i would do it all over again

vetty . 20s . she/her . 18+ blog proud owner of 27 notebooks masterlist

[joeloverture]

live forever | j.m. x f!🦽!reader

masterlist | notifs blog pairing: jackson!joel x f!wheelchair user!reader summary: the years since you met joel miller, from when you crawled into jackson wyoming unable to stand to him making your legs weak. warnings: (18+ mdni) fix it fic: smut, fluff & angst this is a chili's triple dipper (HEA), reader is an ambulatory wheelchair user and deals with a severe chronic pain condition, fic spans several years, big ass age gap: reader is anywhere from 19-early 20s (anxieties about losing mobility at her age are a theme) & joel's age is reader's choice, self indulgent the secret history (1992) references, bring dei back to fiction (everyone in this bitch is disabled), mutual pining, joel calls reader kid, falling in love, did i mention smut? yeah, smut. f!masturbation, getting caught, f!oral, fingering, joel miller's filthy mouth, joel COMES IN HIS PANTS!!! word count: 9.1k a/n: this was supposed to be half of a fix it fic, but for the purposes of disability pride month i've chopped it in half. turns out the fix it part of this fic was too much for me to handle mentally at the time i was writing this. reader's experiences closely mirror my own. reader is young and sexually inexperienced because those were the themes i felt most concerned with as someone disabled at the time. maybe someday i'll pick up the 'fix it' part, but for now, this is reader and she means a lot to me so be nice to her, kay? happy disability pride-- you're wanted, needed, and loved. it's hard to be proud of the parts of yourself that might feel unsavory, but if you're disabled, it's part of what makes you, you. try to embrace it this month. i love you all. p.s. to my able-bodied friends: feel free to read this! you r so very welcome here and to put yourself in our shoes is a great way to get to know our experiences.

SPRING, 2024

The first time Joel saw you, he thought he was hallucinating.

He was heading back into Jackson with Tommy fresh off of a patrol, exhaustion having properly sunk its claws into his eye sockets. Hell, it makes more sense for you to be a hallucination.

It’s not until Tommy asks, “Got an eye for Hot Wheels?” that he realizes he hadn’t just been making shit up.

He didn’t think there were any of… your type… left around after the end of the world. It’s hard enough for men like him to survive when there’s always a clicker snapping just shy of his neck or raiders whaling bullets on his tailbone.

“What now?” Joel gives Tommy a narrow look.

“She’s real sweet, y’know. Works at the library, always tryna get the teenyboppers to read.” Joel makes a noncommittal noise.

“Oughta get to know her. She’s a new arrival like you.” New arrival? How the fuck were you living out there before this? “It’d do you some good. Maria worries, the townsfolk talk–”

“I’m doing my part,” Joel says as if it’ll change a thing.

Tommy’s always spinning his tires with him. Just last week he was on about Refacing the General Store as if they hadn’t just finished refurbishing Tommy’s patio. Joel’d rather acquaint himself with a hammer, God forbid Tommy suggest setting him up again.

“Right,” Tommy says. They watch you brace your hands on the wheels of your wheelchair, rolling along the porch of the bookstore. You straighten displays and get chatty with a customer. You talk with your hands, Joel notices. “Matter ‘a fact, I do have a project for you.”

Joel asks, “Yeah?”

“We put her up in Winnie’s old house, God rest her soul. Problem is, it ain’t… shit, what’s the word…” Tommy snaps his fingers.

“Wheelchair friendly?” Joel asks.

“Wheelchair friendly. She’s been sleepin’ on that raggedy ass old couch ‘a hers ‘cause the bedroom door’s too small. Not exactly comfortable for her… condition. I’m thinkin’ you put in some grab bars in the bathroom, maybe a walk-in tub. A better ramp than what we’ve propped up outside. Widen that doorway for her.”

Joel chews at the inside of his cheek. “That’s a big job. You sure we got the equipment for that? Couldn’t we throw her in with Janet?”

“Janet’s only got one bedroom, and she’s stubborn as a mule. Doesn’t like havin’ her cheese moved. Supplies, though, we’ve got those in abundance.”

He looks at you again. You’ve woven little dandelions into the spokes of your wheels and there’s a knit bag hung from the back. You flash a winning smile at the customer you’re talking to and flip through a book, pointing out a specific line. You’re young — too young to be in a wheelchair. He has to wonder what horrors you’ve seen. Did someone do this to you, or were you always like this? You must be miserable. He knows what it’s like to be off of your own reins.

“Fine,” Joel says. “I’ll handle it.”

You wake up with your switchblade in your hand.

It’s dark, clouds having spread like butter over the gunmetal sky. Rain pitter-patters against the roof of this house you’ve inherited from a dead woman. You blink the sleep from your eyes as your front door death-rattles on its hinges. Someone’s knocking. You crane your neck to the analog clock on your coffee table — 7:03. Who the fuck comes over at 7:03.

“I’m coming,” you shout when the door clatters again. Finally, the knocking stops.

Agitated, you ruffle your clothes into something semi-presentable and rub the sleep from your eyes. You get up, legs protesting with each step. Pain spurts like a live wire up your muscles; 7:04 AM and you already know it’ll be one of those days.

You slump into your wheelchair (the best thing about Jackson by far, surpassing running water of a shower you have to sit on the cold floor of, or food from the canteen that Maria has to hand deliver to you) and wheel your way to the front door. It’s slow going. You never had the privilege of one of these things before finding the cozy town. It’d been just you and your switchblade and your pistol, gritting your teeth and fighting back tears between each runner you’d stabbed in the eye.

You keep the same switchblade in your hand, just in case, but the most likely scenario is that Tommy Miller’s come to bug you again. Maria puts him up to it, you’re sure.

You have to move up to the left side of your door since it opens inwards, fumbling with the creaky gold handle. The door squeaks as the wind pushes it inward. You lean forward, eyes traveling up to the man in your doorway.

He’s a Miller alright — just not Tommy Miller.

“Oh. Joel, right?” you ask, a small pucker between your brows.

He invites himself in.

“Hey now, what the hell do you think you’re doin–” You look down to the dented red toolbox in his grip. Metal clangs around inside with each step he takes. “You know, most people ask for permission before they barge in.” Where Tommy is open and gentle, Joel is standoffish and scowling.

“I’m renovatin’ your house,” Joel says, voice firm and nonnegotiable.

“And Tommy didn’t tell me this why?”

“Spur ‘a the moment thing. Wanted to come and grab some measurements, figure out what supplies I need, how much supplies–”

“You don’t need to fix the backsplash,” you say. “Really, it’s fine. There’s just some mild chipping, no big deal.”

Joel slows and looks over his shoulder at you. His lips pinch together. “You think I walked out here at seven in the morning in pissin’ rain to fix your fucking backsplash?”

“I dunno. You kinda walked in without saying anything, so.”

“Tommy said you’ve been sleeping on the couch.” You nod stiffly. “I’m gonna fix that.”

“What?” you blurt out.

At his side, he starts unraveling a measuring tape. “You ain’t stupid, Tommy said you’re some kinda librarian. I’m fixin’ your house up. Makin’ it more suitable for your…” he waves a hand in your general direction.

“You don’t need to take pity on me,” you say. “You clearly don’t wanna be here. You can just go home. No skin off my back.”

“Well, Tommy won’t quit bitchin’ in my ear until it’s done. So it’d be skin off my back, kid.” Joel walks further into your house, boots thunking against the hardwood. He squats and measures out your door. His notepad has a sticker on it that says NASA, whatever that means. He wets his thumb with his tongue and thumbs through the notepad to mark down the measurements. You sit silently next to him, glaring.

“Lookin’ at me like I shot your dog. I’m doin’ you a solid here.”

“You could be a really shitty renovator,” you say. “And then bam. My whole house falls down and my arms get fucked up too.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.” Joel rolls the tape measure back up. “Where’s your bathroom?”

You point down the hall and follow him there, parking yourself outside while you watch him take the measurements of your toilet and bath. You cross your arms, trying not to mock his scowl.

“Are you gonna be waking me up at the asscrack of dawn every time you get inspired to play demolition?”

“Not demolishing anything. You got a rudimentary idea of this, don’t you?”

“It’s almost like I’ve never seen carpenters before.”

He gives you a look that tells you he thinks you’re full of shit. You return that look in confidence. “Well, your doorways have a more cosmetic frame. Just gotta shave some inches off and pretty it up a bit. Might take a while to find a door, but you could hang a curtain if you’re worried or anything. Your chair ain’t that much bigger, though. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Right,” you say. “Well, if that’s all you need.”

“I’ll be back to ‘demolish’ stuff tomorrow. Two o’clock instead. Got patrol, and clearly Sleepin’ Beauty needs her shut-eye.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you grumble, already wheeling back towards your couch. Your eyelids are sinking as if draped with dumbbells.

He watches you as you strain to push your weight into your forearms, dragging yourself onto the couch. You fluff up the flat pillow you’ve been sleeping on and flick your quilt over your lap. He’s thinking about it — obviously he is. Everyone in the entire town thinks about it. They look at you, too, as if they can understand where the invisible shards of glass in your legs come from and where exactly they pierce. Sometimes, if you’re especially unlucky, they’ll fondle the handles of your wheelchair as if they’re some bastardized nurse.

Joel doesn’t do any of that.

Just gives you a jerk of his head and walks out of the door.

You think you like it better that way.

The next time he comes over, you’re ready. You unlock the door beforehand and tidy up what’s become your belongings. A basket of yarn and knitting needles from the previous resident of this house, a stack of books you’d found during your travels to get here, and… not much else. You’d found some postcards of Jackson in what used to be the visitor’s center and hung them up on the corkboard. Anything to make it feel more like home.

You settle in on your couch under your quilt — also the handiwork of the previous owner — and crack open one of the novels you’d found. You’re halfway through your reread of it. The cover and pages are coarse like sandpaper, but soothe the rattling in your head.

“Come in!” you call when Joel comes knocking at your door.

He grunts a greeting to you as he heads towards your bedroom door. You don’t pay much mind to him as he begins to etch into your wall with tools you don’t recognize.

You flip the page.

“You’re the quiet type, ain’t ya?” Joel asks.

“So are you.”

A beat, punctuated by a pry bar meeting your wall. “Got me there.”

You skim through a couple more pages, scribbling an annotation down onto a sticky note. You wouldn’t dare take ink to the pages of this already beaten and busted book. You’re pulled out of the atmosphere by Joel’s panting, and the wiping of sweat from his brow.

“I’d offer to bring you a glass of water,” you say. “But it’d probably be quicker if you get it yourself.”

“Uh huh,” he says. “I’d put my book down if I were you.”

“Wh–”

A shrill whirring noise fills the air as he begins to saw into your doorframe. With a groan, you flop onto the couch on your stomach and cover your ears. Your cheek is smushed into the spine of your book.

After what feels like forever but is more like five minutes, the sawing cuts, and he tosses ripped up slabs of wood on your floor. He nods between you and them as if to tell you ‘That’s why’.

This is going to be a long few weeks.

/

Most days, Joel Miller is easy to ignore. You’re quiet – he’s quiet. You stay busy – he stays busy. It’s an easy ebb and flow that you two fall into. Three days into the process, he opens up your bedroom door for you entirely. It’s nice being able to lift yourself into a real bed, a luxury you haven’t had in over a decade. You spend most of your time in your bed, across the hallway from the bathroom.

The bathroom fixes, he says, will take longer. Complications with the plumbing and the like.

About a week into renovations, he knocks his tool box shut and lugs it out. He leans against your newly widened doorway and nods at you. “You’ve read that book three times since I first talked to you.”

“You’re observant,” you say, eyeing him over the creases in the pages.

“‘S your favorite or somethin’?”

You nod and hold up the cover. “The Secret History.” A small grin hitches on your lips.

“I was never a big reader,” Joel says, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand.

“This doesn’t seem like your speed. You seem like you’d prefer… I dunno. Hatchet, probably.”

Joel nods, and your gut tells you it’s more of a courtesy. He doesn’t know a damn thing about what you’re talking about. “Why do you like that one so much?”

“It feels like what my life would’ve been,” you say. You stare at the ribbing of the pages, the blur and bend of ink. There’s a water stain in the southeastern corner of the bottom hundred page, bleeding into the page numbers. “They’re Greek students, but they read the literature. I would’ve liked to be a classics student, I think. Maybe teach at some schmoozy top university, give lectures, whatever. Except in the book… all of it goes wrong. They wanted too much, and for a moment, they had it. But it could never last. I guess it's as sobering as it is what I yearn for.”

Joel’s face softens. “Yeah. You never got to live in the real world, didja?”

“This is the real world, Joel. There was just a before, and then the after. Us poor bastards are in the after.”

“Yeah,” he says, backing away from your room. “I guess we are.”

You seal another faded sticky note onto a page with another observation you had when you hear the knock on your door. Maria must be over with your food. You inch across the bed and plop down into your chair before rolling yourself to your doorstep.

You open the door and blink in surprise when you see Joel standing above you with two plates in-hand. “Hey, uh,” he says, face red from the sweeping cold. “Maria was busy, so… thought I’d take over. Mind if I–”

“Yeah, sure.” You scoot out of the way and he kicks your door shut. Your dinner table only has one chair at it, since there’s no need for you to swap between two seats. You slot yourself in across from Joel and pick up the spoon he’d brought over, inhaling mouthfuls of stew.

“Slow down,” he says with a half-glimmer in his eyes. “Gonna get a bellyache.”

Through a mouthful of carrots and potatoes, you say, “‘M hungry.” When you finally slow yourself down, you look at him. He blows gently on his stew and scratches at his scruff. “Thanks. This is… nice. Usually nobody eats with me.”

“What?” He puts down his spoon. “Seriously?”

“Well, I really only know Maria and Tommy, so they alternate days to wheel me over to the library. It’s hard with all the snow and ice to get myself over there. They also take turns bringing me food.”

“That’s… a damn shame,” he says.

“I don’t hate it.” You don’t. It’s worse anywhere else — hell, you might’ve found the last safe haven left in the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to look out of your window and see people your age hanging out or heading off on patrols.

Joel looks at you as if he doesn’t believe you.

“Really. It’s… it’s not that bad – and, I have all these books to keep me company, so really, what’s the problem?”

“There isn’t one,” he says as he goes in for another bite of soup.

There’s a problem, not that Joel would ever admit it aloud or to himself.

The problem is you — of course it’s you. He should’ve known you’d be a goddamn thorn in his side the moment Tommy proffered the job to him instead of just doing it himself. There was a problem when you sassed him on day one, a problem when you appeared completely indifferent to his presence in your home, and a problem when he realized just how alone you were. He finds himself looking at you while he’s chiseling out parts of your bath. Watching the curve of your shoulder or the sprawl of your legs while you lay face down reading your books. Not because he’s ogling you, either — that’s a long-dead version of himself that respects you too much and disrespects himself too much to even consider eyeing you up. He’s more enamored with how you got here. Did you claw and tear your way through hordes of infected? Were you the final member standing of a group? How much blood had you drawn? Did you fire pistols, rifles, shotguns? Outrun raiders on your bad legs?

You’re a survivor. Too much like him. And now you have a chance to fix all of this — just like him.

Tommy was right. He should get to know you.

So for the second night in a row, he shows up at your doorstep with hot food and a performatively detached expression.

And when the third night in a row comes around, when he still smells like sawdust from working in your house until six in the evening, he walks inside to find the table’s already been set.

“Thinkin’ I’ll widen this doorframe, too,” Joel says, slapping at the curvature of it from where he’s sat on the bathroom tiles. You’re curled up in your wheelchair, chin cupped in palm. “Don’t need ya crawling’ everywhere.” He nods definitively.

“I’d appreciate that,” you say.

“You should read to me.” He rummages around in his toolbox. “While I work.” He’s about three fourths done with your bath, from what he’d told you this morning. Today, he’s installing a compact shower bench. He shifts over to it, working with metal bits and bobs you can’t quite identify.

“Joel Miller,” you jest. “literature aficionado.”

“Could be,” he shrugs. “You can be the next person in line to try teachin’ and old dog some new tricks.”

You do. You thumb and read through the pages until your voice goes scratchy and he runs you some tap water to soften it up. You occasionally ask Joel to tell you the parts you’d never been able to understand. (‘Joel, what’s an SAT?’ ‘Joel, tell me about Disneyland.’)

“Joel, did you go to college?”

“Nah. Not my blood. Went to trade school. Was blue collar.” He senses the question before you can ask it. “I worked with my hands. Contracting stuff, like what I’m doin’ now.”

“Lucrative?” you ask.

He snorts. “Fuck no.” He drills at the wall some. “I planned to start up a business. Me ‘n Tommy, just workin’ jobs. Got pretty close to havin’ the savings to do it, too. Then…”

“This,” you fill in for him.

“This,” he nods. He slumps against your bath and dabs at his brow.

“Like I said,” you say. “You want too much, and for a moment, you will have it.”

Sun slices in through the rectangular window at the top of your bathroom. You can see dust buoyant in the air as Joel tidies up the window sill, dust mites floating on nothing. His sleeves are rolled up, arms tensing as he shifts to tug at the bench now secured to your wall. Your mouth feels a little dry as you begin to read from the sunlight, eyes skidding across words.

Your voice is breathy, undercut by a little shiver of raspiness on your tongue as you wade through the first fifty or so pages of your copy. He’d relented to you reading it to him, interspersed with small commentary on lines he doesn’t quite get, references you would never understand without him to underline them. 

