bibli0thecary

[bibli0thecary]

do we see the vision

[bibli0thecary]

and now im crying

Haunting me

Summary: The Dance is over and you get summoned to the Red Keep to be the nursemaid to the little Queen Jaehaera. However, the more days pass, the more you notice a presence always lingering around you, watching from afar.

Pairing: Ghost!Aegon II Targaryen x Reader

Word count: 7042 words

Warnings: Post Dance of Dragons Era, talks of death and war, underage marriage (Jaehaera and Aegon III), Reader is described to be female and to have long hair, my attempt at mystery, ghost stuff, angst, fluff, brief suggestive content (it’s about a tapestry), no mention of Y/N

Notes: This is for the wonderful @bearwithegg ! It took me a long time to post this, but I hope you’ll like it! Likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated. Enjoy 💛

It has been months since King Aegon Targaryen returned victorious to King's Landing and reclaimed his father's throne.

Months since the Dance of Dragons was officially over. Rhaenyra is dead, the war that tore the Seven Kingdoms apart is finally over.

And then the unthinkable happened. The king was found dead in the carriage that brought him to the Great Sept. They say he passed out as peacefully as if he were sleeping. His wine had been poisoned, but no one could tell for sure who the culprit was.

Rumors say it was Lord Larys Strong. Others say it was Lord Corlys Velaryon. Still others say it was the king himself, to end his suffering.

But one could never say with any certainty.

A few weeks later, Aegon III, son of Rhaenyra, would be married to little Jaehaera, the king's last living child. They were children, innocent and frightened, who did not know the meaning of the oaths they were speaking there.

They were both no more than ten summers old, which was why they could not rule. The council took on that responsibility for them. But that did not mean they did not need someone at their side.

The Dowager Queen, Alicent Hightower, was out of the question. It was rumored that she had gone mad in the tower where she had been locked after the death of her last son. Her servants were said to hear her weeping at all hours. And when she was not crying, she was always talking about the time in her own youth when she read to the old King Jaehaerys.

Little Queen Jaehaera was all alone. The girl had no mother, no father, brother, or dragon. The war had taken all of that from her.

She needed someone by her side to take care of her.

And that was exactly why you were called to court. A young lady from a small, rather insignificant house, who had barely survived the Dance.

It was a great honor for you, as you had never dared to imagine ever seeing the Red Keep with your own eyes.

Even though times were bleak, the harvests left much to be desired, and many villages lacked young men, you were overjoyed to have been given such an opportunity.

A small ray of hope in a hopeless age.

The Red Keep was not what you had imagined.

The halls were cold and empty, the walls gray and colorless, and the people were taciturn and seemed plagued by the ghosts of the past.

Little Jaehaera quickly grew on you. Her large, amethyst-colored eyes were always sad and empty, but your heart swelled every time you made her smile.

She never laughed, but sometimes, when you told her stories from your village, you could see her eyes sparkle or the corners of her mouth lift slightly.

It was a beautiful sight that you guarded like a treasure.

You did not have much to do with the young king, as the king and queen often went their separate ways. You were also protective of the girl. The mere thought that something could happen to her sent shivers down your spine.

You did not want to know how the Dowager Queen felt. On the quiet nights when the moon was high in the sky and not even the trees moved, you could hear her weeping. It was loud, tragic, and broke your heart in two.

It must have been terrible to lose four children and three grandchildren in such a cruel way within the span of four years. The first victim was little Jaehaerys, the little queen's twin brother. Then Helaena, Aemond, Maelor, Daeron, and finally Aegon.

Her first and last.

She was only able to bury two of her children. The bones of the Kinslayer were lost forever at the bottom of the lake in front of Harrenhall, as were the bones of his mount, the mighty Vhagar.

In the villages surrounding the God's Eye, there is said to be a kind of test of courage for the younger people. They are supposed to swim to the bottom of the lake and see the bones with their own eyes. Some left a gold coin as tribute, others tried to destroy the final resting place of the prince and the dragon by kicking the bones underwater.

Depending on whose side these people had been on in the war.

Helaena and Aegon were given their graves next to each other in the Sept, so they could comfort each other even in death. It was the Queen Dowager‘s idea.

You had no connection to any of this.

You had not known any of them, had not ever seen any of them with your own eyes, and during the war, your house had been neutral. Your father did not care who warmed the Iron Throne with their behind, but only that his people were healthy and well-fed.

You had not wanted to choose either. Both sides had been right somewhere, but all that was quickly forgotten the moment the first blood was shed. After that, the flame became a walking inferno, devouring everything and everyone who approached this chaos.

You were glad you were not consumed by the fire.

"Have I already told you the story of Mattis the Foolish?" you asked Jaehaera after you had put her to bed and tucked her in.

The little girl shook her head and hugged her stuffed animal—a small cat—more to her chest. A hint of curiosity flashed in her eyes as she looked up at you.

"Well, listen carefully then. Mattis was a young man from the village I come from. He was well-read, handsome, and always quick with a joke. The young ladies idolized him, and every boy wanted to be his friend. Mattis was sure that the gods would favor him and that everyone would like him. And so he set out on a long journey to confirm his belief."

Jaehaera pulled the blanket up to her chin. "And what happened to him?"

"On his way, he encountered a group of bandits who had kidnapped a woman. She called for help, and Mattis the Heroic, as his friends always called him, rushed to the aid of the fair maiden," you continued, and you could see how the little queen became more and more curious with every word that left your lips.

"And then?" she asked you in a quiet voice. She never spoke aloud.

"He had confidence in his ability to befriend anyone, even vicious bandits. He approached them and struck up a conversation. The men fell under his charm, laughed with him, and toasted him. In the end, they gave him the woman for two gold coins and wished him luck on his journey."

"Oh no," murmured the little girl, already anticipating what was coming.

"No sooner had he set off again, the lovely maiden on his arm, he was suddenly stabbed in the back. The woman had pulled out a dagger, robbed him, and returned to the bandits' camp, while Mattis died miserably in the dirt. He had no idea that she was one of them and that she had only been out to rob good souls like him," you continued, brushing a silver strand of hair from the girl's face.

"And because he put his trust in a stranger, he is now called Mattis the Foolish?" Jaehaera asked you with a smile.

The story was dark, yes, but she liked it. You had learned that quickly after you read her a fairy tale once and she handed you a ghost story from Old Vaylria the next evening. It seemed so as if she liked the morbid and dark, which was why you had to come up with a new story every night that reflected that.

"Or simply because he believed that everyone would be his friend because he did not know any different. And what does this story teach us, darling?" you asked her as you slowly got up from the edge of the bed and smoothed out the wrinkles in your nightgown.

"That you should be careful who you put your trust in," she answered with a nod.

"Exactly. And now sleep well, my little one," you whispered to her before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

You were already halfway out the door and on your way back to your humble chambers to finally get some good sleep after your long day when you heard her voice again: "Do you... Do you think ghosts exist?"

You immediately stopped and turned to your charge, your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What strange questions she sometimes asked.

"Ghosts? They are a nice thought, are they not? Your parents and siblings are watching over you, Jaehaera. One way or another," you assured her with a nod of your head.

"Good night," she murmured, turning away from you, whereupon you sighed softly and closed the door behind you.

As you walked through the corridors, you occasionally nodded to one guard or another. They all seemed tired and as if they had seen too much. The war had left its mark on everyone.

Not paying attention to who might be passing you at this late hour, you suddenly bumped into someone.

"Forgive me," you said immediately, but the man simply nodded and disappeared around the next corner without another word.

It was not until several seconds later that you realized... that he had silver hair.

But that could not be true.

The only people in these halls who still had such features were the young royal couple, and they were already in bed.

Later, you told yourself that it must have just been a trick of the light. That the man's hair had simply been ash-blond. But as you looked around the Great Hall the next morning, as most people were getting breakfast or servants were getting it for their lords and ladies, you noticed that you did not see a man with ash-blond hair anywhere.

So who was this man?

You did not want to ask around. Not because you did not want to find out, but because you were not good at talking to people. Jaehaera was the exception because it was your job to take care of her and because she was an innocent child.

Most of the time, you just felt like everyone was judging you, even if you had not done anything wrong. You could feel their eyes on you, and you hated it. You never knew why. You had always been like that. Like the young Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, you too preferred to be alone. You were better off alone.

You firmly believed that you had only imagined this man. After all, you had been tired, and the girl had just said something about ghosts before you left her alone for the night.

It certainly would not happen again, you thought.

It had been two moons since you bumped into the silver-haired man that night. You had not seen him again. No sign, not even a hint.

By now, you were quite certain that your eyes had indeed been playing a trick on you. At least, that was what you thought until you suddenly saw him again.

It was one of the few days in which the young King Aegon III was supposed to listen to some of the people's petitions. Of course, he did not do this unsupervised. He actually just sat on the throne and greeted and bid farewell to the citizens of the Small Folk who spoke, while one or sometimes two council members did the actual speaking and made the important decisions.

Hidden in the shadows at the side of the throne room, a figure leaned against the cold, wet wall of the Red Keep. His skin was as pale as the snow falling in the north, his hair as silver as the moon, uncombed and falling to his shoulders. He wore a dark green doublet, which he left open. Beneath it, a blue shirt and black trousers were visible. His black boots were dirty, and a heavy gold chain hung around his neck.

No one seemed to notice him. No one spoke to him.

You could almost say he was not there at all.

But you saw him. You saw him, and you decided to approach him with quiet, cautious steps. He did not seem to notice you, and you had to gather all your strength to finally clear your throat.

"Excuse me?" you said quietly, careful to keep your voice low so the other men in the hall would not hear you. Their focus should remain entirely on the throne.

The silver-haired man—and even in this light, you could see that it was definitely silver, not just pale blond—turned slowly to you. His eyebrows were furrowed, and he looked like he had just seen a ghost.

Perhaps he was not used to being spoken to so simply?

"I think that we have met before," you spoke when he did not say anything. "Two months ago. I bumped into you in the night."

He blinked before something like recognition suddenly flashed in his violet eyes.

Violet eyes, silver hair, pale skin... was he a Targaryen?

Somehow, he even reminded you of Jaehaera. You could be wrong, of course, but they had almost the same eyes. Large, sad, and looking as if they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders.

"You…" he cleared his throat. "You remember?"

His voice was rough, as if he had not used it in a long time, and the look in his eyes was one of caution. You could not imagine why. You did not look like a princess or one of those fine ladies who took themselves too seriously. Your dress had hardly any embroidery, and your jewelry was silver, not gold. Unlike many others, pomp and wealth were not things that captivated you.

"I wanted to apologize again. It was late, and I was not looking. I hope you will forgive me," you explained your reasons for approaching him again.

He blinked and looked at you for a few seconds before finally nodding his head: "It is alright. Honestly, I also did not pay attention to where I was going."

You thought you remembered his gait being very purposeful, but you decided not to press the issue. He seemed to you like a man who, like a bat, avoided sunlight when it came.

"You do not look like someone who would make a request," you said with a tentative smile tugging at the corners of your mouth as you nodded your head toward the throne.

His lips parted slightly, and he turned slightly toward the monstrosity built so many years ago by Aegon the Conqueror himself. A true sign of royalty, and apparently, it also had a mind of its own. People still spoke of how steel rejected the false queen and accepted her half-brother Aegon. For many who witnessed the event, this had been a sign at the time.

"Believe me, my lady, I have many requests I could make. I merely do not wish to frighten our young king," he answered with a grin, which made your knees go weak for a moment.

"Why would the boy be afraid of you?" you asked him instead, genuine curiosity in your gentle tone.

The man in front of you simply shrugged and leaned back against the wall behind him. "I am not sure. I just have a feeling."

You nodded your head and looked at the small king sitting precariously on the Iron Throne, which was far too big for him and almost swallowed him. Silver hair, violet eyes, pale skin...

"Are you a Dragon Seed?" you asked him curiously, turning back to him, only to see that the man had disappeared.

You quickly scanned your path to the left and then to the right, but you found no sign of him anywhere. How could he have run away so quickly? You had not even heard footsteps. What was wrong with you?

Who in the Seven Hells was this man?

This question haunted you in your sleep for the next few weeks. With each passing day, you believed more and more that you were simply going mad. Sometimes you thought you could see him out of the corner of your eye, but whenever you turned around, there was nothing but cold air.

