#dark!joel x reader

[sinful-mind-joyful-thoughts]

𝙎𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙢 | sᴏᴜᴘ

Read part one here - Squirm...

screencaps and gifs : @din-jarring they are amazing, literally brainwashes me every single time she posts, love you pook 🫶🏻

Pairing: dark!Raider!Joel Miller x dark!Raider!Tommy Miller x dark!Raider!Tess Servopoulos x fem!reader

Warnings/tags: MDNI 18+, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, BLOOD, VIRGIN READER, UNprotected sex wrap it before you tap it kids,food, hunger, kidnapping, degradation, praise, mean!Joel, toxic!Joel, mean people, toxic people, fear, waterboarding (with soup), choking, gagging, talks of sex, talks of anal sex, voyeurism, being held down, ripping off clothes, groping, kissing, spanking, crying, begging, masturbation M and F, Death threats, Guns, Gun insertion (mouth and vaginal), stripping, cum, cum description, hand jobs, blowjobs, orgasm,cum play kinda, THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT YOU CONSUME

Summary: Caught and brought to a new place you meet new faces and feelings.

WC: 4.2K

A/n : Sorry, I was a little late to post pt 2, but enjoy 🫶🏻

He had brought you to a house that barely felt like a home, its cold and unwelcoming atmosphere, a stark contrast to any sense of familiarity. The faces inside offered no solace, just a chilling reminder of your isolation from the man who had violated you. You pushed away thoughts of the horrifying event, trying to focus instead on the bowl of soup before you. Hunger gnawed at your insides, but the thought of not nourishing yourself felt like a silent protest against your dire circumstances.

Seated beside you was the man who had taken you, his presence a constant source of discomfort and fear. It struck you suddenly that you didn't even know his name, adding to the weight of your unease. To your left sat a woman with long brown hair, older than you and marked by scars. You stole glances around the table, avoiding prolonged eye contact with anyone. In the midst of the bustling room, a man's striking resemblance to your captor left you feeling unnerved. You resisted the urge to dwell on the chilling familiarity, instead turning your attention elsewhere.

As you sat there, wrestling with your own inner turmoil, your captor's impatience grew palpable. "What's the matter with you? Why aren't you eating?" he demanded, his voice sharp with irritation.

You flinched at his tone, feeling his eyes bore into you with an intensity that sent a shiver down your spine. "I-I'm not hungry," you stammered, your voice barely above a whisper.

"Not hungry?" he repeated, his voice rising with anger. Without warning, he reached out and grabbed a handful of your hair, yanking your head back roughly.

Pain shot through you, and you couldn't suppress a gasp of pain as tears pricked at the corners of your eyes. "Joel, calm down," the woman beside you interjected, her voice firm but gentle. "You don't want to scare the girl too badly."

Joel's grip on your hair loosened slightly, but his anger still simmered beneath the surface. "Fine," he growled, releasing you with a shove that sent you reeling. "But don't think you can defy me and get away with it."

You swallowed hard, trying to steady your trembling hands as you reached for the spoon, your appetite vanishing in the face of Joel's wrath. It was just another reminder of the power he held over you, a reminder that escape seemed increasingly impossible.

Joel's anger seemed to intensify with each passing moment, his frustration boiling over as he glared at you. "Eat!" he barked, his voice echoing through the room.

Trembling, you forced yourself to take a spoonful of the bitter soup, struggling to swallow it down past the lump in your throat. The taste was nauseating, but you dared not refuse, knowing the consequences would be dire.

As the man who resembled your captor, Joel, leaned in closer, a chill ran down your spine. His eyes bore into yours, filled with an intensity that made your blood run cold. "Who are you?" he demanded, his voice sharp and demanding.

Panic surged within you as you struggled to find the right words. You glanced around the table, seeking a lifeline, but found only unfamiliar faces staring back at you. Joel's twin sat across from you, watching the tense exchange with keen interest.

He noticed your fear. "I'm Tommy. What's your name?"

Feeling the weight of Joel's wrath bearing down on you, you stammered out a response, your voice barely above a whisper. "I-I'm..." After Joel yelled at you, you gave him your name, hoping to appease him in some way.

Joel's eyes narrowed as he watched you, a dangerous glint in his gaze. "It's not hard to behave, is it?" he sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. "Now eat your soup and stay quiet."

His words sent a shiver down your spine, and you obediently brought the spoon to your lips, forcing yourself to swallow another mouthful of the bitter concoction. Each swallow felt like a battle against the rising tide of fear and revulsion.

As you struggled to maintain your composure under Tommy's scrutiny, a sudden text message from the woman beside you caught you off guard. "What's your plan for her?" it read, and before you could react, Joel shot you a smirk.

"Well, Tess..." he drawled, leaning back in his chair. "I fucked her in the van, and the damn thing bled so much she was probably a virgin. But you see, she's real tight in the pussy. I wonder how tight she is in the ass.”

The crude words sent a wave of horror coursing through you, and you felt your heart pound in your chest. The laughter that erupted from the rest of the table only added to your sense of dread.

"NO!" you cried out, unable to contain your fear and revulsion any longer.

Ignoring your protest, Joel turned to his men with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Leave. All of you, except Tommy and Tess," he commanded, his voice cold and commanding.

The men exchanged glances before filing out of the room, leaving you alone with Joel, Tommy, and Tess. The tension in the air was palpable, and you had a nagging feeling that something bad was about to happen.

With a cruel grin, Joel grabbed your arm roughly, his grip like a vise as he forced the bowl of soup to your lips. "Drink it," he growled, his breath hot against your face.

You recoiled, the bitter taste of the soup making you gag, but Joel's grip only tightened, his fingers digging into your flesh painfully. "I said drink!" he hissed, his voice dripping with malice.

Tears welled in your eyes as you choked down the revolting liquid, each swallow feeling like a betrayal of your own dignity. Joel's laughter echoed in your ears, mocking your suffering.

He didn't stop, continuously pouring the soup into your mouth, the liquid spilling down your chin and soaking your clothes. You coughed and sputtered, struggling to breathe as he relentlessly forced you to consume it.

When the bowl was finally empty, Joel shoved you roughly onto the table, your ass in the air, the dried remnants of his cum and your blood staining your dress and leg from the van. You struggled against him, but his strength was overpowering, pinning you down with ease.

"Look at her," he sneered, his hand gripping your hair as he forced your head up. "A pathetic little whore, just begging for it."

You whimpered, the humiliation and shame crushing down on you like a weight, suffocating you. You felt dirty, violated, and utterly helpless in the face of Joel's cruelty. All you could do was pray for it to be over soon, to escape this nightmare and find some semblance of peace.

"Tommy, Tess," Joel's voice sliced through the air, authoritative and unyielding. "Hold her down."

Tommy hesitated, his expression conflicted as he glanced between you and Joel. "Joel, come on, man. This ain't right," he protested, his voice tinged with uncertainty.

Tess scoffed at his hesitation. "Oh, please, Tommy. It didn't work on the last girl Joel brought home. What makes you think it'll work on this one?" she interjected, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

Tommy's jaw tensed at Tess's words, a flicker of frustration crossing his features. "Yeah, well, no shit it won't work now," he muttered under his breath, his bitterness palpable.

With a resigned sigh, he reluctantly reached out to hold your arms down, his touch firm and unyielding. Despite his initial resistance, there was a chilling resolve in his eyes, a silent acknowledgment of the brutality of their actions.

You instinctively tried to wriggle free from their tight grip, but their hold was unyielding, suffocating in its grasp. Joel's hand trailed between your thighs, his touch invasive and mocking. "Did I forget to rip these?" he jeered, his words dripping with contempt. "Or did you put them back on so you could save all my cum that was dripping out of your pretty pussy?" With a swift tug, he tore at your panties, the fabric ripping with a sound that echoed through the room.

Your breath caught in your throat as Joel's lips trailed from your calf to your lower back, his touch igniting a firestorm of revulsion and fear within you. His hand slid up your dress, each movement leaving a trail of dread in its wake.

Before you could protest, his palm connected with your exposed flesh, the sharp sting of his slap reverberating through your body. "You need to learn, sweetheart," he growled, his voice dripping with malice. "What I say goes."

As the sting of his slap lingered on your skin, Joel's grip tightened, his dominance palpable in the air. "Count them," he commanded, his voice cold and commanding. "For every spank, I'll give you a rule to remember."

You swallowed hard, the weight of his words sinking in as fear coursed through your veins.

"One," you gasped, your voice barely above a whisper, as the second spank landed with brutal force.

"Rule number one," Joel's voice cut through the air like a knife, his tone chillingly calm. "You belong to me now. Your body, your mind, everything. Remember, sweet pea, I control whether you live or die."

"Two," you whimpered, each strike sending waves of pain through your trembling body. Fear gripped you tightly, knowing that Joel held the power to end your life in an instant. But in that moment of terror, a glimmer of relief washed over you as you realized he spared your life.

"Rule number two," Joel's voice was a sinister whisper, his breath hot against your ear. "You speak when spoken to. Your voice is mine to command."

The relentless rhythm of his slaps echoed in the room, each strike sending shockwaves of agony through your body.

"Three," you gasped, tears stinging your eyes as the onslaught continued.

"Rule number three," Joel's words were a cruel taunt, his laughter mingling with your cries. "Your desires mean nothing. Your only purpose is to obey."

The sound of his hand meeting your skin became a symphony of pain, drowning out any semblance of resistance.

"Four," you choked out, your voice trembling with each syllable.

"Rule number four," Joel's voice dripped with malice, his grip tightening as he relished in your suffering. "You forget who you were. There is only me, and there is only now."

The world around you seemed to blur as his assault persisted, each strike eroding away at your sense of self.

"Five," you managed to gasp out, the agony threatening to consume you entirely.

"Rule number five," Joel's words were a final decree, his dominance unyielding. "You will learn to love the pain. It's the only thing you'll ever know."

The onslaught of blows came faster now, each strike landing with brutal precision, leaving your flesh ablaze with searing agony. You squirmed helplessly against the iron grip of Tommy and Tess, your cries stifled by the relentless assault.

Joel's laughter cut through the air like a knife, mocking your pain as tears streamed down your cheeks, mingling with the sweat and blood that trickled down your back.

"There's a good girl," he taunted, his voice dripping with sadistic pleasure. "Let it out. Let me hear you scream."

With each strike, your resolve crumbled, your spirit shattered by the merciless brutality of his punishment. You cried out in anguish, the pain consuming you whole as Joel's cruel laughter echoed in your ears, a haunting reminder of your helplessness in the face of his relentless dominance.

As the onslaught of blows began to slow, Joel's strikes became more calculated, each one landing with precision on your already battered flesh. The pain was excruciating, every impact sending waves of agony coursing through your body.

"Enough," Joel commanded, his voice cold and commanding. "Let her go."

Tommy and Tess released their grip on you, allowing you to slump forward, your body trembling with pain and exhaustion. Joel pulled you into his lap, his jeans rubbing against your raw, beaten skin, sending fresh waves of discomfort radiating through you.

"Good girl," he murmured, his tone disturbingly gentle compared to moments before. "You're learning. Remember, what I say goes. Always."

Joel's gaze shifted to Tommy as you squirmed uncomfortably in his lap, desperately seeking a spot that wasn't ablaze with pain. "Tommy, fetch my pistol," he commanded, his voice cold and authoritative.

Tess and Tommy exchanged shocked glances. "Joel? Before we've even gotten a turn?" Tess protested, her voice tinged with apprehension. Fear clenched at your heart at the mention of the pistol. You didn't want to die.

"I didn't say to shoot her, goddamn it, y'all are sensitive," Joel snapped, his frustration evident in his tone. He sighed heavily before continuing, "Just get comfortable, and you," he grabbed your face roughly, forcing you to meet his gaze, "it's not supposed to be comfortable. Now stay still."

Tommy hurried off to retrieve the pistol, while Tess positioned themselves in front of Joel's chair, obediently following his orders to watch. You sat still, trying to suppress the sobs threatening to escape as you braced yourself for whatever came next. As Tommy handed the pistol off to Joel and positioned himself next to Tess.

Joel's laughter filled the room as he accepted the pistol from Tommy, his eyes dancing with sadistic amusement. With a menacing smirk, he pressed the cold metal barrel against the neckline of your dress, causing your breath to hitch in terror. The fabric stretched under the pressure before snapping back into place, sending a shiver of fear coursing through you.

Glancing between Tommy and Tess, Joel's expression dared them to act. After a tense moment, Tess stepped forward, her hands confident as she reached for the hem of your dress. With a swift motion, she began to peel the fabric away, revealing the vulnerable skin beneath.

Meanwhile, Joel moved behind you, his fingers deftly unhooking your bra with practiced ease. As the garment fell away, leaving you exposed and vulnerable, Joel's gaze hardened. "No touching," he commanded, his voice laced with a dangerous edge. "She hasn't had my dick in her ass yet, so there's no point in sharing yet. Just watch."

Turning his attention back to you, Joel's eyes bore into yours with an intensity that made your blood run cold. "Give them a show," he ordered, his tone dripping with malice. With a cruel grin, he began to trace the path of the gun along your skin, sending shivers of fear down your spine.

With every inch of exposed skin, Joel's sadistic grin widened. He traced the contours of your body with the cold metal of the pistol, his touch sending shivers down your spine. "Such a pretty little thing," he taunted, his voice dripping with malice. "All naked and vulnerable."

As he continued to torment you with the gun, his words grew more depraved. "Bet you're wondering what I'm gonna do with this," he mused, his tone filled with sickening excitement. "Maybe I'll use it to fuck you in the ass."

Your heart hammered in your chest as you braced yourself for whatever twisted game Joel had in store. The weight of the pistol against your skin felt like a ticking time bomb, each moment dragging out the agony of anticipation.

"Maybe I'll use it here," Joel's voice dripped with malice as he suddenly pressed the cold, hard barrel of the gun into your mouth. The metallic taste was overwhelming as you complied with his command, the weight of the weapon heavy on your tongue. Your cheeks burned with embarrassment, and a rush of adrenaline flooded your veins.

Glancing over at Tess and Tommy, Joel's eyes gleamed with sadistic pleasure at their reactions. Tommy's hands were shamelessly buried in his pants, indulging in his own depravity, while Tess, stripped down to her bra, caressed her breasts with a sickeningly soft touch.

Returning his gaze to you, Joel's grip on your neck tightened, forcing you to look upwards. Your throat constricted around the gun barrel as he pushed it deeper, eliciting a gag reflex. His laughter echoed through the room, a chilling soundtrack to your degradation. "Come on, take it. Come on," he taunted, his voice laced with perverse excitement.

With a cruel twist, Joel abruptly removed the gun from your mouth, leaving you gasping and coughing for air. The taste of metal lingered on your tongue as you struggled to regain your composure, tears stinging your eyes from the violent intrusion.

Ignoring your distress, Joel's eyes glittered with amusement as he admired the effect of his torment. "Pathetic," he spat, his tone dripping with disdain. "You can't even handle a little gun in your mouth."

Joel roughly turned your head to face Tess and Tommy, positioning you back-to-back with him, creating an unsettling image of depravity. Tess had her hands buried in her pants, mirroring Tommy's lewd actions. Meanwhile, Joel's touch grew more invasive as he groped your body with the cold metal of the gun, each touch sending a shiver of revulsion down your spine.

"You like that, huh?" Joel taunted, his voice dripping with contempt as he pressed the gun teasingly close to your trembling body. "Bet you've never had anything like this before."

You squirmed uncomfortably under his touch, feeling exposed and vulnerable as he continued to taunt and degrade you in front of Tess and Tommy. The weight of their lecherous gazes only added to your sense of shame and helplessness.

Joel's grip tightened around the gun as he abruptly thrust the cold metal barrel into your pussy without warning, causing you to gasp in shock and pain. The sensation was overwhelming—a mix of burning agony and icy coldness that made your entire body tense with discomfort.

Despite the searing pain that coursed through your body, there was a perverse and unsettling sensation that accompanied Joel's crude violation. It was as though amidst the agony, there lingered a twisted form of pleasure—a dark and forbidden allure that sent conflicting waves of desire and revulsion washing over you.

As the cold metal of the gun's barrel plunged into you with each merciless thrust, there was an undeniable arousal that stirred within you, mingling with the anguish and fear that consumed your senses. It was a sickening realization, one that filled you with shame and self-loathing even as your body betrayed you with its traitorous response.

Each jagged edge of the gun's barrel seemed to ignite a primal fire within you, awakening sensations that you had never dared to acknowledge before. Despite the brutality of Joel's actions, there was a part of you that craved the twisted pleasure that he elicited—a part of you that hungered for the forbidden ecstasy that danced on the edge of pain.

Amidst the torment, your body pulsed with unfamiliar sensations, a tumultuous symphony of pleasure and agony that left you trembling on the edge of surrender. Every gasp and moan that escaped your lips was a testament to your body's betrayal, succumbing to Joel's relentless domination.

As the gun's barrel thrust into you, each movement ignited a storm of conflicting emotions within you. Pleasure and pain intertwined, blurring the lines between ecstasy and despair. It was a descent into madness, a journey into the depths of your darkest desires, where every sensation threatened to consume you whole.

As the pressure of Joel's grip on your face intensified, his fingers digging into your cheeks, you felt a surge of panic rising within you. You desperately tried to look away, to escape the lewd scene unfolding before your eyes, but Joel's iron grip held you in place.

Tommy and Tess, lost in their own world of ecstasy, moved with a frenzied urgency, their bodies writhing in pleasure. Their hands roamed feverishly over their skin, eliciting moans of delight that filled the room. The air crackled with anticipation, heavy with the heady scent of arousal.

Meanwhile, Joel's touch on your clit sent bolts of electricity coursing through your body, each stroke igniting a firestorm of sensation. You gasped for air, your body trembling with a mixture of pleasure and pain.

"You enjoying this, huh?" Joel's voice dripped with sadistic amusement, his words laced with cruelty. "Such a filthy little slut, aren't you?"

Your heart raced as Joel's fingers continued their relentless assault, pushing you closer and closer to the edge. Just when you thought you couldn't take any more, he thrusts the cold metal barrel of the gun into you with a force that stole your breath away.

"Please...stop," you gasped, your voice strained with desperation. "I feel...I'm gonna pee."

The sensation was overpowering, a torrent of pleasure flooding your senses, leaving you gasping for air. You cried out, a primal sound of ecstasy mingling with the moans of Tommy and Tess, who watched on as if entranced.

Joel chuckled darkly, his eyes alight with sadistic glee. "You're not gonna pee, sweetheart," he taunted, his voice dripping with malice. "You're gonna cum."

Tommy leaned in closer, his eyes glazed with lust as he watched your writhing form. "Damn, she's really getting into it," he remarked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Tess nodded in agreement, her fingers tracing lazy circles over her own body as she watched the spectacle unfold. "She's a natural," she murmured, her voice tinged with envy.

Meanwhile, Joel's grip tightened on your body, his touch both rough and possessive as he continued to manipulate your pleasure. "That's it," he coaxed, his tone sickeningly sweet. "Give in to it. Let it consume you."

As the waves of ecstasy crashed over you, you felt a sense of shame wash over you. But amidst the shame, there was also a strange sense of liberation, a feeling of being utterly and completely consumed by the moment.

The room fell silent, save for the soft, rhythmic grunts of pleasure emanating from Tommy's direction. In the shelter of Joel's arms, you watched as Tommy's release painted his shirt, his outstretched hand halted by Joel's stern intervention. With a deft motion, Joel retrieved the pistol from its slick haven within your body, aiming it unwaveringly at Tommy's head.

"I said no touching," Joel's voice was a low growl, his eyes flashing with dangerous intent. Tess's moans were abruptly cut short as she, too, succumbed to her climax. Joel rolled his eyes in exasperation, his patience wearing thin. "Both of you...leave. NOW!"

As Tommy and Tess hurriedly obeyed, Joel's demeanor shifted, his hand gentle as it patted your head. It was a startling contrast to the violence moments ago. "You see, if you follow my rules, I protect you," he explained, his tone almost soothing. But as he gestured with the gun beneath your chin, the underlying threat was impossible to ignore, casting a stark shadow over his words.

"Now, it's time for you to show your gratitude," Joel's voice was cold, his eyes boring into yours with a predatory gleam. "You owe me, and you're going to thank me properly."

His demand hung in the air, heavy with implication. You felt a chill run down your spine as you realized the extent of his control over you. With trembling hands, you struggled to find the words to comply with his twisted request, knowing that defiance would only invite further punishment.

He guided you to the table, settling you onto the worn wood surface. The ache from the red marks on your ass made you flinch, but Joel silenced you with a gesture. "Shh..." His finger pressed gently against your lips. "I'm going to show you how to please me. Watch closely and learn.”

Joel unfastened his belt and let his pants drop to the floor, revealing his nakedness. He then took your hand and spat into it. "Make sure there's some wetness. If it's dry, it won't feel good," he instructed, his voice low and commanding. Guiding your hand with his, he began to stroke up and down his impressive length. His cock was large, the weight of it filling your hand as you struggled to wrap your fingers around it. "See, it's so simple," he grunted softly as he moved your hand along his shaft.

As you followed Joel's lead, your hand moved rhythmically along his length, slick with saliva and your own nervous sweat. His breath hitched with each stroke, his eyes darkening with lust as he watched your tentative movements. You focused intently on his reactions, trying to gauge what pleased him, all the while feeling a mix of revulsion and fear churn in the pit of your stomach.

Despite the discomfort and fear that pulsed through you, there was a strange sense of power in the act, a twisted form of control that you wielded over him. You couldn't deny the rush of adrenaline that surged through you as you brought him closer and closer to the edge, each stroke of your hand pushing him towards release.

And then, with a guttural groan, Joel's body tensed, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he reached the peak of his pleasure. Hot streams of cum erupted from him, coating your hand and spilling onto the floor below. As he finally released, you felt a sickening mixture of relief and disgust wash over you, knowing that you had played a part in satisfying his twisted desires once again.

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[kiwisbell]

Red Light [landlord!joel miller]

The men you keep bringing home are no good for you. It's up to your landlord Joel to protect you from heartbreak. 

my masterlist!

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+ (mdni)

tags and warnings: AU - no outbreak/modern day, obsessive!joel, dark!joel, but also soft!joel, landlord!joel, violence, death, murder, stalking, jealousy, truly creepy behaviour, unprotected sex (lead by example; just not mine), creampie, dubious consent, reader’s serious lack of self-preservation, sexual tension, abuse of power, spanking, spitting, squirting, praise kink, degradation kink, joel is a munch, somnophilia, possessive behaviour, dirty talk, a smidgen of gaslighting, the general filth you should expect from me by now, a spoonful of genuine intimate connection™️, implied age gap, submissive reader, dominant joel, daddy kink, knives, mild torture, light anal play, voyeurism, unreliable narration, inappropriate use of a necklace, panty sniffing, ambiguous(?) ending

word count: ~ 15.8k (uh, oops!)

read on ao3!

hello, all! this fic has been tossing and turning inside the proverbial sheets of my head for a while now. when i tell you it's darker than anything i've written, i mean it, so please, please mind the tags. this story does not depict a healthy relationship; joel is a total creep and both he and reader are heavily delusional. with that said, please enjoy this (super long) one-shot!! xoxo

PREFACE

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. — Macbeth, I.IV

~

THE TENANT

You're beginning to think it’s a built-in bad luck charm. A microchip implanted in your skin or a flaw you have yet to pick out. Every single one of your prospective boyfriends has disappeared off the face of the Earth since you moved into town. 

It isn't you. It's not. There is nothing wrong with you. It isn't your fault that either they decide after one date that you aren't worth seeing again, or they stand you up before the date can even begin. Your profile pictures are decent. You followed the rules meticulously: a shot of your face, a group picture to show you have friends, a selfie, a candid. You've examined them time and time again for flaws and find none that a man would care about. You're pretty. Sexy. Confident. They're just intimidated. Fuck, you're turning into your mother.

And yet—

Since moving into this apartment—this beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime deal of an apartment—your luck with dating has abruptly ended. 

It's a lovely building. A stout brownstone with wrought-iron stairs and an old, but functional, elevator, it's traditional and charming. Perfect for a single woman. 

Six months. This is your first second date in six months. David is just fine. He's handsome in a frat-initiate kind of way, with a nice smile and a good sense of dress. He doesn't ask many questions about you, and he's a little pretentious about films you don't give a shit about, but he likes you. You didn't have a horrible time on the first date: he wasn't afraid to spend his money on you at the nice restaurant. And he has a car. 

Raised as an optimist, you learned to see the good parts of a situation. David can work out. 

On the way out of the elevator, you spot your landlord Joel speaking to the concierge. You instinctively smooth down your hair and wave at him as you walk by, shrugging your purse onto your shoulder. “Hi, Joel. Hi, Sam.”

Sam the concierge waves back, but Joel puts his back to the conversation and gives you his full attention, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk. Your heart leaps and your head goes fuzzy with nerves. You barely manage to force a giddy giggle back down your throat. Relief coats your bones when Sam excuses himself to take a call.

Joel Miller’s an older guy, his tousled dark hair threaded with silver on his head and in his beard. One look at him and a person could know that he works with his hands for a living; he’s broad-shouldered, strong, with big arms and a capable air about him. He’s proven his mettle a hundred times over already with the miniscule repairs he’s made to the building. He turned it into a good place to live; he even trims the hedges outside and polishes the doorknobs when they get rusty. 

He’s wearing a green T-shirt today, which is another member of the typical summertime circulation of blue and grey T-shirts, and a pair of jeans. “Evening,” he says, his rich brown eyes sparkling. Sometimes, you can see him smile when his mouth isn’t showing it. It’s charming. Enthralling. “How’s that new lock workin’ out for you?”

You grin. He remembered. Joel installed a new deadbolt on your door last week, since the chain on the last one broke. “It’s perfect,” you tell him. “Are you in a chocolate or lemon mood this time?”

His gaze flickers down your body, taking in your yellow dress, before meeting yours again. “Lemon,” he says.

You bite the inside of your cheek. Talking to a handsome man feels like tossing your heart in the air and trying to juggle. Flirting with a handsome man is like toeing a tightrope between two mountains and forcing yourself not to look down. Your stomach swoops with the path of his eyes over your body, and you cannot convince yourself that you imagined it. “Lemon squares it is. Thank you again, Joel.”

“Just my job to keep my tenants safe,” he says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. You can see a pair of keys in his pocket along with his cell phone. The mere sight of his belt makes your cheeks hot. Why are you looking at his belt? You’re going on a date with another man, for God’s sake. Relax.

“Helps when I like my tenants so much,” adds Joel, and you forget why you were scolding yourself in the first place. 

“Yeah?” You tilt your head to the side. “Maybe you should be baking for them, instead.”

Joel steps away from the desk, working his jaw as he seems to fight down a smile. “It’s for the best this way, believe me. Can’t cook for shit.”

“Big, strong man like you can’t work a stove?” you tease. Don’t look down. 

“I only fix ‘em.” There’s a crooked smile on his face now, and your heart beats your ribs to shrapnel. “You look real nice. Goin’ somewhere?”

That simple validation calms your nerves more effectively than a half-hour of repeating affirmations into the mirror before leaving your apartment. You give the skirt of your sundress a little swish. “A date, actually,” you say, feeling sheepish. Your landlord certainly doesn’t need to hear about your track record as of late. “He’s taking me to Sunfest, in the park.”

A minute twitch of his brow is the only reaction he gives to the news. “That so?” he says. “Lucky man.”

“More like lucky me,” you say with a small laugh, tucking your hair behind your ear. Stop talking, you plead to yourself. Too much information. Shut up, kindly excuse yourself, and leave. 

Joel shakes his head, and now is the first time you notice that his eyes haven’t once left you. It warms your body. “He’s the lucky one. Trust me.”

“Okay. I concede.” You chew on your lip for a moment and, sure enough, his gaze hones in on your mouth. The air in the lobby crackles white-hot. You clear your throat, turning your head to find David’s car parked on the street outside. “I should go. But I promise I’ll get started on those lemon squares soon.”

It’s a possibility that you only imagine Joel’s eyes flitting from the car outside back to you when you turn your head back to face him. “Do me a favour?” he says, a scrape to his deep drawl. 

“Anything, Joel.”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “Be safe,” he says. “You have my number if anything goes wrong.”

You give him a grateful smile. “I’ll be safe, Joel. And if I’m not, you’re the first person I’ll call.”

“Good. That’s…” He trails off, still watching you, his eyes trained in their path across your face. “You’re good. Smart, beautiful, good. You deserve to have somethin’ real.”

The simple, small praises melt your bone marrow and recast it in the shape of him. The old chandelier hanging from the ceiling casts him in a soft light, stark against the hard muscles and profound depths in his eyes. He's breathtaking. You've always known it, but…

He sees something in you, too. 

David honks his horn and makes you jump out of your stupor. You walk backwards out of the lobby just to keep looking at Joel for as long as you can. “For the record,” you say, “you’re a good man, Joel.”

“Don’t be so sure, honey,” he replies, his tone playful. 

You laugh, hurrying out to David’s car as the door closes behind you. 

“This place is beautiful,” you said to Sam, the concierge working the front desk of your prospective apartment. The appropriate paperwork was in your arms, your eyes scanning every inch of the old building. Of all the places you'd seen in and around the neighbourhood, this was the most promising. You hoped to get a glimpse at a unit before you signed, though. Assuming the landlord even wanted you to live here. 

Sam smiled at you. “Lots of people just see the cracks.”

“There's so much character,” you replied, admiring the crystal chandelier. The walls were a calming, aged white, the floors genuine hardwood. The lobby was decorated with plush chairs upholstered with burnt orange fabric, the corners filled with real potted plants. 

The door opened behind you, and you turned to see a handsome stranger, dressed in a pair of dirty jeans and mud-caked shirt, wiping his forehead with his forearm. Behind you, Sam said, “This is Joel Miller. The landlord.”

“Oh!” You were flustered, floundering to stretch out your hand to shake as you introduced yourself. “I’m sorry to catch you at a bad time. This building is gorgeous. You've done a great job with it, Mr. Miller.”

The landlord did not once look at Sam, his eyes fixed solely on you as he wiped a hand on the cloth slung over his shoulder and shook your hand. His hand engulfed yours, warm and rough. The touch jolted you like an electric shock. Your hands must have been clammy and shaking with nerves, but the contact steeled you. 

The intensity of his gaze, however, made you shift on your feet. He didn't waver, didn't stray, like a man set on a mission. Nothing about him was shy. He drank in the sight of you, indulging without shame, his eyes travelling to the next destination once they'd had their fill. It made you feel stripped to the bone.

“It's nice to meet you,” he said. “Sorry for the dirt. Just finished weeding.”

You shook your head in dismissal. “You really take care of this place.”

“It's good work,” he said plainly. “Serves me well. I like gettin’ my hands dirty, fixin’ things.”

“Where were you when my sink broke every week at my old place?”

“Fixing the sinks in this one.”

You laughed. “Well, for what it's worth, the outside is beautiful, too. Not a weed in sight.”

“Pleased to hear it,” said Joel, his dark eyes glittering under the chandelier. 

“You're from Texas!” you said suddenly. Oh, God, kill me now. I sound like a stalker. 

But Joel smiled, a raspy laugh leaving his mouth. You wondered if he laughed often. He looked like a serious man. “You familiar?” 

“I was born there,” you supplied. “Left when I was young, but my dad lived there all his life.”

“Lookin’ good on you already,” he said. “It’ll be nice havin’ another one of us around.”

“Does that mean you're considering me?” you couldn't help but ask. Fuck, you wanted this apartment. 

“I've already considered,” said Joel, his eyes sweeping your body. “You're the only applicant.”

Your hands were trembling and your heart thrummed with excitement. “Oh, God, thank you!” you gasped. “Joel, thank you.”

You could swear his chest swelled a bit at your graciousness. “I can show you the unit, if you’d like. It needs some TLC, but I’m happy to help with the process as best I can. Unless you have someone to…”

You realised what he was hinting at and shook your head. “Oh, no, it’s just me. I’d love to take a look.”

You noted the slight drop of his shoulders and followed him into the elevator. A part of you was surprised to see there was no gate that closed you in; they were plain, somewhat modern elevator doors. “Fixed it last month,” Joel said, looking sideways at you. “Just in time, apparently.”

You grinned at him, bouncing on the balls of your feet. “Nice to see there's no creepy operator in here.”

“Just me.” He punched the button for the third floor and rode with you to the top. 

This was the start of your new life. 

You shut the passenger’s side door and situate yourself inside David’s Lincoln. He’s dressed in a pair of black shorts and a clean Henley. “Hey, beautiful,” he says, leaning in to kiss you across the console. 

You hum, smiling against his mouth. “You clean up nice, too.”

He places a hand on your thigh and pulls away from the curb. He's a touchy person, which is perfectly fine considering how long your latest dry spell has lasted, but at least he isn't inching his way up your dress to cop a feel while he drives. 

The festival is bustling with people, tented stands, and the smell of fried dough and beer. It’s almost dinnertime, and your stomach growls. When was the last time you ate? You spent hours agonising over what to wear until you were sweating and had to shower all over again. You wish you’d snuck an apple into your purse. 

David pulls you into him as you both walk through the winding paths between vendors. “It’s a beautiful night,” you say breezily. 

David squeezes your waist. “Mmm. You’re beautiful.”

A bit too corny for your taste, but you let it slide. “Don't tell me you're allergic to powdered sugar, because I’ve been eyeing the elephant ears.”

“God, if I eat that shit, I think it’ll set me back a month at the gym,” he laughs. “Let’s get one for you, though.”

Great. Now you're the expensive date who eats while her date watches her stuff her mouth with an elephant ear. “Uh. Maybe later.” 

You stop at a jewellery vendor and spend a good while eyeing up a beautiful gold necklace and the heart-shaped pendant dangling from it. David doesn’t notice your staring and breezes by with your hand firmly in his. “Let's check out the grand stand. My buddy’s band is playing before the fireworks display.”

“Sure,” you say, turning your head to watch the necklace disappear slowly from view. 

The gigantic domed stage houses a group of musicians currently tuning up their instruments. David sidles right up to the front and releases your hand to execute an elaborate handshake with his friend, who’s fine-tuning his bass. 

“Hey, man,” greets the bass player. “Good to see you. Who’s this?”

You open your mouth to introduce yourself, stretching your hand out, but David says, “My date for tonight. Baby, this is Ray, of Uncontrolled Bleeding fame.”

The bass player shakes your hand politely. “Very nice to meet you.” 

Because it doesn’t seem to matter much to David, you decide it’s worth the time to tell Ray your name. “It’s nice to meet you, Ray. I’m excited to hear you play.”

Not that you've ever heard of a band called Uncontrolled Bleeding. Still, Ray seems nice enough, and you're on a date. You should give them a chance. 

David squeezes your waist and kisses you lightly on the temple. “You mind if I go backstage for a bit to say hi to the other guys? Won’t be long.”

What?

“Oh!” you manage to eke out over the great swooping nosedive your heart has just performed. He’s here to see his friends. He’s not on a date. “Of course. Take your time. I’ll just… walk around.”

David departs with Ray for a personal backstage tour while you bite down on your tongue and turn back in the direction of the main strip. A few vendors catch your attention, and you take your time because God knows David is taking his. A little bit of you revels in your own petty victory when, a half-hour later, Uncontrolled Bleeding begins to blare their metallic, screaming anthems across the park and you haven’t returned to the grand stand. 

You find your way back to the jewellery vendor to ponder over your favourite necklace some more, but your night gets worse when you find that it’s disappeared from the headless display mannequin. You solemnly slide your wallet back into your bag and pause when you hear your phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” It’s David’s voice, presumably, though it’s so loud on the other end of the line that you can barely make out his words. “I can’t… where… left?”

You plug one ear and look vaguely in the direction of the grand stand across the park. “I can’t hear you very well, David.”

“… afterparty… downtown… going… Uber home?”

You press your lips together and look down at the ground: at your pretty sandals, your new dress. Your entirely wasted potential on a guy who wanted you to find your own way home. “Yeah, David,” you say tightly. You don’t particularly care if he can hear you. “You have fun with your friends.”

“Can’t hear… talk later… okay?”

You hang up and wander back toward the vendor selling elephant ears. 

~

“Miller.”

“Hi, Joel.”

“Honey, it’s loud. Can barely hear you. Are you safe?”

