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netherfeildren · 1 year

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FEAR OF GOD : Chapter III : Your bitter heart, heals my heart

Series Masterlist ; Moodboard

Pairing: Joel Miller x OFC

Summary: The damp dew of morning, as dawn broke across the sky the next day, had taken on a biting frigidness, and with it everything was different.

A/N: Let’s play spot the Fiona Apple reference 😁

I’d planned to wait until Sunday to post, but I just couldn’t help myself. I love this chapter a lot. I hope you guys do too. The song Good Guy by Julia Jacklin fits it quite nicely, I think.

Art is Rotting Plums by Rachel Bess.

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: character death; brief, non-graphic descriptions of illness; discussions of grief; internal angst; rough sex; choking; brief impact play; after care; soft! Joel™️

Word Count: 6.4k

Read on AO3

CHAPTER III : Your bitter heart, heals my heart

Something in my soul was rising, rising, ceaselessly, painfully, and refused to be still.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

The mystery of Teddy continued and his health worsened. There were no objective indices of a malignant source to explain his symptoms, and yet, nevertheless, they persisted, intensified. The boy was fatigued, withdrawn, sensitive, losing weight, prone to bouts of what could be characterized as a cold or flu. You and Connie suspected the worst, but there was not much to be done to prove your theories without imaging or blood tests, not readily available to you. The best you could do was manage the child’s state symptomatically, and hope for the best until a more concrete plan was assembled.

One night in late October, you and Connie decide to bid farewell to the passing fall with a consolation dinner. The months of Teddy’s ongoing illness had fallen harshly on both of your shoulders and spirits were low. The air outside had taken on the true chill of deep fall, the threat of winter near. You were worried the cold would bring tragedy with it. The child’s constitution was weak and despite good shelter and food and the two of you caring for him, winter was harsh and difficult to endure, even at one’s strongest.

Joel had gone on a good hunt earlier that day and had brought back a nicely sized rabbit. He’d refused to join you and Connie for dinner. Withdrawn and sullen throughout the day, he’d told you to enjoy your evening with a soft kiss pressed to your mouth, before he’d wandered off. You could picture him now, sitting on his porch, guitar in hand, drink at his side, brooding at whatever was plaguing him. The image chafed. His inability, or lack of desire, to tell you what was wrong hurt.

You and Connie talked shop over your rabbit and greens, roasted potatoes in garlic and sage, and the braised plums Dina had brought you a few days before. It was a lovely meal, a veritable feast, lit by the warm candle light of the beeswax sticks Maria had traded with you. He told you about his wife, stories you’d heard dozens of times, that he never tired of repeating and you never stopped wanting to listen to. Stories of his training, the toils of residency, the great accomplishments of fellowship. Your favorite ones were of when he was younger, in his twenties, young and fresh and ravenous to learn everything he could. Eager for freedom and experience and knowledge. To hear of his life was to know him, and you loved nothing more than learning about the man who had become your greatest mentor and friend.

Connie died in his sleep that night. After you’d finished the last of the scavenged wine, he laughingly said he’d had it for years, and had been saving it for a special occasion – that now felt as good a time as any – like he knew this would be the last chance. He’d said good night to you, gone upstairs to bed and passed away peacefully. The damp dew of morning as dawn broke across the sky the next day had taken on a biting frigidness, and with it everything was different, would forevermore be different. For how could anything continue to exist as it had when the man who had given you a vocation, who had shared with you the greatest gift in his arsenal, his knowledge, was gone. It was a devastating blow for you, for the whole of Jackson. Beth and your parents took up space in your mind constantly in the days that followed, the memory of them a heavier weight than you usually carried. Their lives and their deaths, a constant loop of replay behind your eyelids at night, in your dreams. But you trudged on. Tried in vain to smother your grief as best you could. Hide it from Joel and Maria and Ellie and all your considerably disconcerted patients.

The weight of the wellbeing of an entire community, that you dearly cared for, now rested on your shoulders, and the responsibility was a formidable and daunting one. Sometimes, you wished you had it in you to rid yourself of the whole thing. To wash your hands of it. Too gripped by the terror of failure and inadequacy to hold on to your courage. Your fears called forth Connie’s past words, how you’d not chosen this for yourself, would not have chosen it if you’d been given another option. But those moments passed eventually, and you did what you must, what was necessary. However great the burden of responsibility felt on your shoulders, you had no choice but to bear them as you may. Choices, always choices; more than conviction of character, more than desires, or hopes, the choices you made were what determined who you were.

