#Susan Cummings | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

virginreprise · 3 months ago

Text

J U N K Y ' P R I D E

joel miller x reader

" I KNOW I CAUGHT YOU AT A NOT SO HAPPY TIME OF YOUR LIFE " ✧ ⁺ ⁺ 　°

WARNINGS: age difference (big one), pervy joel, trailer park joel, joel miller has a vintage porn collection, joel's a sad old man, video game joel was in mind when writing, joel is six foot because i say so, multi-part, smut in the next chapter because i can't write anything if it isn't slowburn

WORD COUNT: 7.7k

CHAPTER TWO

AO3LINK

CHAPTER ONE—BAD DISEASE

Static from the television set tucked in a corner, a beaten leather armchair parked in front of it and a stack of vintage, VHS porn tapes on the unit. One half of “Agent 69” stuck in the VCR, balancing on its side due to the lack of care from its owner who’d jacked off in the very chair that towered over it—cum stained fist and a name on his lips, slipped out between plush flesh. Hand frantic, jerking in tandem with the buck of his hips as he flit his eyes between the TV and the wood-panelled ceiling, profanities spilling from his filthy mouth. Muttering to himself as pornstar moans graced his ears, words whispered into the night, stolen by the archangels and flown up to God: conspiring, scheming, uttering under their breath that he should not be allowed through the holy gates on judgement day. That the defiled Bible on his bookshelf and the cross that had been left for him by the previous owners, pinned to the trailer wall, was not enough for them to ignore the strained sentences that he spewed in a desperate bid for the Trailer Park Princess on her knees—red nails and red lips wrapped around his cock. A ring of colour staining the base.

Utter filth. And Joel knew it.

The perversions he didn’t keep to himself, laughed about bending over the pretty thing next door whilst nursing a beer on Pete’s porch—puffing away on the cheap cigars he’d stolen from the liquor store. They tasted like shit, smelt like shit and Joel would’ve been better without it, but it added to the image: kept Susan from asking him stupid questions like why he didn’t have a woman. It was her way of flirting, bikini top displaying her sagging tits, bending over the kitchen counter whilst his buddies watched baseball.

“You got your eye on anyone, Joel?”

“Not really, Susan.”

Then Pete interjecting.

“Come off it, Susan. Just cause he ain’t committed don’t mean that he ain’t got women.”

That kept her quiet, made her slink away into the hallway, slipping into their bedroom and pulling a cover-up on—suddenly insecure.

Joel wasn’t a pervert. He didn’t have some strange penchant for young women. They were just…nice to look at. Pretty and sun-kissed in the Texan heat, ass hanging out their shorts, bikini top doing much more to entice than Susan’s did. There was no harm in looking—they never knew. He prided himself on being discreet, nursing a beer in the late afternoon whilst Kenny Rogers lulled from the radio, flicking ash from his cigarette onto the porch floor—eyes trained on your open window, cracked just a tad to let the air through. Drapes open.

At times, he thinks you do it on purpose, a gentle taunt, a silent jeer: “You can only look, perv.”

If the invitation was there, he’d take you up on it. Because out of all the women he’d fucked, headboard bashing against the wall, a chip in the wood of the trailer evidence of his trysts, you were the only one who’d worked him up to the point of no return. The only one who’d grabbed him completely by the collar and forced him to lick your boots.

Like Joel said, he wasn’t a pervert. You were just a fucking whore who needed to be put in her place.

So he’d sit there, in the white garden chair he’d snatched up from the pile of scrap that accumulated just east of his trailer, and watch. Most days, you’d be doing nothing in particular, unfortunately already dressed, dirty clothes in hand and wet hair dripping down your back. Other days, the days where Joel thought he was really lucky, where he’d stumble inside with a hard-on, sit on his recliner and hastily shove whatever he got his hands on, into the VCR, skipping over the poorly acted introductions, and pretend that the moans reverberating the trailer, were yours. Images of you slipping your shorts over your hips, swaying slightly to whatever tune you were listening to, peeling your shirt off your body. No bra. Slyly stepping towards your window, catching his eye once, a look so slight that he wouldn’t be surprised if he imagined it, and pulled your drapes shut.

He’d spilt all over his hand, white on his knuckles and a smile on his lips.

Joel would never feel guilty for wanting you, not when he had already made peace with the fact he was a deadbeat, bound to the white trash lifestyle, unemployed and living off the pills he paid for and sold for a ridiculously high price, still grieving his losses and wondering what the fuck he could’ve done differently. If he would’ve done anything differently given the chance.

No, Joel was not a bad person. He just looked for her in every person, desperately seeking a will. And so far, you had succeeded in helping him remove the gun from his mouth—evenings spent in different, dangerous ways.

Texan summers were unlike anything you’d experienced before, the heat so incredibly stifling that your love for the sun disappeared completely. Mornings spent on the porch, soaking in the last bits of breeze before cycling your ass to work, sweating and heaving by the time you got there, in the same condition when you rode back home and locked yourself away with every window flung open before nightfall fell and you felt you could breathe again.

The cicadas were loud, the snakes huddled up in the shade, waiting for you to trample on them, and the beast next door, Joel Miller: terrifying, gorgeous and a fucking pervert.

The day you’d moved into the trailer, despairing the loss of stability, ruminating upon your desperate escape from a home now dead and lost to the prairies of your mind, he’d been there. Wifebeater stretched across his wide torso, a cigarette placed on his lips, unused as it hung there, smoking away, the grey wisps begging with each dissipation into the atmosphere: breathe me in. He’d stared. Unable to be subtle no matter how slick he thinks he is, eyes flitting between your tits and your ass. Tits. Ass. Tits. Ass. A calculated dance that left a funny feeling brewing in the pit of your stomach, a lurch in your bowels that made nausea claw its way up your throat.

Tits. Ass. Then, he suddenly looked at your face, standing there on his porch, the sunrise building its way up the horizon, too early for anybody to see him looking you over like you were a dead deer he’d just shot, smirking at the notion of sawing your head off and displaying it on the wall above his mantle. Heaving boxes into the empty trailer, lot number seventeen, whilst the owner of lot eighteen wouldn’t take his fucking eyes off you, was a terrible feat.

Once you’d shoved the last box into your bedroom, you’d shut the door, locked it tight and peeked through the window to see that he had gone back inside, retreating to the haven of steel and veneer.

Over time, Joel became easier to manage. After the initial, awkward introductions where he’d called you princess, babydoll, sugar (almost adding a “tits” to the end of the nickname before realising where he was) your stomach reeling at the monikers, time settled your unmistakable disgust for him, the universe replaced the sickness you felt when you spoke to him with another stomach-turning anxiety that you pushed down far into every crevasse and high onto every mountain.

You grew to enjoy the nicknames, skipping a few paces up his porch steps and ask him ever so kindly if he could come and fix the cupboard door that was swinging off its hinges, change the lightbulb because you couldn’t reach the ceiling yourself, stop the leaky tap that seemed to start drip drip dripping every month—just to bully you.

Although you knew that Joel was a dirtbag, hearing him talking about the filthiest things, laughing as Pete clapped him on the back in praise and acknowledgement, knowing that he wanted nothing more than to treat you like a whore, he gave you nothing except a sly smile, a sleazy nickname and the occasional help around the house. Fixing things.

So, naturally, you began asking around about Joel. Susan liked to gossip. So did Lillian, a woman who had spent her entire life in the park and, at sixty-two, had no interest in leaving.

“I remember when he moved here,” she’d told you one fine summer evening, when the heat wasn’t as menacing and you felt content being away from the air conditioning, sipping sweet tea in Lillian’s wooden garden chairs, feet placed on the seat—chin resting on your knees. “All stoic, wouldn’t speak ‘ta anyone. I could tell he’d gone through something bad, you know me and my sixth sense.”

She’d paused for a moment, taking a drag, a sip, a sigh before looking at you solemnly.

“He was a catch with the ladies,” she’d muttered. “They were all after him, even this one over here,” she’d pointed to Susan who’d smacked her arm, complaining about her disrespect. She was a married, loyal woman after all. “Well, it’s true. If I were twenty years younger, I would’ve gone for him too, but it wouldn’t have done much anyway cause he didn’t touch anyone. There ain’t many pretty young ladies round here, you know you’re the only one,” she’d said plainly, addressing you with a hint of affection.

Waving her cigarette around as she relayed every single detail she knew about Joel’s love life, telling you how after a few years of moping, he’d bring back girls in the middle of the night, fuck them, and then throw them out the next day.

“He’s not a romantic,” Lillian had prefaced, Susan interjecting with:

“Ya think so? I think he is…if he just found the right woman-”

“Oh don’t listen to her Darlin’, he’s a man who likes to play. He ain’t lookin’ to settle, I tell you that much.”

Listening to them both, their anecdotes, their stories, and their opinions, you concluded one thing about Joel Miller. He was an asshole. A man who had done nothing to better his life since he stepped foot in the trailer park ten years ago, a sag in his shoulders and an anger in his eyes.

You weren’t sure if he’d mellowed since then, or if he’d just managed to conceal it better. Joel hadn’t been angry around you, not when you knocked on his door at three in the morning, asking him if he could come get the spider out of your bedroom, not when you’d accidentally run into his truck with your bike or told him that he was an asshole when you’d caught him talking about you one day in springtime.

“She’s as dumb as fucking rocks,” he’d chuckled. “Bet she gets cockdrunk so easy.”

He’d grumbled out the last sentence, an afterthought that was more for him than the men he was talking to, but you, stumbling around, half-asleep after your shift, were not willing to take the degradation. You’d berated him in front of his peers, slammed the door behind you, and regretted it immediately. Because, even though it shouldn’t matter, even though you thought he was pervy and angry and wouldn’t treat you how you’d been told you deserved, the last thing you wanted was for him to hate you.

Every time he praised you, told you that you looked good as you stepped out of your home, on your way to Lillian’s for a catch-up and the cigarettes she bought you every three weeks, just for being good and keeping her company, you felt that tingle, the synaptic transmissions running down your spine every time he stepped through your door, asking what the issue with your tap was. You should’ve been disgusted when he’d left and you’d gone to the bathroom only to find the panties you’d left on the floor were gone, but you’d felt that same spark instead. A deep, sliding ache that consumed every part of you.

Luckily for you, your sink decided to start leaking again on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Perfect time to lure him into your trailer, grab him by the neck and ask him as nicely as you could if he could cease the pain.

Sip of beer, drag of cigarette, click of the remote to change the channel, repeat.

A usual Sunday afternoon pastime.

Joel would’ve rifled through his VHS’s, find something he could jack off to whilst he deliberated whether today would be the day he’d say “fuck it” and saunter on over to next door, hoping to god he’d get his dick wet by someone other than a whore, but he couldn’t be bothered to move from his seat. It was effort enough trying to change the channel, arm aching as he pressed the button, rolling his eyes as the same boring drab illuminated his TV screen.

