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softlyspector · 9 months

Text

Sage

Summary: Joel finished your tattoo but staying in each other lives is easier than he thinks. A late night phone call reminds him of how easy it is to lose something too.

Read the beginning: You put aside your touch aversion for a tattoo from Joel.

Pairing: tattoo artist!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~10.6k

Warnings: slow build, no outbreak tattoo!au, angst then comfort, the 'believes they're hard to love, loving them is like breathing' trope, reader has issues with touch and is mostly touch adverse (joel's workin' on that though), description of a past abusive relationship, undefined unresolved previous trauma, insecurity, anxiety, Joel gets to have both his daughters in this

A/N: I can't tell you how happy the love for this series has made me. You’re all my heroes and this is dedicated to all of you.

Once again, we’re ignoring canon and pretending like Joel can draw for this fic, thank you. Editing this was a labor, so if there are any mistakes blame my tired eyes. Thank you for reading! As always, I would love to know your thoughts! Please please please, be sure to leave feedback!

“Joel?” Your voice is staticky in the dark.

He’s used to answering the phone half awake in the middle of the night, shadows still strung between the wings of his window. Between bailing Tommy out of jail when he was younger and rescuing Sarah and Ellie from sleepovers they didn’t want to stay at, he’s answered the phone in the shy hours of the very early morning more times than he can count.

In the few months he’s known you, though, you’ve never called him, not once, let alone in the middle of the night.

“Joel?” The connection crackles and your voice wavers. “Can you hear me?”

It’s then that his mind catches up with him, digs its heels in and kicks to life. He hadn’t said anything beyond a cranky, irritated hello? after the shrill ring woke him and he blindly groped for the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hey, yeah, I can hear ya.”

Maybe he has the good sense to answer you, but he’s not awake enough to consider the why of the call yet. He’s glad to hear your voice, though.

It’s like a sweet little song in his ear when he hadn’t gotten to see you at all that day.

And lately the days he doesn’t get to see you are a rarity.

Most days, you stop by the studio but some days he meets you for coffee, or goes on a drive with you, or insists on teaching you to fish. You’ve been at a few Friday dinners with his girls, though not all of them because you fold yourself up tight and try not to intrude. Most Sundays find you arriving early at his door with pie and coffee from Flu’s, which you eat on his front porch in companionable silence before the heat of the day can settle in.

“I’m sorry,” you say. Your voice trembles and Joel feels like a bucket of cold water has been thrown over him.

He lurches up in bed so fast that spots dance in his vision and a spear of pain slices through his shoulder, raking iron hot nails into a years old injury. “Sweetheart?” A knot of protective worry forms in his chest, lights a fire in his belly. “What’s goin’ on?”

The moon casts a thin, pale beam of light across the foot of his bed, growing brighter by the second as his eyes adjust to the darkness. But then you continue and the protective feeling only grows, and then goes hard with an icy ferocity. “Sorry for calling so late and bothering you with this but I don’t—I didn’t have anyone else I wanted to call.”

Your voice breaks on the last word, the creaking in your mouth splintering across the line. “Can you…I don’t—” There’s a little pause in which Joel can hear your footsteps as you pace and the quick sound of your breathing. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Joel pulls himself out of bed and shucks on his jeans that had lain crumpled on the floor where he left them and then pulls on the first shirt his hand touches when he yanks open a dresser drawer. “What’s goin’ on?” He asks again. “Where are you?”

“Ugh—” You swallow thickly, sounding inexplicably embarrassed. “It’s nothing, really. I’m-I’m being stupid. I shouldn’t have called.”

He can practically see you fidgeting, looking down, shaking your head. Can practically feel you thinking of hanging up the phone, nervous doe eyes darting around like you’ve done something wrong.

“Don’t sound like nothin’,” he grits out, his voice coming out harsher than he means it to. “What happened?”

You’d gone down to Austin to visit some friends for the day. It’s why he hadn’t gotten the chance to see you.

Your ex slips suddenly to the forefront of his mind, who was the goddamn reason you’d moved out of Austin in the first place. Then all the myriad of other terrible things that could have prompted you to call him so late flash through his mind.

It only serves to make his chest burn.

“You still in Austin?” Again, his voice comes out angrier than he intends. He pulls open his bedroom door and moves down the hall, not bothering to flip on any lights.

“No. I’m at—I’m at home,” you stutter.

He pauses in the front entryway, wallet and keys dangling from his fingers, one foot halfway into a shoe. “Home?”

“I’m—yeah, home. I just…I came home and the street door was open. I thought maybe the neighbors just forgot to close it when they were bringing groceries in or something, but then the security light wasn’t coming on and my apartment door is open too. It’s probably nothing, Joel, don’t bother with—look I’m sorry for—”

He’s frozen for a moment. The cavernous black hole of your front door looms, the teeth of the darkness sharp and wanting.

The street door, despite his best efforts to augment it, is notoriously difficult to get open. If it was open when you got home—

If your apartment door was open too—

“I’m sorry for calling,” you say again when he doesn’t answer, your voice small and anxious. “I think I might have been robbed or something. I just. . . I didn’t want to call anyone else,” you repeat. “I’m afraid.”

Afraid.

It’s a cold word.

Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket and getting his boots all the way on, he tugs his own front door open. “Don’t you move a goddamn muscle. Do not go inside. Go back down to the street.”

“Joel—”

“I’m serious,” he all but snarls. “Now.”

“Okay,” you agree. Your voice is tight, choked. “Okay.”

“I’m gettin’ on the road now.”

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer for a minute, just listens to your breathing as he gets in his truck and turns the engine, phone squished between his shoulder and ear. The drive into town is only about ten minutes. You should be alright in that time.

“You there?” Your voice is breathy. You sound a little like you might have been crying and he wonders how long you waffled in front of your door, trying to decide whether to call him or just go inside by yourself. “Joel?”

“‘m here.” He turns off the long dirt road that leads to the ranch. “Yeah, I’m here, honey. Stay on the phone.”

“Okay,” you murmur. “Thanks,” you say again.

The word doesn’t register. His mind is already with you, imagining you standing alone on your street, or worse, with folks lurking around the corner waiting to do you harm. It’s an insidious image that he knows isn’t based entirely in reality. “You alone?” Despite his thoughts, he can’t imagine anyone out on the streets of the tiny town at this hour.

“Mm. Just me.”

