Welcome to Wicker’s wicked world of whimsical wonders.
hello, i’m wicker! I’m 23, bisexual, and I love older men.
if you’ve found your way here, welcome. thank you for reading or simply peeking in, it means so much to me!
im a full-time college student so my writing is a little slower to be edited/published nowadays, but there’s always something in the works. feel free to engage or not engage as much as you wish, just grateful for anyone whose eyes skim these words.
I’m still finding my rhythm here, but love this little haven i’ve found for myself. my entire motivation is to keep the yearn alive!
it’s all a work in progress and I am never consistent, consider this a fair warning 😭 I’m doing my best.
The very core of who you are is hypocritical. Every day is a reminder of what you've lost, of who you've allowed yourself to become. Your walls are built around your heart like the fortress of Jackson, until… a certain man tries to pry his way through. How long can you withstand such intrusion? Will your heart ever open, will your soul ever heal, the way you have helped so many others do? Will you ever learn that you're worth saving too?
Slow burn, outbreak!au // Jackson!Joel x f!reader
Rated E. 18+ MDI !!
Ongoing… 7 chapters so far, WC: 26.1k
[on hiatus]
(Last update Jul.28.2025)
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Masterlist here !
Story synopsis:
You told him you were just visiting for the summer. Gave him a name that wasn’t yours. From the moment he saw you across the bar, he knew you were trouble—sunlight and sharp edges, all heat and laughter and something he shouldn’t want, everything he’d been devoid of for so long. What began as a fleeting summer fling burned into something neither of you could name. You left without saying goodbye, it seemed easier that way. But now you’re in his classroom. And he’s your professor. You told yourselves to pretend it never happened. To forget. But how could you forget the way the world only made sense when you were together—and how nothing had made sense since?
Slow burn, no outbreak!au // professor!Joel x f!reader
Rated E. 18+ MDI !!
Ongoing… 17 chapters so far. WC: 120.1k
(Last updated May 18, this fic always has a chapter actively in progress)
Another one couldn’t hurt… right? - The Big Reveal
Pt. 9: you and daddy Joel but not in that way… share the news of the addition to your little family.
pt. 1 | prev pt. | series masterlist // main masterlist | next pt.
NSFW! mdni 18+ only
warnings/content:
WC 7.4k - no outbreak!au, domestic fluff/smut, established relationship, husband!joel x wife!reader, some physical descriptions, mentions of pregnancy, age gap relationship, reader is early 30s & Joel is late 40s, they have 3 kids and are expecting a 4th. // unprotected p-in-v (don’t even think about it!), breeding kink/ pregnancy kink/ impregnation kink (even if your eyes are wide open, you don’t need to squint), soft dom!joel, size kink, fingers in mouth fingers in mouth fingers in mo—, fingering, degradation kink, praise kink, marking, dirty talk, multiple orgasms. No use of y/n.
a/n: more more more I’m greedy for them please stop making me exist elsewhere
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
your parents’ house, Christmas Day
“You’re pregnant?”
Your sister’s voice cuts through the moment you step into the foyer. Her head is poking out from around the kitchen doorway, hair pulled up in a messy bun, hands still flour-dusted from rolling dough, and her eyes lock right onto your stomach.
You glance down at your bump, snug and unmistakably visible beneath your soft, form-fitting sweater.
Your small frame was always quick to betray the blooming life within your womb. You’d started showing at just two months pregnant, a form-fitting sweater leaves little doubt.
You blink at her past your parents, who are busy wrangling your kids into hugs… Sarah already halfway out of her coat and Artie’s stomping water off his boots, and letting himself be lifted into your dad’s arms.
“Well,” you deadpan, tossing a look back at Joel and that permanent smirk fixed on his face, “hello to you, too.”
Your sister disappears, but before you can get your coat off she’s right in front of you, wide-eyed and eyes locked on your bump.
“Oh my god, oh my god, you are. That’s a baby bump.” Her eyes find yours and you swear you see a tear in the corner of them, “You didn’t tell me!”
“I was going to,” you laugh nervously, surrendering your coat to Joel’s waiting hand. “I mean… I am telling you.”
Your mom turns at the noise, gaze dropping to your sweater the same moment she registers the conversation. Her brows lift, lips part, and then her hand covers her chest like the gesture might steady her heart.
“Is it true?” she asks, softly. “Honey, are you really…?”
Joel steps up beside you, tucking a hand around your waist, grounding the moment with that subtle, quiet strength of his. He’s still carrying Ellie, who’s buried her face in his neck with her thumb in her mouth, clinging to him despite her puffy pink jacket. Her little legs dangle against him.
“A little over 4 months along,” he says. “We wanted to wait a little while before tellin’ everyone.”
Your dad glances up from where Artie’s got him in a bear hug. “Wait… four months? You’re four months pregnant?” He stares at you, then Joel, then you again. “When were y’all gonna mention that, sometime after the baby graduates?”
“We wanted to do it in person,” you raise your hands in mock surrender.
The room stills, the chaos of coats and kids fading into a shared, stunned silence, and then your mom’s face breaks open like the sun coming out from behind clouds. She steps forward, hugging you with both arms.
“Oh, sweetheart… another baby,” she murmurs. “You’re growing another little person.”
Joel smiles softly beside you, and when your mom pulls back, she hugs him too. He stiffens for only half a second before sinking into it. Just the effects of your mom’s hugs, he stopped denying that fact.
“Four kids,” your dad mutters, still shaking his head. “You must really like bein’ exhausted.”
“Well, she’s hard to say no to.” A sharp nudge of your elbow has him looking at you with that devious smirk of his, knowing damn well he was the one you couldn’t say no to.
“Happy wife happy life, right?” your sister jokes, nudging Joel from the other side and causing a grunt from the man as he’s attacked from both sides with what he swears are the pointiest damn elbows.
So distinctly sisters, but he loves the bond the two of you share.
Your sister grins as she steps in front of you and reaches over to rub your bump. You roll your eyes, though you secretly love when your sister dotes on your babies. You were practically her baby growing up, after all.
“This little one’s already stealing the show.”
Everyone’s laughing gleefully and so emotionally now, your sister hugging Joel from the side with a playful, ‘you dog, you’.
Joel finally lowers Ellie, who’s now more awake and mumbling something as she toddles straight toward your dad, arms out like a sleepy penguin. It’s her turn to be scooped up by him and he presses a kiss to her forehead.
Joel peels off his coat last with a deep sigh and a pleased smirk on his face.
He glances at you with that look he saves just for these moments, half overwhelmed and half overflowing.
“You okay?” you ask quietly as the room moves around you in a swirl of hugs, laughter, and boots being peeled off of tiny feet.
He nods once, eyes locked on yours, the softest brown to ever be seen. Warm like creamy hot chocolate which has become a staple in your cravings lately, “Never better, darlin’.”
Sarah tugs at his hand then, pulling his attention away from you. Always feels like a much crueler interruption than it is. But what can you do when just a look from the man can have you feeling your heart beat out of your chest.
“Can I show Poppy the drawings we made?” Sarah asks, the brightest smile on her little face causing those distinctly Joel dimples to make their appearances.
Joel’s mouth twitches into a soft grin, “Sure thing, bug.”
She grabs your dad’s hand and drags him into the living room while Artie runs ahead. Your mom leads you toward the kitchen with her arm around your waist, as if you’re viable to break like precious china if handled wrong. She was always like this with your pregnancies, with your only sibling being your sister who was quite content remaining single and childfree, you and your kids were the main attraction at any family gathering.
Joel only had one brother, Tommy, who had also miraculously remained childfree despite his dalliances before he hit his mid-thirties where life turned serious.
Joel had told you all about that moment in his life that he’d realized how much he’d forgone a personal life to take care of his mom when she’d gotten sick. Then, she got better, and he was still stuck in that eldest role of taking care of his younger brother and being the pinnacle of support for the entire family.
When his work started flourishing and he had his own house to maintain, he lost himself in the work. The effort of a relationship is easily dissuaded by the endless hours of paperwork and phone calls that drained his brain of any further effort. By the time he’d get home, he’d be exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally; he knew trying to establish anything external would only be a distraction. Plus, if he were to get into a relationship he’d want to be able to focus more of his energy on that than he was capable of at that point.
By the time you’d met him, he’d finally opened himself to the idea of dating. But he didn’t want the flings or the one-night stands. He’d taken care of himself for long enough that he had no interest in wasting time as that was his most valuable asset. Then, you. Intense, focused, brilliant, determined… young as hell, but you were… well, you. As much as he tried to deny it initially, you had woven yourself into his very being. The idea of waking up to a cup of coffee and his dose of you every day became his lifeline.
When you’d finally decided to try for a baby together, it wasn’t a decision made lightly.
You’d enjoyed almost an entire decade together childfree. You’d filled your time with traveling and enjoying each other to the fullest, but there was so much love left to give.
Joel had respected your wishes after things between the two of you had gotten to an undeniably serious point after you’d settled into the married life. The discussion of kids came up, and you’d both agreed that you wanted to focus on your career and your marriage and not prioritize the life path of having children.
Joel was respectful of your wishes, as he always has been, but you could tell he was a man meant to be a dad. He was nurturing and patient, slow to anger, protective, kind, strong and soft all at once.
He’d never once brought it up unless you did, the exciting idea of having kids. Then, you slowly started talking about it more. How you were having baby fever, or when his cousin’s kids always gravitated towards him and he was just so natural and gentle that you couldn’t help but feel your womb ache to have his babies. Or when you were just so deeply and irrevocably in love you’d beg him to give you his babies.
He always tried to differentiate the feral requests with the logical ones, the conversations brought up when talking about bills or vacations or friends who were having kids. The logistics of it all, the time allocated, the mental and physical impacts that may occur, the lifestyle changes, the entire shift of dynamics once again to accommodate the new roles of being mom and dad, best friends, and husband and wife.
Then, you were buying baby books for new parents, eyeing that empty room for the layout of a nursery, and adjusting yours and his diet for the healthiest baby-making… That's when he finally embraced the excitement he’d been harboring for years.
Of course, he’d always stated his openness to the idea. In a “if you ever want kids, darlin’…” kind of way. Well, he can’t pretend he’s entirely innocent… especially when he’d be balls deep inside of you and he hears those sweet whimpers and tells you to ‘take it… let me fill y’up, make it stick, make a momma outta you’.
It's easy for him as a man to embrace the concept of children. But he knew it would have to be your choice, all he could do was be supportive of your decision. He wanted you, all of you, to himself. He wasn’t ashamed to finally admit his desire for physical, undeniable proof of his possession of your love and your devotion. Turns out, you wanted everyone to know who you belonged to, too.
As if that was much of a surprise for the way you unashamedly would display your affections in public. Or rather lay your claim. He loved every damn minute of it.
You’d learned early on that you shared particular turn-ons regarding the idea of Joel’s seed taking root deep inside you, creating life out of primal instinct. Which were very unproductive for the logical side of things when in reality you both had agreed to prioritizing a childfree life… but it had always been a turn-on. In addition to many others you’d explored over the years, at some point you realized there may be some real-life application with which you were both genuinely excited for. Not just the primal instinct to breed, claim, and belong to each other, though that fire within you both certainly continues to burn brighter with each day.
Now, with your little family, anyone you’d ever encountered had no doubt in their minds about the passion shared between the two of you. Overflowing with love and admiration for each other and bleeding into the physical and living proof of your love in the form of three little munchkins and another on the way.
Damn, he was proud to be the daddy to these kiddos. Quite literally made with love. Growing to become little people he adores, so distinctive and brilliant in their own ways, yet so undeniably you in other ways. And yes, more often than not he can’t help but confront the parts of himself that shine through these mini-versions of he and you.
“Daddy…” Ellie’s tugging on the pant leg of his jeans, her brows furrowed just like her daddy’s, so intently focused on getting his attention.
“Yeah, baby girl? What’d’ya need?” Her eyes light up once she’s won his attention, immediately outstretching her arms.
With a deep sigh, he leans down and picks her up, a soothing hand rubbing her back as he straightens again.
His girls are spoiled, and his son certainly is too. The blossoming life growing inside of you will be just as spoiled… he looks at you at that thought, his gaze softening at the sight of your hand absently resting on the bump beneath your sweater.
He’s obsessed with that sight, but is once again rudely interrupted by Sarah and Artie nearly knocking over your mother as she was carrying dishes to the dining room table.
He groans, letting his eyes rove over you once more before gently sets Ellie back down, much to her disapproval, “alright, you two… c’mere.” Artie and Sarah’s eyes quickly look as his usual soft, gentle voice turned stern. A rarity, but they knew enough to know that they had done something to earn that tone. He points his finger to the floor in front of him, and kneels down so he’s closer to eye-level of your two oldest.
“Artie…” your son refuses to still, trying to grab onto Joel’s broad shoulders and climb onto his back. But Joel quickly catches him, lifting him and setting him down in front of where Joel was kneeling. Joel’s large hands gently grip your son’s upper arms, keeping him still which is a nearly impossible endeavor when he’s hyper.
“Y’listenin’, bud?” Joel’s stern dad voice is so unbearably sexy to you, and as much as you loved it you also liked that he didn’t have to use it that often… yet. Who knew what trouble your kids would get into as they get older and likely more rambunctious.
Artie’s mischievous eyes, the same dark, scheming eyes his daddy gets whenever he’s up to no good, dart everywhere except his father’s face.
Meanwhile, Sarah has already begun retreating behind you.
Your now seven-year-old carefully wedges herself against the back of your legs like maybe if she becomes part of your silhouette Joel won’t notice she’d very clearly been involved in whatever catastrophe had nearly taken out your mother and the dinner dishes.
“Oh no,” he drawls, pointing toward her without looking away from Artie. “Don’t you start hidin’ behind your mama like she’s gonna save ya.”
You bite the inside of your cheek, fighting a smile as Sarah’s little hands clutch the back of your sweater tighter.
“Mommy likes me,” she mutters into your side.
Joel huffs out a laugh at that, deep and warm and exhausted all at once. “Mommy likes me too, bug. Means she’s my accomplice, not yours.”
You finally glance down at her, raising a brow, “Were you helping your brother cause problems?”
Sarah’s eyes widen with immediate betrayal. Like you, of all people, should understand loyalty.
Joel catches the look and points between the two of you, “See? Team effort. Mommy and Daddy are united against tiny menaces.”
Joel sighs through a smile before finally straightening back up to his full height. Sarah stays tucked against you, peeking around your arm with cautious little eyes now that she realizes this is shifting from teasing into an actual lesson.
The softness settles back into his face almost immediately.
He reaches down, patting Artie lightly on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says more gently, waiting until both kids are looking at him. “Y’all know Grandma could’ve gotten hurt, right?”
Sarah’s mouth pulls downward just slightly while Artie’s grip loosens on Joel’s jeans, “We didn’t mean to,” Sarah says quietly.
“I know y’didn’t.” Joel’s voice stays calm and steady, never sharp. “But that’s why we gotta be careful in houses full’a people, ‘specially when folks are carryin’ hot food or dishes, alright?”
Artie nods first, quick and earnest now that he understands that they could’ve hurt someone because of running inside. He was a kid with good intentions, and so was Sarah. You and Joel both know they’d never intentionally hurt anyone, especially Grandma, who makes the best cookies and lets them lick the bowl.
“Can y’go apologize to Grandma for almost knockin’ her over?”
Sarah immediately slips away from your side while Artie barrels after her, nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush to make it right.
Joel catches the back of his sweater again automatically before he can faceplant, “Walk,” he warns.
Artie slows to an aggressively fast walk.
You laugh quietly beside him while Joel shakes his head under his breath, though you can see the fondness written all over his face.
Then he glances over at you, “Think they just need to burn some energy,” he murmurs.
“Y’think?”
He ignores the sarcasm entirely, “I’ll take ‘em outside for a bit before dinner. Let ‘em run ‘round the yard or somethin’.” His gaze drifts toward the darkening yard outside. “Better than lettin’ your father get tackled by a four-year-old hopped up on peppermint bark.”
You hum and melt into his side, pressing your face to his chest as his hand finds your lower back, his fingers massaging right where you always need it.
Your eyes drift toward the kitchen again just in time to see Ellie ignoring the chaos entirely in favor of your sister, who’s finally escaped dish duty and flour-covered countertops long enough to breathe.
Ellie toddles directly toward her with complete certainty, as she always has with your sister.
Your sister barely has enough time to crouch before Ellie climbs straight into her lap, little arms looping around her neck like she belongs there.
You watch as Ellie curls so naturally into your sister’s lap while the rest of the house buzzes around them. She’d always been different from the older two in that regard. Ellie preferred to observe first. To linger quietly at the edges until she decided where she wanted to be.
And somehow, more often than not, she chose your sister.
Maybe because your sister never pushes for attention from her. Never forces interaction or tries to coax her out of her shell. She simply exists beside her. And Ellie responds to that with the kind of trust only little kids are capable of giving.
Sarah reappears from the kitchen with your mother behind her, and your mom’s already waving the whole thing off with affectionate exasperation.
Artie’s at her heels in apology while Sarah explains something very seriously with animated little hand gestures.
Joel watches the scene unfold and something in him visibly eases again.
You tilt your head up to look at him properly, and there it is again, that unbearable feeling that still catches you off guard even after years together.
The sight of him.
Not just handsome, though god he is. Broad shoulders filling out that dark sweater, hair slightly mussed from tiny hands, wedding ring catching warm kitchen light every time he moves.
It’s the intimacy of knowing every version of this man.
Knowing how gentle those hands are when they hold your babies. Knowing the same man that disciplines your children, kissed every inch of your body this morning like devotion itself. Knowing the quiet steadiness of him is real because you’ve seen every version of this man there is to see.
The younger Joel who kissed you like he was starving for it never disappeared. If anything, age only made him worse. Who kisses you now like it’s the nectar of life itself and the only way he can possibly get through the day.
The man who keeps fruit snacks in his coat pocket because Ellie gets cranky in grocery stores. The man who learned how to braid Sarah’s hair from YouTube videos because she once cried when he couldn’t make it look like yours. The man who lets Artie “help” him with yard work even though it usually creates three times more work in the end.
Now, the amazing father who is currently calculating exactly how long he can let the kids sprint around outside before someone inevitably cries about wet socks.
Joel notices you staring almost instantly and his eyes lower to yours, softening at the edges, “What?”
“Nothin’.”
That earns you a skeptical little huff.
Your fingers curl into the front of his sweater instead, smoothing over the fabric there while your body instinctively drifts closer.
You swear sometimes loving him feels less like an emotion and more like gravity.
Your Joel.
The man who somehow still looks at you like he’s a little stunned you chose him.
Even now, standing in your parents’ foyer surrounded by children and Christmas dishes and overlapping conversations, you can feel it lingering beneath the surface in the way his eyes drift over you.
“What’s on your mind, darlin’?”
You smile against his chest, “You always know when I’m in my head, huh.”
“Married to ya long enough.” His nose brushes briefly against your temple, “Got tells.”
You raise an eyebrow and look up at him again, “Oh, I’ve got tells?”
He nods lazily, his eyes slowly absorbing everything your expression has to reveal, “Mhmm.”
“What are they?”
His eyes flick down to your mouth before lifting again, warm amusement settling there, “Get real quiet. Start lookin’ at me like you’re about five seconds away from either kissin’ me or cryin’.”
His hand slides firmly around your waist and pulls you against him until there’s barely space left between your bodies. Warmth radiates off him in waves, familiar and grounding and dangerously distracting all at once.
Then he kisses you, his mouth moves against yours with the ease of long practice. His thumb strokes slow against the curve of your waist beneath your sweater while your fingers drift upward into the slightly mussed hair at the nape of his neck.
God, you love kissing your husband.
Love the way he always sighs into it immediately.
Love the way his hand tightens subtly at your hips every single time, grounding himself to you.
The room dissipates from around you. Everything else fades away until…
“Again?”
Joel pulls back first, though only barely, forehead still resting against yours as he closes his eyes with exhausted resignation.
Sarah stands in the middle of the foyer holding a candy cane like she’s personally witnessed a war crime.
Artie appears beside her two seconds later, immediately far less interested.
Sarah keeps squinting suspiciously at the two of you, “You kiss a lot.”
Joel snaps his fingers playfully and points toward her without missing a beat, “Well, I like mommy a lot. That’s generally how bein’ married works, bug.”
Artie nods thoughtfully at this revelation while Ellie, still planted in your sister’s lap, watches the entire exchange.
Your mother waves a hand from the dining room, “Joel, if you still plan on taking those children outside before dinner, now would be an excellent time.”
“Yes ma’am, I’m goin’.”
The kids erupt instantly.
You bite back another smile as Joel starts gathering tiny jackets, hats, gloves, and boots with the efficiency of a man who’s done this exact routine a thousand times before. He crouches to zip Sarah’s coat while simultaneously stopping Artie from pelting Ellie with a mitten.
Then he looks up at you with that stupid, devastating tenderness that never fails to wreck you.
Joel sighs heavily through a smile before opening the back door, immediately getting blasted with cold air and shrieking children.
Within seconds the backyard is chaos.
Sarah starts organizing some elaborate puddle game that only she understands while Artie sprints through the yard like a feral woodland creature. Joel trails after them with Ellie right behind him, her hat slipping crooked over one eye while she watches her siblings with fascination.
You stand near the kitchen window with your mother and sister, pretending to help arrange dinner while mostly just watching your husband through the glass.
The porch light catches on the broad shape of him moving through the yard, bending to help Artie gather sticks that look the most sword shaped while Sarah tugs insistently at his sleeve trying to explain rules to whatever game she’s invented.
And even from across the yard you can see the grin that spreads across his face when he catches you staring again.
—
Dinner passes in the warm, chaotic blur family holidays always seem to become.
By the time the gifts are all exchanged and opened, and the kids are finally bundled into pajamas and makeshift sleeping arrangements, both you and Joel are running on exhaustion, affection, and several hours of quietly pretending you weren’t thinking about each other in entirely inappropriate ways all evening. Joel stands in the hallway doorway watching you adjust Sarah’s blanket later that night, your sweater riding up slightly over the curve of your stomach as you bend.
The look on his face when you straighten again is enough to make warmth coil low in your belly instantly.
His wedding ring glints softly as he hooks a finger through the belt loop of your jeans and pulls you into him.
There’s a pattern to the two of you now. One built over years of marriage and children and knowing each other too well. Lingering touches throughout the day. Stolen glances across crowded rooms. The gradual build of tension until eventually one of you finally caves.
Usually him, though not always.
You glance down the hallway toward the room where the kids are sleeping before looking back up at him.
Joel follows your gaze and immediately groans under his breath.
“Darlin’,” he mutters, forehead dropping briefly against yours. “We are absolutely not sneakin’ around your parents’ house like teenagers,” Joel mutters against your mouth. Even as he says it, his hands are already sliding beneath your sweater, warm palms spreading over your waist like he physically cannot help himself.
“Mm,” you hum against his mouth. “Married teenagers with a mortgage and four children.”
That rough laugh leaves him before he kisses you again, helpless against it despite himself.
Maybe it was the nostalgia of being back in your childhood home. Maybe it was watching Joel all night, warm and broad and endlessly patient with your children. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones or the rare opportunity to exist without tiny hands climbing all over both of you for five consecutive minutes.
Whatever it was, the second the bedroom door shut behind you, restraint stopped feeling particularly important.
The guest room, which was once your childhood bedroom, is dark except for the colored glow of Christmas lights filtering faintly through the curtains from outside. Soft reds and greens drift across the walls in muted washes, catching along Joel’s shoulders as he locks the door as quietly as possible before turning back toward you.
And then he just… looks at you.
His gaze drifts slowly down your body, lingering at the swell of your stomach beneath your sweater before climbing back upward again. Something about pregnancy completely rewires this man. Not that Joel had ever really tried to keep his hands off of you, but carrying his babies seemed to reduce whatever self-control he once possessed into ash.
He’s stepping toward you again and you bite your lip in anticipation, the heat already climbing your neck.
His mouth brushes yours, “Thought your mother was gonna catch you eye-fuckin’ me across the dinner table.”
A startled laugh escapes you before he kisses you again, swallowing the sound immediately.
The kiss deepens almost without warning.
Years together had made the two of you dangerously attuned to each other. Every inhale. Every shift of breath. Every tiny sound. Joel kisses you like a man who already knows exactly what makes you melt and still enjoys discovering it all over again anyway.
His hands slide beneath your sweater fully now, rough palms smoothing up the curve of your spine before settling at your ribs. You shiver when his thumbs brush the underside of your breasts.
“Joel,” you whisper.
The sound of his name alone seems to do something to him.
His forehead drops briefly against yours again, eyes closing as he exhales slowly through his nose like he’s actively trying to collect himself, “This is a terrible idea.”
Your fingers slide into his hair, “Y’wanna stop?”
Joel lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh against your mouth.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, palms smoothing slowly down your sides, “if I ever stop touchin’ ya, it’s because I’m six feet under.”
Joel backs you toward the bed slowly, one hand spread protectively over the curve of your stomach. The backs of your legs hit the mattress and he follows you down with a quiet groan the second you pull him with you.
His beard scrapes lightly along your jaw before his mouth finds the sensitive spot beneath your ear.
“Y’have any idea,” he murmurs quietly against your skin, “what watchin’ you tonight did t’me?”
Your hands smooth beneath his sweater, palms dragging over warm skin and the firm planes of his back. “Probably the same thing watchin’ you with the kids does to me.”
That earns you a rough exhale against your throat.
“Yeah?” His mouth curves faintly there. “Me wranglin’ sugar-crazed children got you worked up?”
“So stern yet so gentle with your minis…” You glance up at him innocently, “yeah, very much so.”
His mouth drags down your throat and he immediately catches the tiny sound that escapes you, one large hand sliding up to cover your mouth before instinct can betray either of you.
Those dark chocolate eyes lift back to yours instantly, equal parts amusement and warning.
“Mind yourself, darlin’, got sleepin’ kids and a house full’a people who already know too much about what we get up to when we’re alone.”
Your fingers smooth through the hair at the nape of his neck, softening at the rough edge in his voice. It’s almost unfair how quickly this man unravels for you after all these years. One kiss and suddenly the steady, capable father downstairs wrangling over-tired children disappears, replaced by the version of Joel who still looks at you like he’s starving for every inch of affection you offer him.
His other rough palm skims over your ribs, your waist, the gentle swell of your stomach again, “Y’gonna be quiet f’me, baby?”
You nod your head pathetically, and he can feel your grin against his hand.
“Y’promise?”
You nod your head again, taking staggered breaths through your nose as he looks down at you with such fire that you swear you melt beneath him.
“Alright… but I won’t hesitate in gaggin’ ya if I have to, y’understand?” He takes his hand slowly off of your mouth, assessing your understanding and obedience, “use your words, hun. Be a good girl.”
“Yes sir, I… I’ll be good.”
He hums in contemplation, knowing you have good intentions, but also knowing how hard you try to be quiet and how rare it is for you to succeed in that endeavor. His hands finally grab the hem of your shirt and peel it off of you, quickly disposing of your bra as you arch your back for him.
“Y’are a good girl f’me, ain’t ya…” His lips trail lower, lingering and reverent one second before turning hungry the next. Leaving dark red marks in his path.
The colored glow of the Christmas lights from the house beside your parents’ catches across his shoulders as he settles between your thighs again, broad hands smoothing up the outsides of them before spreading them gently apart.
You bite your lip hard enough to stop the sound threatening to leave you and his eyes darken instantly at the effort.
His thumb drags slowly along your bottom lip before pressing gently against it. Your mouth opens for him without hesitation, your tongue instantly working around it in a way that threatens his own unraveling.
“Y’know what y’do to me carryin’ my babies?” he murmurs, eyes dragging slowly over you. “Walkin’ around lookin’ so damn sexy all day while I’m tryin’ to behave in front’a your parents.”
His mouth presses briefly against your stomach then, softer than before, lingering there for a second longer before he looks back up at you again. His mouth presses briefly against your stomach then, softer than before, lingering there for a second longer before he looks back up at you again.
He withdraws his thumb from your mouth much to your dismay, but quickly unbuttons your jeans and hooks his fingers beneath the waistband of your pants and panties and pulls them down with less self-control than he’d been showcasing thus far.
You lift your hips as he slides them off, his hands lightly trace back up your legs, his eyes following aptly.
“Fuckin’ gorgeous, and look at that…” his obsession with your baby bump is no surprise, and might also be one of the reasons you’d agreed to having one last baby in the first place.
“You get prettier every damn day, don’t’cha?” His eyes flick back up to yours with that devilish grin of his before he’s gripping your thighs apart and settling himself between them.
He crosses his arms and peels his sweater and undershirt off in a grand show of revealing his deliciously tanned skin to your hungry hands and eyes.
It doesn’t take long for your hands to unbutton and unzip his pants and start to shuck them down his thick thighs. He steps off of the bed to peel the final layers all the way off.
His cock springs free, leaking profusely at the tip as if he’d been neglected all day. And maybe he had been, unintentionally, due to the demands of wrangling three trouble-makers on Christmas. And so had you, you realize, as your legs spread wider as settles between them again. Then, his attempt to inch down the bed is thwarted by your heels anchoring behind his thighs.
You’re not one to deny his hungry mouth from getting its fill of you, but the entire evening all you’d been able to think about is how you’re carrying his baby and how you need him to melt into you. For his broad body to cage you in like a damn animal and fuck the ache out of you.
“Need you, Joel… need to feel you,” your arms wrap around him as he presses his exposed skin against yours.
“Awfully bold of ya to assume you’re ready to take me, darlin’,” he drags two of his thick fingers down the expanse of your stomach, watching the shivers erupting on your skin with a quiet reverence.
“Gonna need t’use my fingers first, baby… need to feel y’cum before I lose my damn mind inside this tight pussy,” His fingers cup your mound now, his middle finger pressing against your entrance and quickly sinking inside without much resistance at all because of how long you’d been worked up, “fuck…” Joel groans at how wet you are already, then slowly adds another finger before starting to thrust in and out.
The squelch of his fingers is obscene, betraying how needy you are for him, as if there’s ever really any doubt.
“Needy cunt, I know… I know,” he soothes, his thrusts quicken with the addition of his thumb nudging against your swollen clit.
A whimper immediately escapes you, followed quickly by a moan of relief as he finds that spot inside of you, curling his fingers into the spongy ridge that has you seeing stars.
Joel can tell that you are already oblivious to the sounds you’re making. Before you can even register what’s happening, Joel’s thick fingers are stuffed into your open mouth, stifling the sounds pouring out of you, “since y’can’t shut y’self up…” he doesn’t need to finish that thought, the purpose is clear.
You hum around his fingers in surprise, but your eyes tell him everything he needs to know… well, the clenching of your tight walls around his thick digits buried deep in your pussy tends to also be a tell-tale sign that you are getting closer to cresting over that wave of pleasure.
Your hands anchor themselves to some part of him. Your nails biting into the tanned skin of his biceps and forearms, desperately trying to ground yourself against the onslaught of stimulation.
You're enraptured by the sight of him expertly working your body. He’s added a third finger into the gummy walls of your pussy, scissoring you open for his cock, and his thumb continues its circles on your clit.
You’re a blubbery mess around his fingers as you suckle them and incoherently plead for him, he doesn’t need to hear your words to know what you’re saying, “cum f’me, baby, then I can fuck the ache away. Be my good girl…”
Not like you had much choice in the matter as your body keens, your back arching into his touch as he brings you over that edge. Your vision goes blurry, the pleasure is blinding, and all you can feel is him. All you can hear are his stifled groans of approval and his words of encouragement through clenched teeth as he works you through your intense orgasm, “fuck yeah…such a good fuckin’ girl f’me… that’s it…”
You can feel the throb of his cock against your thigh, the tip leaking profusely and swollen red with need.
You still can’t talk coherently through his fingers still stuffed in your mouth, but he can feel your tongue moving along his fingers and his eyes finally meet yours again after he brings you down from your much needed release and withdraws his fingers from your pussy.
He keeps his fingers in your mouth, his eyes dark and hungry as he brings the fingers that had just been buried inside of you to his lips, sucking and licking them clean with a low hum of approval and murmuring praises as he indulges his favorite taste in the damn world, “so sweet, all fuckin’ mine.”
He keeps his fingers in your mouth as he grips his cock in his other hand, his head tilting back briefly in relief as he strokes it once before nudging your legs wider with his.
Your eyes say enough for him to understand what you want, and your body says what your eyes can’t. Your legs spread wider, inviting... begging. Your hands pulling him closer, the heels of your feet digging into the back of his legs and practically forcing his cock closer to where you need him.
“Alright, alright… I hear ya, needy thing, let me make y’feel better, yeah?”
You nod frantically, only now noticing the tears welling up in your eyes in sheer need to be filled by him.
Joel tuts mockingly at your desperation which only causes the tears to spill down your cheeks, “Y’need my cock to claim this sweet pussy like it ain’t what fucked ya deep and raw til it knocked y’up… again?”
His thumb traces your chin and cheek as your tongue works around his fingers as if they were his cock shoved deep into your throat. You do your best to swallow around them, the saliva starting to spill out and down your chin and he just watches, completely enraptured by the sight.
Much to your dismay…. surprise…. delight? you’re not really sure, he pulls his fingers out of your mouth. He then grips your face, with your mouth still agape, between his thumb and his soaked fingers, ensuring your full attention on him.
The next thing you know, his mouth is on yours, and the thick head of his cock is pushing into you.
You swallow each other’s moans, inhaling and absorbing every non-verbal confession of how badly you both needed this.
His tongue licks hungrily into your mouth and you greedily accept it, your hands finding purchase in his greying curls once more as he gives in to his own need.
The stretch is accompanied by a subtle burn as he works the girth of his cock into you. One of his hands grips the underside of your thigh, holding you open for him, while the other braces himself.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your mouth once he bottoms out. “Needed y’too, woulda kept teasin’ ya, but who the fuck am I kiddin’.”
He widens the stance of his thick thighs between yours, causing your legs to spread even more as he loses all abandon and begins fucking you into the mattress.
“Thank you, thank you… thank y…” you blabber against his lips, and you feel him grin against yours in response.
His pace picks up and his heavy balls slap against you with every thrust as he murmurs filth right into your soul, “take it, baby… this cock was made to fill this tight pussy, to fuck ya so hard and deep that y’can’t form a word in that pretty little head a’yours.” He keeps going, nestling his face into the crook of your neck and replacing his hand over your mouth to prevent your whimpers and moans from filling the entire house.
His lips are right up to your ear now, and you know he has no intention of stopping this spew of filth as he fucks you without reprieve, “this tiny body was made f’my thick cock to fuck my seed right into your womb… ‘n make it stick… over and over…” the sound of your bodies slapping together should’ve been more of a concern than whatever other sounds you could possibly be making, but Joel couldn’t care less at the moment.
The sound of Christmas movies carried throughout the house, so at this point it was more about making you compliant to the impact of his words, which he knows will have you milking his cock in no time, “fuckin’ ya in your childhood bed with our kids sleepin’ down the hall… what would your younger self say, huh? Before she knew what a greedy, desperate girl she’d become because a real man showed her how to fuck.”
You think about your eighteen year old self, finally eighteen, having indulged in endless fantasies of someday meeting an older man to show her exactly what Joel has shown you, but those fantasies could never compare to your reality now.
Joel’s words certainly have the desired effect, you can feel that coil tightening once more. That perfect mushroom head of his cock digging perfectly into that spot so so deep inside of you. His teeth and tongue are laying claim to the hollow of your throat. His grip tightens around your thigh, and you know it’ll bruise.
You fucking love when his hands leave a mark in the shape of his fingers. “Please…” you mouth the word against the hand still covering your mouth. Your nails rake down the muscles of his back, each thrust has you crying against his palm. You feel every detail of his impossibly hard cock as it repeatedly stretches you open around it and fucks deeper than you think is even possible, every time.
You can imagine every throb of every vein you’ve memorized with your tongue, your hands, your pulsating walls… his chest heaves against yours, the coarse, yet soft hair spattered across his broad chest rubs deliciously against your nipples and causes more whimpers to spill between his fingers. His skin melts against yours, the sweat of passionate bodies mixing together in a concoction of devotion and primal need.
He lifts himself up so he can see the way his cock splits you open and the foamy ring of your arousal forming at the base of his cock.
His brows furrow in concentration as he feels how fucking close you are again, “there it is, baby… give it t’me, my good fuckin’ girl,” he finally moves his hand from over your mouth in favor of strengthening your impending release. His hand moves between your thighs and his thumb finds that oversensitive bundle of nerves that instantly has you biting down on your own hand to stifle the noises from flooding out.
“That’s it,” his hips stutter as you begin to pulsate around him, he pushes his hips forward, tilting yours up slightly and then everything implodes, “fuck… fuck yes, milkin’ the fuck outta me, baby…”
Now, both of his hands grip the back of your thighs and folds you in half, his entire body pressing you into the mattress as he pounds mercilessly into you.
You’re free-falling off of the edge and Joel’s right there with you. Lips colliding in kisses meant to devour, hands grasping to pull him closer, but there’s no space between you left to fill, yet you ache to absorb.
A few more thrusts and he can’t hold back any longer. With a deep, guttural groan that vibrates so deep you can feel it in your own bones, he’s spilling his seed deep inside of you, “take it,” his forehead drops to your shoulder, his breath hot on your skin in soft grunts, emptying himself with thick spurts of cum painting your walls, “take it all.” His mouth claims every inch of skin he can reach, leaving little red marks and sloppy kisses in its wake. He slowly and messily trails back to your mouth, which he promptly pries open with his.
Your legs shake in the aftershock, your hands alternating between smoothing down the muscles of his back and tangling in his sweat-slicked hair.
You feel every pulse of his cock throbbing deep inside of you. With a few final and deep thrusts, he fucks his cum even deeper, and you can feel the mix of yours and his juices spilling out around his softening cock.
Right as you start to contemplate the consequences of making a mess on the guest room’s sheets, Joel understands exactly where your mind wanders to, “your parents ain’t dumb, they know we fuck like animals.”
Which does little to soothe your nerves. To know that your parents know how sexually active you are… as if a gaggle of kids and another on the way wasn’t proof enough… it went against your upbringing to really talk about that stuff with them. You and your sister are fairly certain they believe that she’s still a virgin, when you’d grown into your womanhood hearing about all of her sexual escapades. Her experience indirectly solidified your own preference for older men.
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” he presses gentle kisses to your forehead, your temple, your cheekbone…. the corner of your mouth, “I’ll rinse the sheets off in the mornin’ and leave ‘em to dry so there’s some benefit of the doubt… That work?”
You nod your head, but roll your eyes at the brown-eyed man staring so intently down at you, “thank you.”
He winks cheekily and you pull him into another sultry and sloppy make out.
“Anytime,” he replies.
You kiss his smug grin with a pleased hum.
A wandering hand finds your sore breasts with a soft sigh of relief against your lips, and he finally pulls out of you with a quiet groan, collapsing beside you. Joel presses gentle kisses to your shoulder and neck before settling into the soft mattress, allowing the exhaustion from the day to finally overtake you both.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
a/n: and yes, we are going to ignore the fact that this initially was going to be more of a Christmas chapter. fighting for my life a little bit (just being dramatic). my drive to do quite literally anything is minuscule to non-existent, but there is no better feeling than a blissful realization where I’m like oh let me do something I want to do and I actually do it. Throughout the past few months I have made like 20 drafts of general ideas for this fic and filled in plot holes/ did research for accuracy. that process is exhilarating for me as I scour pinterest, but that’s as far as I’d gotten til now. writing smut just wasn’t happening for me lol. soooo, here’s whatever this became! hope you enjoyed!
Taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed!): @white-wolf-buckaroo @streamermattsgf @somedayheaven @simpingforjoel
Another one couldn’t hurt… right? - The Big Reveal
Pt. 9: you and daddy Joel but not in that way… share the news of the addition to your little family.
pt. 1 | prev pt. | series masterlist // main masterlist | next pt.
NSFW! mdni 18+ only
warnings/content:
WC 7.4k - no outbreak!au, domestic fluff/smut, established relationship, husband!joel x wife!reader, some physical descriptions, mentions of pregnancy, age gap relationship, reader is early 30s & Joel is late 40s, they have 3 kids and are expecting a 4th. // unprotected p-in-v (don’t even think about it!), breeding kink/ pregnancy kink/ impregnation kink (even if your eyes are wide open, you don’t need to squint), soft dom!joel, size kink, fingers in mouth fingers in mouth fingers in mo—, fingering, degradation kink, praise kink, marking, dirty talk, multiple orgasms. No use of y/n.
a/n: more more more I’m greedy for them please stop making me exist elsewhere
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
your parents’ house, Christmas Day
“You’re pregnant?”
Your sister’s voice cuts through the moment you step into the foyer. Her head is poking out from around the kitchen doorway, hair pulled up in a messy bun, hands still flour-dusted from rolling dough, and her eyes lock right onto your stomach.
You glance down at your bump, snug and unmistakably visible beneath your soft, form-fitting sweater.
Your small frame was always quick to betray the blooming life within your womb. You’d started showing at just two months pregnant, a form-fitting sweater leaves little doubt.
You blink at her past your parents, who are busy wrangling your kids into hugs… Sarah already halfway out of her coat and Artie’s stomping water off his boots, and letting himself be lifted into your dad’s arms.
“Well,” you deadpan, tossing a look back at Joel and that permanent smirk fixed on his face, “hello to you, too.”
Your sister disappears, but before you can get your coat off she’s right in front of you, wide-eyed and eyes locked on your bump.
“Oh my god, oh my god, you are. That’s a baby bump.” Her eyes find yours and you swear you see a tear in the corner of them, “You didn’t tell me!”
“I was going to,” you laugh nervously, surrendering your coat to Joel’s waiting hand. “I mean… I am telling you.”
Your mom turns at the noise, gaze dropping to your sweater the same moment she registers the conversation. Her brows lift, lips part, and then her hand covers her chest like the gesture might steady her heart.
“Is it true?” she asks, softly. “Honey, are you really…?”
Joel steps up beside you, tucking a hand around your waist, grounding the moment with that subtle, quiet strength of his. He’s still carrying Ellie, who’s buried her face in his neck with her thumb in her mouth, clinging to him despite her puffy pink jacket. Her little legs dangle against him.
“A little over 4 months along,” he says. “We wanted to wait a little while before tellin’ everyone.”
Your dad glances up from where Artie’s got him in a bear hug. “Wait… four months? You’re four months pregnant?” He stares at you, then Joel, then you again. “When were y’all gonna mention that, sometime after the baby graduates?”
“We wanted to do it in person,” you raise your hands in mock surrender.
The room stills, the chaos of coats and kids fading into a shared, stunned silence, and then your mom’s face breaks open like the sun coming out from behind clouds. She steps forward, hugging you with both arms.
“Oh, sweetheart… another baby,” she murmurs. “You’re growing another little person.”
Joel smiles softly beside you, and when your mom pulls back, she hugs him too. He stiffens for only half a second before sinking into it. Just the effects of your mom’s hugs, he stopped denying that fact.
“Four kids,” your dad mutters, still shaking his head. “You must really like bein’ exhausted.”
“Well, she’s hard to say no to.” A sharp nudge of your elbow has him looking at you with that devious smirk of his, knowing damn well he was the one you couldn’t say no to.
“Happy wife happy life, right?” your sister jokes, nudging Joel from the other side and causing a grunt from the man as he’s attacked from both sides with what he swears are the pointiest damn elbows.
So distinctly sisters, but he loves the bond the two of you share.
Your sister grins as she steps in front of you and reaches over to rub your bump. You roll your eyes, though you secretly love when your sister dotes on your babies. You were practically her baby growing up, after all.
“This little one’s already stealing the show.”
Everyone’s laughing gleefully and so emotionally now, your sister hugging Joel from the side with a playful, ‘you dog, you’.
Joel finally lowers Ellie, who’s now more awake and mumbling something as she toddles straight toward your dad, arms out like a sleepy penguin. It’s her turn to be scooped up by him and he presses a kiss to her forehead.
Joel peels off his coat last with a deep sigh and a pleased smirk on his face.
He glances at you with that look he saves just for these moments, half overwhelmed and half overflowing.
“You okay?” you ask quietly as the room moves around you in a swirl of hugs, laughter, and boots being peeled off of tiny feet.
He nods once, eyes locked on yours, the softest brown to ever be seen. Warm like creamy hot chocolate which has become a staple in your cravings lately, “Never better, darlin’.”
Sarah tugs at his hand then, pulling his attention away from you. Always feels like a much crueler interruption than it is. But what can you do when just a look from the man can have you feeling your heart beat out of your chest.
“Can I show Poppy the drawings we made?” Sarah asks, the brightest smile on her little face causing those distinctly Joel dimples to make their appearances.
Joel’s mouth twitches into a soft grin, “Sure thing, bug.”
She grabs your dad’s hand and drags him into the living room while Artie runs ahead. Your mom leads you toward the kitchen with her arm around your waist, as if you’re viable to break like precious china if handled wrong. She was always like this with your pregnancies, with your only sibling being your sister who was quite content remaining single and childfree, you and your kids were the main attraction at any family gathering.
Joel only had one brother, Tommy, who had also miraculously remained childfree despite his dalliances before he hit his mid-thirties where life turned serious.
Joel had told you all about that moment in his life that he’d realized how much he’d forgone a personal life to take care of his mom when she’d gotten sick. Then, she got better, and he was still stuck in that eldest role of taking care of his younger brother and being the pinnacle of support for the entire family.
When his work started flourishing and he had his own house to maintain, he lost himself in the work. The effort of a relationship is easily dissuaded by the endless hours of paperwork and phone calls that drained his brain of any further effort. By the time he’d get home, he’d be exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally; he knew trying to establish anything external would only be a distraction. Plus, if he were to get into a relationship he’d want to be able to focus more of his energy on that than he was capable of at that point.
By the time you’d met him, he’d finally opened himself to the idea of dating. But he didn’t want the flings or the one-night stands. He’d taken care of himself for long enough that he had no interest in wasting time as that was his most valuable asset. Then, you. Intense, focused, brilliant, determined… young as hell, but you were… well, you. As much as he tried to deny it initially, you had woven yourself into his very being. The idea of waking up to a cup of coffee and his dose of you every day became his lifeline.
When you’d finally decided to try for a baby together, it wasn’t a decision made lightly.
You’d enjoyed almost an entire decade together childfree. You’d filled your time with traveling and enjoying each other to the fullest, but there was so much love left to give.
Joel had respected your wishes after things between the two of you had gotten to an undeniably serious point after you’d settled into the married life. The discussion of kids came up, and you’d both agreed that you wanted to focus on your career and your marriage and not prioritize the life path of having children.
Joel was respectful of your wishes, as he always has been, but you could tell he was a man meant to be a dad. He was nurturing and patient, slow to anger, protective, kind, strong and soft all at once.
He’d never once brought it up unless you did, the exciting idea of having kids. Then, you slowly started talking about it more. How you were having baby fever, or when his cousin’s kids always gravitated towards him and he was just so natural and gentle that you couldn’t help but feel your womb ache to have his babies. Or when you were just so deeply and irrevocably in love you’d beg him to give you his babies.
He always tried to differentiate the feral requests with the logical ones, the conversations brought up when talking about bills or vacations or friends who were having kids. The logistics of it all, the time allocated, the mental and physical impacts that may occur, the lifestyle changes, the entire shift of dynamics once again to accommodate the new roles of being mom and dad, best friends, and husband and wife.
Then, you were buying baby books for new parents, eyeing that empty room for the layout of a nursery, and adjusting yours and his diet for the healthiest baby-making… That's when he finally embraced the excitement he’d been harboring for years.
Of course, he’d always stated his openness to the idea. In a “if you ever want kids, darlin’…” kind of way. Well, he can’t pretend he’s entirely innocent… especially when he’d be balls deep inside of you and he hears those sweet whimpers and tells you to ‘take it… let me fill y’up, make it stick, make a momma outta you’.
It's easy for him as a man to embrace the concept of children. But he knew it would have to be your choice, all he could do was be supportive of your decision. He wanted you, all of you, to himself. He wasn’t ashamed to finally admit his desire for physical, undeniable proof of his possession of your love and your devotion. Turns out, you wanted everyone to know who you belonged to, too.
As if that was much of a surprise for the way you unashamedly would display your affections in public. Or rather lay your claim. He loved every damn minute of it.
You’d learned early on that you shared particular turn-ons regarding the idea of Joel’s seed taking root deep inside you, creating life out of primal instinct. Which were very unproductive for the logical side of things when in reality you both had agreed to prioritizing a childfree life… but it had always been a turn-on. In addition to many others you’d explored over the years, at some point you realized there may be some real-life application with which you were both genuinely excited for. Not just the primal instinct to breed, claim, and belong to each other, though that fire within you both certainly continues to burn brighter with each day.
Now, with your little family, anyone you’d ever encountered had no doubt in their minds about the passion shared between the two of you. Overflowing with love and admiration for each other and bleeding into the physical and living proof of your love in the form of three little munchkins and another on the way.
Damn, he was proud to be the daddy to these kiddos. Quite literally made with love. Growing to become little people he adores, so distinctive and brilliant in their own ways, yet so undeniably you in other ways. And yes, more often than not he can’t help but confront the parts of himself that shine through these mini-versions of he and you.
“Daddy…” Ellie’s tugging on the pant leg of his jeans, her brows furrowed just like her daddy’s, so intently focused on getting his attention.
“Yeah, baby girl? What’d’ya need?” Her eyes light up once she’s won his attention, immediately outstretching her arms.
With a deep sigh, he leans down and picks her up, a soothing hand rubbing her back as he straightens again.
His girls are spoiled, and his son certainly is too. The blossoming life growing inside of you will be just as spoiled… he looks at you at that thought, his gaze softening at the sight of your hand absently resting on the bump beneath your sweater.
He’s obsessed with that sight, but is once again rudely interrupted by Sarah and Artie nearly knocking over your mother as she was carrying dishes to the dining room table.
He groans, letting his eyes rove over you once more before gently sets Ellie back down, much to her disapproval, “alright, you two… c’mere.” Artie and Sarah’s eyes quickly look as his usual soft, gentle voice turned stern. A rarity, but they knew enough to know that they had done something to earn that tone. He points his finger to the floor in front of him, and kneels down so he’s closer to eye-level of your two oldest.
“Artie…” your son refuses to still, trying to grab onto Joel’s broad shoulders and climb onto his back. But Joel quickly catches him, lifting him and setting him down in front of where Joel was kneeling. Joel’s large hands gently grip your son’s upper arms, keeping him still which is a nearly impossible endeavor when he’s hyper.
“Y’listenin’, bud?” Joel’s stern dad voice is so unbearably sexy to you, and as much as you loved it you also liked that he didn’t have to use it that often… yet. Who knew what trouble your kids would get into as they get older and likely more rambunctious.
Artie’s mischievous eyes, the same dark, scheming eyes his daddy gets whenever he’s up to no good, dart everywhere except his father’s face.
Meanwhile, Sarah has already begun retreating behind you.
Your now seven-year-old carefully wedges herself against the back of your legs like maybe if she becomes part of your silhouette Joel won’t notice she’d very clearly been involved in whatever catastrophe had nearly taken out your mother and the dinner dishes.
“Oh no,” he drawls, pointing toward her without looking away from Artie. “Don’t you start hidin’ behind your mama like she’s gonna save ya.”
You bite the inside of your cheek, fighting a smile as Sarah’s little hands clutch the back of your sweater tighter.
“Mommy likes me,” she mutters into your side.
Joel huffs out a laugh at that, deep and warm and exhausted all at once. “Mommy likes me too, bug. Means she’s my accomplice, not yours.”
You finally glance down at her, raising a brow, “Were you helping your brother cause problems?”
Sarah’s eyes widen with immediate betrayal. Like you, of all people, should understand loyalty.
Joel catches the look and points between the two of you, “See? Team effort. Mommy and Daddy are united against tiny menaces.”
Joel sighs through a smile before finally straightening back up to his full height. Sarah stays tucked against you, peeking around your arm with cautious little eyes now that she realizes this is shifting from teasing into an actual lesson.
The softness settles back into his face almost immediately.
He reaches down, patting Artie lightly on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says more gently, waiting until both kids are looking at him. “Y’all know Grandma could’ve gotten hurt, right?”
Sarah’s mouth pulls downward just slightly while Artie’s grip loosens on Joel’s jeans, “We didn’t mean to,” Sarah says quietly.
“I know y’didn’t.” Joel’s voice stays calm and steady, never sharp. “But that’s why we gotta be careful in houses full’a people, ‘specially when folks are carryin’ hot food or dishes, alright?”
Artie nods first, quick and earnest now that he understands that they could’ve hurt someone because of running inside. He was a kid with good intentions, and so was Sarah. You and Joel both know they’d never intentionally hurt anyone, especially Grandma, who makes the best cookies and lets them lick the bowl.
“Can y’go apologize to Grandma for almost knockin’ her over?”
Sarah immediately slips away from your side while Artie barrels after her, nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush to make it right.
Joel catches the back of his sweater again automatically before he can faceplant, “Walk,” he warns.
Artie slows to an aggressively fast walk.
You laugh quietly beside him while Joel shakes his head under his breath, though you can see the fondness written all over his face.
Then he glances over at you, “Think they just need to burn some energy,” he murmurs.
“Y’think?”
He ignores the sarcasm entirely, “I’ll take ‘em outside for a bit before dinner. Let ‘em run ‘round the yard or somethin’.” His gaze drifts toward the darkening yard outside. “Better than lettin’ your father get tackled by a four-year-old hopped up on peppermint bark.”
