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guessimwritingficsagain · 7 months

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something wild and unruly [western!joel miller x f!reader]

summary: At Madame Aurelie's Secret Garden, men pay for beautiful courtesans trained in pleasure to give them whatever they want. And all Joel Miller, infamous outlaw and gunslinger, ever seems to want from you is a warm bath and quiet conversation. ratings/warnings: E [reader is a sex worker in a parlor house in the late 1800s and we are playing fast and loose with the realities of ALL of this mmk, use of the word "whore", angst, descriptions of sex work, references to losing a spouse and infertility, grief, arguably weird power dynamics, joel in the old west is just as grouchy and stubborn as the one in the apocalypse and is a little scary for a sec, lots of sexual tension, a single handjob, joel gets several baths like a baby lamb, mentions of blood and violence] wc: ~10k a/n: please go to @ezrasbirdie-updates to be notified of updates! i'm not apologizing for word count anymore this story slaps and you should read it. i played rdr2 and then i had to write this. i think his voice moves a little between game joel and show joel, but i pictured him as both as various times. he's like a little blend. kissing @starlightmornings on the mouth for the beta and all her sweet encouragement<3 and to all of YOU who hyped this up for me, i hope you enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it. Also, sex work is work and we support sex workers in this house.

masterlist | joel miller masterlist

“He will be good for your first.” Madame Aurelie speaks in a soft French accent as she gives the strings of your corset an extra tug. Your lungs scream as your ribs compress against them, organs shifting to accommodate the unfamiliar shape around your waist. Whoever stares back at you from the mirror, the woman with her painted red lips and breasts pushed to her chin, is no one you’ve ever met.

Your first.

“Why’s that?” You ask, ignoring the screams of mercy from your lungs.

“He is a pussycat,” she says with a wink. That could mean anything coming from Madame Aurelie. “You will see.”

Your feet drag with every step up the stairs, lingering on the landing as you stare down the hall to the room you’ve been assigned for the evening.

The only thing that keeps you moving is the knowledge that Madame Aurelie will put you back to work as a bar girl, no questions asked, if you turn around and tell her you’ve changed your mind.

It doesn’t make you any less nervous about selling your body for the first time.

Though you could argue, maybe, this isn’t the first time. That most of the women you know and love sold their bodies in one way or another. Sometimes to men they wouldn’t meet until their wedding day and sometimes to men with whom they went to the same schoolhouse.

Or they were like you and married the first man your father could convince of it, simply because he and your mother were tired of caring for you.

That brief union to the nephew of your father’s best friend taught you a single lesson—marriage is, at best, an overly cordial transaction. Maybe not for everyone, maybe not every single marriage in existence, but for girls like you? Girls like you settled down with inoffensive men who read their Bibles and went to church and unburdened your family of your troublesome existence. To thank the nice boy for agreeing to such a sacrifice, you’re to lay still and moan at the right time, and he might give you some money and pretty clothes.

If you’re lucky, he’ll give you a baby, and you’ll have something to pour all that unwanted love onto.

Your husband had been one of those men; polite, if distant, and he gave you flowers on your birthday for all three years of wedded bliss. Your mother promised you’d grow to love him, and you tried to. You did all the things you’d been told to do to make him fall in love with you, but you may as well have been invisible most of the time.

Most of it, you think, had to do with your failure to give him a son. Or a daughter, for that matter. It didn’t seem to matter how much you prayed or how often you let him into your bed, every month you bled, and every month he looked more and more disappointed.

Every month you breathed a long sigh of guilt-tinged relief. Pregnancy and all its wonders scared you, no matter how much your mother insisted on it being a miraculous experience.

And then, three years into your marriage, he had the very bad manners to go off and die from consumption, leaving you with nothing. He’d hidden his debts well, and the bank had no qualms about leaving you a penniless widow.

You had two choices: hope another man would want to marry a twenty-seven-year-old widow or find your way alone.

The thought of starting over with someone new made your skin crawl.

So you headed west after you heard it was lawless and wild and even women could make it on their own out there. Neither of your parents would think to look for you in a house of ill repute. You started as a saloon girl at Madame Aurelie’s Secret Garden, serving drinks and cleaning in exchange for a place to sleep, until Madame Aurelie herself took a liking to you.

“The men love a girl who looks like she’s never been properly fucked,” she’d said. You’d choked on the drink she’d handed you. After all these months serving drinks to cowboys and traveling salesmen, her language still scandalizes you.

And yet, you cling tight to her every word. Everything she says makes more sense than anything in the Book of Revelations.

The more experienced girls get a room to themselves on the third floor, but that would come with a level of seniority you do not intend to reach. For now, you'll rotate with other newer girls in the smaller rooms.

Madame Aurelie had you practice all week long—looking seductive, sounding seductive, pouting your lips out just the right way, spreading your legs just enough to entice but not enough to be lurid.

“There are plenty of places they can go for something quick and dirty,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “That is not what we do here. We give an experience.”

The Garden may well be a house of ill repute, but its flowers are well-tended.

Word has it that she owns the building. It lights up something inside of you, the idea of a woman owning anything. Maybe you’ll ask her about it one day, once you’ve impressed her enough.

For now, you have a gentleman to take care of.

Situating yourself on the bed in what you hope is an aloof, seductive pose, you wait for him to knock. It’s quiet today, but it’s only six in the evening. The cowboys and farmers’ll be coming in soon, and the merchants, too, once the shops close.

So who is this, you wonder, here with the sun still out?

As if on cue, the clattering of boots on stairs reaches your ears. His gait is slow but noisy, growing louder on the wood floor as he approaches. Three sharp wraps on the door echo through the room.

“Come in,” you say in your throatiest voice that doesn’t sound anything like you. The door clicks open and the man standing there is not what you’re expecting, so broad his shoulders take up most of the doorframe. “Pussycat” isn’t the word you’d have used.

“Ma’am,” he grunts, taking off a black gambler’s hat and holding it over his chest.

He has manners, at least.

And Good God Almighty, is he handsome. His graying facial hair gives him a more distinguished air than he probably deserves, but his dark, round eyes are almost boyish.

He sighs and runs his hand through matted waves. Those broad shoulders and chest taper off to a narrow waist, and it might not be such a chore, seeing this one naked.

You’re supposed to be doing something here, too. You shoot up from the bed, concentrating on not tripping over your feet.

“I’m Sugar,” you offer, but that’s not your name at all.

You suspect you don’t know anyone’s real name here. Madame Aurelie prefers it that way.

He nods but doesn’t introduce himself, so you push on.

“I was told you wanted a bath, too? Before or…?” You trail off. It occurs to you that it might offend him, implying that he’s dirty. He is, of course, but you’ve been bought and paid for, and he can fuck you in whatever state of hygiene he’d like.

The ghost of a smirk slides across his lips.

“Now’s good, Miss Sugar.” He says “Miss Sugar” like he’s put a spoonful of it in his mouth, rolling the little grain around his tongue like a forbidden treat. You ring a bell for one of the boys to bring up a few buckets of hot water, then set to work filling the bath with oils and soaps that bubble and foam. Your hands shake, but he doesn’t mention it.

He doesn’t speak at all, actually, and still doesn’t offer a name.

You ponder what it could be while you work—Buck? Levi? Arthur? He doesn’t look like an Arthur.

When you’re satisfied with what you’ve done, you turn around to find him already naked. Your eyes, of course, go straight to his cock.

How could it not?

You’ve only seen one other, and your late husband’s was not quite so impressive. Blood rushes to your face and you look away again as you try to reassure yourself.

This is what’s supposed to happen.

He walks past you and climbs in, sighing as he sinks into the water.

“Would you…would you like me to wash you?” You ask.

“I’d’ve gone somewhere much cheaper if I didn’t, darlin’,” he says. A nervous titter slips out of you, and you shake your head as you grab a washcloth and a bar of soap.

Hair first, unless he tells you otherwise. You pour the water over his head, carefully avoiding his face, and rake your nails across his scalp. He doesn’t make a sound, but his eyes close as you reach the soft nape of his neck.

“Good weather we’ve had lately,” you say. Madame Aurelie instructed you to try to make small talk any time you weren’t…busy.

“It makes them feel important,” she’d explained. “Men love to feel important. But don’t chatter too much—just give them an opening and they will do the rest of the talking. Believe me.”

That philosophy, apparently, did not apply to this gentleman.

“No need for all that,” he grunts. You freeze, opening your mouth and closing it again.

This is off to a real good start.

“Sorry, mister,” you say. He turns his head and you pull your soapy hands back, waiting for another reprimand, but his soft, disarming eyes calm your racing heart.

“Didn’t mean nothin’ personal by it, Miss Sugar,” he says. “Just ain’t in the mood for conversation.”

You nod. “Yessir.”

So you focus on your task instead. It’s relaxing; the plink! of the water trickling down his broad shoulders into the tub, the bath oils slick between your palms rubbing over a constellation of scars on his otherwise soft skin. You almost forget what you’re here for until your hand disappears under the water as you reach his midsection.

“Is there anywhere I should give…extra attention to?” Your breath hitches at the end of the sentence. Your toes curl in your boots as he gazes down at you with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Just the regular amount of attention everywhere’ll be fine.”

He’s an older man—maybe he’s just not ready yet. As your hand slides down to his thighs, though, it’s clear that’s just not the case. He’s hard as iron, but you don’t linger, despite the almost inaudible grunt he gives. A few simple passes with the washcloth and it’s on to his legs.

When you brush over his knees, he tosses his head back as you apply the slightest pressure.

“Felt good,” he says when you glance back. You do the same thing a few more times, and to his other knee, and the tension between his brows melts away completely.

“You got trouble with those?” You ask, then hastily add, “I’m not bein’ nosy—it’s just, I can add in a little massage for a nickel.”

“You new around here?” He asks, disregarding your questions completely, and your smile falls.

“That obvious?” You ask with a self-deprecating chuckle. He lifts his arm from the water and hooks his finger under your chin, pulling you around to meet his eyes. Anticipation crawls up your spine, your breath coming in short puffs.

That might be the corset, though.

“Just got a sparkle to you I don’t usually see ‘round here is all.” He searches your face, but you don’t know what he’s looking for.

“How often are you here?” You ask, grabbing a towel from the stool next to you as he stands up.

“Oh, every few months, I reckon,” he says. He steps out and since the day isn’t too cold, you take your time drying him off. He watches you with a relaxed mouth and soft eyes, and something in his posture makes you a little braver.

“That the only time you bathe, mister?” You ask with a sly grin, looking up through your lashes. He doesn’t smile, but you hear something like a chuckle unstick from his throat.

“Only time I get a proper one, anyway. S’why I come here.”

He’s dry and warm now, and you expect he’ll lead you to the bed to have his way with you now. He’s sweet, if gruff, and you hope that’ll translate to how he treats you.

Maybe you won’t have to pretend too much.

“It’s a performance, Sugar. Make them believe,” Madame Aurelie’d said.

“I ain’t never been much of an actress,” you’d told her, but she’d just waved you off.

“Ah, but it does not have to be a very good one. A little goes a long way.”

He looks you over in your corset and your petticoat, and sets his hands on your shoulders, rubbing his thumbs over your skin. “Thank you very much, Miss Sugar,” he says quietly, reaching for his clothes. “You have a good evening now.”

Your throat goes dry. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. He’s supposed to take you now, and you’re supposed to pretend he feels so good you can’t help but scream his name.

Not that he’s given you a name to scream.

Maybe he has a type, and maybe you’re not it. The other girls told you some of them were picky.

“Was I—do you want me to send someone else? If I’m not pleasin’ to you?” You ask meekly, swallowing your humiliation. “I know I said I’m new—but it’s not my first time, I know how to—”

“No, that’s all right,” he says, pulling on his boots. “You’re more than pleasin’, Miss Sugar.”

He puts on his hat and walks out with a final nod in your direction before he shuts the door.

Of all the things you’d expected to feel tonight, rejection is not one of them.

Madame Aurelie wastes no time bursting in a few minutes later, her brown eyes eager for information.

“So,” she asks. “How’d it go?”

“He just wanted a bath,” you say. She gives you a smirk and nods.

“He only ever wants a bath,” she laughs, offering you a cigarette. You take it, shaken enough from your first venture into this business to indulge.

“He was…very sweet,” you say.

“He’s a decent sort, that Joel Miller,” she says, and something clicks in your brain. You’ve heard of him. You’ve heard a lot about him.

“The outlaw Joel Miller? The gunslinger? The murderer? Wanted in six states? That’s him?” You sputter. Madame Aurelie laughs again and fans the smoke away from her face.

“Rumors! Most of it, anyway,” she says but doesn’t specify which part. “He is not wanted in this state, and we’re gonna keep it that way, darling. He lived a rough life. Lost his daughter before she was sixteen, and her mother before, during childbirth.”

“You sweet on him, Madame?” You tease.

“Who wouldn’t be? My Martin wouldn’t like that very much at all, though, would he?”

“I suppose not,” you murmur.

“Do not get too used to it. We don’t get a lot of his type here. He left you a tip,” she says, handing you a stack of bills.

“For me?” You ask, eyes widening.

“Mmhmm,” she says. “And here’s the rest of your cut.” She slips another stack in your hand and tells you to go up and get some rest. You got off easy tonight, and she’s glad for it.

That night you stare up at the ceiling, adrenaline coursing through you—you’d made more money tonight than you’d ever even seen before.

And that Joel Miller—you hoped he’d come back. Mysterious and brooding, just like all the heroes in the cowboy novels, but much kinder.

The thought of his fingers on your shoulder is enough to make you shiver, enough for arousal to replace that adrenaline, and as your hand slips under your thin cotton nightdress, you thank the Lord that the girl who shares the bed next to you is otherwise occupied for the evening.

“Mr. Miller requested you,” Madame Aurelie says.

That was nothing new—the regulars all have their favorite girls.

You aren’t anyone’s favorite yet.

It isn’t a big deal to you, the job gets done, you get paid, and no one has complained. Being someone’s favorite is last on your list of concerns.

You wouldn’t mind being his favorite, though.

After triple-checking your appearance, you make it up the stairs in half your usual time.

He makes it to the room before you this time, towering over you when he throws the door open. His eyes are sharp and so much darker than the last time. One hand curls around your bicep and he pulls you into the room behind him before he sticks his head out of the door and looks around with swift, purposeful movements.

“Is everything—”

“Anyone follow you up here?” He asks.

“No…not that I know of.” You cross your arms, all that excitement turning to cold dread. “Somethin’ I should know?”

He gives the hallway one last look and slams the door behind him. Something dark and angry pours off of him, and you don’t know him well enough to judge where he’s directing that rage. You never could stand when a man raised his voice or slammed a door, especially not here. Madame Aurelie protects her girls as best she can, but could anyone stop the man in front of you if he really got it in his head to hurt you?

Your heart slams itself against your ribcage as you take a step back from him.

The sudden movement breaks whatever hostility had taken hold of him. He takes his hat off, holding it to his chest as he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sugar,” he says in a soft voice. “Don’t mean to frighten you. Had a run-in with some jackasses full as a tick and didn’t want them comin’ in here and causin’ trouble in your establishment.”

The heart settles itself as you take a deep breath and smile. “That’s all right, mister.”

“It’s Miller,” he says. “Joel Miller.”

“Nice to meet you proper, Mr. Miller,” you say, smoothing the front of your petticoat. “You just want the bath again?”

He nods, his cheeks flushing red. “I know it’s unusual.”

“Hey now,” you murmur, approaching him slowly. “I don’t think it’s unusual at all.” His lips twitch and you resist the urge to cradle his face in your hands. “Let me get that bath ready, all right?”

Joel undresses just like last time, no shame at all as he lowers himself into the bathtub. You start slowly this time—if this is all he wants, you’ll make it the best goddang bath he’s ever had. A massage is extra, technically, but you’re happy to keep it between the two of you.

His muscles melt as your fingers dig into his slick skin, and anything left of that dangerous energy from before melts off of him, too. He sighs and groans, and every little noise is a victory. You work him until he’s boneless, like melted candlewax in your hands. He even lets you kiss his damp forehead and smiles fondly as you stand to fetch a towel.

He dries himself this time, but before you leave he catches you by the wrist. “I really didn’t mean to scare you earlier, Miss Sugar. Take this, would you? For your trouble.” His eyes are soft and round again as he folds an ornate gold pocket watch into your hand. It’s the prettiest thing anyone’s ever given you, including your wedding ring.

“Thank you,” you breathe. “I’ll see you next time?”

“I hope so, Miss Sugar.”

“Where’re you off to?”

Tommy’s nosier than usual these days. Used to be he’d just wave and nod, tell Joel to be careful and come back with something good. But Tommy Miller’s better at reading his brother than anyone in the world, and he must see the eager look in his eye as Joel sets off.

“Need to go into town,” Joel says vaguely, swinging one leg over a chestnut Morgan and patting her neck as he settles. “I’ll be back in a few days. Keep an eye on things here?”

“I think Tess has that handled,” Tommy says, a wry smile at the upturn of his lips. “You’re goin’ to see that girl, huh?”

Joel shakes his head, but Tommy keeps on. He means well, his brother, but Joel doesn’t want to hear it. “I’m sure she’s a nice girl, Joel, but since when has fallin' for a whore ever worked out?”

Joel’s jaw ticks as he glares down at Tommy. “Ain’t about that,” he says, dismissing his concerns. “Got some business to look into.”

Tommy raises his hands and shakes his head. “All right. Don’t go bein’ reckless is all I’m sayin’. You got that kid now—”

“Ellie’s damn near an adult,” Joel says, not bothering to hide his irritation. “She can handle herself just fine.”

But as he looks across the camp to where Tess sat with Ellie demonstrating the proper way to clean a rifle, he can't say that with any certainty. Ellie's barely older than his Sarah was when he lost her, and she was just a little girl then. Smuggling, stealing, sometimes killing--this is no life for a kid, no matter how much of it they try to shield her from. It's just easier to pretend she isn't.

Still, he can trust Tess and Tommy, and he’ll only be gone a few days. And he isn’t lying about that business—a bounty’ll bring in good enough money that Tommy won’t be able to say anything about it.

“Be careful, brother,” he says, and Joel just nods, digging his heel into Starfire and setting off. He doesn’t know how much longer they can stick around these parts, anyway, not as a group. Folks go around kicking up dust and putting a target on their backs, and sooner or later they’ll need to find a new place to settle.

He stews over Tommy’s wording the entire ride. Even if it’s true. Even if that’s what she’s chosen to do, even if she didn’t mind. Tommy said it to make a point, and he’d made it well.

He never gave himself a chance to get attached before, rotating venues and girls while he indulged in the closest thing to intimacy he could bring himself to receive.

It’s not real if they’re getting paid.

But then she happened.

At first, it was curiosity—he requested her that second time because he wanted to know if she would stick around. She’d been so new, hands shaking as she ran the cloth down his legs like she’d never touched a man before.

Now he just likes her company. Now he finds reasons to go into town and for an hour or two with her. He books her the whole night, even if he shouldn’t, even if he never stays that long.

Less time for her to be with other men.

Joel has no right to jealousy, but his heart doesn't seem to care too much about that. He tries not to think about what the rest of her time there is like because it just makes him want to break the closest thing to him.

He calls her Sugar like she asks, Miss Sugar because he was raised with manners, but he’d like to know her real name one day. He wants to know what she smells like in the morning, what her skin feels like under his lips, what she tastes like.

And he can’t goddamn let himself have any of it.

He tries to imagine her sleeping outside, but it makes no sense even in his fantasies. She’s meant for plush cushions and red silks, not dirt and snow and low-life criminals.

“Hi there, outlaw,” she purrs as he opens the door. His eyes drop to her lips, then the curve of her breasts, wondering what they’d look like out of that corset. He could see them if he wanted. He could rip it off of her—he could push her to the bed, spread her out underneath him; show her exactly how much he wants her.

And she’d let him because paid her.

“Everything okay?” She asks, the question tinged with uncertainty as he realizes he’s been standing there for too long.

“Just fine, Miss Sugar. Come on in,” he says, shaking his head. “Had a long ride here, I guess.”

She looks at him with soft eyes, and he wants to believe that concern is real. Couldn’t he pretend, just for now?

“Come on, big boy,” she says, unbuttoning his shirt for him. “Let’s get you comfortable.”

He lets her take care of him, trying to swallow his urge to undress her, too. His life is full of blood and pain and gunshots, and she is warm and much too soft for it. He opens and closes his fists with indecision, and she tuts at him.

“Those hurtin’ again, too?” She asks because she’ll rub his knuckles if they do. It’s easier than telling her the truth.

“Yes ma’am,” he says as she kneels and urges him to sit on the bed so she can take his boots off. He catches her cheek and rubs his thumb across her jaw.

“You look real nice today, Miss Sugar,” he says, and for a moment she smiles as though she needed to hear that.

“Bet you say that to all the girls you visit.” She still teases him delicately, still wary to push a button that might make him angry.

She’s afraid of him, and he’s all too aware of it.

“Ain’t got any other girls,” he says, and it’s true. “'Less you count Ellie, and she’d kill me quick if I ever said as much.”

She furrows her brow, and it occurs to him—he’s never mentioned Ellie.

“Who’s Ellie? If you don’t mind me askin’?” She asks, shrugging off her coat to reveal smooth shoulders and soft arms. He wants to tell her, but it feels too personal now.

“Just a girl I know,” he says, clearing his throat. She doesn’t pry, but he can see she wants to.

“All right, mister,” she says. “Time to get you clean.”

Her strong hands and nimble fingers dig at sore spots, exquisite torture as she loosens muscles he’s never been able to reach. He sinks further down until the water laps at his beard and sighs as she scrubs his scalp with her fingernails.

Joel wants to talk more, but he’s the kind of tired you feel in your bones, the tired that won’t be ignored no matter how much he sleeps. And he doesn’t sleep much these days, anyhow. That’s what twenty years of living like this’ll do to a man, he supposes.

He doesn’t know how Tess does it. How she manages to have a plan for everything, how she’s kept them all from being hanged or worse all this time. He reckons if he had to have all the answers all the time, he’d have turned tail and run by now. It was bad enough being the one to carry the orders out—he can’t imagine coming up with them.

Tess has never even mentioned his visits here, but he suspects when he returns this time, she’ll have something to say. Now that he’d brought back a foul-mouthed teenager, Tess wouldn’t be happy he’d gone off and left her there, no matter how much she liked Ellie.

“All right, outlaw, you’re all cleaned up. Anything else I can do for you?” She asks, and he knows what she means. She asks every time, and he always tells her no.

He gazes down at her fooling with the buttons of his overshirt, and he pretends for a moment that she's his wife and it's the morning and she's getting him ready for an honest day's work.

The delusion vanishes as quickly as it came. Nothing’s ever been that simple for him.

But he can pretend.

“Come sit a minute,” he says. Her head snaps up, and the look on her face is so alarmed it makes him chuckle. “That a problem?”

“‘Course not,” she says, shaking off the surprise. “Not a problem at all. Should I…?”

He answers by unbuttoning his shirt again, stripping down to his union suit and slipping into the ornate bed he’d never used. It’s odd, considering that she’d seen and touched every part of him, how very naked he feels.

“You, too,” he says.

She strips out of her petticoat and corset, which always looks so uncomfortable, and she really is the barest he’s ever seen her. His eyes trail over her body, admiring her. She moves more fluidly, less restricted without those extra layers. For a moment, she looks like that girl he met the first time he came to her.

“C’mere,” he says quietly, and she crawls into bed with him, fitting herself against his side and cuddling against his chest.

“Is this okay?” She asks, and he pulls her closer to him.

He wants to feel all of her, but he can’t make himself do it. If it’s the last time he sees her, he wants it to mean something. He wants to talk to her, tell her things about himself she’s always gently poked at but receded if he gave any signs of discomfort.

So he does.

They talk late into the night, shifting positions now and then when his back starts to protest. They talk for so long his throat gets scratchy and dry, so he asks her more questions about herself.

“You like it here, Miss Sugar?” He asks after she's finished telling him about her favorite books, and how she wishes she had more time to read these days. She gives a dry laugh and rolls onto her back to look at the ceiling.

“It’s all right. Not my first choice, but there ain’t mucha anything else around here. It was either try to find another husband or die an old maid, so I chose neither. At least here I can make my own money.”

He rubs his thumb and forefinger down either side of his mustache, frowning.

“Another husband?” He asks.

“I was married before,” she says, still looking up at the ceiling. “He died. Bank took all the money.”

She says it so plainly it takes him by surprise. He doesn't know what to say at the best of times, and especially not now, so he says nothing. Instead, he tugs on her hand, a silent plea to come back to him.

“But one day,” she says, crawling back up to him and settling herself on his lap, straddling his hips and laying her head on his shoulder. “One day I’m gonna save up enough to buy some land. They let anyone own land out here, gunslinger, did you know that?”

“Mmhmm,” he says. She’s so close and warm, wrapped around him like this. He breathes her in and closes his eyes. “What you got planned for that land, Miss Sugar?”

He wants to kiss her so badly.

“Gonna have a little cabin built up the mountain. I already know how to fish, and my daddy used to take me huntin’. He didn’t have any boys. And I can grow a good garden. Before my husband died I had onions and carrots goin’ real strong,” she says.

“Why didn’t you stay with your folks?” He asks. She leans back on her thighs and considers him for a moment.

“I wanted to live for myself, I reckon,” she says. “If I’d stayed they’d have just found some old widower to put a baby in me. Or try to, anyway. I never…” She trails off and looks away from him.

“And you don’t want that?” He asks.

“No,” she says. “I don’t. What about you, Joel? How come you don’t settle down?”

“Only one way of livin’ for a man like me,” he shrugs. She bites her lip like she means to ask him something. “Why? You want me to come help build that cabin?”

“I’d pay you real good,” she says. “I think it’d be nice, me and you. I don’t even snore.”

She sounds serious; she means to offer him a place in her little dream. He closes his eyes and pictures it—maybe Ellie’s there, too, and she teaches Ellie to read.

I’m sure she’s a nice girl, Joel, but since when has fallin' for a whore ever worked out?

His brother’s words come unbidden, and Joel’s eyes fly open. “Ain’t much of a carpenter,” he says gruffly, dismissing her offer of domesticity and peace.

She isn’t serious. She’s just good at what she does.

But he swears the light in her eyes dulls a little more.

“Well, all right then,” she says, shrugging and changing the subject.

They fall asleep, eventually, and he leaves before she wakes up.

He’s never been any good at goodbyes.

He’s gone longer this time.

You ask after him around town, but no one’s heard from him, not even the mail clerk.

“You that hard up for customers?” Your bartender, Teddy, asks.

“Of course I’m not,” you snap, scowling at him. “I…was just curious. He just ain’t been around.”

“Worried about him?” Teddy asks, not unkindly.

“S’pose,” you shrug, wrapping your shawl around you as the doors open, bringing a strong gust of wind with them. “Gets cold quick around here, y’know.”

You keep the pocket watch he gave you in a drawer next to your bed in the room you shared with a girl who called herself Ginger. She’d had her own encounters with Joel.

“He ain’t never gave me nothin’ so nice as that for my trouble, Sugar. He must like you,” she’d said when you came back with it that evening. You brushed her off.

“He just felt bad for scaring me. And he was awful scary,” you admit. Ginger shook her head at your protests. “Did he ever…did he ever let you touch him?”

“Lord no,” Ginger says. “He’s wound about as tight as a nun’s twat—”

“Ginger!”

There are fewer travelers in the cold months, and for the first time in almost a year, you have time on your hands. Since you can read, Madame Aurelie has you help with the books, but otherwise you’re free to do whatever you want.

You’ve never been able to do whatever you want.

It hits you, one day, that you don’t even know what you like to do. When you were married, you’d sew and cook and garden and keep the house like a proper woman. But you never much liked any of those things.

When you were a girl, though, you’d read and dream about going on the adventures in your story books. It’s hard to remember the last time you read something for fun.

A man comes through town with a cart full of books every few weeks. It’s full of trashy romance and cowboy dramas and even penny dreadfuls that’d made their way across the ocean, and you buy up as many of them as your arms can hold.

It’s not an ideal life, but at least you can escape now and then.

Sometimes you read to Ginger. She’s an excellent audience, gasping and clapping at just the right places, her “oohs” and “ahhs” filling your heart with warmth.

“You do the voices so damn good, sugar cube!” She says.

If you close your eyes, it’s almost like being back home, reading adventure stories to your little sister by candlelight hours after you were both supposed to be asleep.

Sometimes these moments are the only thing that get you through the day.

He comes back just as the ground thaws.

You try to keep your cool; to pretend it’s not him you imagine when there’s another man inside of you.

He opens the door, covered in blood.

“Ain’t mine,” he says as your mouth drops open. “Not all of it, anyway.”

“Lord above, Joel Miller, are you okay? What happened?” You ask as he tosses his empty holsters on the bed. No weapons allowed in Madame Aurelie’s establishment.

“Nothin’ out of the ordinary,” he says, but his split, bloody knuckles tell you otherwise.

“Joel—”

“Please,” he says quietly. “Please, Miss Sugar. I’m all right.”

His tone disarms you as he pulls your chin up to look into his eyes.

“If you say so.” The bath’s already full of warm, fresh water—he always pays a little extra for it.

It’s been just over a year since you became his favorite girl. Neither of you mention how long it’s been since the last time he was here, or how he’d batted away the idea of a simpler, kinder life with you.

You suspect the offer of it is what kept him away for so long.

He’s silent today, brooding as the water turns pink with blood. The baths have become your specialty—the men like your sure grip and the way you listen. Sometimes they want sex after, sometimes they just want to talk. Regardless, he’s not the only one who calls you his favorite these days.

But he’s still yours, and it’s as infuriating as it is painful.

All the others are married and miserable, complaining about their wives and lamenting how they wish they’d found a woman like you when they were younger.

Did your husband do that, too? Visit parlor houses and complain that you didn’t keep the houses tidy enough while he was buried inside another woman? Do they all do that?

Joel doesn’t have a wife or a business to complain about. Would he, if he did?

You like to think he wouldn’t. You like to think that if he had a wife he wouldn’t even be here, and you’d have never met him.

Your thoughts drift to the last time he was here, when he pulled you in bed and held you there and talked and talked and talked until you’d opened your mouth and stuck your foot in it.

It’s foolish to fall in love with clients. Even you, with all your romantic notions, know that. And you won’t be here forever. Once you get enough money saved you’ll leave and buy yourself a place high up in the mountains. You’ll live off the land; learn how to hunt and fish.

And you’ll never see Joel Miller again.

It shouldn’t sting so bad to think about. He doesn’t even know your real name. He could be lying about everything and you wouldn’t know the difference.

Some foolish hope tells you he isn’t, though.

You grab a bottle of cheap whiskey to clean the congealed blood from his knuckles, biting back your questions about what happened. He hisses at your delicate dabs to his wounds but doesn’t protest.

“Thank you, Miss Sugar,” he says. You wish you could tell him your real name, but at least you like the way he says it. He still cradles it on his tongue like something precious, like he relishes saying it out loud.

“You can just call me Sugar, you know,” you say. “No need to be so formal.”

That pulls one of those vague smiles from his lips as he nods. “All right, then, Sugar.”

Furtive glances to check for bruises yield nothing. Someone got the mess knocked out of him but didn’t seem to land any blows on Joel at all.

His mood hasn’t lifted any at all, even with one of the shoulder rubs you’d started throwing in for free. Free in theory, at least; he always gave you some trinket worth more than a whole night with you afterward.

He’ll never tell you what happened, even if you beg him, and you think it’s because he wants you to see him as anything but the man he is. But you like him just the way he is, and you wish you could just say that.

He trembles when you reach his inner thigh, letting out a noise between a gasp and a grunt. You’ve never heard that noise from him before, and goes straight to your core, warmth and need blooming between your legs. His tired eyes meet yours, and they’re begging for something. You can help, can’t you? You know what would relax him, what would take all the stress off of his tense shoulders.

“You can let me help, if you want. It’s okay,” you murmur, waiting for his permission.

“Please, Sugar,” he says in a low rumble. You move slowly, giving him a chance to change his mind.

You can feel yourself throbbing the second you wrap your hand around the base of him, saliva pooling in your mouth as he twitches. He makes no noise as you stroke him; he doesn’t even move, but his hands grip the side of the tub so tightly that his once-blood-red knuckles have turned white with strain.

He’s still denying himself.

“It’s all right,” you murmur, scooting close enough to lay your head on his shoulder, right in the crook of his neck, your lips just centimeters away from his warm, wet skin. You don’t kiss him, but you’d like to. “Relax.”

He lets out a shaky sigh and turns his head toward you, pressing his forehead to yours, eyes closing as his breath ghosts over your skin. His lips are centimeters from yours.

Rarely do you watch any of the other men like this. Now and again some lovely thing you can’t keep your eyes off of shows up, but it is, for the most part, very much a job.

You couldn’t look away from him or his fluttering eyelashes if you wanted to. He lets out a soft grunt, his nose scrunching as his teeth dig into his bottom lip to keep from crying out.

This big, strong, violent man reduced to a quivering mess with just your hand.

He throws his head back, exposing the corded muscles of his thick neck and shoulders, finally letting a harsh grunt slip from his throat. You swallow as he grabs at the strap of your bodice, pulling you closer and gazing at you with hooded eyes. His hand trails down to your low, flimsy neckline and he cups your breast through the fabric with his rough, wide hand. A soft, needy whimper tears from you, and he squeezes.

“Gonna—gonna—”

But you already know, his cock throbbing and pulsing in your hand. “Come on,” you whisper, urging him on. “For me, just for me.”

He makes the most beautiful noises as he bucks into your hand, eyes closed and still clutching at you. Your eyes sweep down to his waist underwater where his release is still coming as he shudders beneath you.

You brush his hair from his forehead as he catches his breath. For once, he’s fully at ease, mouth slack and eyes heavy, the lines between his brows almost invisible.

When he opens his eyes all the way to look at you, you’re suddenly aware that you’re still holding him. You let him go and pull away, putting on a nervous smile. His face is inscrutable, and you don’t know where to go from here. Not with him.

Most of the time, you leave after this, wishing the man a good day and a cheery “Hope to see you again soon!” But this is Joel, and Joel’s different.

Joel’s different.

He doesn’t say anything, either, as he rises from the water and grabs the towel from the stool, stepping out and drying himself. He says nothing as he gets dressed, pulling out a wad of bills and separating a stack.

“Thank you, Miss Sugar,” he says, holding it out to you. He frowns when you don’t reach for the money. “Somethin’ the matter?”

He doesn’t invite you into his bed like last time; doesn’t even ask how you’ve been. You don’t know what you thought would happen, or what you expect of him. He's paying you for the service you provided, just like he always does.

And you must have done a good job. He even gave you a tip.

It’s silly. You knew better. Know better. You know why he’s here, what he came for. It just took a while for him to warm up. There’s no reason you should be upset, no reason you should have assumed he thought of you as anything other than a whore he visits from time to time.

You plaster on the smile you keep ready for everyone else and take the money, still not quite sure what's happening in your head. “Nope! No, sir. Nothin’ at all. I’m…happy to help. Hope to see you again soon!” You say with that false cheer reserved for everyone but him, turning on your heel and heading toward the door.

It isn’t fair to be upset with him. This was a business transaction. Always had been. Just because you jerked him off this time didn’t mean anything had changed. It just meant he needed something different.

Your job is to give him what he needs.

You’re his favorite girl in the parlor house, and that’s all.

Ginger finds you on your bed holding that gold pocketwatch he’d given you so many months ago. The one you’d mistaken for a gift.

“S’wrong with you?” She asks, unlacing her bodice and sighing.

“Nothin’,” you say. You’re not the youngest girl here, but you’re certainly the most naive. The last thing you need is Ginger finding out about your thing for Joel.

She is, unfortunately, way ahead of you.

Ginger’s red hair tumbles down her shoulders as she unpins it, coming to rest on her ample breasts. She has child-bearing hips and a soft tummy, and as she curls herself around you in your bed, you inhale the scent of jasmine she dabs between her breasts and on each pulse point. You’d never smelled jasmine before you met her, and you think if you should leave this place, you’d never smell it again without thinking of her.

“Is it that Mr. Miller?” She asks softly. You don’t want to answer—you don’t want to admit how stupid you’ve been. But Ginger’s kind and patient and her green eyes are easy to lose yourself in.

“Oh, Ginger,” you sigh. “It ain’t nothin’ for me to be upset over. I did my job, and that’s it.”

“He took you to bed?” She asks, surprise evident at the uptick in her tone.

“No,” you laugh. “No, I just…gave him a little extra in the bath today, and he left. Paid me good for it, too.”

“Then what are you so upset for?” She asks, pressing her cheek to the top of your head. “If you just did your job and he paid you good and it was fine.”

You breathe deep, already regretting what you’re about to admit.

“I reckon I thought he liked me, after all this time,” you admit, your voice catching in your throat. Ginger doesn’t say anything at first, and you wait for her to scold you.

She never does.

“I’m sorry, Sugar,” she says quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Her sympathy opens a floodgate, and the tears you’d been holding back seep out as she whispers soothing words to you.

“It’s happened to everyone,” she says, and she calls you by your real name. “We can talk to Madame Aurelie, ask her to put him with someone else. She protects her girls.”

You think about it for a split second—you know Madame Aurelie is a good woman with a ferocious heart—but ultimately, you decide not to. If he’s gone for as long as he was before, you’ll have time to get past it. You’ll mourn whatever you thought you had with him the way you mourned your poor husband, and you’ll move on. And maybe by the time he comes back, you’ll be long gone to that place in the mountains he didn't want anything to do with.

The next morning Madame Aurelie gives you a package in brown wrapping, secured in string and tied off with a bow. A scrap of paper sticks out from underneath the twine.

“Your cowboy left it for you as he was leaving. He looked quite sad,” she says.

You pull at the end of the string and it comes apart, a leatherbound book staring back at you.

It’s a first-edition printing of Little Women with a signature in loopy handwriting on the front page.

L.M. Alcott

You shudder to think where or how he got this. It doesn’t make any sense—why wouldn’t he just give it to you himself? The scrap of paper that falls on the floor as you turn the book over catches your eye. It has another message, this time in hasty cursive.

Meant to give you this last night. Wish I could be better for you.

-J

You wish you could be better for him, too.

Joel never gets that look on her face out of his head. That crushed disappointment when her eyes drifted to the second stack of bills in his hand.

Her tip.

He meant it as a compliment. He meant it as a way to thank her. He meant it as a way to show he still understood the relationship, that he wasn’t foolish enough to fall in love with her, that he hadn’t spent months and months thinking about her. That it didn’t make his heart float right out of his chest watching her clean his wounds and wrap his hand.

By the time he’d gotten dressed enough to go find her, she’d disappeared, and he’d almost gotten in a fight with one of the big guys the madame had stationed around the place. That makes him feel better when he thinks of it—at least she has people to protect her.

And then he had to leave. He wasn’t even supposed to be there, and if Tess ever found out she might wring his neck for stopping in when he had business the next town over.

He left the book with one of the other girls and hoped it made its way to her, and he moved on with a pit in his chest. She’d taken care of him, and he’d acted like it was nothing.

It haunts him when he thinks about her, so he doesn’t. He distracts himself in every way possible. He doesn’t even know if he should go back to her—if some line had been crossed just like he feared from the beginning.

Everything he touches falls apart.

Eventually, though, he needs to go back. He needs to see her and explain himself before it eats him alive.

“She’s not here anymore,” Madame Aurelie says.

“What do you mean, ‘she’s not here’?” He demands, maybe a little too aggressively.

Madame Aurelie shrugs, unperturbed by his outburst. “She made her money and she moved on. That was always part of the deal. She didn’t tell you?”

“Haven’t been around,” he mutters.

The older woman looks him up and down with a pitying smile. “I noticed. She liked you, you know.”

“I know,” he says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Shit. Pardon my language, ma’am.”

She shrugs again. “Last I heard she was to buy a parcel of land further up the mountain. Maybe she’s still around there. If you are that distraught.”

He realizes he doesn’t even know her real name.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says before he departs. He pauses. “You don’t happen to know her real name?”

Madame Aurelie gives him a sly smile and beckons him closer.

It’s not much, but it’ll get him started.

It’s harder to leave than you expect. You’ve grown so close with these other women, especially Ginger, and they’d become a strange patchwork family. But no matter how many times you tell Ginger it would be fun to be two women on the frontier surviving on their own with no men to answer to, she doesn’t want to come live in a cabin in the woods.

You’re only half-joking about your offer.

Madame Aurelie was so gracious about it all, even writing recommendations to the bank to start a line of credit. It was her suggestion, rather than buy the land and a house outright, to pay it back over time. And then, should you ever need any more credit, you’ll already be in good standing with them.

You leave her with a hug and your real name, just in case.

Joel never came back, but you didn’t expect him to. It must have clicked in his head, finally, that you’d gotten attached to him. And it wasn’t like it was hard to find some pretty girl to bathe him.

It hardly matters now. It’s just you and this little cabin surrounded by pine trees and evergreens and the quiet rush of the stream out front. The little kids call you a witch when you go into town for supplies, but the shopkeep is perfectly happy to take your money. He doesn’t care if you’re a witch or a whore or a widow.

Winter’s already creeping in, and as you’re chopping firewood to last those long months, you can’t help but think of Joel. He’d disappeared all last winter; he must have some place he goes. Him and that gang of his.

You’re jolted out of a sound sleep, slumped over in a rocking chair next to the fire. Your ears prick up, listening for any slight sound. Something creaks just outside your front door, and you tiptoe to the cabinet you store your rifle in. The curtains are drawn, closed off enough that no one would be able to see in, but it keeps you from seeing out, too.

You're more than used to all manner of creatures wandering onto your porch, whether hungry or just curious, but their little footsteps don’t sound like boots on wood. Before you can think too much, you pull the door open and pray it’s some lost hunter.

Light from your fire and kerosene lamps pour out and wash over his face, half-shrouded by the hat pulled low on his head. But it doesn’t matter. You’d recognize those lips anywhere.

“Joel?” You ask, still pointing the rifle at him.

“Whoa now, Miss Sugar,” he says, hands raised. “S’just me.”

You lower the rifle but narrow your eyes. It doesn’t feel real. You’ve never seen him out of the confines of that room at the Garden, and it’s like some figure from a dream just walked out of your head and onto your front porch. He’s not supposed to be here.

“What the hell are you doin’ here?” You demand. It’s not that you’re not pleased to see him—you’re not sure what you’re feeling right now. “How did you find me?”

Joel brings his hands to his sides and tucks his thumbs through his belt loops. “You mind if I come in?”

The cold hits you for the first time since you opened the door. You stand aside and let him. He takes off his hat as he walks in, eyes darting around your messy little cabin.

“Wasn’t expectin’ company,” you explain, but he shakes his head.

“It’s a nice place,” he says quietly, and it warms you to your core.

“Thank you. Can I get you some tea? Whiskey?” You ask, very conscious of how ill-fit your home is for guests.

“Wouldn’t say no to whiskey,” he says.

Neither of you speaks as you settle down at your table. You’re still not entirely sure he’s real.

“What are you doing here, Joel?” You ask again.

He takes a sip and grimaces, the cup clattering against the lacquered wood. “Needed to see you,” he says.

“Might be a while before I can get that bathwater warmed up,” you quip, and his lip curls in a smile.

He lets out a long breath before he answers. “I needed to…I had to tell you. I didn't mean to hurt you,” he says, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows. “And I think I might’ve that night.”

Heat blooms in your cheeks and you wave your hand. “Oh, don’t worry about—”

“Please, Sugar,” he says, then shakes his head. And then he says your real name, and it knocks the wind out of you. “I got…I got these feelings for you. And they got me all messed up, sweetheart, they got me actin’ foolish. And when you…when you did that…”

You don’t like to think about it much. When you woke up that next morning, eyes puffy from crying yourself to sleep, it was guilt that consumed you. You’d pushed him too far, too quickly, overwhelmed him with the sexuality your mother shamed you for when all he’d wanted was your companionship.

It was silly, considering your choice of profession, but it still ate you up. He’d trusted you.

“I’m sorry for that,” you murmur, taking a drink of your whiskey. “I am.”

He moves so quickly it makes you jump, suddenly right next to you, taking your hand in both of his. “Sorry? Why are you sorry, darlin’?”

“For pushin’ you,” you say, eyebrows furrowed. “You never wanted that before, I should have just let it go. I thought you were just…punishing’ yourself or somethin’.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he says firmly, leaning his forehead against yours. “I wanted that. I wanted that bad, sugar. I swear it.”

You nuzzle him, gathering the courage to ask what you need to ask. “Then why didn’t you come back?”

“Because I’m a fool,” he murmurs. “And because I don’t deserve you. And I thought you were…I didn’t know if you were bein’ genuine. You gotta understand. I didn’t wanna be the man who fell for—”

“I know,” you say. Because you do know. You know he didn’t want to be the man who fell for the girl he paid to lie to him. “But I ain’t that good an actress, Joel. And I meant every single word. I meant what I said that night. I meant that you could be here with me. I like you how you are, Joel, just like this.”

You know what he’ll say before he says it.

“I don’t belong here, in this life. I am not a good man, and you deserve better. I don’t know no other way but this one, you understand?”

You reach up and thumb his jaw, and he leans into the palm of your hand. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, Joel Miller. You come when you want, stay when you want. I never wanted to take care of a man anyway.”

He pulls back and searches your face, a smile playing delicately on his lips. You want him to kiss you so badly.

You almost stop breathing when he does.

For such a violent, bad man, he kisses you like you’re made of spun sugar, gentle and cautious against your lips. He tastes like whiskey and smells like cold mountain air, and you’d like to sink into him, to live in this moment forever. When he pulls away he’s smiling, eyes twinkling. He’s so handsome it makes you ache.

“Don’t like you livin’ up here alone,” he tells you, out of nowhere.

“I think I’m doin’ okay,” you laugh.

“You are. You are somethin’ else, sugar.” He frowns. “Can I still call you that?”

“I think, Mr. Miller, you might be the only one who makes it sound that nice. So I’ll allow it for now,” you tease. You stand up and glance at the bedroom door. “Stay with me tonight. It’s cold out. I got a spare bed if you need it, but it’s warmer in mine.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that, ma'am,” he says.

You fall asleep curled around each other, so close your lips touch.

In the morning you’re not surprised to find the spot beside you empty, but you find a piece of paper with a post office box address and a hastily scribbled note.

Not any good at goodbyes, so I ain’t saying goodbye. I got someone I want you to meet. You can contact me at this address. Be there before winter starts proper.

Your head hits the pillow with a thunk and you pull the note to your heart, basking in the golden morning sunlight streaming through your window. For the first time in your life, everything is exactly as it should be.

3K notes · View notes

guessimwritingficsagain · 8 months

Text

If You Lie Down With Me

pairing: (pre-ellie) dbf!joel miller x fem!afab!reader

summary: there’s only one guy in all of boston that can get you a morning after pill. unfortunately, on top of being a huge asshole, Joel Miller also happens to be your dad’s closest peer.

warnings: rough sex / smut (masturbation, fem penetration, oral [m receiving]) so 18+ only content; unprotected sex; light choking & restraint; light dom/sub dynamic; fem afab reader; reader has long-ish hair (that gets touched); plot-typical violence (guns, death); plot deviations (no Tess); medication ingestion; pet names (baby, sweetheart, angel); dubcon (slight intoxication, power imbalance, no explicit consent).

word count: 6.5k+

no use of y/n in this fic

alright y’all I’m baaaaAAAaack! so this is basically the other version of Dark But Just a Game that I started back when I was writing it & figured I’d finish it to get out of my hiatus. like any devilmademewriteit fic, it’s dark and nasty and deprived like meeeeeee <3 hope u enjoy !

don’t forget to reblog, check out my masterlist, sign up for the taglist, & leave any comments / feedback / & suggestions!

(ps: new part of Salvatore up next !)

—

“three times the guy I ever thought I would meet, so don't say you're over me when we both know that you lie”

— lana del rey, ‘If You Lie Down With Me’

—

Fuck.

Waking up to a racing heart, a pounding head, and a stomach swimming with nausea was never ideal, although it was always a better experience alone — when you could squint and hiss at the light slicing through the weaknesses in the drapes without hearing your groans echoed by a lower, louder, and annoyingly more pitiful voice.

Right. What was his name?

Jared? Jordan? Jermaine?

Ah, who cares.

If he’d wanted a safe place to nurse his hangover, he shouldn’t have fallen asleep in your bed. Sure, the odds of dad being conscious at this hour (especially the odds after a party like last night’s) were Kate Moss — no, Rolling Stones — slim, but the man would get up at some point, meaning that this poor J-whatever was likely sleeping through his only window of escape from certain homicide.

You whisper. You shake him gently. You gingerly tap the roundness of his bicep.

Huh — Not bad.

You congratulate last-night-you for reeling in this morning’s good-looking catch.

Still… nothing. Not a twitch. Nary a croaked ‘lemmesleep’ graces your ears.

After loosing an exasperated sigh and running through your options, you decide to take the most effective (and least girl-next-door) route. The corner of your elbow collides with his ribs, and the boy jumps up, his loose, blonde curls as wild as his eyes, searching the room for his attacker.

You want to smile at the scene, but the motion hurts your head.

“Y’gotta go,” you croak out, thumbs rubbing circles against your aching temples.

He collapses onto his back, copying your movement with his own fingers to his brow. “God. I feel like shit.”

Despite muttering your agreement, you let your eyelashes flutter closed and your weight turn you away from last night’s paramour: no use figuring out who he is after the (f)act — that just makes it personal.

After a few breaths, the boy moves back up to a shakey sitting position.

Probably sourcing for his clothes.

He reeks of booze and sex — but then again, so do you. His roughened, unfamiliar tenor climbs to barely above a whisper, “Z’something stuck on my leg… blood, or something…”

His interrupting your suffering comes as a deeply unwelcome annoyance, so you try to sort him out to clear him out: “Prolly just the condom,” you mumble, rolling back onto your shoulders, reluctantly supervising his movements.

He lifts up fully, sitting criss-cross and pulling his calf towards him.

“No,” he tries to laugh but succumbs to the nausea, settling for a low breath instead, “S’blood, dude, from beer darts — and I didn’t use a condom.”

Your eyes immediately dart over, settling on his naked, wretched, shivering form. He notices your ire and the hitching of your throat, immediately defensive.

“I asked if you wanted to.”

Unfortunately, he had. The memories of your drunken entanglement start to resurface inside your mind. “It just feels better without one.” This time, you curse last-night-you for being such a careless, inconsiderate, horny bastard.

You’re making problems for me, girl.

“J’s get out.”

J-whatever spares no time complying, collecting his few strewn belongings and staggering out the front door. Once it slides shut, so too do your poor, weary eyes.

Shit.

There goes the afternoon.

Getting your hands on condoms in the QZ was at least fifteen times easier than snatching a morning after pill. Those were a hot commodity, especially among the younger, less responsible crowds.

