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macfrogrecs · 9 days ago

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this was divine, julie 🧡 kicking my feet over tender, protective joel one minute, and losing my goddamn mind over sexy, dom joel the next. i can’t wait to inhale this series.

smother - one shot: ambrosia

dark!joel x f!reader

series masterlist | main masterlist | ao3 | kofi

summary: halloween only comes around once a year, but for you it's the first time ever celebrating. joel is kind enough shows you a few traditions with his own twist added on. 7.3k words. warnings: 18+ MDNI! big juicy age gap (reader is 19, joel is 55), ddlg relationship, daddy dom!joel, sub!reader, i'm so serious they're really leaning into the ddlg in this one so if you don't like that be warned, smut (cockwarming, piv), fluff, smother joel being soft and sweet needs its own warning, v minor depiction of blood, reader is picked up/lap sitting, reader wears a collar and leash. a/n: this can be read outside of the smother canon if you haven't caught up in the story yet or at all really, or if maybe you just want a smutty autumnal read! it's some silly fun on how i imagine halloween might go for these two. a little late on the holiday is better than never! 😋

All it took was one comment from Joel, talking about a kid running around Jackson dressed up as a ghost, a sheet thrown over his head with eye holes cut out of it.

Huh, haven’t thought about Halloween in a long time.

Said with that nostalgic, sad air that Joel tends to carry as he mumbles the words out, scratching at his beard. It’s not even necessarily a comment to you, but more to himself, falling into the past.

“What’s Halloween?” you ask him anyway, no stranger to having Joel have to explain things to you. It turns out, there was a lot you’d missed out on growing up in such a sheltered place. Even down to simple phrases that were common use, and as you were learning now, holidays.

When he looks to you, you can see that cloud of the past around him lift slightly, and he lights up. “You don’t know Halloween?” he asks, and you shake your head, innocent doe-like eyes begging him for more. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Y’all didn’t celebrate a whole hell of a lot where you’re from.”

He goes on to explain it - the traditions of children all over the country every autumn. Pumpkin and apple picking, making or buying costumes of anything under the sun to wear as they gathered candy from their neighbors. You’d only had chocolate twice in your life, and yet from what Joel’s told you, candy was abundant back in his time. It all sounded a little strange, especially the part where he told you that people even carved scenes and figures into their pumpkins to display outside their homes. It was a time for all things spooky - even the undead, which made you shudder at the irony - but always looked at with an eye of scrutiny, as if it was never realistic. Scary things like the world you were living in had been fun back then. Entertainment.

It was October, and Joel tells you that this was the time of year for it. The chill in the air is perfectly pleasant as you bask in the coziness of the overcast day while you amble along listening to Joel speak, one arm threaded through his. The trip here had greeted you both with the most stunning array of hues on the leaves, crunching underneath your boots and Willow’s hooves most of the way. Autumn always felt special to you, but experiencing it with Joel had you wondering if every season could be your new favorite as long as he was by your side.

You wrinkle your brow, trying to imagine a world where all of what he said was possible. You start to feel that familiar pull inside of you, one that comes whenever you hear about the traditions of the old world that became less important as soon as people were focused on only one thing: survival. It’s an aching that you know can never be satisfied, a strange melancholy that makes your chest feel heavier and your stomach drop, wishing for these things you can’t have.

“Y’know,” Joel drawls, seeing your now contemplative, downtrodden expression. “They might have pumpkins growing here in Jackson. Seems like something they’d have thought of.”

You breathe in sharply in surprise, whipping your head to look at him. “Y-you think so?”

“Sure, baby. You can eat all different parts of ‘em too, not just for decor, so it seems practical for a place like this. They grow real nice this time of year.”

For once, that was something that you knew already. In your community growing up, all kinds of squash had been part of your diet, pumpkins included. It was just that nobody had ever thought to allow any kind of whimsy surrounding them this time of year.

You grin. “Yeah, they do. Daddy, can we get some, then? Please?” Your voice, rapidly climbing with hopefulness, eyes widening, and lips pouting, makes Joel chuckle lightheartedly.

“Let’s see what we can do, sweetheart.”

You’re perched on top of the kitchen counter, watching Joel setting up at the table a few feet away. The room is aglow with flickering hues of orange, warm and cozy from the old wood burning fireplace blazing in the living room. You’d needed it to fight off the chill that seemed to follow the two of you home from Jackson.

You survey the scrounged up old newspapers, discolored with age, laid out underneath your two decently sized pumpkins. Joel comes back across the room after putting on some country record you can’t ever remember the name to. It’s nice with a folksy sound, and you suppose it is much better than the music you grew up listening to. In fact, you’re finding yourself starting to like his old country music, the lyrics slipping out of your mouth unintentionally when he plays them. Joel grabs one of the knives he’d laid out, and you gasp and then giggle when he drives it into the top of one of the pumpkins, cutting a hole around the stem.

“Should I help, daddy?” you say softly above the music drifting over your way.

Joel’s head shakes, his longer hair, curling around his ears, flops forward as he stares down at his project. “No, baby, you just sit there and look pretty while I take care of the dirty work.”

You smile, always happy to do his bidding, be the motivating little charm that hangs by his side. You hop off the counter and instead seat yourself at the kitchen table, wanting a closer view. The earthy smell of the insides of the pumpkins being pulled out hits your nose and you look closer at the mess of stringy, seed filled guts that Joel is plopping out onto the newspaper. You make a grossed out face, sticking your tongue out at him.

Joel laughs when you pinch some of it between your fingers, scowling at the sliminess. “Told ya you wouldn’t want to do the dirty work,” he playfully chastises you. “We’ll save the seeds an’ all that, try to make ourselves a snack. You roast ‘em before?”

You nod. “Yes, daddy.”

“Maybe by next year, we can grow some pumpkins of our own, too. An’ I’ve got plans with the rest of it, if I can make it work,” he says, giving you a secretive smile that makes your heart leap. You love it when Joel is in a mood like this. When he’s taking care of you and being so sweet, anything feels possible.

Joel sets aside the mess to sort through later after scraping out as much as he can, plopping your now hollowed out pumpkin in front of you and setting his own at his seat across the table.

“So you’ll create a little outline for yourself ‘fore we cut them, you got it? We don’t have much that’ll do for that, but I figured maybe these pencils would work,” he says, coming up behind you and handing you one, planting a gentle kiss on top of your head before moving to his own chair.

You look up from your pumpkin, your pencil held in a careful hover next to the skin of it. You watch Joel, looking down underneath his dark, bushy brows at his own pumpkin, already concentrating on sketching it out.

“What’s yours gonna be?” you ask him, watching with rapt fascination at how quickly he’s already seeming to find his stride.

“Classic Jack-O-Lantern look -“

“Who?”

Joel laughs heartily, looking up at you now, eyes sparkling as much as his are capable of. “It’s - uh - it’s what we’d call ‘em back in the day. Jack-O-Lanterns. Hell, I don’t even know why actually, was just somethin’ we said. It’s like… a goofy face carved into the pumpkin. Wanted you to see what a lot of ‘em looked like on people’s porches back then,” he says, and you listen with your ears perked up, hanging onto each bit of his explanation of life from a different time.

You give him a soft, appreciative smile for the gesture, realizing that he’d given it some thought. Without ever having to express it, he’s seen your fascination with all things about the ways of the world twenty plus years ago. To give you even a sliver of that experience makes you feel so grateful your heart could burst.

“And - and we’ll light these up after? Isn’t that what you said before?” Joel nods in response, going back to his sketching, prompting you to start on yours.

“An’ what’s yours gonna be, sugar? You got your idea?” he asks.

You smile, nodding coyly as you swipe the pencil across the waxy surface again, trying to make an imprint. “A cat,” you tell him.

His stern glare only serves to amuse you more. The more comfortable your life with Joel got, the more fun it was to poke at his boundaries a little bit. “This ain’t gonna convince me, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, daddy,” you say sweetly - too sweetly - not bothering to hide your real motivation here. You fold your legs underneath you, sitting cross legged on the chair and give him a saccharine smile as you play with the ribbon in your hair. “I just like kitties.”

Joel huffs, rolling his eyes. Just like the many times before today, when the topic had come up, he’s less than impressed. “Yeah, been hearin’ how much you like ‘em for weeks now.”

He was of course referring to the stray that had somehow miraculously found your little cabin in the middle of the woods. One morning you had both gone outside for a walk and spotted her sunning herself on the front porch. A scrappy looking but gentle little gray thing, clearly too skinny and too alone, but with a big heart that seemed oddly unafraid of the two of you. She had reminded you of, well, you, when you’d first come to the cabin. Hungry, in need of a home, in need of love.

You’d instantly dubbed her Mabel after one of the characters in your favorite romance book, while Joel just referred to her as “the cat” or “the stray”, staunchly refusing to get too involved. When you pressed him on why you couldn’t bring her inside, he complained that Mabel was just another mouth to feed, yet he hadn’t stopped you from putting out little snacks for her to sate her appetite. She’d started even eating right out of your hand, making you squeal in delight as Joel rolled his eyes, trying to hide his own smile at your joy.

As much as Joel pretended not to care about Mabel, you’d seen him once through the window in the upstairs bathroom after your bath, when he’d been on his way back from taking care of Willow in the stable. Mabel seemed to be trotting alongside Joel and he crouched down - bad knees and all - to pet her. You watched with gratification as Mabel pushed her head into Joel’s touch and he scratched behind her ears before he kept moving. You could have sworn you’d even seen Joel’s lips moving from afar, like he was saying something sweet to her. You decided not to mention the tender moment, keeping it as all the ammunition you needed to get him to move things in your favor.

“Daddy, I just don’t understand why we can’t have Mabel inside,” you whine as you draw out the crest of a moon onto your pumpkin.

“We’ve been over this -”

“It’s gonna be cold soon, and she’s out there all alone. She found us! And she likes us. A-and I know you like her, too…”

Joel quirks a brow at the same time as his head cocks, studying you, wondering what you know. “She’s… she’s a good cat,” he says, placating you. “But not useful to us, like I’ve said. Just a mouth to feed.”

“What about just for the winter? So she doesn’t freeze out there?” you try to bargain, knowing it’s relatively useless. There isn’t a chance that Mabel would only stay for the winter, dutifully packing her bags and leaving the second that spring arrived.

Joel shoots you a cold, irritated glance, picking up the small paring knife from the table and ignoring your already used argument. “Careful with your knife, honey, when you start to carve it. Just let me know if you need help.”

You chew at the inside of your lip, picking up your knife with slight disdain and poking it into the pumpkin, trying to trace the lines you’d sketched out. But you’re distracted, irritated, that Joel is choosing not to listen to what you think are perfectly rational arguments to his unwavering disapproval towards Mabel.

Joel slices through the flesh of his pumpkin, tossing pieces of it onto the table as tension fills the air. You pull your lip between your teeth, trying to focus on your carving, but your mind races, sees a chance for you to persuade Joel here.

“Daddy… don’t you think -”

“Enough, blossom-” he barks.

“She needs a home?”

He sighs, his shoulders sagging as he rests his carving knife on the table, locking his eyes with your desperate ones. “I know this is hard to hear baby, but it’s not up for debate anymore. I don’t think we need to be usin’ our winter rations on a cat, right?”

“I saw you pet her -”

“Sure, it ain’t that I don’t like her, or cats in general. Had one growin’ up. But it’s just not… practical.” There he goes again, ever the practical one in this house. That’s the price you pay for this ability to keep your naivete, your simple lifestyle of being doted on and letting Joel take care of everything for you. You love it, love that it feels like it chips away at all the wasted years you’d spent being treated as anything other than a vessel to spit out prayers and righteousness, to be trained up and married off to a godly man. All you’d wanted was for someone to cut you a break and simply care for you like the child you were. Here, you’d found exactly that. Yet at times like this it frustrates you that you know the house rules dictate Joel will always get the final say, no matter how much you appreciate his efforts.

“Y-you’re sure, sir?” you squeak out, praying the more formal denomination aimed his way might soften his heart just enough.

“M’sure. Not up for debate anymore, princess, I’m sorry,” he replies sternly, eyeing you for a lingering moment before he seems satisfied enough to start carving again.

You feel yourself deflate, but try to square your shoulders, nodding as you swallow down the lump in your throat. You understand, you know it’s fair to make sure that the two of you can last the winter up here with more limited trips out to stock up when the snow gets bad and there’s no garden to fuel those in between times. But that still immature and frivolous part of you has half a mind to stomp your feet and cry out at how unfair all of this is. That it’s just a cat, what harm could she really do? You feel your lip tremble but bite it back, putting your knife to the pumpkin again. You carve along the body of the cat you’d sketched out with slightly shaky hands, another tense silence falling between you and Joel.

You’re too preoccupied with your own thoughts, fighting the urge not to pout, when your hand slips, misreading the amount of pressure needed to go around a curve in your tracing. You feel it overshoot, the blade coming out of the pumpkin and into your finger before it clatters to the table. You’re yelping before you can help it and instinctively tearing your hand towards your body, gripping onto the now throbbing finger. Joel is on you in a second, worried brows turned down along with his eyes.

“What happened?” he asks in a rushed voice as he grabs your wrist, a silent ask to inspect the hand. The authoritarian from moments ago has melted away, your protector coming out of the woodwork now.

“I-I dunno.” You clutch the finger tight, scared to see the damage.

“Come on, honey, let daddy see it,” he coos softly, helping you unfurl your fingers one by one until you reach the wounded one tucked inside. He breathes out a sound seeming like a relieved laugh when he reaches the injured one only to find a relatively minute scratch oozing out a bit of blood. “See? Barely anythin’ there. C’mon, let’s wash it up.”

You sniffle, peering down at it with him and feel a sense of ease wash over you. He leads you to the kitchen sink, helping you rinse your finger, his body pressed tightly to yours. His lips are perpetually on your hair, kissing your head in soothing little beats.

“Stay right here,” he whispers against your head, disappearing to rummage around in the powder room across the way, returning with a strip of gauze. “Best we got,” he tells you, patching up the small cut with unusually gentle hands. Every movement is soft and doting, sending a flutter through your stomach before he brings the wrapped finger up to his mouth, kissing it.

“Better?” he asks, his eyes swimming with something compassionate.

“Yes, daddy. Thank you,” you squeak out shyly, cheeks warm.

Joel’s arms come around you, swaying with you from behind as his chest presses against your back. He hums along with the music, moving to the beat of the song that’s still lazing through the air in the background. It’s almost as if he’s… dancing with you. For all the times he’s put on a record since he found any worth a damn (in his words), you’d been the one swaying, swinging your hips, spinning around the living room while you couldn’t get Joel to do much more than tap his foot to the beat. Your heart fills with warmth, slowly melting away the icy irritation you feel towards him right now.

“You’ve got to be careful, okay? Were you too busy poutin’ to be careful?” he asks softly against your hair, slowing his movements down.

“Kind of,” you admit, twisting your lips to the side. “Just ‘cause I want it so, so bad, daddy. It wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

He contemplates you for a moment, locking his hands with yours across your chest. His lips graze near your ear before he says quietly, “More than you want to follow daddy’s rules?”

You squirm, trying to turn your head to face him. “No, of course not!” you blurt out obediently, the idea of that being a reality so far out of the realm of possibility for you.

Joel clicks his tongue. “That so? ‘Cause it felt like you were deliberately tryin’ to get me riled up there, not follow my rules. Hm?”

“N-no, I just - daddy I just wanted to -”

“I think what you wanted…” Joel says, languidly drawing his words out, “Was to push my buttons when I’d already said no. Get daddy a little riled up so I’d give in to what little blossom wants.” He follows with a nuzzle of your neck that both tickles and sends a shiver down your spine as his hot breath touches your sensitive skin. You inhale shakily, fighting a needy little noise as he nips at the skin. “Does that sound right?”

“Daddy…” you whimper at him, feeling your bottom lip tremble the tiniest bit. You don’t like what he’s insinuating, even if parts of it are true. You had wanted to press him, to really understand why he was being so stubborn about Mabel, but it hadn’t been out of disrespect. “I didn’t mean to -”

“I know, sweetheart,” Joel says. “Maybe you just needed a little attention from me.”

Your body flashes hot with the overload of sensations. His strong arms against your pulsing chest, fingers holding tightly to yours. The absolute wall of him pressing into your back, keenly aware of how badly you want him to be pressed even closer, more close than is humanly possible, you think.

“You stayin’ mad at your old man for this, hm? Or�� can we have a little fun while we finish carving our pumpkins?” Joel asks, sultry and low.

“N-no, we can…”

“Good,” he whispers. “I’ll help you this time so y’don’t hurt yourself again.”

He backs up with you still in his arms, the awkwardness of your steps together making you laugh, easing even more of the tension. You can hardly ever stay irritated with Joel for long, knowing his care for you runs so deep that while sometimes you can’t understand his decisions, he’s only looking out for you.

Joel’s arms release you just as he goes to sit back in your chair, pulling it to the table and patting his leg. The loss of him immediately sends a devastating cold through you, and you frown. “Right here, baby.” His thick thighs are spread wide, leaving room for you to nestle your ass right between them, pressed in a very precarious spot. One arm slips around your middle, anchoring you down.

Your entire body buzzes as you feel the muscles of Joel’s arm flex around you, pulling you tighter before it slides down towards your waist, bearing you down harder into his lap. The now hefty, thick bulge of him presses into you, making a needy sound slip past your lips.

“Now ain’t that cute,” he says, admiring the shape you’d traced out on your pumpkin - a crescent moon with a cat perched inside of it, tail hanging off the side. It’s rudimentary at best, not exactly as you’d envisioned in your head, but Joel’s compliment rumbled right in your ear sends your cheeks blazing.

“T-thanks,” you mutter as Joel’s hands are quickly working up the hem of your already short dress while your mind tries to catch up, thighs and panties in full view in a split second before he’s shimmying them down your legs.

“You’re bein’ daddy’s good girl now, aren’t you? Got you in my lap and suddenly you’re quiet as a mouse, huh?” he asks, his knuckles grazing all the way up the plush skin of your thighs until they reach between them, barely touching but sending a little jolt of pleasure as he parts your lips, finding you already starting to get wet.

“Oh, you’re always so ready, baby,” Joel says, dripping with sweet condescension. “How do you do it for daddy, huh? How’d I get so lucky?”

“D-dunno, daddy…” you whimper, the name falling so sultry off your lips still music to his ears all these months later. Joel’s watches you writhe with eyes glossing over before catching your neck in a kiss, your head lolling back when stubble scrapes against skin, shooting goosebumps across your body in record speed. Whimpering your special name for him once again sends Joel into a heat, rutting his hips into yours.

The next moment is a blur, the quick jangle of Joel’s belt, the unzipping sound that triggers a response in you like a damn Pavlovian dog, sending you dripping, much to your embarrassment. It’s too easy, it’s always too easy. His thick, warm cock presses against the bare skin at your back and you lose control of your body completely, Joel’s hands now your guide as he places them on either side of your hips, lifting them up.

“Niiice ‘n easy now,” he drawls on the way down, pushing into you with his grip still tight, leaving you completely at his mercy. “That’s it…”

You grit your teeth as a moan slips through, welcoming the all consuming intrusion on your body. Every single thick inch of him, until you’re seated down against his lap again, spread wide and dumbstruck even after all this time that he fits.

“Fuck,” Joel pushes through his teeth, his breathing heavy against your neck, one hand holding your head on the other side, possessively pressing it to his lips. “That’s my girl. Perfect.”

All you can do is whimper out “daddy” once again and wriggle, the fullness of him taking over every other thought. Your hips want to rock, desperate for the friction, but his arm drapes across your body again, holding you in place. You whine, the pressure nearly too much inside of you, each thick inch pressing on your sensitive walls. Needy, desperate panting comes out as you struggle slightly against his hold, not understanding why he hasn’t begun to thrust in and out of you in earnest like he usually does. By now, you’d typically be bent over the table, seeing stars from the way he punched deep inside of you, hitting all of those perfect, pleasurable spots.

“Shh, shh… Still now. Still, baby,” Joel coos soothingly, squeezing his arm tighter around you.

“Wh - what’re you doing?” you whine, your voice sounding far away, your mind quickly devolving into a swimming mess. He’s not moving at all, and it’s driving you absolutely mad, making you more needy than you’ve ever felt. Every inch of you pulses around every inch of where he fills you up, hot and wet and in need of that sweet, delicious friction. You didn’t know the difference in feeling could be this staggering or that Joel could ever have this much self control to keep himself seated inside of you, perfectly still.

“Focus, focus,” he hisses in your ear before his lips press against the shell of it, giving it a gentle kiss. “We’re gonna finish your pretty little carving together. Jus’ needed to keep a real close eye on my blossom this time. Can y’do that?”

You nod, breathing shakily and picking up the knife from the table, trying to ignore the distraction of his pulsing inside of you, this new sense of fullness beyond anything you’d ever have imagined. His free hand slips down your arm in a languid movement before it meets your own, resting on top as a guide for you to carve with.

“There we go…” His voice tickles your ear as he helps you work, your hands moving in concert together to slice through the flesh of the pumpkin. With a trembling hand enveloped by Joel’s, you just try to keep going, despite the utter distraction that is his cock nestled inside of you - large, throbbing, warm, making you feel insane. He knows he’s making it difficult to follow his instructions, that this is all but another game of his that he loves to play with you, testing your limits, finding your vulnerabilities. He’s found plenty of them over the months, and all of them always seem to have something to do with him and his cock.

“Very talented… My smart girl…” When he shifts slightly with his praises, sending his head nudging a spot deep inside of you, you whimper. “I know, I know. You’re doin’ so good.” Joel’s voice strains slightly, and you know he’s feeling it too - the desperation for more, the need to move. He’s always been stronger than you, though, and he will prove his stubborn point by lasting every second of this that he wants to.

“Daddy, please, I need it…” you mumble, your hips rocking slightly, trying to bounce. But the position he has you in, spread wide, one arm around your waist, leaves you helpless to all of it. You’ve nearly given up on the carving, a little layer of sweat breaking out on your forehead and neck as you fight the fire that Joel has ignited inside of you. “J-just a little… please please…”

Joel lets out an amused little hum, kissing the side of your face. “What about a pretty please for your daddy?”

“Oh, pretty please daddy,” you say more excitedly, trying to rock forward again to no avail. His arm tightens in warning, a tiny tsk coming from behind you.

“What about…” he pauses, as if he’s thinking. “A ‘daddy, you’re always right’, or ‘daddy, I shouldn’t have argued with you’?” He pushes his hips, slow and steady, lifting them off the chair just enough before bringing them back down in the most shallow, slow thrust. The sound is filthy - raw and raunchy, a drawn out squelch as you leak out around him. Joel can’t help but groan quietly, and you nearly let out a yell that turns into a strangled, pornographic whine, panting.

“Hnnng, yes, daddy. Please, you’re always right, you are. I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have argued with you. Pretty pretty please… just help me.”

“Oh, very good. Yes, blossom, you’re gonna be a good girl now, right? Remember who’s in charge around here, who makes the calls?”

You nod furiously when he makes that same slow, gentle movement of his hips. You flutter around him, your body screaming out as a strange sense of pleasure builds at the slow drag of him in and out. Every nerve is lit up, every other sense of yours seeming to flit away other than everything Joel. His scent, his taste - phantom on your tongue, his hot skin, the fullness of him that you could never tire of. If only… if only you could stay like this forever, a part of him.

