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almostfoxglove · 2 months ago

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BLOCK PARTY

written for @auteurdelabre's TROPE OFF! challenge & a special thank you to @jolapeno for coming up with this idea - ilysm!

RATING: Explicit (18+) | PAIRING: Joel Miller x f!Reader WORD COUNT: 4.6k | TROPE: FAKE RELATIONSHIP CW: Tooth-rotting fluff, so much soft!joel, a tiny bit of protective!joel as a treat.

SUMMARY: After your ex moves into the neighborhood, Joel offers to pose as your boyfriend at the annual block party. It shouldn't be hard to pretend for a night, since he's hopelessly into you.

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Joel remembers the day you moved into the house on the corner perfectly—that orange craftsman with the cute triangle yard and a pergola on which the last owners let their wisteria die, left empty for nearly half a year. He’d just gotten home from a job, sweat-stained and spent, desperate for a shower when he’d heard the hum of an unfamiliar car. He’s not curious by nature, keeps happily to himself, but that day he found himself spying out through the picket of window between his curtains, wondering who it might be.

Thank god he did.

Thank god, too, that no one else bought that house. Has a little wrap around porch, a red door. Whole block wanted it—hell, Joel even heard the couple left of him consider it one evening. We could sell, one had said, hushed and conspiratorial, then buy that one.

But they didn’t, and a few weeks later you and your beat-up hatchback rolled up into the driveway, gifting Joel one measly glimpse of the back of your head as you rushed inside. No sight of you the next day; you kept the curtains drawn. But two evenings later a moving truck squealed up the quiet street and Joel, well. Joel happened to be near the windows when the truck happened to stop outside your orange house and happened to catch a look at you slogging down from the porch to roll up the back of the van with a distant grunt, unveiling your boxes and towered belongings.

He was pretty much a goner right then, right there.

Because you looked miserable, an Atlas lugging the world on your shoulders. Dark shadows clinging to the hollows of your cheeks. Your hair pulled back and greasy, your t-shirt a size too big, puddled at the hem with a stain. And maybe he’s getting soft or was from the start, because against his better judgment and the complaints of all his tired joints, Joel jogged out of his house and right on up to you. Offered to help you carry it all inside.

Took an hour to trek the boxes in, twenty minutes to tetris the couch, and another thirty for the rest of the furniture. One lampshade broke, for which Joel will never forgive himself but you swore it was fine, insisting it wasn’t one you liked, that it belonged to an ex.

The whole evening sped by and bruised blue, and Joel’s stomach sank just a little when it was done. Though his body howled and ached, he wouldn’t have minded if it’d taken eight more hours to haul all that shit into your house. Might’ve offered to help you unpack if that wouldn’t have been a creepy thing to do. But you shook his hand in thanks, gave him your name and a stiff smile, promising him dinner, or muffins, or whatever the fuck neighbors do as you walked him to the door with the urgency of a vampire who has only a few minutes left to black out all the windows and doors before sunrise. Hurrying him out, wanting to be alone.

When his own front door was latched, the house dead in its quiet, Joel swore to himself that once you got settled, he’d find some way to tell you that you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, that the caw of laughter you let out when he’d dropped the foot of your couch on his ankle was the best fucking sound even if it did bruise purple and green, that all the furniture you own is somehow perfect and warm and exactly what he’d never think to buy but would love to come home to, and that just shaking your hand made him feel like a kid again. That he’d pretty much do anything to be the one who puts a smile on your face.

But you’ve lived across the street three years now and he’s never told you.

Can’t now. It’s too late. You’re friends.

And anyway, these days you smile plenty on your own; you don’t need him. Took the better part of a year, but you perked up. Transformed that triangle yard into an Eden, built trellises for sweet peas and tomato vines. Every year, bushels of strawberry plants bloom in summer and rows of squash unfurl in autumn. Stalks of bulb plants flower every month right on cue. Your birdfeeders never vacant, the little wooden house driven into the yard on a stake dizzy with mason bees in spring.

Three years after you moved in, no one would ever believe Joel if he told them how you’d looked that first day. Her? Can’t picture that girl sad. Her? The one who’s always smiling? You’re messing with me.

Now, both of you swaying on his porch swing—looking out into the rutted wasteland of backyard he swears one day he’ll landscape—Joel watches that old shadow cross your face as you lift your lemonade to your chewed-up lips. He can see it. The light in your eyes swishing dark like you’ve drawn the curtains. For three years he’s watched you build yourself up, coax yourself into the sunshine, only to have it extinguished by your ex—an ex who’s moved in just five houses down.

