This one's gonna cost me (abbot x mohan) 18+, slowburn
A late night impulse leads Samira to download a hook-up app she never intended to use seriously. Then she matches with Dr Jack Abbot. Her colleague. Her senior. The one person she definitely shouldn't be thinking about. Suddenly she's forced to confront what happens when professional boundaries and private desire start to blur.
Joel/Reader
Series
Texas Heat 18+, slowburn
You've just finished a Masters back home in England, and, with little idea of what you want to do next, decide to spend the summer in Texas, staying with your mum's cousins, the Adlers. What you didn't bank on was living next door to Joel. The two of you strike up a friendship, and then something more, as the Texan summer heats up.
Play it Again 18+, oneshots
Each fic is a standalone oneshot, but all are based on country songs.
Oneshots
Just a Graze 18+, smut (4.3k)
Joel comes back injured, and while you patch him up the tension that's been building for several months threatens to break.
Scars 18+, smut, hurt/comfort (3.3.k)
When Joel stumbles into the kitchen at 2am, restless and tense, he doesn't expect to find you at the table, nursing a cold mug of tea. He certainly doesn't expect to end up tracing the scars on your skin, explaining how he got his, your hands mapping the contors of each other's old wounds until something new emerges.
Five for Five 18+, smut (4k)
Yeah, it was probably a stupid idea to trade five ration cards for a tiny bottle of perfume, and yeah, it's not surprising that Joel is angry, but you think it might just be worth it.
Honey and Whiskey 18+, smut (3.6k)
You've been watching him for months, orbiting each other as you both try to deal with the demons you should have left behind when you arrived in Jackson. It's only when you see Joel with another woman that the tension between you finally grows into something palpable.
Drabbles (Under 1k)
Safe Gen, no warnings
Joel finally starts to feel safe in Jackson.
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
Summary: A late night impulse leads Samira to download a hook-up app she never intended to use seriously. Then she matches with Dr Jack Abbot. Her colleague. Her senior. The one person she definitely shouldn't be thinking about. Suddenly she's forced to confront what happens when professional boundaries and private desire start to blur.
Contents: slow burn, colleagues, eventual smut, dating apps, teasing
Almost as soon as she left the bathroom, Samira was sideswiped by Dana. She could tell from the older woman’s tone that something big was coming in, and she braced as Dana reeled off the worst of it.
‘Three car pile-up, two drivers are incoming and both critical. One intubated at scene, the other is GCS 9. Three passengers also incoming, traumatic limb injuries, probable concussion. Robby’s pulling everyone into Trauma 1…’ she turned, and they watched as Robby led Whitaker, Santos, and an anxious looking Olgivie past the nurse’s station towards the trauma bay, ‘…now.’
‘On it,’ Samira said, squeezing a generous amount of hand sanitiser into her palm as she crossed the ED.
Ducking inside Trauma 1, she wedged herself between Whitaker and Santos, trying her best to look like a stoic professional and not a restless, possibly slightly lovesick teenager. If Robby noticed any off about the thin, anxious smile she gave him, he said nothing, instead launching into a briefing on how they were to manage the five incoming patients.
She didn’t notice that Abbot had come in at first. There was already an unnatural tension in the air; there always was when they were awaiting a major case. Everything felt a little off, as though time had stopped. Robby’s voice was the only thing Samira was really focussing on. It was only when Robby’s eyes flicked up to Abbot’s in a short greeting that Samira turned and saw him.
He seemed, somehow, broader than ever. Certainly more imposing than usual. He had his arms crossed, brow furrowed as he listened to Robby. There was a sliver of white t-shirt beneath his scrubs, and it made Samira’s stomach lurch. Was it the same one he had on in the photo she’d seen? If he took off the scrubs now, would she be able to see the thickness of his chest, the broadness of his back and shoulders? She realised she was staring, and whipped her head around, trying to drown out the flurry of thoughts in her head and concentrate on Robby’s voice again.
‘We’re about an hour out from the night shift switch, but if things are as bad as they sounded on the phone some of you might need to stay late tonight.’
Santos groaned audibly and Robby shot her a look.
‘Somewhere to be, Dr Santos?’ He said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Anywhere but here, ideally,’ Santos said, but even Samira could tell that she didn’t mean it.
There was a faint pause, then Robby’s mouth twitched. ‘Noted.’
After that, it was a cacophony of chaos. Samira found herself in charge of Trauma 2; the intubated driver was in a bad way, to say the least, and she spent forty minutes stabilising him with Santos’s help. They were a good team, but it had been a long day and they were both on edge. By the time the guy was ready to go upstairs, Santos looked like she was close to tears, and when surgery arrived to take him up, Samira suggested they both take five in the break room. Before they’d even left the bay, though, they were pulled into Trauma 1.
‘Dr Mohan, we need a little help in here,’ Robby’s voice was as steady and calm as ever, but Samira could tell he was tired, past the point of exhaustion.
She waved Santos on and followed Robby back into Trauma 1. The room was almost full, nurses crowding the patient on the table, Abbot at the far end, concentrating on the guy’s vitals, facing away from the door.
‘Up there, if you would, Dr Mohan,’ Robby said, gesturing to where Abbot was, ‘he’s got complex left tib-fib fractures, and needs reduction before vascular compromise. You’re bracing with Abbot.’
Samira nodded, squeezed her way to one side of the bed where Abbot was already on the other. Their eyes met over the gurney. She was struck, as she always was when she was this close to him, by just how handsome he was. She wondered idly what he’d looked like when he was her age, if the wrinkles that met at the crease of his eyes had still been there, perhaps softer than they were now. She struggled to imagine him with any hair colour but the dappled grey he had now, couldn’t picture him fresh-faced and youthful. He was a man who was born to be fifty, she concluded, the kind of man who wore age like aftershave: it was attractive on him, alluring and slightly intoxicating.
‘Dr Mohan?’ Robby’s voice brought her back to the room, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ she replied, bracing herself on the man’s hip.
She was all too aware of Abbot’s hands on the man’s other hip, the thickness of his fingers almost comically large next to her own narrow, delicate hands.
‘Three, two, one, pull,’ Robby and Whittaker yanked the man’s leg, and there was a harsh, sickening crack as the bone moved back into place.
‘Is he going to be able to walk again, do you think?’ Whitaker asked, eyes raking over the mutilated mess that was the man’s other leg.
‘Hopefully. He’ll go straight up to surgery as soon as they’re ready for him. It’ll be a long recovery, though.’
‘All because of a split second mistake,’ Whitaker said, almost wistfully.
‘Accidents happen,’ Abbot said, and as he said it, he fixed his gaze on Samira. She blinked. His eyes seemed to be playing with her, mischief shot through the light irises. A white hot, creeping sensation inched its way up her spine.
If you’d asked her later why she responded the way she did, Samira would have said that it was the same moment of madness that had led to her downloading the app, and swiping left on Dr Abbot. She might even have said that it was an accident, but that would have been a lie. As she said it, she knew exactly what she was doing.
‘Sure,’ she began, keeping her gaze locked on his, ‘but sometimes people know exactly what they’re doing.’
He didn’t respond immediately, and when he did it was just a small movement of his throat as he swallowed once, eyes boring into Samira’s so intensely that she was sure everyone in the room must be able to feel the tension of it. She was suddenly very aware of her hands on the bed rail, of how she was leaning over the gurney so that her face was closer to his than it needed to be. She looked away first, turning back to Robby who was peeling off his gloves.
‘Dr Mohan, nice work. I think the night shift’s got it from here. Go home, get some sleep.’
The sun was just setting as Samira left the hospital. Her apartment was a short walk away, close enough that she rarely thought about the distance until she was already halfway home, the city unfolding in front of her. Night softened nothing. The colours changed, the green of the trees lining the street turning midnight black, steel and glass briefly glinting gold before slipping back into shadow. She walked slowly; there was no reason to hurry. All that was waiting for her was an empty apartment and the low hum of the fridge she’d bought on sale three months ago after the landlord refused to replace the old broken one.
She replayed the scene with Abbot over and over in her head. He’d been offering her an out, hadn’t he? Offering her a way of claiming she’d matched with him by accident, a way to put the whole strange experience behind them so that they never had to talk about it again. And yet, she’d done exactly the opposite. Something in her had been desperate to make it real, to prove to him that she wanted it, wanted him. It had been a threshold that she hadn’t seen coming but had jumped over without hesitation.
She crossed at a light that took longer than it should have to change. A couple stood nearby arguing softly about something trivial, and a bus hissed to a stop down the road. Somewhere behind her, someone laughed too loudly into a phone call. The world continued in its strange, disorganised way, indifferent to the internal turmoil going on inside her.
By the time she reached her street, the sky had deepened into a bruised gradient of orange and blue. Her building sat between two other identical ones, all narrow bricks and tired windows. She let herself in through the front door and climbed the stairs without looking at the walls. There were always new notices pinned up in the hallway – maintenance reminders, missed deliveries, a handwritten plea about noise after ten – but she rarely read any of them, and tonight she didn’t even give them a courtesy once over.
Her key turned in the lock with a small, familiar click. The apartment was exactly how she left it. She stood by the door for a moment, let her head rest against the distressed wood as the silence pressed in pleasantly. It was only after several seconds that she reached for her phone. She hadn’t checked it since the trauma bay.
She didn’t open the app immediately. She checked her messages first – nothing new from her mother, a couple in the group chat she had with the other Residents, but nothing important – then her emails, going through the usual regime of deleting the spam, moving anything important into a separate folder. All the time she was thinking about Abbot. She could still see him in the trauma bay, his arms braced, voice steady, that brief flicker of mischief on his face as he’d teased her, the way her response had set him slightly off-balance, maybe.
She opened the app again. The interface appeared, bright in the coolness of her hallway. No new messages, no new matches. He was at work now, so he wouldn’t be able to message her. Still. She clicked through to his profile, to the same images and minimal bio, the same carefully constructed anonymity that she’d decimated with one short sentence in the trauma bay.
She sighed. She needed hot food and a long sleep. Some kind of normality. She moved through the apartment as if on autopilot – microwaving a ready meal, shovelling it down, brushing her teeth, washing her face, avoiding the mirror lest it remind her how tired she looked, how drained and weary she was. In her bedroom, the sheets were blissfully cool against her skin and she tucked herself down into the duvet.
Her phone buzzed from its place on the dresser. She froze. Then exhaled a short, shaky laugh when she saw it was nothing more than a spam email. Sephora was having a sale. Maybe she’d check it out tomorrow. It would be her first day off this week, and she had a vague plan of heading into the city if she woke up early enough.
She slept well. Certainly better than she would have expected to. When she awoke, rolling over in the knotted duvet away from the sunlight that was pouring in through her moth-eaten curtains, she reached immediately for her phone. She had a new notification.
Dr J: Not an accident then?
She stared down at the single line of text, fighting the grin that was pulling at the corner of her mouth. She started typing.
Samira: I know exactly what I’m doing.
She sent the message and replaced the phone face down on her bedside table, but almost immediately, it buzzed.
Dr J: You sure about that?
God, it was embarrassing how much those four words made her squirm on her mattress, thighs pressing together deliciously, chasing friction.
She paused for a moment, unsure how best to respond. He was teasing her; that much was obvious. This wasn’t new from Jack. At work he could be sarcastic, playful, even bordering on flirtatious at times, but the nature of this was very different. Was she sure she knew what she was doing? A flutter of anxiety ticked up behind her ribs, then she remembered the heat of Abbot’s gaze on her yesterday, the way he had swallowed thickly at her response.
Samira: When have you ever known me not to be sure of myself?
Dr J: Touché
A pause, and then he began typing again.
Dr J: So what are you looking for on here, exactly?
Samira pressed her face into the pillow and let out a long shaky breath. The truthful answer was that she was looking for someone to fuck her so well she would forget all about the drudgery of work, forget the constant chaos and gloom and inescapable terror of the Pitt. She wanted to be taught exactly what pleasure was, why everyone around her seemed to think sex was a cure for everything when all she’d ever experienced was dull two-minute escapades with immature boys who didn’t know what they were doing, who touched her like she was glass that would shatter. She wanted Dr Abbot to pin her to her mattress and show her exactly how steady his hands were, how talented he was with his fingers and his mouth and his cock. Jesus, she wanted fun.
She started typing.
Samira: I want you to show me what real pleasure is.
His reply came just seconds later.
Dr J: That’s a dangerous thing to ask for, Samira.
Samira: Is that a no?
Three dots appeared to show that Abbot was typing, then disappeared again. She watched as they reappeared and went several times, her stomach churning. Then his reply came through.
Dr J: I don’t think I could ever say no to you. Meet me for breakfast at Benny’s on 5th in an hour?
Samira: Ok
She put her phone down, swore under her breath. Was she going to regret this? A more prudent question, perhaps, was whether she actually cared. Pushing herself out of bed, she decided quite surely that she didn’t.
Summary: A late night impulse leads Samira to download a hook-up app she never intended to use seriously. Then she matches with Dr Jack Abbot. Her colleague. Her senior. The one person she definitely shouldn't be thinking about. Suddenly she's forced to confront what happens when professional boundaries and private desire start to blur.
Contents: slow burn, colleagues, eventual smut, dating apps, teasing
Samira was tired.
Not just the dull, physical fatigue that came from being twelve hours into her fourth shift of the week, though that was there too, settled deep in her muscles, making every movement feel a little slower than it should have. It wasn’t just the headache, either, a low, persistent pressure behind her eyes that the hospital’s unforgiving lights always seemed to trigger. And it wasn’t the kind of tired that came from the fact that all she’d eaten since six that morning was half a protein bar she barely remembered tasting.
No, the real reason that she was tired was that, sometime around ten to two the previous night, in a moment that hovered somewhere between boredom and poor judgement, she had downloaded a dating app.
Calling it a dating app was being generous. Misleading, at best. Santos had made that very clear when she’d mentioned it in passing during their lunch break yesterday. She’d laughed, actually, a low, knowing sound that suggested Samira was about to step into something she didn’t fully understand.
‘It’s not Hinge,’ she’d said, stirring her coffee with unnecessary force, ‘you’re not going to find someone to go for brunch with.’
Samira had rolled her eyes at the time. ‘I’m not looking for brunch.’
Santos had just raised a single eyebrow. ‘Sure you’re not.’
She hadn’t thought much of it then. Not really. It had been late, she’d been restless, and the quiet of her apartment, which she usually found comforting had felt unusually heavy.
So she’d downloaded it.
And then, almost immediately, regretted it.
It wasn’t the premise. She wasn’t naïve. She knew what hook-up apps were, broadly speaking. But there had been something confronting about the specificity of it, the way that everything was laid out so plainly, stripped of any pretence. The app had asked for her interests, and the options didn’t include ‘staying up late reading medical papers’ or ‘holding hands across restaurant tables’. Instead there was a dense scatter of acronyms and terms that made her flush even alone in her bedroom. MMF. Threesomes. Submissive. Bondage. Words that felt both clinical and deeply personal at once.
She’d let out a short, disbelieving laugh then, in the silence of her bedroom, thinking of Trinity leaning across the break room table yesterday, eyes bright in the low orange light. Just try it out. God knows you could use a little excitement. There had been something teasing in her expression, but not unkind.
Samira nearly closed the app then. Her thumb actually hovered over the screen, ready to delete it entirely, and she almost did.
Almost.
Because the uncomfortable truth was that Santos was – annoyingly, uncomfortably – right. Recently, her life had narrowed into something narrow and repetitive. Work, food, sleep. Occasionally a lukewarm beer on a park bench with her colleagues, conversations that circled endlessly around shifts and bed shortages and patients who were either too demanding or not demanding enough. There was a rhythm to it, and for the most part it was a comforting one. But recently it had started to leak into monotony, boredom. She was thirty-one years old, and the weight of that had come unexpectedly. Thirty-one, and constantly orbiting the same routine, the same expectations and habits and tedium.
So, instead of deleting the app, she’d uploaded a couple of photos of herself and selected the interests that felt safe but not untrue. “Casual”, “fun”. They felt vague enough to hide behind. Then she started swiping.
She knew the psychology behind dating apps, knew that they played on the same neural processes that made gambling so addictive, that anticipatory, dopamine heavy release that made you want to keep going, because surely a winner was just around the next corner. And at first, it had been kind of fun. A distraction of profiles flicking past in quick succession – faces, body parts, fragments of people condensed into a handful of images and a few lines of text. Some were carefully curated, others almost aggressively careless. A surprising number involved gym mirrors.
After a while, though, the novelty wore thin. The profiles all seemed to blur together. She’d paused on one photo, frowning slightly. It was difficult to tell quite what she was looking at – poor lighting, an odd angle. She found herself instinctively catergorising it the way she would a clinical image.
Possibly soft tissue. Indeterminate. Could be–
She snorted to herself softly.
‘Absolutely not,’ she’d murmured, swiping past.
By two-thirty, she was ready to give up on the whole venture. Not a single right swipe. Her eyes had started to sting in a way that told her she’d reached the overtired stage of sleeplessness, and the glow of her screen was starting to feel too bright in the darkness of her bedroom. She told herself she’d try one more, and then she would actually delete the app and forget the whole thing.
One more.
She swiped.
And then she stopped.
Dr J.
For a moment, it hadn’t registered. Just another profile, another partial image. The back of a man, standing on a balcony, looking out over a cityscape she didn’t recognise, somewhere warm, warmer than Pittsburg ever managed.
But something about the shape of his shoulders caught her attention. They were broad, familiar. Greying curls looped at the back of the thick neck. She held the screen closer without realising she was doing it, and her breath caught as recognition settled in. She swiped to the next photo. This one was closer. The man was facing the camera, shot cropped from just below the chin to the top of his belt. Arms folded, posture relaxed but deliberate. The fabric of his t-shirt was pulled tight enough to make the underlying structure of his muscled torso clear. The third image was closer still. A side profile, the line of a jaw, rough with five o’clock shadow. The curve of a muscle in his arm, freckles standing out against pale skin.
Samira had gone very still.
Of course she’d noticed Jack Abbot before. It was impossible not to. The way he carried himself, the ease with which he moved through the department, the quiet authority that made even the most chaotic shifts feel manageable. She’d watched him teach. Watched the way he explained things: clear, precise, patient. She’d watched the way his hands moved when he demonstrated procedures, confident without being showy. And sure, it would be a lie to say she didn’t sometimes find herself getting a little lost in the overwhelming blue of his eyes.
That had all felt harmless. Abstract.
This did not.
She scrolled down, her thumb slower now.
No bio. Age listed as fifty-one. Older than she’d thought, and older than her by twenty years. That thought landed with a small, disorienting weight. Below that, a list of interests. She read through them once, then again, as though repetition might soften the impact.
Dominant.
Intimacy.
Sensual.
BDSM.
Aftercare.
Her mouth had gone dry, and there was an insistent, pleasant heat between her thighs. For a moment, she just lay there, staring at the screen, her mind unable to settle of any one thought long enough to make sense of it. Then, before she could reconsider – before she could think through the implications – she tapped the heart icon. The profile disappeared.
‘Fuck,’ she said, the word barely more than a breath.
Sleep had not come easily after that, and now, hours later, the consequences of that tiny, impulsive decision had settled into something heavy in the pit of her stomach.
Samira glanced up at the clock mounted above the nurses’ station. Ten to seven. Two hours left of her shift. She readjusted herself in her chair, rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension that had been building up there over the course of the day. The case notes on the screen in front of her blurred into one rolling, indistinguishable block of text. The fatigue had settled deep in her muscles, corded through with something sharper. Anticipation, maybe. Or dread.
Abbot would be in soon. He was always early. He’d told her once that he preferred it that way. He liked to have time to orient himself before his shift began, time to review cases, talk things through with Robby, discuss anything that might need particular attention.
‘Nothing worse than rushing into things,’ he’d said.
At the time, she had nodded, tucked away the information as one of those small pieces of advice that would only apply to her if she ever made it past her residency. Now, the thought of him coming in in less than ten minutes, of seeing him, face to face, made something low in her stomach tighten. She forced her attention back to the chart in front of her. Seven-year-old male. Bike chain laceration. Superficial, no evidence of deeper tissue damage. Cleaned, dressed, to be reviewed before discharge. Her mouse hovered over the page.
He probably hadn’t even seen it, she told herself. It might not even be him. There had to be other men – other doctors, even – in the greater Pittsburg area with similar builds, similar features, similar freckle patterns. It wasn’t impossible. Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible.
A soft breath escaped her, an almost laugh.
‘God, I can’t wait to get home,’ Santos appeared suddenly at her side with the kind of quiet efficiency that always caught Samira off guard. ‘did you hear about the woman in North three?’
Samira blinked, dragging herself back to the present, ‘what?’
‘North 3,’ Santos repeated. ‘Puked all over Whittaker. Three times. I think it was deliberate.’
Samira let out a faint sound of acknowledgement, ‘right.’
‘You good, boss?’
Samira forced a small smile, finally meeting her gaze. ‘Yeah, fine. And I’m not your boss. You’re a resident now.’
Santos’s mouth curved slightly, ‘Whatever you say, boss.’
Samira smiled as Santos drifted away, the younger woman already launched into a conversation with Javadi before she’d fully turned her back. The smile lingered a second longer than it needed to, then slipped as Samira’s gaze flicked up to the clock again.
Five to seven.
Something in her chest tightened again. Her phone, tucked into the pocket of her scrubs, suddenly felt impossibly heavy. It had been there all shift, of course, but now it seemed to press insistently against her thigh. A hot, illicit weight. A reminder. She became acutely aware of it. Of what was on it. Of what she’d done. Don’t, she told herself, not here. But the thought had already latched into her conscious mind, taken hold.
Had he seen it? Had he liked her back? Had he laughed? Ignored it? Her pulse ticked up another notch, and she exhaled steadily through her nose, forcing her shoulders to relax. She clicked out of the patient notes with more care that necessary. The screen flickered back to the main system and the noise of the department seemed to rush in around her again, monitors beeping, voices overlapping, the distant rattle of a trolley being wheeled a little too quickly down the corridor. Normal. Everything was normal.
Samira pushed back her chair, the wheels squeaking faintly against the linoleum floor, and stood up. No one looked at her, even though she felt like she had a giant arrow over her head, a neon flashing sign that should have said IMPENDING HR VIOLATION.