It was another one of those days. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, the broken glass, the notion that he would never fix it no matter how easy it would’ve been to go over to Shane’s and ask him to get it working again, all for the low price of a few pills.

She’d left him with it and he would die with it.

A reminder of her every time he glanced at his watch, swallowing hard as he remembered the way he’d pressed cool metal to the side of his head, a tear slipping down his cheek before realising that he never could. Because Joel was an asshole, he knew that. He was selfish and cruel and spoke about people as if they could get any lower than he already was. But more so than anything, Joel was a sad old man.

Tommy, the damn bastard, who’d left Joel to fend for himself while he went off with his new-found “true love” to have kids and a decent life, had sent a few thousand dollars and a pitiful “I’m sorry, Joel,” over the phone after his big brother had fucked up and lost his job. When Joel had been left penniless and broken. Nothing to fight for. No one to hold him or tell him that he was loved. He’d spent all his money raiding gas stations for cases of beer, bottles of whisky, anything that could numb the pain—choosing the alcohol over food, over his mortgage. When he’d lost the house, he hadn’t taken anything of hers. Even after she’d died, he’d insisted that everything needed getting rid of. Her clothes, her posters, even her damn phone. He’d slammed Tommy against the wall after realising that he was taking everything with him, that he was not doing as he was told. After that, Joel had closed the door on her bedroom and never stepped foot in it again.

All he had of her was a damn watch, a photo that his little brother had shoved into his hands, a harsh, “Take it, you damn bastard. You’ll regret it when you stop feeling so sorry for yourself,” on his lips, and the memory of her in his arms when he’d felt that huge heart of hers stop beating.

There had been many low points in Joel’s life, wandering through his existence on a tightrope that was ready to snap with every step, but none had been lower than that.

Not even when he’d called Tommy in the middle of the night, sobbing, struggling to breathe with a clean bottle of Jim Beam in his hands, begging him to help. He’d lost his house, he’d lost his job, he’d lost his daughter. Where to next?

Tommy, all the way in Wyoming had scraped together some money, told Joel to get himself down to the mobile park and a steady job. Start from the bottom again.

Sometimes, Joel resented his brother for not giving him that money for a flight to the West, smiling down the phone as he informed that they had a spare room for him, his nephew cooing in his bassinet and waiting for his old uncle.

He understood though. When he wasn’t drunk it made more sense why he hadn’t invited him to his home.

They hadn’t spoken in sixteen years. To his nephew whom he did not know the name of, he was just the deadbeat uncle who hadn’t made it out of Texas—still alive but lost.

Tommy would’ve probably hated him more if he was sitting on Joel’s couch, staring at the porn and the beer, the cigarettes that his little brother knew he had only smoked when he was a rebellious teenager—the occasional pull never becoming a habit, especially when his daughter came along.

Almost certainly would’ve despised him if he knew how he felt about the girl next door, the perverse catharsis he experienced when he took himself in hand and imagined taking care of her, shushing her whimpers, making her whine with the way he stretched her open.

Oh, and he was a bad man. A bad fucking man and he was the last thing you needed. Some poor, young girl who was doing her best to make it. Pay the rent on time, make sure she was kept fed, all whilst juggling the inescapable feeling that once you were in the trailer park there was no getting out.

Joel didn’t see an end. He’d been here for over a decade; his drug money was not for a new house or a new life, it was for whores and booze, a carton of Marlboro reds that he got for cheap from Bill, and porn. He’d collected all the goddamn vices—became a person so unlike who he was, so far from the quietly loveable single dad he’d been hailed as years ago.

As far as Joel now was concerned, that guy was a fucking pussy.

That guy would think he needed professional help for the way he thought about you, would expel every single image of you naked and writhing, tits bouncing in time with his thrusts as you lay boneless and crying in his grasp.

You were legal. What was the big fucking deal?

Joel needed this. You were not just some throwaway material good that would leave him in debt for the next ten years—you were full and gorgeous, smart, quick-witted and made him harder than the oak tree that stood centuries-old just a little down the road from the old Palmer farmhouse.

That day you’d heard him talking about you to his friends, the way he’d lied and said that you were dumb, when you’d come storming up his porch steps—all rage and heat—and cussed him out, he’d laughed. It didn’t matter about the taunts and the sniggers he got from his buddies who he would have no issue never speaking to again. They could go fuck themselves for all he cared because you hadn’t willingly thrown yourself at his feet and licked his boots.

Whores were easy. No challenge with a whore, no longing, no desire, just a mutual understanding that this was transactional and she was going to moan as loud as you wanted her to whether it felt good or not.

But you had given Joel something worth chasing. And fuck he was going to catch you, even if it meant he’d die in the chair he sat in, with nothing to show for his life except a case of Bud, an empty fridge, and a stain on his bedsheets where you’d reached for him—begging for everything he could not give.

Something about him had you checking your appearance before you walked out the door, making your hair presentable, touching up your lipgloss, blotting the oil from your face. All for a man who saw you as nothing but jailbait

You wanted to be wanted. To be looked at with a fire, an urge to grasp you and take you fully, pull you close when you cried and kiss you when you shook with the need to run far away. You wanted to be kept, to be reminded every day that you were needed, loved and desired.

You wanted Joel.

Joel: the sad old man next door, the dangerously handsome figure in your life that stood six feet tall, jaw sharp and strong, muscles straining with his arms crossed—built big and firm. A chest you’d very much like to lay your head on. A bulge in his pants you’d very much like to see stripped bare.

So when the opportunity came, you seized it, with an iron first, intent on capturing what had been yours since the day you’d moved to the free prison—since the day he’d stared at you, an unadulterated and irremovable, perverse desire that shook the very beings of your existence. That determined exactly who you are and how you would fall for the watchful eyes and glinting gaze that befell you every time you stepped down the rotten wood steps at the foot of the trailer entrance.

You stepped onto them then, Chuck Taylors strapped to your feet, laces loose and lazily tied, skin smoothed from the razor you’d pressed against it in the shower that morning—all for him. The appearance every bit of expectation you had for his fantasies and ideals, hoping that the attire would thrust him further into abandoning a morality he did not have.

The sun set rapidly behind you, the grass long and dry around your ankles, unmowed—as you nor Joel had ever discussed who would get mowing duty—and a clear head. A set destination, unstifled by a long day at work, the sweat curling along your back too harsh to be ignored and the sometimes discourteous demeanour of Joel’s so powerful that you often wondered why you liked him. Why you gave so much attention to a man years ahead of you, unable to look at you without laughing at the prospect you thought you were more to him than a pretty thing to look at whilst he wallowed in his castle of self-pity he’d built for himself all these years spent trapped and lonely.

It all seemed insignificant that day you’d crossed the boundary between lot seventeen and lot eighteen. When you’d shakily advanced up his steps, onto the porch you grew so fond of, and knocked once, twice, thrice on the white door—stepping back to await his welcome. Hoping to god that he’d see you and take you there.

The shuffling on the other side of the door raised your heart rate, a sweat forming on the back of your neck which you brushed away with a hasty hand, intimidated by what awaited you when the white disappeared and transformed into bulking arms and a firm chest—a tall body that you gazed up at with ardour.

When the sight appeared, you gulped away the desire to run away, to pretend that you’d just come here for the leaky tap and that there was no other reason you had bothered him on his peaceful Sunday afternoon. No ulterior motive. Not that you just wanted to see him because he had hardly been around the past couple of days and in truth you were worried about him; you wanted to make him feel better.

“Hi.” He struggled to conceal the surprise in his voice, seemingly struggling further to keep the thickness in his throat at bay, the redness of his eyes that displayed days of restlessness and insomnia. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” you murmured impassively, licking your lips, swallowing away the dryness in your throat at the state of him: burning cigarette in hand, flannel shirt unbuttoned and displaying the white wifebeater that lay underneath. The shape of his belly was visible underneath it, his belt purposefully unbuckled and hanging from the loops of his jeans. “I’m alright.”

There was a twitch of his lips as he stared down at you, eyes flitting from head to toe—shameless in the way he always was. In the way you liked.

“You sure?”

It seemed stupid suddenly: the entire situation. The call you felt towards him, the want you had to curl up against his chest, let him hold you and tell you he was proud of you for opening up to him—telling him how fucking much you wanted him, despite knowing exactly how it would end if you were to venture further into a relationship that surpassed just neighbours.

So instead of inviting yourself in, seducing him until he fell to his knees, tugged you by the waist and begged you for just the smallest piece of yourself, you succumbed to your insecurity, and retreated from the palace walls.

“Yeah…yeah, it’s just that my taps leaking again.” For a split second, he almost looked irritated, eyes honing in on you, narrowing with a look of aggravation—confirmed by the clench of his jaw. You appeased him, saying, “You don’t have to come over now. I just thought I’d tell you,” and the expression slowly slipped away into something much more sinister: mirth.

“Sure thing, pretty girl,” he said as he slinked away from the doorframe, inviting you into his home, coaxing you past the threshold as he fumbled about in the fridge and pulled out two beers.

Contemplating, you stared at him, the flex of his muscles as he uncapped each bottle, the stature and size of him as he hunched over the counters, turning around to hold out a drink to you. An invitation. One that you had expected you’d have to give yourself—that you’d have to kick and cry before he ever let himself find you.

“Just have a drink,” he soothed in that southern lull of his, the words rolling from his tongue with ease. As if he had practised the scenario before he knew it would befall him. “No point in worrying over your tap, I can’t do anything until I buy new washers. I’m out 'cause of you.”

The irritation he’d shown earlier seemed palpable now—as if he was inviting you into his home simply to make you as uncomfortable as possible, hold you down by the hips until you promised to leave him alone. A taunt, a ploy to make sure you would never get what you wanted.

However, you had never stepped foot in his trailer, had only ever been on his porch and ran your hand over the chair he frequented, wondering what it looked like beyond the four walls, and curiosity prevailed as it always did.

Uncertainly, you stepped onto the carpet, gently closing the door behind you, and mumbled a thank you as you took the beer from his hand.

Almost immediately, you felt like apologising for his irrational emotions.

“I’m sorry,” you muttered. “I didn’t mean to put you out. I’ll pay for whatever you need-”

“You pay in ways you don’t know. I don’t need your money.”

The cryptic way in which he spoke, the casualness as he gave you a look that hinted at something you couldn’t decipher and the slow saunter to his armchair left you in a state of uncertainty. Standing there, with a beer wetting your hand, a frown on your face and a furrowed brow, you had no idea where to go next. What would await you if you questioned him—the things you would discover that were best left in the hands of God and no one else.

Again, curiosity thrust its violent hand into your stomach and forced your feet to start moving towards him, hoping that he’d appreciate your bravery—your denial of your urges to run far away. It was noted, however, that Joel Miller could care less about bravery. That the quality itself was right down at the bottom of the ladder and that he could and would not give a shit if you welcomed his advances in spite of your lack of courage.