“O-of course, sir,” you mutter obediently, eyes rolling back, head lolled towards his. You feel his hand push on yours, slicing the knife through another bit of the pumpkin, but you can’t concentrate, you can’t care. Your eyes, unfocused, bleary, try to see what he’s doing, watching him wriggle another cut piece of the pumpkin onto the table. Then, with a widening, suddenly clear stare, you see it: your vision, come to life. It’s the cat inside the moon, and it’s beautiful. You break out into a smile, still panting, and Joel looks at it over your shoulder with you.

“Daddy’s proud of you, sweetheart. It looks real good.” He speaks softly, gripping the opposite side of your face, turning you to kiss him and you delve in, deep and passionate, taking his lips for all their worth, sucking on the bottom one before going back for more. You grind your hips down onto his lap, hoping to push him deeper, but there’s nowhere to go. Full up, aching and throbbing, your arousal coating every inch and dripping out to your intermingled bodies, Joel finally breaks.

He starts to move, shallow thrusts, just sending an inch in and out of you, and you gasp at the sudden burst of pleasure when his head nuzzles your insides perfectly on each inward roll of his hips. But it’s still not enough, not after the teasing you’d both endured, and Joel’s hand plants on your back, shoving you forward. The kitchen chair clatters behind him as he moves the both of you to your feet, swiping everything on the table forward, all while starting to wildly thrust in and out of you. You’re pressed down, ass popped out against his hips rutting into yours, laid flat onto the table.

You scream out in sudden bliss, the change in angle sending you to new heights, pleasure unbeknownst to you before this moment. There’d never been so much anticipation for him, so much wildness building up inside of you before.

The second Joel reaches around, a steady finger strumming on your clit, you lose control, your climax crashing into you with the most world shattering vengeance. “Daddy! Daddy!” you cry out in ecstasy, little tears lingering in the corners of your eyes as your legs tremble and give out on you. Joel hoists you up by the waist and chest, his arms wrapped around your middle as he pulls you upright, flush with his own body, your legs flailing slightly as he gets you off the ground. He plunges himself as deep as he can go, your bodies melded together.

“Fuck - that’s - fuck - gonna fill you up,” he grunts out, giving your entire body a few jerks before he’s balls deep, groaning loudly. You’re full, so full, a blissful smile on your face as Joel holds you there for a moment before you both go limp. He catches you before you can crash to the floor, holding you up by the arms before spinning you to land in his arms, clutching you safely to his chest.

“God…” he breathes. “You’re too much for this old man sometimes, you know that?”

“Daddy, you’re not old,” you chastise him in a sweet lilt. You furrow your brow, meeting his eyes.

“Feels like it. About to break my damn back for your sweet little pussy, baby,” he teases, leaning down for a tender kiss, thumbing your chin. “Let’s clean you up, then we can finish our fun.”

You’re curled up in Joel’s lap again, nestled against him in the rocker on the front porch. You glance proudly at your creations, the orange glow bright against the dark backdrop of the surrounding woods. Joel’s goofy face next to the gracefulness of your cat makes you smile wide, chuckling.

Joel had let you help him finish carving his Jack-O-Lantern, considering you’d been a bit too distracted during your own to really appreciate ‘the art of it’, as Joel had said. He’d warmed up spiced tea for you two as a sprinkle of rain started a pitter patter against the windows, Joel draping a knit blanket around your shoulders the moment it began. It had been an utterly perfect evening with an utterly perfect end to Joel’s lap, right where you loved to be.

“You said people always wore costumes, right? What would mine have been?” you ask him.

Joel ponders it for a few moments, rocking you two in the chair. It’s so calming, your ear to his chest, listening to it beat as the silence of the night sits around you both, you nearly feel you could pass out from the exhaustion of the day. “Well, maybe a little witch, ‘cause you get under my skin so much,” he says gruffy, his fingers finding your middle, tickling you enough to make you flinch and squirm. You bat at his hand, swiping it away with a squeal.

“But probably some kind of princess, ‘cause that’s what you really are,” he adds, giving you a wink.

You smile as your skin flushes at his flirtatious, low voice, biting your lip in between your teeth, snuggling up to Joel and saying, “That makes you… the king, right? King of the castle.” You waggle your eyebrows teasingly at him.

Joel chuckles, his chest rumbling the both of you. “Well, I s’pose it does, then,” he concedes quickly. “So what d’ya think, you like Halloween?”

You reflect on the events of the night, eyes fixed on the two glowing pumpkins sitting a few feet away, front and center on the porch. A place only the two of you will ever see, but it still invokes a sense of pride, seeing what you and Joel have built here together. All of the holidays to come, the traditions he can teach you, the care that runs infinitely between the two of you in a beautiful, never ending loop. A deep, warm feeling of home swells in your chest as you blink your heavy eyes, nodding.

“I love it.”

The morning, casting warm and golden hues from the yellow maple and larch trees in view from the bedroom window greets you as you stretch across the bed lazily. You take it in, relishing in the colors of fall dancing across the ceiling, the coziness of the flannel duvet that Joel had brought out last week, insisting you needed it at night even though he slept hotter than a furnace.

The missing space next to you in bed has you frowning, but it’s nothing new. Joel almost always wakes before you. In fact, it’s a rare morning that you get to find him in that unassuming position, able to snuggle up and wake him with a soft kiss to that scar on his nose. You sigh, knowing that if you don’t get up soon, Joel likely will come to wake you, morning tea and breakfast at the ready.

You hear the unmistakable sounds of him in the kitchen - the tinker of cookware, him grumbling to himself, his heavy footsteps. Every noise carries in this house, but you don’t mind at all. You like knowing what to expect the second you walk down the stairs, know where to find Joel so you can fall right into his arms. And today, that’s knowing you’ll find him at the stove, judging by the smell wafting through the slightly ajar bedroom door.

Throwing a sweater over your naked frame and nothing else, you’re still pulling your arm through as you clumsily bound down the stairs. Joel sees just a flash of everything before the sweater falls over your hips, gone just as quickly as it had appeared. He smiles wryly at you as you approach.

“Well good mornin’ to you too,” he purrs, spatula in hand at the stove, always opening up one arm to welcome you in. Your arms wrap around his middle, pressing yourself close.

“Morning daddy,” you say with a tiny yawn. Your arm reaches out, gripping onto Joel’s mug, looking at the glossy brown liquid sloshing around inside. You take a sip with a sour face, plopping the mug right back where you found it, smacking your lips. “Still gross,” you tell him.

Joel nearly howls, chuckling as his head shakes, the wrinkle between his brows deepening as he stares at you incredulously. “How many times are you gonna do that an’ expect a different taste? Coffee’s coffee, babygirl.”

You grumble a little, ready to tease him back, when your eye catches on the griddle on the stove. “Pancakes?!” You perk up, peering at the pan. It’s not often that Joel will use up the limited stores of flour and sugar, only reserved for special occasions to be savored. “Why do they… look like that?” you ask, the color seeming a bit off upon closer inspection.

“Pumpkin,” Joel says simply. “Added some spices, too. Been wantin’ to try somethin’ like this. Now go sit your pretty little ass at the table, it’s almost ready.” His hand presses on your behind with a soft pat, making you giggle as you dutifully take your seat.

Joel serves you a plate, stacked high with pancakes, bringing over a mason jar full of syrup. “Syrup, too?” you ask, wide eyed. It’s truly turning into a feast to remember.

“Mhm,” Joel hums. “Y’know that guy - uh, Darren - who we were talkin’ to in Jackson? The one who was askin’ a lot of questions about your special collar and leash? Too many if y’ask me…” Joel grumbles. You recall with cheeks flushing warm, how he’d seemed captivated by the leather dangling from your o-ring, his eyes roaming the leash to where it met Joel’s hand, gripped tightly. “He makes this stuff, I guess.”

You make an intrigued face, holding the jar and watching the contents slowly, mesmerizingly drip from side to side as you tilt it in your hands.

“Now that I’m thinkin’ of it, I don’t think I want him talkin’ to you ever again,” he tells you flippantly, taking the syrup out of your hands and dousing your pancakes with it, setting a fork and knife in front of you. You smirk with butterflies in your stomach at his protectiveness, his untamed jealousy poking out, and nod in agreement.

“‘Course, daddy,” you say, digging into your meal. It’s delicious, your mouth immediately watering for more as the hot, fluffy pancakes hit your tongue. Joel has outdone himself with the pure amount of flavor packed in here, most of the time having your meals on the more bland side for lack of ingredients. You smile wide, shoveling in another bite, and telling him as much. He kisses the top of your head, thanking you as he brings over his own plate, stacked with far less food than yours. A detail that never goes unnoticed or unappreciated by you, and you usually try to pawn as much of your food off on him as possible the second you get full.

A sound interrupts your otherwise peaceful breakfast with Joel - tiny, almost imperceptible at first, but louder after you pause, straining your ears.

Meow!

You bolt upright in your seat, silverware crashing to the table with a loud ring. “It’s Mabel!” you cry out, scrambling to your feet before bashfully looking at Joel, remembering yourself. “May I be excused? I promise I’ll finish it in a minute, daddy. It’s just that we haven’t seen her in a while,” you beg, looking at him, practically bouncing on the balls of your feet.

Joel sighs, his lips moving to a lopsided smile. “Go on, sweetheart.” He waves you away, sending you rushing to the front door, whipping it open. A gust of chilly air hits your bare legs, but you don’t mind at all, hardly even notice it as you watch as the tiny gray cat weaves her way around one of the slats on the porch’s railing.

“Mabel!” you squeal, crouching down to hold your hand out to her. She sniffs it carefully, but quickly rubs her head into your palm, letting you scratch her behind the ears. Her contented expression, eyes squinting, melts your heart. “She’s so cute, isn’t she?” you call back to Joel, who’s leaning against the doorframe, watching the two of you.

You see him sigh, deflate slightly in a way that makes your heart start to hammer hard in your chest with hope. Joel can’t help the way his chest tightens at seeing you so happy, so content at such a little thing. Your youthful excitement about things is what keeps him going so many days, and he feels guilty for being stubborn enough to keep that from you and himself.

“Go on then, both of you,” Joel finally replies, tilting his head back towards the inside of the cabin. You pause, staring at him, your hand frozen out into the space in front of you as Mabel scrapes her cheeks along your fingers.

“Daddy? Do you really mean it?” you cry out.

He gives you a single nod, his eyes soft and glinting in the sunshine. You spring to your feet, barely able to contain your excitement as you rush to the doorway with Joel, pushing the front door open wide.

“Come on, Mabel! This way!” you call to her, watching her ears perk up, her tail swishing inquisitively. She trots over to you, peering past to the inside, her steps ginger but intent as she puts one paw inside, purposefully brushing herself against Joel’s leg on the way.

You beam, throwing yourself into Joel’s arms, squeezing him tightly. “Thank you thank you thank you! I’ll never ask for anything ever again, daddy.”

Joel huffs out a skeptical chuckle, brows raised. “We’ll see about that.” He watches Mabel tentatively exploring near the entryway, her nose down to sniff every single thing along the way, getting her bearings. When he turns to you, you’re still looking at him, studying his face with gratitude.

Joel leans in to kiss you but pulls away at the last second, teasing you. His fingers slide up to your collar, gripping onto it lightly but possessively. When his eyes darken the tiniest bit, it quickens your pulse, steals the breath from your lungs. His voice rumbles with hidden promises for the day as he puts his lips to your ear, making you shudder.

“A little pet for my pet.”

dividers by @/saradika-graphics !

#big juicy age gaps always and forever #beardedjoel

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macfrogrecs · 12 days ago

Text

He kneels in front of you to take off your boots and smirks. How many times have you done this? Peeling off each other's boots after a long day. When one of you is sick, when one of you is hurt. Your head is pounding and you almost certainly have a fever but Joel's gentle hands and familiar smirk sets you at ease. You're going to be doing this forever.

this pairing + ellie + dog + lumberjack joel…made in a lab for me, apparently 🙂‍↕️

all of it still matters

joel miller x fem!reader | 2.4k

you get sick and, much to joel's chagrin, refuse to take it easy.

jackson!joel, fem!reader, fluff, fainting, ellie and her dog that i invented for some reason, kind of plotless but who cares! it's all about love in the end, anyway.

a/n: welcome back to our lovebirds from just and just as. be gentle, please. it's been a while.

The sky is a brilliant orange. Golden hour, they used to call it.

It's probably a little too cold to be sitting on the front porch but you can't help it on an evening like this. You tug a fraying flannel of Joel's tighter around your shoulders. It's worn at the elbows and he reminds you that he'll fix it if you release it from your clutches but somehow that never happens. The journal he made you is open on your lap, almost full. You've taken care to write down not only your memories but the stories he and Tommy tell about their lives before, the day-to-day of Jackson, the jokes Ellie is particularly proud of. She recently recounted a birthday trip to a museum, laughing as she told you about pushing Joel into the water.

You take a sip of your pine tea. It's chilly through the whole day, now, and soon the morning frost will be snow. Winter was hard for a long, long time, but now it's comfortable. It means lights up in town, children throwing snowballs, community meals and dances. It means warm nights under your blankets with the furnace of a man you sleep next to, soft salve on chapped hands, a slowing down of the Infected sightings.

And it means Joel chopping wood. He should be doing it in the back yard -- usually does -- but this evening he's finishing up the trunk pieces Jesse left by the steps. A big tree had gone down at the edge of the town clearing and everyone got a few pieces once they'd split it up. Joel will no doubt give Ellie at least half of what he cuts.

The benefit of him doing it out front is you get to watch. His back is to you, but you can see the way his sleeves are rolled up, the damp hair curling over the collar. The exhale when he brings the axe down, the flex of his shoulder blades when he tugs it free of the stump. You could watch him do anything.

As if hearing your train of thought, Joel wedges the axe in the chopping block and turns to face you. He runs a hand through his hair, silver strands catching the orange light, and huffs.

"Enjoyin' yourself?" he says.

You grin at him. "I'd say so."

Two things happen at once. A headache blooms without warning at your temple, sharp enough that you wince and press your fingertips to the skin there. Joel notices and takes a step towards you but then a dog barks and his attention is drawn down the street.

"Naledi!" Ellie yells, jogging up the street after her dog. "Come on, we've talked about this!"

Joel glances back at you but you smile at him, ignoring the blooming pain in your skull. Naledi -- named after one of those characters from Ellie's comics -- runs right up to Joel and noses at his knee until he pets her. The animal loves him. You don't blame her.

"Jesus," Ellie says once she reaches the steps up to the house, panting. "She can run." She looks at the yard and scowls. "Aw, shit, Joel. Did you finish all the wood?"

Joel, one hand scratching behind Naledi's ears, levels her with an unimpressed look.

"Ain't gonna chop itself," he drawls. "Last thing we need is you holdin' an axe."

"Rude," she gasps. "You steal my dog and make fun of me. Are you hearing this?"

Ellie looks at you in mock outrage, cheeks pink from the cold. She's not a teenager anymore, but falls back into it so easily when Joel teases her. It's a treat to witness.

"I don't know, Joel, you've seen her --" You stand in the middle of your sentence and the words stop coming because your vision swims. Black spots dance across the yard and you pitch forward to brace yourself on the railing.

"Oh, fuck," Ellie says. Joel is up the porch and next to you in a blink, arm around your waist to steady you.

"You okay?" he asks, low and serious.

The spots disappear and you take some deep breaths. "I -- stood up too fast, I think."

Joel remains in your space for a few more seconds. Naledi barks, watching the whole thing with a tilted head from the grass below.

"Ellie," Joel says. "You wanna finish up the wood? I think we're gonna go inside."

"Totally," she replies. "Yeah, uh, go lie down, or something. We've got this."

Joel ushers you into the house and sits you down in the kitchen. The sun no longer peaks over the mountains so he flicks on the overhead lights, which make you groan. He's back by your side immediately, tipping your head up with a knuckle on your chin so he can look at you.

"Think you might've caught somethin'," he says. "Bout that time of year." He presses the back of his hand to your forehead and frowns.

You circle his wrist and tug his hand down. "Just tired," you say. "The overnight patrol is catching up with me."

"Hmm." Joel leaves you be and starts to fix you something to eat. You know better than to argue and, frankly, you don't have the energy to make something yourself. He sets some buttered toast in front of you and leans on the island to watch you take a small bite.

"Something to say?" you manage through a mouthful of bread.

He shrugs. "You should go to bed early." It's barely sunset but it sounds like a good idea. "You going to be okay to work tomorrow?"

Your shift at the stables with Ellie. Pretty easy, as far as labor goes. A good night's sleep should make it bearable. "Yeah, it's just mucking stalls."

"Hmm," he says again. You know what that means -- he's thinking, he's decided, he's preparing, but he'll let you reach the same conclusion in your own time. He won't force you into anything, never does, but he most certainly has an opinion.

You change the subject. "Did you grab my journal?" Joel nods and pulls it from his back pocket to set on the table next to your toast. You take another bite to appease him.

"Almost done with that thing," he says. "Gonna need another one."

"If only I knew someone who made them," you tease. That gets a gruff laugh out of him.

"What you writin' about today?"

"You, Tommy, and motorcycles." Tommy had told you all about the famed birthday ride at the last family dinner. Everyone had heard the story but you, so their voices overlapped about a hundred times as they fought to be the one to explain.

Joel chuckles. "You ever been on one?"

You take one more bite of your toast and push the plate away. He's on it in a second, taking it over to the sink.

"No," you reply. "I don't even know the last time I saw a working one. Just stripped metal out in the wild."

"Think you'd like it," he says. "Good way to see things. Bit of an adrenaline rush."

"Yeah, because there's a shortage of that these days."

The joke falls flat and your eyelids start to droop so you don't see Joel's reaction anyway. Your head throbs.

"Bed," Joel says, softly. Hands on your shoulders, rubbing up and down your arms. "C'mon."

He ushers you up, hand on your back on the staircase. He waits while you brush your teeth and helps you into an old shirt and threadbare pants with a gentle touch.

When you're settled under the covers he perches on the edge of the bed and lays his hand on your forehead once again. A frown makes its way back onto his face and he checks your cheeks, your neck.

"I'm just tired, Joel," you mumble. "It's alright."

"Hmm." He kisses the inside of your wrist lightly and stands. "Gonna go check on Ellie, alright? I'll be back soon."

You fight to keep your eyes open and fail.

You feel like shit in the morning. Your head is pounding, your body aching. But you've had worse -- you've had broken bones and bruised ribs. You've been sick, you've been tired, you've been scared. This is nothing compared to life and death. You can muck a few stalls with a headache.

Joel isn't here -- a note on the counter says he got called to fix someone's sink and that he thinks you should stay home. You ignore it and head to the stables, taking deep breaths and walking slow.

Ellie shows up not long after you arrive and finds you leaning on your pitchfork in one of the stalls. Your stomach is churning but you're upright, still.

"You look like shit," she says.

"Thanks, kid," you grumble. "Where's your dog?"

"Dina's taking her on the trails today." They've been training Naledi to smell and track Infected.

You sway a little and make some noise of assent.

"Dude, are you sure you should be here today?"

If you leave now, she'll have to do the stalls herself. "I -- let me do a few more. I'm fine. It's alright."

She gives you a look she almost certainly learned from Joel but doesn't argue.

You are fine...for a little while. Ellie seems content to let you work in silence but you feel her eyes on you as you shovel shit and old hay. Just one more, you tell yourself. Then you'll go home and lie down. One more turns into two turns into three until you're scooping a big pile of straw and the spots dance across your vision again.

"Oh," you say with a gasp, and reach out for the wall, for something, anything to lean on. But your hand finds only air and then you're tipping, tipping, and you hear Ellie's Oh shit! and then --

Nothing.

No, I caught her before her head hit the ground. Are you on your back? Wait til she wakes to move her. Sounds like Esther. God, it smells like shit in here. Someone's hand on your forehead. He's coming --

You blink a few times and the roof of the barn comes into view. A groan makes its way up your throat without permission.

"Fuck," you say. "What --"

"Jesus," Ellie exhales. She's on her knees on one side of you, tugging at her fingers. "God, why did you come to work today?"

"I--"

"Where is she?" Joel's voice echoes through the barn and you try to get up on your elbows when you see him. The sudden movement makes your head pound again and hands on your shoulders help steady you. You're blinking into Joel's face, his creased brow and frown deepening as he kneels next to you.

A warm, weathered palm cups your cheek and his gaze catalogs the scene. He does this a lot -- takes in as many details as he can and makes a quick choice on how to proceed. It's a well-honed ability, one that's kept him alive this long. It's kept you and Ellie alive, and countless others in his company, too. Knowing how bad something is, and whether or not you can fix it.

He huffs, some of the tension melting from his face. "Just tired my ass," he mutters. "How're you feelin'?"

"Guess I fainted," you say weakly.

Ellie snorts. "No shit."

"Guess so," Joel echoes. "You wanna get up?" You nod. He does most of the work, arm around your waist as you stand and sway and end up tucked into his side.

"Surprised your knees work this well," you mutter. He makes a low noise in his throat and squeezes your side but otherwise ignores you.

"Think we're gonna go home, if that's alright," he says. You realize the crowd is a little bigger than you thought. Ellie, Esther, and some of the younger boys who work the horses stand nearby. Your head pounds too much for you to be properly embarrassed. You'll have to thank Ellie later for keeping an eye on you but for now, you let Joel lead you out of the stables without waiting for a reply.

Joel walks you home slowly.

"Did someone come get you?" you murmur. He nods.

"Kid said you fainted," he says. "I see you ignored my suggestion this mornin'."

"Yeah, but if I stayed in bed you wouldn't get to be a knight in shining armor."

There is a small voice in the back of your head that reminds you how bad it can be to be sick in this world. You've all seen it -- sickness takes a few people every year, a handful in bad ones. This is probably just the flu. You know that and Joel knows that. And even that can be dangerous, but you're here with the one man in the world who could defeat pretty much anything. Joel, who will keep you safe, who will see you through it. You really, truly believe that. And you want him to believe it, too.

"How polite of you," he says.

Your boot catches on the ground and you stumble a little. Joel slows you to a stop.

"I'm fine," you remind him. "Just sick, I guess." He huffs but you start walking again. "You really looked worried back there, you know."

"Yeah, well." You reach the stairs up to your house. He tightens his hold on you, practically taking all of your weight as you go up them one at a time. "Was worried you fell into some horse shit. Smell up the whole damn house."

That gets a laugh out of you. He gets you up the porch, across the threshold.

"You gonna listen to me this time?" he asks, sitting you down on the entryway bench. "Stay home, rest up?"

"I'll think about it," you sigh. "You gonna take care of me, Dr. Miller?"

"C'mon," he says. "You know I'll take care of you."

He tucks your boots under the bench and puts his palms on your thighs. You lean forward to kiss him and miss by a mile, lips landing at the corner of his mouth.

"My head hurts," you say against his cheek. "I love you."

Joel sighs. "I know, baby," he murmurs. "I got you."

He does.

#there are tears in my eyes #familyvideostevie

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macfrogrecs · 13 days ago

Text

hey, elizabeth. i’m gonna need you to write more of game joel, like, immediately. oh, my fucking god. this was phenomenal. if you ever revisit this pairing, just know i’ll be camped outside your blog like a 2013 directioner. un-fucking-real.

Easy to Please

Pairing: Sleazy Landlord!Joel x Reader

Summary: Months pass, and you can’t make rent—again. You find another way to pay your sleazy landlord. Again.

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected p-in-v. Oral (m!receiving). Dubcon à la power imbalance / sex for money. Infidelity. Pervy!Joel. Talks of abuse. Omitting one tag to avoid spoiling the ending—please read at your own risk.

