inasunlitroom

[inasunlitroom]

only in quotes

pairing: joel miller x f!sex worker!reader

wc: 7.6k

summary: Things can't keep going on as they have, can they?

cherry masterlist

warnings: age gap (20s/50s), smut [piv, choking, fingers in mouth, gagging, sex position that would probably hurt, sex that feels impersonal (idk what else to call this, if there's a word let me know)], dissociation, ptsd, angst, anxiety and spiraling thoughts, unhealthy coping methods, reader is a sex worker, internalized shame, self deprecation, guilt, emotional vulnerability, mentions of poverty, language regarding past unsafe sex, joel being an asshole bc he's scared

a/n: this was originally two parts but I didn't vibe with it as two. points to you if you can guess where it was originally supposed to be separated. as always would love to know what you think! thank you for reading! please don't hate me! i am very sorry.

“We want to offer you a place in the doctoral program.” 

The fluorescent light above you buzzes, a ringing echoes in your ears. You aren’t sure you heard the woman across from you correctly, a solid oak desk between you. “I’m sorry, I think. . .I think I misheard.”

She smiles, “You’ve been admitted to the doctoral program.” 

“But there’s only two spots.” 

The corner of her mouth twitches. “Yes, and one is yours, if you want it.” She keeps talking but the words wash over you foamy and white, lost in the sea of thoughts tumbling through your mind. 

She’s uttering magic words. 

Words like passed, and top of the cohort, and research assistantship, and great application and tuition credit waivers. 

“We regret not seeing more potential in you,” she finishes, and your throat closes. It almost feels as good as being called smart. It’s vindicating even if you understand why they hadn’t before. The sharp drop in your grades the final year of undergrad had done it, impacted your gpa because you were working and not sleeping. 

Maybe you have always been good enough, just without the right tools. 

“Are you okay?” Her smile is still in place, like she’s well versed in the breakdown of graduate students in her office. 

A brief, intense, flash of gratitude, for her kindness, for Joel’s suggestion so long ago that you get a different advisor, subtle encouragement thereafter to follow through with it. An idea he never knew you pursued. Maybe he guessed, when you stopped randomly crying about grant proposals. 

“Just overwhelmed,” you manage. “Thank you.”

You leave her office in a daze, wandering through the building like a zombie, feeling slowly returning to your hands and feet when you exit into the courtyard. 

Relief crashes into you all at once, blooms in your chest like a flower finally cracking through pavement, and your knees nearly buckle. 

You have plop down on one of the stone benches, waves of warm spring sunshine cascading around you. The stone beneath your legs is cool, even through your slacks. It grounds you, brings the world slowly back into focus.

Your hands are still shaking when you press them to your mouth. 

The relief is so intense that you begin to feel dizzy and lightheaded, that a nauseous feeling writhes in your belly, snakes through your ribs in tight stitches, until you have to bend at the waist and push your head between your knees to stave off the feeling. 

“Oh god,” you mumble to yourself, lucky that the courtyard is empty and no one is around to witness the miniature breakdown that wants to consume you. 

The worry that you’d cordoned off in your heart for so long floods out of you all at once, stored there for years, ignored and repressed and congealed between the ventricles and tendon, slowly choking you, killing you.

Pride pools on your belly, that you saw it through, and saw it through well, that you are good at what you do. The salary that comes with the assistantship is a pittance but not pennies. It will be enough, and you aren’t sure that’s ever been true for you before. 

Your mother, your father, your circumstances have been wrong all along. 

It’s over, you realize. It’s done. Selling yourself, scratching and clawing and scrabbling for something more.  

Can it really be over?

How easy it would have been, to give up and go home to your mother, or give in and let prostitution take over your life. The last two years flash through your mind in a technicolor whirl. 

All the terrible things that you’ve done and had done to you. 

All the early morning Mondays you spent at the free clinic being tested for STIs, waiting for something terrible to come up on the test results even though you tried to be careful, all the times you made yourself physically ill because your period was late and you thought you were pregnant. 

All the men that had touched you, hurt you, laughingly, lecherously carved out pieces of you, your soul, to keep for themselves. 

You laugh and lift your head, cupping your chin in your hands instead, elbows braced on your knees. 

It could have been worse, you think distantly, faintly, in the way that you only can with the knowledge that something is behind you. 

If Joel hadn’t come along and selfishly kept you to himself, it could have been worse. You would have spent the last year with more unfamiliar bodies, ruining yourself. Maybe it would have broken you, maybe you wouldn’t have made it this far, if you’d had to continue on as you had been. 

The memory of Joel watching you from across the club the night he asked you to be his sugarbaby slips to the front of your mind. The taut pull of his shoulders, the protective, looming dark shadow of him next to you when the man you’d been attempting to solicit had slapped your ass, protective. A moment that you can admit now, changed everything.

You want to tell someone the news. 

Joel is the only person you want to call. The only person worth telling. The only person who will truly understand the depth of what it means.  

You sit up and fish around in your bag, searching for your phone, but as soon as your fingers touch the cool metal, you pause. 

It would be better to tell him in person, this weekend. 

There’s a lift of hope in your heart, that maybe now things can be different. In your life generally, but with Joel, too. 

You don’t need to rely on his support, his money and goodwill, and maybe that evens things out between you.

Things can be. . .normal.

There’s the question of the lie, too, and how he’ll react to it. Maybe it won’t matter, maybe it will, maybe it’ll take him some time to get over or come to terms with it, but no matter what, you won’t have to go back to the club, you won’t have to prostrate yourself before strange men to survive. 

And, the question of his feelings. Maybe paying for you is the only thing that’s allowed him to ignore how much younger you are than him, regardless of a lie or not. If he no longer has to pay, to take care of you, would he still want you around? Would it ruin the fantasy?

For so many months you’ve reminded him and yourself that that’s all you are. A whore, someone he got his dick wet with, someone he used and paid for, even if he was kind to you. Now you don’t have to be, and what will it mean when you aren’t? 

If you aren’t his sugarbaby, what are you? Do you dare to want him to want more?                                           

Your mood dips, but only a little, it’s hard to feel weighed down by anything at the moment. You feel free, weightless, like lead has been lifted from your chest, like your wings are unbound and unfurled for the first time in years. 

Maybe he doesn’t feel anything for you beyond the narrow straits of the relationship you already have. But it won’t end your life, won’t send you back to a seedy club and sticky floors, bruised knees and an aching scalp. 

The knowledge makes you braver. It would be okay, even if it hurt, even if you want him to feel something for you so badly it’s an aching, pulsing wound overflowing with salt. It’s time to tell him, everything, all of it—your accomplishment and that you want him at your graduation and your real age and that you very stupidly fell in love with him somewhere along the way. 

You want to tell him your real name, whisper it in his ear, listen to him speak it back to you.

You feel as though you’ve been living on borrowed time anyway, not sure why Maria and Tommy never said anything to Joel. It’s been weeks, months, since that day at the drive-in. Maybe you’d misjudged the whole thing, maybe Joel had been able to explain, maybe he hadn’t felt whatever they said was worth repeating to you. 

For a while, you’d convinced yourself that you would quit him, as you’d intended, but the words never fell from your lips. One look at him, and you told yourself just one more weekend with him, that was all. And here you are, months later, still seeing him. 

You still want to talk to him, just to hear his voice, even if you aren’t divulging anything yet. He’s still the only person you want to call. 

You stand and walk through the morning sunshine in the direction of the parking garage, fingers of tantalizing hope zipping up your spine, looping around your mind, fantasies of what a normal life will feel like buzzing through your mind. 

Joel picks up on the second ring, a grunt of a greeting in his voice. “You okay?”

“Yeah, why?” 

“Don’t usually call this time of day.” 

“Oh, if this is a bad time—”

He grunts again, “Didn’t say that.” 

“What are you doing that has you moaning like that? Are you having fun without me?” 

He laughs, the sound wheezy and genuine. “Not this time. Fixin’ a loose board on the front steps.” Wood creaks, and he sighs, the sound of him running his hand over his jaw, catching on the bristles of his beard so clear, you feel like you’re there with him. “So. You need somethin’ from me, darlin’? Sure you’re all right?”

The air turns cool as you step out of the sun and into the concreted shade of the parking garage, the earthy, damp smell of cool stone, cut by an acrid undercurrent of motor oil and exhaust fumes. 

Electric excitement snaps beneath your skin. 

The slam of your car echoes through the busy garage. “What if I said I did?” You ask, tossing your bag into the passenger seat, slotting your keys into the ignition. “Need you?” 

“Guess I’d come find you.”

You smile to yourself, feeling stupidly self satisfied with his answer, fidgeting with your keys, and then the tiny wooden figurine that sits in your now rarely used ashtray. Smoking is a rarity these days for both of you.  

Joel had given it to you the weekend before Christmas, though he didn’t say it was a Christmas gift, just handed it to you on your way out the door, wrapped in white tissue paper with a surprisingly neat bow. 

You suspect he’d been embarrassed about it, tips of his ears red, mumbling something under his breath as he ushered you more quickly than he would have otherwise to your car. You’d unwrapped it before you drove home, a tiny wooden sparrow rolling into the palm of your hand, clearly whittled by hand.

It had taken your breath away, beautiful in a way that was beyond words, and because your own thoughts had tumbled back into your head. There’s no way Joel could know that you’d first thought of him as a sparrow, your sparrow.  

You’d put the bird carefully in your recently cleaned out ashtray and felt the urge to cry, wondering if that was how he saw you. Not the wily, predaceous cat, but the little bird.

Guilt had followed the unwrapping, a familiar weight on your tongue. Joel said it wasn’t a gift when you called to thank him, just that he’d thought of you while he hand carved something for you, so you should have it. I’ll pay you back next time, you purred, and the silence had lasted so long you started to feel bad. 

Neither of you had acknowledged Valentine’s Day after that, and despite the awkwardness the little bird has become sort of talisman, something to hold onto when you worried. 

“I received some good news today,” you continue after a moment, “and I guess I just wanted someone to know that I did.” 

“Well,” he rumbles, his voice earnest and warm. It’s like bottling the feeling of home, and you press the phone more tightly to your face, like it might really bring you closer to him. “Go on then. Tell me about it.” 

You twist the key in the ignition and bite your lip. The engine sputters to life, thruming against your thighs, the soles of your feet. “Would you be very upset with me if I said I wanted to tell you in person this weekend?” 

“Nah, darlin’” he coos teasingly. “I’m never upset with you. You tell me whenever you want to. Call me, too. Goddamn step can wait.” 

“I just,” you suddenly feel the need to explain yourself, for interrupting his day, fixing your hand more tightly around the little carving. It pinches your skin. “I guess I just wanted to hear your voice. You’re the first person I wanted to tell.” 

There’s a long pause, the echo of his breathing down the line, the mirror of your own slowing to match his. “Can’t wait to hear it. Whatever it is, you know I’m proud of you.” 

Maybe that’s why you called him, permission to be proud of yourself. Your shoulders relax against the seat. “I’m going to drive home now. Will you keep talking to me?” 

“Yep.” 

“Will you let me talk you off when I get home?” 

He laughs again, warm and strained. “Only if you want to.” 

“I’d do it now,” you say, putting him on speakerphone and dropping your phone into the cup holder. “But I think it might be dangerous to touch myself and drive.” 

You can tell he’s rolling his eyes by the silence and grunt of suppressed laughter that follows. “What am I gonna do with you?” 

“I’d wear my seatbelt at least.” 

“Well,” he sighs, long suffering, “at least there’s that.” 

.

.

.

Joel manages to head Tommy off until well after the holidays, for months. 

He knows his brother is going to say something to him about you, can scent it in the air like blood after a kill. He reckons Maria won’t let it go, but every time it looks like Tommy might say something, he manages to distract him, or put him off it. 

Surprise arrivals of Ellie to the ranch had helped a couple times. Tommy clearly didn’t want to bring it up in front of her, and Joel’s glad his brother has that much tact at least. 