And then there was Joel. Joel who understood this grief of a lost loved one better than anyone else, who understood you better than anyone else. He’d taken your despair in stride, planted his feet in the ground and said to you with every action, every comforting embrace, every night where you cried yourself to sleep in his arms, in his bed, when you sought out the distraction of his mouth and his hands and his cock, with all of it he told you: here I am, use me as you will. Let me help you carry this burden of grief and responsibility, and if you cannot carry it at all, then I will carry you. And he did, with everything he did, he eased your pain. It was like he could read your mind, your heart, as if he’d studied that intrinsic understanding that had always existed between you and Connie under a magnifying glass and applied himself to taking it on himself, doing the same.

You loved him so much in that time of painful grief after Connie – felt the weight of it so poignantly within your heart, it was like a second presence you carried inside your body now, a second soul. His fist wrapped tightly around your heart, your very life blood held in his hands – his to wield as he chose. It was a terrifying, maddening ordeal, that of losing everything you were to a man. Of giving it to him. And yet, you saw your life in the strangest new light now. What did it matter if the world was vast and cruel and terrifying, if you had him? Very little, it mattered very little.

“Birdie.”

You’d been hunched over your desk for the better part of the afternoon. Late into the evening now, and you were still at it, only a small desk lamp illuminating the strewn catastrophe of papers and books in a wash of warm light. Your eyes stung, your back aching and strained. You couldn’t remember the last thing you’d eaten. “You’re back…”

“How’d it go today? How long’ve you been in here, baby?” You knew that stern tone. You listen to him set down something heavy on the table by the door but don’t turn, too caught up in what you’re currently reading.

“Teddy’s bad again…” you murmur, “There’s – I – I can’t figure this out. It’s driving me insane. If – if I knew more or – or had more equipment…” you trail off. “It’s bad… This is impossible with so little at my disposal.” Your hands clutch your hair, hunched over one of Connie’s old journals, one you’ve read probably a hundred times. “Something’s fucking wrong…” you mumble under your breath. He was weaker and weaker every day. The bruising you’d first noticed a few weeks ago appeared more often, and you had a pretty good idea as to what it was that was wrong with him, but you were terrified of sharing your fears with his mother. Of being wrong. You told yourself you couldn’t be certain without proper testing. That until you’d found something beyond textual evidence to support your theories, that you should keep your conjectures to yourself. After all, if you were right, there was nothing to be done, but keep him comfortable. You told yourself that to hold off was the right thing to do, but you weren’t sure. Had never been in this position before. And alone, with only yourself to count on, with no one to consult with who had experience in something like this, there was only your gut to follow. It was Joel, who’d ultimately soothed your anxieties. He’d said that if it was him, if it was Sarah in this position, the threat of an incurable cancer plaguing her and no sort of cure or treatment closely available, then he’d not want to know the truth of it. The closest FEDRA outhold was hundreds of miles away, and Teddy would never survive the journey – not with the cold of winter starting to set in, he was too weak, too fragile, being eaten alive from the inside out. You felt so fucking useless, so desperate and hopeless, and you didn’t know what to do besides make him comfortable, try and be there for Susanna as best you could. And she knew, she knew something was interminably wrong with her child. She knew you were at a loss, beyond your depth of resources. You could see the understanding and resignation start to settle in her eyes as the days passed.

“C’mere, Birdie. Come look at this.”

You’re still murmuring to yourself, lost in thought, but you turn to him suddenly, and the look on your face – you feel so young, so lost – “If Connie was here it’d be better–” you say. And you feel so angry at your father suddenly. This is all his fault. He cast you into this role before you’d been old enough to have the sense of foresight to understand all that would come with it. Angry at Connie, for furthering it, for dying, for leaving you alone. Your eyes fill with tears, and he comes over to you, cradles your upturned face in his palms, your fingers twisting in his clothes. “Joel–”

“I found something for you – come see.” He says it so gently, pulls you from the chair, strong hand cupped around the bend of your elbow. Your legs feel as shaky and weak as a newborn fawns, and your vision swoops, dark stars appearing behind your closed eyes. “Head rush,” you whisper.

“Damnit, Birdie. When was the last time you ate somethin’?” You clutch at his arms tightly as you feel your balance stabilize.