Luckily for you, as a member of aforementioned younger, less responsible crowds, you knew where your best chances lay in finding whatever it was you needed (if what you needed was deeply immoral or wholly illegal). Unluckily for you, that ‘best chance’ happened to be your dad’s closest and longest-running business partner: temperamental, judgemental, frustratingly competent, Joel ‘Local Asshole’ Miller.

But that could all be dealt with after another eight hours of sleep.

—

Opportunity strikes sooner than expected.

Miller’s in your living room by the time you wake up, the low rumble of his southern baritone recognizable even through the closed door. After scrambling to throw on some clothes, you press an ear to the chipping paint, hoping to determine the number of bodies gathered in your home.

Not many. Just Miller (and the old man, of course).

The latter’s presence bodes ill for you. This would all have to be done in secret, which was not an uncommon strategy where ever the former was involved. No one dealt with Joel Miller to conduct clean-cut, wholesome activities. No one was calling him up for a spare copy of the holy book.

No, getting him alone was essential.

A drink slams down on the counter. After a good, patient ten minutes, you hear your father (‘s rather crude way of) excusing himself to the washroom and heavy-set footsteps decrescendoing down the hall.

This is it.

You slip through the door.

At first, your company takes no notice of you, his eyes still glued to the maps and papers littering the counter before him.

Then, a low grumble: “fun night?”

His voice makes you weak in the knees — an involuntary, near ritual-like response you’d noticed around your mid teens and hadn’t managed to kick yet.

You swallow before responding. “Yes.”

It’s all you manage to muster. Miller finally looks up, wincing slightly as his back straightens. He looks tired, at least more than usual, with his wild, grey-streaked hair tousled and the lines by his mouth cutting deep into his skin.

You’re sure you don’t look much better, a suspicion proven by the man’s slowly spreading, barely-noticeable smirk. That gaze makes you self conscious, mute; your right hand snakes up, absent-mindedly dragging a fallen bra strap back to its proper position.

“So, what was his name?”

He’s teasing, sure, but Miller was there last night. He’d always had sharper perceptions than your father did, especially — and ironically — when it came to you. That skill tended to squander your confidence as the daughter of a modern-day mafia-boss and the owner of a hard, violent heart.

Rushed by the sound of your father’s footsteps, you default to honesty.

“I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

“Josh.”

Amusement flits across his stern expression. “Again.”

“Jamie.”

“Warmer.”

“J-J-something—”

“Gettin’ colder, sweetheart—”

“I need the pill.”

It just tumbles out, an exasperated, desperate plea. Miller, a bit taken aback by your candor, drains of his previous playfulness. You almost notice the split second those dark eyes glaze over. For a second, you’re almost convinced he’s distracted by his imagination’s recreations of the act that had you making such a request.

You almost notice the tingling between your thighs.

He stares. You stare back.

Fuck.

It was moments like this that made you wish Tess was still around. Oh, she wouldn’t be any kinder — no, not at all — but she’d certainly be more professional. Tess was all work, no play. Joel was…

You’re enjoying this, you bastard. You’re enjoying that I’m cornered like this, aren’t you?

The bathroom handle clicks when it turns, and your heart drops into your toes.

Maybe Miller really wasn’t going to help you. Maybe he didn’t have the pill and you’d just embarrassed yourself for nothing. Or, maybe he did, but preferred outing you to your dad at the very first opportunity — letting him deal with you the only way he knew how.

Your fears seem confirmed: his eyes leave the grace of your own, trailing back to his big, splayed hands on the countertop. Unwelcome tears burn the corners of your eyes as the panic begins to set in, as footsteps begin to fall…

“Mine. Tonight.”

It’s low and rushed, but it’s clear, cutting off to the sound of your father lumbering in. A man who saw, thought, and lived through transactions, he’s (thankfully) blissfully ignorant of the tension collapsing around him.

“Morning,” he throws your way.

A taunt, of course — it was well past noon.

You nod in acknowledgement, slowly backing into the doorway of your sacred, beckoning room. They resume their conversation from before, letting you sink into irrelevance.

Before shutting yourself in, you catch a few of Miller’s hushed words. They’re spoken casually to your father but, you later decide, surely meant for you:

“Not that one kid — Jeremy — don’t trust him.”

The door seals (well, not seals… it creaks on its rusty hinges and squeezes into its shrinking frame), and relief courses through you, reaching the very tips of your fingers.

That only lasts a minute.

Soon, you’re negotiating with the rising anxiety of being at Miller’s place alone, asking for his help with a problem that could’ve been avoided if you’d only kept your legs shut.

Alone with Miller, the both of you knowing that you hadn’t.

Crawling back under your covers, you begrudgingly make a vow of celibacy. If this was the cost of attention and a (potential) mid-range orgasm, you were about to become very frugal.

Dreams come easy, but they don’t come sweet.

Flashes of last night’s sins overlay Joel Miller’s unintelligible speech, his voice from the next room over lulling you into a rather confusing, disturbed sleep.

—

At nighttime, it’s a short walk to his building.

Down this alley, past this street, up this back stairwell. Part of being in with Boston’s seedy underbelly gained you access to the best and most up-to-date intel; by the age of twelve, you could run the safest — well, least policed — post-curfew routes from memory.

(Which had come in handy in situations a lot more dire than this.)

Sneaking in was easy, although you cursed him for being so preoccupied during the day. Coming in at this hour required some delicate maneuvers through a half-shattered window, and a less-than-graceful leap down left you with a nick on your cheekbone and a shallow cut along the side of your hand.

Thankfully, the blood mostly dries on your walk up the six or eight or ten flights of stairs. You don’t resent the exercise; it feels good to move, putting the jitters building in every still moment in abeyance.

Still moments like the kind that passes after a barely-audible, coded knock delivered by a girl sucking on the side of her hand, almost wishing for the door not to open.

It does.

He’s in jeans — dirty jeans, dusty — and a simple flannel. It’s Miller — it’s Miller at his most Joel-Miller-like-ness.

So why am I so fucking nervous?

He holds the door open, brows knitting at the sight of your hand in your mouth.

“Window,” You offer.

He mouthes a silent ‘ah,’ before leaning forward to duck his head out the door and, in the process, somewhat sandwiching you against his chest.

Maybe it’s because he smells like forest-fires, but your skin burns red-hot.

Miller looks both ways, checking the status of the hall (empty), then nudges you into the dim light of his place with the weight of his hand against your lower back.

The door shuts behind you.

You’d been here at least a million times before, but the thoughts rising now feel so… new. The jacket strewn on the side of the sagging sofa is his — Joel Miller has sat at this table and showered, slept, fucked inside these walls.

Cut it out. It’s just ‘cause you’re alone. And older.

But what about it, now that you were alone and older?

Old enough to know what goes on between a man and a woman and a little bit of desperation at just the right amounts… and there sure was a lot of him, and some desperation, too…

“Nervous?”

Your feet hit the floor, all thoughts evaporating at the sound of his word. Blushing, you try to de-code his taunt, spoken with playfulness and too much condescension.

“Wh — what’d you — nervous for what? No.”

He’s already across the room, sifting through a box of miscellaneous items. A yellowed lamp shade catches his side-profile, illuminates the smirk spreading across his face. Then, a low command:

“Relax,” and your spine settles, acceding to his wish. “Some girls get nervous, y’know, takin’ it the first time.”

Oh.

You clear your throat, daring to take a step into his place, incensed enough to trace the indents and stab-marks decorating his kitchen table.

“No.”

You’re taken aback by the accuracy and the strength underpinning your answer. It’s true, you aren’t afraid, and hadn’t been afraid of much in a very long while.

What’s a Joel Miller to your best friend’s public hanging? What’s he to a dozen rows of semi automatics raining down on your zigzagging toes? What’s he to a period cramp?

Like a bolt of lightning hitting you in the chest, that cocky, gauche and indelicate rebel you’d grown into reappears.

“I’ve been told I take things pretty well my first time.” The tension rises — this time, at your command — just as Joel does, carrying a leather pouch in his right hand. “And it’s not, anyways,” you add for good measure.

The leather drops onto the marked-up table. Joel crosses his arms.

“Not sellin’ me on givin’ you one of these, sweetheart.”

He gestures to the bag.

A mock-frown as you draw closer to him. His eyes, although severe, reflect the playfulness dancing in your own.

“Why not?” You ask, voice dripping with false innocence.

Joel’s gaze doesn’t stray as it hardens, focused on your own. “They’re for accidents, mistakes, attacks,” he explains, deep and dangerous, “Not girls who can’t keep their pretty lil’ legs together.”

Oof.

On one hand, it sounds like he’s genuinely chastising you for your careless behaviour. But, on the other, he sounds jealous, taunting, hungry.

I’ll play that hand.

Sleeping all day had left you wide awake, and that long-time, school-girl crush on the man before you was dying for content to fantasize about. Even if he pushed you off, you’d get to feel the weight of his hands on your body, right?

So, you return with a taunt of your own: “You think my legs are pretty?”

He shakes his head, his signature scowl spreading as he mostly ignores you. “I think you should at least use condoms,” a breath, “N’ know their first names.”

Ouch.

“I usually do.” you murmur, “and it broke last night.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you mean, bullshit?”

Joel sighs and lowers himself into one of the four old, rickety chairs lining the table. His hand comes up to his temples and you notice how his legs, exhausted, part.

The man doesn’t deign to respond.

Irritation begins to well in your core, sneaking through your arms and up into your throat. The muscle in your jaw must be twitching like crazy.

How does he know? How the fuck does he always know?

Across the QZ, as a skilled liar and born and bred bandit, people tended to hold whatever image of you that you’d crafted for them.

Not Joel. Never Joel.

He saw through you in a way that had always felt… intimate. It was one of the reasons, you guessed, he didn’t dare spend too much time alone with you and why you’d always been curious about him (as a man, of course). Now, there was no avoiding your obvious vulnerability from either of you — you were stripped bare, your dressings in his hand.

It makes you want to flee as much as it makes you want to leap into his arms.

You snatch up the pouch, opening it up to find a mass of differently coloured and shaped pills. Rifling through, you ignore Joel’s stare boring into your hands’ erratic search.

“Yellow ones,” he says.

“I know what they look like,” you retort.

“‘Course you do.”

He moves faster than he should be able to.

One moment, your palm is slicing through the air, headed straight for the highest point of his cheek. The next, you’re facedown on the table. Your attacking hand is caged in by a much larger, much stronger one, pinned to the decaying wood; the other, he pins behind your back. Pills litter the floor — Joel’s boot crunches into a wayward one as he adjusts himself behind you, leaning over your struggling, smaller frame, immobilizing you with his weight.

“Let go of me—” you hiss, words smothered by the wooden surface pressed to your profile.

“—Shut up ‘n listen,” he commands, leaning over to tower over his trapped victim. “Try that again n’I’ll do worse’n kill you. Understand?”

Despite the authenticity of his threat, a strangled laugh wracks your lungs.

“Gonna turn me in for contraband, Miller? Watch them gun me down in the square?”

You smile through your heavy breaths. There, behind your hips, is a growing movement indicative of some other kind of punishment he’s got in mind.

“Or,” you continue on coyly, “Give me another reason to need that pill?”

Joel pauses, untangling your meaning.

Then, an exasperated scoff. His hold tightens on your wrist and you wince. “You always thinkin’ of the fastest way to get a man to fuck you?”

“Only when his cock’s pressed against my ass.”

He goes quiet — only for a moment. Somewhere outside, rounds echo through the night.

“Z’that what you want?” His voice is deep and threatening, promising of the kind of hard, mind-numbing fuck you’d been craving for weeks.

After a hard swallow, you nod, catching the raise of his eyebrows in your periphery.

A moment passes as he mulls over your answer. Only your shallow, anticipatory breaths populate the quiet space.

“Alright.”

And he lets go.

Heart racing, wrists aching, you flip around to his neutral, impenetrable expression.

“Get down on your knees.”

Without taking a moment to decide whether you’re living anything more than just a really fucked up dream, you sink to your knees, folding your hands in your lap (to stop them from shaking). Before you, Joel’s bulge twitches while he watches you yielding to submission, and you try to ignore the excitement building between your own two legs.

His eyes burn into yours: black, starved, weighty. He tells you to shut your own and you do, unable to resist the tone of his command. Within the self-imposed darkness, Joel’s following order — ‘open your mouth,’ — parts your lips as if they were under his spell. You wonder what you must look like to him, needy and ready to receive whatever you’re given.

He speaks again.

“Show me your tongue, angel.”

The gruffness punctuating his arousal doesn’t let you stand a chance. You let your mouth fall open wider.

Next, there’s rustling. You try to remember whether or not he’d had on a belt, listening and failing to hear the soft clinks of a buckle coming undone.

Too soon, something wraps around your chin — thick, calloused fingers — and the pressure of a thumb running down the middle of your tongue sends a rush of electricity down every stacked vertebrae. It’s slow, tantalizingly slow, as if the man were trying to memorize the feel of every groove, ridge, and bud on his leisurely way out.

When Joel drops his hand, a small weight remains at the back of your throat.

“Close.”

You do, opening your eyes to meet his own: severe and wanting — or wanting for severity?

It’s a pill. That much is obvious once the taste begins to spread, bitter and chemical and totally gag-worthy. He follows up with ‘swallow’ for his own sick enjoyment; by the time he says it, it’s clear that you already have.

What kind of game is this, Miller?

Your cheeks burn when your company kneels down. He places his big, broad hand partly on your neck, partly to the side of your jaw, and you’re still too taken aback to tear it off. The feel of his rough palm against your racing pulse silences every urge to enact revenge. Words don’t come — too quickly forgotten on one’s knees.

“You’re way too easy for your own good, sweetheart,” he near-whispers, shooting to kill in a blow packed tight with condescension. “Don’t let me see you here again.”

And that’s it: your cue to get lost.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Miller pulls away from your reddening skin, straightening to stand. You follow suit soon after, heart pumping lead, tongue bruised by the memory of his touch (more overwhelming than the metallic residue dripping down your throat).

He turns, running a few fingers through his hair. It’s the last look you get before resigning yourself to the journey back home.

Still, before turning the rusted handle, in a brief moment of respite, of clarity, you seize the final word:

“I’m only ‘easy’ when I’m drunk. Or interested.”

Silence courses through the room as Joel registers the meaning behind your confession.

“Goodnight, Miller.”

With that, you see yourself into the hallway, checking its status before tearing into the stairwell.

You barely breathe.

He wanted me — he had to have wanted me.

Miller was a pragmatic player; surely, he’d only bother to play with toys he liked like that… right?

Right?

Unable to clear your head or cool the heat radiating through your core, you take the long way home, the distant sounds of a war between rivals soothing the cacophony of noise swimming between your ears.

—

For the next two weeks, all you’re able to think about is him.

You think about him when he’s gone and when he’s in the room, grumbling in hushed tones to your father. You think about him when you’re unable to fall asleep, letting your hands slip beneath the waistband of your shorts, imagining your own fingers as thick, tan ones running through the warmth between your legs.

He takes no notice of you — a fact you deeply resent. Even in your skimpiest clothing, he’s like a damn horse with blinders on. You decide, in the past weeks, he’d either acquired the patience of Job or purged every sinful craving from his system when he’d stuck his fingers down your throat.

Naturally, you’re more than happy when, at breakfast (two in the afternoon), your father gives you the heads up about tonight’s gathering at the Bar (which was really just an asbestos-ridden basement equipped with enough prohibition-style gadgets and architecture to host a good ‘strategic meeting’ every other month).

“Everyone’s gonna be there,” he mumbles. “Need you to keep your ears open. Had to take a couple rats out last week…”

Everyone’s gonna be there.

Smiling to yourself, your thoughts start to spin out. Business, distractions, booze. Tonight would host a million opportunities for you to get him alone.

Hope blooms through your chest.

Do your worst, Miller.

—

“Man, I wish we could’ve experienced cocktails. Straight hooch is ass.”

A peer named Mel, just a year older than yourself, cringes as she sips on whatever murky liquor’s found its way into her cup.

You don’t mind the taste so much, having grown mostly immune to its taste and burn. In fact, you’d come to welcome the subsequent lapse in breath and judgement.

There was little else in this world that made you feel alive.

“Mhm,” you respond absent-mindedly, looking for a familiar scowl among the mass of scowls peppering the crowd.

A sigh to your right. “Always awesome, having your attention.”

The criticism snaps you back into your body. You smile sheepishly at your friend, apologizing through a wince.

She shrugs, her raggedy, pin-decorated jacket jingling with the movement. “S’okay. Known you long enough to know that look.”

For that, she receives a quizzical glance.

Mel comes back with a scoff. “No victims tonight?”

“Oh god,” you shoot her a look of disgust. “Do you mind not using such weird vocabulary? Make me sound like a predator.”

As the words tumble out, you zero in on the object of your search. There he is: eyebrows knit together in concentration, drink in hand, unsurprisingly (and annoyingly) in conversation with your father. A few other stragglers are in the mix, too, but they’re easily overlooked. Time slows to a full stop in his wake —only for the briefest of seconds —

“Well since the last guy actually wound up dead a week later, I think it’s fitting.”

Once again, Mel’s managed to wrangle your interest.

You stare blankly into her onyx eyes, ringlets falling through molasses around her face. “Jeremy?”

And she’s bewildered. “You didn’t hear?”

This time, both of your heads turn in the same direction.

“Ratted to FEDRA about the storehouse off tenth,” she explains, gesturing towards Miller and your father with a tilt of her head. Famous for her bravery, she stoops into your shoulder, averting his gaze and speaking under her breath, “Judging by the way they found him, my guess is it was mostly Miller’s stuff.”

It’s as if she’d screamed it.

The subject of your conversation turns to face you right as your company’s words drift off. Despite the level of noise, the amount of people, and the cloudiness of the air, you’re trapped in the corridor of your mutual stare, cornered.

The challenge, the knowing marking his expression.

“I need some air.”

You twist into the body standing behind you, shoving row after row of criminal scum out of the way. Mel doesn’t follow — she’d never hung around to comfort you, only to inform you. A mutual, typical relationship for the age, and just how things worked in the QZ.

You slam into the door, stomping into a deserted, silent alley, empty save for a few drunk strays. Your lips begin to tingle and a scream builds inside your lungs. Stalking blindly into the night, unsure of your direction, alone in half a top and a plain, ass-length skirt, shivering despite the warmth of the air…

You’re practically begging for trouble.

Just as your eyes catch the numbers on the old, rusted street sign above, just as you realize you’re on a monitored street tonight, only safe after curfew every other Monday and Wednesday, you’re grabbed by the waist, pulled into the space between two buildings, and shoved into a sheltered nook.

A dim, yellow light clicks on automatically. There’s a door (chained closed) leading into the building to your left and darkness to your right.

And there’s Joel Miller above you, his expression indeterminable.

“You asshole,” you barely hear yourself breathe over the sound of the blood rushing in your ears before lunging forward in a useless attempt to, once again, strike his profile.

He catches your wrist, no doubt having anticipated the attack. It’s written on your face, in your eyes, in your shallow, uneven inhalations. He takes your other hand before you’ve even thought to use it, lifting it above your head and slamming it against the old stucco behind you.

“You’re violent,” he says flatly.

He tightens his hold when you struggle against it. “Proud of yourself, yeah? You’re a killer.”

That inspires a slight smirk. You half expect him to return with an ‘as if you didn’t already know that.’

Instead, he says, “Sweetheart, you didn’t even know his name.”

“You should’ve told me.”

And that’s the real source of this anger: it’s rage at being the last to know.

And for what? To protect your feelings? Since when had anyone in your life bothered to do that?

“And don’t call me ‘sweetheart’,” you add for good measure.

You’d wanted him to touch you so badly for weeks now, but here, scorned at being left in the dark and confused at the death of a paramour, you only want to get free.

“And what’d he call you?” He spits, leaning down and in, inadvertently pressing his thigh between your legs — when his breath grazes the skin of your ear, it causes them to part (against your better judgement). “Got lots of names, right?” He continues to tease, “Heard your boyfriend’s pretty one for you before I shut him up — ‘that fuckin’ slut,’ f’I’m rememberin’ right.”

Despite your rage-shakes, you’re warming at the core, Joel’s pressure against it dizzying your already-addled head. It confuses you, makes the scorn easier to access.

“How did I come up, Miller?” You exhale, jutting your chin towards him. “Couldn’t help asking for all the dirty little details, could you?”

He smiles, and the act lacks any sort of kindness. “‘Lot easier gettin’ him alone once he thought he was meetin’ you.” Joel slams your wrist harder into the wall when you try to wriggle away. “Not sure you wanna keep making that kind of impression, angel.”

It’s hard to rationalize with him so close, as his pet-names echoe inside your head. He’d used your name to enact gang-law violence on a boy who’d been inside you, and yet, all you can think, all you can hear, is the way ‘sweetheart’ sounds tumbling off his lips.

“Fucking let me go, Miller,” you manage to exasperate, resenting the begging edge to every word. “I don’t need another abstinence lecture from you.”

Kicking one ankle off balance, Joel turns you around, pressing your stomach to the wall, your back into his chest. Ignoring your whines and pitiful struggle, he wraps a free hand around your neck, pushing your head against his collarbone. Your stomach erupts with butterflies as the rough pad of his thumb traces the front of your throat.

Yes — no — yes, he wants me — no, no, this is wrong, this is so wrong —

“‘Be wasted on you, anyways,” he says, rough and earnest, like his hand sliding down your chest, your breasts, your stomach, “Startin’ to realize if I can’t fix your dad’s mistakes…” and he’s finding the hem of your skirt and yanking it up, bunching the fabric around your hips —

“Might as well take advantage of them.”

He moves hungrily. He’s everywhere, sliding into your underwear and across your breasts, his big arms and suffocating biceps enveloping your entire frame.

“Joel—”

But he claps a hand over your mouth, silencing any hope of your pleas being effective.

“Think I haven’t seen you? Your lil’ looks…” a low laugh, “n’ those fuckin’ clothes?” God, the rumble, the sheer want in his voice hammers at your initial resistance, and you feel yourself welcoming the feel of his thick, long fingers, sliding between your wet folds. You’re clay, melting against the curved, firm wall of his chest.

You mewl pathetically into his palm.

Another low laugh wracks his lungs, dances at the top of your ear.

“Knew you’d be this wet for me.”

“Knew since you got down on your knees,” Joel continues, uncovering your mouth only to ease a few fingers between your lips — lips that part as though commanded, and a mouth that welcomes and caresses whatever it receives, “‘N opened this pretty lil’ mouth for me to fuck it. Can’t close my eyes without seein’ you like that — so fuckin’ needy.” He exhales from between his teeth, signalling his approval while you suck him down to the knuckles.

His fingers tease your clit and you give him your thanks by pleasuring those of his other hand.

When his hands move, it’s to hold you steady and balanced as he drags your underwear down your legs. That thick, heavy cloud of arousal hides any and all rational thoughts from view.

And he knows. He knows you’re past the point of no return, restraining you only out of his desire to rather than out of a real need to. He knows from the whine you breathe at the loss of his hand against your clit, moving to work at his belt buckle instead.

“Gonna use a condom?” You breathe, emboldened by your clearing senses at the temporary lack of stimulation.

At first, you think he’s missed your taunt.

He backs up, pulling your hips along with him until the tips of your fingers are no longer touching the decaying wall before you. Joel pulls you upright and against him with an arm around your waist and a hand around your throat, turning your head and tilting it back to meet your eyes.

You grasp onto his forearms, failing to stand, unable to breathe. His hardness digs into your back, and his cruel eyes show you just how much pleasure he takes in your struggle.

“Don’t like to waste ‘em,” he finally answers, rocking his cock against your spine, “But I will if you beg. You gonna beg?”

He manipulates your answer, fingers moving to your red-hot core — he barely grazes the nerves, only dancing over the needy flesh. You can’t tear your eyes from him either, tethered to your body through his gaze.

Joel Miller was a frustrating lover.

“N-no,” is your answer, slightly strangled and softly stuttered.

He smiles. “S’what I thought.” Then, “Show me what you can do, angel,” he coos, lips just inches away from yours, his hold on your body relaxing —

“Use your pretty lil’ hands n’ put my cock where you want it most.”

And you both know exactly where that is.

After a nod, Joel allows you to bend forward slowly — it’s like moving through honey. Your legs burn with effort as you reach between your legs to wrap a hand around his thick, hard length.

Christ, he’s huge.

He groans when you touch him and uses his own hand to help guide his tip between your folds. One hand holds your waist, fingers extended under your ribs to support your weight in a skilled show of experience.

With his tip at your aching entrance, you try to lean back, to slide yourself slowly down his many inches.

But Joel doesn’t allow it.

He pushes into you in one go, clicking his tongue at your strangled gasp —

The man hadn’t even bothered to open you up with his fingers.

“Ah, c’mon,” he condescends, “You can take it.”

Then he’s setting a hard pace, hands moving from your hips to your ribs to your biceps to your hair to your neck — anywhere he wanted to go, he went. One eventually comes to the front of your throat, tilting your eyes back and up towards the ceiling. Every one of his thrusts arches your back further until you’re contorting into a half-moon shape, standing only by the grace of his support.

And it feels so good. Joel fills you up to the brim, takes you to heaven and floods your ears with hymns, punishes you in the kind of way you’d only experienced in dreams.

Words tumble out, but they’re filled with nothingness. “Joel,” “fuck,” and “yesohgodyes,” quickly become staples of your vocabulary.

He laughs whenever you sob, grows harder every time you moan, restrains you when you try to run away.

The hand around your throat tightens, digging unforgivably into the flesh as you start to let go, as your walls begin to clench and flutter appreciatively around his cock.

“M’I making you happy, sweetheart? My cock making you smile?” He asks gruffly, pulling you back into his chest. Joel readjusts you into whatever shape you need to be in at the new angle, hips still slamming into your ass. Struggling to stand on your tiptoes, he steadies you with his arms and his hand on your jaw, forcing you to look up into his rugged face.

“Mmhm,” is all you can offer him, the pitch jumping up halfway through when the head of his cock grazes that perfect spot inside your cunt.

He doesn’t let up.

“Show me, baby—” he commands, out of breath, too, but not nearly as tortured as you, “—Show me your smile.”

You do your best, smiling up at him, degrading yourself even more at the hands of Joel-fucking-Miller. And he eats it up, loves the way your grin turns into a bitten lip and knit eyebrows over closed eyes, slowing his thrusts to rock even deeper inside you.

You moan something unintelligible, and a laugh rustles through your tangled hair.

“Am I makin’ you come?”

You nod, feeling that familiar rush of pressure blooming somewhere within that throbbing bundle of nerves under his spell.

He smirks in pride and victory, the last look you get before your head falls against his shoulder, your muscles going lax as the peak builds, as your half-sobs grow louder.

“S’it, baby, tell ‘em,” he coos, nipping and sucking the skin on the side of your throat. “Gonna tell the whole street how you take it like a good lil’ slut.”

His fingers fall to your clit, enticing you right over the edge. You vision blurs and your legs shake, but Joel talks you through your orgasm, sweet nothings starting with, “S’right — show me — yes, fuck — good girl…”

And then —

He stops.

You whine, stars dancing before your eyes as the mean, mean man inside you refuses to fuck you through your climax.

“Joel,” you plead, grinding back against him in a pathetic show of need, “Come with me.”

He does the opposite, sliding himself out of your sore opening. You turn to face him, restoring your balance with hands against his chest, gazing up at him in desire-stricken reproach.

“Use your mouth,” he says, voice gruff at your ruined sight and from his own hand on his cock, keeping his arousal level, “Not gettin’ any more help from me.”

It’s unclear whether ‘help’ means pills or his cock, but you assume both to be safe.

You try to argue (having spent the last few weeks dreaming of Joel dripping down your legs) but he just won’t budge.

Then, his voice softens.

“You know your dad’d kill me, angel.”

And it’s really the sweetness of his tone that does it.

Sinking to your knees, it’s déjà vu when you open wide for him, steadying your shaking knees with both hands on his half clothed, half naked hips. Gravel and debris dig painfully into your bare knees, but you ignore the sting, smiling instead at the taste of yourself on Joel’s cock, lips sliding adoringly down the thick length of it.

He groans his approval, tangling his fingers in your hair to help guide your movements.

As you take him in again and again and again, pleasing every inch of him, he chokes out a laugh.

“Never seen you so quiet,” he muses (mostly to himself), caressing your cheekbone with his free hand —

“Gagged by an old man’s cock.”

You pull off, pumping him with both hands, asking breathlessly, “Are you all so big?”

He smiles, eyes darkening at the dirty compliment. “Give you a few numbers n’ you can tell me.”

God, he’s beautiful from down here.

You hold his attention and lick a slow stripe down the underside of his cock, half-grinning up at his lust-filled expression.

“I only want yours, Joel Miller.”

An uneasy inhale as you take him back in, his brows furrowing and his cock growing impossibly harder. Your words please him, he returns by groaning orders and praises like: “S’all yours, baby — take it all — take aaall that dick — good fuckin’ girl.”

He’s so close and you know it, moaning in submission at his hand’s pressure against the back of your head. With your nose crunched into his abdomen, you hold your throat open for him to use it however he pleases — reduced to nothing more than the man’s plaything.

There’s a low “ah, fuck,” from above, and then you finally know what Joel Miller tastes like.

It’s better than the Plan B.

You hear nothing beyond his recovering breaths, feel nothing past pride, lust, and exhaustion.

Eventually, he loosens his grip. You pull off of him delicately, drawing a groan from between his gritted teeth when you make sure to suck every last drop of his seed into your mouth.

Sitting back on your ankles, you roll your head up to face him.

He swipes a thumb under your lips, clearing the saliva connecting you to his softening cock.

“Still mad at me?” He asks.

You’d be crazy to say yes.

“Only for pulling out.”

You note the twitch at the corner of his mustache.

Joel helps you back on your feet, using one hand to pull you up by your arm and another to arrange himself back to decency.

You adjust your shirt; Joel fixes your skirt. It’s a strange kind of silence settling inside this pocket at the side of a random, ruined building.

Then, your company clears his throat, that mask of seriousness falling over his expression once again.

“You gonna be smart?”

What ever could he mean?

Stay away from him? Stay away from men? Practice abstinence? Use protection?

Either way, you’re not one to make promises you know you can’t keep.

You cross your arms.

“No.”

He sighs.

Well, looks like things are already back to normal.

His face softens and he shakes his head, already regretting his next words. “Just — just come find me, then. I won’t do… this again, but — but I’ll help.”

You frown.

“What do you mean, ‘this’?”

He stares down into your accusatory eyes with a look you’d received many times from him, one screaming, “get real.”

“Fine,” you mutter, breaking eye-contact, “Thank you.”

With a stoic nod, he walks around you, heading back into the night. You try, in vain, to watch him go in silence — god knows you had some thinking to get to — and find that, instead of getting it out of your system, the entanglement had only left you wanting for more.

And more and more.

“Is this what you meant?” and you hear his footsteps halt, “When you told me you’d do worse than kill me? When I tried to hit you?”

It comes out before you can help it, and you twist around to face his still, broad shoulders.

You can hear the smile teasing his lips as he utters the words.

“Why are you askin’ me that?”

Still facing his back, you break into a smile of your own. “So I’ll know what I have to do to get you to do it again.”

You watch him shake his head, grey-streaked ripples in the low light.

“Try your best not to find out, angel.”

With that, he disappears into the darkness, leaving you in the flickering doorway. Thighs aching, heart racing, you take a deep breath, trying to memorize the feeling of what it felt to have them taken from you by Joel Miller.

A feeling you’d chase.

—

Put your red boots on

Baby, giddy up

Baby wants a dance

Baby gets her way

Dreamy nights

Talk to me with that whiskey breath

Twirl me twice

I'll treat you like a holiday

And don't say you're over me

When we both know that you ain't

Don't say you're over me

Baby, it's already too late

Just do what you do best with me

Dance me all around the room

Spin me like a ballerina, super high

Dance me all around the moon

Light me up like the 4th of July

Once, twice, three times

The guy I ever thought I would meet, so

Don't say you're over me

When we both know that you lie

If you lie down right next to me

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

If you lie down right next to me

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

When you lie down right next to me

Get your jacket on

Be a gentleman

Get into your truck

And pick me up at eight

'Cause we were built for

The long haul freight train

Burnt by fire

Without trial like a stowaway

And don't say you're over me

When they all know that you ain't

If you lay down right next to me

Dance me all around the room

Spin me like ballerina super high

Dance me all around the moon

Like six times 'til I'm sick and I cry

Once, twice, three times

The guy I ever thought I would meet, so

Don't say you're over me

When they all know that you're lying

If you lie down right next to me

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

Lie, you lie

If you lie down right next to me

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

Lie, you lie

When you lie down right next to me

—

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guessimwritingficsagain · 8 months

Text

He Tells Me

You've fallen into psychological stalemate with a man who does things for you without needing to be asked, and neither of you want to give up the last say.

Joel Miller x Reader | 1k+ | cw: fem!reader, fluff, overgiver!joel & yn, ellie 'JUST FUCKING KISS ALREADY' williams, typos, etc.

A/N: ive fallen into this song again. ITS SO JOEL CODED TO

Tagging: @pinksirensong @aralezinspace @sloanexx @multifandom-fangirl4

▶ ♪ Play touch tank by quinnie ♪ ◀

I love you isn't always I and Love and You; it isn't always the words that tumble out of your mouth or the lump that's stuck in your throat.

I love you isn't always a kiss and a hug; it isn't always the way lips brush against skin or chests press against chests.

Sometimes it's good mornings. Good morning, I love you. Did you sleep well, I love you. Have you eaten, I love you.

I love you, I did the dishes.

I love you, I fixed your faulty light.

Hey, let me carry that for you.

This reminded me of you, here.

I think you'd like this.

I love you.

But somehow, those I love yous read to you as you owe mes, and now, you were paying back every bit of your debt with blood, sweet, and a burnt hand.

Ellie opens the door and smiles, immediately calling your name and pulling you into a side hug. You lean into her embrace as much as the steaming casserole in your hand will allow you.

"You made it just in time for dinner!" she says, pushing you in with her.

You chuckle, "oh, Elle-machine. I'm just here to drop this off and-"

"Don't be silly," a voice cuts you off. Joel comes down from the stairs, barely glancing your way as he overtakes you both, heading for the kitchen. Still, you notice his faint smile and a shot of electricity ripples down your spine, a swell of warmth crawls up your ears.

Joel walks off, grunting as he did, "you're staying for dinner. End of story."

Ellie watches you be rendered frozen in your spot. She does not hide her grin, "he just called you silly."

You turn to her, finding the pot in your hand was feeling heavier, "... he did."

You and Ellie make it to the dining table and you set the food you prepared on a table next to the other dishes.

"Wow," you mutter, "roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and a salad," you look up at Joel, who was walking over with another pot. He sets the pot down as you turn to Ellie, "is it your birthday or something?"

"No," Ellie sit down with a smile, "Joel just knows I'm a growing child who needs her food."

You bring a hand to your mouth to hold in your giggles. Joel catches this and furrows his brows.

"Consider me jealous, honey," you tease her.

"Well, you could always move in with us," Ellie props her elbows on the table.

Before you can reply, Joel takes your hand, making both you and Ellie turn to him. Your heart pounds. His expression hardens as he takes in the cloth wrapped around your palms, "what happened to your hand?"

You watch him examine your hand a second too long. Joel looks back at out, ripping a response from your lips, "I- uh- the... the casserole."

Joel raises his brows, "you burnt your hand cooking?"

The worry in his brown eyes ate away at your heart. You clench your jaw, unwilling to admit you were a useless and bad cook, "... no."

Joel thinks back to the contents of the first aid kit in the compound.

"I- I was doing something with the pot and then I-"

"I think Tommy has burn ointment somewhere," Joel trails off, immediately releasing my hand and marching off.

Your stomach drops. You immediately catch his arm, "wait!"

Joel stops in his tracks, looking back at you.

"It's not a big deal!" you say through an airy chuckle, "I put it under running water for a while. I just put a wrap because it hurts when I-"

His hand, warm and gentle, coming atop yours cuts you off. Joel shifts in his spot; your ears perk, as they were sensitive to the sound of his boots. He gives you a look, a kind one, a patient one, a tender one, "it isn't a big deal. I'll be back in two seconds."

The moment Joel walks off, Ellie pipes up, "you should just take a seat. You know you can't argue with him. Well, I mean you can but that normally doesn't end up well." She pats on the empty chair beside her, "want to hear about what I did in school today instead?"

You release a soft breath and smile, "of course, darling."

When Joel came back, he announced there was no burn ointment, but he did find an ice pack. The only problem now, there was no ice. And so as the three of you began to eat, he explained he'd fix the broken ice cream freezer in the warehouse and make ice for you tomorrow. To which you said-

"You really don't have to," you shake your head, suddenly too embarrassed to get anymore food than you already had on your plate. You had one scoop of mashed potatoes.

Joel moves the bowl of mash closer to you then takes off the lid of one pot, "I meant to do it anyway. They found spare parts for it. Now I have a reason," he turns to you, "have some pasta. I made it for you."

Your eyes land on the pot. You begin to feel a nasty little feeling claw up your nape at the thought of Joel going out of his way for you. I mean, you made the casserole to repay him for helping you do your laundry, and if it wasn't bad enough that he saw your underwear, he made you food, one of your favorites. You offer Joel a smile, "thank you, Joel."

He reaches out to your for your plate. You hand it to him wordlessly. He mutters, "you're welcome, sweetheart."

Your lips part. He's never called you that before, only Ellie.

He stills the moment he has your plate in hand, "I- I mean-"

"NAH," Ellie cuts as she rips off a chicken leg, "you called her sweetheart. No take backsies."

Joel clears his throat as he puts pasta on your plate.

When you all finished eating, not a lick was left on your plates. You obviously insisted on washing the dishes and Joel countered you wouldn't be because you were a guest. The back and forth became so insufferable Ellie stepped up and volunteered, insisting instead that Joel walk you back home. You had no means to insist your way out of that.

And so you waited by the front door for Joel to get his jacket from the second floor. When he got it, the two of you headed out, walking quite leisurely.

"You know," you shove your hands in your pockets. You couldn't help it, "my house is literally, like, two steps away from here. You don't have to walk-"

Joel draping his jacket around your shoulders silence you. He pulls the thing by the collar, making sure it was snug on you, "yeah. All the more reason to walk you, since it's so close."

You watch him pull his pants up as he looks around. He offers, "but if it's a challenge you want, we can circle 'round the compound a bit before heading back to yours."

A warmth envelopes you, and it's not because of his jacket.

He turns to you when you don't respond, immediately blurting, "only if you want," he wipes his lips, "I'm not trying to make you do-"

"No, I know," you shake your head, "I know what you mean."

You and Joel look at each other in the quiet while walking. He takes a moment before nodding. He chuckles rather uneasily, "okay... good- that's good."

Seconds pass with just the sound of your footsteps between you.

You decide to say what's on your mind, "Uh," you turn to your feet.

Joel immediately locks his gaze on you.

"Next time," you purse your lips, "just leave the pasta to me."

Joel knits his brows. Damn.

"You know..." you look away, "like, I'm glad you invited me over and all, but you-"

"Was it that bad?"

You finally turn to him, "what?"

"Was my cooking that bad?" Joel feels his insides churn. He feels so stupid suddenly for not following the recipe to a tee. Damn his personal tastes.

You shake your head, "no. No! Your cooking was great! It wasn't bad at all. I enjoyed it. This isn't about your cooking."

He makes a face, "oh..."

You nod, clarifying, "I just- you don't have to do that for me."

He takes a moment to think. Oh... He snorts and rubs his nose, "ah... I see."

You knit your brows at that.

Joel's shoulder's slump. It was him then. Well, he doesn't blame you for not being interested. He releases a breath. It was stupid of him anyway. He thinks of a flimsy excuse to break the tension. It a horrible lie, "sorry, uh, it's just-- Ellie just really wanted to eat with you."

His words make you knit your brows deeper. You blink twice, "Ellie... wanted me to join?"

"Yeah," Joel huffs, "she thinks your great."

You nod slowly.

"But... if you don't want to eat with me, I'll make sure to-"

"Wait, what?"

The both of you stop walking.

Joel feels his insides disintegrate when you look at him the way you do. He looks away and clears his throat. Man up, "I... don't want to make you uncomfortable with any... unwanted advances."

"Wait," you quickly step forward. You rapidly shake your head, "no! I..." you raise your brows, "I just- I don't want to burden you with... with- d-doing things for me."

A deep line forms between Joel's brows, "burden? Who said anything about burdens?"

You look away as you continue to shake your head, "I- I don't know. I just- I don't want to bother you-"

"JUST KISS ALREADY!"

Both of you snap to the side There, from the second floor window, was Ellie, head sticking out of the window. She cups her mouth with her hand and screams again, "KIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSS!"

You look away from her. You turn to your feet as you feel your face burn.

Joel's loud voice surprises you, "GO TO BED!"

"I'M NOT 4!" Ellie screams back.

Joel decides to end the screaming match with a grumble, "well, you're damn acting like one." He turns back to you, "sorry about her, she's-"

"I really like you," you blurt when you look back at him, "I really like being around you."

Joel feels his fingers tingle.

Your impulsiveness only now begins to feel like a bad idea, "I-" your voice gets smaller, "it's not unwanted advances... not per se... It's just- when people do things for me, I don't- well, I don't know, I-"

"You can't just accept it?"

You stare at each other for a moment. You nod. Joel nods too.

"I'm usually the one giving, ya know," you say.

Joel nods again, "I do. I feel the same way. I don't like needing to get help from anyone," he crosses his arms, "but, you know, being with Ellie... she's taught me that sometimes-"

"FUCKING KISS HER OLD MAN!"

You can't contain the snort that leaves your mouth. Joel shoots a glare to his side. Still, he breaks into a chuckle, "I'm gonna kill her."

Ellie makes a face and waves her hands, "NO! DON'T LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT HER! LOOK AT- oh my god he actually did it."

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guessimwritingficsagain · 8 months

Text

bloodshed, crimson clover

Pairing: Joel x Doctor F!Reader

Summary: You run a small practice in the Boston QZ, willing to treat anybody who needs it. After an encounter where you save the life of Joel Miller, you form an unlikely friendship with one of the most notorious, feared men in the QZ, a reputation you didn't realize existed until you come face to face with it yourself.

Warnings: Angst. Slow build. Mutual pining & tension (unresolved). Ambiguous ending. Game!Joel. Canon-typical violence. Reader captured with mentioned physical harm, Feral Joel with descriptions of torture/murder. Vague descriptions of injury treatments (bullet wound with cauterization, cleaning glass/debris from cuts, burn wound). Reader from California & Joel calls her Cali, Reader calls Joel Texas.

Wordcount: 12.1k

A/N: I've had this idea for a while, started it and it sat in drafts, and suddenly I was hit with inspiration again this past week. Also ty @cupofjoel for letting me scream about them to you and all your support, ily!!

In his own ways, Joel Miller was a complete gentleman.

A distinctly Southern one, with a show of selective manners from his upbringing before the world went to hell, paired with a charming ruggedness that pulled your attention to him from the very first time he stumbled through your little clinic’s doors.

You were one of the few legitimately licensed Pre-Outbreak medical professionals left in the QZ, and accepted each and every sick and injured person into your tiny practice. It took a long time and care to get a place out of the view of FEDRA’s ever-looming gaze, but even then you risked the possibility of having a target painted on your back if you treated the “wrong” person.

Somebody always owed somebody else within those tall steel walls surrounding the poor semblances of a society that, in your opinion, should have been left in the dust with the rest of the world. In not discerning who you patched up, you put yourself in danger of getting on the wrong side of someone distinctly more powerful, more violent than you.

But through your diligent work over the years, you’d gained enough of a clientele for your hidden practice to remain largely untouched. There were a few instances with graffiti, but even that wasn’t too terrible—immature Fireflies pissed off that you hadn’t accepted their offer to join them, most likely new recruits trying to earn their place in the rebel ranks.

So when the rickety old doors banged open hard enough to nearly tear them off the top hinge one night, you were up on your feet and running to assist the large body that almost fell to the floor with the momentum of how they had burst in.

There was not an ounce of anxiety in your body other than the familiar adrenaline of assess the damage, stop the bleeding, prevent infection and keep them alive as you wrapped your arms around their waist, using all your strength to pull them up and direct them to one of the two old clinic beds in the dingy old room that you sanitized as best you could between patients.

That was the first thing you noticed about Joel Miller, even though you didn’t know him by name or even face yet—he was heavy. Solid muscle underneath blood-stained fabric that you began to pull away from his torso, hardly paying attention to the low timbre of his pained grunts when the cloth stuck gruesomely to the gunshot wound you finally saw once you got the shirt off.

There were no questions in your mind other than how deep was it, was there an exit wound, did it hit anything vital, not caring how he had gotten it, who had given it to him, or why they had as you paced to your instruments, only taking a moment to make sure they were clean before pulling on a pair of gloves you were running dangerously low on, hoping that they wouldn’t get too blood-soaked in the process of keeping this man alive.

Yes, you would do all you could to save him—but you still knew in the back of your mind that two pairs of gloves spent on him would risk no gloves and losing somebody else further down the line.

It wasn’t a thought you wasted the time to entertain now as you quickly got to work. There was nothing to numb the pain of the man who laid back on the clinic bed, teeth gritted and half-delirious from blood loss, not even bothering to try and say anything to you while you saved his life.

You weren’t offended. In some odd way, it was a breath of fresh air.

Most, if not all patients you treated with this kind of wound, were usually tripping over fast anxiety-fueled words trying to explain to you how they had gotten into this situation. You supposed they were hoping you wouldn’t turn them in for whatever they most likely weren’t supposed to be doing, not knowing that the only thing you truly cared about anymore was keeping as many people as you could alive in this godforsaken dystopia.

This man though, he stayed silent. Not trying to assure you of his goodwill, whether he truly had any or not. He only stared up at the dilapidated ceiling, jaw practically wired shut, maybe to keep in the low grunts and groans that rumbled from his chest, exposed from where you had to remove his denim shirt to treat the wound on his torso.

Unfortunately, you did end up having to switch to a new pair of gloves, the bleeding slowing but stubbornly refusing to stop completely. You were reaching for more of your quickly dwindling supply of gauze to keep pressing against the wound when you heard his voice clearly for the first time.

“Cauterize it.”

You looked back at him with your hand outstretched halfway to the gauze, eyes widening at the simple command that fell from the man’s chapped lips in a low drawl that rasped with pain and dehydration.

Blinking, you looked from his face that was still directed towards the ceiling down towards the wound, a frown pulling onto your lips as you glanced back towards him and began to protest, “I don’t—”

“Cauterize. It.” He repeated firmly, jaw still clenched with the words hissed out through gritted teeth.

You stiffened, not particularly enjoying being ordered to make a medical choice in your own clinic, but then his eyes met yours, filled with an intense determination that had your hand pulling back slightly from its path towards a longer process that would've hopefully let the wound heal naturally.

Then there was a slight shift in the unfathomable depth of that gaze, a fracture in walls even more impenetrable than the ones that had surrounded you for almost half a decade, and his cracked lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them in a desperate attempt for hydration before he gave a quiet murmur of, “Please.”

There was the first hint of those selective manners, emphasized with an underlying sense of unspeakable eagerness, and your face set into your own determination, nodding as you set about preparing for a practice that wasn’t your favorite, but was sometimes necessary.

Maybe this man couldn’t afford the time it would take to stop the bleeding completely, sew it up and let the wound heal on its own. Maybe there was something out there, somebody out to get him.

Or somebody he had to protect, to get home to.

That last thought is what urged you not stop even when the man grabbed the edge of the bed in a large hand, fingers curling so tight around it that you marveled if the rickety old metal would actually break under the strength of that grip. It's what spurred you to keep going even through the sharp shouts of pain muffled around the clean, rolled up washcloth you had gotten him to bite down on through the procedure.

Once the wound was forcibly closed by the red-hot metal of your sterile knife the best you could manage, you found your eyes drawn back to the man’s face, tracing the strength of his features as they relaxed a fraction from relief once the onslaught of pain from the procedure finished.

When you began the process of disinfecting the closed wound, his face had grown so blank that you worried he was on the verge of passing out, but he surprised you by placing his palms flat against the bed, pushing himself up with a loud grunt the moment you were done treating him.

“Sir—”

Any protests towards his movements you were about to make were cut short as he swung his feet over the side of the bed, placing his boots on the ground, heavy-footed and nearly collapsing when he pushed himself up and strode forward anyway, powering through the weakness you would much prefer he would sit in before trying to leave.

“Sir, I really don’t think—”

But he was shaking his head towards your attempts to get him to rest, fingers fumbling with the buttons of where blood was beginning to dry on the faded denim of his shirt, managing to get it most the way fastened back up as he took increasingly more steady steps towards the door.

What flabbergasted you the most, though, was the way he turned his head back towards you, gaze meeting yours for the second time as he muttered a gruff, “Thank you.”

The second show of those bizarre Southern gentlemanly manners, and you still didn’t have a name for him yet.

And then he was gone.

Time passed, and you allowed the mysterious man with the dark gaze and deep drawl to fade into a memory.

Like with all your patients, you spared just enough thought in the days following his treatment to hope he was alive, even though you knew that any hope to ever get confirmation of survival was fruitless. There was no way to know how much longer somebody survived if you managed to save them.

Other than making that wish of wellbeing for yet another soul, you moved on with your life.

So when the door opened one afternoon weeks later, in much worse wear now than it ever had been from the time that patient had charged through it, you were surprised to see the very same man who was the cause of it standing in your doorway when you looked up.

When you saw him, you paused halfway in rising from your squeaky old rolling stool, remembering his face even from the way his head was turned to the side, observing how the top of the door was nearly coming off its rusty hinges before turning to find you.

With a nod, he stepped further into the room, surprising you with how carefully he shut the door behind him, a direct juxtaposition to his whirlwind entrance and exit when you had treated his gunshot wound.

“Doctor,” he greeted in that same low drawl—Southern, maybe Texas, you thought somewhere in the back of your mind—as you finally rose fully from your seat, returning his nod and automatically moving towards your sparse supplies.

“Take a seat,” you said more kindly than firmly over your shoulder, not in a haste to stop him from bleeding out on your floors this time as he seemed to be relatively fine.

“Sorry?”

You paused, glancing from one of the few pairs of gloves that remained back over your shoulder to see the man staring at you with a slight furrow in his brow, a pinch of confusion on an already severe face that pronounced deep lines of age.

He didn’t seem that old—in fact, you guessed he was perhaps around your age. But then, you supposed you were both old considering the world you had survived in, and even so, there was a haunted look to the man’s intensity that spoke of his longer years, one you weren’t even sure he knew that he exuded as his presence seemed to take up the entire room and all your attention.

“Your wound,” you answered simply, gesturing towards where you remembered the gunshot you had treated to be on his torso, and he followed your gaze to look down at himself, the deep lines on his forehead relaxing a bit when you clarified, “You’re here to have it checked on, no?”

“Uh—no,” he replied, giving a slight shake of his head, his head lifting so his eyes could meet yours again. “‘M healing just fine, ma’am.”