After the rush of the holidays had settled, Tommy had been on a job out of town, and so weeks went by, without mention of you or the drive-in. 

Texas’s short winter passed with barely a whimper, and spring slotted back into place like it had never left. 

The first few months of the year pass easily. Cotton candy sunsets, warm evenings, the smell of citrus in the dust laden air, Friday evenings spent with you. There’s something panic stricken in your features when he meets you, but it eases away, melts into the smile he knows so quickly, that he forgets about it until the next time he sees you and the cycle repeats. 

Joel forgets, too, the incident at the drive-in. He ignores the part of him that knows he should interrogate your age, just so he knows how old you really are. 

He knows you’d lied about your age, and has mostly made peace with the notion that you’re likely a little younger than what you told him the night he met. You’d had good reason to lie, he knows that, had known it already, even before you told him details of the men you’d been with before. The admission of what it had been like for you like a hand carved heartbeat pressed into the palm of his hand. He wants to make sure another finger is never laid on you. 

The rest of it though, he’s steadfastly ignored. There’s a niggling worry in the back of his mind, that everything else has been a lie too. That maybe he’s laying his affection down where there wasn’t room for it, that the space doesn’t even exist, that who you are with him is a play you’ve been acting in, that he’s only a member of your audience. 

Those couple weeks you’d been parted before the drive-in, not taking his calls, cancelling a weekend or two, he’d been sure you were going to end things. Maybe another man had come along, offering more than he could, though he’s offered more money you’ve refused to take. 

Or, maybe you’re tired of living this particular piece of fiction with him, a desperate, stressed out student, too smart for her own good.

If he was a different man, would you have fed him a different story? The answer is so obviously yes it pains him to think about. Every word, every twist of your wrist, every carefully placed limb, had been an elaborate act to make him comfortable, to make him want you. 

It had been, at least. The act had mostly fallen away, snapping up like a shield only when you felt uncertain.  

Or, he thinks it’s fallen away. 

He feels like a dirty old man for thinking it, but you don’t seem young. There’s a maturity to you, an experience and understanding of the world that has been grappled with and fought for, like you’ve lived more years, more lifetimes, than you’ve needed to. 

Maybe he’s just speeding that along, stealing more of your youth. 

One balmy Thursday night near the end of March, Joel settles on his front porch with his guitar, the sound of your voice tinny over his phone’s speaker still winding around his mind, the ribbon of it stitching him together, pulling apart fleshy parts of himself he didn’t know existed. 

The promise of a secret shared tomorrow evening, some good news you’d received, something you want him to know first. A silly burst of pride over it.  

The sun hasn’t quite set, golden orange light playing against the tops of the flowering trees in undulating waves. 

Green is returning to the world again in thick, lush sheaves.  

He’d like to invite you back to the ranch, so you can see it at its best, ride Whiskey again, see the freedom and peace reflected in your eyes.

Maybe for your birthday. Maybe that’d be a good enough opening to tell you he knows you’re younger than you say you are, and work from there, work out all the rest of it, see if he’s as delusional as he thinks he might be. 

He plucks out a slow, lovestruck tune, something his mama used to listen to on the radio, looking up at the slowly rising moon on the darkening horizon, thinking of what he’d play for you, if he ever got the chance, what he’d sing. You said once, you’d like to hear him sing. 

The slow return of the night bugs to the grass hums a melody back to him. 

He thinks better with something to occupy his hands, like his mind feels free to wander to other places. It calms him too, settles the turbulent roll of emotion playing across his chest that he doesn’t dare examine at too closely, or name, still hearing the thready whispered sighs of your voice, the sultry curl of it in his ear, talking him to an orgasm, the arch of your moan matching his. 

It had felt like an offering, a consolation prize for calling him and not telling him your news. He isn’t really sure how you don’t know that you could call to talk about paint drying and he’d sit there and listen to every agonizing, monotonous detail. 

He’s still thinking about that when gravel crunches beneath the tires of a car coming up the driveway, headlights flashing in the evening light. 

A few minutes later, Tommy emerges from the encroaching darkness and lumbers onto the porch. His brother greets him far too casually and moseys inside with a clatter of the screen door. 

Joel sighs heavily, can sense there will be no turning Tommy off the subject this time. He gets to his feet and follows him inside. 

“Cherry,” Tommy hums, drawing your name out as he rummages in the fridge. “That gal you were out with at the drive-in. How come you ain’t brought her around?”

Tommy says your name in his house like its no small shock, no big fucking deal. Joel wants to snatch it out of the air, stuff it into his back pocket, not because he’s ashamed but to keep it safe, because he doesn’t want to deal with justifying himself to his little brother, doesn’t want a goddamn soul to even think of staining your name. 

The air feels heavy, a crackle of electricity ringing around the ceiling. “She’s busy, usually,” Joel answers, which is true, if not entirely honest. “Works a lot.”

“She seemed real sweet.” Tommy says, emerging from the depths of the fridge with a beer, leaning against the counter as he cracks it open with a bottle opener from the drawer to his left. “Surprised though. Little young for you, ain’t she? Tess’d probably think it’s funny.” 

“Yeah,” Joel says, something tense locking up the muscle in his neck and shoulders at the mention of Tess. He leans the guitar against the table, nodding. “Yeah, probably.”

“Maybe too young,” he continues. “Maria ain’t let me forget about it since we saw you with her.” 

His little brother sits at the kitchen table and kicks one foot up on it, tilting the chair back on two legs the way he always has. “So,” he slaps a hand against his thigh, “how’d y’all meet anyway?” 

Even though he knew the question was coming, it still makes him grit his jaw, the tension in his neck transitions into a headache. 

Joel considers lying, making something up, as he sits across from Tommy. But it feels like he’d be shaming you, so he doesn’t. He tells Tommy the truth, or most of it. His brother’s eyebrows almost touch his hairline. 

“You serious?” 

“Now, Tommy, I know what it looks like—.” 

He scoffs. 

Joel bristles. 

“You ain’t even gonna let me finish?” 

He shrugs. “This ain’t like you, Joel. Since when are you that fuckin’ gullible?” 

“It ain’t like that.” 

“Like hell it ain’t. How old is she anyway?” He doesn’t answer, doesn’t want to dignify it but he’s faced starkly with the fact that he just doesn't really know. “How old?” When Joel still doesn’t answer, Tommy shakes his head. “You don’t know? Jesus Christ, Joel. Maria was right. You gotta realize how fuckin’—”

“Tommy,” he growls, a warning.

“You pay her for that day we saw you? To see a movie with you?”

Joel grits his jaw. “Tommy—”

“Uh-huh. She’s a whore, Joel. She’s supposed to make you feel special, or did you forget that somewhere along the way? How much money she gotten out of you?”  

“Shut your goddamn mouth, Tommy. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” 

Tommy shakes his head, takes another long draft from his beer before he leans forward, foot falling off Joel’s kitchen table, chair legs smacking down into the floor. “I know you been through a lot the last couple years, Sarah and Tess. All that stuff with Ellie. Anna comin’ back. Grief. . .does strange things. I told Maria this whole thing’d pass sooner or later, just give you some time but—”

“Tommy,” he snaps, and this time his brother does stop talking, looking intently at him from across the table. “You don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talkin’ about.” He’s repeating himself, ignoring the question, ignoring the pulse of truth. That maybe he had been too willing to put on blinders, indulge in the desperate, grief-tangled parts of himself that wanted to feel better, and ashamed that he wanted to feel any way but miserable.

“Now, listen, we all felt the loss—”

“What do you know about loss?” he snarls. “You lose half your goddamn family in one fuckin’ day or did I miss it?” 

There’s an unsteady feeling in his chest, pressing hard beneath his lungs. “I heard you out,” he says before Tommy can get another word in. “Now leave it.” 

“I take back what I said. Tess would be fuckin’ shamed. She is.” He says, getting to his feet, plunking the beer down onto the table. Tommy knew when a conversation with him had run its course, and how bull headed he could be too.

 Joel stands and Tommy takes a step back, toward the door.

“Watch yourself now, Joel. Listen, I don’t know nothin’ about her, so I can’t really say. I’m sure she’s a nice girl.” The emphasis makes Joel wince, sets his teeth on edge. “That’s a whole issue on its own. But you’re probably gettin’ duped and you’re blind to it because you’re fuckin’ lonely. I get it, but you gotta pull your head out of your ass.”  

The door slams shut behind him, and Joel is left with the sinking, itching feeling that Tommy is right, his own thoughts reflected back at him in his brother’s words, delivered with a punch, the notion that you could exploit his grief.

You wouldn’t. He knows you better than that, but the confrontation leaves him wondering, leaves him remembering that first night with you.

The memory punched out of his mind like holes into a ticket, long lost words careening back into focus, how quickly he’d offered up his grief, his hesitancy about your age, about being with a prostitute at all. 

If you were a different kind of man I’d guess I’d tell you I’m freshly eighteen and you would believe it.

So what kind of lies do you tell a man like Joel to make him comfortable, to contort yourself into the right fantasy, he wonders again? 

Maybe all of it. 

.

.

.

The sky is a clear crystal baby blue when you climb out of your car that Friday afternoon. The air is hot and dry, hazy where the sky meets the earth in blurred lines of red heat. 

You hurry across the parking lot and then the cool inner lobby, picking up the key card from the receptionist who smiles at you and slides it across the wood. She’s kinder than the previous one had been. If she judges you, she at least doesn’t show her disdain to your face. 

The words flutter behind your lips, and for once you want to say them. You’re excited to see him, tell him your good news, come clean about your age. 

The brass door handle is cool beneath your touch, the caress of cold air that swirls out to meet you raising gooseflesh along your arms. 

“Hey, cowboy,” you breathe, chest and throat locking up when you see him, sitting ostensibly no differently than he ever had before, in jeans and t-shirt, elbow on his knees. The words stiffen and knot in your mouth before you swallow and they loosen again, liquid warmth in your mouth and veins. It will feel good, to have the knot of nerves in your gut unfurl, loosen, flatten into nothing. 

It says nothing of the elation you feel that you have someone to tell about your candidacy, to share in your accomplishment, to call you smart and deserving and so persistent and resilient. The words would feel so nice, would taste delicious on your tongue, passed from his mouth to yours, slippery and warm. 

“I want to—there’s something we—”

But as soon as your bag hits the floor, Joel is pressing you back into the door, his mouth on yours in a rarely shown desperation. If it’s a little rougher than usual, a little more demanding, you don’t mind.

You loop your arms around his neck, let the words settle at the back of your throat. 

His jeans are unbuttoned and half unzipped, the skin of his lower stomach taut and warm against your fingertips when you skim your hands down his chest.  

“Joel,” you whisper against his mouth, what you wanted to say lost to the lust being stoked in your belly. You grasp at the rapidly receding firaments, grasping at straws until they all disappear. “Hold on, I—”

He stops long enough to give you a moment to breathe. “You all right?” 

“Yeah,” you murmur, hooking your fingers into the loops of his jeans. It can wait, the things you want to say to him nest again at the bottom of your lungs, content to wait for the right moment. “Yes.” 

Joel cups his hand against your jaw, looking at you like he’s searching for something in your features. You expect some kind of reassurance, the softening of his edges, but he just kisses you again. 

He walks backward with you until his knees hit the edge of the bed, running his hands over your sides and the curve of your thighs. 

Joel rucks your skirt up, so you can slot your knees on either side of his hips, broad palms and fingers hooking against the back of your thighs, cupping the curve of your ass, squeezing until you shimmy forward, until you’re pressed so closely together, you swear you can feel the pulse of his heart against yours. 

He doesn’t look at you when he reaches beneath your skirt to tug your underwear to the side, rub two fingers through your folds. You’re just wet enough that the familiar stretch of his cock is a pleasant ache, though you can help feeling he usually would have touched you more, taken his time with you.