“‘Cubitum eamus,’” you read, a tiny grin needling at your lips. “‘What?’ ‘Nothing.’”

“Hell’s that mean?” Joel asks, drawing out a little measurement on your bath.

“Will you go to bed with me,” you say, voice airy. Joel looks over his shoulder at you, a pucker between his brows.

“Doesn’t sound that sexy,” he says. You only shrug.

The next few pages are uneventful, apart from the sandpaper noise of Joel’s work. You fall into the melodic nature of reading. It’s nice to read something aloud that isn’t some picture book that Maria approved for the littles.

You read, “‘And if beauty is terror,’ said Julian, ‘then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we only have one. What is it?’ ‘To live,’ said Camilla. ‘To live forever,’ said Bu–”

“That’s bullshit,” Joel says. “Who wants to live forever?”

“Some people, I guess.” You weigh the book in your hand. “Don’t read too far into it. Camilla is heavily alluded to fucking Charles. They’re not really part of the exterior world, they’re all too trapped in their own morbidities to realize how strange they are.”

“She– what? Ain’t he her fuckin’ brother?”

“Brother she’s fucking, unfortunately. Hey, I never said it was a book about good people! Just that it was a good book.”

“Jesus.”

“The Greeks were obsessed with immortality. In a way, all of us are. We don’t know when we will die. In another way, our lives are indefinite until they aren’t.”

“You would’ve made a good classics student, that’s for damn sure.”

You cock your head. “How come?”

“You think too much.” You pull a face. “Not in a bad way. It’s… endearing, kinda.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m endeared by how little you think.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cute.”

You pick up where you left off at the same time Joel does. A drill spinning in time with each word spooled out of your lips. You carry on with that until sunset, when the light in the bathroom is fraying and he works by flashlight. Not wanting to strain your eyes, you resign yourself to watching him work. 

You watch his thick fingers traipse around the bath, his broad muscles tensing beneath his taut white tee. How his hands hitch across plaster. It’s impossible not to let your mind wander, to envision the drag of his hands under the hem of your shirt, up to your tits. He’d be so doting, how he always is, a caretaker at heart. Maybe he’d muster the vulnerability to nuzzle into your neck, or you into his. You don’t notice your drifting thoughts or your sifting thighs until he taps against the rim of the bath. 

Joel turns around. You go shock still. “Think that’ll be enough for tonight.” He takes a second, absorbs the sight of your panting breaths. “You alright?”

“Uh huh,” you say. “Perfect.”

You try to explain it to yourself. It doesn’t work.

He’s practically in your house from sunup to sundown, and you only ever see others if you’re working a shift down at the library. Of course you’re antsy. Besides, when you’re out in the woods with only a gun and your own, traitorous body for survival, there’s no time to slip your fingertips into your panties. No time to chase any pleasure besides that of seeing another sunrise.

You blame it on the fatigue because that’s easier. Except can you really blame something that’s always there? A hardened, concrete exhaustion that suctions around your bones. Your body doesn’t seem too tired to react to Joel. It’d been too tired to react to the people you used to travel with, even though they were all you had. And now, with so much more in arm’s reach, your body still ravages you spitefully dormant despite what you want. 

When you’re on the verge of sleep, you feel Joel at the base of your spine, hand slipping between your legs while he grinds himself against your ass. You crook your legs, fingers wiggling down to your clit, but —

Nothing. Your legs spasm with shooting, weblike pain, and you collapse in frustration and agony. Every. Single. Time. Whenever you try to do something even as banal as self pleasure, it rusts within your grasp.

You want something or somebody or maybe you just want him. Maybe you want your own touch, too. Maybe you want to feel like a person because right now you feel like nothing. A nobody who came out of nowhere with no real use to the community because anyone could take your place. Anyone could know more about books than you and be able to work harder than you and then what use do you have apart from filling up this big, big house that wasn’t made for you? Mooching off of Joel Miller himself. You wonder if he calls you a lazy ass behind your back because that’s what you are, a lazy fucking bitch who probably feels the same as anyone else in this goddamn town. But they don’t mope around in wheelchairs. Don’t mope around in bed. Don’t have to crawl to get places. Hell, it’s the apocalypse, everyone has their thing, you’re just being a fucking drama queen. You are fine. You survived outside the fence for long enough, you should be just as capable as everyone else here.

But you aren’t.

Your arousal turns to tears and your face tilts to bury itself in your pillow. You taste saline. You wish you were normal wish you could walk wish you could just fucking move for once. You’ll never be what you want to be. That version of you, if it existed at all, is buried somewhere outside of Jackson.

You have a chance here. At life, at being something. And you are wasting it. 

Leaking at the slit, chomping at the bit for someone who is never going to want you. That much is certain. He’s got several decades on you and is still more active and spry than you. You’d tried to pass him his hammer once on the job and had dropped it, leaving a warped dent into one of your floorboards. He’d soothed the ache with an understanding gaze, hand rounded out over your wrist, soft little, “It’s alright, ain’t hurtin’ anyone.” But you saw it, then, that glaze of pity that you get from everyone. 

You don’t want him to pity you, you want him to want you.

But the illusion will be broken soon, you’re sure. When he’s done fixing up your house, has had enough of you and all of your fucking baggage, you’ll only see him in passing. You’ll go back to eating alone. Those waterworks in your eyes and between your legs will re enter a drought. You’ll reread every book in the library again. Read The Secret History to the walls. Wait for them to respond, and sit in the silence.

He doesn’t come over the next day.

Of course. He saw you fidgeting and now he knows you’re a pervert. Just your luck. Squander what little you have here. Would Tommy and Maria kick you out for this? No. Not for the crime of being hot under the collar for Joel. …Right?

You set the table anyway, and it sits frighteningly bare as the shadows of noon stretch through the windows then stretch into darkness after dusk. You lay on the couch, waiting for him, eyeing where you’d stuffed the bookmark into the preloved pages.

You can’t bring yourself to hop back into your wheelchair and wiggle through the doorway he’d widened for you, so you curl into your couch and quilt like a snail wrapped up in its shell. Then, a ratchety cough bursts through the still, quiet air, followed by the jiggling of a doorknob. Your hand lurches behind you onto the side table. You knock over a ceramic coaster, hear it shatter as your hand locks around your gun.

You heft it, aiming it at the door, and —

“Woah, woah, Jesus, kid, put that damn thing down now–”

You exhale, slowly lowering it onto the coffee table. “Joel? Jesus, it’s…” You crane your neck. “Two in the fucking morning.”

“Sorry, patrol… ran into some marauders. Dealt with some marauders. Why you ain’t in bed? And you know you oughta be locking your door. I know it’s safer here, but I don’t like that boy down the street. Never been fond ‘a him.”

“Was… waiting for you,” you mumble. Jesus, you even sound pathetic.

“Shit. Did you eat? Sorry, kid, I can run back and find somethin’ canned, heat it up for you…” Kid. Another blasé reminder of exactly how he perceives you. Young, but lacking any light in your eyes that might indicate it.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, jaw clenching as you scoot up against the couch. “Thought you weren’t coming.”

“Always gonna come,” he says. “Don’t want you goin’ hungry.”

You swallow, saliva swishing between your teeth. “Right.” You pat the spot next to you. “C’mon. We have another chapter, if you aren’t too tired.”

“So long as you don’t mind me smellin’ like the woods.”

“There are worse things to smell like,” you tease, and then the couch is slugging down with his weight as you tug the chain of your lamp. It takes forty-five minutes to get through this chapter, and you’re halfway to bed by the time you close the book. You yawn, stretching out with a grimace.

“Want some help?” Joel asks.

“Huh?” you ask groggily.

“Gettin’ tucked in,” he says.

“Oh, no,” you say. “I quite like it here. Just… turn out the lamp before you head out.”

“‘Cubitum eamus,’” you read, a tiny grin needling at your lips. “‘What?’ ‘Nothing.’”

“Hell’s that mean?” Joel asks, drawing out a little measurement on your bath.

“Will you go to bed with me,” you say, voice airy. Joel looks over his shoulder at you, a pucker between his brows.

“Doesn’t sound that sexy,” he says. This time, you don’t shrug.

This version of you is airbrushed. There are no bruises from trips and falls she has taken. She is confident and sure within herself, that vain swing of her hips. The push of her breasts together by shoulders hunched forward, but not too far forward. She hefts a leg over the lip of the bath, straddles Joel upon the shower bench. A shaky breath guttered out of his nose, chest rising.

She presses the warm mound of her cunt against his cock, already half-hard through his stained work jeans. “Do you want it to be, Joel?” she breathes. Rocks her hips, enough to make his head fall back against the hard wall with a sharp thud. “Cubitum eamus,” she whispers as she thumbs the zipper of his pants down. “Cubitum eamus,” she exhales into his ear as she works him with a twisting, wanting fist. “Cubitum eamus,” as she spreads her legs wider and sinks upon his lap, rocks her hi—

You wake up drenched in sweat. “Fuck. Fuck.” You’re still curled up like a roly poly on the couch, except this time, you can feel the slick beading the insides of your thighs. You can feel the phantom tickle of Joel’s warmth at your side. Just trying to adjust mashes your thighs closer together jerks your swollen clit between your legs. “Mmph,” you muffle your noise into your pillow.

The pain is further away now, like a fan the next room over. The longer you’re awake, the closer it’ll get until it rises to the sharpness of a siren in your ear. If you’re quick, you might be able to get off. Even if you’re clumsy, even if you haven’t done this in forever, you want it bad enough to try.

You prop one bent leg up against the back cushion of the couch. Your other leg drapes off the edge. There’s no exquisite buildup to this. Your body is far too topsy turvy for that. If you were to work from your neck to your cunt, pain may strangle you by the time you hit your midriff.

Your hand slithers beneath the seal of your shorts’ waistband. Hips cant up into the radiating heat of your fingertips.

This is pathetic. You’re pathetic. Waxing poetic to Joel about the life you wish you had when he’s probably seen the same amount of shit as you. Nobody wears a broken watch without a reason, just how nobody knows how to find a gun in their sleep without a reason. Getting off to the man who’s shown you nothing but kindness when you’ve done nothing to earn it. Rubbing your clit as you are now to the man who has done you boundless favors. It’s too saccharine to resist, though. That treacle drip between your thighs, the mash of your fingertips against your nub. 

You reach down to your hole — which has never felt so empty before — and gather enough slick to smear along your mound. A feathery whimper splays out of your lips as you toss your hips into your hand. Ecstasy sutures whatever pain rises in your joints, muscles, organs. It’s been years since you’ve felt this good, been able to let your walls down enough to do so. Sweat leaks from your pores; you feel your body slick and slippery within your blankets. You can’t make yourself care.

You surrender fully to pleasure with a little whine. Your fingers rub quickly, harshly, needily against your bundle of nerves. Your hips meet each upward stroke. It doesn’t take much, not when you’ve been deprived for so long. Face burning hot, you feel blood rush within your ears. Your cunt clenches around nothing. Your limbs shake, wanting, wanting, wanting. You’re right there, finally, on that razor-thin precipice–

“Oh good lord!”

You squeal, yanking your soaked hand out of your panties. Your fingers have pruned from the moisture, and your wetness stretches in drapes from your nail beds.

You blink away the pleasure-blurred film over your eyes, vision going from spotty to clear. You hurriedly wipe your fingers on your shorts and crane your neck.

Joel stands, facing the now-shut door. His hands cover his eyes even though he’s noticeably looking away from you. His shoulders are hunched, posture slumped. “I t-told you you needa start lockin’ your damn door!” he says.

“You need to start knocking!” you say. With a grimace, you cross your arms over your chest. You wish the couch cushions could expand and swallow you whole. Tears glisten at the corners of your eyes. This is the worst case scenario. He’s never, ever going to speak to you again and you’ll eventually die alone in Jackson the same way you were going to die alone out there, except this will be a far more merciful and prolonged way to die out, like the final burn of a wick in a nearly empty candle instead of an explosion. The rumors, God, you can hear them now, slithering through the cracks in your windows. “I’m sorry, Joel,” you choke out, throat grating from the words. “Fuck, I’m really sorry, you didn’t deserve to see that—”

“‘S fine. We all got needs, but Jesus fucking Christ, girl. In broad goddamn daylight? With the blinds open? I don’t know what you were gettin’ up to out there, but here, we got people. Coulda been anyone else walkin’ by and getting an eyeful.”

“I don’t usually–” you start before shutting yourself up.

“Don’t usually get off with the blinds open and your front door unlocked? I’d sure fuckin’ hope not.”

You cringe. “Don’t usually get off at all.” It’s a hoarse, muttered thing under your breath.

He stills and then shakes his head. “Don’t needa be hearin’ this.”

“Sorry. My body, it just… it… it’s not… it doesn’t work right, okay? When it comes to anything. Was just trying to take advantage.” You can already feel it surging up from your ankles up, concrete hardening in your calves. 

“Poor thing,” he says, and his low timbre shouldn’t make your clit jerk, at attention all over again. “Jus’ wanted to feel good. Now I feel like a dick for walkin’ in on ya. I’ll leave you be.” He turns back towards the door, reaching for the knob. The angle exposes the curve of his body to you, how his abdomen slopes into his bulge down the thickness of his thig– wait.

His bulge.

He’s hard. Why the fuck is he hard?

That flush of warmth in your groin returns, burning all the hotter. 

“Joel,” you rasp. From the way he tenses up, you know he can tell that you’ve noticed. He dips his head. He scrubs a hand along his textured, grizzled face. “I’m sorry, kid, I just – like I said, I’ll get outta your hair–”

He wants you. Or maybe he’s just as pent up as you are. You aren’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. “Joel–”

“Don’t,” he says. His voice leaves no room for argument.

You being you, you argue anyway. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Bullshit,” he grouses. “You’re too young for me, I’m too old for you, and that’s that. You hear me?”

If the evidence of his need weren’t pressed against his thigh, now strategically angled away from you, maybe you’d have given up by now. “It’s biological, Joel. Come on, when was the last time you got laid?” His silence punctuated by the tick of his jaw is an answer enough.

“When was the last time you got laid?” he shoots back.

Your silence is far more deafening than his. You roll over with a groan, burying your face into the same pillow you’d been drooling into. Footsteps crunch along the creaking floorboards of your living room. Joel taps at your shoulder with the backs of his knuckles.

“Kid.” There it is again. “C’mon. Talk t’ me.”

Your eyes flick up. You watch him through your brow bone and lash line. “It’s hell, you know? Except you don’t. Before the outbreak you were probably some sort of sex magnet heartthrob or something. I mean, look at you,” you say with a vague gesture at him. The face he pulls tells you that might not be entirely true, but that’s not a wound you’re interested in poking right now. Not when you’re flayed open beneath him.

“I’ve never had that. That… the old group I was with before they all died and before I got here, there were a couple of eligible bachelors, I guess you could say. All my energy went into surviving. But I was limping back into the compound. Not many of them were interested in a girl who couldn’t put out. One of them even told me they weren’t interested because I ‘walked like I’d already been run through’.” You wince at reciting the memory. “And… eventually, I gave up on ever being wanted. I felt too goddamn shitty to even think about putting my hand in my panties. Couldn’t even spread my legs at the time. So, yeah, Joel. I’m a goddamn virgin and you don’t need to rub it in. You don’t need to be a dick about it because I’m enough of a dick to myself about i-”

“Hey,” he says. “It’s okay. I knew plenty ‘a people at your age who weren’t havin’ sex.”

“For this reason?” you ask. “It fucking sucks, Joel. Not having any control at all whatsoever over my body, being demeaned whenever I try to. I… I just want–”

“Wanna feel good?” he asks, voice low and scrappy.

You swallow. Nod at him.

He takes you in. Your curled up, wretched form that has betrayed you ten times over. Those legs of yours that never work, the arms you struggle to weave through your shirts. His pupils consume his irises, and his jaw is clenched tight. Eventually, he says, “On your back, sweetheart.”

Your heart stutters. You freeze, looking up at him. You’d asked for it, would’ve even begged for it, but Joel, as stoic and straightforward as he always is, says, “Don’t make me repeat it. Already crossin’ too many lines with you than what’s good for either ‘a us. So turn your ass over and let’s get this over with.”

You swallow, throat tight and constricting. “Jeez. Guess romance isn’t dead.” Joel rolls his eyes. “That ain’t what this is.”

“Right, I know.”

You roll over for him, body stiffer than a board and not for the usual reasons. You have no idea what he intends to do with you. No idea how to position your limbs. This couch is already cramped enough for you alone. You can’t imagine how he’s planning to fit himself up here with you. You stare at the popcorn ceiling, trying to stop your vision from swimming. It’s hard when you could take a dip in your panties.

“Are you sure you want this?” he asks, hand landing upon your thigh. “Don’t have to go through with it.”

“I want it,” you say in a rush. You’ve wanted Joel for longer than you’ve been consciously aware of, you think. And now he’s offering to touch you, to make you come, to make you come at someone else’s hands for the first time. “I just… I dunno. What if I’m… bad?” you cringe.

Joel snorts.

“It’s a real concern!”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what smut you’ve been readin’ at the library, but let me tell you this. Sex ain’t perfect. It’s gonna be gross ‘n messy ‘n kinda awkward. It’s about mutual trust and respect. You don’t need to be arching like a Playboy bunny, you just needa relax. Let me take care ‘a you.”

“That’s the hard part, dude,” you say, digging the heels of your palms into your eye sockets.

“We’ll take it easy,” he says, hand slipping tenderly up to your waist. “Can I hop up there with ya?”

