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Halcyon - Ch. 5: I've Never Been a Bad Influence a Day in My Life

You and Joel get closer as you put together your lists. A continuation of Halcyon from the prologue through Ch. 4, a modern no outbreak AU TLOU fic found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: Masturbation, fantasy about P in V sex. Modern No Outbreak AU, No use of Y/N, Slow burn, 18+ only, Minors DNI

Length: 5K

AO3 | Main Master List | Prologue | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

October, 2022

“Why can’t I add to your list?” You pouted a little, can of hard seltzer in your hand as your float drifted to the middle of Joel’s pool.

“Because you’re gonna just use that power for evil, not good,” Joel replied.

“Would not!” You shoved off the side of the pool with your foot, floating back toward the middle of the water.

“Am I allowed to put shit on your list?” He asked, sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet in the water and a beer in his hand.

You scoffed.

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, there you go,” he shrugged. “Goes both ways.”

“You’d be a dick about it!” You kicked the water in his direction but the spray of it fell short and you watched him try to not laugh. “You’d put things on there like ‘buy Joel beer for the rest of his life’ or ‘speak in a bad British accent for a week…’”

“Can you do a good British accent?” He asked, brows raised.

“That is beside the point.”

“What are you gonna add to my list, hm?” There was a teasing edge in his voice as he took a sip of beer. “Get a new wardrobe? Get Sarah a dog?”

“OK, both of those are good additions,” you said, defensive. “But no, not what I was thinking.”

“Then what, Goldie?”

“Put in a hot tub,” you said, chin raised.

He barked a laugh.

“A hot tub?”

“A hot tub,” you nodded. “How can I come over to your house and float in the water if it’s too cold to go in the pool? Which it will be in like… a few weeks. You need a hot tub.”

“It’s already too cold,” he said. “That water’s below 70 degrees, couldn’t pay me to get in there now. Lucky I’m in this far as it is.”

“See?” You said. “Hot tub.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he shook his head.

“If your list is shitty can I add to it?”

“If you actually think my list is shitty we can discuss it,” he said. Your float drifted close to him and you were afraid, for a moment, that he was going to splash you. Instead, he just pushed the edge of it with his foot, sending you drifting back toward the middle of the water. “Still down to compare tomorrow night?”

“Think so,” you said, taking a sip of your seltzer. “As long as you don’t mock me relentlessly for it.”

“When do I not mock you relentlessly?”

“Excellent point,” you said. “I should get better friends.”

“Probably so.”

“At least now you come with Sarah,” you sighed dramatically. “So I guess I’ll keep bugging you…”

“God, you two are gonna kill me,” he said, trying to look serious but a hint of a smile on his lips. “Worst idea I ever had, lettin’ you two get to know each other…”

You giggled a little at that. You and Sarah had become thick as thieves since you and Joel had reconnected now two weeks ago.

It was hard to believe that he’d only been back in your life less than a month. But then, it was hard to believe he’d ever been out of your life at all. You’d only gone a few days without seeing him since that night at the bar and, on those days, the two of you were almost constantly texting. It was the most natural thing in the world, having your life fall into step alongside Joel’s. It reminded you so much of high school even though you were in your 30s now, your lives moving in parallel until they collided at the end of the day and you came over for dinner or went and cheered on Sarah at her soccer game or Joel showed up at your door with beer. Even after all this time, he just knew you and you just knew him. You could read his posture as easily as a book, instantly knowing the kind of day he had by the way he opened the door or flopped on your couch. He seemed to be able to peer inside your mind on command, just a raised eyebrow or a sigh telling him everything he needed to know about how you were feeling and how to make it better.

There was one day where you hadn’t intended to see him at all but it’d turned shitty and he just somehow picked up on it from the tone of your texts. New paperwork had come over from Gale’s attorney and you resigned yourself to spending the evening picking over the bones of your marriage with a bottle of wine and a wilted salad - because you definitely didn’t have the emotional energy to go by the grocery store - when Joel texted. It was a meme that you responded to with just an lol before going back to the paperwork. He FaceTimed just 30 seconds later and you frowned, answering it.

“Hi?” You said brows raised.

He nodded sagely.

“What I thought,” he said. “You look like shit.”

“Gee thanks.”

He rolled his eyes.

“For you you look like shit. What’s wrong.”

You narrowed your eyes and he laughed.

“What?” He asked

“How can you just tell?” You replied. “It’s weird.”

“Come over,” he said instead of answering. He flipped his camera around and Sarah made a face, sticking her tongue out, her hair in two springy buns on the top of her head.

You frowned.

“Where are you?”

He turned the camera back around.

