Short Summary -> It all began when you accepted a new job in Austin, Texas, deciding to leave your childhood home in Boston. While in the process of moving in you are introduced to your new neighbours, Joel Miller and his daughter Sarah. Overtime your relationship with the Miller family grew stronger and when shit hits the fan and it's a matter of life and death, Joel doesn't leave without you. The shocking events on September 26th, 2003 forever change you and everything you once thought you knew about the world.
This is written in multiple different POV throughout the story but for majority of the chapters it will be told through the POV of the main female character Violet Archer (if you are reading this rn, I’m currently re writing with this new character so it might be a bit confusing between the chapters) . Some plot twist happens and it it steers away from The Last of Us main storyline. While some ideas might be taken from the game/show. Most of it will be original content.
Is available to read on Wattpad/AO3 as well! Account is the same: Sassconvict
This is my first fan fic so let me know what you think! Enjoy!!!
Word count (so far)-> 22,373
Warnings-> Swearing, family member death, mention of drunk driver, car crash, knives, blood, gunshot/death, alcohol, kissing, 18+ (minors DNI) smut, oral (f. receiving), fingering, grinding/dry humping, crying, mention of family members death, unprotected sex, handjob, gunshot wound, drugs and alcohol use
In the process of going over and re writing my story right now. I hated writing in readers POV so I changed it to have a main female character. I’m only on chapter 3, new chapter will come once I’m doing going through all 12 chapters 😄
Ya’ll I’ve been lacking so hard on writing. I took a break for the summer, I will be putting out a new chapter of It’s always been you this week! And possibly a one shot if anyone has any requests😉
Summary: A kick in the dick is a strange way to get a man’s attention, but Coach Miller doesn’t mind at all.
Warnings: 18+. Protected p-in-v. Oral (m!&f!receiving). Blunt testicular trauma turned semi-sweet meet cute. Light bondage vis-à-vis coach’s whistle. Soft dom!Joel. Overstimulation. Age gap. Size kink. Some discomfort during sex. Brief mentions of drug use, vomiting, & SA.
Note: Technically not necessary to understanding the plot, but lyrics/references to John Mellencamp’s ‘Hurts So Good’ are featured throughout, so I’d recommend giving it a listen! :-)
Another note: Amy’s was my go-to when I lived in Austin for a summer, but I have no clue if that’s where the locals go lol
Word count: 17.3k
You woke Sunday morning with heatstroke, a hangover, and one very pissed off nine-year-old pinching your nose.
“GET UP!”
Your half-crusted eyes made as if to open, then failed. Shifting side to side in more of a grimace than a look, you squinted and spied your brother under a heavily lidded gaze and then caught sight of a uniform.
A baseball uniform.
Sam’s widely-loved Little League team, the Fireflies.
With an emblazoned logo of a lightning bug staring you right in the face, you realized at once you were fucked. You heard the shrill of your mother’s voice calling your name downstairs and knew you were double fucked.
You were supposed to be the one driving your brother to his game that day. But, rather than choosing wisely last night, you’d decided to play a two-for-one trainwreck and clusterfuck and drink yourself stupid until well past four o’clock in the morning. Now you were suffering the consequences—and would be feeling them tenfold if you didn’t get your ass out of the house and into the car with your brother before your mom stomped her way upstairs.
Without another word, you snagged your phone, your wallet, your keys, your purse, and your brother’s small arm to drag him behind you out the back door and left.
The events of last night were still little more than a blur.
Even a half hour later, pulling into the packed parking lot of Wright Field with the full brunt of a Texas summer’s heat beating down on your shoulders, you remembered next to nothing. There were bits and pieces, no doubt—a quick pit stop at Mayor Garcia’s political rally at seven, a few beers at Djarin’s bar around nine, Tipsy Bison at…ten, maybe? You couldn’t be sure. Everything from the time you took a hit of Tess’s dab pen between bars and several more hefty swigs from Marlene’s flask in the street left the happenings of the full night fuzzy at best. A trace of spearmint on your tongue and some upbeat ‘80s tune replaying in fragments were all that remained.
You were in sweatpants you didn’t recognize. A black satin bodysuit you only vaguely remembered putting on and shoes you were half-certain were Tess’s. Glancing down at the strange ensemble while you put your truck in park, you were truly more lost than you’d felt in a long, long time. Your hangxiety was at an all-time high, too.
“Help me get the stuff,” Sam said, sliding out quick.
‘Stuff’ meaning the snacks it’d been his turn to pack for the team: pretzels, granola, muffins, and Goldfish, along with drinks and some over-the-top fresh fruit medley your mom had prepared that morning. Luckily, your brother had packed all the shit himself while you were passed out in your room. For that, you were grateful.
You tousled his hair while you watched him try and lug two full cases of Gatorade out of the bed of your truck. Sam made a face, casting a sidelong glance to the field to make sure none of his teammates could see him, then huffed as he dropped the cases to the ground at his feet.
“Okay, maybe—” He puffed his cheeks out again, reaching for a big YETI cooler that looked to be even heavier, “—maybe I should carry these over on my own.”
You stared at him, incredulous.
“You kiddin’? This is a ton of stuff, Sammy.”
Sam winced, whether from the weight of the cooler he was barely able to fit his arms around or the nickname you’d used, you weren’t sure. The hulking plastic cube pressed heavy on his chest as soon as he tried to slide it off the truck bed, and, swiftly, you secured your hands under the thing to help him lower it down to the ground.
It was heavy as shit. Your mom must’ve thrown in a thousand extra oranges while he wasn’t looking.
“Fuckin’ A,” you hissed.
“Language,” Sam chided.
The cooler hit the tarmac with a resounding thud.
“Sorry. Why, uh…why don’t you want my help, bub?” You were genuinely curious, and a tad hurt, that your brother seemed not to want you there—he always had before.
“‘Cause,” he said, kicking absentmindedly at a small patch of gravel, “Just don’t…need it right now, ‘s’all.”
“That’s a load of crap.”
“Is not!”
You rolled your eyes.
You reached for the big white cooler in spite of your brother and started to lift, when he tried yanking it away—‘I mean it, I can carry it myself!’—and you nudged him off. He nudged you back in more of a push, and you huffed sharply to back off, I got it, we’re gonna be late. He pushed you again, hard enough to cause the cooler to slip out from your fingers, and when the thing dropped again, this time on your toes, you let out a piercing yelp.
“Sammy!”
“Sorry!!”
You probably would’ve pushed back again—and likely started a slap war in the middle of the parking lot, like you and your brother had long been accustomed to doing—were it not for the sound of a voice cutting in, calling out to you both from a row of cars over:
“Y’all need some help?”
Motherfucker.
You didn’t even need to turn your head to know the owner of that voice. You shot Sam a lethal look.
“We’re good, David, thanks,” you called back.
The ‘thanks’ was nothing more than a courtesy for your brother. That creepy old cunt could eat shit and die.
You forced a smile as you watched the assistant coach of Sam’s team approach through two minivans nearby. He had his black athletic shorts pulled high above his belly button, Fireflies tee tucked in as neatly as any one man could hope to have it, and a baseball cap pulled snug atop his sparse, greasy, strawberry blond head of hair.
With just one grin from him in return, you knew he was still convinced he would get to fuck you at some point.
You wanted to vomit but had no food left in you to do it. You tasted spearmint in your mouth again, and that nameless tune you had stuck in your brain kept playing.
And, true to his irksome, meddling nature, Coach David swooped in and had both cases of Gatorade stacked on top of the cooler and the thing hauled up in his arms before you could stop him or speak a word in protest.
“Sam, help your big sis out and grab the waters, would ya?” He said, nodding to the truck bed with authority. Before he turned back around, he shot you a wink.
While Sam went crawling across the tailgate and tried wrangling the case of Aquafina into his arms, you felt a presence at your shoulder. Then a gaze searing shamelessly into your cleavage, which had been rendered far more exposed than normal in your bodysuit. You wiggled your top up a little, fighting back a scowl.
“Fun night?” David chuckled.
“The funnest,” you returned without humor.
Sam shouldered the weight of the water with some effort, letting out a sound that he was struggling.
“Lift with your legs, buddy,” David barked. Then, to you, “If you need help with anything else, just holler, alright?”
Another goddamn wink. What was it with middle-aged men and winking? Fortunately, he had the cooler and the drinks weighing him down, so he couldn’t stay for long. He did, however, make sure to bump your ass with his hip walking past, and afterward, you could’ve sworn you saw a smirk growing on his face with wretched pride. Then he strode off in the opposite direction, toward the field. Just when he was out of earshot from you both, Sam plopped down with the case of water. He frowned.
“That’s why I didn’t want your help,” he muttered.
“Huh?”
But you knew what he meant.
David was far from the first man who’d ever hit on you in front of your brother, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Sam despised it; almost as much as he hated every guy who even thought they had a shot, and made you plainly uncomfortable. Just as he was about to continue, —and as if to prove his point—a herd of preteen boys passed by. All of them waved, grins overtaking their smug, dumb, prepubescent faces as they yelled out:
“Hey, Sam!”
Then, of course, one brave soul waved to you and said:
“Hey, Sam’s sister!”
And the whole group snickered amongst themselves and slapped the brave soul’s shoulder in congratulations.
You already knew what Sam’s expression would be before you’d even turned around to face him again.
“Alright. You win. Tote your stuff over there, and I’ll just…wait in the truck,” you said, hands raised in surrender.
“Okay.”
Then Sam was gone, trotting after his teammates with the water bottles still sloshing around in his little arms. You watched him, almost forlorn, and felt a bit too much like your mother, overcome with a memory of some soft- rock song you still couldn’t name and the sense that your baby brother was growing up way too fast for your liking.
The scary thing was that someday he could turn out to be like David. His teammates. Or worse. Maybe grow up, tune into a few misogynistic, braindead alpha male podcasts, and become the same insufferable, woman-hating douche you both detested. The thought made you shudder to even consider, and you were fairly certain it read plain on your face as you slammed the tailgate shut and started back around toward the front of your truck.
Contemplating just how much you wanted to save your brother from that fate, you almost missed something huge through the open back window on your way.
Glistening in the sun a neon green: Sam’s bag.
“Shit,” you muttered to yourself. You reached inside.
You were certain he’d need it for the game, but you also knew if you set foot on that field you’d never hear the end of it from him. Gingerly, you hoisted the thing up, straining under what felt like a hundred pounds of old clothes, cleats, and a dozen other things, then started to pull it over your shoulder—considering your options.
The soles of Tess’s shoes, unfortunately, had little to no grip to do so. Stepping down from the truck’s running board with a bag in tow was tricky, and for a second, you slipped. You didn’t fall, but the bag’s strap did come to slide off your shoulder the second you pitched back, and the half-zipped tote was sent tumbling to the ground.
A dozen old baseballs went flying, bouncing, and rolling every which way across the hot concrete. You groaned.
Then you were on hands and knees in an instant, skittering across the cracked blacktop and fumbling for balls like a fucking idiot. You grabbed two, three, four, and— shit, you dropped half of them. You scrambled and crawled again. Deposited the balls one-by-one into Sam’s bag, knees scraping along pavement all the while, and gradually got to six or seven of them before you realized at least one more was missing from the batch.
You stuck your head under the red Jeep Wrangler beside you and heaved a sigh. You spotted the last baseball.
“C’mere, you little shit.”
You sank waist-deep beneath the car, stretching your arm toward the ball. You got about an inch away, straining desperately, before the back of your head hit something sharp and hard sticking out from the Jeep’s undercarriage, and you cried out loud, ‘O-OW! FUCK!’
Come on, baby, make it HURT— SO— GOOD!
You clawed at the ball with an exaggerated huff, grabbed the thing, and started crawling back, head throbbing.
Sometimes lo-o-o-o-ve don’t feel like it should.
Your brain was so steeped in pain, anger, and just a stabbing, generalized resentment for all ‘80s music and men—they were somehow to blame for this—that the second you spotted an all-too-familiar pair of dorky ass New Balance 608 Cross Trainers planted behind your feet, beside the car, you couldn’t help but groan again.
You knew those calf-high crew socks anywhere. Knew that David was just dying to crouch down any second now, ask you in the world’s most grating, flirtatious tone if you needed his help again. Then probably stare at your ass or tits another minute. You weren’t putting up with it.
So, with all the hostility you had reserved for him, the many men like him, and the headache that was just then taking shape at the base of your skull, you said, sharply:
“Hey, Coach, could you FUCK OFF?”
Sam’s good graces with the coaching staff be damned, you had to let this fucker know how you felt. Fair was fair when the man had literally been hitting on you since your freshman year in college and still hadn’t gotten the hint.
You crawled out from under the Jeep expecting a fight.
An appalled expression, grim look, sour gaze, anything.
What you weren’t expecting to find was a man who looked absolutely nothing like David—and everything like a shocked, scared, and very sexy man in skintight lycra.
“Fuck me,” you said under your breath.
You immediately wished you hadn’t.
Whether from embarrassment or arousal, you should not have said those words under any circumstances. Now the man was staring you down even harder, most likely shocked and embarrassed on your behalf. His brows were raised, eyes blinking in what looked like a haze; if you hadn’t known any better, you might think he was—
“Oh, hi! Hey…you.”
A little awkward and strange.
He was stupidly handsome, there was no denying that. Dazzling, even, with the force of a dozen different strong, prominent features in perfect harmony, dimpled cheeks, tan skin, and a sublime Tom Selleck mustache. But something in the way he was watching you now, like his gaze had never strayed across a woman’s form before in his life, put a pit of unease in your stomach. You found yourself staring back, watching him closely, wondering how in the hell you could feel both violently attracted and questioning, still, if this man might veritably kidnap you.
All a part of girlhood, really.
“Hi,” you replied anyway. Hoping he didn’t have a windowless van parked anywhere close by.
“Hey,” he said again. Again.
Chomping down on his gum and smiling.
Sexy, strange man was beaming at you now. Practically exuberant in the way his lips had been stretched to make a wide, happy grin while he stared and chewed away.
You couldn’t take this for much longer.
“Sorry, I thought you were—” you started.
“David?”
You paused to give him a quick once-over, as if searching for clues before you answered him. You found nothing.
“Yeah…David.”
Then you caught sight of a nametag. Miller.
Somehow, the man’s grin got even bigger—and with it, your raw discomfort. Why was he smirking like that?
Maybe you were paranoid. Maybe you were stupid. Maybe you had spent far too much time watching true crime shows to have any fair sense of impending danger, but this guy’s aura was downright intimidating and odd. When you saw him slip a hand in his far-too-tight gym shorts and fish around for something in his pocket, your heart clenched in your chest, and its rate nearly tripled.
“Funny findin’ these—” he said, pointing with his other hand. Then reaching toward your lower half, like he was ready to hook his fingers in the waistband of your pants.
Oh, hell no.
Your most-of-the-time reliable instincts kicked in, your gut tightened up, and, truly unable to think or stomach another man feeling entitled enough to touch you again, you found yourself lifting your most readily available limb to stave off the stranger’s advances as fast as possible.
Unfortunately for him, that limb was your leg.
Or your kneecap, rather, hitting him squarely in the balls.
You didn’t even bother to wait for a response. You knew damn well what a knee to the testicles would do to any man, so your fight turned to flight just as quick, and you took off sprinting across the parking lot. A strangled groan and a string of expletives were all you could hear at your rear, and frankly, you didn’t give a single fuck whether it hurt him or not—you needed to get away.
You ran as far as your legs would carry you, and then some. You ran past the cars, across the street, down the sidewalk, between two metal bins that nearly toppled as you passed, and all the way through the gate until you reached a tall, familiar building, gasping for air. In your panic, you’d slung Sam’s bag over your shoulder, but because it hadn’t been zipped, you lost about half of its contents while hauling ass toward the sports complex.
You’d beg for Sam’s forgiveness later. For now, you had only to try and steady your breaths and temper your nerves to the point of not appearing like a total fucking lunatic walking through the place right now. You paused in the middle of the breezeway to press a hand to your side—you hadn’t sprinted that fast in years, probably.
Families were still trickling into the stadium by turns, most too rushed or inattentive to give a shit who you were or what you were wearing. Others stared. It was the stern, disapproving looks you earned from several mothers that made you reconsider being there at all.
And then you saw Frank.
He and his husband were part of the ‘too rushed’ group, ushering their son ahead of them in a breakneck haste while they muttered and cursed to themselves that warm-ups started ten minutes ago, Bill, I told you not to stop for coffee! And Bill just grunted in reply, most likely.
You sidled up beside the latter, giving a quick greeting before joining them in their speedwalk to the fields. In all the sixteen years you’d been neighbors, you hadn’t seen a single event that Frank and Bill had arrived to on time.
“H— oh shit.” Bill didn’t bother to disguise his surprise when he ran a quick look up and down your person.
So it wasn’t just the soccer moms. You did look like shit.
“Mornin’, sunshine!” Frank chirped anyway, unfazed.
Their son, Nathan, cocked a brow but said nothing.
“Hey, Nate, would you mind giving this to Sam?” You held the backpack out to him as the four of you rounded a corner, about to part ways before the bleachers.
The kid nodded and took the bag. Then, shortly, he picked up his pace from a brisk walk to a jog the second he saw his team meeting up on the field. He broke off in less than a second, and you, Bill, and Frank were left to find seats in a sea of hot, metal benches. The taller of the pair was nudging your ribs before you’d even sat down.
“Dare I ask?” Frank whispered.
“I think somebody might’ve, like…tried to grope me in the parking lot,” you replied, slowly but at full volume.
That earned a couple more stares from the parents around you. Bill audibly sputtered and coughed.
The three of you had just sat down at a comfortable distance from first base when Frank turned to face you fully. His eyes were wide, all decorum momentarily lost as he leaned in to say, ‘No fuckin’ shit! Are you okay?!’
You nodded.
“No, yeah, I’m fi—”
“Who was it?”
That was Bill. You could already tell from the flare in his nostrils that some brutal, ruthless beating was being concocted in his mind for whoever had crossed you. You placed a hand over his, quickly, and shot reassuring looks between him and Frank before you continued.
“No, no, I mean, he didn’t actually— it was just…”
You had to cut yourself short, unsure of what the stranger had actually been trying to do before—
“I kneed him in the dick,” you finished bluntly.
That didn’t seem to appease either party. At all. If anything, it just caused their blood pressure to spike, as Frank’s hand flew up to his mouth, and Bill’s eyebrows leapt halfway up his face in visible horror and shock.
“Well who the— what man’s got the goddamn nerve to just—” The one with the sky-high brows seemed to struggle with his words, and right as he was about to reclaim them, a new presence nearby stopped him cold.
Or maybe he kept talking. You couldn’t tell. Truthfully, it was probably only you who’d gone deaf to the rest of what was said, because in that moment, you were met with a gruesome new discovery stumbling onto the field.
Walking with a limp from the dugout to the nearest umpire—practically bow-legged with how carefully he was treading to avoid disturbing his balls—was the guy.
Your guy.
Creepy guy.
Brand new coach of the Fireflies guy, by all appearances.
Suddenly, the man looked far less vile and menacing in his short-sleeved neon tee, shorts yanked up to his ribs in the fashion all Little League coaches were apt to do. His shoes—the same ones you’d mistaken for David’s—looked just as lame as before, but now you saw them connected to a poor old forty-something dude who volunteered to coach snot-nosed kids in his spare time.
He looked about as pitiful as could be, hobbling over to one man in a black-and-white striped shirt and shaking his hand. Then shaking the hand of another. Then exchanging some words, and obviously straining to maintain his composure as he spoke. Smiling kindly.
Trying to ignore the fact that his nuts were on fire.