Note: This fic was loosely inspired by my three favorite songs about female adultery—‘Thinkin’ Bout Cheatin’ by Mae Estes, ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ by The Eagles, and ‘Cheatin’ Songs’ by Midland. No, I don’t support infidelity. Yes, it makes for fun fiction.

Word count: 3.1k

You hate the face he makes when he cums.

You hate the way he tastes when he’s done.

You hate the grit and the heft of the man, every lone hair that sprouts silver from his chest, and the way he pats the open space beside him in bed after you roll away.

‘Never seen a girl so goddamn allergic to cuddling!’

What makes his observation worse is that you know you’re hating it more and more with every passing day.

Today you have seven Benjamins, two Grants, and a Jackson tucked into your purse. You walk with a sluggish gait, knowing you’re $310 short of making this month’s rent and last. But you go on anyway. It’s not like Joel can’t see you from where he’s seated on the porch.

The pleasantries you exchange are short. By now, you have only to breeze past him in his lawn chair and say, ‘I can’t stay long,’ and he knows the rest. He grabs his six-pack, then his Pall Malls, and asks after you all the same.

“How’s the wrist?” he says.

You sprained it over the weekend. You aren’t sure how he heard. At any rate, you ignore the question and set your bag down on the counter before going to the fridge. You deflect with a question of your own—what the hell happened to the lemonade? He had a full jug last week.

“Got thirsty,” Joel answers, shrugging.

You’re always thirsty, you tell him, and you eye the case of Heineken that he’s placed by your purse. You don’t need to see his face to feel the smile starting to form.

“Don’t I know it,” he says. Insinuating.

You’d hit him over the head if you’d been able to reach. He’s still smiling when your shoulder checks his—closer to his elbow, from the feel of it—and when you leave the kitchen, he leaves too. He trails behind you with an ease that says this is the sixth time this has happened since August, and you’re hardly a week out from Halloween.

It’s not just rent you need to pay; it’s other things. Transmission in your truck’s gone to shit. Phone’s been on the fritz since you dropped it in the tub. Talking heads on TV say the country’s on track to get hit with another recession, and from the way your boss has been slashing your hours in half, you think they may be right. The crack in your bathroom window was tiny last week. Today it’s gone, because your husband put his fist through the thing on Sunday. You patched the hole with duct tape.

Joel’s covering the cost for the pane to be replaced, but that’s because he has to. He’s your landlord—proud owner of the Delta Commons trailer park since ‘97—and that’s what landlords do. Everything else is yours to pay.

You’re a part-time student, part-time waitress, and a full-time caretaker for your ailing spouse, or so you call him. Joel knows Stetson’s not sick, just perennially unemployed and drunk. You pay for most things, and it’s rarely enough to cover your rent. Stetson doesn’t care.

And that’s where Joel comes in.

No pun intended, but in his mind, there’s really no nicer way to say it: you fuck his brains out to make up for the shortfall in rent. You blow him before work to make sure your husband and you will have enough to eat that week. You bite the warm, freckled skin between his shoulder and his neck while you ride him, because you know that gesture will get you a little extra cash when you leave. You smile after swallowing him, and Joel knows that it tastes like shit. You’ve gotten good at faking it lately.

What he hopes isn’t totally fabricated is the way you call him big. Strong. Handsome. So stupidly well-endowed that you have to wince for the first few seconds when you sit on it, and go slow when he takes you from behind

“O-ow!” you whine presently.

His dick isn’t even in you yet. You just stubbed your toe on the edge of his dresser on your way to the bathroom.

“You alright?”

“Fuck me!”

I will, he thinks.

“Want me to get an ice—”

“Let go-OW! FUCK!”

Joel barely even touched your wrist and you were flinching away with a brand new pain. You rub it, almost defensively, then pin him with an icy glare. Nice going.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

Now he’ll be lucky if he can swing a half-hearted handy from the one that isn’t hurt. That’s how mad you look.

You turn your body away, and for a second, Joel assumes that his fate has been sealed: you’ll bumble over to the rug by his bed, toss a pillow on the floor, and assume what he already knows to be your least favorite position. You’ll kneel, and talk of migraines and your long, grueling day and in the end find an excuse not to use your mouth. That’ll be okay. But with the debts you owe him now, it also won’t be enough, and Joel will have to ask you back again. He hates sounding needy, but baby, deal’s a deal.

Luckily you don’t give him the chance to use that line. Much to his surprise, you get on the bed. You lie down. You seem to take a little more care settling in this time, but you take off your clothes. It’s a lime green tank top and some ratty jean skirt, but it’s enough to tempt him.

And not just tempt, but oblige him to accept, unblinking. He crawls over the bed to get to you, and he finds that his spit’s filling his mouth a little quicker. His hands are starting to shake as they slide over the duvet, and the tree trunks he once called his legs are runny, like eggs.

He has to remind himself, bluntly, of your last name, the shiny ring on your hand, your husband’s name, your—

“Age—what’d you say your age was again?” Joel asks.

You look confused for a second, but you tell him.

“Twenty-one.”

Way too fucking young to have gotten hitched three years ago. But then he remembers this is Leakey, Texas, and your family hasn’t strayed more than ten miles from the center of town in four generations. You told him that.

“I thought you said twenty,” Joel says, a little uneasy.

“I did. Up until this past Sunday I was.”

“Oh.”

A beat.

“Happy birthday.”

You blink.

“You gonna take your pants off or what?”

And he does. Maybe embarrassed at first, but then the jeans come off, and his boxers go next, and without so much as a word or a breath, his worries are sliding away like water off his back. Like his clothes now peeling off.

Like your smile growing thin at the sight of him half-stripped on the bed in front of you. Joel doesn’t flatter himself to think he’s even half as handsome as he was in his youth, but he knows he has his draws. What endears him to you today is, unfortunately, his wallet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be convinced to like him more.

More than Stetson, he thinks without humor.

Dumb son of a bitch can’t tell his ass from his elbow and yet he’s won himself you, living it up these last three y—

“Oh.”

He sounds like an owl now. His clothes are off, and you’re rubbing him, pumping him gently in your hand, which you were so kind to make wet with your saliva. It even sounds better than his, the way it squelches with every flick. Joel can only say so much in strangled breaths.

He tries anyway:

“Feel like a dream, sweet pea.”

Sweet pea.

Your pace quickens. Joel swears he can see the corners of your lips twitch, but then he thinks you’re just wincing. You move down to the floor beside the bed. Kneel almost politely while you nestle yourself between his parted legs

Your mouth is warm. It’s always warm. Joel wouldn’t expect a girl’s tongue to greet his dick like ice, but yours is always heated to a thousand degrees, it feels like. He enjoys the sting. Your lips envelop his big, leaking tip, and he swears he can stay like this forever—in you.

On you, too. He’s got his palm resting flat on your head, and he doesn’t mean to, but he pushes. He bunches your hair in a fist and drags your face to make you swallow.

Mean old man, you must be saying in your head when he stuffs your mouth full. Makes your eyes prick with tears.

Sweet girl. My sweet pea, he thinks, affectionately, and continues to rub your scalp. He holds your teary gaze.

And then you’re moving up. Down. Coating his length with shiny spit and tiny whimpers as your lips move gently back and forth, again and again. Joel’s grip tightens in your hair, and he begs for more. More.

“More,” he orders, jaw clenched, “Fit a little more’a me.”

From where you’re kneeling below, you look put off.

Then you pull off, and you wipe your wet chin.

“Chokin’ me,” you grumble, “‘S’too big.”

Normally, Joel loves to hear that.

Now, however, he’s sliding his touch to your chin and tilting your head up to him. Thumbing at the spit dribbling out on either side of your mouth and subsequently coaxing your lips further apart.

He slides back in, and you don’t fight it. You like it. Holding his gaze in a soft, docile look while your lips stretch deliciously around his shaft, you must love it. Every inch and every twinge of pleasure from the brush of his cock going in and out must be your favorite thing.

Joel hopes it is, anyway. He holds your face now, and your throat convulses involuntarily. You’re so pretty.

“Such a good, sweet girl, ain’t ya?” he presses, watching the coarse grey hairs at the base of him tickle your face.

You respond well to praise. You preen under those words, and try to nod. But his cock is so deep down your throat you end up choking again. Joel watches all of it smiling.

Petting your head and not pushing again. Grinning.

“Love my cock nice and stuffed in that pretty throat?”

You blink instead of nodding, but it’s more than enough.

“Love me deep?”

And the head of him sinks somewhere he’s never been. Your eyes are like two wide pools, and your lips leak everywhere—your chin, your cheeks, your neck.

Joel’s smearing it all with his palm and smiling so wide that he thinks he might pull a muscle. He pants heavily.

“Just what you’re made for. Just what you need.”

You look like you might agree. He keeps going.

“My fuckin’ mouth. My pretty, pretty mouth.”

He holds your face. He thinks he might cum.

“Ain’t a damn thing Stetson can do for this mouth, huh?”

And then he doesn’t. Joel barely blinks, and you’re already bucking your head out of his hold, mouth skittering away while the spit spills out. You’re practically drenched down to the chest when your face rears back. Your eyes are alight and no longer smiling when you grit:

“Don’t.”

Joel should’ve known better.

He’s hit a raw nerve, and now he really wishes he hadn’t.

It doesn’t stop there—but it doesn’t get better, either. Things progress in much the same way as they always have but with none of the need, or the warmth, of before. You climb back up and straddle him quick. Not meeting his eye, you just sit down, and slide down, and don’t wince at all. You don’t tell him that he’s big, and he doesn’t get the chance to even groan at the first influx of pleasure before you’re riding him. Bouncing and grinding your hips against his with all the passion of someone perusing the newspaper. You don’t whimper or moan.

Of course, Joel enjoys the feeling. He also wants someone to punch him in the throat for what he’s done.

“Hey, hon—” he starts, voice strained, “Hon, I’m sorr—”

“Shut up,” you snap.

Your movements hardly falter, and now your hand is seizing the headboard. You’re clenching him tight inside your wet, drooling cunt, and it’s obvious you’re trying to make him cum as quickly as possible. You swallow hard.

Joel isn’t sure what to do. On the one hand, his body is being flooded with pleasure, and on the other, he fears you may never do this with him again. Quickly fixing on the latter, he cups your face in one hand. It’s still wet.

His fingers smear the spit, and somehow you look even prettier. You keep grinding your body in desperate little fits above him, and really, you feel fucking amazing, but Joel is too focused on other thoughts. He squeezes you.

“Baby—” he tries again, but you shush him just as fast.

Your hips are moving viciously now. No matter how sore your legs might have been from a long day toiling away—just a couple hours before your shift at your next job, if Joel’s remembering correctly—you’re working him well. Doing him in. Fucking his brains out, but you aren’t his.

His fingers smear the spit even more. Never will be his.

“Sweet pea—”

“Don’t fucking call me that!”

Now he can’t deny that his climax is close. But this isn’t how he wanted it to end—with you so incensed you can hardly look him in the eye. His hand rubs more, helpless.

And just when he’s seconds away from painting your insides white, losing it all to the pleasure, he sees it.

His wet, sticky touch has uncovered a residue.

Joel pulls his fingers away in a blink, and simultaneously, your eyes are fluttering closed. You’re focused now on climax; because of that, you don’t see what he sees.

What he’s stunned to find on his fingers: makeup.

Lots and lots of thick, heavy makeup on your cheeks. Concealer, he thinks he’s heard it called once or twice.

No matter the name, he quickly comes to see what it’s for. Just as you’re hitting your peak, squeezing the headboard behind him, and coming undone with a shockwave trembling all through your body, Joel pales.

The makeup that you applied so heavy tonight hides bruises. Black and blue and awful hues of greenish-purple too, your whole face, he sees, is engulfed.

He doesn’t speak. He won’t ask.

He won’t cum tonight, either.

He’ll finish something else.

You leave Joel’s trailer angry. You don’t say goodbye. The screen door screams shut behind you when you leave, and silently, you wonder why he didn’t cum. For once, you wish he had—and hadn’t said half of what he did.

Six hours pass like molasses, and by the end of it all—the close of your second shift—Stetson’s name still echoes in your head. The way Joel said it. It hums along the walls of your skull while you walk, and as you draw closer to home, you remember that strange and infuriating tone.

Then you remember your own less than two months ago:

Don’t talk to my husband. Don’t talk about my husband.

They were two simple rules, and Joel broke them both.

He must’ve defied the first when paying a visit to make repairs that week, and that’s when Stetson mentioned your hand: how you ‘slipped’ in the bath. Tripped and conveniently sprained your wrist the same night he almost tore your arm out of the socket for looking at a waiter a tad too long at dinner. You’d bet any sum of money Joel didn’t get to hear that part from Stetson when he came over to see about the window, though.

No, your twenty-first came and went without so much as a word about your wrist. Your arm. Your face—used to getting caked with concealer every third week or so.

You wince as you open the door. You walk slowly.

At first, you’re met with silence, and you sigh with relief. Then you hear it, and shortly drop your purse to the floor.

You all but fall down yourself at the sight: your husband doubled over across from you, in the kitchen. His head in his hands. You don’t need to see the face to know that it’s bleeding. Profusely. You tread ever slower into the room, thinking somehow, some way he’s going to blame this on you. And when he straightens a little and shows off the full, gruesome extent of his injuries, you blanch to think that it might be. His body’s been beaten to a pulp.

Your pulse hammers in your head so loud you can’t hear him groan. You see him, but you don’t really believe it.

And when Stetson reaches for you, you stagger back.

Your hands skim the counter, but your brain barely registers it. Your husband’s calling to you now, ‘Quit standin’ there lookin’ stupid, do somethin’, huh?!’ He’s screaming, and you’re not hearing it. Barely feeling like a sentient person at all but just a doll stumbling backward on two wooden legs. As you walk, your palm stays stuck to the laminate underneath it, and suddenly, you feel it.

An envelope.

In this state, you aren’t sure why you grab it, but you do.

You take the lone white paper, and you turn to leave. Your hands shake as you hold the thing, and your legs are hardly any better, but they carry you, miraculously, from the kitchen to the threshold of the back door. Then out. Stetson’s not just yelling but bellowing, loud, every last obscenity known to man as he holds his bloodied side and limps in his perilous, pathetic way. Fortunately, you’re gone just in time to miss the bottle he hurls.

Outside, you walk. And walk. And in the still of the night you’re obliged to find your way through a miscellany of trailers and trucks and old, creaking vans by moonlight, and the throbbing in your head begins to slow. You don’t rush to get far, and you don’t have your keys even if you wanted to drive off. You keep walking. Watching nothing.

When your eyes drift to the envelope in your hand, you barely see that either. You’re just blinking as you look, and breathing as you wait for the sight to make sense.

Inside, you find seven Benjamins, two Grants, and a Jackson staring back. Next to them are a few dozen others—enough to cover August, September, October, and several months before that, if you had to guess.

You hope you’ll get the opportunity to thank Joel, and maybe tell him that you don’t really hate him, someday.

#gutsby

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macfrogrecs · 16 days ago

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so many threads woven through this story — grief and longing and nostalgia and one of the most sexually charged relationships you’ve written, katy — and the way you bring them all together as one is so stunning.

fair warning that when you drop the third part, i’ll be at your door to scream in person, this time. love you love them love this

Good Neighbors | (joel miller x f!reader) (18+)

Part Two of Three

✧˖°✧˖°✧˖°✧A fic inspired by Fortnight by Taylor Swift✧˖°✧˖°✧˖°✧

Part One

summary: tensions build between you and joel, but so does the tension between you and jack. that's where the similarities end. warnings/tags: [18+ MINORS DNI] no outbreak!au, age gap (joel is 38/48, reader is 22/32), joel x ofc (no sexual content), reader x omc (pitiful sexual content), pining, infidelity, slowburn vibes, daddy!kink (I can’t escape my roots no matter how I try), unprotected PIV, brief oral (m and f!receiving), degradation!kink, praise!kink, unashamed sexualization of the term "kiddo", alcohol consumption, drunken assholery, food mention, unhealthy/toxic age gap marriage, reader's husband is an even BIGGER piece of shit - PLEASE READ DISCLAIMER. immersion notes: reader has hair, wears dresses/makeup, and is considered a "trophy wife" type. additionally, in this part, reader is specifically implied to be conventionally thin. apologies to anyone for whom this kills immersion for, but it felt very necessary in the context of the story. word count: ~9.8k DISCLAIMER: Please note that this chapter contains instances of unequivocal verbal domestic abuse that include slut-shaming, body-shaming, blatant criticism of reader’s weight, deflection and projection, circumstantial gaslighting, sexist insults, and aggressive undertones within a marriage with an inherent power imbalance, followed by brief lovebombing. Please read with caution if triggered by verbal abuse or domestic abuse in general. [None of the aforementioned are executed by Joel]. There is also a substantial amount of dialogue that is derogatory and harmful toward specifically American Southerners and rural folk in general. Damaging stereotypes are relayed by a character with the intent of being hostile and hurtful. This dialogue does not reflect my beliefs or opinions as a writer and is only included to enhance character development (or, rather, character deterioration). a/n: we are getting a bit intense with this one, y'all. please read with caution. but this is also a fun one :) [formerly atticrissfinch]

Available Only on AO3

#joelstummy

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macfrogrecs · 16 days ago

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hey, wifey. you’re insane for this one. heartfelt, tender, and deeply, deeply sexy. let’s goooooo!

stay awhile (joel miller x f!reader)

summary: you & joel are travelling to jackson, and make the most of a well-needed rest stop along the way.

warnings: age gap (29/56 — if this isn’t for you, that’s fine! you don’t have to read it), canon typical violence, no ellie, cursing, food, alcohol, mention of parent death, unprotected piv (don’t do that), smut, kissing, shower sex, joel miller being in love and not knowing how to say it, soft!joel, anxiety, weapons, insecurity, panic attack, fluff & comfort, 18+ mdni.

notes: my first foray back into fic writing! yay! nothing much really happens in this one: i just wanted some soft, comforting vibes from joel <3 enjoy 🫶🏻

this is a gift for @ovaryacted 🤍 thank you for inspiring me to write again, babe, by being horny about slick-back joel. i love you. as ever, a huge big gorgeous shoutout to my @macfrog, without whom this fic wouldn’t be seeing the light of day. love you forever.

Dirt clings to your shoes, dry and heavy like sun-baked concrete. Shoulders twinging as you shift your pack across your back, your stomach rumbles. Loudly. Joel looks over his shoulder at the sound, ahead on the path as always.

“Not much further now.”

Your sigh of relief is muted, not wanting to show your struggle. You don’t want him to ever think you’re a burden, that you’re just a girl out of her depth. You want to prove you’re worthy out here past the walls you were raised in.

Time has become meaningless since you left the Boston QZ; a rinse-and-repeat cycle of waking up with the dawn, chewing rabbit, walking ‘til your feet bleed, and Joel fucking you under the stars every night.

You can’t recall the last uninterrupted sleep you had; the last night he wasn’t inside of you. It marks the end of another day you’ve both survived, helps you to forget the shit you’ve seen — and undoubtedly will again, the next time the sun raises her weary head over the scorched Earth.

Some nights, it’s Joel who’s works you up: touches you all day, innocently at first, until it isn’t. Most of the time, however, you’re the one pulling at the zipper of his sleeping bag, finding your way underneath his shirt, toying with the buckle of his belt. He’d lit a fire in your belly only he can put out.

You’re always pinned beneath him, rifle next to his hand as it drives into the dirt beside your head. His thick fingers wrapped round your throat, your back arching off the thin material beneath you as he pushes you over the edge, telling you to take it.

Just like Joel takes what he needs, over and over, and gives you more than you’ll ever be able to tell him. Namely, a tiny, jagged piece of his heart: pulled unwillingly from his chest and dumped into your fragile grasp for safekeeping.

You wondered, at first, if it was purely physical. If you were just a body for him to pour his frustrations into, a tight space for his pleasure only. You wouldn’t resent him for it: crossing your ankles over his back to feel him deeper, scratches from your nails adorning his shoulders.

But then, one morning, he held your hand.

His huge, warm palm over yours, his lips at your temple as he thanked you for taking the overnight watch. Joel’s eyes had twinkled, and you knew from that point on you meant something to him. Something undefined, lingering on the tip of his tongue — something he can only convey with the way he takes care of you.

Joel stops, now, and waits for you to catch up. He offers to take your pack, slinging it over his thick forearm and kissing your sweaty forehead; allaying your earlier fears. “It’s just past this clearin’,” he tells you, squeezing your hip lightly. Your throat is parched as you carry on, the township coming into view past the trees.

The street must’ve been nice, back then. It’s obvious someone’s tried to spruce it up here and there; white picket fences and a vegetable patch seemingly out of place with the barbed wire surroundings. Must’ve been Frank, you muse, remembering what Joel had told you this morning.

They’re decent people. Well, Frank is. Stay out of Bill’s way, ‘f you can. They’ll house us for the night — feed us, let us shower, all the good stuff. Then we make tracks for Wyoming.

Jackson, Wyoming. The place Joel’s taking you to.

He’s had word from his brother that they’ve set up a community, which is thriving by all accounts. There’s a place for both of you there, if you could make it. Free of FEDRA, rations and rats. It sounds like a pipe dream — you’ve told Joel as much. He’d responded with a wry smile, and little else.

Whether it’s real or not, you know you’ll follow Joel to the ends of the Earth. You’d rather be pulled apart by a pack of clickers than left behind in Boston to rot without him.

Joel stops at a gate, indicates for you to go on ahead. The house is beautiful: littered with thriving plants and flowers you’d forgotten existed, besides illustrations in old books. The front door opens, and two men emerge: one wearing a wide smile, the other seemingly chewing a wasp.

Joel introduces them both: Frank and Bill, respectively. The latter eyes you both with suspicion; something you’ve already been warned to expect. Frank’s kindness is a strange but welcoming contrast, adding to the absurdity of their picture-perfect home in a town time forgot.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Joel?” Frank grins, and Joel clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. Your eyes remain rooted to the lush grass bordering the pathway, unsure of how to aid him. You hadn’t discussed this, hadn’t found a reason to. Until now.

“She’s — uh, she’s my —”

“Your daughter, or something?” Bill’s eyebrow lifts towards his hairline disapprovingly.

Joel’s lip curls. “Partner.”

Bill’s face screws up incredulously, Frank intervening with a hand over his chest. “It doesn’t matter who she is,” he smiles, mostly at you. “Any friend of Joel’s is a friend of ours.”

///

Dinner is an experience you’ll never forget.

A smooth wooden table, elegant candlesticks, polished cutlery. Succulent meat, fresh vegetables, red wine — a night of firsts for you, your eyes widening to take it all in. Life before, with treats and trinkets like these, is hazy to you: nine-years-old when the fungus took over, the next twenty years of your life clouded by trauma and violence.

Joel checks in with you throughout, pressing his lips to the inside of your wrist when the two of you are alone, Bill and Frank bickering in the kitchen.

“Feelin’ any better?”

You hum contentedly, belly full and warm. “Can’t fucking wait for a shower.”

He smiles; small and lop-sided, the one you think might be reserved just for you. Your hosts return, and small talk resumes. Joel empties his pockets, the medications you know are paying for your stay lined up on the table. Bill examines them closely, rattling pill bottles and poring over labels.

Frank takes your hand in his. “The guest bathroom is stocked for you — well, as much as it can be. Use whatever you’d like, and take it with you if you want.”

A lump rises in your throat unexpectedly, tears sprouting to the corners of your eyes. They don’t have to provide anything for you — you’re imposing on them, really. Your parents have been gone for so long, and Frank’s soft voice and quiet kindness makes you ache for them.

