solstice
ao3 ⋆ main masterlist
pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader rating: Explicit (18+ only!) warnings: smut (PiV), competency kink, grumpy/sunshine, he falls first, yearning, angst, almost enemies to lovers, Tommy being a little shit, no use of y/n, Jackson!Joel word count: 4k summary: Three little words. Joel heard those same three words damn near every day for the last seven months. Most days, they were the only words you said to him. Sometimes, if he was lucky, you'd say them more than once. Other days, you didn't say anything to him at all. He liked those days least of all.
A/N: happy holidays @trulybetty! thank you for being so lovely about this being a little late. I was only going to go for one or two of your prompts for the @pedrostories secret santa, but then my brain went why not all of them, and now here we are.
divider by @saradika-graphics
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Three little words.
"I got it."
Joel heard those same three words damn near every day for the last seven months. Most days, they were the only words you said to him. Sometimes, if he was lucky, you'd say them more than once. Other days, you didn't say anything to him at all. He liked those days the least.
You said other things too, of course. He heard you speak to other people. Not always nicely, but he heard you. You said more to him on occasion too. Out my way or put it down were some particular favorites, but none said more so than those three, tiny, little words.
I got it.
Because you did. He had never met a woman who had got it more than you. Strong, capable, and everything he ever tried to be. He watched every day how you'd got it. Climbing up ladders with tiles stacked on your shoulder, hauling wheelbarrows full of gravel, chopping wood in bitter wind and cold. You had it, and he watched, wanting it too.
The only problem was, he wasn't too sure what it was.
To begin with, it was the respect you commanded that he yearned for. He had that, once. Not here. Fuck, never here. The people here would barely look at him for the first few weeks. But you? They listened to you. If you said move they listened, even if it was with a roll of their eyes. If you told someone to fuck off to medical, they went without a grumble. They trusted you. Even if you weren't particularly generous with your smiles.
You were the exact opposite of what Joel was finding he had to be.
In Boston, people feared him, and that kept him, and Tess, safe. It was for the best. The people here feared him too, at first. Maybe even still now, if he was to be honest with himself, but he'd worked hard to change that. He met the mumbled good mornings with as much of a smile as he could muster. He went for drinks with his brother, made small talk with the locals even when he didn't want to. He tried to get into Maria's good graces, but never quite succeeded.
And he worked. With you mostly. Jackson didn't have much use for hired muscle or someone who could smuggle shit discreetly - not outside of the daily patrol shifts they wouldn't let him on yet, anyway - but they did have use for contractors. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, anyone who was good at doing shit with their hands. Those were things that had value behind these walls and, luckily for him, that meant he had value too. For the first time in a long time, he meant something to people.
Just not to you.
As much as he smiled, and made small talk, and helped out fixing shit in this place that was now his home, he could never get through to you. He'd try to help you out, only to be knocked aside - sometimes literally. You barely looked at him. Spoke only when necessary. Once, you'd even told him to fuck off.
He did.
At first he took it all personally. He moped, and kept his sour mood hidden from his brother and Ellie. Then, he saw how you were with, well, just about everyone else, and that lessened the sting.
But, as time wore on, Joel saw other things too. Where at first you'd seemed rude and abrasive, he now saw the kindness and compassion you treated everyone with. If you told someone to go the fuck home, it wasn't because you wanted them gone it was because you wanted them rested. If you let people struggle, strike their thumbs with a badly aimed hit of a hammer, it was to help them learn. You never did let anyone make the same mistake twice. And, because of you, no one did.
It was with the waning of spring that his desire to be you changed into something different and entirely more confusing.
As the gardens and trees exploded in the frenzy of summer, you shed your layers. Literally, not figuratively. You still stayed firmly closed up as your jacket disappeared and made way for a shirt hung loosely about your shoulders. Then, even that found its way around your waist and Joel had to come face to face with the bare, strong expanse of your back while you worked in nothing but a tank top, the patch of sweat at the small of your back blooming while he watched.
It was for the best that he didn't think about what you looked like walking towards him during those relentlessly hot months, with nothing but a thin tank top pulled across your chest. It wasn't something he should think about in public, anyway. It was something he kept for late at night, when those three little words echoed around his head and you showed him just how much you really, truly got it.
By October, Tommy had caught on. Your jacket was fastened back around you, and you were as hostile as ever. You breezed past him one morning, hooking a ladder over one shoulder, toolbag gripped in your other hand.
"I got it."
By now, Joel knew you did.
