that was more intense than anything he had ever felt before.

Suddenly, he heard a noise from downstairs—Brad's voice, but it was high-pitched and panicked. Tim froze, his hand still wrapped around Brad's cock. What was going on? He had to find out. He stumbled to the door, his legs unsteady in this new form. His heart thudded in his chest as he descended the stairs, trying to process what was happening.

As he approached the kitchen, he could make out Brad's frantic cries. "What the fuck?! What did you do to me?!" Tim peeked around the corner, his eyes widening in horror and fascination. There was Brad, his body now in Tim's place, flailing around the kitchen in a pair of Tim's oversized glasses, looking utterly lost. Tim had to stifle a laugh—his stepbrother was now the one out of his element.

"I... I don't know what's happening!" Brad's voice, coming from Tim's smaller body, was a high-pitched squeak that seemed to echo off the walls. He stumbled around the kitchen, bumping into chairs and knocking over a vase. Tim felt a twinge of pity, watching Brad struggle with his new reality.

But the pity quickly turned into a giddy excitement as he realized that he was no longer the nerd. He was the jock, the one who could bend the world to his will. The one who could get whatever he wanted. And what he wanted, more than anything, was to live out his wildest fantasies in Brad's body.

Tim took a deep breath and stepped into the kitchen, his new body moving with a grace that was both alien and thrilling. Brad's eyes went wide with shock as he took in Tim's new form. "What the fuck, Tim?" he squeaked.

"Well, well, well," Tim said, a smirk playing on Brad's full lips. "Looks like we've swapped places." He couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction at the sight of Brad in his own skin—so small and fragile. "I guess the universe has a sense of humor after all."

Brad looked up at him with a mix of fear and anger. "Make it stop," he demanded, his voice still not his own. "This isn't funny!"

Tim just chuckled, the sound deep and resonant in Brad's body. "Oh, but it is," he said, his eyes glinting with mischief. "It's more than funny, it's a dream come true." He strode over to Brad, towering over him. "Imagine all the things I can do with this body." He flexed his bicep, watching Brad's eyes follow the movement with a mix of awe and dread.

"You can call me Brad now," Tim said, his voice a commanding rumble. "And I'll call you Tim. It's only fair, right?"

Brad's eyes darted around the kitchen, his mind racing. He had to get out of this situation, had to get back into his own body. But how? He had seen enough sci-fi movies to know that the geeky protagonist usually had some kind of ace up their sleeve, but all he had was Tim's scrawny body and a head full of football stats.

Tim, now Brad, took a step closer, his new body exuding confidence with every movement. "Come on, little bro," he said, his voice a mockery of Brad's usual cocky drawl. "Let's not make a scene." He reached out to pat Brad's shoulder, his hand swallowing Tim's delicate frame. "You'll get used to it."

Brad shrank away, his eyes darting to the floor. "What do you want?" he whispered, his voice barely recognizable as Tim's.

Tim, reveling in his newfound power, leaned in closer, his breath hot against Brad's ear. "Oh, you know what I want," he murmured, his hand drifting down to Brad's crotch. "But first, let's go get you cleaned up. You can't face the day like this."

With surprising gentleness, Tim guided Brad to the bathroom, watching as his stepbrother's body moved clumsily in the unfamiliar confines of Tim's smaller frame. He couldn't resist the urge to run his hand along Brad's ass, feeling the firm muscles that he had so often envied. Brad flinched, his eyes flashing with a mix of fear and anger. "Cut it out!" he snapped.

Tim just smirked, his hand lingering. "Don't worry, I know you're straight," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "But I'm not, and now I've got your body. So let's make the most of it, shall we?"

Brad's cheeks flushed, his heart hammering in his chest. He couldn't believe what was happening. "This isn't right," he protested weakly. "We can't just... swap lives like this."

Tim, now in Brad's body, grinned. "Why not?" He leaned closer, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "You've had your fun with the cheerleaders and the football games. It's my turn now." He stepped back, admiring his reflection in the mirror. "And don't worry, I'll take good care of your body." His hand drifted down to cup Brad's crotch, his eyes never leaving Brad's face. "In fact, I've got a whole new set of rules for it."

Brad felt a surge of anger, his fists clenching at his sides. "You can't just—"

Tim cut him off with a wave of Brad's hand. "Oh, but I can. And I will. Now, let's talk about your old life." He leaned against the sink, Brad's body looking eerily relaxed in Tim's usual slump. "What was her name? Your, um, my girlfriend, I mean."

"Her name is none of your business," Brad spat back, his voice unsteady.

Tim chuckled, the sound deep and resonant in Brad's body. "Well, now it is," he said, stroking Brad's cheek with the back of his hand. "I mean, I'm going to be living your life now. It's only fair that I know all your little secrets."

Brad's eyes narrowed, his hands balled into fists. "What are you saying?"

Tim, now Brad, leaned in closer, his grin wicked. "I'm saying," he began, his hand tracing the line of Brad's jaw, "that from now on, Brad here is going to be exploring his... let's call it his 'alternative' side." He watched Brad's face contort with disgust, his new body flushing with excitement at the thought. "You're going to be the one going to prom with the hottest guy instead of the prom queen."

Brad's eyes widened with horror. "You can't do this to me!"

Tim, now in Brad's body, chuckled darkly. "Why not? You've had your fun with the ladies. Now it's time for me to have some fun with the... boys." He winked, his hand sliding down to Brad's waist, the touch electric and unwelcome. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to give you plenty of stories to tell."

Brad's mind raced, trying to think of a way out of this nightmare. He had to find a way to reverse the swap, to get back into his own body before things went too far. "We need to find out how this happened," he said, his voice shaking with fear. "There has to be a way to fix it."

Tim, now in Brad's body, just shrugged. "Why bother?" he said, his tone laced with nonchalance. "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me." He flexed his new biceps, watching them bulge in the mirror. "I've got everything I've ever wanted."

[ambunyun]

DC x DP Prompt (2)

Danny becomes a dreamwalker, and gains another complicated relationship.

It was no secret that Danny had a rocky and awkward relationship with his rogue gallery, especially after his coronation to become the Ghost King. Imagine the faces his enemies made when they learned that baby half-ghost they used to brawl with was now the Eternal Majesty and effectively their boss.

That was mostly how Danny, in a display of abuse of authority, made Nocturn agreed to help him enter a specific person's dream. More specifically, the dream of one Timothy Drake-Wayne.

It all started when Danny got his scholarship to Gotham University after finishing high school. Finally leaving his ghost-fighting life in Amity Park behind, although he still had to fulfill his duty as the Ghost King.

In his first year at Gotham U, he met none other than the Tim Drake - local celebrity, son of billionaire, genius - as his classmate.

Here's the thing, Danny made Tim extremely sleepy for some reasons.

For one, the air around Danny was chill. Unlike the biting cold of winters, this felt more like the cooling of an air conditioner on a summer day. Which made thing way too comfortable, his body just kept dozing off whenever this strange boy was around, like an animal ready for hibernation.

For two, being the Ghost King meant that Danny had the traces of all the Ancients on him. Including Nocturn's trace as the Ancient of Dream, which induced sleep. This was usually unnoticeable when you were awake, but if you were someone who overworked themselves to the limit of consciousness and survived purely of caffein and energy drinks like Tim did, it got much more effective.

So from Tim's perspectice, Danny was just one big sleep-inducing spell. And this was really ticking him off. He kept falling asleep in the middle of classes, or when he needed to concentrate on a vital case during study time. It was almost impossible to focus when Danny was around, everything was just so relaxing.

The batfam was overjoyed thinking that Tim had finally fixed his broken sleeping habits. In reality, this just made Tim even more paranoid and drank even more caffein than before.

Danny, being someone who had listened to Jazz's rants about the effect of lack of sleep on the mind for all his youth, immediately recognized Tim's worsening symtomps when he saw them. Strangely, whenever he approached Tim to give some advice, the boy just paled and skedaddled away as if he'd seen a ghost (hehe).

So, in true Danny's fashion, he asked Nocturn for help putting a poor classmate to proper sleep. He even manifested himself as the Ghost King in Tim's dream to ease the boy through the process.

This escalated when Tim accidentally developed a crush on Danny in his dreams and was now concerned if he had just developed a crush on a supernatural being in his dream. Or if he had just developed a crush on a figment of his imagination (he couldn't decide which was worse).

Danny was completely unaware of this and patted himself on the back for helping someone while Tim had a crisis.

[wintrwinchestr]

strangers | part 3

summary: when nothing comes of the frantic call for help you'd made just before joel had attempted to take your life, you realize that he had been telling you the truth—nobody cares about you, and nobody is coming for you. the fear of being forgotten becomes so overwhelming, you decide to go against your better judgement in a last-ditch effort to make sure that somebody knows you're still here. what you hadn't anticipated, is that you'd be putting more than just your own life in danger by doing so.

!!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 issues, lying/gaslighting, manipulation, introduction of female original character, reader's skintone shows bruises, reader has at least shoulder-length hair, reader's hair texture can be put into ponytails, reader has pubic hair, groping, fingering, kissing, fingersucking (both reader and joel), mild blood kink, domination and control that is essentially abuse, development of stockholm syndrome, pet names (baby, darlin', babydoll, sweetheart), story inspired by "preacher's daughter" by ethel cain, vaguely set in the 70s, please respectfully let me know if i missed anything and i will rectify the tags

word count: 12.9k

a/n: heyyy... how y'all doin... it's been a while. i am very excited to share the next part of this story, written by some miraculous feat of perseverance. if you're still here, thank you for sticking around. i love joel and babydoll so so much and they have never left my heart or my mind, even when i was taking a break from them. i thought that putting a hard stop to my hobbies while i was having a difficult time at work was a good coping mechanism, but i realized last month that i can't let them take my creativity away from me no matter how hard they try. thank you @chippedowlmug and @polaroidpascal for always yapping with me and keeping their story alive even when i didn't have it in me to write it all down. there is much more of them still to come, thank you for being here <3

divider by @saradika

series masterlist/moodboard

read this chapter on ao3

part 4

You can’t sleep.

Each time the air conditioning kicks on, or the pipes let out a rattling groan, or the mattress springs creak underneath Joel’s weight, your eyes snap open again. Each time you hope to awaken to the sight of blue and red lights streaming in through the crooked blinds, and each time you’re disappointed. Your heart rate hasn’t been able to settle into any kind of steady rhythm all night, the muscle beating erratically every time you hear so much as a cricket chirp or a gust of wind outside. You could’ve sworn at one point you had heard distant footsteps crunching through the gravel parking lot, and you’d held your breath as you imagined they belonged to a police officer coming to your rescue, sent by the woman who had picked up your call for help. Any minute now the footsteps would reach your room, and you’d hear fists pounding on the door as they demanded entry. 

That minute had turned into five, then ten, and then fifteen, before the sound had repeated itself, and you’d realized it was just some nocturnal critter rustling around in the trash can outside the door. 

It’s been hours now since you’d made your futile little escape attempt, since you’d uttered all of about four words to the woman on the other end of the line before Joel had pounced on you like an animal, ripped the phone out of your hand, and dragged you back into his lair. 

…Someone had picked up, hadn’t they? Your memory is failing you now. Maybe the line was dead, maybe you hadn’t inserted enough coins for the call to go through, maybe you had only wanted there to be somebody out there who cared, and you had just hallucinated the woman’s tinny voice in your terrified state.

What you can be sure you hadn’t hallucinated, however, is the contents of the box you wish you had never pulled out from underneath the bench seat. You can’t escape the graphic memories of the polaroids that project themselves onto the backs of your eyelids each time they dare to close, jolting you back into reality the second your consciousness begins to slip away. You can’t help but think about how Joel had made you lay perfectly still for him while he forced himself inside of you, and you taste bile in the back of your throat as you wonder if he had ever really violated any of the other girls that way, or if it was just some sick fantasy.

You’re almost certain of what the answer is, but you try to swallow it down along with the sourness in your mouth.

You think about how scared you were, how scared you are, and how scared they must have been in their final moments, knowing there was nothing they could do anymore except submit themselves to his violence and hope he would at least make it quick. Eighteen or so years’ worth of dreams and desires and ambitions dashed in a single night, snuffed out in an instant as he reduced their bodies to nothing more than something limp and pliant for him to play with. You think about Ruby, and try to blink away the sudden vision of sunken glassy eyes and blonde ringlets covered in dirt and blood, skin pale and body decaying in a forgotten patch of land off the side of the road somewhere. You hope if he had ever spared even one of them from his grotesque defilement, that it was her.