“Good. Stay away from that door,” he grumbles.

“Bossy,” you accuse lightly, the soft attempt at a joke.

He doesn’t laugh. The drive feels like it's taking too long, longer than the ten minutes it normally takes.

He steps on the accelerator and his mind wanders to all the other times he’s been called, into the dark or otherwise, because his people needed him. To the hospital once when Sarah had broken her ankle at a pool party, to the high school when Ellie’d gotten into a fight that ended with a blood spattered hallway and broken nose.

Those were the worst calls, drives. That was when he felt most helpless, like he was stuck in quicksand. There were just things that he couldn’t protect them from. He couldn’t be there every second of the day, he couldn’t always be with them, and that had always grated.

Most assured him the anxiety would fade as Sarah got older, but it never did. It hadn’t even begun with her. It was always there, that protective anxiousness. It had gotten exponentially worse with Sarah’s birth, a tiny life he was responsible for, a tiny life that was so delicate.

And then—Ellie. At least with Sarah he’d had some piece of mind. But Ellie, like Tommy, had a knack for trouble. Too many times she swung in the back door with bleeding knees and twigs stuck in her hair and a scrape over her cheek. It wasn’t always a fight, sometimes it was just climbing a tree she had no business being in, racing her bike against kids twice her size, and unlike Sarah, she had no sense of preservation.

“Are you hurt?” The question burns in his mouth. He doesn't mean to ask it.

“Hurt—” you start, sounding surprised. “No. No, of course not. I’m okay, Joel. It’s just the stupid door. I’m just—I told you I’m just being stupid. Listen, just—”

Joel knows what you’re going to say, and he should tell you that you aren’t being stupid, that it was good you called him; that he wants you to call him, all the time, but especially when you need him.

Instead, he snaps, “Don’t move.”

Your voice cuts off.

His eyes strain past streetlights and empty, open fields, past the copse of trees that marked the start of a forest where he’d seen a trio of deer a few weeks before, like some kind of omen.

In the distance, the town comes into view. You don’t say anything but he listens to the sound of your breathing, the calm in and out that reassures him that you’re okay, that you’re there patiently waiting.

When he turns down your street, you come into view, standing beneath a streetlight in front of your building. The security light above your door flickers weakly, but otherwise remains dark. “You see me?”

You turn and lift your hand. “I see you,” you say, voice crumbling and soft. The golden light pools around you, casts your shadow behind you like a ghost, or an angel. But you’re there, you’re safe, he can see you, and some of the tension melts off his shoulders. “Gonna hang up now,” you say.

“All right,” he agrees.

The line goes dead.

Joel is angry with you.

It’s the only thought that sticks, barbed and fanged and catching, in your mind. It burrows into the top of your spine and makes your whole body go rigid with fear.

Joel is angry with you.

Joel, who’s always been sweet and kind. Who introduced you to his family with affection in his voice, took you fishing and always tossed the fish back when you looked so mournfully at them, who pointed out birds and deer to you quietly and with a practiced ease, who lets you read on the green leather couch in his shop and asks your opinions on the designs he’s working on that you often wish were for you.

But you’ve never really fucked up before. You’ve never made him angry.

This, calling him out of bed in the middle of the night, would give him plenty to be angry about. It would give him something to blame you for.

The truck rolls to a stop, headlights flaring out, and dread forms a knot in the back of your throat.

Before you can open your mouth, to head off his foul mood and explain, Joel is out of the truck and his hands are cupped around your shoulders, then the sides of your face.

You flinch at the suddenness of it and then tense but Joel doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes darting over your body like he expects to find you gravely injured. He doesn’t normally touch you so abruptly and the feeling of his hands on your skin makes tears burn behind your eyes.

He looks pretty in the moonlight. His eyes are cast dark and shaded as they search yours, his pupils so blown out the brown is consumed. You aren’t sure what he’s looking for. “You all right?” He asks, the comforting scent of him wrapping around you. He smells like rosemary and pine, like sawdust. You think distantly that he must have been working on some project earlier in the day.

And sage. He smells like protection.

His thumb slides over your cheek slowly in a vaguely self soothing way.

You resist the urge to twist out of grip, trying to remind yourself that now isn’t then, that he isn’t him.

Your body remembers though, remembers what it’s like to taste fear.

“Fine,” you reassure him again and pull back slightly. “I just—like I said, it’s nothing. It’s stupid. I just got spooked. I—Joel I’m sorry—”

Joel doesn’t seem to hear you as he releases your face, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there. He grips your elbow instead and leads you to the passenger side of the truck. “You stay here,” he says. “‘M gonna take a look around. Give me your key.”

There’s a protective violence around him, a current of energy that makes you wary, that you don’t want to be on the wrong side of.

“You—Joel, please, listen—” You attempt to shake his hand off, panic clawing at your chest. You’re too tense to be touched, too anxious he’s about to snap at you.

Joel has never raised his voice at you. This fear isn’t one that should rest with him and that frustrates you even more. It makes you feel crazy and unbalanced and like you don’t know who’s really in front of you.

Still, it’s your fault, after all. It’s your fault he’s here, and maybe that’s good enough for him to start.

His eyes are like hard, dark flint, like chips of glittering amber, glinting in the pale moonlight that washes out his skin, highlights the circles beneath his eyes.

“Just stay here,” he repeats. His voice is hard when his eyes flash up to yours. “I’ll only be a minute.” His hand still cradles your elbow as he pulls the truck’s door open, thumb sweeping over the ridge of bone there.

His hand feels tight, even though it’s probably not. You tug your arm gently out of his grasp and take a step back. “I’m not going to stay here,” you try again, gathering your courage and tipping your chin up. “It’s my apartment. And I don’t want you to go alone.”

Joel stares at you, brows lowering over his eyes.

Anxiety beats a nervous, familiar pattern against your ribs, hollowing out the well of your lungs. You bite back the urge to apologize to him again, but he clearly doesn’t want to hear it since he hasn’t responded to it yet.

He is angry with you, and you don’t like that. But you try to remind yourself again that Joel is not your ex, that in the months you’ve known him, he’s never made you feel unsafe, or like you couldn’t disagree with him.

But it hadn’t been like that with your ex at first either, and your body is not listening to your mind.

“Jesus Christ—” he grits out then stops, the words long and deeply accented in his mouth. You do your best to swallow down the squirming worry souring your belly. “Fine. Just—behind me.”

