Reader coming home from a night out a little tipsy and just happy. Javi is waiting up as he always does to make sure she’s safely back in his arms. Kids are already in bed and it’s just a little cute moment between the two. Reader being quite lovey dovey i guess.
Lovey-dovey
Series Masterpost | Main Masterpost | Support a disabled creator
A/N: This was a joy to write for you, anon!
Summary: Would Javier Peña still love you if you were a worm?
Pairing: Javier Peña x reader (no y/n)
Tags: +18, Drunk and horny reader, javi is a respectful man, undressing, kissing, making out, drunken tears
Word count: 1.8k
Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54772312
Lovey-dovey
Javier knows you’re home from the jingling of your keys outside the house, your shaking hands trying desperately to fit the key and unlock the front door without much success due to your drunken state. He is standing on the other side, entertaining himself briefly by listening to your quiet swear as you give up on your mission to get inside the right way.
However, considerate as you are, you don’t even try to knock in case you wake up all your sleeping children. Instead, you start to pocket the keys to go around the back of the house and get inside the house through the door to the garden.
It’s just before you step off the front porch that he opens the door for you, leaning against the doorframe to watch you whirl around in confusion. For a second, it looks like you think that you have made the door open by just wanting it enough, but then you smile warmly as you see your husband.
You are drunk but not out of your mind. It is just enough for you to be clumsy in your state of giggles and heated cheeks, and you waltz inside with confidence that you shouldn’t really have with the way your heels make you walk like a newborn giraffe.
“Hello husband,” you snicker.
“Wife,” Javier closes the door after you, holding back a laugh as you hold onto the coat rack to keep your balance while stepping out of your shoes. He drops to his knees to help you, grabbing your ankle to gently slip off a heel, “Had a few martinis, huh? A few tequila sunrises?”
“No,” you grin widely.
Javier rises to his feet once more when your shoes stand perfectly perched on the shoe rack, “No?”
“I just had a little sip of everything,” you confess in a whisper, your words slightly slurred, “Connie let me taste all of her drinks, I barely got to drink mine.”
“So you mixed a lot of alcohol?” He tuts, reaching around your waist to guide you towards the staircase as you look too unsure on your feet to not end up with your face falling into the floor if you miss a step.
“A LOT!” You exclaim with a laugh.
“Shhh,” he shushes you as you begin to ascend the stairs together. Not so considerate after all then but he wouldn’t have you any other way, even when you are trouble.
“Shhh,” you parrot him with tired eyes, holding a finger in front of your pursed lips. He rolls his eyes affectionately, stepping onto the next few steps of the stairs and watching you watch your feet as you follow.
“Sorry, I may have gotten a little drunk,” you finally admit, arm slung around Javier’s shoulder.
“No, really?” He teases in the same tone as he might tease his daughter.
“Can I sleep in your bed?” You ask in another whisper, almost as if you are fourteen again and Javier is your secret boyfriend that you are not allowed to be alone with.
“Your bed is my bed,” he reassures with a twinkle in his eye. You have reached the top of the staircase now, and carefully move down the dark hallway to your bedroom whilst Javier tries shushing you when you comment on the family pictures on the walls.
“You look so handsome here,” you point to a picture from your honeymoon but your finger slips from the glass as Javier has already dragged you further through the house.
“Thank you. It was a long time ago,” he opens the door and pulls you inside.
As you enter the bedroom, you wrestle free from Javier’s arms and collapse onto the bed with a dramatic sigh. You have your arms out to the sides, staring up at the ceiling which spins slowly above you.
“For the record,” you say absentmindedly, “You’re still very, very handsome.”
“Thank you, mi amor (my love),” he chuckles softly, “C’mon, sit. I need to get you out of these clothes.”
“Oooh,” you whistle as his gentle hands start unbuttoning your blouse until it falls open and reveals your bra. He gives you a look, not even having to speak because you know he wants to say really?
He shrugs it off your shoulders and you visibly shiver at his touch even though your skin is burning from the alcohol in your system. Javier would have you right here if you weren’t drunk.
“Stand up,” he orders and then helps you out of your skirt, his careful fingers lingering on your waist as he lowers it to the ground. Your head swims. Javier goes quiet. He taps your legs to signal that you need to lift them one at a time so he can pull the skirt away. You sway slightly, leaning into his touch as he steadies you with a firm grip. His eyes meet yours from where he is kneeling on the floor, filled with warmth and adoration, and you can't help but smile back at him.
“T-shirt?” He asks.
“Mhm,” you hum.
For both of you, it is almost too much to have him undo your bra without following it up with making love to you. He remembers the first time you met and he had walked you home, drunk out of your mind and trying to get laid. He hadn’t done it back then either, and not even a ring on your finger would change that now.
He slides the straps off of your shoulders and down your arms, collecting all the pieces of clothing from the floor so he can throw them into the laundry basket by the dresser. Then he gets one of your loose t-shirts from your drawer and turns to walk back to you.
However, you ambush him by pushing him up against the furniture to kiss him. You taste of fruity cocktails that mix with his own minty breath and Javier lets himself indulge for a moment, deepening the kiss to taste your silky tongue but keeping it slow. He throws the t-shirt over his shoulder so he can settle two hands on your cheeks, framing your face in his large palms.
"You're so good to me," you whisper into his mouth.
“It’s because I love taking care of you, wife,” he murmurs and guides you back to the bed, tricking you to think that he wants more (and he does, revealed by the tent in his underwear, but not like this; his cock will flag eventually). Instead, he helps you sit down and pulls the t-shirt over your head before you can protest.
“Javi,” you pout as you move your arms through the sleeves with his help.
“I know, baby, we can kiss tomorrow when you aren’t drunk,” he says softly, “Tell me about tonight instead. Did you have a good time?”
“We had such a nice time,” you giggle, seeming to move on pretty quickly. He leaves your side to get you a glass of water and your makeup remover wipes from the bathroom.
“That’s nice, mamá,” he replies with concentration on his face, beginning to rub your mascara off, “Did you talk about your husbands? Scold me behind my back, huh?”
“We talked about how horribly you treat us,” you bat your lashes innocently, “I don’t know if we can take it anymore.”
“Running off together, are we?” You take a tiny sip of your water. He holds his fingers under the bottom to make you gulp it down instead.
“I think I might love you too much for that,” you say after swallowing. Javier’s fingers are gentle as he cleanses your skin.
“You love me?” He asks playfully and crouches to wipe the foundation off your neck too. You hum as an answer. It’s almost too much to feel him like that, so you try to initiate another heated kiss but he shakes his head and pulls away.
“No,” he says in the same tone as one would use to stop a cat from doing something naughty.
“What if I promise to be a good girl?” You challenge.
“You’re making this extremely difficult for me, baby,” Javier’s breath catches in his throat, conflict written all over him. He looks like he is just about to give in but then, “No.”
“But,” you pout again, watching him leave your side.
“Go to sleep,” he orders albeit reluctantly as he climbs into his own side of the bed, “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
Time goes by after he has turned off the light. Javier hears your breathing in the quiet room but there’s no sign that sleep has found you yet. He gives you the space you need to rest, tries to think about something that will make his cock flaccid again.
“Javi,” you suddenly say into the dark.
“Yes, honey?” He tries not to sigh. Besides him, you have moved to sit up once again and you are flicking on the light on your nightstand.
When Javier turns his head to look at you, he sees, much to his shock, that you are on the verge of drunken tears. He sits up immediately with slight panic at your shifting emotions, “What’s wrong, mi amor (my love)?”
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?” You ask just before turning into a blubbering mess. You let yourself fall against your husband’s shoulder, and he wraps his arms around your crying form.
There’s a fond smile on his lips as he finds out that it is nothing serious. Instead, it is you feeling everything at a heightened rate. He shushes you gently, rocking you back and forth whilst kissing your hair.
“I would love you so much as a worm,” he promises through a chuckle.
“Don’t laugh,” you whine into his chest, “There are physical boundaries that come with me being a worm.”
“We would overcome them,” he replies but you just continue sobbing to the point where he feels tears on his bare skin, “But I really need you to go to sleep right now, okay? I know you’re upset but I promise you that I’d love you even if you were un escarabajo pelotero (a dung beetle).”
You breathe hard for a few seconds to calm your tears, and Javier figures that you have seen some kind of logic in his argument or at least enough to let yourself be calmed. You wipe your eyes when you pull away. Javier gets some tissues from his nightstand and helps you with the tear streaks you miss.
“No need to cry, okay?” He runs a hand over your back.
“Okay,” you repeat with a final sniffle.
“Dame un beso (give me a kiss),” he purses his lips and you peck them almost shyly. However, he just kisses you a few times more, “Good girl. Now lie down and go to sleep.”
You do as you are told, and he lies down on his side to look at you. The crying seems to knock you out, causing you to snore softly as the clock ticks on your nightstand. He slings an arm over your stomach, cupping your side, and falls asleep too.
You make him so happy. Even like this.
Especially like this.
.
.
If you would like to follow my writing then go follow @notjustjavierpena-fics and turn on notifications 💖❤️
Panchi-Kun, Japanese Macaque abandoned by mum & human-raised, relies on dolls as he struggles to fit in
In the quiet corners of the Ichikawa City Zoo, a small, wide-eyed Japanese macaque named Panchi-Kun (affectionately known as “Punch”) is capturing the hearts of millions, though his own story begins with a heartbreaking void.
Born in July 2025, Panchi-Kun’s life started with a tragedy common in the primate world but devastating in its individual impact: he was rejected by his biological mother shortly after birth.
In the wild, this would have been a death sentence.
At Ichikawa, it became the start of a unique, cross-species upbringing.
The “Security Blanket” Effect
According to Ichikawa Zoo, raised by human zookeepers who stepped in to provide around-the-clock care, Panchi-Kun lacked the one thing every infant primate instinctively craves—the warmth of a mother’s fur to cling to.
To ease his visible anxiety, keepers provided him with blankets and eventually, a plush orangutan doll.
The result was immediate.
Panchi-Kun didn’t just play with the doll; he bonded with it.
Viral footage from the zoo shows the tiny macaque clutching the stuffed animal to his chest while he sleeps, and even more poignantly, carrying it on his back as he navigates the enclosure—a behavior usually reserved for a mother’s living offspring.
The struggle to socialize
While the human intervention saved his life, the transition back to his own kind has been bittersweet.
According to Yahoo! News Japan, as keepers began the gradual process of “re-wilding” him into a troop of macaques, they noticed a stark difference in his social skills.
“He uses the doll as a shield,” noted one observer of the zoo’s social media clips. “When the other young monkeys ‘scold’ him or play too roughly, he retreats to his plush companion for safety.”
While other macaques learn social cues, hierarchy, and grooming from their mothers, Panchi-Kun’s primary source of comfort remains inanimate.
Zookeepers explain that for Panchi-Kun, the doll isn’t a toy; it is a psychological anchor in a world of complex primate politics that he is still struggling to decode, Chibanippo reports.
A viral symbol of resilience
Since his story hit the internet in early 2026, Panchi-Kun has become a global sensation.
Netizens have expressed an outpouring of empathy for the “lonely” monkey, with many drawing parallels to human experiences of abandonment and the search for belonging.
“A baby monkey abandoned by his mother and raised by humans reminds you how much social bonds matter across all species,” wrote one user on X. “Sometimes family is whoever shows up—even if it’s a stuffed toy.”
What’s next for Panchi-Kun?
Emogram reported that the zoo’s ultimate goal is for Panchi-Kun to fully integrate into the troop and eventually outgrow his reliance on the doll.
Experts say it will take time; the “doll-mother” provides the tactile comfort he needs to build the confidence to interact with his peers.
For now, visitors to Ichikawa City Zoo can still see the small macaque darting across the rocks, a bright orange plush toy gripped firmly in his arms—a tiny survivor navigating the gap between two worlds.
In some families, the past doesn’t vanish—it lingers like a cigarette burn on celluloid. You came from one of those. Your grandfather’s name is still on soundstages. Your mother won awards she never picked up. You didn’t just inherit money, but myth.
You grew up in rooms curated by people who no longer existed, in houses unchanged since the sixties. You were taught not to need. Still, you did. Spoiled, maybe—but never cruel.
Harry Castillo’s wealth was different...newer, cleaner, all balance sheets and deal terms. His mother built their firm; his father and brother followed. He lived in a Tribeca penthouse so pristine it looked like a set waiting for actors.
He’d just ended things with Lucy Mason, who worked at Adore Matchmaking. It was mutual, more or less. She told him to call, if he ever got lonely in the way men like him sometimes do.
You didn’t know about any of that. You were busy with your own life. You didn’t know your sister had sent in forms to a matchmaking service with your photo and a profile listing all your icks.
Would love to see what Joel was doing and thinking in those three weeks 👀
the short answer is: he loses his mind
the long answer is:
he times his coffee breaks so he meets martha in the kitchen when she heads for a refill. asks what they’re talking about out there — not to pry, just to hear what girlie’s up to. just to catch whatever it was she said that made martha cackle five minutes ago, and laugh at it too.
he rents pretty woman, and when harry met sally, and sleepless in seattle, and — fuck it, maybe he rents dirty dancing again — just to watch them all through her eyes. see what all the fuss is about. have the time of my life stuck in his head for a few days.
he looks up that thrift store she loves. he switches her desk lamp on before she arrives in the morning. he learns about the paintings she spent the most time admiring in the louvre. he asks his mom when his chest will stop hurting.
today marks one year since i posted the fic i’m proudest of, san angelo. i loved this joel and this girl so much that even after i posted their story, i couldn’t shake them. i wrote a little extra for my own heart, never intending to share — but now feels as good a time as any. enjoy.
pairing: joel miller x fem!reader
summary: they just drift, jellyfish. they go wherever the current takes ‘em. i think you and i were a little like that. i think the universe delivered me straight to you.
warnings: story is inserted into canon, so all the expected major character deaths. star-crossed lovers who transcend universes to be together and all that good shit.
word count: 5k
psst. you might wanna read this post before you jump into this fic. x
She comes through on the heels of a sunbeam.
You don’t know how long it’s been. Ten seconds or ten minutes or ten days, maybe – but she’s still a kid with rosy cheeks and plaid pajama pants, so you figure it can’t have been long.
No, it can’t have been long at all.
“Sarah?”
You push through the ghostly glow of a thousand other people. It’s iridescent chaos, wherever this place is. A flurry of panicked strangers – their forms hazy and only half-here.
They sweep from your path like silk. The screaming is deafening. Some are on their knees, sobbing into the nothingness. Others are searching every face, calling names you don’t recognize, crying out to a god or a universe you know is no longer listening.
All you know is this is it. Whatever you had, whatever you knew – it’s over now. All that’s left is here. Some kind of dreamscape, an astral plane.
If you didn’t know better, you’d call it heaven.
She looks just like the photographs he’d shown you. First day of school, he said – and he grinned wider than you’d been able to make him the entire night. Shoot, this one’s a little blurry, but – you see that trophy in her hand? Fifth-grade science fair. Smartest kid in her class.
“Sarah,” again.
She turns.
Her eyes meet yours, crystal blue and streaming. And as if she, too, knows your favorite superhero and the way you like your mac and cheese – she holds her arms out.
You pull her in, feeling her little hands lock around your waist. Your cheek falls to the crown of her head. She smells like bitter iron. It makes your teeth hurt.
She’s crying. Wetting the front of your shirt, pushing her face so hard into your tummy that she can barely even breathe.
“What happened?” you ask, cupping the back of her head.
Her hair is linen soft, fair and cropped at the top of her neck. Sweet like bubblegum pink shampoo, she smells just like strawberries.
“Tell me, honey – what happened?”
The smallest voice you’ve ever heard. She speaks between thick sniffles. “I don’t –” gasp, “– I don’t know.”
You kneel in front of her, cupping her cheeks. Your thumbs catch her tears as they come. “Where’s your dad?”
“I don’t know,” she sobs, and wraps herself around you again.
She asks who you are on the third day.
By now, you’re wandering around hand in hand. Things have settled, the pale fog has cleared. Your world is one of bursting greens and rolling blues; flowers which lift with the sun and sprawling hills which cushion her fall at the end of each day.
Gently, one by one, the others disappeared. Into the night, into the sun – into their own little corners of this world. You and Sarah are the only two left, settled in a snug valley populated by wildflowers and families of deer.
It’s better this way. It’s calmer. You can listen to the sway of the long grass, can pluck out the different types of bird just from their song.
You hush Sarah to sleep every night. You’ve managed to quieten her crying, had done by the second sunset. She has no reason to trust you, but she does – and you figure you owe it to him to watch over her, anyway.
At least until he gets here.
“I knew your daddy once,” you tell her, taking in the dusky pink sky. The sun is lowering. She’ll grow tired soon. He wouldn’t want her up past her bedtime. “We met a long time ago.”
“Did he like you?” she asks, earnestly – but you pause.
It rises from your chest like painful little bubbles, each one shattering more violently than the last. Tears spring along your waterline. You swallow the tremble in your voice.
“I hope so,” you whisper. “I liked him very much.”
She hums to herself, walking on. Her arms wrap tighter around the firewood she’s holding. “I bet he liked you just as much,” she says. “You musta been pretty special.”
It lingers for a moment. The beauty and the pain of it; the flood of violet that designs a fresh bruise. The memory swirls around you in the breeze.
In the next life.
Promise.
Sarah strolls off in the evening light. The clouds tint her hair a peachy rose. She’s already out of your reach.
The blood jumps in your veins. You gather your skirt and hurry back to her side, masking your nerves with a smile. “Well, I feel it,” you nudge her, “being in your company.”
She giggles for the first time since you found each other. This sweet little melody. It blends in with the birdsong.
The kid goes everywhere on your back.
Closer than your own shadow, hanging from your arm, watching everything you do with a filial affection. Becoming someone’s person wasn’t exactly something you meant to do, but then – neither was meeting her dad in a dive bar.
You’ve been dealt worse hands.
You braid her hair while you sit in the valley. Knots of gold threaded with daisies and dandelions. She names the deer and nods hello to each of them. She stands on your toes and walks backwards, squeals when you trip over one another and tumble across the bed of grass.
It’s not hard to see why he loved her so much. This little dove of a girl. Soft around the edges, a springtime sweetness to her like cherry blossom or fresh snowdrops. Something you want to cradle, tend to with careful hands and shield from the rest of the world.
She wraps her arms like twigs around your shoulders. She chatters in your ear about soccer and movies; asks to hear your favorite everything so she can compare it to hers.
She talks about him every day. Talks about him the same way he’d talked about her: laughter splitting her words, each one rounded by the toothy grin on her face.
When she sleeps, her head in your lap, your fingers sifting through her hair – you look for him. You try to find him.
It’s a gift and a curse that you always do.
Boston, at least at first. Gruesome and unforgiving. Dingy streets and dirty deals; a woman with a mind as sharp as her tongue. He trusts her. He feels safe around her. She relieves some of the ache in his chest and that relieves some of the ache in yours.
You walk in stride with them at night. You watch him break bone and break his own heart, over and over. He looks nothing like he did in San Angelo. His brother can’t look him in the eye anymore.
He’s an open wound. Agony from the inside out. A heart split like the skin over his knuckles.
You follow him back to his apartment and try to whisper words through the dark. Can you feel me? I’m here. I’m right here.
He only ever rolls over and scoops the bare pillow, wrapping his huge arm around it. He’s lonely, drowning in it, though he’d never admit it. He’d never admit any of it: he’s not hurting, he’s not grieving. He doesn’t remember her smile or the weight of her on his back.
That’s the thing. He remembers all of it. He can’t shake her from his shoulders. He can’t stop answering when he hears echoes of her voice. Crying only seems to pain him all the more, the burn of salt on his skin.
You curl up behind him, hoping he might feel your heartbeat through worlds. Hoping he might feel your arms around him and know, somehow, that he’s carrying his kid, too.
Sarah asks in the morning why your eyes are so red.
“No reason,” you reply, tucking a forget-me-not behind her ear. “Let’s go pick some apples.”
She slings herself over your back, an empty string bag dangling from her wrist. She kicks her legs as you wander from shade to shade, dodging the blazing sunlight.
Sarah’s no idiot. She’s her father’s daughter. She can feel the effort in every step, sense the burden heavy on your shoulders. She jokes that your shadows look like some kind of giant cockroach wearing a summer dress, and it makes you laugh.
In the orchard, she climbs up onto your shoulders. She reaches above, clawing for the shiniest ones. Deep reds with freckles just like hers.
“Be careful,” you mutter, feeling her rock with the branches to pick the best fruit. Your grip tightens around her ankles.
The fear sets like a pebble, heavy in your stomach. The same fear that sinks anytime she leaves your reach, the same fear that plummets when she’s shoulder-deep in the river and you think the current might sweep her off at any moment.
She’s not your kid. She’s not. But she’s his – and he was as much yours as anyone.
The sun flashes between the leaves, becoming too hot to stay out much longer. You must be in the thick of summer by now. It’s scorching.
“Sarah,” you plead, squinting up at her swaying silhouette. “Please be careful.”
“You got it,” she calls, voice strained. She plucks and plucks, a satisfied sigh with each apple she rolls into the bag.
Back home, you stand by the sink. The cool shade of the cottage, fruit bobbing in the water. Sarah wants to slice some of them, sit outside and watch the bees pollinate the flowers.
You flick your blade up, fishing the biggest apple. As you line the silver against the swollen skin, you feel her eyes on you.
“You okay, honey?”
She smiles. Her eyes flit to the blade in your hands, the droplet of juice dribbling between your knuckles. “Can I do it?”
