#joel milller fic

[alloftheimagines]

joel miller | left behind

masterlist | taglist | ko-fi

words: 2.9k

warnings: angst, angst, angst. so much angst. ep two spoilers. tess's death. grief. loss. infected stuff. reader is tess's younger sister. age gap. more angst. so much angst. slightly violent reader.

synopsis: in which joel honours a promise he made to tess that means he must force reader to leave your infected sister behind in boston. resentment and a bit of hurt/comfort ensues as you head to frank and bill's.

sibling!tess x reader, reader x joel, little bit of reader x ellie

tags: @sweetbabygirlsworld

“Holy shit. She’s infected.”

You didn’t think the world could fall apart twice, but you look at Tess as Ellie's words settle in and realise you were wrong. Here you are again, losing everything. This time, you don’t know if you can survive. 

“Tess…” you whisper, shaking your head slowly. “No. No. No.” 

Beside you, Joel is deadly still. He looks at your sister with such detachment that you want to scream. This is Tess. Fucking Tess. 

But you know him. You know he’s good at switching off when things get tough. Not like you. You wear your heart on your damn sleeve, and you can’t fucking do this. You look at her again, heart breaking. You feel every tear, every shard slipping through your ribcage. Tess is motionless — resigned. She wears sadness, but no fear. None anybody but you can see, anyway. You grew up with her. You can see the fading light in her eyes in a way the others won’t. 

And you don’t know what to do.

“Let me see it,” Joel orders quietly.

“Joel…” Tess pleads. 

“Show me,” he growls. 

Bitterly, she tears down the collar of her shirt, revealing the infection blossoming across bruised veins. Your knees threaten to buckle, nausea rising in your throat. 

“No.” Tears slip down your cheeks, and you’re already searching the room again for some hint the Fireflies might have left, some sign that it won’t end like this. “No. The girl is a cure. If we can just—”

Tess is saying your name. You’re not listening. If you listen, it will be real. If you listen, you will have to say goodbye to the only family you have left. 

“Joel,” she’s saying now. “This kid… this kid is real, okay? You gotta get her, get them both, to Tommy’s. He’ll know where to go, what to do.”

“No. No, I’m not doing that,” he replies. 

You’re still rattling around, searching old papers and nooks for something, anything; as though you’ll find a miracle in the shadows. 

“If not for the kid then for her.” Tess’s voice rises. You squeeze your eyes shut, your back turned to her. “She needs you, Joel. This is the end of the road for me, but you need to keep going. Promise me."

“I’m not leaving you here!” you shout, throwing the first thing you find against the wall. It smashes to dust. “We’ll find a way out of this, Tess. We always fucking do. Let’s just stop and figure it out!” 

“There is no figuring it out.” Tess marches over to you, gripping your face in her hands. You try so hard to fight it, so hard to stay in denial, but you look at her drawn face and know she’s already half-gone. You know the worry furrowing her brows isn’t for herself, but for you. For what will happen to you now. She practically raised you, toughening you up or else cradling you through the bad nights, never any in between. It made you both strong and so unbearably weak. Not like Joel, who has never let anything touch him. 

You choke on a sob and close your eyes. “Please, Tess. Please. This can’t be it. I need you.”

“I need you. I need you to be safe. I need you to keep going. Please, sweetheart.” She softens, brushing the tears from your eyes. “Please. For me.”

“No—” 

The sound of moans and the shuffling of uneven footsteps interrupt your protest. Joel goes to the window and curses, readying his gun. “Infected. Shit tonne of ‘em. We gotta go.”

You grab Tess’s wrist without thinking. “Come on.”

But she slips out of your grasp, stepping away from all of you. Ellie has tears in her eyes, but she says nothing, looking for the first time not to Tess or Joel, but to you. 

“I can buy you some time, but you have to run. You have to go,” Tess whispers. 

You shake your head again, ferociously this time. “No. No, I’m not leaving. If you stay, I stay.”

She snaps her head away. “Joel. Get her out of here.”

You fight back a bitter scoff, fists curling at your sides — but then hands lock around your arms, nudging you away. “Come on," Joel grunts. "We have to go. Now.”

The betrayal stings. This is fucking Tess. Of all people, he should want to help her. He shouldn’t be giving up on her. 

You snarl, “Fuck you if you think I’m going anywhere!” 

He doesn’t let up, face carved from stone. “We can’t stay,” he hisses, ducking his head to meet your eye. “You want us all to die?” 

“You go! I’m not—”

“Now, Joel!” Tess is yelling. “Get her the fuck out of here now!”

He swears under his breath again and then his arms are like a vice around your waist, your feet lifting from the floor as he drags you away, kicking and screaming. 

“No!” You’re shrieking now, vocal cords ripping apart as you try to reach for your sister. "Tess!"

But she doesn’t reach back. She turns away, and you know with certainty it’s the last time you’ll see her face. 

“Tess, please!” Sobs erupt from you, and you fight harder now, but Joel is too strong, too broad, too heavy-handed to let you go. “Please! Please! Let me go! Let me stay with her! She's my fucking sister, Joel!” 

The fresh air hits you all at once. One moment you’re there, watching your sister get smaller and smaller as infected scratch and rattle the doors, and then you’re back in the rubble of the drab city, the gold dome of Massachusetts State House dwindling. 

And then exploding.

As your feet finally hit the floor and you try to nudge Joel away, the earth cracks with black smoke and you’re thrown to the ground. Joel’s warmth shields you, and you feel Ellie trembling at your side. 

Silence blankets you like ash. It takes a moment for your brain to comprehend it. Any of it. 

You shove Joel to look back at the State House. The building that is no longer a building, just debris and fire. 

The building where your sister was standing not a moment ago. 

“No.” You say the word differently now. Softer. Devastation pierces through it, through you. She’s gone. Tess is gone. 

“Darlin’...” Joel puts his hand on your shoulder and squeezes, and fury sparks through you. 

“You did this!” you scream, hitting his chest again, and again and again. “You took away my choice!” Because the truth is, you would sooner have died in there with Tess than carry on without her. “You took away my fucking sister!” Because he’d gotten her into the jobs, the smuggling. He’d done all of this. 

Joel doesn’t react, barely even budging as you slam into him. His jaw is set, trembling, throat bobbing, and finally he catches your hands and locks his fingers around your wrists. “Look at me.” 

You can’t. You can’t look at him, or anywhere else. You want to vomit. You want to disappear. 

Instead, your chin wobbles and your ribcage opens up and everything pours out of you as you wail. 

He catches you as you sink to the ground, pulling you to his chest, and you’re too weak to push him away now. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into your hair, rocking you gently. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, sweetheart. There was nothing else we could do. Nothing else I could do. But look at me. Please look at me.” He grips your jaw just as Tess had, and you flinch. You hate him. You fist his shirt between your fingers and you want to destroy it, destroy everything around him. 

Except you don’t. He’s all you have left, and the realisation makes you numb. Joel fucking Miller is the only goddamn person you have. 

You do as he asks. You look at him. 

“She bought us time," he says. "We can’t waste it now. Do you understand? We can grieve her later, but right now, we gotta go. We have to get up and keep going. For Tess.”

You hate that he’s right most of all. As you begin to shut down, shock taking over, you look back at the smoking State House and stand. And then you clutch Joel’s collar and bare your teeth. 

Ellie stumbles towards you, eyes round with fear, but you’ve lost the will to care about her presence. You’ve lost everything today.

“Don’t you fucking say her name again,” you snap. “You lost that right. I blame you. I blame you for who she became, who we’ve all become.”

Anguish curls across Joel’s features, but you refuse to feel guilty. You let him go roughly and grab your backpack off the floor, the same one you’d clutched during the outbreak just after you’d watched your parents get savaged by your infected neighbours, Tess dragging you to safety. You’d been thirteen years old, and your sister had gotten you through hell and back, that night and every other one that came after. 

“It shouldn’t have ended like this,” you whisper into the wind, swallowing your own tears. 

It’s the last moment you allow yourself to have, and then you wipe your damp cheeks and glare down at Joel again. 

“Get up. Let’s go.”

He does, looking winded as he rises from his knees to his feet. You allow him to lead the way only because he knows the city, knows his way around, far better than you did. Tess rarely let you do jobs out of the QZ, protective until the bitter fucking end. 

You wish more than anything you could have protected her. 

***

You don’t get the chance to catch your breath again until you get to Bill and Frank’s — which is empty. You never met them yourself, but you know Tess warmed to them, so to find them dead too… it feels like the last piece of good in the world is truly gone. You slump onto their couch still wrapped in numbness as Joel and Ellie gather supplies, reluctant to so much as look at you. Later, you hear them talking about showering, and Ellie thumps up the stairs, leaving the place quiet. You should wash, too. You should eat, drink, prepare for whatever comes next, but you can’t move. Can’t do anything. 

After minutes, or perhaps hours, of silence, Joel kneels in front of you with a plate of food. “You need to eat, darlin'. I know it’s hard, but you have to.”

You hate him calling you that. He never used to call you that. He barely addressed you at all, stubborn, grumpy old man he is. But he’s been family for a long time, and the three of you… 

You got by together. Until now. 

You glance down at the food and your stomach turns. 

“Please,” he whispers, voice cracking. It surprises you, that vulnerability bleeding into his words — and it seems to surprise him too, by the look on his face. You’ve never seen him like this. Not once. 

You take a bite for that alone. It’s dry in your mouth, and you find it hard to swallow, so you push the rest away. He sighs and puts it down on the coffee table, swapping the plate for his flask. You take a swig, whiskey burning like vinegar in your throat. 

“If I talk,” he asks, “will you listen?”

“No,” you answer honestly. “No, I don’t feel much like listenin’, Joel.”

Still, he takes your hand. You glare at your intertwined fingers but make no move to pull away. Perhaps part of you still needs to be coddled, taken care of the way Tess might have.

And maybe you need to know you’re not alone. That he isn’t going to give up on you the way he so easily did with Tess. Which is sick, you know, but you’ve never much been able to help the way you feel about him. The way you have always wanted to peel away his layers and understand him. Tear away his self-hatred, guilt, grief, for whatever horrors he faced before. 

“I didn’t want this. Not for Tess and sure as hell not for you.”

“I told you,” you bit. “I told you not to say her name.”

“I made a promise to her a long time ago.” He continued as though you hadn’t spoken, his brown eyes pleading. “I promised that if something happened to her, I would always protect you. That’s what I did today. I was honouring that promise, and honouring your sister. If you need someone to blame, someone to hate, if that makes it easier, go ahead. But don’t think for a second that this was a choice I wanted to make. I cared about her. I care about you. And even if I have to drag you kickin’ and screamin’, I’m getting you to Wyoming, to Tommy. You and I still have a job to do.” Slowly, as though unsure how you’ll react, he tucks your hair behind your ear. “That kid needs us, but we need her a hell of a lot more if the cure is real. And I… I need you. I need you here with me, safe. I ain’t losing another…”

He bows his head, words thickening.  “I ain’t going back on my promise to Tess, so you can make it difficult as you like. You can never lay your damn eyes on me again. But I’m getting you through this.”

A tear drips down your cheek, your entire body trembling as the sorrow, the grief, finally takes over. 

“Oh, baby,” Joel whispers, voice full of the same loss, the same pain. 

A whimper escapes you as you put your head in your hands. You can’t even hate him now, because you can imagine your martyr of a sister asking Joel to do just that. To protect you above all else. Still, you despise it — despise that your choices were taken away, your voice ignored. 

“I should have been with her,” you say. “She shouldn’t have died alone.”

“She died knowing you were being taken care of.” He squeezes your knee with rough hands. “She died knowing she saved us. It’s the best anyone could’a done. I wish it could have been different.”

“I don’t know how to do this without her,” you admit, because how can you keep it all in? All the love you had for her, all that grief… where will you put it when it’s spilling out of you without warning? 

“That’s something we’ll figure out,” Joel responds. He’s drawing circles into your lower thigh now, the pad of his thumb wearing down your denim jeans slowly. Wearing you down slowly. “You should take a shower then see about finishing your food. That hot water… it’ll help. And I won’t be mad if you use it all before I get my turn.” He offers you a small smile.

But you can’t imagine anything ever helping. You close your eyes, sinking back into the couch. “In a minute. I just need…” You don’t know what you need. If you’re being honest, you need Tess. 

As though knowing it, Joel rises, the couch cushions dipping with his weight beside you. He lets out a soft sigh, fidgeting with his fingers. You feel the weight of his gaze on the side of your face. 

A moment later, he’s draping a blanket over you, and your lids flutter open again in confusion. 

“S’okay,” Joel says. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

You don’t need to be told twice. But when you try to nod off, you only see Tess burned on the inside of your eyelids. Her face the last time you saw it. The bite. Her pleas for you to go.

You give up quickly, aware Joel is still beside you, unmoving. It isn’t like him to not be moving. 

Rubbing your face, you sit up, pushing the blanket off. “Joel…”

“Hmm?”

“Blaming you... it doesn't make it fucking easier. I understand why you did what you did, even if I don’t like it. But if you ever take away my choice again… I won’t go on with you. I can’t. I know you and Tess still see me… saw me,” you correct with a wince, “as a kid, but I’m not. Not anymore. And I sure as hell ain’t your responsibility.”

“I don’t see you as a kid,” he says quietly. “And I don’t see you as my responsibility, either. Honestly?” He purses his lips, tapping on the arm of the couch before he continues, “I see you as the only damn thing worth going out of my way to protect. Make of that what you will. Just… don’t expect me to let you die if that’s your choice. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t apologise for it, either.”

You’re not sure what to say to that; what it means. Why Joel, of all people, is the one to say it. You always thought he and Tess… 

“Why? That promise mean so fucking much?”

“Yeah." He looks at you as though for the first time. "Yeah, it does."

You don’t have the energy to wonder what it means anymore. Instead, you pull yourself up on unsteady feet. Your mind is racing, and that shower is sounding better as reality sets in. Just in time, Ellie returns with damp hair and fresh clothes. She offers a small, reassuring smile, and you ruffle her hair, feeling guilty that a fourteen-year-old was subjected to everything you went through in Boston. Whoever she is, whatever purpose people want her to serve… she’s just a kid, and you couldn’t hold it together for her today. That makes you a shitty chaperone.

“My turn,” you mumble, glancing at Joel a final, wary time before heading upstairs. His expression doesn’t change, but you see something new in it now. Something strange. 

Something that looks an awful lot like care.

#joel miller fic #joel miller #joel miller imagines #joel imagine #joel #joel x tess #joel x reader #ellie x joel #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #joel miller the last of us #joel miller imagine #joel miller drabble #the last of us hbo #the last of us #joel milller one shot #joel miller angst #the last of us spoilers #tess servopoulos #tlou show #tlou #tlou fic #tlou imagine #tlou hbo #tlou spoilers #the last of us fic #hbo the last of us #joel the last of us #the last of us imagine

[brighttears]

Battery

Joel Miller x f!reader

Series masterlist

No physical description

Summary: You met Tess in the Boston QZ because you have a battery for her car. She introduces you to her sidekick Joel, the handsome, hardass who looks like he wants to kill you. You’re leaving Boston with them in the morning. 

Word count: 3.6k

Warnings: deals in Boston with unfriendly characters, drinking, Joel takes sleeping pills

A/n: Wrote this is one sitting with very minimal editing heehee. Obviously screaming for more parts but I just decided to put this out and see what happens with it

—

You sit on a rusty metal folding chair in the musty basement you’ve come to know well, sitting next from your new friends Tess—the person you’ve come here to sort of compromise with, someone who promises a car to give a home to the battery you’ve come here to score in the first place. You met her at work, rolling paint over Firefly logos. You don’t usually chit–chat with your ‘coworkers’, and Tess said the same thing to you when you started talking, but you did, and it was maybe the most pleasant experience you’ve had in your year in the Boston QZ. Somehow, you clicked, and now, you guess you could say you’re something like friends. You even laughed once. More importantly, you both decided you could put a little trust into each other. The paramount detail, however, is that she’s looking for a car battery, and you know someone who has one, and you were going to speak with him the next day anyway. Finally, you both might have a way out of this hellhole. 

She did tell you that her other friend, Joel, is “kind of a piece of work, a real hard head who will look like he wants to kill you”, but goddamn did she mean that. He’s currently glaring at you from across the table, trying to size you up, looking like he’s trying to make you explode with his mind despite the fact that you’re here to do him a huge fucking favor. Next to him is your dealer, a poorly built man who can handle a lot more than he looks like he can, and a man who has plenty of people to back him up for what he can’t. He’s the King Rat, dirty and only seen in basements, but a kingpin just the same. He has a couple of his men around the room with him now, standing by the door with their hands clasped like ex-marines, doing their job at creating an atmosphere of static danger, telling you that he is the person that decides when and if you leave this room. However, your fear is on the backburner. You have become somewhat of a regular in King Rat’s basement—his actual name, the one you address him as, being Wojciech—for deals, trades more like it, but all of it being a forerunner for this right meeting right now. 

“Now, you know I like you,” he says to you, lazily raising a finger with something like a smile, “but I do not know either of you.” He waves his finger at Joel and Tess.

“I like them,” you tell him, a white lie, “that’s why I brought them here. I thought you’d want to know the whole deal here.”

“And we would both like to be here to see that the goods are real.” Tess says, face stoney. 

The static in the air picks up, though no one moves. 