Hesitantly, you planted yourself on his couch, the furniture built into the wall, curving into an L shape where you imagined he’d kick his feet up after a long day, palm the bulge in his jeans and pick from the litany of porn that you took one glance at and thought better than to stare at it too long in case he felt offended by your interest.

The discovery admittedly took away a little of his allure.

“Make yourself at home,” he insisted, taking a sip of his beer and urging you to do the same with a single nod of his head. The slight twitch of his lips when you did so caused your body to go squirming, shifting uncomfortably in your seat as the fire raged within you—unable to be sated with the way he looked at you then.

Just a scoff, a sip, and a glance at your lips before he turned away completely and focused his attention on the blank TV screen— his reflection the only entertainment.

Silence grew uncomfortable, the bitter taste of alcohol coating the back of your throat, dripping down your oesophagus and choking any words that you wished to say. The heat emanating from him was overpowering even from the distance you sat apart, the scent of cigarettes overwhelming, so much so that you needed a distraction, anything to dull the rest of your senses from shutting down—all because of his powerful presence; the effect he had on you even when he sat still and awaited your call.

“What did you mean?” The words came tumbling from your mouth, driven by an insatiable desire and lacklustre confidence you had somewhere deep in the pits of your stomach, bubbling with the acid that nestled there until it rose to the surface—bile transforming into questions that could leave you in a shell of humiliation. At his furrowed brow, you expanded. “About me paying in ways I don’t know.”

He leaned forward in his seat, elbows resting on his knees. Sombre, all of a sudden. Staring into the barrel of his bottle, the brown glass reflecting like constellations on his face—accentuating the sharp angle of his jawline, the sunken hollows of his cheekbones.

When his eyes nestled on yours, burrowing right into your skull, you couldn’t move. Couldn’t even fathom the thought of taking a lungful of air, waiting with your breath held tight inside, for his answer.

“You shouldn’t go asking questions like that.” He sipped quietly, wetting his lips by flicking his tongue in and out, averting his gaze back to the shadow of himself in the television. “You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

It was not the answer you wished for, eyes downcast, focused on your shaking knee as you tried to gauge some form of clarity beneath the mystery that clouded the gates to his head—what lay beneath his skull; what you wished to find.

Against your better judgment, you pressed further, keeping the beer bottle clutched between your hands and hoping it would stay cold forever.

“I can handle myself.” It came out more confident than you had expected, your bobbing knee ceasing its movement, your dry throat provided with moisture. A break from the anxious sweat you had broken out in. “If you don’t tell me I’ll just leave a hundred dollars on your doorstep and leave you alone.”

You hoped quietly, in that stifling room, that he would make sure it didn’t come to that. That he would let you pay in any way he saw fit. You hoped that the sad hulk of a man sitting in the lone chair with porn in every drawer and money set aside for whores, would let you have him—bring back a semblance of light to his eyes. Find out what kept the despondency trapped so tight around him, the crown of thorns on his head expanding until it reached his feet and kept him locked in nature's prison—skin scratched, bloody and unable to be healed unless he found someone willing to cut through the overgrowth.

He seemed to bristle at your words, shoulders tightening, jaw clenching in the manner he did when he was irritated. You’d seen it before when Dale had been drunk and had followed you home. When you’d stumbled uncomfortably to your trailer and pleaded Joel who sat on his porch, almost looking like he was waiting for you, to get him off your back. That tick, the downturn of his brow, the twitch of his lip, the look so intimidating you had rushed inside and watched through the window as Joel clapped a hand on Dale’s back and ushered him away from you.

You had no idea what he’d done after they’d left your sight but Dale barely looked at you after. The last interaction you’d had with him was the morning after when he’d knocked on your door, timid for a fifty-year-old man, and apologised. Joel had been there, like he almost always was—always dancing in your peripheral, waiting for you, taunting you—with a cup of coffee clasped between two hands and a smug look on his face when he watched the interaction.

“You ain’t as smart as you think you are,” he uttered, slipping you away from the vignette and shattering the memory with his simple words.

They stung. More than you cared to admit.

Men were never this difficult, never this hard to get through to, never this confusing. He had given you every possible sign, every protection, every knowing look that confessed: you are everything I wish to have.

It seemed every day he was further from you, every day he looked at you and thought that he was blinded by loneliness and that you were the last thing he needed to dote on.

With the rejection, came vexation, a rumbling little thing that forced its way into your mouth—lips parting to let it out.

“You’re not as discreet as you think you are.” As soon as they fell, the rest came following like a herd of bulls, a huge red flag flying through the air, right where Joel sat. They came for him, and you didn’t care enough to stop them. “I’m not stupid, no matter what you say.”

The tick, tick, tick of his jaw. That subtle way his eyes narrowed, honing in on everything but the thing causing his problems, trying desperately to stop the truths from betraying his conceptions.

“I see you, Joel. I see you through my bedroom window, using me as your personal stripper because you’re too fucking cheap to go down to the strip club and give a tip.” The push and pull was becoming apparent, the sympathy and disgust you held for him all at once growing and growing until all that prevailed was rage. That after everything, he still refused. That he was still a fucking coward no matter how many faces he pulled at anyone who looked at him wrong. You would not be deterred by the look he gave you then: one that should’ve made you shrink away in fear he would do something rash. “I see the way you looked at me from day fucking one. Just a pair of tits to stare at, a new young girl that you can prey on-”

“Stop.”

“I’m not stupid.” Your voice was rising rapidly, your lips downturned in a scowl, unable to see the danger that befell you if you continued. “I know how you talk about me to your friends, I know that you make a show of being this immovable thing that no one can ever get to because you’re so wrapped up in your own self-pity that you can’t even admit to yourself that the only thing you are is a fucking pervert. And an asshole.”

“You are crossing a line, little girl.”

His words fell on deaf ears, a scoff coming from the back of your throat—so many things that you wanted to say but couldn’t voice. You settled for a final, blow. One that might kick him off his feet.

“I know you stole my panties.” Jaw ticking, teeth grinding so hard they were liable to turn to dust in his mouth. “Took them right off my bathroom floor. Could you not help yourself? Are you that sad, Joel? Are you that much of a fucking perve-”

Silenced by the way he towered, standing upright, bottle discarded by the leg of his chair and fury dancing in his eyes—so apparent and profound you finally stopped and cowered.

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

You were stunned into submission, finally on the end of his intimidation—a feat that was sure to happen sooner rather than later. You were just another Dale, just another one of his victims that he shot down with narrowed eyes and a nasty tone of voice that forced you to swallow down the confidence—sending it right back to your stomach, and burning the false assurance away.

“I have been cordial with you for as long as possible.” There was danger in the way he spoke so calmly, a tremor in your hands as he stepped forward, facing you completely, and kneeled before you—eyes boring into yours, forcing you to look at him with the hand he placed on the couch beside you. “I’ve tried my hardest to be respectable but you make it so damn difficult.”

“I’m sorry,” you began, wishing you could take it all back, wishing that you could’ve used your boldness for better: crawled into his lap and let him hold you, sank to your knees like he and worshipped him with every bit of yourself you had.

“Sh, sh, sh,” he shook his head, the hand on the couch, moving, the weight of it resting there dissipating and falling even heavier on the side of your face. “You can’t take it back now.”

Nerves slipped like rapids through your stomach, the damn thing churning so much you began to feel sick with the anticipation and fear you felt being closer to him than you ever had been before. Your mouth opened as if to speak, then closed again when you realised that your throat had closed, the inside of your mouth dry and unable to lubricate your words with credibility as they fell from your lips.

“You think I’m a pervert?” he asked, eyes expecting an answer, eyebrows raising to help you find a response. “Hm?”

“Yes.” The monosyllable fell shakily, unable to lie when he was looking at you so harshly, all whilst stroking your cheekbone with his thumb and engulfing the right side of your face with one, big, warm hand.

He nodded with knowing, his other hand falling to your bare knee. You were crowded by him, completely consumed by his presence and with a harsh swallow, you hoped that he would slip away and allow you to breathe—if only for a moment.

“I know,” he said with finality, your cheek whacked with cold air as he removed his hand, quickly providing you with warmth again as he pressed his thumb to your chin, holding it delicately. Making sure you couldn’t look away from him. “But you like it, don’t you?” he brushed the bottom of your lip with his nail, an uncontrollable shiver running through you that he revelled in.

He’d called your bluff entirely. He’d locked you up in his cage, gave you the upper hand for just a second, made you believe that you could get away from him if you kicked and screamed enough, only to leave you hopeless as he twisted the key to the right, and threw the metal that granted you freedom, into the fire.

“If you had an issue with me looking, you’d close the drapes. You’re a smart girl, I’m sure it ain’t too hard for you.”

His patronisation, his demeanour that consisted of arousal and determination, had a small breath puffing from your lungs, a sudden and overwhelming heat crawling from each of his hands and into your head—breaking your rationale and leaving you pliable and willing in his grasp. He’d got you. Right there. And if he wanted you, you would let him have you.

“And if you didn’t want me to steal your panties, then you shouldn’t have left them there.”

It was unbelievable, the way he twisted the blame onto you, the way he made you believe in everything he was saying with a simple swipe of his thumb over your bottom lip and a look in his eyes that stopped you from questioning him.

“Yes, Joel, I’m sorry, Joel,” were the only words swimming through your head: words that you would’ve spoken aloud had he not stunned you into silence, the hand on your knee sliding along your skin, up towards the hem of your shorts where he slipped his fingers under and skimmed the skin concealed by the denim.

“You understand me, little girl?”

“I’m not a little girl,” you managed, voice shaky as the warmth of him engulfed you entirely, wrapped up in the scent of him, the feel of the callouses along your smooth skin and the eyes piercing you. If looks could kill…if those pretty eyes could rip you apart with the viciousness of their stare.

“No you ain’t,” he murmured, gripping your chin, thumb rubbing along the flesh of your bottom lip, the skin bouncing as he peeled it back and let go. “I know you ain’t.”

There seemed a flood came over his being, a white wave of purity dowsing him, ridding him of every adulteration and forcing sense back into his head as the hand fell from your face, the one on your inner thigh taking longer to slip away before the cloud of insensibility faded and he arrived to a semblance of morality.

You watched as he stumbled over to the kitchen, hand working over the scruff he called a beard and forced his eyes away from you.

“Joel,” you called softly, finally gaining back a little strength now he wasn’t crowding you; forcing you to look at him and make the first move so his conscience could be clean.

“Just go.” The words were uttered much softer than before, the delicacy of his voice surprising you but the strain that coated his throat a reminder that this was still Joel Miller. Dangerously beautiful Joel Miller with a lifetime of terror stashed somewhere in the backrooms of his mind, a darkness in the depths of his eyes you couldn’t help but be frightened by, and a story you wished he would tell. A story that stretched years back to the life before he crept past the opening gates of Shady Springs Mobile Park and left a life that you had no clue wether had been better or worse than his life now. “I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon and have a look at that tap. You might have to get maintenance round soon though if it keeps up.”