You aren’t sure how to deal with Joel like this, he’s always so soft and kind and easy with you.

And you suppose he’s being soft with you now, he’s just—

Angry. He sounds mad; he must be pissed off. Probably because you’ve called him out of bed in the middle of night for no good reason, really. You should have just plucked up the courage to go inside by yourself. It’s likely you’ve called him down for nothing.

“Okay,” you relent. “Behind you.”

He doesn’t answer and shuts the truck door. Instead, he moves toward your building without preamble, decidedly not looking at you.

Seeing the street door wide open when you got home had scared you, the security light not blinking on had terrified you, and then Joel’s constant worries had drifted into the back of your mind, cloyingly poisonous.

He hates that you leave your windows open and trust the town you live in. He hates anytime you mention that your neighbors leave their door unlocked, even as a joke.

Ain’t safe, he always said, you don’t do that.

It was never a question.

He worries about you standing on the street and struggling with the door. He worries about you getting robbed or worse. You always rolled your eyes, because it was always fine and Joel was a serial worrier.

But that had been all you were able to think of as you stood there on the street.

Somehow, you’d convinced yourself to go inside after a few long minutes. You’d debated just going inside too, when you found your apartment door open but the fear had eventually won out.

Joel’s broad shoulders disappear into the dark entryway before the stairwell light flares on. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and jeans. He looks rumpled and soft and painfully domestic. His jeans are pressed with creases, the laces of his boots undone. The t-shirt stretches across the plains of his back, tight against his shoulders. His hair, normally carefully brushed, is mussed. A lick of gray hair sticks up off his forehead.

When he stops in front of your apartment door, you have to repress the urge to smooth it back, to press yourself into his side in silent askance for comfort you’re not sure you deserve.

“I’m sorry,” you find yourself saying again. “Really,” you continue, trying to ignore the dread building colonies in your lungs.

Nervous now, you realize, not because you might have been robbed, but because Joel is angry with you.

But, like all the other times, Joel doesn't acknowledge your apology. He pushes the door open and flips on the light just inside the door.

Your apartment looks the way it always does, homely and calm. You can’t see a single thing out of place, but that doesn’t stop Joel from searching through it anyway.

For the next few minutes it's quiet as Joel moves slowly around your little apartment. It’s messy, messier than usual. And when he pushes your bedroom door open, you feel embarrassment crawl up the back of your throat.

Because this is the first time he’s seeing your bedroom, also a mess, and you realize you wanted that to go differently.

He’s only ever had cause to sit at your tiny kitchen table, your sofa, before.

The floor is strewn with clothes, your bed is unmade, half your jewelry is out of its box and strung across your dresser. Used glasses and mugs sit on your bedside table that you’ve yet to take to the kitchen, your desk is a mess of old receipts, record sleeves, discarded pens, and stacks of books.

You wince when he pushes aside your curtains and slams your window shut, the one you always left open for Paprika, before he opens your closet door.

When your throat tightens, you leave him to your room and sit on your couch instead to wait.

Inexplicable shame and embarrassment melts around your heart. You try not to think of yourself as a bother to him, not exactly, anyway, and not anymore. But it's hard in this moment when he sounds so upset, so irritated with you.

Over the last few months, being around Joel and being. . .kind of something, something indefinable and light, to each other, you’ve realized it wasn’t just the tattoo. The tattoo your ex gave you, branded you with, was just the final nail in the coffin.

Now is a good reminder of that, that you’re sitting around waiting for Joel to tell you how useless you are, to break something, to snap at you.

He won’t, you know that. Somewhere inside you, you know that’s the truth.

But your body does not understand that. You’re coiled as tight as a spring, hands fisted in your lap as you wait for the other shoe to drop, for his concern to evaporate when he realizes there really is nothing wrong.

Anxiety burns bright in your belly, echoes in the stiff cut of Joel’s shoulders, the way he stalks around your apartment, checking increasingly more absurd hiding places until he’s satisfied that you’re alone and the door is locked.

Joel pushes aside the clothes hanging in your closet, gets on his hands and knees and looks under your bed, and finally peeks in your bathroom.

He feels calmer, better, now that he knows you’re safe and unharmed, that you’re there in the living room with the front door locked and your bedroom window shut.

Which reminds him of that damn cat you sometimes let into your apartment, and doesn’t seem to be around.

Joel trails back to the main room, ignoring the details of your bedroom—the clothes in piles on the floor, the few books strewn across your bed and desk with pens sticking out of the pages, the soft cerulean and cream blankets draped over your bed and on the chair in the corner. He shouldn’t get to see those things, not like this at least. “Where’s your cat?”

You blink and turn to look at him over the back of the sofa. You have one of the brightly colored, crocheted shawls over your shoulders and had been staring at his painting. The one he gifted you a few weeks before and that you don’t know is of you. The doe with bees dancing around her ears.

It’s an okay painting, but you adore it.

“What?”

“Your cat,” Joel grumbles. He’s yet to meet the cat, who always made himself scarce whenever he happened to find himself in your apartment. “Paprika, right? He’s not inside. He okay?”

He doesn’t want to go searching alleyways in the dark for the orange tabby but he’ll do it. For you, he’d do it.

“Oh,” you frown. “He’s not really mine,” you shake your head and shift your eyes from his. You look anxious and drawn. It’s like a lead weight in his stomach, to see fear and uncertainty spilled across your face. “He’s fine. I just feed him sometimes. He comes and goes when he likes.”

Joel hesitates. “You sure?”

“I—” Your eyes flicker over him before you look away again, your expression closing up. “Um,” you shift uncomfortably. Your shoulders are tense. “Yeah. He doesn’t—he doesn’t really need me.”

Something about the way you say it breaks his heart.

There are a lot of things you don’t see clearly about yourself, and your worth, your importance, is one of them.

“Thanks for coming by,” you say eventually when he doesn’t reply and rounds the couch to sit next to you. “I really didn’t mean to bother you.”

Joel reaches for you, carefully slots his hand in the crook of your elbow. You tense and he sweeps his thumb over the inside of your arm, soothing you the way he always does. His eyes drift down to your tattoo, the one he gave you. It looks beautiful on you. So beautiful he’s drawn up half a dozen other designs just for you.

He’d draw forever, if it meant getting something just right for you again.