There were the manners you had recognized the first time, more distinct this time, and they drew you a step closer towards the man, your body turning away from your small tray of supplies to face him fully for the first time.

“Oh,” you said softly, head tilting as your own brows furrowed, confused as to what had brought him back to your clinic when he had seemed so desperate to get in, get treated as quickly as possible, and get out the last time. “What brings you back, then?”

There was another flicker of something across his face, some emotion you couldn’t name before he shifted the backpack you just now realized he was wearing off of one shoulder. It slipped to his side, where he balanced it on his hip, drawing your attention to how his broad chest and large arms narrowed down to his waist as he began to rifle through it, the quick flare of some feeling in your stomach shifting to trepidation at his actions.

Oddly enough, you didn’t get blaring warning signals of danger from this man. And besides, if he was trying to rob or kill you, he was going about it in a very odd way.

“Here.” His voice was gruff as he pulled something out of his pack, and you blinked rapidly, eyes widening at the same moment your jaw dropped at the sight of what he was holding out to you.

Supplies.

Medical supplies.

Gloves and bandages and—

“Jesus Christ, is that a stethoscope?” you gasped out, reaching forward to take the items before you could stop yourself, too thrilled by the notion of getting your hands on a crucial medical tool that had eluded you for years.

“That it would be,” the man replied, but you weren’t looking at him anymore, instead unrolling the worn leather pouch to see that there was, indeed, a stethoscope inside—one that had seen better days but, oh, the ways you were going to be able to properly diagnose more patients now because of this was—

You finally paused, back stiffening as you looked back up at the stranger who had so easily handed something this precious to you, a sense of unease finally curling uncomfortably in your gut as you took a step back.

“What do you want?” you asked quietly, uncertain as to the terms of whatever arrangement was happening, even as you were now holding the items close to your chest after rolling the stethoscope back up. Unwilling to give them back, even as you were suddenly daunted by the prospect of what he might want in exchange.

He watched you shift, eyes dropping to where you were nearly hugging the supplies to yourself now, and for a moment you worried he was about to try and take them back before his lips parted and he surprised you yet again by mumbling, “To thank you.”

You blinked, taken aback by the shockingly simple sentiment. The desire to repay kindness with more kindness, despite the kind of world you both lived in.

Despite the fact that just one glance at this man—with his hard muscles and intimidating presence, the grim set of his face and the way his muscles tensed not just with the anticipation of something going wrong at any moment, but almost an eagerness that it would happen, that there would be an outlet for that tension ready to snap—would give one the impression that there wasn’t an ounce of kindness in his body.

“That’s…it?” you ask slowly, still wary, hardly able to believe that there were no strings attached. You weren’t a pessimist, but being an optimist wasn’t exactly an option either, not anymore.

But he just nodded, shifting back on the balls of his feet, hands raising with palms turned out towards you, as if to show he had nothing to take, nothing else to give other than this.

“I repay my debts, ma’am,” he uttered with a deadly seriousness in that low drawl, and this time you definitely settled on Texas as being the origin of such a smooth accent.

“Oh,” you said softly, nodding at the explanation, because now this made more sense. Kindness was a rarity, nearly nonexistent, and it wasn’t what he was showing here.

All he wanted was to repay a debt, one that you weren’t even aware existed.

Though you certainly weren’t one to complain when this was the payment.

Clutching the medical supplies tight to your chest, you reel at how saving this man from an untimely death may have just saved even more lives down the line.

You’re opening your mouth to thank him for his own thanks, but then he’s gone once again, leaving the same way he came in, with more tempered control and less chaotic storm than the first time.

You still don’t have a name.

You settle on calling him Texas.

Not that you say it to his face, or that you even see his face.

More time passes now than those few weeks in between your first two meetings with the Southern stranger. One month goes by, then two, and you once again resign him to the confines of your memories, even though the image of him is much more adamant on breaking out since the second visit.

Second and last, you reminded yourself as you disposed of a used pair of gloves after seeing off a patient, seeing his face flash in your mind’s eye as the cause of why you were able to save this life. Why you could save yet another life after this.

And it wasn’t just the gloves, but everything he had given you. There was still quite a bit of the stash left, as you were used to knowing how to make supplies last for as long as possible, dividing them and deducing who needed what the most as you saw to patients throughout your days.

You were thankful for him. Even if this was his way of settling a debt, washing his hands of you and moving on with his life, you still felt immense gratitude.

You also felt unbearable curiosity.

Every now and then, you found yourself wondering how he had gotten the supplies, and that much at that. Surely by no legal means, and none of your business at all, but you still couldn't help but wonder.

And so with the gunshot wound he had first stumbled into your life with, you tried to paint a picture of Texas in your head.

When your hands were idle, you created stories in your mind of the life he’d led that brought him from home—or where you imagined his home to be, if you were even remotely correct in dubbing him Texas—to here.

It was an embarrassing pastime, really, and you had no business entertaining anything more than a passing thought of gratitude about him. But still, you imagined.

Sometimes that imagination was of an exciting life for him, one of travel to far places that you never got to go, pretending that this was a man who had lived through better times and had many tales to tell of them. Tales to tell you, if you were being particularly delusional.

Other times, you pictured him with a life much more humble. Born and raised in the Lone Star State, probably proud to be. A family man who yelled at football, loved barbeques and beers with buddies, working a simple 9-5 until the world went to shit.

You liked that imaginary version of him. You liked thinking that Texas wasn’t too different from you, just trying to get by in the old world and the new.

So used to him staying inside of your mind, you were surprised the next time you actually saw him again.

In hindsight, you supposed you shouldn’t have been. With the scars you had seen just on his torso when you were treating his gunshot wound, you doubted this man lived an easy life now, no matter what it had been before.

It was late, well into curfew hours, but your tiny apartment was just a few streets away from your humble clinic, and you knew the best methods to get back and forth without being seen. You liked to stay as late as you could most nights, just in case somebody needed tending to at the odd hours when nobody else would be able to help.

Your eyes were growing heavy, a few persistent yawns you failed to fight off your body’s way of letting you know you were definitely pushing it, but you held on for a little longer.

And you’d be forever grateful you did, when he was the one needing tending to that night.

The loud, metallic creak of those loose hinges pulled your attention up from where you were staring absentmindedly at your small desk, and you were jumping from your stool the moment you saw him.

There was no stumbling this time, but you saw the streaks of red well, cuts across his face and arms, worn flannel shredded around the skin embedded with glass that glinted in the low, fluorescent light of your lamp that lit up the confined quarters.

“Sit,” you were saying before anything else, and you swore you heard a quiet chuckle under a pained breath as Texas moved to sink down onto a clinic bed.

“Good evening to you too,” he mumbled, and you glanced up at the unexpected humor, unsure if it was for your expense or benefit.

Nevertheless, your eyes narrowed slightly, and his mouth snapped shut then. He settled back as you pulled your tray with you, a neat array of the dwindling supplies from what he had given you waiting underneath your fingertips before you pulled on some gloves and began.

Much like the first time, the ruined shirt was removed so you could work, but the lack of the looming threat of immediate death and ample time to wonder about the man between his visits left you now with eyes that wanted to wander.

You hoped Texas couldn’t see each time your gaze flickered across his broad chest in the low light of the lamp, observing the way it illuminated his scarred skin before quickly moving your careful attention back to picking glass and debris from the series of cuts across his body, doing your best to stop more scars from finding a home there.

“Gotta stop meeting me like this, Texas,” you find the words slipping from your lips as you focused on your work, your mind not even catching up to what you had said, too focused on your work until he spoke.

“Texas?”

You pause, feeling a surge of embarrassment at what you let slip, only used to him existing inside your thoughts and not in front of you, warm flesh beneath your hands, the heat of him radiating even through the latex gloves.

Your fingers flexed from where you were bracing yourself against the center of his chest, swallowing thickly when you suddenly noticed the steady beat of his heart underneath your palm. You refocused your attention on picking another shard of broken glass from just below his collarbone, trying to gather your thoughts enough for a somewhat reasonable answer.

“I just—” You bit your cheek, struggling with what to say, a sigh held deep in your lungs before you exhaled it slowly and mumbled, “You are from Texas, aren’t you?”

Your gaze shifted up to his neck, gently cleaning the dirt from a scrape there, your new focus of attention leaving you with a perfect view of the twitch of his lips from the corner of your eye.

“Guilty.” You can feel the rumble of his voice in his chest as he mumbles the word, and you quickly lift your hand from it, not realizing that your touch had lingered there even when you had moved away from that area of his body. “Just surprised you picked up on it, s’all.”

A little smile turned up on your lips; part pleased that you had gotten it right, part embarrassed that you had even thought of it, thought of him, that much.

Quiet fell between you and Texas for a while, as you made sure the cuts on his neck were clean before finally moving up to his face.

Your eyes met with his for the first time since he had sat down that night, and it was also the first time you noticed their color.

All that time he had plagued your mind, and you realized you hadn’t even really seen the color of his eyes. You had settled on brown, but sitting closer now, you saw the green surrounding the warmer color, creating a stunning hazel that was all you could see for a moment before your gaze snapped away, the heat of embarrassment filling you again as you pulled your focus back to his cuts.

You hesitated then, one hand hovering in the air before gently gripping his chin between a thumb and forefinger, tilting his face to different angles as you treated it, a remarkably easy task when he hardly winced with each piece of glass removed, seemingly unbothered by the pain.

Once again, you were sucked into the familiarity of the focus that came with your work, and it was Texas that broke it this time, your brain taking a moment to register what he had said.

“California.”

You paused, tweezers hovering over his cheekbone, eyes meeting that hazel again to see he was watching you, and you wondered just how long he had been doing so—the whole time? Why did you hope he was?

“How’d you know?”

Texas shrugged one shoulder, and you once again forced your attention back to your work, trying to ignore the weight of his gaze on your face now that you knew it was there.

“Lucky guess,” he said in that low timbre, and you laughed softly, shaking your head as you pulled the last shard of glass from a cut above his eyebrow, eyes lingering on a scar near his temple before dropping the glass into your tin of medical waste, full of all the once painful remnants of whatever had brought him back to you tonight.

You felt like an awful person, being glad that it had brought him back to you.

Once all the cuts were properly taken care of, you leaned back with a sigh, snapping the gloves off your hands and dropping them into the rest of the medical waste. By some old habit, you patted Texas on the knee before standing, wheeling your tray away with you as you declared him free to go once again.

“It was the accent,” he says, and you pause, looking back over your shoulder as he pushes himself to his feet, and you’re reminded once again of how big the man is when he’s not sitting still while you treat him. “Your accent gave it away. Sure as hell don’t sound East Coast.”

Another laugh left your lips, curling up into a smile as you shake your head and look back towards your remaining medical supplies. Dangerously low again after tonight, but in this moment now, you found yourself not caring just yet.

“Guilty,” you repeated his own affirmation from earlier, and one glance back showed the corner of his lips turning up into a small smirk that had much larger consequences on your heart, racing now at the sight of amusement on his stoic face before you quickly looked away again.

“Long way from home, Cali,” he says slowly, and your heart skips a goddamn beat now at that drawled nickname, as if he wasn’t doing enough already.

“Same as you, huh?” you try to sound casual as you kept your gaze focused on shifting through your supplies, reorganizing them just to keep your mind busy, even as it marveled at how he hadn’t left already,

“Not nearly as much as you.”

At the continued conversation, you finally turn, seeing him bent over at the waist and rifling through the beat-up backpack full of duct-taped holes that he had brought in with him.

You see the gun tucked into the back of the waistband of his jeans then, a sight that wasn’t surprising given the injuries he’d come to you with, but your brows still furrow, mind continuing to create different stories to solve the mystery of him before he straightens up and turns back to you.

He holds out a bundle of bandages and gloves to you, and you try to hold back your excitement at the offering as much as you can, as thrilled by the promise they offered for your work as you were by the idea that he’d already had the supplies ready this time.

The idea that he’d been holding onto them for you.

Delusional, an inner voice chides you, but you smile down at the supplies anyway, rubbing a thumb across the box of gloves and sighing quietly as your mind brings forth a time long gone where you never would have thought twice about the availability of what was once such a common thing.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” you say slowly, pondering how you had recognized his accent, attributed him to a long gone place, as he did you. “How even after all this time, we still remember those little things about a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”

He’s not looking at you anymore when you glance back up. The stoicism you had come to associate with him from just a few meetings was back, and you get the sense you had taken the rare offer of a conversation too far.

You thank him for the supplies, and he nods almost absentmindedly, seemingly half paying attention to you before he moves back towards the door, and you turn back to begin to organize your new supplies, eager to restock your workspace.

The only thing that stops you is—

“What’s your name, Cali?”

Your head lifts, body half-turning around to stare at him in shock.

Nobody has asked for your name in years.

It’s been so long since you’ve said it out loud that the syllables assigned to you at birth feel foreign in your mouth. It taunts you with a time long past, like a bad taste you have to spit out, and when you do, he repeats it back.

The way he says it is…different. He sounds it out just the same as you, but it sounds less wrong leaving his lips. He says it slowly, as if tasting each letter on his tongue, memorizing it before giving a nod and turning to leave.

“Wait.”

He does.

For some reason, he stops when you tell him to, facing the door that he himself was the sole cause of its state hanging off its hinges, something he stares purposefully at when you ask for his own name.

Texas doesn’t look back as his voice wraps around the sounds of his own name, distaste similar to yours when you gave him your own dripping from his mouth as it curves around his syllables.

You start to say it back. The name, his name, Joel leaving your lips quietly, but he’s already back out the door before you can even sound out the M of his last name.

It leaves your lips anyway, his name echoing alone in your clinic, clutching the medical supplies tight to your chest.

Somewhere buried deep in your thoughts, you ponder over the idea that, just from the sheer intensity that radiated from the man the few times you had met him, Joel Miller memorizing somebody’s name feels like irrefutable danger, like you’re in for a very short life span. It’s a feeling you ignore, an instinct you try to forget about as you recall no hostility in his eyes, the hazel sharp as shrapnel you once cleaned from his body with none of the lethality when he repeated your name back to you.

Somewhere, buried even deeper, your heart races instead at the thought that he intends to say it again.

Joel leaves, but he always comes back.

It’s never a social call. The world’s gone to shit; you don’t have the time, and you’re sure Joel doesn’t have the patience.

He shows up in your doorway when he’s injured, and leaves you with enough medical supplies to keep you going until the next time he comes along. At its core, it's a business transaction. He’s just continuing to repay a debt to you so he doesn’t owe you anything. There’s nothing fundamentally personal about it.

That doesn’t stop you from looking forward to those visits. You never know when Joel’s going to show up next, and it does more than keep you on your toes; it holds you in anticipation, keeping those daydreams in the forefront in your mind rather than the back whenever you have time to yourself now.

Because each time he comes through, he leaves you with another snapshot of himself. Another glimpse into the lives he lived once and lives now—usually the former rather than the latter, much to your surprise.

You hold every reveal of the aloof man close; purely off-hand, inconsequential things, like a love for going to the movies now rendered nonexistent, or the time he and his brother rode motorcycles cross country. Those things don’t matter anymore, but you like hearing about them. You like knowing those things about him, fitting the real pieces of him in with your imaginary ones to solve a puzzle that only existed inside your head. It fuels your imagination, spurs on your delusion.

You’re not actually sure if he realizes how much you know about him at this point, while simultaneously knowing nearly nothing about him at all. The important things, like why he keeps showing up with all those injuries, remain unknown.

Joel brings it up, just once, off-hand as you’re wrapping up his shoulder in a spot where you could tell a bullet had grazed him.

“You don’t ask.”

Your hands had paused, eyes lifting from your work to his face, glancing over his side profile before his head turned and he was looking down at you from inches away.

He was waiting for an answer, but your mind was having trouble keeping up with what he had even said, too startled by the swirling of brown and green in his eyes when they were right there. A color as warm and solid as the earth beneath your feet, grounding you to him, pulling you in with that same undeniable magnetism he had first stumbled into your life with.

His facial hair had gotten longer, dark whiskers of hair framing cracked lips, a split down the top one that you had carefully cleaned earlier. You hadn't even thought twice about it when dabbing it clean, but now you couldn’t see anything else, not until—

“Cali?”

You blinked, head snapping up as your back went ramrod straight, and you quickly turned back to where your hands had frozen mid-bandage.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“About what?” you forced the words from your lips, trying not to think about how they ached to have his own pressed to them, split lip and all molding firmly and then gently against yours—

Oh god, no, what were you thinking?

“About any of it,” Joel grumbled, waving a large hand towards his face with a vague gesture, seeming to think you had just been observing his injuries even with the way you’re now staring at thick fingers, long veins, prominent and begging to be traced—

No! Stop!

“You don’t have a policy of asking your patients questions?” he asked, arching a thick brow down at you, and you curse the way your stomach flips at the sight.

“Believe it or not, I actually have a strong one not to,” you finally answered with his shoulder now wrapped firmly, fingers grazing against the gauze before you pushed your stool away from him, gloves snapping off your hands and ignoring the ache to touch him without them. “You do what you have to in order to survive. My job is to make sure you keep surviving. Not to ask questions.”

Joel hummed, and you felt the weight of his gaze on you up until he handed you a new bundle of supplies and left again.

Sometimes, you wonder if he’s picked up anything about you in turn, the way you’ve locked away every small fragment you've learned of him. You wonder if he even cares to listen during those rare moments where you might let something about yourself, past or present, slip.

You dare to dream that he does.

Foolish.

You can almost say with certainty that Joel doesn’t realize the things about himself that you’ve picked up on. Like the movies thing—it had been revealed through slurred words at your last-ditch effort to distract him by asking him questions through a particularly painful procedure, and he had rambled in delirium about popcorn and previews for no more than half a minute before promptly passing out beneath your moving hands.

It had caused bubbling panic in the moment, but when the moment had passed and he had awoken with embarrassment about not being able to tolerate the pain, it seemed all recollection of what he had shared had disappeared.

Or maybe he was just embarrassed about that too.

You would surely never admit that the thought of the large, intimidating man even experiencing an emotion as mundane as embarrassment only endeared you to him more.

And the motorcycle trip—well, that hadn’t even been Joel’s choice in revealing.

A few years into gaining your most returning patient—“we have to get your picture on the wall,” you had jested to him about simultaneously having the best (can somehow survive a plethora of injuries) and worst (has a penchant to keep getting them) luck at one point, much to his silent judgment at your attempted joke—he had entered the clinic the same way he did upon that first meeting, and you winced at the way the door banged against the wall in the same place it'd once left a dent during that first visit from him.

A sharp disapproval at treating your humble place of work like this was on the tip of your tongue, before you saw that Joel wasn’t alone, nor was he the one currently injured.

Any questions other than those pertinent for your new patient’s survival were rapidly dismissed from crowding your fast-moving mind, the same way as always. You helped Joel set the man down, hardly even realizing he was talking, that they were both talking, until after you had snapped on your gloves and assessed the burn wound on the back of the man's forearm.

“It worked out, didn’t it?”

“Hardly,” Joel bit back, voice rough with a harsh disapproval bordering on anger, the sound of which made the hairs raise on the back of your neck as you busied yourself getting cool compresses ready. “It was goddamn stupid, is what it was. Nearly got yourself killed.”

“But it worked.”

“Tommy—”

“Lighten up, big brother,” this Tommy said while you checked his pulse and lifted his arm above his chest, and now you understood the energy filling up the entire space of the room.

There was a blood bond between the bickering men, tested by the fraying of nerves and something deeper, some unnamable tension that came from something you didn’t know, maybe wouldn’t even understand. Some after effect of the transition into this world you now lived in, something that was none of your business.

Even then, the way Tommy’s body was constantly shifting and Joel hovering over your shoulder as they kept arguing while you tried to treat the burn is what made you finally snap.

“Hey!”

The clear echo of your voice layered over the argument, and instantly broke it, both men turning down to see your narrowed gaze shifting between the two of them.

“You need to sit still because I’m not fond of breaking burn blisters, and you won’t be either,” you ordered sternly, not wavering under the attention of the man finally focused on you for the first time since coming in, before you whipped around to Joel still hovering behind you. “And you!”

For a moment, you found a bit of humor in the utterly stupefied look on the man’s face that matched that of his brother’s, before you stood from your stool so you were chest to chest with Joel.

“You need to stop breathing down my goddamn neck and let me work,” you said firmly, pointing towards the far wall, the order clear in your eyes without even having to say it at this point.

You knew Joel saw it, and to his credit all you saw was his jaw ticking, a brief flare to his nostrils before he spun on his heel, marching towards the wall to lean against it heavily. His arms crossed across his broad chest while he watched you sit and go back to cooling Tommy’s burn.

Order was regained in your clinic, and you smiled a little to yourself at having established it, before Tommy shifted forward slightly towards you and muttered conspiratorially, but not at all quietly, “No wonder you got even this hardass to like you.”

A tremor briefly overtook your fingers with the shock of the unexpected words before you flexed them, willing your grip to steady before renewing your focus on his burn injury as Joel snarled from his spot you had assigned him against the wall, “Shut the fuck up, Tommy.”

Your gaze snaps up, making sure Joel hadn’t moved, eyes narrowing when you saw he had pushed off the wall just slightly. When he notices your look, he shifts backwards, back hitting the wall again as his glare shifts off to the side, towards the loose hinges on the door now in even worse condition thanks to both Miller brothers.

There’s a chuckle from Tommy, more bristling from Joel, and the illusive taunt of hope wound tight in your chest, but nobody says anything else until you’re sending them off with the rest of your low supply of lotion that would be adequate for burn treatment, along with instructions on how to take care of the now loosely bandaged burn.

Tommy nods, thanking you when Joel snaps at him to show some manners. The younger brother leaves with a pointed look towards your door and an offhand, not unkind comment on getting it fixed, followed up quickly by an offer of doing the work himself to pay back your kindness.

Not a debt, but kindness, the exact verbiage he used himself in a Southern drawl a bit lighter, more intentionally charming than Joel’s rough allure.

Joel is still irritated, more than you’ve ever seen, but he still nods at you with a mumble of “thanks, Cali,” before following his brother as the younger man is saying “so that’s Cali!”

There's a hard smack to Tommy's shoulder to direct him away, Joel's reprimanding tone saying things you couldn’t hear before they disappear around a corner.

It was then that you decided you liked Tommy.

You like him even more when he stops by a couple weeks later to actually fix the door like he mentioned, filling your head with stories about his older brother you could have only ever dreamed of.

Because of Tommy you have reasons to giggle into your pillow that night at the thought of the two born and raised Texas boys racing across the country on motorcycles, smiling stupidly against the coarse fabric at the image of a younger Joel Miller with wind in his hair and a carefree smile on his face.

You’d only ever seen tiny twitches of those lips into halfway smirks, and so you dreamed of a time where they weren’t chapped from the smog of QZ air or split from punches to the face, but soft and pink and curling up into a real smile.

You dreamed of making him smile again.

Sometimes it takes a while for a visit from Joel.

Weeks turn into months in-between those short moments where you see his face for quick patch-ups and restocks of supplies.

Once there was about a year that passed without so much of a glimpse of him, and you had tried to settle yourself into the likely idea that he may have finally gotten himself hurt so bad he couldn’t even stumble into your clinic, when he proved your hidden, greatest fear wrong by turning up again.

He had limped through the door without a word, letting in a cold burst of snow laden air with him before it shut. A sigh of relief was exhaled from your lips, dry and chapped from the harsh winter months, and you hurried to him, slinging his arm over your shoulder as you helped him through the room to sit.

Peeling the blood caked jeans from his legs with a mumbled apology of the chill permeating your clinic this time of year, you barely got out one word out after of, “You—”

“Gotta stop meeting you like this, I know,” Joel sighed, avoiding your gaze as you settled on your stool with a familiar squeak of the old furniture, pulling on a pair of gloves you had set aside specifically for him months ago, ensuring that you’d have at least one left for him in the hopes that he could still make it back to you in one piece someday.

Even if that meant one less for someone down the line, potentially sacrificing a life for the uncertain possibility of saving somebody else.

It was unlike you.

Selfish, the inner voice of reason chides you again, as it always speaks in his presence.

And as always, you ignore it.

Your eyes flickered up from critically observing the stab wound haphazardly sewn above his knee—his own work, no doubt, and you were surprised at your frustration that he hadn’t come to you instead. You figured it must have not been an option, some reason having kept him from you, but you still fixed him with a hard look that the surly man actually shifted under, wary under the weight of your scrutiny, for whatever that was worth.

Shaking your head, you turned back to set about the process of thoroughly cleaning the wound, checking for any sign of infection and treating his body properly, because somebody had to do it if he wasn’t going to.

It wasn’t like he was reckless. Despite your visits with the man being few and far between—if they could even really be called visits in the first place—you had caught enough of a glimpse of who he was to know he was far from irrational. He wouldn’t have made it this far if he was.

Joel Miller could keep himself alive, of this you had no doubt.

But the repercussions that came with his survival, infection of the body or wounds that went deeper than that of flesh or blood, were things that you learned he merely shouldered as a consequence.

A burden you would lessen, even if all it meant was making sure one wound out of many wouldn’t fester, if he came to you with it.

It wasn’t until this one was treated and redressed, and he was pulling his pants back on while you stared down at the gloves on your hands—a pair that he had given you, that you had saved to save him, now speckled with his blood, a reminder that he was still alive but maybe just barely—and the words you had actually wanted to say when he came in, the ones that you had held back when he interrupted you, echoed through your mind again.

You scared me.

They aren’t spoken, not with words. Instead, your hand pats his knee again after his jeans are zipped up, fingers brushing against where his properly tended wound is now hidden beneath the heavy fabric.

The touch lingers, for just a second, before you’re up and moving away.

To your surprise, Joel follows.

He rifles through his backpack, and you notice a few new holes, more spots where there’s recently applied duct tape. You absentmindedly wonder why he sticks with this one. If he’s able to find and trade other sorts of goods, couldn’t he get a new backpack?

Thanks is given by reflex when he gives you the supplies, even though you know with this trade, you’re even once again. He doesn’t expect your gratitude, maybe doesn’t even want it, but there’s a sure cause for it this time as you shift through the pile to observe the weight of what you felt sitting unassuming at the bottom, but couldn't discern until you saw it.

Gloves.

Not thin latex, but heavy fabric, fitting in the palm of your freezing hand.

Not medical, but practical, even as the promise of warmth had now become a luxury.

Not for patients, but for you.

Joel had gotten this for you.

When you look back up at him, eyes wide with shock, he’s already explaining it away with a dismissive wave of his hand and gruff drawl, “Gotta keep those fingers in proper working condition, right?”

Your brow furrows then, more gratitude trapped inside your mouth as you notice something again that had lingered in your mind since he had shown up that night, something you couldn’t ignore anymore.

That this Joel in front of you now was different.

Joel had never been a beacon of warmth, but he’s never been colder.

He won’t meet your eye, doesn’t even seem bothered by his lack of ability to keep eye contact now. He’s rigid and tense, something pent-up deep inside of him, worse than ever before, and that’s when you know that whatever had happened since you saw him last had taken another piece of whatever he was. Another part of whoever you dreamed about once existing, gone.

“Hey,” you mumble, and he glances back at you, surely seeing the way your brows are knitted above eyes that put your concern on full display, just judging by the way he stiffened.

He waves another dismissive hand, looks away with arms crossed over his chest in a way that you’d seen before. It was like he was physically containing whatever emotions he was experiencing to his own body, holding them in with the flex of his muscles through his beat up winter jacket. A silent show of his strength, trying to protect himself with it, even if it couldn't stop whatever it was he was feeling.

You expect him to leave then, but his weather and time worn boots are glued to the ground, unmoving.

Eventually, he speaks, and the two words with the flat affect shake you to your core.

“Tommy’s gone.”

Fear blankets your body and sets every nerve on fire, pain flashing across your features as Joel sees it and quickly shakes his head, adding simply, nearly without emotion, “Left.”

The daunting grief at the possible death of the younger Miller brother fades, even as an emptiness remains when you softly say, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Silence fills the space, and tension with it, setting you on edge with Joel in a way you’d never felt with him before.

“Fireflies,” he finally supplies, and you nod, looking down to the winter gloves you still held tight in your grasp, even as you set the rest of your new stock down.

So that was what had happened. The last thread holding the brothers together had snapped, and Tommy had left, taking a part of Joel with him. Maybe the last part of him, of who he had once been.

No wonder the man before you was even more hardened than you had ever seen him before.

“I see,” you whisper, and neither of you says anything more after that.

Not until you look back up at his face, refocus on the familiar features, noticing a few new lines of age in the year that had passed since last seeing him, some white whiskers in the edges of his beard, and—

Your hand is reaching out before you can stop to think, gripping his chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting his face down towards you in a way similar to when you’d treated him in the past.

Maybe by reflex from those moments, he lets you do it, even as the sharp clarity of his hazel eyes meet yours in confusion.

“What’s this?” you ask, fingers hovering over the new red line of scarring across the bridge of his nose, tracing the length of it without touch.

His eyes flash, not with anger, but with an emotion you don’t recognize. He tries to pull away, but your grip tightens, keeping him in place as you wait for an answer.

“Nothin’,” he mumbles, your eyes narrowing at the evasive answer, the way his gaze shifts away.

“Texas, this isn’t—”

Joel’s hand finds yours then, thick fingers wrapping around your smaller ones to pull them away from where you were still holding his chin, and the warmth of his skin seeping into yours hits you with a jolt as you only then realize this was touch.

Skin on skin, the very thing you had been aching for, dreaming of, for years. Those thoughts of him that kept you going on lonely days and cold nights, longing for something you could never have, an impossible reality now on the edge of your fingertips as he enveloped them in a rough palm, in his touch.

Touch.

Touch you had instigated, without the barrier of medical gloves between you. Without the clear lines that defined all you were to each other—doctor and patient, business transactions, a debt repaid again and again. Lines that now blurred when he didn’t drop your hand right away.

Blurring further, obscuring your vision in a rose-tinted blush when his grip tightened, and your breath caught in your throat at the feeling of him holding on to you.

“‘Ts fine,” Joel assures quietly, your fingers finally slipping from his, the clear hazel of those eyes you had spent a year waiting and hoping to see again, not meeting yours even once.

He hasn’t looked at you even once.

Just like that, you snap from a slow motion daze back to true reality. Your fantasies hit the ground hard, leaving you shattered with the empty aches of your heart forever unfulfilled in the dark crevices of your mind.

But even then, you can’t look away.

Again, you hear the admission aching to be revealed, slipping from the back of your mind to the forefront on waves of anxiety and need that grew larger, more disastrous, crashing through all your thoughts as you watched him looking away, but not leaving.

You scared me.

The words fill your mouth, waiting to be spoken.

But they aren’t.

Even though you wanted to tell him how his absence had filled you with fear, terror that only abates whenever he’s with you until he inevitably leaves again, you don’t dare to say it. Not when he doesn’t even look at you, even though you can’t bring yourself to look away.

The only thing you do say is an assurance that you’d make it home safe when he tells you to before he’s finally gone again.

It’s the first time that you notice that each time he leaves you with a new piece of himself, he takes a piece of you with him.

“You’re scaring my patients, Texas.”

“Good.”

“Joel.”

It’s been like this since Tommy left.

Joel visits you now when he’s nothing less than the perfect picture of health.

At first, he brings you things—the usual, necessary items that keep your unsanctioned practice running. You thank him each time, albeit with puzzled looks when there’s no visible harm on his body, confusion that only furthers when he lingers.

Eventually, he drops by without anything at all. Nothing in hand, sometimes no backpack in tow, but always with that gun tucked into the back of his waistband.

For a while, you think nothing of it. You’re glad that he’s showing his face, that you’re not glancing up with baited breath each time your door creaks open, hoping for just a glimpse of the man to assure you that he was alright.

Joel lets you see often enough now that he’s still in one piece, and for a while, you’re foolish enough to think that it’s purely for the benefit of your peace of mind.

Then one day, when he’s walking out, a patient is walking in—a younger man you’ve seen more than once, treating wounds similar to those that Joel’s had, though not quite as severe.

What is severe is the look Joel instantly shoots at him as they pass by each other, your heart sinking when the injured man scurries towards the available clinic bed while the door shuts.

You try to push it out of your mind, try to ignore the way your patient keeps watching the closed door with baited breath, until he breathes out with certain trepidation, “That’s Joel Miller.”

Pausing in the middle of splinting his broken finger, your brow furrows, glancing up at the nervous scrunching of his face as you reply slowly, “Yes, it is.”

His gaze finally shifts from the door towards you, then back again quickly, like he’s afraid the mentioned man will burst through the moment he’s not looking.

“You—” A gulp, and then the shaky question of, “You know him, don’t you?”

You finish bandaging his injury, gently placing his hand back in his lap and replying honestly, even with your uncertainty lingering at his tone, “Of course I do.”

He doesn’t say anything more until he’s leaving, glancing back at you warily, seeming to struggle over what he wants to say before settling for, “He’s…he’s got a reputation, you know. Lots of folks are scared of that Joel Miller.”

With a nervous wringing of your hands behind your back, and a calm smile on your face, you assure him, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Of course, you don’t know that Joel’s been waiting.

There’s no way to be aware that he’s been in the alley next to the clinic the entire time you treated your patient, no way to know that he trails the man the moment he leaves the safety of your building.

You’ll never know that the man you treated isn’t so good either. Or that he’s not nearly as bad as Joel.

Somebody always owed somebody else, after all. You knew it well, knew that Joel paid you back for this very reason.

But you didn’t know what happened when you owed him.

Or what happened when he went to collect.

And Joel ensured you were never getting anywhere near it.

A sentiment made clear with another broken finger for the lackey of a rival smuggler late on a payment that had sought you out for the last time that day, along with a painful promise made that he and his buddies would never step foot in your clinic again.

There was no way for you to know what happened that day, but you noticed the shift afterwards.

The way Joel takes up residence along the wall of your clinic and doesn’t leave when patients come in. How he watches them, the mere weight of his sole attention setting them on edge.

You tell them it’s fine, shoot him a glare that tells him to back off. And maybe it works for a little, but not for long.

You assure yourself that it’s fine. A reputation means nothing, and you know Joel Miller, don’t you? Or you know all that matters. And you know that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Until there is.

You’re gone.

It’s the first time since meeting you that Joel stops by the clinic, and you’re not there.

Well into the morning, and you’re not sitting there at your little makeshift desk. At this time, you should be half-rising from your stool he’s been meaning to find a replacement for just at the sound of the door opening.

You're always ready to spring into action, to save a life or make one better. Like you’ve done for him, time and time again.

It’s also the first time since before Tommy left that the door is swinging off its hinges again, and that’s when Joel knows.

You’re gone.

He doesn’t need to see the ransacked clinic, but he looks anyway. Searches frantically through the overturned furniture, your well-organized stock of supplies now a mess, some missing because he knows how much you have of everything, he silently keeps track along with you so he knows what to pick up when he and Tess go on runs.

There’s a panic settling in his gut, a burning ache crawling its way up his throat, and his hands twitch with the need to do something, to make somebody hurt, make them pay, make them talk to bring you back.

Back to the work that is your pride and joy, the four walls that have been your safety for years, a safety you’ve only ever extended to others, one you offered to him.

Joel needs to bring you back to him.

No time is wasted when he gets back to Tess. She knows you by now, having visited the clinic herself with or without Joel, for injuries or for chats. He’s noticed his partner always smiling after, the two of you forming a kinship that warms what fragments remain of his heart like so little else can.

Tess is taking charge in a way that’s familiar, and Joel is grateful for that. He doesn’t know what he’d do if left to his own devices right now, uncertain who’d wind up dead in the streets if let loose to find you on his own terms.

But he takes solace in knowing that Tess will let him do what he does best when it's time.

And when it is time, when they’ve cornered the last person who’s had your name leave their lips, the bone of their arm shatters underneath a brutal stomp and twist of Joel’s heavy boot after a series of ruthless hits that have left them begging for mercy on the ground.

But it gets them what they need—a location, information on a deal gone south for a specific kind of medicine that these smugglers had a monopoly on, medicine you most likely needed to save one patient, and deemed it a risk worth taking just for that.

Smugglers that Joel had very specifically warned to stay the fuck away from you.

The whimpering man under his boot gets a bullet to the head for not heeding his warning, for taking you from him, and they’re on their way without another word.

Fear burns so hot that it singes his veins, making him move faster, hit harder when they get to the warehouse. Red is all he sees and it’s all he feels, running through his fingers as he pulls triggers and chokes windpipes before twisting, snapping. Blood, hot and metallic, staining his skin in splatters up to his forearms as he moves from one to the next.

Joel has lost too much to make it quick, and the thought of losing you too only adds to his rage, making his preemptive vengeance all the more deadly. He lays waste to them all, sparing not a soul of his brutality.

His shiv sinks into a neck, and he leaves it there for too long before pulling it out, leaving a streak of evidence of another life he’s stolen across his face as he turns, more than ready for the next one.

Movement catches the corner of his eye, and he’s lifting his gun towards where he sees legs pushing against the ground, a body scuttling away into a corner out of his sight, cowering behind a tower of boxes.

Joel’s finger is already on the trigger before he sees the shoes peeking out behind the cardboard, the tips of well-worn sneakers that he knows well, having seen them turn and move quickly around one tiny room for years.

Relief doesn’t rush to him yet, not until he’s rounded the boxes, not until he really sees you.

There’s an angry purple bruise forming along your jaw, and fury burns hotter, seeping through the edges of sweet relief that you’re okay, although injured.

You whimper, and his heart breaks, reaching out a hand towards you to help you up, to bring you back to him.

At the movement, you press your back against the wall, cowering away even further as your eyes fix onto his face.

Joel’s brow furrows, anger and relief both ebbing away slowly, and he says your name, holding his palm out further for you to take.

You whimper again.

Eyes wide and clouded with fear, lip quivering as you shrink away from the hand that he had stained with blood again and again to find you, to bring you back.

Above where your back is pressed to the wall, there is a line of windows. They offer a view to the first floor of the warehouse, now littered with bodies he had left, a clear trail of evidence of his path of destruction from the moment he had entered the building.

And that’s when Joel realizes you’re afraid of him.

The worst part is, he’s not surprised, not even in the slightest.

On the contrary, he thinks some part of him had been waiting for this. Waiting for you to finally open your eyes and see him for what he is.

Someone like you, who has spent her whole life patching up the kind of wounds he inflicts, who saves lives and gives while all he does is takes and takes, by his own choice or some kind of curse—of course you’re afraid.

Joel’s bloodstained fingers twitch, remembering the softness of your own the one and only time he had held them that cold winter night. His hand hovers in the air halfway to you, yearning to comfort a hand that heals with one that only knows how to kill.

But then you flinch at the twitch of his fingers, having witnessed their deadliness, and he pulls back.

When Tess arrives a moment later, you turn to her, allowing the other woman to pull you to your feet. You lean heavily on her as she helps you leave, takes you back, but not to him.

Because Joel knows now with certainty that it's a distance that was never meant to be closed.

He knows it's for the better.

Weeks turn into months once again.

Joel doesn’t come back.

As time passes, you reflect on the man you’d known, and the one everybody else knew. You compare the image of those half-smirks that you always hoped would turn into a smile to the face splattered with blood as he ruthlessly murdered any man in his path.

You feel like a fool. For more reason than one, but mostly because you knew.

You had seen the signs of just who Joel Miller was from the first time you met him, signs that you had ignored every time they lit up right in front of your face, blaring signals that you replaced with the naïve images you had created in your mind’s eye. Fantasies of a man that may have existed once, long ago, but not anymore.

It wasn’t the killing that bothered you. You knew what people had to do to survive, and you had always known just from his injuries that this was an indisputable truth heavily ingrained in Joel’s life, no matter who you imagined him to be before.

No, it wasn’t the killing that scared you, but the slaughter.

What you were afraid of was his lack of mercy. His lethality. His intent to make them suffer.

After days of being held at the whims of dangerous men, only to discover that the only man you had come to consider a safe space in years was just as, if not more dangerous than them…

It rattled you.

Changed you.

Left a scar that even you didn’t know how to heal.

In the days that followed, you were glad that Joel kept his distance. You needed time to recover, to process what you had gone through, what you’d seen.

After a few weeks passed, you found yourself staring at the door, waiting once again for him to come back. Waiting to talk to him for once, to say the words that had plagued your mind once again. Even if they had shifted, they still rang true.

You scared me.

Because he did.

Joel Miller himself scared you, and you didn’t want him to.

Because you knew, you knew, that he’d done it for you. He'd done it to save you.

He’d saved you the same way you saved him, in the only way that he knew how.

Maybe it was senseless. Maybe it was wrong, and horrible, and unforgivable.

But he had done it for you.

So you wait for Joel to come back.

Months fade into years; one, and then two, then five and still counting.

Joel Miller never comes back.

At some point, you hear that he’s gone. Left the QZ completely with Tess at his side and never looked back.

You hope that they made it, wherever they were going.

You hope that he doesn’t think of you the way that you think of him. The image of him plaguing your mind every night, broken memories of everything you had memorized about him constantly shifting through your mind, a lonely ache filling in your heart that you knew was your own fault.

He had bloodied his knuckles for you, and you had turned away.

God, you hated yourself for turning away.

You missed him, with every breath, with every moment the door of your clinic opened and you glanced up with the automatic reflex of hoping it was him, even though he was long gone.

You know it's for the better.

Joel is not supposed to be here.

Any form of radio communication is strictly forbidden. He knows this well, knows that if he’s found here, he could be risking everything, even if his brother is married to the woman who keeps Jackson up and running smoothly.

But he’s here anyway, hands trembling with the cold and something else, something that settles deeper into his bones as he holds the microphone in hand.

Waiting.

It’s his second time up here in a week, and though he’d been lucky enough to not be caught the first time, he wasn’t an optimist.

You’re a cynic, a voice echoes in the back of his head, and his eyes flutter shut with the image of you that never seemed to quite leave him, even with the years that have gone by.

But you’re not, his own voice, younger, replies to you in his memories.

I try not to be, you replied honestly, one of your first discussions when you had begun to settle into each other’s presence. Don’t think I could keep doing this if I was.

Joel’s gaze darts down to the small notepad he had brought with him, the pages where he had written one message only to cross it out, rewrite it, and torn pages of it to throw away in frustration.

In front of him was the one left uncrossed, his eyes scanning the words he could only hope had gotten relayed to you, the message he had left for the black market radio specialist in Boston earlier that week.

Found a nice place that could use a doctor, followed by a date and time for a conversation, not wanting to air Jackson’s location without hearing confirmation from you yourself.

Following that sentence, another one, the last thing he had said: they could use you.

And another, crossed out after, the last thing that he would never say: I could use you.

Joel’s head lifts when the static on the old machine clears, a click resounding through the speakers of the radio, and his heart races with the weight of the microphone in his hands.

It’s lifted halfway to his mouth before he hesitates. Your name hangs heavy in his mouth, syllables he had not sounded out in years, but when he finally says it, it feels…natural. Like not a day has passed since the letters of your name were hanging on his lips, the way he always longed for you to be.

There is a pause, long and heavy, and Joel feels his heart sink with every second that passes.

This was stupid. So incredibly stupid.

The last time he had seen you, there was fear in your eyes. Fear of him, well-placed at that, and surely he had taken up no voluntary thoughts of yours ever since other than your worst nightmares.

Surely you were—

“...Hey there, Texas.”

When your voice crackles to life through the speaker, Joel sighs, a sound filled with relief and a rush of longing he thought his mind had forgotten, but his body—no, his soul—had not.

And then a whisper, softly in return, with a smile on his lips.

“Howdy, Cali.”

taglist: @darkroastjoel @thetriumphantpanda @dinsdjrn @cavillscurls @tightjeansjavi @dissentientss @harriedandharassed @ladyfiery47 (tag won't work!)

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guessimwritingficsagain · 8 months

Text

As friends.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Miller

Summary: Joel is your friend, he just happens to be really handsome

Warnings: mild spice towards the end ??? just in case, fluff, friends to lovers (just so y'all know I'm a sucker for that shit)

a/n: I wanted to write a little blurb but it got outta hand. This is is my first time writing for the Joel Miller and i'm nervous (I love this character so much) so please be kind 💖

His living room was dimly lit by one of the lamps next to the couch. Something played in the background, blues you think. He had found a record player a couple of weeks ago while he was patrolling with Tommy. He had even come across some records in perfect condition, tucked inside a tattered wardrobe. He was such a lucky fucker.

When he came back, he showed them off to you while saying something along the lines of “‘f you wanna listen to them you gotta come to mine, sweetheart” flashing you one of his now familiar cocky smiles, as if he needed to convince you to spend time with him.

Your stomach still churns at the nickname and you chastise yourself every time, for letting your mind even dare to go down that path when it’s Joel the one you’re talking about, for even thinking about him that way. Joel, your fucking friend. It had to be the lack of romantic action in your life. It had been so long since you last were with someone that your brain had to be confused. No one in Jackson had caught your eye for the last couple of years, nor tried to make any advances to you, and who would have dared when you were next to Joel —mean scary Joel— every single day?

Still, you didn’t care, you spent most of your free time either with him or at his house, playing games with Ellie while he was on patrol or sipping on wine and talking about your day when he fixed you a nice dinner. Like right now, back at his living room, soft blues playing in the background and the soft orange light from his lamp rendering the room even cozier.

You were sitting on his sofa, glass of wine in hand. Blues had never been your type of music, at least not until Joel showed you one of the records he found on patrol, an Eric Clapton one, a smile from ear to ear and an excited “Look what I’ve found, I reckon you gon’ love it.”

But now, as you look at him sprawled on the couch, his head —his big ass, heavy head— resting on your legs with his eyes closed and humming softly to the song, you believe it may be your favorite.

You sipped on your wine and carded your fingers softly through his hair, relishing in the feeling of his hair through your fingers. You looked down at him, his face was completely relaxed, the familiar pull of his frown nowhere to be seen. He looked so peaceful like this, his long lashes fanned over his cheeks and the light casted soft shadows over his face. He was so handsome.

“You are so handsome” your mouth spoke before your brain could catch up. His eyes opened, orbs completely dark thanks to the lightning, and he quirked a brow, clearly amused at your comment. You tried to recover quickly “And I’m just saying this the way a friend calls another friend cute, don’t get too excited.” You chuckled.

Lies, lies, lies.

He scoffed, “Yeah, right.” he closed his eyes again, letting himself enjoy the feeling of your deft fingers through his hair. “Who you tryna fool, sweetheart? ‘m as old as time.”

You stretched your arm to place the wine glass on the coffee table, careful to not disturb Joel with the motion. This time, your now free hand went to trace the lines on his forehead so softly, a barely there touch. A shiver ran down his spine. It had been a long time since someone touched him with such care, as if he was some precious relic, only to be treated with care.

“Hate that you can’t see what I see, Joel” your voice was soft, charged with love, but still stern. You hated when he was self deprecating, which unfortunately was very often.

“And what is it you see?” he swallowed the lump in his throat. Why were his hands sweating all of a sudden?

Your fingers drifted to the lines around his eyes, tracing them with your fingertips. “For starters you’re rugged and strong and that’s just plain attractive. Besides, you think age kills beauty, but it’s quite the opposite.” His eyes opened once again and gazed up at you, something you couldn’t quite make out swirling in them. You continued, trying to ignore the heat of his stare “The lines in your face… they mean you’ve lived, you’re alive.” you are here with me

“What do you mean?” his voice was barely above a whisper, hoarse because of the sudden dryness that had taken over his mouth.

“This one right here” you smoothed out his semi-permanent frown with your thumb “tells me you’ve got very few friends.”

“m‘kay, that’s rude.” he feigned hurt for a few seconds, then he saw your bright smile. That goddamned smile, the one he never got tired of seeing. And then he smiled too. A small and barely there grin.

“Then the ones around your eyes”, your fingers skimmed over his crows feet, “they tell me that you’ve laughed and smiled a lot, that despite this nightmare we’ve found ourselves in, you were happy once.”

Silent fell over the room, Eric Clapton sang in the background as Joel and you played at your personal staring contest, one charged with unspoken feelings. His eyes were wide in surprise, searching your face, looking for something you sure fucking hoped he found in the way your soft eyes looked back at him. Your fingers still threaded through his locks, not once having stopped since he laid his head on your legs. Everything felt intimate, maybe way too intimate for just a couple of good friends having some wine after dinner.

A nervousness settled in your bones, the kind of feeling you get when you know something’s about to happen but you don’t know what. Your heartbeat picked up, it thumped wildly against your chest, your eardrums, all along your veins. Then you cleared your throat, unable to stand the silence any longer. “Anyway, as I said, you are handsome.” you let out an awkward breathy laugh. “I‘m telling you as a friend” you quickly added. Again. For good measurement, right?

He sat back up on the sofa, his body slightly twisted to face you. In the daze of the moment you had completely forgotten how broad he actually was, his knee pressing against your thigh. “As a friend…” he echoed back at you, a teasing smile spreading over his features. God, he was going to be the death of you.

You reached back for your wine glass and nodded absentmindedly before taking a long gulp, not daring to look him in the eyes just yet. Suddenly, his hand cupped your face softly, fingers pressing lightly into your cheeks, encouraging you to look at him. His eyes were filled with tenderness and the kind of hope you have when love is still a possibility. His lips were mere inches from yours, his breath mingling with yours.

“Would’ya mind if I kissed you, sweetheart?” his voice was low and syrupy and it ignited a different kind of desire in you, something you had never felt before, raw, primal. You inhaled sharply and before you were even able to answer he added “As friends, that is.” he chuckled, clearly proud of himself for teasing you, and you smiled fondly.

“Ain’t that what really good friends do?” you laughed breathily.

“Oh, I reckon they do a whole lot more than that.”

His lips pressed softly against yours, a softness you knew Joel was capable of but you had never experienced it yourself. Now, after getting a taste you didn't want to live without it. His hand moved to cup the back of your head, tangling with the hair at the nape of your neck, keeping you against his lips, deepening the kiss. Your hands found purchase on his shoulders, and thank god because suddenly Joel was grabbing your thighs and pulling you to straddle his lap.

He took advantage of the gasp of surprise that left your lips and licked greedily into your mouth. His hands roamed your back, going down occasionally to squeeze your ass over your jeans, relishing in the whimpers he pulled from you. Your hips started moving on their own accord, rutting against Joel’s growing bulge, making a deep groan rumble on his chest.

You tugged on his hair to break the kiss and stared dreamily at him. His pupils were blown out, his half lidded eyes hazy with lust, his lips swollen and red from kissing and a light shade of red tinted his cheeks. He was positively fucked out.

“You want this?” he asked while playing with the hem of your t-shirt, ducking his head once again to lick and kiss at your neck.

You could only muster a distracted “Hmh” as you kept rutting your hips against his. “As friends?” you asked between whimpers.

He pulled away to look at you, a hint amusement in his eyes as he took in the cocky grin you were sporting despite the lust filled gaze directed at him. His hands slipped past the waistband of your jeans, grabbing your panties from behind and pulling till the fabric rubbed against your clit. You couldn’t help the moan that escaped your lips.

