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the coldest girl in coldtown
Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: do murder and mutilation count if you're just a girl and bad men deserve it?
-OR-
joel miller as the unhealthy coping mechanism and/or muse.
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: qz boston au; graphic depictions of violence; attempted sexual assault; murder; blood&gore; discussions of sexual assault; assault attempt is NOT perpetrated by joel; morally grey fmc; brief use of misogynistic language; consensual! but not safe or sane; obsessive behavior; rough sex; use of restraints during sex (m!receiving); unhealthy relationships; somnophilia; vaginal sex; anal sex; power dynamics; mentor/protege, kinda sorta; dead dove: do not eat
A/N: heyyyyyy, happy father's day or whatever.
see end notes if you want a brief overview of the TWs before reading.
Word Count: 5.3K
Read on AO3
The first time I saw him kill someone, he was saving me.
Bare-bruised knuckles against split-slick flesh, over and over until there was brain matter splattered against the concrete. When he’d pulled his fist back for the last time, a pause to make sure the body was well and truly dead, it shook like he was afraid of what he’d done. Or, that’s what I told myself, anyway. That he’d frightened himself.
One of us needed to be disturbed by his brutality, after all.
If it’d frightened him, it meant he was good. Decent. Just another lick of proof.
A knife had been pulled from his waist and slipped quick and shucking into the body’s throat. I’d never seen something like that so up close before. It’d startled me at first, the jut of the knife. I had the sudden thought, don’t kill it, please, do not kill it. But then it was done, and I was glad for it.
And when I’d rushed back to my damp box room only to find slick lust against clinging cotton, I’d known it hadn’t been me, the frightened one.
She calls it an attempted break in, later, because she’s never liked the word rape.
Who does, of course? Caught unawares—she was new at this, after all, the business of smuggling or watching out for her own life—she’d been unprepared, fumbling a second too long with her gun before they were on her. Unpracticed in watching the blind spots, the dark corners. Didn’t know what to listen for and how a creaking door isn't always just that. An easy fist to the gut and a heavy boot crushing her hand and temple, her head painfully crooked, neck stretched and forced to stare one of the grunts in the eye as they all wrestled her to the ground. He was ugly and drooling, and if she focused on the memory of it, past the slimy cold claws and huffing breath touching her body everywhere, she could remember the saliva pooling at the corners of his mouth while she was touched against her will.
There had been six of them, against one girl. Which, aside from the act at hand, was just plain cowardly. One could’ve had her easy, she wasn’t very good at defending herself just yet. But now, maybe, she thinks she’d needed the incident to inspire her application to the strengthening of her body. And it’d worked afterwards, anyway. There was that.
And then there was him.
Now that was a man adept at making his body do the things he needed it to do.
Maybe he didn’t know the Pandora’s box he’d been opening when he’d done it. When he’d snatched that worm from between her legs, and had gone and gone and beaten until the face had caved in and his knuckles were split; an unsanitary mingling of blood. Maybe he wouldn’t have stepped in if he’d known what it was he’d open inside of her after that.
She thinks—later, though—what an unfair approximation of his character that’d been. He would’ve always stepped in.
It could’ve been called admiration, afterwards. By some.
He called it obsession. Obnoxious. Child’s fantasy. She called it a gateway, the whole thing, the men and their hands and his killing. The moment.
She’d become obsessed with picking apart the minutes she’d lain on the floor of that dark and damp warehouse until the fingers in her mind bled. How cold the concrete against her back had been where her shirt had ridden up, the gravel burn of torn skin and the sandpaper feel of foreign hands. The way they’d said she wanted it. The certainty within herself that she hadn’t, and how disgusted she’d been. And then, other things. Like how close it’d come to happening and how abruptly he had just made it stop. The quickness of it all. How it hadn’t really happened but it had. How it planted things inside of her chest cavity that weren’t there before.
Most of all, the sight of him killing the man. The nucleus of the memory. How the surface of the face had become sunken little by little. The nose concaved into the mouth, forehead like a bowl until the white of bone jut forward and cut his knuckles. How all the rest of them hadn’t even tried to fight him because they knew him by reputation alone, scared enough to run fast. How a human could become so frightening, his mere actions spoke his name in silence.
And then his hand with a tremor, extending towards her.
“I know you’re scared, but you’re okay,” is what he’d said when he was done with it.
How could he have known, though, if that were the truth or not?
But then her body had felt totally numb, almost perfect, completely fine. The only thing hurting, the inside of her throat where she’d screamed her animal screams.
Maybe she was not so afraid, not so hurt. He’d shown her something— What was there to be afraid of now? —How to kill.
First, you hunt for his name—
After, he'd led you back towards the QZ—careful to keep his distance from the wounded animal— when the quick skip of a large stag had come out of the forest brush to startle you both. It’s gait heavy and thumping, skipping in a zig zag, good at running away to avoid capture. He hadn’t said anything more after, and his abject silence had somehow been more unsettling than the fleeing animal or the brutal mauling of a human skull. He’d turned right back around and gone once you were safely delivered. Be more careful next time, he’d said, just as quick as he’d come. An abruptness of a sort that makes one well aware of how significant a person can be. Whole world tilting sort of thing because you’d turned to watch him go, and known he could not go away forever, that he’d be important still, that you needed to know more.
Joel Miller, that’s what they say his name is. Stay away, they add, too.
And there’s a woman, Tess. You go after her first. Slotting behind her in line for ration cards, can’t fucking stand the stench of these bootleg chemicals anymore, after a sanitation shift. She provides nothing more than a quick flash of a sideways glance, but when you see her at the commissary a few days later, going for the last box of overpriced tampons, falsely gracious in letting her take them, there’s recognition in her face, the willingness to chat now, too.
His Tess, she’s the one that gives up his name first.
It’s the second thing you ask, if they're together. Unabashed in your prying, masked as silly, girlish inquiry. Someone once, a long time ago, had taught you how to be a good liar. And you lie and lie and lie to the woman, and it’s a little embarrassing to see how easily she believes the earnestness on your face. You tell her about a boyfriend, who does sort of exist, but only when there’s an itch to be scratched and you’re in need of an easy fuck. What’s the use in love at the end of the world? Nothing but a guaranteed death.
You’d always thought to avoid the artifice of it at all costs. No need to drag around an iron lung in your chest, life was already rotten enough.
From there on, it’s easy. To ingratiate yourself with Tess, to slot yourself into their complicated little life. A third pair of hands can’t ever be a bad thing, or at least that’s what she tells Joel when he’s angry at your presence. You think he doesn’t like the reminder your face brings, of that ugly almost-moment. But after that first and singular time, you’re sure to never, ever let something like that take you by surprise again. Quick on your feet and good with knives if not your fists, you’re useful with the added bonus of a smaller mouth to feed and you learn quick, too. They both have a lot to teach you. Little protegé. You make sure not to ask for much, especially not when your eye is set on much larger game.
