summary: After one deeply awkward encounter with a stranger on the subway, you find out he is your new—and incredibly hot—literature professor. Your relationship quickly becomes filled with twisted sexual encounters, something you realize you need more and more. Before long, you are trapped in a web of feelings for a man who is completely cold, detached, and — above all — married. Sex always finds its way to make things complicated.
tags & warnings: au college, original characters, Joel is nasty rich, cheating, masturbation, power imbalance, oral sex, BDSM, piv, semi-public sex, verbal humiliation, degradation, spanking, emotional manipulation, Joel is MEAN, choking, Dom/Sub, rough sex, violent sex, orgasm control, orgasm denial, face slapping, brat taming, bondage, hate sex, drunk sex, praise kink, porn with plot, whipping, angst, no aftercare, slow romance build, avoidant attachment, emotional hurt, Joel is BAD at feelings, angst/comfort.
if you want to be added to the tag list, let me know!
Chapter Summary: You go out with Jake once again and see Joel and his wife which leads you to overthink again. Little did you know, you would meet him again in a place you didn't expect.
Chapter warnings: smut, rough oral sex (male receiving), dom/sub, verbal humiliation, slight degradation, ice play, handcuffs used, no aftercare.
if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: sorry for posting daily lately but I need to get these out once a day since they are ready because I don't want to clog the tag with my stuff, lmao.
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Chapter Twelve ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ Signature.
The days that followed were strange. You sunk into such a deep state of insecurity that you didn't even want to show up to his lectures anymore, but you did anyway — you couldn't afford to miss more than you already had.
You stopped writing for a while, just like that, as if something had seized up inside you. Fortunately Jake was there, close in the way you learned he always was when it mattered. He understood how important it was to you to prove yourself as a writer, and you had let him read some of your short stories, something you didn't do easily.
He wasn't much of a reader by his own admission, but he read every single one of them, carefully, to the end. Maybe to impress you, you weren't entirely sure, but he told you they were genuinely gripping. You didn't know whether to believe him or not.
Part of you also felt guilty for having talked to him about your professor as if it was purely a matter of grades. Because deep down you knew it wasn't, not entirely at least. Joel in a way drugged you with his actions, because you couldn't stop wanting to earn something from him that he had no intention of giving.
When you started feeling a little better and the urge to go outside slowly came back, you went to the park with Jake to eat ice cream and walk his dog. It was lovely watching her run, Cookie, a chaotic dog who took her walks very seriously. It was a beautiful day, spring was quietly arriving and you could feel it in the air and in the rays of the sun through the trees.
Jake's company settled something in you, you learned to genuinely enjoy being with him, to let yourself be present without always waiting for something to go wrong. Addie was already treating you like a couple, she'd been enthusiastic about it from the start, so certain that he was the right one for you. Maybe she was right.
"Cookie's tired out, come on let's sit down," Jake laughed, already steering the two of you toward a bench nearby.
"Poor little thing," you smiled, crouching down to give her a gentle pat before she curled up contentedly at your feet and closed her eyes like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Jake had already launched into one of his usual stories about him and his friends, the kind that made you realize how much you'd missed out on by renting a flat instead of living in the dorms, those people seemed to have an absurd amount of fun together. Every now and then you burst out laughing at something he said. Jake had a funny gift for storytelling, a timing that was entirely his own, and when he got going he could pull you in completely without even trying. It was genuinely entertaining in a way that felt effortless.
"You're laughing at the fact that I fell like that?" He looked at you, still grinning. "I'm telling you it was mortifying, I wanted to disappear on the spot."
"I'm sorry, but that kind of thing only ever happens to you." You were still laughing, and he shook his head with that expression of exaggerated offense he did so well. Then his arm came around your waist, drawing you into his side, and with his other hand he tucked a strand of hair gently behind your ear, his fingers lingering there for a moment.
"You seem better," he said, smiling, his hand still moving softly through your hair.
"I am, yeah." He looked at you for a moment, then kissed you and you let him. A soft kiss, just like Jake. Just before it ended you opened your eyes slightly, and caught him at the edge of your vision.
You really, really thought that the universe was pulling you a kind of unreasonable joke and that you weren't really grasping what you had to learn from it.
Joel. Again. How was that possible? New York — the whole world had gotten impossibly small, you hadn't spoken since that day in his office and yet you kept running into him.
In the space of a second you took in the whole picture; him and a woman who could only have been his wife, walking along the path at an easy pace, her hand in his. It was her for sure, as much as you could remember — dark and perfect hair and that kind of understated elegance that doesn't look like it's trying too hard, put together without being showy. Even without a normal outfit, she really was perfect.
And Joel, he looked different from how you knew him. More like the version you'd glimpsed that time in the book shop, months ago now. Jeans, a flannel shirt, his hair slightly more messy than usual. Softer, somehow. He was handsome, you thought.
"Everything okay?" Jake murmured, his hand moving gently through your hair.
"Yes, sorry." He nodded softly, pressed a kiss to your cheek, and kept his arm around your waist.
Fuck. They were getting closer, she was talking and he was listening to her.
Did he see you? Did it matter? Stop. You couldn't work out what was causing that sudden wave of nausea, whether it was seeing him hold his wife's hand with such easy familiarity, or the fact that what was paralyzing you was the thought of him seeing you with Jake.
As usual, your mind had become a whirlpool. You tried to focus on what Jake was telling you but you were on another planet entirely. His wife said something and he kissed her on the cheek. You probably let something slip across your face when she kissed him back lightly, laughing at whatever he'd just said. He seemed so unlike himself, like a different person entirely.
Softer. Every now and then he smiled. They were domestic, comfortable in the way that only comes with years. A couple in the fullest sense of the word. You loathed her for it.
They were getting closer, and he looked at you. Fuck. Jake's hand on your waist was starting to feel like something you were suddenly aware of in the wrong way, you tried not to let yourself get caught staring, but you could feel it, that moment when Joel's gaze moved from his wife and landed on the two of you.
Just like on campus, the insecurity flooded back immediately. You didn't know how much he'd seen, or how much it registered for him. Maybe it didn't matter at all, after what had happened in his office he hadn't spoken a word to you, maybe it was simply over. You managed to start breathing again when they finally passed your bench and continued down the path, their voices started fading with the distance and her laugh carried back to you once more before disappearing entirely.
A few minutes passed. Cookie shifted at your feet, resettling herself with a small sigh, and somehow that tiny mundane thing helped. Jake was still talking, his thumb drawing absent circles against your waist, and gradually you let his voice pull you back in.
The warmth of his side against yours. The sound of the park around you, children somewhere in the distance, the wind moving through the trees. You exhaled slowly, and it was a real exhale this time, the kind that actually releases something. Joel had walked past. That was all. He had walked past with his wife on a Sunday afternoon in the park, the same way hundreds of other people walked past without you noticing them at all.
It’s okay.
You tilted your head slightly and rested it against Jake's shoulder, and he adjusted naturally to make room for you.
A few days later you took the subway after class like you usually did, but you'd left college later than normal so you weren't particularly surprised to find the carriage half empty, a lot of seats still free. You sat down, put your headphones on, and picked up your phone. You were exhausted, finals were getting closer and you'd been spending more time than was healthy buried in your notes, running on caffeine and the vague promise of it eventually being over.
A nudge. Someone's leg against yours. Dark, neat trousers. Black shoes, polished. You looked up slowly, a trench coat, a hand holding a book, and on that hand, a wedding ring. You didn't need to look any further to confirm what you already knew. You swallowed. Your heart rate did something you would rather it hadn't.
You fixed your eyes downward and tried to lose yourself in the music, keeping your expression as neutral as you could manage. But the warmth of his leg against yours was enough to make your mind go somewhere unhelpful, and you hated yourself a little for it.
Four stops and you'd be free of this. He wasn't even aware of you, probably. Three stops. People began getting off, a few more getting on, the carriage reshuffling itself around you. He was still there. You found yourself wondering, almost against your will, where he was getting off, which stop was his, what part of the city he went home to — what his life looked like on the other side of all of this.
Two stops left. He kept turning pages, absorbed in his book, and you were aware of it only at the very edge of your vision, that slow movement of his hand. He felt like a complete stranger. What happened after that day in his office? You were used to his coldness, it has always been there, something you'd learned to navigate, but you thought, maybe stupidly, that something changed between you. That the distance between you now was different from before. Maybe you were wrong.
There was Jake now. That was enough. Stop thinking about Joel.
When your stop was approaching you stood up, but suddenly felt a hand close around your wrist. You looked at him. He gave you a quick, unreadable glance, just a fraction of a second, and with a slight pressure guided you back down into the seat beside him. The air left your lungs completely.
What is he doing?
You sat. His hand didn't release your wrist, instead he moved it, bringing your hand down to rest on your own thigh, and then moved his grip, his fingers closing over yours, covering them. You looked at him again. His eyes were back on his book. His hand on you hand, on your thigh — you were dangerously close to go insane.
Your breath caught in your throat and your heart was hammering in your chest, a race against your own body.
And then there was nothing else, just his hand on yours, and the whole carriage might as well have disappeared. You hated yourself for a moment, for the warmth that spread through you because of something this small, this incidental.
A hand. His hand, barely even touching you, and yet your body reacted like it had been waiting for exactly this without telling you. It was maddening. You had Jake. You were fine. You had been getting better, genuinely, and then he did something as simple as closing his fingers over yours on a half empty subway carriage and undid all of it in about four seconds flat.
For some reason you didn't ask him anything. You just stayed there, thinking you would ride with his hand over yours for as long as he wanted to keep it there, maybe he wanted to hold you until his stop. But the subway kept going, further and further out, almost beyond the city by now, and at a certain point he closed his book.
"Let's go, this is our stop." He said it in a completely calm tone, releasing your hand to tuck the book into his bag. You felt the absence of it immediately, and your heart skipped when you heard the word our. But you followed him anyway, you stood up and walked out of the subway behind him.
"Where are we going?" You managed to say once you were out of the station. You had never been anywhere with him outside of college, the thought making your heart skip a beat, though you weren't clear headed enough to think through what it meant or what you were feeling.
"We're nearly there." That was all he said, and kept walking beside you.
It didn't take long, five minutes. You stopped in front of a lit-up building. A hotel.
A fucking hotel.
He held the door open for you and you walked in and looked around.
What kind of hotel was this? It looked expensive just from the lobby, the kind of place you probably would never even imagine stepping in. You stood there while you watched him go to the front desk to book a room, and you could just make out what he said. One night. Obviously. For two people. You heard them talking about some extras.
One night. What about his wife? What the fuck was happening.
As soon as he finished at the desk he took the key card and gestured for you to follow him to the elevator.
"Don't you think it's a little irresponsible, bringing me somewhere people might remember you?" You looked at him, your voice slightly nervous.
"That's what money is for." He glanced at his phone for a moment as the elevator rose to your floor, the fifth.
You got out and walked toward the room, and every step felt like it was slowly hollowing you out from the inside. You couldn't work out what you were hoping for from this evening or this night with him.
When you walked into the room you stopped. It was a suite, much larger than anything you expected, a table with a bottle of champagne already waiting, a bed with silk covers, mirrors that lined the walls and made the whole space feel endless.
You stood there for a moment, slightly dazed, not entirely sure what to do with yourself or with any of what surrounded you, while he simply set down his bag and took off his jacket like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Sit down." He turned to look at you.
You put your bag down and sat on the edge of the bed. He came closer, standing in front of you, and brought his fingers to your chin, tilting it upward so you’d meet his eyes. “You know why you’re here, right?”
You held his gaze for a moment. "No, I don't." You said, still looking him in the eyes.
"No?" He tilted his head slightly, and his grip tightened on your jaw.
You couldn't look away. He looked almost irritated, that familiar tension in his expression, his fingers firm against your face.
You missed it, a lot.
"Stand up." You did.
Joel went to the bedside drawer with the ease of someone who already knew exactly what he was looking for. You felt the air leave your lungs when you saw him pull out a pair of handcuffs, and a not too long narrow box, still sealed.
You had no idea what the box was for. So that was what he'd meant by extras at the front desk.
Then, with that same calm, he sat down on the bed where you'd just been and drew you toward him. He put his hands on your hips and let them slide slowly upward to the collar of your blouse, and began to unbutton it, one button at a time, without rushing.
Your heart was going so fast you thought it would explode in your chest. Were you about to actually have sex? What was he going to do?
When he'd undone the last button he slipped it off your shoulders and let it fall. You felt slightly exposed, a quiet unease settling over you — despite everything you did together, he had never seen you quite like this before, this uncovered, under your eyes. It was a strange feeling, being looked at that way, in that light, in that room — only your bra and your underwear covering you.