The women’s bathroom was tucked just off the main corridor. It was perpetually in some vague state of disrepair, and one of the lights flickered ominously as she pushed her way inside. They still hadn’t repaired the leaky second sink, even though Dr Collins had reported it to maintenance three times now, and there was a hairline crack across the mirror that split reflections into two. But it was quiet. Private. She slipped into the first cubicle, nudging the door closed with her foot. The hum of the department had faded, replaced by the faint buzz of the faulty extractor fan. For a second she stood in the cubicle, resting her head against the cool plastic of the cubicle door. Her breathing was faster than it should be, her heart thumping in her chest.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen lit up. A text from her mother, something innocuous about her cousin’s baby shower, and, beneath it, a non-descript notification from the app. Her thumb hovered over it. She shouldn’t open it. Not now. But she already knew she would. She tapped it, and the app opened, the interface sliding into place with a kind of cheerful efficiency that felt entirely at odds with the tightness in her chest.
New match! The interface told her. The feeling is mutual with Dr J. Start chatting?
For a moment, she didn’t move. Her eyes traced the words, slower this time, as though they might rearrange themselves into something less definite if she gave them enough time. They didn’t, of course. A strange, weightless sensation spread through her, something like vertigo.
He’d seen it.
He’d recognised her. Obviously – she’d used clear photos of her face, stupidly hadn’t made any attempt at anonymity on her own profile. But then she’d not put anything particularly incriminating on it, had she? ‘Casual’, ‘fun’. Those were perfectly legitimate wishes for a thirty-one year old who needed a little excitement in her life, weren’t they? Abbot could hardly make any judgement on that, could he?
But of course, his profile hadn’t been so innocent, and she’d swiped on him. And he’d matched with her.
Her grip on her phone tightened slightly.
‘Fuck,’ she said under her breath, the word pressed out between clenched teeth.
She let her head fall back for a second, staring at the ceiling, at the faint water stain spreading out from one corner. This changed things. This wasn’t an abstract, idealised crush anymore. It wasn’t a late night impulse that she could ignore, file away under poor decisions and move past. This was real. He was real. And in – she checked the time again – less than two minutes, he would be here.
Samira looked back the app. The message prompt blinked up at her, patient, expectant. Start chatting? Her thumb hovered over it, closer this time. Then she locked the screen.
‘Not here,’ she muttered, as though saying it out loud might anchor her back into something resembling sense.
She shoved the phone back into her pocket, pressing her palm briefly against the fabric, then pushed her way out of the cubicle.
When she caught her reflection in the cracker mirror, it startled her slightly. Her expression was tighter than she’d expected, eyes a little too bright, brow damp, like she was running a fever.
‘Get a grip,’ she told herself. Above her, the fluorescent light flickered once, then settled.
Samira straightened, smoothed down the front of her scrubs, and took one slow deliberate breath before reaching for the bathroom door. When she stepped back out into the corridor, the rush of the department’s noise hit her, comforting and grounding in her familiarity. Her eyes flicked up to the clock above the nurses’ station.
Summary: A late night impulse leads Samira to download a hook-up app she never intended to use seriously. Then she matches with Dr Jack Abbot. Her colleague. Her senior. The one person she definitely shouldn't be thinking about. Suddenly she's forced to confront what happens when professional boundaries and private desire start to blur.
Contents: slow burn, colleagues, eventual smut, dating apps, teasing
Samira was tired.
Not just the dull, physical fatigue that came from being twelve hours into her fourth shift of the week, though that was there too, settled deep in her muscles, making every movement feel a little slower than it should have. It wasn’t just the headache, either, a low, persistent pressure behind her eyes that the hospital’s unforgiving lights always seemed to trigger. And it wasn’t the kind of tired that came from the fact that all she’d eaten since six that morning was half a protein bar she barely remembered tasting.
No, the real reason that she was tired was that, sometime around ten to two the previous night, in a moment that hovered somewhere between boredom and poor judgement, she had downloaded a dating app.
Calling it a dating app was being generous. Misleading, at best. Santos had made that very clear when she’d mentioned it in passing during their lunch break yesterday. She’d laughed, actually, a low, knowing sound that suggested Samira was about to step into something she didn’t fully understand.
‘It’s not Hinge,’ she’d said, stirring her coffee with unnecessary force, ‘you’re not going to find someone to go for brunch with.’
Samira had rolled her eyes at the time. ‘I’m not looking for brunch.’
Santos had just raised a single eyebrow. ‘Sure you’re not.’
She hadn’t thought much of it then. Not really. It had been late, she’d been restless, and the quiet of her apartment, which she usually found comforting had felt unusually heavy.
So she’d downloaded it.
And then, almost immediately, regretted it.
It wasn’t the premise. She wasn’t naïve. She knew what hook-up apps were, broadly speaking. But there had been something confronting about the specificity of it, the way that everything was laid out so plainly, stripped of any pretence. The app had asked for her interests, and the options didn’t include ‘staying up late reading medical papers’ or ‘holding hands across restaurant tables’. Instead there was a dense scatter of acronyms and terms that made her flush even alone in her bedroom. MMF. Threesomes. Submissive. Bondage. Words that felt both clinical and deeply personal at once.
She’d let out a short, disbelieving laugh then, in the silence of her bedroom, thinking of Trinity leaning across the break room table yesterday, eyes bright in the low orange light. Just try it out. God knows you could use a little excitement. There had been something teasing in her expression, but not unkind.
Samira nearly closed the app then. Her thumb actually hovered over the screen, ready to delete it entirely, and she almost did.
Almost.
Because the uncomfortable truth was that Santos was – annoyingly, uncomfortably – right. Recently, her life had narrowed into something narrow and repetitive. Work, food, sleep. Occasionally a lukewarm beer on a park bench with her colleagues, conversations that circled endlessly around shifts and bed shortages and patients who were either too demanding or not demanding enough. There was a rhythm to it, and for the most part it was a comforting one. But recently it had started to leak into monotony, boredom. She was thirty-one years old, and the weight of that had come unexpectedly. Thirty-one, and constantly orbiting the same routine, the same expectations and habits and tedium.
So, instead of deleting the app, she’d uploaded a couple of photos of herself and selected the interests that felt safe but not untrue. “Casual”, “fun”. They felt vague enough to hide behind. Then she started swiping.
She knew the psychology behind dating apps, knew that they played on the same neural processes that made gambling so addictive, that anticipatory, dopamine heavy release that made you want to keep going, because surely a winner was just around the next corner. And at first, it had been kind of fun. A distraction of profiles flicking past in quick succession – faces, body parts, fragments of people condensed into a handful of images and a few lines of text. Some were carefully curated, others almost aggressively careless. A surprising number involved gym mirrors.
After a while, though, the novelty wore thin. The profiles all seemed to blur together. She’d paused on one photo, frowning slightly. It was difficult to tell quite what she was looking at – poor lighting, an odd angle. She found herself instinctively catergorising it the way she would a clinical image.
Possibly soft tissue. Indeterminate. Could be–
She snorted to herself softly.
‘Absolutely not,’ she’d murmured, swiping past.
By two-thirty, she was ready to give up on the whole venture. Not a single right swipe. Her eyes had started to sting in a way that told her she’d reached the overtired stage of sleeplessness, and the glow of her screen was starting to feel too bright in the darkness of her bedroom. She told herself she’d try one more, and then she would actually delete the app and forget the whole thing.
One more.
She swiped.
And then she stopped.
Dr J.
For a moment, it hadn’t registered. Just another profile, another partial image. The back of a man, standing on a balcony, looking out over a cityscape she didn’t recognise, somewhere warm, warmer than Pittsburg ever managed.
But something about the shape of his shoulders caught her attention. They were broad, familiar. Greying curls looped at the back of the thick neck. She held the screen closer without realising she was doing it, and her breath caught as recognition settled in. She swiped to the next photo. This one was closer. The man was facing the camera, shot cropped from just below the chin to the top of his belt. Arms folded, posture relaxed but deliberate. The fabric of his t-shirt was pulled tight enough to make the underlying structure of his muscled torso clear. The third image was closer still. A side profile, the line of a jaw, rough with five o’clock shadow. The curve of a muscle in his arm, freckles standing out against pale skin.
Samira had gone very still.
Of course she’d noticed Jack Abbot before. It was impossible not to. The way he carried himself, the ease with which he moved through the department, the quiet authority that made even the most chaotic shifts feel manageable. She’d watched him teach. Watched the way he explained things: clear, precise, patient. She’d watched the way his hands moved when he demonstrated procedures, confident without being showy. And sure, it would be a lie to say she didn’t sometimes find herself getting a little lost in the overwhelming blue of his eyes.
That had all felt harmless. Abstract.
This did not.
She scrolled down, her thumb slower now.
No bio. Age listed as fifty-one. Older than she’d thought, and older than her by twenty years. That thought landed with a small, disorienting weight. Below that, a list of interests. She read through them once, then again, as though repetition might soften the impact.
Dominant.
Intimacy.
Sensual.
BDSM.
Aftercare.
Her mouth had gone dry, and there was an insistent, pleasant heat between her thighs. For a moment, she just lay there, staring at the screen, her mind unable to settle of any one thought long enough to make sense of it. Then, before she could reconsider – before she could think through the implications – she tapped the heart icon. The profile disappeared.
‘Fuck,’ she said, the word barely more than a breath.
Sleep had not come easily after that, and now, hours later, the consequences of that tiny, impulsive decision had settled into something heavy in the pit of her stomach.
Samira glanced up at the clock mounted above the nurses’ station. Ten to seven. Two hours left of her shift. She readjusted herself in her chair, rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension that had been building up there over the course of the day. The case notes on the screen in front of her blurred into one rolling, indistinguishable block of text. The fatigue had settled deep in her muscles, corded through with something sharper. Anticipation, maybe. Or dread.
Abbot would be in soon. He was always early. He’d told her once that he preferred it that way. He liked to have time to orient himself before his shift began, time to review cases, talk things through with Robby, discuss anything that might need particular attention.
‘Nothing worse than rushing into things,’ he’d said.
At the time, she had nodded, tucked away the information as one of those small pieces of advice that would only apply to her if she ever made it past her residency. Now, the thought of him coming in in less than ten minutes, of seeing him, face to face, made something low in her stomach tighten. She forced her attention back to the chart in front of her. Seven-year-old male. Bike chain laceration. Superficial, no evidence of deeper tissue damage. Cleaned, dressed, to be reviewed before discharge. Her mouse hovered over the page.
He probably hadn’t even seen it, she told herself. It might not even be him. There had to be other men – other doctors, even – in the greater Pittsburg area with similar builds, similar features, similar freckle patterns. It wasn’t impossible. Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible.
A soft breath escaped her, an almost laugh.
‘God, I can’t wait to get home,’ Santos appeared suddenly at her side with the kind of quiet efficiency that always caught Samira off guard. ‘did you hear about the woman in North three?’
Samira blinked, dragging herself back to the present, ‘what?’
‘North 3,’ Santos repeated. ‘Puked all over Whittaker. Three times. I think it was deliberate.’
Samira let out a faint sound of acknowledgement, ‘right.’
‘You good, boss?’
Samira forced a small smile, finally meeting her gaze. ‘Yeah, fine. And I’m not your boss. You’re a resident now.’
Santos’s mouth curved slightly, ‘Whatever you say, boss.’
Samira smiled as Santos drifted away, the younger woman already launched into a conversation with Javadi before she’d fully turned her back. The smile lingered a second longer than it needed to, then slipped as Samira’s gaze flicked up to the clock again.
Five to seven.
Something in her chest tightened again. Her phone, tucked into the pocket of her scrubs, suddenly felt impossibly heavy. It had been there all shift, of course, but now it seemed to press insistently against her thigh. A hot, illicit weight. A reminder. She became acutely aware of it. Of what was on it. Of what she’d done. Don’t, she told herself, not here. But the thought had already latched into her conscious mind, taken hold.
Had he seen it? Had he liked her back? Had he laughed? Ignored it? Her pulse ticked up another notch, and she exhaled steadily through her nose, forcing her shoulders to relax. She clicked out of the patient notes with more care that necessary. The screen flickered back to the main system and the noise of the department seemed to rush in around her again, monitors beeping, voices overlapping, the distant rattle of a trolley being wheeled a little too quickly down the corridor. Normal. Everything was normal.
Samira pushed back her chair, the wheels squeaking faintly against the linoleum floor, and stood up. No one looked at her, even though she felt like she had a giant arrow over her head, a neon flashing sign that should have said IMPENDING HR VIOLATION.
The women’s bathroom was tucked just off the main corridor. It was perpetually in some vague state of disrepair, and one of the lights flickered ominously as she pushed her way inside. They still hadn’t repaired the leaky second sink, even though Dr Collins had reported it to maintenance three times now, and there was a hairline crack across the mirror that split reflections into two. But it was quiet. Private. She slipped into the first cubicle, nudging the door closed with her foot. The hum of the department had faded, replaced by the faint buzz of the faulty extractor fan. For a second she stood in the cubicle, resting her head against the cool plastic of the cubicle door. Her breathing was faster than it should be, her heart thumping in her chest.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen lit up. A text from her mother, something innocuous about her cousin’s baby shower, and, beneath it, a non-descript notification from the app. Her thumb hovered over it. She shouldn’t open it. Not now. But she already knew she would. She tapped it, and the app opened, the interface sliding into place with a kind of cheerful efficiency that felt entirely at odds with the tightness in her chest.
New match! The interface told her. The feeling is mutual with Dr J. Start chatting?
For a moment, she didn’t move. Her eyes traced the words, slower this time, as though they might rearrange themselves into something less definite if she gave them enough time. They didn’t, of course. A strange, weightless sensation spread through her, something like vertigo.
He’d seen it.
He’d recognised her. Obviously – she’d used clear photos of her face, stupidly hadn’t made any attempt at anonymity on her own profile. But then she’d not put anything particularly incriminating on it, had she? ‘Casual’, ‘fun’. Those were perfectly legitimate wishes for a thirty-one year old who needed a little excitement in her life, weren’t they? Abbot could hardly make any judgement on that, could he?
But of course, his profile hadn’t been so innocent, and she’d swiped on him. And he’d matched with her.
Her grip on her phone tightened slightly.
‘Fuck,’ she said under her breath, the word pressed out between clenched teeth.
She let her head fall back for a second, staring at the ceiling, at the faint water stain spreading out from one corner. This changed things. This wasn’t an abstract, idealised crush anymore. It wasn’t a late night impulse that she could ignore, file away under poor decisions and move past. This was real. He was real. And in – she checked the time again – less than two minutes, he would be here.
Samira looked back the app. The message prompt blinked up at her, patient, expectant. Start chatting? Her thumb hovered over it, closer this time. Then she locked the screen.
‘Not here,’ she muttered, as though saying it out loud might anchor her back into something resembling sense.
She shoved the phone back into her pocket, pressing her palm briefly against the fabric, then pushed her way out of the cubicle.
When she caught her reflection in the cracker mirror, it startled her slightly. Her expression was tighter than she’d expected, eyes a little too bright, brow damp, like she was running a fever.
‘Get a grip,’ she told herself. Above her, the fluorescent light flickered once, then settled.
Samira straightened, smoothed down the front of her scrubs, and took one slow deliberate breath before reaching for the bathroom door. When she stepped back out into the corridor, the rush of the department’s noise hit her, comforting and grounding in her familiarity. Her eyes flicked up to the clock above the nurses’ station.
Summary: Returning to your home town and reeling from the world’s worst breakup, you don’t expect to become entirely obsessed with your parents’ friend and contractor, Joel Miller, who is undoubtedly off limits. But when Joel offers to drive you across the country for a new job and you end up in a motel room with one bed and no aircon, things heat up.
There’s a sad-looking pair of end tables, a beat up TV, and the smallest double bed you’ve seen in your life.
“Jesus, I’ve seen plane seats with more leg room.” You say, dumping your bag at the foot of the bed.
“Shoulda flown then, darlin’,” Joel replies, one eyebrow raised, a half-smirk on his handsome face.
Tags/warnings: smut, MDNI, PIV, oral (f!receiving), DBF!Joel, dirty talk, one bed trope, age gap (reader is 20s, Joel is 40s), au!no outbreak
8k words
The worst thing about moving back in with your parents as an adult isn’t the lack of space, or the constant fussing, or even their inability to acknowledge that you’re not a kid anymore. Sure, the total absence of privacy and your mom’s constant chattering can be annoying, but that’s nothing to the misery that Joel Miller’s presence in the house brings.
It’s not that he’s horrible – quite the contrary. The problem is that he’s polite, and sweet, and so goddamn hot it almost drives you insane. He’s also two decades older than you, an old friend of your dad’s and totally off limits. You think the agony of it might just kill you.
The morning you arrive back in your parent’s driveway with a suitcase and a broken heart is the morning Joel arrives to start work on your parent’s driveway. That’s where you first see him, standing on the front lawn that hot July morning. Joel’s holding a tool box and a hard hat, and you’re clutching the worn-out suitcase that you took with you when you left for college ten years ago, eyes ringed red, head thumping with the beginnings of a migraine. You recognise him in a vague, distant sort of way, but you can’t immediately place him. He’s squinting in the bright early morning sun, dark eyes hidden by a strong brow, his face dusted with patchy stubble. He looks you over, takes in your tear-stained face, your shaking hands.
“You okay?” He asks, and it’s his voice that makes you realise who he is, that strong Texas twang just as effortlessly sexy as it was when you were eighteen.
You unstick your tongue from the top of your mouth and splutter out a reply, “I’m fine,” You clear your throat, wipe a hand across your throbbing forehead, “Been a long drive. It’s Joel, right?”
His eyebrows raise at the sound of his name and he peers at you a little harder, adjusting the hardhat in his grasp, laying it flat against his hip to get a better grip. The movement makes you glance down at his body, at the tight pull of his t-shirt across broad shoulders, the narrow cinch of his waist beneath a worn tool belt.
“Do I know you?” He asks, not unkindly, and you try to smile at him then despite the tugging, grating feeling in your chest.
“I’m Pete’s daughter.”
His eyes flick to your parent’s house then back to you. “Jesus,” he says, a half-grin tugging at the corner of your mouth, “you’ve grown up a lot.”
You have, of course. The last time you saw Joel was ten years ago, just as he and your father were getting friendly after you guys moved across the country from Maine. You left for college a few months later. It’s the reason you’ve never really felt like Texas is your home, exactly, but it’s the place you’ve come back to after the world’s messiest breakup.
And so begins a long month in which Joel builds your parents a new driveway, and you try to build a new life for yourself. Early on, you see little of each other. Your parents both work long hours, so for the most part it’s just you and Joel at the house. You spend most of your time up in your bedroom, applying for any job that will get you back out of Texas and into your own place, or stalking your ex on social media and trying not to spiral into a deep depression when you realise he’s already dating the girl he told you not to worry about.
Joel works outside, sometimes with his brother, but mostly on his own. It’s one of the days he’s alone that you cross paths in the kitchen, Joel coming in just as you’re pouring yourself a glass of lemonade.
“Do you want some?” you ask him, and he shakes his head, holds up the empty water bottle he’s carrying.
“Just came in to fill up,” he says, eyes flicking quickly over the long lines of your legs beneath the tiny shorts you’re wearing. He pulls his gaze up quickly, asks, “How’s the job search going?”
You scoff, leaning back against the counter to face him. “Do you want the truth, or what I’ve been telling mom and dad?”
“Whatever you want to give me, darlin’,” He says, glancing at you over his shoulder, his expression unreadable despite the bright sunlight streaming in through the patio doors.
If you had to pinpoint the moment when your abstract, theoretical crush on Joel Miller turned into something insistent and broiling, something that would keep you up at night and seep into every waking thought, you’d probably have to say that that seven-word sentence – rounded off with a pet name that sounds downright sinful in his Texas drawl – was the turning point. It makes heat rush to your face, sends a bolt of something like molten lava through your core. You tell him something vague about the job market being a bit of a mess, explain briefly that you’d rather wait for something that you really want to come up, feeling hot and more than a little flustered under his gaze.
“Sounds like you’ve got your head screwed on. More’n can be said about a lot of kids your age.” Joel replies, and the heat of lust in your belly is replaced rapidly with a different kind of heat, something like annoyance.
“I’m hardly a kid,” you reply, crossing your arms across your chest as Joel screws the cap of his bottle back on, his large hand dwarfing the small lid, thick fingers distracting you despite your indignance.
“Sorry, darlin’, I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean you’re young. Y’got your whole life ahead of you.”
“As opposed to you,” you say, smirking at him, testing the water with the tease, “end-of-the-road old man, just waiting for the call of the nursing home.”
Joel huffs out a laugh at this, rolls his eyes as he leans back into the kitchen counter opposite you.
“Careful now,” he says, a mocking sternness in his voice, “you’re meant to respect your elders.”
He pushes himself away from the countertop, stretching his arms back and up so that the hem of his t-shirt rides up a few millimetres above the waistband of his jeans. The tiny slither of tan skin there is enough to set your heart racing. He groan as he stretches, and the sound is intoxicating, deep and rough and entirely indecent.
“Better get back to work,” Joel says, arms returning to his side, “good luck with the job search, darlin’.”
And then he’s gone from the kitchen, his broad back disappearing down the hallway and out of the front door. You sag back against the counter, heart still thumping, brain trying to process the firework display of hormones that seems to be bubbling through your veins.
Two days later, Joel thumps into the house, boots clunking against the expensive kitchen tiles your mom insisted on laying down. You’re in the lounge, laid out on the sofa, laptop perched on your stomach when he pokes his head round the door, his dark eyes finding yours.
“Hey,” he says, voice a little hoarse, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a first aid kit?”
You sit up and close your laptop as Joel shuffles into the room, one hand gripping the other, blood oozing out from between his fingertips.
“Jesus Christ,” you say, rushing to your feet.
“It’s fine, looks worse’n it is. Could do with a Band-Aid, though, if you’ve got one.”
You guide him back through to the kitchen and he leans against the dining room table as you search for the first aid kit.
“What happened?” You ask as you rifle through your parents’ well-organised kitchen drawers.
“Sliced my thumb on a paving slab,” He replies, “Bleeding more’n I thought it would.”
“I’ll say,” you say, finally holding the first aid kit and turning back to him, “you look like something out of a crime drama.”
You gesture to the white tee he’s wearing, and he looks down, sees the dark blood stains that have seeped into the cotton.
“Damn,” He mutters, holding his cradled hands further away from his body as though there’s a chance to save the shirt.
“Come on, let’s clean you up.”