You hum and melt into his side, pressing your face to his chest as his hand finds your lower back, his fingers massaging right where you always need it.
Your eyes drift toward the kitchen again just in time to see Ellie ignoring the chaos entirely in favor of your sister, who’s finally escaped dish duty and flour-covered countertops long enough to breathe.
Ellie toddles directly toward her with complete certainty, as she always has with your sister.
Your sister barely has enough time to crouch before Ellie climbs straight into her lap, little arms looping around her neck like she belongs there.
You watch as Ellie curls so naturally into your sister’s lap while the rest of the house buzzes around them. She’d always been different from the older two in that regard. Ellie preferred to observe first. To linger quietly at the edges until she decided where she wanted to be.
And somehow, more often than not, she chose your sister.
Maybe because your sister never pushes for attention from her. Never forces interaction or tries to coax her out of her shell. She simply exists beside her. And Ellie responds to that with the kind of trust only little kids are capable of giving.
Sarah reappears from the kitchen with your mother behind her, and your mom’s already waving the whole thing off with affectionate exasperation.
Artie’s at her heels in apology while Sarah explains something very seriously with animated little hand gestures.
Joel watches the scene unfold and something in him visibly eases again.
You tilt your head up to look at him properly, and there it is again, that unbearable feeling that still catches you off guard even after years together.
The sight of him.
Not just handsome, though god he is. Broad shoulders filling out that dark sweater, hair slightly mussed from tiny hands, wedding ring catching warm kitchen light every time he moves.
It’s the intimacy of knowing every version of this man.
Knowing how gentle those hands are when they hold your babies. Knowing the same man that disciplines your children, kissed every inch of your body this morning like devotion itself. Knowing the quiet steadiness of him is real because you’ve seen every version of this man there is to see.
The younger Joel who kissed you like he was starving for it never disappeared. If anything, age only made him worse. Who kisses you now like it’s the nectar of life itself and the only way he can possibly get through the day.
The man who keeps fruit snacks in his coat pocket because Ellie gets cranky in grocery stores. The man who learned how to braid Sarah’s hair from YouTube videos because she once cried when he couldn’t make it look like yours. The man who lets Artie “help” him with yard work even though it usually creates three times more work in the end.
Now, the amazing father who is currently calculating exactly how long he can let the kids sprint around outside before someone inevitably cries about wet socks.
Joel notices you staring almost instantly and his eyes lower to yours, softening at the edges, “What?”
“Nothin’.”
That earns you a skeptical little huff.
Your fingers curl into the front of his sweater instead, smoothing over the fabric there while your body instinctively drifts closer.
You swear sometimes loving him feels less like an emotion and more like gravity.
Your Joel.
The man who somehow still looks at you like he’s a little stunned you chose him.
Even now, standing in your parents’ foyer surrounded by children and Christmas dishes and overlapping conversations, you can feel it lingering beneath the surface in the way his eyes drift over you.
“What’s on your mind, darlin’?”
You smile against his chest, “You always know when I’m in my head, huh.”
“Married to ya long enough.” His nose brushes briefly against your temple, “Got tells.”
You raise an eyebrow and look up at him again, “Oh, I’ve got tells?”
He nods lazily, his eyes slowly absorbing everything your expression has to reveal, “Mhmm.”
“What are they?”
His eyes flick down to your mouth before lifting again, warm amusement settling there, “Get real quiet. Start lookin’ at me like you’re about five seconds away from either kissin’ me or cryin’.”
His hand slides firmly around your waist and pulls you against him until there’s barely space left between your bodies. Warmth radiates off him in waves, familiar and grounding and dangerously distracting all at once.
Then he kisses you, his mouth moves against yours with the ease of long practice. His thumb strokes slow against the curve of your waist beneath your sweater while your fingers drift upward into the slightly mussed hair at the nape of his neck.
God, you love kissing your husband.
Love the way he always sighs into it immediately.
Love the way his hand tightens subtly at your hips every single time, grounding himself to you.
The room dissipates from around you. Everything else fades away until…
“Again?”
Joel pulls back first, though only barely, forehead still resting against yours as he closes his eyes with exhausted resignation.
Sarah stands in the middle of the foyer holding a candy cane like she’s personally witnessed a war crime.
Artie appears beside her two seconds later, immediately far less interested.
Sarah keeps squinting suspiciously at the two of you, “You kiss a lot.”
Joel snaps his fingers playfully and points toward her without missing a beat, “Well, I like mommy a lot. That’s generally how bein’ married works, bug.”
Artie nods thoughtfully at this revelation while Ellie, still planted in your sister’s lap, watches the entire exchange.
Your mother waves a hand from the dining room, “Joel, if you still plan on taking those children outside before dinner, now would be an excellent time.”
“Yes ma’am, I’m goin’.”
The kids erupt instantly.
You bite back another smile as Joel starts gathering tiny jackets, hats, gloves, and boots with the efficiency of a man who’s done this exact routine a thousand times before. He crouches to zip Sarah’s coat while simultaneously stopping Artie from pelting Ellie with a mitten.
Then he looks up at you with that stupid, devastating tenderness that never fails to wreck you.
Joel sighs heavily through a smile before opening the back door, immediately getting blasted with cold air and shrieking children.
Within seconds the backyard is chaos.
Sarah starts organizing some elaborate puddle game that only she understands while Artie sprints through the yard like a feral woodland creature. Joel trails after them with Ellie right behind him, her hat slipping crooked over one eye while she watches her siblings with fascination.
You stand near the kitchen window with your mother and sister, pretending to help arrange dinner while mostly just watching your husband through the glass.
The porch light catches on the broad shape of him moving through the yard, bending to help Artie gather sticks that look the most sword shaped while Sarah tugs insistently at his sleeve trying to explain rules to whatever game she’s invented.
And even from across the yard you can see the grin that spreads across his face when he catches you staring again.
—
Dinner passes in the warm, chaotic blur family holidays always seem to become.
By the time the gifts are all exchanged and opened, and the kids are finally bundled into pajamas and makeshift sleeping arrangements, both you and Joel are running on exhaustion, affection, and several hours of quietly pretending you weren’t thinking about each other in entirely inappropriate ways all evening. Joel stands in the hallway doorway watching you adjust Sarah’s blanket later that night, your sweater riding up slightly over the curve of your stomach as you bend.
The look on his face when you straighten again is enough to make warmth coil low in your belly instantly.
His wedding ring glints softly as he hooks a finger through the belt loop of your jeans and pulls you into him.
There’s a pattern to the two of you now. One built over years of marriage and children and knowing each other too well. Lingering touches throughout the day. Stolen glances across crowded rooms. The gradual build of tension until eventually one of you finally caves.
Usually him, though not always.
You glance down the hallway toward the room where the kids are sleeping before looking back up at him.
Joel follows your gaze and immediately groans under his breath.
“Darlin’,” he mutters, forehead dropping briefly against yours. “We are absolutely not sneakin’ around your parents’ house like teenagers,” Joel mutters against your mouth. Even as he says it, his hands are already sliding beneath your sweater, warm palms spreading over your waist like he physically cannot help himself.
“Mm,” you hum against his mouth. “Married teenagers with a mortgage and four children.”
That rough laugh leaves him before he kisses you again, helpless against it despite himself.
Maybe it was the nostalgia of being back in your childhood home. Maybe it was watching Joel all night, warm and broad and endlessly patient with your children. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones or the rare opportunity to exist without tiny hands climbing all over both of you for five consecutive minutes.
Whatever it was, the second the bedroom door shut behind you, restraint stopped feeling particularly important.
The guest room, which was once your childhood bedroom, is dark except for the colored glow of Christmas lights filtering faintly through the curtains from outside. Soft reds and greens drift across the walls in muted washes, catching along Joel’s shoulders as he locks the door as quietly as possible before turning back toward you.
And then he just… looks at you.
His gaze drifts slowly down your body, lingering at the swell of your stomach beneath your sweater before climbing back upward again. Something about pregnancy completely rewires this man. Not that Joel had ever really tried to keep his hands off of you, but carrying his babies seemed to reduce whatever self-control he once possessed into ash.
He’s stepping toward you again and you bite your lip in anticipation, the heat already climbing your neck.
His mouth brushes yours, “Thought your mother was gonna catch you eye-fuckin’ me across the dinner table.”
A startled laugh escapes you before he kisses you again, swallowing the sound immediately.
The kiss deepens almost without warning.
Years together had made the two of you dangerously attuned to each other. Every inhale. Every shift of breath. Every tiny sound. Joel kisses you like a man who already knows exactly what makes you melt and still enjoys discovering it all over again anyway.
His hands slide beneath your sweater fully now, rough palms smoothing up the curve of your spine before settling at your ribs. You shiver when his thumbs brush the underside of your breasts.
“Joel,” you whisper.
The sound of his name alone seems to do something to him.
His forehead drops briefly against yours again, eyes closing as he exhales slowly through his nose like he’s actively trying to collect himself, “This is a terrible idea.”
Your fingers slide into his hair, “Y’wanna stop?”
Joel lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh against your mouth.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, palms smoothing slowly down your sides, “if I ever stop touchin’ ya, it’s because I’m six feet under.”
Joel backs you toward the bed slowly, one hand spread protectively over the curve of your stomach. The backs of your legs hit the mattress and he follows you down with a quiet groan the second you pull him with you.
His beard scrapes lightly along your jaw before his mouth finds the sensitive spot beneath your ear.
“Y’have any idea,” he murmurs quietly against your skin, “what watchin’ you tonight did t’me?”
Your hands smooth beneath his sweater, palms dragging over warm skin and the firm planes of his back. “Probably the same thing watchin’ you with the kids does to me.”
That earns you a rough exhale against your throat.
“Yeah?” His mouth curves faintly there. “Me wranglin’ sugar-crazed children got you worked up?”
“So stern yet so gentle with your minis…” You glance up at him innocently, “yeah, very much so.”
His mouth drags down your throat and he immediately catches the tiny sound that escapes you, one large hand sliding up to cover your mouth before instinct can betray either of you.
Those dark chocolate eyes lift back to yours instantly, equal parts amusement and warning.
“Mind yourself, darlin’, got sleepin’ kids and a house full’a people who already know too much about what we get up to when we’re alone.”
Your fingers smooth through the hair at the nape of his neck, softening at the rough edge in his voice. It’s almost unfair how quickly this man unravels for you after all these years. One kiss and suddenly the steady, capable father downstairs wrangling over-tired children disappears, replaced by the version of Joel who still looks at you like he’s starving for every inch of affection you offer him.
His other rough palm skims over your ribs, your waist, the gentle swell of your stomach again, “Y’gonna be quiet f’me, baby?”
You nod your head pathetically, and he can feel your grin against his hand.
“Y’promise?”
You nod your head again, taking staggered breaths through your nose as he looks down at you with such fire that you swear you melt beneath him.
“Alright… but I won’t hesitate in gaggin’ ya if I have to, y’understand?” He takes his hand slowly off of your mouth, assessing your understanding and obedience, “use your words, hun. Be a good girl.”
“Yes sir, I… I’ll be good.”
He hums in contemplation, knowing you have good intentions, but also knowing how hard you try to be quiet and how rare it is for you to succeed in that endeavor. His hands finally grab the hem of your shirt and peel it off of you, quickly disposing of your bra as you arch your back for him.
“Y’are a good girl f’me, ain’t ya…” His lips trail lower, lingering and reverent one second before turning hungry the next. Leaving dark red marks in his path.
The colored glow of the Christmas lights from the house beside your parents’ catches across his shoulders as he settles between your thighs again, broad hands smoothing up the outsides of them before spreading them gently apart.
You bite your lip hard enough to stop the sound threatening to leave you and his eyes darken instantly at the effort.
His thumb drags slowly along your bottom lip before pressing gently against it. Your mouth opens for him without hesitation, your tongue instantly working around it in a way that threatens his own unraveling.
“Y’know what y’do to me carryin’ my babies?” he murmurs, eyes dragging slowly over you. “Walkin’ around lookin’ so damn sexy all day while I’m tryin’ to behave in front’a your parents.”
His mouth presses briefly against your stomach then, softer than before, lingering there for a second longer before he looks back up at you again. His mouth presses briefly against your stomach then, softer than before, lingering there for a second longer before he looks back up at you again.
He withdraws his thumb from your mouth much to your dismay, but quickly unbuttons your jeans and hooks his fingers beneath the waistband of your pants and panties and pulls them down with less self-control than he’d been showcasing thus far.
You lift your hips as he slides them off, his hands lightly trace back up your legs, his eyes following aptly.
“Fuckin’ gorgeous, and look at that…” his obsession with your baby bump is no surprise, and might also be one of the reasons you’d agreed to having one last baby in the first place.
“You get prettier every damn day, don’t’cha?” His eyes flick back up to yours with that devilish grin of his before he’s gripping your thighs apart and settling himself between them.
He crosses his arms and peels his sweater and undershirt off in a grand show of revealing his deliciously tanned skin to your hungry hands and eyes.
It doesn’t take long for your hands to unbutton and unzip his pants and start to shuck them down his thick thighs. He steps off of the bed to peel the final layers all the way off.
His cock springs free, leaking profusely at the tip as if he’d been neglected all day. And maybe he had been, unintentionally, due to the demands of wrangling three trouble-makers on Christmas. And so had you, you realize, as your legs spread wider as settles between them again. Then, his attempt to inch down the bed is thwarted by your heels anchoring behind his thighs.
You’re not one to deny his hungry mouth from getting its fill of you, but the entire evening all you’d been able to think about is how you’re carrying his baby and how you need him to melt into you. For his broad body to cage you in like a damn animal and fuck the ache out of you.
“Need you, Joel… need to feel you,” your arms wrap around him as he presses his exposed skin against yours.
“Awfully bold of ya to assume you’re ready to take me, darlin’,” he drags two of his thick fingers down the expanse of your stomach, watching the shivers erupting on your skin with a quiet reverence.
“Gonna need t’use my fingers first, baby… need to feel y’cum before I lose my damn mind inside this tight pussy,” His fingers cup your mound now, his middle finger pressing against your entrance and quickly sinking inside without much resistance at all because of how long you’d been worked up, “fuck…” Joel groans at how wet you are already, then slowly adds another finger before starting to thrust in and out.
The squelch of his fingers is obscene, betraying how needy you are for him, as if there’s ever really any doubt.
“Needy cunt, I know… I know,” he soothes, his thrusts quicken with the addition of his thumb nudging against your swollen clit.
A whimper immediately escapes you, followed quickly by a moan of relief as he finds that spot inside of you, curling his fingers into the spongy ridge that has you seeing stars.
Joel can tell that you are already oblivious to the sounds you’re making. Before you can even register what’s happening, Joel’s thick fingers are stuffed into your open mouth, stifling the sounds pouring out of you, “since y’can’t shut y’self up…” he doesn’t need to finish that thought, the purpose is clear.
You hum around his fingers in surprise, but your eyes tell him everything he needs to know… well, the clenching of your tight walls around his thick digits buried deep in your pussy tends to also be a tell-tale sign that you are getting closer to cresting over that wave of pleasure.
Your hands anchor themselves to some part of him. Your nails biting into the tanned skin of his biceps and forearms, desperately trying to ground yourself against the onslaught of stimulation.
You're enraptured by the sight of him expertly working your body. He’s added a third finger into the gummy walls of your pussy, scissoring you open for his cock, and his thumb continues its circles on your clit.
You’re a blubbery mess around his fingers as you suckle them and incoherently plead for him, he doesn’t need to hear your words to know what you’re saying, “cum f’me, baby, then I can fuck the ache away. Be my good girl…”
Not like you had much choice in the matter as your body keens, your back arching into his touch as he brings you over that edge. Your vision goes blurry, the pleasure is blinding, and all you can feel is him. All you can hear are his stifled groans of approval and his words of encouragement through clenched teeth as he works you through your intense orgasm, “fuck yeah…such a good fuckin’ girl f’me… that’s it…”
You can feel the throb of his cock against your thigh, the tip leaking profusely and swollen red with need.
You still can’t talk coherently through his fingers still stuffed in your mouth, but he can feel your tongue moving along his fingers and his eyes finally meet yours again after he brings you down from your much needed release and withdraws his fingers from your pussy.
He keeps his fingers in your mouth, his eyes dark and hungry as he brings the fingers that had just been buried inside of you to his lips, sucking and licking them clean with a low hum of approval and murmuring praises as he indulges his favorite taste in the damn world, “so sweet, all fuckin’ mine.”
He keeps his fingers in your mouth as he grips his cock in his other hand, his head tilting back briefly in relief as he strokes it once before nudging your legs wider with his.
Your eyes say enough for him to understand what you want, and your body says what your eyes can’t. Your legs spread wider, inviting... begging. Your hands pulling him closer, the heels of your feet digging into the back of his legs and practically forcing his cock closer to where you need him.
“Alright, alright… I hear ya, needy thing, let me make y’feel better, yeah?”
You nod frantically, only now noticing the tears welling up in your eyes in sheer need to be filled by him.
Joel tuts mockingly at your desperation which only causes the tears to spill down your cheeks, “Y’need my cock to claim this sweet pussy like it ain’t what fucked ya deep and raw til it knocked y’up… again?”
His thumb traces your chin and cheek as your tongue works around his fingers as if they were his cock shoved deep into your throat. You do your best to swallow around them, the saliva starting to spill out and down your chin and he just watches, completely enraptured by the sight.
Much to your dismay…. surprise…. delight? you’re not really sure, he pulls his fingers out of your mouth. He then grips your face, with your mouth still agape, between his thumb and his soaked fingers, ensuring your full attention on him.
The next thing you know, his mouth is on yours, and the thick head of his cock is pushing into you.
You swallow each other’s moans, inhaling and absorbing every non-verbal confession of how badly you both needed this.
His tongue licks hungrily into your mouth and you greedily accept it, your hands finding purchase in his greying curls once more as he gives in to his own need.
The stretch is accompanied by a subtle burn as he works the girth of his cock into you. One of his hands grips the underside of your thigh, holding you open for him, while the other braces himself.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your mouth once he bottoms out. “Needed y’too, woulda kept teasin’ ya, but who the fuck am I kiddin’.”
He widens the stance of his thick thighs between yours, causing your legs to spread even more as he loses all abandon and begins fucking you into the mattress.
“Thank you, thank you… thank y…” you blabber against his lips, and you feel him grin against yours in response.
His pace picks up and his heavy balls slap against you with every thrust as he murmurs filth right into your soul, “take it, baby… this cock was made to fill this tight pussy, to fuck ya so hard and deep that y’can’t form a word in that pretty little head a’yours.” He keeps going, nestling his face into the crook of your neck and replacing his hand over your mouth to prevent your whimpers and moans from filling the entire house.
His lips are right up to your ear now, and you know he has no intention of stopping this spew of filth as he fucks you without reprieve, “this tiny body was made f’my thick cock to fuck my seed right into your womb… ‘n make it stick… over and over…” the sound of your bodies slapping together should’ve been more of a concern than whatever other sounds you could possibly be making, but Joel couldn’t care less at the moment.
The sound of Christmas movies carried throughout the house, so at this point it was more about making you compliant to the impact of his words, which he knows will have you milking his cock in no time, “fuckin’ ya in your childhood bed with our kids sleepin’ down the hall… what would your younger self say, huh? Before she knew what a greedy, desperate girl she’d become because a real man showed her how to fuck.”
You think about your eighteen year old self, finally eighteen, having indulged in endless fantasies of someday meeting an older man to show her exactly what Joel has shown you, but those fantasies could never compare to your reality now.
Joel’s words certainly have the desired effect, you can feel that coil tightening once more. That perfect mushroom head of his cock digging perfectly into that spot so so deep inside of you. His teeth and tongue are laying claim to the hollow of your throat. His grip tightens around your thigh, and you know it’ll bruise.
You fucking love when his hands leave a mark in the shape of his fingers. “Please…” you mouth the word against the hand still covering your mouth. Your nails rake down the muscles of his back, each thrust has you crying against his palm. You feel every detail of his impossibly hard cock as it repeatedly stretches you open around it and fucks deeper than you think is even possible, every time.
You can imagine every throb of every vein you’ve memorized with your tongue, your hands, your pulsating walls… his chest heaves against yours, the coarse, yet soft hair spattered across his broad chest rubs deliciously against your nipples and causes more whimpers to spill between his fingers. His skin melts against yours, the sweat of passionate bodies mixing together in a concoction of devotion and primal need.
He lifts himself up so he can see the way his cock splits you open and the foamy ring of your arousal forming at the base of his cock.
His brows furrow in concentration as he feels how fucking close you are again, “there it is, baby… give it t’me, my good fuckin’ girl,” he finally moves his hand from over your mouth in favor of strengthening your impending release. His hand moves between your thighs and his thumb finds that oversensitive bundle of nerves that instantly has you biting down on your own hand to stifle the noises from flooding out.
“That’s it,” his hips stutter as you begin to pulsate around him, he pushes his hips forward, tilting yours up slightly and then everything implodes, “fuck… fuck yes, milkin’ the fuck outta me, baby…”
Now, both of his hands grip the back of your thighs and folds you in half, his entire body pressing you into the mattress as he pounds mercilessly into you.
You’re free-falling off of the edge and Joel’s right there with you. Lips colliding in kisses meant to devour, hands grasping to pull him closer, but there’s no space between you left to fill, yet you ache to absorb.
A few more thrusts and he can’t hold back any longer. With a deep, guttural groan that vibrates so deep you can feel it in your own bones, he’s spilling his seed deep inside of you, “take it,” his forehead drops to your shoulder, his breath hot on your skin in soft grunts, emptying himself with thick spurts of cum painting your walls, “take it all.” His mouth claims every inch of skin he can reach, leaving little red marks and sloppy kisses in its wake. He slowly and messily trails back to your mouth, which he promptly pries open with his.
Your legs shake in the aftershock, your hands alternating between smoothing down the muscles of his back and tangling in his sweat-slicked hair.
You feel every pulse of his cock throbbing deep inside of you. With a few final and deep thrusts, he fucks his cum even deeper, and you can feel the mix of yours and his juices spilling out around his softening cock.
Right as you start to contemplate the consequences of making a mess on the guest room’s sheets, Joel understands exactly where your mind wanders to, “your parents ain’t dumb, they know we fuck like animals.”
Which does little to soothe your nerves. To know that your parents know how sexually active you are… as if a gaggle of kids and another on the way wasn’t proof enough… it went against your upbringing to really talk about that stuff with them. You and your sister are fairly certain they believe that she’s still a virgin, when you’d grown into your womanhood hearing about all of her sexual escapades. Her experience indirectly solidified your own preference for older men.
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” he presses gentle kisses to your forehead, your temple, your cheekbone…. the corner of your mouth, “I’ll rinse the sheets off in the mornin’ and leave ‘em to dry so there’s some benefit of the doubt… That work?”
You nod your head, but roll your eyes at the brown-eyed man staring so intently down at you, “thank you.”
He winks cheekily and you pull him into another sultry and sloppy make out.
“Anytime,” he replies.
You kiss his smug grin with a pleased hum.
A wandering hand finds your sore breasts with a soft sigh of relief against your lips, and he finally pulls out of you with a quiet groan, collapsing beside you. Joel presses gentle kisses to your shoulder and neck before settling into the soft mattress, allowing the exhaustion from the day to finally overtake you both.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
a/n: and yes, we are going to ignore the fact that this initially was going to be more of a Christmas chapter. fighting for my life a little bit (just being dramatic). my drive to do quite literally anything is minuscule to non-existent, but there is no better feeling than a blissful realization where I’m like oh let me do something I want to do and I actually do it. Throughout the past few months I have made like 20 drafts of general ideas for this fic and filled in plot holes/ did research for accuracy. that process is exhilarating for me as I scour pinterest, but that’s as far as I’d gotten til now. writing smut just wasn’t happening for me lol. soooo, here’s whatever this became! hope you enjoyed!
Taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed!): @white-wolf-buckaroo @streamermattsgf @somedayheaven @simpingforjoel
WC 5.7k - Joel contemplates your place in his life and his place in yours. An opportunity arises to help you, and your insistent need for independence is challenged by the man who you could never really say no to.
chapter content/ warnings: 18+ only!
No use of y/n, wee bit of power imbalance, tension, forbidden attraction, moral boundaries and conflicts, internal dialogue, switches from pov, mutual longing/pining/yearning, for the love of competency kink, being complicated and frustrating as always, teasing/ some philosophical banter, abandonment issues. Mentions of Sarah’s mom, fear of abandonment, anxious/avoidant attachment, allusions to past intimacy, slow burn.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
Joel was only partially relieved that you weren’t in any of his classes this semester.
On one hand, he really doesn’t miss the shake of his hands and the way his brain would stall at the sight of you. On the other hand, however, he really misses getting to read your work, and the white-hot tension that would ignite within his chest whenever he’d catch you staring in the middle of class.
He was used to attention to some extent, he wasn’t ignorant to the way certain students ogled him. If anything, it unsettled him more than it flattered him. He understood the psychology behind it well enough. Professors occupied a dangerous sort of role for young people searching for direction, validation, and structure. An authority figure capable of making them feel intelligent and seen which could easily become the subject of admiration that blurred into something parasocial and inappropriate. Joel had always been careful with that responsibility, careful with the distance required to maintain it.
The idea of crossing those lines had genuinely never crossed his mind before you. And if he’d met you as a student first, maybe none of this would’ve happened at all.
Or maybe that was just another lie he told himself to sleep at night.
Because… you weren’t nineteen years old looking for validation from an older man with kind eyes and degrees hanging on his wall. You were older than most of your peers, inching toward your mid-twenties with a sharpness that made conversations with you feel less like speaking to a student and more like speaking to someone who understood him in ways most people never had. Even now, with the two of you carefully rebuilding something from the wreckage of what happened over the summer, the lines continued to blur in ways he knew were dangerous. At most, he tells himself, you would’ve become friends.
But friendship with you somehow felt more intimate than sex ever had with anyone else.
Now that the two of you had settled into this strange fragile rhythm of pretending, conversations stolen during office hours or while grading papers had started resembling something painfully close to normal. He’d learned snippets about your life the same way starving men rationed food, careful not to indulge too much at once for fear of ruining himself entirely. Stories about your classes, your friends, little observations muttered beneath your breath that made him laugh harder than they probably should’ve. In return, he found himself giving pieces of himself away with equal carelessness, offering up stories about Sarah or Tommy before remembering halfway through that this was exactly the sort of closeness he’d promised himself he wouldn’t allow.
It was a dangerous game for him to play.
He respected you too much to destroy whatever this was becoming simply because he lacked the self-control to keep his feelings contained, and selfishly, pathetically, he’d already begun relying on your presence more than he should. This new dynamic had become a lifeline disguised as professionalism, something to look forward to during mornings that had long since lost their sense of purpose.
At this point, he’d take whatever version of you he could have. There was some twisted sort of comfort in the longing, in the incessant reminder that at one point you had chosen to lose yourself in him too.
That sting of abandonment still made itself known, no matter how irrational it was, considering the circumstances. Didn't change the truth behind it all. Your choice was made purely out of self-preservation. A clean break from him as if he were nothing more than a distraction. That’s how you’d worked it anyway. How could he ever compete with that?
It wasn’t as though either of you had expected the intensity of your little fling, the ease of slipping into one another’s orbit, the comfort found in shared silences and lingering glances, the way he’d started searching for your eyes before he even entered a room.
He knows now that he’d never truly been in love before you. He’d mistaken obligation for devotion once, years ago, after a drunken stupor and a girl he barely knew turned into a positive pregnancy test and eventually a baby with his eyes cradled against his chest beneath fluorescent hospital lights.
She’d decided to keep the baby. And Joel, stubborn and terrified in equal measure, had done everything he thought a good man was supposed to do. He signed the papers at the hospital without hesitation, worked overtime until his hands ached, learned how to stretch exhaustion into something survivable while trying to build a life out of a relationship neither of them had been prepared for. She’d rejected his marriage proposal which, as upsetting as it was at the time, he is grateful they avoided that headache. For a while he convinced himself they could make it work, that love might eventually grow from proximity and persistence alone, though deep down he thinks they were both just clinging to the idea of not wanting to fail their daughter before she’d even learned how to speak.
Somewhere along the line her drinking worsened, the distance between them becoming impossible to ignore whenever she looked at Sarah with that strange sort of detachment, as though motherhood belonged to somebody else and she’d merely wandered into the wrong life by mistake. He’d read all about postpartum depression, all he could do was be there for her when she would let him, and hope it would someday go away. By the time Sarah was two, she was already half gone, disappearing for nights at a time before eventually disappearing for good, save for a signature on a stack of legal papers Joel could barely look at without feeling sick.
He remembers sitting in that courtroom with Sarah asleep against his shoulder while a judge finalized the termination of her parental rights, remembers the hollow ache in his chest as her mother willingly surrendered every legal claim to the little girl tucked safely in his arms, and even now, decades later, some ugly wounded part of him still associated love with being left behind.
Maybe that was why your disappearance cut so deep beneath his skin despite every logical part of him knowing the situation between the two of you had always come with an expiration date. You hadn’t owed him permanence.
Still, some traitorous part of him had started imagining what it might’ve looked like if you had stayed.
Because unlike before, unlike all those years ago when responsibility had arrived wrapped in panic and fear and the deafening realization that his life was no longer his own, loving you had never felt like an obligation. It had come naturally, frighteningly so, weaving itself into the spaces of his life before he’d even realized what was happening.
Which meant losing you felt less like failure and more like confirmation of something he’d spent most of his life trying not to believe.
That eventually, everyone he let himself love would decide he was easier to leave behind.
And still, despite all of that, despite the ache of wanting you sitting only a few feet away from him some afternoons while pretending not to notice the way his gaze lingered too long, despite the constant temptation to ruin everything the moment you smiled at him like you remembered those summer nights too, Joel found himself strangely grateful for the restraint this arrangement demanded of him.
Because this version of you that he was slowly getting to know now beneath fluorescent office lights and the soft scratch of red pen across paper, felt infinitely more dangerous than the woman he’d tangled himself up with over the summer.
Back then he’d only wanted your body, or at least told himself that was all it could be.
Now he wanted your thoughts, your opinions, your attention lingering on him for no reason at all. He wanted every strange insignificant detail you offered him freely between conversations about coursework and faculty meetings and books you thought he’d like. He wanted the version of intimacy that lasted, and the summer version of you would’ve never given him these moments of getting to know you separate from your body.
—
He glances at you now, his eyes tracing the profile of your face as you concentrate on the papers in front of you.
That furrow in your brow as you assess freshman philosophy papers is strangely endearing, your expression tightening every few seconds as though each half-baked thesis physically pains you to read.
“Do people really assume philosophy would be easy?” you ask suddenly, not bothering to look up from the paper in front of you. “Like genuinely. An easy A?”
Joel leans back slightly in his chair, “Think it’s the novelty of it all. Makes people feel smart.”
Your nose wrinkles faintly as you continue reading. “This one just used the phrase ‘societal moral thingies.’”
He chuckles under his breath in disbelief.
“No, seriously.” You turn the paper around enough for him to see the sentence in question, your pen tapping beneath it. “That’s a direct quote. Societal moral thingies.”
“Technical terminology.”
“Mm. Very academic.”
Joel shakes his head, unable to suppress the grin threatening at the corners of his mouth, “You’d be surprised how many students think confidence can compensate for substance.”
“I mean, apparently it can,” you mutter. “There’s a hundred people in this class and maybe twelve of them seem remotely interested in understanding what they’re arguing. The rest just throw around words like ‘nihilism’ and hope nobody notices they’re saying absolutely nothing.”
“That strategy works disturbingly well in certain departments.”
That finally earns him a glance over the top of your paper, your eyes narrowing with amusement. “You’re allowed to say that as faculty?”
“Tenure’s a beautiful thing.”
“You don’t even have tenure yet.”
“Yeah, yeah... details, I’ll be tenured by the fall.”
A quiet laugh slips out of you before you lower your gaze again, shaking your head slightly as you scribble feedback in the margins. Joel watches the movement absentmindedly, watches the way you chew lightly at the inside of your cheek whenever you’re trying to articulate a thought carefully.
“You certainly made it look easy,” he says after a moment, the words softer than intended.
It was the truth.
For the better part of last semester you’d maintained a nearly perfect score, though the one glaring exception still lingered in the back of his mind. You had intentionally skipped an essay question about care ethics on the final, bypassing it entirely despite knowing the material better than anyone else in the room.
A masterful evasion.
There were assignments you’d skillfully maneuvered around whenever concepts struck a little too close to home.
Not that the two of you had ever technically been in a relationship, but there had still been a strange sort of relational responsibility woven into whatever existed between you.
As much as he’d wanted to know what you really thought, he’d understood the mercy in your restraint.
You’d always been merciful with him.
Well. Had been.
Nowadays he wasn’t entirely sure either of you remembered how to be careful around one another anymore. It had only been about a month into the new semester and the shift between you felt palpable, the conversations easier and longer than they probably should’ve been, your guard lowering in subtle increments every time you lingered in his office.
You’d become awfully chatty lately.
“I still can’t imagine willingly choosing philosophy for a gen-ed credit,” you continue. “Thought kids these days avoided essay-heavy classes like the plague.”
That catches him off guard enough to make him bark out a quiet laugh, “Kids these days?”
You finally look up fully, utterly unapologetic. “Joel, one of my classmates asked me last week if Plato was alive during World War Two.”
“He was not.”
“I know that. I’m concerned that he didn’t.”
Joel rubs a hand over his mouth, trying unsuccessfully to hide his amusement. “You realize you are practically one of those kids these days. At least in terms of college kids.”
“I’m like three to four years older than most of my peers, actually,” you correct lightly, leaning back in your chair. “Which in undergraduate years practically makes me a war veteran.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“Mhm. I already feel disconnected from modern youth culture.”
Joel watches you with open disbelief now, “and you’re not a part of modern youth culture?”
“No, modern youth culture scares me.” You grimace down at the paper in front of you. “‘According to TikTok philosopher user moralityking09…’ See? This is exactly what I mean.”
Joel closes his eyes briefly, “I’m changing careers.”
“You threaten that every week.”
Joel scoffs while you fight a grin across from him, visibly entertained by your own argument, “And every week one of you people gives me another reason.”
“You love it too much to leave.”
You glance up a second later only to find Joel already looking at you.
There’s something dangerous about moments like this, you think. Not the tension itself, because that had existed between the two of you from the very beginning and likely always would, but the ease creeping in around it now.
It would almost be easier if he’d stayed cold.
The amusement lingering around his mouth softens almost imperceptibly and his expression shifts into something gentler, more thoughtful, and the sudden weight of his attention makes warmth creep uncomfortably high beneath your collarbone.
There had always been something deeply unsettling about the way Joel looked at people… well, looked at you.. Not intimidating exactly, though he certainly could be when he wanted to. It was more that he paid attention too thoroughly, his gaze lingering with an intensity that made you feel observed in ways most people never bothered to attempt. Seen and heard, listened to and understood.
Wanted.
You drop your gaze back toward the paper before the thought can settle too deeply, forcing your attention instead toward the paragraph in front of you despite the uncomfortable warmth still lingering beneath your skin.
Outside the narrow office window, the early evening light had started dimming into something softer, streaks of amber filtering weakly through the bare winter branches lining the edge of campus. The hallway beyond Joel’s office had grown quieter too, the usual shuffle of students tapering off as evening classes settled in.
You only notice how late it’s gotten when your phone buzzes softly against the desk beside your elbow.
Your brows knit immediately, “Shit.”
Joel glances up at the sound of your urgency, “What?”
You grab your phone quickly, checking the time before your stomach drops slightly, “I forgot what time it was.”
“How bad?”
“I’ve got like…” you squint at the screen, already mentally calculating the walk across campus, “eight minutes before the last bus gets to the stop.”
Joel’s expression shifts faintly in confusion, “Bus?”
You’re already shoving loose papers into uneven stacks to clear space in front of you, distracted enough not to think much of the question at first.
“What happened to your car?”
You hesitate briefly before shrugging one shoulder, “It’s been making this weird noise for like two weeks now and I haven’t had time to take it in.”
“What kinda noise?”
You pause mid-motion, glancing up at him skeptically, “That is an impossible question for me to answer.”
Joel leans back slightly in his chair again as he always does when he’s amused at something, the corner of his mouth twitching. “C’mon, humor me, I might be able to help.”
You stare at him for a moment before reluctantly attempting, “It sounds…” Your face pinches in thought. “Wrong?”
He laughs quietly at that.
“I don’t know how to explain it.” You gesture vaguely with one hand. “Kinda rattly? And a definite squeak from the back right wheel or something. But only sometimes.”
“That usually means somethin’s loose, and that your brake pads need replacin’.”
“See, that means nothing to me.” You point your pen toward him accusingly. “Men always say things like that as though I know what’s under the hood of my car.”
Joel watches you continue throwing things into your bag with increasing urgency. “And instead your solution was avoid it until the vehicle dies?”
“That is unfortunately how I approach most of my problems, yes.”
“Hm.” His gaze lingers on you another second before he pushes himself up from his chair with a quiet groan. “When were you gonna take it to a shop?”
You sling your bag over your shoulder, “Eventually.”
“That ain’t a timeframe.”
“I’m busy.”
Joel shakes his head, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, “Lemme take a look at it.”
The words catch you off guard enough that you still for half a second, “What?”
“Your car,” he repeats simply, shrugging into the jacket. “I’ll drive y’home, and I can take a look at it before y’spend money takin’ it somewhere and they overcharge ya.”
The offer shouldn’t feel as intimate as it does. It’s just a favor. A normal favor. The kind of thing people did for friends or coworkers or anyone they vaguely cared about.
Still, something tightens strangely in your chest anyway, “You really don’t have to do that.”
Joel’s expression softens with faint amusement, like he already knows you’re going to argue with him about this. “Sweetheart, if your car’s been makin’ death noises for two weeks and you’re still needin’ to drive it around, I promise I’d rather look at it myself before somethin’ happens to ya.”
Your mouth goes dry at the endearment.
Joel had always occupied space in a way that made awareness unavoidable, broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his dark button up shirt beneath the worn canvas blazer he’d just shrugged into, one hand braced lazily against the edge of his desk while he looked down at you with that same steady attention that had been unraveling your nervous system for months now.
Up close, you can see the faint exhaustion lining his face beneath the warm amber spill of evening light coming through the office window, the silver threading through his curls near his temples, the rough scrape of stubble shadowing beyond his neatly trimmed beard by the end of the day.
Your gaze catches briefly on his mouth before you force it away. You clear your throat softly as you take a small step backward in a weak attempt to reestablish something resembling normal distance between the two of you.
“I’ll be fine,” you murmur. “I can still make the bus if I hurry.”
Joel’s brows pull together slightly at that, his gaze flicking toward the clock on the wall before returning to your face.
“You’re not gonna make it in… five minutes,” he says plainly. “Not from this building.”
You open your mouth to argue before realizing he’s unfortunately right.
Your expression must give you away because the corner of his mouth twitches faintly again, less amused and more patient this time.
“And if y’miss it,” he continues evenly, grabbing his keys from his desk drawer, “that’s partly my fault anyway. Kept you here grading papers all afternoon.”
“You didn’t force me to stay.”
“No,” Joel agrees quietly, “but I also didn’t exactly encourage y’to leave when it started gettin’ late.”
Something warm and uncomfortable unfurls low in your stomach at that.
He steps around the edge of his desk then, close enough that you catch the clean cedar scent of his cologne beneath the lingering warmth of coffee and something distinctly him. Your pulse stutters embarrassingly hard at the proximity.
Joel notices it, and you know he does. Still, he gives you an out.
“If you’re uncomfortable with it, that’s fine,” he says after a moment, “I can still help figure out what’s wrong with the car another time. Just figured since I’d already be drivin’ you home…” his shoulders lift in a small shrug beneath the dark fabric of his jacket, “…might as well take a look while I’m there.”
He never pushes, and that’s the reason he continuously unraveled your defenses despite every logical instinct telling you to keep your distance.
Even now, standing close enough that you could count the silver strands threaded through the curls near his temples, his gaze steady on yours in the dimming gold light of his office, he still leaves the choice entirely in your hands.
“…you really think you can tell what’s wrong with it just by listening?” you ask quietly, attempting for something lighter despite the strange heaviness settling beneath your ribs.
Joel huffs a soft laugh through his nose. “Darlin’, half of fixin’ cars is just listenin’ to what they’re complainin’ about.”
Your stomach flips again, it almost makes you nauseous.
Joel waits, patient as ever. Since you’re not making a mad dash for the bus that has probably already left the stop, he figures you’re finally accepting his offer.
You exhale softly through your nose before finally nodding once, “Okay, fine,” you murmur.
Something in Joel’s face eases almost imperceptibly, “Okay,” he echoes.
—
By the time Joel pulls into the parking lot of your apartment complex, the sky had long since deepened into velvet blue, the last traces of daylight swallowed behind low winter clouds. The drive over had been quieter than most of your recent conversations. The radio hummed softly beneath the steady rush of heat from the vents while campus slowly gave way to dim storefronts and sleepy residential streets streaked gold beneath passing streetlights.
Now, standing a few feet away from your car with the hood propped open beneath the weak parking lot lights, Joel leans forward slightly with one hand braced against the frame of the car while the other disappears deeper into the engine.
And unfortunately for you, the sleeves of his dark button up had been rolled halfway to his elbows almost immediately after stepping out of the truck, exposing strong forearms dusted faintly with dark hair and veins that shift subtly beneath warm skin every time he moves his wrist. His shoulders pull tight beneath the fabric as he leans further over the engine, brow furrowed in concentration while the light catches silver near his temples.
You try very hard not to stare and you fail almost instantly.
“Hm,” Joel murmurs after a moment, attention still fixed somewhere beneath the hood. “Alternator belt’s worn.”
Your brows knit, “That sounds expensive.”
“Not terrible.”
“That hesitation was concerning.”
Joel huffs a quiet laugh through his nose before finally glancing over at you, “Wasn’t hesitation.”
“You literally paused.”
“I was thinkin’.”
“About how expensive it is?”
The corner of his mouth twitches faintly before he looks back toward the engine again, adjusting something with practiced ease, “Nah, I can take care of it for ya, just gotta get the parts.”
And you knew you were in deep trouble with the insinuation that he’d be the one to fix your car.
You’d spent months trying not to notice the things that made Joel attractive outside of the obvious, which had admittedly been a losing battle from the start. But watching him work with his hands always felt particularly cruel. There was just something about the calm certainty of his movements, the quiet confidence threaded through every absent adjustment he made beneath the hood like he instinctively understood how things fit together.
The winter air bites sharply at your cheeks while you linger uselessly a few feet away holding your keys.
“Hm,” Joel murmurs after a moment, brows pulling together slightly while he kneels down beside your real right wheel, pressing against something out of your line of sight. “When’s the last time y’got the brake pads replaced?”
You stare at him blankly for a second too long because your brain had unfortunately stopped functioning somewhere around watching the muscles in his forearms shift beneath rolled sleeves.
“My what?” In all honesty you just hadn’t heard what he said.
Joel glances up then, and the immediate flicker of amusement in his eyes tells you he knows exactly where your attention had drifted.
God.
“You weren’t listenin’ to me at all, were ya?”
Heat blooms violently beneath your skin, “I was listening.”
“Mhm.”
“I was.”
Joel ducks his head slightly to hide a smile.
Insufferable.
“You need new brake pads too,” he says again as he stands back up, making sure you’re actually listening now. “That squeakin’ you mentioned is from your wear indicators.”
You hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten until he stops directly in front of you, close enough now that the warmth radiating from him cuts through the cold evening air in dizzying waves. Your pulse stutters immediately.
He smells faintly like motor oil now, roughened by winter air and the lingering traces of his cologne beneath it all.
Joel looks down at you with that same maddening steadiness he always does, “You really should’ve gotten this looked at sooner.”
“I know,” you murmur, “just been busy and since the university runs the bus I’m alright walking home from the stop to save up for the fix.”
“You’ve been walkin’ home?”
You shrug and he sighs exasperatedly, “Well, glad y’missed the bus today so I could help y’out.”
It wasn’t necessarily flirtatious, though your brain was really trying to torture you at this proximity. Joel rarely crossed lines that directly anymore, not unless something slipped out accidentally beneath exhaustion or distraction. The sincerity was threaded so casually through things like this, the quiet certainty with which he offered pieces of himself as though helping you was the most natural thing in the world.
You glance away first, eyes catching on the thin curl of steam drifting from your breath into the cold air. “I mean, I would’ve figured it out eventually.”
Joel’s brows pull together faintly at that, “That’s not really the point.”
You look back at him then, caught slightly off guard by the firmness in his voice, “Then what is?”
Joel studies you for a second, his hand still resting against the roof of your car beside your head while the other hangs loosely at his side with the grease-stained rag curled around his fingers, “That y’don’t always gotta figure everythin’ out alone.”
The quiet sincerity of it nearly knocks the breath from your lungs and you immediately try to deflect. Heat creeps beneath your skin for entirely different reasons now, “I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Never said y’did.”
“You implied it.”
Joel exhales slowly through his nose before shifting slightly closer, enough that the warmth radiating from him cuts more sharply through the cold evening air.
“No,” he says quietly, gaze fixed steadily on yours now, “I implied it’s okay to let somebody help you.” Joel shakes his head slightly, looking down for half a second before his gaze drifts back toward your face, then lower.
The shift is subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t notice it, but you do. You notice everything when it comes to him.
His eyes linger briefly on your mouth before lifting back up again.
The air between you changes immediately.
Your body reacts before your brain can catch up, pulse stuttering violently while your fingers tighten around your keys hard enough for the metal to bite against your palm.
You can feel him thinking.
One step, maybe less, and that’s all it would take.
Joel’s jaw shifts slightly, throat working once beneath the open collar of his shirt while his gaze flickers downward again like he’s fighting the instinct in real time.
Your eyes drop to his mouth before you can stop them.
The realization seems to hit him at the exact same moment because his expression changes almost imperceptibly, something darker pulling briefly across his face before he leans in barely an inch…
…and stops.
The movement is so small you almost think you imagined it.
Joel closes his eyes for the briefest second before dragging a hand down across his mouth, exhaling sharply through his nose like he’s actively annoyed with himself, “Christ,” he mutters quietly.
The cold rushes back into the space between you as he steps away from the car.
You remain exactly where you are, heart pounding so violently it feels humiliating.
“Lemme order the parts tomorrow,” he says, voice rougher now. “Can probably fix most of it this weekend.”
It takes you a second too long to respond, “This weekend?”
“Mhm.” Joel nods once before closing the hood of the car with a solid thud. “Brake pads won’t take long. Belt neither.” His gaze flicks toward you again, softer this time. “I’ll teach ya while we do it so next time y’know what you’re lookin’ and listenin’ for.”
Your stomach flips all over again. Offering you competence instead of dependency like he instinctively understands how badly you resist feeling cared for.
“You’re gonna make me participate?”
That small smile returns immediately, “Sweetheart,” Joel murmurs, “it’s the dead of winter. And sure, this may be Texas but y’can’t be walkin’ home at night hopin’ y’can be one of the few who doesn’t need to rely on a car in your everyday life.”
A reluctant laugh escapes you despite yourself, the sound fogging visibly into the cold air between you both, “Fine, I yield.”
Joel huffs softly through his nose, the corners of his mouth still turned upward while he reaches for the rag tucked into his back pocket again.
There should genuinely be laws against men looking like this while doing mundane tasks.
Especially older men with rough hands and rolled sleeves and deep voices who insisted on fixing things for you without making you feel incapable in the process.
You’re hopeless for this man.
“You busy Saturday?” Joel asks casually while wiping his hands clean.
The idea of spending hours alone with him while he leaned over your car teaching you things in that low patient drawl of his feels dangerous in ways you don’t want to unpack right now.
“…depends,” you manage carefully. “How much actual learning about cars do I have to do to change brake pads?”
Joel laughs lightly again at that, “You’ll be fine, I promise.” He glances toward your apartment building then back at you, expression gentling slightly. “You should head inside before y’freeze.”
The silence stretches again, your fingers tightening slightly around your keys while Joel stands across from you, one hand resting against the hood of your car again like he’s reluctant to leave too.
Or maybe you’re projecting… probably projecting.
Joel glances briefly toward your apartment building before looking back at you again, “You got classes tomorrow?”
The question catches you slightly off guard, “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“What time?”
You narrow your eyes faintly, immediately suspicious. “Joel.”
“What?”
“You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you ask questions like you already decided something before consulting me.”
“What time?” he repeats calmly.
You sigh dramatically, “First class is at ten.”
“Mhm.” Joel nods once like that confirms whatever internal calculation he’d already been making. “I’ll pick y’up at nine-thirty.”
Your brows shoot upward immediately, “Absolutely not.”
Joel barely reacts. “Sweetheart, your car sounds like it’s one pothole away from divine intervention.”
“The bus exists.”
“And now I know you’ve been walkin’ home alone at night from the stop.”
The easy warmth from earlier shifts subtly beneath the conversation now. Joel’s concern never really sounds overbearing because he never makes it about control. It’s always practical with him. Matter-of-fact enough that arguing starts to feel childish after a while.
Unfortunately, you still try, “I can survive two more days without inconveniencing you.”
Joel’s expression changes slightly at that, enough that your stomach tightens almost immediately, “Inconveniencing me,” he repeats quietly.
Joel looks away briefly, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the rag still hanging loosely from his hand before glancing back toward you again. There’s no irritation in his face, just calm… worry… if you look further, care.
“You really think givin’ you a ride to campus is some huge burden on my day?”
Heat creeps uncomfortably high into your chest.
“I just…” You exhale softly through your nose, struggling to articulate something that doesn’t sound pathetic now that he’s looking at you like this. “I’m used to handling my own stuff.”
“I can tell,” The gentleness in his voice nearly undoes you completely.
Joel steps a little closer again, “And that’s fine,” he says quietly. “Just let me help ya, just this once.”
You stare at him for a moment longer than necessary.
God.
Simple observations from him feel like they slide directly beneath your skin before you can defend against them properly drives you crazy.
Your eyes drift briefly toward the open collar of his shirt before snapping back upward again.
The corner of his mouth twitches faintly before he rescues you from your own embarrassment by reaching for his truck keys in his pocket instead.
“Nine-thirty,” he repeats casually, like the conversation’s already over.
You exhale a soft incredulous laugh. “You are unbelievably stubborn.”
Nothing but a dimpled grin waiting for you to take him up on the offer like he already knows he won the argument.
“…fine,” you mutter eventually.
Joel hums in approval of your decision, the sound warming the cold night air between you both one last time before he finally starts backing toward his truck, “Night, darlin’.”
The word settles beneath your skin with immediate dangerous warmth because there’s nothing performative about it. No teasing edge or flirtation obvious enough to call out. It sounds natural coming from him, softened by exhaustion and familiarity in a way that makes panic unfurl quietly through your chest.
You’ve started noticing the difference now.
Sweetheart when he’s amused with you. Darlin’ when he forgets himself.
People do not accidentally develop specific terms of endearment for someone they’re trying very hard not to cross lines with.
You open your mouth to respond only to realize a second too late that your brain has stalled out entirely somewhere between hearing his voice and watching him stand there beneath the parking lot lights looking unfairly handsome with rolled sleeves and tired eyes and rough hands.
One brow lifts slightly while he waits beside the open driver’s side door of his truck, patient enough to make your pulse feel embarrassing.
“Goodnight, Joel,” you finally manage.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
a/n: hellooooo again my looooves!! Summer break-ish! Does that mean I can write more?! I fuckin’ hope so! But I’ll be starting work here soon. Holyyyy dude, spring sem broke my brain but I’m free of calc and physics yay! I’m grieving the fact that my yapping prof/muse for this fic will be gone until next spring but I’m fine, I swear!
I wanna give these characters more brain space beyond just daydreaming I’m getting back into adding songs to their playlist and transcribing the snippets of chapters I’d hand-written during class (old habits die hard) into their designated chapters. Sometimes it’s hard to piece it all together because my notes are not organized unless it’s for specific classes I actually care about. Which… should be all of them, but be so fr…. Miss me with that math bs (to all the math people, I DO enjoy math when it doesn’t stress me out to the point of drawing my focus away from the classes I actually am passionate for, but anti-derivatives can kiss my ass).
Incomplete yet HEFTY playlist I have for these two so far:
taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed): @magicxmiller @yslgreen @mallingcalling-blog @getitoutofmymindwrites @msdariaknight @morganlolitta @faiantas-blog @anheloamores @loveday1219
Yes… another one…. yes, it’s going to be angst. No, I’m NOT okay ☺️
Story synopsis:
You told him you were just visiting for the summer. Gave him a name that wasn’t yours. From the moment he saw you across the bar, he knew you were trouble—sunlight and sharp edges, all heat and laughter and something he shouldn’t want, everything he’d been devoid of for so long. What began as a fleeting summer fling burned into something neither of you could name. You left without saying goodbye, it seemed easier that way. But now you’re in his classroom. And he’s your professor. You told yourselves to pretend it never happened. To forget. But how could you forget the way the world only made sense when you were together—and how nothing had made sense since?
Story warnings: 18+ MDI !!! Joel Miller x f!reader
No outbreak!au
professor!joel x student!reader, age gap (she’s in her early 20s, he’s in his late 40s), no use of y/n, excessive use of pet names and nicknames, reader only has a nickname from separate characters, OC!reader, mean!joel eventually, hot girl!reader (no physical descriptions really), bisexual!reader. Slow burn. hurt/comfort, forbidden romance, yearning/longing/pining, emotional repression, guilt, secret relationship, trust issues, half-truths, consequences of lying, allusions to family trauma, allusions to religious trauma, academic pressure, lack of communication, eventual violence and allusions to violence, allusions to grief, self-destructive behavior, attachment issues, shared denial, etc. etc. ANGST.
