#motherofagony

[motherofagony]

A HEART FOR EATING // vol. 1

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: post outbreak!joel x f!reader setting: jackson, wy (think tlou pt. 2 minus the golfing) rating: mature, 18+, minors dni word count: 5.6k series summary: a vicious raider attack robs you of human connection and lights a fire of destruction in your life in jackson. joel's fixated on you, and your lives tangle. revenge becomes a needful thing. chapter summary: life goes on after raiders infiltrate a routine patrol. you're a shut-in, and jackson residents tiptoe around your trauma. joel found you after the accident, but you don't know what to make of it. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), protective!joel, mentions of trauma (no s/a, i promise), blood, bodily injuries, death, shitty men, dissociation/triggers, alcohol, angst, sexual tension if you close one eye, the softest enemies to lovers you've ever seen vol. 1 // vol. 2 series playlist a/n: longtime listener, first time caller. yes, there will be smut — in due time. probably a slower burn than you're used to on tumblr dot com, but there will be porn galore, i promise. heavy on the hurt + comfort trope in this one. thank you for reading, i hope you enjoy.

“Get the fuck up!”

The boot connects with your side again, the rounded toe slamming into ribs you’re sure are already broken. You’re trying to play dead, but it doesn’t exactly work when yelps are being kicked out of you. Old Yeller, of all fucking things, comes to mind.

But you’re not sick, not infected. Just wrong time, wrong place.

Blood pools sticky under your head. Voices are filtering in like an untuned radio, gathering static and making you nauseous. Like it’s all one bad hangover or a lucid dream in a realm too far.

“Where are the others?”

Someone else asks the question that you’ve been concentrating on. The knob turns, clearing the radio fuzz just so. You strain to hear, but you don’t dare open your eyes.

“Dead. Not shit on ‘em that was worth stealin’. We gotta fuckin’ go — just leave her.”

A vague twang of Boston wraps around his words. You’d forgotten what it sounded like, how the rs get caught in the back of the tongue and dropped. How the voweled aws are spit at you, the shell of your ear growing numb against the icy concrete. 

Yes, you think. Fucking leave me.

The raider that’s been torturing you for what feels like hours groans as if it’s an inconvenience, an interruption to something he was thoroughly enjoying. Whatever he would’ve done, continued doing, taunts the crevices of your mind. He digs through your bag one last time, and you don’t know what he’s looking for or if there would have been anything at all that would have satisfied him the first time. 

You remember a sliver of skin where his sleeve had bunched, revealing a shitty coupling of star tattoos on his wrist. You can feel your icepick heartbeat behind your eyes, and you wonder if it was a dare over a few beers. A matching tattoo with a lover. The thought lifts you up and out of the crushing burden of pushing air into clenched lungs, only for a moment. It’s no name to grab hold of, but it’s an identifier if you can make it out alive. 

He’d crept up behind you while you were clearing a warehouse that you swore you’d be fine doing by yourself, pushing the cold barrel of something painfully familiar into the back of your head. He was tall, unflinching, unworried, too practiced. He helped you slip the straps of your backpack off your shoulders but staggeringly violent and unkind. Feeling you up for weapons with a disgusting leisure. As if you’d be hiding something gun-sized in your small back pocket.

You’d heard panic and screams outside, and you already knew. Voices outnumbered your friends, and it was almost – almost – funny to think that Tommy said the three of you would be one too many for patrol.

So, when exactly two gunshots hit their targets, it only took you seconds to figure out the score. 

Something significant cracked in you then. Started in your chest and splintered to your heart, head, down to the tips of your toes. There was no fighting back, and you were next.

Now — fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder, bloodied face, broken wrist, and one concussion later, here you find yourself. The tall one has a thick mustache, something sinister and villainous that seems too stereotypical even for this. At some point there had been a shift, and what started as a robbery now felt like killing for sport.

“Fine. Think she’s dead anyway.”

He kicks you one more time for the cinematic pleasure of it all. 

This time you don’t wince, don’t feel a jerk or twitch betray you. The muscle in your jaw is so tense, the teeth grinding so hard into one another that you expect to open your mouth to a cloud of dust.

An agony you’ve only ever seen in movies is wringing every cell dry. It’s seizing, unrelenting, almost an exorcism in the tensing and writhing of it all. But you keep it beneath the surface, barely clinging to the little control you have. 

You try to count the footsteps that are finally retreating, to breathe around the blood in your nose both dried and fresh. It feels like measuring the closeness of thunder and lightning, some kind of correlation with the distance of a storm. 

The group trails outside, and heavier footsteps of your stolen horses lead them away. Onto the next. Breath idles in your chest, and the clarity that you think will come when you finally unstick your eyelids doesn’t. Everything feels swollen, scorched, raw. Nerve endings clipped and lapped up by the unrelenting lick of wind. A scream climbs up your throat, but the pain isn’t worth the exhale. And you don’t want them to come back for round two.

You drag the dead weight of your limbs out to inspect what you know to be true, and it’s nothing but bloody snow angels and twisted, awkward angles of your friends. You can’t even look at them, turning your head and squeezing your swollen eyes shut when you check for pulses that aren’t there. 

Snowflakes collect on your lashes and drip pink down your face.

—

Daylight wanes, languid and impatient. It’s been hours trying to retrace your steps back to Jackson, the blood loss slowing you to a stop every five dizzying minutes. Your feet trick you into standing, only for your knees to buckle and bring you down into the snow. Teetering on the cliff of willfully alive and mercifully dead. There isn’t pain anymore, not really, and you’re grateful for the numbing cold, but you can feel your body threatening to cave in on itself. 

Tears don’t come as much as you beg for them, for any type of release that’ll ground you. Enough time has ticked by that someone has to notice an absence of three, but you can’t be sure that you’re even on the right path anymore to meet them in the middle. 

When they find you, if they ever find you, at least they’ll know you tried.

There’s a comfort in that, a warmth that reaches out and grabs you and folds you in like a blanket. It’s safe here, it says. Just lie down for a minute. And you don’t fight it.

Someone’s calling your name now, and it’s a gentle tug back into consciousness. There are frantic hands on your face, delicate and urgent when they take inventory of your wounds. When they say death greets you, maybe it’s this. 

But there’s a Texas drawl that’s murmuring you’re okay, I’ve got you and I know, I know it hurts and shouting instructions to someone else that’s lifting you up, up, up. 

Your fingertips scrape a stubbled jaw when you’re pulled away. The light dims like a blown-out candle. And you’re falling, grasping at anything, everything, nothing. 

You forget the rest.

—

Ten months pass, dripping into spring, then summer, and meeting autumn at its doorstep.

Everything has healed, down to the last scratch. That day feels hazy, and you’d assume it was a hallucination if not for the two friends that didn’t come back with you. The recovery was just as strange, trauma shielding you from the gory parts but not the guilt. Never the guilt. 

Sometimes, you test the memory, prod at it, but nothing new comes to the surface. No recollection of who they were, where they were going, if they were anything more than nameless thieves. It’s probably better this way, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s true.

Fistfuls of flowers collected on your porch, and they seemed to appear out of thin air because no one ever came with them. Anonymous condolences that didn’t want to be seen, and it was an easy guess as to why. You heard rumors, retellings of what happened without much accuracy, but there was nothing to say to correct them. Some of them were angry, and you let them be. Call it penance, undeserved or not. 

Ellie would visit occasionally, sometimes Tommy. You let her play guitar without saying a word, let him bring you books to keep you occupied. Everyone else dodged you, and you didn’t know if it was discomfort or because you were the only one left alive to blame. Probably both.

Since then, they’d kept you busy elsewhere. Projects that hadn’t been projects before suddenly popped up. More hands in the stables for getting horses ready for patrol. Planting vegetables and flowers for food and morale. Playing doctor when the patrols would come back with minor injuries from staving off infected. Being underfoot at the Tipsy Bison, picking up shifts when there was a movie night or some string-lit illuminated get-together. 

Slinking into the shadows and being the ambient background noise in everyone else’s conversations. 

You didn’t have the heart to tell them that you had the farthest thing from a green thumb, that you couldn’t bartend for shit, that the most nurse-like thing you’d ever done was slap a band-aid on a skinned knee. 

An otherness that weighed so heavy you thought it would be better to crush you. Poison that bloomed in the belly of a tight-knit community that didn’t know what shelf to put you on. Who felt like collective trauma was part of the deal, and this was just yours. 

But it softened the blow of your abrupt uselessness. You let it happen. Becoming competent was better than peeking out from drawn curtains. Better than sleeping with your eyes open, watching everyone around you move on while you couldn’t.

While nightmares claw their way up your chest at night and leave you in a cold sweat, flicking on every light that’ll burn to make sure you’re really, truly alone.

The roar of laughter snaps you out of the trance, breaks the eye contact you were making with your fireplace. You wonder absently if you’d tuned out the rest or if everyone had finally huddled together in front of the projector down the road for tonight’s showing of whatever DVD was looted during this week’s patrol. You didn’t usually mind — sometimes even joined when Ellie had enough of your sulking and all but kicked your door in — but tonight feels like an organized, cruel punishment.

You pry yourself from your couch, knocking over the stack of books on your way to the coat rack. Anaïs Nin pierces you with a glare, rotting where you left her. You slip each arm into a heavy coat, tucking one of the books into your bag with a lone cigarette as a makeshift bookmark. It’s cold as fuck tonight, but maybe you’ll linger a little longer after closing down the bar. Maybe you’ll wait until the crowd outside dies down to sneak back into your house, light another fire, and count down the hours until your shift at the stables.

Bartending tonight should be quiet, hopefully only encountering a few regulars that usually kept to themselves and tipped you for doing the same. 

You steal one more warm moment before opening the door and stepping into the flinching cold, taking note of the way words stutter and lose traction when your face registers with the nearby crowd. There always seems to be a vacancy of pleasantries. And you don’t exactly invite them.

Tommy gives you a sympathetic look, tipping his chin up in a half-nod. Ellie lifts a few fingers in a wave, knowing you don’t want the pity but hate the suffocation of nothing at all. You will the corners of your mouth to quirk in a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes and force your legs into a normal pace, almost locking your knees so you don’t break into a run. The debt of an overdue visit with them burrows in your chest. 

The Jaws theme song hums ominously, and you think it’s only fitting.

A few people litter the bar when you meet the cozy blanket of peanut-shelled air of the Tipsy Bison. A pool cue cracks against a ball and sends it clattering into a group of others, a low crackle of some country something crooning out of the jukebox. You shed your coat and your bag in the back, washing your hands under scorching water to shake some feeling back into your bones.

“Just a few tonight. Been slow – you’ll probably be out early. What’s playin’?”

You smile at the thick, syrupy Southern mama accent by your side. Cheryl is no-nonsense, usually slips you a little extra at the end of your shifts, and feigns ignorance of anything about the ugly parts of your past. All she cares about is that you’re eating. There is an undying gratitude for Cheryl. 

“Ah. Jaws, I think.”

She seems to read your mind with a laugh, patting your shoulder affectionately like only a mother can.

“Maybe I’ll go join the sharks. Joel just got here, wants a whiskey ‘fore I head out. You know him,” Cheryl tuts, almost rolling her eyes but you know she likes the caretaker role if you’re any indication.

And you do. You do know him.

Joel keeps to himself almost as much as you do, maybe a little less when it comes to Ellie and Tommy. He’s sort of your catty-cornered neighbor, but not the sugar-asking kind. More like the kind that glances in your direction, holds your stare for a beat too long, and abruptly looks away before anything discernible can appear. 

The closest you ever come to saying anything of substance to each other is when you ready his horse for patrols and intercept it when he’s back safe and sound. You try not to let him catch your gaze shifting to that shiny scar on his head, and you stifle down the question that’s none of your business. 

Maybe he does the same for you.

And maybe he was there and saved you that day, but neither one of you has ever mentioned it since. You don’t know how, and there’s a brick wall around the subject that won’t let you. Enough time has passed that you figure he’d have said something if he gave a shit.

Yet, there’s a deep yearning for his approval, his attention. It’s a mystery even to you, when you think about how savagely indifferent you are to anyone else’s. But you think it’s the magnetism of having him as a witness. The way he could vindicate you and give you an alibi, a heroic complex, but he doesn’t. 

So, the idea that he’s one of the patrons that you can count on one hand tonight… you can’t put a name to what it’s doing to you.

Cheryl makes sure that you’re okay, but she doesn’t linger. She packs up her things with haste, jogging through the cold to join her wife in front of the bonfire.

No one really pays you any mind as you start your closing duties early, and it’s doubtful that the seats will fill any more than they are as the party picks up outside.

Joel sits at the corner of the bar that faces you, and he’s down to a knuckle’s length of whiskey. If he were anyone else, you might wonder why he’s not at the bonfire — but it’s Joel. Social anythings are like a second plague to him.

The thought of having to refill his drink vibrates in the back of your mind, and lead fills your stomach. Small talk that you never quite have with him. It dissipates just as quickly, when you see the way he’s fixed on the sweat gathering on his glass instead of anything else, and when a gust of wind comes in as the door opens.

Max. Anxiety snaps in your rib cage like a rubber band. Something acrid hits the back of your throat and you think it might be blood the way your teeth connect with the soft tissue of your cheek. 

Max had been a recurring character in your bed once. Before. It was never more than convenience, and the way you fucked wasn’t love, not even close. Liberating to think that you never neared the edge of feeling anything except his hand pressing your face into a pillow, performing orgasms that never came. 

There’s no carcass of affection left, so devoid of emotion for him that it feels like a severed limb.

He’s all ego and athletic strength, sauntering up to the bar with a gait that reeks of hours of pregaming. There’s a permanent sneer when he addresses you, a coldness that has nothing to do with the weather.

“Tequila. Two doubles.”

He’s the type to twist the knife of your tragedy in even deeper, making sure to hit all vital organs. The first to question what more you could have done to save his friends, blaming you for leaving them there to die as if they weren’t dead the moment raiders showed up. As if you weren’t almost dead. Anything you’ve said in defense is inconceivable, an excuse, an admission of guilt. He mourns at your expense and often.

Jackson trudges forward, but Max forces you to stay in grief and remember.

“I think you’ve had your fill this week. Drank through your ration on Tuesday, remember?” you say coolly, but a twinge of fatigue colors your tone, giving you away. You aren’t in the mood, and Max finds it easy to light flame to your resolve as-is.

Maria spends hours of careful inventory, and there’s been more than one occasion where you’ve been instructed to cut off a greedy drunk. The vice, the urge to drink in an apocalypse doesn’t really align with the limited stock, unfortunately.

“Yeah, I don’t exactly see Maria around, do you?” A jeer at face value, but you decide in the beat of silence that follows that rule enforcement isn’t worth it tonight. “Sounds like you’ll think of something. And you fuckin’ owe me one, don’t you? Or would you prefer I collect on that another time?”

It’s not worth it. You’re dropping your glare, squaring your jaw, lining up two glasses so that the rims clink. But the way your skin prickles, there’s an unwelcome visitor in his stare, an x-ray vision that you wished Max didn’t have. 

Somewhere down the bar, glass slams against wood and something you know to be amber-colored sloshes.

You try to steady the angry tremble that overcomes your hands as you upturn the liquor bottle. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.

