Tlou Fanfiction - Tumblr Posts

teacups

pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader rating: mature word count: 2.5k+ summary: Joel and you take a shower after a traumatic event. warnings: srs hurt/comfort. violence/gore. implied attempted sexual assault. trauma. panic attack. joel being too nice. A/N: same reader as the one in bad people and moments, but no need to read. Joel Miller Masterlist

Joel wondered if his luck had finally run out. His hand slid along the slippery kitchen floor as the man on top of him snarled. Joel was pinned in a way where he couldn't get a full breath in. He'd been an idiot, relying on threadbare information passed between smugglers. 

"You know that real nice house outside the wall? Only bout half a mile South? Apparently, it's empty. The guys livin' there got taken care of during a raid. A lot of shit probably left inside. Well hidden. I'll pay you to see what you can find."

Joel hadn't thought it'd be that dangerous. He needed a second pair of hands, and everything had been fine until three of the supposedly dead men had walked in on them, rifling through their shit.

"Fuck. Fuck," Joel hissed between clenched teeth as he attempted to reach for the knife that had been kicked out of his grasp. The man's arm around his throat tightened. 

Joel felt his vision tilt, his body shuddering forward. Everything was fluctuating between spots of bright yellow to deep gray. He wasn't scared for himself, but he was for her. She'd been taken into the next room. He could hear her screaming-

No-she was shrieking. Painful, warbling, animalistic noises that only rang out from people cornered without options. Joel knew them well. He'd caused them. 

His jaw clenched as she wailed, a tempest of sound that destabilized him. It cut him straight to the bone, and his head was galloping a mile a minute: no, no, no, no.

Beneath that mantra was something more explicit. Not her. Not her. Christ-not her. 

He swore he heard her shout his name. Beg: Joel. Joel. Please. 

Okay. Okay, honey. 

He went blind-white with a rage he hadn't felt in a long damn time. Despite his lack of oxygen, he braced his hands and knocked his head back. The guy yelled, loosened just enough that Joel shot forward and snatched the knife. He lifted his arm and flung the blade back, making contact with something squishy that gave under the sharp tip. Eye, he guessed, especially by how loudly the bastard was hollering. Joel whirled around to find him holding his face, blood squeezing through the creases in his knuckles. The handle trembling between fingers.

Joel jumped to his feet, jerking the knife out before driving it forward once, twice, and then a third time. He couldn't waste a second, so he jabbed the vulnerable areas. The man gurgled, frantically attempting to stem the injuries before abruptly collapsing. He’d bleed out.

Joel!

His name rocked through his head, and how much time had he just wasted? What if they'd hurt her past the point he couldn't help her? 

He ran.

***

Joel's hands were pulsing with his own heartbeat, dribbling blood from the violence of using a knife. Stabbing was a tricky business.

Joel.

As he tore through the house, he shouted her name, hoping it would comfort her to know he was coming. He'd been a fool to take her outside the walls of the QZ with only two guns and not sufficient information.

But-fuck-she'd handled herself before. 

He hadn't forgotten the night she'd taken out the three people who had killed her boyfriend. Luke had been a good man. A benevolent leader. When he’d been murdered, Joel hadn't exactly cared since he was focused on his own shit. Death had been normal. Loss was easy. Luke had been another name whispered through the channels of QZ communication.

But he did remember her.

Dolly.

It's what most of the community called her because she had a lovely, rich voice and sang a lot of Dolly Parton to help the kids sleep. 

Then, she went briefly insane. A switch flipped when she found Luke ripped and shredded with his guts out. She'd taken it in stride, seemingly calm and collected, as she wrapped his body and brought him to be burned. She'd then asked around, discovered where the three who'd done it were sleeping, and slaughtered them with a Ka-Bar.

Yes-the QZ's homecoming queen walked out of the woods covered in blood, and no one said a word. It was swept under the rug just like everything else, and who was going to complain about losing three assholes who'd murdered a decent guy for a couple ration cards and supplies?

The community had liked Luke. Respected him. 

Joel, admittedly, found the man foolish. Back then, he hadn't given Luke his attention, but once he started fucking his girlfriend, he mulled over his encounters with the blonde jock like he was studying a map. Who was he to her? How much had she liked him? How had he fucked her, pleasured her, made her smile? 

There was the tiniest piece of Joel that felt jealous. Luke was dead, but he still haunted her just like Joel's ghosts plagued him. 

Selfishly, he wanted her rage-her stunning wrath. The idea of that girl carving three people up to avenge his death was a strange, exhilarating image for him. 

In truth, Joel was deeply fucking attracted to her. Dolly. 

What had she said that night as they sheltered from the rain? The first time they'd had sex, and they both had been blind drunk. 

"He was an idiot.

"He still operated as if the rules hadn't changed. He didn't understand that you have to be a bad person to survive here. He trusted too easily. Far too empathetic for his own good." 

Joel never told her, but those words had lit a fire in him. That had been the moment he’d realized she wasn't just some sweet, pleasant angel who sang to kids. She was all teeth. She was smart-

She was still screaming. 

Joel sprinted, barreling through the final door into the dining room before he abruptly slid to a stop. He was puzzled at the scene before him. He couldn’t figure out what he was seeing.

Blood. Dark, viscous as syrup. It was all over the floors. There was arterial spray covering the pale, peeling wallpaper. Dolly was straddling one of the men, bringing her arms up and down in brutal strikes. Joel could hear the squelch of tissue. The creak of the wooden floor under her knees. She had stopped yelling at some point and now was breathing heavily-grunting low and rough. Across the room was the third guy, very obviously dead. 

Joel moved steadily toward her, calling her name softly. She wasn't hearing him, and he realized her sleeves were drenched in blood up to the shoulder. The silver of the knife continued to disappear into the purple-pink mess of the man's belly. His eyes were open and unseeing, mouth parted in shock.

"Dolly," he tried. Nothing. 

"Sweetheart." Nothing.

Finally, he lunged and seized her wrist. She yelped as the knife flew from her hand and skated across the floor. She struggled in his grip, making wet, hiccuping noises when she attempted to wrench herself from him.

"No," she spat. “No-no-no-”

Carefully, he pulled her off the man and wrapped his arms around her from behind. He shoved the side of his face against hers. She was twitching in his hold, shaking furiously. Her teeth clicked, her body taut with adrenaline. "Focus," he coaxed. "You focus for me, now."

She choked and sputtered. She attempted to crawl away, but Joel had her locked against him. Her heart was vibrating in her chest, thumping with the same fury as a battering ram. Joel scanned the room, fully digesting the utter devastation she had caused. Wordlessly, he turned her toward the paintings hanging on the walls. Gold-framed watercolors. It was something nicer, at least. 

"Look at that," he murmured.

She moaned, pushing against him. 