Then with the same composure he moved to your skirt, sliding it down your legs slowly, like he was savoring this moment. Joel brought his hands to your thighs, a touch that started as a caress and tightened into something closer to a grip, hard enough to almost hurt, his thumbs pressing into the soft inner skin like he was marking the territory.
"Does he know you're here?" He looked up at you, his hands still on your thighs.
You shook your head.
"Of course he doesn't." He drew you slightly closer to his parted legs, his eyes not leaving yours. "He seems irritating."
"He's not." You managed to whisper.
He held your gaze for a moment, something cold and almost amused moving across his expression. Then he stood up and pushed you back onto the bed, not in a rough way, which was weird enough knowing him.
You followed him with your eyes as he picked up the handcuffs and fastened your wrists to the headboard with ease. For a moment you thought about what the fuck were you actually doing — or let him do to you. Somewhere between the subway and you laying half naked on the bed handcuffed on the bed, your mind lost its moral ground apparently.
You felt like he exactly knew what he was about to do, just managed to pick the right moment to do it.
You never felt more exposed in your life, lying there, unable to move, watching him move around the room completely unrattled.
Joel walked over to the champagne bucket, lifted the bottle out and set it aside on the table without a glance, and you understood immediately that it was only the ice he wanted. Then he crouched down so his face was closer to yours.
"You let him touch you." He said it quietly, almost conversationally. "At the park."
You didn't answer.
"I saw you." He picked up a cube of ice, turning it slowly between his fingers. "You seemed very comfortable."
"So wh—"
"Don't talk." He cut you off, pressing the ice cube against your stomach without warning. The shock of the cold was so sudden and sharp that a small sound escaped you before you could stop it, your back arching off the bed against the restraints.
He watched your reaction and then continued, "To me," he said, moving the ice slowly, "he is very irritating, and he can't keep his hands to himself." he murmured.
What the fuck?
You didn't say anything. The ice was still moving and it was difficult to think clearly with the cold pulling all your attention to your skin, melting on you while you kept shivering under it. His eyes stayed on your face the whole time, watching for every reaction, cataloguing them with that same detached precision he brought to everything.
"Neither can you, apparently." He added, letting the ice melt a little against your skin.
The longer he held the ice still, the more it shifted from cold into something that burned, a strange, insistent sting that built under your skin. You pressed your lips together, bit down slightly to keep any sound in. Then he reached for another cube, picked up the black box, and shifted his weight on the bed until he was above you, braced on his forearms, his legs on either side of you, his face close enough that you could see every detail of his expression — which was not a kind one.
"You get on my nerves." He murmured, moving his mouth closer to your neck, not a kiss, just his mouth there, just his breath, hot on your skin.
Having Joel so close to you on your body was betraying your confusion entirely, and once again, you were not aware of what his next move would be.
Then the ice, on your pulse point. You inhaled sharply. "He touched you here." His jaw tightened.
Then his lips brushed your collarbone, barely, and the ice followed, pressed directly against the same spot. You gasped before you could stop yourself. It was weird, a sensation you never felt before, the contrast between his hot lips and the burning cold sting of the ice right after.
"And here." His voice dropped lower. "I don't like things that belong to me being handled by people who don't know what to do with it."
Belong to me?
In another instance, with another man, you were sure this wouldn't have created this exact reaction on your body. Your heart was hammering, your body was shivering and you were just hit by the realization that Joel was struck by the sight of you with another man. It was making you dizzy.
"I watched him put his hands on you and you let him." He held your gaze for another moment, then looked down and moved the ice slowly across your skin until it reached the edge of your bra, the exposed curve just above it. He stopped there, letting the ice sit.
"Did he touch you here?" he whispered.
You didn't answer. The cold was biting, spreading, and honestly you felt so incredibly embarrassed to tell him that yes, Jake touched your body.
"Talk to me." He looked at you, you could see contempt in his eyes.
"Yes he did." You said it barely above a whisper.
He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he pressed the ice down, harder than before, holding it firmly against your skin. You pulled against the handcuffs instinctively, a sharp sound escaping you before you could stop it, your back lifting off the bed.
"It's too cold." you almost whimpered.
"He doesn't get to do that." He said it very quietly, his eyes on yours, watching every flicker of your reaction. "That's not his." The pressure of the ice unwavering.
"But I know you're incapable of listening." He continued, holding the ice steady until it melted completely against your skin. Then he reached for the small box and opened it, pulling out a fountain pen.
A pen? You were confused, what was he going to do with a pen?
Honestly you didn't think about it too hard given the circumstances. You were too far gone to think about anything properly.
"So now I'll give you a reminder." He uncapped it slowly, looking at you. He later leaned in toward your neck and started writing. You had no idea what.
"What are you doing?" you whispered trembling, the cold still on your skin from the ice, a shiver moving through you.
"You can't even manage your own body." He said it simply, already moving down to your collarbone, the sting of the ice still there beneath his touch, and now this, another mark.
You still didn't fully understand what he was doing, but for some reason it was sending you somewhere you hadn't expected. Your body aching for him to touch you, throbbing under the weight of him.
It was like discovering a side of him you hadn't seen before. The jealousy. He kept moving down, another line of writing. You managed to catch a glimpse of it.
His signature.
Another cube of ice, this time at your wrist. "He touched you here too." He murmured, pressing it down, making you flinch, and then the pen followed, his signature again, the same careful hand. It was a giddy feeling, the burn punishment of the ice on your skin, and the pressure of the pen right after, then his hot hand, his lips on you.
Then lower, Joel's mouth now moved at your hip, just at the edge of your underwear, and a sound escaped you that embarrassed you slightly, given that his lips were barely resting against the fabric. Then the ice, again, it sent shivers down your whole body. "And here?" He looked up at you, waiting.
"Yes." You whispered, your breathing uneven.
He pulled back slightly and signed there too, pressing the pen harder than before, the irritation of it more pronounced against skin still raw from the ice. Like he was even angrier that the touched you there out of all places — but he is the one not giving you his body, his anger was totally out of this world by how stupid it was. And still, still it was making you crave more of it.
Then Joel moved down toward your thighs, lifting your leg slightly to get access to the inner side, and ran his mouth along it slowly, caressing you with his lips, before the pen followed. Another signature. You gasped, and felt something close to overwhelming heat building under your skin. You knew he probably wouldn't touch you beyond this, and that was exactly what was driving you mad.
Another signature on your other thigh. His mouth first, then the pen pressed in.
"All he had to do was sit next to you." He continued, "And you let him put his hands all over you." He glanced up at you briefly. "Disappointing."
"You — you didn't talk to me." you whispered.
Joel didn't reply, he did the same thing on your stomach. Then your other wrist. Slowly, methodically, infuriatingly precise. Every mark the same, Joel’s signature pressed into your skin.
"By the time I'm done," he said quietly, his mouth brushing your hip before the pen followed, "there won't be a single place he touched that isn't mine."
You really wanted to beg him to do anything to relieve the pressure that was building in your lower belly at everything he was doing to you — the ice, the fact that he was literally signing your body with his name, his mouth on your inner thighs. It was something you never experienced before.
When Joel decided that was enough, he looked at you one more time and then you felt the weight on the bed shifting, him moving to get up from the bed.
"But there's something that really made me angry." He reached up and unlocked the handcuffs without rushing, and you brought your arms down slowly, your wrists aching faintly. "On your knees."
You moved, your body stiff from the cold and from the pressure of the pen, and moved to you after he was done unlocking your handcuffs, standing over you. "That kiss." He said pulling opening his belt slowly. "At the park." His eyes dropped to you briefly, then back up. "That was embarrassing."
"You never learn, do you? I've told you before, you don't know how to keep that mouth of yours where it belongs." His jaw tightened slightly, while he unbuttoned his trousers without hurry, his eyes still on yours.
"He's a boy." He said it flatly, with no particular heat behind it, "He kisses you like he's asking permission." a little dry laugh followed this comment.
You felt heat rise to your face and said nothing, because seeing him just unbuttoning his tailored trousers was making stars dance around your head.
"Although." Joel's expression shifted to something softer, "Tonight you're behaving." His eyes moved over you slowly, taking their time. "Which I’ll remember."
He reached down and tilted your chin up with two fingers, the same way he had at the beginning of the evening. "Hands behind your back."
He took his hardness without a word, watching you the whole time. And the sight of him, it was the first time you saw him. His cock was hard, pulsing a little, and his tip was already leaking. The sight of it made your brain go mush, if you were getting dumb before this, now it was even worse.
"Open your mouth." You did, you would’ve done it even without him asking probably, by the way your body was reacting because of that view.
"Maybe this will help you understand." He murmured, his hand tightening in your hair, tilting your head back slightly so you had to look up at him. "The difference between an embarrassing kiss." His eyes stayed on yours. "And a signature."
He didn't give you time to respond. Joel's grip guided you forward and he pushed his cock inside your mouth, without even giving you time to adjust. A low groan left Joel's mouth at the feeling of your mouth around his length. You made a sound that made him tighten his hand further, his other hand brushing your hair back from your face, "Now you'll remember what that feels like."
His hips pressed forward, "You can think about it next time he tries." He rolled his hips forward slowly at first, his fist still twisted in your hair keeping you exactly where he wanted you. You couldn't help the moan that came out, once again. His erection was making it hard to breathe, and the fact that he was keeping you by the hair was making you unable to adjust better.
"Quiet." He said it without looking down, his voice completely firm. Then he did look down, just briefly, his expression cold. "You're not in a position to make noise." His hips pressed forward again, deeper this time, almost making you gag around his cock. "Not after what you made me watch that day."
You tried. You pressed your lips together as best you could and he watched you struggle with it, which seemed to be precisely the point. Your eyes started to water, your breath coming in broken intervals, and every time you felt yourself falter his grip adjusted, not to ease up, but to keep you exactly in the position of struggling with it. The only sounds in the room were his voice scolding you and the wet sloppy sounds coming from your mouth sucking him at the pace he was setting up.
"Look at me." You did, your eyes finding his, "Keep them up." He said it when your eyes dropped for a second, his fingers tightening in your hair as a reminder. "I want you looking at me." Another low groan as your tongue swirled around him.
You looked at him. Your jaw ached, your eyes were watering, your make up already ruined while you forced yourself to keep your eyes on him.
"Good." His hips rolled forward and you made a sound despite yourself that made him tilt his head slightly. You tried to suppress it.
"You know what I kept thinking." He continued, his rhythm steady, his eyes still locked on yours. "At the park. Watching him with his hands on you." His thumb moved against your jaw. You couldn't answer, obviously. He seemed to find that satisfactory.
"He had that look." Joel continued, his voice dropping lower. "Like he'd won something." You felt your eyes water further. He was going deeper in your throat, and the struggle not to gag was getting stronger. The more he fucked your mouth, the more you looked at him, your center was begging for release. You were pulsing, your whole figure was struggling for the lack of oxygen, for the forced intrusion in your mouth and yet, you were so worked up it hurt.
"That proud little expression." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "It was pathetic. He has no idea what you are." A little pause, "Look at me, I said."
Your eyes had dropped again without you realizing, so you brought them back up as he commanded.
"Better." His thumb traced your cheekbone almost absently, a strange gentleness that didn't match anything else about the moment. His hips pressed forward, his cock deeper, you really felt like you needed to breathe, so you gripped your own wrists behind your back hard enough to hurt trying not to think about it.
"Don't look away. I want you here with me." He held your gaze and you held his, your eyes streaming now, your breath a wreck, and he watched all of it with that focused, possessive attention that you had missed without ever quite letting yourself admit it. And you kept going, sucking him as he moved his cock in your mouth, moving your tongue as much as you could giving the violence of the pace.
"Does he know." He said it slowly, like he was turning the thought over. "Does he know what you can do with that mouth?" His hand tightened in your hair, pulling your head back slightly so he could see your face better. "Does he have any idea?"
You couldn't answer and he knew it — didn't care.
"Does he know what happened in the elevator?" a chuckle, "A few slaps and you were almost gone." He tilted his head slightly, watching your eyes. "Just that. Just my hand and you could barely stand up, does he know that about you?" another groan, his cock was pulsing more inside your mouth, and you felt once again the salty taste of pre cum leaking.
"And the other day." He continued, his thumb moving slowly along your jaw. "On my shoe, you came on my shoe like that and — he thinks he knows you." another chuckle, "He's holding your hand in the park. Like a fucking child." Something that wasn't quite a smile moved across his expression. "He has absolutely no idea who you are."
His grip in your hair tightened further, pulling your head back at an angle that made his rhythm change, deeper now, less controlled than before. He pushed forward and you felt his cock in the back of your throat, your hands gripping your own wrists hard behind your back, you were sure you would find bruises on them tomorrow.
A sound came from him, louder than before, and something about hearing it after all that controlled talk made you feel heat pool through your entire body, your eyes watering so much you could barely see him clearly, your jaw aching, and somehow all of it was so fucking ecstatic for you.