“I don’t like strangers…in my house.” Your words trailed off at the end of your sentence, caught up in the possibilities of your words and how he would reply. If he would see right through you and clock how you’d only spoken because the tap was one of the biggest ties you had to Joel. If he would realise that you’d thought about getting maintenance months ago when it first started dripping but didn’t want a permanent fix, no matter how annoying. All because of Joel Miller and the way he’d perversely captured you in the plot of some barely legal porno that you would’ve turned your nose up at if it was anyone but him and you.

You and Joel.

The thought sounded nice—the reality a little less nicer.

“Yeah, well…” he leant back on the countertops, arms crossed over his chest, eyes bloodshot and bordered by black—an undeniable piece of evidence that Joel perhaps wasn’t doing as well as he made everyone believe; that there was something deeper tugging at his mind and causing such aggravation.

After a moments silence, when he looked at you and you looked right back at him, your head clear and working properly again, you diverted the conversation elsewhere—a ploy to hack deeper at his head and find what lay underneath his skull.

“Are you okay?” Simple, easy. Not difficult to ascertain the concern laced deep in your tone because you were concerned for him. The moment he’d opened the door after days of barely seeing him, time spent cursing the fact he could peer through your windows but you could not peer through his, you knew something was wrong. That there was something happening to him. Something dangerous. Your sympathy began to overtake everything else, memory shed of all the times he had wronged you and replaced with the very little he had done right. “You look…tired. Exhausted, really.”

“I’m fine,” he said with finality, the rage in his eyes returning but with less power this time. The fatigue was setting in, the constant running from himself finally catching up to him.

“Are you sure?”

“I said I’m fine.” It shut you up well enough, so much so that you began to lose the commiserations. You could always say you tried. “Now get out of my house.”

It was the final thing he said to you before he slipped away, striding down the hallway, footsteps echoing until he reached the bedroom; the click of the door resounding throughout the trailer.

You stared at the spot where he’d kneeled, a finger brushing softly over your lip before shaking away the self-pity and gently placing the beer bottle on the table that sat next to his chair.

Looking one last time at the door at the end of the hallway, shadowed and guarded by snapping dogs, you opened the door, the damn thing creaking as if to shout to everyone within a mile radius that you had made no progress with the man you desperately wanted, and stepped out. Leaving your pride on the doorstep.

thanks for reading !

#virginreprise™#joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #the last of us #the last of us 2 #tlou #tlou2 #joel tlou #the last of us fanfiction

396 notes · View notes

breakyourrxles · 1 year ago

Text

❥business attire (m)

↳ You have no qualms with doing what it takes to get ahead professionally: a white lie here, a bit of cheating there—sleeping with your boss? Simple.

Until a business trip with a rival colleague puts quite a wrench into all of that.

bang chan x fem!reader — colleagues/rivals to lovers, romcom, porn with plot, explicit sexual content. [12k wc] cws: alcohol drinking, themes of sexism in the work place!!, penetrative sex, body cum shot, oral sex (m+f), dirty talking (very mild condescension/humiliation), teasing, chan has a big dick of course because i wrote this.

Everything has led up to this moment.

Years of studying, internships, exams; grueling schedules and lost hours of sleep, not even accounting for the people stepped over and lost along the way. You had made the decision long ago that you were willing to do whatever it would take to make it to the top, to achieve the kind of success that you knew was waiting for you somewhere out and into the future.

You're no stranger to the CEO's office, all shining and glittering gold with accents and glossed, white marble, though you do have to admit, you're not used to being here with a third, as far as company is concerned.

No, typically you find yourself here in the later hours of the evening, partaking in a particular set of extra curricular activities that you know will bargain your way up the professional ladder. Ethical? Questionable. Do you care? Not even a little bit.

Granted, you can't imagine the other guy—Chris—to feel similarly about your leg-up on him, as it were.

Your colleague in question stands beside you with hands behind his back like he's a child waiting to hear his grades called out by the teacher. It's a little charming, you've got to admit, though nothing if not sad given the fact that he's awaiting something that was never really going to be offered to him to begin with.

And you don't know anything about this guy because you don't tend to bother learning much of anything about the people surrounding you in your workplace, outside of the smallest inkling of weaknesses that can be used to your advantage. Susan in accounting, for example, one to have something of an issue with getting to work on time in the mornings; no problem, the time clocks can be easily forged to make up for the discrepancy.

Except, of course, for the fact that it's against company policy to do so, and an offense that can find one terminated in an instant—it certainly was a shame the evening that the CEO had come to find out about that, after a bottle of wine and a particularly enthusiastic blowjob from you.

But Chris keeps to himself, and if not for this meeting here, you'd not even know his name. He works on business contact profiles not unlike yourself, which makes him someone that sits directly in your crosshair. You glance over his features for a brief second—his high nose bridge and his full lips, and acknowledge that he's sort of handsome for someone that you have to destroy the will of today. Well, it's not you destroying it, though you've more than put in the work to ensure it to happen.

The CEO of the company brings his attention up from the paper work laid out in front of him and finally grants it to the both of you. Your eyes meet with his in an instant and you try to bite back the knowing grin of victory that threatens to pull at the corners of your lips. Be mature about this, you think to yourself. Humility not a strong suit of yours, sure, but no need to rub it all into the wound.

"There's a massive account that needs an exquisite set of eyes and ears on it this coming weekend, this kind of business trip is the type that makes or breaks a company, a supervisor of the company." The man pauses, eyes falling back down to the papers as he shuffles them about lightly across the desk. "So, you understand that the utmost sensitivity and attention to detail is necessary when deciding who it is to send out on these sorts of things, but in the event of a net gain, then it's easy to understand that the trickle down effect is one that can be felt by everyone involved."

You smile, this time unable to hold it back.

He continues. "The success of this means the immediate success of the supervisor involved."

Then, he looks up to the both of you.

"Which is why I have decided to send the both of you out, and based on the return, I will make a decision in relation to who will be the benefactor."

Your eyes widen, smile falling, and in the moment you find yourself incapable of holding your feelings of unjust back.

"What? What do you mean you're sending both of us? What benefit could me or the company see in having this guy tag along?"

"Hey?" Chris cuts in, a little wounded. You ignore him for the most part.

"Chris does good work, has proven himself on numerous occasions. I think the two of you will work just fine together, and if that's not the case, then consider it a friendly workplace competition to get the fires really burning for results."

Jaw clenched and teeth gritted tightly, you take a step towards the man happily seated in his position of taking, and dare to point a finger out towards him.

"I've earned this."

But to that, a knowing, shit-eating grin pulls at a single corner of his mouth. An understanding of this, of the anger you're feeling and where it's coming from and how absolutely fruitless it will be.

"Have you?" he questions lightly, a disgusting chime in his tone that makes your stomach turn. His eyes drop back down to the desk, not bothering to even look at you for the following question. "And how is it that you've done that, exactly?"

Freezing in place, even just the question mortifies you. Chris' being there feels far too illuminating now in comparison to the emptiness that he carried before, and you know that this man knows that you are incapable of answering that as diligently as you may like to.

But still, the both of you know.

You close your eyes slowly, exhale steadily and try to center yourself into something more professional once more. "I've worked incredibly hard for this kind of opportunity, sir."

"And so has Chan! Sorry, I mean Chris. I'm afraid we spend so much time together leisurely that I often forget to address you properly in a professional setting nowadays!"

What's worse than the initial blow of this knowledge dawning upon you is the way that the man beside you laughs, like it's the funniest thing in the world that you're being made a fool of in front of these men. Granted, he doesn't know—does he know?—regardless, the humiliation toiling in your gut twists unrelentingly whether your colleague is privy or not.

You don't get a chance to respond before the man who has wronged you continues on with the thought, however.

"You are still getting the opportunity, it's just that you're sharing it with someone else. If your work continues to shine above and beyond your peers, then you have nothing to worry about, now do you?"

It takes everything you have inside of you not to snarl out a reply. "Yes, sir. I'll see to it getting done."

"Excellent news! You and Chan are set to leave tomorrow, a red-eye to Los Angeles for three days. I trust that the two of you can have it settled in that time?"

"Yes, sir," the both of you reply in unison, and even just that twists like a dagger in your back.

The airport terminal is busy, too much, for your liking.

There are perks to being in such places, though, and you choose to revel in those small things. No one is interested in you or what you're doing. No one around you cares about your immaculately pressed garment or the fact that your luggage is slightly scuffed. They pay you no mind as you look up from your phone and towards the screen sitting atop the gate entrance as you await your boarding signal.

"Hey."

You sigh aloud at the simple word, easily recognizing the voice that carries it through the crowds. Glancing to your other side, your colleague stands with phone and luggage in hand; a suit jacket just ill-fitting enough that it perturbs you that much more.

So, you don't reply. Chris sits next to you and settles his belongings in such a haphazard way that it grates on your nerves—much like everything that he seems to do, does—and you silently await for him to make his presence unknown to you for what you hope to be the rest of the near week that the two of you are forced to spend together.

Not so lucky, however.

"I think it's going to be good that we're working on this together," he says cheerfully. Annoyingly. "By the way, you can call me Chan. Chris is so formal and professional."

"Well, Chris, we are workplace colleagues, so it only makes sense that we remain professional," you respond.

He leans in towards you, "Our work place isn't that professional, I'm sure you've noticed."

You don't like the sound of that, though it could very well be more of your hurt feelings and humiliation taking the driver's seat. Thus, you temper the anger that threatens to burst out at what you think could be certain implications and simply meet his eyes with a glare.

"So I have."

Chris, Chan, whatever—leans back in his seat, crosses his arms over his chest before continuing on with the thought that you don't care to hear more of but know you're going to be prisoned with, regardless.

"I think we can learn a lot from one another during this."

"And what is it that I can learn from you that I've not yet gathered from years of study, internships, and work in the field? Do you think it's an accident that I've landed myself so far up the corporate ladder?"

His head cocks to the side, and for a moment, you think it to be daringly condescending.

"No, but it's no accident that I've landed myself here, either."

You roll your eyes and focus down on the phone in hand.

"The truth of the matter is that in a lot of cases, the best way to get ahead is to take everyone else down around you," he carries on, voice dropping down to something more akin to a whisper. "Playing nice only gets you so far."

The snort of a laugh that escapes you is so quick you don't have a chance in fighting it back.

"If you think you're going to be conniving enough to wrestle this out of my hands, then I'm afraid you've been paired up against the wrong adversary," you reply. "Better, stronger, smarter men than you have tried, and failed."

Chan's eyebrows perk at that, like he's amused by the comeback. There's a part of you that appreciates the fact that he doesn't immediately wither in the shadow of your toughness, though you're far from desiring a fight for this trip as it carries on, either. Withering, in some cases, might be best.

"You don't know anything about me, yet you're so willing to assume I'm unworthy of the challenge of taking you on. Unfortunately for you, I love a good, friendly competition."