“Chop the –?”
Sarah nods.
You look back down at your hands, hesitating. The blade winks back. Heat begins to creep up your spine. “I…I guess.”
She swaps positions, spreading her fingers over the fruit. Her small hands curve around the handle of the knife. The sight of it makes your stomach turn.
“Like this?” She positions it between her first and middle fingers.
You wince, laying your hands on her wrist. “Yeah,” you gulp, “but just be –”
“– careful?” she says, smirking. “Daddy lets me help him with the cookin’ all the time.”
Yeah, you think, that’s ‘cause Daddy can’t do it by himself.
The knife plunges down with a wet crunch. The halves roll apart. The air punches from your lungs.
Sarah looks up, bright eyes twinkling.
With a sickly anxiety, you realize she wants to do it again.
“Good job,” you say, voice wobbly, fists balling on the counter. Your nails dig into your palms. “Now, uh – now half ‘em again, and make sure you cut the seeds out. You eat the seeds, an apple tree grows in your belly.”
She snorts. “I know that ain’t true.”
The dragonflies hover politely near the river, metallic wings fluttering.
You lay a blanket down in the shade of a willow, fringed from the rest of the valley by its drooping curtain of leaves. You suckle on the shards of fruit, lips lined with a sticky sweet.
Sarah picks the best apples. You know this by now.
She sucks her fingers clean, staring at the sparkling river as it trickles by. You’ve been here longer than you could guess – longer than you care to – but still, she asks, “What if you’re lying?”
You dig between your teeth for apple skin. “Huh?”
“You said you knew my dad,” she says, turning back. She rubs one eye with her knuckle. “What if that’s not true?”
“Then I’d be pretty damn good at bluffing.”
She snickers. “I believe you,” she says, “I always did. There has to be some reason you found me.”
You sit back, leaning on the heels of your palms. Your chest swells with emotion, the lonely pain of waking up to an empty bed and an empty apartment.
“You like soccer,” you tell her. “You play for the…the Defenders, right? Number fourteen. You won your fifth-grade science fair with a project on jellyfish.”
Sarah looks down at the grass, cheeks lifting. She picks a daisy and twirls it between two fingers. “You remembered all that?”
“Like I said,” you sigh, “I liked your dad a lot.”
You keep looking for him every night.
He’s been out of Boston for a while, and you’re glad of it. He found himself a shadow of his own right before he left – a little girl with freckles and a light like sunshine.
Just like yours.
She’s spunky, she has heart, and she can kick ass. Every second word is a curse, feels like. She tells stupid jokes and she pulls on all the right threads. She’s unwinding him, and you’re sure neither one of them knows it yet.
She’s saving him.
You took to her the day they met. He took a little more convincing. You knew he’d come around eventually, and you spent weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It didn’t happen so suddenly. Day by day, hour by hour, he mellowed. His bark quietened, the blaze in his chest tamed. Soon, he let her close enough to warm her hands.
And he was aglow all over again. He looked the way he had two decades before.
It must be years now – the way he’s grayed and she’s sprouted. You can’t keep up with the passing of seasons, the way their conversations change. Change and change and wither away.
And – just as you’ve adopted all the other scars and bruises and fractures in his soul – their distance hurts you just as much as it hurts him. It feels hollow, like his bones are protecting nothing. Ghostly. Barren.
The worst of his pain comes during a blizzard.
It’s a fucking mess, the entire thing. You can’t hear anything over the kid’s screaming. Faces keep bleeding in and out of view; grunts and gasps and terrible, terrible groans.
He’s on the floor – that’s what drew you in. He’s on the floor, broken in two. A mammoth captured in a snowstorm, slain in the basement of a mansion.
You wait for him to notice you. He’s come close before – scuffles in backstreets, on horseback with a puncture in his stomach – but he’s never looked at you before.
You stumble around the edge of the room, stifling your screaming as the girl’s arms lift again. The bite of metal is nauseating. The blood is spattered up the windows behind him.
A shell of himself – this man who once held you, whispered sweet nothings and silly jokes in your ear. Who held his palm open and let you trace over it, score secrets into the skin forever.
He’s done some shit, sure – but hasn’t everyone?
She brings the club down on his skull. His body bends in on itself, breaks in a way you never knew it could. He’s past able to make any sound. The size of him gives one final shudder, and just then –
He looks.
He looks you square in the eye.
Joel?
He blinks. A wet gurgle leaks from his lips.
Joel, can you –? Shit, can you see me right now?
It’s dribbling from his chin like tar. Thick and black. It runs quicker when his lips try to move.
You can, can’t you? You can see me.
His brother and kid are out cold. You step between them, whispering apologies as you pass, and kneel at Joel’s side.
I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, baby, you’re okay.
Your eyes screw shut. He’s in your bed, his shitty Motorola in one hand and your fingers in the other. He smiles. He smiles and he laughs and he kisses you again.
God, Joel, you sob, I love you. I love you so much. Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to fucking do here.
Please. I need you to get up. Can you get up for me?
Can you – can you move? Can you hear me?
Joel?
Sarah brings you tea and sets it down on the table.
She sits beside you, tucking her knees right under her chin. She warns about the flies, says you’ll be drinking bug soup if you don’t get to it quick.
You force your lips into a smile and thank her, ruffling her sun-bleached hair. One tiny sip – only to please her – and your head rolls back, face skyward.
“Are you feeling better?” she asks, laying a hand over yours.
When she finally managed to wake you, you were both crying. She said your scream almost deafened her. She thought something terrible had happened, until she lit the lamp and saw you clutching your bedsheets, sobbing into the cotton in your sleep.
You squeeze her fingers. “Yes,” you lie. “I’m sorry I scared you. It was just a bad dream.”
“I used to have those sometimes,” she says, sniffing. She rubs her nose with the back of her hand. “Not since I came here.”
“You know what it is?” You turn to look at her, one eye closed in the sunlight. “I ate cheese before bed. Cheese gives you funny dreams.”
Her head tips back with a giggle. “No, it doesn’t. That’s so silly.”
You lift your eyebrows. “I blame the cheese, Sarah Miller.”
She nudges the mug an inch closer, and you take another sip.
It’s good – the tea. She knows exactly how long to brew it for, exactly how much sugar you like. It’s as if she counts the granules by hand – and, if you know Sarah, you wouldn’t put it past her.
You balance the warm mug on your breastbone. “Wanna help me hang the sheets up?”
She nods. Always eager to help, eager to do everything and anything. She disappears back into the cottage and you listen for the sloshing of water, the wet slap of the sheets being flung into a basket.
Nothing has come of it. Your dream. No knock at the door, no calls of either of your names echoing through the valley. After you convinced Sarah to go back to sleep, you stood outside and listened to the wind for forty-five minutes.
He is not here.
It’s the first time you’ve ever wondered where here really is, anyway. For this long, it’s been yours and Sarah’s. A secret kingdom in some dusty shelf in the universe; pixies and sunshine and splitting apples by the river.
You don’t want any of it, if he’s not here.
You’ll pack a bag, pull Sarah over your back. Find somewhere else. Somewhere with room for him, too. She needs her dad, and you need your – well.
Sarah meets you by the clothesline. She drops the basket with a sigh, then twirls around the pole as you untangle the sheets. She spirals until she’s sat on the grass, legs crossed, passing you clothespins as you work.
“I was thinking we could stay up late tonight,” you say, slotting a pin over the sheet. Forcing a casual air through your voice, trying to keep it steady. “Watch the sky for a little while, maybe hunt for shooting stars.”
You’re only trying to wring out the hours you’ll be without him. You don’t want to spend the night staring at the ceiling, slowly forgetting what he looks like.
Sarah says nothing. She knows you’re full of it. She leans forward and picks a ladybug from your skirt, rotates her hand to count its spots.
The sheets lift in the breeze, billowing and twisting around one another. The clouds turn over – rolling from perfectly white to an afternoon blush. The world is preparing to turn in already.
And that’s when she says it.
“Daddy?”
Your back is turned. You’re sipping at your tea. “What, honey?”
She pulls herself up and steps forward. She walks through the sheets, ducking her head to miss their brilliant flashes. Staring straight ahead at something you can’t see yet.
“Dad…”
In one swipe of the linen, she’s gone.
With a gasp, she sprints off downhill. She screams as she goes, footsteps thundering through the valley.
“Sarah!” you yelp, swatting the laundry out of the way. It swirls around your arms, waving across your vision in a white smirk. “Sarah, come back –”
The fabric spills over your arm when you lift it. Your heart stops short in your throat.
He’s knelt in the grass, arms wide open. Same jeans, same wintery boots. He flicks his fingers and his little girl collides with him, her tiny body crashing into his.
They roll back into the soft grass and for a few seconds, they disappear. But as quickly as your heart stops, it starts again. He rises from the flora, Sarah in his arms.
He nuzzles his face into her shoulder. He’s sobbing, you can hear it from way up here. Sobbing, then roaring with laughter, then gasping for air – though he won’t pull away from his little girl long enough to breathe.
They have the same laugh. The exact same. It echoes between them, this delighted string of sound. That hearty, giddy laugh.
She stands straight, still holding tightly onto him. Like she’s scared if she lets go, she’ll lose him again. Planted between his knees, fixing threads of silver hair from his eyes. Talking to him, yapping and giggling, her head bobbing all over the place.
He talks straight back – bass voice even deeper than you remember. The only words you can make out are baby girl. He can’t stop stroking her hair, can’t stop bursting into euphoric laughter.
After a minute, he stands. One hand locked in hers, arms swinging. He scopes the valley, murmuring something to his daughter while shaking his head in disbelief.
She points everything out to him. The hills and their peaks. The spot where the sun rises and the spot where it sets. The willow by the riverside, the knolls where the rabbits burrow. And then – she spins around and points to you.
Your hands knot at your stomach.
Shielding his eyes with his arm, he looks up and spots you. He pauses for a few seconds, just stares and stares. He doesn’t move until Sarah tugs on his wrist.
She drags him the whole way back to the cottage. “It’s…it’s…” she pants, squirming with joy as she hauls both of them uphill. She takes your outstretched hand and shakes it. “It’s my dad!”
“Sure is,” you whisper. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. It hurts to be so close to him and still nowhere near enough.
Joel mirrors your expression, loose with shock. He reaches the yard and sighs. His shoulders rise and fall with the effort of his breath, sweat lining his brow.
He’s older. Of course he is, it’s been twenty-five years. Salt and pepper, just like your dreams. More wrinkles, more scars – though, in the sunlight, he looks just like the man you knew. Those same embers of light in his eyes, smirk unconcealable even behind his thicker beard.
He looks the exact same. He never changed a day.
“She said she knew you from long ago, Dad,” says Sarah, beaming up at him. She won’t let go of either of your hands, a little chain link between this world and the last. She blinks back and forth between you.
“Yeah, baby girl,” he finally says, and you hear that familiar sandpaper rasp, smoothed over by a lacquer drawl. “We knew each other pretty well.”
The girl squints in the sun. “She taught me how to make tea. You want some tea?”
He finally drops your gaze. He looks down to Sarah and smiles tenderly. “I would love some tea.”
She squeezes your hand, then turns on her heel and skips back to the house.
Joel watches as she disappears into the kitchen, then turns his attention back to you.
His hairline is rusted with dry blood, eyes still a little bleary. His blood-soaked jacket is gone – and, if you know him half as well as you think you do, you know he rid himself of it sometime before his daughter noticed him.
He hooks a thumb through his belt loop and smiles, perplexed. He drags a heel through the terrain, stones scuffing under his boot. He lifts a finger and points in your direction.
“Mind’s still a little hazy,” he says. “Have we met?”
It floods through your body. That same twenty-something-year-old feeling. A kiddish glee, a teenage flush. You bite right into it.
“I was wondering the same thing. You look familiar. Did you do something with your hair?”
His head tips. He runs his hand through the flicks of hair by his neck. “That oughta be it. I grew it out,” he drags his fingers down his jaw, “Grew out my beard, too.”
“Mm. Yeah, I see that. Looks good.”
Your voice is breaking. It’d be embarrassing if you were paying attention to it.
His arms cross. “You look good. You look beautiful.”
Another little hm. Then –
“If you don’t touch me right now, I’m going to scream.”
And he jumps.
His arms wrap around you, pulling you suddenly and heavily against his chest. He’s so solid and yet so soft; so weathered and still the safest thing you’ve ever known. He feels just like he did all those years ago.
“Joel,” you sob into his shirt, and he kisses your head.
“Hi, baby,” he whispers into your hair, sniffling. He kisses down your neck and across your shoulder.
“Hi,” you weep. You pull back, cradled in his arms, blinking through your tears.
His cheeks are glistening, eyes streaming all over again. He laughs with you, shaking his head. “Jesus,” he chuckles, “look at us.”
You nuzzle into his palm, closing your eyes. “I missed you so much,” you whisper.
“Oh, darlin’,” Joel strokes your cheek, “I missed you, too. I thought about you every day. Every –”
“– damn day,” you echo. “Me, too.”
“I wish I’d gone back for you,” he admits. “I should’ve found you, I –”
“Hey,” you lift his jaw and press your forehead to his, “You found me. I’m right here, see? Feel me? You ain’t gotta worry anymore. You found us.”
He pulls you into the same bear hug again. He squeezes tight and breathes in your hair.
“This is where you’ve been?” he asks, still drinking in the expanse of the valley.
“Yep,” you mumble into his chest.
He kisses your forehead. “And you looked after my little girl?”
“She looked after me, too.”
He laughs, tears slipping though his beard into your hair. “How? I mean – how?”
“She just – appeared. Right in front of me. Like it was meant to be.”
“That night?”
You nod, welling up. “I was already gone, Joel.”
He turns away for a second, pain twisting across his face. He holds you protectively. “Baby,” his voice breaks, “I’m so sorry.”
You press your fingers to his lips.
It needn’t matter now. None of it. Not here, where the sun drowns the valley each morning and the flowers dance in the breeze. Not here, where you and Sarah played handclaps and you taught her how to make daisy chains.
Not here – where the universe finally gave him back to you.
“It happened,” you shrug, “Look where I wound up.”
He nods, but you know it’s a bruise. You know it matters to him. Matters more than any of the rest of it. You can feel his heart throbbing in his chest.
“The next life,” Joel whispers. “Is this the one I get to keep you in?”
You smile. “Yup.”
He hums, playing with your hands. His head drops and he takes a deep, painful breath.
“There are some things you should know about,” he says – and for the first time, it’s like he’s uncomfortable. “Things that probably got a lot to do with why I’m here.”
“I already know,” you say. “I was with you the whole time.”
“You were?”
Your eyes close. “Mhm.”
“Shit,” Joel winces, “I never wanted you to see –”
“Shh.”
You take his hand and open his palm. It feels like velvet against your lips; as warm as the day you met. You kiss each mount, each plain of skin. When you pull away, you run your fingers over the same lines you read all that time ago.
“See? Still the same,” you reassure him, smiling. “You’re still my Joel.”
“Your Joel,” he teases. He tightens around you again, nuzzling your nose with his own. “That who I am, huh?”
“Uhuh,” you giggle, squirming when he tickles your waist.
His lips find yours in a crash of a kiss – a hungry, messy thing. His hands on your jaw, yours in his hair. Vanilla and pine, the scent of home you’ve been searching for ever since that very first night.
You tug gently and Joel groans into your mouth, his tongue rolling against yours. He tastes like beer and second-hand smoke, like the pinch of lime and the sting of love. He tastes like you, like twenty years too long apart.
He tastes like forever still to come.
The wind picks up and swirls around you both. The sun washes over your skin. The sheets snap back and forth, drumming over the kettle’s whistle inside.
“C’mon,” you whisper, leading him to the door. “Your daughter makes the best tea in the world.”
“Hey,” he says, reeling you back in against his body. He smooths your skin with his thumb. The same honey glow in his eyes, the same hidden magic.
“I love you,” he says. “I loved you the minute I saw you at that bar. Loved you no matter how many miles or worlds were between us. It’s the one thing that never changed.”
what happens when joel miller meets his star-crossed lover?
big love to @mrsmando and @5oh5 for cheering me on with this one, and @bageldaddy for being my eyes, my ears, and - only sometimes - my brain.
pairing: joel miller x fem!reader
summary: it's the summer of two thousand eight. after two weeks following his little brother cross-country on the back of a harley, joel follows him through the doors of a dive bar - where fate delivers him to you.
warnings: story is inserted into canon, so cordyceps outbreak happens, sarah dies (off-page), joel dissociates, doomed love, lots of mention of fate, alcohol consumption, reader is a smoker, cursing, drunken one-night stand, oral sex, unprotected piv, joel's cock is massive, a lot of angst, a lot of fluff, a lil smut to tie it all together. enjoy!
word count: 9.8k
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Palm lines.
It’s the first thing he thinks as soon as she stops moving in his arms. The second her little whimpers cease, the moment her chest stops heaving and her eyes glaze over. Suddenly, Joel’s little girl weighs more than he can bear.
Palm lines. And he has no fucking idea why.
He closes his eyes and there you are. The whir of the ceiling fan, the tinkling of bracelets loose on your wrist. You have sorta earth hands, you told him. Or, well – they could be water, if you look at ‘em this way. I don’t really know. I’m still learning.
You told him that air hands were long, spindly. And Sarah was always a lanky kid – tallest on the soccer team, head and shoulders above the other girls by the third grade. Her hands, he thinks, must be air. They must be.
Her fingers are still twisted around his right now. Lifeless, slippery with the blood still wet and quickly cooling.
Joel cradles her, squeezing so hard that he wonders whether he might be able to fuse their bodies together. Lock them in some white-knuckle grip so that he never has to let go of her – never has to leave this hill covered in dirt and blood.
His palms are ruined; a maroon river carving its way down his heart line, dirt deep in the groove of his life line. Why does he even fucking remember what they’re called?
Why the fuck are you what he’s thinking about, right now?
“Tommy,” he says, opening his eyes again. “We gotta…we gotta get to…”
She’s limp, draped over his thighs as though she’s nothing more than a stretch of crimson curtain. He looks down at her and begs her to come back, begs her to open her eyes and look up at him again.
But the night is passing and she’s still not breathing. Dawn is breaking and Joel’s daughter is dead.
He sucks in a shattered breath. “…to San Angelo, Tommy.”
The younger Miller stuffs his gun into the back of his jeans and paces over, soles coated thick in shit and grass. “I hear you, Joel.”
“You ain’t listenin’ to me, I –”
“I’m listenin’ fine, Joel.” Tommy hooks his hands under his niece’s arms. “Now, help me lift her. We can’t…” his voice strains, fighting the death grip his brother has on the girl, “…we can’t leave her here.”
Joel’s frozen to the spot; sinking further and further into the earth. Staring at his open hands, the stains like rust on his palms. He says to San Angelo again, and Tommy snaps.
“Jesus, Joel, enough! I’ve heard enough goddamn it! I see your hands, now – we gotta fuckin’ bury Sarah.”
Your fate line, your nail tickled, and Joel held his hand steady, It can change, if something big is coming.
Somethin’ big? he asked. A little younger, a lot more naïve. Still a healthy dose of belief in the world, an echo of the god-fearing faith that raised him.
His hand felt so light, cradled in two of yours. He half hoped he’d never have to let go – just lie there with you forever. Your legs tangled with his, the sheets disturbed; the room injected with amber from the streetlights outside.
You nodded. A big shift, or something.
And he scoffed. He actually scoffed, right there and then. Incredulous. The hell kinda big shift is comin’ our way? he asked, laughing.
You just smiled back, shrugging. You were so fucking casual, that whole night. It would’ve unnerved him, if he hadn’t been so swept off by the sparkle in your eye, the glowing cherry of your cigarette.
Guess we just gotta wait ‘n see.
It’s August thirtieth, two thousand eight.
Almost five thousand miles on the back of a Harley, and Joel just wants to go home.
He arches his aching back, palms flat against the crests of his hips, and blinks in the light from the food mart in front of him. Twenty-six, he thinks to himself, only twenty-fuckin’-six.
It’s ninety degrees out. An uncomfortable heat, for a man who feels ten years older than he really is. For a man who hasn’t had a decent shower in almost two weeks. For a man who’s spent the last six hours tailing the brake lights of his little brother’s bike.
The sweat gathers sticky between his shoulder blades, prickles along the nape of his neck. There’s dust spattered down his bare arms and buried in the grooves of his knuckles.
He’s tired. He’s tired, he’s dirty, and goddamn, he wishes he was back home.
He holds a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, the yellow sky melting to a purple haze. Squinting, he follows the soar of two swallows overhead, looping through the sky, until he’s rubbing the image from his eyes with the back of his wrist.
He’s gotta remember to call Sarah before she goes to bed.
The door opens with the tinkle of a brass bell older and rustier than Joel feels. A swaggering figure splits the glow from the store in two – a figure with a pack of Marlboros in one hand and an already half-empty bottle of water in the other.
Tommy holds them both out to Joel, who swipes the water with a scowl.
“Ain’t killed you yet, brother,” Tommy scoffs, stuffing the cigarettes into his back pocket. He swings a frayed-denim leg over the seat of his Harley.
Joel drains the bottle, panting as he crushes the plastic in one fist. “Damn near tryin’,” he mutters, tossing it in the trash. He runs his tongue across his bottom lip.
“Where are we?” Tommy asks. He glances over his shoulder, staring from the cracked roads to the telephone wires overhead. A Syclone pulls into the lot; a dehydrated squeal as it rolls to a halt.