“As friends” he answered before claiming your mouth once again.

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guessimwritingficsagain · 8 months

Text

i know it when i see it - part 4

series masterlist | ao3

pairing: pornstar!joel miller x fem!reader

rating: explicit 18+ minors dni

word count: 11.7k

warnings: sex work, exhibitionism, voyeurism, it’s literally porn, drug use, dirty talk, explicit p in v sex, premature ejaculation, oral sex, come eating, finger fucking, squirting, dirty bar sex

summary: as your star continues to rise, you still can’t shake the part of you that just wants joel.

a/n: eternally grateful to @frannyzooey for putting eyes on this while i was losing my mind and @fish-fearme for emotional support.

You don’t hear from Joel.

And it’s not like you were waiting for him to call. Not really.

You know that’s not what this is, whatever it is. It’s not who you are. You’re not some wound of a girl, lingering by a landline, weak and waiting, writing a name over and over in the lonely pages of your diary. You don’t need, not like that, not from men — not anymore.

At night, your sheets are soft, still a little sun-warm from the light that slips through the window. You stretch, fingertips scraping the walls, the chipped paint. Your ankles hook over the edge of the bed, a pillow bunches beneath your cheek. Sleep is easy, always there, waiting at the edges, a gentle lull. Your days are so full — of sex and laundry and learning to roll your own cigarettes, crowded around the coffee table, your roommates fingers curling over yours.

And nothing about the nights feels lonely. You don’t miss the shape of anyone else beside you. There’s no emptiness to fill, nothing waiting for an answer. You don’t need — not him, not anyone.

But still.

You sort of thought he might call.

After that night in the hills — everything that was said on the balcony, the way he looked at you, how he touched you. It felt like some seismic shift had taken place, tectonic and sure, locking into place.

This thing between you — it lives now, it has legs. It’s going somewhere, you just don’t know where, can’t predict the plates shifting beneath you, reordering the world. It feels entirely out of your control.

And it scares the shit out of you.

You don’t need. But you want.

You want him. The way he makes you feel, that toe-curling electric current that runs between you, the way every touch is right, exactly where it needs to be. How your bodies fit together, slot seamlessly, like there was never meant to be any space between them.

It’s hungry, the wanting. It’s a gnawing little ache in the pit of your belly, incessant, insistent. And you’re not lingering, you don’t even look at the phone where it sits silent on the windowsill. You drink your coffee and you make your plans and you shelve any softer feelings.

But still.

The hunger is there.

Little teeth scraping at your stomach lining, unspooling your insides so you’re even more tangled than you were before. So that every nerve ending is a little too raw, a little too real.

But there are other things to focus on, so you do.

Lucky taking off — the name, the brand, the girl that lives inside you, a second self ready to step out, winking. The next run of tapes sells out, so Tess organizes the re-release of some of your other scenes to appease the demand, the desire.

And that means a lot more than a phone that doesn’t ring.

The days look the same. You go to the corner store to buy milk, scratch the ears of the tawny cat stretched across a crate of paper towels. You do your hair in the too-small bathroom and burn your neck with the curling iron, the bruise raw and shining. You drink wine on the rooftop with your roommates, watch the sun sink low on the horizon, swap stories of the places you used to call home.

But sometimes —

You’ll catch the eye of a man at the bus stop. Sense the lingering gaze of a waiter. Feel the stare of a stranger across a crowded room. A look that drags across your skin, eyes that widen when you meet them, a fizzing spark behind their gaze.

And you realize that they recognize you.

Lucky.

They see her in the curl of your lip, the long line of your legs beneath your cut-offs, the curve of your hips as you lean against a bar or reach for something on a high shelf. Even if your hair is unwashed, or you’re in the least-flattering of your laundry day clothes, some too-long t-shirt stained with coffee . She’s still there in every angle, the arch of your eyebrow and flick of your wrist.

It’s usually harmless.

Most of the men who recognize you are too embarrassed to say anything at all. You spot them — that open hunger in their faces, that horny gape — and they shrink into themselves, like they’ve been caught with their dick in their hands on the corner of La Cienega. There’s a shameful sort of a shuffling, a squirming self-consciousness, a hasty retreat. They rarely linger long.

Sometimes it’s more overt.

A few clumsy, flustered flirtations. Clammy handshakes, breath heavy with liquor. Murmurs of —

“God, you’re even prettier in person.”

A shot you didn’t order sliding across the bar with a wink —

“Gentleman at the end said this was for Lucky.”

Business cards slipped into your hand or left at your table, phone numbers scribbled on bar napkins, still damp with a nervous sweat. Sometimes your friends will leave them in bathroom stalls, with the added scrawl: for a bad time call .

It’s so easy to deflect, to ignore, to slip away with a polite smile and say maybe another time .

You expect it to bother you. Make you feel exposed, vulnerable, stripped down for strangers. But it doesn’t.

Sure, they've seen you naked. They know the shape of your breasts, the shade of your nipples, the pink between your legs. They know what it looks like when you come, how your mouth wraps around a sigh. They’ve heard every gasp and whimper.

But you know something about them too.

You know their slinking shame, ducking into the back room of the video store. Seeking you out, someone to keep them company. You know the dark, musty bedrooms. The sad squirt of lotion. The frantic, desperate rutting, the thick-fisted jerk and gritting teeth. The musk of loneliness, low grunting heaves, spilling into a tube sock that crusts over by morning. The tape whirring, clicking off as it ends, the fading glow of the black screen. The quiet that follows.

And all of that makes it less scary than it might be otherwise, de-claws the anxiety that something curls low in your stomach.

You are the fantasy. The untouchable thing, the object of their desperate desire.

The girl of their fucking dreams.

x x x x x

Sometimes paychecks get left for you at the production office in Burbank.

It’s way out of the way, a fucking hike from the west side, but the end of the month nears, rent looms, and so you stop by after a shoot.

You’re a flower, playing the part of a daisy in some psychedelic trip, just shy of parody, a fucked up homage to Alice in Wonderland. You sort of regret taking the part, sure that the White Rabbit is going to give you nightmares. After, you stuck your head in the sink to wash the semen out of your hair, and it’s still damp, dripping around your shoulders as you step into the tiny production office.

The wallpaper is yellowed and peeling, a once-cheery pattern faded from the baking sun. The woman who works there is sweet, always stopping to chat about the weather, offering you a stale, crumbling biscuit from the tin she keeps on her desk. She shocks you sometimes by referencing a film you’ve done, slipping in a bit of filth — nice fat cock on that one, I tell you, if I was a few years younger —

It usually makes you laugh. You’ve spent long hours leaning against the counter as she tells you some of the raunchier stories she’s collected over the years.

But it’s midday, and your skin itches as you wait in the sticky warm office, the slowly rotating fan doing nothing to stir the dense air in the room. You need a real shower, need to scrub the smell of clove cigarettes from your skin, that too-sweet, cloying scent that gives you a slight headache.

She’s particularly slow today, squinting through her turquoise glasses, the beads that rattle around her neck. Shuffling between filing cabinets, searching for the folder with your name on it.

“Spell your last name again for me, hon.”

And you pray for some fucking patience as you spell it out slowly, for the dozenth time, pitch rising as you see her fingers wandering towards the wrong end of the alphabet anyways.

The door swings open behind you, hinges creaking, bringing with it a fresh wave of shivering heat. You glance over your shoulder —

And freeze.

Somewhere in the middle of your last name, letters dangling unfinished from your lips.

Joel stands in the doorway, still gripping the handle, filling the frame with his broad shoulders. And it looks like he has half a mind to leave, now that he sees you standing there. His dark gaze flickering over you, stuttering like the schick-click flame of a lighter, an inconstant heat.

“Oh, Joel, there you are,” the woman says behind you, “Good to see you.”

He stiffens. Forces something like a polite smile, though it looks pained as he unclenches his hand from the door handle and crosses the small space to stand beside you at the counter.

“Doris,” he says, nodding at her and then, without looking at you, mutters your name like an afterthought.

And it stings, even if it shouldn’t. Smarts and ache, those teeth digging deeper in your stomach, the hunger biting inside of you. Want. You want.

But obviously he doesn’t.

He won’t even look at you.

You can feel the tension rolling off him, the stiffness in his shoulders, the tight line of his jaw. The heat of his body radiates, warms the air around you, and you’re already sweating.

All you can think about is his mouth on your neck, the scrape of his hands over your skin, the roll of his hips against yours. The way he coaxed an orgasm out of you, murmuring filthy praise against your throat, looking at you like it all meant something. Walking away before you could say something that might make him stay, find the words to shape the moment into meaning.

And now — nothing.

You’re a water cooler. A desk chair. A fucking paperclip. Just another unimpressive feature of this stale office, not worth looking at, barely worth acknowledging.

Every slow second is agonizing.

His fingers drum against the countertop, an agitated beat.

“Ah, here it is.”

The woman pulls an envelope from one of the folders, squinting down to double check the name before offering it out to you.

“Appreciate your patience, hon.”

You snatch it from her hand before she finishes, stuffing it into your bag, backing out of the office.

“Thanks.”

You take a final, fleeting glance at the rigid line of Joel's back. Swallow down the knot in your throat and leave, letting the door slam shut behind you, rattling on its rusted hinges.

You strip down the second you step inside your apartment, leaving a trail of clothes from the front door, naked before you even reach the bathroom. You slip into the shower before the water has a chance to heat, and you stand there shivering, letting the chill sink into your bones, hoping it will chase away whatever this feeling is.

But later, when you’re laying in bed — a little buzzed, a little high — you feel it stir inside you.

The hunger. The want .

The pinch of sharp little teeth inside you.

A thing that lives, that has legs.

That is completely out of your control.

x x x x x

There’s a heatwave at the end of the month.

You sweat through your clothes, shower, and sweat through them again. You suffer the suffocating heat of the apartment for a few days, the four of you spread across the floor, cooling your feverish skin with cans of Coke, the drip of condensation. It doesn’t ease at night, the air dense, too thick to sleep in.

The beach is over-crowded, bodies piled on the stretch of burning sand, jostling elbows, vying for space as seagulls shriek overhead.

So you head inland. You take the bus into the nicest part of the city, neat green lawns and smooth sidewalks, sprinklers clicking, windows closed to keep the cool air in.

You climb the fence of a fancy hotel, slipping through the service entrance, the sterile air of long hallways, until you reach the pool. You spend the day there, claiming a couple of chairs, spreading out your bright towels, stripping down to your bikinis. Ordering drinks at the bar, charging them to different rooms at random.

By the time the staff catches on, one of the girls has already befriended an actual guest, a woman who swears you’ve been with her the whole time. They can’t kick you out, so you stay, soaking in the little bit of stolen luxury, the sway of palm trees overhead.

You drink frozen, sugary drinks, the dye staining your lips. Twirling the tiny umbrellas between your fingertips. Watching the pool water bead and dry on your skin, the smell of chlorine and sunscreen, damp hair curling in the heat.

You watch as a little girl paces the edge of the pool, daisies patterned on her pink swimsuit, a smear of sunscreen over her shoulders. Her father stands in the pool below, arms outstretched, waiting to catch her. It tugs something sad and distant in your stomach. An ache you sometimes forget is there.

A shadow passes over you, and you squint up to see a man standing over your lounge chair.

“I know you.”

You frown up at him, or the shape of him, too sunblind to make out any features.

“I doubt it,” you say.

“You’re Lucky, aren’t you?”

You shield your eyes from the sun. It takes a moment, his face coming into focus as you blink away the white-bright burn.

And you realize you know him .

He’s an actor, his features sparking that low tug of distant recognition. That not-quite familiarity. You know his face from faded posters at the movie theater, smiling from the glossy cover of a magazine.

He’s a little older now than his last role, his blonde hair faded, lines creasing at his eyes. But he’s handsome, his smile easy and warm as he looks down on you.

You push yourself up on your elbows, tilting your head.

“I might be.”

He nods. And he doesn’t look embarrassed, to have recognized you, to out himself as someone who has seen your tapes.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

He doesn't tell you his name. You wonder if he’s fallen out of the habit, assuming that everyone already knows, the familiarity of his face making the ritual of introduction obsolete.

“Are you staying here?” he asks, “You and your friends, I mean.”

He glances over to where your roommates sit at the edge of the pool. You follow his gaze and see that they’re all staring, unabashed. One of them waggles her fingers in a wave.

You shrug.

“Something like that.”

He looks bemused.

“Just stopping by, then,” he nods, “I get it.”

You feel his gaze from beneath his sunglasses, the blue of his eyes bright and burning with a joke he hasn’t told yet. Or maybe, he’s told it a hundred times, and you’ve already heard the punchline. There’s an ease about him, an informality, like you’ve already met. Like you’ve been friends for a long time, but forgot until right now.

“I keep a suite with some friends,” he tells you, “You should come up. Doors always open.”

He leaves it there, heads back inside. But a few minutes later a waiter comes by, tray heavy with a fresh round of drinks and a set of keys for the penthouse suite.

It’s hot, too hot to tan for long. You’ve all had a few drinks, the buzz warm in your veins. And none of you want to go home yet, back to the heavy heat of the apartment. So you take the elevator up to the top floor, bare feet on the carpeted floor, bathing suits clinging to your skin, shorts unbuttoned.

The door is open, like he said it was, music drifting out into the hallway.

The suite is a massive, sprawling space, light spilling in from a wall that’s all windows, an uninterrupted view of the sea. The air is frigid, icy against your bare skin, raising goosebumps on your arms the second you step inside.

There are people everywhere, draped across the bland, expensive furnishings, clustered in the kitchenette, sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed. You recognize some of them. The drummer who had a drug problem that was in the papers. A model you’ve seen on the cover of magazines, her eyes heavy with liner, a sleepy sort of smile as she stretches across an armchair.

Some are strangers, strange in the way that they seem so out of place among the smooth, impersonal furniture, the placid neutrality of the hotel. A man with sandy, unkempt hair who looks like he might have just wandered in from the boardwalk, his nails dirty as he rolls neat little joints, offering them out to anyone who passes. A group of hippie looking girls, their hair loose and tangled, knees knobby, a wide-eyed vacancy in their expressions.

And then him. The actor. Stepping in from the balcony, welcoming you with wide arms.

“You’re here,” he says, with an air of finality, like he’s been waiting forever and you’ve finally arrived.

It seems like some of them have been living here. There are untidy piles of clothing tucked under chairs, a toothbrush left by the ice bucket. Little pockets of life left among the impersonal objects of the suite, the vague artwork, a little statue of a lion, reared up on its hind legs.

Someone pours you a glass of orange wine, and you sip it by the window, watching the way the coast stretches and flexes until it disappears somewhere in the haze of Malibu.

The other girls settle in easily, like they always do. Filling a space that’s already full, brightening a room that’s already bright. Giddy smiles, warm laughter. The slide of a record from its case, changing the music, shifting the vibe. A shot of adrenaline, everywhere they go.

You settle on a chaise, tucking your legs up under you to make room for the actor to sit beside you. He rests his hand on your knee, and you find you don’t mind it. It’s a little soft, his palm smooth. Uncalloused.

“Is it corny to say that you’re even more beautiful in person?” he asks, tone light, teasing.

You smirk.

“It is.”

“Damn,” he shakes his head, “That was my best line, too.”

“Bet it helps when you have people write them for you.”

He nods, “You have no idea.”

You lean back, watching as the girls tilt and sway to the music.

“At risk of it sounding like another line,” he says, “I've seen all of your films, and you’re really something else.”

You blush and take a sip of your drink. There’s something in the casual way he says it, like seeing you naked is the most natural thing in the world.

He nudges your shoulder.

“Feel free to say something about one of my movies now.”

“I would,” you tell him, “But I haven’t seen any.”

He throws his head back and laughs, loud enough that the model rouses in her chair. She gives a sleepy little yawn, then settles back down.

“I guess I deserve that,” he says.

He looks at you with interest. And it’s not sexual — at least, it’s not only sexual. It's appraising. Intrigued. Like you’re something he’s trying to figure out.

“Do you like it?”

You tilt your head, “Like what?”

“Making dirty movies.”

You think about the hazy glow, the grainy light. The tapes with your name on them, the name you gave yourself. The slide of skin against skin, cameras catching a smile, a sigh. Men at the bus stop, at the corner, being wanted in ways you’re only just beginning to understand.

“I do.”

He nods, like he was expecting that answer.

“I could tell. I think that’s what makes it sort of special,” he says thoughtfully, “It’s not for us. It’s for you.”

His thumb strokes over your skin, an easy touch, there’s no pressure to it.

“Do you like it?” you ask.

“Like what?”

“Making regular movies.”

“Sometimes,” he shrugs, “I used to like it more. Feels sort of phony now. What you do is a lot more real.”

One of the long-haired girls floats over, her eyes wide and unfocused, a syrupy sort of smile on her face, melty and warm. She has something curled in the palm of her hand.

“Hungry?” she asks the actor.

He tips his head back obediently and opens his mouth, offers her his mouth. She lays a small tab on his tongue, then brushes a sweaty, affectionate kiss against his cheek. It seems like a kind of ritual, something they’ve done a thousand times before, unthinking and easy.

She turns to you, her eyes so wide they seem to fill her face, giving her a moony, ethereal sort of softness.

“Want one?”

You hesitate, just for a second, before opening your mouth. You feel the press of her fingertip against your tongue, a little scrape of nail, and then the tab’s bitter dissolve.

You think of communion wafers and consecration. Your knees pressed into an unforgiving bench, fingers folded together, searching for a sin you might be willing to confess. Your mother’s hand curling at the back of your neck, nails digging into your skin. Louder — she’d hiss — God can’t hear you.

The afternoon tips and spills. Hours pass, glacial and strange, a haze of slow, slippery seconds.

One of your friends is fast asleep, curled up in the middle of the unmade bed, snoring softly. Another disappeared with the drummer some hours ago, tangling her hand with his, looking back with a guilty, giggling secrecy. The other has been ensconced in the group of untidy girls, her head laid on their laps as they braid her hair endlessly. Someone ordered room service, a dozen orders of only truffle fries.

You lay on a patch of sunny carpet, stretched out like a cat. It smells like weed and spilled wine, the faint tinge of disinfectant. You feel watery, waves crashing through you, swept up in the tidal pull of your own breath. You think you had legs at some point, but you can’t feel them anymore. You don’t mind. You like it here.

The actor appears over you, his hair glowing gold with sunlight, his pupils blown wide, edging out the blue of his eyes. You think he looks even younger like this, his smile easy, unbothered.

“How are you feeling?” he asks gently.

You consider it. You’re feeling so much it’s hard to find one answer, pull a single word from the twisting, shimmering haze. Finally you say —

“I'm in space.”

He chuckles. “And how is it?”

“Warm,” you tell him, because it is. It’s warm and it’s good, and sometimes if you look too long at something it starts to move, but not in a bad way.

You pull him down on the carpet beside you, resting your shoulder against his, his sandy leg hair brushing against your bare stretch of calf. You want him to see the patterns on the ceiling, how it glitters and swirls, the kaleidoscopic spin of light and color, like there are stars stuck up in the plaster.

But he keeps looking at you instead.

You grab his jaw, fingers digging into his cheeks, forcing his gaze up.

“Alright,” he laughs, “I see it, Lucky. I swear I see it.”

You relax, satisfied. Stretching out, the carpet warm beneath you. Feeling every inch of your skin, so alive, your blood humming in your veins. You turn your head to look at him, the actor, his face so familiar and not at the same time. A stranger you’ve known almost all your life.

“You never told me your name,” you tell him.

He smiles at you.

“You know my name.”

x x x x x

The come down is not nice.

The heat finally breaks the next morning, a fog rolling in from the water, and you sit shivering on the sofa. Blinking against the light. Everything is a little too sharp, grating against raw nerves. You wince when the phone rings. One of your roommates throws her shoe at it.

It’s Tess.

“Why is someone trying to send you a fruit basket?”

“Fuck,” you groan, “Please whisper.”

She snorts, amused, but her voice is a little less sharp when she speaks again. Not soft, you’d never call Tess soft. But still.

“Someone from William Morris called asking for your address. Who did you fuck?”

“No one,” you tell her.

Which is true.

You did not fuck the actor.

You laid on the carpet for what felt like half a century, the minutes slow and sticky, made of molasses. Shadows slipped across the room and the sun set behind the hills. Your one roommate returned, the drummer slinking in behind her, clothes slightly askew, a satisfied flush on her cheeks. And eventually there wasn’t much reason to stay, so you didn’t.

He had the front desk call a car to take you home — kissed your cheek on the way out and thanked you for showing him the stars on the ceiling. You were still high when went to sleep.

“Alright,” Tess relents, “Who didn’t you fuck?”

So you tell her his name, the one you know she knows.

And she makes a sound that’s hard to decode. You think she might be impressed.

“Well then I guess I’ll give him your address.”

The fruit basket arrives that afternoon, but it’s more wine than fruit. All expensive vintages, embossed labels in swirling script, some fancy chocolates. There's a neat little envelope with his name and phone number.

You call him the next day.

Because what would it hurt, really. If you let him kiss you. Let him take your clothes off, roll around in those expensive sheets. Maybe make you come, maybe not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a hell of a story either way.

You’re young and you’re pretty and sometimes men on the street want to sleep with you. You have sex almost every day, you fuck in front of cameras, and the one person you want to look at you won’t . There are so many contradictions, and you don’t want to waste your time unriddling them.

The actor is fun. Easy. Uncomplicated, free of contradiction. A question that answers itself.

He asks to take you to dinner and you agree, slipping into the sleek black car when it pulls up to the curb. The restaurant is all low-lighting and smooth leather booths, a live band playing in the corner, jazz drifting over to your private table. It’s all a little much — the fluttering, eager attention of the waiter, champagne poured before you’ve even looked at the menu, the owner coming out to shake his hand.

You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Is it always like this for you?”

He looks up, smiling, letting you in on the joke. The answer is obvious. Yes. It is always like this.

He calls you Lucky, and you don’t mind. You are Lucky. Her flashing smiles, her fluttering lashes.

He's easy to be around, and the world is easy around him. Rules bend, doors open. There is always a table ready, always a car waiting. A ceaseless tide of good times.

When he takes you to bed, it’s nice. Easy. His hand is warm and smooth over your skin, gentle with you, affectionate. He laughs when you take him into your mouth, his hand stroking over your hair. Lucky, he calls you. He has to stroke himself back to stiffness a few times, but when he pushes inside it feels good. Your bodies slide together, his eyes bright and blue, looking at you like he’s always known you. When you come — and you do — it’s a little, tripping thing. Light, easy. A laugh cut off by a kiss.

You don’t think about the thing that isn’t there.

Heavier hands, the scrape of stubble against your skin. A low, rasping voice, one that knows all the right things to say. The want, the hunger, low in your belly, that burns and burns and burns.

You don’t think about that at all.

x x x x x

August melts into September but there’s no change of seasons here, your shoulders stay bare.

It’s late afternoon on a Friday. The other girls are gone; at work or an audition, or in the back of the tour bus with that drummer. You’re eating dry cereal. Someone forgot to buy milk, and the little bit you have left is spoiled.

The phone rings. And you think it might be the actor, because he calls sometimes just to tell you about his day. Or play a record he thinks you might like. Or invite you over to read through a scene with him, some new script his agent sent over, because he hates acting against nothing.

You wedge the phone under your ear, balancing the bowl of cereal in your hand.

“Hello?”

It's Tess.

“How fast can you get to the Valley?”

There’s an edge to her voice, and you hear it immediately. You frown, setting your bowl down on a stack of books.

“Why?”

There’s a scuffling sound on the other end, a door snapping shut. It sounds like she’s moving away from people, muffled conversations growing distant.

“Had a girl show up trashed, we can’t use her,” she says, “We’re going to lose the whole day. Bleeding fucking money over here.”

You almost agree, your instinct to say yes to her kicking in. But then you hesitate.

“Whose shoot?”

There’s a pause. And you get the sense she was hoping you wouldn't ask.

“It’s Joel’s.”

Because of course it fucking is. Tess wouldn’t waste a favor on just anyone.

“And he’s okay with me coming?” you ask, wary.

“It was his idea.”

You bite your lip, worrying it between your teeth.

Because it’s not a good idea, not really. You can already feel that thing rising up, the hunger waking, those fucking teeth digging in again.

“I can be ready in ten,” you tell her.

And you can hear her exhale, that sharp relief.

“Great, I'll send a car.”

You’re already waiting at the curb when the car pulls up, hair still damp from a hasty shower, legs stinging from a mostly dry shave. You ask to roll the windows down, dabbing at a few cuts still beading little drops of blood around your kneecaps.

It takes thirty minutes to get there, and you try not to think too hard.

Not about the last time you saw him, the nerve ticking in his jaw. Or the time before that, the not-quite fucking in the hallway, how it burns white-hot in your memory.

The car pulls into the mostly empty parking lot of a bar called Frank’s, and your stomach swoops a little when you spot the familiar truck parked by the entrance.

There’s a hastily written sign taped to the door, warning customers that it’s closed for the day .

A bell digs when you push open the door, dust swirling in the air. It’s a true dive, bordering on a shithole, made more apparent by the midday sunlight streaking in through the dirty windows. The stale smell of beer hangs in the air, sticky with it. A bison head is mounted on the wall, all glassy eyes and flaking taxidermy.

The crew is already set up, the camera standing to the left of the bar, cables snaking between the stools.

There are a few extras milling around the pool table, looking a little bored, a little lost. It’s a thankless task, to be a spare body in a dirty movie. Most of them were likely lured in by the promise of free booze.

Tess spots you and steps away from an irritated looking camera man.

“Thank god for you,” she mutters, taking your arm and leading you down a narrow hallway.

She pushes open the door to reveal a grimy single-stall bathroom, a garment bag hanging over the mirror. Graffiti is scrawled across most of the walls, and the air is damp with the acrid smell of urine. It’s pretty bleak.

“We’re on a shoestring here,” she says apologetically, “They’re really fucking us.”

You squeeze her arm.

“It's fine. I'll be ready in five.”

She gives you a grateful look, then steps away, pulling the door shut behind her. The script lays open across the sink, and you flip through it quickly, scanning the pages.

But you’re good at this. You don’t need much, just a few words to set the scene. The rest just happens, spills out of you, this thing you think maybe you were born to do.

You unzip the garment bag. Inside is a slip of a dress that’s almost sheer in the light. When you pull it over your head, you can see your nipples through the fabric. You leave your panties on, the black line of them barely visible, a suggestive hint.

You swipe glitter over your eyelids, dab gloss on your lips. And you’re ready.

You step out of the bathroom just as the door at the end of the hallway is opening.

Joel fills the doorframe. Dressed simply, a dark t-shirt and jeans. The boots he always wears, that heavy tread that’s so familiar, every solid, steady step.

He stops short when he sees you.

Surprise flickers across his face, and then his expression shutters. Goes stony, unreadable. You can see the slight flare of his nostrils, a furious inhale, and then he steps back inside, snapping the door shut.

Shit.

You stand there.

Staring at the closed door.

Muffled voices rise on the other side. The unmistakable bitter taint of an argument, his low, growling anger.

Something uneasy settles in your stomach. The feeling that you are not supposed to be here right now, that he doesn’t want you here.

Doesn’t want you at all.

The door swings open again and you tense, but it’s Tess that steps out, muttering under her breath.

“Fucking idiot.”

She pauses when she sees you waiting there, something like guilt passing over her expression. She clears her throat.

“We’re uh, not gonna need you, actually,” she says, not quite meeting your eye, “Sorry, kid. I'll still pay you the day rate.”

“What happened?”

Her expression twists, and she shakes her head.

“I didn't realize how far he’s got his head shoved up his own ass.”

A bitter taste rises in the back of your throat.

“He didn't tell you to call me.”

And it’s not a question, not really.

Tess sighs, “Not in so many words.”

“Jesus, Tess.”

“Look, it’s my problem, not yours. I'll handle it.”

But it is your problem — your problem with him, his problem with you. Whatever the fuck it is, the knotted tangle of your time together, this stupid fucking stand off, this dance you’re really sick of doing.

You push past her, storming down the dingy hallway, shoving open the door at the end.

Inside is a small office. Receipts spiraling out over the desk, a sagging sofa in the corner. Another piece of crumbling taxidermy, a watery-eyed weasel, hunched high on a shelf, its tiny teeth bared.

Joel stands with his back to the door, smoke curling from the cigarette in his hand, leaning against the desk chair. The set of his shoulders tense, strained.

He straightens at the sound of the door, turning as you slam it shut behind you. You see the way his gaze skates over the barely-there fabric of your dress, the near-nakedness of you.

“What the hell is your problem?” you snap.

He frowns. Stubs out his cigarette.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a fucking asshole.”

His eyes flash.

“Watch it.”

He says it low, threatening. Takes a step forward so he’s towering over you, this hulking mass of man, all dark eyes and thick arms and endless frustration.

You hold your ground. Glaring up at him.

“You’re just gonna have Tess send me home?”

“I didn't ask for you to be here.”

And it stings, even if it shouldn’t. Even if you already knew that. Even if you shouldn’t want to be wanted, not by him.

“Well, I'm here,” you snap, “And you don’t have to like me, but I'm the best you’ve got.”

His dark eyes flicker over your face. And there’s something there, just the shadow of it. You can’t name it, don’t know what it means. But it’s there.

Some of the fury ebbs from his expression. His shoulders drop, and he shakes his head.

“Jus’ ain’t a good idea.”

“Why not?” you press.

But then there’s a little sliver of doubt, a curl of anxiety, souring in your stomach.

“Is it — am I not good enough?” you ask.

He shakes his head, a rough jerking motion.

“That ain’t the reason.”

And — okay. Great. That’s better than the alternative. But it’s still not an answer.

You fold your arms over your chest. Hold his gaze.

“Then give me a better one.”

He glares down at you, jaw working, hands flexing at his side.

“Fine,” he says finally, teeth grit.

He shoulders past you, striding back into the hallway. You hear the heavy him say something to Tess, a gruff exchange of words, and then she’s calling out for places, people.

You suck in a steadying breath. You sort of hadn’t expected him to fold, and you don’t know what it means. But you’re here now, you’re doing this. So you smooth down your dress, set your shoulders, and walk out of the office.

The set is quieting down. The overheads have been switched off, leaving behind the moody pools of light from table lamps and neon signs, the few running lights set up at the edge. A red glow spills over the shelves, illuminating the good stuff left untouched. The wet mouths of house bottles shine along the counter, catching the light.

Joel slopes behind the bar, his movements jerky, restless. There’s an edge of frustration in the way he paces — not looking at you, looking anywhere but .

Tess gives you a searching look. Checking in.

You nod and take your seat at the bar, where a glass of something is already waiting for you. You take a sip, swallow down the burn, try to let the scene sink into your skin.

The smell of whiskey. Salt. A lime muddled under a heavy booth, ripe and rotting against the uneven floorboards. The low thrum of music, vibrating the bar beneath your fingertips.

You’re on your last drink. A little drunk, fizzing with a tipsy kind of confidence. The bartender is hot. He’s been watching you all night. He wants you here.

“Action.”

Joel stands at the counter, wiping down glasses with a rag.

You watch him. The steady drag down the glass, the sort of phallic twist to it. The way his muscles move with the motion.

He eyes you from across the bar.

“Your friends run out on you?” he asks.

You raise one shoulder in a little shrug.

“Guess they can’t handle their liquor.”

He cocks his head, considering you. Dark eyes dipping to the low neck of your dress.

“So what are you still doing here?”

“Wanted to settle up,” you say, letting your voice lilt, lacing the words with suggestion.

You prop your elbows against the sticky tack of the counter, ringed with watermarks. You pull the cherry from your glass, licking the drip of alcohol that clings to it. You linger there, pressing your lips to the tender, sweet skin, teasing it with your tongue. Teasing him.

Joel’s eyes linger on your lips, the wet shine of them.

“Reckon we can figure something out,” he says, voice low, rough.

He sets down the glass. Flicks the rag over his shoulder. Crosses to the wall and tosses the light switch twice, the overheads flickering on and off, drawing the attention of the remaining stragglers.

“Don’t have to go home,” he calls out, “but you can’t stay here.”

There’s a shuffling, a scrape of chairs, that whining drag. The bar begins to empty as the last few patrons file out, swallowing down the final dregs of their drinks, the swill at the bottom of the glass.

You stay on your stool. Waiting. Watching the door. A little zip of anticipating sparking through you, a low coil of arousal gathering in your core. The want. That almost aching hunger.

The bell dings as the door closes behind the last person. And then you’re alone. Just you and the bartender.

You and Joel.

He comes around the counter, crowding up against your stool. Bracing his arms on either side of you. Not touching, not yet. But close enough that you can feel the heat of him, that you have to tilt your head up to meet his gaze.

“Pretty girl like you couldn’t find someone to take you home?” he asks.

You smile up at him, almost sweetly. Almost.

“I don't need to go home.”

You inch your knees apart, spreading them over the stool. An open invitation, the come-on of all come-ons. Your dress inches up your thighs, and you see the way his gaze drops, how it darkens. His knuckles are white where they wrap around the edge of the bar.

You press your hand against his chest. Feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat against your palm, the way his breath hitches when he meets your eye.

“I'm just fine right here,” you murmur.

And then he’s on you.

He ducks his head, scraping his teeth over your throat, the fragile tendon there, straining against his touch. Then dragging down, mouth hot against your skin, tasting your tripping pulse.

His hands drop to your thighs and he tugs you forward, stepping between your legs. He drags his palms over your skin, slowly, inching up towards your core.

You laugh, breathless, and it slips out of you before you can stop it —

“Really oughta buy me a drink first.”

Joel pulls back. Looks down at you. And you swear you see a smile at the corner of his mouth, an almost smirk.

He leans over you, chest flush against your, and reaches across the counter. His stubble scrapes against your cheek as he snatches a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar.

He straightens. Unscrews the lid. Slides his other hand up your neck, cupping your jaw between his thick fingers, forcing your head back. The glint of a challenge in his gaze.

“Open.”

You do, parting your lips, offering out your tongue. He tilts the bottle, and whiskey pours down your throat, a smoky, sizzling burn.

He pulls back when you’ve had enough, giving you a second to swallow. Some of it escapes from the corner of your mouth, drips down your neck toward the valley of your breasts.

And then his mouth is there, chasing it with his tongue, dragging down your sternum, burying his face between your breasts. A low growl leaves his chest, a hungry, desperate sound that makes you ache.

You can already feel the sticky thread of arousal between your legs, the heat that sparks and burns every time he touches you.

He slips a strap off your shoulder, baring more skin to his teeth and tongue. Scrapes his mouth along your collarbones, then dips down, sealing his mouth over your nipple. A jagged little edge of pleasure shoots through you, straight to your core.

You arch into the wet drag of his mouth as he kisses across your chest, teeth digging into the sensitive skin of your other breast. You tangle your fingers in his hair, pressing him closer, a whine leaving your lips.

“Yeah?” he mutters, the words muffled in your skin, “That feel good?”

He bites at your jaw, titling his head to nose against your neck, startling another needy whine from your throat.

“Shit - yes.”

His hands slide beneath the thin fabric of your dress, pushing it up over your hips, leaving everything else exposed. He pulls away to look at you, the mess he’s made of your neck and chest, little red marks from his mouth.

You drop back against the bar, breathing hard. His eyes rake over you, and the heat of his attention makes you tremble slightly.

“Fuck, honey,” he mutters, “Look at you.”

And it does something to you, the low gravel of his voice, the raw want in it.

He nudges your knees further apart, gaze fixed on the apex of your thighs. His thumb drags up the inside of your leg, teasing along the line of your panties, so close to the aching, pulsing heat at your center.

“Bet you’ve been wet since you walked in here.”

Your breath catches in your throat as he hooks his thumb through them and pulls, dragging the wet scrap of fabric down your legs. Exposing the wet splay of your pretty pink sex.

He steps back so the camera can see the shine of your slick on the leather seat. He shakes his head, a teasing note to his voice.

“Fucking dripping for me.”

Joel kneels between your legs, lifting them over his shoulders, keeping you spread open. He licks a line up your inner thigh, catching some of the slick smeared across your skin. You feel the scrape of his beard, the burn of it, his breath hot against your core.

And then he’s eating you, mouth hard and hungry as it moves over your soaked skin. His tongue curves against your clit, a hot, flickering pressure that makes you moan. Your hips buck against his mouth.

You feel the press of his thick fingers at your entrance, and then he’s sliding them into you.

“So tight, baby,” he groans.

You dig your fingers into his shoulder, the flexing tendon there, twisting the fabric of his shirt. You’re making ragged, desperate little sounds, whining for him. You’re getting close, the heat licking up your spine, the hunger a writhing, roaring thing inside of you.

“Think you can take one more?” he asks, twisting his fingers, making you whimper.

You nod, unable to form words, digging your nails a little deeper as you feel a third finger stroking at your soaking hole.

“Gotta stretch this cunt,” he grunts, “Get you ready f’me.”

And then there’s a stretch, a slight burn as his third finger presses inside. He crooks them, stroking upwards, and you gasp, jerking against him. You feel him smile between your legs.

“Right there, huh?”

He presses the same spot, driving even deeper, twisting and pressing. Dark eyes fixed on your face. Your back bows, a ragged breath caught in your lungs, a silent cry.

“Yeah, that’s it. Let me feel you.”

His thumb swipes over your clit, and you’re coming, clenching around his fingers, pleasure coursing through you.

Your legs close around Joel’s head, but he doesn’t stop. He licks you through it, a low growl of satisfaction rumbling in his chest, making you twitch and whine in his grip.

You untangle your fingers from his shirt, ease off enough that he can slide your legs from his shoulders and stand. Your gaze flickers up to his and he looks —

Fuck.

He looks wrecked. Chest heaving with ragged breaths. Eyes so dark that they’re almost black, a feral kind of hunger in his face, his beard shining with your slick.

He steps between your spread legs, sliding his hands up to your hips. He taps your thigh, twice, and you get the hint, wrapping your shaking legs around his waist. There’s an urgency in his touch, a tension rippling beneath his muscles when you wind your arms around his neck.

Joel lifts you easily, holding you tight to his chest as he carries you across the bar and sits you at the edge of the pool table. He stays between your legs, keeps a hand tight on your thigh, like he’s afraid you might go somewhere.

“Need to fuck you,” he mutters.

His other hand fumbles with the button of his jeans, ripping down the zipper, pulling his heavy cock free from the press of denim. He’s hard, an almost painful stiffness, the head of him smeared wet with pre-come.

And then he’s there, pressing up against your entrance, his eyes flicking to yours as he fills you in one, slow thrust.

You moan, and hear his own, ruined sound in a response. A groan that seems to rip through him, his fingers digging even into the flesh of your thighs.

“Perfect fucking cunt.”

Joel’s voice is hoarse, an unfamiliar roughness, almost anger. His head tips back, face twisted in something like pain, something like pleasure.

He begins to move, grinding his hips against yours, cock sawing in and out of your wet heat. You whine at the way he fills you, the steady drag of him inside you, and wrap your hand around the back of his neck. Holding tight as he fucks you deeper, harder, faces only inches apart.

His gaze flickers up to yours.

And he groans, hips stuttering against you as he spills inside, filling you with a warm flood of come.

Shit.

You feel his hands tense on your hips.

“Shit,” he mutters.

You look up at him. And there’s something almost vulnerable in his expression as he stares back at you, eyes wide, hands still tight on your hips. For a second, neither of you move.

Then his expression shutters, and he’s pulling away, pulling out of you. Stepping away and tucking himself back into his jeans.

“I, uh —” he clears his throat, “I need a minute.”

He walks off set.

Leaving you dripping, legs still spread, somehow full and so, achingly empty at the same time.

You feel eyes on you. Wary, uncertain. Even Tess looks like she doesn’t know what the fuck to do.

You pull your dress straps over your shoulders and slip down from the pool table, the hem falling down to cover you. You feel his come dripping down your thighs.

And it’s happened before. Other sets, other scenes.

It’s never a big deal. It might make a shoot run long, but it was usually something you could laugh about, sometimes twist into a compliment — just couldn’t help myself, sweetheart.

But that’s not Joel.

He’s not really a laugh it off kind of guy. He’s more of a go into the woods like a dying dog kind of guy.

You hesitate for half a second, then go after him.

He’s back in the small office, the door left slightly ajar. You approach it slowly, cautiously. Peering through the sliver of light to look inside.

He’s braced against the desk, shoulders bunched by his ears, head low. Every line of him tense, taught.

He looks over his shoulder when he hears your soft steps, the creak of the door as you push it open just enough to slip inside. His face contorts when he sees you.

“Goddamn it.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” you say gently, easing the door shut behind you.

He turns, almost wary. Arms folded over his chest.

“Look — it happens,” you tell him.

He shakes his head. Scoffs.

“I’m too old to be coming like a fucking teenager.”

You shrug, biting back a smile.

“At least you made it out of your jeans.”

“This is why —” he stops himself, shaking his head. He makes a frustrated sound, jaw working.

And you just — you want to make him feel good , as good as he always makes you feel when you fuck. You sort of doubt he’ll ever agree to shoot with you again, and you don’t want the last time to be tainted like this.

“Can I help?”

You take a slow step closer to him. He doesn’t quite meet your eye.

“M’fine,” he mutters.

But you move even closer, coming to stand just in front of him. Looking up at him, waiting until his gaze meets yours.

“Let me help,” you say softly, coaxing.

Joel stares down at you. And he looks uneasy, almost skittish. But he doesn’t stop you when you take the last step, closing the distance, and your hand cups him through his jeans.

He exhales sharply through his nose. And he’s tense, rigid beneath your gentle touch. He shakes his head jerkily.

“You don’t gotta —“

“I want to.”

You rub him slowly through the denim, feeling the half-hard shape of him.

His eyes flutter, and his hand twitches towards your wrist. But he doesn’t stop you. He lets you touch.

“Fuck. That’s — that’s nice.”

His eyes fall shut, and you see some of the tension ease from his shoulders.

You undo the zipper and slip your hand inside, sliding over the soft skin of his cock. The dark curl of his hair is damp with your slick, some of his release. You wrap your hand around him and he hisses, still sensitive.

“Slow, baby.”

And so you go slow, a careful caress, your little fingers tucked into the front of his jeans.

You lean in and lick the line of sweat on his throat. His head falls back as he groans, fingers flexing at his sides.

“Goddamn it.”

And it’s much softer than when he said it before, warm and rough. So you keep licking and sucking, small scrapes of teeth at his neck as you stroke him. You feel him start to stiffen in your hand, the blood pooling beneath your palm like a bruise.

You give him a few more strokes and then his hand closes around your wrist.

“Shit. That's — yeah, that’s good. I'm good.”

His eyes open, and he looks down at you. Hand lingering around your wrist. His thumb swipes over your pulse. His chest shifts, expands. A slow inhale, a heavy exhale.

Then he drops his gaze. Clears his throat.

“We oughta get back.”

And you should go back. You know that Tess and the rest of the crew are waiting, just a few thin walls away. You know you’re burning daylight, you’ve lost enough time as it is, and you still have most of the scene to finish.

Except —

“I can’t go back out there like this.”

He frowns down at you.

You take his hand in yours, slipping your fingers around his wrist. You drag it under your skirt, between your legs, so he can feel where his come is leaking out of you.

You look up at him, the hint of a smile on your lips.

“You made a mess.”

His eyes go dark.

“Christ.”

His fingers move against you, slipping through your folds, dragging his release across your damp skin.

“Can’t have a —” you cut off with a gasp as his fingers graze your clit, “Continuity error.”

Joel chuckles.

“Can’t have that.”

He eases himself onto his knees beneath you. You lift the hem of your skirt, exposing yourself to his hungry eyes, the heat that still burns there.

He gently pries your thighs apart, staring at the spread of your sex, the sticky drip of his semen inside of you. His thumb strokes along the tender crease of your thigh.

“Fucking full of me, ain’t ya,” he murmurs.

And then he leans forward, swiping his tongue through the mess of your release and his.

You moan. Tangling your hand in his hair, legs trembling as he licks through you, into you.

He eats at you slowly, languidly. Cleaning his come from your folds, your still dripping hole. He’s careful about it, coaxing, the delicate slide of his tongue inside you.

His thumbs pull you apart, and you feel more of his come slip out into his waiting mouth.

And it’s filthy, fucking debauched, but you can’t help the twitch of your hips, the heat that builds as he dips his tongue into you, tasting you together.

He’s not trying to make you come, not really, but the occasional nudge of his nose against your clit is enough. The coil tightening, pushing you closer and closer to the edge.

You’re almost there when he pulls back, apparently satisfied. He lets your dress slip back down, smoothing the fabric over your thighs before he stands.

Joel’s eyes flicker over you, taking in the flush on your cheeks, the breath that shivers through you.

He tilts his head. Gives you a knowing look.

“You close?”

You feel the blush burn a little brighter.

“Maybe.”

He pulls the door open. Nods his head towards the set.

“I’ll take care of you.”

There’s heat in the promise, and you feel a tug low in your navel, the thing that lives there digging its teeth in a little deeper.

You slip out of the office and he follows. You can feel the shape of him behind you, the floorboards shifting beneath his step. That steady, heavy tread.

The crew is waiting at the edge of set, a sleepy sort of lull to them. Breathing their smoke through a cracked window. Rolling a pool ball beneath a heavy palm. Flicking through song titles on the jukebox.

There’s a shift when you step back into the set, a snapping to attention. Their eyes find Tess.

She flicks away her cigarette. Gives you a once over, gaze sharp, cutting between you and Joel.

“We good?”

“Fine,” Joel nods, “Where do you want us?”

And for a second, Tess looks like she might say something else, but seems to think better of it.

“Take it from your cross,” she says, “Walk closer to camera this time, we’ll find somewhere to hide the cut.”

He gives a low grunt of acknowledgement.

There's a tug at your waist, and then Joel's arm is around you, lifting you up. A surprised laugh punches out of your lungs, and you grip his shoulders, wrapping your legs around his hips.

He looks at you, dark eyes skimming the blush on your cheeks, down your neck, to your breasts beneath your dress.

He looks back up, eyebrow raised.

“Continuity,” he mutters.

And, oh — right.

You reach up and slip your straps from your shoulders, letting the dress drop down to your waist, like it was when he first carried you across the bar.

You don’t miss the way his eyes linger on your breasts, the skin still flushed and sensitive from his mouth, little red marks around your nipples.

“Alright,” Tess calls out, “Let’s get back into it.”

Joel's arms tense around you. Holding you a little tighter. And you have a single, breathless second to collect your thoughts, find your place in the scene before —

“Action.”

For a moment, the world is a spinning, shifting blur. And then you’re back on the pool table. The warm wood against your legs, the green scratch of felt on your fingertips as you lean back to look up at Joel.

And fuck — he looks good. Skin sweat-damp and fever-warm, heat rolling off him in waves. The heavy press of his dick against the denim of his jeans.

His dark eyes drag over you, and he ducks down to nip at your jaw.

“Gonna fucking ruin you, sweetheart.”

It punches a little gasp from between your lips. He pulls back, straightening to his full height, towering over you. He reaches over his head and tugs his shirt off, exposing the broad stretch of his chest, the trail of dark hair down his stomach.

He undoes the button of his jeans and tugs down his zipper. His cock is thick and full when he pulls it out, a rigid line between your bodies.

He brushes your hair off your shoulders, gathers it at the back of your neck. Tilts your head down so you’re staring at his cock.

“Spit on it.”

You shiver, the words surging like heat through your veins, gathering in the slick between your thighs.

You let saliva pool in your mouth and drip from your lips, a sticky strand dribbling down onto him. He grunts, satisfied, when his cock shines with your spit. He strokes along his length, coating himself in it before he drags the tip over your entrance.

You whine a little, restless, aching to be filled. Leaning back on the pool table, looking up at him. A melty little mess, waiting for him to make good on his promise.

He huffs out a laugh.

“So fucking needy.”

He slides his spit-slick cock between your folds, catching on your clit and you twitch, already sensitive, already so close to coming.

You catch the hint of a smirk on his lips as he slides in.

There’s the stretch, the burn, the slow drag of him against your sensitive walls. You clench around him, feeling every ridge, the heavy weight of him inside you.

And it’s there — right there, the sparking edge of your release, the heat that’s threatening to overtake you. Your hips rise, chasing friction, fucking yourself deeper, a desperate little whimper slipping from your lips.

His hands stroke over the soft swell of your stomach, an almost tender touch, his fingertips dragging down between your legs.

“It’s alright, baby. I got you.”

It doesn’t take much. The roll of your swollen clit beneath his thumb, a slow, dragging thrust and you’re gone.

“Oh, fuck —”

You arch into it, your cunt clenching around him as he grinds his hips into yours, fucks you through it.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, “There you go.”

It flows through you, your muscles fluttering around him, the coil unraveling. It fills you with a kind of hazy heat, satiating some of the hunger — but not all of it.

You blink up at him. Bite your lip. Watch as his dark eyes drag over you, see a want in them you recognize.

Joel tucks his hands beneath your knees, pulling them up and pressing them against your chest. Spreading you, exposing the place where your bodies connect, the stretch of your sex around him.

He groans.

“Sweet little cunt.”

He begins to fuck you harder, hips shoving against yours, so you feel the burning scratch of the table at your back. Every long, steady stroke forces a little whimper from your lips, a keening, desperate sound.

He leans forward, bracing his hands by your head. His sweaty chest presses against your calves, folding you under him, forcing you into a small, fuckable shape. Your faces inches apart, every grunting breath hot against your open mouth.

And the angle allows him to drive that much deeper, the thick heat of his cock stretching inside of you, scraping against something new. A secret hollow, a hidden place that’s white-hot and wet.

Your legs start to tremble, stomach tensing.

“Wait — fuck, I think— ”

Your vision goes white, body arching, head tilting back as a low moan is pulled from somewhere deep inside you — that empty, aching place.

And then it spills out of you, a hot, slick rush of release.

Joel groans, low and almost painful, fucking through the wet mess of you. His hands pressing your thighs even further apart, watching as your hole flutters around him. A sticky-slick pulse, a sudden gush. Soaking the length of his cock, the dark hair at the base of him.

“Fuck, honey.”

He pulls out, his cock shining with your release, dripping with it.

You stare up at him. Jaw slack, eyes wide. Legs still shaking in his hands as he holds you open, keeps you spread.

And that’s — new.

When his eyes flick up to meet yours, his expression is intense . He looks like he wants to rip you open, to eat you raw.

“You’re gonna do that again.”

And you whine. You’re already so sensitive, stripped down to your shivering core. Little tremors wrack through you, and you writhe in Joel’s grasp.

But he doesn’t let go.

He nudges your knees further apart. Drags his fingers through your sore, swollen folds, the aching mess between your legs.

“Didn’t tell me this pretty cunt could come like that.”

And you want to tell him you didn’t know, you’ve never done that before.

But then he slides two thick fingers into your stretched, sensitive hole. Pressing deep, curling up. Stroking that spot inside you. Your hips jerk, twitching against him, but he holds you steady.