You nod. With a groan, he hefts himself over the lip of the couch to get between your legs. The sight of him between your thighs is nothing short of erotic. You squirm. “Needy,” he chides, sending electricity skimming up your spine.

“So… you don’t touch yourself often. Ever give yourself an orgasm, honey?” You bite on your lower lip and nod hesitantly. “Good, ‘s good.” He nuzzles into your thigh, lips tracing over the gooseflesh there. “What do you usually think about?”

“I… stuff, I guess,” you mumble, tucking your chin to your chest. It’s not exactly polite to say oh, yeah, I was jerking off to you before you interrupted my solo session! Sorry! At least… you think it’s impolite. You aren’t quite familiar with the etiquette. “How do you usually make women come?”

“Kissin’,” he murmurs. “Rubbin’. Lickin’. Talkin’.”

“Really painting me a picture there, Miller.”

In response, he pastes an open-mouthed kiss above your knee. Your free leg kicks out, nearly nailing him in the jaw. Joel chuckles. “Okay, maybe you are bad at this.”

“Oh, fuck you, too.”

“Just playin’, kid. But c’mon, you gotta cooperate with me on this if you want it to work. Alright?”

You nod, releasing a shaky breath. “Okay. It’s mechanical, mostly. Just… trying to release some tension, I guess?”

“Mmm, you poor thing. Gonna let me make it all better?” He croons, cupping the back of one of your knees. You nod, scarcely even knowing what you’re asking for anymore. “Gonna kiss that sloppy ‘lil slit ‘a yours. Fuck, can smell ya through your shorts.”

You shiver, hips jerking instinctively towards him. He hums as he starts peppering kisses up the insides of both of your legs. “J-Joel,” you whine. He glances up at you. “What if it tastes–”

“What if it sounds a whole lot like I don’t give a shit. What I wanna do is kiss that pretty fuckin’ clit. Bet it’s twitching, all swollen… poor thing.” Your back bows at that, which draws a pained grunt through the grids of your teeth.

His eyes flick up to yours. “Shh. Don’t gotta wiggle. Let me take care ‘a ya, yeah? That’s what this is about, sweetheart. Can I take these pretty things off?” His thumbs tweak the hem of your shorts.

They definitely aren’t pretty. They’re boxy and hang loose on your hips, held up only by a double-knotted drawstring that’s fraying at the edges. Still, he regards you as if all of you, even your worn clothes, are pretty. It makes your heart flutter against your ribcage, a frantic thing. He tugs them down your legs and shimmies them away from your calves, discarding them somewhere over the couch’s armrest. 

He continues leaving lazy, open-mouthed kisses up the expanse of your inner thighs. It takes everything in you not to flail out and kick him again. It’s such a foreign sensation, such a foreign situation, that you don’t know what to do with your hands. When he looks up at you, he seems to pick up on this much, puzzled facial expression falling into something laced with understanding.

He kisses the fold of your thigh into your pelvis. “What’s got you worried, sugar?”

“I…” I’m scared that I’ll end up in pain. Bedridden for days just because I let myself feel something good. Because I don’t have a body worth feeling anything except for pain. This busted, messed-up vessel I’m trapped in.

He seems to read your mind, eyes silently searching yours until the furrow in his brow becomes less pronounced. “Alright,” he says. “What’s comfiest for you?”

You shuffle until your legs bracket his neck, ankles splayed out somewhere along his spine. “Is that – I don’t want to choke you–”

“You can,” he says, and he sounds serious. You sputter out a laugh that doesn’t seem to land. “Try…. But you ain’t gonna. No offense, but–”

“Yeah, yeah, no core strength, worse leg strength, I know.”

He smiles wryly at you. “Now gimme your hands.” You hold them out, palms up. He cradles them both in one hand and guides them to his fluffy, full head of hair. You sigh as you sink your hands into the curls that naturally sprawl out at his ears. Your thumb strokes his temple, and he hums at the touch, a whirring noise in his throat. “There ya go. Pull as hard as you need to. Gotta know what feels good for ya.”

Your knees almost lock at the sight of him, the beautiful, debauched vision that he is between your legs, the arch of his nose nearly cradled between your clothed folds. He goes the rest of the way, nuzzling his nose against your clit. Your hips jerk, accompanied by a faint whine. “Fuck,” he groans. “Sensitive ‘lil thing.”

You expect him to tug the gusset of your panties out of the way and bury his face between your thighs — but he doesn’t. He licks a long, slippery stripe up the center of your clothed slide. You whimper, head sliding back against the pillow. Your toes curl a tad, fingers tightening in his hair already. He lets out a breathless laugh into your core. He spits on your center and smears it with spiralling twists and turns of his tongue. You feel yourself gush in your panties.

You know what your clit is. You’ve heard the former members of your group talk about how the guys around you were useless at finding it, you’ve slid your own hand in your panties not too often, but enough times to be able to clumsily mash your finger pads against what you think is it. That swollen, twitchy nub between your folds. Joel finds it as if it’s a mere extension of his tongue. His lips latch around it and suck through the soaked cloth of your panties. You buck against his mouth.

Hands nestling into his hair, you drag his face against your cunt, whining. Joel groans, shaking his head side to side. It tugs your clit, sucked raw between his lips, side to side. You shudder, tugging even harder at his hair. “Jesus- fuck, Joel, God–”

He pulls up and gives you a loopy grin. “Jus’ me, honey.”

“If I had tomatoes,” you say. “I’d be throwing them at you.” He gives a halfhearted nip at your clit, hardly enough to even feel it. 

“No you wouldn’t.” He kisses the inside of your thighs again, drags his tongue along the crease between your thigh and your groin. “Be outta a goddamn good orgasm if you did.” He tugs at the seam of your panties, snapping them against your leg. “Gonna let me take these off? Make ya really see God?”

“Yes,” you say, winded. “Yes, Joel– anything you want.”

“Anything you want,” he reminds you, palm open above your knee. His thumb rubs circles against you. 

You nod vigorously. “Well, I want. So get to it.” He pins you with a cocky look. “Please?”

“Can’t deny ya,” he murmurs into your skin. He shuffles your panties down. Takes a deep, trembling breath of your musky-sweet scent. Nudges the tip of his nose into your clit. It’s enough to make you keen. Then, his tongue plunges inside of you without wavering. He curls it upwards, nudging it against that spot you never have been able to reach on your own (only if you bend your legs like rolled dough under a pin, only if you reach around yourself hard enough to make your bones crack). The pressure skims across your body, making you quiver. You jerk at his curls even more, driving him against your cunt. His jaw is opened wide as he eats you, almost as if he intends to swallow your cunt whole and then some. The salacious slurp and suck of his lips catching on your folds is enough to make your fingertips tremble in his curls.

“Ah- fuck. Joel — Joel,” you whine, hips twitching against his mouth. He explores your cunt with a fervor you’ve never been able to exact upon yourself. You’re careening towards an orgasm faster than you’d like to, calves tightening, arms shaking. Blood roars in your ears. Your vision goes spotty. Joel moans into your pussy and you’re done for.

You come harder than you ever have in your life. Thrashing as much as your muscles will let you. Grinding yourself against Joel’s face, his stubble scraping against your bare skin. His lips rise to suction against your clit, giving you a wave to ride along the course of your orgasm. You whine and moan and make sounds you hadn’t thought yourself capable of making. The comedown is just as hard, smacking into wet concrete and trying not to sink. You clutch at Joel’s curls, yanking him out of your cunt when it crosses the line from pleasurably overwhelming to miserably overwhelming. He looks just as wrecked as yours, taking heaving pants. His hair is swept out of his eyes by your grip, pupils dilated, skin slick with sweat, beard webbed by your cum.

“Fuck,” you exhale.

“You’re telling me,” he says. He gently pries your hands out of his locks and presses tiny little kisses along your thigh, up your clothed stomach, along your shoulder blades. He may be straddling you, but he holds himself so tenderly that it’s as if he isn’t there at all. For a moment that leaves your stomach riddled with yearning, you feel nothing but pleasure ribboning through your limbs. There’s no glass-shattering of pain between your bones. It’s just you and him, wrapped up in each other.

His eyes meet yours, pupils slowly shrinking. Your eyes widen as you survey him again. “Wait—” He squints at you. “Gotta be equitable.” With a clumsy hand, you start snaking your way down to his waistband. Before you get there, he snatches your wrist.

“Nope,” he says. “Don’t ‘gotta’ do anything. Didn’t do that so I could ‘get mine’. Did that so I could taste your sweet cunt when it comes.”

“But–” You know how excruciating it is when you’re needy and can’t get yourself off. “I want to.”

“‘Fraid my refractory period ain’t what it used to be.” He scratches the back of his neck, face pulled into a taut grimace. “‘S been a long time for me, too, y’know. Busted in my fuckin’ pants like a goddamn teenager.” His cheeks are apple red, rounded out below his eye bags.

“Oh,” you say.

“Prolly for the best,” he says, hand falling to cup your cheek. “Like I said – can’t say no to ya. And if you started beggin’ me to give that pretty, needy ‘lil pussy my cock? I’d fold in a heartbeat, sugar. And that ain’t good for either ‘a us.”

You toy with the curl around his ear, now moist with sweat. “What if I said I wanted it to be you, Joel?” Joel’s face tightens with a self-loathing that is all too familiar to you. You see it every morning in the mirror.

But Joel, who you feel safe with, Joel. Joel, always at your house at the ass crack of dawn all the way to when the dinner bell rings. Whether he be cracking at your door frames or sliding a poorly-arranged plate across the table to you. Joel, dozing off on your shoulder while you read him Tartt. Joel, who likely against his better judgment, had just given you your first orgasm at the hands of someone else, all because you’d asked. “I trust you,” you say.

“You shouldn’t,” he says. He nuzzles his head into your neck. Your hand goes up to cradle the back of his head, scratching at it. “Ain’t done anything to earn it.”

“In your eyes, maybe. I…” You hesitate.  “enjoy your company.”

Joel takes a deep breath. You feel his exhale fan out on the arch of your neck. He smells like you. Like your cunt. It makes your stomach twirl. “You ain't so bad yourself,” he says.

It’s a while that you both lay there. The sun has gone from a sliver in the window to a beam across your living room, warming both of you as much as you warm each other. His hands play with the hem of your shirt, all the loose, spindly seams that have unraveled over the years. It’s this basking in the afterglow as much as it is basking in the budding heat of something new. 

“What do you want with me?” he asks.

You falter at that, tongue sealed to the roof of your mouth.

Everything, you want to say. But that’d be foolhardy and wrong and stupid. You’ve known him for a few weeks, but it feels like it’s been a few years. He sees you — not as the youngest cripple in town, not as a sexless posable doll, not as the librarian who almost fell out of her chair trying to do a wheelie in the snow. He just sees you.

You want to see him, too.

You settle on, “Anything you feel like giving me.”

He looks up at you through his lashes, pupils gone back to normal. Eyes still soft. Face still rough and smooth at the same time. “Anything, huh?” You nod. “Think I can do that.”

[joeloverture]

hi gang. just dropping in to say ive been doing better than i ever have been in my life! i feel so fortunate and happy lately. the sun is always shining and the birds are always chirping. (translation: they opened a canes in my town) (joke, but that does help)

i just wanted to drop in and say i hope yall are doing similarly well. and although im beyond this chapter (joel fic) of my life, i wanted to express my affection for those of you who were always kind to me <3

[joeloverture]

idk sometimes it occurs to me that we got reed richards as explicitly autistic as we r ever gonna get him AND he was played by a latin man and it just makes me sniffle. like yeah thats the closest ill ever get to feeling represented probably. what a gift it is to have that.

[joeloverture]

live forever | j.m. x f!🦽!reader

masterlist | notifs blog pairing: jackson!joel x f!wheelchair user!reader summary: the years since you met joel miller, from when you crawled into jackson wyoming unable to stand to him making your legs weak. warnings: (18+ mdni) fix it fic: smut, fluff & angst this is a chili's triple dipper (HEA), reader is an ambulatory wheelchair user and deals with a severe chronic pain condition, fic spans several years, big ass age gap: reader is anywhere from 19-early 20s (anxieties about losing mobility at her age are a theme) & joel's age is reader's choice, self indulgent the secret history (1992) references, bring dei back to fiction (everyone in this bitch is disabled), mutual pining, joel calls reader kid, falling in love, did i mention smut? yeah, smut. f!masturbation, getting caught, f!oral, fingering, joel miller's filthy mouth, joel COMES IN HIS PANTS!!! word count: 9.1k a/n: this was supposed to be half of a fix it fic, but for the purposes of disability pride month i've chopped it in half. turns out the fix it part of this fic was too much for me to handle mentally at the time i was writing this. reader's experiences closely mirror my own. reader is young and sexually inexperienced because those were the themes i felt most concerned with as someone disabled at the time. maybe someday i'll pick up the 'fix it' part, but for now, this is reader and she means a lot to me so be nice to her, kay? happy disability pride-- you're wanted, needed, and loved. it's hard to be proud of the parts of yourself that might feel unsavory, but if you're disabled, it's part of what makes you, you. try to embrace it this month. i love you all. p.s. to my able-bodied friends: feel free to read this! you r so very welcome here and to put yourself in our shoes is a great way to get to know our experiences.

SPRING, 2024

The first time Joel saw you, he thought he was hallucinating.

He was heading back into Jackson with Tommy fresh off of a patrol, exhaustion having properly sunk its claws into his eye sockets. Hell, it makes more sense for you to be a hallucination.

It’s not until Tommy asks, “Got an eye for Hot Wheels?” that he realizes he hadn’t just been making shit up.

He didn’t think there were any of… your type… left around after the end of the world. It’s hard enough for men like him to survive when there’s always a clicker snapping just shy of his neck or raiders whaling bullets on his tailbone.

“What now?” Joel gives Tommy a narrow look.

“She’s real sweet, y’know. Works at the library, always tryna get the teenyboppers to read.” Joel makes a noncommittal noise.

“Oughta get to know her. She’s a new arrival like you.” New arrival? How the fuck were you living out there before this? “It’d do you some good. Maria worries, the townsfolk talk–”

“I’m doing my part,” Joel says as if it’ll change a thing.

Tommy’s always spinning his tires with him. Just last week he was on about Refacing the General Store as if they hadn’t just finished refurbishing Tommy’s patio. Joel’d rather acquaint himself with a hammer, God forbid Tommy suggest setting him up again.

“Right,” Tommy says. They watch you brace your hands on the wheels of your wheelchair, rolling along the porch of the bookstore. You straighten displays and get chatty with a customer. You talk with your hands, Joel notices. “Matter ‘a fact, I do have a project for you.”

Joel asks, “Yeah?”

“We put her up in Winnie’s old house, God rest her soul. Problem is, it ain’t… shit, what’s the word…” Tommy snaps his fingers.

“Wheelchair friendly?” Joel asks.

“Wheelchair friendly. She’s been sleepin’ on that raggedy ass old couch ‘a hers ‘cause the bedroom door’s too small. Not exactly comfortable for her… condition. I’m thinkin’ you put in some grab bars in the bathroom, maybe a walk-in tub. A better ramp than what we’ve propped up outside. Widen that doorway for her.”

Joel chews at the inside of his cheek. “That’s a big job. You sure we got the equipment for that? Couldn’t we throw her in with Janet?”

“Janet’s only got one bedroom, and she’s stubborn as a mule. Doesn’t like havin’ her cheese moved. Supplies, though, we’ve got those in abundance.”

He looks at you again. You’ve woven little dandelions into the spokes of your wheels and there’s a knit bag hung from the back. You flash a winning smile at the customer you’re talking to and flip through a book, pointing out a specific line. You’re young — too young to be in a wheelchair. He has to wonder what horrors you’ve seen. Did someone do this to you, or were you always like this? You must be miserable. He knows what it’s like to be off of your own reins.

“Fine,” Joel says. “I’ll handle it.”

You wake up with your switchblade in your hand.

It’s dark, clouds having spread like butter over the gunmetal sky. Rain pitter-patters against the roof of this house you’ve inherited from a dead woman. You blink the sleep from your eyes as your front door death-rattles on its hinges. Someone’s knocking. You crane your neck to the analog clock on your coffee table — 7:03. Who the fuck comes over at 7:03.

“I’m coming,” you shout when the door clatters again. Finally, the knocking stops.

Agitated, you ruffle your clothes into something semi-presentable and rub the sleep from your eyes. You get up, legs protesting with each step. Pain spurts like a live wire up your muscles; 7:04 AM and you already know it’ll be one of those days.

You slump into your wheelchair (the best thing about Jackson by far, surpassing running water of a shower you have to sit on the cold floor of, or food from the canteen that Maria has to hand deliver to you) and wheel your way to the front door. It’s slow going. You never had the privilege of one of these things before finding the cozy town. It’d been just you and your switchblade and your pistol, gritting your teeth and fighting back tears between each runner you’d stabbed in the eye.

You keep the same switchblade in your hand, just in case, but the most likely scenario is that Tommy Miller’s come to bug you again. Maria puts him up to it, you’re sure.

You have to move up to the left side of your door since it opens inwards, fumbling with the creaky gold handle. The door squeaks as the wind pushes it inward. You lean forward, eyes traveling up to the man in your doorway.

He’s a Miller alright — just not Tommy Miller.

“Oh. Joel, right?” you ask, a small pucker between your brows.

He invites himself in.

“Hey now, what the hell do you think you’re doin–” You look down to the dented red toolbox in his grip. Metal clangs around inside with each step he takes. “You know, most people ask for permission before they barge in.” Where Tommy is open and gentle, Joel is standoffish and scowling.