He did it again, another groan, his breath finally not stable at all, his fingers twisting tighter in your hair like he needed the anchor. His other hand moved, thumb pressing at the corner of your mouth where his grip was, feeling it.
"God." He said it under his breath, his jaw was tight, a muscle flickering there, and his eyes were still on yours, "You're— " he stopped himself, pushed forward again, deeper, and swore quietly. "Fuck."
You made a moan you couldn't suppress and for once he didn't tell you to be quiet.
"You have no idea." He said it roughly, his free hand coming to your face again, thumb pressing at your jaw now. "How good—" another thrust forward, another low curse under his breath, "how good you are."
"Fuck." a groan, his hips driving forward without mercy, his fingers twisted so hard in your hair your scalp burned. He was close, you could feel it in the way his breath broke, in the way his grip had stopped being calculated and become something rawer and more desperate — in the way his length was throbbing waiting for release. His eyes stayed on yours. "Don't look away." He managed, his voice wrecked. "Stay.” another sound, “—right there."
And then he pushed forward one last time, hard and deep — you felt it, his hot climax filling your mouth, cock throbbing on your tongue as he groaned.
A moment passed, he pulled back slowly, his breathing still uneven, and his hand released its grip in your hair, gently almost, which felt disorienting after everything that happened. You looked up at him, completely wrecked, your jaw aching, your eyes still wet, your hair a disaster. You probably looked exactly as destroyed as you felt.
He looked down at you for a moment, catching his breath, and then his thumb came to the corner of your mouth, wiping slowly. "Now you're signed." He said it quietly, his breathing still slightly heavy, his eyes moving over your face. "Inside and out."
You weren't sure you could have formed a sentence if you'd tried.
He looked at you for another moment, at the marks still on your skin, his signature repeated across your collarbone, your wrists, your thighs, almost looking proud of himself. "Remember that." He said it simply. "Next time he tries to kiss you."
After his satisfied look spread on hi face, Joel did something you didn't expect, he put one arm under your knees and the other around your back and lifted you, carrying you the few steps to the bed. He set you down on top of the covers with a carefulness that felt almost foreign coming from him. You lay there and stared at the ceiling for a second, trying to process it.
He never did things like that after being so mad. In all the time you had known him, across everything that had happened between you, only the day on the sofa was he gentle, and that’s because you got a good grade.
The jealousy must have done something to him, you thought. Made him strange. It almost made you laugh.
You heard him cross the room, the soft slide of the balcony door opening, and then the quiet click of a lighter.
Of course, you didn't get to be touched, and that was quietly bothering you. At the same time, though, the fact that he felt so annoyed at you having another guy and doing that to you…it almost felt more rewarding than any orgasm, honestly.
You pulled the silk cover up around yourself and sat up slowly, catching your reflection in one of the mirrors across the room, mascara everywhere, hair a complete disaster, his signature in ink across your whole body. You looked like a hurricane passed on you.
You started trying to work your fingers through your hair, slowly, untangling it as best you could, the cover pooled around your waist because of the ice. Through the glass you could see the outline of him on the balcony, one arm resting on the railing, the cigarette between his fingers, looking out at the city in silence. You watched him for a moment before looking away.
You didn't mean to. You told yourself you were just closing your eyes for a moment, just resting while he finished his cigarette, just letting the ache in your jaw and your wrists and the rest of you settle. The silk cover was warm and the room was quiet.
You were asleep before he came back inside. It wasn't a deep sleep, somewhere close to the surface, the kind where you're vaguely aware of the world continuing around you without you. You heard, distantly, the balcony door slide open and then shut. The quiet sounds of him moving around the room. Some part of you hoped, without quite letting yourself think it clearly, that the sounds would eventually stop. That he would stay.
But of course, they didn't stop. You heard the soft zip of his bag, the rustle of his jacket. The room door opened quietly and then it clicked shut, you lay there for a while after he left, listening to the silence of the room settle around you. The faint smell of cigarette smoke and his perfume already starting to fade.
You thought about Jake. You thought about his hand on your waist at the park, his easy laugh, the way he had kissed you. You thought about the way he had texted you three times this evening without knowing where you were or what you were doing. You never felt this kind of guilt in your life, it was a weird knot forming in your stomach — the kind of energy that only the lie that you will have to tell can give your chest, almost nauseating.
You thought about all of it for a little while, and then, slowly, you let it go. There was nothing to solve tonight. Nothing to decide, nothing to fix, nothing that couldn't wait until morning when you were less wrecked and the room was full of daylight — when things will make a different kind of sense.
Right now there was only the warmth of the cover and the quiet and the pleasant, bone deep exhaustion of a body that had been taken completely apart. You pulled the silk cover up to your chin, closed your eyes properly this time, and didn't fight it. You were asleep within minutes.
author's note: Hiiii, loved writing this chapter fr. We are getting closer to the first Joel's pov. Really can't wait. I love reading your comments guys!!
Don’t you ever dare to apologize again for FEEDING us PEAK writing on a daily basis. The way you write is literally so addicting to read, and everything is better than a writer who lets its audience wait like 3 weeks between chapters for no reason. Can’t wait to read more from you, “clog” up the tag as much as you like xx
oh god thank you so much for the compliments!! Really happy that you are liking my story and writing. 🖤
I love when people let me know they are really investend in my stories since it takes so much energy 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Honestly I am posting so fast because a lot of chapters are ready and I don't have to work that much...
Happened to me too that I let readers wait even two weeks because I had problems myself with writing and getting inspiration!! You never know what's going on in a writer's life :(( It could happen again to me too
Anyway thank you again I hope you will appreciate the plot even more as I post 💕
Chapter Summary: You go out with Jake once again and see Joel and his wife which leads you to overthink again. Little did you know, you would meet him again in a place you didn't expect.
Chapter warnings: smut, rough oral sex (male receiving), dom/sub, verbal humiliation, slight degradation, ice play, handcuffs used, no aftercare.
if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: sorry for posting daily lately but I need to get these out once a day since they are ready because I don't want to clog the tag with my stuff, lmao.
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Chapter Twelve ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ Signature.
The days that followed were strange. You sunk into such a deep state of insecurity that you didn't even want to show up to his lectures anymore, but you did anyway — you couldn't afford to miss more than you already had.
You stopped writing for a while, just like that, as if something had seized up inside you. Fortunately Jake was there, close in the way you learned he always was when it mattered. He understood how important it was to you to prove yourself as a writer, and you had let him read some of your short stories, something you didn't do easily.
He wasn't much of a reader by his own admission, but he read every single one of them, carefully, to the end. Maybe to impress you, you weren't entirely sure, but he told you they were genuinely gripping. You didn't know whether to believe him or not.
Part of you also felt guilty for having talked to him about your professor as if it was purely a matter of grades. Because deep down you knew it wasn't, not entirely at least. Joel in a way drugged you with his actions, because you couldn't stop wanting to earn something from him that he had no intention of giving.
When you started feeling a little better and the urge to go outside slowly came back, you went to the park with Jake to eat ice cream and walk his dog. It was lovely watching her run, Cookie, a chaotic dog who took her walks very seriously. It was a beautiful day, spring was quietly arriving and you could feel it in the air and in the rays of the sun through the trees.
Jake's company settled something in you, you learned to genuinely enjoy being with him, to let yourself be present without always waiting for something to go wrong. Addie was already treating you like a couple, she'd been enthusiastic about it from the start, so certain that he was the right one for you. Maybe she was right.
"Cookie's tired out, come on let's sit down," Jake laughed, already steering the two of you toward a bench nearby.
"Poor little thing," you smiled, crouching down to give her a gentle pat before she curled up contentedly at your feet and closed her eyes like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Jake had already launched into one of his usual stories about him and his friends, the kind that made you realize how much you'd missed out on by renting a flat instead of living in the dorms, those people seemed to have an absurd amount of fun together. Every now and then you burst out laughing at something he said. Jake had a funny gift for storytelling, a timing that was entirely his own, and when he got going he could pull you in completely without even trying. It was genuinely entertaining in a way that felt effortless.
"You're laughing at the fact that I fell like that?" He looked at you, still grinning. "I'm telling you it was mortifying, I wanted to disappear on the spot."
"I'm sorry, but that kind of thing only ever happens to you." You were still laughing, and he shook his head with that expression of exaggerated offense he did so well. Then his arm came around your waist, drawing you into his side, and with his other hand he tucked a strand of hair gently behind your ear, his fingers lingering there for a moment.
"You seem better," he said, smiling, his hand still moving softly through your hair.
"I am, yeah." He looked at you for a moment, then kissed you and you let him. A soft kiss, just like Jake. Just before it ended you opened your eyes slightly, and caught him at the edge of your vision.
You really, really thought that the universe was pulling you a kind of unreasonable joke and that you weren't really grasping what you had to learn from it.
Joel. Again. How was that possible? New York — the whole world had gotten impossibly small, you hadn't spoken since that day in his office and yet you kept running into him.
In the space of a second you took in the whole picture; him and a woman who could only have been his wife, walking along the path at an easy pace, her hand in his. It was her for sure, as much as you could remember — dark and perfect hair and that kind of understated elegance that doesn't look like it's trying too hard, put together without being showy. Even without a normal outfit, she really was perfect.
And Joel, he looked different from how you knew him. More like the version you'd glimpsed that time in the book shop, months ago now. Jeans, a flannel shirt, his hair slightly more messy than usual. Softer, somehow. He was handsome, you thought.
"Everything okay?" Jake murmured, his hand moving gently through your hair.
"Yes, sorry." He nodded softly, pressed a kiss to your cheek, and kept his arm around your waist.
Fuck. They were getting closer, she was talking and he was listening to her.
Did he see you? Did it matter? Stop. You couldn't work out what was causing that sudden wave of nausea, whether it was seeing him hold his wife's hand with such easy familiarity, or the fact that what was paralyzing you was the thought of him seeing you with Jake.
As usual, your mind had become a whirlpool. You tried to focus on what Jake was telling you but you were on another planet entirely. His wife said something and he kissed her on the cheek. You probably let something slip across your face when she kissed him back lightly, laughing at whatever he'd just said. He seemed so unlike himself, like a different person entirely.
Softer. Every now and then he smiled. They were domestic, comfortable in the way that only comes with years. A couple in the fullest sense of the word. You loathed her for it.
They were getting closer, and he looked at you. Fuck. Jake's hand on your waist was starting to feel like something you were suddenly aware of in the wrong way, you tried not to let yourself get caught staring, but you could feel it, that moment when Joel's gaze moved from his wife and landed on the two of you.
Just like on campus, the insecurity flooded back immediately. You didn't know how much he'd seen, or how much it registered for him. Maybe it didn't matter at all, after what had happened in his office he hadn't spoken a word to you, maybe it was simply over. You managed to start breathing again when they finally passed your bench and continued down the path, their voices started fading with the distance and her laugh carried back to you once more before disappearing entirely.
A few minutes passed. Cookie shifted at your feet, resettling herself with a small sigh, and somehow that tiny mundane thing helped. Jake was still talking, his thumb drawing absent circles against your waist, and gradually you let his voice pull you back in.
The warmth of his side against yours. The sound of the park around you, children somewhere in the distance, the wind moving through the trees. You exhaled slowly, and it was a real exhale this time, the kind that actually releases something. Joel had walked past. That was all. He had walked past with his wife on a Sunday afternoon in the park, the same way hundreds of other people walked past without you noticing them at all.
It’s okay.
You tilted your head slightly and rested it against Jake's shoulder, and he adjusted naturally to make room for you.
A few days later you took the subway after class like you usually did, but you'd left college later than normal so you weren't particularly surprised to find the carriage half empty, a lot of seats still free. You sat down, put your headphones on, and picked up your phone. You were exhausted, finals were getting closer and you'd been spending more time than was healthy buried in your notes, running on caffeine and the vague promise of it eventually being over.
A nudge. Someone's leg against yours. Dark, neat trousers. Black shoes, polished. You looked up slowly, a trench coat, a hand holding a book, and on that hand, a wedding ring. You didn't need to look any further to confirm what you already knew. You swallowed. Your heart rate did something you would rather it hadn't.
You fixed your eyes downward and tried to lose yourself in the music, keeping your expression as neutral as you could manage. But the warmth of his leg against yours was enough to make your mind go somewhere unhelpful, and you hated yourself a little for it.
Four stops and you'd be free of this. He wasn't even aware of you, probably. Three stops. People began getting off, a few more getting on, the carriage reshuffling itself around you. He was still there. You found yourself wondering, almost against your will, where he was getting off, which stop was his, what part of the city he went home to — what his life looked like on the other side of all of this.