“I’m safe, Joel, I promise. It’s just—Uncontrolled Bleeding.”

“What?”

“No, I mean, the band. They’re really loud. I hate to ask, and I know it’s late, but—”

“What do you need?”

“I, uh… I need a ride home. I can’t get a cab, and all the Ubers around are taken, and the busses are rerouted all the way—”

“I’m comin’ to get you. You just wait for me at the entrance, okay, baby girl?”

“Thank you, Joel.”

“You know I said you could call me for anything. I meant it.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

“Oh! Wait—”

“What? What is it?”

“Do you want an elephant ear?”

~

Joel is white-knuckling the steering wheel when he arrives to pick you up. Despite the congestion around the festival grounds and the fact that your apartment is at least fifteen minutes away, Joel makes it to you in a mere five.

“Did you blow every red light to get here, Mr. Miller?” you ask with a playful smile as you secure your seatbelt and settle on the truck bench.

“I was in the area,” he says with a crooked smile, looking your way. “May have pushed forty a couple times, though.”

You sheepishly extend a cardboard takeout box filled with fried, powdered dough. “Will you take this as my sincere thanks, or will you expect a separate batch of lemon squares?”

Joel answers by dipping his head and taking a bite of the flattened, doughy bread. You watch every minute movement, his strong jaw working as he chews, indulging you even though he’s already done far too much to get you out of this rut. He doesn’t once break eye contact while he eats; you begin to chew subconsciously on your bottom lip.

“Ain’t bad,” he declares at last, and your shoulders deflate with a kind of relief, “but if you let me take you for some real dinner, I’ll forget about that extra batch.”

You tentatively reach for his mouth and swipe some powdered sugar from his moustache with the pad of your thumb. You feel his eyes scanning your face all the while. “Look at me, the lucky girl,” you say softly. “One date goes wrong, and there’s a strong, handsome man waiting to take me on another.”

From the very first day, Joel Miller has always taken his time when it comes to looking at you. It’s a penetrative stare that makes your skin heat up from the tips of your ears down to your chest. His eyes are so dark, pools of warm melted sugar, and you feel yourself leaning, trancelike, slow, into that cavernous gaze. Your body is not your own. It seeks the subtle warmth, the familiar scent—sawdust, coffee beans, rich, dark cologne—and the violent torrent of sensation that erupts from the contact point when he cups your cheek in one hand. 

You’re in the throes of attention, warm as a candle weeping fat waxen tears.

“Told you before,” says Joel, his thumb sweeping fondly across your chin, “you deserve somethin’ real.”

“Yeah,” you sigh happily, feeling all-too complacent under the touch of his rough palm, “maybe I do.”

Behind you, a car honks its horn, and Joel curses, pulling away from the curb. He takes you to Turner’s, a bar by campus that would be crawling with students if it weren’t for the festival. Joel comes around to the passenger’s door and opens it for you, helping you hop out with your hand enclosed in his. His palm is a steady weight on your back as you both walk inside the dim, stuffy bar. 

The back is bustling with activity—drunk folks playing pool or watching the Huskies’ football game or splitting their attention between both—but the bar itself has enough spaces open to fit the two of you. Here, the light is burnt orange, and it makes the strands of grey in his hair shimmer gold. His eyes observe his surroundings with a military precision before they flit back to you, magnetic.

“Shame to waste this dress on that asshole,” says Joel, sweeping his gaze down, back up, barely perceptible. “You’re too goddamn pretty for any of ‘em.”

You’re deliciously abuzz with the incisive way he compliments you. It feels like being punctured down to your very soul; you will never forget the shape of the stain his words leave. “Do you spy on all my dates, Joel?”

He smirks. “Don’t need to spy on ‘em, baby. They’re a bunch of obnoxious kids.”

You huff, resting your cheek against your palm. “I just don’t get it. I thought David was just fine. Then, he takes me on a date just to abandon me for his friends and tell me to find my own way home.”

Joel shakes his head, scoffing as he runs his fingers through his beard. He does that when he’s frustrated sometimes, and you wonder if his hair is soft or coarse. “Piece of shit doesn't know how good he got it.”

“You must know something I don’t,” you say mirthlessly, watching the bartender approach from the other end of the long honey-oak block. “I haven't been able to get a second date since I moved in.”

Joel is silent, eyes still firmly fixed to you, until the bartender arrives, a charming middle-aged woman with a particular Texan twang you could recognise from a mile away. “What’ll it be, Joel?” she asks, giving him a sweet dimpled smile. “Hi, honey. This old man botherin’ you?”

“Only in a nice way,” you reply, squeezing his shoulder. 

Joel hides his grin with a swipe of his fingers over his bottom lip. “Coffee for me, Rina. Drivin’ home.”

Rina’s eyes slide to you, and you ask for the same. You don't want to drink alone. She reappears moments later with two small, chipped mugs of dark roast in her hands. Setting them in front of you, she takes your food orders: a BLT for Joel and a veggie burger for yourself. It’s almost ten o’clock now, too late to eat, but your eyes droop sleepily and your stomach growls for a taste of real food. The powdered dough, shockingly, did not suffice. 

“You ever miss Texas?” Joel asks once you're halfway into your respective meals. You notice that he only digs into his sandwich when you aren't eating, and abstains briefly to watch while you take your bites. It's an exchange of energy, a steady vigil by your side, the hypnotic pull of his warm body. You cannot scoot any closer to him, but your leg brushes his where you rest your foot on his barstool. 

“I wish I remembered more of it,” you tell him. “I grew up a big city girl. Even lost my accent a year into being away. My dad would tease me about it all the time. Said I’d been gentrified.” You fondly shake your head. “Miss him like hell.”

“I can still hear it sometimes,” says Joel, tilting his head to the side, “when you get all passionate about somethin’. Like the time I installed your deadbolt and you tried to explain away your Backstreet Boys CD.”

You put your head in your hands. “Oh, God. I thought you'd forgotten.”

“Nuh-uh, baby, you ain't easy to forget. And I like when you get excited. You get this look in your eye.”

“Yeah?” You slide your foot up his ankle and bring the leg of his jeans with it. Up, down, you keep going, letting the relative darkness embolden you, his sweet little pet names and his silent adequacy enabling what is most definitely inappropriate behaviour. “Tell me about this look, Joel.”

He rests his elbow up on the bar and squares his broad shoulders to you. They eclipse all the other patrons behind him. “You've got pretty eyes,” he tells you. “First thing I noticed when I met you all those months ago. Saw how they lit up when you smiled. Heard your happiness when you told me about Texas. It was nice to be the reason you smiled, ‘n’ I just wanted to make it happen again. I couldn't say no to you. Don't know how any man ever could.”

The revelation stuns you in your seat. His expression telegraphs little save for his attentiveness, his posture locked parallel with yours, singularly focused on the way you react to him. 

You try for a joke. “And I was the only applicant.”

It crumbles, sand in your mouth. Something has shifted. Joel isn't the type to shy away from a conversation, but his gaze hasn't once shifted from your face. It feels like flames licking your cheeks, the heat of that look pushing in on both sides, inescapable. You find that you enjoy the way his attention makes you preen; you want him to look at you. 

He thinks you have pretty eyes. 

“You know that ain't the reason why,” he says, whisper-quiet and gruff amid the vague chatter in the bar. 

“Why, Joel?” you ask, spine straightening, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. As you suspected, his eyes flick down your face, lashes obscuring the precise shade of his irises. 

His Adam’s apple dips. “‘Cause I like you,” he says, the feeling of it like the slide of suede down your spine, “and I wanna keep you safe.”

You shrug slightly, giving him a smile. “I feel pretty safe.”

Joel’s hand drops to the bar top and his fingertips brush yours. The touch jolts your sleepy mind awake. “You're too good for every single one of those assholes you bring around. You know that, right?”

“I’m beginning to understand.” 

“You deserve someone who's gonna be good to you. Give you all the attention you need. Make you… happy.”

You swallow thickly, the candle flame pressing in, sucking the oxygen from your lungs. “Thank you, Joel.”

His fingers begin to creep up every ridge of your knuckles, slowly turning over your palm so it faces the ceiling. The rough pad of his thumb traces the long lifeline inside. 

“Repeat it.”

His eyes lift to yours, and for a moment, there’s something in them that ignites an instinct inside you to flee. There's danger in those eyes: the careful, measured restraint of a man who knows more anger than he lets show. A flicker, brief but incandescent, passes through your head, an electrical current. 

He’s the reason you never had a second date. 

It disappears the instant it comes, the Paterian glimpse of an idea in its entirety fleeing for the horizon, and the instinct recedes in favour of the warm, melting sensation his fingers disseminate through your bones. 

“I deserve someone who will be good to me,” you repeat, like a mantra. “I deserve someone who’s going to make me happy, and keep me safe.”

“That's right,” says Joel, brushing his thumb along the veins in your wrist. You feel the shiver, but you're locked to him, your eyes unable to take in any information apart from the way he feels, looks, smells. “You're a good girl, baby.”

Your lashes flutter and a sweeping rush of pressure descends on your core at the way those words sound on his tongue. You picture him directing you to your knees and calling you a good girl while you take his big cock between your lips, imagine the way he would hiss through his teeth, good fuckin’ girl, that’s it, baby girl, while he fucks you from behind, merciless. Hands and tongues and limbs would mould into one another, amalgamate, becoming indistinguishable. 

He would be good to you. You know it. He’s always been good to you. 

“Joel?” 

“Hmm.” Fingers still make idle patterns on your forearm. 

“I think you should take a look at my sink when you get a chance. It might be broken.”

No amount of coy suggestion could make him ignorant to your desire for closeness. You can feel your body screaming for it, grasping at him with buffed claws. Joel smirks, looking down at your foot making a path up and down his ankle. 

“I’ll take a look tomorrow.”

~

It’s two o’clock in the morning when a shuffling outside your bedroom door guides you out of a decent sleep. In total silence, the most minute noises can be deafening. But it sounds, to your sleep-addled brain, like the hasty retreat of footsteps. 

You blink awake, shifting onto your other side to peer above the darkness of your doorway. Through the bleary haze in your eyes, you notice a tiny red light in the upper corner of the room.  

You squint, rubbing your eyes furiously to pry them open wide, but your vision is the static grain of an old television, and your eyes refuse to adjust. Instead, you grumble, pulling your comforter over your head, and go back to sleep. 

You’ll tell Joel tomorrow.

THE LANDLORD

He cannot wait until the morning.

The nighttime, he discovered long ago, is a friend. It’s the gentle descent of darkness, the horizontal fall of the golden-hour sunlight scanning the entirety of the apartment before it at last succumbs to silent, tar-black night. Occasionally, a car will pass below, or the honk of a horn will tear jaggedly through the quiet, but most times, Joel can sink comfortably into the dark and assume his post.

Six months ago, he showed some restraint. 

Of course, the connection was instantaneous—the pretty girl standing in his foyer with a radiant smile on her face, drinking in the chipped paint and ancient railings and furniture imprinted with years of use, arrested all movement of his heart. You wore a white dress and a pair of strappy sandals, not suited whatsoever for walking the city but perfectly tailored to make an impression. You arrived punctually, all smiles and handshakes and Southern politeness despite your insistence that you'd left it all behind. You shone. And when Joel slid his rough, work-worn hand into yours, dipping his gaze to watch the way he dwarfed your fingers, he felt a tremor roll gently from your body to his, thunder over a mountain. He wanted to chase the next lightning strike. 

It began leisurely, like a hobby, something he could go to when life got a little much. He watched you come home, examining the way your shoulders rounded slightly when you were upset and the way you wiggled your fingers in a wave to those passing by when you were happy. He watched, typically from the garden out front, as you pranced about your balcony on cool mornings to the electronic croonings of Britney Spears, curled up in a chair with a blanket over your legs and a coffee mug warming your hands, or watered your thriving plants from where they hung in the direct morning sunlight. Your day-to-day became his day-to-day. 

And then, he was doing more than merely watching. He was following. 

Your favourite coffee place by the apartment building, just a block away. He lingered far behind that first morning, his fingers twitching in your direction before the rest of his body steered him. The neighbourhood wasn't so great back then, prone to muggings and the like. He wanted to keep you safe. That was all.

You ordered something cold, too sweet for his tastes, and sat for a while as you worked. The barista spent the rest of your time there eyeing you up whenever he could. Joel scoffed. He wouldn't know what the fuck to do with you. Just a goddamn kid. 

He followed you to work and back, on those rare days he wasn't occupied maintaining the grounds. You sat in a corner cubicle with a decent amount of sunlight and typed away on your laptop all day. Joel monitored the company’s publications just so he could have a glimpse of the way you wrote; he wasn't interested in makeup, but he bought a subscription to Viva because he wanted to trace his fingers over your name in those small italic letters. MANAGING EDITOR. 

Your writing is clean, efficient, and smooth. It reads like velvet. He keeps a pile of magazines and newsletters tucked in the back of his bookshelf. For the August edition, they printed your interview with a local prizewinning novelist; you beamed in the picture, photographed in your favourite coffee shop, so happy and so generous, sharing your talent with others. 

He was so fucking proud. 

Five months ago, he watched you bring a date home for the first time. 

It blindsided him. He could not prepare, plan, or sabotage. He could not do a thing as you guided the man—a fucking kid with a too-big ego, grinning smugly for his imminent conquest—inside the elevator. Joel could only watch helplessly, wiping his brow from his precarious place on the ladder, as you walked past him with no more than a soft, sweet smile. He never forgot the painful imprint of that smile on his eyelids. It still burns his eyes late at night, when he stays awake inside his office, monitoring his dual screens. He will pinch the bridge of his nose and close his eyes just to replay the memory of that look. 

The kid left the next morning, before you woke. He never contacted you again. You trudged into the lobby that day, a weariness in your eyes that did not match the vibrant colour of your dress. You spoke idly to another woman in the elevator about your broken thermostat, hugging yourself to keep warm. 

It was working perfectly a few hours later, and there was a bouquet of roses waiting for you at the concierge’s desk. Fiddling with the red ribbon, tears welling in your eyes, you asked who the admirer was. Sam shrugged his shoulders, but when you turned to look out the front windows, you saw Joel tending to the red roses in the garden bed. 

It earned him the first taste of your baking. Biting into one of those moist, warm brownies felt like melting a little piece of you down and moulding it into the shape of his mouth. It felt like taking a piece of the girl he’d coveted for weeks and rolling it over his tongue, keeping it. Swallowing it down. There it rested inside his stomach until the next time he did you right. 

He wanted to tell you no. To insist that he would do anything to make you feel good even if you wanted nothing to do with him. To make it clear that he did everything for you, not for some feeble professional relationship between a landlord and his tenant. He breathed you. He needed you. 

So, four months ago, he began to watch you through the cameras.

They’re small, discreet, tucked into holes in the wall that have been spackled over, repainted, re-sanded. He ran the wiring while you were at work, listening to your CDs on loop to get a better sense of the earworms you hummed on your way out the door every morning. One in the living room, one by the entrance, and one in the bedroom. 

He could keep you safe this way. This way, he would know if those men you brought you home were treating you right—fucking you like you deserved. 

You were so goddamn pretty when you came. For months Joel had sat in his office, slicked-up cock in his hand, jerking himself hard and fast to the pictures of you in Viva. For months he’d spilled over his fingers, on his belly, on the glossy pages of the magazines. The heady, cloying scent of his own sweat and cum stuck to his nostrils. It wasn’t enough. He could imagine wrenching open your tight little pussy all he wanted—the slow, heavy drag of his cock between your hot, wet walls and the sweet noises he’d steal from your tongue—but it wasn’t the satisfaction he needed. 

Joel needed you. Your body, your smile, your voice. He needed to wrap you tight around every vein, a tourniquet, squeezing until all feeling was lost.

You would be his, in time. He just needed to make it so.

The first time he watched you pleasure yourself, rain pattered gently against the window panes and thunder echoed in the distance. A couple grids had already lost power, and Joel had a backup generator if the apartment was next, but you did not seem to mind one bit that the storm drew closer. You clicked off the television, retired to the confines of your bed and its soft white linens, and slipped your hand beneath your flimsy shorts. Joel sat upright, his back creaking in protest, his knuckles white around the edge of his desk as he watched, unblinking, the way your fingers gently circled your clit. 

He didn't touch his cock once that night, no matter how deeply his own need tugged at him. He couldn't look away from the camera feed for fear that he may miss the moment you reached your orgasm. 

When it arrived, it was delicious to watch. Your back arched, your lips parted, and your eyes fluttered shut, fingers rapidly rubbing your slick pussy as you seized under your own ministrations and slowly settled, melting into the mattress. He needed to see more. He needed to be there. 

You were a chiaroscuro of savoury, sultry magnetism and the ichor of the morning sunlight. You were kind and thoughtful. You were gentle, patient, attentive. You were one hell of a baker. You were so fucking sexy it made his tongue prickle with the prospective taste, the anticipation of touching your soft skin engulfing any sense. Reason had no place in Joel Miller’s mind when it came to the sweet girl upstairs. 

Three months ago, you had recovered from the evident betrayal inherent in expecting more from your date than a one-night stand. The next man was older, a partner at a law firm, and took you to dinner at a nice restaurant. He asked questions about you and reciprocated your enthusiasm for good cuisine. He was kind and treated you well. But an incendiary rage ignited in Joel at the sight of the bastard’s hand on your lower back. Another man was touching you. Another man was getting close to you, making you smile, whispering in your ear. Another man was attempting to claim what was rightfully his. 

Joel followed your date home that night instead. He lived in a high-rise downtown, the sort of building that had a doorman and a valet. 

Joel followed him down to the underground lot with a lead pipe in hand. 

“‘scuse me.”

He shut his car door and turned around, giving Joel a polite smile. “What can I do for you?”

A calculated sheepish scratch on the back of his head. “Just… ah, shit, I don’t mean to bother, but my engine isn't turnin' over and my phone died. Mind if I used yours?”

He patted his pockets for his cell and gave it enthusiastically. Joel did not take the phone. He used the proximity to pull the man close and bring the pipe down across his head. 

Blood bloomed, pretty and potent and rich as the roses he planted for you. The body made little noise, the skull shattered upon impact, the legs crumpling. It could never have been much of a man, going down so fucking quick. Should've put up a fight. 

The man must not have liked you very much to let himself die. Joel, whose eyelids were tattooed with your radiant smile, would have crawled his way back out of a certain grave. Joel loved you. You belonged to him. This was a necessary consequence. 

The pipe was dented by the time he was finished. Joel sank to his knees once the body fell, bringing it down again and again, the meticulous arc of the rusted metal uniquely stirring. It felt so fucking good, battering the skull to pieces, blood and brain and bone fragments accumulating on the ground and the pipe and his face. It felt good knowing he had kept another man from betraying you, hurting you, fucking you only to leave in a blur. He was being altruistic. He was becoming a good man for you. 

Joel, kneeling in the pool of warm blood until his jeans were soaked crimson, rubbed his hand down his face and smeared the blood across it. Chest heaving, he let the grin stretch his face. 

He had found his calling. 

Two months ago, he slipped inside your apartment while you were asleep.

You had a rough day. Your boss insisted the company could not afford to give you a raise despite skyrocketing share prices and all the fucking work you’d done for them. The rain started just before you left the building, holding back tears, and a car splashed icy, muddy water on you during your walk home. Salt in the wound. You were sniffling as you let yourself into the apartment, your hands trembling with the effort of shouldering your bag and your misery. Joel approached you from behind and lifted the bag onto his shoulder. 

“Hi, Joel.” Sad and soft and still so polite despite it all. 

“Hey.” He opened every door for you on the way to the elevator and rode it up with you for good measure. “Wanna talk about it?”

You just shook your head and sidled up next to him, your cheek resting on his shoulder. He held his breath, overcome with the sensation that if he moved an inch, the spell would break, and the comfort you sought from him would slip between your fingers. Your arm brushed his, your dewy lashes fluttering as you finally let yourself relax. Joel inhaled, and the scent of you cleaved him down the middle: rain and perfume. 

“Would you give me a raise?”

He looked down at you and smiled. “For a batch of those cupcakes, I’d give you whatever you like.”

It was a half-truth. He’d give you whatever you wanted, cupcakes or no. The sound of your laughter dripped into his bloodstream, saline. It cleansed him of the wrongs he'd committed. He was doing what needed to be done. The world had to realise it turned for you, and then all would be right. 

Hours later, when the sun finally dipped below the horizon, shrouded by distant skyscrapers, he sneaked his way inside. His master key made easy work of the lock, but he had to pull the chain lock off with a pair of pliers because his hands could not reach between the gap. He made clinical work of it and stepped inside. 

There was a chair in the corner of your bedroom for days you felt like reading by the window. Joel lowered himself into it and began his vigil. 

It was a science to study the way you slept. He began to learn the patterns of your breathing, the minute movements of your limbs and how they translated to the moods of your dreaming. The amount of times you turned around, groaned, or hummed correlated directly to the sort of day you'd had. He began to map your tells in his head, drawing them out, formulating blueprints of the simple things that made you. 

To Joel, it was like connecting a red string between thumb tacks, like pouring the varnish over a finished painting, sealing a promise, closing an envelope. He enjoyed the satisfactory slotting of each puzzle piece into place, creating your image, finally knowing you.

By then, he’d caught the virus. He’d let himself get close, and now he was infected with it—that insatiable need to be near, to watch, to admire from mere feet away. 

He continued to acquaint himself over the weeks with your sleeping self to supplement the time he could not spend with you while you were awake. On more than one occasion, he got careless, letting himself succumb to sleep in that corner chair, joining you in the dream world. In those dreams, you were wrapped up in his body, warm and soft and tight, and he was taking. He was behind you, on top of you, beneath you, forcing you to look in the mirror as he spread you open on his cock and wrapped his fingers around your throat. In those dreams, your eyes rolled back and your lips moulded to the shape of Joel, yes, oh my God, and he'd whisper back to you—my sweet girl, my good fuckin’ girl, all mine. 

And you were. You were his. 

Tonight, he followed you to the festival. 

He watched you make a beeline for the necklace you wanted only to pout when you saw it had disappeared. He watched your face fall as David’s rejection sank bone-deep. He reeled in his own gnawing rage, pushing deep down that urge to storm right in and rip out the asshole’s throat with his goddamn teeth, and waited until you called him. 

He knew you would. You trusted him. You needed him. You needed a strong, capable man to take care of you the way you deserved. So he waited inside his truck by the phone, happy to at last hear your sweet voice on the other end of the line. 

Thank you, Joel. 

He tucked those words under his ribs, letting them flower and spread. Those words gave him purpose, made him buzz with erratic energy, validated all his actions. He was doing everything right. 

Your dress was so fucking pretty. Jesus, he wanted to slip his hands under the hem, finger the waistband of those pink panties he knew you were wearing, and bunch the fabric up around your hips as he stuffed you full of his dick. Fuck, he would fill you up with his cum and tuck your panties back over your abused pussy, keeping all of him safe inside. You’d be so happy. You’d get drunk off his cock, begging for it, crying for it. He’d give you everything. 

You do feel safe with him. You said it yourself. 

Now, leaning against the doorway in your bedroom, Joel turns the heart-shaped pendant over and over in his palm, rubbing his thumb over the smooth gold surface. It’s cool and quaint and will kiss your skin beautifully. But he needs to wait for the right time. He needs to make sure you’re ready. 

The sense memory of your fingers on his skin, gracious and gentle, the way you always are, is pushing at the edges of his control. 

There's no one like you. He’s never been more certain of anything. 

You're so goddamn sweet in those tiny silk pyjamas, your body curled up on the bed and your leg slung over a large pillow. You may feel cold and lonely at night, but that's only for now. He won't let you feel alone much longer; his body calls to you, singing your name. He has only so much restraint, and he's been waiting for six months. 

Your lips are slightly parted, your face smooth and serene under the spell of sleep. You're the reason he fixes what's broken. The world needs to be better for you. It needs to be safe and bright and perfect. 

He planted tulips today. You’ll appreciate them, he thinks. He wants you to wake up to vibrant colours every morning and go to sleep knowing that he thinks about you. 

You shift slightly in your sleep, a soft moan leaving your mouth as you hug the pillow closer. Joel straightens in the doorway, wondering if your mind can sense him nearby. He doesn't know what he would do with himself if you were dreaming about him. His eyes move from your pretty face down your chest, barely concealed by the tiny top you're wearing, to find the apex of your thighs, temptingly spread on the mattress. 

He won't. He can't. You’ll never trust him if he loses himself to desire. Joel grits his teeth, his cock achingly hard in his jeans, and unbuckles his belt as silently as he can. He pulls out his dick and squeezes himself at the base, staving off what he knows will be a too-fast orgasm. You move again, your body stretching out on the bed. Joel spits into his palm and begins to stroke his cock. 

He can see a sliver of your waist where your shirt rides up, half of your ass where your leg is slung over the pillow, and your tits smushed together just over the hem of that scrap of a top. You're all of his fucking fantasies rolled into one. Joel breathes hard through his nostrils, his fist tight around the tip of his cock. 

He wants to shuck down those little shorts and put his face in your pretty pussy. He wants to grab your hips and guide his cock inside you. He wants to slide into your addictive cunt until you forget your name. Until you forget every name but his. Your soul will be stained with him. His has never forgotten your shape.

God, your tight pussy would feel so fucking good around his cock. He jerks himself roughly, bracing his hand against the doorframe when a little whimper leaves your mouth. Fuck, he mouths, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw begins to ache. He fucks his own fist, sloppy and unrefined, eyes fixed to your waiting pussy between creamy-soft thighs. His cock dwarfs your slit, eager to spread you open—he’ll fix so nicely once he gets you ready. 

Joel feels his stomach tighten, his balls pulling up, his jaw taut as he brings himself to a high over your body the way he has so many times. He switches so he can jerk off into the hand around which his gift to you is coiled, spilling his cum all over his fingers and the necklace as he bites into the heel of his palm. His spine decompresses and his cock slowly softens in his hand, the tension briefly relieved. His fist gradually loosens around the cum-slick necklace; the heart has imprinted its shape into his palm. 

You stir, turning over in your bed, and Joel hastily departs, tucking his cock back into his jeans. He has enjoyed this brief interlude, but he has work to do. 

Besides, he’ll see you in a few hours. He knows damn well the sink works just fine, but he’ll take any excuse to see you again. And it seems you’ll do the same. 

~

Joel keeps him in a spare apartment in the building, one whose walls have been padded for soundproofing. 

Joel’s sleeves are rolled to his elbows and he's occupying the chair across from David, who's taking his sweet fuckin’ time waking up. Joel’s been pacing for a half-hour, rubbing his fingers over his bottom lip, contemplative, but the bastard won't move. 

So Joel takes a seat, grabs a fistful of the kid’s hair, and yanks it forcefully so he’s staring him right in the face. 

One eye is already blackened—Joel got a little carried away. The sedative worked perfectly, but David has a punchable face. It took all he had not to keep going. 

“Mornin’, sunshine,” says Joel as the kid slowly blinks awake, bleary and unfocused. “Eyes on me, now. Don't want you slippin’ away again.”

David only stares for a moment, gears grinding gently to life in his brain Once that animal instinct kicks in, the kid starts writhing against his restraints, bucking hard in Joel’s unrelenting grip. It's useless, of course. He’s tied by the wrists and ankles. Helpless. 

Good. 

“What—why the fuck… let me fucking go, man, please,” groans the kid. 

“You made a mistake, David,” says Joel. “Think I’m gonna forget about that?”

David whimpers, flexing his hands subconsciously as pain undoubtedly prickles his scalp. Joel hasn't let go of his hair. “Please just let me go, man. I swear I didn't do anything. If you want money, I’ve got money.”

Joel smirks, a scoff slipping out. This is rich. The delectable flame licks up his throat again, indistinguishable from the pleasure of a good meal, a good fuck. It's craving. It’s darkness. He sinks deeper. 

“You think it's manly to leave your date for your friends and leave her to find a way home herself? You think it's funny to treat her like a little toy and then leave her when you're done?” Joel sneers. “You didn't even call her back, David.”

He whines out another please, his ankles ineffectually kicking out. “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Just let me go. Fuck, it hurts.”

“You don't know,” says Joel, repeating it, slow and savoury, rolling it around in his mouth. “You wanna know the most insulting part, David? You don't even care. You made her upset, and you didn't get on your goddamn knees to beg her forgiveness. You didn't do everything in your fuckin’ power to get her back.” Joel brings the knife from his pocket and idly pushes the tip into David’s cheek. “You think she ain't worth that, David? Tell me the truth, now.”

David shrieks, hysterical, the terror and pain so fucking delicious that Joel gulps it down and yet still wants. 

“Are you fucking kidding me? No bitch is fucking worth it. She was cute, but that's it, I swear. I didn't know she had a boyfriend. I wouldn't have—”

The knife digs, gouges, splitting skin and prodding muscle. Joel can feel the edge of the blade slot between the kid’s teeth. He howls, screaming for help to nobody that can help, not quite gone enough yet to realise his utter hopelessness. Joel will have to rectify that.

“Oh, I ain't her boyfriend yet,” Joel says calmly. “But I am hers, way she's mine. And you hurt what's mine. I can’t forget that.”

The knife retreats to admire its handiwork. The cheek is split, the edges jagged, spitting blood. The kid’s tears slip down his face and dip into the wound, salty enough to hurt. He screams and he cries and it’s beginning to get on Joel’s nerves.

“Please stop,” he cries, watching his assailant rear back and grip the knife tight, like an ice pick. “Please… fuck, please—!”

He’s getting real sick of that word. Please. A mere please can’t excuse the look he put on your face last night. A please will not absolve him of the cardinal sin. 

No one—no one—makes you frown. 

Joel sinks the knife into David’s knee, using both hands to drive it to the hilt. The kid’s face is ashen, white and grey as clouds rolling in, and his frail screams begin to peter out; he’s losing consciousness. Joel won’t have that—not until he’s finished.

“Stop whinin’, David. A real man falls in front of his woman and makes things right. A real man fixes what's broken. And a real man”—he twists the knife, gorging, glutting on the feeling of making amends on your behalf—“does everything in his power to show her he loves her.” 

“Please…” The final, feeble attempt of a doomed man to return from the cliff’s edge. 

Joel stands, adjusting his grip on the kid’s hair, and brings his knife just beneath his chin. When he drives it upward, he can see the shimmer of the blade through David’s slack, open mouth. 

“I told you to stop whinin’.” 

~

He’s in your bedroom again. 

He felt the need calling to him, vibrating with a particular intensity he could not ignore. He rarely comes to see you twice in one night, but now that he's here, he knows it was the only way to settle his nerves. 

You're asleep, lips parted against your pillow and a piece of hair fluttering in front of your face with every exhale. Joel approaches your bedside and tucks it safely behind your ear. You don't wake, but you hum sleepily, hugging your pillow closer. Joel smiles, satisfaction sinking deep and assured into his core. He's done right by you. You’ll go happily to him. Moth to a gemlike flame. 

He wanders around the edge of the bed, gaze lazily indulging in your body as he goes. His cock twitches again with a need he cannot yet meet, the desire to move your panties aside and fill you with him. He does not. He kneels at your bedside, closest to where your legs have scissored apart beneath your sheets. The temptingly sweet call of that warm place between your thighs has Joel shifting your comforter aside and ghosting his fingers across the soft skin of your calf. 

Your breathing deepens slightly, like you're sucking in a long mouthful of air, and then you settle. It's the only indication you give that you can feel his presence. And then it’s gone, and he’s hooking his fingers in the waistband of your pretty panties and bestowing upon himself what he's only seen through screens for months. 

You're spread open and glistening, an indication of some preceding dream or fantasy playing out in that keen, busy mind. Your body is wholly pliant, so soft and glowing in the faint silvery light streaming in from the window, and it would be so easy to—

No. He will not taste you. If he does, he won’t stop. You need to trust him. There is blood on his hands that hasn’t yet washed clean, and he will not imprint those rust-red fingerprints on your body. You’re his world—what kind of man willingly imparts such pain onto a world he loves?

Some infinitesimal fractal lodged in Joel’s head obliged him to return to you tonight, to cleanse himself of the events that transpired under the illicit cover of night. The very sight of you reminds him what he’s doing this for. He crushes his nose into the wet spot that darkens your panties and inhales deeply, acquiring some sense of what you will taste like. The smell makes his head go fuzzy, intoxicated, tang and sweetness and impending gratification. In your sleep, you sigh, melting against the mattress.

Joel brings your panties back up over your pussy and thinks, Tomorrow. 

THE TENANT

You're miserable when Joel knocks on your door the next day. 

“He hasn't called me,” you tell him, letting yourself stew, sulking from the feeling of yet another man deciding you weren’t worth a follow-up phone call. “Am I repulsive? Am I a total freak? Is it something in my perfume?”

Joel looks down at you, lips parted as if on the precipice of a response, sweeping his gaze up and down your body. You’re wearing a simple sweater and skirt, but fuck, he can make you feel naked. His gaze penetrates deeper than flesh. It’s only then you realise he’s holding coffee. 

Two cups of coffee. 

“Oh, Joel,” you sigh, licking your bottom lip. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” he says with a crooked smile, his voice a bit raspy, as if caught off-guard. He hands you your favourite drink—caramel macchiato, double espresso—from your favourite place down the block, and you could kiss him with how good it feels to hold the cool, condensation-slick cup in your hands. Your entire body deflates with the first sip. 

“You’re my hero,” you tell him. “I mean it.”

Joel shakes his head fondly. “You got a funny sense of heroics.”

“They taste exactly like this,” you say playfully, tracing the rim of the plastic cup. “Thank you, Joel.”

He swipes his thumb across your chin. “It’s only coffee, baby.”

Since last night, something is inexplicably different. A new, once-forbidden boundary has been crossed. It may be technically inappropriate for your landlord to bring you coffee, touch you so intimately, call you baby. But it makes you feel like warm melting honey, and who is to say a feeling like that is wrong?

He’s wearing a blue T-shirt today. His hair is tousled like he slept on it, and your fingers tingle with the anticipatory sensation of how it would feel to take fistfuls of his locks in your hands. He’s stunning. And you catch yourself staring too late, tearing your gaze away the way one retracts their hand after burning it on the stovetop. Your heart skittering, you direct Joel to the sink and plan some excuse in your head for why it has miraculously fixed itself overnight. 

But he doesn’t even spare a glance toward any of your appliances. He’s only looking at you. 

“I got somethin’ else,” he says, almost shy, reaching into his pocket for a tiny box. 

He grimaces when your eyes, wide and obviously panicked, meet his. “Jesus, I didn’t really think about how this looks. I’m not… proposin’, I swear.”

You both release a nervous laugh, but you cannot deny that your nerves are still fluttering at the sight of that simple suede box in his big hands.

He opens the lid and you gasp. It’s your necklace—the very same heart-shaped pendant you had been eyeing up at the festival. It’s shiny and polished and precisely, undeniably, the same one. “Oh my God,” you whisper, gently sliding your finger over the cool golden pendant. “It’s beautiful. Joel, how did you…”

“Turn around,” he says softly, the gentle direction guiding you better than any hand could. You obey, and Joel steps forward until his hard chest is flush to your back. He’s warm and sure and smells so good—cologne and coffee and mint and something potent, like iron—and all your questions fizzle to sparks in the air. You can no longer grasp for them. You reach out and you only find him.

His touch is careful. The heart-shaped pendant settles against your breastbone and shimmers in the afternoon light. Your chest briefly shimmers with the thought that you were made to wear this necklace. His large, rough hands ghost across the back of your neck as he secures the clasp, and you shiver. A single knuckle trails slowly down your spine, bumping every vertebrae on the way. 

“It ain't your perfume.” His deep, grumbling voice is equivalent to the scratch of his beard against your temple as his jaw moves with each word. “And you're nothin’ close to repulsive. Look in that mirror and tell me what you see.”

There is a mirror, a full-length one by the entrance to your apartment, and it's surreal to watch your own body turn to face it, to watch yourself defer entirely to the man behind you. It feels nice to just let him steer you every which way. 

“I see you,” you tell him, your hand lifting to the pendant on your throat. “And this.”

Joel clicks his tongue, his nose sliding up your temple. “What else do you see?”

You watch your lashes flutter, your head listing slightly to the side. “I see myself.”

“Hmm.” It’s a sound of approval, his palm now sliding around your waist and his arm banding across your body. He presses his hand to your hip bone and pulls you back against him. “Such a beautiful girl in that mirror. Ain't that right?”