There’s something distant about the way he touches you, a remoteness that you can’t exactly place, an agitatedness that puts you on edge. Maybe it’s just the desperation, the unfamiliar, urgent spread of his fingers against your spine, pressing in a way that he hasn’t been before, at least not with you. Squeezing too tight, adjusting your limbs with too sudden jerks. 

You slide your fingers across the back of his neck, threading the tips through his dark graying hair. He looks at you but doesn’t meet your eyes, cupping your jaw in his hand, thumb swiping across your mouth until you part your lips. 

He presses two fingers past your lips, strokes them against your tongue until you gag slightly and grab his wrist. His murmured praise is enough to let him do it again, sucking until he groans and pulls his hand away, swiping away the spit from your lips. 

Joel tugs at the hem of your shirt instead, until you lift your arms, peeling it off you, flinging it to the end of the bed, fingers digging into your hips, rocking you forward against him. 

His hands travel upwards, cupping around your tits, mouth traveling from your lips to your throat.

You gasp when he pinches your nipples into peaks. 

The sound draws his eyes, gaze hooking into yours. A hard breath leaves him. 

You frown when he presses his forehead to your sternum. “Oh, Christ,” he mutters against your skin. 

You lace your fingers against the back of his head, holding him there for a long moment, wondering what happened. “Something’s wrong.” You say softly. “You okay?” 

He nods. 

And when he glances up again the ragged desperation has gentled into something calmer. You stroke his cheek, feel his cock twitch inside you. “Can I take this off?” You murmur, winding your fingers into his t-shirt in half anguished fists. 

A realization plucked like a false note in the back of your mind, how often you were bare, how often he was not. 

But he nods and acquiesce, dropping the material to the floor, you run your fingers across his chest, the tickle of wiry chest hair beneath the pads of your fingers, a delicious scrap against your sensitive nipples when you lean in close. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” You ask when he flattens his palm between your shoulder blades and ruts against you, holding you close to him. 

Something caused this, you’re fairly certain of it. An ache gnaws at the lining of your stomach, that perhaps the borrowed time had finally cashed in. 

“Mm.” His hand sweeps down your spine, before he twists your bodies in an impressive show of strength, pressing your back flat to the mattress. “Gimme your leg,” he says, voice less strained than before. “Ankle here.” 

You almost make a joke, if he’s too old for something like that, but there’s something so serious in his features that it dies on your tongue. He’s so quiet, he’s normally more vocal, talks to you.

Joel pushes back inside you slowly. The angle is deeper than you’re used to, but he goes slowly enough that the stretch never turns into a burn. The first shallow thrust touches something that makes your eyes roll back, the second makes you moan and grip his arm, the hand circled around your calf, keeping your leg against his chest. 

You fold your other leg against his hip, spreading yourself wider, reaching for him, begging him to slot closer to you. 

The far away feeling hasn’t quite dissipated, but it creases and hides when he leans down over you, pushing the aching muscles in your thigh to its near limit. 

He grunts in your ear, the echo of the central air shutting off matching the panting caress of your breath. “Baby,” you think he murmurs, so low the word is almost nothing, just the brush of his breath against your skin.

Hand curled against the side of your neck, he fucks you deep and slow, every inch of him felt as he pulls away and thrusts back into you. A moan builds in your throat that you don’t feel able to expel, something tight tangled around your lungs. You tits bounce with every snap of his hips, until he finally lowers your leg to match the other curled at his hip. 

You cross your ankles at the small of his back, encouraging him closer, to fuck you deeper. His skin is warm against yours, slick with salt. Joel rubs his thumb across the underside of your chin, the line of your jaw. 

He threads one arm beneath your back to tilt your hips up, sucks bruises kisses into your skin when he bows his head. A flattening curve along your collarbone and down to your chest, tongue laving over one nipple and then the other. 

Joel’s hand slides away from your neck to rub your clit, grunting against your mouth, the scent of him and sex so thick in the air it chokes you, salt and leather and lemon. 

The pressure squeezing around the base of your spine unwinds all at once, a terrible, aching pulse that spools out in every direction crossed with desire and affection and something else you’re dangerously close to admitting. 

You feel it when he comes, the tense of his shoulders beneath your hands, the straining muscle of his back and neck, the hot pressure and twitch of his cock. Pretty, when he comes inside you, eyes scrunched, mouth parting gently.

He collapses against you, cursing beneath his breath, strands of his hair sticking to your chest. You wrap your arms around his head and think maybe the distance, the remoteness, you’d felt were just your imagination. You stoke his hair, think about saying your name, feel the warm puff of his breath over your skin, slow and familiar. 

His skin is tacky with sweat, strands of hair plastered to the back of his neck, shimmering in the hollow of his throat, at his wrists and the too pretty curve of his biceps. 

You could spend forever looking at him, instead you get only a moment. 

The afternoon sunlight is still so bright, a ringing, glittering halo around his mussed hair. You’d arrived so early in the afternoon, with the intention to. . .you have so much to tell him. 

“Joel—” 

Confusion curls around the edges of your mind, tugs you up out of the haze of post sex dopamine bliss, when he pulls away from you, the circle of your arms going cold, the place where his head just rested crusting over with ice. 

He sits at the edge of the bed, broad back rising and falling steadily, muscle flicking and rolling beneath his sun washed skin, veiny, competent hands reaching for his t-shirt, tugging it over his head. 

“Joel?”

His back tenses; he stands. 

Of all the cruel things men have done and said after using your body, abusing you in so many ways, this hurts the most, Joel getting out of bed so quickly, not looking at you. 

The sting doesn’t make sense, not at first. Like your body understands before your mind does. 

“How old are you?” 

The blood rushes out of your face so quickly, you feel faint, sitting up, yanking at the sheet unit you can cover your chest. A dirty, used, humiliated feeling follows. 

“Birthday comin’ up, right?” He continues, pulling his jeans up his thighs, buttoning them slowly. He doesn’t look at you. “We met end of March last year. Birthday is comin’ up. So you turned twenty-eight last year, right after we met.” 

The chill over your heart spreads, rushes through your chest until your lungs struggle to draw breath. 

“Joel—” you whisper. “Wait, wait, this is—I wanted to—”

“So you’re turnin’ twenty-nine.” 

His features betray a desperation when he turns, a crisis of faith that cuts you to your core. “Joel—”

“Cherry.”

There’s something incredibly unfair about it. This isn’t the first time he’s done this to you, ambushed you after sex when your defenses were down. Because he’s feeling vulnerable and raw, emotions too close to the surface of his skin, or because you are and he’s hoping the truth will be more readily available to him?

You don’t want to believe it’s the latter, but it’s hard to convince yourself it’s anything else. 

You can feel his cum leaking out of you, can still feel the warm imprint of his hands on your waist, the last gentle, whiskered kiss he pressed to your mouth. You can still feel the lingering burn of it, the new meaning of it. 

He’s begging you to say he’s right, of course he is. He wants you to laugh, say of course you never lied about your age. But you’re already shaking your head. 

“I wanted to tell you—I was—” You stop and swallow, dry throat scraping and clogged with too many words, crowding to get out, not sure what to say first. Your tongue feels cottony and fat and too large for your mouth. “So many times, but I—”

“Tell me now,” he says gruffly and you flinch. “Jesus Christ.”

You close your eyes, summoning the courage to blow it all up. There’s something caged about him, a beast pulling at his chain. The desperation makes sense, he’s already made up his mind about you. Just a lying whore he wanted the truth out of for once. It’s as you knew it would be, one detail would crumble the foundation, everything you said after would be examined and held to the light and be found wanting.  

“I’ll be twenty-four,” you murmur eventually. “In two weeks.” 

Joel paces the length of the room, agitated, hands on his hips. But he doesn’t leave, doesn’t tell you to get the hell out, and so hope blossoms weakly in your heart. A chance. Maybe you have a chance to explain.

You open your mouth to say something, to say anything, to ask if it mattered. 

That moment a year ago, that decision, made in a vacuum you could not have guessed the vastness of, that it would lead, eventually, here. 

 “Anything you said to me real this past year? Or has it all been a little act?”

“How would I—What do you—?” 

“Grief,” he answers sharply. “Just what kinda sob story works on what type of man.” 

This is the ultimate confirmation of what you’d already known. Joel is just like any other man, he’s just taken longer than most in showing it. 

It hurts worse than you could have imagined, though you knew it would be the logical conclusion he would arrive at eventually. 

Everything else has been real, painfully, horrifyingly, nakedly real. He knows you better than anyone else, and he isn’t convinced it’s the truth. 

You think of the photos on his living room walls, all the places you thought you might fit in, given the chance, all the pieces of himself he’d never shared. All the things you shared that he now thinks are lies. 

Maybe the age difference could have been resolved. But the implication that you curated what you said to prise money from his fingers, can’t be. 

You shrug, feeling the broken, ragged pieces of your rasp against the inside of your skin. The dirty, used feeling fades in the wake of a hungry numbness. 

“We should end—” he gestures vaguely with one hand toward you, flippantly, with one lifted brow, barely looking at you as he says it, “—whatever the hell this is.” 

The room seems to shrink, the walls pushing in slowly, hurt blooming like a bruise over your heart. You feel like you can’t breathe, like you might have a panic attack or a heart attack. You manage one shaky breath and then another before that familiar, safe removed feeling cocoons you carefully away. Like you’re watching how this plays out from outside your body, floating above it all. “Okay.” 

Joel stops pacing and you hold the sheet hard to your chest, bracing again, waiting. 

If he’s finally seeing you as you are, maybe he’d treat you that way too. 

And he’s so angry. 

You think he’s angry, and Joel has never been angry with you before. You don’t know what to do with his anger, how it might manifest to you, on you. 

He scoffs. “So that’s it then? You ain’t even gonna say anything? Ain’t even gonna deny it?”

You can’t parse the tone of his voice, anxious and pleading, maybe, more than angry. But you don’t trust yourself with him, to see him clearly, not anymore. 

What would it accomplish anyway? Maybe he wants to ridicule you, snap back with evidence of his own that you’re lying, that you’re still lying, that none of it mattered.

Your shirt is still at the end of the bed where Joel had flung it. You claw it on with shaking hands, your fingers and the lines in your palms unrecognizable, like they belong to someone else, and lurch across the room to your bag, yanking your skirt down and underwear back into place as you go. Humiliation and grief and shame rush through you all at once, a self-hatred so intense that you think, distantly, it might be worth it to let him hurt you. You’d deserve it.  

The air feels heavy, like you’re moving through syrup, thick and viscous, quicksand sucking at your ankles. It seems to take forever to reach the door, to loop around Joel, who suddenly seems so large, like he takes up the whole room, shadowy and hulking. 

“Hey—” 

Joel’s voice is far away, distant, echoing as if from down a long tunnel, from underwater. Maybe it sounds softer, you don’t know. Time feels immaterial and long, like it’s rushing by and crawling to a halt all at once. 

“Darlin’? You hear me?” 

To think you wanted to speak your name into his ear, let it curl safely in his chest, a new home for it. How fucking pathetic. 

You feel dizzy but you’re glad, distantly, that you can’t hear him, can’t hear whatever words he’s hurling at you.  

“Cherry—” His voice snaps like sudden gunfire, like you’re wretched suddenly and against your will from beneath the surface of that safe riptide. 

Joel hooks his hand in your elbow. “Honey, listen,—”

A hard learned lesson emerges from the depth of your stomach, and instinct kicks in, the ghosts of so many angry men sucking the air from the room, so many phantom grasping hands crawling along your skin. 

You jerk out of his grasp so violently that you slam your shoulder into the frame of the door. The pain barely registers, but the safe, hazy film of dissociation can’t protect you from the look that flashes over his face.

Regret, shame. 

Then you feel stupid for seeing it that way, as though he would feel regret and shame over someone like you. 

You want to cry. 

You won’t cry. 

You cannot cry in front of him. 

You haven’t cried in front of a man since the first few weeks at the club and you will not start again now. But you can feel them, thick and ready to fall, at the backs of your eyes, hot beading pressure that doesn’t dissipate when you blink rapidly. 