You’re crying, you realize, when you feel a hot tear pooling in the shell of your ear, and you try to suppress your shuddering sobs as the guilt begins to feel all-consuming. How come you’re still alive to feel Joel’s hot breath raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and yet there’s a fucking shoebox full of dozens and dozens of girls who’d been brutalized and violated and discarded like trash? What makes you so fucking special? Being lost and naive and stupid enough to play into his little game without knowing what the cost would be if you’d tried to back out, to say that you’d changed your mind because he was too rough and controlling and it wasn’t fun anymore, like the rest of them probably had? It isn’t fair that you get to escape their fates just because you were the only one fucked up enough to enjoy the game, at least while it had lasted.

You’re going to wake him up with all your sniffling and shivering if you don’t get yourself under control somehow. You need to breathe. You need to get some air. Feel the breeze on your face and look up at the stars and calm yourself down enough to try and get at least a couple hours of sleep tonight. Lord knows you’ll probably need them tomorrow. 

Although Joel had fallen asleep with his arm locked tight around your chest, it rests across his own now, rising and falling slowly with his breathing. He seems to be in true, deep sleep, having laid perfectly still for the past couple of hours save for the bear-like snorts he lets out every once in a while. Must have really worn himself out last night, you think to yourself, the tone of the voice in your head dripping with venom.

You wait another couple of minutes for the AC unit to turn back on, and use its obnoxious metallic rattling to cover the sound of you peeling back the thin sheet and musty comforter. You do so carefully, in as slow and as delicate movements you can manage in your current state, practically placing your feet on the carpet one toe at a time before pushing yourself up to a standing position. Joel makes some kind of grumbling cough just as you finish straightening out your spine, and it startles a gasp from you. You cover your mouth quickly and turn back to face him with wide eyes, afraid that you’ll find his own darkened ones staring back at you. 

They’re still closed, to your immense relief, but his mouth is hanging open now, his sharp canines catching the moonlight in a way that sends a shiver down your back. You still have another minute or so of cover from the air conditioning before the room is cloaked in sinister silence once again, so you use your last remaining seconds to sweep the floor with your bare feet, blindly feeling around in the dark for your shoes. Come on, where the fuck are they? you wonder, sure that you would’ve kicked them over by now, if they were still in the spot Joel had put them after he had stripped off your clothes and pulled you into the shower with him. 

Fuck.

He locked them in the fucking truck, along with the rest of your clothes, along with all of his clothes and both of your bags full of your modest belongings. You’d been tucked into bed already, sniffling quietly into the pillow as he’d made one last trip outside in nothing but his briefs just to ensure that you wouldn’t be motivated to try something again during the night. You’d hardly be able to make it anywhere without a stitch of clothing on your back except for his threadbare t-shirt, after all, the length of it just barely enough to cover the tufts of curls that poke out from the apex of your thighs. 

“Just a lil’ insurance policy. You understand, sweetheart,” Joel had whispered, slipping the key to the truck underneath his pillow before slithering into bed behind you, wrapping his arms around you and constricting you like a snake. 

Fuck it. It’s been too long. You tiptoe across the few feet of space between your side of the bed and the door to the room, thankful that the AC rattles out one last dissonant groan loud enough to cover the squeak of the hinges and the click of the lock. 

Free from the confines of that cage-like room at last, you shakily exhale the breath you’d been holding, and the desert air is cold enough for you to see the pale cloud of it against the onyx-colored sky. With your back pressed up against the door and your hands splayed out against the wood, you look up at the endless expanse of stars above the treeline and let out a shuddering sob, the sight both comforting and overwhelming all at once. 

You feel small. You feel lost. You feel trapped. Scared. Sick. Confused. Everything. Nothing.

There’s a whole world out there, right in front of you, all around you, and it was waiting to welcome you with open arms, if you hadn’t fallen into the wrong ones first. You feel both grateful and damned to be alive, relieved that you’ve been fortunate enough to live to see another day, but knowing that each one that follows will be spent with him. In his captivity, doing his bidding, spending the rest of your life trying to decide which side of his polaroid camera is the worse one to be on. 

The polaroids. You just can’t fucking get them out of your head. The only physical evidence of what happened to any of those girls, now sitting at the bottom of a gas station trash can, likely covered up with empty soda cans and fast food wrappers and grease-stained napkins by now. That black plastic bag was probably tossed into a dumpster sometime last night, ready to be loaded onto a trash truck and taken to a landfill, never to be seen again. Discarded. Forgotten.

If anything, you wish you could at least provide some kind of closure to their parents, to Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, who only gave up the search for their daughter because they had let the police convince them that their bright, beautiful, and promising child had just decided to run away that summer. You wish you could somehow make it back across the country, walk up to their home and knock on the door and be able to tell them “I know what happened to her. A man took her—a monster. He killed her. I’m sorry.”

But then, what condolence would that provide them, without a body to lay to rest? You wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for her. Joel probably doesn’t even fucking remember where she is anymore, where any of them are. He probably just picks the most unassuming, low-trafficked area he can find nearby to dump their bodies after he’s done with them, chosen as carelessly as he would the next cigarette out of his pack—a thatch of tall grass off the side of a back road, a pile of dry-rotted debris where a barn once stood, an algae-covered pond behind a long-abandoned farmhouse. Bleak, filthy, forgettable places, where nobody would ever be able to find them.

Another sob wracks your body, and you muffle the sound with your hand as you slide down the door, your knees giving out from underneath you as you collapse onto the sidewalk. 

Nobody knows where you are, or what happened to you, and nobody fucking cares. Not the police, not your own mother. You’ll be forgotten just like the rest of them if you haven’t been already, whether you make it out of this alive or not. 

You can’t bear the thought. You thought you could, when you had first left home and started following Ruby’s trail all that time ago. It had seemed inspiring at the time, the idea of leaving that suffocating little town in search of somewhere else to plant your roots and let yourself bloom. But now… you have to make sure that someone knows the truth. Whether they care about you enough to come to your rescue or not, you need at least one person out there to know that you didn’t just vanish into the wind. That you’re still alive. That you’re still out there. That you haven’t given up yet.

You close your eyes for a moment, taking a few steadying breaths as the cool night breeze dries your tears and the thin veil of sweat that your anxious spiral had produced. When you open them again, your gaze lands on the payphone across the parking lot, and you heave a despondent sigh as you study a moth fluttering dizzily around the bulb that illuminates the little booth. The phone is even more useless to you now than it was the first time, without access to the handful of quarters that are still locked inside Joel’s truck. With that option eliminated, you push yourself up to your feet, and feel the tiny muscles in your toes spasm with the desire to run. You try to rewind your memory several hours back, searching for even a glimpse of something that might tell you where the fuck you are, which direction to head in—had you passed any street signs, local schools, city halls, anything? You must’ve been too terrified to pay any attention to your surroundings as Joel drove from the gas station to the motel, devoting all of your focus to planning your failed getaway. Joel was probably counting on that, and had intentionally picked this drab little motel in the middle of fucking nowhere in order to imprison you here.

You finally tear your eyes away from that hopeless, trapped little moth, instead turning your head toward the motel office all the way down at the end of the row of rooms. There’s a dim light on inside, but no other sign of a person working there. Considering the isolated nature of this bygone stretch of highway, the motel might not even get enough business to justify paying a person to man the front desk all night. You chew on your lip, debating if it’s even worth a shot just to take a look around and see if you can find anything of use in there.

Your feet are stepping one in front of the other before you can stop them, leading you toward the door with “OFFICE” painted on the glass window in bold red letters. Goosebumps rise on the exposed skin of your legs as you walk, and you almost hope that there isn’t anybody in there after all, just to spare yourself the embarrassment of having to talk to some innocent bystander while you grasp desperately at the bottom hem of your shirt and your remaining shreds of dignity. You hate how well Joel’s little “insurance policy” is working exactly the way he wanted it to.

The doorknob is cold against your fingertips, and your breath hitches in surprise when you’re able to turn it with no resistance. You slip inside the office and close the door behind you quietly, taking a beat to survey the wood-paneled room—there’s a corkboard of room keys with only one empty hook, a clock on the wall that makes you jump with each startling tick, and a coffee maker in the corner covered in a thin layer of dust, illuminated by the slices of white moonlight coming in through the blinds. It’s all too still, too untouched, everything about the room only emphasizing how absolutely alone you are here. And yet, you can’t shake the eerie feeling of a presence, of eyes on you, watching you and waiting to jump out from the shadows and drag you back to your keeper. 

Just find what you came in here to look for and get the fuck out, you scold yourself, stepping behind the front desk and opening each drawer one by one as you search for the handful of items on your mental checklist—a pen, paper, an envelope, and a stamp. 

It’s not your brightest idea, attempting to send a letter back home to your mother. But it’s better than doing nothing, just disappearing into the forest and letting the monster that lurks there kick dirt over your trail of breadcrumbs. Even if just one remains, it will be enough to prove that you were ever there at all.

The pen and paper were easiest to find, sitting right on top of the desk in plain sight. You’d torn off a sheet of the motel’s personalized notepad, the place’s name and address printed neatly across the top. If your mother does find it in her heart to come looking for you, at least she’ll know where to start.

The envelope and stamp are proving more difficult to locate, and each deafening tick of the clock above your head taunts you with its reminder of how much time you’ve been in here, out of bed, away from Joel. Your searching becomes a little more frantic, less gentle moving of objects out of the way and more haphazardly swiping them around the drawers in your fruitless scavenging. 

“Um… hi there—” comes a voice from behind you, nearly startling a scream from your throat as you whirl around. You hit your hip on the open drawer and wince, and the owner of the voice puts her hands out in front of her, as if she had just spooked a small dog. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you…” She flits her eyes up and down your minimally clad form as she apologizes, and you self consciously yank your shirt down over your thighs. “Are you okay? Can I help you with something?”

She’s young, pretty, maybe a few years older than you, with doe-like green eyes and a pale face dappled with caramel-colored freckles. 

“I-I was just, um… looking for an envelope? A-and a stamp, if you have any,” you confess shakily, your heart pounding and cheeks burning as you fidget nervously with the hem of your shirt. You glance over the girl’s shoulder and see a door you hadn’t noticed before, now open. There’s a drab-colored couch and a small flickering TV inside, playing at a volume low enough that you hadn’t heard it at all through the closed door. She must spend most of her night shift in there, watching reruns of old movies and munching on stovetop popcorn to stay alert just in case some poor soul comes stumbling into the office in need of her assistance. You feel a small pang of jealousy in your stomach as you imagine what a relaxed, carefree night she must have been having, while you were fighting for your life under the very same roof.

“Oh, sure! They’re just, um… Excuse me—” she says meekly as she steps in your direction. You scurry out of her way, swiping the pen and paper from the top of the desk as you do. She takes your place to crouch down and tug open the very bottom drawer in the stack you had been searching through, and rifles around for just a moment before she finds what she’s looking for. She hands the items off to you as she rises back to her full height, just a couple of inches above your own. “Here you are. Is that all you need?”

Yes. No. Not even fucking close.

You turn over the stationery in your hands, running your thumbs across the smooth surface of the envelope as you debate whether or not you should ask her for what you really need��help. 

But the girl has so much life in her eyes, so much color in her cheeks that you can see even in the office’s low lighting, that you’d never be able to forgive yourself if you decide to involve her in this. Her face would be printed on the side of a milk carton the second you open your mouth.

“Mhm, just this stuff. Thank you.” You do your best to make it sound like the truth.

“...Are you sure?” She presses, gesturing to either side of her neck, her auburn eyebrows peaked with concern.

Shit.

In your effort to make sure your bottom half stayed covered, you had forgotten about the dark marks Joel had created around your throat just a handful of hours earlier. They must be pretty noticeable already, if this girl—Chrissy, her name tag reads—is able to spot them just by the light of one yellow bulb and a few slats of moonlight.

You nod, fighting the whimper that threatens to escape when you bring one hand up to press into your bruises, the other holding your letter-writing supplies in front of your lap.

“Yeah, it’s nothing,” you lie, though you can tell she doesn’t believe you. You wouldn’t believe you, either. But you’re thankful that she decides to let it go, anyway. 

Chrissy nods, too. “So… you’re trying to mail a letter, then? We can’t really send it from here, but there’s a few mailboxes in town, if you’re gonna be sticking around for a little bit.”

“Oh, um… I’m not sure. Maybe,” you reply, offering a small smile as you shift your weight awkwardly. “Thank you.”

Chrissy presses her lips together, giving you another quiet nod along with one last sympathetic glance at your disheveled form. “Are you sure you don’t need anything else? I might have a pair of sweatpants with me if you—”

“No, no, it’s okay. I have to… he’s gonna, um…” You fumble, gesturing back to the room at the end of the row while you scramble for some kind of excuse that doesn’t give too much of your situation away. “I’m just going back to bed anyway, so… I’m okay. Thank you, though.”

A few beats of silence linger between you before you speak up again. “Could I write it in here, though? Just like… at the desk? I’ll be quick, I promise.”