“I– it’s okay… I’m okay.”

You turn towards the table then, and sitting on it is a microscope. You turn to look at him, wide eyed, your threat of tears from before immediately becoming reality. “Where did you find that?”

“There’s a house about five hours west. Me ‘nd Tommy decided to check it out. Someone had a whole damn laboratory in the basement.” There’s a small duffle sitting next to the machine. “Don’t know if it’ll work, if it’s any good to you, or– or if you even want it… I brought all the other stuff I thought went with it–” he unzips the bag, peers inside. “Not sure it’s what you need… if it’s any good. But I thought–” He’s ranting, tongue tripping over his own words, and there’s a fierce blush washing over his cheeks. “I just–” he sighs, “I just saw it and thought of you. Thought it might be something you’d like or find interesting… Something to distract you.” And he’s so endearing and so sweet and so understanding and you’re pressing yourself to him, tears spilling. His breath whooshes out in a small huff with the force of your chest thumping against his, your arms sneaking around his neck like vines, feet scrabbling against the floor, stepping on the toes of his boots to boost yourself up higher, press harder. Your heart, your heart, it hurts, it pinches and burns, and oh, you love him.

He is undoing you.

His hand weaves through the long threads of your loose hair, presses your streaming eyes and hot face to his neck. You mouth messily at the skin of his neck, too overwrought for words. Trying to convey everything you’re feeling in this moment into his skin through the press of your own. And you know, with the gentleness of his hands over your hair, your face, your back and waist, that he knows, he understands.

“I knew you needed something – hoped this could help in some way.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you, you breathe into his neck.

This small action, him going out on patrol and bringing back something for you, seeing something that reminded him of you and hauling it all the way back here, just to make you happy, just because he thought it might entertain you – it’s everything. To know that he knows how much this would mean to you, how much this would help you, how much you needed this – it tells you more about the state of the two of you now, in this moment, than anything else that has transpired before.

You hug yourself closer to him, wet face soaking his shirt and he just holds you, let’s you bask in him. And his tallness and warmth and aliveness — it makes you forget that cowering animal you’d felt like these past few days. He brings back to life your own warmth, your own aliveness, pulls out of you the desire to share it with him. It’s like a damn breaking, a rush of despair and love and grief so overwhelming it punches the air out of you.

Gasp escaping in a loud, breathless sob,“I’m alone, I’m alone now,” you press your hot eyes into the space beneath his jaw, “I don’t have anyone anymore. Connie, Connie – I – I don’t – don’t know h– how–” It’s uncontrollable, breath hitching and hiccuping. Somewhere in the rational recess of your mind you know you shouldn’t be telling him all this. That maybe he doesn’t want to hear it, or maybe even more unlikely, that it’ll hurt him to hear you claim this aloneness. That being without Connie now was almost like being without Beth – out there, in the wilderness, alone and desperate; that facing the responsibility he’d left you with felt like that vast wilderness from before. That without him you felt so, so lost. Your anchor to this world, your guiding light, your friend, your teacher was gone; and even with Joel physically beside you, the encroaching sense of familiar loneliness was overwhelming. You couldn’t help it. Couldn’t swallow this hurt. It was too heavy to be repressed.

You pull back to take in his face and he splays his hand over your cheek, gently brushes away the wet under your eye, your bottom lip, the delicate wing of your cheekbone – his eyes: concerned and grave and slightly lost – like you’re breaking his heart, like he’d do anything in this moment to bear your pain for you. You look at him and think of all the times he’s pushed you away, held you at arms length, refused to let you in. The small hurts and the pinch of your heart in the space where you hold him inside of you, your recurring thought that: I know none of this will matter in the long run — but while we’re here — I want you to love me.

But with this, with this, he was showing you. He was telling you with his actions, with his pain and concern for you: I know of the things you need, of the things you want, and I’ll try and give them to you the best I can. I’ll try and take care of you the best I can. This is me trying; this is me telling you, I love you.

“You’re not alone. I’m here, Birdie. I’m gonna take care of you. I promise.”

You push your face into his large, warm palm, nuzzle the rough skin, and you wonder what will become of you if you cannot be close to him anymore — if he were to one day take himself away from you. Because you know that’s the only way this would ever have a chance of ending, if he were to decide to leave, to go away some place he’d not allow you to follow. Nothing else would ever rip you from his side.

