Happy 25th Anniversary To One Of My Favorite Movies Of All Time! ~

Happy 25th anniversary to one of my favorite movies of all time! ~<3

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Chapter 2

hey y’all it’s been a minute but I’m back with Franklin saint and I just finished the show and I won’t spoil the show how haven’t finished the show but the people who know what happens 👀 but anyways this is still takes in season 1. I'm still a new writer so please be nice (side note: frankie has already met avi in this AU but I'm still gonna incorporate the drama that happens in the show but I couldn’t help to write pilot episode, baby Frankie he’s just such a cutie pie 🥰but I hope y’all enjoy 💕🫣)

Summary: lexi wakes up from the next day, and she has conversation with her momma, and makes a lie to her momma to see frankie to go see a wrestling match and letting her spend the night with Frankie Saint.

Warnings: afab-reader, n-word usage, sneaky-lexi, fingering, cursing, kissing, quick-exhibitionism👀, oral (fem and male receiving and giving), cum-eating, squirting, ass-spanking, titty-sucking, ball-kissing, face-fucking (let me know if missing anything)

word count:8.1k 18+ mdni+ (wholly fucking shit)

(franklin and lexi are 19 years old)

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Slowly opening your eyes looking around your room the yellow shaded with spread Micheal Jackson and Whitney Houston posters feeling the pink florals cover over you, with the thoughts flashing through your mind felling Franklin hands touching you all over, felling his fingers inside of you, kissing him over and over, you sigh slowly getting up and putting on a t-shirt and shorts.

Walking to the bathroom to brush your teeth and to do your skincare, leaving to see your momma cooking breakfast making bacon, eggs and grits, leaning towards her to kiss him on the cheek "good morning, momma how was your night?” taking a seat at the table your momma gasp “OH JESUS! alexia you scared me and good morning, how was the rink?" looking at you smiling also taking a seat with two plates in her hands, sitting one down in front of you "uhmm it was fun I actually got to practice going backwards I think I getting better at it” putting a piece a bacon in your mouth while grabbing some sugar and putting it in your grits, stirring it and putting it in your mouth.

Your momma looks at you eating her eggs “and how were the boys, were they having a good time as well?” You sigh “yeah they were, and franklin and melody were just skating with each other the entire time, though and kev was mackin’ to some girl at the rink, and i think leon was just skating by himself as well.” keeping up with your lie to your mom and not accidentally telling her the truth, she nodded her head “better her than you alexia, I’m glad that you’re taking my advice when it comes to these boys, I’m telling you there not good anymore.”

You finished your food, putting your plate into the sink, starting to washing the dishes, you put your plate into the drying rack as you continue putting the rest of the dishes into the rack, you turn your head, lies slipping from your mouth “yeah maybe your right momma, it be nice to have some girlfriends too.” listening feet slowly coming towards you, feeling a hand on your back "aye maybe you can start talking to shon-shon, I hear she good peoples.” a shaky breath comes out, pulling grin on your face “yeah momma I’ll see what’s she doing for next week will that make you feel better.” your momma sighs “yes it would alexia.”

Closing your bedroom door, you jumped on the bed, felling the south-central heating up your room, deciding to crack your front window the cool breeze on your face closing your eyes, absorbing the sun on your dark skin. Obviously, you can’t stop being friends with them, you wouldn’t. Especially not to frankie, but you knew that one day you were gonna have to tell your her the truth. The barbecue smoke fills your nose, hearing the music and the laughter coming from down the street. The ice cream truck stops in front of your house, kids screaming telling the ice cream man to stop, looking out your window, seeing the man asking if the kids had any money, the children’s saying ‘no’ the man shakes his head calling them ‘broke ass kids’.

You see frankie walking up the truck, having a conversation with the man seeing franklin handing him some money, then walking away telling the kids to get whatever they want. frankie stops in front of your house, he smiles at you, looking both sides of the road to see if there’s any cars passing through. frankie finally comes up to your window “sup, baby." you licked your lips grabbing at his face, pulling him into a kiss. you feel his soft lips pushing up against you, they feel so soft, you couldn't stop. You grab franklin by the shoulder, pulling him into your room, you bite frankie bottom lip, frankie grunts up against you, feeling his fingers touching your pussy over your shorts, your moan in his mouth. frankie moves you shorts to the side, feeling his middle and ring finger inside of you, working you in and out of your pussy "god baby, you always this wet for me?'' you moan in his mouth, "yes, baby always for you frankie." moving your hips to the rhythm of his hand, your head falls back, feeling franklin fingers inside of you, hitting you soft spot, fraklin grabs the back of your neck, pulling you in closer into his lips "frannkie-e, I'm gonna cum" feeling your stomach getting hot "nut on my fingers, baby let that shit go" you feel frankie lips over your mouth, muffling your moans so no one can hear you, looking up at franklin, starting into his chocolate eyes, you couldn't help it, you let out a loud moan "yeah baby, let that shit out I wanna hear you'' you moan "uggh-h frankiee" having your climax wash over you, moaning into fraklin mouth, he puts his tongue in your mouth, to silence you. still working his fingers inside of you "god lexi, you look so beautiful when you nut on my fingers."

You feel being lowered on to your bed, franklin starting at you, his eyes drifting from your supple breast to your soft tummy, looking at your shorts to see your shorts were completely soaked, frankie looks down at his fingers to see that they were still creamy, his open his mouth to put his fingers in his mouth he groans, tasting the sweet and tangy nut that came out of you, he sucks his fingers dry swallowing the last bit, still having your aroma in his mouth, he licks his lips "how do you fuckin' taste better than last night hmm baby?" you push yourself up from the bed. slowly walking up to franklin pulling him in for a kiss, feeling his soft and luscious lips moving against you, frankie bites your bottom lip, and kiss you one more time. " aye you think I can see you later today?" you smile "of course frankie it could be anything." frankie grins at you "well lee, kev, and me were thinkin' about going to this wrestling match today.” “oh my god yes frankie, I haven’t been to a match in forever wait is el oso gonna be there, I know he’s your favorite.” smirking up at him, staring into his chocolate orbs “mhm good cause I already bought you a ticket.” grabbing you into a another kiss.

“AYE NEPHEW! WERE YA AT NIGGA!” You jumped at Jerome’s boisterous voice traveled around the hood. You push Franklin towards your window “I’ll make up a lie to my momma so I can see you tonight” “okay page me if you can’t make it.” You tilt your head, furrowing your brows “nigga you think I’m missing el oso, you know he’s my second favorite.” “Ah and who’s your favorite alexia.” frankie backs up to the window “obviously it’s Macho Man nigga.” frankie grins, finally steps out your room franklin bends to look up at you, you slowly caress his cheek, stares longingly, your thumb touches franklin lips, he gently kisses your hand. You gave franklin one last kiss, franklin growls in your mouth “god lexi you’re so beautiful.” “frankie stop.” frankie slips his tongue in your mouth, “but your lips are so sweet.”you pull away from frankie “okay you better go, before jerome come whoop your ass.” “mhm aight come by Jerome house and we’ll take the bike.” You playfully hit franklin’s chin “okay I’ll see you later tonight frankie.” frankie backs away from you with a smirk on his lips “see you soon baby.” frankie walks back down the street to jeromes house.

You lay backdown on your bed letting out a puff of air thoughts running thoughts your mind of what just happen, looking up at the ceiling, turning your head to see your house phone sitting on your dresser, you and shon-shon have been friends since forever and even though she’s cool with melody, you know were her loyalty lays.

You push yourself up, fully standing to walk over to the phone dialing shon-shon number hearing it ring a few times “hello.” you didn't recognize the voice hearing her mom on the phone “hi Ms.Jones it’s alexia is shon- shon there?” “mhm hold on sweetie, SHON-SHON it’s alexia on the phone come here!” you pull your head away from the phone, almost hearing a ring in your ear “hey girl, what’s up?” “Hey shon-shon, how have you been?’’ Hearing her talk about what’s gong in her life, talking about boy problems and what not. "hey so I called you so I can ask for a favor, you think I can tell my momma that I’m gonna sleepover at your place tonight.’’ “ mhm okay but what’s in it for me?’’ "well whenever you want to stay out with trey, just me know and I’ll cover for you.’’ Shon-shon agrees “okay well if you’re moms calls me I’ll say that you’re here with me.” you do your happy dance “thank you shon-shon I owe you big time thanks.” “yeah yeah just call me after so i can get the deets from you.” Your not too sure if you want to do that in the back of your mind you know that melody and shon are friends, and you're not ready for everyone to know your business.

You walk out of your room to walk down the hallway seeing pictures of your family, stoping to look at a frame of your dad holding you as you were a infant laying on his chest, slowly entering you momma room to see her making her bed. “hey momma so I actually talk to shon on the phone just now and she wanted to know if we can have a sleepover at her house, can I go?” as she is fixing her pillow “wow that was fast lexi, I’m glad that your branching out to get some girlfriends.” “yeah momma I told you I’m done hanging out with franklin and them” your momma puts her hands on her hips “you ain’t lyin’ to me lexi now.” you walk closer to her “no momma you can call Ms. Jones right and she will tell you.” hugging your momma “I promise momma, I’m done hangin’ out with them and you were right” you feeling your momma hugging you back, almost squeezing you “alright I believe you make sure you pack a bag, and bring some snack too you didn’t wanna show up empty-handed.” thankful thinking that your momma let you go to see franklin realizing you get to spend the night with him as well.

As you walk out the shower into your room, closing in on all your blinds, putting your lotion all on your body, putting on a clean shirt and sweats you open to drawers to look at clothes you need to pack. You grab another pair of pjs shoving it into your backpack, you walk over to the closer, slowly picking out on what you wanted to wear, yellow tubetop that just stop at your midriff and a jean skirt, you grab your necklace to put in your backpack not wanting any uncertainty coming from your momma, also pack some makeup in your bag, just little somethin’ for yourself you still have enough room to put some snacks in your bag, you put on your snacks then you walk out of your room into the kitchen.

You grab some chips, candy and two bags of popcorn as your putting everything away in your backpack, you hear feet shuffling your away “I spoke to Ms.Jones and she told me that you’re spendin’ the night with shon-shon.” showing a smile on your face “see momma I ain’t lyin’. I’m gonna go to shon’s house.” the faster you leave, the quicker you’ll see franklin “hold on sweetheart now I know you’ve them boys all of life, and I’m just lookin’ out for you, the quicker you realize that they ain’t good anymore.” you back away from momma “shon-shon waiting on me momma I love you, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Walking down the street to still see your momma standing on the porch, looking around to see kids playing around the street, looking out for cars you keep walking looking on your left to see Jerome’s house. jerome is brenching some weights, you walk on his lawn “hey jerome.’’ he puts the weights on the rail he rises up, smiling on his face “sup, lexi how you been?” “I’ve been good, I came by to see fankie is he in the house?’’ he nods “yeah he’s here go right in.” you smile back at him “thanks jerome.” as your walking up at the house jerome asks you a question “aye you comin’ to the fourth of july party it’s gonna be poppin!’ you turn around “yeah I’ll be there are you pull out the fireworks again.” jeome lays back down pulling the weight back down on his chest and pushing it back up “you know it lexi!”

Opening the door to see louie sitting on the coach in the corner of the house watching her soap operas, she looks over her shoulder “heyy lexi what ’cha doin’ here?” walking more into the house “hey louie can I came to see frakie we’re going to a wrestling match tonight.” sparking up a question “watch ’cha watchin?” “oh girl this nigga here is cheating on his wife, and this woman is planning her death and tryin’ to blame it on him, y’know makin’ it looks like he did.” “oh shit louie that shit crazy.” “yeah aye franklin’s in the back if you wanna see him.” smiling at you knowing about your little crush about franklin “thanks louie I’ll see you later.” walking down the hallway, you open the door to see franklin sitting on the floor counting money on the bed, and it's covering the whole bed. “sup baby, come in and can you close the door for me.” you nod still looking at the money “hey frankie, that's a lot of money right there.” still standing, franklin snorts “yeah baby I met this man who helped me with my business his name is avi, he’s this crazy ass Israeli motherfucka.’’ you walk closer to frankie, slowly putting your backpack on the ground, bending your knees to sit on the floor “oh my god frankie, don't tell me he tried to shoot you." franklin laughs "actually he did, he made me put on a vest to see if I was down to make this paper." "frankie can I ask you a question?'' franklin starting at you, looking into your beautiful chocolate eyes "uh-huh." you bite the bullet to ask him "why are you doing this frankie?" franklin looks confused " what 'cha you mean why I'm doin' this?" you push out air out of your nose. looking up at the money again, then looking back at franklin "like what are you doin' this for?"frankie lets out some air "Well I'm gettin' paid to learn how to run a business, do things when I want and how I want. I'm gettin' paid more than some office job and eat shit that's what I'm not after. I want freedom, freedom from all of it. and I want you to look at our future." turning your head to look at the money once more "I believe you frankie and I want to be with you through everything. I just don't you to get hurt in this." frankie pulls you into a kiss "you know that ain't gonna happen and I won't anything happen you too baby I promise." feeling frankie lips on you, you nod your head "okay frankie I trust you."