He shifts from where he’s leaning against the table and steps over to the kitchen island, laying his entwined hands on the white marble countertop. When he moves his fingers from where they’re wrapped around his thumb you see that the cut isn’t particularly deep – just a thin, half-inch gash at the root of his nail. The blood is already slowing, and you unwrap an antiseptic wipe. You reach out your own hand, take his into it, trying not to think about how warm his skin is, how much larger his hands are than yours, and that if you looked up, right now, you’d be face to face with him over the kitchen island, breath mingling in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“This might sting,” you say, and you do glance up at him then.
He’s watching your intertwined hands, but his eyes flick up as yours do. You’re barely a hair’s breadth from each other, foreheads almost touching, and there’s a moment of something –tension, perhaps, or awkwardness – you’re not sure exactly. It’s over in a split second, both of you looking down again. You wipe the antiseptic over the cut and he hisses out a breath from between his teeth.
“Sorry,” You say, cleaning the blood from his uninjured hand with the wipe and then moving away to throw it into the trash.
You put the Band-Aid on for him, wrapping it delicately around his thumb. He flexes the digit when you’ve finished, and you move your hand from his reluctantly.
“Good as new,” You tell him, and he smiles, a warm, genuine smile that makes the dark brown of his eyes glint in the sunlit kitchen.
“Guess I’d better get back to work,” He says, pushing himself away from the island.
“Looking like that?” You gesture to his blood-soaked t-shirt.
He looks down and frowns, lips pouting as he pulls the fabric away from his chest to examine the large, deep red bloodstain.
“I can wash it for you,” You say, “I’ll go and get you one of dad’s to wear while it dries. He won’t mind.”
“It’ll be fine, darlin’, don’t worry.”
“Joel, you look like you just killed somebody. C’mon, it’s no trouble. Take it off,” You reach out a hand and there’s that tension again, that delicious, toe-curling awkwardness that makes his moment of indecision go on for what feels like a decade. You stand there, looking at each other, neither of you moving.
Then he sighs, grips the bottom of the shirt and tugs it up over his head. Up, over his stomach, which is softer than the rest of him, a trail of dark hair leading down to his belt buckle, then up further to reveal his ribcage, solid and thick, his chest toned and tan, and those shoulders, ridiculously broad even when they’re bare, freckled from the Texas sun. He hands the t-shirt to you and you feel heat rising up your neck and into your face, eyes sliding away from his torso and to the shirt. It’s slightly damp in your hands – not from the blood, but from Joel’s sweat. Your heart is thumping in your chest, blood pooling in your belly and between your thighs. Swallowing thickly, you ball up the shirt and fill the sink with cold water, submerging it.
“I’ll go grab you something to wear,” You say to Joel, still not sure where to look when you turn back to him.
He’s got a hand on the back of his neck, fingers distractedly pulling at the hair there, and if you didn’t know him better you’d say he was embarrassed, shirtless in your parents’ kitchen, his tan skin hot against the cool white of the worktops.
Upstairs, you pull out one of your dad’s t-shirts, realising immediately that it’s got to be about two sizes smaller than the shirt Joel was wearing. Your dad, though tall, has always been slim and wiry, the opposite build to Joel’s thickset broadness.
“So about that shirt…” you say as you re-enter the kitchen, holding up your dad’s tee to Joel, “I think it might be a bit small.”
Joel takes it from you, holds it up against himself. It hardly stretches to cover the middle of his chest. You look at him, his eyes meeting yours and suddenly you’re both laughing hard.
“Just try it!” You say.
“Darlin’, if I put this on it ain’t coming off again,” Joel replies, but he starts tugging it on anyway, squeezing his thick biceps through the arm holes, seams almost bursting as he pulls it up and over his head. He gets it on, just, but it’s ridiculously tight, straining across his chest, cutting into his armpits to accommodate his broad shoulders.
“Been a long time since I fitted into a small, sweetheart,” he says, tugging at the bottom of the shirt, which sits just below his belly button, the solid vee of his hips visible above the waistband of his jeans. His eyes shift up at you with the last word, and there’s a flickering heat in them, something that turns the innocent sentence into an innuendo. Heat flushes up your face, cheeks burning as you grin at him.
“You look great,” you tell him, holding his eye contact.
“Jesus,” he says, finally looking away from you to glance down at his chest, “I can’t go out and work in this, can I?”
It’s a genuine question, his voice unsure. You try to shrug and tell him it looks fine but instead of words a giggle bursts from you, and you shake your head.
“You look like a stripper,” You tell him, and he lets out a huff of a laugh, pulling the shirt back off.
“Shirtless it is then,” He says, “Give the neighbours something to watch, won’t it?”
He winks at you with this last, and the laughter dies in your throat because his eyes are shining, face pitched with the tease and it sends a bolt of pure arousal through you.
You don’t know if the neighbours spend the rest of the afternoon watching him work on the driveway, but you certainly do. There’s an elegance to the way he moves – something effortlessly sexy in his posture, the ease with which he moves paving slabs and cement bags. His jeans ride low on his hips, dust-covered and torn at both knees, and his back, bare and gleaming with sweat in the heat of the day, distracts you from your job search. You bring him out fresh lemonade, just as an excuse to talk to him again. He takes it from you, and you watch his throat bob as he swallows it down, tongue chasing the moisture from his lips. His chest is heaving from the exertion of the work, and there’s something so intimate about it – about him standing a good four feet away from you, sweat beading at his brow – that you have to turn around and take yourself back inside.
Four days after the paving slab incident, its Joel’s turn to come to your aid.
You’re running late, as you always seem to be these days, getting ready to go out and meet a friend who’s in town for a week for dinner. Your parents are, as always, out somewhere, but Joel’s stayed late, still working outside laying the final paving slabs on the drive.
The problem is that the zip on your dress is stuck, right in that bit of your back that you can’t quite reach. It won’t go up and it won’t go back down either, and after fifteen minutes of wriggling and tugging and straining, you realise you have two choices: go out with it like this, or get Joel to help.
That’s how you find yourself in the kitchen, your back to him as he tries – and fails – to release the zip.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and you can tell how gentle he’s being, using those strong, thick hands that you’ve seen lift forty kilogram paving slabs so softly on you.
“You can be a bit rougher,” you tell him, not noticing the insinuation until the words are already out of your mouth.
If you could see him then, you’d see the way his ears flush red; how his eyes flick nervously away from you, his throat bobbing as he swallows thickly. You hear this last, hear it alongside the slight wobble in his voice when he says, delicately:
“I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to get it down, darlin’. I think the zip’s broken.”
“Shit,” You say, trying to turn your head to see the problem, even though you know you won’t be able to. Instead, you find yourself looking at Joel, at the way his arms are pressed against you, face just above yours, his eyes focussed on the middle of your back. You see the patterns of hair growth in his stubble, the small flecks of grey there. He’s so beautiful up close like this, his attention still on the stuck zipper. You wonder what it would be like to run a hand over his strong jaw, to let your fingers find a home in the whorls of errant curls on his head. He’s stopped tugging at the zip now, and there’s a tiny frown line digging into the apex of his nose. His eyes are still fixed on your back, one hand at your waist to hold you steady. It’s like his fingers are leaching electricity into your skin, his palm hot despite the layer of cotton between it and your flesh.
“You might have to cut me out of it,” You say into the charged silence, and his eyes flick up to meet yours.
Concern is concentrated there, his brows furrowing, and he looks like he’s going to refuse. You have an image of him shaking his head, turning his back on you and leaving the house without another word.
“Please,” You say, and he clears his throat, gives a short nod as he lets his hands drop back to his sides.
You find the scissors in the drawer, hand them to him and watch, shakily, as he leans to place the blades against the side of the dress.
“Try to follow the stitching,” You say, “I can probably sew it back together and put a new zip in.”
“Right. Sure,” His voice is throaty, deeper even than usual as he moves the scissors over, his hand grazing the side of your bare thigh. “Are you… have you get anything on underneath?”
“I’m wearing underwear,” You reply, and almost giggle with the ridiculousness of the situation. Joel Miller, contractor extraordinaire and your dad’s best friend of ten years, stood with you in the kitchen of your parents’ house discussing what underwear you’re currently wearing.
The first slice of the scissors through the material brings you back to your senses. He keeps going, concentrating hard, his face a mask of attentiveness, eyes fixed on the dress or perhaps – you watch as his gaze creeps up the long expanse of your revealed thigh – your body. The last snip of the scissors severs the dress and it’s only by holding the material to you that you prevent it pooling at your feet on the tiled floor. Joel moves away, but just before he does you feel the tips of his fingers graze a delicate path up your side. The touch is so light you almost think you’ve imagined it, the blunt edges of his nails just barely there against you. Then he’s moving away, his face unreadable, eyes looking anywhere but at you as he hands the scissors back.
“Thanks,” You say into the heated silence.
“S’alright,” He replies, dark eyes finally finding your face. “you should go find something else to wear. I’ll, uh, be outside.”
He doesn’t look back as he leaves the kitchen, but his fists are clenched at his sides as he goes, fingers flexing out and then curling back in, and it’s this thought that keeps you up late that night, one hand buried in your pyjama pants as you make yourself come again and again to the thought of him.
All of this is just the prelude, of course. The entrée to the main event that starts on a stormy August evening and ends (begins again, perhaps) in a motel room some three hundred miles from Austin.
You find out you’ve finally landed a job – a good job, in the field you were desperate to get into – as thunder rattles the windows of your childhood bedroom. It’s been storming all day, bolts of lightning illuminating the dull Texan sky. It matches your mood, too, because the job is in Chicago and you start in two weeks. You look from the screen of your laptop to the chaos of boxes and furniture piled around you. Two weeks to get to Chicago, find a new place to live, and move all of the crap you brought with you from the shitty shared apartment you left a month ago.
It's Joel who saves the day, of course. Joel, with his ridiculous truck that he says can easily fit you and all of your worldly possessions for the thousand mile trip. You don’t need to be good at math to know that this means you and Joel will be spending days driving across the country, together, in very close proximity. And it should set alarm bells ringing, because you’re fairly sure you’ve already crossed some kind of line: that the easy, dad’s-old-friend relationship that might have been there at the start of the summer has been slowly chipped away by shared lemonade and awkward thumb cuts and dresses with broken zips.
The alarm bells are entirely absent, however, because the truth is there’s no one else you’d rather go on a three-day road trip with, desperate as you are to wring out every drop of his company before you start your new life. And God, if that doesn’t make you sound like the most desperate woman in Austin.
The morning of the move you wake early, head buzzing with a million things that you need to do before Joel picks you up at seven-thirty. All of your stuff is back in boxes – not that you ever really unpacked much anyway – and there are a few last things you need to pack. You work your way through these last bits – toiletries, make up, phone and device chargers and your laptop. You’ve just finished loading everything into a rucksack when you hear the doorbell, loud in the quiet of the early morning.
And there’s Joel in the doorway, a dark blue t-shirt pulling tight across his broad chest, one arm leaning against the frame, an easy smile on his face to greet you. You try to ignore the tugging, wriggling excitement that bubbles up in your stomach at the sight of him, tell yourself it’s excitement for the move, for your new job, your new apartment.
“Ready?” He asks, voice still a little hoarse with sleep, and you nod. His hair is ruffled, curls standing up at the back of his neck when he turns to indicate the truck. “Let’s get loaded up, then.”
Together, you load up all of the boxes into Joel’s truck. They fit easily, laid out in neat rows in the bed. Joel carries most of them, insisting that he doesn’t want you putting your back out. He makes the lifting look easy, picking up boxes you struggled to carry at all with an ease that speaks for the coiled strength in his thick arms and broad back. When you’re done he stands by as you say your goodbyes to your parents, shakes your dad’s hand and promises to make sure you get to Chicago safe.
“I’ll take care of her,” he tells him, and you can’t help but notice the way his eyes flick to you as he says it, adding, “C’mon then, darlin’” and opening the passenger door open for you with a strong hand.
You climb in, wondering if he did really graze his fingertips up your side a couple of weeks ago in the kitchen as he helped you out of your dress. The memory is already a little hazy, overplayed in your mind every night since, trying so desperately to recall the heat of his body behind you, the almost-not-there trace of his fingertips against your skin. You want so desperately for him to do it again, to get close enough so that you can feel the warmth spilling from his skin. You want his hands splayed over your hips, the scruff of his beard rough on the back of your neck, breath harsh in your ears.
The cough of the truck’s engine shakes you from the daydream. Joel pulls off your parents’ driveway, his hand resting on the back of your headrest to look behind him as he does. You take a last look at your parents on the driveway, giving them a final wave as you and Joel round the corner towards the highway. And then it’s just you and Joel and hundreds of miles of open road.
“Get your feet off the dash.”
You’re thirty miles outside of Austin, the hot Texan sun beating down into the cab of the truck. You’ve taken your shoes off, propped your feet up onto the dashboard to try to stretch out, but Joel’s having none of it.
“Why?” You ask nonchalantly, not moving them.
“Cause if we crash you’ll break your legs.” Joel replies, face hard as he glances away from the road to look at you.
“You crash a lot? Because I feel like you should’ve told me that before I agreed to let you drive me halfway across the country.”
Joel huffs out something between a laugh and a sigh.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a damn brat?” He says, and you gasp as he leans across the dash, wraps a hand around one of your ankles and pulls it off the dashboard. “I ain’t playing around, darlin’. No feet on the dash.”
The sternness of his voice coupled with the pet name is enough to have you pressing your thighs together, heat pooling like molten gold low in your belly. Even an hour later, as you fall into a comfortable conversation about Chicago, you can still feel the heat of his hand on your leg, like it’s been branded against your skin. You think about how it would feel further up your leg, in the crux of your knee, his fingers hot on your thigh and even higher still, creeping past the elastic of your panties. Joel clears his throat, hands massaging the worn leather of the truck’s steering wheel and it pulls you out of your reverie.
The Texas suburbs turn into highway, and then into the interstate: a long, straight haze of tarmac as far as you can see. It’s been almost four weeks since you made the drive to Texas after your breakup, all of your possessions behind you in a U-haul, and the open road is a welcome change from the claustrophobia of your parents’ street.
You sit in contented silence for the rest of the day’s journey, occasionally passing comment about something you see on the side of the road. Joel smiles at your poor attempts at humour, lets himself ease into the drive, mind undoubtedly wandering to whatever it is middle aged contractors think about (taxes and surcharges, mainly). You stop for gas somewhere in Oklahoma, grab a sandwich each and a couple of cans of soda and eat in the parking lot. By nightfall the open plains of the state are swallowed up by Tulsa’s distant but impending skyline, and Joel pulls the truck off the highway again.
“There’s a decent motel a few miles away,” he tells you, “S’nothing special but I’ve stayed there before and it’s pretty clean.”
“A stunning endorsement.”
“It’s also the only motel this side of the city,” he says, “beggars can’t be choosers, darlin’.”
Beggars certainly can’t, because it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that almost no one has chosen anything about this motel for years, possibly decades. The parking lot is mostly empty, if you don’t count the beer cans and chip packets that litter the tarmac. Most of the lights are off, too. Joel pulls the truck into a space and kills the engine.
“One quick question before we go in,” you say, slipping your feet back into your trainers, “on a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that we get murdered in our beds?”
Joel scoffs at this, a throaty noise that shouldn’t turn you on but somehow does.
“S’long as I’ve got a bed to sleep in before the murder, I’m happy,” he replies, “Back’s killin’ me after that drive.”
To illustrate the point he opens the truck door and climbs out, large hand massaging the bottom of his back with well-practiced dexterity. You do the same, grabbing your overnight bag as you hop out and follow Joel towards the reception.
Inside, a bored-looking woman with a badly-dyed fringe eyes you from behind a desk and reluctantly lowers her magazine.
“Two singles,” Joel says, leaning his forearm against the desk. His shirt sleeve is rolled up, revealing several inches of deliciously tan skin. You pull your eyes away as the woman sighs.
“Due to current renovations, we’re operating at a limited capacity,” she says, her voice flat and disinterested. She runs a finger over the open book in front of her. “Only room I’ve got left is a double. $20 for one night.”
“Damn,” Joel sighs. “It got a pull-out?”
“Nope.”
“A couch?”
“Nope.”
“A floor?” His voice is straining on the side of annoyance, and it’d almost be funny, the way the girl rolls her eyes and huffs, if you weren’t so tired and desperate for a comfortable bed.
“You want the room or not?” She says, and Joel looks to you. You shrug, and he sighs.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll take it.”
The woman pulls a key out from under the desk and hands it to him. In turn, Joel slides a $20 bill across the desk.
“Room 23,” she says, her voice flat and toneless again. “Enjoy your stay.”
Room 23 is certainly clean, but that’s about all it’s got going for it. The walls are a sickly mustard yellow and the curtains match. There’s a sad-looking pair of end tables, a beat up TV, and the smallest double bed you’ve seen in your life.
“Jesus, I’ve seen plane seats with more leg room.” You say, dumping your bag at the foot of the bed.
“Shoulda flown then, darlin’,” Joel replies, one eyebrow raised, a half-smirk on his handsome face.
You roll your eyes, wave a hand in the air. “Yes, yes, I’m very grateful to you for saving me $200 for a flight I can’t afford. Seriously, though, what’s the plan here?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says, “and you can take the bed.”
“Joel, you literally just spent ten minutes lamenting about how much your back hurts. You can’t sleep on the floor.”
“Well I ain’t letting you sleep there. Your dad’d never forgive me.”
“Guess we’ll have to share then.”
There’s a silence as your eyes meet, something unsaid and intoxicating dancing in the air between you, then Joel says, “I don’t know that that’s such a good idea.”
The strength of his gaze on you is almost palpable, his dark eyes burning into yours before they flick away quickly to glance at the bed.
“Scared I’ll steal all the covers?” You ask, voice teasing as something warm and distracting pools low in your belly.
“Something like that.” He replies, groaning as he stretches, left hand back in the small of his back.
“C’mon, it’ll be fine. You keep to your side, and I’ll keep to mine.”
He grunts at this, shakes his head without looking at you.
“Well, I’m going to brush my teeth,” you tell him, picking up your bag and side-stepping around the TV table to the small bathroom.
It’s cleaner than you expect, soap suds only a few millimetres thick on the avocado green sink. Through the thin wall you can hear Joel moving about, the ambient sting of the TV static electric as he flicks through channels. He settles on something that sounds like the ESPN, and sure enough, when you leave the bathroom a few minutes later, clad in loose fitting pyjama shorts and a tank top, he’s spawled out on the bed – still in his jeans, but you’re sure the bedspread is dirtier even than his faded denim Levis – watching baseball.
“Bathroom’s free,” You say, tucking your bag under the bed and flopping down next to him. The mattress is so narrow that even without meaning to you’re touching – his thick thigh pressed suddenly against you knee as you shuffle yourself over. It’s a fleeting touch, the heat of his body barely palpable before he moves off the bed towards the bathroom, ducking to pick up his bag as he goes. You watch the broad span of his back disappear behind the bathroom door and let out a long, slow breath. If this were a romance book, it would be a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding in, but around Joel, you notice every tiny movement of air.
The baseball is still on, and you let your focus drift to it. When Joel reemerges a few minutes later, he’s still in his jeans, t-shirt now untucked but otherwise unchanged.
“You always sleep in your jeans?” You ask.
“Not normally, but I usually don’t make a habit of sleeping with cheeky minxes like you.”
The words fall heavily into the tension of the room. He seems to realise immediately what he’s said, and he looks away quickly, clearing his throat. You swallow as arousal swoops low in your belly.
“I didn’t mean-” he starts to say, but you cut him off.
“I know what you meant.”
His eyes find yours again. You’re not sure if it’s the low light of the poorly fitted lamp, or something else, but his pupils are blown wide, irises swallowed up almost entirely. There’s a flush on his cheeks too, but that could just be the shitty air-conditioning; the tension in the room is almost as thick as the sticky-sweet humidity. A moment passes, and neither of you move, Joel still in the frame of the door, his broad shoulders almost swallowing up the view of the bathroom beyond, and you on the bed, knees drawn up to your chest.
“I’ll take the floor,” he says, finally looking away, “just pass me a pillow.” He holds out a hand.
“C’mon Joel, you’re not sleeping on the floor. You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just presses a hand into the small of his back, like he’s thinking about how much it’ll just about kill him to sleep a night on the motel’s hard, musky carpet.
“’lright,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed to toe off his boots.
They hit the floor with a dull thud, and then he’s lying back on top of the faded top sheet. You shuffle down and tuck yourself beneath the comforter, studying the sharp crease of Joel’s brow out of the corner of your eye, the sloping ridge of his nose.
It’s intoxicating being this close to him. All you can think about is that his arm is only a few inches from your own, his thigh almost pressed up against yours in the undersized bed. Despite the layers of fabric between you, you can feel the heat rolling off of him. You think about how he looked in the kitchen that morning so many weeks ago, blood soaked shirt clutched in his hands, chest bare and tan and altogether irresistible, and the way that his hand felt brushing your side after he’d cut your dress off of you. You wonder what it would be like to turn over now and fold yourself into his chest, press yourself into him and feel his body react to your presence. Would he be soft and gentle, teasing in his affection? Or would he hold you against the mattress, taste you with teeth and tongue and leave you shivering and yearning for more?
These delicious thoughts lull you into a deep, dreamless sleep. You stir hours later, the early morning light already filtering through the moth-eaten motel curtains. The first thing you’re aware of is that you’re hot, the top sheet and comforter tangled in a ball at your feet. There’s a heavy weight lying across your waist, warmth radiating out from an unseen source. Joel, you realise with a sudden jolt, is curled behind you, bracketing you with his arm, knees tucked up behind yours, hips pressing dangerously into your ass.
He’s still asleep –you can feel the gentle, steady rush of his breath against the back of your neck. You’re sure that as soon as he wakes he’ll move away, so you stay frozen in place, heart hammering, arousal pooling low and lurid in your belly. When he shifts, his hips pressing forward into the round apple of your ass you have to bite back a moan, and then his hand moves, fingers brushing a short path along the underside of one breast and you can’t help but let out a gasp. Joel moves his hips again, and you feel the unmistakable press of him against you, hard and hot beneath a layer of rough denim.
His breathing changes then, and you feel rather than see his eyelashes flutter open.
But he doesn’t move away, doesn’t push you from him. Several seconds pass, both of you still and quiet in the quiet morning light. Then, as slowly as you can bear, you press yourself back into him, drag the curve of your ass against the solid ridge of his cock. He inhales sharply, fingers twisting in the sheets by your stomach.
