Look, I don't write much. It's sparse in here. But what is here, is lots of fluff and joy and love. And the odd Pedro boy being fluffy and joyful and lovable...and cheeky.
Everything is rated G or maybe T for Teen. Warnings for anything higher will be listed as needed.
*🎄New for Dec 2025* Why do You Delight in Torturing Me? (multiple P-boy crossover, rated 🌶️)
Plot summary: In 1870s Texas, Joel Miller loses his wife and son in childbirth, leaving him to raise his five year old daughter Sarah alone. Faced with losing her to his wife's grieving parents, or being forced into marrying her younger sister, he turns to you - the town's thirty-something spinster - and asks for your hand in a marriage of convenience.
Chapter summary: It’s time for Joel to head back to jail, but the day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Warnings: 18+only.
A/N: Finally managed to get back to this one! I’m going to try and manage expectations (and my sanity) a bit more by saying I’ll aim to post at least every other Friday. If I can post once a week, then I will 🥰
Masterlist
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Monday evening rolls around before it feels as though you’ve had time to process anything.
These last few days have felt like a whole marriage lived in miniature. The togetherness, the conversations, the love-making…a moment in time of the whole life you might have had unspooling all at once, bright and desperate and doomed, because on Monday evening your time’s up and Joel has to ride back into town and give himself up to the sheriff's office to await the outcome of the trial.
You’ve known it was coming – of course you have. But when Joel had helped you up into James’s brougham for the ride home, you’d pushed the thought from your mind, consumed only with the true purpose of the stolen hours you’d been granted. And now…now reality looms like a harbinger of death over what has become so sacred.
It sits on the ranch like a shadow the whole day long. Joel had risen before dawn and done more work than three men – mended the pasture fence, reshod a mare, split a winter's worth of wood and stacked it under the lean-to against the day you might need it and he might not be there to swing the axe. You had watched him from the kitchen window through the long bright morning, stripped to the waist in the heat, driving himself at the work like a man trying to leave his hands' labour behind him in the very grain of the place, and you had understood that this was how he was saying goodbye to it.
To the ranch. To the life. To the small chance that he might not come back to any of it, despite how positive you’ve both allowed yourself to feel in the cocoon of one another’s embrace.
The afternoon comes too fast.
He comes in at four o'clock, washes, and puts on one of his good shirts. Then he comes into the kitchen where you’re stood at the table not doing anything at all, only standing with your hands flat on the warm scrubbed pine, and he stops in the doorway, looks at you, and neither of you say a word.
"Please,” you whisper, your voice coming out cracked. "Don't say it's time yet, Joel. Not yet."
He crosses the kitchen in three strides and gathers you into him.
You press your face into his chest, wind your arms around his ribs and hold on the way a drowning woman holds a spar. His arms come around your back, his beard presses into the crown of your hair and he holds you just as hard. For a long while the two of you stand there in the afternoon kitchen holding on and saying nothing, because there’s nothing to say that will make it smaller than it is.
"Darlin’, we have to go soon. If I ain’t through the Sheriff’s door by sundown he can send men out here, and I won't have men ridin’ onto this place after dark with you and Sarah in it. I'll go on my own two feet or not at all."
"I know. I just…I don't want you to go, Joel." The words tear out of you. "I know I have to let you. I know there's no help for it. But I don't want you to go and I’m not going to pretend that I do."
His arms tighten. "Good," he says roughly, "don't pretend. I couldn't stand it if you pretended. I’m done with any kind of pretendin’ for the rest of my life however long that turns out to be."
You laugh at that – a wet, broken thing – tip your face up, and he bends his head, and kisses you in a quiet and terrible way, a long careful pressing of his mouth to yours as though he means to learn the shape of it and carry the shape of it away with him into the cell. You kiss him back the same way, memorising, hoarding, and when he draws back at last his eyes are wet and yours are streaming.
"Where's Sarah?" you manage.
"Nappin’. Clean wore herself out helping me stack the wood." His thumb wipes at your cheek. "I know it goes without sayin’ darlin’, but if anythin’ bad does happen, Sarah’s yours – you understand me?”