Chapters will come with their own warnings. Not all will have sexual content, but will allude to it.
smut!, unprotected p in v, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving, some m receiving), power imbalance, praise kink, size difference, hands!, eventual jealousy, heavy on the flashbacks, marking/possessiveness, grinding/dry humping, fake name during hookup(s), creampies (don’t be stupid), dirty talk, hair pulling, rough sex, getting attached, touch-starved, needy!joel, needy!reader. OKAY OKAY you get the gist.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
Chapter 1: The Echo of Familiarity
WC 3.4k - Returning to your hometown for a fresh start, you are determined to rebuild your life on your own terms. With a new major, new apartment, and new friends, everything feels just unfamiliar enough to be hopeful. You’re focused, self-contained, and intent on staying out of trouble. But the past isn’t always behind you. You had ended things so you could focus on school with no distractions, but you couldn’t get him off of your mind. Turns out, the universe has a cruel twist of fate waiting for you in Carson Hall room 202— PHIL 205.
Chapter 2: The Summer Fling
WC 14.8k (hey! shut up 😭) - you weren’t looking for anything that night… just a drink, a distraction, something that wouldn’t follow you home or remind you of why you’d left this town to begin with. But then there was him. A stranger with a crooked smile and a voice like velvet and smoke. A couple drinks led to his truck, his bed, and a night that felt like it belonged to a different version of you. Neither of you really asked any questions, and you sure as hell didn’t ask for more. But when morning came and numbers were exchanged, neither one said what you were thinking—I hope I see you again.
Chapter 3: It Was Never Meant to Matter
WC 4k - your real name felt strange on his tongue, out of place. simple lies and half-truths that were never meant to cause any harm crash together in a crescendo of devastation as you come face to face with their consequences. the past stretches its fingers into the present, wrapping around your throat like thorns. you had only wanted a clean break, but there’s nothing clean about this. only heart ache.
Chapter 4: Come Over
WC 8.7k - you both thought it’d be a one-time thing. but a text sent, an invitation, leads you right back to him. what starts as heat becomes something quieter, gentler, harder to walk away from. you tell yourselves it’s just casual, and you wonder how long you’ll be able to cling to those lies just for another night with him.
Chapter 5: Act 1
WC 5k - the silence after heartbreak is never really quiet. you act like everything’s fine, well, try to. but the past keeps following you across campus. a name, a look, the echo of a memory that still lives in your bones. he pretends you’re just another student. you pretend he doesn’t make you ache. and when you’re pulled back into his orbit— you have to keep yourself from falling apart over and over again.
Chapter 6: Movie Night
WC 6.7k - you keep telling yourselves it’s temporary, like that’ll make it hurt less. like naming it would make it real. but neither of you pulls back, not when the warmth is this easy, this addictive. not when something honest keeps blooming in the silence between words.
Chapter 7: What Once Was
WC 4.7k - glances linger, words go unsaid, and memories rise in the spaces where closeness used to live. you try to move forward, to remind yourself it’s your fault and you have to deal with the pain you caused, but part of you is still yearning for what once was.
Chapter 8: In This Shirt
WC 18.7k (don’t look at me!) - it’s easy to forget the days ahead, but something in the air feels different now. the weekend hums with quiet peace, stolen mornings, bare skin, and the kind of closeness that slips in without asking. somewhere beneath the warmth, something begins to shift. and a decision is made.
Chapter 9: Linger
WC 4.6k - life carries on, and so must you. but did it have to be so soon, and right where he could see it? did he ever mean to you what you still mean to him… or was he always just that easy to forget?
Chapter 10: The World We Knew (Over and Over)
WC 5.6k - you leave without saying goodbye. you tell yourself it’s better this way— that silence is softer than an ending, but all that’s left is the guilt you won’t face and the anxiety Joel can’t quiet.
Chapter 11: Twisted Fate
WC 7.6k - your friends discover the past you’d spent so long trying to run from, though you knew you couldn’t hide from it forever // you’re burning out and your friend has a suggestion that might ease the tension of your schedule, however, fate has a little twist in store for you // Joel finds your note.
Chapter 12: The TA
WC 6k - the lines between past and present blur as closeness turns into caution. what was once soft becomes sharp, and every shared space feels tighter, more fragile. what neither of you will say still hangs heavy in the air, and Joel can’t stop reaching for what he knows he has to let go.
Chapter 13: Professional Conduct
WC 6.5k - with your friend out sick, the classroom feels smaller… and quieter. between clipped exchanges and close proximity, you test the edges of something that feels almost like new ground.
Chapter 14: End of the Semester
WC 6.6k - As the semester wraps up, you must confront your inability to move on and the incessant reminders of how fucked you are, don’t worry… it’s mutual.
Chapter 15: A Better Man
WC 7.1k - A run-in during winter break leads a tense interaction of people who only know of the summer versions of you and Joel // the Spring semester starts.
Chapter 16: I Love You So
WC 4.4k - the aftermath of seeing each other like ghosts of the summer has Joel questioning it all / Tommy interrogates Joel about what happened between you.
Chapter 17: If I Needed You
WC 5.7k - Joel contemplates your place in his life and his place in yours. An opportunity arises to help you, and your insistent need for independence is challenged by the man who you could never really say no to.
More to come!
This is a work in progress, chapters are subject to further changes and proofreading pending rational judgement after dealing with ferality.
SLOOOOOOWWWW BURNNNN !!
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Some of these titles are directly from some of my favorite songs!
What Once Was - Hers
In This Shirt - The Irrepressibles
Linger - The Cranberries
The World We Knew (Over and Over) - Frank Sinatra
(A) Better Man - Paolo Nutini
I Love You So - The Walters
If I Needed You - Townes Van Zandt
Chapters aren’t based on the titles but their correlation after I wrote them fits in a way that tickles my fancy.
WC 5.7k - Joel contemplates your place in his life and his place in yours. An opportunity arises to help you, and your insistent need for independence is challenged by the man who you could never really say no to.
chapter content/ warnings: 18+ only!
No use of y/n, wee bit of power imbalance, tension, forbidden attraction, moral boundaries and conflicts, internal dialogue, switches from pov, mutual longing/pining/yearning, for the love of competency kink, being complicated and frustrating as always, teasing/ some philosophical banter, abandonment issues. Mentions of Sarah’s mom, fear of abandonment, anxious/avoidant attachment, allusions to past intimacy, slow burn.
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Joel was only partially relieved that you weren’t in any of his classes this semester.
On one hand, he really doesn’t miss the shake of his hands and the way his brain would stall at the sight of you. On the other hand, however, he really misses getting to read your work, and the white-hot tension that would ignite within his chest whenever he’d catch you staring in the middle of class.
He was used to attention to some extent, he wasn’t ignorant to the way certain students ogled him. If anything, it unsettled him more than it flattered him. He understood the psychology behind it well enough. Professors occupied a dangerous sort of role for young people searching for direction, validation, and structure. An authority figure capable of making them feel intelligent and seen which could easily become the subject of admiration that blurred into something parasocial and inappropriate. Joel had always been careful with that responsibility, careful with the distance required to maintain it.
The idea of crossing those lines had genuinely never crossed his mind before you. And if he’d met you as a student first, maybe none of this would’ve happened at all.
Or maybe that was just another lie he told himself to sleep at night.
Because… you weren’t nineteen years old looking for validation from an older man with kind eyes and degrees hanging on his wall. You were older than most of your peers, inching toward your mid-twenties with a sharpness that made conversations with you feel less like speaking to a student and more like speaking to someone who understood him in ways most people never had. Even now, with the two of you carefully rebuilding something from the wreckage of what happened over the summer, the lines continued to blur in ways he knew were dangerous. At most, he tells himself, you would’ve become friends.
But friendship with you somehow felt more intimate than sex ever had with anyone else.
Now that the two of you had settled into this strange fragile rhythm of pretending, conversations stolen during office hours or while grading papers had started resembling something painfully close to normal. He’d learned snippets about your life the same way starving men rationed food, careful not to indulge too much at once for fear of ruining himself entirely. Stories about your classes, your friends, little observations muttered beneath your breath that made him laugh harder than they probably should’ve. In return, he found himself giving pieces of himself away with equal carelessness, offering up stories about Sarah or Tommy before remembering halfway through that this was exactly the sort of closeness he’d promised himself he wouldn’t allow.
It was a dangerous game for him to play.
He respected you too much to destroy whatever this was becoming simply because he lacked the self-control to keep his feelings contained, and selfishly, pathetically, he’d already begun relying on your presence more than he should. This new dynamic had become a lifeline disguised as professionalism, something to look forward to during mornings that had long since lost their sense of purpose.
At this point, he’d take whatever version of you he could have. There was some twisted sort of comfort in the longing, in the incessant reminder that at one point you had chosen to lose yourself in him too.
That sting of abandonment still made itself known, no matter how irrational it was, considering the circumstances. Didn't change the truth behind it all. Your choice was made purely out of self-preservation. A clean break from him as if he were nothing more than a distraction. That’s how you’d worked it anyway. How could he ever compete with that?
It wasn’t as though either of you had expected the intensity of your little fling, the ease of slipping into one another’s orbit, the comfort found in shared silences and lingering glances, the way he’d started searching for your eyes before he even entered a room.
He knows now that he’d never truly been in love before you. He’d mistaken obligation for devotion once, years ago, after a drunken stupor and a girl he barely knew turned into a positive pregnancy test and eventually a baby with his eyes cradled against his chest beneath fluorescent hospital lights.
She’d decided to keep the baby. And Joel, stubborn and terrified in equal measure, had done everything he thought a good man was supposed to do. He signed the papers at the hospital without hesitation, worked overtime until his hands ached, learned how to stretch exhaustion into something survivable while trying to build a life out of a relationship neither of them had been prepared for. She’d rejected his marriage proposal which, as upsetting as it was at the time, he is grateful they avoided that headache. For a while he convinced himself they could make it work, that love might eventually grow from proximity and persistence alone, though deep down he thinks they were both just clinging to the idea of not wanting to fail their daughter before she’d even learned how to speak.
Somewhere along the line her drinking worsened, the distance between them becoming impossible to ignore whenever she looked at Sarah with that strange sort of detachment, as though motherhood belonged to somebody else and she’d merely wandered into the wrong life by mistake. He’d read all about postpartum depression, all he could do was be there for her when she would let him, and hope it would someday go away. By the time Sarah was two, she was already half gone, disappearing for nights at a time before eventually disappearing for good, save for a signature on a stack of legal papers Joel could barely look at without feeling sick.
He remembers sitting in that courtroom with Sarah asleep against his shoulder while a judge finalized the termination of her parental rights, remembers the hollow ache in his chest as her mother willingly surrendered every legal claim to the little girl tucked safely in his arms, and even now, decades later, some ugly wounded part of him still associated love with being left behind.
Maybe that was why your disappearance cut so deep beneath his skin despite every logical part of him knowing the situation between the two of you had always come with an expiration date. You hadn’t owed him permanence.
Still, some traitorous part of him had started imagining what it might’ve looked like if you had stayed.
Because unlike before, unlike all those years ago when responsibility had arrived wrapped in panic and fear and the deafening realization that his life was no longer his own, loving you had never felt like an obligation. It had come naturally, frighteningly so, weaving itself into the spaces of his life before he’d even realized what was happening.
Which meant losing you felt less like failure and more like confirmation of something he’d spent most of his life trying not to believe.
That eventually, everyone he let himself love would decide he was easier to leave behind.
And still, despite all of that, despite the ache of wanting you sitting only a few feet away from him some afternoons while pretending not to notice the way his gaze lingered too long, despite the constant temptation to ruin everything the moment you smiled at him like you remembered those summer nights too, Joel found himself strangely grateful for the restraint this arrangement demanded of him.
Because this version of you that he was slowly getting to know now beneath fluorescent office lights and the soft scratch of red pen across paper, felt infinitely more dangerous than the woman he’d tangled himself up with over the summer.
Back then he’d only wanted your body, or at least told himself that was all it could be.
Now he wanted your thoughts, your opinions, your attention lingering on him for no reason at all. He wanted every strange insignificant detail you offered him freely between conversations about coursework and faculty meetings and books you thought he’d like. He wanted the version of intimacy that lasted, and the summer version of you would’ve never given him these moments of getting to know you separate from your body.
—
He glances at you now, his eyes tracing the profile of your face as you concentrate on the papers in front of you.
That furrow in your brow as you assess freshman philosophy papers is strangely endearing, your expression tightening every few seconds as though each half-baked thesis physically pains you to read.
“Do people really assume philosophy would be easy?” you ask suddenly, not bothering to look up from the paper in front of you. “Like genuinely. An easy A?”
Joel leans back slightly in his chair, “Think it’s the novelty of it all. Makes people feel smart.”
Your nose wrinkles faintly as you continue reading. “This one just used the phrase ‘societal moral thingies.’”
He chuckles under his breath in disbelief.
“No, seriously.” You turn the paper around enough for him to see the sentence in question, your pen tapping beneath it. “That’s a direct quote. Societal moral thingies.”
“Technical terminology.”
“Mm. Very academic.”
Joel shakes his head, unable to suppress the grin threatening at the corners of his mouth, “You’d be surprised how many students think confidence can compensate for substance.”
“I mean, apparently it can,” you mutter. “There’s a hundred people in this class and maybe twelve of them seem remotely interested in understanding what they’re arguing. The rest just throw around words like ‘nihilism’ and hope nobody notices they’re saying absolutely nothing.”
“That strategy works disturbingly well in certain departments.”
That finally earns him a glance over the top of your paper, your eyes narrowing with amusement. “You’re allowed to say that as faculty?”
“Tenure’s a beautiful thing.”
“You don’t even have tenure yet.”
“Yeah, yeah... details, I’ll be tenured by the fall.”
A quiet laugh slips out of you before you lower your gaze again, shaking your head slightly as you scribble feedback in the margins. Joel watches the movement absentmindedly, watches the way you chew lightly at the inside of your cheek whenever you’re trying to articulate a thought carefully.
“You certainly made it look easy,” he says after a moment, the words softer than intended.
It was the truth.
For the better part of last semester you’d maintained a nearly perfect score, though the one glaring exception still lingered in the back of his mind. You had intentionally skipped an essay question about care ethics on the final, bypassing it entirely despite knowing the material better than anyone else in the room.
A masterful evasion.
There were assignments you’d skillfully maneuvered around whenever concepts struck a little too close to home.
Not that the two of you had ever technically been in a relationship, but there had still been a strange sort of relational responsibility woven into whatever existed between you.
As much as he’d wanted to know what you really thought, he’d understood the mercy in your restraint.
You’d always been merciful with him.
Well. Had been.
Nowadays he wasn’t entirely sure either of you remembered how to be careful around one another anymore. It had only been about a month into the new semester and the shift between you felt palpable, the conversations easier and longer than they probably should’ve been, your guard lowering in subtle increments every time you lingered in his office.
You’d become awfully chatty lately.
“I still can’t imagine willingly choosing philosophy for a gen-ed credit,” you continue. “Thought kids these days avoided essay-heavy classes like the plague.”
That catches him off guard enough to make him bark out a quiet laugh, “Kids these days?”
You finally look up fully, utterly unapologetic. “Joel, one of my classmates asked me last week if Plato was alive during World War Two.”
“He was not.”
“I know that. I’m concerned that he didn’t.”
Joel rubs a hand over his mouth, trying unsuccessfully to hide his amusement. “You realize you are practically one of those kids these days. At least in terms of college kids.”
“I’m like three to four years older than most of my peers, actually,” you correct lightly, leaning back in your chair. “Which in undergraduate years practically makes me a war veteran.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“Mhm. I already feel disconnected from modern youth culture.”
Joel watches you with open disbelief now, “and you’re not a part of modern youth culture?”
“No, modern youth culture scares me.” You grimace down at the paper in front of you. “‘According to TikTok philosopher user moralityking09…’ See? This is exactly what I mean.”
Joel closes his eyes briefly, “I’m changing careers.”
“You threaten that every week.”
Joel scoffs while you fight a grin across from him, visibly entertained by your own argument, “And every week one of you people gives me another reason.”
“You love it too much to leave.”
You glance up a second later only to find Joel already looking at you.
There’s something dangerous about moments like this, you think. Not the tension itself, because that had existed between the two of you from the very beginning and likely always would, but the ease creeping in around it now.
It would almost be easier if he’d stayed cold.
The amusement lingering around his mouth softens almost imperceptibly and his expression shifts into something gentler, more thoughtful, and the sudden weight of his attention makes warmth creep uncomfortably high beneath your collarbone.
There had always been something deeply unsettling about the way Joel looked at people… well, looked at you.. Not intimidating exactly, though he certainly could be when he wanted to. It was more that he paid attention too thoroughly, his gaze lingering with an intensity that made you feel observed in ways most people never bothered to attempt. Seen and heard, listened to and understood.
Wanted.
You drop your gaze back toward the paper before the thought can settle too deeply, forcing your attention instead toward the paragraph in front of you despite the uncomfortable warmth still lingering beneath your skin.
Outside the narrow office window, the early evening light had started dimming into something softer, streaks of amber filtering weakly through the bare winter branches lining the edge of campus. The hallway beyond Joel’s office had grown quieter too, the usual shuffle of students tapering off as evening classes settled in.
You only notice how late it’s gotten when your phone buzzes softly against the desk beside your elbow.
Your brows knit immediately, “Shit.”
Joel glances up at the sound of your urgency, “What?”
You grab your phone quickly, checking the time before your stomach drops slightly, “I forgot what time it was.”
“How bad?”
“I’ve got like…” you squint at the screen, already mentally calculating the walk across campus, “eight minutes before the last bus gets to the stop.”
Joel’s expression shifts faintly in confusion, “Bus?”
You’re already shoving loose papers into uneven stacks to clear space in front of you, distracted enough not to think much of the question at first.
“What happened to your car?”
You hesitate briefly before shrugging one shoulder, “It’s been making this weird noise for like two weeks now and I haven’t had time to take it in.”
“What kinda noise?”
You pause mid-motion, glancing up at him skeptically, “That is an impossible question for me to answer.”
Joel leans back slightly in his chair again as he always does when he’s amused at something, the corner of his mouth twitching. “C’mon, humor me, I might be able to help.”
You stare at him for a moment before reluctantly attempting, “It sounds…” Your face pinches in thought. “Wrong?”
He laughs quietly at that.
“I don’t know how to explain it.” You gesture vaguely with one hand. “Kinda rattly? And a definite squeak from the back right wheel or something. But only sometimes.”
“That usually means somethin’s loose, and that your brake pads need replacin’.”
“See, that means nothing to me.” You point your pen toward him accusingly. “Men always say things like that as though I know what’s under the hood of my car.”
Joel watches you continue throwing things into your bag with increasing urgency. “And instead your solution was avoid it until the vehicle dies?”
“That is unfortunately how I approach most of my problems, yes.”
“Hm.” His gaze lingers on you another second before he pushes himself up from his chair with a quiet groan. “When were you gonna take it to a shop?”
You sling your bag over your shoulder, “Eventually.”
“That ain’t a timeframe.”
“I’m busy.”
Joel shakes his head, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, “Lemme take a look at it.”
The words catch you off guard enough that you still for half a second, “What?”
“Your car,” he repeats simply, shrugging into the jacket. “I’ll drive y’home, and I can take a look at it before y’spend money takin’ it somewhere and they overcharge ya.”
The offer shouldn’t feel as intimate as it does. It’s just a favor. A normal favor. The kind of thing people did for friends or coworkers or anyone they vaguely cared about.
Still, something tightens strangely in your chest anyway, “You really don’t have to do that.”
Joel’s expression softens with faint amusement, like he already knows you’re going to argue with him about this. “Sweetheart, if your car’s been makin’ death noises for two weeks and you’re still needin’ to drive it around, I promise I’d rather look at it myself before somethin’ happens to ya.”
Your mouth goes dry at the endearment.
Joel had always occupied space in a way that made awareness unavoidable, broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his dark button up shirt beneath the worn canvas blazer he’d just shrugged into, one hand braced lazily against the edge of his desk while he looked down at you with that same steady attention that had been unraveling your nervous system for months now.
Up close, you can see the faint exhaustion lining his face beneath the warm amber spill of evening light coming through the office window, the silver threading through his curls near his temples, the rough scrape of stubble shadowing beyond his neatly trimmed beard by the end of the day.
Your gaze catches briefly on his mouth before you force it away. You clear your throat softly as you take a small step backward in a weak attempt to reestablish something resembling normal distance between the two of you.
“I’ll be fine,” you murmur. “I can still make the bus if I hurry.”
Joel’s brows pull together slightly at that, his gaze flicking toward the clock on the wall before returning to your face.
“You’re not gonna make it in… five minutes,” he says plainly. “Not from this building.”
You open your mouth to argue before realizing he’s unfortunately right.
Your expression must give you away because the corner of his mouth twitches faintly again, less amused and more patient this time.
“And if y’miss it,” he continues evenly, grabbing his keys from his desk drawer, “that’s partly my fault anyway. Kept you here grading papers all afternoon.”
“You didn’t force me to stay.”
“No,” Joel agrees quietly, “but I also didn’t exactly encourage y’to leave when it started gettin’ late.”
Something warm and uncomfortable unfurls low in your stomach at that.
He steps around the edge of his desk then, close enough that you catch the clean cedar scent of his cologne beneath the lingering warmth of coffee and something distinctly him. Your pulse stutters embarrassingly hard at the proximity.
Joel notices it, and you know he does. Still, he gives you an out.
“If you’re uncomfortable with it, that’s fine,” he says after a moment, “I can still help figure out what’s wrong with the car another time. Just figured since I’d already be drivin’ you home…” his shoulders lift in a small shrug beneath the dark fabric of his jacket, “…might as well take a look while I’m there.”
He never pushes, and that’s the reason he continuously unraveled your defenses despite every logical instinct telling you to keep your distance.
Even now, standing close enough that you could count the silver strands threaded through the curls near his temples, his gaze steady on yours in the dimming gold light of his office, he still leaves the choice entirely in your hands.
“…you really think you can tell what’s wrong with it just by listening?” you ask quietly, attempting for something lighter despite the strange heaviness settling beneath your ribs.
Joel huffs a soft laugh through his nose. “Darlin’, half of fixin’ cars is just listenin’ to what they’re complainin’ about.”
Your stomach flips again, it almost makes you nauseous.
Joel waits, patient as ever. Since you’re not making a mad dash for the bus that has probably already left the stop, he figures you’re finally accepting his offer.
You exhale softly through your nose before finally nodding once, “Okay, fine,” you murmur.
Something in Joel’s face eases almost imperceptibly, “Okay,” he echoes.
—
By the time Joel pulls into the parking lot of your apartment complex, the sky had long since deepened into velvet blue, the last traces of daylight swallowed behind low winter clouds. The drive over had been quieter than most of your recent conversations. The radio hummed softly beneath the steady rush of heat from the vents while campus slowly gave way to dim storefronts and sleepy residential streets streaked gold beneath passing streetlights.
Now, standing a few feet away from your car with the hood propped open beneath the weak parking lot lights, Joel leans forward slightly with one hand braced against the frame of the car while the other disappears deeper into the engine.
And unfortunately for you, the sleeves of his dark button up had been rolled halfway to his elbows almost immediately after stepping out of the truck, exposing strong forearms dusted faintly with dark hair and veins that shift subtly beneath warm skin every time he moves his wrist. His shoulders pull tight beneath the fabric as he leans further over the engine, brow furrowed in concentration while the light catches silver near his temples.
You try very hard not to stare and you fail almost instantly.
“Hm,” Joel murmurs after a moment, attention still fixed somewhere beneath the hood. “Alternator belt’s worn.”
Your brows knit, “That sounds expensive.”
“Not terrible.”
“That hesitation was concerning.”
Joel huffs a quiet laugh through his nose before finally glancing over at you, “Wasn’t hesitation.”
“You literally paused.”
“I was thinkin’.”
“About how expensive it is?”
The corner of his mouth twitches faintly before he looks back toward the engine again, adjusting something with practiced ease, “Nah, I can take care of it for ya, just gotta get the parts.”
And you knew you were in deep trouble with the insinuation that he’d be the one to fix your car.
You’d spent months trying not to notice the things that made Joel attractive outside of the obvious, which had admittedly been a losing battle from the start. But watching him work with his hands always felt particularly cruel. There was just something about the calm certainty of his movements, the quiet confidence threaded through every absent adjustment he made beneath the hood like he instinctively understood how things fit together.
The winter air bites sharply at your cheeks while you linger uselessly a few feet away holding your keys.
“Hm,” Joel murmurs after a moment, brows pulling together slightly while he kneels down beside your real right wheel, pressing against something out of your line of sight. “When’s the last time y’got the brake pads replaced?”
You stare at him blankly for a second too long because your brain had unfortunately stopped functioning somewhere around watching the muscles in his forearms shift beneath rolled sleeves.
“My what?” In all honesty you just hadn’t heard what he said.
Joel glances up then, and the immediate flicker of amusement in his eyes tells you he knows exactly where your attention had drifted.
God.
“You weren’t listenin’ to me at all, were ya?”
Heat blooms violently beneath your skin, “I was listening.”
“Mhm.”
“I was.”
Joel ducks his head slightly to hide a smile.
Insufferable.
“You need new brake pads too,” he says again as he stands back up, making sure you’re actually listening now. “That squeakin’ you mentioned is from your wear indicators.”
You hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten until he stops directly in front of you, close enough now that the warmth radiating from him cuts through the cold evening air in dizzying waves. Your pulse stutters immediately.
He smells faintly like motor oil now, roughened by winter air and the lingering traces of his cologne beneath it all.
Joel looks down at you with that same maddening steadiness he always does, “You really should’ve gotten this looked at sooner.”
“I know,” you murmur, “just been busy and since the university runs the bus I’m alright walking home from the stop to save up for the fix.”
“You’ve been walkin’ home?”
You shrug and he sighs exasperatedly, “Well, glad y’missed the bus today so I could help y’out.”
It wasn’t necessarily flirtatious, though your brain was really trying to torture you at this proximity. Joel rarely crossed lines that directly anymore, not unless something slipped out accidentally beneath exhaustion or distraction. The sincerity was threaded so casually through things like this, the quiet certainty with which he offered pieces of himself as though helping you was the most natural thing in the world.
You glance away first, eyes catching on the thin curl of steam drifting from your breath into the cold air. “I mean, I would’ve figured it out eventually.”
Joel’s brows pull together faintly at that, “That’s not really the point.”
You look back at him then, caught slightly off guard by the firmness in his voice, “Then what is?”
Joel studies you for a second, his hand still resting against the roof of your car beside your head while the other hangs loosely at his side with the grease-stained rag curled around his fingers, “That y’don’t always gotta figure everythin’ out alone.”
The quiet sincerity of it nearly knocks the breath from your lungs and you immediately try to deflect. Heat creeps beneath your skin for entirely different reasons now, “I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Never said y’did.”
“You implied it.”
Joel exhales slowly through his nose before shifting slightly closer, enough that the warmth radiating from him cuts more sharply through the cold evening air.
“No,” he says quietly, gaze fixed steadily on yours now, “I implied it’s okay to let somebody help you.” Joel shakes his head slightly, looking down for half a second before his gaze drifts back toward your face, then lower.
The shift is subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t notice it, but you do. You notice everything when it comes to him.
His eyes linger briefly on your mouth before lifting back up again.
The air between you changes immediately.
Your body reacts before your brain can catch up, pulse stuttering violently while your fingers tighten around your keys hard enough for the metal to bite against your palm.
You can feel him thinking.
One step, maybe less, and that’s all it would take.
Joel’s jaw shifts slightly, throat working once beneath the open collar of his shirt while his gaze flickers downward again like he’s fighting the instinct in real time.
Your eyes drop to his mouth before you can stop them.
The realization seems to hit him at the exact same moment because his expression changes almost imperceptibly, something darker pulling briefly across his face before he leans in barely an inch…
…and stops.
The movement is so small you almost think you imagined it.
Joel closes his eyes for the briefest second before dragging a hand down across his mouth, exhaling sharply through his nose like he’s actively annoyed with himself, “Christ,” he mutters quietly.
The cold rushes back into the space between you as he steps away from the car.
You remain exactly where you are, heart pounding so violently it feels humiliating.
“Lemme order the parts tomorrow,” he says, voice rougher now. “Can probably fix most of it this weekend.”
It takes you a second too long to respond, “This weekend?”
“Mhm.” Joel nods once before closing the hood of the car with a solid thud. “Brake pads won’t take long. Belt neither.” His gaze flicks toward you again, softer this time. “I’ll teach ya while we do it so next time y’know what you’re lookin’ and listenin’ for.”
Your stomach flips all over again. Offering you competence instead of dependency like he instinctively understands how badly you resist feeling cared for.
“You’re gonna make me participate?”
That small smile returns immediately, “Sweetheart,” Joel murmurs, “it’s the dead of winter. And sure, this may be Texas but y’can’t be walkin’ home at night hopin’ y’can be one of the few who doesn’t need to rely on a car in your everyday life.”
A reluctant laugh escapes you despite yourself, the sound fogging visibly into the cold air between you both, “Fine, I yield.”
Joel huffs softly through his nose, the corners of his mouth still turned upward while he reaches for the rag tucked into his back pocket again.
There should genuinely be laws against men looking like this while doing mundane tasks.
Especially older men with rough hands and rolled sleeves and deep voices who insisted on fixing things for you without making you feel incapable in the process.
You’re hopeless for this man.
“You busy Saturday?” Joel asks casually while wiping his hands clean.
The idea of spending hours alone with him while he leaned over your car teaching you things in that low patient drawl of his feels dangerous in ways you don’t want to unpack right now.
“…depends,” you manage carefully. “How much actual learning about cars do I have to do to change brake pads?”
Joel laughs lightly again at that, “You’ll be fine, I promise.” He glances toward your apartment building then back at you, expression gentling slightly. “You should head inside before y’freeze.”
The silence stretches again, your fingers tightening slightly around your keys while Joel stands across from you, one hand resting against the hood of your car again like he’s reluctant to leave too.
Or maybe you’re projecting… probably projecting.
Joel glances briefly toward your apartment building before looking back at you again, “You got classes tomorrow?”
The question catches you slightly off guard, “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“What time?”
You narrow your eyes faintly, immediately suspicious. “Joel.”
“What?”
“You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you ask questions like you already decided something before consulting me.”
“What time?” he repeats calmly.
You sigh dramatically, “First class is at ten.”
“Mhm.” Joel nods once like that confirms whatever internal calculation he’d already been making. “I’ll pick y’up at nine sharp.”
Your brows shoot upward immediately, “Absolutely not.”
Joel barely reacts. “Sweetheart, your car sounds like it’s one pothole away from divine intervention.”
“The bus exists.”
“And now I know you’ve been walkin’ home alone at night from the stop.”
The easy warmth from earlier shifts subtly beneath the conversation now. Joel’s concern never really sounds overbearing because he never makes it about control. It’s always practical with him. Matter-of-fact enough that arguing starts to feel childish after a while.
Unfortunately, you still try, “I can survive two more days without inconveniencing you.”
Joel’s expression changes slightly at that, enough that your stomach tightens almost immediately, “Inconveniencing me,” he repeats quietly.
Joel looks away briefly, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the rag still hanging loosely from his hand before glancing back toward you again. There’s no irritation in his face, just calm… worry… if you look further, care.
“You really think givin’ you a ride to campus is some huge burden on my day?”
Heat creeps uncomfortably high into your chest.
“I just…” You exhale softly through your nose, struggling to articulate something that doesn’t sound pathetic now that he’s looking at you like this. “I’m used to handling my own stuff.”
“I can tell,” The gentleness in his voice nearly undoes you completely.
Joel steps a little closer again, “And that’s fine,” he says quietly. “Just let me help ya, just this once.”
You stare at him for a moment longer than necessary.
God.
Simple observations from him feel like they slide directly beneath your skin before you can defend against them properly drives you crazy.
Your eyes drift briefly toward the open collar of his shirt before snapping back upward again.
The corner of his mouth twitches faintly before he rescues you from your own embarrassment by reaching for his truck keys in his pocket instead.
“Nine o’clock sharp,” he repeats casually, like the conversation’s already over.
You exhale a soft incredulous laugh. “You are unbelievably stubborn.”
Nothing but a dimpled grin waiting for you to take him up on the offer like he already knows he won the argument.
“…fine,” you mutter eventually.
Joel hums in approval of your decision, the sound warming the cold night air between you both one last time before he finally starts backing toward his truck, “Night, darlin’.”
The word settles beneath your skin with immediate dangerous warmth because there’s nothing performative about it. No teasing edge or flirtation obvious enough to call out. It sounds natural coming from him, softened by exhaustion and familiarity in a way that makes panic unfurl quietly through your chest.
You’ve started noticing the difference now.
Sweetheart when he’s amused with you. Darlin’ when he forgets himself.
People do not accidentally develop specific terms of endearment for someone they’re trying very hard not to cross lines with.
You open your mouth to respond only to realize a second too late that your brain has stalled out entirely somewhere between hearing his voice and watching him stand there beneath the parking lot lights looking unfairly handsome with rolled sleeves and tired eyes and rough hands.
One brow lifts slightly while he waits beside the open driver’s side door of his truck, patient enough to make your pulse feel embarrassing.
“Goodnight, Joel,” you finally manage.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
a/n: hellooooo again my looooves!! Summer break-ish! Does that mean I can write more?! I fuckin’ hope so! But I’ll be starting work here soon. Holyyyy dude, spring sem broke my brain but I’m free of calc and physics yay! I’m grieving the fact that my yapping prof/muse for this fic will be gone until next spring but I’m fine, I swear!
I wanna give these characters more brain space beyond just daydreaming I’m getting back into adding songs to their playlist and transcribing the snippets of chapters I’d hand-written during class (old habits die hard) into their designated chapters. Sometimes it’s hard to piece it all together because my notes are not organized unless it’s for specific classes I actually care about. Which… should be all of them, but be so fr…. Miss me with that math bs (to all the math people, I DO enjoy math when it doesn’t stress me out to the point of drawing my focus away from the classes I actually am passionate for, but anti-derivatives can kiss my ass).
Incomplete yet HEFTY playlist I have for these two so far:
taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed): @magicxmiller @yslgreen @mallingcalling-blog @getitoutofmymindwrites @msdariaknight @morganlolitta @faiantas-blog @anheloamores @loveday1219
Rules: Post ten GIFs of your ten favorite movies (no giving away the title) and tag ten people.
thank you for the tags my dears!! @simpingforjoel @ess-evo
Figured I’ve been M.I.A. for a bit now, and I’m letting yall know I am alive!
I haven’t had much time to watch movies or write but I’ll do my best to remember movies I’ve watched… why is it always such a hard list to come up with 😭
GIF by @dearemma
This was so hard and I’m going to be so mad about whatever movies I’ve forgotten, but this is a pretty good list for now! I think I used to watch so many movies because a celebrity crush was in them and those aren’t always “favorite movie” quality hahaha
No pressure tags bc I’m done being scared to be perceived (jk no im not): @littledes1re @saralovesjoelmiller @joelismyserotonin @missadangel @studioghibelli @isabellaboo2025 @reedispunk @cinnxmxngxrl @katyispunk @rosharanfiction (my apologies if you’ve already done it!)
“I've got to get away and let you go, I've got to get over” - “I Love You So” by The Walters
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professor!joel miller x f!reader
Chapter summary:
WC 4.4k - the aftermath of seeing each other like ghosts of the summer has Joel questioning it all / Tommy interrogates Joel about what happened between you.
chapter content/ warnings: sexual content, 18+ only!
wee bit of power imbalance, tension, forbidden attraction, moral boundaries and conflicts, internal dialogue, Joel’s pov, mutual longing/pining/yearning, being complicated and frustrating as always. Mentions of medication, depictions of a panic attack, allusions to past intimacy, slow burn.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
Mill, Locke… hell, even Aristotle had something to say about restraint. About the virtue in holding the line when the easier path was giving in. Self-control as the thing that made a man more than his appetites.
He told himself that’s what this was. A kind of moral exercise, the discipline to want and not take, to burn and still stay good. To put his years-long studies of theories and moral challenges to proper use. To prove to himself what he was teaching had its foundations in reality.
The true power wasn’t in the taking. It was in the holding back. In knowing exactly how fast he knew he could make you come apart for him and choosing not to touch you at all.
But one slip and it wouldn’t just be a lapse, it’d be a headline and the end of his career. The kind of thing that gutted reputations and left scorch marks you never scrubbed out. He’d lose the job, the department, every shred of professional respect he’d clawed together.
And morally, Christ, he knew the balance was already uneven. You were his TA, his student. The power between you didn’t tip so much as lean, and if he reached for you now, it would be him making the move, him taking advantage, no matter how much you may have wanted it for yourself.
That was the truth of it, the rot at the center of the wanting. He couldn’t separate the hunger from the ruin.
It was the same logic as every story about forbidden fruit, it wasn’t dangerous because it was sweet, it was sweet because it was dangerous. Unfortunately for him, he knew how sweet you tasted too, and the punishment was in the knowledge that he would never be able to taste you again.
He remembered the salt of your skin in summer heat, the faint trace of whatever you’d been drinking on your tongue when you’d pulled him in. The way you’d gone soft and pliant against him when he’d bitten just hard enough to hear you gasp. It was in his mouth now, phantom and maddening, as if memory alone could conjure it back.
Every second you sat there, he could feel the line under his feet like a live wire. One step over and everything changed.
So he told himself he could live in the wanting. That the ache was cleaner than the act. That restraint was a kind of penance, proof he wasn’t the man people might think he was if they knew.
But the more you leaned toward him, the more the ghost of you lingered on his tongue, the harder it became to believe his own lie.
And when you shifted in your seat, skirt tugging higher on your thigh, and looked up at him through your lashes like you were about to ask something, he knew with bone-deep certainty that if he wasn’t careful… one day, he was going to fail at this.
God, you were trouble, and he sure as hell shouldn’t enjoy this.
You still had power over him, that much was abundantly clear to him.
But now he remembered he had power too.
It stirred something old and heady in his chest, something feral. It made his cock strain beneath the desk, made him clench his jaw and breathe through his nose just to keep his voice steady as you were working through essays together.
“Next one,” he muttered, flipping to the next page like he wasn’t choking on the weight of his own need. Like he wasn’t imagining how fast you’d crumble if he really used that power, if he stepped into the space between you and…
He breathed out slowly. Because that was the only way he got to keep looking at you like this, unchained, and still call himself good. He knew it was only a matter of time before he’d break if he kept this up. He could only take so many accidental brushes of fingers against his before he’d have pinned you beneath him… alright, it’s getting away from him today.
He was lucky you’d always chosen to sit across the table from him, unable to see his pants tighten just because you fucking exist next to him.
You shifted in your seat, boot grazing the floor, the sound sharp in the quiet. You tilted your head slightly, eyes still on the paper in front of you.
He glanced up then. Just for a moment. Watched the way your fingers moved across the rubric, steady and confident. Watched the way your expression never faltered, even as your pen hovered just long enough over one particular line, like it reminded you of something, “I can’t quite figure out what’s wrong but I just know something is.”
He clears his throat before extending his arm to point out what he’d noticed, “The citation’s wrong.”
You glanced up briefly, “Is it?”
He tapped the margin with his thumb, “They’ve attributed a Hunt quote to Nietzsche.”
You frowned at the paper, “Ah, I see. Just needed your keen, expert eye,” you say with a faint lilt to your voice, something just a breath past teasing… not quite playful but not entirely innocent either.
Joel didn’t answer. His eyes lingered a second too long before he looked back down, he had to take a sip of his coffee to hide his grin.
The room settled into the quiet scratch of pens and the soft shuffle of paper, but it wasn’t quiet to him. Not when he could hear the faint shift of your breathing, not when every movement in his periphery pulled at him like a hook under the skin. You were close enough that if he leaned just a little, he could catch the scent of your shampoo. Close enough that his arm could brush yours if he let it.
When he’d accepted your application, he’d told himself he’d be content merely in your presence. The silence surrounding would be just as well as anything else. The tension crackled regardless, and that was his solace that you hadn’t been just a dream. He was fine with that. Stolen glances and spared words limited to professionalism and courtesy… he was just fine with that. And you have proven yourself to be an exemplary student and TA.
But instead, because of your proposition, and your insistence for a change of pace between the two of you, and now the new semester without Jamie’s impeding presence, it felt like something else entirely, something he’d have to manage just as carefully.
You leaned in, scanning the essay between you, and he had to lock his jaw to keep from looking down the slope of your neck, from imagining the heat of your skin under his palm. Because he knew exactly what he’d do if he let himself, how he’d hook a hand under your chin, drag your gaze to his, thumb pressing into your bottom lip until you parted for him. How he’d slot his hand between your thighs under the desk and slide it up until you shifted in your seat, until you made that sound he’d been starving for since summer. That skirt of yours rucked high enough for his fingers to slip beneath, feel the heat of you, test just how ready you’d be for him.
He reeled himself back, long breath in through his nose, pen tapping against the paper to give his hands something else to do.
It would be so easy. Too easy.
—
“What the fuck do you mean you’re her professor?”
Tommy’s voice echoed in his head as the memory dragged him back to that cold December night.
Joel hadn’t answered. He had pushed open the door and stepped into the cool air instead.
“Fuck, Joel…”
He’d tried to walk it off, tried to put distance between himself and the conversation, but Tommy had followed him out into the night like a shadow he couldn’t shake.
“Joel!” The shout had cracked across the parking lot, sharp with disbelief.
Tommy had grabbed his arm and spun him around, the weight of the moment finally forcing Joel to look at him. “You can’t just drop something like that and walk away.”
Joel’s eyes finally focus on his brother’s, what could only be described as distress etching deep lines in his face.
Joel’s jaw had tightened so hard it ached. “Just stop.”
The pressure in his chest came fast and unforgiving, a sharp bloom of pain that stole the breath right out of him. His hand had flown up instinctively, fingers gripping his shirt as the world tilted sideways. He barely had time to stumble before Tommy caught him, steadying his weight with both hands.
“Whoa, what the fuck? Easy… I got ya.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and feels his breath staggering in gasps.
The night blurred after that. The concrete beneath his boots, the sting of cold against his face, the rush of air in his ears. He couldn’t tell how much of the walk to the truck he’d managed on his own, only that the next clear moment found him in the passenger seat. Tommy’s cold hands gently slapping him back to consciousness.
“Joel! Joel, man, c’mon… look at me, it’s alright, you’re alright,” repeated in his ears as the world steadied once more. A bottle of water was being handed to him and his brows furrowed in confusion.
“It’s been awhile since one of those, are you alright? Thought you were taking meds for this?”
Joel groaned and waved him off, irritation flashing through the lingering fog. Tommy lifted both hands in surrender, backing off just enough to let him breathe, “Alright. Alright.”
Tommy rounded the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat, motioning to Joel to buckle up only to get a few grumbles from his older brother.
“She got you that bad, huh. I was gonna say how lucky you were fucking hot college girls, but I see that’s not appropriate… and I apologize.”
Joel didn’t answer. He leaned his head back against the headrest, eyes closing as the truck rumbled to life, the vibration traveling up through his bones. His chest still felt tight, like the panic had left an echo behind, a dull pressure that refused to fade completely. He rolled his shoulders once, then again, trying to shake the lingering tension from his body.
Tommy drove in silence for a few minutes, the road stretching out in front of them, the dashboard lights casting soft shadows across the cab. Joel watched the blur of streetlights through half-lidded eyes, his thoughts drifting despite his best efforts to corral them.
He knew the panic attack hadn’t come out of nowhere.
He’d honestly been surprised he’d gone so long without one since this whole ordeal began. With his prescription waiting for a refill request, he’d simply refused to discuss alternatives with his doctor.
He figured he deserved the anxiety, he wanted that edge that kept him on his toes. The physical reminder of all he’s lost and everything he could possibly lose.
The pain and ache was worth those few moments of reprieve he’d find to pictures of you stored in his phone. He’d even revisit those voice memos you’d left during that last week as you anticipated spending the weekend together.
Everything had been too easy, he’d taken it for granted. Projected his own feelings onto you when it seemed safe to assume that level of mutuality.
Maybe he’d hoped you’d have decided that he was worth the risk of attachment. That you would let yourself be worshipped by him until his final breath like he’d grown to crave with you.
“We didn’t know,” he said, weakly, taking a sip from the bottle with shaky hands.
“I mean from the way you two looked at each other I’d have believed y'all were in love, man. Did y’all break it off after you found out?”
He just shook his head once, his eyes never shifting from their far-off gaze out the window and into the winter night sky.
“C’mon, talk to me, just this once,” Tommy stopped at the red light and turned his body towards his older brother.
Joel slowly turns his head, his eyes unamused at his brother’s insistence.
“She left before.”
He sees the realization on Tommy’s face and a slow nod of acknowledgment. “Did she say why?”
With another curt shake of his head, Tommy sighs and the light turns green.
“No, nothin’. Not til…”
Tommy’s eyebrow lifts with that, “Not til what?”
Joel groans, he’s never been one to talk about feelings. To talk about anything personal, really. His brother knew more than anyone, but it still felt like some kind of failure to have to externalize it. He knew it was rooted in pride, in habit, in years of keeping things locked behind his ribs, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to change.
Joel’s fingers tightened around the bottle, knuckles whitening as he stared through the windshield at nothing in particular. The streetlight outside cast long shadows across the dashboard, stretching the silence between them.
“Just… forget it.” He grumbles, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes.
“You drive me insane, man. Just once I wish you’d let me in, let anyone in. Gettin’ too old for this shit.”
That earned Tommy another glare from the older man, “I am too old for all that sappy bullshit, ain’t worth fussin’ over.”
Tommy silently pulls into the parking lot of a familiar spot, Joel hadn’t even realized he hadn’t been heading in the direction of his house.
“Well, shit… of all the places.”
The realization dawns on Tommy’s face and yet another deep sigh resolves the unintentional resurfacing of memories. “Fuck, we can go somewhere else if y-”
“It’s fine, let’s grab a drink.”
The two men find a spot at the bar and sit in silence for a few moments as they nursed a beer, watching whatever football highlights were running on the tvs.
“So…”
Joel downs a shot of whiskey and signals the bartender for another, “what do y’want me to say?”
Tommy shrugs and turns in his seat, but notices a woman down the bar eyeing Joel in a not-so-subtle way. “When’s the last time you’ve gotten laid, man?”
“The fuck?”
Tommy tilts his head in the direction of the woman and raises his eyebrows suggestively. Joel’s gaze followed where Tommy was so fixated.
“Fuck off.” And that was that, at least Joel had hoped, but so far tonight one thing had become increasingly clear to Tommy.
“You’re in love with her,” an accusing finger points straight to Joel and he grumbles under his breath for the night to be over.
For the first time in a long time, Joel had found himself the opportunity to talk about you. He hadn’t mentioned you since he avoided the conversation when Sarah and Tommy were gossiping, and even then he was deflecting.
If Tommy could tell his conundrum, he must’ve seemed like an open damned book as he got to really take you in at the hockey stadium. With your flushed cheeks and your trembling lip, your warm eyes looking up at him at the closest proximity you’d been in months. He was still replaying that interaction in his head.
He wishes he could kiss you every time you looked at him like that, he wishes he could kiss you any time he damn well pleased.
Since that video of you kissing that girl and the odd lack of jealousy he felt after you’d assured him she’s just a friend, he hadn’t stopped thinking about how important it was to you that he knew she was just a friend.
You seemed almost apologetic that he had to watch it, then that banter where you’d accidentally made a joke about his dick being big and well… that had fueled a night of restless fist-fucking. He’d imagined you on that phone call before that last weekend together, your voice so sweet and breathless as you asked him to show you how hard you’d gotten him just from the sound of your moans through the phone.
He likes to imagine you touching yourself to the thought of him, that your sweet pussy still drips when you’re around him… that at any moment he could reach between those milky thighs and be proven how much he can still affect you, that your…
Fuck… there he goes again.
“I don’t know, Tommy, I just…” he downs the shot after he realizes the bartender had set it down in front of him.
“Alright, how about this,” Tommy turns with his beer in one hand and his other hand perched on his thigh, earnestly leaning towards Joel so he could hear him better. “I’ll ask ya a few questions, just say yes or no, ‘kay?”
He can tell Tommy’s getting a little drunk, a few shots’ll do that to the poor lightweight, no matter how much tolerance he should have at this point.
“Fine. Shoot.”
Tommy clears his throat and takes his own shot, shaking his head at the burn of it. “Do y’miss her?”
Straight to the point, Joel respects it. And while he can, maybe it’d be good for him to admit some bits of truth to the only other person who knows about you, “Sure.”
“Do you ever see her besides in whatever class she has you for?”
“Mhmm.”
Tommy’s eyebrows raise at that, “Beyond what happened today or is that what you’re implying?”
“Beyond what happened today.”
Tommy continues, hoping he can gain some clarity, “Have you ever had a chance to be alone with her?”
Joel clears his throat this time and slowly nods his head, “Yeah, happened pretty often actually.”
“Then what the fuck, man! What’s stoppin’ you?”
Joel glares at him again, “Ain’t a yes or no question, Tommy.”
“Also, how the fuck do you get alone time with her? Seems like it’d be kinda suspicious, no?”
“Again, not a yes or no question, dumbass. She’s my TA.”
And now Tommy’s just got a blank stare on his face.
“What?”
“You’re alone with her often… you’ve got a socially acceptable reason to be alone with her as her professor and… you see the problem with this? Okay fine, last yes or no question, are you in love with her?”
Joel nods his head slowly and furrows his brow, “but I don’t get what’s wrong, I’ve been doin’ things right, I haven’t crossed any lines…”
And of course it wasn’t Tommy’s last question, “You chose her as your TA?”
“Yeah, but she applied!” He gestured innocently, as if someone who had been sexually involved with him and had applied for a TA position couldn’t plausibly be angling for some proximity.
“For you specifically?”
“No… no, but Dr. Lansing’s position had been filled and she was a good fit. Plus, her friend was already my TA and I thought they’d work well together.”
Tommy is nodding along slowly as he takes in the information, connecting dots as best as he can to understand the dynamics.
“But you said you get to be alone with her?”
Joel’s head is starting to spin now, maybe that last shot wasn’t such a good idea after he’d just had a panic attack an hour prior.
“I just don’t see why y’can’t sneak around, y’got that high of a moral standin’ that you can’t make it work with the woman you love?”
“Jesus, Tommy. I teach philosophy, remember? What the fuck do y’take me for?” Joel takes a deep breath and takes another sip of his beer. “Couldn’t even bring home a woman because it’d make me feel dishonest about my intentions, ‘specially when Sarah was young. I don’t know how to deal with this shit, plus, this is her future we’re talkin’ about.”
Tommy holds out his hands, halting his rant, “Slow down, man.”
It’s the first time he’s ever truly been vulnerable besides when Sarah’s mom left the little baby in his arms as she drove off from all maternal responsibility. Only time he’s let Tommy into his personal life and admit he’s no super human void of emotions.
“Have you talked to her about any of this shit?”
“Fuck no, that’d just make it complicated.”
“How the fuck could it get more complicated?”
Joel gestures widely, “I could be fuckin’ my TA’s how it could get more complicated.”
“So you admit it’s plausible that she would be on board with it?”
“Ain’t the point... I can’t be selfish.”
“But you won’t have sex with anyone else… so, what… you’re just waiting for her graduation?”
Joel sighs deeply and shrugs, “guess so… hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“Got me fucked up, Joel.”
Another shrug as Joel finishes off his beer.
“I say hit it once, see what happens.. What is she, a blabber mouth? She gonna squeal to her daddy that a professor fucked her?”
“Don’t think she has any interest in fuckin’ either of us over.”
“Gotta admit it’s a hot prospect, secret little affair, ‘specially if you love ‘er, fuck it man, y’only live once right?”
Joel slaps him on the shoulder and shakes him gently, “don’t think you’re gettin’ it, little brother. Ain’t how this is gonna go as much as I like to think of it.”
“Why’d y’go off your meds?”
And another sigh from the older man and he clears his throat, “Couldn’t finish, stopped it last summer, ‘round the time I met her.”
“Bet y’fucked like rabbits then, huh… no wonder you’re so hung up. I remember y’bein’ so fuckin’ antsy when y’couldn’t see her that week Sarah was here, is that when she ghosted?”
A slow nod.
“Then she showed up in your class?”
Another.
“Am I gonna get anywhere close to understandin’ this dynamic? If it was me, I’d fuck her ‘n be careful ‘bout it. Don’t make any rational sense to me why y’don’t find it a perfect opportunity.”
“Can y’stop sayin’ you’d fuck her like you’re actually imaginin’ fuckin’ her?”
“If you’re not gonna.. What’s stoppin’ me from imaginin’ that? She’s smokin’!”
“Would your girlfriend enjoy you talkin’ like that ‘bout my girl?”
“Your girl…”
“Fuck off, y’know what I meant.”
“Mhmm… never seen y’like this before, Joel, just don’t get why y’gave up so easily.”
“Who said I gave up, I got her eyein’ me every time she’s with me… I’d say it’s ‘bout as good as it can get in our situation.”