“San Angelo,” Joel says. “Only a few more hours to go.” He settles on his own bike, pulling his leather jacket over his shoulders. “We passed a Super 8 coming into town, if you feel like restin’ up. Or – we leave now, be home around midnight.”
Tommy chuckles. “What’s the rush? We ain’t gotta be anywhere anytime soon.”
And Joel agrees – for the most part.
His mom is watching Sarah while they’re gone, and he reckons she’s hardly missing him. Too smart for her own good, Joel’s realizing: plotting and scheming her way into staying up past her bedtime, drinking Pepsi at dinner, watching Curtis and Viper – and swearing that her dad lets her do it all, too.
But, still. He misses his kid.
It’s the most they’ve ever been apart – time or distance. The longest he hasn’t had her climbing up his back or hanging off his arm. The least he’s been called Dad since he was eighteen years old.
He just…misses his kid.
He sighs, drumming his fingers on the body of the bike. “Tommy, I gotta get back home to Sarah.”
“Look,” Tommy says, and Joel knows that the argument is lost already, “By the time we got back, she’d be asleep anyways. Let’s leave in the morning – first thing, I swear – and we’ll be home in time for breakfast. Deal?”
They stare at one another, a stand-off in the parking lot. Both waiting for the other to break. The swallows gather on the roof of the store, basking in the weak wash of flickering fluorescents.
“Come on, brother,” Tommy pleads, “It’s one more night.” He lifts his helmet, punching it over his mop of shaggy hair, and kicks the bike to life.
Joel growls to himself, watching it drift over to the side of the road.
He considers heading to the Super 8 alone, grabbing a room only to shower and get some food, then hitting the road and leaving his little brother in the dust. Waiting for him to stumble through the door tomorrow morning – tired, groggy, probably hungover – while Joel, fresh as a daisy, drizzles syrup over Sarah’s pancakes and pours her orange juice.
He’s a pragmatic man. He’s a grown-up. Scares away the ghosts and ghouls and monsters of his daughter’s nightmares. Shushes her back to sleep in the crook of his arm, tiptoes as lightly as he can out of her room so as not to wake her.
Things like God, like the universe, things like horoscopes and laws of attraction…for the most part, Joel can do without them. Has done his whole life.
But then – the glow of indigo overhead, and the mysterious shadows lurking behind the buildings. The birdsong tittering in his ears, the twinkle of the sun in Tommy’s helmet – something distant in the dusty sphere.
Something, someone, winking at him from far away.
Something a little heavier than the breeze nudges at his spine, and Joel’s arms lift – fitting his own helmet over his head. He swings the heel of his boot into his kickstand and revs the bike, Harley roaring as it joins Tommy’s out on the boulevard.
Murphy’s is a small, green bar on the corner of an intersection. All peeled paint lettering and buzzing fluorescents – the y burnt out and pulsing.
Joel doesn’t think Tommy picked it for any reason other than the huge Lone Star mural on the side of the goddamn building, the way he tosses his thumb to it as they park up. A squint smirk on his face, muttering something like ‘s good to be home, big brother, as they hook helmets over handlebars.
Tommy leads Joel inside, their boots tacky on the wooden floor. Walls paneled by aged frames and sun-bleached photographs; air hanging thick with a smell like vinegar. The babble of slurred conversation is pierced by the sharp crack of pool balls breaking.
Metal-plate belt buckles snaked through strained jeans; low eyes which shift to size-up the two strangers. They all turn back to their fingerprinted glasses when Joel and Tommy settle into an empty booth.
It feels hotter in here than it is outside, stuffier. A thick humidity which clings to Joel’s bones, humming like the string lights draped from beams above his head.
Tommy reclines between the creaking leather cushion and the wall. He pokes at a yellowing poster of some Western, hums to himself, and then looks across the table.
Joel’s eyes loop once around the room before they meet his brother’s. “What?” he asks.
“First round is yours, old man.”
“Oh, is it, now?” He cocks an eyebrow. “Thought this was your idea?”
A weedy grin stretches across Tommy’s lips. He needs to fucking shave, Joel thinks. Whiskers poking from around his small mouth like pine needles. “’s my birthday trip,” he reasons.
And can Joel argue with that? Does he have the fucking energy? Will it get him out of here and back to Austin any quicker?
“Goddamn it,” he grumbles. He pushes himself to his feet, heels of his palms against the tacky wood.
He wanders over to the bar, tugging on the front of his tee to unstick it from his damp chest. Slots in beside an ivory cowboy hat with a pair of jeaned legs. The man fixes his bolo tie and watches Joel’s hand as he flags the bartender down.
And then he feels it.
You.
Then he feels you.
First, the weight of you – crashing some into his back. He shunts forward from the suddenness of it, knocking his ribs against the bar, and lifts a hand to brace himself on the ledge.
And then – heat, like an iron. Like every hair and freckle on your skin is branded into his the second you come into contact with him. A feeling like the roll of a wave against his spine, a hand hooked around his forearm when he begins to turn.
“Shit,” you hiss, steadying yourself on the curve of his shoulder. You glance down at your feet, clicking between your black boots. “I’m sorry, that was…that was my bad.”
“’s alright,” Joel says instantly. He holds his arm still until you let go and he sidesteps – though only a little. He watches, dumbstruck, as you rest your elbows on the bar and lean forward. His eyes linger on your back, trailing the crisscross straps wrapped tight over your spine.
You squint up at the menu pinned above shelves of crystal bottles. Your eyes move back and forth across the chalkboard, slowly descending until they’re meeting his in the speckled mirror opposite – a sweet smile growing on your lips.
It runs like whiskey through Joel’s veins: warm and dangerous.
And the way his head spins, the way the world blurs for a moment into one swipe of color around you; the way your cooing laugh echoes between his ears long after he’s heard it –
Joel’s already intoxicated.
He’s still staring when you pull back and motion to the bar. “You can go first, by the way,” you say, waving a hand. “I wasn’t cuttin’ in line. Just trying to read the drinks.”
“I’ll wait,” he replies, remembering how to be polite, how to be charming. Old cogs long out of use jerking to life inside him again. “Can’t read any of ‘em, either, anyways.”
It draws from you that same little laugh, a puff of air from your nostrils. You nod, biting your bottom lip.
He’s quickly forgetting why he’s stood in this room, why he’s in this city. He’d probably forget his own fucking name if you asked him right now what it was.
“’nother drink, darlin’?” a low voice interrupts, and you’re turning away.
Joel’s eyes follow you – a moth chasing something golden and radiant – as you face the wiggle of a snow-white mustache poking from beneath the brim of that ivory cowboy hat.
You shake your head, lifting two fingers with a bill slipped between them. “I’m good, thanks, George. Maybe next round.” You wave to the kid behind the bar – some name that Joel’s too fucking mindless to hear. Too distracted by the glint in your eye, the sparkle of your crescent moon earrings in the light.
If only he knew this feeling. If only he could put a name to it. As familiar as the sun and yet, brand new like dawn. His stomach swirls in a fleet of butterflies – as though he’s fifteen again, bumping elbows with his high school crush.
You nudge him, thumb pointing in the direction of the bartender.
Joel shakes his head. “Ladies first,” he says, heart skipping when you hold his stare.
“Nuh-uh,” you shake your head, “Told you I ain’t jumping in.”
He asks the guy for two beers, barely taking his eyes off you. “Alright,” he leans in, lowering his voice, “Then let me buy you a drink. Make up for gettin’ in your way just then.”
You prop your chin on your knuckles, grinning as you push your twenty around the wooden bar top, dodging pooled rings of alcohol like it’s an arcade game. “I don’t do that,” you say, eyes tracing the slick trail left by the bill.
“Do what?”
“Accept drinks from strange men in bars.”
His tongue presses against the back of his teeth, the taste of humor honey-sweet. “Yeah? ‘n how long have you known…” he nods to the – what is he, sixty? Sixty-five? – year-old on your right, “…George?”
Your gaze lifts, eyes wide. Apparently as impressed by Joel’s confidence as he is himself. “We’re actually in a very serious relationship. Marriage proposal imminent.”
“Damn,” he mutters as the bartender reappears with two Coors, “And here I thought I had half a chance.”
You hum to yourself, studying him. Looking from his jaw across the span of his shoulders, his wide-knuckled hands and then back to his lips. Curious and wary, judging the strange animal stood before you.
And he knows he’s weathered from the weeks on the road, and all the years before that. Dirt under his nails and the light sheen of sun on his forehead. The flecks of gray through his thick, brown beard.
You take a deep breath, eyes twinkling, and tell him, “I’m here with my friend.”
“Ain’t that lucky?” Joel glances at Tommy. “I’m here with my brother.”
You look across to the dirty blond, sat tilting a glass candle in his hand. “He single?”
Joel nods. “Is she?”
You nod.
“Alright. You wanna come sit with us?”
Your smirk answers his question. You take the beers, rings clinking off the glass. “Rum,” you call over your shoulder, wandering off, “I drink rum.”
Joel’s gaze lowers to the sway of your hips. “Rum it is,” he says, turning back to the bar.
“So…a cross-country bike trip, and you wound up in San Angelo?”
You’re on your fourth drink, the first one Joel hasn’t paid for – and he only allowed it because it’s a Diet Coke (and maybe you got to the bar first, held his wrists with one hand so he couldn’t stop you from slapping your own money down).
“Yep,” Joel replies, pinching the lime from his drink and dropping it onto a napkin. “Just passin’ through. Shower, sleep, then head on home.”
“Where’s that, then? Home?”
“Austin.”
“Austin,” you pout, “Nice.”
Joel smirks, licking citrus from his fingertips. “Is it?”
“I’ve never been to Austin,” Brooke chirps, fiddling with the umbrella in her piña colada. She twirls the paper canopy and glances up to Tommy.
He snaps out of his slack-jawed gaze when he realizes what she’s implying. “Oh – yeah, well…” his head wobbles as he stutters, “…you two ever come down that way, we’d be happy to, uh…show ya ‘round, huh, Joel?”
Joel doesn’t reply, staring back at his brother with the same amused expression you are.
You’ve been an inch apart all evening – doused in the dive bar darkness, the shrouded conversations and muffled TV static. The tip of your nose and curve of your shoulders lit only by the luminous signs dotting the walls.
Tommy and Brooke are already deep in conversation again about the best car Tommy ever owned. Joel watches as your eyes flit between the pair, entertained by the way they trip over each other’s sentences. Your cheeks lift when Brooke lays a hand over Tommy’s, and he squeezes her fingers back.
Where did you come from? Joel’s thinking. He takes a swig of his whiskey, feeling your eyes on him. As he lowers his glass, you lift yours. When he turns in his seat towards you, you’re already facing him, back against the wainscotting. He smiles, and so do you.
Every movement feels choreographed, some merry dance only you two know. You’re in your own little world.
Where did you come from, again, and where have you been my entire fucking life?
“So, what about you?” Joel asks instead, swallowing – all warm-bellied and brave. “You grow up here?”
You shake your head, taking another sip. “Nope. Just liked it enough to hang up my coat for a few months. I grew up in Phoenix.”
“You travel a lot?”
“I’ve been around. This is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I was a kid.”
He thinks of home: of Austin and its silver-snake river, burnt-orange jerseys and the pleated bunting lining Sixth Street. He thinks of late nights on lawn chairs, nursing a beer and shooting the shit with his brother. Keeping their voices lower than the buzz of the cicadas, looking more at the dusky sky than at each other.
“You don’t ever get tired of it?” Joel asks. “Of moving around so much?”
You scoff, breath clouding the inside of your glass. “Three weeks on a motorcycle starting to get to you, huh?”
He breathes a laugh, loose again. The cicadas fade from his ears.
Your head tilts in a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess the universe keeps on surprising me.”
Joel doesn’t do this. At least, he hasn’t done this since he was a teenager – crate of beer under his arm and a chest full of courage. He’s long forgotten the feeling of heat blooming in his cheeks, the twitch of his heart anytime you look at him.
But fuck, if there isn’t something about you. Something in the way you move, the way you look at him. Something in the way you play with your straw, knocking ice cubes around and chewing on the plastic once you’ve drained the glass.
Something – though it’s a little too early and Joel’s a little too tipsy to tell just what. He tries to remember that he’s pragmatic. A grown-up. He chases away the monsters in his daughter’s –
“Oh, shit,” Joel says suddenly, scrambling to pull his cell from his pocket. It’s nine thirty. He was supposed to – “I forgot…”
A miserable tone from his Motorola cuts him short. The screen flashes an empty battery before fading to black. He jams a thumb into the keypad a couple more times, cursing at the winking symbol.
“Someone you gotta call?” you ask.
He meets your eye and winces. “Yeah, I’m…I said I’d call an hour ago.”
“You wanna use mine?” You twist around, fishing in your purse for your own. “We can go outside.”
“No, no, it’s…it’s alright, I’m sure she won’t mind, she –”
You shake your head. “Shut up. Come on, let’s go. I could use some fresh air, anyways. Be back in a minute,” you tell Brooke – who nods and turns straight back to Tommy.
Joel extends his hand to help you out of the booth, then follows you to the door. The cool air tugs every nerve in his body to attention, pin-sharp when he steps out of that lazy heat. Under the emerald glow of the Murphy’s sign, he settles his glass on a window ledge. “Next round’s on me, alright?”
You roll your eyes, pushing the phone against his chest. “Just call, Joel.”
One last apologetic glance, and then he’s dialing. He makes to wander along the curb, the tone already pulsing in his ear, when he notices –
“You ain’t brought a jacket?”
You’re sitting on the ledge, clutching your elbows. Swatting midges from the light you’re bathed in, charms on your bracelets jingling. “Hm?”
He tuts. “A jacket. Here.” He shrugs his own off, sitting it around your frame. It’s warm from the bar and from Joel’s body heat, and you sink into it – letting the dark leather drown you as you rummage through your purse again.
“Nice,” Joel’s eyes narrow, “Fresh air.”
You hum into your hands, flicking your lighter. The cigarette trembles when you murmur, “We all got our skeletons, I guess.”
He turns on his heel when a familiar voice picks up.
“Hey, hey, M–Yeah, sorry it’s late…Yeah, we got held up. My phone died, so I’m using…Is she still–? Can I–? Oh, Sarah. Hi, baby.”
His little girl begins chattering down the line immediately, telling Joel everything she’s been up to since they last spoke this morning.
“…and then, Emily thought I was one of the Armadillos – I don’t even know how, ‘cause they play in red, remember Dad? – but she did, and she slide tackled me so bad that Coach Thomson had to sub in Akari for me so I could ice my ankle. Grandma was kinda mad about it, but she took me to Burger King after to cheer me up, and…”
Joel wanders back and forth, smiling to himself and scuffing the heel of his boot along the concrete – barely able to squeeze more than two words between her chirping. It’s all, Yeah, baby? and Wow, sweetheart; all uhuhs and mhms until she finally quietens, excitement plateauing again.
“Alright, well. You know what time it is, right?”
“Yeah,” Sarah groans. She knows it all too well.
Bedtime.
“…But you didn’t call when you said you would, Daddy, and it’s Saturday, it’s –”
“I know, baby, I know. I’m sorry. Just…somethin’ came up. But I’ll see you tomorrow, right? We’ll be back before you know it.”
“Where’s Uncle Tommy? Can I talk to him?”
Joel turns to face the bar. “He, uh…I’m not with him right now, sweetheart. I’ll tell him you asked after him, though.”
Sarah concedes, and then begins asking questions Joel knows she’s only asking to stay on the line a little longer – to stay awake a little later. But still, he answers each one – humoring her and, at the same time, letting himself listen to her voice just a little more before he has to let her go.
He thinks of scooping her up in the morning; thinks of being slumped on the couch after dinner with her head on his stomach – fast asleep with whatever movie she chose droning on in the background.
Despite the thousands of miles and close to two weeks between them – she makes him feel closer to home. She always does.
When Sarah asks where he is, he glances your way. Clocks your flat expression, the half-burnt cigarette hanging from your fingers.
You flick ash to the ground. Eyes unreadable beneath low brows, a tiny crease between them that Joel’s only just seeing for the first time.
“Uh…” he clears his throat, “…just a little – a little north of you, baby. Home first thing, I promise.”
He tells her he loves her and she says it back, and he tells her to sleep well and she says that back, too. And then he’s hanging up – Alright, see you soon, bye, Sarah, bye-bye, byebyebye – and pressing his thumb into the red button.
He wanders back over to you – ears flat like a guilty dog, though he isn’t quite sure why. He mumbles a quiet thanks as he passes the phone back, then stuffs his hands in his pockets.
You lean back, ankles crossed, studying him. Swirling what’s left of the cigarette in your fingers – the smoke lifting like a winding snake to the dark sky. “So,” you pout, “What are you doing flirting with me, if you got a wife and kid back home?”
His jaw ticks, a hand coming up to scratch his beard. “I don’t have a wife,” he says.
You stare blankly, filter back against your lips. “Okay, then – a girlfriend. Does she know you’re out tonight with us?”
He shakes his head. “No wife, no girlfriend. I don’t have an anything.”
“But you have a kid.”
Joel nods once, tongue in his cheek. “Uhuh.”
And then the penny seems to drop. A small oh; your jaw slack and eyes wide. The cigarette smolders between your fingers. “Fuck,” you whisper, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“No, hey,” Joel steps closer, “You didn’t know. It’s alright.”
He straightens the jacket on your shoulders. When you finally look at each other again, you snort.
“Sorry,” you repeat, shaking your head. “Is she okay? Your daughter – is she…?”
“Sarah,” Joel says. “She’s…she’s fine. Thanks.”
You look down, stubbing your cigarette against the brick. Voice quiet, you ask, “Her mom’s not around anymore?”
Relief settles in his chest: you’re softening to him again.
Joel slots onto the ledge at your side. Shoulder to shoulder. He reaches behind and lifts his drink. “Not since she was a year old.”
Your mouth pulls in a wince. “Jesus. That’s rough.”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to – you’re not asking him to explain – and he doesn’t want to, either.
You’re not stupid – you’ve seen enough of the world to hear what he’s really saying. The darkest, dustiest corners of it – all the places no one ever wants to look.
You don’t seem disturbed, barely even moved by the reality that…well, shit happens. People leave, families break; a two-car driveway is suddenly taken up by just a pick-up truck and a little pink bike with tassels.
He figures you get it. You don’t need to know how can that be? – you just…know that it can.
“So, uh…” you look up at him again, “…my apartment is, like, five minutes away if you wanna…you know. You can charge your phone, can shower – if it’s bugging you that much.”
Joel’s eyebrows lift. “Oh, really?”
You simper, eyes thin. “Really.”
“Charge my phone ‘n shower?” He stands, palm flat against the wall above your head, and leans in. His face is inches from yours.
You look up, mirroring his expression. “Yes,” your voice curls in a half-truth, “What’s the big deal?”
“What a goddamn line,” Joel says, smirking. “How long you been sittin’ on that one for?”
His blood thrums faster, harder, louder in his veins when you stand up, hands on your hips.
“It’s not a line, I’m serious –”
“I didn’t take you as the type, baby, I really didn’t – but if that’s how you wanna play this, then –”
He feels you before he sees you moving, like he’s stood at that bar all over again. Your hands on his jaw, your chest pressed to his. Your lips – soft as satin, with a tinge of sweet rum and smoke – against his.
Joel barely misses a beat. He closes his eyes and lifts a hand to the back of your head, kissing you back. It’s dizzying, the taste and feel of you so close; the wet of your tongue on his. The little scratches of your nails in his beard, the moans caught in your throat.
Dizzying – and fucking perfect.
You break apart and lean in to each other, catching your breath. Joel’s hands slip beneath the heavy leather of his jacket onto your waist.
“Unless…” you whisper, pulling away from him, “…you don’t want to. In which case, I’ll just…” You twirl back towards the door, batting your eyelashes.
Joel smiles. He catches your wrist and reels you back into his body. “I want to,” he breathes, kissing you again. “I want to.”
“Let’s go.”
You make it to your apartment door, fumbling with your keys – and Joel’s hands are glued to your waist.
You miss the lock over and over as he kisses your neck, grazing the skin with his teeth. Anything to satiate the hunger quickly taking over, the tightening in his jeans.
He pulls you against his hips – rough denim grinding into the curve of your ass. He can smell your flowery perfume, a strange melding of peony and menthol sharp in his nostrils.
It’s the hungriest he’s ever felt, he thinks – a starved animal pinning his prey to her flecked apartment door. He pauses, bottom lip damp against your neck; breathing a liquor-laced laugh over your skin.
You jam the key into the lock. The door finally shunts open and you spill inside, dragging Joel with you.
Your place is dark. Angled strips of streetlight thrown high up the bare walls and across the ceiling, splintered by tilted shades. The spill of a blanket draped over an empty couch; a pair of sneakers left on the rug. Joel’s knees brush by a houseplant guarding the door – heavy leaves which pfft when they sway out of his way.
It’s half-decorated. Temporary. Caught somewhere between home and away. Little fragments pieced together into something the shape of home: a mosaic vase that scatters light across the surface of the coffee table; a beaded curtain pinned around the closet doorway.
Like you’re a little magpie, collecting trinkets of silver and gold until your nest feels like yours. Bags dropped long enough to keep a Monstera plant alive, not to put nails in the wall for the frames propped against the skirting board.
You shrug Joel’s jacket off, dropping it over the back of the couch. When you spin back around to him, he lifts your chin with two fingers and presses his lips to yours. You lead him down the hallway, tumbling into your room.