“Thank you,” you whisper into his palm, press a small kiss to the center of it.

“Hell, baby. If I knew the damn thing’d pull this reaction out of you I’d have left it where I found it.” You laugh a watery little laugh. And you think that it really does feel like the world’s ending, a terrible thing, when you feel the love you have for someone settle within you, when you realize the depth of it.

You press up high on your toes, seeking out his mouth, a kind of frantic buzz filling your limbs as you reach for him. You twine your arms around his neck and your fingers into his hair. He understands you and he’s here and he’s going to take care of you and you love him so much. None of the things that had been plaguing your mind these past few weeks, none of the anxieties matter in this moment. Just the feel of his warm skin, his rough hands passing over your clothes and then gripping, twisting in the back of your shirt to press you up higher. He peppers open mouth kisses to your cheeks, your jaw, sucks on your neck sharply. “What do you need, Birdie? Tell me what you need, and I’ll give it to you.”

You can’t think, can’t put into words this frenzied desperation you’re feeling. All you can do is claw harder at his clothes and hair, try to climb the length of his body, get as close as you possibly can. You let out a high little whine, and he winds his fingers through your hair, grips tight and gives a sharp tug. “Need me to be the only thing in that pretty head right now? Huh?” He jerks your head back sharply, exposing the vulnerable column of your throat. His teeth latch onto the delicate line of muscle there, and you’re sure he can feel the rapid fluttering of your pulse against his tongue, a staccato of morse code telling him all your secrets, can taste the distressed need seeping out of your pores. You try and hitch your knee around his hip, grind your aching cunt into him. You can feel your arousal seeping into the gusset of your panties, and you claw at his back to try and find purchase, to rock yourself harder into him. His mouth moves down to the soft junction of your shoulder, and his bite there is harsher, claiming. You’ll have a red blossom of a bruise there tomorrow you’re sure. “So fucking desperate for me, baby.”

His words make something satisfied coil low in your belly. Yes, yes, you moan. You’re glad he knows. You want him to feel how much you need him, how much you want him. You want your desperation to incite his own. You want, need, him to need you as much as you do. He’s clutching your ass then, fingers squeezing your flesh tightly and hoisting you up into his arms. You wrap your legs around his waist, lick into his mouth as he walks the two of you towards the sofa against the wall.

He lets your feet drop to the ground and sits heavily on the couch, knees spread wide and he’s ripping your leggings down your thighs without preamble, clasping the bend of your knee to slip your shoe off and pull the fabric of your pants and underwear off one foot. He pulls you onto his lap then, and you’re clawing at his belt, pulling his already hard cock free of the confines of his clothes. It’s late into the evening now, but anyone could walk in at any moment. Nancy had gone out earlier, but she could come back, come looking for you. None of that matters right now. All you can think about is getting him inside of you now, now now. He grips the back of your thigh to spread you wider across his lap and fists the base of his cock, jacks it once, twice. The tip is gleaming with precum and flushed so red it’s almost purple – your mouth waters at the sight of it. He hasn’t even touched your pussy yet, but you can feel how soaked you are. Your sex tight and aching, and you wrap your own hand around him, pressing up a little higher on your knees to position him at your entrance, and then you’re sinking down, down and you both let out twin ragged groans of relief as you take him inside of you, watching the place where he disappears inside. It’s too much, painful, without having him make you come before, and exactly what you need. His eyes on yours are wide, as if he’s shocked. As if, even after all the times the two of you have done this, he still can’t believe it can feel like this. His neck is flushed red, you can see the hammering of his pulse in the thick vein of his neck, and it makes the walls of your cunt flutter in response. You’re going to come already, just with this. Just at the feel of taking him within you, your orgasm is there. You start to throb and pulse around him and your womb clenches and twists tight like a cramp. “Jesus fucking christ,” he grits out through clenched teeth, large palms gripping your ass to start to move you. And you’re orgasming fully now, cunt clamping down hard around his throbbing length. “Shit, shit–” you bury your face in his neck, tears, a slow, uncontrollable stream from your eyes at the intensity of it, “you’re coming already – Christ– you’re coming already.”

He starts to thrust his hips up into you, the blunt head hitting deep at the mouth of your cervix. “Good girl – good, fucking take it.” All you can do is moan and sob into his neck. Nothing will ever feel like this. Nothing else in your whole life will ever be as good as this is. He’s subjugated you with the feel of his cock pounding inside of you, and if you weren’t in love with him, you’d probably resent him for it. For having such a hold over you. No one person should have this much power over another. You yank on his hair hard. There is a fist around your heart in the shape of him, and it fucking hurts, and you want more and less, all at the same time.

