pairings: joe burrow x older reader (no kids) 🤍
cw: panic attack, crying, work stress
wc: 2568
an: based on this ask!
i'm slotting this in the older reader without kids verse because it was requested and i've had several people wanting justice for older reader without kids 🥺 but don't get turned off by that because i feel like anyone could see themselves in this one. let me know what you think ✨
also — do we like the i choose you verse or should we make it the however long verse? lmk!
if you want to be added to the taglist let me know — i update it all the time!
banners by @moonstoneandmoonlight 🤍
masterlist
You don’t tell him.
You call him because you always call him at the end of the day, and not calling would be louder than calling. So you call. You make yourself a glass of wine first because your hand is still a little unsteady from the meeting, and you take it to the couch, and you press his name with your thumb and tuck your feet up under you and wait.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Your voice comes out fine. You think it comes out fine. “How was practice?”
“Long.” There’s a rustle on his end, the sound of him moving through his kitchen. “Zac kept us late. How was your day?”
You take a sip of the wine. It’s too cold. You bought it three days ago and forgot to take it out of the fridge in time.
“Long,” you say back, and you try to make it sound like a joke, like you’re matching him. It doesn’t quite land. “Yeah, it was — yeah.”
There’s a pause on his end. Not long. Just a second where the rustling stops.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” You set the wine down on the coffee table because your hand isn’t doing what you want it to. “I think we’re going to have to take another look at the Breedlove stuff. They want a different direction.”
“After all that?”
“Mhm.”
“Babe.”
“It’s fine. It’s — it’ll be fine. I’ll figure out where to start tomorrow.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second.
“You eat?”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
You can hear him thinking. You change the subject before he can land on what he’s thinking about. You ask him what he wants for dinner this weekend. You ask him if Tee texted him back about Saturday. You keep your voice in the register it’s supposed to be in. You sound like yourself. You’re pretty sure you sound like yourself.
He answers your questions. He doesn’t ask you anything else about Breedlove.
When you finally say you’re going to take a shower and get to bed early, he says okay. He says he’s going to let you rest. He tells you he loves you and you tell him you love him back and you hang up and you sit on the couch in the dark and you finish the wine and you do not cry.
—
The knock comes forty minutes later.
You know before you open the door. You’ve known since you hung up. You walk to it slow anyway, because some part of you still wants to be the kind of person who can handle her own bad day.
He’s on the other side in a hoodie and gray sweats, duffel slung over his shoulder, hair still wet from the shower he took before he got in the car.
“Joe.”
“Hi.”
“You didn’t have to —”
“I know.”
He steps inside. Sets the duffel down by the door. Toes his shoes off the way he always does, lining them up against the wall without looking, because he’s been here enough now that his body knows where they go.
His eyes catch on the kitchen island — your laptop still open where you left it, the Breedlove binder closed but sitting on top of a stack of mood boards you’d printed out two weeks ago. He doesn’t say anything about it. Just clocks it.
“You eat?” he asks.
“I told you I would.”
He looks at you.
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Sit down.”
“Joe —”
“Sit down, baby.”
He says it the way he says everything that matters. Quiet. Not a request. He passes you on his way to the kitchen and his hand brushes your lower back as he goes, just for a second, and you sit down on the couch because your legs feel suddenly like they’ve been waiting for permission.
You hear him open the fridge. You hear him open it again. You hear him swear under his breath at whatever he finds.
“Babe.”
“Don’t start.”
“There’s a lemon. And ketchup.”
“I went to the store on Sunday.”
“It’s Thursday.”
You don’t answer. You hear him close the fridge. Hear him pick up his phone. Hear him order something — he knows the place, he knows your order, he doesn’t have to ask. He’s quiet and efficient about it the way he’s quiet and efficient about everything, and you sit on the couch listening to him do this for you and you press your fingers against your eyes until you see colors.
He comes back into the living room. Sits down next to you. Doesn’t pull you in yet. Just sits, close enough that his thigh is against yours, and rests his hand on your knee.
“Twenty minutes,” he says.
“Okay.”
“You wanna put something on?”
“Okay.”
He picks up the remote. Doesn’t ask what you want to watch. Puts on the cooking show you’ve fallen asleep to a hundred times. Volume low. He doesn’t look at you while he does it. He’s giving you the room to be in the same space as him without having to be looked at, and you don’t know how he knows to do that but he does.
—
The food comes. He pays the delivery guy at the door and brings it in and sets it on the coffee table because he knows you don’t want to sit at the kitchen island tonight. He opens the containers. Hands you yours. Sits back down.
You eat about half of it.
He doesn’t comment. Just finishes his and takes both containers to the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water that he sets in front of you without saying anything about the wine.
Then he sits down and opens his arm.
You go.
You go without thinking about it, without making it a thing, and his arm closes around you and pulls you in against his chest and his other hand comes up to the back of your head and you close your eyes.
He doesn’t say anything.
The cooking show is still on. Someone’s making a galette. The host is whispering for some reason. Joe’s chest moves slow under your cheek, and his thumb is on the back of your neck, not stroking, just there, and you can smell his soap and the faint trace of laundry detergent on his hoodie and you can feel his heartbeat through three layers of fabric.
“It was a good project,” you say.
You don’t know you’re going to say it until it’s out.
“I know it was.”
“I worked on it for —”
“I know.”
Your throat closes. You stop.
He doesn’t push. His hand stays on the back of your neck. He’s quiet for a second, and then —
“Tell me what they said.”
“Joe —”
“Not all of it. Just what they said.”
So you tell him. Not the whole meeting. Just the part where Daniel said the direction wasn’t landing the way they’d hoped, and the part where Megan wouldn’t look at you, and the part where you realized halfway through that the version you’d been building for four months was already dead in the room and nobody had told you yet.
You tell it flat. No editorializing. Just the facts.
He listens. His thumb moves once on the back of your neck.
“That’s bullshit.”
“Joe.”
“It is. They let you build the whole thing and then changed their mind. That’s bullshit.”
“It’s how it works sometimes.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not bullshit.”