Two stops left. He kept turning pages, absorbed in his book, and you were aware of it only at the very edge of your vision, that slow movement of his hand. He felt like a complete stranger. What happened after that day in his office? You were used to his coldness, it has always been there, something you'd learned to navigate, but you thought, maybe stupidly, that something changed between you. That the distance between you now was different from before. Maybe you were wrong.
There was Jake now. That was enough. Stop thinking about Joel.
When your stop was approaching you stood up, but suddenly felt a hand close around your wrist. You looked at him. He gave you a quick, unreadable glance, just a fraction of a second, and with a slight pressure guided you back down into the seat beside him. The air left your lungs completely.
What is he doing?
You sat. His hand didn't release your wrist, instead he moved it, bringing your hand down to rest on your own thigh, and then moved his grip, his fingers closing over yours, covering them. You looked at him again. His eyes were back on his book. His hand on you hand, on your thigh — you were dangerously close to go insane.
Your breath caught in your throat and your heart was hammering in your chest, a race against your own body.
And then there was nothing else, just his hand on yours, and the whole carriage might as well have disappeared. You hated yourself for a moment, for the warmth that spread through you because of something this small, this incidental.
A hand. His hand, barely even touching you, and yet your body reacted like it had been waiting for exactly this without telling you. It was maddening. You had Jake. You were fine. You had been getting better, genuinely, and then he did something as simple as closing his fingers over yours on a half empty subway carriage and undid all of it in about four seconds flat.
For some reason you didn't ask him anything. You just stayed there, thinking you would ride with his hand over yours for as long as he wanted to keep it there, maybe he wanted to hold you until his stop. But the subway kept going, further and further out, almost beyond the city by now, and at a certain point he closed his book.
"Let's go, this is our stop." He said it in a completely calm tone, releasing your hand to tuck the book into his bag. You felt the absence of it immediately, and your heart skipped when you heard the word our. But you followed him anyway, you stood up and walked out of the subway behind him.
"Where are we going?" You managed to say once you were out of the station. You had never been anywhere with him outside of college, the thought making your heart skip a beat, though you weren't clear headed enough to think through what it meant or what you were feeling.
"We're nearly there." That was all he said, and kept walking beside you.
It didn't take long, five minutes. You stopped in front of a lit-up building. A hotel.
A fucking hotel.
He held the door open for you and you walked in and looked around.
What kind of hotel was this? It looked expensive just from the lobby, the kind of place you probably would never even imagine stepping in. You stood there while you watched him go to the front desk to book a room, and you could just make out what he said. One night. Obviously. For two people. You heard them talking about some extras.
One night. What about his wife? What the fuck was happening.
As soon as he finished at the desk he took the key card and gestured for you to follow him to the elevator.
"Don't you think it's a little irresponsible, bringing me somewhere people might remember you?" You looked at him, your voice slightly nervous.
"That's what money is for." He glanced at his phone for a moment as the elevator rose to your floor, the fifth.
You got out and walked toward the room, and every step felt like it was slowly hollowing you out from the inside. You couldn't work out what you were hoping for from this evening or this night with him.
When you walked into the room you stopped. It was a suite, much larger than anything you expected, a table with a bottle of champagne already waiting, a bed with silk covers, mirrors that lined the walls and made the whole space feel endless.
You stood there for a moment, slightly dazed, not entirely sure what to do with yourself or with any of what surrounded you, while he simply set down his bag and took off his jacket like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Sit down." He turned to look at you.
You put your bag down and sat on the edge of the bed. He came closer, standing in front of you, and brought his fingers to your chin, tilting it upward so you’d meet his eyes. “You know why you’re here, right?”
You held his gaze for a moment. "No, I don't." You said, still looking him in the eyes.
"No?" He tilted his head slightly, and his grip tightened on your jaw.
You couldn't look away. He looked almost irritated, that familiar tension in his expression, his fingers firm against your face.
You missed it, a lot.
"Stand up." You did.
Joel went to the bedside drawer with the ease of someone who already knew exactly what he was looking for. You felt the air leave your lungs when you saw him pull out a pair of handcuffs, and a not too long narrow box, still sealed.
You had no idea what the box was for. So that was what he'd meant by extras at the front desk.
Then, with that same calm, he sat down on the bed where you'd just been and drew you toward him. He put his hands on your hips and let them slide slowly upward to the collar of your blouse, and began to unbutton it, one button at a time, without rushing.
Your heart was going so fast you thought it would explode in your chest. Were you about to actually have sex? What was he going to do?
When he'd undone the last button he slipped it off your shoulders and let it fall. You felt slightly exposed, a quiet unease settling over you — despite everything you did together, he had never seen you quite like this before, this uncovered, under your eyes. It was a strange feeling, being looked at that way, in that light, in that room — only your bra and your underwear covering you.
Then with the same composure he moved to your skirt, sliding it down your legs slowly, like he was savoring this moment. Joel brought his hands to your thighs, a touch that started as a caress and tightened into something closer to a grip, hard enough to almost hurt, his thumbs pressing into the soft inner skin like he was marking the territory.
"Does he know you're here?" He looked up at you, his hands still on your thighs.
You shook your head.
"Of course he doesn't." He drew you slightly closer to his parted legs, his eyes not leaving yours. "He seems irritating."
"He's not." You managed to whisper.
He held your gaze for a moment, something cold and almost amused moving across his expression. Then he stood up and pushed you back onto the bed, not in a rough way, which was weird enough knowing him.
You followed him with your eyes as he picked up the handcuffs and fastened your wrists to the headboard with ease. For a moment you thought about what the fuck were you actually doing — or let him do to you. Somewhere between the subway and you laying half naked on the bed handcuffed on the bed, your mind lost its moral ground apparently.
You felt like he exactly knew what he was about to do, just managed to pick the right moment to do it.
You never felt more exposed in your life, lying there, unable to move, watching him move around the room completely unrattled.
Joel walked over to the champagne bucket, lifted the bottle out and set it aside on the table without a glance, and you understood immediately that it was only the ice he wanted. Then he crouched down so his face was closer to yours.
"You let him touch you." He said it quietly, almost conversationally. "At the park."
You didn't answer.
"I saw you." He picked up a cube of ice, turning it slowly between his fingers. "You seemed very comfortable."
"So wh—"
"Don't talk." He cut you off, pressing the ice cube against your stomach without warning. The shock of the cold was so sudden and sharp that a small sound escaped you before you could stop it, your back arching off the bed against the restraints.
He watched your reaction and then continued, "To me," he said, moving the ice slowly, "he is very irritating, and he can't keep his hands to himself." he murmured.
What the fuck?
You didn't say anything. The ice was still moving and it was difficult to think clearly with the cold pulling all your attention to your skin, melting on you while you kept shivering under it. His eyes stayed on your face the whole time, watching for every reaction, cataloguing them with that same detached precision he brought to everything.
"Neither can you, apparently." He added, letting the ice melt a little against your skin.
The longer he held the ice still, the more it shifted from cold into something that burned, a strange, insistent sting that built under your skin. You pressed your lips together, bit down slightly to keep any sound in. Then he reached for another cube, picked up the black box, and shifted his weight on the bed until he was above you, braced on his forearms, his legs on either side of you, his face close enough that you could see every detail of his expression — which was not a kind one.
"You get on my nerves." He murmured, moving his mouth closer to your neck, not a kiss, just his mouth there, just his breath, hot on your skin.
Having Joel so close to you on your body was betraying your confusion entirely, and once again, you were not aware of what his next move would be.
Then the ice, on your pulse point. You inhaled sharply. "He touched you here." His jaw tightened.
Then his lips brushed your collarbone, barely, and the ice followed, pressed directly against the same spot. You gasped before you could stop yourself. It was weird, a sensation you never felt before, the contrast between his hot lips and the burning cold sting of the ice right after.
"And here." His voice dropped lower. "I don't like things that belong to me being handled by people who don't know what to do with it."
Belong to me?
In another instance, with another man, you were sure this wouldn't have created this exact reaction on your body. Your heart was hammering, your body was shivering and you were just hit by the realization that Joel was struck by the sight of you with another man. It was making you dizzy.
"I watched him put his hands on you and you let him." He held your gaze for another moment, then looked down and moved the ice slowly across your skin until it reached the edge of your bra, the exposed curve just above it. He stopped there, letting the ice sit.
"Did he touch you here?" he whispered.
You didn't answer. The cold was biting, spreading, and honestly you felt so incredibly embarrassed to tell him that yes, Jake touched your body.
"Talk to me." He looked at you, you could see contempt in his eyes.
"Yes he did." You said it barely above a whisper.
He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he pressed the ice down, harder than before, holding it firmly against your skin. You pulled against the handcuffs instinctively, a sharp sound escaping you before you could stop it, your back lifting off the bed.
"It's too cold." you almost whimpered.
"He doesn't get to do that." He said it very quietly, his eyes on yours, watching every flicker of your reaction. "That's not his." The pressure of the ice unwavering.
"But I know you're incapable of listening." He continued, holding the ice steady until it melted completely against your skin. Then he reached for the small box and opened it, pulling out a fountain pen.
A pen? You were confused, what was he going to do with a pen?
Honestly you didn't think about it too hard given the circumstances. You were too far gone to think about anything properly.
"So now I'll give you a reminder." He uncapped it slowly, looking at you. He later leaned in toward your neck and started writing. You had no idea what.
"What are you doing?" you whispered trembling, the cold still on your skin from the ice, a shiver moving through you.
"You can't even manage your own body." He said it simply, already moving down to your collarbone, the sting of the ice still there beneath his touch, and now this, another mark.
You still didn't fully understand what he was doing, but for some reason it was sending you somewhere you hadn't expected. Your body aching for him to touch you, throbbing under the weight of him.
It was like discovering a side of him you hadn't seen before. The jealousy. He kept moving down, another line of writing. You managed to catch a glimpse of it.
His signature.
Another cube of ice, this time at your wrist. "He touched you here too." He murmured, pressing it down, making you flinch, and then the pen followed, his signature again, the same careful hand. It was a giddy feeling, the burn punishment of the ice on your skin, and the pressure of the pen right after, then his hot hand, his lips on you.
Then lower, Joel's mouth now moved at your hip, just at the edge of your underwear, and a sound escaped you that embarrassed you slightly, given that his lips were barely resting against the fabric. Then the ice, again, it sent shivers down your whole body. "And here?" He looked up at you, waiting.
"Yes." You whispered, your breathing uneven.
He pulled back slightly and signed there too, pressing the pen harder than before, the irritation of it more pronounced against skin still raw from the ice. Like he was even angrier that the touched you there out of all places — but he is the one not giving you his body, his anger was totally out of this world by how stupid it was. And still, still it was making you crave more of it.
Then Joel moved down toward your thighs, lifting your leg slightly to get access to the inner side, and ran his mouth along it slowly, caressing you with his lips, before the pen followed. Another signature. You gasped, and felt something close to overwhelming heat building under your skin. You knew he probably wouldn't touch you beyond this, and that was exactly what was driving you mad.
Another signature on your other thigh. His mouth first, then the pen pressed in.
"All he had to do was sit next to you." He continued, "And you let him put his hands all over you." He glanced up at you briefly. "Disappointing."
"You — you didn't talk to me." you whispered.
Joel didn't reply, he did the same thing on your stomach. Then your other wrist. Slowly, methodically, infuriatingly precise. Every mark the same, Joel’s signature pressed into your skin.
"By the time I'm done," he said quietly, his mouth brushing your hip before the pen followed, "there won't be a single place he touched that isn't mine."
You really wanted to beg him to do anything to relieve the pressure that was building in your lower belly at everything he was doing to you — the ice, the fact that he was literally signing your body with his name, his mouth on your inner thighs. It was something you never experienced before.
When Joel decided that was enough, he looked at you one more time and then you felt the weight on the bed shifting, him moving to get up from the bed.
"But there's something that really made me angry." He reached up and unlocked the handcuffs without rushing, and you brought your arms down slowly, your wrists aching faintly. "On your knees."
You moved, your body stiff from the cold and from the pressure of the pen, and moved to you after he was done unlocking your handcuffs, standing over you. "That kiss." He said pulling opening his belt slowly. "At the park." His eyes dropped to you briefly, then back up. "That was embarrassing."
"You never learn, do you? I've told you before, you don't know how to keep that mouth of yours where it belongs." His jaw tightened slightly, while he unbuttoned his trousers without hurry, his eyes still on yours.
"He's a boy." He said it flatly, with no particular heat behind it, "He kisses you like he's asking permission." a little dry laugh followed this comment.
You felt heat rise to your face and said nothing, because seeing him just unbuttoning his tailored trousers was making stars dance around your head.
"Although." Joel's expression shifted to something softer, "Tonight you're behaving." His eyes moved over you slowly, taking their time. "Which I’ll remember."