It leaves something warm in him, that you like the tattoo so much.

“I think everything is all right,” he admits. He expects you to relax with that reassurance but your arm goes impossibly tenser beneath his touch. “I don’t want you stayin’ here tonight.”

The words fall out of his mouth. They’d been twisting circles around his mind since he picked up your phone call half an hour before, but now they spill out, desperate. Anxiety warps his voice into something hard, something tainted with acrid vulnerability that he hates.

He doesn’t know if you hear it, but you go still and swallow thickly. You tug your arm away from his hand and rub the inside of your elbow.

Your eyes meet his, wide and weighed down with something hurt. His pretty little doe, afraid. He suppresses the urge to tell you it’s all right, that he’s got you.

“But it’s all fine, isn't it?” You ask, like that matters at all, like the night isn’t long.

“Guess so,” he concedes. “But I ain’t leavin’ you here alone tonight. I can’t.”

Your frown, lips parting gently as you stare down at your lap.

“I’d feel better if y’stayed with me,” he continues when you don’t answer, his voice still laced with irritation. He clears it, tries to make it softer but the worry lingers, infects, roots down in him like you have, bright as sunshine, sweet as tea and bumblebees on a summer evening. You make him sick with worry and he needs to know you’re safe. He needs to see you, real and right in front of him. “Tonight.”

“Better?” You look up again, confusion tugging your brows up. “Why?”

Joel fists his hands on his knees. His knuckles strain against his skin, the flesh white with tension. It pulls hard until something starts to ache, and he has to wonder if that’s how you always feel. If your skin feels like a thousand tiny needles are prinkling at the underside of your skin.

“Yeah,” he says, his accent deepened, kinked and hard. “Better knownin’ you’re okay.” His voice doesn’t raise in volume, but you still flinch. You try to pass it off as a shiver but he sees it, finally sees what you see, what you’re so clearly waiting for.

The thought alone makes him want to curl inward, crawl inside his own heart and shield you there. Makes him sick with unease.

And his suspicions are only confirmed when you duck your head, tuck your hands beneath your thighs, and start again, “I’m sorry for bothering you. I really didn’t mean to drag you out of bed for nothing.”

Joel isn’t sure what to say to that as he realizes you’ve been apologizing repeatedly since he got there.

It makes him hate himself, because you’re so clearly afraid of him.

The silence stretches, moonlight pools on your thighs and around your calves from the kitchen window, competing with the low yellow of the floor lamp. You fidget with a loose thread on your jeans, fingers plucking nervously at it.

“It wasn’t—” He shakes his head. He can’t think of a way to reassure you. “You think it was nothin’?”

“Well,” you glance around your intruder-less apartment. Like it’s all the damning evidence you need. “It was. I shouldn’t have called.”

Joel curls a gentle finger beneath your chin and tips your face up, making an effort to have his voice as gentle as he possibly can. Like you’re that deer again, the one that’s familiar with him and yet still wary, still watchful. “You all right with that? Comin’ home with me?” You reluctantly lift your eyes to his and give a mute nod. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry,” you burst out again, soft eyes fringed with worry. “I—”

“Hey.” Joel doesn’t let you look away from him, smoothes his thumb against your chin. Your skin is soft there, and you don’t try to pull away again. “I always want you to call on me. For anythin’. It wasn’t nothin’. I’m glad you called me.”

You blink at the sincerity in his voice. Some of the tension around you fades. “I ain’t upset with you,” he says, just so you’re both clear.

You pull your face away from his hand, and he knows your skin feels stretched too thin, tight and uncomfortable, because you scrub at it again with your hand.

Joel lets his hand drop to the space between you. “Stay with me tonight, darlin’.” he pleads, not sure he’ll be able to make the drive home if you say no. “In the mornin’ we’ll come back here, see if anything is missin’, and I’ll change the locks.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine, Joel,” you try again. “It’s okay. I’m safe here.”

But that isn’t good enough. He needs to know you’re okay and he can’t do that if you’re in this damn apartment alone with locks he no longer has any kind of faith in.

He doesn’t want to try touching you again, not when you’re fidgeting and anxious and pulling away. Guilt ties knots around his lungs when he thinks of you flinching, how often he’s touched you without thought tonight. “Look at me,” he says instead. “Look at me, baby.”

You lift your eyes to his, your gaze hooking into his, desperation he can’t place lingering in your expression. “I’m proud of you, for callin’ on me. But I won’t rest knowin’ you’re here alone.”

You frown. “Proud?” This time, you reach for him.

Your hand is warm and soft, the brush of your fingers against his palm like homecoming. “Yeah.” And then, again, “I’m not mad. You did good.”

He can’t tell if you believe him, but you agree to stay with him anyway.

You’ve been to Joel’s house more than a few times and each time, it’s more familiar than the last.

Joel’s touch is on everything there. His girls’ lives are fingerprinted on every surface, his life and his family pressed into each fold of the house. The walls sigh with memories that have been collected and transported from Austin, wrapped in tissue paper and delicately given a place to live. Somehow, it always smells like sage has always just been burned.

There are a pair of sheep and a goat that command the acres of land around the ranch. “I’d like a couple horses,” he’d said the first time he brought you over and showed you around, months before. A couple weeks had passed since you’d had breakfast with him and his girls for the first time, and you were already dangerously attached to him. “But that’s money and time I don’t have.”

“You should get chickens,” you’d said, petting one of the goats through the wooden fence, squinting at him through autumn sunshine.

“Chickens?”

“Mhm. For eggs. Cost less money than horses and there’s nothing like fresh eggs.”

Joel had only looked consideringly out over the field. “Chickens for horses,” he’d laughed a little, the sound dry and pleasant, like he found you a peculiar kind of amusing. “There’s an idea.”

The driveway is long, the world far away. Late autumn air drifts in the truck’s open windows, warm with dry heat. The fingers of bare trees reach toward the sky, skeletal and thin, clenched around the outline of the moon.

The ranch always feels like a home, like a refuge, and in the night it seems like a fortress. He parks the truck beneath a leafless oak and kills the engine. You listen to it pop as it cools in the darkness.

Lightning bugs careen through the air, the low sounds of crickets and cicadas cascading on the breeze. “C’mon,” Joel’s voice is crinkled, washed in the gentle, pastel colored tones you know. “Let’s get you inside.”