You almost laugh. It comes out more like a breath.
He shifts a little, gets his other arm around you too. Doesn’t say anything for a minute. The cooking show is still on. Someone’s whisking something. The host is whispering for some reason.
“You did good work on that project.”
“You didn’t see it.”
“I heard you talk about it for four months. I know what good work sounds like when you talk about it. You did good work.”
Your throat closes.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
That’s the thing that almost gets you. Not the validation. Not even the bullshit. Just I’m sorry — like he’s allowed to be sorry for you, like it’s not asking too much of him to feel it with you.
You press your forehead harder into his chest.
He tightens his arm.
—
His arm is tight around you. His hand is still on the back of your neck. You can feel his heartbeat through his hoodie and you can feel him breathing slow on purpose and you can feel the careful, contained way he’s holding you, like he knows you’re closer to the edge than you’ve said.
That’s what does it.
Not the meeting. Not the four months. Not even the wine.
The fact that he knows.
Your chest goes wrong before your brain catches up. One second you’re fine — wrung out, but fine — and the next second your lungs have forgotten what they’re supposed to do. The air’s there. You can feel it. It just isn’t going in right. It’s getting stuck somewhere in your throat and your shoulders are up by your ears and your hands have started shaking, the small useless kind of shake that you can’t make stop just by looking at it.
You try to sit up. You try to get off his chest because you don’t want him to see this, you don’t want him to see you like this, this isn’t —
“Hey. Hey, no. Come here.”
His arm tightens. Doesn’t let you pull back.
“Joe —”
“I got you.”
“I can’t — I’m sorry, I can’t —”
“You don’t have to do anything. Come here.”
He pulls you back down against him. Doesn’t ask what’s happening. Doesn’t tell you to breathe. Doesn’t tell you it’s okay. Just gets you against his chest and gets his arm around you and puts his other hand flat between your shoulder blades and holds on.
Your hands are shaking against his ribs. You can hear yourself, the wrong-sounding pull of your own breath, and the sound of it makes it worse, makes your chest go tighter, and you think I’m going to throw up and then you think I’m going to embarrass myself and then you think I’m going to scare him and that one is the worst one, that one makes it so much worse —
“Baby.”
His voice is right next to your ear. Low. Not soft like he’s trying to be soft. Just there.
“Feel me breathing.”
You try.
“That’s it. Just feel it.”
His chest moves under your cheek. In. Out. Slower than yours. Much slower. He doesn’t tell you to match it. Doesn’t count. Doesn’t do any of the things people sometimes try to do that make it worse. He just breathes slow against you and keeps his hand spread wide on your back and lets you find it on your own.
You don’t, at first.
You can’t.
Your body is doing its thing and your body doesn’t care that he’s here. Your body is going to do this whether you want it to or not, and some part of you that’s still online enough to be embarrassed is screaming at the rest of you to get it together, to stop, to not do this in front of him — and that part is making the other part worse, and the loop is tightening, and your hands won’t stop —
“Hey.”
His hand moves. Comes up to the back of your head. Holds it.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
You make a sound. You don’t mean to.
“I know,” he says. Quiet. “I know, baby. I got you.”
He doesn’t move otherwise. Doesn’t shift, doesn’t reach for his phone, doesn’t try to do anything other than be the thing you’re pressed against. His chest keeps going slow. In. Out. The hand on the back of your head is heavy, anchoring, and somewhere in the part of your brain that’s still working you register that he’s done this before. That he knows not to talk too much. That he knows not to make it bigger than it is. That he’s not scared.
That’s what finally cracks it.
Not the breathing. Not the hand. The fact that he’s not scared.
The first real breath comes ragged. The second one comes a little better. The third one breaks, and that’s when you start crying — not the controlled kind, not the dignified kind, the kind you’ve been refusing since two o’clock this afternoon. Wet and ugly and shaking and into his hoodie.
He doesn’t say anything.
Just keeps his hand on the back of your head and lets you.
—
You cry for a long time.
Not the whole time at the same volume. It comes in waves — hard, then quieter, then hard again when you think about something specific (Daniel’s face, the look Megan gave the floor, four months, four months) and then quieter again. He doesn’t rush any of it. His hand stays on the back of your head through the loud parts. Moves to your back during the quiet ones. His hoodie is wet under your cheek and he doesn’t seem to care.
Eventually you stop.
Not because you’re done. Because you’re empty.
You stay there with your face against his chest, breathing in the damp spot you made, and you don’t move because moving means he might see your face and you don’t want anyone to see your face right now, not even him.
He seems to know that too.
He doesn’t try to tilt your chin up. Doesn’t ask if you’re okay. Just keeps his hand moving slow on your back and lets you stay hidden against him for as long as you need to.
“I’m sorry,” you say, eventually. Your voice is shot.
“For what.”
“That.”
“Baby.”
“I didn’t want you to see that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
He’s quiet for a second.
“I’m glad I did.”
You make a sound that isn’t quite a laugh.
“Don’t.”
“I am.”
His hand keeps moving on your back.
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“I know.”
“How’d you know.”
“I just did.”
“Joe.”
“Baby. You called me to tell me about your day. You didn’t tell me about your day. I’m not gonna sit at home when you sound like that.”
“I sounded fine.”
“You sounded like you were trying to sound fine.”
You don’t have anything to say to that.
He turns a little, gets his hand under your jaw — careful, slow, giving you time to stop him if you want to — and tilts your face up the rest of the way. You let him. Your eyes are swollen and your nose is running and you look like exactly what you are, which is a thirty-five-year-old woman who just had a panic attack on her couch, and he looks at you like none of that registers as anything other than you.
“You’re not gonna ask. I know you’re not gonna ask. That’s okay. I’m not waiting for you to ask.”
“Joe.”
“I meant it. Whatever this looks like. I’m here for it.”
You close your eyes.
He pulls you back down to him, slow, his hand at the back of your neck guiding you until your cheek is against his chest again. His thumb starts moving on your back.
daisy🥺🥺🥺this was just so ughhh. he’s so sweet and gentle and a safe space for her. genuinely one of the best things you’ve ever written and i’d double down on that 100% any day of the week.