Holding onto your handheld mirror, mouth hanging open while you put on eyeliner, tearing open your backpack, looking for your mascara as you gracefully putting on your lashes, you feel franklin's hands touching you "nigga stop before you mess me up." franklin smirks at you "why you don't even need it lexi." you roll your eyes "frankie stop." focusing in your eyes, franklin turns your head "hey I mean it baby, think you're beautiful without all that stuff on your face, and I thought you were really beautiful this morning while you were nutting on my fingers." franklin pulls you in for a kiss, feeling his soft lips on you, biting your bottom lip franklin slips his tongue, sucking on it, franklin pulls you onto his lap "ugh-h frankie I need to finish so we can see lee and kev." frankie groans "arghh you know I don't want to baby.'' "well how about when we come back, we can have a little sleepover." feeling lips on your neck, slowly moving down to your chest "aye how you manage to get out anyways?" "I told my momma that I was sleeping over at shon-shon's house." "why you lyin' to your moms for? she knows me?" frankie pulls away, looking into your eyes, you pull your face down "she knows what your doin' frankie, and she doesn't like it, she wants me to stay away from you." "is that what you want?'' franklin pulls your face up to look at mahogany skin, starting into deep brown eyes "of course not frankie I'm with through the end, whatever that may end up." frankie nods, you kiss franklin once more, slowly moving your hips, franklin pulls off "okay you gotta stop, before I get hard again." you slowly move away to pick up your mirror to see your mascara smudge on your cheeks "nigga I told you to leave me alone and now I gotta redo my mascara.'' "aight aight I'll be over here. by myself.'' you start to giggle, grabbing your wipes to clean off the smudges off your face.

You look at yourself into the mirror, happy with the way you look fro pick out in a circle, a gold shimmer in the corner of your eyes cascading on your lid, a sharp wing liner, full lashes, with a brown lip and gloss on top, you change out of sweats into jean skirt, you bend down to find tube top, you felt a hard smack on your ass "OW! frankie that hurt." rubbing the sting that was still left on your ass " why baby yo ass looks so smackable though,mhmm" you finally find your yellow tube top, you step into it pulling it up too your chest, having it stop were you still showing some cleavage, you look over to see frankie dress in a orange t-shirt with black pants and white adidas. "oh I almost forgot." you bend down to look for necklace once you find it, in your front pocket, you pull it out to show franklin "can you put this on me baby boy.'' "of course baby, turn around." frankie's hands grasp your shoulders one of his hands taking the necklace out of your hands, opening the clasp, laying it on your chest, having it stop right at your breast frankie lips gently grazing your neck slowly moving down to your shoulders, hands gripping at your waist, pulling you in closer to him "god baby you are so beautiful." "we gotta go remember, the faster we leave, the sooner we get back to have our sleepover frankie." franklin groans "arghh okay, you lucky that el oso is wrestlin' tonight, cause otherwise, I would've said fuck match." you giggle that burst into laughter "yeah right frankie I know you wouldn't miss this shit for nobody."

Franklin grabs your hand to walk out of the room to the front door, you see louie and jerome sitting out on the porch, people watching "aye me and lexi we'll be back we're gonna see a match." "are y'all goin' by y'all-self." louie says "nah lee and kev are gonna be there. but we'll be back later on but we gotta go so.'' jerome nods his head "aight nephew page me if anything go down, I know y'all gon be in pico-union nigga." frankie nods as well "uh-huh I'll let yall know if anything happens." you waved at them "bye yall." frankie walks to his bike while still holding you hand, frankie digs in left pocket to find his keys, he hops on and turning on the bike, realizing you had on a skirt ''frankie I can't get on the bike I have a skirt on." frankie smirks at you ''that just means you gotta get closer to me then." you sigh, putting your leg over the bike, pulling down your skirt "frankie I don't wanna flash anybody." "you ain't gon flash anybody, and I'm the only one that's gon see it." you scoot closer to frankie, feeling his strong back, you wrap your arms around his stomach, touching his solid abs you lay your head on his back." hang on I don't want you to fall." franklin kicks up the kickstand, moving his two feet to move out of the driveway, you smile at jerome and louie, frankie is out on the street, he revvs up the engine, leaving the house, you pass by your house, you turn your head hopefully thinking your momma is not sitting on the porch, thankfully passing down your home, you turned your head back to where you could see frankie "you good?" "yeah I just didn't want my momma to see me." frankie hums, looking back onto the road "you know I get, lookin' at it from your moms perceptive seeing your daughter wantin' to be with a drug dealer." you shake your head "you're more than that frankie, I want to be with you and I don't care what my momma thinks she's not gon stop me from being with you." "well alright then." fankie comes to stop at a light, you feel frankie large hand grazing your thighs, you try to scoot closer to frankie "god baby you are so soft.'' you squeal feeling frankie long friends touching your inner thighs, inching closer to your pussy, you moan "frankie green light." hearing a horn coming from behind you, frankie reluctantly pulls his hand away from you and starts to drive off, you pull into see kev and lee standing in front of the waving them hands in the air.

Franklin turns off the bike, you hop off the bike to hug kev and lee "damn franklin what took y'all so long the match is about to start." kev says "yeah lexi here had to get ready.'' you roll your eyes towards frankie "whatever nigga." '' well me and kev gotta bet goin on to see who wins, yall in?" "hell yeah we in!" you pull on frankie hand "frankie I didn't bring any money I can't play." franklin gives you a quick kiss "I can give you some money baby I don't mind sharin'." frankie grabs his wallet, to pull out a few twenty's for you, he puts in your back pocket, gently pats your ass, lee and kev walking up to the booth ordering some popcorn and some slushies “man that’s a fine ass bitch.” kevin staring at some mexican chick, looking at her ass, lee rolls his eyes “yeah whatever nigga the machine is definitely whoppin’ el oso ass.” you order for you and frankie the same thing as kev and lee, you hand frankie a blue slushy, you sip on yours, “yeah right nigga fo’sho el oso is gon win and if he don’t I’ll double it.” you taste the sweet flavors touching your tongue, you all walk inside of the building.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE BIGGEST AND THE BADESS MOTHAFUCKAS THAT YOU EVER SEEEE!” The commentor pointing at the crowd, screams rattle the building, you keep walking into the building looking for your seats, you kept close to frankie, feeling his hand squeeze you, “aye we right here.” kev says, stopping in the front row. kev, lexi, frankie, and lee in a row. “IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE UNDEFEATED THE RANGING CHAMPION ROOOCCK “THE MACHINE’’ JONESS AND THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE UNDERDOG FIGHTER ELE OSOOOO!!” Looking at the ring, there’s tall and hefty man with brown locks under his black and gold mask, and even taller white man with a purple and blue Shinglet with tease hair all the up to the sky, the bell goes off, the two wrestlers run up on each other, el oso throws the first punch knocking down rock jones, lee hands frankie a twenty, frankie smirks “yeah nigga, come on el oso take him down.” you turn to kev “are you team oso or whatever the white boy name is?” kevin smirks at you “umm jones actually delory been watchin’ him since he was young.” Jones picks up el oso then throwing him on the ground shaking the ring, you groan, grabbing the money from your pocket handing kev a twenty, kev’s eyes widened “damn lexi where you get all this money from I known you ain’t got no job.” frankie turns head, pulling in “where you think kev?” kev’s eyes shift between you and frankie “franklin now I know you ain’t gave lexi money, with yo’ stingy ass.” All three of you laugh, “yeah I might be, but it’s nice to share the wealth, you know.” frankie put his large hand on your thigh, you see kev’s eyes shift down to your legs, seeing kev to stiffen up almost looking defeated, lee looks over “aye y’all nigga watchin’ the fight almost over.” jones climbs up the rials, standing tall then to jump fallen on top of el oso, he grabs his leg to pin him down, the ref slams his hand on the mat to stop the fight, groans and screams throughout the room “AND WINNER BY PINFALL ITS STILL THE RANGING CHAMPION ROOCKK ‘THE MACHINE’ JONNESS.” frankie hands all of twenty’s to lee, looking smug, you grab your money as to give to kev, but he stops you “keep lexi,I don’t wanna be known as steal from franklin’s girl.” “we haven’t told anybody.” “well your secret is safe with me.” “thank you kev.”

As you see people watching out of the building, kev walks, you follow him, feeling frankie fingers interlocking yours, you turn your head to smile at frankie, looking at frankie’s full lips, pulling into a grin, you keep following kev to his car “so what we doin’ next I hear there is a party that one of our corner boys is throwin’.” you turn around to look for frankie, seeing him jogging to an alley calling out el oso, you turned to kev and lee to signal them to follow frankie “aye come’re I think frankie is talking to someone.’’ “aight nigga slow down.” you follow frankie seeing him getting a autograph from el oso “aye thanks man, nice to meet you.” you see frankie walking back to you “aye look oso signed this, I should get it frame.” frankie giggling, you all walk back to kev’s beat down of a car “aye so there’s this party tonight that one of our corner boys is throwin’ it’s his birthday today.” kev said “shit I’m down y’all comin’?” said lee, “nah actually me and lexi are gonna head out, her momma pagin’ me so catch y’all later.” frankie daps up kev and lee and you hug them, kev hugging you a little bit tighter, you wave goodbye, walking back to his bike you said “so you ready for our sleepover frankie.” “baby you know we ain’t doin’ that.” hopping in the bike to drive back to jerome’s house.

Frankie parks in the garage, turning off the engine you both walk up the steps into the house, the lights were on, you see louie and jerome seating on the couch watching tv, some old black love movie was on the screen “heyy how was the match?” louie said “it was so fun there was hella people there, but el oso lost.” “hmm any mexicans out there fuckin’ with y’all niggas?” “naw but I did get oso to sign this for me, pretty cool huh.” “Mhmm.” jerome and Louie nods their head in agreement “aye we need I think we need to talk business for a second, I found out where lenny and ray-ray lives, and I need some some help to get my money back, you think y’all know anybody to help me and lee out.” “there’s this guy name karvel he lives off on 23rd and Jefferson, one of the girls at claudia's club was talkin about him, but I hear he kinda crazy." frankie kept nodding his head "okay I'll page lee tomorrow it's been a few days and I wanna sneak up on them." "maybe I can come too." eyes bulge out of their eyes, in shock mostly frankie, not believing what he just heard. "what?" "I mean you could use the man power." jerome chuckles, oh god that was a horrible joke, "I just think four is better than three, and I told you frankie I want to be with you through the good and the bad, so were getting your money back." fankie flashes a quick smile, grabbing your hand to kiss, his soft and full lips grazing your thumb, "okay, but you stay in the car I don't want you getting hurt if somethin' go down." his chocolate eyes staring into you, "alright now y'all kids get out now, unless you wanna see somethin' you won't like," jerome pulls louie into his lap, kissing all over her face, she laughs "aghh aight we outta of here."

Walking in the room, seeing a fresh made bed, you hop on it, feeling the stress oozing out of you "so you really wanna do this shit babygirl. The game is not for the weak, I just want you to know what your getting into." you flip over to lay on your back "yes franklin I am and who knows maybe it won't get out of hand." you walk over to frankie, wrapping your arms around his neck, you could look at frankie, his smooth mahogany skin, frankie had a little scar on his left cheek, your thumb grazes over it "how did you get this scar frankie?" frankie chuckles "oh you don't remember, it was when we went to the park, and you were so eager to go down the slide, that you drag me down with." you smack your lips "nahh nigga you lyin’ you know I just lightly pulled you.” “hmm so since we’re having our sleepover did you bring anything.?’ you kiss him, frankie soft lips, pulling you in, frankie grabs your hips, moving down to your ass, gripping on it, you moan in his mouth “frankie we can’t be too loud jerome and louie are still up.” “I hear jerome and louie fuck all time, it’s fine.” frankie pulls you in wet kiss, frankie pecks your lips once more, feeling your pussy getting wet, you had to stop “I know I just don’t them to hear us.” “well we don’t have to sex, but we can do other things.” frankie wiggle his brows, you both giggle “maybe if you’re a good boy, let’s see how this night goes, but I do wanna change?’’ you walk over to your backpack, setting it on the bed, you pulled your night clothes, snacks and juices. “damn baby girl you got the good shit.” “you know it baby, I keep thang on me.” you change into your night clothes, frankie changes into a wife-beater and wear his blue boxers, seeing the undershirt contrasting with his beautiful skin, damn my nigga is soo fine, seeing him filling out his boxers, just swinging in there, you grab your makeup wipes, staring in to the mirror, taking off your work, in the corner you see frankie putting on a green du-rag and securing it, frankie walk over to stand behind you, looking into the mirror “you are so beautiful alexia, you know that.” “yeah but you can still tell me though.” you both giggle at your joke, frankie wraps his arms your waist, squeezing you in, frankie puts his head in neck, breathing in your scent, kissing your neck, you moved your head to give frankie more room, frankie hand moves to your shorts, his long fingers touching your pussy, “I know you said we can't have sex, but I wanna taste you.” frankie picks you up, like you were nothing.