“There it is.”

He flattens his other hand against your stomach, the tense fluttering muscles. He presses down, feeling his own fingers deep inside of you. And you can’t think, can’t form words. Can only feel him, that pressure, the burning heat that builds.

He fucks into you with his fingers. Fast, hard.

“Show me,” he grunts, “Soak my fucking fingers.”

It’s so much, almost too much. The slick shove of him into your hole, the sticky-wet heat. There’s a whining, desperate panic and you feel something inside you about to snap.

And then it does.

A gush of slick pours out of you. Soaking his hand, coating his fingers in a sweet, syrupy release.

“Good girl.”

He doesn’t stop. Filling you again and again with his fingers. His palm digging deeper into your stomach, arm flexing as he fucks you with what feels like his whole hand.

You cry out, nails digging into his shoulder. Pulling him closer, pushing him away.

He grunts, pressing closer, fucking deeper.

“Know you have more for me.”

And somehow, you do.

Your eyes roll back and your mind goes white-hot, scorching. It sears through you, a burning wave of arousal, a tight pressure between your hips. Your back arches off the table as another surge of release rips through you, spills over his hand, drips down onto the dirty bar floor.

“There it is.”

It leaves you boneless, a shaking body beneath his hands, a soft bundle of shivering limbs.

You feel the drag of his tongue along your inner thigh, collecting the drops of your release, the wet that still drips out of you. He licks a broad stroke through your soaked folds and you whine, way too sensitive, but he doesn’t linger long.

Joel stands between your knees, gently tugging your legs down so they dangle from the edge of the table, around his hips.

You blink up at him. A wobbly, soaking wet mess. Tears clinging to your eyelashes, a bloom of blotchy-red blush across your cheeks and chest.

His hand comes up to your jaw, coaxing it open, thumb swiping over your bottom lip. You let your mouth hang open, wet and waiting.

He leans over you and spits your own release in your mouth.

“Swallow it.”

You do, your own taste sliding over your tongue.

He stands over you and strokes his cock over your damp, shivering stomach. You can hear the soft schlick of your own wetness on his skin. His eyes are dark, fixed on yours as he fucks into his hand.

All you can do is tremble, legs twitching around him, a faint please slipping from your lips.

And then he’s coming, spilling onto your stomach and chest. The damp spray of semen over your skin, coating the marks left by his mouth.

You stay like that for a moment, looking up at him.

The only sound is the thunder of your pulse in your ears. The low hum of the radiator. Your quiet little gasps, his ragged breathing. Filling the damp, sticky air.

“Alright, let’s cut there.”

And it’s over.

You come back to yourself. To the bar and the set, the stale air and sweaty press of the table beneath you. Tess standing a few feet away. The camera and crew. The sun hanging low in the sky behind a dirty window pane.

Joel looks down at you. Something unreadable in his expression.

You force yourself to sit up. Still sensitive, sore in a way you’ve never felt before.

He steps away, and there’s an ache, a twinge —

But he doesn’t go far.

He takes the robe from Tess and brings it back to you. He wraps it around your shoulders, brushes your hair back from your damp, sweaty face. Your body is still soft and boneless in his hands, melting into him, a drip of a girl.

“You good?” he asks.

You blink up at him. Feel the realization settling in you, the slow spread of a smile across your lips.

“I didn't know I could do that.”

It’s a giddy, tripping thing inside you. Something new, something secret he found in you.

The corner of Joel’s mouth twitches. An almost smile.

“Hate to be a buzzkill,” Tess says from behind you, “But we’ve gotta start striking the set. Bill will kill us if we keep him closed after five.”

Joel steps away, tugging his jeans up over his hips.

You slide down from the table, knees still weak. Your steps are a little shaky, and you feel coltish and feeble as you slip down the hallway, away from the set. Feeling Joel’s eyes on you as you make your way back to the bathroom.

Inside, you strip the sweaty mess of a dress from your skin. Splash water onto your feverish skin, wipe the sticky mess of semen from your stomach. Settle back into yourself.

You feel — strange. A little aching, a little raw. Ripped open in a way that you rarely are after other scenes. You’ve never needed much aftercare, never really asked for it. But now, you think maybe it might be nice.

To have a quiet moment. To be touched in a way that wasn’t just sexual. To be held.

But that’s not what this is.

And you know that, even if the thing in your stomach doesn’t. Even if its sharp little teeth are still scraping against you. The want satisfied, the hunger satiated. But something else left waiting.

Wanting more.

You step back into the hallway, still doing up the buttons on your cut-offs. And Joel is standing there, scrubbing a towel along the back of his neck, drying the sweat from his skin.

You look up at him. Wary, uncertain. Not sure where you stand.

His gaze holds yours for a moment. Unreadable, unreachable. Then he jerks his head towards the door.

“Come on,” he says, “Let’s have a real drink.”

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guessimwritingficsagain · 9 months

Text

Sage

Summary: Joel finished your tattoo but staying in each other lives is easier than he thinks. A late night phone call reminds him of how easy it is to lose something too.

Read the beginning: You put aside your touch aversion for a tattoo from Joel.

Pairing: tattoo artist!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~10.6k

Warnings: slow build, no outbreak tattoo!au, angst then comfort, the 'believes they're hard to love, loving them is like breathing' trope, reader has issues with touch and is mostly touch adverse (joel's workin' on that though), description of a past abusive relationship, undefined unresolved previous trauma, insecurity, anxiety, Joel gets to have both his daughters in this, you can decide if this is game joel or show joel

A/N: I can't tell you how happy the love for this series has made me. You’re all my heroes and this is dedicated to all of you.

Once again, we’re ignoring canon and pretending like Joel can draw for this fic, thank you. Editing this was a labor, so if there are any mistakes blame my tired eyes. Thank you for reading! As always, I would love to know your thoughts! Please please please, be sure to leave feedback!

“Joel?” Your voice is staticky in the dark.

He’s used to answering the phone half awake in the middle of the night, shadows still strung between the wings of his window. Between bailing Tommy out of jail when he was younger and rescuing Sarah and Ellie from sleepovers they didn’t want to stay at, he’s answered the phone in the shy hours of the very early morning more times than he can count.

In the few months he’s known you, though, you’ve never called him, not once, let alone in the middle of the night.

“Joel?” The connection crackles and your voice wavers. “Can you hear me?”

It’s then that his mind catches up with him, digs its heels in and kicks to life. He hadn’t said anything beyond a cranky, irritated hello? after the shrill ring woke him and he blindly groped for the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hey, yeah, I can hear ya.”

Maybe he has the good sense to answer you, but he’s not awake enough to consider the why of the call yet. He’s glad to hear your voice, though.

It’s like a sweet little song in his ear when he hadn’t gotten to see you at all that day.

And lately the days he doesn’t get to see you are a rarity.

Most days, you stop by the studio but some days he meets you for coffee, or goes on a drive with you, or insists on teaching you to fish. You’ve been at a few Friday dinners with his girls, though not all of them because you fold yourself up tight and try not to intrude. Most Sundays find you arriving early at his door with pie and coffee from Flu’s, which you eat on his front porch in companionable silence before the heat of the day can settle in.

“I’m sorry,” you say. Your voice trembles and Joel feels like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over him.

He lurches up in bed so fast that spots dance in his vision and a spear of pain slices through his shoulder, raking iron hot nails into a years old injury. “Sweetheart?” A knot of protective worry forms in his chest, lights a fire in his belly. “What’s goin’ on?”

The moon casts a thin, pale beam of light across the foot of his bed, growing brighter by the second as his eyes adjust to the darkness. But then you continue and the protective feeling only grows, and then goes hard with an icy ferocity. “Sorry for calling so late and bothering you with this but I don’t—I didn’t have anyone else I wanted to call.”

Your voice breaks on the last word, the creaking in your mouth splintering across the line. “Can you…I don’t—” There’s a little pause in which Joel can hear your footsteps as you pace and the quick sound of your breathing. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Joel pulls himself out of bed and shucks on his jeans that had lain crumpled on the floor where he left them and then pulls on the first shirt his hand touches when he yanks open a dresser drawer. “What’s goin’ on?” He asks again. “Where are you?”

“Ugh—” You swallow thickly, sounding inexplicably embarrassed. “It’s nothing, really. I’m-I’m being stupid. I shouldn’t have called.”

He can practically see you fidgeting, looking down, shaking your head. Can practically feel you thinking of hanging up the phone, nervous doe eyes darting around like you’ve done something wrong.

“Don’t sound like nothin’,” he grits out, his voice coming out harsher than he means it to. “What happened?”

You’d gone down to Austin to visit some friends for the day. It’s why he hadn’t gotten the chance to see you.

Your ex slips suddenly to the forefront of his mind, who was the goddamn reason you’d moved out of Austin in the first place. Then all the myriad of other terrible things that could have prompted you to call him so late flash through his mind.

It only serves to make his chest burn.

“You still in Austin?” Again, his voice comes out angrier than he intends. He pulls open his bedroom door and moves down the hall, not bothering to flip on any lights.

“No. I’m at—I’m at home,” you stutter.

He pauses in the front entryway, wallet and keys dangling from his fingers, one foot halfway into a shoe. “Home?”

“I’m—yeah, home. I just…I came home and the street door was open. I thought maybe the neighbors just forgot to close it when they were bringing groceries in or something, but then the security light wasn’t coming on and my apartment door is open too. It’s probably nothing, Joel, don’t bother with—look I’m sorry for—”

He’s frozen for a moment. The cavernous black hole of your front door looms, the teeth of the darkness sharp and wanting.

The street door, despite his best efforts to augment it, is notoriously difficult to get open. If it was open when you got home—

If your apartment door was open too—

“I’m sorry for calling,” you say again when he doesn’t answer, your voice small and anxious. “I think I might have been robbed or something. I just. . . I didn’t want to call anyone else,” you repeat. “I’m afraid.”

Afraid.

It’s a cold word.

Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket and getting his boots all the way on, he tugs his own front door open. “Don’t you move a goddamn muscle. Do not go inside. Go back down to the street.”

“Joel—”

“I’m serious,” he all but snarls. “Now.”

“Okay,” you agree. Your voice is tight, choked. “Okay.”

“I’m gettin’ on the road now.”

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer for a minute, just listens to your breathing as he gets in his truck and turns the engine, phone squished between his shoulder and ear. The drive into town is only about ten minutes. You should be alright in that time.

“You there?” Your voice is breathy. You sound a little like you might have been crying and he wonders how long you waffled in front of your door, trying to decide whether to call him or just go inside by yourself. “Joel?”

“‘m here.” He turns off the long dirt road that leads to the ranch. “Yeah, I’m here, honey. Stay on the phone.”

“Okay,” you murmur. “Thanks,” you say again.

The word doesn’t register. His mind is already with you, imagining you standing alone on your street, or worse, with folks lurking around the corner waiting to do you harm. It’s an insidious image that he knows isn’t based entirely in reality. “You alone?” Despite his thoughts, he can’t imagine anyone out on the streets of the tiny town at this hour.

“Mm. Just me.”

“Good. Stay away from that door,” he grumbles.

“Bossy,” you accuse lightly, the soft attempt at a joke.

He doesn’t laugh. The drive feels like it's taking too long, longer than the ten minutes it normally takes.

He steps on the accelerator and his mind wanders to all the other times he’s been called, into the dark or otherwise, because his people needed him. To the hospital once when Sarah had broken her ankle at a pool party, to the high school when Ellie’d gotten into a fight that ended with a blood spattered hallway and broken nose.

Those were the worst calls, drives. That was when he felt most helpless, like he was stuck in quicksand. There were just things that he couldn’t protect them from. He couldn’t be there every second of the day, he couldn’t always be with them, and that had always grated.

Most assured him the anxiety would fade as Sarah got older, but it never did. It hadn’t even begun with her. It was always there, that protective anxiousness. It had gotten exponentially worse with Sarah’s birth, a tiny life he was responsible for, a tiny life that was so delicate.

And then—Ellie. At least with Sarah he’d had some piece of mind. But Ellie, like Tommy, had a knack for trouble. Too many times she swung in the back door with bleeding knees and twigs stuck in her hair and a scrape over her cheek. It wasn’t always a fight, sometimes it was just climbing a tree she had no business being in, racing her bike against kids twice her size, and unlike Sarah, she had no sense of preservation.

“Are you hurt?” The question burns in his mouth. He doesn't mean to ask it.

“Hurt—” you start, sounding surprised. “No. No, of course not. I’m okay, Joel. It’s just the stupid door. I’m just—I told you I’m just being stupid. Listen, just—”

Joel knows what you’re going to say, and he should tell you that you aren’t being stupid, that it was good you called him; that he wants you to call him, all the time, but especially when you need him.

Instead, he snaps, “Don’t move.”

Your voice cuts off.

His eyes strain past streetlights and empty, open fields, past the copse of trees that marked the start of a forest where he’d seen a trio of deer a few weeks before, like some kind of omen.

In the distance, the town comes into view. You don’t say anything but he listens to the sound of your breathing, the calm in and out that reassures him that you’re okay, that you’re there patiently waiting.

When he turns down your street, you come into view, standing beneath a streetlight in front of your building. The security light above your door flickers weakly, but otherwise remains dark. “You see me?”

You turn and lift your hand. “I see you,” you say, voice crumbling and soft. The golden light pools around you, casts your shadow behind you like a ghost, or an angel. But you’re there, you’re safe, he can see you, and some of the tension melts off his shoulders. “Gonna hang up now,” you say.

“All right,” he agrees.

The line goes dead.

Joel is angry with you.

It’s the only thought that sticks, barbed and fanged and catching, in your mind. It burrows into the top of your spine and makes your whole body go rigid with fear.

Joel is angry with you.

Joel, who’s always been sweet and kind. Who introduced you to his family with affection in his voice, took you fishing and always tossed the fish back when you looked so mournfully at them, who pointed out birds and deer to you quietly and with a practiced ease, who lets you read on the green leather couch in his shop and asks your opinions on the designs he’s working on that you often wish were for you.

But you’ve never really fucked up before. You’ve never made him angry.

This, calling him out of bed in the middle of the night, would give him plenty to be angry about. It would give him something to blame you for.

The truck rolls to a stop, headlights flaring out, and dread forms a knot in the back of your throat.

Before you can open your mouth, to head off his foul mood and explain, Joel is out of the truck and his hands are cupped around your shoulders, then the sides of your face.

You flinch at the suddenness of it and then tense but Joel doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes darting over your body like he expects to find you gravely injured. He doesn’t normally touch you so abruptly and the feeling of his hands on your skin makes tears burn behind your eyes.

He looks pretty in the moonlight. His eyes are cast dark and shaded as they search yours, his pupils so blown out the brown is consumed. You aren’t sure what he’s looking for. “You all right?” He asks, the comforting scent of him wrapping around you. He smells like rosemary and pine, like sawdust. You think distantly that he must have been working on some project earlier in the day.

And sage. He smells like protection.

His thumb slides over your cheek slowly in a vaguely self soothing way.

You resist the urge to twist out of grip, trying to remind yourself that now isn’t then, that he isn’t him.

Your body remembers though, remembers what it’s like to taste fear.

“Fine,” you reassure him again and pull back slightly. “I just—like I said, it’s nothing. It’s stupid. I just got spooked. I—Joel I’m sorry—”

Joel doesn’t seem to hear you as he releases your face, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there. He grips your elbow instead and leads you to the passenger side of the truck. “You stay here,” he says. “‘M gonna take a look around. Give me your key.”

There’s a protective violence around him, a current of energy that makes you wary, that you don’t want to be on the wrong side of.

“You—Joel, please, listen—” You attempt to shake his hand off, panic clawing at your chest. You’re too tense to be touched, too anxious he’s about to snap at you.

Joel has never raised his voice at you. This fear isn’t one that should rest with him and that frustrates you even more. It makes you feel crazy and unbalanced and like you don’t know who’s really in front of you.

Still, it’s your fault, after all. It’s your fault he’s here, and maybe that’s good enough for him to start.

His eyes are like hard, dark flint, like chips of glittering amber, glinting in the pale moonlight that washes out his skin, highlights the circles beneath his eyes.

“Just stay here,” he repeats. His voice is hard when his eyes flash up to yours. “I’ll only be a minute.” His hand still cradles your elbow as he pulls the truck’s door open, thumb sweeping over the ridge of bone there.

His hand feels tight, even though it’s probably not. You tug your arm gently out of his grasp and take a step back. “I’m not going to stay here,” you try again, gathering your courage and tipping your chin up. “It’s my apartment. And I don’t want you to go alone.”

Joel stares at you, brows lowering over his eyes.

Anxiety beats a nervous, familiar pattern against your ribs, hollowing out the well of your lungs. You bite back the urge to apologize to him again, but he clearly doesn’t want to hear it since he hasn’t responded to it yet.

He is angry with you, and you don’t like that. But you try to remind yourself again that Joel is not your ex, that in the months you’ve known him, he’s never made you feel unsafe, or like you couldn’t disagree with him.

But it hadn’t been like that with your ex at first either, and your body is not listening to your mind.

“Jesus Christ—” he grits out then stops, the words long and deeply accented in his mouth. You do your best to swallow down the squirming worry souring your belly. “Fine. Just—behind me.”

You aren’t sure how to deal with Joel like this, he’s always so soft and kind and easy with you.

And you suppose he’s being soft with you now, he’s just—

Angry. He sounds mad; he must be pissed off. Probably because you’ve called him out of bed in the middle of night for no good reason, really. You should have just plucked up the courage to go inside by yourself. It’s likely you’ve called him down for nothing.

“Okay,” you relent. “Behind you.”

He doesn’t answer and shuts the truck door. Instead, he moves toward your building without preamble, decidedly not looking at you.

Seeing the street door wide open when you got home had scared you, the security light not blinking on had terrified you, and then Joel’s constant worries had drifted into the back of your mind, cloyingly poisonous.

He hates that you leave your windows open and trust the town you live in. He hates anytime you mention that your neighbors leave their door unlocked, even as a joke.

Ain’t safe, he always said, you don’t do that.

It was never a question.

He worries about you standing on the street and struggling with the door. He worries about you getting robbed or worse. You always rolled your eyes, because it was always fine and Joel was a serial worrier.

But that had been all you were able to think of as you stood there on the street.

Somehow, you’d convinced yourself to go inside after a few long minutes. You’d debated just going inside too, when you found your apartment door open but the fear had eventually won out.

Joel’s broad shoulders disappear into the dark entryway before the stairwell light flares on. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and jeans. He looks rumpled and soft and painfully domestic. His jeans are pressed with creases, the laces of his boots undone. The t-shirt stretches across the plains of his back, tight against his shoulders. His hair, normally carefully brushed, is mussed. A lick of gray hair sticks up off his forehead.

When he stops in front of your apartment door, you have to repress the urge to smooth it back, to press yourself into his side in silent askance for comfort you’re not sure you deserve.

“I’m sorry,” you find yourself saying again. “Really,” you continue, trying to ignore the dread building colonies in your lungs.

Nervous now, you realize, not because you might have been robbed, but because Joel is angry with you.

But, like all the other times, Joel doesn't acknowledge your apology. He pushes the door open and flips on the light just inside the door.

Your apartment looks the way it always does, homely and calm. You can’t see a single thing out of place, but that doesn’t stop Joel from searching through it anyway.

For the next few minutes it's quiet as Joel moves slowly around your little apartment. It’s messy, messier than usual. And when he pushes your bedroom door open, you feel embarrassment crawl up the back of your throat.

Because this is the first time he’s seeing your bedroom, also a mess, and you realize you wanted that to go differently.

He’s only ever had cause to sit at your tiny kitchen table, your sofa, before.

The floor is strewn with clothes, your bed is unmade, half your jewelry is out of its box and strung across your dresser. Used glasses and mugs sit on your bedside table that you’ve yet to take to the kitchen, your desk is a mess of old receipts, record sleeves, discarded pens, and stacks of books.

You wince when he pushes aside your curtains and slams your window shut, the one you always left open for Paprika, before he opens your closet door.

When your throat tightens, you leave him to your room and sit on your couch instead to wait.

Inexplicable shame and embarrassment melts around your heart. You try not to think of yourself as a bother to him, not exactly, anyway, and not anymore. But it's hard in this moment when he sounds so upset, so irritated with you.

Over the last few months, being around Joel and being. . .kind of something, something indefinable and light, to each other, you’ve realized it wasn’t just the tattoo. The tattoo your ex gave you, branded you with, was just the final nail in the coffin.

Now is a good reminder of that, that you’re sitting around waiting for Joel to tell you how useless you are, to break something, to snap at you.

He won’t, you know that. Somewhere inside you, you know that’s the truth.

But your body does not understand that. You’re coiled as tight as a spring, hands fisted in your lap as you wait for the other shoe to drop, for his concern to evaporate when he realizes there really is nothing wrong.

Anxiety burns bright in your belly, echoes in the stiff cut of Joel’s shoulders, the way he stalks around your apartment, checking increasingly more absurd hiding places until he’s satisfied that you’re alone and the door is locked.

Joel pushes aside the clothes hanging in your closet, gets on his hands and knees and looks under your bed, and finally peeks in your bathroom.

He feels calmer, better, now that he knows you’re safe and unharmed, that you’re there in the living room with the front door locked and your bedroom window shut.

Which reminds him of that damn cat you sometimes let into your apartment, and doesn’t seem to be around.

Joel trails back to the main room, ignoring the details of your bedroom—the clothes in piles on the floor, the few books strewn across your bed and desk with pens sticking out of the pages, the soft cerulean and cream blankets draped over your bed and on the chair in the corner. He shouldn’t get to see those things, not like this at least. “Where’s your cat?”

You blink and turn to look at him over the back of the sofa. You have one of the brightly colored, crocheted shawls over your shoulders and had been staring at his painting. The one he gifted you a few weeks before and that you don’t know is of you. The doe with bees dancing around her ears.

It’s an okay painting, but you adore it.

“What?”

“Your cat,” Joel grumbles. He’s yet to meet the cat, who always made himself scarce whenever he happened to find himself in your apartment. “Paprika, right? He’s not inside. He okay?”

He doesn’t want to go searching alleyways in the dark for the orange tabby but he’ll do it. For you, he’d do it.

“Oh,” you frown. “He’s not really mine,” you shake your head and shift your eyes from his. You look anxious and drawn. It’s like a lead weight in his stomach, to see fear and uncertainty spilled across your face. “He’s fine. I just feed him sometimes. He comes and goes when he likes.”

Joel hesitates. “You sure?”

“I—” Your eyes flicker over him before you look away again, your expression closing up. “Um,” you shift uncomfortably. Your shoulders are tense. “Yeah. He doesn’t—he doesn’t really need me.”

Something about the way you say it breaks his heart.

There are a lot of things you don’t see clearly about yourself, and your worth, your importance, is one of them.

“Thanks for coming by,” you say eventually when he doesn’t reply and rounds the couch to sit next to you. “I really didn’t mean to bother you.”

Joel reaches for you, carefully slots his hand in the crook of your elbow. You tense and he sweeps his thumb over the inside of your arm, soothing you the way he always does. His eyes drift down to your tattoo, the one he gave you. It looks beautiful on you. So beautiful he’s drawn up half a dozen other designs just for you.

He’d draw forever, if it meant getting something just right for you again.

It leaves something warm in him, that you like the tattoo so much.

“I think everything is all right,” he admits. He expects you to relax with that reassurance but your arm goes impossibly tenser beneath his touch. “I don’t want you stayin’ here tonight.”

The words fall out of his mouth. They’d been twisting circles around his mind since he picked up your phone call half an hour before, but now they spill out, desperate. Anxiety warps his voice into something hard, something tainted with acrid vulnerability that he hates.

He doesn’t know if you hear it, but you go still and swallow thickly. You tug your arm away from his hand and rub the inside of your elbow.

Your eyes meet his, wide and weighed down with something hurt. His pretty little doe, afraid. He suppresses the urge to tell you it’s all right, that he’s got you.

“But it’s all fine, isn't it?” You ask, like that matters at all, like the night isn’t long.

“Guess so,” he concedes. “But I ain’t leavin’ you here alone tonight. I can’t.”

Your frown, lips parting gently as you stare down at your lap.

“I’d feel better if y’stayed with me,” he continues when you don’t answer, his voice still laced with irritation. He clears it, tries to make it softer but the worry lingers, infects, roots down in him like you have, bright as sunshine, sweet as tea and bumblebees on a summer evening. You make him sick with worry and he needs to know you’re safe. He needs to see you, real and right in front of him. “Tonight.”

“Better?” You look up again, confusion tugging your brows up. “Why?”

Joel fists his hands on his knees. His knuckles strain against his skin, the flesh white with tension. It pulls hard until something starts to ache, and he has to wonder if that’s how you always feel. If your skin feels like a thousand tiny needles are prinkling at the underside of your skin.

“Yeah,” he says, his accent deepened, kinked and hard. “Better knownin’ you’re okay.” His voice doesn’t raise in volume, but you still flinch. You try to pass it off as a shiver but he sees it, finally sees what you see, what you’re so clearly waiting for.

The thought alone makes him want to curl inward, crawl inside his own heart and shield you there. Makes him sick with unease.

And his suspicions are only confirmed when you duck your head, tuck your hands beneath your thighs, and start again, “I’m sorry for bothering you. I really didn’t mean to drag you out of bed for nothing.”

Joel isn’t sure what to say to that as he realizes you’ve been apologizing repeatedly since he got there.

It makes him hate himself, because you’re so clearly afraid of him.

The silence stretches, moonlight pools on your thighs and around your calves from the kitchen window, competing with the low yellow of the floor lamp. You fidget with a loose thread on your jeans, fingers plucking nervously at it.

“It wasn’t—” He shakes his head. He can’t think of a way to reassure you. “You think it was nothin’?”

“Well,” you glance around your intruder-less apartment. Like it’s all the damning evidence you need. “It was. I shouldn’t have called.”

Joel curls a gentle finger beneath your chin and tips your face up, making an effort to have his voice as gentle as he possibly can. Like you’re that deer again, the one that’s familiar with him and yet still wary, still watchful. “You all right with that? Comin’ home with me?” You reluctantly lift your eyes to his and give a mute nod. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry,” you burst out again, soft eyes fringed with worry. “I—”

“Hey.” Joel doesn’t let you look away from him, smoothes his thumb against your chin. Your skin is soft there, and you don’t try to pull away again. “I always want you to call on me. For anythin’. It wasn’t nothin’. I’m glad you called me.”

You blink at the sincerity in his voice. Some of the tension around you fades. “I ain’t upset with you,” he says, just so you’re both clear.

You pull your face away from his hand, and he knows your skin feels stretched too thin, tight and uncomfortable, because you scrub at it again with your hand.

Joel lets his hand drop to the space between you. “Stay with me tonight, darlin’.” he pleads, not sure he’ll be able to make the drive home if you say no. “In the mornin’ we’ll come back here, see if anything is missin’, and I’ll change the locks.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine, Joel,” you try again. “It’s okay. I’m safe here.”

But that isn’t good enough. He needs to know you’re okay and he can’t do that if you’re in this damn apartment alone with locks he no longer has any kind of faith in.

He doesn’t want to try touching you again, not when you’re fidgeting and anxious and pulling away. Guilt ties knots around his lungs when he thinks of you flinching, how often he’s touched you without thought tonight. “Look at me,” he says instead. “Look at me, baby.”

You lift your eyes to his, your gaze hooking into his, desperation he can’t place lingering in your expression. “I’m proud of you, for callin’ on me. But I won’t rest knowin’ you’re here alone.”

You frown. “Proud?” This time, you reach for him.

Your hand is warm and soft, the brush of your fingers against his palm like homecoming. “Yeah.” And then, again, “I’m not mad. You did good.”

He can’t tell if you believe him, but you agree to stay with him anyway.

You’ve been to Joel’s house more than a few times and each time, it’s more familiar than the last.

Joel’s touch is on everything there. His girls’ lives are fingerprinted on every surface, his life and his family pressed into each fold of the house. The walls sigh with memories that have been collected and transported from Austin, wrapped in tissue paper and delicately given a place to live. Somehow, it always smells like sage has always just been burned.

There are a pair of sheep and a goat that command the acres of land around the ranch. “I’d like a couple horses,” he’d said the first time he brought you over and showed you around, months before. A couple weeks had passed since you’d had breakfast with him and his girls for the first time, and you were already dangerously attached to him. “But that’s money and time I don’t have.”

“You should get chickens,” you’d said, petting one of the goats through the wooden fence, squinting at him through autumn sunshine.

“Chickens?”

“Mhm. For eggs. Cost less money than horses and there’s nothing like fresh eggs.”

Joel had only looked consideringly out over the field. “Chickens for horses,” he’d laughed a little, the sound dry and pleasant, like he found you a peculiar kind of amusing. “There’s an idea.”

The driveway is long, the world far away. Late autumn air drifts in the truck’s open windows, warm with dry heat. The fingers of bare trees reach toward the sky, skeletal and thin, clenched around the outline of the moon.

The ranch always feels like a home, like a refuge, and in the night it seems like a fortress. He parks the truck beneath a leafless oak and kills the engine. You listen to it pop as it cools in the darkness.

Lightning bugs careen through the air, the low sounds of crickets and cicadas cascading on the breeze. “C’mon,” Joel’s voice is crinkled, washed in the gentle, pastel colored tones you know. “Let’s get you inside.”

Joel takes your bag from your hands and meets you on your side of the truck before you even have the door fully open, his hand pressed to your spine. You fight the urge to lean away, an anxiousness thrumming under your skin that isn’t familiar when it comes to Joel’s touch.

As you cross the driveway to his front porch you spot something through the dark, a new structure near the sheep’s fence. “Are you building something?”

He turns to where you’re looking. “Chicken coop,” he mumbles.

“You’re getting chickens?” You ask, surprised.

“Told me to, didn’t ya?”

You suppose you did, though you didn’t know he’d actually taken your suggestion to heart.

But he sounds annoyed again, so you let it go, let him push you ahead of him toward the house. Joel’s front door, unlike your own, opens without complaint.

His keys rattle as he sits them on the table inside the door. The living room light blinks on, a warm yellow that contrasts against the lightening blue sky beyond the front windows. Guilt swirls in your belly again. It’s so late that it’s now early.

If you weren’t so stupid, if you weren’t so useless—

The only thing you can be grateful for is that it’s a Sunday and Joel doesn’t have to rush to the studio after being awake all night.

A new, shame laden thought blooms, infects—maybe he felt he had no choice but to heed your call. Because you’re useless.

“This way,” Joel grumbles lowly in your ear, his hand on your hip, pushing you through the living room gently but forcefully, like he’s herding a particularly stubborn sheep.

You step away from his hand, and this time Joel notices immediately and drops his hand. “That’s okay,” you assure him. “I remember where the bathroom is.”

“You all right?” He asks. “I know you’re probably—”

“I know you said you aren’t angry,” you interrupt, fidgeting with your fingers. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things for me. You could have said no. You could have told me to figure it out.”

He stares at you, confusion pulling at the lines in his face. You have to lock down the urge to reach up and trace the delicate pattern of crow’s feet beside his eyes. “I didn’t want to say no.”

You blink, something warm worming its way into your heart, replacing the dread that had curled there like a snake, sharp with venom, waiting to strike. “You didn’t?”

“Sweetheart,” he says, extending his hand to you but not touching you. “I’d do it every night if I had to, if it meant you were safe. You don’t have to figure it out. Not alone, anyhow.”

“Well,” you say gently. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to every night.” Then, before you can help yourself, you continue, “I know you said you weren’t, but you just. . .you sounded angry.” You stop and think about leaving it at that but he would never understand you if you left him to guess. You want to be honest with him besides. You want him to trust you. “And I. . .my ex he—well, he would have been upset. He would have told me to figure it out.”

You fold your hand into his, still outstretched to you. The pads of his fingers are rough and familiar beneath yours. “I ain’t him,” he reminds you.

“I know. But it’s hard to remember, sometimes.” You take a long breath. “I always had to get ahead of it, y’know? Because I was always in the wrong. It was somehow always my fault.”

Joel watches you, his eyes knowing in a way you can’t decipher. He nods and instead of answering, he holds out your bag. “C’mon,” he says, voice soft, like the brush of wings. “Been a long night.”

When you’ve washed your face and changed your clothes and convinced yourself that Joel was telling the truth and that he would not mind seeing you in your pajamas—you trek back through the house to find him in the kitchen.

He’s sitting at the dining table, covered in Sarah’s textbooks from the previous semester and photo albums and mail, a bowl of fruit and a jar of honey, art supplies and the tiniest carving of a deer you’ve ever seen. You pause and let your bag fall to the floor before slowly approaching.

Joel’s shoulders are loose and soft, one hand relaxed and open on the table, the other curled around a pencil as he sketches in an open leather bound book.

He turns and closes the book before you can peer over his shoulder and see what it is he’s working on. “Hey,” he says, the cut of his voice back to what you know. It alights on you in a warm glow, chases the fog of worry from your mind. “You all right?”

It feels like the thousandth time he’s asked you.

“I promise I’m fine, Joel,” you assure, pressing one hand to the space between his shoulder blades. He leans back into your touch almost immediately, the tendon in his neck loosening. You rub your thumb slowly against his skin. Thick muscle flexes and releases beneath your hand. “Really.”

“It’s okay,” he says, glancing up at you. “If you’re shaken up.”

You pause and tilt your head at him. “Do you want me to be?” You ask, finally pushing that errant lock of his hair back down and into place.

“No,” he answers immediately. He stares up at you with big, sincere eyes. Your gaze flicks across his face, down to his mouth, and not for the first time, you find yourself wishing he’d kiss you.

Just like each Sunday morning spent on his porch, just like all those times he pointed wildlife out to you, his shoulder pressed into yours, his face close to yours when you turned to smile at him.

“Are you shaken up?” You ask, refocusing on the softness of his gaze.

Joel shifts in his seat and then reaches out to draw the chair next to him out. You let your hand fall from his back and fold yourself into the space next to him, wishing he’d tuck you into his side.

He doesn’t, because he’s Joel. Instead, he lays his hand on the table and lets you come to him, just like he always does, just like he always has.

A few weeks before, when Joel was driving you back to town, you’d seen a deer on the side of the road. She was beautiful with big, dark eyes and a smooth tawny coat. You’d pointed her out, watched the flick and twitch of her alert ears.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen such a pretty animal before. And then, behind her, two spotted deer, smaller, clearly younger, but no longer fawns, had appeared.

Joel, to your surprise, pulled over. He told you to stay put and then approached them slowly, so he could usher them back into the woods rather than spook them into the road. He hadn’t said anything to you about it and you hadn’t asked, but the act had stuck with you.

Now, his hand there on the table, you’re reminded of that moment. You’re reminded of all the moments like this one, where he patiently waited for you to come closer.

You reach out and fold your fingers through his. “Yeah, I was,” he admits and for a long while he doesn’t say anything else. You aren’t really expecting him to.

The light in the kitchen is warm and muted, a cold blue morning light beginning to grow on the other side of the blinds. There are pictures of his girls all along the wall beside the door that leads to the back deck.

Sarah and Ellie in high school graduation gowns and caps, Ellie bent over someone’s shoulder as she tattooed, hair obscuring her face and theirs, Sarah as a baby in Joel’s arms, Ellie as a gap-toothed child, tongue poking out of her mouth, Tommy and Joel with their arms around each other, fishing poles leaning against the truck behind them.

Joel is only in a couple of the pictures, the space on the wall reserved for the people he loved and not himself. You squint closer. “Joel,” you say, a spike of laughter in your voice. “Is that you? Did Ellie tattoo you?”

“Yep,” he says with a shrug. “Needed the practice.”

“I didn’t know,” you turn back to him and tighten your grip on his hand. You smile. “How many tattoos do you have that I’ve never gotten to see?”

His mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. “Guess,” he says, throwing your challenge from months ago back at you.

You roll your eyes and don’t take the bait. Instead you say, “It’s okay, you know? That you were shaken up. That’s okay. I’m okay.”

He watches you for a long moment before his eyes drop, and he watches your hands instead. His voice is carefully casual and even when he asks, “How long did you stay with him? After the tattoo?”

There’s nothing accusatory in his voice and it takes you a moment to realize Joel is asking about the tattoo on your shoulder, the one your ex permanently marked you with.

He’s asking about the Pandora’s box of your body, the cavalcade of emotions and fears that lived inside you.

You expected anger, to be screamed at for something out of your control, to be faulted for someone else compromising your safety, to be blamed for asking for help and wanting someone else to take care of you.

“The tattoo. . .” you trail off and swallow back the uncomfortable feeling that lodges itself in the back of your throat. “It was the last straw.” You look away. “I just didn’t realize it at the time. I thought all the other stuff—I thought it was my fault. It doesn’t make sense while it’s happening to you, I guess. You pretend it’s normal because sometimes things are fine and good. I was just stupid enough to wait until after he left me with something permanent to realize things were so bad.”

Joel doesn’t say anything for a minute but when he pulls his hand away from yours, your belly swoops painfully, a knot forming in your chest.

It’s a lot.

Your issues with touch, the relationship trauma you haven’t examined but locked away to burst to the surface while someone was trying to help you. The doubt that he even really wanted to help you, because who would?

But then he says, “It ain’t permanent. Look here.” He tips your chin up with a delicate tap.

You turn and watch him leaf through the leather bound book. He pulls out a sketch and hands it to you. The paper is thick, the edges of it rough and torn. You don’t say anything, not really sure what you’re looking at. The design is beautiful, in the same style as the tattoo on your forearm.

It’s so clearly for you specifically that it makes your heart cinch painfully tight.

“It’s a—we can change it however y’want. It’s a design for a cover-up,” he plucks the page from your fingers and turns it. “See here, there underneath is the original, best as I could remember it anyway.” It’s a coverup of the ugly fucking tattoo on your shoulder, the reminder, the painful, itchy grossness.

You stare at it, unable to form words, lips moving soundlessly as you take the page back, looking more closely at the details, at the clever ways he’d thought of incorporating the existing lines. He doesn’t say anything, not even when you turn and throw your arms around his neck, squeezing tight until his arms curl around your waist. “He doesn’t get to have you,” he says.

One broad hand slides up your spine to cup the back of your neck. It makes you feel small. In a good way, in a way that makes you close your eyes to stave off the tide rising in your chest.

He’d done that the last time he held you, too. When you’d melted into him in your kitchen and told him you were nothing but work. He’d whispered things like it’s okay and good girl in your ear then.

His fingers are warm and firm against your skin, rough and soft in all the right places. An ache forms between your ribs, juts up into your heart and splits you open.

“Thank you,” you say against his shoulder. “For everything.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for,” he says, his chest rising and falling with each word, like a symphony against your own body.

You bury your nose against his neck, let the pins and needles of touch fade away, replaced with the safety that Joel carried around with him like it cost him nothing. “I mean it,” you say quietly.

“I know you do,” he replies.

The morning light is golden now, bleeding in through the curtains in thin shafts, bars that cross you and Joel, still settled in his arms. It doesn’t feel wrong to relax against him, to let him rub your back slowly.

It doesn’t hurt, and you realize you don’t expect it to.

“You wanna sleep?”

“Maybe for a little while.”

You move out of his grasp, and then let him pull you along to his bedroom.

Joel’s room is darker than the kitchen, and it's easy not to think too hard about what’s happening as you slide beneath the sheets next to him.

It’s quiet, the whole world still and silent aside from the fan rotating slowly overhead.

You reach for him in the dark, curl up tight against his side. His arm slides around your back, tugs you that much closer. He’s still in his jeans but you don’t point that out because you don’t want him to move.

“One of my tattoos,” he says against your temple, when you relax into the safe circle of his arms. “Is over my heart.”

You contemplate that for a long time, trying to imagine what it might be. “A nice one? Or an Ellie apprenticing one?”

He chuckles. “A nice one.” You expect him to ask about your tattoos, and you’re prepared to answer, but he says instead, “It’s been a long time, since I’ve done this.”

Joel doesn’t specify what he means by this, whatever little thing has been growing between you. “Have someone in your bed?” You tease.

He doesn’t answer, the silence heavy, almost melancholy. His hand slides up your back again, the fabric of your shirt teasing up. You tense when his fingers brush against your bare skin, warm and gentle.

His hand moves away and tugs your shirt back down for you. You consider, maybe for the first time, Joel’s position. He’s only ever touched you freely, so needfully, the first and second times you’d been tattooed by him, and every day you’ve seen him since.

He plays by your rules and you have to wonder what he needs.

It’s been a long time, he’d said. He’s inched closer to you over a period of months, patience in spades wrapped around you like a safety net.

You trust Joel, you realize. Maybe you’d known it before but it sinks into your skin in that moment, folds itself tightly inside your soul. You want to let him take something he needs. “It’s okay,” you find yourself saying. “You can. . .it’s okay.”

He hesitates and you push one of his hands back to your waist. “I like it,” you assure him.

He presses both hands beneath your shirt so they rest against the small of your back. The span of his hands are broad, splayed across your spine, over the ridges of your vertebrae. “Sure?” He asks, but his nose is pressed against your temple, his body loose and molded to yours. “My girl,” you think he says, so quiet it’s almost inaudible, the words pressed right against your forehead in a kiss. “Good girl.”

It feels so nice, the intimacy without expectation of anything more, without feeling like something was wrong with you. It feels like the envelope of your heart may burst.

You tuck yourself tighter into the crook of his arm, nose buried against his shoulder. He smells so strongly of himself there, the natural scent of his skin and sweat undercut only slightly by the faded smell of his soap.

He sounds close to sleep, exhausted after the worrisome, anxiety fueled night you had accidentally caused him. “Joel?” He grunts so you know he’s listening, still awake. “My antler tattoo is on my ribs.”

“What?” His hands drift a bit higher. “Really?”

“Mm.”

So when his fingers trace over your bare skin, you close your eyes. The sensation is so nice. The earlier acrid wave of fear has passed and no needles stab at your skin. It tickles, it feels like wings against your ribs.

Want flutters alive, in your belly, between your legs.

His bedroom is warm and cast in faded, milky light. He shifts and pushes up the sleeve of his t-shirt, until the curve of his opposite shoulder and the expanse of skin beneath is bared to your eyes. “One of Ellie’s first,” he says. It’s a needless explanation, though you find the tiny outline of the dinosaur a little funny.

When you reach across his chest and touch it, Joel twitches, like he isn’t expecting you to. His skin is soft there. “It suits you,” you say as he digs both his hands into your waist again.

You trace your fingers over his chest and throat. You trace the line by his eyes and rake your fingers through his hair.

He leans into your touch and you feel like the world rests in your palm.

When he says, “I think I can feel yours.” You close your eyes and smile. It almost feels like he’s tracing the outline of it.

“You can’t.”

“I can,” he disagrees. “It’s real pretty.”

You want to offer to show him yours in return, but sleep and safety pull you under.

Joel’s room is empty when he wakes, and if it weren’t for the clear imprint of your body in the nest of sheets next to him, he’d think the previous night was a dream.

He’d think the comfortable way you curled into him was a dream.

He lies there, jeans cutting into his waist painfully, thinking about how easily you’d curled up next to him, how velvet soft your skin was. It makes him smile and he groans and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just like a kid,” he huffs. You make him feel young, like this is the first time and he’s a better man than he is.

But he’s starting to wonder if that’s what love is supposed to feel like. Off Balance and brand new and secure and like it had always been there and always would be, all at once.

Joel gets up slowly, shoulder and knees and back smarting as he does. He feels the ghost of your head on his shoulder, an ache forming along his collarbone from the weight of it resting there. His fingers snag on the blanket you must have thrown over him in lieu of your body heat.

He wonders where you’ve gotten to. Maybe you left, took an Uber back to town.

Then, he hears it; commotion in his kitchen.

And he remembers it’s a Sunday and that his girls have been visiting more often, ever since they figured you were around on most Sundays. That usually you stopped by with coffee and pie from Flu’s, and sat on the front porch with him.

The noise is nice, better than waking to a silent house which he’d never gotten used to after Sarah and Ellie moved out.

His girls and you, down the hallway, in the kitchen. There’s laughter, and then a shriek as something shatters on the floor, a flood of curses from Ellie that devolve into shushing and giggling.

The smell of breakfast food cooking slips under the door as he changes. In the bathroom he slicks his hair back into place with wet fingers and thinks about your fingertips fluttering through his hair and tracing the crinkles by his eyes of their own accord. He brushes his teeth and thinks about how gently you’d laid your hand between his shoulder blades, how you let him sleep with his hands pressed inside your shirt, told him about your antler tattoo. . .

The antlers on your ribs, spearing up through the cage of your body.

He wants to see it, trace it, wants to put his mouth against it. The urge to touch every inch of you siphons into his chest, the urge to curl you in close to him, to feel the plush curves of you against his side, in his hands.

He wonders if you’d let him. He wants to earn it from you, coax you closer and closer, as slow as he has to.

When he walks down the hall and passes into the living room and then the kitchen, he finds the three of you huddled around the breakfast table. Sarah’s head is lent against your shoulder and Ellie’s bicep presses into yours.

The three of you have your heads bent together, hungry eyes sliding over something on the table in front of you.

“Mornin’,” he greets.

You look up at him, doe eyes bright, crinkled at the corners, every doubt and fear from the night before washed away. “Morning, Joel.”

“Girls,” he nods, passing by the table, beelining for the coffeepot.

“We made breakfast,” Sarah says by way of a greeting. “How come you haven’t shown her all these designs?”

He does a double take at the table, to find most of the contents of his notebook spread across the wood.

Joel sighs hard through his nose and Ellie does have the grace to at least look sheepish, though it outs her as the instigator. “It’s not like you were ever gonna show her!”

“Jesus,” he grumbles, not looking at you as he grabs a mug from the cabinet, a little embarrassed at the sheer amount of them. “Well, now I won’t get the chance to, will I?”

As he pours coffee into his mug, Ellie gives a dramatic groan and Sarah says, “C’mon, dad, don’t be like that.”

He turns to find all three of you staring at him, and he can’t really be all that upset when your mouth is twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “Come sit down,” you suggest, “and I’ll tell you which one my favorite is.”

So, he gathers up a plate of eggs and bacon and toast and ignores the smirking of both his daughters, the knowingness in both their faces grating on him, and sits across from you.

He watches you page through design after design, months worth of work, all the way back to the beginning of summer when you’d first, finally, wandered into the studio. You push one across the table towards him, and then a couple more.

“That’s just about all of ‘em,” he comments around a forkful of egg.

Instead of responding to him, you turn to Sarah and say, “Maybe one day he’ll realize he’s a good artist.”

You insist on cleaning up after breakfast so Joel can have some time with his daughters.

The light buzz of conversation seeps in from the living room. Occasionally Ellie’s voice rings out, more excitable and louder than Joel and Sarah’s. You can’t hear what they’re talking about and you don’t want to.

A bit of guilt pools in your belly, a slight worry that Joel might be upset with you for letting his girls show you something they probably shouldn’t have.

You hope he really had intended to eventually show them to you, to share with you the beautiful things he made, whether he thought of them like that or not.

Joel’s home bursts with art, with craftsmanship and creativity, though he doesn’t believe you. He tells you the same things are true about your apartment and your silly little hobbies, and you suppose both of you have a little to learn in being as proud of yourselves as you are of each other.

When you’re wiping down the counters, Ellie and Sarah pass through to gather their things and say goodbye. While Sarah gives you an unexpected hug that you make yourself hang on for, Ellie rifles through a cabinet, pilfering it for stray snacks.

“He isn’t mad you saw them,” Sarah says when she pulls back, mischievous glint in her eye.

Ellie and Sarah are the same kind of troublesome, you’ve come to realize. Sarah is just better at hiding it. “Oh yeah?”

“He needs a little push sometimes,” she says delicately and with a shrug.

“More like a huge kick in the ass,” Ellie says. “You should have heard him before he even met you! It was like you were some kind of ghost or something. But it was like that after he met you too.” Her voice pitches lower and gruffer in tone, “Ellie, you’re goin’ to spook her. Don’t say nothin’ —”

“Alright,” Joel says from the mouth of the kitchen. “That’s enough. Get your ass back to Austin.”

You smile at Ellie, “You do a really good impression.”

“Told you, dude!” She says as she slides past her dad, Sarah following right after.

Joel just grunts and then calls after them, “Drive careful!”

“Bye!” Twin voices call out before the front door slams closed.

And then you’re alone with him, fingers still tangled in a dish towel.

Joel’s eyes soften when he looks at you, and you’re reminded of his hands beneath your shirt, the iron hot touch of his body against yours. You’re reminded of the lancing burst of want that sparked inside you with him.

Only with him.

Maybe because you knew he tried to understand, that he’d let you go when you needed it.

You open your mouth, not sure what you’re going to say, when Joel steps forward and tugs the towel out of your hands. “Don’t suppose you’d come outside with me? I want to show you somethin’. See if you might help me with it.”

“Sure,” you say.

Joel nods and when you brush your knuckles against his, he laces your fingers together.

Outside the air is warm in a distinctly autumn way, with the scent of sun in the air muted, the swirling chatter of decaying leaves on the breeze, the earthy scent of hay and soil.

You cross the porch with him and descend the steps to the yard. He leads you toward the chicken coop.

“When did you have time to build that? It’s new.”

“Been workin’ on it for awhile now. Just had Tommy help me move it here from out back.”

“Oh?”

“Was supposed to be a surprise,” he grumbles.

You lean into his arm, seeing your walk from the truck to the house in a different light. “Is that why you were cranky about me seeing it last night?” Joel starts to answer when you gasp and let go of him as two red-ish brown hens and a rooster round the corner of the coop. “Joel! You already got some?”

He mutters something about goddamn chickens showing me up behind you as you crouch to watch them on the other side of the fence.

“I did,” he sighs. “Look here.” He opens the gate and ushers you through to the other side where a hatch opens in the coop. “Go on,” he says, gesturing for you to look.

Two fuzz balls peer back at you from the depths when you peer into the hatch. “Chicks?” You say excitedly.

“Chicks,” he agrees mildly. “You wanna hold one?”

Without waiting for a response, he gently cups his hands around one of the yellow, fuzzed creatures and drags it out.

And you get the very real pleasure of seeing Joel Miller standing there in the morning sunshine, holding a tiny chicken to his chest. You laugh, and he says, “What?”

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The chick is transferred to your hands from his, light and airy, like something incorporeal sitting in your palms, peeping softly. When you look at him, Joel’s face is relaxed. “What did you want me to help with?”

He clears his throat and gestures to the coop. “Paintin’.”

“Weren’t you a contractor?” You tease. “Shouldn’t you be able to paint it?”

Joel rolls his eyes. “I mean somethin’ pretty. Like how you painted your table.”

“Oh,” you murmur, something warm settling in your chest. “That’s nothing special.”

“Mhm, just like how that painting of mine you like so much ain’t special either.”

You roll your eyes and offer the baby chick back to him. “Okay, I get it. I’ll help you paint it.” Joel tucks the bird back into its home, the peeping fading when he closes the hatch. “Joel,” you reach for his wrist. “I’m sorry about seeing those sketches.”