#thank you got writing #please never step writing #fic rec #joe burrow
#i think we were more worried about him than he was #still can’t believe he cut his own fucking cast off #likeee #work ethic and dedication and resilience is insane #joe burrow
#feeling targeted by joey #because i absolutely have a bad habit of putting my kiddos before myself #i love that he’s talking about mental health #so so important #and such a reason i love him #kind soul boy #joe burrow
ja'marr being so fussy over joe while joe is like notoriously hardheaded and immovable when he wants to be really is like. so to an extent joe lets himself be fussed over
pairings: joe burrow x younger reader 🤍
wc: 2.6k
an: what do we think about the new banner?? i need to make one specifically for this verse since it's becoming a thing lol.
this is a simple math piece but softer than the last one — less of the math, more of the after. it's him asking her something she doesn't have an answer for, and then actually staying in it with her instead of letting it go. the smut is kind of just the door. the thing it's about is the conversation at the end.
no real warnings beyond it being explicit — this one's tender more than anything. 18+ only, mdni.
based on this ask 🤍 — i took it somewhere a little different than requested, but i hope it's close to what you wanted. thank you for trusting me with it.
reblogs and comments are everything, you know the drill.
masterlist
His mouth is on your neck.
You’re on your back in his bed. The sheet is somewhere around your knees. His hand is under your thigh, hitching it up against his hip, and his mouth is doing slow, deliberate work along the side of your throat, like he’s settling in. Like he’s got nowhere to be.
You have one hand in his hair. The other is flat on his shoulder. His shoulder is warm. His back, where you can reach it, is warmer.
He’s been like this for a while. Long enough that you’ve stopped being able to track time. Long enough that your body has caught up to itself, and you’re starting to feel the slow pull low in your stomach, the one that comes when he takes his time with you. He always takes his time with you. You’re still not used to it.
He shifts. His mouth finds your jaw. His weight settles between your legs the way it does when he’s going to start, and you can feel him hard against you, and you can feel him not moving, and you know he’s going to make you wait for it.
He kisses you. Wet. Open. His tongue slides into your mouth, and your hand in his hair tightens, and you feel him smile against you for half a second before he pulls back just enough to look at you.
His eyes are dark. Pupils blown. His mouth is parted.
“Tell me what you want.”
—
You blink up at him.
“I — ”
His thumb drags along the underside of your thigh. He’s still not moving. He’s just waiting.
“I want — ”
You don’t have it.
You don’t know what the answer is. You know what your body is doing. You know you want him. You want him to move. You want — something. But the question is sitting there and your mouth is open and you can’t fish the words out of wherever they’re supposed to be. You don’t know if he’s asking what position. You don’t know if he’s asking what he should do with his hands. You don’t know if he’s asking something bigger than that.
“You,” you say finally. “Just — you. Keep going.”
He looks at you for half a second longer than he needs to.
Then he kisses you.
His hand slides off your thigh and up your side. He pushes into you slowly. Your eyes close. Your hand in his hair tightens again, and you make a sound against his mouth that isn’t a word, and he doesn’t ask you anything else.
But he’s watching you.
You don’t realize it at first. He’s kissing your neck again, and his hips are moving slow and deep, and your hands are everywhere on him because you can’t decide where to put them. It’s only when he pulls back to look at your face that you clock it. He’s looking. Closer than usual. Like he’s reading something.
You don’t think about it. You can’t. He kisses you again and your brain quiets, and his hand comes up under your knee to lift it higher against his hip, and the angle changes, and you make a sound that’s louder than the last one, and his forehead drops to your shoulder.
“There you go.”
—
He keeps going.
You don’t notice the pace changing at first. He’s still slow, still deep, his forehead at your shoulder and his hand under your knee. But something is different. He’s pulling back to look at your face more. He’s stopping when your breath catches and waiting until it evens out before he moves again. His hand at your knee shifts to your hip, his thumb pressing into the bone there, and he’s reading you with it — tracking the way you push up against him, the way you go still when something is too much, the way you make a sound and his hips move with it.
You’re not used to this.
You don’t have a word for what it is yet. You just know your body is doing things it doesn’t normally do — coming up to meet him without you telling it to, your hands finding his face because you want him closer, your mouth saying his name without you deciding to say it.
He kisses you again, slower. His tongue is in your mouth and his hand slides off your hip and down between you, and his thumb finds you, and you make a sound against his lips that’s almost embarrassed.
“Joe — ”
“Mm.”
“I’m — ”
“I know.”
He doesn’t speed up. He keeps his pace and works his thumb at the same rhythm, and you can feel it building low and slow, and your hand grabs his wrist where it’s braced beside your head because you need something to hold.
You come with his mouth on yours. Your back arches off the mattress and your knee tightens at his hip, and the sound you make is muffled against his lips, and he kisses you through it, slow, not letting up on his thumb until you’re trembling.
You expect him to move then.
You expect him to flip you, or push your knees up, or finish — that’s how this usually goes, you come and the focus moves on, the rest is about him. Your body is already braced for it. You don’t even realize you’re braced until he doesn’t do it.
He doesn’t move.
He stays exactly where he is. His hips are still. His thumb has eased off but his hand is still there. He’s looking at you.
“Hi.”
You laugh. You don’t mean to. It comes out shaky.
“Hi.”
He kisses you. Soft, this time. His hand moves from between you back up to your face, and his thumb drags along your cheekbone.
“Again.”
—
You stare at him.
“What?”
“Again.”
“Joe — ”
“Mm-mm.”
He kisses you before you can finish whatever you were going to say. His hand slides back down between you, and his hips start moving again, slowly, and you can hear yourself say his name into his mouth like a protest, but it isn’t a protest, and he knows it isn’t.
He works you up slowly. He’s still inside you, still moving in that deep, patient rhythm, and his thumb is back on you, and his other hand is under your shoulder blade, holding you against him. You don’t know where to put your hands. You try his back, his hair, his face. You end up with one hand fisted in the sheet beside your head and the other pressed flat against his chest.