“Well… y’could be gettin’ some much needed release and that’d probably be even better,” Tommy’s starting to slur on his words, keeping them partially under his breath, clearly stubborn on his take of things.
Joel can’t deny he’s thought of it. He’d considered any possibility at this point, but none of them outweighed the risk to you, the risk to your future… otherwise he’d dive head-fucking-first. He’d gather you in his arms and never let you go. Issue with Tommy is, he’s too focused on the physicality of it. He’s not considering the long-term impact of Joel condoning that behavior as a philosophy professor.
Tommy wasn’t wrong about one thing. Joel had thought about it. Not once or twice, but in the quiet hours when sleep wouldn’t come and the house felt too empty to breathe in. He had imagined what it would be like to stop holding the line, to close the distance, to take instead of deny. The relief of it. The warmth of it. The way it might quiet the constant hum under his skin.
But every version of that fantasy ended the same way.
With you losing something you could never get back.
He stared into his glass, watching the condensation bead and slide down the side like it might carry the answer with it.
“It ain’t about the sex,” he said at last. “If that was all it was, I’d have gotten over it by now.”
Tommy tilted his head, studying him more seriously now, “So what is it about?”
Joel’s jaw flexed. For a second it looked like he might shut down again, retreat behind that familiar wall of silence. Instead he scrubbed a hand over his face, rough and tired.
“It’s her,” he said simply. “Just… her.”
The words landed heavier than anything else he’d said all night.
“She walks into a room and everything feels… brighter,” he went on, clearly uncomfortable with his own honesty. “Like I remember what it’s like to be excited about shit again. About romantic shit. About the future.”
Tommy didn’t interrupt.
“And then I remember I ain’t allowed to want that,” Joel added. “Not from someone like her.”
“Someone like her?” Tommy echoed.
Joel nodded toward the bar, toward the world beyond it, toward everything he wasn’t. “Young ‘n smart. Got her whole life ahead a’her. She ain’t supposed to get tangled up with some middle-aged professor with baggage.”
Tommy huffed quietly. “You say that like you don’t get a vote.”
“I don’t,” Joel replied. “Not when the consequences fall on her.”
That shut Tommy up for a second.
Joel leaned back, eyes drifting toward the ceiling. “If anyone found out, it wouldn’t be me they’d worry about. It’d be her. They’d question her grades, her motives, her character. Every damn thing she’s worked for would get picked apart.”
His voice roughened, “I can survive bein’ the bad guy if it means she ain’t wrapped up in my mess.”
Tommy’s expression softened, the teasing finally draining out of him. “You really love her.”
Joel didn’t answer this time because the truth sat in the air between them, undeniable.
After a long moment, he exhaled, shoulders sagging in a way that made him look older than he was.
Tommy took a slow drink, shaking his head like he still didn’t fully understand but couldn’t argue either. “Man,” he muttered. “That’s rough.”
Joel let out a tired laugh, “Tell me about it.”
—
And now, he sits across from you again with all those thoughts floating around his head. The selfish temptations toying with his psyche.
That conversation with Tommy seemed like the last chance he’d get to be honest, at least about you. And had he even been completely honest?
Should he have shared how every time he catches you staring it takes active effort not to devour you whole?
Should he have shared the weight of your presence feels like home? That he only ever feels at peace when he has you by his side?
No, he shared what he could. To at least externalize bits of you that had been living in his mind. To make the ache for you into its own sort of existence.
The full extent of you in his mind is his alone.
· · ──────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒───────── · ·
a/n: and they’re back! I’ve had a lot of time for brainstorming for this story and I’m really excited for what I have in store 😈 it’s been a slow-going time writing wise, but I get to it when I can. Man, I love them so much, sorry I’m not pushing chapters out faster.
taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed): @magicxmiller @yslgreen @mallingcalling-blog @getitoutofmymindwrites @msdariaknight @morganlolitta @faiantas-blog @anheloamores @loveday1219
Pt. 8: you and past daddy Joel but not in that way navigate the new dynamics of your relationship.
< pt. 1 | prev pt | series masterlist // main masterlist | next pt >
NSFW! mdni 18+ only
warnings/content:
WC: 12.8k - no outbreak!au, family!au, flashback chapter!, fluff, love at first sight, yearning/pining/longing, teasing, big fat crushes, juicy age gap (reader is 19, Joel is early 30s), Joel is a respectful man!, soulmates basically, lots of inner dialogue; smut!, unprotected pinv (reader has an iud), size difference, so many pet names/nicknames, belly bulge, Joel’s a big man alright!, oral sex (f!receiving), fingering, creampie, riding, size kink, feral!joel, possessive!joel, soft dom!Joel. No use of y/n.
a/n: uhhhhhh hellooooooo yeah yeah yeah long time no see, every winter (or once it ends) I have the epiphany of seasonal depression 🥴 so uhhhh im back I guess! It’s my spring break which means I’ve got a few day for revising/ proofreading so we’ll see what I get accomplished. I’m so sorry I’ve been gone so long, finally getting back into writing is so rewarding but I feel so behind! So bear with me, I’m not going anywhere, I just love taking looooong breaks and then realizing mental health actually matters for me too. It’s been a wild ride. Some angst may be in the works as well so hopefully within the next week my prof fic will get an update. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
“What’cha got runnin’ through that pretty little head a’yours, baby?”
You’ll admit you haven’t been particularly subtle after the night you’d spent with Joel over the weekend. Finally having him in your bed had awakened a feral side of you that you hadn’t even known existed.
And now… you were sitting across from Joel for the first time since he’d spent a night between your thighs and well, that image wasn’t going anywhere as the man sat and sipped his coffee.
“Nothin’, just… admiring you.”
“Admirin’ little ol’ me?” But that devious grin of his means he’s just trying to make you squirm, and that dynamic had become increasingly clear to you as you’d spent more and more time with him.
You roll your eyes and can’t help the gentle nibble of the bottom of your lip, “You’re annoying.”
He scoffs, “Y’ain’t mean that, darlin’.” And that sly bastard leaned back in his chair and the fabric of his shirt tightened over his broad chest. “but y’should know it’s best to use your words. Taught y’that Saturday night, didn’t I?”
You nod, your breath catching making you momentarily speechless.
“Missed you yesterday,” you flutter your eyelashes and he tsks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, his hand smoothing over his freshly trimmed mustache and beard.
“I missed ya too, sweetheart.” He leans forward, crooking his finger and motioning you to lean forward.
Of course, you comply, and the way your cheeks dimple has him sucking in a breath to steel himself in public.
“Missin’ those sweet lips of yours,” and the suggestive, low tone of his voice means he wasn’t just referencing kissing the lips you were currently smiling at him mischievously with.
“Yeah?”
He nods in reply and inhales deeply before leaning back in his chair again, refusing to say anything else before he loses any semblance of self-control and hauls you back to his truck.
To be fair, when he had to run off to his parents’ for a family dinner, he had regretted every second of it. Not a single thought was spared to his cousins or their kids running around.
Especially since he’d woken up to your ass grinding against him, your flushed skin warm beneath his touch as his fingers found your perfectly slick mess between your thighs.
He knew this was the closest he’d ever get to heaven on earth as your whimpers and pleas for him to fill you again had him levitating out of body. He sank into your tight walls devastatingly slow again, not only for your sake, but because just the sight of your naked body melted against his had him dangerously close to finishing before he’d even begun.
“Y’know…”
That sultry voice of yours has him right back to the present and the way your eyes drink him in. He loves the way you look at him, it’s intoxicating to know just how mutual the attraction is.
“What’s that?” He straightens his back and takes another sip of coffee, chancing a quick glance at the clock to see how much time he has left with you before you have to go to the office.
“I always wondered where you park, you said it’s close by?”
His mouth goes dry, it was like you could read his damn mind, but he quickly closes his mouth and clears his throat, “Just around the corner, why the sudden curiosity?”
You shrug nonchalantly, but that look in your eyes makes it abundantly clear to him that you were feeling particularly needy and he was more than happy to oblige as long as it wouldn’t get you into any trouble with work.
“We’ve only got about twenty minutes before you’ve gotta get ready for your meetin’, darlin’,” you’d told him all about the proposal you’d had to prepare for your boss. That you were presenting it today which is why he’d made sure to be extra mindful of the time this morning.
“Twenty whole minutes?” That sparkle in your eyes was quickly becoming an aphrodisiac to him… as if everything about you didn’t already have him hooked like a damn addict.
“Nineteen now.”
You slide your chair back and begin to clear the table, but Joel is quick to pick up on this. As always, he takes the trash and the cups and offers his arm as the two of you leave the coffee shop.
The walk to his truck is about four minutes, four precious minutes you could’ve used sinking down onto him liked you’d craved to do since you’d seen him last, but now you knew you didn’t have the time so you’d have to settle for something to bide you both until you could take your damn time.
“Ain’t exactly private, baby…”
Your hands press against his abdomen and grip the fabric tightly, pulling him closer as he unlocks the doors.
You don’t really care how much time or privacy you have, “just wanna feel you close.”
He hums contemplatively and opens the door for you to hop into the backseat, then climbs in behind you.
When he shuts the door behind him, you’re already pressing yourself against him, and for a moment he complies, allowing your soft lips to crash against his like it’s all you’ve thought about since you’d seen him last.
Joel’s back hits the seat with more force than you’d intended, one of his arms coming up instinctively to pull you with. The other hand lands on your waist, and for a split second he just breathes you in, eyes shut, jaw tight like he’s holding something feral on a leash.
Your hands slide up his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer.
His thigh presses between yours automatically, muscle flexing beneath denim, and the contact pulls a soft, needy sound from you before you can stop it.
That made his restraint crack.
Joel’s hand leaves your waist to cup the back of your neck, just rough enough for you to feel his urgency, thumb brushing just beneath your ear where your pulse is hammering. He tilts your head the way he likes, deepening the kiss without devouring you entirely.
You can’t help the way you melt into him.
He breaks away first, dragging a breath through his nose, forehead dropping to yours, “Now…” his fingers tighten at the nape of your neck as he cradles your face in his palm, gently holding your face away from his so you’re able to look at him, “y’gonna tell me what’cha need or y’gonna just grind on my thigh ‘til y’gotta go?”
You hum contemplatively, imitating his tone from earlier, biting your lower lip and stilling on his lap.
Joel’s eyes are intently on yours, his breath labored as his grip tightens on your hips to prevent any potential movement. His resolve is thin, and you know within a second you can make him succumb to your wiles.
But… you aren’t cruel. Plus, you know how little time you have.
Your eyes betray this consideration, and of course he picks up on it.
Joel checks his watch and scoffs an amused breath, “Got a big day…” His voice is strained as he fights to maintain his composure, understanding he’d need far more than ten minutes to stifle this need thrumming between the two of you, “Need that sharp brain a’yours workin’, not all scrambled ‘cause y’let me distract ya.”
You lean in again, your mouth curving against the hot skin of his neck. Your tongue peeking out to press against the stubbled skin of his jaw, “maybe I like being distracted.”
A quiet huff of breath leaves him and he tips his head back against the window, eyes closing for a second like he’s counting backwards from ten to reground himself.
“Christ…” he loves to say that when he’s not even sure why the hell he’s callin’ on a god he doesn’t even believe in, “And I love bein’ the one to distract ya darlin’.”
He pulls himself back yet again, those soft, brown eyes looking at you earnestly now.
His thumb drifts along your jaw, then down your throat, stopping at your collarbone where your pulse jumps again beneath his touch. He watches it, something dark and tender flickering in his expression all at once.
“Missed ya,” and he’s so endlessly gentle in the way he admits it. Such a stark contrast to the carnal hunger filling in any space between you.
You soften instantly, pressing your forehead to his again, fingers slipping into his hair at the nape of his neck. He leans into it… a barely perceptible shift, but you feel the way the big, steady man folds just a little when it’s you.
A car door slams somewhere down the street and real life intrudes the moment.
Joel exhales slowly to ground himself, hands sliding back to your hips and he squeezes gently, “C’mere,” he murmurs.
He pulls you into his chest, chin resting lightly on the top of your head. The embrace is tight and warm, almost protective if you let yourself see it. It’s the kind of hug that says I wish we had more time too.
Your cheek presses to his shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of his soap and coffee and smothered cigarette smoke. His hand moves up and down your back in slow strokes, soothing both of you.
“After your meetin’,” he says into your hair, voice back to that steady and grounded tone he uses when you know you have to part ways, “You call me. Tell me how it went.”
You nod against him, memorizing the feel of him to get you through the rest of the day.
“And if it goes good,” his mouth curves against your temple, his breath ghosting your skin, “maybe I take ya somewhere nice tonight.”
“What if it goes just alright?” And he knows what that means to you as a perfectionist.
You don’t doubt that you can do the job competently, you’re fairly confident in your capabilities… but sometimes things just don’t go exactly right, and all you can do is fix it for the next time. The only way to learn is to try, and you live by that.
His arms tighten around you, “Then I definitely take ya somewhere nice.”
You laugh softly into his shirt, the tension easing as you both settle into the part of your time together that you hated the most… the saying goodbye.
He presses a lingering kiss to your hair.
“Alright,” he murmurs, “off y’get before I change my mind.”
You nod solemnly before you feel his lips meet yours again. You find yourself drowning in him, then finally he pulls back, breathless.
His deep, brown eyes soften any semblance of guilt that had started to bloom for starting something you couldn’t finish.
“Sorry… just missed you,” you admit sheepishly.
“Ain’t nothing to be sorry ‘bout, sweetheart. Missed ya too.” A blush of embarrassment paints your cheeks as he pushes against the very noticeable bulge beneath the denim of his jeans, willing it to go down. You know he’s intent on walking you to the office as he always does after your coffee together.
“I don’t want’cha to think this is all I want from ya now, darlin’, but I also want ya to know how badly I wanna be able to take my damn time.”
You hadn’t really had the opportunity to discuss this new dynamic between the two of you. Not that you’d avoided the conversation, but mostly due to there not being much time for talking over the weekend.
If it were up to him, or more accurately if it were up to you, you both know exactly how this twenty minutes would have gone. But he’s still determined to prove to himself that he can be the man who walks you back to your life instead of distracting you from it.
You know how intentional Joel always is when it comes to his words and his actions.
Joel has set a high standard of expectations for himself, and you know how important it is to him to maintain that with you.
He wants to be a healthy addition to your life, even if there still wasn’t exactly a label on this blossoming thing between the two of you. It sure feels like he wants to spend the rest of his days worshipping the ground you walk on, but you know… nothing too serious.
He doesn’t want to limit you, he doesn’t want to be selfish. Most importantly, he just hasn’t had that conversation with you quite yet.
Then again, he had been so intent on waiting longer before taking that next step with you and had it been on his own terms, he’d have been able to discuss what the expectations of this thing was before he could close his eyes and know exactly how you feel against him and around him.
Does he regret giving in to you? Absolutely not. He has no clue how he had been so goddamn patient, but he figures, for you… he’ll do anything. Your existence in his life is enough to make his head spin in disbelief and his pants tighten at the notion of you being his.
You’ve talked about plenty of things, and he has greedily consumed every tidbit you feed him. He loves that rush of remembering something you’ve said and the way you light up when he references it. He loves making you feel seen and cared for in every way that he can. He loves showing up for you in the ways that you’ve allowed thus far, and hopes to be more than just an early morning coffee date and Saturday night dinners.
You’ve given him a lot of yourself and he’s given a lot of himself to you, but he wants to give all of himself to you.
And he wanted to have all of you to himself.
So, that conversation would need to be had, boundaries would need to be set… or else he’d find himself in quicksand. Falling for you irrevocably while you’re on steady ground, watching him sink.
He hadn’t had any intention of finding someone he wanted to share his life with. He wasn’t particularly good at sharing in general. But since you quite literally bumped into his life, his entire outlook on the future has changed.
With you, he sees hopes and dreams he’d thought were too late for him to want. In you, he sees a future of things to look forward to, of things to aspire to be, of reasons to wake up every damn day with a smile on his face and incessant morning wood begging for attention.
Joel had never been a particularly joyful guy. He had a permanent scowl on his face and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, but since you… well, fuck. Even his mom could tell the difference.
His mother, who has fought like hell to see her sons become successful but has never once had a girl brought home for her to meet. Sure, Tommy casually dates and brings them around without caring much about how significant it was to their mom that they both find someone to share their life with.
Meanwhile, Joel hadn’t brought anyone around. Nor had there been anyone to bring around. A few flings here and there in a drunken stupor, but never a name that stuck around long enough to be remembered.
He’d never considered himself the lover type, he’d always been too preoccupied with keeping his brother out of trouble and helping his pops at the ranch.
His family has always been his first priority, and thus his working had been primarily to support them. It hadn’t left much room for a personal life.
That is, until his mom convinced him to buy his own house after she’d won a medical malpractice lawsuit that allowed them to pay off the house and hire a ranch hand.
God, he wanted to tell her all about you at dinner the other night, but he needs to make sure your intentions are aligned before he gets too ahead of himself. Before he gets his own hopes up and his mom’s hopes up. He knows how devastating it would be.
His mom will love you. He has no doubt about how welcomed you’ll be to the family once they get to meet you. There was too much uncertainty with his mom’s sickness anyway to waste a moment pretending you weren’t everything he needs and wants in his life.
The only thing was your damn age. A grown ass man so enamored with a girl who isn’t even out of her teens.
There was a delicate balance here to maintain, for your sake mostly.
He wasn’t necessarily worried about what other people thought, but he did care that his intentions were never questioned by you and those who care for you.
He isn’t blind to the side eyes you’ve already received while together in public, especially if there had been any display of affection undeniably non-platonic.
He hadn’t been the instigator in those moments, and the act of you claiming him in public had awoken something entirely new within him. Something primal and feral that feeds off of your passion for him, but doesn’t understand how you can want him of all people. Of all the guys who wish they could have a shot with a girl like you… you wanted him.
Now that he’s gotten a taste of you, well, he doesn’t think that hunger can ever be satiated. In fact, every moment he spends in your presence makes him realize just how desperate he is for more time with you.
—
Joel’s grip tightens around your hand, his eyes intently observing you from across the table, “ I got somethin’ I wanted to ask ya..”
The meeting had gone fairly well considering the distractions that had been firmly planted in your mind since the morning. Joel’s promise of taking you out to a nice dinner motivated you even more to give your best for the presentation. Your boss had actually commended you for the slideshow, although your voice had a distinct shake at the start, you’d quickly found your rhythm.
With Joel on your mind you’d found that quiet self-assurance. No matter how it may have gone, you had him. It was merely a bonus that you want to make him proud of you, too.
But now, with his large hand holding yours, and those earnest, brown eyes looking at you with that undeniable softness, your heart is pounding.
You have no idea what’s going on in that pretty head of his, but it’s making him fidgety as hell in an endearing way.
“What is it?” You try to soothe him by tracing the veins of his hand and forearm.
He watches intently, always enraptured so easily by the feel of you.
God, he’s intoxicating, every bit of him. If he were consumable you’d be drunk off of his countenance alone.
Now that image is in your head, the thought of drinking his very essence was an exciting prospect to say the least.
“I just wanna formally ask ya to be mine.”
Your brain halts to a stop, or at least pauses those filthy thoughts you’d just conjured… at least for a moment.
A subtle smile creases his lips as he watches your brain catch up.
“Well, yeah..” you moisten your lips with your tongue and pick up your glass of water to take a sip, “I mean, yes, of course. I’ve been since the beginning.”
That earns a soft chuckle from Joel as he lifts your hand to his lips and presses a lingering kiss to the back of it.
“So… what, you want me to start calling you my boyfriend?”
You see him physically wince at that title which was entirely your intention.
“I’m kidding,” and that mischievous grin graces your lips again.
“Don’t care what’cha call me, darlin’, just wanna establish that I’m yours, and I want ya to be mine.”
You hum thoughtfully, leaning forward in your chair and letting your eyes trace his broad shoulders, you lose yourself for a moment again until you feel his hand squeeze yours to reel you back.
“Y’alright?”
You slowly nod your head, your tongue peeking out to moisten your lips as Joel takes in a stuttered breath.
“How’s the food, baby?”
You clear your throat and giggle to yourself, peeling your eyes away from him to look down at your plate of barely touched food.
You know that’s his hint to eat more, he always wanted to make sure you were eating enough and hydrated… ever so thoughtful for a man who wasn’t even officially yours until this very moment.
You take a few bites and can feel him intently watching, the tension thrumming thickly between you. That fire from the morning never having a chance to be stifled yet.
“I like being yours,” you say finally, taking a sip of your water and your eyes finding his once again.
You can feel the tension of his body rolling off of him, “That right?”
“Mhmm… you think we can get out of here soon?” You poke at the food on your plate, preparing another bite and gauging how long it will take you to finish so you can finally find some alone time with Joel.
Joel slowly exhales with a grin, “Couple more bites then I can take y’home.”
He watches you rush your bites and shakes his head, “I was thinkin’ I could take y’to my place tonight. Maybe grab some clothes from your place first, I know y’haven’t been over yet.”
Your eyes go wide and you excitedly nod your head, chewing your food before you reply, “I’d love that, you’d let me stay the night?”
“Let ya? Darlin’, y’know how hard it was for me to leave ya the other day, I’d spend every night with you if I could.”
That causes you to raise an eyebrow, “Then we should figure that out more often.”
Joel leans back in his chair with those broad, tense shoulders stretching the fabric of his shirt, and a barely audible but unmistakable groan from the anticipation of all of the possibilities escapes him.
The waitress comes by to check on you and gives an odd look between the two of you since you were sitting in silence practically ogling each other. Neither of you pay any mind to it, too consumed by the prospects of finishing what you started this morning.
You leave the restaurant hand-in-hand, with Joel opening doors for you as he always does.
As soon as he opens the passenger’s side door of the truck, you’re pulling him into you by his belt loops. His hand immediately grips your hip and pulls you even closer, letting you feel the tension that has been growing the entire day in anticipation of feeling you close again.
You moan against his mouth, his tongue and jaw working in tandem to pry your mouth open.
By this time you should have realized you’re in a busy parking lot, but a stern cough from the person that had parked next to his truck interrupted the moment.
You hadn’t even heard it, you’d been so enraptured by the feeling of Joel against you, but as soon as he peeled himself away from you the pieces fell together as he stepped backwards and patted your ass to get up into the seat, closing the door behind you.
“Sorry about that, ma’am, we’ll get out of your way.”
“Grown man and a young girl, you should know better,” but all you see is an old woman shaking her finger accusingly before getting into her car.
Joel says something else you can’t hear with a furrowed brow, then walks around the front of the truck to get into the driver’s seat.
“What’d she say?”
“Just a cynical old woman, somethin’ ‘bout my age ‘n yours,” it doesn’t seem to affect him, but it makes you seethe at the notion of someone commenting about something that doesn’t concern them in the slightest.
“What’d you say back?”
“Told her to mind her own business, and wished her a good evenin’.”
You shake your head and reach across the console for his hand which he gladly offers.
“Doesn’t bother you, does it? I just hate for anyone to see you in a bad light because of me. It isn’t fair that I give you a bad rap.”
He turns to you, a slight frown on his face as he takes in your words, but it quickly softens as his eyes trace your features, “Don’t give a single fuck, baby. Just want you, nothin’ else matters but you and makin’ sure you feel safe and respected.”
And god if you could hop the mid-console and have him finally take you like you’ve been craving all night… this man drives you fucking crazy.
“Good, good, I’m glad, because I really do love being yours,” and you hadn’t meant to use that word, but your brain was far from thinking rationally. Even if it had been, the meaning remained.
And Joel had taken note, he was always taking notes. The word excited him, but not for the reason he initially expected, but because he’d been thinking that same word for a while now and knew he couldn’t be the one to say it first.
And while you hadn’t said it in that way, he knew that’s what he hoped for some day. Some day.
He leans across the console, silently prompting a kiss and you happily comply. He pulls back immediately to prevent it from getting out of hand again, “Let’s get you a change of clothes for tomorrow and I’ll finally show ya my place,” his hand releases yours so he can start the truck’s engine, but offers it again for you to hold while he drives to your place.
—
He hadn’t intended for the stop at your place to be anything but a quick one, but you’d decided to get changed into something more comfortable and had allowed him the peep show of watching you undress ever so slowly. He’d tried to be respectful, to urge you to hurry and stop teasing him like you so loved to do… but then you held eye contact and laid back in your bed to strip off your visibly wet panties, and it was over for him.
Now, his head is buried between your thighs, drinking you in like he hasn’t even seen water for weeks. His tongue lapping at your slick folds, your fingers entangled in his hair as you writhe against him. His filthy murmurings of possession are pouring out of him on instinct now. Finally being able to lay claim completely and utterly, “mine, mine, mine. my sweet pussy.. my good girl… that’s it… tell me who you belong to…”
He’s already made you cum once, you thought that would be enough to get you to his place before you really indulged, but he hasn’t stopped. He can’t stop, he’s a man possessed, the taste of you is imprinted in his soul and the thirst will never be quenched.
“That’s it, baby… fuck… let this sweet pussy cum f’me” he groans against you, the loud whimpers spilling from your throat merely spurring him on to make you forget every thought but him.
“Joel… oh my god, please… please please…” not that you need to beg, he is right there at your every whim to give you what you need.
His tongue delves into your weeping hole, quickly followed by a thick finger penetrating your tight cunt.
Even if you wanted him to stop, he isn’t sure he’d be able to. Since his first taste of you, even just your tongue against his, the hunger has only culminated every moment between his tongue tasting some part of you. On skin, against your tongue, devouring your sweet pussy… he couldn’t get enough. It’s all he thinks about, to the point of complete distraction at work or around his family. The snapping of fingers in front of his face is a common occurrence when he’s without you.
Next thing he realizes is your velvet walls clenching around his fingers, having added a second one to start working you open for his cock. He’d been so consumed by the thought of finally feeling you around him again that the gush of fluids signaling your impending orgasm floods into his mouth and he’s fucking drowning in it. His moans are unmistakable as he fucks his fingers against that spongey ridge that makes you scream.
He earns those desperate screams as your orgasm rides out longer than the last, your hips bucking and your legs trembling. He can’t help his incessant moans of approval as he drinks every drop. Your hands are desperately pushing against his shoulders for some reprieve.
That finally pulls him back to reality, his tongue slowing as he laps up the remnants of your release. But you nudge him and his eyes meet yours over your sweat slicked torso.
“Joel… Joel.. holy fuck..” his dazed eyes searching yours as he comes back down to earth.
He blinks slowly and his tongue cleans your slick from his lips and that sly fucking smile makes those dimples appear that you adore, “Yeah?” That’s all you get from the man so clearly disoriented.
Your hands cradle his face, then pull him towards you, motioning him to climb over your naked body, “Joel, that tongue…”
He moans appreciatively at your praise, using that very tongue to lather sloppy kisses against every inch of skin he encounters on his ascension up your body, eventually reaching your breasts and laving his tongue over each pebbled nipple.
You practically have to pry him off of you to finally bring him back to you. Those big, brown eyes so far gone.
You pull him against you, your lips crashing against his and the overwhelming taste of yourself on his tongue pulls a whimper from you. His tongue instantly prying open your mouth further to chase those sounds from you. His groans pouring into you and reverberating through every nerve on your body in return.
Every ounce of his body is focused on molding himself against you. You can feel his strong jaw working beneath your palms as his tongue tangles with yours.
For a few seconds there’s nothing but heat and breath and the heavy weight of him pressing you deeper into the mattress. His hand splays across your ribs, thumb dragging slow circles over your side while his hips settle instinctively between your thighs. Your hips seek the perfect friction of the incessant hard-on beneath his denim, no doubt smearing your slick all over the crotch of his jeans.
Which he still needs to wear to take you back to his place… which is when something in him finally clicks.
He pulls back just enough to drag a breath into his lungs, forehead falling against yours while his eyes remain shut.
“Jesus…” he mutters under his breath, voice rough and low.
Your fingers are still curled in the back of his shirt, holding him close, and for a moment he lets himself stay there, breathing you in, letting the warmth of your body and the smell of you settle into his bones.
Then he exhales and lifts his head. “Baby,” he soothes softly, eyes tracing along your naked, flushed skin with a low whistle of appreciation.
You blink up at him, still flushed, trying to tug him back down toward you.
He chuckles quietly at that, brushing a strand of hair away from your cheek.
“As much as I’d love to keep goin’,” he murmurs, voice steadying again, “I did promise I’d take you to my place tonight.”
You groan softly in protest, pulling him down for another quick kiss like you’re trying to renegotiate the plan.
He indulges you, of course he does, kissing you slow and deep once more before easing away again, this time more firmly.
“C’mon,” he says, brushing his thumb over your cheekbone. That crooked grin appears, dimples appearing on cue, “I was kinda hopin’ the first time you see my place we’d be able to take our time, and maybe I’d keep my hands off ya long enough to at least show ya the basics.”
You huff out a laugh, and push playfully at his chest, “You’re the one who lost control five minutes after we got in the door.”
“Now hold on there, miss,” he says, raising a brow. “You’re the one that started the little strip show.”
Your cheeks warm but you can’t help smiling, guilty as charged. You knew exactly what you were doing as soon as you dragged him with you to the bedroom after you’d told him that you wanted to change into something more comfortable. And while you could’ve had some decency of being quick and efficient, his hungry eyes watching you all night had planted that devious notion into your head to give him a little show.
Now you didn't need to crook a finger in his direction as you laid down on your bed and opened your legs to show the panties that you’d soaked through even just enjoying a nice dinner with him. You didn’t need to entice him towards you or encourage his request of… “ just a quick taste, baby… know y’been waitin’ all day” but he knew you needed it or wanted it or who the hell cares he needed to taste you again for purely selfish reasons too.
Joel finally shifts off the bed, dragging a hand through his tousled hair while he tries to collect himself. Adjusting his jeans to alleviate the pressure momentarily. He reaches down with his other hand to pull you off of the bed after him.
“Alright, trouble. Go grab whatever y’need for tomorrow,” his voice is so rough around the edges as he appreciates your naked body so casually existing around him like it wouldn’t make him lose his damn mind.
You slide off the bed, stealing one last quick kiss from him as you pass.
Joel watches you go, jaw (and fucking pants) tightening again as you disappear into the closet.
He lets out a slow breath with the semblance of the words, “fuck me,” escaping under his breath with a groan, continuing to take deep breaths as he tries to reestablish his composure.
A minute later you reappear with a small bag and that same mischievous look that’s been driving him insane all night.
Joel shakes his head, matching your grin with his own, holding the soaked panties you’d slowly peeled off of yourself in his hands and bringing them to his nose, inhaling deeply in an obscene show of possessiveness, “keepin’ these as a little souvenir.” He stuffs them in his pocket and reaches for you to guide you towards the door.
Your eyes are dazed once again, the two orgasms clearly having minimal impact on your built up tension and anticipation of finally having Joel to yourself.
He guides you towards his truck, resting a hand at the small of your back, “it’s gettin’ late.”
—
As Joel pulls into the driveway, you notice there’s already a truck parked there. You hear Joel huff a “fuckin’ Tommy” under his breath as he climbs out and rounds the hood to open the passenger door for you.
He guides you inside, offering you a reassuring smile, which means this isn’t unusual to find his younger brother using his spare key like an open invitation.
“Yo, Joel, I saw you were out of beer so I thought…” he’s walking from what you conclude is the kitchen when his eyes see you, then flicker between you and Joel before a knowing grin spreads on his face.
A face resembling Joel’s but his facial hair is scruffier, his hair is dark and long with those same curls you’ve grown to adore on the older man. No doubt a younger brother in both looks and the way he seems to be gearing up to pick on his older brother.
“Well, well… who’d’ya got here?” He steps closer to get a better look at you.
You were amused, and couldn’t help the smile on your face. Sure, you’d wanted to meet his family since you’d heard so much about them through the stories Joel had shared with you, but this most certainly hadn’t been the ideal way to do so.
“Wasn’t really expectin’ y’here tonight, Tommy. Thought you had plans?”
Tommy shook his head dramatically, a shit-eating ear-to-ear grin spreads on his face as his eyes haven’t strayed from you. Observing you like an animal in a zoo, or rather something so out of place that he can’t help but stare.
Joel looks down at you and his brow furrows at your amused, calm countenance, “nice to meet you, Tommy.”
Joel introduces you with no hesitation as his girl and you offer your hand for Tommy to shake. He gladly takes it and scoffs his own amusement.
“Never met a girl of Joel’s before. Didn’t know he could get any.”
Joel grumbles beside you and Tommy takes that as an opportunity to further investigate this phenomena of Joel bringing a girl home.
But Joel knew his brother almost as well as he knew himself, “Listen, Tommy…”
Tommy holds both of his hands up, “Was just gonna welcome her to the family, we both know this ain’t somethin’ casual if you’re bringin’ her to our neighborhood.”
You knew Joel lived down the street from his parents, he always wanted to be close by for his mom even if she’d insisted on some space, for his sake. He worries, he is a worrier, you know that and you want to be there for him as he has been for you.
“Not now, alright? Go bother mom ‘n pops while you’re in the neighborhood.”
“Alright alright… here,” he goes towards the door you and Joel had entered the house through. He presses a carton of cigarettes into his hand, “picked you up a new pack of smokes for ya since you were runnin’ low at work, had a deal goin’ so I figured I’d grab ya one.”
“Thanks,” Joel stiffens and shakes his head, patting his brother on the back as he opens the door.
Tommy pauses once more before he leaves, “Really is nice to meet you, hope to see y’round.”
Joel pushes him on the shoulder and urges him through the door, “See ya tomorrow, now go on, get.”
He closes the door and locks it, turning back towards you with a deep sigh.
“Sorry ‘bout that… and these..” he holds up the carton of cigarettes and throws them on the foyer table, “been tryin’ to cut back.”
“It’s alright,” you take his hand in yours and his gaze shifts to your small hand compared to his, “He seems… exactly as you’ve described him.”
Joel chuckles at that, his entire focus narrowing back to you, “Ain’t how I wanted to introduce ya to ‘im, but guess that’s the way it was bound to go.”
You nod in understanding, that amused smirk still not leaving your face.
“What?” He furrows his brows, and you take that moment to really take in the differences between the brothers.
Joel and Tommy were no doubt biologically related, their deep brown eyes were unmistakable, but Joel’s are full of familiar warmth and adoration.
That sparkle in his eyes that you adore and study endlessly, which could easily be compared to the warm swirl of coffee with an ounce of cream that you rely on to get you through every day. A routine he’s become embedded within every morning.
The intensity of his gaze never fails to make you go weak in the knees, being the object of focus to those big, brown puppy dog eyes was enough to make you fall head first and you knew you were falling… fast.
The wrinkles by his eyes formed from squinting in the sun or smiling, or a number of things that he’s done enough that even his early thirties have cemented them into his very being. You know they’re called crow’s feet, it was something you’d always found so beautiful in an older man.
The grey speckles starting to spread in his beard and by his temples, another signal of a life well-lived, experiences lived through, good and bad times making themselves known. His beard was always well-trimmed, sometimes he’d shave to just a mustache and… well, you think it’s because the grey in his beard makes him appear older than he is. You secretly love it, you’ve always found the evidence of aging a beautiful and sexy thing.
You’ve always preferred older men, you’d told him that not long after he’d finally asked you out. It was no secret, but you think it’s hard for him to wrap his head around, and you don’t blame him. You hadn’t actually dated anyone older before him, but after your trial run with someone your own age just to be sure… your preconceived notions had been confirmed, and you vowed to never settle for a guy who couldn’t handle all you are and all that you want to become.
Your eyes shift to those lips of his, always so soft and so expressive, watching him talk was mesmerizing. The shape of his face and his bone structure made it almost obscene to watch him talk. His voice and that rasp of Texan woven so deeply into his diction, you could listen to him talk for hours.
But then that tongue of his peeks out as you’re observing him so intently, your mind flashes to merely half an hour ago when he was buried between your thighs with that skillful mouth of his. Your grip on his hair as he devours you is one of your favorite sights to see. Those brown curls with the occasional streak of grey, especially when they were slightly tousled from your wandering hands, you were obsessed.
You could look at him forever, and this particular moment you’ve taken to appreciate him was rudely interrupted by his big, calloused palms directing your attention back to those big brown eyes of his… but they had changed from moments prior. The pupils were blown wide, they were intense, darkened by your obvious ogling of the man you can’t seem to get enough of. The man you could now confidently call yours.
“Y’alright, hun?” His eyes frenziedly search yours and you nod sheepishly, still too enraptured by the pools of melted chocolate staring so intently into your soul. No doubt reading you from the inside out and outside in, he had a special knack for that.
“Tommy’s definitely your brother,” you say, finding the words to translate every dirty thought floating through your head, “but I think the arrangement of genes aligned perfectly when your parents made you.”
“That so?”
You hum, tilting your head in his palm and unconsciously giving him those doe eyes he can’t seem to resist.
“Damn, darlin’, two cums ain’t enough to sate ya?”
You shake your head as much as you can manage between his palms, “been achin’ for you to fuck me.” It’s quiet and almost breathless as his gaze bores into you, but it’s enough to have any of his remaining restraint fade into the abyss.
A guttural groan emits from somewhere deep in his lungs as the words sink into his flesh, immediately feeling the tension build tenfold since he finally has you alone and in his house.
“Y’know…” his gaze shifts towards the couch in the living room behind him, “been daydreamin’ of the way you’d look ridin’ me.”
Your eyes widen in excitement and he dips his head to finally press his lips to yours. Those endlessly soft, passionate lips of his, quickly parting to lick his tongue into your mouth which you happily comply with.
The groan that he lets out lights that fire within you once again. The fire of incessant need and hunger that has you pushing him backwards towards his living room.
He leads you to the couch and pulls you down onto him so you’re straddling his thighs.
Your “more comfortable” outfit happened to be a damned dress, and it became very clear with the way your slick was dripping down your thighs and onto the fabric covering his thighs, that you’d decided against putting any form of panties back on, “Should’ve fuckin’ guessed you’d opt for no panties after your little show earlier, gonna tell me what’s in that pretty little head a’yours?”
His grip on your hips is already so tight you swear it might bruise your sensitive skin, “Need y’to use your words, sweetheart…”
God, the juxtaposition of your sweet Joel to your filthy, feral Joel always keeps your head spinning and your pussy fucking pulsating and dripping in anticipation of being stretched by his thick cock. He always makes you cum harder than you could ever have imagined possible prior to meeting him. But that was merely a bonus. Having such a beautiful, kind, and caring man so damn needy for you was the greatest feeling of all.
The idea of him being so worked up for you has you grinding down against the fabric of his jeans, “need you… need to feel you, please,” the whimpers of need flooding out of you without any attempt at filtering them has his grip tightening and he guides your hips harshly against his, he’s more than happy to comply with your request.
Even though your mind is practically blank and every possible thought is replaced with the sensations of the man beneath you, you know the sight awaiting you beneath the denim is going to be filthy. That thick mushroom head so swollen and probably already leaking that precum you’ve been dying to get a taste of, waiting ever so impatiently to get the attention it deserves.
He’s been holding in his need for you for what seems like an eternity now, how many times has he found himself with an unfortunate tent in his pants throughout his time without you just at the damn thought of having you in his arms again?
And now, Joel is finally able to have you to himself, to claim you for the first time as solely his own. At least, officially. Even if both of you had already known there was never a moment since you’d met you hadn’t belonged to each other. But now, it was confirmed without doubt that you were his. Only his, and fuck if he wasn’t going to remind you of that fact every damn chance he gets.
With you grinding so prettily on him, he has to squeeze his eyes shut to think of anything that will keep him from cumming in his damn pants before he’s even gotten to feel your molten warmth squeezing his cock, “fuckin’ cravin’ you wrapped ‘round me, baby, don’t even bother fuckin’ my own fist anymore, ‘cause I knew there’s no comparison to you and the way your tight pussy squeezes my cock. Ain’t nothin’ like it… swear to fuckin’ god baby..” he really can’t help the lewdness spilling from his mouth between kisses and your borderline pornographic moans against him.
It’s got you practically whining and undulating in his lap for more, and suddenly he’s cursing the very invention he never goes a day without, “help me get these damned things off.” One hand releases its grip on your hip as he goes to unbuckle his belt, but your tiny, very capable hands quickly aid him in the task. With a quick lift of his hips he shoves the pants and his boxers to about mid-thigh and that seems good enough for now. He pushes his shirt up so it’s out of the way.
His thick and painfully erect cock bobs against his stomach. The tip is swollen and angry, the shaft twitches as his blood pulses through it. Precum is leaking from the tip in copious amounts, practically crying for relief. His balls look so heavy and full… you want him to empty himself completely inside of you.
“Wow” slips past your lips, your fingers deftly tracing the bulging vein that perfectly runs down the length of it.
His cock jumps, and his head rests back against the couch for a brief moment, his mouth hangs slightly open and you watch his adam’s apple bob as you wrap your hand around it as much as you can. Fuck… how the hell does he make this thing fit in you?
“So big…” you’re just thinking out loud, but Joel’s blown out pupils meet yours again and that dark chuckle of his means he’ll make the damn thing fit.
“I know… I know… y’know I’ll be real gentle,” his hands which had been practically glued to your hips now smooth up your bare thighs, pushing your dress up so he can finally get a view of you on his lap.
“Y’think y’wet enough to sit on it?” He swipes his thumb over your clit and slit, testing for himself. You practically jump at the contact, so overwhelmed by the anticipation that his touch could make you fall apart in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
“Oh, fuck…” he’s enraptured at the sight, slowly sinking a thick finger into your aching cunt. He adds a second and guides your hips over them, you had never experienced anything like this. “Ride my fingers, baby, show me how y’gonna ride my cock.”
You rock your hips back and forth, completely unaware of the sounds spilling from you at the sensation of his fingers massaging that spot inside of you that’s making your vision blurry. Your grip tightens on his biceps to stabilize yourself, leaving crescent shaped marks on his skin. The groans from beneath you spur you on.
The roll of your hips and the twitch of his cock in anticipation has him entirely enraptured. “That’s it… make y’self cum on my fingers and then I’ll let you sit on my cock… can y’do that?”
You nod eagerly, your hands sliding up his arms and to his neck, tilting his face towards yours so you could lose yourself into the chasm of his need for you, “So beautiful, baby, doin’ so good for me.”
He was so good at talking to you, it was incredible how effective his words are at making you fall apart.
“Joel…” you mewl, that crest of euphoria quickly approaching as his expert fingers work you closer and closer..
“You say my name so sweet, say it again while y’cum for me, c’mon…” he can feel your impending orgasm as you squeeze his fingers so fucking tight that his head spins in anticipation.
Joel feels it the moment your body tightens around his fingers, the change in your breathing, the way your hips start chasing the movement instead of following it.
“Right there, right there, please… Joel…”
He loves when you beg, when you’re so fucked out that the chase of your orgasm is the only care in the world.
It’s what you deserve, to let everything else go for as long as he can prolong it. He craves that look in your eyes and the complete loss of any inhibition. Your passion and your hunger are things he always wants to inspire.
Suddenly you’re pulsating around him, your release gushing around his fingers, it’s intense and makes his dick throb with its current state of neglect.
Your forehead drops to his shoulder for a second, breath warm against his neck, you murmur quiet whimpers into his skin and something in him softens even while the rest of him is wound tight as a goddamn wire.
“Easy,” he murmurs, voice low and steady in that way that somehow grounds you even while he’s the one undoing you. His free hand slides up your back, fingers spreading wide between your shoulder blades, holding you there for a moment as he works you down from your high.
Your hair falls forward over his arm and he brushes it back absentmindedly, tucking it behind your ear before his hand settles against your cheek.
“You’re alright,” his thumb grazes beneath your eye as if he’s checking you’re still with him.
You lean into the touch without thinking, your breathing uneven, body still rolling against the slow rhythm he’s keeping.
He loves this part too, the moments between the heat. The way you soften when he touches you like this.
“Look at me a sec,” he murmurs.
You comply, your pupils blown wide, cheeks flushed, lips parted as you try to catch your breath.
Joel huffs out a quiet laugh under his breath, “Yeah… ‘bout what I expected. You’re gorgeous like this, darlin’.”
“Need you… please, Joel, let me ride you.”
He hums at that, so amused at your begging and so surprised that he’s been able to refrain from impaling you onto him.
“Well, since y’askin’ so nicely, who am I to keep my good girl from gettin’ what she wants, hmm?” With a few last strokes of his fingers inside your velvety walls he slips them out, immediately bringing them to his lips to suck clean.
You watch the lewd show with apt attention, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth as his tongue works around his own fingers to savor every ounce of your essence.
He fucking loves the way you’re looking at him, those doey, fucked-out eyes have him lifting your hips over his unbearably swollen tip, “Sit on it, baby.”
As the tip nudges between your slick folds, he hisses at the contact, one hand holding the base as he guides your hips up and down along the length of him, your slick dripping along his shaft.
“Shit,” as soon as he nudges his tip against the tight hole, you whimper and it causes him to buck his hips involuntarily. Your greedy little cunt sucks him in and he knows in an instant that he’s in trouble.
“Oh fuck,” escapes from your lips as you ease yourself onto his length.
“Yeah, that’s it…” his low groans pour out of his throat at the feeling of finally having you wrapped around him again. He knows this isn’t going to last long, not with the built up anticipation and the sight of you sitting so prettily on his lap.
His beautiful girl, so eager to please and so eager to be pleased. As a giver, he’d drown between your legs if given the chance. But as a man, he wants to see you work for it, too. And he wants to fill you up with his cum every chance he fuckin’ gets.
Maybe see the way you look kneeling between his legs just so he can recall that image on nights he doesn’t get to spend with you.
He’s failed tremendously at trying to distract his brain from the very pertinent feeling of your walls pulsing around him.
He’s kept his grip on your hips, holding the skirt of your dress up so he can watch the way his cock disappears into your tight cunt, then reappears as he fucks into your abdomen. It’s a wild sight to see, the bulge of his cock inside of you is something he’s never even known was possible but he’s obsessed, the sight never leaves his mind.
“Look at that…” he says in awe, pressing his free palm against the sight, he can feel it, the head of his cock making its way deeper and deeper inside of your vaginal canal. “My good girl, mine. Fuck.”
Your fingers entangle in his hair, pulling just enough for his face to tilt upwards as his hips finally meet yours, the coarse hair at the base of his cock rubbing deliciously against your clit as you rock back and forth on him.
You crash your lips against his, slowly lifting yourself up and lowering back down over his shaft, so slick from how worked up he’d gotten you.
Your moans and the rhythm of your hips and tongue against his are like lyrical fucking ballads in his head.
He’d never been much of a poetry guy, but since you entered his life he’d finally begun to understand the appeal. Especially when you share your favorites with him, he studied the meanings like he was a poetry fanatic.
And especially if he had this comparison he could really appreciate the significance. The quite literal masterpiece of you fucking yourself on his cock.
“Ain’t gonna…” he groans against your mouth, your little bunny hops causing your tits to bounce against his chest makes him lose his damn mind even more, “ain’t gonna last much longer, baby, doin’ so good f’me…”
He releases his grip on your hips in favor of grabbing your ass and pulling you all the way down onto him, practically impaling you even if you had already worked yourself open for him, you’d been favoring the top half of his cock. Not that he minded, he wants you to take control of your pleasure and it feels mag-fuckin-ificent but he wants to be all the way inside of you when he finally reaches that peak.
You wail in a mixture of pleasure and pain as he fucks up into you harshly, his grip on your ass guiding the tip of his cock forcefully against your cervix. It’s a pinch and an aching pain, but it’s a thrill more than anything. Your whimpers pour into his mouth and he drinks them in, quiet chants of his name that have never sounded sweeter than when on your lips.
Once again your walls begin to milk him even more, he finds that little bundle of nerves and rubs little circles again in a desperate and greedy attempt to have your orgasm trigger his own. To absorb your euphoria into one cataclysmic explosion of connection and passion as he finally claims you as his. His. His. His. Your clit is so swollen and puffy, he can tell how sensitive it is by the way you initially jerk away from the touch, but give in quickly as the wave of pleasure starts to peak once again.
That sensation is something he’ll never tire of, the pulse of your walls, the tight grip on his hair pulling his lips to yours, the moans and cries of overstimulation and then… the wave of your release dripping down his balls as you squeeze the ever-living shit out of him, “Oh… there it is, fuuuuuuuck,” and he’s gone right with you, burying his face into the crook of your neck.
His cock pulses inside of you, stream after stream of spend coating your walls as he fucks it as far into you as he can.
Your whimpers of overstimulation melt into him and he swallows harshly, leaning his head back against the couch with his eyes shut tight and chest heaving.
“Fuck,” he breaths once more, feeling the after effects of relief and overstimulation all at once, “y’still with me, darlin’?”
All you can offer for the moment is a nod of your head against his shoulder.
His hands trail up and down your back, soothing you both as the waves recede again.
What had been firm and guiding turns into something softer. Palms warm and steady as they trace up your spine, then back down again, like he’s trying to map you out in a different way now. Memorize you without all the urgency.
You let out a slow, shaky breath against his neck, then huff a quiet laugh.
“Y’know… for a man who said he’d try to keep his hands off of me so he could show me around, I’m really enjoying the tour of your living room thus far…”
Joel lets out a low, tired chuckle, the sound vibrating against your collarbone.
“Mm,” he hums, not even opening his eyes yet. “Had somethin’ real nice to look at. Got a little distracted.”
Your hand slides from his hair to his jaw, thumb brushing along the scruff there as you tilt your head back just enough to look at him.
“You’re unbelievable,” you say, but there’s no bite to it. Just warmth and a little awe woven in.
His eyes finally crack open, heavy-lidded, still a little dazed.
“Yeah?” he murmurs sleepily.
“Yeah,” you breathe, smiling faintly. “You turn into this…” you gesture vaguely between your bodies, “…absolute menace… and then five seconds later you’re all soft and sweet like your cum’s not leaking out of me around you.”
He exhales a quiet, breathy laugh at that, like he’s still somewhere between here and a few seconds ago.
“Jesus…” he mutters, one hand sliding up to cup the side of your face, thumb dragging slow across your cheek like he needs to remind himself you’re real. “You don’t make it easy on me, do ya?”
You grin, entirely unrepentant, “Not really my goal.”
That earns you a soft huff again, his eyes finally opening properly to look at you. There’s something steadier settling in there now beneath the haze.
Something that looks a lot like decision.
Joel studies your face for a second longer than necessary, like he’s taking stock of you… of this, of what you just shared… and then his mouth curves.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I think I like you like this.”
You raise a brow. “Like what?”
“Lookin’ at me like that,” he murmurs, thumb brushing your cheek again. “Like I’m the only thing on your mind.”
You hum, leaning into his hand. “You are. That’s kind of the problem.”
That gets a real smile out of him, dimples and all.
“Problem?” he repeats, amused.
“Mhmm,” you say, tracing your fingers down the center of his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat finally settling. “You’ve completely ruined my ability to focus on anything else. I’ve got things to do, Joel.”
“Do ya now?” he murmurs.
“Supposedly.”
His hand slides from your cheek to your waist, thumb hooking just slightly like he’s debating pulling you closer again.
“You don’t look too concerned about it,” he says.
You tilt your head, smiling lazily. “I’m prioritizing.”
“Yeah?” he huffs, leaning in just enough that his lips brush yours without fully committing. “And what exactly am I?”
You don’t hesitate. “Top of the list.”
That lands right in his chest, you can see it in the way his expression softens before he covers it with a smirk.
“Dangerous answer,” he murmurs.
“Why’s that?”
“Means I’m gonna start wantin’ that kind of attention all the time.”
You grin, as if that’s not already your reality. Every time he’s near you he’s got all of your attention. He’s a priority, and it feels dangerously easy to let it stay that way.
Joel watches that look settle over your face, something soft but certain, and it does something to him. You can see it, feel it, in the way his hand tightens just slightly at your waist.
“C’mon,” he urges after a moment, voice quieter now. “Before I forget I had plans that didn’t involve keepin’ you right here all night.”
You laugh under your breath as he helps you up, easing you off of his softened length with a quiet hiss, slower this time, careful with you in a way that contrasts everything that came before. There’s no rush now, just his hand steady at your back, his thumb brushing absent little arcs like he can’t quite stop touching you.
He pulls his jeans back up, adjusting himself before he buttons and rezips them. He gives you a once over and smooths his hands down the fabric of your dress, nodding to himself when he’s satisfied that he’s somehow righted the erotic sight he’d just witnessed with you in that dress.
He leads you through his house, giving you a brief tour before returning to the foyer and grabbing the carton of cigarettes Tommy had given him. Then, he leads you to the back door and opens it for you, ushering you through it with a gentle hand to your lower back.
The night air hits you soft and cool, a stark contrast to the warmth still clinging to your skin. His porch is simple. Worn wood, a couple of chairs, a railing that’s seen better days but is still well-maintained… it just feels like him. Solid and lived in. The backyard is beautiful, well-manicured grass with enough foliage variation that it feels more natural than those seeded lawns that offer no biodiversity. Huge oaks line the back of his yard and a singular magnolia sits proud in the corner. Next to the deck is a pair of Japanese Maples that arch over the walkway into the garden.
It’s a complex yard for who you always assumed was a busy man, but you see that it’s a little overgrown, perhaps due to recent neglect.
“This is a beautiful yard, looks like it’s taken a lot of time to curate.”
Joel steps out behind you, holding the carton open and pulling out a cigarette, “used to be all I did on weekends, spent hours and hours out here. May not live on the ranch anymore but can’t take the ranch out of the man. Don’t do well cooped up inside.”