Joel takes your bag from your hands and meets you on your side of the truck before you even have the door fully open, his hand pressed to your spine. You fight the urge to lean away, an anxiousness thrumming under your skin that isn’t familiar when it comes to Joel’s touch.

As you cross the driveway to his front porch you spot something through the dark, a new structure near the sheep’s fence. “Are you building something?”

He turns to where you’re looking. “Chicken coop,” he mumbles.

“You’re getting chickens?” You ask, surprised.

“Told me to, didn’t ya?”

You suppose you did, though you didn’t know he’d actually taken your suggestion to heart.

But he sounds annoyed again, so you let it go, let him push you ahead of him toward the house. Joel’s front door, unlike your own, opens without complaint.

His keys rattle as he sits them on the table inside the door. The living room light blinks on, a warm yellow that contrasts against the lightening blue sky beyond the front windows. Guilt swirls in your belly again. It’s so late that it’s now early.

If you weren’t so stupid, if you weren’t so useless—

The only thing you can be grateful for is that it’s a Sunday and Joel doesn’t have to rush to the studio after being awake all night.

A new, shame laden thought blooms, infects—maybe he felt he had no choice but to heed your call. Because you’re useless.

“This way,” Joel grumbles lowly in your ear, his hand on your hip, pushing you through the living room gently but forcefully, like he’s herding a particularly stubborn sheep.

You step away from his hand, and this time Joel notices immediately and drops his hand. “That’s okay,” you assure him. “I remember where the bathroom is.”

“You all right?” He asks. “I know you’re probably—”

“I know you said you aren’t angry,” you interrupt, fidgeting with your fingers. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things for me. You could have said no. You could have told me to figure it out.”

He stares at you, confusion pulling at the lines in his face. You have to lock down the urge to reach up and trace the delicate pattern of crow’s feet beside his eyes. “I didn’t want to say no.”

You blink, something warm worming its way into your heart, replacing the dread that had curled there like a snake, sharp with venom, waiting to strike. “You didn’t?”

“Sweetheart,” he says, extending his hand to you but not touching you. “I’d do it every night if I had to, if it meant you were safe. You don’t have to figure it out. Not alone, anyhow.”

“Well,” you say gently. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to every night.” Then, before you can help yourself, you continue, “I know you said you weren’t, but you just. . .you sounded angry.” You stop and think about leaving it at that but he would never understand you if you left him to guess. You want to be honest with him besides. You want him to trust you. “And I. . .my ex he—well, he would have been upset. He would have told me to figure it out.”

You fold your hand into his, still outstretched to you. The pads of his fingers are rough and familiar beneath yours. “I ain’t him,” he reminds you.

“I know. But it’s hard to remember, sometimes.” You take a long breath. “I always had to get ahead of it, y’know? Because I was always in the wrong. It was somehow always my fault.”

Joel watches you, his eyes knowing in a way you can’t decipher. He nods and instead of answering, he holds out your bag. “C’mon,” he says, voice soft, like the brush of wings. “Been a long night.”

When you’ve washed your face and changed your clothes and convinced yourself that Joel was telling the truth and that he would not mind seeing you in your pajamas—you trek back through the house to find him in the kitchen.

He’s sitting at the dining table, covered in Sarah’s textbooks from the previous semester and photo albums and mail, a bowl of fruit and a jar of honey, art supplies and the tiniest carving of a deer you’ve ever seen. You pause and let your bag fall to the floor before slowly approaching.

Joel’s shoulders are loose and soft, one hand relaxed and open on the table, the other curled around a pencil as he sketches in an open leather bound book.

He turns and closes the book before you can peer over his shoulder and see what it is he’s working on. “Hey,” he says, the cut of his voice back to what you know. It alights on you in a warm glow, chases the fog of worry from your mind. “You all right?”

It feels like the thousandth time he’s asked you.

“I promise I’m fine, Joel,” you assure, pressing one hand to the space between his shoulder blades. He leans back into your touch almost immediately, the tendon in his neck loosening. You rub your thumb slowly against his skin. Thick muscle flexes and releases beneath your hand. “Really.”

“It’s okay,” he says, glancing up at you. “If you’re shaken up.”

You pause and tilt your head at him. “Do you want me to be?” You ask, finally pushing that errant lock of his hair back down and into place.

“No,” he answers immediately. He stares up at you with big, sincere eyes. Your gaze flicks across his face, down to his mouth, and not for the first time, you find yourself wishing he’d kiss you.

Just like each Sunday morning spent on his porch, just like all those times he pointed wildlife out to you, his shoulder pressed into yours, his face close to yours when you turned to smile at him.

“Are you shaken up?” You ask, refocusing on the softness of his gaze.

Joel shifts in his seat and then reaches out to draw the chair next to him out. You let your hand fall from his back and fold yourself into the space next to him, wishing he’d tuck you into his side.

He doesn’t, because he’s Joel. Instead, he lays his hand on the table and lets you come to him, just like he always does, just like he always has.

A few weeks before, when Joel was driving you back to town, you’d seen a deer on the side of the road. She was beautiful with big, dark eyes and a smooth tawny coat. You’d pointed her out, watched the flick and twitch of her alert ears.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen such a pretty animal before. And then, behind her, two spotted deer, smaller, clearly younger, but no longer fawns, had appeared.

Joel, to your surprise, pulled over. He told you to stay put and then approached them slowly, so he could usher them back into the woods rather than spook them into the road. He hadn’t said anything to you about it and you hadn’t asked, but the act had stuck with you.

Now, his hand there on the table, you’re reminded of that moment. You’re reminded of all the moments like this one, where he patiently waited for you to come closer.

You reach out and fold your fingers through his. “Yeah, I was,” he admits and for a long while he doesn’t say anything else. You aren’t really expecting him to.

The light in the kitchen is warm and muted, a cold blue morning light beginning to grow on the other side of the blinds. There are pictures of his girls all along the wall beside the door that leads to the back deck.

Sarah and Ellie in high school graduation gowns and caps, Ellie bent over someone’s shoulder as she tattooed, hair obscuring her face and theirs, Sarah as a baby in Joel’s arms, Ellie as a gap-toothed child, tongue poking out of her mouth, Tommy and Joel with their arms around each other, fishing poles leaning against the truck behind them.

Joel is only in a couple of the pictures, the space on the wall reserved for the people he loved and not himself. You squint closer. “Joel,” you say, a spike of laughter in your voice. “Is that you? Did Ellie tattoo you?”