Wojciech grows a slow grin, looking her right in the eyes. You watch them, trying to determine if this is about to get nasty, trying to read what you might be able to do to calm it down. He is a person to learn. Tess, apparently, is someone who doesn’t really give a fuck. Some may think she’s stupid to be so curt, but you can tell that she can hold the fuck her own. Plus, Joel looks like he could rip someone's throat out with ease. Still, you tense. 

“Aah,” he drawls, “smart woman. I can understand that. Yes, very smart. Well,” he flicks his hand out to a man behind him who then produces the battery onto the table, “it is very real. And it can be all yours,” he looks at you now, still grinning, “at the agreed price.” You then unload from your bag onto the table a fat stack of ration cards, a metal box full of various kinds of bullets, and a large plastic bag full to the brim of fat white pills. 

Wojciech’s eyes widen and he licks his lips as if you’ve just placed a freshly cooked Thanksgiving style turkey on the table.

“Good girl,” he says, still drooling over the payment, “what a sight, what a sight. You are a good girl, you know,” he looks up at you, his hands absentmindedly flexing. You try to smile, although his words make you want to gag. He is a person to learn, and also a person to swallow your bile for. This is just how he talks, and he’s never actually tried to lay a hand on you, so you can put up with it. Besides, once this deal is done, you'll never have to see him again. Just as his mouth is probably salivating for what's on the table right now, so is yours. You force yourself to keep Wojciech’s gaze instead of staring at the car battery. 

Still, though, you can see Joel’s eyes on you, still looking at you like you don’t belong here, like he hates you. So far, you really don’t like him, but it’s not him you care about, it’s the car he has. 

“You know, I will miss you, you and your sneaky ways. I don’t know how you did this, but I will never ask, because I don’t care as long as you get it onto my table.” He laughs heartily, leaning back in his chair with his hands still flexing, the sounds ending in squeaks, as they always do, which has added to the sticking nickname of Rat King. 

You got this stuff by saving, scraping, working a lot, and, yes, some stealing, along with making ‘friends’ with some guards who will never get the chance to get in your pants, though flirting was your main method of essentially manipulating them. It was hard work, never honest, but worth it. And now, finally, it is about to pay off.

“Well, seems we’re done here now, right?” Tess says.

Wojciech’s eyes roll to hers, relaxing back in his chair, still with his somewhat disquieting half grin. 

“Down to business. I like that. I like you, too, miss missy. Too bad you’ll be taking this battery and then be far gone right?”

Tess says nothing, which is smart.

Rat King finally gives in, “Aah”ing as he slides the battery across the table while one of his men bags up the other items on the table. 

You take the battery in your hands, sliding it over to yourself, then standing to set your now empty bag on the table next to it. It barely fits, but it does. 

Everyone else raises to their feet as you do, concluding the meeting. Wojciech is grinning at you again, wide, thin, full of small teeth, his eyes squinting with it. 

“Once again, very nice doing business with you,” you say to him, reaching out your hand for him to shake and hoping the grimace doesn’t show in your smile. 

“Yes, yes, as always, I really will miss you, you know.” He tells you as he shakes your hand, sweaty and tight. 

You say nothing. You try to say as little as you can with him, just be polite as possible; get in, get out. 

He lets go of your hand and then nods, signaling permission for your departure. You lead Tess and Joel out, all filing up the narrow staircase back into the sunlight. The bag hurts your shoulders, but you need to hide the weight, make it look like nothing important as you walk down the streets. 

“Alright, golden girl,” Tess says to you, now in stride next to you with Joel on the other side of her, “smartest way to do this is you stay with us tonight, and then you leave with us in the morning. Sound good to you?”

You nod, “Sounds good to me.”

“You got any shit to pick up at your place or are you good?”

“I’ve got everything I own on me.”

“Really?” She screws her face up with her question.

“Yup. Clothes, two loaded guns, and two knives.”

“No food?”

“Nope. Sorry I have nothing to offer on that front, but, that’s part of how we got this big thing on my back.” You pull the strap of your bag more securely on your shoulder.

“So, what,” Joel grumbles, “we just s’spossed to supply that for you?” He asks, mostly rhetorically. Really, he’s saying fuck you, who do you think you are?

Before you can snap anything back, Tess says, giving him a warning look, “Well, I think it’s a pretty fair fucking trade, seeing as she is the reason that we’re finally getting the fuck out of here.”

Joel stares at her for a moment, glowering, then looks back down the road, grumbling under his breath. 

Tess switches her gaze to you, “We’ve got shit saved up, don’t worry about it.” You nod, grateful. 

The rest of the walk is silent, all the way up to their apartment. Once at the door, Tess tells you, “Stay out here for a second, we gotta talk.” You nod, and she closes the door. You stay still, listening in on their private conversation. 

“I don’t like this.” Comes Joel’s muffled voice, “I do not want to add another person into our lives.”

“Well, this is how it’s gonna go. She has a battery, we don’t. We need her. She’s solid.”

“And how do you know that? You just met ‘er.” Joel snaps back. 

“Because I know, Joel. Look, do you trust me? Good. So, trust me. I understand you’re worried, I know you think this will complicate things, but we need her, and I trust her, ok?”

“It’s stupid to trust someone you barely know. I don’t like ‘er, I don’t like that prick Wojciech, I don’t like any of this. We can find another battery, alone.”

“No, we can’t. Who knows how long that will take? We have one right in front of us. This is our chance, Joel. To get out of here. Go find Tommy.”

There’s a pause, a shuffle of feet, and then Tess’s voice again, barely audible, “There’s just something about this chic. Okay? I like her. I really think she’s worth keeping around.” 

Joel says nothing. 

“Alright?”

He says nothing again. 

“Good. Now, be nice.”

You smile. You’re starting to really like Tess; the unspoken command she has over his angry bear of a man, this authority she holds over seemingly the air itself, instantly knocks up your respect for her. Thank god you like at least one of the people you’re about to travel with, to wherever they’re going. 

She opens the door then with a slight, polite smile, “Come on in. Get that thing off your shoulders. I’m sure they’re bruised by now.” As you enter, she adds, kind of offhandedly, “We need to talk.”

You offer a matching smile back, walking in and finding the table to set down your heavy bag before joining her on the couch. Joel sits in a chair in the corner, still looking annoyingly murderous. You stare right back, blankly, challenging him. He scares you just as much as half of the people in Boston, so it doesn’t really hit like it used to. He’s not gonna hurt you, he just wants you to feel like he will. You almost sigh, tired of shit like this. 

He looks pissed as fuck, but, eventually, he looks to the ground, submitting to Tess’s request of ‘being nice’.

Joel is almost like a puppy, well, more like a dog, a guard dog, who sits in the corner, watching and glaring as much as a dog can, who eventually huffs, defeated, and plods over to lay at your feet. He reminds you of an old, tired, Saint Bernard. Tess is unquestionably his owner, known this dog for years, able to command him with one word or even just her eyes. 

“Look,” Tess interrupts your musing, her eyes demanding your attention, sitting next to you with her hands clasped over spread knees. “Him and I, we are not good people. We are here to get what we want, and go.”

Something about Tess makes you think that she may have been a mother at some point. You like it.

She continues, “I think we can help each other out. You wanna get outta here, too, right?”

You nod, “As soon as possible.”

She half chuckles, “Well, we’re on the same page, then. Joel here has a brother somewhere out in—”

“Tess,” Joel suddenly hisses, not even looking at you when he addresses you, “she does not need to know that.”

Tess barely gives him a look before she looks back to you, continuing on, “Somewhere out in Wyoming.”

“She did not need to know that.” Joel repeats, firmer. 

Tess turns to him then, pausing. “Look. We all have the same goal, now. Get the fuck out of Boston. And that’s where we’re headed, and she’s coming along, so, yes, she does need to know that. It’s as much her business as it is ours.”

“Who the fuck says she’s comin’ along? We’re gettin’ her out of Boston, an’ that’s it.”

Deciding you have a right to say something on the matter, you interject, “I want to get as far away from Boston as I can. I’ll go as far as you can take me. And for what it’s worth, I’m not gonna rob you, I’m not gonna kill you, I just want—”

“That’s worth nothin’.” Joel snaps, glaring at you again. 

You huff, glaring back. “I get it. I’m a stranger. So are you. But I’m coming with you, because it’s my fucking battery. I busted my ass getting that thing. And if we’re getting this car, we’re gonna be stuck in close quarters for a while, so you might as well get used to me, and I might as well get used to you. We’re helping each other out here, ok? I’m not just cargo. I am a fucking asset. That should be apparent enough now. That Wojciech guy is not easy to fucking work with, you’re lucky you got to be in the room to begin with. Because I got him to trust me. Cause I can get my hands on things others cannot. I know shit. I know how to talk to people. And I have shit out there. I know what to do, where to go. I’ve only been in Boston for a year. I was out there for years. I have shit stashed, and I know where it is. And I can show you. And we can share it. I’m not a child, I’m not useless, and I’m not stupid. So be nice, ok?”

Joel just stares back, glowering, grinding his teeth.

“What is this,” Tess speaks up, “a staring contest? Look, we don’t have time for this. We’re leaving in the morning, and she’s right, you need to get used to each other. I don’t have the patience to deal with this shit, ok?”

You’re not exactly sure who she’s addressing while you’re still steady with Joel’s gaze. If this is a staring contest, you are way too stubborn to lose, especially after how he’s been treating you. 

After a moment, Joel finally submits, casting his eyes to the floor before he gets up and goes to the kitchen where he digs a large, thick glass bottle out from the top shelf of a cabinet, a quarter of the way full with golden, what you assume to be, liquor. He doggedly retrieves two, then three, cups. He holds all three in one hand, a finger in each, with the bottle in his other hand. He comes to the table before the couch, moving slow, resistantly, like he’s trying to rub it in how much he does not want to be setting the glasses down to pour one for Tess, but then also one for you. He keeps his gaze down as he does and then pours his own glass, not even bothering to set the bottle down so that he can immediately pour himself another after downing the first. You watch as he pulls a bag out of his pocket and takes two big, fat, white pills—the same kind you just passed hundreds of over to Wojciech—to swallow down with his alcohol. He pauses, turns, and tosses the bag to you. You catch it, look at it in your palm, and then set it on the table. 

Joel glances over at it, “T’s not laced.” There’s taut irritation in his voice, “I jus’ took one.” You dumbass is easily heard, though he doesn’t say it, instead taking a sip and trying to hide the grimace it gives him. 

“I don’t want one.” You tell him, “I prefer less sleep. ‘Few hours keep me sharp.” You don’t take your eyes off of him, though he only keeps you in his peripheral. 

The alcohol is harsh on your tongue, a mixture of every type of alcohol to exist, probably, and not watered down like you’re used to. You polish the glass off in one gulp, unintentionally slamming the glass back down on the table with a wince. Tess chuckles and gulps hers down as well. 

She sets her glass down almost as hard as you had, then says to you, “Alright, you get the couch. I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, she gets up and goes into the next room over. 

Joel stays standing, glass and bottle still in hand, not looking at you. He pours himself another one, then plods closer to pour you another as well. He abandons the bottle on the table then and sits in the chair in the corner in a way that ages him. The setting sun crosses orange over his chest and lights up his face; he’s rough, and handsome. More handsome than you want him to be. 

His flits his eyes around, considering, then submitting again with a sigh. 

“So, you said you got stuff stashed around?” He says, finally looking at you. 

You nod as you sip, trying to mute a grimace. 

“Where?”

“Few miles from here. Pretty much a straight shot from the gates. Then some more a few miles further.”

“You know how to get us there?”

“Yes.” You answer, annoyed. 

He sighs, then grimaces with his sip. He pauses again, looking absentmindedly at the seat next to you on the couch, then speaks again, “So you said you only been here a year?” You nod. “Why’d you come?” 

“For a break.” 

“A break,” he nearly chuckles.

“I know, not much of one. That’s why I’m ready to leave.”

“You got a destination in mind?”

“No.” 

“Good.”

There's a pause. You want to know more about him, the reasoning you assign to being for the safety of your own travels. 

“So, brother?” You inquire. 

Joel takes a slow sip, answering with a grimace probably both from the taste and the decision to answer, “Yes.”

“Why isn’t he with you?”

Joel considers the walls before he answers, “We had a disagreement.”

“About what?”

“Morals. You gonna finish that?”

You keep eye contact as you down the dregs of your drink. He keeps the gaze as well, examining you as he licks his teeth behind his lips. He sighs, then looks through the window. 

“You gonna watch me as I sleep?” You quip. He turns back to you, eyes looking you over again. 

“No.” With that, he gets up, walks to the table to set his glass down, and leaves into the next room over. 

When he’s gone, you sigh. What an introduction. Tess seems solid, but Joel is fucking exhausting. You hope to god he lets up on his go fuck yourself air about him soon enough, but you can’t tell if that’s a possibility. You have to admit, it’s a bit winsome, and definitely intriguing. He’s a nut you’d love to crack, and if things do work out, you should have plenty of time. 

You lay back on the couch and close your eyes. You feel almost like a kid on Christmas Eve, so much so that you consider the bag of sleeping pills on the table, but you’ve never touched them and you don’t plan on starting now. That would be stupid. Maybe by now, however long he’s been here, Joel is used to going to sleep in a bed and being sure he’ll be fine until he wakes up in the morning, but you are not. It is an idea that’s nice to have in your head, allowing you maybe a few hours more sleep than you used to get, but that all ends tomorrow. You’re not upset about that, though; sometimes, it feels like out there is your natural habitat. You have no qualms with leaving these walls. So, you try your best to welcome sleep, to get the next few hours over with so you can start the next chapter.

#the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fic #the last of us x reader #the last of us hbo #the last of us x f!reader #the last of us x female readrer #the last of us angst #tlou #tlou hbo #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #tlou series #joel miller #joel the last of us #joel tlou #joel miller fan fiction #joel miller tlou #joel miller x reader #joel milller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller the last of us #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel x reader #joel miller angst #tess servopoulos

[dinsdjrn]

sneak preview at post-outbreak!joel x f!afab!reader

what i promise i’m formatting tomorrow and posting ✨🫡 this is me holding myself accountable and hopefully getting past my posting anxiety

cw: ANGST, established and ended relationship, (BREIF) morning sex (like blink and you’ll miss it!), lack of communication, they’re both assholes lowkey.

#joel miller fic #joel milller fan fiction preview #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #i’m only not formatting tonight bc i’m already in bed and don’t wanna go to my laptop #but i WILL DO IT

[fanfictilltheend]

A/n: Hi I know I’ve literally been promising this on my tumblr for over a month but here it is! Please let me know how you liked/if you liked this fic!! Sub!joel was a little unexpected but just sort of happened so let me know your thoughts on that! I don’t think there’s enough of him! Wrap it before you tap it, folks! @pr0ximamidnight added to this 420 prompt I created by saying: “I think having Ellie search for her stash and then come to find Joel to ask if he’s seen it, only to walk in on them giggly and baking with flour everywhere and he’s got his shirt off and reader is wearing it would be so cute. She’d be so daughter about it like “i cannot believe you took my weed. You’re the worst….wait are those brownies” (sorry I changed it to chocolate chip cookies lol I was craving them!)

Warnings: 18+ smut do not interact if not 18+ penis in vagina sex, recreational drug use, marijuana, smoking, sub!Joel, very light sub/dom, afab!you, age difference (Y/N is 35 & joel is 61), unsafe sex, fluff, Ellie appearance

Summary: Joel and Y/N get high together and light sub!joel happens 💕

“C’mon, Joel, we have to!” you beg, pouting a little (which you know Joel has a hard time resisting). “Now that you’ve told me Ellie has a stash there’s no backing out! It’s 4/20 for chrissakes!” “Y/N,” Joel replies a little sheepishly. “I ain’t sure stealing Ellie’s joints is exactly the best idea…”

#joel miller #joel miller fanfic #my fic #ao3 #fanfiction #tlou #the last of us #the last of us smut #the last of us fluff #joel x y/n #joel x reader #joel miller x original character #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #smut #fluff #recreational drug use #marijuana #joel milller/y/n #joel miller/you #joel miller/reader #joel miller fluff #sub!joel #subby!joel #joel miller smut #ellie williams

[joelsgreys]

❄️ joelsgreys weekly recap ❄️

sooo this was supposed to be done yesterday, but it’s fine. also when i do these, i’m going to try and be more organized with it like putting fics into categories…probably by character? idk we shall see what works out best. this a long one btw.

🔥 indicates smut, please be sure to heed all tags/warnings by the author, all blogs and works are 18+ only, MINORS DNI.

Joel Miller

Medicine by @goodwithcheese

Joel Miller x GN! Reader

Summary: I don't know. It's just a thing, y'all. (lol ily Megan)

Nourish by @goodwithcheese

Joel Miller x GN! Reader

Summary: Just a little domesticity.

Candy Girl by @kiwisbell 🔥

Joel Miller x Female Reader

Summary: please see author warnings and tags. But let me tell you rn this one had me sweating you won’t regret reading it. 😵‍💫

good to me by @swiftispunk 🔥

part two

Gyno!Joel Miller x Female Reader

Summary: with your usual doctor out, you're stuck having to get your routine pap smear done by the gorgeous dr. miller.

his favorite girl, part ii by @cupofjoel 🔥

Joel Miller x Female Reader

Summary: keeping things professional only works if both parties are in agreement. after a heated first lesson, it's clear you and joel aren't.