Frankie moves your backpack and snacks on the floor, frankie gently lays you down on the bed “wait! I need to put on my bonnet on.” frankie search to find to find your pink bonnet, you put it on securing it on, you lay back down, you feel frankie hands rubbing up against your thick mahogany thighs, your eyes look down at frankie, you sit up, finally looking at your frankie, you put your hand on the side of his face, your thumb touching his scar “you are so handsome franklin, I think you are the most beautifulest person in the world and I want to be with you forever.” eyes locking on each-other, “you mean that shit baby?" you nod your head, frankie lifts up to get a better look at you, you gulped, heavy breathing, frankie just staring at you, looking so clam, like he knows what was going to happen in the future. Frankie smiles at you, eyes drifting down to your shirt, seeing that you had on your necklace on, frankie reach down to lay it on top of your shirt “you know when I got this for you this was a way to show everybody that you my girl.” “yes franklin I am yours as you are mine, I wanna your girl, maybe more than that.” frankie nods his head “I’m gonna get you out of here and your momma too, and once I’m done then we can talk about marriage and maybe even kids.” you kiss frankie, feeling his soft lips touching yours, they’re so soft, but forceful, frankie bites your lip, frankie kiss you again, you feel his hand pushing you down to the bed, the soft pillows resting against your head, frankie lifts up your shirt, throwing it on the floor, your dark nipples perk up, frankie latches on your nipple, sucking on it, frankie tongue circles on your nipple, sucking on it one more time, switching to the other one, sucking on your nipple hard, feeling the breeze washing over you, frankie lowers his head to kiss your soft tummy “you would look so gorgeous if you had my kids, knowing that something was made out of love, and that will never be harmed.’’ “you really mean that frankie that our baby will never be hurt.” “I promise alexia saint.’’ “mhhmm that has a nice ring to it, alexia saint.” “yes it do Mrs. Saint.” frankie kiss you, frankie tongue slips inside of you, sucking on it, tasting the sweet flavors in your mouth, you bite frankie lip, frankie pulls down your shorts, rubbing your thighs slowly touching your hips, “come’re.” frankie pulls you closer to him, he growls, his hand push up your thighs, looking at your pussy, soft lips, almost puffy looking, with a little pink poking out “your pussy is so pretty baby.” insecurity washing over you, slowly closing your legs, “don’t do that, I wanna see you okay.” you start to relax, trying to slow down your heart rate.

Franklin latches on your clit, his tongue swirling your pussy, you moan “o-oh god frankie.” frankie kiss your pussy, slowly sucking your clit, entering frankie tongue moves inside of you, moving your hips, your hand moves to frankie head, gripping on to his du-rag “fuck frankie you make me feel so good ah-h fuck.” “Nut on my face baby, I wanna see you shakin’.” you moan, feeling heat in your lower stomach, you put a pillow over your face, muffling your moans, you feel yourself about to cum “yes frankk-iiee oh m-y god I’m about to-o cum-m ughhh." frankie pulls the pillow off of you, putting his fingers inside of you, feeling his long fingers touching your spongy spot, frankie puts hand over your mouth, you try to gab frankie hand to slow him down, it's almost becoming too much. “move your hand baby girl and take what I give you.” you start shake uncontrollably, your eyes rolled in the back your head, moaning loudly against frankie hand, climaxing washing over you, frankie moves his hand, putting his mouth over yours, inhaling your moans, frankie kisses you, stilling inside of you moving in-n-out, you’re still moaning “you’ve ever tasted yourself before baby girl.” you shook your head no “I’ve never thought too frankie.” frankie pulls out of you, you both look at your essence, a light cream going down on frankie hand, frankie looks at you, you open your mouth, tasting a sweet and tangy flavor on your tongue, you moan, frankie pushes his fingers down your throat , you gag “oh shit my bad baby I’m sorry.” pulling frankie hand out of you, finally breathing, air fulling up in your lungs “it’s okay frankie, but I think I want something else.’’

You switch spots with frankie, looking at his boxer, standing at attention, you pull down frankie’s boxer, finally looking at his dick, bobbing back and forth, your hand touches frankie’s waist, gently touching his base, moving your hand up to his stomach, frankie rich skin kept going, you kiss frankie thighs up to balls, kissing all over them, your tongue swirling, sucking on his smooth balls “fuck-kk lexi I need you baby, please I need you in my mouth.” you kiss up his thick dick, looking so strong and girthy with a thick vein on the side from the base to the tip, you grip the base, working it up and down, frankie groans “ughh shit baby, you see how your teasin’ me baby, got me all tight in shit.” “just lay down and let me take care of you.” you open your mouth, putting fankie in your mouth, remembering to breathe through your nose, you lower head in taking frankie more, almost taking frankie in all the way, you take one more breath, opening your throat, pushing all the way down to frankie’s base, frankie lets out a loud moan. unable to control himself, frankie hand touches your bonnet, gently gripping your afro, frankie plants his feet on the bed, holding you still so he can fuck your mouth, you slip your fingers inside of you, not feeling as full with yours than frankie, you started to rub your clit, feeling your heat coming back in your tummy. “ yes-yes-yes ughh you like it when I fuck your mouth baby, stick your tongue for me baby.” you nod your head with frankie still in your mouth, you slip out your tongue out, tasting his under-shaft, frankie holds your head in place, frankie shivers “oouuhh baby fuck oh-h god I’m gon-na nut baby ughh do you want my nut baby?” you moaned, frankie stops “do you want my nut baby?” you nod your head “uh-huh.” “well you better nut on your fingers, while in nut your mouth.” you stick your tongue again, putting frankie back in your mouth, you put your fingers inside of you, working faster in your hole, frankie moves his hips faster and faster, you paid attention to your breathing, not wanting to gag on frankie “fuck baby I’m gonna nut, are you gonna nut too baby, come on baby, let it go.” bouncing on your fingers, feeling yourself to cum, your climax washing you, you groan in your throat, frankie hisses, pulling you closer to his base, frankie cums deep in your throat, you gulped it down, tasting frankie musky and strong cum, you lick your lips “you taste so good baby.” you look up at frankie, seeing him completely relax “come’re I wanna taste us.” you smiled, kissing frankie was something you can never stop doing, feeling his smooth lips pushing up against you, frankie groans, tasting a mix of sweet and tangy flavor in your mouth, “damn we do taste good, this might be my new favorite thing.” you moan in frankie mouth “oh yeah baby this might be my favorite thing too.” frankie smacks your ass, “ow frankie that hurt.” frankie smirks “I’m sorry baby, turn around I’ll make it feel better.” you rolled on your stomach, you lay your head on the bed, with your ass up, frankie is behind you, gently rubbing your sting, the pain slowly going away, frankie hands massaging your ass, spreading them apart, frankie bends down looking at your pussy, seeing your essence dripping down your thighs, frankie tongue licks up your cum to your pussy, sucking on your lips, sucking all of your cum out of you “ahh frankie what are you doing-g oh my god-d.” “I just want one more baby, can you do that for me.” you were gasping “I don’t know frankie I’ve never done it more than twice, I don’t think I can.” “you let me worry about that shit, you just relax baby girl, okay?’’ you nod your head “okay frankie.”

Frankie goes kiss your puffy pussy, his tongue slowly moving all around you, frankie slides his tongue to your clit, frankie wiggles his tongue back and forth against your clit, shivers running down your spine, you curl your toes, you move back against frankie face, “oh my fuck-k jesus christ frankie, you like how I taste baby huhh?’’ frankie growls, nodding his head, pushing in like he was trying to get inside of you, frankie pecks your pussy, feeling his lips working inside like he was kissing you, you grab frankie head “Im-m gonna cum frankie-e oh my god it’s happening.” "nut right fuckin’ now.” you let go of frankie’s head, you buried your face in the bed, you start to convulse, you arch your back, gripping the bed spread, frankie didn’t stop, you kept moaning, it became too much for you, you start to crawl to get away from frankie, he grabs on to your hips holding you in place “the fuck you think you goin’ hold still.” frankie still eating you up, you were still shaking from your aftershocks, “frankie please I feel like I have to go pee.” frankie stops “then go baby, I ain’t stopping you.” frankie sucks on your clit, sucking so passionately, you spread your legs futher, taking what frankie gives you, you feel it happening again, but this time is feels different, “oh my-y FUCK baby I’m gonna cum-m ug-ghh.” soaked essence came out of you, not realizing what just happen, feeling frankie wet lips kissing your pussy, you push frankie head away from you, not being able to take it anymore, you lay back down on the bed, feeling relaxation wash over you, you were panting, coming back down to earth, you feel frankie hand touching your ass “see told you I can make it feel better.” you grab the pillow next to you, smacking it upside of his head “nigga stop lyin’ you know just wanted to eat me.” you both giggled “yeah you right, but you like that shit didn’t you, tasting you after you nutted twice already.” my nigga is a freak, oh lord help me jesus “yeah I did frankie, but I have to go to the bathroom.” “you just did baby.” you stood up to look at the bed, a large wet spot, you jumped back on to the bed, you're embarrass, how could something like this happen I mean you heard stories of guys doing that girls, frankie senses sadness coming from you “aye don’t be like that, hey I’ll just tell them that I spilled water on the bed.” “this never happened to me before frankie, I didn’t know I could doing something like that.” “come’re.’’ frankie slowly lifts you up to hold you squeezing you tightly “it’s okay baby, I know that was a lot for you, but you were making the most beautiful sounds, I couldn’t stop and I wanted to see how you would sound if I pushed you.” you felt a kiss on your bonnet, you turned your head to kiss frankie, resting your hand on his chest. “well I’m glad I got to do it with you frankie.”

You put on frankie’s wife-beater and your underwear, you walk in the hallway, thankfully jerome and louie door was close, you walk into the bathroom to do your business, walking back into the guest room frankie already layed down a towel on the wet spot, seeing frankie already had his boxers on, with his du-rag on secured on, you walk over grabbing frankie chin kissing him on the lips “thank you baby.” frankie smiles “you know I got ’chu baby.” kissing one more time, you look to see your popcorn on the floor. you bend down to grab it, frankie smacks your ass once more “from now on you can’t be spankin’ my ass like the time, hard like that.” “what says who?” “says the one who gettin’ your spanks nigga.” frankie pouts “okay what about light pats then.” you nod your head “light pats are good baby, I’ll be back gonna pop some popcorn." walking back into the room, closing the door, you rip the bag of popcorn open handing it over to frankie, he takes a handful of popcorn stuffing it into his mouth, you walked over to grab your candy and juices, setting it on the bed, you ripped open a box of chewy candy, popping it in your mouth, you hand one to frankie, he opens his mouth wanting you to feed him, you gently place it in his mouth, you put some popcorn in your mouth, you moan “hmm sweet and salty nothing taste better than that.” “I could think of something better.” you both giggle “yeah I bet you can huh frankie.” you and frankie talked all night from what they want in the future, what kinda of trips they would like to take, franklin wanting his own plane, and what they’re children would look like. feeling your eyes closing, your head laying in frankie shoulder “you getting sleepy baby.” you nod your head, lifting up the sheets to get under the blanket, frankie turns off the light switch and getting under the blankets with you, frankie wraps your tummy, pulling you in closer, you snuggle with frankie, silence taking over “can I tell you something baby?” you flip over to face frankie “anything frankie.” you feel frankie breath, he smiles “well I know we just started dating, but we’ve known each other for all of our lives since we were kids, and you don’t have to say it- all I’m sayin’ is ummhmm I love you.” you sit up, realizing what frankie just said “arghh shit I knew I’ve shouldn’t of said that, I’m sorry baby-.” you kiss frankie to shut him up, you bite his lip, “I love you too franklin and no it’s not too early for this and like you said we’ve known each other all of our lives, and to honest with you baby I think I fell in love with you when we first met.” a gush of air comes out of frankie “oh thank god, you had me worry baby girl, I thought you didn’t love me.” “yes, yes I do franklin saint.” frankie pulls you in another kiss, slipping his tongue in your mouth, you put a hand on frankie chest “as much as I would to keep kissing you frankie, I’m sleepy.” “okay baby go to sleep, I’m gonna crack a window.” frankie walks up to the window, cracking it slightly, frankie get back into bed with you, cuddling up against you, frankie kisses your shoulder “goodnight baby I love you, sleep tight and don’t let bed bugs bite.” “and you get your shoe and you wack them until there black and blue, and I love you too frankie.”

Silence finally taking over the room, you drift off to your dream land, you and frankie are older sitting on the beach, two little kids come running up to you ‘mommy, daddy look we found a shell isn’t soo cool.’ you look to see a little boy and girl, looking like you and frankie mixed in together, they’re chocolate brow skin shining against they skin, they run back to the water, playing in the sand “I told you nothing bad happened to you and the kids.” you turn your head, looking at frankie, he’s gotten solid, a light patch of hair on his cheeks with a goatee, how is it possible that he gotten more fine over the years, frankie swats down on the blanket, taking off his socks and shoes, putting his feet in the sand, frankie smirks at you “yeah you were right frankie, thank you for protecting me and the kids.” you kiss frankie lips, feeling his soft pillowy lips, “and I’ll always will.” you hear cheerful screams 'mommy and daddy come to the water it's so warm' you kick of your shoes, frankie grabs your hand pulling you in to the water, laughter all round, not wanting to leave this dream and that one day you’re gonna make your dream a reality.

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Chapter 2 is finally done AHHHGHH🥹🥹 thank you to everyone reading this I know it’s a lot but I wanted to write the pilot, cause look at baby franklin saint I mean how can you not 🥰 the next chapter lexi meets karvel 👀👀 (LET THE DRAMA COMMENCE HAHAHAHA) and shout out to @wide-nose-and-wonderful for lighting a fire in my ass to finish chapter (thank you so much sis you don’t know how sweet your message was to me it really meant a lot to me 😘💕) and lexi wants to be in the game, she has no idea what’s going to happen. And I had Who is Jill Scott album playing on the last smut scene ‘show me, he loves me, and slowly surely’ is horny sex bitch music and it got me in the mood y’all 😈, and can we talk about frankie being a EATER, like a fuckin’ much, you can’t tell me that nigga does not eat the pussy, all day every day, and sneak-peak in to lexi's life in the future with daddy saint, I couldn't help it with his fione sexy ass, thank you again for spending time to read this and one more thing… I love you❤️.