He holds the ration card to you, taunting you by pulling back when you reach for it, only to smirk and flick it toward you, uncaring of where it lands. You shove it into the mouth of the register with the violence you wish you were brave enough for.

“You can leave now.”

“That so? Mouthy now that you have an audience?” Max gestures cruelly to the grand total of four patrons, five if you counted Johnny Cash.

It stings, but dully. You’ve heard worse – even if not to your face – and it’s all kind of anti-climatic if you considered the low-budget production they always try to make out of you. The words eventually all sound the same, nothing punches quite the way they intend. Still, your cheeks burn as if on cue, and —

“She told you to get the fuck out.”

A low timbre erupts, easily mistaken as pure venom. There’s a sway in the way your senses glitch and then still, and reality swirls at the edge of your periphery. Pool balls stop their roll, murmured chatter ceases, and even the fucking jukebox settles on an instrumental to lean in and listen. 

You dare to look over at Joel, whose demeanor looks more akin to statuesque and threatening than his curved slouch when you first clocked in. He’s standing, flexing his fists so hard that you think they might shatter.

Max backs off but subtly – you can see the way his puffed chest deflates even though his glare doesn’t. He finishes off one tequila before backing up with the other dangling in his fingers, both hands turned palm-out in mock surrender. 

A deep annoyance plucks at his brow, but he knows he’s flirting with a black eye. 

Max flashes a middle finger, lets his grip relax after downing the glass in his hand, and it crashes to the floor with a wincing shatter. He’s gone before you can string together any curses, and would it have mattered anyway?

Then, there’s scattering, the bar flies wordlessly agreeing that anywhere is better than the awkwardness of being here. Cards thrown down, beers drained, and there’s an uneasiness with the way they shuffle outside towards the rest of the group. A dance around the broken glass that isn’t their problem. You pretend not to notice, though you try to hide the redness that stains your cheeks as you bring a dust pan over to the mess.  

You feel eyes on you and, all too suddenly, you realize that Joel didn’t follow them.

“Careful. Here, lemme do that.”

He’s kneeling, taking the pan from you. Knuckles brush yours a little too long and electrify, zapping you. You mutter something like thanks and it’s too ungrateful, too tired. A woodsy scent fills your nose, and you’re hard-pressed not to lean into his collar and bookmark it.

Glass slips into the trash with a tinkling, shimmering sound. You’re already back behind the bar, hands busying with something else, tidying up the already-tidy. Letting him slip outside with the crowd, heavy with satisfaction that he came to your rescue yet again. 

But he’s sat back down, watching you with an odd intensity. He’s never assessed you like this, at least not that you’ve seen. A different sort of undressing than what Max gives you. You meet his eyeline warily. Vulnerable, waiting for your predator’s jaw to unhinge and devour you whole.

“He always talk to you that way?”

A quiet, lethal question hangs in the air, so quiet that you could’ve chalked it up to your imagination. But evidenced by the white-knuckled grip Joel has on his glass, the measured way he brings it to his lips, it was real. Controlled, scary even. But real.

Your mouth opens to answer, then closes. You consider in a beat’s time how it would sound to laugh it off, then stop yourself. It would be too forced, too desperate of a sound to be convincing. You’ve never been the unfeeling, unaffected type.

It’s clear that he knows the answer, has probably seen it with his own eyes, but it’s like he wants a green light to set his sights on some other more sinister and deserving prey.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s been through a lot,” you say, half to yourself. It’s easier this way.

“Does matter. So’ve you,” Joel says, even quieter, like he’s trying to contain an angry edge that threatens to bleed out. The calm is almost worse. In a way, you wish he would loosen the leash on his rage. Or break something to satisfy the urge in you that wants to do the same – you’d give him permission to do that. This is too unreadable and ambiguous, too much room left for agonizing interpretation in how he grits his teeth and pulses that muscle in his taut jaw. You want to yell, let out what’s long pent-up. Yes! Yes, it does fucking matter!

But you don’t. You keep the rag tight on the lip of the pint glass in your hand, rotating it past the point of needing to be cleaned. The rub of the microfiber cloth makes you itch, and your teeth scrape again at the inside of your cheek.

It leaves your mouth before you can catch it and shove it back down.

“Why do you care?”

Joel looks up at you now and you think that you’ve already overstepped during your first, real fucking conversation. He finishes off the whiskey and puts it back down carefully. He stands up, each slow step over to you spiking your blood pressure, your breath shifting into neutral. 

It’s the way he’s fixated on you, a litmus test for any sarcasm. The way a chill creeps into the base of your spine and slithers up each vertebrae despite the warmth you feel below your waist. And when he comes behind the bar, reaches for the glass in your hand and puts it down gently, you wonder if that tug has always been there. 

Fuck.

“You think I don’t care?”

Tiny hairs at your nape stand at attention in a near-salute. The web of intrusive thoughts tangles between you, and you’re acutely aware that this is the closest you’ve ever been to Joel Miller – that you’ve been conscious for. That feeling rushes back and bursts in your chest, the comforting honey in his voice that’s been haunting you since he found you crumpled in the snow. 

The omnipresent, sharp tang of whiskey sticks to the slightly graying stubble that you want to reach out and touch. That you want to feel the scrape of in places that makes heat pool deep in your belly. His flannel is unbuttoned at the top, the column of his throat ridged and tense. 

Focus.

“Why are you saying this now?” you say, and you want to hold your ground but his admission is akin to mesmerizing.

He thinks for a minute, his eyes smoothing over every angle in your face. They look past you, just over your shoulder, like he’s asking himself the same thing.

“Knew you could handle it. ‘Til you couldn’t anymore.”

There it is. You let it sink in, clicking that last piece into place. Always observing you from a safe distance, the buzz of something unsaid ringing in your ears when he’s around. How he listens to your interactions, but never too closely. Watching for weak spots. And tonight was the weakest of them all, letting yourself be humiliated by the only person that knew where to bite just right.

You feel laid bare, too seen. Pissed that he can witness your struggling, thrashing, drowning with outstretched arms and kicking feet and decide when and if he’ll pity you.

And this time, a laugh does slip out – humorless and breathy.

“The same way you can handle whatever’s making you drink alone on a Friday night? Don’t act so holier than thou, Joel. I’m the wrong one.”

“Watch it.”

You don’t mean it. Not really. But you’re so angry, a wasps’ nest that’s been taunted and poked at after being left to its own devices for too long. Sometimes violence feels more intimate. Safer.

And he’s using that gravelly, terse tone with you of all people, and you want to fucking lose your mind.

When he doesn’t say anything else, just looks at you and waits, they leave their home in a wave. Burying stingers where you know they’ll hurt. Once more, with feeling.

“Are you looking for a ‘thank you’?”

Joel’s mouth quirks, but it isn’t a smile. It only stokes the fire, and you know what he’s doing. Letting you win, begrudgingly because you’re being an ass. But you haven’t had a win in the last ten months, only loss after devastating loss. He’s throwing you a raft.

“No. Just tryin’ to help, ‘s all.”

Your nostrils are flaring in sharp inhales that you can’t control, and you physically jab at him, your own tightly wound chest dragging in the hive for a final, practiced nosedive. “I don’t fucking need your help, Joel.”

He’s snatching your wrist, holding it in a vise, but there’s a flinch in his expression. Joel hardens, sliding that cool armor back into place. Sizing you up one more time, committing you to memory. A curt nod, plucking that chord of roughness in his tone that makes you ache.

There’s a glare you’ve never seen from him, like disappointment and disdain wrapped up neatly in one package. Delivered with a dagger straight to your heart.

“We’ll see. Not s’good at that, are you?”

And it’s a KO you allow, one you’ll lay with. But he’s leaning in, invading your space. You move to retreat and cower, the way you’re accustomed to, but Joel’s grabbing a fistful of your shirt and fastening you in place. His mouth’s at your ear as if he’s telling you a secret. 

“Good luck bein’ a fuckin’ martyr.”

The pressure loosens, as does his grip, dissipating like some ghostly presence. He leaves without another word, and something inside you snags and unspools. 

—

You don’t see Joel for days. 

Three days to be exact, torturous and fluid days that feel like trickling sand, but blend together in an indistinguishable slideshow when you zoom out. You time your breaks perfectly at the stables so you don’t run into him, and you ask Cheryl to cover for you on Tuesday, ignoring the strange look she gives you – the resident workaholic. 

It’s a sort of avoidance that you don’t want to acknowledge or look directly in the eye. If you did, it would mean that Joel affected you more than you want to admit. Or that he’d sized you up in an expert way that a categorical stranger shouldn’t be able to.

You should be livid, and you are… in a way. But mainly you want to shrug your skin off, your unease for being so dissected by him. Just unzip it all and let it pool at your feet, stepping out of the pile one leg at a time. The pinch, the untethering of you and the man that could read you without translation.

And when it’s 9 o’clock and you’re making tea as you trudge through a book without really reading anything, you glance outside at the house across the street and it’s so dark that you think it may have swallowed him whole.

Or he’s hiding from you, too.

—

It’s finally Thursday, and you can’t put it off any longer. You’re running out of food, you promised Tommy you’d lend a hand with feeding the horses – and there’s a dull itch to see Joel again. You don’t even know what you’d say, if he even wants to bother with you after the other night. Part of you hopes that you fall backwards into the acquaintance of saying nothing, that you have permission to rewind past whatever this nagging feeling is.

It’s quiet outside – a lazy day. The snow on the ground is melting, patchy in spots where sunlight or kid-feet caught it at just the right angle. The greenhouses are so fogged and frosted over that you’re grateful you can’t see the death-rot inside. It’s not quite growing season yet, but close, and you long for the added distraction in your day if this is the alternative.

Anything to pass the time and not think about Joel and his hands touching yours. The fabric of your shirt oozing between his knuckles when he forced you chest-to-chest. 

When you make it over to the barn, his horse is gone and there’s almost – almost – a twinge of relief. You’ll be done before he gets back from patrol. You won’t have a chance to swallow the apology that will rise in your throat like bile, but maybe it’s for the best.

You’re elbow deep in feed when there’s a yelling that cracks in the air. You freeze, waiting to hear a suffix of children’s laughter, but it doesn’t come. There’s a confused sort of shouting, and the gate at the border of Jackson slams and rattles like you’ve never heard before. 

Shaky hands wipe at your pants, and you step out, a hand shielding your eyes from the glare of the sun.

Joel is slumped atop his horse, upright but hardly. There’s a cut somewhere on his head that streams a blurry red, and the horse whines when Tommy sprints to meet it.

“It’s Joel! I need some fuckin’ help here!”

And without fully connecting the dots or measuring the severity, you just run. Colliding with the crowd that’s formed, shoving elbows and shoulders as if in a trance. Like something’s pressing you from behind, throwing all its weight into pushing you forward. 

You blink and you’re helping Joel down, Ellie’s tattooed forearm somewhere in the jumble of limbs. Tommy’s jean jacket stiff from the cold.

You don’t have to look in a mirror to know that you’re pale as a ghost. The moisture strips from your mouth, joints moving as if by marionette. Blood is already drying and caking in the creases of your hands. Knowing it isn’t yours makes you feel sick.

“‘M fine, Jesus Christ,” Joel coughs, a jagged edge in his throat that sounds anything but. There’s something underneath his coat that’s soaking through, blossoming a dark stain on the front. 

Images keep shifting every time you blink, like you’re losing time in between and someone’s slamming the fast-forward button until it jams. Joel groaning on a makeshift stretcher. Ellie’s frenzied feet following as they take him to his house.

The tall one on top of you, squeezing your windpipe. 

Your head cracking against the pavement. 

Two gunshots firing. 

Snow in your bloodied, matted hair. 

“You’re okay, I’ve got you. I know, I know it hurts.”

Ringing grows loud and shrill in your ears. Tommy’s in front of you, calling your name. Shaking your shoulders. 

“– need you to go fix him up –”

And you’re falling back into the present, vision shifting back into focus. You’re nodding, clinical now. You’ve seen worse, and strangely, that’s comforting. 

“– whatever supplies you need, I trust you –”

The weight of Tommy’s confidence steadies you, tying up the loose ends that have untwined deep inside. You run through the mental checklist of what’s in your medical bag at home – stashed in your closet on the very top shelf. Bandages, antibiotics, sutures. But if you’re dealing with a bite…

“I got it. Promise. Keep everyone out, alright? I’ll let you know.”

He pauses, catching up with the subliminal thing that waits in the air between you. Wariness paints his gaze, and you know he knows what you’re afraid to say. 

Tommy nods, but you’re already running.

[guiltyasdave]

joel miller - oneshots - part 2

fic recs masterlist - please check the tags and warnings on each fic! if you enjoyed a fic, please show the writer some love <3

into the deep end by @magpiepills

you're poison but a good kind by @northernbluess

only need ten by @pascalpvnk

creep it real! by @swiftispunk

leopard print & stuffing by @toxicanonymity (featuring tommy miller)

devour by @jksprincess10

trick or treat by @tieronecrush

a quiet storm by @ozarkthedog

boo by @pascalsbby

i put a spell on you, and now you're mine! by @5oh5

i wanna show you off & best kept secret by @joelscurls

innocent trouble by @velvetmud

punishment & safe and sound by @joelsgreys

trick or treat? by @morallyinept (featuring dave york & frankie morales)

checkmate & nobody does it like you do by @honeyedmiller

#1 girl by @joelhoney

i found the door by @tinycozycomfort

animals, tell me more, forget, use me & thankful by @endlessthxxghts

good to be home by @hearteyesforjoel

i hope you're happy by @blissfulbarbie

obedience by @wintrwinchestr

home for christmas & bunny tails by @sweetercalypso

a promise softly sung by @agentmarcuspike

five of joel miller's birthdays by @bastardmandennis

lover's rock by @tinygarbage

lonesome and mad by @hyzer34

all three dogs, wish you were here & walking through fire by @macfrog

shopping by @notjustjavierpena

strawberries and cream & a villain's monologue by @aurorawritestoescape

birthday surprise & the burglary by @aurorawritestoescape (featuring tommy miller)

ivy by @dancingtotuyo

apocalypse by @tremendum

sticky by @ezrasbirdie

told you i'd be back by @palioom

leftovers & the kind of love we make by @katiexpunk

please, mr miller? by @auteurdelabre

silent night by @javiscigarette

the stranger by @nala2811

full by @morallyinept

no soul to sell & in the next room by @atticrissfinch

i'll fix it for you by @bi-writes

for a good time call... joel & wrong until you make it right by @missredherring

tangled triumphs & our little sheep by @planet-marz1

fire walk by @motherofagony

stress by @joelsflannel

still sleepless, christmas after all & good with my hands by @mrsmando

distracted by @psychedelic-ink

rough day by @pedge-page

the art of breaking by @corazondebeskar-reads

the most wonderful time by @always-andromeda

[macfrog]

Do you have any game Joel fic recs (longer series)? I’ve read all of yours and I loved them but unfortunately there aren’t many game Joel writers, so I’m having some trouble finding them. I figured I’d ask you boss!

there are some insane game joel fics out there, lovely non! here are a few off the top of my head - they are all very well-loved (deservedly so).

➵ a kind of hunger by @familyvideostevie centers around the very fiery relationship between a very spunky reader who runs a bar and a - very - dreamy joel. just bursting at the seams with passion and humor and emma's delightful way with words.