He waited.

***

"Joel," she gasped as if finally coming up for air. She was bending forward, nearly falling, and he latched to her back possessively.

Protectively. 

"Yeah?" His cheek was still glued to hers, his beard scraping her jaw. Both of them were slick with sweat. If he moved his head just right, he'd be able to kiss her, but it wasn't the time. Initiating something sexual seemed like bad form after whatever had gone down.

"Joel," she repeated, and he cleared his throat. Her thin, weary voice worried him.

"You're alright," he assured her. "They're all dead."

She said nothing, so he let her go lax in his arms. He studied the walls and the chandelier. He tried to count her heartbeats but found it challenging when the room stank of copper and viscera. The real stench of death.

Suddenly, she lurched in his arms.

"Teacups." She pointed to the white cabinet-so dusty it could be gray.

"Yes," he agreed slowly, puzzled. 

"Teacups," she muttered before it bloomed into a laugh that was verging on hysterical. "We should take them home." She turned, fingers caught in the opening of his shirt, tugging down like she was attempting to climb him. "Would be nice, you know? Have something pretty."

He grimaced, readjusting his stance, crouching lower to the point that his knees creaked and pain shot through his thighs. He ignored it and grasped her face, tilting it toward the delicate stream of moonlight. "Look at me," he ordered firmly. "Look at me, honey."

She did, her eyes flickering from the floral-stamped teacups to his face. She appeared gone-blood, tears and tears smeared across her nose and cheeks. Her hair was even wet with it. A disturbing memory infiltrated his head: Sarah's artwork that used to hang on their fridge. Finger-paints. Lots of red and pink. He swallowed before licking his lips. 

"Is this blood all theirs?" He asked, gesturing to her clothes. He was pissed at himself for not checking her sooner, but he figured calming her down had been the most necessary action. 

She lifted her shoulders before dropping them. She had gone somewhere else. Shit.

Gingerly, he maneuvered her into his arms to carry her up the stairs. He needed to clean her and wipe away the remnants of tonight’s mistakes. His mistakes.

***

"Get in the shower," he instructed, but she wasn't moving. He sighed, tenser now. He figured a hot shower would have excited her. A luxury neither of them had had in months, maybe longer. Joel frowned and scraped a hand over his face. 

She'd killed before, so he wasn't sure what this was? She seemed broken. Carefully, he reached for the hem of her jeans only to find her belt gone. He inhaled sharply as he began to scrutinize the rest of her outfit. He'd assumed things had gotten messy in the fray. Her sleeve was torn, and there was swelling along her throat. He took her face into his hands and moved it left to right, right to left. Looking closer, he realized her bra straps had been wrenched loose. Buttons missing on her shirt. When he pulled the collar to the side, he found a distinct bite mark. 

Joel cursed, jerking away instantly. She didn't flinch, only stared up at him sadly. 

He hadn’t meant to. It had been a reflex. A very poor one. He needed to try a softer approach and show her he wasn't fearful of her. He'd just been surprised. 

He reached for her again and began rubbing her shoulders. He found them cold and damp. Clammy. 

"They weren't infected." He was stating it as fact. Hoping.

She bit her lip. 

"Work with me here, baby. They weren't infected, right?"

She swallowed and shook her head. "It wasn't that." She blinked dazedly before continuing. "They tried…" she trailed off, and her eyes began to fill with tears. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, chewing hard as if she couldn't say the rest. She averted her gaze, and Joel felt sick.

"They didn't, Joel," she whispered. "They-they-"

He reacted immediately. 

Wrapping his arms around her, he hauled her body to his chest. "They tried," he confirmed. "They tried, and they didn't get close. You took care of 'em."

She broke.

She began sobbing into his shirt, muffling her mouth against the denim fabric. She was shaking, and Joel felt inadequate-completely lost. Inexplicably, he decided that this would be something Luke would most likely excel at. Kindness. Empathy. Understanding. Joel only felt nauseous. He felt ill with guilt and then had to banish the thought away, disappointed at his pettiness. She needed him, so he cupped the back of her head, using his thumb to draw tiny circles above her ear. 

After a few minutes, he spoke gently. "Do you want to shower?"

She fisted his collar, her back hitching under his hand. She was working herself up again, straying very close to a panic attack. He had to calm her down.

"I'll go in there with you," he offered. "I won't leave."

She stilled, though her shoulders continued to tremble in spurts of aftershocks. He could smell the blood on her. Rusty and metallic. 

"Okay," she agreed.

***

The shower felt good. Better than good. It was narrow and cramped, but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she burrowed into Joel's naked chest, desperate to feel his skin. He had even been willing to get in fully clothed.

"You've been through a lot. I don't want to make you uncomfortable-"

"Shut up, Joel. It's fine."

The room was humid with steam, the air tinged with old blood. The shower floor had turned pink, and Joel had to detangle himself from her to search for wounds. He'd found a slit in her side, just beneath her ribs. Hardly serious, but it had to have stung. With a bar of valuable ivory soap that had been just lying on the shower step, he carefully dragged it over the injury. He crouched low, one hand holding her hip as he cleaned her. 

She said nothing as she watched him, her fingers running through his hair. Somewhere between washing her toes and beneath her breasts, he felt a strange affection for her. This was the most intimate thing they had ever done. The gentleness. The womb-like shower. The dim lights. 

 When he was done, he kissed the wound under her ribs, lips firm against velvety skin. He stood, and she regarded him with tender curiosity, her eyes far more present than they'd been ten minutes ago. He pulled her to him, his cock slightly stiffening simply because she was beautiful and molded into his frame, and his body reacted to her regardless of his intentions.

"I was scared," she confessed as the water sluiced down them, drumming the tile floor. "I was so scared they'd killed you already, and I couldn't do anything."

"I think," he said, lightly teasing. "You managed to do quite a bit."

She huffed, shoving her face into his throat, nose rooting along his jaw. She used enough force that his back hit the wall and his arms automatically rose to cradle her. He said nothing, just let her find him, use him as she needed. She'd been terrified for him even when they'd attempted to harm her. He swallowed thickly as a new wave of anger pulsed in the trenches of his marrow. He hoped one was still breathing downstairs, unable to move. Joel would make it hurt.

He felt her shift in his arms, and as she relaxed, it cooled his temper. She stood on tiptoes, her mouth running along his ear. He shivered and attempted to calm himself down-think of anything else. 

"I did it for me," she whispered. "But-but I also did it for you. I'd kill for you if I had to."

Stunned, he gripped the nape of her neck and forced her face from his throat. He pulled her eyes to his. He wanted to tell her that she'd certainly already done that. He didn't want her to have to, even if it shot heat through his bones.

"You did a hell of a job," he managed to say instead. He was drunk off the shower steam and hot water, and her breath was cool against his mouth. "You did so fuckin' well, sweetheart."