“Yep,” he says with a shrug. “Needed the practice.”

“I didn’t know,” you turn back to him and tighten your grip on his hand. You smile. “How many tattoos do you have that I’ve never gotten to see?”

His mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. “Guess,” he says, throwing your challenge from months ago back at you.

You roll your eyes and don’t take the bait. Instead you say, “It’s okay, you know? That you were shaken up. That’s okay. I’m okay.”

He watches you for a long moment before his eyes drop, and he watches your hands instead. His voice is carefully casual and even when he asks, “How long did you stay with him? After the tattoo?”

There’s nothing accusatory in his voice and it takes you a moment to realize Joel is asking about the tattoo on your shoulder, the one your ex permanently marked you with.

He’s asking about the Pandora’s box of your body, the cavalcade of emotions and fears that lived inside you.

You expected anger, to be screamed at for something out of your control, to be faulted for someone else compromising your safety, to be blamed for asking for help and wanting someone else to take care of you.

“The tattoo. . .” you trail off and swallow back the uncomfortable feeling that lodges itself in the back of your throat. “It was the last straw.” You look away. “I just didn’t realize it at the time. I thought all the other stuff—I thought it was my fault. It doesn’t make sense while it’s happening to you, I guess. You pretend it’s normal because sometimes things are fine and good. I was just stupid enough to wait until after he left me with something permanent to realize things were so bad.”

Joel doesn’t say anything for a minute but when he pulls his hand away from yours, your belly swoops painfully, a knot forming in your chest.

It’s a lot.

Your issues with touch, the relationship trauma you haven’t examined but locked away to burst to the surface while someone was trying to help you. The doubt that he even really wanted to help you, because who would?

But then he says, “It ain’t permanent. Look here.” He tips your chin up with a delicate tap.

You turn and watch him leaf through the leather bound book. He pulls out a sketch and hands it to you. The paper is thick, the edges of it rough and torn. You don’t say anything, not really sure what you’re looking at. The design is beautiful, in the same style as the tattoo on your forearm.

It’s so clearly for you specifically that it makes your heart cinch painfully tight.

“It’s a—we can change it however y’want. It’s a design for a cover-up,” he plucks the page from your fingers and turns it. “See here, there underneath is the original, best as I could remember it anyway.” It’s a coverup of the ugly fucking tattoo on your shoulder, the reminder, the painful, itchy grossness.

You stare at it, unable to form words, lips moving soundlessly as you take the page back, looking more closely at the details, at the clever ways he’d thought of incorporating the existing lines. He doesn’t say anything, not even when you turn and throw your arms around his neck, squeezing tight until his arms curl around your waist. “He doesn’t get to have you,” he says.

One broad hand slides up your spine to cup the back of your neck. It makes you feel small. In a good way, in a way that makes you close your eyes to stave off the tide rising in your chest.

He’d done that the last time he held you, too. When you’d melted into him in your kitchen and told him you were nothing but work. He’d whispered things like it’s okay and good girl in your ear then.

His fingers are warm and firm against your skin, rough and soft in all the right places. An ache forms between your ribs, juts up into your heart and splits you open.

“Thank you,” you say against his shoulder. “For everything.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for,” he says, his chest rising and falling with each word, like a symphony against your own body.

You bury your nose against his neck, let the pins and needles of touch fade away, replaced with the safety that Joel carried around with him like it cost him nothing. “I mean it,” you say quietly.

“I know you do,” he replies.

The morning light is golden now, bleeding in through the curtains in thin shafts, bars that cross you and Joel, still settled in his arms. It doesn’t feel wrong to relax against him, to let him rub your back slowly.

It doesn’t hurt, and you realize you don’t expect it to.

“You wanna sleep?”

“Maybe for a little while.”

You move out of his grasp, and then let him pull you along to his bedroom.

Joel’s room is darker than the kitchen, and it's easy not to think too hard about what’s happening as you slide beneath the sheets next to him.

It’s quiet, the whole world still and silent aside from the fan rotating slowly overhead.

You reach for him in the dark, curl up tight against his side. His arm slides around your back, tugs you that much closer. He’s still in his jeans but you don’t point that out because you don’t want him to move.

“One of my tattoos,” he says against your temple, when you relax into the safe circle of his arms. “Is over my heart.”

You contemplate that for a long time, trying to imagine what it might be. “A nice one? Or an Ellie apprenticing one?”

He chuckles. “A nice one.” You expect him to ask about your tattoos, and you’re prepared to answer, but he says instead, “It’s been a long time, since I’ve done this.”

Joel doesn’t specify what he means by this, whatever little thing has been growing between you. “Have someone in your bed?” You tease.

He doesn’t answer, the silence heavy, almost melancholy. His hand slides up your back again, the fabric of your shirt teasing up. You tense when his fingers brush against your bare skin, warm and gentle.

His hand moves away and tugs your shirt back down for you. You consider, maybe for the first time, Joel’s position. He’s only ever touched you freely, so needfully, the first and second times you’d been tattooed by him, and every day you’ve seen him since.

He plays by your rules and you have to wonder what he needs.

It’s been a long time, he’d said. He’s inched closer to you over a period of months, patience in spades wrapped around you like a safety net.

You trust Joel, you realize. Maybe you’d known it before but it sinks into your skin in that moment, folds itself tightly inside your soul. You want to let him take something he needs. “It’s okay,” you find yourself saying. “You can. . .it’s okay.”

He hesitates and you push one of his hands back to your waist. “I like it,” you assure him.

He presses both hands beneath your shirt so they rest against the small of your back. The span of his hands are broad, splayed across your spine, over the ridges of your vertebrae. “Sure?” He asks, but his nose is pressed against your temple, his body loose and molded to yours. “My girl,” you think he says, so quiet it’s almost inaudible, the words pressed right against your forehead in a kiss. “Good girl.”

It feels so nice, the intimacy without expectation of anything more, without feeling like something was wrong with you. It feels like the envelope of your heart may burst.

You tuck yourself tighter into the crook of his arm, nose buried against his shoulder. He smells so strongly of himself there, the natural scent of his skin and sweat undercut only slightly by the faded smell of his soap.

He sounds close to sleep, exhausted after the worrisome, anxiety fueled night you had accidentally caused him. “Joel?” He grunts so you know he’s listening, still awake. “My antler tattoo is on my ribs.”