There is something, though, that does take you by surprise, in the weeks that follow. Which turns out to be nothing more than how easy the whole thing is—sowing discord between the pair of them. Perhaps it was less your own finesse, and more that Tess had already grown tired of him. How he didn’t feel exactly how she felt, love or whatever, maybe. Or how they were both just a little too type A for long lasting camaraderie. Maybe it was just that the whole world was dead and nothing is forever anymore, all partnerships, even those forged in blood and fear, eventually run their course.
Likely, though, it was nothing more than the regular human greed that ruins most things—both of them in want of someone to order around, and you, with the inclination to only obey one of them when you so chose to.
A lie here, an omission there, their house falls to pieces like it’s made of cards. No one seems to pay much attention to the spider in the cracks. Or at least that’s what you want to think. And when it’s only you left then, with a warm shoulder for him to console himself with, there are no real fangs to sink into his skin, but you imagine they’re there.
You have to show him you’re grateful, you reason, for saving you. Or you have to punish him, maybe. He’d opened a wound inside of you. Something delightfully festering that had maybe always been there, but that he’d ripped open by the mere act of saving a girl he didn’t know from something she didn’t want. Really, it was that he’d been the only man to ever do something good for you and not ask for payment afterwards.
And it’s easy to wear down such a lonely, broken creature. You see that in Joel eventually. He wants something so badly, he just doesn’t know what.
He fucks your mouth first. Real mean and rough-like. Something you’d offered as a little stress relief. He’d said he didn’t want to have full on sex because you’d end up getting attached, and he wasn’t looking for some young thing that couldn’t take a hint. He said he was unavailable, even though Tess hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. She looked at you with suspicion now when she saw you in the streets, like she knew what you’d done, what your intentions had been from that very first random meet in the rations line.
He said he didn’t really like you. But he’s a bad liar, and none of that really deters your persistence. Eventually, none of that stopped you from finding yourself bent over the kitchen table of some long-gone family’s abandoned home, his hips slapping wet and hurting against your ass, only a few weeks later.
In his defense, he really did try to keep to his word.
Joel Miller is an honest man, after all. Even if he is a killer.
In repayment of your debt, you teach him how to lie in a way that matters, a believable way.
You volley your little lessons back and forth. Where the best spots are to pilfer for things in long ago picked-over places. A good slight of hand to make a pull from deep in someone’s coat. How to shoot someone in the head without missing. How to breathe through your nose while a cock is lodged in your throat. Enough truth sewn through your lies to make your story believable. How to throw a knife at an angle that won’t veer. How to take a fucking without crying or complaining. The FEDRA soldier on Tuesdays and Thursdays posted on the East facing gate that’ll look the other way if you say or do the right things for him. How to make dessert without sugar or flour or milk and have it turn out actually good despite the fact. How to pretend. How to kill. How to get what you want.
He doesn’t notice at first, when you start to hunt them. Going out on runs together, coming home dirty and sweaty and tired but amped enough to fuck and then fall into an exhausted stupor, sweaty limbs intertwined; it keeps him distracted for long enough.
But people start to talk, after the third one goes missing and is later found chopped up and scattered in pieces. A well known gang through the QZ, the deaths start to cause a stir.
He starts looking at you funny after that one. Something like hesitancy in his touch, a subtle but cautious pause before he speaks. He tries to lie, to play it off, but you’re the one that taught him how to do that. Doesn’t he know it won’t work on the source? Men are always so stupid.
You kill them slow because the moment happened so fast. Taking your time to savor the way it feels to force each one of them out of their lives. You’re inventive about it, experimenting on how to approach each one differently. Reasoning that you remember the almost-ness of it so brilliantly because it happened so fast, and that if you take a more leisurely approach with your get-back, it’ll leave your mind quickly.
When there is only one man left, of the group of six, Joel starts to ignore you. When you come round, knocking on his door, trying to corner him when he’s getting off his shifts, the subtle brush offs, a heavy hand to your shoulder that tries to assuage you of his coldness. But you feel it and you don’t find it very fair, the fact he’d be frightened off by the very thing he wrought in you.
You’re only doing what he showed you to do at that very moment of your almost hurt.
It could be that he’s worried about attracting the wrong attention. The fact that you’re already on probation, an aside you’re not interested in dwelling on, for disorderly conduct, followed by an attack on a soldier several months back. It doesn’t really help your cause. You reason that he has a smuggling enterprise to keep going and the wrong attention could ruin things for him. You reason that you probably should not be going on a murder spree when you’ve already got eyes on you. But what must be done, must be done. And you do not like being ignored.
There is something else, though, that you have over him, that you introduced him to besides the art of lying, and that’s a great fuck.
Something more difficult for him to ignore or forget, than your words in the street are.
He’s sort of a coward about it. Sneaking in on you in the dead of night when you’re asleep and unable to force him into things he pretends not to want. Like he’s afraid to face you. Like he’s afraid of the questions you might ask and the answers he might give. Foolish of him to think distance might keep him safe.
One late afternoon, your face hot and sweaty with anger after you watch him actively turn the opposite way, ignoring you when you try to catch his eye, “Why are you ignoring me?” Because you want it said out loud, you kind of want him to acknowledge that he knows what you’ve been doing, even.
Do you want me? Do you like me? Could you love me?
Maybe he’s tricked you into believing in things you didn’t before. Who knows.
He’s getting off a shift, sweaty, too, dirty and grimy, that musk male scent of hard labor and a long day in need of a woman to soften it all.
“Not ignoring you,” he lies like you’d taught him, wiping his grimy hands down with an ever grimier rag, pushing dirt around needlessly.
“Oh, right,” you laugh. “You can sneak into my bed at night, but you can’t look me in the eye in the street. That it now, Joel?”
He looks around at your raised voice, wary of others listening in on your tiff. And the once over he gives you is mean, cold and condescending like a father readying to scold his unruly child for embarrassing him.
“Listen,” he sighs and you bristle, “We gotta talk—”
“Yeah, we do,” you cut him off. “You’re being kind of a pussy.”
“Watch your mouth, kid.”
That makes you cackle, head thrown back. “Kid. Not so much a kid when you’re balls deep inside of me, are you?” The words are ugly and you catch a woman hovering nearby out of the corner of your eye, her small shocked gasp and quick scurry away as you spit your obscenities.
His mouth tightens in displeasure and he takes you roughly by the elbow, yanking you down the street towards your room. “Don’t be disgusting,” he scolds, yanking your harder, whiplash to your neck. You try to dig your heels into the asphalt, reminded of your inability to fight off men who want to force you to do things you don’t want to do.
“Maybe that’s just me. Disgusting.” Your stubby nails trying to gouge at the skin of his wrist do nothing.