“I’m renovatin’ your house,” Joel says, voice firm and nonnegotiable.

“And Tommy didn’t tell me this why?”

“Spur ‘a the moment thing. Wanted to come and grab some measurements, figure out what supplies I need, how much supplies–”

“You don’t need to fix the backsplash,” you say. “Really, it’s fine. There’s just some mild chipping, no big deal.”

Joel slows and looks over his shoulder at you. His lips pinch together. “You think I walked out here at seven in the morning in pissin’ rain to fix your fucking backsplash?”

“I dunno. You kinda walked in without saying anything, so.”

“Tommy said you’ve been sleeping on the couch.” You nod stiffly. “I’m gonna fix that.”

“What?” you blurt out.

At his side, he starts unraveling a measuring tape. “You ain’t stupid, Tommy said you’re some kinda librarian. I’m fixin’ your house up. Makin’ it more suitable for your…” he waves a hand in your general direction.

“You don’t need to take pity on me,” you say. “You clearly don’t wanna be here. You can just go home. No skin off my back.”

“Well, Tommy won’t quit bitchin’ in my ear until it’s done. So it’d be skin off my back, kid.” Joel walks further into your house, boots thunking against the hardwood. He squats and measures out your door. His notepad has a sticker on it that says NASA, whatever that means. He wets his thumb with his tongue and thumbs through the notepad to mark down the measurements. You sit silently next to him, glaring.

“Lookin’ at me like I shot your dog. I’m doin’ you a solid here.”

“You could be a really shitty renovator,” you say. “And then bam. My whole house falls down and my arms get fucked up too.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.” Joel rolls the tape measure back up. “Where’s your bathroom?”

You point down the hall and follow him there, parking yourself outside while you watch him take the measurements of your toilet and bath. You cross your arms, trying not to mock his scowl.

“Are you gonna be waking me up at the asscrack of dawn every time you get inspired to play demolition?”

“Not demolishing anything. You got a rudimentary idea of this, don’t you?”

“It’s almost like I’ve never seen carpenters before.”

He gives you a look that tells you he thinks you’re full of shit. You return that look in confidence. “Well, your doorways have a more cosmetic frame. Just gotta shave some inches off and pretty it up a bit. Might take a while to find a door, but you could hang a curtain if you’re worried or anything. Your chair ain’t that much bigger, though. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Right,” you say. “Well, if that’s all you need.”

“I’ll be back to ‘demolish’ stuff tomorrow. Two o’clock instead. Got patrol, and clearly Sleepin’ Beauty needs her shut-eye.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you grumble, already wheeling back towards your couch. Your eyelids are sinking as if draped with dumbbells.

He watches you as you strain to push your weight into your forearms, dragging yourself onto the couch. You fluff up the flat pillow you’ve been sleeping on and flick your quilt over your lap. He’s thinking about it — obviously he is. Everyone in the entire town thinks about it. They look at you, too, as if they can understand where the invisible shards of glass in your legs come from and where exactly they pierce. Sometimes, if you’re especially unlucky, they’ll fondle the handles of your wheelchair as if they’re some bastardized nurse.

Joel doesn’t do any of that.

Just gives you a jerk of his head and walks out of the door.

You think you like it better that way.

The next time he comes over, you’re ready. You unlock the door beforehand and tidy up what’s become your belongings. A basket of yarn and knitting needles from the previous resident of this house, a stack of books you’d found during your travels to get here, and… not much else. You’d found some postcards of Jackson in what used to be the visitor’s center and hung them up on the corkboard. Anything to make it feel more like home.

You settle in on your couch under your quilt — also the handiwork of the previous owner — and crack open one of the novels you’d found. You’re halfway through your reread of it. The cover and pages are coarse like sandpaper, but soothe the rattling in your head.

“Come in!” you call when Joel comes knocking at your door.

He grunts a greeting to you as he heads towards your bedroom door. You don’t pay much mind to him as he begins to etch into your wall with tools you don’t recognize.

You flip the page.

“You’re the quiet type, ain’t ya?” Joel asks.

“So are you.”

A beat, punctuated by a pry bar meeting your wall. “Got me there.”

You skim through a couple more pages, scribbling an annotation down onto a sticky note. You wouldn’t dare take ink to the pages of this already beaten and busted book. You’re pulled out of the atmosphere by Joel’s panting, and the wiping of sweat from his brow.

“I’d offer to bring you a glass of water,” you say. “But it’d probably be quicker if you get it yourself.”

“Uh huh,” he says. “I’d put my book down if I were you.”

“Wh–”

A shrill whirring noise fills the air as he begins to saw into your doorframe. With a groan, you flop onto the couch on your stomach and cover your ears. Your cheek is smushed into the spine of your book.

After what feels like forever but is more like five minutes, the sawing cuts, and he tosses ripped up slabs of wood on your floor. He nods between you and them as if to tell you ‘That’s why’.

This is going to be a long few weeks.

/

Most days, Joel Miller is easy to ignore. You’re quiet – he’s quiet. You stay busy – he stays busy. It’s an easy ebb and flow that you two fall into. Three days into the process, he opens up your bedroom door for you entirely. It’s nice being able to lift yourself into a real bed, a luxury you haven’t had in over a decade. You spend most of your time in your bed, across the hallway from the bathroom.

The bathroom fixes, he says, will take longer. Complications with the plumbing and the like.

About a week into renovations, he knocks his tool box shut and lugs it out. He leans against your newly widened doorway and nods at you. “You’ve read that book three times since I first talked to you.”

“You’re observant,” you say, eyeing him over the creases in the pages.

“‘S your favorite or somethin’?”

You nod and hold up the cover. “The Secret History.” A small grin hitches on your lips.

“I was never a big reader,” Joel says, scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand.

“This doesn’t seem like your speed. You seem like you’d prefer… I dunno. Hatchet, probably.”

Joel nods, and your gut tells you it’s more of a courtesy. He doesn’t know a damn thing about what you’re talking about. “Why do you like that one so much?”

“It feels like what my life would’ve been,” you say. You stare at the ribbing of the pages, the blur and bend of ink. There’s a water stain in the southeastern corner of the bottom hundred page, bleeding into the page numbers. “They’re Greek students, but they read the literature. I would’ve liked to be a classics student, I think. Maybe teach at some schmoozy top university, give lectures, whatever. Except in the book… all of it goes wrong. They wanted too much, and for a moment, they had it. But it could never last. I guess it's as sobering as it is what I yearn for.”

Joel’s face softens. “Yeah. You never got to live in the real world, didja?”

“This is the real world, Joel. There was just a before, and then the after. Us poor bastards are in the after.”

“Yeah,” he says, backing away from your room. “I guess we are.”

You seal another faded sticky note onto a page with another observation you had when you hear the knock on your door. Maria must be over with your food. You inch across the bed and plop down into your chair before rolling yourself to your doorstep.

You open the door and blink in surprise when you see Joel standing above you with two plates in-hand. “Hey, uh,” he says, face red from the sweeping cold. “Maria was busy, so… thought I’d take over. Mind if I–”

“Yeah, sure.” You scoot out of the way and he kicks your door shut. Your dinner table only has one chair at it, since there’s no need for you to swap between two seats. You slot yourself in across from Joel and pick up the spoon he’d brought over, inhaling mouthfuls of stew.

“Slow down,” he says with a half-glimmer in his eyes. “Gonna get a bellyache.”

Through a mouthful of carrots and potatoes, you say, “‘M hungry.” When you finally slow yourself down, you look at him. He blows gently on his stew and scratches at his scruff. “Thanks. This is… nice. Usually nobody eats with me.”

“What?” He puts down his spoon. “Seriously?”

“Well, I really only know Maria and Tommy, so they alternate days to wheel me over to the library. It’s hard with all the snow and ice to get myself over there. They also take turns bringing me food.”

“That’s… a damn shame,” he says.

“I don’t hate it.” You don’t. It’s worse anywhere else — hell, you might’ve found the last safe haven left in the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to look out of your window and see people your age hanging out or heading off on patrols.

Joel looks at you as if he doesn’t believe you.

“Really. It’s… it’s not that bad – and, I have all these books to keep me company, so really, what’s the problem?”

“There isn’t one,” he says as he goes in for another bite of soup.

There’s a problem, not that Joel would ever admit it aloud or to himself.

The problem is you — of course it’s you. He should’ve known you’d be a goddamn thorn in his side the moment Tommy proffered the job to him instead of just doing it himself. There was a problem when you sassed him on day one, a problem when you appeared completely indifferent to his presence in your home, and a problem when he realized just how alone you were. He finds himself looking at you while he’s chiseling out parts of your bath. Watching the curve of your shoulder or the sprawl of your legs while you lay face down reading your books. Not because he’s ogling you, either — that’s a long-dead version of himself that respects you too much and disrespects himself too much to even consider eyeing you up. He’s more enamored with how you got here. Did you claw and tear your way through hordes of infected? Were you the final member standing of a group? How much blood had you drawn? Did you fire pistols, rifles, shotguns? Outrun raiders on your bad legs?

You’re a survivor. Too much like him. And now you have a chance to fix all of this — just like him.

Tommy was right. He should get to know you.

So for the second night in a row, he shows up at your doorstep with hot food and a performatively detached expression.

And when the third night in a row comes around, when he still smells like sawdust from working in your house until six in the evening, he walks inside to find the table’s already been set.

“Thinkin’ I’ll widen this doorframe, too,” Joel says, slapping at the curvature of it from where he’s sat on the bathroom tiles. You’re curled up in your wheelchair, chin cupped in palm. “Don’t need ya crawling’ everywhere.” He nods definitively.

“I’d appreciate that,” you say.

“You should read to me.” He rummages around in his toolbox. “While I work.” He’s about three fourths done with your bath, from what he’d told you this morning. Today, he’s installing a compact shower bench. He shifts over to it, working with metal bits and bobs you can’t quite identify.

“Joel Miller,” you jest. “literature aficionado.”

“Could be,” he shrugs. “You can be the next person in line to try teachin’ and old dog some new tricks.”

You do. You thumb and read through the pages until your voice goes scratchy and he runs you some tap water to soften it up. You occasionally ask Joel to tell you the parts you’d never been able to understand. (‘Joel, what’s an SAT?’ ‘Joel, tell me about Disneyland.’)

“Joel, did you go to college?”

“Nah. Not my blood. Went to trade school. Was blue collar.” He senses the question before you can ask it. “I worked with my hands. Contracting stuff, like what I’m doin’ now.”

“Lucrative?” you ask.

He snorts. “Fuck no.” He drills at the wall some. “I planned to start up a business. Me ‘n Tommy, just workin’ jobs. Got pretty close to havin’ the savings to do it, too. Then…”

“This,” you fill in for him.

“This,” he nods. He slumps against your bath and dabs at his brow.

“Like I said,” you say. “You want too much, and for a moment, you will have it.”

Sun slices in through the rectangular window at the top of your bathroom. You can see dust buoyant in the air as Joel tidies up the window sill, dust mites floating on nothing. His sleeves are rolled up, arms tensing as he shifts to tug at the bench now secured to your wall. Your mouth feels a little dry as you begin to read from the sunlight, eyes skidding across words.

Your voice is breathy, undercut by a little shiver of raspiness on your tongue as you wade through the first fifty or so pages of your copy. He’d relented to you reading it to him, interspersed with small commentary on lines he doesn’t quite get, references you would never understand without him to underline them. 

“‘Cubitum eamus,’” you read, a tiny grin needling at your lips. “‘What?’ ‘Nothing.’”

“Hell’s that mean?” Joel asks, drawing out a little measurement on your bath.

“Will you go to bed with me,” you say, voice airy. Joel looks over his shoulder at you, a pucker between his brows.

“Doesn’t sound that sexy,” he says. You only shrug.

The next few pages are uneventful, apart from the sandpaper noise of Joel’s work. You fall into the melodic nature of reading. It’s nice to read something aloud that isn’t some picture book that Maria approved for the littles.

You read, “‘And if beauty is terror,’ said Julian, ‘then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we only have one. What is it?’ ‘To live,’ said Camilla. ‘To live forever,’ said Bu–”

“That’s bullshit,” Joel says. “Who wants to live forever?”

“Some people, I guess.” You weigh the book in your hand. “Don’t read too far into it. Camilla is heavily alluded to fucking Charles. They’re not really part of the exterior world, they’re all too trapped in their own morbidities to realize how strange they are.”

“She– what? Ain’t he her fuckin’ brother?”

“Brother she’s fucking, unfortunately. Hey, I never said it was a book about good people! Just that it was a good book.”

“Jesus.”

“The Greeks were obsessed with immortality. In a way, all of us are. We don’t know when we will die. In another way, our lives are indefinite until they aren’t.”

“You would’ve made a good classics student, that’s for damn sure.”

You cock your head. “How come?”

“You think too much.” You pull a face. “Not in a bad way. It’s… endearing, kinda.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m endeared by how little you think.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cute.”

You pick up where you left off at the same time Joel does. A drill spinning in time with each word spooled out of your lips. You carry on with that until sunset, when the light in the bathroom is fraying and he works by flashlight. Not wanting to strain your eyes, you resign yourself to watching him work. 

You watch his thick fingers traipse around the bath, his broad muscles tensing beneath his taut white tee. How his hands hitch across plaster. It’s impossible not to let your mind wander, to envision the drag of his hands under the hem of your shirt, up to your tits. He’d be so doting, how he always is, a caretaker at heart. Maybe he’d muster the vulnerability to nuzzle into your neck, or you into his. You don’t notice your drifting thoughts or your sifting thighs until he taps against the rim of the bath. 

Joel turns around. You go shock still. “Think that’ll be enough for tonight.” He takes a second, absorbs the sight of your panting breaths. “You alright?”

“Uh huh,” you say. “Perfect.”

You try to explain it to yourself. It doesn’t work.

He’s practically in your house from sunup to sundown, and you only ever see others if you’re working a shift down at the library. Of course you’re antsy. Besides, when you’re out in the woods with only a gun and your own, traitorous body for survival, there’s no time to slip your fingertips into your panties. No time to chase any pleasure besides that of seeing another sunrise.

You blame it on the fatigue because that’s easier. Except can you really blame something that’s always there? A hardened, concrete exhaustion that suctions around your bones. Your body doesn’t seem too tired to react to Joel. It’d been too tired to react to the people you used to travel with, even though they were all you had. And now, with so much more in arm’s reach, your body still ravages you spitefully dormant despite what you want. 

When you’re on the verge of sleep, you feel Joel at the base of your spine, hand slipping between your legs while he grinds himself against your ass. You crook your legs, fingers wiggling down to your clit, but —

Nothing. Your legs spasm with shooting, weblike pain, and you collapse in frustration and agony. Every. Single. Time. Whenever you try to do something even as banal as self pleasure, it rusts within your grasp.

You want something or somebody or maybe you just want him. Maybe you want your own touch, too. Maybe you want to feel like a person because right now you feel like nothing. A nobody who came out of nowhere with no real use to the community because anyone could take your place. Anyone could know more about books than you and be able to work harder than you and then what use do you have apart from filling up this big, big house that wasn’t made for you? Mooching off of Joel Miller himself. You wonder if he calls you a lazy ass behind your back because that’s what you are, a lazy fucking bitch who probably feels the same as anyone else in this goddamn town. But they don’t mope around in wheelchairs. Don’t mope around in bed. Don’t have to crawl to get places. Hell, it’s the apocalypse, everyone has their thing, you’re just being a fucking drama queen. You are fine. You survived outside the fence for long enough, you should be just as capable as everyone else here.

But you aren’t.

Your arousal turns to tears and your face tilts to bury itself in your pillow. You taste saline. You wish you were normal wish you could walk wish you could just fucking move for once. You’ll never be what you want to be. That version of you, if it existed at all, is buried somewhere outside of Jackson.

You have a chance here. At life, at being something. And you are wasting it. 

Leaking at the slit, chomping at the bit for someone who is never going to want you. That much is certain. He’s got several decades on you and is still more active and spry than you. You’d tried to pass him his hammer once on the job and had dropped it, leaving a warped dent into one of your floorboards. He’d soothed the ache with an understanding gaze, hand rounded out over your wrist, soft little, “It’s alright, ain’t hurtin’ anyone.” But you saw it, then, that glaze of pity that you get from everyone. 

You don’t want him to pity you, you want him to want you.

But the illusion will be broken soon, you’re sure. When he’s done fixing up your house, has had enough of you and all of your fucking baggage, you’ll only see him in passing. You’ll go back to eating alone. Those waterworks in your eyes and between your legs will re enter a drought. You’ll reread every book in the library again. Read The Secret History to the walls. Wait for them to respond, and sit in the silence.

He doesn’t come over the next day.

Of course. He saw you fidgeting and now he knows you’re a pervert. Just your luck. Squander what little you have here. Would Tommy and Maria kick you out for this? No. Not for the crime of being hot under the collar for Joel. …Right?

You set the table anyway, and it sits frighteningly bare as the shadows of noon stretch through the windows then stretch into darkness after dusk. You lay on the couch, waiting for him, eyeing where you’d stuffed the bookmark into the preloved pages.

You can’t bring yourself to hop back into your wheelchair and wiggle through the doorway he’d widened for you, so you curl into your couch and quilt like a snail wrapped up in its shell. Then, a ratchety cough bursts through the still, quiet air, followed by the jiggling of a doorknob. Your hand lurches behind you onto the side table. You knock over a ceramic coaster, hear it shatter as your hand locks around your gun.