You lifted a hand to cover your mouth.
Frank’s gaze followed yours.
“Is that—”
“Yeah.”
Shit.
The Fireflies lost 8-0.
The Morales City Catfish weren’t even that good of a team, and still, the boys had suffered a crushing defeat. Naturally, you saw uniform faces of dejection and gloom coming back up to you once the game had been called, and you could tell it would take a shit-ton of ice cream and encouragement to get the team over this funk.
Sam was so down he barely even acknowledged your presence, or the fact that you weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. He just sniffled, hung his head in abject shame, then accepted a quick side hug from you before turning away, crossing his arms, and trying his best to play it cool in front of the rest of his team.
“Uncle Frank, can you take us to Amy’s?” he called over your shoulder, where Frank and Bill were already consoling a similarly miserable Nathan behind you.
“Sure thing, sport,” Frank shot back. He knew just as well as you that two scoops of Rocky Road were likely the only things capable of cheering them up right now.
And, over the course of that long, ugly game, you’d come to learn that Frank also knew Joel Miller. Coach Joel.
Soft-spoken and sweet, salt-of-the-earth Joel Miller who was serving as the Fireflies’ head coach pro tempore while his best friend was taking time off to recover from gallbladder surgery. Frank and Bill most certainly didn’t disbelieve what you’d told them about your encounter with him, but on closer examination, it became clear to you all that there might’ve been a misunderstanding.
In other words, you’d probably jumped the gun on kneeing the poor guy in the dick. You felt like shit.
Particularly when you watched him walk off with David after the game to put equipment away, and you saw he was still struggling to walk without a conspicuous limp. You, Bill, and Frank had decided it would be best at least to talk things out with him, but now that the time was actually here, you were dreading going up to Coach Joel.
Luckily—or maybe unluckily—you didn’t have to.
You felt a light tap on your shoulder as the rest of your group was starting to leave. Sam and Nate were leading the way, and the adults in front of you were too busy talking to notice you’d been stopped. You turned around.
The first thing you saw was a stack of clothes.
You couldn’t bear to look up at the face.
“You dropped these.”
Right. Right. When you’d been flailing like a cat on a hot tin roof to get away from the man. Your cheeks warmed.
You accepted the clothes from Joel and were already starting to shake your head, when your voice clawed out of your throat, far too small and feeble for your liking:
“I am…so…so sorry, Coach.”
At last, you mustered the courage to meet his gaze. It was cool and indifferent as soon as you reached it.
“I thought— see, I-I didn’t know you were—” You sounded downright pathetic, stammering like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, “I kinda—”
Then a new voice cut in.
“C’mon, we’re leavin’.”
That was Sam.
Gaze hardened to that of an almost-stoic, he stared at Coach Joel and didn’t even bother to mask his grim look.
He probably thought Joel was trying to make a move.
If only he knew how fucking far from the truth that was.
You swallowed and smiled sweetly all the same. Glancing down at the clothes in your hands, then nodding to his bag, you reached over to hand your brother his stuff.
“Coach Joel just wanted to give back some of the junk I, uh…accidentally dropped when I was walkin’ in earlier, Sammy,” you said, trying your best to sound relaxed.
But Sam just turned to the side, wordlessly telling you to put the clothes in the bag for him, and you knew it was because he wanted to keep mean mugging Joel as much as he possibly could while your attention was diverted.
Nine-year-olds were weird like that. Sam might not have had the guts to tell his friends off, or even a familiar ‘authority figure’ like David, but Joel was fair game. He was basically as good as a stranger to him and wouldn’t even be with the team for more than a couple weeks. So he stared him down and continued to frown while you re-zipped his bag, hoping he wouldn’t say anything dumb.
“Why’re ya walkin’ around so weird, Coach?”
“Sam!”
Clearly, you’d hoped a little too soon.
Your cheeks were on fire now, glancing between your brother’s pinched, insolent expression and Joel’s neutral one. It was like the latter hadn’t even registered the jab.
“Sam, you can’t just ask tha—” you started off in a hurried whisper, only to have your speech cut short.
“Old age, buddy,” Joel returned swiftly, words laced with the faintest trace of humor, “Threw my back out this mornin’ chasin’ after somebody, and now it hurts.”
The coach’s eyes didn’t even try to refrain from flitting over to yours when he said ‘somebody.’ You coughed.
Sam smirked, oblivious.
“Yeah? Who?”
“Wish I knew.”
“How come they were runnin’?”
“That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to figure out.”
Offering nothing more than a noncommittal shrug and a scrunch of his nose, Joel re-shouldered his bag and started to lift the other stash of equipment he had tied up in a mesh tote. He blinked a little harder as he did.
Sam looked down at the tote.
“You, uh…need some help with that?” he asked. For the time being, at least, intrigue had supplanted mistrust.
“Nah, ‘s’okay. I got it.”
“Sa-a-am!”
You glanced over your shoulder and saw Nathan with his hands cupped over his mouth, standing by the gate with his parents. Even at a distance, you could see the curious looks on Bill and Frank’s faces. You tried your best to appease both with a nod—‘I’m good, don’t worry.’
Then, before you even realized what you were doing, you found yourself turning back to Sam and smiling. Again.
Sweet and pleading and strained as you’d ever been:
“Go on ahead, I’ll help Coach carry the stuff.”
You weren’t sure why that statement felt so momentous, but it did. You looked back at Joel for half a second to find his eyebrows raised, as if he’d interpreted your message the same, and quickly, you both tried to conceal whatever you were feeling on your faces.
It was hard.
Sam looked between the two of you, suspicions seeming to creep back in for a second. He gave Joel, in particular, a pointed look, and for a moment, you thought he might change his mind and insist on coming along with you.
Then he sucked in a quick breath and remembered ice cream awaited him with Nate and the rest of the guys. His attention span was decent enough for a kid his age, but even that had its limits—and food was too tempting.
‘Whatever’ appeared to be his last, decisive thought.
“Hope your back feels better, Coach,” he said quickly, before he started off across the pavement, “See ya!”
At length, Sam called something over his shoulder about meeting you there, but you could tell he was already too caught up in the prospect of hanging with his boys to really care. You watched him sprint down the breezeway full-speed, and, just as he made it to the gate, he turned:
“Hope ya find that dumb sonovabitch, Coach!”
He was smiling extra big as he said it.
You wanted to yell back and tell him to watch his language, like he would always do to you, but he was gone before you could even start to form the words.
The little shit.
Once he had left, you and Joel exchanged a look that lasted no more than a second, and neither of you smiled.
The coach tossed his mesh bag your way with all the concern he might have had for a sack of potatoes. A heavy set of metal gear clashed and clanged around in your arms, and for a second, you staggered backward.
“Locker room’s that way,” he muttered. Nodding toward the back of the sports facility but saying nothing else.
Joel didn’t wait for you to follow along. He just went.
Kindness wasn’t so much an expectation as it was a foolish hope—that Coach Joel might be willing to make amends, forgive and forget, maybe even grace you with one of his dimpled grins once all of it was said and done.
So far, he hadn’t even looked your way, much less given you the chance to apologize. He strode ahead, quickly, as soon as you’d started walking behind him, then he pressed his phone to his ear and hadn’t stopped yapping away while you trotted on his heels and tried to keep up. Through the bleachers, the breezeway, and a near-labyrinthine set of twists and turns to get to the locker rooms at the rear of the building, Joel was like a wall.
As handsome and fuckable as a wall could ever be, but one whose face you couldn’t even see to properly read for any emotion, because he refused to meet your gaze.
The closest thing you’d gotten to contact was him nodding toward a supply closet on your way in, cupping his palm over the bottom of his phone and going, ‘There.’
“For the…stuff?” you asked dumbly, lifting your bag.
Coach Joel barely gave a hum of acknowledgment before turning away and resuming his phone call with vigor. Then he pivoted again, put a hand on his hip like he meant business all of a sudden, and pretended to be extraordinarily invested in this other, better conversation.
Or maybe he wasn’t pretending.
You didn’t know the guy.
You stepped inside.
Dropped the bag.
And when you returned, Joel was gone, leaving you to a long, empty, dead-cold corridor with no sign whatsoever of where he went—or where you were meant to follow.
Asshole.
It struck you then that not a single, sane soul would bother to haunt these hallways once the weekend games were over. It was just you and Joel and…Joel and you with nothing between but the stale, fetid air and echoes bouncing back and forth across the concrete walls. More sounds followed as you started down the hall yourself.
The first corner you rounded led to a door—Emergency Exit Only. You turned to your left, spotted another closet. Spun on your heels and tried going the other direction, only to find that the adjoining passage was shrouded pitch black. All but one fluorescent bulb that way was turned off. You stared into the darkness, it stared back, and through the soft, flickering glow of that one lone panel, you finally saw the entrance to the locker room.
It looked ominous as all hell.
Already picturing some axe-wielding psycho in the depths of the shadows, you walked ahead, unfazed. Hoping silently, stupidly, someone would jump out and rock your shit before getting to Joel, you treaded as slow as you possibly could. When you pushed the door open and not one serial killer bothered to stop you, you sighed.
“Coach?” you called.
No answer.
For a second or two, you contemplated whether or not you were even allowed to do this, but you went inside. Slowly. Taking two hesitant steps across wet, white tile, craning your neck to make sure no one else was around. Stealing a look in the mirror and seeing yourself cowered—whether from fear or dread, you couldn’t be certain—and shit did you look extra dumb wearing those big, grey sweats that were about two ass shakes away from falling off your hips. You walked up to the mirror and frowned.
The reflection you saw was unsettling—who the fuck gave you these, anyway? What happened to your skirt?
These questions and at least a dozen more began to percolate between your ears with growing unease, memories rehashed and scrutinized into the tiniest, bite-sized pieces. No matter how hard you stared and tried to remember, full recollection was always out of reach.
Such was the state of your mind that you couldn’t believe your eyes when they first drifted to your left.
It seemed too serendipitous, too crazy and coincidental and plainly on the nose to be something from reality staring you straight in the face. You blinked in disbelief.
Sitting in an unzipped bag on the floor was the skirt.
Your skirt—a flimsy little mid-rise denim number that you’d snagged half off at Kohl’s last summer. In there.
Folded at the top of an old nylon tote labeled, ‘MILLER.’
For the second time that day, you would’ve lost your lunch all over the floor if you’d had the food to do it. Instead, you found yourself dropping to your knees and yanking the skirt toward you, eyes widened with shock. Fingering the blue fabric in your hands like the material might disintegrate between them, staring at the thing and almost wishing it’d dissolve so this wouldn’t be real.
So Joel—Coach Joel, with his big bruised balls and all—wouldn’t have your skirt in his bag and know something about the things you’d done last night that you did not.
With this bizarre turn, and the way your day was going, it should’ve come as no surprise when next you heard:
“What are you doing here?”
But, of course, the voice did catch you off guard.
It was like Coach Joel had a knack for finding you in the worst possible spots, at all times. You rose to your feet.
“Wh— what are these doing here?” you snapped anyway.
Joel didn’t flinch.
“Oh. You found it,” he returned, voice devoid of interest.
Like this was no great discovery. Like this was old news. You took a step closer to him, still holding the skirt out.
“Yeah. What the fuck was it doing in your bag?”
“I meant to give ‘em back earlier.”
“Wh—”
“Figured it wasn’t the most appropriate time for that, with your son standin’ right there between us an’ all.”
Your son?
“My son?”
“The kid.”
“That’s my brother,” you said, exasperation only rising, “Why did you even have this thing in the first place?!”
At that, Joel paused. His brows drew in, and his frown grew deeper. Like he wasn’t sure what to make of you.
“So you lied,” he said, finally.
“Lied?”
“‘Bout how drunk you were.”
“I never said—”
“No. You said plenty,” Joel spoke over you, stern. Then, eyes narrowing, “If you can’t remember it, I was right.”
You couldn’t tell whether it was the tendency to interrupt or simply the condescending glint in his eye that you despised, but, by turns, you could feel the remorse seep out from your bones and any desire to make amends dissipate right along with it. And then there was that mention of ‘it’—was he insinuating something had happened between you two while you were blacked out? You gripped your skirt tighter and eyed him just as hard.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” you spat.
The face across from yours was tough, but evidently not imperturbable. A shadow of some amorphous hurt passed behind his eyes, if only for half a second.
“You don’t…remember last night at all, do you?”
You didn’t.
You wished you did, but you didn’t, and it was just then beginning to irk the hell out of you that this man did. You couldn’t stand to be at such a disadvantage—or to have been at such a disadvantage if, in fact, he’d taken you home and done things you couldn’t even remember.
So, perhaps more cruel than you should’ve been, but feeling the need to reclaim some leverage, you said:
“Why? Were you, like, my pity fuck of the night and that’s why you’ve got my skirt? And tried groping me earlier?”
Coach Joel’s nostrils visibly flared; he stared even harder.
“No. No, I tried— those are my pants there, I was—” Growing agitated in the face of the accusation you’d just leveled against him and struggling to find the words to defend himself, Joel’s brows pinched tighter. His lips pursed, and he shook his head. You went on, undaunted.
“Yeah? So you normally fuck girls too drunk to even—”
“No.”
Joel’s response was immediate. Insistent. Voice carrying through the near-empty, wide and tiled room with all the force of a sonic boom. He hadn’t yelled at you, though.
And, before he could continue, you heard the very real scream of a door squeaking back on its hinges from the opposite end of the locker room. Heavy wood struck a doorstop no farther than ten or so yards away from you.
Joel coughed.
“Milleeerrrrr, you in here?”
Choked.
The next thing you knew you were being shoved in a shower stall to your left with Joel painfully close in tow. One broad hand appearing beside your hip like magic, yanking a knob, then slamming a hot and clammy palm over your mouth before you could scream at the spray.
A ruthless, ice-cold downpour had you both drenched in seconds. You would’ve leapt back or turned away if there were space at all to budge, but there wasn’t. And Joel had you constricted to his chest like a python anyway.
‘Don’t’ was all he whispered in your ear before turning.
Then shouting back, loud, “What’cha need, Big D?”
David cackled at the nickname. You inwardly cringed. Huge, glacial spates of water continued to shoot down your back, you squeezed your skirt in your hand like a vice, and the man behind you hugged your body to him even tighter as you squirmed and tried wriggling away.
“Just came to see if you needed a ride to Amy’s. The boys are all already over there,” David replied, and in turn, he was treading closer. Walking slowly to the stall.
Joel pinched your face like you were somehow to blame. You jerked a sharp elbow to his ribs, and he let up a little.
“Nah, man, I—” Joel began, ever-so-slowly reaching out toward the shower knob and turning it, “—gotta talk to Ezra, make a couple more calls. I’ll meet y’all over there.”
Outside, David made a low, disappointed huff. Then he plopped his ass on a bench from what you could hear.
“I can wait,” he said.
“There’s really no need—” You could feel the strain in Joel’s voice, picturing him gritting his teeth and wincing beneath the torrents of water. Slowly, the shower heated.
“Believe me, I’m in no rush to get over there,” David chuckled. The bench creaked as he leaned back.
Then, he added:
“Ain’t like Ms. Cum-On-Me-Tits’ll be there anyway.”
I beg your finest pardon?
You wanted to thrash out of Joel’s arms the second you heard the name—knowing damn well who he meant—but the big, wet arms out in front of you were pressing down on your chest like the oxygen in the air was scarce. Your lungs could barely expand far enough to breathe, much less venture to fight him off of you and leave.
“Ms. Who?” Joel said, sounding dumb as a bag of dicks.
“You know who,” David barked out a laugh this time, “The slut you were eyeballin’ the whole fuckin’ game.”
You’d kill both men with your two bare hands if you could—if you had to be subjected to one more second of this asinine ‘locker room talk,’ you just might off yourself, too.
Joel’s arms noticeably tensed around you.
“I don’t—”
“Sam’s sister, man. I don’t blame ya one bit. Pretty little thing like that, I’m starin’ at those tits every chance I—”
You ground your heel hard into Joel’s toes then, and he groaned. Loosened his grip on you just long enough for you to turn around in that tiny, compact shower and look up to pin him with the most vicious stare you could. He didn’t have to be the one saying these things for the words to sting and make you feel every bit as objectified. As far as you were concerned, and on top of everything else going on, his silence made him equally complicit.
Above you, a pair of brown eyes tried to apologize.
Or maybe just commiserate about how badly David sucked. Joel cleared his throat and cut back in.
“She’s…alright,” he said, eyes boring into yours as he spoke—then, pointedly, “Not really my type, though.”
“Bullshi-i-i-it!”
David sang an incredulous cacophony before continuing:
“Tell me, Joel, does your ass get jealous of all the shit that comes outta your mouth? Or is it used to it by now?”
In another sopping wet and raw moment of discomfort, Joel frowned. The water enveloping you both had slowly crept up to a more comfortable temperature, and just as a pinkish hue ascended his neck, you wondered if it was the warmth or something else that ushered in the color.
And the answer to that came much sooner than you expected—one superb cherry atop a monster-sized shit pie—when something stabbed your pelvis a second later.
Your mouth fell open as Joel’s snapped shut. He blinked; you stared; neither one of you possessed the courage to look down, but you knew what was standing there, stiff.
Then, as if to compound every last one of your problems and add the cruelest of insults to injury, David sat up.
Again, he laughed.
“You know I’m right!” he chided when Joel said nothing, “Got yourself laid after you left Tipsy Bison last night, and it still ain’t enough for a horny fuck like you, huh?”
Now you had to be sick. Your head was throbbing.
Glaring lack of food be damned, you felt the urge. Again.
You almost tore the shower curtain aside when Joel caged you back against the wall with his body, torso pinning yours, and you heard a far-off cackle once more—this time, accompanied by the sounds of David’s shoes squeaking as he stood. Boner momentarily forgotten, Joel pressed his body to yours on cool glazed ceramic and made a plea as he stuck his index finger to your lips.
And whatever that wordless message was, you were too mortified to meet his gaze. You just stood in place and stared over his shoulder as David made to leave outside.
Some words were exchanged; they barely registered with you. Joel told David, again, that he could drive to Amy’s without him—David said something about ‘big butts’ and ‘college sluts’ and promises of hearing the ‘whole story’ when Joel got there—and Joel hummed, noncommittal.
As soon as the door slammed shut behind the Fireflies’ asshole assistant coach, your hands went straight to Joel’s chest to shove him off as hard as you could.
“Hey—”
A short, emphatic ‘fuck you’ was obscured just slightly by the sound of the shower curtain being yanked to the left, your feet moving quickly underneath you, then the splashes of puddles as you walked—stomped—away.
You were back outside, exiting through a different door than David had and making it out into the hallway again.
“Hey—”
“Don’t care.”
Those words weren’t muffled at all. You stalked down the hall with your skirt in a fist and your whole body dripping.
You made it halfway before a hand found your waist, but you tried to keep going in spite of the pull. Straining.
And, personally, you would’ve liked to use your sopping wet denim just then as a projectile, launched directly into Coach Joel’s face. It would’ve been easy, smacking a creep upside the head when he clearly couldn’t comprehend a lick of difference between a ‘fuck you’ and a ‘thank you,’ but the weapon in your grip was virtually useless if you didn’t have the strength to lift it.
Or if Joel didn’t stop you then to make you face him, use one broad hand to burn a wet-hot imprint in your side while his other nudged a door open beside you.
Or if you didn’t stumble inside with one nudge.
If there hadn’t been a bone-empty coach’s lounge waiting behind that door, rattling with the sound and sheer force of the thing shutting swiftly behind Joel.
Then, before you could try and curse him out again:
“I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit.” You sounded like David saying it before.