“Baby,” he says, voice raspy and delicious, like syrup poured over rough gravel, “this isn’t- we shouldn’t-”
But you roll your hips again, and his hand comes up to cup one of your breasts, fingertips brushing the sensitive whorl of your nipple.
“I don’t care,” you say, “please, Joel, I want this. I want you.”
He makes a noise that’s something between a moan and a curse, muffled by the way that he presses his mouth into the back of your neck, teeth gently grazing the point of your pulse. Then he’s trailing kisses along your throat, his hand mapping a blazing path down your side, fingers dipping beneath the fraying elastic of your sleep shorts.
“Fuck,” he curses when he finds you wet and wanting between your thighs, “this all for me, baby?”
You can only nod, arousal surging through you as he drags his fingers through your folds, gathering the wetness there and pressing a thick digit into the heat of you.
“All these weeks,” he says into the crease of your neck, “all these fucking weeks, you’ve been all I can think about. Off limits and driving me wild with those tiny shorts and that stupid broken dress. Jesus, baby, you don’t know what you do to me.”
He rolls his hips deliberately, pressing his clothed cock against you, moving his hand to grip your side and hold you there, flush against him.
“Joel,” you say, like it’s the only word you know, “please.”
“Please what, baby? Need to hear you say it.”
“Please,” you repeat, voice shaking with need, “touch me. I need you.”
“I know, baby, I know.”
He pushes himself up onto his knees, crawling down the bed to settle himself between your thighs. He pulls your shorts down slowly, eyes fixed on you, pupils blown wide, hair still scruffy with sleep. When he presses his mouth to you, tongue tracing the swollen bud of your clit with practiced proficiency, you have to bite your lip to stop yourself yelling out.
You thread your fingers through his hair, scratching nails against his scalp and he moans into you, eyes flickering open to look up at you. He’s a sight to behold, his strong arms holding your legs open, broad shoulders pressing against the backs of your thighs. There’s a cocky glint in the shimmer of his eyes, a grin that spreads devilishly across his mouth when he pulls back momentarily to gather the slick heat of you. He presses a finger into you, curls it just so, and fires builds in your belly, licking hot and insistent, a coil that threatens to snap any moment. Joel flicks his tongue over the tight bud of your clit, closes his lips around it and sucks hard. He eases you open with practiced ease, points his tongue to flick deliciously at the small bundle of nerves, each press sending a jolt of pleasure through your canting hips. You’re ricochetting higher and higher, desire coiling tight in your belly. It takes only a few more careful flicks of his tongue to tip you over the edge, body shaking, muscles clenching as you come hard. You glance down and Joel’s watching you, eyes fixed on your quivering body, your sweat-soaked face. He looks like a man possessed, hair now wild from the grip of your fingers, cheeks flushed, stubble damp with you.
“You’re the prettiest thing I ever fuckin’ saw, darlin’,” he tells you as you come down from the high, thighs trembling where he holds them.
He presses a kiss to each one and then crawls back up towards you, covering your body with his. When he kisses you – finally – you can taste yourself on his lips, heady and sweet. You claw at the t-shirt he’s still wearing, fighting to pull it up over his head. He sits back on his haunches, hauls it off, and pulls yours off too. Then your hands are tugging at the buttons of his flies and he watches as you undo them, your hands still shaking with the intensity of your orgasm.
It’s a little awkward pulling his jeans off – they get caught around one ankle and he stands to kick them off, grinning when he sees the giggle caught in your throat. But then he’s back between your thighs, capturing you in a heated kiss, teeth pulling teasingly at your lower lip, tongue pressing into your mouth, the laughter is gone, replaced by a hot, aching need. His cock is a solid ridge of heat beneath his underwear when you reach for him, and he moans into your mouth when you slip your hand beneath the black fabric. He’s big – thick and curved, head already wet with pre-come. He pushes the shorts off, kicks them away. Then you’re pulling his hips to yours, watching as he lines himself up, drags his swollen head through your folds before pressing deliciously into the tight heat of your cunt.
“Christ, darlin’,” he hisses, stilling his hips as your slick cunt swallows the head of him. “you look so good taking my cock like this.” You can feel the rumble of his voice in your chest, dark and still gravelly with sleep.
“Joel,” you say, fingers clawing at his ass, desperate to pull him into you, have him take you fully.
He presses forward, dipping his head to capture your lips in a searing kiss, moaning into your mouth when he bottoms out. It’s better than you thought it would be. He’s thick, stretching you open, sending tendrils of pleasure through you. There’s a coiled strength in Joel, something you noticed over many hot summer days watching him lay paving slabs on your parents’ drive, and feeling him pressing that strength into you, the white hot delicious burn of his cock splitting you open is overwhelming, all encompassing.
“You okay?” he asks, peppering kisses along the side of your neck, his breathing laboured.
“Move, Joel, please,”
You feel like if he doesn’t move soon, if he doesn’t shift his hips and fuck you the way you’ve wanted him to for almost two months, you might go mad. When he shifts his hips, drawing up and out and then pressing back inside, you moan softly, pleasure blossoming between your thighs.
“I think, fuck, I think if I move any more I’m going to come,” he says, voice shaking with the effort of staying still, “just give me a minute, baby. Fuck, you feel so good.”
The curses are harsh in the soft morning light. You scrape you nails over the smooth skin of his back, feeling the sharp ridges of muscle, the way they shift beneath his skin when he moves, finally pressing his hips forward. He kisses you again, teeth sharp, tongue soothing. After a moment he sits up on his haunches, wraps his hands around your hips, pulls you to him like you weigh nothing. And then he’s fucking you, hard and raw and like nothing you’ve ever felt. Every press of his hips is like lightning, jolts of pleasure coursing through you. You can’t take your eyes off of him; the slight crease in his brow, the solid set of his lips, face twisted in desire, his own eyes fixed on where you’re joined.
“Taking me so well,” he says, “just like I knew you would.”
He reaches between your bodies, presses his thumb to your clit and strokes it carefully, each stroke precise and measured and altogether overwhelming.
“Need you to come on my cock, baby,” he says, “you think you can do that for me?”
“Yes, Joel, please, yes,” your voice is weak and shaking, dulled to your own ears by the thumping of blood.
Three more gentle caresses of his thumb and you’re coming again, cunt squeezing Joel’s cock. You can hardly see as the pleasure overtakes you, only vaguely register the way Joel’s cursing into your neck, bodies pressed together again. His hips falter, rhythm stuttering.
“Fuck, baby, where do you want me?”
“Inside, please, come inside me.”
“Jesus fuck,” he gasps, and you feel him twitching inside you, cock pulsing as he comes, flooding your walls.
He keeps fucking you through it, the muscles of his back shaking with the effort of holding himself up, and then he collapses on top of you, heavy and hot. The weight of him is delicious, his cock still half-hard inside you. He presses a series of kisses to the side of your neck, catching your lips in another.
The early morning light is brightening now, twists of sunshine breaking through the shabby curtains, lighting whorls of dust that glimmer in the room’s heat. You stay entwined with each other for several long moments, both breathing hard, unwilling to move, reluctant to part. When Joel shifts away from you its only to roll over, pulling you back against him to spoon you.
“We should get moving soon,” he says into the nape of your neck after what could have been a minute or an hour, “still three hundred miles to go.”
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
summary: tommy doesn’t understand why you would want to be with an older guy like joel. you let him know why.
warnings: sexual content, 18+ only, p in v, dirty talk, age gap (not specified), confident reader!
wc: 2.9k
an: i had so much fun writing this omg. enjoy <3
Joel was a man of restraint.
However, something about you chipped away at that control. He tried to hold back at first, telling himself he was too old for you.
Until one day, the tension between you became impossible to ignore. A glance too long, a brush of hands that lingered, a shared breath in a quiet room, and suddenly, neither of you could pretend it wasn’t there.
Since then, you and Joel had fallen into a quiet understanding. He’d hauled all your belongings to his house without a word, and quickly settled into the rhythm of your life together.
It didn’t matter he was older than you, hell, it hardly crossed your mind. You had the type of quiet understanding that just worked.
A quiet understanding that Tommy didn’t quite get.
The brothers were in your dining room—turned makeshift office—pouring over blueprints for new houses when you rapped lightly on the door. Pushing it open with your foot, you stepped inside, carrying a tray with two glasses of iced tea.
Your hair was pulled back, loose strands falling softly around your face, and a small, soft smile curved your lips. Joel looked up from the papers, eyes softening as he caught sight of you.
“Here,” you said, setting the tray down. “Thought you could use a break.”
Joel’s hand brushed yours for a fleeting second as he accepted a glass. “Thank you, sweetheart.” You didn’t notice the way Tommy’s eyes lingered a little too long on your figure as you handed Joel the drink, the smirk already forming on his lips.
You glanced at the blueprints, smiled faintly at the two of them, then turned to leave. “I’ll leave you both to it,” you said, heading toward the door.
The moment you were gone, Tommy leaned back in his chair, smirk wide, voice dropping low and teasing. “How’d an old bastard like you get so lucky, huh?”
Joel didn’t look up from the papers. “Luck had nothin’ to do with it,” he replied, voice steady.
Tommy chuckled, leaning forward, elbows on the table. “C’mon, Joel. I’d pray for a woman like that.”
Joel’s gaze was still stuck to the papers, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
Tommy leaned even closer, voice dropping into a mock whisper. “Hell, least I’d know what to do with her.”
Joel finally looked up, jaw tight, eyes darkening with a dangerous edge. “You done?” His voice was low, clipped, more sharp than amused this time.
Tommy grinned, leaning back. “I’m just sayin’, girl like her could probably go all night. You’re probably tappin’ out after twenty minutes.”
Joel’s hand clenched around the glass you gave him, heat clawing up his throat. “You’re talkin’ ‘bout somethin’ you don’t understand,” he replied, voice lower than before.
Tommy laughed, a dry sarcastic noise. “No, I understand just fine. But you think you can put her through the mattress the same way a guy her own age could?”
Joel’s jaw locked, the muscle in his cheek twitching as his eyes darkened with warning. The air between him and Tommy thickened.
But before he could snap, the door creaked open again.
You stepped inside, balancing a plate against your hip, the scent of something warm following you in. The easy half-smile you wore froze mid-curve, slipping away as Tommy’s words registered.
You knew people whispered about you and Joel, sure, quiet speculations behind closed doors or sidelong glances. But not like this, not Tommy.
Your gaze flickered between the brothers before landing on Tommy.
“I don’t need to think about guys my own age,” you said, tone clipped, a small frown pulling at your lips as you tilted your head.
Tommy was frozen, clearly caught off guard.
Joel’s gaze snapped to you, unreadable. But there was a heat behind it that made you feel possessive.
You stepped closer, your frown lifting into something more charged when you held Joel’s gaze. You looked back at Tommy as you made your way around the table, sliding onto Joel’s lap, letting your weight settle against him. His hands automatically came up to steady you.
“You wanna know what he does to me…what a guy my age could never do?” You murmured, voice low as you leaned across the table, staring Tommy down. Joel’s hands flexed against your hips. “You wanna know how he fucks me so hard I forget my own damn name?”
Tommy leaned back, jaw working, his eyes wide as they darted between you and Joel.
Meanwhile Joel hadn’t said a word. He sat rigid under you, muscles tight, the heat coming off him near feral. His grip on your hips was almost bruising.
You leaned back into him, turning your head slightly, lips brushing his ear. You raised your hand and ran it over Joel’s neck, he leaned into your touch and made a noise at the back of his throat. “If he wants to know so bad…maybe we should let him watch some time?” You murmured.
Then, without breaking eye contact with Tommy, you pressed your lips against Joel’s, your tongue running over his bottom lip. You could hear Tommy’s breath hitch.
Joel groaned, low and ragged, one hand tightening on your hip while the other tangled in your hair, pulling you impossibly closer.
You let out a muffled moan into the kiss, before shifting your hips against him, tasting him fully, letting the heat between you explode. Your lips dragged over his, biting, sucking, moaning against his mouth as his growls filled the room.
Tommy made a rough sound, half a grunt and half a curse, “Jesus Christ—”
Joel’s fingers tightened in your hair, yanking your head back just enough to tear you from his mouth. A thin string of saliva clung between you both as his dark gaze snapped to his brother.
“Get the fuck out, Tommy.”
The words cut through the room like a knife, gravel-deep and dangerous.
Tommy froze, caught somewhere between shock and something he didn’t want to admit. His jaw worked, but Joel’s eyes didn’t waver.
Tommy shoved back his chair, muttering something under his breath as he made for the door.
The second the door closed, the air in the room changed. Joel’s hand tightened on your waist, thumbs digging in just enough to make you gasp to break the kiss. His dark eyes locked on yours, full of heat and warning as he turned you on his lap to face him.
“You like doin’ that?” he murmured, low and gravelly. “Marchin’ in here, sitting on my lap, talkin’ dirty in front of my own brother?”
One hand slid up your back, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades, pulling you flush against him, while the other gripped your hip tighter, anchoring you in place.
You tilted your head, letting your lips brush his jaw. “I do,” you whispered, voice thick and teasing. “Next time he’ll think twice before he talks to you like that.”
Joel’s eyes darkened, pupils wide, heat radiating off him. “You gettin’ all hot tryna defend me?”
You smiled coyly, leaning closer, fingers trailing up his biceps. “You like it?”
Joel’s voice dropped even lower, rough and ragged. “Like it? I’m fuckin’ undone just watching you.”
You brushed your nose against his jaw, feeling heat rise to your cheeks at his words.
Joel’s hands pulled you over the thick bulge straining in his jeans. You gasped as he grinded you over his lap. His breath was ragged against your ear, hot and uneven. “Goddamn hottest thing I've ever seen.”
You moaned softly as the outline of his cock caught your clit and that was it— Joel lost any restraint he had. His hands shoved under your thighs as his mouth crashed into yours, teeth and tongue, messy and consuming.
You clung to him, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other on the back of his neck. You were breathless, lost in the urgency. “Joel—”
“Gonna let me have you right here?” He rasped, already fumbling with his belt. “On my fuckin’ lap?”
You nodded fast, desperate. “Yes—Joel, yes.”
He didn’t wait. Jeans shoved down just enough, your panties tugged aside with no care, then he was there, thick and hot, pressing at your entrance. You cried out as he pushed in deep with one rough thrust, filling you in a way that knocked the breath from your lungs.
Joel’s head dropped back with a guttural groan, eyes squeezed shut as his hands clamped down on your hips. “So fuckin’ tight, baby.”
You writhed in his lap, grinding down on him, desperate for more, your toes barely scraping the floor, nothing solid to push against. The helplessness only made you needier. You clutched at his shoulders, moaning against his neck, breath hot on his skin. “God, Joel… please—”
You didn’t get the chance to finish, Joel snapped his hips up hard, once, hard. His fingers slid into your hair, tugging you back from the crook of his neck until you were staring up at him. “You don’t get to ask for things,” he rasped. “You put on that little fuckin’ show, got me this hard… now you’re gonna take the consequences.”
He set the pace brutal at first, bouncing you on his cock, your cries filling the room. Each thrust sent sparks through your body, your nails digging into his shoulders as you clung on.
But then—just when you thought he’d fuck you into breaking—Joel slowed, grinding deep, holding you down on him so you could feel every inch. His lips ghosted over your jaw, breath hot.
“You wanted to prove somethin’ to him,” he rasped, voice softer but dripping with heat. His thumb found your clit, circling slow, relentless. “Now you’re gonna prove somethin’ to me.”
Your body trembled, caught between the rough pounding and the slow, torturous grind. Joel’s eyes burned into yours, full of hunger and possession.
“Show me how good you come on my cock, sweetheart,” he whispered, low and commanding.
You whined, your head falling back.
“Look at me,” he ordered, voice rough as gravel. His hand left your hip to clamp around your jaw, tilting your face up until your eyes locked on his. His pupils were blown wide, burning with heat. A dangerous smirk tugged at his mouth as he rasped, “You offer him a show, but won’t let me watch?”
“N-no Joel,” you pleaded, an attempt to get him to give you more. The slow grind was unbearable, his cock dragging over every nerve inside you. He held you flush to him, moving you how he wanted, thumb working your clit with cruel precision.
“Fuck—Joel, please, I’m—”
“That’s it, baby,” he rasped, hips rolling up into you, each thrust angled to hit that spot. “God, I love it when you get all fuckin’ messy.”
He leaned you back slightly, his hand moving from your face to the base of your neck, eyes trailing down to where your bodies were connected.
You moaned, “Joel—”
“Tell me you’re all fuckin’ mine,” Joel growled, voice a low, dangerous rumble against your ear.
You tried to answer but only managed a stuttered sound, babbling something unintelligible as his pace picked up, each thrust punching the air from your lungs.
“Tell me,” he snarled, hips snapping harder. “Tell me how I fuck you better than anyone else could.”
You gasped as he drilled into you, nails digging into the thick muscle of his biceps. “All y‑yours, Joel,” you whimpered, voice breaking.
“Damn right,” he rasped, teeth grazing your throat before biting down just enough to make you whimper. “What else?”
Your head lolled to the side, pleasure spilling through your bones, words slurring as you tried to obey. “T‑that you fuck me better than anyone.”
“That’s fuckin’ right,” Joel growled, his thrusts going deep and deliberate now. “Tommy, the whole damn town should know. I’ll fuckin’ prove it every night if I have to.”
His words lit something white-hot inside you, and your climax slammed into you hard. You shattered around him, crying out his name, body shaking as wave after wave rolled through you. Joel held you tight, fucking you through it, thumb still circling, refusing to let you come down.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, breath ragged against your ear. “So fuckin’ pretty, baby.”
You whined, overstimulated, nails biting into his shoulders. His hands were everywhere—palming your ass, sliding up your spine—anchoring you to him. He groaned low in his chest as you pulsed around him, and then, still buried inside you, he shifted his grip.
Before you could even catch your breath, Joel hauled you up against his chest. You clung to him on instinct, too fucked out to even wrap your legs around him as he rose from the chair in one smooth, powerful movement.
“Joel—” you gasped, dizzy from the movement.
“Don’t think you’re done yet,” he muttered darkly, voice wrecked. “Ain’t even close.”
He laid you on the table, on top of the blueprints. You shivered at the sight of him. Shirt clinging to his chest, jaw tight, cock still thick and hard inside of you.
“Spread for me,” he rasped, pushing your knees wide until they hung off the edge of the table. “Wanna see you laid out like this.”
Your breath hitched as his hands slid down your thighs, thumbs pressing little circles into your trembling skin. He drew his hips back just enough to drag the head of his cock over your swollen clit before sliding back into you, slow and deep.
“God—Joel,” you moaned, back arching.
“Yeah,” he groaned, leaning over you until his mouth hovered by your ear. “Ain’t no other man who could fuck you like this.”
He started to move again, long, dragging thrusts that had you keening, the wet sound of you two echoing off the walls. One of his hands came up to your throat, resting there as his thumb brushed against your pulse, while the other braced against the table, muscles flexing.
He was slower now but deeper, his eyes fixed on yours, voice gone low and rough.
“Gonna give me another one right here on this table,” he murmured, his free hand slid from the table to your clit, circling tight, relentlessly.
You groaned, chest heaving, as you repeated his name.
“Show me, baby. Show me how fuckin’ hard this old man makes you come,” he rasped.
His words tipped you over the edge. You broke with a strangled cry, clutching at his arms, body arching up into him as your orgasm ripped through you. Your walls squeezed him tight, pulsing around his cock.
Joel’s groan was guttural. “Fuckin’ hell…” His thrusts turned rougher, faster, chasing his own release. “Keep squeezin’ me like that—”
You felt him tense above you, muscles coiling under his shirt. He threw his head back, grunting as he thrusted into you, his rhythm becoming messy.
“Joel—”, you whispered, your hand reaching under his shirt, your finger trailing the vein that ran from his stomach to his cock.
“You keep takin’ it, baby,” he grunted, low and rough, as you mewled in agreement. “Fuckin’ need this.”
You wanted to speak, to tell him to take what he needs, instead a broken moan left your mouth.
The image of you beneath him, spread over the table, mouth fallen open in pleasure, sent him over the edge. You were all his. And he could fuck you better than any man your age could.
He drove into you once, twice, and then buried himself deep, spilling hot inside you with a ragged groan, murmuring your name like a prayer.
One hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise while the other slid up your ribs, shaky but tender, as though grounding himself. You met the hand on your ribs, intertwining your fingers with his.
His head dropped to your shoulder, teeth catching your skin as his whole body shuddered against you.
When his breathing finally started to ease, Joel lifted his head. His eyes were still dark, heavy-lidded, but softer now, the edges melted by the afterglow. He brushed a damp strand of hair from your face with a gentleness that contrasted the roughness he’d just unleashed.
He pulled out slowly and guided your thighs together. His large hands stayed on you, soothing now, stroking the outside of your hips. He bent to press a kiss just above your collarbone, lingering there for a beat.
You swallowed, voice still shaky as your hands ran over his back. “Joel… you know I don’t care what Tommy has to say” you murmured. “Or anyone else.”
Joel gave a soft exhale, forehead dipping to touch yours. “I know, baby,” he said softly, thumb stroking slow circles over your jaw before a smile crept onto his face. “Maybe folks oughta talk more if it gets you riled up like that.”
You huffed a laugh, rolling your eyes as warmth crept onto your cheeks. “Shut up.”
That made him laugh properly, rough and genuine, the sound catching in his chest. You ended up laughing into his shoulder, hiding your flushed cheeks.
As you laughed you were caught in that familiar space again.
The quiet understanding you two shared. The quiet understanding that just worked.
Summary: "Y'askin' me to use you," Joel asks. "Tonight?"
"If you want to," you respond. "Yeah."
"And it ain't suppose to mean nothin' between us?"
"That's the whole point, Joel."
the one where you and Joel agree to a friends with benefits situation. Everything is going fine until eventually the whole thing gets fucked up. Who fucked it up? Joel did. And maybe...you.
Tags: MDNI 18+, friends with benefits, age gap implied, Jackson Joel, reader is like 30s. oral!m receiving, oral f!receiving, talks of pull out method, anxiety mentions, a bit of free use, p-in-v, unprotected sex, brief mention of scars on reader(years of trying to survive), avoiding emotions, Joel is kind of down bad, creampie, joel cums in his pants from eating, soft dom joel, but my man is afraid of hurting.
A/N: honestly, I’ve worked on this for a while. It’s a two parter. i was listening to a Coldplay song. so this was born. Smuts kinda tame & There is a bit of a time skip. I tried to make it kinda obvious buttt. A cutesy fact, there is small mentions of yellow things :) If you wanna be tagged for part 2, just comment.