He follows you over to your bed, collapsing onto a tousled mess of sheets with his hips between yours. The hem of your dress rides up your thighs, bunching around your hips and revealing a flash of pink lace underneath.
The world around him seems to sober up for a second, sharpens into focus. It begins to seep in: the realization that he has you – some girl he met no more than two hours ago in a bar – pinned to your mattress. A slick gathering in your underwear and a weight building in his.
Right now, he should be sinking into squealing bedsprings in a Super 8. Bathing in the flicker of a television set twenty years too old. He should be showered and rested – ready to head home at sunrise, if not sooner.
But then something led him to you, and – well.
There’s no fucking helping him now, is there?
Joel’s fingers hook around your panties. He pulls down, leaving a trail of kisses along your bare leg, until that same pink lace is dripping from your ankle.
His eyes flash up to yours, love-drunk and sparkling. He pushes your knees apart, watching your velvet folds open for him, and – oh, he thinks, staring at the glistening arousal smeared around your cunt. Such a slick little mess for him already.
“Goddamn, darlin’,” he licks his lips, “She’s so pretty.”
You hum, hands lowering. Your fingers separate, spreading your pussy for him. Your middle finger swirls around your clit, dips along your seam. And the n, silky and shining, you lift your hand again and slip your fingers into your mouth.
“Tastes even better than she looks,” you murmur, dappling your fingertip along your bottom lip.
Joel growls. He pushes down on your thighs, ignoring your little yelp, and drags the tip of his tongue through your slit.
“Oh, shit,” you gasp, back arching. Your fingers knot in his hair, twisting and tightening. “Shitshitshit.”
“Mhm,” he hums against you, tongue pushing inside.
Fuck, you’re just so perfect: so soft and warm and fucking dripping for him. He laps at your sweet center, wet already spreading all over his mouth and beard.
A dampness blooms in his boxers. He’s throbbing, fucking aching the longer he goes untouched. He grinds against the mattress, denim rough against his solid erection.
He lifts his chin, panting – satisfied by the way you squirm under the weight of him. “You like that, huh?” he asks, a sodden kiss to your mound. “Fuckin’ love it.”
He spits a thick bead of saliva, watching it dribble down your folds to your ass. His tongue swipes it back up, circling your clit, all slippery and swollen.
“Fuck, Joel,” you moan, tugging on his hair. Your legs spasm, hips lifting.
He loves the sound of his name when you say it. Broken in two, a lilt to it as it rolls from your tongue and down his spine. Like it’s yours as much as it is his, now.
He sucks hard on your clit, his tongue flicking. And he can tell you’re close; can feel your hips starting to lose rhythm, see your back desperately arching higher and higher.
Joel groans, pushing up to hover over you. He cups between your legs, dabbing two thick fingers at your entrance, and pushes in.
Your pussy draws him in knuckle-deep. Your chest lifts, the loose neckline of your dress exposing more and more. You grab your breast, pinching your nipple – a roll of pebbled flesh between your fingertips.
He lowers his lips to your ear – watching as you toy with yourself. “Come on, baby,” he grits his teeth, “Give me one. Let me feel this pretty cunt.”
Your head rolls back into the pillow; a high sob as your orgasm crests. Clamping tight around him; a warm flood down his fingers.
Joel kisses you as you come. You look so pretty, he thinks, with ecstasy behind your eyes and his fingers between your legs.
Christ, he wants to be inside you so badly. Wants to feel your cunt do all this around his cock instead.
The blood rushes between his hips.
His fingers slip in and out, bringing you back around. Joel’s lips are on your neck, murmuring, “Good girl, that’s my girl,” as you resurface.
Your eyes open again – glossy, glazed with the aftershock of your high. “Fuck,” you breathe, playing with the hem of his shirt.
He pulls his fingers out and sucks them clean. Whips the tee over his head in one motion; another kiss tucked under your chin as you peel your dress from your body. He tosses it to the floor.
Still dazed, your body still trembling, you ask, “Do you have a condom?” All dreamy and distant, your hands trailing along his belt.
Joel pauses. Tilts his head, frowning. “I’m on a road trip with my brother, baby – the hell would I bring condoms for?”
You roll your eyes, sighing. It’s the cutest thing Joel thinks he’s ever seen. You thread the belt through the loops of his jeans. “In case you meet a really cool girl at a bar and wanna take her home, maybe?”
He lifts his eyebrows, impressed. He slips his salty tongue over yours again.
You moan at the taste. “It’s just I’m…I’m all out.”
His belt drops to the floor; buckle clinking against hardwood.
“Well, shit,” Joel whispers.
It’s not exactly a scenario he predicted, setting off from Austin. Meeting you wasn’t on the bucket list for the trip. It’s another three, four, probably five things to add to the list of shit he doesn’t do, shouldn’t do, wouldn’t fucking do if it hadn’t been for you.
No, Joel thinks, groaning as you palm the solid shape of him – he didn’t bring a goddamn condom. Jesus, the most he has in his pockets right now is fifteen bucks and a stick of gum.
You unzip his pants, shrugging the denim loose. “We can just do it…without,” you offer.
Joel stares down at you. “You sure?”
You nod, biting your lip. “Just pull out, right?”
“Just pull out…” he echoes. Your hands are cold on his heated skin, but he’s not about to fucking stop you.
You tug his underwear down with his jeans, following the darkening hair from his navel down. Another quiet pull out passes your lips – your voice dissolving when you spot the thick base of his dick.
Joel’s shaft springs free, heavy against the inside of his thigh.
“Holy shit.” You push yourself up on your elbows, eyes flooding black.
His tongue runs along the bottom of his teeth. He thrusts forward into your hand, a glassy drop of precome dribbling from his slit.
Your thumb swipes across his flushed tip, fingers wrapping around his width. You roll his balls in your other palm, massaging and squeezing just the right amount.
“Easy, easy,” Joel whispers. Too much, too soon. He can’t come yet, not until he feels your fluttering cunt around his cock.
Instead, you reach up – snaking an arm around his neck. You pull him back down, his naked body flush against yours, and hike a knee over his hip.
He grinds into you, his cock nudging between your legs. They fall apart for him – pliant and keen, like petals unfolding. He covers himself in your slick, his tip catching below your clit.
“Pl-ease,” you whine, scratching at his shoulders.
Joel nips at your damp neck. “Please, what?” he taunts.
Your breath is hot against his cheek – a stifling request which curls up in the shell of his ear. “F-fuck me.”
And his hips roll into yours.
“Jesus f…” your face buries into his chest, “…you’re…you’re so fucking big, Joel, I can’t –”
He nudges between your walls, groaning into your skin. You’re even tighter around his cock, even cozier. “I know,” he pants, “I know. Take it, baby, know you can take it.”
You stretch around him, opening up the deeper he pushes. “Fuckfuckfuck,” you pant, the thick hair at his base finally brushing against your clit. “Fuck, Joel.”
“Look at me,” he taps your jaw, “Hey. Look at me. Breathe.”
You exhale, hot and shaky across his lips.
“Good, that’s good.” Joel nods. He holds you by the waist, lets you adjust to his size.
He pulls back, your cunt clamping around him. Halfway out, and then in again. Feeling you open up, inch by inch, until he builds a steady rhythm.
“Jesus, baby, she’s so…” he moans, “…she’s so goddamn tight.”
You drape an arm over his shoulders, a hissing pain where your nails dig into his skin. Yelping each time he bottoms out, your leaking cunt wrapped snug around him. “So – goddamn – big,” you whine, a ruined smile on your lips.
He slams his body into yours again, watching the way your tits bounce. Nipples hard, skin tacky and shining with sweat. Your pussy pinches, and he starts to unravel.
Fuck the road trip, Joel thinks, fuck all of it. This is where he should be: in the middle of your bed, burrowed deep between your legs. This is the only place he wants to fucking be, right now.
So he fucks you harder; the headboard hammering against the wall. A fistful of the pillow, his knuckles whitening. He guides his cock when he slips out – a filthy sound as your clutch sucks him back in.
“Fuck,” he growls, gripping your hips so hard he worries he might bruise you. His thrusts become sloppy – quick and desperate.
“So close,” you gasp. You’re squeezing him so tight that he sees stars. “I’m gonna – I’m…”
Perfect, Joel thinks, watching you bloom. You’re so fucking perfect.
He coaxes you through it. Slows enough to feel you come around his cock, your warmth as it gushes all over him. “That’s it, baby, I got you. Shit, you’re gonna make me come.”
He pulls out just in time to coat your stomach; a throaty groan as he comes. He pumps his shaft, covering from your sternum to the plush of your tummy. It dribbles down your waist, spurts between your breasts.
He collapses over you, pressing his forehead to yours. His dick, soaked and softening, smears the ejaculate across your skin.
You giggle, leaving sticky kisses along his beard.
“You okay?” he asks, breathless.
You nod, and his tongue dabs at the inside of your lips. You taste like sex and sweat – sweet and salt.
Joel shifts to the edge of the bed. He feels you follow, your lips featherlight on the curve of his shoulder.
You make to stand – going to clean yourself up, he reckons, your tummy dripping with his semen – and he locks a hand around your bare thigh.
“Stay,” he says, voice low and rough – sex still smoldering. “Let me get you a towel.”
You smile, resting your chin on his shoulder. Your fingers link around the other side of his waist. “I’ll get it. Just relax.”
And for a minute or two, you stay like that. Hooked onto one another, tired eyes closing over, breathing in rhythm. Your cheek on his shoulder, your knee brushing against his tummy.
It’s simple; quiet and still. Joel feels like half a person – the other half tracing her chipped nails along his bare thigh. Eyelashes fluttering, teeth holding back a grin that she thinks might give her away.
Eventually, you move. Shimmy yourself down the mattress, swipe a crinkled tee from the ottoman – and slink off to the bathroom.
Joel lies back against the headboard, body sticky hot. He watches the shadow of your figure stretch across the open door. His eyes drift upwards to the looping ceiling fan – only half as dizzying as the sound of your humming in the next room.
And just when he starts to think he might be fucking missing you, you reappear in the doorway. Leant against the frame, some worn band tee hanging from your shoulders. Arms crossed; smiling back at him.
A rush of words floods to the tip of his tongue. You look beautiful. Your makeup’s smudged, chains of your necklace twisted; your shirt is frayed and splotched with faded stains – and you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on.
He holds his arms out and you prance over.
You crawl over his figure, kissing your way up to his lips, and then turn in his lap. Cradled against his broad chest, your head nuzzling into the dark threads of hair between his pecs. You clasp one of his hands in two of yours.
“Offer’s still there for a shower, if you want it,” you whisper, kissing the pads of his fingers.
Joel tilts his head, mumbling against your temple, “Will you be in there with me?”
You answer something shaped like a tease, just as sharp with wit – but he’s too busy watching your nails trace his open palm. Too distracted by the sweet scent of your skin: a fresh burst of fruit, singed with the edge of tobacco.
“What do you do for work?” you ask.
He makes some sort of sleepy sound – a grunt, a hm? into your skull. “Oh, uh – I’m a contractor,” he says.
Your chin lifts. “That why your palms are all…?” Your thumb strokes light as lace against his worn skin.
“Probably,” Joel admits. He draws shapes on your thigh with his free hand.
“Do you sand the wood with your bare hands, or somethin’?”
Joel scoffs. “Alright, alright. You liked my hands plenty, twenty minutes ago.”
Your cheeks lift, a low hum caught in your throat. You angle your head to let his lips trail along your shoulder, pressing into the hinge of your jaw. A dark nail following the landscape of Joel’s skin – each score and divot, the callused pads at the bottom of each finger.
“You have sorta…earth hands, I think.”
It sits in the air for a few seconds before Joel turns to you. “What?”
“Earth hands. Or, well – I guess they could be water, if you look at ‘em this way.” You open up his hand, fingers stretched. “I don’t really know. I’m still learning.”
He looks down at you. Feels the now-steady pulse of your heart on his sternum. “Learnin’…hands?”
You snort. “Palm reading, Joel.”
His brows draw tight. He licks the inside of his whiskey-stained cheek. “You’re into all that hippie sh…stuff?”
You knock your knuckles against his chest, still staring at his hands. The hills and their valleys, the ravine-like lines; the worn skin and hatch marks.
“Let’s see…Your heart line,” you whisper – more to yourself than Joel, but he’s listening all the same. “It’s pretty deep, which means the relationships you’ve had have been…important. But it’s kinda…it tails off right here, see? It’s broken. So…I guess they didn’t end too good.”
Joel raises an eyebrow – playful, encouraging your timid smile. Keep figuring me out, he thinks, stoking the curious flame behind your eyes. “Alright,” he says, “Now tell me something you didn’t already know about me.”
You gawk, holding his wrist up. “You don’t see that? The way it breaks up? I’m not bullshitting you, Joel, it’s –”
“Naw, I see it,” he nods, squinting a little at his palm, “Just – tell me more. What’s all these other lines mean?”
“Well,” you adjust between his hips, “you got your life line right here. Short, which means –”
“Don’t tell me that part.”
“No,” you roll your eyes, “It just means you’re independent. You never needed much from anyone. And it runs past this mount – these are called mounts – right here. Venus: all to do with love and sexuality.”
Joel holds your open palm next to his, comparing them. He takes less than a second’s look, lines his lips to your ear and says, “Seem like a pretty good match to me.”
You wriggle when he tickles your ribcage, trying to twist out of his grasp. You’re laughing again – the same laugh he’s been hearing all damn night. The same giggle that’s had his stomach somersaulting since he first heard it.
The room seems to light with it, this glow he feels from you – as if you’re the sun. Spent and still half-drunk; lazing with a stranger in the middle of her bed. Tracing the lines and scars on his palm, telling him how logical and grounded he’s supposed to be.
As if the world orbits around you – everything you touch turning to molten gold. And for what feels like the hundredth time tonight, Joel looks at you and wonders: Where the hell did you come from?
You hold your hand against his, folding your fingers perfectly together. The evidence of your night flaking from Joel’s knuckles; sweat still simmering on the nape of his neck.
He hasn’t done this for years. Hasn’t felt this gentle aftermath. It’s usually a rush, a hastened zip and clink of his pants. An awkward dance, plucking clothes from the bedroom floor and pacing back to his truck.
It’s never like this. Talking and laughing, holding and kissing. Questions about his parents and yours; his biggest dream as a kid, or the time you broke your arm falling out of a tree.
He tells you stories about growing up with Tommy; tells you Sarah’s favorite flavor of cake. He tells you about the time they tried to make it for a school bake sale, forgot to turn the oven off, and almost burned the damn kitchen down.
You snicker and tell him that never would’ve happened if you were there.
Yeah, well, Joel smiles, I wish you were.
He notices you’re drifting off, despite your slurred protests and your weak grip on his wrist. He pulls you under the covers, curving his body around yours, praying that the quickening drum of his heartbeat won’t wake you.
His nose nuzzles into the curve of your skull, his hands link in front of your tummy. And he wonders whether his body was made with yours in mind.
He glances out at the sky – light starting to bleed from the horizon – and wills the turn of the sun to slow. Only a little; just let him stay here a little while longer.
Just a little while.
Dawn forces her way in eventually – more unwelcome than ever before.
There’s a throb between his temples which swells to life when the light floods past his pupils. “Jesus Christ,” he grumbles, face turning back into the pillow. He gives you a gentle squeeze and then pushes up from the mattress.
You roll to the middle of the bed, still sound asleep. The sun spills golden all over the valleys and crests of your body. The bedsheets carve pathways up to your hips, dipping at your waist.
Last night, there was something so mystical about you – so otherworldly. Joel felt himself drawn towards you like a compass needle shooting north, the second he felt your weight crash against his spine.
A figure behind a cloud of smoke, like the mountaintops disappearing into a thick mist. And now, blood drained of alcohol, you’re just you.
Your shirt is twisted around your shoulders. Your lips puffy, mumbling to yourself in your doze. Makeup smudged like chalk under your eyes, and still – just as beautiful. Just as radiant as you were ten hours ago.
Joel rubs his eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed. He blinks down at his bare feet, the morning sharpening into focus. As he lifts his phone from the nightstand, the cable drops – hitting the wooden floor with a snap.
He pauses, shoulders hunched. Hears you stir over his shoulder, and turns around.
The earth of your body shifts beneath cotton hills, clouds of sleep clearing from behind your eyes. “Hey,” you whisper, voice pretty and broken.
A little bird in the palm of his hand – that magpie curled up in her nest of gems and trinkets.
“Hey.” He leans down and kisses your cheek. “Sorry, darlin’, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
You wrap your arms around his wrist, tugging. “Are…are you…leaving?”
Joel feels a pang in his chest, and he doesn’t know why. He takes a deep breath. Your scent fills his lungs and steadies his heart. “I…” he sniffs, “…I gotta go home, baby.”
You give a slow and heavy nod. “S-Sarah…”
He strokes your head with his thumb. “Yeah. Shh, go back to sleep. It’s still early.”
He glances at his phone – it’s just after six. He knows Tommy will be waiting for him, parked outside the Super 8 and wondering where the hell Joel is. He knows Sarah will be, too – sat by the living room window, listening for the rumble of their bikes.
And still, he thinks – How do I fucking leave you? Leave this?
He shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought. He has a kid waiting for him back home; soccer practice, packed lunches, homework and bedtime stories. He has work to do, bills to pay, a roof to keep over their heads. It’s all waiting in Austin, two hundred miles away.
As though you can see the question flipping in his mind, you pull him closer. A weak finger in the palm of his hand, drawing circles. Your bleary gaze meets his, and you whisper, “In the next life.”
Joel smiles. Twelve hours ago, he’d have laughed at the idea of it. Now, he’s not so sure. He kisses your knuckles, muttering, “Promise.”
Another wave of sleep washes over you, and you’re gone again.
Joel pushes himself from the bed, reaching for his clothes. His back twinges as he stretches, pulling his T-shirt over his shoulders. He steps into his jeans; pinches his belt between two fingers and lifts it from the floor.
He leans over and tilts your shades the opposite way, dulling your bedroom. He unplugs the charger, neatly winds the cord, and sits it on your nightstand. He fixes his side of the sheets: folds them over the mattress, tucks them in at your back.
With a deep breath, he makes for the door.
His jaw turns, eyes still low. Your dress is in a heap at the foot of the bed; a tube of lip gloss lying next to it. He looks up, following the landscape of sheets – the slope from your ankle to your hip. Your hunched shoulders, your cheek smushed into the pillow.
If he looks too long, he’ll never leave.
The image burns golden into his eyes. He hopes for half a heartbeat that you’ll wake again and pull him back into bed. Kiss him all over, whisper something sharp and sweet in his ear. Touch him and graze him and wrap yourself around him – anchoring him right here and now.
But you don’t.
And Joel slips out of the room.
Jackson stirs to life over his shoulder.
A white lump in the snow-covered valley, the settlement seems so far away now. Tommy sets off up ahead, leading the way to the outpost. The blizzard is picking up – it almost swallows the silhouette of him whole.
Joel had tried to warn him: the weather would be too bad to see five feet in front of them, never mind any infected. But Tommy argued with the same determination that dragged the pair of them into that dive bar thirty years ago, and Joel didn’t have half the energy nor the will to argue back.
He’s thinking about you. He always is.
Your searing gaze over the rim of your glass; the weight of you against his chest. The tickling of your nail on his palm, severing each line and changing him forever. You and your palm lines.
You were just learning to read them. Joel didn’t know a thing about any of it, and he told you so. You took his hand in yours and said, Here. Let me see.
He runs a thumb down his fate line, swaying in time with his horse. And he shakes his head with a little smile – he still remembers which one is fate and which is heart.
He still remembers all of it. He has earth hands. All salt and soil and solid as stone. His earth hands have gotten him this far, right? Twenty-five years and he’s still here. Gray and grown; stiff joints and sewn-up scars.
His head line has channeled more strangers’ blood than Joel can count. Mounts that’ve stopped breath in the throat of any man who crossed him. He doesn’t think you’d recognize his hands anymore, if your fingertips traced over them again. Broken and bruised and bloody.
And he doesn’t think he’d want you to – doesn’t want you to meet the shadow of the man you knew back then. He’d prefer you remember that same brown-eyed, soft-touched stranger with enough charm and naivety to survive anything. No need for bone-breaking fists or bloodstained hands.
Where are you, he wonders?
The answer knots deep in his stomach: the same old rope twisting into the same old shape. A fist of anger, of guilt. Some terrible cocktail of both, spilling poison through his veins.
He’s terrified to wonder what might’ve happened if he had ever made it back there. What he might’ve found in your apartment – what he might not.
Where would you have gone, that day? Would you have fled, or would you have stayed?
You were smart, he knows that much. He saw the cogs of your mind turning right in front of him, standing opposite each other in that bar. Barely thirty seconds in and he could’ve sworn you had him all figured out.
But – oh, Jesus, you were kind. Open and willing to help a stranger with a dead phone and a tired smile. Would that kindness still glow as bright against the flicker of a world on fire?
A lone hawk swoops down before him, shooting straight between the pines. Joel slips his glove back over his freezing hand.
He thinks about you every day. Every fucking day, and it never eases. Never loosens. It keeps him up some nights – the truth he’s too afraid to look square in the face.
You live now in the back of his mind like a little ghost. His little ghost – still floating around that dusty city; the warm light of life and innocence still bright in your eyes.
Tommy glances over his shoulder. He gestures ahead as if to say, Would you take a look at this goddamn storm?
And Yeah, Joel thinks, I’m lookin’, brother.
All he wants is to go home. Jackson, Austin, the bedroom of your apartment in San Angelo. Just let me go back.