“No,” your voice is a sudden, vicious little snarl, a cornered, frightened thing. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.” 

You swallow and back away from him, shaking your head as you go, reaching blindly behind you for the door handle. “You’re right. It wasn’t fucking real,” you shrug, like there isn’t shattered glass lodged in your lungs from your broken heart. “I’m a whore, Joel. I’m nothing but a whore. I told you that. That’s all I am.” 

His face goes blank. 

His hand drops from your arm. 

“Then I guess we ain’t got nothin’ to say to each other.” 

Previous / Next

[inasunlitroom]

a love so fine || one shot

joel miller x f!reader

for my girl, @dinandwhiskey, happy belated birthday babe! ily so dearly. massive shout out to my beloveds, @phoeberidgers and @pedrospatch for being my eyes, my brain and my heart, without them, i am equivalent to the tin man (they also keep me sane) <33

pairing: jackson joel x f!reader summary: a quiet evening in with your husband joel helps to quiet the brain noise.  warnings: jackson era [around tlou part ii timeline], canon divergent [golfing doesn’t happen and everyone is happy and thriving bc i said so], implied age gap [no specific age for reader but joel is late 50’s], established relationship, HUSBAND joel, DOMESTIC JOEL, sickly-sweet fluff, reader can’t cook [i swear i can], pet names [baby, sweet baby, darlin’, (1) use of the word kiddo, an excessive amount of the use of the word “baby” bc i can’t seem to help myself], JOEL IN A THIGH HOLSTER, dirty talk, unprotected p in v sex, biiiiiiig breeding kink [ruh roh], joel says dagum bc he’s old, hint of a mama kink, praise kink, (1) (2) (3) uses of the word “daddy”, smidgen of begging + teasing, a bit of mocking, angst in the form of internal turmoil [duh it’s me what did you expect], feelings of inadequacy + guilt/shame, hurt/comfort, tinge of sex as a coping mechanism, soft emotional smut, finger sucking, oral [m!receiving], cock and ball worship [girl’s got a big oral fixation let her live], hand kink, blink and you miss subby!joel, switch reader, hint of dacryphilia, gentle–turned–semi–rough sex, soft dom!joel, mean!joel [but the sexy kind], prone bone, doggy style, hair pulling, light spanking, creampie, size kink [joel is huuuge and big and strong and at one point lifts reader onto a counter], & reader has hair long enough to grab. word count: 6.3k dividers by @saradika-graphics

masterlist || ao3 || follow @joelsdaggerupdates for notifs!!

Cold air whimpers into the house as Joel steps through the front door when you’re pulling the semi-burnt meat pies out of the oven, the cold nip blanketed by the heat emanating from the cavity. You set them aside, and turn your attention to the pot of soup on the burner, your mom’s old family recipe, when you’re greeted by Joel’s figure materializing behind you. Broad palms splay across the expanse of your back, big, thick arms wrapping around your middle, shivering at the cold bite of his cheek against yours. You sink into his embrace, allowing him to feed off of your warmth.  

“Was patrol okay?” you ask, unfocused as your eyes scan over the creased paper for what feels like the hundredth time in the last two hours. 

His chin dips. Snow dusts from his head onto your shoulder. “Was fine. Couple of stragglers. Took care of them,” scruff of his face scratches at your neck as he nuzzles into your skin. “You’re home early.”   

You hum, your free hand drifts to meet his.“Surprisingly slow day at the clinic. Closed up by six, the staff booked it to the bar afterward.” You tilt your head to rest against his, basking in the crisp scent of snow, pine, and gunpowder on him, one you’ve come to recognize as home. 

“Y’didn’t wanna go with them?” he asks, thumb stroking over your stomach. 

“Nah, the clinic kicked me on my ass today. Wanted to come home, make somethin’ nice for us,” you say, reaching over the stovetop, turning the rusted knob up a few notches, flame sizzling beneath the pot.   

“Already got my something nice,” he purrs, dips his nose into your hair, reveling in the scent of your shampoo as he presses two kisses in quick succession to your temple, broad hands retreating and sneaking into your jean pockets over your ass, squeezing as he leans in to nip at your carotid.

You shrug him off in jest. “Alright, slow your roll, cowboy. You’re pulling my focus here.” His chest rumbles with a laugh against you.  

“This one’s still giving you trouble, huh?” his lips pressed up against the shell of your ear as he peers over your shoulder.  

You set the wooden spoon aside, opting to let the broth simmer, flavors marry that way. “I just don’t get how she did it. I’ve tried it about a million times. It never comes out right,” you sigh exasperatedly.

He chuckles. “Honey, you’ve been cooking all of what? Five seconds? This recipe’s been in your family for years. Cut yourself some slack here, baby.” He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. 

You can’t help rolling your eyes because this isn’t your first attempt. You’re exhausted and hungry, and you know Joel is too. You’re more than capable at work, cleaning up blood from surface wounds, expertly wrapping the occasional tourniquet, extracting bullets lodged in patrollers without even blinking. But in this slice of your life, you know you could be doing more. 

He doesn’t hesitate, head wobbles a bit, right shoulder tips, “I know it’s a lot to ask of ya,” he says softly. 

You huff slightly. “Alright, alright, enough,” sparing him a quick glance, picking up the spoon again. 

“Give it here,” he attempts, fingers motioning to hand over the spoon. You scold him in turn, reluctant to seek his help, something else you seem unable to forgo despite the world going to shit. 

“Alright,” he starts, as he moves to wrap his strong arms around your waist. “You. Sit here,” he sets you down on the countertop beside the stove. 

“Joooeeel,” you protest and begin shifting your weight in readiness to hop off the countertop.  

“Nah–” Joel puts his palm up, intercepting your movements. 

You roll your eyes but don’t fight him again, fingers curl under the countertop, legs dangling from the edge as you watch him swirl the wooden spoon in the soup. You bite your lip, a knot curling in your chest. Domesticity is a nice look on him. You often tell him as much, but this time you don’t. “Oh – don’t tell me you can cook now. Much less my own family recipe. You can do everything else, can I have this one damn thing.” 

His eyes crinkle at the corners, and mouth tugs up. “Says the doctor who spends all her time fixin’ up everyone else in this town. Could probably do it in your sleep.” He spoons the soup, pinching a sliced carrot in the bowl of the spoon, testing its tenderness. 

“Alright, but if you burn it, we gotta eat at the community hall again.” You lean back, your head resting against the cabinet. 

He lifts the spoon to his lips, eyes closing as he savors the bite and swallows. “You even taste it? ‘Cause it’s pretty darn good, sweetheart.”

When you don’t respond, he dips his index finger into the pot, strides over to you, and slants himself in between your legs. He taps the bottom of your lip. “Open up,” he commands softly.

You do as he says and close your lips around the digit and hum.

A balanced blend of rich sweetness and delicious saltiness with a hint of tang on the finish dances on your taste buds.

He’s right; it’s pretty good. But you don’t revel in it. Your mind focused on Joel’s lips parting at the sight, his eyes trained on your lips around his finger. You watch him, your lips curving into a smirk as he removes his index finger, swiped clean, and replaces it with his thumb, pushing past your lips and onto your tongue. 

One of your hands instinctively reaches up to wrap around his wrist, his head dips slightly lower, lips only a hairsbreadth from yours, woodsy-salty taste of him and the heat from the burner melding together, clouding your mind. You feel the hitch in his breath against your lips, black slowly taking up the hazel hues in his eyes as they stay trained on your mouth, sucking his thumb. 

“Good girl,” he whispers softly, almost casually. 

You preen at his praise. Teeth barely grazing the pad of his thumb. You can feel the bulge against your belly, sitting firm between layers and layers of clothing, growing more and more evident with every passing second his thumb stays pressed into your mouth. 

You release his thumb with a soft pop, biting back a grin, your hand reaching up to card your fingers through his too-long hair, “tastes good.” 

You both know you’re not just talking about the soup. 

You tuck a curl behind his ear. The corner of his mouth tugs up, and his thumb traces the shape of your lips, lustful eyes focused on yours as his soft lips envelop yours, the hairs of his mustache tickling your face. You giggle into his mouth. Then both his hands cradle your face, the metal of his wedding band bitingly cold against your cheek, you shiver. 

Your finger hooks into the holster on his thigh, drawing him in, grinning when you feel the tightness behind his jeans, rock solid, and throbbing. You grind upwards, rolling your clothed cunt against his bulge, a deep groan pours from his mouth into yours. Arousal clouds your senses as you fuse your body to his, nails digging into the leather of his strap, lungs fighting for air between heavy pants until—

A loud sputtering sound from beside you forces you apart, and your heads dart towards the stove. 

Shit shit shit. 

You hastily hop down from the counter, lunging for the knob, your other hand simultaneously pulling the pot off the burner.

You let out a sigh of relief, “Thank God. It’s not burnt. Think it’s ready if you wanna eat now, or do you wanna run through the shower first?” you ask over your shoulder.  

Joel huffs out a quiet laugh, places a firm hand on the small of your back as he reaches for the tethered cabinet above your head, “let’s eat darlin.’”

—

You’d been glancing to and fro between your sketchbook and Joel propped up beside you with a book in bed for the last fifteen or so minutes. The soft glow from the lamp on the nightstand to your left, capturing his features just right for you to doodle them as accurately as you can.

His post shower hair combed back into soft waves, tucked behind his ears and down his neck. It’s getting quite long; curls threaten to slip into the collar of his sleep shirt. He’s long overdue for a trim really, but you love it this way. He won’t admit it, and you won’t remind him, so it stays. 

A thin pair of old rimless reading glasses are perched on the scarred bridge of his nose. He’s got his free hand stretched out and resting on the top of your thigh beneath the covers, thumb slowly stroking your skin — always needing to touch you. The hour is quiet. Peaceful. You could stay like this forever with him; bellies full and freshly showered, in bed before ten. If he’ll still have you.  

His other hand props up the book holding his attention. An Idiot’s Guide to Space, reads the broken purple spine. The book so small in his big hands. Heat blooms in your chest for the second time, the first when he pulled it out of his nightstand an hour prior. Something he does at the end of each night. 

Joel found it on patrol one morning. He kept it to himself at first, tucked away in his top drawer, until you stumbled upon it while putting his folded clothes away. A freshly showered Joel emerged from the bathroom, Ellie’s always goin’ on and on about space. Ain’t got a damn clue about any of it, he admitted shyly. 

Sometimes he’ll blurt out a fact or two while you’re in bed or padding out of the bathroom. His voice cutting through your reverie –

“Baby, says here you could cross the damn Milky Way in twelve fuckin’ years. Did you know that?” he chances a glance at you.

You chuckle at him. “Yes, I did know that, baby,” shaking your head a little. 

“Shit. So it’s just me with the two of you experts?” he asks with a laugh.

You smile to yourself. You don’t tell him that Ellie's the one who told you that little tidbit. 

You tuck your pen between the pages and close your sketchbook, laying it on the small table beside you, “We’ll get you there someday, baby,” you tease. 

Joel snorts, reaching for your arm and tucking you into his side. You rest your head on his chest, his fingertips softly brushing the skin of your arm. “Quit yankin’ my chain, ‘cause baby, you got no idea what you’re playin’ at.”

Oh. But you do. 

You peer up at him, studying the hard lines in his face and the soft gray shadows under his eyes from exhaustion, too much violence.  

You shift to dip your head lower down the curve of his belly. Your hand traces a line down his middle, following the thickening trail of hair down his supple belly, slipping beneath the covers, fingertips grazing the outline of his length over gray sweats, hand cupping his semi-hard cock.

Joel flinches, glasses jolt. It spurs you on. 

You palm him through his pants, and he hisses through clenched teeth. 

“Whaddya doin’ down there, kiddo?” he asks tersely, his gaze lifting over the top of his glasses.

Heat rises to your cheeks. That damn pet name. One that he uses more often these days, when you’re being a pain in his ass. The one that reminds you just how much older he is.