Even with Jaehaera, you found no peace. The little girl bore such a frightening resemblance to the stranger that you once accidentally asked her exactly how many brothers she used to have. It had been foolish and thoughtless of you, as she immediately turned away from you and disappeared into her chamber to cry instead.

She would not even accept your lemon cake as an apology, and she would not listen to any stories in the evening. In fact, she even forbade the guards from letting you in when you tried to wish her goodnight.

You felt terrible.

One afternoon, you summoned the courage to ask a member of the council what the former Targaryens had looked like. The answer you received was anything but satisfactory. They had only told you exactly what you already knew. Silver hair, pale skin, amethyst-colored eyes that sometimes varied in color and intensity, and one of them had an eye patch. You were aware of all of this.

The one person who could still help you was the Queen Mother, Alicent Hightower, but she was rather ill at the moment because she apparently had the flu.

So you were left empty-handed.

That was until you met him again one night. You were standing on the balcony of the chambers you had been assigned when you entered the Red Keep. They were apparently the old chambers of the mad Queen Helaena, who took her own life by jumping from Maegor's Holdfast.

At the time, you had asked why you had been assigned these chambers, since you were no one of great importance. After all, you came from a relatively unknown house, and your sole duty was to look after the queen. You had expected servants' quarters, not such opulence.

The moon stood high in the sky, bathing the world in a silver glow. Otherwise, the night was warm, and the sky was cloudless. It was peaceful.

It would have been so easy to find peace that night, but you found none.

Dressed in a pale green robe and a white nightgown, you leaned against the stone railing and looked down at the city below. Your hair fell in gentle waves down your back, and only now did you begin to understand how long you had been within these walls. When you left your home, your hair had fallen to your elbows, and now the ends touched your lower back.

Although the night was windless, you could suddenly feel a light layer of gooseflesh spreading across your arms and a chill running down your spine. There was really no reason for that until you suddenly heard the sound of heavy boots behind you.

You immediately turned around and gasped in alarm when you saw the silver-haired man who had been on your mind for months.

"By the gods! How did you get in here?" you asked him, placing a hand over your heart. It was racing as fast as a hummingbird's wings.

The stranger, who did not seem much older than you, seemed as surprised as you for a moment before he seemed to recover and straighten his shoulders.

"You doors were open," he said simply.

"No, they are not," you replied, letting your gaze sweep over him. You had never before considered whether he might be dangerous. You had been too fascinated by the mystery he represented.

A small laugh escaped him, and you could feel your heart clench for a moment.

"Oh, I am pretty sure they are," he said before leaning against the stone railing next to you and looking down at the city as if he were its king. He certainly looked like one.

Confused, you blinked and looked back down at King's Landing. Lights were still burning in some of the windows, but most seemed to be fast asleep. Of course, that did not apply to the residents of the Street of Silk, where life blossomed at night like you had never seen before. You had only been there once, and you did not want to repeat the experience.

"And why do you just walk into someone's chambers without even knocking first? Especially since it is the middle of the night! I could have been asleep already," you told him, and you could feel a shiver run down your spine at the thought.

Not because he might have seen you sleeping, but rather because you would not have known.

"Believe it or not, beautiful, I honestly have no idea."

You were about to respond when he turned back to you, and the expression on his face was so frighteningly real that it swallowed the words in your mouth.

The moonlight fell on his features in such a way that it made him seem almost inhuman. Divine, even. He looked like a fallen angel who did not know what path to take. He was beautiful in a way that was hard to put into words.

"Who are you?" you finally asked him that one question that had burned itself into your mind as if Balerion himself had enclosed you in his flames.

A smile played around the corners of his mouth, but it quickly disappeared. Instead, he turned back to the city, and a sigh escaped him. Soft and barely audible, but you heard it because it was otherwise eerily quiet. Other than your breathing, you could not hear a single sound.

"Trust me, you do not want to know," he finally answered.

A single gust of wind whizzed through the night, making the already tangled strands of his hair appear even tangler. It almost looked as if he had last combed it years ago.

"But I do," you replied, taking a step closer to him. Normally, that would have cost you a lot of courage, but that was the last thing on your mind. The only thing you wanted were answers.

"I do not wish to scare you," he said with a sigh. "You would not understand."

A huff of air escaped you: "Trust me, I understand a lot of things. I am not a foolish woman, for a change. I read a lot."

For a second, you thought you saw something like recognition in his gaze, but it vanished as quickly as waves come and go at the ocean.

"You are the one who takes care of my—I mean, the one who takes care of the queen, right?" he asked suddenly, at which you just blinked for a few seconds. That had been a particularly quick change of subject.

"I— Yes," you answered him with a nod of your head.

He nodded too, and while people danced and drank in the distance, the balcony of your chambers was enveloped in a silence that was not exactly unpleasant, but was not entirely pleasant either.

Too many questions remained unanswered for it to be pleasant.

"How is she?" he asked you, his voice sounding as if he knew so much more than he let on. He sounded vulnerable, almost sad.

At first, you wanted to ask him why he cared. The answer was already on the tip of your tongue, but you swallowed it down at the last moment. You did not want to fend him off. No, you just wanted to know more about him. About this beautiful, mysterious man who had been on your mind ever since the first moment.

"I cannot say. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she cries, but mostly she is just quiet. I try to be a friend to her as best I can, and maybe even a kind of mother figure, but it is not easy."

Once again, he nodded his head, and you could see him slowly letting this information sink in, absorbing it. It seemed like it meant something to him. Like he knew her.

"I am grateful you are with her. If she were alone... she would fall apart from all this," his words were spoken with such certainty that you could be sure of one thing, too. He was not a stranger. He was exactly where he belonged. In these halls, in the Red Keep.

You took another step closer to him, until your elbows were almost touching. You expected to feel the warmth of his body, but as you stepped closer, you felt absolutely nothing. As if you were speaking to the air.

"Who are you?"

He opened his mouth to answer you when there was a sudden, frantic knock on your door. You stood there for a moment, but then reluctantly turned away from him and hurried to the door.

They were locked from the inside, as you said. There was no way he could have entered these chambers from the outside without you noticing.

Your hand trembled as you unlocked and opened the door, only to see Jaehaera standing before you. Barefoot, wearing only her nightgown, her hair loose.

"I had a nightmare," she said without you even having to ask.

You immediately crouched down and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. You were just glad she was talking to you again, even though you had made the mistake of asking her about her brothers.

But just as you were about to hug her to tell her that everything was fine and she did not need to be afraid, her eyes suddenly widened. You had never seen her like that before.

Without a word, she stormed past you and toward the balcony.

"Jaehaera!" you called after her and quickly jumped to your feet, almost tripping over the ends of your robe.

"Where is he?" she shrieked, causing you to look at her questioningly.

"Where is who?" you replied, and then you noticed that your mysterious stranger had once again disappeared without a trace. Again.

"Daddy! Where's Daddy!?" she cried, and you were at a loss.

"Daddy?" you repeated. "Sweetheart, your father is no longer with us. You know that."

But the little queen would not listen. She pointed to the spot where the silver-haired man had just been standing, and thick crocodile tears began to run down her soft cheeks.

"No, you do not understand, he was here! I just saw him! He was standing right here!"

The coin fell. You grabbed the edge of the door to keep from falling.

"By the gods..." you whispered, disbelief in your voice.

Jaehaera wept, and you understood.

The silver-haired man was not just anyone. It was Aegon II Targaryen, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. And a man who should most certainly be dead.

Weeks passed, and you had not seen Aegon again. To protect Jaehaera, you told her that she probably saw a shadow coming from the curtains and that her mind was playing tricks on her. Of course, she would not accept that, and once again she ordered her guards that you were not allowed to enter her chambers.

She was angry and sad, and you understood why, even if you could not yet explain it all.

That afternoon, some of the tapestries were to be replaced. Many were more than ten years old, and the Small Council had decided to have new ones hung. In your opinion, any change was a good thing. They apparently still wanted to suppress the past—the war that had been less than two years ago—as best they could.

Because the queen did not want to see you, you helped removing the tapestries in one of the castle's many corridors. Thank the Seven, you did not have to hang any of the new ones, because that would have required a ladder, but it felt good to tear the old ones off the wall.

Simply doing something violently helped you release some of the frustration that had been building up inside you over the past weeks and months, like a gigantic wave that threatened to bury you at any moment.

"Just coming and going, ridiculous," you muttered, while you tore one of the tapestries off the wall, which clearly depicted a sexual position. Like the other ten that were already scattered on the floor. "I mean, yes, he was the king, but that is still pathetic, is it not? Oh, who am I kidding? The man is a ghost. He can come and go as he pleases."

"If I did not know you are talking about me, I would have said you were very angry about a lover," a familiar voice suddenly spoke behind you, and you froze completely.

Slowly, you turned to him, still holding the tapestry. Aegon the Elder was standing not far in front of you, leaning against the wall with a grin on his lips that almost took your breath away.

"Ever done that?" he asked teasingly, pointing at the red carpet motif.

Your eyes widened and you looked down at the motif. It showed a woman twisting in a very unnatural way, pleasuring a man while another sat between her thighs.

"What do you take me for?" you quickly retorted, heat flooding your cheeks, turning them the color of a ripe apple.

A laugh escaped him, loud and genuine, and for the first time, you saw his eyes sparkle. He seemed happy.

"I am only jesting, my dear. I did not expect you to be involved in such activities before. Although... are you married?" he asked curiously, glancing down at the motif on the carpet for a while longer, as if fascinated by it.

The way he licked his lips made your heart leap in your chest, and you quickly tossed the tapestry to the others already scattered on the floor. His smile turned into a pout.

"No, I am not married yet," you said, and immediately he beamed from ear to ear again.

"Something any man likes to hear."

Without being able to stop yourself, you raised your eyebrows and crossed your arms. "Oh yeah? And what about ghosts? Do they like to hear that too?"

The radiant sparkle left his eyes for a moment, and instead he sighed and turned away from you to take another closer look at the remaining tapestries that adorned the walls. You followed him without saying a word.

Suddenly, a chuckle escaped him, which sounded like music to your ears.

"I tried that! Before you ask: No, it didn't work," he explained, pointing with his outstretched arm at a particularly bold motif.

"Oh..." was all he got in response from you.

Then you cleared your throat in what you hoped was a good attempt to change the subject: "You seem so happy today, Aegon."

He did not turn to you, but you could see his shoulders tense for a moment before finally relaxing. "You know my name."

"I have told you before and I will tell you again. I am no fool, Your Grace," you said, sounding perhaps a little more serious than necessary. "She saw you."

"I know," he shrugged. "And that is exactly why I was with her just a moment ago."

Your eyes widened and your mouth opened and closed for a few seconds, like a fish's.

"You—you were with her? With Jaehaera?" you asked, just to be sure.

Aegon continued down the corridor, and from the way he walked, you could sense what he had been like when he was alive. Lively, playful, and perhaps a little arrogant.

You would have liked to have known him when he was still among the living.

"I just said that. Yes, I was with her. We talked, and I was able to tell her some things I did not get a chance to."

"I hope you gave her a long embrace, because she deserves it. You are her father," you said, letting your eyes roam over him. He looked so real. As if you only had to reach out and you could touch him.

You could see the Adam's apple moving in his throat as he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He seemed so human, so alive, that you wanted to pull him into the throne room and show everyone that the king was still alive and that there was no reason to treat two war-torn children like puppets.

"Believe me when I tell you, I would have loved to. But I cannot."

"You cannot? What does that mean?" you asked him cautiously, yet still curiously.

Aegon did not answer with words, but simply held out his hand, as if he were asking you to dance. Slowly, you raised yours as well and extended it. Your fingers could almost touch; you even imagined to briefly feel the warmth of his skin, but where flesh and bone should have been, there was nothing but air. Your hand simply slid through yours.

Your shoulders slumped, and for a moment, your eyes filled with tears. Here stood Aegon, former king, caught between life and death.

"But at least I do not look like a roasted chicken anymore," he jested, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

You tilted your head, but he was already explaining before you could even ask the question: "My brother pretty much set me on fire with Vhagar. My whole left side was burned, my leg was useless, and my cock did not work either anymore."