Maybe if it was possible to be rotten and still be loved, then you might be convinced to believe after all. But he’s doing a piss poor job of it so far. The both of you are, actually. This really is like you’re carrying around an iron lung. Feels terrible. And when he whips around abruptly, finally on the sorry stoop of your front door, he looks truly angry at you in a way you don’t think you’ve seen him look before.
“You’re killing them.”
That look, it almost makes you want to be sorry. To say, I’m bitter now, I want to be sweet again. I feel like a ruiner. Some strange emotion wells up in your throat, behind your eyes. Almost.
“Yes.”
Maybe it’s accusation mixed with worry mixed with fright, you don’t know. Because when the anger leaves his eyes and he drops your arm as if stung, it feels bad in a distinctly unpleasant way. He must see something sinister in your glassy eyes, to bring it forward.
Why can’t he see that this is all his doing, opening this thing inside of you and showing you how to do it as easy as a bare handed kill?
“The FEDRA goons’ll catch on, you’re not bein’ careful, and you’ll get caught ‘nd that won't be something I'll be able to get you out of. You’re out of control.”
“Not yet, I’m not.”
He shakes his head, disappointed look down his nose at you. “I won’t stick around to watch the crash out.” Very fatherly-like. You’d laugh in his face if you didn’t also want to cry in his arms just now, so you bare your teeth at him in an angry growl, and he’s the one to laugh in your face instead. Imagine an anger so weak it’s funny.
“Maybe we’re the same, Joel. Have you considered that? Maybe that’s what bothers you about it. That we’re too alike for your own comfort.”
“You only see what you want to see, that’s why bad things come your way.”
“That’s a mean thing to say, Joel Miller.”
“You’re bein’ fuckin’ crazy, not careful. I’m not stickin’ around to watch you hurt yourself. You understand me?” He’s really working himself up, red in the face. Real upset with a finger thrust into your nose that’s making you more emotional than you even think you really feel. But he’s got you all twisted up inside, obsessed and murderous and thinking you might believe yourself in love when you were so sure that wasn’t even possible. “Thinkin’ you’re so fuckin’ smart, so sly. I see you.” He thrusts his finger at your face, gets real close and personal. “I know what you are, you little mess.”
You have to force sound up through the knot in your throat, your voice cracks anyways, you swipe an angry hand at an escaped tear. “I’m just doing what you taught me. You can help me, if you want. If you’re jealous you’re missing out on all the fun.”
The look he gives you, eyes full of furious heat like he could throttle you. You can feel his panting breath against your mouth and those angry eyes flash to your lips for a second, and you know he wants to kiss you, too. Can’t even help himself. You taught him how to lie, how to trick his way into what he wants better than he already knew how. Showed him a good fuck. There’s things Joel’s obsessed with now, too, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. And it’s not such an easy thing to brush off as a weakness, an obsession, when the object of its desire is right in front of you and just as panting angry.
When he storms off in a huff, you make sure your mocking laugh is loud enough to follow.
He comes when it’s midnight dark outside, not like a ghost because Joel could never be something as ineffable. Whatever it is that can be worse than a ghost, though, that’s what he crawls into your bed as, you decide.
The night is dark. It is quiet. The air is still. If something bad were to happen, this would be the perfect moment.
You hang suspended in your dreamscape, not awake and not gone to sleep completely. The feel of his weight moving over you on hands and knees could be light as nothing the way you float on that edge. But the heat he radiates is unmistakable when he pulls the light sheet away from your damp body, and you can feel the bare heat of his naked thigh brush against the inside of your knee when he nudges your legs apart.
A coward is worse than a ghost.
He moves your limp body as he needs, spreading your thighs and hitching your hips.
“S’alright, just open your legs for me…yeah, baby, yeah. Lemme in, don’t need to be awake, just take it.” There’s the wet tuck of the wide head, “Here ya go, darlin’. Nice and easy.” Skin so hot it scalds, but so, so soft, too. The forward nudge, the slick slide because you were dreaming of this already, went to sleep wishing for it, so it’s tight and gripping but wet.
This is how one confuses lust with love. And you think: I want…I want. And I want it from him and he has to give it to me.
His thumb rubs along the stretch of your cunt around his cock as he sneaks his way inside your body, so sleepy, such a good girl, coaxing the taut skin to do what he’s demanding, gathering slick beneath the pad of his thumb to slide up the curve beneath your cheeks to press at your other hole, insistent on intruding even further.
You whine pitifully, still trapped in that half-dream place and he gruffs soft and chuffing in his chest, half braying buck, half soft, easily manipulated thing.
“You like this, baby,” he tells your half asleep form. “Like it when I use you like this.”
He’s got one arm bent over your head to cup the top of your skull, applying gentle pressure to press your body back into accepting his cock, and when he’s slid full into the hilt, fingers of his other hand hitching one knee higher to make more room for his bulk, he pauses and holds still to breathe into your neck. That’s what gets you to wake up completely. The concentrated scent of his body so close, the hot wash of his breath against your throat, the smell of his clean sweat blended with heat. Your own cold sweat blooms along the line of your vertebrae, and you can feel the thump of his aorta in his belly against the small of your back and deep in your cunt against your cervix, that thump thump thump. You wish you could reach in and take hold of that lifeline, grasp in your hand that which keeps him alive for you and guard it for him in thanks for his keeping you alive, too.
“So good, stay right there, just like that. Don’t move, baby, need this right now.”
He presses a very gentle kiss to your jaw, and then starts to thrust. You like that he’s always gentle when he sneaks up on you like this. That he’s always very careful about fucking you awake, ever aware of the fact that he’s taking something.
You moan softly for him, the feel of the wide head moving against the front wall of your cunt, rubbing against the sensitive spot there. The catch and tug at the ring of your entrance when he pulls his hips all the way back to slide in long and stretching next.
“That feels good, doesn’t it? Feels good to just lay there and take it. My little hole to fuck and fill whenever I want.”
You start to pant, quick and panicked, needing to get there already. You want it so bad. He presses in as deeply as he can go, tip to womb, grinding and you start to come, so hard it’s painful, like your insides are all stretched and wrong and bruised, and then suddenly pulls out of your belly with a wet, tight suction.
It forces a strangled little scream from your throat— “Come inside me, no, no, please, please, Joel. ”
“No.” —Your entire body spasms painfully and half-fulfilled.
“Don’t be mean to me. I can’t take it, not tonight, please— No, no, don’t, Joel—” Before he’s forcing that thick mushroom head into your ass, stinging and unprepared, and jacking the greater half of his cock to spend into your tight hole, his palm wrapped around your hip, fingertips pressed to the pulse in your groin to force you back onto his spurting erection. The sound he makes, loud, unrestrained groan with his hot, wet mouth pressed against your ear, the feel of his tongue licking at the sensitive dip below, and the unbearable heat of his semen bleeding into your belly, it makes your cunt spasm again, milking hungry at nothing.