“Joel, I…” You can feel his swelling erection prodding your ass and your head feels hazy with a heady, lustful desire you can no longer ignore or dismiss. “I don't think we should be…”

“No?” His mouth curves against your temple and you shiver at the coarse scratch of his moustache on your skin. It feels deliberate, premeditated. “I won’t tell a soul,” he murmurs, his thumb stroking your hip right where the hem of your sweater begins to inch upward. You can see a strip of your own bare stomach in the mirror. He’s making your eyes droop, your lashes flutter, your body light up from one nerve ending to the next, a closed circuit.

Oh, God. His touch is measured, gentle yet barely restrained. It is dipping a finger into the water just as it nears its boiling point. Months of staring and dreaming and retreating to your bed to touch yourself to thoughts of someone you cannot touch have led you here: his necklace, his gift to you, sitting prettily on your throat, his capable hands moulding you slowly to the shape of him. He’s touching you. 

“You like me?” His voice rubs hard on your ears, sanding you down, smoothing the rough edges. He lets you linger on the precipice, a firm grip on your hand, letting you make the choice: to let go, or to reel yourself in. 

“I like you,” you whisper, snapping the tether and plummeting to the warm, wet earth below.

You watch Joel’s eyes close in the mirror, something like a prayer falling from his lips. It does not take the shape of words—it is gruff and yet soft, hardly loud enough to discern over the ringing in your ears—but it’s so reverent that you can picture yourself falling to your knees at the sound of it. 

His hand skims up your waist until he finds your throat, gently pinching your jaw so he can direct the turn of your head. You go easily, tilting your gaze back to rest your temple on his shoulder, as his other hand slides up from your hip to your ribs, grazing the underside of your breast. “You like me enough to touch you like this?” 

You gasp, finding an anchor in the deep brown—nearly black, now—of his eyes. They’re warm  but they’re dangerous; once you look, the cage door slides shut, and you’re trapped. 

This must be one of your many dreams.

“Yes, Joel.”

“Mmm.” He smirks, teasing his tongue across his plush bottom lip. You watch the movement and feel yourself tightening, want want want a chorus in your ears. “You wanna kiss me, baby girl?”

Silently, you nod, your fingers gently sliding through his silky locks while your other hand seeks the strong balancing force of his shoulder. His smile sobers to a deep, stunning severity, and you cannot think to let it frighten you when you’re already slanting your mouth over his. 

It starts slowly. His mouth is soft, his hands deftly returning the fervour with which you hold him, cupping the back of your neck with his other hand warming your ribs. A small gasp escapes you, and a rumble of satisfaction passes from his chest through yours, and it flips an ineffable switch inside him. 

Joel turns you in his arms, his chest pressed to yours, his hand shooting out to brace against the wall as he walks you back toward it. Sufficiently cornered, you let your body melt into him, his palm now warming your lower back, his tongue feverishly seeking the seam of your lips. You let him pry you open, tasting the coffee and mint on his breath and inhaling the rich scent of him, sticking it with greedy hands to the walls of your brain. You’ll never tire of him, of this. 

He kisses you like a glutton seeking more fulfilment, like an aesthete seeking that exhilarating, fleeting moment in time, desperate and unwavering and famished. Tongues slide together, hands grope and wander, fabrics shift. You can feel your sweater lifting at the same time your fingers finally find the hem of his T-shirt, but he beats you to the chase. You’re dizzy by the time he breaks away to remove your shirt, but you dutifully lift your arms to help him. 

You seek his mouth again to resume the kiss, but Joel is decidedly feeling pious. He kisses his way down your throat, the necklace dangling from it, your sternum, your belly, sinking to his knees as he goes along. His hands are firm on your hips, squeezing, keeping you in place, while his mouth draws a map of you, eliciting the honeyed sensation of warm water dripping down your body.

“Oh, God,” you whisper, your head knocking back against the wall. It's so much. You've never been the object of attention quite like this, the marble statue at which the devout kneel, obsessive in their worship. You've never had a man fall to his knees to put his mouth all over you. 

Has he wanted you as long as you’ve pined for him? 

Joel grunts, his lips dragging open-mouthed kisses from one hip to another, his fingers hooking in the waistband of your skirt and yanking it down. You yelp, grasping his shoulders. 

Joel only growls into your skin, his hands dropping to your ass and kneading you while he continues down past your hips. “So fuckin’ beautiful,” he grumbles. “So goddamn pretty. Don’t know how I waited this fuckin’ long. Jesus, baby girl, you're perfect. Goddamn perfect.”

His ramblings are poison. Every word infects, squeezing out your healthy cells, replacing them with the delicious scrape of fire against the ceiling of a room. The scratch of his beard. The sweet nurturing sound of his voice. The cared-for sensation of being kissed and touched and spoken to like you're someone worth a second date. Like you're worth the price of all the world and a couple stars, too. 

And so the words slip out, shy and whisper-quiet and your cheeks burning hot enough to blister. 

“Please, Daddy…”

Joel’s hands tighten on your body, a fractional movement that kicks up the frantic beating of your heart. He tilts his head back to gaze up into your eyes and you feel more naked with that single stare than ever before. 

“That what you need, sweet thing?” he says, pressing his lips to your inner thigh. “You need Daddy to make you feel good?”

“Mhm,” you whine, the pitch of your voice pathetic and needy. You watch him crush his nose into your inner thigh, nipping at your sensitive flesh, and his name leaves your mouth in a sob. 

“‘m gonna need words,” he commands, biting you again in reproach. “Talk to me, baby girl. Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to make me come,” you plead, grasping his soft greying hair in your fingers. “Please.”

“You gonna call me what you wanna call me?” he prompts, smacking your thigh. “C’mon, baby, lemme hear it.”

“Daddy!” you cry out, your hand tightening in his locks. “Fuck, Daddy, please make me come.”

Joel growls, bringing your soaked panties down your legs. Your knees nearly knock together, but he’s shouldering his way between them, bringing one up onto his wide shoulder. You're spread open like this, bared plainly for your landlord to feast upon at his will. The sight of his lips parted, waiting and ready to take your pussy into his mouth, has you trembling. 

He gives a slow, experimental lick, sliding the flat of his tongue through your wet slit. You shudder, your head lolling against the wall. One teasing drag of his tongue and you’re butter, humming and whimpering for more, Daddy, please as he takes his fucking time tasting what you have to offer. 

“Goddamn sweet,” he grumbles, his blunt nails digging crescent moons into the flesh of your ass, pulling your body flush to him. “Waited so fuckin’ long for this.” You watch the fire ignite from red- to blue-hot in Joel’s eyes, his gaze shuttering as he loses himself, devoted entirely to the process of unravelling you. 

The next time he dips his tongue between your folds, he does it deliberately, calculated, as if he has already memorised your shape and now seeks to pry you open. He parts your lips to make way for his mouth, hot and soft against your clit. Softly, you cry out, watching as he presses a featherlight kiss to your pearl. You try to grind against his face, needing more, but a resounding slap to your ass stops you dead. 

“No takin’ what I don’t give,” he says. “You understand me?”

You pout, but you nod your head anyway. 

He decides it isn’t good enough and abruptly takes your clit between his teeth in a scolding bite. 

“Repeat. It.”

“I’ll only take what you give,” you tell him. “I’ll be good.”

Apparently satisfied, he hums, diving back in and finally—finally—sucks on your needy clit. “Oh!” He’s eager, sure, but he’s practised. He’s meticulous in the way he applies pressure to your clit, lapping at you greedily and pulling back to draw your pleasure into measured tidal waves. You crest only to recede from shore, and then his lips suction to you again, his hand snaking around to your front and pressing down on your lower belly. 

“Fuck!” you squeak, your stomach tightening as the dizzying pleasure overcomes you. “Joel, I’m gonna—!”

The orgasm pulls you under, drowning you with a forceful hand, your lungs sucking in mouthfuls of air. You seize, your heel digging into Joel’s muscled back, your fingers fisting his hair, your cunt clenching desperately around nothing, begging to be filled. Joel keeps his mouth on you all the while, licking you through your high, and you think it’s a benevolent act until your orgasm gently fades and he continues to make out with your pussy as if it never happened.

“Ah! Joel, please—” It’s so much. Too much; your pussy contracts relentlessly at the endless attention from his tongue, happily licking your clit and relishing the faint throbbing underneath it. It’s like he’s starved. His eyes are closed, his beard glistening with your wetness, his fingers dimpling your flesh as he pulls you right along to another high. 

Two thick fingers gather up the juices you’ve leaked onto your thighs and push them back into your hole, insistent in their desire to enter. You gasp, your heart in your fucking throat: “That’s only two?”

He chuckles, but the vibration only makes you jump, letting his fingers sink inside your cunt to the knuckle. “Oh, fuck, fuck, Daddy, that feels so good, please make me come again, I need it, please—!”

Joel groans into your pussy, curling his fingers toward him so they press against a spongy spot inside you that sends your head spinning, your mind folding in on itself. All you know is the next orgasm, the best way to get him to give it to you, the fastest way to reach that indelible place once more, just once more—

Joel’s hand applies more pressure to your belly, and you scream, clawing desperately at his shoulder as you give yourself over to something much, much stronger than an orgasm. It’s foreign, the creeping sensation of an invader taking up residence in your body. You cannot see, cannot hear. It assumes control, tearing a cry from your mouth and locking all your limbs tight and splashing your wetness all over Joel’s chin, beard, shirt. 

You think he only stops because you begin to list; he catches you around the hips and presses a soft kiss to your used little clit. “Mmmmm,” is vaguely how you manage to thank him, your eyes peeling slowly open. 

“I know, baby girl,” he says, stroking your hip bone with his thumb. He litters kisses all over your thighs, coaxing you through the minute twitching of your muscles as they relax. “You did so good for me, pretty girl. So fuckin’ beautiful. My sweet girl.”

You shiver in his grasp, watching as he makes his way back up your body. He swipes his forearm across his wet beard and you moan a little at the sight. “Nobody’s ever…”

Joel crowds you, his hand cupping the back of your neck so he can guide your gaze up to him. “That's what you don't understand, sweetheart,” he says. “You can try to find another man to make you happy, but he won't be me. I’m the only one who’s gonna treat you right.”

“Joel…” Sense begins to push at the edges of your brain, but you only slump further into his touch, letting him secure your hair behind your ear. “This isn't right,” you whisper. “I pay you every month to live here. People will know. People will talk about me.”

“People have suffered worse for a hell of a lot less.” 

You have no time to decode his words because he grabs your hand and presses your palm over his chest. Beneath the shirt and the warm, tanned skin, you feel a strong, rapid heartbeat, hammering away at his ribs. He maintains eye contact, the gaze incisive, peering right into the cluster of wiring inside your head that calls his name. “You feel my heart and you tell me this ain't real. You think this ain't love? You think it's obsession? Infatuation? Think I can’t see you lookin’ at me the way you do?”

His words pin you to the ground. They’re possessive, covetous—jealous. He wants you, and he knows you want him. All these months, he’s wanted you the way you’ve craved him; all the comforts and the roses and the baked goods in lieu of payment for substantial repair jobs; the times he’s let slide some late payments because I know it’s tough sometimes, the inexplicable kindnesses in your everyday. 

Joel Miller dedicated himself to you the second you arrived to see the prospective apartment. 

“You’re mine,” he says, his thumb stroking your jaw. “And I wanna hear you say it.”

People will call you a whore. They’ll think you’re pimping yourself out for cheaper rent. They’ll send you filthy looks. But the man in front of you makes you feel wanted. Desired. You’re better than all the dates that failed. You’re better than a shitty boss who won’t give you the raise you deserve. Joel is good to you. He’s always been.

“I’m yours, Joel Miller,” you say, resting your forehead against his. “Now please take me to bed.”

He grins, taking your hand and leading you to your bedroom. You get grabby straight away, fingering the hem of his shirt with a pleading look in your eye. You can still see the evidence of your orgasm staining the collar. “You can take it off, baby,” he says with that cocky smile, letting you lift the shirt over his head. In the sunlight, the grey in his hair shimmers, and his chest is bared to you. You lick your lips, placing your hands on his broad shoulders just to feel the way your palms contour to his dips and curves. 

You lean in and put your lips to his neck, tracing the shape of him down to the hollow of his throat, He tastes faintly of fresh air and sweat, and he smells like you. Your hands admire the warmth and strength underneath them, his body so tangible when only yesterday it was a distant dream. He lets you indulge, though his hands flex at his sides, and your fingers fumble with his belt buckle. 

“Help,” you mumble against his chest, bumping your nose into him. Joel chuckles, relieving you of your burden and shucking off his belt. It clinks along the floor somewhere nearby, and you can unbutton his jeans to bring them down, freeing his hard, throbbing cock. 

Your mouth waters at the sight. He’s thick and slightly curved, the tip leaking precum onto his belly, his balls heavy with the need to come. During those long nights after long days of work, you would imagine, for hours on end, what lingered just below his belt; the little trail of hair leading down his soft belly to your destination; the way his wide shoulders would bracket your body, shelter you from all the tough shit you could possibly suffer. You would picture all the ways you could thank him. You bite your bottom lip and ready yourself to sink to your knees, but Joel is having none of it. He attacks your mouth, kissing you deeply, his hands sliding up your back as if he's trying to count every vertebrae. He doesn't relent even when your knees hit the edge of the bed and you collapse backward onto the mattress. He only crawls over you and pins you beneath his hard body. 

“So pretty like this,” he says, lowering his head and nudging your chin upward with his nose to give himself better access to your throat. He sucks and nips at you all the way down, pausing at your heaving breasts. His fingers gently toy with one stiff nipple while his mouth occupies itself with the other, teasing it with his tongue and his teeth. You moan softly, content to watch him explore your body, squeezing your tits before he migrates downward. 

“Daddy,” you whisper, stroking his hair away from his face, your head falling back onto the pillows as his fingers part your folds once more. “Fuck, please, touch me. I need you inside me.”

Joel settles in between your open legs and takes his cock in his hand. You mewl for him, determined in the face of his big cock to fit it nicely inside you. “Mmm, you ready for me, baby girl? You need Daddy to fill you up, use you like a pretty little toy?” 

You’re nodding frantically, the words igniting you. “Please take me.”

Joel slaps the head of his cock against your clit, once, twice, watching your thighs twitch. Spreading the slick wetness from your pussy onto the tip, he finally guides himself to your hole and notches just inside. 

“Jesus,” he utters. “Jesus, you're a fuckin’ dream.”

“It’s real,” you pant, “I’m real.”

He begins to disappear inside you, wrenching you open, your poor pussy disused from going so long without decent sex. You feel the pinching pain give way to a delicious pressure in your core as he eases into you, taking it slow despite his taut jaw, his gritted teeth. Your cunt forms a tight seal around his length, your arousal lubricating his entry, and you feel lightheaded. He’s so fucking big—and he’s still going.

“Oh, my… Joel—”

“I know, baby.” He brings his thumb to your clit and helps you relax with every circular swipe. “I know what y’like.”

You keen up against him, your thighs squeezing his hips. He's only halfway inside you and it feels like being filled up to your throat, choking on the air you breathe. Your head falls back, your hands flying up to your tits and squeezing. 

“Daddy…”

One of Joel’s hands overlaps yours where it grasps your breast. “That’s my girl. You can take me. Always knew you could.” Still, he's panting with the exertion of holding back. 

“You thought about me?” you say coyly, trying to pull him deeper inside you. He obliges, if only because you're being so petulant, and his hips finally knock into yours. You release a bone-deep sigh of relief.

“All I do”—his hips thrust shallowly, baring his teeth as he paws at your thighs—“is think about you.”

You cry out at the angle, the depth he reaches, how thick and heavy he sits inside you. Your pussy sucks him in, begging for more, and Joel obliges by hooking his hand in the back of your knee and pushing your thigh toward your chest. 

Your vision whites, a ragged cry leaving your mouth. “Oh, fuck! Yes, yes, yes, that feels so good—”

“‘s right, baby girl. I’m the only one’s gonna fuck you this good,” Joel grits out, dragging his thick cock along your walls, spreading you open, forcing himself to fit. The head of his cock kisses your cervix with every thrust, measured in their intensity, just enough to drive you up the goddamn wall but never enough to sting. “I’m the only one you want.”

Your mouth is open and his pounding urges a steady rush of ah, ah, ahs up your throat. Joel leans over you and tilts your head back with a hand in your hair to slant his mouth over yours. He lets you pour your cries into his mouth and he swallows them down, fucking you so hard that your hips begin to ache. 

He smatters your jaw with sloppy kisses. You lift your hand to his face and trace the patches in his beard, your brows drawn together in your perpetual haze. 

“I dreamed about you,” you whisper, taking his earlobe between your teeth to make him growl against your skin. “Touched myself thinking about you.”

“I know,” he says, his hips grinding hard against yours, rubbing up against your used clit. He answers your gasp by nibbling your throat, and you keep him fixed to you with your hand at the back of his neck. His soft hair is matted with sweat and you want to bury yourself here, etch the shape of him into your stone. He's strong, capable, so present in this moment that your heart begins to throb to the beat of his. 

Joel surges upward and takes you with him, forcing you to sit on his lap. At this angle, his cock reaches deeper, somehow, your mouth falling open and your forehead dropping to his shoulder. His palm is a soothing presence on your sweaty back as he tells you things that make you flush from your chest to your ears. 

“Thought about takin’ you on the goddamn bar last night,” he grunts, guiding your ass in a rolling rhythm along his lap, his cock gliding slowly along your walls. You moan, your thighs shaking around his hips. “Thought about spreadin’ you over my desk and fuckin’ you dumb with my cock.” 

You sob into the crook of his neck, grinding down on his cock, the pressure of his navel against your clit sparking hot in your lower belly. “What else?” you ask, nipping at the strong muscle where his shoulder meets his neck. Your tits are pressed up against his chest, his warmth engulfing you, your body slowly lowering over him as he guides you the way he likes. 

His palm coasts down your spine until he finds your puckered asshole. His name is jagged and rubbed raw on your tongue. 

“Shhh, baby girl.” The pad of his finger teases your hole with just enough pressure to ooze electric ecstasy down your spine. “Feels good, doesn't it?”

Fuck, his voice is so gentle, so knowing. You curl your fingers in his hair, your nose tickled by the locks that curl over his ears. 

“Mmmhmm,” you mewl, lifting your hips as best you can despite the growing aches, telegraphing your desire to be touched by him—played with. 

“Thaaat’s it,” he coos, his nose nudging your cheek as he turns his head. His finger continues to prod your asshole while his hips buck up into you. “Openin’ up for me like a good girl. You’d let me take you wherever I want, hmm? Whenever I want?”

“Yes, Daddy, yes,” you moan, your mouth perpetually open against the skin of his neck. You can’t think. You can't breathe. You can only drink down mouthfuls of him and let your body succumb to the delicious weight of his cock inside you. “Yes, I’ll be your little slut. I’ll be whatever you want. You make me feel so good.”

He seems pleased with your babbling, grinning into your cheek as he keeps you spread wide and pounds up into you. His finger continues to tease your tight hole until he feels your body contract around him and apparently decides that he isn't quite through with you. 

“Turn around. Hands and knees.”

Who are you to refuse?

You lament the brief loss of his cock as you shift into your knees, resting your forearms on the bed and teasing him with a wiggle of your ass. Joel hums appreciatively, sidling up behind you and grinding his hard cock between your asscheeks. You jolt forward, but he catches you around the waist and warms his palm at your ribs. 

Something warm and wet lands in a glob on your asshole, and you realise he fucking spit on you. Your head spins, dizzied by your own arousal, and soon, the warm, wet head of his cock slips back inside your hole, and you relish the refuge of being taken by him all over again. 

“You wanna know what else?” He begins to fuck you hard and fast and almost angry in its intensity. His thrusts knock against your ribcage and rattle the bars, your heart floundering for a way back to the surface. “I thought about knockin’ on your door every goddamn day and putting my dick in this pretty fuckin’ pussy. Thought about your tight fuckin’ body every single time I saw you walk by and a long time after. I thought about the noises you'd make and Jesus, I was right. So goddamn sweet.”

You’re drooling onto the pillow, your eyes rolling back in your head, your fingers uselessly clasping handfuls of your white sheets. Joel is an animal, mounting you from behind and taking you hard, deep, the slick squelching noises of your coupling so crude and indecent that they burn through your ears like a lit fuse. It's wrong. You never should have kissed him. But wrong shouldn't feel like this. 

Wrong shouldn’t taste like mint and coffee, shouldn't smell like roses and sawdust. Wrong shouldn’t feel like his cock sitting snug inside your pussy, some obscene jigsaw, seeping saplike pleasure down your spine. 

This must be right. 

His hands are rapacious, one wrapping around your hair and the other guiding the bend of your back, arching you perfectly to fit him while he takes you the way he likes. “Such a tease in those pretty dresses. Such a prim and proper girl ‘til she gets the right dick. You’ll get on your knees for this dick, baby girl, won't you? You’ll beg for it like a goddamn whore.”

“I will!” you moan, your cheek pressed into the mattress. The force of his thrusts have you travelling up the bed in minuscule movements, his thighs slapping hard against yours. “Fuck, I will, Daddy! Please, Daddy, I wanna make you feel good, I’ll do anything.”

“You're doin’ such a good job already, sweet thing,” he says, using his leverage on your hair and your waist to yank you upright, his chest pressed to your back, your ass now firmly sat in his lap. You moan long and low at the new angle, your back arching and your toes curling. 

Joel groans against your jaw, his mouth travelling along the line of it in sloppy kisses that indicate he's about as close as you are. “Yeah, baby. Fuckin’ drunk on my cock. Fucked you good and dumb, hmm? Fucked you so good you can't even think.”

You can only manage a low whine, the sound of it a fleeting puff of air from your lips, the oxygen in your lungs depleting and replaced with the smell of him. You try to bounce on his dick—you really do try—but you cannot remember how to work the muscles in your thighs. You cannot remember what you had for breakfast nor the colour of the skirt you wore today. You can only vaguely understand the shape of the man behind you, the name that belongs to him, the way you curve and fit into him. You’re falling, the technicolour world outside your window fading to the sound of soft, beating wings—that may be your heart, fluttering in your ears—as you seize, yielding to the pleasure. 

You will not recall the sounds you make when you come, grasping blindly at his thighs to keep yourself from falling over, your ears ringing. You feel his moustache scratching your jaw and his cock working you through your high, slowing his thrusts to help you land softly on solid ground. You may cry out his name, and you may call him something else entirely. But it's vibrant. It's radiant as the sunlight now dipping behind the distant buildings. It tastes just as sweet as the golden hour. 

Joel does not stop fucking you when your body goes limp in his arms. No, he resumes his brutal pace, using you like a fucking toy to get himself off. You happily take it, your head lolling back against his shoulder and your eyes drooping. 

“Nnh, fuck… I’m gonna… Jesus—oh, fuck—”

His hips press flush to your ass and he nuzzles his face into your throat, depositing kisses and love bites all over your skin as he pumps shallowly into you, his hot cum filling you up and leaking generously around the seal of your cunt. You gasp, your fingers threading through his already-tousled hair, keeping him glued to you as he flexes against your body and comes hard enough to double himself over. 

He collapses on top of you, forcing you to bend at the hip, little puffs of air escaping his mouth and seeping into you. You whine, your sore hips battered and bruised, your pussy deliciously abused as you pulse continuously around his dick. “Joel, please…”

He comes slowly back into his body, his lips trailing down your spine as he lifts himself upright. “Shit. ‘m sorry, baby girl. You feel okay?”

You hum happily, letting yourself pant into the mattress. “Feels so good.”

Joel pulls out, savouring the tight drag of his cock out of your pussy, hissing through his teeth and watching his thick cum dribble slowly out of your hole. “Such a fuckin’ pretty sight. My sweet girl, all used up.”

You drop your face into your forearm and giggle. Joel smooths his hand over your lower back. “What's so funny?”

“Just…” You sound a bit hysterical as you continue to laugh. “I’m going to be late on rent this month. I put a down payment on a car.”

Joel lowers himself next to you and gently pulls you into him, his moustache tickling your cheek. “Planning on gettin’ the hell outta dodge?” he says playfully, nipping your earlobe. 

Your eyes droop and you sink into him. “Think I’ll stay here for a while.”

“I know you will, baby,” he murmurs.

“Joel?”

“Hmm.”

“Thank you for the necklace.”

~

It’s night when you next wake, and Joel is next to you. 

For someone so stern and strong, he looks utterly serene in his sleep. His lips are slightly parted, half his face pressed into the pillow, his hair curling around his ears and his arm lazily draped over you. You gently sweep a lock of hair away from his face. 

Through the dark, the red light beams, and the arm around your waist tugs you closer.

THE END.

#kiwisbell's fics #pedro pascal #joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x female reader #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #tlou hbo

[joelsgreys]

captive

Raider! Joel Miller x Female Reader

summary: You find yourself missing your captor while he’s out on an early morning hunt with the rest of the group.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. RAIDER ERA. DARK!JOEL. DUBCON. IMPLIED PREVIOUS NONCON. UNSPECIFIED AGE GAP (reader is in her 20’s and Joel is 50). READER HAS NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION. mentions of Joel’s group murdering reader’s group, it’s implied her family members were also killed, Joel pretty much kidnaps reader and keeps her as his own, stockholm syndrome, reader deals with a lot of very distressing and conflicting feelings, Joel isn’t too creepy or extremely dark, but he is still not a good person, mentions of Tommy. VERY BRIEF SMUT in the form of cockwarming, daddy kink but i didn’t go overboard this time, pet names (honey, baby, babygirl, sweetheart) if i missed anything, you can POLITELY let me know because if i missed anything, it was purely accidental. minimal editing.

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS.

if this isn’t your thing, that’s fine, just scroll on by.

word count: 1.4k

a/n: i might actually throw up idk. i’ve had this itch to try dark joel and seeing as i have major writer’s block with all my other wips i decided to just scratch the itch. this is a little out of my comfort zone but i actually ended up feeling pleased with what i wrote. this is my personal take on dark/raider joel, i’m sure it is very out of character but it’s fanfiction so…yeah. here it is.

It’s the rain that rouses you from your sleep.

It beats down heavily on the remote cabin’s tin roof.

Loud. Much too loud.

You roll over, settling yourself on your side.

The mattress is old, worn, rotting beneath the sheets.

You can’t complain, though. At least you have a bed.

Everybody else is forced to sleep on the hard floor.

He always gets the room with the bed.

As his special girl, that means you always get the room with the bed too.

It’s not quite as flattering as one would believe.

He only ever wants the bedroom for one reason—to keep you behind a locked door so you can’t run.

You sigh softly and stare out the window. He’d secured that too, made certain that it couldn’t be opened from the inside.

Closing your eyes, you try and go back to sleep.

Sleep doesn’t come.

His absence is starting to bother you.

You’ve been with him for an entire season now.

You’re getting used to him.

The sound of his voice. 

The warmth of his body.

The taste of his lips.

You can’t even sleep without him next to you.

“Fuck,” you whisper, clutching the stale sheets, balling them in your fists out of frustration.

How was it possible? How could you be missing him?

He had taken everything from you.

Your family.

Your home. 

Your innocence.

He was holding you captive. He was a monster.

But a monster doesn’t keep you safe.

Doesn’t clothe you.

Doesn’t feed you.

Doesn’t protect you.

He did all of those things and more. 

Is that why you feel so empty without him beside you?

Is that why you’re no longer so certain you would run if you were given the chance to escape him?

You fucking hated him for what he’d done.

Yet here you are, aching for him to come back to you.

It’s another hour before you hear the lock clicking. 

Joel pushes through the door, quietly closing it behind him.

“Y’awake?” he asks, slipping his pack off his shoulders.

“Mhm,” you answer with your back to him. “I am.”

You hear the sound of his pack hitting the floor.

His worn leather boots being kicked off. 

His rifle being set down, propped against the wall.

“How was the hunt?”

You can feel him freeze as he’s taking off his jacket.

Getting you to willingly speak to him had always been a lot like pulling teeth. Difficult, almost impossible.

When he doesn’t respond, you roll over to face him.

There’s a swoop in your tummy.

Joel is drenched from head to toe. His blue denim shirt clings to his broad frame and his dark, graying curls are slicked back away from his face.

He’s got such a handsome face.

Monsters aren’t supposed to have handsome faces.

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re really askin’ me how the hunt went?” Suspicion laces his tone. “Why? Y’worried you won’t eat tonight?”

Of course you weren’t.

Joel Miller doesn’t let you go hungry.

When food is scarce, he makes sure you eat first. If he notices you rubbing your tummy because your portion wasn’t enough, he’ll give you his own portion.

He takes care of you.

“No.” You pause and sit up. The sheets you two share fall away from your body, leaving your soft, supple breasts on full display for him. “Just wanted to know how your morning went. That’s all.”

It’s not your tits that make his cock twitch against the zipper of his jeans—it’s the sincerity that flashes across your features, the sound of it in the tone of your voice.

You’re being sweet to him.

He clears his throat lightly.

“Went real good. Brought down a deer. Female, ‘bout a hundred pounds or so. Enough to keep all of us well fed for the next couple of weeks,” he says with a nod. “Was pissin’ rain the entire time but it was worth it. Tommy’s in the shed out back right now dressin’ it so we can get a stew started.” He pauses. “You’re gonna get a proper meal tonight, babygirl. Belly’s gonna be nice and full.”

He’s not just talking about food and you know it.

You make an effort to meet his gaze, but you can’t. You can’t bring yourself to do it, not when you remembered how he’d taken you away from your family—how he had carried you over his shoulder, kicking and screaming as his people raided your camp and slaughtered every last member of your group because that’s what Joel Miller had ordered them to do.

Looking him in the eye might be the one thing you will never, ever be able to do.

“It’s cold,” you murmur after a minute. “You should get out of those wet clothes before you get sick.”

With a subtle nod, Joel turns around and starts peeling off his clothes until he’s completely naked. He uses an old rag to dry himself off as best as he can, although it doesn’t do much for him.

You can’t help yourself and stare—your gaze drags over the strong muscles of his back and shoulders, how they flex and ripple beneath his skin with every single one of his movements. Arousal pools between your thighs and all you can do is fucking hate yourself for wanting it, for wanting him.

“S’pretty early still,” he states, his back still to you as he runs the rag through his hair. “Y’should try to get some more sleep.”

The confession tumbles out of your mouth before you can even think about stopping it.

“I couldn’t sleep while you were gone.”

Surprised, he turns around.

Almost immediately, your eyes fall to his cock.

Even when he isn’t fully hard, he’s still so fucking big.

“Is that so?” Joel asks, sounding rather pleased. 

“Yes,” you say, softly. “I—I missed you.”

His lips turn upwards into a subtle, faint grin.

“Yeah?” he coos. “My sweet little girl missed me while I was gone? Hm?” Slowly, he approaches the bed. It dips slightly and the frame creaks as he plants a knee on the mattress and leans over towards you. Gently, Joel takes your chin between his index finger and thumb. “Y’need Daddy by your side so you can sleep, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” you whisper, warm tears glazing over your eyes.

It’s bad enough your body welcomed him so easily.

Now your heart was starting to do the same.

And then there was your mind.

What if that stopped fighting him too?

Part of you is afraid it already has.

Joel climbs into bed, joining you under the sheets.

“M’here, my pretty girl. C’mere, honey.” He coaxes you to lay on your side and pulls you back against his chest. His skin is still damp, frigid from having been out in the elements, but somehow he’s still warm. “That better?”

“Need you closer,” you mumble, wiggling against him.

Joel groans, his thick cock hard and throbbing against the small of your back. He nips at your bare shoulder as his hand drags down the length of your body and slips between your thighs. “Christ, babygirl. Pussy’s soakin’ wet for me. Looks like she missed me while I was gone too, didn’t she, sweetheart?”

He runs his finger along your slick, silky folds.

“Daddy,” you whimper, bucking into his hand.

“Don’t worry, honey. Daddy knows what you need.”

Joel pulls his hand from between your legs.

You almost cry—you’re so fucking desperate for him. 

And you shouldn’t be. 

He reaches in between your bodies, his hand wrapping around the base of his cock. Without warning, he slips it into your tight, aching cunt, sheathing himself in your warm, wet heat in one smooth stroke.

You choke out a sob.

It’s always overwhelming, that initial stretch.

That fullness, the feeling of him being in your belly.

“S’alright, sweetheart. S’alright. I know you can take it,” he soothes you. “You’re such a good girl for me. Always take my cock so fuckin’ well. So good for me, baby. You feel better now that Daddy’s cock is buried inside your pretty little pussy?”

He drapes an arm around you, pulling your back flush against his chest.

“Yes,” you breathe, placing your hand on top of his.

Joel feathers a kiss onto your neck.

“Go to sleep, babygirl. M’here. Ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he promises you.

That shouldn’t be a comfort to you. But it is.

You close your eyes, your fingers subconsciously lacing together with his as you start to drift.

Cunt full of his cock, you fall asleep in your captor’s arms.

divider credit to @saradika🤍

#tw dubcon #tw dubious consent #tw noncon #raider joel #raider! joel #dark!fic #dark! joel miller #dark joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller smut #joel miller drabble #joel miller fanfiction #tw daddy kink #dark!joel x reader #fic: captive

[auteurdelabre]

CODE BROKEN Series (COMPLETE)

For 18+ Readers only!

"You broke into my house," Joel says moving his gaze from your eyes back down to your mouth as his wide hand grazes his belt buckle. "Moved my shit around. Least you could do is be polite."You only wanted to pull a silly prank on your neighbor, Joel. Who could have seen it ending up like this?[AU where Joel Miller ends up in Jackson City by himself.]

Part 1: Go your Own Way

Part 2: The House of the Rising Sun

Part 3: Tainted Love

Part 4: I will Survive

Part 5: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Part 6: Epilogue

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #smut #joel miller smut #joel miller #dad joel miller #pedro pascal #fanfic #fanfiction #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller

[mermaidgirl30]

✨Run Rabbit✨

A/N: This idea literally came out of nowhere today, so I had to hurry and write it real quick! This idea is based off the song “Run, Rabbit Run!” by Flanagan and Allen. The song would not leave my head, and then I got this image of Joel chasing reader through an abandoned mansion. This one is a tad bit dark, but I hope you enjoy! If you liked this work, please think of reblogging and leaving me comments 🩷 Thank you to @ozarkthedog for being my beta 🥰

Summary: At the beginning of every month, you meet Joel to play a little game of hide and seek at the abandoned mansion near Jackson. It’s not just any game of hide and seek though. It’s dark and it’s twisted. If he catches you, he gets to do whatever he wants with you.

Pairing: Dom! Joel x fem! reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ ONLY MDNI)

Word Count: 4.1k

Tags: Possessive Joel, hide and seek, cat and mouse, Joel chases reader until he finds her, Jackson! Joel, outbreak! Joel, smut, fingering, oral, unprotected p in v, cream pie, dirty talk

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

The air is suffocating, the black walls are covered in regret and years of cigarette stench. The dim lights seem to shine down on you like a spotlight as you run as fast as you can through the lavish house. You can hear him calling you, stalking you in the dark shadows like a starving dog hunting to devour fresh meat. 

   “Can’t run from me forever, darlin’. You keep on runnin’, but I’ll eventually find you,” he chuckles as his deep voice reverberates around the echoing halls. 

   You cover your mouth, keeping your body down as you run run run past the expensive statues and monumental paintings of the abandoned mansion. Your throat is on fire the longer you run, your body aching like that of a dying man on his last breath of life. Your legs feel like they’ll give way at any second, but you have to keep going. You can’t give up. Not yet. Not when he’s right on your tail. 

   Tired. You’re so very tired, yet you keep running. Dragging your hollow body down the vine covered corridors of the wide hallways as you gasp for fresh air in your watered down lungs. 

   You fly around a narrow corridor and nearly trip yourself on a bed of dark green vines that bite at your ankles, threatening to take you down as Joel draws closer to you. 

   You can feel his overbearing presence, can taste the whiskey that bleeds inside his thick veins, can feel his large body already crowding yours as if he’s already caught you. He hasn’t caught you yet, but you know he will. He always catches you. 