“Thank you,” you mutter, squeezing his hand. “I really appreciate it.”

///

As soon as the plates are cleared, your eyelids are drooping. Frank ushers you upstairs, Bill having shut himself away in the garage. “Joel can show you how to work the shower,” he tells you, both of you following his lead up the stairs.

“Any clothing you don’t want anymore — just leave it in a pile. We’ll use them to make cleaning rags,” he grins. “There are boxes in your room, marked with sizes. Take what you want.”

You wring your hands, returning his smile shyly. “Like shopping?”

“Exactly,” he chuckles. “And tips for the staff are always welcome.”

Joel is quiet, lingering behind you both for a while. You sense his eyes on you, though. You always can.

“If you need anything else, just ask. Joel knows his way around,” Frank tips his head towards him, squeezing your shoulder lightly. Joel thanks him, and he leaves you both in the semi-darkness, footsteps echoing down the stairs.

“C’mon,” he sighs, holding out his hand. “Shower.”

///

The water is heavenly. Hot and burning across your skin, dirt and sweat disappearing down the drain. Eyes closed, you tip your head back and submerge yourself fully, losing yourself in the sensation, blood rushing in your ears.

A pair of hands on your hips bring you back: Joel’s close behind you, his lips against your shoulder. Stripping off in front of him felt different on this occasion: you’re not dipping yourself in a freezing river, and he doesn’t have a gun close to hand. You took your time, his gaze dark and watchful.

You turn to face him, his cock hard and insistent against your belly. He bends to kiss you, hands sliding across your slippery skin, finding purchase on your ass. Your whole body is relaxed, fluid — the luxury of time meaning you can enjoy the sensation of Joel’s tongue in your mouth, focus on nothing else but the way he’s touching you.

There are no threats here, just the two of you indulging in one another over the clean white tiles. Every movement is languid, determined to stretch the minutes into hours. At some point, Joel lifts you into his arms, pressing you against the wall as your legs wrap round his waist instinctively. He winces in pain as you move, brows drawn together.

You’re not the only one with back problems.

You kiss his nose, droplets clinging to his lashes. “Put me down, old man.”

“Take no notice of Bill,” he smirks, both of you remembering his earlier comment. “He’s never liked me all that much.”

You hum, eyebrows raised, fingers in the grey streaks of his hair. “Well, I like you. A lot.”

You’re not sure what’s made you so bold, if it was Joel’s constant, reassuring touches along your thighs beneath the table all night, or the fact you’ve just washed the soap from his body like you’ve done it your whole life. Like it’s routine for you both to be here: naked and content in somebody else’s shower.

Joel’s lips drag a path of fire down the column of your throat, and you’re whimpering like he’s touching you for the very first time, like he’s mapping every contour and curve of your body and committing it to memory.

“Wanna fuck you like this, baby,” he groans, nosing at your pulse point. “Make you feel it for days.”

You think you could come already just from his words; the way his thick forearms support you, broad chest pressed into yours. Joel lets you beg for a moment, but soon enough, he’s filling you up deliciously, stretching you at a torturous pace to have you feeling every last inch of him.

“Good girl,” he groans, damp forehead against your own as you grind down on him eagerly, his thrusts meeting yours in a rhythm you’d established long ago. Joel’s big — sometimes overwhelmingly so. The sensation of him splitting you open has you clawing at his shoulders, moans caught in your throat. “So perfect f’me,” he reminds you, breathing short and laboured as you both reach the point of no return — your favourite place to be.

///

Joel flicks the light switch, boxes stacked high around the room. You don’t even know where to start; sleepy eyes bewildered by the sheer amount of choice.

“We’ll make this quick.” His hands find your hips again, kiss pressed below your ear. You nod, tugging at the first box you can reach.

A pile of items begins to grow — new jeans, socks, sneakers, and sweaters. Joel finds himself a flannel and packs it away, pulls on a plain black t-shirt and fresh underwear. You sneak glimpses at him as you continue rifling through the clothes; tanned biceps pushing against the fabric, thighs dusted with the same dark hair that spreads across his belly.

Arousal claws at your insides, white-hot and agonising. You’re still reeling from the orgasms Joel had pulled from you half an hour ago; watching his release paint your tummy, washing it away as his chest heaved with the aftershocks. Thinking about it has your thighs clenching, and you busy yourself with your task as a distraction.

The next box in your search is full of pajamas: plaid pants and graphic tees, camisole vests and matching shorts. Dropping your towel, you pull the silk vest over your head, shimmy the shorts along your thighs. “What d’you think?” you ask, adjusting the straps over your shoulders. Joel’s on his knees, distracted by a pair of boots.

“Hm?”

“Do you like this?”

He looks up, eyes wide. You watch his throat bobbing as he swallows, taking in your bare legs, the lace trim. You’ve never worn anything like this before, never had cause to. You like the way it feels against your skin, how it makes you feel in front of Joel, who’s still struggling for words below you.

You approach him slowly, cradling his chin in your hands. You feel powerful; his pupils dilated as his calloused palms drift along the back of your thighs. His hair is combed back from his face, silver waves flat against his head. Your fingertip runs along the curve of his nose and comes to rest on his full bottom lip.

You pull Joel to his feet, his thick thumb sneaking underneath the camisole strap. He plays with it absentmindedly; eyes heavy with tiredness. “You need to sleep,” you murmur, running your hands along his biceps. His brows raise, grin tugging at his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m serious, Joel.”

“I, uh, don’t mind takin’ the couch, ‘f you…” he trails off, chest slumping as he exhales. “Oh,” you mutter, taken aback slightly. “I mean, I could take the couch, if you didn’t want to — y’know, share.”

Something akin to hope lingers on his features, eyes flitting between you and the bed.

He takes your hands in his, rubbing over your thumbs.

“There’s no way you’re doin’ that with your back.”

///

You’ve never slept on anything this soft.

Back in Boston, your bed was propped up on pallets; blankets scavenged and traded for, pillowcases stuffed with clothing past repair. On the road, the forest floor sufficed. You don’t remember your bedroom from before, although you know it must’ve been nice — soft shades of pink, a story to lull you to sleep, your mom kissing you goodnight.

Joel’s arm circles round your waist, anchoring you to the present. His warm palm against your tummy, you feel his soft exhales of breath over your ear. The moonlight throws shadows across the room: both your packs ready to go in the morning, an assortment of weapons and stores of food, a reminder that this safe haven was only ever temporary.

Tears prick suddenly at your eyes, and soon enough you’re sobbing quietly; tears soaking the mattress beneath you. Joel stirs, looming over you in an instant. “Hey, don’t cry,” he hushes, gathering you into his arms. You go into them gladly, Joel tracing his fingertips along your spine to soothe you.

“Long day,” he murmurs after a beat.

“But a good one.”

Joel kisses your damp cheek, pulls back to check in on you. “You wanna talk about it?”

Wiping your eyes, you curl into his chest: greying hair tickling your face, his steady heartbeat thrumming in your ears. You feel your own begin to regulate as a result, encouraged by his presence. Now you can’t see his face, your tongue loosens.

“I just — I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back out there. Infected, raiders, God only knows what else.. I want us to stay here, with our nice bedroom and hot water and proper fucking food.”

Joel is silent for a moment, digesting your confession. Your earlier fears begin to surface — he’ll think he’s made a mistake. That you’re a burden. He’ll take you back, leave you on the road. Leave you to die.

You’ve fucked up everything for him.

“Breathe for me,” his voice pulls you from the depths of your despair; not even realising your heart rate had spiked again, fists curled into the floral coverlet. You inhale deeply as per his instructions, breathing out as he sits upright, pulling you into his lap.

“I wish we could stay too, baby. But that’s never been the arrangement — n’ trust me, Bill can be meaner’n any clicker when he wants to be.”

You laugh shakily, Joel’s lips at your temple.

“Sorry for being pathetic.”

“Got nothin’ to apologise for. I should be the one sayin’ sorry; I didn’t think about how overwhelmin’ this might’ve been for you.”

Fingers brushing against his chest hair, you sigh heavily. “Do you think Jackson will be like this?”

“Maybe. Not sure about fancy plates ‘n all that, but Tommy’s sure been talkin’ it up.” Joel scratches at his chin, shifting you a little across his thighs. “Been meanin’ to ask you somethin’.”

You loop your arms round his neck, nose to nose in the silvery white light. His hands move to your waist, flex across your ribs. “Go ahead.”

“When we get there —” you notice there’s no if. Joel has no doubt; certain you’ll make it through whatever horrors lie ahead, “— I wanted to know.. ‘f you planned on stayin’ with me. Livin’ together, wherever they put us.”

You swallow, feeling tears threaten once more. The comparison clutches at your heart: the risks and perils that lie in wait on your journey don’t trouble him, but asking you if you’ll remain in his company has Joel averting his eyes, lip caught between his teeth.

“If you’ll have me,” you whisper, kissing him softly. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

The kiss that follows is long, both of you breathless when you break apart. Joel’s hand drifts under your camisole, squeezing your breast as he hardens underneath you. The smile he saves for you is back: half obscured by the darkness, but you trace along his lips anyway, feeling it for yourself.

“You got room to pack this?” he asks, voice deep and guttural, tugging gently at the silk.

You push him back into the sheets, pin his wrists above his head. “For you, Joel Miller, I’ll make room.”

#welcome back madame president of the slick back joel fanclub #mrsmando

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macfrogrecs · 1 month ago

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😵‍💫😵‍💫‼️😩💦💦💦🤪🤪🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

i need him i need it i need all of it i’m gonna fucking die

Seeing Pink

Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader

Summary: Joel steals more of your innocence every day. Fortunately, you love to give as much as he loves to take.

Warnings: 18+. DD/LG—DON’T LIKE IT, DON’T READ IT. This depicts two consenting adults in a fictional setting! Freeuse & somnophilia with a pre-negotiated safeword. Unprotected p-in-v/a. Soft dom!Joel. Corruption kink (!!) Reading a Regency novel while fucking…for the culture.

Note: ***Spoilers*** for Jane Austen’s Emma. The book has been out for 208 years, but I wanted to give y’all a heads-up.

Word count: 4.4k

You woke with your pants around your ankles.

You don’t remember falling asleep that way.

In fact, you’d always taken great pains to follow the rules: ‘Don’t play while daddy’s away,’ ‘Clothes on if he’s gone.’ So to find yourself sprawled out on the couch, just as you’d been when you dozed off waiting for him to come home—sans bottoms—was unnerving, to say the least. Glancing at your hand, you found your book was still in it. Only the words were harder to read now that your eyes were bleary and the letters were all…jumpy. Jumping?

Bouncing.

As your mind made the slow, steady descent back into your body, you sensed you were rocking back and forth.

Someone was rocking you with the force of his thrusts.

“Daddy!” you gasped, nose half-buried in a cushion.

You were lying face-down on the old, weathered sofa, and you could feel your old, weathered man behind you. Inside you. Stuffing that tight, shiny space between your legs as he straddled your hips from above. His own hips made a soft click, click, click with every piston of his weary bones. He said it’d been that way since the day he’d turned forty. You just might’ve giggled if the sound hadn’t been paired with the chorus of a soft, wet, and sticky-sweet pleasure you knew to be coming from you.

The head of his dick then carved a delectable path to the center of you, like he’d made it himself. You whimpered.

“‘M’sorry to wake ya, bug.”

You could hear his voice was strained.

Daddy never got a head start on playtime unless his day had been particularly rough—unless he really needed it.

Unless he saw pink in your hair, and knew this was okay.

It was your own, secret language, of course. A silly idea brought to fruition by an even sillier admission: when Joel had told you one night that there were times he just wanted to use your body to feel good. When his big one had been at work for hours, and you were so invested in your book and just couldn’t bear looking away, or you’d fallen asleep—would it be alright if daddy put himself inside you for a little while then? I’ll be nice and gentle.

The code was a pink satin bow.

When you tied that ribbon in your hair, Joel knew you were giving him permission to use you as he pleased.

And then there were other ways to make sure he only did what you wanted to do, even in this special ‘scene’; if it ever got to be too much, or you just didn’t want him to be in you or on you anymore, all you had to say was ‘cinnamon’ and your playtime stopped right there. Joel made sure of it every time, and he didn’t make you wait.

When you’d fastened the satin in your hair that night before nestling down to read, you hadn’t expected him to be taking you up on it, really. He’d been so tired lately.

“It’s alright,” you told him, while the air was knocked out of your body through the place he kept pounding you.

“I-I missed you, daddy.” You added, a bit sheepish.

At that—or perhaps just feeling your walls pulse around him—Joel groaned. He placed a broad, callused palm over your spine and held you steady while he fucked you.

“I missed you…more, sweet girl.” And it sounded like a confession. The smallest sliver of an apology: ‘I know I haven’t been here as much as I’d like to be—I’m sorry.’

You’d accept that attempt at making amends, and any other kind Joel would try to proffer, in a position like this. With his hand on your hip and the small of your back, wet member gliding back and forth between your folds, you felt useful to him. His sweet girl. No better thing to be.

Him filling you, and then you, in turn, filling the whole living room with your soft, staccato whines. So nice.

So kind of him to spend his days toiling in the heat to put a roof over your head, a book in your hand, and the silkiest, comfiest pyjamas that money could buy—pooling around your ankles now, but you didn’t mind.

You dropped the novel so you could use your hands. Try to lower your touch to the curve of your cheeks, then spread yourself open for his eyes to drink you in: your tight, dripping hole getting stretched around his cock.

That was what you’d wanted to do, anyway. What Joel liked to see, ostensibly. But the second your fingers lifted from the book, he tightened his grip and shook his head.

“Keep readin’, baby. Looks like you’re close to the end.”

You didn’t know what to say. His observation was correct; you were ten pages shy of completing Emma—but why finish now? Why read when he was right here? If you ever spread your legs while you read it was because you were too engrossed in the plot, and Joel needed release. It was rare he made the suggestion himself.

As if to answer your questions, he wedged his cock even deeper. Confirming his wants with a gentle authority:

“You do like your book, don’t you, sweet pea?”

He’d bought it just weeks ago. You nodded, emphatic.

“I— I do, daddy! I do. I just…” you trailed off, trying to find the right words while his cock made you dizzy with pleasure, “Just…like you better, is all. Wanna feel you.”

You suspected that would work. From the rhythm of his hips, you guessed he’d be likely to assent at any second.

Then he didn’t.

Joel picked the book up and pushed it back to you.

“You can feel me just fine with your eyes on the paper. You did say you wanted to read to be more like a…?”

Uh.

Your brain blanked.

Then you remembered.

“Like a big girl,” you said, in a breath.

Those had been your words. Hardly of note to you now, with your cunt so happily occupied, but ones that Joel wasn’t ready to dispense with yet. Not when you’d been so eager to read these last weeks, to try proving yourself.

You braced your knees against the leather. Tried to shift yourself slightly while Joel kept knocking you back, again and again, with his balls slapping hard against your rear.

Then he slowed, and lowered himself, and came to rest with half his weight blanketing your soft, prone body and his face closer to yours. He kissed the shell of your ear.

“You do wanna get fucked like a big girl, don’t ya, baby?”

And he drove his cock in all the way down to the hilt.

You felt him in your tummy. Your fingers trembled as you reached for the book again and tried to nod your head.

This was a game you liked. An angle Joel loved. A dynamic between you two that turned your insides to syrup and your mind a soft, compliant puddle. He’d shown you what kind of treatment big girls get, and you felt your body wilt with the idea. Joel was laying overtop you now, hips rutting mindlessly against your ass and his arms sliding under you. Grazing the skin and feeling your breasts and telling you again, ‘You can show me, baby. No need to be shy. Daddy’s right here. You’re alright.’

Now it wasn’t so much the command which compelled you but the praise in that sweet Texan drawl. The patience. You could feel him stiff and hard and aching, but he was disciplined enough to wait—let you take your own pace now and show him, in your own special way.

You opened your book to the last page you’d read. Joel stroked your hair, and he kissed the edge of your cheek.

“You’ve made it so far, baby,” he said, admiringly, “Barely been two weeks and you’ve already finished it, nearly.”

You nodded. You let him play with your hair and graze your soft skin with his lips, and when his hips had stilled, you tried not to betray your disappointment. Daddy just wanted to see you could behave—you definitely could.

Even if all you wanted him to do was hold your body to his and fuck you senseless, make you cry and whine and squeeze all down his big, leaking cock while you came for him, you could stay calm. Good girls always did.

Big girls knew how to listen, and when to hold still.

“I like it…like it— a lot,” you told him, and you knew he knew there was more to those words than just the book.

With his hands still underneath you, Joel propped you up to rest more comfortably against a pillow. He slid one hand down your tummy and in between your legs, while the other kept squeezing your breast—tweaking the pebbled nub between forefinger and thumb and feeling you squirm under his touch. You gripped your book tight.

“Keep readin’, sweet pea,” he encouraged, words gentle, “I’d hate to be the one…distractin’ you from all the fun.”

How he could be so calm while talking such nonsense was beyond you. Maybe he’d grinned, too. You didn’t have the strength to peek behind you while his index started rubbing between your folds, and your walls clenched tighter. You wanted to wriggle your hips for friction, but as it was, you knew what you had to do.

You had to try.

At first you read a couple words. A short fragment of a sentence. You yearned to get more, really digest what the passage was attempting to convey—a friend of Emma’s getting engaged, as it was—but prospects were poor. Joel kissed your neck and toyed with your wetness and made you want to whine from all the tension within.

His cock was nestled deep. The smooth, bulbous head had found reprieve near the cusp of your cervix, and with every flick of his finger, it was like you could feel him sinking deeper. Kissing the most intimate parts of you while you had only to breathe. And think. And try to read.

“Learnin’ a lot?” Joel hummed in your ear.

You bit your lip and nodded. He knew you were full of it.

Your legs were now trembling around his hand and your eyes hadn’t moved so much as an inch across the page.

“Enjoyin’ yourself?” he pressed.

“I— I— yeah. Yeah,” you whimpered.

“What’s been your favorite part to read?”

Not this one, that’s for sure. You swallowed.

“W— When…” Again, your mind was wiped of all memory.

“When…”

His index drew a slick, pretty lemniscate on your clit, and you wanted to cry. But you had to keep trying. For him.

“When— when Frank finally shows up,” you huffed.

“Frank who?”

“Frank Churchill. He’s…Emma’s old governess’s stepson. He visits for a little, and then Mr. Knightley gets jealous.”

You were out of breath. Joel was trying his best not to smile behind your back, but you could feel him now—there, and between your legs, making speech a struggle.

“Who’s he?”

The man sounded like a father with all his sweet and calm curiosity. Like he wasn’t balls deep in your heat.

“Old family friend. But he…he’s got a thing for Emma.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah—” And you had to pause to swallow. Suck in a breath when Joel nosed your cheek and told you softly, ‘Doin’ so good for me’ “—but he doesn’t know it at first.”

You felt encouraged by Joel’s words. Enlivened by the pulse of his cock inside you, and pushed toward release with every circuit of his fingers. He was treating you well, making sure it felt good no matter how much he teased.

And then he reached up, leaving your poor little clit to throb all on its own. Something caught between a moan and a plea—‘Joe-el’—bubbled deep in your throat. But Joel was too focused on the book in your hand; he had a wet, sticky finger flipping the page in a second. He’d turned it back, to a passage you had marked in pink.

The sight of the line you’d highlighted made your cheeks heat instantly. That made you want to wriggle away.

Joel held you closer.

“Why’d you mark this, honey?”

Again with the loving, probing tone. You couldn’t bear the thought of explaining your reasoning here. Not now.

But he urged you to read it. Pulled your body nearer to his and kissed the side of your head, while his body blanketed yours and his words were spoken as gentle as ever. He wanted to know what it meant. Why you’d marked it in pink, no less. No diffidence would do.

You balked. Blinked. Remembered that big girls listened.

‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’

And when you said it, it almost felt like telling him yourself. Your grip loosened from the book as soon as the words came out of your mouth, leaving Joel to hold it

“Knightley said that to Emma, did he?”

His eyes were scanning the page, eyes alight and lips smiling. From between your legs, you felt full, and yet nothing was more hollow or harrowing than presently hearing this man chuckle at the words that had made your heart swell in your chest that night. It felt belittling.

And not in the way you liked. Joel reached for your chin to tilt your face to him, and when you mumbled a short ‘yes’ to his question, he softened his hold. He hummed.

“I’m sorry, baby. ‘M’sorry. Knightley’s sweet, isn’t he?”

He nudged your cheek with his nose.

“Uh-hm,” you said, low. Ignoring the urge to be mature.

“Sweeter’n daddy?”

“Maybe.”

Joel grinned again. He shifted his weight. You were just about to tilt your head more, when he sat up completely. You felt his pelvis prod the flesh of your ass, and he left your book to you. He readjusted his grip on your hip in his hand while he used the other to knead your skin.

You keened at the change of angle—feeling the friction between the coarse grey hairs at the base of his tummy and the swell of your bottom, the brush of his manhood.

“Yeah? He treat Emma like this?”

And, to punctuate the question, Joel withdrew himself to the tip and slammed back in. He groaned with pleasure.

“Daddy,” you hissed, and he started sawing back and forth, gently like before, “He just…I— I— I don’t know.”

“400 pages in and they still haven’t fucked?”

“Daddy!”

“What?”

“They don’t do that. Mr. Knightley is a…a…gentleman.”

His thrusts were shaking you again, and you struggled to hold your book. Joel kept his motions shallow. Teasing.

“Is daddy not a gentleman when he does this to you?”

You could’ve laughed at that question. You did, a little bit.

“Plenty gentleman-ly, daddy,” you giggled, “Plenty.”

“Good,” Joel returned, swift.

Then, without warning or ceremony, he spit in his hand. He slicked his fingers with the stuff and sank his index and middle fingers between your cheeks—right above the hole he was stretching with his cock—and pressed.

You jumped, still getting fucked face-down, but now with the tips of Joel’s fingers circling a tiny ring of muscles.

His favorite to tease you with, of late. He leaned in.

“Even here?”

But before you could respond, and while thoughts of love, betrothals, and Georgian-era decorum were still floating through your mind, you felt one finger breach your hole. As his cock continued to slide messily, greedily inside your cunt, you let out a whine.

“Da-a-ddy.”

He knew what it would do to you. What it always did. Particularly when he was taking you from behind and telling you sweet and dirty things. Making you feel it.

You hardly knew what else to do but hold your book to your chest and purse your lips, sensing a familiar sting.

“Did men like him do this to sweet little girls like you?”

“I— I—”

“Or is that just daddy?” He pushed the finger deeper.

Your tender, yet-empty hole sucked him in like a dream. You almost couldn’t believe how quickly you spread for him, having only gotten touched in that new, precious place with just the tip of his thumb before. It was tight.

And tighter still, with Joel’s cock gliding in and out of your cunt and his finger sinking further in a hole he’d never fucked. You pressed your cheek to the couch.

“Go on,” Joel urged, gentle, “Use your words.”

You tried. You parted your lips and squeezed a nearby pillow for support, and Joel even pushed your book down flat on the sofa in front of you so you could see the words more clearly. Focus on those instead of his finger.

He pushed in to the second knuckle, and you whined.

Your mind was blanking again. You had only to say:

“He’s…like you, daddy. Knightley’s kinda…like you.”

Joel didn’t hamper the path of his index, but he did slow his hips. He let them peter off to only the gentlest of thrusts, while the motions of his finger flowed like a white-hot stream between your legs. Petting that tender little ring while diving in and out, swiftly, and teasing.