Taglist: @fairy-cores-world

Love nazzy

strawberry wine - joel miller x ofc!liv stone/fem!reader

after - part twenty-five

you just have to keep going.

a/n: the big one. the biggest yet? I think? either way. this is pretty much the entirety of episode three in one part. I considered doing the rest of the story this way (one part per episode) but there's going to be a lot more added to the plot, so much more to come!

word count: 14.2k

warnings: if you've been reading this far, you know the drill, but explicit smut ahead!

✨@friskito-library for updates on new parts/works✨

You head west. Toward Lincoln. You walk for miles; maybe ten, if Joel had to guess. And the entire way, you don’t say a goddamn word. Not a single thing.

Ellie is uncharacteristically quiet the whole way, not a question or comment as you walk past the edge of the city, past what remains of the chain link fence you once told Joel was FEDRA’s original plan before the QZ was built. Ellie has your bat in her hands still, and she carries it silently, tapping her fingers against the metal softly, not hard enough to make any noise. You have Tess’s gun in hand, your grip on it so tight Joel is sure your knuckles are aching.

You walk through the forest until you’re all so tired you think you might drop. The night is cool, no rain to bother you, and you find a small clearing near the river to set up camp. Not that there’s much to set up. Ellie nearly collapses into the dirt, sprawling at the base of a tree, using her bag as a pillow. You go to shrug out of your jacket, stepping over and draping it over the kid. Joel follows suit, shrugging out of his own and putting it around your shoulders.

“Can’t risk a fire,” Joel murmurs to you, the two of you standing in the clearing. You ditched your bags once you found the spot, leaned them against a tree along with the bat, which Ellie had handed back to you, and the rifle. “Not this close to Boston.”

You just nodded in agreement, wrapping your arms around yourself. Joel rubs his hand up and down your back, and you turn to look at Ellie, completely passed out beneath Joel’s jacket. “What are we gonna do, Joel?” you whisper, your voice hoarse, and he can hear the panic in you. “What the fuck are we gonna do?”

“Exactly what we said we would. We go to Lincoln first. It’s a good hike, but we’ve done it before, we can do it again. We resupply, figure things out with Bill and Frank, and then…well, Tommy used to be a Firefly, maybe he can point us in the right direction.”

“We need to get to Lincoln as soon as we can,” you say, a slight waver in your voice, but you swallow it back. “We need to rest, to reset.” 

To mourn. 

It goes without saying, and Joel nods. He moves his hand to your shoulder, makes to pull you into his arms, but you move out of his grip instead of into it, turning to where your weapons are leaned against the tree. You pick up the rifle, and then head toward the edge of the trees surrounding you, toward where the river runs, the sound audible from where you’re standing.

“I’ll take the first watch,” you murmur over your shoulder, swinging the rifle up. “Get some rest.”

You never wake him. Sleep finds Joel easily, his body exhausted from the travel, but it’s the kind of sleep where he feels like he’s merely shut his eyes and opened them again, even though hours have passed. He closes his eyes on an inky black sky, and wakes to one filled with clouds, an almost lavender colour poking between the streaks of white.

The rifle is still missing from its previous spot beside your bat, and Joel knows gunfire would have woken him. But where are you? He gets to his feet slowly, every bone in his body aching with protest, leaning his good hand against a tree for a moment as he stretches out his back.

He walks over to where Ellie’s still passed out, and nudges her with his boot, just a light tap. She whines, hiding her face under his coat, and he taps her again. “Wake up, kid,” he grunts, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Now.”

Following the sound of the river, Joel steps through the trees, bowing his head to watch his step until the water comes into view. Sure enough, there you are, sat right at the shoreline, your arms wrapped around your knees, which are pulled up to your chest. The rifle sits in the dirt beside you, and there’s a stack of rocks piled neatly, almost impossibly high.

“You didn’t wake me,” he calls, his voice hoarse with the morning. You jump, turn to look at him over your shoulder, and Joel’s heart squeezes at the tears on your face. “Liv, baby—”

“I didn’t see the point,” you reply, sniffling, wiping your cheeks with your sleeve. “I knew I wouldn’t sleep, figured one of us should get some good shuteye.”

Joel grimaces, squatting down beside you, looking out at the river. “Y’know, I always heard sleeping on the forest floor was good for your back. Load of shit.”

“Ellie awake?”

“I nudged her.”

You just nod.

“Liv,” he starts, and reaches his hand out.

“Don’t, Joel,” you grit out, nearly flinching away from him. “Just…if you touch me right now, I’ll start crying, and if I start crying now, I’m not gonna fucking stop.”

“Liv—”

“Don’t,” you repeat, your eyes brimming with tears as you stare back at him. “Please? Just…let’s just get to Lincoln, and figure out what we’re doing next.” You scramble to your feet, grabbing the rifle up off the ground. Joel follows suit, straightening his legs, and for a moment, he almost says fuck it and grabs you. But he doesn’t. He watches your eyes move up his body, landing on his face, and one lone tear slips down your cheek before you swipe at it. You hand him the rifle as you brush past, heading back up the bank to your camping spot.

He feels the loss differently than you do. He knows that. What he and Tess’s relationship had evolved into was vastly different than the closeness that had formed between you, but it didn’t mean he cared any less. She was Tess, steadfast and reliable, determined and headstrong. Just like you. How many times had he thought about that, before he made it back to Boston? How well he thought you and Tess would get along, the way the ferocity in each of you reminded him of the other.

And now, she’s gone. Just like that.

Joel waits a moment, looks out across the river, at the slowly rising sun, at the tower of rocks you’ve left on the shoreline. He bends down again, leaning some of his weight on the rifle, his knees creaking as he goes. He reaches into the water, hissing as the cold covers his hand. He closes his fingers around a smooth, flat stone and pulls it from the riverbed. It’s nearly a perfect circle, dark stone with a vein of white running through it. 

Carefully, ignoring the way his hand trembles as he sets it down, he lays the stone atop your tower. He pauses, makes sure it stays upright, and then rises to his feet again, slinging the rifle over his shoulder and walking back to the clearing.

You’re still on your way back, and his boots find the footprints you’ve left in the mud, matching your steps as you walk ahead of him. You’re both silent as you walk back up the slight hill to the camp, finding Ellie fully awake, sitting against one of the tree trunks. Her bag sits beside her, and your jacket is now draped across her knees.

Wordlessly, you walk across to where your bags are set at the base of another tree. You pull Joel’s jacket off and hand it to him before stooping to your bag, yanking open the zipper, digging through the contents. “You want your jacket back?” Ellie calls to you, but you don’t answer, pulling out the little parcel of dried beef from your bag. You unfold the paper, take a small piece before handing it to Joel. He snaps off a bit, refolds the paper, and then tosses it to Ellie. It lands at her feet, and she shoots him a glare as she reaches for it, the paper rustling. “I’ve never been in the woods,” she continues as you re-zip the bag. “More bugs than I thought.”

You don’t say a word, but Joel’s close enough to hear your slow exhale.

“Look, I’ve been thinking about—” the kid starts.

“Don’t, kid,” Joel calls, lifting a hand.

“Listen to me for a second,” she shoots back, and Joel sees the way your back straightens, your shoulders pushed back. Defensive. “I was gonna say that I’ve been thinking about what happened. Nobody made any of you take me. Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a truck battery, or whatever, and you made a choice.” Her eyes flick from Joel’s to yours. “So don’t blame me for something that isn’t my fault.”

For a moment, the only noise around you is the river, bubbling in the distance. You brace your hands on your knees, slowly straightening, and Joel puts his hand on your back as you do, testing, seeing what your reaction might be. You surprise him by leaning into the touch, though he doesn’t miss the silvery line of tears along your lashes.

“She’s got a point,” you say, your voice still a bit hoarse as you turn to look at him. “We made a choice.”

It’s a loaded statement if Joel’s ever heard one. You made a choice. You both made a choice, all those years ago. Keep your secret safe, don’t let anyone — FEDRA, Fireflies, nobody — get their hands on you. Don’t let anyone take you from him. It’s the most selfish choice Joel’s ever made. He knows that. You both do.

But if you hadn’t, maybe Tess would still be alive.

Stubborn as he is, even he knows that’s not Ellie’s fault.

You made a choice, all of you.

“I’m sorry, kid,” you call, turning towards her. “It’s not your fault. It’s just…not what any of us bargained for.”

Joel snorts. “Ain’t that the truth.”

You both pick up your bags, you slide the bat between the straps, and Ellie gets to her feet, walking over to you with your coat outstretched towards you. You nod as you take it, pulling it on. “How much longer?” Ellie asks.

“Five-hour hike,” Joel answers when you glance at him.

“We can manage that.”

+

The weather holds up for your hike toward Lincoln. Joel leads, Ellie trails behind him, and you bring up the rear. You don’t miss the way Joel glances over his shoulder at you every once in a while, his gaze hard, and you just give him a slight nod each time.

Your head is a mess.

Tess knew. She knew almost the entire time, since Tommy fucked off to be a Firefly. That whole time, and she never said a goddamned thing.

Her final words echo through your mind, clear as a fucking bell.

It didn’t matter, Liv; it doesn’t matter. I knew Joel would never let them take you, no matter what it would fix, not if it wasn’t guaranteed, if it meant taking you from him. But now…this could be real. She’s real, Liv. The kid. She can fix it. Make up for all the bad shit we did.

These Fireflies out west, the ones looking for the cure, if they had more of you, would they have a better chance? Would the odds be better if they had two instead of one?

You shake the thought from your head as Joel looks back again, meeting your gaze. There’s a cut on his cheek, from your tussle in the museum yesterday, and you wish you had something to clean it with. You need to look at his hand again, too.

Take care of him, Liv.

You chew the inside of your cheek. You can let Ellie take your place, let her save the world, let her be the hero.

You can’t leave Joel.

The sun hides behind the clouds for the first leg of your journey, and once you’re out of the forest and on the open road, your trio falls into step with each other, Ellie in the middle of the two of you.

And fuck, does this kid ask a lot of questions.

“You’ve gone this way a lot?” she asks, the first thing anyone has said since you left the clearing. “No Infected?”

“We used it pretty regularly before,” Joel answers, but he doesn’t look at her as he says it, his head on a swivel, good hand tight around the rifle. “But recently, not so much.”

“What are you looking out for?”

“People.”

“Oh.”

She looks at you. “Are Bill and Frank nice?”

Before you can, Joel answers again. “Frank is.”

“Joel,” you chastise, shooting him a look. “They’re both nice. Frank is great, Bill is just more…practical.”

“Practical?” Ellie repeats, lifting a brow.

“Crazy, she means,” Joel quips, and you reach around Ellie, punching him in the arm. “Hey!”

The next question: “So are you two, like, married or something?” 

“We are,” you nod.

“For how long?”

You pause, realizing you’re not totally sure, and Joel answers yet again. “Thirteen years.”

Jesus, has it been that long?

Ellie looks at him, then back at you. “So you met after the outbreak?”

That sends something like a shock down your spine, and you and Joel look at each other over Ellie’s head. “No,” you answer, and for a moment, it’s 2001, you’re standing in the middle of the hardware store, and Joel Miller is standing in front of you for the very first time, asking for a quarter-inch drill bit in that lovely drawl of his. It’s a good memory, a happy one, one that time cannot ruin. Despite it all, the corner of your mouth lifts. “No, we knew each other before.”

Her head snaps back to Joel. “You said you were from Austin.”

“I am,” he tells her, but his eyes are still on yours. “That’s where we met.”

“Wait, so how long have you known each other for?”

“That’s a long story, kid,” you say, shoving your hand through your hair.

“Yeah, and this is a long fuckin’ hike.”

“Some other time.”

“Please?”

“Ellie.”

“Please?”

“Enough,” Joel barks, but it’s halfhearted.

Ellie sulks for all of thirty seconds before something else piques her interest. “How’d you get that scar on your head?” she asks Joel, tilting her head to the side to get a better look at it.

It’s like fucking whiplash, going from a happy memory to a god-awful one. Your side prickles with it.

Joel sighs, but it just spurs Ellie’s questioning. “What? Is it something lame? Like you fell down the stairs or something?”

“I didn’t fall down any stairs.”

“Okay, so what then?”

You’re staring at your boots, watching each step you take, trying to swallow down the guilt that has crept up your throat. You can feel Joel look at you before he speaks. “Someone shot at me and missed.”

“See, that’s cool,” Ellie replies, waving her hand in the air. For a moment, you think you may vomit. “You shoot back?”

“Yeah.”

“You get him?”

You swallow hard, kicking a rock out of your path. “No,” Joel says after a beat, “I missed, too. It happens more often than you think. Clipped him in the ribs, I think.”

“Shoulder,” you correct, and suddenly Ellie’s attention is on you.

“You were there?” she asks, incredulous, and you just nod. “Why’d they both miss? They suck at shooting, or just like, in general?”

Joel shakes his head. “In general.”

Ellie goes quiet for a long moment, looking at Joel and then back at you, back and forth again. “Y’know, I still have that spare hand.”

You’re about to say it’s not a bad idea, Tess’s pistol in the pocket of your coat, but Joel beats you to the punch. “No.”

“Okay,” she nearly whines. “Jeez.”