   This was all a game. A dark, twisted game that started on a cold night in December. You remember the first time he chased you, the first time he tore through all your clothes the minute he captured you and devoured your entirety on that pitch black night. Now, every first Saturday of each month you’d meet him back at this abandoned mansion to play his little game. He called it hide and seek, you called it a deadly game of cat and mouse because you were the mouse, and cats always caught their prey. 

   It’s like you two are stuck in a never ending dance, two souls completely consumed in the other as you spin in circles until one of you collapses. You shouldn’t keep coming back, shouldn’t want to play his dark little games, but yet you come. Every single time, you come, unable to face the reality of a month without his touch, his taste, his growls. You’d let the man do as he wanted because how could you resist those charming, big brown eyes? You couldn’t, you just couldn’t. You were a moth drawn to a flame, and he was the brightest, most dangerous flame of all. Something you wanted to forever be branded by.

   Joel Miller was a fucking menace of society, but he was your menace. So you’d continue the game until one of you stopped breathing. 

   “Where are you, little lamb?” he calls as your breath scorches the vine covered walls. You continue running, twisting around dark corners, running down stone steps, and hiding behind crimson curtains. 

   The next wooden door you come upon is locked tight. No amount of shaking the golden handle or hurling your body into the door will make it budge. You turn your head from side to side. The only way out is from the way you came. The hallway that he is in. Fuck. 

   You gulp down a silent breath and make a run for it, even though you know he’ll be there waiting like a prowling wolf. 

   You take careful steps down the marble hallway and sneak around the cold corner until you see his dark silhouette shining against the reflective flooring. You gasp as your eyes go wide, but before you can run he reaches out a long arm and clasps tightly to your wrist. 

   “There ya are, little lamb. Thought you’d get away from me this time?” he smirks as he wraps his calloused fingers tightly around you and tries to pull you in. 

   “Haven’t caught me just yet,” you laugh as you somehow manage to slip out of his grip and make a run for it. 

   You run down some slippery stone steps and end up at the back of the mansion with vine covered long corridors and twisting mazes of green bushes. You run as fast as you can as the wind sweeps through your long hair, letting the brisk wind set your adrenaline on fire. 

   You manage one glance back and see just how fast he’s creeping up on you. He’s like a lion running after a gazelle, the hunter about to attack the prey with its bare claws. And he will destroy his prey. 

   You take a few more steps, but then you feel a hand claw at your shoulder. He takes you down on the hard floor as you come crashing down to the pit of your doom. Pain radiates through your body, but you brush it off as you crawl forward, trying to escape the man that will take you as his own. 

   “Where do ya think you’re goin’, pretty thing?” he asks darkly as he wraps a hand around your ankle and tugs you in his direction. You hear a squeak escape your mouth like a trapped mouse that just got caught by a giant cat. 

   “I’m running away from you,” you answer back as you kick and try to squirm out of his reach. 

   He obviously has other plans because he drags you back underneath him and turns you flat on your back as he pins your hands above your head, his hips and large thighs caging you in so you can’t break free. He won this round, like he always did. 

   “Didn’t think I’d catch you so soon, little lamb,” he chuckles deeply as the weight of his body hangs over yours entirely. 

   “You just caught me off guard,” you sigh as you see his dark chocolate eyes honing in on yours. They’re so captivating, so damn pretty that you can’t look away. He’s so gorgeous even when you should find him intimidating. 

   “Now you’re mine,” he smirks as his chocolate eyes become darker, more blown out as he hovers his plush lips over yours. “Just what am I gonna do to you tonight, hmm?” he asks as lust fills the void of his dark eyes, making you squirm with anticipation already. You know what you want. You want him. 

   “Maybe I should be a little rough with you, hmm? That what you want?” he asks with the tick of his sculpted jaw, his thick eyebrow raising as he looks at you like he just won the most valuable prize in town. 

   You shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t be feeding his sick mind as he plays his dark games, but you can’t help it. You want it just as bad as he does. You want him to be rough with you. 

   You look at him with wide eyes and smirk right back at him, challenging his dominant side to give in. “So be rough with me,” you whisper back. 

   You see his dark eyes grow large with need as he huffs out through his nostrils. “Open,” he demands as he grabs a hold of your jaw and squeezes, just enough for your lips to part open slightly. He bends his head down and inhales deeply as he spits into your mouth as you feel the warm spit cover your tongue. 

   “Swallow,” he growls as you fully oblige. You close your mouth and swallow as you taste his spit slide down your throat. All hot and moist as you taste him in the back of your throat. And somehow you think it’s so goddamn hot. 

   “Good girl,” he praises as he shifts his weight down and starts unbuttoning your faded denim jeans. 

   “Now, you’re gonna be a good girl for me, right?” he asks as he starts to drag the denim down your legs, feeling a wave of slick slide down your lace panties as your adrenaline kicks in. 

   “Mhm,” you nod as you watch him strip your legs bare, next going to tear off your sticky pink t-shirt while he hovers over the fine lace of your bra, his calloused fingers circling your back as he slowly undoes the clasps. 

   “Gonna let me taste every inch of you, little lamb? Gonna let me fuck you till you can’t take anymore?” he asks as he undoes the last clap and slowly starts to slide the bra free, leaving your full breasts exposed to the chilly night air. The only thing left is your slick covered panties, and then you'll be completely bare. 

   “Yes,” you breathe as he cups your breasts and slides his tongue along the crook of your neck, all teeth and tongue as he nips and bites at your flesh. 

   You can’t help the burn, can’t help the absolute need that courses through your body as his weight encompasses your chest. His hot breath bleeds into your lungs and it’s as if you can breathe fresh air for the first time. His woodsy, whiskey scent makes you dizzy as he slides his wet tongue along your bottom lip as he hovers his weight above you. He’s like a wolf that comes to feed on you in the night, and you’ll gladly let him devour you whole. 

   He snakes his hand down your abdomen and slides his hand underneath your ruined panties as he presses his thumb in between your folds, collecting slick as you groan at the feel of him spreading you wide. 

   “Open up, darlin’. Wanna give you a taste,” he whispers. He slides his thumb in your mouth, and you press your tongue around it, tasting the sweet saltiness of your own arousal as you let it slide down your throat. 

   He opens his mouth and sucks the rest of the slick off as he moans at the taste of you in his system. “You taste so fuckin’ sweet, darlin’. Wanna just eat you up,” he groans as he hovers his lips back over yours, inching closer and closer until you’re practically begging him to drop down on your lips. 

   “Please,” you whine as your hands fist at his green flannel shirt, desperate for him to get closer to you. 

   “Please what?” he smirks as his dark eyes weigh into yours, pools of lust overflowing the edges as his pupils now expand into complete darkness. A predator about to eat his prey up entirely. 

   You have to use all your strength to get any words out, desperate for his touch. “Take me, all of me,” you plead as your eyes search his black pits that burn you alive. 

   “Oh, sweetheart. I’m gonna take it all,” he smirks. 

   Before you have time to respond, he drops his lips on yours and fists your hair as he tugs hard and pries your lips apart as he slots in his wet tongue. He glides his tongue against yours and circles your mouth as you moan against him and drink his whiskey breath down. 

   He breaks apart from your mouth and nips playfully down your neck as he kneads your breasts together. His tongue comes down to circle each nipple, bringing them to life as they harden and pebble for him as you writhe underneath him in pleasure. 

   His experienced hands are everywhere, burning your skin alive as he skates his calloused fingers up and down your glistening body that’s now caked in sweat. He shoves your legs apart and slides the lace down your legs as he sits back and examines your entire naked body that’s on full display just for him. Glistening skin and slick coated folds splay out in front of him, and he looks like a mad man the way he’s looking at you. 

   His nostrils flare as his eyes grow wide, the big black pits scavenging your body as he drags a hand through his thick salt-and-pepper scruff as he groans out a heated response. “Goddamn, little lamb. You’re so fuckin’ wet and ready for me. I can hardly stand it,” he moans as he slides between your legs and pushes your thighs apart, his calloused fingers spreading your folds apart as he spits down in between them and starts running meticulously up and down your open folds as he starts circling your clit slowly. 

   You moan and writhe underneath his fingers, but he just presses a big hand to your stomach and holds you still as he works his fingers up and down your soaked pussy. And it feels so good that you want to crawl out of your own skin as the flames alight in your lower regions. 

   “Fuck,” you moan as he licks a thick strip from your dripping hole all the way to the top of your clit as his nose brushes against the coarse hair that sits above your clit. He inhales a large whiff of you as he groans and wraps his arms around your thighs as he holds you down against the cool ground. 

   “That’s right, little lamb. Gonna have you screamin’ my name by the time I get done with you,” he chuckles darkly as he dives back in. 

   His tongue devours you as he slides it up and down, drawing tight circles around your throbbing bundle of nerves as he sucks you deep into his mouth. He glides his middle and ring finger into your dripping hole and works them in and out as he curls up and hits your spongy walls again and again as his tongue feasts on your clit and his fingers go knuckle deep into your pussy. 

   Your eyes start to roll back as your head hits the hard floor, your body feeling like it’s floating on a cloud as hot heat starts to slide down the base of your spine. Close, you’re so close. Almost there. 

   He growls up at you as he demands your attention right now. “LOOK AT ME,” his voice echoes off the vine covered walls as his dominance sheds through the dim light of the hallway. 

   Your eyes snap up to find blown out dark pupils looking up at you as he sucks you in his mouth expertly. His nail beds dig into your thighs as one of his fists sit knuckle deep in your pussy. You’ve never seen him so wild, so much like a starving wolf that it makes more slick slide down his fingers as he pumps in and out of your drenched walls. 

   He pops your bundle of nerves out of his mouth as he gives you one more long lick as he growls up at you with pure dominance in his words. “Come for me, little lamb. Want ya to scream my name, tell me just who’s makin’ you feel good. Come on, darlin’. Show me how you break,” he smirks as he quickens the pace of his fingers and drops back on your clit as he circles circles circles until you’re seeing stars in your vision. 

   “Joel, I’m gonna… gonna,” you whine as you feel your orgasm start to break apart. 

   “Go on. Come for me. Be a good girl now and obey,” he growls as he pulls you back into his mouth while his fingers press up into the spongy walls as you feel yourself coming hard for him. 

   You clench up around his fingers and feel slick start to rain down his fingers onto your thighs as you throw your head back and scream his name as your moans echo through the long, dim lit corridor. Your body feels like white noise washing through it as your toes curl and your fingers slide through his tousled curls. 

   He groans as your fingers dig into his scalp while he licks up every inch of spilt slick in between your thighs. You feel your high start to come down as you take nice, deep breaths and focus on the buzzing in your ears. 

   Joel sits on his knees and views the mess that he made in between your legs as you splay across the floor with your legs still wide open for him. He must enjoy the view because he can’t keep his hungry eyes off you. 

   “Such a good girl, you know that? Now, gonna let me take ya all the way? Gonna let me fuck ya now, sweetheart?” he smirks as he starts unbuttoning his green flannel shirt, undoing the buttons quickly as he slides it off his thick arms and throws it in a heap next to the vine covered wall. His rock hard abs sit glistening in the night light while a happy trail of dark, coarse hair sits just above the waist of his jeans in a v shape. It makes you want to get on your hands and knees and crawl to him as you beg to have just a little taste of him.

   “Yes, please. Fuck me,” you moan as you push your breasts together as your center feels on fire for him. 

   “Oh, I’m gonna fuck ya deep, little lamb,” he smirks as he knits his eyebrows together in concentration. 

   He unbuttons his dark jeans and threads the leather belt through his belt loops while he shoves his jeans and boxers down his legs while he stands and hovers over you with his hard cock hitting the base of his hairy stomach as the tip sits weeping and swollen, just waiting to get inside you. 

   You lick your lips together and stare at the swollen tip as saliva starts to coat your mouth. You can practically taste the salt on your tongue, can almost feel the precum sliding down your throat as you beg him for just one more taste. He looks so delicious, and you want to just eat him right up.

   He smirks down at you as he sees you staring at his thick cock that screams your name. “Want a taste, little lamb?” he smirks as you nod your head mindlessly. 

   “Get over here then and do somethin’ ‘bout it,” he demands as he pulls you up by your hair and plants you on your knees in front of his large body. 

   “Go on then. Let me see how good you can choke on this cock, darlin’.” He flashes his pearly whites at you and wraps his fingers around your hair as you take your hand and start sliding it up and down as you spread the precum all over his thick length. 

   You lick the tip lightly and swirl around slowly as you tease him while your hand works up and down the base of him. “Fuck, there ya go,” he groans as you take him inside your mouth as you taste salty goodness drip down your throat. You take him deeper as you choke on him, feeling the drool coat his cock as you go back and forth on him slowly. 

   He grabs tighter to your hair and starts to fuck up into your mouth as you feel him bottom out at the base of your throat as it constricts around his thick length. You choke and gag around his length as he deep throats you over and over again. Your vision blurs as the tears lick at the corners of your eyes, but you don’t care. You love when he chokes you out, when his cock is deep in your throat as you hear his stifled moans get caught in his throat the more your mouth deep throats him. 

  “Fuckin’ Christ,” Joel growls as his thrusts become rougher and deeper, enough to where you’re gagging on your own drool as it coats your mouth as he slips deeper inside. 

   Before you think you can’t take anymore, he releases his cock from your mouth as a bead of drool connects from his tip to your lower lip as you choke for air with his fingers still firmly wrapped around your hair. 

   “Good fuckin’ girl,” he praises as he releases you and shoves you back to the ground as your back his the cold floor. “Now spread those legs, sweetheart. Gonna fuck ya nice and deep now,” he instructs as he spreads your legs and gets down on his knees.  He throws your legs over his shoulders and lines his cock up with your folds as he slowly slides the tip up and down your folds as your spit on his cock collects with the messy slick in between your legs. 

   “Jus’ relax now, darlin’. Let me help fill this pretty pussy up,” he smiles as he shoves his cock through your folds and fills you up. 

   You gasp at the stretch, he’s so fucking big that you never quite get used to the stretch. There’s a tinge of pain, but mostly you’re so full of him that all you can focus on is how good he’s making you feel. He fucks up into you deeper as he bottoms out inside you over and over again. 

   His body hovers over you as his lips nip against your neck as he slides in and out of you faster faster faster as you start to feel wildlife burn through your whole body. He folds your legs in half like a pancake as he fucks deeper inside you, making your walls squeeze his large length tight as you get close to your second orgasm. 

   You study his appearance, focusing on his knit eyebrows that are sewn together in concentration as he loses himself in you entirely. Sweat sticks to his forehead as his curls stick together in the glistening sweat. His broad back is flexing and tightening around you as your nails claw his tan skin, making him moan into the shell of your ear as he licks against the edge of your ear with thick pants leaving his mouth. 

   You kiss along the edge of his jaw, nipping at his scruff as you moan his name eagerly into the base of his ear as he speeds up his thrusts, bottoming out again and again until you can’t take it anymore. 

   “Joel, I’m gonna… fuck, I’m gonna come,” you pant out as he presses his forehead against yours. 

   “Come for me, pretty girl. Let me feel ya,” he commands as he thrusts up inside once twice three more times until you’re squeezing his cock with your walls and pouring yourself all over him. You moan his name and scratch your nails down his back as he moans back in satisfaction. 

   “Oh, that’s a good girl,” he praises as he continues rutting up inside you until he’s choking for air with his own tongue. 

   “Christ, I’m gonna come. Fuck, I’m gonna…” He doesn’t take long till he’s shooting thick ropes of come inside your walls as you feel warmth bubbling all inside you. He takes a minute to let it all out, releasing all his spend inside you as you breathe in his whiskey coated scent. 

   “Fucking hell, sweetheart. Can’t get enough of that sweet pussy,” he groans as he pulls his cock out of you and lets his spend slide down your milky thighs. 

   He collapses onto his back and pulls you into his side as you wrap a leg around his waist and inch your head up to the crook of his neck as your arm wraps around his broad chest. 

   “Some game, huh?” you pant as your exhausted body splays over the entirety of him. 

   “Some game,” he agrees as he rakes his fingers through your messy hair and kisses the top of your forehead as you relax all your weight into him. 

   “Think there’s ever gonna be a day where you won’t catch me?” you ask curiously as he smiles down and shakes his head at you. 

   “No, sweetheart. I’m always gonna catch you. Even if I have to run a couple miles to get to you. I’ll always catch you, my pretty girl.”

   You smile as he pulls you tight against his body, and you spend the rest of the night just lying on the floor in the abandoned mansion where this all started in the first place. A twisted game that ended in two lovers running back to each other again and again. 

   Maybe some games aren’t meant to be played, but this one was specifically made for you and Joel. The cat and the mouse who started off running away from each other, but it ended with both of you falling apart together. 

Tagging some mutuals who might want to read🩷 @milla-frenchy @vividispunk @littlevenicebitch69 @jasminedragoon @morallyinept @mountainsandmayhem @dugiioh @pedrostories @syd-djarin @laurrrra @joelmillersblog @joelmillerisapunk @amyispxnk @msjarvis @lotusbxtch @untamedheart81 @littlemisspascal

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel x female reader #joel the last of us #tlou fanfiction #joel miller pedro pascal #joel tlou #dom!joel miller #pleasure dom #joel miller one shot #run rabbit run #outbreak!joel #post outbreak joel #jackson!joel #the smut hits hard with this one #joel smut #smut #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedrostories #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller

[aurorawritestoescape]

BAD BLOOD

Pairing: step uncle Joel Miller x f!reader x stepdad Tommy Miller

Summary: you want your stepdad and your step uncle offers to help.

Tw for this part: +18, mdni, smut, talk of step-cest (for now), everyone is horrible, EVERYONE, big age gap (reader is 22, Joel and Tommy are in their late and mid-40s), degradation, f!masturbation, dark Joel, perv!joel, soft dark Tommy, dark reader, dirty thoughts all around, face slapping, smoking, swearing

Word count: 3,5k

A/n: no one look at me🫣 This is part 1 of my depraved family fic as I call it. I plan on 3 parts, next two are gonna be much more smutty. I have a fever rn so sorry for any mistakes. Hope you enjoy! 😵‍💫 @milla-frenchy it’s your fault for hyping this up so much!😘

Masterlist || Part II || Series masterlist

“How’s that stepdaughter of yours? Calls you daddy yet?”

“No, Joel, she’s twenty two. She ain’t gonna call me daddy,” Tommy replies, fumbling with the coaster under his beer bottle.

“Never say never,” Joel mumbles under his breath.

They’re sitting in a crowded bar, their booth table is sticky, the whole atmosphere is depressing and Tommy feels dirty just being here. It was Joel who picked the place and Tommy didn’t object.

“She doesn’t care much about me. Busy with boys,” Tommy explains with a slight sadness in his voice.

Joel’s face twists in a grin, eyes cold and intent, “So she’s a slut?”

Tommy chuckles, “She’s young and single as far as I know. She’s old enough to date. I don’t see any harm in exploring herself.”

“This explorin’ sounds a lot like whorin’ around,” Joel grunts with a smirk, emptying another glass.

“Nah, she’s a good girl,” Tommy follows Joel, chasing the last of his beer with a few nuts.

“Gonna get another round,” Joel says, getting out of their booth. Tommy is about to stop him but he hasn’t seen his brother for a while so he decides that one more beer won’t harm anyone. Yet when Joel returns with four shots of tequila and then two more beers Tommy regrets his stay.

Joel insists and Tommy as always gets influenced by his older brother. They drink and discuss business, work, sports, they drink more and Tommy feels that the room starts spinning. He asks the bartender for water and then returns to the table.

“How long is your stepdaughter staying with you?” Joel asks narrowing his eyes at Tommy.

“For a few more weeks,” Tommy answers, surprised they’re talking about you again.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Joel lowers his voice, his eyes glinting under the dim lights.

“About what?” Tommy asks, glancing up at his brother. By the tone of Joel, Tommy knows what Joel is talking about and he averts his eyes looking anywhere but his brother’s face.

Joel leans back on the seat, his arm resting on the back of it.

“About fucking her,” Joel speaks louder making Tommy squirm in his seat, as his eyes are darting around the bar.

Joel notices his unease and smirks, “I’ve stayed for a couple of days and already noticed her parading around in her tiny skirts and crop tops. The bitch is waiting to be bent over your kitchen counter, brother.”

Tommy rubs his chin feeling blood rush to his face as well as his crotch, “No, Joel, I love Jess.” Why the fuck is his voice so quiet and shaky all of a sudden?

Joel isn’t having any of it, “Maybe you do, but it doesn’t stop you from wanting to fuck her daughter, right?”

Tommy laughs uncomfortably but the tequila has hit him hard so after a few moments he hums looking at the empty shot glass.

As if having been waiting for this tiny crack in Tommy’s facade, Joel leans on the table getting closer to Tommy, his scowl carnal and triumphant,

“Here’s my little brother. He’s still somewhere inside this boring family man. I remember you being able to get any girl you wanted. Fucked them good. I taught you everything I knew after all. They’re all simple sluts. Call them pretty, then slap their pussy and they’ll do anything for you, give you any hole. Do you want your stepdaughter’s holes, Tommy?”

Tommy’s eyes are blown out and dark, his palms are sweaty. The memories of his escapades flood his mind and he can’t help but get hard thinking of all the pussy he used to get. Before settling down.

“So do you?!” Joel interrupts his brother’s thoughts with a loud question. Tommy flinches, his nerves alight, head cloudy, and answers, “Yes.”

Joel tilts his head and continues, “How would you do it? Hypothetically of course.”

Tommy sees pride in Joel’s eyes and feels cocky. All his life he wanted to get his brother’s approval. It led to a lot of bad situations, as Joel’s influence had been almost always negative. But Tommy can’t help but go back in time to his younger self, drunk on tequila and his sibling’s poisonous words. Staring at his hands he starts talking, quietly but so Joel could hear him,

“I’d fuck her in her room. She has a nice big bed, all pink and pretty. Would push her face into a pillow and rail her from behind. You’re right. She acts like she wants it. Walking into the kitchen in the morning all sleepy in her tiny pjs. The shorts barely cover her ass. I caught a glimpse of her pussy once when she was reaching for the cereal. Nearly came in my pants. She sleeps in just those shorts. Easy access. Could slide them to the side and slip my cock into her tight pussy. Maybe she’d think it’s a dream. Imagine fucking her sleeping body. Fuck…She’d wake up full of her stepdad’s cum and wouldn’t know it. Only later when she starts dripping me out of her hole and...”

Someone shouts in the bar and Tommy snaps out of his drunk daydreaming. He adjusts his hardening bulge and glances up at his brother. He sees Joel’s expression and his body erupts in goosebumps. The man in front of him looks like the devil himself, eyes cold and dark, mouth twisted in a smile that resembles a scowl.

“Got you, brother,” he mumbles and Tommy sees a phone in Joel’s hand. The man puts it on the table and Tommy sees that he’s been on a call with someone. Joel hangs up and leans back grinning wider.

“What the fuck?” Tommy asks trying to clear his mind but in vain. Suddenly he feels like he has blacked out. He must be out cold, drunk and dreaming because he hears your voice. Here, in this dark sleazy bar.

“Hey, daddy!”

As if in slow motion caused by his drinking and shock he sees you slide into their booth and take a seat next to Joel. His brother throws his arm around you.

“What the fuck?” Tommy repeats his question, gaping at you both and you give him an innocent smile putting your hands on your naked thighs barely covered by a short plaid skirt, saying, “Just wanted to join you too. Seems like you’re having fun.”

You feel Joel’s heavy arm on your shoulders, his thumb is caressing your collar bone. You sense him staring at your cleavage peeking out of the low cut top and can’t help but gush.

“We are, baby,” Joel rumbles, licking his lips while Tommy is staring at you and your step uncle.

“Give uncle a smooch, baby. Haven’t seen you in a while,” Joel lowers his face closer to you and you feel tequila on his breath burning your cheek.

“You saw me at breakfast this morning, perv,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Suddenly a hand grabs a fist of your hair and yanks your head back. Joel is pressing his side to yours, his face hovers over you, as he hisses, “that’s no way to talk to your seniors, girl” His eyes are blown out, he is enjoying it and you are too. Your legs tremble and you feel yourself getting wetter.

Tommy gets up and tries to reason with Joel saying that people are staring and he must let you go.

You’re blinking up at your step uncle and forget why you’re there for a second. Your gaze darts to his plush lips, they are waiting to be kissed and bitten. You shoot him a smile and he groans.

Joel hears worried mumbling from around their booth and lets go of your hair much to your disappointment. He looks around with a polite smile, mouthing, ‘All good, just joking.”

You fix your hair and look at your stepdad who has plunged back into his seat, eyes worried and wide.

“You can’t grab her like that, Joel! What the fuck is happening between you too?” Tommy exclaims but in a hushed voice.

Joel adjusts the prominent bulge in his jeans and takes a big gulp of his beer.

You're batting your lashes at Tommy and breathe out, “Don’t worry, daddy. I’ve forgotten my manners.”

Joel chuckles, you smile and Tommy furrows his brows. “Since when are you calling me daddy,” that’s what he wants to ask but doesn’t dare, not when Joel is here, not after the conversation they’ve just had.

So he takes a sip and asks you if you want anything.

“Thanks, I’m good. My friend is waiting for me in the car. I just popped in to say ‘hi’ to my favorite stepdad and step uncle,” you reply, giving them both your sweetest smile, fumbling with your necklace. You haven’t missed the way they both stare at your chest.

You get up peeling off your thighs of the sticky seat and pause next to Joel for a second fixing your skirt. Tommy rises up to his feet but you stop him with a wave of your hand, “It’s ok, I’ll find my way out,” you giggle and get out of the booth. You look at Joel who’s shamelessly ogling your ass and legs.

You wait for him to pay your face some attention and when he finally glances up you bend over the table and kiss his scruffy cheek before whispering, “Bye, Uncle Joel.” When you straighten up and turn to Tommy, Joel places his big warm hand on the back of your thigh and gives it a squeeze. You move away from him feeling dampness between your legs and step up to Tommy, whose jaw hasn’t closed up since the moment you showed up.

You bend over and kiss his cheek too. Your lips linger on his face a little longer than necessary and Tommy places his hand on your shoulder to gently push you away. You feel a pang in your heart but don’t show it. You’ll have him very soon.

“Have a good night, daddy.. uncle,” you coo, looking at one man and then the other.

You turn your head to your stepdad and say quietly, so only he could hear,

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Tommy. I'll make sure to wear the pjs you like.”

You watch his face growing paler and your lips twist in a smirk. You turn on your heels and head for the exit, passing Joel and giving him a wink. He returns it with one of his predatory grins.

Your heart is pounding in your chest and as soon as you leave the bar you take a deep breath of fresh night air. You find your friend’s car, get in and ask her to take you home. You light a cigarette with shaky hands not being able to believe you got what you wanted. Well not exactly what you wanted but you’re definitely closer to the final goal.

You look at the red dot of the cigarette burning in the darkness of the car and remember today’s morning when you were smoking on the patio of your mom’s house.

***

Joel joined you there after breakfast and took a seat next to you. He lit a cigarette too and for some time you were sitting in silence. He was leering at you from the side of his eye and after a dozen of sleazy glares you got fed up. “Would you quit staring, old man?” you asked Joel in an accusatory tone. He just chuckled as his dark eyes slid down from your face to your chest, and then legs.

Everyone was aware that Tommy’s brother was a sleaze bag. Single, no children, with a bouquet of addictions which none of many rehabs could treat. He also was hot. You didn’t hate him, but rather came to admire the extent of him not giving any fucks. He always said whatever he wanted and trolled your mom whenever he’d visit his brother which gave you immense pleasure and satisfaction. At least someone didn’t see Jess as a perfect little house wife.

“I could ask you the same question, sweetheart,” he replied with a sly smile. You furrowed your brows in confusion taking the next drag and then quipped, “I wouldn’t look your way if you were the last dick left on the planet!”

He chuckled and you hated how much you loved the sound and the fact that you managed to make him laugh.

“Nah, angel, I’m talkin’ about the way you stare at my little brother,” You opened your mouth to tell him there was nothing little about Tommy but fortunately shut it just in time. You couldn’t forget the time you had caught him in the bathroom naked after taking a shower so you knew that his cock was long and thick. He had a happy trail on his soft tummy, a broad chest and muscular arms. You lost count of how many times you had gotten off to that image.

Suddenly your palms got clammy when you heard what exactly Joel said.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. You should have your eyes checked, Joel. At your age it might be a good time to get glasses.”

He didn’t laugh that time, just looked at you intently with his piercing stare.

“I could help you get what you want,” he rumbled in the quiet of the yard. You narrowed your eyes at him, birds chirping in the trees was the only sound accompanying your thoughts. Is he joking? Is it some kind of a trap? You wouldn’t be surprised. It was Joel after all.

“What do you think I want?” you asked him carefully.

“To fuck Tommy and get back at your bitch of a mother.”

You laughed but it didn’t sound natural at all. You were surprised to your core that he read you like a book. You didn’t say anything and just continued smoking and staring into the distance.

“I have an idea and if you like the plan, we could help each other out.”

“How would we do it?” you asked and added hastily, “hypothetically of course.”

Joel told you about the plan, the first step of which would be fulfilled perfectly and the result of it would be stored in your phone now.

When he finished explaining it to you, you asked him why he wanted to ruin his brother’s life. Bringing the cigarette to his lips from time to time, Joel complained that Tommy had abandoned their family business, had left his life in Austin, had left Joel, his only family member, chasing some mediocre pussy (you smiled at that). Joel wanted his brother out of that marriage as he hated Jess (you smiled again) and wanted Tommy back. “I don’t know why you hate your mom like that but I don’t doubt you have a reason,” he concluded.

You hummed at that leaning back, your expression serious and pensive.

As if sensing your doubt Joel spoke again, “I’ll add a big bonus to our deal.”

You glanced his way and waited for him to continue.

“On top of getting my brother’s dick you’ll get mine as well.”

Now you couldn’t help but laugh, “Why the fuck would I need your dick?” you asked giggling, being in awe at the man’s enormous ego.

“You surely don’t need it, sweetheart, but fuckin’ hell you want it,” as if proving his point he grabbed his bulge and adjusted it looking straight into your eyes. “I’ll fuck you like no boy ever did. Like my little brother never will. Believe me, baby, if you want a good dickin’ down, you need Joel.”

With an open mouth you stared at the man next to you. The pull he had on you was hard to deny when your panties were soaked just being next to him, talking to him. His masculinity, his darkness, his self confidence captivated your soul, mind and body. But you couldn’t just admit it.

“I’m pretty sure I can have you right here, right now if I wanted to, dirty creep,” you spit out at him leaning forward and putting your elbows on your knees.

He turned his head away from you, smiled, then got up with a grunt and came up to your chair. He was towering over you, so much bigger and stronger than you that you started to regret your harsh words. You stared up at him hiding your growing fear as well as you could. His gaze was locked with yours and you flinched when he placed his hand on your cheek and rubbed your cheekbone with his thick thumb. Your eyes were about to flutter shut and it took everything from you not to purr into his gentle touch when all of a sudden he gave your cheek a slap, not hard, but your head spun to the side and you had to grab the arms of the chair for stability.

“Think about it, sweetheart,” he said and went inside the house.

You rubbed your cheek not feeling the pain but a surge of shame shooting into your heart and then right to your pussy. The desire to be used by him started burning in your stomach. You wanted both of the brothers now and if you could have it all in one move, why the fuck not?

Joel didn’t look surprised when you approached him later and agreed to the deal. You discussed the details and that evening everything went smoothly.

***

As soon as you are in your bedroom you rush to the night stand and grab your favorite toy. You throw it on the bed along with your phone and plunge down next to them. You take off your thong and notice that the gusset is soaked through. You throw the ruined underwear on the floor before taking your phone and adjusting AirPods in your ears. The house is empty, your mom having a girls night out, Tommy still in the bar, so you can enjoy the result of yours and Joel’s efforts fully. At least until you get the real thing. You find the audio and press play. Right into your ears as clearly as if he was next to you, you hear Joel’s drawl asking Tommy about you. You spread your legs and dip two fingers between your folds. You’re so wet they slide down to your entrance easily. You hear Tommy talk about you and your pussy flutters. You push the fingers inside and start slowly fucking yourself rubbing your clit from time to time. “So she’s a slut?” Joel asks in your ears and you moan moving your fingers faster. You can’t get enough of them talking about you like that. When Tommy calls you ‘a good girl’ you nearly come so you pull your fingers out and pant heavily trying to calm down. You know the good part is coming soon so you need to wait for it.

For some time you just lie there, eyes closed, skirt pulled up to your waist, pussy dripping and glistening under the light of the moon coming through the window. You don’t dare touch your nipples like you usually do, as you know you’ll come right away.

When you hear Joel’s “how would you do it?” you return your hand to your throbbing pussy. You plunge your fingers into your slicked entrance and slowly begin massaging your insides, pressing the pads of your fingers against your g-spot.

“Would push her face into the pillow… rail her from behind” You can’t help but moan so you bite on the back of your hand to stop your whimpers in case someone comes home.

“She acts like she wants it... I caught a glimpse of her pussy…”

Fuck, Tommy!

Your digits slide out of your hole and caress your pulsing clit. You feel your orgasm on the tips of your fingers.

“Easy access. Could just slide them to the side and slip my cock into her tight pussy…Imagine fucking her sleeping body. She'd wake up full of her stepdad's cum…”

“Stepdad’s cum” Fuck… You roughly push your fingers back into your hole, fucking yourself in earnest now and in just a few seconds you explode, pussy squirting its juices all over your bedding, your soaked hand still working your g-spot prolonging the hardest orgasm of your life. You arch your back, all your muscles tighten, and you bite your lip till it bleeds.

Your moans are leaving your mouth openly now. You don’t care anymore, blinded by ecstasy, drowning in pleasure. Nothing exists anymore, no one exists, just you and your hand on your fluttering pussy.

The recording stops and you lie on the bed spent, your limbs tingling pleasantly. Still trying to catch your breath, you throw your soaked bedding off, and the forgotten toy falls on the floor with a thud. You get under the blanket still clothed and as soon as you close your eyes you fall asleep.

***

Thank you for reading!❤️

Your comments and reblogs would make me very happy!💖💖💖

Part II

Tag list: @iamasaddie @harriedandharassed @bbyanarchist @missannwinchester @nervousmumbling

If you want to be tagged for this mini series or everything else of mine please let me know🫶

***

For other stepdad or ‘uncle’ activities check out these hot stories if you haven’t already 🥵

A little discipline - stepdad!Joel x reader by @walkintotheriveranddisappear

Uncle Ezra by @bonezone44

App Store - stepdad!Joel by @toxicanonymity

Bad girl - stepdad!Joel by @seventeenpins

The final jump - stepdad!Joel by @talaok

Please heed the warnings of the fics!

#joel miller #dark!joel #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #joel miller x reader #dark!joel x reader #dark!reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #the last of us #dark!reader fics #dark!tommy #dark!joel miller #dark tommy miller #tommy miller x you #joel miller x you x tommy miller #joel x reader x tommy #tommy miller smut

[proxima-writes]

pairing: cult leader!joel miller x virgin!female reader

rating: explicit (18+ MDNI)

word count: 8.6k

summary:

You think you’re as good as dead when a band of raiders find you. In what you think are your final moments, an angel appears.

His name is Joel Miller, and he is here to deliver you from evil.

author's note: a huge thank you to my fellow cultist @atinylittlepain for listening to me scream about this. without them, we'd probably be on version 5 of this story. and to everyone who has been excited about this, i hope you enjoy!

warnings: DARK CONTENT - DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, dub-con: power dynamics, dub-con: cult mentality, age difference - 60M and 27F, explicit sexual content (18+ minors do not interact), no use of y/n, dual POV, post-outbreak, canon divergence, canon typical violence (knife wounds, gun shot wounds, numerous mentions of blood), minor character death(s), blood cult ceremonies, religious themes, possessive behavior, emotional manipulation, loss of virginity, oral sex - f receiving, vaginal fingering, unprotected p in v, cum play, dirty talk, pet names, praise, joel really has a loose screw ok? if there are any tags missing, please let me know!

“I don’t think you should go out there by yourself,” you say, watching as your dad inspects his gun. He looks up at you with a pained expression.

“I gotta see where we should head next. I don’t want to lead you out in the wrong direction, accidentally get you in a bad spot,” he says. “I’ll be fine, buttercup.”

There’s a heaviness that settles in your stomach at his words. He sounds confident enough, but his eyes tell a different story, expose his fear. He stands with a sigh, a wince of pain washing over his face.