"Joel…"
"When I'm gone, whatever happens at that trial – she's yours. You’re my wife, in every way possible now, so nobody can take her from you. She's yours. And this place is yours, free and clear, whatever…" His voice catches. "Whatever they decide about me."
"Stop." You catch his face in both hands. "Stop talking like a man saying goodbye, Joel Miller. Stop it! You didn't do the thing they're saying you did. You defended this family. Any man in the county would have done what you did, and you know that James is positive about the outcome. We have the town council on our side, and you are coming home."
"You believe that," he says, eyes searching yours.
"I believe it with my whole heart. And I thought you did too."
"I do, I…want it to be true."
He bends and presses his forehead to yours, and the two of you stand there breathing the same air in the afternoon kitchen until the light through the window begins to gild toward evening and there’s no more putting it off.
You wake Sarah together, which is the hardest part. She comes up out of her nap warm and rumpled and slow to understand, and when she does, she comes apart in a way you haven’t expected. She flings herself at Joel, burying her face in his neck, unwilling to let go. He sits down on the edge of her bed and holds her and rocks her, and his own face is a thing you have to look away from.
"Don't go, Pa, please don't go. I'll be good. I'll be so good. Don't go!"
"Babygirl, look at me." He draws her back and thumbs the tears off her cheeks. "You listen to me now. I have to go and talk to some men in town about what happened. That's all. And they're gonna talk it over, and they're gonna see that your Pa did right, and then I'm gonna come home. You hear? I'm gonna come home."
"When?"
"Soon."
"How soon?"
"I don't know exactly, babygirl. But soon. And while I'm gone you gotta help out, okay? And you say your prayers. And you know what you can pray for?"
Sarah hiccups. "A baby sister?"
Joel's face breaks and mends in the same instant. "You pray for whatever your heart wants, babygirl," he says, thick. "You pray real hard and God’s gonna hear you.”
He holds her a long while more. Then he stands, sets her small hand into yours, and looks at the two of you standing there together in the failing gold light and something passes over his face that you’ll carry with you the rest of your life.
"My girls," he says.
Then he nods and goes outside to help Tomás with the wagon.
****
The ride into town is made mostly in silence.
Joel handles the reins and you press against his side on the wagon bench with your hand tucked into the crook of his arm, the country going by gold and green and heartbreakingly beautiful in the last of the light, Tomás silent in the back.
For some reason, you find yourself memorising it – the way the live oaks throw their long shadows across the road, the way the cicadas saw in the heat, the way the dust rises gold behind the wagon wheels, the warm hard press of Joel's arm against your side, and the smell of him. You memorise his profile against the gold light, the rough dark beard, the eyes fixed on the road, the small muscle working in his jaw.
"Darlin’..."
"Yes?"
"When this is over…"
"When this is over," you interrupt, "we are going to have the rest of our lives, Joel Miller, and I intend to be a very great trial to you for every day of them."
The corner of his mouth pulls. "That so."
"That is so. I’m your wife proper now and you’ll be sorry you ever wished me to speak my mind."
"I'll never be sorry for that." His hand leaves the reins a moment to cover yours in the crook of his arm. "Never once. Whatever comes, I want you to know that. You're the best thing that's happened to me since I lost Tess and I need you to know it before I go through that door."
The gold country blurs through your tears.
"I love you, Joel," you say, “and I need you to come home to me."
"I'll do everything a man can do to come home to you," he says, not quite a promise because he’s too honest a man to promise what he can’t command, but as near a promise as the truth allows and you took it and hold it.
Sawyer’s Creek eventually appears on the hazy horizon. The same townsfolk who watched you leave a few days ago now watch you return with wide-eyes and whispers behind hands, but you lift your chin and look none of them in the eye.
Joel draws the wagon up before the sheriff's office and sets the brake. He sits a moment with the reins in his hands looking at the building, and you feel the breath go out of him. Then he wraps the reins, climbs down and comes around to lift you down, his hands spanning your waist and setting you on your feet in the dust of the street.