***

Afterward, Joel tucked her into one of the beds. She reached for him, her lids heavy and movements sluggish. He promised her he'd come back after he checked the house. He didn't kiss her, but he thought about it. Things were changing. He shook his head, interning those worries for another day. He swapped his tenderness with something easy. 

Anger.

He found outrage and clawed his fingers into its familiar texture. 

There it was. Fury and revenge were his old, perfect lovers, and he felt them as he stood outside her door. They touched him, caressed him, begging to be used.

For her. 

Joel would do this for her even if it meant nothing. Even if the damage was already done. He needed somewhere to put it. He needed somewhere to place those emotions because he certainly wouldn't take it out on her, fuck her simply for stress relief after what had happened tonight. 

"Joel?" From inside the room, her voice rang small. It distressed him. Bury that, too. 

He rested his forehead against the closed door, sighing. "Yeah?"

"Will you check if they're gone, please?"

"Of course."

***

Silently, he went downstairs, found a hammer from one of the men's belt loops, and then ruined whatever she had left still whole in the dining room. Skulls. Ribs. Bones. He crushed them all, fractured them to bits and pieces for what they had done to him and his. 

press the gas and ride

gif by @riley-keoughs pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader (nicknamed Dolly) word count: 2.4k+ summary: comfort in a car warnings: hurt/comfort. smut. angst. A/N: this takes place a month after teacups, but no need to read. tlou ep 3 spoilers. this is really just trash smut. Joel Miller Masterlist

She watched Joel's expression buckle as he read the letter. His brow furrowed, the muscle in his jaw tensing. She looked away, suddenly feeling intrusive. She'd never come here with Joel. His trips to Bill were semi-frequent, but this was the first time he’d brought her. Of course, he hadn't expected this. He hadn't thought they'd be walking into a dead house. 

The fresh air through the open front door bullied the stench of rotten meat and vegetables. The dinner on the table buzzed with flies. There were starched, ironed napkins folded in triangles with lovely patterns of woodland creatures. She traced the tiny squirrel sewed into the fabric before studying the label on the wine bottle. She was intent on busying herself. She wanted to give Joel space, but he'd been more paranoid than usual since the attack a month ago. 

I don't want you out of my sight.

She hadn't stopped aching. Brutal. Horrible. She'd slaughtered two people, and her mind continued to spin with the memories of it. She was unable to remove the taste of blood from her tongue. She could not unhear the shuddering death rattle or unfeel the way the man beneath her had wriggled and then spasmed like an electrocuted rodent.  

Joel had also seemingly lost his cool that night. After he'd tucked her into bed, she'd heard him smashing up the first floor. In the morning, he'd refused to let her see what he had done and when she fell apart again (in the safety of their QZ apartment), Joel wouldn't have it.

He'd crouched so they could be eye-level, large hand cupping the back of her skull. "They got what they deserved. Nothin' more than that."

He was right, but teaching her head to stop was easier said than done. 

She scanned the dining room before settling on the mahogany cabinet full of delicate china. When she noticed the powder blue and white teacups, she winced. She couldn't escape it. Everything triggered her. She needed to learn to grow up and out of her pain because it wouldn't serve her and certainly not Joel. He bulldozed through everything, and she had to follow suit. 

Joel cleared his throat. He had stopped reading and was staring out the window, far away. She intended to bring him back to shore. 

"They have a car?" she asked, and Joel's eyes swept toward her. Inscrutable. 

"Yeah." He scraped a hand over his mouth. "Yeah."

***

Joel guided her to a guest room, instructing her to clean up and be ready in an hour.

He'd found her a box of women's clothes that she happily dug through. The very idea of new outfits felt celebratory- even if they smelled a bit stale.

The musty fabric reminded her of her grandmother's closets. She'd used to hide behind the wool coats and leather shoes, toes snug in the sea-green carpet. She'd get light-headed on mothballs. 

Her family was gone. A long time gone.

She supposed Joel was the only person who really gave a shit about her well-being. If she died, he’d have the memory of her, at least. She wouldn’t be dust.

After she showered, she yanked on a sundress and sneakers. Joel would undoubtedly say something, but she was past caring. She stared at herself in the mirror, petting the floral-print bodice. She twisted side to side, the breeze from the open window licking between her legs and under her arms. 

She thought of Bill and Frank in the next room and abruptly stopped. Morbid. Strange to be so fine rummaging through a house when two dead men were feet away. Their window was open, too, and she wondered if the sweet brush of cool air had cradled them into the next life. She stepped forward, pressing her ear against the wood. She listened, tapping her fingertips over the wallpaper. 

Silence. She tapped again. Waiting.

"What are you doing?"

She whirled around to find Joel standing in the doorway with a towel around his waist. He'd combed his wet hair back, but a single strand boyishly drifted over his forehead. The scars across his torso gleamed white under the naked afternoon sun.

"Nothing." She shifted her weight, the dress swishing with her. 

He frowned as he scrutinized her outfit. "You can't wear that."

"Because?"

"Because you can't do shit in a dress that short," he replied flatly. 

She put her hands on her hips. "Can I just wear this today? It's-fuck-it's the prettiest thing I've worn since-since I don't know." She averted her eyes, feeling childish at her reasoning.

Because I want to be beautiful for once. I want to look beautiful for you and not covered in grime, blood, and jeans, two sizes too big. 

The expression on Joel's face flickered between irritated and puzzled. She thought he might stride across the room and tear it off her. 

Once in a while, he'd give her shit about things like this-pecking at her for enjoying luxuries that didn't exist anymore. He'd call her a spoiled brat when he really wanted to tick her off. Instinctively, she knew he was doing it, so she'd snap at him, deal him back with a rough hand. 

He always won and she assumed he’d win here, as well.

She expected him to say no, but he took a breath instead. Running his hand across his chest, he massaged an old bullet wound hidden in the sparse hair before turning back into the hall. White flag. 

Then, his voice pitched so low it grazed the floor. "Fine."

***

The letter must have softened him. Repeatedly punched him until he was a tender, pliant piece of meat. He hadn't even twitched when she snatched two guns too massive for her off the basement wall or smuggled a box of wine into the car.

His hands scraped over the steering wheel when he slid into the front seat. He stared blankly at the dash and then the manicured driveway. The grass was just beginning to creep away from the lawn, encroaching onto the asphalt. 

She wasn't sure how to deal with this. He usually seemed to take death in stride. His grief was like a chalky, oversized pill, but he swallowed it nonetheless. He'd made it clear that he didn't even like Bill yet...

"I'm sorry," she offered.

"Take your feet off the dash," he ordered stiffly.

She scowled but did as she was told, figuring she didn't need to push Joel Miller’s buttons again today. She settled into her seat, hands prim in her lap as she waited for him to begin driving.