➵ a heart for eating by @motherofagony is a delicious and savage story following a raider attack in jackson. bloody, gritty, and one sexy as fuck joel. lex just tangles you up in the story instantly.

➵ i know it when i see it by @bageldaddy is a dreamy story spun from 70s gold dust, about a certain pornstar!joel. genuinely too good to be ours for free and written by the hottest loser i know.

➵ @cavillscurls's soft!joel is such a comfort read, leaning into jackson!joel's more tender side (dude is hot as fuck, too). mya's writing is just gorgeous and will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

and i know you said series, but there are also plenty writers who have some hot as shit one shots featuring this pixel man;

➵ sweet by @honeyedmiller

➵ never enough by @amanitacowboy

➵ 10:05 pm by @netherfeildren

➵ talking body by @joelsdagger

there are so many, i'm for sure missing a whole lot. if anyone wants to add any, please do.

yay for game joel fic. more of that, please.

[honeyedmiller]

swiftiscruff friendship exchange

decided to go cowboy themed for the @swiftiscruff friendship exchange apparently (forgive me bc i suck at moodboards)

so i haven’t really ever gotten too personal on here, but last year was one of the toughest years of my life. i came back onto tumblr because i missed writing so much and i’ve pretty much always used it as an escape from reality. i’m so grateful for that goofy 49 year old man and the multitude of characters he’s played (and naughty dog for making an incredible franchise video game) that inspired me to write again.

never would i have thought that it would have brought me to meet some of the most incredible, kindhearted, loving people. i genuinely cannot imagine not having met all of you in this life.

i’ve read so many fics on here by the most fucking talented writers i’ve ever come across. i really didn’t think fic could make me feel the way i did / still do ever again, but it has and it honestly inspires me every day. i’m so happy i was welcomed into this fandom with open arms. i have @chaotic-iguana to thank for being one of my first friends on here, who introduced me to many more individuals that hold such a special place in my heart.

i love you all so much and i want you all to know from the bottom of my heart i’m so grateful to know you / have interacted with you in some way. even if we aren’t moots, your work has inspired me and i’ve enjoyed reading everything you all have to offer. thank you to each and every one of you who takes the time to create such wonderful masterpieces for us all to read! not to be the biggest sap ever, but i’m sending you all so much love.

all my love,

dev

tags— people who i’m moots with or who i admire greatly:

@ilovepedro @joelsgreys @endlessthxxghts @nostalxgic @punkshort @party-hearses @pascalpvnk @tinygarbage

@javierpena-inatacvest @bastardmandennis @sweetercalypso @mrsmando @swiftispunk @morning-star-joy @kiwisbell

@ozarkthedog @joeloverture @undrthelights @beardedjoel @hier--soir @joelscurls @saradika @toxicanonymity

@javiscigarette @from-the-clouds @joelsdagger @luxurychristmaspudding @pr0ximamidnight

@untamedheart81 @mermaidgirl30 @nerdieforpedro @studioghibelli @pedgito

@5oh5 @netherfeildren @atticrissfinch @joelscruff @motherofagony @familyvideostevie @bageldaddy @macfrog

@penvisions @clawdee @amanitacowboy @gracieheartsspedro @morallyinept @bearsbeetsbeskar @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

(there’s more people i want to tag but tumblr won’t let me)

[wannab-urs]

The Spreadsheet Digest - Vol 25

Hi Friends!!

It has been... a week. I didn't get a whole lot of reading done. But I did absolutely adore every single thing I read this week. I think, if I can count, I read 12 new fics this week. Also tried out yet another new format: Author summaries (or my quick one if there wasn't one) included with the rec.

As always you can find all of my previous fic recs here. Feel free to tag me in your fics and I'll add them to my TBR (please understand that my TBR is long as hell and it might take a while for me to get to it)

Fic recs below the (baby) Pedro!

Me and My Husband a Din series by @beskarandblasters

Summary: Din Djarin is doing what any typical Mandalorian would be doing after reclaiming Mandalore, finding a riduur and settling down. He’s still a member of the Guild on Nevarro, taking bounties here and there to support his new family. But when he meets you while you’re working the front desk at an inn on Naboo, he finds himself hooked, feeling like he’s found something new and exciting in his now mundane life. How long can he keep up appearances with his riduur? And how long can he keep his little secret with you?

This is the first married!Din series I’ve ever seen (not saying it doesn’t exist, but I haven’t seen it), so this is for my infidelity loving Din Girlies. I love how awkward and just plain bad at flirting Din is in this. And you’ll hear this a lot from me in my reblogs but POOR MAY!! I’m so excited for the rest of this series. 

Oh, Honey a Joel series by @lincolndjarin 

Summary: you’ve been given a gift. a fresh start in a brand new place, the sleepy little town of Honey, WV. a distant aunt has passed away and left you a little plot of land and her camper, the stars must be aligning for you because the local mortician is looking for an assistant and you’re desperate for the work experience. your new employer even offers to set you up with her brother-in-law! things are looking up, you’ve got a brand new home, a new town, a hot date, (and thanks to a series of bear attacks that started immediately after your arrival) you have more than enough work to keep you busy!

Oh look Gin is reading another monsterfucking fic…. Shocker. But anywayyyy, I love the buildup in this. It’s got such a good suspenseful plot. And I love that reader goes a lil off the rails and everyone is fuckin gaslighting her aghhhhhh. Oh also baby Ellie is in this and that is adorable. The lore and the worldbuilding in this are to die for, I feel like I’m reading a mystery novel. 

A Heart For Eating a Joel series by @motherofagony

Summary: a vicious raider attack robs you of human connection and lights a fire of destruction in your life in jackson. joel's fixated on you, and your lives tangle. revenge becomes a needful thing.

I love Joel’s characterization in this so much. He’s a grumpy bastard, but he’s got that wonderful protective caregiver thing going on. If you’re a fan of some mild love as consumption, injured men (and taking care of them (joel)), christ side wounds, and gorgeous storytelling this is the one. 

Go Ahead, I dare ya a Javi P two shot by @chronically-ghosted

Summary: 1. No sex. 2. No touching yourself. 3. No orgasms. 4. No murdering your annoying DEA partner. A Javier Peña-shaped riff on that iconic Star Wars fic.

The TENSION!!!! The BUILDUP!!!! This fic drove me crazy dude. It’s so will they won’t they the whole fucking time right up until they do. Javi is perfectly written and reader is a perfect match for his bullshit. 

Wet Work a Frankie one shot by @loversandantiheroes

Summary: Frankie accidentally discovers how to make you squirt

I???? It’s a fic where Frankie makes you squirt three times like what else do I even have to say? It’s on your kitchen table! And you call him a good boy! This fic is devastatingly hot. 

Frankie Breathplay Drabble a Frankie drabble by @ozarkthedog 

Summary: Frankie chokes you while you ride him

Got tagged in this lovely little drabble and ummmm oh my god? Breathplay is a little bit of an understatement for what this is. It borders on dark!frankie (in my personal opinion), which I adore. He’s choking you out while you ride him. Like that’s what’s happening. Asphyxiation but make it sexy. 

Real Gods Require Blood a Joel one shot by @proxima-writes

Summary: You think you’re as good as dead when a band of raiders find you. In what you think are your final moments, an angel appears. His name is Joel Miller, and he is here to deliver you from evil.

CULT JOEL! CULT JOEL!!! I love how fucking scary Joel is in this. It’s like if the stuff that happened to canon joel got all mixed up with some religious trauma and made him go a little crazy. I loved this so much. It was quietly terrifying, beautifully written. I love the ending so much too… not gonna spoil it but AHHHH

The Locksmith a The Thief series by @oonajaeadira 

Summary: A Thief you’ve known for years and have conflicting feelings for brings you a gift. The gift is a not only a puzzle in itself, but part of a larger mystery, one only you can crack.

I’m like 3 or 4 chapters into this series and I love it so much. The Thief with a locksmith reader is just such a good idea and I love how he ropes her into situations. He’s such a smooth talker ugh. The opera chapter? Pls. I gotta go finish this series now actually AH. 

The Haunting of Dieter Bravo a Dieter one shot by @idolatrybarbie

Summary: "ghosts aren't real, except when they are."

As a paranormal horror slut, it really felt like this fic was written for me… (f’me, if you will, Bea). Dieter being Dieter and reader being done with his shit and then they get HAUNTED. I love it. The suspense is so good. I was actually a lil freaked out. 

Everyone at this party's a vampire a Dieter one shot by @idolatrybarbie

Summary: "you look so pretty like this."

This is funny because Dieter is an idiot, but reader is so hot??? Anyway sexy vampire lady lures Dieter’s dumbass into getting murked and it’s wonderful.

Intimidation Tactics a Dave/Marcus P series by @whataperfectwasteoftime

Summary: You and your partner, Marcus Pike, are investigating a case that brings you far too close to something much more dangerous than your average art thief. 

I haven’t quite finished this yet (actually just got to the big action scene), but I am so in love with this fic. I already adore the way Penny writes Marcus, but then we get her Dave too. And Dave has all these elements of movie Dave – badass, sexy, a little scary – but we also get to see him be sweet and protective and playful and I love it so much. And then also I think everyone knows I’m a big ol slut for a MMF fic and the dynamic between Marcus and Dave is so fucking good. Little baby enemies to lovers plotline and GOD their chemistry is off the charts. 

Just Friends a Javi P two shot by @joelsgreys

Summary: You’re planning to have sex for the first time and you’re nervous—Javi offers to show you a thing or two, but just as friends of course.

I really love the way Vee writes Javi, man. He’s arrogant, annoying, rude, snarky… but also protective, sweet, and very ummmm giving. The banter is fuckin unmatched. And the mutual pining? PLEASE. I’m obsessed. 

----------------

Apologies to anyone whose series I normally keep up with... I've been a lil scatterbrained.

-----------------

Happy Reading!

[familyvideostevie]

Hey I genuinely can't get enough of your Joel fics!!! Your style of writing is so tailored to me and I've never read anything like it. Seriously it's beyond fan fiction level and so earnest and beautiful. While I anxiously wait for your next fic is there any accounts and or Joel fics you could recommend?? All the love xx

hello! first of all, this is very kind of you. thank you so much! i am really truly so glad you enjoy my work and it means like, more than you can imagine to hear it. :) thank you for being patient with me! no word on when a next fic will be but i appreciate you being here.

recs below! (there are so many lovely wonderful writers here, and i cannot possible cover them all!)

full disclosure i read mostly game!joel fics, so those are what i can recommend! here are some accounts i'd check out. (if you'd like some show!fics, send me another ask and I'll do my best!)

@softlyspector: becca is an absolute favorite. i think if you like my fics you'll love hers! i am always trying to have the same mastery of joel's character as she does and her exploration of canon is expert and motivates me as a writer. and her aus! wow, her aus. just utterly transformative. you cannot go wrong reading her stuff.

@macfrog: if you like really flushed out, detailed aus, max is your girl! she's got some really built-out series and her masterlist will give you quite a lot to chew on.

@batsingotham: bat has a truly wonderful series (here on ao3) called "Cinnamon and Honey" that i adore. amazing in-universe work, has absolutely inspired my own writing about jackson.

@motherofagony: lex has recently moved her work to ao3, but you have to check it out. i think about her au one-shot often and her in-universe wip is really amazing and worth keeping up with. amazing depth of character!

@bageldaddy: finally, if you haven't, highly recommend checking out bea's work. it's sexy, intense, and masterful!

hope you find some things you like here! :) thanks again for being here and being so kind.

[atinylittlepain]

Ginnn any reading recommendations list?❤️❤️

HI non, thank you for asking :)

im not sure if you're talking fic or non fic so ill give you a little of both

in regards to fic, lemme just share a few authors on here who I've been really excited to read lately:

@macfrog is doing some really cool shit - their dog oneshot was brilliant, and their new series Sweet Child of Mine is already a delight

@chloeangelic is like, the patron saint of refreshingly not-boring smut and tension lol - highly recommend her ongoing series Seeking What is Desirable

@5oh5 has an ongoing series rn called From Eden that's an absolute treat and I can't wait to catch up on it

@dr-aculaaa is literally my favorite steve harrington writer - nobody is doing it like drac, I tell you, so good

@motherofagony is fucking brilliant, just all of their stuff, highly recommend

as for nonfic, here are some authors i'm really excited about rn:

Sam Sax - brilliant, visceral poetry, highly recommend Pig

Jeanette Winterson, but like, her early stuff lol - currently reading Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and thoroughly enjoying it

Sarah Rose Etter - the Book of X was amazing, and im looking forward to reading Ripe as well

Eimear McBride - a fascinating style, very challenging to read but it's worth it in my opinion

i will always always always recommend Max Porter - any of his work - I've read it all and I've loved it all and I aspire to write like he does

[party-hearses]

using only song titles of one artist/band, cleverly answer the questions and then tag people.

thank you for the tags @bastardmandennis @cool-iguana @honeyedmiller ily all and i'm pretty impressed with myself 😌

artist: say anything (my music taste has always been and will always be trash)

what's your gender: baby girl, i'm a blur

how do you feel: alive with the glory of love

if you could go anywhere: cemetery OR dreaming of manhattan

favorite mode of transportation: a walk through hell

your best friend: hate everyone

favorite time of day: night song

if your life was a tv show: the truth is, you should lie with me

relationship status: shiksa (girlfriend)

your fears: she got away

npt: @kiwisbell @motherofagony @tinygarbage @deathwife @qveerthe0ry and anyone else who wants to! 🖤

[motherofagony]

A HEART FOR EATING // vol. 2

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: post outbreak!joel x f!reader setting: jackson, wy (think tlou pt. 2 minus the golfing) rating: mature, 18+, minors dni word count: 8.7k series summary: a vicious raider attack robs you of human connection and lights a fire of destruction in your life in jackson. joel's fixated on you, and your lives tangle. revenge becomes a needful thing. chapter summary: you take care of joel after a patrol injury, but you suspect there's more to it than he's telling you. the atmosphere shifts as you and joel grow (begrudgingly) closer. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), protective!joel, brief masturbation (f!reader), praise kink for two seconds, blood, bodily injuries, needles (reader gives joel stitches), dissociation/triggers, alcohol, angst, sexual tension intensifies, The First Kiss™, soft!joel vol. 1 // vol. 2 series playlist a/n: we're picking up speed, folks. world-building is my weakness, so i hope you enjoy this nonetheless. honorable mention goes to the readers in the trenches, waiting patiently for joel to [redacted] reader senseless until she [redacted] all over his [redacted]. thank you for the love on the series so far. taglist: @ghostwritesthings, @widowssbite, @p3rkerr, @eternallyvenus, @punkshort if anyone would like to be added/removed to the taglist (or if i missed anyone), please send me a DM!

You’ve always hated flying.

In the great before, the stone ages of family vacations and things to look forward to, fears were singular and planes were yours.

Your family never had a lot of money, not really, but on the special occasion of a death in the family, you’d find yourself trapped to a seat in a metal tube. Going nowhere but up. Sitting through safety instructions that came from smiling, lipsticked mouths that were only hypotheticals until they weren’t.