To that, you huff out yet another mildly amused laugh.

"It will be anything but friendly."

The flight to Los Angeles gives you plenty of time to conjure up a game plan, not that you think you're going to need anything all that involved to conquer your adversary.

Chan enjoys the in-flight entertainment alongside of you as you do—laughs along to the film that he's watching and orders himself a drink to truly settle in. You do neither. Instead, you crack open your laptop and mull over the numerous documents and spreadsheets of information that you'll want to know like the back of your hand by the time that you land.

As well as how best to handle him.

Thankfully, your colleague seems whimsically dim despite your earlier conversation in the airport. He talks a big game as far as a competition and winning is to be concerned, but you rack your brain trying to recall a time in which his name has ever come up at work previously; no accolades, no parties thrown, no cheers for a job well done. In fact, the majority of those moments have been granted to you, and incredibly hard-earned, at that.

But, you have to give it to him: he doesn't appear frightened by you. Chalk that up to naivete, sexism, or stupidity—you couldn't care less which pin it is that he lands on, because either way, the outcome will be the same.

So sure of himself, and yet nothing to show for it besides a bizarrely personal relationship with the CEO. Well, you have that, too.

With the way that things have played out, you want to call things off, however. This man back at the office has humiliated you and taken from you but not held up his end of the bargain. Is it worth it to continue carrying on? Will it harm your career if you don't? Probably best to maintain the status quo as far as sexual endeavors go. Besides, the sex isn't half bad, either.

When you and Chan land in Los Angeles it's far too early for your liking and with how little sleep you are now on, but the thrum of the bustling, awaiting city excites you. This opportunity is going to be everything—is going to grant you everything—and in all likelihood, you wouldn't be able to sleep if you were to try.

Chan attempts to take your bags from you once you're both walking the busy halls of LAX and you fight him off with every try. He smiles and laughs and rolls his eyes at your unwillingness to cooperate, but this is no comical matter to you. Little does he know how close to danger he sits at every passing moment.

One taxi down and making your way to the hotel, Chan rushes his way out of the car and around to the back so that you have no hope in fighting him this time. He is so insufferable, you think to yourself, though you can't deny yourself the joy of having him hauling your luggage about. Good, perhaps you will be useful to me, after all.

The hotel is a lavish one; all white marble, silver accenting and lush green foliage at every turn. You're thankful for that much, because in so many ways there is nowhere else that you wish to be less than here.

You spot a bar down the corridor just a bit and make a mental note of it, as you may be spending ample time there when not constructing the professional downfall of your idiot colleague. In that moment, Chan forces himself into your line of vision with a wide grin and nods his head over towards the elevator.

"Floor seven," he says, handing you one of the room keys.

You look at it, sitting thoughtfully placed inside of its red paper envelope with a number written on in gold ink. Then, you glance at his, still remaining in his hand.

The same number.

"We don't have separate rooms?" you question, though you're capable enough to already know the answer to such an asinine question. Thus, you move onto the next most obvious one. "Why don't we have separate rooms?"

"There's two beds, it's not a big deal."

"It is a big deal," you all but shout, forcing the tail end of your anger back as to maintain a semblance of professionality. "We need to go back down and get this sorted out. I'll handle it."

Chan laughs under his breath, watching the number on the LED change as the elevator rises.

"You won't be sorting anything out. There's about five major conferences in the area this weekend and this place is heavily booked, as is everywhere else decent in the region. You're just going to have to put your big girl pants on and deal with it."

You don't know Los Angeles well enough to hide a body. Unfortunate.

Though your fingers tingle and your head throbs, you don't bother fighting the fact any further. You are a logical woman, and you're perfectly capable of understanding the concept of there being no further vacancy in a hotel. Thus, you sigh, clench your jaw, and drop it altogether.

When the elevator stops with a ding, you couldn't feel more relieved. You rush out from between the metal doors so quickly that you nearly shoulder it as it continues its momentum. Down the hall and pausing in front of your shared, temporary residence, you press the key to the reader and push inside without even so much as a thought about where Chan is or how he is fairing with the baggage load that he has taken upon himself to deal with.

The door nearly shuts him out, a leg craned in through the crack as he fights it without a word to you for help.

It is spacious. Bright and clean and smells of new linens like no one prior to the two of you has ever actually stayed in here before. The bathroom is large and pristine in the way that it glitters. A wide enough working space with two chairs and not nearly enough coffee offered straight away—though that's a simple enough fix as far as you are concerned.

"Pretty nice!"

Ah. You had nearly forgotten about him, but Chan always has a way of making his presence known. He hands you your bag and you pull it over towards the side of the bed that faces the large window, blinds drawn. Reaching towards them, Chan offers up his expertise once again.

"They said there's a balcony."

"Surely I could have gathered as much for myself."

He rolls his eyes and sits on the edge of his bed, intent on unpacking. You continue on towards the balcony, pulling the fabric away and gazing out through the massive, glass panes.

It's Los Angeles. Not a whole lot to offer as far as views go in the major city areas, but suppose it will have to do.

"We should get dinner tonight. Look over our plan of action for the next couple of days with these clients and get to know one another a little bit better." Chan isn't looking at you while he says it, but you can hear the hopefulness in the sound of his voice without necessarily seeing it on his face. "Besides, it's on company dime, might as well go all-out!"

While the idea of spending somewhat intimate, one-on-one time with this man is not something that excites you, suppose what does excite you is the possibility of putting your devilish little plan of hostile take-over into action. Unfortunately, what this also means for your future, is something that will be much, much more difficult than simply defeating him.

Being nice.

"Yeah, that sounds good, actually." You hope the sudden change in your demeanor doesn't raise any red flags in his mind, but you don't think him to be smart enough to consider the fact. "There was a nice looking place downstairs in the lobby, maybe we should go there."

"Perfect!"

He's so happy that it almost makes you feel guilty about the whole thing.

Chan continues on. "It's early and I've got a few things I want to get ahead on. I'll get out of here so that you can sleep, just in case that's what you'd like to do, but feel free to send me a message if you need me for anything. I'll just be downstairs."

He's so kind. How unfortunate.

"I will, thank you."

Chan grabs his work bag and scurries out of the shared room. How disastrous this whole thing is for him, a monumental case of wrong place, wrong time.

Dinner is good, but your trickery is far more delicious.

There's a stack of envelopes with paperwork inside of them sitting on the edge of the relatively small table, barely enough room for it now that entrees and glasses of wine have been poured, but now that the business portion of the evening has come to a close, the two of you are able to enjoy the perks that going on these sorts of trips often has to offer.

Chan sits ahead of you with a glass full of white wine and a nicer tie than the one he arrived with. He looks handsome–that, you can't deny—though it's something that will have to sit ignored in the back of your mind with far more important matters to consider.

"Are you seeing anyone?"

You're lost in your thoughts when he asks the question suddenly, and it jars you back into the present moment with what you imagine to be an incredibly evident startle.

"I'm not sure that's any of your business," you reply quickly, but on second thought, you remember that your plan is to reel him in. Thus, you amend the response. "No, I'm not. I'm much too wrapped up with my career for that."

Chan pouts, like he's sad about it for you. "Still, it gets lonely, yeah?"

He looks and sounds sincere in a way that you're not expecting, and suppose a little honesty won't completely hinder your end goal.

"It does, sometimes, but that's what I've chosen. Once I'm comfortable with where I am professionally, then I'll carve out time for dating." You look up at him, pointing your fork straight at him, "this isn't some thinly veiled commentary about how I'm getting too old to find someone, is it?"

And though you're somewhat joking in saying it, horror strikes through each and every one of Chan's facial features upon hearing the words.

"What? Oh, no! God, no! I was just thinking that working long hours like we do can be isolating, so it might be nice to have someone to go home to at the end of it all, you know?"

You do know.

"It's not that I don't get out and meet people, do things," you say, taking a sip from your glass to wash away the humiliation of honesty that lingers in your throat. "They're just not…long term acquaintances, if you will."

Chan grins knowingly, and you don't particularly like that look on him. As if you've not been the one giving up the information freely to get him to this point.

"Ah, I see," he says in an exhale and an accompanying nod, "just enough to keep the bed warm next to you sometimes, huh? I'm no stranger to that arrangement, myself."

This is far more information than you find you ever need to know about any of your colleagues, though the same could be said about anything at all regarding their personal lives. Spouses, kids, pets, what kind of car they drive; it's all more information than you care to know about any of them, though you can't help but feel the sizzle of intrigue inside of your chest at his willingness to offer up such particularly intimate knowledge in regards to his late night activities.

Perhaps playing with this guy will be more fun than originally considered.

And thus, you take something of a gamble in relation.

"To be honest with you, I've been seeing someone casually for a while, though I'm not sure if that arrangement is working out for me any longer."

Both of you take another sip from your glasses, but Chan's gaze lingers on you for an especially lengthy amount of time. He sets his glass down calmly on the table, sighs aloud, and then settles himself casually against the back of the chair.

"I know you've been sleeping with the CEO."

You are thankful to no longer be in the middle of your drink, because you'd certainly be choking on the swallow right about now.

There's an attempt to maintain your composure—something that you're quite adept at—though in situations like this you have far less experience in doing so. You're not quite sure whether or not the shock is obvious across your face, but it certainly feels like it is.

No point in lying, the both of you are already here, after all.

"Is that so." Not a question, a statement.

Chan shrugs, all nonchalant in a way that you don't really appreciate, either.

"Yeah, he let it slip one of the nights we were out late playing darts with the guys from the office. Sounded a bit like he was boasting, like I was supposed to be impressed with him for it, or something."

"I take it you're not the only one who knows then?"

"Nah, I don't think he told everyone. It was a moment where we were alone, I don't really know why he told me. I was just like, that's great, man, and then we started talking about the game."

Slumping into your chair, it's the first time you've felt well and truly defeated, and especially when it comes to any and all matters such as these. While you're not ashamed of the lengths gone through in order to attain what it is that you intend to attain, it is far from ideal for the entire office to be aware of it.

"Amazing, you didn't even have to sleep with him to get put on this assignment," you sigh, arms crossing over your chest. "Suppose I look foolish now."

"I don't really care about that, about you doing whatever you think you need to do to get ahead in life. If you want to sleep with our boss to do that then that's your prerogative," Chan says, tone simplistic and plain. "Where I do care is that you seem to be under the impression that you're the only person in the office who is worthy of anything, and that no one else is working hard in order to achieve anything. I am, we are, just most of us aren't going to the same lengths that you are."

A beat of silence passes between you, and in perfect timing, the waiter comes with the check and disappears just as swiftly. Once he disappears from the table side, Chan leans forward, dropping his volume even more in a way that expresses so wholly that the next words spoken are truly only meant for you.