She looks at you like you’re a kicked puppy as she replies, “Of course you can. I’ll be back there, if you decide you do want the change of clothes after all. If you could just close the door on your way out, and… be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” you half-whisper, and you can’t help the way your bottom lip trembles when Chrissy retreats back into that cozy little room, leaving the door cracked open just enough for the voices from her movie to keep you company while you write. You glance up at the clock once before you begin, promising to allow yourself no more than five minutes to say what you need to say, seal it away in the envelope, and sneak back into bed without Joel ever noticing you were gone. 

You used to pride yourself on your neat handwriting, when you were still in school and a thing as trivial as that actually mattered. But you haven’t had to write anything by hand in so long now that you hardly recognize the disconnected capital “T”s and chaotically pointed “M”s as you scribble them down. The words are still mostly legible, though, even the ones that were accidentally blurred by stray tears you couldn’t wipe away in time before they hit the page.

You read over the letter once as the clock counts out your last remaining seconds, and decide it’s good enough to be slipped inside the envelope and secured with a swipe of your saliva. Your stomach flips when you go to write your home address on the front, fearing that you’ve forgotten it in all the time that Joel has spent scrubbing you clean of who you were before you met him. But when you close your eyes, you hear the song your father used to sing to you to help you remember it when you were little, in case you ever got lost and needed to tell someone where you came from. It had never really come in handy, until now.

With your sufficiently addressed and stamped envelope in hand, you quietly exit the office and pad your way back down the sidewalk to the room where your captor lies waiting. You press your ear to the door before entering, and wait until you hear the telltale groan of the air conditioning kicking back on. When the mechanical sound reaches its full volume, you slip back through the door and shut it behind you all in one swift, delicate movement. You slink over to your side of the bed like a cat, and tuck the envelope underneath the mattress as you gently crawl back underneath the covers, next to Joel’s still-sleeping form, in the exact same position you had left him in. The slight disruption of your weight depressing the mattress prompts him to roll over in his unconscious state, and his skin is scorching against your own as he wraps you up in his arms again, pulling you tight against his chest. He gives a slow buck of his hips against your backside and releases a quiet growl into your hair that makes you shiver despite the heat he radiates.

You can’t fight the pull of your heavy eyelids for much longer, the wave of adrenaline you had been riding all night finally coming to a crest and crashing against you all at once. Telling your story, getting the words down on paper, having some kind of half-assed plan to make sure you don’t just disappear into the ether, seems to have given you more peace of mind than expected, at least in your delirious, traumatized, and sleep-deprived condition. For now, you’re still treading water, still holding your head above the surface of the deep dark unknown that awaits, and it’s enough for your exhausted mind to finally show you a few hours worth of mercy. 

You will survive this, you won’t disappear, even if you have to take it one excruciating day at a time.

—

The first day of the rest of your life begins that hazy morning after, when Joel finally rouses around ten o’clock from what seems to have been a relatively deep slumber. He tightens his grip around your upper body as he purrs out a sleepy groan, wetly kissing under your ear before mumbling, “Mornin’ babydoll.” Your body seems to have not caught up with reality just yet, evident in the way your cunt still flutters involuntarily at the sound of his gravelly morning voice and the warm slide of his tongue. You curse yourself for the instinctual reaction, wishing you could just reset all of the ways that your nerves have been trained to react to his touch over the past few months.

“Morning, Joel,” you whisper, and you can feel his half-hard length pressing into your back.

“You sleep okay, sweetheart?”

Your eyes go a little wide at his question, and you’re grateful that you’re still facing away from him. Is this a test? You can’t be sure anymore. But if he had ever realized you were gone during the night, surely he wouldn’t wait until the next morning to do something about it… right?

You nod. “Mhm, fine.” Your voice cracks a little, but Joel doesn’t seem to notice.

“Good, tha’s good…” he snakes a hand between your legs, finding its way underneath your—his—oversized shirt to lightly prod at your bare little hole. “And how’s she doin’, hm? Was dreamin’ about her all night, how fuckin’ good ‘n tight she was for me… She feelin’ sore at all this mornin’, babydoll?”

“A little, yeah.” His touch makes you shudder, but you know better than to try and reject it.

Joel tuts, circling the roughened pad of his finger over your clit. “Poor thing… ‘M sorry about that, baby. Jus’ got a lil’ carried away last night, tha’s all. You forgive me, don’t you, sweetheart? You understand?”

You hesitate, swallowing down the bitter taste of the lie you’re about to tell. “Yes, it’s… it’s okay, Joel.”

“Mmm, just the sweetest lil’ girl, ain’t you?” Joel says, swiping two of his fingers through your folds to collect some of your involuntary slick. He pulls his hand out from under the covers and sucks one of the damp digits into his mouth, releasing a pleasured groan. Joel gives another slow grind into your ass before bringing his hand in front of your face, pushing the other still-wet finger between your lips and forcing you to taste yourself. “See how sweet she is for me, baby? Think she forgives me too, don’t she?”

You nod around his finger, humming in pretend agreement.

“Perfect… so perfect for me, my lil’ doll,” Joel muses, sliding his finger back and forth across your tongue and teasing the back of your throat with each intrusive thrust. You fight to suppress your gag reflex until he eventually removes his finger from your mouth, wiping the dampness off on your shirt. “C’mere, pretty girl. Gimme a kiss,” he grumbles, gripping a paw onto your shoulder and pulling backwards, using the leverage to get you to roll onto your other side to face him.

The warm morning light coming in from the window illuminates the back of his head, highlighting the way his mussed salt and pepper locks stick up every which way. This is the first time you’re getting a good look at him since you had first spotted his disturbing keepsake box peeking out from underneath the bench seat, since he had snapped at you for trying to grab it, since you had still thought that would be the worst thing he’d ever do to you. It’s almost comical, in a sinister sort of way, how harmless Joel looks like this, with his scarred nose and stubbled cheeks still rosy from sleep.

You hadn’t anticipated how complicated it would be to still have to feign intimacy with him, how dizzying it already feels to stand on the sidelines in your own mind and watch your desire wrestle with your disgust. Joel presses his lips against your own, and you do your best not to grimace as you kiss him back. He still feels the same, still tastes the same, like black coffee and cigarettes and spearmint. But he isn’t the same.

Joel parts your teeth with his tongue as he deepens the kiss, hungrily lapping into your mouth as you let him take what he wants, only pulling away from him once he breaks the connection first. He brushes some of your hair away from your face when he does, admiring your slightly swollen lips as he rubs his calloused thumbs across your cheeks.

“Whaddya say we just have ourselves a nice afternoon together, hm? Think there might be a lil’ town nearby, could get us somethin’ to eat, maybe even do some shoppin’, dependin’ on what’s there.”

There’s a few mailboxes in town, if you’re gonna be sticking around for a little bit, you hear Chrissy’s voice repeat what she had told you last night, and feel an exhilarated pang in your chest when you remember the envelope you have hidden beneath you.

You try not to answer too eagerly, taking a beat before you respond with a quiet “Really?” “Yeah, babydoll. Why, you don’t wanna?”

“No! No, I—that sounds good. I just didn’t think… I thought you’d wanna get going again, or something. After… you know.” You bring your hand up to touch the sore sides of your neck instinctually, unable to bring yourself to say it, to think about it for longer than a couple of seconds. 

“Like I said, sweetheart. We’ll just leave your hair down today, nobody’ll see ‘em,” Joel says casually.

It’s unsettling, the evenness in Joel’s tone as he suggests having a normal day together, attempting to just move on as if the contusions you’re discussing aren’t a direct result of his abuse. You’ve only just woken up, and you’re already feeling the whiplash from the softness of his words in comparison to the degradation he was spitting at you last night. You wonder how much of it he even remembers, if he had really just let some entirely separate entity inside of him get “carried away”, or if it was all Joel. He couldn’t have been that good at hiding his true self from you the entire time you’ve known him, could he? What does it say about you if the signs had been there all along, and you’d either chosen to ignore them, or missed them completely? How can you ever be sure now which Joel you’re in the company of at any given time?

“Okay,” you agree, putting on a small smile that he’s quick to return. 

“Alright, we’ll get to it, then. Jus’ stay put, sweetheart, lemme bring our stuff back inside, find you somethin’ to wear.” Joel plants a whiskery kiss on your hairline before tossing the sheets aside and rising to his towering height, retrieving the key to the truck from underneath his pillow in the process. You can’t help the way your stomach flips as you watch him lumber towards the door, squeezing your thighs together under the covers at the sight of his visible morning wood bobbing in his briefs with each heavy step. You roll back onto your other side as soon as he steps over the threshold, letting the corners of your mouth drop as you curse yourself again. Is this how it’s going to be from now on? A constant battle between wanting to forget and feeling disgusted with yourself for even trying to? There has to be some way to navigate this without completely fucking loathing yourself for just trying to stay alive. 

Joel returns to the room a few minutes later with his arms and hands full of the clothing he’s chosen for both of you. He drops his boots onto the carpet with a heavy thud, but sets your own shoes down next to them with more care. He tosses a few articles of his own things onto his side of the bed before coming around to yours, holding out his free hand for you to take. “Up you go, babydoll, c’mon,” he commands. You grab hold of his steady hand, using it for support as you slide out from underneath the covers and push yourself off the mattress, the springs creaking in protest.

Joel entwines his thick fingers in yours as he leads you toward the small bathroom. You loosen your grip to shut the door behind you, expecting him to drop his handhold to allow you some privacy, but his grasp only tightens. You inhale sharply at the dull pain caused by his fingertips digging into the back of your hand, and turn to face him with panicked eyes. The stern expression you’re met with makes your heart rate quicken, terrified that you’ve already somehow found a way to upset him again.

“I just need to use the bathroom first, I’ll try to be quick,” you insist, still attempting to untangle your fingers from his.

“Not with the door closed you don’t.”

“...W-why?” You question timidly.

Joel jerks his head toward the shower, his gaze still trained on you. “That lil’ window up there. Just gotta make sure you ain’t gonna try anythin’, tha‘s all.”

You glance over to the tiny window he’s referring to, the kind that doesn’t even open all the way, just cracks open enough to let the steam out.

“But… I couldn’t even fit through there. And I… I learned my lesson, Joel, I promise—”

“Shh, don’t gotta get all worked up, ‘s alright, sweetheart. Jus’ do what I ask, okay?” Joel finally drops your hand in favor of cradling the side of your neck, brushing his thumb across the tender cartilage at the front of it. “You understand, don’t you, baby? ‘S just a precaution.” 

Joel speaks to you so gently, with such adoration in his tone and in his expression, even with the threatening placement of his hand on your throat. The blatant display of manipulation makes you dizzy. You drop your gaze from his face to the bathroom floor, and try to use the cool sensation of the tile against your bare feet to ground yourself. 

“Are you gonna watch me while I… go?” You ask meekly, your cheeks warming with embarrassment.

“No, no, sweet girl,” Joel placates, using a hooked finger to lift your head back up. “I’ll wait outside for you. Jus’ leave the door ‘bout halfway open, ‘s all I’m askin’. Besides, ain’t nothin’ I haven’t seen before, hm?” He pinches at your chin with a teasing smile, continuing to act as if everything he’s asking of you is completely ordinary. 

“Yeah, but…” You start, but Joel huffs in warning.

You concede with a sighed “Okay,” and he finally leaves you to conduct your business. You’re thankful that he at least isn’t watching you, instead just leaning his broad back against the doorframe outside the bathroom with his arms crossed. Although, you think he might’ve taken a peek when you had first sat down, in the brief moment when your oversized t-shirt was rucked up to your tummy. You go through the motions as quickly as possible so as not to prolong your mortification, practically flushing and stepping over to the sink all in one hurried movement. Joel slides himself behind you as you’re washing your hands, setting your clothing down on the back of the toilet before placing his hands on your hips. His hard length is slotted against your backside, and you do your best to ignore him as you dry your hands with the bleach-stained motel towel. He only continues to use his weight to press you harder against the edge of the sink, undeterred by your efforts, and you wince a little at the pain that begins to pulse under your ribcage.

“Lemme tell you how this is gonna be from now on, okay babydoll? Look at me,” Joel orders, and you meet his darkened eyes in the mirror where he towers above you as he continues, “You ain’t gonna do nothin’ for yourself or by yourself ever again, ‘s that clear? Nothin’. Know we had some of that before our lil’... incident… and you liked that, didn’t you, baby? Liked me takin’ care of you like that?”

You nod, because it’s true.

“You’re nothin’ but a lil’ doll to me from now on. Gonna let me dress you this mornin’, do your hair up, brush your teeth, everythin’... And when we go out today, you ain’t gonna talk to anybody, ain’t even gonna look at anybody, you understand? Nobody except for me. I’m all you got for the rest of your life. And that’s what we always wanted, ain’t it? Just each other…” He says the last part almost wistfully, letting go of your waist with one hand in favor of twisting a lock of your hair around one of his roughened fingers. “You’ll come to like livin’ like this, babydoll. Got no other choice, do you?” 