“Picking up pizza,” he said. “I’ll grab an extra cheese bread, come over.”

“I’ve been drinking…”

“We’ll pick you up,” he said. “Come over.”

“Please?” Sarah jumped to try to get in the frame and Joel laughed, tilting the camera so she was visible. “It’ll be fun! OH! Spend the night! Come sleep over again, please?”

Joel tilted the camera so he was back in the frame.

“You really wanna disappoint my kid?” He asked. “C’mon.”

“Yeah!” Sarah said, bouncing just out of frame again, just a bit of her bun appearing in the bottom corner as she jumped. “Don’t let down the kid, that’s just shitty.”

“Hey,” Joel said but you could tell he was trying not to smile. She stopped bouncing. “Language.”

“Sorry.”

He turned his attention back to you.

“Be there in 10,” he said. “Can’t let you just sit and wallow. Need pizza for that.”

He and Sarah picked you up and Sarah insisted on cranking Taylor Swift in the car, signing Look What You Made Me Do into her water bottle in the back seat while you balanced warm pizza boxes on your lap, trying not to laugh when you and Joel exchanged glances at red lights.

At dinner, you pulled a pepperoni off your slice of pizza and stuck it on the end of your nose and held very serious eye contact with Joel and Sarah as they spoke, nodding along carefully so as to not disturb the topping dangling from your face. Sarah tried very hard not to laugh and did a pretty good job of it until you made a face at her from across the table when Joel’s back was turned and she cackled, laughing so hard she almost knocked over her soda can.

“You bein’ a bad influence on my kid?” He asked when he handed you the paper towel you’d requested.

“Joel,” you said, deathly serious, pepperoni slice still on the tip of your nose. “I’ve never been a bad influence a day in my life.”

After dinner, as Joel did the dishes, you sat on the couch with Sarah and listened as she told you about one of her friends at school who hadn’t been as kind lately. You nodded along until Sarah seemed to run out of steam, slumping down against the cushion with a slightly tired look on her face.

“Well,” you said. “Have you told her that you’ve been feeling hurt by how she’s been treating you lately?”

She scrunched her face a little.

“No,” she said. “But I thought that’d be pretty obvious…”

You shrugged.

“Sometimes it’s not. She may not even know she’s doing it. If I were you, I’d tell her that you’ve been feeling hurt and ask if she’s doing OK because it sounds like this is a change for her. If she’s hurting you that might be because her feelings are getting hurt somewhere else.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she nodded a little. “That’s a good idea.”

“I do have those occasionally,” you said and she smiled a little at you.

The three of you watched part of a movie before Sarah went to get ready for bed and you eavesdropped from the living room as Joel read to her in her room, the door opened just enough to hear when his voice changed with the characters.

“Peeta sighs,” Joel said like Joel before his voice shifted to something that sounded more boyish but still strong and deep, almost what you remembered from when you first met him. You smiled. “'Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know I was alive until the reaping…’”

Joel flopped next to you on the couch when he was done and you held out your glass of wine. He took it, taking a big sip before handing it back.

“You look tired,” you said, holding the glass.

He shrugged.

“No days off from this whole dad thing. Don’t really want a day off but still… get tired after a bit.” He looked over at you and smiled a little. “Thanks for talking with her. Think she needs someone like you around.”

“Oh, someone who managed to tank her relationship and got stuck starting over in her 30s?” You asked. “That kind of someone?”

He rolled his eyes.

“A woman…”

“Oh, is that all?”

He glared at you.

“A woman,” he said again. “But one who’s lived some life, knows how to navigate the hard shit. One who’s willing to listen to her problems. She’s got me and Tommy for that but can’t help but feel like I’ve let her down by not giving her some kind of… I don’t fuckin’ know, feminine influence.”

“Ahh yes, the mysterious feminine,” you nodded sagely. Joel picked up a pillow and smacked you in the stomach with it, making you laugh as you caught it and held it to yourself. “Joel, you’re doing great with her.”

“Yeah?” He asked, serious now.

“Yeah,” you said, serious, too. “You really are. She’s so lucky to have you, Joel. You have no idea.”

“I’m lucky to have her,” he said, looking toward Sarah’s room for a moment before turning back to you. “So, you have the kind of bad day that you want to talk about it or the kind of bad day that you want to get fucked up about it?”

“The latter.”

“Then chug that wine,” he said, shoving himself off the couch. “And maybe change into your pajamas, I’m getting the tequila.”

You swapped numbers with Sarah at breakfast the next day. You and Joel were both hung over and trying to pretend like you hadn’t been up until 2:30 on a work night getting hammered until you passed out in a heap on his couch only to be roused by a groggy Sarah at 7 in the morning.