“Joe — ”
“You can.”
“I can’t — ”
“You can.”
You can. Your body knows before you do. The second one comes faster than the first and harder. Your hips push up off the bed and his arm under your shoulder tightens, holding you, and the sound you make is louder this time because you don’t have the wherewithal to keep it quiet. His thumb keeps moving even after, gentling you down, and you have to grab his wrist again to stop him because you’re too sensitive, you can’t, and he laughs — low, against your jaw — and moves his hand.
He’s still hard inside you. He hasn’t moved.
“Okay?”
You nod.
“Words, baby.”
“Okay. I’m okay.”
He kisses you. Then his hand goes to your hip, and he pulls back, and pushes in, and you feel him let himself go for the first time all night. The pace changes. He’s not pacing for you anymore. He’s chasing it. His forehead drops back to your shoulder and his breathing gets ragged, and his hand at your hip is going to leave marks, and you don’t care. You hold onto him. You let him have it.
He comes hard. His whole body locks up against yours. His face is in your neck, and he makes a low, broken sound, and his hand at your hip flexes once and stays.
He doesn’t move for a long time.
You don’t either. Your hand is in his hair. His weight is on you, warm and heavy, and you’re catching your breath underneath him, and his breath is hot against your collarbone.
Eventually he shifts. He pulls out slow, and you wince, and his hand comes up to your jaw and he kisses you once, soft.
“Be right back.”
He gets up. You hear water in the bathroom. He comes back with a washcloth, warm, and cleans you up himself without making a thing of it, and then he drops the washcloth somewhere on the floor and pulls the sheet up over both of you and gets back in bed.
He pulls you against him. Your head on his chest. His arm under your shoulders. His hand at the small of your back, palm flat.
The room is dark. You can hear his heart under your ear. Your breathing is starting to even out.
He doesn’t say anything for a while.
You think he might be asleep. You start to drift yourself, your eyes heavy, his hand moving slow circles on your back.
Then he says it.
“Hey.”
“Mm.”
“Can I ask you something?”
—
“Mm.”
You don’t open your eyes. You’re heavy on his chest, and his hand is still moving on your back, and you don’t think anything of the question yet.
“When I asked you what you wanted.”
Your eyes open.
You don’t move. You keep your face exactly where it is, against his sternum, your hand flat on his ribs. You feel him breathing under you. You feel his hand on your back go still for a second, then start again, slower.
“You didn’t have an answer.”
You don’t say anything.
“Y/N.”
“I heard you.”
His hand keeps moving.
“I’m not — ” He stops. You feel his chest move under your cheek. “I’m not asking to make you feel weird. I just want to know.”
You’re quiet.
You think about lying. You think about saying you were too in it, you weren’t thinking, you couldn’t get the words out because you were too far gone. He’d probably let you have it. He wouldn’t push. You know him well enough by now to know that.
You don’t lie.
“I didn’t know what to say.”
His hand stops.
“What do you mean.”
“I — ” You close your eyes again. You don’t want to look at him for this, even though you can’t see his face anyway. “I didn’t know what you were asking. Like — I didn’t know if you meant — ”
You stop.
“Take your time.”
“I didn’t know what you wanted me to say. Nobody’s — ”
You feel your face get hot against his chest. You’re glad it’s dark. You’re glad you’re not looking at him.
“Nobody’s asked me that before.”
His hand on your back has gone very still.
You don’t lift your head. You keep going because if you stop, you’re not going to start again.
“In college it was — they didn’t really ask. Like, anything. They just — did stuff. And sometimes it was fine and sometimes it wasn’t, but I didn’t really — I didn’t know I was allowed to say. Like to tell them — not like that, like this. I didn’t have the words for it. I just figured that was how it was.”
You feel his chest rise under you. A long breath in. Held.
“And you do that thing where you — you check on me. Mid. You ask me stuff. And I — ” You laugh a little, embarrassed. “I never know what to say. Because nobody’s ever asked. And I’m not — I’m not used to it. I keep thinking I should be better at answering by now.”
You feel him breathe out.
His hand on your back starts moving again. Slow.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time.
—
You start to think he’s not going to.
You’re not mad about it. You half want him not to. You’ve said the thing, it’s out, and the not-saying back would be its own kind of answer. He could just keep his hand on your back and let you fall asleep and you’d take it.
He doesn’t let you.
“Y/N.”
“Mm.”
“I — ”
He stops.
You feel him try again. His chest moves under your cheek. You feel him start the sentence and abandon it before any of it comes out.
“I don’t — ”
He stops again.
You wait.
You don’t lift your head. You don’t help him. You’re not going to help him. He’s looking for it and you can feel him looking, and the looking is the answer almost as much as whatever he lands on.
“I’m not good at this part.”
His voice is lower than before.
“At — saying. The thing. I’m — ” He huffs. You feel it under your ear. “I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“No, I — ” He stops again. His hand on your back has gone still. “I want to say it right. The first thing I want to say is that I’m — I’m going to fucking kill them. Which I know isn’t — ”
You laugh. You can’t help it. It comes out small against his chest.
“Yeah.”
“I know that’s not what you need to hear.”
“It’s a little what I needed to hear.”
He’s quiet for a second. You feel his hand start moving again on your back.
“The thing I actually want to say is — ”
He stops. He starts over.
“When I ask. I’m not — I’m not testing you. I don’t have a right answer in my head that I’m waiting for. I’m asking because I want to know. And if you don’t have the answer, that’s — that’s an answer too. You can tell me you don’t know. You can tell me you want me to figure it out. You can tell me to stop asking. Any of that is — that’s fine. That’s good. I just want to hear you.”
You weren’t ready for that one.
You don’t say anything. You can’t yet.
His hand on your back keeps moving.
“And the — ” He stops. “The other thing. I’m not — I don’t want you to be better at it. I don’t want you to have the answers already. I want — ”
He stops one more time.
“I want to be the one you figure it out with.”
—
You don’t say anything.
You can’t. Your throat is doing something you don’t trust. You press your face a little harder into his chest, and his hand on your back stops moving, and then it starts again, slower.