He nods to Tomás and doesn’t let go of your hand as you go up the steps to the door.
Inside, Sheriff Hayes is sat behind his desk, and when he sees you, he nods briefly, an acknowledgement of a bargain made and kept. In the corner, you see James leaning against the wall, a glint of satisfaction present in his eyes.
"Mr Miller,” James says, coming forward to shake Joel’s hand. "You're a man of your word. I told the Sheriff you'd be here by sundown on your own two feet and here you are. That counts for something."
"Mr Oliver." Joel nods in return.
"Well." Sheriff Hayes rises from behind the desk. “I'm as sorry about this as I was the last time, but I have to do it. Come on back, Joel.”
The moment arrives and though you thought you were braced for it, you realise you’re not. Not now, after everything. Joel turns to you, takes your face in both his hands, and looks at you as though he means to take the whole of you with him down the corridor and once more into the dark.
"Joel…" Your voice won’t hold. "Joel, I…"
"Darlin’, you listen to me now. You go home, take care of my girl and take care of yourself – just like you did last time. You eat and you sleep even when you don't want to because I need you strong and I need Sarah minded and I can't do either of those things from in here. Can you do that for me?"
"Yes,” you swallow hard, “Yes, I can do that."
"That's my girl." His thumbs wipe at the tears streaming down your face. "I'll be alright in here, just like I was before. It's a few days and then the trial, and then…"
"And then you come home."
"And then I come home," he says, and he kisses you, long, hard and desperate, one hand fisting in your pinned-up hair, the other splayed wide against your back crushing you into him.
You kiss him back with everything you have, both of you knowing it has to last and neither of you able to make it enough, and it’s Hayes clearing his throat who finally, gently, ends it.
"Come on now, Joel, before it gets harder.”
Joel draws back and presses his forehead to yours one last time, his breath shuddering against your mouth.
"I love you," he says low, just for you. "Don't watch me go through that door.”
You shake your head fiercely. “I watched last time and I’ll watch this time too.”
"Darlin’…”
"I'm not going to look away from you, Joel Miller. Not now, not ever. If you're walking through that door I'm going to watch you do it with my eyes open, and I'm going to be standing right here when you walk back out of it. That's my promise."
Something breaks and blazes in his eyes.
"God, I love you," he says.
Then he lets go of your face, steps back, squares his shoulders, and turns to Hayes.
“Let’s get this over with.”
Hayes nods and opens the door. You watch your husband walk through it, watch as he turns back once and lifts his hand, before the door closes behind him.
Then comes the sound of the cell door - the iron scrape and the heavy clang and the turn of the key, ringing down the corridor into the office, into your chest, into the marrow of you. You stand and listen to your husband being locked away, and something inside you that had the fortitude not to break the last time, but doesn’t possess that same fortitude now, gives way.
James catches you before you can fall and sits you in a chair by the window. He crouches in front of you, letting you weep and not saying the useless things men say. Not telling you to hush or be brave or that it will all come right, only staying there, crouched before you, with a steady hand on your shoulder while the storm of it goes through you.
Because he knows what these few days have meant.
Hayes reappears, and, seeing how it is, pours a tin cup of coffee and sets it wordless on the ledge near your hand, retreating behind his desk to give you what privacy the small room allows.
It passes the way even the worst of things pass. You come back to yourself by degrees and wipe your face with the back of your wrist, drawing in a shuddering breath.
"Forgive me, Mr Oliver."
"There's nothing to forgive, Mrs Miller,” James replies. "I've done this work for a long time with a good many wives. There's not one of them didn't do exactly what you just did. You go ahead and feel it. It means you've got something worth feeling it over. That'll serve you in the days coming."
“But…before…”
“No talk of before,” he shakes your shoulder gently. “We’re living in the here and now.”
You nod and meet his gaze. "How many days? Don't spare me because I would rather know the shape of the thing than imagine it worse in the dark."
His eyebrows lift with something you might call amusement.