He reached down and tilted your chin up with two fingers, the same way he had at the beginning of the evening. "Hands behind your back."
He took his hardness without a word, watching you the whole time. And the sight of him, it was the first time you saw him. His cock was hard, pulsing a little, and his tip was already leaking. The sight of it made your brain go mush, if you were getting dumb before this, now it was even worse.
"Open your mouth." You did, you would’ve done it even without him asking probably, by the way your body was reacting because of that view.
"Maybe this will help you understand." He murmured, his hand tightening in your hair, tilting your head back slightly so you had to look up at him. "The difference between an embarrassing kiss." His eyes stayed on yours. "And a signature."
He didn't give you time to respond. Joel's grip guided you forward and he pushed his cock inside your mouth, without even giving you time to adjust. A low groan left Joel's mouth at the feeling of your mouth around his length. You made a sound that made him tighten his hand further, his other hand brushing your hair back from your face, "Now you'll remember what that feels like."
His hips pressed forward, "You can think about it next time he tries." He rolled his hips forward slowly at first, his fist still twisted in your hair keeping you exactly where he wanted you. You couldn't help the moan that came out, once again. His erection was making it hard to breathe, and the fact that he was keeping you by the hair was making you unable to adjust better.
"Quiet." He said it without looking down, his voice completely firm. Then he did look down, just briefly, his expression cold. "You're not in a position to make noise." His hips pressed forward again, deeper this time, almost making you gag around his cock. "Not after what you made me watch that day."
You tried. You pressed your lips together as best you could and he watched you struggle with it, which seemed to be precisely the point. Your eyes started to water, your breath coming in broken intervals, and every time you felt yourself falter his grip adjusted, not to ease up, but to keep you exactly in the position of struggling with it. The only sounds in the room were his voice scolding you and the wet sloppy sounds coming from your mouth sucking him at the pace he was setting up.
"Look at me." You did, your eyes finding his, "Keep them up." He said it when your eyes dropped for a second, his fingers tightening in your hair as a reminder. "I want you looking at me." Another low groan as your tongue swirled around him.
You looked at him. Your jaw ached, your eyes were watering, your make up already ruined while you forced yourself to keep your eyes on him.
"Good." His hips rolled forward and you made a sound despite yourself that made him tilt his head slightly. You tried to suppress it.
"You know what I kept thinking." He continued, his rhythm steady, his eyes still locked on yours. "At the park. Watching him with his hands on you." His thumb moved against your jaw. You couldn't answer, obviously. He seemed to find that satisfactory.
"He had that look." Joel continued, his voice dropping lower. "Like he'd won something." You felt your eyes water further. He was going deeper in your throat, and the struggle not to gag was getting stronger. The more he fucked your mouth, the more you looked at him, your center was begging for release. You were pulsing, your whole figure was struggling for the lack of oxygen, for the forced intrusion in your mouth and yet, you were so worked up it hurt.
"That proud little expression." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "It was pathetic. He has no idea what you are." A little pause, "Look at me, I said."
Your eyes had dropped again without you realizing, so you brought them back up as he commanded.
"Better." His thumb traced your cheekbone almost absently, a strange gentleness that didn't match anything else about the moment. His hips pressed forward, his cock deeper, you really felt like you needed to breathe, so you gripped your own wrists behind your back hard enough to hurt trying not to think about it.
"Don't look away. I want you here with me." He held your gaze and you held his, your eyes streaming now, your breath a wreck, and he watched all of it with that focused, possessive attention that you had missed without ever quite letting yourself admit it. And you kept going, sucking him as he moved his cock in your mouth, moving your tongue as much as you could giving the violence of the pace.
"Does he know." He said it slowly, like he was turning the thought over. "Does he know what you can do with that mouth?" His hand tightened in your hair, pulling your head back slightly so he could see your face better. "Does he have any idea?"
You couldn't answer and he knew it — didn't care.
"Does he know what happened in the elevator?" a chuckle, "A few slaps and you were almost gone." He tilted his head slightly, watching your eyes. "Just that. Just my hand and you could barely stand up, does he know that about you?" another groan, his cock was pulsing more inside your mouth, and you felt once again the salty taste of pre cum leaking.
"And the other day." He continued, his thumb moving slowly along your jaw. "On my shoe, you came on my shoe like that and — he thinks he knows you." another chuckle, "He's holding your hand in the park. Like a fucking child." Something that wasn't quite a smile moved across his expression. "He has absolutely no idea who you are."
His grip in your hair tightened further, pulling your head back at an angle that made his rhythm change, deeper now, less controlled than before. He pushed forward and you felt his cock in the back of your throat, your hands gripping your own wrists hard behind your back, you were sure you would find bruises on them tomorrow.
A sound came from him, louder than before, and something about hearing it after all that controlled talk made you feel heat pool through your entire body, your eyes watering so much you could barely see him clearly, your jaw aching, and somehow all of it was so fucking ecstatic for you.
He did it again, another groan, his breath finally not stable at all, his fingers twisting tighter in your hair like he needed the anchor. His other hand moved, thumb pressing at the corner of your mouth where his grip was, feeling it.
"God." He said it under his breath, his jaw was tight, a muscle flickering there, and his eyes were still on yours, "You're— " he stopped himself, pushed forward again, deeper, and swore quietly. "Fuck."
You made a moan you couldn't suppress and for once he didn't tell you to be quiet.
"You have no idea." He said it roughly, his free hand coming to your face again, thumb pressing at your jaw now. "How good—" another thrust forward, another low curse under his breath, "how good you are."
"Fuck." a groan, his hips driving forward without mercy, his fingers twisted so hard in your hair your scalp burned. He was close, you could feel it in the way his breath broke, in the way his grip had stopped being calculated and become something rawer and more desperate — in the way his length was throbbing waiting for release. His eyes stayed on yours. "Don't look away." He managed, his voice wrecked. "Stay.” another sound, “—right there."
And then he pushed forward one last time, hard and deep — you felt it, his hot climax filling your mouth, cock throbbing on your tongue as he groaned.
A moment passed, he pulled back slowly, his breathing still uneven, and his hand released its grip in your hair, gently almost, which felt disorienting after everything that happened. You looked up at him, completely wrecked, your jaw aching, your eyes still wet, your hair a disaster. You probably looked exactly as destroyed as you felt.
He looked down at you for a moment, catching his breath, and then his thumb came to the corner of your mouth, wiping slowly. "Now you're signed." He said it quietly, his breathing still slightly heavy, his eyes moving over your face. "Inside and out."
You weren't sure you could have formed a sentence if you'd tried.
He looked at you for another moment, at the marks still on your skin, his signature repeated across your collarbone, your wrists, your thighs, almost looking proud of himself. "Remember that." He said it simply. "Next time he tries to kiss you."
After his satisfied look spread on hi face, Joel did something you didn't expect, he put one arm under your knees and the other around your back and lifted you, carrying you the few steps to the bed. He set you down on top of the covers with a carefulness that felt almost foreign coming from him. You lay there and stared at the ceiling for a second, trying to process it.
He never did things like that after being so mad. In all the time you had known him, across everything that had happened between you, only the day on the sofa was he gentle, and that’s because you got a good grade.
The jealousy must have done something to him, you thought. Made him strange. It almost made you laugh.
You heard him cross the room, the soft slide of the balcony door opening, and then the quiet click of a lighter.
Of course, you didn't get to be touched, and that was quietly bothering you. At the same time, though, the fact that he felt so annoyed at you having another guy and doing that to you…it almost felt more rewarding than any orgasm, honestly.
You pulled the silk cover up around yourself and sat up slowly, catching your reflection in one of the mirrors across the room, mascara everywhere, hair a complete disaster, his signature in ink across your whole body. You looked like a hurricane passed on you.
You started trying to work your fingers through your hair, slowly, untangling it as best you could, the cover pooled around your waist because of the ice. Through the glass you could see the outline of him on the balcony, one arm resting on the railing, the cigarette between his fingers, looking out at the city in silence. You watched him for a moment before looking away.
You didn't mean to. You told yourself you were just closing your eyes for a moment, just resting while he finished his cigarette, just letting the ache in your jaw and your wrists and the rest of you settle. The silk cover was warm and the room was quiet.
You were asleep before he came back inside. It wasn't a deep sleep, somewhere close to the surface, the kind where you're vaguely aware of the world continuing around you without you. You heard, distantly, the balcony door slide open and then shut. The quiet sounds of him moving around the room. Some part of you hoped, without quite letting yourself think it clearly, that the sounds would eventually stop. That he would stay.
But of course, they didn't stop. You heard the soft zip of his bag, the rustle of his jacket. The room door opened quietly and then it clicked shut, you lay there for a while after he left, listening to the silence of the room settle around you. The faint smell of cigarette smoke and his perfume already starting to fade.
You thought about Jake. You thought about his hand on your waist at the park, his easy laugh, the way he had kissed you. You thought about the way he had texted you three times this evening without knowing where you were or what you were doing. You never felt this kind of guilt in your life, it was a weird knot forming in your stomach — the kind of energy that only the lie that you will have to tell can give your chest, almost nauseating.
You thought about all of it for a little while, and then, slowly, you let it go. There was nothing to solve tonight. Nothing to decide, nothing to fix, nothing that couldn't wait until morning when you were less wrecked and the room was full of daylight — when things will make a different kind of sense.
Right now there was only the warmth of the cover and the quiet and the pleasant, bone deep exhaustion of a body that had been taken completely apart. You pulled the silk cover up to your chin, closed your eyes properly this time, and didn't fight it. You were asleep within minutes.
author's note: Hiiii, loved writing this chapter fr. We are getting closer to the first Joel's pov. Really can't wait. I love reading your comments guys!!
Chapter Summary: Joel seems not be around lately and you have been going out more with Jake, finding out he is a really nice guy. Until one day Joel sees you two and for some reason you get a crazy bad grade on your next essay.
Chapter warnings: emotional manipulation. if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: I'll try to post one chapter a day since i'm finishing editing what i had to! At least for some days lmao
previous ♡︎ next
Chapter Eleven ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ The grade
It was lunchtime when you walked out of your history class. It was a beautiful day, luckily, and you had organized a picnic with Jake.
You had gone out together again, he had taken you to the cinema to see a film noir, and it surprised you to discover that — despite seeming so distant from your world and your interests — he could talk about movies and books with such ease and depth. He genuinely seemed like a good guy, and you promised yourself — and Addie, mostly — that you would really give it a chance.
You felt like you regained some clarity over the past week. Miller had cancelled the lesson the week before, and you didn't have the chance to see him since. You weren’t entirely sure how that made you feel, not meeting him anywhere.
By then you had already been pulled into a kind of spiral you couldn’t quite control, you kept asking yourself whether you were making the right choice by spending time with someone who probably saw you as exclusively available for him. Lately, though, you managed not to think about Joel too much when he wasn’t around, as if he were a dream that dissolved the moment you stepped back into the real world.
When you were with him, you became someone you barely recognized, a different version of yourself, one that was beginning to frighten you a little, though you tried your best not to give it too much weight. You noticed that writing while thinking of him gave you an extra push, so you had started using those very feelings he was giving you for that — pouring every emotion you felt onto the pages of your stories.
You found the spot Jake mentioned, out on campus, and leaned against a tree, scrolling through your phone until you heard your name called from a distance. Looking up and seeing him more clearly in the sunlight, you thought, not for the first time, that he really was handsome. His face was soft and open, his dark blonde hair catching the light beautifully, his were eyes a deep shade of green. He always wore t-shirts from his favorite bands and baggy jeans.
This guy was total opposite of Joel, you thought — not just because he was younger, of course.
“Hey, sorry… my friend held me up and then I had to stop by the dorm to grab everything,” he said grinning as he came closer.
“Don’t worry,” you smiled back. “I haven’t been here long anyway.”
“You look really pretty today,” he said warmly, pulling a blanket from his bag and spreading it out on the grass. “And I brought something that’s going to make you happy,” he added with a laugh, settling down onto it.
“Thank you, you’re always so sweet,” you said, sitting down beside him. “What is it that’s going to make me happy?”
He was quiet for a moment, rummaging through his bag. Then he pulled out a small gift and held it out to you.
“Jake, what are you doing? You didn’t have to—” you said, taking the bag and opening it. Inside was a book — the one you had told him you desperately wanted — just the week before.
“You really shouldn’t have!” You could barely contain your excitement. You threw your arms around him and kissed him on the cheek without even thinking.
“Hey, so books earn me kisses? Good to know! I’m learning how to win you over,” he laughed, pulling out the sandwiches he had brought for lunch along with some fruit.
“Don’t make fun of me, I’m sooo happy!” you said, already starting to flip through the pages with a smile.
“I’m glad. I got sandwiches I hope you’ll like.” he said, handing one over. You took it and thanked him.