“Harder, please, harder,” you whisper into his ear, let it slide through him, over him. And then he’s flipping you over, your entire weight cradled briefly in his arms as he presses your back into the cushions, and spreads your knees wide, one hooked over the back of the couch, and the other held open by his hand. “You want it harder, little bird? Want me to wreck this cunt?”

“Want it to hurt. Make it hurt, Joel, please.”

Your words set off a deep red flush in his chest that crawls up his neck and into his cheeks. His eyes go slightly glazed and feral, and he snaps his hips so hard into you your teeth click. He hoists your knee in his grip higher and you press your bare foot into his shoulder as he sets a brutal pace. He makes it hurt. Hand wrapped around your throat, angling your head back into a stretch that pinches. You arch your back, deepening the angle so that he’s fucking up into you and hitting something that makes dark spots flash in your vision. Oh, it hurts, it hurts, it feels so good. His hulking form over you, teeth bared in a snarl, would be terrifying to anyone else. But you think that even with his hand on your throat and that savage look in his eyes, there is nowhere you’d ever feel safer than right where you are. Beneath him, surrounded by him, held in the palm of his hand.

“Like that, baby? This what you needed?” He rips the collar of your t-shirt down, then the cup of your bra, and slaps your breast harshly, once, twice, three times, rips a high pitched keen out of you.

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

“You’re gonna take all of my come like a good girl, but first I need you to give me one more. Need you to come on my cock one more time.” The hand on your throat moves to your clit, circles it over and over again. You can feel the wet slap of his balls heavy against your ass. There’s sweat beading at his temples and your eyes never leave each other. Your heavy pants and the sounds of your fucking filling the room like some sort of lewd song. You start to throb around him, the pounding of his cock pulling your orgasm from deep in your pelvis so that it’s fluttering out, up your back and through your limbs like electricity. You pull his chest to yours then, and he lets his heavy weight crush you into the cushions beneath, grinds his cock deep, his pubic bone pressing harshly on the bud of your clit and eliciting another pulsing wave of your orgasm, and then he’s jerking inside of you. The heat of his come filling you. “Take it, take it all, every last drop.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

His hips grind slowly, and he lets your knee drop. You wrap your leg around him and push your foot into the base of his spine, pressing him harder into you. He pulls back a little after the last jerk of his cock, gentle thumb ghosting along the arch of your eyebrow, your cheek, then down across the wing of your collarbone, he lowers his head to press a long kiss to your shoulder. When he looks at you again his eyes are soft, a little concerned, “That was okay? I wasn’t too rough?” You nuzzle into his chest, press a kiss over his heart.

“No, no, that was what I needed. It was perfect.”

The two of you lay there for a long while afterwards. His head on your breast and his heavy weight pressing you deep into the sofa. The heat rolling off his body is almost overwhelming, sweltering like a furnace, and it wrings exhaustion out of you. There’s an ache settling deep in your pelvis, and the skin of your throat and thighs smart where he gripped you so hard. It’s bliss.

You run your fingers through his hair, nails dragging along his scalp, and then in long, languorous strokes down his back. He practically purrs, like an oversized and needy cat.

Perhaps this necessity is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. I need you so much, Joel. Isn't that the worst thing you’ve ever heard? Like an addiction, some sort of disease. For him to be the thing in the world to best soothe you, to best comfort you, but also be the one thing that sometimes hurts you the most. The dichotomy of all he brings out in you – the almost overwhelming love you feel for him, the fear of needing him so much you’d die without him, the desperation to be close to him at all times, for the two of you to be more connected, to know each other better than any two people ever have in all history. You could set fire to the two of you wrapped around each other like you are now with the intensity of all your feelings, let your skin meld together as one. And then also: the hurt, the sadness, the feeling that there’s always something small but magnificently significant missing between the two of you. All the unspoken words that hang heavy in the air. That one piece of him he always manages to keep hidden and tucked away from you no matter the intensity of what transpires between you, no matter how wide you spread his ribs to peer within him. It’s like a neverending stabbing to the depth of your heart, over and over and over again. You think you might have become addicted to the way it hurts. So much so, it manifests physically. You think that perhaps the more it hurts the more content you feel because at least you still have him here with you, at least he’s still in your arms.