After about an hour more of walking, Ellie only pouting slightly, and a familiar gas station comes into view. The place is untouched, the only thing that’s changed over the years is the slow creep of nature taking back the space, the trees encroaching closer in on either side.

“Cumberland Farms?” Ellie reads out, her head cocked to the side as Joel heads for the door. “What are we doing here?”

“Got some stuff stashed inside,” Joel answers, rifle swinging from his shoulder.

“Stashed?” Ellie repeats. “Why do you have stuff stashed here?”

“Just in case,” you tell her, stepping over a crack in the pavement as Joel pushes the door open. “Like Joel said, we used to take this path a lot.”

“To get to Bill and Frank’s?” she asks.

“You ask a lot of goddamned questions,” Joel grumbles, and Ellie just grins.

“Yes, I do.”

As you step inside, Joel glances your way. “Shoulda grabbed her bag,” he says, his brow knitting together, and you don’t need him to specify. “We split the food between you and her, didn’t we?”

You just nod, opening your mouth as Ellie shouts, “No way!” She’s grinning the widest you’ve yet to see, beelining across the gas station to a large arcade game tucked in the corner. The glass is shattered in one corner, the whole thing covered in a thick layer of dust. She’s immediately hitting the buttons, rattling the joysticks. “You ever play this one?”

You and Joel just look at each other.

“I had a friend who knew everything about this game,” Ellie continues, and you find yourself staring at her back while Joel kicks a piece of wood out of the way, searching for the stash box. “There’s this one character named Mileena who takes off her mask and she has monster teeth and then she swallows you whole and barfs out your bones! Oh, man.”

Behind you, Joel pushes a long-empty shelf across the floor, the metal squeaking. Ellie turns to look at you both, and you instantly look away, feeling caught.

Joel kicks at an empty can on the ground and Ellie rolls her eyes. “You forgot where you put your stuff.”

“No,” he quips, lifting his head. “I’m just…zeroing in on it. It’s been a couple years since we came in here.”

“Okay, well, I’m gonna take a look around, see if there’s anything good,” she replies, turning on her heel and heading towards the back of the gas station.

“Trust me,” you call out, “it’s all been picked over already. We cleared this place out back in the day.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she replies, waving her hand in the air. Joel returns to his search, and Ellie turns back to you. “Is there anything bad in here?”

“Just you,” Joel calls back, and you smack his shoulder.

“Ah, getting funnier,” Ellie deadpans, and disappears through the doorway. A few moments pass, and you hear the scrape of metal.

“You okay in there?” Joel calls out, his brow crinkling.

“Yeah!” Ellie calls back, and he just shakes his head, pushing at the empty freezer in front of him.

“She’s a weird fuckin’ kid,” he grits, grunting as he shoves at the appliance. “So many goddamn questions.”

“If I was growing up in a time like this, I’d have a lot of goddamn questions too,” you reply, putting your hands on your hips, and Joel straightens with a sigh. “Where the fuck did we put that box?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, rubbing his fingers across his forehead. His hand drops, but a beat after it hits his thigh, he lifts it again, reaching for you. “Liv—”

You let him grab your hand, enough that his fingers thread through yours, knuckles locked together, but you shake your head. “Don’t, Joel. Please.”

“I just wanna—” I just wanna make sure you’re okay.

You’re not. It’s that fucking simple. But you can’t break down in the middle of the fucking gas station.

“I know you do,” you reply, squeezing his hand lightly. “Just…not here. Please.”

“Okay,” he grits out, and with a heavy breath, he lets go of his hand and reaches for his knife, kneeling down. “Let’s just find the box, then.”

You watch for a moment as he sweeps trash out of the way, a nearly white-knuckle grip on his knife. You want nothing more than to pull him up by the shoulder of his coat, haul him against you, bury your face in his chest. You want that warm, steady comfort he’s trying so hard to give to you, the thump of his heart against your ear and his arms tight around you.

It’s okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay.

But is it?

You crouch down to help with the search, rapping your knuckles against the cracked tiles, sweeping the debris out of the way first so you don’t cut yourself. You can feel Joel watching for a moment, but when you go to glance back at him, his eyes dart away.

Finally, you find a tile that sounds different than the others. “Joel,” you call holding your hand out for the knife, closing your fingers around the hilt. The blade hits the metal box with a satisfying clink when you jam it through the tile, and you use the blade to pry it up. “Jackpot.”

+

There’s a little bag filled with medical supplies in the box, and you reach for that first. Then you hand Joel the box of ammunition. He starts picking through it, fishing out the bullets that’ll fit his pistol, when he realizes there hasn’t been a sound from the direction Ellie disappeared in.

He hands you back the box, and curls his hand around the rifle, taking a step towards the door she went through. “Ellie?” he calls, lifting his hand in your direction, making you pause your movements. He can’t ignore the way his stomach drops. You call his name slightly, and he walks towards the door, calling louder now. “Ellie!”

“Picked over my ass,” she declares, appearing from the darkened doorway. She’s got a box of tampons in her hand, a smug smile on her face, and when Joel turns back, he sees you pop up from the floor, your jaw dropping when you see what she’s found. 

“No fucking way.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll share,” Ellie says, unzipping her bag and stuffing the box inside. “Least I can do.”

Joel returns to where you’re standing over the box. Sufficiently resupplied, Joel closes the box, fitting it back into the space it had been hidden, and, his dig through the box of ammunition proving fruitless for the larger gun, sliding the rifle in beside it. He can feel the kid watching him, and when he glances up, there’s something close to concern in her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s not much ammo out there for this thing,” he tells her, reaching for the tile you’d yanked up and fitting it back into place. “Makes it mostly useless.”

“Well, if you’re just gonna leave it there,” Ellie says, waving her hand at where the gun is now hidden.

Joel shoots to his feet, hearing you huff out your breath as he tells her firmly again, “No.”

He grabs his bag from where it’s laying on the ground, slings it over his shoulder. “C’mon,” you say to Ellie, reaching for your own bag. “Still a ways to go.”

It’s warmer, when you step back out of the gas station, leaving Cumberland Farms behind as you head back towards the road. Warm enough that Joel shrugs out of his jacket, stuffing it through the strap of his bag. It’s not long before you and Ellie follow suit, Ellie tying hers around her waist. After a bit of walking, Joel feels you move up toward his right, sensing your presence more than hearing your steps.

You put your hand in his, your fingers tightly wound together. He chances a glance in your direction, just a quick one, seeing the firm set to your jaw, your eyes trained on the path before you. He’s surprised enough at your touch. You’d allowed him the same back at the gas station, but only long enough to tell him not to push it further, not to give you the comfort that was trying to claw its way out of him like some kind of rabid animal.

He just wanted to make you feel okay. He knows good is a stretch, knows it’s a hard sell when he doesn’t have his bare body pressed to yours, every ache and pain soothed away by the way you writhe beneath him, feeling the same. 

Joel catches himself, reaching down with his free hand to adjust the waist of his jeans. Not the fuckin’ time. Or place. He’s starting to wish he’d made more of it, when he’d woke you early a few days ago, before the sun was up, before either of you had to even think about getting out of bed. He’d moved over you slowly, woke you with soft kisses along your jaw, gentle until your eyes fluttered and you made a little noise, roused by his touches. 

He should have kissed you longer, should have let his mouth trail lower than just your chest. He’d lifted the hem of your t-shirt, teeth scraping at the sensitive flesh of your breast, but he should have roved lower. He should have tasted you at the source, lapped at you until your legs were shaking around his ears, until he could slide into you with little resistance, the only place that’s truly felt like home to him.

Coughing, tugging at his jeans again, he squeezes your fingers, lifts your joined hands until he can press his lips to your knuckles. Behind you, Ellie makes a gagging noise. “You guys are kinda gross,” she says, and when you both turn your heads back to look at her, she’s got a funny grin on her lips. “But like, in a cute way.”

“Gee, thanks,” Joel deadpans, and beside him, you actually giggle.

“So will you tell me now how you guys—” Ellie starts to ask, but cuts herself off, coming to a stop as you reach a break in the trees lining the road. “Holy shit.”

Off in the distance, sprawled atop a large hill, is a plane. Or, what remains of one. The pieces are long decayed, the rusted-out metal visible even from where you’re standing. 

Ellie whistles out her awe. “You fly in one of those?”

“A few times, sure,” Joel answers. your fingers flexing in his grip.

“So lucky.”

“Didn’t feel like it at the time,” he tells her. “Get shoved into a middle seat, pay twelve bucks for a sandwich.”

“Dude, you got to go up in the sky,” the kid emphasizes, and you stifle your laugh.

He’s begrudgingly grateful, for this weird kid, that she distracts you enough from what’s happened to make you laugh. 

“So did they,” you mumble, looking away from the scene before you.

“Oof,” Ellie fake-winces, squinting at you. “Grim.”

The three of you continue down the path for a little while longer, and just when he’s starting to think he’ll have peace and quiet the rest of the way to Lincoln, the kid pipes up with more questions. She seems to notice his reluctance to answer, however, because she moves around to your side, interrogating you instead of Joel.

“So, everything came crashing down in one day?”

“Basically.”

“But how? No one was infected with cordyceps, everybody’s fine, eating in restaurants and flying in planes. And then all at once, it was over? How did it even start? If you have to get bit to be infected, then who bit the first person? Was it a monkey? I bet it was a monkey.”

You chuckle again, shaking your head. “They don’t teach you this in FEDRA school?”

She blows a raspberry. “Yeah, they don’t teach us how their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic.”

You’re quiet for a moment before you start giving her the spiel. “No one really knows where it started, or really how, but the best guess is that cordyceps mutated. It got into the food supply, some kind of basic ingredient like flour, something that was in basically everything. And certain brands of food were sold all across the country, all over the world even. Bread, cereal, pancake mix, that sort of thing.”

At the words pancake mix, Joel grips your hand tighter. You don’t flinch, squeezing back.

“They figure, if you eat enough of it, then it’ll get you infected. So all this tainted food hits the store shelves around the same time Thursday, people bought it, ate it that night, or the next morning, and the day went on. People started getting sick, started turning, and by the evening, it was worse. They started biting, started attacking people.”

“Were you attacked?”

You go quiet, but from the corner of his eye, Joel sees you nod. “My boyfriend at the time, Dean. I was out celebrating my birthday, and I came home and found him, just standing there. Then he started twitching, then he lunged at me. Gave me this.” Joel turns just in time to see you pulling back the strap of your bag and the collar of your flannel, letting Ellie see the scars on your shoulder, the jagged lines Dean had left in your skin.

“Shit,” the kid curses. “That’s intense. You killed him?”

Another nod. “With my bat.”

Ellie’s jaw drops. “That’s…pretty badass, actually.”

You bark a laugh. “Thanks, kid.”

“Wait,” she says, lifting a hand. “It was your birthday?”

“Yep,” you answer, nodding again. “Joel’s too.”

“No shit.”

“Shit. Friday, September 26th, 2003. My twenty-fifth birthday. By Monday, everything was gone, and they started dropping bombs not long after that.”

Ellie finally settles into silence for a moment before she says, “It makes more sense than monkeys. Thanks, Liv.”

“You’re welcome, kid.”

He’s been distracted as you’ve walked, listening to the sound of your voice, trying to catch any dip or crack that might give him space to swoop in, take over, make you feel safe again. Even if he doesn’t really want to answer the kid’s incessant questions, he can do it for you, if he has to. But you haven’t wavered, and Joel feels that begrudging gratitude take up a more permanent residence in his chest. At least, while the kid is still around. 

And then he realizes where you are. 

“Wait,” he calls out, and both of you stop in your tracks, you holding your arm out to stop Ellie from taking another step. “We’ll cut across the woods here.”

“Isn’t the road easier?” Ellie asks, glancing between the both of you. Joel sees the realization on your face, and you sigh.

“Yeah, it is, it’s just…” You trail off, clearly not quite sure what to tell the kid.

Joel finds the words before you do. “There’s stuff up there you shouldn’t see.”

She grins. “Well, now I have to see it.” And with that, she ducks under your raised arm, continuing on down the path.

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to,” Joel grits out, and pulls you to step after him, following her. “I’m serious, Ellie.”

She tilts her head back, calling back to the both of you. “Can it hurt me?”

“No,” Joel calls back, hearing you sigh after. 

“Not in the way you’re thinking of,” you say, rubbing at your brow. “Ellie, wait, just—”

“You guys worry too much,” she calls, picking up her pace a bit. “Besides, if you really wanted to stop me, you should have said axe murderer.”

You heave a sigh as she continues on, almost at the spot you didn’t want her to be. Joel’s spine tingles as you come up to the bend in the road. He still remembers the first time you found this spot, the first time you had gone to Bill and Frank’s.

“Uh, whatever it is,” Ellie yells back to you, “I think it’s gone.” But then her steps slow, her attention dragged off the side of the road, and Joel’s fingers squeeze around yours.

As you come up behind her, stopping when she turns to look at you, Joel answers the question before she even asks. You were the one to tell him the story, and after just rehashing your own experience on the day of the outbreak — and saving him from telling his own, he realizes — he can tell the kid this.

“About a week after Outbreak Day, soldiers…” 

He trails off for a moment. It’s hard not to imagine Cowan’s face as his eyes are pulled towards the ground. You had been adamant that Nick hadn’t been a part of it, but Joel had never felt like the soldier was telling you the entire truth. That, and a bullet to the head, and Joel is more than a little biased, but…

He sighs, continuing. “They went through the countryside and evacuated the small towns. Told you you were goin’ to a QZ, and you were, if there was room. If there wasn’t…”

The words trail off again, and his eyes can’t pull away from the bones in the dirt, the few scraps of clothing still tethered in the earth.