“Maybe I should—“

“No,” he interrupts. “I’m going. I won’t be gone long, okay? We can’t stay here forever. Who knows what’s out there in the forest.”

That’s exactly what you’re afraid of. At least inside the rotted cabin you stumbled across you could pretend you were safe. The forest is alive in a way you’ve never experienced growing up in a QZ surrounded with barbed wire and steel. You hear the snap of twigs and the howl of wolves, or the flutter of wings and the call of birds, and sometimes you think you feel the weight of eyes watching you if you venture out too far in your exploration.

“We’ve made it this far. We got out of Denver and that was half the battle,” your dad says. “You got your knife, right? And enough rations.”

You nod, swallowing around the lump in your throat. He kisses your forehead, dry lips lingering on your skin. You have an aching feeling this is a goodbye, some sinking intuition that he’s making a mistake that you can’t correct.

“Be back soon. I love you.”

Joel’s been keeping an eye on the people in the woods for the last three days. There was chatter on one of the radio stations that the Denver QZ was facing an uprising and he knows that once those walls come down, the survivors that venture out are bound to stumble across his town.

The cabin door opens and the man steps out, venturing into the forest. Joel waits to see if his female companion follows, but the door remains shut. He longs to see you, the girl who’s image has been burned into his brain since his first glimpse, but he has a duty to fulfill first.

He walks quickly and quietly through the forest, sure feet catching up with the man less than a mile from where he’d started.  Joel clears his throat. 

The man turns, fumbling with a gun that he clearly has no experience using, pointing it at Joel with shaking hands and shouting, “Move and I’ll shoot!” 

“You lost?” Joel asks, holding his hands up and keeping his face trained in a mask of concern. “Lookin’ for somethin’?”

After a pause, the man seeming to have concluded that Joel isn't a threat, he says, “My daughter and I…we escaped the Denver QZ."

"That must've been difficult." 

"We....we're running out of food," he continues, dropping his arms, limbs hanging heavy at his sides. "I-I don't know what else to do, man."

Gun no longer pointed at his face, Joel approaches the man, stopping when he's within arms reach. Up close, he can see the dismal state the guy is in -- sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes, tattered clothing hanging on a thin frame. Joel places a hand on his bony shoulder.

"I can help you," he says. The man looks up, a brief glimmer of hope flashing in his eyes. Joel watches the slow realization, the way his brain catches up to what's just happened, a choked noise spilling from his dry lips. 

Joel tugs his knife from the man's gut and steps back, watching as he collapses to the ground. Desperate hands smear the blooming red stain across his abdomen. Joel circles the man, positioning himself at his back, and pulls him close with a hand slapped over his mouth.

"I'll take good care of her," he whispers before dragging his knife across his neck in one clean slice. The man twitches once before growing limp and Joel releases him, body hitting the forest floor with a dull thud. Not one to waste, Joel gathers anything of use from his person. 

Something catches the light against his neck. Curious, Joel tugs the bloodstained neck of his t-shirt to the side, finding a silver chain. He pulls, revealing the length of it. 

A cross.

The clasp snaps with a sharp tug and Joel stuffs it in his pocket. Standing and shouldering his bag once more, he begins his walk back towards the cabin.

You're running as fast as your legs will carry you, lungs and limbs burning with the effort. You made the mistake of not listening to your dad when he'd told you stay where you were, to stay hidden, that he'd come back. Your nerves had gotten the best of you and you decided that you would catch up with him, but you didn't know which direction he'd gone. You figured you would travel a little ways and see if you could find him and if you didn't do so quickly, you'd rush back to the cabin and wait, just as he told you.

That's when the men saw you, two large figures with rifles that reminded you of FEDRA soldiers slung across their backs. 

You duck behind a thick tree to catch your breath. You can hear voices calling out through the forest above the rush of blood in your ears, taunting tones carrying through the air.

"C'mon out, pretty girl!" 

You chance a peek out from your hiding spot, only catching a brief glimpse of one man through the trees. 

"Where ya hidin', sweet thing?" 

His voice sounds far away and that gives you the courage to move forward, a tentative dash for another tree. 

“I might be nicer to ya if you just come on out, but if I have to hunt ya down…well…you know what a hunter does to its prey, don’tcha?”

You press your hand over your mouth, muffling the cry that claws its way up your throat. You start to run again, faster, not caring if he can hear you so long as you're able to maintain that distance, hoping that if you can outrun them for long enough, he'll just give up and then maybe you can find your--

You crash into something, the world sliding out from under you and the breath rushing from your lungs as you land on your back with a pained shout. A hand wraps around your ankle, pulling you across the rough ground before you have the chance to recover. 

"Gotcha," a man says, the voice different from the one that had been taunting you before. A figure stands over you, a foot on either side of your hips, looking down at you with a sinister smile. "Pretty little prize, huh?"

You twist your body, scrambling away from him. He laughs, following after you with unhurried strides.

“Now, don’t play hard to get,” he admonishes. A hand wraps around your ankle and he drags you toward him, kicking and screaming. Your foot connects with some fleshy part of him and he curses. 

“You little fuckin’ cunt,” he hisses, dropping your foot. He kicks you, heavy boot colliding with soft flesh and bone, a sharp pain blossoming in your side, shooting down to your very marrow. You curl in on yourself, wounded prey trying to protect its most vulnerable parts.

A shot rings out, the sound startling in the relative quiet of the forest. You sit up, sudden movement making you light headed, and it takes you a long moment to register the scene before you.

The man that had been chasing you, the one that had caught you, the one that had hurt you on the surface but planned to do far worse, lies on the ground, eyes wide open but unseeing. Above him stands your savior, an older man with gray streaked dark curls and tan skin, broad shoulders and hard brown eyes. He reminds you of a painting you saw once in a book your dad owned, long before the outbreak.

“Death On A Pale Horse,” he explained when you showed him the painting that caught your eye. “Based on the Book of Revelations. You remember that one, right?” 

“Yeah.”

“This one,” — he pointed to the central figure, a dark creature on a white horse — “is Death. And this one” — he pointed to a figure on the right that rides a dark brown horse, the dark colors making him blend among the horrors breaking from the sky behind him — “would be famine. You can see the emaciated man below him.”

“What about the other two?” You asked.

“The one of the red horse would be war.”

You pointed to the remaining figure, a man with dark curls and a determined expression. “And the white horse?”

Your dad paused. “Conquest. Pestilence. The Antichrist. The first horseman of the apocalypse.”

The man before you today looks like that figure on the white horse and despite his choice to rescue you from one horror, you fear he may be something far worse.

The man kneels and you flinch away from him. He sighs and says, “I ain’t goin’ to hurt you.”

“Who are you?” You ask, voice weak, throat on fire. 

“My name is Joel,” he says. “I want to help you.”

“How do I know you weren’t with those other guys?” Your eyes grow wide and you rush to stand on shaky legs. “Wait, there’s another—“

“He won’t be an issue,” Joel assures you, wrapping a steadying arm around your waist. “C’mon.”

“I can’t—“

“Men like those two ain’t the only things in the forest to worry about, and I’m afraid we can’t sit around and find out. That gun shot could send a horde runnin’.”

“Wait!” You snap, pulling out of his grasp. He holds his hands up, as if in surrender, or maybe like he’s approaching a wounded animal. You’re not sure which. “My dad is out there. H-he went to figure out where to go from here. We were in a cabin…” Your voice trails off. “I told him I would wait for him.”

Joel’s eyes are soft as he says, “We need to get ourselves to safety. I can send someone out to look for your dad first thing in the mornin’.”

“Send someone?”

“There’s a group of us, down in the valley. Survivors, like you.”

“Really?” Relief washes over you, eclipsing even the ache in your belly and the burn in your throat and the pain in your muscles. “How far?”

“With the state you’re in, probably about a two hour hike.”

You don’t have much choice but to go with him, do you?

“Okay.”

“Where’re you comin’ from?” Joel asks, glancing over his shoulder at you. You’ve been following quietly behind him, head down and eyes fixed on the ground. 

“Denver,” is all you offer in response. He knew that much already. He wants to know more.

Maybe he has to give more first.

“‘M from Texas, originally. Was in a QZ in Boston for a while before makin’ my way out here.”

“Why’d you come out here?” You ask.

“Had a friend once tell me, ‘Save who you can save’,” he says. 

“What does that mean?” You ask.

“You’ll see.”

Joel had mentioned survivors, but you're shocked to discover that just past a wooden sign proclaiming WELCOME TO CRESTONE in chipped yellow paint, a whole town is tucked away, surrounded by a wooden gate that opens for you as you approach. You feel the weight of curious eyes as you walk through a town square, Joel's palm between your shoulder blades steering you towards a more residential area until you reach a two story adobe home.

Once inside, you’re led upstairs to a sparsely decorated bedroom, a large bed in the center with a faded quilt tucked around the mattress with precision and a dresser against one wall covered in yellowed wallpaper. Joel gestures for you to sit, kneeling on the wood floor in front of you to work on the laces of your sneakers.

“What—“

“You need rest,” he says, removing your shoes. He looks up at you, brown eyes full of concern. Your stomach flips.

“But—“

“No,” he says sternly. He stands and walks to the side of the bed, tugging the quilt free and folding it down. “I have duties to return to, but you’ll be safe here.”

You don’t have it in you to continue arguing. You haven’t seen a comfortable bed in more than two days and the exhaustion catches up to you in one fell swoop, eyes halfway to shut as you crawl into the space Joel’s made for you between the sheets. He pulls the covers over you, the warmth of a hand smoothing across your cheek the last thing you feel before falling asleep.

You wake to the sun high in the sky, streaming through the open window of a room that you don't recognize.  You push yourself to sitting, your ribs protesting the movement and your head pulsing just behind your eyes. Your mouth is unbearably dry, so much so that you start coughing, further aggravating your bruised ribs.

"There's water on the nightstand," a voice says, startling you.

You look to your left, finding a young girl sitting in a wooden chair by your bed. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face, wayward pieces falling across pale skin. Her sharp brown eyes watch you with an intensity that makes your skin crawl.

“I’m Ellie,” she says. You mumble your own name.

“Did Joel save you?” Ellie asks. 

“Uh—“

“He must have. That’s what he does,” she continues, cutting you off. 

“Ellie!” A familiar deep voice calls out. Her eyes go wide and she scrambles from her seat, rushing for the door. Heavy footsteps climb the stairs, Joel appearing in the open doorway. He looks at her with a stern expression, mouth pressed in a thin line. “Thought I told you not to come up here.”

The look on her face isn’t fear, like her reaction would have led you to believe. No, she looks up at Joel with reverence as she says, “Sorry. Wanted to see her.”

Joel nods. “Head to the mess hall. I’ll bring her down shortly.”

Ellie casts a lingering look in your direction before disappearing through the doorway. 

“Sorry about her,” Joel says. He takes a seat on the edge of the mattress. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Could be better,” you say honestly. “How long was I asleep for?”

“A little more than a day.”

Your eyes go wide. “My dad—“

“We’ve sent out a search party. No luck yet, I’m afraid,” he says. You curl into yourself a bit at the news, shoulders tight with worry. He reaches forward and places a hand on top of your own where it rests on the sheets. “You should get some food. I brought you some new clothes, too. I’ll let you get dressed and we can go down to the mess hall.“

He leaves the room before you respond and you drag the pile of clothes closer to you, finding a neatly folded t-shirt, jeans, underwear, and socks. It takes you a long moment to work your way out of your dirty clothes, your movements slow to not aggravate your injuries. You keep your bra on, pulling the clean shirt over your head, followed by the jeans. You're thrilled to be wearing something that's not caked with dirt and sweat.

You're working on putting your socks on when there's a knock at the door, Joel entering when you call out for him to come in. He smiles at you.

"There, that's better," he says. "C'mon. Let's get down to dinner."

You follow him out of the room and down the stairs. The first floor of the home has a kitchen that opens up to a living and dining area, the space filled with worn mismatched furniture. The walls are wood paneled and there's a massive stone fireplace with elk antlers mounted above it.

The sun is setting as you step outside and get your first real look at the town as its bathed in gold. Narrow residential streets give way to wider roads once you reach the town center, where commercial buildings are pressed together advertising long forgotten businesses, their windows dark. 

"That's the butcher up there," Joel says, pointing to one of the wooden buildings. "He gets the meat from the traps prepped for us." He points to another building with a sign that says RESTAURANT. "That's the bakery."

"A butcher and a bakery?" You ask. "Do you have electricity here?"

"Sure do. Solar panels, just outside the gate."

You continue walking through the town until you come up on a large white building, people entering and exiting through a set of thick double doors. The shadow of a cross remains above the door, perhaps scorched by the sun where a crucifix once sat. People welcome Joel as he enters, heads turning in their curiosity. You press a little closer to Joel's side.

The large room is bursting with noise and activity -- a flurry of conversations, the clink of cutlery, and laughter. You've not seen anything like it before, the mentality in the QZ not conducive to camaraderie. You can count on one hand the number of people you would have considered friends within those walls, and even that was a stretch. You and Joel join a line of people retrieving plates of food from a single window. 

"How long has all of this been here?" You ask, gesturing to the room. He looks around proudly.

"Ellie and I came across this town on accident after we went through hell leavin' Boston. The folks here set up their own quarantine zone and with bigger fish to fry, FEDRA sort of left ‘em alone. They were kind enough to take us in," he says. "After that, more people started showin' up lookin' for safety. Lots of people who escaped the QZs or had been on their own for a while and were tired of runnin'."

"Ellie says you save people," you comment, taking a step forward as the line moves. "What's that mean?"

"Every flock needs a shepherd."

You’re at the front of the line now, standing in front of the window. A woman appears, her face lighting up when she sees Joel.

“Joel! How are you?” She asks, leaning onto the ledge. Behind her you can see people moving quickly and efficiently around a stainless steel kitchen, large pots of food simmering on the stovetop. 

“Well enough,” he says. He places a hand on your shoulder. “We have a new guest. Make her plate nice and full for me?”

“Of course.” 

She gathers a plate from a precarious stack, loading it with a heaping pile of food ranging from mashed potatoes and stew to colorful vegetables that you haven’t seen in ages, not since before the outbreak when you were seven and your dad would make dinner rather than pass you a ration package. You’re speechless as she hands you the plate with a kind smile, a mumbled thank you the best you can manage to show your gratitude.

Joel is handed a plate as well and you follow him to a table where Ellie sits next to a man with white hair, her plate already empty in front of her. The man looks up at Joel as you approach, his expression closed off and wary. 

“Michael,” Joel says in greeting, jaw ticking. You take a seat beside Ellie, who to your surprise moves closer to you, arm brushing yours. “You botherin’ Ellie?”

The man, Michael, shakes his head. “No, sir. We were just having a little talk.”

“What about?” Joel sits on the opposite side of the table. He rips his bread roll in half. 

“Just some concerns I was having.”

“You bring your concerns to me. Not to her.”

The two men stare at each other, the tension thick and impossible to ignore. Finally, Michael gets up, leaving the table without another word. Ellie’s shoulder’s lose their tension and Joel catches her eye, the two of them seeming to have an entire conversation in just a look.

The moment passes and Joel’s features relax, a smile tilting the corners of his lips as he returns his attention to you and gestures to your plate.

“Dig in,” he says.

Joel walks you back to his home after dinner, the sky now dark. Ellie’s already closed herself in her room by the time the two of you return, having left the mess hall before you had finished eating. 

“Tired again?” Joel asks when you yawn, mouth open wide as you stretch your arms above your head. 

Your expression is sheepish as you say, “A little bit.”

“That’s to be expected,” he assures you. “You fought a hard fight. It’s okay to relax now. I’ve got you.”

“Thank you.” Your fingers tangle in the hem of the t-shirt he’d given you earlier. “I don’t know if I’ve said that already.”

“You’re welcome. Come on, let’s get you back upstairs. You can use the shower and get to bed.”

“Oh my god, a shower sounds amazing.”

He shows you the bathroom and helps you get the water running. Once he shows you where to find a towel, you smile gratefully before shutting the door on him.

Dismissed, Joel makes his way to Ellie’s room, knocking on the door. She answers quickly, opening up only enough for him to see her face.

“Yeah?” She asks.

“Can I come in?” 

She rolls her eyes but opens the door further, allowing him inside. Her room is smaller than his but far more decorated, pages ripped out of old magazines and comic books tacked to the wall. She takes a seat on her single bed, folding her legs beneath her.

“What did Michael talk to you about?” He asks. She shrugs her shoulders. Joel bites back a sigh. Sometimes he forgets what it was like to reason with a teenage girl. “Ellie.”

“He said” — she pauses, scratching at her wrist in the way that she will when she’s anxious — “he said that you were full of shit. That your fucked up ceremony isn’t helping any of them.”

Joel’s teeth grind together. “That all?”

“Called me a stupid kid for following what you say,” she mumbles. “Said everyone in town was stupid for believing you.”

“Thank you for tellin’ me,” he says. Rage burns in his veins as he turns to leave. 

“What are you gonna do?” Ellie asks as he reaches the door.

“I’m goin’ to teach him a lesson.”

He pulls the door shut behind him, tilting his head against the wood with a sigh. The click of a latch down the hall precedes your quiet, “Joel?”

Joel turns to face you, surprised to find you standing just outside the bathroom door with a towel tucked around your body. Water glistens on your skin in the low light, drawing his eyes down your neck and across your chest. He clears his throat.

“Everythin’ alright?” He asks. 

“Yeah, everything is fine,” you murmur. “I…could I get some new clothes?”

“Of course, should’a given you some before you showered. Sorry about that.” 

Joel walks past you, entering his bedroom and approaching the dresser. He tugs the top drawer open, full of clothing he’d gathered while you’d been asleep for more than a day. He piles together another t-shirt, sleep pants, and underwear, setting them on the bed for you. 

You’re standing in the doorway when he finishes and he fights the urge to go to you, to pull you close, to run his wretched hands over your body like he’s wanted to since he first saw you in the forest. 

He doesn’t, though. Not yet. You still have much to learn.

“Here you go,” he says. “Some more stuff in the drawers for you if you need it.”

Joel leaves you to get ready for bed, shutting the door behind him. He heads downstairs to grab what he’ll need, essentials shoved in a bag thrown over his shoulder before venturing off into the night.

Only a few lights continue to illuminate windows as Joel walks through the residential area. The house he approaches at the end of a street is already dark, quiet beyond the wood door that he knocks on three times. The door opens slowly, Michael appearing in the small space. 

“What?” He grunts.

“Come take a walk,” Joel says. Michael rolls his eyes, moving to shut the door but Joel’s boot blocks his effort. “I ain’t askin’, Michael.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do?” He challenges. Joel throws his weight against the door, catching Michael by surprise enough for him to step into the house.

Joel throws an elbow into the man’s gut, making him double over with a groan. He circles behind him, kicking the back of his knee to send him to the ground. He pulls a length of chain from his pocket, looping it around Michael’s neck and pulling the ends.

Michael struggles, clawing at the garotte and thrashing wildly, but Joel holds strong. He tightens his grip further until Michael’s fight becomes sluggish, lack of oxygen finally causing him to go limp.

Joel releases the chain and Michael’s body slumps to the ground. He removes his backpack, digging through the contents until he finds a rusted pair of handcuffs that he uses to bind Michael’s arms behind his back. Next, he places a strip of duct tape over his mouth.

When he wakes, Joel will lead him out past the gate. He will find an unassuming home that rests outside the boundary of Crestone. He will open the hidden doors of the cellar, the ones covered in a layer of leaves and grass. From the darkness he will hear the echo of desperate groans and the rattle of chains and the angry attempts to break free from bindings. He will lead Michael down the dirt steps, the smell of rot and fear and death clawing at his olfactory nerves. 

He will place a burlap bag over a struggling Michael’s head and the man will beg and plead in words muffled by tape. Then, Joel will offer him for judgment.

A hand on you shoulder shakes you awake, the room still mostly dark when you manage to open your eyes. You groan, pulling the quilt up over your head.

“C’mon, we gotta get to breakfast,” Ellie says. The cover gets yanked down and she gives you a mischievous grin. 

“Where’s Joel?” You ask, sitting up slowly. She shrugs.

“Probably there already.”

You swing your legs over the side of the bed and stand, stretching your arms up. You grab the same jeans and socks from the day before, changing into them quickly and sitting down on the floor to pull your sneakers on. Ellie watches you, her foot tapping impatiently.

“You can go without me if you’re in a rush,” you offer. She shakes her head.

“I’m fine,” she says quickly. “You ready?”

“Sure.”

You follow her out of the house, her clipped pace difficult to keep up with due to your lingering pain. As the sun starts to rise and you pass by more of the houses, you notice something peculiar about some of them.

“What’s that?” You ask, pausing in front of one the houses. There’s a streak of what looks like dark red paint across the top of the door. Ellie doubles back and stands beside you.

“Protection,” she says. 

“From what?” 

She shifts her weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable with your line of questioning. Rather than answer, she walks away, leaving you to catch up to her or be left behind.

As the two of you start to walk through the square, there’s a rush of people around you. Shouting can be heard up ahead as a crowd comes into view, gathered around the front of the mess hall building. People press in close together, craning their necks to see over each other and catch a glimpse of whatever spectacle has their attention.

Ellie pushes through the crowd and you follow close on her heels until she manages to break through the other side of the wall of people. You catch glimpses of something writhing on the ground, something animal but not quite, something failed and fetid and foul. Another peek affords you a view of an arm littered with bite marks shaped by blunt teeth, deep gouges into their skin that shine red with blood and fester with disease.

Joel appears, stepping around the side of the building. The whispers cease, the crunch of Joel’s boots and pained groans the only noise to be heard in the stale air.

His dark eyes scan the crowd. People shrink back from his gaze, pressing closer to each other for relief. He reaches down, curling his fingers into the burlap material and yanking it off to reveal a man, familiar and yet not recognizable. Unseeing eyes, ashen skin, and dark red veins now the hallmark characteristics of the man you now remember as the one who had been talking to Ellie in the dining hall.

Joel draws a gun from his back, aiming it at Michael’s head. “Let this be a lesson,” he says, pulling the trigger.

The shot rings out, making you jump. The agonized sounds come to abrupt halt and his body goes limp, eyes still open as blood blooms on the ground around him. 

“No blood spilled. No blood saved,” Joel says. You look up from the horrible scene and meet his hard gaze. You step back, turning and shoving your way through the crowd.

Then, you run.

You’re frantically shoving clothing into your bag when a door slams downstairs and heavy footsteps climb the stairs at a quick pace. You can feel the burn of Joel's eyes on your back, his presence in the room thick and cloying as you refuse to turn around, even when he murmurs your name.

He moves closer, a hand on your shoulder prompting you to turn to break the connection. He holds his hands up in surrender, taking a step back as he says, "Let me explain."

"Explain? Explain?! How the fuck do you explain that?!" You snap. 

"If you'll just listen--"

"There's nothing you could possibly say that will--"

"Ellie is immune!" He shouts. Your words die on the tip of your tongue, lost to ether as you stare at Joel. 

"W-what do you mean? Immune?" You ask. 

He takes a deep breath. "I told you what my friend said. 'Save who you can save'. The first person I saved was Ellie."

"I helped her out of Boston, kept her safe, nearly lost my life if it meant keepin' her alive," He continues. "That's what I offer here."

"So you think you're....what? Some kind of god? That you can grant immunity?"

He huffs a laugh, the noise devoid of any humor. "God abandoned his worst experiment in their time of need. There is no god anymore, just the poor creatures he left behind. Someone had to take up the mantle."

"But how?"

"The ceremony," he says. 

"That’s not a fucking answer, Joel!” You shout. “What fucking ceremony?!”

“Blood spilled for blood saved. You can’t make it in this world without givin’ your everythin’ first.” He lifts the bottom of his shirt, just enough to reveal a jagged scar to the right of his belly button, shiny scar tissue disrupting smooth tan skin. “I did this for Ellie. Now everyone else has to do it for themselves.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand.” You take a small step closer to inspect the wound, raising your hand and reaching out with a tentative touch. Joel inhales sharply as you run your fingers across the puckered flesh. 

His hand wraps around your wrist, pulling your hand up and holding it against his chest. “It’ll be easier to show you, okay? There’s a ceremony in a couple days.”

“I don’t—“

“You’re just afraid because this is somethin’ new, but I promise you that you got nothin’ to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” He lifts a hand to your face, tilting your chin with his thumb. “I just need you to trust me.”

His eyes are honest, earnest, pleading with you to believe him and the longer you search them, the more truth you seem to find. He will take care of you. You just know it.

“Okay.”

Dinner is served early on the day of the ceremony, the room buzzing with excited conversation. You haven’t seen Joel much the last few days, just passing glimpses, and Ellie says it’s because he has a lot to prepare for. Tonight there’s a woman at his side wearing a white dress that flows to the floor, black hair braided down her back. She smiles at Joel, hanging on every word you can’t hear. It makes your stomach clench in a weird way when her hand curls around his bicep and her head leans against his shoulder.

“That’s Marcy. She’s volunteered for the ceremony,” Ellie says. She’s sitting across from you, a smirk on her lips. “S’why she’s been hanging around Joel the last few days. Joel’s gotta prepare her.”

“Oh,” is all you manage to reply, picking at the vegetables on your plate. “What does…what does he do? To prepare her.”

She shrugs. “Dunno.”

You glance at the pair. Joel leans in close to the woman, whispering into her ear. Your fingernails dig into the meat of your palm, your hands curled into tight fists beneath the table. He stands, a hand on the woman’s shoulder as he calls the people to attention, voices fading until silence envelops the room. 

“Tonight,” Joel says, “another is to be saved. And we will all bear witness to the gift of deliverance that only self-sacrifice can grant.”

It’s only a few words, but the power in them is palpable as you glance around the room at the entire town watching him with rapt attention. His eyes meet yours.

“Save who you can save,” he intones. A chill runs down your spine.

“Save who you can save,” the town echoes back. 

The sun is already low on the horizon, twilight casting a soft glow on the scene. You stand at the back of the crowd, watching as Joel leads Marcy onto a raised wooden platform. Another man joins them, passing something wrapped in cloth into Joel’s outstretched hands. 

“The thing about the world today,” Joel says, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a large knife, “is that there ain’t a single guarantee.” He looks out over the crowd. “Except here, within these walls. Why? Because here you’ll make the greatest sacrifice and earn the greatest reward.”

He begins to pace the length of the platform, knife in hand. “Givin’ your blood in exchange for your safety? That doesn’t sound so bad, right?” The people around you nod their heads in agreement. “You’ve seen what that sacrifice can do. I did it for Ellie. I did it for myself. And tonight—“ he places a hand on Marcy’s shoulder “—another has made the choice to earn that gift of protection.”

A cheer erupts, spreading through the crowd through shouts and applause. You find yourself joining them, clapping your hands together as you continue to watch Joel. 

“Marcy,” Joel says. “What brings you here today?”

“No blood spilled, no blood saved,” she recites dutifully. 

“Are you afraid?” He asks.

“No,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I trust in your protection.”

Joel smiles at her, beaming with pride, and that knot in your stomach from earlier returns with a vengeance. You want him to look at you like that.

He stands in front of her, blocking her from view with his body. A hush falls over the crowd and from the silence erupts an anguished scream. You flinch, the sound piercing and painful and petrifying, though it seems to have taken nobody else by surprise.

Another scream as he jerks his arm back, the knife in his hand now stained with red that slides down the blade, dripping to the wood beneath his feet. He steps to the side and you can see the woman now, her hands pressed to her belly. Crimson blooms beneath her hands, marring her pretty white dress and leaching the color and vitality from her face. She drops to her knees and so does Joel, who wraps an arm around her shoulders and gently guides her until she’s lying on her back. He holds her hand and smooths her hair from her face as she just repeats, “Thank you.”

Slowly, the strength in her voice fades. Her arm goes limp in his grasp, dropping to the floor with a dull thud as her eyes flutter shut. Joel whistles sharply, three men rushing up the platform and lifting the girl into their arms, careful not to jostle her too much. Joel remains kneeling, his head turning to scan the crowd.

“We are born covered in blood,” he says. “It gives you protection from the outside world when you’re wrenched from the womb. And it will protect you now as it is wrenched from you.”

He steps off the platform and walks past the crowd, heading for the residential street. Everyone shuffles forward, moving en masse like sheep following their shepherd or cattle to the slaughter. You’re led to one of the smaller homes and you watch as Joel smooths the flat of the blade across his hand, gathering blood in his palm. 

He places his palm on the door, smearing the blood across the faded blue paint. When he’s done, he turns to face the crowd.

“Marcy has earned her protection. Those of you among us that have not yet made your sacrifice, may you return home this evenin’ and realize that each passin’ day is a wasted opportunity for your salvation.” His serious expression softens as he smiles. “No blood spilled.”

“No blood saved,” the crowd says.

To your surprise, the words fall easily from your lips.

Joel shuts the door quietly behind him. He’s just finished checking on Marcy and was pleased to find that her wound has been dressed and she’s recovering well. At the kitchen sink he runs the water as hot as he can tolerate and scrubs his hands clean.

He can hear faint footsteps upstairs, the sound of your pacing back and forth in his bedroom. He’s pleased that you stayed through the entire ceremony, didn’t run away filled with fear or disgust like you had watching him make an example out of Michael. 

There’s hope for you yet.

Joel dries his hands on a towel and heads upstairs. He glances at Ellie’s room out of habit, though he knows it’s empty. She likes to help out after the ceremony, usually sticking beside the town nurse, Shelly, as she monitors the person who participated in the ceremony over night. 

The door to his bedroom is shut but he can see that the light is on, the glow of it seeping out from the gap beneath the door. He knocks, three sharp raps of his knuckles, and waits.

You pull the door open, and Joel is once again struck by how much he wants you, how much he’s craved you since the first time he saw you. You look up at him with wide eyes but he doesn’t sense any fear as you pull the door open further and step back to let him enter.

“You doin’ okay?” He asks, shutting the door quietly behind him. You’re standing with your arms wrapped around yourself, nodding quietly. Joel moves closer, tentatively reaching out to tilt your chin up so that he’s looking into your eyes. “Talk to me.”

“I….,” your voice trails off. You take a breath. “I want that protection.”

He was hoping you would say that. Relief floods through him.

“I can’t do that,” he says. Your brows pinch together, hurt flashing across your features. “I won’t have your blood on my hands.”

“But—“

“Listen to me—“ his hands frame your face, thumbs smoothing over the high points of your cheeks “—you’re meant for somethin’ different here.”

“Something different?” You repeat. You shake your head slightly. “I don’t understand.”

“From the moment I saw you, I knew I couldn’t let you lose a drop,” he whispers. “You don’t need to bleed, sweetheart. Not like them. I’ll protect you myself.”

Your mouth drops open the slightest bit, drawing Joel’s gaze. He slides his thumb across your bottom lip, mesmerized by the softness of it. There’s not much about his life the last twenty or so years that he would call soft.

There was his brother, Tommy, even though they couldn’t see eye to eye and had to part ways. His daughter, Sarah, before the outbreak. She took care of him, made sure he took his vitamins and packed his lunch and didn’t miss a parent-teacher conference. She was light and joy, his heart outside of his body, and she was ripped from his grasp.

There was Tess, who was not a soft person but was a soft place to land among the carnage. Bill, ornery though he was, and Frank, arguably his better half. They were a breath of normalcy, even when Bill had a gun trained on him. Ellie, once she quit being a pain in the ass and wormed her way into his heart with her promise to follow him wherever he went.

And now there was you.

“Will you let me do that?” Joel asks. “Protect you?”

You lift your hands, delicate fingers wrapping around his wrists. He wonders if you can feel the rapid beat of his heart, his pulse pounding beneath your grip. Finally, after a long moment, you whisper, “Yes.”

Joel captures your lips with his, swallowing your gasp of surprise. You’re tentative, a bit clumsy with your movements as you kiss back and he pulls away, leaning his forehead to yours.

“I-I’m sorry,” you murmur. “I’ve never—“

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take care of you.”

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take care of you.”

While his words don’t stop your pulse from racing, they do calm your nerves the slightest bit. It’s not that you’ve never been interested in sex, there was just never a good opportunity. Going through puberty in an apocalypse where a militant government faction monitors your every move in exchange for basic necessities wasn’t exactly conducive to forming intimate relationships. 

While you’re lost in your thoughts, Joel moves you backwards until your legs hit the mattress and he urges you to sit down. He kneels in front of you, working on the laces of your sneakers, removing them and setting them to the side. He looks up at you as he removes your socks and you’re not sure if you're supposed to find the sight of him kneeling at your feet as sexy as you do, but a rush of warmth rolls through you all the same.

He runs his palms up your legs, across your thighs, until his fingertips find the waist of your jeans, popping the button of the fly and pulling the zipper down. 

“Lift your hips a bit, sweetheart,” he says, working the denim down and off your legs, tossing them aside. His hands return to your thighs, goosebumps erupting along their path to your hips. 

“No one’s touched you here?” He asks, here being the soft skin of your inner thigh that his thumbs sweep across. You shake your head. He moves higher, a featherlight touch over the elastic of your underwear that makes you gasp. “What about here?”

“N-no,” you manage to whisper. He smiles at you, the same proud smile he’d given Marcy that you were so desperate to have for yourself. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs. He kisses the inside of your knee quickly before sitting up higher, reaching up to lift your shirt up, tugging it over your head and dropping it onto the growing pile of your clothing.

“Lie back for me,” Joel commands. You shift up the mattress and follow his instruction, bringing your arms up to cover your exposed breasts. He makes a dissatisfied click with his tongue, pulling your arms away as he crawls up the mattress to settle between your legs.

“None of that,” he admonishes, planting your hands by your head. He kisses your lips again, butterflies erupting in your stomach when his tongue tangles with yours, hot and demanding. He palms one of your breasts, hands rough on the delicate skin. “This is mine, do you understand?”

Joel brings his mouth to your breast, tongue swirling over your stiff nipple. You cry out, the foreign sensation making more heat rush through you, leaving you throbbing between your thighs. He looks up at you through his lashes as he sucks your nipple between his lips, releasing it with a lewd pop.

“Mine to touch,” he says, leaning on one arm to trail his fingers down your stomach. “Mine to kiss.” His lips trace the same heated path. “Mine to protect.”

When he reaches your underwear, he pulls back. “Look at that,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing across the gusset, making you whimper and squirm. “You’ve soaked your panties, sweetheart.”

Your face feels hot with embarrassment. “‘M sorry,” you mumble.

“Sorry? Ain’t nothin’ you need to be sorry about,” he says with a chuckle. He sits up, working your only remaining barrier between you down your legs. He spreads your legs with his hands on your thighs. “Goddamn, you look so pretty, baby.”

“Really?” You ask. His answering grin is wolfish. 

“So pretty,” he repeats. He settles on his belly, face so close to your pussy you can feel the warmth of his breath against your heated flesh. “Gotta get you ready.”

Your response to the question is cut off with a high pitched moan as Joel runs his tongue through your folds, circling your clit with broad strokes. You try to close your legs against the sensation but his strong hands keep your thighs pinned down near the mattress.

He groans as he sets a slow and measured pace, alternating attention to your clit with dipping his tongue inside of you, dragging your essence from the source. Your hands clench in the sheets, chasing and retreating from the overwhelming sensation in equal measure.

There’s a blunt pressure that turns into a slight pinch as Joel slips a finger into your tight heat. Your head tilts back with a high keening noise and you’re panting, desperate for breath as he moves his hand in tandem with his tongue.

One finger becomes two that thrust and curl and part inside of you, stretching you in unfamiliar ways. It feels good, and all you want is more, more, more.

Joel’s hand moves quickly and he sucks on your clit, swirling his tongue around the sensitive bundle of nerves until that flood of relief that you’ve only accomplished a handful of times on your own washes over you, your back arching sharply off the mattress as you shout his name like a prayer to the heavens.

His motions slow to a stop and he leaves the bed. You hear the clink of a belt and the rustle of clothing being removed before his weight returns between your legs, a new heat to be felt against your flushed skin with his clothes no longer in the way. With shaky hands you reach up to touch him, starting at his shoulders.

You trail your hands across his warm tan skin, down his hard chest and softer belly. That scar, the one that frightened you before, leaves you breathless as you run your fingers over it now. He’s so strong, so powerful, and he wants you. Wants to protect you so that you don’t know that same pain.