"Your— Oh. I am sorry, Aegon," you said, wrapping your arms around yourself, not knowing what else to do with them.

You had once heard that the king loved wine and women more than anything else and spent more time on the Street of Silk than in his castle. So it must have been terrible for him to suddenly no longer be able to do the things he loved most. And sex, after all, can be very liberating in stressful times.

"Oh, never mind, dove," he sighed, shrugging as if it did not matter to him, but you could see the pain was still there, lingering. "I am over it."

"No, you are not," you said with a smile.

"Guilty," he grinned, turning around. "Where are you from, anyway?"

"House Butterwell of Whitewalls," you murmured, unsure whether you wanted him to hear it or not. Your house was not one of those that immediately conjures up images of a large castle and riches as far as the eye can see. No, quite the opposite.

The silver-haired man, whose name you now knew, tilted his head, and you could see him thinking hard. "My dear, I have to disappoint you, but I have never heard of your house."

"I know," you said simply, shaking your head as a gentle blush rose in your cheeks. "That is what most people say when they ask me, which admittedly are not many."

But the former king simply shrugged and reached out as if to brush a stray strand of hair from your face, but his hand slid through you once again. Disappointment settled in your stomach.

A part of you wished he could touch you. You wanted to know how his hands would feel on your skin, if his lips were as soft as they looked, and if his fingers would be warm or cold.

These thoughts were dangerous, but you could not hold them back anymore. Just like the feelings that blossomed within you and were directed at him. A ghost.

But he smiled, and you knew you were lost.

From that day on, you spent almost every single day with him. Sometimes Jaehaera was even there, but often you were alone.

He often came in the evenings, when most of the lords and ladies had already gone to sleep and you were wrapped in a comfortable nightgown. You would spend hours telling each other things. Sometimes from your own lives, sometimes they were completely irrelevant and had nothing to do with you or him at all.

Aegon now knew everything about you. He knew your favorite wine, your favorite color, silly childhood memories you had confided in him, as well as your dreams and desires. You knew his entire life. His difficult childhood, his youth drowned in wine and women, and his adulthood, which had been no less difficult.

In a short time, you had grown more fond of him than any other man you had met before, and Aegon was sure—for once in his life—that he knew what love felt like.

He did not say the words, and neither did you, but somehow you both knew.

You could feel it in the way he was always there exactly when you needed him, and he knew it in the way you looked at him. As if he had personally hung the stars in the sky and made them shine just for you.

You had resigned yourself to the fact that he could not touch you. If he wanted to, he would say so instead. Imagine me placing my hand on yours and squeezing gently.

He calls you dove. You call him king.

And when he was with you, the world seemed to be in order, even if you could not explain it.

That was until the first letter reached you. Your presence at court had attracted the attention of other houses and their sons. All of them were alliances that should be considered. All of them would give your house a bigger name and fortune, and your father would be able to provide more for the citizens. Your house would finally gain prominence.

Your father and mother were excited and happy, expecting you to make a suitable choice. A charming young man who would marry you and to whom you could give heirs. The fate of so many young ladies.

They could not have known that your heart had long since been taken, and that the only man you wanted and with whom you could imagine a life was no one who could make all this possible for them.

For the man you loved was long gone.

He found you sobbing in your chambers. You were sitting at the foot of the bed, a cup of wine in one hand and a letter in the other.

He was no fool.

You were a beautiful woman and of marriageable age. It was only a matter of time before the first men crawled out of their holes to feast on you.

It was not fair. But what in this world was fair anymore?

"Who is it?" he asked you in a calm voice, hoping he could reassure you.

"I don't know," you sobbed. "Some Lord Manderly."

He knew the name, but it probably would not be the old man he was thinking about. That would make the marriage proposal almost insulting. You were in the prime of your life, and that old fart already had one foot in the grave. The bastard.

"Aegon?" Your gentle voice pulled him out of the raging thoughts he was currently trapped in.

"What is it, sweetling?"

"Do not be mad. I will not choose Manderly anyway. My father at least gave me the freedom to choose one of the men. All that matters to him is that I choose at all," you explained, wiping the salty wetness of your already shed tears from your cheeks.

A long sigh escaped the Ghost King before he unceremoniously plopped down on the bed next to you, burying his face in the soft sheets.

Your scent clung to them, and he wished he could just lean against you, hold you in his arms, and promise you that no one would ever take you away from him.

You smelled of freedom, of wildflowers, and fresh soap. Apparently, you had bathed just an hour or two ago.

"And look, my king. Jaehaera will need her nursemaid until she is at least fourteen summers old. That is still a while, and I do not think she would let someone replace me," you said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Aegon froze.

Your eyes widened.

Your hand was on his shoulder. It did not just move through it, it was on him. Warm and alive.

Aegon did not hesitate for a second, but sat up and reached for your hand, squeezing it gently, as he had said so many times he would.

"You... You can—"

"Touch," he finished for you.

Not a second later, his lips were pressed against yours, his hands on your cheeks, his thumb rubbing small circles into your soft, flushed skin.

His lips were warm, soft, and so alive that you could feel the first tear rolling down your cheek. Then the second, and then the third.

"Don't cry," he murmured against your mouth before teasing your tongue with yours.

"You are crying too, Aegon," you replied, and you heard him chuckle softly.

You leaned back to catch your breath, but he was whining and trying to press another kiss against your lips, but you placed a finger on his lips to stop him.

"How is that possible?" you asked him with a genuinely happy smile on your lips.

"I have no idea, dove. But if I do know one thing, it is that I want to enjoy this evening to the fullest," he answered, his arms wrapping around your waist.

"To the fullest, you say? What about my suitors?"

The grin on his handsome face only widened before he buried his head in the crook of your neck.

"Forget them. Your king commands it."

He pressed a kiss against the sensitive skin of your neck, and you knew he was right.

For one evening, real life could rest. For one evening, the line between life and death had been blurred, and you had never been happier.

And Aegon knew this might be the last night he would ever touch, which is why he vowed to savor it to the last second.

Until he was no more.

The Dividers are from the wonderful @zaldritzosrose !

Taglist: @bey0nd-1he-stars @sassypain @hisfavegirl @dahaenatargaryen @sylasthegrim @danytar

[bibli0thecary]

was just thinking about how old as fuck bf Joel would have you in bed by 9pm and had to write it 😭😭 all fluff xx

It’s 8:42 when he flicks off the living room lamp with a sigh, the whole house dipping into that familiar, sleepy hush. You’re already brushing your teeth, barefoot in his flannel that hangs loose and low, the sleeves swallowing your hands as you lean over the sink. He watches you from the hallway like he always does, arms crossed, eyes soft, like he still can’t believe you’re here—his—night after night.

By 8:56, you’re both under the covers. Clean sheets. Fresh pajamas. His arm is warm around your waist and the windows are cracked just enough to let the breeze in. The town outside is quiet. Your limbs are tangled, skin on skin, and he smells like cedarwood and peppermint toothpaste and the kind of comfort you never thought you’d get to keep.

You glance at the clock. 8:59.

“You made me boring,” you whisper, smiling into his chest. “I used to be wild. Fun. The last one to leave the party.”

Joel’s voice is low, sleep-soft. “You’re still fun. You’re just tired now.”

“Because I’m in bed at nine. You’ve aged me.”

He snorts, the sound muffled by your hair. “You’re the one who yawned through dinner.”

“You were the one talking about home insulation and firewood like it was the highlight of your week.”

He chuckles again, hand smoothing down your back beneath the blanket. “That’s ‘cause it was.”

You bite back a laugh, snuggling closer, cheek pressed to his chest. You can hear his heartbeat—steady, warm, yours. His other hand cups the back of your head like he needs to keep you there, needs to hold on even in sleep.

“You like our little life?” he asks suddenly, voice quieter now, almost shy.

You blink up at him, and the look on his face is so open, so tender, it makes your breath catch. That furrow between his brows, the one he always wears like a shield, is gone. He looks… safe. Happy. Home.

“I love our little life,” you whisper. “I’d go to bed at 7 if it meant doing it with you.”

He smiles. Really smiles. The kind that starts in his eyes, slow and crooked and completely devastating.

And then he leans in, presses the softest kiss to your lips, like a thank-you. Like a goodnight. Like a promise.

By 9:01, you’re both asleep.

Wrapped in each other.

Wrapped in peace.

[bibli0thecary]

girldad!roman roy who’s daughter does not need to meet her grandfather. he sees his baby girl for the first time, wriggling in your arms, tiny limbs flailing everywhere. you press a gentle kiss to her forehead, and as she calms down, she looked up at her father. it makes his heart stutter in his chest, her wide brown eyes, just like his. and by god, roman swears she’s perfect.

the presence of the doctor reminds him, and he lets out a resigned grunt. “he’s not meeting her.” when you only respond with a blank, tired look, and a raised eyebrow, he elaborates. “dad. i don’t want him anywhere fucking near her.” his firmness surprised you slightly, but you nodded, too distracted by the newborn baby girl in your arms who’s just started wailing again.

it’s not long before he’s standing beside his father’s coffin, looking dully at the flowers that surround him, wondering if he would’ve done it differently if he could. but the sight of his daughter beside him, all soft skin and chubby cheeks, and the bruises that sullied his skin for so long linger in the back of his mind. for the safety of his daughter, he’d do it all over again a thousand times.

[bibli0thecary]

baby jr asking what prenups are after hearing it in a film or something and they have to explain and she asks if they did one and roman’s all well no because daddy would have killed himself

"Daddy, what's a prenup?"

"...How do you know what that is?"

"I don't know what that is. It's why I'm asking you."

Smart aleck. Of course, she's his daughter, but she asked it so sweetly. Roman smiles.

"Something good marriages never have."

"...But the TV said that it's-it's so the Mommy and Daddy can still have money even after they break up." Baby Jr crosses her legs on her chair. "You and mommy aren't going to break up-"

"Don't...don't even start with that."

Roman's not looking at her, just at the TV, flipping through channels.

"Don't tell me you learned that from fucking Bluey."

Baby Jr giggles. "Silly Daddy, Bluey and Bingo's Mommy and Daddy would never break up."

"Same with your Daddy and Mommy." Roman throws the remote up in the air. "A prenup is something to make sure that the wife doesn't take anything away from the husband if they break up. That's decided before they get married. But Mommy didn't sign a prenup cause she loves me."

"...Okay."

"Yeah. Daddy would've killed himself."

"No no, don't that."

"I didn't, cause Mommy loves me and knew that we would never break up. Don't tell her that I told you I would've killed myself, though. That's, like, probably bad for you to hear."

"Okay, Daddy. I go shhhhh."

"You do that. I'm stable now. Because I got you, and your little fingers to munch on."

Baby Jr squeals when Roman gently bites her hand.

[bibli0thecary]

[bibli0thecary]

When I say “I love men in uniform” this is what I mean.

[bibli0thecary]

pedro pascal at cannes believer

[bibli0thecary]

Having a bad day, read x reader! Having a good one, read x reader! Bored, read x reader!

All in all, live, laugh, love x reader!

[bibli0thecary]

Me when I see my little princesses 🥰😍 (They are full grown men and most of them are mentally ill and would probably kill me if I got near. The others aren't even human 💀)

[bibli0thecary]

Y/N and their slasher boyfriend

[bibli0thecary]

( ! ) Joel's live reaction to see you wearing kitty ears.

"what the hell are you...? goddammit, the heck is that?"

"kitty ears!"

"where did you even get that from?"

"the mall, duh."

"the one I specifically told you not to go in?"

"...... yes, but–"

and then he'll bend you over the first surface that he sees and spank your ass bright red. fuck the infected and raiders, he needs to teach you a lesson.

[bibli0thecary]

die for you — joel miller

”you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,”

pairings reader x joel miller

summary abby wants you dead instead.

tags spoilers for those who haven’t watched s2 e2, reader insert, sad, depressive, just pure sadness. mentions of death, because you will die. joel crying and begging. ellie crying too. established relationship. swearing, all that.

the world had already fallen apart, but this day was supposed to be ordinary.

joel had gone with dina, and you were paired with ellie and jesse. a patrol like any other. except today, the cold was unforgiving and you can’t help but feel that something bad might happen.

winter had buried the abandoned buildings under thick layers of snow, turning streets into treacherous paths. frost clung to your eyelashes, burning against exposed skin. visibility was near zero, and the biting winds made it impossible to push forward.