He didn't. 

He continued to sit silently, seemingly unable to turn the car on. The hand around the steering wheel tightened, his scabbed knuckles flexing and paling beneath the windshield. His nostrils flared, and she suddenly knew:

He was going to crack. He was going to burst down the middle, and he needed her. 

Abruptly, she crawled over the console, gripping him by the lapels of his button-up to balance her weight. The fresh clothes looked good on him-the plaid green shirt fit his broad frame like a glove. She nearly toppled into the door before he grasped her wrist roughly. “What are you-"

"Shh," she murmured, straddling his lap. He stared at her. 

Joel wore his grief in the creases of his face. His pain. His anger. He was beautiful to her. Sexy in a way that couldn't be understood. Older, too. Older than any man she'd ever had before, but it wasn't like she'd had that many men, to begin with. 

"I'm here," she whispered, her thighs squeezing around his own. His mouth parted, exhaling. 

She wondered what undercurrents ran beneath his skin-his armor. What did he think about? How did he see her? 

She lifted herself onto her knees, and Joel's hands automatically seized her hips. Unbuttoning his jeans, she tugged the zipper down, and his eyes found hers. Good. Coyly, she licked her palm before gripping his half-hard cock. She stroked him slow, glancing down to watch the blush-red head disappear in the circle of her fist. He shuddered, hips lifting a few inches off the leather seat. 

She intended to be fast about this. Pleasurable consolation was a language she knew Joel understood. 

“I’m going to fuck you,” she said and he shivered under her touch. He remained silent as the grave though his eyes never left hers. Perhaps, he was struck dumb by her forwardness.

She clutched his shoulder as she braced herself before sinking down and guiding him into the heat of her cunt. She'd worn the sun dress for a reason. 

Joel made a gritty, strangled noise as she took him to the hilt, lowering herself until his thighs were flush with her ass. The band of his jeans grazed her skin, the metal of the zipper catching flesh. His nostrils flared as she tightened, walls spasming because he was always a little too big. 

Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, forcing his face against her chest. He sighed deeply as she rocked forward, his fingers biting into her waist. It could hardly be called a fuck, just her grinding down and him pushing his cock upward until he couldn't claim another centimeter. 

She cradled the back of his skull, rooting her nose around his damp hair that smelled like clover and a scent she recalled from before - something generic and artificial like Irish Spring. 

Finding leverage was proving difficult, but she did her best. She rose up, keeping him halfway inside her before sliding down. Repeat. In her defense, she’d never fucked anyone in a car before.

One of her hands snuck out the open window to grasp the top of the car. It was dusty, and she had this ridiculous worry that maybe someone would crawl into the garage and bite her hand. She ripped it back to cup the side of Joel's face instead. His mouth twitched, his lids heavy like he was drunk and dazed. He didn't even care she had smeared old car dust into his beard. He'd have to shower again. She would, too, and she wanted to laugh at the strange coincidence of paving new roads in their relationship through hot showers. After all, he'd wrenched her away from a panic attack in that house outside Boston. He'd held her in the shower, mouth brushing her ear.

"You did a hell of a job."

"You did so fuckin' well, sweetheart."

She swelled from the memory of Joel's praise. She wanted to pay him back.

"I've got you," she murmured against his temple, nails tracing a line across his scalp through his thick damp grays. "I've got you, Joel."

He nodded-or she thought he did. His gestures were always so vague. Sometimes he'd hold her down and fuck her brains out while telling her how much he wanted to kill her for being stupid and acting recklessly. It would then always end with him possessively clutching her body to his.

You send mixed signals, Joel. 

What?

You said you wanted to kill me, and now you won't let me go.

I never said that. 

She felt him twitch inside her, his mouth dragging across her clavicle before he abruptly shoved the top of her dress down and latched to her nipple. He sucked it, tongue darting over the nub and causing her pussy to clench around his length.

"Sweetheart," he mumbled. 

"I know," she said. 

Their grief sat between them - a weight strung about their ankles, dragging them down to the deepest parts of whatever was left. She knew blips of his pain as he knew hers. He comforted her in the ways he understood, not necessarily with words but with actions. She could do that for him now, remind him that he had her.

She rolled her hips, and he groaned, his breath puffing against her sternum. She snagged him tighter and dug her grip into his skin like she was holding fast to a rock in a riptide. The car was so small, the steering wheel bumping against her lower back, and you could hear everything.

The rustle of fabric. The squelch of her sex and slap of skin. 

Finally, Joel planted his feet and began to drive up into her. Short, fast strokes that hit just right. It almost hurt. It gave her a belly ache, but everything else fell away. The car filled with his low, subdued grunts and her whimpers. 

He secured his arms around her waist, one hand sneaking to the base of her scalp to embed his thumb into the muscle beneath her ear. They were tangled in such a way that it would have looked like anything - they could be devouring each other, feasting on the other's throats as they fucked fast and sad.

Somewhere along the way, Joel tilted his head and demanded her mouth.

He kissed her fiercely, tongue hot and aggressive as it wrestled with hers. Exploring. "Baby," he sighed against her slippery teeth. "Fuck."

Joel, her man of few words, but just the right ones. She still didn't call him anything but his name. Nothing else fit him.

"Shit," she gasped as he delivered a harsh thrust. Stay with me. Stay focused.

Her climax paraded around her belly, kicking up dirt and shouting out toward a faceless crowd. It was turning in circles, unable to find the finish line. He was screwing her tectonic plate deep, but the friction wasn't enough for her to get off. It didn't matter. This was about him. Not her. 

He gripped her hip and shoved her down before spearing up, grinding in slow, determined circles. He left her mouth to find her throat, sucking methodically at her pulse. 

It didn't take too long after that. He grumbled something into her jaw (maybe, Dolly) before his hips stuttered beneath her. She felt him fill her, warmth blooming outward. She'd have to deal with that, but for now, she worshiped him. He lifted his face, flushed from exertion - golden, bright, and devastating as his dark eyes searched hers.

“You’re good,” she praised, pressing her lips to his chin.

When she crawled off his lap, she was sticky between her legs. He huffed, tugging at the edge of her dress as if trying to hide her modesty. 

No one's around here, Joel.

No one. It's you, and it's me. It's us. 

She was sore as fuck, like she'd been smacked in the crotch. Her orgasm was lost somewhere, hanging by a few threads, but she didn't want it. Instead, she craved the longing-the lingering frustration of her missed pleasure. She brushed her hair out of her face and smoothed her dress.

"That was-"

She was hauled back over to him. Their brows bumped, noses jamming together before Joel kissed her hard. When he finally pulled away, he asked, "You feel safe with me?"