"That is exactly what I wanted to tell you. Word came in on the noon rider to say that the judge will be here in three days' time."
You stare at him. "Three days?”
"Yes,” he nods. “Three days and then we can hold the trial. I know three more nights in that cell sounds like a cruelty when you'd take him home this minute if the law let you, but this is a good thing. And if I do my work the way I mean to do my work, then at the end of the fourth day, your husband walks out that front door on his own two feet and rides home with you."
“You truly believe he'll be acquitted?”
“Mrs Miller, I’ve already been given a letter from the leader of your town council vouching for your husband.”
He looks at you levelly, and you understand that he’s a man who chooses his words with care and doesn’t spend hope cheaply.
"I don't tell people what they want to hear. I tell them the truth. Three days, and then we have a fight I mean to win."
You close your eyes.
Three days.
It has a shape now, a bottom, and an end you can see – with hope shining.
"Thank you," you say calmly. "Thank you, Mr Oliver. You cannot know what it is to have a shape to hold onto instead of the dark."
"I have some idea." He rises and offers you his hand, drawing you to your feet, steadying you until he’s sure your legs would hold. "Now, I saw your man through the window, and he’ll be able to drive you home. I'll come out to the ranch tomorrow to go over the particulars of the day with you – what to expect, where you'll sit, what the lawyering will look like so none of it takes you by surprise. Between now and the trial you're not going to sit alone at that ranch imagining the worst. You're going to be busy helping me build the thing that brings your husband home.”
You look toward the mouth of the brick corridor, where the shadow had swallowed Joel whole.
"Sheriff,” you say tightly, regaining the strength you know you possess. “Before I go, may I say goodnight to my husband?"
Hayes looks up, mouth opening as if to refuse, then sighs and rises from his chair. “You seem to like asking me to break the rules, Mrs Miller.” He shakes his head. “Two minutes.”
You nod and wait for him to open the door, then move pass him down the now familiar corridor, the other cells empty on either side, until you reach the bottom. Joel rises from the cot to greet you, his hands going around the bars.
“Darlin’…”
“I had to tell you,” you say hurriedly. “Mr Oliver says the judge will be here in three days. Three days, Joel. He says if he does his work you'll walk out on the fourth day and come home."
You felt the breath go out of Joel, the naked relief of finally having a date to keep in mind.
"Three days.”
"Three days, my love."
He shakes his head. "I thought it might take longer. I thought…but this way, Sarah won't hardly have time to miss me again. Three days and it's decided, one way or the other. I can do three days standin’ on my head. Three days is nothin’. You go home tonight, and you tell my girl it’s only three more sleeps and then her Pa’s comin’ home.”
"I will,” you nod.
“Then, maybe…” he pauses, almost bashful, “maybe we can get to workin’ on that baby sister she asked for.”
Emotion swells in your chest, tears jump into your eyes and all you can do is nod.
“Three days,” he says, bending to kiss your fingers. “And then I don't ever leave you again as long as I live."
You press your mouth to the gap in the bars and Joel presses his to it in somehow one of the truest kisses you’ve ever been given. And when you draw back, you’re both weeping and both, underneath the weeping, lit up from within by that hard bright number.
Three.
"Go on now,” Joel says. “Go home to my girl…our girl. I'll see you first thing, when they bring me to wherever it is they’re plannin’ on holdin’ this thing. You be in the front row where I can find you."
"I'll be in the front row. Eyes open."
"Eyes open." The old lazy, crooked smile pulls at his mouth. "That's my girl."
You make yourself let go of his hands and it’s the hardest thing you’ve done all that long hard day, harder than watching him walk through the door, because now you truly know the shape of what you’re letting go of and you know it’s only for three days and even three days is three days too long.
But you let go, and you step back, keeping your eyes on him until Hayes’s broad body comes between you and gently turns you back up the corridor toward the office and the door and the purpling evening beyond.
James walks you out into the evening light and Tomás immediately jumps down to help you into the wagon.
“Thank you,” you say to the lawyer. “For everything.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he nods sagely.