Part 2 | Masterlist | ao3
The ride back to town is chilly. It’s strange for this time of year. Not the kind where you're freezing and can't keep yourself warm. It's just a strange breeze that takes you some time to get used to. Hardly enough to cause a shiver, really. It makes you draw the strings of your hoodie tighter.
Just as you're reaching the gates of Jackson. You look up. The sky is that pretty soft yellow. One that makes the trees seem so warm in the cold.
You've lived in this town a year now and somehow the sky's never looked this pretty before.
"Pretty, ain't it?"
His voice comes from the horse beside you.
Joel Miller. Your patrol partner. Most people would describe him as grumpy. He's not exactly that…not all the time.
To be honest, you've spent the last year wondering how the hell the two of you get along. Probably has something to do with the way you handle things. You're mostly quiet, some would say. You can handle yourself, unlike some.
Killing infected is easy for you. You grew up doing it. It's become more like a second nature. When you need to look for somethin' to trade, you do it and don't ask for help.
You're just a girl from a shit family. Who, by the way, practically raised herself. From a town that don't really exist anymore. Somehow you've made it this far.
“I don't think I've ever seen it this color,” You say, eyes still on the sky. "Or maybe I ain't really payed much attention to it."
“‘Minds me of back home,” he shrugs. "Nothin' better than sittin' on the porch after a day in the heat, drinkin' a beer."
"You had a home?" you tease.
To say you're a little jealous would be a lie. You're jealous he remembers what his home felt like after the infection spread. All you remember are quarantine zones. Sure, you had one. In that shitty town you grew up in. You just…don't remember.
After you help put the horses away, it's usually a quick walk back. He walks with you. Most of the time. He's nice like that. Though, you're never really sure why. Says he just wants to make sure no one bothers you.
But today, you stop in front of his house.
His heavy bag is slung over his shoulder as he climbs the worn-out steps. That foggy yellow porch light on as always.
"Ya' comin' in for a drink this time?" he asks. "Still think ya owe me from the last time."
"Tonight?" you raise a brow. "I swear you complained about wantin' to relax like seven times on the way back."
Joel tilts his head toward the door. "Traded for better whiskey this time. Since that last one didn't sit right with your picky ass."
It wasn't that it didn't sit right. It was from a super shady dude and…none of that matters. Why are you hesitating right now? Just staring at him as he unlocks the door.
There ain't nothing waiting for you back home.
Almost never is.
Maybe a half-rolled joint. A few sleeping pills you found in that abandoned pharmacy a few weeks back. They really didn't work. It's not like twenty some year old pills are supposed to anyway.
You follow him inside. Now, this isn't the first time you've been in his house. It's always been quick visits. Usually, Ellie was the one to answer the door. But right now, this house? It's way too quiet for a teenager that's supposed to be in it.
"So…where's Ellie?"
Joel doesn't look at you as he closes the door. "Left her a note," he starts. "Told her to stay over at Tommy's. But she ain't ever listen. Prob'ly off with her friends."
It's typical of her. You see her running off with her friends any chance she gets. Can't say you blame her, you were probably the same way at her age. What kind of teenager wants to be cooped up in the house?
Joel nods toward the kitchen table.
In that very small. But cozy kitchen.
You sit down at the round table. It has a few messed up chairs. One missing part of its legs. The others worn down with a few deep scratches inside the wood.
Moving through the kitchen, he grabs a bottle from the top of the cabinet. The good stuff he stashes up there. The amber liquid catching in the dimly lit kitchen light. He sets two glasses down on the table, pouring into them.
Then he slides the drink toward you.
You give a quick little "Thanks."
Joel sits across from you. A drink in his hand. That old chair creaking as he moves slightly. You think maybe he's about to talk. Instead he takes a slow sip of his drink. There is this silence between you as you both drink.
Neither of you says a word. It doesn't really uncomfortable. These moments with him never exactly are. But, you've had a rough few days. Trade deal gone wrong. Lack of sleep.
You take another sip. The whiskey has that authentic burn as you drink it. It's barely even enough to kill what's been going on in your head.
"You ever get tired of all this?"
Truly, you didn't mean to blurt that out. It just happened. Now, you're going to have to roll with the punches.
Joel looks at you. One brow lifted. It's not even a real reaction to what you said. But enough to let you know he obviously heard you.
"What are you goin' on 'bout?"
"The constant anxiety," you say. "More like the constant bullshit everyday."
He just nods. You sigh, loudly. Dragging your thumb along the rim of the worn down glass.
"I try everything," you admit. "Walking. Writing in a journal for a while. I stole a self help book once that talked about breathing. A terrible herbal tea that just made me feel dizzy."
"Ain't none of that help?"
You take another sip. It burns a little less this time. Might be the whiskey that's given you this fake courage anyway. But you just outright say it.
"Only thing that ever really shuts off my mind is sex."
He swallows hard. Nearly choking on his drink.
It was risky, what you said. Telling your patrol partner you needed sex to turn off the anxiety you were having. He shifts awkwardly in his chair. Jaw tight. Setting his glass down on the table, carefully.
You've already gotten this far. Why stop now?
"I'm not looking for the kind of sex that makes people think they're in love," You continue. "Not pretending it's about feelings or whatever."
Can feel it from his side of the table now. The tension. He hasn't said anything else. Hasn't even shifted. But you know he has to be thinking about it. Hopefully the way you are right now.
"You know, I don't want to be told I'm beautiful," you murmur. "I just want to be fucked. Let someone just use me the way they need."
Joel takes a deep breath.
Just sitting there, still not speaking.
"It's about not bein' in my head," You say. "That's all I need."
"Is—uh," Joel finally speaks. "You're serious 'bout this?"
You are serious enough that you hadn't talked yourself out of it. But you're looking at him. He's glancing back. Like he really can't figure out if this is a real conversation.
"I'm serious," you admit. "I know it sounds…fucked."
"I ain't say that."
"But you're thinkin' it," you comment. "It's the only time I feel quiet. I don't need it gentle. Ain't need to be held or praised. I don't want anything."
"You done somethin' like this before?"
Never in a million years. Not this. You haven't had a boyfriend all these years. Mostly trying to survive. But you get it…understand why he'd ask that.
"No," you admit. "Closest I ever got was a shitty one night stand I had years ago. It wasn't exactly anything to write home about."
He taps his foot against the floor. Fingers fidgeting with the glasses he had on the table. Like he doesn't quite know what to do with his hands right now.
Finally he speaks, "Jesus Christ."
It's an impossible ask. What you're even trying to get him to agree to. Sex to give you that peace you need. To calm down whatever the hell is going on inside your head.
"And that's what you want?" He asks. "Right now?"
"I'd never ask you to hurt me," you say. "Not askin' to be degraded or anything. It's about..being quiet. About letting go of my thoughts for a few minutes."
Joel's white as a ghost. Sitting completely still. His hand tapping on the table. Like he's trying to focus on something. Anything else. Though, you're making it hard for him to do so.
"Just for a little while," You shrug. "I just don't wanna think. Not be in control. Or in my head, it's awful in there. Just…letting someone use me."
"Use you?" He furrows a brow.
That's what got him talking.
Not surprising. It's probably a bit of a shock to hear you don't want to be in control.
"Yes," you say flatly. "Don't have to help me finish either. I can do that part myself. Or they could…I don't really care."
"Ya let someone do that to you?"
He says it like he's irritated. Like the thought of someone using you has pissed him off. It's just…not how he thinks. It's an arrangement. But you shake your head.
"Not someone," you say, eyes meeting his. "You…it's not like this is somethin' you can do with someone you don't trust. Can't…actually."
"And ya trust me," He rumbles. "With…somethin' like this?"
You nod, "I do."
"Why?" Joel grumbles, taking a pull from his glass. Emptying it. "Outta all people ‘round here, me?"
It's a simple answer. He makes sure the two of you don't get killed. A few times you've done really stupid shit. The one time you insisted going through that run down house. Fell right through the floor board like he said. He helped you anyway. Yelled at you the whole damn time coming back, though.
"I trust you to stop me when I need stopping," you say. "You keep me outta trouble. Ain't that enough right now?"
"Y'askin' me to use you," he asks. "Tonight?"
"If you want to," you respond. "Yeah."
"And it ain't supposed to mean nothin' between us?"
"That's the whole point, Joel."
Joel exhales through his nose. What he usually does when he's trying to hold something back. He has a choice. A yes or a no. Agree to it or don't. You're practically praying he'll say yes. Help whatever's going on in your head.
But he leans back in the old chair. Stares down at the table. At that empty glass that is sitting there.
"Ya serious about this?" He questions.
"Listen, I get it. I do," you start. "I get it sounds a little fucked up. Thought for a while maybe I'm not supposed to want something like this…but I do."
He's looking at you. Really looking. A part of you thinks maybe he's judging a bit. You wouldn't exactly blame him. But he's done avoiding this anymore. It's like he's trying to figure all of this out.
"Ya want me to just take you?" He looks confused. "Like you're mine to do whatever I want with? What if I hurt you?"
"I doubt you'll hurt me," you shrug. "You're a lot gentler than ya think. But it's about not thinking. I want you to decide when we do it. To take what you need from me."
You pause. "I just want….to not be in my head for a few. For the first time in years."
"Ya can have someone younger. Someone who prob'ly won't throw their damn back out. Maybe talks to ya a bit more than I do," he continues. "Who ain't got more years on ya."
"I don't want that," you roll your eyes. "I want someone who I feel safe with. I want you."
That sticks with him.
Can see it in his eyes.
Joel leans in. Eyes on yours. "Ya serious about this? Not askin' again."
"Yes."
He's still as can be. Barely blinking. The silence between you two stretches for a few minutes. Long enough for you to think about standing. About leaving the room. About saying nevermind and heading out the front door.
Then, he stands.
Doesn't go far. Just circles around the table. Boots heavy against the wood. He stops behind you. Takes off his jacket. Folds it once like he's making a choice and stays right there. The tension is there. It's got you sitting up straighter in the chair.
He doesn't touch your shoulder.
Or lean down.
Just says, "Take off your pants."
He's agreeing to this. Actually agreeing to this. It takes you a second. But then you just undo your shoe laces. Kicking them off. You stand up. Hands going to the button of your jeans. Sliding them down. Black lace underneath.
When did he walk over to the other side of the table? Must've walked back around again when you weren't paying attention. He moves the glass to the middle of the table. The scrape of the chair against the floor is loud as he pulls it all the way back. He sits again.
"C'mere."
Your heart is beating so fast. This is exactly what you wanted. Why are you nervous all of a sudden? You look at him. Joel's sitting back. Legs spread. Elbows on the sides of the chair. Eyes looking straight at your thighs.
"How ya want this to be darlin'?"
"What do you mean?" you raise a brow, slow steps. "Whatever feels natural."
"Alright," he nods. "What don't ya want me to do."
"No praising," you say. "Got it?"
Licking his lips, he points to the floor. "On your knees."
Spreading his legs wider. You sink down between them. He's already hard. You can see the outline through his jeans.
You don't ask.
Just reach for his belt.
Joel watches as you undo it. That loud clink as the metal comes undone. He hisses when you pull him free. You had always imagined how his cock would look. Big, of course. But this thick? And veiny? God.
Mouth opens. Your lips part. You take him in without even waiting for permission. Taking it slow at first. Hand wrapping so pretty at the base of his cock. Steadying him as you tilt your head and let him slide over your tongue.
He sucks in a breath through his teeth, "Fuck."
Hands immediately wrapping in your hair. Tightly. You move faster, pressing your tongue flat under his length. Hallowing your cheeks out to take more of him. Dragging your mouth down until he hits the back of your throat.
He groans, "Christ. Just like that…"
It is obviously a slip out. An instinct. It's hardly meant to be a praise. Not anything sweet toward you. Just the truth. Anything he'd say to a girl who's mouth is wrapped around his cock.
You let him fill your mouth again and again. Mouth full. Jaw burning as spit slides down your chin. You keep your hand steady at the base of his cock. Move faster. Moaning around him. He jerks his hips, just once.
Not quite thrusting.
Trying to keep very still.
That's when your free hand moves. Slips low. Going straight into the waistband of your panties. Pressing right into your clit. You're so desperate to cum when he does. Jesus, you're fucking soaked.
Joel looks down. Eyes going to the floor. He sees your hand. Sees the way your knees are digging into the wood floor. The mess on your chin. Spit and his precum dripping around your mouth.
He curses, a lot louder this time. "You fuckin' touchin' yourself?"
You hum against him. The only answer you can really give with a mouthful of cock. He's breathing harder now. Jaws tight. The muscles in his stomach tensing from the small bit of his shirt rode up.
"Goddamn," he grits out. "Don't you stop."
And you don't. Fingers working a little faster against your clit. Frantic circles. Mind going blank. You're about to cum with your mouth wrapped around him. Thighs start to tremble. His cock does a small twitch against your tongue.
"F…fuck…I'm gon…"
You moan around him. His pull of your hair is what does it. You cum, hard. Thighs closing around your hand. Fingers still working. Joel's head falls back.
"Fuck-take it…just take it."
Hot spurts of his cum land in the back of your throat. You choke once. Barely. Then swallow down as much of it the best you can. Joel's breathing is still coming out hard. Slumped back in the chair.
One hand drags slow down his leg. The other letting go of your hair. Like he's trying to settle himself. You wipe your mouth. Pulling your hand from your panties. Fingers still shaky.
He looks at you. "You okay?"
You give a nod. Don't really have the words for it right now. Heads really fogged and your body is tired. Like everything you've been feeling has finally let go. You haven't felt like this in…God, you don't even know how long.
Somehow, you fall asleep on Joel Miller’s couch that night.
And it's the best sleep you had in years.
Joel already left for the day by the time you got up.
It surprises you. Leaving you alone in the house. Leaving you covered up with a blanket. His blanket. Smells just like him. Can't really describe it just him.
You gather your stuff together. As fast as someone possibly can. It doesn't feel right hanging around his place. You aren't his girlfriend. Well…you're not technically his friend either. Not one to hang out in here.
Once you settle down in the mess hall. You accepted how your day is going to be. Not seeing him. Just a clear head space. A book. Something to get you through the day.
But, of course.
The mess hall is loud.
Way too many voices. Chairs scraping as people get up and sit down. Someone dropped a plate on the ground and it shattered. Fuck, you should've stayed home. Easier if you did.
You can barely focus on the book in front of you. All the pages bleeding together. Actually, you've read the same page maybe seven times already.
What is the plot even about? You have no idea. Only thing you know is it’s a half-assed romance book you found a while back. Now, your tea is cold.
No point in really drinking it.
Just as you turn the page. Your eye catches the edge of a belt. You know that belt. After last night, the way you unbuckled it was burned into your brain.
Fuck…don't think about it.
The chair scapes loudly. Joel sits down in front of you. His fingers gently placing the food down onto the table.
"Y'alright?" Joel questions.
He asked you last night. Right now, it's sweet that's he's checking in. That he cares enough to. You're still…friends. After all.
"I'm fine," you reply. "Y'know you asked me that exact question last night too. Nervous?"
That part is obvious. He was also nervous last night. It isn't like anyone can hear the two of you. It's too loud. Plenty of voices louder than you both.
"What you want to do…" Joel starts. "Does it come with some kinda rules?"
Does sleeping with your patrol partner come with rules? That part you're not even sure. The whole concept is new. At least to you. You hadn't even thought this far ahead, figured he would've simply just said no.
"Do you want there to be rules?" You ask. "I'm not sure how this whole thing works."
"I ain't either," he says. "But…some ground rules are prob'ly the way to go."
Is there a guide? Rules to avoid developing feelings for someone you're messing around with? What are you saying? This is Joel. You are the one who has to worry about the feelings here.
"The easiest one is no kissing."
That is an obvious one, right?
You're sleeping together. A casual arrangement. No need to be kissing each other.
"Can't do it at the house again," Joel mutters. "Ain't really want Ellie to know about all this."
Fair. This isn't something you exactly wanna explain to anyone to be honest. It's better kept between the two of you.
"I guess…no cuddling. No coupley things," you suggest. "And always pull out."
The last thing you wanted or needed is to be pregnant. Can barely handle yourself, let alone a damn baby in this situation. These are easy rules, right? Simple ones that two of you can follow.
"Ya got any other ones?" he questions.
Well… you should have more. Really, this whole thing is a giant red flag on your part. Sleeping with a man you're sure as hell to get feelings for. It's not just him that's gonna make you feel that way. It's his words.
"No praising," you blurt out. "We need to stick with that."
You don't need to be told you're doing such a good job. Or that you're pretty. All those little things you know he's capable of saying? They're just a ticking time bomb. Something that's going to explode in your head. Make you think about this constantly.
Lying to yourself. Telling yourself zero feelings will be had is so much easier. For Joel, the man who you've never known to have feelings for anyone. There's no chance he has to worry about falling in love with you.
You, of all people here.
"Anythin' else?" You add. "You don't have anything?"
He shakes his head. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
That's going to be a thing now. Asking if you're okay. Can't really rule your way out of that one. He's concerned. When someone you've known a long time comes to you with this. You can see it as being worrisome.
"I'm alright," you say, nodding toward the door. "Looks like someone's looking for you."
There is Tommy. Motioning for you to get Joel's attention. Just like that…this moment you two are sharing. It's gone. Joel gives you a polite head nod and he's up. The chair scraping against the floor as he's leaving.
Joel shuts the barn doors behind you. The rain coming down hard as you tie the horses to the poles. The old barn can at least offer you some shelter. Most of the parts had been replaced years ago. Jackson uses this barn for all the animals.
Still, it's worn by years of just sitting here.
It's about a mile outside of town. Yellow hay still fresh from when it was freshly laid out the other day. Enough to keep the horses warm, at least.
"Y'know it's my favorite," you say. "All this rain…reminds me of that shitty apartment I lived in the quarantine zone."
"Shouldn't have taken so damn long," he groans. "Whatever was takin' you so long back there."
Doesn't really matter what you were doing. Just that it took a little too damn long and now you are soaked. Joel's jacket is dripping water onto the ground. The only light coming in here is from the small windows.
"How long you think we'll be stuck here?" you question, looking around.
Above you is a little storage spot. A set of stairs that lead up to it. It's made out of thicker wood. Some of it looks like it's been recently replaced. An easy place to sit. Better than standing here.
"Prob'ly an hour. Maybe more…" Joel shrugs. "Better get comfortable. Ain't feel like riding all the way back ‘til it stops."
You make your way up the stairs. Listening to the loud creak under you. Taking steps up to the top. When you look back at Joel, he's raising a brow at you. Before he follows you up. Only thing up here is a barrel of hay.
Joel stands at the top. Just looking at you, crossing his arms. You can sit down. Can talk about how the weather is right now. But no…you know what you want. Him. That's what this whole thing is about, isn't it?
Reaching for the hem of your shirt, you pull it above your head. Throwing it down on the floor. You're different from years before. New scars on random places of your body. Ones that are on your stomach are darker. Fresher.
"Are you gonna just stand there?" You smirk. "No one's around. Who's gonna hear us?"
You feel vulnerable. Just by how his eyes are looking at you. He steps forward, unbuttoning his shirt. Then his fingers are on your stomach. Gently touching those scars. You would push someone else away…not him.
"How'd ya get these?" Joel asks, pulling off that brown flannel.
"How'd you get yours?" You smile. "Fell through a building once when I was trying to survive."
"I can't even say where most've mine have come from," he shrugs, his white shirt coming off next.
"They look good on you," you murmur. "Not so much on me."
Joel says nothing. But it's the look in his eyes that you already know he disagrees. Your bra comes off. Hitting the floor. Quickly your pants and underwear are the next to go. Kicked off somewhere around space.
"You nervous?" You ask, reaching forward to help him unbuckle his belt.
"No," he replies, flat. "Just gotta be careful."
"Careful," you raise a brow. "With me?"
"Mhm."
"I don't need you to be careful with me."
"I'ma always try to be that way," Joel says. "Can't help it."
His clothes are on the floor. Your eyes instantly go to his cock. Yes, you've seen it before. He's big. He felt massive in your mouth. But it's the sure shock of just how big he is when he's standing in front of you.
Turning you around, he presses you against his chest. Feeling just how much hair he has on his chest brushing your back. It makes your eyes roll back. He gently guides you on top of the hay barrel. Your face pressing against it.
You think you hear him about to say something. Instead he just clears his throat. Maybe it's just that little bit of nerves you both are feeling. Well…you're feeling anyway. Once you look back at him, you see him gathering spit on his fingers.
Pressing them into your soft cunt.
Oooh. Fuck.
"Joel," you cry out.
His fingers slowly spreading you open. Wetness immediately coating his fingers as he drags them in and out of you. Your hands looking for something to hold onto. Fuck, you just want his cock. Actually, you need it. All you can do is push back on his fingers and whine.
"Need to spread ya open a bit, darlin'," he mutters. "Gotta get ya ready."
Joel spreads your legs further. Stepping between them. His fingers dragging in and out of you until he takes them out. Using your wetness to stroke over his cock once. Twice. Pressing just the head into you.
"Goddamn," he groans, mostly to himself. "Got such a pre-"
He stops himself from saying whatever he was about to say. Instead, just pushes the thick head of his cock fully inside you. You let out a small whine. Hand moving back to spread you open. So he can watch.
"You're takin' me so good," he moans, thrusting inside you. "Watchin' her take every inch of me."
"Fuck-fuck," you cry. "Gonna have to slow down a bit."
Slowly, he keeps going. You feel him pushing deeper. Your hands clawing at the hay as he buries to the hilt. He takes a second. Though, you need a second. But then he pulls back and thrusts forward.
Oh god.
You moan so loudly. He picks up the pace, eyes practically glued to your cunt. Watching his cock going in and out of you. Every time he's pulling out, your cunt is sucking him back in. He slams back in, you cry out.
"God," you mumble. "Joel-fuck."
Finally, he finds a pace. He thrusts harder. You're babbling. Moaning his name over and over, like it's all you can say. Then he stops.
"Shhh," he says, listening. "I swear I heard somethin'."
"Joel," you cry. "Don't stop."
He slaps a hand across your mouth. Freezing mid thrust. Doing his best to listen. But you can't help yourself. You groan. Rocking your hips back, fucking your soaked cunt back on him.
You can tell he's trying. Really trying to pay attention to anything but the fact you're fucking yourself on his cock. Whining into his hand as he hits the softness of your cervix. The second he realizes no one is out there. He pulls his hand away and slams into you.