There is a part of yourself that realizes that you need something to hurt, to be difficult, to feel worth it. Like if there isn’t some seed of pain at the root of the thing, then it isn’t worth fighting for, isn’t worth the dedication, and you can’t understand why. Perhaps because the start of your life was so easy, so peaceful, despite the world you’d been born into. Perhaps because after your parent’s death everything was suddenly so jarringly difficult, from one blink to the next, life threatening at every turn, that it made the before not seem real anymore. Didn’t seem like it’d ever be attainable again if you didn’t hurt yourself in the process of obtaining it. Perhaps it was just martyrdom, or stupidity, or a subconscious inclination to make everything in your life infinitely more difficult than it actually needed to be. Like that girl who’d always done as was expected of her needed to find some way to counteract her obsequiance with a little bit of rebellion. Some small way within yourself to rail against always being good. Perhaps these small hurts were that form of rebellion.

And then, well really, how could you not resent him after all that? Even if that resentment is overshadowed by how much you love him, how much you need him, still, still you’re angry with him at the same time for keeping that piece of himself away from you when you’ve spilled your blood at his feet. And yet, despite all this, despite all these thoughts running through your mind as you feel his breath press into your chest, as you feel the strong, steady thump of his heart echo into the cavity of your own, you understand him. You understand the motives behind every one of his actions, read the feeling in his eyes like a book, and so how could you not continue to endure all this ache? Continue to crave it. How could you not offer him your understanding, at the very least? If he won’t let you give him anything else but that, then this is all you’ll offer him. A place he can shuck away the fear he holds gripped around his heart, a place to come and be accepted as he is. Whatever is missing after that can be endured, if only he continues to rest his head here on your heart, let you breathe him in, let you feel him.

And oh, you think, it is such a terrible thing to love someone so much. A terrible thing.

Ellie liked to say that time healed all wounds. And sometimes that was true. Sometimes it was not a healing, but merely a scabbing over. Eschar over a festering of hurt still alive beneath the surface, but lived with so long it becomes customary. The bearer becomes complacent – used to it. Parts of you felt like that. Different pockets of painful memory across the surface of your skin. Pushed to the back of your mind in a plight for the preservation of your sanity.

Joel liked to be contradictory and say it was never time. But people, it was people that helped you heal your wounds. Serious, stoic old man that he liked to pretend to be, but you found him incredibly soft and sweet the day he told you that. Trying his best to piece together words to comfort you. You’d shown him exactly how sweet you found him afterwards, on your knees, your mouth wrapped around his hard cock.

And you found they were both right in their own ways. At his side, surrounded by him, the stain of your grief dissipated little by little every day. And as time after Connie’s death passed, the clinic became your priority. The perfect distraction. The patient’s and the people of Jackson were tended to by you and Nancy, who’d become indispensable, with a dedication and hyperfocus, Tommy said, rivaled that of any soldier he had ever served with before. That thought made you quite pleased to think about. For others to recognize the strength in you was cathartic in a way you’d not known you needed.

“There’s been word of a group of travelers – about ten of them.” Maria tells you and Joel. You’re at your office desk, a strew of case notes and charts before you. Joel’s already scowling, shaking his head, arms crossed against his chest. His hair is getting too long again, dark curls streaked with gray, messy and sticking up in all the places where you’d tugged your fingers through earlier when he was kissing you. “A teenage girl found her way to the gates – patrol’s bringing her in now. She’s barely speaking, but we managed to get a bit out of her. Says there’s kids with them, a baby. Says they’re sick, hurt – been traveling a long time.”

Joel looks at you, a forbidding look already building in his eyes, “Absolutely not.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you.” You turn your nose up at him and look back at Maria, he feels his blood boil at your bratiness. “What else did she say, Maria? Is she hurt?”

“I said no, Birdie.”

“Not from what we could tell. Wouldn’t let us get too close– Joel, if they’ve got kids with them–” Maria tries.

“I don’t give a damn. And since when’ve you gotten so fucking lax with the safety of this place? What happened to floatin’ anyone who got too close down the river?”

“Joel–” you admonish sharply. But he isn’t listening to this shit. There’s no way in hell he’s letting you go along with this nonsense. “She ain’t going out there. Absolutely not… With just some unconfirmed story to go on? You think I’d let her–”

“Let me?” Your voice is incredulous.