It’s like a rollercoaster, your dad would say, amused in the way only a dad can be and sleeping through damn near anything in the same fashion. It did nothing to calm the knocking of your knees, to quell the flip of your stomach as you climbed higher and higher until you couldn’t see anything but cotton ball clouds.

It was always unnatural to you that something so heavy could float, that you were supposed to go on doing human things and drinking your ginger ale and munching your pre-packaged snack option. As if you weren’t being hurled into the sky with no one walking you through it.

As if the plummet onto tarmac meant no harm, just completely normal erratic braking that felt a lot like the moments before a crash.

There was no control — it was in someone else’s hands that you never saw. And as you fell, you were supposed to say thank you, that’s exactly what I paid for.

This is your version of the oxygen mask. This is you putting yours on before you help Joel.

You’re on your knees digging through your med bag, thumbing through bandages, checking for a quick count of gloves, antibiotics, wash cloths. You fumble with the zipper, fighting with the tremor that starts in your forearms and liquifies into your wrists. There isn’t much in the way of supplies unless you ransack what’s kept in storage, but there’s no time, and you’re not sure of what you’re about to walk into.

Waiting any moment for a scream, or the blast of a gun when they realize Joel’s not Joel anymore.

And it isn’t really a big possibility in the grand scheme of things, if you consider that he would’ve likely turned on the route home. But it’s still there, tickling the back of your head, nudging your navel uncomfortably. Nothing’s impossible.

You of all people know that.

You linger in your living room, giving a final sweep. Worst case, you can run back for what’s forgotten, but something about the idea of abandoning a vulnerable Joel – if only for a minute – doesn’t settle right in your stomach.

Before you can stop yourself, you’re shoving a bottle of whiskey into the bag, the only anesthetic on hand. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you need to score back some points.

The steps leading up to Joel’s house are sturdy, and you imagine it’s because of the pride he takes in what’s his. Before this, his house was just another skeleton of roof, foundation, windows, and siding.

The kind of houses you pass by every day that are rife with familiarity but you don’t know what it’s like to see the people inside eat dinner, brush their teeth. Fight. Fuck.

Fresh paint from only two seasons ago, reinforced porch posts. A swing. It’s weird to see permanence in this day and age, but his intention to anchor himself and grow roots here flutters meaningfully inside you.

It’s always been a sacred thing to you, you don’t know why. A place you’d never dreamed of entering, but dreamed about what it would smell like. A pair of boots haphazard by the front door, small piles of organized chaos, of collected tangibles. A you never know if you’ll need this in one corner, a saving that for a rainy day shelved in another.

So when you raise your hand to knock, you feel like an intruder, an unwelcome invasion of privacy. And you don’t know why you knock at all, you nearly think better of it given the circumstances, but you’re testing the atmosphere, hoping for voices inside instead of a struggle.

Ellie’s swinging the door open, relief smoothing out the lines in her forehead when she sees you. Her presence seems to answer any unspoken questions you had about Joel being infected, and you don’t voice them to her when you can see unrest in her antsy legs.

“Hey. Sorry for the wait. He alright?”

Her teeth are worrying her lip, probably more traumatized by the sight of him than anything. A few strands of hair have freed themselves from her lazy half-bun at the base of her neck, caught in the crossfire when she ran her hands through it, you think.

“Yeah,” Ellie breathes, committing to it. “Yeah, he’s okay. Bleeding stopped, nothing seems broken. Just needs stitches, I think.”

It sounds more to convince herself than anything else. There’s a foreign fragility to her, and you hate it.

“He tell you what happened?”

The question strikes a nerve. Ellie’s shaking her bowed head, scoffing in a half-laugh that doesn’t touch her eyes. Her hand wraps around her knuckles, cracking slowly in an effort to alleviate the tension that’s reached a fever pitch inside her.

“He won’t tell me, says it doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t have gone alone anyway, he was bein’ a dick. ‘I wanna think, kiddo - need t’clear my head,’” she mocks in a gruff, rolling pitch, the perfect dosage of Texas.

It levels you, potent. Are you the thing Joel needed to clear his head of?

You’re weirdly longing for it, but being flicked away like a bug, peeled away layer by layer from him isn’t something you want.

There’s hope that you’re contagious. That you’re haunting him and lurking in the darkest corners of his mind like an apparition like he has yours. And maybe there’s hope after all, something left to salvage.

But you play dumb, furrow your brow a little too expertly.

Ellie’s measuring you, and there’s a glimpse of worry but she hides it in a way that you wouldn’t know what you were looking for if you hadn’t already found it.

“Anything you wanna tell me about the other night? He was pissed when he left,” she tacks on quietly.

You go a little slack-jawed. You don’t even know how to put it into words, and you couldn’t tell her what it meant even if you tried.

What’s there to even say?

“You know what, none of my business,” she says, her hands lifting in tired surrender when you don’t answer, ignoring your near-sputter. “But you’re not off the hook, just make sure the old man doesn’t croak. And tell him he scared the shit outta me.”

You exhale and hope it doesn’t read too much as relief. You’ll have to answer to her later, but at least you might have an answer to give.

“Handful of salt in the wound, rub in circular motions – got it. Tell Tommy I’ll catch up later.”

Your shoulders scrape affectionately as you nudge past each other, and you cast a wide look at the periphery of Joel Miller’s house. The feeling of unwelcome disappears, and if anything, you’re being tugged further inside. Imagining what it’s like to be a fixture, an adornment in his weird little life.

Nooks that you assumed would be messy are neat, coiffed even. There’s that unavoidable smudge of secondhand all over the furniture – mottled ever so slightly, aged uneven in places that only an apocalypse can do. But it’s an otherwise tidy existence. Another surprise from Joel that you’d never pick up on if you only witnessed him nursing a drink at the bar.

An oak bookshelf props itself at the bottom of the stairs and it rivals your own, dust gathering in thin lines where he’s repeatedly shelved this, reread that. There are paintings hung decisively on most of the walls, breathtaking rural landscapes of wherever.

You’re lugging the bag upstairs, counting your breaths with each step. The whiskey rattles mutely against the first aid tin, and it’s a toss-up now of who you really brought it for.

The landing mirrors the ground level, a purposeful littering of tchotchkes. Doors line the second floor, some closed, some ajar but not inviting, and you realize you have no idea which one you’re looking for. You sway uninvited by the bannister until you hear the unmistakable hiss of breath between clenched teeth, then a soft moan as his weight shifts.

And you’re stepping inside a room – his bedroom – warmed in the soft beginnings of sunset. Joel’s sprawled asymmetrically on his bed, eyes pinched shut, delirious with blood loss but already looking substantially less like a corpse. A damp rag settles just above his brow, and the handiwork of Ellie.

There’s an unrecognizable hurt in him, wounded in ways that he shouldn’t be capable of.

He doesn’t give any indication that he knows you’re here until he’s rasping out something weak disguised as stern.

“I ain’t bit. Shut the door behind you.”

Your mouth goes dry.

“How did you –?”

Joel just huffs in response, as indignant as his body lets him be.

“You see anyone else here? They might as well’ve jumped out the window, as fast as they dumped me ‘n left. I ain’t stupid.”

You accept that and drop the pretense, pursing your lips with a nod. He doesn’t seem that offended, knows it’s just the nature of the beast.

You move over to his bedside, unpacking the bag quickly on a side table, looping your metaphorical stethoscope around your neck and switching gears into a mode that’s strictly doctoral.

Yet, there’s still that hum beneath your skin, the fizzle of unfinished business. It’s thick in the space between you, in the way he flicks his gaze at you lazily. You’ll let him foster the anger, giving it a home. You can be the martyr he says you are.

This new lens feels calmer, almost professional. Your nerves are still firing rapidly, and your composure is forced, but it’s better than nothing.

You drag a chair from the corner up to Joel’s bed, not letting your eyes wander too far into the depths of the space. You don’t have time to dissect the idiosyncrasies of his life. Not yet.

He still hasn’t opened his eyes, but you get the sense that he’s tracking your every move. His limbs are concrete, the tendons in his forearms so tense and coiled like any and every movement is forbidden.

“Joel.”

He grunts, a pained translation. Still no effort to move.

“I need to take a look at you,” you say patiently, bargaining like you would with a kid. “Wanna tell me what hurts?”

Another grunt, softer this time. He motions vaguely, weakly to his head, then the left flank of his abdomen.

You already know what you’ll find under the rag on his head, and it bodes well that the bleeding looks to have stopped. His stomach wound, on the other hand, was enough to bleed through two layers.

“Alright. Lemme see.”

A muted whimper echoes in his throat, so uncharacteristically that it tugs on your heart. Still statuesque, unmoving.

Your fingers are deft, careful as they unbutton the first, second, third buttons of his flannel. Joel’s stock-still, and his breath comes in sharp, slow waves through his nose. Your own breath kind of sits in the back of your throat, and you pretend with a hurried exhale that you weren’t just holding it.

Your fingers reach his navel on the last button, and you’re gently tucking each panel of his shirt under him on either side, focusing too hard on not touching him. It feels like something is somersaulting low in your stomach.

You can’t even dare yourself to look at his chest, his stomach. The patch of hair leading down to the band of his pants.

Get it together. That’s not what this is.

An angry gash looks up at you, thankfully clotted with dried patches of blood. It’s about two delicate fingers long, a nasty slice. It looks clean, abrupt in shape but suspiciously manmade. Not too deep, but not superficial enough to heal without some assistance.

And thank god, not nearly as bad as you thought it would be.

Joel’s looking at you now through heavy lids, wary of you, but something like fear touches the corners of his eyes. You fight to stay medical, methodical in your diagnosis. No emotion slips out, nothing allowed in.

You sit back calmly, letting loose a sigh. Not letting yourself bathe in the intimacy of the moment, in the way he’s staring.

“You need stitches,” you announce simply.

“Like hell.”

“Joel.”

He’s scowling, a hurt animal pissed at its own vulnerability. Silence passes like a ship between you, and for a moment, you think he’ll really fight you on this. He can’t hide anything when he’s like this, the weighing of his options evident in the tick of his jaw, the pathetic pinch just in the center of his brows.

“Fine,” he grits out. “Make it quick.”

This fucker.

You’re rolling your eyes, unceremoniously tugging the rag from his forehead. The cloth is red but not soaked, just twinged pink around the edges. Joel curses, just an octave above unintelligible.

His hand is shooting to the cut near his hairline and you’re smacking it away before he can pollute it.

“Lay still, fuck’s sake,” you chastise. “An infection’ll put you out longer than a few days. Unless you have a puzzle you been meaning to get around to?”

The faux-threat calms him immediately, and the shift in restraint doesn’t go unchecked. He doesn’t say another word, but you catch a glare and a twitch of his mouth.

You make quick work of cleaning him up, squeezing rubbing alcohol on a clean towel and scrubbing patient circles through the mess of dried blood. Joel releases sharp noises you can only describe as growls when you get too close to the border of his cuts.

It’s primal, a dog asserting dominance with his leg caught in a trap.

You try to lose the attitude, and it’s difficult when your patient hates you, doesn’t hate you, won’t clarify either way.

There’s a hint of purple that’s developing like fresh film on the mountains of his knuckles that doesn’t go unnoticed. Places on the most taut peaks of flesh where his skin has split, marred with scrapes that look like indents of teeth. And in the right light, there’s a discoloration of something in the same family splayed on his ribs.

And that… you know that when you see it. Even if everything else can be explained away.

“You wanna talk about it?” you say quietly.

There’s an intermission where he doesn’t respond. Too long to be the truth, too short to come up with a lie. And you know he’s been waiting for this question, might’ve already thought of a story.

“Got clumsy,” Joel recites. “Tripped on some stairs that were caving in, hit my head.”

“Bullshit.” And it’s a statement, not an insult. It doesn’t cover why he has a certified stab wound in his side.

Another stretch of silence, lack of defensiveness, makes it clear that he knows you know. But he doesn’t elaborate, and for whatever reason, you don’t push it.

And maybe it’s enough to acknowledge this sort of thing for now. You can stow it away, let it keep you up at night. Draw parallels where there possibly aren’t any. If he’d run into a human thing, he’d be much worse off, right?

Just like you were.

You take care in lining up the supplies to stitch in neat order beside you, mulling over each step in your mind. Stalling, maybe.

You pull the whiskey bottle out of your bag by the neck and nudge Joel with the cap.

“Something to take the edge off.”

He kind of hesitates, but there’s a tenderness. Recognizing it as an act of mercy, a peace offering.

There’s nothing said, but he takes the bait, spinning off the top and swallowing a messy mouthful. A drip escapes through the corner of his mouth and slips into his beard.

You can feel the taste of it blossoming on your tongue.

He grunts his thanks and keeps a steady grip on the neck of the bottle, and the network of veins in his forearm unwind.

You clamp the needle, laced through with something thicker than thread but not quite medical grade. Joel exhales a shaky whine when you pierce the skin, and his fist grips the sheets when you twist clockwise to push the needle through to the other side.

“You’re doing great,” you murmur.

The needle weaves over the cut, greeting the other side. You pull it through and up, and his lower lip trembles, sweat beading his forehead.

“First one done,” you say, praising him but also yourself.

Joel’s still clenching the linens on the bed, ignoring you and hiding out in his own mind somewhere.

You don’t tell him that you’ve only ever practiced on fruit, that your suture knowledge comes exclusively from the one medical text you have and endless hours of TV you grew up on.

Silence envelopes you again, heavier than before if possible. The pressure waxes and wanes like nighttime waves, licking the shore between you. And it’s not angry, just something… else.

“Some house you got,” you note casually as a distraction, like you’re commenting on the weather. It comes off relaxed enough, though any conversation between you feels like flossing a crowded mouth.

His eyes sharpen, and you think it’s in excruciation, but there’s a twinge of apprehension. You straighten for a moment, hands fixed mid-stitch, and roll your eyes.

“Okay, cool it, Home Alone, I’m not casing the place.”

Joel takes a turn rolling his eyes. You swear that you see his mouth twitch again, but you hang your head, dabbing a cloth where pinpricks of blood form.

You try again.

“I like your paintings.”

You dare to look up, and his mouth is in a tight line.

“You like my paintings.” he repeats dully, not a question. Joel’s as cynical as you, and he thinks it’s a jab, not sincere.

“You’re not gonna make this easy on me, are you?”

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

Now’s as good a time as any. You sigh at that.

“Look, the other night wasn’t my finest moment. It didn’t need to go that way,” you mutter, leaning on the concentration of sewing up Joel’s skin. Otherwise, you might feel too strongly, dissect your word choice with an uncomfortable linger. “Sorry. I know you were trying to help.”

He goes rigid as your second stitch meets a third. The bottle tips to his lips again, and you wonder if it’s an act of liquid courage. You boldly hope so.

“Nah, I shoulda kept my mouth shut. Been thinkin’ I needed to apologize anyway,” he admits, and you know he’s happy you made the first move. You can already feel him loosen, but maybe it’s the alcohol. “You ain’t a martyr, y’know.”

Oh.

The needle hooks into the final sliver of skin, your handiwork tightening into a neat line. You sit back, wiping your brow with the ungloved section of your wrist. It’s a treaty, a handshake at the very least.

“Actually, I think you hit the nail on the head with that one,” you smirk, olive branch fully hanging between your teeth now. “Keeping up the charade is so exhausting.”