“we need to find shelter!” jesse shouted. he pointed ahead a building as they helped him open the shutter doors urging the horses inside. you shoved past the threshold without a second thought, fingers clumsily reaching for your walkie-talkie. you roughly tore of your balaclava, ripping it free in frustration.

you breath came in sharp, steam rising in the air as you held your cold fingers to the radio.

“joel? dina? come in”

static.

you tightened your grip. “joel. dina. do you copy?”

nothing. just silence.

ellie stepped inside, shaking the frost from her coat. she glanced at your stiff posture, the way your fingers gripped the device like it might give you the answer you needed.

“any luck?” ellie asked, rubbing her hands together for warmth, and then her gaze drifted—eyes scanning the dimly lit space. marijuanas. ellie huffed a small, amused breath despite the tension.

“no.” you swallowed hard. your head was pounding.

“well… at least someone had the right idea. can’t imagine getting high in a place like this. too depressing.” you barely reacted, lost in the silence of the radio.

jesse entered behind her, his boots leaving damp streaks on the frozen floor. “what?” he asked, pulling off his gloves. the static in the radio felt heavier than the snow pressing in around you.

jesse shook her head. “they’re probably just out of range. we need to stay put. let’s wait for the storm to pass.” but you couldn’t sit still, not with joel and dina somewhere out there.

you turned to look at ellie, reading your thoughts before you could say them aloud. “i’m coming with you,” ellie said. jesse exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair.

“fine, i’ll cover the east side” he said, grabbing his gloves and pulling them on. “if you don’t hear from me, i’m probably dead or freezing my ass off.”

the wind howled around you and ellie, cutting through your layers like knives. snow blurred the world beyond a few feet. footsteps vanished the moment they were made. as the cold pressed in around you, a terrible thought crept into your mind.

“we need to keep moving,” ellie said, her voice tight. “we won’t last long out here.” you nodded, that’s when you saw it—a shape emerging from the storm, just barely visible through the swirling snow. a cabin in the mountain. you hesitated.

“what are the odds it’s safe?” you stared at the cabin, a creeping dread curling in your stomach. “low. but better than freezing to death.” ellie shifted slightly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“someone’s here.” the tension in the cabin thickened as you and ellie remained pressed against the wall, weapons drawn.

another noise. footsteps. not yours nor ellie’s.

a loud, sharp gunshot echoed. your breath hitched. ellie’s gaze snapped to yours, wide and panicked. then a voice. a familiar voice, shouted in pain from the room across you.

joel.

ellie surged forward, bursting through the door without hesitation. you barely had a chance to stop her but ellie was already inside, gun raised, fury burning in her eyes.

one of them whirled around at the sudden intrusion, attacking into ellie before she could react. the force sent her crashing to the ground with a hard grunt, her revolver skidding across the wooden floor as another pair of hands pinned her down.

ellie groaned, struggling. “joel!” “fucking get off me!” abby just stood there watching paying the intruder no mind.

you sucked in a sharp breath, ducking behind just in time before anyone could spot you.

your eyes landed on him. he laid on the wooden floor. his breath uneven, his face twisted in pain as blood seeped through his pants. you felt you stomach twist as you caught sight of his busted knee.

through the haze of pain, his gaze lifted locking onto ellie. his lips parted slightly, a hoarse, breathless sound escaping him, barely loud enough to hear.

“ellie…”

“joel! joe—” ellie shouted, thrashing harder, pure desperation in her voice. her words cut off with a sharp gasp as one of them pressed her harder into the floor, tightening their hold.

joel tensed, his breathing ragged, his hands curling into fists despite his weakness. he tried to push himself forward. but his ruined knee buckled, sending fresh agony through him. his jaw clenched, his face twisting in pain, and his voice came out strained, almost broken.

“get your goddamn hands off her.”

joel now wondered where you are. he wanted to ask ellie but couldn’t risk your life. he just hoped that you are somewhere far from the cabin and far away from jackson as the place is currently being attacked.

“tourniquet his knee."

a scream ripped from his throat, raw and broken. you clenched your teeth trying not to cry. "stop!" she shouted, thrashing violently. her face slowly turning red.

joel was breathing hard now, short and sharp gasps escaping him as his head dropped back.

without hesitation, you moved fast as your gun lifted and aimed.

the shot rang out. blood splattered against the wooden walls.

one of the men dropped as chaos erupted.

joel’s eyes snapped to you the moment the shots rang out.

ellie scrambled to her feet, using the distraction to break free, throwing her elbow into the second man's face before scrambling for her revolver.

you had shot 5 out of 8.

you asked ellie is she was okay but just as you took your next step, you felt it. a cold metal pressing against your temple. your breath hitched.

“drop them” one of the guys ordered. your fingers tightened around your gun still warm in your hands.

“you…" abby muttered, almost breathless. she lunged, grabbing her rifle, yanking it into position and pointing it straight at joel.

"abby.."

"drop them," she snarled, the barrel pressed close, just inches from his head. joel barely flinched, his jaw clenched tight. ellie froze beside you, her breath sharp, her revolver still aimed.

slowly, carefully, you exhaled through your nose, lowering your arms. your guns slipping from your fingers, clattering onto the bloodstained floor. the moment they hit the ground, one of abby’s people, a woman, tackled ellie to the ground once more.

a slow, humorless laugh escaped her lips. "funny how the world works," she murmured, shaking her head.

"i thought i'd be tracking you two down forever, and here you two are walking straight into my hands." her fingers flexed against the rifle, gripping it tighter, and then her expression shifted.

her gaze flicked to joel, then back to you.

“i heard a rumor,” she murmured, almost conversational, like she was testing the words on her tongue.

“that when joel killed my father…you were there.”

ellie froze beneath the girl pinning her down, her wild glare flicking between you and abby. joel couldn't speak.

abby took a slow step forward. “you were there,” she repeated, her voice lower now, heavier, her anger burning just beneath the surface.

“you watched it happen. didn’t you?”

“you let him do it,” she hissed.

“you let him take everything from me.” “you were supposed to be family,” she murmured, her voice quieter now.

"abby, please i—"you barely blinked. family. the word felt wrong coming from her.

“shut the fuck up! we were together in this world, surviving it,” she continued, her fingers flexing against the trigger now pointed to you.

“i trusted you.” her gaze locked onto yours, fury burning just beneath the surface. “and then joel took everything from me. and you— you just let it happen.” her voice broke slightly at the edges, but she swallowed it down, replacing it with something cold.

this wasn’t just revenge.

this wasn’t just about joel anymore.

this was about you now.

“i could just put a bullet in your head right now,” “but that would be too easy,” she continued. “too quick. too clean.” her fingers flexed against the trigger, but she didn’t pull it. not yet. she let out a slow breath, shaking her head as if thinking what to do with you.

“you’re gonna die painfully slow.”

joel’s breath hitched. abby’s gaze flicked to him, watching the way his jaw tightened, watching the way his panic had settled deep into his bones.

she was enjoying this.

she was feeding off his fear. and that meant you mean a whole lot of something to him.

“she doesn’t belong in this,” joel pleaded, his voice growing more desperate, thick with something heavier than pain.

“you came for me right? fine. fine. take me. just— just please let them go.” joel swallowed hard, his breath stuttering as he tried to force himself forward, as if he could shield you from abby’s aim.

“she ain’t done nothing to you,” he continued, words rushed now, his voice cracking in places, and for the first time you saw it. tears. threatening to spill, but he fought against them, his jaw tightening, his breath coming out in desperate bursts.

“just let her go,” he whispered. “please.”

“oh, joel, that’s exactly why I won’t.” his face twisted, horror settling deep in his bones.

it wasn’t supposed to end the way that it is ending. it was just supposed to be a normal patrol day. you and joel sleeping together at the end of the day in each other’s embrace, joel whispering sweet nothings into yours and yours into his.

that’s how your days went with him for the past five years since the three of you settled into jackson.

pain swallowed you whole. your body was wrecked, bruised, battered, broken.

you lay on the cold wooden floor, chest rising and falling in strained, shallow gasps. blood dripped from your mouth, staining the worn boards beneath you, pooling along the edges of your ruined body.

your swollen eyes found him. joel. his eyes locked onto yours. you saw everything. rage. fear. desperation. and worse, guilt. with a last blow from abby, the golf club broke in half. leaving abby to punch you.

you didn’t scream, you couldn’t feel any pain at this point.

“stop," joel rasped, his voice raw, strained, begging. "please—just stop." he tried to move, tried to push himself forward but his ruined knee buckled. his face twisted, his hands twitching weakly against the wooden floor, as if he could somehow reach you.

he couldn’t. he was trapped. forced to watch.

ellie was screaming raw, desperate cries, her voice breaking as she thrashed beneath, tears spilling from her eyes. you meant a lot to her.

"stop!" she sobbed. "just fucking stop!"

but abby wasn’t listening, reaching the broken golf club. she kneeled over you, hands ready to pierce through your neck. joel let out a sharp, strangled breath.

"don't," he rasped, his voice cracking, breaking, falling apart in the space between you. abby exhaled softly.

"say hello to my dad for me," abby raised her hands and paused.

“i’m sorry.” she murmured quietly. your vision swam, clouding at the edges, fading to black. “for everything.”

you try to speak, to force out a word, a plea, anything, but your throat tightens, the world tipping.

"you don’t have to do this! please!" joel's voice shakes, a mix of fear and disbelief. his eyes bloodshot.

then a sharp, sickening crack as the metal connects with your throat. the darkness creeps in, slow at first, then all at once.

you heard joel screaming your name, the sound breaking apart like glass.

"no—no—no—" ellie screamed, fighting, struggling, kicking but she was pinned, she was helpless, she was drowning in the horror of it all.

memories started flashing before your eyes.

joel.

no, this is the joel only you knew.

the joel who looked at you with eyes that softened when you caught him staring. the joel whose laughter was rare but beautiful.

your vision flickers. you see him under the soft jackson light, his hand absentmindedly tracing patterns over your knuckles as you sit beside him on the porch.

you remember the way his calloused fingers felt, rough from years of hardship, yet somehow the gentlest touch you’d ever known.

“never thought i'd have this,” he had murmured once, voice barely above a whisper. you’d turned to him, resting your head against his shoulder, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

he had always, always found a way to make you feel like you mattered.

and ellie. she had teased, nudged, given you knowing looks when Joel would brush a stray hair from your face or linger a little too long when saying goodbye.

now, you try to reach for him, desperation lacing the last flicker of strength in your limbs. your fingers twitch, stretching toward the fading memory of him. he’s sat there in front of you, looking at you like he always did like he sees you in a way no one else ever has, but you can see the pain in his eyes as he shouts your name begging you to get up.

your body fails you. the weight of it all pulls you down, down, down. your hand drops. joel’s image flickers and both joel and ellie’s voice fades. then nothing.

abby steps back, her expression unreadable, and the two men with her exchange glances. one gestures, impatient, and she nods.

they leave.

but the silence that follows is louder than any scream.

joel groans. a broken, ragged sound as he forces himself forward.

he crawled towards you.

blood pools around his knee, staining the ground beneath him, but he drags himself closer, hands trembling, breath shallow. every inch forward is agony, but still, he moves.

ellie scrambles beside him, desperation pushing her forward, hands shaking violently as she reaches for you.

joel's hand finds yours, trembling, bloodied fingers curling around yours in desperation. he grips tightly, waiting, pleading in silence. “just squeeze,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “just once. please.”

ellie chokes on a sob, her hands pressed against your chest, searching for something—anything—to hold onto. joel’s grip tightens around your lifeless hand, desperation threading through his veins like fire. his breath trembles, uneven, as he waits for any sign that you’re still here.

but there’s nothing.

no squeeze. just silence. “come on,” he whispers, voice hoarse, barely more than a breath.

“baby please...”

nothing.

ellie lets out a strangled cry but joel barely hears her.

because suddenly, he is not here—not kneeling in blood, not gripping your lifeless hand.

he is somewhere else. years ago.

sarah. his little girl.

she used to hold his hand so tight, like she was afraid he’d slip away like she’d never let go.

and then one day she did.

the last time he held her hand, she hadn’t squeezed back either.

the memory crushes him, knocks the air from his lungs, rips through him with a force so brutal it’s unbearable. the same pain. the same silence. the same unbearable emptiness.