You were so absorbed in the moment, in the warmth of the afternoon sun on your skin, in Jake’s easy and fun company, in the crisp new pages of the book resting in your lap, that for a while the rest of the world had ceased to exist. You were laughing at something Jake had said, a sandwich half eaten in your hand, when your eyes drifted almost unconsciously across the campus lawn.
Joel was sitting not far away, leaning against a wall, a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. He had a book open in his other hand. It was a sight you were used to, at this point. The figure of him with his break cigarette and his eyes fixed on the book, a book that would change frequently.
Your stomach dropped for a moment. For a split second you wondered how long he had been there, whether he had been there before you arrived or had simply appeared at some point while you were too busy smiling at someone else to notice. The thought unsettled you more than it should have — a confusing feeling of him seeing something he shouldn't have seen.
It was only when you couldn’t look away that he seemed to feel your gaze, because he lifted his eyes from the page and found yours almost immediately, as if he knew exactly where you were the whole time. His expression was impossible to decode, there was something in it that looked like indifference, maybe even contempt. Or maybe that was just what he wanted you to think. You held his stare for a second too long before dropping your eyes back to the book in your hands, your heart beating a little faster than the afternoon warranted.
How much did he see? How long was he there? Why the fuck does it matter? He probably doesn’t care anyway.
The thought that he didn't care about you gave you a strange feeling, on one hand, a sadness you couldn't quite suppress, and on the other, a quiet relief. You needed to find yourself again, and he wasn't giving you anything more than a fragmented passion that you surely where chasing, but it was also kind of destroying you from the inside.
Jake's company didn't have to be overshadowed by the fact that he was there too. So, for the first time in a while, you stopped overthinking about him and turned your full attention back to Jake, even though you couldn't deny that a fragment of Joel was still there, tucked away somewhere in the back of your mind. You stayed out for a few hours, talking about all sorts of things, laughing more than you expected, and for the first time in what felt like ages, you felt genuinely at ease.
That evening you came home and sat down at your desk, and you felt like writing, you opened your laptop and started working on your next essay with a confidence that had been missing for a while. It was an essay you actually cared about, a creative writing piece rather than a dry textual analysis, and the words came more naturally than you'd anticipated.
You put real effort into it for yourself, more than for Joel — lately he had been showing appreciation for your work anyway, so that nagging need to impress him was slowly starting to fade. You wrote through the entire night, losing track of time, surviving on cold tea and the quiet hum of the city outside your window, and when you finally finished, you sent it through the university portal.
Predictably, he ignored you for the entire class, but it didn't bother you as much as it once would have. You weren't entirely sure why you had managed to make peace with the whole situation surrounding Joel. Maybe it was the months you had spent crying and thinking about nothing but him, they simply worn you down to a breaking point. Perhaps Addie had been right all along, and spending time with someone who was actually available was doing you more good than you'd wanted to admit.
You were with Jake that day when the notification came through.
"Grade posted - Creative Writing, J. Miller - 52%."
Your eyes went wide. Fifty two? How was that even possible? You never received such a low grade in your entire life. Did that mean you had to go to office hours? It would have been the following day, a wave of anxiety hit you out of nowhere, sudden and suffocating.
"Hey, what's going on?" Jake pulled you out of your thoughts, and you lowered your phone.
"Nothing, just a bad grade…" you murmured, glancing up at him. "I just don't understand how that's possible."
"Oh, you should ask about it. Maybe you were distracted when you were writing it." he murmured calmly.
You nodded slowly, turning it over in your mind. You were not distracted, and you were so into it that you were certain it would go well — it was going well lately, and you were better at creative writing than literary analysis. It was totally confusing, and again, it sent you spiraling.
"Don't think about it now, tonight we're going to my friend's party, it'll take your mind off things." Jake took your hand, trying to get you out of your own mind.
And so you did. You went to the party, spent the evening with Jake and his friends, had fun, and maybe drank a little more than you should have, because the next morning you slept well past your alarm.
When you finally dragged yourself up and checked your phone, your stomach dropped.
Fuck. His office.
The time slot had long since passed, there was no way you'd catch him in his office now, and on top of that you felt absolutely awful, nauseous and with a pounding headache. Not that it would have made much difference anyway — even if you had shown up, he probably would have told you he didn't have time for you. So you just let it go, pulled the covers back over yourself, and fell asleep again maybe too exhausted to think clearly about the consequences.
Two days later you asked Addie to come with you to his office. You weren't entirely sure why, maybe somewhere in the back of your mind you half expected things to go badly, and you needed someone who cared about you close by so you wouldn't back out and avoid the whole thing entirely.
Addie did nothing but talk to you about the film she'd seen at the cinema the night before, but you were only half-listening, your thoughts drowning in that fifty two, turning over and over the same questions, what have you done wrong, how he would react. When you finally arrived, you took a long, slow breath.
"Wait for me out here, I shouldn't be too long," you told her, your voice already slightly unsteady.
"You need to calm down, you're so nervous. it's just a bad grade!" She squeezed your hand as she said it, and her smile settled something in your chest, just a little. You nodded, and knocked.
"Come in." You swallowed down your nerves and stepped inside.
"Good morning, I came about the essay," you murmured, meeting his eyes briefly before looking away. "I know I didn’t take an appointment, I'm sor—"
"Sit down," he said, his gaze still fixed on his computer screen.
And you did. You sat down and let your eyes drift around the room, his office, the one you hadn't set foot in since the day you were on his lap on the sofa. Still a little cluttered, the same as you remembered it: books everywhere, essays stacked across the desk, that dim, warm light he always seemed to prefer. He made you wait a little before acknowledging you, then picked up the pages of your printed essay without a word.
"What on earth possessed you to hand this in to me?" He looked up at you, his tone ice cold.
"What?" You stared at him, and whatever was showing on your face was probably disbelief, at least a trace of it.
"In almost twenty years of teaching, I don't think I've ever read anything this poorly written." He continued, leaning back slightly. "What were you actually thinking?"
You couldn't answer. You didn't understand what he was talking about, it didn’t seem bad to you when you wrote it. You were proud of it, even. You stomach was in knots, and his expression wasn't helping.
"The opening of the story makes no sense. The protagonist is flat. The whole thing gives the reader absolutely nothing to hold onto." He continued, watching you from behind his glasses.
"The opening is intentionally chaotic, for a rea—" you tried to explain.
"I haven't finished." He cut you off, his voice dismissive and sharp. He started skimming the pages, pausing at a particular passage, then began reading a paragraph aloud as if it was the most embarrassing thing he'd ever had the misfortune of encountering. "It's embarrassing."
"I don't under—"
"You actually want to be a writer? Truly embarrassing, having someone at this level in my course. Perhaps I've failed as a teacher." He shook his head slowly, removing his glasses.
You couldn't find a single word. The air had gone out of you completely, and there was a knot forming in your throat too, tightening with every passing second, getting harder and harder to swallow down.
"Perhaps you should stop surrounding yourself with distractions and start focusing on what you actually need to do, or you won't pass this course. Calling this work mediocre is frankly a compliment."
It felt like it would never end. Your mind was foggy, scattered, you kept staring at the pages in his hands and turning over the same thought, how certain you had been that he would like that piece. How much you'd believed in it.
Was it really that bad? Have you been that wrong?
"You can go. I have things to do. Next time, don't show up without an appointment." That was all he said, sliding the annotated pages of your essay across the desk toward you.
You took them without a word, stood up on legs that felt slightly unsteady, and walked out.
Outside, Addie was waiting for you leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone, and she looked up the moment she heard the door close behind you. You were dazed, the essay still clutched in your hands, your gaze somewhere far away as his words kept replaying in your head.
Not even mediocre. Do you really want to be a writer?
"Hey, how did it go?" She looked at you for a second or two.
You just started crying, you couldn't hold it back anymore, everything you'd been pressing down during those few minutes in his office finally breaking through the surface.
"What's going on?" Addie's voice shifted immediately, sharp with worry. She took your arm and pulled you close, wrapping herself around you. "Hey, it's okay, tell me what happened." But you couldn't stop crying — couldn't really speak at all — you could only stand there, face buried in her shoulder, letting it all come out.
"It's alright, it's okay." She stroked your hair gently. "What did that bastard say to you?"
"I'm never going to be a writer." You managed between unsteady breaths. "He said it's all wrong, that he's never read anything worse in his life."
"What? Don't listen to him, that's not true" she murmured, keeping her voice low so it wouldn't carry through the door. "Try not to take it personally, maybe he was just in a bad mood." You kept crying against her, unable to find anything solid to make you calm down even a little.
A few minutes later you heard the office door open. Joel came out with his phone in one hand and an unlit cigarette already between his lips — you felt his gaze land on you, but you couldn't bring yourself to look at him. He said nothing. He just kept walking toward the elevator, unbothered as if the corridor were completely empty. And you stayed exactly where you were, still in Addie's arms, while she held you and kept murmuring quiet things against your hair.
"He's a heartless piece of shit, you know that. None of this is on you." she whispered.
That evening you asked Addie to stay with you and to invite Eric over too, so you could all watch a film at your place. Addie didn’t quite understand how a bad grade like this could shake you so deeply, but she probably figured that writing simply meant more to you than most things did.
And it was true, it was important to you, more than you usually let on. It was your dream, the one thing you had always quietly built your sense of self around. Maybe if anyone else had said those things to you, you wouldn't have taken them so hard. But it wasn't anyone else. That was further proof that he still had the power to get completely under your skin, to knock something loose in you that you thought you'd managed to put back in place. You hated him for it. You hated how easily he could still do that.
Mostly, you didn't understand why he was so cruel to you, saying you were losing time with distractions, that you weren't focused. Did he mean you were distracted because you tried to gather his attention these past few weeks?
No, it couldn't be. He was into it, even the last time. Way more into it that any other time probably. You didn't really meet him too since that day in the round table class. Except for the pic nic with Jake, but you were convinced that a 'meeting' like that didn't count.
You were trapped in a spiral that was too insistent for just a bad grade, because deep down it felt like it meant more than that. You just weren't sure why.
That evening Jake texted you more than once, but you didn't reply to any of them. You had nothing to give. There was only Joel in your head, taking up all the space, while you stared at the screen and made a pretense of watching the film, not really seeing any of it.
author's note: aaaa the plot starts to move a little. Let me know what you guys think if you want! Thanks for the support 💓
Chapter Summary: Joel seems not be around lately and you have been going out more with Jake, finding out he is a really nice guy. Until one day Joel sees you two and for some reason you get a crazy bad grade on your next essay.
Chapter warnings: emotional manipulation. if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: I'll try to post one chapter a day since i'm finishing editing what i had to! At least for some days lmao
previous ♡︎ next
Chapter Eleven ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ The grade
It was lunchtime when you walked out of your history class. It was a beautiful day, luckily, and you had organized a picnic with Jake.
You had gone out together again, he had taken you to the cinema to see a film noir, and it surprised you to discover that — despite seeming so distant from your world and your interests — he could talk about movies and books with such ease and depth. He genuinely seemed like a good guy, and you promised yourself — and Addie, mostly — that you would really give it a chance.
You felt like you regained some clarity over the past week. Miller had cancelled the lesson the week before, and you didn't have the chance to see him since. You weren’t entirely sure how that made you feel, not meeting him anywhere.
By then you had already been pulled into a kind of spiral you couldn’t quite control, you kept asking yourself whether you were making the right choice by spending time with someone who probably saw you as exclusively available for him. Lately, though, you managed not to think about Joel too much when he wasn’t around, as if he were a dream that dissolved the moment you stepped back into the real world.
When you were with him, you became someone you barely recognized, a different version of yourself, one that was beginning to frighten you a little, though you tried your best not to give it too much weight. You noticed that writing while thinking of him gave you an extra push, so you had started using those very feelings he was giving you for that — pouring every emotion you felt onto the pages of your stories.
You found the spot Jake mentioned, out on campus, and leaned against a tree, scrolling through your phone until you heard your name called from a distance. Looking up and seeing him more clearly in the sunlight, you thought, not for the first time, that he really was handsome. His face was soft and open, his dark blonde hair catching the light beautifully, his were eyes a deep shade of green. He always wore t-shirts from his favorite bands and baggy jeans.
This guy was total opposite of Joel, you thought — not just because he was younger, of course.
“Hey, sorry… my friend held me up and then I had to stop by the dorm to grab everything,” he said grinning as he came closer.
“Don’t worry,” you smiled back. “I haven’t been here long anyway.”
“You look really pretty today,” he said warmly, pulling a blanket from his bag and spreading it out on the grass. “And I brought something that’s going to make you happy,” he added with a laugh, settling down onto it.
“Thank you, you’re always so sweet,” you said, sitting down beside him. “What is it that’s going to make me happy?”