“You ever goin’ to stop apologizin’ to me for everything?” He asks, eyes alighting on you.

“Well,” you continue. “I am. Especially if you never intended for me to see them.”

He nods and squints into the sun. His boot scuffs against the ground. “I always intended you to see ‘em. They’re yours.”

“They’re beautiful.” You step closer to him, the hens clucking around your ankles, and draw his fingers between yours. It’s quiet for a moment before you take another step. Being around Joel is like being safely shaded, like sleeping in a protected wood. “Thank you for coming when I called. You didn’t have to.”

“I did, honey,” he disagrees. “I’ll always come when you call. Even if you think it’s nothin’.”

You nod and tip your chin up, watching his eyes. The sun makes the irises look honeyed. You glance away, swallowing down the words burgeoning behind your lips, all the things you want from him and want to say to him.

He shifts. “I’m sure you got other things to get to. Let’s go take a look at your apartment—”

“Wait,” you tighten your hold on his hand. “Not everyone would do what you did. Not everyone would put up with me the way you have. My ex didn’t. He probably made me worse.” You’re so close to him you can feel the sink and rise of his chest, you can feel each deep breath like it's your own. “But you make me better, you make me safe. So just let me say thank you for once.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t let you thank me for doin’ right by you,” he says, stubborn as a bull. “I know you need reminding. But you ain’t work to me. There’s nothin’ wrong with you. I haven’t been putting up with anything. I’d drive down there every damn night if I had to.”

You tilt your cheek into his hand when he cups your jaw. Joel’s eyes are flicking over your face, his expression tense and needful, wanting.

His eyes hook into you, intense and tawny, the breath is punched from your lungs.

Never.

You’ve never felt like this with anyone, like you could be stripped bear, like he could press his hands inside your chest and feel the slick beating of your heart in his palms and everything would still be okay. He’d catch you, he’d shield you, he’d figure out a way to mend you and help you, he’d look at your heart and put it back in your chest even if he wanted to keep it for himself.

When he leans in and kisses you, it feels like fragments of your soul are being pieced back together. Shards of yourself you hadn’t even known were dust reform, shine brighter.

He cradles you to him, the line of your body pressed against his. He’s muscled and soft and broad and so solid. He groans into your mouth, licks into you. There’s possession in the way he holds you, like your his and his and his and you always have been.

Joel tastes like coffee, because there’s nothing else he could have tasted like.

He’s so familiar and safe, like sage burning against the night, like a soft place to land in all the ways a person could be.

His other hand splays against your lower back, the tips of his fingers against the waist of your jeans.

When you pull back, lungs aching for air, he presses his forehead against yours and closes his eyes. His jaw is clenched tight, a muscle jumps in his jaw, like he’s afraid.

“I’m not that skittish,” you say. “I trust you, Joel.”

He opens his eyes, swipes his thumb across your lips. He looks like a man who’s patient, steady hand has finally touched something delicate and rare.

💞 Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

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guessimwritingficsagain · 9 months

Text

Wish you were here

Summary : Joel isn't good.

Warnings : Mature content, MDNI, Joel is NOT fine, memory loss, PTSD.

I'm sorry for this, I guess my great-grand mother and my grand-father loosing it aren't helping and I needed to get this out.

-------------------------

Joel was good at reading people.

When he met you, he liked you right away. You were funny, smart, sharp, even. He liked you.

Joel was not good at liking people, so he enjoyed you the best way he knew - from afar.

He knew enough about you to understand you liked to do the same. You liked your boundaries respected, thank you very much - you’d hissed as much to a man who’d gotten a bit handsy, one night at the Bison.

That had got to him - and that had gotten his hard. He could touch you, knew that, had done it before : his hand in yours to help you get up, or slightly touching your arm to get your attention … Things he hadn’t paid much attention to until he realized he liked you a whole lot. Liked you in a way he hadn’t liked anybody since he was young and in so in love he didn’t think twice about asking Sarah’s mother to marry him.

So, to know that he was allowed to put his hands on you, even in the most innocent way, when other men were left picking up their dignity from the floor, that did something to him.

Joel would love to fuck you. He also was not going to try anything because he was two decades older than you, had a bad ear, and a dick that took its sweet time getting there. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was getting older.

But he was allowed to touch you. He knew that, made the mistake of thinking he was somehow special.

So why was he fighting for his life, here, looking at you wearing a dress, smiling at some boy, like you were on a date.

He grumbled something about using the restroom and went to take a leak he didn’t need to take while Tommy and Maria kept on chatting.

He’s pacing when you come in.

‘Hey, Joel, let’s go back.’ You offer, extending a hand. When he takes it, you just lead him back, fingers intertwined and god how lucky is he ?

‘I thought you were busy with that guy.’ He says.

You turn around look at him like you’ve done it a thousand times, and answer :

‘No, Joel, I’m always with you.’

You make him sit down, then you join him, thighs touching. You take a sip of your drink and that’s when he notices it - the ring on your finger.

Everything grows cold, all of a sudden. You’re married. Of course you are.

He moves away, scratches his beard, coughs, looks at his brother and suddenly a thought makes him jump and move closer, his hand on your shoulder, squeezing. It’s a blur - he can’t quite get the words out at first, and you’re not helping because your hand is on his thighs and it’s confusing because he likes you-

He touches you.

He’s allowed.

His hand goes up your thigh, lifting your dress up -he’s not supposed to do that, you’re married. He announces :

‘Don’t forget Sarah’s game tomorrow.’

The answer is a stillness he doesn’t understand. You break it :

‘It’s Ellie tomorrow, Joel. She’s gonna play something. You taught her, remember ?’

You’re looking at him and he wishes he could kiss you. Something flashes in his mind and he remembers.

Ellie.

Before he can say anything, you get up and announce :

‘We’re gonna call it a night.’

You walk him home, and on the porch, your left hand takes his left hand and you kiss the rings there. He doesn’t know what that means, but he’ll take what he can take. So when you ask to join him in bed, he doesn’t say no, even though nothing happens.

———

Joel wakes with his nose right in your neck. You smell a little sweaty and he’s more than happy to lazily lick your neck from bottom to top. You stir, looking tired. One of his hands finds a nipple, and he whispers :

‘Wish I could put my mouth on you properly, but Ellie’s gonna want to practice b’fore the big moment.’

‘Yeah, you go ahead.’ You whisper.

‘I love you.’ He says.

You answer in kind. ———

Taglist

@pedritobalmando @amidjarin @ajeff855 @justpedropascal @sara-alonso @sarahjkl82-blog @amidjarin @sara-alonso@justpedropasc@mrsbentallmadge @farfromjustordinary @hnt-escape @kirsteng42

#joel miller x reader

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guessimwritingficsagain · 9 months

Text

Breakout

Pairing: Boxer!Joel Miller x Fem!Reader

Summary: When former boxer turned trainer Joel Miller reluctantly agrees to take on this year's favorited newcomer, he expects the bad-tempered rookie to bring him plenty of headaches. What he doesn't expect is that he'll also bring him you.

Rating: Explicit 18+ (By proceeding to read beyond this warning, you are agreeing that you are 18 years or older)

Series Content: Alternate Universe - No Outbreak, Explicit Smut, Age Gap, Secret Relationship, Workplace Shenanigans, Jealous Ex, Risk of Getting Caught, Fighting (Obv), Teacher/Student Dynamic, Best Friend's Dad

Word Count: 7.2K

A/N: This got away from me, she says, surprising no one. Next part will be out on August 15th! Thank you to my western wife @frannyzooey for continuing to be the best beta, and to @astroboots and @djarinsbeskar for planting this thot. Love you.

Masterlist | Series Masterlist | Part 2

Joel has never been a big fan of his birthday.

At least, not since he was a kid. And even then the day had always seemed to be more of a hassle than anything else, his mama frantically trying to cram in a birthday cake and candles between her shifts. Maybe even a trip to the record store with his topped-off pocket money if he was lucky.

And Joel was. He knows he was. She had done the best she could for him and Tommy, so that even if they’d never had plenty, they’d always had enough to keep them from going hungry.

Still hadn’t stopped him from sometimes wanting more.

On the day Joel had turned fourteen, he had walked himself down to the local H-E-B and gotten a job doing whatever they’d let him do. Naively sure that he would finally feel what it felt like to have money until his first paycheck had come, and it had barely been enough to help with the bills let alone to have some to stash away.

Joel had tucked every dime into his mama’s purse while she slept on the couch that afternoon before he took Tommy with him and started going door to door. Offering to mow lawns, paint houses, fix fences… Anything he thought he could successfully stumble his way through while the radio and his younger brother played nearby.

Losing count of the number of jobs he held before he hit graduation, Joel took pretty much anything that would allow him to scrape together enough to cover the tuition for University of Texas and the gas to get him to and from campus. The first couple years slipping by during a balancing act of work schedules, class lists, and whatever few hours of sleep he could manage after he had helped Tommy with his homework and then finished his own.

Still Joel had somehow made time on his 21st birthday to drop into some of the local bars around Austin, a guitar slung over his back and a lingering hope in his chest that he might actually get to put his foot one step closer to what he wanted.

“Not looking for any new acts right now, although I am looking for a new door guy,” the owner of the seventh place he tried had told him while giving Joel a critical once over. “The crowds can get a little rowdy on the nights we have bands in. I need someone who makes them think twice and who can break it up if they’re not thinking at all.”

“Right,” Joel had muttered, crossing his arms against his chest as he thought it over. Couldn’t be any worse than some of the fights he’d had to pull Tommy out of since grade school. Definitely couldn’t be any worse than tarring roofs in the Texas heat. “Probably could handle that for you.”

“By the look of you, I think you’re probably right,” the owner had said with a pleased nod, clapping Joel on the shoulder before heading towards the back office. “Come on, you can fill out the paperwork.”

Joel had his first fight his first night on the clock. His delusions about getting, at the very least, to spend the night listening to music and potentially making a few connections going up in a cloud of cigarette smoke as soon as the first fist had attempted to connect with his face. Suddenly tarring roofs hadn’t seemed so bad.

A few months into the job, Joel had walked back into the bar after putting yet another drunk out on the sidewalk to find a man in a suit waiting by his station at the door. His immediate thought being that the guy must be talking to someone who definitely wasn’t him until he had side-stepped directly into Joel’s path.

“Hey, kid, mind if I talk to you about something real quick?”

Kid? When was the last time anyone had called him kid?

“Will just take a second,” the man had reassured him, completely unbothered by the continuing chaos around him. “I have an opportunity for you.”

The opportunity had been a chance to see if Joel could cut it as a boxer, the man rambling on about how he thought Joel had both good instincts and decent control. Neither compliment had peaked Joel’s interest like the mention of prize money, however, until he reminded himself that he had no desire to spend any more time getting his face bashed in than he already was.

“Think about it,” the guy had said, tucking a business card into the front pocket of Joel’s denim shirt as he’d looked with a small frown at the new tear in Joel’s old jeans, one of several courtesy of the pavement outside. “Could change your life.”

“Right,” Joel had said, glad at least that Tommy wasn’t there to jump at the offer and create yet another mess he’d just have to clean up. “You enjoy your evening.”

Joel had walked away after that, already needing to intervene in another scuffle that was about to turn into a brawl, but when he had gotten home that night, he had tossed the card onto his desk instead of into the bin. Left it there right up until the day when he found out that an impulsive one night stand had turned into a lifelong commitment.

“Hey, this is Joel… Miller. The bouncer from the bar?” he’d said into the handset, trying to keep his voice low so that neither his mama or Tommy would hear downstairs. “How much money are we talking about?”

Joel could still swear he’d heard the guy grin, his stomach bottoming out because he knew he was being a sucker. But he also didn’t know what else to do.

“Depends on you, Joel,” the voice had said on the other end. “All depends on you.”

Well at least that much he’s always known.

*****

Twenty years after Joel had agreed to hear a full sales pitch, he checks his watch and walks into the gym still wondering what he could have done differently. How he could’ve avoided serving a life sentence amongst the thud of punching bags and the creak of boxing rings, the smell of chalk and sweat, the overwhelming annoyance that comes from dealing with overinflated egos.

Such as the one that must belong to the jackass that is currently sprawled out on the old couch in Joel’s office like he owns the place, the twenty-something clearly visible through the front glass with his feet up, his eyes closed, and even a goddamn cigarette in his mouth.

Joel takes a deep breath, fingers flexing around the rim of his half-empty to-go cup of coffee as he envisions dragging the intruder out by his ear, and he’s about to step forward right up until he sees the gym owner step out of his office a few doors down, the grin on his face making Joel feel anything but cheerful.

“No,” Joel says before the other man can even get a word in. “Absolutely not.”

“Now, hold on,” Charlie Hunter says, raising an eyebrow at him and jerking his head in the direction of his own office. “Will just take a second.”

“I don’t babysit,” Joel responds, keeping his feet firmly planted where he is. “You know that.”

Charlie smiles again, starting to sidle over with the same inability to take No for a final answer now that he had all those years ago. Slicked back hairstyle and suit might be the same, too.

“Would you just hear me out?” Charlie asks once he’s close enough to Joel to let the noise of the gym cover their conversation. “This one’s the real deal. He just needs someone to train him up a bit.”

“The last person you needed me to train a bit threw a tantrum in the middle of the ring cause his opponent hit him too hard,” Joel reminds him, his irritation growing at just the memory. “We agreed after that I was done wasting my time. Give this one to someone else.”

“I can’t give him to someone else,” Charlie insists, crossing his arms so that Joel can make out just how thin the elbows of Charlie’s suit coat are getting. “I had to promise him you just to get him in the door. It was that or he was going to go to the Fireflies.”

Joel’s jaw clenches, his eyes narrowing as he stares Charlie down and tries to determine if he’s just playing him because he knows how Joel feels about that particular rival gym.

In response, Charlie holds up his hands as if to say, “Would I lie to you?”

Yes. Yes, he would.

“Listen,” Charlie tries, switching tactics when Joel continues to remain unmoved. “This isn’t just some kid.”

Joel looks back through the front glass of his office, just in time to see the cigarette slip slightly in the rookie’s mouth as he lolls his head to the side in his sleep.

“Everyone,” Charlie continues, missing the impending fire hazard while his focus stays on Joel, “and I mean everyone thinks he’s going to be the second coming of Christ.”

“Just don’t make gods like they used to, I guess.”

“Joel.” Charlie’s voice turns nearly pleading, enough that Joel looks at him again in surprise before he continues, “We need this. Could mean some actual money coming in again.”

Just once Joel would like that to not work on him. To have that sort of privilege.

Instead he sighs, remembers the skyhigh pile of bills waiting at home, and he rubs the back of his neck with the hand that’s not still clutching his coffee. “How much?”

Charlie’s apprehension fades from his face, the lifelong shark back as he says. “Twenty percent. I’ll give you twenty percent of the gym’s take.”

Joel snorts, very nearly insulted. “Then you can also give yourself a new trainer.”

He starts to turn, knowing Charlie will stop him and he does. This little song and dance is as much a part of their relationship as all the other bullshit.

“Thirty.”

Joel sips from his coffee, but otherwise says nothing.

“Fine,” Charlie concedes again. “Thirty-five.”

What Joel wouldn’t give to tell him to fuck off. To turn back around and walk out the door and just…

“Deal.”

They shake on it, Charlie taking it one step further by giving Joel a solid clap on the shoulder before he turns and walks back to his office, stopping in the doorway before he shouts back, “Oh, and happy birthday.”

*****

Is this really it?

You swipe back and forth between the address in your text and the one in your maps app, your eyes flicking up once more to the broken down building to your right after you’ve confirmed it.

“It’s not that bad,” you mutter to yourself, sitting in your car and attempting to reconcile the legendary reputation that your boyfriend Tyler had gone on and on about with the boarded up windows and faded paint of Hunter’s Gym. “Just needs some TLC.”

Even as you wonder how far you could get in an afternoon with a pressure washer and some fresh paint, you can practically see Tyler rolling his eyes at you, hear the offhand remark he would make about how you always need everything perfect.

It’s not that. Not really. It’s more that you get a hum in your blood when you get to see the difference it makes when things are taken care of. Old furniture, old houses… even the occasional neglected house plant you rescue from the garden store. Green leaves and thriving roots again with nothing more than some new soil, fresh water, and a spot in the sun.

Your attention goes back to your phone, quickly typing the words Hunter’s Gym into the search bar and waiting for the results to load at a devastatingly slow pace. You’ve needed a new phone for ages, your current one purchased back when you and Tyler were both consistently holding down a job but that’s been some years ago now. In fact, it has been at least a year since Tyler has worked a regular shift at all. Too busy chasing his dreams to clock in and out.

You let your head drop back against the headrest, giving up on your phone and tossing it into the passenger seat in frustration.

It’ll be worth it in the end. We’re getting closer. It won’t be like this forever.

But, God, it feels like it.

Once, you and Tyler had been high school sweethearts running from your small town to the big city, starry-eyed and aching to find the kind of life you would never have been able to back home.

And at first it felt like you had.

Your tiny downtown apartment had felt like freedom just like takeout containers eaten cross-legged on the living room floor had felt like a feast, one big adventure that had landed you both right where you were supposed to be back when all you had needed was each other.

But that was five years ago… Five years of working the same terrible schedules at the same terrible restaurants. Five years of wondering if this would be the month you didn’t make rent. Five years of just waiting. You are so tired of waiting.

You snatch up your discarded phone again, see the page is still trying to load just before you check the clock in the dash. Fifteen minutes past the time when Tyler told you to pick him up.

You look at the door to the gym, fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

You are just so tired of waiting.

*****

Joel leans against the ropes of the corner ring, watching the so-called second coming of Christ otherwise known as Tyler bounce around like he’s too afraid to stand still.

Step. Step. Jab. Duck. Uppercut. Step. Step. Duck. Counter.

Undeniably the kid does have ability, his ongoing winning streak in low-level matches proof of that, but for as much as he is quick and somewhat powerful with his movements, he has little to no technique. Something he seems unaware of since every time he throws a punch, he looks to Joel to see if he’s impressed. Clearly showing off but not in the way he thinks.

Christ, the attitude on this little shit.

When Joel had finally made it into his office earlier, Tyler hadn’t even cracked his eyes open until Joel had shut the door loudly behind him. A ripple of satisfaction passing through him at the way his new trainee had nearly jumped out of his skin, although it had been quickly followed by more irritation when the kid had actually tried to take a swing at him.

“Shit,” Tyler had sworn, his eyes widening as Joel effectively swatted the punch away and shot him a warning look. “Fuck, the Joel Miller in the flesh. Sorry about that. Those instincts, you know?”

“Right,” Joel had said, stepping around the kid and setting his now lukewarm coffee down before he stood behind his desk with his hands braced on its surface. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your beauty sleep.”

“I had a fight last night,” Tyler had told him, his tone still amiable though Joel is certain he didn’t imagine the way Tyler’s eyes had briefly sharpened. “You remember what that’s like.”

The corner of Joel’s mouth had twitched, his feelings not the least bit hurt by the rookie’s poorly concealed attempt to humble him. Retired or not, Joel was confident the odds would still swing in his favor based on that first punch alone.

And now that he’s seen the first few dozen…

“That’s enough,” Joel tells Tyler after a few more minutes of agony, still debating if the potential paycheck will be remotely worth it. As if he has other options.

“Come on over here.”

Tyler jogs over with a smug look on his face, pulling his gloves off and tossing them carelessly to the ground while he waits expectantly. “So?”

Joel ducks between the ropes as he climbs into the ring himself. “You self-taught?”

“Yep,” Tyler says, the confidence rolling off of him. “Amazing what you can learn from watching old fight tapes.”

“Amazing,” Joel agrees, although with not nearly the same inflection as he walks to the center of the ring. “Your footwork is shit.”

“My footwork?” Tyler looks down at his feet as if expecting them to spontaneously show him what Joel could possibly mean.

“Dancing around like that isn’t going to keep you from getting hit,” Joel tells him, setting his feet apart and transferring his weight from side-to-side to demonstrate. “All it’s going to do is wear you out.”

“It’s worked just fine so far,” Tyler counters, squaring his shoulders. “That’s my style.”

Joel smirks. “Your style. It’s your style to lose?”

*****

When you walk into the gym, it’s almost exactly what you expected.

More faded paint and cracked concrete floors, posters that have been hanging up so long that the images on them are too faded to make out, exercise equipment that is most definitely out of warranty and currently completely unused.

Instead everyone is gathered over in the back corner, standing around a boxing ring as two figures square off in the center.

One of them you’re positive is Tyler. Something you think you could tell from any distance. His opponent on the other hand…. The closer you get, the more he’s the one you can’t stop watching.

Tall and broad in his jeans and t-shirt, his wavy dark hair is paired with a short scruffy beard that frames an intensely set mouth. Not quite a frown although his brow is deeply furrowed in concentration above his eyes.

Unlike Tyler, he hardly moves. Stays on the balls of his feet as he steps cleanly out of the way of each punch that Tyler throws before coming back center.

Each time he does, the other onlookers give whistles of support, sometimes mixed in with claps and calls of “Nice, Joel!” and “Show him how it’s done, Miller!”

Even without being able to see Tyler’s face, you know the effect that it will all have on him, the evidence in his increasingly erratic throws.

“Come on,” you shout as you jog up to the sidelines. “Come on, Tyler!”

Although Tyler shows no sign of having heard you, Joel’s eyes do flick your direction, deep brown and an eyebrow raised above in curiosity as you meet his gaze. Neither of you look away until he’s forced to dodge another blow, this one so uncontrolled that Tyler stumbles. A few unsteady steps forward that he fails to fully correct before he’s swinging again, and you almost close your eyes to avoid having to see him go down onto the mat.

Shit.

While Tyler thumps his fist against the ground in frustration, there’s a collective round of applause, the small crowd dispersing before Joel even has a chance to extend his hand to help your boyfriend to his feet.

“I’m good,” Tyler tells him, avoiding the offered hand as he gets up and brushes himself off. “I won’t take it easy on you next time, old man. Surprised you can still move like that.”

Always the gracious loser, you think, feeling your cheeks go hot with embarrassment on his behalf.

“Didn’t really have to move much. Just had to be ready,” Joel tells him, his breathing even while Tyler is panting. “All that energy you waste on your style is energy you won’t have to put into your punches. And that’s going to matter a hell of a lot more when you start fighting people who really know what they’re doing.”

Joel turns away, walking your direction so that he can slip between the ropes and back out onto your side.

God, he’s even bigger up close.

“Hi. I’m Joel,” he says, holding out his hand again and unlike Tyler you take it while offering him your own name in return.

“I’m Tyler’s girlfriend,” you say, pointing back in his direction to strengthen your explanation. “Good, um, good fight. Not sure I’ve ever seen someone win without actually throwing a punch.”

He smiles a bit. “Thanks.”

Joel looks back towards Tyler, your boyfriend back on his feet but currently still glowering in the middle of the ring. “Be here at seven tomorrow morning, and we’ll get start— ”

“Oh, could it be earlier?” you say quickly, bringing Joel’s attention back to you. “I’m his ride, and my first job starts at six thirty so… Do you know what time he’d be done? I can swing back at lunchtime but then my other job starts at two.”

You expect him to look at you like you’re the world’s biggest pain in the ass, but instead he offers you a small smile that nearly looks reassuring.

“Sure. Six and noon.”

“Great, glad we got all that worked out,” Tyler snaps, snatching up his gloves from the floor before he also steps out of the ring. “Let’s go.”

Tyler storms off towards the exit without another word, and you do your best to offer some sort of apology to Joel before you trail after him. Not catching up until he’s already out by the car and tapping his foot.

“You going to unlock it or what?”

You roll your eyes at him before pressing the clicker and walking over to your side, wincing at the way he slams the door hard enough to make the car shake.

“I’m sorry that you lost,” you tell him once you’re in the driver’s seat. “Who was tha — ”

“You should be sorry,” he says, pointing a finger in your direction. “You distracted me.”

You stare at him, so surprised that it takes you a moment to stammer out a quiet, “What?”

“It would have been fine if you hadn’t come in there shouting. I had it handled.”

“If I hadn’t — I was supporting you.”

“Yeah, well, next time just stay in the car.”

Tyler looks away, his arms folded across his chest as he stares out the passenger side window, and you keep your eyes front so he won’t see the hot angry tears that are on the verge of spilling over.

He doesn’t mean it, you think as you put the car in drive and pull away. He’s just mad he lost.

Without intending to, you find yourself glancing back at Hunter’s Gym in the rear view. Its drab exterior fading away even though the question you had tried to ask doesn’t.

Who was that?

*****

From the moment Joel steps through the front door, he knows she’s there. Busy in the kitchen from the smell and the sound of it, and sure enough when he rounds the corner from the hallway, he finds her at the stove.

“Happy birthday!” Sarah exclaims when she sees him, his daughter dropping what she’s doing to come over and greet him with a warm hug. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

“I could’ve cooked. You didn’t need to go to the trouble,” Joel tells her as he gives her a squeeze, peering over her head to see that she has fixed some sort of chicken dish from a nearby printed off recipe. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Sarah assures him, returning to her task only after she has shooed him towards the table. “Just statistics and chem today.”

Well into the start of her junior year of college, Sarah had already been gone when Joel woke up this morning, off to morning classes before she went to her job at the bookstore and came back. As she had the previous two years, Sarah had opted to stay at home this year instead of in the dorms, a relief to Joel not only because he likes still having her around but also because it helps with some of the cost of school that he is covering.

He may not have made it through with his degree but so help him fucking God, his baby girl would. Even if it meant him needing to train the biggest asshole that he’s come across in quite some time. Which reminds him… What the hell was a guy like him doing with a girl like that?

Used to sizing people up for a living, Joel had automatically done the same with you as soon as he’d noticed you ringside. Interested to see if you would be able to give him any additional insight into what made Tyler tick.

Unfortunately for all involved, he hadn’t had much luck there. Although what he had determined was that while Tyler’s personality had managed to grate on his nerves before they’d even been in the same room, yours was far easier to be around. Sweet even with the way you’d come in to cheer for the asshole, the way you’d clearly given a damn about him despite the fact that he obviously hadn’t appreciated it…

“Dad? You okay?”

Joel’s head jerks up, and he realizes he’s been standing with his hand on the back of the kitchen chair, gripping the wood so tight that his knuckles are turning white.

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, trying to shake it off as he drops into the seat instead. “Was just thinking about something that happened at work.”

Sarah frowns as she looks back over her shoulder at him again. “Anything bad?”

“No, no, it’s nothing,” he tells her, but then he groans, “Shit, I forgot. I didn’t stop by the store on my way home. You wanted stuff for cake. I’m so – ”

“I already got it,” Sarah cuts in, tilting her head in the direction of the box mix waiting on the counter. “Thought you might not remember so I stopped yesterday. I rented us a movie, too. As is tradition.”

She smiles at him, and he smiles back, hoping she can’t pick up on the guilt that swirls in his stomach at the reminder that she is used to him letting her down.

He’s tried not to. He’s tried so fucking hard.

“Oh, hey, before I forget, I got an email from Uncle Tommy,” Sarah tells him, her smile turning to one more hesitant. “He said to wish you a happy birthday.”

Joel rolls his eyes, deciding right then to go get himself a beer from the fridge. “That’s nice considering he won’t even answer my texts… If it wasn’t for you, I’d probably have to haul my ass all the way out to Wyoming just to make sure he’s still breathing.”

“I don’t think they have cell phones where he’s at,” Sarah tries, not quite defending him but then she’s always had a soft spot for Tommy. Everyone has a soft spot for Tommy.

“I think it’s like some place off the grid or something,” she continues. “At least that’s how it sounds.”

“It’s a commune,” Joel says, exasperated all over again as he takes a long pull from his drink. “Just leave it to Tommy to go backpacking to quote ‘clear his head’ after quitting the Fireflies only to wind up in a fucking commune.”

Sarah snorts, laughing and shaking her head. “At least he’s happy, right? Doing what he wants to do?”

Joel nods, biting back his retort about how nice that must be. Never wanting his daughter to think he had any regrets where she was concerned.

He’d do it all over again to get her, but there was also still a part of him that wondered when or if he would ever get a chance to... To be that selfish. Just once.

“Dad?” Sarah asks again. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Joel nods, takes another drink. “Yeah, baby girl, I’m just fine.”

*****

The first few weeks that Tyler spends training at Hunter’s Gym are some of the worst of your life.

Irritable, sulky, and constantly sore, your boyfriend is a dark cloud that hangs all throughout the apartment. Hard to move or even breathe around for how easily he’s set off, which is why you have a growing list of topics that you just avoid for the time being.

What would you like for dinner? No go. Can I take a look at your cuts? Absolutely not. What can I do to help? Hell no.

“Nothing. You can do nothing,” he complains, dropping into the upholstered chair you had just spent the entire weekend cleaning and restoring while still wearing his gym clothes. “Please stop asking.”

You bite your lip, trying not to focus on the sweat, dirt, and blood that are currently staining into the delicate emerald green fabric. “Tyler, you know… If this isn’t a good fit. We could try a different…”

He stares at you, and you know you should have known better than to even start to suggest it.

“You think I can’t do it? That what you’re saying?”

You sigh, your eyes going to the ceiling for a moment so you don’t have to see the self-pity that is a constant on Tyler’s face. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Of course, you can. But sometimes people just don’t click and maybe you and Joel – ”

His eyes flash, and now you’ve really done it because of all the topics that are currently off limits, Joel Miller has to be at the very top of the list.

“It has nothing to do with us not clicking,” Tyler asserts, his tone making it clear that he thinks this should be obvious. “The dude is just a dick. He’s washed up, and he’s taking it out on me because I’m not. He knows I’m better than him.”

You press your lips together and turn away, not trusting yourself to say anything as you let your fingernails dig into your palm because you have an insane urge to just laugh.

Better than him? Than Joel Miller?

Even though you weren’t a boxer yourself, you had been around the sport long enough by now to know that Joel is good. Really good. You had thought so even before you’d taken a couple hours on your day off to go to the library with the hope of figuring out just who exactly had so easily put your boyfriend through his paces.

What you had found was article after article on Joel’s boxing career, glossy high profile shots of him on the front page of sports sections, interviews where reporters asked him about his technique, his training… his ruthlessness.

Joel Miller is ruthless.

That sentence in particular had come up over and over and over again, paired with recitations of his opponents, his scores, his titles. All the fights he won that he shouldn’t have. All the times he was left standing in the middle while his opponent was laid out at his feet.

For all the articles you combed through, the ones with his picture were always the ones that gave you pause, made you lean in close to the screen to try to make out all the details of his face that had been captured mid-fight and to match them to the ones you’d seen several times since that first day.

There was something different when you compared the two. Something beyond the steady changes that come with passing years, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, and you still haven’t. Though you haven’t stopped trying.

In truth, you look at Joel far more than you should. Look forward to catching a glimpse of him far more than you should too considering he’s the bane of your boyfriend’s existence. But the truth is… you like him.

Not in a bad way, you quickly try to explain even if it’s just to yourself while keeping your back to Tyler as you walk into the small kitchen and start putting together something for dinner.

No, not in a bad way. Just in a…

Several times now you’ve been into the gym to pick Tyler up, usually when their training sessions are running long and you can no longer stand to just sit in the car. The air and the radio turned off so that you don’t have to waste gas like you’re wasting your time.

Each time, Joel has greeted you with a small smile and a nod, grabbed you a nearby folding chair and a cup of water for while you wait without asking. Started adding a protein bar too after the time he had heard your stomach audibly growl, and you had been forced to admit that you hadn’t actually had time to eat anything yet that day.

“Thanks,” you had muttered, still feeling a bit embarrassed as you took a grateful bite that tasted like chocolate and peanut butter. Your embarrassment only growing when you realized that his attention was making your stomach swoop.

It’s only because unlike your boyfriend, Joel never seems annoyed to see you there. And how ridiculous is that… That all it takes is for a guy to look at you with warm brown eyes and a calm, not-quite smile, and all you want to do is melt because you can’t remember the last time your boyfriend even said thank you let alone offered to get you something as small as a fucking protein bar.

You slam the fridge door harder than you mean to and when you look over, Tyler has lifted his head to look at you. A small frown on his face as he takes you in and asks, “What’s your problem?”

You, buddy boy, you almost say. You’re my problem.

But instead you say nothing, not mentally or emotionally up to an argument when you’re already tired from a long day and so is he.

This is just a rough patch, you tell yourself instead. It’ll get easier. It has to.

Tyler used to light up when he saw you. You used to be the last person he wanted to let go before he went into the ring, the first person he’d look for in the crowd.

It’ll get better. It’ll go back to that. You just need to get through this, and it’ll get better.

Right?

*****

You’re late.

Thirty minutes past the time you’re supposed to show up when, by Joel’s memory, you haven’t been so much as tardy since you first started bringing the dickhead you live with to and from the gym. Dropping him off in the morning on your way to work and then coming in to watch the last few minutes of Tyler’s training before you pick him up.

In truth, Joel is never happier than when he hears the door open and sees you standing there. Only because that means his time is up. That’s all it is. Your arrival means his obligation is fulfilled until the next time he has to spend hours listening to Tyler argue with him about everything from proper form to proper conditioning.

How do you put up with it?

You shouldn’t have to, and more than once he’s had a mind to tell you so just before he reminds himself that your business is your own even if he’s taken an unwise interest in it.

It’s just… You’ve got such a kind, sweet way about you. A smile on your face when you walk in even though he can tell that you’re tired, pretty eyes that meet his whenever he does even the smallest thing for…

Pretty. Christ, what the fuck are you doing thinking she’s pretty?

Joel shifts in his stance at the edge of the ring, crossing his arms tight across his chest as he watches Tyler spar with another fighter from the gym. Doing better this week than he has in any of the ones previous but still with a long way to go and still with his greatest attribute being that he has such a huge fucking chip on his shoulder that he refuses to let himself lose.

Checking his watch and then the door again, Joel watches them for a few more minutes before he finally turns away and snaps out, “I’ll be back. Keep going.”

On his way to his office, Joel can see Sarah still sitting at his desk and working on one of her papers. Having decided to come in with him today and hang out for a while so she could also use the gym to workout, she glances up when she sees him coming, her brow creasing with worry at whatever expression he must have on his face.

“Has anyone called?” he asks as soon as he’s got the door open. “Anyone called this morning to say they were going to be late?”

“Uh,” Sarah’s nose scrunches up as she looks at the Post-Its by the phone. “No, but Charlie dropped off a few names for you. Some new potential clients?”

Ordinarily that need would be more welcome than it is at the moment, a sign that even if training Tyler was his penance than his reward was that others were also noticing the improvements and wagering that maybe Joel could do the same for them.

“No, not a new client. Would be a, um…” Joel trails off, suddenly feeling unsure how to describe you to his daughter. A large part of that likely being that you must be only a handful of years older than her. Although why that should matter when all he’s asking is if you have called is beyond him. What the fuck is wrong with him today?

“Nevermind,” he says, ducking back out and heading for the front door. Long, ground-eating strides as he wonders if something happened with that car you drive, the thing clearly on its last legs, although he’s fairly certain he could fix it up a bit and get it running better if you’d let him. Nothing major but it wasn’t as if Tyler was going to do –

Joel nearly gets clocked by the door when it swings open right as he reaches it, his reflexes kicking in just in time to avoid a black eye although not quick enough to get him out of the way before someone collides into him.

“Sorry, sorry,” says a frantic voice against his chest, the recognition kicking in before he looks down and sees you, and his fucking stomach clenches.

“Sorry, I, um – ” you start to say, your breathing quick as you get your feet under you again and push your hair back from your face. “Sorry, work was really busy and I was the only one who didn’t call out and I got out late and I was almost here but then I realized that I forgot Tyler’s lunch so I went back home but I couldn’t get the door open cause the landlord still hasn’t fixed it and I…”

You seem close to tears, flustered and upset, and even if Joel belatedly realizes that he has a steadying hand on your upper arm, he doesn’t let go as he tells you, “Nothing to be sorry for. You okay? Are you hurt?”

“Am I hurt?” you blink up at him, and he can see then that you have been crying. The sight clawing at his chest as he wonders where the fuck this landlord is and if he might move a little faster with the right persuasion.

“No, I’m – I’m fine. Sorry, just a… just a bad day.”

You’re still looking up at him, so close to him that he can see all your features more clearly than he usually can. And he was undeniably correct earlier, you are pretty.

While his eyes stay on your face, you take a shaky breath in, steadying yourself just as your own gaze drops to his mouth for a fraction of a second. Your lips parting before you just as quickly glance away, and he’s left to think of a scenario where you didn’t.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

“Where, um, where’s Tyler?” you ask, another much needed reminder for whatever mixed up thoughts are currently swirling around in his head.

Yep, that’s right. She’s your client’s girlfriend not to mention the long list of other reasons why you shouldn’t even be looking at her.

“He’s – ” Joel clears his throat and steps back, trying to get his head to clear along with it.

“He’s over in the corner ring,” he tells you, angling himself in that direction and waiting for you to fall into step beside him before adding, “He did alright today.”

“Oh.” You look relieved. “That’s great. He’ll be in a good mood then.”

Joel frowns, not liking how that sounds. “Is he normally not?”

“No, I mean. You know Tyler,” you try to smile as you fluster again, and now he really doesn’t like it. “No, it’s – You know. When it doesn’t go well in the ring….”

Joel does know, but he also knows he did everything he could not to bring it home with him. Not to let the person he was in the ring come anywhere near the person he was out of it. Come anywhere near the people he had out of it.

“Sorry, that sounded bad,” you tell him quickly, pushing your hair back again but not meeting Joel’s eyes. “Trust me. It’s fine.”

“It’s not. It’s not – ” Joel starts to say, making you look up at him just before a third voice chimes in from a little ways deeper into the gym.

“Babe, what are you doing here?” Tyler asks, walking towards you with a friendly smile while Joel reluctantly moves a few paces away and pretends to occupy himself, still keeping you in the corner of his gaze.

“What do you mean?” Your brows knit together in confusion. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”

“I told you I’m going to lunch with a few guys from the gym,” Tyler says to you, immediately making Joel wonder who he had possibly roped into spending more time with him.

“No, you didn’t tell me that,” you say, your voice unsteady but low. “When I dropped you off this morning, you didn’t say anything about that.”

“I did. You just weren’t paying attention.”

“Tyler,” you say, sounding as exasperated as Joel feels. “You did not tell me that. If you had, I wouldn’t have nearly killed myself getting over here just to — ”

“Look, can we argue about this later?” Tyler asks, cutting you off with a sigh and taking a new phone out of the pocket of his shorts before he begins to tap away. “I need to go get changed.”

Joel can practically hear his teeth grind together, his fists clenching at his sides. This —

“Fuck you.”

Before Joel gets any further, your so far unseen snap of temper comes as both a surprise and a fucking delight, your words echoing in the gym as you shove the bagged lunch hard at Tyler and turn on your heel. The chorus of low whistles and murmurs of support accompanying you as you walk right back out the door.

For his part, Tyler appears unaffected, rolling his eyes and tossing the lunch into a nearby bin on his way to the locker room.

As for Joel’s. He knows he shouldn’t go after you himself, but…

He also doesn’t think he can just watch you leave.

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guessimwritingficsagain · 9 months

Text

claim [dark!joel miller x f!reader]

summary: you've been driving Joel crazy for the last four days. and now you have something he wants. ratings/warnings: E [WILDLY dubcon/moving into noncon, somnophilia, oral sex, PIV, Joel has a very, very dirty mouth, dark Joel, guilty Joel, reader is kind of a menace, power dynamics] wc: 1.4k a/n: please go to @ezrasbirdie-updates for updates! Well here's this, which has been kicking around my google docs since April and i'm trying to clear my WIPs out. this shouldn't be this hot to me, but it is, and now you all have to suffer too. cheers!

You’re asleep.

Fucking finally, you’re asleep. All day long you’ve prodded and poked, teasing him with wicked humor; brushing so close to him your tits graze his arm just enough that he can feel your nipples through your tank top.

You’re exactly why he doesn’t smuggle people, and if he didn’t need the cooperation of a certain FEDRA soldier for the rest of his work, he’d have told him to find someone else to move you.

Everything was fine on the first day. You’d been a little scared of the outside, taking your time to get your bearings.

Once you realized he wasn’t going to leave you for dead somewhere, you’d started to come around. Started to talk and tease him and flirt, even when he didn’t respond. Now you find every opportunity to push his buttons.

It’s making him fucking crazy.

The sleeping bags are almost unbearable in the thick, hazy summer air. He’d glared as you shimmied your pants off before slipping into yours.

“What if we gotta get up quick?” He’d said, looking resolutely away from your bare legs. You’d just rolled your eyes at him.

“I’m not sleeping hot, Joel. I’ll die in my panties if I gotta,” you’d said. You’re a goddamn nightmare.

But you’re asleep, and he’s not—he’s sweating his ass off instead. And that one bare leg sticking out of your sleeping bag isn’t helping him.

Joel can’t remember pulling his own sleeping bag right next to you, but he’s there. He’s two inches from your pretty, soft body, but he controls himself, closing his eyes until he hears a murmur next to him.

“What?” He asks, but you don’t answer. He opens his eyes just in time to watch you kick off the rest of the overstuffed cocoon and sigh, your body shimmering with sweat. He groans quietly, closing his hand into a fist to keep from reaching out to you.

His cock isn’t as much of a gentleman. It’s sprung to life, pulsing against his jeans and begging for attention.

A nasty voice in his head, the one he tends to shove down inside of himself, pipes up.

She’s been begging for it all day. And she owes you.

You stretch slightly, pushing your tits out like you’re arching up for him. Your legs part and he can see the outline of your lips.

She owes you.

He takes it.

You’re all sweaty.

And wet. Your cunt is almost tender with the way it’s pulsing, aching for someone to touch it.

A thick, calloused hand wanders your body; shallow, uneven breaths hot against your ear.

Well, that didn’t take long.

As groggy as you are, you put all your strength into staying still. Let him believe you’re a very heavy sleeper—at least until he’s inside of you. Let him see your eyes open, wide with feigned shock.

He’s surprisingly gentle for someone groping a sleeping woman, ghosting over your nipples, and hovering like he’s trying not to pinch them. You keep your breathing even and slow, praying he doesn’t notice your heart rate picking up.

Joel slips his big hand under your panties, gentle as he passes over your curls and growling as his fingers slide through the sticky wetness of your pussy, gushing slick as he takes advantage of you.

“You need this so bad,” he grunts. “So lucky I’m here, sweetheart.”

If your eyes were open you’d roll them at this pathetic excuse of a justification.

You almost squeal when his soft, warm, thick tongue drags up your seam, groaning when he hits your swollen clit. He stops and you think he’s looking at you, checking to see if you’ve woken up.

Joel lets out a ragged breath when you don’t move, tonguing your before he pulls your panties down and slides a finger inside of you. You clench at the groan he lets out.

“That’s right, baby, that’s right. Goddamn, you sleep heavy,” he murmurs. He slides another finger in and makes the same noise, fucking you gently with both of them, pulling your legs open further, and repositioning himself between them.

“One more, sweetheart, one more for me,” he says. A harsh sigh emerges from you as he pushes a third digit inside of you.

It almost hurts.

You want it to hurt more.

Another sigh escapes your lips, followed by a low whine, but he’s either stopped paying attention, or he just doesn’t care.

He’s going to do whatever the fuck he wants to you.

You whimper again at the thought of him using you in whatever way he wants, a new wave of slick leaking from you and onto all three of his long, thick fingers. He buries them to the knuckle and curses at the way you flutter around him.

“Gonna take me so fucking good,” he slurs. The thrill of him being pussy drunk from your sleeping, helpless body goes straight to your cunt, an involuntary clench pulling his fingers further into you. He moans against your thigh, teeth brushing across your skin. “Bet I could make you so wet you’d let me fuck you with my whole fist, wouldn’t you? You nasty little thing. Bet you’d let me fuck your asshole, too, wouldn’t you? Could put in now with all this comin’ outta you.”

He pulls his fingers out, swift and sudden, and you feel so pathetically empty. “Knew you’d taste so fucking good,” he moans, an obscene slurp echoing in your ears.

Joel sits up, and you hear the clinking of his belt as his unbuckles; the zrrrp of his zipper making you clench around nothing. “You want this,” he says to himself. “You wanted this.”

And then you’re so full.

There’s no adjustment, no time to prepare, he’s just inside of you and growling, muttering “You wanted this” over and over as he hoists your legs up around his hips and pushes your shirt up to bare your tits.

You open your eyes as slow as you can, and he sees you just when he’s sheathed himself to the hilt.

“Joel?” You murmur as though you’ve just woken up, and watch every muscle in his face twitch as he freezes, eyes flitting from guilty to confused to defiant to guilty again. He’s waiting for you.

Suddenly he’s so interested in your cooperation. After a few moments of letting him sweat, which must seem like an eternity to him, your lips curl into a soft, sultry smile.

“Please,” you whine.

“You—dirty little thing—wanted my cock so bad—”

He’s so unrelenting, so demanding, fucking you and fucking you and fucking you so hard that you can’t speak at all. You don’t bother keeping it down, your moans bouncing all over the patch of land you’d camped on until he leans down and presses his hand over your mouth.

“Shut up,” he grunts, but you don’t. He doesn’t mean it like that. “Those are mine. Mine.”

You snake your hand between your bodies to seek more direction pressure. All you’ve been dreaming of for days is to come around his cock.

“Make yourself come, darlin’, come on, let me feel that pussy come,” he grits out.

It’s a dream, that orgasm, the stars behind your eyelids melding with the midnight sky. You’re shaking around him, choking his cock inside of you, and he takes his hand from your mouth and swallows your cries with his lips instead.

“You wanted this,” he murmurs over and over.

“Joel, Joel please come, please, please, I need you to—”

He gives a few more hard, sloppy thrusts and pulls out. Warmth splashes over your mound as he finishes hunched over and snarling.

His head drops to your chest, shuddering and panting as he comes down from his high.

“Fuck,” he murmurs. You run your fingers through his sweaty hair, and he leans up to kiss you again, cautiously this time, looking at you with soft brown eyes. He's gone from big bad wolf to bunny rabbit.

“What is it?” You sigh, sliding your thumb over his trembling bottom lip.

“You wanted this? I did this right?” He asks, shaking his head. “Don’t know what…”

“I wanted it,” you assure him, smoothing the worried crease between his eyes with your thumb. “You know I did.”

“I…”

“I wanted you to take it.”

He nods again and kisses your sternum, nuzzling his nose between your breasts.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as he kisses you. You smile to yourself.

Sure he is.

2K notes · View notes

guessimwritingficsagain · 10 months

Text

come back same time and place the next night (part 1)

dad's coworker!joel miller x f!reader / 3k words

series summary: your chances of hooking up with your dad’s soon-to-be coworker are low, but never zero. turns out the two of you have a lot more in common than you thought, especially when you find out he’s going to be staying at your house for a while. you know what they say: if you can’t beat them, fuck them.

series warnings: no outbreak AU, dad's coworker!joel (idk if that's a thing but yeah), lots of feelings (angst/fluff), age gap (reader is 24, joel is 43), no use of y/n, i'm not good at choosing names for side characters sorry for that, pictured 2007 joel while writing this so perhaps you should do the same thing, some chapters will include smut 18+ and i'll let you know at the beggining of each part.

warnings for this chapter: soft!dom joel, oral (m receiving), dirty talk, pet names (we all love them)

a/n: HELLO AGAIN i'm back with a new series!!! first of all, i just wanted to say THANK YOU bc of all the love you gave my previous post. i'm so thankful for all the likes, reblogs and comments, you truly made me feel incredibly happy. tbh i used to have a hard time figuring out whether i should start posting my own creations or not, and the support you showed me made me realize that it was definitely the right call. so yeah tysm for that and i hope you also enjoy this new project of mine :) i just have one final left and then i'll have a couple of weeks to relax and work on this series! also english isn’t my first language so if you come across any mistake please tell me! i’m trying my best but still

here's my masterlist in case you want to read my other works :)

“Sneaking out of my house / I must be out of my mind / I’m running out of excuses / We’re running out of time / You say the love will come and go / We’ll learn how to ride the ebb and flow / You’ll always leave before the light / Come back same time and place the next night.”

1.0

You take another sip of your drink, alcohol making its way through your throat. It leaves a trail of burning kisses down the inside of your esophagus, and you make an effort not to swear as the sensation settles heavily on your chest.

Stacy looks around the bar for a while, her knee impacting rhythmically against yours ever so slightly. Next thing you know, she’s snorting, her blonde hair falling like cascades over her collarbones. “Remind me not to let you pick the bar the next time we go out. There isn’t a single hot guy in here.”

“That’s not true,” your fingers pinch the pink straw floating on your glass, a lipstick stain adorning it. You’re not exactly sure, though. The truth is you aren’t looking for somebody tonight, at least not right now. “Give me a second.”

Scanning your surroundings, you try to concentrate on your quest: finding a new hobby for Stacy. And by hobby, you mean a man she can simp over for the rest of the night. Once you’ve examined the room multiple times without success, you feel… disappointed.

Just when you’re about to agree with her, this pretty waiter comes on the scene, placing a martini under your friend’s nose. “Here it is. Hope you enjoy it.”

Oh.

Stacy giggles at him. It’s that specific kind of giggle you know very well. “Thank you, but I didn’t order this.”

“Don’t worry. This one’s on me,” the hot-waiter answers, giving her a smile that’s all white teeth before disappearing between the mess of sweaty bodies on the dancing floor.

You look at her, because you already know what she’s going to do next. She wiggles her eyebrows in your direction and takes hold of her purse, not without previously drinking almost half of the cocktail she got for free.

Her forehead furrows in a funny way. “It’s not very good. He’s lucky he’s cute.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” you tell her, ignoring her words. “I’m being serious.”

She leaves and you’re left alone, though you don’t mind the lack of company. The beating of your heart seems to sync with the pounding music from the pub. There’s this one girl doing karaoke, but nobody seems to be actually listening to her. You wonder if she’s aware of it, although she appears not to, because her tone gets even more high-pitched every time she gets to the chorus of the song.

After some minutes, you decide to give Stacy’s drink a try. She wasn’t wrong: the taste of it is absolutely awful. Some muscle in your jaw twitches as you cough a little.

“Is it that bad?”

You turn to your side, looking for the owner of that unknown voice that startled you. A man stands beside you, pointing out the martini. As you lean in closer to him, you hand him the drink. “Why don’t you try it yourself?”

His cold fingers brush yours gently when he takes the glass into his hands. The straw vanishes between his lips momentarily, and then he proceeds to chuckle. “You’re right. It’s… definitely somethin’ else.”

This must be your lucky night. When was the last time a guy this good-looking approached you? He jerks his thumb toward the empty chair in front of you. “Are you waitin’ for someone?”

Cocking your head, your mouth turns into a smile. “Not anymore.”

