Rules - A Joel Miller Drabble
Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader Rating: E. Smut is backkkkk baby. Fingering, unprotected p in v, the usual. Word Count: 2829 a/n: Someone destroy the USB before episode 6 premieres or I fear I actually won't make it past next Sunday. Anyway, here's some smut!
“So what’s he like?” you ask, trying your best to sound nonchalant. “You know, when he isn’t being an asshole?”
Maria follows your line of sight, right to where your gaze is fixed on the two men across the street, chopping up the tree they’d spent the afternoon taking down. “Joel?” she asks, and you know she’s looking at you now, but you don’t acknowledge it, keeping your focus on the flowers you’ve been planting in your front yard.
You only hum in confirmation.
“He’s pretty closed off,” she sighs, “but I can’t say that I’d expect anything else. He’s been through it according to Tommy.”
“We’ve all been through it,” you fire back, perhaps with a bit more venom in your voice than you want. You let out a breath to calm yourself, “I mean, it’s just…he’s…not a bad neighbor so I was just wondering.”
The woman at your side smiles, letting out a soft laugh as she plants another bulb in the soil. “You should go talk to him,” Maria comments, a suggestion that finally has you staring at her like a deer in the headlights.
“Why the fuck would I…”
She raises her eyebrows in question, effectively stopping you. “You know as well as I do how…” she trails off, contemplating her words, “...unwelcoming people in this town can be sometimes.”
“I know, but…”
“But what?” she cuts you off again, “you can’t talk to him because of your dumb rule?”
“It’s not a dumb rule,” you counter, shoving a plant into the ground with a bit more force than necessary. “I think it’s rather smart, actually.”
Maria laughs again, loud enough this time that it causes Tommy to pause and look in his wife’s direction. There’s love there, in the way he looks at her, the same kind of love that you swore off a long time ago. The kind of love that was scary enough to think about without the outbreak and the constant threat of loss. It’s why you made an oath to yourself to avoid men years ago, a rule that had been easy to follow since a relationship of any kind hadn’t really even crossed your mind until you found a relatively normal life in Jackson.
Or until Joel Miller moved in across the street.
You’re prepared to argue, conscious of the way your friend stops what she’s doing to turn in your direction, but her voice is soft when she continues. “Do you want my honest opinion?”
You let out another sigh, already well aware of what she’s going to say, but you nod anyway.
“You, my friend, need to get laid.”
As if he can hear your conversation, Joel chooses that moment to slice through a piece of wood with near perfect accuracy, a loud crack sounding from across the street. It’s enough to make you jump, eyes darting back to him, and this time they meet his, both of you freezing.
Maria chuckles from beside you, already turned back to her work. “I’m just saying you should think about it. He's a good guy, you know,” she continues, as though she needs to add more fuel to the fire. “Tommy wouldn’t have let him in if he wasn’t, blood relation or not.”
Your eyes are still locked on the man in question, who seemingly forced himself to move on to another thick cut of wood, ax swinging through the air. There’s little you can do to argue with her, though, on either point. Joel’s given you no reason to believe that he isn’t someone you can trust, no matter how quiet or unsocial he might seem, and you can’t deny the dull ache that lingers when you watch the way his muscles move beneath his black t-shirt.
“Just think about it, okay?” Maria comments again, right before the two of you fall quiet with only the occasional echo of splitting wood filling the silence.
You know he’s home.
The light is on in the kitchen, with the soft glow leaking into the living room. Ellie is out somewhere, you know that too, because you saw her leave earlier.
Not that you’ve been watching or thinking in the slightest about what Maria had said.
After all, you have a rule, and that rule has a purpose. There’s enough of an opportunity to be hurt in your world without adding a relationship, or even just sex, to the mix, and after all, you’ve been fine this long without someone in your bed, much less him.
But you also can’t help the way your mind wanders back to that afternoon. To the way you could see the faint sheen of sweat on his brow from across the street. To the sound of his grunt with each swing of the ax. To the way each move he made somehow seemed to make you more desperate for something you've denied yourself for far too long.
Maybe Maria was right. Maybe you do just need to get laid, and maybe this is the perfect opportunity. Joel hasn’t seemed like someone on the hunt for a relationship either, even as women flock to him at The Tipsy Bison. Not that you’ve noticed.