Don’t Let This Darkness Fool You by @cowgurrrl

Summary: Joel's journey to sobriety.

Deliver Me From Nowhere Chapter Eight by @atinylittlepain

Joel Miller x OFC

Summary: No summary, please see author warnings and tags.

Sticky by @ezrasbirdie 🔥

Joel Milller x Female Reader

Summary: You send Joel a new toy to keep him occupied while you're away.

crystal by @ezrasbirdie

Joel Miller x Witchy!Female Reader

Summary: Joel's live-in girlfriend is a little witchy. It takes some getting used to.

but you know the killer doesn’t understand part ll and part lll by @morning-star-joy 🔥

Joel Miller x Neighbor! Female Reader

Summary: You're Joel's new next-door neighbor when he settles in Jackson, and you're determined to add some positivity to the grumpy old man's life. When Joel meets you, he knows right away he's fucked.

Distraction by @psychedelic-ink 🔥

Woodshop Teacher! Joel Miller x Female Reader

Summary: there are many advantages to enrolling in a woodshop class: drawing you away from not-so-happy thoughts, relearning something that you enjoyed doing when you were a kid, and, well, the sight of watching mr. miller do something he’s undeniably good at.

meet me in the woods chapter one by @pedgito

Joel Miller x Female Reader

Summary: The night of your arrival is anything but what you expected, realizing that not only was your cabin double-booked but the unexpected guest is more than willing to leave you stranded to savor his peace. A handful of stubborn talks and a big decision later, you realize that Joel might not be that much of a stranger at all.

Frankie Morales

Two Minutes by @agentmarcuspike 🔥

Frankie Morales x Dominatrix (Ex! Reader)

Summary: after breaking up with you on a self sabotaging whim, frankie finds his way back into familiar arms to cope.

sweet treat by @mrsmando

Frankie Morales x Plus Size! Female Reader

Summary: you’re a waitress at your local diner, and a group of ex-delta force operators are your favourite customers. turns out, you like one of them a whole lot more than the rest.

Mike Schmidt

waiting to spill by @cupofjoel 🔥

Mike Schmidt x Female Reader

Summary: mike never thought your week-long trip home would lead to the discovery of a costly new craving.

divider credit @saradika-graphics ❄️

#vee’s recs #weekly recap

[brighttears]

Filth

Joel Miller x f!reader

One use of y/n, no physical description other than having hair

Summary: You and Joel are on the road, heading to nowhere in particular, but going there together, though you're nothing more than partners on the road. It takes a risky yet intriguing move by you in the face of danger to urge Joel to explore your relationship a little further, and it leads to you touching for the first time, then much more than that, and feeling things neither of you have ever felt before. Aka: you have wild sex in the dirt

Word count: 8.2k

Warnings: violence, starts with suicide of a stranger but basically porn with plot (minors dni!), unprotected PiV, Rough sex, hair pulling, lots of biting, multiple orgasms, creampie, brief sub!Joel but almost all just dom!Joel, possessive!Joel, Joel is just extremely horny (I think that’s it on that front? but pls lmk if I forgot to anything!), pet names (darling, baby)

A/n: like 7k of this is just smut ok. Idk what came over me. Anyways Im so fucking terrible with multi parters but now I have three chapters written, I’m writing like Joel Kerouac and his fucking scroll I stg I just have like 20 pages to rewrite to be presentable and split into parts. So welcome to part one of filth. Btw sorry if the formatting is weird my wifi’s down so I can only use my phone

series masterlist

—

“Come on, keep up.” Joel says, looking at you over his shoulder. 

You trot to his side as you approach the building—a large and wide, run down brick warehouse by the side of the road. It’s the first thing you’ve come to in a long while, walking down the empty road, surrounded by trees. Joel slows his steps as you come closer, and you follow his lead. There’s a large metal door on the side and the only windows are around the front, a thin rectangle of glass block windows high up on the wall. Joel glances back at you as he pulls out his gun, and you pull yours out to raise it in two both as you reach the door. 

It’s surprisingly silent as Joel pulls it open, but as you pause just outside, you hear a faint shifting. 

“There’s somethin’ in there.” Joel says quietly. He looks back at you, “Stay close.” You nod, and he starts with slow steps inside. The room is big and deep, and you can barely see, but you catch the glint of a doorknob on the other side of the room, and you walk towards it with quiet, careful steps. 

Joel stops to turn to you, “Ok. You stay right behind me—” Suddenly, you see movement behind him, and the beginning of a screaming growl before you raise your gun and shoot. An Infected falls dramatically at your feet, its face splattering on the concrete ground. Joel looks at it, then at you, his eyes wide and brow pinched sternly, and he whispers angrily, “What the fuck was that?”

“You didn’t see it, it was behind you,” you start but Joel cuts you off. “You don’t just go shootin’ at anythin’ that moves.. We don’t know what else is in here. Could be full of Infected. Could be full of Clickers.” There’s a silent pause before you reply, “Doesn't sound like there are.” Joel sighs, glaring. 

“Don’t shoot unless I tell you to. Got it?” 

You nod shyly, somewhat embarrassed now. 

“Jesus.” Joel says under his breath, shaking his head as he looks head at the door. When he looks back at you, he states firmly, “Stay behind me.” 

You nod again, and start back towards the door. You enter an office room, those same glass block windows shedding much more light into the smaller room. There’s a desk and a chair at your side, a fake plant set by the windows next to a line of filing cabinets. The room is pretty much untouched. Nothing of value, even before the apocalypse. Behind the desk, next to a pasteful, plain painting caked in dust, is another door, slightly ajar. There’s shuffling inside, then stillness, and you can hear very faint, fast breathing. 

“There’s a person in there.” You whisper to Joel. 

“How do you know it’s a person?” He looks back at you skeptically. 

“I hear breathing. It’s fast, but they’re trying to be quiet. Infected don’t do that.”

Joel pauses his eyes on you, considering, then looks back to the door. You approach slowly, and Joel nudges the door open with his foot, announcing, “You’ve been found out. Come out into the light where we can see you, hands up.”

There’s more breathing, faster now, but no movement. 

“I said, come out, into the light, hands raised.”

Finally, they step out into the line of light—it’s a woman, absolutely terrified, with a bite mark on her shoulder. It’s fresh, and infected. Thick, tangled dark hair farms a pale face, piercing blue eyes bugging out of her head as she stares at you. She grips a gun in her hand, but it’s pointed at the floor. Her breathing is rapid. 

“Drop the gun.” Joel demands. After a pause, “Drop the gun.” 

The woman squeezes her eyes shut, flinching, then drops it, her hand shaking, and it thuds on the carpet. 

“Kick it to me.” She pauses again, and Joel repeats himself harshly, “Kick it to me.” She does it without opening her eyes. Gun tsill trained on her, Joel leans down to pick it up and then shoves it into his belt. “Now give me one good reason not to shoot you.” He says as he straightens. The woman’s eyes fly open, and she looks petrified. Her lips try to move, quivering, but she’s unable to speak. 

Joel cocks his gun, but you put your hand on his shoulder, “Wait.” He glares at you with wide eyes, but you step towards the woman, lowering your gun to your side. He clamps his hand around your arm, but you shrug it off, not even looking at him as you walk up to her. When you get to her, you see that her entire body is quaking. 

“Hey.” You say in a soft tone, “What’s your name?” She stays silent, wide eyes staring. You continue, attempting to be friendly. “My name’s Y/n. It’s ok. I’m not gonna hurt you.” You keep your voice as soft as you can and shake your head lightly, “I’m not gonna hurt you.” You shift closer to her side, trying to keep her eyes on you instead of the barrel of Joel’s gun. 

Eventually, she swallows, and speaks, “Maggie.”

“Hi, Maggie.” You reply with a light smile, continuing slowly, “We saw that Infected in the other room. Looks like he got you, huh?”

She swallows again, then nods. “Yeah, I–I was alone,” her voice tremors, “and I didn’t see him, n’…” she trails off, swallowing hard again and blinking at you. 

“Yeah, we almost didn’t see him either. I’m sorry.” She stares back, a deer in the headlights. You take a breath before continuing, “I think… you know what has to happen now.” Maggie closes her eyes and pauses, then nods vigorously. “Look,” you start again, “I wanna give you an option. We can do it for you. You can close your eyes, it’ll be quick.” You raise your hand, holding your gun out in your open palm, and she looks down at it. “Or you can do it yourself.” You say quietly. “It’s up to you.” 

This wasn’t planned. You just couldn’t bear to see her go in the state she was in, is still in.

Maggie looks up at you, down at the gun, then back at you. “I… I wanna do it myself.”

“Ok.” You whisper.

Slowly, she takes the gun out of your hand, then raises it shakily to her temple, wide eyes glued on yours. She’s still shaking. She pauses. 

“It’s ok.” You assure her, slowly nodding, then slip your hand into hers. Maggie nods vigorously again, trembling, and you squeeze her hand. She squeezes it back, then the trigger, bang, and slumps against the wall and then to the ground, her hand slipping out of yours, the gun thudding with her. 

You look down at her, swallow, and pick up your gun. 

“Can we go now?” You say to Joel. He looks shocked, though trying to hide it, then nods. 

“Let’s go.”

He walks quickly back outside, and you struggle to keep up. He’s obviously pissed, but there’s a strange look mixed within it. He continues quickly past the building, then suddenly stops, turning to you. 

“What the fuck was that.”

“I don’t know, I just, she just, she looked so scared, and you—you asked her for a reason not to shoot her, but she couldn’t speak, so I just wanted to give her a chance—”

“That was stupid.” Joel glares. “Walkin’ up to someone who’s infected, someone with a gun—”

“She dropped the gun, and the bite was fresh.”

“You don’t know what she was gonna do.”

You cut him off, defensive, “She was scared stiff. She couldn’t have done anything if she wanted to.”

“Why the fuck did you give her your gun? She could’ve shot us both.” He shoots back fiercely. 

“She wasn’t going to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I was looking in her eyes. She knew she had to die. There was no reason for her to shoot us.”

“You don’t fuckin’ know that! Even if she didn’t, havin’ no reason hasn’t stopped people before.”

“You had a fucking gun pointed at her. If she had even flinched, you would have shot her.”

Joel looks at you, then down, shaking his head. “That was fuckin’ stupid.” He takes a breath, then looks back down the road, and starts walking back along it. Following beside him, you glance at his face. On it you see a mix of anger, confusion, but maybe a hint of recognition, of understanding as he mulls it over. Then, that strange look from earlier, something else you can’t place. 

After a while, he stops suddenly, turning to you, “Why’d you give her an option?”

You pause, then shrug, voice shy, “Well, she had to die, and she knew that… but… I don’t know…”

“‘You don’t know?’ That’s the answer you’re going with?” He responds, irritated. 

You take a breath. “Because there’s not much choice left to be had anymore, with anything. She’d gotten this far, which mean she’s had to do the same kind of shit we have, and she was just so fucking scared, and I just wanted her to have some kind of say in how she went. I wanted her to be able to go with some kind of dignity.”

“Was it that, or did you just not wanna get your hands dirty?”

“I’ve shot people. I can do that.”

“That’s not what I was askin’. I’m askin’, were you doin’ it for her, or were you doing it for you?”

“For her.”

“So, you could have shot her, but you chose not to.”

“Yes.”

He pauses, then says, “If I told you to shoot her, would you have?”

“Yes.”

Joel pauses again. “If I told you to, you would have done it, no hesitation, no mercy, no nothin’?”

“Yes.” 

“No hesitation, no mercy, no nothin’.” He repeats. 

“Yes.”

“Just cause I said so.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust you.”

There’s a long moment of silence, the both of you just looking at each other, before he asks, “If I told you to shoot me, would you?”

“…Why would I shoot you?”

“Just answer the question.”

After a moment, you reply, “Yes.”

There’s a longer moment of silence before Joel says, “Get on your knees.”

“…What?” You ask quietly. 

“Do as I say. Kneel.”

You pause, then do. “Are you going to shoot me?” You ask, voice still small. 

“Close your eyes.”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“Close your eyes.”

After another moment, you do. You’re blind now. It’s quiet. The wind gently brushes over your face. I trust him. I trust him. I trust him. You repeat the mantra in your head as the seconds tick by. 

“Open your eyes.” Joel’s voice is much closer now, and when you open your eyes, he’s squatting in front of you, face less than a foot from yours. 

Your breath hitches. 

Silence. 

Joel’s eyes bore into yours, searching, you don’t know what for, but searching. You feel naked. Exposed. Still blind, though your eyes are open. You’re lost, no idea what to do, or what Joel will do next. I trust him. 

“…What is it?” You ask eventually, voice coming out quieter than you intended. 

He stares into your eyes for a long while, and then his lips move, but he stops. Eventually, he says, voice quiet but strained, “I want something from you.”

“What?” You nearly whisper. 

He pauses for another long while, then, quiet, desperation in his answer, “Everything.”

“It’s yours.” You whisper back almost immediately. Your mind swirls, velvet ropes twisting around each other, your gaze frozen on Joel, so close to you. “You can take it. Anything. I’m yours.” You answer like you’ve been waiting forever for him to ask, and only now do you realize that you have been. 

Joel lips part and he lets out a soft breath, and then he moves his face closer, lips merely inches away, and while your eyes are trained on his, you feel his knuckle brush gently over your cheek. 

Then, he kisses you. You breathe in as soon as his lips meet yours, your mind bursting and melting as they slip between yours, tasting him, sweet and heady. Quickly, he deepens the kiss, passion pressing into your mouth, and then pulls you forward, tugging his arms like a hook around you to pull you into his lap. You straddle him, his strong hands immediately going to grip your sides, and you comb your hands through his hair. Joel lets out a soft moan, the sound shooting a jolt of electricity through your body, and you press yourself closer. When he slides his tongue between your teeth, you open yourself for him, hands sliding around his face, through his hair, just, all over, messy, eager, starving to finally touch him. He lets out another soft moan, your lips parting with it before he brings your them back in, kissing you slow but passionate. 

As you push and pull your hands around his head, Joel’s neck relaxes, letting himself lean and fall with your touch, his hands traveling over your sides, your back, your hips. You feel him relaxing under you, letting out more breathy moans; he’s being submissive, you can feel it, his defense falling. Big bad Joel is putty in your hands. 

You keep moving over him like this, then start planting kisses over his cheek and jaw before you move your lips to his neck. Wet and sloppy, your tongue travels over his neck, relishing in his flavor–pungent, earthy, salty with caked sweat, but it doesn’t make it any less palatable. It’s him. With your chin pressing over his collarbone and chest as you advance around his neck, his beard scratches your temple, breath warm in your ear. You lower your hands to ball his jacket in your fists over his shoulders, keeping him there. 

Joel’s hands tighten around your sides and he breathes out, “Shit.” More whispers of moans come out of him, his hands back to sliding all over your torso, and he breathes out, “God,” before his grip hardens, rubbing cupped hands up and down your sides, and then he moves his chin down to nudge your face away, grabbing your lip with his teeth and pulling you back in to kiss you, rougher, hungrier, immediately pushing his tongue past your teeth. One of his hands reaches up to clutch your chin, squeezing your cheeks to hold you in place. He slides the grip around to the back of your neck and bends it to get at your neck. 

He kisses, then starts to bite, as if he’s claiming you, and you melt at the idea, your mouth falling open. To be his. He bites harder, sure to leave a dark make. There’s no one to see it, but if there were, they would all know. You’re his. Joel uses his nose to slide your shirt away so that his mouth can reach your shoulder, biting again before he brings his tongue to lick a flat line along your collarbone. You moan, your entire body buzzing. He kisses hungrily, his tongue on that sensitive spot along your neck, just above your collarbone and next to your throat. He nips it, then moves back to the side of your neck, almost opening and closing the entirety of his mouth around your skin, sinking his teeth in like an animal. 

You feel his hands start to slide under your shirt, running up and down your back, his mouth still pinching your neck, enough for it to hurt, but you don’t stop him. You don’t want him to. You want him to do as he wants. Mark you. Own you. 

His thumb lays along your jaw as he holds you open for him, and then he slides it up, his palm over your ear with his fingers around the back of your head to pull his lips back into yours. Eager, frenzied, fervent. Joel’s hand slides from your side to your thigh, squeezing it while the other falls to the collar of your shirt, tugging, and you’re pulled further into his mouth, hands gripping his shoulders, just for support, just to hold on. 

His grip moves to your ass, squeezing, while his hand continues to tug at your shirt, the fabric digging into the back of your neck as you hear the sound of fabric ripping, and you let out a quick moan, your mouth opening with it as your neck is tugged down. Slowly, dramatically, he licks back into it, his tongue hooking around the back of your top teeth to keep your mouth on his as he continues to rip the fabric of your shirt, finally tearing it fully in half. As soon as he does, he pushes forward, leaning you down so that his mouth can travel past your chin to drag it wetly down over your sternum. He kisses down the center of your chest while his hand caresses your breasts, the other still simply clutching your ass. 

With every part of you squirming, you grip his jacket in balled fists. You can’t remember the last time you’ve been touched; and like this, never like this, by someone like Joel, no kind of animal like him. Tilting your head to the sky, you moan, eyes closed, brow drawn up, shivering both from his touch and the breeze over your bare chest. 