You don’t say anything at first, just watch as he turns the cigarette between his fingers, almost hesitant, which doesn’t feel like him at all.
“Thought you said you were tryin’ to cut back?” you tease, hoping to seem not too eager for the show you’ve been hoping he’d put on for you. The active suppression of the cigarette smell had made the idea of him actually smoking one seem like a myth in your head. Something so elusive that you couldn’t help but crave it.
“I did say that..” he trails off, looking over his yard thoughtfully. “Just need one, haven’t had one all day.” He glances at you. “Been tryin’ not to smell like it around you.”
“You know… you don’t have to do that,” you murmur, stepping up to the railing and leaning against it.
His jaw shifts, then shrugs, “I want to.” He flicks the lighter, flame catching, the tip glowing faintly in the dim light. He takes a slow drag, shoulders easing just a fraction as he exhales.
And yeah, there it is. You weren’t wrong in all the imaginings you’d have of him smoking in your mind. It’s… unfair, honestly.
The way he leans against the railing, head tipped slightly back, smoke curling past his lips like it belongs there. The quiet, the restraint, the way his eyes find you again through it all.
You step closer without thinking, “gimme one.”
He blinks at you, “What?”
You tilt your head, a grin spreading on your lips. “One puff. Relax.”
Joel straightens immediately, brows pulling together, “No.”
You laugh, shaking your head. “Oh, c’mon.”
“Ain’t funny,” he says, but there’s no real bite to it, just concern, immediate and unfiltered. “You don’t need to start that.”
“I’m not starting anything,” you counter, reaching for his wrist. “I’ve done it plenty of times before.”
His eyes narrow just slightly, “When?”
You shrug, “I’m in college, Joel. Drunk friends, bad decisions, you know.”
He studies you like he’s trying to decide whether to be annoyed or concerned at that. “Jesus,” he mutters under his breath.
You nudge his arm, “Joel.”
He exhales, then shakes his head like he’s already losing the argument.
“One puff,” he says finally, holding it out but not letting go yet. “And that’s it.”
“Deal.”
He hesitates another second, then releases it.
You bring it to your lips, take a small, practiced inhale, then pass it back without any theatrics.
Joel watches the whole thing too closely.
“See?” you say, handing it back.
He takes it, but his expression hasn’t softened, “Don’t like that you know how,” he mutters, “ain’t an easy habit to break if you let it become one.”
You lean against him, shoulder brushing his arm. “Don’t have to worry so much about me, Joel. Don’t plan on picking up any bad habits but you.”
He hums in response to that, “Y’think I’m a bad habit?” His brows furrow together again as he takes another drag of the cigarette, his eyes never leaving yours.
The ember flares brighter at the end of it, a brief, glowing pulse in the dark, and you can’t help the way your gaze follows it… up the line of his fingers, the roughness of his knuckles, the flex in his hand as he brings it away from his mouth. The way his veins of his forearms bulge deliciously up to his elbow. Then the tightness of his sleeves around his biceps now displaying little red crescents from where you’d nearly drawn blood.
You shrug as your eyes are drawn back up his firm chest and broad shoulders, “Mm… addictive. Bad in the way that it’s all I think about. But not something I intend on breaking.”
That earns you a look. His posture straightens, shoulders rolling back like he’s grounding himself again.
You take him in, really take him in now that there’s a little space between you.
The way the porch light catches along the sharp line of his jaw. The way his hair’s still mussed from your hands, falling just enough out of place to make him look… undone in a way that doesn’t quite match how composed he’s trying to be now.
His shirt sits open at the collar, showing the rise and fall of his chest beneath the swath of soft hair there, still not fully settled, and you can see where your fingers had dragged earlier, faint impressions that make your stomach tighten all over again.
And then there’s the cigarette. God. It shouldn’t do anything for you. So bad of a habit to have yet so hot when he’s the one doing anything.
The way he holds it, absent and practiced, like it’s just something to do with his hands, even though you know better now. The way his lips press around it, the slight hollow of his cheeks when he inhales, the quiet exhale through his nose like he’s thinking too much and trying not to show it.
It’s truly unfair.
You shift closer again without realizing, drawn in by something you can’t quite name.
Joel notices immediately, just as he always does.
“Don’t,” he says softly, but there’s no real warning in it, just a quiet kind of restraint.
“Don’t what?” you ask, tilting your head once again.
His gaze drops briefly to your mouth, then back up to your eyes.
“Look at me like that while I’m tryin’ to behave,” he answers.
You smile that mischievous smile of yours, “You were the one worried about bad habits.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head as he taps the cigarette lightly against the railing.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “And I think I found a new one.”
Your hand finds his free one again, palm sliding into his palm, your fingers entwining with his.
“Wonder how hard I’d be to quit,” you wonder if it comes off self-righteous, but you just like working him up.
He glances down at your joined hands, then back at you, something soft cutting through the edge of him.
“Ain’t even gonna try,” he admits. Joel takes one last drag, slower this time, then stubs out the cigarette in the ash tray on the railing.
There’s something so absolute in how you both stand there, no rush or hesitation, just the quiet weight of it settling in.
It doesn’t feel new and that’s always what catches you off guard.
It feels… certain. Like something that had been circling the edges of both your lives finally stepped into the center and decided to stay.
He turns toward you fully, attention narrowing in that way you’re starting to recognize, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
“Reckon’ we gotta actually talk about what this means,” his gaze is intense as it always is, “Us bein’ exclusive.”
Your breath catches, not because of the words themselves, but because of how steady he is when he says them. He never fails to take your breath away.
He continues, eyes fixed on yours, “Bein’ with you is the only thing that’s ever really made sense to me. Not gonna pretend otherwise.” A small pause as his thumb brushes over your knuckles. “Just want you feelin’ secure in it. And heard, always.”
You soften without even meaning to, your grip on his hand tightening just slightly as you look up at him, “Yeah… I feel that way too. I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything.” And for someone who has always known exactly what she wanted, who chased things down with both hands and didn’t hesitate when something mattered, there’s a weight to that admission that doesn’t go unnoticed.
It settles into him in a way you can actually see.
The tension that had been riding under his skin all evening eases a fraction, his shoulders dropping just enough, his gaze softening without ever losing that fixed, unwavering focus on you, “good.”
His eyes flick down to where your hand rests against his chest, like he’s grounding himself in the contact, then back up to you, something deeper and steadier sitting there now. Whatever this is, whatever it’s becoming, he’s already made peace with the fact that it matters more than he’d ever expected anything to matter, “Just wanna do right by you. Be good to you.”
There’s no performance in it, just truth laid out plainly in that quiet, gravel-soft way of his.
You smile, “you are.”
Your thumb drifts against the fabric of his shirt, tracing slow, absent lines. Your body doesn’t quite know how to stop reaching for him now that it’s allowed to. “I want to be good to you too… not just take from this.”
His hand comes up, covering yours where it rests against him, holding it there, “You are, darlin’. Better than I deserve.”
You shake your head, stepping closer without thinking, your hand sliding from his chest to his jaw, your thumb brushing just beneath his ear, lingering there. “you deserve the world, Joel.”
His hand tightens over yours, like he’s refusing to give himself that, but he likes hearing it from you. He likes that you believe that for him, and maybe that’s enough. He’s not the best man, but you make him want to be.
He leans into your touch in that quiet, unconscious way that gives him away, and you follow it instinctively, closing the last bit of space between you until your forehead meets his, your breath mingling, your noses brushing.
There’s no urgency left. No sharp edge of want pressing forward, at least not right now. It’s driven by something deeper, something that settles instead of ignites.
When your lips meet his, it’s slow and unhurried, deliberate, this moment clearly isn’t something to rush through. His hand at your waist anchors himself to you just as much as he’s holding you.
There’s something about it that feels deeper than anything you’ve shared so far. But it’s not louder, or necessarily more intense, just more certain. Something has quietly rooted itself between you without either of you needing to name it.
Devotion.
The kind that lingers and settles. That chooses, again and again, without needing to be asked.
You feel it in the way he holds you like letting go isn’t even a consideration. He feels it in the way you stay, the way you linger without thinking, the way leaving him has already begun to feel like something you have to pull yourself away from. In the quiet recognition that every moment with him carries two truths at once: something new unfolding and something steady already built beneath it.
It’s a strange kind of peace.
Because devotion, you realize, isn’t found in the loud moments. Isn’t found in the urgency, the ache, the wanting. Those things are merely the result and culmination of it. It isn’t in the way two people collide, but in the way they remain. In the way they return. In the way they choose, again and again, even in the quiet, even when nothing is pulling them together but their own certainty.
It lives in this. In the stillness after everything has been said and done, where nothing needs to be proven and nothing needs to be asked.
Where the future isn’t something you’re trying to figure out, but something that feels… somehow and impossibly… already aligned.
And as you stand there, wrapped up in him and this quiet, undeniable knowing, it becomes clear that devotion isn’t something you just fall into.
It’s something you recognize.
Something you choose and something you keep choosing… until it becomes indistinguishable from who you are.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed!): @white-wolf-buckaroo @streamermattsgf @somedayheaven @simpingforjoel
Yes… another one…. yes, it’s going to be angst. No, I’m NOT okay ☺️
Story synopsis:
You told him you were just visiting for the summer. Gave him a name that wasn’t yours. From the moment he saw you across the bar, he knew you were trouble—sunlight and sharp edges, all heat and laughter and something he shouldn’t want, everything he’d been devoid of for so long. What began as a fleeting summer fling burned into something neither of you could name. You left without saying goodbye, it seemed easier that way. But now you’re in his classroom. And he’s your professor. You told yourselves to pretend it never happened. To forget. But how could you forget the way the world only made sense when you were together—and how nothing had made sense since?
Story warnings: 18+ MDI !!! Joel Miller x f!reader
No outbreak!au
professor!joel x student!reader, age gap (she’s in her early 20s, he’s in his late 40s), no use of y/n, excessive use of pet names and nicknames, reader only has a nickname from separate characters, OC!reader, mean!joel eventually, hot girl!reader (no physical descriptions really), bisexual!reader. Slow burn. hurt/comfort, forbidden romance, yearning/longing/pining, emotional repression, guilt, secret relationship, trust issues, half-truths, consequences of lying, allusions to family trauma, allusions to religious trauma, academic pressure, lack of communication, eventual violence and allusions to violence, allusions to grief, self-destructive behavior, attachment issues, shared denial, etc. etc. ANGST.
Chapters will come with their own warnings. Not all will have sexual content, but will allude to it.
smut!, unprotected p in v, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving, some m receiving), power imbalance, praise kink, size difference, hands!, eventual jealousy, heavy on the flashbacks, marking/possessiveness, grinding/dry humping, fake name during hookup(s), creampies (don’t be stupid), dirty talk, hair pulling, rough sex, getting attached, touch-starved, needy!joel, needy!reader. OKAY OKAY you get the gist.
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Chapter 1: The Echo of Familiarity
WC 3.4k - Returning to your hometown for a fresh start, you are determined to rebuild your life on your own terms. With a new major, new apartment, and new friends, everything feels just unfamiliar enough to be hopeful. You’re focused, self-contained, and intent on staying out of trouble. But the past isn’t always behind you. You had ended things so you could focus on school with no distractions, but you couldn’t get him off of your mind. Turns out, the universe has a cruel twist of fate waiting for you in Carson Hall room 202— PHIL 205.
Chapter 2: The Summer Fling
WC 14.8k (hey! shut up 😭) - you weren’t looking for anything that night… just a drink, a distraction, something that wouldn’t follow you home or remind you of why you’d left this town to begin with. But then there was him. A stranger with a crooked smile and a voice like velvet and smoke. A couple drinks led to his truck, his bed, and a night that felt like it belonged to a different version of you. Neither of you really asked any questions, and you sure as hell didn’t ask for more. But when morning came and numbers were exchanged, neither one said what you were thinking—I hope I see you again.
Chapter 3: It Was Never Meant to Matter
WC 4k - your real name felt strange on his tongue, out of place. simple lies and half-truths that were never meant to cause any harm crash together in a crescendo of devastation as you come face to face with their consequences. the past stretches its fingers into the present, wrapping around your throat like thorns. you had only wanted a clean break, but there’s nothing clean about this. only heart ache.
Chapter 4: Come Over
WC 8.7k - you both thought it’d be a one-time thing. but a text sent, an invitation, leads you right back to him. what starts as heat becomes something quieter, gentler, harder to walk away from. you tell yourselves it’s just casual, and you wonder how long you’ll be able to cling to those lies just for another night with him.
Chapter 5: Act 1
WC 5k - the silence after heartbreak is never really quiet. you act like everything’s fine, well, try to. but the past keeps following you across campus. a name, a look, the echo of a memory that still lives in your bones. he pretends you’re just another student. you pretend he doesn’t make you ache. and when you’re pulled back into his orbit— you have to keep yourself from falling apart over and over again.
Chapter 6: Movie Night
WC 6.7k - you keep telling yourselves it’s temporary, like that’ll make it hurt less. like naming it would make it real. but neither of you pulls back, not when the warmth is this easy, this addictive. not when something honest keeps blooming in the silence between words.
Chapter 7: What Once Was
WC 4.7k - glances linger, words go unsaid, and memories rise in the spaces where closeness used to live. you try to move forward, to remind yourself it’s your fault and you have to deal with the pain you caused, but part of you is still yearning for what once was.
Chapter 8: In This Shirt
WC 18.7k (don’t look at me!) - it’s easy to forget the days ahead, but something in the air feels different now. the weekend hums with quiet peace, stolen mornings, bare skin, and the kind of closeness that slips in without asking. somewhere beneath the warmth, something begins to shift. and a decision is made.
Chapter 9: Linger
WC 4.6k - life carries on, and so must you. but did it have to be so soon, and right where he could see it? did he ever mean to you what you still mean to him… or was he always just that easy to forget?
Chapter 10: The World We Knew (Over and Over)
WC 5.6k - you leave without saying goodbye. you tell yourself it’s better this way— that silence is softer than an ending, but all that’s left is the guilt you won’t face and the anxiety Joel can’t quiet.
Chapter 11: Twisted Fate
WC 7.6k - your friends discover the past you’d spent so long trying to run from, though you knew you couldn’t hide from it forever // you’re burning out and your friend has a suggestion that might ease the tension of your schedule, however, fate has a little twist in store for you // Joel finds your note.
Chapter 12: The TA
WC 6k - the lines between past and present blur as closeness turns into caution. what was once soft becomes sharp, and every shared space feels tighter, more fragile. what neither of you will say still hangs heavy in the air, and Joel can’t stop reaching for what he knows he has to let go.
Chapter 13: Professional Conduct
WC 6.5k - with your friend out sick, the classroom feels smaller… and quieter. between clipped exchanges and close proximity, you test the edges of something that feels almost like new ground.
Chapter 14: End of the Semester
WC 6.6k - As the semester wraps up, you must confront your inability to move on and the incessant reminders of how fucked you are, don’t worry… it’s mutual.
Chapter 15: A Better Man
WC 7.1k - A run-in during winter break leads a tense interaction of people who only know of the summer versions of you and Joel // the Spring semester starts.
More to come!
This is a work in progress, chapters are subject to further changes and proofreading pending rational judgement after dealing with ferality.
SLOOOOOOWWWW BURNNNN !!
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Some of these titles are directly from some of my favorite songs!
What Once Was - Hers
In This Shirt - The Irrepressibles
Linger - The Cranberries
The World We Knew (Over and Over) - Frank Sinatra
(A) Better Man - Paolo Nutini
Chapters aren’t based on the titles but their correlation after I wrote them fits in a way that tickles my fancy.
I was recently thinking about how there really aren’t enough professor!Joel fics to quench my thirst. Because truly… professor Joel? A man who teaches and guides for a living? How many more boxes on my kink bingo card are we trying to tick here?
But what makes this series stand out isn’t just the trope. It’s the writing. It’s thoughtful, immersive, and emotionally precise in a way that sneaks up on you. It doesn’t just tell a story, it makes you feel it. You ache. You long. You sit with the weight of every moment.
My only regret is that I didn’t discover your work sooner.
@forthelorewick, you have such a gift. And don’t get me started with the “Another One Couldn’t Hurt…Right?” series because it lives rent-free in my mind for all the best reasons.
Thank you for sharing your talent with us. Your work genuinely stays with the reader, and that’s something really special. 🫂👌
Genuinely cannot fathom people reading my work which is ironic since I’m posting on tumblr but seriously, this means so so much to me.
Professor!Joel is quite literally years of daydreaming that started from the moment I understood what attraction was. In addition to being infatuated with a teacher of mine throughout high school… who also happened to be a Joel aha… ahaha…😅
I had those same feelings as you expressed when I decided to write this trope. Now, I’d never been that much of a fanfic reader, but whenever I tried to satiate that fixation of mine I was always disappointed because I am just not someone who can get past a completely unethical relationship stemming between a student and a professor (despite how much I love the dynamics of authority figures and that power imbalance…). Sure, I do enjoy reading it every once in awhile, some filthy, taboo stuff is fun! but I always had that challenge in my mind for this premise in particular. Then, at the end of 2024, I got into writing fanfiction for Joel Miller, whom I’ve been hyperfixated on since tlou 1 came out in 2013… I had never written fanfiction either! Until I met a friend who wrote fanfiction and well, she encouraged me to write my own. Obviously my skills are still being honed especially with the prospect of sharing it, but I’m appreciative of this outlet. And, of course, professor!Joel had to finally be brought to life and I was the only one who could write it the way I always envisioned it.
I didn’t want it to be forbidden attraction to student x professor, it had to be so much more and so much more painful to maintain an inherently angsty premise that I could extend across many, many chapters 😈 and so… All the Wrong Ways to Know You was born.
I used to have much more time to write and publish chapters, but it makes it that much more intentional now. I also don’t stress myself out over any timeline, but I wish I had more time and brain power to push chapters out more quickly.
Thank you so much for reading this story, I cannot express how much it means to me that there are actual people who read my work, and not only read it but enjoy it! I never posted on tumblr expecting any of that, I just do it because I love having it actually organized instead of just living in my Google Docs forever. Any attention feels like a bonus and will always be so surreal to me! I love love love writing these two and am so excited for all I have in store for them. And for my other fics too! I’m a chronic daydreamer so in one way or another they’re always in progress.
I will say, being back in college means I have additional sources for my research and I recognize some inconsistencies from my first few chapters since it was before I even knew I was going to be going back to school 😭 but it’s fine! And so we continue on our merry way… and enjoy my prof muse while he lets me schedule office hours.
Again, thanks for being here, your words encourage me to keep going and to get my ass moving with finalizing this next chapter, ha!
Wanted to add a dash of oversharing because why not (I apologize actually but I’m not going to change it).
How am I supposed to act normal after reading baby daddy Joel Miller? The smut is the best I’ve ever read holy shit I am legit stunned. Please tell me me you’re thinking about writing more for those two absolute sluts for one another?! 🤞🏻🫦
Omg thank you so much!! Hehehehe yeah idk man they’ve consumed my soul and I’m not really complaining about it but I am complaining about having to write actual college papers instead of my baby daddy Joel smut BUT !!! I have so many more parts planned and brainstorming all the time (daydreaming about baby daddy Joel) so don’t you worry, much much more to come! Idk any timeline as of right now, but the juices are flowing… or will be 🫣
Actually crazy how I never used to be a smut writer and it’s evolving slowly but surely. I at least hope it’s getting better and I really love knowing people are enjoying it.
Pt. 7: (Past) daddy Joel but not in that way… is so patient to take that next step in your relationship until you just can’t take it anymore.
pt 1. | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4 | pt.5 | pt.6 / pt. 8
series masterlist // main masterlist
NSFW! 18+ only! mdi please or I will tattle to your parents.
content/ warnings:
WC 7.4k - no outbreak!au, family!au, flashback chapter!, fluff, love at first sight, yearning/pining/longing, teasing, big fat crushes, age gap (reader is 19, Joel is early 30s), Joel is a respectful man!, soulmates basically; smut!, unprotected pinv (reader has an iud), size difference, so many pet names/nicknames, belly bulge, Joel’s a big man alright!, oral sex (f!receiving), fingering, creampie, praise kink, size kink, feral!joel, soft dom!Joel. No use of y/n.
a/n: I know I said “soon” but time is relative so shhhhhh, I tried to make it more complicated than I needed to, and now I have like 3 more parts mapped out. I am NOT a write multiple chapters in advance type of person and it just is what it is alright. Ooooon another note Arc Raiders is peak new game out right meowwww and I’m living life in Reed Richards’s Fortnite skin 🫦 (I play to annoy and make bits with friends and also I’m just sooo good at gaming thank you).
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Pt. 7 (continuation from pt.6)
The next date passes in a blur of laughter, stolen moments, and the kind of closeness that leaves your pulse climbing higher every time. Between the dates which was becoming another one of those habits you’ve created together, you maintain your morning coffee together. He walks you up the street now, though, bidding you farewell with a hug and gentle peck of a kiss goodbye. What a wonderful way to start the day.
The third Saturday night, he knocks on your door exactly on time, his beard freshly trimmed but still rugged, shirt tucked in but wrinkled at the collar like he’d fussed with it last minute. At some point you’d told him that sunflowers were your favorite, something about their defiant cheerfulness, how they always turned toward the light— he remembered.
He showed up with a bouquet in hand, three golden sunflowers and a single sprig of lavender tucked just to prove he listens.
Dinner was easy, time with him goes by too quickly. He had picked a quiet place and you found yourselves leaning toward each other across the table without realizing. He didn’t talk as much as you, but when he did, it was slow and careful. Every word he chose was hand-carved for you.
He walked you to your door that night, hands in his pockets, standing close enough that your shoulders brushed, but to your disappointment, he made no attempt to initiate anything.
Then the next date, you dressed up more than you meant to. Joel’s eyes lingered for a second too long when you opened the door. The flowers this time were smaller— just lavender, a bundle tied with twine after you’d mentioned the smell soothed you during stressful exam weeks.
It made something flutter in your chest.
Later, parked in the truck beneath a streetlamp that buzzed softly above, he made you laugh. some grumbled joke about Texas winters and cheap red wine. You were still giggling when you turned toward him, and the warmth in your chest twisted into something molten as his eyes dipped to your lips.
The kiss was sudden, like you’d both forgotten to wait. His hand was firm on your jaw, his lips softer than you expected, tongue cautious at first and then devastatingly sure. It sent a shiver down your spine.
But then you shifted, angling your body to get closer, and he stopped. Pulled back like he’d burned himself. His pupils were blown wide, his chest visibly rising and falling with restraint.
“Can’t,” he muttered hoarsely, dragging a hand through his hair. “Not yet.”
You didn’t push. But it hurt, the kind of ache that curled between your ribs and refused to let go. All you did was think about him, about what he’d feel like against you, how he’d touch you… you were needy for it. Every night you’d peel your clothes off and bury your fingers in the slick mess he’d made of you.
The next time, he brought takeout and danishes from the highest renowned pastry chef in Austin, then parked overlooking a quiet lake. He passed you fries one at a time and shared stories he’d never told anyone. You’d never seen him so open.
You fed him your last fry, and he licked the salt from your fingers.
The kiss afterward was inevitable, slow and bruising and messy with want. Your hands slipped beneath his coat, fingers curling in the front of his flannel. His own slid beneath your jacket, wrapping around your hips like he’d been starving for the feel of you. The taste of him is addictive… something woodsy, the faint taste of cigarettes you know he tries to mask, coffee, something faintly sweet… but his control still didn’t crack. When he groaned softly into your mouth and your thighs parted almost instinctively in the narrow space between the console and the seat, he cursed under his breath, “Shit, baby…”and pulled away again, forehead pressed to yours.
You could still feel the tension thrumming in him like a livewire. He held your face gently, kissed your cheek, then your forehead. Then he walked you to your door and just stared like he wanted to say everything and couldn’t risk even one word slipping out beyond, “Goodnight, darlin’.” You can feel the weight behind it. All that want, the care, the ache he’s trying so hard to keep contained.
By the fourth Saturday night date, it’s unbearable.
You stop at your doorstep again, hearts racing in sync, breath fogging in the cold air. He starts to speak, something about seeing you soon, but the words tangle when you catch his hand.
“Joel,” you say,the edge of your voice trembling with frustration and need. “Please. Come inside. Stay.”
He freezes, eyes closing briefly to steel himself against his carnal hunger for you, “Sweetheart…”
You take a half step closer so your body is pressed against his, tightening your grip around his hand. “Please,” you whisper again, quieter now.
His eyes open, dark and searching. You see the tick of his jaw and the conflict in his eyes. But the fire flaring beneath it all wins over his hesitant disposition.
You watch him battle himself, wanting so clearly to move and to reach for you, but not quite letting himself.
So you make the decision for him and most importantly, for yourself.
You let go of his hand only to curl your fingers into the front of his shirt, dragging him close enough that your breath catches when his lips brush yours.
He groans low in his throat, his fingers flex where they grip your hips.
“Don’t go,” you say again. “Please stay.”
Joel looks at you intensely now, his eyes frantically searching yours for any hint of uncertainty. His hand comes up slowly, brushing along the side of your face, thumb tracing the hinge of your jaw.
“Sweetheart, if I come in,” his words are barely audible, “I ain’t gonna be able to hold back much longer.”
You nod in finality, “Good.” You open the door to your apartment and drag him along with you.
He kisses you before the door is fully shut behind you, you can feel the tension radiating off of him as his mouth devours yours.
His hands grip your hips tightly as he pulls you against him. His need seeps into you, mixing in a frenzy of lust and threadbare self-control finally unraveling.
Your hands cup his face, holding him against you as you lick hungrily into his mouth. He greedily accepts the intrusion of your tongue, saliva and moans mixing as you pull him along with you towards your bedroom.
You can’t stand it anymore, you can feel the thick bulge beneath denim against your thigh, but he keeps trying to distance himself from you. As if to keep you from feeling just how needy he is for you or his attempt to still maintain his self-control.
Your fingers slide down to his chest, deft fingers starting to unbutton his shirt and his breath stutters against your lips.
His hands leave your hips for a moment, sliding behind you to unzip your dress. His hands slowly trail up your arms, then drags the sleeves off of your arms, pulling the dress down so it pools at your feet.
Joel takes a moment, separating his lips from yours, his eyes scanning your exposed flesh like a predator ready to subdue its prey, “Fuck, sweetheart…”
You push his shirt open to reveal his tanned chest. The sight of it has your mouth watering and you can’t help but press your hand to his warm skin. You can feel the racing of his heart and the rapid rise and fall of his chest as his breath comes in stutters.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he groans, his hands meeting the warm skin of your stomach and trailing upwards. He hesitantly cups your breasts in his large hands, his eyes searching yours for permission. You eagerly lean more into his touch, wordlessly answering.
Without another moment’s hesitation he kneads your lace-covered breasts with reverence, his eyes transfixed on the sight, “prettier than I even imagined them…”
“You imagine them a lot?” You tease, gently biting your lip as you watch his eyes unable to move from your cleavage.
“Fuck yeah, I did.” He can’t lie, not with how exposed his desires were becoming as you undress for him. “Can’t tell y’how much I’ve dreamt of makin’ you feel good, makin’ you mine.”
You have nothing to say to that, it’s like he’s reciting your exact thoughts.
You look down, your breasts fitting perfectly in his hands. You whine at the sight and feel of him finally touching you, but don’t even realize the noises you’re making until his lips clash against yours to swallow them whole.
He takes this moment to slip his hands around to your back, quickly undoing the clasp of your bra, exhaling like he’s just barely keeping his restraint intact. You untangle your hands from where they’d found purchase in the curls at the nape of his neck, allowing your bra to be discarded along with your dress.
You push his shirt off of his shoulders and you lean back for half a breath, just enough to look at him.
God, he’s big.
Not just tall, substantial. Broad chest rising and falling, tan skin with a faint sheen of sweat at the collarbone. His arms hang at his sides, corded with strength, chest dusted with coarse hair that narrows in a line beneath the waistband of his jeans, “you’re beautiful.” The words escape your mouth in a breath, but you can tell he hears you by the bashful chuckle he lets out.
You can smell him so vividly in your space, something earthy and warm like tobacco and sweat, and him. It’s dizzying. You feel lightheaded from the sheer mass of him.
His gaze roves your body slowly, reverently, like he’s not just looking at you but studying you, etching you into memory. “Nothin’ compared to you, darlin’…,” his voice is gravel-thick, the sound vibrating in his chest and curling low in your belly.
You move closer again, your hands skimming up his bare chest, feeling the heat of him.
He groans softly, a sound caught between need and disbelief. His hands cup your waist, his palms spanning the full width of your hips, fingertips grazing the small of your back.
He leans down then, brushing his nose along your jaw before his mouth finds your neck, his stubble rasping against your skin. You smell his shampoo, faint musk and citrus, and feel the way his breath hitches every time you press closer.
His jeans brush your bare thighs and you can feel the strain in them, can feel all the ways his body is trying not to pin you to the nearest surface.
“Tell me you want this,” he rasps, one hand rising to cradle the back of your neck. “Tell me you’re sure.”
You meet his eyes. “I’m sure, Joel. I need you.” There’s no hesitation in your words.
He holds still for just a moment longer, like the words knock something loose in him. Then his mouth is on yours again.
His other hand is spread wide along your ribs, his thumb skimming along the underside of your breast, feeling the weight of it, “your tits are perfect, darlin’. Perfect weight in my hands… gorgeous fuckin’ nipples… you’re a dream, baby,” and without another word he guides you back towards the bed. His hands fully cup your tits, kneading them and gently flicking his thumb over your hardened nipples as he pushes you back onto the mattress.
“Whoa there, hun…” he breathes against your lips as you fingers graze over the metal button of his jeans, “not yet…” but you can hear the desperation in his voice.
Regardless, he’s patient, clearly he has plans he wants to do before he gets to that. For a moment, he lets your fingers trace the ridges through the denim, he’s thick and huge… and it’s intimidating simply to the touch. He groans as you cup his hardened girth through the fabric, “Y’feel what you do to me, darlin’? But I gotta get you ready first okay?”
He can only imagine how tight your cunt is going to feel… everything about you being so small compared to him. But those thoughts need to be stifled for just a moment, he needs to taste you first. To work you open to the point you can take him, and he was willing to spend as much fucking time between your thighs as he could manage without losing his goddamn mind.
He takes your wrists in the grasp of one hand, and you nod in compliance, raising your arms above your head against the mattress. His grip is tight and there’s no point in fighting against it, not that you want to anyway.
He hovers over you now, his gaze drifting to where your legs spread wide around his broad body. All that’s left to cover you is your slick soaked panties, your hips undulating against his, or trying to. Your body seeking that friction without your brain catching up, you just realize you’re doing it when his other hand presses firmly against your lower belly, pinning you down to the bed, preventing you from moving at all.
“Patience, baby. Y’alright?”
You nod, licking your lips as your eyes trace down his face again, the tick in his jaw as he tilts his head and tsks his tongue, “Gonna need you to use your words, hun, that’s how this is gonna work, y’understand?”
You swallow hard, breath trembling, and nod again, but it’s not enough. Not for him. “Yes,” you whisper. “Need you.”
Joel’s gaze softens slightly at the edges, but the heat doesn’t fade. If anything, it deepens, “Good girl.”
Two words, and they burn.
His thumb brushes the inside of your wrist where your pulse flutters like a trapped thing, and he leans down, so close his breath fans over your mouth. “You’re so fuckin’ sweet,” he says, dipping down to press a kiss just below your jaw. “So warm. Softest thing I ever touched…”
His mouth trails down the slope of your neck, kissing across your collarbone, pausing to breathe in the scent of your skin like he can’t believe you’re real. Every inch he touches leaves your body arching up into him without permission.
You’re making it incredibly hard for him to be patient. The strain of his cock in his jeans is nearing painful, but he likes it. He likes how worked up you get him. Likes the way you fill his mind after a long day of work to the point he works his calloused hands over his leaking cock to the thought of you.
He can wait, he’s waited this long already, and the thought of making you come apart on his tongue has him throbbing even harder against the denim. He’s sure he’s leaked through the fabric by now, he’s never been so fucking wired in his life.
The stubble of his beard scrapes along your chest as he kisses lower, and the sound he makes when your hips buck reflexively against his stomach… the groan that emits from his chest, half-choked as it escapes, is the sound of a man just barely keeping it together.
His other hand still presses firm over your lower belly, pinning you there. Keeping you still. “Don’t rush me, baby,” he mutters against your skin. “You’ll get what you need.” His tongue finally flicks your hardened nipple, causing you to arch into him with a whine of relief as he sucks one into his mouth.
You can feel the vibration of his moan through your skin, seeping directly into your blood stream which has your blood pulsing downwards. The throb of your clit against the lace fabric of your panties has you squirming beneath his heavy hand.
“Perfect…” he switches to your other nipple, gently biting. A string of saliva connecting his mouth and your body, a perfect image of his ravenous hunger for you, “fucking body.” He finishes his thought, now his kissing trails downward, the muscles in your abdomen flexing in anticipation and he groans at the sensation beneath his lips.
“What a tiny little thing, y’are…” he croons, loosening his grip on your hands as he continues his descent.
“Joel… please…” you whine again, not caring how pathetic you sound. You just need him to finally touch you, to give you anything and as he inches closer to your clothed pussy, you get hopeful… and fucking antsy.
“You say my name so nice baby, say it again… and I’ll give ya what y’need,” his hand, now free from their grip around your wrists, follows the same trail his mouth had mapped moments before, squeezing and kneading at your breasts, pinching and rolling your nipples.
“Joel”, you sigh as he settles between your legs, everything stops for a heartbeat. The air stills, his breath stalls, and the world seems to narrow to the rhythm of two people whose tension had been brewing for months at this point… finally letting their need consume them and each other.
He drags his palms down the slope of your waist, the pads of his fingers catching along the curve of your hips. You feel the catch in his breath when your legs shift, when you tilt your pelvis toward him like your body’s moving on instinct. His fingers find the waistband of your panties, his eyes entranced, both hands engaged as he shifts lower.
His eyes never leave yours as he curls over you, his face lit by the low glow of the bedside lamp, shadows softening the lines of his jaw but not the heat in his expression. “You’re shakin’,” he whispers, a smirk creeping onto his lips as he trails his knuckles along the soft skin of your thighs, causing them to erupt in more goosebumps.
“I know,” you breathe. “Can’t help it.”
His mouth parts, like he wants to say something back, but instead, he presses a kiss to your inner thigh, soft and slow and achingly deliberate. His nose brushes your skin as he exhales, warm breath ghosting over you.
“You smell so good, darlin’, dyin’ to get a taste. S’that alright with you?” His now dark, blown out brown eyes meet yours over the expanse of your body, your chest rising and falling rapidly as the sight of this broad, huge man between your legs with his face inches from your pussy has your heart rate tripling.
“Yes, Joel… yes please,” and you don’t know what to do with your hands since they’re free from their previous confines. You want to run your hands through his soft hair, to feel the curls between your fingers.
“S’okay baby, lift your hips for me,” his fingers tug at the waistband, you lift your hips and he drags the cloth down your legs. It catches briefly as the soaked fabric is peeled from your drenched lips, the sight seems to send Joel into a bit of frenzy.
His motions moving faster, yanking the fabric off of your legs and gripping your thighs and prying them open.
“Look at that pretty pussy, drippin’ f’me… tell me what y’need, baby, use those pretty words of yours.”
Your head is swimming in arousal, you’re so lost to the sight, sounds, and smells of this man you can barely form a sentence, but you want to please him… you want to verbalize your desire for him the same way he seems to be able to, so you try… “Pl.. touch me… need you..” hell, you hope that works.
He lets out a low laugh, and you see him lick his lips. Instantly rewarding you with a circular swipe of his thumb through the slickness pooling at your entrance in eager anticipation, now threatening to drip onto your blankets beneath you. He audibly moans, not wasting another second before he dips his head and presses a gentle kiss to your clit, inhaling deeply as he does so.
Before he does anything else, he glances up at you for a final confirmation that you want this too… what kind of lunatic wouldn’t want this man to devour them whole?
You can’t help it now, your body has a mind of its own, seemingly completely separate from your conscious train of thoughts. Your hands found their way to his head, your fingers tangling in his hair, and your hips arching into his mouth.
He doesn’t deny your eagerness, in fact he flattens his tongue in anticipation. His hands grip your legs open with a bruising grip, you can see his nostrils flaring as your heat envelopes his senses. He pulls you against him finally, his mouth latching onto your cunt, devouring the juices that had collected since he’d first picked you up for your date that night.
His moan is all-consuming as it radiates through your entire being, as soon as he gets a taste, he loses himself. The sounds are obscene, his tongue dipping into the source like a thirsty dog lapping at water.
“Fuck yes…” you hear him hum against you, mostly to himself. Your grip tightens on his hair, unable to rut against his face like you wanted because of his tight grip.
He pulls back for just a moment, completely out of breath, having foregone breathing in favor of inhaling your essence.
“Fuck, baby…” it’s more of a growl than anything, he can’t stop himself, “so fuckin’ sweet…” he groans between licks, his fingers now joining the dance as he slips one slowly inside your weeping hole.
Your breath shudders as his fingers stretch you, the slick sound of it barely masked by the guttural noises he keeps making deep in his throat, ragged and disbelieving, like he’s not sure if this is really happening or if he’s dreaming it.
You can barely process anything anymore, just the weight of his shoulders pressing down between your thighs. The wet heat of his breath ghosts over sensitive skin, the deep inhale as he savors you, the soft scrape of stubble against your sensitive folds.
The room is warm, thick with the scent of sex and sweat and him. It lingers in your lungs, your sheets, the space between your bodies. It clings to the back of your tongue, your mouth dry from hanging open, waves of pleasure rolling over your body.
He moans again, louder this time, and the sound of it curls low in your belly. Your fingers tighten in his hair, holding him against you, like you need something to anchor you while your body threatens to come apart molecule by molecule.
You feel the mattress shift with every move he makes, the dip of his elbows as he begins to fuck you on his fingers, the flex of his forearms, the solid weight of him against your thighs. He’s everywhere.
“Don’t stop,” you whisper, voice barely there. “Please don’t stop.”
You feel him hum against you, wordless and possessive, and the vibration shoots up your spine like lightning. Your body pulses with it. Every nerve frayed. Every muscle drawn tight with the weight of release building behind your ribs like a storm begging to break from the clouds.
He keeps his pace steady and purposeful. Not teasing anymore…. He’s listening to your body the same way he listens to your voice. So attentive and intense, you’re quickly falling apart.
His fingers tighten on your thighs and you realize he’s trembling too. The kind of full-body tremble that only comes when someone is too close to losing control.
“Joel,” you gasp, voice cracking.
He lifts his head just enough to meet your eyes. His lips shine, his beard glistening with your arousal and his face flushed. His breathing is ragged, but his gaze is still steady, anchored to you like nothing else in the world matters.
You nearly throw your head back, but as soon as your eyes break contact with his, “Look at me,” he murmurs, “Right here, baby.” He demands, trailing his free hand up to grip one of your tits in his hand, pinching the nipple which causes your walls to clamp more on his fingers that were coaxing you closer to that edge. He reaches a place you’ve never experienced before. It’s mind blowing, you’re completely gone, lost in the sensations.
Your fingers muss his hair as you practically rut against his face. His eyes flutter closed as he lets you chase that feeling, moaning almost as loud as you, his hips grinding into the mattress like he could get off just by eating you out, god… he can tell you’re so fucking close.
“That’s it…”
The breath leaves your lungs in a broken cry, the world narrowing to sensation, to him, his scent, his breath, his hands, the sound of his voice grounding you through the tremble that overtakes you.
He holds you through it, his mouth chasing the rocking of your hips through the shudders, through the ragged breath, through the sudden heat of tears you didn’t expect, didn’t even realize were falling.
“Shh, s’alright baby” he soothes you as he brings you down from that peak, “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful like this… makin’ the sweetest sounds f’me.”
When you reach for him, you hold his face in your hands as he climbs back up your body.
First thing you know you need is his clothes fucking gone. You unbutton his jeans and unzip them, then follow him as he steps off of the bed to shed his jeans and boxers. His body is broad and warm under your palms, solid in a way that makes you feel safe but your whole body still burns with desire.
Your fingers follow the trail of coarse hair leading down to his cock, tentatively taking the throbbing length into your hands. It’s so hard yet soft like velvet, and your hand can’t even wrap around its girth. “Wow…” you hear yourself saying, and he chuckles as your jaw drops open slightly. “You’re so big, Joel, I…”
He cuts you off with a kiss and a groan as your grip tightens around him. He leads you back, laying you down again, crawling onto the bed with you.
Your hand is still around his length, your thumb swiping over the tip and spreading his precum over it.
His moan is loud as he cants into your hand, you can tell it wasn’t intentional, but his inherent need for you is incredibly endearing.
“I need you, baby, need to feel your cunt wrapped around me, ain’t gonna last long, but I need…” His desperation has you gasping into his mouth as his collides against yours, his hand once again gripping your wrist and prying it away from his cock as he breathlessly pants against your mouth.
His lips move against your cheek when he speaks, “still with me?”
Your hands find his hair, running your fingers through the soft locks, then stilling to cup his face between them, “I need you too, Joel, just… want to feel you.”
He hums in approval as your legs wrap behind his legs to pull him closer, “This sweet pussy been achin’ f’me the same way my cock’s been achin’ f’her?” It’s nearly a growl as he shifts lower and settles between your thighs.
All it takes is the gentle press of his thumb against your clit to have you whimpering beneath him again, “yes… ached for you since we met.”
That confession earned a throaty groan, his face burying into the crook of your neck, “that right, baby?”
You nod, helplessly as he grips your thigh and presses your hips open again, grinding his leaking cock over the slick folds of your pussy. He curses under his breath, lining up the mushroom head of his cock with your entrance before he has a sudden moment of realization and a groan of annoyance, “Fuck, I don’t got any condoms, baby… I wasn’t plannin’ on all this tonight. It’s been… it’s been awhile.”
He sounds almost bashful when he admits it, his big, brown eyes look up at you pleadingly, as if he was already begging for forgiveness.
You hands cup his face once again, and you giggle mischievously which causes him to tilt his head in confusion, and it’s the cutest thing you've ever seen.
“What’s so funny, darlin’? Laughin’ at an old man’s demise? Got a perfect cunt beggin’ for my cock and I can’t do a damn thing about it?”
You shake your head and pull him into a sweltering kiss, reaching one hand between the two of you and taking his cock to notch it at your entrance.
“What’re y’playin’ at, darlin’? Temptin’ an old man, naughty girl.”
You shift your hips, the head of his cock sliding into your wet heat and he stifles a groan, pressing his forehead against yours, “fuck, don’t be cruel.”
You whimper at the sheer girth of the head of his cock splitting you open.
“Pussy’s so fuckin’ tight…” but he doesn’t make any move to sheath himself any further, he leans back to gauge where your head’s at and sees you fighting through accommodating him, “Cock’s too big f’you huh? We’ll make it fit. Y’gotta tell me though, gotta talk to me baby,” his large hand soothes down your jaw to your neck, sweeping back any hair that’s plastered to your skin by your sweat.
“S’… a lot.” You manage, your walls contracting and squeezing around him, desperate to accommodate him.
“I know… I know…”
“I… I’ve got an IUD, but I’ve never… I dunno…” His hands envelope your thighs, holding you still. His eyes are glued to the sight between you, the sight of what you thought was the head of his cock was just the tip, not even the full mushroom head.
“Oh shit…” his breath is stuttered and his eyes are shut tight, “alright… alright.. fuck, I should’ve asked.”
Your fingers grip his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. His grip doesn’t budge, refusing to move at all. You can feel the precum leaking out around the tip of his cock with your own arousal and it’s an intoxicating sensation. He’s so worked up for you, and yet he’s still maintaining some semblance of self-control to ensure you’re prepared for him.
“Please,” you plead, your hand unsure about what to do with themselves as they trail up the muscles of his arms.
“I’m gonna take this slow, alright? Ain’t in a rush… just gotta… take it slow…” for a moment, he leans back, taking your hands into his and placing them against his ribs. “You control it, can y’do that? Go at your pace, tiny little thing, don’t wanna hurt‘cha.”
You nod with a trembling bottom lip and he tuts in sympathy. “S’gonna be alright, take as much time as y’need… m’not goin’ anywhere… just right here in this tight little pussy… at whatever pace you want me. Can y’say ‘yes sir’ to let me know y’understand?”
And that tore something open in you, your jaw went slack and you pulse around the first few centimeters of him.
“Oh y’like that huh… alright,” he chuckles lowly to himself and resumes his grip on your thigh.
“Yes… sir,” you manage, your eyes wide and blown out as you take in this monstrously sized man and the tip of his cock barely even breaching your entrance, feeling so full already and there’s… holy shit, so much more to go.
You feel and see his cock twitch at that and a low groan involuntarily rips through his vocal cords, “yeah… just like that, my good girl,” he rubs gentle circles into your thighs, leaning over you until your wrists had more pressure to push against him if needed.
“M’gonna start now, Y’know what to do?”
Your lips quiver with anticipation and nerves but nod your head. Your voice is weak but you know what you have to say, “yes, sir.” Which earns you another throaty groan.
“Lessen up on your grip when you want me to go deeper, s’all at your pace…” he repeats, although you already know what to do.
Fuck, you were bristling with anticipation. All you wanted to do was have him bottom out inside you, but you knew it would hurt like hell all at once, and you’d certainly never taken any man of his size.
You’d had a boyfriend who you’d gotten the IUD for, but you broke up with him before you’d even had a chance to put it to any use. You really weren’t sure what to expect, especially a huge cock and a metal, t-shaped contraceptive stuffed in your uterus.
You know Joel’s cock is bigger than what you have going on inside you, and you’re certain he’ll find your cervix and potentially feel your IUD. The concept is embarrassing for some reason, but you also know how thrilling it is to have someone who cares so much about making you feel good and comfortable. So you know no matter what, it will be okay.
Without another moment’s hesitation, you ease on your grip against his chest, just slightly. The head of his cock slowly eases in, accompanied by Joel’s ragged breathing as he watches with rapt attention, “So warm ‘n perfect, the head’s in baby— doin’ so good f’me…”
There’s sweat on your brow from the sheer intensity of it all, your thighs tremble beneath his grip, your eyes searching his demeanor to gauge if you’re disappointing him with how slow you’re going.
He feels you staring and looks up at you, a cheeky grin on his face turns to a moan as you squeeze around the mushroom head, “fuck.” He can’t help his reaction as you lessen your grip again and slide in one centimeter at a time, your nails biting into his chest in desperation.
He feels so fucking good but so fucking much all at once. You feel a tightness and a pinch if you let too much in at once, but you’re finally finding a rhythm with him as he gently nudges more inside. He supports his weight on either side of you and lets your legs relax, hovering over you and keeping his hips steady for your guidance.
“Y’doin’ so good f’me, sweetheart, so proud of you,” He croons softly against your soft, wet lips, licking into your mouth with complete adoration, “touch that pretty little clit f’me… can y’do that? It’ll help, promise.”
You nod eagerly and slide a hand between your bodies, your velvety walls massaging the head and shaft of his cock as you work your fingers over that swollen nub of nerves.
“God, could cum jus’ like this, feels so fuckin’ good ‘round me.”
Your other hand splays along his ribs, continuously letting him inch further and further in, until finally— with a final grunt and prolonged groan from both of you, his hips meet yours.
“Oh shit… fuck fuck… such a good fuckin’ girl… look at that…” his eyes are locked onto your lower abdomen, and surely enough what a sight to behold… there’s a bulge in the shape of his thick cock through your lower belly.
“What a sight, didn’t even know that was possible,” his jaw is agape as he thrusts his hip forward just slightly as you grip loosens on his chest and the bulge moves along with his thrusts… “oh, you’re trouble… that’s fuckin’ hot as hell seein’ my cock so deep inside ya like that.”
Your eyes have been transfixed on something else entirely, on the sight of his large hand covering so much of your body as he braces himself to look between your bodies. His large hand is splayed against your ribs, leaning back so he’s more on his knees again, one hand still bracing beside your head. He pulls his hips back slightly, experimentally thrusting back inside of your dripping heat.
“Feels so big, Joel…” you don’t know how loud you’ve been whimpering until you feel his cock pulse inside of you and his eyes find yours again.
“Good?” The hand splayed on your ribs trails down to your hipbone, his thumb extending and brushing against your clit which causes tremors to run through your body and another prolonged groan from Joel.
“Yes… yes sir, so so good.”
He hums his approval and leans over you to press a sweltering kiss to your swollen lips, the vibration coursing through your veins and to the very place his thumb is circling as he begins to rock his hips shallowly against yours.
Joel’s thumb circles that tender spot, his touch confident but patient. Every motion is deliberate, like he’s memorizing what makes you arch, what makes your breath catch in your throat.
Your fingers twitch against his chest again, the weight of him pressing into you in all the right places. You feel everything. His chest hair against your breasts. The flex of his muscles as he works himself against you. The creak of the mattress. The humid heat between your bodies. The overwhelming stretch and incessant burn that still hasn’t faded even though he’s fully seated inside you. You can feel the tip of him pressing against your cervix and every time he bottoms out it’s a delicious sting you’re slowly growing accustomed to.
He groans low, one of those guttural, broken sounds that seem to come from somewhere deep in his ribs.
“You’re takin’ me so damn well, baby…” he murmurs, voice thick with awe and restraint, like he’s in pain from holding back. He presses a kiss to your shoulder, then to your collarbone, his lips open and trembling against your skin. “Shit. Can feel every part of ya.”
You exhale shakily and slide your hands up his arms. He’s burning under your palms. Sweat-slicked, muscles flexing, heartbeat pounding hard enough you can feel it in your fingertips.
Your voice comes out small, unsteady. “Your heart is pounding.”
“Feel like it’s gonna break outta my chest,” he breathes back. “You got no idea what y’do to me.”
Joel shifts just enough to brace his forehead against yours again, noses brushing. The sound of both your ragged breaths fills the space between. That raw intimacy, the knowing, it sits between your ribs and makes your chest feel tight.
“Gonna cum f’me? Can feel ya tremblin’ ‘n y’legs are twitchin’ and tensin’ ‘round me, let me feel y’let go.” He draws back further now, easing back into your stretched pussy as his thumb works your clit mercilessly. Each time he pulls further back, until he’s fucking into you as gentle but as rough as he can manage, chasing your high and chasing his own.
Your moans come out as sobs, it’s so fucking much and so good, and you know you’re about to cum as soon as that beautiful ridge of his cock rocks over that spongey spot inside of you.
“Don’t, don’t stop, yes yes yes,”
“Right there, huh, that’s it” His eyes are glued to every expression on your face as you teeter on that edge of euphoria. In any other circumstance or any other mindset you might get insecure about the unfiltered show of emotions on your face but you don’t care, if anything you’re happy to bear your soul to him as he brings you as close to heaven as you can possibly be on earth.
He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t speed up and he sure as hell doesn’t stop the circles on your clit or change his angle because you said don’t stop and that means keeping up exactly what he’s doing no matter what and he’d rather die than lose that wave of pleasure you’re about to ride around his cock.
Before it can even register in your mind, you’re gone, babbling incoherent nonsense in some semblance of his name as your walls milk his cock in the most intense orgasm you’ve ever experienced.
He chokes out a moan as the massaging of your silken walls have his balls tightening, “fuuuuck, baby… gonna cum, where’d’ya want me?” He desperately hopes you let him stay inside. It’s already the most intense orgasm he’s ever had and he’s only teetering on the edge.
“Yes… inside, please, cum inside me, Joel.” You’re still riding out the last waves of pleasure as he finally lets go, his balls emptying inside you as he rocks his hips against yours with deep, guttural grunts of finality.
Your high-pitched whimpers and sweat consume him as he buries his face into the crook of your neck, he can’t help but lap up the saltiness dripping down your skin, everything about you is intoxicating.
He slowly comes to a stop inside you, half-collapsing on top of you, his cock still pulsing, the final streams of cum coating your walls.
Your hands find purchase in his hair, holding him to you, your fingers soothing down his back and up his neck and he swears he’s died and gone to heaven.
You’re peppering tired kisses to his forehead and the top of his head and he hums, trying to rein himself back in.
He stays inside you long after the last tremors have faded.
Neither of you speaks. There’s only the sound of his breathing slowing against your collarbone, your heartbeat finding its rhythm again beneath the weight of his chest. Your skin sticks where you’re pressed together. Your bodies are slick, fever-warm, and soft with spent adrenaline.
His hand finds yours where it’s still nestled in his hair. He wraps his fingers around your wrist, just to hold it in place. Keep it close. Keep you close.
“Still with me?” he asks eventually, voice gravelled and low, like he hasn’t caught his breath yet.
You nod, nuzzle into the sweat-damp curls at his temple. “Mhm. Floatin’ a little.”
A quiet hum of satisfaction rumbles through him. He kisses your shoulder again. A few seconds later, the back of your hand. Then your jaw.
“God, sweetheart. I don’t think I’ve ever,” he murmurs against your skin, and the praise sinks deeper than it should, ‘that was…”
He trails off, because whatever he’s about to say feels like too much, too fast. Instead, he slips a hand between your bodies, gently brushing the hair back from your face. You’re glowing and flushed, and when he sees the way your lashes flutter, fighting to stay in the moment, he smiles.
“Yeah… it really was,” you reply, completely understanding what he was entailing.
He laughs gently in exasperation, pressing his lips against yours again and sealing the moment before pulling away and slowly easing his softening length out of you with a soft hiss, immediately missing the warm sheath of your body wrapped around him.