“These people weren’t sick?” Ellie asks, her voice snapping on the words.

“Most likely no,” you answer, and Joel feels your body turn against his, both of your hands now wrapped around his. 

“Then why kill them? Why not just leave ‘em be?”

“Better dead than infected,” you reply. “At least, that’s the way FEDRA saw it.” You turn your face away from the body pit. You reach out and tug on the handle of Ellie’s backpack. “C’mon. We should get going. Almost there.”

+

You’re more and more nervous, with every step you take.

Joel notices, gripping your hand a little tighter. You haven’t let go for hours at this point, and your palm is sweaty against his, but he doesn’t seem to care, and neither do you. Depending on what you find beyond the gate, you know he’ll be the only thing to keep you upright.

What if they’re dead? What if they’re dying?

You can’t decide what option is better. Which is worse.

As you round that final corner, the gate Bill built around the small town coming into view, your breath catches in your throat. Nature hasn’t let up anywhere, but when you were still visiting, Bill and Frank had always kept everything trimmed back — Bill more than Frank, but you knew the latter had a penchant for instructing the former what needed attention.

But now, plants crawl across the top of the fence, wrapping through the wires. Long-dead, thanks to the electrical current, but left in place, unbothered by the inhabitants of Lincoln. Your mind spins. It could be that Bill just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore, that his old knees couldn’t take the hike up the ladder. Maybe he’s got a laundry list of things for Joel to do now that you’ve come back.

The hum of the fence is familiar as you approach, the DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE sign split in half, whether by the decay of time or by something else, you can’t be sure.

Joel squeezes your fingers before letting go, murmuring to you and Ellie to stay in place as he walks up to the gate, reaching out a cautious hand to enter the code. Bill told you long ago what it was — 37265, F-R-A-N-K — in case you ever needed to come in when they couldn’t let you in. The man really had thought of everything.

Your shoulders sag with relief when the fence beeps open, Joel pushing the gate inward to let you all inside. Something inside you snaps, and the moment you’re through the gate, you’re off like a shot, striding with purpose toward the old house. All around you, Lincoln shows signs of abandonment, overgrown grass, leaves littering the sidewalks and streets. One of the fence gates at another house bangs against its latch in the wind.

Behind you, you hear Joel call your name, his boots picking up the pace to match yours, but he doesn’t catch up until you’re standing in front of Bill and Frank’s home. It looks less unkempt than the rest, but the flowers on either side of the low front gate are wilted, the steps nearly brown, petals covering the ground beneath. It’s not promising.

Joel catches your arm. “Let me go in first,” he tells you, his voice low, but you shake your head, shake off his grip, and stride up the walkway to the porch.

The door’s unlocked. It creaks open when you push it inward, the sunlight streaming through the doorway. Joel steps up behind you, Ellie behind him, and you step inside slowly, through the small foyer, stopping at the base of the stairs.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Joel turns toward the dining room and you toward the living room. The air feels thick with dust, the complete opposite of the homeliness you’re used to feeling the moment you walk through that door.

“What the fuck?” Ellie murmurs.

It’s only a beat after that Joel calls, “Bill?”

You step into the living room, seeing Frank’s half-done painting on the easel, the beginnings of Bill’s likeness looking back at you. “Frank?”

Nothing but quiet.

Your stomach twists, and you can feel Ellie looking at you. There’s a streak of concern in her eyes, and you lift your hand in her direction. You pull out your gun, and Joel follows suit. “Stay there, okay? If you hear anything, if you see anything, yell for one of us.” She doesn’t say anything at first, and you prompt her. “Clear?”

“Clear,” she repeats, nodding. But then her voice drops. “What if they’re gone?”

Then it’s just one more nail in my coffin, kid. That’s what you want to say. Instead, you say nothing, turning on your heel and striding towards the back of the living room. There’s a thin layer of dust on everything, every surface you look at. Distantly, you hear Ellie tap at the piano keys, and it sends a chill down your spine.

The living room leads you back and around to the kitchen, and you find Joel there, looking through the back door, the small greenhouse and the garden beyond it. It’s not as overgrown as the rest, but most of the garden is dead, threads of ivy climbing up the glass of the greenhouse.

“Anything?” you ask, willing your voice not to crack on the question.

He shakes his head.

Joel follows you out of the kitchen, into the hallway that runs the length of the stairs. There’s a bedroom on the lower level; when the stairs got too much for Frank, they moved downstairs. You lift your hand and knock on the door, the sound echoing on the other side.

Nothing.

Joel’s hand lands on your shoulder and your hand drops to the handle. Unlike the front door, it doesn’t give when you twist the knob. “Liv,” Joel says quietly, his fingers digging into your shoulder slightly. “Baby.”

The front door slams shut all of a sudden, moved by the wind, and you both flinch.

It goes without saying, now.

They’re gone.

You both look back to the front door, Ellie nowhere in sight, and despite the heartbreak that’s sweeping through you like a tidal wave, your instincts kick into gear, and you step out of Joel’s grip, calling the kid’s name as you make your way to the door. “Ellie!”

“In here,” she calls as you step into the foyer, and your head turns in the direction of her voice, finding her sitting in one of the dining room chairs. You hadn’t noticed before, but there are two plates set at the end of the table, the remnants of food on them long moulded over, flies buzzing around. Twin wine glasses stand between the plates, and there’s a small empty baggie on the table.

They’re gone.

Your attention turns back to Ellie, you force it there, seeing the folded piece of paper in her hands. Joel’s steps creak as he comes up beside you, reaching for your hand as Ellie says, “It’s from Bill.” You both put your guns away. There’s no need. Ellie reaches for the torn envelope on the table. “To whomever, but probably Joel. I figured I fell under ‘whomever’. There’s this, too.”

She picks up another envelope, this one unopened, and extends it toward you. Along with it, a car key.

“It only has your name on it. And the key was in this one.”

You both drop your bags, you lean the bat against the wall. Joel takes the key, and you take the second envelope. Your hands are shaking as you do.

“So they’re…?” you trail off, unable to say the words as Ellie looks back at Bill’s note. Dead. She gives a tiny affirmative noise. You inhale sharply, your fingers crinkling the envelope, and Joel reaches for your free hand. She extends the paper towards Joel, but he shakes his head.

“You read it.”

You don’t know if you can handle this. But you have to.

Ellie clears her throat, and starts to read.

+

August 29th, 2023.

If you find this, please do not come into the bedroom. We left a window open so the house wouldn’t smell, but it will probably be a sight. 

I’m guessing you found this, Joel, because anyone else would’ve been electrocuted or blown up by one of my traps. Hehehehehehehehehehehehe.

Take anything you need. The bunker code is the same as the gate code but in reverse.

Anyway, I never liked you. But still, it’s like we’re friends almost. And I respect you. I respect the love you have for that girl. You’ve done right by her, and I know you’ll keep doing it. So I’m gonna tell you something because you’re probably the only person who will understand.

I used to hate the world, and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong, because there was one person worth saving. That’s what I did. I saved him. Then I protected him. That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do. And God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.

I leave you all of my weapons and equipment. The truck is in the garage, and there are guns in the bunker. Use them to keep Olivia and Tess safe, until such time you decide you’ve had enough. At that point, I recommend pairing 40 Vicodins with a nice Brunello.

Good luck, Joel. You’re gonna need it. 

Bill

+

There are tears on your face, sliding down your cheeks unbidden, and Joel feels his own emotions crawl up the back of his throat.

Wordlessly, you tear into the envelope in your hand, pulling out the folded paper within. The note is shorter than Bill’s, the handwriting scratchier, letters falling off the pages in some places. Joel can only watch as your eyes scan over the words, again and again and again. The tears come harder. He wants to reach for you — he needs to reach for you — but before he can get a grip, you slap the paper again his chest and turn on your heel, bolting out the front door.

+

My sweet Liv,

This letter will not be as long as I would like. My hands are not cooperating lately, and I’m sure I’ll have to come back and finish this more than once. It’s okay. I’m old. This is just the way things are.

I hope you find this, someday. I could be writing to no one now. It’s been a while since we heard from you, since we were able to speak, and god, I miss you, Liv. I wish you and Joel and Tess had come when you had the chance. I wish we could have stayed closer, lived together.

But I can’t waste my time on what could have been. I know what you find here will hurt, and for that, I’m sorry. But you have to know, I had a good life. Were there bad days? Of course. The world ended, after all, and yet I still managed to make the most of it.

Take care of Joel. Promise me that you won’t ever stop paying attention, that you’ll keep showing him you love him. He’d move heaven and earth for you, and I know you’d do the same for him.

It might not feel like it now, but things will be okay, Liv. I promise.

All my love,

Frank x

+

“Stay here,” Joel tells Ellie. He doesn’t wait to see if she nods, he’s already out the door, Frank’s note crumpled in his hand. He steps out onto the porch, onto the walkway, and that’s when he sees you, on your knees in the grass, nearly crumpled forward.

He calls your name, but you don’t seem to notice. Even as he runs for you, moving in front of you, dropping to his knees, taking your face in his hands, you barely flinch. Your face is soaked with tears, your eyes squeezed shut, hands clawing at your shirt, pulling at the material. “I-I can’t—” you choke out, and you slump forward when he grabs your wrists, tugging your arms around his shoulders.

Your face pressed into his chest, he feels his shirt cling to his skin in an instant, wet with your tears. He fits his arms under yours, keeping you upright, keeping you against him.

“Liv, baby,” he murmurs, his cheek pressed to your temple. “Baby, you gotta talk to me. Let me help you.”

“Tess knew,” you blubber out, lifting your head so fast you nearly knock Joel in the chin. Your eyes are bloodshot, your lashes clumped together. “Tommy told her before he left with the Fireflies. She knew the whole goddamn time what I am, Joel, and she never said a damn thing. And if I hadn’t been so fucking selfish all these years, she could still be alive!”

Joel shakes his head, lifting his hand until he can cup your cheek in his palm. “No, baby, that’s not what—”

“Yes, it is! If I’d given myself over when it first happened, everything could be different now! This all could be over. It—”

“Or you could be dead!” Joel snaps, and he has both hands on your face now, forcing you to look at him. “They could have killed you for it, or what if it didn’t work? What if nothing changed? We made a choice, Liv. Tess made a choice. Bill and Frank, they—” He cuts himself off, dropping his chin to his chest. The sob you let out rattles his ribs. “We made choices, baby. Choices to stay alive, to stay together.”

Your eyes slip shut again and you nod between his hands, but another sob falls from your lips, your hands moving down to fist in the front of his jacket. “It hurts, Joel. It hurts so fucking bad and I can’t breathe and it just hurts and I—”

“I know, baby,” he murmurs, and pulls you close again, his mouth at the crown of your head. He puts his arms back around you, one around your middle, one across your shoulders. Slowly, he rocks you side to side, humming against your hair. “I know it hurts. It’ll pass, I promise you. You gotta give it time, you hear me? You’ll be okay.” He pauses, inhales sharply when you whimper. “We’ll be okay.”

He’s not sure how much time passes, the two of you kneeling there in the grass, but his joints start to protest after a while. Your sobs subside, your breathing levelling out to an almost normal pace. You don’t let go of him, your hands still locked in his jacket. But your head tilts back against his chest, until his mouth is resting on your forehead.

“What are we gonna do, Joel?”

He rubs his hand across your shoulders. He’ll hold you as long as he has to, to make you feel safe, make you feel okay. It’s just as much for you as it is for him. “We stock up, take what we can. We go find Tommy. That was always the plan, anyway.”

“What about the kid?”

“Tommy might know someone, somewhere we can take her. If not, we find a way to radio Marlene, find a new place to meet, something. We’ll figure it out. Always do.”

Your eyes slip shut again, your arms lowering slightly so you can sling them around his waist. Your face fits into the curve of his neck, and he squeezes you softly. 

“I promise you, baby,” he murmurs to you, lips grazing whatever part of your face he can reach. “We’ll be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

“And I’ll keep you safe.”

Slowly but surely, you both get to your feet, and while you start in the direction of the front door, the double-door garage to the side of the house catches Joel’s attention. When you lift a brow, he pulls the car key from his pocket, and you follow his lead, walking towards the garage. You pull one of the doors open, and Joel steps inside, looking for a light switch. Fluorescents buzz in their sockets above the covered truck, and you both tug on a corner of the tarp, revealing the blue-and-white painted Chevy.

Joel pops the hood first, to see what he’s working with, and everything in him deflates when he sees what’s missing. He lets the hood slam shut, braces his hands on top of it. “What is it?” you ask, busying yourself with shoving the tarp into a corner of the garage.

“No fuckin’ battery,” he grits out, and your face pinches.

“There’s gotta be something around here,” you say, walking around the truck. “This thing’s in decent shape, and there’s no way Bill would have left it to us without it—”

His attention is caught over your shoulder, an old fridge pushed against the wall, stacked with bottles of different cleaning solutions. He steps around the truck, around you, and yanks the fridge open. Sure enough, everything he needs to make a battery is inside.

Joel can’t stop himself from smiling. Fuckin’ Bill. Really did think of everything.

You step up behind him, peering over his shoulder and into the fridge. “You know what you’re doing there, baby?”