Joel drags himself back up, sliding his hand back up to your neck to slowly pull your faces back together. He looks at you under lids half closed, his teeth almost barred. He bites your lower lip, then his teeth come back down over your neck, biting it unrestrained, mouth open, teeth on either side, as if he was trying to take a piece out of you, and then both hands go down to start to grind your hips over his. A cold fire runs over your skin, engrossed completely in him, mind spinning, him all around you, every part of his body against yours. 

Joel moans into your skin, and you relax your body, letting your arms fall lax around his shoulders, allowing him to move you as he pleases. Let him do what he wants with you. Let him have you. Feeling it, Jole moans again, deep and low as he sucks a breath in through his nose, inhaling you. His fingers curl around your jeans at your hips, tugging them, almost unthinkingly, just tugging. In response, you lean your head down to push him away so that you can look down to start unbuttoning your jeans for him. When you look up, you meet his gaze, and the intensity in his eyes makes your breath hitch, and in the most erotic way possible, you feel like you’re being boiled alive. He’s looking at you like prey, like he wants to rip you apart, full of lust, of need, and he nearly growls as he leans his lips back onto yours, and you wrap your arms back around his shoulders. 

With your jeans undone, Joel slides a hand down, and his fingerw press into you already soaking through your underwear. Instantly, his touch instantly pulls a loud moan from you, breathless. He moans right back, deep and low as he sucks on your bottom lip, then opens his mouth again over yours to kiss you harshly, his hand smoothing up and down between your thighs. Your fists bunch the fabric over his shoulder again, moans cascading from your open mouth, and Joel leans back to watch you. 

You open your eyes to him and moan just at the sight, his mouth open and dribbling both of your spit, his cheeks flushed, still looking at you under half lidded eyes, looking like a wild animal as he feels over your wetness, and your body rolls into his touch. He slides his hand up from between your legs in a line up to caress your chest again, your own cum trailing over your skin. His other hand keeps hold over your hip, grinding you down over his hips again. Right from under your core you can feel his hardness, and you release a shaky breath, a deep craving boiling up in your chest. Joel’s eyes flutter closed for a moment as the contact rolls from between you, his mouth falling open wider as a moan falls through a deep breath. 

His hand falls fast from your chest down to the band of your underwear, tugging it as he his mouth goes back to your neck, now doing nothing more than sliding his tongue along it, then bites down again as he begins to rip apart the next piece of clothing. He brings his mouth back up, both hands gripping your hips now to pull you down and grind, his bulge firmer now, making deep contact right against your opening through your jeans. With both of your mouths open, your lips brush and bump, breathing moans into each other’s mouths as he moves you over him faster, almost bucking into you as he holds you down, rolling your hips back and forth. 

With a deep growl, he grabs the fabric of your underwear, ripping it down until it pulls away, exposing your pussy for him to slip his hand back onto, sliding all of his fingers up and down as he continues to grind, each pull gliding his fingers farther in. Your moans louden helplessly, your heart pounding. Joel’s forehead rests on your chin, mumbling things you can’t make out. The hand from your hips reaches for your hair, bunching it in a fist to find your mouth again. He breathes hotly into it, mumbling unintelligibly before he slides his tongue back in. You’re almost throwing your hips over him, both his hardness and his hand making sweet contact with your pussy as your tongues find a rhythm in each other's mouths. 

Your hands fall to fumble with his belt, undoing his jeans with haste, and Joel’s breath quickens, going back to clutching your hips before you’re even done, moving desperately against you. He lifts you up and you get the message, moving swiftly with him to remove your boots and jeans, the remnants of your underwear flapping against your leg at the one spot that they’re still attached over your thigh. As you climb back onto his lap, you slide your hands eagerly over his chest, hooking your thumbs around his shirt to lift it up. Joel lets out a breathy, loud moan as you do, then hurriedly pulls it over his head to toss on the ground before he pulls your hips back towards him, placing you down on his dick. 

A loud moan skids from your throat as he enters you, and he takes no time to start pumping himself into you, loud as he tugs and rolls and pulls. Your hands slide over his back and into his hair, combing and clutching as you’re lifted up and down over him. His firm cock fills you repeatedly, his body warm and powerful around you. 

Joel has his mouth back on your neck, kissing and licking and biting, your skin sore, the stumble on his cheek scraping against your throat. He becomes rougher, controlling your hips with his hands gripped so hard it hurts, but you relax your body again, rolling with his movements, allowing him to take you as he wants. Joel leans back and your head falls to look down at him, and he still has that hungry look on his face, wet and flushed, breathily heavily and leaking low moans. Your own voice becomes louder as you take in his expression, and he lifts his hand to clamp around your mouth. He looks back down, his head against your chest as he watches you coming up and down over his thick cock. He lets out a long moan before wrapping his arm around your waist, pushing himself father into you, keeping his hand on your face with your head leaned over his shoulder. He picks up his pace, mouth on your neck again, the sensitive skin abused at this point, but pain has never felt so good, and you let your moans loose into his palm. 

The pleasure builds as he thrusts himself deep inside you, faster, and you whine into his hand. Joel lets his mouth come off your neck, leaning his head into the crook of your neck, letting out loud, breathy moans. His arm comes back around from your waist to close around your hip again, bringing you down harder at him, widening his thighs to go deeper, hitting your limit repeatedly, and you nearly cry out.

“Fuck, darlin’,” Joel breathes out, “you feel so good.” His voice jumps with the beat of his body as he repeats, “Feels so good.” 

He lets go of your face to bring it back to his, kissing wet and rough, sucking and licking, your teeth clicking together. 

“Feels so fuckin’ good,” he says again, though it comes out almost like a whine, muffled in your lips. He starts moaning more, going harder, faster, and it starts to hurt your hips, but he keeps a relentless pace, griping so hard you know your waist will be covered in bruises—another mark from him, he’s claiming you, your his, and you know it, and so does he. 

“Shit,” he breathes out, wrapping his arm around your back and his hand back over your mouth to hold you close as you cry out moans. 

The pleasure is almost too much at this point, but he’s fucking you, finally, so you take it, and his moans grow louder, sounding almost pained, like he’s trying to hold back though he’s already fucking you in such a desperate manner. As he hits your limit, sweetness slicks its way from between your legs through your body and up into your mouth like he’s plunging sugar up through you, and you clamp your legs around him, knees on his sides, twisting your ankles around his waists as your toes curl and your eyes screw shut. You cum around his dick, thigh shuddering around him. 

“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” Joel breathes out, as if you had a choice. You're almost screaming moans into his hand when he doesn’t let up, fucking you relentlessly through your orgasm, but he still doesn’t stop, only going harder. As he keeps going, you feel tears start to ball up in the corners of your eyes, falling down your cheeks to meet your spit already wetting his palm. You grip the hair on the back of his head, body wrapped around him, holding on for dear life. Joel let’s go of your mouth, wrapping it around the back of his neck to tug your face down into the crook of his neck. 

“Bite down,” he tells you, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you, pushing you further and further, and you obey, closing your mouth around his trap. Joel moans loud, a deep breath puffing out his chest against your body, and he squeezes your ass hard, tugging your onto him while he bucks up into you. His fingers in your hip nearly reach the bone, fucking you animalistically, like he himself can’t stop, is unable to stop fucking you. His breaths are ragged, and he makes another sound like a moan and a whimper, once again sounding pained, and he moves his head up to press against your neck, mumbling things you can’t understand into your wet, bruised skin. 

He pauses, slowing, almost stopping for a moment, but not even long enough to catch any sort of breath before starting back up again, rougher, urgent, hammering into you, moaning loudly. He bunches your hair into a fist with his hand still pulling and tugging you over him. His movements become frantic, aggressive, needy, and he pants into your neck. 

“More,” Joel breathes against your skin, sounding more like an escaped thought, and then he jolts into you, starting to simply press your hips down on his cock. More, he wants more, and you don’t know how much more you can take, but you’ll give it to him. His moans come out like whimpers, pained, but he wants more, more, more. 

That deep euphoria starts to build inside of you, and you know you’re about to cum again. You release your teeth from his shoulder, almost pressing your lips to his ear as you grip his hair, forearms tight against his back, holding tight, and you tell him, “I’m so close,”

At the sound of your voice, his movements and breaths start to slow a little, seeming to put effort into speaking, “I know,” then slowly, carefully, pressing deep inside of you, he says, “so, so close.”

You whimper loudly, and he takes it as a sign to start fucking you faster, like he’s starving for it, like he needs it more than anything. That feeling grows inside of you, an incredible pressure that feels like it can’t twist any tighter, and you moan gutturally, almost completely overwhelmed. He’s all over you, all around you, his spit, his breath, his hands, his dick deep inside of you, all you can smell is him, all you can taste is him, all you can feel is him. He makes a groaning, moaning growl, somehow fucking you faster, and he holding tightly onto your torso as your body jolts against him. 

He slows then, letting out another growling, groaning sound, and his grip loosens slightly, only for his fingers to dig back into your skin. He reaches up to pull your head back by your hair, looking at you with almost glazed eyes. They move down from your eyes to your lips, and he pulls you into another kiss, his tongue pressed into your mouth as he moves slowly inside of you. 

Just when you thought he had finished, he starts moving faster again, but more deliberate. Purposeful. Did he cum, but what’s more? He kisses you deeply, holding you as close as he can, arm pulled around your waist with his hand pressed firmly against your back. He keeps himself attached to you as if he can’t pull himself away, like he’s physically unable to let you go. 

He moves faster again, movements becoming more frantic, almost primal, keeping his mouth on yours. He pulls back to let his forehead press against yours as he fucks urgently, then starts mumbling incoherently again, like he’s unable to speak properly anymore. Joel pushes you farther, farther, his movements aggressive, clutching at you like he only wants to take more of you, like taking you is the only thing that matters, the only thing that exists, the only thing he can physically do. He starts moaning again, breathy but loud and jolting from his throat, breath hot into your open mouth as he fucks faster, leaving bruises in a pattern of his fingertips. He stops his mumbling to reattach his mouth to neck, simply holding his mouth around your skin, teeth digging to the beat of his hips, claiming you, and you feel yourself close to cumming for the third time. 

“Yes, yes, yes,” you whimper, and he takes his mouth back to yours, kissing you again, sucking your lips. 

Then, in a low, quiet voice, he says, “I’m… greedy… I need… more…” 

“Everything, take everything,” you reply, out of breath, and his throat starts back up with moans, leaning his forehead against your cheek. You bring your hands over the sides of his neck, pulling his head back to look at him, but his eyes are screwed shut, his teeth bared slightly, like he’s in pain, but then he opens his eyes to meet your gaze and he looks so incredibly desperate. As he watches you, he adjusts his hands on your hips, moving harder, pumping into you relentlessly. He looks to have forgotten everything other than you, held onto him, like he’s lost himself completely in you. Need. Need. Need. Your body almost hurts, that place for pleasure almost abused by now, and yet, you feel yourself drawing closer to another climax, and you cry moans, still focused on his face. His movements are frantic, taking more, moving as fast as he can with wild intent. He closes his eyes, lips searching for yours again, and you give them to him, your tongues instantly meeting. His hands slide around your torso, nails scratching down your sides, shifting the, around your ass, your back, your hips, your stomach, up your front, clutching your breast, moaning and touching and kissing as if he knows nothing more than this. Like he was made for it. 

He pushes you father, taking you deeper, filling you to the brim, and you feel yourself so close, the pleasure more raw, so you pull your lips away to tell him again, whining, “Joel, I’m so close, I’m so close,” 

He keeps his eyes closed, then barely gets out, “Just a lil’ more, baby, just a lil’ more, please, please,” and you couldn’t refuse if you wanted to. And then you feel it, that wave of euphoria flowing back through your body, taking that route from your pussy through your thighs, up your chest and shooting into your head, and it’s completely overwhelming this time, and you hear yourself crying out jagged, long moans, eyes squeezed shut and leaking tears. You feel nothing else, only him, all you know is him and this feeling and his arms sliding and clutching and pumping into you as you bounce on his cock. You feel like you’re going to burn, like you’re not even human anymore, but he doesn’t stop, only going faster as your entire body trembles around him. You hold onto him helplessly as he fucks you violently. 

For a split second, it seems as if he’s stopped moving and it makes some sort of sound come out of you, right in the middle of rapturous orgasm, but then he changes how he takes you, not just pushing into you now, but painfully gripping onto your hips to pull you down over him. You try to relax your body again for him, letting him move you, slower, pulling and tugging you down over his cock over and over and over again as you cum.

“Oh, god,” he says, breathing heavily. His moans sound nearly anguished, as if he’s still somehow holding something back, like he’s trying to keep this going as long as possible. 

All he wants is more. You can tell. Nothing else. Only more. He starts to quicken his pace again, bouncing you in his lap, aggressive again, fingers digging into you. You feel like you can barely take anymore, but you want to, and you can tell that he’s going to keep going until his mind or body breaks, taking you until he can’t anymore. And you’re his, all his, for him. He moves like he can’t control himself anymore, purely wanting more, more, more. 

Joel presses you down hard over him, fitting every centimeter of himself inside of you as starts thrusting to that limit again and again and again. He kisses you like he wants to consume you, like he needs you to be completely his, and if you had room to talk, you would tell him, I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours. 

His fingers crab and claw at you, and you feel things you’ve never felt before, that you couldn’t even describe, and it feels so otherworldly good. He kisses you frantically, like he can’t get enough, moving like he can’t possibly go as intensely as he wants. His tongue probes, digs, licks. There’s no stopping now, it doesn’t even feel like an option. Your body is a mess, mush in your stomach with some other substance filling the rest of you, something created by him and, naturally, for him. You feel yourself about to cum on him again, surprised that your body can still function like this, you’ve never been able to go this long, but he makes you, Joel takes you there. 

He mumbles more against you lips, and you can barely understand it, but you hear him say, “God, oh, god, so good, so good, please, I need it, I need you,” and his words alone are enough to push you over the edge again, and you tremble, almost vibrating around him, legs still locked around his back, and he moans loud and quick as you cum on his throbbing, bucking cock. 

He grips your body like he wants you to implode you around him, and you just might if he doesn’t stop. Your orgasm is longer than any one before, and the long moans you let out are almost gargled in your throat as every muscle in your body shudders around him. He’s almost like a god, creating this feeling that you didn’t know existed. With your head tilted up, Joel kisses and licks your throat, breathing raggedly, sounds never ceasing to come out of him—simply sounds, almost words but not quite, and he wraps his arms around you, keeping you held tightly onto him as you squeeze helplessly around his cock. 

If you could speak, despite how close you are to your absolute limit for everything, you would beg, for more, anything, everything, for him to get what he needs, all you want for him is to get what he needs from you. You gasp as the complete euphoria blossoms and pours over you, almost an unbelievable wave of pressure and pleasure, and you think, this is like heroin on steroids, a kind of euphoria that prods repeatedly through your pussy into every part of your body. And from the way he’s going, you know this must feel just as good for him as it does you. As the feeling encompasses you, you’re like a rag doll in his arms, though your hands grab and claw at his back, your fingertips feeling like they’re vibrating as they press into his skin, then climbing through his hair to bunch and clench in your fists. With your chin hooked around his shoulder, Joel continues to pour mumbles into your neck. You’re not human beings anymore, just piles of pleasure attached onto each other. You have no control, and neither does he, fucking you like an animalistic machine, violently, his arms fumbling to wrap you tighter, going deeper, faster, harder, and you’re both crying out at this point. How much more does he have, how much longer could he possibly keep going? For god's sake, he’s in his late 50’s. 

You grasp onto him, crying and clawing and squeezing and gripping. “Oh, god,” he groans out against you, bucking frantic and chaotic, and this must be it, he must be at the top of that cliff, about to crash down from this record breaking climax. He cries out one final, long, guttural moan, falling into whimpers as he thrust as deep as humanly possible inside of you, becoming slow jerks as he finally pumps the rest of his cum inside of you. 

Eventually, it slopes into just twitching and shaking, him pinned deep inside of you. Joel’s body starts to relax, releasing his grip that leaves behind throbbing prints. You lean back on him, muscles exhausted, and look over his face. You begin sliding your hands around it, feeling over his cheeks, brushing your fingers over his wet and puffy open mouth, your thumbs over his eyebrows before pushing your fingers through his hair. His shoulders heave with deep breaths, looking back at you through half lidded eyes, dazed. Now suddenly gentle, his hands slide up your thighs and over your sides, gliding up your ribs before falling back down to rest over your legs. 

Joel lets his head fall forward, resting in the crook of your neck, breathing hard, and you brush your hands through his hair as you both catch your breath. 

You are an absolute mess, and so is he, both coming back down to planet earth in each other's arms. Eventually, both of your breathing starts to slow, coming into an even rhythm. Lazily, he slides his hands back up and down your sides, and you keep your hands in his hair, petting him like a dog. You keep your eyes closed, being in nothing other than this moment, nothing other than in each other's arms. One of your arms slings over his shoulder, brushing your other hand over the side of his head. 

Joel raises his head slightly to rest his chin on your shoulder, his nose leaned into your neck, and he lets out a deep sigh. You sigh after him, then start planting kisses over the top of his head. When you pull his head back to look at him again, he looks like he could fall asleep right here in your arms, but, with your eyes open again and now actually grounded back into reality, you start looking at your surroundings, and anxiety starts to bubble up as you realize that you are in the dirt on the side of the road, completely out in the open, and completely naked. 