“no,” he chokes out, shaking his head violently, his grip tightening like that alone can pull you back. “not again. not you. please—don’t do this to me. don’t—”

joel cradles you in his arms, holding you like you’re made of glass. his breaths are uneven, sharp, as he presses his forehead against yours.

"you’re okay," he whispers, but his voice cracks, betraying him.

his grip tightens around you, like he can somehow anchor you here. like he can change what’s already happened.

the reality settles in. the weight of it crushes his chest. a shuddering breath escapes his lips and then, the tears come once more.

slow at first, like he’s fighting them. like he’s trying to hold himself together for just another second. but it’s useless.

a broken sob escapes him, muffled against your shoulder. his body shakes as he clutches you closer, as if the sheer force of his grief could undo the impossible.

ellie lets out another choked cry, her fingers trembling as she reaches for you, her own tears slipping down her face.

he leans down and presses a gentle kiss against your forehead.

he is drowning in his guilt, in the unbearable weight of what he has done.

he brought you into this chaos. into his life of violence and consequence. he made you part of his story.

"this is my fault," he chokes out, "i brought you into my mess. i—i should've kept you out of it."

"why did it have to be you? why, why wasn’t it me instead?"

"i should've protected you but i just sat there and watched them taking away the most important person in my life."

he lost you.

and there’s no coming back from that.

“you made everything better,” he murmurs, his tears slip onto your skin. “even when the world was hell, you—you made it brighter.”

“you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” he brokenly sang.

"you make me happy... when skies are grey...you'll never know dear...how much i— love you... please don't take... my sunshine away..." he continued as he sang your favorite song. the one that he always sings before you close your eyes and sleep beside him because you couldn't sleep without him doing so.

but this time, you'll be sleeping forever.

a/n i'm sorry. made this 7am in the morning because girly woke up and chose violence. might make an alternate version of this where u live and have a happily ever after w joel. comment if u want to be tagged!

[bibli0thecary]

old man!joel coming home from a long day of patrol, pissed with whatever tommy and/or ellie did to annoy him, and bending reader over while she does something like dishes or cooking. he is POUNDINGGGG the living hell out of her and muttering shit about how his day was terrible while reader is practically drooling and fucked dumb 👅👅👅

listen... i was screeching like a bitch in heat while writing this. FFFFUCK ME. thank you for this, anon, i love you 🫡

old man!joel miller collection masterlist | notifs blog

tw/tags: 18+, mdni. pwp/filthy smut. blissful domesticity / you're doing the dishes. free use. mild breeding kink. joel is a bit rough bc he's annoyed, poor baby. joel eats you from behind while you scrub. hair pulling, one playful spank, one account of rimming. unprotected piv. creampie. implied age gap. reader is female but not described other than hair that can be yanked.

You were elbow’s deep in the kitchen sink, doing the dishes, when you heard the front door creak. “Joel?” You called out, peeking over your shoulder. It was late at night, and you had just finished preparing the meal for the evening. No matter how late it was, you always waited for Joel to come back home when he was assigned to patrol. It was a good way to wind down for the day, have some warm food to replenish your empty bellies before heading together to bed. “M’back, sweetheart,” he replied from the hallway, loud enough for you to hear. “Take off you boots!” you warned him with a chuckle. “Otherwise, you’ll have to mop the mud off the floor before dinner!”

You heard his huffy grunt from the kitchen, quickly followed by the dull thud of his boots hitting the wooden planks.

Your attention returned to the pile of dishes and pots in front of you, scrubbing them clean with a sponge and bare hands.

“What do I always tell you?” Joel gritted right behind you, his broad hands palming either side of your hips.

You giggled, rolling your eyes. “To wear gloves, I know. But I won’t be longer than five minutes, I promise.”

“You’re gonna ruin your hands,” he tutted. “And you know I like ‘em soft.”

Looking over your shoulder, you saw the deep crease between his prominent, silvery brows. Joel wore a downcast expression, the crows’ feet around his eyes kissing the corners. His pepper-and-salt curls were wildly pointing everywhere, a testament to how windy it was outside.

“How’s patrol been?” you asked while you focused on the task at hand again.

“Shit. It’s been a rough day,” he husked out, shaking his head. “I hate patrols with Ellie and Tommy. They always do my head in.”

Your lips curled up in a smile—it was good for him to spend time with his family. Deep down, you knew he enjoyed their company, although all the banter left him exhausted by the end of the day.

“No, you don’t,” you retorted with a giggle.

“Yes, I do,” he growled in your ear, his calloused hands smoothing out over your tummy. “They don’t know when to shut up.”

The energy emanating from Joel’s body was intense, charged with frustration and a hint of exasperation. Without asking for permission, his meaty fingers found the button of your jeans, undoing it expertly quick before he pulled the zipper down.

“They fucking bully me any chance they got,” his chest rumbled with a contained grunt before he unceremoniously pushed your pants down to your knees. “Ellie and her puns drive me crazy as it is, but Tommy always has to chip in.”

You gasped, eyes fluttering for a second, when Joel’s left hand dove past the elastic of your underwear and his fingertips stroked the unruly curls on your mound. Squirming a little, breathing shallowly now, you scrubbed the pot harder. Your concentration faltered again when his ring finger wiggled through your slit to find your needy clit.

Joel nibbled at your earlobe, his tented jeans hard pressed against your ass. The heat of his chest warmed up your back, loosening the muscles, all the while his pad thumbed your nub lazily but determinedly.

“I wonder when they will run out of stupid jokes,” he went on, as if you were not melting under his touch. “I should burn those magazines in the garage.”

You hummed like a nightingale, your mind emptying of all thoughts. But soon his hand slid out of your panties, leaving you clenching for more. Before you could tell him not to stop now, Joel placed his hand between your shoulder blades and bent you over until your boobs were hanging into the sink.

“Old my ass,” he rasped before you heard him kneeling behind you. “I ain’t that old.”

You didn’t dare to point out how his knees had just cracked—you didn’t want to sour his mood anymore.

Still foaming the same pot, Joel’s fingers hooked around your panties, slithering them down your thighs until they tangled with your trousers on your knees. His broad hands grasped your ass cheeks and coaxed them apart—the cold air of the room kissing your wet pussy made your skin bristle, but soon enough the cold was replaced with Joel’s warm lips.

You sobbed audibly, arching your back, while Joel lapped at your entire fold, from your throbbing clit all the way up to your rimmed hole. Your breathing accelerated, heart racing wildly now, when he gently licked your puckered entrance before pecking it and returning to your creaming bundle of nerves.

“They said my aim is getting worse with age,” he complained, his lips talking against your inner labia. “Had to fucking show ‘em how it’s done.”

Joel then latched onto your clit and you moaned uncontrollably, your knees trembling with blinding pleasure. He suckled on it, the tip of his tongue circling around it from time to time, edging you to the summit of a much-needed orgasm. He paused for a breather and you grinded your crying cunt on his nose and mouth, silently begging for release.

“Tommy didn’t hit the can,” Joel huffed, nudging your clit with the tip of his nose. “Still had the guts to tell me that I am the one whose aim is getting worse? Clown.”

How he could ramble about his day while he was eating you out from behind was beyond reason. You barely had two brain cells rubbing together right now, forcing you to keep on scrubbing the same pot over and over again until the protective coating was coming off.

Joel sank his tongue in your palpitating opening, and right there and then you came. Wailing, you let go of the pot and sponge to grab at the rim of the sink, breathing heavily as he fucked you with his tongue throughout a shattering climax. Your creamy juices poured into his mouth and Joel drank from you like a man starved for water.

When you stopped shuddering with the afterglow, Joel got up to his feet behind you. Resuming your task with the dishes, you grinded your wet pussy on his zipper, the pull tab tickling your clit, asking for more.

Joel palmed your globes, squeezing them tight, before he took a step back to unbuckle his belt. Only a second had passed between hearing his zipper going down and Joel stabbing your cunt with his veiny cock, burying himself down to the hilt.

“Oh, f-f-fuck,” you stuttered under your breath, brows bunched up in concentration as you scrubbed the next dish.

Joel sighed heavily behind you, his hands clasping your waist to keep you in place. “Out of six cans, I only missed one. One! And only because the wind got a bit too strong as I was shooting! I had to listen to Ellie mocking me all the way back to Jackson and Tommy laughing his ass off.”

The way he was freeusing you had you gushing everywhere—Joel knew he always had your consent, didn’t matter if you were asleep or awake. You just wanted him pounding you hard until your brains and guts got fucked out into oblivion, just as he was doing you now against the kitchen counter.

Joel’s thrusts were sharp, deep and relentless. His hard cock stretched your inner walls impossibly so, a dull sting blooming into a very tight coil low in your belly. Your pussy hugged him, fluttering around him in uncontrollable waves, every time he was fully seated inside you.

For five minutes, he remained silent behind you, only his heaving grunts, your needy sobs and the squelching sounds of your cunt filled the musky atmosphere of the kitchen. When he rutted in, you pushed your hips back, eagerly meeting him halfway—your bodies in heavenly unison, as if your pussy had been made only for him. Only for his cock to ruin.

“Need this,” Joel muttered while one of his hands landed between your shoulder blades again, your back arching some more. “This sweet pussy of yours to blow off some steam.”

Before you could purr in approval, your drool falling off the corners of your mouth into the dish you were mindlessly scrubbing, Joel bunched your hair up in a ponytail and yanked at it. You gasped at the sudden, harsh tug that forced your head back. With every jerk on your hair, your puffy lips wolfed his pulsing dick down more eagerly, squeezing arrhythmically as another orgasm began to boil inside you.

You just couldn’t remain quiet any longer—when Joel jackhammered in and pulled at your hair, you moaned like a slut. He was fucking you so hard now, your breasts jiggled in the farmhouse sink, your underboobs hitting the ceramic. The clapping sound of your bodies meeting competed with your wanton whimpers, but you made a point of screaming louder.

Feeling a renewed rush of blood coursing through Joel’s girthy cock, you clenched your used pussy around him with a very tight grasp—so tight, that he was humming and ruggedly breathing while he climbed up to ecstasy. Joel tugged at your hair again, and this time he kept on pulling, your back impossibly arched like a bow ready to snap, until the back of your head was resting on his right shoulder.

“You know my aim is excellent, darling,” he groaned huskily, announcing his orgasm.

Joel pulsed one last time inside you before his cum filled you up in spurts, rope after rope of his white seed gluing to your inner walls and clinging onto every crevice inside your pussy. And when he did, you finally unravelled with him, an overwhelming euphoria drowning you as you sobbed and screamed your pleasure, leaving creamy rings on the base of his cock.

Joel kissed your cheek before letting go of your hair. Both of you were heaving now, trying to tame your breathing back to a normal pace and calming down your hearts. Joel always fucked you dumb and he did delivery this time—you only wished you were also cock drunk.

He pulled out sfotly, your pussy quivering one last time at the emptiness he left behind. You felt Joel’s tantalising fingers in your slick seam, gathering the leaking cum from your pussy lips to push it back inside you. You moaned again, biting down your lip, as he fingered you with his tacky spent, putting it back inside your cunt so it would take.

“Can’t waste it, sweetheart.” With just a few pumps of his thick fingers you came again, your thighs still shaking as you straightened your back.

You looked over your shoulder again to glanced at him stuffing his soft cock back in his boxers, with dreamy eyes and mouth agape, some drool still wetting your chin.

Joel snickered behind you, chuffed with himself. He swiped the spit off your chin with his thumb and licked it off his finger as if it was a little treat.

“What’s for dinner, sweetheart?” he asked, way more relaxed now, while he pulled your panties and jeans up and readjusted them for you.

“Lamb stew, but I wish there was cock on the menu,” you pouted, dreamily sighing as you rinsed off the dish and left it on the drying rack besides the sink.

Joel slyly grinned at you, playfully spanking your ass. “For dessert.”