You were already backing up in that tiny office space, wishing you had the willpower to just chuck your skirt and run, but of course, your pride was too great. Your curiosity was too wild, and your anger was unrivaled.
“Nothing happened last night,” Joel said, emphatic.
“Wh—”
“We didn’t fuck. Or do anything. I swear.”
That kind of candor was a first. You weren’t sure just what to make of it. Wordlessly, you dropped your skirt.
“David said—” you started again.
“David heard—from my little brother, if I had to guess—that we left Tipsy Bison together. And we did…but, uh…” Joel trailed off, shifting his attention to something of note over your shoulder, and then stepping, reaching carefully around you, “I just wanted to get you home.”
“To fuck me,” you finished.
“No.”
Joel tensed again as he shook a towel out in front of you, then draped it over your shoulders. You made a face at the coarse texture but stayed quiet as he wrapped you. He paused, pressed your arms lightly, then appeared to decide in the blink of an eye and one awkward cough that now was not the best time to be touching. You couldn’t deny the warmth was a welcome change as you stood soaked head-to-toe, yet nothing could uncurl the ice-cold fist in your stomach at the sight of him now.
Joel stood, still semi-erect in his five-inch inseam shorts.
A puddle was starting to form on the floor around you both. Joel’s breathing was slow; he stood so close you could feel it. Hear it. Smell it. He started to back away.
Before he did, you got a whiff of something light on his breath. Then some dim, misshapen word began to form.
Spearmint.
You stood and you stared. You saw an image flash before your mind—a memory. At some point in time, you had danced with this man. One night. Last night? Maybe.
‘I knew him as John Cougar. That’s how old I am.’
‘And he’s Mellencamp to me. So what?’
‘Means you’re too young for me.’
All the same, the man’s hand had tightened its grip. Splayed out at the base of your spine and drawing you closer, the fingers tapped along to a heartland rock tune playing loud across the way on the Tipsy Bison’s jukebox. Joel smiled and chewed. Chewed and smiled.
And chewed some more—still, to the present moment.
Joel Miller kept a pack of Wrigley’s Sugarfree Spearmint gum in the pocket of every clothing item he owned. He indulged in the stuff so often because it helped ease his nerves some. You knew this because he’d told you, right before his lips had grazed the corner of yours and told you, slowly, there were worse ways to smell than minty. You had proceeded to frown and demand a proper kiss.
But that night, last night, Joel never did.
“We didn’t…do it,” you said, question and statement commingled as you searched his face for an answer.
What you got in return was more akin to a wince.
“You were drunk,” Joel answered simply.
‘Blackout’ was implied by the tone of his voice. Then, when the same old muscles went tensing beneath the smooth, tanned skin of his jaw to keep chomping away—nerves shot to hell no matter how hard he chewed—Joel held your gaze and drank you in, as you did to him.
And the memories came trickling back, one by one.
“I— took that off myself, didn’t I?” Pointing to your skirt.
Joel’s eyes didn’t need to follow your own. He nodded.
“Stripped it off pretty quick when we got in the truck.”
You wanted to die. Now the mere idea of remembering was something more like an anvil hanging overhead, ready to drop any second. You sucked your bottom lip in.
“Kept on sayin’ to me, ‘I’m sober, I swear!’ and took the skirt off to show ya wanted to, y’know—” Joel paused to circle around the desk behind him. He went rummaging, quietly, then, “You threw it over your neighbors’ fence as soon as we got to your place. I had to fish it out later.”
Coach Joel made it through two, three, four drawers before finally setting his sights on the one he needed—the one where they kept old athletic clothes stored, it seemed. You watched him set aside a heather grey shirt of some minor league baseball team you didn’t recognize, followed by a pair of gym shorts.
It certainly wasn’t the most trendy attire, but it was dry.
Joel was still dripping wet when he motioned to the stuff. Before he could offer it up, though, you frowned.
“Wait— we were at my house?”
Joel smiled in that wry, humorless way of his and nodded. Pretended to inspect a smudge on his shoe so he didn’t have to meet your gaze and watch the first inklings of embarrassment morph into pure humiliation.
Your cheeks were on fire. You remembered it now.
How Joel had calmly set you up in the passenger seat of his truck, politely pushed your feet back inside when you whined and insisted you were fine to keep drinking, let’s go back, then artfully dodged a kiss that you’d tried to plant on his lips. You’d got his cheek instead and huffed.
“Joel, I am so, so sober, it’s insane,” you hiccuped, “Pinky promise we can fuck now if you wanna.”
“I don’t,” Joel grunted. He put the car in drive.
You must’ve gone back and forth on that topic for hours—or however long it took to get from the Tipsy Bison’s parking lot to your parent’s house in the dead of night—and Joel had been adamant. Insistent. He wouldn’t lay a hand on you until you’d sobered up and gone to sleep.
He’d somehow managed to wrestle you into a pair of his sweats after you threw your own skirt over the fence. He’d reasoned, pleaded, then outright begged you to follow his lead inside. When you refused, he had no choice but to throw you over his shoulder and—
“—sneak me into my room?” you said, words steeped in disbelief. Your parents would’ve murdered the man in cold blood if they’d seen him toting their half-conscious, fully drunk daughter over his back and into her bedroom.
Coach Joel was brave for that.
Kind-hearted, too.
And you’d kicked the poor soul in his balls the next day.
Suddenly—and conspicuously—your gaze fell to his dick.
“I-I…Joel, I am so…fucking sor—”
“‘S’okay,” Joel cut in, gently. Wincing at the memory and pretending not to see your eyes burn a hole in his shorts.
Your gaze was still fixed firmly on that spot when you saw his hand stir at his side. He reached into his pocket.
To your immediate chagrin, he withdrew a little wrapper.
Just big enough to house a strip of gum, but it didn’t, at least not anymore. Someone had removed the gum and flipped the wrapper inside out to write something down.
Joel’s fingers flattened it out some, and then you saw it: a phone number scribbled on the small silver parchment. The man in front of you held it out for no more than a second before placing it on top of the clothes on the desk and sliding the pile toward you. Clearing his throat.
“Forgot to give you this,” he said, “I was just, uh— tryin’ to pull it outta my pocket. Earlier. In the parking lot.”
So not trying to grope you. Or kidnap you in broad daylight. Or do anything even remotely malevolent.
Just trying to give you his number. Pointing to his pants.
No sooner had Joel set you down on your bed than you were squirming against your comforter, trying to drag his sweatpants down your legs with some effort. Joel immediately seized both of your hands at the waistband and shook his head. He yanked the pants up while you tried, unsuccessfully, to pull them down your body.
“This ain’t happenin’ now, honey,” he’d said softly.
“Why—” You fisted the fabric even tighter and attempted to wriggle out again, to no avail, “—not?!”
“One: you’re drunk…” Joel replied, voice even as ever. Tugging his sweats back up to rest comfortably at your hips, then rotating your body in bed so he could pull the sheets over you, “Two: date comes first, remember?”
You blinked in embarrassment—again—at the memory. Joel bit the inside of his cheek, as if remembering too.
“I promised I’d take ya on a proper date,” he said simply. Flatly, almost, “Y’know, ‘fore we did anything like, uh…”
And from one shared look alone, the two of you knew what would’ve followed after. Or had a rough idea of it, anyway. Perhaps feeling a bit too forward with that wordless admission, or still uncertain whether you even remembered the date he’d promised you in the first place, Joel looked down. He glanced over at the clothes and opened his mouth to speak again, probably to tell you to get changed, now, you’re fixin’ to freeze to death—and maybe you should’ve waited for him to say it.
Maybe.
Maybe you should’ve waited for Coach Joel to tell you that he’d step outside and give you some privacy while you changed, offer to give you a ride to Amy’s if you needed it. Keep things professional. Platonic. Put dates on the back burner for the time being and leave it at that.
But you were already so cold, and your inhibitions low.
Maybe some part of you wanted to make it up to Joel somehow—thank him for being so kind the night before.
So, instead of letting him speak, you hooked your thumbs under the waistband of his sweatpants, just like you’d done the night before, and started to pull down.
“Does the date have to come first?” you said. Soft, slow.
The wet and heavy fabric fell around your ankles with a less-than-sexy thud, but you stepped out of it calmly all the same. Your legs were met with another biting chill, the kind that was bound to seize your limbs when left bare below the waist—save for your bodysuit—and you felt a wave of goosebumps break out across your skin.
Joel stared as you stepped closer. He hadn’t evinced so much as a note of surprise, but you could tell from the glint in his eyes he had to have been thinking something.
‘Christ’ was all he muttered.
You drew nearer, until just the tips of your toes were about to graze his own, and you kicked off Tess’s shoes with a nonchalance you were amazed you were able to feign. Inside, your heart was hammering against your chest, and your stomach doing somersaults as Joel’s gaze drifted back up to your face. His chewing had slowed, but you could feel the faint fragrance of mint on his breath. You wished he would touch you, but he didn’t.
“Figured we could just...cut through the—” you started.
“No.”
It seemed Joel loved to interrupt. Loved telling you no.
You leaned back a little, both eyebrows raised. You were about to take a step away, sensing by the stern look that had crossed over his face that maybe he wasn’t in the mood to touch, or kiss, or do anything with you at all. As much as rejection would’ve felt like a punch in the gut, and likely compounded your embarrassment tenfold, you would never try to cross that line without his permission.
You’d just sucked in one last inhale of spearmint and failure when you felt a hand on the front of your top.
Joel’s index and thumb pinched the fabric.
They tugged you toward his body, gently.
At the first influx of relief, you smiled—thank fuck you hadn’t creeped the poor guy out—and started to reach for Joel just the same, but his other hand stopped you. Again, it was tender, but appreciably firmer this time:
Don’t touch me.
Your face fell. Hand dropped limply beside you and eyes winced with confusion as Joel continued to pull forward.
He brought you to a stop before your bodies made contact. Then he slipped his touch from your belly, up your sides, before eventually settling on your...shoulder?
He applied light pressure. You didn’t understand why.
When he pushed harder and made your legs buckle underneath you, the message rang a little more clearly.
Your knees made the gentlest splat atop wet hardwood, the office floor soaked from your body and Joel’s. You’d barely managed to keep your balance between his feet and had just started to tilt your head up to meet his gaze, hands instinctively reaching out and gripping his thighs for support, when the fabric rustled under your palms.
The soaked, black shorts were being peeled off, slowly.
You blinked up at Joel in disbelief. Did he seriously—
“Think you should say you’re sorry first,” Joel said.
Your heart thudded even harder. You scarcely had another second to process his words before Joel had pulled his shorts down just enough for a strip of skin to show; for the material of his boxers to glide down and leave the tiniest bit of plaid fabric to contain himself.
Coach Joel smoothed his other palm across the back of your head, nudging you closer without pushing you in it.
Amazingly, there was still a palpable undercurrent of concern, even as he had you planted on your knees in front of him. He stroked your scalp with his thumb.
“Nicked my balls pretty good this mornin’—least you could do is give ‘em a kiss to say sorry, right, darlin’?”
You continued to blink, still not quite capable of speech.
“Uhhhm—” you sputtered, only for Joel to intervene.
“‘S’just fine by me if you don’t,” he murmured, “Figured they’d feel a bit better with your pretty lips on ‘em is all.”
From the sweet and encouraging lilt in his voice to the gentle rubs of his finger going back and forth across the crown of your head, you felt a stab of saccharine pride. An urge to preen beneath his touch and soak in the tiniest streaks of affection wrought by the pad of one thumb and a smile taking shape lazily above you then.
Joel didn’t tug the waistband of his boxers any further; you did. The gears in your brain whirring alive with a desire to have him keep smiling at you like that, keep stroking your head and voicing his dulcet appreciation, you reckoned the effect was something akin to a drug.
You weren’t watching his cock when it finally sprang out. Your eyes were just glued to Coach Joel’s, holding his gaze and hoping he liked the sight of you there beside it.
Beside him.
Beside every inch of him, and— oh fuck were there a lot.
Your attention momentarily diverted, you peered up at Joel’s cock as it sat nestled against a small tuft of grey-black hairs at the base of his belly and almost coughed.
He was huge in every aspect. Your mouth fell open.
Seeing your lips so parted, Joel had to fight back a chuckle, it sounded like, and gently nudged your head.
“‘S’okay, baby. Just the balls, remember?”
Your gaze flitted back to his, visibly unnerved. Confused.
“Just…the balls?” you breathed.
At length, the short, shallow exhales from your lungs were fanning across Joel’s family jewels, and you almost couldn’t believe he wanted you to neglect his cock completely in favor of kissing them. You swallowed.
When your mouth reopened, caught somewhere between a look of curiosity and muted surprise, Joel pressed the pads of his fingers into your scalp once more. Prodding you gently toward the source of his desire without applying too much pressure on the spot.
“Right…there.”
Your lips latched onto the smooth, warm skin as he said it. It was strange, landing straight on a plane of flesh that you typically didn’t pay attention to until you’d licked and bobbed your head down his cock a few times. These soft and rounded globes felt almost foreign to you, as you curled your lips into one, gently, and then felt them spring back with a pop. Your mouth was watering.
Joel groaned at the slippery wet friction from that kiss.
While you stared and started in for another soft peck, Coach Joel sucked in a hiss of a breath through his teeth.
“Feels better already, honey,” he grunted.
You kissed the other. You ran your tongue along the underside and guided it back to your mouth so you could suckle some more, and the fingers noticeably tightened.
Another soft, punctured breath. Another rumbling moan.
“Fuck— baby, you look so pretty. Kissin’ ‘em so well.”
Feeling confidence swell in your chest, you locked eyes with Joel and opened your mouth wider. If you hadn’t been otherwise preoccupied, perhaps you would’ve felt a small twinge of embarrassment at the drool that leaked out of both corners of your lips as you did it, but, at any rate, you were busy, and evidently, the sight had only made Joel’s cock harder. Your eyes shifted to the stiff, thick, veiny member standing upright above you, all but pulsing with need, and you lifted your hand to touch it.
Joel brushed it away.
“Nuh-uh,” he tutted.
Without meaning to, you whined. Tongue ushering more of that soft, smooth flesh against your lips and jaw hanging slack as your cheeks stretched to accommodate as much as they verily could, you felt deprived, in a way.
You pressed your fingertips into his thighs, pleading.
And, as if to answer your question, Joel shook his head.
“An apology to me ain’t about what you want, darlin’,” he said, voice gravelly as he spoke, “Keep your hands off it.”
Something in his tone, though not unkind, grated on your ears like some of the worst news you’d ever heard. An aura you hadn’t been able to decipher until just now seemed to sink beneath your skin, made you sick with it—that feeling of dread that you’d disappointed the man. Perhaps it was because he was a coach, because he knew how to assume an authoritative stance and hold you to it, that you felt especially dispirited by his words. That simple, clipped ‘hands off’ hurt more than expected
You tore your gaze from his and resumed the quiet ministrations with your lips and tongue on his balls, bracing yourself tighter against his thighs as you did.
“‘M’sorry— I—” you said, voice muffled between kisses and gentle laps of your tongue, “—didn’t mean to, Joel.”
You felt the muscles in his legs stiffen as you bathed him with attention, spit smeared all over and lips working tirelessly to massage him, give him more pleasure.
“It’s alright, pretty girl,” Joel murmured, voice strained with the force of another moan clawing out of his throat. At length, he gave in—squeezing your head to him a little tighter and letting out a sound so obscene that you felt a new wave of warmth pool into your panties, trickling fast.
And, as if he could hear your arousal seep out, knowing just what his honeyed praises were liable to do to you:
“Good girl, just like that— fuck, your mouth feels nice.”
The sting of his last admonition was beginning to fade. Your lips worked hungrily over him, suckling and kissing and taking more into your mouth, as much as your jaw would allow. You were just about to try and squeeze all of him in, when you felt Joel shift in front of you slightly.
Then stepping back, crouching down to your level.
You probably would’ve fallen flat on your face had he not scooped you up in his arms the second after. Your knees were like jelly, your brain scarcely more functional and feeling a little self-conscious about the spit on your chin. You were just about to wipe it off with the back of your hand when Joel got it for you—using his mouth to do it.
Licking a stripe across the lower half of your face, mixing his own saliva with yours and tickling your cheek with his mustache in an act that seemed almost pornographic.
“You are so fucking sexy,” Joel murmured, teeth nipping at wet skin and lips pressing light kisses here and there.
Before you could respond, he turned you around and shoved you onto the desk. Pressed a hand to the small of your back, flattened you facedown on the table’s surface with your ass hanging over the edge, and then stepped behind you, quietly. Quickly. Working to rid himself of clothes that were still clinging to his body like a second skin, Joel shrugged his shirt off, yanked his shorts and boxers the rest of the way to his feet, then kicked all three articles of clothing aside as he drew closer to you.
You heard four drawers open beside you, underneath you, in quick succession. Joel was rummaging again.
Where excitement normally would’ve taken root at this point—pleasure pooling between your legs as the man hastily procured a condom and tore the wrapper open, worked it onto his dick—you felt uncertainty instead. Sadness, even. You kicked your feet back and forth, toes scraping the oak floor as though the friction might conceivably rouse something lighter inside you. It didn’t.
Joel returned, and you couldn’t see his face. He gave your ass a taut smack, then kneaded the flesh in his palm, and you couldn’t be sure if he was smiling or frowning or simply glowering down at you with a look of indifference. When you felt his touch graze over your hands and tuck them coolly at the small of your back, you wanted to tilt your chin some to face him. You didn’t.
Instead, you stared at the wall across from the desk and hoped that he liked whatever he saw. When you felt something wrap around your wrists, you didn’t protest, only bit your lip and waited for him to tie it extra tight.
Joel leaned in and dropped a quick kiss on your shoulder.
The knot he made was snug but not suffocating.
You really wanted to see him now, for some reason.
“This OK?” Joel said. He tapped your wrists.
Before you could answer beyond just a nod, though, he tugged the knot and made a noise in his throat that sounded like a scoff. He pressed something cool and light against your palm, and a shiver pulsed through you.
“Is that…your, uh…” you breathed out an awkward laugh.
He’d tied your hands behind you with his whistle.
“Uh-huh,” Joel hummed, sounding pleased.
And in the next, you could hear a trace of a smirk:
“Always wanted to tie a slut up just like this, y’know?”
Ouch.
Joel was great with praise, but his degradation hurt a bit. You squeezed the metal whistle and tried to pretend like there wasn’t a strangely painful lump taking shape at the back of your throat—it shouldn’t have felt like that at all.
You shouldn’t care what a total stranger thought of you.
That’s all Coach Joel was after all: a stranger to fuck.
But as you felt him unclasp the fastenings at the bottom of your bodysuit, tug your panties down, and line himself up with your entrance from behind, you kind of wished he wasn’t. Maybe you’d been mistaken in initiating this thing and would’ve been better off accepting the date like he’d offered. Maybe then you wouldn’t feel so weird.
At any rate, he was already gripping your hips in his hands and starting to ease himself inside you. Groaning at the pressure and warmth enveloping his cock and uttering curse after curse with just the head notched in. You could sense the slightest sting of latex at your center; Joel’s girth felt every bit as imposing as it had looked, and now your face was screwed up with a wince trying to take him in. Your clit was untouched, throbbing.
Just as you’d bit down on your lower lip with discomfort, Joel dropped his head back and let out a satisfied groan.
“Fuck me,” he grunted, “You’re so…fuckin’ tight.”
Next, ‘good girl’ was quick to become a strangled refrain on his tongue as he worked a couple inches in and out of your aching hole. It felt okay, as you’d gotten plenty wet on your knees for him before, but it stung with each stab of his hips, and your body had gotten overly tense. Worse yet, Joel was so focused on getting himself in that his fingers still hadn’t found your clit. They massaged your ass instead, evidently in awe of how small you looked taking him inch by inch; the sight mesmerizing to him.