"What kind of question-

"You feel safe with me?" he urged, hands seizing her cheeks. She wondered if it had something to do with what had happened at that house a month ago. The teacup house. Or was this because of what had been written in that letter beyond Bill and Frank's goodbyes?

She felt that if she probed, he would splinter. It wasn't her business. She told him the truth. 

Smiling, she placed her hand over his. "Yes," she assured him. "I always feel safe with you."

Joel took a breath, nodding once, before pulling away. He stabbed the keys into the ignition, twisting them north, and the car rumbled to life.

When they left the garage, she watched the walls creep over him again. 

If I leave here tomorrow

Summary: Joel used to know her, before the outbreak. All these years, he told himself she was dead, that she was just a ghost.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: 7.4k

Warnings: smut (piv, fingering, f!receiving oral), canon typical violence, mention of past rape, grief, angst, emotionally unavailable Joel, emotionally unavailable reader, (until they're both not oops), hopeful ending and a lil fluff

A/N: Thank you for reading! As always, I would love to know your thoughts! I'm apparently only capable of writing about loss and grief and trauma these days. Disclaimer: I have not played the video games and this was written before episode three came out. If there are in world inconsistencies, its fanfiction, I'm sure you'll get over it. Let me know if any additional warnings need added.

Like the first bite of sun after winter, like a fox emerging from a den. 

Joel remembers thinking she was entirely feral. 

Before the outbreak. 

She was loud. She couldn’t hold a job down to save her life - hopping from one to the next like it was a game, never still. She ran on luck and caffeine and whatever bit of cash she had. 

Somehow, she was always laughing. Somehow, things always worked out for her.

She was never late on bills, always had food on the table. She was always ready with kindness to spare someone who needed it, and was never one to look away when trouble came knocking or when someone needed help. 

Especially, he hates to admit, when it came to him and his. 

She was resourceful, clever. Knew when to owe people favors and when to be owed favors. 

Chaotic as she was, she was stable where it mattered. And where it mattered - usually it was with him and Sarah. 

She’d baked cupcakes one year, for Sarah’s birthday. It was a year he thought he’d known struggle in, struggling to balance work and home, being a single father to a little girl. 

And then, she’d just kept doing it. She’d baked cupcakes for Sarah every year after that. 

She’d watched Sarah for him more times than he could count, when he was late coming home. 

“There’s always a light on here for her, Joel,” she used to say, holding the screen door open with her hip when he came to collect his daughter. “Anytime.” 

He’d appreciated it because things were always hard and she didn’t have to offer. Tommy couldn’t always be around, they both worked more than they should have. 

She liked folksy country and anti-war music and the sun. She liked books and long drives. 

Any time he stopped over, she’d have a record on the turntable. Bob Dylan and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Fleetwood Mac and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Bruce Springsteen. Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. 

“Your girl needs to know when it's okay to burn her draft card,” she’d say with a laugh. 

Tommy would roll his eyes, and Joel would always say, “Don’t pretend you remember the 70s.” 

She listened to Free Bird so many times, Tommy started calling her Birdie. She’d just closed her eyes and said, “That song was written about me.” That had only concerned him slightly, considering what the song was about. 

Sometimes she’d disappeared for days on end, and scare him just a little. But Joel always knew she’d come home. 

Even if she disappeared, she was always there, somehow, when they needed her to be. 

And - 

Sarah liked her.  

Sarah loved her. 

Sarah had loved sitting on her front porch. Liked baking with her. Liked listening to her wax poetic about 70s rock and the dime paperbacks she picked up in the line at the grocery store. Liked reading with her in the light of the lantern she kept out front, swatting away mosquitoes. 

The big, loud of her stuck out before the outbreak, in a charming, chaotic kind of way.

It sticks out even worse on the other side. 

That big personality that Joel had pretended to be annoyed by, sticks out like a sore fucking thumb.

Mostly, because she’s supposed to be fucking dead. 

It makes sense, maybe, that she’d survived, found a way to survive when she’d always done so badly with fitting into the structure of before. 

Of course, she’d survived.

Of course, eighteen years later, she’d still be alive and kicking. She might even be thriving.

In this world. 

Surviving is a daily struggle for Joel, time passes slowly, agonies linger. 

When she emerges from the treeline, she’s alone. There’s a rifle over her shoulder, and a backpack. It’s like seeing a ghost, and the pit inside his heart, that thing he thought long dead, flutters. 

Against his will, it kicks him in the ribs, sucks the air out of his lungs. 

She only looks at him with a lifted brow, a wry twist of her mouth, like she isn’t surprised at all, and says, “Damn Joel, ya look like shit.” 

He hadn’t known she was the smuggler they were meeting. How could he have? 

Still, it’s like looking into a mirror and seeing another face peering back. 

Joel presses a hand over his face, unable to believe the past could still sneak up on him like this. He sweeps a hand down his face, cups his chin and glances away, up at the blue, clear sky, the swaying tops of the trees.  

The past could still sneak up on him. 

Like this, like her. 

“Shit,” he mutters. 

Tess glances between them, eyebrows raised. “You know each other?” 

“Used to,” she says, unfazed as she crouches down to unzip her pack. “Neighbors. Once.” 

Neighbors. 

They’d been a little closer than that. They’d been a little more than that. 

She’d been like - well, she’d been almost like family. Once. 

The trees sway with a light breeze. It carries the scent of spring, decomposing undergrowth, wet leaf and new life. 

And sage. 

She’d always smelled like sage. 

Tess raises her gun, sharp eyes on her hands digging through the bag. “Relax,” she laughs. “Here.” She tosses a plastic bag across to them, over the pine needles and wet earth. 

It lands at their feet.

Pills. Oxy. 

Way more than they’re used to seeing all at once.

“Holy shit,” Tess mutters and lowers her gun. 

“Go ahead and count ‘em if you’ve gotta.” She zips the pack up, slings it on and leans back against the bark of a tree. “Got all day.” 

Tess stoops to pick up the bag before snapping it open. 

Joel glances back at the ghost standing across from him and doesn’t look away. Casually, as though she hasn’t been dead for years. 

Decades. 

In his mind, she died with Sarah. In his mind, she still lives in a Texas that no longer exists. 

Birdie, he thinks. Finally gone away. 

That’s what he’d always told himself. 

“Calm down,” she grins at him with bared teeth, mistaking the cut of his gaze for something that it’s not.

“I’m not staying, just passin’ through,” she continues, glancing away from Joel, jaw set, brows tucked inward. Her accent is as thick as the last time he’d heard her voice. When she’d shouted from down the street that last morning in normalcy. 

She’d playfully wolf whistled at him from the step of her front porch. 

Hands cupped around her mouth as they drove by. Happy birthday, Miller! You don’t look as old as you could! 

Sarah had laughed, whispered, yeah, dinosaur, under her breath. Tommy had laughed too and waved at her as they drove past her house.