Liquid heat pools between your thighs. 

You gaze up at him, “I just wanna play with him a little. Is that okay?” Falsely innocent eyes sparkling, your fingers circling the head of his cock over his pants. 

He makes a low sound, and stirs. “Darlin’ if I ever say no to you, you take my revolver n’ use it on me.” A hint of playfulness in his tone.  

You giggle softly. “As fun as that would be, cowboy, that’d deprive me of my happiness,” fingers pulling the blanket and his sweats down in one fluid motion, revealing his hardening cock. 

Deft fingers now stroking through your hair. “Lemme guess. That happiness got more to do with my dick than anythin’ else?” he asks, lips curling with a soft laugh. 

You don’t respond, you suspect the smirk that quirks your lips is answer enough for him. Your head dips lower; grabbing the full length of him in both of your hands — so fucking big. Your lips close around the wide head, and you hum. 

He rests the book on his stomach, tucks an arm behind his head, and watches you as you get to work on his length. You pull your lips off him. “You want me to continue? You better keep readin’ that book of yours, Miller,” you say firmly.

A blush creeps up his thick neck; watch as his Adam’s apple bops in his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” raising the book again and continuing where he left off. 

Satisfied, you shift to move down the mattress, the sheets moving with you and bunching at the foot of the bed. 

Your mouth gets back to work on his cock, now fully stiff in your grasp, head swollen and flushed red. Your lips curling around it, your other hand wrapped around the base, fingers barely wrapping around the thick girth of him. You lathe a wet kiss to the tip, and then suction the mushroom shape of him hard, an obscene sound filling the quiet of your bedroom. The heavy weight of him pulses and leaks onto the pink softness of your tongue. You lap up the salty precum leaking at the slit and in your periphery, catch Joel fisting the corner of your pillow. He’s panting, shaky breaths escape him while he attempts to read. You smirk around him. He likes it like this; slow, lazy – sloppy. 

Your gaze drops back down as you pull off him and dip your head down to his low-hanging balls, heavy and already set to burst. You take one in your mouth, the tip of your tongue slowly draws circles along the thin, stretchy flesh, while your other hand slowly pumps the long length of him. You feel a strong hand meeting the back of your skull, fingers sewn through the strands of your hair, his muscles beneath you tightening.

You feel the heat of his gaze, almost impossible to ignore, it urges you on. Your other hand cups his other ball, gently fondling the heavy weight of it, fingers gently twiddling the skin. You suckle softly at his sac, eliciting a strained whimper from Joel, his hips cant upwards, cock twitching in your face.

“Fuckin’ love them,” you whisper, turning your attention to the other, laying a soft kiss on the underside of his ball. That one is just for you. 

“Yeah?” he exhales. “Keep goin’ then, baby,” fingers curling around the back of your neck, instructing you with the faintest bit of pressure. 

Your eyes glance up in time to find him dragging his other hand down his face, book now stacked haphazardly upon the others on his side table. His glasses sit low on the tip of his nose, eyes shut tight, dark brows pinched. All his features meld together in pleasure as he loses himself in you.

You asked him to continue reading but you can’t deny this is what you wanted all along. He looks beautiful like this; in the soft golden glow in the bedroom, tan sun-freckled skin all bare for you, mouth ajar and chest heaving with ragged breaths, veins in his neck thick and prominent as his chin tilts upward. The sight makes you ache. 

You never minded this. Matter of fact, you love it. Giving. Taking care of him, encouraging him to chase after something he wants. You never used to enjoy it before but Joel Miller so rarely takes. So rarely selfish. And seeing strong, stoic men, your man, come apart for you just from your mouth makes you rub your thighs together to soothe the brimming ache. 

Joel Miller – the man who despite the kinder, slower years spent in Jackson and never once hesitating to lend a hand to those in need, who still had a mean reputation, allowing himself to revel in the feeling of you taking care of him. The hard lines of his usual scowl gone from his face and replaced with twisted lines of pleasure. Letting himself take take take and being shameless in doing so.

You suck hard on the ball in your mouth and he moans loudly, feel it draw up between your lips. “Oh – fuck – that’s good,” his head topples back against the headboard with a hard thud, “so good,” he breathes. 

Your clothed core tightens, feel the ruined material cling to your lips. 

And because you can. You pull off him and give the head of his cock a little wet kiss. 

You blink up at him to find him watching you with bated breath, hazel eyes blown completely black. You gather saliva beneath your tongue, let a strand drool, and land directly on his slit. Joel’s entire body shivers, hips thrusting upwards into the air on instinct, his fingers in your hair tighten, blunt fingertips digging into your heated skin. “Dagum you’re good at that, baby.”

You smile and pump the length of him slowly, twisting upwards and running your thumb over his tip. Your mouth retakes its place on his length, lips stretching open around the bulbous head as you ease your head lower and lower on his length, pushing him in, in, in past your gag reflex. Tears prick at your eyes, pushing him in until his cock coaxes the back of your throat; you gag around him, and Joel groans raggedly at the sound. He loves it. You lift your head and hum around him as you begin bopping your head up and down the length of him, your fist pumps what you can’t fit into your mouth. And Joel whimpers, and jerks, hips canting to meet every bob and every stroke, every lick and every kiss.  

A tear cascades down your cheek when you swallow, the silken walls of your throat tighten around him, and at that, Joel makes a pained noise. “Get up here,” he growls, his hand drawing your mouth off him. 

You prop yourself up, shove up his shirt to lay wet kisses up the trail of his graying hair. Your mouth dips left of his belly button, pecking the deep scar, an unwelcome reminder of his fall that nearly ended in fatality.

Your lips press a kiss south of his belly button before you tongue at it. You feel the muscles in his belly quiver beneath the softness of your tongue, goosebumps ghosting his skin, your hand still wrapped around the thick girth of him — it pulses in your grasp. “Fuck– You’re gonna make me come,” he tugs at your neck again, dragging you up to straddle his lap.

“That’s kind of the point here, baby,” you say as you pepper the whiskered corners of his mouth in little kisses. “I wanted you to come in my mouth.” You brush your lips against his, and he chuckles. The hand still at the base of your neck holds you there as his tongue sneaks into your mouth, licks along the line of your gums to taste the salty flavor of himself, you moan in unison. 

He’s still panting when your fingers run through his tousled hair, feeling droplets of sweat at his temple. You kiss at the shadows under his eyes, glasses long forgotten somewhere. Joel’s tongue flicks the corner of his lips, thumbs away the tear beneath your eye then at the thin string of saliva clinging to the skin on your chin and he presses another quick peck to your lips, and against your lips.

“You look so goddamn sexy like this,” he whispers softly, before pushing his lips to yours once again. 

You smile against him. “That mean I can continue?” you whisper. 

You feel his lips twitch, he peels your shirt from your body, then his, and then his hands find your hips, swiftly flipping you over, his broad form towering over you. “Got another idea, little mama.”

“Like what daddy,” dropping your voice at the word “daddy”.  You’ve never thought to try the nickname out but you know you’ve plucked a chord when you feel his cock twitch between your bodies and you’re mentally kicking yourself that you’ve waited this long.  

Who knew Joel Miller, at the ripe old age of fifty-nine would realize he had a daddy kink. 

A low growl slips from his lips, “say it again.”

You bite back a grin that threatens to pull over your lips, your chest blooming at the thought of Joel Miller growing so comfortable with you that he’s unashamed in asking you for things that make him feel good. You want nothing more than to give that to him, so you do. 

“What are you gonna do with me, daddy?” you ask, feigning seriousness. 

“Might need to stuff that slutty mouth of yours again,” the amber in his eyes so warm and filled with lust.  

You shrug, exaggerate a sigh, “I wouldn’t complain.”

He shakes his head but you catch the creases around his eyes, feel the low chuckle reverberate through the slats of his ribs. 

“No, you wouldn’t,” he begins and his fingers hook around the waistband of your panties, “but like I said, I’ve got other plans for you tonight.”

“And what exactly do those plans entail, daddy?” you ask, your fingers ghost over his shoulders, up his neck and into his dampened temples. A smirk tugging the corner of your lips at the slow drag of your underwear down your legs. 

He doesn’t answer. His hand cups your mound, feels the sticky wet at your opening, your body jolts at the first fleeting sliver of attention your hungry cunt’s received all night. “Pussy’s this wet all ‘cause you blowin’ me, hm? You like it that much, baby?” He cocks his head, a smug grin plastered on his face. 

A blissful sigh falls from your lips, he encourages you further when he guides the head of his cock to your messy pussy. 

You arch and squirm and moan on instinct, the agonizingly slow drag of his cock through your puffy folds meticulous in measured movements. Your head falls back, fists clenching, pussy fluttering, and Joel just smirks. 

“Yeah she likes that, don’t she?” he asks, his hazel eyes burning into yours.

Your heart falls. A wanton moan slips past your lips. You want to respond. You do. But you can’t ignore that sudden, all too familiar spike of fear beginning to flare in your chest. 

His hand cups your chin almost immediately. Joel knows you all too well. Before you even know it yourself, he sees it in the storms in your eyes, the slight tremble of your fingers, the sudden rapid rise and fall of your chest. Joel’s observant, always functioning on high alert. He’s helped you through moments like this over the years, and both of you thought they were long gone. But the guilt and shame claw their way back tonight, decidedly paying a visit. 

“Hey. Stay with me, honey,” he implores, brows pinching.

Unbidden tears prickle your eyes. Your eyes slip shut. I can’t. You want to say. It’s too much. The sharp blackening teeth of shame sinking into your skin, gnawing a hole low in your belly. How do you tell your husband that even after six years together you’re still afraid to put yourself first. Afraid that if you do, he’ll abandon you just as everybody else has. How do you tell him that even though he’s never shown you he has any intention of doing so, you’ve made yourself believe that he will. That small noise in your brain ugly, rotten. And no matter how hard you try you can never seem to quiet it. How do you tell him that all you want is for him to fuck you. So hard he brings you to tears. To quiet the noise. Stamp out the flame. But you can’t seem to form the words. Can’t bring yourself to tell him and maybe even worse, you still don’t understand why after all these years spent with him. I don’t know how. 

He hinges forward, broad form crowding yours into the mattress, hands find yours beside your head, a soft clink ricochets in your ears when the metal of your wedding bands meet. 

“Talk to me, baby, what is it?” he whispers, his cock still gliding through your lower lips. 

“I–” your stammering cuts off into a soft whine, eyes flittering.   

“What?” He cocks his head, warm breath fanning across your face. 

Your guilt-ridden mind screaming at you to scramble for words. To get him to understand. Little do you know, he does. Has for a long time. Your past often makes you forget. Here. In the now, he reminds you. 

“I can’t–” you sigh when he kisses the corner of your mouth, “Joel– I–”

“I– I– I–” Joel mocks above you. “Can’t use your words cause you’re only thinking of my cock ain’t ya?”

You keen at that, cheeks bloom. He’s right. Only you rarely ask for it. 

“Always want it, but you never ask for it. Been your husband for two years and I still oughta show you I ain’t ever leavin’, is that it?” 

You mewl all petulant and small. 

He reaches to bring your left hand to his mouth, pressing a fleeting kiss to the cold metal of your wedding band. “Y’know m’all yours, sweetheart. Haven’t I shown you?” He presses another kiss to the band. “Or these mean nothin’ to ya?” A hint of smirk passes over his lips as he lays a third kiss to your fingers, your skin ablaze.  

They mean everything to you. He means everything to you. The words die on your tongue but he knows. He’s only teasing you because he needs to hear it, needs to hear that honey sweet giggle to bring you back to him. And although you wish he didn’t have to, you can’t deny that his persistent efforts make you feel just as desirable as the day he slanted his mouth over yours and made you his forever. Long before solemn vows and makeshift wedding venues. Before ratty ‘his and hers’ bath towels and engraved silver bands. He claimed you as his and he as yours and even still, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Your mind slips and the pulp of his forefinger traces down your sternum, follows the line of your stomach, goosebumps rising in its wake. 