“Joel, we need to get up,” you tell him, still scanning around. You cup his face in his hands, looking back down at him, but he seems to be mesmerized. “Joel, we need to get up.” You tell him again, then finally recognize realization in them. 

“Oh, shit,” he whispers as his eyes widen, and you pull away from each other, him removing himself from inside of you, and, having to use each other for support and balance, you pull each other up to your feet, wobbling. 

With his warm arms still wrapped around you, Joel sighs, looking over your face. You desperately wish you could just stay like this, standing here in the dirt, looking like Adam and Eve, but you say, “We need to get dressed.” As you look around at the ground, searching for your clothes, you realize that your shirt is now unwearable. “And I need your jacket,” you add, “I don’t have a shirt anymore.”

“Wha’d’you mean, you don’t have a shirt anymore?” Joel looks at you with his brow pinched tiredly. 

Your lips tug up shyly when you remind him, “You ripped it in half.” 

“Shit.” He says, his lips tugging up with yours, then looks down at the scattered clothes. “I did, did’n’ I? Sorry, I just got so caught up in you. Did’n’ really mean to.”

“It’s ok.” You reply quietly, smiling back up at him. 

“Shit,” Joel breathes out with a smirk as he totters over to pick his jacket off the ground, coming back to bring it around your shoulders. He holds you by your biceps in front of you, looking over your face with another slurred “Shit,” before pulling himself away as you both stumble around after your clothes. You shove your arms through the sleeves of his jacket before finding your boots and pants, realizing the other detail of your shredded underwear. 

“God damn it,” you chuckle to yourself as you pull your pants back on, then sitting to do up your boots. When you look up, Joel is leaned over his boots, pants on but not buttoned up. You grab his shirt off the ground before hobbling over to him, holding it out to him. As he straightens back up, he gives you another smirk as he takes it from his hands. You step a little closer, looking down to do up his pants for him. When you step away, he’s frozen, still holding the shirt in his hand. 

“Never had someone do that for me.” He says, smirk fallen from his face, and you lean in to press a kiss to his cheek with a smile. When you pull away, he chuckles, then pulls his shirt back on. “You have no idea what you do to me, do you?” He says as he pulls the hem around his waist. 

“By now, I think I have an idea.” You smile back at him, and he chuckles again before bringing you back against his chest, cupping your face to pull you into a kiss. “God, you are somethin’ else.” He says, lips teasing yours. 

“Says you,” you smirk, pulling away. 

He looks down at you, chuckles, then looks back down the road. “Alright, we really gotta get going. We’ll find some clothes somewhere along the road.” He leans down to pick his pack up and sling it around his shoulders. “We already got a guardian angel lookin’ over us the way we were screaming out here. Jeez, we really did get carried away.” He turns to walk back down the road, looking at you over his shoulder with his hand offered out. 

“I’ll say,” you reply as you grab your back and trot up to stride next to him, slipping your hand into his with a smile. 

Swinging your hands at your sides, he smiles and chuckles. “Jesus, I really wasn’t expecting that from myself.” He lets go of your hand to instead link your arm over his. He hums a deep sigh, then says, “You make me feel dangerous, dangerous things.” You look up at him, twisting a smile around your face. He glances down at you, smirks and chuckles, then tugs you into his side as you walk. “You wanna know somethin’?”

“Yeah, what?”

“The first time I saw you, I knew you were special.” He chuckles lightly, “I was like, ‘Jesus, she’s pretty.’” He chuckles again, “‘I could fall for her if I’m not careful.’”

“Well I’m glad you weren’t.” You smile. “You wanna know something?”

“I do… what?” He asks, looking back down at you. 

“I’ve been wanting you to do me like that since the day we met.”

He pauses, looking at you, “No kidding?”

“No kidding.” You say, grinning, fluttering your eyelashes, hardly able to believe what’s in front of you now, that Joel feels the same way, that he wants you just as bad as you want him. “Jesus, I haven’t smiled this much in a long time. My face hurts.”

“That not just from smilin’.” Joel smirks down at you, and you feel your face going hot. Suddenly, he spins you around to hold you in front of him and leans into another kiss, then moves his head down further, biting your neck lightly. It’s painful, and you shiver, but smile. “Look at’chou, all marked up my me.” He whispers against your neck, and your eyes fall closed, another hot shiver running through you. “You’re mine.” He teases his lips along your skin, “Always gonna be a little bit mine.” He rubs his lips over your neck lightly before whispering again, “I want you. So I’m gonna mark you up,” you feel him smile against your neck, “make sure everybody knows. This cute lil thing over here? Nobody touch. She’s all mine.” Heart fluttering, you chuckle lightly,. “N’ I’m all yours.” He breathes out over your neck, heating up your entire chest, then plants a simple kiss. “And you know what? I don’t want just a little bit of you.” He bites lightly again, “I want all a you.” 

“I told you,” you breathe out, only able to get words out like that, “everything. You can have everything. I’m yours. All of me.” 

Joel nearly growls, whispering more against your neck, his hands sliding up your waist, “You have no idea how bad I wanna take you again, right here.”

You smile but shy away, grabbing his hand to pull to keep walking. Part of you wants him to, despite how ruined your body already feels; you’re obsessed with him at this point, but you try to keep yourself reeled. “Not here.” You tell him, “We gotta keep going. Find somewhere before it gets dark. Besides,” you bump your side against him, “I’d be shocked if you could get anything else out of you now.” Joel chuckles and you squeeze his hand, changing the subject, “I hope we find a town somewhere up ahead.”

Suddenly, you hear dogs barking, a lot of them, and Joel tugs you into the tree line. He pulls you to face him, his face now entirely serious. He raises a finger to his lips, “Shh.” Dripping with anxiety, entirely caught off guard, your eyes are wide as you look at him. You nod. You have no idea what these dogs mean, but it’s a threat, and your hand instinctively goes to your gun on your hip. He sees your hand move, then shakes his head no. 

“Don’t move. Be silent. And follow my lead. Ok?” He whispers sternly. 

You nod, brow pinched with anxiety, but you’ll do anything he says.

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[brighttears]

Breaking Glass

Joel Miller x f!reader

No use of y/n, no physical description except for female sex organs and having hair

Summary: It takes a close call on a run outside of Boston for Joel to realize that he needs to finally tell you the truth—he’s in love with you.

Word count: 7.7k

Warnings: pining (Joel, resolved), violence, description of being cut (brief and metaphorical), smut (minors dni), unprotected PiV, cunnilingus, creampie, dirty talk, pet names (sweetheart, baby, darling, good girl)

A/n: WOOOO finally i wrote something. this took way longer than i thought it would. BIG THANKS to my lovely bestie @bejeweledblueberries for being my beta reader <<<<33333 (btw the smut is p much unedited) (also the cover photo is so lq but its such a pretty picture so)

—

“You ready?” You ask, grabbing your gun to tuck into your waistband, flipping your shirt over where it sits on your back to conceal it.

Joel does not like being in Boston, but he can’t say he’s ever excited to leave—leaving means danger, extra danger, more than what you’ll find within the QZ; infected, for one, but not only. And though he feels safe with you and your weaponry at his side, he does not like going outside the QZ with you. However, the two of you have agreed that him going out without you is just as acceptable as you going out without him, and there are things out there you can’t get anywhere else, and you need a generator. 

Joel looks you over while you rustle through your backpack and then slip it on. You’re so beautiful, he wants to say, but he won’t. 

From the moment you met, Joel felt something shift. Someone had introduced you to him as a solid resource, so you did a few deals, and then you became an asset. That was the word Joel stuck with for a while, but when you started going on runs together and sort of teamed up as traders, Joel found something more growing. Shoving it down worked adequately well, though, so Joel felt relatively safe. Nonetheless, the feelings have continued to simmer, but he’s been able to keep them contained.

If he had his way, right now he would take your bag off of you, lay your weapons down, scoop you up, take you into the bedroom, and lay down with you; nothing more, just lay and hold you safe with him. But he won’t.  

At his silence, you look at him and raise your eyebrows. 

“Oh, yeah.” Joel snaps back into it, stealing one last double take before grabbing his own gun to hide like yours and slinging on his pack. You start for the door first and Joel follows you down the noisy, dingy hallway. 

The afternoon sun is harsh outside and the streets are bustling, but you have a learned path that you follow to sneak out past the walls. 

Once out, the din of the QZ trails behind you for only a short time before being replaced by chirping birds, the rustling leaves of the green trees, and refreshing flora. A subtle peace falls over the two of you as you pull away, but a dismal tone intrudes as you venture out further into the ruins of the former world. Many things are left exactly as they were, but broken, dilapidated, decayed—visibly abandoned in the chaos of that final fateful day. Joel diverts his gaze when you pass an empty stroller, a faded pink blanket dirty and rumpled on the ground in front of it. 

The goal is a generator, and Joel turns his attention back to the search for any place you might be able to find one; there’s supposed to be a hardware store around here somewhere. You pass clothing stores, grocery stores and drugstores, a jewelry shop, and restaurants, all overcome by nature, with ivy snaking through broken windows to crawl onto ceilings, welcome mats covered with moss, any hanging plant holders a waterfall of colorful flowers with curly, verdure tails. Mother Earth has come back as queen decorator and with her new freedom has wasted no space.

After walking for a while, you pause in front of an upscale restaurant, and Joel slows to a stop, coming to your side to look in with you. The inside is open to view from the large wooden frames missing their glass. The wood interiors are rich but mostly wrecked by water damage. Every table is still set up with plates, silverware, folded cloth napkins, and large wine glasses, though all dirty and dusty. Liquor bottles sparkle in the sunlight on the back wall’s bar. 

After a moment, Joel looks at you and asks, “Watchu thinkin’ about?” 

You hum a sigh, then turn to him with a wishful smile, “I just bet their food was sooooo good,” you laugh. Joel smirks and then gives into a smile as he watches yours. Inevitably, his mind wanders to taking you out there, you in a tight dress, he with cufflinks in, clinking glasses with a red rose on the table—

Suddenly, a booming voice calls out, “Hey there, friends, haven’t seen you around these parts!”

You both whip around and, far but still too close, four men are walking towards you. Their clothes are dirty and ripped but their faces are unconventionally cheerful. 

The man speaking shows off two broken teeth, gapping his smile. “Oh, look, a gentleman and a lady!”

The hair on the back of Joel’s neck stands. Quietly, he states “Foe.” and raises his gun, but you beat him at the punch, shooting twice and then yelling “Go!”. 

Joel instinctively bolts into the restaurant and hears a gruff “Fuck!” as he sprints to the bar at the end of the room. He throws himself around it, quickly pulling out his revolver to cock in his hand on the concrete floor as his back hits hard against the cabinets. 

Glass shatters and he ducks his head as the cups from atop the bar blast over his head. At the top of his vision, dozens of shelved liquor bottles burst, pouring reds and golds. Clear vodka drips onto the toe of his shoe at the end of his outstretched leg. It runs cool into his sock as it trails down his boot.

Joel shoots out an exhale and then whips around, throwing his arms over the bar to return fire, but his bullets only batter the wooden tables flipped on their sides, shielding the men set behind them. Joel ducks back and lands just in time for another powerful succession of bullets. A half broken bottle falls and crashes onto the floor and he shuts his eyes and swivels his head, feeling the liquor spray his cheek. 

He whirls back over the bar but after only a few shots hears a loathsome clicking. When he crouches down to check the cylinder, he finds it empty. 

“Fuck.” Joel grits through his teeth. 

Thoughts churn and froth in adrenaline as he slaps over empty pockets, and when a hand lands on his belt, where his knife should be, he looks down at it and realizes he must have forgotten it. 

Running the day back through his head, he remembers looking at you right before you left; he must have been too distracted and left it, probably on the table right next to his gun. Joel closes his eyes and hits his head back on the bar. “God damn it.”

Then his eyes shoot back open—where the fuck are you? His heart stops. Where the fuck are you?

Joel shuts his eyes again and realization of his true failure floods through him.

He loves you, but he’s never said a word. Never has a breath of it ever left his lips. Why? The fear that has kept it sealed away seems like complete bullshit compared to the electrocution of fear that shot through him when he realized he’s out of bullets. He had been afraid of living. He sees that now. 

Behind his eyes, he sees you. 

The first image that flows into his mind is your smile—something hard to find in the Boston QZ, something that took a long time to see, and something that knocked the breath out of him the first time he saw it. He had watched your lips broaden in slow motion, revealing teeth in a perfect curve. He’d made you laugh. He tried making jokes a lot more often after that, and started becoming familiar with your dazzling smile in return.

He remembers the first time you went on a run together; you had snuck out early in the morning to split through between guard’s shifts when the sun was still rising, gold in the divine forestry of the world beyond gray walls. There was a moment where the sun perfectly framed your profile, highlighting the curve of your nose, your lips, your brow, your lashes; the image is etched in his memory. 

One day, out in the streets, some Firefly approached him when he was really not in the fucking mood for it, and right when he took a step forward, tensing to throw a punch, you had grabbed his hand. It was the first time you’d touched, and it brought him down immediately. It didn’t calm him, distracted him more like it, but he let you drag him away. One look from you told him to quit it and he followed obediently behind you while you led him back to his apartment. Mesmerized, he watched the swish of your hips the whole way back. In front of his building you told him, “You need to learn how to pick your battles, Joel. He wasn’t worth your punch.” He objected, you returned, “Figure out what’s important and put that zeal of yours into that.” 

He thought on that for a long time, it was the precursor to his realization that he’s in love with you. He barely slept the night he did. When you showed up at his door the next morning, he was tongue tied. You asked him what was wrong, he told you he’d barely slept. When you asked why, he admitted he’d just been thinking about what you said, about figuring out what’s important, but when you asked him what conclusion he had come to, he lied. He felt completely unable to tell you then. 

After that day, Joel debated almost habitually if he’d ever tell you. That’s when the fantasies started. Torture came with it, too—he was so very torn, so full of longing; it was like he’d been cut, his love for you was like a wound, in such deprived circumstances. He was too afraid of losing his only friend, and to be left behind with a gash of unreciprocated love. The longing deepened quickly, but he grew to tolerate it; he needed you around, whether it was exactly how he wanted it or not. No matter what, he just didn’t want to lose you, and that fear kept the lips of his heart sewn shut. 

Once there was a time when you had arranged to meet up and you opened your door to meet him with a black eye, split lip, and a bent posture. A protective hand hovered over the side of your ribs while you stepped aside for him to enter your apartment. Joel stumbled over “Are you okay?” and “Who did this to you?”, pulled both further into your apartment and back out to beat the fucker’s ass, but you sat him down and kept him locked there when you begged him to stay—“Just stay here, okay? Please don’t go out there to start a fucking brawl in the street, that’d be stupid—you’d get teamed up on or busted by some FEDRA guard, I don’t want to get you lookin’ like me or locked in a cell or whatever the fuck—it’s just not worth it, okay? Just, please stay here.”

So he did, all day, and you let him clean you up better than you had yourself. He focused his gaze more than he has even when shooting a gun when you lifted your shirt up so he could check the damage to your ribs. It wasn’t all that difficult with that bruise though, black and blue with flecks of red, threatening tears in his eyes. He almost told you that day.

Still too scared. He needed this moment now, because now he might really lose you. 

The raspy voice of one of the men trapping Joel takes him out of his head, “Haven't heard any shots outta you in awhile, you outta bullets, fuck face?” He cackles, shrill and ruthless, “You’re fucked now, huh?” He cackles again, ugly and evil. The laugh itself sounds like that of a killer. 

“Come on out, we’ll spare ya!” Another shouts.

“Yeah, don’t worry, we’re real gentlemen, we don’t shoot unarmed men!” A third adds and they all laugh. 

“Gotta come out sometime!”

He’s right. Panicked, Joel glances around, looking for something to use. All there is is broken glass—useless from this position. 

“Shit.”

This quick run outside the walls, where he foolishly guessed he’d only need one gun, has turned into a shootout, and he’s lost track of you. The possibility of you having been killed ties Joel’s chest up tight as a noose. 

Then, three shots but no breaking glass, a man’s agonized scream, another shot, and quiet. Joel’s breathing does not calm and he remains flustered until your voice breaks the silence.

“Joel?”

Immediately, he shoots up to see you standing in the doorway of the restaurant, gun still raised, pointed off to the side at a slumped body. Your chest heaves and your hair is disheveled. 

“Are you okay?” You call out as he’s already holstering his gun and swinging around the bar. He basically charges at you, flooded with relief just at the sight of you. Then you collide, and Joel wraps his arms around you impulsively, his lips almost touching your shoulder with his nose on your neck. Joel closes his eyes, breathing in deeply with his cheek firmly against your skin and letting his arms squeeze you. Enveloped in you, his surroundings fall away, and all he wants is to hold you. 

A near death experience is often something that knocks some sense into people and Joel just hopes to god he can keep this fresh courage long enough to get home to finally tell you that he loves you, because there will come another time when he is fucked, doomed, out of bullets, and you may not be there, and he will die with a mouth full of regret. He doesn’t let go of you. 

“Joel, are you okay? Hey, hey, are you ok?” You put your hands on his shoulders, lightly pushing him away, but he doesn’t release you, nor does he open his eyes, wanting to just feel you and listen to you breathe.

“Yeah, I’m ok.” He murmurs against you.