She’d been smoking a cigarette, a habit she’d recently taken up again, leaning against her porch railing. 

And Joel remembers suddenly how she’d stopped smoking the first time. Because of Sarah. When she started watching Sarah when she was still little, still practically a baby. 

She hadn’t just stopped smoking when Sarah was around, but stopped smoking period. 

She’d been so goddamned loud and beautiful and -

He hadn’t seen her after that, but with all the neighbors turning right around him, he hadn’t even considered the possibility of her survival. He hadn’t seen her on the street that night, just the couple across the way and next door. 

He hasn’t thought about that part of that day in a long time, too busy replaying that morning’s breakfast, the failed pancakes, and that day’s evening, a movie with his girl and no cake. 

She looks older, but not old, not like him. She’d been younger than him then too, not by much, and certainly not so young that he felt bad about fucking her. About seeing her and wanting her more than he should have. 

The mere sight of her, here, is wrong. She’s supposed to be back there, in the past, standing on the porch while a record played inside, ribbing him with Tommy when they invited her over for dinner, offering poorly wrapped presents to Sarah every Christmas morning they knew her. 

“What do you mean you’re just passin’ through?” He has to look away from her, diverting his gaze up to the tops of the trees again, the blue of the sky. He doesn’t have to be looking at her to know she’s rolling her eyes at him. 

He feels Tess’s gaze cut to him, sharp as a knife. 

“I mean exactly what I damn well said, Joel.” Something shuffles, and his head whips down, eyes fastened on her, gun already raised. She has her backpack twisted around her front, digging through one of the pockets. She doesn’t seem fazed, doesn’t even glance up. 

Her hands are bruised, bloody, cracked skin showing lines of red beneath. Her lip is split too. 

He doesn’t like the flicker of concern it drags up out of him, the feeling kicking and screaming all the way up the back of his throat. 

It’s hard to look at her, not just because of the split lip and bruised knuckles, but because she’s not supposed to be there. 

She’s not supposed to be there.

He wishes viciously, suddenly, that she were dead. 

Dead is easier. 

Dead means she never lived through the last eighteen years. 

It means that protective, preserving instinct inside him, of him and his, rises up. 

“Jesus, calm down, just adjustin’ some stuff.” She grouses. “If I was gonna shoot you I woulda done it by now.” 

Joel watches her, the twist of muscle in her arms, the shape of her hips beneath the jeans she wears, the cut of her collarbone under the frayed hem of her t-shirt. 

“Listen, if I knew I’d be meeting you,” she snaps suddenly, hard gaze meeting his, “I wouldn’t have fuckin’ come. Trust me on that. I don’t like seeing the past either. I don’t wanna see you either.”

That’s not what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t correct her.  

Joel lowers the gun, taking the bag of pills from Tess when she offers it to him to inspect. “Gotta be kidding me. Where’d you get this much?” He’s never seen this much of it at once. Tiny bags, tiny amounts, that’s what he’s used to. 

“I wouldn’t worry about that.” She crosses her arms over her chest and juts a hip out. “Want it or not?” She kicks up one brow.

“You came here all the way from Atlanta by yourself?” Tess asks. 

“No,” she answers simply, not clarifying whether she didn’t come from Atlanta, or if she isn't alone. “You want ‘em or not?” She asks again. 

She smiles at them and it's like looking into the teeth of a wild animal. 

She’s always been feral though, he thinks again. 

And he always liked the slightly sharp cut of her.  

Things he thought had died a long time ago come swirling back, fingers of feelings crushed beneath the cold boot of reality rear back to life. 

She’s exactly what he remembers, almost exactly how he remembers her. 

Birdie. 

Like the fox out of a den. 

She tilts her head, blinking long and slow at him.

“It hasn’t been so bad,” She answers a question that he doesn’t ask, her eyes boring into his. “Lotta scary stuff out there,” she shrugs. “But a lotta good too.” 

Joel scoffs.

“You wanna believe the world is so bad, huh?” She shakes her head, and holds out a hand when Tess steps forward with what she’d agreed to trade the Oxy for. 

“Look around you,” he snaps, waving a hand at the space around them, though it's peaceful at that moment. The wind is light, spring is in the air, and the dead apparently rise in ways that aren’t always bad. “What good is there left?” 

She shakes her head. “Not everywhere is here. And not everyone is you, Joel.” 

Joel doesn’t answer her, chest heaving with emotions he wishes the boot of the world would stomp back down again. 

She unwraps the cloth of the package Tess handed her, a soft expression shifting over her face at the sight. 

It’s a book, flat and thin. 

It’s fucking Goodnight Moon.

She’d just traded a fortune for a children’s book.

They’d just grifted her. She’s not stupid. She knows, she just doesn’t care.  

The expression on her face makes her look much younger. “See y’all around,” she says, not looking back as she tucks the book away and disappears into the treeline behind her. 

She’s gone but the memories she leaves in her wake don’t dissolve. 

Joel dreams of her. After that. 

His subconscious is subsumed by his past not being as dead as he thought it was. The keys to his humanity dangling in front of his face, within reach. 

He dreams. 

Of that fatal night. That last morning. That first brutal day in his cold new reality. 

Happy Birthday, Miller! 

He hasn’t thought about that part of that day in years, in decades. The memories of that morning had been eaten away at, consumed by what came later. He’s almost surprised the memories are still there, cupped between his ribs, stuffed back in the dark corners of his spine that he can’t reach himself. 

He dreams of her and Sarah pressed side by side on the couch, a picture book opened on their laps, tiny fingers tracing pictures and letters. They’d had a favorite book, one with a hidden mouse on each page. 

Sarah had liked to find the mouse, read each word slowly. And Birdie only laughed when Sarah pretended not to be able to find the mouse, despite the damn thing never moving, always in the same place on each page. 

He dreams of the meals left on the counter in his kitchen, a little voice telling him we made it together!

He dreams of the days she was gone, having to reassure Sarah, yes, she will come home. He dreams of the music on her porch, in the kitchen. 

Joel dreams of other nights too. 

The first night they fucked, the wet push of her bottom lip, the graze of her teeth against the flesh after she smiled at him and glanced at his mouth, lashes soft around her eyes. 

It had been one of those rare nights he was alone. Sarah was at a friend’s place, no parental responsibilities. He should have been asleep, catching up on something any parent knew to be elusive. 

Should have been. 

But he wasn’t, couldn’t. 

So, a cold beer on Birdie’s front porch sounded good. 

He dreams of the walk across the road, right up onto her porch where he knew he’d find her, feet up on the railing, a record spinning on so low he almost couldn’t hear it over the crickets and cicadas. 

He can’t remember, not now, what they’d talked about, how exactly they’d gone from her front porch to her bedroom. But he knows a Cash song had been playing.  