“Joel,” you whisper. He leans forward, hands on the mattress beside your head. He kisses you, slow and all encompassing. You can feel the hard length of his sliding through the mess he’s made of you and you gasp.

“Let me make one thing clear,” he says, face serious, “there ain’t any goin’ back from this. You’re mine. You got that?”

“I trust you,” you reply. Your response earns you a deep groan from the man, a kiss to your forehead that precedes the blunt head of his cock pressing to your soaked entrance.

His cock is thicker, much thicker, than his fingers were and you whine at the intrusion. His shushes you, peppering your face with soothing kisses. 

“I don’t think—“

“You’re doin’ so good, sweetheart, I know you can handle it,” Joel says. “Take a deep breath, just a little more.”

Tension gives way, a sharp pinch that turns into an ache as Joel presses his hips firmly against yours. He kisses your neck and trails his nose across your sweat damp skin, holding still as you adjust to his girth.

You shift your hips the slightest bit and Joel’s moan echoes your gasp. “Tell me I can move,” he begs, another desperate kiss pressed to your lips. “Please, baby.”

There’s something heady about the power you have in this brief moment, a man like Joel begging you for something when he’s used to having everything. You nod and that’s all the encouragement he needs to draw back slowly, that fullness leaving you inch by inch, before thrusting sharply.

It’s unlike any experience you’ve had before — the way his body moves with yours, the flex of his muscles above you, the intense look in his eyes each time he presses inside of you.

“Made for me,” he murmurs. “Mine.”

“Yours,” you agree, moaning as each drag of his cock presses against a tender spot inside of you that has your stomach tightening rapidly.

His effort doubles, hips slamming hard enough to make the headboard bang against the wall. You dig your nails into his back, watch the clench of his jaw against the sting, and moan his name as you succumb to the feeling of free falling into bliss, clenching around his cock.

“That’s it, sweetheart, fuck,” he growls, hips stilling against yours as warmth pulses inside of you, his mouth dropped open on a groan of your name.

Joel takes a moment to catch his breath before withdrawing from you. He reaches his hand between your legs, pressing his fingers into your swollen pussy as you gasp.

He holds those fingers up, the light catching on the red staining them.

Perhaps you’d spilled blood for your safety after all.

You wake to the early morning light filtering through the window, a noticeable ache between your legs as you begin to stir. You’re naked, having fallen asleep in Joel’s arms last night, his lips caressing your neck until you’d drifted off and dreamt of blood and wolves. You stretch your limbs, encountering only cold sheets as you do.

As you sit up, you realize the sound of rushing water is the shower and surmise that Joel must be in there. With stiff movements you leave the warmth of the bed and approach the dresser, tugging open the top drawer to find clothing for the day.

You’re reaching for underwear when your fingers catch on something cold, metal in a sea of fabric. You pull on the object, unearthing it from its hiding spot and holding it up for inspection.

A cross, hanging from a silver chain. A chain you would tangle your fingers in as a child, a cross that a thumb would rub across as a deep, familiar voice muttered prayers.

The shower turns off and you take one last look at the crucifix before setting it back into the dark corner you’d unearthed it from.

Then, you shut the drawer. 

Joel Miller masterlist

All masterlists

#joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller x female reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel tlou #no use of y/n #joel x reader #dark content #cult leader!joel miller #cw age gap #cw dubcon #cw age difference #dark!joel miller #dark!joel x reader #dark joel miller

[weirdfangirly]

Fatherless ─⊹⊱ ☆ ⊰⊹─

Dark-Fiction Central ©️

Dark!Joel x Reader

Summery: You offer yourself to a complete stranger in order to survive.

⚠️ : dark content. Dub-con. Age-gap (reader is not a minor). Dark Joel. Mean Joel. Loss of virginity. PiV. Slapping. Reader sees Joel as her dad. Painful sex. Joel enjoys seeing Reader hurt. Reader has daddy issues. Blood. Name calling. Degrading sex. Mention of suicide. Joel is NOT a hero in this one.

A/n: Well damn. If you want more, let me know.💓

─⊹⊱ ☆ ⊰⊹─

What a beautiful day to die, you thought when you opened your eyes this morning. You had spent the night in the woods—just like the night before, and the night before, and the night before...

You didn't dare set foot into the city. It was full with infected and raiders.

Sweat was dripping down from your forehead, even though you wore a light summer dress. Your legs were shaking from exhaustion, you were afraid they'd give in at any moment. You didn't know how long you had been wandering through the woods. Alone and lost. Your stomach was empty, as were your supplies. The only thing that kept you alive was the water from the river flowing through the woods.

Every day was a torment of uncertainty. You wandered between the many trees. You wandered with no destination in mind, with nothing in mind other than to put one foot in front of the other. Basic bodily functions like keeping your eyes open became harder with every passing day. The forest was rough and unpredictable, and you were not dressed appropriately. You were lucky that you hadn't broken an ankle with the footwear you were wearing. Yesterday you had stepped into a ditch and fell, you couldn’t find the strength to pull yourself out of it, so you just lay there and cried yourself to sleep.

Hoping to never wake up again.

Hunger made you grip your stomach in pain. You wished you could just cut it out, so that you didn’t have to put up with the cramps any longer. You had tried to catch squirrels and rabbits when your supplies became thin, but it was hopeless. You felt mocked by them. They led you deeper and deeper into the forest before seemingly vanishing into thin air, leaving you behind exhausted and still hungry. Your starving mind was trying desperately to come up with solutions. At one point you’d even eaten tree barks. Feeling full felt good, but it was short lived.

Suddenly your eyes caught something very promising. You stopped in your tracks, thinking that maybe this was yet another sick joke of your mind…

A berry bush.

Your eyes widened at the mere sight of the thick juicy berries. A miracle.

You ran to the berries. You couldn't remember the last time you had enough strength to actually run, but the mere thought of eating real food gave you the energy you needed to do that. You eagerly started to pick up as many berries as possible. Your hands were shaking in anticipation, your mouth watering, your mind running wild.

You were about to stuff the handful of berries inside your mouth when you suddenly heard the clicking sound of a gun.

*click click*

Your body froze.

„I wouldn't eat those if I were you.“, said a deep masculine voice.

The man was standing a few feet behind you, barrel of his gun aimed at you. The sight of you deeply confused him. When was the last time he’d seen a girl wearing a summer dress?

25 fucking years ago?

„Turn around.“, he said. „Slowly.“

You did what you were told, carefully turning around.

The first thing you saw was death lingering at the barrel of his gun. You slowly raised your shaking hands and looked up at your possible executor. A tall man, older than your father had been when he had passed. His old age didn’t match with his body. He had board shoulders and strong arms. His legs were long and steady. Fit. Invincible.

He looked like someone who would survive the apocalypse. Ruthless.

What a beautiful day to die, you remembered your thoughts from this morning—you weren’t so sure about that anymore…

He on the other hand, didn’t know what to think of you.

“Pokeweed berries..”, he pointed his gun at the berry bush behind you. “..are poisonous.”

“T-thank y-you.”, you stutter, unsure what else to say. You opened your palms and let the berries fall to the ground like little pearls.

It was comical that you were thanking the man who had a gun pointed at your face, but he appreciated your good manners.

“Now, tell me what are you doing on my land, girl.”, he demanded to know.

“I-I didn’t know...”, the last time you’d spoken to someone was your father. Your voice sounded brittle. You cleared your throat. “I-I didn’t know I was trespassing, s-sir.”

Joel had a way of dealing with trespassers; putting a bullet in their heads. No exceptions. He had never encountered a trespasser looking quite like you though. You were clearly malnourished—the gun in his hands weighted more than you. Your legs were covered in little scratches and nasty bruises. Your long hair were covering half of your face like a curtain—he could still make out enough to confidently say that you were too young and too pretty to be anywhere out here on your own. He saw no weapon on you neither. He raised his eyebrow when he spotted your painted toenails…You were wearing fucking sandals. You made no sense to him. Hadn’t you realised in what times you were living?

He could feel his pants getting tighter—which annoyed him greatly. It clearly had been a long time since he’d fucked a cunt when the mere sight of painted toenails and a pretty face excited him this much.

You were oblivious of what was happening inside the man’s pants. Your only worry was the gun pointed at your face. You wanted to run away, but your head was dizzy, your vision foggy, your stomach hurting and your mind running crazy.

It was a miracle that you were still standing at this point.

“Where are your people?”, he doubted you were traveling alone. You were probably just lost and people were already searching for you.

You shook your head.

“Bullshit.”, he spat. “Don’t lie to me, girl.”

He quickly scanned his surroundings, expecting someone hiding behind the trees and waiting to attack him. He took a step closer to you, which made you take a step back. “You gon’tell me that a girl like you is up here all by herself? I ain’t buyin it.”

“I-I swear, sir.”, you sobbed. “I’m…I have no one.”

Hearing the truth hurt. It took a lot of you not to break down crying. This was the first time someone had ever pointed a gun at you and it reminded you of the death of your mother. This is how she must’ve felt during her last seconds on earth? Scared and helpless.

Joel wasn’t sure if he believed you or not. By the looks of your physical state, it seemed to him that there was some truth behind your words.

“What’s in your backpack? Any weapon’s?”, he wanted to know. He thought about making you hand it over to him, but he doubted that you were carrying anything of use in it.

You shook your head. “Just my-my pocket knife.”

“Of course.”, he murmured, getting more and more frustrated with you. What a stupid girl. Walking around like this not even armed. He lowered his gun and turned around.

“Get lost.”, he said, before walking away. “Before I kill you.”

You were standing there perplexed, hands still up. You watched him walk away. He was the first human interaction you had in weeks. Your first human interaction besides your family. You shook your head in disbelief.

He was leaving you.

Leaving you alone.

Leaving you to Die.

Alone with your hunger and pain.

Your only chance of survival was literally walking away from you.

“Wait!”, you called out after him, but he kept walking.

No, no, no.

You started to run after him, almost tripping over your own feet. You couldn’t let him just walk away like that.

You had to do something.

“Please.”, you begged, not even sure for what.

But the man kept walking. His face was stone cold, looking right ahead.

“Please, sir.”, you tried again. “Please don’t leave me alone. I’m…I’m hungry.”

You sounded pathetic to him—something Joel barely tolerated.

“Not my problem, girl.”

You grabbed his arm, trying to stop him from walking any further—big mistake. He turned around in a heartbeat and grabbed your wrist. Your wrist felt like a toothpick in his iron-like grip. His first instinct was to break your fucking arm, but he stopped himself from doing just that, reminding himself that you were just a stupid kid.

Tears started to swell up from your eyes and your plump lip started to wobble. Fear was written all over your face and you immediately submitted to his strength. Knowing it was pointless to fight against it.

“Ouch.”, a sob escaped your throat and you begun to cry. Fat ugly tears started to run down your doll-like face.

He frowned, disgusted by your weakness and himself for finding it arousing…He let go of your wrist and you collapsed to the ground. Your shoulders started to shake uncontrollably. “I-I miss my d-daddy.”, you suddenly hiccuped.

A wave of feelings washed over him. He was annoyed of your showcase of weakness in front of him—a total stranger. He wanted to pull you up and slap you across the face, to get you back to reality. He was angry at himself for feeling sorry for you, just because you reminded him of his daughter in one way or another. Equally as innocent. Sarah never got to get used to the brutality of the world, she died an angel. Sweet and pure. He hadn’t felt this type of emotion for a long time. Sadness. Sarah—No. He shook the thoughts of his past life away. You weren’t Sarah. You were a nobody. Just a stupid girl that clearly didn’t know what was good for her—because Joel clearly wasn’t, especially since his pants got even tighter after hearing you cry out the word daddy.

Sick son of a bitch.

He decided that every feeling was easier to deal with than sadnesses. He wanted to forget, so he grabbed you by the arm and pulled you up. He slapped you across the face. Hard. Pain shot through your body and made you shut up immediately. His slap had put you in some kind of shock like state. The only other person who had ever done this to you was you father.

His hit felt so familiar, you almost wanted to beg for more.

“Consider this a warning, girl.”, he whispered close to your ear. “Have you any idea, what a stranger with a gun could do to a girl like you during times like this?”

You didn’t say a word. Your brain was still trying to regulate the pain that was radiating from where his hand had collided with your face.

“Last chance, girl,”, he said, voice dangerously low. “Get lost, before I blow your pretty face away.”

After a pregnant pause, you opened your mouth to speak. “You find me pretty?”

He has called you pretty.

He frowned at your words. Bewildered at your question in a situation like this

“Do you?”, you urged to know.

“I slapped you a little too hard, sweetheart? Seems like you’ve lost you goddamn mind.”

“Keep me.”

“What?”

“Keep me.”, you repeated, now silent tears running down your face. “Take me with you, I’ll be good to you. I-I promise.”

Your words angered him deeply because they sounded so goddamn good to him.

“I don’t want to die.”, it came out as a whisper.

He grabbed you by your throat. If you were scared, you didn’t show it. Your eyes seemed dull, disconnected. You truly looked like a lifeless doll to him. He brought you closer to his face. Observing you intensely.

You were so easy, so submissive. He didn’t know what to feel.

“You don’t know what you are getting yourself into, kiddo.”, he whispered. You could feel his hot breath on you skin. “You will not like what you recive..”

And he was right. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. You didn’t know anything. Your father had kept you sheltered away from reality. You never left the parameters of your fathers farm. You’d never spoken to anyone but him since the death of your mother. You didn’t know anything about the real world—but you’d read books. Many of them. Romances. You once read that “the female body is the most powerful weapon against a man.” At first you didn’t understand, but now you do. You knew what men wanted…it was the only thing you had to offer to him in order to survive.

He waited for you to say something. To apologise and beg him to let you go, that it was all an misunderstanding and that you were just a stupid girl who didn’t know any better— but you stayed quiet.

He saw desperation in your eyes, behind all the dullness.

Fuck.

He tossed you to the ground like a rag doll.

He was circling you like a lion, while throwing his weapon aside.

The man crouched down and spread your legs. He pulled your dress up, revealing your clothed cunt. He could see the outline of your plump lips through the thin fabric of your underwear. He nearly fucking came just by the sight of it. He tore your underwear apart with a grunt.

This wasn’t at all how you’d imagined your first time to be. You’d hoped it would be more like how it was in your books; with a guy you trusted and loved. Sweet and innocent. Exciting and nerve-wracking. Silly and dumb. Kind and loving.

Sadly, your really looked different; The forest floor was rough and uneven. Sticks and stones poked you in the back. It was uncomfortable. The man in front of you, who was currently slowly unbuckling his belt, was twice your age and far away from being your boyfriend. In fact, he was a total stranger. You were hungry and utterly exhausted. You felt disconnected from the situation—which was a good thing considering what would happen next.

„Fucking perfect.“, he whispered. You watched him stare at your most private parts. You felt ashamed and closed your legs again, blocking his view. His eyes snapped up at you, frowning.

„Open them.“, he said calmly. Chest falling up and down.

The sight of him in a state like this scared you. You nodded, scared of the sudden shift of his energy, and opened your legs for him again.

„Try this again and I’ll fucking cut your legs off.“, he warned.

He was slowly losing himself, losing control. The rational part of him knew that what he was doing was wrong for so many reasons. He was taking advantage of an starving girl. You were young, he didn’t even know how old. Definitely way younger than Sarah would’ve been now had he not failed her...

Stop.

A sudden wave of rage overcame him. This had nothing to do with Sarah. You had nothing to do with Sarah. It pissed him off that you made him think about her while being in a state like this.

You shook your head in dread. „I-I just…I…can I know your name?“

You hoped that maybe if you knew his name that this would feel less dirty, more intimate…

“Shut up.”, he just hissed. He grabbed inside his pants and freed his member. Your eyes widened and you let out a little whine of protest.

It was your first time seeing a man’s cock. It looked unnatural to you. It looked wrong. Thick and veiny. Too big. It was painfully red, throbbing.

He rubbed his hand over your little cunt, sending a shockwave through your body. He then put his thick finger inside you to feel you up.

„Are you scared?“, he asked.

You nodded. Scared and hungry. So hungry.

„I can tell, you’re fucking dry.“, he murmured, annoyed. He spit inside his palm and stroked his throbbing cock—this was all the preparation you would get from him.

Without wasting any more time, he slammed his thick cock inside you—or at least he tried. The size of his cock was too much to handle for your body, your cunt was rejecting him, working against him—but Joel kept pushing, forcing his length inside you. All of it.

Meanwhile, you were chocking on your own screams.

“Good job, cunt.”, Joel praised after making you take all of his cock.

He watched you cry for a second. Your face was painfully distorted and you were holding tightly onto his forearms for support.

“Fuck!”, he hissed. You were so tight, it was almost painful for him too. Almost.

He started to fuck you hard but slow. He was on top of you, holding himself up on his hands. After a few of his thrusts your body’s natural instincts kicked in and your cunt started to become wet for him, making this feel even better for him.

“Do you like it, baby?”, he chuckled darkly.

You didn’t. You had started to remove yourself from the situation by focusing on the branches of the leaves above you. So pretty.

Joel didn’t like that. He wanted you here. He wanted you to learn—too see what happens to dumb girls like you if not careful enough. He slapped you across the face again. This time hard enough to cause your nose to bleed—he didn’t mean to do that, he was pumped full of testosterone and adrenaline.

“I said, do. You. Like. It?”, with every word his hips snapped into yours, hard. Seeing you bleed for him like that only made him want to hurt you even more. Your were so goddamn sweet.

You looked up. Your vision was blurry, but he still looked so handsome to you. “Yes, dad.”, you whispered, confusing him with your father.

You had missed being close with someone. You had missed being loved. You had missed the warmth of human interaction. You were alone and scared for so long now. You never wanted to go back to that—even if it meant to suffer.

Hearing you call him dad, angered him. He stilled abruptly and grabbed you by your throat, making you chocke. “M’not your goddamn father, you fucking whore.”

He spit in your face. How dare you call him dad?

„Say it.“, he demanded.

You tried to but he was choking you too hard. He removed his hand from your throat.

„Your-your not my dad!“, you choked out.

He continued to fuck you, but this time his thrusts were even more unforgiving. His hips snapped into yours, bruising you up.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”, you cried out. “Please, ah!”

Joel didn’t care about your cries. It only turned him on more. Your father had clearly never explained to you how dangerous this world was for girls like you. You were lucky that it was him fucking you. It could’ve been much worse for you. You should thank him really.

Joel was fucking you like a beast, grunting and hissing in your ear. His sweat was dripping down your neck. He was hot, yet you felt cold. He kept his unforgiving rhythm; hard but slow.

You didn’t know how long it took him to find his high and finish, but he eventually came all over your stomach and dress. Growling like a wolf. You didn't even realize it was over. You could still feel him all over you.

“Fuck!”, he needed a few seconds to calm down. Kneeling over you and trying to catch his breath. His half-hard cock was hanging out of his pants. He wiped the sweat from his forehead while watching you lay beneath him covered in his hot cum.

He raised an eyebrow when he saw that blood was dripping down from your abused entrance. He looked down at his cock just to see it painted with your blood…

“Virgin?”, he whispered. You were a fucking virgin?

“What kinda fucking virgin whores herself out like this?”, he hissed at you. He was still panting heavily.

You didn’t respond, too stunned with the mixture of emotions you were feeling.

He got up and put his cock away, mumbling words to himself. He picked his firearm up from the ground.

He looked down at you. You still hadn’t made any efforts to get up. Your dress was still rolled up, cunt on display, cum all over you. He felt disgust by his handiwork.

“Get up, girl.”, he said. “C’mon.”

“It hurts.”, you just whispered, looking up at the dancing leaves.

He crouched down and rolled you dress down, covering you up before helping you in your feet. You looked down at yourself, your virginity was dripping down your slander legs. Your cheeks turned red out of shame as if it was your fault.

He cleared his throat. “M’name is Joel.”

You looked up at him and cracked a small broken smile. “I’m very hungry, Joel.”

He nodded a few times. “I know. Can you walk?”

He felt bad for even asking.

You tried to make a baby-step forward and pain shot through your body. “Ouch.”, you hissed and cupped your private part.

“C’mon. Hold onto me. S’not far.”, he offered you his arm and you looked up at him for any indication that he was just messing with you and that he would push you away the second you would touch him.

“Thank you, Joel.”, you said and grabbed his arm for support, looking forward to your meal.

#joel x reader #dark!joel miller #Joel miller #joel tlou #tlou #the last of us #mean!joel #dark!joel miller x reader #dark!joel x reader #Joel x you #Joel miller x reader #fanfic #dark fic

[tinycozycomfort]

where you sleep

pairing: jackson era!joel miller x f!reader

day three of @pascalisbaby and i's joeltober: hand kink -> read her day three here

summary: When you swing your neck to face him, he’s already cocked his chin over the hill of his left shoulder to await your gaze—beaming. He knew you’d been watching since you approached the room. Worse, he wanted you to see. 

warnings/tags: pwp!, hand kink, oral sex (m recieving), dom/sub dynamics, masturbation (m), exhibitionism, misuse of underwear/underwear play, pet names (honey, sweetheart, etc), creepy!joel (/dark!joel?)

word count: 1.7k

rating: explicit! 18+ only, mdni

a/n: gotta give an extra kiss to @pascalisbaby for not only saving this from the delete button more than once but for always being the best person alive!!!

main masterlist

You hear him, first—the end of a damp squelch, the sharp intake that breaks between coupling breaths, on a loop—from your place at the front door. It’s only clear enough to be interpreted as motion, disjointed pieces of noise that make you think he might be struggling, or hurt—so you follow. 

Padding lightly down the hallway in the dim afternoon, a twinge of anxiety leans lamely against your heart with all its dead weight; guilty already, even with no cause. Your chest thrums as it tries to hold up, picturing all of the ways he could have ended up wounded while trying to fix your shower, but when you reach the bathroom, it’s empty. No blood, no horrific scene, just a pile of loose tools and a smattering of fine plaster from where he’d dug around in the wall—yet the sounds persist somewhere further. 

You continue down, not quiet by any means, a little disturbed by his lack of interest in your arrival. He’s in your room, you deduce—the only occupiable space left in the home—coming into view now with the aid of long, heavy steps. Announcing yourself, just in case.  

The door is split open enough to see a long strip of empty space—the corner of your unmade bed, the swirling edge of your dresser, a sliver of mirror posed straighter than usual. 

As you sidle up to the frame, the sounds pitch up—strained hissing and sloppy glide of skin reaching a peak—and so you risk a deeper lean to see what it is he’s gotten himself into; what it is that isn’t worth hiding. 

A weak wash of daylight squeezes through the kinks in the blinds, allowing you only the fuzzy edges of what he’s doing. 

Joel sits on the far side of the bed, body angled so that you can see just a little more than profile, hunched roundly over his lap. He’s almost fully dressed—button-up intact right up to the neck, crinkled tops of his jeans still upright on his legs—everywhere except his center. 

He has one hand braced on his stomach, wide and solid and threaded with thick cords of vein, the fabric of his modesty folded up into his thumb. The waistline of his pants is zipped and peeled open at the thigh, the buckle of his belt jolting with faint clinks on every off-beat. A crude frame for the action resting within it.

His cock is slick in his right hand, a band of bright wet flashing between his fingers as he makes rough passes along it, stuttering minutely when he moves down to the base. He fucks the column fervently, the hard muscle of his clutched fist sending a push of arousal between the tops of your thighs. 

He touches himself as roughly as he seems able to tolerate—the sinew between his first set of knuckles dipped harshly, peaks white from strain, the tips of the hand on his stomach turning in against his own flesh enough to ripple.

Something pink, unnaturally so, peaks between his fingers every so often, calling you away from your observation of his abdomen. He’s particularly enamored with whatever it is—panting every time it swirls over the head, dulling the sheen of his pull. 

Fabric, you realize, absorbing the slip on his skin. You squint, assessing the texture of the material as it darkens with each stroke. Lace fabric; scallop-edged lace fabric that looks starkly familiar to what had been discarded in a shallow grave on top of your too-full hamper the night before. 

He shoves into the cloth, webbing it around the points of his fingers like a pocket, canting his hips off the bed to slot into it and he huffs in frustration when he manages to miss a few times, stunted. 

You glance up to see he’s maneuvering himself blindly; despite his intricate goal he looks straight ahead, eyes still open from what you can make out, concentration elsewhere as he fumbles against the make-shift cunt. 

You track his focus, only half-way across the room when you remember just how much the door had been left open, the crease of the frame very visible in the newly-positioned mirror at your bedside—the intention of it. 

The realization rushes between your ribs like ice-water, little knocks of frozen pellets as they swim between the bones on the way down. The force is so fast you feel like you’re going to keel over—not assisted by the way your knees already feel tight from the strain of keeping yourself motionless. 

You hit the end of the line, his expression wild where he meets you in the reflection, pleased.

“You just gonna watch, sweetheart? That’s all?” 

When you swing your neck to face him, he’s already cocked his chin over the hill of his left shoulder to await your gaze—beaming. He knew you’d been watching since you approached the room. Worse, he wanted you to see. 

“Joel—Fuck, I’m… I didn’t mean to-” 

He uses his unoccupied hand to help him rise to his feet, his right not ceasing to work himself as he rounds the edge of the mattress. You cower, still mostly inaccessible behind the wood, so he reacts accordingly—slows, tames his grin, knits the inner corners of his brow to look disarming. 

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. You caught me in a bit of a bind here, honey,” he pumps lazily, head bowing to direct your attention as if you would need the assistance, “No big deal. Wouldn’t hurt if you offered to help—might as well work for the show.”

You stare at him, wide-eyed, afraid to pierce the illusion, the dream in front of you a few words from melting away, and he pouts something disappointed.

“Don’t need to invite you into your own room, do I?”

“Joel,” you try again, weak. 

“Heard you the first time—didn’t mean to. We’re past that. I forgive you. Now c’mon, come take a closer look—like I know you want to.”

Hesitantly, you hook an ankle around the edge of the door, willing yourself forward. Joel nods encouragingly before cutting the distance with his own wide steps. 

He uses his clean hand to cup the swell of your cheek, thumb twisting to dig into the fullest part, the pads against your neck pressing down like a suggestion, and you fold without question, tucking a knee beneath you to guide yourself to the floor. 

Joel releases you, draping the curve of his shirt up into his palm again to reveal what had been only momentarily concealed beneath it. Even so, your eyes stay fixed on the spread of his fingers against his belly, right past the place where his cock hangs between his legs. 

“Didn’t seem to have a problem looking when you thought I didn't know. Don't be shy.” His words are encouraging but his tone is laced with annoyance, frustrated maybe that you aren’t responding with the enthusiasm he wants.

He resumes playing with himself, the stretch of lace in his clutch not enough to claim your favor—the way his nails pierce his stomach far more intriguing. 

He seems to understand, trailing his palm up to his chest, still holding the hem, a smile curling on his lips when you follow the movement. 

“Oh, that’s what you like?” 

He releases his length, letting the lace slot between the crease of his thumb like a bracelet. “You want me to touch you with these, sweetheart?” He waves the wet hand lewdly before offering it to you, “Want me to put them in your mouth?” 

You nod, and he lets the rough tips of his pointer and middle tap on the center of your bottom lip, watching shamelessly as you open up for him on instinct. 

“Look at that. I think we can figure out something here that works out for both of us, hm?” 

He doesn’t bother letting you answer, lining the row of his longer fingers outward against your lower lip, his thumb braced against the upper. You stick your tongue out, curling it around his first finger to try and coax him inside but he has another idea. He spreads his legs, settling his weight before leaning to feed the tip of his cock through the channel he’s created with his hand, breaching the open space of your mouth. 

You take him enthusiastically and he makes a choked sound, the plane of his chest pushing out hard between firm breaths, a stripe of pink crawling up his neck and across his face. He’s ruffled, composure broken, his own mouth agape in veiled mockery.

“There you go. So pretty. You wouldn’t say no if I asked you to come down your throat, would you?” 

You do your best to shake your head, working him deeper, the row of your bottom teeth secure under the line of his pointer.

He shudders, the nail of his thumb pushing you open wider as he slides in as far as he can manage at this angle, with so much already occupying the inside of your face. 

“That’s right, honey. Good girl for me, aren’t you? Walked right into my little gift, eager. Let’s reward you, hm?” 

You hum in response, lost to anything other than the brush of his hand against your chin when he thrusts too quickly, the drag of the inside of his knuckles against your tongue. 

“Fuck. You like it, too. Should’ve come by sooner.” 

Pressure builds in the pit of your stomach, hot and rolling as where it falls over into the cradle of your core. You rub your legs together in an attempt to relieve it and he whines, bucking up quicker into the hollow of your cheeks, the fabric of your forgotten underwear slipping in with the rest of his mess on a jostled punch. 

Joel starts to unwind, heaving in hard gulps and elbow craning out in a jagged, rhythmic sway. He unhinges his jaw like he wants to say more but you bend, taking more of him than you should be able to, the soft wedge of his head prodding your throat and he grunts, rounding out his spine as he comes as far down as he promised to. 

You puff up your cheeks around him, an almost-smile, swallowing as much as you can before pulling off of him with a gentle pop, your own palm sliding up to take hold of his forearm. He lets you, deflated from his orgasm, and you run your tongue over what you couldn’t catch on his skin. 

“Should’ve known,” he chuckles, peering down at you between soaked lashes before assisting, sliding two fingers into your parted lips, “Let’s find out what else you like.”

#joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #pedro pascal characters #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #joel miller/reader #kinktober 2023 #kinktober #dark!joel x reader

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

open your fucking mouth

kinktober, day fourteen

a/n: this one admittedly isn't for everyone, but it's for some (sdfghjklæø you could say that about everything. copy paste and add to everything i've ever written because we all like different things)

warnings: dark!cowboy!joel miller x innocent!reader, smut, dubcon/noncon, wild west au, historical au, gun kink, blowjob, hair pulling

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

masterlist | join my taglist | kinktober 2023

“Suck it,” the outlaw demanded in a gruff voice, stroking his length mere inches from your wide eyes. It had been just days ago that he had forced his way into you and your daddy’s home, saying that you were to provide him a place to hide and if you didn’t comply with his every wish then he’d kill you both.

“I-I-,” you blinked up at him from your position on the floorboards, not even comprehending what it was he was asking you to do, “you want me you what?”

Sucking in an impatient breath, he rephrased, enunciating every syllable as if you were an idiot, “put my cock in your mouth,” but when the furrow didn’t disappear from your brow, his fingers then instead pulled the gun from his leather belt. Instinctively crawling back at the threat, he swiftly grabbed onto your hair before you could escape any further, the cold barrel pressing into your cheek as he then hissed, “I said suck it.” 

Heart thumping all the way in your throat, you slowly lowered your lips to the tip of his dick, “yes, that’s it…” he groaned as you timidly enveloped the bulbous head, “you sure you’ve never done this before? That dirty old sheriff has never gotten you to crack?” he slightly lowered the weapon as you nervously shook your head, eyes fluttering up at him as he filled your mouth, “well, well, aren’t I lucky…”

Suddenly, his hand found the back of your head and he roughly pulled you down, “there you go,” forcing his girth all the way down your throat and causing you to gag around him, “fuck…” 

But eventually, his firm hold did falter as he let you reel back, coughing as you wiped the lewd slobber off your lips. 

Hearing his thumb cock the gun, you found his glare, “open your fucking mouth,” and when you did, the cool barrel of the firearm swiftly slid across your tongue. Could it be loaded? That you didn’t know. But what you were aware of was the way the harsh metal made you feel, the indescribable sensation it shot down between your thighs. 

© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble 

#lea’s writing #kinktober 2023 #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #dark!joel miller #joel miller x innocent!reader #cowboy!joel miller #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller imagine #joel miller x female reader #tlou smut #the last of us smut #pedro pascal smut #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller x reader

[iamasaddie]

some rotten man

paring: dark!Joel x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ minors DNI) word count: 1,2k~ summary: you really never thought you'd need this type of training. a/n: I'm all flavors of fucked up and so is Joel, make sure you check out the warnings before you proceed with reading! Special thanks to the literal love of my life, my emotional support human and beta @bearsbeetsbeskar <;3 warnings: dead dove do not eat; PWP (for real, no plot at all); implied non-con; explicit sexual content; rough oral sex (m receiving); degradation; spitting; face slapping (barely); no use of y/n ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴏꜰ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ. ɪ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴅᴏɴᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɪᴛᴜᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪʙᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ɪʀʟ. ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ, ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡʀɪᴛɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴡᴀʏ ᴏꜰ ʜᴇᴀʟɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇꜱꜱɪɴɢ ᴛʀᴀᴜᴍᴀ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ᴅɪᴄᴛᴀᴛᴇ ᴏʀ ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʏᴘᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴜᴍᴇ. ꜱᴛᴀʏ ꜱᴀꜰᴇ, ᴘʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴄᴇ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴇɴꜱᴜᴀʟ ꜱᴇx ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴘʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.

"Now, my little slut, you're going to open that fucking mouth of yours and I'm going to fuck it until you're so full that my cum gushes out of it. Do you understand me?"

You trembled under the man's towering figure, his bloodied hand gripping your hair so tight that tears started welling up in your red eyes.

"I can't fuckin' hear you, baby girl."

"Ye- yes." You stuttered out and nodded, but didn't do anything else to show your consent.

“Well then what are you waiting for, darlin'? Stick that bratty tongue of yours out."

You opened your mouth, following his command. A deep inhale made your throat dry, but when you saw him pulling his cock out your throat became sandpaper. Joel’s cock was massive even with his height and broad frame. It was big to the point that even under different circumstances you'd find it terrifying. The head was deep dusty pink, slit glistening with beads of precum. He was thick, veins covering the shaft made it look even bigger and more intimidating. You tried to swallow with your tongue still licking air, but your throat just contracted, walls sticking to each other unpleasantly.

"You look hungry, little one,” Joel barked a laugh, “let me help you with that.”

He slapped his dick on your tongue, letting you feel the weight of it, before leaning back and furrowing his brows. Joel looked at you, your pathetic position sent shivers down his spine. There was just this one little thing… Before you could even brace yourself, you felt before seeing him spitting directly onto your tongue, and then putting his cock back where he thought it belonged. “Oh, yeah,” he almost sang with pleasure, “that’s better, isn't it?”

You just stayed still, getting used to the foreign weight in your mouth, the meat of his cock filling you completely even though you saw he wasn't halfway in. His hips rocked violently, the tip hitting the back of your throat and he threw his head back. His moan would be deafening if it didn't drown in the sound of you gagging and coughing. You knew that if you'd had anything to eat in the last few days it'd be already all over him. Reflexively, you pushed back as far as you could with your hands tied behind your back. One second his cock fell out of your mouth, and the next a loud slap and a burning sensation on your left cheek made tears spring out of your eyes.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, hm?” Joel grabbed your cheeks painfully squeezing them between his fingers and yanked you back so hard that your face met his crotch. “Stupid fucking slut," his hand twisted in your hair, roping it around his fist. “We're just getting started.” 

You didn't know if he was offended or excited by your physical reaction, but the next time he snapped his cock into your mouth he went even rougher, keeping you tightly pressed even when you started coughing and suffocating on it.

"You either control your breath or you're gonna die on my fat cock, baby.”

His tone was playful, but by the way he gripped your head you knew he was dead serious. You tried to calculate his rhythm and the intensity of his thrusts to get a small window of opportunity to get some air into your lungs even if the air you breathed was filling you with the man just as much. The heavy odor of his musk and a salty hint of sweat.

With each movement of his hips he filled you a little bit more, you were almost grateful to him for not trying to squeeze his whole dick into your throat in one thrust. You didn't know if minutes passed, or hours, the only thing you felt was the overwhelming thickness of his cock in your throat and the pulsating sensation when he stayed inside it for a moment too long. He moaned, enjoying the feeling of your throat contracting around his aching shaft, trying to violently push it out when he forced it to stay in place. 

"Fuck, little one, I might just stay in your throat forever.” He whispered harshly, and it felt like his grip on your head became almost gentle as he let go of your hair and scratched the back of your skull with blunt fingernails.

By the time he pulled his cock out of your mouth you thought this was never going to end. You felt your throat burning, saliva dripping from the corners of your mouth as you tried to catch your breath, tears streamed down your cheeks in an uncontrollable stream. 

"Not bad for a first, hm, baby?" 