“Joel—” you started to whimper.
“This what ya wanted all along, huh? Gettin’ fucked over my desk like a little slut?” Joel’s words were equal parts indelicate and venomous—even sexy as they crawled off his tongue—but the tone with his thrusts was too much. He was gripping too hard, pushing too far, being unkind in a way that would’ve been alright if you were a doll. But you weren’t. The least you needed was concern. So, gently, you let out a breath and turned your head.
“Joel—”
Before bottoming out completely, Coach Joel slapped your ass once again and groaned through his teeth.
“C’mon an’ tell me how much ya like it, baby, how—”
“JOEL.”
He stopped. From the corner of your eye, you spied a startled, half-blanched face. Joel pulled out immediately.
“Wh— hey, you okay, sweetheart? Hey,” the man said, leaning in and loosening the restraints on your wrists. When you nodded for him to keep untying, please, he tugged the whole thing off and turned you back around,
“Is everything okay?”
His eyes were much wider than you’d expected to find them, hands gripping you by either arm as his gaze scanned your face. Out of some unsettled feeling, it seemed, he drew closer, hastily, until your legs were nearly enmeshed and his hands cupped your cheeks.
“I don’t…like that,” you answered in a small, soft voice.
“You don’t…” Joel trailed off, blinking slow at first, then appearing to process your words and turn to stroking the cusp of your jawline with his thumbs while he did.
When it hit just how much you hadn’t liked that and why, he paled even more. Like he couldn’t get his touch to be apologetic enough, his eyes soft and glossy and sorry.
“Did I—” Joel leaned in, squeezing your face, “I’m sorry—did I hurt you any? You can tell me, honey, honest.”
“Not much.” And you tried to crack a smile, but the man wasn’t having it. He switched positions, hoisting you up.
He carried you over to the sofa. Held you in a semi-awkward cradle once he realized the couch was all but broken in two from decades and decades of use, then resigned himself, gladly, to just holding you in his arms.
Pretending not to see you make a face as if to say, ‘Joel, I’m alright now,’ he nuzzled his own closer to yours and started sponging little kisses near your chin and neck.
“‘M’sorry,” he mumbled again, voice now stifled by skin.
You tried not to get too squeamish, or giggle in his hold, but the fact was that his lips were so light—feather-like, almost—and the places he was kissing were so sensitive, you couldn’t help but let out a couple sounds that were half-laugh, half-strangled gasp. With each one of these, Joel would start smiling in between affectionate pecks.
And his dark, dampened curls, though striated with grey, framed his face in a boyish way; he grinned and lost a decade. You were amazed what a difference a glimpse of him could make, and now that he was caressing you, kissing you, your body knew it too, suffused with warmth
When Joel’s lips found yours, you almost forgot it was the first time he’d done that today. Or ever. You kissed each other comfortably, without a shade of pretense or pause, and found that your mouths worked so well together it was a small wonder you hadn’t thought to do that sooner. Joel pulled away, still holding your face.
“We did this backwards,” he said, sounding deflated, “Date first, kiss second, embarrassingly bad sex last.”
You shrugged. Smiling. Silently hoping Joel hadn’t felt your cheeks warm while he cupped your face like that and then tried deflecting that attention away by saying:
‘Two out of three isn’t that bad, Coach.’
And, just as swiftly as he’d brought you over to the sofa, Joel had you flipped and pinned under his body on the old, misshapen cushions and squealing out a laugh.
“I thought ya wanted it rough, honey,” he groaned against your throat. Kissing the skin as you giggled.
“And your idea of rough is—” you started.
“Callin’ ya names, slappin’ your ass, all that kinda sh—”
“—constantly interrupting people while they talk, too?”
Joel suspended his affectionate ministrations just long enough to swap his lips and tongue with teeth, giving your neck a light bite. For all his outward displays of Southern gentility and gentleman-like behavior, he was, after all, still a coach: the kind of guy whose primary sustenance was competition, whose ability to hold a conversation reflected the desire to dominate, always.
Maybe he didn’t like having this fact brought to his attention, stated so plainly as his body blanketed yours and his head burrowed even deeper into your neck. Joel squeezed the sides of your body, about to pull you closer, when you squirmed out from under him and sat upright.
You glanced down and saw that Joel had already chucked the condom. He was starting to lean back into the sofa, length standing semi-erect against the shelf of his belly while his hands fumbled over your thighs and hips. Trying to steer you into his lap, he muttered another string of apologies along with some words like, ‘I know.’
“You’re right, I know I’m bad about that, I—” he began.
“Get another.”
Now you were the one to interrupt, limbs resisting his pull as you nodded to the desk. Telling him to go.
“You wanna—”
“Yeah.”
When Joel blinked a couple times and didn’t move, you stood up yourself. He reached for you; you ignored him. You strode over to the desk where he’d retrieved the condoms the first time and grabbed the box, snagged a square metallic wrapper out of it, and walked back over.
You sat down beside Joel and didn’t wait for him to take the lead. You tore the packet with your teeth and, careful not to chomp down on the latex itself, pulled the rubber out. It wasn’t until you sank down on your knees in front of Coach Joel on the wet, hard floor that he stirred at all.
He grabbed your wrist before you could slide it on.
“C’mere.”
Again, you resisted his efforts to pull you into his lap—‘Joel, I wanna do it now, I swear’—and when it seemed you were going to remain as defiant as you ever had been, on the floor, Joel leaned forward and kissed you.
Somehow, he reached you even deeper than he had before. You were on your knees, chin tilting to his and lips parting, slowly, and Joel cupped both sides of your face to drive his tongue inside. Now he wasn’t just touching but tasting, too, his efforts quick to be accompanied by the gentlest of sounds from his mouth to yours. Thumbing your cheeks even harder when his tongue moved against yours and a grunt crept out of his throat.
“I wanna—” he said in between soft, strained breaths.
You already knew what he was going to say. You shook your head against his before pulling away. Watching him watch you with a hungry look and follow you to the floor.
“I need you to fuck me, Joel,” you cut in. You scooted back and spread your legs, and Joel crawled forward.
He murmured something about eating you out, licking that pretty pussy clean before he gave it to you again, but you just told him no, again, and fisted the damp grey ringlets at the back of his head to pull him closer to you.
Joel was already slotting himself between your legs, dismayed not to be able to taste your cunt but also keen to join you as you came to lie supine on the floor before him. His eyes were alight with curiosity, mouth opening and closing with the threat of a teasing word or two on his tongue until you started to slide the condom down.
You almost couldn’t believe it yourself: how forward you were being—sober this time. With the sting from Joel’s first entry reduced to a mere throb between your legs, the space where he’d been before was pulsing, blood pumping, and with each new second you could feel the need amplify. Your legs curled around his waist and pulled him closer, hips inching forward on hardwood beneath him to get his cock pressed flush with your heat.
“Take it…real slow this time.” Joel was already sliding a hand under your head. Cradling the back of your skull as his tip moved over the wet and sticky warmth that had pooled between your folds. His eyes searched your face.
Just sensing the weight of his gaze, his grip, the restraint from his lower half as it hovered over yours, you already felt safer. Silly, almost, for how much that wordless reassurance and concern from Joel came as a comfort—and had you writhing under him for more, now, please.
“We’ll get there, hon, don’t you worry your pretty little head—” And as he said it, Joel pressed a kiss to your forehead, “—and if it hurts any, ya tell me, alright?”
“I will, Joel, please,” you whimpered.
Smooth and bulbous and just a pinch too snug in that latex, the head of Joel’s cock made a dizzying squelch against the rim of your cunt. The tip was all it took to remind you just how big he was, how tough it was probably going to be to adjust to his size, how—
“Hey,” Joel said, voice grounding you immediately.
You looked up to meet his gaze.
“I’m still takin’ you on a date, by the way,” he mumbled, and you smiled, “If you wanna save this part for later—”
As though your bodies had both said ‘no’ at once, Joel’s cock eased forward slightly, softly, and notched into the slick ring of muscles that had kept your parts separate. The intrusion was barely an inch, and not your very first, but it felt like a novelty—something tender and delicate to steal a breath from your chest and Joel’s—and the stretch, now, was a welcome one. Your legs tightened at Joel’s sides, and his lips pressed over your own, briefly.
“This okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” you nodded.
“You sure?”
“Mmmh—ohhhh, fuck, yes, Joel.”
The words flew from your mouth without meaning to. Your hands moved up to his chest, his shoulders, squeezing his trap muscles and sinking your nails in the skin while a welt of pleasure blossomed between your legs. Joel kissed the corner of your mouth, smile already starting to tug at both ends of his. Then he kissed it again.
Joel swallowed his awe—and pride—and leaned closer.
“Shoulda been treatin’ her sweeter, baby, I’m sorry,” he hummed against your cheek. Then he sank his length even deeper inside and relished the soft pulse of you.
He was rutting gently with just half his dick, and still, your body and brain were on the fritz, all but overcome with that swollen, coiling bliss. You glanced down and were half enrapt with the heft of his stomach boring into yours. You trailed your fingertips over the soft plane of flesh, pinched it gently while Joel’s steady and shallow thrusts split you even further open, and you smiled, too.
“That’s a first,” he said, chuckle rumbling low.
“What? Fucking on the floor?”
“That— that too,” Joel tried to make the same amused sound but was interrupted by a groan bubbling up in his throat. You’d clenched, and he drove in even deeper, “You…you touchin’ my, uh…my stomach, I mean.”
You pinched it again, feeling soft grey hairs in your palm.
“Your tummy?”
Joel couldn’t help but grin a little at the word.
“My tummy,” he repeated, as if he didn’t believe it.
Again, you could’ve sworn you saw a flush of pink creep up the side of his throat, but you decided not to mention it. Instead, you just slid your hands back up to his chest and stretched your legs even wider to take more of him in. Joel obliged with the last remaining inch and groaned.
You moaned too, squeezing tighter. He’d just bottomed out, and you were already, somehow, on the brink.
It didn’t matter that you were getting fucked on the frigid wood floor by your little brother’s baseball coach, water pooling around you and between you and commingling with the minuscule beads of sweat that were starting to form on your bodies. Joel was as handsome as he’d ever looked, brow drawn inward and lips taking the shape of an ‘o’ whenever they weren’t sponging kisses over yours. The stretch you felt was approaching euphoric now, walls fluttering with each slow and gentle stroke inside you. Joel was deep, and he was measured—and he was careful in the force of his thrusts, taking pains to watch your expression for any changes or signs of discomfort.
He was praising you, too. Strings of ‘Right there, baby—doin’ so good for me’ and ‘Feels so nice’ and ‘Keep goin’ were like music to your ears, nudging you closer and closer to climax with every tender thrust. When Joel’s hand descended to your hip and the cadence of his own body grew a little more deliberate and fixed, you were certain he would be teasing out your release any minute. You wound your fingers through his hair, preparing to pull tight in anticipation of that heady, blissful feeling.
Evidently, Coach Miller wasn’t as ready. He wrenched himself out of your grip and withdrew the next second.
And, try as you might to contain the sound, a whine tumbled off your lips, followed by a ‘Joel!’ just as quick. A hollow feeling swallowed your lower half; you felt you had no other choice but to prop yourself up on both elbows, cast a despondent look between your legs, and groan:
“I was so clo—”
“Couldn’t wait. ‘M’sorry, honey.”
You might’ve liked to give him a little more hell for that—particularly observing the smug smile that had crawled onto Joel’s face as he said it—but the feeling was short-lived. Just when you opened your mouth to speak, you watched him glide down your front. He was painstakingly slow, then swift as soon as he slipped between your legs. His shoulders bumped your thighs, heedless of the feeling the motion would evoke, and came to rest with his face between them. Happy. Or pleased—even eager.
You couldn’t fault him for that enthusiasm for long, either, because the next thing you knew, Joel’s mouth was lowering further. Slotting his lips and tongue against your glistening folds and nudging you gently, teasingly, as if knowing exactly what you lacked in that moment. Your fingers found his hair again and this time were free to tug as long as they liked; Joel busied himself intently.
He flattened his tongue and licked a stripe up your slit. He lapped at your folds, collecting whatever sweet, tangy parts of you had trickled out over the stretch of that morning, and didn’t flinch when the jolt of pleasure it sent caused your hands to make fists in his hair. In fact, the sting on his scalp only seemed to make his actions that much greedier. He grinned when you whimpered.
“Still close?”
The fucking tease.
“N-N— No shit, Miller.”
You hated the way his mouth made a faltering mess of your own. In spite of the impairment, though, it was clear that this state wouldn’t last for long; a couple more strokes of his tongue and a soft, semi-complaisant suction on your bundle of nerves and you would be gone.
Coach Miller was mean, but he wasn’t so cruel as to deny you the sublime pleasure of getting to cum in his mouth. With one hand, he gave your thigh a comforting squeeze, and with the other, he trailed his touch to your entrance. When his index and middle fingers first slid in, he held your leg again and stroked the skin in small, tight circles.
“You’re good, hey. You’re okay,” he assured you softly, the fingers of his other hand sinking even deeper.
You felt pathetic and squeamish, but the heft of that one push just felt so good. Paired with his tongue on your clit and a vicious little suckling here and there, his mustache dragging back and forth along the cusp of your mound, it came as no surprise to you or Joel when next your body tensed and your lower half flooded with pleasure.
What little remained of your resolve not to cry disintegrated in less than a second—by turns, your thighs clamped down around Joel’s head like a vice, your eyes squeezed shut, and the whine that tore out of your throat was as shrill and piercing and high as you’d ever heard it. Succeeded shortly by a fuck, fuck, FUCK, Joel, fuck and a gush of warmth down his chin, your climax couldn’t have been more pronounced if you’d tried. Fortunately, the fully-drenched man beneath you didn’t mind at all; if anything, he saw it as a personal success.
Climbing back up your body, bracketing his bare, muscly arms about your torso, and gripping the base of his cock, triumph was there, painted clear across his every feature. It softened his face. Made his length even stiffer and more ready than ever to re-enter your warmth before you could press so much as a hand to his chest, sighing gently. Joel snagged your lips between his for a kiss.
“That’s it, pretty girl, keep goin’.”
His words were muffled by your mouth—a tiny gasp.
“Gonna make this last a little while longer, that alright?”
He breached the first two inches of your swollen, shiny, still-pulsing cunt as if to punctuate the question. All raw and tender from the last orgasm he’d coaxed out of it, and being stretched around his tip without fair warning, your muscles spasmed again. You both let out a breath.
“It’s— Joel, it’s—”
Another inch. Almost too good to bear. The man appeared to nod in understanding, before he smoothed a hand over your face and cradled it. He drove in deeper, while your voice broke off in some low, muffled whine.
“A lot. I know,” he finished, softly, as if commiserating with you while splitting you open on his cock, “I know it’s a lot, baby. You just tell me if it gets to be too much.”
His words had all the air of a calm, measured authority, spoken in tones you knew too well. He sank further. No inflection quite as stern or steady could have belonged to anyone else but a coach, you reckoned. Coach Miller, the hard-boiled voice of reason for the baseball team, so-called ‘silent type,’ object of every last housewife’s desire—and also the guy you’d kneed in the dick that morning.
It was only fair he got to return the favor in his own way.
Now he was holding your hip in his free hand, pinning you down to the floor while he started to ease in and out of your cunt at a generous pace. He knew you were spent. He sensed he was already on the brink himself, most likely. He also probably knew he couldn’t leave your limp, boneless body well enough alone before he felt the urge to make you hurt a little too—and enjoy it, of course.
Joel was all shining, hopeful eyes as he stabbed inside and found that spot, watching your own flutter closed.
“Coach.” It came out without much thought on your part. It just seemed like the right thing to call him, no matter how ethically grey or downright weird it was.
Joel liked it.
He squeezed your palm when it reached for his, and he brought it up to his mouth, peppering soft, sloppy kisses across the back of your hand while he fucked you into the floor. Shamelessly, he also used your grip on him to gauge how near you were to your next release. From what he could tell in the sights and sounds and frantic little clinches of your fist, you were close. Still loath to give in to that feeling, or else afraid to accede so quickly after the last, though, your breaths were labored. Timid.
“I-I-I don’t know if I can,” you cried, shaking your head.
Inside you, there was a big, swelling something taking shape at the pit of your gut, and with each new brush of Joel’s cock, it only got larger. The sensation was so keen and acute it might well be construed as pain if he kept at this any longer. You didn’t know if you could cum again.
“Go on an’ try, sweet pea,” Joel cooed and lowered your hand, still grasping his, between your trembling legs, “Won’t take any more’n a second or two, just touch—”
His thumb fumbled with yours and made a hapless little circuit on your clit, which almost shrieked at the feeling.
“—right here, and—”
“Fuck me,” you panted.
Your fingers and his were drenched in your nectar, all but oozing down with each slick, deliberate thrust from Joel.
“That’s what I’m doin’, no? Ya like it?” He couldn’t help it.
Frankly, neither could you. From the near-sated, happy-and-about-to-cum-on-your-dick glint in your eye, you sensed he’d know what you meant when you said, next:
“It hurts.”
“Good?” Joel grinned.
“So good.”
The man delivered a thrust that felt like it might puncture your lungs, and with it, your last resolve.
He drew even closer, until his nose and yours were brushing, smiles faint but there all the same, and his thumb guiding your own across your throbbing clit:
“Give it here, baby. Make me feel it.”
And you did. With one more stroke inside, you let it all flood out, cunt spasming and pulsing and leaking liquid heat down the length of Joel’s cock. He fucked you full, only the condom between you, and as your moans gave way to whimpers and whines, the noises in his own throat took on an even more desperate kind of timbre.
Your stuffed, overstimulated hole felt as greedy as it had ever been, and the man rutting into it was still needier. Using your body, squeezing your hand, panting out hot and frantic breaths that all but begged you to keep letting him fill your cunt—please, baby, feels so damn good, keep goin’. Try as he might to maintain the upper hand whenever he could, it was clear this time around he was fucked, top to bottom and ten ways to next week. He had a look that struck you as pleased, pained, and on the last trembling webs of cum being emptied from his body, Coach Miller held onto your face and kissed you.
While your highs died down, he stayed inside—still kissing, grunting, mumbling how good you felt. You barely had the presence of mind to hear it, but you smiled and let him go on. You’d made a mess of yourself.
Of Joel, too. Apart from the sheen of sweat and still-damp and dripping hair, his body was wrecked. Groaning. Lower stomach painted with your slick, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. Now that the fucking was done and the room was mostly consumed by silence and strangled breaths, you had the distinct, albeit less sexual, pleasure of seeing some other things.
Like the way the joints in the coach’s knees made a pop when he tried to sit up. How the soft and weathered face pinched tighter, wrinkled further as he ventured to drag you with him, in what would eventually only be a semi-seated position on the floor, against the coffee table. How you straddled his lap, still impaled, and felt a groan vibrate through his chest when you tilted your hips the tiniest bit. He just might’ve grimaced if he wasn’t so spent and lazily fixated on you, eyes glued to your lips. He traced the seam of it with his thumb, looking amused.
“You really thought I was tryin’ to kidnap ya earlier, huh?”
Your cheeks warmed. You hoped he wouldn’t feel it.
“Well, you…you were reaching for me!”
Menacingly, you wanted to add.
“Grabbed you a couple times after that, too, didn’t I?”
And the smile on Joel’s face said he’d already felt the temperature rise in yours. You tried turning your head, embarrassed, but he held it, letting his palms sink in.