Practically bringing a scream out of you. Ohhh. It feels so good. He rolls his hips. Starts thrusting into that sweet spot. Pulling your hips down further. Joel reaches around, finding your clit.
A few really rough circles.
And you cum.
Face buried in the hay. Moans mostly muffled. He pulls out. God, you miss the feeling of him filling you. You turn back to him. Watching him jerk himself onto your ass. Hot spurts of cum hitting your back.
As you catch your breath. You realize…it's not raining anymore. Those little pitter-patters that had hit the roof before are gone. You just smile and look at him. Hand running through his hair. Sweat down his chest. Out of breath.
"It stopped raining," you chuckle. "If you can't tell."
"Y'don't say?"
Climbing up to get a better view of something wasn't really the best choice you made today. Actually, it was the worst. You slipped. Stumbled on some rock because you were barely paying attention.
Got a few scratches on the way down. But nonetheless, you were fine. Joel is…obviously fine. You limped back home once you got off your horse. Listening to Joel go on and on about how reckless you are. You're not really. It wasn't even that tall, to be honest.
"Outta ya damn mind," Joel growls. "Coulda got hurt doin' somethin' like that."
You push the door open. After what happened today. Kinda surprised he walked you all the way back. Though, you spent most of the time limping. The first thing you do is throw your bag onto that old couch of yours. Hitting that yellow blanket you left there last night.
"I barely fell," you scoff. "Just lost my balance after I climbed up. It's a few tiny scratches, no big deal."
"Gonna get yourself hurt real bad one day," He shakes his head. "I ain't gonna be there to help you all the damn time."
"You gonna leave me?" you pout, kidding.
Joel does another small head shake. Looking around your place. He's never actually been inside the house. Always stopped at the front door. Polite enough to make sure you got in okay. Even though you didn't need help.
"Not unless you want me to," Joel says, standing as you sit on the couch.
You didn't want to say it out loud. That strangely enough you have gotten used to him. All this time the two of you spend together. It would be strange if one day he just isn't in your life anymore.
"You-uh still planning that thing for Ellie’s birthday?" you question, trying to change the subject.
"Mhm," he tilts his head. "She's still on that astronaut thing. Well, least I think she is. Someone told me 'bout that place across the highway. Somethin' might be in there."
It's a tradition he does. Her birthday every year. Takes months of planning. Her birthday isn't even until March. Tries to make it as special as he can for her, given the circumstances. It's sweet. A side of him that is rare to see. He may be brooding and a bit of a pain in the ass.
That's always how he is.
But…under that. It's something you want to understand.
He sits down next to you. After a few minutes, the two of you are just sitting in silence. The one you've gotten used to. But, thanks to this arrangement, it's different now. You know why he's here. Why he bothered to come inside. Can't be that he wants to spend time with you, right?
You reach over. Your hand rubbing over his thigh. Joel mutters something. You can't really understand exactly what it is. When he finally looks over at you.
"Ain't gotta do this," Joel says. "Not if-"
"I want to," you smile. "Don't you? This is what we agreed on, right?"
"We're doin' it my way this time," he moves your hand.
His way? What the hell does he mean by his way? He doesn't stand up. Just moves off the couch to get on his knees. Which, you know he'll complain about later. He's not going to...is he? He spreads your legs. Hands going to the button of your jeans.
"What are you…"
This is what you wanted? Isn't it? Just like before. Taking what he wants. What he needs first. Letting you get out of your head for just a few minutes. The button of your jeans pops open.
"Joel…" you gasp, as he pulls your pants. "You don't gotta do that."
"Do what, darlin'?"
You knew the moment he got on his knees what he's going to do. And really…he doesn't have to. What does it do for him? The sex a few days ago. You understood. It was quick and fast. A benefit for both of you. But this? How does it benefit him?
"Y-you know what I'm talking about…" you breathe. "Joel…"
Lifting your hips, he slides your jeans all the way off. That anxious feeling starts creeping up in your throat. No one has ever…done this.
Gotten on their knees for you.
Friends…obviously talk.
You've heard how good it is. How it feels amazing when the other person actually enjoys it. Because why wouldn't it be?
"Joel," you say, firmly. "You don't have to."
"Don't want me to," he asks, beard grazing your inner thigh. "Or don't think I'm gonna be good at it?"
He's going to be amazing at it. He's…fantastic at everything he does. The second you open your mouth to say something back. His teeth sink into the inner part of your thigh. You jolt from the rough bite.
"Fuck," you whine.
His tongue moves across the tender bite. Giving it such a small kiss. It stings a little, you have to admit. He kisses up your thigh. His hands grip your thighs and pull you to the edge of the couch.
Jesus.
You tangle your fingers in his gray hair.
What's wrong with you? Why wouldn't you want this? Him on his knees. His beard against your thighs. He spreads your legs a little further. Then he sinks his teeth into the sweet spot where your hip meets your thigh. You choke out.
He just grins. You can feel it against your skin.
"Whatcha need, darlin'?"
"I-I-uh," you stammer out. "You."
"C'mon now," He smirks. "I know you're better with ya words."
"Your tongue," you finally say.
Hooking two fingers into your soaked panties. He pushes them to the side. You look down at him. His eyes are so focused on your puffy cunt. Using his tongue to wet his lips.
"You want my tongue on this pretty pussy?"
He sounds drunk. Hasn't even had his mouth on you yet. It's like he needs more. Pretty. It's in your head. But it's obviously not about you…right. You grip his hair.
His mouth hovers over your clit. Just barely. His warm breath against it. The tip of his tongue brushes against it. You gasp. It's overwhelming. Just that little taste. Fuck, you need more. You start pulling his head closer. Trying to get him where you need him the most.
"Please," you beg, something you don't do often.
There's no warning. Never known Joel to give one anyway. His mouth closes around your clit in a hungry suck. He lets go. Dragging his tongue down to your dripping entrance. Plunging his tongue inside.
"OH," you cry out.
Joel's eyes look up at you. Your free hand sinks into the couch cushion. Trying to grab anything that isn't pulling his hair. He drags his tongue back up, he circles your clit. Groaning into your cunt like you're the best thing he's ever tasted.
Just as he starts to drag his tongue back down.
You whine.
"No-no," you cry, "Go back to what you were doin', please."
His eyes roll back. Like your praise is what does it for him. His mouth's back to sucking on your clit. Making you babble out words you can barely understand. You understand it now. He rolls your clit with his tongue until you're trying to push his head away.
"I'm-"
You cum. His arms wrapping around your thighs. Burying his face so deep into your cunt that he might suffocate. And honestly? He doesn't seem to mind. You're trying to push him away as fast as you can.
Hands still trying to push him away. He doesn't budge. Just moans into your spit soaked pussy. You can feel your clit pulsing against his tongue. Then you feel it. A little gush that soaks his beard. Did you just…? On him? It takes a minute to process as he continues to suck.
"Joel!" You yelp. "I can't."
You're doing your best to run from it. Just crying out over and over again how good it feels. Until he finally stops to take a breath.
"I ain't have somethin' this sweet in so long," Joel mumbles.
His beard is covered in you. He licks his lips. This time, he really does look drunk on you. He buries his face back in. Each his time his tongue flicks over your clit, you cry out. He doesn't seem to care how overstimulated you are right now. Not even when your thighs press against his ears.
"No-," you protest. "No more tonight."
"Not done, darlin'." Joel says. "Ain't ever had a pussy this good."
You're a mess. Head dipping back. Out of breath. Brain working on overtime just to form a single sentence. Didn't even know something like this could feel this good. You stop fighting. Biting down on your lip to muffle your moans.
Tongue dragging from your entrance back up to your clit. His lips are back around your clit. Just as his two thick fingers slide inside your pulsing cunt. Thrusting them lazily. Hitting that spot every time. It's not going to take long for you to cum.
Legs are shaking.
You are gasping.
Christ, you're practically sobbing. Hand barely muffling the ones that slip out every once in a while. Your thighs? They're squeezing his head so tight. You are wondering how he's even breathing.
And then you cum again. Gushing all over his fingers. Hips grinding into his mouth. He doesn't want to stop, you can tell. But you're pushing him back so hard. It finally nudges him away. Jesus fucking Christ.
After a minute, you relax. Legs finally not tensing anymore. He smirks. Pressing one last kiss to your sensitive clit. You whimper, not expecting it. He slides your panties back into place.
"Are you trying to kill me?" you ask, swallowing hard.
Joel wipes his face off with his arm. When he stands, you notice is. The wet mark that's spread across the front of his jeans. He came. He came in his pants from just eating you? My god, that's the hottest thing you've ever seen.
Fuck.
"You okay?" he asks, catching his breath.
"Yeah," you nod. "Are you?"
"Bathroom?" Joel mutters quickly.
You point down the hallway. "It's that way. Second door to the left."
You have no idea where he's taking you.
Just riding horses on some abandoned road for a while. Haven't been this far away from Jackson since before winter. God, you barely realized where you are. If it weren't for that worn weathered down white church about two miles back. Or the old arcade. The sign had fallen down since the heavy snow. You’d know exactly where you are.
But this far out.
You don't recognize.
Joel's a little further ahead of you. Looking back every few minutes to make sure you're following along. He seems to know precisely where he's going.
"Here," he points.
You tie your horse to the most stable part of the fence. Looking up at the old brick building. Why did he bring you all the way out here? More places to search? Something specific?
"Can I ask why you brought us here?" You question. "There is a ton of houses a mile back. Easier than here."
"Ain't ya full of questions today, darlin'?"
Okay…fair. It's a bit more than usual. Mostly because the two of you have a routine. Search the places that are closest. This isn't anywhere near close. At this point you might actually have to stay out here for the night.
Once you step through the smashed out doors. Glass crunching under your feet. The realization hits as you read the sign. You're in a library. An actual one. You mentioned to him in such a small comment. That you swear you've read every book in Jackson by now.
He...uh. He remembered you said that.
"How'd you find this place?" You ask, looking around.
The shelves are still lined with old dusty books. A kids section that hasn't been touched in twenty something years. Little teddy bears that are stacked in a corner. Those ABC blocks stacked on each other. A place frozen in time.
"Asked 'round," Joel replies, walking on the glass behind you. "Had somebody owe me. They pointed me this way."
There are very few people who casually owe Joel Miller a favor. When they did it is usually something bigger then giving away some secret. You raise a brow, looking back at him. Walking further into the library.
"A favor, huh?"
As you turn the corner. You bump into one of the shelves. A single book falls off the shelf. The back of it hits the floor. Dust coming off the ground. You pick it up. Wiping the yellow book off with your hands.
It's a regency book. Or you think it is. Something you ain't ever read before. You look back at him and just smile. Feels like being a kid in the biggest candy store right now.
"How long do we have? Before we have to pack up?"
"Long as you want," he drawls. "Ya itchin' to go home already?"
"No," you shake your head, grabbing another book. "It’s-uh just gonna get dark soon. Don't wanna take too long."
"Threw a bag together," he says, leaning against a wall. "Ya got the whole night here. 'Less ya ain't looking to share a sleepin' bag with me?"
You roll your eyes. After all the two of you have done. Sharing a sleeping bag is the least of your worries. You place your fingers on the spines of the book as you walk down the row. Looking at each one of them.
"You sure about this?" You inquire. "The entire night? Really?"
He nods. Eyes on you as you look back at him. He did this. For you…? But why? You grab a book off the shelf and read the back.
"Whole night, darlin'," he says. "Go on…have ya fun."
You try to hold back some eager squeals as you keep looking through all the books. Grabbing so many different ones and reading just a small section of them. It's overwhelming actually. How much is here.
How many different ones you've never seen. Some you've seen too many of. Like you could sorta tell what was the most popular at the time. Before the world fell to complete shit.
Hours pass, maybe. You're barely even sure. Not like you have a watch or the broken clocks in this place actually worked. But the sun’s gone down. Those yellow streaks that were lighting up the building are now gone. You catch yourself looking at Joel. Wonder what he's doing.
He'd be reading some book. Or walking around the place. Making sure everything is okay. It isn't until you hear him call your name. While you're sitting on the floor. Flashlight in your mouth. Staring down at the words.
"Gotta go," Joel says loudly, motioning toward the door.
"Now?" You sigh.
"Let's go," he rushes. "Ain't got a lotta time."
Scrambling to your feet. You shove the book into your bag. You’re surprised it's barely holding on. The straps ripping at the top. Throwing it over your shoulder. Catch right up to him. The only light you can see is thanks to your dully lit flashlight.
And his.
Just a smidgen ahead of you.
The two of you head across the street. To another abandoned building. The mailboxes on the outside look like something from an old apartment building. Stepping into one of the fully empty rooms, he closes the door.
This has happened before. Staying in some strange building for the night. Before Jackson it was about surviving the night. Since then, it was rare. Snowed in. Rain too bad to ride back. Far from something anyone should be used to. But at some point everyone who's scavenged has done it.
Taking a long drink of water. You heard the sound of scraping against the floor. You turn, he's moving something heavy. A dresser maybe against the door. He groans loudly and rubs his shoulder as he moves away from it.
You let out a little laugh. Biting your lip.
"Somethin' funny, darlin'?"
"You can use ya other shoulder," you comment. "The one that isn't going to cause you all that pain."
"Habit," Joel murmurs. "A bad one."
A habit. Much like the two of you have become. Chasing those moments where it's just the two of you. Ignoring what life is really like outside of the bubble. Is this how it's supposed to feel? Not like you've had experience with this.
Is someone who you casually sleep with supposed to take you this far…just so you can enjoy your favorite hobby? Or last week when he gave you some of his coffee? Which, he never does. Made sure you ate when you weren't feeling great. All these things are normal, right?
The sleeping bag hits the floor as you toss your water bottle. Joel's sitting on the ground. Untying his boots as he tries to stretch out. Moaning about his shoulder pain.
"Comin'?"
"Do I got another choice?" You tease. "Sleeping bag or the floor?"
"Get in here."
Today is his birthday.
You circled it on that shitty calendar you made and kept pinned to your kitchen wall. His rule is to not make it a huge deal. It's just another day, after all. That's what Joel told you about a thousand and ones times leading up to today.
"Ain't need nothin', darlin'. It's just a normal day."
You knew different.
He just wanted you to pretend it isn't a big deal.
It's literally pouring out. It reminds you of him. That time on patrol where you two sat in an abandoned barn. You told him how it is your favorite.
The way it just wets everything. The way the puddles would fill in the broken road. Now as you stand here with a cup of tea, you actually realize you're upset that you're not with him.
That's strange. Or is it? That you're thinking about him more and more each day. Stop it. This is just an arrangement. You've had this conversation with yourself a million and one times by now. Haven't you? Just…stick to it.
After being stuck in the house. You decide maybe it's just best if you go out. Get outta your head. You're not gonna go to him. Not tonight-it's his birthday.
You grab a hoodie. Throw it over your head and head out in the rain. Stepping into a few muddy puddles before you're at the Tipsy Bison.
Which is…surprisingly filled with people.
Everyone sitting around.
Drinking something. At least someone's making a living' tonight.
Even the bar doesn't feel how it usually would. Seriously, you promised him. You fucking promised you wouldn't make today into this huge thing. Swore up and down.
The moment you woke up this morning you told yourself you wouldn't go over there. Check in on him. But it doesn't feel like a normal day.
You'd be lying to yourself if you said it did. Lately, you're good at that. Telling yourself in your head things don't really matter.
Tommy had given you that somewhat awkward hi you've gotten used to. Dale...you know Dale. That kinda awkward patrol kid. He offered to buy you a drink. You declined, of course.
After someone knocked over a glass. It could've been the shatter. What the hell are you even doing here? Filling the void? Drinking is a way to that. You suppose.
"C'mon now," Joel says.
Fuck. You didn't even realize he'd come through the front door. Actually, how long has he been here for?
"What?" you raise a brow, looking up at him.
It's pretty obvious to he isn't trying to sit down. Just staring down at you the way he does. Then he repeats himself. That drawn out C'mon.
That makes you push out that old shitty chair and stand up. Any other day you would've argued with him. Asked where you're going.
The two of you are walking out the back door. The rain instantly soaking your hair. It's starting to sick to the sides of your face. He's gently gripping your arm as you walk down the street.
"Where are we going?" You finally ask, blinking the rain out of your eyes.
"Don't make no difference."
In a way it doesn't.
Right now, you're practically running through the street with him.
That's when you see it through the drenching rain. That yellow porch light. The only thing you can really see. It happens so fast. Stepping up on the porch. Going through the door.
This is a line, isn't it? You're watching it break right in front of you. He said that his house is off limits. Here you are, following him. Undoing the shoe laces of your muddy shoes. Kickin' them off.
That red soaked hoodie you were wearing landing on the sofa. Joel's hand grabs yours. Are you supposed to say anything? Ask him if he's okay?
Okay, clearly…he's not.
With just the way he's acting. Grabbing you out of a bar. How light his hand is grabbing yours. That look in his eyes as he looks back at you.
This entire time you've needed him. To stop whatever has been going on in your head. For the first time ever. He needs you.
Today.
Joel Miller needs you.
Once the bedroom door closes behind you. You feel your heart in your chest. You've never been in here. Everything in here just screams. Him. Now…your palms are sweating.
Just do it. It's your turn. To take the first steps. You reach for the hem of your shirt. Pulling it over your head. Off came your bra next. It falls down to the floor with your shirt.
Joel moves a piece of hair from your shoulder. His calloused fingers running down the side of your neck. To your collarbone.
Everything feels strange. Different in a way. His touches. Your breathing. How the room feels so much warmer than it was a few minutes ago. Even as you take off your pants and underwear.
When you turn around to look at him.
His hands are shaky as he takes off his belt.
Eyes down on the floor. Don't ask him. Don't you dare do it. Opening your mouth is going to ruin everything right now. That isn't what he needs. He needs this. To feel close to you. A way you've learned to understand.
Both of you are naked as he steps closer to you. You look up into those brown eyes of his. It's like you can really see into them. Is it the same way he sees you? You're both just two broken people.
Whatever is going on isn't about patience. It's about need. When the back of your knees hit the wooden bed frame. You gasp. Unlike all the times before. He's being so gentle as he lifts your legs onto the bed.
You move up into the middle of the bed. Spreading your legs open slightly as he presses his knee onto the bed. He spreads your legs further apart. Thumb rubbing gently against your knee.
His eyes go down to your soaked cunt. Your eyes stay on him as he spits into his hand. Reaching down to rub it over his thick cock. Not wasting any time. Not that you want him to right now. He lines himself up with your soaking hole and pushes in.
The stretch along makes you whine.
Hands going right to his chest.
The feeling of him inside you is intense. Every time feels like the first. This time he's slowly moving. Dipping just the head of his cock inside you. Pulling back out. Just to push in again. So careful. His fingers are digging into your thighs.
"Don't tease me," you beg. "Joel…please."
"Wanna enjoy her," Joel groans, pulling out. Pushing back in once more.
You grind yourself back. Taking just a little more of him inside you. He grips the headboard. Hands shaking the wood. And slams into you. Filling you. Hitting into your cervix hard enough to make you yelp.
Fingernails dig into his chest. Scratching just hard enough to leave a few red marks. He starts thrusting slowly. Fully pulling out. Slamming back into your tight pussy hard. Rattling the bed under you.
"Sweetheart," He moans. "Feelin' so good. Pretty pussy wrapped around my cock."
Uh, that's new. Darling…you were use to that. He about near calls everyone that. But sweetheart? That’s different. It's a rule. A silent rule. No nicknames. No coupley things.
Don't…Don't over think it. You look up into his eyes. They way they're looking down at your body. His hand rubs against those few scars on your belly. God, you can't stop staring at him. How focused he is as he fucks you.
"Ain't nothin' more beautiful," he chokes out. "Takin' it like a good girl."
He pops his finger in his mouth. Wetting it. Quickly presses his thumb right into your clit. Rubbing circles as he thrust into you. Hitting that spot that is making you melt all over his cock.
Wait.
Wait.
Did he just…? Did he just call you beautiful? He's fucking you so good you barely registered it. He just called you beautiful with his cock buried so deep inside you. This should be a hard stop. Shouldn't it?
It's a rule. You know…that list of things the two of you agreed on? To stop feelings? So this wouldn't turn into a real thing? And now, it's broken. Really broken.
Looking down between you. Where your bodies are meeting with each other. He pulls out. His cock glistening with your slick. Then slamming back in. The sounds echoing in the room as he fucks you.
"Joel," You cry out.
Fingers still on your clit. Fuck, you're about to cum. Breathing heavy. Pussy gripping his cock as he drives into you.
"Fuck," he groans. "Needed ya so fuckin' bad."
You push his hair behind his ear. Those silver streaks of gray that run throughout. He stops, hovering over you. Breathing kind of sporadic. But it's like…he's debating something. What is he thinking about-then his lips are on yours.
Eyes go wide. He's actually kissing you. Right this instant. You don't want him to stop kissing you, to be honest. His lips feel so soft against yours. He taste like whiskey. A taste you never want to leave your mouth.
Hands wrap around his neck. Fuck…fuck. His tongue swipes your bottom lip. As you moan, he slips inside your mouth. He starts moving. For some reason, it feels so much better than before. Dragging his thick cock in and out of you. Lips hungrily smacking against yours.
Joel's fingers work you again. Pressing a little harder as you break the kiss. Crying out into his mouth. Your teeth sinking into his bottom lip.
It feel so good.
Too good actually.
"Don't stop," you beg. "I'm gonna cum. Fuck, I think…"
His forehead is presses against yours. "C'mon doll, I know ya can cum all over me. Seen ya do it before."
It's like his words are what does it. You cum hard all over his cock. Soaking him and dripping all over the bed sheets under you. Did you just…? God, don't. Don't.
"Atta girl," he praises you.
His praise turns off your brain off. That drawn out voice of his. It just hits a spot you didn't know is possible. If you hadn't already soaked the sheets under you. You probably would've just from that.
Taking his hand away from your clit. You whine. You actually whine from the loss. Grinding your hips against him hard. Just to chase the feeling. He pins both of your hands to the bed. His fingers lace in yours.
You turn your head to look. His large rough hands covering your smaller ones. You..just never realized how much bigger his hands were until now. And just how perfectly they fit into yours.
"Ain't gonna last much longer baby," he announces.
He's hitting your clit with every thrust. Grinding into you just to keep hitting your g-spot. Sex with Joel has always been fucking fantastic. But never this good. You don't realize what's changed. Okay, stop lying. You do.