By now, he wanted to come with you anyway.
So he did, grabbing his own set of salvaged tools and heading up to the latest reno with you, only to have you square up to him the second you saw him.
"I said, I got it."
Five words. It was a good day.
So good, that he couldn't keep his eyes off you in the Tipsy Bison that night. You weren't in here often - from what he could tell, you didn't do much outside of work - but the people who shared your company seemed to enjoy it. You sat soft and quiet in the corner, listening in to their conversation more often than you contributed. But, when you did, they laughed, and Joel caught himself smiling, and Tommy caught him too.
"Never thought you'd be more of a ray of fuckin' sunshine than anyone else, but there's a first for everythin', I guess," he'd said, tilting his glass to the table in the corner where you sat.
Joel took a swig of the last fresh cider of the season and shrugged.
"You got an eye for her."
He sputtered, choking on the tart, sweet liquid. "No I ain't."
"Well you got somethin'," said Tommy, clinking his glass against Joel's own. "If it ain't an eye it's your-"
A harsh kick, and a grunt loud enough to turn every head in the bar later, and Tommy dropped it entirely.
For about a week.
Tommy ribbed him at dinner, drinks, lunch and just about every time in between. Called Joel 'Sunshine' even as he scowled. Asked about his girl as if you were anything other than a person who hated him. Slung his arm around Joel's shoulder and told him all about the birds and the bees, as if he'd ever forgotten.
He couldn't forget. Not with you running around barking at him and keeping him in a seemingly permanent state of arousal. If it wasn't your voice and that angry way you talked at him, it was just about anything else. He couldn't escape it.
It was how you did everything he could do, and more. What he had in strength, you had in technique. Your hands - fuck, did he watch your hands - were rarely unblemished with dirt or scrapes, but they were adept at everything you put them to. He couldn't look away, even if he knew each minute he looked was a minute quicker he'd be when he touched himself to the thought of you later that night.
The taunts stopped with the first snowfall.
"If you're really that interested, should talk to her," Tommy said instead. "Bark's worse than her bite."
"You're still sayin' she bites, though."
"Sure she would if you asked nice enough, brother."
Joel didn't ask.
He didn't ask the morning he woke up early to see the town blanketed in thick snow either. He simply went out, picked up a snow shovel and began working until the sun came up. He didn't expect to find you at his door that evening, or for you to grab him and throw him outside, pushing him up against the side of his own house.
"What do you think you're playing at, Miller?" you growled up at him, pushing him firmly against the siding.
Joel stared, dumb-founded, your hands curled in the front of his shirt - touching him - and blinked down at you.
"I don't give a shit who you are or what you've done out there. I am not scared of you and I am not having you take my job."
You ignored him more after that. Days went by with barely a word to him - not even a scowl thrown his way if he made too much noise or offered to help someone out on a job.
As for him, he couldn't stop thinking about it. Every day for weeks that night played through his head, memory of the feel of your hands on his chest and your face so close he could feel your breath, until Christmas was on the horizon and a pit of fear began stirring in his stomach. You were a balm to it, somehow. Something to focus on when the fear got too much and kept him inside, away from the crowds of happy people.
Every single I got it was more of a comfort than the last. It could have been the familiarity of it, or the way those words came softer and softer as the season wore on. Sometimes he'd head by the workshop to ask if you needed a hand, just to hear that soft rejection one more time.
Until late one cold afternoon, it didn't come. You were alone, blowing warm air onto gloved hands, and when he asked you simply nodded, and he followed.
You worked together in silence until the sun set, when you turned to him as you parted ways.
"S'hard this time of year, but joy and grief can exist at the same time, y'know."
He didn't go to the Bison that night. Or the next. He let the grief crack open his chest instead, and let it pour out over his bedroom floor for two whole days.
On the third, he let the joy back in. Ellie reeled off new jokes from a book she found in the Jackson library. He held his nephew and rocked the teething babe to sleep. He went back to the Bison - you weren't there - and celebrated the impending holiday.
Seven months, three days, and about as many hourssince he stepped foot back in Jackson. Damn near every day he's heard those three little words, and he'll be damned if he goes another without them.
With the day as short as it could ever be, the sun tracking low in the sky, he finds you.
"I got it," you say softly, when he asks you that very same question he always does.
"I know."
He doesn't know how your lips end up on his - because it is you who kisses him. He doesn't know how his fingers find themselves under your shirt either, the coldness of them making you gasp into his mouth until you're pulling apart, both wide eyed.