“Yeah, well, I’d say we’re even now, Coach.” Your words came out a bit muffled with his hands squishing your cheeks between them. Adamant as you were, defiance was hard to feign when the man was making you pout. You made as if to get up, but Joel just held on tighter.
“Far from it,” he said. He kissed your puckered lips, and you couldn’t ignore the little flutter in your stomach.
“How come?”
“‘Cause I owe you a date.”
You should’ve known he wasn’t the kind to give up, or forget, that easily. Even when you gave a playful push to his chest, pretended not to revel in the spattering of kisses he’d begun dropping along your collarbone—‘That’s a bad idea and we both know it, Coach’—he just pulled you even further into himself, and you felt your defenses falter, if only for a second. Maybe he was right.
“I can take you now,” Joel added.
“Like hell you will,” you laughed.
Your voice was even, but beneath it, the façade unsure. Joel was lifting you to your feet, then looking around.
“I know a place,” he continued, casual. His eyes scanned the room, and you surmised he was looking for clothes. When they landed on the shirt and shorts he’d left for you on the desk, he walked right over. He handed them to you. While you dressed, he grabbed another set from the desk drawer and began doing the same, going on:
“It’s this spot called ‘Amy’s.’ I hear they’ve got gr—”
“Joel.”
Your eyes met his again, expecting to find a smirk on his face. You saw no such expression. Instead, he watched you earnestly. Drew the drawstrings in on his too-tight shorts and smiled. You had to fight with every fiber of your being not to do the same as he strode back over and stood in front of you. You shook your head at him.
“Not happening,” you said. Your lips twitched once.
Meanwhile, Joel’s were stretching into a full grin.
Before you could stop him, he was pulling you out of the office. Leading you back down the hallway from earlier. Your footsteps echoed all through the concrete corridor.
“Think Sam’ll kick my ass when he sees us?” he mused.
“Probably just knee you straight in the dick.”
Even from where you were being tugged along behind Joel, you could feel him wince. He flashed you a sidelong glance, and you returned it with a half-apologetic smile.
“I kissed it all better, didn’t I?”
“I think you missed a couple spots, I dunno.”
And with that, Joel was smirking. Shooting you a wink.
You groaned at the memory of David doing the same.
“Please never do that again,” you begged him.
You strolled into the locker room together.
“Do what?”
“Wink.”
“Oh.”
Joel was slinging the strap of his bag over his shoulder.
“Is that…” he started.
“Creepy as shit? Correct.”
He nodded back in wordless acknowledgment, but deep down, you sensed he was most definitely going to wink at you again at some point in the day, just to piss you off.
You’d get him back eventually.
Or maybe kiss the few remaining spots left untouched.
You were about to tell him as much—maybe give him a preview of what was to come with some road head on the way over to Amy’s, for fun—when you paused. You and Joel were walking back down the hall and headed to the exit when you felt something vibrate in your pocket.
You pulled your phone out and checked the screen.
From: Sam
Leaving Amy’s now
Don’t need a ride 😁
Why the fuck a nine-year-old even had an iPhone was beyond you. You typed as you walked alongside Joel.
From: You
Where are you going?
You approached the set of exit doors and stepped out.
From: Sam
Movies. Frank’s driving us.
You were headed out to the parking lot, listening to Coach Joel argue his case for taking his truck to Amy’s.
From: You
Who’s us? Are y’all gonna need a ride back?
From: Sam
Sarah ☺️
The little shitbird never elaborated when he was talking about his plans. You followed Joel out to his vehicle and thanked him as he helped you into the passenger seat. You weren’t really listening as you focused on the texts.
From: You
Sarah who?
Joel was starting his truck. Cranking the A/C and the volume on the radio—an ‘80s rock station, of course.
John Mellencamp’s voice flooded the cabin, and you could feel Joel’s grin kick up. Luckily, it wasn’t the song.
Something or other about authority, you heard dimly.
Sam was taking forever to reply. You were on the way.
From: You
Sarah who??
“Everything okay over there?” Joel asked. He reached over and squeezed your leg to punctuate the question.
You blinked. You nodded once.
“Yeah, it’s just my brother. He’s…going on a date, I think.”
Again, Joel’s smile stretched wider, like this was news.
“No shit? He’s only like nine years old,” he chuckled.
“Yeah. Third grade going on thirty, this kid.”
You watched your text conversation as if staring harder might procure another message. It stayed the same.
Meanwhile, Joel was pulling onto the highway, and his palm was moving up your thigh. The music played loud.
Your gaze flitted to his, and in it, you saw a brazen look.
“Where’s he takin’ her?” His fingers crawled further up.
Joel would be pulling off to the side of this roadway if he didn’t ease up. You spread your legs a little wider for him.
“The movies, it sounds like,” you murmured back.
Then you grinned and were about to set your phone aside when it vibrated in your hand. You glanced down.
“Sounds like a fun place to go,” Joel hummed, probably thinking of all the things he’d like to do to you in a theatre
From: Sam
Sarah Miller
You scanned over that message and didn’t think twice. Something registered in your mind—a faint recollection of that name, and then a sweet, cheerful face you’d seen at Sam’s school before—and you had to smile a little bit.
You liked Sarah Miller.
You were glad Sam seemed to like her too.
Nerves easing a little bit now, you texted back. Telling him to have fun and be safe, call me when you need a ride home. You couldn’t contain the smile on your lips.
Apparently seeing this pleased look, Joel slid his hand to the inside of your thigh and squeezed again. He brushed the heel of his palm against your shorts, then inched it backward, so that he was grazing the soft heat between your legs. You squirmed a little bit but didn’t stop him. In fact, your teeth snagged your bottom lip, and you were subsequently forced to stifle a sound. Joel leaned over.
“We’re ten minutes out. Think you can be a good girl and cum on my fingers just once before then?” he whispered.
The truck was humming along. The air was warm. The music was as deafeningly loud as ever, and your skin was quickly growing damp with sweat, but you were game.
Biting down on the smallest fragment of a whimper, you nodded your head. Joel’s fingers dove under your shorts.
“Oh, but…” you trailed off, sucking in a quick breath. Remembering. “We gotta get back to my car right after ice cream. Sam’s probably gonna need a ride home.”
Joel groaned.
Evidently, he’d had other plans post-Amy’s.
“Can’t the girl’s parents drive ‘em home or somethin’?”
“It’s just her dad, I think. Sam and Sarah have been fri—”
“Sarah?”
Suddenly, Joel’s gaze was darting right. Meeting yours. The fingers that were moments away from plunging deep within your heat were drawing back. Halting.
“A friend from school,” you finished slowly. “Sarah Mill—”
Oh.
Oh.
“Miller? Sarah Miller?” Joel interjected again, eyes wide.
You’d never made the connection.
You just remembered the kid with the bright, warm smile and thought nothing else. What are the odds she’d be—
“My daughter?!”
It seemed Joel’s right hand had completely forgotten its former mission, in favor of freaking out about his kid with your brother, in a movie theatre. Alone. Protective dad mode had kicked in instantaneously, and you couldn’t help but smile seeing that development. You sighed at the loss of his fingers but almost wanted to laugh when you saw the truck’s navigation shift from the ice cream shop to the closest movie theatre. Joel’s nostrils flared.
“But our date, Joel,” you whined, tone all faux protest.
Joel shot you a look and glowered at your teasing smirk.
“You’ll get your date, sweetheart,” he answered. Promised. His grip tightened on the wheel and twisted. “Just gotta make sure my player knows how to behave.”
Something told you he wasn’t talking about baseball.
joel and reader domestic fluff. maybe cooking and messing around
- ✂️
Just a quick little fluff piece, loved writing this🥺🫠
Masterlist
Oneshot
Sweet Girl
Joel Miller X F!reader
Reader’s POV:
You decided around noon to make cupcakes for the boys at Joel’s company, so after procrastinating and reading your book for a while, you head to the kitchen and turn on the radio, getting started on taking out all the ingredients for your project. Thankfully, you actually have everything you need to make them, along with the ingredients to make your own buttercream icing.
After making a mess of the kitchen, you throw the cupcake tins filled with batter in the oven and begin making the icing. Deciding to turn up the music, letting it fill the house. After they are done in the oven, you let them rest before starting to ice them. About halfway through, one of your favourite songs comes on, so you turn the volume up even more. Putting down the cupcake in your hand and beginning to dance around the kitchen. Completely unaware of your surroundings, you don’t hear Joel walk in the front door.
He stands there watching you dance around and sing. When you finally turn towards the door, you see his figure standing there, and you wonder how long he has been standing there watching you. He has the biggest smile on his face, walking up to you and grabbing your body, holding you before spinning you around and pulling your body into his again.
You try and speak over the music, “Did I just witness the Joel Miller dance?”
He smiles in response before letting go of you to walk over to the radio, turning it off. Walking back to you and putting a hand on your waist, and the other comes up to your face. Taking his finger and wiping icing off your cheek that you had neglected to notice, then putting his finger in his mouth to suck off the icing while maintaining eye contact with you, making your cheeks heat up, and you know he can see the blush on your face because of the huge cheeky smile on his face.
“You make these for me, baby?” He teases.
You playfully smack him on the shoulder, “Technically, I made them for you and the boys at work, so I guess you could say that,” you answer.
“That’s so sweet of you, baby, my sweet girl,” he says as he moves his hand up to your face to push a stray hair behind your ear.
You pick up a cupcake and ask, “Do you want to try one, baby?”
He nods, expecting you to hand it to him, but instead, you collide the icing of the cupcake into his face while laughing hysterically like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done. You pull it from his face, the icing sticking to his face, he shakes his head.
“Oh, you really shouldn’t have done that,” he smirks while grabbing one in his hand. You notice and begin to pull away, but he’s much quicker than you. Entrapping you between his body and the counter as he pushes the cupcake into your face. Now you both stand there with icing dripping from your faces, laughing at each other.
He takes his tongue and licks up the icing surrounding his mouth, “While this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you asked if I wanted to taste it, the icing is amazing,” he says before taking the cupcake in his hand and taking a bite. “Mmmmm, now that’s more like it, tastes like your face too,” he laughs, and you roll your eyes at his comment.
He walks over to the sink and grabs a kitchen towel, wetting it in the sink before walking back to you and beginning to wipe the icing from your face. His eyes are locked onto yours, and a smile comes over your face. When he’s finished, you grab the towel from his hand and go to the sink to rinse out the icing before cupping his face with your hand and wiping the icing off his face.
“Well I’m glad you like them,” you say while walking over to the piping bag and continuing to ice them. You hear his footsteps behind you and then you feel his hands on yours waist, pulling your back to his chest before placing his chin on your shoulder to watch you.
After a few minutes you finish up and place the piping bag down, turning around and placing a kiss to his lips before quickly pulling away to walk over to the mess you made on the counter so that you can start cleaning it all up.
He grabs your wrist and shakes his head, bringing his lips to yours for another quick kiss before saying, “Baby, go take a shower. Let me clean up for you.”
You insist on helping him, but he is determined to do it himself. “Thanks, Love. If you get done soon, come join me in the shower,” you say to him with a wink.
“Oh, I’ll be there my sweet girl. Just go get started without me,” he waves you away with a smile plastered to his face.
As you walk up the stairs, you think to yourself, “How did I get so lucky?”
♫ my tears ricochet - taylor swift
✎ read this on ao3
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tommy miller x reader
synopsis: You and Tommy circle each other like old ghosts, past bleeding into every glance, every touch—until a construction notice breaks careful distance and exposes old wounds still raw. Neither of you says what you really mean, but the silence between you screams louder than words.
warnings: Domestic living. Pre-outbreak. Reader is a writer. Angst. Mentions of death, and implied suicidal ideation.
w.c 10k
AUGUST, 2003
Coming back to Austin was never part of the plan.
But desperation has a way of rewriting things. Work had dried up. Your parents needed an extra pair of hands. So you made a quiet deal with yourself: swallow the pride, pack the boxes, go home.
Home. That word didn’t sit right anymore.
Still, there were benefits. No rent. Warm meals. A roof that didn't leak. Time, too—time to write from the corner of your old bedroom, the wallpaper still faded in the shape of childhood posters. In exchange, you’d help out around the house. Maybe lend your skills to the family business, if they asked.
It was manageable. Comfortable, even.
Or so you told yourself.
Until the past started pressing in, as soft as a breath on your neck. Austin carried its ghosts well, and you knew exactly which ones still lingered. The Miller family hadn’t left town. You hadn’t dared drive past their old place—hadn’t even thought about it, not really.
Too afraid you'd catch a glimpse.
Too afraid you wouldn’t.
Now, every trip to the store felt like a gamble. You kept your head down in aisles, your chest tightening at the sound of familiar boots scuffing tile. The shape of a man’s shoulders could turn your blood cold in an instant.
It wasn’t just home anymore. It was haunted.
And you weren’t sure you were ready to face the one ghost still walking around in broad daylight.
It’s stupid, really—how he still lives in the corners of your mind after all these years.
Especially now, back in your childhood room, sitting cross-legged on the same threadbare carpet, staring at that rusted metal tin under your bed.
You haven’t touched it. Haven’t dared. It’s exactly where you left it, gathering dust like the part of you that never moved on.
Was he still in town? Married? Kids tugging at his sleeves, calling him dad?
Hell, if you knew. Hell, if you wanted to know.
What you did know was this: whatever you and Tommy had, it had taken root deep—deeper than you realized until you came back. And now it stretched through you like ivy, tightening with every breath, every thought that wandered too far into the past.
It didn’t just haunt you. It hollowed you out.
You always thought teenage love was supposed to fade—burn fast, leave nothing but a scorched memory. Something you could laugh about years later, over drinks with old friends.
But this? This wasn’t that.
This was different. This one never died. And part of you was terrified it never would.
The grocery store was nearly empty—just the hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional wheel squeak from a lone cart. Nine p.m. on a Wednesday was strategic. No small talk. No familiar faces. Just you, the shelves, and the quiet. You could wander without armor, float between aisles like a ghost.
A bottle of wine. A couple of wilting vegetables. A gallon of water. Your cart looked more like a motel mini-fridge than the groceries of someone edging toward thirty.
You rounded the corner, drawn by the cereal aisle like a moth to a glow. You told yourself you’d skip it. Be good. Grab something green. But what else would keep you company at midnight, spoon in hand, staring at the glow of the fridge light?
Cheerios.
You reached forward—and so did someone else.
Your hand met theirs. Warm. Small. Fingers painted with chipped purple nail polish, a fraying string bracelet wrapped around the wrist.
Something soft. Something familiar.
And suddenly, the quiet wasn’t so quiet anymore.
“Aren’t you a little old to be buyin’ Cheerios?”
The voice was laced with a southern drawl—sharp, playful, too clever for its own good. She sounded bold. Bright. And young. Really young.
You glanced over and blinked. She was young. A kid, no more than ten, maybe eleven. Big eyes, a spark of mischief, and all the confidence in the world.
Without thinking, your mouth moved before your brain could catch up.
“Where the hell are your parents?”
Smooth. Real smooth. Maybe not the best thing to say to a stranger’s child.
Definitely not in the cereal aisle. Definitely not while holding a box of Cheerios like some kind of existential prop.
You sighed internally, wondering when exactly your life had become a string of awkward moments and low-stakes public breakdowns. Before you could backpedal, a voice rang out behind her—low, worn, and gravel-thick.
“Sarah!”
It hit like a dropped match on dry grass. That voice. You hadn’t heard it in years, but your body remembered before your mind did—spine stiff, breath caught, blood rushing somewhere you couldn’t name.
Familiar. Undeniably. Panic took the wheel.
You held out the box, almost like an offering. “Here—take it.”
Your voice cracked on the edge of a breath as you gripped the cart’s handle, fingers tightening like it might anchor you to the moment. You considered walking away. You wanted to walk away.
But something in you hesitated. Stayed. Hoping—dreading—that your gut was right. That the familiar voice wasn’t just a cruel echo. There are faces that time can’t erase. Some are etched too deeply. Etched into blood, into memory, into the space between heartbeats.
“Am I even allowed to take Cheerios from strangers?” the girl muttered as she crossed the aisle, drifting back to his side with all the ease of someone who knew exactly where she belonged.
He shot her a look—half stern, half fond. Then, as if pulled by some invisible thread, he lifted his head. And your whole world tilted. For a moment, your body didn’t know what to do. Vomit? Collapse? Spontaneously combust? All of the above?
You stared. Then, softly—barely above a whisper, like saying it too loud might break something—you breathed it out:
“Joel?”
You hadn’t seen this man since—God, what? 1990? And now he was here. In front of you. Looking older, sure—but still him. Still Joel. Lines carved deeper into his face, a little more tired in the eyes, but the foundation was unchanged. Solid. Familiar in a way that made your stomach twist.
Then your gaze dropped.
Wait.
Wait.
Does he have a kid?
Your brain scrambled to catch up, blinking fast as your eyes darted from the girl—still clutching the box of Cheerios—to him. Back and forth like a bad tennis match. You were trying to do the math in your head, but none of it added up, and suddenly the air felt too thin in your lungs.
Yeah. Yeah, you might actually throw up.
Joel didn’t say anything at first. Just looked at you—jaw tight, unreadable. That Miller silence, always more loaded than a whole damn conversation. He definitely recognized you. You could see it in the way his eyes no longer sat tired and low.
“She yours?” you finally managed, voice rough around the edges. It wasn’t judgment, not really. Just shock. Curiosity wrapped in disbelief.
He scratched at his beard. “Yeah,” he said, simply. “She’s mine.”
Something behind your ribs clenched. Not jealousy—no, that wasn’t fair. It was more like grief with nowhere to go. Like walking through the front door of a house you thought had burned down. Because this means the chances of his brother being around are only larger.
“Oh, right—Didn't... know,” you murmured.
He gave you that look.
The same one he used to shoot your way when you were seventeen and reckless with love—when he was older, angrier, and always carrying the weight of something he refused to name. Eyebrows lifted just slightly, one corner of his mouth tugging like he might laugh, or maybe just break.
“Yeah, well,” he said, voice rough as gravel. “Life’s funny like that.”
You felt it—the sting, low and stupid, blooming behind your ribs. Your throat tightened.
Don’t ask. Don’t do it. Don’t say his name. Don’t let it crawl out of your mouth like some pathetic ghost. You’re older now. Stronger. You survived it, remember?
You even believed that for a second. Then, before you could stop yourself, the words slipped out.
“How’s your brother?”
God. Fuck.
Joel’s jaw tensed, the weight of the question landing between you both like a dropped hammer. He looked away, just for a second—just long enough to say everything he didn’t. His hand rubbed at the back of his neck, and Sarah, still clutching the box, watched the moment pass with the quiet awareness only kids had.
“He’s…” Joel started, then hesitated. “He’s around.”
Around.
That word—around—cut deeper than a clean answer ever could.
Around as in… here? This very fucking store? Around as in… Alive?
You nodded slowly, lashes fluttering like your body was trying to blink away what your heart refused to accept. Of course, he was around. Somewhere.
Living a life with wide open skies and no trace of you in it. Breathing. Existing.
Your arms folded across your chest—not defensively, but like scaffolding, like something to keep your ribs from caving in. Joel shifted beside the cart. At first, it was just a glance. A habitual scan. But then—he really looked. You felt it. That weight behind his eyes.
Like he was seeing something impossible. Like he was trying to stitch the image of you now to the ghost of the girl you once were—laughing barefoot on the Miller porch, chasing fireflies, lips stained with cherry popsicles. His brother was never far behind.
Joel’s brow furrowed, and his voice dropped low.
“You grew up.”
It wasn’t said with surprise, exactly. More like quiet awe. Or regret.