You swallow, biting your lip to stave off burning tears that you know will only upset him if you let them spill. 

“Do you?” Joel repeats.

“N-no, I don’t,” you reply, and he hums in satisfaction before rewarding you with a wet kiss to your temple that makes your skin crawl. 

“Yeah, tha‘s right… Turn around now, arms up for me, sweetheart.” Joel steps back from the sink to allow you room to obey his command, and you don’t hesitate to do so. He carefully lifts his t-shirt over your head before tossing it to the floor, and you shiver as the breeze blowing in from that one cracked window wraps itself around your naked form. Joel tuts when you wrap your arms over your pebbled nipples on instinct, gently scolding, “Nuh uh, don’t cover up what’s mine. Lemme look at ya.” He uses a light touch to guide your limbs down to your sides, whistling low as his predatory eyes roam around your trembling body, spending a few extra moments on your exposed chest. “Most gorgeous lil’ thing in the whole world… Would jus’ parade you around with me all bare like this if I could, show y’ off to everybody. Bet you’d like that, huh babydoll?” He taunts, pinching at one of your hardened buds.

“Y-yeah, I would,” you appease quietly, but he doesn’t seem to pay your unenthusiastic response any mind, too preoccupied with shimmying a new pair of panties up your legs. He takes a little too much extra care in settling them around the creases of your thighs, and huffs to himself when he notices the way your little hole squeezes around nothing at the sensation of his fingertips sliding underneath the elastic, just barely teasing your folds. Joel has you turn around to face the mirror again so he can clip your bra behind your back, and a small smile tugs at the corners of your lips despite yourself when he zips on the pretty blue dress he picked out for you. You like how it compliments your eyes, even with how tired they look.

Just like Joel had told you he would, he doesn’t allow you to do a single thing for yourself as he completes the rest of your morning routine, holding your chin securely in the dip between his thumb and forefinger as he brushes your teeth and tips a glass of water into your mouth for you to rinse out the minty paste with. He cradles the base of your skull with one hand, using the other to scrub the sleep from your eyes and the oils from your cheeks with a damp washcloth. Joel gets to work on your hair next, pulling the top half of it into two small ponytails and tying each of them off neatly with ivory-colored ribbons. You’re surprised at the delicate movements his hands are capable of despite their size, despite the damage they’ve caused. He’s clearly had some practice with this, but you try not to think about it too hard.

Once Joel deems his doll pretty and presentable, he leads you out of the bathroom and has you sit on the edge of the bed, kneeling before you with some protest from his aching joints. He slips a pair of lace-trimmed socks over your feet, one at a time, followed by the same canvas sneakers you were wearing when you had first met him. The sight of them brings you a little comfort, somehow, the discolored laces and smudged rubber soles making up just about the only familiar things you have in your possession anymore. Nearly everything you own, everything about you, has been tainted by Joel in some way now. You should’ve just taken off in the other direction when he’d pulled over his truck, left nothing but a cloud of dust in your wake and never even have given him the chance to ask you in that stupid disarming Southern twang of his if you needed a ride, if you were lost, if you had family or a boyfriend who cared about you enough to come looking for you. You’d advertised yourself in big bold lettering that you were the perfect fucking victim, practically wrapping the rope around your white woolen neck yourself so he could lead you to slaughter. This is what you deserve, stupid lamb that you are. Look at you now.

Joel instructs you to stay perched on the bed while he completes his own morning regimen, and you hang your head low as you rest your hands in your lap, picking at the skin around your fingernails. They’re practically raw now, but you can’t stop even though you should, even though it hurts, even though you’ve made yourself bleed. It had always been a nervous habit of yours, and you hadn’t noticed until you started up again last night that this was probably the nicest your nail beds had looked in years. You’d felt so comforted, so safe with Joel that you hadn’t had a reason to continue the self-destructive behavior, until all those fluttery feelings were ripped out from under you in a second. You’d been biting and tearing at your skin all night in addition to the many other things you’d been doing instead of sleeping, the habit having returned with a force as you’d used the pain to… what? To make up for the lack of blood you’d shed, to apologize to the ghosts of Anna and Elizabeth and Ruby and ask them please not to haunt you, you’re sorry, you’re sorry, you’re sorry. See? He’d made you bleed, too.

You’ve been attempting to balance your attention between your hands and the bathroom, waiting for an opportunity to arise where Joel is distracted enough for you to retrieve the envelope from its hiding place without him seeing. You keep your chin close to your chest as you observe his movements, trying not to make it too obvious that you’re watching him. After a few minutes, he finally bows his head into the sink to splash some water onto his skin, and you quickly reach behind you to swipe the letter and shove it underneath the waistband of your panties. Joel still hasn’t lifted his head back up by the time you’ve got it situated, and the corner of your mouth twitches in satisfaction. For a plan that you’re basically just making up as you go along, it’s going better than you expected. 

You return to your preoccupation with your hands as you wait for Joel to finish up, and you remain hunched over yourself even as he flicks off the bathroom light and stalks over to where you’re now sucking the taste of bitter iron from one of your fingers. He startles you out of your focused state when he asks, “What’re you doin’, babydoll?”

You lift your head up, releasing the smarted skin from your mouth as you hold out your hand to examine the injury. Both of you watch a little crimson pearl begin to swell in the groove where your nail disappears into the skin. “Oh…” Joel sighs, grabbing your hand gently and raising it closer to his face, turning it this way and that to admire how your blood catches the light. You swear you can see his pupils dilate before he sucks your finger into his own mouth, swirling his tongue around your skin as he savors the metallic tang mixed with the remnants of your saliva. You feel the sharp edge of his teeth graze the pad of your finger, and your breath catches as you fear he might just bite the thing clean off from the last knuckle down. He doesn’t, of course, just lets his eyelids quiver and his cock twitch before releasing the digit from his mouth and rumbling out a quiet growl. You can’t help the somewhat sickened expression that overtakes your features as you watch Joel’s perverted little display, but work to fix it into something more neutral as he opens his eyes again.

“Pretty sure I got some bandaids in the truck, lemme get dressed ‘n then we’ll hit the road, hm?” he says, in a tone too casual to belong to someone who’d just had a near orgasmic reaction to tasting your blood. You suppose this is just another consequence of your survival—having to endure Joel’s unconcealed freakish tendencies now that he knows you’re not a flight risk anymore.

Joel tugs on his standard uniform—his thick canvas jacket layered overtop a simple undershirt and earth-toned flannel, paired with tattered jeans and his sturdy leather work boots. You allow him to help you to your feet as he leads you out to the truck, his thick fingers laced tightly through the ones of your non-bloodied hand. You have to squint at how bright the late morning sky is, your eyes aching as they adjust from the dim lighting of the motel room. 

“Hey, morning!” Comes a cheery voice from down the row. You turn your head in the direction of the sound, and put your hand up to shield your eyes from the sun in an effort to get a better view of the person it came from. When your gaze finally focuses, you’re able to make out a feminine figure with auburn hair and alabaster skin, her slender arm waving at you in greeting—Chrissy.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

You dip behind Joel, attempting to hide yourself from her view. He puts a protective hand across your body, and takes the lead in responding to her. “...Mornin’. Can we help you with somethin’?”

Her footsteps pause on the pavement, and there’s a beat before she says anything else, likely not expecting Joel’s less-than-friendly response to her sunny demeanor. “...No. Well, I just wanted to say ‘hi’, check in on you—Both of you,” she corrects herself quickly. You’re staring straight down at the sidewalk, avoiding eye contact just like Joel had demanded of you. But you can still see her out of the corner of your vision, attempting to lean around Joel’s large form to get a better look at you. You feel like your heart is about to burst out of your fucking ribcage as Joel turns his head toward where you’re cowering behind his arm, then slowly back to Chrissy. 

“We’re fine,” he says plainly. 

The silence that follows feels like it lasts an eternity. You hate how weak you must look in front of her, practically shaking where you stand like a newborn fawn while you seek the protection of this much older man whose hands, Chrissy must notice, are large enough to have created the marks on your neck that she had pointed out last night. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, to figure out the reason—the person—behind your flighty, nervous, and fidgety behavior in the office. Chrissy takes a few steps backwards, away from this strange couple standing before her, one she realizes is in her best interest not to engage further with.

Her voice comes out noticeably more unsteady now than it did when she had first approached you. “W-well, I just like to say ‘hi’ to guests on my way out if I see them. So… ‘hi’, and, um… if you need anything, someone else will be here soon to cover the office.” She rushes through the latter part of her sentence, like she just wants to spit all the words out as quickly as possible so that the interaction can be over with. You can’t see his face, but you suspect Joel is giving her some kind of hooded-eyed look that’s making her stumble over her words. “Have a good day, you two. Be careful,” she adds before she departs, and you know that those last two words were meant for you.

Joel watches her as she disappears around the corner of the building, only lowering his arm once she’s completely out of sight. You don’t look up until the sounds of her footsteps dissipate, until Joel’s arm is on your lower back as he ushers you into the truck. 

“Get in, baby,” he commands, opening the door for you and helping you up into the passenger side of the bench seat. He reaches across your body to buckle your seatbelt for you before you can even lift your hand to do it yourself.

Once you’re situated to his liking, Joel closes your door and makes his way over to the driver’s seat, climbing inside and igniting the rumbling engine. He roots around in the truck’s center console, tossing aside cigarette butts and gum wrappers and loose change, eventually coming up with a single bandaid. Its paper sleeve looks crumpled and neglected, and you suppose it’s because he’s never really had a use for it until now. There isn’t much of a point in trying to bandage the type of wounds he typically inflicts, anyway, the damage already having been done.

“Gimme your hand, darlin’, hold it still for me.” Joel tears open the wrapper with his calloused thumbs and flicks away the little paper tabs from the fabric’s sticky surface, wrapping the bandaid around your finger tenderly. It would be a sweet moment, if it weren’t for the way he adjusts himself upon seeing the deep red droplet bloom on the other side of the little cotton pad. You make a mental note to work on finding a different self-soothing mechanism, lest you want to wake up in the middle of the night with his knife at your neck and his cock in his hand, deciding that you weren’t worth keeping around after all, that he just had to know if you really are just as pretty on the inside as you are on the outside, to know if the rest of your volume tastes as sweet as the small sample he’d already taken. 

You sit on your hands the entire ride into town.

—

The drive was mostly silent, but actually kind of pleasant, finally giving you a real opportunity to take in the vast surroundings of… wherever you are, New Mexico. Your hands had gotten uncomfortably warm where they were squished under the bare skin of your legs for the entire half-hour or so drive, but you didn’t dare remove them. You’d have had nowhere else to put them anyway, not with the way Joel’s large paw was clamped onto your upper thigh, his pinky finger slipping underneath the hem of your dress and tracing the edge of your panties. You were grateful you’d had enough forethought to slip the envelope into the right side of your underwear, predicting that he’d get handsy like this in the truck. You’d just kept your body perfectly rigid with your head turned away from him, and tried not to descend into madness thinking about what he had made of your interaction with Chrissy earlier, if he suspected anything, if he knew you were hiding something, if he suddenly developed x-ray vision overnight and knew exactly what you were concealing under your dress.

Relief washed over your nervous system as you’d observed jagged rockwork and ochre-colored scrub brush gradually turn into modest Pueblo-style homes and businesses, glad to have finally been granted an opportunity to escape the motel after your twelve hours of terror. The steadily approaching signs of civilization had served as a reminder that the world does actually have other people in it besides you and Joel, despite what he’s been attempting to convince you of.

The town had become more populated the further the truck had chugged along down the main street, with a few friendly-looking people walking their dogs and carrying paper grocery bags as they strolled along the storefronts. You had even found yourself staring at a group of girls around your age sipping their coffees together on a bench, giggling and gossiping and making you wish you had problems as superficial as theirs. They reminded you of the type of girl Ruby was, bright-eyed and carefree and beautiful, and you’d tried to swallow down the bitter resentment that had begun to simmer in the pit of your stomach. Joel hadn’t even seemed to notice the girls as the truck passed them by, and you weren’t sure if his disinterest should make you feel satisfied or hopeless. Yesterday, you would’ve told yourself that you’re the love of his life, of course he wouldn’t dare have eyes for anyone but you, he’ll never leave your side for the rest of his life. But the sentiment takes on a much different connotation today, feeling more like a life sentence than a daydream.

You hadn’t realized how hungry you were until the truck had finally rolled to a stop outside of a quaint little restaurant, its terracotta awning decorated in twinkling lights. The sign on the facade read The Coyote Café, and had a little silhouette of the namesake animal painted next to the words. You could see through the turquoise-trimmed windows that there were already a handful of other patrons inside enjoying their meals, and it made you feel a little safer, knowing that Joel would be more motivated to put his mask back on in front of so many pairs of eyes. In a town this small, the two of you probably stick out like a sore thumb enough as it is, the café seeming like the kind of place where the waitresses know the regulars by name. You were eager to finally be able to drop your defenses, at least for a little while.