Joel presses out a pained half-laugh, and you feel something crumbling between you.

You tie off the last stitch, trimming the excess thread off the knot. The clamp clatters into the tray, and you give it a final once-over before peeling a large rectangle of bandage from your kit and pressing it gently over the wound.

“All done,” you quip, peeling your gloves off. “Didn’t even have to amputate.”

“Not too bad,” he grunts.

“I’ll add it to your tab.”

While you’re riding the high of approval, you stand and move to the foot of the bed. Joel’s boots are still on, laced messily.

And for some reason, you don’t even ask permission, you just start untying, tipping them off and lining them next to one another on the hardwood.

He doesn’t say a word. Out of confusion, maybe.

You scoot your chair and makeshift flatlay along with you, positioning yourself at Joel’s head. That look is back, a side-stare that steals your breath.

That look that knows you could absolutely ruin him, and he’d either thank you or kill you.

The pads of your fingers brush back the hair from his forehead, still slightly matted with blood. It’s a surface cut, but crescent-shaped and easily hidden by a curl of brown, peppered with grey. Butterfly closure it is.

No signs of a concussion show themselves. At least there’s that.

“You might have a scar,” you murmur. Being this close to Joel makes you feel like you’re wearing two layers too many.

And he hasn’t broken the stare, not even minutely.

“Add it to the collection,” he says lowly, not an ounce of self-pity.

Your eyes flash to the scar near his temple. You’re exercising full-on restraint not to ask him about it. But it’s not the time, something you could try to pry out of him later. And knowing there’ll be a later makes you relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw.

He’s nice enough to pretend not to notice, or he’s in too much pain to mention it.

You dab the damp rag around the border of his cut again, mopping up any excess. You reach for the isopropyl.

“You might wanna take another swig,” you warn. And he obeys, down the hatch and white-knuckling through it.

“Good boy,” you’re murmuring automatically, and it just slips out.

Your mouth falls open just so, and Joel’s coughing, clearing his throat against the burn of whiskey. You’re pleading with the universe that his cough was close enough, loud enough to cover the words, but his face has turned a shade of red that’s probably rivaling the heat that reaches your ears.

Good boy? Jesus Christ.

If there was ever a heightened moment of being fucking touch-starved, it’s this.

You make haste with the disinfectant and place the closures over the cut. The bloodied towels and scraps from the DIY surgery are cleaned up, tied neatly into a plastic bag. And now, this is the part where you run and never face him again.

You’re already making plans to board up your windows, maybe have Ellie deliver your meals solely through a slot in the door.

But Joel’s pain is overriding everything, and he’s sunken even further back into the pillow, his head lolling to prop on his shoulder. He’s whispering a weak thanks that’s incoherent at best. You tug the blanket up and over him.

You grab a glass from downstairs, fill it to the brim with water and bring it to him. He groans at the sight, petulant.

“I’m not leaving until you finish this.”

His lifts his arm for it, scowling. “Gimme the damn thing.”

Satisfied, you hand it over and watch him drink it down, his throat bobbing in a hearty gulp. Your gaze can’t help but snag on it.

You have got to get the fuck out of here.

You come back with a refilled glass and sit it on his bedside table, close enough within reach. The medical bag is packed up and ready, sagging slightly in areas where you’ve emptied it. It knocks against your already-knocking knees, and you’re grateful to use its weight as an excuse for how blurred you feel.

“I need to talk to Tommy. You gonna be alright for a bit?”

His eyes are closed again, on the outskirts of rest, but his mouth pulls up in the ghost of smile.

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere, sweetheart.”

And you hope he means it.

—

You track down an unsettled Tommy, finding him pacing in the back of the general store. He’s restocking some shelves but not quite – there’s an gross pairing of tinned fish and fresh eggs sitting on a display that’s unappetizing at best.

“He’s okay. No bite,” you add lowly, acutely aware of how many pairs of ears are in the store. “But he needs to be monitored.”

Tommy slackens, rubbing his eyes that are full of exhaustion and bruised with worry. Index finger and thumb stroking the respective tails of his mustache one, two, three times as the gravity of that strikes him.

He loops you into an embrace, and it’s kind, full of ease. The smell of firewood and smoke tickles your nose. His worry evaporates then, and honestly, so does yours.

“He doin’ alright?”

You chew on that for a moment and nod. There are complications, but nothing to do with Joel’s health.

“He was pissed about the stitches, but I didn’t have a choice. Cut was pretty deep.”

“So… he tell you what happened, then?”

There’s that question again. You feel like you should have an answer, but if he wouldn’t clue in Ellie, you sure as hell wouldn’t be.

Like squeezing blood from a stone, your dad used to say.

“No,” you lie instinctively. You don’t know why.

But it isn’t really. Not if you don’t know the full truth yourself. There’s just something about Joel’s omission that makes you feel entitled to find out first.

“He said he fell down some stairs,” you amend, “just didn’t say where or how.”

Tommy offers you the same look that Ellie gave you – a raised brow coupled with a touch of disbelief.

“If you say so.”

You shrug, playing it as cool as’ll come natural to you. “You know Joel. Doesn’t want to make a fuss.”

He chuckles, shaking his head and rolling out his shoulders that you know have been holding tension. He believes that, at least.

“Sounds like you know him, too.”

—

A few days come and go.

Ellie takes on a lot of the recovery, but she doesn’t like messing with stitches — creeps me the fuck out that you did that without puking all over him, she claims — and she’s eager to substitute for the patrol routes while Joel’s down and out. You offer to step in, with a totally normal and selfless motive.

If she thinks anything else of it, you’d be the last to know.

Your new itinerary consists of changing Joel’s bandages, cleaning up through his hissed breaths and every goddamn it. Twice a day, morning and night and sometimes in closer intervals, but never approaching the cusp of any boundary.

Joel’s fiercely independent, swatting your hands when you try to help. Donning a clean flannel in the space between your lunchtime visit and your nightcap, despite you telling him that he shouldn’t be pushing his mobility.

That said, he’s marginally better about following doctor’s orders, drinking the water you leave on his nightstand but neglecting the pills that would stop him from coiling in on himself like a ready spring. And he doesn’t say it but you know it’s because he thinks it’d be a waste.

You trade regular formalities at first, each of you standing behind your respective walls, daring the other to toe a bit closer.

Joel doesn’t ask, but you bring him some short stories to pass the time and he devours them. You didn’t think much of it other than just straying past the point of being nice, but your heart sings a bit at how he leaves his shell at your coaxing.

You learn Bradbury is his favorite, but when he finishes The Most Dangerous Game, it’s the most he’s ever spoken to you in one sitting, astounded at the perfectly tied bow of an ending, asking you questions that only the author could answer. But it’s a marvel to witness, something you think about when you’re cleaning stables or washing dishes.

He’s unraveling for you, a loose thread tugged too hard on your favorite sweater. He talks of the places in the paintings, sometimes abruptly, like he isn’t sure what his cue is or if he has one.

Mentions of pre-Jackson when there was so much uncertainty and isolation, but it was coupled with those types of watercolor skies that you couldn’t paint if you tried.

These little pieces of him that make him whole – it’s like you’re both in on the same secret. And Joel isn’t doing it to lighten the tension, to be nice; that isn’t his brand of politeness. He just revels in the holy act of confession with you as his witness.

You come to learn that his room is modest, different from the rest of his house. Clues of hobbies sprawled on his desk – leatherworking tools and hand drawn blueprints that you can’t get a good look at with just a sidelong glance.

There’s a dusty stereo tucked at the back towards the wall, and you picture a content Joel, sketching new plans for a porch swing or some small addition while old bluesy country croons from the speakers.

You like this daydream, placing him in something lighthearted where his only worry is that he’s losing daylight on yardwork.

The two of you talk about little bits of everything and nothing. Reminiscing about sending snail mail, discussing what you think places like Italy look like now. How close you came to crossing an ocean in another life.

Tonight, you have a night terror that clings to you like wet denim. Stop-motion, nonsensical. Your head ricocheting into concrete, hitting your temple just so. Flashes of the people that used to be your parents, your friends.

And just as the life drains from you, blood seeping onto the floor and into spidering cracks, you wake up a flailing mess.

You practice your routine, twisting on knobs of lamps and plugging in the twinkling lights hanging around the perimeter of the living room. You press your cheek to the floor, checking under your bed for monsters for good measure.

Bleary-eyed, you’re climbing back under the covers, pulling them snug up to your chin.

There’s a neediness crawling its way through your organs with a one-way ticket south. The juxtaposition of fear mingles with an otherness, and it anchors itself to Joel.

You never cared for a protector, still don’t, but the eagerness that sprouts from him to defend your honor — and for nothing in return — magnetizes you on a cellular level.

Your fingers are dipping into the band of your already-damp underwear, taking inventory of what the thought of him does to you. Body on auto-pilot. A pool of dripping neediness, so slick that you’re coating your clit in excess and rubbing in tight circles.

He doesn’t even have to touch you, and it’s pathetic.

Images of Joel’s beard scratching your thighs swirls behind your eyelids, your hand gliding between the glistening of your folds. Fingers crook inside you, dipping into the last knuckle, and you’re choking on a gasp, already on the edge.

You wish they were more calloused, thicker, with length that can hit the spot that’s desperately out of reach.

You wish they were Joel’s.

It takes only a minute, some curling and pumping of your wrist to make it quick in case it’ll only ever be a fantasy. The wet noises of your arousal are nothing short of obscene, and you’re coming loudly, sharply on a string of moans.

In some ways, you think, you have already died.

And fuck. It’s so poetic it makes you sick.

—

On the fourth day, Maria sends you to Joel’s with some stew — two hearty containers that're meant for the both of you.

She’s been taking her shift at his place, carrying over containers of this and that to keep him fed. You wonder how often she takes on that role anyway, sans injury. You don’t peg Joel as the type to eat three square meals a day of his own accord.

Tell Joel I can’t make it tonight. Gotta do inventory.

She makes no room for elaboration, so you don’t ask. But you thank her with a hug, and you could swear that she’s giving you a conspiratorial smirk.

When you knock on Joel’s bedroom, he gives a new, warm invitation, coated in subtle hospitality. It’s a far stretch from the unaffected what? you might’ve received a week ago.

You place the stew down on the bedside table, along with some bowls and spoons you plucked from his kitchen. He just looks up at you from his bed, uncertainty reaching the lines of his forehead.

“It’s all Maria,” you explain and he hums, catching up.

“Explains a lot,” he mutters.

You eat quietly for a little over ten minutes. Joel’s flannel today boasts a rich navy, buttoned up to the top but not far enough to hide the sprinkling of hair that peeks through.

He catches you staring and pins you with a dark glance.

“You afraid of the dark or somethin’?”

Joel’s ask cuts through the air, and your spoon stops mid-route to your open mouth. It’s so out of the blue that it stuns you momentarily.

“Sorry?”

“You turn the lights on at night.”

What you thought to be private moments of fear were actually on display for all to see.

For Joel to see.

And the memory of your thighs trapping your hand as you came over and over again on your fingers… you’re grateful to at least have had some decorum to draw your bedroom curtains.

“Um.” You dig for a way to say nope, I’m actually just a pussy and I see things that aren’t there. Also, I was touching myself thinking about you last night. “No, just nightmares.”

Every inch of your skin feels like it’s searing. A bead of sweat makes a slow descent down your spine to your tailbone. You laugh lightly to deflect.

Joel’s mouth thins into a tight line.

“It’s nothing,” you promise.

“Ain’t nothin’,” he snaps. His brows are knitted in fury, misdirected. But you get it.

Your stomach is rumbling, but you’ve effectively lost whatever appetite you had. The bowl finds a space on the side table, and you’re pulling your knees to your chest protectively, thumbing at the fray on the cuff of your jeans.

You don’t mean to scowl, but you can’t help it. You can’t even meet his eyes.

Joel’s sighing, his own bowl discarded on the nightstand, grazing the lip of yours.

“Look, it’s not my business,” he starts, choosing his words carefully, “but that kinda shit worries me.”

When you do look up, he’s rubbing his beard with rigid fingers. You should feel nice and fuzzy that he cares enough to point it out, but it’s just embarrassment instead.

That, on top of everything else, you can’t even get through the night without waking up in a cold sweat.

“I know how it looks,” you say in surrender, “but I swear I’m fine.”

You can imagine what it would feel like to really mean it; it’s just on the tip of your tongue. There is a defiance there, it’s just struggling to find a way out.

“You sure about that?”

You let your feet touch the floor, straightening out your legs and busying yourself with smoothing the creases in your pants.

“You worry about everyone else like this?” you muse, hoping to redirect.

Joel’s scratching the back of his neck, eyes fixed anywhere else.

“Always worried about you.”

If you were any farther away, you wouldn’t have heard him.

Outside, kids are yelling, playing tag. You watch in jealousy, can almost hear the crunch of their boots and their tiny, inconsequential conversations. It takes you longer than intended to give a response, and he waits, patiently. Just trickles a look from the crown of your head to your hands to your face. Searching for a reaction.

“You’re about ten months late, Miller.” And you’re smiling briefly. You mean it as playful, but it’s colored with sadness.

His eyes glaze, and the wheels are turning, wondering if that also means too late.

“Didn’t want you to think I was takin’ advantage of the situation. And I thought Max —” Joel bites down on the name.

“Fuck Max,” you spit in disgust. “That was never a thing.”

You don’t have to make eye contact to see that he’s pleased by that. He hums in the back of his throat. Resists a shit-eating grin. From the looks of Joel connecting the dots, you don’t need say much else.

“Yeah, well. We all failed you,” he insists. “I failed you.”

It sets an incredulous spark in some hidden part of you. Nails cut into your palm, your fists balling harshly. Everyone else? Sure, you’d give him that. Jackson spit you out, with the exception of a select few.

But Joel?

“You saved me.”

“Not good enough,” he says under his breath.

—

The next day, you let yourself inside, already learning the language of Joel’s house when you press a little extra weight against the door to seal it shut when it sticks.

It’s quiet, on the cusp of 8, and you wouldn’t be surprised if Joel’s on the brink of sleep.

The sun’s long settled over the mountain, so there’s not much in the way of guidance.

It’s dark, but you expected it to be. You draw the curtains one by one, moving blindly from room to room yet knowing exactly where your feet are. It strikes you as odd, a visitor keeping pace with an unfamiliar house.

But if Joel’s anything, it’s predictable. Unfussy in the way he keeps out of the way, even in his own space. Takes pride in it, sure, but lives in a way that demands nothing but cherishes everything, even the absence of something.

Meaning there’s nothing too unexpected, too risky in its placement. He doesn’t take up too much room in the event that it’s gone tomorrow.

When your hands fumble for the switch of the living room lamp, the bulb springs to life and bathes a wary Joel in light. Sitting on the couch, slouched with residual soreness, but waiting.

For you.

“Jesus, fuck — what the fuck, Joel —”

“You’re late.”

“— sitting in the fucking dark like a lunatic —”

He puts a hand up to stop you, as if to press your mute button.

“I didn’t fall down any stairs.”

Your hands have risen to your chest in the shock of him there, and you’re gripping your shirt in the way he had almost a week ago. You don’t miss that little detail, so much so that you struggle to piece together what he’s saying.