He stoked the flames of desire inside you with each new touch. He flattened his one free hand beside your book, anchoring himself a comfortable height above, and while you tried stealing a glance behind you, he peered down. Reading—or appearing to, anyway—as he fucked one hole with a gentle resolve and caressed the other. You’d never felt more full, or fucking insane to feel more of him.

Before you could even venture to beg, though, Joel said:

“How are we alike, honey? Tell me.”

You almost wanted to cry as his finger wiggled deeper. You had to answer, though. Recollect as best you could.

Stammering only the slightest bit: “He’s, uh, o— older.”

“Older?”

You could feel the smile start to stretch again overhead.

“Yeah. Emma’s twenty-one and he’s…a-almost forty.”

Presently, Joel’s smile morphed into a chuckle. Low.

“Almost forty? That must make me a fuckin’ fossil, then.”

“No!” you squeaked. And just when you had, Joel’s finger breached your hole straight down to the last knuckle. He let it rest while you squirmed, then dragged it out a little.

“I only—” You quickly tried resuming, but your brain was fried. Your body was limp, and all you could feel, or think, was the slow, sweet, and wet sensation tingling between your cheeks as Joel pushed his thick finger in and out, “—only meant he’s a bit more…experienced…than her. Knows her better than just about anyone, and he— he—”

Made you think of Joel. Made you dream of your own fifty-something lover situated amidst a world more than two centuries old, rousing the most romantic notions. You felt silly. You wanted to bury your face in your hands, were it not for the fear that your cheeks might sear them.

It didn’t matter, at length. Your sweet old man ensured it.

“‘S’okay, little bug. It’s alright. Makes me glad to think you’re thinkin’ of me while you read,” he told you, calm.

He stroked your hair. He stalled his hips, momentarily. And just when you thought you might’ve mustered the courage to speak to him yourself, you heard him again.

Except it wasn’t a word you heard—just a wet noise.

A glob of spit hitting the small of your back and sliding down, crawling slow between your cheeks for Joel’s warm, waiting finger. He withdrew the digit, and then he smeared his saliva all over the place he’d pried you open. Likely knowing you’d be too stunned to talk, he went on.

He worked his finger back in, now coated with a sheen of spit: “Always readin’…feelin’ new things, ain’t ya, baby?”

You nodded, and you scarcely even knew it.

“Only natural it happens like that,” Joel assured you, soft, “Daddy teaches, and you learn…and learn…like a big girl.”

With each new word he wanted to drive home, he pushed his finger in. Dragged it out. Curled it gently, as though beckoning you to him, then watched you rut your hips at the feeling of needing more. He sucked a breath through his teeth when he felt you ooze more, warm.

Nectar trickled down his length while your lips above were drooling, too. Your face was smushed to the cushion below, and your hips were tilted up, desperate.

“Daddypleasejustfuckit—fuck—now,” you cried out.

In all the time you’d been together, Joel had never heard you beg like that. The sound was gratifying to his ears, and his cock grew even stiffer inside you. Just barely checking himself, he moved his other hand to your hip.

Squeezing.

Trying to chide your lack of manners, your swearing.

“That ain’t how you ask daddy nicely, little lady—”

“Just make it full like my pussy, daddy, please.”

Though it was clear you knew better than to interrupt the man mid-sentence, you had used your ‘please,’ at least. Joel was strong, unyielding, in just about every place but the one between your thighs—and with words like those, he had only a moment before his primal drive kicked in and he wouldn’t be able to say no after that, for anything.

He would try to sound stern. Gruff, even. Mumbling something or other about how you had to be sweet to get this dick where you needed it, but the truth was that Joel couldn’t wait much longer for you, either. He caved.

He withdrew his finger, quick. Grabbed your hips. Spit.

Spit again. Smeared again. Felt perfectly depraved making this mess, but you seemed to like it all the same.

“Need daddy to teach you that, too?” he asked, hasty.

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” you answered, helpless.

“Yeah? Teach you how to take it up the ass?”

“Please, daddy.”

“Dirty fuckin’ girl.”

He smacked your ass, just before poising his tip where his finger had been. He would’ve liked to drag it out. But as it was, the old man was probably four pumps shy of blowing his load; you were all but melted on the sofa.

Joel couldn’t deny it drove him out of his fucking mind to see you like that. Legs spread, slit wet, eyes glossy and listless and so wholly bereft of any other idea in the world but the need for him. It made him sick. He loved you so much. And he’d show you, in ways that any mentor worth his weight in salt was apt to do: he let you feel it.

Slowly, at first. Just the tip made you flinch, and your teeth grit together. Joel found your hand and held it.

“Nice and slow—you’re doin’ so good,” he said.

Even if you didn’t feel like you were in the moment, he always made sure to let you know how much he liked it. How nice you felt stretched for him, how good you took it, and how he had no doubts his girl was made for this.

“Made for me,” he added gently, feeding you some more.

And when he surmised from your soft, strangled sounds that this change was a lot, breaths fast, he knew better than to press again. He pulled out and turned you over.

He had your legs over his shoulders in no time at all and, afforded this new view, was delighted to find a trace of a smile still on your lips. He kissed them. Then he tried to make it fit again. He felt you tremble and held you closer.

“That’s it—that’s my girl—almost there.”

“C’mon baby, just a little bit more to go.”

When you keened at the stretch over halfway through, he brushed the hair from your face and kissed your forehead

“I know. I know. Keep goin’, little one. I know.”

Like he knew what to say to get you the wettest you could be. Your eyes winced, and your cunt dripped a dizzying amount—leaking liquid heat down your slit to coat Joel’s tummy, his overgrowth of hair, and your aching hole, of course. The whole thing was taking you out of yourself with every thrust, and your fingers were laced tight in his. Letting him shower you with kisses.

“Daddy’s so mean for doin’ this, isn’t he?”

He was teasing again, nipping at the hinge of your jaw and pressing kiss after kiss while he stuffed you full. Your eyes were ablaze and fucked-out of their mind, as it was, but still, you managed to smile when he spoke it so soft.

“Not— not mean at all, daddy.”

“You sure?”

Joel wedged himself in to the hilt and grinned back.

You might’ve whined, but you felt too full. Euphoric.

“Uh-huh,” you breathed, head reeling, “I like it.”

“How much?”

Your gut clenched with the punch of his thrusts. Lids fluttered as Joel trailed his tongue up your cheek—another mindless, feral tendency he had close to climax. He held your face and fucked you tender as ever, and when the feeling in your tummy grew and grew and almost bloomed, he slipped his tongue in your mouth. Groaning when your teeth met the muscle and bit it.

“I love it, Joel,” you corrected, panting against him.

He could’ve spanked you for saying his name—breaking character was your favorite way to get punished—but, at present, the man didn’t have the strength to do a thing. He just nodded, and grinned, and licked into your mouth and drove his dick so far up your body that he could’ve sworn he’d grazed your lungs. You kissed him again.

“I love you—” he groaned.

“I know, daddy,” you smiled.

“—so much.”

“I love you more.”

He spilled his warm, thick seed inside. You came undone. Your bodies melded and rutted together in a few last shuddering bursts, and with Joel pinning you down, kissing you more, guiding your lips against his own in a wanton tumult, you felt it—contentment. Full pleasure.

Another soft, dizzying, cum-drenched lesson with daddy.

You had to bite your lip to keep from laughing when Joel reached for you next, expression all smug and beaming.

Licking the sweat off your cheek like the freak he was.

“Did I ever tell you pink is my favorite fucking color?”

anyway this was my irl reaction to reading That Line for the first time:

#needthat

#in gutsby we FUCKING TRUST #gutsby

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macfrogrecs · 1 month ago

Text

Good Neighbors | (joel miller x f!reader) (18+)

Part One of Two

✧˖°✧˖°✧˖°✧A fic inspired by Fortnight by Taylor Swift✧˖°✧˖°✧˖°✧ summary: it was a flash in the pan years ago. one you've never quite been able to shake. but now you're married. and he's married. and living next door. so you'll just be content to exist as past lovers turned into cordial neighbors...right? warnings/tags: [18+ MINORS DNI] no outbreak!au, age gap (joel is 38/48, reader is 22/32), joel x ofc (no sexual content), reader x omc (pitiful sexual content), pining, infidelity, domestic dubcon (not joel), slowburn vibes, PIV, car sex with a stranger, brief oral (m receiving), degradation!kink, praise!kink, hair-pulling, mirror sex, unashamed sexualization of the term "kiddo", solo skinny dipping, adulterous seduction, thinking-about-him-while-fucking-my-husband, you're-too-young-and-that's-a-problem, alcohol consumption, food mention, unhealthy/toxic age gap marriage, reader's husband is a piece of shit, reader has hair, wears dresses, and is considered a "trophy wife" type, but no actual physical description is given. but if that descriptor ruins your immersion, i wouldn't read. not safe if triggered by coercive/obligatory marital sex/touching. word count: ~11.1k a/n: when i heard this song at 12AM ET on April 19, 2024, my first thought was: i should write this fic. i let the thought sit, thinking it was just a fleeting idea and it would pass. but every time i heard the song after that first time (approximately 500 times) i couldn't stop thinking about writing this story. so i'm doing it. this will be two parts, and i'm already sketching out the latter half of this story. i'm so excited to dive into a new version of joel and a new reader after taking a longass break. i hope you enjoy, swiftie or not <3 [formerly atticrissfinch]

Available only on AO3

#hello!!!!!!#joelstummy

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macfrogrecs · 1 month ago

Note

hi mimi!! 🤍🤎 first of all happy birthday!! could i request an espresso martini with 2003 loverboy? maybe a meetcute where joel's not as smooth of a loverboy as he used to be? but like it's endearing lol

-shellshocklove

hi isa!!! thank you so much babe! and thank you for this; i loved writing this one 🥺 i hope this fulfils the prompt - i got a little carried away lmfao. enjoy him my love! 🍸

warnings: age gap (30s/20s), allusions to smut, kissing, cursing, alcohol, pain/injury/blood (a cut), 18+ mdni.

For the first time in months, Joel is woken by the pearl—pink dawn streaming through the open blinds as opposed to his bedside alarm clock. The breeze is soft and warm, tickling at his hair, early morning shadows tossed over the rumpled sheets.

Sheets he’s sharing with you.

Last night never part of his plan: Tommy telling him the guys from site were headed to the bar after work, the combination of Friday and payday too much to resist. Sarah was with her mom for the summer, and Joel was facing the long weeks ahead unsure of who he was when he wasn’t a daddy.

You were there with your friends, beautiful under the neon lights, hip pressed into his at the crowded bar as you waited to be served. You’d apologised for the close proximity, Joel only able to grin back foolishly, somehow finding his voice to ask you if you wanted a drink. That’s kinda why I’m queuing, you’d teased, and Joel felt his cheeks flare, your hand over his. Still, you’d let him buy you a vodka soda, and the cab ride home.

Kissing in the backseat was something Joel thought he’d left in his twenties — somewhere you still were. The sounds you made as he dragged his tongue along your throat made him painfully hard, your hand palming eagerly him over his jeans. The two of you shared a whiskey in his kitchen before he’d pressed you down onto his bed, licking the smoky taste from your lips, fucking you twice before collapsing into a sated sleep.

Joel half expected you to be gone by the time the sun came up, but you’re here beside him, features relaxed in your deep slumber. He can still feel the sharp sting of your nails in his back, the crescent moons you’d left on his shoulders, scratching like a wildcat and sobbing for more in his arms.

Lucky guy, he muses, taking in the curve of your breasts, your soft tummy and velvet thighs, the sweet tip of your nose.

Propping himself up on an elbow, he dares to trace his fingertip over your shoulder blade, and you stir beneath his touch. Blinking sleepily, your smile is the same as it was last night, though something about it is a little more knowing.

“Morning.”

“Morning, yourself.”

“You, uh, want somethin’ to eat?” Joel asks before he can stop himself, remembering you might just want to gather your things and slip away, that this didn’t mean all that much to you. Not in the way it has to him.

“I’d love that.” You pull the sheets around yourself, rubbing at your eyelids, lips bitten from his ministrations the night before. You’re more fucking beautiful to him today, all smudged mascara and bare skin, your dress lost on the floor.

Joel pulls his pyjama pants on hastily from the hamper, unsure of whether a shirt is required, too. He’s so fucking out of practice with one night stands — it’s embarrassing, but you don’t seem to mind at all: rolling over to his side of the bed, facedown in the pillows.

Deciding on pancakes with some of the fruit he keeps stocked for Sarah, he chops the strawberries rhythmically, questions buzzing around his brain as coffee brews in the corner.

So, what happens next? Will he get your number? Would you wanna see him again? Is he too old for you? Can he ask if you want to get dinner? Or is that too pushy?

“What’re you making?”

Joel lets out a strangled noise of surprise; neatly slicing into the soft pad of his fingertip, blood sprouting onto the cutting board. He’s hammered his thumbs more times than he can count, but the pain is still sharp and breathtaking, and the humiliation he feels compounds it even more.

You’re stood behind him, peering over his shoulder in curiosity. He hears your intake of breath, your immediate concern. “Fuck! Joel? Are you okay?”

He chuckles, heading to the sink to run it under cool water. “‘s nothin’, trust me,” he reassures you, turning to assess the damage. It’s clean, but deep, and he curses himself inwardly for making such a scene.

“You got a first aid kit anywhere?”

“Above the cabinet,” Joel points with his good hand. “But I’m tellin’ you, I don’t need anythin’. It’ll be fine.”

You wave him off, stretching on your toes to reach for it. It’s then that he notices your attire. You’re seemingly bare beside a flannel shirt of his, discarded on his dresser a few days back. It rides up over your thighs, the silk panties he became well acquainted with last night peeking out beneath the fabric.

You sit him down at the table, his hand out in front of you. Joel watches you concentrate — tongue stuck between your teeth, a crease in your brows as you apply the antiseptic. His shirt hangs open a little on you, the plush swell of your tits pushing at the fabric. He shifts a little in his chair, feeling himself hardening.

“You’re doin’ a good job takin’ care of me,” he says as you cover the cut with a band-aid. Shoulders shrugging, a smile splits your face, and you pack away the kit like it’s your own. “It was my fault, after all. Would be better if I had a nice nurse’s outfit.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joel teases, eyebrows raised as you run your tongue across your lips, taking your hand in his own. “Well, as it happens, I like this even better,” he tells you, plucking at the flannel.

You stand over him, and he tugs you down into his lap, thumbs running across the silken skin of your thighs. You shudder in his arms, and Joel reaches for the buttons, the two of you laughing quietly as he undoes them.

“If I stole this from you, would you want it back?” you ask, hands in his hair as he strokes along your ribcage, rolling your hips against his.

“I most definitely would, sweetheart,” Joel grins, sliding his lips over yours, tangling your tongues together. Something about it feels so natural: your body and his, and he has a feeling this definitely won’t be the last time he sees you.

“Good to know.”

#obsessed #utterly obsessed #mrsmando

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macfrogrecs · 2 months ago

Text

Feel me right there, baby? Daddy’s always right there, ain’t he?

so fucking obsessed with this series and this joel, noelle, oh my god. he’s so sweet and soft with her and just the right fucking amount of deliciously dirty 😩 you nail him every time.

devil’s advocate || joel miller x f!reader

happy belated birthday to the man himself :3

pairing: daddy dom!joel x f!reader rating: 18+ explicit minors dni summary: joel misses you while he’s away at work. warnings: [no-outbreak], established relationship, age gap [reader is 20’s, joel is late 50’s], dd/lg dynamics, daddy kink, sending nudes, m!masturbation, possessive language, pet names [little bug, baby angel], mentions of reader wearing a collar, references to: smut, tummy bulge, and creampies, joel’s pov. word count: 2.3k

a/n: let’s pretend this isn’t my second fic of joel having a wank lmao. anyways! this is another little snippet of life with daddy joel. however, it can be read as a standalone, but if you would like some context of how this all started, i recommend reading intermission first. a gazillion thank you’s to @pedrospatch for beta’ing this for me, for all the reassurance, and not letting me get cold feet and to @dinandwhiskey for yapping about these two with me endlessly from day one, this silly little concept wouldn’t exist without you <33

series masterlist | main masterlist | ao3 | playlist

dividers by @saradika-graphics

Joel’s in his office looking at blueprints when his phone buzzes against his leg. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, eyes squinting as the bright screen lights up his dim office. His heart pinches in his chest when he sees your name across his screen.

do you like this one daddy?

Attachment: 1 image

He taps on the notification. His mouth hangs open, throat dry, dumbfounded as he takes in the picture. You, on your knees in the bedroom, wearing a white slip nightgown. The sleeves cut off at your shoulders; there’s a lace trimming along the neckline — too high for his liking — that it almost meets the heart-shaped charm dangling from your collar; angel, it reads; he smiles to himself when he sees it. The lace continues down your front and stops at your middle, where a matching white belt cinches in your waist, accentuating your figure. The silk material cuts at your knees.

Jesus Christ. There’s a tightness in his stomach, and somewhere else. He knows what you’re doing, knows this is a game you play very well. You know you don’t need his opinion or permission. Everything you wear, everything you do drives him fucking crazy. You drive him crazy.

Whatever you like, angel, he types out. His thumb hovers over the too small blue arrow when another text with a different photo attached comes through.

or how about this one?

This time the slinky nightgown is baby pink, lace running across the deep neckline. The material clings to your breasts so well, he can tell your nipples are peaked beneath it. There’s matching lace at the bottom of the skirt, cuts high up your left thigh, and a tiny bow sits atop the slit, identical to the one in between your breasts.

The stiffness in his jeans starts to throb. You’ve got him wrapped around your pretty little finger, so much you’ve conditioned him to get hard anytime he sees– thinks of you.

He’s so damn hard. Rock solid, and he can’t wait any longer. He pops open his jeans, and drags the zipper down too quick; it snags on denim. He doesn’t even hesitate to unzip the metal teeth of his fly entirely, he’s too desperate. Joel shucks his cotton boxers down enough to clumsily pull his already leaking cock out. He spits in his hand, groans lowly as he curls it around his heavy length, and starts pumping.

Joel’s head falls back, and he breathes a sigh of relief as he fucks his fist. He was half-hard all day, All your fault, he thinks. Trotting into the kitchen in one of your pretty little dresses while he cooked up your breakfast, your head bopping along to the record he’d put on as you rounded the kitchen island to take your seat at the table, plate full of eggs and bacon in hand to start your morning. Hips swaying, frilly fabric swishing, barely covering the plump curve of your ass, but just enough to tease him. Something you’re always doing.

His mind wanders. Imagines what the material you’re wearing in the photo feels like in his hands. You both favor the frilly dresses, tiny and soft against your skin. He’s always careful not to rip the delicate fabric; he likes the sight of fucking you in them more than ripping them into pieces. But he likes the silk ones too; likes running his roughened fingertips along the lace trimming, tracing it over your breasts, following the line down your body until his fingers meet your bare thighs. His hands always dipping beneath the hem, seeking more, as if it’s second nature to him. Fingers finding your sex — always dripping with arousal — then his palms move to the swell of your ass, gripping and digging into your plush flesh, pulling you closer into his chest and both of you moaning in unison.

He groans, bites his bottom lip to stifle it. He can’t be too loud, not with his crew on the other side of the door. You make him feel like a damn teenager. Making him so hard that he has to jack his cock in the quiet dark of his office, willing himself not to make a sound because he’s too impatient to wait until he returns to you. That’s what you do to him.

Joel can never get through a full workday without thinking of you. You…simply living and breathing is all that manages to take up his mind. All he ever thinks about is you, consumes his very being. All of this is nothing. Serves as nothing but a distraction for him until he can get back to you. Never not checking every damn clock or a crew members' watch at every turn on every job site, nearly begging for the day....everyday to be over, wants nothing more than to take you into his bed or take you right there on the couch or the kitchen if that’s where you are when he gets home. Wants to spread you out and split you open on his cock, burying himself in until he meets resistance and elicits that soft gasp from your lips, the one that makes him forget about the world for a moment or two. Wants to grab your hand and cup his shape through your tummy and tell you, Feel me right there, baby? Daddy’s always right there, ain’t he?

He hears your moan echoing in his ears, and the quick tugs of his fist increase almost unconsciously. He used to think the sounds you made were his favorite. Your giggles when he pulls at your ankles to bring you closer. Your whimpers when he teases his cock over your panties (in retaliation for teasing him). Your body writhing beneath the broad weight of him when he finally slips it in; daddy, pouring from your lips as he plays with you.

Now, he reckons it’s more than that.

It’s how you taste on his tongue — warm and sweet when he glides it through your drooling folds. It’s how you feel around him — your little wet cunt sucking him in, made just right for him. Your skin, soft and delicate, waiting to be marked black and blue. Your body putty and pliant, curling and melting into him on the couch or in his bed after a long day. It’s how you trust him completely — without hesitation as he does what he pleases with you. It's how you look at him — gorgeous wide eyes sparkling and a sleepy smile on your face beaming up at him in the soft morning glow when you wake up beside him. It’s the first thing he sees every morning and his heart fucking flutters.

It’s everything. All of it and more.

His fist tightens around his cock, thumb sweeping over his wide tip — leaking and an angry shade of purple. Angry because his fist isn’t enough; it’ll never be enough–

His phone buzzes as a third photo with a message pops into the text thread, his head snaps down and his eyes meet the photo in a nanosecond.

is it too short daddy?

He inhales sharply through his nose as he studies the photo; you’re wearing the same outfit, only now you’re bent at the waist, your hands flat on the mattress, and leaning forward on the balls of your feet — ruffled white socks sitting low on your ankles. The lace hem of your skirt has ridden up just enough to reveal yourself to him. You. On full display — only for him to see — and yet–

Not short enough, he wants to respond.

He sets his phone down on his denim-clad thigh, thumb tapping on the photo before his fingers pinch outward, zooming in.

Christ. There they are. Taunting him beneath the thin pink cherry speckled panties that barely cover your holes, just waiting for him — waiting to be filled until you’re sore and leaking and so full of him he has to work his cum back into your spent hole.

Hole.

He hasn’t delivered on his promise to fill the other one. Not in the way you’ve been asking.

Baby angel, we oughta do it right. We oughta go slow.

He’s been training you for the last little while; he knows he’s too big to take all at once. One day he’ll make good on his promise. Daddy always keeps his promises, don’t he little bug?

His phone buzzes once more, cutting through his reverie. You sent him a fourth photo with–

miss you daddy :(

The skirt of your nightgown is bunched around your hips, your thighs spread and fingers skimming beneath the band of your panties, his eyes trail down, following the line of your small fingers, and then he sees it–

The wet stain of your slick on the front of your baby pink panties; your cute little clit, soft and puffy against the sheer material — peeking out — almost like it’s calling out for him.

Fuck. Poor baby. Daddy’s comin’. Just a little longer.

Joel’s jaw clenches, and the tension pulls taut in his stomach. He should be there. Needs to be there. Push the head of his cock past your puffy folds — returning home — repenting for being away for so long, for leaving you at all. Warm velvet walls pulsing around him as he thrusts in, in, in.

Beads of sweat roll off his forehead and into his temples, pencil slipping from behind his ear and clattering on the wooden floor as he lets his head roll back on his neck, hitting the back of the chair, his eyes slip closed. Lets himself think of sinking into you, the warmth of your skin against his, your velvet cunt snug around him — soft and swollen and wet — fluttering around him, squeezing him until he comes.