As you try to pry your eyes away from where they’re locked on his living room window, you see him. He’s changed into a different t-shirt, this one white, and his hair is slicked back from the shower he must’ve taken once he’d finished outside. For a brief moment you wonder if he’s going to go to bed, but then he sits on the couch.
And in the next second, you’ve left yours.
The walk across the street and up the steps of his porch has your heart beating like you’ve just run a marathon, and you will its pace to slow as you stand in front of his door. You tell yourself you should turn back, follow your rule, go home, and you’ve just about convinced yourself when the door swings open.
Joel looks understandably surprised to find you in front of him, a guitar in his hand as he stares at you the same way you’re staring back.
“Hi, Joel,” you manage to get out, wringing your hands at your sides. “I was just…Maria said that I should…”
“Maria?” he asks, cutting you off with a gruff voice.
“Yeah,” you continue, “Maria said that I should come and just, I don’t know, say hello? Welcome you to Jackson?”
“I’ve been here five months and…” Joel trails off before letting out a huff, one hand running through his curls, which you can now confirm are still damp. He sets down the guitar before continuing, “Tommy told me that I should come over to your house and introduce myself. Get to know people.”
It takes you aback, and suddenly everything seems to click into place. Maria’s insistence that you plant flowers today, the same day that Tommy happened to insist on taking down the tree in Joel’s front yard. The way she’d been so quick to suggest that you check in on Joel, and the way she met Tommy’s gaze from across the street. An interaction you’d initially read as a simple exchange between two lovers suddenly more clear.
They’d set you up.
“I can’t believe them,” you laugh, hands slapping against your thighs as you pace back and forth slightly. “See, this, this is why I don’t do this. Why I have a rule.”
Joel’s quiet, but the look on his face reads as confused when you finally stop rambling. “What rule?”
You let out a frustrated sigh, running a hand down across your face. “I don’t date. I don’t…get involved with people. I don’t do this,” you explain, your hand swinging back and forth between the two of you as though that will somehow make it all clear.
It doesn’t.
“And just what is it that you think this is?” he asks, his hand mirroring your own, "because last I checked I wasn’t necessarily interested either.”
“Who said I was interested?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” he challenges, accompanying his words with a step toward you. “Why?”
Your breath hitches. “Maria said…”
Joel shakes his head. “Yeah, and Tommy said the same thing to me. Said that you’ve always been a bit of a loner, that you don’t date, but maybe if I just walked across the street and knocked on your door I’d find something I haven’t thought was possible in the last…”
He stops, then, cutting himself off as he looks down at you, something shifting, and then he’s turned away, stepping into the living room and leaving you with your thoughts.
It’s enough to keep you quiet for a moment, your attention focused on his footsteps as they trail back and forth in front of the couch. “I’ve seen you,” you continue eventually, stepping into his house, your voice soft, “with the women.” When he doesn’t respond, you continue as though you need to elaborate further, “at the Bison.”
“I know damn well where you’ve seen me,” he retorts, swinging around to face you. “And I know you’ve also seen me turn every one of them down.”
“Why is that?” you can’t help yourself from asking, the words out of your mouth before you can stop them.
Joel crosses the room again to stand right in front of you, closer than before.
“Because I have rules, too.”
You don’t stop to consider your next move. In fact, you’re barely conscious of what it is you’re even doing until after your lips are already on his, hands woven into his hair as he cups the back of you head, holding you firmly against him. It’s only when his tongue trails along your lower lip, seeking entrance, that you pull back forcefully.
“Fuck, wait,” you breathe out, desperately trying to put some space between you in a half-assed attempt at reminding yourself that this is the absolute last thing you should be doing right now.
He doesn’t push you. He just stands there, staring, breathing just as heavily as you are as you both try to figure out what you’re supposed to do next. What you’ll allow yourself to do next.
But your body chooses for you.
The next thing you know, you’re on the couch, trapped between his body and the back of the sofa. His lips never leave yours, devouring you like a man dying of thirst as his hand trails lower. You don’t stop him when his fingers tease the edge of your jeans, and you definitely don’t stop him when they slip beneath the waistline, hot against your skin.
“How long?” he asks when he lets you come up for air, his lips still marking a path along your jaw.
“What?” you ask, too focused on the way you’re already arching against him when his fingers find your core to fully comprehend what he’s asking.
It’s with a breath hot against your neck that he explains, “since someone touched you like this. How long?”