It punches you abnormal; you kept so busy with leaving the subject alone that it slipped your mind that he lied.

“Sit down.”

You’re obedient and you don’t know why. You find a seat across from him, pulling up a stool that’s meant for feet, not your ass. Something crackles beside you, and the embers of a dying fire glow and warm to the left of you.

Your leg crosses over your knee, creating a 45-degree angle that you rest your elbows on. “Yeah, I gathered as much, thanks. You’re a terrible liar.”

Joel’s just eyeing you. And it’s not in a way that sizes you up, more of a calculation of what to say next. What to give away. There’s a beat of this, then another, then another.

“I thought ‘bed rest’ was pretty self-explanatory.”

You’re growing impatient, filling the room just to do it. You both know what happened, and maybe that’s what’s needling at you. That you’re the one person who’d understand the most, but the one person he doesn’t want to know.

It feels wretched and seething, knowing something but not enough.

“I’m gonna need you to cut to the part where you tell me what happened, Joel.”

At that, Joel drags in a breath and leans deeper into the couch. His gaze has moved to somewhere far off, burning into the drawn curtains like he can see outside, can see directly into the window of your kitchen. And with sudden clarity, you realize that he could — it’s a clean diagonal stare.

Are you afraid of the dark?

How many times has he sat in this very spot, taking in the show, watching you make tea, watching you read, watching you stutter and shake with sobs? Witnessing the onslaught of a nightmare?

Touching yourself? Watching you undress?

You aren’t the voyeuristic type, just uncaring to the point of defenseless. But Joel keeping an eye on you in this way is the coup de grâce that does you in. There’s no question now of whether he cares.

“I took Mountain View, headed for the outpost. Not much up that way lately, maybe one or two infected every once ‘n a while,” he says, and it’s unsettling that he’s talking in a way that could be to anyone or no one at all. “Thought I’d stop at the pharmacy on the way up, check that off, too. ‘Cept I wasn’t the only one with that idea.”

He pauses only to crack his knuckles for effect. Fingertips splay on his spread knees, and what seemed so fragile earlier, watercolors of bruises stretching from ligament to tendon, seems threatening now.

“One was lootin’ in the back, didn’t hear me come in. I thought he mighta been alone ‘til his friend followed me in,” he pauses, lost in thought. “Got into it with him.”

As if on cue, the gory split-skin of his hands flexes. Offensive wounds.

You were right, but you wish you weren’t.

“His friend came up from the back, ‘n they took turns for a minute. Long enough for me to get a good look. I ended up takin’ out the shorter one, other one was gone before I could get up.”

Joel doesn’t lift his head, just his eyes. The skin around them crinkles in sinister shapes, lids disappeared, lashes nearly touching brow. You know it’s not anger directed at you, but it’s shrinking you back down into an armchair, your fingers digging and clawing at the fabric without recognizing it.

“Know what’s funny about that?”

You don’t think you can answer with the desert that runs through your mouth. And whatever it is, it’s anything but.

“Not a lot of activity along the outposts this way, unless it’s infected. Everyone else comes straight through to Jackson. The logs say we’ve only run into two groups of raiders in the last five years along the patrol route,” another pause for emphasis. “And one of them was ten months ago.”

Something catches in your chest.

And then there’s a dam that breaks, pure relief. Relief that Joel’s seen the thing you’ve been pointing and screaming at while everyone else shrugs their shoulders and squints.

Then — panic.

Ice sneaks into your veins. The tips of your fingers run numb. It strikes you that you’re standing, that the foot stool is tipped on its side.

He doesn’t move, but there’s a contained rage in his eyes and his voice. A temper bubbling now that you’ve confirmed what he suspected.

“He have any tattoos?” Joel asks roughly.

There’s a flash of stars, hand-poked, bordering on downright sloppy.

“Who?” You say dumbly, but it’s obvious what he’s referring to. He’s seen it, too, and he’s seen it this week.

“You know who.”

You do.

You could draw it from memory if he asked.

Your weight becomes too much for your legs, and you collapse back down, this time into a chair that supports your amoeba-like state as everything in you turns to jelly.

“They’re getting closer. We were in Teton, so if they made it this far —” you jumble out, not sure if it’s just meaningless vomit to his ears. By his solemn nod, it isn’t.

He’s up and out of his seat with a wince that’s not as severe as before, his eyes careful on you, on your hands that you’re gripping together tightly to keep them still.

The isolation of his side is evident in the way he closes the space between you, but he masks the grimace as best he can. There’s a reprimand in you somewhere that he should be resting, lying down at least, but you know it’s pointless.

“Hey.”

He’s kneeling as much as his flank will allow, a pain in his eyes that isn’t for himself. Those fingertips scale the cliff of your jaw, ghosting as if he’s afraid to overstep. They’re prodding you to meet his eyes, and when you do, he drops his hand like he’s been burned.

It connects fiercely to a memory that you try to hold in your hands. A snowy, reminiscent one that slips through like a ribbon of smoke.

“Ain’t gotta worry about him. I’ll take care of it.”

You laugh, a real one that’s stained with sarcasm.

“What does that mean?”

Joel softens now, and the shift startles you. He thinks for a beat before answering.

“Whatever you need it to mean.”

It feels incomprehensible that anyone would willingly put themselves in danger for you, even adjacently, but then who noticed you were missing that day? Who led the pack, found you bleeding out?

The weather was violent, incoherent — a lost cause, a needle in the proverbial haystack. He already toed the line of a dangerous, potentially fruitless rescue mission.

And you never even thanked him.

“Why?” You ask it for the second time in as much as a week. It’s disjointed in conversation, but he knows that you need this answer.

“You remember how you were before?”

And for a split-second, you try.

There are glimpses, a rickety reel of kids tugging on your pant leg as they beg you to join them during recess, a glittering spray of laughter with Ellie as empty beer cans and discarded guitars litter her living room floor.

Of your friends’ faces on too many relaxed, sunny patrols, sometimes forcing them into a detour into the abandoned record store through Alpine so you can see what’s left.

Dinner in warm houses like Tommy and Maria’s, so full to the brim of love and potatoes and mead that you stumble on down to your house with cheeks burning and tuck yourself in with all of the lights off.

Visions of Joel that are fleeting, taped in frames on a film strip, but friendly exchanges.

But it’s a faceless narration. The accident wiped clean of any room for interpretation. Any visitation with these memories. You can place yourself in them, but can’t for the life of you feel tethered to her.

Frustrated, eyes watering, you shake your head.

“That’s why.”

Now he’s holding your jaw like he would some fragile thing, slotting his thumb just under the pulse thrumming in your neck, feeling the echo of it in his hand. There’s a silence, as if he’s straining to hear, to know the sound and syllables of your livelihood. You wish he’d press harder, bring you to the precipice of pleasure and death.

If only to know what it feels to be glass in Joel Miller’s hands, to be given the taste of death after he’d given you the gift of life all those months ago.

Your heart is hammering against your ribs. You know he can feel the adrenaline in your pulse point.

“Joel,” it falls out as a whisper, and you hate how good his name feels in your mouth.

He’s looking at you with empathy, thumbing through the pages of every agony you’ve succumbed to. It’s new and buzzing, knowing that there’s nothing you’d ever have to explain to Joel. No reasoning or fine print for how you are, he just knows. And he stays anyway.

A tear tracks a salty line down your face and it meets the pad of his thumb, an easy swipe.

And there’s a surge low in your throat, seesawing with satisfaction and the tell-tale lump of more tears if you lean in hard enough. Joel never shows his hand, the last to fold, but it feels a lot like you’re the prize he was waiting to throw cards down for.

So, you lean. Concave cheek into his calloused hand, tears without sobs leaking between his fingers down into his sleeve. The weight of only the world — your world, plural and shared — pushing you into him. The cataclysmic release that you’ve been aching for.

Your head is against his chest, cheek pressed against flannel because he’s guided you there. And it’s nice, you think, nice that he’s being a gentleman about the whole thing.

A gentleman just finger-combing through your hair, tucking it behind your ear.

It’s serene, and you’d happily make a home there and fall asleep if it wasn’t for the hammering of your heartbeat. You know he can feel it, and your quickened breath is the cherry on top.

Joel levels your faces, and his fingers are deja vu on the braille of each ridged cheekbone. He’s waiting on a cue, a line to be given to him from offstage, but you see flames licking through each darkened iris.

Something keeps holding him back, keeps holding you back. He’s too careful, afraid of cutting his hands on you. And in exploring every facet of that, it’s because he doesn’t want to bleed on you, not because the sharpest parts of you could hurt him.

You keep telling yourself it’s foreign and you’re strangers to one another.

But is it? Are you?

As if he’s reading your mind, Joel closes the distance in one fell swoop, and he kisses you.

It’s clumsy at first, in the way that clumsy is when you’re learning each other’s mouths. You taste the dregs of whiskey, of something wanton, and every unspoken word that’s ever misted between you. Years of forming smile lines and the prickle of his unkempt beard against your chin, taste the stories of every scar.

You’re tangling with him, lips pressing urgently against Joel. His tongue’s expert but gentle when he dips it inside your mouth, and you’re swapping breathless sighs. You can only imagine what he’s tasting of you, what flavor he’s been dreaming of.

His hands are still at either side of your face, thumbs pressing sweetly into the bony part of your jaw. Joel’s stilling the unrest in you that’s put its bags down and refused to leave. It quiets, tips a hat and walks out, leaving a welcome calm in place.

There’s a chasteness, but you know he’s just as desperate and hungry as you are. Wanting to claim, to devour each other entirely. And it’s not lost on you that he’s on his knees, hands clasping your face in prayer like you’re some communion he’s drinking from.

He engulfs you, and you’re moving together, fitting together like you were poured from the same mold. Joel’s fingers have moved to thread through your hair, one of his hands cradling the back of your head and tugging just barely.

Enough that magma pools in between your hips.

But he slows, letting loose a low groan into the heat of your mouth. It’s helpless, like he’s accepted he can’t swim and has submerged his head underwater.

And when you finally break apart, Joel’s pupils are dilated, on the cusp of black. Your collective breaths are uneven. He looks at you in awe.

“Been wantin’ to do that for a long, long time,” he’s saying, but you can barely hear him. Not when your heart is catching up with the rest of you, roaring above everything else. His thumb skates over your bottom lip, and the instinct to unhinge your jaw for him shouldn’t be there, but it is.

Maybe this sort of suffering is worth it, if it’s Joel you’re suffering for.

If you weren’t in trouble before, you sure as fuck are now.

[lunitawrites]

Mood board game - Make a mood board out of the first 9 pics Pinterest shows you

Thank you for the tag @toxicanonymity 🖤

I love how it's vibes, vibes, vibes and then haircut inspo.

Tagging: @atinylittlepain @walkintotheriveranddisappear @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @rubyfruitjungle @motherofagony @morning-star-joy @beefrobeefcal @neverwheremoonchild @mrsmando @papipascalispunk sorry if you did it, idk how I missed it, considering I live here.

[tinycozycomfort]

decorate my tree

thank you @bastardmandennis for the tag 🧡 (i left you a totally normal message btw)

np tags (but this is very cute and you should do it): @cupofjoel @morning-star-joy @undrthelights @northernbluess @demonjoel @motherofagony @saradika

[softmick]

"The exorcism comes around again, as it does. Born in a night where I look at you and I can breathe again, can smell the cigarette that hangs from your lips, lips that've touched my collarbone. I forget why I was scared. I swallow my pills dry. I never pray, but I speak in tongues and hymns on my knees for you."

[emeraldmoth]

rules: pick a song for each letter of your URL and tag that many people

thanks for the tag @demonjoel 💚

E - evergreen by pvris

M - me & your momma by childish gambino

E - every heart (minnano kimochi) by BoA

R - rosemary by deftones

A - agora hills by doja cat

L - lovers rock by tv girl

D - dirty harry by gorillaz

M - my last breath by evanescence

O - on the road by post malone ft. meek mill & lil baby

T - the taste of ink by the used

H - head over heels by tears for fears

no pressure 🏷️s (please disregard if you’ve already done it, don’t want to do it or think i’m annoying 😬): @earthgirlie @pr0ximamidnight @motherofagony @joelmillers-whore @isitmeulookin4 @pascalpvnk @javiscigarette @joelswritingmistress @vesrin & anyone else wants to!!!

[motherofagony]

motherofagony masterlist

A HEART FOR EATING

ongoing joel miller x f!reader series summary: a vicious raider attack robs you of human connection and lights a fire of destruction in your life in jackson. joel's fixated on you, and your lives tangle. revenge becomes a needful thing. vol. 1 vol. 2

FIRE WALK

joel miller x f!reader summary: a chance encounter at a motel has you crossing paths with a stranger in a blue t-shirt. unavailable

[motherofagony]

hey! i want to share something.

for those of you who keep up with my writing:

moving forward, all of my new writing will be posted on ao3 exclusively.

i've been going back and forth on this for quite some time. when i first started this blog, i loved it. i felt so seen, i felt like i was connecting with readers + other writers that were pushing me to be better, to dig deeper. i've never had someone read my work and know exactly what i meant or resonate with it like some of you have. i felt so at home, and it was my little secret from friends and family that don't know these parts of me.

but, in the same vein, being perceived by some people here is so paralyzing, and the comparison game + entitlement is something that i really cannot deal with anymore.

my confidence as a writer has taken a nosedive since fire walk, and i love all of you, but it's no longer fun to be on a platform when interpersonal relationships start to factor into whether someone's work is considered worthy of being read.

i hope you can understand - i might continue reblogging some things here and there, but i've overstayed my welcome here as a writer. i'll definitely continue as a reader here, at the very least.

thank you so much to those who have shown me support, reblogged my silly little words + photos, and have sent me kind messages over the last year. if you'd like keep up with my comings and goings on ao3, it's linked in my bio. <3

[macfrogrecs]

LEX

that entire last section has me fucking speechless. this is so unbelievably gorgeous. so sensual and soft and sexy and just UNREAL. i cannot beLIEVE YOU RN!!!!!

FIRE WALK - one shot

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: au, no outbreak!joel x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+, minors dni word count: 6.5k summary: a chance encounter at a motel has you crossing paths with a stranger in a blue t-shirt. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), very brief references to past non-con encounters (not with joel, no details just shitty men in general), soft!joel, alcohol, mentions of family trauma and ab*se, unprotected piv, fingering, oral (f + m receiving), A Scene With a Belt™, slight mentions of reader's clothing but no physical descriptions otherwise, love as consumption and women as fruit a/n: this was a brain-worm of a one shot, so i had to press pause on AHFE and get it out. consider it a dirty love letter to strangers with stories in shitty motels. and i have to give the biggest thank-you to @iamskyereads for stepping in and offering to be my beta reader in the final hour. she was so unbelievably thorough and thoughtful and kind. i owe you big.

New-age boogeymen hang two-way mirrors and jiggle motel door handles with broken hangers.

That’s what the news says.

August licks an unforgiving line of heat up your back, and cutoff denim and halter tops do nothing but give the sun more skin to burn. 

It’s sweltering, brutal as an Arizona summer is, and The Palms Motel promises a pool and a mini bar on their dirty marquee. You’ll take what you can get, can’t really afford to be picky with fifty dollars in your pocket, but at least maybe you’ll live like royalty tonight.