His hips falter, breath now shaky and weak, muscles in his belly tightening as the coil deep within him threatens to snap. Joel retracts his left hand from his phone and lifts it to cup the weight of his balls, kneading gently at the stretchy flesh. His office chair squeaks as his back arches, canting his hips upwards, rutting into his own fist — desperate — like a fucking puppy. His left hand squeezes around his balls tighter, right arm tenses as his wrist pumps faster — still not enough.

He hears you then — all whiny and meek — Daddy. Please. Daddy, fill me up, need it inside please.

And it’s all he needs.

“Ohh baby,” he breathes, mouth falling open, filthy groans clawing through the walls of his throat, echoing against the ceiling and the four walls of his office, as the tidal waves crash over him and take him under.

His head snaps down in time to watch his release, cock pulsing and twitching as thick, hot ropes of cum spurting from his tip coat the distressed wood of his desk, landing within a hair's breadth of the blueprints. Shouldn’t be there. He thinks of painting your insides with him, filling you up with his spend and making you his, over and over and over.

Fuck, that’s it — Fuck, he groans.

He’s in a trance, and it’s almost like he’s coming again. His thighs tremble as his thumb glides across his tip, and he imagines the curved head nudging against that special place inside you while your nails scrape across the nape of his neck, marking him as yours. He lets his eyes close slowly, and then he sees you, his eyes dancing across your face, watching as it twists up in pleasure as his thick head prods at his favorite place again and again. Until your eyes water and you’re gushing around him, dripping cunt clutching him until you milk him of everything he has to offer, sanctifying himself with every last drop.

His guttural groans settle into tired sighs, and his wrist slows as he nears the end of his orgasm, but he doesn’t stop, not until he’s certain he’s milked himself completely, just as he would if he were nestled inside you. When the last of his release dribbles down onto his fist, body still shaking and pulsating from his climax, he thinks he’s never come this hard by his own hand.

His hand comes to a stop, and his breath begins to steady, chest rising and falling as his lungs fill with air. His left hand finds his phone again, props it up while his right still clutches his softening cock, hissing as his fist meets the swollen cockhead — dripping and covered with cum. He snaps a picture, shaky fingers backspace his previous message, and instead types out, Naughty little girl. Look what you made Daddy do. And taps the small arrow without another thought, sending it on its way to you. And he blames it on the blood pumping and surge of energy rushing through him in the wake of his intense orgasm — and you for making him feel alive.

He doesn’t wait for a response before he sends another message.

It’s perfect, angel. Keep it on till I get home. Got a surprise for you.

You reply seconds later:

yes daddy 🩷

He smirks. Attagirl.

Joel clicks his phone off, runs a hand down the scruff of his beard before leaning over his desk with a grunt, careful as to not sully his shirt with his release. He fumbles around his junk drawer for a small pack of pink heart-themed tissues, dabs at droplets of sweat on his forehead before wiping up his spend on his fist and desk. He tucks his soft cock back beneath his black boxers, and takes a moment to unsnag his fly, zipping up his jeans. His aching knees regain function, and he stands, heavy legs dragging him through his office and stalking towards the door. When his weak fist meets cold steel, he makes a mental note to stop by the store to pick up the butterfly charms he promised you.

follow and turn on notifs for @joelsdaggerupdates to learn when i post fic!

#i need him everywhere everywhere all at once actually #joelsdagger

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macfrogrecs · 2 months ago

Text

read this yesterday and just had to reread it all over again to jab my finger back into the wound it caused. jesus christ, emma.

Not even the good moments -- Ellie's laughter, the awe in her face when she sees the giraffes, her jokes and her muted but still sharp sarcasm -- keep him afloat. He's lost, adrift in a sea of blood and bullets and it starts to eat away any humanity that was left in him.

to take some of the things we love so much about ellie - her giggles and the nerdy kid in her - and use them against joel is both a stroke of genius and of evil. can't lie. to have them be the things he knows should keep him alive but continuously keep killing him. i can't believe you.

This isn't how she imagined it would go. She never told Joel, but for weeks she's been thinking about waltzing up to the hospital and telling them who she is. She pictured Joel telling her jokes while she got her blood drawn, pictured him staring down nurses and doctors while they made the cure. She figured it would take a few days, maybe a week, and then they'd be on their way back to Jackson. She had hoped Marlene might be there, too. She has so many questions about her mom.

was already weeping by this point but fuck you for this, dude. oh my god. i already yelled at you but the jokes while she's having blood drawn? protective dad joel? She has so many questions about her mom ???? get the hell out. get OUT

and honestly, though you know this entire thing broke my heart, somehow this was the finisher:

She can read between the lines. She speaks Joel now.

such a simple but beautiful way to capture their bond. something so natural and almost primal about it. they just speak each other's language. there's nothing else to it. she met him, she observed him, she learned him. in four words, you nailed it.

god. you just nailed the entire thing. i love this so much. i love you, so much.

living high until that fatal day

a/n: i never do this. literally, never. when i'm not here i'm writing stuff that's not x reader for ao3 and this is a fic i posted over there. it's a time loop story about joel and ellie. @bageldaddy told me i had to post it here. without her this fic would not exist. thank you so much, bea. so, here we go. if you read it, thank you. let me know what you think. joel miller & ellie williams gen fic. 7.5k words warnings: Time Loop, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, kind of???, it resolves, Suicide, only in one of the loops!, Canon-Typical Violence, joel gets stuck and has to figure it out, Father-Daughter Relationship, thoughts about sacrifice and love, POV Joel, mostly, this one is kind of intense folks, major character death tag is cause well the loop ends one way or another, gonna diverge at the end, but it ends well!!! i promise, also this is pretty firmly game but hbo folks should be okay!

summary: joel finds himself stuck in a time loop of that day in salt lake city.

Joel lies to her.

He's got dried blood under his fingernails and his shoulder aches from the kick of the rifle and he's so, so tired.

But he lies to her.

If he was a smarter man he'd have thought of something better. Told her that the hospital got raided or they had a FEDRA mole, how the whole thing was a sham from the start. He doesn't know if she was awake for any of it. If the last thing she remembers is him reaching for her and failing to save her. If she remembers what it feels like to drown.

It's hard to look at her in the mirror but he manages. Just keep driving, hands tight on the wheel. Don't white knuckle, don't spook her. She's in the car. She's safe. He did it.

"We found the Fireflies," he says. She doesn't look at him. "Turns out there's a...a whole lot more like you, Ellie. People that're immune. It's dozens, actually."

There's a strange pull in his gut, a pull that he's felt a few times before in the moments before everything went south. When the soldier pointed his gun by the river, when Tess looked at him on her last day, when he fell off the ledge in Colorado. But he ignores it.

"Ain't done a damn bit of good, either. They've actually st--" Ellie closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. She doesn't look at him. "They've stopped looking for a cure. I'm takin' us home. I'm sorry."

She turns her back to him and the pull becomes a burn, becomes a black hole under his ribcage taking everything with him. He blinks once, twice, wonders if he got shot and didn't notice, if he cracked a rib and it punctured his lung, if --

The road in front of him disappears.

He can't see a damn thing -- not like the lights went out, like there is nothing to see. There is nothing in front of him at all.

Then, Joel wakes up yesterday.

___

He jolts awake with a strangled yell. Ellie kneels over him, the rifle he taught her to hold slung over her shoulder. It's just past dawn based on the color of the sky and how he can make out most of her face, her withdrawing hand and her unimpressed but slightly concerned frown.

"You were talking again," Ellie says. "Nightmares?"

Joel tears his eyes from her and thunks his head back down on his crumpled up jacket. The trees stretch high above him and he tries to get it together so he doesn't spook her.

They’re camped within sight of the highway. Salt Lake City has been looming for days now and Joel doesn't want to take any chances. The ring-road is almost clear, dotted here and there with cars and a fair amount of supplies, enough that Joel suspects people haven't been here for some time. If this is another Colorado State situation, he's going to have to put Ellie in a car and take them back to Jackson before she does something stupid.

She's fine. Well, no, not quite. Things aren't the same and they never will be but he can tell she's doing her best and he won't ask more than that. Their pace has slowed this week and he's having a hard time figuring out if she's sliding back into some sort of post-Colorado haze or if she's nervous about actually arriving in Salt Lake.

God knows he's nervous as hell.

But every day she'll walk as far as he tells her to and won't complain. He knows she wants to get there. They have to get there and it has to work -- because he doesn't know what they're going to do otherwise.

She asked him a question. Nightmares. Joel sits up and drags his hand down his face.

"Somethin' like that."

Ellie shrugs and starts to clean up their camp now that he's awake. He still hates letting her take watch, but she needs to feel in control of things, so they split it most nights. She hums a little bit as she works and he has hopes that today might be a good day.

But that dream... It comes back in flashes: the giraffes, the tunnel. Ellie hanging from the side of the bus because she jumped to save him, her small frame sinking slowly, just out of reach. The crack of her ribs underneath his hands. The hospital. The Fireflies.

Joel gets up, rolls his shoulder at a phantom pain and looks down at his hands. Crusted with dirt and nothing more.

Jesus Christ. He's losing it.

They set off.

The blue hospital sign seems to shine in the spring sun all too soon.

"This is where we get off. Let's go, kiddo."

Joel talks even though he knows she's not listening. He talks to take his mind off of the echo that sits at the base of his neck with every step. Has he told her he'll teach her guitar before? He's been thinking it for months.

Ellie trails behind him, kicking rocks and half-heartedly searching cars when he asks her to. She heads for a faded blue sedan but he stops her.

"Blue one won't open, don't bother."

The look she gives him makes him think about what he just said. "How do you know that?"

He blinks. How does he know that? Before he can explain it, Ellie shrugs and keeps walking.

The disinterest is new and it doesn't sit well with him. She's been through a lot, more than any kid deserves, and they're almost there. He figures it's worse today because of that.

"I dreamt about flying the other night."

Joel's stomach twists. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Go on, tell me about it."

She tells him about her dream, about how it felt to fly and then fall, and he is dizzy with deja vu.

"I've never been on a plane." Ellie looks at him like he can tell her what it means. Like he has any damn answers at all. "Isn't that weird?"

Joel hums and swallows the lump in his throat. The bus terminal. Ellie, drowning. Firefly after Firefly in his path. His hands flex around a gun that isn't there.

"Well, you know. Dreams are weird." It tastes like a lie in his mouth but he can't figure out why.

It gets worse when they find the bus station, when she runs off in search of something that's got her smiling. Her small hand reaches for the giraffe, her eyes bright, but Joel feels like he's watching it through a fog. He knows what she's going to say before she says it.

"So fucking cool."

Joel has seen a lot of weird shit in his life but whatever is happening here is leagues above the rest. It bumps up against something in his brain, like the answer is just out of reach but he can't fucking get there. Always a step behind when it counts.

Ellie hands him a picture of his dead daughter and something in him comes dangerously close to snapping. Instead of gratitude or sorrow or anything that would make sense, he's terrified.

He's fucking terrified because this happened. Which means he knows what comes next.

But there's no time to worry about it. They pick their way through the tunnel, through the runners and the clickers and the fucking bloaters. The pressure on his neck gets heavier, gets almost unbearable. He's strung tighter than he's been in years, like the walls are closing in on him and there's a timer he can't see.

When they get to the rapids, he waits for Ellie to get to the other side of the bus until he jumps on it but it dislodges. The dam in his head breaks and he yells, screams at her to run, to leave him, but she jumps on the bus anyway.

She drowns.

Joel doesn't doubt that the Fireflies are coming -- he hears them -- but he doesn't take his eyes off of her, doesn't stop the chest compressions until he's knocked out.

The rest of it is a blur, his sense of reality already warped by his need to get to the operating room. To save her.

Joel picks them off one by one, floor by floor, hardly taking note of how familiar it all feels. He doesn't even give the surgeon a chance to speak before he's dead, a bullet between the eyes. He knows they'll make it to the elevator. He kills Marlene. He drives them away.

He lies.

He wakes up yesterday again.

___

It takes a few days before Joel purposely deviates from what he's thinking of as the script. His head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds when he wakes in the clearing, Ellie's eyes on him.

He thinks about it as they pack up camp. Can he get them out of here? Would that be allowed? The rules of this aren't clear to him but he figures it can't hurt to try. They could turn around right now and make it back to Jackson in a week or so.

He watches Ellie carefully arrange her things in her bag, watches her stop to admire a butterfly in the branches above. He watches her and tries to see her alive and not pale on an operating table.

"Ellie," he says. "I got a bad feelin' about this."

She loves to tell him he's overreacting but today she crosses her arms and sits back on her heels. "What do you mean?"

Her scream as she falls into the water. Her ribs cracking beneath his hands. The piercing alarm in the hospital, her body warm but limp in his arms.

"What if we waited?" She frowns but he keeps going. "Went back to Jackson, rested up. Took a break. Come back in a few months with a bit of a crew. Tommy'll give us some guys, hell, I bet he'll come with if you want --"

"No," Ellie says sharply. There's an edge to her voice he hasn't heard in a long time. "Joel, shut up."

"Ellie --"

She stands abruptly, takes a few steps back. "I said no." The look on her face tells Joel he's already lost. "Are you -- are you fucking kidding me? You want to go back? Now?"

He sighs. "Just to rest up. We don't know what we're walking into --"

Ellie throws her hands around in disbelief. Her eyes look wet. Christ, he's made her cry again. He promised himself he wouldn't do that.

"We don't know if they'll still be there."

"We don't know if they are there."

"And we won't find out if we fucking run away like cowards!"

Joel stands. "I don't want another Colorado State situation, Ellie --" Her face shutters. Mistake.

"Don't bring up Colorado," she growls. "You don't know what that was like."

Damn right he doesn't. He knows by now what happened but he'll never know how hard it was for her to survive when he was busy dying on that mattress. But he has to try something or they'll just end up here again tomorrow. Yesterday. Whatever.

The idea of her suffering makes his hackles rise, makes his blood run cold

"Can I finish a god damned sentence?" he snaps. Ellie is undeterred and snaps back.

"Not if it's going to be about leaving. We-- I -- we're not fucking leaving. Not after everything. We can't."

Joel sighs and drags a hand down his face. This girl. He's trying to save her and she can't see it. There's no way to make her see it and it's his fault. She should know by now that he'd do anything, anything, for her. He lost that battle a long time ago, probably longer ago than he'd like to admit.

"I know," he tells her. "Just...if you want to give it all up, to go back, we can. We don't have to go through with this."

Ellie's eyes are blazing and her tone is disappointed. It cuts deep. "Yes we do. I thought you'd understand that, Joel."

He follows her this time as she stalks down the highway towards the hospital. No mention of six strings, no dreams about planes. They catch the giraffes but she doesn't stick around to watch them for as long. It's a different kind of loss to be without her smile, her laughter. Joel wishes he'd never opened his god damned mouth.

"I'm sorry," he says. "For earlier." Ellie pauses on the stairs and half turns to look up at him. "I know it's important to you."

She sighs. "I know you mean well." Joel closes his eyes. He knows what comes next. "But there's no halfway with this. Once we're done, we'll go wherever you want, okay?"

He plays his part for the rest of the day, just to get it over with.

___

Next time, Joel waits until they're watching the giraffes to try something different.

"So," he says. "This everything you were hoping for?"

Ellie gives him her half-smile. "It's got its ups and downs, but...you can't deny that view, though."

He seizes his chance. "Wanna go down there?"

She perks up. "Really? Do you think they'll let us get close?"

"They might. Let's try."

They manage to backtrack a little bit and end up on the field. It smells like a zoo but Ellie is thrilled to be so close so they post up on the roof of a rusty FEDRA Jeep. Two of the giraffes end up eating out of the tree right above them. Ellie holds her breath.

"They just...don't care, do they?" she whispers. "How long do you think they've been here?"

She leans into his side and cranes her neck to watch one of them use its tongue.

"Don't know," he says. "Big ones could've been from before. But the tiny one s'probably younger than you."

"So cool," she says again. "They're from a zoo, right? I wonder if anything else lives in the city."

They've been sitting here long enough that the sun has started to set. Joel allows himself to hope.

"Might be. What do you say we spend the night here and look on the way to the hospital tomorrow? Daylight'll do us better."

Ellie chews on his suggestion. "I guess," she says. "Are we safe here?"

"Should be." Joel has no idea, frankly. He sure as hell wants them to wake up here in the morning. He wants to make good on this idea, wants to show her something else that'll make her smile. He wants this to be a bizarre, unexplainable day that he'll forget about with time.

"I'll keep watch."

They set up camp crowded against the fence so Joel can see the whole field. The giraffes leave them alone and Ellie falls asleep quickly after they eat.

In the quiet open air the dread in his gut returns full-force and he knows he's wrong. Again.

A branch cracks and he whirls around, rifle in hand to find three men pointing their guns at him through the wire. They might be wearing Firefly jackets but he can't tell. He doesn't care. Joel dares to look at Ellie for a second and sees she's still asleep.

It's a mistake.

One of them follows his gaze and his eyes widen.

"Holy shit," he whispers. "She looks like who Marlene said --"

"Shut up," the second one hisses. "On the ground, old man."

"How are you gonna get around that fence, hotshot?" he says. "Ellie. Ellie, wake up."

She blinks a few times and sees his stance. scrambling to her feet with her knife in hand.

"Holy shit. What the fuck?"

"Get behind me."

One of the soldiers points his gun at her.

"Don't move."

It's chaos after that. The guys shout at each other.

"Don't point it at her! Don't you remember the fucking briefing?"

"You hadn't even joined when we got here, you don't know. We've been looking for her for months --"

"If you shoot her we're all dead --"

Joel locks eyes with Ellie.

"When I say run, you run. Okay?"

The fear in her eyes turns to determination. Brave girl, he thinks. I'm sorry. He waits for the idiot pointing at her to look away and takes a deep breath. What's one more day?

"Run!"

Joel doesn't check to see if she obeys before firing through the fence. The rifle is incredibly powerful at such a short range and where there was once a head there's only mist. Joel clears the chamber as fast as he can and gets the second one in the shoulder but he's not fast enough for a third and before he realizes it he's on his back in the grass.

The Firefly's assault rifle litters Joel's chest with bullets but he doesn't feel it until he tries to take a breath and nothing comes. It's like he's underwater.

At least he didn't make her cry this time.

Joel isn't much of a believer in anything but he decides fairly quickly that he's in Hell or something close. God knows he deserves it.

His sins are countless, his ledger dripping with red just like his hands. They will never be clean. What he can't figure out is how he got here. Did he die somewhere in St. Mary's? Is the real world somewhere else beyond his reach, now? If he died then what happened to Ellie?

He tries to make tallies in the bark of a tree on the edge of camp but they disappear every time he wakes up. He makes do with his own slowly unspooling brain. Two, five, ten.

Ellie is much the same every time but somewhere around day twenty she asks him about it. "How do you know where everything is?"

They're in the bus depot before the tunnel. He's taking them quickly around the tents, putting off Ellie handing him a photo of his dead daughter. It's muscle memory at this point. A pair of pliers here, some rags there. A half-empty but uncracked bottle of hooch behind that blood-stained bed, some bullets under that overturned partition.

"Just payin' attention."

"I pay attention!"

Joel uses the excuse to grin at her. It's hard sometimes to remember that she has no idea what's coming, that he can and should be good to her every chance he gets. The violence has already started to blur together in his mind. Killing everyone in the hospital is by far the easiest part of this fucking loop. These parts are harder.

"Didn't say you don't."

"I feel like that was a double negative."

She's still energized from the giraffes and he knows she's working up the courage to talk about Sarah, but right now he wants to spend time with her. He spots the Firefly medal tangled in the shattered floodlight and points it out.

"Ellie," he says. She's at his side in seconds, looking up at him with eyes brighter than he's seen in weeks. "Wanna get that down?"

She gives him her classic why are you like this look. "Are you going to be weird and pick it up?"

Joel shrugs and leans on the rotting tank nearby. "Just want to check your aim."

"My aim is really fucking good and you know it!" Even so, she picks up a brick from her feet and palms it, eyeing the silver circle before winding her arm back and hurling the brick towards it.

She misses. Maybe three hundred miles and a trail of dead bodies ago she'd have stormed off, embarrassed and pissed. But she just makes a face at the still-swinging medal and then looks at him. "How did I miss that?"

He pushes off the tank and scoops up a glass bottle. "Sun s'probably in your eyes." Joel stands next to her and eyes the target, trying to compensate in his mind for her height. "Stand here." Ellie moves over in front of him and he hovers his arm over her. "Can I?"

She nods. Joel presses the bottle into her hand and she takes it as he maneuvers her with a hand on her elbow until she's got the trajectory he thinks will work.

"Now?" she asks. "Feels pretty fucking similar to what I was doing."

"Just trust me. Throw a little lighter than last time. And higher."

Ellie sighs, but once he steps back she does as he says and nails the medal hard enough that it drops to the ground. She whoops and turns around, hands high in the air and a wide smile on her face. Joel tries to breathe through how easily she puts her faith in him.

"Fuck yeah! Did you see that?" She holds both hands out for a high five and he obliges.

"Sure did. Nice job, kiddo."

When Ellie hands him the picture of Sarah, he pulls her in for a hug. He half expects her to shove him off but instead she allows it, twisting her hands in his shirt as he cups the back of her head.

"Thank you," Joel says quietly, thickly.

Later, when he finds her on the operating table, he presses his lips to her forehead for an extra moment before picking her up and heading for the elevator.

He messes with the order of things a little bit. Tries to make their morning last longer, tries to stay watching the giraffes for an hour or so.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Watching Ellie drown over and over fucks with his head more than the hospital does because he can't stop it. At least while he's leaving behind corpse after corpse he knows that she's asleep upstairs, waiting for him. In the tunnel, he knows that the only way out is through, but she has to fucking drown first.

He gets sloppy.

He forgets about the runners in the side rooms when he ducks in to avoid a clicker and takes a step too close. Ellie is behind him as always and he shoves her back blindly as three runners slam him against the metal railing of the stairs before he can reach for his gun. He's too surprised to feel anything, but their breath smells like rotting meat and something worse, something that makes his eyes water.

Joel searches the room for her and finds her -- pale-faced and terrified, already reaching for her knife. He tries to say her name but it comes out as a scream when one of the runners goes for his shoulder, jagged teeth ripping through his shirt in an instant.

"Ellie -- run, Ellie -- GO --" He begs her to leave him but his voice stops working as his throat is ripped out. The last thing he sees is her horrified face as she raises her pistol.

And then he wakes up yesterday.

___

It occurs to him on day 30 -- if he's keeping track accurately -- that he's got one of the smartest people he knows at his disposal. Kid's got an encyclopedic knowledge of space as well as science fiction stories. He asks her while they're still on the highway, stalling though he can see the blue H sign from here.

"Y'ever read stuff about time?" No reply. "Ellie?" She's staring at that deer again. "Ellie."

"What?"

"You read any stories about time back in school?"

"Uh, sure," she says. She tugs her sleeves over her hands and catches up to him, eyes on the ground. "Why?"

"Saw a weird movie 'bout it once. Somethin' reminded me of it this mornin'. Guy gets stuck in a...shit, what did they call it?" Joel peeks inside an RV and smells rot so he leaves it be. "He lives the same day over and over."

"A time loop!" Ellie sounds more excited about this than anything they've talked about for days. "Those are so fucking cool. Scary, though. I feel like I'd go crazy."

Joel drags a hand down his face. "Yeah," he says. "How do you think you get outta one?"

"Well, how did the guy in the movie do it?"

"He stopped bein' an asshole," he says. Ellie laughs.

"Well, we know that's not possible for you. Guess you're fucked."