“Y/N.”
“Mm.”
“You good?”
You nod against his chest.
“Words, baby.”
“I’m good.”
He huffs. You feel it under your ear. His hand slides up your back, finds your hair, and his fingers work through it slowly.
You stay like that.
You don’t know how long. His heart under your ear. His hand in your hair. The sheet pulled up to your shoulders, his arm under you, the room dark except for the streetlight coming in around the edges of the blinds.
You feel him press his mouth to the top of your head.
He doesn’t say anything else.
His hand keeps moving in your hair, slow, and your eyes get heavy, and the last thing you’re aware of before you go under is his thumb tracing the shell of your ear.
no because you could feel the love he has for her here. when he says he wants to kill them…it just shows the love and the want of her being treated right. they’re so good for each other ughhh.
daisy i just love this and you so much. your writing is so beautiful, so fluid, so ughhh.
#fic rec #joe burrow #daisy your writing always scratches my itch
I landed the night before at 2 am, straight from LA, so I wasn't making [Burrow's golf event]. I'm like, bro, I'm jet-lagged and I had camp the day after. I'm like, 'I can't make it bro.'
But J- Burrow is the type that like, he throwing something and wouldn't say shit. Like he wouldn't say shit to us.
You know what? He hung out til 1 o'clock last night.
He would do that. He would do that.
You need to get him into watches.
He is, but he don't - trust me, bro, trust me. I fuss at him all the time. He wear the bands, I be like, bro. I be like, bro, take the fucking bands off and wear your watch - and you know what? His only watch that he got is the fucking black Cartier. I say bro, throw this shit away.
You know the Eye of the Tiger Rolex? He got offered that...he didn't take it.
He's not into it bro, he's not into it. We got him into cars too, like me and Tee got - we get him into shit slowly though, you know like, it's taking a minute.
pairings: Joe Burrow x Reader 🤍
wc: 1.5k
an: hey this has been HIGHLY requested so i hope it lives up to expectations. this is what i'd call the companion to Hands — if you haven't read Hands give it a read first. this one's for those of us who think joe would be so touchy-feely in private. 🤍
based on this ask 🤍
masterlist
He’s on the couch when you come in. One leg stretched under the coffee table, the other bent, phone held up over his face. He doesn’t look over when the door shuts.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
You toe off your shoes by the bench. Drop your bag. The house is dim and warm — he’s been home a while, you can tell by the lamps, the low TV, the candle he lights and then pretends he didn’t. You head for the kitchen.
Your route takes you behind the couch.
His arm comes up off the back of it before you clear him. He’s not even looking — eyes still on the phone — but his hand finds your waist like he had it mapped, and he pulls. Not hard. Enough. You fold backward over the couch, off balance, your hair hanging, and his forearm lands across your stomach, a bar keeping you against the cushions and against him.
“Joe.”
“Mm.”
“I want to freshen up.”
“In a minute.”
He still hasn’t looked at you. His thumb keeps scrolling. But his hand has spread flat over your hip now, fingers curling into the side of you, and you’re stuck.
You give it a second. Then you give up, go around the front, and the moment you’re within reach he collects you again — one arm behind your back, the other under your knees, arranging you across his lap like it’s nothing, like you weigh nothing, like this was the plan all along.
The phone goes face-down on the arm of the couch.
“Hi,” he says, finally looking at you.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You came over here.”
“You pulled me over here.”
“Yeah.” He tucks a piece of hair behind your ear, hand staying to cradle the side of your head. “Because you walked by.”
———
You don’t freshen up.
What you get is rearranged, because somewhere in the next minute he decides the way you’re sitting isn’t right, and he fixes it the way he fixes everything — without discussion. Hands at your hips, turning you. An arm guiding your shoulders down. He stretches out along the couch and brings you with him, your back to his chest, gets an arm under your neck and the other over your waist and a leg hooked over both of yours, and then he stops. Because now it’s right.
You disappear.
That’s the only word for it. He’s all around you. His arm a pillow under your head, his other arm crossing your whole body, his hand hanging off the far side of your waist. His knee tucked behind both of yours. His chin comes down on top of your head.
If you wanted to get up you couldn’t, not without real effort. He’s not even holding tight — his arm is loose, his hand open — but there’s so much of him that the holding doesn’t cost him anything. He’s just bigger than the situation.
You stop trying to watch the TV.
He exhales against the back of your head, long, the whole day going out of him in it, and his arm pulls you back the last half inch until there’s no space anywhere.
“This okay?” he says. Low. Already half-gone.
“Mhm.”
“You’re not making me move.”
“No.”
“Good.”
His hand finds yours where it’s resting on your stomach. Covers it. Stays.
———
The bad nights are different.
He comes in late from those — after the film, after the showers, after he’s done being the guy who answers for it at the podium. You hear the garage, the door, the quiet of him not announcing himself. On a good night he calls out. On a bad one he just appears.
He appears in the bedroom doorway. Still in his post-game quarter-zip, hair flat from the helmet hours ago, his jaw set in the way that means he’s been holding a face together for three hours and the muscles have forgotten how to do anything else.
You put your phone down.
You don’t ask how he is. You learned that early — that how are you gets you fine, that the question is a door he closes before you finish asking it. So you just lift the edge of the blanket. Make a space.
He crosses the room and gets in.
He doesn’t lie down beside you. He comes into you — face straight into your neck, one arm wrapping all the way around your back, the other shoving up under you to pull you against him, chest to chest, his weight half on top of you. He’s heavy. He doesn’t care. His breath is uneven against your throat and he holds on like he’s been waiting all day to do exactly this and couldn’t.
You get an arm around his shoulders. Your other hand into his hair. You don’t say anything either.
For a while he just breathes you in. You feel his back rise and fall under your palm, too fast at first, then less. One hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other low on your spine, pressing in like he’s checking you’re real.
Then his hand moves.
It slides down — over the small of your back, lower — and his mouth turns against your throat, drags up under your jaw, and you feel something else surface in him under the need. His hand flexes on you. His breath changes.