“Joel,” you say softly, then move your hands from his shoulders to instead wrap them around him, resting your chin on his shoulder and brushing your hands up and down his back slowly. Joel feels your chest expand and contract with a deep breath. After a few moments, you whisper, “We have to go. It’s not safe here.” 

Joel takes one more inhale of your scent before reluctantly loosening his grip. He pulls back slowly, letting his hands shift down, stilling on your forearms to hold you before him. He looks over your face, idling, a dreamy haze over his mind, almost dizzy from the adrenaline rush wearing off and the sleepiness of love.   

Your lashes flutter and a smile tugs at the corners of your lips. Your thumbs circle over where they rest on his biceps. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“We really should go.”

Joel doesn’t answer. You’re right, but he’s afraid to move, afraid that if he lets go, of you and of this moment, his fervor for truth will stay here, and he’ll leave it behind and stay silent. But should he risk staying here and Infected showing up, having heard all the gunfire, or if the recently deceased have friends not far behind?

Finally, he nods. As you turn and start toward the door, Joel’s hands, still not ready to let go of you, trail down your arms. One slips down into your hand and you look back at him, grow a smile and curl your finger to hook in his, tugging lightly to pull him behind you. 

And then you’re off. There’s no real room for conversation as you leerily duck and weave your way back to the QZ, but Joel forces the prior moments to run through his mind like a film. He is determined to grip this chance, thinking again and again of how he almost left you behind in this world without you knowing the truth about his feelings for you. 

When you reach the QZ, only barely making it before curfew when the guards will begin rolling through with their bright flashlights and loaded guns, you slip quietly through the streets before finally making it to the apartment you share. 

Only recently had you began living together, decidedly mostly out of convenience, since you go on runs together so frequently and have the same goal of leaving Boston—Joel has a brother out there somewhere, and you would simply like to get the fuck out of this cesspool that used to be Boston. Also because you get along so well, and well, he loves you, and he likes to be around you as much as possible. 

Decorating isn’t really something that exists in the QZ; belongings typically consist of necessities and maybe a few little personal indulgences, such as the butterfly window hanging that Joel couldn’t help himself from getting for the place. You arrived with your life in two bags. Nevertheless, your mark has trailed into his apartment, and somehow, the air feels a little cleaner with you there. 

Because you came to him, your bed is technically the pullout couch, but since his is much bigger, whenever you arrive home after him at night, he’s already on the pullout, forcing you into the more comfortable, actual bed. 

Every morning that Joel’s up first, or if he wakes in the night, he takes a moment, or a few, to lean in the doorframe to watch you sleep. He adores how you look when you’re unwound. If it’s in the middle of the night, he is often tempted—no, he aches to crawl in, even just to lay next to you. More frequently though, he fantasizes about moving closer, taking you into his arms, feeling your body against his, your hair in his face, to fill his lungs with your scent, even if it’s just sweat and ash. He imagines the little sound you’d make or the breath you’d let out once you feel him there, your fingers intertwining with his when he closes his hand over yours, you snuggling closer… sometimes he has to pull himself away for a quick dick pulling in the other room. Regardless of how it makes him feel—horny, smitten, quaking with yearning, or just some kind of tangled melancholy, he treasures these quiet moments and tries to memorize the relaxation on your face. 

These are not the only times he likes to watch you—sometimes, he’ll just be sitting at the table and you’ll be in the kitchen making coffee or in the living room tinkering with something or other, and he’ll play with ideas of a domestic life. Very secretly, he’ll roll around in the sound of your first name with his last name, or, unfrequently and especially confidently, a wedding.

Joel simply likes seeing you, being near you, and no matter what you’re doing, he adores spending time with you. The only way he can get a splash of contentment is when he’s with you—there’s nothing else here that could do that for him here. Only you, only you, runs through his head often. 

Tonight, you’re visibly exhausted as you walk into the apartment before him, dropping your bag on the table—right next to his knife, exactly where he had guessed it was—and rub your hands over your face. They slide down your neck, pausing briefly before falling to your sides. Then you turn to him and ask, “Are you ok?”

He nods, “I’m alright. Are you?”

“I am now, yeah,” you chuckle, “now that we’re back and I know you’re ok. What happened back there?”

Joel shrugs, “Ran outta bullets.” He chuckles sheepishly. 

“Oh.” you laugh. “Shit, yeah, you were three on one. I was around the corner fighting off one of those fucks. It was a knife fight though, usually takes a little longer.” Suddenly, you throw your hands to your head, “Fuck, I’m–I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner, I mean, you needed backup and I… took so long to fucking—”

“No, no,” He puts his hand out to stop you, his brow pinching up, “no, don’t worry about it sw—” he pauses, clearing his throat to pull back in ‘sweetheart’—maybe he’d been thinking about his feelings too much on the way back—“don’t go blamin’ yourself. You didn’t do anythin’ wrong. We got ambushed, that’s jus’ how it goes. I’m jus’ glad you’re alright—” Joel then paces over to you, scanning your face and body, “you sure you’re alright? Did’n’ get nicked or somethin’? Don’t hide that shit from me, you know,” 

“No, I’m fine. Maybe a couple scratches and bruises, but that’s it.” As he turns you, leaning in to check your back, you chuckle, “I’m fine, Joel.”

“You sure?” He asks again, quietly when he returns in front of you, turning your face from side to side with his fingers lightly along your jaw. 

“Yeah, I’m okay.” 

As he looks over your face, he gets caught in your eyes, almost doelike with a sweet smile. He swallows hard, suddenly realizing your proximity. 

“Okay.” He almost whispers. 

Your lips twitch, you blink, and he swallows hard again, then lets go of you and steps back. 

You blow out an exhale, looking around. “There’s a box of bullets in my bag you can grab, I gotta wash this off,” you tell him as you walk backwards into the kitchen, then take your blade out of its sheath and turn to the sink. Joel moves to the table, slowly unzipping your bag, pulling out the box, and reloading his gun. His heart rate has picked up because he feels that now is the time and fuck, here it is, and he has to do this, it’s what he’d been promising himself he’d do the whole way back. His anxiety reassures him that this is his one chance; that damning fear is close to overtaking him again, and he can’t let it this time.

Joel plods over to lean against the counter next to the sink. 

As you run your knife under the water, you glance at him with a light smile. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He copies nervously. 

You glance at him again, then shut the water off, wipe the blade on your shirt, and resheath it on your hip. Leaning your hands over the edge of the sink, you shift your weight to one hip and turn your head to him. “What’s up?”

Joel meets your gaze and takes a deep breath. The broken sink continues to drip, clinking into the drain. “Well I,” he starts, “well, thank you, for… y’know.”

“You don’t need to thank me.” You chuckle. 

“No, I mean, I know, I just… wanna thank you anyway. But, that’s not….” Joel takes another deep breath, stalling. “Uhm… well, I just… that was… that was a close call.” You nod, looking down. “And I’m… really glad… well… ok, listen.” You look back up at him but then he has to look back to the floor to gather his thoughts. “That was a close call.” He begins again. “I’ve had a few, but haven’t had one like that in awhile. You…” saved me. Not just then, you’ve been saving me for a long time. Joel clears his throat and takes another finalizing exhale, forcing the truth out with it, “You know what they say about… near death experiences I guess, where people get uh, moment of clarity, when they see everythin’ they regret doin’? Well, I think that could count as a near death experience, cause I was thinkin’... I mean, y’know, I got a lotta things I regret, but the one that was on my mind, just for a second, before you came in and saved my dumbass,” Joel looks up at you to smirks and you return one. “Well…” Joel’s smirk fades and as his eyes travel over your face his heart swells. Confidence and fear mix like water and oil within it, but the persistence he’d been cultivating surfaces and urges him to continue. “Well, I was thinkin’ about you.” Your head tilts slightly and your eyes soften, the corner of your lip pulled up slightly. “I was thinkin’ about how… I never told you that uh,” Joel looks down and nervously scratches his eyebrow. “I–I’m… in love with you.” He puts his hand on his hip, the other leaning on the counter, keeping his eyes down. Your hands clench the edge of the sink. His heart flees with pattering beats. The faucet drips its endless drip. 

At least you know. At least you know, he thinks to himself. He hadn’t built any expectations of what you might say, he can’t say he’s ready if you reject him, and he hasn’t thought far enough ahead to what he’d do if you do. He just needs you to know. 

Joel watches your fingernails turn white pressed against the silver of the sink and feels his heartbeat punching in his chest. This is his moment of truth. He knows that one way or another, nothing will be the same now; if this is the end between the two of you, he will never let himself share a truth like this ever again. He will leave Boston tomorrow and never look back. 

Finally, he looks up at you for some kind of tell, his lips parted, brow anxiously knitting together, but your eyes are locked unrevealingly on the drain. “Do you—could you—I mean, i–is that ok?” 

“This is something you planned on taking to the grave?” You ask, finally turning to him with still unrevealing eyes. 

Joel rubs his hand on his forehead, closing his eyes, shamefaced. “…I did. I jus’… I don’t wanna ruin everythin’.” He shakes his head. “Look, y’know, I really like you, I mean I lo–I love you, but, but, I jus’, y’know… like bein’ around you. I like everythin’ about you, I like talkin’ to you, I mean I feel like I can talk t’you. An’ I mean, we work pretty well together,” glancing at you, he adds, “don’t’y’ think?” He moves his hand to rub the back of his neck. “I think you’re so,” Joel looks back to the floor, finishing quietly and awkwardly, “beautiful… and I jus’… don’t wanna lose you. An’ back there… I thought I was gonna. I mean, I was gonna lose eveyrthin’, I was gonna lose my life, an’ I felt so… jus’… full of regret. That I never told you. I hope I show it, that’s the import’n thing. But I jus’ thought it was import’n that… you knew that I love you. An’ you’re worth lovin’. An’ I jus’ felt like you should know.” He concludes. 

“Well… I’m glad you told me.” This makes Joel look up and is met with a light smile. This time, your eyes are soft. You pull your lips in briefly before continuing, “I really like you too. I mean, I really like living with you and… I really like spending time with you and talking to you. You’re the first friend I’ve had in awhile,” you chuckle, “and… I feel safe around you.” Joel breathes deeply. You feel safe around him, one of his deepest desires come true. I’ll keep you safe forever. Just stay with me forever, and I’ll keep you safe forever. I’ll love you forever. “And… I just really like you, and I’m… I love you too.” You breathe out, “I love you Joel,” and your eyes are on his lips and you turn to him, fall into him and you kiss. 

You taste sweet and you’re in his arms again and your fingers tangle in his hair and you grip his shirt. Joel’s hand holds your bicep and then the back of your neck and his arm wraps around your waist. “I love you,” Joel mumbles into your lips and pulls you closer until his body is flush with yours. 

“I love you,” you return, and sling your arms around his shoulders, both hands in his hair as his slides over your face, holding his thumb in your cheek, his eyes squeeze shut. 

How long he’s been waiting to have you like this. 

You’re both sweaty and grimey and there’s a tinge of copper in your scent but Joel appreciates it with the rest of it. He smooths his hand over your tangled hair, bunching it in his hand to keep your face in place for him as he slips his greedy tongue through your teeth. You twist your tongue with his, them becoming their own snaking dance while you pull yourselves desperately closer to each other. Joel takes your face in his hands and, like a dam breaking, tells you again, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” in between kisses. In response, you hum into his mouth and wrap your arms tight around him, dragging over his back and into his hair, pressing your bodies even closer together. 

You pull back with hot, heavy breaths, still sliding your hands all over him, and say, “I’ve wanted you like this for so long,” and punctuate with a slow sloppy kiss. Joel’s chest swarms and then he hoists you up, your legs automatically wrapping around his waist. Feeling your weight fills him with satisfaction he didn’t know he longed for and hums into your mouth, starting for his bedroom with you in his arms. 

The passion develops, as natural and guaranteed as changing weather. The novelty creates a storm that Joel is unprepared for but embraces with awe. The storm develops quick when he drops you onto the bed and you reach up to pull him on top of you by the lapels of his flannel, taking him back to your mouth like you’re starving for it. Joel’s entire body is hot as his hips weigh down over yours. Electricity buzzes over the area of contact and Joel feels himself getting hard, the storm now a hurricane of lust that pushes his hand up your shirt. When you moan, it vibrates through his lips and all the way down to his cock. He comes up to sit on his knees and when he lifts his shirt you follow, eager to see the parts of each other never before revealed. 

“Fuck,” Joel mumbles and returns back down on your body. His hand slides lazily over your torso and he moans into your lips when you reach down for his belt.

“I want you,” you say, and Joel moans again.

“I’m yours, baby.”

You slip his belt open and don’t bother with his buttons or zipper before slipping your hand in to slide over his length. Joel pulls back for only a moment to breathe, then goes back to attacking your lips. His hand reaches down to grip your wrist in a frenzied move, overwhelmed by the feeling of your hand on his hardening cock. 

“You like that?” You ask into his mouth.

“Yes,” is all he can get out, then moans when your hand closes over his base. 

“God, you’re big.”

“You want it?” He slurs. 

“Yes.”

At that, Joel slides his own hand down your pants, palm on your clit while he curves his fingers to feel the wetness already soaking through your underwear. He moans, once again overwhelmed by the want he feels from you. “Yeah, I know you do.”

You remove your hand from him, instead wrapping your legs around him to pull him down, squeezing his hand in, allowing him to feel the details under it. He hums and bites your lip. 

Joel raises up again, using one hand to unbutton and unzip your pants with the other working on his own. Breathing out deeply as you watch him, your hands slide over sides up to over your face and into your hair, reaching up to squeeze the pillows your head rests on. 

A lamp mistakenly left on allows for light for him to view you under. Admiring you, Joel shakes his head and speaks his mind, “Beautiful ain’t enough to describe it.” 

You chuckle and sigh, looking down to watch him tug down your underwear and jeans. You widen your legs for him to tug them down, bending one knee to remove a leg and then the other for him to pull free. Joel doesn't bother with his own, only pulling his down enough to make room for his cock, which bounces out of his lowered boxers. When your eyes flick from it back to his, your body lifts and falls with a deep sigh. Seeing the lust in your eyes, he finds himself unable to take any time with it, and he comes back down on you, slipping his hand to his member, now rock hard, to guide it to your entrance. 

“Yes,” you breath out, once again opening your legs for him. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” 

Joel kisses your lips lightly before pulling away to look through the window of his body above you to the dark mess of curls between your thighs, the muscles of his groin tensing as he enters you. 

“Fuck. you’re tight.”

“You’re big.”

“Too big?”

You shake your head. 

“Good.” And with that, the entirety of his shaft enters you and you both moan.

“Shit.”

“Fuck me, Joel,” you whisper.

Joel groans deeply at your response, then repositions, taking his hand away to set his forearm over the bed, his other hand dragging over your face, resting his thumb on your lip. He watches your face as he starts with long, slow strokes. After a few, he can’t get himself to pull so far back out of you, needing to be inside you and unable to help himself from starting to snap his hips into a fast pace. The force of his full length has you bouncing and you close your eyes, eyebrows furrowed up with your mouth opened wide, pouring out moans. 

“Yeah?” Joel says breathily, “You like that, sweetheart?”

“Uh-huh,”

“I wanna make you cum, baby,” he says, then messily kisses the corner of your mouth. 

“I want you to cum inside me,” 

“Yeah? You want me to fill you up with my cum?” He says, then bites your lip.

It flips up from between his teeth when you reply, “Yes.”

“I wanna make you cum first.” To punctuate, Joel’s pace quickens, loading his full length into you over and over again.

“Joel, feels so good,” you squeeze the words out, eyes still closed and brow pinched up, fingers raking through his hair. 

The feeling of your hands holding his face close to yours and your tight walls around him fulfills Joel’s long lived need to unite your bodies like this and his chest is filled with all the feelings of every moment he’s fantasized about this exact scenario. 

“God, please, fuck me,”

He hums, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that.”

Finally, your eyes snap open, locking on his as you careers his face, “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,”

Joel reattaches your mouths messily, sliding his tongue around your lips before it finds its way back in, and your nails scratch over his cheeks as you pull him closer. Your moans break the hold in brief intervals, singing them to each other as you fuck. Joel moves a hand down to grip your ass, holding you steady as he ruts into you. 

Pleasure builds inside of him warm and tight and Joel suddenly pulls out, “Shit, I’m gonna cum.” Without pause, he moves back on the bed and settles his mouth between your legs, sliding his hands up your thighs, and as he starts his tongue along your slit, your hands go back to pull at his hair. 

“Oh shit Joel,” he hears you, muffled with your thighs over his ears, and groans into you as he continues to slip his tongue up and down. His head is clamped tighter between your thigh when he sucks your clit and he feels your moans vibrating through you, your fingernails scratching his scalp. He uses the tip of his tongue on the underside of your clit with his lips suctioned around it, and in no time, you’re trembling around him, bobbing your crotch into his mouth. He feels you crying out more than he hears it and only pulls away when you tug him away by his hair. When he looks up, all he sees is your jaw, your head laid back, breasts on display with your back arched up. He pushes himself up, admiring how your toes curl at the end of your spread legs. Joel smiles as your quivering subsides. Crawling back on top of you, he presses his hand over your now soaking wet pussy, carrying out your orgasm with a few more spasms. As soon as he comes to your face, Joel grabs your lips with his again, kissing you sluggishly with your deep exhales tickling his face. 