“Joel–” you giggle quietly, and his eyes gleam. 

“Ah. There she is,” he says so softly in that honey Texan drawl that makes your stomach fall away. 

His hand flattens, broad palm drifts down the softness of your belly and settles beneath your navel, the cold bite of his wedding finger making you quiver. 

His dark eyes flicker. “How about I really fill you up? Hm?” His hand drifts further south, grips the root of his cock between your bodies, glides the underside of his cock, featherlight, through your swollen lips, the angry red almost purple tip bumps your throbbing clit before he slides it back down through your folds, letting the head catch at your drooling hole. “You wanted to know what I plan on doin’ to ya? M’gettin’ my wife pregnant. Give my sweet baby a baby? Would you like that?” 

The rest of what he wants to say lingers on the tip of his tongue, mulling around in his mouth, show you, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Your breath hitches, eyes go wide. Your thoughts are clouded by him. Your belly swelling, carrying your child. His child. Yes. Yes. Yes. You want it. You want it with him. 

You breathe out a desperate moan, “God, yes. Joel. Yes.”

His cock, heavy and thick, still glides through your messy folds, the head of his cock catching, catching, catching at your hole, coating his length in webs of your slick. The sweet sound of your wet echoing loudly in your shared bedroom. 

“That sound like I wanna leave you?” He asks gruffly.

You shake your head vigorously, your hips canting upwards, chasing after him. 

You hiss when his tip bumps your clit. You pout at him. “Joel. You’re being mean–” your words tapering off into a soft sob. 

He laughs at that, presses the incredibly wide head in, then back out and up again, “Not being mean, baby. Just tryna get you outta your head s’all.” And he says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like breathing. Your chest swells. He’s right fucking there. Right in front of you. But it seems as if there is no end in sight for the longing you feel for him. 

“You want it? You oughta ask for it nice, sweet baby,” he says simply.

Your pout grows more petulant, but you concede. You’re always the first to let up between the two of you. You’re easy for him that way. 

“Joel, please fuck me. Need you to fuck me, please,” you plead, words slipping into a soft moan.  

His eyes scan your face, feel his lashes flutter against your skin. He lines himself up at the opening of your cunt. “I will. I always fuck you well don’t I?”

You nod numbly, biting your lip and guiltily averting your gaze. Finger tracing up a line up his strong thigh, over his soft belly that protrudes over his still hard cock, circle the scarred tissue on his lower abdomen. 

He takes your hand in his, lays a kiss to your palm before settling it to cradle his own face. “M’gonna fuck you real good, sweetheart. Remind you how good you are for me.” 

You make a soft sound that halts his movements, fingers squeezing his. “I want it hard, Joel,” you say. And he nods in understanding. Always meeting you where you are. There’s no halfway with him. He sits back, gently taps the side of your thigh, turn around. 

You do as silently requested and twist; your stomach and chest meet the sheets, body prone on the mattress — your favorite way of taking him. 

He presses his body weight into you, his entire form enveloping yours while his hand dips south to line himself up. He thrusts forward, moaning in unison as he breaches and stretches you wide, quelling the ache when he fills your cunt in one sharp thrust. He bites your shoulder on instinct, and your eyes pinch shut in response. Joel sets a blistering pace that has your cunt constricting around him. His soft belly is flush to the small of your back, feel the sweat sliding between your bodies, welcome tears spill from your eyes, and the guilt that sat in the pit of your belly turns molten. 

“That’s it, thatta’girl,” he grits into the dampened space behind your ear. 

His words make you clench, and in response, his hand finds the nape of your neck, fingers curling and smothering your face into the mattress, and you practically sing for him in return. Your legs clamp shut, limiting the space he has to fuck into you and he groans so beautifully for you. His hand sneaks around your front, scrubs expertly at your throbbing clit, and your vision begins to blur, fists clutching the linens so tight you’re tearing them. 

“Oh god, Joel,” you cry out, the intense pleasure beginning to overwhelm you. 

“That’s it–fuck–” he grunts, “make–me–so damn–happy, baby–fuck, never—never–known it before you,” Joel rasps, punctuating every word with a sharp thrust.

You mewl and writhe beneath him in tandem, and then his massive hand grips your face, angles it towards him so your lips meet his, his index finger in your mouth, hooked behind the line of your gums to take take take. Your body jolts as his cock kisses your womb on every brutal thrust. 

“Joel, harder, please, harder,” you beg against his lips. So fucking desperate for more. 

He pulls out suddenly; a lewd, wet squelch of gaping emptiness escapes your cunt when it closes around his absence. He takes you with him, collecting you in his arms and moving the two of you up the bed and guiding you to your knees, facing the headboard. His chest fuses to your back again, knuckles brushing the globe of your ass as he parts the flesh to sink into you once more. Your head topples back onto his shoulder, buries his face into the crook of your neck, muffling the guttural moan that elicits from him as you take him deeper.

He lays a harsh slap to your ass, then firmly grips the plush flesh, soothing the sting with a rough squeeze. And then, his right hand finds a home on your hips, dull fingertips digging into your lush flesh. Your head turns, mouth meeting the hinge of his jaw. Your right hand reaches for his scalp, carding a hand through his sweaty curls to pull him closer as you babble breathlessly, fuck–I lo–I love you. I love you, Joel. Joel. Joel Joel.   

He chants in turn, I love you, baby, my sweet baby. I’m not goin’ anywhere. M’not. I swear it, branding each word with messy kisses to your temple. His left hand interlocks with yours, wedding bands clinking, kissing at the close. Your cunt flutters around him when he recites the same words he groaned into your waiting mouth on your wedding night, God, you’re so good for me. S’ you n’ me sweetheart. You n’ me. Always and forever.

His hand releases your right hip, fingers tangling painfully into your hair at the base of your neck, pulling on the strands to drag your mouth to his. He slants his plush lips to yours, a deep groan pours from his mouth into yours when you squeeze around him. His cock grazes that spongy spot he made his long ago, and your hips push back, meeting him thrust for thrust, wanting more. His thrusts grow harsher, faster, stronger, until pain and pleasure coalesce. The pressure of his massive, unrelenting length battering your wasted cunt makes the room spin, vision waning.  

“Give it to me, baby. Come with me. I got you darlin’,” he chants as he pounds into you. “Let go for me, honey. C’mon. Show me you’re mine. Need to feel this pussy come for me. Let go, Let go.” 

Your walls pulse and Joel moans, low and breathy, something deep in his chest crumbling. You feel his cock jerk inside you, desperate and holding holding holding for you to meet him there. His teeth nip your ear and it’s all it takes for you to fall apart. Your navel tenses, cunt fluttering around his length, as you come with loud broken moans of his name, and he swallows them with deep groans of yours. He breaks, his fist slamming against the oil painting above the bed while he empties himself inside you, his cock spitting his cum at the mouth of your womb.

Your body goes limp against the painting, thighs still trembling against his, his body going lax against yours. Your head drops forward; tacky skin of your forehead meets the sticky surface with a soft thud. Joel groans lowly against your neck, chest heaving as he sears wet kisses to the top of your spine as he comes down.

You stay like that for a while. When Joel’s chest stops heaving, he rolls off you, and when your breathing slowly returns, you flop to the mattress by his side. 

You turn to face him, your chest sticking to his, tacky skin glistening with sweat in the moonlight from the window across the room.  

He cradles the side of your face in his palm, the pad of his thumb wipes away the tears before pressing it into your mouth. You nip at it gently on instinct, and Joel laughs. 

“I don’t got another round in me tonight, baby,” voice throaty and gruff. You giggle and call him an old man.

And he grumbles something that sounds a lot like, m’not that old. To which you quip, whatever you say, grumpy old man. 

Joel scoffs. “Yet you still like suckin’ this old man’s cock, ain’t that right, sweetheart?” His hand tracing a line up and down your spine. 

You hum blissfully. 

A beat passes, and with a smirk on his lips, his hand wanders to your drippy slit, you whine when he dips two fingers inside your cunt — still sore and puffy, still gaping. 

He presses deep, the cold nip of his wedding ring inside your cunt making you jolt. “Thought you said you couldn’t go another round, old man?” You say, a little breathless.

His wicked smirk broadens. “I did. That don’t mean the same for you though.” 

A gush of his cum pours out of you, coating his ring in your joint mess as his fingers pump in and out of your gaping emptiness. 

He grunts and pulls you on top of him. “I said I'd give you a baby, didn’t I? I intend on keepin’ my promise. We oughta make sure it takes”. 

For hours, Joel made no effort to pull out of you. He fucked into your used, wet heat with his fingers. And he didn’t stop. Not until the snowflakes sprinkling outside your window turned into darts of rain that softly pelted against the glass. Not until the swirl of pale gray and muted blue in the sky washed away into a blush of dusty pink and petal violet, the sun splitting the clouds on the horizon, a sliver of sun peeking between the curtains and spilling across worn sheets, shrouding your silhouette in a soft golden light. And maybe just maybe, this time, it’ll finally take. And with it, maybe that flame of fear is snuffed for good. Always and forever

[inasunlitroom]

when i say “girl” randomly as an interjection i’m speaking to the omnipresent all knowing being of Girl. asking her for mercy. taking girl’s name in vain

[inasunlitroom]

Art. Roberto Ferri

[inasunlitroom]

MAMMA MIA! (2008) dir. Phyllida Lloyd

[inasunlitroom]

This blog is pro tits and anti Nazi

[inasunlitroom]

Yeah…

[inasunlitroom]

[inasunlitroom]

Margaret Atwood, from Power Politics

[inasunlitroom]

i am my own person and will be okay no matter what bc i trust myself

[inasunlitroom]

hello joel nation

[inasunlitroom]

—cherry; series masterlist

Updates on Tuesdays usually around 4/5PM EST!

pairing: joel miller x f!sex worker!reader

summary: Lonely, widowed, Joel seeks company where he knows he shouldn't.

general series warnings, please see each chapter's individual warnings for a complete list: age gap (20s/50s), smut (in most, probably all, chapters), reader is a sex worker, misogyny, smoking (reader and joel), internalized shame, poverty and issues and dangers that come along with that

a/n: this fic is my baby, and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I've never preplanned a series and had the parts completed or mostly completed before publishing it before. maybe I was being a little selfish in keeping them to myself. updates every tuesday <3

chapters below the cut:

cherry ; Lonely, widowed, Joel seeks company where he knows he shouldn't.

late nights ; You never expect Joel to come back, let alone to search for you.

offers ; Joel comes back to you like clockwork. He has a proposition for you.

[inasunlitroom]

i’m so in love with him it makes me sick

[inasunlitroom]

offers

pairing: joel miller x f!sex worker!reader

wc: 5.2k

summary: Joel comes back to you like clockwork. He has a proposition for you.

part 1 & 2 to cherry

warnings: age gap (20s/50s), smut [f!receiving oral, semi-public car sex], praise kink, reader is a sex worker, protective and defensive Joel, misogyny, smoking (reader), reader briefly soliciting a man who is not Joel and is fairly degrading to her (they don't sleep together), poverty and issues and dangers that come along with that, mentions of hunger and eating, mentions of violence and self destructive tendencies, very hurriedly edited

a/n: please let me know what you think! thank you for reading!

Joel becomes your regular. 

Each Friday, you shimmy into a too short dress and make the long drive out to the club, far enough away from the town you live and work in to avoid anyone you might know. 

You smoke, and drive with the windows down, listening to the ancient rattle of the engine, the whine that sounds like a threat, the slow buckling of delicate machinery. 

The very last thing you can afford is a mechanic. The tenuous tightrope you walk would snap beneath your feet, send you plummeting into the abyss of true financial disaster. 

It makes you sick, a curl of dread settling in your chest, writhing in the pit of your stomach along with all your other woes, until you turn on the radio to drown out the thoughts, drown out the sound of the failing engine. 