Your fingers thread through his hair again, slowly combing through the damp curls at the base of his neck and massaging lightly. He’s quiet while he watches you, studying your face as if to memorize it, like maybe this moment could dissolve if he lets it out of his sight.
“Y’okay?” he murmurs eventually, thumb brushing over your cheekbone. “Did I… was that too much?”
You shake your head earnestly, cupping his face in your palms as you lead his eyes to yours, “you’re fucking perfect.” You say with a sweet smile, earning a groan from the man still half-collapsed on top of you.
“You’re a sweet talker with a dirty mouth, darlin’.” He presses a kiss to your cheek and steps off of the bed, giving you a once over and letting out a low whistle of appreciation just to watch you roll your eyes at him.
“I could get used to this sight y’know,” he hums to himself as he disappears into your bathroom.
You take a moment to catch your breath, the reality of Joel finally being in your apartment settling in as you catch his frame rummaging around your bathroom and quickly cleaning himself up before returning with a damp washcloth in his hand.
“I could too,” you mean it more than you’ve meant anything in your life, and you weren’t someone who was light with your convictions. You know at that very moment that this is it for you, he’s it. The thundering in your chest as he cleans you up and proceeds to wrap you in his strong arms with light kisses to wherever his lips could reach solidifies that conviction into your own personal truth.
You are his, and he is yours.
You both couldn’t deny that string of fate that seemed to pull you together, and now the tethers that would keep the fires within your souls stoked and roaring.
It was simple, and it was everything.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
I’ve put too much stress on myself to on making these into some form of linear parts; I will probably change them to have titles so it’s easier to navigate! Once again, never expected to have so many parts of this, but I know these have taken over my other fics when I am able to write so whatever! We take what we can get 🫡🙂↕️
As always, more to come!
Taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed!): @white-wolf-buckaroo @streamermattsgf @somedayheaven
⤷ my Masterlist ── .✦ ⤷ want to be on my Taglist? ── .✦
Pairing: Old!joel Miller x f!reader
Summary: it feels like a dream—waking up in Joel Miller’s arms, taking care of him, building a quiet routine together. You think things might finally be okay. But then a knock on the door changes everything. Just like that, you’re back in front of your father, back in the place you swore you’d never return to. Joel tries to hold back, but when lines are crossed, he crosses them too. Now the town is whispering, and the silence between you is louder than ever. It’s your turn to speak. His too. Because this time, walking away isn’t an option.
Warnings: 18+, smut, fluff, angst, MDNI, age gap! (60s and 20s) oral m!receiving, sex ed (kinda), rubbing over panties, coming on tummy, protected sex, pinv, virginity taking, nipple play, fingering, slight grinding, praise kink, inexperienced!reader, soft!joel, pet names, real sweet!joel, outbreak, tommy and maria cameo, reader has an abusive household, abusive father, drunk father, implications of physical abuse on reader, bruises, details with blood, joel beats someone up until they’re bloody, crying, lot’s of guilt, kind of dbf!joel but not really
A/N: oh my gosh!! here it is!!! i honestly didn’t expect part one to do so well, but it meant the world seeing how much y’all loved it. thank you for every sweet comment and reblog—you have no idea how much i appreciate it. anyway… here’s part two of sweet ol’ joel and his stray kitten. this time, it’s gonna get a bit angstyy 🫣🫣
The morning light spills through the window in a hazy glow.
And in the hush of early morning, Joel hears the wind between trees and the floorboards creaking beneath the day’s first breath. His head still aches, pounds from last night, lashes heavy with sleep—but they flutter anyway, drawn to the warmth pressed against his chest.
You.
You’re curled into him, breath slow, cheek resting just above his heart. There’s softness to you now—a stillness. Not like the girl from yesterday, tear streaked face and asking to stay. Or like the girl who sat on the pillow, trembling body—trembling thighs, neediness in her voice, trying oh so hard to finally reach her high.
No. This version of you is something else—quiet, peaceful. The kind he wants to keep. You feel safe with him, even when he still believes he’s the last man who could offer that.
He keeps watching you, memorizing what he missed—your steady breath, parted lips, soft and still. And just for a moment, he lets himself wonder how it might feel to kiss you.
But he doesn’t. He won’t take what hasn’t been yet offered.
Still, the ache is there, in him. Not just in his body, but in his chest. In that one place where he keeps all the things locked away he doesn’t dare to say.
Your lashes suddenly flutter, and Joel wonders if he thought too loud—if the noise in his head stirred you. You sigh softly, shift against him, and when your eyes blink open, you smile up at him, warm and sleepy.
“Mornin’, bun,” he murmurs, voice still inked with sleep. “You had sweet dreams, hm?”
You nod lazily, rubbing your eyes with the back of your hand. “Yeah. Dreamed ’bout you.”
Joel lets out a deep chuckle, his hand drifting to your cheek, fingertips brushing softly over your skin as the sound rumbles low in his chest.
“Dreamed ’bout me, huh? What’d I do in your dream?” He asks, teasingly.
You giggle, cheeks flushing, and shake your head—suddenly shy, and already regretting ever telling him about the dream.
“Nothin’. It was dumb.”
“C’mon now,” he teases, nudging your side, pinching your cheek slightly. “Don’t leave me hangin’. I wanna know.”
You bury your face into his chest, voice muffled. “You let me take care of you. With my mouth.”
And maybe yesterday’s lesson in front of the mirror made you feel a little bolder. Or maybe it was just that being with Joel—feeling safe with him—made every thought in your head feel steady enough to share.
But of course, the air shifts. Joel stills. His breath catches, and he swallows hard. What else could you expect? His honey bun just told him she had a wet dream about having him in her mouth. Of course he’s going to be speechless.
“Yeah?” he asks, voice low, almost hoarse. Then, softer: “Jesus, bug.”
“Sorry,” you whisper. “I shouldn’t’ve said that.”You look away, cheeks burning—suddenly really unsure if what you said was okey to share after all.
Joel turns to you immediately, hand brushing your arm. “No. No, don’t do that. Don’t take it back.”
“Yesterday… the way I touched you—that wasn’t just about wantin’ you. Not that I don’t want you, of course. But it was more than that. It was trust. About you lettin’ me in.” He tells you, voice soft. “And this—what you just said—it ain’t wrong. It’s just… it’s a lot. You’re a lot. And I’m tryin’ real hard not to mess this up.”
“I want this to feel earned. Not rushed. Ya know? Not like I’m takin’ more than you’re ready to give.” His hand brushes your chin. “But you sayin’ that, bun? Dreamin’ about me like that?” He shakes his head, a breathless laugh escaping. “You’re ruinin’ me, sweetheart.”
“Truly ruining me since yesterday.” He adds.
You want to react to what he says—you really do. But you glance down in that moment, and your eyes catch on the blanket—tented slightly over his lap. Your breath hitches.
Joel follows your gaze, then groans softly, dragging a hand over his face.
“Shit.” He curses. “Didn’t mean to—hell, you weren’t even touchin’ me.” Joel feels his cheeks heat up. “Old man like me, it’s been a long time since I got up just ‘cause someone said somethin’ sweet.”
Heat starts to pool—low, deep, curling in your belly like it’s wanting to get out. And for a moment, the room tilts—just slightly—like the world’s gone soft around the edges and you feel dizzy.
You reach for his hand immediately, lacing your fingers through his.
“Can I help you?” you ask, voice soft.
Joel freezes. His breath catches again.
“What?”
“I mean… if you want. I could—”
But he interrupts you.
“Bun…” His voice is thick, low, almost unsure. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not?”
He looks at you, really looks at you. Eyes going dark and searching. “’Cause I want to say yes. God—I want to say yes.”
“Then say it.” You shrug.
He shakes his head, eyes closing for a beat.
“It ain’t that simple. I gotta be careful with you. You’re not just some girl, baby. You’re… you’re important.” Then, quieter, more broken: “I’m supposed to… take care of you. Not make you do things like this…”
His voice cracks a little at the end, and your heart starts to ache. You pull back just enough to see his face—creased with worry, eyes dark with something deeper than desire.
Guilt. Fear. Maybe even love already.
“Joel,” you whisper, reaching up to touch his cheek, playing with his stubbles along the way. “You’re not making me do anything.”
He closes his eyes, leans into your touch like it hurts and he is searching for comfort.
“I know. I know. It’s just…” He swallows. “You’re young. You’re still figurin’ things out. And I—hell, I’m just some old man who’s already made too many mistakes.”
You shake your head, thumb brushing his jaw.
“You’re not some old man with regrets, Joel. You’re the man who makes me feel safe.” And you mean it.
He opens his eyes, still unsure, still worried. You nod to him.
“You’re killin’ me, bug,” he murmurs. “But if we do this… it’s gotta be slow. Gotta be right. I want you to feel safe. Always.”
You smile, small and sure. “I do.”
“I know you haven’t done other things yet… so you also never done this, right?”
You nod, eyes downcast, a little shy. Joel exhales—not out of frustration, just trying to steady himself. He tips his head back against the pillow, muttering under his breath:
“God, baby…” Then he chuckles, low and rough, trying to shake off the heat rising in his chest. “You’re makin’ me give you full sex ed ‘til you’re home again.”
You giggle, and he smiles at that sound like that’s the only thing that keeps him grounded right now. He shifts besides you, the sheets rustling as he pushes them over. Then he softly pulls his shorts down, revealing himself to you fully for the very first time.
Your breath catches and you sit up on the bed.
He’s hard, thick, flushed, the kind of size that makes your stomach flutter and your thoughts scatter. Big. And pulsing.
You blink, eyes wide, taking him in—he’s beautiful in a way that catches you off guard. Heat rises to your cheeks, and a slow, aching warmth blooms low between your thighs
Then you notice it.
A bead of…something glistens at the tip, catching the sunlight. And just as you’re watching, he twitches—just a subtle pulse, but enough to make your heart skip.
“Joel…” you whisper, voice small. “What is that?”
He huffs a breath, rough and low. “That’s pre-cum, baby,” he says, “Means I’m worked up. Real bad.”
You glance up at him, your fingers curling into the sheets. “Because of me?”
His jaw tightens, and his eyes meet yours. “All you, hon’. Haven’t been touched in a long time. And now you’re here, lookin’ at me like that…”
You reach out slowly, fingers trembling just a little.
You take his hard length into your hand, gently, real careful. He’s so warm beneath your touch—velvet over steel, pulsing with heat. You trace along his cock, watching the way his stomach tightens, the way his breath catches. He could come right on the spot just feeling your soft hands around him.
At the tip, that bead of slickness still glistens.
You hesitate, but then gently swipe your finger through it, curious.
Joel hisses—a sharp, guttural sound that makes your heart stutter. “Jesus,” he mutters, eyes squeezed shut. “You’re gonna kill me, baby.”
You glance up at him, eyes wide. “Did I do something wrong?”
He shakes his head, jaw clenched. “No. God, no. Just—feels real good. You’re doin’ perfect.”
You wrap your hand around him, this time with more confidence—thumb brushing over the slick at the tip again. He moans, hips twitching, and you feel the weight of him pulse in your palm.
So, you start to move—slow, unsure strokes, up and down, just watching him pulse in your hand with curiosity. Joels jaw is tight, eyes half-lidded, chest rising and falling faster.
“Like that?” you ask softly.
He nods, voice rough. “Yeah. Just like that. You’re doin’ so fuckin’ good, sweetheart.”
Then, another drop beads at the tip, slick and glistening.
You blink. “Oh…”
Joel chuckles under his breath, voice low and ruined. “Yeah, baby,” he murmurs. “That’s all you.”
Your gaze flick up to his, and something in your chest tightens. You want to taste him. The thought alone makes your cheeks burn, but the curiosity is louder than your nerves right now.
You shift, leaning in slowly, lips parting as you hover just above him.
Joel’s hand moves fast—gentle, but firm—fingers brushing your cheek as he sits up slightly, propped on one elbow. “Easy, bun,” he murmurs. “No rush.”
You pause, heart pounding.
He brushes your hair back, thumb grazing your jaw. “Just… try kitten licks first. Gets you used to the taste.”
You nod, swallowing hard, and lean in again. Your tongue flicks out, careful, tracing a slow line along the tip. He groans—deep and wrecked—and his hand tightens on the sheets.
“Atta girl,” he breathes. “Just like that.”
You grow bolder, licking a slow stripe from base to tip, tasting salt and heat and something uniquely him. He groans even louder.
“God, baby…” he rasps.
You glance up, lips brushing his skin. “Is this okay?”
He meets your eyes, breath ragged. “More than okay. You’re doin’ perfect.”
Another drop beads at the tip, and you catch it with your tongue.
“That part—right there? That’s the most sensitive. Just like your clit. You touch that, I’m not gonna last long.”
You hum softly, filing that away. Your hand wraps around him again, stroking gently as your tongue explores, each movement a little more confident than the last.
“Try a little tighter at the bottom,” he murmurs.“Tightness helps.”
You glance up, lips still brushing his skin, your hand gripping tighter.
He grunts, jaw tight. “Yeah—just like that.”
You follow his lead, your fingers curling around the base as your mouth moves over the tip. The combination makes him curse under his breath, hips twitching.
“Fuck,” he growls, voice fraying. “You’re drivin’ me fuckin’ insane.”
You pause, lips hovering just above him, heart pounding in your chest.
You glance up, eyes wide. “Can I…?” you whisper. “Into my mouth?”
Joel swears he sees heaven.
He exhales hard, chest rising with the effort to stay grounded. His hand finds your cheek, thumb brushing softly along your skin.
“Only when you’re ready, bun,” he murmurs, voice rough with restraint. “Just begin with the tip. Don’t rush.”
You nod, breath shaky, and lean in again—slow, careful. You part your lips and take him in, just a little, just enough to feel the weight of him on your tongue.
Joel groans, low and wrecked. “Jesus…”
You start with just the tip, like he told you. The weight of him on your tongue is unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. You breathe through your nose, slow and steady, and glance up to find him watching you—eyes dark, jaw clenched, like he’s trying not to fall apart.
His hand rests lightly on your head, not guiding, just there. A tether. A promise.
“Easy…” he whispers, voice frayed. “That’s it, bun. You’re doin’ so good.”
You hum softly around him, and he grunts. His hips buck, just barely, like his body’s moving before he can stop it.
You pull back slightly, then lean in again, taking a little more this time. Your hand wraps around the base, stroking gently in rhythm with your mouth. You feel him throb against your tongue, hear the way his breath stutters.
“The most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen, baby.” He murmurs.
You smile around him, just a little. You’re starting to understand the power in this, the way he falls apart for you, the way he praises you like you’re the only thing that’s ever made him feel that way.
You try to take a little more of him, slow and careful, but it’s too much too fast. Your throat tightens, and suddenly you’re pulling back, coughing softly, eyes watering.
Joel’s hand is there in an instant, as he guides you away. “Hey—hey,” he murmurs, sitting up, cupping your cheek with both hands. “You okay?”
You nod, swallowing hard, blinking back the sting. “Yeah.”
He brushes his thumb along your cheek, eyes searching yours. “You can stop now, bun. You don’t have to prove anything.”
Your heart sinks. You look up at him, lips still wet, voice barely a breath. “But I wanna.”
Joel exhales, like the air’s been punched out of him. “Gosh, bug…”
He leans in, presses his forehead to yours.
“Okey,” he murmurs. “Only if you don’t go that deep. One more choke and you’re done. Got it?”
You nod again, a little smile tugging at your lips. “Got it.”
Your mouth moves over him again, slow and steady, as you take him in again. His tip only, while your hands work with the rest of his length.
Joel lies down again, when he made sure that you’re okey.
You start by carefully bobbing your head, each bob matched by the soft glide of your hand. He’s panting now, voice frayed, whispering praise between clenched teeth.
But your own body starts to ache too—hot, tight and desperate. You can’t ignore it anymore.
Without thinking, you shift, swinging one leg over his leg. The muscle beneath you is firm, solid, and the pressure makes your breath hitch. It’s nothing like the pillow you used yesterday.
You start to move—just a little. A slow grind, testing the friction. It sends a jolt through you, and you gasp softly around him.
Joel groans, his hips twitching. “Bun…”
You pull back, lips slick, breath shaky. “I—I needed something,” you whisper.
His eyes are dark, locked on yours. “You usin’ me, baby?” he rasps, voice thick with heat and awe.
You nod, cheeks flushed. “Feels good.”
He exhales, wrecked. “Fuck.”
You smile, then lean down again, taking him back into your mouth as your hips begin to move in slow, desperate circles against his thigh. Joel’s fingers tighten on the bedsheets, and you feel it: the subtle shift of his hips, the way he starts to move with you. Just a little at first. A slow, upward roll of his hips into your mouth.
He’s trying to be careful. You can feel it in the way he holds back, the way his muscles tremble beneath your touch.
“Christ,” he breathes, voice wrecked. “You feel too good, bun. Can’t—can’t take much more.”
You hum around him, and he bucks again—sharper this time, then stills, jaw clenched like he’s fighting himself.
But his control is slipping. You can feel it in the way his leg flexes beneath you, the way his hips twitch, the way his breath stutters every time your tongue flicks just right.
“You’re gonna make me lose it,” he whispers. “You and that sweet little mouth… grindin’ on me like that…”
You pull back, lips slick, breath coming fast. Your thighs are trembling from grinding against him, and your heart is pounding like it might break through your ribs. You release a moan and look at him.
“I want it… in my mouth.”
Joel’s whole body goes still.
He stares at you, jaw tight, chest heaving. Then he shakes his head slowly, voice low and rough. “Not happenin’, bun.”
Your brows furrow. “Why not?”
He sits up again and cups your cheek, thumb brushing your lips. “Because you’re not a place I finish in. You’re not a goddamn dump for me to lose control in.”
You blink, stunned by the intensity in his voice.
“I’m already doin’ too much,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gonna ruin you like that.”
You swallow hard, too dizzy to answer his words, throat tight. “Then… where?”
He hesitates, then gestures towards your belly, voice barely above a whisper. “Your tummy. If that’s alright. I just… I need to see it.”
You breathe in, slow and deep. “That’s okay,” you say. “I want that.”
He nods, still watching you like you might vanish. “Alright,” he says. “We’ll do it slow. You tell me if anything feels off. Promise?”
“Promise,” you whisper.
He eases you on your back, guiding you down onto the bed with a gentleness that makes your chest ache. His hands are warm, steady, reverent as they slide along your thighs, pushing your dress up inch by inch until your tummy is bare to the cool air.
Joel settles between your legs, kneeling, his eyes drinking you in like he’s memorizing every inch.
One hand wraps around himself, slow and deliberate, and your breath catches at the sight of it—how big he is, how flushed, how desperate. You crave him in your mouth again.
But then his other hand moves—sliding between your thighs, cupping you over your underwear. You gasp, hips twitching, and he groans low in his throat.
“Still so worked up, huh?” he murmurs, thumb brushing over the damp fabric, focused on your clit. “Knew you were grindin’ for a reason.”
You nod, breathless. “I couldn’t help it.”
He leans in, pressing a kiss just below your navel. “I know, bun. I felt it. You were so good for me.”
His hand moves in a rhythm, slow circles over your clothed heat, while the other strokes himself in time. His eyes never leave yours.
“Wanna see you come,” he says, voice rough. “Wanna feel you shake before I let go.”
You whimper, hips lifting into his hand, and he groans again—like the sound of your need is too much for him to bear. You start trembling beneath him now, hips bucking into his touch, breath catching with every pass.
“Easy now,” he murmurs, voice rough but soft. “Just let it build, bun. Don’t fight it.”
You moan out, eyes fluttering shut. The pressure is unbearable—in the best way. Every circle of his thumb sends sparks through you, and the sight of him—jerking himself off, eyes locked on your face—is almost too much.
“That’s it,” he whispers. “You’re doin’ so good. Just breathe for me.”
Your fingers clutch onto the sheets, thighs tightening around his hand. He leans in, brushing his lips over your stomach, your hip, your thigh—anywhere he can reach.
“Cum for me,” he whispers. “Let go, bun. Wanna see you fall apart.”
And when you do—when your body arches and your breath catches and you cry out his name—he follows, with a broken sound and a shudder that runs through his whole body. His release spills warm across your belly, painting your skin white, while he still murmurs to you, even as he falls apart.
“Good girl… so good for me… you’re okay, I’ve got you…”
You lie there, breath shaky, dress bunched around your waist, skin flushed and slick with warmth. Your fingers drift to your belly, tracing the mess he left behind. It’s sticky, cooling, and somehow…beautiful.
Joel watches you, eyes soft, chest still rising and falling with the aftershocks.
“You’re all messy now,” he murmurs. “M’messy girl.”
You glance at him, cheeks warm, but you don’t look away. He leans in, pressing a kiss to your forehead.
You whisper, “Yours?”
He stills, just for a second. Then his voice comes quiet, careful. “Only if you like.”
You nod, barely a breath. “I like.”
Joel exhales, like he’s been holding that breath for years. He pulls you close, tucks your head beneath his chin, and wraps an arm around your waist.
“Then yeah,” he murmurs. “Mine.”
Then he groans softly, the sound low and gravelly in his throat as he shifts beneath you. He pulls back, eyes flicking down to the mess across your stomach. His jaw tightens, just a little.
“Hold on,” he says, quiet. “Let me get you somethin’.”
You watch him move—still bare, still sweaty—as he grabs a towel from the bathroom. He runs it under warm water, wrings it out, then kneels besides the bed. He’s careful when he touches you. Real gentle. He presses the cloth to your skin, slow and steady, wiping you clean with quiet focus.
“There we go,” he murmurs. “You did so good, bun.”
Your cheeks flush again, but not from embarrassment. From the way he says it—low and sincere, like it matters.
“So good for me,” he adds, kissing your now clean tummy. “Takin’ me like that. Bein’ so sweet.”
Then, he stretches, joints cracking, and throws the towel to the side.
“Alright,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m gettin’ up before I pass out right here and wake up with a crick in my back.”
He stands, bare feet hitting the cool floor, and pads towards the bathroom. Just before he disappears through the doorway, he glances back over his shoulder.
“You comin’?”
—
The kitchen is quiet, save for the soft clink of bowls and the low hum of the morning. You’re already moving with purpose, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, flipping through the motions like you’ve done this a hundred times before. The flour’s open, the eggs cracked, the pan is warming on the stove.
Joel stands besides you, fork in hand, already chewing on a bite of pancake.
You glance up at him with a smug little smile. “Told you I can do them well.”
He grunts his approval, mouth full, and gestures at the plate like it’s gospel.
The kitchen’s a mess, but it’s the best damn morning he’s had in years—and it’s not because of the pancakes. It’s because of you.
And then—five sharp knocks at the door.
The sound slices through the warmth like a blade. Joel freezes, fork halfway to his mouth. You both go still.
And suddenly, the peaceful moment shatters.
The spoon in your hand clinks against the edge of the mixing bowl, batter dripping onto the counter. Your breath catches in your throat as your eyes snap to Joel, wide and full of panic.
The color drains from your face.
“S’alright,” he says, voice low and even. “S’just Tommy.”
You shake your head, already backing away from the counter. “That’s also what you said yesterday.”
Joel’s eyes flick to you—bare legs, dress hanging loose on your frame, flour still dusted on your cheek. You look soft. Young. Like something that shouldn’t be seen in a place like this, in his house, at this hour.
He swallows hard. “Yeah,” he mutters. “I know.”
Another knock. Slower this time. He can hear the weight begind it—Tommy’s not just stopping by, he is sure. Joel takes a breath, rubs the back of his neck, then glances towards the hallway.
“Maybe…maybe go into the bedroom, yeah?” he says, voice quieter now. “You can never know.”
You nod immediately, already moving. Your bare feet paddle across the floor, quick. You disappear down the hall, and the bedroom door clicks shut behind you.
Joel stands there for a second, staring at the door. His chest is tight. His hands are cold.
Then he turns, walks to the front door, and opens it.
Tommy stands on the porch, hands on his belt, hair pulled back into a bun, face drawn tight with concern. His eyes flick past Joel, scanning the room behind him.
Joel steps aside, opens the door wider. “Mornin’.”
Tommy steps in, boots heavy on the floor. “You’ve seen Cooper’s girl?”
Joel’s stomach twists. “No?” he says, too quickly. “Why?”
Tommy sighs, rubbing his jaw. “She’s been missin’ since yesterday. Her dad’s losin’ it. Tellin’ everyone you took her.”
Joel’s brows pull together, he swallows. “What?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “He’s out there yellin’ at anyone who won’t listen. Said you lured her in. Said you been sneakin’ around with her.”
Joel’s mouth goes dry. “That—” he starts, but the words don’t come.
“I know—ain’t true, and he is probably just drunk again. I just wanted to let you—“
Tommy gets cut off by a sneeze.
Small. High pitched. Muffled, but unmistakable.
From his bedroom.
Tommy’s head turns. His eyebrows lift, slow and sharp. He looks at Joel.
“Joel,” he says, quiet. Flat.
Joel’s whole body lock up. His breath catches. It feels like the air’s been sucked out of the room. It’s not just that you’re here. It’s what it looks like. What it sounds like. And the truth—your truth—isn’t his to tell. You made him promise. No one could know.
But now Tommy will know.
And Joel knows Tommy would never believe he took you. He knows his brother wouldn’t buy into the lies your father’s been spreading. But when he’ll see you—dress rucked up your thighs, lips swollen, cheeks flushed—there’s no mistaking of what’s happening here.
Joel’s heart sinks at the thought.
“Tommy—” he starts, but his voice cracks.
Tommy’s already moving. Three long strides and he’s at the bedroom door. Joel doesn’t stop him. Can’t. He just stands there, frozen, as his brother turns the knob and pushes the door open.
You’re standing there.
Eyes wide. Shoulders tense. But you try to smile—bright and friendly, like nothing’s wrong. Like you can cover it all up with charm. Like Joel didn’t just come all over your tummy only thirty minutes ago.
“Mornin’,” you say, voice light. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Tommy stares at you. Then back at Joel. His face hardens.
“God damn it, Joel,” he mutters, grabbing your hand—rough, and firm—pulling you towards the kitchen. “She’s a damn kid.”
Joel’s lips part, but no sound comes out. His throat tightens. His lip trembles. It feels like every word Joel knows, just disappeared in seconds.
He wants to say something. Anything.
So, you voice cuts through the silence.
“Ain’t no ‘damn’ kid.” You pull away from Tommy’s grip and mimic his cursing with your fingers. “We were just hanging out,” you say, loud and clear. “Joel was showing me how to carve wood. Because I always wanted to learn it.”
Joel’s chest aches. He can’t believe the kind of fool he is being right now. He wants to kiss your skin. Wants to hold you. Wants to thank you for being so brave when he can’t even speak up.
Tommy exhales hard through his nose, hands on his hips. “Well, I promised your father I’d bring you home safe, so…”
Joel’s eyes flick to you. He sees the way your shoulders tense, the way your jaw tightens even as you try to look calm. He knows what’s waiting for you on the other side of that door. He knows what your father is capable of.
His throat works around the words he wants to say, but they just don’t come. Only a shake of his head.
“Okay,” you say quietly. “I’m coming. Wait for me at the door.”
Tommy mutters something under his breath—something Joel doesn’t quite catch, but it’s laced with disappointment. He gives his brother one last look, sharp and tired, then turns and steps outside, leaving the door open behind him.
The silence that follows is thick.
You turn to Joel. Your voice is barely above a whisper. “Joel… are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes are on the floor. Then they lift to meet yours, and they’re full of something raw and breaking. Almost glassy.
“I—I can’t let you go,” he says, voice cracking, shaking his head.
You step closer, your hand brushing his arm. “I have to,” you whisper. “He won’t leave us alone. He won’t leave you alone.” You know Joel kept you safe—again and again, without hesitation. He stood between you and the worst of it, even when he didn’t have to.
But now it’s your turn.
You won’t let your father drag Joel into this mess. You won’t let him twist things, poison the air around something this good. Something that makes you feel alive.
It’s scary, thinking about what might happen when you walk through that door again. You could tell Tommy the truth—lay it all out, every ugly piece of it—but that would only make things harder than they already are.
You know how this town works.
How people talk. How fast things spread.
And with your father already telling folks Joel kidnapped you…you can’t pour more gasoline on a fire that’s already burning.
Even if it terrifies you. Even if staying quiet feels like swallowing glass.
Joel’s jaw clenches. He looks like he wants to finally say something—stay, don’t go, I’ll protect you—but he doesn’t. He can’t. Because he knows what it would mean to say those things. He knows what it would make him.
And he won’t be like your father.
He won’t be another man who cages you.
So he just nods, barely. His hands are fists at his sides.
You reach for the doorknob, then pause. You look back at him one last time.
And then…you’re gone.
—
Joel doesn’t move.
He just stands there, staring at the door. Staring at the spot where your hand brushed the wood on your way out. The silence that follows is gutting, uncomfortable. The silence that follows is gutting—thick and uncomfortable, like the kind that clung to Joel when he first moved into the house. Back then, he was still just a vessel of a man, hollowed out by loss, unable to hold onto the things he loved. Still only a shadow of what he truly wanted.
He turns, slow, and walks back into the kitchen.
The warm and sweet smell of pancakes cling in the air and they land in Joel’s nose, not letting him go. The bowl’s still on the counter, batter half-mixed, spoon resting like you only just stepped away for a second.
But you didn’t. You’re gone.
Joel exhales, rough and shaky. Picks up the spoon. Puts it down. His hands feel too big, too useless. He moves through the kitchen like a ghost—opening cabinets, closing them, touching things just to feel something. The coffee you made him sits cold on the table. He stares at the ring it left behind.
You were here. You were laughing at the way he called you ‘honey bun’. Humming. Kissing his cheek, touching his hand.
And he let you go while he promised to keep you safe.
Back to the father who spends his time picking you apart. Who doesn’t see anything other than the bar.
He presses his palms to the counter, head bowed. His shoulders shake once, barely. “Should’ve kept you,” he mutters. “Should’ve just…kept you.”
But you asked him not to be like your father. And he promised.
Promised he’d never take your choices from you. Never silence your voice. Never make you feel small just to keep you close. And even now—when everything in him is begging to run after you, to drag you back and lock the door and keep you safe—he doesn’t move.
Because he knows what it would mean if he did.
He also knows that this is different. That what your father does isn’t just cruel—it’s dangerous. That silence, in his case, is a kind of violence too. That someone should speak up. That someone should save you.
But he also knows this:
You didn’t ask him to save you.
You asked him to trust you.
There’s nothing to do but think—just think—looping through the same scenes over and over. What might be happening right now. What might be happening to you. Joel flinches. Stands up too fast. His body already moving towards the door, towards your house. But halfway there, he stops. Stares at the path. And then slumps back inside, like the weight of it all is too much to carry.
And when the morning breaks, pale and cold, Joel wakes to the same silence. No footsteps. No humming. No trace of you in the air.
Just compete absence.
He sits up slow, body aching, heart even heavier than before. The kitchen is still a mess—batter dried in the bowl, flour dusted near the rug. He couldn’t possibly bring himself to lay a hand on the last thing you held.
He rubs his face, mutters, “Christ.”
He leans back, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He can’t believe the position he’s in. Can’t believe how fast everything spun out. One minute you were in his arms, warm and safe and smiling. The next, you were walking out the door with Tommy, and he just stood there. Frozen.
He swallows hard.
She trusted me.
And I let her down.
He stands there, staring out at the path that leads to your house. The distance between them feels longer than it should. Like a canyon.
Joel breathes in deep. Holds it. Lets it out slow.
“Fuck this,” he mutters, already grabbing his jacket off the hook and putting it on.
He’s not going to drag you out, nor is he going to make a scene. He just needs to see you. To look into your eyes and to know that you’re okey.
That’s all. And that’s enough for him.
He pulls the door open, steps out into the cold morning air, and starts walking with big deliberate steps.
The porch creaks under Joel’s boots as he stops at your door. The morning is still, but he can already hear the town whispering. He stands there for a moment, jaw clenched, eyes scanning the windows. Curtains drawn. No movement. Absolute no sound.
He can’t tell if that’s a good sign, or a bad one.
He shifts his weight, breathes in deep through his nose, and exhales real slow. He knows he is not here to fight. At least, that’s what he tells himself over and over.
But his fists are already tight besides his hips.
He knocks—three times. Firm. And for a second, he lets himself hope it’ll be you who answers. That you’ll open the door, sleepy eyed and safe, so he can breathe again.
But the door swings open, and the smell hits him first.
Liquor. Sharp and sour. It clings to the air like rot and makes his way into Joel’s nose. Your father stands there, already scowling, eyes bloodshot and already looking to pick up a fight.
“Well, well,” he mutters, voice thick. “Look who finally grew a pair.”
Joel swallows hard, trying to keep his voice steady. “Mornin’. Just stoppin’ by. Everything alright?”
Your father leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Joel nods, eyes flicking past him, trying to see into the house. “She around?”
“She’s sleepin’,” your father snaps. “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”
Joel’s jaw tightens. “She’s got patrol tomorrow. Five am. I just came to let her know.”
“That so?” Your father smirks. “Funny. Thought that was Maria’s job. Or Tommy’s.”
Joel forces a shrug, trying to piece together a lie in his head. “Tommy sent me.”
“Bullshit,” your father spits. “You think I don’t see what’s goin’ on? You think I’m stupid?”
This is what he feared the most: that your father would test Joel’s nerves—and that Joel wouldn’t walk out of here a saint.
Joel’s eyes narrow. “I think you’re drunk.”
Your father steps forward, his face just inches away from Joel, breath hot and sour. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doin’ with my daughter, but it ends now. You hear me? You stay the fuck away from her.”
“You’re a goddamn predator,” your father growls. “Sixty years old and sniffin’ around a girl half your age. You think that’s love? You think that’s real?”
Joel’s fists clench again. His pulse is pounding in his ears. His heart starts to beat faster. He already feels the tingling beneath his skin, like he wants to just put a fist through his god damn head.
“You don’t know a damn thing about her,” he says, voice slightly shaking. “You don’t know what she’s really like. What you’ve done to her.”
Your father laughs, bitter and loud. “Oh, I know exactly what I’ve done. I raised her. Fed her. Kept her in line. You? You’re just some washed up old man who can’t keep it in his pants.”
And in that moment, Joel decides the best thing he can do is turn around and walk out of the house. He knows his anger—knows how it builds, how it blinds—and he’s certain that if he stays, he might do something he can’t take back.
“That’s what I thought,” your father sneers. “Go be a pedo somewhere else, you sick fuck.”
Joel stops.
The world goes quiet. The pulsing in his ear go louder. His breath catches. His vision narrows. The porch, the trees, the sky—they all blur.
And then he turns.
Three strides. That’s all it takes.
His fist connects with your father’s jaw, a sickening crack echoing through the air. The man stumbles back, hits the floorboards hard.
And Joel doesn’t stop.
He drops to his knees, one knee on each side of his body and slams his fist down again. And again. Blood splatters across the porch, across his knuckles, across his face.
“You don’t talk about her like that,” Joel growls, voice ragged. “You don’t touch her. You don’t look at her.”
Your father tries to raise an arm, but Joel knocks it aside and drives another punch into his ribs. The man wheezes, starting to cough blood, the fluid running down his face. Joel’s face is twisted, eyes wild. He’s not thinking. He is feeling every bruise on your body that he saw, every tear that you cried, every single time you came into his house and every time he stayed silent when he should’ve spoken up.
“You think you’re a man?” Joel snarls, breathing out loudly. “You think beatin’ her makes you strong?”
He grabs the man’s collar, slams him back down. “You’re not a father. You’re a fuckin’ coward!”
You should be horrified.
You should be screaming, begging him to stop, turning away from the blood and the violence that unfolds in front of you. From the sound of your father’s ribs cracking and Joels fists connecting with his face.
But you’re not. You’re still. Watching. Just besides the staircase.
Because for the first time in your life, someone is fighting for you. Not to control you. Not to punish you. But to protect you.
And it’s not just anyone.
It’s Joel.
The man who held you like you were something fragile. Who kissed your bruises like they were sacred. Who let you go when it broke him to do it—because you asked. And now he’s here, beating for you. Burning for you. Ignoring consequences, ignoring everything just to keep you safe.
And all you can feel is this strange, aching warmth in your chest. Not fear. Not guilt. But something like relief. Like justice. Like finally, finally, someone sees you—and they’re not turning away.
You step forward, barefoot on the porch, heart pounding.
“Joel.”
Your voice.
It cuts through the haze like a blade.
Joel freezes, fist still in the air, blood dripping from his knuckles. His chest heaves, while his ears ring loud. He breaths to his mouth like a wild animal.
He slowly turns his head.
And there you are. Standing in the doorway, barefoot, wrapped in a sweatshirt too big for you. Your eyes are wide, lips parted but you look unfazed of the bleeding body that’s lying and coughing under Joel. There’s a bruise on your cheek. Another on your arm.
Joel sees them. And everything else disappears.
He doesn’t see your father anymore. Doesn’t feel the blood on his hands. All he sees is you.
“Fuckin’—” he mutters, and slams one last punch into the man’s face. The hardest of them all. Joel then stands up, stumbling back.
You rush to him, hands reaching to his chest.
He looks at you, dazed. “Oh, honey bun…”
You step into him, arms wrapping around him. His arms wrap around you, strong and tight. He holds you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish. Like if he lets go, the world will fall apart again.
“Joel,” you whisper, voice cracking. “You came.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, cupping your cheek with a bloodied hand, the metallic smell filling your nose. “I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry. That I let you go. That I didn’t stop him. That I—”
“Joel,” you say again, firmer this time, interrupting him.
And then you kiss him.
Soft. Shaky. Your lips press to his like you’re trying to breathe him in.
Joel stiffens beneath you, caught off guard, his breath hitching against your mouth. For a heartbeat, he doesn’t move—like he’s afraid to believe this is real. But then he exhales, low and shaky, and something in him gives.
He kisses you back, slow and aching, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. His hand rises to cradle the back of your head, fingers threading gently through your hair, grounding himself in the feel of you. His other hand settles at your waist, not pulling, not pushing—just there, steady and warm.
When he finally pulls back, it’s only by an inch, just enough to rest his forehead against yours.
“You’re safe now,” he whispers.
And this time, he means it.
Your father suddenly groans, face swollen, lip split, one eye already purpling. He shifts, coughing, and mutters through cracked teeth:
“You’re dead, Miller…I’m goin’ to the council. You’re fuckin’ done.”
Joel doesn’t look at him.
He just says: “C’mon, let’s get you outta here.”
—
When you reach his house, he opens the door for you, lets you step inside first. The warmth hits you like a wave. It finally feels like peace again.
“Sit down,” he says gently. “I’ll be right there.”
You nod softly, and sink onto his couch, pulling your knees up, wrapping your arms around them while Joel disappears into the bathroom. You hear the water running, the soft scrape of soap against skin. You know he’s scrubbing the blood from his hands. Hard. Like he’s trying to erase the memory of it.
And you feel it, all at once.
Not guilt. Not fear. But a deep, aching sadness that settles behind your ribs like something bruised. Not for yourself—but for him. For what he had to become in that moment. For the fury he had to unleash just to make the world safe for you, even for a second.
When he comes back, his knuckles are raw and red, but clean. He dries them on a towel, then tosses it aside and walks over to you.
He crouches down in front of the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
“You warm enough?” he asks, voice low.
You nod, silently.
He watches you for a moment, eyes searching your face. Then he takes a breath.
“You know I’d never ask you to do something you don’t want to,” he says. “You know that, right?”
You glance at him, wary. “Yeah.”
He nods. “Good. ‘Cause I need to talk to you about somethin’. And I need you to know it’s comin’ from a place of care. Not pressure.”
You shift slightly, pulling your pullover tighter around you.
Joel’s voice softens. “I think… I think we should tell Tommy.”
You go still. “Joel—”
He holds up a hand, gentle. “Just hear me out, bun.”
“I know you didn’t want anyone to know,” he says. “And I kept that promise. I did. But after what I saw today… after what he said, what he did—” Joel’s voice catches. He swallows. “I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t keep quiet and watch you go back to that house like nothin’s wrong.”
You look down at your hands. “It’s not that easy.”
“I know,” he says softly. “I know it ain’t. But Tommy—he’s not like your dad. He listens. He cares. And if he knew the truth, he’d help. He’d want to help.”
You shake your head. “What if he doesn’t believe me?”
Joel leans in, voice low and steady. “Then I’ll believe you loud enough for the both of us.”
You blink, tears welling.
“You don’t have to carry this alone anymore,” he says, hand landing on top of your thigh—squeezing once. “You’ve been strong for so long. Too long. Let someone else be strong for you now.”
You sniff, wiping your cheek with your sleeve. “I’m scared.”
Joel nods, he stands up and sits down besides you. He takes you into his arms. “I know, baby. I know. But you’re not doin’ this alone. I’ll be right there. Every second. You just say the word.”
You pull away to look at him, really look. And for the first time in a long time, you don’t feel small. You feel held.
“Okay,” you whisper. “Okay. I’ll tell him.”
Joel exhales, slow and shaky. He reaches for your hand, cradles it in his own.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs.
You squeeze his hand, then look at him, eyes searching.
“What about you?” you ask quietly. “You beat him…they won’t understand.”
Joel rubs his forehead, sighs. “We’ll somehow handle this, yeah? The most important thing is now that you speak up.” You nod, but your eyes stay on him.
“I don’t want them to hurt you for protecting me.”
Joel leans forward, presses his forehead to yours. “If there’s a price to pay, I’ll pay it. But I ain’t lettin’ you go through this alone. Not again.”
—
The expected knock comes like a ripple through still water—three slow, deliberate thuds against the door just thirty minutes after.
Even while it’s expected your fingers still tighten around the edge of the blanket draped over your lap while hour heart begins thudding in your chest, not from fear exactly, but from the weight of what’s about to happen.
Joel doesn’t move at first. He’s standing near the window, arms crossed, jaw tight. His knuckles are still raw, the skin split and crusted with dried blood. He glances at you, his eyes softening just a little.
“It’s okay,” he says, voice low and steady. “We’ll just tell them.”
You nod, but your throat is too tight to speak.
He walks to the door and opens it without a word. Tommy and Maria stand on the porch, framed by the pale morning light. Tommy’s face is hard, unreadable. Maria’s eyes flick past Joel immediately, scanning the room until they land on you.
Joel steps aside.
And they walk in without being asked.
Tommy’s boots thud against the floorboards, heavy and slow. Maria’s steps are quieter, but no less certain. They don’t speak right away. Tommy’s eyes land on you—sitting small and on the couch, blanket clutched around your shoulders—and something shifts in his face. Not surprise. Not quite anger. Something heavier.
He and Maria sit down on the opposite couch, facing you. Joel stays behind you, standing like a wall between you and the rest of the world.
“You wanna tell me what the hell happened?” Tommy says, eyes locked on Joel. His voice isn’t raised, but it’s sharp. Accusing. Protective.
Maria reaches out and touches his arm—just a light press of her fingers. A silent reminder to breathe.
“Look—I know how this looks,” he says, voice rough. “But she came to me cryin’. Bruised up. From that goddamned scum that her father is.”
Tommy’s eyes narrow. He scans Joel’s face like he’s trying to read between the lines.
Maria’s gaze drops to your arms. You hadn’t realized the blanket had slipped down a little, exposing the edge of a bruise near your wrist. She doesn’t say anything. Just looks. Quietly. Carefully. Analysing.
Then she murmurs, almost to herself, but loud enough for Tommy to hear: “I told you.”
Tommy exhales through his nose, but says nothing while Maria turns to you, her voice softer now. Measured. “You wanna tell us what happened, sweetheart?”
You glance up at Joel. He gives you a small nod—barely there, but enough. His eyes say it all: You’re safe. Say what you need to say.
“He gets drunk… really often. And—and he takes it out on me.” Your voice is shaky. Small.
You swallow hard. Your hands tremble as you push the sleeve of your pullover up, revealing the bruises along your forearm. Some are old. Some are newer. All of them are ugly.
“I didn’t know what to do,” you whisper. “I was scared.”
Maria nods slowly. Her eyes are glassy, but she doesn’t cry. She just reaches across the space between you and rests her hand gently on your knee. Tommy rubs his forehead, sighing deep from his chest.
“I should’ve looked better,” he mutters. “Hell, I. knew he was too often in that damn bar. I just… I didn’t think…” He trails off.
Maria squeezes your knee gently.
“You’re okay now,” she says. “He’s already in a cell. All the other details—we can talk about them when you’re feeling stronger, okay?” She glances at Tommy, who nods.
“Probably best to let the folks vote on what happens with him,” he says, voice low.
Maria agrees with a quiet hum.
You take a breath. Then another. And then you speak again, a little louder this time. “And Joel didn’t do anything wrong. He protected me. He kept me safe. That’s why he beat him.”
Tommy’s eyes flicker to Joel, who’s still standing behind the couch. His jaw is clenched, his eyes downturned. He looks like he’s holding something in—something sharp and heavy.
“I couldn’t possibly look away,” Joel murmurs.
Tommy leans back, arms crossed. “Alright. Ain’t gonna get you off the hook that easy, Joel. You beat a goddamn man bloody.”
Joel nods once. “I know.”
Maria glances at Tommy, then back at Joel.
“Nothing harsh, probably,” she says. “It still falls under defense. I’d say… community hours. Longer patrols. Something useful.” She smiles—just a little. It’s the first warmth in the room.
Then she turns to you. “And you, sweetheart,” she starts, her voice lifting, “you can have the house now.”
Your eyes widen. “Really?”
Maria nods. “Yeah. Until everything’s settled, it’s yours. I’ll come by a few times, check in on you—if you’d like.”
You nod, stunned. “I’d like that.”
Maria’s smile softens. “And I have to say—you’re incredibly brave. For talking about it. For surviving it.”
Tommy grunts in agreement. “Yeah,” he says. “Takes a fuckin’ mountain of braveness to speak up like that, hon.”
You laugh—just a little. It slips out before you can stop it. A small, breathy sound. But it’s real.
Tommy stands, stretching his back with a groan.
“And you, old man,” he says to Joel, “you can rest now.” He winks.
Joel swallows hard. Nods. Doesn’t say anything.
But you see it—the way his shoulders drop just slightly. The way his hand brushes the back of the couch, like he needs something to hold onto. Then Maria gives your knee one last gentle squeeze before pulling her hand back. She straightens, smoothing the front of her coat, and glances at Tommy.
He meets her eyes. Nods.
“We’ll let you two be,” Maria says softly, her voice careful not to disturb the fragile quiet.
Tommy lingers a second longer, eyes flicking between you and Joel. There’s something unreadable in his face—something that looks a little like worry, and a little like understanding.
Tommy steps towards the door, but then pauses. He turns back to Joel, looks at him. Maria pauses too when she sees him turn back. He doesn’t say anything at first. Just looks at Joel—really looks at him.
Then he steps closer.
Tommy rests a hand on Joel’s shoulder. Not rough. Not soft either. Just…solid.
“I ain’t blind, you know,” Tommy says, voice low. “I see what’s goin’ on.”
Joel doesn’t answer. His jaw ticks once. His eyes flicker, but he holds Tommy’s gaze.
“I see the way you look at her,” Tommy continues. “And I see the way she looks at you.”
You feel your breath catch, but you don’t look away. You just watch them—two men who’ve seen too much, lost too much, and still somehow keep showing up.
“I ain’t here to judge it,” Tommy says. “Ain’t my place. And hell, I know you, Joel. Better than most.” He squeezes Joel’s shoulder once. “You’re a stubborn bastard. But you don’t give your heart easy. And when you do… you don’t let go.”
Joel’s throat works around something he doesn’t say.
“So I’m gonna say this once,” Tommy says. “I trust you. I trust you to keep her safe. To do right by her. No matter what anyone else says.”
Joel’s voice is hoarse. “I will.”
Tommy nods. “Good. Don’t let me down, brother.”
He lets go of Joel’s shoulder and turns to you. His expression softens. “You got someone who’d burn the world down for you,” he says. “That’s rare. Don’t let it scare you.”
You nod, eyes stinging again.
Maria opens the door, but before she steps out, she looks back at Joel. “You’re not alone either, you know,” she says. “Don’t carry all this by yourself, old man.”
Joel gives a small nod. It’s all he can manage.
Then they’re gone.
The door clicks shut behind them.
—
Two weeks pass.
The house is yours now.
It still smells faintly of him—of old tobacco and something with liquor—but each day, that scent fades just a little more. You’ve thrown open the windows, let the wind sweep through the rooms for a cleansing. Maria brought you new curtains. And you decorated the walls so they’re no longer bare. You’ve hung little things—pressed flowers in frames, a sketch Maria gave you, a string of dried herbs above the kitchen window. The silence here is different now. Not hollow. Not haunted. Just quiet. Peaceful.
Your bruises are slowly but surely fading. The deep purple has softened to yellow, then to nothing. Your ribs don’t ache when you breathe anymore. You are finally able to sleep through the night.
Maria comes by every few days. She never stays long—just enough to drop off a basket of food, or a new blanket she stitched, or a book she thinks you might like. Her presence makes the whole place feel more alive. She never asks too many questions. Just smiles, touches your arm, gives you greetings from tommy, and reminds you that you’re not alone.
And Joel…
Joel stays away.
Not because he wants to. You know that. You can feel it in the way he lingers just a little too long when he passes your house on patrol. In the way you find things on your porch in the morning—wildflowers bundled in twine, a tiny wooden fox carved with careful hands, a jar of honey with a note that just says “for your tea.”
He’s giving you space, you know that too. He hasn’t knocked, hasn’t asked to come in. But he’s there. Always just close enough.
You see him sometimes, working his community hours. Fixing fences. Hauling lumber. Splitting logs behind the stables, sweat glistening on his brow, his shirt clinging to his back. That poor old man, you think. But then you see his arms flexing with every swing of the axe, and you catch yourself staring. Too long. Too openly.
Sometimes he catches you.
He never says anything. Just gives you that look—quiet, unreadable, but warm. Like he’s glad you’re there. Like he’s relieved you’re still looking.
You always look away first.
Your father is still in the cell. The town will vote next week on what happens to him. You hear whispers when you walk through the town—some sympathetic, some sharp. But you never listen too closely.
And the guilt…the guilt still lingers. It creeps in during the quiet moments, when the kettle whistles or when you fold laundry and your hands remember flinching. You think about the years you lost. The girl you had to become just to survive.
But you also feel something else now.
Freedom.
It’s in the way you walk barefoot across your own floor. In the way you hum while you sweep. In the way you leave the door open just because you can.
You’re not healed. Not yet, but you’re healing.
And for the first time in your life, you feel like you.
But on one particular night, the quiet feels too loud.
You miss him. Dearly.
Not just his voice or his hands or the way he made you feel safe. You miss the way he looked at you like you were something fragile. You miss the way his presence filled a room without ever demanding it. You miss the way he said your name like it meant something.
And you missed the way he made you feel—inside.
So you go to him.
You don’t knock. You know he wouldn’t mind.
You tip toe into his house like stray cat once again.
You tiptoe across the floor, heart thudding in your chest. His bedroom door is open. You pause in the doorway.
He’s asleep.
One arm thrown over his chest, the other resting besides him. His face is turned slightly towards the window, shining in moonlight. He looks older like this. Softer. The lines around his eyes are deeper, but his mouth is relaxed. Peaceful.
You step closer.
The floor creaks beneath your foot, and he stirs—just a little. His brow furrow, but he doesn’t wake. You slip quielty under the blanket.
It smells like him. Feels like him. Warm and worn and safe.
You press yourself against his side, burying your face into his chest. Your hand finds the fabric of his shirt, fingers curling into it, needy. “Missed you,” you whisper.
His breath catches.
Then his arm moves—slowly, sleepily—wrapping around you. Pulling you in.
“Oh, bunny…” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep. He presses a kiss to your forehead, then another, softer one to your temple. His lips linger there, as if he is taking in your warmth.
You tilt your head up.
And he kisses you—just a brush of lips. Gentle. Testing if you’re really here and if it’s not just a dream he is having.
You kiss him back, feeling his soft lips on you, his hands exploring your body. You missed the immediate calmness Joel radiates. The one where every inch of your body melts to him, and your mind goes all hazy, thinking about nothing but Joeljoeljoel.
Joel pulls away, groaning while his hands pull you up so your body is on top of him.
“How are you doin’, babygirl?” He asks, gently brushing through your hair.
“It was strange,” you say, voice low. “Being alone. I thought I’d hate it. But… I didn’t. I liked the quiet. The space. I needed it.”
Joel nods, watching you carefully.
“But I missed you,” you add, glancing at him. “Missed your voice. Your coffee. You’re everything.”
He smiles, just barely. “Missed you too, bun. So fuckin’ much.” He places a kiss on your forehead. “But you needed that time. After everything… I didn’t want to crowd you. I figured you’d come back when you were ready.”
You look at him, eyes soft. “And now I’m here.”
He nods, quiet for a beat.
“Yeah. Now you’re here. Makin’ me one happy bastard”
You giggle at that, and you look up, brushing your nose against his.
Then you kiss him again—real slow, real unhurried, like you’ve got all the time in the world. His hands settle on your hips, grounding you, then they move on your back. He draws big, soft circles on there. You deepen the kiss, just a little. And then your hips begin shift—tentative at first, a slow press of warmth against his crotch.
His breath hitches.
“Bug…” he warns, voice low.
You lean down, your hair brushing his cheek.
“Take me,” you whisper. “Please.”
He freezes.