This isn't just fucking.
You know it. He knows it.
Leaning up. You bite on his bottom lip. Making Joel growl and fuck you harder. The bed is creaking louder with each slam. You're crying out his name. Nothing that you're saying is making sense. Mostly just babbles.
"Joel…"
"Darlin'," he grunts out. "Gonna cum."
"Inside," you choke out before you realize you've just said that. "Cum inside. Please."
He looks at you. Like he needs to make sure that you're sure about this. You just nod your head quickly. You watch him look down. Trying to keep himself in control. His hand grabs your hips. Pulling you firmly against him.
The second his cock hits that spot again. You cum. Juices covering his length. Eyes rolling back. Your fingers squeezing his cock so hard.
Your knuckles are turning that pink.
Mouth falling open.
Joel's so lost in it when your eyes open. Nearly hurting you with how hard he's going. Until he lets out a rough groan. His tip kissing your tender cervix. Hot spurts of cum coat your cunt. Filling you up so much it begins to spill out around his cock.
Pressing one last kiss to your forehead. He pulls out of you. Leaving you completely breathless next to him. The first thing you miss is his skin against yours. You quickly stand up.
"Ya okay?"
"Yeah," you nod. "I just..just need to go to the bathroom."
Grabbing the nearest shirt. You throw it on. It's too loose to be yours. It has to be the gray one he was wearing before. Opening the door you peak into the hallway. Praying that Ellie wasn't home for any of this.
Then you slip into the bathroom. Patting against the wall. Finding the light switch. The sudden light hurts your eyes. You close the door behind you. It's…perfectly silent. There you stand. Your reflection looking back at you.
What did the two of you just do? Crushed every single rule that is up for a reason. Rules that were meant to stop…this. Now, it's all gonna spill out.
Everything. Seriously, everything was going fine.
Just fine.
Until Joel Miller decided he needed to kiss you. In the middle of sex. Now, you don't know what to say. But you can't stop thinking about it.
forgive me. the next part is going to be kinda angsty.
Summary: Returning to your home town and reeling from the world’s worst breakup, you don’t expect to become entirely obsessed with your parents’ friend and contractor, Joel Miller, who is undoubtedly off limits. But when Joel offers to drive you across the country for a new job and you end up in a motel room with one bed and no aircon, things heat up.
There’s a sad-looking pair of end tables, a beat up TV, and the smallest double bed you’ve seen in your life.
“Jesus, I’ve seen plane seats with more leg room.” You say, dumping your bag at the foot of the bed.
“Shoulda flown then, darlin’,” Joel replies, one eyebrow raised, a half-smirk on his handsome face.
Tags/warnings: smut, MDNI, PIV, oral (f!receiving), DBF!Joel, dirty talk, one bed trope, age gap (reader is 20s, Joel is 40s), au!no outbreak
8k words
The worst thing about moving back in with your parents as an adult isn’t the lack of space, or the constant fussing, or even their inability to acknowledge that you’re not a kid anymore. Sure, the total absence of privacy and your mom’s constant chattering can be annoying, but that’s nothing to the misery that Joel Miller’s presence in the house brings.
It’s not that he’s horrible – quite the contrary. The problem is that he’s polite, and sweet, and so goddamn hot it almost drives you insane. He’s also two decades older than you, an old friend of your dad’s and totally off limits. You think the agony of it might just kill you.
The morning you arrive back in your parent’s driveway with a suitcase and a broken heart is the morning Joel arrives to start work on your parent’s driveway. That’s where you first see him, standing on the front lawn that hot July morning. Joel’s holding a tool box and a hard hat, and you’re clutching the worn-out suitcase that you took with you when you left for college ten years ago, eyes ringed red, head thumping with the beginnings of a migraine. You recognise him in a vague, distant sort of way, but you can’t immediately place him. He’s squinting in the bright early morning sun, dark eyes hidden by a strong brow, his face dusted with patchy stubble. He looks you over, takes in your tear-stained face, your shaking hands.
“You okay?” He asks, and it’s his voice that makes you realise who he is, that strong Texas twang just as effortlessly sexy as it was when you were eighteen.
You unstick your tongue from the top of your mouth and splutter out a reply, “I’m fine,” You clear your throat, wipe a hand across your throbbing forehead, “Been a long drive. It’s Joel, right?”
His eyebrows raise at the sound of his name and he peers at you a little harder, adjusting the hardhat in his grasp, laying it flat against his hip to get a better grip. The movement makes you glance down at his body, at the tight pull of his t-shirt across broad shoulders, the narrow cinch of his waist beneath a worn tool belt.
“Do I know you?” He asks, not unkindly, and you try to smile at him then despite the tugging, grating feeling in your chest.
“I’m Pete’s daughter.”
His eyes flick to your parent’s house then back to you. “Jesus,” he says, a half-grin tugging at the corner of your mouth, “you’ve grown up a lot.”
You have, of course. The last time you saw Joel was ten years ago, just as he and your father were getting friendly after you guys moved across the country from Maine. You left for college a few months later. It’s the reason you’ve never really felt like Texas is your home, exactly, but it’s the place you’ve come back to after the world’s messiest breakup.
And so begins a long month in which Joel builds your parents a new driveway, and you try to build a new life for yourself. Early on, you see little of each other. Your parents both work long hours, so for the most part it’s just you and Joel at the house. You spend most of your time up in your bedroom, applying for any job that will get you back out of Texas and into your own place, or stalking your ex on social media and trying not to spiral into a deep depression when you realise he’s already dating the girl he told you not to worry about.
Joel works outside, sometimes with his brother, but mostly on his own. It’s one of the days he’s alone that you cross paths in the kitchen, Joel coming in just as you’re pouring yourself a glass of lemonade.
“Do you want some?” you ask him, and he shakes his head, holds up the empty water bottle he’s carrying.
“Just came in to fill up,” he says, eyes flicking quickly over the long lines of your legs beneath the tiny shorts you’re wearing. He pulls his gaze up quickly, asks, “How’s the job search going?”
You scoff, leaning back against the counter to face him. “Do you want the truth, or what I’ve been telling mom and dad?”
“Whatever you want to give me, darlin’,” He says, glancing at you over his shoulder, his expression unreadable despite the bright sunlight streaming in through the patio doors.
If you had to pinpoint the moment when your abstract, theoretical crush on Joel Miller turned into something insistent and broiling, something that would keep you up at night and seep into every waking thought, you’d probably have to say that that seven-word sentence – rounded off with a pet name that sounds downright sinful in his Texas drawl – was the turning point. It makes heat rush to your face, sends a bolt of something like molten lava through your core. You tell him something vague about the job market being a bit of a mess, explain briefly that you’d rather wait for something that you really want to come up, feeling hot and more than a little flustered under his gaze.
“Sounds like you’ve got your head screwed on. More’n can be said about a lot of kids your age.” Joel replies, and the heat of lust in your belly is replaced rapidly with a different kind of heat, something like annoyance.
“I’m hardly a kid,” you reply, crossing your arms across your chest as Joel screws the cap of his bottle back on, his large hand dwarfing the small lid, thick fingers distracting you despite your indignance.
“Sorry, darlin’, I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean you’re young. Y’got your whole life ahead of you.”
“As opposed to you,” you say, smirking at him, testing the water with the tease, “end-of-the-road old man, just waiting for the call of the nursing home.”
Joel huffs out a laugh at this, rolls his eyes as he leans back into the kitchen counter opposite you.
“Careful now,” he says, a mocking sternness in his voice, “you’re meant to respect your elders.”
He pushes himself away from the countertop, stretching his arms back and up so that the hem of his t-shirt rides up a few millimetres above the waistband of his jeans. The tiny slither of tan skin there is enough to set your heart racing. He groan as he stretches, and the sound is intoxicating, deep and rough and entirely indecent.
“Better get back to work,” Joel says, arms returning to his side, “good luck with the job search, darlin’.”
And then he’s gone from the kitchen, his broad back disappearing down the hallway and out of the front door. You sag back against the counter, heart still thumping, brain trying to process the firework display of hormones that seems to be bubbling through your veins.
Two days later, Joel thumps into the house, boots clunking against the expensive kitchen tiles your mom insisted on laying down. You’re in the lounge, laid out on the sofa, laptop perched on your stomach when he pokes his head round the door, his dark eyes finding yours.
“Hey,” he says, voice a little hoarse, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a first aid kit?”
You sit up and close your laptop as Joel shuffles into the room, one hand gripping the other, blood oozing out from between his fingertips.
“Jesus Christ,” you say, rushing to your feet.
“It’s fine, looks worse’n it is. Could do with a Band-Aid, though, if you’ve got one.”
You guide him back through to the kitchen and he leans against the dining room table as you search for the first aid kit.
“What happened?” You ask as you rifle through your parents’ well-organised kitchen drawers.
“Sliced my thumb on a paving slab,” He replies, “Bleeding more’n I thought it would.”
“I’ll say,” you say, finally holding the first aid kit and turning back to him, “you look like something out of a crime drama.”
You gesture to the white tee he’s wearing, and he looks down, sees the dark blood stains that have seeped into the cotton.
“Damn,” He mutters, holding his cradled hands further away from his body as though there’s a chance to save the shirt.
“Come on, let’s clean you up.”
He shifts from where he’s leaning against the table and steps over to the kitchen island, laying his entwined hands on the white marble countertop. When he moves his fingers from where they’re wrapped around his thumb you see that the cut isn’t particularly deep – just a thin, half-inch gash at the root of his nail. The blood is already slowing, and you unwrap an antiseptic wipe. You reach out your own hand, take his into it, trying not to think about how warm his skin is, how much larger his hands are than yours, and that if you looked up, right now, you’d be face to face with him over the kitchen island, breath mingling in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“This might sting,” you say, and you do glance up at him then.
He’s watching your intertwined hands, but his eyes flick up as yours do. You’re barely a hair’s breadth from each other, foreheads almost touching, and there’s a moment of something –tension, perhaps, or awkwardness – you’re not sure exactly. It’s over in a split second, both of you looking down again. You wipe the antiseptic over the cut and he hisses out a breath from between his teeth.
“Sorry,” You say, cleaning the blood from his uninjured hand with the wipe and then moving away to throw it into the trash.
You put the Band-Aid on for him, wrapping it delicately around his thumb. He flexes the digit when you’ve finished, and you move your hand from his reluctantly.
“Good as new,” You tell him, and he smiles, a warm, genuine smile that makes the dark brown of his eyes glint in the sunlit kitchen.
“Guess I’d better get back to work,” He says, pushing himself away from the island.
“Looking like that?” You gesture to his blood-soaked t-shirt.
He looks down and frowns, lips pouting as he pulls the fabric away from his chest to examine the large, deep red bloodstain.
“I can wash it for you,” You say, “I’ll go and get you one of dad’s to wear while it dries. He won’t mind.”
“It’ll be fine, darlin’, don’t worry.”
“Joel, you look like you just killed somebody. C’mon, it’s no trouble. Take it off,” You reach out a hand and there’s that tension again, that delicious, toe-curling awkwardness that makes his moment of indecision go on for what feels like a decade. You stand there, looking at each other, neither of you moving.
Then he sighs, grips the bottom of the shirt and tugs it up over his head. Up, over his stomach, which is softer than the rest of him, a trail of dark hair leading down to his belt buckle, then up further to reveal his ribcage, solid and thick, his chest toned and tan, and those shoulders, ridiculously broad even when they’re bare, freckled from the Texas sun. He hands the t-shirt to you and you feel heat rising up your neck and into your face, eyes sliding away from his torso and to the shirt. It’s slightly damp in your hands – not from the blood, but from Joel’s sweat. Your heart is thumping in your chest, blood pooling in your belly and between your thighs. Swallowing thickly, you ball up the shirt and fill the sink with cold water, submerging it.
“I’ll go grab you something to wear,” You say to Joel, still not sure where to look when you turn back to him.
He’s got a hand on the back of his neck, fingers distractedly pulling at the hair there, and if you didn’t know him better you’d say he was embarrassed, shirtless in your parents’ kitchen, his tan skin hot against the cool white of the worktops.
Upstairs, you pull out one of your dad’s t-shirts, realising immediately that it’s got to be about two sizes smaller than the shirt Joel was wearing. Your dad, though tall, has always been slim and wiry, the opposite build to Joel’s thickset broadness.
“So about that shirt…” you say as you re-enter the kitchen, holding up your dad’s tee to Joel, “I think it might be a bit small.”
Joel takes it from you, holds it up against himself. It hardly stretches to cover the middle of his chest. You look at him, his eyes meeting yours and suddenly you’re both laughing hard.
“Just try it!” You say.
“Darlin’, if I put this on it ain’t coming off again,” Joel replies, but he starts tugging it on anyway, squeezing his thick biceps through the arm holes, seams almost bursting as he pulls it up and over his head. He gets it on, just, but it’s ridiculously tight, straining across his chest, cutting into his armpits to accommodate his broad shoulders.
“Been a long time since I fitted into a small, sweetheart,” he says, tugging at the bottom of the shirt, which sits just below his belly button, the solid vee of his hips visible above the waistband of his jeans. His eyes shift up at you with the last word, and there’s a flickering heat in them, something that turns the innocent sentence into an innuendo. Heat flushes up your face, cheeks burning as you grin at him.
“You look great,” you tell him, holding his eye contact.
“Jesus,” he says, finally looking away from you to glance down at his chest, “I can’t go out and work in this, can I?”
It’s a genuine question, his voice unsure. You try to shrug and tell him it looks fine but instead of words a giggle bursts from you, and you shake your head.
“You look like a stripper,” You tell him, and he lets out a huff of a laugh, pulling the shirt back off.
“Shirtless it is then,” He says, “Give the neighbours something to watch, won’t it?”
He winks at you with this last, and the laughter dies in your throat because his eyes are shining, face pitched with the tease and it sends a bolt of pure arousal through you.
You don’t know if the neighbours spend the rest of the afternoon watching him work on the driveway, but you certainly do. There’s an elegance to the way he moves – something effortlessly sexy in his posture, the ease with which he moves paving slabs and cement bags. His jeans ride low on his hips, dust-covered and torn at both knees, and his back, bare and gleaming with sweat in the heat of the day, distracts you from your job search. You bring him out fresh lemonade, just as an excuse to talk to him again. He takes it from you, and you watch his throat bob as he swallows it down, tongue chasing the moisture from his lips. His chest is heaving from the exertion of the work, and there’s something so intimate about it – about him standing a good four feet away from you, sweat beading at his brow – that you have to turn around and take yourself back inside.
Four days after the paving slab incident, its Joel’s turn to come to your aid.
You’re running late, as you always seem to be these days, getting ready to go out and meet a friend who’s in town for a week for dinner. Your parents are, as always, out somewhere, but Joel’s stayed late, still working outside laying the final paving slabs on the drive.
The problem is that the zip on your dress is stuck, right in that bit of your back that you can’t quite reach. It won’t go up and it won’t go back down either, and after fifteen minutes of wriggling and tugging and straining, you realise you have two choices: go out with it like this, or get Joel to help.
That’s how you find yourself in the kitchen, your back to him as he tries – and fails – to release the zip.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and you can tell how gentle he’s being, using those strong, thick hands that you’ve seen lift forty kilogram paving slabs so softly on you.
“You can be a bit rougher,” you tell him, not noticing the insinuation until the words are already out of your mouth.
If you could see him then, you’d see the way his ears flush red; how his eyes flick nervously away from you, his throat bobbing as he swallows thickly. You hear this last, hear it alongside the slight wobble in his voice when he says, delicately:
“I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to get it down, darlin’. I think the zip’s broken.”
“Shit,” You say, trying to turn your head to see the problem, even though you know you won’t be able to. Instead, you find yourself looking at Joel, at the way his arms are pressed against you, face just above yours, his eyes focussed on the middle of your back. You see the patterns of hair growth in his stubble, the small flecks of grey there. He’s so beautiful up close like this, his attention still on the stuck zipper. You wonder what it would be like to run a hand over his strong jaw, to let your fingers find a home in the whorls of errant curls on his head. He’s stopped tugging at the zip now, and there’s a tiny frown line digging into the apex of his nose. His eyes are still fixed on your back, one hand at your waist to hold you steady. It’s like his fingers are leaching electricity into your skin, his palm hot despite the layer of cotton between it and your flesh.
“You might have to cut me out of it,” You say into the charged silence, and his eyes flick up to meet yours.
Concern is concentrated there, his brows furrowing, and he looks like he’s going to refuse. You have an image of him shaking his head, turning his back on you and leaving the house without another word.
“Please,” You say, and he clears his throat, gives a short nod as he lets his hands drop back to his sides.
You find the scissors in the drawer, hand them to him and watch, shakily, as he leans to place the blades against the side of the dress.
“Try to follow the stitching,” You say, “I can probably sew it back together and put a new zip in.”
“Right. Sure,” His voice is throaty, deeper even than usual as he moves the scissors over, his hand grazing the side of your bare thigh. “Are you… have you get anything on underneath?”
“I’m wearing underwear,” You reply, and almost giggle with the ridiculousness of the situation. Joel Miller, contractor extraordinaire and your dad’s best friend of ten years, stood with you in the kitchen of your parents’ house discussing what underwear you’re currently wearing.
The first slice of the scissors through the material brings you back to your senses. He keeps going, concentrating hard, his face a mask of attentiveness, eyes fixed on the dress or perhaps – you watch as his gaze creeps up the long expanse of your revealed thigh – your body. The last snip of the scissors severs the dress and it’s only by holding the material to you that you prevent it pooling at your feet on the tiled floor. Joel moves away, but just before he does you feel the tips of his fingers graze a delicate path up your side. The touch is so light you almost think you’ve imagined it, the blunt edges of his nails just barely there against you. Then he’s moving away, his face unreadable, eyes looking anywhere but at you as he hands the scissors back.
“Thanks,” You say into the heated silence.
“S’alright,” He replies, dark eyes finally finding your face. “you should go find something else to wear. I’ll, uh, be outside.”
He doesn’t look back as he leaves the kitchen, but his fists are clenched at his sides as he goes, fingers flexing out and then curling back in, and it’s this thought that keeps you up late that night, one hand buried in your pyjama pants as you make yourself come again and again to the thought of him.
All of this is just the prelude, of course. The entrée to the main event that starts on a stormy August evening and ends (begins again, perhaps) in a motel room some three hundred miles from Austin.
You find out you’ve finally landed a job – a good job, in the field you were desperate to get into – as thunder rattles the windows of your childhood bedroom. It’s been storming all day, bolts of lightning illuminating the dull Texan sky. It matches your mood, too, because the job is in Chicago and you start in two weeks. You look from the screen of your laptop to the chaos of boxes and furniture piled around you. Two weeks to get to Chicago, find a new place to live, and move all of the crap you brought with you from the shitty shared apartment you left a month ago.
It's Joel who saves the day, of course. Joel, with his ridiculous truck that he says can easily fit you and all of your worldly possessions for the thousand mile trip. You don’t need to be good at math to know that this means you and Joel will be spending days driving across the country, together, in very close proximity. And it should set alarm bells ringing, because you’re fairly sure you’ve already crossed some kind of line: that the easy, dad’s-old-friend relationship that might have been there at the start of the summer has been slowly chipped away by shared lemonade and awkward thumb cuts and dresses with broken zips.
The alarm bells are entirely absent, however, because the truth is there’s no one else you’d rather go on a three-day road trip with, desperate as you are to wring out every drop of his company before you start your new life. And God, if that doesn’t make you sound like the most desperate woman in Austin.
The morning of the move you wake early, head buzzing with a million things that you need to do before Joel picks you up at seven-thirty. All of your stuff is back in boxes – not that you ever really unpacked much anyway – and there are a few last things you need to pack. You work your way through these last bits – toiletries, make up, phone and device chargers and your laptop. You’ve just finished loading everything into a rucksack when you hear the doorbell, loud in the quiet of the early morning.
And there’s Joel in the doorway, a dark blue t-shirt pulling tight across his broad chest, one arm leaning against the frame, an easy smile on his face to greet you. You try to ignore the tugging, wriggling excitement that bubbles up in your stomach at the sight of him, tell yourself it’s excitement for the move, for your new job, your new apartment.
“Ready?” He asks, voice still a little hoarse with sleep, and you nod. His hair is ruffled, curls standing up at the back of his neck when he turns to indicate the truck. “Let’s get loaded up, then.”
Together, you load up all of the boxes into Joel’s truck. They fit easily, laid out in neat rows in the bed. Joel carries most of them, insisting that he doesn’t want you putting your back out. He makes the lifting look easy, picking up boxes you struggled to carry at all with an ease that speaks for the coiled strength in his thick arms and broad back. When you’re done he stands by as you say your goodbyes to your parents, shakes your dad’s hand and promises to make sure you get to Chicago safe.
“I’ll take care of her,” he tells him, and you can’t help but notice the way his eyes flick to you as he says it, adding, “C’mon then, darlin’” and opening the passenger door open for you with a strong hand.
You climb in, wondering if he did really graze his fingertips up your side a couple of weeks ago in the kitchen as he helped you out of your dress. The memory is already a little hazy, overplayed in your mind every night since, trying so desperately to recall the heat of his body behind you, the almost-not-there trace of his fingertips against your skin. You want so desperately for him to do it again, to get close enough so that you can feel the warmth spilling from his skin. You want his hands splayed over your hips, the scruff of his beard rough on the back of your neck, breath harsh in your ears.
The cough of the truck’s engine shakes you from the daydream. Joel pulls off your parents’ driveway, his hand resting on the back of your headrest to look behind him as he does. You take a last look at your parents on the driveway, giving them a final wave as you and Joel round the corner towards the highway. And then it’s just you and Joel and hundreds of miles of open road.
“Get your feet off the dash.”
You’re thirty miles outside of Austin, the hot Texan sun beating down into the cab of the truck. You’ve taken your shoes off, propped your feet up onto the dashboard to try to stretch out, but Joel’s having none of it.
“Why?” You ask nonchalantly, not moving them.
“Cause if we crash you’ll break your legs.” Joel replies, face hard as he glances away from the road to look at you.
“You crash a lot? Because I feel like you should’ve told me that before I agreed to let you drive me halfway across the country.”
Joel huffs out something between a laugh and a sigh.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a damn brat?” He says, and you gasp as he leans across the dash, wraps a hand around one of your ankles and pulls it off the dashboard. “I ain’t playing around, darlin’. No feet on the dash.”