He was quiet for a moment, rummaging through his bag. Then he pulled out a small gift and held it out to you.
“Jake, what are you doing? You didn’t have to—” you said, taking the bag and opening it. Inside was a book — the one you had told him you desperately wanted — just the week before.
“You really shouldn’t have!” You could barely contain your excitement. You threw your arms around him and kissed him on the cheek without even thinking.
“Hey, so books earn me kisses? Good to know! I’m learning how to win you over,” he laughed, pulling out the sandwiches he had brought for lunch along with some fruit.
“Don’t make fun of me, I’m sooo happy!” you said, already starting to flip through the pages with a smile.
“I’m glad. I got sandwiches I hope you’ll like.” he said, handing one over. You took it and thanked him.
You were so absorbed in the moment, in the warmth of the afternoon sun on your skin, in Jake’s easy and fun company, in the crisp new pages of the book resting in your lap, that for a while the rest of the world had ceased to exist. You were laughing at something Jake had said, a sandwich half eaten in your hand, when your eyes drifted almost unconsciously across the campus lawn.
Joel was sitting not far away, leaning against a wall, a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. He had a book open in his other hand. It was a sight you were used to, at this point. The figure of him with his break cigarette and his eyes fixed on the book, a book that would change frequently.
Your stomach dropped for a moment. For a split second you wondered how long he had been there, whether he had been there before you arrived or had simply appeared at some point while you were too busy smiling at someone else to notice. The thought unsettled you more than it should have — a confusing feeling of him seeing something he shouldn't have seen.
It was only when you couldn’t look away that he seemed to feel your gaze, because he lifted his eyes from the page and found yours almost immediately, as if he knew exactly where you were the whole time. His expression was impossible to decode, there was something in it that looked like indifference, maybe even contempt. Or maybe that was just what he wanted you to think. You held his stare for a second too long before dropping your eyes back to the book in your hands, your heart beating a little faster than the afternoon warranted.
How much did he see? How long was he there? Why the fuck does it matter? He probably doesn’t care anyway.
The thought that he didn't care about you gave you a strange feeling, on one hand, a sadness you couldn't quite suppress, and on the other, a quiet relief. You needed to find yourself again, and he wasn't giving you anything more than a fragmented passion that you surely where chasing, but it was also kind of destroying you from the inside.
Jake's company didn't have to be overshadowed by the fact that he was there too. So, for the first time in a while, you stopped overthinking about him and turned your full attention back to Jake, even though you couldn't deny that a fragment of Joel was still there, tucked away somewhere in the back of your mind. You stayed out for a few hours, talking about all sorts of things, laughing more than you expected, and for the first time in what felt like ages, you felt genuinely at ease.
That evening you came home and sat down at your desk, and you felt like writing, you opened your laptop and started working on your next essay with a confidence that had been missing for a while. It was an essay you actually cared about, a creative writing piece rather than a dry textual analysis, and the words came more naturally than you'd anticipated.
You put real effort into it for yourself, more than for Joel — lately he had been showing appreciation for your work anyway, so that nagging need to impress him was slowly starting to fade. You wrote through the entire night, losing track of time, surviving on cold tea and the quiet hum of the city outside your window, and when you finally finished, you sent it through the university portal.
Predictably, he ignored you for the entire class, but it didn't bother you as much as it once would have. You weren't entirely sure why you had managed to make peace with the whole situation surrounding Joel. Maybe it was the months you had spent crying and thinking about nothing but him, they simply worn you down to a breaking point. Perhaps Addie had been right all along, and spending time with someone who was actually available was doing you more good than you'd wanted to admit.
You were with Jake that day when the notification came through.
"Grade posted - Creative Writing, J. Miller - 52%."
Your eyes went wide. Fifty two? How was that even possible? You never received such a low grade in your entire life. Did that mean you had to go to office hours? It would have been the following day, a wave of anxiety hit you out of nowhere, sudden and suffocating.
"Hey, what's going on?" Jake pulled you out of your thoughts, and you lowered your phone.
"Nothing, just a bad grade…" you murmured, glancing up at him. "I just don't understand how that's possible."
"Oh, you should ask about it. Maybe you were distracted when you were writing it." he murmured calmly.
You nodded slowly, turning it over in your mind. You were not distracted, and you were so into it that you were certain it would go well — it was going well lately, and you were better at creative writing than literary analysis. It was totally confusing, and again, it sent you spiraling.
"Don't think about it now, tonight we're going to my friend's party, it'll take your mind off things." Jake took your hand, trying to get you out of your own mind.
And so you did. You went to the party, spent the evening with Jake and his friends, had fun, and maybe drank a little more than you should have, because the next morning you slept well past your alarm.
When you finally dragged yourself up and checked your phone, your stomach dropped.
Fuck. His office.
The time slot had long since passed, there was no way you'd catch him in his office now, and on top of that you felt absolutely awful, nauseous and with a pounding headache. Not that it would have made much difference anyway — even if you had shown up, he probably would have told you he didn't have time for you. So you just let it go, pulled the covers back over yourself, and fell asleep again maybe too exhausted to think clearly about the consequences.
Two days later you asked Addie to come with you to his office. You weren't entirely sure why, maybe somewhere in the back of your mind you half expected things to go badly, and you needed someone who cared about you close by so you wouldn't back out and avoid the whole thing entirely.
Addie did nothing but talk to you about the film she'd seen at the cinema the night before, but you were only half-listening, your thoughts drowning in that fifty two, turning over and over the same questions, what have you done wrong, how he would react. When you finally arrived, you took a long, slow breath.
"Wait for me out here, I shouldn't be too long," you told her, your voice already slightly unsteady.
"You need to calm down, you're so nervous. it's just a bad grade!" She squeezed your hand as she said it, and her smile settled something in your chest, just a little. You nodded, and knocked.
"Come in." You swallowed down your nerves and stepped inside.
"Good morning, I came about the essay," you murmured, meeting his eyes briefly before looking away. "I know I didn’t take an appointment, I'm sor—"
"Sit down," he said, his gaze still fixed on his computer screen.
And you did. You sat down and let your eyes drift around the room, his office, the one you hadn't set foot in since the day you were on his lap on the sofa. Still a little cluttered, the same as you remembered it: books everywhere, essays stacked across the desk, that dim, warm light he always seemed to prefer. He made you wait a little before acknowledging you, then picked up the pages of your printed essay without a word.
"What on earth possessed you to hand this in to me?" He looked up at you, his tone ice cold.
"What?" You stared at him, and whatever was showing on your face was probably disbelief, at least a trace of it.
"In almost twenty years of teaching, I don't think I've ever read anything this poorly written." He continued, leaning back slightly. "What were you actually thinking?"
You couldn't answer. You didn't understand what he was talking about, it didn’t seem bad to you when you wrote it. You were proud of it, even. You stomach was in knots, and his expression wasn't helping.
"The opening of the story makes no sense. The protagonist is flat. The whole thing gives the reader absolutely nothing to hold onto." He continued, watching you from behind his glasses.
"The opening is intentionally chaotic, for a rea—" you tried to explain.
"I haven't finished." He cut you off, his voice dismissive and sharp. He started skimming the pages, pausing at a particular passage, then began reading a paragraph aloud as if it was the most embarrassing thing he'd ever had the misfortune of encountering. "It's embarrassing."
"I don't under—"
"You actually want to be a writer? Truly embarrassing, having someone at this level in my course. Perhaps I've failed as a teacher." He shook his head slowly, removing his glasses.
You couldn't find a single word. The air had gone out of you completely, and there was a knot forming in your throat too, tightening with every passing second, getting harder and harder to swallow down.
"Perhaps you should stop surrounding yourself with distractions and start focusing on what you actually need to do, or you won't pass this course. Calling this work mediocre is frankly a compliment."
It felt like it would never end. Your mind was foggy, scattered, you kept staring at the pages in his hands and turning over the same thought, how certain you had been that he would like that piece. How much you'd believed in it.
Was it really that bad? Have you been that wrong?
"You can go. I have things to do. Next time, don't show up without an appointment." That was all he said, sliding the annotated pages of your essay across the desk toward you.
You took them without a word, stood up on legs that felt slightly unsteady, and walked out.
Outside, Addie was waiting for you leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone, and she looked up the moment she heard the door close behind you. You were dazed, the essay still clutched in your hands, your gaze somewhere far away as his words kept replaying in your head.
Not even mediocre. Do you really want to be a writer?
"Hey, how did it go?" She looked at you for a second or two.
You just started crying, you couldn't hold it back anymore, everything you'd been pressing down during those few minutes in his office finally breaking through the surface.
"What's going on?" Addie's voice shifted immediately, sharp with worry. She took your arm and pulled you close, wrapping herself around you. "Hey, it's okay, tell me what happened." But you couldn't stop crying — couldn't really speak at all — you could only stand there, face buried in her shoulder, letting it all come out.
"It's alright, it's okay." She stroked your hair gently. "What did that bastard say to you?"
"I'm never going to be a writer." You managed between unsteady breaths. "He said it's all wrong, that he's never read anything worse in his life."
"What? Don't listen to him, that's not true" she murmured, keeping her voice low so it wouldn't carry through the door. "Try not to take it personally, maybe he was just in a bad mood." You kept crying against her, unable to find anything solid to make you calm down even a little.
A few minutes later you heard the office door open. Joel came out with his phone in one hand and an unlit cigarette already between his lips — you felt his gaze land on you, but you couldn't bring yourself to look at him. He said nothing. He just kept walking toward the elevator, unbothered as if the corridor were completely empty. And you stayed exactly where you were, still in Addie's arms, while she held you and kept murmuring quiet things against your hair.
"He's a heartless piece of shit, you know that. None of this is on you." she whispered.
That evening you asked Addie to stay with you and to invite Eric over too, so you could all watch a film at your place. Addie didn’t quite understand how a bad grade like this could shake you so deeply, but she probably figured that writing simply meant more to you than most things did.
And it was true, it was important to you, more than you usually let on. It was your dream, the one thing you had always quietly built your sense of self around. Maybe if anyone else had said those things to you, you wouldn't have taken them so hard. But it wasn't anyone else. That was further proof that he still had the power to get completely under your skin, to knock something loose in you that you thought you'd managed to put back in place. You hated him for it. You hated how easily he could still do that.
Mostly, you didn't understand why he was so cruel to you, saying you were losing time with distractions, that you weren't focused. Did he mean you were distracted because you tried to gather his attention these past few weeks?
No, it couldn't be. He was into it, even the last time. Way more into it that any other time probably. You didn't really meet him too since that day in the round table class. Except for the pic nic with Jake, but you were convinced that a 'meeting' like that didn't count.
You were trapped in a spiral that was too insistent for just a bad grade, because deep down it felt like it meant more than that. You just weren't sure why.
That evening Jake texted you more than once, but you didn't reply to any of them. You had nothing to give. There was only Joel in your head, taking up all the space, while you stared at the screen and made a pretense of watching the film, not really seeing any of it.
author's note: aaaa the plot starts to move a little. Let me know what you guys think if you want! Thanks for the support 💓
Chapter Summary: Joel seems not be around lately and you have been going out more with Jake, finding out he is a really nice guy. Until one day Joel sees you two and for some reason you get a crazy bad grade on your next essay.
Chapter warnings: emotional manipulation. if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: I'll try to post one chapter a day since i'm finishing editing what i had to! At least for some days lmao
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Chapter Eleven ⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚ The grade
It was lunchtime when you walked out of your history class. It was a beautiful day, luckily, and you had organized a picnic with Jake.
You had gone out together again, he had taken you to the cinema to see a film noir, and it surprised you to discover that — despite seeming so distant from your world and your interests — he could talk about movies and books with such ease and depth. He genuinely seemed like a good guy, and you promised yourself — and Addie, mostly — that you would really give it a chance.
You felt like you regained some clarity over the past week. Miller had cancelled the lesson the week before, and you didn't have the chance to see him since. You weren’t entirely sure how that made you feel, not meeting him anywhere.
By then you had already been pulled into a kind of spiral you couldn’t quite control, you kept asking yourself whether you were making the right choice by spending time with someone who probably saw you as exclusively available for him. Lately, though, you managed not to think about Joel too much when he wasn’t around, as if he were a dream that dissolved the moment you stepped back into the real world.
When you were with him, you became someone you barely recognized, a different version of yourself, one that was beginning to frighten you a little, though you tried your best not to give it too much weight. You noticed that writing while thinking of him gave you an extra push, so you had started using those very feelings he was giving you for that — pouring every emotion you felt onto the pages of your stories.
You found the spot Jake mentioned, out on campus, and leaned against a tree, scrolling through your phone until you heard your name called from a distance. Looking up and seeing him more clearly in the sunlight, you thought, not for the first time, that he really was handsome. His face was soft and open, his dark blonde hair catching the light beautifully, his were eyes a deep shade of green. He always wore t-shirts from his favorite bands and baggy jeans.