He does know you taste like fruit, even in the dead of winter. He always suspected it - knew your sweet tooth by the berries you couldn't resist and the sweet treats gifted to you. He knows your fingers are as cold as his when you hand him a shovel.
He does know, even though you got it, you let him help anyway.
You clear streets and roofs of snow together until the sun goes down. He follows at your heel in the dark, cold biting through your layers as you both stomp the snow off your boots, shovels thrown down, workshop locked up. You barely even look at each other until you're staring through the fog of your own heavy breaths on Joel's front porch. He doesn't know how to welcome you in - he never was too good with words - so he simply unlocks the door and pushes it open.
You step inside.
Layers are shed before the door even closes. Heavy coats dumped on the couch, boots toed off and left this way and that. The hat on your head stuffed in a pocket - he can't remember which.
You move upstairs - worked on this house, you say - and pull him into his own bedroom before his lips even touch yours again. But when they do, they do. Joel's frantic with it, feeling the softness of you so close to the hardness of him. His hands hold your waist, rooting you to him, but then you're moving them up and under your shirt to the flair of your ribcage. The curve of your breasts fit perfectly against the cradle of his thumb and forefinger, and he thinks of everything his hands have done, this is what they were made for.
It must be. When you whine at the feel of this thumb stroking across your pebbled nipple, he thinks for the first time in a long time that maybe his hands aren't so monstrous if they can pull such pretty noises from you.
In fact, the things they've done don't seem to matter at all when he gets to touch you, to pull sounds from you so sweet he'll be tasting you on his tongue all over again just from the memory of them. For all the harm these hands have done, they could never hurt you. You would never let them. You'd tear him apart first.
And he'd let you.
You swallow his groan when you palm his length over his jeans. He stiffens beneath your touch, warm and firm, and grinds into your hand. It's been so long since he's felt the touch of anyone other than himself. He could come just grinding himself against the firm press of your hand against him, if he thought about it too hard.
So he doesn't. He focuses instead on the soft plink plink plink as you run a nail up his ice cold zipper, the way you bite his lip, tangle your fingers in his hair.
He tries to take off his own belt, cold fingers fumbling against even colder metal, but you mumble I got it into his mouth, and his knees quiver.
You do. You always do.
His belt is pulled off and you're tugging him by the loops of his pants and pushing him against his own bed, the sheets still rumpled from the morning. You slip off your own and toss it to the side too, tangling it with his on his bedroom floor. Then, you're so very close to him again, his thigh between your legs as you nip and suckle on his bottom lip. He holds you close - one hand finding its way under your shirt again, cupping your breast fully this time, and the other pulling you firmly against his strong thigh.
You warm his thigh with the burning heat between your legs, grinding yourself against him, the seam of your jeans pulling tight against you. Moans you were pulling from him a moment ago are silenced by your own, your nails digging crescents into his arm as you burrow your face into his neck in an attempt to stifle them.
You're better than he ever dreamed. Softer. Warmer. Stronger. The sounds you make so much prettier than he ever thought. Those three little words so much sweeter within these walls than any other.
Even when you strip off layer after layer, it's better than he dreamed. Summer was barely a taste of you, he realises, when your shirt, your tank, your soft bra, all tumble to the floor and you climb onto the bed behind him.
You kick your jeans off, and he pulls his down too. He can't get his shirt off quick enough, the scars on his body forgotten as he strips bare for you as you watch, lust barely turning to curiousity as you take in the sight of his body.
"Come here," you tell him, and he obeys. You're softer with him when he lies beside you then. Grasping hands turn to gentle strokes, his own hands on your bare flesh mimicking your gentle movements across his skin.
When your hand trails down to his cock, squeezing once again when you feel him throb in your palm, he has to pinch his eyes closed and pretend he's anywhere but here.
"Been a long time," he says through gritted teeth. "Long, long time."
Me too, he thinks he hears you whisper before your lips latch to his again and his soft, worn boxers are slipped down his legs, kicked to the side, forgotten.
You don't look at him, and for that he's grateful. He's less grateful when you start to play with your own nipples and toy with the edge of your panties. He presses a kiss to your shoulder instead, hiding his face against you and breathing you in.
When he opens his eyes again, your panties are off, thighs spread, one hooked lazily over his own, the other stretched out on his sheets.
"Don't have to," you mumble, when he looks down at you, stunned look obvious on his face.
"I want to."