“Oh my fucking god, Joel,” you say, pulling his face away. 

“Yeah?” He smiles.

“Yeah,” you chuckle, then bring your mouths back together. Then you take yourself away again, fingertips grazing over his cheeks when you say, “I want you inside me again, I want you to cum inside me,”

Eagerly, Joel is already reaching back down for his dick, slicking it over your pussy. “Yeah? You starvin’ for it, ain’t ya?”

“Mhm,” You nod, your eyes dragging up from his lips back to meet his gaze, circling your thumbs over his cheeks. Sweet desperation paints your face with your brow furrowed and lips swollen. You lick into his mouth, bobbing your hips up to tease his tip inside of you. 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Joel says as he guides his cock once again into you, “I’ll give you what you want. Just tell me, an’ it’s yours.”

“I want you,” you reply, bucking your hips up to bring him further in. 

“I’m yours.” He whispers, lips brushing yours as he speaks, before finally filling you with his cock. 

“Yeah, more,” you whine as he begins to fuck you again. “Harder,” is music to his ears, and your body jolts on the bed as he obeys. “Like that, like that,” you breath out, eyes closing briefly before opening back up to his, hands still cupping his face. Though you’re not kissing, your hot and heavy breaths create a link between your mouths and you use the remaining space to keep locked on each other's eyes. 

“You feel so good, baby,” Joel tells you, his voice jumping with his pace “I wanna feel you cum again, can’y cum for me again, sweetheart?”

You simply nod, starting to lay out short moans as you tie your legs around him. “You’re so big,” you mewl, and Joel can’t help but lick into your sounds. You whine again, clamping your legs around him tighter. Open mouthed moans part your lips connection, but Joel appreciates the view, watching your eyes squeeze shut and then open again, lips wet with his spit and your own cum. 

Joel groans in appreciation of it all, your sweaty bodies gripping each other’s in every way, him providing for you, making you feel good, making you cum, and from his lips slips again, “I love you.”

Your response is in the hand thrown back to clutch the pillow, eyes screwed shut again with your lips in an O, and Joel replies with harder thrusts, your groins meeting as he bottoms out. Needing to stabilize himself on the rocking bed, Joel’s hand lands on the wall. 

“Gonna cum for me? Such a good girl, doin’ what I ask. Yeah, I can feel you comin’ close baby. Cum for me, darlin’. Cum for me, and then I’ll cum inside you, js’ like you asked. Go on, baby. Ah, fuck.” 

You cry out, gripping Joel’s hair as your head flips back again, legs still keeping Joel locked deep inside of you. As he feels your pussy contract around him, Joel starts to breathe heavier, letting out grunts, groans, and moans as his thrusts get messier, bumping into your harder to a needy, unsteady beat.

“Ah, fuck, I’m gonna cum,” is his turn to cry out, and, looking down at you, and in the same loud voice, he says, “cum for me baby, cum with me, cum with me.”

Your free hand grabs his wrists as he holds your side, chest jolting with lustful breaths, and then you’re shuddering again, and Joel raises up to grip your sides with both hands. Your orgasms are drawn out as Joel pulls you onto him with deep thrusts, pausing inside of you while he pumps his cum into your tight, quivering sheath. 

When your climaxes subside, you’re left staring at each other, breathing heavily. Joel smiles, then gently lowers himself down to kiss you tenderly. He waits until he’s empty of cum to pull out, cock softening as it rests in the V of your hips. 

“That was fucking amazing,” you say between breathes. 

“You feel better than I ever coulda fuckin’ dreamed.” Joel chuckles, then kisses you one more time before rolling off of you to lie at your side, turning his head to meet you looking back at him.

“You dreamt about that?” You smile.

“Fuck yeah I did.” Joel admits shamelessly. You laugh. “Did you?” 

“Once or twice.” You shrug, chuckling with a toothy smile. Joel chuckles back, then looks up with a heavy sigh. He smiles to himself, then feels your finger on the edge of his lips. He closes his eyes. This is something he’s never felt before, and truly never dreamed. It really is better than anything he ever could have imagined, laying next to you like this, his body still warm, your touch on his lip. Nothing outside of this room exists, nothing over than this bed with you in it. He hums another sigh, then turns his face back to you. 

“You’re so beautiful.” He murmurs. 

“You’re so beautiful.” You say with a smile. 

Joel takes your wrist with his hand, feeling the muscles move as you continue to pet his face with your finger.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

His hand falls away from your wrist and he rests it on his stomach, stars in his eyes as he gazes back into yours. 

There's a few minutes of silence, but it’s filled with an air between you like a rosy haze of sweet smelling smoke, lit up under golden light. 

Joel supports his head with his hand under his pillow, allowing a better view to stay with your eyes. As he stargazes, he takes a deep breath through his nose and decides to admit, “…I almost said this before,” his mouth pauses open before he continues, “you saved me today, out there… but you saved me before then. You saved me a long time ago. For a… long, long time, I didn’t really know what I was doin’. I know I had to go get Tommy, I just needed to get a car.” He shifts his head to look up, “I still need to get a car.” Then he looks back at you, “We still need to get a car, you know I’m not goin’ without you. But… I was lost. I felt… empty.” Joel swallows, looking over your face, “But then I had you. N’ then I felt like… I was alive again. Not just survivin’. You made me feel… real. I forgot what smilin’ felt like,” Joel chuckles, “until you. All I wanted was to leave. I mean, I still wanna leave here, Bostn’, but then, all I really wanted to be was with you. Anywhere, with you.”

You smile, and then roll to your side, sliding your hand over his chest and kiss him. He closes his eyes but keeps still. Heaven sounds in a cloud passing over him as your sweetness once again blesses his lips. 

“You know, it’s funny how much of that I’ve always felt, too.” You start, still over him, and start to trace over his features with a featherlight touch. “I didn’t have a brother. I just wanted to get out. I was happy to meet you because you were a way out. But… you weren’t just a way out of Boston, you were a way out of… everything. Only for moments at a time, but,  you were. It’s like… I just can’t believe I found you. In the mess of everything, you were there… and I’m just so… grateful, I guess. That’s not the right word… Just… Thank god for you. I kind of think god is dead, after all the… you know, everything, but thank god for you.”

Your words bring tears to his eyes. He allows them to bead in the corners, and you touch them away with your fingertip. “I love you.” He whispers.

“I love you so much, Joel.’

Joel was something without you, but not much. A knife, a gun, a severed brother, a fractured father, a frightened soul staggering around a broken city. With you, he’s carried back to love, and he can feel softness finding its way back into his veins from a heart inlaid with velvet. 

He may not believe in fate, but Joel likes the idea that he was destined to find you, and you him, and he thanks whatever was responsible for granting him the courage that grabbed him the moment it did so that he could finally tell you what you mean to him, because he knows the fearful man in his core couldn’t do it alone. 

Love, bona fide, is a deep pool in his center that never dried up, but was fortified with pieces of his dark desperation, broken down himself into spikes he assembled around it. But now with you, he surrenders, and, bodies held close, he dips with you into the warmth of his pure waters. 

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[brighttears]

Dusk III

Joel Miller x f!reader

No physical description, no use of y/n

Summary: You and Joel start getting closer, and it scares Joel. He tries to stop before you get too close, but it only ends up drawing you farther into each other. 

Word count: 5.7k

Warnings: drinking, mentions of death, violence, death of an animal

A/n: Okay this is one gets pretty juicy like halfway through ... is also def better than the last two. also, the song used in there is Lilac Wine by Jeff Buckley

— 

“Ravens and wolves are both creatures that represent dusk, the mixture of light and dark”

—

“Come on, I wanna see what he’s got.” you lean towards Maria, hanging from the pole on her front porch. “Tommy talks him up every chance he gets.”

Maria snorts, “You got that right.” She shakes her head and starts for the stairs, “Alright fine, I’ll let him know.” 

“Wait, don’t tell him what it is. Just tell him to be at the stables at noon.”

Maria gives you a look and chuckles again. “Alright, fine, Miss.Mysterious. Just bring back a buck, please.”

“Psh, don’t worry about it babe,” you swing around to walk down with her, “you know me, straightest shooter on this goddamn commune, and now my partner’s a macho fucking cowboy.” 

— 

You’re there waiting for him, leaning against the wall dividing two stalls, legs crossed straight out and arms folded. Once Joel is in view coming down the hallway, you can’t help a grin and bite over your bottom lip. Before he can ask, you bounce off of the wall to stand and tell him, “We’re goin’ huntin’.”

— 

Outside of Jackson, there’s a comfortable silence as you lead Joel towards the river. “This morning someone on patrol said they saw a buck out here.” you inform him.

“Why didn’t they shoot it?”

“They did, they just fuckin’ missed. Alright. Our best bet is out here by the water.” You adjust the thick rope slung over your shoulder. “You ever hunt deer before?” 

“The fact that you have to ask that is kind of offensive.”

“Well then I think I think we have a good shot. HA. Pun.” Joel can’t help but smile, thinking of Ellie. “Well, you’ve never hunted with me, so I’m gonna introduce you to my very special method. It’s not hard, you just stand next to me, we aim together, shoot together. Double our chances, you know?” you glance back at him, “My old hunting buddy and I did it all the time and it really does help.”

“Well alright then.”

It doesn't take long for you to find a male Mule Deer drinking at the edge of the river. You put a hand up to stop Joel, walking behind you, nod your head towards it, then to your side. As you line up side by side, you whisper, barely audible, “Ready cowboy?” 

Two shots ring out and then your whooping. Joel laughs; it does feel pretty damn good to know he’s the one putting food on the table tonight. “Holy shit, he’s huge!” you cry as you make your way down to it, unhooking the rope from yourself which you’ll use to drag it back to Jackson. Joel follows you down to the water, trying not to feel old as he hides a grunt getting down to sit on his haunches. You’re brushing your fingers down the deer’s fluffy white snout. As you drag them along the course of his antlers, you say quietly, “So beautiful.”

Your words spark Joel, remembering the Cordycep, and he watches you look at this dead deer the same way you did the rotting corpse of what is responsible for the end of the world. You examining death with such tenderness, he wants to understand, but he can’t. You are such a contrast. Joel bets you look pretty when you cry, hot when you’re covered in blood, and have the scream of a siren.

“I love being able to see them up close like. Wouldn't ever be able to otherwise.” you tilt your head and hum, brushing your hand down over its neck, traveling down to its side to a dark maroon hole. “One shot, almost straight to the heart.” You turn your head to Joel with a smile, “See? One shot outta two. Doubled our chances.” You’re really rocking him and he can only respond with a half hearted chuckle, his eyes glued to your lips until you turn back to the deer. “Alright. Help me hook ‘im up.” 

It’s a big buck, but not so big that you’re incapable of dragging it back to Jackson, each pulling one end of the rope wrapped around its neck. You’re both huffing and puffing as you go, leaning forward into your steps, but Joel finds time between pants to ask you, “You met Ellie yet?”

“The girl? No, not yet.”

“Well, I think you’d like each other.” “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You pant for another minute before he comes to his point, “You wanna come eat with us tonight?”

“At dinner?”

“Yeah I mean, I really think you and Ellie’d like each other,” suddenly embarrassed, “and I jus’ always see you sittin’ alone, so…” 

“Yeah,” you grunt, “that’d be nice.”

“Alright then.”

— 

That night, you make your way over shyly, standing with your plate in your hands, looking at Joel wordlessly until he invites you to sit. Ellie stares shamelessly. You glance up from your food, noticing it, but act unbothered. Ellie apparently approves of this reaction, then introducing herself, and starts to grill you. The stray cat method prevails.

“Why were you sitting alone before?”

“I guess people don’t like to eat with me.”

“Why not?”

“Hm, well I was kind of overprotective of my food when I first got here.”

“Yeah, you did look kinda creepy.”

“Ellie.” Joel gives her a look, eyebrows raised, and then to you, “I’m sorry, she’s—”

“Feisty.” you finish for him, smiling, and Ellie grins back, shifting to sit a little taller in her seat. 

“Yeah Joel, I’m feisty.” she tells him, who shakes his head at his plate with a restrained chuckle. “So how long have you been here?”

“Couple months longer than you have.”

Ellie nods, chewing, as soon as she swallows, she asks, “How did you get here? Where’d you come from?” Joel tenses at her nosiness but your response is prompt. 

“I wasn’t really trying to get here, I didn’t even know this place existed, actually.” your eyes are on the food you pick at as you speak, “Then a crew of these guys on horsebacks found me, and Maria—”

“Oh, we met those guys. They’re kinda assholes.” Joel hits Ellie’s knee with his under the table.

“Well I was unconscious so I didn’t have the pleasure, but Maria convinced them to bring me back with them. Before that though,” you pause for a small bite and keep your head down. “I was with a group for a long time. It was just me and my friend at first, that was since… yeah. A long time. Anyway, it grew, the number of people kinda ebbed and flowed, you know. There were only a few that lasted that whole time. One of them was looking for her sister so that’s what we were aiming for. We traveled a good distance together. But… it was a rough fucking winter here, and we… you know, shit happens. I was the only one that” you clear your throat and pause. “I’m the only one left. And I didn’t know what to do or where I was so I just kind of… kept walking. And then I couldn’t anymore and, yeah, passed out, they found me, Maria saved my ass, and here we are.”

The three of you eat quietly for an awkward minute before Ellie speaks. “I’m sorry, about your friends.”

“Thanks.” you shove a fork full of food into your mouth. 

There are a few more minutes of awkward silence until Ellie pipes back up and then starts relentlessly jabbering into your fresh ears. Joel tries to get her to restrain herself, mind her manners, but you converse fluidly with her. The way you interact with Ellie impresses him—it’s smooth, casual, and you don’t treat her like a child, but as an equal. Ellie is practically drooling over it.

—

Many nights, Joel and Tommy will stay behind after dinner to talk and have a drink at the empty bar. Maria will take Ellie home, but tonight, Ellie literally begs you to walk home with them, and you readily comply, giving Joel a wave and a smile over your shoulder on your way out. 

“Okay, Joel, you’re killin’ me here.”

Joel looks at his brother quizzically, spinning his glass of whisky on the rocks, condensation wetting the smooth, dark wood of the bar.

“You got a girlfriend and didn’t tell me?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Joel chuckles, not expecting the assumption. 

“Is this a friends with benefits kinda thing?”

“No,” Joel laughs. 

“What, she’s just your new best friend?”Joel takes a sip of his whiskey instead of answering. “Come on, you gotta give me something’. I promise I won’t say a word to Maria.”

“It’s nothin’ like that. I don’t know… but… shit, it’s somethin’, y’know?” he smiles at his brother, “I mean she’s great. She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. She’s funny, Ellie already loves her. She’s great with her, I mean, she talks to her with respect, like an equal. She’s real good with a gun,” Joel throws some whisky back, the rock of ice clinking. “n’ it’s like she sees what I don’t. She knows more than me. She doesn’t make me feel stupid, just like I’m better when she’s there.” he shakes his head, “I feel like such a fuckin’ fool sayin’ this but, it just feels right when I'm with her. It’s like she’s this piece I didn’t know I was missin’.” he takes another sip, “You know, I ignored her for two weeks.” Joel nods to himself, “Longest fuckin’ two weeks of my life, I swear.” he bursts out a chuckle. “I don’t know what it is, Tommy, it’s crazy, but I just couldn’t stay away from her, I mean I couldn’t. There’s just somethin’ ‘bout her.” he pauses, watching the last of the amber at the bottom of his glass blend around the ice. “It fuckin’ scares me. How much I need her. Shit. I just don’t wanna hurt’er.” Joel adds quietly.

“Ah, Joel…” Tommy shakes his head lightly at his last words. “Don’t do that.”

Joel looks up at him, “Do what?”

“You just got through every reason that she’s a great girl, how much you like her, and then you go and shoot yourself in the foot.”

“Whad’you mean shoot myself in the foot?”

“You get scared! Too scared!” he chuckles lightly, “Just go! Be with her!”

“But Tommy—” 

“I don’t wanna hear it. Don’t let her slip through your fingers, now. Hey, Ellie’ll never forgive you for that.” Tommy means it as a joke, but it pricks Joel. “Just be fuckin’ happy. Appreciate it. Findin’ love during the apocalypse is a beautiful thing.” he smiles brightly. 

“Sure, ok,” he gives him a fake glare and smirk, “it’s gettin’ late. I’m fuckin tired ‘n we’ve both got someone waitin’ up on us.”

That night, once again, Joel finds himself losing sleep over you. He chews on Tommy’s words. He hadn’t thought about it like that and he isn’t sure where you lie. You haven’t even touched, you are not his girlfriend, that doesn’t sound right even if it was like that, and you are friends, but it has to be more than that—friendship doesn’t smolder like this. While he walks around in the idea, opening different doors, one of them is to the thought of kissing you, and even though he’s alone, Joel blushes. He sits up on his bed, swears, and rubs the heels of his hands in his eyes. 

“…and then you go and shoot yourself in the foot.” 

Another thing Joel had never thought about. Tommy said he got scared, and he’s right, why wouldn’t he be scared? When has loving someone ever worked out? He’s not shooting himself in the foot because it isn’t about him. He should be scared for you. If no one else knows to protect you from men like him, he’ll do it himself. He groans and swears again when he feels that pull, his heart trying to tear through the line tying it to his brain. It hurts to even think about having you gone now that he knows the way it feels when you’re here. What hurts more though is the thought of you dead. Joel sighs and runs his hands through his hair, scratching at his scalp. Fuck this, I’m tired, I’ll deal with it tomorrow. He thinks, pulling his boots off and getting under the covers.