She’d taken to texting you then, sometimes just silly selfies, sometimes memes you didn’t really get, sometimes with questions about friends at school. You were pretty sure your heart melted the first time she called you Aunt Goldie, a sense of belonging wrapping around you that you’d never really known before.

“We still on for tomorrow?” Joel asked, eyes following the slow, lazy path your float was making across his pool. “Make a night out of this whole project, kick things off right.”

“Hell yeah,” you said, drifting back to Joel. He didn’t shove you back out to the water this time. “Did I tell you I’m seeing Anna for lunch? I cannot just go into that blind, I’ll need an out…”

“She’s doin’ that well, huh?” Joel asked.

“I don’t know,” you sighed. “She’s supposedly sticking with her program but… I feel like I should be a better sister and try to check in more but then it just feels like babysitting and that doesn’t seem right, either.”

“At a certain point, she’s gotta do it on her own,” Joel said. “You’re her sister, not her mom.”

“I know,” you nodded. “But I feel like I should have checked in on her more after our mom died. She was a teenager and I just left her alone…”

“You were 20 years old,” Joel said gently. “Not like you were equipped for that shit.”

You shrugged and took another drink.

“Hey,” he said, nudging your float gently, just enough to make you look up at him. “Don’t be hard on yourself for that. You were handed a shit situation and you did what you could with it. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Ended up in a similar boat with Tommy. Spent years - literal years - bailing his ass out of jail and begging him to get his shit together. Eventually he did a stint in the army and got it figured out. At least a bit. She’ll get there. But it’s not your job to get her there.”

“Yeah,” you sighed. “You’re probably right.”

“Who, me?” He asked, mocking. “Right? Never thought I’d see the day…”

“Shove it,” you splashed at him, the water dripping down his face and soaking his t-shirt. You snorted as you watched him fight the urge to laugh.

“Gonna pay for that,” he said, setting his beer down on the side of the pool and grabbing your float as you tried to paddle away.

“No!” You shrieked and laughed, shoving your seltzer into the cupholder as more of you ended up in the cold pool water than you really wanted in your rush to escape.

“You started it!” Joel was leaning precariously over the water now, trying to splash you again while keeping you from retreating. “Shoulda just kept those little hands to yourself…”

“They’re not little!”

He yanked your float back toward the side of the pool and nodded down at one of your hands.

“Freakishly small…”

“Yours are just freakishly big you mutant!” You grabbed a fistful of his shirt and watched as he realized a second too late what was about to happen.

“Oh shit,” his eyes went wide and you laughed in victory before you pulled him all the way into the pool, jeans and all. He brought you down as he went, the float capsizing and sending you and your mostly empty drink can into the cold water with a sharp yelp.

You went under, the chlorine stinging your eyes as you twisted and tried to right yourself below the water. You and Joel surfaced at the same time, not even a foot apart and gasping for breath, laughing as you tried to brush your soaked hair back from your face.

“It’s so cold!” You shivered and splashed at him before crossing your arms tightly over yourself.

“Why are you complainin’ to me?” He shivered back. “You’re the one who wanted to be in the damn pool…”

“In the floatie!” You said. “I was mostly dry until you got involved!”

“Got justice you mean,” he said, reaching for your can and pulling it out of the water, dumping it out before setting it on the side of the pool. “You’re the one who put us in here…”

“You’re the one who was being mean,” you said, reaching out for him and pressing your cold fingers to his chest, the heat of him still apparent even in the water. You sighed contentedly. “That’s better…”

“Jesus, what are you, ice?” He griped, tugging you against him with a little yelp. “Gonna fuckin’ freeze to death if you’re not careful… ridiculous…”

You giggled once but pressed yourself closer to him, soaking up his heat and pressing your cold fingers to his exposed skin.

“OK, you could be less mean about it,” he said, pulling back from you just enough to scowl down at you. “Frozen fuckin’ hands…”

You laughed and realized, very suddenly, how close you were to him. You weren’t sure the last time you’d been quite this close to him, the last time you could feel every line of him through his clothes, the last time his mouth had been that close to your own. Your heart sped up. His eyes searched yours and you could feel his breath on your skin and suddenly, you weren’t close enough to him. Not close enough at all.

“Dad?” Sarah’s groggy voice called from the sliding glass door, making you jump, both of your heads turning toward her. Her face was scrunched and a curl had broken free of its braid, sticking straight out from the side of her head. “Is everything OK?”

“Course it is, baby girl,” Joel frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be? What are you doin’ out of bed?”

“You’re being loud,” she groaned. “You’re never loud.”