Angry, greedy, starving tears slip from your eyes when he pulls out of your stinging ass. He doesn’t even frown when he sees your splotchy, tear streaked face, only licks them clean away like they’re exactly what he expected to slake himself with in the aftermath.
He’s a heavy sleeper when he’s in your bed. One of the silent reassurances because you know he wouldn’t be able to truly rest, to find real sleep beside you, if he didn’t trust you completely.
You straddle his waist, the soft thickness of his cock tucked between your bodies, and admire your handwork. The broad musculature of his chest, the thick vein, dark beneath his skin, running along his shoulder, highlighted by the intruding moonlight. You press the hard muscle beneath it, watching as the blue thread disappears for a moment and then bleeds dark again. When you grip his face, his lashes flutter for a moment, and then it’s just his stupid, animal eyes, helpless to your grace, following you even when you terrify him.
“I told you not to be mean to me,” you tell him, digging your nails into his cheeks. He looks at you blankly for a second longer, taking stock of his body, and then his head tilts up, up, following the line of his arms to where his hands are tied together at the bedpost.
The look he swings back your way, crooked brow and all, is condescending enough you take hold of his hardening cock between your bodies, tugging his hips off the mattress so he’s whimpering, hardening further immediately.
“What’re you up to, baby?” He pants, head falling back between his lifted shoulders, groaning when you squeeze the reddened head tightly.
“My turn to play,” you murmur, sitting back to admire the thick bulge of his biceps as he strains against the ties, his reddening chest.
“Fuck—that’s fuckin’ good,” Joel moans as you twist your fist around him, tugging his sac with your other hand, spitting to lubricate your fist moving up and down his length. He moans louder, your name, and his legs shift restlessly behind you, tipping you forward on your knees with the movement. You squeeze his balls tighter, trying to find your balance and he whines. There’s a tiny bead of sweat at the delicious notch of his throat that you taste with the tip of your tongue. Sweet and salty, both at the same time.
“Fuck, fuck, that’s enough now.” He widens his knees bent behind you, trying to dislodge your balance further, and you hear the creak of the headboard as he strains further against his binds, the muscles in his arms bulging obscenely. Your heart beats a panicked flutter of excitement. “That’s enough, you’re going to make me fuckin’ come—fuck.”
“I told you not to be mean to me tonight. I asked you to come inside me and you wouldn’t. You’re mean, Joel Miller, and I don’t like it.”
You shuffle your knees wider, and he looks down at you with glassy, delirious eyes, his erection throbbing almost violently in your grip.
“You’re bein’ a real bad girl right now.”
“I want you to love me,” you tell him, notching him at the mouth of your sex.
“I won’t.”
“I’ll make you.”
You press down on him until his thighs are against your bottom, both of you groaning ferociously at the tight fit caused by the angle you're bent forward at on top of him. Looping your arms around his neck, yanking his head back with your fingers in his hair.
“Fucking kiss me,” he demands, and you press your mouth hard to his, tasting his tongue. Tightening around him, you bear down, molding your chest to his. I’ll make you, I’ll make you, you tell him and he eats at your mouth, growling with the force of his strength when he rips the restraints free of the headboard to wrap one freed arm around your waist, pulling your hips still and lifted so he can pound up into you as hard as he wants until you’re both falling into your orgasm together, gasping mouth against gasping mouth.
When he’s finally caught his breath, he tells you, “If anyone could, it’d probably be you.”
The last of the six takes a long time to catch. Like a bad, sneaky rat that’s learned all the tricks. She takes too long, and he gets another girl, and what he does, it isn’t just an almost, not even just a breaking in. She’s forced to say the whole hateful word out loud. It’s all very brutal, makes her stomach hurt. Makes her cry and feel guilty and then relieved, terrified and then horrible again.
So when she finally catches him, she makes it really count, real slow.
“You gotta hold the knife like this. Forty-five degree angle, cock your wrist and press firm. But controlled. Don’t wanna go too deep, though, and knick the liver or he’ll bleed out right quick like a stuck pig. Real messy.” Joel’s instructions are clear, precise. “Yeah, good, like that. A little deeper.” The blood spurts, it is very red—arterial, too deep��the body bays like a dying thing.
“Thank you.” He knows what she means.
“Sure.”
She looks at him and he stares back at her.
“I told you I’d make you. Didn’t I?”
“You did.” His eyes are deep and soft. “Now focus,” he tips his chin at the dying body, “We’re almost done.”
Later, when Joel steps out of the old, abandoned house, her work cleared away not to be found, he sees that there is a large, dead stag just by the door, seemingly come out of nowhere—caught now.
End Notes: FMC is attacked and a sexual assault is attempted, she is pinned down and groped (body parts not specified) but Joel stops her attackers before it can be taken further. If you would like to skip ahead the description of assault starts from "She calls it an attempted break in..." and ends at "First, you hunt for his name."
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hi Vic idk if you’re v active lately but just want you to know I think I’m in love w you and your writing!!!
hello ! not so active anymore unfortunately but irregardless!! i’m extremely glad to have you here!! thank u so much for reading my silly things :3
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So “the coldest girl in coldtown” is a masterpiece. Love it, love you, you’re the best🖤
thank you very very much :)
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the coldest girl in coldtown
Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: do murder and mutilation count if you're just a girl and bad men deserve it?
-OR-
joel miller as the unhealthy coping mechanism and/or muse.
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: qz boston au; graphic depictions of violence; attempted sexual assault; murder; blood&gore; discussions of sexual assault; assault attempt is NOT perpetrated by joel; morally grey fmc; brief use of misogynistic language; consensual! but not safe or sane; obsessive behavior; rough sex; use of restraints during sex (m!receiving); unhealthy relationships; somnophilia; vaginal sex; anal sex; power dynamics; mentor/protege, kinda sorta; dead dove: do not eat
A/N: heyyyyyy, happy father's day or whatever.
see end notes if you want a brief overview of the TWs before reading.
Word Count: 5.3K
Read on AO3
The first time I saw him kill someone, he was saving me.
Bare-bruised knuckles against split-slick flesh, over and over until there was brain matter splattered against the concrete. When he’d pulled his fist back for the last time, a pause to make sure the body was well and truly dead, it shook like he was afraid of what he’d done. Or, that’s what I told myself, anyway. That he’d frightened himself.
One of us needed to be disturbed by his brutality, after all.
If it’d frightened him, it meant he was good. Decent. Just another lick of proof.
A knife had been pulled from his waist and slipped quick and shucking into the body’s throat. I’d never seen something like that so up close before. It’d startled me at first, the jut of the knife. I had the sudden thought, don’t kill it, please, do not kill it. But then it was done, and I was glad for it.