You managed a tired smile. “Yeah—Life's funny like that." Only echoing his words from earlier.
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he added, his tone edging toward something heavier, quieter.
You swallowed. “Didn’t think I’d come back.”
He nodded. It hung between you. All of it.
“I’d say I’m sorry,” Joel muttered, glancing toward Sarah, who had wandered a few steps ahead, already bored of the grown-up tension. “For what he did. But I figure that ain’t mine to apologize for.”
Your throat tightened. “No. It’s not.”
A long beat passed.
Then Joel’s voice softened in a way you hadn’t heard since you were a kid and scraped your knee on his driveway.
“But he was a damn fool for leavin’ you like that.”
You didn’t respond right away. Didn’t trust your voice not to crack.
Instead, you asked, gently—like the wind might blow the moment away if you weren’t careful:
“Does he still live around here?”
Joel hesitated. That pause said more than words ever could.
“He’s back,” he said finally. “Moved back a while ago."
"My guest bedroom...” He said it like it was a joke.
You felt something in your chest slide loose. Raw. Heavy.
Joel glanced down the aisle.
“If you want…I can let him know I saw you.”
You looked away. At the flickering grocery lights, at the Cheerios box still clenched in your hand like it meant something.
Then: “No.”
Joel blinked. “No?”
Maybe?
No.
You shook your head, voice tight. “He's smart—he knows where to find me.”
And with that, you turned—hands tight around the cart handle, knuckles pale with restraint, as if you could just walk away. Like the past wasn’t licking up your spine like fire. Like it didn’t still have teeth.
You made it to the next aisle before the mask cracked.
Your hand flew to your chest, gripping at fabric, trying to anchor yourself, trying to breathe. But the air wouldn’t come. Not fully. Every inhale felt like it got caught somewhere in your throat, shallow and scraping.
Your pulse thundered in your ears, drowning out the overhead music, the hum of fluorescent lights, and the rest of the world. You leaned against the shelf, next to a row of canned beans and sadness, and let the weight settle in.
He was here.
He left and never looked back. But you? You came home.
The house felt smaller than it used to. Every creak in the floorboard was louder, every familiar room more suffocating. Being home again wasn’t as soft as you thought it’d be. It was rigid. Airless. Your old bedroom still smelled faintly of dust and childhood. But now, the walls felt too close. Too loud. You couldn’t sit still in it for long—pacing was safer. Something about the silence made your thoughts too sharp, too unkind.
You kept telling yourself you were fine. That one aisle encounter in a grocery store didn’t mean anything. That Joel’s words didn’t loop in your brain at night like a skipping record.
“He’s around.”
“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“He was a damn fool.”
You hadn’t even unpacked fully. Suitcases still half-zipped, laundry spilling over the edges. You told your mom you'd get to it. You lied.
The worst part?
You started hearing things. Little things. The clink of boots outside. A truck engine that sounded too familiar. That gravelly voice, echoing where it wasn’t. You’d look out the window. Nothing.
The metal tin under your bed—still untouched—started to feel radioactive. You’d stare at it some nights like it might burst open on its own, spill out the parts of you he never came back for.
The food tasted like cardboard. You stopped writing. Sat in front of your laptop, fingers frozen above the keys, stuck in a loop of opening old drafts and closing them again.
Your mother noticed. Asked gently if everything was alright, “Just tired.” You meant... I think I’m falling apart, and I don’t know how to stop it. Until the dam finally broke. In the thick of your late-night anxiety spiral, you did what you always did when your mind wouldn’t stop racing—you fled to your laptop. The glow of the screen was a small comfort, a lifeline to something tangible.
You dove into the local municipal website, fingers trembling as you searched the address you once knew like the back of your hand: the old Miller house.
It had been sold.
Two years ago.
That meant they were gone. They weren’t here anymore. Not in that house. Not in the place that held all the ghosts you thought you’d outrun.
And, you weren’t going to camp outside the grocery store, waiting for Joel to come back, begging him to say something—anything—about his brother.
You weren’t that crazy. Okay, maybe you were.
You exhaled slowly, the breath tight and uneven as you tried to push back the anxious knot settling deep in your stomach. You mindlessly scrolled through the local ads, searching for something to distract, anything to grab onto.
That’s when it jumped out at you.
Your eyes locked on the listing: Miller Construction — bold letters beneath a grainy photo of a faded pickup truck and a logo that looked slapped together but somehow genuine.
And there it was. A phone number.
You stared at it for what felt like minutes, heart pounding in a frantic rhythm that only anxiety could compose. Your fingers itched to pick up the phone, to dial those digits and shatter the silence that had been suffocating you for weeks.
But then doubt crept in.
What if no one picks up?
What if Joel answers?
Fuck, what if Tommy answers?
What if it’s not even them anymore?
Your mind spun, painting every worst-case scenario in vivid, merciless detail.
You told yourself, Maybe it’s better not to know. Still, your thumb hovered over the screen, trembling. One call could change everything. Or ruin what little peace you’d fought to keep. The room felt smaller. The air is heavier. You closed your eyes and swallowed hard.
Just one call. But you didn’t do it. You didn’t call.
Because some battles aren’t meant to be won—not yet. Not when the wounds are still raw, and the cost too high. Maybe it was finally time to kill that stubborn dream. The one you’d been clutching like a lifeline—the future you almost had with Tommy, back when everything still felt possible.
The future where you held his hand through late-night study sessions and half-forgotten promises. You built a life together, one small piece at a time, giving him the family he never got to have. Where he escaped the shadows of his past and made his own way—free and whole.
But not in this life. No. This life was different. In this life, you weren’t meant for that kind of happiness. Not with him. And maybe, just maybe, it was time to let that ghost go.
To mourn what could have been. And learn how to live without it.
Tomorrow, you told yourself.
Tomorrow you’ll wake up, open your laptop, and finally write again. You’ll make a real breakfast—eggs, toast, coffee strong enough to chase away the weight in your chest. You’ll laugh when your dad grumbles about the news, and nod along when your mom reminds you to check the mail.
And maybe, just maybe, it’ll feel like something in you finally let go.
Like some part of that aching, hollow dream was finally laid to rest.
You’d mourned it. Buried it. Let yourself believe you’d moved on.
Or at the very least—you were trying to.
And for a while, it almost worked. You made that breakfast. Brewed that coffee. Sat at the kitchen table and filled blank pages like your life depended on it. Day after day, you showed up for yourself. Pretending the ache had dulled, that time was stitching over the old wound. And for nearly a month, the rhythm held. You wrote. You helped around the house. You laughed when it was called for, and cried only when no one was looking.
You were healing. Or faking it well enough that it didn’t matter. Until one morning, the pattern cracked wide open— and nothing felt safe after that.
The knock came just past nine. Sharp. Measured. The kind of knock that wasn’t just passing through. You shuffled to the door, mug in hand, warmth still clutched between your palms. You weren’t expecting anyone. The morning was still fragile. Undisturbed.
Until you opened the door.
Joel Miller.
Joel Miller stood on your front step like a fragment of some half-buried memory you’d spent the last two weeks trying to drown. Even his face reminded you of his younger brother.
Older now. Weathered. But still him. His voice was rough with that dry Southern rasp, “Your dad around? He said we were clear to start this mornin’.”
You blinked.
“…Start what?”
He nodded back toward the curb, where a truck idled loudly and low, “Backyard. Said it needed regrading. New fence. We're doin' a couple other things.”
You gripped the doorframe like it might help you stay tethered.
'We'
'We're'
You followed his gaze.
Another figure rounded the truck—shoulders broad, posture familiar even after all these years. You didn’t need to see his face. You knew that walk. You knew that silence.
The past wasn’t dead. It had just been biding its time. Curled in the corners of your quiet life, patient and unblinking—waiting for the right moment to crawl back in.
You stared at Joel like he’d cracked open something sacred, like he’d reached through time and dragged your ghost straight into the daylight. He stepped into the house casually, like nothing was out of place, like this wasn’t a ruin you’d spent years quietly rebuilding.
Your voice came out thin. Unsteady.
“Why—” Your voice cracked under the weight of it, barely holding shape as you forced the word out. You swallowed hard, tried again, and tried to steady yourself. “You brought him?”
Joel didn’t flinch. He stood like stone, hands in his pockets, gaze level—not cruel, just worn down by time and truth. “Didn’t know your dad was your dad until we pulled up,” he said, voice flat, matter-of-fact. “Work’s work.”
You blinked. Once. Twice. The tight coil in your chest drew tighter, shoulders pulling inward like armor about to snap shut. “You didn’t know that my childhood home was my home?” Your tone sharpened. Bitter. “That’s bullshit, Joel.”
His jaw ticked. A tiny movement, a tell. But still, he didn’t deny it. “You think I remember every address from twenty years ago?” he muttered, but it wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even convincing.
“Didn’t think you’d be here.”
Your eyes drifted past Joel, drawn like a tide to the figure moving around the truck.
Tommy.
And God—he looked good. Time had carved him into something fuller, heavier at the shoulders, solid in a way that made the earth seem to hold its breath around him. That broad back, once boyish and lanky, now bore the shape of a man who carried too much. And still—still—he moved like he used to. That quiet, slow confidence that made you fall the first time.
His hair was slicked back now, all sharp and polished like he was trying to tame it—those wild curls that once spilled like ink between your fingers. Back then, they had a mind of their own.
So did he.
Now? Now, he looked like a man trying to keep himself in check. A cowboy dressed for control. It didn’t suit him. Not entirely.
And maybe that’s what made it worse.
You stepped onto the porch before hesitation could catch up to you. The screen door gave its familiar groan behind you, the sound slicing into the quiet morning like a memory you hadn’t invited. Sunlight spilled across the wooden planks, drawing a clean line between past and present—and you stood right at the edge of it.
He looked up.
Not startled. Not surprised. Like some part of him had known you were there all along. Like he’d been waiting. And without meaning to—without even really deciding to—you spoke.
“The back door’s open,” you said flatly, arms crossed tight against your chest. “I’ll leave the front unlocked, too. I’ve got work upstairs, so I won’t be in your way."
"... Just… try not to track mud through the house.”
Your voice was ice. Not cruel, but practiced. Sharp. The kind of cold you learned to wear like armor. You didn’t look directly at him—not for more than a second. Your gaze swept across the two brothers like they were just another chore to handle. Just another thing on your list.
Then, with the kind of grace only bitterness could teach, you pulled the screen door back. Just enough. Enough space for him to walk through.
If he wanted to. Tommy’s eyes lingered on yours, searching. But you didn’t give him anything. No softness. No invitation.
Only the door. A silent challenge.
He stepped forward, boots heavy against the porch boards. Hesitating at the threshold like a man about to cross into holy ground. Or wreckage.
He paused. “Thanks.”
You didn’t answer.
And then he slipped past you—into the house he hadn’t set foot in since he left it behind. Joel gave you a longer look. Not pitying. Just tired. Knowing. You turned without a word, shutting the screen door behind you. It snapped closed with a final, decisive click.
Upstairs, you sat at your desk. Fingers poised over your keyboard. But the words didn’t come.
Downstairs, you heard the quiet murmur of male voices. Boots scuffing against the tile. Familiar footsteps in an unfamiliar context.
The past wasn’t dead. It was walking through your childhood home. It was standing in your kitchen. It was breathing your air.
You stared blankly at the blinking cursor, heart climbing into your throat. And then—uninvited, unwanted—came the thought: What if he never left this time? Would you even let him stay?
The next few days passed in a strange rhythm. Tight. Unyielding.
You kept to yourself. Mornings started early—coffee, eggs, laptop open, headphones in. A fortress of routine. You made sure to stay upstairs when the work started, and when you did come down, it was surgical.
Quick. To the kitchen. To the laundry. Back up again.
But somehow, Tommy was always there. Not talking. Not looking for conversation. Just… nearby.
He was in the hallway when you went to grab your charger. On the back steps, when you went to let the dog out. In the yard beneath your window, hammer in hand, sleeves rolled up. The exact kind of cruel coincidence that made the air feel thinner.
You didn’t speak. Not much.
When you passed each other in the hall, it was a glance. Maybe a nod. If he said “mornin’,” you didn’t answer.
When he asked once—just once—if you wanted anything from the hardware store, you said, “No.”
He brought back a bottle of your favorite iced tea anyway. Left it on the counter without a word.
You put it in the fridge and never drank it.
At night, you heard him laughing with Joel in the backyard, low and warm. That familiar sound—the one that used to carry across your bedroom floor like music when you were seventeen—now curled around the edges of your chest like smoke.
You stared at your ceiling for hours.
On the fifth day, you handed him a beer from the fridge.
It was nothing. Just a gesture. A momentary lapse in your rigid silence. It didn’t mean anything. Not a crack. Not a thaw. Not anything.
Right?
“Here,” you said, voice flat, nudging the chilled bottle through the half-open sliding door. “It’s like... eight hundred degrees out there.”
He glanced at it, then at you. The sun caught in his lashes, sweat clinging to the edge of his hairline. He didn’t smile.
He took it.
“Thanks,” he murmured, voice low, gravel-worn.
You nodded once, already stepping back, as if you stayed too long in his orbit, you'd come undone. “I didn’t do it to be nice,” you added, backing toward the stairs. “I just didn’t want you passing out in my yard.”
Tommy lifted the bottle in a small, sardonic toast, “Would hate to inconvenience you like that.”
You didn’t laugh. Didn’t smile. Didn’t even blink.
You turned and walked away.
But it snagged something in your chest on the way out—like a fishhook caught beneath the ribs. Goddamn it. Was this how it was going to be? Was this all it was going to be?
No. No—you reminded yourself. Steeled your spine. This is how it should be.
Silent. Distant. Cold.
He left you. Walked out of your life like it was easy. Like you were just another part of the small-town scenery, he was shedding on his way to something bigger. Like what you had—what could’ve been—was forgettable.
Like you were.
You kept to that script for days.
Short answers. Avoiding eye contact. Locking yourself in your room to write and rewriting the same sentence fifteen times because your mind won't shut up.
And Tommy… he didn’t push. Not exactly. But he lingered.
Took his breaks on the back steps just under your window. Adjusted his work schedule so he was still around when you came down for coffee. One evening, you walked into the garage to grab something—and found him already inside, fixing the latch on the side door.
He startled, turned. So did you.
You both froze in the dim light, dust swirling between you. He looked like he wanted to say something. You waited, against your better judgment. But he didn’t. So you walked away. Again.
You climbed the stairs like the house itself was heavier now, like the walls remembered everything you’d said—and all the things you didn’t. That night, you sat at your desk, the pale glow of your screen washing over your face.
The document was still empty. Still waiting. The cursor blinked in the silence like a pulse—steady, unyielding. A heartbeat you couldn’t silence.
A reminder that time hadn’t stopped, even if everything else had.
And for just a moment—just a breath suspended between memory and ache—you let yourself go back.
Back to that night. The night he left.
You remembered how small you felt, sitting on the edge of your bed. Your knees drawn up to your chest. Bare skin touching bare skin, like you could hold yourself together.
The hum of cicadas outside had filled the space where his voice should’ve been. The night had swallowed him whole. And all you had left was the shape of him in your bedsheets, the echo of him in the room.
He never said goodbye.
Not a word. Not a note. Just gone.
And maybe that was the cruelest part—how he didn’t leave with a slammed door, didn’t give you a fight to cling to. He left softly. Quiet. Like he didn’t want to wake you.
Like he thought erasing himself gently would somehow hurt less.
You could survive the loss, maybe. You’d done that already—day after day.
But the not knowing. The lingering weight of all the almosts? That’s what gutted you.
Because how the hell are you supposed to stop loving someone who never let you say goodbye?
Someone who never gave you a final page to turn?
You didn’t want a clean break. You would’ve settled for jagged.
Shattered. Anything other than this quiet, aching permanence.
The grief of a love that just… drifted.
Like he took all the chapters you were meant to write together—and lit them on fire before you ever saw the ink.
How can you love someone you never closed a chapter with?
You didn’t have the answer. So you just lived. That’s all you could do.
The next morning was bleak. The kind that felt colorless from the moment you opened your eyes—sky the shade of wet concrete, air too still, too heavy.
The kind of morning where nothing quite sits right on your skin. Sleep. Sleep and read. That’s the kind of morning this was.
The boys had shown up early, hammers already echoing against the bones of the house by the time you dragged yourself from bed. The second addition—the part your parents conveniently forgot to tell you about—was underway.
A whole wing is being built like an afterthought. Like the house needed more rooms to feel emptier.
You stood in the kitchen, pouring your coffee into your chipped mug, the one with the fading rim and spider-crack down the side. Your phone was pressed between your cheek and shoulder, your mother’s voice crackling through the receiver.
"Yes, Mom… I know," you said, your voice edged with sleep and irritation. "I’ll tell them not to use the darkwood."
You stared out the window as the boys moved like ghosts across your backyard. Dust in the air. Heat is already rising off the soil. You squinted.
There he was.
Tommy.
Shoulders bent under the weight of some lumber, jaw tight, shirt sticking to his back like it was a second skin. He looked like the summer you’d tried to forget. Just older.
“I just don’t understand why you didn’t plan this before you left the country,” you muttered, lowering your voice. “You left me with the world’s most cryptic blueprint and no answers.”
Your mother sighed on the other end, already tuning you out.
“I have to go, sweetheart,” she said. “Tell Joel I said hi. And Tommy, too.”
No goodbye. You took a sip of the coffee, bitter and burnt, but it gave you something to hold. You opened the back door.
“Hey,” you called out, your voice cutting across the morning. Tommy looked up, blinking sweat from his lashes.
“No darkwood,” you said plainly. “Apparently, it clashes.”
Tommy raised an eyebrow, leaned slightly on the beam in his hand. “What the hell doesn’t clash with this house?”
You almost smiled. Almost. But didn’t let the edges of your lips rise.
“My patience.”
He let out a breath of a laugh, then nodded, and turned back to the work.
You stood there for a moment longer, your fingers tightening around the handle of the mug, watching him move like he belonged to the earth. Like the weight of the wood grounded him. Like he didn’t once disappear from your life like a ghost at dawn.
You hated that it still made your heart ache.
And somehow—worse than anything—he always seemed to know when you were watching. Like there was some invisible thread still strung tight between the two of you, humming in the silence, pulling at the air when your gaze lingered too long.
As he rounded the corner of the house, he paused—just once. Looked back.
And your eyes met. It was brief. Barely a second. But it knocked the wind from your lungs all the same. You ducked instinctively, your head bowing out of view behind the kitchen window. Staring down at your hands like they held something worth inspecting. Like you could pretend you hadn’t been caught in the act. Caught in him.
Feigning indifference. Feigning innocence.
But it was too late. The moment had already happened.
And it was enough to remind you of the thread between you. It had never truly broken.
You stayed hunched for a while, eyes on your fingers as if they might still tremble. You hated that he could still do that—look at you and stir something deep in your chest, something old and warm and traitorous.
Eventually, you forced yourself back into the rhythm. Coffee cooling beside your laptop. The dull hum of construction outside pulsing against the windows like a heartbeat.
Work. Just work. You had an article due, something about the resurgence of analog photography. But the words wouldn’t come easily today. Your fingers hovered over the keys, twitching. Restless. The sentence you typed three times already still sounded like someone else wrote it. It was so hard to write lately.
With a heavy sigh, you pushed back from the desk and wandered into the kitchen, legs stiff from too many hours of sitting in your own silence. You reached for an orange—bright, firm, promising something clean and sharp to cut through the fog pressing against your skull.
Maybe the acid, the scent, the bite of citrus would jolt something loose. A sentence. A metaphor. A way to end the paragraph that had been rotting on your screen for the past hour.