It could go there. You both feel it sitting in the room.
He stops.
His hand comes back up, flat between your shoulder blades. His mouth presses once, hard, to the corner of your jaw, and then he just puts his face back in your neck and stays. Lets it go. Takes the other thing instead.
“Just this,” he says. Muffled. Half a question.
“Yeah. Just this.”
His whole body lets down at once — the last of it going out of his shoulders, his weight sinking into you, his breathing finally leveling against your skin.
“Missed you today,” he says into your throat.
“You had me when you got home.”
“I know.” His arm tightens. “Wanted more of you than that.”
You hold him until he’s slack, until his hand has gone still on your back. You don’t know if he’s asleep. You don’t move to check.
———
Joe wakes a little after three and the bed is wrong.
He knows it before he’s awake enough to know anything else — the specific wrongness of cold sheets where she’s supposed to be. He reaches without opening his eyes, arm sweeping the mattress, and finds her at the very edge of it, turned away, having migrated across the bed in her sleep the way she always does. Chasing the cool side. Leaving him.
He hooks an arm around her and drags her back.
He does it before he decides to. Half his brain still down in sleep, the rest of him running the only instruction it needs at this hour: closer. He pulls until her back hits his chest, gets a leg over hers, tucks her under his chin, and only then surfaces enough to register what he’s done.
She makes a sound. Not awake — a small, put-out mumble at being moved, then a longer one, content, as she finds the warmth and burrows into it. Into him. Her hand comes up and closes around his forearm in her sleep.
He goes quiet.
He’s awake now, more than he wants to be. The room dark, the only light the strip under the bathroom door. She’s a small warm weight against him, breathing slow, her hair against his mouth, her whole body fit into the front of his like the space got cut for her. His hand is spread across her stomach. It covers most of it. If he’s still enough he can feel her heartbeat.
He thinks, the way he sometimes does at this hour — when there’s nobody to perform for and nothing to manage and no version of himself he has to be — that he doesn’t understand how he got this.
He doesn’t say it. He’d never say it. It’s three in the morning and she’s asleep, and even if she were awake the words wouldn’t come; they never come, they jam up somewhere between his chest and his mouth and what makes it out is always smaller than what he means.
So he doesn’t try.
He pulls the blanket up over her shoulder where it slipped. Presses his mouth to the back of her head. Tightens his arm until there’s no space left — the way she likes it, the way he likes it more.
She sighs. Burrows deeper.
“Joe,” she says. Not awake. Just finding his name somewhere and saying it.
“I got you,” he says into her hair. “Go back to sleep.”
She does.
He stays up a minute longer than he needs to. Just to feel her there.
pairings: Joe Burrow x Older Reader with Kids 🖤
wc: 3.1k
worth the risk
an: i'm a little nervous about this one. i spent a long time trying to get it right 🖤 based on this ask — someone wanted lola and joe being friends and i couldn't stop thinking about it. but i didn't want to jump straight to friendship, so this is the first crack in lola's armor instead. she's not there yet. but she's getting there.
masterlist
It’s a Tuesday. Joe’s been over for dinner.
You don’t think about it that way until later, until you’re standing in the kitchen with wet hair and Gemma on your hip and you realize how ordinary it had started — pasta, garlic bread, Gemma asking Joe to cut her noodles smaller, Lola eating half her plate without comment and asking to be excused. He was just there. The way he’s been just there a few times now since the pool day, in small ways, picking up the thread of dinner, sitting on the floor with Gemma when she dumps her bin of dinosaurs, not making it a production.
He’s at the counter when you head upstairs. Phone in his hand, water glass beside it. Lola’s at the kitchen table with the galaxy project spread out in front of her — paper plate of paint, foam stars in a baggie, a paintbrush she’s been holding too tight all evening.
“I’m doing Gemma’s bath,” you say. “Lo, you got it from here?”
Lola doesn’t look up. “Yeah.”
You glance at Joe. He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes meet yours over the counter for a second. He’ll be there. You don’t need to ask.
You take Gemma upstairs.
—
The bath is a production, which is to say it’s normal. Gemma wants the unicorn cup and the dolphin cup. Gemma wants to wash Mommy’s hair, no, the dolphin’s hair, no, Mommy’s hair. Gemma stands up to announce something and you tell her to sit down. Gemma sits down so hard the water sloshes onto the bathmat. You laugh in spite of yourself, and she laughs because you laughed, and you reach for the shampoo and try to remember what you were doing.
Downstairs is quiet at first.
Then it isn’t quiet, exactly — it’s just the regular sounds of a house with another person in it. The fridge opening. A cabinet closing. Nothing alarming. You tip Gemma’s head back to rinse her hair and she squeezes her eyes shut and holds her nose dramatically even though you’re not anywhere near her face.
“Tight squeeze,” she says.
“Tight squeeze.”
You’re working conditioner through her hair when you hear it.
A noise from downstairs. Small. Sharp. A chair scraping back hard, and under it a sound you know even from a floor away, even through running water — a frustrated huff that’s halfway to a sob.
You go still. Your hands stop in Gemma’s hair.
It comes again. Quieter. Someone trying not to make a sound and not quite managing it.
You’re up before you decide to be — half-risen, one hand braced on the lip of the tub, the towel already in your other hand. And then you stop, because you can’t. Gemma is sitting in eight inches of water with conditioner in her hair and a cup in each fist, three years old, and you cannot leave her in it, and you cannot haul her out dripping and naked and carry her downstairs, and even if you could — especially if you could — arriving wet and frantic to rescue your eight-year-old in front of him is the one thing that would make it unbearable for her. Going down those stairs doesn’t help her. It only helps you.
You lower yourself back down onto the bathmat.
It is the worst feeling you know, this one. Hearing one of them and being held in place by the other. Your whole body is pointed at the staircase and you are kneeling on a wet bathmat with your hands in your younger daughter’s hair, and downstairs your older one is crying where you can’t reach her, with a man you’re still deciding about.
You make yourself keep moving. Rinse. Cup of water, tip her head back, rinse.