And when I’d rushed back to my damp box room only to find slick lust against clinging cotton, I’d known it hadn��t been me, the frightened one.
She calls it an attempted break in, later, because she’s never liked the word rape.
Who does, of course? Caught unawares—she was new at this, after all, the business of smuggling or watching out for her own life—she’d been unprepared, fumbling a second too long with her gun before they were on her. Unpracticed in watching the blind spots, the dark corners. Didn’t know what to listen for and how a creaking door isn't always just that. An easy fist to the gut and a heavy boot crushing her hand and temple, her head painfully crooked, neck stretched and forced to stare one of the grunts in the eye as they all wrestled her to the ground. He was ugly and drooling, and if she focused on the memory of it, past the slimy cold claws and huffing breath touching her body everywhere, she could remember the saliva pooling at the corners of his mouth while she was touched against her will.
There had been six of them, against one girl. Which, aside from the act at hand, was just plain cowardly. One could’ve had her easy, she wasn’t very good at defending herself just yet. But now, maybe, she thinks she’d needed the incident to inspire her application to the strengthening of her body. And it’d worked afterwards, anyway. There was that.
And then there was him.
Now that was a man adept at making his body do the things he needed it to do.
Maybe he didn’t know the Pandora’s box he’d been opening when he’d done it. When he’d snatched that worm from between her legs, and had gone and gone and beaten until the face had caved in and his knuckles were split; an unsanitary mingling of blood. Maybe he wouldn’t have stepped in if he’d known what it was he’d open inside of her after that.
She thinks—later, though—what an unfair approximation of his character that’d been. He would’ve always stepped in.
It could’ve been called admiration, afterwards. By some.
He called it obsession. Obnoxious. Child’s fantasy. She called it a gateway, the whole thing, the men and their hands and his killing. The moment.
She’d become obsessed with picking apart the minutes she’d lain on the floor of that dark and damp warehouse until the fingers in her mind bled. How cold the concrete against her back had been where her shirt had ridden up, the gravel burn of torn skin and the sandpaper feel of foreign hands. The way they’d said she wanted it. The certainty within herself that she hadn’t, and how disgusted she’d been. And then, other things. Like how close it’d come to happening and how abruptly he had just made it stop. The quickness of it all. How it hadn’t really happened but it had. How it planted things inside of her chest cavity that weren’t there before.
Most of all, the sight of him killing the man. The nucleus of the memory. How the surface of the face had become sunken little by little. The nose concaved into the mouth, forehead like a bowl until the white of bone jut forward and cut his knuckles. How all the rest of them hadn’t even tried to fight him because they knew him by reputation alone, scared enough to run fast. How a human could become so frightening, his mere actions spoke his name in silence.
And then his hand with a tremor, extending towards her.
“I know you’re scared, but you’re okay,” is what he’d said when he was done with it.
How could he have known, though, if that were the truth or not?
But then her body had felt totally numb, almost perfect, completely fine. The only thing hurting, the inside of her throat where she’d screamed her animal screams.
Maybe she was not so afraid, not so hurt. He’d shown her something— What was there to be afraid of now? —How to kill.
First, you hunt for his name—
After, he'd led you back towards the QZ—careful to keep his distance from the wounded animal— when the quick skip of a large stag had come out of the forest brush to startle you both. It’s gait heavy and thumping, skipping in a zig zag, good at running away to avoid capture. He hadn’t said anything more after, and his abject silence had somehow been more unsettling than the fleeing animal or the brutal mauling of a human skull. He’d turned right back around and gone once you were safely delivered. Be more careful next time, he’d said, just as quick as he’d come. An abruptness of a sort that makes one well aware of how significant a person can be. Whole world tilting sort of thing because you’d turned to watch him go, and known he could not go away forever, that he’d be important still, that you needed to know more.
Joel Miller, that’s what they say his name is. Stay away, they add, too.
And there’s a woman, Tess. You go after her first. Slotting behind her in line for ration cards, can’t fucking stand the stench of these bootleg chemicals anymore, after a sanitation shift. She provides nothing more than a quick flash of a sideways glance, but when you see her at the commissary a few days later, going for the last box of overpriced tampons, falsely gracious in letting her take them, there’s recognition in her face, the willingness to chat now, too.
His Tess, she’s the one that gives up his name first.
It’s the second thing you ask, if they're together. Unabashed in your prying, masked as silly, girlish inquiry. Someone once, a long time ago, had taught you how to be a good liar. And you lie and lie and lie to the woman, and it’s a little embarrassing to see how easily she believes the earnestness on your face. You tell her about a boyfriend, who does sort of exist, but only when there’s an itch to be scratched and you’re in need of an easy fuck. What’s the use in love at the end of the world? Nothing but a guaranteed death.
You’d always thought to avoid the artifice of it at all costs. No need to drag around an iron lung in your chest, life was already rotten enough.
From there on, it’s easy. To ingratiate yourself with Tess, to slot yourself into their complicated little life. A third pair of hands can’t ever be a bad thing, or at least that’s what she tells Joel when he’s angry at your presence. You think he doesn’t like the reminder your face brings, of that ugly almost-moment. But after that first and singular time, you’re sure to never, ever let something like that take you by surprise again. Quick on your feet and good with knives if not your fists, you’re useful with the added bonus of a smaller mouth to feed and you learn quick, too. They both have a lot to teach you. Little protegé. You make sure not to ask for much, especially not when your eye is set on much larger game.
There is something, though, that does take you by surprise, in the weeks that follow. Which turns out to be nothing more than how easy the whole thing is—sowing discord between the pair of them. Perhaps it was less your own finesse, and more that Tess had already grown tired of him. How he didn’t feel exactly how she felt, love or whatever, maybe. Or how they were both just a little too type A for long lasting camaraderie. Maybe it was just that the whole world was dead and nothing is forever anymore, all partnerships, even those forged in blood and fear, eventually run their course.
Likely, though, it was nothing more than the regular human greed that ruins most things—both of them in want of someone to order around, and you, with the inclination to only obey one of them when you so chose to.
A lie here, an omission there, their house falls to pieces like it’s made of cards. No one seems to pay much attention to the spider in the cracks. Or at least that’s what you want to think. And when it’s only you left then, with a warm shoulder for him to console himself with, there are no real fangs to sink into his skin, but you imagine they’re there.
You have to show him you’re grateful, you reason, for saving you. Or you have to punish him, maybe. He’d opened a wound inside of you. Something delightfully festering that had maybe always been there, but that he’d ripped open by the mere act of saving a girl he didn’t know from something she didn’t want. Really, it was that he’d been the only man to ever do something good for you and not ask for payment afterwards.
And it’s easy to wear down such a lonely, broken creature. You see that in Joel eventually. He wants something so badly, he just doesn’t know what.