One wrong move and your whole life collapses before your eyes. The shame that wells up into the back of your throat is debilitating, to have to return home and look your mother in the eyes and say she was right, going to school was a fool’s dream, a mistake that could fill oceans of other worlds. 

So each Friday, you swing through the doors of the club, little red purse on your shoulder, fingers adjusting the hem of your dress that barely covers your ass, ready to work. 

Since meeting Joel, things have been a little easier. He tips well and you’ve been able to afford better groceries, have time to relax on Saturdays because you don’t need to work again. 

He pays you so much, you feel guilty for accepting it. Then nauseated because you’d fucked him for it, and finally shame for the whole terrible cycle. Guilt for being paid, when he was the one seeking out a whore in the first place. 

Still, he’s gallant compared to most and you don’t dare to let yourself assume Joel will be there. 

But each Friday, Joel is already there, patiently waiting for you at the bar like he never left in the first place. 

The static edges of your brain immediately settle, your worries fade from your mind. It gives you one less thing to fret over. Joel is familiar now. You know how to handle him, what he probably wants you to say and do, what gets him off the quickest, what he enjoys the most. 

You don’t have to try on a new personality, carefully consider and construct each word you speak, be the fantasy they want for a few hours. 

With Joel that all sloughs away. You don’t have to think for the next few hours. 

You aren’t willing to admit to yourself that you hardly put up a front with Joel. Often, the real parts of you unspool in his lap, your real worries and fears, desires and wants. He satisfies you like no man ever has, and you’ve told him things you don’t dare speak aloud in your real life. 

Crystal chastises you, reminds you of the few things she’d taught you, the few rules that get her through this life unscathed, the first night you tossed yourself to the wolves and got burned. 

They’re all the same. And if you start to think a man isn’t, he’ll just disappoint you. Her brow had lifted, lips puckering around a cigarette. Or break your heart. 

Chastity, on the other hand, seems to think you’re in the beginnings of a Pretty Woman situation. She’s a romantic and not yet broken, peering out at the world through rose colored glasses, even here. 

She encourages you. Even keeps Joel company until you get there some evenings, when you’re late on purpose just to see what he’ll do, half hoping sometimes that Crystal will smile and say someone else took him home with a knowing glint in her eyes.

But he’s always there, waiting patiently, guiding you out with a hand softly laid against your back, finger tracing your spine. 

This evening, Joel is nowhere to be seen. 

You’ve stalled long enough that Crystal stopped by the bar. She’d dug her nails into your arm and cautioned you again against relying on one man, smoke from her cigarette billowing into your face. “What are you going to do? Go home empty handed and cry? He isn’t here. Get over it and get on your knees.” 

You’d shaken her off roughly. “I’m deciding.” 

“Baby this is the busiest we’ve been in months. Take your fucking pick, huh?” Her cigarette ash had landed on your arm before she spun away, angry for god knows what reason. 

Five minutes have passed since then, time allotted to yourself to cool down and stop the shaking in your hands, overstimulated from the amount of people in the room, Crystal’s closeness. 

The room sways with heat, bodies jostling in cresting waves around you, bathed in unholy red light, neon and flashing. One of the dancers takes her top off and the din of men roaring at her makes something better ignored twists in your gut. 

Before you can go work the crowd, a man sidles up to the bar, a beer bottle already in hand. You don’t look at him but you can feel his gaze, appraising, assessing. 

You can’t wait any longer than you already have for Joel so you push your chest out and squeeze in your elbows. You let out a dreamy little sigh that sounds more like a moan, so your tits lift and fall, strain against the neck of your top. 

The neckline of your dress is low, plunging between your breasts, already not much left to the imagination. 

“Well, look at you. You don’t look like you’ve been run through yet.” 

Men have said much worse to you. The disgust you feel barely registers, so it doesn’t show on your face, in your body language. 

Not that he would notice if it did. 

Instead, you assess him quickly. 

What kind of woman did he want you to be? More like what kind of girl. He clearly thinks you’re young, maybe new to the job, naive even. 

You giggle and turn toward him, fluttering your lashes. “Am I being that obvious?” 

“Nah,” his eyes flick over you, hungry and wolfish in the dim, ruby light. “I’m just no stranger to a whore. How old are you, honey?” 

Joel had once asked you the same question, though in a different tone, an agonizing, guilty one. This man clearly has no such qualms. 

The back of his free hand presses into your thigh, sliding back and forth over your skin. His touch feels wrong, after so many weeks with only one man, too warm and a little damp and uncomfortable.

His hand looks ancient against your skin, leathery and unforgiving; the skin between the fingers dry and cracked. 

Joel’s broad palms flit to the forefront of your mind, the familiar creases and grooves, scarred and seasoned and skilled. You dream of those hands, long for their firm touch on your skin, between your legs and in your mouth.

You like the way Joel’s hands look against your skin, aged by not old. 

You push Joel from your mind and keep your eyes down, blinking shyly. Nineteen year old you, new to this, embarrassed at being called a whore maybe. “Just turned nineteen last week.”

“Well happy birthday, sweetheart.” 

You giggle again and fidget a little when he curls his hand around your leg, then shifts his fingers to the inside of your thigh, dangerously close to your cunt. Testing you, seeing if you’d squirm.

You do a little and he grins. “You like that?” 

“Yeah,” you say breathlessly and turn toward him. “I could, um, I could make you feel good too?” 

“Aw,” he lifts his hand to run a finger along your cheek, the edge of your mouth. “How many men you fucked so far?”

You count on your fingers, pretending to think. In your peripheral vision, you watch his grin grow. “Four? So far. But one of them fucked me a couple times.” Your voice is bright, a little defensive of your single digit number. 

“Only need one hand to count ‘em all up? You are green, girl.” 

He releases his beer and runs his finger along the bust of your dress. Crimson light pulses over his face, convulsive and metamorphic. His touch makes your skin crawl, beads of moisture slip over his fingers and onto your skin. 

It’s unpleasant to say the least. The wooden bar feels far away and sticky beneath your elbow, his touch rough and demanding when he gropes you, pinching your nipple. 

You moan quietly, biting your lip until he releases you.  “Oh, I guess so.” 

This corner of the bar is dark, and although the club is packed, there’s a breadth of space between you and the next person at the bar. It’s clear he wants to look at your tits, so you turn toward him, your back to the crowd, and push your chest into his hands. 

“And so fuckin’ sweet,” his hand trails higher on your leg. A familiar floating feeling overcomes you, your mind slipping away from your body, the comfortable distance your mind provides from the world. Only distantly do you realize you haven’t felt that with Joel in awhile. “You wanna suck my cock and I’ll be your lucky number five?” 

“Yes,” you murmur.

He laughs and squeezes you hard. “How much you cost?”

You open your mouth when you catch sight of a familiar shadow across the room. Joel, ever faithful, apparently, just a little late.

Dizzying relief washes over you, followed by a self loathing so intense you feel it curdle and squirm in your belly.”

You widen your eyes at him, then glance away. If you want me, come get me. 

The man next to you doesn’t notice, too busy staring at your chest, sliding one finger beneath the neck of your dress, pinching your bare nipple when he gets to it, muttering in your ear about fucking you right here, showing everyone what a little slut you are. His breath is hot on your skin. 

A shadow falls over you. 

“Howdy, Cherry.” 

“Joel!” You jerk back in feigned surprise. 

The man releases you reluctantly, hand sliding back from your leg and chest. Your chest feels sore from his clumsy ministrations and not in a pleasant way. “Oh god,” you say, clasping the man’s hand against the counter. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot I was meeting Joel.” You roll your eyes, the picture of a too ditzy girl. 

“Well, now, honey, see, we already agreed—”

The shadow looming over you seems to grow thicker. Joel’s hand slots firmly against your back. 

The man clears his throat, “Hey all right, I get it.” He looks at you again, one last soul sucking appraisal. “I’ll find you some other time then, baby.” His hand lands on your ass and squeezes before he pulls away.

Joel starts to turn after him, but you hook a hand against his elbow. “No. Don’t, please. That’s just part of it.” 

“He ain’t got the—” 

“Joel.” 

He meets your gaze, eyes flicking over you, assessing for a long moment. “All right. You okay?” 

“Of course I am,” you dismiss. 

You tuck your hand in his elbow and tilt your head toward the door. But he doesn’t budge. “I’m serious.” 

You blink. “So am I, sweetheart. That was nothing.”

“Nothin’,” he scoffs and shakes his head, but gently guides you ahead of him. 

Joel walks you across the crowded club as he has for many, many weeks in a row now. Too many weeks. You feel the penetrating, disapproving gaze of Crystal on your back.

No doubt she saw him start to turn, how defensive the slope of his shoulders have been. It scares you a little, too, that he apparently feels that protective over you. A bigger part of you likes it, feels safe in the cup of his palm. 

The air outside is hot, penetrating in its humidity but not stifling with the acrid tang of sweat and wanting bodies. Spring had long since transitioned to summer. Even there, in the desolation of the long concreted strip of this poor industrial area, you can hear the songs of night bugs. 

“Not everyone is as gentlemanly as you, as I’ve been telling you for many months,” you remind him. “That’s just how they are. They want to treat me like a whore and I let them.” 

Joel’s jaw is clenched tight, and for a moment he doesn’t answer. “Yeah,” he acquiesces when you reach his passenger side door. “Don’t mean it’s right.”

“Remember the night we met? And I said if you were a different kind of man I’d say I was freshly eighteen?” 

“Yeah,” he answers warily. 

You lean against the side of the truck. “Well, he’s that kind of man, sweetheart.”

He’d wanted to defile you, make you feel the grimy life you’d entered into. The worse part was, as used to it as you were, it still would have stung. He still would have made you feel like trash. 

Joel doesn’t say anything for a moment, his gaze persistent in sweeping you from head to toe and back again. You wish he wouldn’t have seen what he did, because it seems to have unsettled him. He buzzes with a violent, rattled energy. “I didn’t like seein’ him touch you like that.” 

Your stomach sours, a pit opening up that your anxiety plummets through. Fuck. You’re ruined in eyes. Can’t pretend you’re anything other than what you are now. 

“I’m sorry you had to,” you breathe. “Really. I thought you weren’t coming. I’m saving to fix my car so—”

Joel shakes his head. “Ain’t what I meant.” 

You blink. “What do you mean?”  

He opens the door for you, and, like always, gives you a palm to balance on as you settle into the cab. 

The answer never comes. 

Instead of shutting the door and moving back around the cab, he braces one thick forearm against the open door, and looks you over. Joel hooks his opposite hand against the back of your knee, thumb rubbing a soft circle into the flesh. 

You reach for him, untucking the hem of his shirt from his jeans to run your fingers along his belly, the indents of hidden hipbones. You get as far as unbuttoning his jeans when his free hand captures both of yours. “Hold up. I need to. . .We gotta talk.” 

“Oh?” 

“How do you—” He stops and thinks for a moment and you wait, touching him lightly again when he releases your hands. Joel’s skin is warm against your hands, sweat beading on his sides in the heat. 

You tuck your fingers in the waistband of his jeans. His face is shadowed and hard to read. “What? Whatever it is, I want to give it to you.” 

“Ain’t that,” he says, breath hitching a little. He coils his fingers around your wrists and holds them still. You let your fingers go slack in his and he squeezes. “Hell with it,” he mutters, glancing up at you to search your eyes. You tilt your head, waiting. “I worry about you damn near all the time and—”

A bright red flag swings up in your mind and you bristle, hackles raising. You keep your voice sugary sweet anyway. “Do I need to remind you of what this is? I’m not your girlfriend, Joel—”

“I know.” He interrupts, thumb tracking back and forth over the back of your hand. It sparks a confusing warmth. “That isn’t what I meant. We go through this song and dance every week, me comin’ here and pretending like we don’t know what’s about to happen.” He shakes his head and doesn’t continue, eyes fastened to the ground for a long moment as he thinks. 

His jaw works, muscle straining in his throat. Sweat beads in the hollow and you wish more than anything to taste him, sweep your tongue up his throat, feel the bristles of his beard on your lips. 