It might kill him to see you like this again.

Joel might kill the bastard just to prevent you any more harm. Burn that goddamn house to the ground. He’s glad that he broke that lamp when you moved in. Not that he says.

“C’mere,” he says, stretching out one arm, and without hesitating—without even turning your head to look at him—you sink against his side, cheek squished to his chest. A torture and miracle, the gift of your touch. How you have, over the years, decided to trust him.

“Of all the fucking neighborhoods to—” you start to say, but your voice cracks, betrays you, and there’s a jagged edge to your next breath that makes Joel’s whole body yank with pain. “Of all the fucking neighborhoods for him to choose.”

“I know, darlin’,” Joel mumbles, resting his chin on the crown of your head. Praying he doesn’t imagine the way your body deflates at his touch.

“Block party’s gonna suck,” you sigh, and if he closes his eyes Joel can almost imagine that this is something that it’s not. That if he wanted to, he could kiss you right now, touch you properly. Pet and lick and fuck every thought and worry right out of your head. That your heart’s racing even half the speed his is right now.

You must hear it, he thinks—with the shell of your ear resting so near that traitorous organ—but if you do you don’t say a word.

Joel squeezes your shoulder. “Don’t gotta go alone,” he says.

This stiffens your shoulders, holds your breath. You peel yourself from his side and evening sun paints your face orange as a clementine, gilds your eyes with tendrils of gold. Your brows pinch together so sweetly, curving down above your nose as a laugh rises to your lips. “Right,” you chuckle. “Sure.”

“I mean it,” Joel says, and takes his arm off you to sit up straighter, rocking the swing. “Could go together.”

He’s not sure why you look so surprised. You’re friends. You go places together. Lunch, the movies, to the grocery store. Shit, you drove him home loopy from the dentist after they cracked out his wisdom teeth. Took photos of him after you waddled him into his house, drugged up and chipmunk-cheeked. Relished showing him every snapshot for weeks afterward, giggling and pinching his face until he blushed.

Going to the annual block party together seems a hell of a lot more neighborly than that.

“What,” you say, still smiling at him like he’s crazy. “And you’ll pretend to be my boyfriend?”

It’s possible Joel’s heart stops. All his thoughts certainly do. All sound, reasonable logic floats away until all that matters in the world is your face, your gob-smacked smile. The dissonance of what he was offering and what you heard.

“If you want,” Joel hears himself say.

And that’s that. He digs his own grave.

If anyone was around to see Joel’s face when he first lays eyes on the guy, they’d probably assume you used to date the devil himself. Jaw grinding, arms crossed tightly over his chest, every nerve flayed and hair on end—doesn’t seem to matter how much you assured him that your ex isn’t a bad person, Joel hates the guy. If he were a younger man, as reckless as he’d once been, he’d knock the guy on his ass for daring to step foot in the neighborhood, let alone buy up a place.

You’re with Joel in your front yard showing off the mason bees that dart in and out of their paper tubes when something flickers in the corner of Joel’s eye—a man running on the sidewalk, earbuds in, sweat pooled in a V on the front of his t-shirt. He does a double take at the sight of you.

Joel squares his shoulders.

The guy comes to a jogging halt, pops an earbud out as he calls your name, and Joel’s heart might rip clean out of his chest when your face falls at the sound of his voice, all the pride in your smile snuffed in the blink of an eye. You turn so slowly. Wave a little sheepishly. “Hi.”

“Do you—” the guy starts to ask, his bright eyes flickering between you and your orange house.

You nod. “Three years now.”

His eyes damn near pop out of his skull—this, at least, is one small comfort. He had no idea you lived here. He’s not following you or nothing. As you rub the back of your neck, suddenly quiet, Joel hears your voice in his head saying, You’ll pretend to be my boyfriend?

Guess that starts now if you wanna sell it. At least that’s what Joel tells himself as he takes a small step closer and settles his hand on the small of your back over your t-shirt. Swears he can feel your every tiny twitch beneath his palm, every degree of your body heat. There’s just one second of lag before you inch closer, too, making a shrew of his nervous heart. Blood races in his veins; his stomach turns to molten gold.

A twitch snags in your ex’s cheek and Joel’s lips tighten, fighting back the smug urge to smile. Tucked against his side, you look up at Joel and he can’t help feeling like next to you is exactly where he belongs. Perfect, you smile before drawing your eyes away, and slip your arm around his waist.