He fucks your mouth first. Real mean and rough-like. Something you’d offered as a little stress relief. He’d said he didn’t want to have full on sex because you’d end up getting attached, and he wasn’t looking for some young thing that couldn’t take a hint. He said he was unavailable, even though Tess hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. She looked at you with suspicion now when she saw you in the streets, like she knew what you’d done, what your intentions had been from that very first random meet in the rations line.
He said he didn’t really like you. But he’s a bad liar, and none of that really deters your persistence. Eventually, none of that stopped you from finding yourself bent over the kitchen table of some long-gone family’s abandoned home, his hips slapping wet and hurting against your ass, only a few weeks later.
In his defense, he really did try to keep to his word.
Joel Miller is an honest man, after all. Even if he is a killer.
In repayment of your debt, you teach him how to lie in a way that matters, a believable way.
You volley your little lessons back and forth. Where the best spots are to pilfer for things in long ago picked-over places. A good slight of hand to make a pull from deep in someone’s coat. How to shoot someone in the head without missing. How to breathe through your nose while a cock is lodged in your throat. Enough truth sewn through your lies to make your story believable. How to throw a knife at an angle that won’t veer. How to take a fucking without crying or complaining. The FEDRA soldier on Tuesdays and Thursdays posted on the East facing gate that’ll look the other way if you say or do the right things for him. How to make dessert without sugar or flour or milk and have it turn out actually good despite the fact. How to pretend. How to kill. How to get what you want.
He doesn’t notice at first, when you start to hunt them. Going out on runs together, coming home dirty and sweaty and tired but amped enough to fuck and then fall into an exhausted stupor, sweaty limbs intertwined; it keeps him distracted for long enough.
But people start to talk, after the third one goes missing and is later found chopped up and scattered in pieces. A well known gang through the QZ, the deaths start to cause a stir.
He starts looking at you funny after that one. Something like hesitancy in his touch, a subtle but cautious pause before he speaks. He tries to lie, to play it off, but you’re the one that taught him how to do that. Doesn’t he know it won’t work on the source? Men are always so stupid.
You kill them slow because the moment happened so fast. Taking your time to savor the way it feels to force each one of them out of their lives. You’re inventive about it, experimenting on how to approach each one differently. Reasoning that you remember the almost-ness of it so brilliantly because it happened so fast, and that if you take a more leisurely approach with your get-back, it’ll leave your mind quickly.
When there is only one man left, of the group of six, Joel starts to ignore you. When you come round, knocking on his door, trying to corner him when he’s getting off his shifts, the subtle brush offs, a heavy hand to your shoulder that tries to assuage you of his coldness. But you feel it and you don’t find it very fair, the fact he’d be frightened off by the very thing he wrought in you.
You’re only doing what he showed you to do at that very moment of your almost hurt.
It could be that he’s worried about attracting the wrong attention. The fact that you’re already on probation, an aside you’re not interested in dwelling on, for disorderly conduct, followed by an attack on a soldier several months back. It doesn’t really help your cause. You reason that he has a smuggling enterprise to keep going and the wrong attention could ruin things for him. You reason that you probably should not be going on a murder spree when you’ve already got eyes on you. But what must be done, must be done. And you do not like being ignored.
There is something else, though, that you have over him, that you introduced him to besides the art of lying, and that’s a great fuck.
Something more difficult for him to ignore or forget, than your words in the street are.
He’s sort of a coward about it. Sneaking in on you in the dead of night when you’re asleep and unable to force him into things he pretends not to want. Like he’s afraid to face you. Like he’s afraid of the questions you might ask and the answers he might give. Foolish of him to think distance might keep him safe.
One late afternoon, your face hot and sweaty with anger after you watch him actively turn the opposite way, ignoring you when you try to catch his eye, “Why are you ignoring me?” Because you want it said out loud, you kind of want him to acknowledge that he knows what you’ve been doing, even.
Do you want me? Do you like me? Could you love me?
Maybe he’s tricked you into believing in things you didn’t before. Who knows.
He’s getting off a shift, sweaty, too, dirty and grimy, that musk male scent of hard labor and a long day in need of a woman to soften it all.
“Not ignoring you,” he lies like you’d taught him, wiping his grimy hands down with an ever grimier rag, pushing dirt around needlessly.
“Oh, right,” you laugh. “You can sneak into my bed at night, but you can’t look me in the eye in the street. That it now, Joel?”
He looks around at your raised voice, wary of others listening in on your tiff. And the once over he gives you is mean, cold and condescending like a father readying to scold his unruly child for embarrassing him.
“Listen,” he sighs and you bristle, “We gotta talk—”
“Yeah, we do,” you cut him off. “You’re being kind of a pussy.”
“Watch your mouth, kid.”
That makes you cackle, head thrown back. “Kid. Not so much a kid when you’re balls deep inside of me, are you?” The words are ugly and you catch a woman hovering nearby out of the corner of your eye, her small shocked gasp and quick scurry away as you spit your obscenities.
His mouth tightens in displeasure and he takes you roughly by the elbow, yanking you down the street towards your room. “Don’t be disgusting,” he scolds, yanking your harder, whiplash to your neck. You try to dig your heels into the asphalt, reminded of your inability to fight off men who want to force you to do things you don’t want to do.
“Maybe that’s just me. Disgusting.” Your stubby nails trying to gouge at the skin of his wrist do nothing.
Maybe if it was possible to be rotten and still be loved, then you might be convinced to believe after all. But he’s doing a piss poor job of it so far. The both of you are, actually. This really is like you’re carrying around an iron lung. Feels terrible. And when he whips around abruptly, finally on the sorry stoop of your front door, he looks truly angry at you in a way you don’t think you’ve seen him look before.
“You’re killing them.”
That look, it almost makes you want to be sorry. To say, I’m bitter now, I want to be sweet again. I feel like a ruiner. Some strange emotion wells up in your throat, behind your eyes. Almost.
“Yes.”
Maybe it’s accusation mixed with worry mixed with fright, you don’t know. Because when the anger leaves his eyes and he drops your arm as if stung, it feels bad in a distinctly unpleasant way. He must see something sinister in your glassy eyes, to bring it forward.
Why can’t he see that this is all his doing, opening this thing inside of you and showing you how to do it as easy as a bare handed kill?
“The FEDRA goons’ll catch on, you’re not bein’ careful, and you’ll get caught ‘nd that won't be something I'll be able to get you out of. You’re out of control.”
“Not yet, I’m not.”
He shakes his head, disappointed look down his nose at you. “I won’t stick around to watch the crash out.” Very fatherly-like. You’d laugh in his face if you didn’t also want to cry in his arms just now, so you bare your teeth at him in an angry growl, and he’s the one to laugh in your face instead. Imagine an anger so weak it’s funny.