The attractive, charming stranger sits down, and you seize the opportunity to take a closer look at his face. You’re not sure of his age, but he’s older than you. He seems to be in his early 40s, the hair on his beard starting to get a bit gray. It’s subtle. If you weren’t such a perfectionist, perhaps you wouldn’t have seen it. But you did, and if possible, it just makes him come across as even more appealing to you.

“If you don’t mind me askin’, why did you order that drink?”

“Well, I didn’t. It was a gift for my friend,” you rest your chin on your palm, giving a half shrug. “She’s with the guy that gave it to her. The blonde girl over there, with the white tank top? That’s her.”

His eyes follow your gaze, finding Stacy just a couple of meters away from where the two of you were talking. She raises one of her hands in greeting, the boy from before attached to her hip like a lost puppy in the middle of the road.

“She seems nice,” he murmurs once he focuses his attention on you again.

“Yeah, she is,” as you finish that sentence, you feel your phone vibrating in the pocket of your jacket. “Excuse me.”

It’s a text from Stacy. Said message reads:

whose dad is that??? he’s hot af

You can’t help but laugh at her occurrence, and he tugs at his shirt collar. “What happened?”

“She texted me: whose dad is that?” staring at him, you lift an eyebrow. “Do you have any children I should know of?”

“No, I don’t,” you watch him lick his lips. “Why? You’re not into dads?”

He's cocky. Good thing you like cocky.

Time flies. You learn some things about him: he’s from Texas (the southern accent gives him away) and works as a contractor (just like your dad, which is funny.) When he reveals how old he is, he seems to look for any sign of discomfort on your features. “I’m forty three.”

“Twenty four,” you reply with your own age. He glances up to the ceiling, and you give a bitter laugh. “Is it a problem for you?’”

“Shouldn’t I be the one askin’ that to you?”

You flutter your eyelashes at him. “I don’t mind.” If anything, you like him more. However, there’s one mystery left to bring to light. “What I do mind is that we’ve been here for almost an hour and you still haven’t told me your name.”

He leans back in his chair. “Let's play a game.”

“Be careful. I’m really competitive.”

“You have three chances to guess my name. I’ll just give you my initial. You gotta do the rest, deal?”

What were the odds of guessing it? I should take the risk, you think as you find yourself already nodding your head. “Deal.”

“It starts with the letter J.”

“Jack,” it’s the first name that comes to your mind. For an instant, you believe you’ve won, but then you catch him smirking. “It’s not Jack.”

The corner of his mouth turns up. “Keep tryin’.”

“Josh?”

“Ice cold.”

“Joe?”

Something you couldn’t even distinguish glows in his eyes. “I’m givin’ you one more chance.”

“So I’m close?” you ask him, probably too enthusiastic. When he doesn’t say anything else, you go on. “Is it Joel?”

He places a hand on top of his shirt where his heart is, pretending to act relieved. “Fuckin’ finally.”

You punch your fists into the air. “Yes! I knew I was gonna get it.” A sincere smile takes place on your face. “What’s my prize?”

“Well,” he inches forward, his pinky nudging your wrist, that mere touch giving you goosebumps. “You could give me your number and go on a proper date with me.”

God knows you want it. Rising from your seat, you tuck a lock of brown hair behind his ear. “I was thinking of something else.”

That’s how you end up in the ladies restroom, your back flushed against the wooden door as Joel presses his clothed knee between your legs. You moan into his mouth without thinking if there are any other people outside waiting to use the bathroom. Joel draws in a long breath, grinning as he takes in the sight of you. “You wanna put on a show for the others?”

“Let me suck you off,” your hand is dangerously close to his crotch, your nails ghosting over his zipper. He seems to be having an internal fight with the last brain cell he has left, but then he detaches himself from you, unzipping his jeans. The sound of his belt hitting the floor with a thud is what finally leads you to fall to your knees.

He’s big. Even though he’s still wearing his underwear, you can tell his size, a wet patch forming into the fabric of his boxers. You grab him by the base, stroking it experimentally. Joel fights back a groan, urging you to take him. “Come on, sweetheart. I don’t like t’beg.”

You do, that’s the thing. “Please,” you whisper, hoping he’ll hear you. His eyes find yours and suddenly it clicks. A lightbulb goes on in his head. He directs his dick towards your open parted lips, your eyelids getting heavy as the taste of his precum invades your tastebuds.

It’s not your fault he has an amazing dick.

You begin to bob your head, taking more and more of his length with every one of your short movements. Slick must be already staining your own panties, but you can’t get yourself to care about that insignificant detail. Not now, when Joel’s hips thrust deeper into your mouth, his tip brushing the back of your throat and making you gag. “Fuck, baby. Knew you would put that gorgeous mouth to good use. Attagirl, takin’ me so well.”

A stupid whine gets lost somewhere in your vocal tract. Intertwining your fingers with his, you locate his wandering hands on your hair, wishing he would take the hint. He grabs a handful of it and pulls you off his cock.

“You really like this, don’t ya’?” Joel smears your lower lip with your spit. “Were you thinkin’ about this while we were talkin’ back there?”

“Yes,” you try to take him in your mouth again, but he doesn’t allow you to, his iron grip on your nape getting tighter the more you fight against it.

Then he lets you have it. “Bet you get off on this too,” his voice drops an octave, and it sounds so dirty and intimate you’re on the verge of crying. With teary eyes, you swallow around his length.

You lose track of time. His bare thighs tremble and the only noise you can hear is his heavy breathing. “F—fuck. I’m close, where do you want it?” Mumbling something you can’t even comprehend with his cock still in your mouth, his thrusts begin to lose finesse, thick fingers holding you where he needs you the most. “So good, baby. Lettin’ me have you like this. Fuckin’—“

He’s about to come.

“—good girl.”

It all happens so fast you have to remind yourself to gulp down his cum, hot and sticky and just Joel’s. You patiently wait for him to come down from his high, nuzzling his happy trail. He helps you stand up, kissing you and tasting himself on your tongue. The second he tries to sneak a hand into your panties, getting closer to your aching cunt, you recognize your phone ringing in the distance.

Groaning, you stretch your arm, answering the call. “Hello?”

“Well, hi. This is awkward.”

You frown. Joel mimics you. “I’m sorry, who’s this?”

“I’m calling you from Stacy’s phone. We were making out and then she told me she was feeling sick, so I took her outside… and now she’s throwing up,” the boy on the other side of the line explains to you and you detect a hint of agitation in his voice. “She asked me to contact you.”

“Oh, God. Hot-waiter?”

“Yeah, she also said you were probably going to call me that,” he seems to move his phone away from his ear, and then talks to you again. “She’s not passed out, but she shouldn’t stay here.”

Does he actually think you’re going to leave her alone? “Can you tell me where you are?” you suggest him while Joel tucks himself back into his boxers.

“Next to the parking lot.”

You hang up after telling him you’ll be there in five minutes, and you feel Joel’s lips on your neck, a sigh spilling from you. His teeth nip at your sensitive skin. “You gotta go?”

Humming, you smooth down your skirt, observing your reflection in the mirror, some leftover mascara sticking your eyelashes together. He appears right behind you, his broad frame becoming more visible this way. “Stacy’s throwing up. I have to take her home.”

“Do you have a car?”

“No, but I’ll call an uber. It’s no big deal.”

Joel puts his hands on his hips. “I brought my truck. Let me help you.”

Of course he has a truck.

“Joel, you don’t have to,” you massage the back of your neck, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

“It’s the least I can do,” tilting his head, his lips catch yours once again. “Consider it my way of thankin’ you, since I cannot return the favor.”

It shouldn’t feel like this. You weren’t used to doing this kind of thing on a regular basis, but you’re more than sure that men don’t treat you this way after sucking them off. Still, you accept his offer since it means you’ll get to spend more time with him.

He walks you out and helps you get Stacy on her feet. As she sees Joel, she spreads her arms wide, hugging him. “Oh my God! It’s the hot dad!”

“Sweetie, you have like— puke all over your clothes,” you tell her, so Stacy chooses to hug you instead. “She gets pretty sensitive when she’s drunk.”

“I can tell,” Joel opens the back door of his truck, jerking his head in the direction of it. “Get her inside while I start the car.”

It all goes pretty well from then on. He asks you for Stacy’s address and you give it to him, the palm of his hand resting on top of your left thigh. Stacy gets comfortable in the back seat, yawning. “You two look like my parents before they got divorced.”

“That’s a really nice compliment,” you mutter with irony as Joel laughs by your side, rubbing his chin.

Soon after that, she falls asleep. Joel parks his car right in front of Stacy’s porsche. He glances over his shoulder, making sure she’s still sleeping before his seatbelt’s off and he’s grabbing you by the jaw, leaning in for a kiss. The fucker’s a very good kisser, you notice throughout the night.

“Are you gonna give me your number?” he murmurs against your mouth, his hot breath mixing with yours.

“It depends. Will you call me?”

He tells you he will, and you prefer to trust him as you watch him save your number, a smiley face next to your name.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Joel doesn’t call you.

You don’t want to admit it, but it’s starting to get to you. He did sound honest. Why the hell did he treat you like that if he wasn’t planning on calling you? Why did he insist so much on getting your number?

Men suck. Joel sucks, you decide after a whole afternoon of staring at your phone, waiting to receive a text from him. Given the situation, anything would make you feel better.

Hey! It’s Joel, from the bar. I’m so sorry for not calling you these days. I forgot to tell you I’m married and have three children, two cute little puppies and a cat. Anyways, what a great night we had! Take care!

Okay. Perhaps not anything.

You’re home, sitting on the couch while you watch a meaningless TV programme. It consists of answering random questions, and if you get them wrong, you fall down some dark tunnel that only God knows where it takes you.

Normally, during a night like this, you’d be studying or perhaps at Stacy’s. But tonight, your father had asked you to actually stay. He didn’t tell you why he specifically needed you there, and you didn’t bother to ask him.

Out of the blue, you hear the doorbell ring. None of your parents seem to be on the first floor, so you walk to the door, opening it.

You choke on your own saliva.

Joel’s here. Joel, who didn’t call you. Joel, who looks absolutely good with his hair slicked back.

“Did I ever tell you where I lived?” the tone of your voice falters, your legs suddenly feeling wobbly.

He can’t believe it either. “No. I must have the wrong address,” keeping his eyes fixated on the box of chocolates dangling from his hand, he straightens his back. “What are you doin’ here?”

“I should be asking you that,” you hiss, your pupils flared with anger. “Why the fuck are you at my house, with a freaking box of chocolates, when you couldn’t bring yourself to call me?”

Then, you hear the sound of footsteps coming from the kitchen. It’s your dad. He contemplates the scene with a smile. “I see you’ve met my daughter. Trust me, my wife and I taught her better manners than this. Don’t know why she didn’t invite you in. Food’s almost ready!”

You’re about to short-circuit. Definitely not a joke.

“Sweetheart, this is Joel Miller. Remember I told you last week that someone from the company was coming over for a while? Well, this is him,” your father chuckles, expecting you to come up any kind of answer.

Joel’s faster than you, intending to shake your hand, those same calloused fingers that he had used to touch you in that dirty bathroom now playing dumb. “Nice to meet you.”

If he wants to pretend you don’t know each other, then so be it.

You squeeze his hand without measuring your strength. “Oh, the pleasure’s all mine.”

Turns out that your chances of hooking up with your dad’s soon-to-be coworker were low, but never zero.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

tags: @spurz :)

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guessimwritingficsagain · 10 months

Text

dancing is a dangerous game

5.5k | joel miller x f!reader

joel + you blend spotify playlist

rating: 18+ MDNI

tw: brief mentions of using your body for trading purposes, you shoot at joel miller????, light dub-con but that goes away quickly

warnings: post-outbreak au. no ellie. angsty smut, semi-dom!reader and dom!joel so that's fun, power struggle, age gap (joel is 56, reader is late 20s or early 30s), enemies to lovers, voyeurism (f watching m), masturbation (m and f), pet names/degrading names (baby, honey, darlin', brat, bitch, slut, etc.), dirty talk, choking, oral (m receiving), fingering, spanking, p in v (unprotected - wrap it up folks), joel is mean but not unkind. no use of y/n.

summary: inspired by "cowboy by me" by our lord and savior taylor swift. this is a post-outbreak world and joel has his own land. think bill, but a little less... deranged. kind of. you essentially are a raider, but make it fashion. when you stalk joel's cabin for the third day, that's when you get interrogated by none other than joel miller himself.

A/N: hi, i'm bee! this is my first fic on tumblr, and my first stab at this whole stratosphere. longtime listener; first time caller 💅. i was ALSO inspired by an ask i saw on @swiftispunk's page (hi! i love your writing sm??) and kinda just... ran with it. i honestly wasn't anticipating writing stuff during the outbreak, so i apologise if it's not quite right. imagine me living during that time with a tube of lipgloss and one (1) bullet in my pocket just in case. this... may be a series. i don't know yet. see ya! enjoy!!!

The first time you meet Joel Miller is down the barrel of your gun.

You can hear your father's voice telling you 'Back out, girl. Don't get too big for your britches.' Look where that got him. His ashes against your chest in a makeshift pendant necklace, buried by your clothes.

Still, you listen.

"It don't have to be like this," you drawl with index over the trigger guard. You've heard of him. Joel Miller. He's notorious, and even though you've kept to yourself most of your life, his name still roamed throughout the abandoned towns you passed. Someone always owed him, and he always owed somebody.

Your dad would've been older than him, but not by much. You knew of the world before this, was just a little thing. Still, you heard stories undulate from your father's southern voice that mostly left you bored on long days searching for food or shelter. You'd give anything to hear them now.

Part of you died when he did.

You were young when the outbreak happened. Resourceful, your father made it work in raising you. Taught you how to fend for yourself, rely on no one. Which was no easy feat considering how unbelievably stubborn you were. Were? Are.

Maybe he loved you. Maybe it was the chip on his shoulder. The kind of anguish that comes from not being able to give your mother the same kind of life. A promise to her.

Yes, you were young when the outbreak happened, but flashbacks of her getting attacked by a clicker burn you alive at night.

"Y'er on my land." A gruff voice calls you back to reality. Few words for someone who held your life in his hands. His own gun pointing back at you. Of course it would be.

"I was just passin' through." The lie flies through your teeth. You had been circling the place from a reasonable distance for a few days now. Scoping out when this man in front of you was his busiest, when he patrolled, when he slept. This was a heist situation, no doubt about it.

"Bullshit. This s'the third fuckin' time I seen you 'round here. And it's y'er last."

Shit. Fucking shit.

Your eyes dart to the side, really trying to pattern a plan in escaping but your breathing would say otherwise as calm and collected as it was.

In any other situation, you wouldn't be so willing to comply, but considering he's got you cornered and his gun is quite literally cocked and ready to go – you're not exactly in the position to make hasty decisions.

Goddammit if there wasn't something about him that made you nervous.

"Listen. Just was lookin' for somewhere to sleep. It's fuckin' cold and your stables look warm." Your head tilts in the direction of a lone horse's home in a bed of hay, and you're not fully lying. It's not that you have set up camp by any means, but you've noticed.

"We could trade. You give me y'er ammo, and I g–"

"You give me your cock, I get it. You really could be more original." You were used to this. Bartering, some might call it. Living out here on your own was dangerous, and running into men who wanted to use your body in order to get supplies wasn't that uncommon. If they were that kind, even. You'd heard the horror stories.

Albeit, most of these men met your gun in the end. Enabling you acquire their supplies, keep all yours, and your dignity. Win/win.

"...I give you the pleasure of livin' another day. Really? Y'think it's that easy?"

There was something in the way Joel says this that makes you grateful for the jacket you're wearing. Goosebumps prickle your skin, bile creeping up your throat and you will it back down again. Y'think it's that easy? As if he thought you wanted it.

If circumstances were different, you'd be rubbing the crimson off your cheeks. Flashing him a sheepish grin in an attempt to resolve whatever misunderstanding there was... but this wasn't the environment to elicit such conversation.

And you weren't that type of person to begin with.

Instead, your index sweeps from guard to trigger when you fire off at his leg. Hasty decisions be damned. You're quicker than him, so why're you tryin' to save him? You're a 'shoot to kill' type of person, and as the bullet grazes past his calf – part of you wishes you had.

Because not only did your bullet not make contact, Joel gets worse. You two lock eyes. His rifle is thrown over his shoulder as he grunts and walks perfectly fine over to you – despite the way his eyebrows knit together, jaw ticked. Was that a grin? Do something, anything – run.

Joel grips the nape of your neck, and you yelp in surprise.

Who the fuck does this man think he is?

His large hand eclipses your wrist as he maneuvers the gun from your hand. The action makes you writhe in pain, and it sends a shiver down your spine to know he's only using an ounce of his power.

You dig your elbow into his ribs despite him stronger than you. Stomping, kicking, punching anything you can find.

"What the fu–"

"Little girl, you picked the wrong one." His breath edges at the shell of your ear, and every sign should be pointing for you to hate this, but it almost feels familiar. Like yourself. It's only then when you worry.

---

You don't realise it, but Joel is pushing you inside his cabin. Keeping your head in direction of the ground, thud of the door heard somewhere behind you.

"You want to be treated like a big girl? Get these fuckin' pants off."

"What... what? No I'm fuckin' not–"

Joel chews up the space between you when he pushes you to the nearest wall. Your back at his chest, a cheek flush against the cabin's support.

Pine, tobacco, and whiskey fill your senses and you bite back the urge to whimper. He wouldn't see you like that.

"You're not? That why you were watchin' me jerk off last night? 'Cuz you don't wanna give it up?"

That alone makes blood creep up your neck and spill over your cheeks. You have to squeeze your legs together to quell the ache.

It was lonely on your own.

Most nights were spent half asleep on a cold, hard surface. Tired and hungry more days than not. You don't remember the last time you got a hot meal, much less been touched. So when you heard Joel's low grunts coming from the window (a window from a cabin you don't know quite yet that he built with his own hands) you become intrigued.

It's in this moment you're certain it must have been the rustling of branches just outside his room. You remember it happening last night, cursing to yourself for making noise. His fist stalled around the girth of his fat cock before spilling his seed over his stomach. As if that is what caused him to come.

It makes sense now, and it equally causes you to become dizzy and filled with rage. You bite your bottom lip, unable to think of a response.

"Mouthy thing ain't got much to say now. Now c'mon. I ain't taking these off you, doin' it y'erself." More of a warning, Joel lets up on his grip on you, but you're defenseless. No weapons, no pack. He's got your world in his hands.

With the newly found space between the two of you, you turn around – back of your head against the wall as your eyes find the other set for, perhaps, the first time. And they're deep. Deeper than you were aware of. Dark, impossibly round. Wrinkles reside on the sides of them, and if you knew any better, you wouldn't admit they were doing something to you.

But not only are you stubborn, you're too forthright to beat around the bush.

"I shot at you, and you want my cunt? You must be lonelier than I a–"

"Now."

Your words don't match your actions as your hands fall by your sides. Fingers play with zipper of your old, faded jeans that have seen better days.

You can't help but snicker an awkward laugh from how he's just watching you. Insecurities rise when you realise you're not laughing at him, but more his eyes on you. How intense it feels suddenly. He wants this. Wants you.

His eyes draw impatiently, broad frame leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed.

"Ain't got all day. Still considerin' your death."

His arms. Bulging through the fabric of his shirt, his body was built in a way that you could tell he worked with his hands... maybe in his past life, too. Throat dry, you shimmy out of your pants until you're left in your cotton panties.

Ones that you are becoming more aware the condition of. A small pool of wetness forming at the core of you clings to the fabric.

"Top, too."

Is that? It is. Your eyes wander down to see the growing bulge in Joel's pants. Not even the hem of his flannel could hide it. Sure, you'd seen it in its full form the night before, but that was with distance and without the heat rising between the two of you.

You bite your lip without hesitation, pulling the layers of jacket and a handful of tops onto the ground until you're bare. The cool air passes over your nipples and wills them into stiff peaks.

"Ain't you somethin', baby."

That's the first time Joel Miller draws a shaky exhale out of you. All from a single sentence.

When Joel steps over to you, that calm and collected breath is nowhere to be found. Your chest rises and falls at a random pattern, feeling more and more naked by the second as his clothes are completely kept on his body. A purposeful tactic.

He bends down to collect your clothes along with everything else that yours, and you are truly at his will. So busy on the precipice of pleasure that you don't even think about trying to get away.

"Stay."

"Ain't a dog." You glare, standing with your legs brushing together.

"Then quit actin' like a bitch. And quit movin', I'm gettin' to you."

It shuts you up quick, jaw snapping shut. You're certain if he told that to anyone else they'd be reduced to tears, but you can take it. It coils a heat inside the pit of your stomach that you've never felt. Causes your clit to feel as if it's on fire from the need to touch it.

Joel turns on his heel to walk away and it's as if you're able to breathe fresh air from the humidity he brings. You notice he's putting your things and his rifle away on his kitchen counter before coming back to you. He must really trust his ability to keep everything out like that.

Then again, have you even moved in the last five minutes?

The last thing he is, is worried.

You're able to look around, if only for a moment. Though, is it really looking? Your adrenaline is pumping, pupils blown from the fact that not only are you in the house you'd been stalking... you're about to fuck the man in it. And you almost tried to kill him. You definitely didn't miss on purpose. Couldn't have.

All the same, the cabin was nice, and you could take in briefly the light wood – old and weathered. A record player in the corner beside a guitar. This stuff could get you a lot in return, but for whatever reason that doesn't even cross your mind. Maybe your heart beating in your ears is a handy distraction to keep you walking the line.

Your eyes track the rugged man instead.

---

"Here's how this is gonna go," he announces, coming back to you and not phased that you haven't moved a muscle. "You are gonna take your ass over there on the couch. You're gonna make me come, then you're gonna go. Understand?"

"Well... I guess it is that easy."

Your bratty mouth getting you in trouble again. As if you're in the position to say anything. Naked as you are.

---

Joel's jaw ticks forward in a way that makes you feel fear, yet there's a direct correlation between it and the slick gathering between your folds. The same wide hand that gripped the nape of your neck wraps around the front of your throat while he pushes you against the wall, and your shoulders slump – all but folding instantly.

His mouth is inches from yours, forcing you to look him in the eyes.

"Listen here. I've been real kind to you. Coulda killed ya day one, tryin' to steal my shit like that. Was gonna be real kind in where I fucked ya, too. Now we're gonna fix that mouth a'yours and fast. Knees. Now." You soon come to know this isn't a suggestion. It's not even a warning. It is what's happening.

It's in the way Joel's hands guide you down onto your knees. He goes for his belt and you hear and see that distinct clang of metal untangle before your very senses. Your mouth waters instantly, teetering into fully giving into this struggle of power.

Joel's hands are calloused. You can tell he takes care of them, but that doesn't hide the wear and tear. Specifically on his fingertips. They grip your jaw roughly, and you choke back a moan as your mouth hangs open pliantly from this. Every nerve ending buzzing to be touched.

"Where'd that bratty girl go, huh? You done bein' big and bad – wanna be a slut, don’tcha?"

Your eyelash splay along your cheeks as you nod, and you feel his grip tighten, tugging your chin up higher.

"Look at me. You want this cock? I need your words. Tell me you wanna be a slut."

You're not sure when it happens, but hot tears run down your cheeks as everything comes to a head. Your body is trembling with raw desire right at your fingertips, just within reach. You can't hold back anymore, it physically hurts to.

"I wanna be a slut for this cock... please."

"Fuck, even a please. Oughta eat you out for that, sugar. Maybe next time."

Your brain is swimming at the thought. Next time?

With his free hand, Joel sets his cock free from his jeans, giving a satisfying smack to his abdomen quickly. No need for another piece of fabric keeping him from getting what he wants as you soon take note he isn't wearing boxers.

There's no denying what you're met with as you get to view it from this close. Joel Miller has a pretty cock. There's a soft, but bulging vein on the underside to match how big and thick it is. The rosy tip greets you, and it's the first time you get to see how much you've turned him on.

Your mouth is drooling while it's pried open and meets the tip of him. A moan from you is instantaneous, yet feels so distant from yourself, it doesn't affect you until much later. The taste of his precum coats your tongue as he slips past your lips and it's all you can experience. Your moans slip in and out of the sloshing sounds of your mouth. Keeping your hands by your sides, you don't tempt to touch him in fear he would pull away, so instead you twirl your tongue around his leaking head. Bob your head up and down in a slow, but sultry rhythm that causes him curse under his breath. He's not stoic above you, he's reacting.

He's clawing for every last bit of the upper hand.

"S'a lot, innit, babygirl? That's alright, you can take it." It's then you can sense Joel's guard slipping. Could be the fact that your mouth is suctioned perfectly around the length of his cock, but his voice gets damn sweeter the longer you go like this. His hips also have no problem in thrusting shallowly every now and then to knock the drool off of your dripping chin.

Even if you could form a thought, you don't know you would.

His fingers tangle in your hair, pulling it out of your face as you maintain eye contact. Intuitive in your approach, he told you to look at him earlier, so maybe he likes it? The groans filling the room lead you to believe you are correct. It feels so removed from who you were moments before: snickering because his gaze felt intimidating. Now, his pupils are blown as they pour into yours and his neck hangs back when your mouth makes those pretty, sloppy popping noises – testing your gag reflexes as you will them to relax.

It's way more intimate than anything you've ever done with anyone you've ever been with, and this stranger is pulling it out of you. Within the mess your brain is in, you remind yourself if you want to stop you can, and not a bit of you does.

The hot tears that were once down your cheeks swell in your eyes once more, but this time from the sheer size of him. You moan vibration after vibration against him, shifting and pushing your cunt against your calf, thigh – anything to feel some sort of friction.

He lets out a growl when he notices you, "Honey, if it's that bad, touch yourself." If your cheeks weren't red before, they are now.

It's him calling you out, slight embarrassingly, but not letting up with his hips. It's the way the embarrassment builds the fire in the pit of your belly. It's your hand pushing inside your panties at the sound of his command. And it's you practically choking on his cock from the gasp you let out through your nose – stunned at how wet you are.

Your fingertips barely brush over your clit when you notice the slick collecting, bubbling right at the very top of your slit and slutty moans fall out of you. Your eyelids droop as you try to keep your gaze up to Joel, but the way your fingertips roll over the hood of your clit in satisfying circles sends you over the edge way quicker than you anticipate.

"Shit, baby. Just like that. You filthy thing, can't hold off another minute longer, can ya? Need it right fuckin' now."

The sound of Joel's deep voice looms overhead as you come completely undone.

Unable to stop yourself, the suction on his cock pops free for a moment. Your moans hitting the air as your eyes roll back. Your body rushing to find each wave of pleasure roll off your back. Joel's cock still nestled in your mouth, but his hips still. "Goddamn, look at that little slut come out. Such a needy fuckin' kitten."

When Joel makes sure you've ridden it out, he pulls his cock from your mouth. Your body feels weak despite how eager your mind is now, face-to-face with Joel's cock, you watch as his scarred hand glides your saliva over his length entirely. It puts you in a trance, quickly getting out of it when he taps his cock against your cheek. "Pretty kitten want this? C'mon."

If your moans felt foreign to you, you don't even know what to do with yourself at the twinge of a grin that spreads on your face. The sheer audacity of his taps right against your fucking cheek. Orgasm-drunk, you shuffle to your feet and Joel has no problem in tossing you – finally – to the couch.

Your back is to him while the front of your body brackets the width of his couch, arms hunched over the back of it, knees dig into the cushions. You're grateful for the lack of eye contact in this position as it gives you a moment to press your face into your bicep, an attempt to collect yourself. But all of it obsolete when you sense Joel's presence at your ass.

His body heat unmistakable to miss. You bite at your own skin, neck craning to behind you to watch him.

"Shit, darlin', look at you. Ass up like this like y'er in fuckin' heat for me." You whine at the fact his clothes are still mostly on, and you know he must be sweating underneath them, but he won't give it to you like that. Not yet, 'maybe next time'. "You know I can't go any further 'til you get a spankin'. Need to be punished for tryin' to hurt me like that. For tryin' to take my things. Ain't right. Need you to learn your lesson."

Where are you? A part of you knows this is a tactic. That Joel is lulling you into a position you can't say no to. It already shows itself in how you're splayed on his couch. Yet, you can't find the person you were before you stepped into the cabin. Not yet, not like this. You nod weakly, and Joel swipes the cotton undies down to your thighs so quickly the rush of air cools the heat of your folds. A flutter runs through you.

"Count. To ten. If you don't, we start over. Say, yes sir."

"Y-yes... sir. Yes sir."

A searing, mind-numbing spank wallops over your ass and it causes your hips to jut forward. Whimper hitting the top of your throat, you almost, almost, forget to count. Everything in your senses distracting you from completing the simplest tasks such as fucking counting.

"O-one." Another. "Twooo." And again. "Th-three!"

You start sniffling by the third smack of his wide hand, and you hear mocking sniffs behind your head. "Aww, pretty baby can't take the hurt she tries to give to others? That must be really tough. Y'heart's bleedin' all over my couch, honey."

Your cheeks burn, you really feel sorry for what you've done. Or at least, what you were planning to do.

The next spank leaves a welt of Joel's handprint across your skin. "FOUR!" Your body begins to feel weak, sliding against the couch, you know talking back is useless as you silent tears stream into your arm.

There are six more blinding slaps to your ass by the time he's done with you, and you feel him pull back when he's through. You imagine him wringing his palms, the roughness of them. You begin to wonder if that's how they got to be so weathered, and pretend not to be weirded out by the ache of jealousy.

"Y'know for somebody whinin' the whole time, your pussy is just droolin' from that," any narrative you wandered off with disappears in its replacement of Joel's fingers gathering slick between your folds. No announcement, just go. It was just within reach, feeling him inside you. You ride the shudder your body makes, licking your lips as you realise the unspoken rule is free and you can speak. "N-need it. Need your cock, please... please." "Need it, and you don't even know my name?" His index and middle finger waste no time in pressing into your aching core. Sounds of your wailing mix with his words as he lurches over, lip close to your ear. "Or maybe you do already."

"Please, please, please," your fingertips grip for the worn fabric of his couch while your hips that try to jut back are quickly halted by his other palm, a strong stopper at the base of your spine. "Not 'til you tell me my name." "I-I don't know. I don't know it, I swear." Joel's thick fingers slip completely out of you and you mewl pathetically, pussy clenching around nothing and he can see every last detail of it behind you. "Last fuckin' time, better tell me the truth." "It's Joel," you cry, hips pushing back against the resistance as much as possible. Anything to be filled again. "Joel. Joel. Joel. I was... I was– I don't know anybody. Not with anybody, I swear! Joel, I swear. Please! Just grew up hearin' your name. I swear on my life, Joel, please! I know I lied, didn't think you'd believe me."

You don't know why you're begging like your life depends on it, but your pleasure surely does, and there's a longer pause than you want lingering behind you. As if you can palpably feel Joel contemplating whether you're being truthful or not. But if there's one thing about you, aside from this moment in this compromising position: you don't answer to anybody.

Joel's cock bottoming out inside of you at the drop of a hat is confirmation enough that he believes you.

And you not only wail, but scream at the stretch and irresistible contact that punches you straight to your gut – right where you can feel the tip of him. Half-moon prints dig into your hips by his short fingernails when he grabs ahold of you and you're on your forearms, head hanging between your shoulders. Your panties keep your thighs straying too far apart if there is such a thing.

"This what you wanted when you watched me?" Joel grips your torso now, pulling you closer to him as you become more upright, his cock more accessible to the spongy spot inside of you and your nipples stand erect, eyes rolling back as it takes all of you not to rest your head back against his shoulder, and you fail. Hard. Your occiput makes contact with his shoulder. Joel brushes your hair back to the side, lips graze but never fully touches the column of your neck. "Thought about this tight cunt last night. Left the window open on purpose, but you knew that already, didn't you, pretty girl? Clever little thing and so fuckin' dirty."

Joel's hand snakes around the front of you, spreading your folds as he dives his fingers over your glossed-over clit your wetness claimed and that sends a whine off of your depraved lips. "That's it, honey. Show me what this cock does to ya. Makes you downright brainless from how well you take it." While his skilled fingers, toy with your clit, the other set of digits graze over your breasts on their way up to your mouth. You take them inside the warmth of your wet mouth easily, rolling your tongue over the digits until you can only focus on the white hot pleasure beginning to boil over. You keep his fingers between your teeth, a faint realisation that you can taste yourself on them. That's what does it.

His hips are relentless as they pound into you, the repetitious slaps of his skin against yours, of his balls tapping your cunt again and again sends you into a place that he knows you're approaching when you tighten and pulse.

"Y'know how tight and wet you feel around me, darlin'? Never had a fuckin' cunt like this. Let it out, let it out, just like you wanna. Just like you did last night around your fingers. Nothin' like this cock though, and you know it now, don't you? Oh, fuck yeah– thaaat's it. Look at you." "Joel... Joel!!!" Joel talks you through it, sending your body diving off the cliff that is your second orgasm. The undeniable gush of your fluids around his cock. His name stays stuck at the your tongue, the constant thud of it vibrates your lungs.

It starts at the attention on your clit. The raw bundle of nerves send signals outward as it spreads down your legs, up your stomach, to your nipples and down your spine. Your brain feels effervescent, toes curl, and it comes back again right to your heart. Your beating heart, wild, and every moan, whimper, scream that comes from you sounds like it is from someone else's chest. But it's yours, and you know that when you start to feel hazy, unable to hold yourself up anymore.

"Good for my cock after all. Ain't ya, baby? Shit."

Your torso leans forward while your cheek rests on the top of your hand that's gripped on Joel's couch, and your body is relaxed and fucked. Comfortably silent, just the way Joel would want you. His cock slips out of you, unable to stop the slew of grunts and groans that acts as an anchor to keep you from slipping under. You lick your lips, looking back at him with a nod, unable to stay silent for long. That struggle of power coming back for vengeance. "That's right. Come all over this ass you ruined. See those handprints? Dirty fucking man, you just met me. Show me how much you enjoyed doing that."

That's as far as you get when you feel the heavy streams of his hot, white come rope over your skin, and for someone who is no position to be smug, you sure do have a shit-eating grin on your face. Pure, and the simplest thing the two of you accomplish.

Joel shakes his head, shallow breaths become him as he staggers back and you pretend not to notice. "Gonna kill me, kid."

"Almost did."

---

You don't know why, but neither of you hold the promise of you leaving right away. You linger, both of you half naked and spent. You take your time cleaning yourself off, slipping your clothes back on. Day becoming night.

You tiptoe into the living room where Joel is unfurled on his couch. His eyes are closed, the back of his head inches away from where the two of you just had sex.

Planning your goodbye, you sit at the edge of the couch cushion, knowing he wasn't really asleep. Just restin' his eyes.

"I am sorry...," you finally say into the dimly lit room, pangs of annoyance fizz at your tongue for even apologising. For shooting him, for trying to steal from him. All of it.

It's not his fault. It's just how you are.

This is dichotomous in relation to your eyes. They're bleary when a yawn pulls deep from within you. As if rest had been climbing up to the surface this entire time.

"Maybe you should be apologisin' 'bout your shitty aim. Could teach you a thing or two." Joel's eyes remained closed, arms crossed. If you could let yourself experience this, you would notice how soft he looks in this moment. Instead, your stomach is recoils in fight or flight.

You're glad he can't see you swallow the knot in your throat.

There was no magical solution for your life, and a part of you wishes you hadn't chosen his cabin to raid. You wish you hadn't met him, because now you could feel yourself want to notice the small things in him. Already.

You felt it dangerous to let anything that close to you.

You scoff to play it off, giving his chest a light shove and very accidentally getting lost in the light landscape of hairs that resides at the top of his flannel. "I could teach you a thing or two." A pathetic response for a pathetically spent human.

"We could both teach each other," he resigns and you're grateful he doesn't point out your lack of wit for how worn out he's made you. Perhaps the smugness settles in the things he doesn't say. Really, it's in what Joel spouts off next that throws you upside down.

"S'why you should stay. One month. That's it."

"Excuse me?"

"Didn't stuttered," your eyes roll and somehow, despite Joel's own being shut, he tuts his teeth. "Don't roll your eyes at me, little girl. You need a place to sleep. Besides, I could use an extra set of hands. Way I see it, best offer you've had in a while. Got a shelf life, though. Don't like to wait."

A part of you is suspicious, and if this man didn't make sure you orgasmed twice, you would suspect yourself to be dead within a matter of minutes.

There's something true about him, though. You're unwilling to look at it directly, but you trust him.

"Fine."

"Gonna need clearer confirmation, darlin'. Really need you to want this if you're gonna stay with me." He knew exactly where to press.

"Fuck, I shoulda killed you when I had the chance. I want to stay with you. One month." You try to ignore the grit between your teeth as speak, but your shoulders eventually soften. And you really do mean it. It's just... you're hardened from years of misplaced trust.

Your hand goes to the pendant around your neck subconsciously.

Joel either doesn't notice, or gives you the space.

You're grateful either way.

"That's that, then."

If anyone could understand the concept, it's Joel.

"That's that."

426 notes · View notes

guessimwritingficsagain · 10 months

Text

IV ║ Notch

Joel Miller x F!Reader

{ Part III: Edgestitch | Behind the Seams: Part IV | Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist }

Rating: E, but not that explicit

Summary: While Ellie works her first shift at the Outfitters, Joel drops by yours to return the blouse you left behind at the baby shower. Turns out, there's plenty around the house to keep him occupied until the teenager clocks off.

Warnings: Sexual tension, body insecurity, some language, inaccurate descriptions of gardening, gratuitous descriptions of the male body, undervest supremacy, flirting, dry humping, shy!reader, reader has a nickname related to her job, soft!domestic!Joel, no use of Y/N

Word count: 8.9k

Notes: Once I started writing this chapter in earnest, it came together a bit more quickly than I expected! It's extremely self-indulgent, with plenty of white undervest and belly action because you guys deserve all of that goodness for being the most patient, loving readers a writer could hope for 🥹 Thank you, I love you all! ❤️

Notch – diamond shaped marks that stick out beyond the edge of the pattern to line up all the pieces when sewing the garment. They come in pairs to be matched up.

Joel is sleeping - which is not something that could be said until a couple of months ago.

After the outbreak, sleep as a concept ceased to exist. What took its place is literal ‘shuteye’, either engineered by pills knocked back with moonshine, or a preventative shutdown by his body to avoid total failure, having pushed his physical form to the living limit.

It’s the kind of sleep that is destitute and provides no relief. It keeps the cogs turning just enough that he doesn’t expire, standing in his boots - which, on most days, are not the only things held together by duct tape.

But after the hospital, even that turned out to be too much to ask for. Some nights, the itch for chemical-induced relief got so bad that Joel entertained the thought of asking Tommy for illicit pills, ready to crawl on all fours to his brother’s house two streets down because he was shaking so hard he couldn’t lock his knees. But he didn’t trust him not to tell Maria, and with Ellie in the picture, he wasn’t about to tempt fate.

So instead, he asked Maria to assign him to night patrols. She hmmm’d at his request like she knew something he didn’t, but she humoured him, letting him take the graveyard shift for a couple of weeks straight. She didn’t have to tell him that she could see the way he tripped over his own feet and hear the slur in his voice. She’s too sharp not to notice.

But she didn’t say anything.

What she did do though, was not so subtly wean him off the late-night patrols. It started with a couple of random, last-minute changes, and then the next thing he knew, he was working morning shifts exclusively. When he tried covertly swapping stints with another guy, he showed up at the guard tower at midnight to find his sister-in-law standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her pregnant belly.

As he trudged home begrudgingly with his head down and her stern reprimand in his ears, he couldn’t help a chuckle. Gotta hand it to her.

Banished back to his bed, Joel went back to staring owlishly at the ceiling, watching the moonlight slide across the plaster until he knew all the cracks in it with his eyes closed (metaphorically). He’d listen to Ellie snoring away two doors down and marvel at the fact that she somehow still slept like the dead, even after… all that.

And then, one night, it happened for him too.

Admittedly, he ate a bit too much at Tommy and Maria’s - on top of running the town like a well-oiled machine, she makes a mean chicken fried steak - and Ellie had not so subtly plonked a second helping on his plate without asking. He was lying in bed, steeling himself for another long night, when his eyes drooped. The motion was so alien that it jolted him wide awake, but he couldn’t shake the weight that clung to the seams of his lashes. The next time he opened his eyes, it was morning.

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It’s nowhere near consistent, and more often than not he wakes up in a cold sweat in the small hours, but in between, he’s sleeping. For once, he’s feeling rested. And it’s a nice fucking break from the relentless exhaustion that he’s convinced is fused into his bones.

He always wakes up earlier than Ellie though. She never stomps down the stairs until he’s already had breakfast, and hers has gone cold.

So on the Saturday morning following the baby shower, with his face plastered into the mattress, body curled around a pillow - old habits die hard - Joel nearly falls out of bed at the banging on his door.

‘Joel! Get the fuck up!’

For one disconcerting moment between sleep and wake, he’s in his bedroom back in Texas. He half expects to look up to see the posters on the wall and the perpetually overflowing laundry basket at the foot of his bed.

Blinking through the urge to close his eyes, the colours fade and he stares blearily at the digital clock on his bedside table.

7:30.

What the fuck? More often than not he has to drag the teenager out of bed by the ankles, kicking and swearing, at 7:50 to get to school at 8:00.

His knees groan as he staggers onto his feet, grabbing yesterday’s jeans from the floor and pulling them on. He finds a passably clean shirt about five deep on a chair, which he shrugs on over his white undervest. With a grunt, he yanks open the door and heads downstairs on bare feet, frowning at unfamiliar sounds coming from the kitchen.

Joel pauses in the doorway, hands on hips. ‘What do you think you’re doin’?’

Deeming his question unworthy of a response, Ellie tosses him a roll of her eyes over her shoulder and resolutely ignores him.

Shuffling closer, he asks, ‘Are you - cookin’?’

Brandishing the spatula at him, she snarls, ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

He goads her with a smirk. ‘To be honest, it looks like you threw up in the pan.’

Ellie elbows him hard in the stomach. ‘Fuck you, man!’

He grins. There’s nothing like winding her up first thing in the morning. Grabbing the pan, he bins the ruined eggs, scraping off the burnt bits stuck to the bottom. ‘Crack some more eggs, I’ll make ‘em.’

Ten minutes later, in their usual seats at the kitchen table, they tuck into scrambled eggs and buttered toast.

‘Slow down,’ warns Joel as Ellie wolfs down hers. ‘You’re gonna choke.’

‘You hurry up! Can’t be late for my first day,’ she garbles through a mouthful of food.

‘Why can’t you be like this about school?’ he grumbles, then he winces as his teeth catch something crunchy. Picking it out, he gives her a pointed look. ‘Eggshell.’

‘Calcium,’ she shoots back without even looking up, too busy shoving the rest of her breakfast into her mouth, stuffing her cheeks like a chipmunk.

That one word stops Joel in his tracks and hurls him twenty years back in time.

But then Ellie is jumping up and practically throwing her empty plate into the sink, sneakers squeaking on the tiled floor as she dashes out of the kitchen. ‘C’mon, old man!’

Joel smiles, the memory warm like sun on his face.

He shakes his head, slowly finishing his breakfast - like he wishes he did that day.

They turn out to be fifteen minutes early.

To his chagrin, Ellie admits freely that she lied about the time so they wouldn’t be late. He’s a punctual guy, thank you very much. He certainly doesn’t need to be schooled by the little brat.

Joel sits on the stairs, while Ellie has her face squished up against the door, unabashedly leaving smudges on the glass panels as she keeps up an uninterrupted running commentary on every last piece of clothing she can see.

He tunes her out easily, shifting in his seat so that his right ear is to the door. In his hands is the blouse that you left behind at Tommy and Maria’s at the baby shower. He’s been meaning to return it to you, but the week got away from him, and there’s no time like the present.

Considering the state of his knees, he impresses himself with the speed at which he stands at the sound of footsteps on the otherwise quiet main street. Squaring his shoulders, he discreetly pulls on his shirt, suddenly seeing wrinkles everywhere in the fabric, and runs his fingers through his hair, wishing he’d taken another look in the mirror before he left the house -

But it’s Lucy who appears at the bottom of the stairs with her unfailingly sunny smile.

‘Hi, you must be Ellie,’ she chirps.

She eyes Lucy cautiously, lips pinched to one side. ‘Where’s Pin?’

Joel growls. ‘Manners.’

Ellie puts her hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry. I meant - nice to meet you, where’s Pin?’

Lucy beams good-naturedly and fiddles with the lock. ‘She’s off today, and it’s all my fault because I made her work three weekends in a row. You’ll be helping me in the front anyway, so I’ll show you the ropes.’ Stepping aside and swinging the door open, she prompts, ‘In you go now, hon.’

Ellie doesn’t even look back at him, rushing into the shop like a thoroughbred fresh out of the starting gates.

Pocketing the keys, Lucy smiles. ‘Hi Joel.’

‘Hey,’ he nods back. ‘Sorry about Ellie.’

‘Don’t be, I was exactly like her when I was younger. Still am sometimes,’ she jokes. Then with a sly side eye, she remarks, ‘And honestly, you look more disappointed that I showed up than she does.’

He splutters, ‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.’

She smirks knowingly, gesturing at the blouse clutched tightly in his left fist. ‘I can pass that to Pin for ya.’

Joel hesitates for just a second, and Lucy bursts into laughter, elbowing him teasingly. ‘The way your face fell! I’m joking, Miller. Relax.’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s fine, guess I’ll give it to her next time she’s ‘round.’

Just then, from the depths of the shop, Ellie gasps dramatically and yells at the top of her lungs, ‘I want thissssssss one!’

Meeting Lucy’s eyes, Joel asks, ‘Sure you gonna be ok left alone with her?’

She shrugs. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

He flashes her a thumbs up. ‘I’ll pick her up at three then.’

He’s about to walk away from the Outfitters when Lucy’s voice stops him. ‘Hey, Joel!’

Looking up at the wraparound porch, he raises an eyebrow in a silent question.

‘She lives in the yellow cottage on the same street as the shoe shop. Keep going north, you can’t miss it,’ she says with a two-finger salute and a parting line that he’s heard before. ‘Say hi to Pin for me!’

You’ve always had a soft spot for the turn of the season, when late spring blooms graciously give way to summer buds. The grass smells greener, and the air is pregnant with pollen and nectar. It’s not overly warm yet, but you can feel the intensity in the sunlight, muted only by the early hour. Good thing you’re starting early.

It’s unseasonably warm for June, and the vegetable patch on the far end of your garden has suddenly burst into life. The cauliflower has finally come through after two failed crops in a row, and both the tomato vines and pepper plants are thriving. Closer to the ground, the onion and garlic shoots are patiently waiting to be pulled, and asparagus shoots spear through the earth in tidy lines one after another.

Pulling on a hat and gloves, you get to work.

You’re halfway through the second row of onions when there’s a faint knock on the front door. Even though you’ve only been in the sun for a little while, the coolness inside the house feels like a balm to your skin as you pad inside, peeling off your gloves before reaching for the door.

Swinging it open, you’re stumped by the sight of Joel Miller on your doorstep.

You haven’t seen him since the party, where you’d agreed on a start date and time for Ellie’s first shift, and -

Since the kiss.

You’ve felt his absence keenly. You’ve caught yourself loitering on street corners, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, knowing you’ll be able to spot him just by the way his shoulders swing with his long strides. You’ve kept an ear out for the southern lilt that has chased goosebumps across your skin, or any mention of his name, but all in vain.

Jackson has a habit of growing in size, usually in direct proportion to one’s desperation.

Now that he’s somehow here, you’re aware you’re gaping at him, so broad that his shoulders are blocking out the daylight. Too many years out of practice to count, you have no idea what the protocol is when you next see the man who literally made your knees buckle with just his lips and nothing else.

‘Mornin’, he finally says with a small smile.

You stammer. ‘H-hello. What, um, I mean, how -’

‘I dropped off Ellie at the shop and Lucy told me where you live,’ he explains, shaking out the blouse in his hands. ‘Thought I’d come ‘round and return this.’

Your palm twitches with the urge to smack yourself on the forehead. Of course that’s why he’s here.

Taking the top from him, you smile back gratefully. ‘Thank you. And of course, it’s Ellie’s first day. I’m sorry I can’t be there, but I’ve been subbing for Lucy on the weekends for a month straight and I needed a break.’

He waves away your apology. ‘Count yourself lucky. She was just ‘bout bouncin’ off the walls.’

‘Bless her heart,’ you chuckle, breaking off when his eyes flicker over you, as if he’s just registered your very minimalist ensemble of a white cotton tank top and denim cut-offs. Your skin prickles under his scrutiny, flattery winning out against self-consciousness at the deliberate drag of his gaze over you, a thoughtful weight behind it.

That is until something catches his attention, and you flinch when he peers under the brim of your hat. ‘What -’

Before you can even articulate your question, he’s taken one step towards you, his work boots heavy on your creaky wooden porch. His voice is low but rough around the edges, just the way you like it.

‘You got some dirt -’ he swipes his index finger firmly on the end of your nose. ‘Right here.’

Your jaw hangs open, then clamps shut, in quick succession, the shell of your ears burning hot at his fleeting touch. Throat suddenly dry, you barely manage to squeak, ‘Thanks.’

One day, you will at least try and keep your cool around this man. But alas, it is not this day.

Rearranging himself, Joel leans on the doorframe with his arms crossed and remarks conversationally, ‘You look outdoorsy this mornin’.’

Flashing the soil-stained gloves at him, you try to keep your voice steady. ‘I’m just doing some gardening out back. The vegetable patch needs harvesting.’

He purses his lips at that. ‘Didn’t peg you as the gardenin’ type.’

You don’t know where the bravado comes from, but you swat him on the arm with the gloves and quip, ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’

‘You got me there,’ he huffs a laugh and gestures towards the back of the house. ‘Anythin’ I can do to help?’

The refusal is on the tip of your tongue. You don’t say yes to a whole lot nowadays, other than when Lucy makes you. But then you hear yourself ask, a challenge in your voice that you didn’t know you had. ‘I don’t know. Are you any good with your hands, Joel Miller?’

At the boldness in your words, which you don’t take back, Joel’s eyebrows reach for his hairline. Biting your lip but standing your ground, you watch him grind his jaw as he considers his response.

‘Why don’t you try me, sweetheart?’

‘Like this?’

‘Wait - slow down.’

A shuffle of hands. ‘How about now?’

‘That’s it. Yes, that’s good. Keep going.’

A raspy grunt. ‘I think I’m almost there.’

‘Yeah, that’s right, don’t stop -’

‘Alright, you ready?’

‘Come on, Joel -’

With one last flick, the knife slices clean through the base of the stalk, and Joel plucks the cauliflower head out of its leafy cradle with a triumphant grin.

‘How’s that for good hands, huh?’ he crows.

‘I’ll get back to you in the fall when we see if the cauliflower grows back,’ you tease.

He huffs, squinting up at you through the sun. ‘You’re hard to please, sweetheart.’

You preen at the playful turn of the conversation. If you were a little braver, you’d give him a mischievous wink - but for now, you gesture at the patch. ‘Can you handle the rest? I’ll get started on the peppers.’