“Mommy, you’re squeezing too hard.”
“Sorry, baby.”
You loosen your grip. You didn’t know you were holding on. You listen.
Nothing for a long minute. Then footsteps. Not up the stairs — just to the bottom of them. He stops there.
“Hey — “ Joe’s voice, low. Pitched to carry through the bathroom door without raising. “Everything’s fine.”
You go still.
He led with everything’s fine which means everything is NOT fine.
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a small fan anywhere?”
You blink. You’d expected — you didn’t know what you’d expected. Not a fan question.
“Hall closet,” you say. “Bottom shelf, behind the vacuum. It’s white.”
“Got it.”
You hear him move. The closet door opening, a soft scrape of something being shifted, the door closing. Footsteps going back to the kitchen.
He didn’t ask what you’d want him to do. He didn’t explain. He just asked about the fan.
Gemma is humming to herself in the bath. The dolphin cup is on its side, floating. You’re sitting with your hand still in the water, conditioner running down your wrist, and the only thing you can think about is everything’s fine and what that means and what it covers.
“Mommy.”
“Hi, baby.”
“You’re not washing me.”
“I know. I’m coming back.”
You finish her hair. You let her play with the cups for the three minutes it takes to convince her that getting out is a good idea. You wrap her in the hooded towel with the elephant ears and carry her to her room and put her in her pajamas and read her one book about a pigeon driving a bus, and Gemma is asleep before you finish the page where the pigeon gets mad. You close the book and sit on the edge of her bed for a second longer than you need to.
You listen.
The kitchen is quiet. But it’s a different quiet now. There’s a low voice — Joe’s voice — saying something you can’t make out. The hum of the fan underneath it. And then, after a long pause, Lola’s voice. You can’t hear the words. You can hear that she’s talking.
You go downstairs.
—
You stop at the bottom of the stairs because you don’t want to interrupt whatever this is.
The galaxy is on the kitchen table. From the doorway you can see it from the side — purple and blue and black swirled across the paper, glitter catching the overhead light. The foam stars are in a small pile next to a different bottle of glue than the one Lola started with. A small black-handled box fan is sitting on a chair at the end of the table, angled at the paper, humming. The painting is dry now, or close to it. You can see that from across the room.
Joe is sitting in the chair next to Lola’s. His elbows are on the table. He’s holding the bottle of glue and showing her how to put a dot of it on the back of a star.
“You don’t want a lot,” he’s saying. “Just enough. If you put too much it’ll squish out the sides when you press.”
“Like how much.”
“About like that.” He squeezes a tiny dot onto the back of the star. “See? Smaller than a pea. Smaller than that, even.”
Lola takes the bottle from him. She’s frowning the way she frowns when she’s concentrating, the way she frowned at three years old trying to put her shoes on the right feet. She squeezes a dot onto the back of a star. Looks at it. Looks at Joe.
“That’s it,” he says. “Now press it where you want it.”
She presses it. It sticks. She lifts her finger and the star stays.
Her shoulders go down a quarter of an inch.
She doesn’t see you yet. Joe doesn’t either, or maybe he does and is choosing not to.
“How many you got left?” he asks.
“Seven.”
“Okay. You wanna keep going?”
“Yeah.”
She does another one. He sits back a little, lets her work. He doesn’t reach for the star she places slightly crooked. He doesn’t reach for anything. He just sits there with one hand around the back of her chair, not touching her, just there.
You can see her face from where you’re standing. You can see that she’s been crying. Her cheeks have that flush they get, the one that takes a while to fade. Her eyes are a little puffy. She hasn’t wiped her face all the way; there’s still a streak under one eye where she dragged her hand and missed.
She places another star. This one’s straighter.
“That one’s better,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“The first one’s crooked.”
“You want to fix it?”
“It’s stuck.”
“Yeah, it’s stuck. We can leave it.”
She looks at him sideways. Considers this. “Okay.”
You step into the kitchen.
Lola looks up. For half a second her face does something — embarrassed, maybe, or guarded — and then she settles. She doesn’t perform anything for you. She just goes back to the star she’s holding.
“Look, mom,” she says. “Joe got the fan.”
“I see that.”
“The paint wasn’t dry. That’s why the stars wouldn’t stick.”
“I see.”
Joe looks at you finally. His face does its Joe thing — gives you almost nothing if you don’t know him. You know him. There’s a small thing happening at the edge of his mouth that means he’s relieved you came down when you did and not five minutes earlier. There’s a small thing happening in his eyes that means don’t.
You don’t.
“It looks beautiful, Lo.”
“It’s not done.”
“It looks beautiful so far.”
She presses another star down. “Joe’s helping me.”
“I can tell.”
You walk past them to the sink. You don’t sit down at the table. You don’t pull up a chair and join. You rinse out the paintbrush she abandoned next to the paper plate of paint, because the paint will be impossible to get out tomorrow if it dries. You wipe the counter. You move slowly enough that you can keep listening without watching.
Lola places another star. Reaches for a new one and knocks the baggie. Three stars skitter across the table and one lands in the small mound of glitter she spilled earlier.
“Oh my god,” she says, scrambling for them.
“Casualties,” Joe says, picking the glittery one out of the pile by its edge.
“It has glitter on it now.”
“It does.” He turns it in his fingers. “Looks more like a star, actually.”
Lola makes a small huff. Looks at him. Looks at the star.
She laughs.
It’s not a big laugh. It’s a quick one — almost a snort, the kind that gets out before you can stop it. Her hand goes up to her face like she’s surprised by the sound. She presses her mouth flat. Looks back down at the table.
But it happened. And from the sink you can see Joe not looking at her. He’s looking at the galaxy. He doesn’t acknowledge the laugh, doesn’t smile at it, doesn’t do anything that would make her aware she did something. He just hands her the glittery star like he was always going to.
“Where do you want this one.”
She takes it. “I don’t know.”
She picks a spot. Glues it down. Sits there for a second with her hand still on it.
“Mr. Joe.”
“Yeah.”
“The crooked one.” She doesn’t point at it. They both know which one. “Can you get it off?”