You heft it, aiming it at the door, and —

“Woah, woah, Jesus, kid, put that damn thing down now–”

You exhale, slowly lowering it onto the coffee table. “Joel? Jesus, it’s…” You crane your neck. “Two in the fucking morning.”

“Sorry, patrol… ran into some marauders. Dealt with some marauders. Why you ain’t in bed? And you know you oughta be locking your door. I know it’s safer here, but I don’t like that boy down the street. Never been fond ‘a him.”

“Was… waiting for you,” you mumble. Jesus, you even sound pathetic.

“Shit. Did you eat? Sorry, kid, I can run back and find somethin’ canned, heat it up for you…” Kid. Another blasé reminder of exactly how he perceives you. Young, but lacking any light in your eyes that might indicate it.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, jaw clenching as you scoot up against the couch. “Thought you weren’t coming.”

“Always gonna come,” he says. “Don’t want you goin’ hungry.”

You swallow, saliva swishing between your teeth. “Right.” You pat the spot next to you. “C’mon. We have another chapter, if you aren’t too tired.”

“So long as you don’t mind me smellin’ like the woods.”

“There are worse things to smell like,” you tease, and then the couch is slugging down with his weight as you tug the chain of your lamp. It takes forty-five minutes to get through this chapter, and you’re halfway to bed by the time you close the book. You yawn, stretching out with a grimace.

“Want some help?” Joel asks.

“Huh?” you ask groggily.

“Gettin’ tucked in,” he says.

“Oh, no,” you say. “I quite like it here. Just… turn out the lamp before you head out.”

“‘Cubitum eamus,’” you read, a tiny grin needling at your lips. “‘What?’ ‘Nothing.’”

“Hell’s that mean?” Joel asks, drawing out a little measurement on your bath.

“Will you go to bed with me,” you say, voice airy. Joel looks over his shoulder at you, a pucker between his brows.

“Doesn’t sound that sexy,” he says. This time, you don’t shrug.

This version of you is airbrushed. There are no bruises from trips and falls she has taken. She is confident and sure within herself, that vain swing of her hips. The push of her breasts together by shoulders hunched forward, but not too far forward. She hefts a leg over the lip of the bath, straddles Joel upon the shower bench. A shaky breath guttered out of his nose, chest rising.

She presses the warm mound of her cunt against his cock, already half-hard through his stained work jeans. “Do you want it to be, Joel?” she breathes. Rocks her hips, enough to make his head fall back against the hard wall with a sharp thud. “Cubitum eamus,” she whispers as she thumbs the zipper of his pants down. “Cubitum eamus,” she exhales into his ear as she works him with a twisting, wanting fist. “Cubitum eamus,” as she spreads her legs wider and sinks upon his lap, rocks her hi—

You wake up drenched in sweat. “Fuck. Fuck.” You’re still curled up like a roly poly on the couch, except this time, you can feel the slick beading the insides of your thighs. You can feel the phantom tickle of Joel’s warmth at your side. Just trying to adjust mashes your thighs closer together jerks your swollen clit between your legs. “Mmph,” you muffle your noise into your pillow.

The pain is further away now, like a fan the next room over. The longer you’re awake, the closer it’ll get until it rises to the sharpness of a siren in your ear. If you’re quick, you might be able to get off. Even if you’re clumsy, even if you haven’t done this in forever, you want it bad enough to try.

You prop one bent leg up against the back cushion of the couch. Your other leg drapes off the edge. There’s no exquisite buildup to this. Your body is far too topsy turvy for that. If you were to work from your neck to your cunt, pain may strangle you by the time you hit your midriff.

Your hand slithers beneath the seal of your shorts’ waistband. Hips cant up into the radiating heat of your fingertips.

This is pathetic. You’re pathetic. Waxing poetic to Joel about the life you wish you had when he’s probably seen the same amount of shit as you. Nobody wears a broken watch without a reason, just how nobody knows how to find a gun in their sleep without a reason. Getting off to the man who’s shown you nothing but kindness when you’ve done nothing to earn it. Rubbing your clit as you are now to the man who has done you boundless favors. It’s too saccharine to resist, though. That treacle drip between your thighs, the mash of your fingertips against your nub. 

You reach down to your hole — which has never felt so empty before — and gather enough slick to smear along your mound. A feathery whimper splays out of your lips as you toss your hips into your hand. Ecstasy sutures whatever pain rises in your joints, muscles, organs. It’s been years since you’ve felt this good, been able to let your walls down enough to do so. Sweat leaks from your pores; you feel your body slick and slippery within your blankets. You can’t make yourself care.

You surrender fully to pleasure with a little whine. Your fingers rub quickly, harshly, needily against your bundle of nerves. Your hips meet each upward stroke. It doesn’t take much, not when you’ve been deprived for so long. Face burning hot, you feel blood rush within your ears. Your cunt clenches around nothing. Your limbs shake, wanting, wanting, wanting. You’re right there, finally, on that razor-thin precipice–

“Oh good lord!”

You squeal, yanking your soaked hand out of your panties. Your fingers have pruned from the moisture, and your wetness stretches in drapes from your nail beds.

You blink away the pleasure-blurred film over your eyes, vision going from spotty to clear. You hurriedly wipe your fingers on your shorts and crane your neck.

Joel stands, facing the now-shut door. His hands cover his eyes even though he’s noticeably looking away from you. His shoulders are hunched, posture slumped. “I t-told you you needa start lockin’ your damn door!” he says.

“You need to start knocking!” you say. With a grimace, you cross your arms over your chest. You wish the couch cushions could expand and swallow you whole. Tears glisten at the corners of your eyes. This is the worst case scenario. He’s never, ever going to speak to you again and you’ll eventually die alone in Jackson the same way you were going to die alone out there, except this will be a far more merciful and prolonged way to die out, like the final burn of a wick in a nearly empty candle instead of an explosion. The rumors, God, you can hear them now, slithering through the cracks in your windows. “I’m sorry, Joel,” you choke out, throat grating from the words. “Fuck, I’m really sorry, you didn’t deserve to see that—”

“‘S fine. We all got needs, but Jesus fucking Christ, girl. In broad goddamn daylight? With the blinds open? I don’t know what you were gettin’ up to out there, but here, we got people. Coulda been anyone else walkin’ by and getting an eyeful.”

“I don’t usually–” you start before shutting yourself up.

“Don’t usually get off with the blinds open and your front door unlocked? I’d sure fuckin’ hope not.”

You cringe. “Don’t usually get off at all.” It’s a hoarse, muttered thing under your breath.

He stills and then shakes his head. “Don’t needa be hearin’ this.”

“Sorry. My body, it just… it… it’s not… it doesn’t work right, okay? When it comes to anything. Was just trying to take advantage.” You can already feel it surging up from your ankles up, concrete hardening in your calves. 

“Poor thing,” he says, and his low timbre shouldn’t make your clit jerk, at attention all over again. “Jus’ wanted to feel good. Now I feel like a dick for walkin’ in on ya. I’ll leave you be.” He turns back towards the door, reaching for the knob. The angle exposes the curve of his body to you, how his abdomen slopes into his bulge down the thickness of his thig– wait.

His bulge.

He’s hard. Why the fuck is he hard?

That flush of warmth in your groin returns, burning all the hotter. 

“Joel,” you rasp. From the way he tenses up, you know he can tell that you’ve noticed. He dips his head. He scrubs a hand along his textured, grizzled face. “I’m sorry, kid, I just – like I said, I’ll get outta your hair–”

He wants you. Or maybe he’s just as pent up as you are. You aren’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. “Joel–”

“Don’t,” he says. His voice leaves no room for argument.

You being you, you argue anyway. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Bullshit,” he grouses. “You’re too young for me, I’m too old for you, and that’s that. You hear me?”

If the evidence of his need weren’t pressed against his thigh, now strategically angled away from you, maybe you’d have given up by now. “It’s biological, Joel. Come on, when was the last time you got laid?” His silence punctuated by the tick of his jaw is an answer enough.

“When was the last time you got laid?” he shoots back.

Your silence is far more deafening than his. You roll over with a groan, burying your face into the same pillow you’d been drooling into. Footsteps crunch along the creaking floorboards of your living room. Joel taps at your shoulder with the backs of his knuckles.

“Kid.” There it is again. “C’mon. Talk t’ me.”

Your eyes flick up. You watch him through your brow bone and lash line. “It’s hell, you know? Except you don’t. Before the outbreak you were probably some sort of sex magnet heartthrob or something. I mean, look at you,” you say with a vague gesture at him. The face he pulls tells you that might not be entirely true, but that’s not a wound you’re interested in poking right now. Not when you’re flayed open beneath him.

“I’ve never had that. That… the old group I was with before they all died and before I got here, there were a couple of eligible bachelors, I guess you could say. All my energy went into surviving. But I was limping back into the compound. Not many of them were interested in a girl who couldn’t put out. One of them even told me they weren’t interested because I ‘walked like I’d already been run through’.” You wince at reciting the memory. “And… eventually, I gave up on ever being wanted. I felt too goddamn shitty to even think about putting my hand in my panties. Couldn’t even spread my legs at the time. So, yeah, Joel. I’m a goddamn virgin and you don’t need to rub it in. You don’t need to be a dick about it because I’m enough of a dick to myself about i-”

“Hey,” he says. “It’s okay. I knew plenty ‘a people at your age who weren’t havin’ sex.”

“For this reason?” you ask. “It fucking sucks, Joel. Not having any control at all whatsoever over my body, being demeaned whenever I try to. I… I just want–”

“Wanna feel good?” he asks, voice low and scrappy.

You swallow. Nod at him.

He takes you in. Your curled up, wretched form that has betrayed you ten times over. Those legs of yours that never work, the arms you struggle to weave through your shirts. His pupils consume his irises, and his jaw is clenched tight. Eventually, he says, “On your back, sweetheart.”

Your heart stutters. You freeze, looking up at him. You’d asked for it, would’ve even begged for it, but Joel, as stoic and straightforward as he always is, says, “Don’t make me repeat it. Already crossin’ too many lines with you than what’s good for either ‘a us. So turn your ass over and let’s get this over with.”

You swallow, throat tight and constricting. “Jeez. Guess romance isn’t dead.” Joel rolls his eyes. “That ain’t what this is.”

“Right, I know.”

You roll over for him, body stiffer than a board and not for the usual reasons. You have no idea what he intends to do with you. No idea how to position your limbs. This couch is already cramped enough for you alone. You can’t imagine how he’s planning to fit himself up here with you. You stare at the popcorn ceiling, trying to stop your vision from swimming. It’s hard when you could take a dip in your panties.

“Are you sure you want this?” he asks, hand landing upon your thigh. “Don’t have to go through with it.”

“I want it,” you say in a rush. You’ve wanted Joel for longer than you’ve been consciously aware of, you think. And now he’s offering to touch you, to make you come, to make you come at someone else’s hands for the first time. “I just… I dunno. What if I’m… bad?” you cringe.

Joel snorts.

“It’s a real concern!”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what smut you’ve been readin’ at the library, but let me tell you this. Sex ain’t perfect. It’s gonna be gross ‘n messy ‘n kinda awkward. It’s about mutual trust and respect. You don’t need to be arching like a Playboy bunny, you just needa relax. Let me take care ‘a you.”

“That’s the hard part, dude,” you say, digging the heels of your palms into your eye sockets.

“We’ll take it easy,” he says, hand slipping tenderly up to your waist. “Can I hop up there with ya?”

You nod. With a groan, he hefts himself over the lip of the couch to get between your legs. The sight of him between your thighs is nothing short of erotic. You squirm. “Needy,” he chides, sending electricity skimming up your spine.

“So… you don’t touch yourself often. Ever give yourself an orgasm, honey?” You bite on your lower lip and nod hesitantly. “Good, ‘s good.” He nuzzles into your thigh, lips tracing over the gooseflesh there. “What do you usually think about?”

“I… stuff, I guess,” you mumble, tucking your chin to your chest. It’s not exactly polite to say oh, yeah, I was jerking off to you before you interrupted my solo session! Sorry! At least… you think it’s impolite. You aren’t quite familiar with the etiquette. “How do you usually make women come?”

“Kissin’,” he murmurs. “Rubbin’. Lickin’. Talkin’.”

“Really painting me a picture there, Miller.”

In response, he pastes an open-mouthed kiss above your knee. Your free leg kicks out, nearly nailing him in the jaw. Joel chuckles. “Okay, maybe you are bad at this.”

“Oh, fuck you, too.”

“Just playin’, kid. But c’mon, you gotta cooperate with me on this if you want it to work. Alright?”

You nod, releasing a shaky breath. “Okay. It’s mechanical, mostly. Just… trying to release some tension, I guess?”

“Mmm, you poor thing. Gonna let me make it all better?” He croons, cupping the back of one of your knees. You nod, scarcely even knowing what you’re asking for anymore. “Gonna kiss that sloppy ‘lil slit ‘a yours. Fuck, can smell ya through your shorts.”

You shiver, hips jerking instinctively towards him. He hums as he starts peppering kisses up the insides of both of your legs. “J-Joel,” you whine. He glances up at you. “What if it tastes–”

“What if it sounds a whole lot like I don’t give a shit. What I wanna do is kiss that pretty fuckin’ clit. Bet it’s twitching, all swollen… poor thing.” Your back bows at that, which draws a pained grunt through the grids of your teeth.

His eyes flick up to yours. “Shh. Don’t gotta wiggle. Let me take care ‘a ya, yeah? That’s what this is about, sweetheart. Can I take these pretty things off?” His thumbs tweak the hem of your shorts.

They definitely aren’t pretty. They’re boxy and hang loose on your hips, held up only by a double-knotted drawstring that’s fraying at the edges. Still, he regards you as if all of you, even your worn clothes, are pretty. It makes your heart flutter against your ribcage, a frantic thing. He tugs them down your legs and shimmies them away from your calves, discarding them somewhere over the couch’s armrest. 

He continues leaving lazy, open-mouthed kisses up the expanse of your inner thighs. It takes everything in you not to flail out and kick him again. It’s such a foreign sensation, such a foreign situation, that you don’t know what to do with your hands. When he looks up at you, he seems to pick up on this much, puzzled facial expression falling into something laced with understanding.

He kisses the fold of your thigh into your pelvis. “What’s got you worried, sugar?”

“I…” I’m scared that I’ll end up in pain. Bedridden for days just because I let myself feel something good. Because I don’t have a body worth feeling anything except for pain. This busted, messed-up vessel I’m trapped in.

He seems to read your mind, eyes silently searching yours until the furrow in his brow becomes less pronounced. “Alright,” he says. “What’s comfiest for you?”

You shuffle until your legs bracket his neck, ankles splayed out somewhere along his spine. “Is that – I don’t want to choke you–”

“You can,” he says, and he sounds serious. You sputter out a laugh that doesn’t seem to land. “Try…. But you ain’t gonna. No offense, but–”

“Yeah, yeah, no core strength, worse leg strength, I know.”

He smiles wryly at you. “Now gimme your hands.” You hold them out, palms up. He cradles them both in one hand and guides them to his fluffy, full head of hair. You sigh as you sink your hands into the curls that naturally sprawl out at his ears. Your thumb strokes his temple, and he hums at the touch, a whirring noise in his throat. “There ya go. Pull as hard as you need to. Gotta know what feels good for ya.”

Your knees almost lock at the sight of him, the beautiful, debauched vision that he is between your legs, the arch of his nose nearly cradled between your clothed folds. He goes the rest of the way, nuzzling his nose against your clit. Your hips jerk, accompanied by a faint whine. “Fuck,” he groans. “Sensitive ‘lil thing.”

You expect him to tug the gusset of your panties out of the way and bury his face between your thighs — but he doesn’t. He licks a long, slippery stripe up the center of your clothed slide. You whimper, head sliding back against the pillow. Your toes curl a tad, fingers tightening in his hair already. He lets out a breathless laugh into your core. He spits on your center and smears it with spiralling twists and turns of his tongue. You feel yourself gush in your panties.

You know what your clit is. You’ve heard the former members of your group talk about how the guys around you were useless at finding it, you’ve slid your own hand in your panties not too often, but enough times to be able to clumsily mash your finger pads against what you think is it. That swollen, twitchy nub between your folds. Joel finds it as if it’s a mere extension of his tongue. His lips latch around it and suck through the soaked cloth of your panties. You buck against his mouth.

Hands nestling into his hair, you drag his face against your cunt, whining. Joel groans, shaking his head side to side. It tugs your clit, sucked raw between his lips, side to side. You shudder, tugging even harder at his hair. “Jesus- fuck, Joel, God–”

He pulls up and gives you a loopy grin. “Jus’ me, honey.”

“If I had tomatoes,” you say. “I’d be throwing them at you.” He gives a halfhearted nip at your clit, hardly enough to even feel it. 

“No you wouldn’t.” He kisses the inside of your thighs again, drags his tongue along the crease between your thigh and your groin. “Be outta a goddamn good orgasm if you did.” He tugs at the seam of your panties, snapping them against your leg. “Gonna let me take these off? Make ya really see God?”

“Yes,” you say, winded. “Yes, Joel– anything you want.”

“Anything you want,” he reminds you, palm open above your knee. His thumb rubs circles against you. 

You nod vigorously. “Well, I want. So get to it.” He pins you with a cocky look. “Please?”