“M’sorry kiddo,” Joel said, separating from you and working his way to the edge of the pool, pulling himself out of the water and dripping on the stone edge. “Gimme just a second to get Goldie out of the water before she freezes to death and dry her off, I’ll come tuck you in again in just a minute…”

“Can I get another chapter?” She said it fast, the words all strung together, her eyes big. “Please? They just got into the arena and…”

“We’ll see,” he said. “But only because it’s Friday and you’re sleeping over at Emma’s tomorrow so you won’t get one then. Inside, go on.”

He watched her go and then went to the lounge chair at the side of the pool, getting the only towel he’d brought outside and holding it away from his body, spread open wide.

“Hurry up, before I change my mind,” he said.

“Such a gentleman,” you said, trying not to let your teeth chatter and trying to shove the ache that was still growing all hollow and wanting inside you down deep. You got out of the water and he wrapped you tightly in the towel, his arms going tightly around you.

“Not really,” he said, pulling you back against his broad chest and squeezing you so the water from him soaked into the towel before he shook his shaggy curls over you so drops of water got all over your face as you laughed. “There, cured you of THAT notion…”

“Thanks so much,” you said wryly as he released you. You turned to face him as he ran his fingers through his soaked hair and his shirt pulled up just enough that you caught a glimpse of the smooth flesh around his hips and you found yourself drifting closer to him again before you stopped yourself. Joel put his arms down and seemed to notice exactly where you were, just looking at you for a moment before he cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I should go tuck Sarah back in,” he said. “Get into something dry so I don’t get her all soaked…”

“Right,” you said, stepping back from him. “Sorry we woke your kid up because you just couldn’t leave well enough alone…”

“I will throw your ass back in that pool,” he said, going to open the door for you. “Don’t try me.”

“Oh don’t worry Miller,” you teased. “I know just what you’re capable of.”

He started toward the stairs, a little trail of water in his wake as he went, and you watched the pull of the wet fabric of his shirt over his shoulders. You swallowed, hard.

“I’m just going to head out,” you said and he stopped, turning to frown at you.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” you said. “Really should go wash this chlorine out of my hair. But see you tomorrow?”

“With the list?” Joel asked.

“With the list,” you answered.

“Lookin’ forward to it,” he said, turning to go up the stairs again before looking back over his shoulder. “Drive safe, Goldie.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just heading for his room.

Your heart was still racing.

You left the towel draped over the banister and just pulled on the oversized t-shirt you’d put in your bag before going to your car.

You tried not to think about Joel as you drove home.

It didn��t do you any good to think about him that way. It was Joel. He didn’t see you that way, drifting in that direction was what had ruined things so many years before. You’d just gotten him back, things were so good again, you felt like you belonged again, you couldn’t fuck that up, not because you’d never been able to move past a school girl crush.

But you wanted to kiss him. Fuck, you wanted to kiss him.

You tried not to think about kissing him. You tried not to think about what happened after the last time you’d kissed him. How quickly everything had dissolved, how you’d gone from picturing a future with Joel - a different one than you’d held in your mind outside of fantasy before - to running as far and as fast as you could in a matter of hours.

It’s Goldie, he’d said then. It’s the worst thing that could happen, I wish it was anybody else…

You flinched at the memory, shoving it away. No, you didn’t think about that, not when you could help it. Just like you didn’t think about the way Joel’s lips felt against your skin, how his fingers - warm and think - had traced over you, how he made you feel so clearly seen and adored in a way that no one else had before, in a way your husband had never really seemed to. How he still made you feel that way.

“Fuck,” you muttered to yourself as you parked, dropping your head to your steering wheel with a groan before you went in your house, closing your car door with a little too much force.

You showered and forced yourself to keep your hands away from your aching slit. You were not going to fuck yourself in your bathroom to the idea of sleeping with your best friend. You weren’t. You weren’t a teenager anymore and you weren’t going to act like one. You were better than this.

Your hair was still damp when you gave up on getting any writing or grading done and went to bed, an almost frustrating, throbbing ache between your thighs. You stared at the ceiling in the dark for a while before you all but threw the covers off and rifled through your nightstand for the discreet little pink vibrator you’d bought years ago when you’d first figured out that, while your husband had many talents, making you come wasn’t one of them.

You went to your usual fallback for porn but didn’t find anything that was really working for you, the ache of longing just getting worse as you gently toyed with your clit under the covers in the dark. Your cunt was slick, your wetness seeping down to your nightie and coating your fingers. It felt like forever that you’d been touching yourself and getting nowhere when the batteries on your vibrator died and you whimpered, kicking your legs down into your mattress in frustration.