“I do, actually,” he says, starting to pull the ingredients out of the fridge, a jar of sulphur, the plastic pieces of the battery itself. “Had a friend back in Austin that showed me how to do this.”

It doesn’t take him long. You hover at his shoulder the entire time, watching him work, asking the odd question, your brow furrowing as he connects the battery to the charger. You’re committing the steps to memory, Joel realizes as he finishes up, as you recite everything he just did back to him. He can see it for what it is — a distraction — but he nods along anyway, corrects you when you mix up the second and third steps.

You start over, counting the steps off on your fingers as you try again, and Joel turns to you, takes a step towards you, which has you stepping back once, then again, until your back is pressed to the truck. 

“Liv, let me kiss you,” he murmurs, reaching up and bracing his hands on either side of you, fingers curling against the roof of the truck. He has to; he needs to. The desperation bubbles to his surface, lurking just beneath his skin. You’re the only one he can be like this with, the only one who can see through that hard mask he’s been wearing since you left the QZ. His emotions are getting the better of him — grief, pain, desperation, fear. He feels them all.

But he just really wants to feel you.

“Please,” he begs, and a beat later, your fingers hook into his belt loops, tugging him against you, one of your legs sliding between his. He bends his elbows, hearing the truck creak slightly as he pushes his weight against it, against you.

Slowly, your chin lifts, drops. A nod. Yes.

Your lips taste like salt. It makes him groan. Tilting his head to the side so he can kiss you deeper, one hand coming off the truck to bury in your hair, fingers twining in the strands. He feels you melt, slightly, a chip in the shell that has formed around you in your grief. 

He feels the same, feels like everything that’s wrong, everything that makes him hurt, is gone, the moment his lips find yours. It feels heightened, the weight of the last few days nearly making his knees buckle, the loss of Tess, the revelation of Bill and Frank. It feels like too much, but for just a moment, he can forget.

You moan when he flicks his tongue against the seam of your lips, asking. Your hands move up, unhooked from his belt to slide beneath his shirt, the flannel bunching over your wrists as you slide your palms over his stomach, glancing across the scar on his hip. Your fingers flatten against his ribs, and he tugs on your hair lightly, tilting your head back, groaning when you sink your teeth into his lower lip. 

Joel pushes forward again, until his hips are nearly flush with yours. Your thigh tightens between his legs, rubbing against the seam of his jeans, and the feeling makes him choke, mouth tilted away from yours as his breath hitches, suddenly feeling like a touch-starved teenager. “Joel,” you whisper, one hand skirting around to rest against his spine, the other moving down to his belt buckle. Your fingers curl behind the metal, knuckles scraping his lower stomach. “We should—”

He cuts you off with another kiss, wanting to taste you more, lick the salt from your lips. You let him, tugging on his belt, moaning when he drops his hand from your hair and lets it rest at the base of your throat. Joel drags his mouth along your jaw, nipping at the space below your ear, where your skin is thin, and he can feel the thump of your heartbeat against his lips.

“Joel,” you grit out, leaning your head back until it’s resting against the truck. It gives him better access to your neck, lets him lick a strip up your throat. “The kid—”

“—can’t hear us,” he finishes for you, the words mumbled into your skin. “I wanna—”

“We’ve been out here a while,” you cut him off, and Joel sighs, moving his hand from your collar, replacing it with his forehead. He braces his hands on the truck again, but you give yourself away, pushing your thigh slightly against the bulge in his jeans once more. “She’s gonna think we ditched her.”

“She can wait one more minute.”

“Joel.”

He sighs, but relents, leaving one last kiss on your lips before he tugs on your hand and pulls you out of the garage and back towards the house.

+

You find Ellie in the same place you’d left her, sitting in the chair at the dining room table. When you and Joel step through the doorway, her head shoots up, dark eyes moving between you both.

You’d nearly frozen on the porch, the weight resettling. Joel had done his best to chase it away — in fact, your lips still tingled with his efforts, a shot of heat between your legs you’re doing your best to ignore for the time being — but the moment you stepped through the front door, it had spiked again. The plates at the end of the table, the empty wine glasses, they didn’t help matters.

“Is everything okay?” Ellie asks, her voice low as she gets to her feet. “Do you have a plan?”

“Joel just made a battery for the truck Bill left,” you answer. “It’s charging right now.”

“Okay.”

“I have a brother out in Wyoming,” Joel says, and you glance at him, squeeze your fingers around his. “He’s in some kind of trouble and we’re heading out there to find him. He used to be a Firefly, and my guess is, he knows where some of ‘em are out there. Maybe they can get you to wherever this lab is.”

“All right,” Ellie nods, her eyes still darting between you and Joel. Then they drop to her hands. “Listen, you guys, about Tess, and Bill and Fr—”

You lift your hand, cutting her off. “I need you to listen to me, Ellie. If we’re taking you with us, there are ground rules.”

“Okay.”

“Number one, you don’t talk about what happened to Tess. We don’t talk about what happened to Tess. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Two, you don’t tell anyone about what happened to you. If anyone sees that bite mark, they’re not gonna think twice. They’ll just shoot you, and there won’t be a damn thing either of us can do to stop it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And three, if Joel or I tell you do to something, you do it. No questions asked. You do what we say, when we say it. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat it.”

“What you say goes.”

Joel’s fingers twitch against yours, and you share a look, something in you deflating as you sigh. “Okay,” he murmurs, nodding to you.

“So, what now?” Ellie asks.

“We stock up,” you say, repeating what Joel had said to you earlier. You glance at him. “How long will the battery take?”

“Couple hours,” he replies, and lifts his hand, moving it to the back of your neck. “Enough time to rest for a bit. Find some food maybe. I wanna know what’s in that bunker.”

“You and me both.”

It was the one place Bill never let you see. It was his boundary, and you respected it. But you couldn’t lie; the curiosity was getting the better of you. The three of you make your way down to the basement, Joel pulling up the set of drawers that makes up most of the ladder. There’s a grate over the opening, a keypad embedded into the floor, and Joel crouches down, enters the code. It slides open a second later, and he heads down first, you following, Ellie after you.

“Ho-ly shit,” the kid mutters, as Joel flicks on the lights, illuminating the wall of guns, the shelves of first aid and cans of food. She bee-lines for the weapons, and you move towards the stack of security screens, the computer that played your coded songs over the radio. “This guy was a genius.”

“That he was, kid,” you agree, tapping at the keyboard. Joel moves behind you, puts a soft hand on your back. “That he was.”

“Why was the music on?”

“If Bill didn’t reset the countdown every few weeks, then this playlist would run over the radio and we’d hear it back in Boston.” 

Ellie leans over the desk, peering at the screen. “Eighties.”

You tilt your head to the side. How does she know what the code was? You turn to Joel, who just grits his teeth, pointing toward the shelves lined with food at the back of the bunker. “Grab some cans from over there,” he tells her. “Nothin’ dented or swollen.”

She nods, going to do as he asks, but pauses at the wall of guns again. “Can I—?”

“No,” Joel says instantly. Ellie’s eyes slide to you for a second, but you say nothing.

“There’s a wall of them.”

Joel glares at her, and puts her hands up in surrender. As soon as she’s across the room, you turn to him. “How did she know about the code?”

“Back in Boston,” he tells you, a slight flare in his cheeks. “She found the songbook, asked me what the code was, what eighties meant. I didn’t wanna tell her, but she figured it out on her own. Said she heard a fuckin’ Wham! song while I was asleep. I panicked.”

You can’t help your grin. “Smart kid.”

The rest of the afternoon finds you searching the house. You steer clear of the closed bedroom at the end of the hall, and Ellie follows you around like a puppy, letting you take the lead as you look through cupboards and closets.

Rolls of toilet paper, cans of soup and veggies and the like, paper towels, first aid supplies, camping gear. You stack everything near the front door, piling it into bags Joel finds in the garage. 

Bill must have emptied out the boutique since you were last here, because Joel unearths boxes of clothes in one of the upstairs closets, finding a few boxes filled with ammunition in the process. You and Ellie pick through them while Joel goes hunting for more bullets, pulling out t-shirts and sweaters. You both reach for the same red t-shirt and Ellie freezes, her brows shooting into her hair. You concede, pushing the shirt towards her. “You take it, kid.”

“Thanks,” she mumbles, staring down at the fabric. “Liv, can I ask you something? It’s not about Tess, I promise.”

You reach for another shirt, inspecting it for a second before tossing it aside. Not your size, or your style. “Shoot.”

“How did you find Bill and Frank?”

The question settles over you like a blanket. It’s a harmless question, warranted even, and you can’t fault Ellie for her curiosity, especially after your reaction to their letters. She’s owed some answers.

But your moment of hesitation must show on your face, because she’s instantly backtracking. “I-I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me. I’m just—”

“No, it’s okay, kid,” you say, picking up a patterned fleece sweater. “Really.” She actually smiles, and you return it. “You ever heard of Fleetwood Mac?”

You tell her the whole story, how you found Frank on the radio, your first meeting, the trading you kept up over the years.

The friendship you held so close to your heart.

“Were you always a smuggler?” she asks, having taken a seat at the edge of the bed. You moved on to another box, men’s clothes, trying to find something for Joel. 

“Pretty much,” you answer, pulling out a green plaid shirt that looks oddly familiar. “Well, I wasn’t before the outbreak, but after everything went to shit, it was kind of my only option.”

“What about before the outbreak?”

“I worked in an office. Sat at a desk all day, it was kinda boring, to be honest.”

“Is that where you met Joel?” You shoot her a look, your brow raising slowly. She’s full-on grinning now. “You said it was a long story, and you said I could ask you something.”

“You already asked me something. Many somethings.”

“C’mon,” she groans, flopping back on the bed. “Please?”

You blow out a breath. “Fine. Joel and I met…” You trail off, squinting. “Twenty-two years ago, in a hardware store in Austin.”

“A hardware store?”

You nod, unable to stop yourself from smiling at the memory. “My grandparents owned one in Texas, and when they died, my parents took over. I had just finished college, and I was home for the summer, so I helped my dad out around the store. Joel came in one day and that was how we met.”

“And you’ve been together ever since.”

Your head drops, eyes downcast. “Not exactly.”

Ellie rolls onto her stomach, ducking her head so she can catch your eye. “Would you just tell me already?”

“The office job was in Boston,” you tell her, and her face pinches with confusion. “I left at the end of the summer, and we tried to make it work, but the distance sucked.”

She’s got her fingers locked together, bouncing her knuckles off her lip. “So you broke up.”

“We did,” you say with a nod, finding another shirt for Joel, a blue button-up not unlike the one he’s currently wearing, just a few shades darker. “I’d been in Boston just over two years when the outbreak happened. Dean attacked me, like I told you, and he was the first Infected I killed. Then the bombings. Then FEDRA started rounding up any survivors they could find, and we were holed up in the mall for a while, but then people started turning, so they moved us.” You sigh, flipping the box closed. “Next thing we knew, the QZ walls were up, and FEDRA took over.”

“But, Joel…?” She trails off, her confusion deeper.

The corner of your mouth quirks. “Five years after the walls went up, Joel’s brother showed up. They’d been travelling the entire time, stayed in the QZ in Baltimore for a few years before they got kicked out.”

“They got kicked out?”

“Tess got—” You cut yourself off, drop your eyes again. “They got caught smuggling in Baltimore, and FEDRA wasn’t having it. I snuck them in, and the rest is history.”

“Wait, okay, so,” Ellie starts, counting off the years on your fingers. “You’ve known each other for twenty-two years, the outbreak happened twenty years ago, but you didn’t see him again until five years after that, and you’ve been married for thirteen and—” She groans, putting her face in her hands. “That’s too much math.”

You giggle, tossing the red t-shirt she’d left between you at her. “We’ve been together a long fucking time, we can just leave it there.”

Ellie catches the shirt, sitting up, rubbing her fingers over the logo imprinted on the fabric. “So you got married in the QZ?”

“Yeah,” you nod, reaching for the fleece sweater you’d pulled out for yourself. The memory sparks. “But then Bill and Frank threw us a wedding here, actually.” Tears crawl up the back of your throat. “Surprised me with it, Joel planned the whole thing.”

“Joel did?” she repeats, surprised, her brows raising again. “No offence, he’s just kind of a grump.”

You bark a laugh, the tears receding slightly. “Time will do that to you, kid.”

She’s quiet for a moment before she reaches between you and grabs your hand. Her palm is clammy. “I’m sorry, Liv. About Bill and Frank. They sound like they were really great friends.”

You swallow hard, squeezing her hand, nodding. “Thank you, Ellie. They were.”

+

“Needs another hour,” Joel informs you, checking the dial on the charger. 

You’ve all moved to the garage, combing through Bill’s impressive collection of camping supplies. The bed of the truck is already half-full, and Joel’s helping you load a camping stove into the backseat when Ellie excitedly declares, having turned the work sink on, “They have hot water!”

You shut the truck door, your hand grazing Joel’s back as you step around him. “We’ve got time for showers.”

“Can I go first?” Ellie asks, her question directed at you, nearly bouncing on her heels. “Please?”

“Go on,” you tell her, jutting your chin toward the door. “Just don’t be too long.”

The kid grins broadly before disappearing out the side door of the garage. After packing a few more necessities into the truck, Joel checks the battery once more before following you back into the house. You lead him upstairs, into the guest room you’d stayed in when you’d come to Lincoln in the past. There are shirts laid out on the bed, a pair of jeans that look about his size, and toiletries. A bottle of soap, toothbrushes, a tube of toothpaste, even floss. Joel can’t remember the last time he saw dental floss.