You meet his gaze and hold it for a long moment when he glances back up, deciding that you believe him, that he understands. “Say it,” you murmur softly, sitting up so your faces are close together, his breath falling over your lips. “Tell me.” 

The muscle in his cheek twitches, fingers tightening on your wrists, like you might disappear once the words flood out. “I want you to come to the hotel, stop comin’ to this godforsaken place. Just come to me.” 

“You’re asking for—you want. . .exclusivity?”

“I guess so,” he sighs, slowly releasing your hand to rub his jaw slowly, nodding almost to himself. “I’ll send you money every Friday, even if I can’t make it out here. Book the hotel, so you can still get away if you need to. If you need somethin’ I want you to tell me. For groceries, rent, hell, I can get your car fixed—”

He seems in no mood to stop talking for once, so you cut him off, shock rolling through your body from head to toe. Already the lines between you are blurred, twisted together into something more than just paid for sex.

This is something else altogether. Uncharted, dangerous waters. 

“Joel, wait, hold on. I think. . . you’re describing a sugarbaby,” you point out and he winces. “I don’t mean to offend you, but can you afford something like that?”

“You don’t gotta worry about that.” 

“Kinda do,” you say, tilting your head to keep his eyes on yours. “It’s, like, the whole point.” 

“I mean I’m good for it.” 

You eye him, still unsure. You like Joel, but you aren’t stupid enough to trust any man at his word. “Are you serious?” 

He dips his head. “Yeah.” 

It’s a much more intimate and personal, formal, arrangement. How much he would expect from you, what he would pay you?

You say as much. 

“I know. We got things to talk about. For now, would ya consider it?”

“Yes.” The agreement jumps out of you before you can stop it. There’s no harm, you tell yourself, no harm in thinking about it, talking about it. 

Joel slides his broad, warm, achingly familiar palm up your thigh instead, leaving your fingers hooked into his belt. You stroke your thumbs there, and his breath catches, sways in the warm breeze around you. 

It’s quiet for a long moment. The lot is desolate around you, the buzz, pop, and flicker of the streetlamp at the corner, the distant hum of traffic on the main road, and the ever present hum of cicadas your only company. 

“Well, okay. Good.” 

Your favorite word on his tongue, the sweet caress of it lodging in your belly, wanting. 

“Do you want me to start calling you daddy?” 

He chuckles, the sound pleasant and surprised, like a balm to your worry. 

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” His eyes slide over you, hook into your gaze as his fingers trail up the inside of your thigh. “Don’t mean much, but I’m sorry for being late.” 

“It means something. I really didn’t want to suck that guy’s dick.” You pluck at his belt buckle again, but leave it in place when his shoulders go still. “You want to tell me about it, sweetheart? Why you were late?” 

He pushes you back across the seats, the leather is warm against the wings of your shoulders. The encroaching darkness paints him in shadow, hands warmer than the humid air when they press your knees wide. “This is what I want.” 

“Okay.”

Joel looks up at you, then around the deserted parking lot. Some of the lust clears from his gaze.

“This parking lot has seen much worse, Joel.”

You get the sense that he’s forcibly letting go, unfurling, untangling the hesitation. You spread your legs wider, trying to show him it’s fine, you don’t mind. It’s not like you have a whole lot of honor to defend in any case, and the parking lot is deserted besides 

He leans over you, huge in the door of the truck, imposing.

Thick fingers tug your underwear to the side, slide through the folds of your pussy, already damp. “C’mere,” he says, the slurred word like a command, arm threading behind your back to tilt your hips in his direction. 

The position is slightly uncomfortable until Joel squeezes your thigh and shifts your leg a little, bent against the seatback. 

His gaze locks on yours, intense and dark, one finger pushing into your slowly. 

Heat blooms in your chest, travels to your throat to lie there in a thick heap. He slides a second finger into you, treading now familiar ground inside you. His fingers move at an agonizingly slow pace, building up the pulsing heat inside you. His face is shadowed, brows tugged down over his eyes in concentration. 

You arch your back, a moan caught in your throat when he strokes your walls, thumb heavy against your clit, messily trailing back and forth across your pussy. 

He fucks you slowly, watching your face until you squeeze your eyes closed and roll your hips against his hand, back arched against the seat. 

You gasp when he presses his mouth to your cunt, lips sealing around your clit, tongue flicking before he sucks harshly. 

You comb one hand through his hair, blinking down at him to watch him finger you, eat your pussy like a starved man. He groans quietly when you pull his hair, short locks falling through your fingers softly. 

He grips your ass and pulls you closer, encouraging you to close your legs around his head. 

The warm weight of an orgasm curls in your gut, twinning around your spine, reaching feathered hands between your ribs, a sharp contrast to the way his facial hair feels on your thighs, a rough burn that you adore. 

He’s patient about drawing it out, taking it slowly from you, to wind your pleasure around his fingers like puppet strings.

Joel groans against you when your cunt pulses around his fingers, the pleasure he gives you like a slow moving storm, a gradual blooming through your veins, body straining to keep his mouth against you, until it passes and exhaustion replaces it. 

His tongue sweeps through your folds, he retracts his fingers and you shiver when you feel his tongue dip inside you instead. Only when you whine does he pull away, swiping his fingers on a napkin in the door. 

You sit up slowly and adjust your skirt, flip down the vizor to glance at your face. There’s something in your features that you like and don’t like, like you’re freshly fucked but, rosy eyed too, virginal.

It’s terrible. 

Maybe Crystal is right and you’re playing with fire, asking to be ruined, but you don’t care. Not at that moment. 

“Are you at the same hotel?” You ask, just to say something, snapping the mirror closed with a bit more force than you mean to. 

“Yeah, same place as always.” 

You lean forward and reach up to swipe your thumb against the seam of his lips instead of lingering on whatever you saw in your own face. “Did you think I’d agree?” You ask, pulling your hand away, sucking your thumb into your own mouth for just a second, to taste yourself from his mouth.  

“I was feelin’ optimistic we’d, uh, spend the night together even if you told me to fuck off,” he answers, sounding distinctly flustered. The blue night air crests in gentle waves around his features. Nighttime seems to soften him. 

You smile, “Well I still haven’t really said yes.”

“Yeah,” he nods, patting your thigh, tongue running over his bottom lip. “But I got a good feelin’. You hungry?” 

“Hungry?” The word is foreign to you. You can’t remember the last time someone asked you if you were hungry. And the truth is you really are. You’ve been short on groceries for days and you can’t spare the money for that sort of thing. “I, uh—” 

“Yes or no?” The question is gentle. “And I’m payin’. Clear?” 

This is what he wants, you realize. Someone to take care of. The realization smarts, you aren’t good at being taken care of. 

This is what you’ll have to deal with, if you say yes to him. 

A fist closes around your lungs. The word is hard to produce for a long moment. “Yeah, I am.” 

“Good.” Joel stokes your thigh again. “Good girl.” He pulls back and closes the door, leaving you momentarily disoriented. It feels as though your whole world has spun on its side with one question. 

The drive is an exceptionally short one. It doesn’t even give you time to offer to blow him. 

Five minutes down the highway, a lone shack sits at the side of the road. Yellow and pink neon light blinks down at you, an electric buzz in the air as Joel parks and you stand in line together. It’s the first time you’ve been in public with him somewhere other than the club. 

Does he want everything that usually comes along with a sugarbaby? Paying for you and fucking, sure. But being out in public together? The companionship aspect? 

You watch him, wondering if you want it. Wondering if you aren’t already living some part of it. Crystal’s words flash through your mind again. 

“So, what’re you thinkin’ about?” 

Joel is squinting at the sign, bathed in a pink glow. Your legs still feel shaky from his mouth and fingers and something in your belly clenches at the sight of him just standing there. 

You peer at the menu with more ease than Joel seems to manage. “Need me to read it to you?” You ask, digging an elbow into his ribs softly. 

“Ain’t that old.”

They have ice cream, which seems to be what most people have ordered. But you need real food, something that won’t make you sick after a bite or two on an empty stomach. “Fries. And a cherry coke.” 

“Cherry, huh?” He slides an arm behind your back and squeezes your hip. Aside from a middle aged woman that glances at you sharply, no one pays you any mind. “That where the name comes from?” 

You roll your eyes. “Okay, Yeah. So maybe I have a penchant for cherry.” 

“Uh-huh. You sure you don’t want a burger or somethin’?” 

The thought of having to perform for him later, fuck him, with a full belly makes you feel ill. “Very sure.” 

He orders and pays and you try not to feel weird about him buying you a three dollar basket of fries and a coke. Especially when he apparently wants to help you with rent and to fix your car. It chafes. You hadn’t sacrificed, entered this life at all, to have someone else take care of you.

You sit on the lowered tailgate of the truck and listen to the fuzzy sound of the radio playing from the shack, slowly eating one fry at a time, watching Joel’s hands, the curve of his knee  hitched on the bed of the truck, pressed into your hip, the other extended toward the ground. 

The night is exceedingly calm, the air balmy and a little cooler than in the city. 

One by one the other diners toss their trash and drive away in a cloud of red dust, leaving you and Joel looking out over the pocked, jagged landscape alone. 

“You’re quiet tonight,” he says eventually. “You sure you’re all right?” 

He’s still thinking about that other man. 

You grin and rub a comforting hand against his forearm. “Just thinking about what you said. Do you come here a lot?” 

He shakes his head and lets you put your legs into his lap as you sip your drink, crushing his burger wrapper in his hands. “First time. I drive by it every time I come through this way though. Usually busy.” 

“How’d you know I was hungry?” You ask, offering him your drink. 

“I pay attention,” he says, taking a long sip.

You chew on your bottom lip. A ring of truth crowds his words. By Friday, you’re usually on your last couple bucks and hungry. Have you been hungry every time you were with him? You hadn’t even noticed.

You don’t have a sharp, witty come back for him, not this time. Being exposed to the night air, stars winking bright in the sky above you, the soft singing of the shack’s owner makes an intense melancholy wrap around your chest. You feel small suddenly, and like you’re making all the wrong choices, that none of it will matter in the end. Your family will still be right about you.

Joel rubs your calf slowly and seems content to sit in silence. You chew on the end of your straw and watch him. “You know you’ve never kissed me?” 

“Yep.”

If he were any other man, you wouldn’t dare ask. You brace anyway, because you’ve learned the hard way that they can flip on a dime. “You don’t want to?”

He thinks for a moment. “I wasn’t sure it was somethin’ you did. And I didn’t want to—Jesus, I already felt so bad about what I was doin’.”

Expectation lingers in his gaze, a question unasked. “Some men don’t like it, so I always wait for them to do it.” 

“Don’t like it?” 

“Who wants to kiss the mouth of a dirty little whore?” You say lightly, a joke but not really. “Putting your cock there is fine, of course.” 

He clears his throat and seems ashamed for some unfathomable reason. “Don’t get all guilty about it, Joel. I really do like blowing you.” 

“Jesus,” he mutters, shaking his head. He hesitates, then says, “I like eating your pussy, since we’re exchangin’ truths.” 

You laugh, the sound exploding out of you. He grins when you clutch your belly. He doesn’t often smile with his whole face, and he’s more handsome for it when he does. “Well,” you laugh, “I didn’t need you to tell me that. It’s painfully obvious.” 

“Uh-huh. C’mere.” 

Tears of mirth are still rolling down your cheeks when he pulls you close and kisses you. It’s surprisingly chaste, or at least begins that way. His tongue sweeps in against yours when you open your mouth. It’s intoxicating and intimate and you don’t ever want to stop. You can feel his beard scrape your cheeks and lips and you like the sharp feeling of it. 

He tastes like cherry coke. 

“Cherry,” he says against your mouth when he eventually pulls back, “Yeah, I get that now.” 

[inasunlitroom]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[inasunlitroom]

warm winter tones

[inasunlitroom]

you would fuck that old man. i would fuck that old man. we are the same. hold my hand