He blinks, and the snow melts to cracked asphalt under a lilac sunset. Tommy’s holding handlebars instead of reins. The horses’ hot puffs of breath darken to clouds of smoke, choking from the exhaust pipes of the Harleys.
You’re somewhere on the other side of town, waiting for him in the faint glow of a jukebox. Sipping what’s left of your rum and Coke, fishing a twenty from your purse for the next round.
Just let me go back home.
He tugs on his horse’s reins and pulls off after his brother.
If you ever feel up to it - a little short story from the scom universe about reader and Joel deciding to have a second baby or finding out they're pregnant for the second time would warm my cold dead heart <3
i am. so. sorry. for the word count on this i truly do not know what happened. but i had a lot of fun with it, so. hopefully y'all do, too. happy fathers day! x
jellybean ~4k words | series masterlist
warnings: pregnancy symptoms (feeling and being sick, horniness + sleepiness. aka me even when not pregnant), 99% just duckie vs her mom
Duckie spills the secret on a Friday.
The morning is lazy, slow. The breathing of the sea across a plain of beach. Your fingers sift through her hair like the breeze through sun-bleached pages. The way she and the sun tint the room peach.
Sarah sprawls out across the spot still warm on her dad’s side of the bed. She’s in a habit of waking up early to sneak through to your room, lift the bottom of the covers, and army crawl between your bodies.
Joel’s in a habit of stirring to the heat of her at his back, her tiny toes at his spine, and turning to scoop her in one arm. They sleep curled into one another, mouths catching flies.
This morning, though, she’s up to something. She brought a secret.
She’s flat-out on her stomach, pens scratching at the paper. There’s the scent of cherry and lemon and green apple tangling in the air. Taut frown on her face, tongue poked with concentration. She looks just like her dad.
She pauses and looks up at you. “What color is this part?” she asks, dabbing at the blank hubcap.
“Silver,” you reply, fixing the cap back onto the grape pen before it stains your sheets.
She huffs. “I don’t have silver, Mama.”
You tap on the page. “Daddy’s wing mirrors are black, but you did ‘em green. The colors don’t matter, do they?”
But it’s seven a.m., and you’re sharing only the red jellybeans for something of a pre-breakfast snack (the four-year-old’s idea), and you’re exhausted despite having slept the full night, and she keeps halting any time Joel’s humming quietens – just in case he spoils his birthday surprise.
She hunkers down with the lemon pen to nail the emblem of his truck, and you figure – color is just the least of it. Truthfully, to your kid – and so, to you, too – nothing has ever mattered more.
You cup her cheek and lift her gaze back to meet yours. “How about I grab you a glitter pen today, just for the wheels?”
She grins. Little milk teeth, gappy and gummy. Peach fuzz cheeks, sweet as the rest of her, a perfect fit in the palm of your hand.
I love you I love you you’re my whole world I love you, you want to say.
Instead: “Only if we tidy your room later. Deal?”
“Deal, Mama,” Sarah giggles, and her little ink-stained hands splay out across the page again.
She scribbles only a few more splotches of color before you both notice it.
The sudden silence.
The water’s stopped running. The shower screen rattles as he pulls it back. Dripdripdrip from the showerhead straight down to the empty basin.
Sarah twists to watch Joel’s disembodied arm blindly grab for a towel folded on the sink. It whips off out of sight, and he calls through from the bathroom.
“Duckie? You still there?”
“Gogogo,” you whisper, helping your daughter cover her dad’s drawing with blank sheets. “Leave the jellybeans, Duck, save yourself!”
She finds the entire thing hysterical. Swinging her masterpiece under one arm, two fistfuls of rainbow pens, springing from the mattress like it suddenly caught flame. She throws herself from the foot of the bed and dashes across the hall to her own room, candy scattering in her wake.
Joel’s head cranes around the doorframe. “Where’d she go?”
You smile, shrugging. Chewing innocently on a jellybean. “That’s funny. She was here a second ago.”
He pads over to the bed, towel slung loose around his hips. Smirks, when your hungry eyes descend his figure – the bearlike shape of him, all muscle and fur, toned where he needs it but soft where you want it.
He cages over you, dark hair dripping with the smell of citrus, skin sticky.
His lips are like velvet against yours. Tongue still singed with coffee. A low growl from his throat when you lean forward to lick into his mouth.
“Smell so goddamn good,” you murmur, dipping your head to bury into the crook of his neck.
His beard is fuzzier when it’s damp, natural masculine musk melded with the fresh soap and rich aftershave he uses. All honey and oatmeal, mixed with a woodsy scent – and fuck, it’s intoxicating. Moreso than usual – stronger and sexier.
You take his hands and lower them to your hips, letting his fingers knot around the baggy material of your – his T-shirt. Tugging on it, exposing the slip of delicate lace on your hips.
“Darlin’,” Joel warns, “we’re late. We still gotta drop Duckie off – If she walks in –”
You groan, huffing back into the mattress. The weight between your legs ripples over the horizon, pulses into weak nothing.
Joel fixes the shirt back down to your thighs just as the thunder of his daughter’s footsteps rumbles back into the room.
Tonight, he breathes, slicking some of the hair from his face.
You grin, taking his hand to pull yourself back up.
Sarah materializes in the doorway, a lingering half-girl. Smiling from behind the frame, twisting the ball of her foot into the floor.
“Hi, Duck,” Joel says, still playing with your fingers.
“Hi.”
“You look guilty.”
Her grin widens. She totters into the room, launches herself onto the bed, and nuzzles into your side. She squirms when Joel digs his fingers into her waist.
The beats of her laughter drum against your ribs, the same way her fists used to when she lived inside you.
“Alright.” You cradle her, her little head tipping back to wake the rest of Austin up with her squeals of glee. “Are we ready for some actual food, now?”
Joel chuckles, reaching for his mug.
Sarah nods from your lap. Her eyes drift down to the print on your tee. “Mama?”
“Mhm?”
“Do they like jellybeans?”
You frown. “Does who like jellybeans?”
Her finger prods lightly into your tummy. “The baby.”
Joel chokes, splattering coffee into his fist. He slams the mug down, pounds his chest clear of liquid.
“There’s no – Jesus, Joel,” you swipe mocha flecks from the sheets, “Told Sarah to be careful with her pens and then you spray coffee all over the…”
Sarah rolls off, cackling. “Silly Daddy,” she hoots, leaping on the bedroom floor.
“Hey,” you usher her over to the door, “Why don’t you go pick out what you wanna wear today? I’ll be right behind you. Quit tryna give your dad a heart attack, okay?”
“The baby, Mama,” she’s repeating, walking like a little convict. She turns over the threshold to her room like it’s a cell, her pink pajama uniform and guilty expression to go with it. Still laughing, swallowing the ticklish bursts when she notices you’re shaking your head.
“There is no baby.” You kneel before her, repeating, “No baby. Just you. How about your T-shirt with the butterflies?”
It seems to distract her enough. Thank Christ. She gasps, inspired, and twirls off to find the tee.
“Fucking hell,” you sigh, pushing back to your feet.
Joel’s flapping the sheets when you slip back into your room, still clearing his throat. Half-dressed: a white T-shirt over his broad chest and a pair of black boxers. Soaked hair clinging to the back of his neck and drying in flicks across his forehead.
Jesus, you want to pull him back over you and let him have his way.
You close the door over and spin, hands on your hips. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Me?” he croaks. “Did you hear what she just said?”
“You’ve known this kid for four years, Joel, you really can’t tell when she’s fucking with you? She’s my kid, keep up.”
“Just seemed an awfully –” he thumps his chest again, “– awfully specific thing to say.”
“She’s in a phase I think,” you reply, catching the pillow he tosses across. “She’s telling stories. Last week, her pre-K teacher congratulated me our supposed wedding. Asked to see pictures of the Mickey Mouse officiant.”
“Jesus,” he grumbles. “She really bought that?”
You mimic the breezy voice: “Sarah was very convincing.”
Joel scoffs. “I don’t know if I can take a lying phase and a copying phase at the same time. Every goddamn word I say, she’s gotta repeat it.”
“She idolizes you,” you straighten the sheets, “I think it’s endearing.”
“Hm. Just wait until it’s you.”
He wanders around the bed, pulls your back against his chest. His arms cross over your tummy, lips pressing into your shoulder where his shirt has slipped.
“How much harder would two be?” he mumbles into the bare skin.
“Two Sarahs?” You scoff.
Joel laughs. “Yeah, you’re right. I forget she runs on chaos and jellybeans.”
“Yup,” you turn in his arms, linking yours behind his neck, “And there ain’t no point in talking about it anyways, because I am not fucking pregnant.”
He rolls his forehead against yours, stealing bristly kisses. “Okay.”
“I’m not, Joel.”
“I believe you, baby.”
Sarah’s bedtime is a liberal eight, eight thirty on weekends. She likes to sit up, lodged between you and Joel on the couch, and help pick the movie you two will watch once she’s in bed.
Once – and only once – Joel tried to fool her by pretending to play her choice, then switching as soon as she went down.
The kid quizzed him on the movie the next morning. He failed. She’s never forgotten.
Tonight, though, Joel’s out. Some game that you know and care too little about sports to learn the name or importance of. He’s with some buddies at the local bar, probably nursing his second beer in as many hours, and counting down the minutes until he can come home to his girls.
Sarah snores soundly, slumped at your side as though butter wouldn’t melt. The flicker from the TV across her face, the gentle mumbling of the voices onscreen. Her hands limp in her lap, fingers idling in a pink snack bowl.
You admire her, stealing a piece of her popcorn. Teeth grinding down when you remember dishing it for her earlier, hearing her curious voice ask whether or not the baby likes popcorn more than jellybeans.
Nope, you sang, tossing a handful in your mouth as you passed her the bowl. Imaginary babies don’t eat popcorn.
She snorted (which unnerved you, because what the fuck is this kid finding so funny?), and followed you to the living room so close that you could feel her toes at your heels.
Some of the kids in her class have siblings. Some older, but mostly younger. It’s the only fucking explanation, the only thing that explains this sudden interest in the real estate of your uterus.
She’s going through a phase, you tell yourself, suckling on popcorn. But then – how many fucking phases do kids go through? Which phases did you go through?
Barney & Friends. That was a fucking phase. Refusing to leave the house without the hoodie your mom bought you from the Museum of Natural History, even in the height of summer. Ketchup and broccoli, your boyfriend at seventeen, frisbeeing your neighbor’s newspaper and aiming for his flowerpots.
Phase, phase, fucking phase.
Does she know something you don’t?
…No. You took a test just last week. Shut up. Stop letting the kid into your fucking head.
Joel’s keys jangle on the other side of the door, shunting into the lock with a sound which stills your brain.
You tilt your head over the back of the couch, your man’s beard tickling your nose as he kisses you. “Evening.”
“Missed you,” he whispers against your lips. He straightens and tugs the jacket from his shoulders. “She not in bed yet?”
“She fell asleep down here,” you reply. “I got too tired to carry her up.”
He caresses your forehead, big pillowy palm. “You feelin’ okay?”
“It’s been a long day,” you grumble.
Joel smiles. He flops down onto the couch beside you, reaching over to stroke Sarah’s head.
You roll, solid as a rock, curling into his side. “She keeps saying it, Joel. She keeps fucking saying it.”
His chest jumps, tectonic plates moving with a laugh. “You’ve met your match, honey. Produced a professional little shit.”
“One of the other moms from her class is pregnant,” you mumble. “That’s gotta be it, right? That’s where she’s getting it from?”
“Maybe,” Joel muses. His fingers link with yours. “Why don’t you take a test anyways? Settle it in your mind?”
It startles you awake, even if only enough to prove the fucking point.
“No, Joel!” you hiss, body jerking. “If I take a test, and it turns out negative – which it will – she wins! My four-year-old fooled me. No,” you pluck spilled popcorn from your lap, pinging it back into the bowl, “I know this kid. I gave birth to this kid. She is not fucking winning.”
“Alright, baby,” he coos, “it’s okay. I won’t let the four-year-old fool you.”
You glower. “Thanks, asshole.”
He chuckles. “She’d make the best big sister, though. She would,” he insists, when you huff back against his chest. “She’d love being the oldest. Get to be bossy, get to call the shots. Get to protect them, no matter what.”
Your voice feels so small, as inquisitive as your daughter’s when you blink up at him. “Were you protective over Tommy?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, he was annoying as all hell – and I told him so – but anyone else had anythin’ to say about him, and – well, they had me to deal with.”
“Big scary Joel Miller,” you whisper, yawning into his shirt. “I knew him once.”
“Mhm,” he rumbles, “You sure did.”
You look up again, blinking all doe-eyed and dreamy. Already half-asleep.
“He never scared me,” you whisper.
Joel smiles.
“Well, you scared the hell outta him.”
Saturday morning, you wake to an empty bed. No snoring man, no scribbling girl. Just you – a starfish on the mattress. Bathing in waves of late-morning sun, sheets for coral, body as heavy as though you really are at the bottom of the ocean.
Her giggles carry all the way upstairs. Sarah. They surf into the room on a sunbeam, sounds like bubbles which shatter and sprinkle over your aching body.
You smile into Joel’s pillow, breathing in the smell of him, and peel your eyes open.
It’s ten thirty. Definitely – you blink three times and rub at your eyes, just to make sure. Ten thirty, and something’s swirling behind your navel. Something that sharpens, sours, when you push yourself upright.
“Oh, shit,” you rasp, and throw yourself across the room.
You barely make it, collapsing in a heap at the toilet. Your stomach empties in seconds; three heavy, painful gags and your head is in the bowl, choking on last night’s dinner.
“Motherfucker,” you spit, gasping, “Oh, Jesus.”
You’re sick. You’re just sick. Sarah probably caught something from pre-K, passed it on without even knowing. And, hey – you feel better, now that that happened.
You’re just sick. Nothing else.
“Mornin’,” Joel calls, watching as you stagger into the kitchen.
Sarah mimics his drawl. “Mornin’, Mama.”
“Hi, Duckie.” You crumple into the chair beside her, shoulders hunched. The smell of burnt toast and grape juice twists up your nose, and you suck in a slow breath.
Joel sweeps a hand over your forehead. He tips your jaw up to face him. “You alright? Thought we heard running.”
Sarah rips a slice of toast in two. She stares at the fluffy insides, the jam dripping from the tear. The sight of it lifts the hairs on your skin, the gloopy mess splattering onto her plate.
“Just feel kinda…funny,” you slur, turning away.
“Funny? Funny how?”
“Funny how?” your daughter parrots.
You shrug. Every word, every inhale makes you feel even more nauseous. “Probably just ate something.”
“Heard that one before,” Joel drones, and you throw him a flat look.
Sarah licks the jam from her fingers. She holds her tiny hands up to her dad, snorts when he pretends to bite at them.
“Eat your breakfast, Duckie,” he says then – in his Dad voice. And in something softer, kinder: “Can I make you somethin’?”
You swat the idea away, but it’s already churning in your stomach again. “Just gotta – get over whatever it – is.”
The table falls silent. Joel and Sarah stare blankly at one another. When you turn to look at your daughter, she’s staring straight back. Smirking.
“Stop looking at me like that,” you clip, wincing again at the dribbling jam.
“Alright,” Joel utters, “I think you oughta take a test now.”
“That is not what this is,” you groan, petulantly pushing up from your chair.
He takes your hand, steadying you. “No? I was thinking about it, baby, and I don’t think we’ve been safe enough to be so sure.”
You dump your golden toast in the trash and turn, crossing your arms. Your shoulders lift. “We’re not being any less safe than we have been the last four years.”
“Safe,” Sarah says, and Joel holds a finger up.
“No,” he tells her. “No. Not that word. Go back to funny.”
She beams at him. “You’re funny, Daddy.”
He sighs, pacing over. “Look,” he lowers his plate into the sink, “I’ll take Duckie to the park. Let you rest up, give you a quiet house for the morning. But darlin’, if you’re not better by tonight, you’re takin’ a test.”
You grimace. “But she –”
“I know –” he grits his teeth, “– I know you don’t want her to be right. But I want you to be okay, more ‘n I want to prove my child wrong. Like it or not, you’re taking a damn test.”
Your eyes flit across to the kid swinging her legs in her chair, the splotch of jam down her Peppa Pig T-shirt. Your greatest accomplishment and your biggest challenge, wrapped up into a hundred-centimeter, jellybean-fueled monster.
Her cheeks lift, jam-covered and smug.
“Funny,” Sarah says, nodding.
The afternoon strings the sun high in the sky.
You’ve been home alone for the better part of an hour, busying yourself by cleaning to take your mind off the nausea tugging at your esophagus. Making and remaking beds, folding laundry until your fingers cramp.
Sarah’s room has never been tidier. Joel’s workshop has never seen so little dust. And you have never been more determined to prove your four-year-old wrong.
You’re lingering in the bathroom, the window gaping. Sucking in breath after breath of fresh air – which only serves to tickle the acid burning its way up your throat, entice it further.
You’re emptying the cabinets, reorganizing them into some senseless order. Playing Tetris with boxes of Band-Aids, slotting in tubes of toothpaste. You blindly reach behind your hip for the next box – a nearly empty thing which rattles when you lift it, jitters as though nervous.
You glance down.
“Fuck off,” you hiss, throwing it on the shelf beside some tampons.
It stares back at you, as blinding as the sun. The two display window examples, pregnant and not pregnant, like a wink peering out from the dull cabinet.
Your gums taste of bitter bile, rancid. Teeth furry and aching. Your entire body aches – though nothing quite so bad as the space below your ribs, still tender from all your retching.
Slowly, your hands slip down your front to cup your lower tummy. Rounder than before, suppler – bloated, even.
“’s from all the throwing up,” you tell nobody in particular. Maybe yourself. There’s a desperate edge to your voice, almost a plea.
But then – a plea to who? For what? There was nothing you loved more than carrying Sarah for nine months. Duck. Start saying duck. Baby Duck.
You were never on your own. She was right there. Someone to talk to, someone to complain to. Someone to weep to, in the quietest lulls of night.
Her language came to you as easily as your own. All her kicks and punches, her fucking acrobatics while you tried to sleep. It was love, in its most chaotic form.
And you loved her, the very moment you saw those two lines. The very moment you realized she’d been in there the whole time.
You realize now, squatted on your bathroom floor, that it feels the exact same. A warmth, radiating from your very core, if only you’d pay it enough attention to feel it.
Like there’s someone there. Right there.
“If you’re fucking with me,” you warn your stomach, reaching for the single test, “I will lose my shit.”
Love, in its most chaotic form bursts through your bedroom door no less than half an hour later.
“Hi, Mama!” Sarah sings, tearing through the room with her hands behind her back. Her knees bump against the side of your bed, the air about her summer-warm and pollen-sweet.
“Hi, little Duck,” you mumble, voice swollen. You wipe sleep from your eyes, asking, “How was the park?”
She answers with a wide grin on her face, whipping out a small, shabby bunch of flowers. Dandelions and daisies tangled around one another, loose petals scattering over your bedsheets.
“Oh, baby,” you push yourself up, ignoring the sickly weight in your stomach, “Are these for me?”
She nods. She dusts her hands free of grass when you take the bouquet. And then, as you smell them and hum with delight, she turns.
First, over to the dresser. She stares at her reflection, pokes at some of the makeup on the table. Then over to the window – where her breath fogs the glass. You hear the whack of Joel’s tailgate closing, and she tracks him into the house, before examining the windowsill.
You watch nervously as she drifts back over to the bed, a curious hop to her movements. Inspecting, like she knows there’s something waiting to be found. Someone.
“Did you have fun with Daddy?” you ask.
“Yep,” her small voice says, distant and distracted. She disappears into the dim bathroom.
You slump back down on the mattress, dropping the flowers in a clump on your bedside table. “I don’t even know when I fell asleep, baby girl,” you say through a yawn.
Sarah doesn’t reply.
“Duckie?”
“What’s this?”
You lift your head. “What’s wh…Oh, n-no, Duckie, wait –”
She flees past you, one fist raised and wielding the pregnancy test.
“Sarah! Jesus, fuck –”
You’re chasing after her before you have a chance to consider it – nausea be damned. She’s squealing something, roaring with laughter, blitzing out into the hallway. She swivels, ladders down the stairs backwards, leaps straight into the arms of –
“Christ, Sarah –”
Joel stumbles backwards with the force she throws at him. She’s safe in his arms by the time you reach the top of the stairs, waving the stupid stick around his head like it’s a magic wand.
“Daddy!” Sarah cries.
He glances up to you: hunched over the top step, panting, clutching your stomach. He pinches the test from her grasp. “What do we got here, baby duck?”
She kicks her feet. She has no fucking idea what they have, but she knows you didn’t want her near it – and if you know your kid, you know that’s all the catalyst she needed to fucking take it.
You slowly make your way down towards them, smirk growing the nearer you draw.
Joel glances down to the test. The creases by his eyes deepen. He hugs Sarah closer.
“Two...two means...pregnant, right?” he asks.
You sigh, nodding. “Mhm.”
His head lifts.
He breaks, the second he sees your expression. Eyes glassy, tears spilling onto your cheeks. The same smile you wore that June morning: sleep-deprived and shellshocked, a love pumping through your veins so strong that you thought you might burst with it.
Joel reaches for your hand, reels you in against his body.
“Shit,” he laughs, holding the test up.
Your shaking hands take it from him – though you already knew what it says. You were dreaming of it all when Sarah broke into your room.