Ellie had gone in the shower in the master bedroom, and distantly, the pipes rumble as the water shuts off. “Go get in,” you tell him, jutting your chin towards the bathroom off the guest room. “I’ll go make sure she’s okay.”

Before he can get a word out, you’re gone, disappearing across the hall, and Joel turns on his heel, heading for the bathroom. Much like the rest of the house, every surface is covered in a thin layer of dust, and he cranks the shower on, but lets the water run for a while, cleaning the film from the bathtub, letting steam fill the room as he wipes down the counter with the sleeve of his shirt. It’s already dirty, anyway. The mirror fogs at the edges, and Joel finds himself face-to-face with his reflection as he strips down.

His belt goes first, the leather curling off the edge of the countertop, the buckle thunking to the surface with a metallic clang. He lets his jeans hang open, sliding slightly off his hips as he undoes the buttons on his shirt. As he reaches the last one, you reappear in the doorway, your face neutral until his shirt hangs loose, and Joel sees your bottom lip slip between your teeth.

“I thought you’d be in already,” you say, your eyes raking over him before they meet his in the mirror. “Hot water and all.”

The apartment had running water, back in the QZ. Most of the time, anyway. But hot water? Not unless you were wasting generator power heating it on the stove and dumping it into the tub. This is a luxury no matter how you look at it. “Waitin’ for you.”

For a moment, Joel wonders if you’ll protest, if the kiss you shared in the garage, heated as it was, was all you would allow. He’d drop it if you did, would respect the boundary and step back from your line in the sand. He’s about to say as much when you step through the door, pushing it closed behind you and flicking the lock shut. Your eyes find his in the mirror again, and he watches you step closer to him, his back still to you.

Your hands reach up, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt, and you pull it back. Joel relaxes his arms, letting you peel it down, keeping it bunched at his wrists, a makeshift restraint.

“Baby,” he murmurs, turning his head to look at you when you lean up and press your lips to his spine. It makes a shudder run through him, and you move even closer, until he can curl his hands around your hips. Your own slide against his ribs, one moving up to rest right over his heart, which thumps wildly beneath your touch as the other hand roves lower, nails dragging as you slide beneath the elastic of his boxers.

You graze the base of his cock, and he can’t hold back the moan that slips out of him. You bite at the muscle of his shoulder, hard enough to make him jump, and your hand closes around him. “We have to be quiet, Joel,” you murmur. There’s a glint in your eye as he stares back at you, your eyes just visible over the slope of his shoulder.

He moves quickly, taking you by surprise. Joel pulls his hands free, his shirt falling to the ground, and he spins, turning so your hand stays where it is in his pants, catching the other with his own. He walks you backward, until your back hits the wall, and pins your hand over your head, his other fingers on your jaw. The kiss you share is rough, rougher than the one in the garage, a mess of teeth and tongue. His jeans slip down his hips, and you release him long enough to shove his boxers down, cock springing fee, curving up towards his stomach.

You pull your mouth from his just long enough to lick a stripe up your palm, and your hand closes around him again a moment later, slick with your spit, the way you twist your wrist making his eyes roll back in his skull. He releases your pinned hand, feeling it curl into his hair as he busies himself with the buttons on your shirt, the button on your jeans.

He’s panting into your mouth by the time he’s got your pants around your ankles. “Gonna fuck you in the shower,” he grits out, his forehead pressed to yours. He’s not gonna last. “Gotta do somethin’ first.”

“What—?” you start, but the question dies in your throat as he pulls your hand from his cock, dropping to his knees on the tile before you. He lifts your legs one at a time, tugging the jeans from where they’re caught around your feet, your underwear going with it.

Joel curls his hand around your knee, lifts it up and over, effectively spreading your legs as you’re pressed to the wall. He keeps your thigh in place, and presses his face against it, sucking a bruise into the sensitive flesh. You hiss above him, one hand locked in his hair, your face tilted to the ceiling.

As long as he lives, Joel will never get over the taste of you. He has you committed to memory, by now, knows exactly where to lick, where to suck, when to give you just that slight edge of teeth. He knows how to make you cum, and make you cum hard. But the moment his tongue touches you, it’s like the first time, every time, his tastebuds exploding with your unique flavour.

“Shh, baby,” he whispers into the crease of your thigh when you let out a little whimper, your hips canting towards his mouth. “Gotta be quiet.”

He drinks his fill of you. He chases away every rogue thought in his head — in both your heads — with his tongue, flicks at that little bundle of nerves until your thighs are quaking in his grip.

“Joel,” you gasp out, tugging on his hair slightly. “The water.”

“Right,” he grunts against you, knowing full well that the vibration of his voice sends a zap through you. “Tell me what you want, baby. You wanna cum on my tongue right now, or on my cock in the shower?”

“Shower,” you reply, your chest heaving with breaths. Joel grins, giving you one last lick before he’s moving back up your body, setting your shaky leg back down on the ground. He lets his mouth roam on the way up, nipping at your stomach, your chest, all the way back up to your lips.

The rest of your clothes go quickly, and he holds back the curtain for you to step under the spray. The moan you let out when the hot water hits your skin is nothing short of euphoric, and Joel’s cock twitches at the sound. He’s quick to follow, tugging the curtain back across the rain once you’re both inside. You’re standing directly under the spray, letting the water cascade over you, soaking your hair to your scalp, running in rivulets down your body.

Joel reaches for you, the warmth coating his hands first, moving up his arms as you curl your fingers above his elbows, pulling him forward to share the spray with him. He groans too, when the water hits him, and it’s coupled with a roll of your hips against his, your wet mouth seeking his beneath the water.

Your kisses are sloppy now, both of you growing languid with the heat beating down on you, hitting sore muscles and aching joints in just the right way. You slide your hand down his front, curling your fingers around his cock again, and Joel’s spine prickles. He lets you stroke him once, twice, before he’s grabbing your shoulders and turning you. Slowly, he bends you forward slightly, until your hands are pressed to the tile in front of you, your back arched and your ass pressed against his crotch. 

“There she is,” he murmurs, skimming his palm up your spine, until he can lock his hand in your soaked hair. He rolls his hips now, his other hand curled around your hip, and he slides your feet apart with his, his eyes drawn down to the curve of your ass. He releases your hip to take himself in hand, and draws his hips back, angling just right, the tip of his cock catching on your entrance before he’s slamming forward, filling you to the hilt in one fell swoop.

Your hand smacks against the tile loudly, your voice punched from your lungs, and you go so tight around him for a moment, Joel thinks your cumming already. But then your head turns in his grip, your eyes nailing him in place.

“More.” 

He’s never been one to deny you, and now is no exception. The ache in his bones is forgotten, the only thing he can think about right now is the feel of you around him, the way you arch up, your back pressed to his front, one hand reaching back to tangle in his hair. His hands are everywhere, mapping you out, squeezing every bit of flesh he can get his hands on. And all the while, he drives himself into you, deeper and deeper, turning your head with his grip on your hair and claiming your mouth for his own.

You curl your fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand down between your legs. He finds your clit easily, groaning when he feels how hot and wet you are, not just from the water. You whine as he pinches the bud between his fingers, drawing a tight circle that makes you clench around him.

“C’mon, baby,” he groans into your kiss, nipping at your bottom lip. “I wanna feel it.”

You shudder as you cum, and Joel feels every second of it, his own orgasm not far behind. The water pours over you both, and he just stays where it is, the aftershocks rippling through him, leaving behind that different kind of ache, the good kind.

Sighing, you fit yourself into his arms, angling your bodies so the water doesn’t hit you both in the face. Joel stays buried in you, hips flush with your ass, and you lean your head back on his shoulder, letting him dot kisses along your wet throat.

“Mmm, I needed that,” you murmur, leaning your head against his, rubbing your palms along his arms.

“Me too.” He lets his nose ride the curve of your jaw. “We could stay the night. Sleep in real beds, let me wake you up proper in the morning.” At the mere thought of your spread out on a bed for him, Joel twitches inside you.

But he feels your hesitation, feels it bristle across your skin like goosebumps. “We can’t, Joel. I-I can’t stay here, not knowing that they’re…” You trail off, but Joel nods. You don’t have to say anything more.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmurs, tightening his arms around you.

“I know.”

You spend what remains of the hot water actually getting clean. Joel groans when you lather his hair with shampoo, dragging your nails along his scalp, and he returns the favour. Lavender-scented soap swirls down the drain, and he wants to eat you alive.

Wrapped in towels, standing on the bathmat, Joel knocks his fingers beneath your chin and kisses you soundly. You, the one thing that always manages to keep him grounded, the one constant in this hell you’re traversing.

He can keep going, so long as he has you.

+

You leave Joel to dress in the bedroom, leaving him with one last kiss, raking your hands through his hair. It’s damp enough that it stays in place, slicked back over his skull, and you grin against his mouth. “Handsome.”

You can hear Ellie moving as you reach the bottom of the stairs, and turn towards the dining room to see her standing at the hutch in the corner of the room. One of the drawers is pulled open, and she has Frank’s gun in her hand. Her eyes are wide, literally like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Liv, I wasn’t—”

“I didn’t see anything, kid,” you say, and turn your back. Once you hear the zipper of her bag, you turn around again, handing her a stick of deodorant. “Here.”

“Nice,” she answers, but you see her eyes go wary. “Liv, the gun—”

“What gun?” you repeat, lifting your brow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ellie.”

She catches on, her face softening, and she stashes the deodorant as well. The stairs creak a moment later, and you turn your head to see Joel walk down, dressed in the green plaid you’d picked out.

“Well, don’t you look pretty,” Ellie comments, offering him a grin.

Joel looks at you, and you don’t miss the way his cheeks pinch with pink. “Shut up.”

You reach for Joel’s hand. “Let’s go.”

The three of you head into the garage, locking the front door from the inside before you head out. You know you don’t need to, but something about it makes you feel better. Ellie follows behind you as you walk around to the passenger’s side of the truck, and you don’t miss the way her eyes light up with curiosity.

Joel slides into the driver’s seat, and you nudge her with your elbow. “You wanna sit in the front?”

Her grin is infectious. “Really?”

You nod. “Go for it.”

You take her coat as she opens the door, leaving you to clamber into the backseat, fitting your bags and jackets between your seat and the stack of cans on the other side of the bench seat. Joel glances over his shoulder at you, a question in his eyes, and you just wave him off, reaching for your seatbelt.

In the front seat, Ellie flips the sun visor down and then back up, leaning forward to inspect it closer. You watch as she reaches out the open window, pushing on the side view mirror until it moves.

“First time in a car?” Joel asks, his voice low.

“It’s like a spaceship,” Ellie replies, and you laugh.

“No, it’s like a piece of shit Chevy S10,” your husband grits, and you lean back in your seat, settling against the headrest, “but it’ll get us there. I think. Seatbelt.”

“Hmm?”

Joel stares at the kid for a moment, his eyes cutting to you before he reaches across, grabbing the belt and pulling it across her. “Seatbelt,” he repeats.

Ellie listens, clicking the belt into place. “So cool.”

It just makes you laugh again.

Joel turns the key in the ignition, and you hold your breath before the engine rumbles to life. You watch him lift his hand, adjusting the rearview mirror, and he meets your eyes through it, something unspoken in them, comforting.

We’re gonna be okay.

He shifts the truck into drive, and slowly, it rolls forward, out of the garage and onto the road ahead. Ellie busies herself with the glove box, rummaging through the collection of tapes inside. “Would ya leave it?” Joel grumbles, glancing at her. She opens one of the cases, shaking the tape between her fingers. “Put it back, Ellie.”

“Joel,” you call softly, reaching out to put your hand on his shoulder. He’s tense, but relaxes a little when you dig your fingers in slightly. Ellie pushes the tape into the slot, and a moment later, a familiar song plays over the radio.

And I think it’s gonna hurt me, for a long, long time.

Ellie reaches for the radio, clearly not a fan, but you reach out, grabbing her arm. “Wait. Leave it.”

“Really?”

“Really,” you repeat. “It’s Linda Ronstadt.”

“You know who Linda Ronstadt is?” Joel asks, and Ellie gives him a withering look.

“You know I don’t know who Linda Ronstadt is.”

Joel turns the truck towards the gate, and as he rolls to a stop, he meets your eyes again in the rearview.

One of the last times you were able to get to Lincoln, after Frank got sick, the pair revealed to you an unofficial anniversary of sorts. “I’ve lost track of the years,” Frank told you, sat on the couch with you, leaned against your shoulder, “but what feels like a lifetime ago, on this day Bill helped me out of that hole, and I never left.”

“Just like that, huh?”

He’d chuckled, weakly pushing at your arm. “Not just like that. He cooked me dinner first, played a song on the piano.”

“What song?”

Frank had called for Bill then, and he’d appeared in the living room a moment later, concern on his face. “What? What is it?”

“Play our song?”

And he had. You had tears in your eyes by the end of it.

And I think I’m gonna miss you, for a long, long time.

Joel reaches for the remote on the dash, keying in the gate code once more. Tears crawl up the back of your throat as the fence slides across, opening for you to drive through. Joel glances over his shoulder at you, and you squeeze his shoulder again. “Eh,” Ellie mumbles, tipping her back against the headrest. “It’s better than nothin’.”

Joel pulls the truck through, and you leave Lincoln behind. You turn, looking through the back window as the gate slides shut again.

And I think I’m gonna love you, for a long, long time.

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