The sternness of his voice coupled with the pet name is enough to have you pressing your thighs together, heat pooling like molten gold low in your belly. Even an hour later, as you fall into a comfortable conversation about Chicago, you can still feel the heat of his hand on your leg, like it’s been branded against your skin. You think about how it would feel further up your leg, in the crux of your knee, his fingers hot on your thigh and even higher still, creeping past the elastic of your panties. Joel clears his throat, hands massaging the worn leather of the truck’s steering wheel and it pulls you out of your reverie.
The Texas suburbs turn into highway, and then into the interstate: a long, straight haze of tarmac as far as you can see. It’s been almost four weeks since you made the drive to Texas after your breakup, all of your possessions behind you in a U-haul, and the open road is a welcome change from the claustrophobia of your parents’ street.
You sit in contented silence for the rest of the day’s journey, occasionally passing comment about something you see on the side of the road. Joel smiles at your poor attempts at humour, lets himself ease into the drive, mind undoubtedly wandering to whatever it is middle aged contractors think about (taxes and surcharges, mainly). You stop for gas somewhere in Oklahoma, grab a sandwich each and a couple of cans of soda and eat in the parking lot. By nightfall the open plains of the state are swallowed up by Tulsa’s distant but impending skyline, and Joel pulls the truck off the highway again.
“There’s a decent motel a few miles away,” he tells you, “S’nothing special but I’ve stayed there before and it’s pretty clean.”
“A stunning endorsement.”
“It’s also the only motel this side of the city,” he says, “beggars can’t be choosers, darlin’.”
Beggars certainly can’t, because it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that almost no one has chosen anything about this motel for years, possibly decades. The parking lot is mostly empty, if you don’t count the beer cans and chip packets that litter the tarmac. Most of the lights are off, too. Joel pulls the truck into a space and kills the engine.
“One quick question before we go in,” you say, slipping your feet back into your trainers, “on a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that we get murdered in our beds?”
Joel scoffs at this, a throaty noise that shouldn’t turn you on but somehow does.
“S’long as I’ve got a bed to sleep in before the murder, I’m happy,” he replies, “Back’s killin’ me after that drive.”
To illustrate the point he opens the truck door and climbs out, large hand massaging the bottom of his back with well-practiced dexterity. You do the same, grabbing your overnight bag as you hop out and follow Joel towards the reception.
Inside, a bored-looking woman with a badly-dyed fringe eyes you from behind a desk and reluctantly lowers her magazine.
“Two singles,” Joel says, leaning his forearm against the desk. His shirt sleeve is rolled up, revealing several inches of deliciously tan skin. You pull your eyes away as the woman sighs.
“Due to current renovations, we’re operating at a limited capacity,” she says, her voice flat and disinterested. She runs a finger over the open book in front of her. “Only room I’ve got left is a double. $20 for one night.”
“Damn,” Joel sighs. “It got a pull-out?”
“Nope.”
“A couch?”
“Nope.”
“A floor?” His voice is straining on the side of annoyance, and it’d almost be funny, the way the girl rolls her eyes and huffs, if you weren’t so tired and desperate for a comfortable bed.
“You want the room or not?” She says, and Joel looks to you. You shrug, and he sighs.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll take it.”
The woman pulls a key out from under the desk and hands it to him. In turn, Joel slides a $20 bill across the desk.
“Room 23,” she says, her voice flat and toneless again. “Enjoy your stay.”
Room 23 is certainly clean, but that’s about all it’s got going for it. The walls are a sickly mustard yellow and the curtains match. There’s a sad-looking pair of end tables, a beat up TV, and the smallest double bed you’ve seen in your life.
“Jesus, I’ve seen plane seats with more leg room.” You say, dumping your bag at the foot of the bed.
“Shoulda flown then, darlin’,” Joel replies, one eyebrow raised, a half-smirk on his handsome face.
You roll your eyes, wave a hand in the air. “Yes, yes, I’m very grateful to you for saving me $200 for a flight I can’t afford. Seriously, though, what’s the plan here?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says, “and you can take the bed.”
“Joel, you literally just spent ten minutes lamenting about how much your back hurts. You can’t sleep on the floor.”
“Well I ain’t letting you sleep there. Your dad’d never forgive me.”
“Guess we’ll have to share then.”
There’s a silence as your eyes meet, something unsaid and intoxicating dancing in the air between you, then Joel says, “I don’t know that that’s such a good idea.”
The strength of his gaze on you is almost palpable, his dark eyes burning into yours before they flick away quickly to glance at the bed.
“Scared I’ll steal all the covers?” You ask, voice teasing as something warm and distracting pools low in your belly.
“Something like that.” He replies, groaning as he stretches, left hand back in the small of his back.
“C’mon, it’ll be fine. You keep to your side, and I’ll keep to mine.”
He grunts at this, shakes his head without looking at you.
“Well, I’m going to brush my teeth,” you tell him, picking up your bag and side-stepping around the TV table to the small bathroom.
It’s cleaner than you expect, soap suds only a few millimetres thick on the avocado green sink. Through the thin wall you can hear Joel moving about, the ambient sting of the TV static electric as he flicks through channels. He settles on something that sounds like the ESPN, and sure enough, when you leave the bathroom a few minutes later, clad in loose fitting pyjama shorts and a tank top, he’s spawled out on the bed – still in his jeans, but you’re sure the bedspread is dirtier even than his faded denim Levis – watching baseball.
“Bathroom’s free,” You say, tucking your bag under the bed and flopping down next to him. The mattress is so narrow that even without meaning to you’re touching – his thick thigh pressed suddenly against you knee as you shuffle yourself over. It’s a fleeting touch, the heat of his body barely palpable before he moves off the bed towards the bathroom, ducking to pick up his bag as he goes. You watch the broad span of his back disappear behind the bathroom door and let out a long, slow breath. If this were a romance book, it would be a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding in, but around Joel, you notice every tiny movement of air.
The baseball is still on, and you let your focus drift to it. When Joel reemerges a few minutes later, he’s still in his jeans, t-shirt now untucked but otherwise unchanged.
“You always sleep in your jeans?” You ask.
“Not normally, but I usually don’t make a habit of sleeping with cheeky minxes like you.”
The words fall heavily into the tension of the room. He seems to realise immediately what he’s said, and he looks away quickly, clearing his throat. You swallow as arousal swoops low in your belly.
“I didn’t mean-” he starts to say, but you cut him off.
“I know what you meant.”
His eyes find yours again. You’re not sure if it’s the low light of the poorly fitted lamp, or something else, but his pupils are blown wide, irises swallowed up almost entirely. There’s a flush on his cheeks too, but that could just be the shitty air-conditioning; the tension in the room is almost as thick as the sticky-sweet humidity. A moment passes, and neither of you move, Joel still in the frame of the door, his broad shoulders almost swallowing up the view of the bathroom beyond, and you on the bed, knees drawn up to your chest.
“I’ll take the floor,” he says, finally looking away, “just pass me a pillow.” He holds out a hand.
“C’mon Joel, you’re not sleeping on the floor. You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just presses a hand into the small of his back, like he’s thinking about how much it’ll just about kill him to sleep a night on the motel’s hard, musky carpet.
“’lright,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed to toe off his boots.
They hit the floor with a dull thud, and then he’s lying back on top of the faded top sheet. You shuffle down and tuck yourself beneath the comforter, studying the sharp crease of Joel’s brow out of the corner of your eye, the sloping ridge of his nose.
It’s intoxicating being this close to him. All you can think about is that his arm is only a few inches from your own, his thigh almost pressed up against yours in the undersized bed. Despite the layers of fabric between you, you can feel the heat rolling off of him. You think about how he looked in the kitchen that morning so many weeks ago, blood soaked shirt clutched in his hands, chest bare and tan and altogether irresistible, and the way that his hand felt brushing your side after he’d cut your dress off of you. You wonder what it would be like to turn over now and fold yourself into his chest, press yourself into him and feel his body react to your presence. Would he be soft and gentle, teasing in his affection? Or would he hold you against the mattress, taste you with teeth and tongue and leave you shivering and yearning for more?
These delicious thoughts lull you into a deep, dreamless sleep. You stir hours later, the early morning light already filtering through the moth-eaten motel curtains. The first thing you’re aware of is that you’re hot, the top sheet and comforter tangled in a ball at your feet. There’s a heavy weight lying across your waist, warmth radiating out from an unseen source. Joel, you realise with a sudden jolt, is curled behind you, bracketing you with his arm, knees tucked up behind yours, hips pressing dangerously into your ass.
He’s still asleep –you can feel the gentle, steady rush of his breath against the back of your neck. You’re sure that as soon as he wakes he’ll move away, so you stay frozen in place, heart hammering, arousal pooling low and lurid in your belly. When he shifts, his hips pressing forward into the round apple of your ass you have to bite back a moan, and then his hand moves, fingers brushing a short path along the underside of one breast and you can’t help but let out a gasp. Joel moves his hips again, and you feel the unmistakable press of him against you, hard and hot beneath a layer of rough denim.
His breathing changes then, and you feel rather than see his eyelashes flutter open.
But he doesn’t move away, doesn’t push you from him. Several seconds pass, both of you still and quiet in the quiet morning light. Then, as slowly as you can bear, you press yourself back into him, drag the curve of your ass against the solid ridge of his cock. He inhales sharply, fingers twisting in the sheets by your stomach.
“Baby,” he says, voice raspy and delicious, like syrup poured over rough gravel, “this isn’t- we shouldn’t-”
But you roll your hips again, and his hand comes up to cup one of your breasts, fingertips brushing the sensitive whorl of your nipple.
“I don’t care,” you say, “please, Joel, I want this. I want you.”
He makes a noise that’s something between a moan and a curse, muffled by the way that he presses his mouth into the back of your neck, teeth gently grazing the point of your pulse. Then he’s trailing kisses along your throat, his hand mapping a blazing path down your side, fingers dipping beneath the fraying elastic of your sleep shorts.
“Fuck,” he curses when he finds you wet and wanting between your thighs, “this all for me, baby?”
You can only nod, arousal surging through you as he drags his fingers through your folds, gathering the wetness there and pressing a thick digit into the heat of you.
“All these weeks,” he says into the crease of your neck, “all these fucking weeks, you’ve been all I can think about. Off limits and driving me wild with those tiny shorts and that stupid broken dress. Jesus, baby, you don’t know what you do to me.”
He rolls his hips deliberately, pressing his clothed cock against you, moving his hand to grip your side and hold you there, flush against him.
“Joel,” you say, like it’s the only word you know, “please.”
“Please what, baby? Need to hear you say it.”
“Please,” you repeat, voice shaking with need, “touch me. I need you.”
“I know, baby, I know.”
He pushes himself up onto his knees, crawling down the bed to settle himself between your thighs. He pulls your shorts down slowly, eyes fixed on you, pupils blown wide, hair still scruffy with sleep. When he presses his mouth to you, tongue tracing the swollen bud of your clit with practiced proficiency, you have to bite your lip to stop yourself yelling out.
You thread your fingers through his hair, scratching nails against his scalp and he moans into you, eyes flickering open to look up at you. He’s a sight to behold, his strong arms holding your legs open, broad shoulders pressing against the backs of your thighs. There’s a cocky glint in the shimmer of his eyes, a grin that spreads devilishly across his mouth when he pulls back momentarily to gather the slick heat of you. He presses a finger into you, curls it just so, and fires builds in your belly, licking hot and insistent, a coil that threatens to snap any moment. Joel flicks his tongue over the tight bud of your clit, closes his lips around it and sucks hard. He eases you open with practiced ease, points his tongue to flick deliciously at the small bundle of nerves, each press sending a jolt of pleasure through your canting hips. You’re ricochetting higher and higher, desire coiling tight in your belly. It takes only a few more careful flicks of his tongue to tip you over the edge, body shaking, muscles clenching as you come hard. You glance down and Joel’s watching you, eyes fixed on your quivering body, your sweat-soaked face. He looks like a man possessed, hair now wild from the grip of your fingers, cheeks flushed, stubble damp with you.
“You’re the prettiest thing I ever fuckin’ saw, darlin’,” he tells you as you come down from the high, thighs trembling where he holds them.
He presses a kiss to each one and then crawls back up towards you, covering your body with his. When he kisses you – finally – you can taste yourself on his lips, heady and sweet. You claw at the t-shirt he’s still wearing, fighting to pull it up over his head. He sits back on his haunches, hauls it off, and pulls yours off too. Then your hands are tugging at the buttons of his flies and he watches as you undo them, your hands still shaking with the intensity of your orgasm.
It’s a little awkward pulling his jeans off – they get caught around one ankle and he stands to kick them off, grinning when he sees the giggle caught in your throat. But then he’s back between your thighs, capturing you in a heated kiss, teeth pulling teasingly at your lower lip, tongue pressing into your mouth, the laughter is gone, replaced by a hot, aching need. His cock is a solid ridge of heat beneath his underwear when you reach for him, and he moans into your mouth when you slip your hand beneath the black fabric. He’s big – thick and curved, head already wet with pre-come. He pushes the shorts off, kicks them away. Then you’re pulling his hips to yours, watching as he lines himself up, drags his swollen head through your folds before pressing deliciously into the tight heat of your cunt.
“Christ, darlin’,” he hisses, stilling his hips as your slick cunt swallows the head of him. “you look so good taking my cock like this.” You can feel the rumble of his voice in your chest, dark and still gravelly with sleep.
“Joel,” you say, fingers clawing at his ass, desperate to pull him into you, have him take you fully.
He presses forward, dipping his head to capture your lips in a searing kiss, moaning into your mouth when he bottoms out. It’s better than you thought it would be. He’s thick, stretching you open, sending tendrils of pleasure through you. There’s a coiled strength in Joel, something you noticed over many hot summer days watching him lay paving slabs on your parents’ drive, and feeling him pressing that strength into you, the white hot delicious burn of his cock splitting you open is overwhelming, all encompassing.
“You okay?” he asks, peppering kisses along the side of your neck, his breathing laboured.
“Move, Joel, please,”
You feel like if he doesn’t move soon, if he doesn’t shift his hips and fuck you the way you’ve wanted him to for almost two months, you might go mad. When he shifts his hips, drawing up and out and then pressing back inside, you moan softly, pleasure blossoming between your thighs.
“I think, fuck, I think if I move any more I’m going to come,” he says, voice shaking with the effort of staying still, “just give me a minute, baby. Fuck, you feel so good.”
The curses are harsh in the soft morning light. You scrape you nails over the smooth skin of his back, feeling the sharp ridges of muscle, the way they shift beneath his skin when he moves, finally pressing his hips forward. He kisses you again, teeth sharp, tongue soothing. After a moment he sits up on his haunches, wraps his hands around your hips, pulls you to him like you weigh nothing. And then he’s fucking you, hard and raw and like nothing you’ve ever felt. Every press of his hips is like lightning, jolts of pleasure coursing through you. You can’t take your eyes off of him; the slight crease in his brow, the solid set of his lips, face twisted in desire, his own eyes fixed on where you’re joined.
“Taking me so well,” he says, “just like I knew you would.”
He reaches between your bodies, presses his thumb to your clit and strokes it carefully, each stroke precise and measured and altogether overwhelming.
“Need you to come on my cock, baby,” he says, “you think you can do that for me?”
“Yes, Joel, please, yes,” your voice is weak and shaking, dulled to your own ears by the thumping of blood.
Three more gentle caresses of his thumb and you’re coming again, cunt squeezing Joel’s cock. You can hardly see as the pleasure overtakes you, only vaguely register the way Joel’s cursing into your neck, bodies pressed together again. His hips falter, rhythm stuttering.
“Fuck, baby, where do you want me?”
“Inside, please, come inside me.”
“Jesus fuck,” he gasps, and you feel him twitching inside you, cock pulsing as he comes, flooding your walls.
He keeps fucking you through it, the muscles of his back shaking with the effort of holding himself up, and then he collapses on top of you, heavy and hot. The weight of him is delicious, his cock still half-hard inside you. He presses a series of kisses to the side of your neck, catching your lips in another.
The early morning light is brightening now, twists of sunshine breaking through the shabby curtains, lighting whorls of dust that glimmer in the room’s heat. You stay entwined with each other for several long moments, both breathing hard, unwilling to move, reluctant to part. When Joel shifts away from you its only to roll over, pulling you back against him to spoon you.
“We should get moving soon,” he says into the nape of your neck after what could have been a minute or an hour, “still three hundred miles to go.”
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
I’m just saying I’ve never been this kind of soft gentle girl (as much as I wish I was) that is typically written alongside Joel so I wish I could see more capable/independent girl x Joel vibes out there
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
Summary: The weeks are long so you've got to make the most of Friday nights in crowded bars.
Tags/warnings: MDNI, 18+, smut, porn with a smattering of plot, PIV, oral (f!receiving), dirty talk, grinding.
Song: Dirty Looks by Lainey Wilson
Word Count: 1.2k
You get a lot of dirty looks.
Maybe it’s the age gap: Joel’s sinking slowly into his late forties, while you’re only just trickling past your mid-twenties. Or maybe it’s the way you can’t keep your hands off each other – the weeks are busy, for both of you. He’s got his business, a list of jobs ten miles long, and a kid who’s still in school, and you’ve got a career which means you work late every day and get paid a pittance for it in the hopes that one day you’ll get a big break. It means you only really have this – the hazy Friday nights in Austin’s packed-out bars and clubs, each of you trying to make the most of the anonymity in the sweaty, noisy crowds and the cheap booze that lets you forget the drudgery of everyday life.
Tonight, Joel’s got his hands on your hips, your back pressed against his chest. You’re both swaying to the music that’s crackling through the bar’s cheap speaker system, lost in its rhythm. You can feel him hard against your lower back, grinding against you on the crowded dancefloor.
He’s still in his work clothes, his jeans ripped at the knee, hands filthy from hauling concrete all day, calloused and rough on the skin of your waist when he drags his hands up under your shirt. He apologised when he first arrived, told you he wished he’d cleaned up, but you don’t mind. You want the dust and dirt of his day to rub off on you, to settle on your skin like his rough fingertips, lick against your flesh the way his lips do when he presses them to the back of your neck. The dirt looks good on him. The dirty looks do, too.
Mostly, it’s the older folk who glare. The ones who look like they haven’t had fun in several decades. They stare when you spin in Joel’s arms, roll their eyes when you lace your hands around his neck and push yourself onto your tiptoes to fit your lips against his. And when Joel groans in the back of his throat, pulls you flush to him by the apple of your ass, tongue dipping into the wet heat of your mouth, the dirty looks only spur you both on.
It’s a short stagger out of the bar and into the bathroom, a single stall with a lock and a sturdy sink that Joel lifts you up onto, his hands firm on your hips, fingertips digging into your flesh hard enough to leave bruises for tomorrow. You chase his mouth when he pulls away. He drops to his knees on the cracked tile floor, pops the button on your jeans and pulls them down in a smooth motion, kisses his way back up to the line of your panties. Breath stuttering when he presses his nose against the covered centre of you, inhaling the base scent of your cunt, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them they lock onto yours, irises almost entirely swallowed by the black gulf of his pupils in the low light of the bathroom.
“Gettin’ dirty looks from the people at the bar,” he says, voice gravelly, “like they had somethin’ to tell us.”
“Ain’t nothing but jealous,” you tell him, cording a hand through his hair, the few silvering streaks catching in the light.
He chuckles at this, returns his mouth to the seam of your panties, pulling it aside with one large hand so that you’re exposed to him. The first lap of his tongue against you makes you gasp, hands gripping the sides of the sink. His mouth is hot against you, tongue tracing a well-practised pattern against your clit that makes your legs shake on his shoulders.
You want to keep him pressed against you like this forever, want to feel the intense stroke of his tongue on you for the rest of your life. When he presses one thick finger into the tight circle of your cunt it tips you suddenly over the edge, and you come hard, not bothering to quieten your moans for the people at the bar.
Joel’s on his feet again then, hands tugging at the worn leather of his belt, undoing it deftly. The solid outline of his cock pressing against the denim makes your mouth water and you pull at the button of his flies, slip your hand inside to grip his cock. Solid flesh under velvet skin.
Even though you’ve had him before you’re still always struck by the size of him, thick and heavy against your palm, head already damp with precum. When you stroke your hand against him he gasps into your mouth, licks his way behind your teeth, his lips chasing yours, scruff rough on your cheeks. He kicks his jeans down, lines himself up and presses into you with one languid, smooth move.
From there it’s hot and hurried and kinetic, Joel’s hips slamming into yours as he fucks you against the sink. His hands map a path along your back, settling on the curve of your ass, using it to anchor you against the porcelain and pound into you harder. The slap of his skin against yours is delicious, his cock hitting the spot inside you that makes your toes curl. All you can think of is the depravity of it, the delectable debauchery of this quick fuck in the bathroom of a dodgy bar; a man almost twice your age, handsome in a weathered, ragged way. Dark eyes and dark hair and a wanton need for your body that’s entirely intoxicating.
Joel’s breath hot is in your ear, filth and depravity falling from his chapped lips as he keens against you.
“You’re mine, ain’tcha?” He says, his deep voice vibrating against your chest, “Just a dirty little thing that needs to be fucked good ‘n proper, huh?”
It’s all you can do to mumble an affirmative, nails scratching his broad back, fingertips feeling the lithe pull of his muscles as he moves against you. His hands are back at your hips and there’s something about rough hands on this hardworking man, the earnest, desperate way he holds you to him, how he always watches you when you’re dancing, his eyes holding yours like you’re the last two people in the world. It’s these nights that make the long working week bearable, the press of his body on yours the only thing that really matters.
And now, Joel’s skin against yours, stubble grazing your cheeks as he kisses you. Dirty looks long since forgotten, any sense of judgement from strangers the last thing in the world compared to the two of you here. He slides his hand down between your writhing bodies, presses the flat of his thumb against your clit with practised precision and you’re coming again, cunt clenching around him.
“Good girl,” he murmurs into the side of your neck, nipping at the skin there with his teeth, “you feel so fuckin’ good. Gonna make me come in this tight little pussy.”
You nod against him, core still shaking with the force of your orgasm, and his hips stutter, a half-broken choked-out moan falling from his lips as he pulses inside you.
Five minutes later, leaving the bathroom, the dirty looks are nothing to the heat of Joel’s eyes on you, the slow pull back to the dance floor, his needy, rough hands back on your hips, the dirt of his day rubbing off on you.
most important part of the writing process actually is when you loop a single song on max volume and stare at the word document and imagine the characters doing things for 14 hours. this is known as getting in the zone