“Sorry,” you say, grinning in a way Joel’s not seen you manage since this jackass showed up. “This is Joel. My— uh—boyfriend.”

Maybe heaven is one beautiful lie.

Joel must be a greedy man, because he slips his hand up your spine to wrap his arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to his chest. It’s either the best or worst feeling in the world, the way you don’t resist for a second. The way you melt against him, your hand gripping at the hem of his t-shirt over his hip.

“Right,” says your ex, still doe-eyed when he meets Joel’s blackened stare. “Clark. S’nice to meet you, man.”

Joel hmphs , gives him fuck all but a stiff nod, and for just one second you turn your face into his chest like you’re trying to smother a laugh. Pride has never filled him quite as quickly as it does now, knowing he’s the cause. That he’s put that smile on you, making you bite your bottom lip. He’s the one who’s made this gentler on your heart.

When Clark takes off again, you and Joel wait until he disappears around the corner to withdraw your arms, then you break into stomach-y laughter, smothering your face in your hands. “Oh god,” you wheeze, your whole face split by joy. “His face. That was—shit, that was incredible. That felt so good.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Joel looks out into the empty street to hide his blush, focusing on the golden light of August’s showboating. It’s a perfect evening, oak trees gossiping in the balmy breeze. It’s small, sure, but knowing he’s made you feel so good sets him on fire, fries his brain. He wants to make you say so good, so good, so good, in every possible way.

You snort, you’re laughing so hard.

“Happy to be of service,” he mumbles.

“Jesus,” you go on, and he turns to find you’re wiping your thumbs under your eyes. “That felt so much better than I thought it would. I think you might be a genius.”

Sure, genius. That’s the word for it.

On the day of the block party, you ask Joel to creep across the street at the break of dawn, insisting that people could be setting up, and, wouldn’t it look weird if we didn’t come out of the same house? We have to look like we’re sleeping together, dumbass. He only managed to restrain himself from suggesting that he just sleepover by the skin of his teeth, so tempted by the thought of being close to you at night—even isolated on your couch, so many doors away from your dreams.

But he’ll take the morning. He does. As early light sets the asphalt ablaze, Joel slinks across the road to your house, finds your front door unlocked, and lets himself in. Inside is cold like winter, the air-con cranked, and you’re on the couch in a sweater that’s cuffed at your wrists, coffee smoking in your hand, your legs folded up beneath you, bare.

“Morning,” you say, when you see him, a kind smile on your lips.

Joel shuts the red door behind him, clears his throat. “Mornin’,” he says.

There are hours until the block party begins, so you and Joel kill the morning on your couch watching shitty TV and drinking enough coffee that Joel’s hands begin to shake—though maybe that’s just the cold, the air frigid in a way that transcends summer. Maybe it’s just you. You, transforming leftovers from your fridge into a breakfast hash, rich with cilantro from the plant on your windowsill. You, knocking your knuckles against his arm whenever you laugh at something stupid he’s managed to say or a joke on screen. You, handing him his refilled mug or breakfast bowl or taking them back to wash up, brushing your fingertips against his hand. Every time.

It’s a jolt to his whole system, this small meeting of your skin.

Soon the television is challenged by the din of your neighbors setting up tables and booths and games for the kids—at which you straighten on the couch, craning to peek through one of your picture-frame windows. A sigh blooms from your lips, then you set down your mug.

“Should put clothes on,” you tell him as you rise, legs unfolding. You look so soft. Joel knows you would be. “Gimme a second.”

Then you’re gone, and his head falls down against the back of your couch, the heels of his hands grinding into his eyes. It feels like you’re only gone for a second before your footsteps pinch down the stairs once more. “Headache?” he hears you ask, catching him with his hands still over his eyes. “Did I give you too much coffee?”

You’re teasing. Joel can hear your smirk as his hands slip back down to his lap, craning over the back of the couch to look up at you, and the world crumbles below him and falls away. Brows folded low over your eyes, you slide your hands down your front to soothe wrinkles from the skirt of your red sundress that only you can see. Slack-jawed, Joel finally manages to sit up, then twists to look back at you properly—perfect, that’s what you are. Every temptation and every vice and every poison he’d willingly drink.

“The dress is too much, isn’t it?” you say, sounding worried now.

He shakes his head, fights not to reach over this goddamn couch and pull you onto his lap. The thought alone makes his cock twitch traitorously in his jeans. You’re close enough that he could. You’re right there.

“S’perfect,” Joel croaks.