Some guy you met — Tom, Tim, Jim, whoever — pulls his convertible up to the front office. Your knees knock together over the speed bump, cartilage kissing bone.

It’s the closest you’ve ever come close to a chauffeur, but the chauffeur you see in movies doesn’t usually take liberties with trying to work his grease-speckled mechanic hand up the passenger’s shirt.

You met him at a gas station in Tucson, thumbing your way from northern Texas to put as much distance between you and your whiskey-breathed dad as you could. He’d torn your clothes apart at the seams with his eyes when he spotted you in the parking lot, swimming in blood-infested waters with sharp, sharp teeth.

There was no plan, no directions penned and cities circled on a folded map, just glass in your hair and a final straw.

He asked if you could buy him some booze — revoked license, baby, y’know how that goes — and you shouldn’t have, but when he flashed a leather wallet thick with cash, you knew you’d be stupid not to.

You hid behind a shelf inside the gas station while he idled in the parking lot and plucked a fifty from the wad, stuffing it deep in your bag. You grabbed some shitty malt-something from a fridge along with a 6-pack, flashing the slack-jawed cashier a wink. 

He didn’t try to hide the eye contact with your tits, but neither do most men. Sometimes you milk it in your favor, sometimes it just makes your lunch rise to the back of your throat.

And when you’re by yourself, it’s hot iron, ready to strike. A doe in their headlights, a buck with a nice rack. Skipping through the center of their bullseye.

You bought a little palm-sized bottle for yourself and tucked it safely next to the stolen cash in the abyss of your purse. These tiny cons got you by, made power surge deep in your belly. It made loneliness feel worth it, knowing you had an upper hand to lean on if you were ever in a bind.

He bitched about inflation when you came out with less than was reasonable for the amount you spent, and you just shrugged. Not your cash, not your problem. 

You bartered for a ride to the nearest motel, and now Tom-Tim-Jim is asking you over the purr of the engine if you need company for the night.

If you were feeling a little more you, you might’ve taken him up on it. Maybe he would’ve even paid for the room, maybe he wouldn’t get angry like your dad does. Maybe he’d be able to fuck you without hitting you.

You’re good at diffusing the temper in most men, can touch them in ways that make them grit their teeth, can be a good girl and go fetch.

But you’re not in the mood to bend, to give someone’s son — someone’s husband with a tan line around their ring finger — a place to wipe their shoes on. You don’t feel like wiping their dirt, your mascara from your eyes and saying thank you while they zip up their pants.

And you sure as fuck don’t fancy being on a milk carton.

“I’m alright, sugar. Thanks for the ride,” you say, dipping your chin to peer over your sunglasses. “I know where to find you, don’t worry.”

Yeah fuckin’ right.

He doesn’t try to conceal his disappointment, just sucks his teeth and squeezes at the exposed skin of your thigh. His way of saying goodbye to something he could’ve dripped sweat on, came in too early. You think your flesh might rot off in chunks. 

You open the door and swing your legs out in a way that’s a little too eager.

Tom-Tim-Jim waves solemnly with two fingers up and two bent, and then he’s gone in an aggressive rev.

The motel might’ve been a kitschy dream in its heyday. It’s not a total dump; more of a vintage skeleton of washed-out pink and umbrellas that’ve been ripped by weather and overuse. There are a million faded emblems of cartoonish palm trees. It’s almost endearing how tragic it is.

You can tell that it was popular and swarming with tourists at one time — there are dusty, water-stained pamphlets lining the wall next to the front desk that brag Named one of Arizona’s top destinations in 1996!

A mounted fan whirs and oscillates, but it might as well be someone blowing hot breath down your neck. 

There’s a tired woman holding down the fort at the desk with a name tag that claims Brenda, and she looks surprised to see you. You figure most customers are stopping in for a night’s rest on the way to somewhere more important, their final destination. But you don’t look like you have anywhere better to be.

“Hey, honey,” Brenda trickles, laced with an accent that’s more New Orleans than Arizona. “Need a room?”

“Yeah, just for the night,” you say, fishing out your wallet with confidence that doesn’t meet your eyes. “How much?”

“Forty-five a night, ‘less you wanna upgrade to the honeymoon suite.” She looks somewhere over your shoulder.

That’s nearly everything you have, but it sounds a lot like tomorrow’s problem. At least you’ll be safe tonight from the prowling stares of nighttime predators, and the leftover change will give you a decent vending machine dinner.

“Just a normal room’s fine,” you smile, sliding over the crumpled, stolen fifty.

Brenda types busily on the keyboard, asking for your name but nothing else. And when she hands you a plastic keycard, you finally relax your shoulders. Untangle the nerves in your lower back that are choking one another.

Room 17, it reads. Your oasis awaits!

You thank her, spin on your heel, and immediately bump chest to chest with something hard.

You’re eye level with a worn, cornflower blue t-shirt, ringed with a light stain of sweat at the collar. They’re grasping both of your arms to steady you, and you’re snagging the gaze of a tousled man with a bag slung over his shoulder.

“Watch where you’re goin’,” he murmurs, but it isn’t reprimanding or mean like you’re used to, just sickly sweet and Texan. Syrupy in a way that drips right down between your legs.

You don’t remember seeing anyone else in the lot when you’d pulled up. And the stealth of him entering soundlessly behind you sends a jolt of electricity up your spine, the clench of something that would be fear if it were any other stranger.

But he doesn’t look at you with intent to devour or to claim. Just eyes you like you’re anyone else. An equal. The bare minimum, but rare and shiny nonetheless.

“Sorry,” you breathe, and he’s releasing you a little too quickly for your liking. Leaving brands on the creases of where your forearms meet upper and elbow.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

So you don’t.

You brush past him on the way out, a polite nod. And that’s that. 

The heat is the kind that feels hotter, unbearable when paired with the shrill sing of cicadas. An endless buzzing that you think might be the sun sizzling on the concrete. If you stood in one place for too long, your flip flops might very well melt you in place.

Your room key clicks to unlock Room 17, and you push the door open to a heavy, humid space that smells vaguely of mold. You’re so grateful for the privacy that you can’t even bring yourself to wrinkle your nose.

Flip flops discarded, your toes sink into shag carpet — a dirty luxury that makes you moan. It’s only been two days since you left home, fled home, but it beats sleeping with one eye open on a bus stop bench.

You up-end your leather bag, dumping all of its contents onto the bed. Cigarettes, some loose film canisters, your toothbrush, a lighter. There wasn’t much time to pack, nothing worth bringing, and the less, the better. Nothing to weigh you down if you had to dip at a moment’s notice.

It takes you only a couple minutes and a light sheen of sweat to realize that the A/C is busted. Smothered, you try to crack open a window in the bathroom, but it’s no cooler than the hell you’re standing in.

When you let Brenda know, she just shrugs with an apologetic kind of half-smile.

“Most of ‘em are out these days, honey,” she says, and you decide then that it’s a small price to pay. “We got someone comin’ to look at it next week.”

You shoot her a smile, figure that she’s had enough rotten backtalk in her day. You scoop a set of flamingo-themed matches from the bowl on the counter and turn around, only to see a familiar blue shirt waiting his turn.

His eyes try not to roam, but he’s giving you a nod and stepping up without hesitation, asking Brenda for extra towels.

The way that she titters and blushes, you’d think he’d asked if he could spit in her mouth.

It irritates you, and you can’t say why.

The door chimes behind you as it closes, and you linger, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. When he emerges, a stack of towels so high it’s hitting his chin, you step in stride on the walk back. Tracing his footsteps, catching up with his shadow.

“You followin’ me?” you quip, a cigarette dangling from your mouth. The cherry ignites on every breath, smoke erupting in tendrils that hug each word.

He answers with a laugh, turns and squints back at you with one eye. Almost as if he was expecting you to ask.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? Could say the same to you.”

You stop in front of 17, hand over your brow to shield from the sun that’s winding its way down, getting ready to tuck itself in for the night. There’s nothing that touches your tongue that doesn’t sound exactly like a fuck yes. So you don’t say anything.

“Enjoy your sauna,” he chuckles over his shoulder, passing you with his towels on the way to Room 20.

—

Led Zeppelin filters out through the radio, half-static, half-electric. Your legs are crossed in the air behind you, and you’re posted up face down on the bed, kicking along to the beat while you flip through whatever Cosmopolitan someone left behind in a drawer.

Someone raps a few times on the door, and if it’s a repairman, they’re getting their fucking dick sucked.

You army-roll off the flowery duvet, abandoning a how-to on finding your g-spot, and you peer through the peephole.

Your breath hitches on a soft swear.

When you open the door, you see Blue T-Shirt standing there, skin creasing around his eyes slyly. An unopened beer hangs and swings from his restless fingers. He offers it up wordlessly, the butt of it pointed at you.

It’s ice-cold and slippery to the touch, erupting goosebumps on your forearm. Saliva coats your tongue, and you don’t think it’s the thirst for alcohol, but maybe the tall drink of water. 

“Um… thanks?”

“Figured you’d either be dead by now or parched,” he says smugly, and it’s velvet to your ears.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. I got the fan to work at least,” you mutter, jerking your thumb vaguely behind you.

“Listen, uh —”

He’s rubbing the nape of his neck, and you catch the way the network of muscles flex from his elbow to the seam of his armpit. He looks like he’s in pain, struggling with the fit of a puzzle piece into something rough and jagged.

Something he shouldn’t be trying but has to see it through, exhaust it until it’s definite one way or the other.

You just squint, sucking in the corner of your lip between your teeth. You nearly grin, but it’s much more fun to watch than to connect the dots for him.

“A/C works in my room, so ‘f you wanted to… y’know,” he trails off, not even sure in his own offer. “No pressure. It’s hot as hell outside, don’t want you t’get heat stroke ‘f I can help it.”

This kind of approval you like. This kind that sizzles girl-honey between your legs, winning it from a man that’s playing to earn, not to cheat.

“I try not to make a habit out of going into motel rooms of guys I don’t know the names of,” you harp sweetly. But it might as well be a done-deal.

“D’you make a habit outta accepting beers from ‘em?”

You smile. Typically, yes.

“Joel.”

His hand shoots out, strong and suggestive. Fingers like alligator teeth that’ll grip you, hold you under until you thrash. 

And you pluck your cigarettes and gifted liquor bottle from the bed, arms full when you carry them down to Joel’s room.

—

You’re sprawled on the full-size bed next to his, head propped up on hand propped up on elbow.

You’ve been trading your little fist of bourbon back and forth, swapping stories in the same way. Somehow, you fall into it easy like old friends, and it’s nice to follow someone’s lead instead of keeping one step, three, seven steps ahead. Arm outstretched to the door knob, feet ready to break into a run at the change in tone, blackening of pupils.

Without meaning to, you’ve wordlessly agreed that the person in possession of the bottle has the proverbial mic, and they swig to help with details and theatrics. It’s counter-productive in flow, but it makes you laugh when Joel exaggerates the story he’s telling on purpose, reaching out to pass it back and suddenly yanking it back, remembering a shade of gray or a funny expression.

Your knuckles keep zapping each other, brushing a little longer than the time before. There’s no numbness to consensual touch.

Joel’s mid-40s. From Texas, like you. He came to visit his daughter Sarah at college, says she’s growin’ up too fast, doesn’t need her old man anymore. It’s a thrill to see someone talk about their own flesh with love, admiration for who she is and who she’s becoming. You find yourself leaning in, enraptured that there are no IOUs or fine-print that you know to come with a parent’s love.

Mentions of his stubborn brother Tommy who he works with and who just can’t stop getting into trouble. The unspoken guilt that maybe he could be the one to keep him out of jail if he tried harder. It doesn’t work that way, and you tell him so.

You tell him about your dad when he asks about your life, your story, and you don’t know why you do but maybe you know exactly why. No one ever gets close enough to ask, so it comes leaking out of the corners of your mouth.  

You’ve never told anyone, not even your diary, not even the guidance counselor who slipped a note to your fifth grade teacher and pulled you out of class. Shaky fingers, shaky limbs when they asked if they could roll up your sleeves just to see and you said no. 

Crying because you knew your dad wouldn’t let you go back. Not to school, not to your friends.

You omit the nitty-gritty details, but Joel gets the gist. Swigs his share of the liquor a little too angrily with tight lips. Not like your dad does, but you don’t miss the irony of it all.

He holds anger for you, on behalf of you. It simmers as he listens to you in patient silence, coming to a boil at the bad parts when he gets up and starts walking lines in the shitty carpet. Pretending to look outside in interest at his truck parked at the end of the lot, but gripping the curtains until you can see every expanse of bone in his hand.

You don’t need this from him. It’s a hurt you’ve wedged between the pages of a book and doused in flames of acceptance long ago. But it spreads from your toes to your ears, the burn of someone feeling like this. For someone like you.

He finally settles down in an armchair by the window, a funny corduroy thing that would probably light up under a blacklight on one of those crime shows. Legs parted, a warm stare on the way you take up space on the bed. Facing him comfortably, your vision buzzing around the edges. A loose smile shared as if this room was meant for the two of you all along.

“So, what’s your plan?” Joel’s humming, his words getting lost in an echo of the bottle neck.

You don’t have one. Can’t have one when you have nowhere to go but gone.

It stretches on and on between you — a mouth opened and closed too many times on possibilities. If you admit to it, you end up with pity or an upper hand dealt to a stranger. You can’t afford to owe anyone a favor, nor can you front the cost of needing one.

But you’re so tired.

“Dunno. I’ll figure it out.”

“You got enough time for that?”

And you know what he means. Enough time in the motel, enough time before you’re a thief at wit’s end, doing anything for survival. He doesn’t need to ask to know you don’t have a destination, some relative waiting for you in a California dream.

You’ve excused yourself to the bathroom, soft radio bleeding in under the door, arms braced on the sink, all glossy eyes.

You want him, bad. But he won’t make the first move, won’t take advantage of what isn’t his and what others before him took without asking. You’re a pawn, entitled to the first move. The rejection would kill you, but not knowing would be worse.

He could hold you soft, give you something to think about when tomorrow rips you both in opposite directions.

When you pull open the door, Joel’s frozen in mid-stride towards you, like he’s just made up his mind about something.

He straightens but he’s still. Afraid of moving too fast, saying too much, scaring you into flight. Out of the unlocked cage of his room — something he did on purpose, because he doesn’t expect anything from you and wants you to know he doesn’t.

You meet him in his dusty shag quicksand. You take his wrist in your hand, kiss the thrum of life in the dip where veins meet palm. An offering.

Joel looks like he’s in pain, like what you’re doing is excruciating and thorny. The front of his jeans strains. He’s searching you for any hesitation, any obligation because he did something kind. He knows what currency you feel the need to pay in, and this isn’t that.

“Please,” you whisper simply. And he nods, accepting, succumbing.

There’s a careful meeting of lips, wanting to do it the right way, in the right order. When you push your tongue in, used to the pace of animals, he just holds your face and slows you down. It’s languid, his mouth showing you what sweet and gentle can taste like. Your tongues take their time, and your hands slip beneath the hem of his shirt, all ribbed muscle with a sprinkling of hair.

He shudders against the lightness of your feather-fingers.