“Can’t deny ya,” he murmurs into your skin. He shuffles your panties down. Takes a deep, trembling breath of your musky-sweet scent. Nudges the tip of his nose into your clit. It’s enough to make you keen. Then, his tongue plunges inside of you without wavering. He curls it upwards, nudging it against that spot you never have been able to reach on your own (only if you bend your legs like rolled dough under a pin, only if you reach around yourself hard enough to make your bones crack). The pressure skims across your body, making you quiver. You jerk at his curls even more, driving him against your cunt. His jaw is opened wide as he eats you, almost as if he intends to swallow your cunt whole and then some. The salacious slurp and suck of his lips catching on your folds is enough to make your fingertips tremble in his curls.

“Ah- fuck. Joel — Joel,” you whine, hips twitching against his mouth. He explores your cunt with a fervor you’ve never been able to exact upon yourself. You’re careening towards an orgasm faster than you’d like to, calves tightening, arms shaking. Blood roars in your ears. Your vision goes spotty. Joel moans into your pussy and you’re done for.

You come harder than you ever have in your life. Thrashing as much as your muscles will let you. Grinding yourself against Joel’s face, his stubble scraping against your bare skin. His lips rise to suction against your clit, giving you a wave to ride along the course of your orgasm. You whine and moan and make sounds you hadn’t thought yourself capable of making. The comedown is just as hard, smacking into wet concrete and trying not to sink. You clutch at Joel’s curls, yanking him out of your cunt when it crosses the line from pleasurably overwhelming to miserably overwhelming. He looks just as wrecked as yours, taking heaving pants. His hair is swept out of his eyes by your grip, pupils dilated, skin slick with sweat, beard webbed by your cum.

“Fuck,” you exhale.

“You’re telling me,” he says. He gently pries your hands out of his locks and presses tiny little kisses along your thigh, up your clothed stomach, along your shoulder blades. He may be straddling you, but he holds himself so tenderly that it’s as if he isn’t there at all. For a moment that leaves your stomach riddled with yearning, you feel nothing but pleasure ribboning through your limbs. There’s no glass-shattering of pain between your bones. It’s just you and him, wrapped up in each other.

His eyes meet yours, pupils slowly shrinking. Your eyes widen as you survey him again. “Wait—” He squints at you. “Gotta be equitable.” With a clumsy hand, you start snaking your way down to his waistband. Before you get there, he snatches your wrist.

“Nope,” he says. “Don’t ‘gotta’ do anything. Didn’t do that so I could ‘get mine’. Did that so I could taste your sweet cunt when it comes.”

“But–” You know how excruciating it is when you’re needy and can’t get yourself off. “I want to.”

“‘Fraid my refractory period ain’t what it used to be.” He scratches the back of his neck, face pulled into a taut grimace. “‘S been a long time for me, too, y’know. Busted in my fuckin’ pants like a goddamn teenager.” His cheeks are apple red, rounded out below his eye bags.

“Oh,” you say.

“Prolly for the best,” he says, hand falling to cup your cheek. “Like I said – can’t say no to ya. And if you started beggin’ me to give that pretty, needy ‘lil pussy my cock? I’d fold in a heartbeat, sugar. And that ain’t good for either ‘a us.”

You toy with the curl around his ear, now moist with sweat. “What if I said I wanted it to be you, Joel?” Joel’s face tightens with a self-loathing that is all too familiar to you. You see it every morning in the mirror.

But Joel, who you feel safe with, Joel. Joel, always at your house at the ass crack of dawn all the way to when the dinner bell rings. Whether he be cracking at your door frames or sliding a poorly-arranged plate across the table to you. Joel, dozing off on your shoulder while you read him Tartt. Joel, who likely against his better judgment, had just given you your first orgasm at the hands of someone else, all because you’d asked. “I trust you,” you say.

“You shouldn’t,” he says. He nuzzles his head into your neck. Your hand goes up to cradle the back of his head, scratching at it. “Ain’t done anything to earn it.”

“In your eyes, maybe. I…” You hesitate.  “enjoy your company.”

Joel takes a deep breath. You feel his exhale fan out on the arch of your neck. He smells like you. Like your cunt. It makes your stomach twirl. “You ain't so bad yourself,” he says.

It’s a while that you both lay there. The sun has gone from a sliver in the window to a beam across your living room, warming both of you as much as you warm each other. His hands play with the hem of your shirt, all the loose, spindly seams that have unraveled over the years. It’s this basking in the afterglow as much as it is basking in the budding heat of something new. 

“What do you want with me?” he asks.

You falter at that, tongue sealed to the roof of your mouth.

Everything, you want to say. But that’d be foolhardy and wrong and stupid. You’ve known him for a few weeks, but it feels like it’s been a few years. He sees you — not as the youngest cripple in town, not as a sexless posable doll, not as the librarian who almost fell out of her chair trying to do a wheelie in the snow. He just sees you.

You want to see him, too.

You settle on, “Anything you feel like giving me.”

He looks up at you through his lashes, pupils gone back to normal. Eyes still soft. Face still rough and smooth at the same time. “Anything, huh?” You nod. “Think I can do that.”

[joeloverture]

giving this one a little reblog for chronic pain awareness month!!

reminder that it’s more common than you think + people who wouldn’t be benefited by a mobility aid don’t think about using them!! buy that cane/crutch set/wheelchair/rollator/whatever

[milosmantis]

finally remembering to make this

idk who needs to hear this, but put on that brace. use that cane. sit more often. if it is something that will help you, let it help you. go buy a brace, a cane, a shower stool, a portable chair, whatever it is that will make your life even just a little bit easier. you deserve it. whether you are diagnosed with something or not, let the aid aid you.

[joeloverture]

im so sick of awards shows bc every time i switch tabs its a white person up there

[joeloverture]

anyway. diego luna u got a nom in my heart.

[joeloverture]

im so sick of awards shows bc every time i switch tabs its a white person up there

[joeloverture]

it’s so embarrassing to have caught frat flu at my big age what am i 18

[joeloverture]

im just gonna be up front it’s really disconcerting to see overt ableism so normalized everywhere but especially in a sexualized context in a fanfiction that’s seemingly doing well without any comments or posts calling it out. i really enjoy the idea of believing in the best of people but god this one really threw me for a loop. i don’t want to yank myself back into fandom related bullshit but im just… idk. i come back to read for the first time in a fortnight in this fandom and this is what im greeted with??? all right. cool.

[coquettepascal]

fuckable

pt. ii of suckable summary: you and clark break the "don't fuck your roommate" rule.

tags: 18+, smut (so much smut), roommate!clark, established friendship, f!reader, clark is older than reader (non-specific,) reader doesn't know clark is superman, slight angst, more mentions of clois past, fwb shenannigans, blowjobs, m!masturbation, accidental voyeurism, finger fucking (m!receiving), pillow humping, there’s a dildo, comeshot, facial, titty humping, big butt!clark, big boobs!clark, big dick!clark, sub!clark

a/n: special thank u to @joeloverture who lets me be a comebrain in her dms 24/7. this fic is 4 u <3

wc: 8.4k

my masterlist - my askbox

It’s been weeks since you first tried to suck all eight inches of Clark Kent’s dick. You still haven’t managed to make it all the way down. You’re not giving up. 

“O-okay, mm– don’t choke,” Clark sighs. He’s finally managed to feel comfortable putting his hand in your hair, but only barely. It rests at the crown of your head, not pushing or pulling, just touching. He just wants to touch you. 

Your throat contracts uncomfortably as his tip pushes at the back of your throat. You’re really trying your best not to choke on him since he hates that, but it’s difficult to open up. Something about this challenge is so exciting, especially seeing how much Clark enjoys it. 

He’s like a puppy. Each time you even begin to suggest the idea of “practicing” again you can see his dick jump in his pants. Clark’s expression is always formed into a shy look, but the shimmer of excited horniness can’t be hidden in the blush of his cheeks and the light of his eyes. He always says “we don’t have to, it’s okay,” but the fact that you want to practice sets him off every time. He’ll scamper off to the couch while shoving his pants down his thighs, usually leaving his boxers on since he likes being teased through the fabric. 

It’s exactly what happened earlier tonight. Clark’s boxers lay beside him, of course with a small stain of precome on the front, and his pants are forgotten somewhere on the kitchen floor. You had caught him washing the dishes and something about him being so responsible had your jaw tingling with a need to try fitting him in your mouth again. He’s fully leaned back on the couch now, his eyes trained on the ceiling as he breathes with an open mouth. One hand is still tangled in your hair, but the other one is cupping his own breast. Clark kneads the tit in his fingers, only letting his thumb brush over his nipple when something feels particularly good. You know why this is, and it’s why you’re keeping your hands to yourself as you kneel with his dick enveloped between your lips.

Clark has a problem with coming. Not coming too fast, but too much. And he can’t recover very quickly from it, which is terrible for practicing sucking his dick. Even though he’s around the same size while soft, it goes down much easier which feels like cheating. So you have to keep your hands to yourself, or at least he’s asked you to. It’s kind of okay, but you really miss the feeling of his skin in your hands, the weight of his pretty tits.

At least you get to watch.

His skin looks glowier than usual tonight. It’s hotter than usual, so there’s a chance he’s just sweating, but his breasts are glistening in the yellow light of the lamp. The darker hair that’s smattered between his tits is slightly sweaty and you wish you could pull off him and lick at it, but then you’d lose progress. As if this is even about that anymore.

Finally your throat opens a little more and you manage to fit another half inch down. It makes your eyes roll back for a second, the pleasant feeling of a full mouth and throat shooting a thrill up your spine. You’ve mostly been using your hands to measure how far down you get on him, starting with both your hands wrapped around almost all his firth, then removing fingers as you ease down. Tonight you’ve finally reached the last three fingers wrapped around him.

“S-slow,” Clark whines softly, his hips desperately trying not to lift off the couch. “Slow, you’re good, you’re doing so good.” 

Everything in you wants to push yourself further, to say fuck it and just suck him down your throat and bury your nose in that delicious little patch of hair at his base, but you won’t. He wants it slow, and you’re not even supposed to be getting him off. You’re proving a point. 

“Geez,” Clark says. He seems to be grateful for the lull in your practice as you try to get a hold of yourself. “I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten… that far.” 

Stupid Clark and his mouth. Each time you do this you tell yourself you cannot be getting yourself off while you suck his dick, but the heel of your foot always ends up pressed against your crotch. Your foot drags underneath you as you try to stealthily slide it to where you need it most. He hasn’t caught you doing this before, or at least he hasn’t said anything about it previously. Your eyes flutter again as the heel of your foot finally presses to your core, and your fingers press into his thighs. It feels like just enough to keep you satisfied until you’re done here and can go back to your room to fuck yourself properly. 

Your breath finally evens out as much as it can with over half of Clark in your throat and he rubs your head gently, telling you again that you’re doing well. 

“So good, you’re getting further everytime,” he sighs faintly. His head is tilted down to look at you while his hand rests on his belly. “Wish I could repay you for this in some way. Mmh–”

A hot rush crawls across your cheeks as Clark says that. He has mentioned “repaying” you once or twice, but it’s not… something you can allow. Sucking his dick is one thing, spreading your legs for him is another. It can’t go farther than it has, not when he’s still so freshly out of a relationship, so you don’t reply. You keep your mouth full of him and just enjoy the weight of his thick cock in your mouth, let it drown out the noise of what this could mean, or accidentally lead to, and focus on him. 

—

The normalcy after these practice sessions used to feel comfortable and normal. At some point last week though, Clark had kissed the top of your head before he had ducked out of the bathroom and gone to bed. He had said “good night,” and pressed a kiss to the top of your head as you brushed your teeth. And you just had to stand there, foamy mouthed from toothpaste and throat still raw from his dick, and accept that this is what you’ve created. 

And it isn’t going away.

Clark isn’t home a lot of the time still, though you do know he has time off coming up. You’re kind of banking on him not being home during that time too, maybe going back to see his parents in Smallville, and leaving you alone. The fact that Clark is so easily affectionate with you is starting to make you scared. All at once you want to suck his dick as far down your throat as you can, but also you’re desperately trying to pull away from him. It’s terrifying that this big man is suddenly under your thumb, silently whining for more even though he never says anything at all. Is it you that’s needy, or is it him? You don’t know. This isn’t worth figuring out, you’re roommates that experiment with his huge body. It’s fine. 

Everything about this would be fine if he wasn’t in a long term relationship just seven months ago. You might even be willing to break the roommate rule of “absolutely no fucking.” The idea that you could be Clark’s rebound is something weirdly scary, preventing you from letting yourself admit that you might have a crush on him. Putting any feelings into this only sets the rug under your feet, allowing a chance for it to be pulled right out. Fumbling Clark after seeing his polite boy attitude and sucking on the anaconda in his pants would feel like… like you don’t know. Every time you think about it you feel dumber. 

What you do know about Clark and Lois Lane is scarce. You know that they broke up amicably, that they were together for almost a year, and that they’re managing to maintain a friendship. Clark has previously said that a lot of their friendship is solely so Jimmy doesn’t feel awkward and so things don’t get ugly at work. But if he isn’t talking about her more than this, then what is being left unsaid? 

You don’t want to care, but can you help it?

Something seriously must have been wrong with Clark for things to go wrong. The hurt on his face the first time he mentioned her told you that it was him that definitely screwed things fully over. You can’t imagine what, though. Clark doesn’t seem very argumentative from what you can tell, and with how quiet he gets about the breakup you can’t imagine that he cheated. Did he have some evil alter-ego that ruined everything? In all the safety you feel in Clark and his ways and his energy, something feels like it’s squirreled away. It must be Lois, is what you’ve concluded with. 

Not that it should matter. 

It shouldn’t pop into your mind ever. You shouldn’t wonder if he’s thinking of her when his eyes are closed and you’re massaging his dick in your mouth, you shouldn’t wonder if he wishes she was there when he opens his eyes to look down at you, and you definitely shouldn’t wonder if he ever called her baby. He’s never called you baby. Only your name. (is Clark a “baby” guy?)

This wondrous jealousy only festers into something uglier as Clark’s week off approaches. He keeps talking about how much he feels like he’ll miss work and his friends. You know he loves his job, but that’s where he sees Lois. You’re frustrated with him and yourself at the same time. It feels like you’re upset that he has another best friend, not even that there’s another woman but just the idea of him missing someone else is overwhelming. He isn’t even yours. You have the possessiveness of a petulant child, though you know that Clark is so much more than a toy you don’t want to share. He’s a friend. What would the loss of Clark feel like now? After you’ve lived with him, experienced him, and found yourself accustomed to his presence in so many ways, how could you survive the loss of a friend and somewhat-lover like him? 

—

It’s making you push him away.

You don’t realize it at first since he’s out of the house a fair bit still, but you’re not acting on your wants anymore. The amount of time you spend in your room when he’s home isn’t just noticeable, it’s agitating him. He keeps knocking whenever he gets home from work, or from going out with Jimmy, and asking if you’re okay. You keep telling him yes, you’re busy, you’re on the phone. So long as you’re too busy to pay attention to him, you don’t have to look at him. Even if you are thinking of him the whole time you’re laying in bed, aching to have him in your mouth again. 

Of course, you could just talk to him. You could sit him down and set boundaries for this weird thing you have. But then there’s more questions. It never ends. 

If he were over Lois, you aren’t prepared to take on a relationship. You’re terrified of the idea that Clark might want you to be his something and then there’s a whole other world of problems that could come with that. Dating your roommate is a terrible idea.

If he weren’t over Lois though, and you are just a rebound, then… what? Maybe you’d cry, feel angry, and tell him that you’re never sucking his dick again. Well, you don’t want that either. You do want to keep sucking his dick. But you don’t want to be his rebound. 

You wallow in your room for hours, listening to him as he comes home and leaves again and again. There is no reassurance for your indecisiveness, only guilt for avoiding him for so long. 

Clark is really hurting over this. He hasn’t told you, obviously, since you haven’t spoken to him yet this week, but he keeps asking if you need anything through the barrier of your bedroom door. The times you’ve left your room while he’s home he hasn’t said much, just stared at you with this look of “what did i do?” And the apartment is so annoyingly clean. Never a dish in the sink, never a speck of dust on the sidetables, and the shower is spick and span. It only serves as a reminder of what you’re pushing away. It hurts so much you wonder if you’re really even protecting yourself from harm.

—

Friday, the day before his time off begins, you decide to slink out of your hole of guilt and jealousy. 

It only took a full week of neglecting all of your roommate duties, showing up to your job with only half your brain in your head, and completely ignoring Clark, to realize that ignorance is not bliss. Clark is too nice to hurt like this, and you don’t want to screw up your friendship with him just because you’re scared that you’ll be a rebound. You knew what you were getting into when you offered to put him in your mouth, consciously or not. Clark wasn’t a stranger with a history you didn’t know about, you knew. It’s time to face the music and let this mess ride.

So you decide on starting dinner a little earlier. It’s Friday and you know he might be tired, and he’ll be hungry. God can that man eat.

You pull out the frozen dumplings from the freezer at around 5pm. He gets off work around 5ish usually, so hopefully by the time he’s home you’ll have your “i’m sorry clark” meal ready for him. He’s been in love with these lately and you can tell. The packaging has been filling up the garbage for the past month because each bag only has “approximately 22” per bag, and Clark can eat the whole bag if he wants. It used to baffle you, but after seeing what he looks like beneath his clothing, it’s no longer confusing. His body puts that food away good. 

The bag turns out to be about three quarters of the way full,which should be enough, so you pour in all the dumplings. Hot water scalds your forearm for a moment when they splash in, but it only hurts for a second. You can’t believe you’re doing this anyways. Clark won’t be mad at you, but he’ll want to talk about stuff. There’s no game plan for his questions, you’ll just answer honestly and hope that he’ll be able to look at you the same.