“Maybe we’re the same, Joel. Have you considered that? Maybe that’s what bothers you about it. That we’re too alike for your own comfort.”
“You only see what you want to see, that’s why bad things come your way.”
“That’s a mean thing to say, Joel Miller.”
“You’re bein’ fuckin’ crazy, not careful. I’m not stickin’ around to watch you hurt yourself. You understand me?” He’s really working himself up, red in the face. Real upset with a finger thrust into your nose that’s making you more emotional than you even think you really feel. But he’s got you all twisted up inside, obsessed and murderous and thinking you might believe yourself in love when you were so sure that wasn’t even possible. “Thinkin’ you’re so fuckin’ smart, so sly. I see you.” He thrusts his finger at your face, gets real close and personal. “I know what you are, you little mess.”
You have to force sound up through the knot in your throat, your voice cracks anyways, you swipe an angry hand at an escaped tear. “I’m just doing what you taught me. You can help me, if you want. If you’re jealous you’re missing out on all the fun.”
The look he gives you, eyes full of furious heat like he could throttle you. You can feel his panting breath against your mouth and those angry eyes flash to your lips for a second, and you know he wants to kiss you, too. Can’t even help himself. You taught him how to lie, how to trick his way into what he wants better than he already knew how. Showed him a good fuck. There’s things Joel’s obsessed with now, too, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. And it’s not such an easy thing to brush off as a weakness, an obsession, when the object of its desire is right in front of you and just as panting angry.
When he storms off in a huff, you make sure your mocking laugh is loud enough to follow.
He comes when it’s midnight dark outside, not like a ghost because Joel could never be something as ineffable. Whatever it is that can be worse than a ghost, though, that’s what he crawls into your bed as, you decide.
The night is dark. It is quiet. The air is still. If something bad were to happen, this would be the perfect moment.
You hang suspended in your dreamscape, not awake and not gone to sleep completely. The feel of his weight moving over you on hands and knees could be light as nothing the way you float on that edge. But the heat he radiates is unmistakable when he pulls the light sheet away from your damp body, and you can feel the bare heat of his naked thigh brush against the inside of your knee when he nudges your legs apart.
A coward is worse than a ghost.
He moves your limp body as he needs, spreading your thighs and hitching your hips.
“S’alright, just open your legs for me…yeah, baby, yeah. Lemme in, don’t need to be awake, just take it.” There’s the wet tuck of the wide head, “Here ya go, darlin’. Nice and easy.” Skin so hot it scalds, but so, so soft, too. The forward nudge, the slick slide because you were dreaming of this already, went to sleep wishing for it, so it’s tight and gripping but wet.
This is how one confuses lust with love. And you think: I want…I want. And I want it from him and he has to give it to me.
His thumb rubs along the stretch of your cunt around his cock as he sneaks his way inside your body, so sleepy, such a good girl, coaxing the taut skin to do what he’s demanding, gathering slick beneath the pad of his thumb to slide up the curve beneath your cheeks to press at your other hole, insistent on intruding even further.
You whine pitifully, still trapped in that half-dream place and he gruffs soft and chuffing in his chest, half braying buck, half soft, easily manipulated thing.
“You like this, baby,” he tells your half asleep form. “Like it when I use you like this.”
He’s got one arm bent over your head to cup the top of your skull, applying gentle pressure to press your body back into accepting his cock, and when he’s slid full into the hilt, fingers of his other hand hitching one knee higher to make more room for his bulk, he pauses and holds still to breathe into your neck. That’s what gets you to wake up completely. The concentrated scent of his body so close, the hot wash of his breath against your throat, the smell of his clean sweat blended with heat. Your own cold sweat blooms along the line of your vertebrae, and you can feel the thump of his aorta in his belly against the small of your back and deep in your cunt against your cervix, that thump thump thump. You wish you could reach in and take hold of that lifeline, grasp in your hand that which keeps him alive for you and guard it for him in thanks for his keeping you alive, too.
“So good, stay right there, just like that. Don’t move, baby, need this right now.”
He presses a very gentle kiss to your jaw, and then starts to thrust. You like that he’s always gentle when he sneaks up on you like this. That he’s always very careful about fucking you awake, ever aware of the fact that he’s taking something.
You moan softly for him, the feel of the wide head moving against the front wall of your cunt, rubbing against the sensitive spot there. The catch and tug at the ring of your entrance when he pulls his hips all the way back to slide in long and stretching next.
“That feels good, doesn’t it? Feels good to just lay there and take it. My little hole to fuck and fill whenever I want.”
You start to pant, quick and panicked, needing to get there already. You want it so bad. He presses in as deeply as he can go, tip to womb, grinding and you start to come, so hard it’s painful, like your insides are all stretched and wrong and bruised, and then suddenly pulls out of your belly with a wet, tight suction.
It forces a strangled little scream from your throat— “Come inside me, no, no, please, please, Joel. ”
“No.” —Your entire body spasms painfully and half-fulfilled.
“Don’t be mean to me. I can’t take it, not tonight, please— No, no, don’t, Joel—” Before he’s forcing that thick mushroom head into your ass, stinging and unprepared, and jacking the greater half of his cock to spend into your tight hole, his palm wrapped around your hip, fingertips pressed to the pulse in your groin to force you back onto his spurting erection. The sound he makes, loud, unrestrained groan with his hot, wet mouth pressed against your ear, the feel of his tongue licking at the sensitive dip below, and the unbearable heat of his semen bleeding into your belly, it makes your cunt spasm again, milking hungry at nothing.
Angry, greedy, starving tears slip from your eyes when he pulls out of your stinging ass. He doesn’t even frown when he sees your splotchy, tear streaked face, only licks them clean away like they’re exactly what he expected to slake himself with in the aftermath.
He’s a heavy sleeper when he’s in your bed. One of the silent reassurances because you know he wouldn’t be able to truly rest, to find real sleep beside you, if he didn’t trust you completely.
You straddle his waist, the soft thickness of his cock tucked between your bodies, and admire your handwork. The broad musculature of his chest, the thick vein, dark beneath his skin, running along his shoulder, highlighted by the intruding moonlight. You press the hard muscle beneath it, watching as the blue thread disappears for a moment and then bleeds dark again. When you grip his face, his lashes flutter for a moment, and then it’s just his stupid, animal eyes, helpless to your grace, following you even when you terrify him.
“I told you not to be mean to me,” you tell him, digging your nails into his cheeks. He looks at you blankly for a second longer, taking stock of his body, and then his head tilts up, up, following the line of his arms to where his hands are tied together at the bedpost.
The look he swings back your way, crooked brow and all, is condescending enough you take hold of his hardening cock between your bodies, tugging his hips off the mattress so he’s whimpering, hardening further immediately.