He nods. ‘Leave ‘em with me.’

The pepper plants are having a great season, standing at four feet tall and heaving with fruits. You’ve left them alone on the vine for the last three weeks to sweeten, and they have dutifully ripened into a beautiful red. Settling onto your knees, you methodologically comb through the peppers from top to bottom, cutting off each one by the stalks.

It’s a big harvest, half of which you plan on giving away to your neighbours in exchange for their berries and lemons. Some you will cook. Lucy is due to come over for dinner, and she loves your stuffed pepper recipe. The rest you’ll have to find time to roast, skin, deseed and preserve in oil, which will last the rest of the year -

A shadow falls over you, stilling your hands and drawing your eyes upwards.

The sight is familiar - feet planted shoulder-wide by your knees, chin tucked in as he stares down at you, your nose level with the front of the jeans that you picked out for him - you’ve seen it all before, except for one small detail.

Joel is sweating. A lot.

His thin plaid shirt - you’re not sure if you’ve seen him in anything else yet - is sticking to him like a second skin, clinging to the solid outline of his biceps as he holds onto the basket full of cauliflower heads. The sunlight glances off the perspiration dotting his hairline, and the wispy grays that normally curl away from his face have wilted in the humidity.

There’s a flush under his skin as he swipes at his forehead with his shirt sleeve, and your gaze follows a bead of sweat dripping down the prominent vein on the side of his neck, and into the deep V of his shirt - wait, is that the outline of an undervest that you can just make out underneath -

‘Should I take the cauliflower in?’

‘Um -’ you stammer to a halt, eyes still plastered to the front of his chest, just like his shirt.

He clearly mistakes your gawking for something else, flashing you an apologetic smile at his state. ‘Sorry, I work up a sweat real easy.’

Oh, come on. Now all you’re thinking about is how else he works up a sweat -

Seized by the sudden need to get out of the heat in more than one sense of the word, you rip the basket from his grasp and turn on your heels to sprint into the house with a choked, ‘I’ll be right back!’

You nearly trip over your own feet running into the kitchen, your heart thumping so loudly in its ribcage it feels like the whole house is shaking to the beat.

And all that man has done is sweat in front of you.

‘Pull yourself together, Pin,’ you mutter to yourself as you tip the cauliflower heads onto the kitchen table. Grabbing a jug from the cupboard, you put it in the sink and turn on the faucet. Watching the trickle of water, you make yourself take three deep breaths.

Joel’s kind enough to do you a favour, you could at least have the courtesy to not perv on him while he helps you out.

Nodding determinedly to yourself, you pluck two glasses from the drying rack, putting them inside the empty basket that you hook on your elbow, and march back outside -

Only to almost swallow your tongue and drop the full jug of water right at your feet.

Joel’s sweat-soaked shirt is now hanging on your washing line like a white flag, having surrendered to the heat. And just like that, the very image that has been inconveniently seared into the back of your eyes since the party is suddenly before you in all its glory, in the morning sun, out in the open air.

The white undervest stretches over the breadth of him, and if he didn’t look so good in it, you would’ve laughed at the comical way the flimsy straps are clinging onto his shoulders for dear life. Then he bends over to inspect the tomato vines, the bottom of his vest riding up with the movement, teasing a flash of skin above the waistline of the jeans pulled tight over his behind. One big hand reaches out, the outline of his arm flexing as he does, and he palms the bottom of one tomato, testing if it’s ripe for the picking.

Except in your head, it’s something else he’s cupping with such rapturous attention.

He doesn’t notice you until he stands up with a low grunt of effort. Pointing an apologetic finger at his shirt, he says, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I’m sweatin’ right through it like nobody’s business.’

You make a noise in your throat that you pass off as an answer, and with shaky hands, pour him a full glass of water which you shove in his direction.

‘Appreciate it, sweetheart.’ He salutes you and takes a long drag, tipping his head back. You watch, transfixed, as the sunlight bounces off the lines of sweat criss-crossing down the strong column of his neck, and the hard bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

Suddenly, you’re parched. But you don’t trust yourself to stay upright, let alone pour yourself a drink.

‘It’s hot today,’ Joel breaks the loaded silence, though it’s possible that it’s unilaterally so on your side.

‘Uh-huh,’ you croak, still holding onto the water jug like a shield.

He peers at you with a touch of mischief. ‘You ain’t gonna swoon or anythin’ are you?’

Probably. And definitely not for the reason he has in mind.

You attempt a weak smile that may have come off as a grimace. ‘I’ll try not to.’

Reassured, he nods towards the garlic patch. ‘C’mon. Let’s get our hands dirty, sweetheart.’

By the time the vegetable patch has been thoroughly picked and the baskets crammed full, the sun is high in the sky, the morning clouds burned off with the heat.

Joel isn’t the only one who’s sweating through his clothes - your light cotton top is now clinging uncomfortably to your skin, sweat dripping down your sternum and dampening the cups of your bra. You heave a sigh of relief when he helps you move the haul to a shaded corner near the porch where you have an outdoor sink and wheel hose installed.

Emptying the root vegetables into the sink, Joel steps back and casts a critical eye over the rain gutters that line the eaves of your house. Fingers spread over one jutting hip, he leans his weight on his right leg, the stance creating all kinds of angles that are completely unnecessary in this kind of heat.

He points at the leaves and branches that are clearly sticking out from the channels, but you’re only really interested in studying his large hands. The bumps and veins on the back of them, the watch with the broken face on his left wrist, the dirt coating his thick fingers, pushed under tidily trimmed nails. The logical thought that follows is how he would leave dark streaks on your white top when he pulls you in by the waist -

‘Looks like the gutters need cleanin’,’ Joel declares.

Well, the gutter your head is currently dunked in can certainly do with a good scrub.

‘Rainy season doesn’t start for another few months, they can wait.’

He uh-uh's sternly. ‘I’ve heard that before. Do you have a ladder?’

‘You really don’t have to -’ you protest, but he won’t hear it.

‘It’s no big deal, I’m sweaty anyway,’ he replies. ‘Besides, you’ll be doing me a favour keepin’ me occupied. I don’t pick Ellie up till three.’

You bite your lip. ‘But I feel bad working you so hard.’

Without skipping a beat, he winks. ‘Don’t worry your pretty head, sweetheart - I like workin’ for it.’

Jesus Christ. This man needs to be locked up and the key thrown to a colony of clickers.

The inner contractor in Joel comes out to play as he climbs deftly up the extension ladder propped up against the eaves, gloves on and a tarp bag tied to the top rung for collecting the debris. Discreetly, you shuffle around the freestanding sink so that you have a clear view of him as you turn on the water and start washing the dirt off the onions.

He’s starting close by, just a couple of feet away from you, patiently scooping out the dead leaves and twigs by the handful. Up on the ladder with his side to you, you’re eye level with the swell of his belly, which stretches the seams of the vest, and the underside of it peeks out every time he reaches up for the gutters. Your cheeks warm with the memory of how the soft folds felt against you, so warm and solid that you ache to reach out, push the flimsy vest up and nuzzle the tender skin with your nose -

It takes you a couple of minutes to realise that you’re not even pretending to be washing the onions anymore, the hose running in your idle grasp as you stare, head cocked to one side.

You don’t hear him when he turns to you. ‘Can pass me the hose?’

You stare dumbly back at him. ‘Huh?’

‘The hose, Pin,’ he repeats, a playful condescension in his smirk, like he knows exactly what you’ve been looking at. ‘That onion looks sparkly clean.’

You’re not sure what happened. One second you’re holding onto the hose with the intention of turning off the water before passing it to Joel, but your brain skips that crucial first step, and the next thing you know, you’re pointing it straight at him, spraying him in water from face to chest.

As he splutters, you shove the hose into the sink and screech, mortified. ‘Oh my god! I’m so sorry!’

You watch in horror as the water trickles from his hair, down his stubbled chin and onto his chest - okay, that’s a lie. It’s definitely not horror that’s twisting in your tummy and then much, much lower between your thighs.

And if you thought this man looked good sweaty, well - you’ve seen nothing yet.

He might as well put you out of your misery and take off his undervest right about now. It’s completely see-through, pebbled nipples and the firm ridges of his pecs showing through the wet fabric, rounded out by the endearing soft pouch of his belly.

He wears the early summer tan so well, and for the first time since the outbreak, you think about the swim club in your old neighbourhood. Watching the water drip off his skin, it’s not a stretch to imagine this man pulling himself out of the pool after a quick dip to cool down, before stretching out on a sunlounger to dry in the sun - all in slow motion, set to the track of a corny sax riff.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say on reflex, but the apology rings hollow with the way your gaze lingers over his chest, and he notices.

He chuckles, carding one hand through his wet hair to slick it back, standing taller under your eyes. ‘As I said - never a dull moment with you, sweetheart.’

Joel takes his time, clearing out all the blockages and hosing the gutters clean so that you don’t have to worry about them for another six months. He dumps the leaves and sticks in the compost post, rinses the soiled gloves and his hands clean, before taking his shirt off the washing line and heading into the blessed shade.

He finds you in the kitchen, back to the door, putting away clean plates and cutlery from the drying rack, porcelain knocking together and metal clanging.

This is the most he’s seen of you, in a tank top and shorts, bathed in light spilling in from the large windows that open out into the backyard. He sees touches of your workshop right here in the kitchen - dried herbs and seasoning in mismatched but tidy boxes on the shelves, knives organised by size on a magnetic knife block, plates and bowls arranged in neat stacks behind glass cabinets.

Not wanting to alarm you, he deliberately scrapes his shoe on the tiled floor to make his presence known.

Whipping around - and just a touch startled - you smile with a quiet hey, and Joel’s not sure if he’ll ever get over how the sweet shyness still clings to the curve of your lips despite the fact that he’s kissed you right there.

He stays by the door for now and says, ‘I put the ladder back, and the gutters are all done, but I spotted some shingles missing on the roof while I was up there. I’ll come back to fix ‘em some other time.’

‘Thank you so much Joel, but really, don’t worry about the roof. You’ve done enough.’

‘You basically got Ellie outta my hair every Saturday for the next few months, so I’ll have plenty of time to kill,’ he half-jokes.

A comfortable lull sets in, and he looks up at the ticking clock, surprised that it’s almost noon. Shifting his feet, he opens his mouth and is about to excuse himself when you blurt out, ‘I’m sorry I soaked you.’

The jury's out on who's more taken aback by your phrasing. Exasperated, you groan, ‘I did not mean to say that.’

Joel’s kept a respectful distance since he arrived at the house, the pliant weight of you in his arms and your taste on his tongue kept firmly at bay in the back of his mind, not wanting to bring up anything that would make you uncomfortable in the light of day. But now, he pushes himself off the threshold of the door and crosses the cosy kitchen, pleased that you stay put when he plants himself in front of you, toe to toe.

Brushing a finger under your chin so that you’re staring up at him, he deliberately pitches his voice low and gruff, the double entendre almost crude in its delivery. ‘Just so we’re clear, you can soak me any time, sweetheart, in any way you want.’

Your lips part and your gaze darkens, and he feels his body instinctively react, invisible threads reeling him bodily into you. When you speak, your voice quivers, his name at once a single-worded reprimand and a needy whine that takes him right back to his brother’s spare bedroom. ‘Joel -’

‘Yes, Pin?’ he baits you playfully, just like he did that night, taking one last step so that you’re crowded against the countertop, bookending you with his palms planted on the wooden surface.

Finally shedding that last bit of shyness holding you back, you retort with no real bite, ‘You’re such a tease, Miller.’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it,’ he quips easily, his attention on your mouth. He hears your shaky intake of air, the whole moment suspended on tenterhooks as you skirt each other on the brink -

Just then, a breeze drifts in from the open window above the sink, providing instant relief from the humidity that hangs heavy in the air. All of a sudden, he’s acutely aware of the fact that he’s sweaty all over, so much so that he might actually smell.

Self-conscious, he clears his throat and murmurs ‘I should probably go, I need a shower and a change of clothes -’

‘You can shower here,’ you interrupt, stumbling over your words in your haste. ‘I have a spare shirt somewhere.’

You don’t need to ask him twice.

He smiles. ‘Sounds good, sweetheart.’

Your ensuite bathroom, like what he has seen of your house, is clean and organised. There’s a neat stockpile of soap bars in the cupboard, and he spots the familiar bottles of regulation shampoo and toothpaste that the town mass produces.

The water is plenty hot as he efficiently lathers himself top to bottom and front to back, but the pressure is a bit weak for his liking and can be easily fixed. Something else to add to the list.

The towel you left on the rack is soft and smells like the sun. Patting himself dry and rubbing it through his hair, he wipes away the condensation off the mirror above the sink. He peers at his reflection, ruminating that it’s time for a shave, and pushes back his wet hair so the strands don’t get in his eyes.

Out of his clothes, only his jeans are passably dry, so he forgoes his boxers and pulls them on, carefully doing up the zipper. Using his shirt as a sling, he bundles up all the dirty clothes and opens the bathroom door.

He catches you coming into the bedroom as he steps out, and your jaw drops at the sight of him in just his jeans before you slap your palms dramatically over your eyes, the tshirt you’re holding onto covering your whole face and muffling your voice. ‘I’m so sorry! I should’ve knocked!’

Joel chuckles at your reaction. ‘Sweetheart, it's your house. And I’m not exactly naked.’

Lowering your hands sheepishly, you still clutch the tshirt to your chest like a security blanket, admitting, ‘Sorry, I just - I just realised I’ve never had a man in here before.’

Something wraps itself around his stomach and pulls, and it takes him a beat to put a name to it because it’s been so long. It’s possessiveness that rushes through his veins and goes straight to his head, and he has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep his voice from wavering. He demands, ‘Never?’

‘Never.’

He lets the word wash over him, appeasing the beast in him for now. With a slow nod, he takes three measured steps towards you, stopping just an arm’s length away. Gently coaxing you to let go of the purple tshirt, he snorts at the huge Lakers logo blazoned across the front.

He quips, ‘I’m more of a Longhorns fan myself, actually.’

The tension cracks, and you grin back, ‘Well, not anymore.’

After your confession, it’s probably redundant, but he wants to hear you say it. Flashing the tshirt at you, he asks, ‘Old boyfriend’s?’

It’s the most personal question that’s been exchanged between you so far by a mile, and it’s probably none of his business, but you can’t explain why your pulse spikes at the way his normally warm gaze hardens with something unfamiliar.

‘No,’ you answer. ‘I keep some of the stock here when there’s not enough room at the shop, that’s all.’

Joel rasps, ‘Good.’

With that one syllable, his shoulders visibly relax, suddenly drawing your attention to his topless form, which you’ve been too mortified to actually look at. It’s a lot to take in, and even though you’ve seen most of him already, there is one conspicuous part that you haven’t yet -

But before your eyes can trail that low, Joel turns. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll just -’

You’re slow to catch onto why he trails off in the middle of the sentence, still far too distracted by his general state of undress to notice until he’s already made his way to the top of your neatly made bed. And then you see it…

The flannel peeking out from underneath the duvet.

Oh. Fuck.

With an almost flippant flick of his wrist, Joel peels back the corner of the bedspread. Wordlessly, he stares down at the red plaid shirt he lent you at the baby shower, tucked snugly in your bed, buried half under your pillow.

He stares at it for so long that you interrupt the silence for once.

‘I’ve been meaning to return it,’ you squeak, hands flailing awkwardly, desperately wanting something to hold onto. ‘I just - forgot.’

Joel half-turns to you, arching an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been keepin’ it in your bed?’

Backed into a corner - and you’re not proud of it - you lie. Outrageously. ‘I don’t know how it got in there.'

He picks up the shirt by the collar. It’s wrinkled all over and obviously worn in. He smirks, ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

You’re this close to swivelling around and making a break for it, but as soon as your axis of balance tilts backwards, Joel grabs you by the wrist and pulls you in, hauling you firmly into his bare chest.

‘You’ve been wearin’ it to sleep, haven’t you?’ he asks in a tone that brooks no argument.

Your fingers curl into his chest, his skin blazing warm under your palms. There’s no point fibbing anymore, and you admit, ‘Yes.’

His voice is hoarse when he asks, ‘You wear anythin’ underneath it, sweetheart?’

You hold your breath for one long moment, the tension in the room swelling so quickly that your ears pop. Eventually, under his patient yet heated stare, you shake your head, lips sealed.

His pupils dilate and his nostrils flare, and you feel his grip on your hips tighten.

‘No bra?’ he prompts.

‘No bra,’ you parrot back.

His jaw clenches so tightly that you’re surprised he manages to articulate his next question. ‘No panties?’

‘No panties -’

You barely get the word out before Joel is kissing you, pushing the syllables right back into your mouth until you swallow them with a whimper.

And then he’s pulling back, growling against yours, ‘And what do you do naked in my shirt, hmm?’

You stutter, ‘I - I think about you -’

An undignified squeal escapes you when he suddenly spins you around, your back hitting the bed, denying you the chance to catch your breath. The ceiling fan turns directly above you, but it does nothing to quell the heat between your bodies as Joel clambers over you on his hands and knees, sliding his mouth over yours again in a hard kiss.

You always thought your bed was a decent size, but now, with the bulk of this man hovering over you, you’re not so sure anymore. His ridiculously wide shoulders fill your entire field of vision, and even though he’s holding himself up with his forearms by your ears, you can almost feel the full weight of him through sheer anticipation of his touch.

His heated words brush by your ear, making you shudder. ‘Tell me what you think about, sweetheart.’

‘Your arms, your shoulders -’ you hesitate, dropping your voice shyly. ‘Your belly.’

Joel looks taken aback. ‘My belly?’

You duck your head almost guiltily. ‘Yes.’

His brows draw together in an endearingly confused frown. ‘Why?’

‘That time in the workshop, when we met, you were sucking it in so hard you could hardly breathe - but you don’t anymore.’

The dots connect, and his lips part in an oh. ‘I didn’t even realise.’

‘I know. That’s why it’s sexy,’ you point out.

He looks at you incredulously, as if you’ve lost your mind. ‘My belly is sexy?’

You grin. ‘Yes, and your confidence. You walk differently now, you know.’

He makes a noise at the back of his throat, a self-satisfied smirk tilting his lips upwards. ‘You been watchin’ me?’

‘Maybe,’ you tease.

You exhale long and heavy through your nose when he sucks delicately on your bottom lip, opening you up so that he can dip inside, stealing a taste of your tongue with his.

‘Been thinkin’ about you all week, sweetheart,’ he whispers, trailing fire across your cheek and the hollow behind your ear.

‘I haven’t seen you around at all,’ you whine, tipping your head back as he nudges the tip of his proud nose down your throat.

‘I know, it took three fuckin’ days to clean up after the party,’ he complains, his disgruntled tone prompting a giggle from you. ‘Never again.’

‘I’m not so sure about that. There will be plenty of birthday parties to look forward to, Uncle Joel -’

An open-mouthed kiss on the side of your neck catches you off guard, the unfamiliar texture of the wet suction and scrape of his teeth jolts you clean off the mattress, sending you body slamming into his ribcage.

Joel hums, pleased at your reaction. ‘So sensitive. I’ve barely touched you yet, sweetheart.’

It’s immediate, the shame that burns under your skin at his remark despite knowing he doesn’t mean anything by it, and Joel frowns at the way you stiffen under him. Regret colours his words as he cups your cheek. ‘Pin, I’m sorry, that came out wrong -’

‘No, that’s the thing. You’re not wrong,’ you interrupt with a shake of your head. There’s no point denying it - you’re a grown woman, and there’s something fundamentally embarrassing about losing touch with that part of yourself over the years. ‘I - it’s been so long, I don’t even know my own body anymore.’

His eyes dip downwards and slowly, over the curve of your breasts and the arch of your back. With an encouraging smile, he argues, ‘I’m not sure about that. Looks like your body’s reactin’ perfectly to me.’

Your lips twitch despite yourself. ‘You’re just saying that to get into my pants.’

He takes the unexpected turn in the conversation in stride and runs with it. ‘Trust me, sweetheart, if I were tryin’, I’d already be in them.’

‘You’re such an ass, Joel Miller.’

His roguish grin has you squirming and fisting the sheets underneath you. ‘I dunno. Somethin’ tells me you like it.’

Wrapping one palm on the back of his neck, you drag him into you again, relishing in the weight of him as he pins you to the bed with the broad frame of his shoulders. He moans into your mouth, claiming it with deep strokes of his tongue, while his calloused palms sneak under the hem of your shirt and pull you into him by the small of your back.

Even as your hips buck, begging for friction, Joel holds back, propping himself up on his knees to keep a tenuous grip on his self-control. Pulling back from your lips with a wet pop, he assures you through heavy breaths, ‘We can stop any time, sweetheart. Just say the word.’

Your response comes fast and sure, but he can read the hesitance between the lines, ‘I - I don’t want to stop.’

He presses a patient kiss to your lips, but backs away before you can deepen it. ‘How about this - we’ll flip you over so that you’re on top, and you decide what you want to do. Is that ok?’

You pause to consider his proposal, sliding your tongue over your bottom lip - he’s this close to kissing you right there and then. You ask shyly, ‘And it’s ok if we - you know, just make out?’

He smiles. ‘I can do with some good old-fashioned neckin’.’

‘Ok then -’

You yelp when Joel turns you over without warning, the sudden movement making your head spin. Sitting up against the headboard, he drags you in his lap and asks, ‘Alright?’

You nod with a nervous smile. It’s intimidating, being so close to him that there’s nowhere else to look but into his thoughtful eyes that are watching you for any signs of discomfort. Catching your breath, you settle into the moment and realise that you’re straddling him, hands clinging onto his shoulders, knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his hips. His belly is warm and soft where he’s pressed up against you, but lower, nudging insistently between your legs -

Joel is hard.

The revelation robs you of air, want and need rushing like blood to your head, and you stiffen, not knowing what to do.

Joel catches on - you’re beginning to think that nothing ever escapes him - and he reminds you, ‘Just kissin’, ok, sweetheart?’

Snapping out of your freeze frame, you nod, ‘Yes. Ok.’

Giving you somewhere to start, he prompts, ‘Where do you want my hands?’

Tugging on his wrists, you watch his jaw go slack when you place his palms squarely on your ass, where your denim shorts hardly cover the top of your thighs. He lets out a lewd moan at the way your soft curves fill his hands, fingers squeezing and kneading greedily, and you push your hips back into his contact.

‘Not so shy after all, hmm?’ he rasps.

You preen at his praise, and riding the wave of boldness, you tip forward and press your lips to Joel’s before you could overthink it. Over the roar of blood in your ears, you hear him suck in a shaky breath, and you feel the deep groan in his throat taper into a whimper when you swipe your tongue into his mouth.

You’re completely unprepared for the power the sound unleashes in you.

Somewhere in your consciousness, a door is cracked open, and memory crackles at the edges of your mind. Each shuddered breath shared, every slide of skin on skin, brings to the surface what you thought you’d forgotten.

Your fingers burrow into the still wet locks at his nape, earning a loud moan from Joel when you pull on the grays that have distracted you on more than one occasion. He nips his way sloppily down your neck, trailing spit and beard burn as he goes, while your palms skate over his chest and down, down, down until your fingernails drag over the pliant folds of his tummy, hanging over the waistband of his jeans.

‘Sweetheart,’ he groans brokenly at the contact, forehead knocking into yours.

Spreading your fingers over soft flesh, you choke on an inhale when he bodily rocks into your palms. Your thumb catches the hollow of his belly button, fingers tenderly squeezing the creases and dimples of his belly. His eyes crack open under tightly knitted eyebrows, vulnerability etched in every line on his face.

Something shifts - something that neither of you can take back. And suddenly, it’s not just kissing anymore.

Caught somewhere between writhing instinctively under his touch and a deliberate pursuit of friction, your hips find a rhythm that has the seat of your panties quickly twisting and dampening as you grind on the erection straining against the zipper of his jeans.

Blunt nails bite into your thighs as Joel growls, ‘Shit, sweetheart. That’s it.’

You want to bury your face in his neck, feeling too wanton in the way you’re panting in needy whimpers, but he preempts that on no uncertain terms. ‘I want to see everythin’. Look at me.’

You do just that - you can’t deny this man even if you tried - watching him watch you with his pupils blown wide and wild, wetting his bottom lip the same time his eyes drop to your tits, as if he can see right through the thin fabric. He doesn’t touch you anywhere else though, his hands staying where you put them. You can feel his grip dig harder and harder into the swell of your ass, but he doesn’t try to change your rhythm, giving you free rein to ride him any way you need.

When your peripheral vision starts to go, you know it’s not a coincidence that your thoroughly soaked panties shift and strain against your clit, pinching it just so that you cry out, hips faltering.

Joel bares his teeth, and you feel his hips rut upwards into you, his restraint slipping. ‘There you go. You’re close, aren’t you?’

You can only nod, frantically grinding into him now, your whole mind narrowing until the only thought that remains is chasing that high that you can almost taste. Everything swells, electricity fills the air, his name a sacred chant on your tongue as you claw at his back, teetering precariously on the brink of something that promises to devastate you.

‘Joel, Joel, Joel -’

He catches you when you break - you fling yourself at him, knocking into him so hard that the back of his head hits the wall, but he doesn’t even flinch. Tucked safely into the crook of his neck, you whine and wail as you thrash in his hold, and his nostrils flare at your scent. He can smell you, he can smell the slick leaking from your pussy, humid and heady in the air between you, making his mouth water as he aches to taste you - all of you.

One day.

Right now, the hinge of his jaw almost cracks as you milk the last remnants of your orgasm with a needy swivel of your hips, rubbing against his cock at an angle that makes his vision swim, and he knows he’s too far gone. His control slips like shifting sands, and a primal instinct takes over as he bucks roughly into you, fingertips leaving imprints in your skin that you will feel for days after.

‘Oh fuck, sweetheart, wait, I’m - shit, I’m gonna -’

When it hits him, it’s fucking relentless - he cums and cums until his voice goes hoarse with your name, until it feels like his abdomen would cave in and collapse, spurting and spilling until it feels like he’s turned inside out. It goes everywhere, thick, milky strands filling the gaps in his jeans and sliding down his legs in a sticky mess, and he slumps bonelessly into the headboard, panting against your lips as he catches his breath.

Sweetly, gently, he tilts his chin up just enough to kiss you, his nose nudging your cheek intimately when he pulls away, his lungs too deprived of air to keep going. He winces when you shift above him, knowing that you can feel the wet spot pooling under your bare thighs.

Joel breaks the sluggish silence first, cracking a grin. ‘So much for just makin’ out.’

You clumsily climb off his lap and crash land sideways onto the mattress. ‘Is that a complaint, Joel Miller?’

He drapes a heavy arm over you and pulls back you flush into him. ‘Well, these jeans are fuckin’ ruined. I want a refund.’

‘I’m afraid we don’t accept cum-stained returns. Store policy.’

He pffts. ‘Damnit. Should’ve read the fine print.’

You grin. ‘Well, at least there's something deeply poetic about cumming in the jeans that I picked out for you.’

‘Touché, sweetheart,’ he grunts and presses a kiss to your forehead. Glancing down at the unmistakable wet patch on the denim, he asks hopefully, ‘Any chance you got some pants I can borrow?’

Ellie bounces her leg irritably, hunched over on the stairs exactly where Joel was sitting this morning. Where the fuck is he? He’s twenty minutes late, and he had the nerve to get all huffy when she lied about the start time today. Unbelievable.

Moodily looking left and right, there’s still no sign of him. She’s about to give up and wait for him at home when something conspicuously purple comes to a stop in front of her.

Her jaw hits the floor.

‘Oh. My. God.’

She’s never been high before, but she’s pretty sure this is the stuff hallucinations are made of.

This being Joel Miller in a purple tshirt with a tacky logo she doesn’t recognise printed on the front and khaki cargo shorts that cut off at the knees, holding a basket of vegetables that she’s pretty sure he doesn’t eat.

With a roll of his eyes, he snaps, ‘Shut your mouth, you’re trappin’ flies.’

Pasting on the most obnoxious grin she can muster, Ellie croons, ‘Man, don’t you look pretty.’

Turning on his heel, Joel starts walking without looking back. ‘Shut up.’

Jogging to keep up, she cackles, ‘Hey, did you fall into a wormhole and went shopping at a farmer’s market in 1999?’

‘Shut up.’

‘You really should wear shorts more often, y’know, show off those knees. And purple really is your colour, Barney!’

Joel frowns, shooting her a sidelong glare. ‘How the hell do you know who Barney is?’

Ellie shrugs. ‘What do you think they teach us at school?’

He’s the one who starts it. The quake in his shoulders would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but nowadays, there’s not much that he can hide from her. As usual, she giggles first, which trails into a squeal when Joel gives her a shove on the back, sending her stumbling over her shoes.

‘Fuck you, man!’ she snickers and basically rugby tackles him, but he barely budges, lips pulling back into a toothy grin.

Across the street, unbeknownst to the pair, Tommy smiles to himself as he watches his big brother laugh, really laugh - the kind that has him doubling over and gasping for air through watery eyes. For the first time since the world ended, he looks up at the sky with a reassuring nod, and he knows deep down - Joel will be just fine.

Notes: You guys continue to blow me away with your support - I cannot be more grateful for all the reblogs, asks and interaction with my silly Behind the Seams posts and random updates. Thank you so so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I can't wait to hear what you think ❤️

I will be having a think over the next few weeks about where Seams will go from here. This chapter wraps up the first mini story arc, and I'll be dedicating August to wrapping up my Palomino series, so it will give me some time and distance to mull over what's next for Joel and Pin. I'm also a few followers away from a big milestone, so I might have something fun planned! 🥰

2K notes · View notes

guessimwritingficsagain · 10 months

Text

i've got headaches and bad luck but they couldn't touch you

[not my gif. title from song Of All the Gin Joints in All the World] pairing: joel miller x fem!reader (afab, use of she/her, use of the word girl)

rating: explicit. (18+. mdni.)

word count: 4.6k requested: Could you write something (literally anything really) like mean Joel x feisty Reader but based on the ancient Fall Out Boys song "Of All the Gin Joints in All the World" pretty please? 🥺🥹 I was just listening and I thought the lyrics were perfect for your writing ❤️But as always no pressure and no problem at all if you don't like the idea or anything else. Lots of love! P.S. smut is very welcome btw hihihi summary: “Joel's not one for feelings anymore, but you seem to pull them out of him like it's your goddamn job." warnings: established previous hookups, use of girl/babygirl, established age gap (unspecified but addressed openly), brief mention of oral m!receiving, brief mention of reader and joel’s canon-typical scars. choking, mean!Joel & brat tamer!Joel, brat!reader lol, dirty talk (its joel), degradation, use of the word slut, slight dumbification, spitting, rough sex, unprotected PiV, cum eating, nipple play, slapping (tits, ass). think that's it!

notes: okay finally another mean!Joel for the soul!!! this is super unedited also. tysm for the request, obv inspired by the song Of All The Gin Joints in All the World by FOB. :) this was fun and i hope yall love it! dont b afraid to request anything yall wanna read at all and as always pls comment or reblog :) love u xoxo

[other Joel fics: mr. miller series fever landmines ]

★

Joel Miller isn't sure exactly when all this bullshit started.

one day, he was introduced to you fleetingly in the cafeteria while you and Maria had an intense conversation - he’s not sure if you spoke for more than ten seconds; but months later and Joel happens to know exactly what your sweaty skin tastes like on the sharpness of his tongue and could probably list his favorite pairs of underwear you own.

it's nothing, really.

you patrol together often, and Joel guesses that out of all the insufferable people he's had to deal with, you're definitely not the worst. perhaps your handiness with a trigger - not nearly as inept as his own but definitely a close second - helps; or maybe it's the way your mouth feels wrapped around his cock.

and he's not stupid; he knows exactly what Tommy was doing when he signed Joel with you for patrol - the same shit he'd been pulling since they were thirty years younger and Joel was fresh out of the relationship with Sarah's mom. but it's different now, because life is not the same - nothing is the same.

Joel's not one for feelings anymore, but you seem to pull them out of him like it's your goddamn job.

you are one talkative motherfucker; usually, that'd drive Joel up a wall, but after repeated and incessant exposure to Ellie for such an extended period, his patience has surprisingly grown.

and unlike others, you never acted nervous or scared by him. irritated, maybe, but it's not like he cares much if you get irritated by his attitude; you're worse than he can be.

at first, he thought you were just fucking him because you just didn't know who he really was yet. but months into whatever this shit is, and you're still - for whatever fucking reason - hanging around him, even after everything. he likes it, though, that you fight fire with fire.

and maybe that's why Tommy stuck you two together, because in some ways it was inevitable - maybe it was a good thing, Joel thinks.

but this morning, as Joel's mind slams against his body, jolting him awake, his aching head makes him double-guess that.

it's weird how different it all is now - before you, Joel was tortured through nights plagued with sweats and memories. blood, pain, loss. he used to dream restlessly of life and all of its unforgiving horrors; but now, to his shock, he finds himself plagued with dreams of you.

he gasps awake - he's not sure he'll ever stop that.

but this time, you're next to him in the bed. his skin feels warm as the light filters through the blinds that stay constantly pulled down this time of year to retain the cool air and Joel lets out a shuttered sigh, his head aching.

it's only the second time you've stayed the night. he's never stayed at yours, god forbid - but a small part of him aches this morning when you slide out of his heavy, sleep-addled muscles. in the absence of your heat there is still bliss for a moment, until he's roused fully by your voice.

"these sheets are dirty." the sound carries into his ears, melodic and fiery. he cracks one eye open, hand raising to rub over his face - a deep, tired sigh.

"g'mornin' to you too." he snarks, sighing as he pulls himself on aching muscles to blink his eyes open; you stand over the bed, on the side that usually remains cold an empty while Joel thrashes in fits of restless sleep. there's not a single scrap of clothing on your body.

he feels himself stir at the sight of you, naked, neck painted in a splattering of beautiful marks that'd been pulled forth in moments of ecstasy the night before.

you send him a half smirk, shrugging as you tug on a shirt - his, fuck, his stomach swirls at the sight of you wrapped in him. something primal crawls in his chest as you smile at him, legs almost glowing in their bareness as they knock against the side of the mattress. your fingers brush the fabric to the left of his head.

"there's stains on the pillows." you shake your head, your face alluring in its tease. he feels himself roll his eyes as he grunts, "you're actin' like it ain't your makeup stainin' it?"

he stares at the marks on the pillowcase; black, from that shit you sometimes put on your eyes which just makes them all the more beautiful, wide, and alluring. the makeup that's surely expired after all this time but still is something you like to do to, as you'd mentioned once, 'reclaim your humanity.' whatever.

Joel would never admit it to you, but he hadn't even really tried to wash out those stains; something about them gives him a warmth in his chest every morning that he wakes up in this cold bed.

but when his eyes fall back to you in your silence, you smirk and it hits him: you're fucking teasing him.

he glares at you as your lips curl in a huff of a laugh, shaking your head. "if you keep complainin' about every damn thing, might as well just fuck you on the floor." he mutters, mostly to himself- but also to see the way your thighs shift, eyes widening slightly as color washes your cheeks. you're squirming at his words, just like that - oh, he's got you pinned.

you'd like that, you dirty little thing.

but you regain your composure quicker than lightning, ready to snap back; yet another tally to add on the list of things he admires about you.

"you're such a gentleman, Miller." you snide, fanning yourself sardonically with one hand as you roll your eyes, searching for your underwear.

he remembers the first time you'd said that to him -

"why so shy?" you'd purred. the memory of your voice curls around his ears as he huffs, watching you bend over and give him a complete view of your ass as you fetch your panties from the floor. "c'mon, Joel, you don't need to be such a gentleman. 's nothing you haven't seen before." you'd stripped yourself of your shirt, your pert nipples pebbling in the cold breeze as he'd sat, cleaning his rifle. "the hell's the matter with you?" he'd grumbled; but it didn't stop either of you. you'd been pressed between him and the splitting backseat of the broken down crashed car within seconds, anyways.

his eyes meet yours as you stand again.

he snarks, "well you’re givin' me a headache, an' I've only been up for two minutes." he glares at you, swinging to pull his boxers over his hips, standing up to find his shirt. he pointedly ignores the glare you send him at his grumpiness.

"you're the one acting dumb," you mutter, "acting like I'm the one who gives you headaches." you retort, a teasing glint in your eye; he knows that look. Joel knows you'd never get a headache from him - as much as he pisses you off, he knows you're too fiery, too lucky to get caught up in whatever miserable puddle he's drowning in.

because Joel's bad luck curls around his fists wherever he goes; the talons reaching out, crawling through every hallway and seeping through every door. you, on the other hand, are like a goddamn firecracker. Joel hates the idea, but you're... somehow gifted in that way.

he's convinced his bad luck couldn't touch you if it tried.

no matter the dumb shit you pull - forgetting a flashlight, not flipping off your safety that one moment when the clicker had stumbled out of the brush; all of that, and you escape unscathed, nothing but a giggle and a half-shrug from you before you move on to the next stupid thing.

if you weren't such a goddamn brat, it'd be charming.

his eyes snap to yours as your words fall from your lips; a burning in his chest at your tone. he watches your legs carry you into his bathroom, and he can't help it when his follow yours.

you haven't even flipped on the lights before he shuts the door behind him - you're already wearing that snarky fucking smile on your face, and he's straining already against his boxers.

he stares down at you, crowding you slowly into the wall. "what the fuck did you just say to me?" he hisses, mouth close to yours. as you turn your chin up towards his face, he can tell that you try your hardest to control your smirk, playing into the tense energy that's emanating from his chest.

"I said you're acting dumb."

you repeat, tilting your head slightly as you drink in the darkness in his eyes. lord, you'd let that darkness swallow you in a fucking heartbeat.

speaking of; your own heartbeat thunders in your chest, anticipating. you know what's coming, you can nearly taste it on your tongue.

"oh, 's that right?" Joel asks, tilting his head to stare down at you. you swallow as you stare back into those deep irises, the small bit of golden light that shines through the small bathroom window illuminating in an ominously heavenly ray.

his hand settles on the crook of your shoulder and neck, sliding gently upwards as you nod your head defiantly, pushing as far as you can to see when he'll snap. his eyes glisten in temptation; daring you to act up more.

raising your brows, you try to play like it's obvious, "waking up and complaining about your headaches, old man?" you tut gently, shaking your head innocently. "I don't think it's my fault that you fucked me twice, immediately passed out and now your head hurts when you've woken up the next morning. you know better than to push yourself in your old age, Joel. that's stupid." you add coyly, knowing it'll push him over the edge - he loves it when you act like a brat, no matter how much he denies it.

his response is immediate and exactly what you'd hoped for.

he's on you in a split second - hand sliding from your shoulder to grip your throat, pushing you back onto the wall of the bathroom. the towel bar digs into your middle-back slightly and you gasp in arousal at the force of his body on yours. you can feel his cock, hard and straining in his boxers, as it presses into your lower stomach.

"y'wanna play like that, baby?" he growls, "why you fuckin' around with an old man like me, then?" he asks.

your face heats up, arousal flooding your core, your cunt slowly wetting itself at the purr of his voice - the meaner the words, the larger the flame.

"hm?" he gently pushes, raising his brows as his hand squeezes gently on your throat, nudging you against the wall further; your gasp is slightly rasped under the pressure, your whole body screaming with desire. this is what you love - mean, angry, hungry Joel Miller. "'s it because nobody fucks you like I do, is that it?"

his knee slides between yours, wedging himself high up, rubbing suddenly against your aching pussy, the material of your cotton already soaked with a damp spot that rubs against his thick thigh.

"Joel, fuck-" you groan, already willing to just do what you can to get him to touch you. his hand on your throat tightens at your word, thigh rutting up to slide against your needy clit, your hips bucking at the feeling. "-'s because nobody else is so easy." your fiery mouth betrays your body; the snarky comment snaps his eyes to yours, a dark breath leaving his lips.

"that's ironic," he snaps, "comin' from someone who begged me to fuck them for hours."

your face burns at the memory of the first time you and Joel'd hooked up; your desperate voice hoarse from pleading him to fuck you - out in the middle of the woods, a sleeping bag that, by the end, had rips on it from rocks and twigs and the force of his thrusts; the shyness gone from either of you as your touches made up for all the silence between you.

he hums lowly, watching you as you swallow at the memory, his thigh rutting up again and pulling a yelp of pleasure from your lips. "y'don't feel so high 'n mighty when I fuck you stupid, right baby?" he asks, voice dripping with condescendence as he nods gently, encouraging you to answer him. your core throbs at his words, your mouth going dry.

his hand leaves your throat; you swallow a gulp of air, staring with wide eyes as he grasps your jaw roughly. "answer me."

"n-no, I don't." you mutter, voice sounding small; the arousal that pulses through your veins begs your mouth to be smart, do what Joel says so he'll give in to what you want.

he smirks, hands roughly grabbing the thick of your hips and flipping you around to press you against the counter, your hips bending as he shoves himself just behind you. your eyes meet yourself and his own hawkish gaze in the mirror in front of you; your heated breath fogs up the mirror in the faint morning light.

his fingers thread through your hair, tugging you back again as he tilts your head back. his upside down face, smirking down at you, has your thighs clenching - "open." he orders, voice stern.

your tongue sticks out and he wastes no time spitting roughly onto your tongue, moving your head back to stare into the mirror; his eyes meet yours as his spit slides over your tongue and his furrowed brows twitch with a slight smirk. "look at you, doin' what I tell you. now swallow it and say thank you."

your core flutters at his words deliciously as you do as you're told; swallowing, you take a breath and mutter, "thank you," - though it's more breathless than you expected, Joel seems to approve. he hums, "there are those manners," he mutters into your ear, cock pressing against the swell of your ass. "almost seemed like you'd forgotten you had them."

"didn't forget." you mutter, face heating up as your pussy aches, fluttering around nothing and desiring for his fingers, his cock - anything.

one rough palm slides his shirt up your torso, exposing your bare tits to both of you through the mirror. with his face stooped down near your neck, a short inhale of your hair before his hand reaches it's destination - your throat.

"then why're you actin' up?" he rasps, teeth grazing your shoulder. he squeezes his hand again and your eyes roll back in pleasure, arousal soon slicking your thighs as you think you may die from all the teasing. "you don't wanna cum?"

your eyes widen, breath halting as you shake your head, "wh- no- no!" you hiss, "I do want to cum, please."

his other hand raises, slapping your breast harsh and quick; your gasp of shock tapers off into a whine of pleasure, your nipples hard in arousal as his palm comes to soothe over the sting.

"then why're you acting like this?" he asks again, shaking his head. another slap, this time to your other breast. his eyes follow the skin of your chest; the way you gasp, your whines at the slight stinging and the pleasure that follows. fingers pinch your nipples, teasing in circles before another sharp slap echoes through the room. "just a little brat, y'can't help yourself." he decides, biting on your neck lightly.

you can feel him rut against you hard, grinding his hips as he lets out a short groan. you let out a low moan, whining slightly when he smacks your tits again, skin glowing with the impact. his eyes meet yours in the mirror. "quit the whinin'," he grunts, rutting his hard cock against your ass, "you'll be stuffed full of me soon enough." he grunts, "then we'll see who's dumb."

your shaky moan sounds more like a groan, elbows falling to steady yourself as Joel releases your throat, tossing you forward to grab your hips instead. he pulls you back, grinding into you as his head tilts back in how own small groan of pleasure. "this ass." Joel grunts to himself as he palms the curve of your ass in both large hands, one falling to smack harsh onto the left.

you're dripping down the inside of your thighs as he ruts against you twice more; thick fingers soon slide to thumb at the slick wet of your panties. his fingers tease the wet material that's glued to your pussy with need, tracing over your lips lightly over the fabric. "pretty pussy, just for me." he mutters; you nod, looking up at him through the mirror, "all for you, Joel." you affirm, voice shaking with anticipation.

"you gonna be good when I fill you up, baby?" he lifts his brow, stern look as he palms himself. fuck, he's so sexy behind you like this, his thumb slowly dragging the material of your panties to the side and exposing your weeping cunt; you nod, "yes, I'll do anything-"

you're cut off by a sharp gasp as the stretch of his cock's head cuts off your brain. he eases in gently at first which you're more than grateful for - no matter how many times Joel fucks you, his size is always something you have to adjust to; especially after your rounds last night left you barely able to walk straight.

he lets out a breath, "there y'go, baby, take me." he says it surprisingly gently, easing in inch by inch as you breathe deeply, your soaked pussy easing his cock through your channels. his cock is heavy and aching as he slides into you, sheathing you fully within another few seconds - Joel's hands grip so hard on your ass, splaying you open for him, that you think his fingers will remain there for days.

he's still only for a moment, letting you accommodate to his size before he's leaning forward to press his chest to your back, "gonna fuck you stupid, baby."

"please, Joel," you groan, cunt fluttering, begging him to move. "do it."

it's all that he needs before he's setting a pace that has you whining under him, your breath choking as you brace yourself agains the counter of the sink.

it's bliss. his hips are sharp, the reach of his cock pressing against the spongy spot inside you, dragging against your pulsing walls. "fuck, so deep-" you hiss, eyes closing in pleasure as he presses himself against you, hips surely going to bruise against the thrusts that shove you into the countertop.

one hand sneaks over your front, grasping at your tits as his cock reaches up into you deeply. he lets out a grunt, "fuckin'- christ, you're s-so tight," he grunts, "even after fuckin' you all night."

you moan, the quick bout of his praise causing you to squeeze around him, trapping him in your aching desire. the both of you moan at the feeling and suddenly one hand presses on your spine until you're low to the counter. his hands grab your shoulders, fingers curling around the base of your throat as he changes his pace to hard and rough, the sound of your ass against his hips nearly hitting your ears over your cries of pleasure.

the noises of your arousal swallowing his cock echo around the room in a familiar, comforting chorus as you both let out shuttering moans; his strong arms pull you back until you're once again pressed against his broad chest. his breath fans over your neck and you whine slightly when his thrusts press you up onto your tip-toes. his lips find your ear, "how's that feel?" your hole flutters from the deepness in his voice - he groans at the feeling.

your response is a whine of ecstasy as you claw at his forearms, head tilting back until you can almost feel his erratic heartbeat. his chest rumbles with a light chuckle, "look, barely took ya any time to get fucked out on my cock," he praises, hand petting your wild hair, "knew you'd be good for me. always take what I give you, right?"

you nod, desperate to reach the climax that's easily built within you from the stretch of him deep in you and his voice in your ear. your clit aches from being ignored and your hand snakes down to rub light circles on it; your hips jolt as you gasp raggedly, eyes fluttering shut in pleasure.

"no." he growls, hand grabbing your jaw sternly as he pounds into you, "when I'm fuckin' you, you keep your eyes on me." he snaps, squeezing your cheeks. "'s that clear?"

you nod in the mirror, whines getting louder as his name falls nearly incoherently from your lips- you see his lips ghost over your neck, the smirk that spreads over his pink lips as you finally get out a strangled, "Joelpleaseplease- s'close-"

he knows what you need; you and Joel are each other's best escape. he pistons into you hard, chasing your high as he feels it spasming close around him. "easy, huh?" he snarls, hips just as harsh as his words, eyes sharp on yours. "who's easy, baby - me, or the one beggin' like a slut to cum on my cock?"

for someone so quiet and closed off, Joel Miller has never shied away from using his goddamn words when he's fucking you, that's for sure. his words, his accent - they push you towards the edge and it almost distracts you from his question. his eyebrows raise in the silence as you gasp for words, moans choked as his fingers slide down from your jaw to squeeze your throat.

"look at'cha, can't even speak for me," he groans, his hand suddenly snaking down to smack your away from your clit; two larger, calloused fingers replace your shaky ones and you wail at the stimulation, almost too much.

you blink up at him through the mirror, unable to speak, unable to think as you feel the crest of something incredibly blissful growing; you let out a whine of ecstasy. "I'm- I'm easy," you concede, finally able to spit your words out, your voice higher than normal in your pleasure.

Joel nods, kissing your sweaty hairline, "'s goddamn right you are, babygirl," he hisses, "easy for me. this pretty little pussy is mine, isn't it?"

you scream, "yours, Joel-" before he barely finishes the sentence.

with your words, he smiles against your neck - the feeling of it sends goosebumps over your whole torso. "you're a lucky girl," he growls in your ear, teeth brushing the shell before licking it gently, "you can cum."

you barely realize you've hit your orgasm until you’re writhing - a white-hot, searing arousal streaking your vision as your eyes roll back. he fucks you steadily through your orgasm, your thighs closing slightly around his large palm, but his fingers don't stop their motions on your clit.

you shake and stutter for gasps as he pounds into you, chasing his own high that's been spurred - by your own words or the clenching of your orgasm around him, you're unsure.

"love how you feel-" he groans, voice weakening as he nears his own orgasm, hips sloppy as he pushes your face down, against the cool tile of the bathroom sink. "fuck, baby, made to take this cock."

his sentences are choppy, his gasps and grunts of pleasure mixing with the slap of your ass against him as he thrusts, your legs tired as he fills you full and then suddenly pulls out. you gasp at the suddenness of his absence, turning to look at him as if betrayed - but he looks completely gone, eyes dark with need. "gonna cum on your tits, sweetheart."

your stomach flips at the word - one he's never used before - and you relax into his harsh grip, moving down to the ground on your knees as he grunts, "take this shit off now."

his shirt is on the ground in half a second, your breasts bare to him as he fists his cock, eyes on you and lidded with pleasure. your hands fall onto his strong thighs, looking up at him in awe as he fists his cock, slick with your sticky spend, tip flushed and veins stretching over the shaft. "please, cum on me, want it so bad, Joel," you whine - his hand caresses your jaw and slips over your lips, sticking his thumb into your mouth. you suck eagerly and he moans your name deep, head tilting back in ecstasy.

"fuck," he grunts, slipping his thumb out of your mouth before you can even swirl your tongue around it, and then he's hitting his orgasm.

ropes of his cum land on your tits, a small bit gathering on your chin as he slows his hand, letting out a few sharp breaths. he's barely caught his breath before your fingers are gathering a swipe of his thick cum, bringing it to your mouth. his dark eyes follow you through his labored breaths as you slowly suck his spend off of your fingers, "fuckin'- pretty," he mumbles into his hand as he runs a palm over his face, shaking his head.

you smile, cheeks heating up. the sun is rising and the room is fully golden, bouncing off the mirror and illuminating his tan skin, the scars on his body and yours. he's pretty, you realize.

you tell him so, quietly - in the silence of the bathroom. his scowl softens and you swear you see a blush forming as he rolls his eyes down at you from where you perch on the linoleum.

Joel always says you only tell him sweet things to get him to fuck you - but in the afterglow of your actions, you catch sight of your makeup-stained pillowcase back in Joel's bedroom and it makes you grin. you know he doesn't wash it for a reason, the same reason you keep coming back to him.

and you also know that the way he smooths his thumb over your hairline, the way your own hands in turn soothe over his thighs - those actions, they make up for everything else that's unspoken.

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