A bubbling noise is the only sound in the whole apartment as you cook. You end up boiling some vegetables and microwaving some fried rice that Clark must have made while you were hate-hibernating. The dumplings dance in the bubbles of the boiling water as you watch them. It smells good in the kitchen, something that would normally cause you to be hungry, but right now you just feel nervous. You’re either about to lose the dick of your life, or the friend of your life, or maybe both. 

But there’s no time to overthink.

Clark comes stumbling through the door at 5:10, a surprisingly early showup considering he typically misses his bus. 

It doesn’t seem like he realizes you’re out of your room at first. You listen to the soft sound of him slipping off his work shoes, hanging up his shoulder bag on the hook, and slipping his ancient laptop out to put away in his room. He’s breathing a little heavily but his steps are still gentle, like he’s afraid of being too noisy. 

Finally, he steps into the main part of the apartment, and you turn to face him.

He looks surprised to see you, but he also looks… like Clark. Not even Clark, but clark, with a lowercase c. The guy looks exhausted, not like bags under his eyes tired, but the-life-has-been-sucked-out-of-him tired. Dead behind the eyes. And he’s still so handsome. 

Usually Clark wears a suit to work, with ties varying in plain colours. He says that it’s important to him to feel professional and “in uniform.” He’s super anal about this uniform too, you swear he’s the only man you’ve ever seen iron his clothes. But today, he’s a little more casual. There’s still a dress shirt and a tie, but rather than a suit jacket, he’s opted for a dark grey sweater vest. Not like a dorky one, but a loose one that hangs on his frame enough to conceal his hugeness yet exemplify it at the same time. He looks cute, but hurt. 

“Hey,” he says. It isn’t all the way normal, slightly hesitant. You give him a smile that feels weird. The dumplings are sitting on a big plate behind you, the sauce packet laying beside it on the countertop. “You’re feeling better I guess?”

You nod. Clark nods, placing his laptop on the dining room table. 

“You wanna eat dinner together?”  He asks as he slips into his designated seat. You nod again, and there’s the fond smile you’ve been missing. Clark’s cheeks push up his face, his eyes squinting up, and those dimples. God, he makes everything in you a conflicted mess. 

—

Dinner is quiet. Clark takes his time eating all but five dumplings on the plate, leaving them for you, and then scarfs down the rice and veggies. He seems really happy to be sitting with you again, but there’s still a certain amount of mystery in his eyes. You can’t bring yourself to eat, too afraid that the mystery you’re seeing behind his eyes is the same one you’re trying to solve. 

He’s zoning out, staring at his plate, when you speak. 

“Sorry I um… was like that, for a bit,” you say stiltedly. You’re kind of hoping he just lets this go and also doesn’t want to think about it. This could be so easy if neither of you thought about it.

Clark looks up, almost alarmedly, and shakes his head. “What? No– no I don’t, it’s fine that you needed a bit. We all get into slumps sometimes,” he reassures quickly. His hand is fidgeting with his napkin, scrumpling the paper up in his big palm. “I’m not like this,” he gestures around his tired face, “because of that. I’m glad you’re feeling better, honest.”

Clark swallows the saliva in his mouth and breathes deep. His chest fills, then releases, and his fingers start to tear at the edges of the napkin.

“It’s Lois, at work,” he admits.

Oh. Your jaw clenches but you try to look like any normal concerned friend would rather than a jealous roommate whose mouth he occasionally fucks. 

“I don’t like talking about her,” he prefaces, “because I think she knows too much about me. I was really, really, in love with her. Like spectacularly in love, and so I just was vulnerable all the time and she knows everything about me ever. And it was fine when we were together but…” He turns his head to the side, raising his arm to rest his cheek in his hand. “But now we aren’t together. And she still knows everything about me. And she still doesn’t love me.”

Again, Clark never talks about her. All you previously knew, was that they were together, and now they were not, and that they are co-workers still. You probably could have figured that Clark is the type to fall hard and fast considering everything about him, but now it’s coming from the horse’s mouth. 

“She just keeps talking to me, y’know? And she just knows me. The things she says, the inside jokes, the knowing looks,” he shakes his head, sighing again. “Lois knows me, but she never made me feel seen. I saw her and it was like cupid had struck me or whatever, but when she saw me she just saw me. I just wish someone could see me, like how I saw her.”

His arm falls back down to rest on the table and he turns his face back to you. Clark looks significantly less dead inside now but more vulnerable than ever.

“I think I just need to sleep this off, right? I have the next week off so I won’t have to feel her eyes on me for a bit,” he decides. You feel bad for not saying anything but you’re honestly speechless. He’s just resolved your insecurities about his ex without even knowing you were insecure in the first place. “You’ll probably be the only one I see,” he says.

—

He told you to leave the dishes from dinner in the sink, and that he’ll do them when he gets up tomorrow morning, but you need to do something with your hands. You’re not shaking, or really feeling anything in particular, but your problem was just… resolved. It’s no longer an anxiety that Clark might be hanging on to Lois. If anything, it seems like he’s tired of being around his ex constantly. 

The soap from the dishes rings up around your wrists as you scrub the plates. It’s thrilling to know you’re not really a rebound, but things are still somewhat in the air. You should have brought it up at dinner, you should have asked him if there’s boundaries and rules that you two should be talking about, but you didn’t. He looked too comfortable, finally opening up to you after he’d stuffed himself full of dumplings, maybe subconsciously you didn’t want to ruin his moment of vulnerability. 

You ponder on it as you scrub each dish, spoon, and fork. There’s nowhere you really want to, or don’t want to, take this. A serious relationship doesn’t sound like a good idea, but an idea of what this is overall would surely alleviate the headache you and him have created. You’re sure he feels the same way, you know he must. 

The last fork is placed in the drying rack, and then you scrub around the edge of the sink and stove, then wring out the sponge of soapy water. And then you turn to the direction of Clark’s door. He had showered after dinner, then scampered into his room. You didn’t turn around just in case he was only wearing a towel. No distractions right now, focus.

Last month you would have knocked on his door, y’know, before you knew what he looked like naked. You’re pretty far past that now, so tonight you just creak open his room.

Your eyes find him before your mouth gets the chance to open.

Clark’s bed is to the side of his room that’s closer to the window. It’s a double size bed, and you’re pretty sure his feet usually hang off the end if he stretches out fully. His bedside lamp isn’t on for once, and his book is abandoned on the floor. 

Clark is placed in the center of his bed, facedown. His knees are drawn up and one of his pillows is folded in half and shoved beneath his lower abdomen, where he rocks into the material with shaky thrusts of his hips.

But you can’t focus on that, it’s not the focus right now.

The focus right now is that one of Clark’s thick arms is reached back, sprawling down his muscular back, guiding his fingers into himself. He’s stretched out on two of his fingers right now, but it looks like a third is what he wants. His pointer finger keeps bending, trying to find its way into him, but he just isn’t ready yet. 

You should speak up, or maybe close the door quietly and leave him to get himself off. You can’t. 

It’s entrancing. You had no clue that Clark was into this, he never mentioned it. Yes he was always more submissive but you didn’t know the extent of it.

His fingers push particularly deep and he whimpers, hips rutting so his cock (assumedly) rubs against the soft material of his pillow. Pervertedly, you wish there was more light in this room. You want to see how the soft rim of his asshole stretches around his fingers, want to see the sweat that’s surely rolling down the indent of his back, and you also really, really, want to be the person whose fingers are in him. Clark’s pace is slow, but he’s pushing pretty deep into himself. The flex of his wrist is fluid and you can tell he’s curling his fingers, searching for the right spot.

You can’t leave the room, not yet. You wonder if this is how he usually gets off, if this is normal. 

Your eyes leave the sight of his pretty ass for one second, glancing to the windowsill to the right of him. There’s a pretty sizable bottle of lube placed there, and it’s only half full. Okay, maybe this is how he usually gets off. 

Clark is totally lost in the feeling of his fingers. He seems to find the right spot inside himself and begins to thrust his fingers faster, curling them harder. You’re familiar with his moans by now, but it’s so much hotter tonight with how he keeps trying to hold back. His hips rut into the pillow desperately, the seesaw of pleasure between his fingers and the pillow is driving him wild. Unfortunately you can only see the mess of curls on his head since his face is buried in the mattress. 

His fingers continue to push into his hole eagerly, each thrust forcing his hips to jump forward into the pillow. You know how close he is just off his sounds, and you aren’t wrong. Clark suddenly jams his fingers into himself as far as he can and then begins to hump the pillow wildly as he comes onto the material. It’s like he’s purposefully overstimulating himself, panting and groaning, and… whining. He’s always whiny, but this breathiness is different. He’s puffing out a word, your name, as he humps into his pillow and then back against his fingers. 

Fuck. 

Now is when you back out, shutting his door quieter than you opened it, and then rushing back to your room.

Clark is fucking himself to the thought of you. He looked so miserably good as he fucked himself on his fingers, his pretty cheeks spread to make room for those big hands that have been in your hair time and time again. He let his cock be neglected on purpose, poor boy. Maybe he was thinking about you beneath him, stroking it, or maybe he was thinking about you behind him, thrusting into his sensitive hole. Oh god, oh god. 

You’re laying flat on your back in your bed when you hear his door creak open. He has no clue you saw what he was doing. The tap in the bathroom runs as he washes his hands and you listen to his shaky steps when he makes his way back to his room and shuts the door again.

In your mind, the roommate rule was about not fucking Clark, that being Clark not being in you. It never crossed your mind that you might want to be the one in him.

—

Getting to sleep was hard, but getting up is almost harder.

The last conversation Clark had with you last night was about how he wanted to feel seen, and you’ve definitely seen him now. 

Yup. Seen him with his fingers knuckle deep in his butt. Great. It will be very easy to look him in the face today.

You manage to get out of bed at around 10am, hoping that Clark is out of the house. The apartment is quiet when you cautiously step out into the main room. You’re safe. Safe from having to face Clark who fucks his butt and thinks of you. Clark who has unleashed a new worm in your brain, alongside the one already in there that begs you to suck him off all the time. 

Clark who is walking through the front door right now, not taking his shoes off because his arms are full with two very full, paper, grocery bags. 

There’s no fucking breathing room for you in this apartment. Shit, he’s right there, he’s right there and you know what he did.

“Hey, you’re up!” Clark says cheerfully. He places the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, turning his back to you. “The early bird catches the worm, you know.”

He says… something after that about french toast, or breakfast. Something vaguely breakfast related. You don’t know, you can’t focus because Clark is wearing shorts today. Not lazy basketball shorts, or cargo shorts, but athletic shorts. Maybe a 5 inch inseam, but they look like a 4 inch inseam on him, and they’re hugging his ass. They’re not meant to hug his ass, but the fabric can’t really contain it all. 

He turns.

“You hungry?”

Clark’s wearing a plain grey tee, the printing is rubbed off on it. Did he run to the store? There’s sweat under his boobs, he has fucking underboob sweat stains. You start feeling dizzy and there’s a weird pull in your pussy, like an ache that’s guiding you. 

It’s been a shitty week. It’s been a shitty week of being separated from him, and not having him under you and in your mouth, and wondering if he’s secretly in love with his ex. And now all you want is to fuck him stupid, especially after seeing what he was doing last night.

Clark tilts his head at you. “Hello? Earth to–”

“Go to your room and take your clothes off.”

The words themselves are demanding, but your voice is strained. A feeling like stress is balled up in your chest and you’re worried it’s not making you as authoritative as you can be. But Clark is who he is, and he loves to lay down and take it deep down, so he listens.

The grocery bags are abandoned on the counter as he quickly walks to his room, mumbling something like “yes ma’am,” under his breath as he goes. 

You watch from the kitchen, into his open bedroom door, as he shuts his curtains and then starts to strip. His shirt is first, tossed onto the floor, and then his slutty little shorts follow, being tugged down at the same time his boxers are. He isn’t hard yet, but he’s still massive.

Clark looks at you as he sits down on his bed, thighs a little bit apart. His chest is puffing a little rapidly. You’re sure you’ve taken him off guard, but he’s not saying no. He looks deliciously willing.

With confident anxiousness you stalk toward him. The door is shut with your foot as you eagerly approach him, shoving your own pajama bottoms down to leave them in a heap. You’re down to your undies in a moment, just that and your sleepshirt. 

“I want you on your back,” you say firmly. Clark’s eyes go wide behind his glasses and he nods, making himself comfortable in the center of his bed. 

You walk around the right side of his bed, then grab the pillow that he was using last night. If you were to look to your left you’d see the stained pillowcase in the laundry bin there. Holding the bare pillow, you kneel on the bed and awkwardly crawl to the space between his legs.

“Wanna try something,” is how you preface this. Your hand comes down, touching the side of his hip and tapping it. He lifts up right away, letting you place the pillow beneath his lower back and the top of his bum. 

He’s looking up at you with the same nervousness you saw the first time you experimented with him. Clark’s eyes are curious as he watches you position him, but he’s pliant like always. It doesn’t matter to him what happens here, he knows he can trust you to make him feel good. So far, for him, this is fairly familiar territory.

That changes quickly.

You lean down and start to press kisses from the tip of his cock downward, lower and lower, until you’re at his balls. Gingerly, you press kisses to them. He’s extremely sensitive there and you don’t want to hurt him, but they’re in your way. One hand reaches to stroke him gently while the other lifts his balls up and out of the way. He tenses at this, a little nervous about what you’re doing, but then you begin to dot kisses along his inner thighs.

“Looked so nice in your shorts,” you say quietly, still stroking him at an easy pace. Your lips start to press more lingering kisses into the hair that grows thicker toward his most sensitive area. “You’ve got such a nice butt, Clark. You know that?”

You pull back after saying that, just enough to catch the nervous look on his face. The hand that was jerking him comes off his cock, then slides along his hipbone, down his leg, and pushes his thighs further apart.

Then, you lay your eyes on his hole. It still looks a little tender from last night, when he was furiously fingering himself to the thought of you doing this exactly. You watch as his pucker tightens shyly, and he gasps. Your name falls off his lips again. You press another kiss to his inner thigh, this time even closer to his hole.

“I saw you last night,” you confess. Clark is breathing so heavily now and his body is growing hotter with shame. A stutter fails to help him explain himself, he doesn’t know what to say. 

“I watched you,” you continue, “and I really liked what I saw. I want to try, Clark,” you admit. Your own chest is heaving with nervousness too. The pair of you are just wrecks over the idea of you in him, indulging in the perversions the both of you yearn for. 

“Yes,” Clark breathes out, voice almost cracking.

You didn’t even have to ask. He’s already said yes.

Clark reaches over the side of the bed, opening his bedside drawer and grabbing the lube. He extends the bottle out to you and you take it easily. His legs prop up in a better position, allowing even easier access to himself. 

The first finger slides in with no resistance. You don’t know how late it was last night when you ended up walking in on him fucking himself. It took you a long time to do the dishes since you were so busy pondering what the pair of you talked about, so it might have been less than 12 hours since something was last inside him. It makes it feel even more natural to be doing this.

You make yourself comfortable between his legs, kneeling so that your legs won’t fall asleep under you, and so that you’ll be able to see his face. His eyes are closed tightly shut as he takes in the feeling of your finger opening him up, sweat starting to sprout beneath the hair on his chest.

“Good, does that feel good?” You ask. Clark nods, one of his hands balled into a fist as the other one lays flat, palm up, and twitching slightly.

His hole is desperate around your digit, so warm and eager as it sucks you in over and over again. He already feels like he’s ready for more and you test it, pressing your ring finger to his hole when your middle finger slides out enough. Clark nods eagerly, a whimper catching in his throat.

“More, need more please?” He asks sweetly.

You don’t blame him, you’re sure that your fingers are not comparable to the size of his fingers at all. You could probably fit your fist in there if he prepped himself with four of his own fingers. 

“It’s so easy to open you up, Clark,” you tease softly. His chest huffs with an embarrassed laugh, but then his brows scrunch again as you start to curl your fingers inside him. “Were you just prepping for me last night? Is that why you were fucking yourself?

He nods first, then shakes his head.

“N-no,” he manages. “I was trying to prep myself for a–nnh, there, there please!” He interrupts himself, letting his hips buck back into your fingers. “I was trying to prep myself for my toy.”

A thrill is sent up your spine at that. A toy, Clark has a toy. 

“I just came too fast, I came too fast cause I was thinking about you,” he keeps rambling, both hands balling into fists now as he tries to keep himself in his mind. “Been wanting this, but I wasn’t sure if you’d… be a fan.”

God he’s so cute, you’re so glad you’re the one fucking him.

“Where’s your toy?” You decide to ask. He motions to the drawer that he grabbed the lube from and you hum. “Go on and get it then. I don’t think my fingers are big enough for you.” 

It takes him a couple tries to actually get a grip on the toy. His fingers keep slipping off since you purposefully curl your fingers extra deep each time he actually manages to grab it. You think about teasingly apologizing, but you figure he’s embarrassed enough as is. 

The toy Clark has isn’t that big, not in comparison to himself. It’s a plain, traditional, dildo. The skin tone of it is strikingly similar to your own, but that’s probably just coincidence. Its girth isn’t much more than what he was taking last night. He holds it out to you, but you hesitate, slowing your fingers a moment.

His cock looks so neglected as it lays hard on his belly. You kind of miss it.

“Can you prep yourself now?” You ask, letting your fingers slip out of him. “It’ll be faster if you use your bigger fingers, I think.” Clark looks surprised but then drops the toy, grabbing the bottle of lube right away. He’s so sweetly obedient to you all the time.