“What?” His hands drift a bit higher. “Really?”

“Mm.”

So when his fingers trace over your bare skin, you close your eyes. The sensation is so nice. The earlier acrid wave of fear has passed and no needles stab at your skin. It tickles, it feels like wings against your ribs.

Want flutters alive, in your belly, between your legs.

His bedroom is warm and cast in faded, milky light. He shifts and pushes up the sleeve of his t-shirt, until the curve of his opposite shoulder and the expanse of skin beneath is bared to your eyes. “One of Ellie’s first,” he says. It’s a needless explanation, though you find the tiny outline of the dinosaur a little funny.

When you reach across his chest and touch it, Joel twitches, like he isn’t expecting you to. His skin is soft there. “It suits you,” you say as he digs both his hands into your waist again.

You trace your fingers over his chest and throat. You trace the line by his eyes and rake your fingers through his hair.

He leans into your touch and you feel like the world rests in your palm.

When he says, “I think I can feel yours.” You close your eyes and smile. It almost feels like he’s tracing the outline of it.

“You can’t.”

“I can,” he disagrees. “It’s real pretty.”

You want to offer to show him yours in return, but sleep and safety pull you under.

Joel’s room is empty when he wakes, and if it weren’t for the clear imprint of your body in the nest of sheets next to him, he’d think the previous night was a dream.

He’d think the comfortable way you curled into him was a dream.

He lies there, jeans cutting into his waist painfully, thinking about how easily you’d curled up next to him, how velvet soft your skin was. It makes him smile and he groans and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just like a kid,” he huffs. You make him feel young, like this is the first time and he’s a better man than he is.

But he’s starting to wonder if that’s what love is supposed to feel like. Off Balance and brand new and secure and like it had always been there and always would be, all at once.

Joel gets up slowly, shoulder and knees and back smarting as he does. He feels the ghost of your head on his shoulder, an ache forming along his collarbone from the weight of it resting there. His fingers snag on the blanket you must have thrown over him in lieu of your body heat.

He wonders where you’ve gotten to. Maybe you left, took an Uber back to town.

Then, he hears it; commotion in his kitchen.

And he remembers it’s a Sunday and that his girls have been visiting more often, ever since they figured you were around on most Sundays. That usually you stopped by with coffee and pie from Flu’s, and sat on the front porch with him.

The noise is nice, better than waking to a silent house which he’d never gotten used to after Sarah and Ellie moved out.

His girls and you, down the hallway, in the kitchen. There’s laughter, and then a shriek as something shatters on the floor, a flood of curses from Ellie that devolve into shushing and giggling.

The smell of breakfast food cooking slips under the door as he changes. In the bathroom he slicks his hair back into place with wet fingers and thinks about your fingertips fluttering through his hair and tracing the crinkles by his eyes of their own accord. He brushes his teeth and thinks about how gently you’d laid your hand between his shoulder blades, how you let him sleep with his hands pressed inside your shirt, told him about your antler tattoo. . .

The antlers on your ribs, spearing up through the cage of your body.

He wants to see it, trace it, wants to put his mouth against it. The urge to touch every inch of you siphons into his chest, the urge to curl you in close to him, to feel the plush curves of you against his side, in his hands.

He wonders if you’d let him. He wants to earn it from you, coax you closer and closer, as slow as he has to.

When he walks down the hall and passes into the living room and then the kitchen, he finds the three of you huddled around the breakfast table. Sarah’s head is lent against your shoulder and Ellie’s bicep presses into yours.

The three of you have your heads bent together, hungry eyes sliding over something on the table in front of you.

“Mornin’,” he greets.

You look up at him, doe eyes bright, crinkled at the corners, every doubt and fear from the night before washed away. “Morning, Joel.”

“Girls,” he nods, passing by the table, beelining for the coffeepot.

“We made breakfast,” Sarah says by way of a greeting. “How come you haven’t shown her all these designs?”

He does a double take at the table, to find most of the contents of his notebook spread across the wood.

Joel sighs hard through his nose and Ellie does have the grace to at least look sheepish, though it outs her as the instigator. “It’s not like you were ever gonna show her!”

“Jesus,” he grumbles, not looking at you as he grabs a mug from the cabinet, a little embarrassed at the sheer amount of them. “Well, now I won’t get the chance to, will I?”

As he pours coffee into his mug, Ellie gives a dramatic groan and Sarah says, “C’mon, dad, don’t be like that.”

He turns to find all three of you staring at him, and he can’t really be all that upset when your mouth is twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “Come sit down,” you suggest, “and I’ll tell you which one my favorite is.”

So, he gathers up a plate of eggs and bacon and toast and ignores the smirking of both his daughters, the knowingness in both their faces grating on him, and sits across from you.

He watches you page through design after design, months worth of work, all the way back to the beginning of summer when you’d first, finally, wandered into the studio. You push one across the table towards him, and then a couple more.

“That’s just about all of ‘em,” he comments around a forkful of egg.

Instead of responding to him, you turn to Sarah and say, “Maybe one day he’ll realize he’s a good artist.”

You insist on cleaning up after breakfast so Joel can have some time with his daughters.

The light buzz of conversation seeps in from the living room. Occasionally Ellie’s voice rings out, more excitable and louder than Joel and Sarah’s. You can’t hear what they’re talking about and you don’t want to.

A bit of guilt pools in your belly, a slight worry that Joel might be upset with you for letting his girls show you something they probably shouldn’t have.

You hope he really had intended to eventually show them to you, to share with you the beautiful things he made, whether he thought of them like that or not.

Joel’s home bursts with art, with craftsmanship and creativity, though he doesn’t believe you. He tells you the same things are true about your apartment and your silly little hobbies, and you suppose both of you have a little to learn in being as proud of yourselves as you are of each other.

When you’re wiping down the counters, Ellie and Sarah pass through to gather their things and say goodbye. While Sarah gives you an unexpected hug that you make yourself hang on for, Ellie rifles through a cabinet, pilfering it for stray snacks.

“He isn’t mad you saw them,” Sarah says when she pulls back, mischievous glint in her eye.

Ellie and Sarah are the same kind of troublesome, you’ve come to realize. Sarah is just better at hiding it. “Oh yeah?”

“He needs a little push sometimes,” she says delicately and with a shrug.