"I've seen your work, I know you have what it takes to be a top executive in this company, and that's without all of the extra shit like fucking some rich scumbag who's just going to turn around and throw the fact back in your face." He leans back again, signs the receipt, and then begins reaching for the stack of papers. "But you're not the only one who works hard and puts in crazy hours to earn a place here. Let's work this case like the team we're meant to be, get it done like I know that we can, and shove it in that asshole's face once we get back."

It's a plan that seems so pleasant on the surface: working together with a colleague who you now have nothing to hide from, who knows all of your dirty little professional secrets and still appears to respect you in spite of it.

You watch Chan pack all of the belongings into a briefcase and can't help but wonder, why don't you care? Why would someone in direct competition with you not seem to be bothered by the fact that you're extending yourself well beyond a professional setting in order to no longer have to compete with him on equal footing?

Rather, you can't help but feel as though the tone of the conversation has taken a turn, almost as though Chan respects you and your work ethic more after the discussion of it all. With everything laid out onto the table, this man knows and understands you in a way that no one else really does, and beyond all of it—he still sees you. He sees how important all of this is, how you're capable of doing just about anything to achieve your purpose no matter how looked down upon it often is, and no matter how humiliating it has thus turned out to be.

Chan just sees you.

"We have an early morning tomorrow, I know these guys are going to want us there at least twenty minutes before the time, so we should plan to have our coffee and look over the documents well before we're meant to arrive."

You glance up at him as he stands, baggage in hand and a smile that says all of the very same things you've just come to realize about him. It's back to normal, like nothing has happened, no conversation about any ethically questionable goings on has even taken place.

Back to regularly scheduled programming.

And you kind of like that.

Twenty minutes early becomes thirty minutes, due to your insistence. With a coffee in hand and perfectly manicured nails, you step out from one of the back doors of the taxi and leave the dealing with briefcases and paperwork to the guy who insists on going above and beyond to make himself useful to you. Good.

It's an early morning, but you find some comfort in that. Los Angeles never really turns off, but at least for now the sidewalks and streets are just a bit quieter than they will be at any other hour of the day. The weather is beautiful—perfectly breezy in just the right amount, with the sun coyly peeking through the clouds edges up above—and you can't help but think to yourself, no way that this day could possibly go wrong for me.

The office building that the two of you stand in front of is nothing special, as far as appearances go. Most in the surrounding area look much the same; worn down from the elements and barely seeing any architectural upkeep, but the spinning, glass front doors standing just a few paces ahead tell a different story of the interior. In ways, it brings a sort of feeling of the illuminated beauty of your professional future, standing between you, and there.

You're in your best set of dress. Black and white with a long skirt fitted just right. Chan is much of the same beside you in his immaculately tailored jacket, accentuating the wide slope of his shoulders and sleeves cutting off perfectly at his wrists.

He turns to look at you, and then smiles with a cute cock of his head.

"Ready to smash it?"

And not that you needed the added boost, but hearing the words vocalized from him adds just that much more fuel to your fire.

You nod. "Absolutely."

Hands are shaken and pleasantries exchanged once you and Chan are invited upstairs and into a large, white conference room that feels far too sterline and uninhabited for your liking. The place feels open, yet uninviting in a way that grates on your nerves and incites the kind of anxiety that you've not felt in these situations for many, many years.

One positive, is that the three men that you're meant to be working with today seem relatively uninterested in you, particularly. From one head of the table, you set your coffee down and begin unpacking a briefcase full of paperwork, envelopes, and a laptop crammed full of numbers and offerings and statistics meant to make this a home run. You know that it will be, you believe wholly that it will, but as you glance up and across what feels to be an impossibly long table towards the grouping of men chuckling and laughing amongst themselves, you can't help but feel something else that you've not felt in such a long time.

The all-encompassing suffocation of male cliquiness.

The Boys Club. They exist in so many spaces, and far from unheard of in your particular line of work. You watch on—particularly at Chan—as he smiles and laughs along with men that take absolutely no interest in you, your work, or what you bring to the table. They all playfully slap each other's arms and nod along to their stupid jokes like they've been best friends since the playground, and you are left out of it entirely.

Once you're settled, you stare at them and their childishness for what feels like an eternity, until finally you decide upon being the bad guy and taking matters into your own hands.

You clear your throat, "mind if we get started?"

The laughter stops dead in its tracks, all joy seemingly sucked out of the room at a lightning quick pace, and the men slowly turn to grant you their obvious looks of abject disapproval.

Though, you can't help but wonder which part they are disapproving of, exactly; be it the fact that it is time to begin the meeting, or the fact that a woman has the audacity to tell them as much.

Still, they follow suit without a disgruntled word. Chan makes his way around the table to meet you where you stand, but as the two of you meet eyes, he nods at you. The quiet insistence for you to take the lead. Not that you had any plans otherwise.

So, you do. With the laptop hooked up and the projection upon the wall, you begin going over statistics for the men to look over, take in, eventually discuss amongst themselves. It's easy work for you, knowing all of this information and all of the inner workings of your profession like the back of your hand.

One man raises a hand slightly into the air, a pen perched between his fingers as he nods towards the projector.

"What was the annual turnover for 2019 and how did that impact the immediate years going forward?"

He is looking at Chan when he asks the question, though your colleague has not said a word the entire time. You want to be better than the urge to present yourself in a way unbecoming of women in your position, because you know that anything you do can be interpreted as such, but the anger and desire for hostility gets the better of you when you reply back to him.

"2.3%, and the impact was minimal, easily dealt with internally with very little felt as a result of it throughout other sectors of the company."

The man asking raises his eyebrows, as if surprised by the fact that you have spoken. You've swallowed down your pride that would come out as far more aggressive than simply answering the question, so if he has an issue with you doing so now, you know precisely what to chalk it up as.

He turns to look at his colleagues first, then his attention falls back to you with a foul curl to the corner of his lips.

"I asked him," he says, pointing his pen at Chan. "Not you."

To this, Chan reels physically. You're not looking at him, not paying him any mind in particular, but you can see as much out of the corner of your eye from where he stands beside you. Now, your eyebrows perk up at the insidiousness of what's so outwardly and openly taking place here, but not so willing to take it on as a defeat just yet.

"With all due respect," you reply, calm and unshaken as you can be. Practiced, throughout the years. "I've been working at this company for six years, been through the lowest of the lows and had a personal hand in ensuring that it reached its highest of highs. While my colleague is knowledgeable and well-respected, this meeting is being led by me, so I would appreciate it if any questions be directed as such."

This feels good. Far from the first time you've had to stick up for yourself in such a way, you exhale the nerves through a semi-shaken breath and settle yourself where you stand. You're still not looking at him, but you do notice the fought back creeping of a smile across his lips.

The joys of victory end quickly, however.

Another man speaks up, this one seated across the way from the first indignant fellow.

"With all due respect," he begins, mocking you. "I believe I speak for all of the men in the room when I say that the only questions we're particularly interested in asking you relate to the snugness of your skirt around your hips and ass, and if there are ever questions relating back to the professional aspect of this engagement, we will be addressing your colleague."

The mixture of emotions that course through you is electric, impossible to parse through and pick just one out to focus on. Anxiety, anger, humiliation, regret, terror, sadness; they all rage through your nerves. Your skin feels hot, a sort of dizziness coming in on you quickly that you don't appreciate, because now is not the time to be experiencing weakness. Your lips part to speak, still unsure of what to even say. Flabbergasted, you attempt to find the words—some words—to fire back at these horrible men, but your mind feels simultaneously full and empty. How can that be.

A woman who prides herself on being the best and brightest in the room, dwindled down to nothing at the hands of useless, pathetic men who bring nothing to the table besides those already aforementioned.

"Alright, let's not get out of hand," Chan says, cutting in through the awkward silence. This appears to appease the men, which you dislike even more though you understand his reasoning for doing it. "My colleague is very well-respected in her profession and incredibly knowledgeable. Perhaps it would be best if we make quick work of wrapping this up and heading off on our separate ways."

For the rest of the meeting, Chan takes the lead. The men down the way open up splendidly, laugh and have a wonderful time with another man in charge, saying all of the same things you had said, reading off of all of the sheets of information that you compiled, that you slaved away at for weeks, for months at a time. Countless late nights with nothing more than the television for company in the background and a frozen pizza in the oven in order to make sure that you will never, ever be the recipient of the kinds of unreasonable lashings that you have taken on today.

All for nothing.

You don't dare speak another word, and sit in the shadow cast by your colleague. When the meeting concludes, the business men are happy; smiling and laughing along with any and everything Chan says. They love him. They love him not because he is knowledgeable, or good at his job in a way that is particularly extraordinary, but simply because he is not a woman. Simply because he is not you.

This sort of dichotomy has always existed, and in every facet of life, too. When buried into your work and the insular walls of your typical professional environment, suppose that it's easy to forget what it's like out here, in the real world. Where men do not respect you whether you're better than them or not, all in all, the result is the same, anyway.

Suppose the CEO has prepared you for this moment, a smaller humiliation only to set you up for one much larger and harder to swallow down the pain of.

Chan handles these men—the situation as a whole—as well as he can, you suppose. There is a kind of pain that settles in your chest at his unwillingness to turn it into a fight, though logically, you understand how pointless this might be for everyone involved. How short-lived the joy of bombing this meeting might be, only so that the suffering of your ego-death be even shorter-lived.

Just get in, and then get out, as relatively unscathed as you can manage. Chan has picked up the pieces left scattered around to the best of his ability and really, with flying colors.

It does not change, however, the deeply nestled pain of being on the receiving end of such corrupt wrongdoings.

The taxi ride back to the hotel is silent, and you're thankful for the fact that Chan does not make so much as an attempt to say a word.

On the small table just beside you, there sits a tall, green bottle of wine with no glass to accompany it. You've decided against it, and that drinking straight from the source will suit you just fine as a consolation prize on the balcony tonight.

One of the charms of Los Angeles, you find, is the weather in the evenings. A cool breeze that gently carries over your features and through your hair as you stand against the railing and gaze out at the still-busy streets down below. There's a part of you that wishes to have the will to go out and enjoy the city on the last night here, and with your work responsibilities settled, but the mood of previous encounters still sits heavy on your chest, dampening any hope of enjoying yourself before your flight tomorrow morning.

Though many, long hours have passed since the morning, conversation between you and Chan have been few and far between. You understand it well enough as him, knowing the time and place to engage with a person after being so horrifically wronged, so when the glass door slowly slides open and he brings himself outside to join you, your heavy heart welcomes the intrusion, rather than resents it.

"Hey," he says, barely above a whisper. "Mind if I come out?"

Your smile is thin and straight, hardly able to be called such. "Sure, take a seat."

There's only one wobbly wooden chair next to the table. A ridiculous design from all angles of consideration, but Chan doesn't bother arguing with you and slowly slinks himself down into what it has to offer him.