This guy was total opposite of Joel, you thought — not just because he was younger, of course.
“Hey, sorry… my friend held me up and then I had to stop by the dorm to grab everything,” he said grinning as he came closer.
“Don’t worry,” you smiled back. “I haven’t been here long anyway.”
“You look really pretty today,” he said warmly, pulling a blanket from his bag and spreading it out on the grass. “And I brought something that’s going to make you happy,” he added with a laugh, settling down onto it.
“Thank you, you’re always so sweet,” you said, sitting down beside him. “What is it that’s going to make me happy?”
He was quiet for a moment, rummaging through his bag. Then he pulled out a small gift and held it out to you.
“Jake, what are you doing? You didn’t have to—” you said, taking the bag and opening it. Inside was a book — the one you had told him you desperately wanted — just the week before.
“You really shouldn’t have!” You could barely contain your excitement. You threw your arms around him and kissed him on the cheek without even thinking.
“Hey, so books earn me kisses? Good to know! I’m learning how to win you over,” he laughed, pulling out the sandwiches he had brought for lunch along with some fruit.
“Don’t make fun of me, I’m sooo happy!” you said, already starting to flip through the pages with a smile.
“I’m glad. I got sandwiches I hope you’ll like.” he said, handing one over. You took it and thanked him.
You were so absorbed in the moment, in the warmth of the afternoon sun on your skin, in Jake’s easy and fun company, in the crisp new pages of the book resting in your lap, that for a while the rest of the world had ceased to exist. You were laughing at something Jake had said, a sandwich half eaten in your hand, when your eyes drifted almost unconsciously across the campus lawn.
Joel was sitting not far away, leaning against a wall, a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. He had a book open in his other hand. It was a sight you were used to, at this point. The figure of him with his break cigarette and his eyes fixed on the book, a book that would change frequently.
Your stomach dropped for a moment. For a split second you wondered how long he had been there, whether he had been there before you arrived or had simply appeared at some point while you were too busy smiling at someone else to notice. The thought unsettled you more than it should have — a confusing feeling of him seeing something he shouldn't have seen.
It was only when you couldn’t look away that he seemed to feel your gaze, because he lifted his eyes from the page and found yours almost immediately, as if he knew exactly where you were the whole time. His expression was impossible to decode, there was something in it that looked like indifference, maybe even contempt. Or maybe that was just what he wanted you to think. You held his stare for a second too long before dropping your eyes back to the book in your hands, your heart beating a little faster than the afternoon warranted.
How much did he see? How long was he there? Why the fuck does it matter? He probably doesn’t care anyway.
The thought that he didn't care about you gave you a strange feeling, on one hand, a sadness you couldn't quite suppress, and on the other, a quiet relief. You needed to find yourself again, and he wasn't giving you anything more than a fragmented passion that you surely where chasing, but it was also kind of destroying you from the inside.
Jake's company didn't have to be overshadowed by the fact that he was there too. So, for the first time in a while, you stopped overthinking about him and turned your full attention back to Jake, even though you couldn't deny that a fragment of Joel was still there, tucked away somewhere in the back of your mind. You stayed out for a few hours, talking about all sorts of things, laughing more than you expected, and for the first time in what felt like ages, you felt genuinely at ease.
That evening you came home and sat down at your desk, and you felt like writing, you opened your laptop and started working on your next essay with a confidence that had been missing for a while. It was an essay you actually cared about, a creative writing piece rather than a dry textual analysis, and the words came more naturally than you'd anticipated.
You put real effort into it for yourself, more than for Joel — lately he had been showing appreciation for your work anyway, so that nagging need to impress him was slowly starting to fade. You wrote through the entire night, losing track of time, surviving on cold tea and the quiet hum of the city outside your window, and when you finally finished, you sent it through the university portal.
Predictably, he ignored you for the entire class, but it didn't bother you as much as it once would have. You weren't entirely sure why you had managed to make peace with the whole situation surrounding Joel. Maybe it was the months you had spent crying and thinking about nothing but him, they simply worn you down to a breaking point. Perhaps Addie had been right all along, and spending time with someone who was actually available was doing you more good than you'd wanted to admit.
You were with Jake that day when the notification came through.
"Grade posted - Creative Writing, J. Miller - 52%."
Your eyes went wide. Fifty two? How was that even possible? You never received such a low grade in your entire life. Did that mean you had to go to office hours? It would have been the following day, a wave of anxiety hit you out of nowhere, sudden and suffocating.
"Hey, what's going on?" Jake pulled you out of your thoughts, and you lowered your phone.
"Nothing, just a bad grade…" you murmured, glancing up at him. "I just don't understand how that's possible."
"Oh, you should ask about it. Maybe you were distracted when you were writing it." he murmured calmly.
You nodded slowly, turning it over in your mind. You were not distracted, and you were so into it that you were certain it would go well — it was going well lately, and you were better at creative writing than literary analysis. It was totally confusing, and again, it sent you spiraling.
"Don't think about it now, tonight we're going to my friend's party, it'll take your mind off things." Jake took your hand, trying to get you out of your own mind.
And so you did. You went to the party, spent the evening with Jake and his friends, had fun, and maybe drank a little more than you should have, because the next morning you slept well past your alarm.
When you finally dragged yourself up and checked your phone, your stomach dropped.
Fuck. His office.
The time slot had long since passed, there was no way you'd catch him in his office now, and on top of that you felt absolutely awful, nauseous and with a pounding headache. Not that it would have made much difference anyway — even if you had shown up, he probably would have told you he didn't have time for you. So you just let it go, pulled the covers back over yourself, and fell asleep again maybe too exhausted to think clearly about the consequences.
Two days later you asked Addie to come with you to his office. You weren't entirely sure why, maybe somewhere in the back of your mind you half expected things to go badly, and you needed someone who cared about you close by so you wouldn't back out and avoid the whole thing entirely.
Addie did nothing but talk to you about the film she'd seen at the cinema the night before, but you were only half-listening, your thoughts drowning in that fifty two, turning over and over the same questions, what have you done wrong, how he would react. When you finally arrived, you took a long, slow breath.
"Wait for me out here, I shouldn't be too long," you told her, your voice already slightly unsteady.
"You need to calm down, you're so nervous. it's just a bad grade!" She squeezed your hand as she said it, and her smile settled something in your chest, just a little. You nodded, and knocked.
"Come in." You swallowed down your nerves and stepped inside.
"Good morning, I came about the essay," you murmured, meeting his eyes briefly before looking away. "I know I didn’t take an appointment, I'm sor—"
"Sit down," he said, his gaze still fixed on his computer screen.
And you did. You sat down and let your eyes drift around the room, his office, the one you hadn't set foot in since the day you were on his lap on the sofa. Still a little cluttered, the same as you remembered it: books everywhere, essays stacked across the desk, that dim, warm light he always seemed to prefer. He made you wait a little before acknowledging you, then picked up the pages of your printed essay without a word.
"What on earth possessed you to hand this in to me?" He looked up at you, his tone ice cold.
"What?" You stared at him, and whatever was showing on your face was probably disbelief, at least a trace of it.
"In almost twenty years of teaching, I don't think I've ever read anything this poorly written." He continued, leaning back slightly. "What were you actually thinking?"
You couldn't answer. You didn't understand what he was talking about, it didn’t seem bad to you when you wrote it. You were proud of it, even. You stomach was in knots, and his expression wasn't helping.
"The opening of the story makes no sense. The protagonist is flat. The whole thing gives the reader absolutely nothing to hold onto." He continued, watching you from behind his glasses.
"The opening is intentionally chaotic, for a rea—" you tried to explain.
"I haven't finished." He cut you off, his voice dismissive and sharp. He started skimming the pages, pausing at a particular passage, then began reading a paragraph aloud as if it was the most embarrassing thing he'd ever had the misfortune of encountering. "It's embarrassing."
"I don't under—"
"You actually want to be a writer? Truly embarrassing, having someone at this level in my course. Perhaps I've failed as a teacher." He shook his head slowly, removing his glasses.
You couldn't find a single word. The air had gone out of you completely, and there was a knot forming in your throat too, tightening with every passing second, getting harder and harder to swallow down.
"Perhaps you should stop surrounding yourself with distractions and start focusing on what you actually need to do, or you won't pass this course. Calling this work mediocre is frankly a compliment."
It felt like it would never end. Your mind was foggy, scattered, you kept staring at the pages in his hands and turning over the same thought, how certain you had been that he would like that piece. How much you'd believed in it.
Was it really that bad? Have you been that wrong?
"You can go. I have things to do. Next time, don't show up without an appointment." That was all he said, sliding the annotated pages of your essay across the desk toward you.
You took them without a word, stood up on legs that felt slightly unsteady, and walked out.
Outside, Addie was waiting for you leaning against the wall, scrolling through her phone, and she looked up the moment she heard the door close behind you. You were dazed, the essay still clutched in your hands, your gaze somewhere far away as his words kept replaying in your head.
Not even mediocre. Do you really want to be a writer?
"Hey, how did it go?" She looked at you for a second or two.
You just started crying, you couldn't hold it back anymore, everything you'd been pressing down during those few minutes in his office finally breaking through the surface.
"What's going on?" Addie's voice shifted immediately, sharp with worry. She took your arm and pulled you close, wrapping herself around you. "Hey, it's okay, tell me what happened." But you couldn't stop crying — couldn't really speak at all — you could only stand there, face buried in her shoulder, letting it all come out.
"It's alright, it's okay." She stroked your hair gently. "What did that bastard say to you?"
"I'm never going to be a writer." You managed between unsteady breaths. "He said it's all wrong, that he's never read anything worse in his life."
"What? Don't listen to him, that's not true" she murmured, keeping her voice low so it wouldn't carry through the door. "Try not to take it personally, maybe he was just in a bad mood." You kept crying against her, unable to find anything solid to make you calm down even a little.
A few minutes later you heard the office door open. Joel came out with his phone in one hand and an unlit cigarette already between his lips — you felt his gaze land on you, but you couldn't bring yourself to look at him. He said nothing. He just kept walking toward the elevator, unbothered as if the corridor were completely empty. And you stayed exactly where you were, still in Addie's arms, while she held you and kept murmuring quiet things against your hair.
"He's a heartless piece of shit, you know that. None of this is on you." she whispered.
That evening you asked Addie to stay with you and to invite Eric over too, so you could all watch a film at your place. Addie didn’t quite understand how a bad grade like this could shake you so deeply, but she probably figured that writing simply meant more to you than most things did.
And it was true, it was important to you, more than you usually let on. It was your dream, the one thing you had always quietly built your sense of self around. Maybe if anyone else had said those things to you, you wouldn't have taken them so hard. But it wasn't anyone else. That was further proof that he still had the power to get completely under your skin, to knock something loose in you that you thought you'd managed to put back in place. You hated him for it. You hated how easily he could still do that.
Mostly, you didn't understand why he was so cruel to you, saying you were losing time with distractions, that you weren't focused. Did he mean you were distracted because you tried to gather his attention these past few weeks?
No, it couldn't be. He was into it, even the last time. Way more into it that any other time probably. You didn't really meet him too since that day in the round table class. Except for the pic nic with Jake, but you were convinced that a 'meeting' like that didn't count.
You were trapped in a spiral that was too insistent for just a bad grade, because deep down it felt like it meant more than that. You just weren't sure why.
That evening Jake texted you more than once, but you didn't reply to any of them. You had nothing to give. There was only Joel in your head, taking up all the space, while you stared at the screen and made a pretense of watching the film, not really seeing any of it.
author's note: aaaa the plot starts to move a little. Let me know what you guys think if you want! Thanks for the support 💓
I was thinking of what tarot cards would pop up to reader around the time she met prof joel. I'm crying it would be a mess. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, and also maybe I'm crazy my brain is mush
summary: After one deeply awkward encounter with a stranger on the subway, you find out he is your new—and incredibly hot—literature professor. Your relationship quickly becomes filled with twisted sexual encounters, something you realize you need more and more. Before long, you are trapped in a web of feelings for a man who is completely cold, detached, and — above all — married. Sex always finds its way to make things complicated.
tags & warnings: au college, original characters, Joel is nasty rich, cheating, masturbation, power imbalance, oral sex, BDSM, piv, semi-public sex, verbal humiliation, degradation, spanking, emotional manipulation, Joel is MEAN, choking, Dom/Sub, rough sex, violent sex, orgasm control, orgasm denial, face slapping, brat taming, bondage, hate sex, drunk sex, praise kink, porn with plot, whipping, angst, no aftercare, slow romance build, avoidant attachment, emotional hurt, Joel is BAD at feelings, angst/comfort.
if you want to be added to the tag list, let me know!