You steadied the fruit on the cutting board and pressed the knife down—careless, distracted.
The blade slipped.
It was quick. A sudden, slicing kiss across your palm. You barely saw it happen before the sting bloomed, hot and biting. Then came the warmth—blood pooling fast, dark against the pale ridges of your skin. The orange rolled lazily toward the sink, abandoned.
“Shit—” you hissed, instinctively clenching your fist. Blood welled instantly, thick and crimson, dripping in slow, syrupy globs onto the tile.
You barely had time to grab a towel when the back door opened.
“Hey, I—” Tommy’s voice stopped short. The sound of his boots scuffed once, twice on the threshold, and then—
He was at your side.
He didn’t ask. Didn’t hesitate. Just crossed the room like he’d done it a thousand times before.
Like he hadn’t been gone for over a decade.
“Let me see,” he said, low. Not a demand. Just the kind of voice you don’t argue with.
You tried to turn your hand away from him, but he caught your wrist gently, his calloused fingers curling around yours like they remembered how.
“It’s nothing,” you murmured, not trusting your voice to be steady.
“You’re bleeding all over the damn place,” he muttered, brow furrowed, eyes flicking down to your palm. The concern in his expression was too raw, too real—something that didn’t belong to a man who had left you behind without a word.
He pressed the towel into your palm, firm but careful. “You got a first aid kit?”
“Yeah, it’s—” The words stalled in your throat as your gaze lifted, catching his.
He was close. Too close. Close enough that the air felt different between you—thick with heat, tension, history. You could smell him: sun-warmed sweat, the faint bite of cigarettes, and something faintly artificial… cologne?
You blinked. He wore cologne?
For work?
Your mouth went dry.
You swallowed hard. “It’s under the bed.”
He froze for just a beat, eyes lifting from your hand to meet yours.
And for the first time since construction began, you really looked at each other—no shielding, no avoidance, no polite glances and feigned distractions. It was raw, heavy. The kind of eye contact that rattled something deep in your ribs. That said everything neither of you had the guts to.
Grief. Anger. Ache. Love. All of it—pressed into a single, suffocating second.
Tommy’s breath hitched, but he covered it with a short nod. “Yeah,” he murmured, voice rough at the edges. “I’ll get it.”
He didn’t ask where. He didn’t need to.
Because he already knew. It was exactly where you left it. Years ago—tucked under your bed, in that old shoebox, next to the flashlight and extra batteries.
Just in case.
Just in case he ever needed it.
He shifted his hand, covering yours atop the towel—a silent invitation to press down, to steady the pain yourself. Without another word, he headed upstairs—not rushing, but with a purpose that betrayed a memory sharp and certain. He knew exactly which door to find.
When he returned, he knelt before you as if by instinct—as if the years hadn’t dulled the unspoken understanding between you. The kitchen seemed to shrink around him, heat thickening the air. His presence was unbidden, yet it felt like something that belonged.
You might not pass out from blood loss, but the fact that he was kneeling in front of you.
“You didn’t have to—” you began, voice rough and tight.
“Don’t,” he cut in, quiet but resolute. And you didn’t.
“It’s fine,” you murmured, trying to pull your hand back, your voice brittle beneath the heat rising in your cheeks. “I can handle it.”
Tommy didn’t move. Didn’t blink. “Doesn’t look like it.”
His fingers were already unfurling gauze from the battered first aid kit, hands working with the same stubborn care he used to fix broken fences and busted drywall.
Steady. Precise. Unapologetic.
“You’re bleeding through the damn towel,” he added, eyes flicking to the deep red soaking through the cloth like it had something to prove.
You weren’t. He was being kind of dramatic.
And then—his hand wrapped around yours again.
Warm. Solid. Familiar in a way that made your stomach twist.
For just a breath, just a flicker of a moment—you let it happen. Let yourself imagine it was still then. It was still a hot July night, and he was slipping through your bedroom window like he belonged there.
That he hadn’t taken every soft thing you gave him and vanished into silence.
He peeled the towel back slowly, and hissed through his teeth.
“You always did this,” he muttered under his breath, almost like he didn’t mean for it to slip out. “Couldn’t cook without hurting yourself. Still clumsy as hell.”
You blinked. The words cut deeper than the blade had.
“Don’t,” you said, voice barely above a whisper, trembling but sharp as glass. “Don’t talk like you know me.”
His jaw tightened. But he didn’t let go. Didn’t retreat. His thumb moved without thinking—just once—over the edge of your wrist, where your pulse thudded wild and panicked, like it knew better than to trust him again.
“I do know you,” he said at last. His voice wasn’t soft, or angry.
Just… worn.
Tired.
“That’s the part I can’t seem to forget.”
The kitchen went quiet—stifling quiet. Only the hum of the fridge, and the sound of your own breath snagging on the edge of emotion.
And still—he held your hand like it was something worth protecting.
Like maybe, for once, he was the one who couldn’t let go.
As if summoned by the thrum of your fear, the front door creaked open. Joel stepped inside, a paper bag slung casually in one hand, eyes narrowing the second he caught sight of the kitchen.
“The hell’s goin’ on in here?”
“Nothing,” you said too fast—your breath hitching in the middle of the word. “I’m fine.”
You yanked your hand back like it had caught flame, heat rising in your cheeks. Hold the line.
Tommy didn’t flinch, but something passed over his face—quick, unreadable. He flexed his fingers once, then raised them slowly in a mock surrender. His tongue pressed into the corner of his cheek, but the tension in the air pulsed too loudly for jokes.
Joel clocked every bit of it. His brow lifted.
Silent. Sharp. Suspicious.
You didn’t say anything else. Just turned and walked out. Quick, sharp steps—an escape. Because staying? Staying meant unraveling. Splintering the whole house down the middle.
Tommy stayed frozen, hands braced on the counter like he might push the whole kitchen away. His jaw ticked, tongue dragging over his back teeth. Joel didn’t say a word, but Tommy could feel his stare like a weight at the base of his neck.
Finally, he glanced up, exhaling through his nose.
“…Hell of a thing,” he muttered. “Cuts an orange and suddenly it’s a goddamn Greek tragedy.”
“Go get the goddamn cement bags…” Joel exhales, dragging a hand through his hair.
It had been a month since construction began.
A whole month of the Miller brothers tearing apart your backyard and piecing it back together—sweat-streaked days of lumber stacks, concrete dust, and the whine of power tools cutting through the silence you'd once cherished.
Expanding the house wasn’t easy. Adding a whole new wing wasn’t some HGTV weekend project—it was invasive, loud, exhausting. The kind of change that pressed into every corner of your life, even the ones you thought were safe. You were managing it all on your own, with your parents halfway across the world chasing their latest academic obsession, sending vague texts about ancient temples and unfiltered sunsets.
You were the one answering questions, signing off on adjustments, pretending like you had it all under control when inside, everything felt like it was slipping.
The house didn’t feel like yours anymore. Not with brothers tracking in dirt, rearranging your walls, changing the literal structure of the space you grew up in. And especially not with Tommy Miller’s ghost—his voice, his laugh, his scent—pressed into every hallway, lingering long after he'd gone for the day.
It felt like trying to build something new on top of bones you hadn’t buried properly.
Like every hammer swing was driving something deeper into your chest instead of the walls.
The heat pressed down like a second skin, sticky and relentless.
One of those nights where even a cold shower leaves you clammy, soaked through with sweat you can’t wash away.
You rose from your chair, limbs stiff and aching, the words on your screen blurring into nothing—meaningless.
Your writing, your efforts, all of it felt hollow, like shouting into the void.
Fuck. Everything felt wrong.
Downstairs, the air still carried him—faint traces of beer, the sharp cotton scent of his shirt, and that subtle, feral tang of sweat that somehow smelled like home. Like, even when he was dirty, rough, and exhausted, he was cleaner in your mind than anyone else.
Your eyes flicked toward the back door, still ajar, a sliver of the night creeping inside. Tommy groaned low, shifting his workbag over one shoulder, muscles tensing with the familiar motion.
“You’re still here?” Your voice was barely above a whisper, hesitant and rough. Bare feet slid over the hardwood, soft as a ghost’s approach. “It’s like... ten at night. You do know we’re not paying overtime, right?”
He glanced up, surprise flickering across his face, but he didn’t let the bag slip from his grasp. Instead, he let out a tired chuckle, dry and short.
“Yeah, I figured.” His voice was rough around the edges, like gravel smoothed by time but still sharp enough to cut. “Work’s slow when it’s this hot. Thought I’d get a head start, try to wrap it up before it gets worse.”
You nodded, though your heart pinched with something you couldn’t name. The space between you stretched taut, loaded with unsaid things. “You—” Your voice caught, words tangled in the tension thickening the air. You stopped yourself, the weight of what you wanted to say crushing the breath from your lungs. “You didn’t have to come back.”
His eyes locked with yours—steady, unflinching, almost unapologetic.
“I came back for the job,” he said quietly, voice rough around the edges. “…Save Joel some time.”
The words settled between you like cold stones. You swallowed hard, but the heaviness wouldn’t lift. It anchored you where you stood.
“His kid is cute,” you said then, voice clipped, sharp enough to draw blood, “Sarah...”
His niece.
It wasn’t a question or an invitation—it was a declaration, a wall built from years of silence.
Tommy’s gaze flickered for a moment—something like regret, or maybe pain—but he didn’t respond. The silence stretched. You hated how much you still wanted him to say something, anything.
Instead, he shifted his weight and muttered, “Yeah. She is.”
Your heart twisted—bitter, raw, aching in a way that felt both familiar and unfamiliar.
This awkwardness between you? It wasn’t who you were. Not the way you’d been before, back when laughter filled your rooms, when teasing and jokes were the language you both spoke effortlessly, when you prodded and pushed at each other with no walls between you.
When you were each other's first.
“How’s...” You faltered, fingers drumming nervously on the granite countertop, “How’s your dad?”
He paused, tongue pressed to the side of his cheek like he was swallowing something hard.
“Dead.” The word came out clipped, a breath caught somewhere between a laugh and a growl, frustration threading through it.
Your mouth opened, his name on your tongue, but he cut you off with a sharp shake of his head.
“Don’t do this—"
"Not tonight.”
The silence after his words was thick, loaded. You wanted to push, to ask more, to unravel the years of silence, but something in his eyes warned you off—this wasn’t the time.
Was it ever going to be?
“You left.” The words hit the room like a jagged blade—plain, sharp, unforgiving. “You slid out of my bed. Climbed out my window. And you left.”
You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to stand taller, spine stiffening like steel under fire.
He tilted his head, that old, familiar frustration simmering just beneath the surface—like a storm you’d weathered before, one you knew too well. You've seen it before. Hell, you were there when it was made.
Your name slipped from his lips, low and urgent, a warning:
“Please.”
But you didn’t back down. You couldn’t. Why would you?
“You left,” you spat, voice breaking but fierce, “And you never came back.”
He stepped back slowly. The weight of your words knocked the breath from his chest. The work bag slipped from his shoulder like a dying limb, thudding softly against the floor.
You didn’t let up.
“Do you feel guilty?” you asked, voice trembling with fury. “Do you even want to apologize?”
Silence. So you pressed harder, cutting deeper.
“Did you like it?” The words came like venom. “Wasting all those nights I let you sleep in my room. Pretend nothing was wrong. Hiding from your father... while I—while I held you together.”
His jaw tensed. Still nothing.
“Did you like it?” you hissed. “Fucking your best friend—”
That shattered him. He stepped forward so fast the air shifted, his voice raised above yours for the first time.
“Jesus—fuck…” he barked, dragging a palm down his face like it might erase the moment.
Anger. Sweat. Shame. It was all there, bubbling just beneath the surface.
You didn’t move. You couldn’t. His presence filled the kitchen like smoke from a house fire—heavy, choking, impossible to ignore.
He looked at you like he didn’t know whether to argue or fall to his knees.
“I was seventeen,” he said, low, guttural. “And I was drowning.”
You blinked, your voice quieter now. But not kinder.
“And I was there. Every single night. And you still left me.”
He stepped back, that frustration blooming into something more brittle. Regret. Maybe even grief.
“You think I haven’t thought about it every goddamn day since?” he asked, his voice cracking at the edges.
You laughed. It was short and bitter, “Not enough to come back. To apologize.” The silence that followed was loud enough to swallow you both whole.
He stared at you—really stared. But this look was different. It was weighted.
You could see it in the quiet collapse around his eyes. The carved-in creases along his brow. The lines hugging his mouth like they'd settled there after years of clenching.
He looked tired. Weathered. Older.
Hell, so were you.
But the boy you once knew—the one who whispered secrets against your bedsheets and flinched at every car door slam—he was still in there. Flickering behind the amber-brown of his eyes, freckled skin flushed from heat and memory.
“What do you want me to say?” he finally rasped, voice rough as gravel. Another step forward. Closer.
“That I love you?”
Your breath caught.
“That I was a dumb fuckin’ kid who fell for his best friend?” His voice grew sharper. “That I hated my life? That you were the only good thing in it? That every day, I thought about leavin'—and I don’t mean runnin' off to the army.” He looked at you then, unflinching.
“I mean, leaving. For good,"
"My dad ain't keep his gun in no damn safe.”
You flinched, a ragged inhale escaping before you could stop it. Your arms folded around yourself like armor.
But he didn’t stop. He took another step—careful, cautious, like you were something sacred he didn’t know how to hold.
“That seeing your face—sneakin’ into your window, smelling your shampoo on my fuckin’ hoodie—that was the only thing that made me feel alive?”
Your silence begged him not to go on.
But he did.
“That every hit I took, every time I bit my tongue bloody just to keep quiet... I did it so I could make it to the next night? Just so I could hear you laugh?”
“Just so I could feel like a fuckin’ person for once?”
He was close now. Close enough to break you.
And when you didn’t respond, when your body remained rigid and your lips sealed shut, he added—soft, but ruined. “You think I wanted to leave you?"
“I didn’t leave you—I left me.”
The words landed like a hammer to the chest. Blunt. Unforgiving. Final.
You exhaled, a sound more sob than breath, and your knees nearly buckled with it. Tears tracked silently down your cheeks, warm and steady like they’d been waiting all this time for permission.
That wasn’t the answer you wanted. But it was the one you got.
And God, it gutted you. Because you'd spent years stitching his absence into abandonment. Into betrayal. You’d made it about the leaving—not the why. Not the rotting town that carved him hollow from the inside out. Not the bruises he kept quiet. Not the glassy stare he wore like armor. You never realized. And now it was too late to fix it.
He stood there, just looking at you—eyes wide and wild with something close to regret. And then, his breath hitched. He lifted a hand—hesitating—like it wanted to reach for you, to cradle your cheek, wipe away the wreckage.
But it faltered. It dropped. He couldn’t even touch you.
“Fuck—” he rasped, stepping back like your pain had burned him, “I’m sorry. That was—” He choked on the next words, shaking his head like they wouldn’t come.
“Too much,” you whispered for him. Your voice thin. Broken.
His eyes flicked to yours again.
And for a second, there it was.
That same goddamn look. The one he gave you on that night—your window cracked open, the summer air thick, his hands trembling as he kissed you like it was the only thing that could save him. That night he left without a goodbye.
He still looked like that boy.
But this time, you weren’t seventeen. And this love wasn’t enough to rewrite history.
You wiped your cheeks with the back of your hand, jaw trembling. “You don’t get to do that. Drop some tragic confession and expect it to make the mess prettier. You left, Tommy. You chose to disappear.”
“I didn’t have a goddamn choice,” he said low.
“You did.” Your voice cracked on the last syllable. “You did, and you didn’t choose me.”
The silence between you turned heavy, thick with all the years lost to what-ifs and should’ve-beens.
Finally, you turned toward the stairs, wiping your face again.
“Just—lock the back door when you’re done.”
You padded up the stairs, each step heavier than the last. Behind you, his voice barely filtered through—just the edge of a broken exhale, the muffled crack of “Fuck,” and the restless shuffle of feet with no direction, no place to go.
But you kept climbing.
Because what else could you do?
You reached the landing and closed your door like it could block out the past. Like it could erase the way his words were still ringing in your bones.
I didn’t leave you—I left me.
It echoed like a curse.
You stood there, still. Shaking. Eyes darting across your room like they were searching for something to hold on to—something that hadn’t already been shattered.
But everything looked different now. Smaller. Older. The bed where you once whispered into the dark with him. The chair where he used to sit in silence, a quiet escape from the bruises on his ribs. The window he’d disappeared through.
You slumped to the floor.
What the fuck were you supposed to do with all of this?
With the memory of a boy who’d wanted to die—who’d only stayed alive because of you—and the boy who never told you. Never gave you the chance to carry any of it.
Cry?
God, yes. You cried.
It wasn’t graceful—wasn’t soft or cinematic. It tore out of you like a wound reopening under pressure. Sharp. Immediate. Ugly. Loud. The kind of crying that hollowed your ribs and made your molars pulse. You cried like your body thought grief was a fire to be purged, like noise could rewrite history if you screamed loud enough. If you hurt hard enough.
You didn't even remember falling to the ground. One moment you were upright, the next you were on your side—curled fetal on the cold floor like some ghosted version of yourself. Your fists clutched the hem of your t-shirt, pulling so hard you thought the fabric might tear, might snap you out of this. But it didn’t. Nothing did.
You couldn’t breathe around it—this grief, this truth that clawed at your lungs like it was trying to make space for itself. You wanted to crawl out of your skin. Tear the memories out of your skull. Rewind to the summer of ‘89 and beg him not to go.
And the worst part?
The cruelest part?
You still loved him.
You still fucking loved him.
Through all of it. Through the leaving. Through the years of nothing. Through the not-knowing and the silence and the way he looked at you now like he still held your name behind his teeth.
You loved him, and he had left anyway.
Not because he stopped. But because he didn’t know how to stay.
And that? That broke you worse than if he’d said he never loved you at all.
authors note: hi .. was this bad.. idk feedback is like so appreciated.. i am intimidated.
Warnings -> 18+ smut (Minors DNI), oral (f receiving), lot’s of swearing and arguing 😬
Your POV:
It took about 2 days before Joel was back on his bullshit, the apologies and I love you confessions had no chance against the grief Joel was feeling.
Your couple of days free from the medical centre were short-lived, you headed back to work with little to no enthusiasm to be there and Henry was quick to notice. It didn't help that Joel decided he wanted to pick a fight with you this morning right as you were getting ready to leave. Something along the lines of "What do you expect me to do while you are at that damn clinic almost 24/7?" which is complete bullshit, which is what you told him. He didn't appreciate that answer, so you told him to go find a job around the QZ or something useful instead of being on my back all the time about things I can no longer control.
You assume when you return at the end of your long day that either he listened to you and found something to do or was at the bar drinking again, not caring which one it was you went to bed. When you wake up the next morning to get ready for another day at the clinic, you find him passed out on the couch covered in dirt and dry blood.
You decide not to even engage with him on this, leaving him passed out on the couch as you leave the apartment unit, but making sure to slam the door when you do so that he knows you saw him.
You walk through the doors of the clinic and are immediately greeted with chaos, and people running around you. Finally, you see Henry walk into the area and you flag him down, "What's going on? Where do you need me?" you ask.
"We've got a girl in her mid-20s it looks like in the 3rd examination room on the right, a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Can you handle that, might need surgery" he replies.
You swallow and reply "Yeah of course I'll head over there now". All you can think is, what if it's Sarah?
Immediately upon entering the room, you can quickly deduce that it is indeed not Sarah. This girl looks younger than sorry and lacks her gorgeous dark curly hair and dark skin. You picture Sarah in your head and get lost in thought for a moment before the medical centre staff member yells out to you, “Doctor, we need you over here right now!"