His hair is damp and freshly toweled off after a shower—loose curls sticking up every which way as if looking for a means to escape from his head. You smile at the sight, appreciate how approachable and kind he appears when he isn't done up in a professional setting like you're used to seeing. There's a realization that has dawned on you at some point during the day, though you have difficulty in pinpointing the precise time, where you come to accept your softening heart towards your colleague.

Perhaps on account of your forced togetherness, perhaps aided by his willingness to diffuse a situation in what might have been the best way that he knew how in the moment. No, he didn't enact violence upon those men in that office space, and yes, it would have been nice to see, but solve something, it wouldn't have, and suppose all you had really hoped to do was escape further escalation as quietly as the situation would allow for, anyway.

"I'm sorry about what happened earlier." Chan is the first to speak up since seated, the first to bring up the whole thing since its having taken place. "It's so fucked. Simple, pathetic men with a chip on their shoulder who can't handle acknowledging that a woman is capable of doing their job, and more."

"Yeah," you sigh, turning towards him in an effort to grab the wine bottle once more. "Guess it's not anything I'm not used to, though it's been a long time since it's so blatantly been shoved in front of my face."

You take a large sip, and then laugh to yourself before continuing on with a similar thought.

"Actually, I guess that's not true, considering our boss pretty much did the same thing right before sending us out on this mission."

Turned to face him now, you watch Chan's features scrunch like he's fighting back the urge to speak his mind plainly, though evidently, it is a fight meant to be lost.

"Look, it's really none of my business what you do," he says, a seemingly rattled hand rushing to run fingers through his hair, "but do you really think it serves you to keep seeing that guy? God, he's such a fucking asshole, airing out your personal business to other colleagues and then waving it around in the office right before sending us on this trip—I wouldn't be surprised if those guys were friends of his, too. Birds of a feather, and all that, you know?"

Another sip, though now you're looking down at Chan with a kind of surprised gratitude.

"No, I don't think it does, though it'll be mighty interesting finding out how navigating those professional waters will work out for me. Suppose that's the position I've put myself in, though."

It's then that Chan stands, all white bathrobe and silly hair that warms your heart as he closes much of the small amount of distance that previously would sit before the two of you. With this new, closer proximity, it's easier to take in the charming slope of his nose and the plump, pretty fullness of his lips.

"The only people in this equation who are wrong for what they've done is him, and those pieces of shit from this morning." He pauses—the both of you do—and for a moment you think each of your breaths to be held in suspension as to what it is that's going to happen next. Chan's eyes remain fixed on yours for so long, and as you feel your temperature rise across your skin and the beat of your heart pick up in some unfamiliar sort of anticipation, you're able to see his gaze flicker down to your lips for just a second before once again settling on maintaining eye contact. "Yeah, you've been kind of an asshole to me, to other people in the office, but that doesn't mean you're deserving of this. No woman is deserving of being subjected to this, regardless of who it is that you decide to sleep with, and for what reason."

If not for his soft demeanor standing right before you, you might believe him to be angry with how he sounds. He must be, though he carries himself well enough as to not let it come out in ugly and unpleasant ways; and as a result, the quick and hard beating of your heart within your chest only picks up that much more. Since when does this guy have such an absurd effect on you?

"I've seen the work you put in, so I'm in a pretty good position to make the call," Chan says, inching himself just ever so slightly closer to you. His voice drops lower now, and accompanying it, the less subtle eyeing of your mouth in relation to his. "You're better than this, you're better than probably all of these blokes here."

"Is that so?" you whisper in response, and though the sentiment is appreciated, you must acknowledge within yourself that the topic of conversation has fallen quite a bit to the wayside in favor of something far more intriguing, something far newer, and more enticing.

"It is." He inches closer yet, only suspected millimeters of distance still held between your mouths. "I'm a pretty good judge of character, you know."

"Says the guy who used to hang out with our boss to get ahead."

Chan grins at your playful combativeness before replying, "Just doing what it takes, I'd have slept with him too if the opportunity were to arise."

Free hand coming up to feather over the softness of his robe, your palm smoothes across his chest and the definition that lies beneath before speaking.

"You know, I'm technically your superior, too."

"Oh?" he chimes, eyebrows perked. "Is that so?"

"Technically," you answer with a small shrug. "I've got you on length of employment, by a couple of years."

Caged in against the railing of the balcony, Chan's lips reside so close to your own that they nearly ghost over the flesh. He smells of mint and rosemary from having been freshly washed—all the more damning for you and your budding curiosity about him.

"Should I give up on trying to sleep with him, then?" Chan asks, a seductive playfulness laced throughout each and every word. "Move on to different, more promising prospects?"

"Only one way to find out."

When Chan finally closes the distance fully and kisses you, it's not as hard, not as rushed as you previously had anticipated it to be. The kiss is careful, a want that resides deeply nestled beneath it but far from the thing that grants unbridled haste and need. His lips are soft, the tug of his teeth at your bottom lip experimental as he tests the waters in regard to what he should or should not be doing, but it's a kind of trepidation that only has you eager for more from him. Your fingers grip tightly into the robe, a light pull in order to have his body more firmly and intentionally against your own, and it must be precisely the sort of green light he had been looking for, because the delicate slide of his tongue to find yours enters into the mix, and now you have no other choice but to accept that your original plan in hostile takeover has ultimately ended up in yet another failure.

Though this one is far more appreciated, and you've got to admit, you're happy to go home tomorrow with this sort of loss sitting on your scorecard.

The day of your return home is long and full of travel, though this does little to stave off all of the thoughts of what could, and might be.

Falling hard and fast has never been you. Through the years you've dedicated to your professional development, you've met people, shared bed and intimacies with people that never were to develop beyond the simple gratification that the two of you granted each other in those moments. You try to think back to the last time you really wanted someone; not physically, not sexually, but as a larger and more intrinsic part of your life.

But you can't, not until now.

Chan offers you a ride back to your home from the airport once the both of you land. The taxi is long and expensive, and while money is of no consequence to you, there is a much firmer inkling within that wishes to have just a little bit more time together that isn't set between the walls of a stuffy office that you now have come to have great disdain for.

Driving on the highway, you roll your window down slightly and enjoy the breeze as it's offered to you. The horizon paints itself with colors of pink, purple, and orange as the sun begins to set; normally something of no interest to you, but now? Now, a newfound beauty in all of it.

You barely know Chan, but what you've learned in a short amount of time has you eager to find out more. You can't help but wonder if he feels the same.

"Hey, uh."

As if reading your mind, Chan pipes up from the driver's side, a nervousness in his voice that you aren't quite familiar with but has you eager to hear more.

"Look, no pressure, yeah? But…think you might be interested in coming back to mine and having a drink, or just to talk?"

Thank all of the powers that be, you think to yourself.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," you say, trying to temper your interest. "Let's do that."

Chan's place is nice. Comfortable, cared for, but cozy.

As you step inside and remove your shoes, you look around to take in your surroundings. The furniture is nice, but not lavishly so. Pretty vases with flowers and hanging picture frames showing memories of friends and family adorning his walls that come off as inviting, and not showy. In juxtaposition, you find yourself thinking back to so many other places that you've visited in the past—homes that feel far less like them, and more like museums. Do not touch. The empty atmosphere of being unlived in.

A cork pops off from a bottle just a bit inside and around a corner, thus, you follow the invitation of it. Chan stands in his kitchen pouring two glasses of wine, and you take a seat at the small, glass, dining room table in wait.

"Workplace romances are forbidden, you know."

Well, that is certainly one way for you to broach the topic.

And while you've been mulling it over the whole day, you had decided upon this as the best route. It's simplistic enough to get the point across, but also light-hearted in a way that it doesn't need to be taken too seriously in consideration by Chan. The concept of an office romance being so broad that there is difficulty in necessarily pinpointing what does, or does not, fit within the definition.

But the two of you have kissed, and there is clearly some degree of interest. So, it applies well enough to be used as the shoe horn.

However, Chan only smiles as he finishes up the task of pouring the drinks. He glances up at you briefly, then carries on with what it is that he is doing before replying.

"Okay," he says. Not giving you much to work with until he comes around the table and sits beside you, wine glasses set onto the tabletop. "Then I'll quit."

"Wait, what?"

You don't expect this answer, and it certainly doesn't make any sense to you, either. Yes, things have been moving relatively quickly in your own mind, and as far as your own feelings are concerned, but has the same been true for him? To this degree, at that?

He shrugs. "I'll quit. It's not a big deal, I don't even like that place, and I sure as hell don't like our boss, so I'll just find another job if it means we can keep doing this comfortably."

Chan punctuates the thought with a sip of his drink, so nonchalant. Like the most absurd thing hasn't just come out of his mouth with incredible conviction.

"I…but…" you stutter out, trying to gather your thoughts. "You barely even know me, and if I'm being honest, it sounds a little crazy to be willing to give up such a huge position at a company just to date a colleague that wasn't even that nice to you only a couple of days ago."

"Yeah, I suppose when you put it like that, it does sound a little crazy." Chan takes another bored sip of wine. "I did tell you I'm a pretty good judge of character, though."

A beat of silence passes between the two of you, and you take it as an opportunity to bring your own glass up and to your lips before speaking into the rim. "Going to give up your job so you can sleep with me."

"Well, not just sleep with you, though I guess that depends on how good it is."

You choke on the sip.

"I'm a big boy, I can make career decisions for myself, even if that decision is to effectively and temporarily blow mine up." Chan's hand finds your thigh beneath the table then, fingertips gently digging into the flesh of the inside. "The rest is up to you, though. We can call all of this off right here, right now, and go to work tomorrow like nothing ever happened."

With the back of your neck heating up and the light prickling of goosebumps across your skin, you set your glass down, inhale deeply, and then look Chan square in the eyes.

"Maybe it's about time you earn that next promotion."

"You know—"

Chan whispers the words out and against your lips, through fervent kisses so quick and needy that he's barely able to say anything, at all. Hands are busy at work to slip the both of you out of your business attire from the day; button down shirts, belts, slacks, and skirts strewn hastily about the hardwood flooring of his bedroom while stumbling desperately towards the bed.

"I never thought my next promotion would be getting myself fired."

"Life is just full of surprises," you say, pushing him to the edge of the bed and gently down on top of it. "Isn't it?"

He doesn't bother responding, however, instead fixated on the way you drop to your knees between his legs and lightly graze a palm over the tenting at the front of his undergarments.

Fingers hooking into the elastic sides, you drop them down his thighs, freeing what it is that you really wish to see of him. You wrap a hand around the thick base of his length, gently stroking him to a fullness that was already so close to being reached. Chan sighs into the touch first, then a light groan that catches in his throat at the feeling of your tongue traversing up the underside of him, only to curve around the tip and then sink down whole to take him in.

One hand comes up to find the back of your head, though there's no force behind the gesture as you work him with your mouth. The wide stretch is enough to already have you feeling the fatigue of such an offering, but the heavenly sound of Chan quickly unraveling beneath you is enough to have you ignoring the ache that comes along with the wonder of such a large cock.