"Guess so," he mutters.

The H sign is close enough that she'll see it any minute. He wishes for the hundredth time that they could just stay out here all day, just talking. If he had a guitar he'd play for her. If he had a fucking car he'd put her in it and turn around, even though it wouldn't do any good. They'd just end up right back here because he can't fucking figure out how to get out of this.

"I think you just have to change, right?" Ellie says. She's looking at the photo of an airplane on the bus. This time she doesn't tell him about her dream. Is he losing pieces of her, already? "I guess it doesn't have to be about yourself. Maybe something you do, or something you say. It's the universe telling you to make a different choice, right?"

That's the fucking thing. The choice isn't an option. It's not even a choice.

The one thing he hasn't tried and will not try is leaving the hospital when Marlene tells him to. He'd rather die a thousand times, rather live this shit show over and over for the rest of eternity than let them cut her brain out. They will not touch her while there is still breath in his body.

He'd do it all over again. He will.

Joel tries a hundred things and they don't work.

After his conversation with Ellie he decides to really fuck with the day. Doesn't matter, right? So long as she's not put in any extra danger he considers it. He begs her to walk away, get on his knees and pleads with her throughout the day. Doesn't work. She just gets pissed at him like that first time and he doesn't push it because he can't bear to see her cry. He lengthens their morning in the clearing, fakes sick or says the rifle is jammed and needs cleaning. That goes south, too, when a pack of runners wanders through the woods and straight into them. They make it to the highway and have to miss the giraffes because they're running.

One time Joel spends all day zig-zagging them around the city to avoid the tunnel. The Fireflies find them much the same way except they shoot him on sight and grab Ellie right out of his arms as he bleeds out on the cracked asphalt, her screams echoing in his ears.

Another time, he ties them together in the tunnel with some fraying rope and they both drown.

Killing Marlene early gets him a bullet in the head and not killing her at all gets him back where he started, no change.

Joel even begs the doctor to run more tests first, to try blood, to try anything, but it takes too long and the alarm sounds and he's cornered in the operating room before he can grab Ellie and go.

Nothing fucking works.

But what is there left to change?

His mind starts to fray. He loses count of the loops and it becomes hard to detach himself from the slaughter. Not even the good moments -- Ellie's laughter, the awe in her face when she sees the giraffes, her jokes and her muted but still sharp sarcasm -- keep him afloat. He's lost, adrift in a sea of blood and bullets and it starts to eat away any humanity that was left in him.

The blood of hundreds, thousands maybe, is on his hands and he feels nothing.

Once and only once does he get there too late. Everything else goes like it always does but maybe he took too long on the first floor, maybe he took too long picking the guys one by one instead of using the assault rifle, maybe maybe maybe.

When Joel gets to the pediatric ward he knows something is different -- he can hear a buzzing sound, something loud and unnatural. The stale air is thick with something metallic, tinged with death. The buzzing stops and he finds his feet glued to the floor outside the operating room. Voices on the other side of it, murmuring and the clink of metal on a tray. Joel's hand shakes when he reaches for the knob because he knows whatever he finds on the other side is going to kill him.

But he opens it because he has to. The doctor is at the sink this time, the nurses nowhere to be found. Ellie's body is covered in a sheet, blood seeping through the fabric. Joel looks away. He just stands there, his heartbeat loud in his ears as the world ends.

The first time his daughter died, Joel thought he could will it not to be so. He held her as long as he could, whispered her name with her blood drying on his hands until Tommy begged him to get moving.

This time, he knows it's true and he knows there's only one ending.

He raises his gun at the doctor who is now leaning on the edge of the sink. The door swings open and the nurses return, eyes wide and vibrating with the energy of a job well done. He swings over to them and kills them both with quick headshots. The doctor has barely turned around when he's dead, too.

Joel breathes, ears ringing. He manages one step closer to the operating table but his knees buckle and he goes down hard on the cool tile. His vision is blurry. Is he crying?

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so fucking sorry, baby." He angles himself so he won't get any blood on her and then presses the barrel of his gun to his temple and pulls the trigger.

If Joel was on the edge of losing his mind before, now he's laser focused. He doesn't pull any more shit. He settles back into the loop, savoring Ellie's laughter with the giraffe and gunning down every sorry motherfucker in his way at the hospital. He will not get there late ever again.

So when Marlene says something different the next time around and he almost misses it.

Ellie is dead weight in his arms but she's warm and he can see the rise and fall of her chest. The hospital was messier than usual because he rushed this time, cutting down the Fireflies like it was his last stand. There's blood in his hair and crusted under his fingernails and his shirt is beyond ruined.

"Are you going to tell her what happened here?" Marlene presses her hand into her side, blood leaking from around her crimson palm. "Are you going to tell her what you did?"

He lies to her.

Every time.

It's never occurred to him to try something else. Even though he's changed almost everything about this damn day except that.

Because Joel knows what happens if he tells the truth. He knows what that will cost him.

And he doesn't know if he'll survive it.

He's afraid. Joel doesn't want to lose her and if that makes him selfish then so be it. He wants to take her back to Jackson and give her a bedroom of her own and as many stupid comics as she wants and three meals a day for the rest of her long, peaceful life. He wants her to grow up and grow old.

He'd kill a thousand more Fireflies to make it happen.

He'd damn the whole world.

Because he loves her and it fucking hurts.

This girl and her puns and her comics and her god damned bravery and her bleeding heart. He doesn't want to lose her.

But is this, whatever this endless hell is, is it fair to her?

If it's breakable, if he has the ability to get them to tomorrow, to get them to Jackson, to get them home, shouldn't he? If he loves her shouldn't he give her a life even if he's not in it?

Joel gently arranges Ellie in the backseat and shoots Marlene in the head.

For a few seconds Ellie thinks she's in the car on the way into Pittsburgh. The hum of the old engine, the rocking motion of the truck. But -- wait. She's lying down. The car smells...musty. And she's cold like she's wearing a dress and --

"What the hell am I wearing?"

She flutters her eyes open. Different truck. Backseat. Is she in a...hospital gown? What the fuck? Where is she?

"Just take it easy," Joel says. Okay, so she's with Joel. Something in her chest settles. She must be safe. "Drugs are still wearin' off."

Drugs? Ellie pushes back into her memory and tries to find something, anything that'll give her a clue as to what's going on here. They were in the bus tunnel. The water was rushing, Joel jumped on the bus and it started moving and she...fell into the water?

It's a blur after that. More of a blank, really. Did they get to the hospital? Did they find the Fireflies? Based on her weird fucking outfit it sure seems like it.

"What happened?"

Joel's eyes flick up in the rearview mirror to look at her. "Let's get you into some clothes, first. Then we'll take a break and I'll tell you everythin'."

He sounds tired. More tired than he's ever sounded, frankly, but she can't imagine why. And he can't seem to stop looking at her like she's going to disappear. Like he hasn't seen her in ages.

"Okay," she says slowly. "Where the hell are we going to get those?"

"Your bag is on the floor by your feet." Joel veers off the highway down an exit ramp and Ellie sits up. Her head feels light for a second and then really heavy so she braces her hands on the seat in front of her and takes a few deep breaths. "You okay, kiddo?"

"Yeah. Fucking...drugs, I guess. What'd they do that for?"

"They ran some tests. We'll talk about it."

Normally she'd push him but something feels off. Ellie tries to get a good look at his face but she can't, not from this angle, and not with her head fucking pounding like it is. She's missing so much time. It makes her skin crawl, makes her heart race. Joel is here, she tells herself. He wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

He parks them at the edge of a cemetery and gets out of the car to stand guard while she changes out of the gown. Her last pair of jeans, apparently, and a grey t-shirt with a few holes in the collar. She wishes she had a sweatshirt or something to wrap around herself, to pull over her hands and feel covered. But beggars can't be choosers. At least someone put her shoes in her backpack.

Joel doesn't turn around when she opens the door but she sees him stiffen.

"I'm done." He looks back at her and she finally sees his face. "Jesus Christ, Joel, what happened to you?"

It's not just the blood. Sure, he's got dried streaks of it on his neck and in his hair. Ellie glances at his hands and sees it crusted under his fingernails, too. But he looks wrecked. Older, somehow. He looks like something terrible happened, the way she remembers his face when he fell from the balcony in Colorado, when he found her in the burning restaurant. But somehow it's worse.

He's looking at her like he can't believe she's real.

"Alright." Joel lowers the rifle and ignores her question, clearly. "Didn't see anythin'. Should be fine to sit here for a bit."

"Are you going to tell me what the fuck happened?"

He moves like he's going to drag a hand down his face but thinks better of it. "Yeah," he says. "I am."

Ellie swings her legs so they're hanging out the door. Joel leans the rifle against the truck and crosses his arms. "You're making me kind of nervous, man."

"Just...promise me you'll hear me out to the end."

Yeah, something is going on. She doesn't like it.

"Uh, sure."

"What do you remember?"

Good fucking question. "The tunnel. The bus and -- water. I fell in, right?"

Joel nods, clears his throat. "Jumpin' on the bus was dumb. Don't do that again."

She snorts. "Yeah, okay. Point taken. But I was afraid you were going to drown!"

"You did." He delivers the news in a flat tone she doesn't like. She drowned?

"Are you serious?"

"I got us out of the water and tried to get you breathin' again." Ellie realizes her chest is sore. She imagines Joel doing compressions like they showered her in school, imagines his panicked face, his hoarse voice calling her name. Fuck.

"Did it work?"

"No," he says. "Fireflies found us first and knocked me out."

"That doesn't make sense." She frowns. "They knocked you out?"

Joel shrugs. "Just tellin' you what happened."

"What did they do with me?"

Joel looks troubled. "I...don't exactly know. It was a while before I saw you again."

It makes her skin crawl. He must be able to tell because he keeps talking. "I'm sure they just ran some tests while you were out. They brought you back, made sure you were breathin' okay."

"Tests?"

"I'm gettin' there." She feels like he's having a hard time looking at her. Something close to but not quiet dread sits heavy in her stomach. What happened?

"Joel..."

"I woke up inside the hospital. Marlene was there. Told me they didn't know it was us, that they'd been waiting." He pauses, drags a hand down his face. "You didn't wake up or nothin'? You sure?"

Ellie shakes her head. She doesn't remember anything after the tunnel.

"Well, she told me they could do it. They had a doctor who could make the cure."

The air rushes out of Ellie all at once. "Are you fucking serious?"

"And then she said..." Joel chews on his words and looks away from her. He looks angry.

"What did she say?"

"Makin' a vaccine...would've killed you."

The bottom drops out of Ellie's world. It's like a hundred doors in her brain open at once.

It would have killed her? Are they sure? Did they do enough tests? Were they going to? Why didn't they wake her up? Were they going to ask her? How did they get out?

She swallows them all and manages just one in a broken whisper. "What did you do?"

Joel looks right at her. "I stopped them."

If Ellie wasn’t already sitting down she thinks her legs would give out. She knows that Joel meant what he said to her in Silver Lake. Knows that he'd do anything for her.

But this?

"What do you mean?" He shakes his head. "Joel. What do you mean, you stopped them?"

His shoulders slump. "They told me to leave and I refused. And I made sure no one can follow us to try again."

Static builds in her ears. She can read between the lines. She speaks Joel now. He killed them all, that much is clear to her. He killed them all, Marlene, too, probably, because she was supposed to die to save the world. Hot tears sting her nose and gather at the corner of her eyes.

"But I -- but we -- I was supposed to...I'm the cure!"

"You're a person. You're a kid. Don't matter what's in your brain, you ain't dyin' for --"

Ellie pushes out of the truck and to her feet. Joel steps back to give her room but she knows he probably wants to touch her, to reassure her. The anger fills her, makes her face hot and her heart race.

"Who said you get to make that choice? If they said I had to die maybe I should have? Then it would mean something --"

"Your immunity ain't the thing that matters most. You are. So I picked you," Joel yells.

She's really crying now, huge heaving sobs that make it hard to talk, make it hard to convey how angry she is. "Well, you picked wrong, asshole."

"I ain't gonna apologize for it. I'd do it all over again, the exact same way. Every time." Joel's expression is as serious as it gets. He used to look this way all the time. No nonsense, no room for argument.

She tries to find the words anyway but they don't come.

"Now, you've got some options here," he says. "I think the best one is for us to go back to Jackson. I know Tommy'll take you in, and --

She laughs, or tries to.

It sounds like something bitter and awful to her own ears. First he tells her she was supposed to die today and now he wants to leave her?

"Are you fucking serious, Joel? You want to leave me again?"

Joel's brows pinch together. He looks pained. Good. It feels like her chest is caving in, like her lungs aren't working right anymore. This must be what it felt like to drown in the bus terminal, to sink slowly, to fade away entirely. She read once that drowning was supposed to be peaceful. This hurts.

"I want you to be safe," he says. "Jackson is the best place for that. I don't have to be there if you don't want me there --"

"I didn't fucking say that!" she yells. "I -- Jesus, give me a fucking second, okay?"

He stands by the door as she paces back and forth, tugging her hands through her hair.

She was supposed to die. But she didn't. There's no cure. And it sure fucking sounds like Joel didn't leave any option to try again.

He traded saving the world for her.

It's too much.

"What do you want, Ellie?" Joel sounds like he's been awake for days. Like he's in pain, like he's being hollowed out. He sounds like how she feels.

She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes.

"I want none of this to have happened! I want us to go back to this morning and I want us to not have gone into the bus tunnel and I want you to have asked for tests first, I want them to try something else. I want Marlene to tell me why they didn't wake me up. I want to do it again but differently, I want things to be different, I --"

Her words break off into a sob. "Ellie..." She opens her eyes and finds him reaching for her. His shirt is stained with dried blood but she steps into his hold and his arm wraps around her.

"I don't know what to do, now," she whispers.

Joel exhales a shaky breath. "I know you wish things were different. I wish things were different. But they ain't."

They stand there, his hand dragging up and down her back. She listens to his heartbeat and remembers those nights in the basement when she thought it would stop any minute.

"Fuck," she whispers, then pulls away. He lets her go. "Fuck, Joel."

He sighs. "Yeah, kiddo. Fuck."

He told her the truth and that means something. It hurts, it hurts so bad, and it doesn't absolve him of anything, but that matters.

"I'm so angry with you," she says. "I don't know how to forgive you for...for...saving me."

It sounds stupid as she says it but Joel nods solemnly.

"That's alright."

"But I..." She wants to get this part right. "Let's go back. To Jackson. We'll figure it out there. But you...you have to swear to tell me the truth. Just like this. We have to be honest with each other."

Joel meets her gaze without blinking. "I swear."

Ellie takes a deep breath. The anger, the horror, the disbelief at what he's done settle a little bit. She has no clue what comes next, but this is a start.

"Okay."

Joel wakes up.

His back hurts and his shoulder aches. It's dark, darker than it should be, darker than it's been for hundreds of days.

Ellie is asleep in the backseat of the truck.

It's tomorrow.

thank you for reading. let me know what you thought!

#familyvideostevie

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macfrogrecs · 2 months ago

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head over heels for husband!joel who looks scary to everyone else but is secretly soft n smitten, actually. this is SO CUTE

back with some husband!joel headcanons bcs wdym he’s not real and not my husband and not eager to see me after a long day at work???

. such a fucking gentleman, i’ve said this before a million times but his gentlemanliness literally doubles after you get married. opening the door? he’s already done it for you, cooking? he can’t cook for shit but he’s still gonna try his best. oh and don’t even try to open a jar or can or whatever or he’ll shove you gently and open it for you in .5 seconds and press a sweet kiss to your head as he returns to whatever he was doing previously

. admires ya’lls wedding rings way too much. joel’s most probably not the typa guy to wear jewellery but that ring? he’s never taking it off not in your wildest dreams. also while he does like admiring it on his own finger he likes seeing it even more on yours. the thought of any guy searching for a ring on your finger bcs they’re hoping you’re not taken just so they can ask you out and finding that the pretty metal on your finger does in fact show that you’re married makes him wanna kiss you and marvel at you for the thousandth time and take you home and fuck you into the mattress because no other guy could know you as well as he does<33

. will get offended if anyone refers to u as “the ball and chain”. like that’s his wife ain’t nobody gonna talk shit about his girl because that’s the woman he married and he chose and he loves and the thought of anyone thinking you’re a burden on him just pisses him off even more (if anything he’d think that he’s the ball and chain but that’s just his insecurity talking)

. looks scary. like let’s b real joel is an intimidating guy (especially post apocalypse) and most people probably don’t feel very….. comfortable talking to him??? when in reality he warms up when you get to know him but it’s still weird seeing people looking nervous around your husband because there’s literally no reason to be???

. no reason to be nervous around him except if you touch anyone he cares about (especially his girl). any guy even hinting that he’s checking you out? joel’s brows are already furrowed and he’s slipping his arm around you even tighter just to make sure you’re tucked safely into him. any guy tries to make a move? he’ll let you handle it, but if the guy starts being pushy??? that same guy will be booking it out of whichever place he’s in because the 1.91m dude who’s standing in front of the pretty girl he was just talking to looks like he’s about to break his arm and shove it up his ass in an instant

. gets more touchy after you’re married. also feels more familiar with your family and wants to melt when he sees you talking with his so casually. like can you not see that the smile he’s trying to hide so badly is bcs you’re bickering with tommy about why the hunger games books were so much better than the movies and he feels so comfortable seeing that you’re so comfortable around his family

love this man to the moon and to saturn, he’s my rough texan bbg and idc what anyone has to say about it<333

#admiring the wedding rings killed me #joelsfavouritegirl

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macfrogrecs · 3 months ago

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obsessed with how funny and flirty this is. their chemistry is soooo 😩 also this made me blush like a FOOL 👇🏼

AIN'T THAT A BITE

written for @studioghibelli's writing challenge

Fandom: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Game)

Rating: Mature

Central Characters: Reader, Young!Joel, Sarah

Central Relationship: Joel / Reader

Word Count: 6k

Pre-Outbreak & No-Outbreak AU

SUMMARY

It's the night of Jackson High's Sock Hop, the 8th grade dance which took you weeks to organize, and everything seems determined to go wrong. Thankfully, one student's dad—the handsome and brooding Joel Miller—comes to your rescue. READ ON AO3, if that's your jam!

Four weeks ago, volunteering to organize the eighth-grade dance committee had seemed like an excellent idea—a chance to make a solid first impression on the PTA and the chilly cast of your new colleagues while giving yourself a little excitement, some frivolous living beyond the usual boredom of your repetitive existence. Lesson plan, grade, report card, lesson plan, grade, report card—you love your job, but it gets old.

But now, on the night of Jackson High’s September Sock Hop, you know you’ve made a terrible mistake. Someone brought cookies with walnuts that had to be ceremoniously tossed, one of the speakers in the gym is crackling, three of your parent chaperones have bailed, and oh, yes—a sink in the girls’ bathroom has decided to spring a sudden leak and flood the place a mere fifteen minutes before the kids are due to show up.

Drenched and sweating, you make a hopeless attempt to mop the flood of water with the gym’s supply of linens, turning the tiled floor into a swamp of soggy towels that squelch beneath your shoes. It’s all a futile effort—the burst pipe beneath the far left sink is spewing water faster than the towels can sponge—but here you are, trying anyway, looking like you’ve just taken a long walk in a fucking monsoon.

A row of square mirrors sits framed above each ceramic sink, taunting you with your reflection. Your red poodle skirt has gone burgundy with water and your once pristine white button-up clings to your chest, translucent, peek-a-booing your bra.

Real professional.

“Miss Green?” comes a voice on the other side of the door, followed by a weary knock. “Believe students are arriving now.”

With a sigh, you take a final glare at your reflection as if looking again might fix things, then call out, “Alright,” with as much patience as you have left to muster. Outside the calculus teacher is waiting in his pin-stripe vest with a sorry grimace. He agrees to lock up that bathroom from use and with a tired thank you you click down the hall towards the school doors, stomach raw with nerves.

As promised the first, eager attendees stand outside Jackson High’s wide glass doors, giddy to be let in for the night’s event. Kids are in everything from pastel poodle skirts to leather jackets and waitress get-ups—you even spot the Broderick twins in matching, vintage baseball uniforms striped with strawberry red. Behind them stand their parents, some smiling and others bleary-eyed, who you force yourself to smile cheerfully for as you let them in, a clipboard held over your chest to hide your bra.

You don’t miss how the parents stare at you—soaking wet and clearly befuddled—and you mutter your apologies as they shuffle into the school. All but the main hall has been blocked off, leaving the children a one-way path to the gymnasium for the dance. You check your watch quickly; maybe you can sneak in a quick smoke around the corner before the rest of the eighth graders arrive.

Outside the air is perfect: your one reprieve. Blue-dark clouds haunt the star-pocked sky and the balmy remains of the dying summer sweep through the parking lot as a breeze. You breathe easily for the first time in an hour, lift your face, and close your eyes, stitching yourself together in the calm.

When you’re steady again, you decide against the smoke break. Too many parents pulling up in shiny cars with the kids. It’s enough to feel them in your skirt pocket—an escape hatch when you need them, a totem when you don’t. A nasty habit, your mother always says. But you only allow yourself two cigarettes a year. Not so bad, as habits go.

You’re about to turn back in and see if you can’t call a plumber at this hour when a pickup groans into the lot—steely-blue, bold text stickered on the side. It pulls not into a parking spot but the drop-off zone, right in front of you.

Miller Construction Ltd.

Maybe miracles are real after all.

As the passenger window rolls down and the cab light blinks on inside, you rush over, desperation rocketing your heart around in your chest. A girl in a lilac poodle skirt blinks up at you from the passenger seat, eyes wide with surprise. She’s got her hair pulled back in two big, curly pigtails ribboned with bows, and looks adorable—exactly what you’d pictured when you took on the behemoth task of putting this whole stupid evening together—complete with a matching neck scarf and shiny black shoes. You give her what you hope is a friendly grin and start rambling.

“I am so sorry,” you say, before you bother looking at the driver. “But we’ve got a plumbing emergency and if there is any chance you might have a few minutes to take a look at it, you’d be a—”

Your sentence drops off as you at last hunch down to make eye contact with the man in the driver’s seat through the open window. Dark-eyed and frowning, all curls and scruffy beard and thick flannel shirt: your type to a T. In your pause his daughter stifles a chuckle, and you shake your head to restart your brain. Focus. Sinks to fix, floods to mop.

With a tight grin, you tuck a stray hair behind your ear. “Would be a lifesaver if you could, I don’t know, take a look. Even if it’s just to tell me we’re fucked and need an emergency plumber. We had a bunch of parent chaperones bail last minute, so we’re a little short on hands.”

Now the kid snorts, giggling. Shit—your teacher-voice has slipped.

You close your eyes, horrified. Seems there’ll be no end to your embarrassment today.

Sighing, you step back to open the passenger door so the girl can hop out. “If you promise not to tell any grown-ups I swore in front of you,” you tell her. “I’ll give you all As when you get to my class in a couple years.”

“Deal,” the girl says, grinning at you. “But I’d probably get an A anyway.”

Despite yourself, you smile—this time for real.

“You ain’t her teacher?” comes the driver’s voice. Deep and coarse, all Texan. When you glance back, he’s still frowning, eyes narrowed at you.

“Tenth grade English and History,” you say.

“And you’re workin’ the eighth-grade dance,” he says.

You shrug. “I’m new. Thought it’d go over well if I came in eager and offered to plan the thing.”

He hmphs, expressionless, his skin golden under the overhead light, eyes glinting with amber. You’re almost glad the kid’s not in your class; parent-teacher interviews would be torture. Sitting across your desk from this man, forced to pretend you don’t want him to ruin you.