You don’t know what possessed you to say that. Maybe it was the silence, thick and humming with everything you couldn’t say. Maybe it was the way your body still remembered the heat of his hands, the sound of your name in his mouth, the way he looked at you like you were something precious while trembling because of his hands.
His hands tighten on your hips, then still. He reaches over, flicks on the nightstand lamp. The soft amber light spills across your face.
He looks at you. Really looks.
Your cheeks are flushed. Your lips parted. Your eyes wide and glassy with something between nerves and need. You look like you did that first night—when he found you trembling and desperate and burning all at once.
He exhales, a low, rough sound from deep in his chest. “I see you picked up right where we left off with ruinin’ me,” he mutters.
You pout, just a little. “You like it.”
“Babygirl…” he groans, sitting up slowly, pulling you into his lap. His hands settle on your waist. “That ain’t no small thing. Literally.” He tries to lighten the mood with a sarcastic line but fails.
You raise an eyebrow. “You’re about to say it.”
“You’re young,” he starts, but you cut him off.
“You’re young, I’m old, i’ve made mistakes, blah blah blah, ugh.” you say, rolling your eyes.
His eyebrows shoot up, his voice firm. “Now watch your tone. I’m serious.”
You go quiet.
He sighs, brushing your hair back from your face. “Ain’t somethin’ quick. Ain’t somethin’ you just ask for, hell—you’re still a virgin.”
You look down, cheeks burning, maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all.
“No, baby,” he says quickly, voice softening. “I didn’t mean it like that. Hey—look at me.” His hands find your face, and they cradle you. “There’s nothin’ wrong with it. Nothin’ wrong with wantin’ it.”
“Then what’s the problem?” you ask, voice small.
He leans back, runs a hand through his hair. His fingers tremble.
“The problem’s me,” he says. “Already had trouble holdin’ myself back two weeks ago. And now… if you want to take it a step further, I’ll break.”
His voice cracks.
“And?” you ask.
He looks down.
“And I’ll be the old man who ruins your first time.”
You shake your head. “Joel,” you whisper. “I don’t want to hear that anymore. Seriously.”
You cup his face in your hands. “I don’t care how old you are. You think those boys my age wouldn’t ruin it? You think I’d be here if I didn’t feel safe?”
You kiss his cheek. Then his forehead. “You told me I’m yours.”
He nods, voice barely audible. “I did.” A beat. “And you are,” he says, pulling you closer. His hands slide up your back, holding you like you might vanish. “You are.”
You rest your forehead on his shoulder, breathing him in.
“Then please,” you whisper. “Don’t hold back. I want it all.”
And you do. All of him.
He shudders. His arms tighten around you. “This is your first time, bug. This ain’t just a night.” he mutters, voice breaking again. You roll your eyes, sit up slightly, your hand on his chest, your eyes steady on his.
“Joel,” you say softly. “Do you want me?”
He freezes.
“Baby…” he breathes, like it hurts to even hear the question.
“No,” you say, firmer now. “Tell me. Do you want to take me?”
His eyes close. His jaw clenches. And then, finally, he exhales—like he’s been holding his breath for weeks. “God,” he says, voice breaking. “There’s nothin’ I want more than that.”
You feel your insides warming at his words. You look at him—really look—and he’s already looking back. Like he’s seeing you for the first time. Like he’s terrified and in awe all at once.
You reach for his face, thumb brushing his cheek. “Then do it, Joel,” you whisper. “Without guilt. I’m right here.”
He exhales, slow and heavy.
His hand dips lower, landing on the underwear beneath your shorts. His fingertips slowly caress the dampness on the fabric making you close your eyes and breathe.
“…You haven’t touched her since, have you?” His voice is low, almost disbelieving. His fingers press gently over the damp fabric. “You’ve been neglectin’ her… waitin’ on me.”
You nod, barely, your voice a whisper. “Mhm. Waited for you.” Joel stills, like the words hit somewhere deep. You swallow, eyes flicking to his. “Every time I saw you working… the way your hands moved, the way you looked…”
You trail off, breath catching. “I wanted to. I did. But I—I wanted it to be your hands.”
His breath leaves him in a shudder, he releases a sigh.
“Alright,” he murmurs. “If we’re doin’ this… we’re doin’ it slow. Real slow.”
You nod against his chest.
“I mean it, bug,” he says, tilting your chin up so you’re looking at him. His eyes are soft, but serious. “I ain’t gonna rush you. Not a damn second of this.”
You nod again, and he brushes his thumb along your cheek.
“There’s some things we gotta talk about first,” he says. “Not to scare you. Just…so you know.”
You sit up a little, still straddling his lap, your hands resting on his chest.
“It might hurt,” he says gently. “First time usually does. Might be some bleedin’. That’s normal. But if it’s too much—if you wanna stop at any point, you tell me, alright?”
You nod, but he waits.
“Say it,” he says softly.
“I’ll tell you,” you whisper. “If I want to stop.”
He nods, satisfied.
“Good girl.”
His hand moves to the drawer besides the bed. He pulls out a small foil packet and holds it up between two fingers.
“We’ll use one of these,” he says. “Condom. Keeps things safe. Clean. I’ll take care of it.”
You blink, then squint at him. “Wait… why do you even have those?”
Joel clears his throat, suddenly looking sheepish. “Tommy gave ‘em to me. Said I should…y’know. Get outta my shell.”
You stare at him—then giggle, the sound bubbling up before you can stop it.
Joel groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Ain’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” you whisper, still smiling. “You’re blushing.”
“I ain’t—” He scowls, but his ears are pink. “You’re impossible.”
He kisses your cheek, then his eyes turn serious again. “I ain’t gonna do nothin’ you don’t want,” he says. “Not ever. You say stop, I stop. You say slow down, I slow down. You say not tonight, I’ll hold you and that’s it.”
You smile, eyes stinging a little. “I know,” you whisper. “That’s why I’m here.”
He leans in, presses a kiss to your forehead.
“You really sure?” he asks. “Not just ‘cause you think I want it. Not ‘cause you feel like you owe me.”
“I’m sure,” you say. “I want this…and it’s not because I have to, Joel. It’s because I can finally feel like I can choose.”
He swallows hard, eyes locked on yours. There’s something in his expression—something raw and aching. Like he’s trying to hold back a tide of emotion and failing, just a little.
“Alright,” he says, voice rough, a little broken. “Then I’m yours. However you want me.”
So, he kisses you first.
Not rushed. Not greedy. Just slow. Reverent. Like he’s trying to memorize you—the shape of your mouth, the way your breath catches when he deepens the kiss, the soft sound you make when his tongue brushes yours. His hand cups your cheek, thumb stroking gently, and you melt into him, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.
Then, carefully, he shifts.
His hands slide to your hips, guiding you as he rolls, easing you beneath him with a tenderness that makes your chest ache. He hovers above you, braced on his forearms, eyes searching yours.
“Wanna see you,” he murmurs, voice thick. “Wanna take my time.”
You nod, breathless, and he leans in again—this time kissing your neck, your collarbone, the soft skin just below your ear. Each press of his lips is slow, deliberate, like he’s savoring every inch of you. His stubble scrapes lightly against your skin, and you shiver, your hands sliding up his back.
His hand starts to trail lower, slow and sure, until his fingers land inside your underwear and brush through the slick heat. You gasp, hips twitching, and he stills—not pulling away, just waiting.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “You’re alright.”
You nod, breath shaky, and he strokes again—featherlight, just enough to make your breath catch. Then his thumb circles your clit, and your whole body jolts.
“There she is,” he murmurs, smiling against your neck. “Still so sensitive.”
You whimper, your hips rocking without thinking.
“My poor bun is so needy, huh?” He asks, placing a breathy kiss on your cheek. You can’t do anything but nod needly, a whine leaving your lips.
Then his fingers trail lower, teasing your entrance, and he pauses.
“Gonna put one in,” he says. “Just like last time. Let’s see how you take it, yea?”
You nod, breathless, and he eases in—slow, careful, watching your face the whole time. The stretch is still unusual but not painful. Just…full.
You gasp when Joel starts to thrust in, your thighs trembling, and his free hand comes up to cradle your cheek.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “Doin’ so good, baby.”
He starts to move, slow and shallow at first, letting you adjust. Then he curls his finger just slightly, and your back arches when he brushes something deep inside you that makes your whole body light up.
“There,” he says, voice low and rough. “Remember what this is called?”
You gasp, eyes fluttering. “G-spot.”
He grins, presses a kiss to your jaw. “That’s my girl. Knew you’d remember.”
He curls his finger again, slow and deliberate, and your breath stutters, rubbing over that spongy spot that makes your eyes roll.
“Feels good, don’t it?” he murmurs.
You nod, barely able to speak. “So good.”
“Yeah,” he says, watching your face twist with pleasure. “She’s been waitin’ on this. On me.”
His fingers move with a rhythm inside you, slow and steady, when his other hand slides up your side. He pushes your dress higher, bunching it around your ribs, and then he sees you.
His breath catches.
“Oh, baby…” he murmurs, voice cracking. “They’re hard already, bun…” His thumb brushes over your nipple, featherlight, and you shiver. “You ever touched these before?” he asks, eyes flicking up to yours.
You shake your head, cheeks burning. “No.”
He groans, like the answer physically hurts him.
His hand cups your breast, thumb brushing again, slower this time. “Saw ‘em that first night,” he says, voice low and wrecked. “You remember? You were sittin’ in front of the mirror, that little dress on… they were already perked up. Couldn’t stop starin’.”
You nod, breath catching. “You touched them. Through the fabric.”
“I did,” he whispers. “Rubbed my thumb right over ‘em. You gasped so sweet, like you didn’t even know they could feel that good.”
He leans down, mouth brushing your skin. “Been thinkin’ about this ever since. About how you’d feel. How you’d sound.”
He kisses the swell of your breast, then the peak, lips soft and reverent.
“So fuckin’ soft,” he breathes. “So warm. You’re killin’ me, bun. You really are.”
His mouth closes around your nipple, slow and deep, and you cry out, your back arching. His fingers inside you curl just right, and your whole body tightens.
“Joel—”
“I know, baby,” he murmurs, voice shaking. “I know. I’m right here. Just let me love on you a little longer.”
Your breath stutters, caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob. His fingers keep moving, slow and sure, curling deep inside you with a rhythm that’s just right—like he’s listening to your body more than your words.
You clutch at his shoulders, your thighs trembling.
“Close—” you breathe, voice cracking.
“I know, bug,” he whispers, lips brushing your skin. “I got you. Just let go.”
The pressure builds, hot and unbearable, and this time you don’t fight it. You let it crest, let it take you. Your body arches, a cry slipping from your lips as you come around his fingers—tight and pulsing and overwhelming. It’s not loud, not wild. It’s deep. Shaking. Like something breaking open inside you.
Joel holds you through it, his hand never faltering, his mouth still soft on your chest.
“There you go,” he murmurs, voice rough with awe. “That’s it.”
You collapse against the mattress, breathless, your skin flushed and damp. He slows his hand, easing you down, then stills completely, just holding you.
You feel his forehead press to your shoulder, his breath warm and shaky. “You alright?” he asks, barely audible.
“Yea—yeah. That was good.” You say breathless.
He smiles softly, brushing the damp hair out of your face.
He watches you for a beat longer, then leans over to the nightstand. You hear the soft crinkle of foil as he grabs the condom, and he glances back at you.
“You ever seen how these are used before?” he asks, not teasing—just checking.
You shake your head. “Not up close.”
He nods, then tears the packet open slowly, deliberately. “Alright. Watch, then. Just so you know how it works.”
You do. You watch as he pulls down his shorts, his cock jumping free—once again, droplets of pre-cum formed on the tip. He rolls the condom on, his movements careful, precise. And there’s something strangely intimate about it—not clinical, not awkward. Just…real. Human.
When he’s done, he settles between your thighs again, his hand trailing down your side. He softly pulls down your panties, placing a kiss just above your mound.
“Still okay?” he asks.
You nod. “Yeah.”
Then, he leans in, kisses you—soft and slow then shifts his weight, one hand sliding between your legs. His fingers find your clit again, rubbing in slow, gentle circles, and you gasp, hips twitching.
“Just wanna make sure you’re still nice and ready,” he murmurs. “Don’t want nothin’ to hurt.”
You nod, breath catching.
He lines himself up, the head of him nudging against your entrance. He pauses, eyes locked on yours. “Gonna go slow,” he says. “Just the tip, baby. Let’s get you used to it, yea?”
You nod again, and he begins to press in — slow, careful, inch by inch. The stretch is intense, unfamiliar, and your breath catches in your throat.
You gasp, your hands tightening on his arms.
Joel stills immediately. “S’only the tip, baby,” he says softly. “You okay?”
You nod, but he waits. “I’m okay,” you whisper. “Just…full.”
He leans down, kisses your cheek. “I know. You’re doin’ so good.”
He stays still for a moment, just the tip of him inside you, his breath coming in shallow pulls. His eyes are locked on yours, searching, waiting.
“You’re squeezin’ me so sweet, baby,” he murmurs, voice rough with awe. “Can’t believe this is real.”
Joel leans down, presses a kiss to your cheek, then your jaw, then the corner of your mouth.
“Gonna go a little deeper,” he whispers. “You tell me if it’s too much.”
You nod, and he shifts his weight, one hand sliding down to lace his fingers with yours. He squeezes gently, grounding you, and then he starts to mov—slow, careful, easing in inch by inch.
You gasp, your brows knitting, and he stills again.
“You okay?” he asks, eyes flicking to your face. “Talk to me, bun.”
You nod, breath shaky. “Yeah. Just…so full.”
That’s the only thing you can say about his length inside you. Full. Stretching you to the brim.
“Oh, baby.” he says softly. “You’re doin’ so good.”
He kisses your temple, then your shoulder, and with one more slow push, he sinks the rest of the way in. You whine out, your body arching, and he groans—low and broken against your skin.
“All the way inside now, bun,” he breathes. “You’ve got me. Every inch.”
You cling to him, your heart pounding, your body adjusting around him. He doesn’t move, just holds you—one hand in yours, the other stroking your side, his forehead pressed to yours.
“Still with me?” he murmurs.
You nod, eyes glassy. “Yeah.”
He exhales, shaky and slow. “Okay. We’ll stay right here. Just breathe with me.”
You’re still adjusting, your body wrapped around him, in a way that makes your breath catch. Joel hasn’t moved—not really. He’s just holding you, breathing with you, his forehead resting against yours.
And then you whisper, voice barely there, “Move. Please.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, the sound low and frayed.
“Already feelin’ good, hm?” he murmurs, brushing his nose against your cheek. “S’alright. Just tell me—”
“Just tell me if it’s too much, if you wanna stop, if anything don’t feel right,” you cut in, mimicking his voice with a breathless little grin.
Joel stills.
Then he lifts his head, eyes narrowing just slightly.
“That’s the second time you interrupted me, honey,” he says, voice low and tight.
Before you can answer, he draws his hips back —just a little and thrusts into you once, slow but deep. You gasp, your eyes widen, your whole body jolting.
“Not gonna stay nice if you do it again.”
His voice is rough, teeth gritted, but his hand is still holding yours, his thumb stroking your knuckles. He’s still there—still Joel, but something’s cracked open now. The hunger. The heat. The part of him that’s been waiting too long to feel this.
He watches your face as he starts to move—slow at first, just a gentle roll of his hips, easing in and out with careful precision. You gasp, your fingers tightening around his, and he groans low in his throat.
“There it is… yeah. You’re startin’ to melt around me, huh?”
You can do nothing but mindlessly nod.
He finds a rhythm, steady, deep, unhurried—and your body responds before you can think. Your thighs tremble, your breath stutters, and he feels it.
He breathes, voice rough. “You’re takin’ me so sweet, bun. So fuckin’ sweet.
You whimper, your back arching, and he leans down, kissing your neck, your shoulder, your jaw.
His thrusts stay slow, but deeper now, more deliberate. He watches every flicker of your expression, the way your mouth falls open, the way your brows knit, the way your eyes flutter shut.
The whole room fills with your moans.
“You okay?” he asks, voice strained.
You nod, breathless. “Yeah. Feels…so good.”
He exhales, shaky. “Good. Just hold on to me.”
He presses his forehead to yours, his hand still gripping yours tight, and keeps thrusting slow.
“Joel.”
His rhythm falters for just a second when you say his name like that—soft, wrecked, barely a breath. He lifts his head, eyes locking on yours, and nods, his jaw tight, his breath ragged.
“I know, bun,” he murmurs, voice thick. “I know.”
But he doesn’t stop. He can’t.
His hips keep moving, slow and deep, and you feel every inch of him, every careful thrusts like a promise.
He reaches down now, feeling himself getting close. His fingers find your clit—slow, careful—and the second he touches your bud, you whine out loud, high and helpless.
“You’re so fuckin’ soft here,” he breathes, voice low and frayed. “So swollen. S’good?”
“Mhm, Joel.” All you can do is nod, eyes fluttering shut.
Then he thrusts a little deeper, a little firmer, making you moan louder around him.
“Didn’t know it could feel so good…” your voice barely above a whisper.
He chuckles, low and warm. “Yeah? S’posed to, baby. I’ve got you.”
Every thrust makes your breath catch. His hand is still laced with yours, his forehead pressed to yours, and you can feel the tension in his body. Every muscle tight. Every breath ragged.
But then he stills, just for a second, and you feel it—the way he’s holding himself back.
“Joel?” you whisper.
He shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck, baby… it’s been a long time.”
You blink up at him, dazed. “You’re close?”
He nods, jaw clenched. “Too close. But I want you to come first.”
You open your mouth to speak, but then his hand on your clit starts to rub tighter and faster circles, making your body jolt.
“Joel—” you gasp, hips twitching.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I know, bun. Just let me take care of you.”
He keeps moving inside you, just enough to keep the rhythm, while his fingers work you with quiet precision. His eyes are locked on your face, watching every flicker of sensation, every gasp, every tremble.
“You’re so close,” he breathes. “I can feel it. You’re squeezin’ me so tight, baby…”
You whimper, your body arching, and he groans—low and broken. “God, you’re gonna undo me,” he mutters. “But I need to feel you come first. Need to feel you fall apart around me.”
You cry out, hips jerking.
“Please”
“Shh, baby,” he breathes, voice shaking. “I know. I’m right there too.”
His fingers move in slow, steady circles, matching the rhythm of his hips. You’re already so close—the pressure building again, tighter this time, sharper.
“Gonna come… I think,” you whisper, barely able to speak.
Joel groans, forehead pressing to yours. “Good, baby. Gooood,” he murmurs, his voice thick with awe. “That’s it.”
His thumb moves just right, coaxing, guiding. “Remember to chase it,” he whispers. “Feel it, bun. Don’t hold back.”
You cling to him, your body trembling, and then it hits—hot and deep and overwhelming. You cry out, your body clenching around him, and Joel curses under his breath, his rhythm faltering.
“Fuck—” he groans. “That’s it. That’s my girl.”
You feel him lose control then—his hips snapping forward, deeper, rougher, and he gasps against your neck.
“Can’t—can’t hold it,” he chokes out. “You feel too fuckin’ good.”
You wrap your arms around him, pulling him closer. “It’s okay,” you whisper. “I want you to.”
He buries his face in the crook of your neck, his whole body shuddering as he thrusts deep one final time. You feel it—the way he stills, the way his muscles lock, the low, guttural sound he makes as he comes, spilling into the condom with a broken gasp.
His weight settles over you, heavy and warm, both of you slick with sweat, your chests rising and falling in sync. The room is filled with nothing but your breathing—ragged, uneven, real.
You slide your hand up, fingers threading into the damp curls at the nape of his neck. You stroke gently, grounding him, and he melts into it, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to your throat.
Neither of you speaks. You don’t need to.
He stays there, wrapped around you, his lips brushing your skin like a prayer, like a thank you. And you just hold him, your fingers in his hair, your heart still racing.
Joel hasn’t moved much—just shifted enough to ease his weight off you, but he’s still close, still inside the moment. His fingers brush your cheek, tentative. “Was that…okay?” he asks, voice low, uncertain. “I didn’t go too far?”
You blink up at him, stunned. “Are you kidding?”
He looks down, brows drawn, like he’s bracing for something.
You smile, soft and a little dazed. “Joel…that was more than okay.”
He exhales, shaky, and leans in to press a kiss to your forehead. “Good,” he murmurs. “Just…didn’t wanna mess it up. Didn’t wanna hurt you.”
“You didn’t,” you whisper. “You made me feel safe. Wanted. Like I mattered.”
His throat works around something he doesn’t say. Instead, he presses another kiss to your temple, then your cheek, then the corner of your mouth.
He swallows. “You’re mine now,” he says, voice low, almost shy. “Forever… if you want.”
You smile, fingers still stroking the back of his neck.
“You’re mine too, old man.”
He huffs a soft laugh, the sound muffled against your skin. “Yeah,” he says, pressing a kiss just below your ear. “Guess I am.”
And then he just holds you tighter, like he’s never letting go.
You weren’t a stray cat anymore.
Joel kept you now. Forever.
OH MY GOD🥹 this took sooo long but i’m proud of it. Hope it meets yalls expectations!! Also my last fic for this year😭😭
(No pressure tags) if you liked the first part, you may like the second: @mabelmiller @furiousprincesskingdom @elkenenvy @alpacinolover1213 @claredevee @lambs-fav-fics @spicytunarolllll @zoot3577 @cuteanimalmama @pookiewrldfics @zeida
Summary: you tiptoe into Joel Miller’s home like a stray cat, always giving him a heart attack, always flashing those doe eyes, tear-spilled and aching, and making his heart twist. So he protects you—cares for you, cooks for you, calls you pet names. But that night feels different. Heavy. There’s an ache crawling through your body, one you don’t understand and can’t quiet. You try. You fail. And when you get caught—by the same man who just called you “kiddo”—you can’t help but ask him for help.
Warnings: 18+, smut, MDNI, age gap! (60s and 20s), pillow grinding, masturbation, really inexperienced!reader, one (1) light thigh spank, fingering, joel teaches you how to touch yourself with a mirror, soft!joel, like the sweetest Joel, he is super flustered, fluff, pet names, lot’s of praise, joel calls reader kiddo/kid, implications of abusive household, implications of abusive father, drunk father, outbreak, kind of dbf!joel but not really
A/N: if anyone can still remember this from the poll i made monthsss ago, you are a real one🤞🏻 but i loved writing this, it’s filthy but also so incredibly soft, sweet and joel is just a sweet old man :((( (he is alive and well) anyways, i hope yall enjoy this!!🫶🏻
“Jesus Christ, girl. Told ya not to scare me like this.” He huffs out, boots creaking on the old wooden floor as he turns to face you. “Sneakin’ up on me like a damn cat.”
The light outside is slowly fading, as his eyes scan you—quick, instinctive. He takes in the flushed skin, the way your dress hangs crooked on your frame, the tremble in your fingers. Then his gaze lands on your tear streaked cheeks, and something shifts.
His whole face tightens in worry.
“Did ya daddy say mean things again?” He pinches your chin in his hand, making you look up to him.
You can only nod, unable to speak—because if you did, you were sure the knot in your throat would unravel, and you’d sob, just like you did hours before coming to Joels house.
He softly coos, one arm wrapping around your body as he pulls you into his chest. “Oh, babygirl,” he whispers, resting his chin gently on top of your head. “I’m sorry.” Then he presses a kiss there, steady and long.
His words sink deep into your bones, steadying your heart—not with judgment, but with understanding and care.
“S’okey.” You mumble, burying your face into his flannel shirt further, taking in his musk.
“Hell, I probably stink, don’t I?”
Joel just came back from chopping wood. His hands were rough—calloused, streaked with dirt as usual. Sweat clung to his skin, glistening along his neck and brow, soaking into the collar of his shirt. The scent of him was musky, edged with pine and smoke, but also of course, a hint of sweat lingering behind.
You loved burying your head into his chest.
“Not really,” You mumble. “Can I stay here tonight?” You ask, pulling away from his embrace and locking eyes with him—the question making your cheeks all flushed, a hint of embarrassment behind them.
“We can’t keep doin’ this, bug.” Joel murmurs, finger twirling a strand of your hair. “You come back every single time, like a damn stray cat.”
You roll your eyes at that, but a smile tugs on your lips.
“What? it’s true. I feed her, give her some milk and she always tip toes into my house back and gives me a near damn heart attack.”
You couldn’t quite pinpoint when it all began.
Maybe it started when your dad and Joel, being neighbors, began visiting each other—trading food, clothes, medicine like good old friends. Or maybe it was when you and Joel started talking about everything and nothing, while you found yourself trusting him with things you hadn’t told anyone else. Then again, it might have been that night you tiptoed into his house without asking, desperate for a place to stay after your dad had been cruel to you again.
Even then, he never asked questions. Even then, he knew what you needed in that moment, as if he could read you.
They all say in town: Joel Miller is a rough, stern, stubborn, and gruff man. But you always saw the opposite. You saw the way his fingers shifted patterns on your skin, careful not to let his dry hands scrape you. The way he’d place a cold hand on your forehead and leave it there—steady and quiet—until your migraine melted away. You heard his voice becoming softer when he talked to you.
And then there were the quiet actions. Like replacing the kitchen clock with a quieter one, just because you once told him—without meaning to—that the ticking reminded you of the one in your father’s room: loud and fast.
Or how he never locks the door anymore. Always leaves the porch light on, so you know—you can come in, even if it’s the middle of the night.
You sometimes wished he was your father.
“I tell ya what. You help me with bringing those logs inside and then you can stay here.”
You nod, eagerly.
So, he gestures towards a pair of worn boots by the step—his, clearly too big for you, but the only option he’s got.
“Go on,” he murmurs, voice low and rough. “Slip into those. Ground’s cold.”
You glance down at the boots, then back up at him, one brow raised.
He sighs, already exasperated. “Why ya always gotta come barefoot anyways? Ya gonna catch a cold.”
You roll your eyes, a little smirk tugging at your lips. “I’m fine.”
And before he can argue, you step past him, bare feet brushing over the cool stone, then the grass, then the packed dirt of his garden path.
Joel watches you go, but then shakes his head, chuckling. He can’t stay mad at you. Never.
The wood’s already stacked neatly near the shed, thick logs piled in a criss-cross pattern. You bend to grab one, arms wrapping around the weight of it, and carry it back towards the house. Joel moves the same, grabbing two—instead of one—and moving them into his house.
You come back for another, but as your foot shifts on the ground, something sharp presses into your sole. You hiss, stumbling slightly, and glance back at him.
He’s already shaking his head.
“Told ya to wear the boots, honey bun.”
You stick your tongue out at him, giggling as you hobble a step, then straighten and scoop up the log anyway. Joel smirks, eyes accidentally lingering on your legs as you walk back towards the house, the hem of your dress swaying with each step.
You’re halfway through stacking the last of the wood before Joel disappears into the hallway. You don’t think much of it—just keep moving, barefoot on the cool floor, arms full of logs that leave little flecks of bark on your dress.
When you place them down, and turn around, he’s back. Holding something.
A pair of thick, worn, brown socks.
He tosses them onto the couch, then goes to close the door to his garden. He jerks his chin towards his couch. “Sit.”
You blink. “What?”
“Sit down, kiddo.” His voice is calm, but firm. “You been runnin’ around barefoot like a damn forest sprite. Floor’s cold. You’re gonna catch somethin’.”
You roll your eyes, arms crossed. “I’m fine.”
Joel gives you a look—that look—the one that says, “I could bend you over and spank you,” and you know better than to argue. With a huff, you drop onto the couch, legs swinging slightly.
He kneels in front of you, knees popping—followed by that quiet dad groan he always makes as he lowers himself. His hand comes up, wraps around your ankle real gentle but firm.
You try to pull back, but he doesn’t let you.
“Quit squirming. Let me take care of you.”
You go still, cheeks flushing.
He slips the first sock over your foot, slow and careful, as if you’re something fragile. His fingers brush your ankle, your calf. He doesn’t look up, his eyebrows are pinched, concentrated
“Can’t have you gettin’ sick. Cold floor like this’ll mess with your stomach. You’ll be cryin’ to me about cramps in a day or two.” He murmurs.
You snort. “You sound like an old man.”
He smirks, sliding the second sock on. “Yeah, well. Old man knows how to keep you warm, bug.”
When he’s done, he pats your knee, then leans in—just a little and presses a kiss to the inside of your ankle. Soft. Barely there.
Your stomach does a small flip. And your toes curl against the rug, like your body’s reacting before your mind can catch up. It’s just a kiss, soft and low on your ankle, but it sends something warm skimming up your spine.
Then he stands up slowly, “There. All better.”
You wiggle your toes in the socks, quiely recovering from the kiss. They’re too big, smell like cedar and laundry soap—just like Joel smells whenever he changes clothes. You don’t say thank you. You don’t have to.
Joel’s already watching you with that quiet, unreadable look—the one that says he’d do it all over again, every day, just to keep you safe.
Then he clears his throat, voice low and lazy.
“Whatcha want to eat, huh, hon?” You glance up. “We can make some pasta,” he adds, already turning towards the kitchen.
You hop off the couch, socks slipping slightly on the floor, and trail after him. “You always make some pasta.”
Joel shrugs, pulling open a cabinet. “It’s easy. And you love my pasta.”
You climb onto the counter, legs swinging, watching him move m—sleeves pushed up, hands steady, the taught rhythm of someone who’s done this a hundred times before. He grabs a pot, fills it with water, sets it on the stove.
“You gonna help or just sit there lookin’ all cute?” he mutters, not looking at you.
You grin. “I’m moral support.”
Joel snorts, tossing you a clove of garlic. “Then start peelin’, bug.”
So, you do. Slowly. While watching him out of the corner of your eye as he moves around the kitchen and hums under his breath. The silence between you isn’t awkward…it’s warm. Familiar.
And when he brushes past you to grab the salt, his hand grazes your knee. He doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t even look at you.
But you feel it. And so does he.
Slowly, the air starts to smell like olive oil and tomatoes. The kitchen, warm now, feels like home—the kind you never had, but Joel made for you.
He glances over his shoulder at you, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “You’re gettin’ more garlic on the floor than in the bowl, bun.”
You shrug, grinning. “You’re the one who made me help.”
He chuckles, shaking his head as he stirs the sauce.
Then—suddenly—a knock on his door.
Your heart jumps. The garlic slips from your fingers, forgotten. You freeze, eyes wide, breath caught in your throat.
Joel looks up, brows furrowing. “Relax,” he says, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “It’s probably just Tommy.”
But you’re already sliding off the counter, feet hitting the floor with a soft thud, knowing what it could mean if your father finds you. You duck behind the counter, heart pounding, curling in on yourself like instinct. Joel watches you for a beat, something unreadable flickering across his face.
“Alright,” he mutters, more to himself now. He walks to the door, slow and steady, and opens it just a crack. And the smell hits him first—sharp, sour, unmistakable. Then the voice.
“You’ve seen my girl, Miller?”
Joel’s jaw tightens. Your father stands on the porch, swaying ever so slightly, eyes glassy, breath thick with liquor. His shirt’s half untucked, belt askew, like he got dressed in the dark.
Joel doesn’t blink. “Nah,” he says, voice flat. “I was home all the time.”
Your father squints at him, leans in too close.
“You sure?”
Joel’s eyes narrow. His voice drops, low and dangerous. “You callin’ me a liar?” And hell, he could punch the shit out of him if you weren’t behind the counter.
There’s a beat of silence. Then your father scoffs, mutters something under his breath, and stumbles back down the steps, disappearing into the dusk.
Joel watches him go, jaw clenched, hand still on the doorknob, trying to calm himself down from the anger he is feeing. Only when the sound of retreating footsteps fades does he shut the door, slow and deliberate. The lock clicks into place.
He turns around.
You’re still crouched behind the counter, peeking up with wide, sad eyes. Your hands are clenched in your lap, shoulders drawn tight.
Joel’s face softens instantly, the anger washing away as fast as it came. He crosses the room in a few strides and kneels besides you, his knees popping as he lowers himself down.
“You stayin’ here tonight,” he says gently, “Maybe even tomorrow.”
You don’t answer. You just throw your arms around his neck, burying your face into his chest. He catches you so easily, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other wrapping around your waist.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he whispers, pressing his lips to your hair. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you here. I got you.”
You nod against him, breath shaky, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, brushing a thumb under your eye. “It’s alright now. Let’s keep cookin’, yeah? My tummy’s grumblin’”
You manage a small smile. He helps you up, steadying you with a hand on your back, and guides you gently back to the counter.
The garlic’s still there, waiting. The water’s boiling. And Joel—Joel is right beside you, like he always is, and always be.
—
The pasta’s gone cold, but neither of you seem to notice.
You’re sitting across from Joel at his little wooden table, legs tucked under you, fork still in hand.
Joel leans back in his chair, watching you with that unreadable look. You can feel it—the way his eyes linger, the way his fingers tap slow against the rim of his glass.
You set your fork down. Swallow hard.
“You know…” you start, voice soft. “I don’t really trust people. Not anymore.”
Joel’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“But I trust you.” You look up to meet his eyes. “With everything.”
He shifts in his seat, like the words hit somewhere deep. He looks away, jaw tight.
“Don’t do that,” he mutters. “Don’t go puttin’ that kind of faith in me. I ain’t no good man, baby.”
You shake your head, voice steady now.
“Well… you’re better than my father.”
That lands like a stone in the room. Joel’s eyes snap back to yours, something raw flickering behind them. He doesn’t speak right away. Just stares at you, like he’s trying to figure out what to say that won’t break the moment.
Finally, he leans forward, elbows on the table, voice low. “That ain’t sayin’ much.”
You smile, sad and small. “It’s sayin’ enough.”
Joel exhales, long and slow. Then he reaches across the table, rough fingers brushing yours. He doesn’t grab your hand—just lets his rest there, close enough for you to choose.
And you do.
You slide your hand into his, and he closes his fingers around yours tightly. You expect him to let go, to change the subject.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he lifts your hand slowly, eyes never leaving yours, and presses a kiss to your knuckles—soft, sweet, delicate, like he’s done it a thousand times in his head but never dared to do it for real.
Your heart warms.
It started with safety. With wishing he was the kind of man who could’ve raised you. But now, when he looks at you like that, and kisses you— you know it’s something else entirely.
And then there is another thing. The one where Joel makes you feel different. Not in your heart but rather…down there. Deep in your belly, where butterflies loom whenever you look at his calloused hands, whenever he stands in front of you—broad shoulders and as a big man who could handle anything.
A giggle slips out before you can stop it.
Joel raises an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”
You shake your head, cheeks warm. “Nothin’. Just… your hands are so big.”
He laughs, but there’s a flicker of something else in his eyes—something darker, deeper. “Yeah? That a problem?”
You shrug, trying to play it off, but your tummy does a little flip as his thumb brushes over your knuckles again, slow and absentminded.
The room is dim now, the outside fully dark. And if it weren’t for the gentle brushes of his thumb over your knuckles, it would be the silence that let’s you a yawn slip. Stretching your mouth wide before you can stifle it.
Joel catches it instantly.
“Looks like somebody’s tired already?” he says, voice low and teasing.
You blink at him, eyes heavy, lips curved in a sleepy smile. “M’not.”
He chuckles, his hands leaving yours before standing up and offering the same hand. “C’mon, honey bun. Let’s get you tucked in before you fall asleep on my damn table.”
You take his hand without hesitation, letting him guide you down the hall—his thumb beginning to brush over your knuckles again.
He stops in front of the small door and pushes it open with a quiet grunt. The hinges groan slightly, like they haven’t been used in a while. The room beyond is cozy, if a little dusty—a twin bed tucked against the wall, a faded quilt folded neatly at the foot, and a big mirror leaned against the other side of the room.
Joel steps inside first, flicking on the light. Dust motes dance in the glow.
“S’been a while since you were here,” he murmurs, running a hand along the edge of the mirror. His fingers come away gray, and he wipes them on his jeans with a quiet huff. “Should’ve cleaned up better.”
You smile, stepping in behind him. The room is small, but it’s yours. Always has been. He never says it out loud, but he keeps it ready—just in case.
Joel walks over to the bed, pulls the blanket back with a dramatic flourish, and pats the mattress. “Alright, bug. Hop in.”
You climb in, the sheets cool against your skin, the mattress dipping slightly under your weight. Before you can settle, Joel grabs the edge of the blanket and throws it over you, tucking it in tight around your sides.
Then, with a grin, he starts rolling you—gently, playfully—wrapping you up like a burrito, like a cocoon. “There we go,” he mutters, half to himself. “All wrapped up. Ain’t goin’ nowhere now.”
You giggle, squirming a little under the snug weight of the blanket. “Joel!”
He chuckles, crouching beside the bed, one hand braced on the mattress, the other smoothing your hair back from your face.
“You always do this,” you murmur, eyes soft.
Joel grins. “You always giggle.”
You peek up at him, voice quieter now. “You always kiss my forehead.”
Joel’s expression shifts—something tender flickering behind his eyes. His voice drops, warm and low. “And I always will.”
He watches you for a beat longer, then leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead—slow, gentle, lingering just a second too long. A silence settles between you, thick with something unspoken. Then he clears his throat gently.
“I’ll be downstairs,” he says, softer now. “Still need to work on somethin’. If ya need anythin’, just come down, yeah?”
You nod, cheeks warm, eyes already heavy.
“Okay.”
“Night, honey bun,” he whispers.
And then he stands, walks to the door, and slips out without another word, closing it behind him with a soft click.
—
It hits you just minutes after the door clicks shut. A slow, pulsing ache deep in your belly. A thrum of want, right where your hands have never wandered before.
You shift on the bed, the sheets cool beneath your thighs, the air still holding the warmth of where he was. Your fingers twitch at your sides, unsure. You glance towards the door, half-expecting him to come back. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.
The silence stretches.
You sit up, then lie back down. Pull the blanket up, then push it off again. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s holding something in. Like something wants to release, but it can’t.
Your eyes flick to the mirror across the room. You don’t recognize the girl staring back—flushed cheeks, parted lips, pupils wide like she’s seen something she wasn’t supposed to.
You think of Joel.
His voice…low, steady, rough. The kind that settles in your chest and stays there.
His hands—big, calloused, careful. The way they brushed over your hand, the way he kept you wrapped up around his chest. The way he looked at you—not like you were fragile, but like you were worth protecting.
You close your eyes and breathe him in, even though he’s gone. The scent of him still lingers—soap, cedar, something with wood.
Your hand moves without thinking. Just resting. Just curious.
You’re not sure what you’re doing. But you know what you’re feeling.
You never touched that place. But today, something in your body wants more. Something aching to be touched, something that makes your pulse go faster, your breathing deeper.
So your hand starts moving—slow strokes over your damp panties. Your cheeks burn as the first waves of pleasure stir beneath your skin, soft and startling.
It feels good.
Too good.
A spark flares, sharp and sweet, and for a moment you think—maybe this is it. This is what your body wants. But it fades too fast. Dissolves before it can crest. You’re left with a pulse that won’t settle and a need that won’t quiet.
So you try again.
Stroking up and down. Left and right. Your body responds—hips shifting, breath catching. It’s good. More than good. But it’s not enough. Like trying to drink from a glass that’s just out of reach. You taste it, but you’re still thirsty. Your breath comes out in sharp waves and your hand moves faster, chasing something that’s there something you are not quite sure how to reach.
But you fail. The burning sensation on your cheeks grow, and you’re breathless when you let your hand fall.
You shift again, restless. Your thighs press together, trying to chase that feeling. Your gaze drifts across the bed, landing on the pillow near your hip. You hesitate. Then, slowly, you pull it between your legs, the fabric cool against your skin and the now, more dampened fabric.
You close your eyes, hips rocking against that feeling.
You don’t know what you’re doing—only that it feels good. You sit up, straddling it. The pillow is soft beneath you, and your hips begin to move faster without permission. You bury your face in the sheets, breath catching, heart pounding.
And somewhere in the dark, his name flickers on your tongue.
Joel stands at the kitchen sink, cleaning the dishes from the pasta. He should’ve gone to bed by now, leave all of that and just relax. But something’s keeping him up—a restlessness in his chest he can’t shake. If it’s guilt, or love—he can’t decide.
He thinks of you. The way you looked at him tonight, the way your eyes peaked from behind the counter. The way you wrapped your arms around him like he is the only person that can save you.
He runs a hand down his face, exhales slow. “Get a grip,” he mutters to himself. “She’s just a kid.”
Still, it lingers. He folds the same dish towel twice. Stares out the window like it might give him answers.
And when he finally heads to the hallway, to wash his face, put on his something more comfortable—he hears it.
Upstairs, Joel freezes.
He’s halfway to his bedroom when he hears it—your voice, muffled but clear, calling his name in a tone that makes his stomach twist. It’s not loud, but it’s enough. Enough to make his heart lurch.
He doesn’t think. Just moves.
Two long strides and he’s at your door, pushing it open with a sharp breath.
“Baby?” he calls, voice tight with worry. “You okay—”
Then he sees you.
You’re on your knees, straddling the pillow, frozen mid-motion. Your breath catches. Your eyes go wide. Your mouth is parted, lips swollen, cheeks flushed a deep, blooming pink.
Joel stops dead in his tracks.
His heart drops straight into his boots.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, voice low and stunned. He turns his head, suddenly aware of what he’s walked into. “Sorry, I— I didn’t mean to barge in like that.”
But then you say it again.
“Joel,” you breathe, voice trembling, needy. “Please.”
He doesn’t know what you’re asking for. Doesn’t know if you know. But the sound of it—the way you say his name like it’s the only word you’ve got left—hits him like a punch to the chest.
His cheeks flush hard. His hands find his hips, like he needs something to hold onto.
“Gosh,” he says, voice rough. “The hell are ya doin’, bug?”
He doesn’t even know why he asks. He sees it. Clear as day. But his brain’s still catching up to his heart, and his heart’s caught somewhere between panic and something he doesn’t dare name.
You sink down on the pillow slowly, heart pounding, shame already rising in your throat. “I… I can’t help myself,” you whisper, voice thin and breathless. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes flick back to you, going soft. “S’alright,” he says, voice low. “I’ll just—”
“Will you help me?”
The words tumble out before you can even stop them.
Joel freezes. Really freezes. His whole body goes still, like the air’s been knocked out of him. He looks at you, disbelief written on his face, and something shifts. His mouth parts, but no sound comes out. He’s searching for words and finding none.
“I don’t know what I’m doing…” you whimper, voice cracking. “I just—I don’t know how to make it stop.”
Joel’s hands fall from his hips. He rubs his forehead, dragging his palm down his face like he’s trying to wake himself up from a dream.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes. “Nah. Not happening.“
“Please, Joel.”
He shakes his head, backing towards the door. “No, baby. I— I can’t. You can just… do whatever you need. I’ll leave ya alone.”
He turns, hand on the doorknob, already halfway out.
And then you say it.
“It hurts…”
Just two words. Barely a whisper. But they hit him like a bullet.
Joel stops.
His jaw clenches. His eyes squeeze shut. He curses under his breath—not at you, god, never at you—but at himself. At the way his heart twists. At the way his body responds, his cock wakes up in his pants. At the way he wants to help you, even while he knows he shouldn’t.
So, he turns back around.
Steps into the room again, slow and quiet. He walks awkwardly and sits down besides you, careful not to touch.
His eyes land on your flushed skin, sweat on your forehead, the way your hands are gripping the pillow as if it’s going to run away from you. And then the small wet spot you left—on his pillow. His. Joel’s head turns into mush.
“W-what do ya want me to do, bug?” he asks, voice almost broken.
You should be embarrassed. You should be hiding your face, pretending it didn’t happen. You shouldn’t be asking him for help. But you don’t feel shame anymore. Because it’s Joel. And with him, you don’t feel ashamed. You feel safe.
You look at him, eyes glassy, lips parted. “Touch me.”
Joel flinches. His jaw tightens. He shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut. “God, baby… it ain’t right to do things like that when you’re visitin’ someone.”
He rubs his face, voice cracking. “You’re young. You’re hurtin’. And I’m supposed to be takin’ care of you, not—” He stops himself, breath shaky. “Not this.”
You look at him, heart breaking a little, eyes wide and wet, voice barely a whisper. “But you said you would help me with anything.”
Joel freezes. That line hits him like a punch in the ribs. And he swallows hard, jaw clenched, eyes flicking away. “I did,” he murmurs. “I did say that.”
Why did he have to say that, for fuck sake.
He rubs his palms together, like he’s trying to scrub the guilt off of his skin. “Didn’t think it’d be this, bun. Didn’t think you’d be askin’ me for somethin’ like this.”
Silence stretches between you two. His eyes on you. On your skin. On your dress that’s hitched up. And on the small bit of your underwear that he can see. He lets out a shaky breath, seeing the way the fabric is completely soaked. He huffs, soft and low.
“Y’really are needy, aren’t you, huh?” His voice is deep, but soft.
You nod your head silently, shifting your hips to show him the mess you made. He swallows, muttering something under his breath that comes close to “christ.”
“Ain’t gonna touch you,” he says, finally. “But you can listen to my voice, yeah? Let me take care of you like that.”
You blink at him, confused. Lips parted, brows drawn.
Joel sees it immediately—sees the flicker of doubt, the question in your eyes—and his heart damn near cracks. He knows you’re just needy, just desperate to feel something. And he feels like a real bad man for denying you.
“I just…” he starts, then stops. Rubs a hand over his mouth. “I don’t wanna mess this up, bun.”
You tilt your head, still quiet. Still waiting. Like a cat.
“You’re all soft right now, all sweet. All needy.” he rambles, “and I know you trust me. I know you feel safe. And I ain’t gonna take that and twist it.”
He shifts, nervous. His hands twitch like they want to reach for you—but fhey don’t. They can’t.
“So I’m gonna talk you through it. Just my voice. You’ll still feel good. I promise. But this way… you’ll know I ain’t just takin’ advantage.”
You nod, slow, understanding what he is trying to say. You see it in his eyes, guilt written on them. You don’t want to make him feel bad. So, the tension in your shoulders eases, and you trust Joel to make the ache go away.
“Okay,” you whisper. Joel exhales, shaky and repeats: “Okay.”
“Alright then,” he murmurs. “Do what you were doing before I came into the room.”
You hesitate, eyes flicking to his. He nods, just once. “Go on. I’m right here.”
He shifts where he’s sitting, his body turning towards you. Now, his whole attention is on you.
So you move—just like before. Still unsure, still not a damn clue what you’re doing. Your hips begin to buck in that familiar rhythm, slow and searching. A soft whine slips from your lips as the now cool, damp pillow brushes against your aching heat. The sensation is new, startling, and you want to chase it.
You glance at him, eyes wide, waiting.
He sees it—the unsureness in your gaze. The need. And his voice comes low, steady, like a hand on your spine. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Just like that. You’re doin’ good. So damn good.”
You inhale sharply. The words settle over your skin. You hadn’t expected it to feel like this—how his voice alone could make your body respond, how praise could feel like touch. You move again, tentative. His voice follows you, steadying.
“Go slow, baby. No rush. Let yourself feel it.”
Each slow grind of your hips draws a quiet squeak from the mattress, rhythmic and raw. Your breath stutters, a whine escapes your mouth.
He hears it, so his voice dips lower. “You’re so beautiful like this. So sweet. Look at you.”
And Joel feels guilt in his chest rising from the words that leave his mouth. He swallows hard, jaw clenched. His voice is steady, but his hands are clenched into fists at his sides, like he’s holding himself back from reaching for you.
You glance at him, always. Only at him, awaiting something. Cheeks flushed, lips bitten bloody.
He gives you a nod, eyes warm but careful—not trying to let you see the guilt. “Keep goin’. I’m right here, bun.”
You move faster, shaky, needy, guided by his voice.
The tension starts to build, hips stammering in that rhythm he coaxed from you with nothing but words. You’re right there, teetering, the edge rising up to meet you—
And then it’s gone.
The pressure breaks, not into release, but into absence. A gasp tears from your throat, sharp and helpless. You freeze, blinking hard, chest heaving.
Frustration prickles at your skin.
“I—I can’t,” you whisper, voice cracking. “It’s not working.”
Joel’s jaw tightens, he sees the frustration. Sees the way your hips messily buck, your chest rising up and down quickly.
“I wanted to,” you whisper. “I really tried.”
He nods, brushing a hand down his face, like he’s trying to steady himself. Then, quieter: “I know. I saw you.”
Your breath hitches, frustration bubbling up in your chest. You blink fast, trying to swallow it down, but the words slip out before you can stop them.
“I—I never did it.”
Joel stills. His brow furrows. “What?”
You look away, cheeks burning.
“Touched myself I mean,” you whisper. “I tried before, but… I don’t have any privacy in that goddamn house. Someone’s always around. I never—” You shake your head, voice cracking. “I never got there.”
Joel’s face softens. He nods, slow and quiet, like he’s piecing it all together.
“That’s why you’re so worked up, huh?”
You nod, eyes downcast, lips trembling. You feel embarrassed for making such a scene tonight—keeping him up, begging him to touch you. But you don’t know any better. You don’t have anyone else.
He hesitates, then shifts closer, voice low and careful. “Can I… can I try somethin’ else?”
You look up, confused. He swallows hard.
“Still not gonna—” He stops, starts again. “Still not gonna take more than you give me. But maybe if I just…”
He lifts his hands, palms open, hovering over your hips.
“Just here,” he says. “My hands. That’s all. I’ll guide you. Help you move. Nothin’ more.”
You whisper, “please,” and reach for him without hesitation, your fingers curling around his hands like you need him to stay grounded. Joel exhales hard by your reaction, as if the wind’s been knocked out of him. His hands settle on your hips, warm and trembling.
“Fuck,” he mutters, voice thick. “You’re going to fuckin’ ruin me, bug.”
You blink up at him, breath catching, feeling the throbbing get worse now that his hands are on you.
He shakes his head, eyes locked on yours. “Always fuckin’ using those eyes on me,” he murmurs. “Always knowin’ you get what you ask for, don’t you?”
You blink up at him, a soft smile tugging at your lips as you squeeze his hands.
“I just look at you.”
Joel huffs a breath, something like a laugh but heavier. “’Course you do, baby.”
His gaze drops, catches on the slow, unconscious roll of your hips on the pillow—like your body’s still chasing the rhythm, even if your mind hasn’t caught up.
He swears under his breath, voice thick.
“C’mon then,” he says, shifting closer, hands squeezing gently on your hips. “Let’s get you there.”
You start moving your hips again, while Joel’s hands guide you, slow and sure now, his voice a low hum in your ear. And every time you falter, his grip reminds you: he’s here. He’s watching. He wants this for you.
And somehow, that makes it easier. Makes it deeper.
The friction is good, but it’s his hands that make you tremble. His hands that coax the heat higher. His hands that tell you it’s safe to fall apart.
“There we go,” he murmurs. “Movin’ so good for me.”
You whimper, chasing that edge again, feeling it coming closer and closer. He leans in, lips brushing over your cheek.
“Sweet little thing,” he breathes, “So fuckin’ good for me.”
Something in you breaks open at that—soft and aching. You can’t help it. You lean forward, forehead pressing to his shoulder, breath hot against his neck.
Joel stills, just for a second. Then his hands tighten firmer on your hips.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You rest right there, baby. I got you.”
You nod against him, breath trembling. He keeps talking, voice low and steady, every word a touch. You feel more wetness soaking the pillow, more mess forming between your legs. And he notices it.
“Didn’t know you had all that in you, honey bun.”
You bury your face further into his neck, heat rushing to your cheeks. You don’t say anything—can’t. Your body’s trembling, and his words only make it worse. Or better. You’re not sure anymore.
And he also notices the way your hips go faster, the way your thighs clench, the way your breath hitches.
“You’re shaking, baby. You gonna make another mess for me?”
And it hits you right in the chest. You whimper, barely, and lift your head. Your eyes meet his—wide, glassy, desperate. You nod. Just once. Small. Needy. Like you’re asking permission and giving it all at once.
Joel groans, his hands tightening on your hips.
“You’re doin’ so good. So proud of you. Let it come, bun. Let it take you.”
“J-joel.” You whimper out.
“M’right here. M’right here, baby.” He whispers, gently squeezing your hips and moving you against the pillow faster.
“I think—it’s coming, Joel.” You whimper, breathless.
Joel nods, his hands guide you on the pillow with a steady, fast rhythm, with the right amount of pleasure. You fall back to his neck, releasing a hiccup, hands holding down on the sheets, feeling that coil in your tummy finally about to snap and then—
…It’s gone again.
You freeze, breath caught in your throat, eyes wide with disbelief. Your face stays buried in his neck, hot with frustration, your breath hitching in little gasps.
“It’s gone.” you whisper, voice cracking.
Joel holds you tighter, one hand smoothing slow circles down your back. He doesn’t say anything at first—just breathes with you, steady and warm.
“What am I gonna do with you, bug, huh?” he murmurs, more to himself than to you.
You lift your head, eyes glassy, almost crying lips parted.
“Please,” you whisper. “Do something. I don’t care what. Just… please.”
Joel’s jaw flexes. He looks at you, then away, scanning the room like he’s searching for an answer. That’s when his eyes land on the mirror. On the long, full-lengthed one, leaning against the wall. He stares at it for a beat, then huffs a breath.
“Your father’s gonna kill me,” he mutters.
You blink, trying to figure out what he is thinking. “No,” you say, voice trembling but sure. “You’re stronger than him.”
Joel lets out a low, humorless chuckle. “You got no idea what you’re sayin’, baby.”
Then, you put your hand on top of his again, squeezing gently. “I do. I trust you.”