[bibli0thecary]

as it always was

pairing: joel miller x reader

wc: 6.9k

summary: Joel wants you to come live in Jackson. With him, maybe. But you are stubborn.

warnings: reader's eyesight it failing, two people sickeningly in love, argument and conflict, miscommunication but only very slightly, mentions of canon typical violence, isolation and loneliness, anxiety, fear of being trapped, referenced past torture, reader's age is ambiguous

a/n: this is partially based around the abandoned plot thread from tlou2 where Joel has a partner outside Jackson. thank you for reading! let me know what you think!

There’s a storm coming. 

It’s something you feel in your bones, a particular stirring in the air, the smell of ozone electric and pressing on the breeze. 

You had always been able to tell when a storm was coming, though the signs you looked for used to echo differently. The smell and caress of the air always, but the shift of the trees too, the underside of leaves thrown to the sky, their veined bellies like the flash of a warning signal.

When the air goes still and soft and silent, there are mere minutes, moments, to take shelter. 

Pressing at your memory is like pressing on a bruise, it yields nothing but pain. You’d like to believe someone crouched beside you as a child and pointed the trimmings of the world and its secrets out to you, but you very much doubt it.

The other signs would come later of course, the more obvious ones, great purple clouds blackened at their edges, like a great wave that sought to swallow the world down the long column of its throat. 

The sky isn’t clouded yet, just a few dark gray, fuzzed, puffs, but there’s a stirring in the wind, the shuffle of leaves that you sense might be turning over, might be offering themselves to the rain. 

You aren’t sure, the horizon is a mass of furred emerald green and brightest blue, suggestions of color and shape and nothing more to your failing eyesight. 

Most of the world is a tempestuous blur, blocking and light, shapes and the vague notions of objects, shambling figures, but nothing more, not unless whatever you’re trying to look at is right beneath your nose.

It’s impossible to know why your eyesight started to go, though you can pinpoint when it started to get really bad. Maybe it's just the genetic lottery at play, something passed down through a family tree. You can only trace it back one person, your mother who died before she ever had the chance to lose her vision. Or, maybe, because of the gunpowder once thrown in your face back in the QZ, back when you still thought there was a better world worth fighting for, the black caress of it in your nose and lungs, the burn in your eyes. 

When you could still get a good look at yourself in the mirror, you swore the whites of your eyes were gray with the stuff, even all these years later. 

You hadn’t thought there was a better world to fight for so much as you needed something to hope for, something to fill the slow, crawling hours, the day by day, piece by piece devastation of the reality of everyday life. Not the Fireflies as Tommy Miller once had been, something revealed to you over tea in your kitchen after you almost blew his head off with a shotgun for creeping around on your porch, but a different group, one that had long ago fallen apart in a QZ that no longer existed. 

The air doesn’t smell of rain yet, that morning, just the whisper of the leaves, only a promise of what might come. 

For the moment, the sky appears a bright blue, rain clouds only a suggestion on the horizon, morning sun peeking through to burn away the fog left by the night’s cold humidity. \

Rifle in hand, you sit down on the top step of your front porch and breathe in the still chilled air. Fingers of dawn turn the horizon a milky pink. The pistol holstered at your side digs into your hip, so you lie it at your side.

It rained through the night, the world is still a little damp for it, the overgrown grass most likely covered in a dew you aren’t able to see. 

The world is still partially caught in the web of night, those sore hours just after the sun has risen and shadows still lie thick between the trees, close to the ground at the bottom of the earth. 

You set about taking apart the gun in your hands, cleaning the parts as you go, examining them for signs of wear, of red spotted rust by holding them close to your face.  

The day lightens as you work, waiting, spine aching where you’re hunched over, as the clouds gather and the air grows warm and thick with the scent of too familiar rain. 

The clouds had cleared through the night just to return and dump on you again, muddying trails, downing branches. 

It makes a nerve twinge in your chest, a fluttery anxious feeling that you bat down.

The chatter of insects, the thready trails of thousands of animals suddenly fall silent, noise that hums in the background unnoticed until it suddenly stops. You rely on it, to warn you of someone, something approaching. You listen carefully, fingers shifting to the pistol, quietly pulling back the hammer. Eventually the sound of a horse drawing near reaches your ears, the slight jangle of the rider adjusting in the saddle. 

Whispering through the overgrown weeds that choke the back beneath the copse of trees.

A moment later, the horse and rider appear from between the trees. Your eyesight is so poor it should be impossible to tell who is approaching, but you recognize the shape of the man, the blurry outline of him somehow more clear than anything else. 

“Quit pointin’ that thing at me,” he grouses, though you have already lowered the gun and though there is affection shelved in his voice. 

“You’d be dead if I meant you any harm.” 

“Don’t doubt it, sweetheart.” 

You stand and shoulder the rifle, shove the pistol into the holster at your thigh, and descend the porch steps into the yard. 

The wind is picking up, rustling the world, warmth stroked air stirring around you, scented with pine and rain, the soft, leather, wood oil smell of Joel.  

“Hi Joel,” You greet, reaching out to stroke his horse, nosing at the grass at the base of one tree. She makes a soft grunting noise, the vibration of it echoing against your fingers. 

“Mornin’,” he answers. “You smell like coffee.” 

“I brewed some for you. It’s inside.” 

“Didn’t have to do that.” 

“Well, you gave it to me, it's only right I share.” 

He steps closer and plucks at the shoulder strap of your rifle. You can just feel the pressure of his fingers through your jacket as he takes it from you and slings it over his own. There’s something gravitational about him, the pull of the earth against the moon, tugging you in until you’re close enough to see his features clearly. 

Anyone else would find the proximity uncomfortable, but not him, not with you. He knows you like to see, and doesn’t begrudge you his face, though he has insisted it's nothing to look at anyway. 

His breath fans over your cheek as he looks you over, gaze a careful assessment of your wellbeing that isn’t entirely necessary. 

You reach out and tug the strap of the rifle as he’d done to you. “Come inside,” you murmur, tipping your head toward the house. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Now hold on a minute,” he says, curling his hand around yours, keeping it pressed around the rough cotton rifle strap. 

“What?” 

He cups your face in his palms, his skin warm against your jaw, looks you over again before tilting your chin toward him gently. Joel kisses you like it means something to be able to. His beard scrapes against your cheeks, fingers tightening against your jaw for just a moment. You choke on the nearness of him, bracing your hand against his chest. The fabric of his coat beneath your fingertips, the silver curl of hair that you stroke behind his ear, the smell of pine and cedar and warm gun oil, is familiar now and so comforting. 

Overwhelming, too, in a way that you adore. 

It’s possible that your infatuation with him is because you’ve been isolated for so long, but you don’t think so. 

There’s too much about him that you like, things you have never noticed about other people.

You like the way he talks, his deep tug of his accent, the bottomless well of his voice and occasional regionalisms he spouts off. Dagum, being your favorite so far. You like the way back of his hands look and the age spots near his temples; the gray hair in his beard, and the way the skin at the small of his back looks when his shirt rides up; the way he smells and grits his teeth and shakes his head when he’s angry, but really just worried and not good at saying so. 

You really like how he worries about you, even if you wish he wouldn’t.  

It’s been such a long time since anyone cared about you. 

You’d forgotten this need, to be looked over and cared for and touched, in the intervening years. 

“All right,” you whisper when he pulls back, eyes still closed just to have the sensation last a bit longer, his lips still brushing yours, just a little. His hair feathers against your forehead, face tilted towards yours like the north point of a star. With some pain, you open your eyes, blinking until the map of his face comes into focus again, a highway of scars and weather lines. “You’re getting soft in your old age.” 

Joel snorts and releases you, crow’s feet deepening at the corners of his eyes with mirth, nudging you back toward the house. “I reckon you’re right.” 

You caught him at a good time, Tommy once said to you. My brother ain’t always been so easy.

“I have somethin’ for you,” Joel says, hand against the small of your back, guiding but only lightly. He pauses briefly to hitch the horse in the open air stable, dilapidated but still useful. 

With Joel there, you don’t have to pay attention as much. You can let your strained eyes unfocus. The world takes on a softened, wavered quality, like undulating sunshine through stained glass. 

The gathering of rapidly purpling clouds gather at the edge of your vision. For the moment, the breeze caressing your face remains soft instead of cutting, the deep green of the furred boughs of ancient pine trees dancing with it. A rabbit darts into the undergrowth around the house ahead of you, a white-gray blur. 

You only know which animal the ball of color amounted to because it is so often what you find in your traps. 

You think Joel probably knows you give your eyes a rest when he’s around because he offers his hand up the steps, even though you don’t need the assistance, muscle memory and the feel of the railing beneath your palm enough to guide you even in the total dark of night. It’s a good excuse to touch him again, feel the bones of his fingers between your own. 

“You do?” You ask. “More whiskey, I hope.” 

He chuckles and pushes the ragged screen door open. “Watch yourself here,” he directs and pulls you in front of him, squeezing your fingers again but not letting go until you’ve cleared the raised frame of the door. 

“I got it.” 

“I know.” 

The cabin is warm, the spiral of wind from the front of the house to the back, turning more violent as the storm brewing moves ever closer. Joel hangs his backpack from the back of a kitchen chair, leans your rifle against the door jamb and unholsters his own pistol. The safety is clicked on and the gun laid on the sideboard by the door. 

You like watching him, even if his outline is fuzzy at the edges. You hop up onto the counter and swing your legs, watching him. 

Every movement of his body is fit with purpose, intentional and lethal. He pays attention to things, even when it seems like he might not be. He’s handsome, too, of course. Beautiful in a way that you will pencil down on paper later, laden with interesting lines that move with each expression. 

“You’re outta firewood,” he says when he sits down to tug his shoes off one at a time. 

“We’re heading into summer in case you forgot.” 

“Still gets cold at night,” he says, unraveling the laces of his left boot, not looking at you. 

“I’ll take care of it,” he says, rising from the table with a grunt to place his boots neatly by the front door. 

You roll your eyes, “I can do it.” 

“I know it. I want to.” 

He dusts his hands off on the thighs of his jeans and approaches you slowly. You reach out and tug him closer by the collar of his jacket, pulling the zipper down before glancing into his face again when its descent reaches the middle of his chest. “I mean,” you meet his eyes, click your tongue in sympathy, “unless it’s too cold for you in here—” you murmur and start to drag it back up again. 

“Cute,” he snips, unholstering your gun to place on the counter, hands on your hips. 

“Well, I’m being serious, Joel. I’m just thinking of you—” You slide your hand to the back of his neck and pull him that much closer. “I might be feeling a little warm but if you’re—”

He rolls his eyes in such an annoyed and familiar way it makes your chest ache. He returns your hand to the zipper of his jacket and you happily indulge him by pulling it back down, razor teeth coming apart in your hands. 

There’s a shush of fabric as the jacket falls away from his body and hits the floor, your hands already occupied with other things, touching the bare skin of his wrists, tracing the thick veins that run beneath his skin to his elbows, feeling the flex of his forearms. He is thankfully only wearing a t-shirt beneath to contend with the warmth that, with luck, will be driven away by the rain drawing closer. 

It’s practical of him, to cover his skin. Protection from the sun and the elements and the looming possibility of life ending teeth digging into the soft flesh, but you like him like this better. 

His palms are warm and dry in yours, the heat familiar and comforting against your own. 

“A storm is coming,” you say. 

“That it is.”

“Were the leaves turned over when you rode up?” 

“Yep.” 

“Your hands are dry. Have you been using that ointment I gave you?” 

“Nope.” 

“Joel,” you chide. “That hurts my feelings.” You had hunted for herbs, sought out and meticulously cleaned a little tin. And he—

“I gave it to Ellie. She went on patrol when it was real windy. Face and hands was all red. Helped her a lot.” 

“Oh.” 

It’s a bigger compliment, maybe, that he had given it to Ellie. You have no proof that he isn’t lying, but you don’t think he is. 

“Uh-huh,” his eyes are amused. “Besides, how else am I supposed to get you to fuss over me?” 

It’s your turn to roll your eyes. “I fuss plenty,” you murmur, sweeping your thumb over the rough skin. You nudge your knees against his hips, tucking him in closer to the cradle of your hips. “Let me help you.” 

Joel kisses you instead of answering, hand cupped against the side of your neck, thumb tracing the line of your jaw. You draw your knees in tighter, urging him as close as he can get. His hand slips beneath your shirt, palm flat against your back, tracing the ridges and hills of spine and muscle and fat. 