You couldn't answer, vocal chords betraying you, but Joel wasn't one to talk into the void. Once again he grabbed you by the hair, yanking it so hard you could swear he ripped a strand or two as he forced you to make eye-contact with him, his glistening cock a threat in front of your lips. "I asked you a fucking question."

"Yes." Your voice was hoarse and barely above whisper.

"Yes what, slut?"

"Yes, Sir."

Talking hurt even more than swallowing his massive shaft down your throat, it was like sandpaper scraping open wounds. Of course he couldn't pass up an opportunity to mention it.

"Got my little cockslut's throat fucked up, didn't I?" His smile was full of animalistic pride as he tutted and shook his head. Joel reached for your cheek with his hand and you braced yourself for another slap, but only a cruelly gentle caress followed. "It's okay, little one, I have the perfect medicine that's gonna cure all the soreness. Open up," he patted your chin, "come on, fucktoy, I'm not going to repeat myself."

As soon as you opened your trembling lips that were already torn on the edges from his abuse, he was quick to shove his cock inside your warmth. By the way you felt it throb on your tongue as it slid further down your throat, you knew that he was close. The man above you was groaning, with every violent thrust of his hips the rough material of his jeans met your burning skin, making you wince. You felt his hand slowly descend from the back of your head and curl around your throat. It was huge, big enough to easily grab half of your neck. You were barely able to inhale between his thrusts and you were terrified that if he squeezed you a bit harder he'd just end up shooting a load down a corpse's throat. But it wasn't his intention. Instead, he tightened his grip just right to feel his cock down your throat but at the same time not cutting off your air flow completely. 

“Ughh,” his groan was primal, reverberating from the depths of his chest and vibrating through all of his body. "Perfect. Fucking. Slut.” Each word was accentuated with a thrust, deeper and deeper, you wouldn’t be surprised if your chin was bruised from his efforts already. He squeezed your throat harder than before and moaned as he could almost feel his thick and salty load dripping down the inside of your throat. When you started thrashing, he finally noticed that your face got dangerously purple from the lack of breathing and pulled out, opting to squeeze your bruised cheeks instead. 

"That's it, baby, good job." He cooed with a sick sweetness. "You need some training, but it's okay. We've got all the time in the world, and I'm an excellent teacher."

#joel miller x reader #dark!joel miller #serenaxpedro writes #tlou x reader #tlou fanfiction #dark smut #dark!Joel x reader #iamasaddie fic

[sinful-mind-joyful-thoughts]

𝙎𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙢...

Read part 2 here - Soup...

*vision bored doesn't describe readers' looks it describes the vibes of the story*

screencaps: @din-jarring they are amazing, the best most amazing person. I definitely recommend you check them out 🫶🏻

Pairing: dark!Raider!Joel Miller x fem!virgin!reader

Summary: Seven years after the outbreak and with two days of starvation looming, desperation drives you to attempt stealing from your own assailant. But in this dire bid for survival, what unforeseen consequences await?

Warnings/tags: MDNI 18+, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, BLOOD, VIRGIN READER, breaking and entering, bondage (belt), groping, spit, fear, non/dub-con, guns, toxic people, degradation, praise, (maybe kind of), fingering kinda, biting, male moaning, breeding kink, kissing, kidnapping, mean joel, daze, kinda inexperienced reader, UNprotected sex wrap it before you tap it, kids. THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT YOU CONSUME

WC: 2.5K

Your pulse quickened as a looming silhouette tore through the door of your family's cabin, a formidable rifle in hand. The once serene sanctuary of your family retreat had morphed into something ominous during the seven years since the outbreak. Time had shrouded the cabin in secrecy, but now it felt like it held more secrets than safety. With no one around to offer aid and your provisions dwindling, a sense of foreboding gripped you. Who was this intruder, and what did they want?

Huddled behind the worn fabric of the couch, you trembled, trying to decipher the intruder's intentions. The eerie silence of the cabin was only broken by the sound of your racing heartbeat and the slam of the empty cupboards. The emptiness of the cupboards, devoid of sustenance for two long days, added to the dread coiling in your stomach.

Your father's departure had cast the first shadow of unease. Taking the only means of protection—a small pistol—he left behind a void filled with questions and fear. When days stretched into weeks without his return, your mother embarked on a desperate quest to find him, leaving you alone to wrestle with gnawing uncertainty.

Peering cautiously from your hiding place, you observed the intruder ransacking the kitchen. Panic surged as you spotted the cabin door ajar, a white van parked conspicuously outside. Desperation prompted a daring idea – if there was nothing left to steal, why not take whatever the intruder possessed? With knowledge of the terrain on your side, you calculated a plan to hide in the woods until the coast was clear.

You watched the intruder's every move, hoping for the perfect moment to act. When he cautiously ventured into the bathroom, likely searching for supplies you lacked, you seized the chance to make your move. With a deep breath to steady your nerves, you slipped out the door and tiptoed toward the van, determined to reclaim control of the situation.

Peering into the dim interior, you scanned for any signs of danger before cautiously stepping inside. The van's interior was a jumble of crates and boxes, their contents obscured by shadows. Time was of the essence, so you swiftly lifted the tarp covering the crates, revealing precious bottles of water. With careful precision, you gathered as many as you could carry, ensuring not to drop any or create any disturbance.

Exiting the van, you concealed the bottles in a nearby bush, intending to wait there until the intruder departed. Once the water was safely stashed, you returned to the van, continuing your search. As you reached for a few cans of canned food, you suddenly found yourself confronted by a terrifying sight: a tall, muscular man with a rifle pointed directly at your face.

The sound of the cans dropping from your hands seemed to fade away as you stood there frozen in fear, unable to move or even think. The man had a heavy, muscular build, with dark hair and an incoming beard that made him look even more menacing. It was clear that he had been watching you, and that he had no intention of letting you leave without a fight.

As you struggled to comprehend the situation unfolding before you, the man's voice shattered the eerie silence, causing a shiver to run down your spine. "Caught red-handed, are we? Thought you could just waltz in and help yourself to my supplies?" His words were like a cold slap in the face, jolting you into a state of panic.

Before you could utter a word in response, he roughly pushed you onto your back, the barrel of the gun pressing into your chest. Fear gripped you tightly as you found yourself unable to move, your mind racing with thoughts of imminent danger.

"Please, I didn't mean any harm. I'll put everything back, just please don't hurt me," you pleaded, your voice quivering with desperation. But your words seemed to fall on deaf ears as he grabbed your arm with force, pushing your chest against the center console. Your heart sank as the cold metal of the gun dug into your back, a sense of hopelessness washing over you.

In that moment of vulnerability, you couldn't help but curse yourself for choosing to wear a dress today. The fabric rode up your thighs, leaving you feeling exposed and defenseless. It served as a harsh reminder of how unready you were for the predicament unfolding before you. While you weren't naive, you'd had discussions before, even received "the talk" about the delicate subject of virginity. But contemplating the act itself was a realm you never envisioned venturing into, especially not now. The weight of such responsibilities loomed heavy on your mind, intertwining with the immediate danger at hand, creating a tangled web of fear and uncertainty.

He knelt behind you, his rough, calloused hand replacing the gun at your back. "You want to leave here in one piece? Then you better be prepared to compensate me for what you were trying to steal," he demanded, his grip firm as he lifted the hem of your dress.

As panic surged through you, you attempted to break free, but his hold only tightened. He swiftly changed tactics, his unfamiliar touch gripping your waist just above where your panties ended. With a rough tug, he pulled down your panties, his words and actions leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable.

"Now that's a pretty lookin' pussy," he taunted, his fingers tracing over your folds. You squirmed uncomfortably under his touch, his chuckle sending shivers down your spine.

Feeling trapped and afraid, you remained frozen, unable to escape his looming presence.

He started to palm your bare clit, making sure to rub the wet spit onto your pussy. You were starting to become wet at his actions, he rubbed his middle finger around your damp pussy teasing you, making you squirm again. “I like it when you squirm. Makes things more interesting," he chuckled, his words sending a shiver down your spine. In a desperate attempt to escape his unsettling presence, you jolted forward, scrambling towards the front of the van, hoping to create some distance between yourself and the menacing figure behind you. He pulled you back and firmly grasped your shoulders, preventing you from escaping further. Then, he cupped your face with his hands, his touch possessive yet tender, his eyebrows lifting in a silent question as his husky voice filled the space between you.

"I'm never—" he began, his lips pressing against yours briefly before he lowered his voice, his gaze locking onto yours, "gonna let you go." His thumb traced gentle circles on your temple, a stark contrast to the intensity of his words.

But then his touch shifted, his lips leaving yours to trail along the curve of your neck and shoulders, igniting a tingling sensation that sent shivers down your spine. It was as if he was trying to seduce you, drawing you in with each caress.

Returning to your lips, he initiated another kiss, and you found yourself torn between conflicting emotions. Part of you felt trapped and scared, but another part couldn't deny the thrill coursing through you. As he deepened the kiss, you found yourself responding, losing yourself in the moment.

Finally pulling back, a small smile played on his lips as he shook his head in disbelief. His voice dropped to a whisper as he repeated his vow, "Never."

As one of his hands traveled down your stomach, a shiver ran down your spine, and he began planting kisses along your neck. For a moment, you closed your eyes, lost in the sensation, feeling a sense of serenity wash over you. But reality crashed back down as he suddenly shoved you forcefully onto the center console. Your head collided with something hard, causing a sharp pain to shoot through you, and blood began to gush from your nose.

Shocked and a little dizzy from the sudden impact, you struggled to gather your bearings, your head throbbing as blood continued to trickle from your nose. Blinking rapidly, you tried to focus, but the dizziness made it difficult to think clearly. Panic began to rise within you as you realized the severity of the situation, your heart pounding in your chest.

One of his hands held you down harshly against the console keeping you trapped once again sanity has left you, his other hand swiftly unbuckled his belt, the sounds of his movements echoing in the tense silence of the van you felt hopeless and dazed as you felt his dick rub against your pussy still wet from the desire of his kiss.

He leaned closer to you, his entire body weight pressing down on yours, his chest now firmly against your back as he roughly pushed his dick into you. he was big you let out a loud shriek as a burning sensation cascaded through your body, causing your eyes to squeeze shut in pain. Desperately, you reached for his thighs, trying to push him off you.

"Quiet." He groans as he pushes deeper into your cunt you felt his pubes brush against your clit, he was so big so overwhelming you could feel him in your stomach even as he was still. He gripped your hands and grabbed his belt from beside him before tying your hands together behind your back. you could feel every movement making you let out small sounds of discomfort as his dick rested inside of you.

"Suckin' me right in." He lifted your dress higher taking a moment to stand and bask in the view of his dick being swallowed by your pussy. he started groping your ass taking his time as he started he's penetrating your soul. he began to thrust setting a slow but harsh pace. "You're gonna be achin' for days.” you let out a few broken moans at his movements your daze and confusion were replaced with a sense of pleasure and warmth as he continued thrusting in and out of you.

He shifted his hands to grip the makeshift restraints around your wrists, then began pushing you towards him so that you met his thrusts. As the new sensation overwhelmed you, you started to squirm again, unable to contain the mix of pleasure and discomfort. "I said squirming makes it interesting, I didn't say be difficult," he murmured, his voice low and filled with amusement. With a swift movement, he hooked you up so you were pressed against him, your struggles futile against his strength. He noticed the blood from your nose and chuckled, the sound sending a shiver down your spine as you whimpered in fear.

He started to thrust up into you harder. more primal for his desire, he moved one of his hands to play with your breast. you let out a loud moan as one of his thrusts hit just where it was needed for his movements to feel like he was heaven. He pushed you back onto the console, this time skillfully avoiding the sharp object, sparing you from any further facial damage.

His weight presses you down onto your back again, forcing you to stay still as he pounds deep into you over and over again. His power and speed never slow down as he bites down hard on your shoulder to muffle his moans, he hits that sweet spot inside of you with every thrust making it impossible to hide your obvious pleasure from his actions making sure to move your hips back to meet him every time it makes you feel so dirty, "You tried to take from me, but now you're learning your place. Beneath me, where you belong, like a whore".He stopped biting your shoulder and whispered, letting out a soft moan

"Don't call me that," you manage to mumble, your voice trembling with a mixture of fear and defiance, though you still push back into him, your back arching involuntarily making you press into his chest. "I-I can call you whatever I want when... when..." Your words falter as you struggle to find your voice, the pleasure taking over you. As he continues to pound into you.

But he cuts you off sharply, he pinched your side hard, causing you to whimper in pain. "Shut the fuck up," he commands, his voice harsh and threatening. "I'm tired of your mouth. Keep it up, and I'll find another way to shut you up."

His thrusts grew more erratic, his grip tightening as he abandoned any pretense of restraint, his small moans and grunts escaping him freely. "Shit, I'm gonna need Viagra or something to keep up with this pussy," he muttered, his words punctuated by the force of his pistoning movements. "Gosh... feels like you're gonna swallow me whole."

Suddenly, he stopped hitting that spot that had pleased you, and a sense of disappointment washed over you. As his thrusts became sloppy, you ceased meeting him halfway, hoping he would find that sweet spot again. But he didn't.

With a final, desperate thrust, he let out a guttural groan, his body shuddering as he reached his climax. As he withdrew, leaving you feeling empty and unsatisfied, a wave of sadness and confusion washed over you.

Your walls were slick, not with your arousal, but with his, milky ropes of his release making an obscene set of sounds as he pulled out of you. Still restrained, you watched silently as he got dressed and exited the van, leaving you feeling abandoned and exposed.

Minutes passed, the silence heavy and suffocating, before he returned with a few papers and items you recognized from your cabin. "Hey, those are mine!" you protested, your voice tinged with a mix of anger and desperation.

He ignored your protest, tossing the items into a bag without a second glance. "They're mine now," he replied coldly, his tone leaving no room for argument.

As he released you from your restraints, you felt a surge of defiance rising within you. "You can't just take everything!" you exclaimed, trying to assert some semblance of control over the situation.

But his gaze was icy as he looked at you, his expression unreadable. "Watch me," he muttered, before turning and striding away, leaving you feeling small and powerless once again.

"Get comfortable," he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the driver's seat, his voice devoid of any warmth or compassion.

You watched him go, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of your stomach. As you sat alone in the van, surrounded by the remnants of your life that he had taken from you, the reality of your situation began to sink in.

He wasn't just taking your belongings. He was taking you.

With a heavy heart, you realized that you were now at his mercy, trapped in a situation you couldn't escape. And as he started the engine and pulled away from the cabin, leaving everything you knew behind, he turned to you with a chilling smile.

"You're mine now," he said quietly, his words sending a shiver down your spine. "And you're not going anywhere."

#the last of us #joel miller fanfic #fanfic #tlou #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel tlou #sinfulmindjoyfulthoughts #joel miller smut #joel x reader #joel the last of us #joel miller fic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller tlou #joel miller the last of us #dark!joel x reader #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal #pedrohub #pedro pascal fic #pedro pascal fanfiction #raider joel #joel miller x virgin reader #dark joel miller #dark!joel miller #the last of us smut

[tuesdayafterafriday]

to take care of you

dark!joel miller x f!reader

joel takes you in after you arrive all alone in jackson. he gains your trust and promises to take care of you, but that ends up being more than you bargained for. (4.6k words)

tags: ddne, dark, non con, dub con, explicit content, no minors allowed, age gap, power dynamics, perverted joel, vulnerable reader, breeding kink, virginity loss, non consensual somnophila

You were all alone when you got to Jackson. Shivering, starving, and scared. You didn’t make many friends fast, staying locked up inside of your house most of the time. It was Ellie who got through to you first. You latched onto her, and she quickly became the person you trusted the most.

So, when she suggested that you move into the empty room in the house that she lived in with Joel, you were quick to accept. Joel was annoyed at first, the thought of a stranger moving in.

“Does she know that you’re barely around these days.”

Ellie had just rolled her eyes, not in the mood to dig into the complexities of their relationship at the moment. “She’s too scared to live on her own. I think she’d feel safe with you around.”

“Hasn’t she heard the rumors of my past?”

“I told her she can trust you.”

You didn’t have much of a presence around the house at first. Usually, Joel forgot you were even there, until he’d hear the creaking of steps upstairs or a stray cough. You started to spend more time in the common areas after a while, though, and Joel found himself happy to get to know you.

And the more he got to know, the more beautiful he thought you to be.

The first time you touched him was a few months after moving in. It was innocent, but it changed everything for him. He had explained to you that, on his recent trip to see the town’s seamstress, he ended up bartering for a new dress for you. It was relatively plain, but when he saw it he remembered the stray comment you had made about the heat of early summer, having only a few winter garments at your disposal.

Just seeing you in the dress would’ve been enough motivation, but the smile on your face when you saw it and realized it was yours was even better. You tried it on immediately, stepping out of your room to show Joel how it looked with a shy smile.

“You woulda been a model, if you’d been an adult back in the day.”

The comment made you smile even more, gaze still on the floor as you approached Joel and slowly pulled him into a hug. It wasn’t long, but it took Joel completely by surprise. The smell of you, the feeling of your body pressed up against his, the small noise you made against his ear. It was the first time he realized just how much he needed to fuck you.

He didn’t want to do anything too fast; he didn’t want to scare you away. But he needed you. He needed a release. So, he started when you weren’t home. He went into your bedroom and looked through your meager possessions, trying to come up with a way to get to you.

Instead, he ended up in your bed, pants pulled down to his ankles, rutting his hips against the firm mattress—precome surely leaking on the linen—while he sniffed your scent that lingered. Joel knew it was wrong to act like this, so desperate and out of control, like a feral animal who had just caught a whiff of a particularly strong pheromone.

But the thought of your body having been wrapped in these sheets only hours earlier turned him on. The thought of your body in general turned him on. He imagined you, soft and aching, underneath him. He wondered if your body would twitch as he pulled orgasm after orgasm out of you, thumb never leaving your increasingly overstimulated clit.

He would make you come so many times you’d forget your own name.

As he grasped at the sheets—hand finally beginning to stroke his cock in time with his hip movements—he found something in the sheets, near the end of the bed. He almost came right there at the sight of them: a plain light pink pair of panties.

He could tell they were dirty, still a little damp in the center and smelling of you. He knew he was really gone when, without even a second thought, he immediately brought the panties to his nose, sniffing in as much of your scent as he could get. Just like the kind of pervert he used to hear people joke about: the nasty old man panty-sniffer. That’s what he’d become.

But he was fine with pushing down his shame in favor for his insatiable arousal.

Now he could imagine what you’d look like when he’d yank down your jeans, your pretty little pussy only covered by a thin piece of pink material. He squeezed his balls roughly as he wondered if you had a matching bra, made by one of the seamstresses in town.

His thoughts only got dirtier, and soon enough he had flipped himself to be on his back again. He took a moment to spit in his palm again before returning it to his cock, enjoying the feeling of the slight wetness.

He wanted more than anything for it to be your saliva on his cock, and lots more of it. He wanted to see you on your knees for him, looking up at him with labored breaths, his cock inching further and further towards the back of your throat. He knew you’d be such a good girl, eager to take as much of him as you could.

But he wasn’t only interested in you if you were his good girl, though. He wanted to turn you bad, wanted to see you lose all your concerns about what was proper and just suck his cock like an absolute whore. He wanted to turn you into as sick and needy of an animal as he was.

It was that thought—the thought of what you would sound like when he finally lost control and let his cock hit the back of your throat with force, making you gag on his considerable length—that finally got him off. His shirt was pushed up a bit, and he came on the firm pudge of his stomach.

_________________________________________

Ellie helped you meet more people in the community, and you even ended up with some friends. Joel couldn’t help but feel jealous when she’d whisk you away with the promise of hanging out with people your own age. Deep down, he knew it was good for you.

He really saw the value of it one night, though, when he found you passed out on the sofa, clearly too inebriated to get yourself up the stairs and in your own bed. You were in a heavy sleep, arms sprawled above your head and your legs open, one foot planted on the ground and the other on the body of the sofa. He admired the sight of you in the dress, the way your breasts were squeezed by the tightness of the chest, the way your legs looked as the knee length hemline rode up, exposing the plush meat of your thighs.

As he palmed the bulge in his jeans, he decided he wasn’t going to fuck you tonight. He knelt down in front of your body, grabbing the hem of your dress to flip it open. You were wearing a pair of thin cotton panties, damp in the middle where they stretched over your cunt. He brought his face to your body, his big nose nestling between your covered folds and inhaling deeply. The scent of your arousal mixed with your sweat was intoxicating, and he had to fight himself to not go any further.

He pulled his cock out of his pants and began to stroke himself to the smell of you, just as he had in your bedroom. This time it was so much better, though. It was the real thing. Instead of just a discarded pair of panties on their own, he could see the curve of your mound, your lips covered in cotton, the way it clung to the curls of your pubic hair.

He couldn’t help himself. It was all too much. He gently pulled your panties to the side, exposing your cunt. He let out a strained groan at the sight of you before coming all over his own hand. He leaned forward and gave a small kiss to your labia before putting you back as he had found you, taking a moment to taste you on his lips.

He knew he should feel guilty, but he was too overwhelmed to manage it.

_________________________________________

It was several weeks later when he woke up to the sound of you screaming. He ran to your room, knowing just how to push on the handle to get the door open even when it was locked. You had stopped yelling by then. Instead, you cried into your hands.

“I’m sorry,” you began to repeat. “I just had a bad dream.”

Joel’s reasoning skills weren’t fully functioning. He felt awful seeing you in pain like that, and his own body was filled with adrenaline. That’s why he didn’t think to stop himself before offering you a spot in his bed.

“Or I could sleep in here on the floor… I know you don’t like to be alone, is all.”

You had stared at him in silence for nearly a minute, and Joel began to fear that he had severely miscalculated your level of trust in him.

Then, he saw a small smile.

“You’d do that for me?”

“Course.”

As you curled up under Joel’s blanket, you explained to him that you had always shared a bed with someone growing up. It felt wrong to sleep in one without someone else. Joel knew the kind of pain you were in after losing your family, your group.

“I’ll try and find a way to get over it,” you whispered. “I’m sorry for making you take care of me all the time.”

Joel’s heart broke at the sound of sadness in your voice, but his body surged with arousal at your acknowledgement of him taking care of you. He told you that he was happy to take care of you, that he’d help support you through this for as long as you needed.

“Seems like you’re carrying the grief in your body,” he told you, noticing the stiffness in your shoulders even as you lied in bed.

“What do you mean?”

He gestured for you to get up in a seated position and turn around on your side, facing the opposite direction from him. He only took a moment to admire your ass in your nightgown before placing his hands on your shoulders. You flinched at first, but he cooed at you as he held you in place.

“You can trust me, remember?”

You let out a nervous breath, and Joel began to rub your shoulders. The next sound you made was a small moan. You quickly apologized, and Joel grinned to himself.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. ‘S supposed to feel good.”

He kneaded your muscles while you sighed sweetly, your body moving gently against the bed. He wondered if the pleasure was spreading. He moved his hands down your back slightly, grasping your sides under your armpits and using his thumb to rub circles into your back muscles. He could tell you loved it.

Slowly, he moved his hands further and further to your front before eventually groping your breasts, thick fingers running past your pert nipples. You let out a strained moan before jerking your body away.

“J-Joel,” you whispered, breathless. “I don’t think I carry grief… there.”

Joel chuckled, hoping to help diffuse the tension. “I know, but it’s a good spot for relieving tension.”

You turned to look at him, and he could’ve gotten off just on the shy but aroused look on your face. Your skin felt warmer and warmer, and your mouth hung open slightly, tongue gently licking your plush lips.

The word “ripe” was stuck on Joel’s mind.

“You know I’d do anything to take care of you, right? Whatever you need.”

You stared at him with wide eyes before beginning to shake your head. “T-thank you for all the help, Joel, but I think I’ll just sleep in my own bed.”

As you began to push yourself off the mattress, Joel’s hand darted out and hooked your body in, his large hand stretching over your tummy and holding you gently in place.

“Listen… I know what everyone in town says about you, and I’m sure that can’t make it easy to feel at home here, but”

“What?” You turned to face him again, your demeanor shifting. “What do people say about me?”

Joel let out a sigh, shaking his head gently. “People just haven’t learned to trust you yet… think you’re a bit of a freeloader, is all.”

“I help out where I can…”

“I know, sweetheart, I know,” Joel cooed, using his hand to rub your side. “People said things about me when I first got here, too. Now they respect me, they listen to me. If I keep tellin’ ‘em that you’re good… they’ll believe it.”

Joel suppressed a smile as he watched tears begin to form in your eyes.

“You tell them that?”

“Of course.”

The night ended with you apologizing for trying to go back to your room. It was so sweet of you to offer me a spot here for the night, I shouldn’t have tried to say no. He waited until you were asleep to pull the straps of your nightgown down far enough to expose your breasts. He fisted his cock while he imagined coming all over your chest.

All over your face.

All over your cunt.

All over you.

_________________________________________

Nothing happened for a few days. Ellie came to visit, which helped take Joel’s mind off the situation completely until she brought you up while they were eating breakfast. She had made some confusing joke about the “real great” night you were sure to be having that day.

“What’s that ‘sposed to mean?”

Ellie just snickered, a trait she never gave up from childhood. “She’s going on a date with James.”

Joel felt his body tense up at the news, although he couldn’t feel surprised. You were a beautiful young woman, of course you’d be going on dates. It still filled him with a terrible sense of jealousy, an unearned sense of possessiveness.

“What’re the plans?” Joel asked, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.

“They’re going to ‘stargaze by the lake,’ if ya know what I mean,” Ellie replied as she shoveled down another mouthful of oatmeal.

Joel just gave her a funny face. “I do not know what ya mean. You and Dina used to love going down there to stargaze.”

Ellie’s smile immediately disappeared, a wince taking its place. “Well, uh… I’m not saying this is what Dina and I were doing down there… because, you know, we had a real passion for… the stars. But…” Ellie let out a groan and just spit it out already. “That’s where everyone goes to hook up.”

Joel made a disgusted face in light of this news, letting out a slight groan while he dropped his slice of bread.

“So that book on constellations I found for ya was just a part of some nasty little rouse?”

Instead of being too embarrassed, Ellie just laughed. “We did use that book! A lot.”

Joel let his disgruntled face begin to soften, but Ellie was quick to get the punchline in, already laughing at her own joke.

“We needed something to talk about afterwards.”

“You little shit,” Joel muttered, stifling his own laughter. “I think maybe you oughta just keep lying to me like you did when you were a kid, okay?”

His smile didn’t remain long, however, disappearing when he remembered that you would be down by the lake later that night, getting fucked by some guy who probably wasn’t even gonna get you off once.

“Ain’t she a little old for such juvenile tricks?”

Ellie shrugged. “She’s stuck living with an old man. Would you really prefer her bringing home some guy? And James’s family certainly wouldn’t appreciate him bringing her home for the night.”

Joel gave a noncommittal nod, pretending to no longer care even a little bit about you as he switched to a new topic of conversation. Ellie seemed none the wiser, happy for the change in pace.

_________________________________________

Joel told himself he was just going to keep an eye on you from a safe distance, make sure that the boy didn’t try any funny business. He was just going to hide behind some trees and ignore the sound of your moans.

That proved more to be more difficult than he had imagined, however. He stood there, peering around a big tree trunk to watch you lie on the ground as James ran his hands up and down your body, firmly placing one of your hands on his cock that was sticking out of his jeans.

He didn’t bother to touch your clit or your other less obvious erogenous zones; he just began to spread your legs, prodding his cock at your entrance. He doubted you’d even be wet for him… he wondered if James had even been considerate enough to slip on a condom.

But the sight of your exposed breasts in the moonlight and the little noises you made for him was enough to make him at least believe you were enjoying yourself.

You looked beautiful, now fully nude in the summer heat. James was busy clumsily pawing at your breasts while you rubbed your own clit. A part of Joel’s brain was ignited in anger as he watched the younger man line his bare cock up with your pussy. It was that part of his brain that he had to temper when he was in Jackson, only bringing it out when necessary while on patrol shifts or on supplies runs.

 It was Joel’s duty to protect you, as an older member of the community, as the father of your close friend. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself as he finally emerged from behind the tree and began to approach you and James.

“’scuse me,” Joel muttered, with a pointed tone that was meant to convey authority and disappointment. You were too busy to mind the tone, however, as you were both scared shitless, scurrying to cover yourselves up and act like you weren’t just getting ready to have sex.

“Don’t you know how dangerous it is to be out here this time of year? In the dark? Busiest time for bears.”

James—although clearly scared based on how fast he shoved his dick back in his pants—seemed perturbed by Joel’s interference with his plans.

“Then why are you out here?”

Joel just shrugged. “Tommy wanted me to keep an eye out for horny idiots and stop ‘em from becoming a bear’s dinner.”

James didn’t laugh, just jumping to his feet and reaching out for your hand.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that,” Joel muttered. “I’ll escort her home. Think you’ve done enough for tonight, champ.”

Joel looked back to James with a dark gaze, trying to impart the message that he wanted him to fuck off already.

James just rolled his eyes, clearly not up to trying to fight with a man like Joel, especially now that you had a vested interest in going home with him instead. He said goodnight to you without much grace or sweetness and limped off, probably still dealing with  a bit of an erection.

“Keep an eye out for bears, buddy!”

When Joel looked back down to you, he found you smiling at his comment.

“I-I’m really sorry,” you muttered, looking down at your lap nervously while you shifted around from underneath your blanket, probably trying to get your panties back on. “This is so embarrassing.”

“Only thing that’s embarrassin’ is your choice of company.”

You ignored the comment, but he could tell you were still uncomfortable by the entire situation. He figured you were probably too bashful about sex to have a frank discussion about it, and Joel knew how dangerous it was for a young person—especially a young woman—to try and figure out sexual intimacy with only vague ideas and generalities.

You needed his help, Joel realized. And he was already here to protect you—it wouldn’t make sense to just stop now, when you arguably needed him the most.

He kneeled down, staring at you closely while you continued to shift around under the blanket. You looked up at him in shame, shaking your head.

“Now, I told you I’d take care of you, but I don’t know if I’d be able to take care of you and some baby you let yourself get knocked up with because you weren’t bein’ careful enough.”

“I’m so sorry, Joel… I just…”

“There’s other ways to get men to like you. You don’t need to degrade yourself for the first little boy who shows you attention.”

“Joel, I…”

“This is certainly not the way to get people in town to trust you.”

“I’m sorry!”

Joel stopped, staring at your face which seemed shocked by your own outburst. Tears began to form in your eyes once again, and he wished it didn’t turn him on as much as it did.

“I was just… Joel, I was just so desperate.”

“For what?”

Your eyes left his, and you looked around with a wince. “For that… relief you were talking about. James was just the first guy who asked.”

Joel thought about taking you right there. He’d hold your arms down and clamp your mouth shut if he had to, as long as he could give you that relief that you were so desperate for. He cock was aching in his jeans just at the thought of it, of how your pussy would feel clamping down on him, how he’d stretch you open.

His grip got tighter around your arm, and he had to stop himself from hurting you.

“Get up. We’re goin’ home.”

_________________________________________

“I know you’re disappointed in me,” you whispered when you two finally got back to the privacy of the house, after a long silent walk.

“I’m not disappointed in you,” he replied sternly. “I’m hurt.”

You stared at him with a sad little look.

“Have I not given you everything? Have I not taken care of you without judgement?”

“You have… of course you have!”

“Then why would you go to some random, careless boy in your time of need.”

You let out a tiny huff, looking around the room in discomfort. “I just… I thought maybe you weren’t into that stuff anymore. You’re just so much older than me.”

It turned Joel on to hear you say it, but his blood burned at what you were insinuating.

“Think I’m just some old man with a limp dick?”

You seemed shocked at his language, beginning to slowly back away from him.

“After all I’ve done for you?”

“Joel, I’m sorry,” you whispered, taking a few more steps back. “Can we talk about this in the morning? I think you’re too upset now.”

He took a few long strides forward and grabbed your wrists before you could move, twisting your arms so you were unable to get away. He pulled your body flush against his, staring into your eyes intensely.

“Think I can’t fuck, huh? Trust me, baby: I’ve never met a pussy I couldn’t get off. Used to fuck little sluts like you… I’d pick ‘em up in bars or at parties. Fucked almost babysitter I ever hired, fucked a few of my buddy’s daughters.”

“Joel,” you whimpered, voice dripping with fear. “I’m sorry… I believe you.”

“Haven’t even gotten to tell you about all the pussy I’ve gotten since the outbreak. Fuck, there’s something about the end of the world that made girls like you hornier than ever. Can’t tell you how many girls I had coming on my cock, callin’ me daddy while they milked me dry.”

“Let me go,” you muttered, twisting your arms just to bring yourself more pain.

“The ones who were trying to fight how they felt were my favorites, though. There was just something about grabbing a bitch by her wrists and bending  her over and just destroying her. And lemme tell you, sweetheart. They always came.”

Joel tried to be gentle when he tied your hands together. He didn’t need you being all bruised up and covered in evidence. He stuffed your panties in your mouth to stop you from screaming. Finally, he threw you on his bed, face first. He quickly got on top of you, his meaty thighs spread over each side of your ass while he repositioned your face against the mattress and muttered directions.

“Quit your squirmin’, baby.”

He indulged himself in a few slaps of your ass, watching your flesh jiggle before spreading your legs and letting out a low whistle.

“Look at all that wetness coverin’ your cute little pussy.”

He shoved a thick finger inside, groaning as he explored your tight, wet hole. “You really were fuckin’ desperate for it, huh?”

He took a moment to taste you off his finger, groaning in approval before working another finger in, roughly stretching you open.

“Don’t know why you’re resistin’ so much. Gonna give you better cock than that fucker James coulda.”

You made lots of noise, but it was all muffled by the gag. Drool dripped out of your mouth and down your chin, the sight of which turned Joel on even more.

“I told you, baby. I take care of you.”

With that, he lined his cock up at your entrance and pushed his reddened, leaking cock inside.  He moaned as he forced himself deeper and deeper into you, grateful for how wet you were.

“Gonna make you take all of it, baby. Even if it hurts. You gotta learn your place here.”

You continued to make noise, squirming around underneath him in a way that only made his cock feel better.

“Aww, you want more? That what you’re trying to tell me?”

He began to pull his cock out, rubbing the tip against your swollen labia for a moment before slamming it back in, eliciting a sharp yell from behind the gag.

Joel continued to fuck you, hands gripping at your shoulders. He leaned in closer, beginning to mutter in your ear.

“There’s a cost to the comfort of Jackson, sweetheart.”

He grabbed the back of your head and twisted your neck around so that he could see more of your face. Tears streamed down your face, mixing with the drool on your chin.

“Keep cryin’, baby. I can feel how much you love this.”

He reached down to grope at your breasts, sharply pinching your nipples.

“Gonna learn to take what I give ya.”

Your cunt squeezed him tightly, and he thought you were close.

“Imagine what everyone in town will say when you end up pregnant, redeemed by kind old Mr. Miller helping to raise some crude man’s baby.”

He imagined you swollen with a baby, at your most vulnerable and needy. He imagined how much it’d turn him on to milk your breasts while he remembered how he knocked you up.

That was the thought that finally got him off. He groaned as he came inside of you, twisting your hair up in his hands and pulling your head back. It’d been too long since he’d come inside of a pretty little thing like you, and he couldn’t help but savor the moment when he pulled his softening cock out and watched a bit of his come cover your lips/

“Sorry you didn’t get off yet, sweetie,” Joel muttered as he watched your hole desperately contract around nothing. “But we’ve got plenty of time for that.”

#dark!joel miller #joel miller x reader #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel #tw dub con #tw noncon #cw noncon #cw dubcon #ddne #dead dove do not eat

[joelsgreys]

conflicted

Raider! Joel Miller x Female Reader

summary: Your captor gives you a bath. You have some conflicting feelings when he touches you.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. RAIDER ERA. DARK!JOEL. DUBCON. also tagging elements of NONCON just to be on the safe side. UNSPECIFIED AGE GAP (reader is in her 20’s and Joel is 50). READER HAS NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION. mentions of Joel’s group murdering reader’s group, Joel killed her father, mention of blood, Joel pretty much kidnaps reader and keeps her as his own. pet names (baby, babygirl, honey, pretty girl, little girl), daddy kink, very minimal editing.