Then Tomás clicks his tongue and the wagon leaps into life, setting off up the Street and out of town. You don’t look back. You look ahead, up the darkening road toward home, toward Sarah, safe with Maria, who needs to be told three sleeps, toward the ranch and the split wood stacked under the lean-to and the bed you’ll lie in alone tonight.
But only three more nights, only three, and then the trial, and then Joel will come riding home to his girls at last.
The first stars come out over the live oaks, and you ride home through the warm Texas night holding the hard bright number against your heart like a coal against the cold.
The way all the 2020s have done so far have been making me categorically against every new generation of tech that comes out is insane. Like I'm from a technological boom generation, saw the first portable phones, nokias & blackberries & flipphones etc, and the first smartphones, and the first ipods & ipads & tablets in general while still having cassettes & DVD & MP3 players around so I know how all of it work, I had computer classes in high school, I did the transition between home desktop computers to laptops and back to gaming computers. But then they started to put internet in your printer & microwave, everything has ads & AI now and every update is worst than the last. I literally loved technology and they ruined it
recently saw ppl discuss whether they put their medicines in a kitchen cabinet or a bathroom cabinet and i was shocked by the fact that many ppl said kitchen cabinet. so now i need you to reblog this and say where you keep yours
So I've finally got to the page where the comics and graphic novels go. And in some cases I need new / better scans because the older ones were too old, or not of good quality.
The old image of this one was blurry for some reason, so I scanned it way higher because I've always been fond of this cover. (And I bet some of y'all can figure out why.) :)
...But while I was hunting for the copy of that to scan it, something I didn'r recognize fell out of a pile of comics I was riffling through. I couldn't understand what it was doing there. And then I looked more closely and saw the writer's name. (eyeroll) I'd written it and completely forgotten about it.
...Forgetting stuff like this can't all be age. 1993 was busy for a bunch of reasons, though, so I guess it got lost in the shuffle. ...Anyway, it'll go up on the website now.
Meanwhile, problems I'm still left with: Why do I have multiple copies of the ST:TNG "Ill Wind" miniseries issues 1, 3 and 4, but can't find copies of issue 2 anywhere? (insert hair-tearing here)
I am not going to spend the day tearing those bookshelves apart looking for it. I am not, I am NOT...
Joel does math off the top of his head or correctly guesses the right measurements to something and suddenly it’s one of the hottest things you’ve ever seen
Or he does that carpenter thing where he measures, takes a pencil from behind his ear and scribbles the number on the 2x4 he's working on, then throws down a quick equation next to it to factor in the degree of the angle he has to cut it at then holding the pencil between his teeth while he makes the perfect cut
Many people assume there is an imbalance between Aziraphale and Crowley by default because Crowley is supposedly stronger than Aziraphale due to the fact that Crowley can stop time.
But what if I told you that, technically speaking, Aziraphale might be capable of doing that too?
According to one of Christian source:
“Principalities are an angelic order. They are granted authority over the laws of the universe and nature, and they also protect nations and countries.”
We have already seen that Aziraphale is capable of literally bringing out the fucking sun at night.
(With the words "let there be light" btw)
So, I suppose that, technically speaking, Aziraphale is perfectly capable of stopping time as well.
Yessss! In the book when he’s reading the prophecy book, dust accumulates on his jacket and his cocoa goes mouldy, yet only one night passes. I always took that to mean time stopped inside the shop.
Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.
imagining grace in his first year of teaching kind of automatically introducing himself as dr. ryland grace bc that's what he's used to. and the kids are like O_O dr? and somebody inevitably googles him and finds a video of his final crashout. and because 13 year olds are little menaces, when he inevitably snaps at the class to sit down and do their work at some point (his classroom management skills need time to develop okay) somebody puts on a little pouty face and goes "dr. grace? you don't.....you don't think i'm a.....a staggering waste of carbon......do you?" and grace's life flashes before his eyes.
and next year he's just mr. grace and doesn't tell any kids his first name so it's harder for them to google him (they manage it anyway).