His fingertips skim the hem of your jeans, grip your hips and move you forward to the very edge of the counter. You gasp against his mouth and then laugh when he steadies you. You feel his grin against yours, a strange kind of intimacy accompanies that, that you know the shape of his laugh. 

It sickens you sometimes, how much you like Joel, how much you might love him, how much you look forward to his visits and these moments. How you worried he might not make it to you because of the impending rain and the accompanying mud. 

Your reality is left behind for moments or minutes or hours; it's just you and him in a quiet world. He groans softly when you cup him through his jeans, dragging your nails against the rough denim. 

He groans and drags you ever closer, hands slipping higher, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts.

You arch into him, but when thunder suddenly cracks overhead, you break away with a gasp. 

He laughs, the sound hoarse and desperate, caught up in the center of his chest. 

You just pant against his mouth, eyes closed, and pull back a fraction. You comb his hair back, feel the strands slip through your fingers, longer than it once was, grayer too, soft under your fingers. You trace his face, aware that it might be your only way of seeing him in the not too distant future. If he continues to visit you, if he still wants you.  

“It scared me,” you reproach softly, still cupping his face in your hands, the weight of his head in your palms. 

He doesn't move, hands still firm and warm against your spine, thumbs stroking circles into the space beneath your ribs. “I got you.” 

“My hero,” you pat his side. “I’ll get you some coffee if you shut the door.” 

“That ain’t really a fair trade,” he grouses. 

“Sure it is. You love coffee.” He grumbles something under his breath, and you laugh. “What, you’d pick me over coffee?” 

“Shit, honey, any day.” 

He doesn’t mean it, but it still makes you laugh. 

You slide down from the counter and giggle to yourself at the way he walks a little funny. “Problem?” 

“You ain’t funny.” 

“I’m hilarious. Ask Tommy sometime, or Ellie. I can even get Maria to laugh.” 

You don’t see it but you know he rolls his eyes. 

“So what’d you bring me?” You ask when he’s settled at your kitchen table with the cup of promised coffee. You lean against Joel’s shoulder, cheek against the side of his head, fingers feathering through the hair at the nape of his neck. “You said you brought me something.” 

He digs in his bag instead of answering you, eventually depositing A loaf of bread wrapped in cloth and a jar of conserve on the table. There’s something scrawled on the side of the jar but you can’t make out what it says even when you bring it close to your face, the color of the ink too similar to the contents. Instead you unscrew the jar and sniff. The jam is strawberry, a favorite of yours during the spring and summer months.

The bread is still warm and makes a satisfying crunch when you unwrap it and press a thumb into the crust.

“Well,” you murmur and sit down across from him. “Thank you, but what’d I do to deserve all this?” 

Joel just shakes his head, his expression hard to read. “Nothin’.” 

You raise a brow but let it go for the moment. If Joel had something he really wanted to say, he’d get it out one way or another, in time. “It’s cause you like me, huh?” 

“Somethin’ like that.” 

“Still warm,” you murmur, breaking the crust on the bread. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you.” 

“Good, I didn’t bring it to swap for somethin’.” 

You slice the bread with a serrated knife from a drawer in the kitchen and spread strawberry jam over it, a first little taste of summer. You try to pass a piece to him but he shakes his head. “It’s yours.” 

“Well, thank you, baby.” 

“Mm.” 

For a moment, there’s only silence, the crunch of fresh baked bread in your mouth. The whistle of the wind through the trees outside, through the still open windows, bringing the scent of rain and petrichor and earth. You inhale the cool air as the humidity dissipates and the room falls to shadows, clouds gathering thickly overhead. 

“How’re you, uh, gettin’ on?” He asks suddenly. “With supplies.” 

You wish his face were clearer to you, a clue to what the tension in his voice means. “Fine. Winter depletes a lot, you know that.” 

“No firewood.”

“It’s summer, Joel.” 

His jaw ticks, your eyes tracing the quick movement, but his expression is still unclear. You drag your chair closer. Joel is hard enough to read as it is, and if he has something to say, you need to see his face. 

Often his meaning is hidden in his eyes, his voice is untrustworthy, prone to aggression when anxious or passionate. 

His brows are tugged together over his eyes, hard and unrelenting, on a mission you can’t begin to guess at. “It drops below freezing at night, darlin’.” 

“Joel,” you start gently, “It’s not like I’m starting fires out here. It’s asking for attention. For trouble.” 

“Jesus,” he mutters, swiping a hand down his face before he leans toward you. “That’s the goddamn problem.” 

Ah. Now you know what this is about, what the bread and jam, two things you can’t get yourself, are about. 

“I’ve been doing this for years, Joel.” 

“Ain’t just about firewood,” he starts, tilting his head, eyes locked on yours in challenge, like you don’t know its not about the firewood. “Food, clothes, medicine—”

“Is there an abundance of new clothes and medicine lying around somewhere that I don’t know about?”

“Funny.”

“I have what I have,” you shrug. “It’s always been enough.” 

A muscle jumps in his cheek and jaw, teeth ground together to avoid saying something he can’t take back. “All right,” he answers eventually. “Have you been huntin’ lately? I can get you something, bring it up from Jackson—”

“You don’t need to worry, Joel,” you reiterate, feeling as though you’re about to be ambushed. “Really. I have enough.”  

“Yeah,” he agrees in a defeated sort of way, rubbing one hand against his jaw. You close your eyes, to savor the sound of his fingers against his beard. It’s like a balm, one of the things you like best about him. It’s indescribably attractive, the sound of the rubbed bristles against the bowl of his palm. “But I do,” he admits. “All the time.” 

“But I don’t want you to,” you counter. “You don’t need to.”

You mean it in a reassuring way. 

There’s no reason for him to worry. You’re okay. You can take care of yourself just fine. 

His shoulders tighten, expression pensive and far away, jaw working slowly, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He’s grinding his teeth, keeping something inside. The room grows steadily cooler in the silence as the rain finally bursts from the clouds in a violent torrent. 

You lean closer, peering in at his face, watching the lines by his eyes deepen, waiting for him to loosen up. 

It’s a minute before he answers, not looking at you. “If you lived in Jackson, neither of us would have to worry.” 

The room grows darker. “So that’s what this is about.” 

“What?” He asks, too nonchalantly and a little too loud. 

“You aren’t subtle, Joel. You don’t know how to be.” 

He grinds his teeth. “Why won’t you come live in Jackson?”

Some vast, nameless fear unfurls in your chest at the suggestion. 

You don’t answer him for a long time, not sure what to say, how to explain yourself. There’s some part of you that curls up tight, a protective shell reforming around your heart, because maybe Joel won’t come back, if you don’t explain it right. And you don’t want to be trapped in Jackson, but you don’t want to lose him either. 

Maybe that’s unfair of you, vilely selfish, but it doesn’t make it any less true. 

“I’m sure Tommy has already told you,” you answer eventually, “that they’ve offered before. Tommy has, Maria has, her dad did before he passed — I’ve always said no. I don’t want to, anyway.” 

Joel clears his throat, hesitates for only half a second. “Well, now I’m askin’.” 

The words are spoken so softly, a gently sung plea. 

He’s asking, and so it should be different, because it's him. It is different, it’s—

“No.” 

The word rips from your chest, tears from your mouth. Terrible and mean. 

He scoffs. “That easy, huh?” 

You bristle. “That’s just how it is, Joel.”

“What happens when I come out here one morning and you’re fuckin’ dead—” 

“You bury me and get over it.” 

“—or infected?” 

“You kill me and get over it.”

He doesn’t laugh and you don’t expect him to but a sour thread of irritation ignites in you anyway. “I don’t know, Joel, just stop coming out here then.” 

Joel gives a humorless laugh and drags an exhausted hand down his face. “Yeah.” 

You wonder how hard it must have been for him to ask in the first place. “Nobody is dragging you out here but you.” 

Your words are dismissive of what you mean to each other. Horrible in how short and clipped they are, how little meaning you assign to them, to him. 

For a moment he doesn’t answer as you mindlessly sweep the crumbs leftover from the crust of bread into a little pile. 

You make the mistake of glancing up to see the expression on his face, hurt and resignation, but not surprise spread over his features. Something about it is unsurprising to him, that you would say no to him about this. 

“All right,” he sighs, “not for me then—”

“That isn’t what I meant—” you try to correct and then stop, not sure how to say what you mean.

A long, icy, stubborn and stupid, silence persists for so long you start to wish he’d just storm out, just leave. You expect it, because Joel is like a kicked dog sometimes, mean and avoidant when he’s scared or hurt. 

Instead, he says, accusing, voice a harsh slice through the air, “I know your eyes are gettin’ worse.” 

You freeze, lightning forks through the sky, thunder shakes the walls of the house as the rain drums down harder. 

“You can’t see and it’s gonna get you killed. If it don’t get you killed, somethin’ else will. You won’t be able to hunt if you can’t see. You ain’t gonna last by yourself much longer.” 

The words are calm, but bordering on a snarl, the shift of old fear just below the surface of his voice. 

“And you’re askin’ me to just ignore it. Pretend like you ain’t sittin’ out here in the goddamn dark, alone, all the time.” 

You don’t reply, because that is what you’re asking. You don’t want him to think about it because the notion scares you. Not being able to hunt anymore, losing your vision entirely, feeling like living on your own might be a death sentence you willingly walk toward, terrifies you. You try to avoid thinking about it most days, telling yourself that you would manage somehow, you always have, that finally losing your sight would just be a new challenge.

You have survived much worse after all. 

“I don’t need to hunt. I trap—”

“Jesus,” he mutters, shaking his head. “That ain’t the point.” 

“Then what is the point?” 

You don’t mind living close to Jackson, having people nearby isn’t such a bad thing. Their patrols help with curbing the hoards of infected that sometimes passed through, help with culling and discouraging raiders in the area.

It’s nice, you suppose, to know you aren’t totally alone in the world. 

Jackson is nice enough. The few times you visited felt like stepping onto another planet, or maybe into the past. 

Smiling people, folks that helped each other out, a school and a store and food to go in the store. Greenhouses and stables and laughter. 

Strange. 

But the walls are enough to frighten you. 

The walls are suffocating as much as they are protective. They remind you of gunfire and smoke and screaming; of a weapon in your hands and blood on your skin and gunpowder in your eyes, a viselike grip on your arm dragging you down, into a basement where screams bounced off the walls.

It had been hard to shake the feeling of surveillance there, of being watched. Of being trapped, doors and walls closing in on you that could not be opened again. Of being at the mercy of other people. 

Maria had offered you a place there a long time ago. Long before Joel, long before Tommy, even. You had always declined, and it wasn’t until Joel arrived one spring that you spent more than an hour there.

Joel has spoken your worst fears aloud. You’re afraid of losing your vision more than you’re willing to admit, terrified and in denial about it. Pressure builds in your ears, the walls squeezing in tight around you, helplessness of learning to navigate without sight and take on a new, strange world, of not being able to see his face again, even close up, a filmy white blur and nothing else. 

“You can’t take care of yourself out here alone,” he repeats, gentler this time, evidently thinking he’s broken through to you in the interim of your silence, that you don’t already know and aren’t petrified of it, incapacitated with fear when you think of being blind and alone, maybe not adjusting to it, maybe needing help and being killed over it. 

“I can,” you insist. “I always have.” 

He huffs, annoyed or maybe scared, and looks away from you, shaking his head. “Can you see the goddamn spores?” 

You swallow and answer honestly. “No.”

“Jesus.” 

“Spores are usually underground,” you defend, “so I don’t have to worry about them.” 

He sits back, one hand braced on his thigh, brows tilted up, watching you with eyes that say he knows you know it’s bullshit. “And infected. . .” He says slowly, not looking away from you. “How close they gotta be before you can tell they ain’t people?” 

“Well I can tell from the sound—”

The sound of their shuffling gait, the pounding of runners’ feet against the ground, the clicks and groans.

“If you couldn’t hear ‘em,” he interrupts loudly, “could you tell them apart? Stalkers are quiet.” 

You don’t answer because the truth is worrying and doesn’t help your case. It doesn’t matter to him that stalkers are also usually inside, and hide. It doesn’t matter, because he knows the truth. He’s making a point.