Dreaming of linked hands and echoed giggles; of bunkbeds and matching surnames, of all four seats in the truck filled and all four chambers of your heart spoken for.
Dreaming of one on each hip, one in each hand. Dreaming of them tag teaming Joel, of the word kids slung with his southern twang. My kids, the kids, our kids. All ours.
Dreaming of two Sarahs, goddamn it. Because nothing ever completed your life as effortlessly as one Sarah, and – hell, she was born to follow in her dad’s footsteps and become the elder Miller sibling.
“Shit,” you agree, turning to sob into Joel’s chest.
“Duckie,” Joel says, voice hoarse and choked by tears, “You’re gonna be a big sister.”
She giggles, tracing the damp lines down your cheeks. As she reaches your jaw, the elation on her face slowly dwindles into something of a frown.
Your lips part to repeat it – a big sister, Duck – when her tiny voice steals the air from your lungs.
Just me up at 2am wondering how many times Joel replays that wedding hotel room night in his head 🤔
warnings: breeding kink, pregnancy, m masturbation, desperately horny joel
word count: ~600 words
i think he thinks about that entire night and wonders what the fuck even happened there. the way the world tilted ever so slightly the moment he pulled open his front door and saw her on his porch – sunlight twinkling from her earrings, satin draped over her breasts in pale waves; the shameless flirting under the cover of rosé wine and beer, string bulbs and rainbow disco lights.
i mean, one minute he’s waving his newspaper at her like a grumpy old man, counting down the seconds until she’s skipping back over to her own fucking porch – the next he’s caging her against the bed in her hotel room, thinking if he doesn’t fuck her here n now, he might tear the entire place apart.
between the wedding and three weeks later? yeah, he might think about it – just a little.
might think about her dress, the shape of her body beneath it. the way it fell from her hips – just slipped down over her curves and pooled at her feet like venus emerging from the ocean. might think about her naked body: how, until that night, he’d only ever wondered about it – stealing sideways glances over the fence at her little shorts and tight vest tops. but now…now, he knows what she looks like. he’s seen her undress for him.
and i bet he thinks about her soft gasp when he first pushed inside, after she finally caught her breath again; feeling the size of him inside her, how he knew she didn’t expect him to be so big and so fucking hard for her. how much he had to focus on not coming within five thrusts, she was so fucking tight.
bet he thinks about it in the shower, one hand against the tiled wall, the other jacking himself furiously. mouthing the words he whispered in her ear as their bodies rocked together: how good she is for him, how pretty she looks all full of his cock. bet he still hears the echo of her moans, the sweet little laughs lilting from her lips.
and when he finds out she’s pregnant? shit.
when he’s watching the evidence of what they did grow right before his eyes? her body blooming: stomach swelling, breasts growing, her cheeks plumping and her skin glowing? knows that he’s the one who changed her forever? knows that it’s his baby she’s growing?
sure. he probably thinks about that part a normal amount, too.
and i bet he thinks about how he shouldn’t be thinking about it. about her.
not when he’s sure she wouldn’t look at him ever again, if not for their parallel driveways and the parallel lines on that pregnancy test. not when he’s trying to act his fucking age, date someone actually appropriate for a forty-eight-year-old with backache and still two decades off retirement.
but it makes it worse – the fact he shouldn’t be doing it. shouldn’t be relieving the heavy weight between his legs in the morning with the memory of her lips closing around his fingers, playing on a reel behind his eyelids.
shouldn’t be staring into space while he’s driving, hearing her giggles once they’d finished; feeling her nails as she drew shapes on his sweat-sticky chest. shouldn’t be thinking about her wandering around with his baby inside of her; her body growing ‘n changing all ‘cause of what they did together.
he shouldn’t be. he shouldn’t he shouldn’t he shouldn’t but jesus, he is. you fucking know he is.
dear reader, joel has absolutely wrecked the tape, the number of times he’s replayed that night. the vhs player is smoking.
to @mrsmando - without whom this insane story would never have happened in the first place. i love you i love you i love you
thank you all so much for coming on this journey with me - it has been a blast. i hope you like where we turn out! love you guys always n forever x
pairing: neighbor!joel x fem!reader
summary: you're a mom. it's time to get your shit together.
warnings: bon jovi mention straight out the gate, labor/delivery [i have never given birth. those of you who have are nothing short of remarkable. please forgive if some of this is a little inaccurate or vague], use of pain medication during birth, description of pain and post-birth recovery, super emotional reader, unprotected piv, oral, alcohol consumption.
DISCLAIMER: this series covers some issues which i know may be sensitive and possibly triggering to some. warnings will always be as thorough as possible, but if there’s ever anything you feel i’ve missed, please let me know. feel free to drop by my inbox anytime.
word count: 12k
pt. i / series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🩵
It’s September twenty-third.
Well, by now, it’s probably the twenty-fourth. You’ve been a little distracted, rolling between the sheets with your next-door neighbor for the last couple hours.
The wedding’s still going strong downstairs. The same Bon Jovi song has played three times over. Tommy has called Joel to ask where he is so much that Joel’s phone is now switched off and shoved to the bottom of his bag.
You’re slouched on the toilet in a sliver of moonlight. A fistful of tissue, panties loose around your ankles. Rolling your forehead side to side along the cool tile, heartbeat hammering between your temples.
Joel Miller – Joel fucking Miller – is in your bed. Naked, sweating, cock probably still half-hard.
This morning, the very idea of the man was an eyeroll. Stood in your mirror, promising yourself that this time tomorrow, it’ll all be over with.
This time in a month, it’ll be a foggy memory.
This time in a year, it –
His voice is muffled through the bathroom door. “Did you fall in, or somethin’?”
You snort. The milky moon blurs across your vision when you pull yourself upright. You swipe between your legs and stand, flushing the toilet.
“I needed a fucking breather,” you tease, tiptoeing back across the room.
Joel’s stretched out; a worked arm draped along the headboard. Sun-kissed to the middle of his bicep, paler across his shoulder. One leg bare on the mattress, the other under the sheets. They only just cover his modesty – dark hair trailing beneath light silk just in time.
He’s so big. It’s like you never really noticed until now. He takes up half the bed, laying like this. And sure, you’re halfway to fucked, but – has he always been so handsome?
You flop down beside him with a sigh, curling up in the burrow of sheets at his side. Your eyes trail up his body – the sheen of sweat up his side, the dark, damp hair under his arm. All the parts of him you’ve never seen before, will never see again.
You gulp. Quit fucking staring.
He doesn’t notice, anyway. He’s rubbing circles into his temples, grumbling. “How many goddamn times are they gonna play It’s My Life?”
“…for Tommy and Gina…” you nudge him, “…who never backed down…”
Joel chuckles, pulling his hand down his beard. “Twenty bucks says he’s changing that to Maria.”
“Oh, for sure. I ain’t going back down to listen to it, though.”
He hums in agreement, reaching over for his beer. His Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks.
“You owe me, by the way. This is my room, remember? My fucking minibar.”
He pauses, the bottle against his bottom lip. His eyes linger south of your chin before he answers, “I’m paying for the damn room.”
“Then I want a drink from yours. Make it even.”
He clicks his teeth and drinks again. “It’s one beer. Call it an early birthday gift.”
You frown. “When the hell’s your birthday?”
“Tuesday.”
“Bullshit.”
“Serious. The twenty-sixth.”
You push yourself up onto your elbows; chest bare and on display. And it’s a strange feeling, how little you care. Twelve hours ago, you didn’t know how close to sit next to him at the ceremony. How many times you could accidentally bump knees or brush elbows and it not be weird.
But in the last two hours, he’s made you come more times than you can count. More times than anyone you’ve ever been with before – that’s for sure. And you’ve repaid the favor: the proof is still dribbling out of you. Still dripping between your legs, all pearlescent and warm. You’re soaked, swollen, still sore from the size of him.
It’s a fucking strange feeling, that you don’t mind at all.
“How old are you turning?” you ask.
Joel swallows. He settles the beer on his sternum, thumbing the corner of the label. Sucks in a deep breath and says, “Forty-eight.”
“Jesus,” you mutter, eyes wide.
He turns slowly, glaring at you. “Hilarious,” he drawls, bumping the bottle against your tummy.
You hiss at the sudden chill. Wiping cold droplets from your skin, you swipe it from his grasp.
Joel pushes himself from the bed with a quiet groan and pads across the room. His cock sways with each step, an arrowhead of thick hair at its base.
He doesn’t seem to mind, either.
You tip your chin back, taking a hefty swig.
The pulsing bass is heavier, guitar squeal sharper, when he cracks open the window. Cool air sweeps past the scent of sex and settles softly on your skin.
The mattress dips again as Joel settles back into bed. He pulls the sheet over himself, silk falling over the stubborn shape against his thigh.
“Well,” you pass him the bottle, “happy birthday, old man. Here’s to forty-eight.”
“Here’s to forty-eight,” Joel echoes, staring off into space, “and whatever the hell it has in store.”
1:29. 1:29. 1:30.
It’s blurring across your vision. The pain and the panic and the blinking of your fucking alarm clock.
Your stomach is still tensed in the aftermath of the contraction; an ache like the slow sway of the ocean, a wave rolling off into the distance. You’re hunched over the edge of the bed – knee bouncing, palms kneading your round belly.
“We’re okay,” you whisper, blowing into the still night. “We’re fine. Maybe it isn’t labor, right? Maybe it’s just those…Braxton…shit…Hicks.”
The cicadas laugh as your uterus swings again.
Another kick of pain; a bolt that winds you, piercing from your stomach down between your legs. So slow it feels fucking personal.
Your back curls, nails digging into the mattress. You grit your teeth until it passes, then push yourself to your feet, reaching for your phone.
You think of Joel: the flecks of gold in his eyes, the rough surface of his palms. The fresh, woodsy scent woven into every thread on his shirt, seeping from every pore on his skin.
The way he’d pull you under his arm and walk you to his truck. Play more Eagles or whatever shit he has to take your mind off the pain – tell you he knows, he knows as you whimper in agony. The way he’d hold your thigh the entire ride, loosening it only to weave his fingers through yours.
He’s in Houston, though. He’s something like three hours away. There’s nothing he could do, even if you did call – even if he did pick up. Even if he got in his truck right this second.
Shit. Shit fuck shit. How are you in labor right now, on this fucking night? All your teasing, all your taunting the universe. You really think that’s gonna happen? You think your kid’s that much of an asshole?
Yeah. They’re half you.
You’re on your own. It’s nothing new; you’ve been on your own for most of your life. You drove yourself to college, worked your ass off, and sold your graduation guest tickets to your roommate. You found a job by yourself, moved back to Austin and turned it into home by yourself.
You haven’t needed anyone or anything, since you were eighteen.
But – oh, Jesus, fuck it. This was a two-man job from the start. Some things you figure you can let slide – and having a kid seems like a pretty decent excuse.
Fuck it.
You move, hunched and hobbling, to the bathroom door. Slumped against the wooden frame, you cup a hand between your legs.
Sure enough, your underwear is soaked. The fluid trickles down the seam of your thigh, warm and thin. It glistens in the moonlight when you lift your fingers.
“Shit,” you whisper. “Goddamn it, Duck.”
Body tingling and almost numb with pain, you scroll through your contacts to J. You stumble into the bathroom, wet fingers slipping around the sink. A weight begins to pull low between your hips.
Two rings and the tone cuts, his voice instantly spilling a cool comfort down your spine.
There’s no hello, no double checking that you haven’t accidentally dialed him in your sleep. Only that trademark drawl, that flat tone you’d swear sounded bored, if it weren’t for the haste with which Joel asks, “You okay?” the second he answers.
As if he were awake anyway, just waiting for your call.
“Yeah,” you choke, rubbing the nape of your neck. “I just called at one in the morning to…to say hi.”
He sighs, the crackle of breath echoed by the tinkle of wind chimes. The creak of wood as he settles into a chair on Vanessa’s parents’ porch. “Alright, smartass. What is it?”
“I’m…I’m in labor.”
“Mhm. That sure is funny, baby. Good one.”
You groan. “No, Joel, I swear – I swear, I just went into labor.”
He pauses. The chimes titter in the background. “You’re…You ain’t kidding me?”
The sharp peak of pain swipes the air clean from your lungs. The phone hits the sink with a clatter, drowning out your cry.
This kid is beating the ever-loving shit out of you. You’d be embarrassed if you had the energy to think about it.
“Baby?” Joel yells, loud enough that the sound loops around the bowl. His voice lifts to an octave you didn’t know it could reach. “Talk to me. Please, talk to me.”
Your fingers clamp around the phone. “I’m f-fine. It’s fine. I just gotta…gotta change my fuckin’ sheets, Joel, my waters broke while I was sleeping –”
“Oh, Christ,” he growls. The door squeals as he storms back into Vanessa’s family home. “The sh…Change the goddamn sheets? You gotta get to a hospital, darlin’!”
You laugh, head tipping back. “It’s fine,” you tell him. “Feels like the kid’s trying to kill me, but I can – shit, I can take ‘em.”
There’s the jangle of keys, the ruffle of a shirt being thrown over his head. “Yeah?” Joel says.“You can take childbirth, all on your own? Do me a favor and call a damn ambulance, baby.”
“An ambulance,” you repeat, laughing again.
“Yes, an ambulance. Call 9-1-1 right now. You want me to call ‘em? Let me go grab the landline –”
“Joel, do not call an ambulance –”
And if you thought you’d heard him at breaking point before – plucking your underwear from his lawn, dragging you around Home Depot, paling in your room with a pregnancy test in his hands – you know you have, now.
“You gotta get to a goddamn hospital now, baby!”
His voice trembles at its end, quivers like the pluck of a guitar string. A high-pitched echo, a nervous vibration.
Joel’s panicking.
It’s the second thing in less than five minutes that you never knew he could do.
“I can’t afford a f-fucking ambulance, Joel,” you yelp, sitting back on the edge of the bathtub.
“I will pay for it,” he pleads, “I’ll pay. Just – you gotta call them. You gotta…” He sighs again, breath wavering. “You’re in labor, and you’re alone. If anything happened to you, I –”
A hushed voice interrupts him. Follows him through the house, knotting her nightgown around her waist and twisting her dark tresses into a ponytail.
“She’s in labor,” Joel tells her. “I can’t stay. I’m going back for her.”
The porch door slams shut before Vanessa can reply, and Joel’s back outside again. Gravel crunching beneath his boots, crickets screaming in the background. “Still with me?” he asks.
“Still here,” you breathe, tracing your nails along your leg. “Duckie says hi, I guess.”
He hums. “Hi, Duckie. You little shit.”
You rock back and forth, eyes closed. Breathing between contractions, your head low between your shoulders. “How long will you be?”
The truck door creaks open. “I’m leaving right now. I’ll be…Fuck, I’ll be a couple hours, at least. I’m on my way, alright?”
Tears drip onto your bare thighs, the salt spilling into your mouth. “Joel,” you shake your head, “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Yes, you can,” he says. “Are you kidding? Got us this far ‘n now you want to bail? That ain’t you, baby. Come on, now.”
“I wanna bail,” you insist. You slump to the floor, head lolling over the rim of the bathtub. Weeping like a little kid. “I’m scared, Joel. I’m so scared.”
“I know you are. Lord knows I’m scared, too – scared as hell. But –” the engine roars to life, “– I can’t wait to finally meet this kid. Our kid. Can’t wait to hold ‘em. Can’t wait to see you become a mom, and me become a dad.”
“Mom and Dad,” you whisper, sniffling.
“Mom and Dad, right? Yeah. You can do this. I know you can.”
The bathroom blurs behind your tears. You close your eyes, replacing the pale night with warmer dawn. Replacing it with images of tiny hands and feet; missing front teeth and a love-worn teddy tucked safely into bed.
Joel’s voice is softer, kinder. Calmer, now that he’s closing the hundred and fifty miles between the two of you.
“Just – don’t let the kid give you any shit, alright?”
The fear boils into determination. Something more irritating than it is terrifying. You inhale, blowing a heavy, shuddered breath to the ceiling. “Whatever, Miller.”
“Attagirl,” he says. “That’s the spirit. Now, call a damn ambulance.”
With a scoff, you push yourself to your feet, waddling towards the foot of your bed. You sway back and forth, holding your bump and listening to the hum of Joel’s truck.
And then you hear it.
Three sharp raps, from downstairs.
You wander to the hallway, squinting in the dark. “Joel?”
“Hm?”
“Are you…?”
The sound grows louder the nearer you draw. Quick knuckles against your front door.
“Am I what, darlin’?”
You lower yourself down the stairs, fist tight around the rail.
It’s August again. Sun’s encore blazing through your kitchen windows, bleeding golden through your living room. Everything shining, everything new and untouched.
Knock knock knock.
Light satin, duck egg blue; string lights and a diamond-encrusted necklace. The bones of your wardrobe propped against your porch. A rattling toolbox hanging from his fist, a positive pregnancy test in yours.
The knocking halts when you flick the porch light on. She calls your name once, old voice quivering.
Your phone is still glued to your ear as you pull the door open. “Al…?”
She squints at you and lifts a hand to shield from the light. She’s still in her pajamas – green dressing gown loose and lifting in the breeze.
Her eyes drop to the tee draped over your bump, the silver stream of fluid down the inside of your thigh. As she opens her mouth to speak, your hand slams into the doorpost.
“Oh, fuck,” you groan, and Alice Brown steps straight over the threshold.
“Are you in labor? Oh, sweetie. Sit down, sit.”
She backs you towards the stairs. One bony, trembling hand around yours – squeezing as tight as you are. She rubs up and down your spine, shushing until the pain subsides.
You blink up at her glowing figure, haloed by the porch light outside. “How did you…?”
She hushes you with a finger in the air. “I’m up most nights. I heard you from the window. Have you called 9-1-1?”
You shake your head, beginning to cry again.
Alice just nods, dismissing your bullshit. “Where’s your overnight bag, sweetheart?”
You toss a thumb over your shoulder. “It’s up in the nursery. I can go grab it –”
She holds you still with a hand on your shoulder. “Stay.” Another curt nod, then, “Get your shoes, get yourself over to my car. Do you need pants? You need pants. My car, right now.”
“Alice, you really don’t have to –”
“Get in the car,” she insists, climbing past you. “I’m right behind you!”
You watch her figure dissolve into the dim upstairs, and lift the phone back to your ear. “Did you…hear all that?”
“Alice Brown,” Joel replies, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. “What’d I tell ya? That woman doesn’t miss a goddamn thing in this neighborhood.”
“Three centimeters,” the obstetrician says, covering your legs with the sheet. “Still a little ways to go.”
The suite is hushed and still. Walls an unoffending shade of oatmeal; decorated only with oak paneling and a framed painting of some lilies.
A nurse tilts the shades, averting the twinkling city lights in the distance. She turns and smiles – the same fucking smile everyone’s been giving you since you set foot in the place. Head tilted, brows arched.
Sympathy that you want to chew up and spit back out at their feet.
You force yourself to smile in return, and she floats back out to the bustling reception.
“Will he make it?” Alice asks. She’s still in her pajamas; the floral print goes well with the interior of the room. “The father, I mean. Joel.”
The obstetrician peels the gloves from her hands. She shrugs as she drops them into a wastebin. “I don’t see why not,” she says. “Things are moving a little quickly, but I don’t see you having your baby in the next couple hours.”
“You don’t know this kid like I do,” you groan, shifting in the bed.
She lifts the cardiotocograph reading, scanning the jagged lines. “You’re doing great,” she says. “I’ll be back in a little while. Just holler if you need anything.” She strolls off, letting the door sweep shut behind her.
Alice adjusts your pillow and squeezes your shoulder. She holds out a cup of water, guiding the straw to your lips. “He’ll be here,” she whispers.
You take a sip and settle back. “I don’t think I’m that lucky. I told him I hoped he’d get a flat on the ride there. This feels like karma.”
“Well, if it’s anyone’s karma –” she wiggles her fingers, “– it’s his. Going to Houston was ridiculous in the first place. Hell, you two not being together is ridiculous.”
You scoff, shaking your head. “Just because we’re having a kid doesn’t mean we should be together. You shouldn’t be with someone for the sake of a baby who won’t even know any different.”
“Right, right,” Alice agrees, turning away. “You should only be with someone if you love them.”
“Exactly. And me and Joel – we’re not in love.”
She murmurs to herself. She lowers into a chair by the window, crossing her arms. “I’m seventy-three,” she says. “I’m not a damn fool.”
Something twists awkwardly between your hips. You wince, clutching your bump.
Duckie’s heartbeat pulses through the room. Muffled little bubbles of noise, popping one after the other. Strong and steady as hell – a determined little thing, the doctor said.
Don’t I fucking know it, you thought.
You reach for the silicone mask and cup it over your mouth. The gas is cold and funny when you inhale, feeling it shoot straight for the back of your skull. It does little more than dull the spiking pain, but still – you tip your head back, eyes rolling closed.
You let yourself fade from the suite – its yellow lamplight and hushed chatter outside – to somewhere warmer. Somewhere brighter.
Birdsong high overhead, and the whispering leaves on the oak trees in your yard. The sweet breeze on your skin, soothing the sting of the sun. Prickling wood on your fingertips, the gentle strum of a guitar somewhere beyond the fence.
Peering between the slats, catching glimpses of him like watching a film reel. His head nodding, his foot tapping. The concentration tight on his face; the perfect pick and pluck of his fingers on each string.
Half-hoping that he’ll spot you, scold you for spying and storm back into his house. That he might bring it up later – And another thing, while he whips his newspaper from your grasp, ignoring your cackling.