Joel had chosen a table all the way in the back corner of the place, furthest from the door, and had insisted on the both of you sharing the same side of the booth. Although you could feel a few stares on you, you’d remained steadfast in your obedience of the rules he had laid out for you this morning, and kept your head down while he placed your orders with the waitress—a plate of enchiladas and a beer for him, and a cheese quesadilla with a glass of water for you. You probably would’ve been able to eat more, but you suspected that his choice of meal for you was deliberate, so as not to provide you with too much energy that you might use to make another break for it. It had reminded you of the way he had convinced you to take your coffee decaf at Moody’s that night, all of it seeming so fucking obvious now, in hindsight. 

“You know somethin’, babydoll?” Joel suddenly asks through a mouthful of beans and rice. “Think I saw a lil’ consignment shop just down the way. Whaddya say we head on over there next, let you pick out somethin’ pretty for yourself since you been so good today, hm?”

You hadn’t exchanged many words as you’d been eating, other than the occasional semi-awkward comment about how nice the weather is or how good your meals are. Ordinarily, you’d be making up stories about the interesting-looking strangers sitting at the counter, or quizzing each other on the country songs playing over the radio, or debating whether the color of his flannel was really green or brown. You’d sometimes hang out at diners so late into the evening that the waitstaff would have to kick you out, and you’d be apologetic as you made your way back out to the truck, hardly able to believe how much time you’d lost track of while you were flicking wadded up straw wrappers at each other or taste testing each other’s desserts. You mourn the version of Joel in those memories as you push around the crumbs on your plate, quietly responding to him with, “Really? You’d let me?”

“‘Course I would, sweet girl.” He wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin before lowering his voice, leaning down closer to your ear. “Long as you let me take it off of ya later tonight.”

“Let me.” As if you have any other choice.

Joel chuckles at his own crude comment as he slings an arm around your shoulder, pulling you flush to his side. He finishes the rest of his meal with one hand while he rakes the other along your upper arm, occasionally sliding a finger underneath your bra strap and snapping it against your skin. You’re only able to let your posture relax for just a moment when the waitress brings around the check, and he finally removes his scalding hand in order to retrieve his wallet from his back pocket. He slaps a few crumpled bills onto the table, and then his thick fingers are forcing themselves in between your own smaller ones as he pulls you up from the booth and leads you out of the café. You spare a glance at the motherly-looking waitress on your way out, and you exchange sympathetic looks with each other behind Joel’s back. You wish she didn’t look so sorry for you, like you’re a wounded animal being dragged around by the hunter who shot an arrow through your heart. But isn’t that what you are?

Your feet stop dead in their tracks when you step down onto the sidewalk outside the cafe, your brain too enamored with the landscape of the surrounding valley to tell them to keep moving. The wide open sky and limestone hills dappled with towering evergreens almost look like a painting, the way the mountains turn paler shades of blue-green as they extend further into the distance. It’s so unlike the flat, beige midwestern states where you and Joel had begun your journey together, it almost takes your breath away.

“You just gonna stare up at the sky all day, or d’you wanna get to shoppin’, hm?” Joel says, startling you from your state of wonder.

“Oh, no, we can go. I’m sorry,” you submit, hurrying to Joel’s side. He makes an enamored little hum and kisses the top of your head before continuing to pull you along the storefronts. You keep your head down, counting the cracks in the pavement as you work to keep up with his long strides. 

“See that buildin’ down there, the one with the pink siding? Tha’s the lil’ clothin’ store I was talkin’ about.” You flick your eyes upward to where Joel is pointing a lazy finger, immediately spying the technicolor little shop he’s referring to. The unusual choice in paint color is certainly eye catching, but what you’re really drawn to is the dark blue metal receptacle standing on the sidewalk just in front of it—a mailbox, just like Chrissy told you there would be.

This is it. This is your chance. When you get up to the mailbox, you’ll improvise a way to direct Joel’s attention elsewhere, and use the opportunity to slip the envelope from under your dress and deposit it into the box without him noticing. You’ll have to move quickly, precisely, quietly, or it’s all over. 

You should start tugging it loose now, so that it’ll be halfway in your hand already by the time you reach the store. You pat your hand against your upper thigh, expecting to feel the paper crinkling against your skin.

Except, you don’t. You can’t feel it. It isn’t there anymore. 

You feel panic start to bloom in your chest, but try your best to keep your cool. The mailbox is only a few paces away now, and you’ll have nothing to deposit into the slot, because your chance at preventing yourself from being completely forgotten by the one person in your life who might actually care, is gone. Vanished.

Where the fuck is it? Had it fallen out when you were exiting the truck? Is it laying on the floor of the cab for Joel to discover when he helps you back into your seat later? Where could it possibly have—

“Hey, excuse me! Mister?” A young-sounding voice—male, unfamiliar— shouts from behind you, followed by the sound of jogging footsteps. Joel turns around, your hand still held securely in his own. Your feet stay planted exactly where they are, your eyes unblinking and locked onto the mailbox, just barely out of reach. “Did one of you drop this? Found it on the floor by your table when I was cleaning up, didn’t want you to leave it behind.”

“Uh… don’t think so. Lemme take a look—” Your arm pulls in an uncomfortable direction as Joel reaches toward the boy to retrieve the mystery object. Well, it’s a mystery to him, you already know exactly what it is. All you can do is hold your breath while Joel undoubtedly reads your handwriting on the front of the envelope, hoping that if you stand perfectly still, you might really be able to disappear. Without the letter, that’s the ending you’re destined for now, anyway.

Joel laughs breathily. “Y’know what, son? Think we did drop this. Thank you kindly for bringin’ it back to us.” Joel squeezes your hand so hard you think all the fragile little bones might shatter, and you bite your lip to stifle a pained whimper. Your eyes start to water as the crippling fear you had felt last night begins to climb its way up the back of your throat, and you wonder if this bus boy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, might just become the last person besides Joel to see you alive. Or at least, the back of your head. Without giving him a good look at your face, he wouldn’t even be able to recognize you when they show your picture on the news a day or two from now, or be able to go to the police and tell them that this lumberjack-looking older man he encountered was the one he saw you with last. You should’ve known better than to try tempting fate again. 

“Of course! Have a good one,” says the bus boy, and a tear escapes your waterline as you wait for the sounds of his footsteps to fade. You can’t be sure if the wetness collecting on your lashes is from the pain of Joel’s iron grip on your hand, or from the sheer terror of being found out by him again. What you do know, is that he doesn’t seem like the type to let you go through all three strikes before he puts you out.

“We will,” Joel responds, but only loud enough for you to hear.

He turns back around after what feels like an eternity, sighing disappointedly. You don’t need to look at him to know that he's upset, angry, furious. It radiates off his skin, penetrates your soul, wraps itself tightly around your throat in replacement of his hands. Your palm is sweating, but he doesn’t let go, just digs his dull nails into the back of your hand as he snarls a one-worded command close to your ear—”Walk.”

Joel drags you the rest of the way to the mailbox, shoving you down onto the wooden bench just beside it. You’re surprised that whatever it is he’s about to do to you, he’s confident enough to do it in broad daylight, in front of a few dozen potential witnesses. You keep your eyes on the ground, waiting to hear the flick of his pocket knife or the cracking of his knuckles, but all that comes is a tired groan as he kneels before you, lifting your chin up to face him. 

Joel wags the envelope in front of your face with his other hand, looking at you with a more pitied expression than an enraged one. “You wanna tell me what this is, babydoll?” He asks in a confusingly even tone. You search his eyes for the reddish hue they had become last night when he was spewing obscenities at you and threatening your life, but you don’t find it. 

“It’s… it’s a letter,” you admit, blinking away tears. You avoid his gaze even with your chin raised, looking around at the townspeople to see if any of them are staring at the little scene the two of you are putting on. 

“Don’t look at them, baby, look at me. They ain’t gonna help you.” Joel jostles your face in his grip, and you flick your eyes back to him immediately. “I can see that it’s a letter, sweetheart. Who were you plannin’ on sendin’ it to, hm? Whose name is this?” Joel prompts, using his thumb to tap the name and address you had scribbled onto the center of the paper.

You let out a sob, the patronizing tone of his questioning making you feel so fucking stupid with just a few words. How is he so fucking good at this? At breaking you down, spinning the effects of his own actions back onto you, making you feel like the one in the wrong.

“My mom, I… I wrote it to my mom,” you reply through little sniffles, and you can hardly stand the exaggeratedly sympathetic way that Joel’s eyebrows peak at your answer.

“Babydoll… What could you possibly have to say to her? You ‘n I both know she don’t care about you anymore, never did. She’d open this up and just throw it right in the trash… I mean—” Joel releases your chin from his hold in order to slide his thumb along the envelope’s seal, tearing open the flap and removing the page of motel stationery you had written your plea on in the dim lighting of the office. “Here, sweetheart. Why don’t you read it to me, lemme hear what you wanted to tell her so badly you decided to do it behind my back. You snuck outta bed last night to do this, I assume?”

You nod, taking the letter from his hand and unfolding it.

“Hm… Have to do somethin’ else about our sleepin’ arrangements from now on, then.” You don’t know what he means by that, and you aren’t looking forward to finding out. “Read it to me, darlin’, go ‘head.”

You take a deep breath, blinking hard as you try to get your watery eyes to focus on the page. “I s-said that, um… that I was sorry for leaving, that I don’t blame her for the way she treated me growing up.” You pause to swallow the moisture collecting in the back of your throat as you cry, and attempt to steady your wavering voice before you continue. “A-and… that I was with you, that we’ve been traveling together, but… But I got scared, and I w-wanted her to come get me. Um… ‘Please don’t forget about me. I love you. I’ll see you when you get here.’ That’s the last thing I said.” You set the letter down on your lap and collapse in on yourself, burying your wet face in your hands as your sobs become full force.

“Oh, babydoll…” Joel soothes, rubbing a hand up and down your arm as you cry. “Where did you get all these ridiculous ideas, hm? Sayin’ that you love her, that you forgive her? I mean, do you really believe she’d come lookin’ for you all the way out here, snatch you up and take you home ‘cause she cares so much about you?” “I… I don’t know, maybe. I just couldn’t sleep last night, I got so afraid of—” “That girl in the parkin’ lot this mornin’... it was her, wasn’t it? You moseyed on into the office lookin’ all pitiful last night and she talked you into doin’ this? She took advantage of you, baby?” Joel brushes a stray lock of hair behind your ear, his face contorted in dramatic concern.

You’re so caught off guard by his accusations, your shuddering body finally stills. You lift your head up from your hands, wiping your eyes on the backs of them. “...What?”

“I mean, I know you know better than this, so it must’ve been her, puttin’ all these nonsense ideas into your head, convincin’ you to do somethin’ that’d only get you hurt… She don’t know what’s good for you like I do, baby. What was gonna happen when you sent off your lil’ letter, and you waited ‘n waited ‘n waited, and your mama never came for you? Who’d be there to take care of you, hm? Me. Always gonna be me.” Joel gently swipes his thumbs underneath your eyes, collecting the salty dampness still there. He sounds so sure of his own words, they’re almost convincing you that you’re misremembering your encounter with Chrissy last night. It was late, you were exhausted, and Joel is right, you do know better, you’ve told him yourself. Had she done more than just provide you with the envelope and stamp? Was the idea in your head before you walked into the office, or had she somehow persuaded you of it without you being any wiser? You’d remember if Joel’s version of the story is the one that really happened, wouldn’t you?

“No, Joel, she didn’t—” you start, but he cuts you off swiftly.

“She did, baby, I think she did… Poor girl, must’ve been too out of it to even remember what really happened. D’you see now? This is why it’s gotta be just you ‘n me from now on, sweetheart. ‘Cause there’s all kinds of people out there like her who wanna get inside your head, convince you of things that ain’t true…”

As undeserving as Chrissy may or may not be of the blame for your childish endeavor, you feel relieved that your most recent act of defiance doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Joel as the one you attempted last night. He seems more… sorry for you, than anything else, and you aren’t quite sure why he seems to feel differently now than he did a mere twelve hours ago. Maybe he views it as proof of your loyalty, the fact that you had made it outside, gotten yourself a small taste of freedom, and still decided to crawl back into bed with him afterwards. You could’ve taken off running down the road if you’d really wanted to, his “insurance policies” be damned, but you didn’t. You stayed. And you hate what that says about you—that you’re fucking weak. But you’ll take “weak” over “dead”, at this point.

You decide to poke the bear a little bit, just to confirm if you’re in the clear the way you seem to be. “So… you’re not upset?” 

“No, no, I ain’t upset with you, baby. But this is why you can’t do things without me no more, okay? Can’t trust nobody out there except for me, can you?”