You run over to the bedside and begin your evaluation. She had a gunshot wound to the abdomen and was losing blood quickly. “Can we get some O neg in here!” You yell out to the “nurse” standing in the doorway, and she turns quickly to get that for you. When she returns, you start the transfusion and try to control the bleeding, but you can’t seem to get ahead of it. The heart monitors start to scream at you, indicating she’s lost her pulse. You yell out, “Starting CPR!” As you get on top of her and start doing chest compressions.
After doing compressions for a while and the first transfusion, you call the time of death. In a perfect world, you would have given her more blood and continued CPR, but you’re running on a limited supply and have a protocol to follow.
You get off the young girl once you stop CPR and unhook her from all the machines before pulling the sheet over her head and calling the soldier in to take the body away.
You let out a loud sigh before walking back into the hallway and over to yours and Henry’s office so you can sit down for a moment before they call you back into the hell hole. You place your face into the palm of your hands as you try to hold the tears back. You saw a lot of intense shit while being a doctor before the outbreak, but somehow it never measures up to the things you’ve seen since getting to the Kansas City QZ.
When you worked in Austin, you mostly just clipped a lot of aneurysms and did a lot of tumour resections. The occasional trauma when you worked the ER or when you were on call, and for the most part it was almost exclusively head traumas. Though you did a full rotation in the intern and resident years of your surgical residency, it had been a long time since you’d done a lot of the things that you do here in the QZ. Back at your job in Austin, you were also provided with a more than adequately stocked hospital, while here at the medical centre, you were lucky if you had the basics. No major surgeries, not because you didn’t have the equipment but because you didn’t have properly trained staff to pull it off.
The QZ soldiers had raided a nearby hospital before you even arrived, they got hospital beds, medication, IVs and other miscellaneous hospital supplies but it wasn’t enough, it’s beginning to run low now. You and Henry have sat in front of the leaders of the QZ to express these thoughts with them but “the closest hospital isn’t close enough” they say. While you find that to be a load of bullshit, you don’t bother arguing with them because it ain’t gonna get you nowhere, so you bite your tongue and move on.
The rest of the day wasn’t as hectic, just a few people coming in for a variety of different reasons, no more losses though thankfully. Once the sun started to go down, Henry came to relieve you from work. He lived at the medical centre, and by that, he does live there. He never takes a break, he blames it on the fact that he doesn’t have anyone waiting for him at home which has always brought a frown to your face but he is a very stubborn man and there is no persuading him out of his ways.
Once you finally give in to Henry’s persuasion for you to go home, you grab your bag and start walking back to your apartment. In your head, you hope that Joel isn’t there lying on that damned couch. But with your luck, that isn’t the case as you lay your eyes open, he’s passed out on the couch.
You let out a quiet laugh while rolling your eyes before slamming the front door closed. This immediately causes Joel to jump, eyes opening wide and glaring at you. He is met with your smug smile; you are feeling petty tonight, and having woken him up makes something inside light up.
He quickly stands up on his feet and starts walking up to you; he looks down at your body and sees the blood on your clothes from work but chooses to ignore it and keeps walking closer, right until he is so close that he pushes you against the wall.
Unable to move, he feels power over you, and this brings a smirk onto his lips. He likes being in control—he looks down at you as you fight to meet his gaze; he grabs your face and forces it up so that your eyes meet his. You try and turn your eyes in the opposite direction; he starts pushing against you harder, trying to force you to look at him again and finally give in.
You bring your eyes back up to him, and he brings his hand up to your neck and applies slight pressure, causing a quiet moan to slip past your lips. He pushes his hips against yours.
Your mouth opens and lets out another moan and brings his lip to your neck and starts sucking on the sensitive skin, pulling the skin into his mouth before using his teeth to leave a mark on your skin. He brings his lips close to your ear and whispers “Jump”; you hesitate for a second before jumping up so that his hands can grab you. Squeezing your ass as he continues to push you into the wall, this time taking your lips in his. Sliding his tongue past your lips, you push against it with your tongue, causing a groan to come from him.
He pulls you from against the wall and places you on the table just a couple of feet away from where he previously held you against the wall. Placing you down and dipping his head to give a kiss to your inner thigh while looking up at you through his eyelashes, waiting for you to stop him, but you don’t. He takes his mouth and gives a kiss to your heated core, still covered by your leggings. His name starts leaving your mouth along with needy moans, you feel his smirk before he pulls his face away from between your thighs grabbing the waistband of your leggings and pulling them down your legs to remove them, throwing them on the floor before bringing his face back to yours before pressing a needy kiss against your lips, pulling away again, kissing your neck, down to your chest and then to your stomach before looking back up at you and bringing a kiss to the inside of your thighs. This causes your hips to buck forward, trying to get any type of release as he continues to tease you.
Finally, after hearing you whine his name, he brings his warm lips to your dripping core. Bringing an open-mouth kiss to your swollen clit before sucking on it and swirling his tongue. You start to lose control of your body and begin grinding against his face, you can feel a smirk build on his lips from your actions.
He pulls his mouth off you, looking up through his eyelashes to meet your gaze. You begin to whine at the loss of contact, but just as quickly as he stopped, he started again. This time he brings his fingers up to your core and pushes them inside you, the stretch causes your back to arch into him. While still looking at you he brings his lips back to your sensitive clit and begins flicking his tongue at a torturous pace. He feels your legs begin to shake and your walls begin to tighten around his fingers, he can feel you close to your orgasm so he quickens up his pace.
You feel yourself reaching your high, you moan his name over and over. You no longer have control of your body, at this moment he holds all the control and you hate it but love it so much at the same time. He lets out a deep moan and the vibration from his mouth on you sends you over the edge in less than a second. Your walls clench hard on his fingers and he feels your arousal release on him but he continues, dragging your orgasms out before finally pulling his fingers out and licking down your entrance to collect all your arousal on his tongue.
He pulls away and starts to undo his jeans but before he can pull them down, a loud banging at the door startles both of you. The banging is then accompanied by a voice.
“Joel! Are you in there?” A woman’s voice calls out and you immediately jump up and throw your leggings back on while glaring at him.
“Joel, who the fuck is that?” You try and whisper but it turns into something more.
He pulls his hands over his face before shaking his head and replying, “I’m sorry” as he walks over to the door while buttoning his jeans back up.
He opens the door and a woman, around his age is standing there. “There you are,” she says before looking back at you awkwardly like she didn’t know you would be there. She speaks up again “Oh hey Doctor, umm- nice to finally meet you.”
You stand there so lost in what the fuck is going on, you scoff “Oh is it, and who the fuck are you?”
She steps past Joel and you now see the blood soaking through her shirt, “I’m Tess, I’m a— a friend of Joel’s” she replies to you as she pulls out a chair from the table and takes a seat like she has the right to even be sitting in your apartment.
“A friend? Well funny because Joel ain’t ever mentioned a friend named Tess before, but from what it sounds like, he’s mentioned me to you huh?” You yell back at the two of them.
You can see the panic on Joel’s face. He’s been caught and he doesn’t know what to say, but he finally manages to say something: “Baby, it’s not what it looks like, okay.” He tries to grab your hand, but you yank it away. You look at Tess and notice she is refraining from looking at you. You can’t believe the scene that’s unfolding in front of you.
You take several steps back, rage beginning to take over your body. “Okay, well, ‘Joel’s friend Tess’,” you say with air quotes to indicate you can tell this is a load of bullshit. “What the fuck are you doing at my apartment looking for my boyfriend?”
She quickly looks at Joel, like she didn’t know that this was a shared apartment or that the two of you were dating. She just knew of you and from Joel’s lack of friends that’s why she assumed you were the Doctor he came in with. “Well, as you can see, I’ve got a bit of a situation here,” she says, pointing at the giant growing blood stain on her shirt. “I knew Joel had a pretty stocked-up first aid kit here, so I came to use it, but I get the feeling that the first aid kit might belong to you?”
You shake your head again, not knowing what to even reply to her. “Yeah, you’d be fucking correct in assuming that, and why the hell couldn’t you go to the clinic, huh?”
She hesitates before responding to you. “Well, this injury didn’t exactly come from within the QZ walls.”
Holy fuck is this woman serious? “What the fuck, you need to get the fuck out of here. I cannot have some smugglers just sitting at my kitchen table.”
Tess looks at Joel again, but his eyes are locked on you, and finally, it all clicks.
You walk up to Joel, shoving him hard and yelling at him. “Is that what you’ve been doing these past few nights? You’re going past the walls smuggling with this fucking stranger. You’ve brought her into our apartment! Jesus Christ, Joel, have you fucking lost it?”
You step back and take a breath to collect yourself before speaking to both of them, but mostly to Joel. “You both need to get the fuck out of my apartment right now.”
Joel takes a step towards you, but you throw your hand out and stop him. “Get your fucking shit out of my apartment, Joel. I can’t deal with you right now. I can’t fucking believe you.”
“Your apartment? I thought this was our apartment.”
You laugh. “Our apartment, funny. And what have you done to make this apartment any bit yours, huh? I slave away at that clinic while you sit here drinking, and now apparently spending your time with other women doing things that could get us both killed!” “The only reason they gave us this apartment and even let us stay is because I’m a doctor, for fuck sake.”
He takes another step, and you snap, running over to the bedroom and pulling his stuff out of the drawers. “Here’s a head start. I’m going to leave for an hour, and when I get back, I want to be like you were never here. You can go figure it out on your own and leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to fucking see you, do you understand?”
He doesn’t answer, so you yell at him again. “I said, do you fucking understand?”
He quietly answers, “Yeah, I understand.”
You leave the room and go towards the doors, throwing on your jacket and sliding on your shoes before turning to Tess. “And you… You can get the fuck out right now and go find someone else’s medical supplies to steal.” She nods and gets up, but you open and slam the door in her face before she can follow behind you.
Tears fill your eyes. You quickly walk away from the once-shared apartment.
You find yourself coincidentally at the bar where he probably met Tess. Pounding back drinks, and waiting for an hour to pass by, it may be the longest hour of your life, but finally, it passes.
You drunkenly make your way back to your apartment, unlocking and opening the door. Once inside, you look down and see Joel’s key. He slid it back under the door when he locked up.
You look around, and it indeed looks like he was never here. You know that’s what you said you wanted, but the tears start coming anyway as the life you’ve known for so long finally comes apart.
Warnings-> Violence, drugs and alcohol use, mentions of the death of family members, and lots of swearing cuz they both got truckers mouths
A week later:
Reader's POV:
The past seven days have been nothing short of hell, Joel has barely spoken a word to you, but you know that he probably just needs some time but its hard because he wasn't the only one who loved and lost Tommy and Sarah.
You started working in the medical centre the day after you both arrived and it's been non-stop ever since, mostly QZ soldiers getting all banged up and shot. Today felt like it was no different but things took a turn for the worse pretty quickly.
You had placed a man in a quarantine room not too long ago, just a few doors down from the one they had put you in. The only difference between you and this man though was that he was lying about being bitten and you weren't.
When you entered the room he was facing away so you approached him, as you got closer noticing the uncontrolled shaking movements his body was making. You quickly turned on your heels to run to the exit but tripped on your foot in the process, falling to the ground directly on your injured shoulder causing you to let out a scream of pain, drawing the infected man's attention to you. Quickly it makes its way on top of you and from the pain in your shoulder making you almost unable to push him far enough away to stop him from biting you, pushing your body beyond its breaking point as you feel the stitches in your shoulder snap from your skin.
You screamed for help and within seconds a soldier appeared at the door and shot the infected in the head causing its limp body to fall on top of you. Using your uninjured arm to push the dead weight from on top of you and quickly exit the room, your breathing is heavy and you feel like your heart might explode. That was almost it you thought, you almost died right there in that room.
The other doctor, Henry walks up beside you and puts an arm on your shoulder, pulling you from your thoughts. "You okay, not bitten are you?" He asks.
You shake your head before replying "No I'm not bitten, just pretty shaken up honestly."
"Well you know it's on the slower side today so why don't we take a quick look at your shoulder and then you can head home" he says to you while pointing to your shoulder where blood has been soaking through your shirt.
You agree and follow him to one of the examining rooms, you remove your shirt and take a look at the gunshot wound for yourself. The stitches from when Henry cleaned out your wound had indeed split open.
Henry takes his time cleaning and re-stitching your wound, insisting you put it in an arm sling for a few days to prevent your stitches from splitting again and then commands you to take a couple of days and rest which honestly catches you by surprise.
He walks you to the door but before sending you off hands you a bottle of pain medication.
"Take these to ease the pain, be careful with 'em' them though. They are strong, okay?" He says to you.
"Thanks, Henry, I appreciate what you're doing for me."
"Not a worry, now get home before I change my mind about letting you leave" he jokes.
You wave goodbye to him as you walk away, making your way to the place they moved you into. It wasn't crazy big or anything but it was big enough for you and Joel. You walk through the doors of the apartment unit and instead of being treated by Joel, you are greeted with the smell of booze. You slam the door closed and hear a groan coming from the living room, you notice the half-empty whiskey bottle on the table. Joel had been drowning his emotions out with the booze and you knew that this might get ugly.
You let out a loud sigh and immediately this gains the attention of Joel, "You got something to fucking say?" He yells at you.
You ignore him, knowing he is just trying to get a rise out of you. "I'm fucking talking to you" he yells again.
This does get a rise out of you causes your hand to slam down on the table, "Jesus Joel can you calm down, I just got home and it's been a long day so please, can we not do this" you yell back at him.
He scoffs and stands up to walk over to the table, grabbing the whiskey bottle and taking a drink out of it before hissing and placing it back on the table, his eyes not leaving yours the entire time.
You roll your eyes at him as he walks back to the couch and lays down. Your next move, might not be the smartest but he's pissed you off and you want to return the favour. With his eyes still on you, you grab the bottle lift it to your mouth and begin chugging the liquid down. It burns but you are determined to finish it.
Joel swears before getting up to come yank the bottle from your hand but by the time he does, he grabs an empty bottle.
He swears again before looking you dead in the eyes and saying "Are you fucking serious! You don't even like whiskey. Fucking crazy woman" he scoffs and slams the empty bottle back onto the table so hard that the glass breaks.
A slight smile creeps onto your face making you indeed feel like a crazy woman but you have no regrets. Not until you see him throwing his jacket on and sliding on his boots, headed for the door.
"Where the fuck are you going?" You say with a slightly more attitude than you intended.
"Well you drank all my fucking whiskey so I'm going to the bar" he hisses back at you before slamming the door behind him.
You didn't expect his reaction to be good but you didn't expect that. Finally you take off your shoes and jacket, heading to your shared bedroom to take your blood-soaked clothes off, minding the arm sling. You realize then that Joel hadn't even noticed your blood-soaked shirt or the sling holding your arm. You think, "Well he was probably just drunk", but then your brain throws darker thoughts at you "Does he even care about you anymore?".
The dark thoughts begin to multiply and swim around in your head, then you remember the pills Henry had given you. You throw on a tank top and some shorts and walk over to your jacket to pull the bottle out from your pocket. You know you shouldn't because of the whiskey but the need to numb your mind wins over your self-control.
You walk over to the kitchen and grab a glass of water before bringing it over to the couch, opening the pill bottle and ignoring Henry's warning about them being strong and taking three of them out and swallowing them back before you have the chance to change your mind.
You place the glass of water next to the pill bottle on the small coffee table before lying down and staring up at the ceiling. It doesn't take long for the effects of the liquor mixed with the pills to start taking over your body. You start to lose the feeling of your body, almost as if you're floating in space, eyes fighting to stay open until finally they give and you fall unconscious, mind leaving your body just like you hoped it would.
Joel's POV:
For the past week all you've done is either sit at home and drink or sit at the bar and drink, some parts of you feel bad because you know she is out there working hard so that you both have a place to stay and ration cards so that you can eat. Everyone around here already knows you as the boyfriend of the pretty new doctor so they pretty much give you whatever you want, probably hoping that this will earn them a favour from her in the future.
You sit at the bar thinking about the events that just went down minutes ago in the apartment, "what the fuck came over her" you thought to yourself before grabbing the glass in front of you, slamming the liquid back before motioning the glass to the bartender to fill it back up.
After a few more drinks and some failed attempts from drunk women trying to take the empty seat beside you, they must not know you as the doctor's boyfriend. You finally decide to go take your place back on the couch in your apartment. Hoping that it's been long enough that she's asleep when you arrive.
When you walk in the front door you immediately notice that the lights are all still on, "fuck I guess I didn't wait long enough" you thought to yourself before quietly closing the door behind you and removing your jacket and boots. You make your way to the couch to go to sleep before realizing that she is already passed the fuck out on it. You groan before taking a closer look and seeing the bottle of pills on the coffee table, you walk over to it and pick it up. Pain meds. Then you remember why you left in the first place, she drank all your liquor. Fuck.
You call out her name and when she doesn't even twitch you grab her face and start rocking it back and forth repeatedly calling out her name but no response. You start to panic, "is she dead?" But then saw her chest rise and fall again. A little of the anxiety being lifted you decide how you are going to wake her up, you grab the glass of water sitting beside the pill bottle and dump it on her.
This immediately causes her eyes to open and her arm to fly over her face, that's when you realize the new stitching on her shoulder and her arm being in a sling. Immediately feeling back you didn't notice it before.
The water trick didn't work very well as you see her eyes are already closed again. You yell out to her loudly and this wakes her up again and she begins to yell at you now.
"What the fuck do you want Joel, can't you see I'm fucking sleeping."
You put your arm on her shoulder to apologize but before you can she sits up, yanking her body from your grasp before yelling out at you again.
"Don't fucking touch me!" she says through gritted teeth.
Pure shock is your reaction to her actions and words. "Darling I'm sorry for being a dick earlier, you know I'm just having a really hard time right now with everything that's happened" You begin to try to apologize.
She scoffs and lets out a drunken laugh "Yeah you were being a dick, but not just earlier. All fucking week Joel. You know I'm sorry about Sarah and Tommy you know I am but you aren't the only one who lost them! I lost them too!" She yells out the last part before her face falls and tears begin to roll down her cheeks.
You feel even worse now, you had been so lost in your own emotion that you forgot about hers. You motion her to move over so you can sit beside her, eventually she hesitantly moves to make room for you.
"Baby you're right, I've been selfish and I'm sorry. I haven't been there for you when I should have" You apologize again, motioning for her to lay down on your lap and she does, letting out a sigh of relief.
You take your hand and slowly drag it across her arm that's being held in the sling and you ask "What happened at work today love? Are you okay?"
She nods "I'm fine, I just had a rough encounter with a patient who turned infected and I ripped my stitches fighting it off," she says a little too casually, the sentence making Joel's eyes go wide.
"Jesus, I'm so glad you're alright. I can't lose you too okay?" He says while rubbing his thumb on her cheek, wiping away the tears.
You push her up so that you can stand, reaching for her hand and pulling her up after you. She forgets how out of it she is and almost falls to the ground so you pick her up bridal style and walk her over to your bedroom where you carefully place her on the bed. You remove your clothes before joining her in the bed, pulling the blanket over you both before sliding your arm over her body to pull her back to your chest.
With your head nuzzled beside hers, you speak out quietly "I'm sorry again darling, I love you so much."
She hums as she grabs your hand that's resting on her stomach, replying "I love you too Joel" before you both let sleep take over you.
Previous -> Chapter 10: Bitter Welcome
Next -> Chapter 12: Alone Again
***AN: Oof angry grieving Joel, can't blame him tho. Shits tough man, hopefully he doesn't let his anger get the best of him..............