"Fuck, you feel good," he exhales, hips ever so slightly canting up to meet your mouth as you take him deeper in.

You pull off slowly, looking up the length of his perfect, toned body to meet his heavily lidded eyes. Hand still stroking him as you do. "You know what feels better?"

"I can guess."

With that, Chan leans forward and grasps you by the wrist—pulls you up and onto the bed with the kind of strength you couldn't dare fight against if you wanted to. Swapping your positions, you find yourself splayed out against the mattress and with hands already busy prying your thighs apart to accommodate him before you're even able to gather your senses.

A lone finger slides up your wet crease, stilling at the most sensitive part of you. Your body jolts at the feeling, looking down as Chan grins only inches away from the place where you want him the most.

"Would you hold it against me if I told you I wanted to fuck you the moment we landed in LA?" he admits, and punctuates the thought with a languid stroke of his tongue following where his finger has just traveled. "Never would have said anything in a million years but—God, the way you look dressed for work like that? So professional and serious, couldn't stop thinking about what you'd sound like if I just—"

Chan pauses the thought, digs his tongue and the plush of his lips more firmly against your clit and gently offers the sensation of being filled by two fingers simultaneously. You can't help the whine that falls from your mouth, though you make a half-hearted attempt to catch it before it does. One hand of fingers curling into the bedding below, the other finding Chan's hair to wrap the curls up and between; he wastes no further time showing precisely the kind of want that he has quietly carried for you. Dizzying and electric beneath your skin, hips bucking up ever so slightly and without conscious thought to find more of him as he grants it to you.

"I was so mean to you, though," you manage to say through heavy breaths and moans, "would you hold it against me if I told you I considered fucking you to try to ruin you? Professionally, of course."

The sounds that this information musters up and out of Chan can only be described as the most animalistic, primal groan of hedonistic want that you've ever heard.

"Yeah? You're going to ruin me?" he replies, fingers still pressed inside of you and a thumb firmly sitting at your clit. "Might have to revisit who's going to be ruining who."

Disappearing off and to the side, Chan makes such quick work of dealing with the necessities that you almost don't even notice his having done so. He stands afterwards—all but hauls you further up the length of the bed to accommodate his being there as well, and then positions himself between your legs once more as he drags the thickness of his cock through the wetness that awaits him.

"Maybe I sort of like it when you're mean to me, ever consider that?" Chan asks, coy in tone. One hand gripping into the soft flesh of your thigh as to hold you open for him while the other sits firm at the base of his cock, blunt head only slightly pressing at your opening. "Maybe it was all just a plot by me to get you to talk to me like a piece of shit so that I could then, in turn, fuck you stupid like we both want."

And while you would love to fight the point, the steady drive of Chan's hips forward makes for that to be an impossibility. The stretch of him carving out space inside of you for his cock is dizzying, slow and careful as he does so. You whine and sigh out as he pulls your body onto him until he rests fully inside.

"You talk a big game," Chan says then, gently fucking into you as his hands slide down and settle around your hips for leverage. "But at least you can take a big dick too, can't you?"

It's so much happening all at once, your senses in overdrive at the way that he's speaking to you almost condescendingly, paired with how pulled apart from the seams your body feels in order to accommodate his thickness. Once settled into more of a steady, offering drive into you, the friction is mind-numbing—feeling so full that not one single nerve ending finding reprieve from the hug of your body around his cock.

You reach forward with one hand, grasping at a strong, tensed arm that shows beneath the flesh each and every muscle he has worked so hard for. Your nails dig in, and as a result, he fucks you harder, faster; hips snapping roughly against the undersides of your thighs.

"Fuck, Chan, don't—don't stop."

"Yeah? Like it that much, huh?" His grip on your hips gets harder, and the strength in his upper body now fully used to pull your body down and against his cock with every drive. "You're taking it so good, maybe one of these days we'll see how good your pretty body can take it when I fill you up with my cum, yeah?"

And you want to be better than this, stronger than this. Stronger than the way that the words go straight into your already pained and needing arousal—tightening around him, an orgasm now threatening on the horizon much faster than originally anticipated.

You gasp out his name, repeating expletives in droves like a hopeless chant that you have no control of as a knowing smirk paints across his lips and he continues on with the work he is putting into your body.

"Want that," he says, breath shaky. "Want me to come in you. Now who's the one of us earning something?"

Grip into his skin tightening just that much more, your back arches up and off of the bed; thighs shaking and muscles tightening as you grit your teeth through the way that your orgasm shakes you. Chan never stops, the glide of his cock so smooth and easy between your walls that even through the stiffness of your body as you come, the strength that he holds makes it easy to use your form to fuck himself with as he watches you release around him with enamored appreciation.

It doesn't take much more from him, and you feel the way he fucks into you becoming more erratic, more needy and without plan as he aims to find his release. Though you've just finished, and need and want for him still courses through your veins at a lightning quick pace, and thus, when you beg for him in a whine to come on your body, it's a kind of humiliation that you'll have to deal with only after the fact.

But not now.

Chan groans, deep and nestled into his chest as he pulls himself from the warmth of you and pulls the condom off—you watch him stroke over his wet, thick cock by hand quickly—taking in the sight of how the definition of his abdomen and chest flex as he reaches closer and closer to his end.

"Anything for you," he says, though the words are barely audible and totally destroyed in the dryness of his throat. "Little cock-drunk, are you? Don't worry baby, I'll give you what you want."

While his tone is just ever so slightly condescending, there's a sort of sexiness in the confidence of it that does, indeed, drive you even crazier with each and every utterance of it. Chan strokes himself to completion shortly after; free hand coming up to find your clit and carefully rubbing you along with him as he comes. The both of you moan in unison, watching the way his cum paints your chest and stomach in such a lewd fashion before the momentum naturally slows, as does his hand.

Chests heaving, Chan is the first to cough out a laugh in the aftermath of it all.

"Did I get carried away?"

"No," you say through a heavy, exhausted exhale. "No, not at all. Fuck."

"Good?"

You give him a tired look in response, not wanting to give him the pleasure of acknowledging it with words.

Chan appears to accept this with a smile, leaning down and capturing your lips with his own. It's not needy, not full of lust as before. Now, laced within it is something completely different, and not unlike the first time that the two of you shared a kiss together.

You opt out of spending the night together, on account of having work early in the morning and wanting to be proper fresh for the occasion. None of your belongings are here, none of your work clothes—only items hours traveled in and then lightly carrying the musk of two people far too hasty in going at one another.

Still, you can't help but consider what the aftermath of this truly looks like for the both of you in the workplace. Of course, Chan admits a willingness in the moment to quit his job for the opportunity of the two of you exploring this—but how much truth could really be lying within those words?

A man who barely knows you, who has no real reason to be willing to do such a thing for you. What makes you so special, anyway?

Suppose the next morning in the office will tell.

Stepping into the office, you aren't so sure what you expect to find, only that what you have found is most definitely not it.

People are running all about, through the corridors, in and out of cubicle spaces, phones ringing and ringing for what sounds like forever with the sound of shouting into receivers coming from every single direction.

You walk in further, down the hallway towards your own personal office—but just before you make it there, your boss cranes his head out from his own just a bit further down the way and shouts at you for the world to hear.

"You! Get in here, now! What have you done?"

Eyes wide and eyebrows pressed up towards the ceiling, you can't help but wonder to yourself; what have I done?

Once you make it inside, you don't even bother closing the door behind you. Privacy isn't needed now, in part because a new side of you has been unlocked since this trip—a part of you that doesn't care. A part of you that has long since resigned yourself to simply not giving a shit about any of this. Not like you used to, not in the same way that once allowed for it to take, and take, and take from you without ever truly giving back.

You're free now.

"Did you know that Chris quit?" the man shouts, hair tousled and random papers lying thoughtlessly around his desk. "What did you do on that trip? What did you do to him you little—you little…bitch."

These words, once upon a time that is not even all that long ago, might have hurt you in such an inexplicable way, but now, the concept of such a thing seems so unfathomable, so far away from you. The cutting edge of a knife meant to maim, only now it slides off of you effortlessly—this man can no longer hurt you, and soon, you have decided, he can no longer take from you, either.

"I didn't do anything to him, sir." You smile, accompanying the words. "Though I don't think the same can be said for me. I think he's done a lot to me in a very short time, and for that, I am incredibly thankful."

The man pauses, looks at you with an empty stare before his eyebrows firmly knit together in a grimace. He intends to speak, but you are no longer interested in hearing anything from him.

"I quit, too."

Turning back towards the door, you hear the man stumbling over his words in an attempt to get something of use out. For once, it would seem, he is left speechless. The ideal version of him, you can't help but think.

"You can pay out my severance as intended under typical circumstances, and if you don't, I'll send everything to HR and contact a lawyer to take you for everything that you're worth," you add in, glancing back over your shoulder. "And I will win."

"Oh, and thanks for fucking me over so exquisitely on this work trip, I actually think it worked out in everyone's best interest."

Halfway out of the door, you hum, then turn back towards him for the last time with a smug, gratified smirk.

"Well, except maybe for you."

Your hectic surroundings as you leave the office for the very last time feel like nothing but static noise. Inconsequential and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. You don't know what the future holds for you, or for Chan, or for whatever it is that the two of you might have budding and blossoming together. It sort of doesn't matter, which you find to be the beauty of a new beginning.

When the elevator sounds off upon reaching the bottom floor, the metal doors part, and standing in the marble lobby is a familiar face that you're certainly not expecting to see.

Chan stands there before you; all fitted jeans and comfortable black hoodie. A casual side of him that you've not seen before, but are so delighted to be able to that it ignites a fluttering in your chest that perhaps you've not felt since grade school.

"What are you doing here?" you ask.

He tries to fight back the smile, but to no avail. "I knew you were going to quit, so I figured I'd be here to get you when you did."

"I didn't come here this morning with the intention of doing that."

"I'm sure you didn't." Chan swings the loop of his keys around on a finger nonchalantly. "But I still knew you would. Breakfast?"

Three days isn't long enough to say I love you, but there's a previously locked away, fairytale side of you that's certainly thinking it right about now.

"We're both unemployed, should we be going out and getting breakfast?"

Chan tsks at that, "we're top executives in our field, we'll both be head-hunted before we even start looking. Besides—"

Reaching down, Chan takes the hand not holding a briefcase into his own, pointedly fitting fingers in between your own and looking straight into your eyes.

"Can't a guy take his girlfriend out for a waffle?"

Yes, yes he most certainly can.

♡ hope you enjoyed.

—this is a oneshot, there will be no part 2.

#bang chan smut #bang chan x reader #bang chan x y/n #bang chan x you #bang chan scenarios #bang chan imagines #stray kids smut #stray kids x you #stray kids x reader #stray kids x y/n #stray kids scenarios #stray kids imagines #skz smut #skz x reader #skz x you #skz x y/n #skz imagines #skz scenarios

2K notes · View notes