You press your lips together and Joel shakes his head, jaw gritted, the tension pooling into his neck.  

“You can’t.”

“So go, if it bothers you so much,” you deflect. “It’s not your problem. I’ll manage. I’ve been fine for years. I will keep being fine.” 

“That’s not what I—” He sighs. 

“Joel.” Your voice raises a panicked octave that you can’t hold back. His name tastes like acid and fear, like the rotting carcase of a dead world closing in on you, just like it always had and always would. “I can’t, okay? I just can’t.”

If he hears the fear in your voice, he doesn’t fold to it. “Why?” He demands, a touch of exasperation in the hard edge of his voice. 

You don’t answer for a moment and then remember his hands. It’s a good enough excuse to walk away. You need to walk away from just a moment, to gather yourself. 

When you stand, Joel’s fingers closer around your wrist, a soft, pleading hey, sweetheart on his tongue. 

“I’m just getting something for your hands.” 

He releases you and your hands shake as you navigate the rain darkened hallway to your bedroom, to the oil in your bedside table. 

The trees outside appear to be taking a beating, bending in the howling, unrelenting wind. Rain lashes the window panes and the roof in a violent tattoo. 

You return to Joel, and let your eyes focus on him. Even if he’s angry with you, you want to see his face. The scar over the bridge of his nose, other little marks against his cheeks, the warmth of his eyes, the lines in the palms of his hands, the patch of gray in his beard. 

He doesn’t protest when you pick up his hand and spread lavender oil over his knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” you say. 

The lines around his eyes soften, just a little. “That’s all right.” 

His face could be lost to you someday, only a picture in your memory. Are you willing to lose him sooner over something like this? Would he make you choose? Say he can’t come back to you anymore? 

Joel lets you rub the oil into his hands, the joints of his fingers, massaging until your own hurt, warm oil finally soaked into his skin. You sit on the very edge of the chair next to him anxiously, spine stiff. “I’ll give you some, to take with you,” you say instead of what you need to. “It's different to the one you gave to Ellie.” 

And enough to last a while, you think, just in case. 

You can’t make yourself look up from his hands. Hands that you know better than your own these days. Thick fingered, broad palmed, lined, calloused, spotted, sun roughened. Some of it gleaned from careful examination, the rest from memorization of touch you’d know anywhere. 

His hands in yours are a touchstone, a grounding force. You know what they feel like almost everywhere, what sounds they can dredge up out of you, how carefully they treated animals and instruments. 

Joel says your name, the sound of it so soft in his mouth, a pleading thing, but you don’t look up. There was a time you wouldn’t have believed him capable of this, but he’s changed, different since you first met him and Tommy introduced you on one of his first patrols, new to Jackson and still half feral, untrusting. 

You suspect, though you are sure you’ll never know, that Joel had told Tommy you needed to be dealt with, living so close to their little haven, but not apart of it. And here he is, months and years on, wanting to deal with your outsider status in another way. 

“I’m scared,” you admit to his hands, the softened skin beneath your own. “Really scared.”

Joel retracts one of his hands from between yours to tilt your chin up. 

Your faces are close together. He’s never particularly minded your need to be close, to see. 

He blinks, surprise registering. It reminds you that he’s right. “You ain’t scared out here?” His voice is troubling, supplicating in a way that Joel simply isn’t. He’s needling you, lulling you into complacency, because the surprise belies worry. He’s worried about you. “Infected and raiders and slavers that a whole damn town has trouble fendin’ off sometimes?” Hius voice raises as he speaks, not in volume but agitation, aggression pooling in his tone like poisoned honey.

“That’s nothing,” you murmur. “It’s nothing compared to not being able to take care of myself.” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand you.”

“Yes you do, Joel. You understand, and you know you do. You just don’t want to because it's me.” 

“‘Course it’s different because it's you,” he snaps. 

You balk. “What does that mean?”

He doesn’t answer, shaking his head. Joel takes his hands from yours and stands and walks a few steps away, toward the door. 

He stops, one hand scraping over his beard, the other anchored on his hip. You can tell he wants to walk away. 

But, he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t say anything either. 

“It’s not Jackson that scares me,” you say, finding the gentle voice trapped in your chest. “It’s not you that scares me. It’s losing my sight there and not being able to get out. It’s getting trapped somewhere again. It’s not being able to take care of myself.”

“Honey,” he says and turns back to you.  

You meet his gaze as best you can. The edges of him are grainy, blurry, like a dream. “I ain’t done much beggin’ in my life. But I am now. Please. Please, come live in Jackson. I worry—I worry all the goddamn time.” He walks closer again. You know he does it so you can see his face, shame welling up terribly in the back of your throat. “And I don’t like sayin’ it. It don’t have to be with—I just need to know you’re all right.”

“Joel—” 

“It’s not like out there,” he gestures vaguely outside, to the still swirling storm. “It ain’t like in the cities.” He takes your hands in his, warm, the scent of the first of summer’s lavender lingering in the air, twinning with Joel’s familiar smell, the fresh scent of rain washing through the open windows. “Whatever happened to you there, it won’t happen in Jackson.”

The way he says it gives you pause, such intense sincerity, so much desperate need. He means it. Not just that it wouldn’t happen, but that he would not let it happen. “You really care about me, Joel Miller.” 

“Shit, was I not makin’ it clear before?” 

“You have your ways.” You pat the chair. “Can I tell you what happened?” 

He takes the chair again, knees pressed together like children sharing secrets. 

The rain abates, a little, slowing to a downpour instead of a deluge. 

“You tell me anything you want.” 

Finding a foothold for your voice is hard. The threads of your like hard to weave together, to pick up where one thing begins and another ends, where it all leads. 

But he’s patient, for once, hopeful, maybe. 

You tell him. 

About the gunpowder, about the many bombs and firefights, about the basement and the walls. The leaving that came later when you were so sure you would die there, ribs bruised, face a mess of wounds and popped blood vessels. 

The room feels calmer, after you say it, like not so much is at stake anymore, like he might understand your irrational fear of gates shut behind you, why your vision failing feels like a different kind of wall. 

“And then I had to figure out so much on my own. I didn’t know how to trap or hunt or garden, but I couldn’t go back. And I didn’t trust anyone. The first time I had to break down a rabbit, I threw up, and I was so proud of the little trap I’d caught it in. A trap that took days to get right. The first deer I shot. . .half the meat was wasted because I was so squeamish. How could I kill people like nothing and an animal made me sick?”

You look at him, and Joel squeezes your hand but doesn’t answer. 

“I went hungry because I didn’t know how to feed myself.” You close your eyes. “It’s no different than what anyone else has been though. But I figured it out and I didn’t have to rely on anyone. I didn’t have to rely on favors or shitty ration cards or—” 

You open your eyes again, that careful, steady gaze of his on you, accessing. You already know what he’s going to say. 

“But it got better and I was free. Then my sight started to go. And I feel trapped again. I don’t want to owe anyone; I don’t want to rely on anyone. I don’t want walls around me again. So I have to figure it out, like I did before because I can’t go back.”

 He shakes his head. “But you don’t gotta now. I know—” he emphasizes before you can interrupt, “I know how it is. I know what you mean. Jesus, I know. But it don’t have to be that way. It ain’t that way.”

You shake your head, not sure he really understands. 

The rain continues to slow, pattering to a tiny, insignificant drizzle. He urges you up, into the cradle of his body, arms curled around you. “Can you visit me?” Joel offers, a desperate olive branch. “Ain’t even gotta be overnight.” 

You chew on it for a moment, the anxious pulse of your heart slowing as his hands rub the base of your spine. “I’m not saying yes, but maybe I can visit.” 

He breathes out. “Well, all right.” There’s such stark relief in his voice, it makes the middle of your chest ache. “That’s a start.” 

“I’m not—I can’t promise you anything.” 

“I know it.” 

You blink. “We’re okay? You’re okay with—” 

“For now. Ain’t gonna leave it alone neither.” He pats your hip. “And you’ll let me bring supplies.” 

It’s not a question. You smile and duck your head. “I guess I should be flattered. Will you still come hunting with me?” 

“‘Course I will. Will you come home with me tonight?”

You hesitate, but only for a moment. “Of course I will.”  

It’s not as hard as you think it is, climbing atop the horse with Joel at your back in the evening sunshine that turns the world into a slipshod mullion of orange and yellow peeking through still dripping trees.

His arms branch around you to hold the reins, tucking you close to his chest. He promises to bring you back before nightfall and you believe that he will never become something that might make you feel trapped, even if you never learn to live in Jackson. 

[bibli0thecary]

under your mercy — joel miller

pairings oldman!joel miller x reader

summary joel finds himself rubbing his face againsts your boobs for comfort before falling asleep after a long day of jackson work.

tags sunshine x grumpy, soft joel sleepy reader. cuteness overload once more. established relationship, jackson era, joel hating on tommy for making him work so much. unspecified agegap.

masterlist

joel trudged through the front door, exhaustion clinging to him. patrol had been long enough, but the real kicker had been the errands tommy roped him into afterward. the sun had long since dipped below the mountains by the time he finally made his way home.

he shed his jacket, draping it over the chair and kicked off his boots with a grunt, rubbing a hand down his face as he took in the peaceful stillness of the house. upstairs. that’s where you’d be. as tired as he was, the thought of crawling into bed beside you was the only thing keeping him upright.

dragging himself up the stairs, his joints protesting with each step, he finally reached the bedroom. joel paused, taking a moment just to look at you. the beauty of you.

the steady rise and fall of your breath soothing something deep inside him. he’d never get over how lucky he was. how after everything, he ended up here.

carefully, he eased onto the mattress, the bed dipping under his weight. instinctively, you stirred, murmuring his name in a sleepy whisper.

“mm. s’just me,” he murmured, his arm already curling around you.

you hummed in response, barely awake, but you still shifted closer. “missed you,” you mumbled, words heavy with sleep.

joel closed his eyes, letting the words soak into him. his grip tightened holding you close. “missed you too, sweetheart.”

“long afternoon?”

“tommy’s a pain in the ass.”

joel groaned, “made me run all over town doin’ shit he coulda done himself. damn fool thinks i got endless energy.”

a sleepy giggle escaped you as you brushed a hand through his hair. “poor old man.”

“watch it.” joel grumbled.

your laughter softened. then, almost hesitant, you whispered, “i’m sorry.”

joel lifted his head slightly, brow furrowing. “what for?”

“for falling asleep without you,” you murmured. “i should’ve waited.”

“sweetheart, i don’t need you to wait up for me. just need you here when i get home.”

you sighed, letting yourself fully relax into him, letting his words settle in your chest. “okay.”

he hummed, brushing a soft kiss against your temple. “love you.”

"i love you too," you smiled, curling against him, finally letting the weight of sleep take you under again.

after a while, you felt sensation in your chest.

“joel—what are you doing?”

when you looked down and saw him. his head resting against your chest, his face pressed into the fabric of your shirt.

shifting his head slightly to the left, then to the right, like he was settling into the perfect spot. the motion was lazy, unhurried, like he was soaking in the comfort of you, like he needed the reassurance of your warmth.

particularly between the presence of your boobs.

joel exhaled slowly, his grip tightening around your waist. “gettin’ comfortable,” he mumbled, voice thick with exhaustion.

“you’re hopeless.”

he grumbled something incoherent, shifting slightly but refusing to lift his head. you felt the way his body melted against yours, like the tension from the long day was finally slipping away.

“you good now?”

joel hummed in response, nuzzling into you once more. “mm. real good.”

you sighed, letting your fingers drift lazily through his hair. “sleep, joel.”

“this is sleep,” he mumbled against your shirt, his voice softer now, quieter. "i love your boobs so much..."

his breath evened out, the warmth of him soaking into you, you knew this is where he felt safest. right here, tangled up in you, resting his weary bones where he belonged.

[bibli0thecary]

hi! i’m your humble fanfic writer who is currently working on baker! joel miller x reader and i am so happy that you guys adore the fic <3 but i am just a struggling degree student who tries to find time and energy every day and i feel bad that i’m putting this out…

if you’ve enjoyed my stories, consider supporting me with a coffee:

buy me a coffee (maybe matcha)

every bit of support helps me spend more time writing the fic you love. thank you for reading my loves! i promise i’ll write more soon 🥹