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS.

if this isn’t your thing, that’s fine, just scroll on by.

word count: <1k

a/n: this is a bit less than a blurb. a blurb of a blurb. a blurbette, if you will. i shelled it out in like less than an hour. to me it is part of the captive universe, but can be read as a standalone! please be advised that this is not fleshed out at all, i just felt like writing something that didn’t require too much brain power.

He pours one last pail of hot water into the tub.

“How’s the water?” he asks you.

His voice is so deep. Rich, like molasses. 

It’s also laced with a southern accent, you’d noticed.

Aware he’s still waiting for an answer, you shrug.

He tries again. “S’not too hot, is it?”

He had ordered one of the women in the group to start a fire and boil water collected from the stream they had stumbled upon just a mile south of the small cottage.

“Seriously, Joel?” Angela had glared at him. “I am not a fucking maid.” Hands planted on her hips, she foolishly added, “If I’m gonna haul and boil water for a bath, it’s gonna be for me, alright? Not for that little fucking brat of yours.”

His switchblade had gone straight to her throat.

“Fuckin’ say that again,” Joel hissed, the sharp edge of the blade lightly slicing into her flesh. “Call her that one more time and see what fuckin’ happens.”

She apologized and then got to work, completing the task within a couple of hours.

Finally, you answer his question.

“Water’s fine,” you mumble. It’s hot, but not scalding.

“Good.”

Joel kneels beside the tub.

Flinching, you hunch over and pull your legs up against your chest.

It doesn’t matter. He’s already seen you naked.

He’s the one who had undressed you, after all.

Dipping a washcloth into the water, Joel instructs, “Sit up straight, honey.”

Honey.

The pet name makes you feel sick to your stomach.

You’re not his honey. You’re his prisoner.

He frowns, the creases between his brows deepening.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, pretty girl.”

Obediently, you nod and the water sloshes around you as do what he says.

You saw what he was capable of. You’re terrified of him.

With a satisfied hum, he begins washing you.

It had been three days since the massacre. Joel gently scrubs away the crimson caked onto your skin and the color of the water turns to rust. You don’t know whose blood you’ve been wearing—could it be your father’s?

He had been standing in front of you when his life was taken by the very same man that knelt beside you. Had his blood splattered on you? Was it being cleaned off by the same man who had so violently spilled it?

Your stomach lurches at the thought.

He had been trying to protect you during the ambush.

Your father had been trying to fucking protect you.

And Joel Miller had killed him.

He had killed him just to get to you.

Joel runs the washcloth down your arm, his dark gaze dragging over every inch of your body. “Such a pretty, pretty little girl,” he murmurs. Dropping the washcloth into the water, he gently cups one of your breasts in his large hand. He sweeps his thumb over your nipple and lightly teases the pebbled flesh, his digit circling it until it becomes a stiff peak.

Your eyes flutter closed and you inhale sharply.

There’s a strange feeling in your lower belly.

Strange because it’s not entirely unpleasant.

He trails his hand lower, raking over your tummy.

Lower.

Lower.

Lower.

He rests his palm over the mound of your pussy.

Gasping, your thighs clench together.

You’d like to think it’s to keep him out, to keep him from violating you further, but the burning pressure building in between your hips seems to be saying otherwise.

Horrified, you squeeze your thighs even tighter.

No. Don’t let him in.

But what if your resistance led him to force his way in?

You shudder, unable to decide which would be worse.

Joel leans forward over the bathtub, pressing his lips to your temple. “Don’t fight it, honey. S’okay that it feels good,” he mumbles against your skin. “It’s s’pposed to feel good when I touch you, baby.”

No, it’s fucking not!

Bowing your head, quietly begin to sob.

He wraps his arms around you. “Don’t cry, babygirl,” he soothes. “Don’t cry. Daddy’s gonna take real good care of you. I promise I’ll always take good care of you.”

His vow makes you cry even harder.

divider credit @saradika 🤍

#tw dubcon #tw dubious consent #tw noncon #tw dark fic #raider!joel #raider!joel miller #dark!joel miller #dark!joel x reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x afab!reader #joel miller blurb #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller drabble #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

[auteurdelabre]

Code Broken (Series) dark!Joel Miller x f!reader

rating: explicit, 18+ mdni

summary: "You broke into my house," Joel says moving his gaze from your eyes back down to your mouth as his wide hand grazes his belt buckle. "Moved my shit around. Least you could do is be polite."

You only wanted to pull a silly prank on your neighbor, Joel. Who could have seen it ending up like this?

[AU where Joel Miller ends up in Jackson City by himself.]

warnings/tags: Extremely dubious consent, oral sex [m receiving], rough oral sex, face-fucking, Come shot, Joel is bad at feelings, Mean Joel, Dirty Talk  

word count:  6.9k

a/n: Y'all, this whole series is pretty depraved (from my perspective) and much darker than my normal stuff. I wanted it as a challenge and I had a lot of fun doing the series, there's 5 parts so I hope you enjoy it. Comments and the like really make my day. xx

masterlist

=========================================

Chapter 1: Go your Own Way

Joel Miller is the most serious man you've ever seen. The rigidity of his spine when he walks, the dark eyes always darting around in stormy irritation. People still greet him when he goes into the center of town, and he nods politely and makes small talk. But he never looks anything other than bothered.

He terrifies you. 

You know his name only because of your friends in the small community of Jackson City. His brother is Tommy, a cheerful man married to Maria with a baby on the way. Tommy is the one that welcomed you into this settlement years ago, the one that settled you into the modest home you now live in on the end of Rancher Street. Larger homes buttress you on either side and yours is dwarfed in comparison but you don’t care. You still can’t believe you have your own house.  Your own bed. Your own everything.

You watched the survivors come from all over the globe, watched as the community swelled in number and joy over the years. It was like a slice of heaven in and amongst a hellish landscape of the undead.

And then Joel Miller had entered and everything for you changed.

Tommy and Joel couldn't be more different. Tommy is sweet and polite and likes to ask after people to make sure they're okay. He’s stoic and his dark eyes light up when he laughs or makes a joke.

Joel keeps to himself. He doesn't talk to many people. He answers people with a serious tone in his drawl. He likes horses and he likes music, that's as much as you can tell about what he likes because he rarely does anything else.  

When he'd moved into Jackson City he'd been given the home next to yours. Yours was a simple one bedroom, meant for singles, his was a spanning home with a garage. You rarely saw him outside unless he was headed for the stables or communal meals. 

Sometimes on nights your window was open to let in the night breeze you heard him playing his guitar in his place. On rare occasions he sang, his voice rasping and mournful under the chords. It made your chest tight and your eyes prick with tears. It made you remember a youth you’d rather forget.

It was actually the music that had inspired your first attempt at an introduction. 

You'd been out planting in your garden when you heard the front door to his place creak open. You walked casually over to the fence that separated your properties to see him sitting on the front stoop of his place, a pale blue coffee mug in one hand. 

He was looking into the middle distance, his profile strong. You'd leaned on the fence, hoping to catch his attention. As a man always on alert he had, his dark eyes sliding over to you as you greeted him. 

"You play really well," you told him enthusiastically, recalling the tune you heard him play late into the night the evening prior. "Was that Fleetwood Mac you were singing yesterday?"

Joel hadn't replied. In fact he'd given you the coldest look you'd ever received, stood up and gone back into his house. You'd stood there looking after him in shock for several moments until going back to your gardening. 

When you'd told your friend Trish what happened that following Tuesday during your weekly "book club" (drinking poorly made wine and playing cards) she'd laughed in that annoying way of hers and told you to stop being so sensitive.

Trish told you that Joel Miller was rude to everyone. That the only reason people put up with it was because his brother was Tommy and because Joel himself was one of the few bachelors in the community.  Then she’d gotten a soft look in her eyes and sighed that Joel was gorgeous in that sullen, quiet way that made older men mysterious. You hadn’t understood that, having never found poor humor and a bad attitude attractive.

You’d decided it had been a one-off. Maybe Joel was just tired that morning. You tried waving to him if you saw him in the street, one hand usually on the reigns of a horse tugging it gently behind him. He never returned the gesture. 

It came to a head when you and Trish had been to a movie night in the square some months later, the summer heat always driving you indoors where it was cooler. They were playing an old science fiction feature and finding seats was near impossible. It was always like this when a popular film was showing. The popcorn lay in big tubs and patrons brought bowls to scoop the kernels into.

The children were hunched in front of the large white blanket that acted as a screen chatting animatedly. Your co-workers waved, observing how busy it was as you scanned the space, seeing an empty chair in the middle row near the back. Trish told you to grab it and that she'd search for another free one. 

You'd been so intent on taking the chair that you didn't even realize who was seated next to you until you plopped down, brushing arms with the bare forearm next to you. 

You noticed his jeans first, the way they seemed molded to his muscular thighs. Then his forearms, his plaid shirt rolled to the elbows and then finally up his neck to his profile, the full lips, the hawkish nose and the dark eyes that you could clearly see were trying to ignore your presence.

"Hello neighbor," you'd chirped trying not to sound as nervous as you felt. You'd watched as he glanced out the corner of his eyes at you, nodding briefly. Emboldened by this you motioned towards the large white sheet.

“You a big fan of Charlton Heston?”

He’d given a short nod, a grunt of a reply. This had felt like such progress to you and you relaxed a bit into the seat. You saw Trish heading your way with popcorn in hand and your knee bumped into Joel’s as you swivelled in your chair, angling your neck to see if there were any other free seats. 

"Do you see any other empty seats? My friend Trish-"

He gave you one sharp look, scanning your body from top to bottom before rolling his eyes and jerking from his seat. Your face went bright red as he sidled past you just as Trish approached with popcorn.  

"What was that?" Trish asked, looking after his frame quickly disappearing down the street. You'd shrugged, embarrassment overtaking you.

But the message was clear: Joel Miller can't stand you. 

You suppose after that is when you decided on payback. Something innocent, really, silly in hindsight. Something that would irritate him on a daily basis. 

The plan was to hide his guitar somewhere within his home. Specifically, in the back of his under his kitchen sink... then the bathtub ... then under his bed. 

It's immature, especially at your age. But you'd missed out on so much life during those twenty years of running and hiding that this felt fun.

You could imagine him going insane trying to find it. Shouting angrily when he realized it was misplaced only to find it popping up in random places in his home.

It was an innocuous prank, borne out of boredom and humiliation. And if Joel caught on or accused you and brought you before the sheriff, what could they do? The guitar never left his house. How could it be stealing?

It had seemed like the perfect plan.  

But now as you pull the black hooded jacket over dark jeans and look into the night sky this evening, you're wondering if this was really is the best idea. 

You've gotten away with it twice before. Once to hide the guitar in his shower. Once under his kitchen sink. 

You do this once a month on one of the evenings that everyone is at the movies. After your last experience with Joel, when you started to internally begin cataloguing his movements, you'd noticed that Joel attends every single one. His only habitual act that you can count on. 

His visits with Tommy are regular but never scheduled, sometimes they go to the bar, sometimes at Joel's and you assume, sometimes at Tommy's. He's not a big joiner, not found during game nights at the canteen. He rides, that much you've seen and know. He likes to be around the animals. 

There’s not much to do in the evenings in Jackson City, and that usually rests easily on the community. After so much violence it’s nice to have quiet, peaceful nights. But the movie nights provide popular and give you enough time to act, a good hour and a half minimum. You could push it to two hours but that seems foolish. It's a perfect time because it's where your neighbors are usually spending their time as well. 

The first time you'd navigated from your roof to his, you'd been shocked at how easy it was. Your homes were close together and jumping onto his shingles was nothing more than a gentle leap in the darkness. 

The window to his hallway was unlatched, just as yours was, just as most everyone's was. You lived on a glorified compound; no one felt the need to lock up the upper floor windows. 

You'd squeezed in, falling gracelessly onto the wood floor. You'd worked quickly, finding the guitar beside the fireplace downstairs and gently placing it into Joel's shower half leaning against the tile. 

Then you'd run back, closing the window after you, jumping back onto your roof and throwing yourself back into your bedroom with your heart in your throat. You hadn’t taken time to catch your breath before you'd rushed down your own steps and run to the movies, coming in the back to make it seem like you'd always been there, standing near the far corner with your heart racing, trying not to giggle. 

When the lights flickered on and everyone rose to leave you made sure that Joel saw you, brushing past him intentionally. You had to have an alibi. He needed to see that you’d been here the whole night, just as he had.  

"Excuse me," you'd said airily, not even put off by the silence of his reply when you ‘bumped’ into him. 

The second time in his place you were finding an appropriate hiding spot for his guitar when you'd noticed other things about him. Like the detailed wood carvings that lined the mantle over the fireplace. The paintings of landscapes filled with animals hung around the sparsely decorated home. 

You’d taken time to wander around the home, noticing the records, the other guitars hung on the wall. You’d seen the reading glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa and the woodworking space in the garage. It had been thrilling seeing this interior life, knowing that the impenetrable Joel Miller wore reading glasses and carved wood figurines. There was something beautiful in those small pieces of him.

But tonight as you stand looking at yourself in your mirror you wonder if maybe that's enough. You've had your fun. You've tricked him twice; you've snooped in his home. That's enough. 

That should be enough.

But you haven’t seen his bedroom yet. Something holds you back every single time you consider it. You’ve walked by that closed door twice, knowing that solving the mystery of Joel Miller could be even closer if you just walked over the threshold.

You’re broken from these thoughts when you hear his front door open. You creep to your bedroom window, hiding in the shadows to see his tall frame pulling his jacket on, locking his front door and heading to the center of town for the film. His boots crunch the leaves underfoot as he moves and when he turns the corner you know it's time to move. 

You traverse across your roof silently, cloaked in the darkness of the night. The neighborhood is mercifully quiet and you take a moment to appreciate the view. Your thankful for the still of the evening, the quiet and you glance up to see the stars dotting the sky. 

Then you’re back focusing, leaping onto Joel's roof and hurriedly moving inside. You pass the familiar sights of his closed bedroom door, the creaking wood hallway leading to bathroom. The single red toothbrush that sits sadly in a fogged water glass. You jog quickly downstairs to retrieve the guitar, always in its stand by the fireplace. 

It gleams in the moonlight streaming through the window, as if it’s begging you to grab it, to hide it, to play a game. You take it into your hands, always sure to be careful with it. Pulling  a prank on him is one thing, willful destruction quite another.

It's your last time doing this, you've decided. So where should you hide it?

The answer comes to you almost immediately - his bedroom. The only room of his house you haven't snooped yet. The only space of his that you haven’t conquered. Excited tingles go through you as you race back up the creaking step to his bedroom, pushing the door open without ceremony before your nerves overtake you. 

It's a simple box shaped room, larger but the exactly the same shape as yours, which is exactly the same as the many homes that line these streets. Joel's is much less inviting than yours though. 

He has a bed near the window, tan sheets and blue coverlet. The bed is hastily made, as if he'd been in a rush to leave. There is a small nightstand next to his bed holding a pile of books.  On one wall is a well built shelf holding a myriad of records, all ones you've heard him play and on the table below it is the record player. 

You observe that his closet doors are half open and you pull them smoothly apart, your gaze going hungrily over the contents inside. You’re  amazed at how neat and organized it is. Shirts and jackets are hung, hats on shelves, belts strung on hooks.

The familiar green plaid is hanging there dead center, reminding you of that embarrassment at the movies. Despite this your fingers go to the fabric and you find it soft with use and age. Without thinking you dip your face forward, dragging the fabric to your nose and you inhale. It smells like him, or how you imagine he smells. Like the outdoors and fresh laundry and warm cologne. Probably the cologne you saw in his bathroom during your last adventure. 

You take the smooth neck of the guitar and place it gently in the far side of the closet floor, next to what looks like a beat-up tan backpack. You close the closet doors with a smile of self satisfaction, imagining what his reaction will be.

You've never actually seen Joel get upset by these pranks but one day working on your garden you did hear him complaining to Tommy over coffee that he must be getting old because he can’t remember where I put my fucking guitar.

You'd giggled yourself silly at that, trying your best not to be heard as you moved the soil under your gloves. It had tickled you immensely to know that your small inconvenience was upsetting him. You felt vindicated for the way he had treated you.

You stand in the center of his bedroom and your eyes drift back to that pile of books and you find yourself curious about what he reads. You traces the spines with your forefinger and your gaze and you're shocked when you find classics by Jane Austen and books on astronomy. You'd expected worn paperbacks of cowboys or travel. 

You notice that behind this stack of books there's a framed photo of a smiling Joel and a sweet faced little girl, obviously his daughter at what looks like a carnival. You can see a waving Tommy in the distance. You’re shocked at how different Joel looks when he smiles, his dark eyes crinkling authentically, his smile broad and his face boyish. Perhaps he is sort of attractive, in a brooding way.  

You notice the yellow of age in the corner of the photograph and the realization that the photo is over twenty years old. When you look closer you can see Joel is younger, his hair and beard not threaded with grey. 

Knowing what that means in this dark world of carnage is what solidifies the realization that you've overstepped. 

You need to leave. Fuck the prank. Fuck harassing a guy who clearly has very good reason to not like people. You were so quick to judge, so fast to make it about you when maybe, just maybe, he was just a loner who never got over the loss of his kid. 

You even think about taking the guitar back to its place by the fire when you hear the distant jingle of keys hitting the lock to the front door. 

What the fuck? He was supposed to be gone at least another hour!

Your heart sinks when you hear him enter his home, tossing the keys onto the kitchen table and moving quickly to the stairs.

Fuck. 

Now his footsteps are on the creaking staircase coming your way. If you run for the window in the hallway he'll see you through the gaps in the banister. If you hide under the bed you'll be easily seen. 

Panic overtakes you and you do the only thing you can think of and dash into the closet, sure to avoid hitting the guitar with your leg. You close the doors, leaving them open just a hair, just as he had.

You don’t want to arouse suspicion. You'll just stay here a little bit. Wait until he goes back downstairs and then try to sneak back out the window. 

"The fuck?"

You hear Joel on the landing and now you realize your fatal mistake when he murmurs something else to himself and you hear the heavy sound of the window being closed.

You left the fucking window open. 

He knows someone is inside. 

You cover your mouth, muffling the shallow pants of terror that go through you when Joel enters the bedroom. Through the slits between the slightly parted closet doors you can just make him out.  He doesn’t turn on the light in the bedroom, so everything is still bathed in a blanket of darkness tinged blue from the moon’s glow.  

He’s wearing a flannel, this one tighter around the shoulder, emphasizing the muscles of his back and broad expanse of his upper body. He looks suspiciously around, his face stoic like someone on a deadly mission.

He walks past the closet, his body strong and his movement’s solid in a way that intimidates you. If he wanted he could snap you in half and not break a sweat. He scans the room before slowly dropping to his knees beside the bed, craning his head to see underneath. 

When he sees it's clear he stands again and moves out of your view.

You tilt your head, trying to listen for his footfalls but hear nothing but silence. Did he go downstairs? You figure he's gone to check out the other rooms when the closet doors fly open revealing you to him.

Joel is there, his hands on either door as he looks down at your hooded frame hunched in the corner. 

"I fucking knew it."

He reaches in and pulls you out of the closet by the arm of your jacket but you stumble out, wrenching out of his grip enough to run into the hallway, your heart pounding. 

The window is closed. It'll take too long to open. Your best bet is to run downstairs and out the front door. You think since you're hood is still on he hasn't seen your face properly and there is a chance to make an escape.

You move swiftly down the hallway, your eyes on the nearing stairs but he's immediately there, gripping you by the back of your jacket and tugging harshly. You fall back into his arms before he’s whirled you around to face him.  

You give a sharp yelp when he slams you against the nearest wall, his hand around your throat pinning you there. 

"Who the fuck are you?" 

His voice is loud and echoes in the barren hallway. He sounds furious, not that you're shocked. If you'd come home to a stranger hiding in your closet you likely wouldn't be elated either. You try to hide your face in the hood of your jacket, panic making you feel cold all over. If you could just-

His large hand comes to rip the hood of your head, taking with it a few loose strands of your hair. You give a hiss of pain as your scalp tingles. 

You're caught. 

Joel's stares down at you with fury in those dark eyes of his that fades abruptly when he recognizes you.  "You live next door."

He still has you loosely pinned to the wall by the throat, but now he drops his hand, gliding it down your collar before pulling it from your body. He smooths his palm over his wavy hair, not out of nerves but more out of disbelief at seeing you of all people in his home.

"Did I hurt you?"

You stare up at him in shock. You've broken into his house and he's the one asking if you're hurt?  You shake your head. The slam of your back against the wall had shocked you more than anything. He looks confused, his eyes narrowing on your face. 

"How'd you get in my house? Why are you here?"

You're both breathing heavily and you can only hope he doesn't see the fear in your eyes.

"I'm sorry," you sputter instead of answering him. "Just a joke, was just-"

"How did you get into my house?" He repeats though this time his voice isn't as hard, more curious.  

"I j-just climbed in the window," you explain shakily pointing to the window at the end of the hall. "My roof is close enough to yours that..."

You trail off, not wanting to incriminate yourself further. He's so close to you that you can feel his warm breath falling over your cheeks. 

"I've never stolen anything," you assure him just in case that's what's really upsetting him. "Never touched any of your stuff except your guitar. Just hid it a few times and I was really careful with it."

"Why were you doin' that?'

"It was just a joke," you say again weakly, though now under his severe eye line you can't understand why at one time you thought it was so amusing. 

He's not responding, not replying, just staring at you with that inscrutable gaze. There is a flutter of panic starting in your belly, the realization that no one knows you’re trapped between Joel Miller and the wall. The knowledge that despite a few interactions, he remains a mystery.

"I should get back home," you whisper, trying to sidle off to the left. "My boyfriend is waiting for m-"

His palm comes to lay flat against the wall just next to you, boxing you in. Its dark in the hallway, but the moon hits you both, silhouetting you and showing you Joel’s expressive eyes.  

"You live alone," Joel says with a sigh, as if your lie has disappointed him. "Have for as long as I've been here. Only company you get at your place is on Tuesday nights with that gal of yours."

You gape up at Joel, shocked at how accurate he is. Your brows furrow in confusion. "How do you know that?" 

"Same reason you know I go to the movies every other week."

He's been watching you. 

Just as you've been watching him. And while you know why you've been following his schedule, noting his arrivals and departures you can't understand why he would be doing the same for you. He just keeps staring at you in that intense way of his that makes you feel warm and tingly all over. 

"My friend Trish-"

"No one knows you're here," Joel murmurs, his eyes moving to your mouth and then back to your eyes. His voice is so low, so velvety, so soothing despite the inherent menace in the sentence.

You swallow thickly, the sensation of fear slowly curving the length of your spine. You’re suddenly so aware about how little you know of Joel Miller. For all you know he could be a serial killer. 

But that doesn't fit with how he's studying your face. He looks more open, even bordering on amused. But that can't be right, he can't stand you and now he knows you've broken into his house on more than one occasion.  

"Had a feeling someone was fucking with me,' Joel observes evenly. "S'why I turned around tonight. Realized the guitar thing only happens when I'm out at the movies."

You remain silent, feeling so stupid. Why had you needed to keep going? Why didn't you just go with your gut instinct and stay home?

"I’ll go," you croak, hoping that Joel will take pity on you and just let you leave. Joel's face remains placid, his hand going to rest where your neck meets your shoulder, stopping you from leaving. 

"You broke into my house," Joel says moving his eyes from your eyes back down to your mouth. "Moved my shit around. Least you could do is be polite."

Polite? What is that supposed to mean? 

The meaning becomes quite obvious when you feel his heavy hand on your shoulder begin to press, moving you back to slide down the wall until you're on your knees between he and it. The wood floor bites into your denim clad knees, but you remain still.  

His eyes stay on your face as realization dawn's on you. His fingertips are ghosting over your shoulder and you watch as his free hand goes to his jeans, undoing the button and bringing down the zipper. You can see his pale boxers underneath and watch his hand flexing. 

Your eyes dart back up to his face, seeing the way he towers over you, his breathing elevated only slightly and his eyes fixed on yours. 

Why aren't you running?

He reaches and grips your wrist in his fingers. You watch almost detached as he opens your hand with his own and slides it under the waistband of his boxers. 

Why aren't you screaming?

His stomach is warm and taut, strangely smooth for a man of his vocation. You hesitate before his hand is forcing yours to continue, wrapping it tightly around his hard cock. You hold in a gasp as your palm hits it, instinctively curling. 

"Like that," he murmurs gently. 

He's warm and thick and under your exploratory fingers you can feel him twitch which excites as well as terrifies you.  He hisses through his teeth softly as you begin to squeeze, your eyes focused on his face. His eyes never leaving yours, the full mouth dropping open as he groans. 

You continue slowly, feeling the ridge of his shaft, the pulsing heat of that iron under velvety skin. He has his palm flat on the wall above your head, his forehead moves to rest in the crook of his arm as he gently shifts his hips.

You stare up at him from your spot kneeling on the floor, still in disbelief that this is happening. Usually just the sight of him walking down the same street as you is enough to send you bolting in the other direction. 

But now his gaze is soft and half lidded. His mouth isn't curled into a sneer or scowl. Joel Miller is much less intimidating when he's leaning into your stroking hand.

Then with a soft grunt he bats your hand away and brings himself out of his boxers. You hide a sigh at the sight of his broad hand curling around his thick cock. You hadn’t expected beauty in him, a softness of movement inside his rigid edges.  

He remains standing there unmoving and watches you stare, breathing shallowly as you drink him in. You think he must like it because you can see droplets of pre-cum gathering on the tip. It's obvious what he wants. 

Your heart gallops. "I don't-"

"'Course I could just go down to the sheriff and see what they make of this break in," Joel interrupts tightly. "Whatever you'd prefer."

It's blackmail, plain and simple. And considering how the threat of being tossed into the wild with the ravenous clickers is always an option when it comes to the sheriff, you know your choices are limited. 

His large hand has come to slip over the head of his cock, his hips moving to press into his fingers slowly. You seriously consider your chance of survival outside these walls survival when Joel tilts his head slightly, a small smirk playing on his lips. 

"I think you want it," he croons, his hand continuing to stroke himself shallowly. "Think you've wanted my cock for a while now, pretty eyes. Just been afraid to ask for it."

You frown, protestations dying on your lips as you consider his words. Had a small part of you been wondering what lay beneath your neighbors rough exterior? Was that why you had been so determined to engage with him in the first place? 

Wait, did he call you pretty eyes? 

A steady thrum starts between your legs at that, your knees pressing into the wood floor harshly. You feel too warm in your jacket, but you don't dare move. You feel like a trapped animal trying to outwit an apex predator. 

"Just a taste," Joel suggests when you don't reply, his hand moving from his cock to cup your cheek. You feel your lips parting subconsciously to take in a sharp breath as you regard him twitching inches from your mouth. 

Fuck why are you even considering this? You should be screaming, running away, not on your knees and looking at Joel's hard cock with what feels like a burgeoning anticipation. 

No. You're not doing this. It's fucking degrading. You barely know Joel Miller and this is- Your eyes fly open when his hand comes to grip your chin. His eyes are heavy lidded with lust, the pupils blown wide. 

"Open up," he commands huskily.  

When you don't immediately acquiesce you feel his thumb drag over your lower lip, curling over your bottom teeth and urging your mouth to open for him. 

After a moment of consideration your jaw goes slack and you feel your heart leap when Joel gives you a ghost of a smile. There is a brief shadow and you're almost convicted you saw a dimple in his right cheek. 

You don't have time to consider this because he's taken his cock in his hand again, stroking the base languidly.

"Mouth open. Tongue out." 

You hesitate, wondering how far this is all going to go. He's not actually going to go through with this, is he? You open your mouth a bit, your breathing coming out in hurried puffs. The amusement has fled from his features and he narrows those dark eyes of his on you

"Tongue. Out." 

The words are clipped and offer no room for negotiation. With a quiver that goes through your core, you do as instructed, slowly inching your tongue out of your mouth and letting it hang over your lower lip. 

He moves slowly, but you're still shocked when his hips shift forward. You turn your head at the last minute, panic overtaking you. Joel gives a grunt and you feel the warmth of his cock pressing against your cheek having just narrowly missed your mouth. 

He growls in frustration, his hand coming to grip the back of your head as he drags his cock along your cheek. You feel the pre-cum smearing along your skin to the corner of your mouth like some debauched trail of pleasure but you seal your mouth closed, a small form of rebellion. 

"Don't make me ask again."

His voice is low and dangerous. If it hadn't been so intimidating you might have pointed out that he hadn't asked for anything, just demanded. But as it is you’re caught in his home, his hand is wrapped in your hair and he doesn’t look like he’s fucking around.

You tilt your jaw and again stick out your tongue. With cock still in hand, he taps the weeping head onto your flattened tongue before letting it rest there, heavy and pulsing. The salty flavor of him explodes on your tongue, the ridges of his cock pronounced on your sensitive tongue. 

Your eyes crack open and move up the length of his body, noting that Joel's breathing picks up when your eyes meet his again. 

Without ceremony he slips past your lips, tensing only when you let out a small cry of surprise. When you offer no other protestations his cock inches further into the slick heat of your mouth. He gives a small shudder, his head tilting back and exposing the column of his neck.

Your eyes shutter closed, your mouth working around him, confused as to why you're not fighting this more.

"You deserve this," he says through slow exhales, his hand bracing on the wall behind you. His eyes are closed so you're not sure if he's talking to you or to himself. 

His hips snap forward and you whimper, feeling him inch closer to the back of your throat. One of his hands moves down to stroke your hair as he withdraws, his slick cock dragging against your lower lip. You exhale through your nose, catching your breath as you look up at him. 

He's breathing heavily, his mouth parted ever so slightly. 

"You can take it all," he tells you plainly.

And without another word he's thrust himself back fully into your mouth. So deep that your nose brushes against the wiry hairs at the base of his cock. You feel him hit the back of your throat and it takes everything not to gag or pull back. You have a feeling if you did he'd stop. 

But you want to continue. You want to hear what other noises Joel Miller makes when he gets his cock sucked. 

Does he do this often? Instruct women like he's done to you this evening? Fuck their mouths? The thought overruns your senses, imagining Joel in the throes of orgasm. Imagining that its you doing it to him. Your tongue swirls on the underside of him and you're rewarded with a shallow gasp.

Joel groans, watching your bob your head along his shaft. His hands are on either side of your jaw, guiding you along his slick member. 

"I just know this is makin' you wet," Joel grunts as his hips continue to thrust forward. "Me fucking this sweet mouth of yours." 

While you wish you could deny it, he's completely right. You are shocked at how wet you are. You can feel it there, pooling between your legs as you suck him.

His movements increase in tempo, the motions are abrupt and you search for purchase anywhere. Your hands go to the bottom of his t-shirt, gripping it as you urge him to bury himself completely in your mouth. 

He growls as he begins to fuck your throat hard, so hard your head jerks back and presses into the wall behind you. He pins your head there and shoves his cock deeper into your throat, giving sharp moans as you whimper and writhe, knowing you can't escape. For a moment all you can feel and see is Joel's cock, slick with your saliva sliding between your lips over and over again. After a few guttural grunts and thrusts his movements slow and he lets his cock simply pulse there, your lips straining to wrap around it.

"Show me those pretty eyes," he murmurs. He doesn't need to ask you twice, you lift your gaze up the length of him, hollowing your cheeks. When your eyes finally meet Joel's you hear a sharp inhale from him. 

"You have no idea how fucking gorgeous you look right now," he says, his teeth clenching as you continue to suck him. "F-fuck, those eyes staring up at me.. Your mouth so... So full of my cock... You like it don't you? Having my cock fill your sweet mouth?"

You make a low humming noise of approval. Those words, those filthy, delicious words wrap around your insides. Now your hands are at the base of his cock, stroking him as you swivel your tongue along his shaft. 

"So good," he grunts, his hand going to the top of your head. But instead of using it to brace you and push further into your mouth, it just rests there, almost fondly. 

It's you who grips the back of his thighs, urging him down your throat. You who moans wantonly not for him but because you're so turned on you can barely function. 

You suppose that's what tips him over the edge, your open desire. 

Now his movements are erratic and he's fucking into your mouth so harshly you think you might faint. Not from pain but because it feels so fucking good to be used like this. So taboo to have the grouch from next door using your mouth for his pleasure. So fucking heady knowing that he’s going to come because of you.

Your hands fly back to the base of his cock, stroking him as you swivel your tongue along his shaft. He makes a sound that could almost be a whimper if it weren't so low and gravelly. He tilts his chin down, watching you.   

"You want my come?" He grunts, pulling your hair back at the nape of your neck, forcing your gaze to his. You nod, your mouth stuffed with him and he makes a noise in the back of his throat as he pulls out from between your lips.  

"Say it.” He's visibly shuddering as he takes his cock in his hand and begins stroking. 

"I want it," you whimper, your body aflame. 

"What do you want?" He asks jerkily, his movements becoming staccato-ed. "You know what I wanna hear." 

"Please Joel," you say; drifting forward and licking the reddened head of his straining cock. "I want your come. Please." 

He licks his lower lip swiftly. 

"Fuck yeah you do," he sighs almost reverently before the fist around his cock increases in speed. "You're gonna take every last drop aren't you?"

Another nod from you and now your tongue is out, flattened and ready for him as you arch. Joel makes a tortured sound in the back of his throat. 

"Keep those pretty eyes on me," Joel whispers raggedly. "Don't you dare look away." 

Your eyes open just in time to see Joel Miller come undone before you. The face normally contorted into a frown or grimace is replaced by his mouth curved into a disbelieving smile as he looks down at you, his breathing coming out in short little rasps. Then he stills and you watch him spill out over his hand.

Thick ropes of his come erupt over you, landing in warm strips along your cheeks, your lips, your tongue. His hand continues stroking, painting you with him, muttering filth that you can't really hear before he is spent. 

Joel's legs tremble a moment, but grow steady as he leans against the wall with his forearm. You go to wipe your face but Joel shakes his head. 

"Don't move," Joel demands breathlessly. "I.. I just need to look at you."

You sit there, your face decorated with his seed and your eyes fixed on his face for what feels like forever. He looks at you as if you are art. As if you were designed and molded to be everything he wants. 

You want to bathe in the warmth of his eyes forever, but soon his breathing becomes even. He tucks himself back into his boxers and zips up his jeans. 

You sit there expectantly, unsure of what to do next. After everything that happened is-

"Get out."

You blink twice as the words sink in. You’re still kneeling there, still staring up at him when Joel pulls back, his gaze hard again. He raises a brow in irritation, a silent question of why are you still here?

Humiliated again by Joel Miller.  

You hastily wipe at the cooling seed on your face with the arm of your jacket as you scramble to a stand. Your eyes go to the stairs, thinking of how you'll get back inside your place and you make a motion to go down them. His hand shoots out, holding it in front of you to stop your movement. You notice he doesn’t touch you when he does this.   

"You can go the way you came," Joel says without inflection and somehow this option of escape feels like a further sting. He steps back, indicating the hallway window with a tip of his head and you move past him quickly, hot tears pricking the back of your eyes.

You pull open the window with ease, not looking behind you to see if he’s watching. You hope he’s not. You pull yourself over the sill and lower yourself onto the roof.  You hate yourself for looking back over your shoulder, hoping he’ll stop you and bring you back inside.

Instead you watch as Joel brings his wide hands to the lip of the window, preparing to shut it the moment he stops speaking.

"Don't ever break into my house again."

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller #joel miller smut #smut #fanfic #pedro pascal #dad joel miller #fanfiction #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller #dark!joel #deaddovedecember2023

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BAD BLOOD MASTERLIST

Step uncle Joel Miller x f!reader x stepdad Tommy Miller

Series summary: you want your stepdad and your step uncle offers to help

Series warnings: 18+ mdni. smut, step-cest, big age gap (reader is 22, Joel and Tommy are in their late and mid-40s), unprotected piv, creampie, anal, degradation, f/m masturbation, dark Joel, perv!Joel, darkish! Tommy, dark!reader, slapping, cum eating, slight somno, smoking, swearing

Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI

Main masterlist

#pedro pascal #joel miller #pedro pascal characters #dark!joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #joel miller x you x tommy miller #dark!joel x reader #dark!reader #dark!tommy miller #tlou #joel miller fanfic #joel miller tlou #dark tommy miller #joel miller x reader x tommy miller #joel x reader x tommy #tommy miller x you #tommy miller smut #masterlist #bad blood series