You let out a sigh of relief and nod before moving toward the door for your shoes. With his last remaining sense, Joel turns his head just before you bend down to reach for a pair of sandals. This was a terrible idea. He sees that now. A huge fucking mistake.

But it’s too late to back out now, because you’re already calling him over, sliding your hand into his as you step out onto the porch like this is normal, like you’ve done this before, like you don’t mind his sweaty palm. Outside the street is a racket, a flurry of children chasing each other between driveways and neighbors cracking the caps off beer bottles, a painted banner strung over the road between two maples:

B L O C K P A R T Y !

He hears you make a quiet hmph sound of amusement as you draw toward the crowd.

Joel waits, but to his surprise, no one asks why you’re here together, why you’re holding hands. Sorta figured you’d have to do the awkward uh, yes, it’s very… new for everyone, but nobody asks. In fact, when you vanish momentarily from his side to get drinks—the ruffle of your dress flirting with the tops of your thighs—someone tuts sweetly to Joel, “I knew it.”

Then you’re back before he can blush, two bottles sweating in your hands, and the neighbor vanishes the second you pass one to him. Your forehead has pinched up with nerves. Must mean you’ve seen him, Clark or whatever, and Joel’s a man of his word—you’ve asked him to do a job—so he glides one hand around your waist and presses his lips to your temple. Mumbles softly, “I’ve got ya,” against your skin as he breathes you in. There’s something sweet in your perfume, he thinks. Lilac or honey.

As if on cue, a soccer ball zips beneath the banner and a moment later it lifts as someone chases after it. Clark, obviously, looks up, sees you in the nook of Joel’s arm, and tucks the runaway ball under one arm without a word, then takes off in the direction he came from without so much as a nod.

Joel feels your chin jut into his chest as you squeeze him, smiling. “This is gonna be fun,” you grin.

Joel takes a deep breath to keep himself from hoping. That glint in your eye—one part mischief and another affection—ain’t good for him, but he can’t help the twitch at the corner of his mouth, that instinct to return your smile. “Careful, darlin’,” he mumbles, and as he brushes his thumb across your cheek you lean into his hand. “Face might stick like that.”

Rolling your eyes, you say, “What, you don’t like it like this?”

Though he only hmphs, Joel suspects you know that he does, in fact, like you very much like this: smiling up at him like he’s painted the sky with stars just by standing at your side.

How quickly the day passes with you beside him. For every year he’s lived in the neighborhood Joel has too attended the block party, but like most obligatory functions, he finds himself worn down quickly, always the first to leave, retreating into the quiet of his house when he’s reached the end of his meager tolerance. When he’s had too many conversations and seen too many faces too close together and he’s desperate for quiet, for sleep.

It’s different with you. You buffer so much of the polite conversations he’s never been good at having with grace and ease, always drawing the focus away from him just as he starts to feel it’s too much, like you can tell when Joel’s at the end of his rope. Sure, he’s still gotta stand there while you chat to whoever about mixed up mail or work or garden soil, but so long as they’re looking at you, that swell of too much never comes. He can just stand there, sipping his beer or lemonade, and focus on the swipe of your thumb across his knuckles as you hold his hand. The heat of your body when you lean into him.

By sundown, Joel forgets that it’s all pretend. He forgets this is nothing but a favor between friends.

Now the food has dwindled, that summer smell of hotdogs dissolving from the air, and all the lawn chairs once relegated to each person’s lawn shuffle into the black street as cicadas form their nightly orchestra. You don’t have any lawn chairs, but Joel’s got two. Always has—he doesn’t know why. Only ever just him at these things.

Maybe he was hopeful, back when he bought them.

It’s hard not to feel—as he drags both out to sit at the back of the crowd—like he was waiting for you. He just didn’t know it at the time.

“So prepared,” you tease him, as you settle into your seats.

“Keep it up,” he replies, his eyebrows warning in their slow rise. “I’ll take that chair you’re sittin’ on.”

You scrunch your nose. “No you won’t,” you say.

Obviously he won’t. But you don’t have to be so cute about it.

Then a sudden chorus of children shrieks, announcing the first firework. There’s a hissing, then a dart in the darkness, and a small spark of golden light cracks open overhead. A smattering of applause simmers, punctuated by oohs and awws, and all the kids giggle every time a sparkler booms. Beside him, the glitter of each explosion forms a galaxy in your eyes, your lips parted with wonder. The prettiest thing Joel’s ever seen, just like that first day. After a while you notice that Joel’s not watching the show, and turn slowly to look at him, your expression open and tender.