Joel just knows he had. He’d followed her, through the dark. To her bedroom. 

Her air conditioning was busted which was why she’d been on the porch in the first place so late at night. 

He remembers her being warm. The soft channel of her cunt hot. 

“Jesus, sweetheart,” he’d murmured into her damp skin. “You feel like fire.” 

He remembers the way she’d tasted, the way her belly clenched under his hands, the rise and fall of her ribs beneath his fingers, her hitched breath when he’d clutched at her sides, dug into her flesh like he could have pressed his fingers right through her ribcage, between the slats of her ribs, into the meat of her. 

She hadn’t held it against him when he left before she woke up. 

He’d had to go, to pick up Sarah from the friend’s house. But he’d wrestled with it, whether to wake her or let her go on sleeping. He’d settled for kissing her forehead, and leaving her be. 

When he wakes from that dream, he wishes she was dead for the second time. It’s only a distraction, what she’s caused. 

Weeks later, she’s in the QZ.

Another drop off, this time inside the walls. He doesn’t know what she smuggled in, what she’s trading. It doesn’t matter. It matters that she’s there. 

There’s a girl with her, too similar in coloring and size not to be her daughter. 

Joel doesn’t mean to approach them the way he does, doesn’t mean to grip her by her upper arm and drag her into a nearby alley. Her daughter is smart enough not to make any noise when she follows. 

“What are you doin’ here? I thought you weren’t hanging around.” His eyes cut to the girl. She looks eighteen, maybe younger or older. “Why would you come back here?” 

She shakes his arm off and leans back into the brick of the alleyway. “We had to circle back. There’s more here for us.” 

“More of what?” 

“Books.” 

Joel stares at her. 

“And music. CDs mainly. Somebody’s got ‘em.” 

Her daughter moves closer to her side, hand hovering over the knife at her side. He’s forced to look at the daughter then, really look at her, the shape of her face and eyes. They look similar enough, but Joel has to blink away the features that layer over hers. 

He tells himself that he doesn’t see himself in her, that he doesn’t see Sarah in her. 

She lies a hand on her daughter’s arm. “It’s okay. Joel’s an old friend.” Her daughter lowers her arm, relaxes into an easier pose but doesn’t take her eyes off him. 

Good, she’d been taught well.

“Joel, my daughter Daisy. Daisy, Joel.” 

Joel doesn't acknowledge the introduction and neither does she. “You should go. If you aren’t stuck here, you don’t wanna be.” 

“I came to collect,” she says, fingers still circled around her daughter's wrist. “There’s someone here that has a book I need.” 

“Need?” He rumbles. “Really? Need?” 

“Lotta books were destroyed. Fire. Neglect. Water damage.  More is lost every year. Music too. And that needs electricity, batteries.” She shrugs. “Some people will pay a lot for that.” 

Joel knew she was a smuggler, that was obvious. This he hadn’t expected.

People traded in necessities, food, drugs, contraband - not this. 

“Like you?” 

“Like me. It’s worth it.” 

He doesn’t see how, not when she had to risk so much for - all for sound and paper. 

“Building a fuckin’ library or somethin’?” 

She lifts a brow, nudges her daughter toward the street with her knee and a jerk of her chin. There’s a new bruise on her jaw, discolored skin disappearing into the top of her shirt. “So what if I am? Just don’t look too closely. Just look away.” 

They’re gone in second, disappearing into the crowd. 

Joel feels the worry, the care, he’s tried to tramp down, rise back up, bite into his lungs with sharp teeth. 

Just look away. 

Right. 

Joel sees her every couple weeks after that. 

For some reason, she sticks close to Boston, comes into the QZ every so often. 

She isn’t stupid, must know the risks of sticking around the QZ. But maybe she’s finished running around. 

“Daisy is moving on,” she says when Joel passes her the book she’d been looking for. He watches her pull back the cloth and inspect the spine of it. He’s still not sure if it's her daughter’s real name, or something she’d made up and given to him that day he dragged them into an alleyway. 

He’d spent too much time looking for the book. Denies that the smile it tugs her mouth into does anything for him. “Movin’ on? Without you?” 

“She’s that age. Needs to go on by herself,” she shrugs. “We’ll come back together if we need to. She knows how to find me. Knows how to handle herself. And I’m tired.” She rewraps the book - a banged up edition of something called American Gods. 

Joel watches her hands, the shake in them. She looks drawn. Tired. 

Something old and long dead makes him say, “You hungry?”

“Almost always,” she answers without hesitation.

When she first moved in down the street from him, all those years ago, they’d said almost the same thing. She’d been getting her mail, and he and Tommy had been barbequing. It had been the neighborly thing to do, to invite her over. 

If she remembers, she doesn’t show it. She follows him without a word, lets Joel guide her with a hand at the small of her back. 

She sits at the kitchen table, relaxes, but doesn’t talk, like its her home and she’s always been there. 

She used to talk, she used to talk a lot. 

He says as much to her. 

“Yeah,” she answers. “And you still don’t.” Her nails drum on the wooden table. The first time she’d had dinner with him, after that impromptu barbeque, with all of them, his little family, they’d had pizza. It wasn’t good pizza but it was better than what he sits in front of her now. 

It occurs to him then, that she’s never asked about Sarah. 

Not once, in all these months. 

She knows him well enough to know that if Sarah wasn’t there with him, something must have happened to her. That if she were alive, she’d still be with him, and he’d be different.

He wonders if she grieved them, him and Sarah and even Tommy. If she looked for them in the days after the outbreak. 

Joel hadn’t looked for her, there wasn’t time, and he hadn’t thought of it, not with the new wash of grief in him, the loss of his whole world. He’d only thought of her once, when they drove back down the street past her dark house. 

If she’s grieving all over again, she doesn’t show it. There’d been a closeness between her and Sarah that only existed between a mother figure and daughter. 

It reminds him of her hand on Daisy’s arm in the alleyway. 

Daisy, who kind of looks like him, who looks mostly like her. 

“Is your girl okay?”

She glances up and nods once, slowly, not meeting his eyes. “Fine. She’s smart, resourceful.” 

“How old is she?” He ventures, not sure he wants to know. 

She shrugs, “Eighteen, about.” 

Joel doesn’t even have to do the math on that one. It’s been nineteen years, about, since the outbreak. He figures in the time she would have been pregnant, and the reality of a situation falls into place in his mind. 

“Is she mine?” He asks, voice gruff. 

Her head jerks up from the plate in front of her, eyes flat and unamused. “Are you fuckin’ serious Joel?” 

“Is she? Timing’s right.” 

They’d fucked a few days before the outbreak. An early birthday present, she’d said then. There’d been a lot of sun that day, warm spears of late September heat. She’d smiled into his skin, promised he wasn’t old even if she teased him about it. He’d kissed her, thought about how things could be settled like that forever between them if she just let it.