“Goddammit,” you moaned into your pillow, tossing your phone and vibrator aside, the ache in you worse than you’d ever really remembered it being before. There was no way you were going to be able to sleep like this, your whole body drawn tight and needy. You fumbled in your drawer for the charging cable and plugged the vibrator in before sighing and staring up at the ceiling again.

Your thoughts drifted to Joel again. You couldn’t help it, he’d felt so good against you in the pool. He knew you so well, even after all this time. He kept your favorite snacks at his house and draped a blanket over you when you started getting cold when watching a movie. He was so funny and so handsome it hurt to look at him and he’d felt so fucking good.

Your fingers slipped between your legs again without really thinking about it, brushing against your swollen, sensitive clit. You resisted it for a moment, the idea of falling into the fantasy of you with Joel, but the need drawing everything inside you all tight and molten won.

It swallowed you quickly once you gave in.

The memory of him was there at the fore so fast, the way his lips had felt on you so many years ago. How you thought they’d feel against you now. His hands ranged over you, around your waist, down to your hips, his fingers twisting and knotting in the fabric there as he bunched it up to hold you firmer, reach you better. You moaned and rocked into your hand, sliding lower, your palm pressed against your sensitive nub as you slipped a finger inside yourself with a moan. You worked yourself open slowly, your slick making easy work of it, as you imagined it was his hand between your legs, his fingers sinking into you. How he’d take your swimsuit off and line his cock up with your entrance and push inside of you as he moaned your name. How his fingers would grip your flesh, prying at you as though he was trying to take you apart to keep pieces of you for himself. How he’d work himself so deep into you that you were certain no one else had ever come quite so close to climbing into another person’s skin before.

You rocked your hips against your hand to the thought of him, not sure where memory ended and fantasy began, the fingers not plunging needily into your hole finding their way to your breast, grasping at the soft swell there, your own hand so unsatisfyingly small compared to his. You remembered the way his voice trembled as he breathed your name - his mouth against the tender skin at the base of your ear - as his cock filled you, the whole of him buried inside like he belonged there as he came.

“Joel!” You gasped as your own orgasm hit, tight channel throbbing around the three fingers you’d managed to fit inside yourself, slick pooling in your palm and your tit filling your other hand.

You came harder than you had in years, let alone from only using your hand and not your toy. It took you a few minutes to come down from the high of it, indulging in the fantasy of him in a way you hadn’t done since your freshman year of college. He last time you gave into it was back when you’d first started dating Gale but you’d felt so desperately alone, like no one had ever bothered to learn you at all. So you’d let yourself pretend that your best friend was still your best friend, that he loved you the way you loved him and that fucking you hadn’t been some mistake he’d made on prom night. It had seemed the most supreme extravagance, pretending that Joel would have wanted you to come like that with him. It still did.

You put a stop to all that when Gale proposed, solidifying your relationship in an entirely new way. You tucked the memory of Joel and his body on and within yours away then. You’d never intended to think about him that way again. But then, you’d never intended to get divorced, either.

“Fuck,” you sighed, shoving yourself out of bed to pee and clean up the mess you’d made of yourself. Before you lay back down, you opened the golden notebook on your bedside table and found the page with the list. You went to the bottom and tried to add another line but the pen in the elastic loop wouldn’t write. You groaned before fishing out the red pen you’d left in your nightstand from a night you were editing in bed from the top drawer. You added two words to the bottom of your list - trying to ignore the way the diamond of your engagement ring caught the light from your lamp, casting little rainbows on the paper - and circled them, pressing the pen into the paper harder than you really needed to.

“There,” you said, capping the pen and dropping it on the notebook you hadn’t bothered to close. The pen rolled until it came to a stop, the red cap almost pointing to the newly added words as though they needed any more attention.

That, you thought, was the solution. If you could just figure out how to accomplish that, you could put Joel back in that little box and keep this stupid crush from blowing up your whole life a second time, as long as you weren’t an idiot about it.

You switched off the lamp and pulled your blankets tightly around yourself, trying to ignore the feeling that the words were glaring at you from their perch on your night stand. They blinked at you like neon behind your eyelids and you tried not to see them in the same way you tried not to think about Joel’s body on yours in the pool as you drifted off to sleep.

Get laid.

Next Chapter

A/N: I just adore these two. Honestly, they keep getting away from me, their conversations are so fun to write and explore that I get lost in what I'm trying to accomplish with a chapter. But that's OK! The ride is the point of this whole fic thing, right?

Thank you for being patient with this chapter! I got a bit sidetracked with another project but I think I'm in a good place to get back to my once a week updates here for a while. I hope it was at least somewhat worth the wait!

Thank you for being here! Love you!!

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