Half-hoping that he won’t. That he’ll sit there at his back door, bottle of beer at his feet, playing to his audience of sparrows.
And you’ll stand here, wishing you could ask the name of each song he hums.
The contraction splits your daydream in two.
In two hours, you dilate almost three centimeters.
You pace back and forth across the suite, pausing only when your womb clenches like a fist. The contractions are lasting longer, swinging lower, and punching harder. They’re giving you less recovery time; less of a chance to get back on your feet.
It’s a fucking nightmare.
Joel’s still not here. Last you heard, he’d just hit Travis County. Twenty minutes, baby, I promise. That was half an hour ago.
It might be for the better that he hasn’t gotten here. You’ve warned Alice three times already that you might just beat the shit out of him, whenever he walks through that door.
And you know what, sweetheart? She chuckled. I bet you could beat the shit out of him, sore as you are.
“Fuck,” you cry out, collapsing onto the bed. You stretch out forward, head hanging between your shoulders, and gulp back more of the laughing gas. The ache barrels from your stomach to your hips, peaking in the very center.
Alice rubs circles into the small of your back. It’s not helping, but you let her do it anyways. Gives her something to tell the neighbors that isn’t damaging to your reputation.
“That’s it,” she coos. “A little longer, just a little…”
The door clicks open just as the tense band begins to loosen.
Your head is spinning. The mask slips from your fingers.
Alice’s hand pauses. “…a little longer…” she repeats, voice drifting. Her weight leaves your back, replaced by something heavier, stronger.
Safer.
Someone grounding, someone smelling of pine and sweet spice.
He sits on the bed at your back and curves around your body. Lips to your shoulder like the sun in your backyard. His beard scratches against your hot skin.
You blink your eyes open.
Joel’s watch face winks back at you. His hands are over yours – bigger, wider. His fists swallow yours whole. They turn, slipping beneath your palms, and your fingers lace together.
“Joel…” you breathe, face turning in to his neck.
“Hi, sweet girl,” he says, wiping sweat from your brow.
You fall limp against his chest. “Holy shit.”
He looks exhausted. Gray, almost translucent. Looks like he’s just driven a couple hundred miles, half asleep and wholly panicked.
But – he’s here. He made it.
The sight of him, the feel of him holding you upright, melts away any anger or resolve to fight back. For now, at least. Picking an argument can wait until there isn’t a human splitting you in two.
He’s here. You’re not doing this alone.
“Holy shit,” Joel repeats. “You okay?”
“How did you get here so –?”
“Ninety-five the entire way.”
You frown. “Only ninety-five?”
“Trunk’s a hunk a’ shit,” he admits. “Couldn’t break a hundred.”
Alice scoffs, somewhere across the room.
He cradles you, his lips to your forehead. “Where we at?” he asks, staring at the paper churning from the cardiotocograph.
“Five, almost s–shit – six centimeters.” You clamp down on his hands, your uterus winding again.
Joel holds the mask back to your lips and you suck another chemical breath in. “Six? Jesus,” he gapes at Alice, “ain’t that…ain’t that real fast? For – for your first?”
Your fingers are weak and shaky, resting on his knuckles. “Your kid has a sick sense of humor,” you mutter into the silicone.
“That ain’t from me,” he says. “That’s all you, maestro.”
You turn closer into his shirt with a groan. He’s solid as a rock, swaying you through it. He’s here.
Alice swipes her coat from a hook by the door. She shakes her head, pulling it over her shoulders. “Ninety-five, Joel? Sweet Lord.”
He rolls his eyes. His hand curves around your bump. “Had a little bit of an emergency, Alice,” he says, watching your face twist with pain.
“And what if you’d had an accident?”
“I didn’t, Alice.”
“You could’ve, goin’ that damn fast. You’re lucky you’re even here.”
Joel finally looks up. “It’s four in the mornin’,” he protests, like a teenager. “Lucky if I passed five cars.”
You give him a weak smile, lowering the mask. You won’t win, you mouth.
He presses his lips to your head. “’s too much fun,” he murmurs, and you snort.
“Oh!” Alice throws a hand up. “I’m glad you find it funny!” She buttons her coat and glares back at both of you, hands on her hips.
She’s a busybody – has been since before you even moved in. She showed up on your doorstep on your first night with a casserole in hand, and made sure to get a good look at your living room before she shuffled back to her own place.
Always watching, always listening.
You never thought you’d see the day when you’d actually be thankful for her snoopiness.
“Thank you, Alice,” you say, head tilting. “For getting me here, for holding my hand…Thank you.”
Her expression thaws, eyes gleaming. With a sniff, she composes herself – and then points to Joel. “You call me as soon as that baby arrives. I won’t sleep, Joel, until you call.”
“I’ll call,” he assures.
She looks back at you. Balls her crepe paper fists, gives them a hearty shake. “Good luck, Mom,” she says, and with one last glance, slips out of the room.
Joel turns back to you, an eyebrow raised. “Take it she was out tendin’ to her tulips again?”
“Yeah,” you snicker, “one in the morning, those fuckers had to be watered.”
He chuckles. “You feelin’ okay?”
“Better now,” you tell him.
“I’m so sorry, darlin’,” he says, shaking his head. “I should’ve been here. A goddamn idiot, headin’ off like that. So damn stupid.”
“Shh, you’re here now.” You wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes. “I just needed you to be here.”
He nods. “I’m here, whatever you need. Tell me what I can do.”
You take a deep breath. “I need…”
Joel straightens – bracing, ready to jump at your first request.
“…I need a fucking break, Joel. I’m so tired, and this fucking kid –”
“Alright,” he sighs, shifting from behind you. “You and your goddamn jokes.”
You smirk, looking over your shoulder. “You missed me.”
“Hm,” he fixes the neckline of your gown, “I missed you. I really did.”
Born at 07:43. It’s a girl.
It’s like being broken open. Like splitting at the seams; your old self falling from you like shards of fruit. Separating, rolling apart; making way for someone older, wiser. Someone with all of the answers in the palm of her hand.
Mom.
You finally get it. She turns to you, finally glances over her shoulder. And she’s no stranger – no one you haven’t known your entire life. I know you, you whisper, nail trailing her smile lines and the pimples along her jaw.
I see you every time I look in the mirror.
Duckie is pulled from your body with a scream like bloody murder – a scream which matches the whimper you let out in shock, if not in volume.
The kid can scream. Jesus Christ, she can scream. It pierces the dull room; deafens you for a couple seconds the first time you hear it.
You’ve never heard a sound so fucking beautiful.
She wails as they lift her from your body. All curled-up, wriggling in the midwife’s arms. She wails as they slot her beneath your chin, as they wipe the blood and amniotic fluid from her.
She wails until the moment her skin meets yours, and as though it’s all you’ve ever known, you begin shushing her cries. Your arms close around her body, rocking her until she settles.
Her tiny hand grabs for something, for someone, for –
You.
Her mom.
“Joel,” you gasp, watching her tiny, pruned fingers clasp tight around just one of yours. “She’s…she’s so small…”
He sniffs in reply, lifting his hand from your shoulder to wipe his face.
You turn to look up at him.
He looks as broken open as you feel. Eyes bloodshot and soaking, tears streaming into his thick beard. A sob in his throat which chokes and silences him, until he catches your eye and he can’t help but laugh with elation.
“Look at her,” he weeps, all torn up by the little girl in your arms. He presses his lips to your forehead in a crash of a kiss: wet, soaking wet on your skin.
You beam up at him when he pulls away. “We did it,” you whisper.
Joel shakes his head. He runs a thumb across the damp print left on your head. “You did it, honey,” he mutters. “I was nothin’ but a spectator.”
“You almost missed the game,” you quip, and he laughs again.
Your body throbs; nearly numb with pain, heavy with fatigue and emotion. But as long as she’s here, this tiny tornado of a girl, you don’t feel a thing.
Clenching and then unclenching her fist around your finger – so delicate compared to the punches she was throwing at your ribs just six hours ago. She’s worth every fucking second of it.
You finally fucking get it.
She fits so perfectly in the crook of your arm. It feels as though your body was made just to hold her – the very shape of you, designed especially for the very shape of her.
You wonder whether it was the same for your mom. Whether you came along and made her feel whole, for the first time in her life.
Duckie’s eyes open – all glossy and brand new, blinking up at the both of you like she needed no introduction. She already knows you, from the inside out. Her dad’s graying beard, the threads of silver around his temples. Her mom’s tear-stained cheeks, eyes red and bleary with sleeplessness and pure love.
You’re Mom, you’re Dad.
It’s all she’s ever known.
The pillow sighs as you lean back into it. The doctor begins repairing the damage done between your legs; threading and knitting your body back together.
You’re caught between a state of bliss and shock. Your brain is doing much the same work to itself as the woman between your knees is. Patching over all the bloody parts: the screams which tore your skin, the pain which cracked your teeth.
None of it holds a candle to the weight of her in your arms. No matter how tired you are, you can’t take your eyes off her. Her puffy cheeks, the little creases between her brows. No matter how sore, you never want to let go of her.
Joel runs a finger down Duckie’s cheek. “Ain’t she the most beautiful thing in the world?”
“I love her,” you say, bubbling again. “I love her more than anything.”
An hour old, and she’s already a daddy’s girl.
Joel ambles back and forth at the foot of your bed in the recovery suite, bouncing Duck in his arms. He’s never looked so relaxed, so natural at something. He’s never seemed so content, so peaceful.
Everything he’s ever made with his hands – structures and framework and your goddamn closet – and yet this, this tiny accident, this baby girl you were so sure you’d dreamt up right up until an hour ago –
This is the thing he’s proudest of.
Morning lifts through the windows, all soft and vanilla. It floats around him, sunlight spilling across his skin and breathing life and color into him.
Sunlight – or his daughter. They’re the same thing, anyway.
You pull apart a slice of toast, watching. Just watching. Sweet strawberry jam on your tongue, the flavor of everything sharper, fresher. The colors brighter, more vivid.
The world makes more sense like this, you think. Painted in shades of honey and ochre; a room in a corner of the world where time slows to a halt. A soft lullaby from his lips, and the little coos from hers.
The ache of love and labor lingers deep inside you, and nothing has ever made more sense.
You suck the sticky sweet from your fingertips.
Joel looks up, toying with Duckie’s hand. “You want her back?” he asks, a dumb grin on his face.
You shake your head. “I like watching you.”
He scrunches his nose, nuzzling it against his daughter’s, and whispers, “I wasn’t gonna give you back, anyways.” He sways in the early light, staring down at her. “Jesus,” he mutters, swiping at his eyes again, “I didn’t…I didn’t know I could love somethin’ this much.”
“Me, either.”
He drifts over, lowering himself slowly onto the edge of the bed. He extends his elbow, still cradling the baby, and helps you pull yourself upright.
You hiss, a not-so-subtle sting between your legs.
“You, uh…you think of a name yet?” Joel asks.
“Not yet,” you reply, hooked onto his shoulder. Duck blows a bubble and you wipe it with your knuckle. “I thought we were sticking with Duckie?”
His cheeks swell. The sun kisses the edges of his beard. “I thought of one,” he says softly. “Maybe. It’s your call.”
You yawn into his shirt, the warmth of him calm and soothing. “Alright, Miller. Hit me.”
He looks down at the baby nestled in his safe hands. The smallest thing either of you have ever seen.
The name must roll around his head a few times, the way he tilts to-and-fro – looking at her from one angle, then the next. Deciding, when he pulls back, that she suits it from every direction. Like it was her name long before he or even you knew it.
You watch his lips shape the name before you hear it.
Sarah.
And for what feels like forever, you just stare at him. The syllables lingering in the air like glistening specks of dust in a sunbeam. Your eyes follow them down to your daughter, now sleeping peacefully with two hands around one of her dad’s thumbs.
“Sarah,” you repeat, remembering whose name it was, whose name it is – whose name it has always been. “Sarah Miller.”
Joel’s shoulders lift. “What do you think? She look worthy of bein’ a Sarah?”
The rustle of tissue paper. Blue and green and purple tearing between your fingers. The funny fuzz of pom poms as your hands rummaged through the bag. Her hand swimming towards you, an orange foam fish riding the waves between her fingers. Bubbly sounds erupting from her lips.
Your girlish giggle. Her silly grin. Hopscotch along the sidewalk; stopping to look for cars before she’d walk you across the street. How much do I love you, baby girl?
More than the whole world, Mama.
“I love it,” you breathe, tears running to the corners of your mouth. “Sarah fucking Miller.”
“Sarah fuckin’ Miller,” Joel echoes; two wet lines the same as yours, curving down his cheeks. He shifts her into the crook of his arm.
You’re impossibly close. Your chin rests on his shoulder, foreheads brushing when you lean in to each other. His breath is hot on your lips, closer and closer and closer until –
He tastes like salt, rich with emotion. Salt, and then sweet when your tongue meets his. He lifts his free hand to cup your cheek, and your fingers link around his wrist.
And you know you shouldn’t be doing it – know this isn’t your man to be kissing. But in this room, where no one else can see – where it’s just you, him, and all the best parts of yourselves shaped into someone better – he feels like yours.
Just for a moment.
Joel takes the first week of Sarah’s life off work.
He spends a good twenty minutes on the phone to the contractor, talking more about the kid than he does the job. Her eyelashes, her fingernails, the way her legs scrunch anytime he lifts her up.
He’s besotted with the entire thing. And he tells everybody so.
He moves in with you both, stays in your guestroom. It’s a week of no sleep, no peace, and a total of three showers between you. Wearing the same clothes covered in spit-up and drool until one of you has the time or energy to do laundry.
It’s hard. It’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. By your count, you’ve already cried three times to Joel – terrified you’re getting it all wrong.
But you’re doing it. Jesus God, you’re doing it.
You order takeout most nights. You can’t stand long enough to cook just yet, and you don’t trust Joel not to burn your fucking kitchen down – despite his protests. And it feels like, after everything your body’s given you, it deserves a greasy pizza and some chicken wings.
You rot on the couch together, watching shitty TV and arguing over reruns of Jeopardy! – until Sarah wakes and the whole thing begins again.
Joel loses the game of rock, paper, scissors tonight.
“Shh, baby girl. ‘s alright now, I gotcha,” he lulls, tucking her back in to her bassinet.
She fusses and stretches out; arms over her head, legs curled up. Her onesie is still a little too big – the socked feet all baggy, the sleeves rolled up her wrists.
He lingers for a moment as she drifts off, a hand stroking her tummy. Watching, always watching her. The rise and fall of her stomach, the puffs of breath from her nostrils, her lips still suckling away in her sleep.
“I swear I have a baby photo that looks just like her,” you say. “Same nose and everything.”
Joel clicks his teeth. “Got her looks from her mom. Lucky thing.”
“Low-hanging fruit,” you snort.
He drifts back over, sinking into the couch at your side. “Doin’ okay?” he asks, and you nod.
Every muscle in your body still feels like a ton weight. Your stomach is still swollen; there are still stitches between your legs. There are moments you can’t tell if you’re crying because of hormones, exhaustion, or joy.
Every time, it’s a combination of all three.
Life before feels so long ago – and it hasn’t even been a fortnight. But then you held her for the first time, and now – your arm misses the weight of her when she’s not in it. Your house feels eerily quiet when she’s not laughing, or whimpering, or screaming the fucking roof down.
You can feel your daughter growing up already, and she’s only ten days old.
On the mantelpiece, safe in a stippled gold frame, your mom beams down over her. The photo at least twenty years old, the memory even older. Laughing, the way she always was; nothing quite so funny as a joke frozen in time.
Joel prods you with his elbow. “She’d be proud of you, you know. Your mom.”
“Oh,” you scoff, “no, she’d be like, Holy shit. This kid totally kicked your ass.”
He chuckles. “Sure she did,” he shrugs, “she’s your kid.”
The TV babbles to itself across the room. In its glow, Joel meets your eye. A tiny, pearly fleck swimming in deep honey.
It’s familiar – each shade of bronze in his eyes, each thread of silver through his hair. Like you’ve mapped each and every line on his skin, collecting them like the sleepless hours between you.
Everything about him feels so normal. Burnt toast in the morning, a spoon clinking around a mug of coffee. The rustle of the newspaper, the sizzle of eggs in the pan, the baby snoring on your chest.
Everything – and yet nothing you’ve ever known.
“I miss her,” you whisper. “I miss my mom.”
His hand finds yours instantly. “I know, baby. I know you do.”
You slouch down, leaning on his shoulder, and close your eyes. Joel presses his lips to the crown of your head, his thumb looping around your knuckles.
Sarah gurgles in her sleep. She sighs – a satisfied little sound. Nothing has ever made more sense.
His voice rumbles against your skull. “Who sent the lilies?”
Your eyes flutter open. “Hm?”
Joel flicks his finger towards the window, towards a sprawl of speckled, cream flowers. “The lilies? They weren’t there this morning.”
“Oh…” You turn to look up at him, cringing.
He sees the flicker of her behind your eyes. Her lustrous curtain of hair, her perfect almond nails.
“Really?” Joel asks, mirroring your expression.
You nod, trying not to laugh. “From her and Kate. You were upstairs with Sarah when she came by. I offered to call you down, but – she just wanted to drop ‘em and go.”
“What did she…? Did she say anything?”
Your head shakes. “She just…she said congratulations, said she hoped we were okay. Then she got in her car and she left. I kinda figured things weren’t sunshine and roses, anyway. You haven’t fuckin’ seen her since Houston.”
He snorts, fingers massaging his eyes. “I was goin’ to tell you,” he mumbles into his palms, “I just…Honey, I don’t even know what day of the week it is right now. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” you mutter.
“Yes, I do,” he insists. His eyes flit over to Sarah, then back to you. “We haven’t really talked it through yet, me ‘n her. I called her a few days ago, we agreed it’s time. It – it’s past time. I shoulda called it months ago.”
“I guess,” you sigh. “Are you okay?”
Joel’s brow furrows. “’course I am. I got the most beautiful baby girl in the world,” and then, rolling his eyes, “you’re here.”
“Oh, fuck you,” you clip, batting his arm. “Vanessa could do way better, anyways.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
You squeeze his fingers, softly adding, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Joel.”
He stares down at your clasped hands. He looks tired, worn out. You figure it’s not just from the newborn. But he takes a deep breath, something the color of relief dawning on his skin, and looks you dead in the eye.
“I’m not.”
“Hey, Duckie – can you say, Happy birthday, Daddy?”
A vinyl wobbles on the turntable – some acoustic record from when Joel was a teenager. There’s wrapping paper still crumpled beneath the coffee table; four plates with more crumbs than cake left, dotted around the room.
Tommy leans in, a lopsided party hat on his head, and tickles Sarah’s chin.
She blinks at him, unamused, then scrunches her little nose and turns back into your chest.
He sighs, straightening. “She don’t like her uncle Tommy all that much,” he grumbles, sulking back over to the couch. Maria puts a consoling arm around his shoulder.
You rest your lips on Sarah’s head, breathing in her sweet scent. Swaying back and forth, you tease, “She don’t like anyone all that much, not unless they’re her daddy.”
Joel’s head lifts and he smiles, eyes glistening. He watches you and Sarah dance; laughs when you twirl her around and she tips her head back, flashing a gummy grin.
“She’ll come around to ya,” he tells Tommy, wandering over to your side. “We all learned to, eventually.”
Tommy scoffs. “Very funny, old man. Jesus.”
Joel stoops down to let Sarah run her small hands through his beard. He catches her fingertips between his lips and pretends to nibble on them.
She giggles, squirming in your arms. Her fingers find the sweeps of hair on his forehead and, taking a fistful, she tugs.
“Christ,” Joel hisses, pulling back.
“That was on you this time,” you chuckle, pointing a finger. “You know she does that, and you still fall for it.”
Maria glances down at her watch. “Is that the time?” she asks, turning to Tommy. “We should really turn in.”
“Oh – right, right.” Tommy tips the last of his beer into his mouth. “We’re takin’ Mom to brunch tomorrow. Better get some goddamn rest.”
Joel hums, still massaging his hairline. “Hey,” he whispers, elbowing you. “Maybe I should take her over. She’s getting sleepy – ain’t you, little Duck?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Tommy stands and holds a hand out. “Why don’t you let Maria and I take her? We’ll tuck her in, keep an eye on her. We weren’t half bad the other day, while y’all were at work. And if she’s stayin’ at Joel’s tonight anyway…”
You glance to Joel, who shrugs. Something shaped like Sure.
“As long as you don’t mind,” you reply, bouncing the baby slowly. “Let me go grab her things.”
Joel’s hand slips across the small of your back as you pass, making for the stairs. He lingers at the bottom, watching until you turn into the nursery with Sarah in the crook of your arm.
You set her down in her crib and gather some of her favorites: a yellow blanket, a duck comforter, a rattle shaped like an elephant. She watches contentedly as you shuffle back and forth, staring when you lean over the wooden rail.
“You know how much I love you?” you whisper, curling a finger inside her fist. She squeezes, and you say, “More than the whole world.”
She grabs at the chain dangling from your neck, the letter S catching the light. Instead, she lifts your finger to her mouth. Her nails scratch light as a feather across your skin. Her gums are tiny and soft around your knuckle.
Everything about her is tiny and soft. Her sweeping eyelashes, her plushy cheeks. Her round tummy, and the squeals she lets free as you dot kisses and blow raspberries all over it. No matter how much she’s grown in three months, she’s still so tiny.
She’ll always be the smallest, sweetest thing you’ve ever known. And she’s all yours.