He touches you and you let him. His hands run all over your body, rough, calloused palms dragging across your soft belly, your hips, your thighs. He's dreamed of this, and still it's better than his wildest fantasies.
When your hand wraps around his bare cock, pumping his length once, twice, he thinks that's better than any fantasy too. You practically drag him by the cock, tugging gently to pull him towards you until he's kneeling between your thighs. You lazily stroke him, swiping precum across his tip and making him jerk in your grip. His own hands play with your thighs, massaging and squeezing them, drawing his fingers closer and closer to your apex.
Seven months, three days, and twenty-something hours since he stepped back into Jackson, he slips into you for the first time.
And, fuck, is it divine.
You're slick, and wet, his cock gliding across your skin before he pushes into you, and you both gasp.
He's slow. He trembles. His fingers make dents in your thighs as he grips them. You shuffle your hips, make yourself comfortable, and he holds steady while you adjust to the intrusion. Then, you pull him in, grabbing him by the neck to steal a kiss while he makes space for himself deep inside you, rocking each tentative inch into you until he's rooted inside.
You adjust - let the tenseness in your core release - and he barely holds on. And, just when he thinks he's got a hold of himself and begins fucking you in slow, languid movements, your hand moves and you say those three little words.
"I got it."
For the first ever time, he stops you. His hand pins yours to your hip, his movements stilling as you frown up at him, a threat on the tip of your tongue. So, he begs.
"Let me. Please."
And you do. He slowly swipes a spit slicked thumb against your clit, and watches as you melt into his sheets. By the look of you, the pure relief on your face, he thinks this could be the first time you've ever truly let go, and his ego soars.
It soars again when your legs tremble, rocking his thick cock in you as his thumb works slowly over your clit. You moan his name, and he groans too. He can't keep it back. It's the first time he's ever heard you say it, and he doesn't think it could sound better. Your eyes find his when you say his name again, testing him, only to pull another groan deep from his chest.
A small nod is all you give him as a sign you want more. His thumb moves quicker, popped into his mouth to taste you just for a moment before it swipes around your cunt where you grip him, and back up to your clit.
You come on him, face turned into his sheets, brow furrowed, mouth open as you moan and shake, trembling and pulsating on his cock as you come.
For you, he keeps going. Let's you ride out the waves, fluttering against him, as he barely holds back from the brink himself.
If this is all he gets - if you push him off and walk away now - it would be a good day, he thinks. But you don't. He doesn't even get chance to ask if you want him gone when you're pulling him down, kissing him, rocking your hips against him and murmuring against his throat for him to fuck you.
So, he does.
It feels sloppy, and awkward, his hips not quite knowing how to move any more as he snaps them against yours.
"Don't stop," you whisper to him with a scrape of your teeth against his shoulder. "Don't stop."
He's never been able to disobey you, he realizes. He's never had reason let alone want to. Even now, he does as he's told, keeps fucking forward into you, mattress squeaking and bed rocking as he finally, finally, finds his rhythm.
It's easy then. You spur him on, grip him tight, wrap your legs around his waist. He grunts, growls, can barely stop himself from panting, looking down at you and how you stare back at him and he thinks fuck, this is what it's like to be trusted by you.
With a sudden gasp, he pulls out, slipping from your wet heat to rut against your sopping cunt until he's spurting ropes of come against your mound and belly.
He apologizes, tries to admonish himself for being so quick. You tell him to shut up, hitting his shoulder. He does.
You both sigh in the afterglow. Even in the before, he never had times like this, he doesn't think. It was always frantic, too quick, too drunk, too fumbling. In the after, he could never quite relax enough to enjoy it fully. In the now, it's just about the best he's ever had.
You're still covered in him. Your fingers play idly in it on your belly, and he glows. He'd trace patterns with it over your skin, if only you'd let him. But then, you're up and gone, and he fears you're gone for good until you waltz back in and throw yourself next to him, mess cleaned from your skin as you stretch and yawn beside him.
"I aint tryin' to take your job, y'know," Joel tells you some time later, when the afterglow wanes and sleep pulls at him.
"Right."
He looks to you, the roll of your eyes and tug of a disbelieving smile on your lips visible in the glow of the bedside lamp.
"I promise. I'm just tryin' to... be some place."
You're still. And silent. He thinks he's fucked up for all of one second, until you're smiling sadly up at the ceiling.
"I get that," you say softly. "This is a nice place to be, all things considered."
And, though he thinks he knows what you mean, Yes, he thinks, this is a nice place to be.
This is a good day.
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