“What’re you up to, baby?” He pants, head falling back between his lifted shoulders, groaning when you squeeze the reddened head tightly.
“My turn to play,” you murmur, sitting back to admire the thick bulge of his biceps as he strains against the ties, his reddening chest.
“Fuck—that’s fuckin’ good,” Joel moans as you twist your fist around him, tugging his sac with your other hand, spitting to lubricate your fist moving up and down his length. He moans louder, your name, and his legs shift restlessly behind you, tipping you forward on your knees with the movement. You squeeze his balls tighter, trying to find your balance and he whines. There’s a tiny bead of sweat at the delicious notch of his throat that you taste with the tip of your tongue. Sweet and salty, both at the same time.
“Fuck, fuck, that’s enough now.” He widens his knees bent behind you, trying to dislodge your balance further, and you hear the creak of the headboard as he strains further against his binds, the muscles in his arms bulging obscenely. Your heart beats a panicked flutter of excitement. “That’s enough, you’re going to make me fuckin’ come—fuck.”
“I told you not to be mean to me tonight. I asked you to come inside me and you wouldn’t. You’re mean, Joel Miller, and I don’t like it.”
You shuffle your knees wider, and he looks down at you with glassy, delirious eyes, his erection throbbing almost violently in your grip.
“You’re bein’ a real bad girl right now.”
“I want you to love me,” you tell him, notching him at the mouth of your sex.
“I won’t.”
“I’ll make you.”
You press down on him until his thighs are against your bottom, both of you groaning ferociously at the tight fit caused by the angle you're bent forward at on top of him. Looping your arms around his neck, yanking his head back with your fingers in his hair.
“Fucking kiss me,” he demands, and you press your mouth hard to his, tasting his tongue. Tightening around him, you bear down, molding your chest to his. I’ll make you, I’ll make you, you tell him and he eats at your mouth, growling with the force of his strength when he rips the restraints free of the headboard to wrap one freed arm around your waist, pulling your hips still and lifted so he can pound up into you as hard as he wants until you’re both falling into your orgasm together, gasping mouth against gasping mouth.
When he’s finally caught his breath, he tells you, “If anyone could, it’d probably be you.”
The last of the six takes a long time to catch. Like a bad, sneaky rat that’s learned all the tricks. She takes too long, and he gets another girl, and what he does, it isn’t just an almost, not even just a breaking in. She’s forced to say the whole hateful word out loud. It’s all very brutal, makes her stomach hurt. Makes her cry and feel guilty and then relieved, terrified and then horrible again.
So when she finally catches him, she makes it really count, real slow.
“You gotta hold the knife like this. Forty-five degree angle, cock your wrist and press firm. But controlled. Don’t wanna go too deep, though, and knick the liver or he’ll bleed out right quick like a stuck pig. Real messy.” Joel’s instructions are clear, precise. “Yeah, good, like that. A little deeper.” The blood spurts, it is very red—arterial, too deep—the body bays like a dying thing.
“Thank you.” He knows what she means.
“Sure.”
She looks at him and he stares back at her.
“I told you I’d make you. Didn’t I?”
“You did.” His eyes are deep and soft. “Now focus,” he tips his chin at the dying body, “We’re almost done.”
Later, when Joel steps out of the old, abandoned house, her work cleared away not to be found, he sees that there is a large, dead stag just by the door, seemingly come out of nowhere—caught now.
End Notes: FMC is attacked and a sexual assault is attempted, she is pinned down and groped (body parts not specified) but Joel stops her attackers before it can be taken further. If you would like to skip ahead the description of assault starts from "She calls it an attempted break in..." and ends at "First, you hunt for his name."
Netherfeildren's Masterlist
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there is something sooo embarrassing about everything i have done and will do
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Ilya Kaminsky, from “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck”, Deaf Republic
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Transphobia is so antithetical to genuine feminism it blows my mind there's such a wide overlap like you either believe in autonomy and self determination or you don't
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Have you read “Nour” by Mustafa the poet yet? I’d love to know your thoughts on Pedro’s poem (and on the anthology as a whole of course) xx
I haven’t read the whole book !!! (Honestly all I’ve been reading the past few weeks is alien smut 😭) but I did see pp’s piece and thought it was very well done and lyrical and felt his voice was very loud and present in the writing like u can tell that’s him and he wrote it and I always love when u can really see a person in the writing I feel like it speaks to some real natural ability
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I’ve been obsessed with your writing forever, it’s incredible! I wanted to ask if you’d ever be open to writing more of I urge you: Bite me? I love love love the way you write Qz Joel 😭😭 and I’ve been wondering what they’re up to
absolutely yes I would love to I just need to get over this small affliction wherein all of my ability has suddenly left me and I’m finding myself incapable of putting down even a single word without wanting to barf
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hi vic! which Pedro films this year are you most exited about?
😛😛😛

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VIC hello again my love, just finished fable of the dog !!! Pls I have no words, Ellie’s conversation w reader about pretending the bad stuff doesn’t exist was the worst but like so good and unfortunately relatable. Always obsessed w anything you write!! I have a question - I’m not sure i understood how Sarah actually died? Pls could u explain a little just so I know I understood correctly. Thank you so much !!!
hello and thank you so much !!! Fable Ellie is so special to me :( honestly if I had to choose any iteration of these characters that is most similar to myself I’d say it’s her but cooler and smarter and better
essentially, joel got caught up with an in universe version of the fireflies by way of Tommy, doing things he shouldn’t be doing. When he tries to get out of it, they want to strong arm him into continuing his work with them and Sarah gets caught in the crossfires of an altercation which Joel is blamed for.
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Another book you may be interested in - fruit of the dead by Rachel Lyon. Modern retelling of Demeter and Persephone story where hades is a Fortune 500 big pharma ceo. It was amazing
dude I fucking love myth retellings thank u that sounds delish
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Different anon but I LOVED thirst for salt. Top 5 fav books - an amazing exploration on what it’s like to reflect on a love and recognize you miss it while also knowing it’s in the past for a reason.
gosh darnnit I must read this immediately
#reading Johanna Lindsey’s ‘Love Only Once’ rn bc I want to see what the histrom readers of yore loved in her#and I just can’t !! get !! into it !!!#perhaps I will start this instead#vic replies
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'he would not fucking say that' maybe he would if he knew he was starring in his very own porn fic for the sole purpose of delighting some freaks on archive of our own dot org. maybe he'd play it up for the cameras. ever consider that
#joel when he wants to be called DADDY in everything I write#like so what omggggg he did say it in my brain who caressssss
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no offense but reading is literally the cure to brain rot and there’s no work around to reading books
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PEDRO PASCAL as JOEL MILLER The Last of Us, Season 2 Episode 1: Future Days
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Megan Nolan, from her novel titled "Acts of Desperation," originally published in March 2021
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