“I can try.”
He leans over. Works a fingernail under the edge of the foam. Peels it up slow, careful not to tear the paper or take any paint with it. Holds it up. “Okay.”
“It’s still good?”
“It’s still good. Here.” He hands her the bottle of glue. “Try again.”
She does. Smaller dot this time, like he showed her. Presses it down where she wanted it the first time. Holds her finger there longer than she needs to. Lifts it.
Straight.
“There you go,” he says.
She looks at it.
“Where do you want the last one,” she’s asking him.
“Where do you want it?”
“I don’t know. There’s no more room.”
“There’s room there.”
“That’s empty.”
“That’s where the empty parts of space are, though. It’s not all stars.”
“Oh.”
A pause. “Did you know there are parts of space that don’t have anything?”
“Yeah. They’re called voids.”
“What.”
“Voids. They’re huge empty parts of space with nothing in them. Like the Boötes void. It’s like — hundreds of millions of light-years across and basically empty.”
“That’s a lot.”
“It is a lot.”
“How do you know that.”
“I don’t know. I read it somewhere.”
“Is it really empty? Like nothing?”
“Almost. There’s a few galaxies way out in it. Not many — like sixty, maybe, in a space that could fit millions. So far apart you’d never get from one to the next.”
“Sixty.”
You’re standing at the sink with your back to them. Your hand is on the faucet. You’re not moving.
“Mr. Joe.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m putting the last one in the void. It can be one of the sixty.”
“Good call.”
You hear her press it down. You hear the small huh sound she makes when something works.
You turn around.
“All done?”
“All done.”
She slides off her chair and stands back to look at it from a little farther away. Joe stays seated. The fan keeps humming. The galaxy is — actually, it’s good. It’s an eight-year-old’s galaxy, swirly and a little messy, glitter clumped in the corners where she got excited with the brush, foam stars at slightly off angles. The last one is alone in a dark patch near the bottom corner.
“Everybody else is doing the solar system,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Mrs. Patterson said we could do either. I picked galaxy.”
“How come?”
She thinks about it. “I didn’t want to do the same as everybody.”
Joe looks at it for a second. “Yeah,” he says. “I get that.”
“I love it, baby.”
“It’s for science.”
“I know. It’s beautiful.”
She nods, satisfied. Then she yawns so big her whole face scrunches up, and you remember what time it is.
“Bed, Lo.”
“I have to put it somewhere safe.”
“On the counter. Where the fan can keep going on it.”
She moves it carefully. Both hands. Joe gets up and moves the fan with her, holding the cord up so it doesn’t catch on the chair. They set it down on the counter together and Lola steps back and looks at it one more time.
“Okay.”
“Teeth,” you say.
“Okay.”
She goes. She doesn’t say goodnight to Joe. She doesn’t say thank you either. She just goes — bare feet on the hardwood, a small noise in her throat that means she’s tired, the bathroom door closing down the hall.
You stand there.
Joe is leaning against the counter now. He’s not looking at you. He’s looking at the galaxy.
You walk over. Stand next to him. Look at the galaxy with him. The foam stars are slightly raised against the paper. The void in the corner is a small dark room with one star in it.
“She was upset,” you say. Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“How upset.”
He’s quiet for a second. “She didn’t want me to know.”
You nod. You don’t push. You can feel him deciding what to give you.
“I just told her the paint was too wet,” he says. “That it wasn’t her fault. Got the fan out of the closet, set it up. Told her we’d let it dry and try again.”
“Okay.”
“She didn’t talk much while it dried. Just watched me move things around.” He pauses. “Then she asked if I was gonna tell you she cried.”
You close your eyes.
“What did you tell her.”
“I told her no.”
You open your eyes. He’s looking at you now.
“It wasn’t a lie,” he says. “I’m not telling you she cried. I’m telling you she was upset.” He glances at the galaxy, then back at you, and for the first time all night he doesn’t look sure of anything. “I didn’t know if that was my call. Keeping something from you. About her.”
“Joe.”
“I made it anyway.” Not defending it. Just telling you. “I don’t really know how this part goes.”
“That’s — “ You stop. You don’t know what you were going to say. You shake your head, and what comes out is quieter than you mean it to be. “It was yours to make. Okay? It was.”
He nods once. Looks back at the galaxy. The fan hums. You can hear Lola in the bathroom, the water running, the soft thump of her toothbrush on the cup when she’s done.
You lean against the counter, your shoulder against his. He doesn’t move. He just stays there with you, looking at your daughter’s project on the counter, and you don’t say anything else because there’s nothing to say that wouldn’t make it bigger than it should be.
You tuck Lola in. She’s almost asleep before you finish pulling the blanket up.
“Mom.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Don’t forget the fan in the morning.”
“I won’t.”
She turns over. Pulls her stuffed dog under her chin. You smooth her hair back from her forehead and she lets you. You stand there for a second longer than you need to.
“Mom.”
“Yeah.”
“Joe’s coming back tomorrow?”
You stop. You hadn’t said anything about tomorrow. He doesn’t have plans here tomorrow that you’ve discussed. But she’s asking like he might be. Like it’s a thing she’s tracking.
“I don’t know, baby. Probably not tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
She closes her eyes.
You stand there in the dark for another minute, your hand still on her hair, and then you turn out the lamp and go back downstairs.
Joe is still in the kitchen. He’s washed the paintbrush. The paint plate is in the trash. The fan is humming at the galaxy on the counter.
He looks up when you come in.
You walk over to him and put your face against his shoulder and don’t say anything, and his hand comes up to the back of your head, and you stand there in the kitchen with the fan humming and your daughter’s galaxy drying on the counter, and you let him hold you up.
After a minute you pull back. Look at him.
“Don’t make me cry, Joe.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing something.”
“I’m standing here.”
“Yeah.”
He’s looking at you. You’re looking at him. The fan hums. The galaxy dries.
“She’s been asking about you more,” you say.
He closes his eyes for a second. Opens them.
“Good.”
You nod. He nods. Neither of you says anything else.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