“More like a huge kick in the ass,” Ellie says. “You should have heard him before he even met you! It was like you were some kind of ghost or something. But it was like that after he met you too.” Her voice pitches lower and gruffer in tone, “Ellie, you’re goin’ to spook her. Don’t say nothin’ —”

“Alright,” Joel says from the mouth of the kitchen. “That’s enough. Get your ass back to Austin.”

You smile at Ellie, “You do a really good impression.”

“Told you, dude!” She says as she slides past her dad, Sarah following right after.

Joel just grunts and then calls after them, “Drive careful!”

“Bye!” Twin voices call out before the front door slams closed.

And then you’re alone with him, fingers still tangled in a dish towel.

Joel’s eyes soften when he looks at you, and you’re reminded of his hands beneath your shirt, the iron hot touch of his body against yours. You’re reminded of the lancing burst of want that sparked inside you with him.

Only with him.

Maybe because you knew he tried to understand, that he’d let you go when you needed it.

You open your mouth, not sure what you’re going to say, when Joel steps forward and tugs the towel out of your hands. “Don’t suppose you’d come outside with me? I want to show you somethin’. See if you might help me with it.”

“Sure,” you say.

Joel nods and when you brush your knuckles against his, he laces your fingers together.

Outside the air is warm in a distinctly autumn way, with the scent of sun in the air muted, the swirling chatter of decaying leaves on the breeze, the earthy scent of hay and soil.

You cross the porch with him and descend the steps to the yard. He leads you toward the chicken coop.

“When did you have time to build that? It’s new.”

“Been workin’ on it for awhile now. Just had Tommy help me move it here from out back.”

“Oh?”

“Was supposed to be a surprise,” he grumbles.

You lean into his arm, seeing your walk from the truck to the house in a different light. “Is that why you were cranky about me seeing it last night?” Joel starts to answer when you gasp and let go of him as two red-ish brown hens and a rooster round the corner of the coop. “Joel! You already got some?”

He mutters something about goddamn chickens showing me up behind you as you crouch to watch them on the other side of the fence.

“I did,” he sighs. “Look here.” He opens the gate and ushers you through to the other side where a hatch opens in the coop. “Go on,” he says, gesturing for you to look.

Two fuzz balls peer back at you from the depths when you peer into the hatch. “Chicks?” You say excitedly.

“Chicks,” he agrees mildly. “You wanna hold one?”

Without waiting for a response, he gently cups his hands around one of the yellow, fuzzed creatures and drags it out.

And you get the very real pleasure of seeing Joel Miller standing there in the morning sunshine, holding a tiny chicken to his chest. You laugh, and he says, “What?”

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The chick is transferred to your hands from his, light and airy, like something incorporeal sitting in your palms, peeping softly. When you look at him, Joel’s face is relaxed. “What did you want me to help with?”

He clears his throat and gestures to the coop. “Paintin’.”

“Weren’t you a contractor?” You tease. “Shouldn’t you be able to paint it?”

Joel rolls his eyes. “I mean somethin’ pretty. Like how you painted your table.”

“Oh,” you murmur, something warm settling in your chest. “That’s nothing special.”

“Mhm, just like how that painting of mine you like so much ain’t special either.”

You roll your eyes and offer the baby chick back to him. “Okay, I get it. I’ll help you paint it.” Joel tucks the bird back into its home, the peeping fading when he closes the hatch. “Joel,” you reach for his wrist. “I’m sorry about seeing those sketches.”

“You ever goin’ to stop apologizin’ to me for everything?” He asks, eyes alighting on you.

“Well,” you continue. “I am. Especially if you never intended for me to see them.”

He nods and squints into the sun. His boot scuffs against the ground. “I always intended you to see ‘em. They’re yours.”

“They’re beautiful.” You step closer to him, the hens clucking around your ankles, and draw his fingers between yours. It’s quiet for a moment before you take another step. Being around Joel is like being safely shaded, like sleeping in a protected wood. “Thank you for coming when I called. You didn’t have to.”

“I did, honey,” he disagrees. “I’ll always come when you call. Even if you think it’s nothin’.”

You nod and tip your chin up, watching his eyes. The sun makes the irises look honeyed. You glance away, swallowing down the words burgeoning behind your lips, all the things you want from him and want to say to him.

He shifts. “I’m sure you got other things to get to. Let’s go take a look at your apartment—”

“Wait,” you tighten your hold on his hand. “Not everyone would do what you did. Not everyone would put up with me the way you have. My ex didn’t. He probably made me worse.” You’re so close to him you can feel the sink and rise of his chest, you can feel each deep breath like it's your own. “But you make me better, you make me safe. So just let me say thank you for once.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t let you thank me for doin’ right by you,” he says, stubborn as a bull. “I know you need reminding. But you ain’t work to me. There’s nothin’ wrong with you. I haven’t been putting up with anything. I’d drive down there every damn night if I had to.”

You tilt your cheek into his hand when he cups your jaw. Joel’s eyes are flicking over your face, his expression tense and needful, wanting.

His eyes hook into you, intense and tawny, the breath is punched from your lungs.

Never.

You’ve never felt like this with anyone, like you could be stripped bear, like he could press his hands inside your chest and feel the slick beating of your heart in his palms and everything would still be okay. He’d catch you, he’d shield you, he’d figure out a way to mend you and help you, he’d look at your heart and put it back in your chest even if he wanted to keep it for himself.

When he leans in and kisses you, it feels like fragments of your soul are being pieced back together. Shards of yourself you hadn’t even known were dust reform, shine brighter.

He cradles you to him, the line of your body pressed against his. He’s muscled and soft and broad and so solid. He groans into your mouth, licks into you. There’s possession in the way he holds you, like you’re his and his and his and you always have been.

Joel tastes like coffee, because there’s nothing else he could have tasted like.

He’s so familiar and safe, like sage burning against the night, like a soft place to land in all the ways a person could be.

His other hand splays against your lower back, the tips of his fingers against the waist of your jeans.

When you pull back, lungs aching for air, he presses his forehead against yours and closes his eyes. His jaw is clenched tight, a muscle jumps in his jaw, like he’s afraid.

“I’m not that skittish,” you say. “I trust you, Joel.”

He opens his eyes, swipes his thumb across your lips. He looks like a man who’s patient, steady hand has finally touched something delicate and rare.

💞 Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

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

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