You pause, then shake your head at him.

“Good, good girl… Y’know what, baby? Here—” Joel reaches into the pocket of his jacket, and pulls out a tarnished silver lighter. “Why don’t we just forget about all this, huh? Forget about your mama, that girl back at the motel… All those people who don’t care about you the way I do.” He places the cool metal object in your hand and closes your fingers around it. 

“You… want me to burn it?”

Joel shrugs, quirking his mouth into a pout. “Don’t see why you’d wanna keep it… Ain’t goin’ anywhere, is it?”

“...No, guess not,” You mumble under your breath. You know what this means, what it symbolizes, why he wants you to do it yourself. So you can bear witness to your one last glimmer of hope dissolving into embers and ash on the sidewalk at your feet, so you can understand that there is no other outcome other than the one Joel had predetermined for you the second you had agreed to let him take you to Moody’s that night. There is no way out. There is submitting to him, and there is death. Take your pick.

You flick open the lighter, raise the flame to the paper, and watch it ignite. It only takes a few seconds before you feel the heat begin to lick at your fingers, and you drop the still-burning remainder of the letter onto the pavement below so as to spare your hands any further injury today. It curls in on itself and crumples as it chars, and the two of you stare at it until it’s nothing more than a smoldering pile of cinders. You swear you can see an amused smile tug at the corners of Joel’s lips in the edge of your vision.

“Don’t that feel better, baby? Finally lettin’ go of her?” he asks, taking the lighter from your hands and shoving it back into his pocket, along with the envelope. 

You sniffle once, shrugging. “A little.”

“I know, sweet girl. It will, in time. You’ll understand sooner or later.” Joel groans as he pushes himself back up from his kneeling position, then extends a hand down for you to take. He helps you stand, then adjusts your hair to sit nicely over your bruises again, before placing his hands on your shoulders. “Now, that red-headed girl… Did you get her name, sweetheart?”

“...Chrissy. Her name was Chrissy,” you answer hesitantly, the intonation of your response sounding more like a question.

“Chrissy…” Joel repeats, letting her name settle on his tongue. “Whaddya say we just head on back, see about payin’ Chrissy a lil’ visit, hm?” He retakes your hand in his, then starts in the direction of the truck.

Your heart sinks into your stomach, realizing the hidden meaning of his words. “Jus’ gotta bring ‘em to me, tha’s all. Maybe go after ‘em if they try to run,” Joel had rasped into your ear last night, when he was describing the role you’d be forced to play in continuing his sick habit. 

“W-what? Why? She won’t be there anymore, remember? She said she was leaving, that somebody else would be working in the office for the day,” you frantically remind him, hoping that she can be spared after all, hoping that you can be spared from your first time acting as bait.

Joel stops walking for a moment as he considers your words, then pulls you along with him again. “Pay a visit to whoever’s workin’ in there, then. See if they know where she might be.” He doesn’t look at you as he speaks, just stares straight ahead as he hones in on the truck like a missile. The overly concerned facade he had put on earlier seems to be faded now, replaced with something more akin to bloodthirsty determination.

You scrape the far corners of your mind for something, anything you could say to him that might talk him out of this. “But… I thought you said she took advantage of me? Why would you want to see her if you think she tried to hurt me?”

A muscle in Joel’s jaw ticks. His nostrils flare.

“You know why.”

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

[anthussy]

okay but like image if logan has more animal instinct from a wolverine not just the biting and stuff like he already does but image wade having to explain why he has to do a lot of vacuuming after winter and why he owns a butt load of lint rollers, its because his hairy hunk of adamantium had grown more thicker hair before winter and sheds it off after winter.

another thing like wolverines being nocturnal, imagine wade getting up at god knows what time in the morning to get a glass of cold milk or something and he just sees his pookie in the kitchen doing some random ass task

also wolverines have terrible eyesight, logan has glasses to help him see properly but he refuses to wear them and sometimes wade has to point out whatever logans trying to read in the distance or whatever hes looking at.

[spookberry]

Can't tell if Nocturn would be an owl because he already feels so coded like one, or if he would be a goat because of the horns.

Perhaps both? Animal hyrbid ghosts have been shown to exist (although that was via Vlad's f'ked up experiments), so it's plausible.

Tbh if im not actively looking at Nocturn I just imagine hes an owl. Im always a little surprised to see hes not one

[bumblesimagines]

Imagine:

Meeting Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri

Request: Yes or No

Pronouns: He/Him/His, M!Reader

CW/TW: Typical Witcher warnings, mentions of death and pregnancy loss

Meant to post this a while back for October buttt I just came around to finishing it. Divider by firefly-graphics!

~~~

Geralt had long grown used to people's scrutinizing stares and hateful glares when he strolled through their towns, even while carrying the monster that'd been plaguing them for days or weeks. He received their coin with scoffs and murmurs rather than thanks for risking his life to help them but it hardly bothered him after so many years of the same repeated cycle. It was his duty, the job placed upon his shoulders the moment he stepped out of Kaer Morhen as a witcher for the first time.

Even then, as he listened to the stuttered directions of the young man pointing him toward where their monster was last seen, he felt the glares piercing his back. He ignored them, per usual, and climbed atop Roach with a grunt, his hands curling around the reins and tugging the horse in the direction he'd been pointed in. The townspeople claimed a ferocious beast roamed the town at night, snarling about with snapping jaws. They said chickens and goats turned up dead most often but some mornings, they found the torn corpse of an unlucky drunk. Many monsters came to mind but only one stood out to him amongst others.  

Roach snorted and stalled, her ears flicking about nervously and hooves stomping into the mushy dirt beneath them. Geralt slipped off the saddle and ran his hands along her neck, soothing her into calming down as he studied the woods surrounding them. With night quickly descending, he expected to hear the noise of nocturnal animals beginning to clamber out of their dens and homes, but he only heard the distant call of an owl and the quiet chirping of insects. 

"You'll be alright," He whispered to Roach as he tied her reins to the nearest tree, ensuring to give her mane a few more comforting strokes to ease the anxious stomping and huffs. "I won't let it hurt you." 

When night draped a blanket of darkness over them, Geralt fed sticks into his small fire until it grew bright enough to light the area around him. He waited, seated on the leaf-covered ground with his arm propped on his knee and one hand tightly clutching the handle of his sword. His ears picked up the crunching of sticks, loud enough to be purposeful but gentle enough to not belong to the fearsome creature he heard so much about. His attention darted to Roach to study her form, taking in her twitching ears and the way she began tugging at her reins with a certain desperation prey animals only had when around predators. 

"I heard there was a witcher in town," A voice murmured, and Geralt twisted around to look at the owner of it, eyes narrowing when the man drew closer and out of the darkness. To the inexperienced, he appeared as normal as a human but Geralt caught the glowing amber eyes before he stepped into the light and they morphed back to a shade of (E/C). His stance appeared casual but his eyes remained locked on him, barely paying Roach any attention as she grew rowdier. "I was under the impression the kikimora problem had been solved a year ago. What brings you here?"

"A monster," Geralt responded gruffly, his muscles tense and senses on alert. "It roams the night and frightens the townspeople."

The man stared at him in silence for a beat, the crackling of the fire and huffing of Roach filling the air until the corners of his lips curled upward, mockingly. The leaves and twigs crunched beneath his boots as he strode forward toward him, the light of the fire casting a warm glow over his figure and making him appear almost... angelic. "What makes a monster a monster, I wonder? Strigas will kill humans to feast but when a hunter kills a buck, no one calls him a monster for feeding himself. When you, Geralt of Rivia, are attacked and have to kill, they call you a butcher, but when a knight kills to protect himself he is a hero worthy of many titles and ballads."

"Why do you kill humans then, werewolf?" The man gave a quiet laugh, dropping down to his knees beside Geralt with a wide grin that exposed his four sharpened canines. Werewolf bites were hardly as potent as stories made them out to be but he'd heard the painful tales from witchers and hunters who'd been unfortunate enough to cross paths with the beasts drunk under the light of the full moon.

The werewolf's head tilted downward toward the sword Geralt held tightly and he reached out with a hand that grew (H/C) fur and nails that extended into claws meant to slice through flesh cleanly. He dragged the tip of his claw along the blade until he reached the handle, his hand returning to its human appearance and brushing over the back of Geralt's hand. No werewolf created from a curse or bite could control their abilities so finely, Geralt recalled from the teachings and stories, but one born from another werewolf could.

"To feast or to protect?"

"A group of humans will kill a family of werewolves, even an unborn child, under the guise of getting rid of a plague and be called fearless heroes... but a wolf avenging its pack and pup is a monster, even when he leaves innocents alone." 

Geralt's grip on his sword loosened and his shoulders sagged, with pity or perhaps relief, he wasn't so sure. His mind flickered back to Blaviken, to Renfri and her tale of vengeance on the man who'd taken everything from her. He'd advised her then to leave Blaviken and continue forth with the familial bonds she'd created amongst her men but she refused. His eyes flickered downward to Renfri's old brooch mounted on the hilt of his sword, a prickle of sympathy swirling in his chest.

"Tell me, witcher," The man's hand pressed over his, his thumb pushing and running over one of the veins along his skin gently. Geralt looked back at him, unable to rid himself of the caution still etched in his body despite his soft touch. Only silver could truly kill a werewolf, and this one had his hand near Geralt's only means of defense. Still, his eyes were alluring, and curious as they flickered over his rugged features. "Would you not wish to avenge your parents if they were slaughtered? Or your lover and child?"

"Witchers cannot have children." He thought of Cintra, and the Law of Surprise he'd accidentally stumbled right into with Duny and Pavetta. What had come of the child, he wondered. His unwanted destiny.

"Still, would you not believe it is justified?" 

Grinding his teeth, Geralt looked toward the fire. "What will you do once you have your justice? Killing those who've hurt you will not bring your family back, and the town will simply look for another hunter." He spoke, tentatively raising his hand away from his sword and resting it over his thigh to escape the warm touch. It'd been weeks, perhaps months, since he'd last felt a gentle caress. He found it easily addictive. 

"I will return home.. to the mountains in the north where I was born and raised. If the town chooses to repeat history, then I will gladly accept their vengeance for what I did to them." The man responded, scooting himself closer and nudging the sword away with his fingertips. His hands took Geralt's arm, fingers tracing some scars along his skin delicately and still curious. Geralt couldn't help but watch his fingers move so gingerly, fingers capable of transforming into powerful weapons. "You and I are the same, Geralt: despised for merely existing in a cruel world. Humans will always fear us for things we cannot control. I will always be a monster of the night and you will always be the Butcher of Blaviken."

"Then we leave these people and their town alone. We prove there is more to us than being monsters." It'd failed with Renfri, trying to persuade her away from what Stregobor made her out to be. From the way the man paused his movements and glanced at him, Geralt expected the same outcome. "You return to the mountains and live with the memories of your family until you create a new one." 

The werewolf frowned with knitted brows and peeled his hands away to unclasp his cloak, letting it slip down his back and pool around him. His fingers undid the buttons of his shirt, once white but now dirtied with mud and hints of dried blood. With the light of the flickering fire and his enhanced vision, Geralt spotted the scar along his abdomen. A silver weapon, or otherwise it would have healed as if it'd never happened. He took Geralt's arm once more, pressing his calloused hand against the scar but Geralt's focus drew to the warmth naturally radiating from his skin. 

"The men of this town did not care to learn about us. They did not care that my mother embraced my father despite his curse, despite knowing it'd pass onto their children; they did not care to learn that they named me (Y/N) when I was born and lived in constant fear that I'd be taken from them; they did not care to learn of how I warned Esra to stay away but she did not care whether I was man or monster... they did not care to learn we wished to have a daughter so we could name her after the aunt that raised Esra. They did not care for me, I will not care for them."

A steady silence consumed them both as they stared at one another, as Geralt battled internally between encouraging him to leave or accepting he'd do the same if he were in his position. (Y/N)... he seemed genuine but he thought back to the body he'd been shown. The image of a belly sliced open would forever be burned into the minds of the townspeople.

"Why haven't you killed all of them? You've killed three thus far and are still here. It would be easier than waiting to take them all out at once." 

"There are two more.. one seems to have figured it out and keeps to himself in his home. The paranoia will devour him eventually but the other... the other is away and I will not leave until he returns. I'm going to turn him into my kind, even if it takes more than one bite, and once he is cursed as my father once was.." (Y/N) grinned again, the angelic and almost innocent appearance disappearing, replaced by the look of someone who reeked of trouble. "The townspeople will take care of him for me. He will know what true fear and hatred is from those he once called his friends."

"Allowing you to infect a human with lycanthropy is-" 

Geralt knew he should have expected it, sooner or later, for werewolves were notorious for their speed and strength. In the blink of an eye, (Y/N) lunged at him with enough strength to knock the air out of his lungs and force him onto his back, pinning his forearms beneath his knees and holding the tip of his blade over his forehead. With his back to the fire and shadows cast over (Y/N)'s face, his eyes naturally gleamed with amber to adjust to the darkness.

Geralt stared up at him, his chest rising and falling as his mind caught up with what'd just occurred but unable to push away the thought of how startlingly beautiful he appeared.

"He took my Esra from me, my child.. be thankful, witcher, that I have not taken his wife and son. I don't wish to hurt you or anyone else but I will if you get in my way." 

The sword plunged into the soft dirt above Geralt's head and (Y/N)'s clawed hands came to rest above his shoulders, his knees sliding off Geralt's arms. Conflict bubbled and spread through Geralt's chest, threatening to fill his throat and make him choke. He had a duty, a promise to uphold to the townspeople and by extension the men, but he remembered the pure rage that'd flooded his veins when Renfri died in his arms with teary eyes and choked words.

(Y/N) peered down at him, vibrant eyes studying his face. "It's a shame, witcher, that you've come all this way for nothing. Under different circumstances, on a different night, I may have made it worthwhile." 

A breathless chuckle escaped the witcher, surprised to find a similar longing in his veins despite his position. His casualness in touching his hand and arm made sense to him now. How long had it been since he lost his lover? How long had it been since he craved to be held and desired? Tentatively, Geralt pushed himself up, forcing (Y/N) to slide further down and settle over his thighs. He'd sworn off involving himself in personal business the day Renfri died in his arms but now and again, he wondered what could have happened if he'd helped her in her cause against the wizard.

"I will be done with unfinished business soon, Geralt of Rivia. Grant me this without a fight and when the time comes, you may ask a favor of me in return." Despite his friendly offer, Geralt knew he had little choice. A single slice from his claws in the right place would kill the infamous witcher, leaving his body to be found by whichever courageous townsperson dared venture out in search of him. (Y/N)'s hand crept up to his face, reverting to their human appearance before pressing against his cheek. "Werewolves are good friends to have." 

"You say the one you wish to kill is away," Geralt recalled. "Track him down and be done with it away from this town, and I won't have reason to harm nor stop you."

(Y/N) pursed his lips, the glimmering amber fading into (E/C) as he considered his words. "Very well, then." He nodded, legs moving when he went to stand, only to surge forward and capture Geralt's lips. He pulled away before Geralt could react but not before a sharp canine caught his bottom lip, leaving a prickle of pain he hardly noticed. (Y/N) grinned, tongue swiping at the droplet of blood staining his lip.

"It's a deal, witcher. Safe travels."

The woods were eery and desolate, scarce of any noises that would otherwise entice one to trek through it in search of serenity. Yennefer's ears searched for noise, for the songs of birds or insects and the rustling of wildlife trekking through the brush. She recalled a saying, one about never entering silent forests, for it meant something was lurking within. 

She held onto the reins of the horse Ciri rode, tight and firm in case she needed to tug and usher the horse away from danger. After everything they'd gone through, she'd be damned if she let anyone hurt or take Ciri away from them. 

"Where are we going?" Ciri asked quietly, but despite the softness of her voice, it sounded as if she were speaking normally. 

Geralt remained silent, his muddied boots crunching down bushes for them to walk through until he stopped to crouch down by one. He plucked a patch of fur free from a branch and rolled it around between his fingers, wrinkles forming between his brows as he knitted them together. He stood and let the wind carry it further into the forest before he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his sword and released it from its sheath. 

"We're almost there." He grunted, sparing them a glance over his shoulder. "Stay close."

Yennefer's mouth pressed into a line but she warily followed, pulling on the reins and offering Ciri a reassuring nod. The younger girl swallowed thickly and tightened her grip on the saddle, her green eyes beginning to flicker around the forest wildly. Yennefer hardly blamed her. She felt a pit of anxiety naturally forming in her stomach, her instincts beginning to urge her to turn around and return to the safety of the treeline. 

Then, she heard it, distantly at first and she almost wondered if she imagined it. But when the horse planted its hooves firmly in the dirt and refused to move no matter how hard she tugged on the reins, she knew it was very much real. "Geralt," She exhaled, twisting the reins over the horse's head so Ciri could take them into her hands. 

"Don't run," Geralt instructed them, both hands wrapping around his sword as he came to a stop a few feet ahead of them. 

In the distance, and growing closer, sounded like thundering footsteps belonging to something big. Whatever approached them was quick and the sound of wood creaking and snapping made goosebumps spread across Yennefer's limbs.

The horse neighed and stomped, tugging on the reins with enough strength to make Yennefer stumble. She pressed her hand against the horse's neck and muttered a quiet incantation under her breath, feeling the tense muscles relax beneath her palm. 

"Ger-" Ciri choked on her words and Yennefer whirled her head around to look forward again, her heart lurching at the sight of the beast pressing its paw over a thick log and snapping it in half. 

It approached them on all fours with bristled fur and bared teeth, its pink gums visible and sharp teeth on full display. Each step was heavy and left an imprint in the soft dirt, the branches of the brush around them taking soft clumps of fur as it walked by. It stopped two feet ahead of them and rose to its full height on its back legs, easily towering over them. 

"You remember me, don't you?" Geralt asked the beast and took one hand away from his sword to lift it toward the beast, slow and cautiously. "We met a while back." 

The beast's nostrils flared with a huff and it lowered its head toward Geralts hand. For a fleeting moment, Yennefer expected to snap its jaws around his wrist and tear it off his arm, but instead, it lowered back down to all fours with a soft thump.

A smile graced Geralts face and the werewolf stopped snarling, the spiked fur along its back lowering with a quick shake. Its ears remained perked and it eyed them curiously, its nose twitching with each deep inhale it took as if memorizing their scents. 

"You remember that favor you owe me?" Geralt asked as he ran his fingertips over the top of its snout, a rumbling sound emitting from its chest. "I need your help." 

Yennefer could only exchange a bewildered glance with Ciri as they began following the beast- (Y/N)- back to his home further up the mountain. Geralt provided them a simple explanation, a quick summary of how'd they met almost a full year prior before he'd met Yennefer or taken Ciri in. 

The trees eventually gave way to a clearing with a decently sized cabin in the center, and Yennefer's eyes naturally gravitated toward the grave markers near the treeline by the garden. She grimaced and looked away before her staring could be noticed. Part of her knew she wouldn't have to ask what happened; it was always the same tale.

Swinging one leg over the side of the horse, Ciri slipped off and landed beside Yennefer with a puff of air. "Is this where we'll be staying?" She asked, tucking her ruffled tunic back into the waistline of her pants and observing their surroundings.

(Y/N) turned his head back toward them and then mustered up the most unimpressed look Yennefer had ever seen on an animal when he looked at Geralt. The witcher gave a small grin, the first relaxed one Yennefer had seen in a while, and offered a half-shrug.

"You never specified what type of favor." 

[softtaemu]

To All the Fics I’ve Loved Before

Links to fics, blurbs and others for my own (and maybe, others) enjoyment | don't be afraid to message me if you want something taken down or if i typed something wrong !!

i love all the authors here pls make more content especially my dick, jason, poe and pines author pls pls

some of these i don't really remember but i made a rule to myself where if i truely enjoy a fic it goes into my liked folder

so what if they're mostly smut,,,

🍄 for my favs hehe

Poe Dameron

I. Mercy, Sabotage, And Dead Space 🍄

II. Rumors, Freebies, And a Race for Last Place - @no-droids 🍄

Give Me My Sin Again - @brandyllyn

Feels Right - @jake-g-lockley

The Hating Game - @light-yaers 🍄

The Heart of a Ship - @im-poe-dameron

Seeds of Love - @moonlight-prose

Aphelion Duology - @oscarseyebrow

Running to You - @dailyreverie