“Jesus, kid,” you sniff, swiping at your tears. You slip your hands around her back and prop her on your hip. “Alright, let’s go. Quit making your mom cry.”
The bag over your shoulder, you carry her out of the room and into the dark hallway. It’s quiet downstairs; nothing but the crackle of the record player, the distant chink of dishes in the kitchen.
That – and hushed voices in the living room.
“Joel,” Tommy says, over and over again. He’s trying to cut in between his brother’s rambling. Joel – listen to me. Just listen, for one second –”
You linger on the bottom step, trying to split Joel’s voice from Tommy’s. Trying to pluck the words out, over Maria’s humming from the next room.
“…and it ain’t that simple, Tommy it’s –”
“What ain’t simple about it? You have a –” Tommy says it through his teeth, “– you have a kid together, Joel. You really think she’s gonna –”
Sarah grabs the charm around your neck and shakes suddenly, rattling the chain.
You close your hand around hers, losing your balance. “Shhhhit, Duckie, you –”
Joel’s eyes snap to your figure as you step down. He clears his throat, leaning away from Tommy. “Hey – hey, darlin’.”
“Hey,” you reply. Bright. Chipper. Unclenching your fist to let your daughter shake your necklace some more.
She squeals with delight when she spots Joel across the room.
“She ready to go?” he asks, slinging a quick – telling – look at Tommy.
You look between the brothers, browns quirking. They look as guilty as each other: scratching their beards, staring at the furniture instead of you. “Uhuh,” you reply, tongue against your teeth. “Everything…everything okay?”
Tommy slaps his thighs as he stands. “Everything’s great, sweetheart. Sure as shit. Joel – you, uh…you got a key on ya?”
“Oh, yep.” Joel reaches into his pocket. He unhooks a silver key from the chain and drops it into his brother’s open palm.
Tommy calls for Maria. He sidesteps around you, face flushed and smiling.
She floats through from the kitchen, drying her palms on her jeans. “Where’s my baby duck?” she sings, reaching for Sarah.
You pass her over and she melts into her aunt’s arms, curling up into a little pink lump on her chest. “She just had a feed, like, twenty minutes ago, so – she should go down pretty well. And there are more bottles in Joel’s fridge, if you need ‘em.”
Maria nods, wrapping Sarah’s blanket around her. She lifts the bag strap from your shoulder and hands it to Tommy. “I’ll text you as soon as she’s down. Come on, Duckie, let’s get you to bed.”
Tommy leans over and squeezes your arm, winking as he follows his wife. He calls goodnight to Joel, lifting a pointed finger over his head, and closes the door behind them.
Things could not have gone smoother.
It’s suspicious as shit.
You turn when you hear Joel shifting.
“C’mon,” he utters, a pile of plates in one hand. “I ain’t leavin’ you with this mess.” He heads through to the kitchen, broad figure swaying.
The plates spill into the sink, water trickling over them. Joel hums to himself as he gets to work with a sponge in hand.
You linger in the living room.
Things have been good lately – peaceful. You’re in as much of a routine as Sarah will allow: a steady pattern of dropping her off and picking her back up, patchwork family dinners, daytrips whenever both of you can make them.
Your body is healing, pulling itself back together. You don’t have to think about being Mom anymore – she walks in stride with you. The world is painted a new shade of normal – one where you can do anything with a baby on your hip, one where love becomes your first language.
One where you swallow back the ache in your heart, for better or for worse. The only piece of you still fractured. The only wound left open.
Joel’s birthday cards lie flat on the coffee table. You pluck them up one by one – his parents’, Tommy and Maria’s, yours – and Sarah’s.
A messy splotch of a handprint, bright yellow paint smeared across half the fucking card (she hasn’t quite mastered self-control yet). A googly eye plastered to the bird’s chest; orange crayon for the beak and legs.
Sure, you took charge for most of the project – but when he opened it and saw his daughter’s little masterpiece, you caught him swiping his knuckle at the corner of his eye. He snuggled into her, perched on his lap, and whispered, Thank you, little Duckie.
You prop them along your mantelpiece, dotted around your mom’s photo. When you step back, looking from son to brother to…a good friend, you could almost pretend.
Almost pretend that they belong here, on this mantelpiece. There is no yours and his. Just one of everything; nothing doubled nor halved.
Almost pretend that he won’t collect them as he leaves, break into another teary laugh at the sight of the duck painting, and then kiss your cheek goodnight. Promise to have your daughter back in time to go swimming tomorrow morning.
Almost.
“Hey,” Joel calls, “did you, uh – did you hear Tommy talkin’ about Jackson?”
You slip into the kitchen, side by side with him at the sink. “Uh, yeah,” you reply, lifting a towel. “Moose, pine trees. Yep.”
“It sounds beautiful. You think we should take a trip up there sometime? Could be Sarah’s first vacation.”
“You mean the three of us?”
He shrugs, scrubbing a bowl in the water. “Sure. I don’t think Duckie would let one of us stay behind, do you? She’d scream the damn airport down,” he chuckles, looking back to the twinkling bubbles.
You hum. “Maybe.”
“You don’t feel like it?”
“No, I do. I just – I don’t know. Maybe someday.”
“Okay,” Joel says, nodding. “Put a pin in it.”
He passes you a dripping plate and you drag the towel over it, circling the pattern until the suds are wiped clean. And another, and another.
It feels awkward. It feels stiff. There’s something hanging between you, heavy on both your shoulders. A weight you haven’t felt around Joel in over a year.
You turn to him as he stacks the last plate on the draining board. “Is that what you were talking to Tommy about?”
Joel pauses. “You heard that, huh?”
“Only the part about having a kid. It’s none of my business, I know, I just –”
“Actually,” he clears his throat, “it’s plenty your business.”
He leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. A deep breath, cheeks puffing as he exhales. His grip on the dish towel whitens his knuckles.
He’s…nervous. The same shade of gray he wore the night you went into labor.
He takes another unsteady breath.
“Joel?” you ask, head tilting. “Whatever it is, you can say it. I got whiskey, if that’ll make it easier. Probably tastes like shit, but…”
His expression cracks. His eyes twinkle, and he smiles. Only a little, but enough. Enough to let the words slip through.
“You know, that night at Tommy’s wedding was one of the best nights of my life.”
Your heartbeat thuds a bassline in your ears; the rush of your blood the squealing guitar. Skin tacky, moans caught between teeth. Laughter and lust tangling together in the air.
“Yeah?” you ask.
Joel nods. “Yeah. Lying there – talking, laughing, messin’ around. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in all my life. I could’ve stayed in that room with you forever.”
Your eyes start to sting. You look away.
“I thought I would regret it. I thought I should regret it. And I never did. But then,” he takes a deep breath, “the next day, I look out front, and my newspaper’s sittin’ on my lawn. And for two weeks straight, I kept checking – and there it was. I thought, Sure as shit, she regrets the whole thing. I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
You shake your head. “I wanted to see you again. I missed – I missed you. Missed pissin’ you off.”
He laughs. “I missed you pissin’ me off. Missed that annoying as hell thud on my porch.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to – you know,” you admit, and Joel nods.
“We got pretty good at avoidin’ each other,” he grumbles. “And then – with Vanessa, I thought I’d be doin’ you a favor. Letting you off light.”
“You…you took her number to do me a favor?”
“Naw,” Joel says. “I took her number ‘cause her brother in-law has a lumber company, and I had a closet to build. I was drunk, I was an idiot, and I brought it up to her at the wedding. By the time I thought it through, you ‘n I weren’t speakin’.”
You stare at him, jaw slack. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He shakes his head. He edges closer to you. Voice low, he says, “I shouldn’t’ve gone out on that first date with her. I shouldn’t’ve done any of it. I should’ve talked to you about what I was feeling.”
“Well, maybe we both should’ve,” you mutter, wringing your hands. “I wasn’t exactly the best at it, either.”
His head tips, considering. “Can I tell you now?”
You glance over to him. “Tell me what, Miller?”
“Tell you…tell you that I love you,” he whispers.
It steals the breath from your lungs. One clean swipe.
He nods to himself, then – certain of it – and says it again. “I do, darlin’. I love you.”
Your heart begins to hammer. Tears spill over onto your cheeks, dripping from your jaw.
“And, look –” Joel takes your wrists, “– I got no right to say any of that, I know. I put you through a hell of a lot, these last few months – and that kills me. But if you’ll let me, I swear to you – I’ll make it up to you. I’ll take care of you for the rest of my life.”
You look up. His cheeks are dappled, too – glistening with tears. “Joel…” you weep.
He cups your jaw. “Listen to me. What we’ve had, the last three months – I want it all the time. I want you, and I want Duck. I want the three of us under one roof. I want to sleep in the same bed as you.”
You breathe a shuddered laugh. Your hands fall over his wrists. Keep talking, you mouth, bottom lip trembling.
“I want to get married, or not,” Joel says. “I want to show up to Tommy and Maria’s anniversary party late, ‘cause Duck couldn’t pick which shoes she wanted to wear. I want to have more kids, take ‘em on vacation.”
“Wyoming?” you sniff.
“Wyoming,” he repeats. “I want…I want all of it, baby. You ‘n me. I want you ‘n me, more than anything in the world. And if I’m too late, then you can tell me. Tell me, and I swear on my life I will never mention it again.”
Your hands curve over his. His strong knuckles, worked and weathered and worn by his years. Down to his wrists – the tatty strap on his ages-old watch, the dark hair peppered along his arms.
“I love you so much, baby. So much that it drives me insane. You drive me…fuckin’ insane.”
“Oh, fuck you,” you whisper, balling your fists against his chest.
Joel laughs, nose brushing against yours. “Yeah,” he sniffs, “I figured you’d say som’ like that.”
“I love you, too,” you mumble, linking your arms around his neck. “Shit, I love you.”
“Ain’t that a thing?” he says, and his lips are on yours.
It’s been a year. A year since the first time you felt him – lips soft as velvet, sweet with alcohol and something stronger. His tongue and yours, his teeth and yours. Every part of you clashing with every part of him.
And goddamn, you’ve missed it.
Joel follows you upstairs, pinning you to the wall by your bedroom door. White heat flooding through your veins, he kneels before you and pulls you onto his tongue.
He’s hungry.
He laps at you as though you’ll be gone in the morning. As though he won’t wake up tangled in you, breathing in your scent, lips on your skin.
Dusk seeps in at the edges of your vision; daylight draining from the sky. It’s dark, too dark to see him clearly, but you feel him fucking everywhere.
His beard grazes the inside of your thigh. He kisses where he scratches your skin. He holds your hips steady, tongue dipping in and out.
“You know how fuckin’ sweet you taste?” he growls, slipping inside again.
He looks so good between your legs. Like he was made for it – made for you. All yours, in ways you never really understood until now.
He brings you to the edge with his tongue flat against your clit. Holding your hips firm against his mouth, groaning with you as you fall.
You come with a broken moan. Hips stutter to a halt, legs fall wide open. The warmth in your belly spills over and rushes to every corner of your body.
Joel moans, tongue still lapping as your cunt pulses all over him. “Good fuckin’ girl,” he slurs, watching you come undone.
He stands, a chaste kiss to your lips, and then parts them with his tongue. “Taste good?” he mumbles, kissing you gently.
Yeah, you think, moaning against him, it tastes fucking good.
He spreads you out on your mattress and kisses what feels like every square inch of your body. You giggle at the feeling of his lips behind your ear; moan when they close around your nipple.
Your back arches; little lightning bolts as he pulls the buds to a peak. Your fingers knot through his hair; hissing at the meeting of pain and pleasure between Joel’s lips.
“I love you,” you whisper, when he settles between your legs. You don’t know that you’ve felt something so true in all your life.
He smiles. Your fingers trace the lines at his eyes.
“Come here,” he says, and pulls your hips to meet his.
You curve a hand around his neck, glancing down at your open legs. “Looks a little different to the last time you saw her.”
Joel shakes his head, licking his lips. “Beautiful, baby. She looks so goddamn beautiful.”
Each movement is careful, deliberate. He notches his tip at your hole and pauses until you’re looking at him again.
And then he pushes in.
He slips an arm under your head; the other holding your thigh on his waist. He kisses you as you stretch around him. He still tastes like salt and slick.
You gasp, teeth gritting around a hiss. “Fuck,” you whimper, turning in to his chest.
“Easy, easy,” Joel coos, voice rumbling against your temple. “Catch your breath. Doin’ so good.”
“It’s not sore,” you tell him, nodding for him to move again. “It’s…it’s just…different.”
“Tighter,” he groans, eyes on your cunt as it draws his cock in.
You agree, “Tighter.”
He catches you in another kiss, his tongue slipping between your lips. “Feel so good, sweet girl. Breathe. ‘m right here.”
It’s never felt like this before. This gentle, this tender.
You have never felt like this before. Broken open, stitched back together. Your heart split into two – whole again each time his body meets yours.
Joel catches your moans on his tongue. He steadies his pace; rocking into you over and over. Laughing against your lips; your fingers intertwined with his.
“Feel good?” he pants.
Your head rolls back. “Mhm.”
“Take it, baby. Such a tight little thing.”
“Joel,” you cry, “I’m close.”
His teeth nip at your neck. “Shit,” his hips jump, “attagirl. Just like that.” He thrusts into you harder, bleeding the color from your vision.
You pull his lips to yours, foreheads tacky. Joel’s eyes gloss over.
I love you, he breathes.
And the world whitens.
He pulls you against his chest when you come back around. Shifts up the headboard, skin all sticky and warm. He kisses your temples, kisses your shoulders, kisses your knuckles.
You melt into his grasp, turning to look up at him. You run your fingers over his lips, through his damp hair. Just staring. Drinking him all in.
“You were right next door, the entire time,” you whisper.
He runs a thumb across your cheek. “Yep.”
“Do you think we wasted too much time?”
Joel’s lip turns. “Nah,” he says. “We found our way.”
“Needed a little help, though.”
He scoffs, tongue between his teeth. “I’m sure she’ll hold it against us forever.”
You think of that evening in August. The last bow of the sun before your world changed forever. Of deals struck and promises made. Of satin on your fingertips – newspaper ink and duck egg silk.
You think of that photograph on your mantelpiece. Bright eyes watching every second of it. A smile on her face the entire time.
You laugh to yourself. Joel looks down and kisses your swollen cheek.
“We should go,” he taps your thigh, “got a little duck who’ll be wonderin’ where her mama and daddy are.”
The church tower rings out twice as the truck purrs between graves.
Joel pulls up under the shade of a sycamore, tires rolling to a halt. Sarah kicks her feet, her heels thudding against her car seat.
“Mama,” she presses a sticky finger to the back window, “flowers.”
“Yeah, baby,” you call over your shoulder, hugging your own graveside gift a little tighter in your arms. “Lots of ‘em, huh?”
“Yeah,” your daughter quietly considers, then kicks her seat again.
Joel waits patiently for you to give him the go ahead. He slips a hand around your knee, looking ahead at the rows of headstones. So patient, so gentle.
Your chest swells, a deep breath filling your lungs, and you nod. “Alright.”
“Sure?” he asks. “Take as long as you want, darlin’.”
But if you wait any longer, you’ll never leave. The paper wrap crinkles in your arms. “You take Duck,” you reply, “I’ll take…”
Joel lifts your hand, placing a soft kiss between your knuckles. “You got it. We’ll walk on.”
He leaves you in the truck to collect yourself. He unbuckles Sarah and sets her loose, following her across the grass with his hands in his pockets.
Her light-up sneakers flash as she sprints; head tossed back, toothless smile pointed to the sun. She turns back to her dad, her little hand fitting perfectly into his.
Made for each other.
You hook your fingers around the handle and leave the truck.
Their grave is a short walk down a grassy slope, sheltered by another towering tree. Its leaves flutter down around you as you near the stone; stray petals which catch in the breeze and lead the way.
You kneel down, the grass dry and prickly through your jeans. “Hi, Mom,” you whisper, sweeping some dust from the base of the grave. “Hi, Dad.”
Your grandma picked this spot. She’s long gone – laid to rest elsewhere with a grandfather you never met – so you try to visit as often as you can. Freshen the flowers, brighten up the stone.
It fucking sucks, but someone’s gotta do it.
You peel the brown paper from the bouquet, exposing the soft colors Sarah picked back in the florist. They fit perfectly on the stone, right beneath the words Devoted parents.
Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, a feeling that wraps itself around your throat and steals any other words – until a flash of pink catches your attention.
“Duckie,” Joel calls, following her between graves. “Hey. This is a cem…Hey, Duck, listen – this is a cemetery, we gotta be – Sarah!”
You stifle a laugh, watching him jog after the hoodie tied around her waist. He swipes for her hand and she dodges him, ducking between graves faster than his mid-fifties joints can turn him.
There’s no one else here – it’s only you. And it’s a quiet enough place as it is, so – you let her laugh. Let him chase her, and let her sneakers light the place in pink. What else is there to do?
“Sorry it’s been a little while,” you tell your parents, eyes still on your man.
He’s kneeling now, Sarah on his thigh, in front of a tall, cross-shaped stone. They’re pointing at the words on the stone, her inquisitive eyes studying each one.
“I know I said I’d come visit for Dad’s birthday, but I guess things got busy – what with the move and all. We’re still living out of boxes. But the girls’ rooms are almost done – we just gotta paint ‘em.”
You look back down to the stone. Your mom’s name carved deep into spotted marble, your dad’s underneath. One awful date to tie them both together.
Dad probably heard Duck’s first squeal and turned away; gone back to whatever boring activity he might get up to in the afterlife. But your mom, you know for certain, is sat with her chin on the heel of her palm. Watching her mini-me trace the shapes of words, squirming when Joel presses his lips to her temple and whispers hints to her.
She’s probably smiling, making some comment about how big Sarah’s getting. How smart she is, how funny. How she must keep you and Joel on your toes – and goddamn, she’s right.
“Joel’s been working on the kitchen,” you continue. “I left my phone in the truck, but you should see it, Mom. He got these marble countertops, these little brushed-gold handles. He wrote out names on the wall before he tiled it, so whoever remodels after we’re gone will find that. The four of us.”
“M-meh-mem-orr-mem-or-ree?” Sarah tilts her head.
Joel nods. “Memory, yeah. Good job, Duck.”
“Duckie’s good,” you tell your mom. “She’s top of her class in – well, everything. Really wiping the floor with all the other first-graders. She’d have been your favorite – I know that much. And you’d have been hers.
“She’s gonna be some kind of lawyer, we think. Social justice and all that. She likes to be a woman of the people. Always talkin’ back to Joel – she hardly cuts him any slack, these days,” you laugh.
“He’s good, too – Joel. Working hard, as usual. Tommy and Marie visited last week – they brought Buckley, and now Duck won’t stop goin’ on about us getting a dog.”
You chance a glance over the stone, making sure the pair are out of earshot when you add, “Don’t tell her, but we called the pound last night. We’re heading there tomorrow while she’s at school to pick one out for her birthday. Joel’s giddier than I think Sarah’s gonna be.”
Joel’s carrying Duck now, wandering down a wobbly row of graves.
She halts him by pointing to one. “N-eh-v-eh-never…fff-or-g-for–”
He stares at her, a grin breaking across his lips. “Sound it out, that’s it. ‘s a big word, baby girl. You got it.”
The world seems to blur around them. The birds sing, a light melody from overhead. The green trees sway across the blue of the sky; the straight soar of cars on the highway. It all fades into the background, behind the two of them – wandering from shade into brilliant sun.
Your family. Your man, your blood – and everything in between. The little girl who brought it all together in the end – leading her dad by hand over knolls and broken stone, chasing butterflies, and asking what eh-teh-err-nal means.
“Means forever,” Joel says, kneeling beside her. “’s how long I’m gonna love you for.”
“And Nel?”
“And Nel.”
“And Mama?”
“And Mama.”
Sarah runs her hands through his beard, swaying side to side. “But me the most,” she concludes, nodding.
Joel hms, biting back a laugh. He lifts his chin, asks the little girl whether or not he’s going gray.
She has the same ridiculous laugh you do. The same snort you used to find so embarrassing, until you heard it come from her.
Just watching them stokes the already burning fire in your ribcage – the warmth flooding around your heart. He’s so good at it – being a dad.
Was he ever anything else, before he was a father? You can’t remember a time you didn’t wake up next to him, wrapped up in his arms, or with one of his kids burrowed between your bodies. It all feels so long ago, now.
He wanted to do everything. He’d lie with you between his legs, holding your half-sleeping form upright while you fed her. He’d race home after work specially to bathe her. He picked up any and every single duck-themed thing that he came across.
And what were you? Mom felt like such a fucking longshot. So out of your reach that you couldn’t understand the meaning of the word.
But there are days when she says it – Sarah, looking up at you with Joel’s twinkling eyes and a smirk which matches yours – and it’s like you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear it. Like you’ve been waiting your whole life for her.
Well. Her, and her little sister.
“And, uh – another thing,” you say, reaching for the plastic handle of a car seat. “I brought somebody for you to meet.”
A clumsy fist shoots up to shake a speckled dinosaur toy – the brown spheres of its eyes catching the sunlight. She squeals with delight when you unbuckle her, kicks her legs the same way her sister always did.
“She’s a little nervous, ain’t you, Nel?” you whisper, laughing at her gummy smile and tiny, socked feet. “She spit up on herself on the way here, but – I think you’re gonna love her.”
You perch the baby on your thigh, same as Joel did with Sarah, and she wraps her fingers around one of yours. You wiggle it – waving to your mom’s name, to the petals gently fluttering in the breeze.
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