Beside you on the sidewalk, the girl shoots her dad a daggered look and crosses her arms. “He’s free,” she says. “He can do it.”

“Sarah,” the man hisses.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she snarks. “Do you suddenly have a social calendar I don’t know about?”

After a brief stare-down which Sarah seems to win, he huffs and mutters a cranky one second before pulling out of the drop-off zone to park.

“I like your skirt,” Sarah says when he’s gone. Streetlamps have you both in a cloak of shadow, and the pale light radiating from the school’s front doors doesn’t quite reach this spot, but her inquisitive expression is unmissable in the dark.

“It’s a little ruined,” you say sheepishly. “But I like yours.”

Pleased, she gives you a little twirl, purple fabric blooming from her waist. “Thanks,” she says, when she stills again. “My dad sewed on the poodle.”

Across the lot you hear the harsh slam of a car door cracking shut and spot her glowering father stalk across the asphalt, silhouetted by a distant streetlight, his shoulders unfairly broad. You nod toward the front doors. You’d never admit it to anyone, but the thought of this surly figure lovingly stitching a felt poodle to his daughter’s costume makes you a little weak in the knees.

“You can go on in,” you tell Sarah, and she waves at her dad before running inside.

Then he’s walking up the pavement, growing closer. Of course he smells good—like patchouli and something earthy and skin. Of course he’s rolled up his sleeves, baring his tanned forearms, one tensed by the toolbox clutched in his hand. You manage a stiff grin as he approaches, no teeth, to which you receive only a curt nod in reply.

In silence, you walk him through the glassy doors, heels clicking as swing music crackles from the gymnasium some distance away. You catch, in the corner of your eye, the shape of his head turning as he watches Sarah running full-speed down the main hall to catch up with a group of girls that must be her friends. She launches herself at them, and even at this distance you hear the shrill of their joy, the sugar-high laughter, and smile to yourself.

“She’s sweet,” you say, guiding him into a branching hallway, away from the main event.

He grunts, then mumbles, “Pain in my ass is what she is.”

You chuckle. When you dare to look back at him again, you see his begrudging tone doesn’t match his expression. You swear his eyes flit quickly away as if you’ve caught him already looking at you. Hard to be sure, you think, in this dimmer light. But his cheeks almost look pink.

After a beat too long, you realize why.

You’ve dropped your clipboard to your side without thinking, unveiling your water-logged shirt, which clings sheerly to your skin. Grimacing, you cover yourself again. “Not much of a plumber,” you say quietly.

Once you’ve grabbed the keys back from your colleague, you drag this poor, probably busy dad to the girls’ bathroom and unlock the door, glancing down at his boots before you open it. “You don’t love those shoes, do you?” you ask.

His eyebrows lift, jaw tensing. “Sure they’ll be fine, darlin’,” he grunts.

You push into the bathroom before your brain has the chance to recover from darlin’. You’ve been in Texas all of six months and you still aren’t used to the pet names. Everyone here seems to call each other everything. Even the old woman who works the till at the grocer by your apartment calls you honey or angel, and you wouldn’t exactly describe her as the friendly type. Darlin’ isn’t even irregular. Bus drivers call you that.

Difference here is that it’s this man saying it—which is to say, someone gorgeous with a voice that could melt you if you let yourself listen close enough. Your heart purrs, thrilled.

The bathroom is a calamity. Though the drains in the center of the tiled floor have meant no water has flooded into the hallway, there’s still an inch or so blanketing the tiles wall to wall. Under one of the mirrors, the guilty sink continues to spew: a graceful font of silver gushing from a fault in the pipe.

Over your shoulder you hear Sarah’s dad clear his throat before you step out of his way.

Fearless, he trudges through the mess unfazed, dodging the tides of boggy towels like this is the most natural habitat to find himself in. His boots and the ankles of his jeans blacken with water, and though you’re in some stupid, clacky pair of heels to go with your outfit, you follow him into the shallows anyway, riddled with shame. At the slosh of your footsteps behind him, Sarah’s dad turns to give you a cutting stare you cannot read and you freeze, caught.

“What?” you say.

“No reason you gotta be in here for this,” he says. “Might be wise to dry off a little, don’t you think?”

Does the corner of his mouth twitch upward, or do you imagine it—you can’t decide. “Right,” you manage. “Sorry. Thank you, seriously.”

You pivot to leave him to it, splashing weakly as you go, your skirt bunched in one hand to keep it safe from the splatter. In the doorway you can’t help but look back, and see him kneeling in the mess, tool in hand, his toolbox open and shelved on a not-broken sink. He spots you looking and this time, you don’t imagine it. He lets slip half a grin.

“Got it from here,” he says.

You nod but don’t move and you don’t know why.

Well, that’s not true. You do.

Sarah’s dad cocks one dark eyebrow at you, bemused, maybe, by your hesitation. “You really have chaperones bail?” he asks, voice low.

“Three,” you say.

He grunts, then turns his attention back to the spitting sink, and you step out into the dim hallway without goodbye.

You slip into the bathrooms in the teacher’s lounge to stand under the hand dryer for a bit, letting your shirt dry out. When it’s no longer see-through, you stand in front of the long mirrors looking at yourself, fussing. You retouch your lipstick—red, like your skirt, like your nails—though the hair’s a lost cause. The best you can do is run a hand through the end bits and say an empty prayer.

Then, finally, you emerge, and take off with a sidelong glance thrown at the closed door of the flooded girls’ bathroom as you pass.

You volunteered four weeks ago, and you spent three of those weeks working on the decorations in tiny pockets of time between the school day, your commute home, and all the hours you spend every evening and weekend on lesson plans and marking. Maybe it’s only September, but the whole staff has been working since August and it’s no slower now than it will be in the spring. Still, you gave up sleep. Gave up seeing friends. Gave up proper, home-cooked meals and reverted to the habits of your college days, eating boxed mac and cheese straight from the pot over the stove.

Now, it all pays off.

The gymnasium’s a goddamn ritz. Ribbons of twinkle lights droop from the rafters, sparkling above the scatter of a disco ball. You thrifted huge, vintage neon signs—with your own money, thanks so much public school district—that cast pools of candy-colored light on the shiny floor. Gingham tablecloths sheath the drink stands. You had to bribe the theater department to let you repurpose an old bartop set from some long-gone play. Painted that sucker with black and white checkers, even scrounged up some round, pleather bar stools to match. Instead of a bar-bar, it’s a snack bar—pastel cupcakes and dairy-free milkshakes and huge metal bowls of nut-free, everything-free snack mixes displayed behind the bar. Kids all get three snack tickets ‘cause the PTA had strong feelings about sugar intake, but hey. All the bar stools are full; the kids seem to love it.

Despite the last-minute disasters, you’re tempted to cry with relief. Slept three hours last night, painting the last of the stars that hang overhead, but they look like magic now. Glossy and twinkling while Elvis plays. It looks pretty close to perfect. And the kids, by some miracle, are dancing. The gym teacher comes out to show them some simple swing steps, and as clumsy as they all are, it’s fucking adorable.

“Hope you’re willing to do this for all the dances,” one teacher mutters to you as you pass.

You flit from table to table, refilling and wiping down and checking in with chaperones—twenty minutes zing by in the blink of an eye. When the gymnasium door creaks quietly open, the dark shape of Sarah’s dad appears in the doorway. You set down your punch glass with a grin and scurry over.

But he’s looking up when you make it to him, starstruck by twinkle lights, his face pink and blue with the neon light. Christ, he’s easy on the eyes. Facing this way, with none of the gym or kids or decorations in view, you can almost imagine that you’re standing in a bar looking up at some handsome stranger you might have a shot in hell at taking home.

“Everything okay?” you ask, when he still hasn’t looked down, his hand flat and broad on the door to prop it open.

He blinks, wakes from his daze, and the look of wonder that just now softened him fades, his face stiff again. You step into the hall and the door slides shut behind you. The honeyed voices of The Isley Brothers muffle.

In the direct light of the hallway you can see he’s soaked—jeans wet to the tops of his thighs, his whole flannel clinging to his chest. One curl lays flat and damp against his forehead. He would’ve had to kneel right in the spray to work on the sink. Might as well have set a hose on the poor man.

Jesus, you must have ruined this guy’s whole fucking night.

“Oh my god,” you say, eyes wide with horror. “I am so sorry—”

He lifts one hand as if to say stop and your mouth snaps shut. “Just water,” he grumbles. “Sink’s fine now. Joint was old and brittle. Had a part in the truck that’ll hold you over till Monday, but you’ll need someone to do a proper repair next week.”

You run a hand over your face, so grateful to him that all logical thought and processing flutters right out of your head. “Jesus, I could kiss you—thank you so much, seriously,” you start to say, hand still over your eyes as you stutter to a halt, realizing your mistake.

Heat boils in your face as you split your fingers to peek at him through your hand, but he doesn’t look horrified. He just rolls his eyes, a little playfully you think, and shakes his head like you’re being ridiculous. “Not necessary,” he says.

You let your hand drop. “I’d insist that I’m normally the epitome of professionalism, but there’s no way in hell it’d be convincing,” you say, grinning sheepishly.

Shrugging, he remains silent. Maybe you should take your friends up on their offers to set you up—you clearly need to get laid. Just him shrugging is doing things to you. Nevermind the tiny flick of his tongue that graces his bottom lip as he looks off down a roped-off hall.

“Still short on chaperones?” he asks, not looking at you.

“Yeah,” you admit. “But we’ll make due.”

Another shrug. “Could help out—‘m already here.”

Your eyes round. Though part of you wants to refuse, insist he’s done more than enough already, that he ought to get home and into dry clothes and forget about this mess, you don’t. It’s definitely selfish, almost greedy, but you don’t want him to go. Even if you only get to look at him across the gymnasium without saying another word to each other the whole rest of the night, you’d like him to stay.

A grin squirms across your face before you can stop it; you have to look away to smother it as you tap one foot against the floor.

“Okay,” you say coolly, returning your gaze to him once you’ve gathered yourself. “But you can’t go in there looking like this.”

The theater department’s costume room gives you the creeps. Has since the first day you stepped foot in this place back in August when you got the grand tour—anywhere with this many mannequins is cursed, frankly—and it turns out it’s even worse in the dark. When you swing open the door, pale light from the hall slants against the black floor, and you reach blindly across the wall for the switch as your heart patters with dread.

Then finally: light. Weak, stuttering, yellow, but light all the same. You breathe.

Regardless, stepping into the costume room feels like being squeezed. Cramped alleyways have been formed by clothing racks stuffed well past their capacity—gowns of past Shakespeare productions hang beside the gothic frocks of Morticia and Wednesday Addams—forcing you to inch between racks, grazed by a parade of empty sleeves.

Sarah’s dad, bless him, hardly fits at all, and has to shuffle through the aisles sideways to follow you on what must seem to him like a blind mission without any destination.

But you’ve been in this place. You know exactly what you’re looking for. Turning a corner, the next section is too narrow for the man to fit through, so you point out a chair across the room by the mirror and tell him to wait.

“And you can ditch the flannel,” you call out as he goes. “Can hang it over the heaters to dry.”

Though you hear the low thunder of him mumbling, you miss the words.

When you emerge from the dusty racks, unnerved by the looming, half-dressed mannequins standing guard over their lot, Sarah’s dad is sitting where you asked him to wait, stripped out of his flannel, left in a slightly damp white t-shirt, his shoulder blades faintly visible in the stuttering light. If him shrugging was doing something to you earlier—this is likely to kill you.

You clear your throat as you approach and he quickly straightens his posture. When you’re close enough, you hold out the hangers to him, even give them a little shake when he cuts his eyes at you, doubtful. You roll your own in reply. “Come on,” you insist. “Sarah will love it.”

That gets him to stand, albeit with a scowl, but it still makes you grin. With a grumpy hmph, he takes the hangers from you and you duck between racks again to give him some privacy. Sure, maybe you’d like a peek as he strips off those wet jeans, but even you know better than that. So you stand in the disordered aisle of costumes and listen instead.

For a long time you hear nothing, like he’s hesitating. You did have to guess the sizes, but you worked plenty of retail jobs in your early twenties. Aren’t so bad at guessing. Every breath in this room, now that you’re silent, feels agonizingly loud. Not just yours, but his. The swelling of his chest with air.

Then finally—clink. A belt buckle slacking open. Your eyes slam shut even though you’re looking in the opposite direction, at some 60s-style dress from what must’ve been an old Hairspray production with construction paper polka dots duct-taped on. He lets out a soft grunt. There’s a shuffle of fabric. Then a wet slop as his jeans hit the floor.

Your whole body throbs with heady, certain want.

Yes, you definitely need to get laid. This is humiliating.

When you hear the belt buckle’s metal clink again, signaling he’s got the new, dry jeans on, you feel it’s safe to speak again. “I never asked you your name,” you say, still staring at the costumes. You hear him set the next hanger on the chair and even though putting it on requires no further undressing, you’ll stay exactly where you are until he’s done. Don’t trust yourself not to leer.

More shuffling, this time of sturdier fabric. “Joel,” he gruffs, and after a pause adds bitterly, “I look ridiculous.”

Chuckling, you squeeze out of the aisles and find him standing before the full-length mirror wedged in the corner of the room, into which Joel is sneering at his reflection.

Also, he’s dead fucking wrong.

The jeans are a little tight, but frankly they’re better this way. His thighs taut beneath denim, his calves hugged. He’s a little bow-legged. So Texan. From the waist down he might as well be a cowboy. From the waist up, however, he looks like he’s just strutted off the set of Grease, putting even 1978’s Travolta to shame. His white t-shirt sits crisply beneath the black leather jacket, which he snaps to adjust the lapels. Fits him perfectly, like it was made for those shoulders, and he’s raked back his wet hair, giving it the look of being gelled, one stray curl rebelling over his forehead.

He catches your eye in the mirror, mouth twitching again, but it doesn’t become a grin or a frown. You raise an eyebrow at him. “Don’t know what you’re looking at,” you say. “But you do not look ridiculous from where I’m standing.”

His nose scrunches as he breaks his eyes from yours in the reflection, ducking his head to rub the back of his neck. Seriously, you’d crawl all over this guy if he weren’t the dad of one of your students. Future students—whatever. But you’ll save yourself the humiliation, gotta get this show on the road, and so you jut your chin in the direction of the door. “Let’s go. Got kids to supervise, hands to keep from wandering.”

Joel balks, hands flat to fists in an instant, ready to kill.

“Oh please,” you tease, and wave one hand dismissively as you make your way to the door. “Like you weren’t thirteen once.”

You listen as he stomps after you, muttering a cranky, “Gonna have to be at all these fuckin’ things,” that makes your head fall back with a sudden laugh.

The moment you return to the gymnasium, you’re needed by everyone—so and so needs to know where the extra ice is; what’s-her-face is concerned about the sugar content of the fruit punch; and some parent wants to talk about their kids’ English grade like this is the appropriate venue for such a conversation. You immediately lose Joel to the call of teacher-slash-host duties, and he slips past you, hugging the wall as he strides over to man the drink table which, in your absence, has stood without supervision. The man might as well be a saint—you manage to catch his eye and mouth a silent thank you across the gym, to which he half-grins from a pool of neon pink glow, setting you ablaze.

Most of the night you spend running around like a madwoman, responsible for switching in new music as each CD ends, refilling snack bowls, and pulling one student off another when you catch them kissing in the hall. Thankfully neither of them is Sarah, but you do have to give the kids a talking-to.

Late in the night, you’re chatting to some of your colleagues against the gymnasium wall and watching the kids shimmy to Rock Around the Clock, poodle skirts billowing like spinning tops, when you spot Sarah rush across the floor toward Joel—apparently only spotting him now. You’re too far to hear them, too far to read their lips, but Sarah’s runaway smile is obvious at any distance. She hops in place, delighted, and forces Joel to do a little spin for her.

Though smaller, you catch his smile too. The dimple in his cheek as he fails to restrain his contentment at her approval. How he shakes his head, embarrassed to be fawned over. Adorable.

When the Spanish teacher makes his rounds with the school’s camera, snapping flash photos of the kids’ eager smiles and costumes as they pose with their milkshakes or friends, you tap him on the shoulder and point in Joel and Sarah’s direction. “Get one of them, would you?” you whisper, and he nods, shuffling off.

Joel spots him coming a mile off, camera in hand, and immediately frowns. He makes eye contact with you across the gymnasium like he knew exactly where you were standing, and shakes his head as if to say no way. You smile, wicked, and mouth yes. One of his hands balls to a fist.

But when Sarah spots the photographer a second later, she wraps an arm around Joel’s waist to pose and his resistance crumbles. When you were thirteen, you’d have been humiliated to be seen posing with your parents in front of your classmates, but Sarah doesn’t seem to mind at all. Her adoration is obvious, abundant. Anyone can see how much she loves him—you can see, too, Joel’s love for her. Once the Spanish teacher raises the camera to shoot, he throws his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, looking down at her with a soft, grump-less grin. The white flash snaps in the dark gymnasium, photo taken, then Sarah returns to her friends.

You cut your eyes away when he starts to turn his head in your direction, returning your gaze to your colleague. Don’t need him catching you staring. Your dignity has suffered plenty tonight.

You cave about twenty minutes before parents are due to pick up the kids at the end of the night—not due to stress, just exhaustion—and sneak out into the black night to smoke. Tucked just out of view of the parking lot and doors, you sink onto a wooden bench and light up, letting the tension unwind from your body. Gray smoke tendrils as you exhale a half-formed smoke ring. Never could get those right, but it’s fun to try while crickets croak unseen from the shadows, braiding their eerie melody. With every drag, you relax into a kind of trance, at one with the night.

Eyes shut, you don’t hear him coming. It isn’t until he clears his throat that your eyes snap open and you realize someone’s caught you smoking.

“Shit,” you mutter, adjusting your posture to sit up straight.

Joel stands over the bench, caliginous in the dark. His hair has dried, curls loosening from each other. You hear a low chuckle that must come from him, but you can’t quite make out his face until he lowers himself onto the bench beside you—then you see he’s smirking.

You tap ash onto the sidewalk beside your feet, away from him, unable to look him in the eye. “Not worth trying to defend myself, is it?” you joke sheepishly.

He adjusts his position, thighs spread just a touch, and crosses his arms over his chest. The leather jacket is practically criminal, it fits him so well.

“That’s alright, darlin’,” he replies. “Don’t need to.”

You bring the cigarette to your lips to smother your impulse to smile, the filter stained crimson by your lipstick. You risk a glance at him. “You want one?”

Shaking his head, the corner of Joel’s mouth tugs. “Quit when Sarah came around,” he admits.

“Very responsible,” you say, and though you really shouldn’t flirt, it comes out a little snarky, like you’re teasing him. “Quit after college, but I get to indulge twice a year.”

Joel quirks an eyebrow at you, though doesn’t question the obvious flaw in your logic. “Miss it?” he asks.

You shrug and exhale a thin stream of smoke from the corner of your mouth. “Always think I do,” you say. “But it’s so much grosser than I remember. Can’t believe I used to smoke these everyday.”

He lets out a deep hmph, not quite a laugh.

“I’m serious,” you say, grinning now. “These things are vile. They reek and make kissing gross. I might as well burn the clothes I’m wearing after this. Don’t even like it anymore—it’s just nostalgia, I think.”

Shifting again, Joel’s legs spread a little wider, though from the other side of the bench you’re still nowhere near touching. As you click one lacquered nail against your cigarette, ash rains softly to the ground.

“Never minded,” he mumbles. He’s looking out at the dim street, not you. Streetlamps dot the street with coins of gold between cedar elms that have already begun to drain their color. The breeze is next to perfect, whisking your smoke politely away from Joel.

“Minded what?”

“Kissin’ someone who smokes,” he says matter-of-factly. His tone isn’t flirtatious—nor is his expression, his face still profiled to you—but goosebumps scale your arms all the same.

“Hm,” you hum in reply.

Best not to dwell in this breath of quiet. The long pause in which you feel yourself want. You shift on the bench, cross your legs, and prepare to change the subject—but Joel beats you to it.

“Looks good in there,” his voice rumbles, and in your periphery, he turns to look at you for just a moment, handsome and leather-clad. Practically put on this earth to punish you. You hold your breath until he turns his head away again. “Impressive.”

Your heart squeezes like he’s crushed it in his fist, but you tilt your head back and forth nonchalantly. “Guess it doesn’t look so bad,” you admit. To your surprise, this drags a quiet chuckle from Joel, and your eyes drop quickly to his hand where it hangs from his still-crossed arms—a brief and discreet glance, you think—and see no ring. It shouldn’t make a difference, but you're glad.

“Gotta be more subtle than that, darlin’,” Joel mumbles, despite the fact that he’s not looking at you.

You feel your face rash with heat. “Fucking eagle eyes,” you mutter, pinching the last of the cigarette to your lips for a final drag. You hold the smoke in your lungs as Joel laughs again, this time with more warmth.

He shakes his head. “Could’a just asked,” he says.

“You’re not even looking at me,” you say, smiling despite your embarrassment. You bend over to crush your cigarette against the bottom of your shoe, then pocket the spent filter, disappearing the evidence. “How the hell did you even catch that.” It isn’t so much a question as it is a whine.

Joel shrugs. “Don’t have to be looking at you to be watchin’,” he says.

You can’t decide if you’re glad or disappointed that the moment you both look at each other, the whole of his face finally visible in the murk of nightfall—warm eyes, summer skin, that stubbly beard you’d like to nuzzle into—a caw of noise erupts inside the school and shatters the moment. The sound of students emerging from the gymnasium into the hall draws Joel’s attention first, and you allow yourself a long look at the back of his head to study his curls, just beginning to thread with gray, before you let the noise draw your attention, too.

“That’d be our cue,” you say, and you both rise from the bench.

As Joel starts shrugging off the leather jacket, you put a hand on his bicep to stop him and shake your head. So solid. Warm. He freezes under your touch, black leather slumped part-way down his arms, until you withdraw your hand.

“Nu-uh,” you say. “You’re keeping that.”

He frowns. “Not sure I like the idea of stealin’ from Sarah’s school,” he says.

You roll your eyes, wave one hand dismissively. “You saw where it came from, they’ll never miss it. There were at least half a dozen more in there.”

When Joel narrows his eyes at you, you narrow yours back stubbornly. Finally, he sighs and snaps the jacket back over his shoulders—a gesture that turns you to honey—and shoves one hand into the back pocket of his jeans. The also-stolen jeans. You’re gonna make him take those too. Not like anything that fits him is gonna fit any of the students here. You don’t even know why the theater department has costumes this size.

“Least take this and sign me up for,” he gestures vaguely with one hand as he pulls something from his pocket and holds it out to you. “Whatever. More chaperonin’.”

Pinched between his fingers is a crisp business card bearing the same logo stickered to his truck. Miller Construction Ltd—Joel Miller, Co-Owner. His phone number is printed squarely at the bottom. You take it, running your thumb across the printed text.

“Very generous,” you tease, and Joel looks down at you and grins, one dimple creasing his cheek. When you smile in return, his dark eyes slip down your face, landing on your lips.

As you make your way back up the path to the school, he walks close enough that his arm brushes against yours just once. Your body purrs with want, made worse when he smirks and leans toward you, lowering his voice. “Trust me,” he rumbles quietly. “Offer’s entirely selfish.”

Then, entirely composed, Joel yanks the front door open for you and winks.

Moodboard created by @studioghibelli!

#almostfoxglove

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