Joel’s hands are peeling your shirt off, his thumbs resting to press against pillowy hips. He’s not letting your lips go, something like impatience stirring in you. 

Doesn’t he want to fuck you hard? Fuck you fast and selfish?

Isn’t there a catch?

He’s taking his shirt off now, up and over. Carved by Michaelangelo, thrown up on a ceiling in a library book you read once. You’re touching him in reverence, but not letting yourself learn too much of him.

His eyes are molten. Joel walks you back to the edge of the bed, scratchy quilt tickling your thighs when you fall back on it. You start to pose yourself, angles that make you look more desirable, pliable. But he’s not paying attention to that, just unbuttoning your shorts, kissing the jut of every curve and permeating down to the bone, punching out a soft groan when he slides the denim off and sees the shining ambrosia that’s waiting.

He’s kneeling, tugging you down to meet his waiting mouth. And you’re just breathless, flinching when he pulls you apart, guiding your legs over his shoulders and wasting no time devouring you. Your legs, his bib.

Joel’s tongue flicks through the shell of you, teasing you in alternates of quick and slow, starving and full. It feels like a slice of heaven. 

You pitch out a tangled gasp, hands instinctively moving to knot in his hair. Anything to hold onto, a different kind of grounding.

“So wet f’me,” he vibrates lowly into you, all husk. “Taste so fuckin’ sweet.”

He sinks a middle finger into you, and you’re keening, hips canting and unable to stay glued to the mattress. You feel him smile against your cunt, just pressing his forearm across your lower half to keep you still.

Joel’s twisting and working into you, onto you, and you’re so fucking close from just this — a tiptoeing to the edge that grows longer, more erratic in stride. He sucks your clit — pulsing sensitive, so swollen — into his mouth and grazes it with the tip of his tongue just so. Baring his incisors and closing around you in a delicious scrape like a Venus flytrap taking its meal.

You think you see God behind the flutter of your eyes.

You’re close enough to warn him, to rasp it out in the symphony of moans. His free hand reaches up to roll your peaked nipple between his forefinger and thumb, and he stretches you with an added ring finger. You’re writhing. Possessed.

He’s watching you through thick lashes. Letting your heels dig into his shoulders as the drenched sounds of you fill the room.

“Joel, please — I’m gonna —”

“C’mon, pretty girl,” he just murmurs.

You feel that little pull at your navel.

And you’re tipping in a freefall, seeing stars. You clench down around his fingers, fingers that are still pumping against that spongy spot deep inside you. Your arousal gushes, wet and sticky against the scrape of his beard. He laps you up, the sight making heat creep up your chest and wrap around your neck.

When he lifts his head, he’s high on it. Pupils dilated like tiny, round moons. Your orgasm glistens on him, smeared over lips and chin. The fur of a peach peeled back far enough to sink teeth into.

It’s fucking filthy.

Joel places open-mouthed kisses from your hip up to the center of your breasts, a trail of your orgasm shiny on your skin in perfect, sloppy Os. His breath meets your throat where he nips at you, and you don’t have time to drag in a breath before you’re tasting the saltiness of yourself on his tongue.

Your fingers fumble on his belt, practiced with years of releasing the tension on the metal prongs, the slithering sound whooshing from the loops of pants. You’re good at it, like you used to be good at gymnastics until your mom stopped getting out of bed to drive you. 

There was always a little gold for contorting your body.

He detaches from you unwillingly, putting all of his weight on his knees and shins as he straddles the space of your thighs.

You’re pulling yourself up in a sitting position, pushing denim and boxers down past his hips. Letting his cock spring free, the head a dark pink and beaded with precum. You swipe the flat of your tongue against it, peeking up at him while you soak up the taste of it. 

When you push the length of him into your mouth, ridged hard with veins, Joel tips his head back, chin to the ceiling. He groans something brutish yet helpless, cradling the back of your head. You’re seated in the driver’s seat, all control. 

It’s new, different.

But then he’s moving his hips back, pulling himself from your mouth, wiping the saliva from your chin with a steady thumb.

“Don’t need t’do that,” Joel whispers hoarsely. “Not ‘f you don’t want to.”

Confused, you knit your brows. He laughs darkly, shaking his head.

“Didn’t mean it like that, it’s — it feels fuckin’ good,” he says, awestruck. “Would just rather make you feel good instead.”

Oh.

He doesn’t wait for an answer or a negotiation. The rest of his clothes pool on the floor in a pile, and he’s climbing back over you, an anchor or a buoy in a storm.

He lines himself up at the seam of you, puffy and so wet from before, nudging the tip of his cock at your warm center. A thumb coaxing the bud at the apex of you in lazy circles.

Joel’s sliding in slowly by each inch, filling you full until there’s nothing left and his patch of hair prickles the pearl of your clit. All you can do is whine and tense around him.

He’s resting tentative hands on either side of your face, indenting the weak mattress with handprints. He groans, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t give in when you try to rock against him.

“This alright?”

You’ve forgotten how to do anything, hoping that digging your fingertips into his forearms is communication enough.

“I’m gonna need a yes, baby.”

You feel around in the dark for the tether back to your body, and it jerks you like a marionette, giving him a nod.

“Yes. Fuck.”

That’s enough. He’s rewarding you with a roll of his hips, and you feel like you’re on fire. It’s a stuttering, painfully slow pace at first, his mouth so close to your ear that every grunt is amplified. But it evolves into something eager, unsatiated, snapping up into you with a relentless sort of fucking.

He’s hitting that place so deep within you, letting you unravel and grow hoarse from the moans tearing their way up your throat. That pressure is roiling, the kind that you get only when you touch yourself but intensified by a million.

It just feels so right, because there’s nothing to prove. 

You’re ships passing in the night, strangers making a pit-stop on the way to nowhere. There’s no backstory, no history to make mention of. No shame in the morning when he inevitably rolls over and pretends to be asleep, and you scrub off the smell of him with your provided travel-size shampoo.

It’s not love, but it might be the closest you ever get.

The glow of him above you, a deity with his face screwed in agony. Chasing after you when he feels the tightening of your cunt, the easy glide of every thrust that tells him you’re close.

Then, you’re snapping like a rubber band. Gushing in a dripping mess that trickles to where your ass meets thigh. Crying without tears, overstimulated but blissful. Joel is quick to follow, like he’s been waiting his turn.

He’s trembling, emptying inside you in a warm flood. Groaning low and beautiful, gripping your hips to keep you flush to him.

When pulls out, tearing himself away, he’s slinging an arm over his eyes on the pillow beside yours. One hand on your leg to make sure you don’t go anywhere.

“So fuckin’ perfect,” you hear him mutter.

At some point you drift off, his arm draped over you. You open a bleary eye to a neon 2:49AM that casts a halo over the nightstand. Joel’s tucked you in, the thin duvet snug up to your shoulder. He’s not snoring but not not snoring, just breath getting caught in his throat in a satisfied, well-spent way.

It’s all too much, too pure to be real.

Before you let yourself change your mind, you slink out from under the warmth of your generous stranger. You step in your shorts one foot at a time, tugging them up gelatin legs too springy from coiling and uncoiling.

You promise yourself that you’ll take just one mental picture as a keepsake, and it’s this. A sleepy Joel who will be well on his way to a second cup of coffee on the way out of Arizona, maybe even nursing a little headache behind his right eye. And he’ll remember an apparition of some girl he fucked in a motel. The touristy thing to do, a sight to see. 

He might even tell Tommy, say you were a crazy little thing with too much baggage, but it was fun to stay up past his bedtime.

You don’t mean to do it, really you don’t, but you flip through his wallet that lays innocently on top of the TV.

If you take a little something, that’ll turn this into another one of your stories that you tell your kids born from a loveless marriage somewhere in the crevices of a future from now. It won’t pull on the tendons of your heart.

And it won’t mean anything. You won’t let it.

—

The next morning, there’s a soft knock at the door, and it’s probably housekeeping kicking you out for overstaying your welcome. Time to turn down the bed for the next lost soul. You imagine Joel’s long gone, hopped in his truck and back to a reality you’ll never meet him in.

Your fingers are slow to gather up your purse, and you’re shoving your toothbrush in from its place on the sink.

“I’ll be out in a second!” you yell in a voice that reeks of years of diner-flavored customer service.

More persistent knocking that borders on pounding. It shakes the chain in the deadbolt.

You’re yanking open the door, and there’s Joel, white shirt and jeans. And it isn’t that cushion of admiration from last night, no greeting with a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Just a wolf coming to claim his continental breakfast.

Fuck.

You try to shut the door, suddenly too ashamed of what you’ve done, and to someone undeserving. Someone that showed you kindness, empathy.

But his boot catches the door before it can close, and he’s inside, slicing through the space between you. It’s not quite anger, but it’s shadowy. Sardonic.

Your shoulder blades kiss the cheap wallpaper.

“You’re real funny, y’know that?” he starts, and he’s smiling but not really.

Shrinking small, so small that maybe you’ll disappear.

There’s a tick of silence. His thumb skates to your collarbone and then to the hollow at the base of your throat. He wants to squeeze but he doesn’t, his fingers wrapping loosely around the column to fix you there. Heat creeps up the back of your neck into your hairline.

The instinct to flinch bubbles up against your joints, but you can’t bring yourself to.

“Y’think you can fuck me,” he muses, disgustingly deadpan, “‘n steal from me.”

Dread weighs heavy like lead in your stomach. You can’t stop yourself from shaking your head, still playing dumb.

He bristles at that, thunderous. You both know it’s a lie; you’re a hundred dollars richer than you were last night. His fingers briefly flex around you in a way that you’ve seen before, and horror hits a fever pitch in you.

Tears prick your eyes, and you’re putting your palms on his chest and shoving, but he doesn’t give. Unstoppable force meets immovable object, and all that.

It’s not so much the blaring punctuation in a sentence, the ticking of dynamite ready to blow. He’s confronting you with proximity, with your own dishonesty. Wanting to shake you and tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Joel just leans in closer, almost grazing noses. You try to breathe around the lump of panic.

“The hell’s the matter with you?”

It’s disbelief, it’s hurt. In the same way, it’s understanding, incredulous. It’s him stepping back and loosening the hold around your neck like no one’s ever done; it’s softening and imploring.

He’s shoving his hands in his pockets, guilty and recoiling. Sorry he could even make himself look like one of them — a forced penance in the flesh.

There’s no answer that can justify what you did. Nothing simple about nothing personal. But truly… that’s all it was. A pie wafting steam on an open windowsill. Something to make you feel better about the void he’d leave.

“‘F you needed money, you coulda just asked.” 

He’s disappointed, desperate. In a tone that really says, I would’ve done anything you wanted.

A dam inside you gives, crumbling deep at the foundation and knocking the walls down around you. Words don’t come, but you shove your hand in blind into your bag, pulling out the loose bill and extending it.

Joel sees the regretful offering and your heart with x-ray vision. That you think of yourself as a doll, less valuable without her box. Used without tags. Free to a good home.

He shakes his head, the softness of a keep it barely peeking out of his mouth.

You’re skinning yourself raw, wanting another way out but having none. With half a mind to say that the next night could come with fangs.

You feel the stab of relief, and shame. So much shame.

Like a soothsayer, he foresees the coldness of a bench, the shrinking of you into the safety of an alley.

You drop to your knees in exaltation, thinking you know what’ll fix this. You can’t see through the watercolor blur of your tears, but you touch his belt with fingers that are cold to the tips.

But Joel knows what you’re doing, shaking his head no no no.

He won’t let you do it like this. He drags you up gently by the elbows. Pulls you into his chest, says stop stop stop. Kisses your hair, then your lips. You cry until he can taste the tears, until the front of his shirt is damp.

“I’m sorry,” you rasp out roughly. “I’m so sorry.”

He tells you to never say sorry to him again.

—

Joel pays for a room for two more nights, but only one — his with the working A/C.

You move your toothbrush and your bag over to Room 20.

You go to the pool, swimming laps around him in a tank top and your cherry-embroidered underwear, squealing and splashing in a flail when he swims underneath your legs and stands up to hold you on his tan shoulders.

Sunscreen streaks greasy on your stomach when you lay out together on the loungers after. Joel likes a cat-nap with his face under a towel, grumpy and tired from the sun. But he never snaps at you, never gets impatient when you ask too many questions while he’s dozing off.

You learn the pinched expression he makes just before he comes. That his right palm has hundreds of lines you can see best by lamplight. He misses the noise of Sarah in his house, of sharing the coffee pot with someone. He doesn’t like the small piling of toast crumbs left only by him on the kitchen table.

He learns that you apologize for wet, clean hair on his pillowcase, for laughing too loud. Things that don’t need a sorry. A collection of oversaturated manners that might take time to unlearn, but he promises to teach you.

He learns that you approach an orgasm with tentative toes in cold water, almost unbelieving that sex can give, give, give instead of take, take, take. He learns that you like the meeting of eyes when he’s buried between your legs, pushing your thighs apart to keep from suffocating. That when he does let you get on your knees for him, you know just the spot to caress with your tongue on the underside of his cock.

Joel’s belt is snaked under your stomach, across your hips, fists intertwined in the leather as he pulls you back, slams himself forward. It bites and creates indents in your flesh, and you don’t care. He gives you marks to love, to admire in your reflection, never ones that are ugly. Never ones out of hate over spilled milk.

There’s a dirty slap of skin, growing louder, competing with your moans. Your nails are tearing into the cheap sheets, and Joel’s so close but won’t come until he coaxes another out of you. A grand total of at least four by now, but you’ve lost count.

At long last, you splinter around him. Pitching off the cliff in a cry. Joel’s leaning — his chest, your back — and spilling deep, holding onto you for dear life. You hear him whimper in a strangle. Big, tough game that’s been taken down with an arrow in his chest.

Hot tears are flowing out of you, stuttering sobs close to follow, and Joel pulls out slowly. Seems to know why. And he rolls you over, into him, hand careful in slow strokes against your hair.  

You’ve never been good at goodbyes. Maybe that’s what this is.

Men like to say that women like you are insane, too analytical, too tear-streaked, too conscious of the way they look when they sleep. Because waking up with your mouth open, a drying corner of drool threatening your cheek is too human, not pretty.

Sometimes women like you are dead, rotting pomegranate flesh. Long forgotten in decay on the ground when the weight became too heavy to hold yourself up. And those men pick up your seeds and shove them squelching back into places where they don’t fit. 

The winters come bitter and harsh, but you’re always reborn in the spring. And without fail, you grow back fiercely into a tree reminiscent of Eden, low-hanging apples plucked and bruised and bitten into once and spit out in tart disgust. 

Women like you choke men like this with your pits, strangle them with vines, poison them with berries. They can consume, but so can you.

But then, in the ripe, cool shade of summer, you’ll have a visitor like Joel that will come with a basket and a blanket and they’ll stay and read books beneath you. They’ll enjoy your fruit, you’ll drip from their mouth and dry tacky like flypaper, and they won’t be able to imagine a day before you. 

They’ll collect all the pieces of you on a Tuesday morning and give you change to get a Coke after checkout. They’ll tuck you into the front seat of their truck, let you put your feet up on the dash, hand protective and calm on your thigh while the other steers you both back to Texas. A new home without shouting and bottles thrown.

And they’ll stay through every season.