At first you can’t tell if your lack of response is because of the way he’s moved onto circling your clit or the sudden realization that you’re about to tell Joel Miller that you haven’t been properly fucked in twenty years, but every thought leaves your mind when he pulls back.
“What the fuck, Joel?”
“Tell me,” he insists, teeth grazing your collarbone and nipping at the skin there as his fingers trace against your stomach. “How long has it been?”
“Outbreak Day,” you murmur, hopeful that your response will have him resuming the motion between your legs. Instead, he stops entirely.
“Outbreak Day? God, baby, no wonder you’re so fucking wet.”
A groan leaves your lips a moment later when he resumes his mission to make you come on his couch, fingers swirling around your clit as he returns his lips to yours. You battle against one another, your hands roaming across any part of him that you can reach, until you’re left motionless by his fingers teasing your entrance.
He slips two in easily, your body going rigid as he holds you steady. “Easy now, not yet, baby," he murmurs, letting you adjust. When he starts to move, it’s slow, a steady pace that allows him to learn what each sound that falls from your lips means. The way you whimper when he curls his fingers just right, the catch in your breath when you’re close, and the groan that escapes when he stops, leaving you teetering on the edge of bliss.
“I fucking swear,” you breath out as he laughs against your neck. “This is why I don’t do this. Easier to just take care of…” you trail off, words lost as he adds a third finger to the mix, pace suddenly faster than before. His lips are hot against your ear as his thumb finds its home against your clit. “You sure about that?” he whispers just as he finally lets you tip over the edge, your hand tightening against his bicep as he guides you through it, only pulling back when you’re pushing him away, overstimulated.
The world is still a bit black around the edges when you hear the clink of his belt and the pull of fabric, and you’re barely aware of the way you tear at your shirt and push at your own jeans, frantic to rid yourself of them. The haze lingers when he settles between your legs, looking down at you, and the world only clears when you realize he’s staring.
“What?” you ask, voice soft and a bit rough from the strain he’s already put on you tonight. You look down to where his cock hangs heavy and hard between you, and you know now that he does want this just as much as you do.
“You sure? Because we don’t have to…this doesn’t…” he fumbles over his words, “this doesn’t have to mean anything.”
You’d had your fair share of one-night stands before the outbreak, and maybe it was the fact that the world you lived in now was very different from the one you lived in then, but you wonder if he can feel it too. The sense that that isn’t what this is.
That somewhere between his front porch and his couch, both of your rules had been broken, and that neither of you are really sure what to do about it.
Instead, you guide him closer, your hand reaching for his length so you can guide it to your entrance, letting your actions answer his question instead. When he slips inside, it’s in a singular motion, his hands coming to rest on either side of your head. His eyes are shut tightly, enough to make you wonder how long it’s been for him, but then he continues with a precise snap of his hips.
You thought you remembered how it felt, how this would feel, even after all this time. But as he fucks you into the cushions you start to wonder if you do, because this feels like something else entirely, something you can’t quite explain.
Joel is grunting against your neck, lips buried into the skin he finds there as each shift of his hips hike yours further up the couch. Your shoulders, and then your back, catch on the arm of the sofa, and you hold on, one arm wrapped around to claw against his back and the other desperately holding to the fabric. You can tell he’s barely hanging on by the way his thrusts grow more erratic.
“Joel, it’s okay, you can…”
“You first,” he insists, reaching between you to thumb at your clit again. It’s enough, pleasure sparking in your veins until it settles and you’re clenching around him, just for a moment before he pulls out. You whine at the loss, but he’s quick to replace his cock with his fingers, working you through your orgasm as he wraps his other hand around his length.
He spills against your stomach seconds later.
The room is left with just the sound of your heavy breath when you both come down from the high, his fingers slipping once more from your heat as he stands, retrieving his t-shirt from where he’d thrown it to the floor. With a gentle touch, he wipes it across your stomach, cleaning his spend from your skin.
When he's finished, you start to move. “I should…”
“Stay,” Joel surprises you by saying, and you swear you catch a hint of a smile on his face as he runs his thumb over your lower lip. "You should stay."
Something in the back of your mind triggers an old alarm bell that sounds the warning that this isn't what you do. You don't get involved. You don't do this.
But as he offers his hand to help you stand, gathering your discarded clothes before he leads you to his bed, you wonder if, perhaps, rules are made to be broken.