“Missing the show,” you say.

He shrugs. “I’ll see ‘em next year.”

When you smile, he wants to kiss you so badly his heart might actually stop, strangled by its longing.

But your head whips back at the thunder of a vibrant firework—a dandelion of neon blue and searing white—and the moment passes. Then Joel watches your smile falter as your eyes fall into the crowd; Clark, sitting up near the front of the pack, is looking back at you over his shoulder. Trying to be subtle and doing a shitty job; head snapping away the moment he sees Joel’s glare.

“Ignore him,” Joel says, and reaches down to wrap a hand around one leg of your chair, dragging you closer to him. You let out a giddy yelp of surprise and draw your ex’s attention again.

This time you don’t flinch or falter. One glance at the guy and you’re reaching for Joel, fist gripping the collar of his t-shirt to tug him toward you. He’s got no chance to think, to panic; it happens too fast. Your sweet mouth closes over his—not for a peck, but a real kiss. Lips parting to taste his bottom lip, a breathy sigh passed from your tongue to his. Joel’s lost all at once, no use resisting. His hand curls gently over your wrist to keep your grip on him as he tilts his head to lick into your mouth.

The fireworks fall away.

You taste like lemonade and hops and the raspberry cobbler someone cooked up, and there’s not a cell in Joel’s body that doesn’t swoon at the way your lips chase and melt into his, humming softly against his mouth when he cradles the back of your head in the palm of his hand. How you tug gently at his bottom lip before you draw away, forcing his hand to slink from your hair.

Clark’s staring. Your lips proud and grinning. Plush and kiss-bitten. Looking every bit as calm as Joel feels walloped. You hm smugly to yourself and drop your head on his shoulder, attention once more captured by the crackle of fireworks Joel forgot were happening, and even though he’s a fool for agreeing to something he knew would rip him up, he can’t bring himself to regret it. Not when you’ve kissed him like that. Not when you’re lying against him still, even though Clark has turned away.

The whole rest of the show passes in a dizzy haze. A blur of shattering light, and the heady weight of you leaning against him. Near the end you slip one hand over his knee. Your ex isn’t watching, doesn’t see the way your thumb glides slowly across the denim of Joel’s jeans, intoxicating.

It feels, or else he hopes, that it’s just for him.

The night is black by the time he walks you home, all your neighbors disappearing into their darkened houses, his lawn chairs stowed safely on his porch, and even though everyone’s gone when you reach your porch you still don’t let go of his hand until you’re at the door and you have to get out your keys.

Your lock surrenders with a metal crack and you let your red door swing open. Inside your furniture beckons from the shadowed living room, cozy and soft. But you hesitate in the doorway, looking up at him. Joel has to put his hands in the pockets of his jeans to keep himself from pulling you against him properly, and pinning you to the wall.

You scrunch your nose at him again. “Thank you,” you say, and your bottom lip pinches between your teeth as Joel’s gaze falls to your mouth. “Was actually pretty fun, in the end.”

Joel nods, drops his eyes shyly to his shoes. “I had fun too,” he manages to say.

Your sandal nudges the toe of his boot as he stares at his shoes. “Y’alright?”

No, he’s not alright. He knows what it’s like to kiss you now—how the hell’s he supposed to go on living with that, and not ever have it again. “Mhm,” Joel lies, head snapping up to meet your gaze. He mistakes the look in your eyes for discomfort, thinks he must be keeping you from your night, from sleep. That after you were so sweet to him all day, he’s got the nerve to bother you. His heart winces as he forces himself to take a small step back. “Sorry. Don’t wanna keep ya.”

“Oh,” you say, face falling a little. “Okay. Goodnight then.”

There’s no way the pathetic flinch of his lips looks anything like a smile as he mumbles a sorry g’night.

Then your face shrinks slowly in the closing gap of the door, a darkened look haunting your face that Joel swears—in the split second he sees it—almost looks like disappointment. Like you don’t want him to go.

When he licks his lips, Joel remembers the plush of your lips, the soft hum you’d made when he licked into your mouth, how you’d leaned into his hand when he cradled your head. How your ex could never have seen or heard any of that sitting so far away.

Maybe you just wanted to. God, he hopes you wanted to.

So before he can talk himself out of it, Joel’s hand jumps out and smacks flat against your door, holding it ajar. Through the slender gap he watches a grin bolt across your face as you sigh thank god and grab hold of his shirt, hauling him through the doorway to crash your lips against his.

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