Joel’s mind spins with possibilities—how this idea could play out, how it might shift the shape of your relationship, how it could make him look like something he’s not. Like he’s crossing a line. Like he might ruin you. He looks at you for a long moment, searching. Then he nods. Slow. Decisive.
“Alright,” he says, voice almost broken. “Let’s try somethin’ different.”
He stands up, the bed dipping as he rises. Then he turns, reaches a hand out to you.
“Let me show you somethin’.”
You blink up at him, confused, but you take his hand. He pulls you up slowly, the pillow that just sat between your legs, now completely wet and ruined laying there in the corner. He steadies you when your knees wobble, and pulls down your dress again.
Together, you walk across the room, his hand warm around yours. The mirror looms ahead—tall, full-length, catching your reflection in the dim light.
He steps behind you, his hands resting on your hips. You meet his eyes in the mirror.
“You trust me?” he asks.
You nod, almost too quickly. Because you do. You trust him with everything you have.
He leans in, lips brushing your ear.
“Then let me see you, baby.” A shiver runs down your spine. “Can I take your panties off?”
Your breath catches. No one’s ever asked you that before. No one’s ever seen what lies behind the fabric.
And for a second, you freeze. Not because you don’t want it—but because it’s him. Because it’s real. Because this isn’t about being used. It’s about being seen. Because you trust him.
You nod. Slow. Careful. Then whisper, “Okay.”
Joel nods, pushing your dress up and hooking into the waistband of your panties, slow and deliberate. He kneels as he draws them down your thighs, his eyes never leaving yours in the glass.
His eyes land on your pussy, and he licks his lips without even noticing.
“There she is,” he murmurs. “So god damn pretty.”
You let out a shaky laugh, burying your face in your hands. “Joel…”
“What?” he says, looking up and grinning. “I’m just tellin’ the truth.”
You peek down at him through your fingers, cheeks burning, but your cunt still pulses. Still asking. Still open for him.
“Sit,” he says softly, guiding you down.
You lower yourself onto the floor, the plush rug cool against your thighs. Joel kneels behind you, his presence a wall of heat at your back. Then he shifts, legs sliding out on either side of yours, bracketing you in.
You’re nestled between his thighs now, your back against his chest, his arms resting loosely around your waist.
He leans in, his voice a low murmur against your ear.
“There we go. You okay?”
You nod, breath catching, looking at yourself in the mirror.
Then, with slow hands, he reaches down, his palms gliding over your thighs. He nudges your knees apart, spreading you gently until your legs rest over his.
“Just like that,” he says. “Let me hold you open.”
You glance at the mirror, at your swollen pussy, then to Joel. Your cheeks flush, but you don’t look away. Not this time.
“I don’t want you to just feel it. I want you to watch how your body moves. Watch how it wants this. You ain’t broken, bug. You’re just learnin’.”
You nod, but your voice is small. “I don’t even know where to touch.”
Joel’s hands settle on your thighs, grounding you. He leans in, his voice a low hum in your ear. “Then I’ll show you, baby. Just once. So you know where to start.”
Joel’s hand hovers just above your center, not touching yet.
“Before we get there,” he murmurs, “you gotta learn how to tease yourself. Build it up slow. That’s how you make it last.”
“I know you’re already worked up with two ruined orgasms…” his eyes softly find yours in the mirror. “But I want you to also learn it for other times, yea?”
You nod before you even realize it, breath catching in your throat. You don’t fully understand what he means—not quite yet—but you trust him. You trust that whatever he’s teaching you, it’s not just about your body. It’s about you.
“Okay,” you whisper, voice shaking. “I’ll try.”
He smiles, just a little. “That’s my bun.”
And when his hands return to your hips, guiding you again, you let go of the fear. You let him lead. You let yourself feel. He brushes his fingers along the inside of your thigh, featherlight. You shiver.
“Start here,” he says. “Skin’s soft. Sensitive. You touch yourself here, you’re tellin’ your body what’s comin’.”
He drags his fingertips up, tracing the curve of your thigh, then across your hip, your lower belly.
“Then here,” he whispers. “Your mound. Just a little pressure. Not too much. You’re not tryin’ to rush it—you’re sayin hello.”
You watch in the mirror, mesmerized by the way his hands move, by the way your body responds.
“You feel that?” he asks, his palm resting just above your center. “That heat?”
You nod, lips parted.
“Good,” he says. “Now we go lower.”
His fingers dip between your folds, still avoiding your clit, just gliding through the slickness there.
Joel’s fingers glide through your slick, slow and deliberate. He doesn’t rush—just lets himself feel you, lets you feel it.
He groans, low and wrecked.
“Goddamn, baby…” he murmurs. “You’re soaked.”
You squirm, cheeks burning, but you don’t look away. Not this time. You watch how his big fingers explore your cunt, how the pleasure feels tingly.
He pulls his fingers back, glistening with your arousal. Then, without a word, he brings them to your mouth.
“Open,” he says, voice rough.
You do. Lips parting, breath trembling. He slides his fingers past them, slow, letting you taste yourself.
His eyes stay locked on yours in the mirror.
“Tastes sweet?” he asks, voice low and wrecked.
You nod, your heart beating faster, your tongue curling around his fingers. His fingers are big, and you need quite a while until you suck your arousal off.
He groans, deep in his chest. “Good.”
Joel watches you suck his fingers, slow and shy, your tongue curling around the taste of yourself. His breath is ragged behind you, chest rising and falling against your back.
Then, he pulls his fingers free again, slick and warm, and you gasp like you’ve lost something.
Suddenly, he pulls away from you and mutters, almost to himself: “Hang on.”
He reaches for his glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt. Slips them on with one hand, slow and deliberate. You catch his reflection in the mirror—the way his eyes narrow behind the lenses, the way his jaw tightens.
“There,” he murmurs, voice low and wrecked. “Now I can see exactly where she is.”
His hand slides down, slow and deliberate, until his fingers hover just above where you ache. Then, just when you least expect it; his fingers part you gently. The cold air meeting your slick coated cunt.
You shift in front of the mirror, thighs trembling, eyes flicking up to meet his in the glass.
“See this right here?” He taps on the little nub once, featherlight. You jolt. “That’s your clit, baby. That’s where all that ache’s comin’ from.”
“This little thing’s what makes you fall apart. You ever touched it like this before?” he asks.
You shake your head, quietly, your cheeks flushed.
“That’s alright,” he taps on your little clit again. “You feel that? That little twitch? That’s your body beggin’ for more.”
A gasp leaves your mouth when he gives you one rub. You squeeze your eyes shut, your head falling back against his chest. And suddenly, Joel lands a spank on your thigh making you jolt against him and open your eyes wide. “Keep your eyes on the mirror. I want you to see what I see.”
His hand smoothes over the spot. “Easy bug,” he murmurs. “Didn’t mean to scare ya. Just want you here with me.”
His hand stays steady between your thighs, fingers gliding through your slick, slow and reverent. You’re trembling, breath shallow, eyes locked on the mirror like he told you.
Joel’s voice is low, almost hypnotic.
“Slow circles,” he murmurs, brushing over your clit with the lightest touch. “Not too fast. Not too hard.”
You twitch, hips jerking, but he holds you still.
“Just like this,” he says again, rubbing in a lazy rhythm. “Slow circles. That’s how she likes it.”
You whimper, your head falling back again on his shoulder. You feel the pleasure in your tummy slowly building—just from feeling his middle finger on top of your clit. And he doesn’t stop.
“There she is” he whispers. “All swollen and pulsing.”
He keeps rubbing, patient and precise, and your body starts to melt into his.
“She’s real sensitive,” he says. “You rush her, she’ll shut down. But you take your time…”
He presses just a little firmer, and you gasp.
“That’s it,” he breathes. “That’s the spot. You keep her there, she’ll take you all the way.”
His fingers never stop moving, and his voice keeps repeating, grounding you in the rhythm.
“Slow circles. Soft pressure. Let her talk to you.”
Joel’s fingers keep working you in slow, deliberate circles, never rushing, never faltering. The pleasure builds like a storm, tight and trembling in your belly. Your thighs are shaking, your breath coming in ragged gasps.
You can’t hold it in anymore.
“Joel,” you whine, the sound broken, desperate. “I—please—”
He stills. Just like that.
You cry out, hips jerking, chasing the friction he’s stolen. But his hand stays still, warm and maddening between your legs.
He leans in, “Now you continue,” he says. “Let me see if you listened.”
You blink, dazed, your whole body buzzing.
“Wha—?”
He guides your hand down, curling your fingers over your clit, still slick from his touch.
“You’re so close, baby,” he murmurs. “Don’t stop now. Show me you remember.”
Your hand trembles, but you start to move, mimicking the slow circles he taught you. Your breath catches. It’s not the same as his touch—but it’s yours. And it’s working.
Joel watches you in the mirror, his hands resting on your thighs, grounding you.
“That’s it,” he says, voice thick. “Look at you. So fuckin’ pretty like this. Wrecked and tryin’ so hard.”
You whimper again, your body arching, chasing the edge he left you on.
“Keep goin’,” he whispers. “You’re almost there.”
Joels hand circle your thigh and before you even notice it, his other hand is gently rubbing on your nipple over the fabric. You gasp, trying to keep the rhythm of the circles on your clit, but it’s hard to do when you feel his hands and his gaze watching you.
Your breath stutters. Your legs shake. Your vision blurs.
“Joel,” you gasp, voice breaking. “I—I think—”
And then it hits.
Your body arches, a cry tearing from your throat as the orgasm crashes over you—sharp and deep and endless. You collapse back against him, your whole body trembling, your hand falling away from your center.
Joel catches you, arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you close. A hand sneaks down to cup your cunt, pressing his palm on your clit to make you ride out your orgasm. You bury your face in his shoulder, breath ragged, heart pounding.
“There you go,” he murmurs, lips brushing your temple. “That’s it, baby. You did so good.”
You whimper, still shaking, overwhelmed. Your first orgasm.
“Shh,” he soothes, rocking you gently. “I got you. I got you.”
He presses a kiss to your hair, his voice warm. He slowly removes his hand, making sure that the throbbing slowly fades away.
“First one always hits hard,” he says. “You held on so long. Now you let it out, bun. You earned that.”
You’re still trembling, your body boneless and warm, your breath slowing in Joel’s arms. He doesn’t rush you. Just holds you there, your back pressed to his chest, his hands gentle on your thighs.
One of them drifts up to your waist, rubbing slow, soothing circles into your skin. The other stays low, massaging the sore muscles of your inner thigh, where you’d tensed so hard.
You melt into him, your head resting on his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed.
“Did so good,” he murmurs, lips brushing your temple. “So proud of you, bug.”
You hum, barely awake, your voice a sleepy whisper. “Thank you.”
Joel smiles, soft and warm.
“’Course, baby,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.”
You sigh, content, your fingers curling around his wrist where it rests on your belly.
For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of your breathing, the weight of his arms, and the quiet hum of something new blooming between you.
And then your voice comes out, soft and sweet, but bold.
“Now I want one from you.”
He stills, breath catching. Joel looks at you in the mirror, searching for your eyes. Then a low chuckle rumbles in his chest.
“That so?” he says, voice rough with restraint. “You really bringin’ me to my limits today, aren’t you, bug?”
You smile into the mirror, still dazed, still glowing. Joel’s always been careful. Too careful. He’s guided you, watched you, whispered praise—but never let himself touch you the way you crave. And you understands why. You know he’s afraid of taking too much, of being too much.
“You said you’d do anything for me,” you whisper, the words soft but sure.
Joel groans, tipping his head back with a quiet curse.
“Y’gonna always play that card now?” he mutters, but there’s no heat in it. Just awe. Just surrender. So, this time—Joel does not argue, he doesn’t let guilt take over him. His fingers find their way down, on your clit and resume their slow, sweet rhythm, just like before. You twitch beneath his touch, still sensitive, still trembling.
“You still sensitive, hm?” he murmurs, watching your body react, watching your eyes flutter in the mirror.
He spreads your pussy lips, creating a v-shape with his fingers. Your cheeks flush again, looking at your aching cunt—your hole clenching.
“So fuckin’ sweet,” he murmurs, then goes back to rubbing your clit.
But you wonder. What does it feel like? When something is inside, when the pleasure comes from there instead of your clit. And then you wonder: how would his big fingers feel in you, and you can’t help but arch your back, a whine escaping from your throat.
“Inside.” You mumble out before you can stop yourself.
Joel stills, his breath catching. His eyes flick to yours in the mirror, dark and steady.
“You want it inside?” he asks, voice low, reverent.
You nod again, cheeks flushed, body aching.
Joel leans in, lips brushing your ear.
“You sure, baby?” he asks, “It might hurt a little. First time always does.”
Your breath stutters. You hadn’t thought about that. Not really. But you nod anyway. Because it’s him. Because you want to learn. Because you want it to be him who teaches you.
Joel leans in, lips brushing your shoulder.
“I’ll go slow,” he murmurs. “Real slow. You tell me if it’s too much, yeah?”
You nod again, more certain this time. Your body aches, but your heart is louder—beating with trust, with want, with the quiet hope that this will be different. That he will be different.
He nudges his middle finger against your opening, and your breath hitches.
“Relax for me, bun.” He gently coaxes. “I wanna feel you take me in soft.”
You try to breathe, slow and deep, but your body’s tight—nerves coiled, thighs trembling. You’ve never done this before. Never let anyone in.
But Joel’s voice is there, smooth, wrapping around you like a blanket. “That’s it, baby. Just breathe. You’re doin’ so good.”
His finger presses again, gentle but sure, and this time your body yields—just a little. Just enough.
It’s strange at first. Not painful, not really. Just… full. New.
You gasp, eyes fluttering shut, but Joel’s hand is on your hip, grounding you.
“You okay?” he murmurs, still. Waiting.
You nod, breath shaky. “Yeah. Just… it feels weird.”
“First time always does,” he says, voice warm. “But you’re takin’ me so well, bun. So fuckin’ sweet for me.”
And with that, he eases in a little more, slow and careful, watching your face in the mirror the whole time. When his whole finger is in, he hums.
“Tight little thing, aren’t you?” Kissing your temple, he presses in just a little deeper, slow and careful. “You’re makin’ it real hard not to lose my mind here, bun. You feel what you’re doin’ to me?”
Your body jolts when he curls his finger just right, a sharp gasp tearing from your throat before you can stop it. Your thighs twitch, your breath stutters, and your eyes fly open—wide, startled, overwhelmed.
Joel’s watching you in the mirror, gaze dark and steady, lips parted like he felt it too.
“There,” he murmurs, voice thick. “That little spot right there?”
He presses again, slow, and your hips buck before you can stop them.
“That’s your G-spot, bun.” He kisses your temple again, his free hand stroking your side. “Feels good, don’t it?”
You nod, breathless.
Joel’s fingers start working you slow and sweet, in and out while rubbing your clit with his thumb. Your body trembles, your breath catching with every stroke. You’re close again, the pleasure building fast, and you can’t hold it in.
Your body arches into him, still trembling, still so sensitive. The second wave is building fast—hotter, sharper, like your body’s been waiting for this all along.
His voice right at your ear. “That’s it, baby. Let me take care of you.”
You whimper, your hips rolling into his hand, chasing every stroke.
“You’re gonna soak my hand, aren’t you? Gonna make a mess all over me.”
You nod, breathless, your fingers digging into his thigh. You can’t even process all the dirty things he is saying into your ear. It feels like you’re floating.
“Please,” you whisper. “Don’t stop.”
His breath catches, and his hand stills for just a second—just long enough to feel the way you clench around him, desperate and trembling.
He murmurs, voice thick. “You beg so fuckin’ sweet.”
He curls his finger again, slow and deep, dragging it right over that spot that makes your thighs shake.
“Oh, bun… you’re right there, huh?” He asks, “So close I can feel it. You’re flutterin’ around me, squeezing me so tight. Cunt’s begging to come.”
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t rush. Just keeps that steady rhythm, dragging his finger over that spot again and again.
“Come on, baby. Let go for me. Wanna feel you make a mess on my hand.”
Your breath catches—then breaks. The pressure snaps, and you fall.
Your whole body seizes, thighs clamping around his wrist, a cry ripping from your throat as your orgasm crashes through you—hot, blinding, endless. Your cunt pulses against his finger, and wetness gushes out of you.
Joel holds you through it, one hand on your belly, the other still deep inside you, grounding you as you ride it out.
“That’s it, baby,” he murmurs. “So good. So fuckin’ good. You’re perfect. You hear me?”
You nod, tears slipping down your cheeks, your body limp and warm. He kisses your temple, his voice soft now, reverent.
“You did so good for me. My sweet girl.”
Slowly, carefully, he begins to ease his finger out. You whimper at the drag, the sudden emptiness making your body clench around nothing.
“Shh, I know,” he soothes, pressing a kiss to the back of your neck. “You’re so so good.”
Joel wipes his finger on his jeans as you sag against him, your legs barely holding you up. He catches you without a word, wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you back into his chest.
Your heart’s still racing, but his hands are warm, his voice soft, and you feel yourself start to come back—slowly, gently, safely.
You’ve never felt this way before. Not just the pleasure, but the after. The way he holds you like you’re something fragile and precious. Like he’s proud of you. Like he’s not going anywhere.
The room slowly begins to fill with silence, the kind that hums with everything unspoken.
And then you shift, just slightly, and feel it—wetness, warm and unexpected, seeping through the fabric of his jeans where you’re sitting in his lap.
You blink, dazed, and glance down. Then up. You turn around.
Joel’s face is flushed, his jaw tight, eyes flicking away like he’s been caught.
You tilt your head, lips parting. “Joel…?”
He exhales, low and rough, then meets your gaze.
“Couldn’t help myself, bun,” he murmurs, voice thick with something between awe and apology. “You—watchin’ you like that… callin’ out for me… I just—”
He shakes his head, a crooked smile tugging at his lips.
“You undid me.”
You blink, lips parting, and then something soft blooms in your chest. You reach up, cupping his cheek, your thumb brushing the stubble there.
“You came… just from me?” you whisper, wonder in your voice.
He nods, eyes searching yours.
“Yeah. Just from you.”
You smile, slow and sweet, your heart fluttering. You lean in, pressing your forehead to his.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” you whisper, and it’s not a joke—it’s the truth.
Joel lets out a shaky breath, his arms tightening around you.
“You’re somethin’ else, baby,” he murmurs. “You don’t even know what you do to me.”
You nuzzle into his neck, your voice barely a breath.
“I like that I can make you feel good too.”
He kisses your temple, ”You do. More than you know.”
Then he murmurs, voice low and a little rough: “C’mon, let’s get us both cleaned up.”
You nod, barely awake, but you don’t move. You just hum and nuzzle into his chest. Joel chuckles softly, his hand smoothing over your waist. Then, after a beat, he adds—almost shyly:
“And then… maybe you’d like to sleep in my bed tonight?”
You blink up at him, eyes soft, lips parting.
“Yeah,” you whisper. “I’d like that.”
Joel exhales, something easing in his chest. He presses a kiss to your temple, his voice low and steady.
“Good,” he murmurs. “’Cause I ain’t gonna let you go back to your father anyways.”
You look up at him, and he’s already watching you, jaw tight, eyes soft.
“You’re safe here,” he says. “With me. Always.”
okey so this is HALF proofread…if you find mistakes or something doesn’t make sense, just ignore or let me know🥹 I feel like i’m using the word “like” too much…
Well anyways, i know this took a hot minute…i’ve been sick. forgive me pookies 😩 If you liked this, i’d love to hear your thoughts! Comments, messages, little keysmashes…i cherish all of it. you make it worth it 🫶🏻
once again thank you for the tag hun @simpingforjoel 🫶🏼😚
This one is easy but also hard because I listen to 1 on repeat in phases, and some additional insight bc why tf not, unprompted data about me:
1. Konstantine - Something Corporate (early 2000s music will do that to a gal) my professor’s wife recited a line from this after I mentioned it’s my favorite song when we were out drinking, the friendship lust I have for them is insane. (If you’ve read my professor!au… this is mostly unrelated and ironic! But I’m learning about stuff behind the scenes for research purposes).
2. I Really Want to Stay at Your House - Rosa Walton, Hallie Coggins (on repeat and repeat and repeat, an entire new music taste was acquired through this. angsty ass music video of cyberpunk)
3. Hot Blooded - New Constellations (YEAH, listened to it on a car ride with my man and i was like well, that’s my new song phase. on repeat right now)
4. Killshot (slow + reverb) - Magdalena Bay (same as above, holy hell i love this song)
5. All These Things That I’ve Done - The Killers (autumn ‘24 anthem, making its comeback as a remembrance to all the shit i was going through last year!)
6. Head in the Wall / Crush - Ethel Cain (summer ‘25 anthem, had these 2 songs on repeatttt)
7. Shades of Cool / Mariners Apt Complex - Lana Del Rey (haven’t listened to her as much as I usually do because of my weird musical side missions, but she still makes her rounds)
8. Sailor Song - Gigi Perez (the yearn of this song is crazy)
9. Chicago - Sufjan Stevens (aforementioned professor got me onto Sufjan Stevens and this music perfectly encapsulates his vibe.)
10. LET THE WORLD BURN - Chris Grey (very relevant as an Aries idk, just feels right when i listen to it)
I cheated by giving some 2 BUT WHATEVER.
@littledes1re and anyone who wants to participate! Im not anti-social I swear! (Okay….. a bit, xoxo).
Absolutely Fantastic blog here, thank you for your work 🙂↕️
🥹🥹🥹 thank you for being here! this means so much to me! it’ll always be crazy to me that people read the results of my daydreaming mayhem 😳 but so grateful, I love it here 🫶🏼
you and daddy Joel…. but not in that way, recall how the two of you came to be.
pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4 (1/2) | pt. 4 (2/2)
/ pt. 5 (2/2)
series masterlist // main masterlist
warnings/content:
WC: 6.1k - flashback chapter! fluff, love at first sight, yearning/pining/longing, teasing, big fat crushes, age gap (reader is 19, Joel is 33), flirting, guilt over age gap, a little bit of insecurity, reader is a badass business woman, first date/first kiss, Joel is a respectful man! No explicit content in this part.
a/n: once again, I split it into 2 parts because 1 & 2 would’ve been around 20k together. this rare snippet of Joel and reader managing to have some self-control around each other. this is the start of the long haul, baby!
as you can tell, I am procrastinating from doing my school work.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Fall… 14 years ago
You were running late, again.
Not terribly, but enough to feel your own frustration simmering, enough to blame the long light at Main and Broad for your hurried steps and half-buttoned cuffs. Your heels clicked over the tiled floor of the downtown café just as the morning crowd hit its peak.
The line was stretching out the door, people in dress shirts and slacks double-checking their emails and muttering their orders. You were half-distracted, texting your coworker about rescheduling a meeting, when the door swung open behind you and a gruff voice barked an apology.
Then, collision. Your body accidentally pressed to his for a brief moment.
A chest like a damn brick wall.
You stepped back, heels catching the edge of the mat, and he caught your elbow with a quick, steady hand.
“Whoa there… y’alright, darlin’?” he muttered, and the sound of his voice hit you somewhere low in your stomach. That slow, southern rasp. Your eyes flicked up just in time to catch the faintest curve of a shy smile beneath a lightly salt-and-peppered beard.
Your bag nearly slipped off your shoulder, and his phone dropped to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” you said quickly, glancing up.
You meant to look away just as fast, but you couldn’t.
Because there were his eyes, sparkling with something unreadable. He looked older than you by a handful of years, scruffy and broad, with lines carved along the corners of his mouth and eyes like a man who’d seen things you could hardly ponder in your short spanned adult life at this point.
He was a wet dream in flannel, you couldn’t tear your eyes away.
He cleared his throat and bent to pick up his flip phone, “s’alright, my fault really. Wasn’t lookin’ where I was goin’.”
Neither were you, clearly.
You stepped back, heart hammering in your chest, feeling the heat bloom embarrassingly high on your cheeks.
It wasn’t a long encounter, he was gracious to not extending this moment of embarrassment. You both made your way into line and that should’ve been the end of it.
—
He didn’t planned on going again, or at least that’s what he had told himself. You seem young, too young for him to even be thinking about you beyond a stranger he’d merely bumped into… but the way you carry yourself and the part of town you seem to have established yourself in… you’re young, ambitious, and fucking beautiful. That glint in your eye has him walking some dangerous lines in his mind.
He miraculously finds a parking space not far from the café, and his crew isn’t due on-site for another hour so he figures he could use the caffeine.
It’s the best coffee he’s ever tasted from a shop, and it’s priced exactly as you’d expect for the best cup of coffee you can get in Austin, Texas. Pricey, but justifiable since his work site is so close, and a chance to see you again makes just about any price worth paying… even if it is a longshot.
To his delight, you’re already there when he walks in. Your back is to the door, shoulders wrapped in a dark blazer, the soft ends of your hair brushing the collar.
You have your phone in one hand, your wallet in the other, and when you step up to the register. He watches the barista nod like she’s already entered your order before you even approach the counter, you offer pleasantries and pay. A warm, familiar smile is shared with the other baristas who saw you arrive.
You have a habitual order that they could anticipate, always the same… you have a usual. He sees the barista promptly handing you a large coffee and what looks like a Danish. You have a sweet tooth. They have no need to call your name since they know you.
Which is a shame, really. He was looking forward to hearing your name for free. A simple curiosity satiated so easily at a coffee shop. But maybe that would make it that much sweeter if he ever does earn that privilege of learning your name.
He finds himself noting every detail as you claim a table in the corner by the window, you set down your drink and your Danish, laying out a napkin and setting aside your phone to take out some documents to work on. Within a few moments you seem to be furiously writing something, making marks in red, and the curiosity gnaws at him. He has so many questions about you.
He supposes the most important thing he should ask himself is how old you are. Couldn’t be older than twenty… he should scold himself for eyein’ a barely legal adult. He always held himself to a higher standard.
Whereas other men might prowl on innocence or purity, or whatever the hell those creeps prioritize in their preying on young girls… he’s fascinated by you in a completely unfamiliar way. Hypnotized, like a kid in a damn candy shop. What do you do for work? What are you doin’ at this overpriced coffee shop every damn day? What the hell is your name?
So fuck it, y’only live once, right?
It was probably the fourth morning in a row that he’s stopped in…and sure maybe he gets there before you intentionally so he can buy your order (much to the delight of the barista, they clearly love you), still doesn’t know your name… but he remains hopeful.
By the time it’s your turn to approach the register, the barista gives you a knowing smile, “Already taken care of,” they say.
Your brows lift, “What?”
“Gentleman over there.”
You turn slowly, a crease between your brows as your eyes follow the barista’s subtle nod.
And there he is, broad frame slouched in a corner booth, flannel stretching over his shoulders, one arm propped along the back of the seat, fingers tapping slow against his coffee cup.
Joel tries, he really does try to feign nonchalance, but the moment your gaze locks on his, he feels the air punch out of his lungs like a freight train to the chest.
He can’t pretend he hadn’t hoped this might happen.
When your mouth curves, when that blush colors your cheeks, when your eyes softens and that sweet, deliberate smile blooming across your face just for him… he knows he’s screwed.
And then you nod. Not just at him, but toward your usual table, and the chair across from you that usually remains empty.
It’s an invitation, and his chest tightens.
He has to blink twice just to keep himself from floating out of his goddamn body. His hand curls tighter around his coffee cup to ground himself, the heat almost scalding. He clears his throat, glances around like someone might stop him, and forces himself to stand with a practiced ease that belies the storm inside him.
He watches you giggle to yourself and he silently bets it’s the sweetest sound on earth. He sees your hand brush a piece of hair from your cheek and the way you gently bite your lower lip as if he couldn’t see.
He sees that blush spread higher on your cheeks as he approaches, clutching his coat in one hand, coffee in the other. His throat bobs as he swallows hard, “Y’mind if I join?”
You’re setting your things down as you usually do and you pull back your chair to sit down.
“Well, it’s the least I could do for the person who funded my will to live for the day,” and guilt threads sharply through admiration. The last thing he wants is for you to feel obligated.
He raises his free hand, a small gesture of surrender as he eases into the seat. “Wasn’t my intention, darlin’. Just… noticed you’re a regular. Figured I’d do somethin’ nice. People here seem to like you.”
You finally look up, tilting your head. The corner of your mouth quirks, the warmth in your eyes dimming the early-morning light, “I was teasing, but seriously, thank you. It was a pleasant surprise in an otherwise rough start to the day.”
His eyes flick down your face, caught briefly on the line of your jaw, the bow of your lips, the delicate flutter of your lashes as you reach for your coffee. His gaze follows yours and are you... checking him out?
Your gaze linger on his forearms where his sleeves are rolled up, the way his fingers curl around the mug, the width of his chest beneath the flannel.
You don’t look away when your eyes meet his again. In fact, you look amused. Goddamn… you are trouble. A grin spreads across his face before he can stop it. He coughs once into his fist, trying to hide the shake in his voice, “what’s happened before the sun’s even risen that’s got your mornin’ so lopsided?” he glances at the soft orange light just beginning to streak across the windows.
You’re biting the inside of your cheek as you smile, “I’m just behind on a portfolio, and I’ve got a proposal due by the end of the day.” You see his brow lift at that and you decide to give a dog another bone, “I work for a firm up the block.”
His brow rises even further. You take another sip of coffee, the steam kissing your lips, and you catch him watching.
“Law?” he guesses, pretending the sip he took didn’t burn like hell.
You shake your head. “Engineering firm. I’m an assistant in HR. Contract oversight. Making sure the place doesn’t implode.”
He hums thoughtfully, “S’impressive. Young thing like you working at a place like that.”
The compliment might’ve sounded patronizing from someone else. But he can’t help the awe he feels for you seep deeper into his chest, and maybe it comes out a little demeaning but the way your eyes sparkle means you took it as he intended.
“Reckon I better ask your age before I get ahead of myself,” he adds, rubbing the back of his neck and tearing his eyes away.
You lean in, elbows to the table and glint in your eye, “Well… I’ll be about halfway from nineteen to twenty in a couple weeks.”
He chokes on his sip this time. Not hard, just enough to feel it catch in his throat. Even though he isn’t surprised per se, only by the way you just had to answer, “Jesus,” he mutters under his breath, as if he hadn’t been the one who showed up here three days in a row just to catch sight of you again.
“It ain’t right, I should…” but as he shifts like he’s about to stand, your hand reaches across the table and gently presses over his. Your hands, so small compared to his. Your skin is warm and soft against his rough knuckles. Hell, all of you is so soft and small compared to him.
You plead with your eyes for him to stay, and hell… he is a weak man for those eyes of yours already, “It’s just coffee…” you bat your eyelashes at him and motion to your still untouched Danish, slowly pulling your hand away from him as he settles back into his chair, “Want to split it with me?”
He blinks, mouth going dry. It is the most innocent offer and somehow you make it sound erotic, the way you offer to share the sustenance you never start a day without. He swallows harshly and can’t help the tight-lipped grin that spreads on his lips, “Alright.”
“You never did tell me your name,” you say as you carefully cut the Danish in half, the tiny plastic knife struggling against the flaky shell. You place his piece on a napkin and slide it towards him.
“Joel,” he nods his thanks and takes the Danish between his thumb and middle finger. The flaky pastry with cream cheese topping and drizzle had his mouth watering as he takes a bite. He hums as the flavors erupt in his mouth and he hadn’t noticed that he’s closed his eyes until he opens them to see that glimmer in yours as you watch him.
“I’m picky about my sweets, but this damn Danish is my vice,” you take a bite of your half and the hum you make in appreciation of the pastry makes his whole body tense.
You can bet he notes that in his list about you in his mind.
“And your name?” He finally asks, pretending as if that information isn’t something he’s been yearning for.
The sound of your name from your lips is a melody instantly stuck in his head, “pleasure to meet you.” He tries out your name for himself, a gesture to you that he wanted to remember it, as if he could ever forget it.
And you discover you really like your name on his tongue.
“So what brings you to this little corner of the city? What do you do for work? Hadn’t seen you before that time we bumped into each other.” The initial embarrassment of that collision has long since faded. What stays with you is the weight of his body pressed into yours, the strength in his arms when he steadied you. The faint warmth of his breath, the coarse brush of his jacket against your chest, the scent of musk and worn leather threaded with something sharper, still lingers in your memory.
The way your body responded had startled you. That singular moment became a phantom sensation you carry into your mornings, your workday, even your dreams. The memory has a pulse of its own. And now, with him sitting across from you, broad and real and just close enough to reach across the table, the effect is even stronger.
You are a little behind on your portfolio, and he might be the reason why. Which seems ridiculous as he is still practically a stranger… but some things in life are simply irrational.
That deep, southern drawl of his has your insides all twisted up, his broad shoulders framed in flannel will haunt you for months even if this is your last encounter… and you sincerely hope it won’t be.
You take a slow sip of your coffee, forcing yourself to breathe evenly through your nose as you listen.
He grins as he recalls that moment you collided, the first moment your eyes met his and he was hooked. He’s been craving it since, “I’m the general contractor for a construction company, we’re building a hotel on 5th.”
Of course he is. It explains the way he fills a room with stillness and presence, the way his flannel clings to a body built on real labor. His hands look capable of tearing down walls and holding something delicate without flinching, “That explains the flannels and denim.” You let your eyes drift from his collar to the stitching at his shoulder, then downward. He catches your look and lets out a quiet laugh.
“Ain’t got a fancy job like you, sweetheart. Think I’d go insane workin’ in an office.” His finger gestures loosely toward your blazer, taking in your neatly pressed sleeves, the structured silhouette that hugs your frame, “Y’like havin’ to put on that getup every mornin’?”
Your fingers smooth the front of your jacket on instinct, moving downward past the first button, “I don’t mind. People take you more seriously when you look like you belong in a courtroom.”
His brow raises thoughtfully, “Y’reckon people don’t take me seriously?”
You roll your eyes and shake your head, “think people take one look at me and see someone young, and that’s enough to assume I’m green. Dressing like this helps. A little.” Your gaze sweeps over him once more, “You… you just make sense.”
“Hmm..” Joel tilts his head, contemplating you. Looking at you with something close to admiration. “How’d you climb that ladder? Not in a…” he catches himself. “Not in a way that questions it, just… it’s somethin’. You’ve already got your foot on the gas.”
“Didn’t sound like that at all,” you deadpan, but your voice softens on the tail end. You see the fire flicker in his eyes at your tone, it’s sarcastic and dry and it makes him feel like a fire is churning beneath his ribs.
“Y’sure are a cheeky thing,” he retorts, taking the final bite of his half of the Danish and then wiping his mouth with the opposite side of the napkin.
You track every movement, how his throat works when he swallows, the way his jaw flexes around each chew. His stubble is just long enough to darken his chin, coarse and uneven in places. You blink hard, but your thoughts don’t clear. Honey-brown eyes watch you as you answer, “I graduated in the spring,” you say, your voice quieter now. “Associate’s in business administration. Got lucky with a good internship that turned into something permanent. They’re paying for me to finish my bachelor’s in economics now.”
He nods slowly and leans forward a little, “Workin’ full-time while gettin’ your degree? That’s a hell of a schedule.” The praise sits heavy in the air.
The sun was slowly making its way higher in the sky, reminding him of just how much time he’d been taking from you and how little time you have left together until you both have to start your work day.
“It’s not forever. Just won’t have much of a social life til I’m done.” You shrug nonchalantly, and he understands and respects the sacrifices a good education requires nowadays.
The coffee shop has grown louder around you, a pulse of movement and clinking ceramic, the grind of beans in the distance, but neither of you seem to notice. You watch the sunlight stretch across the floor near your feet, inching closer.
“So… what do y’do for fun?” and you scoff at his question, he tilts his head and his brows furrow.
You sigh and place your coffee mug down, “I sleep… I wake up, and I drink coffee…” and your list ends at that.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Joel hums again at that, who is he to judge? You seem in good spirits and sociable. It could all just be a front.. But hell, he’s still just a stranger. He doesn’t really have that right to know whether it is a front or not.
His smile returns, slower this time, “Mighty fine way to start the day.”
“And always over far too soon,” you tap the screen on your phone and glance at the time.
Joel nods in understanding, taking the final sip of his coffee and holding out his hand towards your empty cup, “I’ll take that for ya, darlin’.”
And it hits you then, the smallness of the moment, how much you don’t want it to end. You hope the job on 5th isn’t wrapping up any time soon. You hope his mornings continue being in this coffee shop, with you.
You realize just how quickly you could envision what him being in your life could look like even beyond the coffee shop. Which was wildly inappropriate, considering he is likely near his mid-thirties and you had barely just met the guy…
But the heat behind your ribs flare again as you watch him carry both mugs to the bus bin, his stride confident, loose in the shoulders. You note the slope from his broad shoulders to his back beneath his shirt, the dark curls at the nape of his neck. He turns around just in time to catch your eyes.
He gives you a sly grin as he catches you staring and makes his way back to the table.
He offers his hand out to help you up from your chair, knowing it was time to make your way to the office. You place your palm in his without thinking.
His hand dwarfs yours. The squeeze is gentle but firm. Your gaze transfixes on this point of contact as he lifts you up with little effort.
Your body follows his easily. Your balance shifts forward and you briefly step too close, but you don't move back. Neither does he.
“Well…” he clears his throat after he finally drops his hand back to his side, having let the contact linger for a moment longer than was necessary, “Pleasure to meet ya, darlin’.” That dimple appears again, just above the corner of his mouth.
You smile, mouth suddenly dry, “Pleasure to meet you too, Joel. Maybe I’ll see you around?”
With a curt nod of his head, he grabs his jacket from the back of his chair and turns you both toward the door.
—
It becomes his habit, waking before dawn to beat you to the counter. He never assumes, never asks. He just waits for the flicker of your attention when you walk through the door, and then your glance back towards him from the register. The baristas have stopped hiding their smirks. You don’t even try to hide yours.
Conversations evolve from work to school to family… It surprises him how easy you are to talk to. He tells you about his parents, about how he and his brother got into construction together fairly young after their mother got sick. How she’s been in remission for over a decade now and is doing better than ever.
You tell him about your long nights and early mornings, the impossible balance of coursework and corporate life. You tell him about your boss who talks too much and your officemate who steals pens. About your favorite restaurant, your favorite street in the city, the tiny things you’ve never told anyone because no one ever cared to ask.
And he listens, really listens. It lights him up, watching your smile as you retell a joke you heard the previous day, or when you beam at an exam going particularly well.
He stores each detail: the way your voice dips when you talk about your father, how your smile changes when you talk about your sister, the way you unconsciously tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re telling him about something you’re proud of yourself for.
Those forty-five minutes at the start of the day became his lifeline. Your smile, your laugh, that flirty lilt to your voice when you comment on his flannel of the day.
But every day, his true intention would get stuck in his throat.
Joel pretends he doesn’t notice how your eyes find him the moment you walk in. Pretends he doesn’t time the start of his coffee just right so it’s still warm when you sit down. But the truth is, he’s planning. Always planning. He’s been wanting to ask you out for weeks now. Every morning he tells himself today’s the day, and every morning he finds a new excuse to wait.
You’re too young. Too good. Too bright-eyed for the mess he’s built his life around.
But then you laugh at something he says, head tilting back, hand pressing to your chest, and it’s over. Every damn time, it’s over.
You start teasing him more. You start testing his patience, brushing your hand over his forearm when you reach for the sugar or cream. Poking fun at him in good nature, getting more and more comfortable in each other’s presence. You start catching him looking at your mouth, and instead of pretending not to notice, you tilt your head, lips parting in a smile that threatens to undo him. You lean in when you talk. You let your knee bump his under the table
It drives him half out of his mind.
You start playing with your straw while you speak. Running your fingers along the ridges. Biting the edge of your cup lid between thoughts. One morning you lick a crumb from the corner of your mouth and Joel forgets whatever he was trying to say. Just stares at you for a moment too long, blinking back the heat.
You grin. Because you know what you’re doing, and you keep doing it.
And then you say things like, “What would I even do if you didn’t show up one day? I might actually cry.” Which serves as a jumpstart for Joel to get his shit together and finally just ask you out.
And god, he wants to ask. Wants to ask you out so fucking badly he aches with it.
But he doesn’t want to get it wrong. Doesn’t want to cross a line. Doesn’t want his intentions from the start to be misread, to make you think this was all some elaborate plan to get you to go out with him.
He wants you to know it isn’t like that. That what’s got him coming back every morning isn’t just the shape of your mouth when you sip your coffee, or the way your perfume lingers across the table, though those things undo him more than he’d ever admit. It’s you. It’s the way you listen. The way you look right at him and see something he doesn’t always recognize in himself. The way your laugh curls in his chest and stays there for hours after you’re gone.
Still, he can’t stop thinking about the other part, the wanting. The way it hums under his skin like a warning and a promise. The physical pull of it. The restless energy that coils in his gut every time your knee bumps his beneath the table and you don’t move it away. The teasing lilt in your voice when you call him cowboy or Mr. Miller with a look that makes the back of his neck heat.
He tells himself he’s too old to feel this way. Too old to get nervous over a woman in a coffee shop. But then you look up from your new iPhone 4s, which you had remarked as a perk of your job. Your hair falls loose over your cheek, eyes catching the morning light, and he’s gone again.
He’ll think about asking you out halfway through his shift, covered in sawdust, the smell of pine thick in the air. He’ll rehearse what he might say, then he’ll curse under his breath because it sounds wrong… too forward, too heavy with the kind of wanting he doesn’t want to scare you with.
Because you make him want to be careful. To take his time. To make sure the first time you go out, he doesn’t ruin the only good thing that’s come easy in years.
He’s fairly certain you’d say yes. You’ve flirted enough, your gaze drags too often, and he catches you watching him when you think he isn’t looking. There’s no doubt there’s something mutual there.
But you’re young. So fucking young. Younger than anyone he’s let himself look at in a long time. He’s lived enough years to know how easily good things break when handled with clumsy hands. How quickly this could be seen as something disingenuous. How easily he could be seen as predatory. Not even out of your teens… he has to remind himself of that fact. How old he is, how much more life he’s lived compared to you.
So he tells himself to wait. To give it another week. But when he walks into the café the following morning and you grin at him like you’ve been waiting for more than a full day for another chance to see him, his resolve starts to crumble.
The whole time he waits in line to order, he can feel your gaze on him. Occasionally he’ll look over at you and shoot you a wink. He loves the pink that spreads on your cheeks from his non-verbal flirtations. “Mornin’ darlin’,” he greets after he gets his coffee, sliding into his chair across from you.
You look up from your laptop, that gorgeous smile already pulling at your lips. “You’re late,” you tease, voice warm and familiar.
He glances toward the clock on the wall, shaking his head with a soft huff, “I know, m’sorry.”
You shrug, typing something on your laptop before sliding it aside to give him your full attention, “Guess I’ve just gotten used to you being on time.”
That hits him harder than it should. The idea that you’ve gotten used to him. That there’s a rhythm to your days now, starting with coffee, quiet chatter, and laughter, and he gets to be a part of it.
He unwraps the sleeve from his cup, fiddling with the seam to distract himself. “Traffic was hell,” he groans, reminiscing about the accident on the highway. His leg had been bouncing, fingers tapping against the steering wheel, imagining your disappointment at having to buy your own coffee after weeks of him spoiling you.
You hum softly, stirring your drink. “You worry too much, Miller. You think I only show up for the coffee now?”
He quirks a brow, “Don’t you?”
You shake your head, grinning. “Not anymore.”
The way you say it, soft and easy, layered with something heavier, it makes his chest tighten. He forces a laugh, rubbing his thumb over the rim of his cup. “Guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” you say, leaning in just a bit. “You make mornings better.”
He looks up at you then, really looks. The sunlight coming through the window paints you gold, your smile lazy and open, and his mouth goes dry. “Do I now?” he manages.
“Mhm,” you murmur, eyes dropping to his mouth for just a second too long. “Don’t let it go to your head, cowboy.”
It already has. His pulse thunders in his ears. There’s a laugh caught somewhere in his chest, but it dies halfway out. You’re still watching him, expectant, and he realizes he’s been quiet too long.
“You ever think about…” He hesitates, fingers tapping against his cup. “I dunno. Us seein’ each other somewhere that ain’t here?”
You blink, lips curving. “You mean… like a date?”
He clears his throat, gaze flicking down. “Somethin’ like that.”
A pause. Then, that slow, knowing smile of yours again. And under your breath he hears it, “Finally.” Like you’ve wondered when he’d finally get the nerve to ask you out, “You sure play the long game, Joel. I respect that.”
He huffs a nervous laugh, eyes softening, “That a yes?”
You nod, letting the blush spread across your cheeks again. “That’s a yes.”
He hums thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t already had the date planned out for weeks in his head. He knew exactly where he’ll take you, exactly what shirt and pants he’ll wear, exactly how many dates he’ll wait before he kisses you… unless you kiss him first. That is a likely possibility, and a whole other problem… one he’s thought about more than once.
He is going to show you how proper men should be. How much restraint a real man should hold in the face of wanting something this badly. To prove his respect for you, his genuine interest beyond the physical. He likes you. God, he likes you, an alarming amount. The thought of fucking it up and losing you completely terrifies him.
“So…” he starts, twiddling his thumbs as that grin spreads across his lips, all boyish eagerness and nerves. “I know you’ve got that big project comin’ due soon, but how about I take y’out Saturday night? Consider it a little celebration.”
You beam at him, warmth rushing up your chest, because he remembers. Because he listens.
He’s still a wet dream in flannel, and somehow even more so now.
You have to admit, you’ve been getting antsy waiting for him to ask. You know he’s attracted to you, know he enjoys this easy little routine… But there’s always been that gnawing doubt, that maybe you were just a morning distraction. Yet every conversation and every glance that lingers too long, has proven it’s more than that.
“Saturday night,” you repeat, etching it into your internal calendar. “I can make that work.”
He chuckles under his breath. “Nothin’ fancy. Just thought maybe dinner. Somewhere quiet.”
He hums in contemplation, gaze dropping briefly to his coffee before flicking back up to you. You see the faintest drag of his tongue across his teeth, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Reckon I’ll need your number too,” he drawls, casual as anything. “For, you know… coordination.”
You hum in reply, taking a slow sip of coffee before retrieving your phone from your bag, “Could’ve asked for this the very first moment we met and I would’ve happily obliged. But again, I respect the slow game you’re playing, cowboy.”
He chuckles gruffly at that, but doesn’t say anything in response. A slight head shake is all you get.
You tilt your head, filling that moment of silence, “You’re really gonna make me wait three whole days?”
“Darlin’ I ain’t disappearin’ in the meantime. Business as usual ‘til then.”
You smirk into your cup, pretending to hide the grin that threatens to break loose. “Good. Can’t afford to lose my morning coffee time especially with these deadlines pressing in at the seams.” Without another word you slide your phone across the table.
He studies it for half a second, then looks at you, one brow lifting. “You sure you trust me with this kinda power?”
“Think I can handle the risk,” you say lightly, resting your chin in your hand.
Joel’s grin spreads slow and crooked. “Good answer.”
He takes the phone, his fingers moving with deliberate steadiness. Big, calloused fingers tapping the screen with surprising gentleness. Then, a faint buzz sounds in his pocket, and he slides the phone back to you with that lazy, self-satisfied smirk you’re starting to adore.
You grin, shaking your head, “Real question is… does this give me the right to text you whenever I want to? Or is this strictly for date coordination?”
He slips his ancient, old school phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and pressing some keys before he slips it back to where it had been, “just saved your contact. Now I’ll know it’s you when you start spamming my phone.”
Your jaw opens slightly in feigned offense, “Spamming? That’s a bold assumption.”
He quirks a brow. “You’re tellin’ me you ain’t the type?”
You shrug. “Guess you’ll have to find out.”
“Guess I will,” he says, tone low, easy. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes… amusement, warmth, maybe a hint of trouble.
You pick up your phone again, thumb hovering over the keyboard before typing out a single word: Boo.
His pocket buzzes immediately. You watch the slow spread of a grin across his face as he flips open his phone and types back, the tiniest pause before you get the reply: You’re trouble already.
You bite back a smile. “That was fast for that ancient phone.”
He leans back, crossing his arms over his chest, voice a little rougher now. “This ol’ thing does everythin’ I need. Don’t need a fancy gadget in m’pocket that I won't use.”
You roll your eyes, but your pulse skips anyway. “You’re such an old man.”
“And yet,” he stands and takes his cup with him, “you just agreed to go out with me.”
You laugh as he steps away, tossing a small salute over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow, darlin’.”
The bell above the café door rings as he leaves, and you find yourself staring at your screen, rereading that last text until the letters blur a little from smiling too hard.
—
Saturday came faster than either of you expected. Since you continued your morning coffee meetings it allowed for you to have something to look forward to in anticipation of the weekend.
You’d texted a little through the week, mostly light stuff. A joke or two you’d overheard, a few quiet check-ins that said more than they needed to. Conversations never ending and continuing into your mornings.
You’d sent him your address, confirming 5:00pm as the time to expect him in his truck.
Now, at 4:58pm, the low rumble of his truck engine curls up into the parking lot of your apartment complex.
You peek through the window just in time to see him climb out, and your heart stutters. He’s not in flannel. Not tonight. The man approaching the apartment complex wears a dark button-down rolled to his forearms, denim you can only assume he considers his nice jeans, and his boots clean enough that he must’ve wiped them twice before leaving. His hair is neatly combed, still damp at the edges. He looks taller somehow, broader, his confidence measured and easy.
You open the door before he can even knock.
He’s halfway up the steps to where your apartment is, hands shoved in his pockets, when his eyes find you. His mouth parts just a little, like he hasn’t quite prepared himself for you either.
“Hey,” you breathe, smiling.
“Hey, darlin’,” he returns, that roughness in his tone wrapping around the word like it belongs to him.
You laugh under your breath and step forward without thinking, arms sliding around him, cheek pressed against the firm heat of his chest. He stills for half a second, surprise flickering through his breath before he melts into it, one hand coming up to rest between your shoulder blades.
God, he smells good. Woodsy and clean. His shirt is soft against your cheek, the fabric warm from his skin. You feel his breath against your temple when he murmurs, “Evenin’, sweetheart.”
You pull back just enough to look at him, and that’s when he leans in, slow enough that you can stop him if you want, but you don’t. His lips brush the corner of your cheek, light as a secret. The faint scrape of stubble follows, and the heat of it spreads through you faster than you can hide.
Then, his hand guides you down the wooden stairs of the complex and towards the truck that was still running, keeping warm just for you. Before you can reach for the handle, the door is opening for you, and a hand is being offered to help you up into the passenger’s seat.
His hand is warm when it closes around yours. Calloused palm, careful pressure. You feel the strength in his grip and the way he reins it back, like even this small contact matters too much.
“Thank you,” you murmur as you climb in, skirts of your coat brushing his knuckles.
He only nods, shutting the door with a quiet finality before circling around to the driver’s side. When he gets in, the cab fills instantly with him. Hints of soap, cedar, traces of the cologne that caught your breath earlier. You can feel his presence in the space between you, a pulse that never seems to steady.
His hand lingers on the gearshift, thumb tracing the seam absentmindedly. The radio hums low, something slow and old.
You catch him looking at you when you turn your head, eyes soft but dark around the edges.
“What?” you ask, smiling.
He shakes his head once. “Nothin’. You just look… real good, is all.”
Your pulse stumbles. “You clean up pretty well yourself.”
He grins, that slow, crooked thing that’s always half-mischief, half-confession. “Didn’t wanna get shown up too badly.”
Dinner passes in that same easy rhythm. Banter and teasing, shared glances that last a little too long. You talk, he listens; he talks, you lean closer. There’s warmth everywhere. The tension lingers between you, in the soft candlelight, in the way his thumb traces circles on the condensation of his glass whenever you laugh.
Afterwards, he walks you up to your apartment, the air cool and quiet except for the heavy sound of your steps. You stop at the door, turning toward him.
“Thank you for tonight,” you say.
He smiles, hands slipping into his pockets again, “You’re the one I should be thankin’ sweetheart, haven’t had a night like that in a long while.”
You step closer, close enough to smell that faint trace of soap and cologne again. “Still feels like I should.”
You move before you can think twice, hands catching the front of his shirt, tugging him down. His breath catches, the sound sharp in the quiet. When your mouth meets his, it’s soft at first, cautious. Then it deepens for just a heartbeat… heat, breath, and the edges of control.
He’s the one who steadies it. His hand comes up to your cheek, thumb brushing once before he pulls back, forehead resting against yours.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice rougher than before. “Don’t wanna rush.”
You smile, still close enough to feel the words move against your skin. “You’re a tease, Miller.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, straightens, and gives your hand a gentle squeeze. “Get inside, before I forget how to be a gentleman.”
You nod, opening the door. “Goodnight, Joel.”
He lingers for a second longer, eyes warm. “Night, darlin’.”
The door closes softly between you, and for the rest of the night, neither of you can quite stop smiling.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ ୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Next part is being finished up here soon!
Yeah and what about me enjoying the idea of physically running into Joel Miller’s broad body and his strong arms catching you and yeah SO WHAT! I’ll write it into every story.
Taglist as requested (please let me know if you want to be added/removed!): @white-wolf-buckaroo @streamermattsgf @somedayheaven
OH MY GOODNESS how lucky we are to get to know the lore of our fave power couple!!! 😍🥰💕 I’m over the moon after reading how these two sweethearts met, this was so endearing and soft!! 🤎☕️✨
THANK YOU MY DEAR always so glad when you enjoy these parts 😭🥰 just softness for these two before they tap into that feral side, I can’t stop writing them. Crazy for me to ever think they could be a one shot hahaha. More to come soon!! 🩷