— 

That next day, Joel is taking an afternoon nap, one of his absolute favorite activities, when Ellie’s feet bounding down the steps wakes him. He almost falls down the stairs, chasing after her and hollering her name, eyes still blurry with sleep. When his eyes focus, you’re at the bottom with Ellie grinning wildly next to you.

“Hi, Joel.” you wave.

“She’s gonna teach me how to ride a horse.”

“Ellie you already know how to ride a horse—”

“I know how to sit on a horse, not how to ride one.”

“I’ll have her home before dark, we’re just going to be at the stables.” You tell him, then look down at Ellie, only half seriously stern, “I thought she told you already.” 

“Soorryy. Okay come on let’s go.” Ellie grabs your hand and pulls you outside. 

“We’ll be safe I promise!” you call out over your shoulder before the door shuts behind you.

Joel sighs and presses the knuckle of his thumb into his forehead, “Christ.”

—

Joel waited up. Several times, he got up from the chair he waited in and grabbed his coat, but made it at most a few feet down the road before stopping himself. He needs to learn how to trust Ellie a little, let her have some freedom. He trusts you, too. It doesn’t eliminate his stress, though.

His foot taps on the floor, watching the sky fade into sunset through the front window. When he hears two steps from the front, rushes to the door, swinging it open before you and Ellie are even actually in front of it.

“Hey,” he says, breathlessly, quickly scanning Ellie to make sure she’s ok.

“Hi,” she says back, raising her eyebrows at him and smiling, “don’t tell me you’ve been sitting in a chair waiting for me all day.”

“No, I w—well I—how was it?”

“Sooooo fun!”

“She’s great at it.” Ellie beams at your side, soaking up your praise. “Alright well, goodnight then,” you start to turn but Joel interrupts you. 

“Uh—you w—wanna come in? Warm up just for a second? If you want.”

“Sure.”

Ellie gives Joel a mischievous grin, raising her eyebrows up and down at him as she passes through the doorway and calls out as she bounds up the creaky stairs, “I’ll just be in my room!” 

You take a few steps in and look around. “It’s really not much,” Joel says, watching you turn around to take in your surroundings. He had never tried to clean, or furnish anymore than Maria had made him, because he never considered that he’d have guests over. 

A smile spreads over your face when your eyes land on the guitar leaning against a corner of the front bay window. You point and look back at him, “Who plays?” 

“Uhh… I do. I’m tryna teach Ellie but I haven’t gotten her to sit down so that I can.” he chuckles sheepishly and rubs a nervous hand on the back of his neck.

“Okay you have to play me something.”

“Aaah, nnaah, I haven’t played in years, I’m outta practice. It’ll sound like shit.”

“Come one, it’s been forever since I’ve heard someone play. You gotta, Joel. Please!”

As soon as you say ‘please’ Joel goes for the guitar. “Alright, fine. I warned you, though.”

You beam, immediately going to plop on the couch facing the front windows. Joel picks up their guitar by its neck and sits in the wooden chair facing you from the other corner of the bay windows. The chair creaks under his weight and the strings softly squeak as he runs a hand up and down the neck. You move to the corner of the couch, tucking one leg underneath you and supporting the side of your head on your hand with an elbow on the arm of the couch. 

He stares at the strings under his fingers while he racks his brain for a song that he even remembers how to play, trying to focus on this instead of his nerves. It takes him a long time. When he does start, his strums are graceful and his voice, gentle and low. Goosebumps prickle your skin.  

I lost myself on a cool, damp night

I gave myself in that misty light

Was hypnotized by a strange delight

Under a lilac tree

The quiet vibrato he ends the first verse with dazes you. 

I made wine from the lilac tree

Put my heart in its recipe

Makes me see what I want to see

And be what I want to be

He keeps his tone low, quiet and all so gentle.

When I think more than I wanna think

I do things I never should do

I drink much more that I oughta drink

Because it brings me back you

Another drawn out vibrato literally makes you dizzy and everything else falls away. 

​​Lilac wine is sweet and heady, like my love

Lilac wine, I feel unsteady, like my love

Listen to me, I cannot see clearly

Isn't that she coming to me? Nearly here

As he’s progressed through the song, his confidence is rising; he must be lost in it. You find yourself misty eyed.

Lilac wine is sweet and heady, where's my love?

Lilac wine, I feel unsteady, where's my love?

Listen to me, why is everything so hazy?

Isn't that she, or am I just going crazy, dear?

You tighten your throat to keep tears down. You knew he’d be good—he’s too modest—but you weren’t expecting him to hit you with this. 

Lilac wine, I feel unready for my love

Feel unready for my love

After his last strum, it stays silent for a few long moments. You’re still trying to reel back tears. Your heartbeat is steady but you feel it bumping out of your chest and warmth blooms from it out to your shoulders. You slip your hand from supporting your temple to your cheek, holding your fingers over your mouth as a wild grin overwhelms it. 

Joel can’t take his eyes off the floor. Now that the music has fallen away, thoughts and fears buzz in his head, and all he wants is for you not to be laughing. His cheeks are red. When he finally gets himself to tentatively raise his head, he does only the least he can to see you.

Eyes glistening, you tell him softly, almost through your hand, “That was beautiful, Joel.” a wide smile plastered on your face. 

Looking up farther at you, his lungs release and his head calms, making him almost sleepy in relief, and warmth spreads through his entire body. He can’t help but smile and looks back to the floor. “Thank you.”

You hum and it’s quiet for a little longer. Joel is the one to break it, standing with a restrained groan and setting the guitar back in the corner. “It’s gettin’ late, lemme walk you home.” he says without looking at you, making his way towards the door with a stiff knee.

“Oh, you don’t have to…” you want him to.

“Nah, it’s alright. Wouldn’t feel right havin’ you walk all alone in the dark. I could use some air anyway.” he says, back still to you as he slides on his coat.

The sound of packed snow under your feet is surrounded by a comfortable silence on the way to your house. It’s not a long walk in reality, but sort of is in Jackson, and by the time you’re there you can see clearly on Joel’s face how cold he is.

“Okay, your turn, come in for a sec. Just to warm up. You’re all rosy.”

“Oh I don’t wanna intrude—”

“I’m the only one that lives here and I’m inviting you in.” you smile lightly at him, opening the door. He happily follows. 

“Not much more than yours,” you tell him as he does just what you did at his house. “All my stuff’s upstairs.”

“You have stuff?”

You laugh, “I mean not really, I have a few things. I just—I don’t know, I still like having things.” 

Joel thinks of the photograph you’d slipped into your pocket on your first patrol together. “Can—can I see?” 

You hesitate, only for a moment and only because of your own nervousness, but it kills Joel. “Yeah, sure,” you lead him upstairs. It’s weird living alone in such a big house, but there aren’t any small houses in Jackson. It can get lonely sometimes, you still aren’t used to not being in a group of friends. 

Your bedroom is the first, right by the stairs, and the gold metal knob squeaks when you turn it. Walking in, Joel is confused, the room being just as barren as downstairs with only a few sad pieces of furniture. But then you click on a light, bringing his attention to his right, where your bed is as well a small, dark wood dresser, ending around chest height so that you have to bend a little to see yourself in the rectangular mirror that rests right up against the wall. Dirt and dust thinly films it and the border and corners blemished yellow with age. 

“Well, this is it.” you say, taking your coat off to hang over your bedpost. Joel is immediately drawn to the dresser where you’ve artfully set up everything you own that isn’t survival gear. Having Joel there makes you suddenly remember the photograph of the woman you’d found, and you slip your hand into your coat pocket to retrieve it. You sit on the edge of your bed, next to Joel at your dresser, and slide your finger along the side of it. The border has turned yellow and the rest of the colors have faded so that it’s just that milk yellow contrasting brown-black. The woman’s light, curly, mussy hair partly obstructs her face, but she gleams a toothy smile thrown over her shoulder. Her back to the back camera, it looks candid. On the upper edge of the thick bottom border, characteristic of a polaroid, scratches, only barely still marked by pen, of very small, close together letters say ‘i love you’ with a tiny heart next to them. You rub your thumb over it to feel the grooves. After flipping it back to front a couple times, studying the details, you take it to the dresser to slip into a vignetted corner of the mirror. 

Soft yellow light sheds over the few other miscellaneous items you’d acquired along your journey, one of which is a sizable pearl necklace. It spills out of the fittingly shell shaped, old and worn silver ashtray which you never properly cleaned. 

“What’s all this for?”

“I just like collecting stuff.” You answer as he ghosts a line over the surfaces of the objects on the dresser, “All sorts of treasures out there. I pick things up, keep them with me until I run out of room, and then I just leave them behind somewhere. It’s like there’s a trail behind me made of other people’s lives.” coming up next to Joel, you continue, “We made a game out of it, so when I found something we’d all make up stories about who left it behind.” you watch his face as he examines the pearls and bite your lip. The light shows off the rich brown of his eyes and there's a hint of a smile at the edges of his lips. “This is my favorite.” you use both hands to pick up the heavy pearls, holding them up for Joel to see, “They’re real. Look. See how they’re not really white?” you take a pearl to twirl between your fingers, showing off its silvery pink and blue with the white, watching Joel’s focused eyes.

“Never seen a real one.”

“Here.” you stand behind him, turning him to face the mirror, and slip the necklace around his neck.

“What’re you—” he chuckles. 

You hum, “Look at you.” you look at him smiling in the mirror. “So fancy.” laughing, you come around from behind him and he turns to face you. You pick the pearls up to hold just off of his chest so you can twirl one and watch it in the light. “This is one of the first things I ever picked up, and the only one I’ve kept all this time.” the pearl glints, “I got it from a rich person’s house and the whole room was full of stuff like this, diamonds, jewels… I always like to imagine the woman who lived there wearing them all at once and standing out in the sun.”

You and Joel are in a bubble. Watching these pearls in the light never gets old, and Joel warms you without you even touching. You can hear his breaths and smell his natural scent. He looks even more fucking solid this close up. Joel is the epitome of safe. 

He watches your eyes focus on your heavy pearls around his neck, your face tranquil, and you subliminally relax him. It takes everything in him to not press every part of his body against you, wrap you up tight and keep you there, safe in his arms. 

Scared, Joel breaks the silence, almost at a whisper, “I should be gettin’ back. It’s late, Ellie’s probably waitin’ up.” 

Popped, you nod, taking your hands off the pearls, stepping back and clasping them behind your back, pursing your lips. Joel stays frozen, looking at you. “Here, I’ll get those off for you.”

“Oh, yeah.” he turns around for you to unhook the necklace and it clatters melodically as you lower it back into its shell. 

“Let me lead you out.” Neither of you look at each other until he’s on your front porch steps. Then, he turns to you, says goodnight, and is on his way home. 

You watch him walk off from the doorway until a cold breeze brings you back in. Inside, you close the door and press your back against it, close your eyes, curse, and bump the back of your head on it. You weren’t trying to do anything, but anxiety suddenly falls like acid rain over you that he might think that you were by inviting him in. The whole time, you were barely thinking, you were just… there with him. You blame unlearned social skills and bump your head against the door again. Fuck, you might have just scared him away. Sighing deeply, you open your eyes and head back upstairs. 

In your room, you stop at the dresser, running a finger along the bumps of the necklace. Leaning in a little, you look at yourself in the mirror. Then you make a face to yourself, click the light off, and jump into bed. Joel’s quiet vibratos crawl in to lull you to sleep.

— 

Joel almost walks past his own house, head swimming. Once he’s back inside, Ellie calls from her room, “Joel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where’d you go? Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, I was just walkin’ her home.”

“Oh, okay.”

As he climbs the stairs, Joel tells Ellie’s closed door, “It’s late, you should be asleep.”

“Okay.” she replies. Light still emanates from the bottom crack of the door but Joel reminds himself that Ellie prefers to keep the light on while she sleeps. 

In his room, Joel blows a deep breath out as he slips off his coat and boots. All he seems to do in his bed is sleep and think about you. Added to his collection is the image of your soft eyes focused on shiny pearls you hold from his chest, and your face, poking out from the side of him, smiling at him in a mirror. 

Gentle, gentle, gentle, full of grace and love, and good with a gun. He feels blessed and cursed to have you, because you are you, but, he is him. Tonight only brought you closer and he wants only more, but the softness he witnessed made him want to run, because if you come any closer you’ll be walking into the sharp stake protruding from his heart.

Joel wants to cry as he comes to a decision. 

— 

You’re patrolling together the next day and Joel decides to take you back to the house you found on your first patrol. 

“C’mon.” His voice is gentle, nodding his head back towards the hill and already pulling his horse back. Despite his tone, the air around you is immediately dark and heavy. Joel looks completely calm. Your rapid heartbeat thrums in your ears. 

In the house, he steps into the living room on your right. The dark red carpet is filthy, the walls are thick wood panels, DIY 70’s style. The room is lit by clouded sunlight from three dirty front windows. A dirty old newspaper crinkles under your foot and Joel lightly kicks a pastel pink shard from the broken lamp. In front of him is a dark brown brick fireplace, sooty black logs spilling out over the ledge and onto the carpet. Joel’s hands are on his hips and his head is bowed as he leads you in. You breathe to calm your heart as you follow him in.

He takes a deep breath, facing the fireplace, and then turns to you. It takes him a moment to flick his eyes up to you, and when he does, he’s glaring. Your heart sinks and fear falls from a bucket over your head, running thick down your entire body. You’re not scared of him, but of whatever he’s about to say. You have no clue what to expect. 

He bites his lower lip, looking at you for a long moment before he speaks. “We can’t—we can’t do this.”

“…What?”

He breathes deeply out of his nose. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near me.”

You are physically taken aback, “Are you serious?” 

“Do I look serious?” he replies, voice grim, fiercely glaring. 

You almost roll your eyes. “Okay, I know what this is.” You snap, “You know, you can be so self centered.” 

“The fuck I am—I’m doin’ this for you,” his shout bites, “to protect you.” 

“Joel I am not going to play this fucking game with you.”

“What fuckin’ game?” 

You raise your tone to match his, “This game where you come and you’re with me, you tell me you want me here, and then you decide you’re bad for me, whatever the fuck that means, and then you leave and I don’t know if you’re gonna come back, and then you do and then you’ll leave again and then come back and you can’t keep doing that because then I can’t fucking trust you and that WILL. Ruin. Everything. I’m not fucking doing that.”

“I’m not comin’ back,” he yells, his face severe, “that’s the damn point. An’ it’s for your own good. The world that I live in ain’t no life for you.”

You scoff, “Where the fuck do you think I’ve been living?” You march right into his face, almost nose to nose, glaring straight back into him, “I’ve been through hell, Joel. You have no fucking clue. I am not fucking weak, Joel. Fuck you. Fuck you for that.”

Joel barely lets himself blink, challenged by your gaze, “You’re right, you’re not weak. Fragile is what you are.” he brings a hand up, palm out, and points at it, without breaking, “You see this? You see these hands? I’ve beaten people to death. I’m dangerous.” he hisses, “You should be afraid of me. You’d be stupid not to be. I could kill you.” 

You take his hand and wrap it around your throat. “Do it then.” your eyes stay locked, your breathing even. “Kill me. I know you can. It’d be so easy, Joel.” you whisper, angling your mouth to bare your teeth at him. Joel's breaths are heavy and his eyes widen, brow still hanging dourly. He rips himself away from you and takes a few steps back. “‘Dangerous’.” you continue, “Like that’s special. Here, let me show you something.” you stride back up to him and raise a hand to point at your other, shoving it in his face, “See that knuckle? How it’s curved and flat? That’s called a boxer’s fracture. Someone killed my friend so I beat him to death and it broke my fucking knuckle.” Then you press your thumb into the center of his collarbone, just enough for him to feel his airway constrict until he swats your hand away. “You ever learn that trick? Makes choking someone to death go a lot faster. I know my fucking way around this shit. Scared of you,” you scoff, “Who can’t kill me? You’re not special.” 

Joel lets a solid five silent, tense seconds pass and then he grabs for his gun, making your heart flutter, but then it hits the floor, followed by the thump of his knife. He reaches for your gun and yanks it out of its holster to drop, then around you, without breaking eye contact, to remove both the gun and knife stuffed between your back and belt, hitting the carpet with thuds. 

Suddenly, the idea of you that he had created—someone innocent, clean, pure, someone unlike him, opposite, a good for his bad, yin for his yang—falls away. 

“Hit me.” Joel tells you stonily. 

You smack him and his head jerks with it. 

After that, he kisses you hard, crashing your mouths together so it almost hurts. You reciprocate instantaneously. His hands inch up the sides of your neck, thumbs almost meeting together as they slide up your throat—showing that if he squeezed, just a little, his hands could completely enclose your neck—but he only brings them up to hold your jaw to kiss you. When he pulls away, you’re both breathless.

Interrupting your fervent eye gaze is a bang at the glass window, which reminds you that all of your weapons are on the floor, but seeing the wing defining the mark on the dirty window, you both let out a breath of relief. You collect yourselves and follow it outside. Stepping over the weedy, dead flower beds, you find a still crow, blood seeping to puddle around it.

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[brighttears]

not to be vain and this is still being edited but i think i lowkey popped off here

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