“It isn’t safe. There are too many people here who need you–” I need you, he thinks, I need you so much, I’ll die without you, I need you safe, “People who rely on you. You’re not gonna put all that in jeopardy for a group of strangers.”

“I’m not completely helpless, you know.” You stand now, crossing your arms beneath your breasts, and fucking hell, now is not the time for him to be ogling your tits. You prop your hip out, the sassiest look he’s ever seen, set on your delicate features. “If I’m out there, if it’s necessary, I can take care of myself.”

“Birdie, you’re not hearing me. The answer is no.” There’s no room for argument in his tone, and he sees your temper flare in your eyes, bright hot and seething at him.

“Joel, I’m not asking your permission. This is what all this has been for – what everything I’ve learned and practiced for was always meant for.” You splay your palms wide, your voice cracking a little in your fervor, and he feels a terrible sense of premonition begin to creep up the back of his neck. His hair standing on end. “There may be only one of me, but that makes my skill all the more necessary to share. There’s only one of me and lots of people who need help – and I’m gonna do everything I can to help everyone I can. Strangers or not. You cannot stop me.”

He turns away, his heavy boot accidentally colliding with the chair beside him and jostling it violently. “Fuck–” he spits, “Fuck,” runs a hand through his hair, grips hard and tugs. The thought of you out there, in danger, vulnerable, sets his teeth on edge. Goes against everything howling inside him to keep you safe, protected. To hunch his body over yours and bear his teeth like an animal at anyone who’d dare get too close, horde you only for himself. At the same time, his own sense of self preservation rears its ugly head. The thought of you hurt so abhorrent in his mind he shies away from it – wants to run far away, avoid witnessing such a thing.

He pivots sharply back in your direction, brandishing a threatening finger at your chest, “If we do this, we do it how I say. Exactly as I say. No questions asked.” He turns his glare on Maria, “And we’re taking a good group with us. None of those idiots who can barely handle themselves. I want Pablo, Kenneth and Ben.” You and Maria share a look. Jesus, fucking incompetent, the lot of them, he thinks and paces, but they’ll have to do. “And Tommy’s fucking coming. If you’re gonna risk mine, then you’ll risk yours.”

“Fair enough,” Maria says, holding up her palms at him. Her face is serious, not letting his provocation rattle her. “I agree.”

“Fucking better,” he grumbles under his breath, glaring at her out of the corner of his eye. You sidle up to him, run a soothing palm up his belly to his chest. He has to suppress a shiver. “You’re gonna rip all the hair out of your head, baby,” you croon, soft and appeasing, small palm wrapping around his wrist to gently pull his hand away. The glare he levels at you would send a grown man running. You scrunch your nose at him, and fuck the fact that he wants to kiss you senseless right now. No one person should be this beautiful, this appealing. It surely must go against some law of nature, for one cruel little creature to be so unbearably beguiling, so hard to say no to. Unable to hold on to his annoyance at you for anything longer than a few seconds, he wraps your small hand in his and tugs you further into him. “You’ll do as I say. We’re going to be extremely careful out there. I sense anything even slightly off, and we’re coming back. Understood?” he murmurs into your hair. You look up at him, eyes wide and falsely guileless, oh he knows all your tricks, you can’t fool him with that look. You nod in confirmation, soft pink cheek smushed up against his shoulder. Jesus.

Read Chapter IV

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End Notes: I kind of want to mention some things (and don’t know really know how to put it), but I realize there are parts of Birdie’s thought process in this chapter, and really in the story going forward, that some people might not agree with all that much, or find like idk misguided, unhealthy, etc., and yes, most definitely acknowledged. But really, the whole point of this story is that she’s working through some things, they’re both working through things. So… I know her point of view is perhaps not very well adjusted, but I think she’s going to get better eventually. They’re BOTH going to get better eventually. At least, that’s where I hope I’m able to lead them both to, and I hope you all don’t judge her too harshly or think too poorly of her before this is all over. My goal when I started writing this was to examine the grace we all sometimes need others to give us when we’re our worst or weakest selves. This is a very personal chapter for me, and perhaps my favorite of the entire story.

I’m sending lots of love to you all. Thank you for reading. xx

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller/you #joel miller/reader #pedro pascal #tlou fic #joel the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #tlou #pedro pascal characters #FOG fic

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