Deft Hands - @eyelessfaces

Better Safe Than Sorry Series - @eyelessfaces

Favor - @eyelessfaces

Stripper!Poe - @youvebeenlivingfictional

Directions - @zinzinina

Got it Bad - @sinisterexaggerator

The Idea of You - @st4rymoon

Sex pollen - @eyelessfaces

For Your Entertainment - @melodygatesauthor

Miguel O'Hara

Pequeña - @that-sokovian-bastardkovian 🍄

The Ideal Gaze - @bluesidez

Starved - @honestsycrets 🍄

Back Massages - @wyvernest

Love Drunk - @bruisedboys

Baker!reader x miguel fluff - @bruisedboys (untitled)

Love Bite - @madschiavelique

Touch - @loganlermanstanaccount 🍄

College roommated Miguel - @loganlermanstanaccount 🍄 (i'd put all their miguel fics but im too lazy)

Once Upon a December - @mrs-lockley

Churn - @luvrxbunny

Nerds During Exams ?? - @obxsprincess (untitled)

Dad bod!Miguel - @cupcakeinat0r

Miguel going beastmode in bed - @tired-biscuit

Honey-Sweet - @fettuccin-e 🍄

Next Door - @cherryredstars

Insoportable - @ovaryacted

Between Your Thighs - @intoxicated-chan

Miguel Love Strong Women - @sillysillygoofygoose

Take My Breath - @whatthefishh

Shower Sex - @miguel-ohara-lover

Let Me Wrap My Teeth - @psychedelic-ink

Tired Miguel eats you out - @dilfartist

Breeding kink - @buryustogether

Amazing Head - @loganlermanstanaccount 🍄

This Series - @devilfic

Convergence & Webs of Opacity- @runa-falls (to read)

Dick Grayson

Help Me, Help You - @tetzoro

Written All Over Your Face - @roturo

A very freaky blurb - @hanasnx (untitled)

Freaky bfb! grayson - @killakalx (untitled)

Shameless smut grayson - @liciaarchives (untitled)

Squirting (as a friend) bsf!dick - @killakalx (untitled)

Sex Pollen Dick - @uc1wa (untitled)

Sex Pollen Dick again - @martiniluvr (untitled)

Jason Todd

Dick Pic! Jason - @dxckgrxsonx (this isn't finished idk if it'll get continued pls do ella pls pls) 🍄

Big eyes Big dick blurb - @dxckgrxsonx

Jason's in charge - @martiniluvr (untitled)

Restroom Attendant - @sanguineterrain

My Lady, Oh Sorceress - @e-nonsense

Jason overstims himself - @dxckgrxsonx

I'll Prove It - @dxckgrxsonx

Bruce Wayne

Right Place, Right Time Series - @devilfic

Honeymoon Series - @devilfic

Sugar on the Rim - @mostly-imagines

Cape stealer fluff - @devilfic (untitled)

Bruce Being Cockblocked- @c-nstantine

Nocturnal Animal - @devilfic

Joel Miller

You Owe Me Series - @tofics 🍄

Texas Sweet - @coquettepascal (if i had a nickel for every back massage smut i had in this list i'd have two nickels) 🍄

Wild Like the West - @hellishjoel

Heavenly Bound - @ozarkthedog

Head Lightning - @shellshocklove

Honey-Do - @kiwisbell

A Matter of Time - @thriftedtchotchkes

Pretty in Pink - @lincolndjarin

Javier Pena

Whatever My Wife Wants - @javierpena-inatacvest

Not so Secret Santa - @lincolndjarin

Plans - @wayfaringhoax

Have You Ever Seen the Rain - @psychedelic-ink

Tu Sonrisa - @tokkiwrites 🍄

Constructive Critisism - @lincolndjarin

Moonknight Boys

What You Like - @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction (marc backseating steven so) Hand Covers Mouth - @juneknight

Steven Grant

Dry Humping - @eyelessfaces

Marc Spector (i ong love love me some dorm!marc content)

Precum Dorm! Marc - @juneknight

Dorm!Marc drabble - @juneknight

Obsessed - @juneknight 🍄

Accidental Stimulation - @spicyllewyn

Beneath His Breath - @juneknight

Jake Lockley

Stan Pines

Snapshots Series - @moonieandi 🍄

SPECIAL MENTIONS (RANDOM EDITION)

Mixed p eating (gotham ppl) - @killakalx

I'd watch him lick it off - @killakalx

@Cherryredstars' whole ass masterlist (bookedmarked cause i wanna read more)

The Legend of Mar'sol Series - @sirowsky Mandalorian x reader

Free use Miguel - @runa-falls

The Inn (witcher) - ao3

Sirowsky's masterlist

Siren - @chvoswxtch

[another-lost-mc]

having a brainrot about how it would be if the characters turned into their animal type (is that what that's called?)

like imagine a shady sorcerer happen to accidentally cast a spell that changes them into their animal type how fucking cute and funny that would be

-🪶

a/n: that's so cuuuute. I went with the symbolic animals from their banners.

the wild side | the demon brothers + karasu

0.5k words | sfw | fluff + humor

related: the dateables' version

The Peacock (Lucifer)

How he responds to you vs. how he responds to everyone else:

He can't keep his feathers fanned out on full display as much as he wants to because he keeps getting stuck in doorways.

He walks around the house in a slow strut. Sometimes he spins around to show off all 360 degrees of his exquisitely-feathered beauty.

He doesn't notice that sometimes he smacks you in the face with his plumes if you're nearby.

The Crows (Mammon and Karasu)

They both bring you gifts and intimidate the others that try to get too close.

They're even more clingy than normal too.

It's surprisingly easy to tell them apart: Mammon's feathers are tipped with white, and Karasu's eyes have a deep scarlet glow.

The Snake (Leviathan)

He desperately wants to curl himself around your arm or leg. He'll try to keep his space if you're visibly creeped out by snakes though, he doesn't want to scare you.

An alternative you could try is wearing one of his oversized hoodies: he'll curl up inside the pocket and every once in a while he'll poke his head out and flick his serpentine tongue at you.

If you don't like that either, he'll curl up in the bottom of your closet or under your bed, somewhere dark and warm where he can still be close enough to keep an eye on you.

The Unicorn (Satan)

The House of Lamentation wasn't designed for horses or horse-like creatures.

He's the only one Lucifer won't try to chase away, his hooves look deadly.

Satan doesn't fit in your bedroom easily but he'll follow you in the hallways or inside the larger rooms with more space.

You are definitely going to recreate this movie moment at some point before the magic wears off:

The Scorpion (Asmodeus)

He's a bit bigger than most scorpions which means he's even more cute or gross depending on how you feel about them.

He's careful not to hurt you with his pincers if you pick him up.

He must be powerful even in this form because he releases sweet-smelling pheromones when he senses you're nearby.

He curls in the makeshift bed on you place on your desk for him. He's surprisingly calm even though scorpions are usually nocturnal.

His eyes have an eerie pink glow. You didn't notice it until you turned off the lights at bedtime.

(He stares at you until you fall asleep.)

The Fly (Beelzebub)

He's a bit larger than a normal fly.

He's restless and his wings are so noisy when he buzzes around you.

Most of the time you can hear the faint sound of his wings coming from the kitchen.

When he's not eating, he's usually hovering on or near Belphie.

The Cow (Belphegor)

He barely fits in your room and he snorts irritably when you raise your arms up and remind him that he is definitely not allowed to sleep on your bed like this.

He's even more annoyed because he can't go up to the attic like this either.

He just happens to plop down in front of your doorway to sleep instead. The others can't climb or go around him easily. He flicks them away with his tail when they try. He doesn't mind if you climb over him though.

read more: obey me masterlist

[osiiiris]

V Perpetua - my headcanons

I think so far I’ve seen enough of him to develop some personal headcanons for Perpetua.

Perpetua is human to me, but a very strange kind of human. However, he wears a mask because he doesn’t want to be perceived as one.

He’s mostly nocturnal, has a history of selective mutism, and is terribly afraid of social gatherings. When he has to participate, he has absolutely no idea how to interact with so many people. In trying to seem “normal,” he ends up acting like one of those aliens from Men in Black, the ones wearing human skin but moving in incredibly awkward ways. He’ll say something weird, completely out of context, and people won’t know how to react. He’ll think he did a great job.

He’s absolutely clueless. Always. Completely uninterested in the world around him, he lives mostly in his own mind and frequently dissociates. Too bad, his mind isn’t a nice place. You’ll try explaining what he has to do on stage, and he’ll just stare up at the giant structure, imagining how it would look with real human heads hanging from the ceiling.

As a result, you can’t have a real conversation with him. He’s too unpredictable, and his attention span is too fleeting. Having a meeting with him is one of the most frustrating experiences.

When he was a child, he used to stare at people, a lot. From windows, from inside a car, from a distance, or even directly in front of them. He would stare them down for endless minutes with wide, unblinking eyes, making everyone deeply uncomfortable.

He can’t sit properly. You’ll most likely find him crumpled up in a chair, looking at you like an owl.

He’s only relatively interested in sex, in the sense that he rarely thinks about it or seeks it out. His mind is too detached and chaotic, and carnal lust isn’t his first choice when it comes to seeking pleasure. But when he does engage... he’s freaky. He has some peculiar kinks. Strange shit go on in his bedroom (and not only). He usually doesn’t need to have full-on sex to be satisfied: he just needs to practice his kinks. Most of his occasional partners don’t want to “have sex” with him again.

He listens to a wide range of music, from black metal to techno rave. He can go from Mayhem to Die Antwoord in an instant.

He has a passion for taxidermy that began when, as a child, he used to find dead lizards and snakes and cut them open to see what was inside. He’s not very good at it, though… his creations are terrible.

He collects real animal skeletons and fossils.

The only request he made as Papa was for a private laboratory. What he does in there is a secret, but techno music can always be heard when he’s inside.

He smiles a lot, mostly out of uncontrolled excitement, but since he can’t quite act like a regular person, his smiles are unnaturally wide and unsettling.

Although not many people knew of his existence, he spent a lot of time studying the old Papas. As a result, he often quotes their speeches during his concerts—but he’s no copycat. Sometimes he evokes their words and leaves them incomplete, adds something personal, or even mocks them. It’s as if he’s saying, “Do you remember this? Well, I’m not the same.”

Unlike the other Papas, he’s not in competition with anyone, nor does he want to conquer anything. He was simply pushed onto a stage, and now he just does the thing. His real interests lie outside his musical career.

Sister Imperator is still trying to figure out whether he’s the greatest mistake she’s ever made.

[ncillary]

Self Aware AU (Sylus)

Summary: You have the lowest Affinity with Sylus. The reason is because he is a red flag. As red as his eyes. Spawn of the devil. Unless, he is actually not as evil as you label him to be. Does this change something in you? Yes? No? Maybe so?

Note: Japanese dub, English sub

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Masterlist Self Aware AU

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|  1  |  2 [current] |  3  |  4  |  5  |

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The recent update probably had been messing with the game. Yours especially.

(What's the point of sneaking around to only touch it? Come here. Take my hand.)

(Fine. I'll be the one to hold your hand out in the open. Better?)

You shook your head.

Every time you tap his hand, either, that prompt hasn't failed a single time to appear.

If you tap somewhere else, he'll just not move. Or talk. No dialogue without voice either.

You pinched the bridge of your nose.

"Ever since you showed up, you've given me headaches. Maybe I shouldn't have gone through with the Main Story after all."

He gave a coy smirk without you noticing.

"Whatever. Nothing else changes so I guess it's not that bad. Gotta get ready to work."

+-------------------------+--------------------------+

*Pop*

Your stretched successfully relocated stiff bones and muscle from their rigidness after sitting the whole morning until after lunch break. Data entry was easy, unless, the data played hide and seek with you. Customer service was not your forte but you wing it somehow.

"Heuh... Glad I pushed through over lunch. I'm free all day starting now."

Working remotely has its perks. You can save more expenses by cooking. No transportation fee and so on. The only downside you could think of was, your social life. How awkward you've become with real interaction except for people you know. But that doesn't mean you're timid about it. Life goes on.

"Right. How about I use Quality Time when I cook? The Weekly Plan isn't complete yet."

Blinking, your eyes met red gems.

"Fancy meeting you. I think you've conquered my cafe far more frequently now."

"The lights here are just too bright."

You looked at him, unimpressed.

"Nocturnal creatures sleep during the day. Not sauntered into a cafe looking ready to have a nice walk under the sun."

He somehow gave a cheeky smile at you. Then asking you if you could let him continue checking in on the auction.

"Be my guess." You tapped 'Yes'.

The screen flashes. He sat down while scrolling on his phone to watch supposedly an auction. Not that you could see it.

You propped your phone, letting him accompany you while you're in the kitchen nonetheless.

Somehow you feel bad about forcing him to have a Quality Time with you after he said that. But you kinda want a company too.

You prepared your charger port in the case your phone alerted you on low battery. Eyes briefly glanced to your phone.

His eyes stared at you then they turned back to the phone less in milliseconds.

You shook your head, "Must've have imagine it."

+---------------------------+-----------------------+

"Have you seen the one with the rocking chair?"

"My eyes are clean, thank you. Spare me from that."

"Pleaaaaaaseeee... Just stay in the room with me. Hold me down if I look like I'm about to throw my phone away. I don't trust myself."

You sighed, "Someone save me."

+--------------------------+------------------------+

"Aaaak! Why did you do that?"

Your friend smirked as the Wish Pool animation began it ten pulls.

"You've been staring at it for a long long long-"

"Quit it!"

"And it's your finger who did it. Not mine."

You pinched both of her cheeks, "YOUR FINGER force MY FINGER-"

*Tring*

The golden light shone on your phone.

You both turned to it.

"Can't be him. Can't be him. Can't be him."

You chanted as you hold your phone close to you.

"If he did appear in JUST TEN PULLS then you have my blessing with Crow Crow." Your friend caress her aching cheeks while smiling cheekily.

"I'm not going to accompany you watching Snowy later."

"oOh come on...."

Her complained was drowned out as your focus changed to your current predicament.

One. Two. Three taps. You exhaled.

Four. Five. Six taps. You exhaled.

Seven eight nine ten!

Red. Black feathers. Your breathed stalled.

White hair. Half naked. Head down. Red gems looking at you mischieviously.

Silent. Rustling.

"Oh, wow. It really is Crow Crow."

You pulled her cheeks again.

+---------------------------+------------------------+

"Why didn't she watch the new memory?"

Long finger tapped the table. He smiled.

"Playing a little game of cat and mouse, I see."

+--------------------------+------------------------+

You groaned, "Did you see this guy? Am I a sack of potatoes this time?"

"Yours? Did you see mine? WHY ARE WE ROCKING AGAIN?" She blushed.

You patted her back in sympathy.

+------------------------------+---------------------+

"Ready? One two..." *Tapp*

"How many times?"

"The 8th time. I hope he comes this time even with the rocking-theme still there."

You patted your friend's back.

"You?"

"Third and probably my last-"

*Tring*

Both heads looked at their respective phones. Both had the golden sparks.

Two pairs of eyes looking at each other. Disbelief. Nervous.

They looked back at their phone and started looking through.

A gasp. Snowflakes. Your friend's mushy face as she buried her phone in her chest.

"Careful." You took it away from her before she destroyed it with her love-death hug.

"AH! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!" She pointed at your phone.

Feathers scattered. Your breath hitched. There he was, carrying MC, with that smug face of his.

You raked your hair, "Wow. I was just... testing it out."

Your friend nudged you, "Crow Crow flies straight to your heart, huh?"

Cheeks being pulled.

+-----------------------------+-----------------------+

You let it play out this time.

You were too shy to watch the previous one in-game so you just let it marinate there. Besides, you've already watched it from fan's sharing.

Currently, you were getting a simple dinner ready as you glanced at your phone once in a while. Bluetooth headphones were on.

You've watched it with your friend on another platform. Both of you watched all of the character's new banner. You can't help it but wanting to know how this one played out.

Every scene looks fine.

You particularly like that one scene. Hearing it alone was enough. You rather not have a repeat of redden ears when you watch it previously. Almost being caught by your friend.

"Shavanika." You stopped on your track.

Ears warm. You chance a glance as he said it for the last time.

His face was close to the screen. You knew that. What you just realised was that it stopped there for a long time.

Confused, you approached your phone, noticing the Auto icon was off. You tapped it back.

"How did that happen?"

"You're finally in front of me, kitten."

You stared as you heard an unfamiliar dialogue coming from him. He patted MC's head and walked backwards.

The animation continues playing. Your eyes never leaving it. Your body and attention was locked until it was over.

Hand move up like a robot. You played that part again. The dialogue was back to normal. Finger steadily tapping the back button until you saw him looking at you in the cafe.

His slender finger tapping his temple. Face at an angle as he smiled at you cheekily.

You tapped his head.

"Next time you do a sneak attack, give me a heads up. I'll remember to lean down and cooporate."

You finally let out you breathe.

"I've heard that one before."

"Oh, but have you heard of THIS one, sweetie?"

You moved backwards in alarm. Your focus never wavers from the red gems looking at you beyond the screen.

A hum.

You stilled instinctly.

"Good fight mode but it was just me, kitten."

He's watching you as much as you're watching him

"Not to be alarmed but I hope you don't mind me barging in. Unintentionally."

*CRASH*

Your breath ragged. Your mind reeling. Your phone...

Decorated the floor after hugging the wall nearby.

It happened too fast. You didn't even know how you moved instantly to grab the phone and throw it away.

"What in the actual fantasy I've been smoking?"

You crumbled to the floor, trying to calm yourself down.

+-------------------------+-------------------------+

Chuckling.

"She'll make a good pitcher with that throw."

He dialled a number.

"Send her a new phone. The game included."

The sunlight shone through the blinds. He squinted a little before feeling the slight breeze.

"Let the game begin."

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| 1 | 2 [current] | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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Masterlist Self Aware AU

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