Clark fingers himself with ease, reaching underneath his thigh so he can stuff his hole while your mouth wraps around his cock. The familiar ache in your jaw feels so much better than usual as you try to swallow down as much as you can. You’ve lost a week's worth of progress, but you’re still able to take him farther than you could in the beginning. 

He works himself quickly but gently, eagerly upping himself to four of his thick digits as soon as he feels ready. You pull off once you feel him twitching a little too much, knowing that you don’t want him to come just yet.

His arm crosses his body as he reaches for the toy, his hole still stuffed on his own fingers while he holds up the toy and looks at you pleadingly. 

“You’re ready?” You ask carefully. It’s not like you’ve done this a lot, and you don’t want this to go wrong.

Clark nods, pushing the toy closer to your hand, and whining “please?”

Willingly, you take the toy and then generously lube it up. Clark’s fingers remain in his hole until you have the toy lined up, ready to switch it in. His  fingers make a nasty little noise as they slip out of his hole, but you can’t enjoy it for long.

He takes the toy so quickly, his hole sucking it in as his back arches off the bed a little. A guttural groan is torn from his chest as he finally gets the fill he’s been waiting for since last night. 

You hold it still in him, waiting for him to feel ready for this. You’re sure he could take it rough, but you also don’t want him to come right away. This is something he’s been wanting and so you want to make sure it was worth all those fantasies he probably thought up.

“You want me to start?” you ask.

His face is totally lax, his mouth open as breaths puff out, and his eyes are rolled back under his eyelids. “Y-yep, start, please start,” he gasps.

Beginning is easy. You start at a slow pace, easing the thick toy in and out at a speed which has him squirming. There’s no resistance from him, despite how tight he is around the toy, his body is completely open and ready. He’s so into this his hands are shaking at his sides. Slowly, you begin to increase your pace and start to snap your wrist a little harder. It’s important that you don’t give yourself an arm cramp early if you want to make this as good as you’re imagining. Clark seems more receptive to this pace, nodding his head and letting his eyes open a little more, searching for you. 

“L-like that,” he nods encouragingly.

His glasses are starting to slide up his face and he shoves them back down a little, almost like he’s trying to distract himself , and it makes you smile. Cute boy, cute, cute, boy. 

“You’re smiling at me,” he says nervously. You nod. “Cause I’m looking at you,” you respond teasingly.

Things feel easy again now, like you really are just two roommates that are fucking around. God, god, it’s just him and you, and you’re fucking, and it’s so hot. It’s so hot watching him writhe while you fuck him, unable to control the way his breathing stutters and his mouth parts with silent gasps.

“Y-yeah,” he smiles back, eyes crossing a little, “you see me.”

The implication of his words, the words that feel too reminiscent of last night, feel heavy for a moment. But you can’t let that distract you from what you’re doing right now. Think later, fuck him now. You nod along with his words.

“I see you, I see you baby,” you say encouragingly. His hips keep lifting off the bed, his eyes fluttering and rolling back at the same time. Clark is so damn close and you aren’t even touching him. The tip of his cock is flooding precome now, all over the soft fuzz of his belly, and you want to lick it up. The only thing keeping your lips from wrapping around his cock is the fact that it might be too much for him. He looks starstruck whenever you catch his eyes. You can feel the tightening pressure of his hole as he clenches down on the toy, making it harder and harder to thrust it in and out of him. Tears blur at the corner of his eyes as he begins to try to speak. His lips are moving, but only gasps of air come out. His hips tilt higher.

“Doing so good, you look so nice like this,” you whisper more to yourself than him. The weight of his cock can’t stop the crazy twitch it does, the shaft jumping off his tummy. It almost sounds like he’s choking on air as he fists the sheets in his hands. 

“Y-yours,” he finally manages to talk. “Your cock, y-yours to see. I’m yours t-to have, I need this– I want you to see me.” 

You’re seeing him alright. It’s hard to ignore any part of him, his big body spread out over the bed as he thrashes in pleasure. It’s unusual how long he’s lasting, but he might just be holding back. Your eyes focus on the space between his legs, where his balls sit and his asshole grips onto the toy. The ring of his hole stretches around the girth of the dildo so prettily, like it was just made to take it, like it was made for you to see it. His confession only spurs you on to continue fucking his hole at the same pace, but with harder movements. The tips of your fingers push into the plush of his cheeks as you jam the toy into him over and over, the movement rough but clearly exactly what he needed. 

“Keep looking, please keep looking at me,” Clark begs. You don’t meet his eyes, you couldn’t if you tried. His glasses are fogged up and crooked, shielding his gaze. Instead you keep your eyes on his hole and his dick, exactly where he wants you to look. Clark’s thighs tremble as his hips lift up higher than ever before again and you ignore the cramp in your forearm as you follow his movements. He keeps pushing higher and higher, almost like he’s looking for friction on his dick that he won’t find.

Then, as his hips are fully extended upwards and his cock is pointed down his abdomen, Clark begins to come. Untouched, with nothing but the toy you’re pistoning into his hole, he starts to shoot his load everywhere. His orgasm starts so strongly that his come completely misses his tummy and chest and instead shoots onto his own face. You watch as some of it gets into his own mouth while he’s panting, and then you watch as he swallows it down without hesitating. He isn’t slowing down though, his hips are attempting to jam back into your still-in-shock hand as it holds the toy still. Come spills out of his cock in thick spurts, coating first his cheeks and chin, then stuttering down to his chest and belly. He isn’t coated in it, but he looks like a glazed donut by the time his orgasm subsides. 

Clark’s hips fall down into the bed heavily once he’s done. It’s beautiful, he’s made the most perverted, disgusting, mess of himself. He came off how good the toy in his ass felt, how good you fucked it into him, and now he’s covered in his own come and whimpering like it’s taking effort to breathe. 

“Ah g-gosh,” he mutters as he looks down. You lick your lips, eyes staring at his glistening chest.

This must be how guys feel. This must be why titty comeshots are so popular in porn.

Clark’s tits are sitting so prettily on his chest, slick with his come, and shining in the light coming through the crack in the curtains. You want to lean down and lick it all off of him, but also you have other plans. 

You’ve basically broken the roommate rule, right? You fucked him, now you can release this hold you have on yourself. 

“Clark,” you breathe. His eyes manage to focus on yours, pinching slightly when he feels you release the toy but leave it in him. Your hands rip your shirt off your body, then you awkwardly pull down your undies as you start to crawl up his body, higher and higher. You fit one leg so your knee is almost tucked into his armpit, and the other knee is on top of the meat of his bicep, angling yourself perfectly above his tit.

Your chest is kind of in the way of viewing Clark’s face, but you can see that his eyebrows are pretty high on his head now.

“Just… gonna use you for a second,” you explain before seating your cunt on his tit. 

The fat of it is so soft on your core and you instantly start to rut your hips back and forth, using the come left on his breast as lubricant. It wouldn’t typically be a good place to hump, not rigid enough, but you’re so desperate for him right now that it doesn’t matter. You love his tits so much, love seeing how his dress shirt strains over them, you loved the sight of his underboob sweat earlier, and you love how sensitive they are. His nipple grows harder as your slit grinds up against it, almost nudging against your clit. 

One of your hands reaches down and slips into his hair, winding the curls around your finger as you use his head to anchor your movements. You’re so close already, overly worked up from going all this time without getting anything from him. No more hesitation, no more not using his huge body to get your own. He likes it, you know he likes it.

Your hips switch angles, grinding down harder on the downstroke of your humps so his nipple does finally start to rub your clit. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Clark gasps, staring up at you. He probably can’t even see your face, but he sounds just as breathless as you feel. “You’re so beautiful, please come on me.”

It’s all you need, apparently, for Clark to call you beautiful. Your body flushes with heat from your feet all the way up your neck, choking you for breath as you start to shake on top of him. His nipple sits right by your clit, hardest you’ve ever felt it, and you rub into it as you ride out your high. One of Clark’s hands is on your thigh, rubbing it soothingly as he watches you fall apart on top of him.

It takes you at least a minute to catch your breath, but even then your breaths are still choppy and your eyes are dazed. Clark manages to coax you down to lay beside him, but is careful not to get any more come on you than there already is. 

“Uh,” he says, awkwardly reaching down to pull the tip of the dildo out of himself. 

You look down at his body, which is now somewhat covered in your come and his mostly dried come, and stifle a laugh. 

“You should shower,” you tell him teasingly. “You’re kinda dirty right now.”

“Probably,” he replies, frowning down at himself. Clark doesn’t make any move to get up though. Instead he seems a little lost in thought. His hand reaches to touch yours where it lays, but then falls short about an inch.

“If I ask you to shower will you promise me that you’ll never make me go a week without you again?” Clark asks suddenly.

A laugh pulls itself properly from you this time, your head falling sideways to look at him. 

“You better not be falling in love with me,” you chide jokingly. Clark smiles, shaking his head.

“I’m not! I’m not, okay?” He replies playfully. “I just like seeing you.” 

What a dork. Good thing you like seeing him too. 

>///<

thank you for reading ! please leave your thoughts in the replies or tags of your reblog, or leave them anonymously in my askbox !! i love to read your thoughts... share with me rahhh!!

taglist is in the comments, but from now on i'll be using an updates blog @coquettepascal-updates, so follow there and turn notifs on :D

[joeloverture]

“aren’t you a joel blog vetty” no actually im a zoe blog. just zoe. ily zoe. this is so good im going to chew on you

[cosmickid-inmotion-deactivated2]

Trans Joy Writing/Art Event

Header by the amaaaaazing @perotovar

Hello everyone!

Me, @perotovar @sp00kymulderr and @qveerthe0ry are so excited to announce our Trans Joy event! While this is geared more towards the Pedro Pascal Fandom, this event is open to everyone! 

(Plz rb for a wider reach)

We’ve heard from people that they have been curious about writing trangender representation, but are unsure how to start or are scared of doing it wrong, or even being offensive or incorrect. We understand it can be intimidating at first, so we created this event to help make it accessible to everyone. At the end of the info and rules, you’ll find links to terms, information on transitioning and articles on queer theory as well as links to multi-cultural trans perspectives.

We will also be offering judgement free good faith sensitivity reads so you can get your piece checked out if you are nervous

Steps

Look through the articles, learn if you are unsure. 

Play around with concepts, genders, and prompts

Ask questions to me or any of those running the event

Write or draw!

If you would like a sensitivity read, you can either DM one of us you know best, or you can DM me and I’ll send it to the others and we can see who is available

Post it on tumblr! Make  sure to tag us and link the event so others can see it! We will be reblogging pieces. (Note: Not every piece will be reblogged by everyone. We all are busy, so we can’t read everything. However, if no one has read yours feel free to reach out. It’s never intentional, and we aren’t trying to exclude anyone)

EVENT RUNS THROUGH AUGUST! If you need an extension, reach out.

Rule

No dark or incest. We aren’t hating, we promise. This is just not the event for it this time around.

Due to issues around the fandom, you may have one of us blocked, or one of us may have you blocked. We will not be discriminating, unless there is an extreme reason. If one of us are blocked by you or vice versa, interact as normal with the other admins! Unless extenuating circumstances arise, we will just go on as normal. No biggie.

General rules about no minors, no minor characters in sexual situations. We are allowing trans kids, as there is nothing sexual about trans children. Discussion around hormones, binding, etc are normal and fine, we just ask not to get too detailed if you have a minor transitioning. Things like surgery or such just avoid. They can be discussed with adults. If you need clarification, let us know!

One character must be trans, but it doesn’t matter who. Joel can be trans. OC can be trans. Reader can be trans. Steve can be trans. 

MTF, FTM, non binary, demi girl/boy, bigender, any variety of genders are allowed. We’ll have some basic trans identities listed but you don’t have to stick to it!

You can play with a canon character. It’s okay for Joel to be a trans man. Joel can be non binary. But Joel can also come out as a trans woman, if you want. We’re not going to police you.

Again, Pedro fandom is the focus here but all fandoms welcome <3

Prompts

We encourage everyone to write how they are comfortable. We love stories that are just a normal story with a trans character and it’s no big deal. But we do have some prompts that are specific trans based. Again, you don’t have to follow any of these! This is just to help give ideas.

First time having sex with genitalia (I.e, Javi G. likes women, has never had sex with a dick before, first time with a transgirl)

First time having sex after bottom surgery

Helping someone recover from surgery

Coming out

Trans child coming out (I.e Ellie is non binary)

Trans child transitioning (info below on what minors transitioning actually looks like)

“I don’t owe you androgyny/masculinity/femininity” Someone demanding they be called what they are even if they don’t “present” how someone thinks they should.

Choosing a new name

Helping give shots

Songs

Here are some songs explicitly about a trans person to inspire you!

Big Butt Billy- Willi Carisle (non binary masc)

Mary, Queen of Arkansas- Bruce Springsteen (trans fem)

Candy Says - Velvet Underground

 King for a day - Green Day 

Born a girl - manic street preachers 

Annabel - Goldfrapp

Lola- The Kinks

Delicate, Petite, and other things I’ll never be- Against Me!

Silloettes- Avicci

Information

Trans MTF (male-to-female): A transgender person who was assigned male at birth but identifies and lives as a woman.

Trans FTM (female-to-male): A transgender person who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man.

Nonbinary: A person whose gender identity doesn’t fit strictly into the categories of male or female.

Bigender: Someone who identifies with two genders, either at the same time or shifting between them.

Genderqueer: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity is not exclusively male or female and may reject traditional gender norms.

Agender: A person who does not identify with any gender or feels a lack of gender entirely.

Genderfluid: Someone whose gender identity shifts over time or in different contexts.

Demiboy: A person who partially identifies as a boy/man but not fully or exclusively.

Demigirl: A person who partially identifies as a girl/woman but not fully or exclusively

Guide to being a trans ally

https://lgbt.foundation/help/a-guide-to-being-a-trans-ally/

The Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People

All of the best practices for how to write with care about trans people, written by a genderqueer copyeditor.

Multi-culteral perspective

The Seven Genders in the Talmud | My Jewish Learning

Thought nonbinary gender was a modern concept? Think again. The ancient Jewish understanding of gender was far more nuanced than ...

How Britain tried to 'erase' India's third gender

New research reveals how the British rulers targeted and tried to eliminate eunuchs in colonial India.

The Māhū

The connotation of the word “māhū” is often a negative one. This word has become a derogatory term toward someone who is gay, lesbian, bisex

Trans children/ Youth facts and myths

Get the Facts on Gender-Affirming Care

Every person has the fundamental right to access the health care they need without fear of discrimination, prejudice, or barriers to treatme

No children are getting surgeries

Kindergarteners are not on puberty blocks

Puberty blockers are NOT the same as hormones treatments

Children are not being forced or groomed into being trans

You have a higher regret rate of knee surgery than you do regretting gender affirming surgery

People who detransition are real and valid and shouldn’t be silenced, but they are the minority. 

Detransitoning rates vary but generally under 10%, and those who detransition, by and large, do it not because they aren’t trans but because of the stigma they face. Most transition again later.

Check out the MTF and FTM reddits!

Feel free to ask us about transitioning. Everyone's transition choices are different. Some want surgery and hormones, some just want a haircut. It’s all very personal, as the experience can be!

With this event, and with the threat of defunding by Donald Trump and his administrations policies, we are encouraging, if you are able, to donate to The Trevor Project. Money goes to education and funding their LGBT suicide hotline.

If you are based in the UK you will be aware of the Supreme Court recently ruling against trans women being legally recognised as women, and the increase of TERF rhetoric in the mainstream media. if you are UK based please consider donating to https://transactual.org.uk/ or https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/

We look forward to everyone's participation in the event! Here are some trans fics that might help you get an idea how to write!

Lover Boy by @sp00kymulderr (tranamasc reader)

About a Girl by @cosmickid-inmotion (transfem reader with info on transitioning)

Never Say Never by @djarinmuse (non binary reader)

Non Binary!Frankie @cosmickid-inmotion

Anticipation by @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction

any other recs are welcome!

[sp00kymulderr]

It’s here! Please join our event, if you’ve ever been curious about writing a trans character but unsure how to go about it this is a great time to have a go! No judgement, only love and support!

If you need a helping hand at all, feel free to message me with any questions or anything ❤️

It’s so important now more than ever that trans people are represented positively, even if it’s ‘only fanfiction’ I promise you it means the world to us

[joeloverture]

this is not the reason we are supposed to be seeing gina carano in the news but sure. so easy to move past transphobia and antisemitism today. im so done with disney it’s unreal how can an entertainment company be so single-handedly evil

[joeloverture]

oh so NOWWWW they want to arrest maduro

[joeloverture]

sorry pedros favorite book is of human bondage????? idk how to deal with this information

[joeloverture]

i can’t even feel bad about f4 doing so bad at the box office because it’s not like it was in their plans to make anything like that again to begin with 😭

[joeloverture]

REED not leading a film called DOOMSDAY in which he faces off against DOCTOR VICTOR VON DOOM who is his historic RIVAL is exactly the type of bullshit marvel and the russo brothers would pull

[joeloverture]

“it’s bc of salary disputes” THE WHITE NON LATIN MAN IS GETTING PAID 80 MILLION+ FOR LIKELY LESS SCREENTIME OH MY GOD BUCK UP

[joeloverture]

REED not leading a film called DOOMSDAY in which he faces off against DOCTOR VICTOR VON DOOM who is his historic RIVAL is exactly the type of bullshit marvel and the russo brothers would pull