She scoffs, “Fuck off.”

“I’m serious,” he growls. “Is she?” 

“What would it change, Joel?” she snarls suddenly. “I wish she was, but she’s not.” 

He doesn’t pause to think on that, on how she wishes Daisy was his. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me-,” 

“She’s not,” she slams down the fork in her hand, the dishware rattling on the table. “She’s not, Joel.” 

Joel stares at her for a long moment, unrelenting and hard. He doesn’t believe her. 

“Jesus,” she mutters, running her fingers over her face and down the side of her neck, squeezing her eyes shut. “Jesus, she’s…Joel. I was raped. Okay? A month after the outbreak. Thought I could trust this fucker -,” her rage surfaces before she takes a breath and glances up at him. “It doesn't matter. I was raped. Next month, I missed my period. I wish she was yours but she’s not.” She shakes her head and looks down, brows pulling together, “She’s not.”  

He stares at her, reaches out and tips her face up. 

Rage, inhuman in its intensity crawls up the back of his throat, lights a holy fire he only feels when him and his are in trouble. It’s a years’ dead wound, a decades’ old trauma. It was twenty years ago. “Who?” 

She laughs, low and bitter, but doesn’t look away. “I was lookin’ for you, y’know.” He tries not to show how that guts him. “Or Tommy, I dunno. That fuck from the gas station down the road? We were gonna head north together, didn’t know what else to do. Anyways. It happened. He’s dead.” 

“Mm.” He presses his thumb to the center of her chin. He doesn’t want to release her just yet. He strokes a thumb over her cheek, shifts to cup her face between his palms, fingers rubbing slowly against the side of her neck, the space behind her ears. He traces over her jaw slowly with the pads of his thumbs. “Are you sure?” 

“Stabbed him through the fuckin’ throat so if he’s not we got bigger problems.” 

“You did?” He’s not surprised. 

“First one, for me. Not counting the infected. You think I’d let him walk away after that?” 

No. He knows she wouldn’t. “Atta girl,” he releases her gently, picks up his fork. “You did good with her. With Daisy.”

It had been hard, those first years. He can’t imagine it - the added stress of pregnancy, a baby. Going through it alone, pregnant and then with a child. A baby, a toddler, a child, who didn’t understand the world, the need to be quiet, the need to hunt or be hunted. 

She’s always been strong, but he wishes she didn’t have to be that strong. 

“What would you do? If I said he was still alive?” 

He remembers thinking once that she reminded him of summer. Beautiful, warm, wild - brutal in excess, harsh enough to kill if he didn’t watch himself, if she was crossed. There’s that brutality in her eyes now, she wants to know that he’d do something about it. Despite the years and the distance, the improbability of ever finding that man again. “He’d get a knife through his throat.” 

There’s a gleam in her eyes, a sparkle that glitters as her brow quirks and she resumes eating.

Joel follows suit, quiet again.

“You used to listen to them.” 

She taps her nails along the edges of the tape case. “Lynyrd Skynyrd,” she smiles. “Yeah I did.” 

Her favorite. It’s her favorite, but he doesn’t say that. 

“You already got it, don’t you?” He drops into the seat next to her when she sits down at the table.

“Yeah,” she says, “But mine skips. The tape is fucked up.” She opens her backpack, pulls out a walkman. “Yours might not be.” 

She sticks the headphones on, stuffs the tape into the player, and slams her finger against the play button. For a moment, her eyes flutter closed, and Joel is back on her porch, watching her from the front step, head tilted back in the sun while a record player crooned away. 

Fleetwood Mac. Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Beastie Boys. Pink Floyd. 

“Is it?” He asks.

“What?” Her eyes flicker open.

“Skipping.” 

“No,” she takes the headphones off and offers them to him. “Careful now, I gotta conserve the batteries.” 

Joel takes a moment to listen to a few verses of a song he listened to probably thousands of times with you, hundreds of minutes. All nine damn minutes of that song, over and over. 

“What do I owe ya for it?” She asks. 

“Nothin’.” 

“Seriously,” she tilts her head at him. “C’mon. Can’t be outta the goodness of your heart. These aren’t easy to come by. I should know.” 

Joel gives a tight shake of his head. “It’s really on me. Wouldn’t be able to play it anyways. Only got the radio. Y’know how that goes.” 

“Sure,” she nods, eyes cutting into him. She tucks the walkman and the tape into her backpack. “Am I makin’ you soft or something, Miller?” 

She means it as a joke, but Tess had only argued with him the day before about it. That he loses his head around her, that she reminds him of who he used to be.

It pisses him off, that she’s right. 

The tape is enough evidence of that. It took him forever to find, cost him too much.

A distraction, a liability, a softness, that his world does not allow for. 

He stands, rounds the table, leans down over her. She looks up, eyelids lowered and gaze calm. Joel anchors one hand to the back of her chair. He doesn’t answer her question. 

She has lines by her eyes, gray is just starting to creep into her hairline. Like it's taken her a long time to age. She tilts her head up, not off put by the sudden movement, the closeness. 

“Sorry.” 

“What for?” 

“Makin’ you remember. I should just move on. Stop comin’ back.” 

He doesn’t know where she goes when she leaves the QZ, when she disappears for weeks, sometimes months. She has a home, a place, something clearly closer to normal, to before, than here. 

“Yeah,” he says. “You should.” 

Before he can think better of it, he leans down and kisses her. 

Her lips part beneath his, tongue readily meeting his. 

It’s not a gentle kiss, not by any stretch of the imagination. 

But she only moans when he jerks her up from the chair, pushes her back into the nearest wall.

Joel presses a hand to the nape of her neck, and slips his tongue into her mouth. She moans into him, fingers scrabbling for purchase against his sides, tangling roughly into his jacket. 

She tips her head back when he pulls away from her mouth. Her skin is like lava, warm like summer, like sun. The past. Like a warm night and a busted air conditioner. 

He presses the edge of his teeth into her throat, tongue laving over the spot. “C’mon,” he whispers against her, mouth moving down toward her collar. Her head lolls back, eyes fluttering closed. 

She hooks her fingers into the loops of his jeans, tugs him closer to her. His thigh falls between hers, and she digs her nails into his waist, fire hot hands fitted beneath his shirt, sliding over his ribs, his stomach. 

Her touch isn’t gentle. He knows if he looks, he’ll find crescents marking his skin, maybe bruises too. 

Her teeth snag against his bottom lip. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, jerking back. 

“You gonna fuck me?” 

“Not yet, sweetheart.” 

She crushed between him and the wall. Her lungs heave in tight little breaths. 

She smells like the breath of the woods, a little like that sage he knows, though he can’t see how that’s possible. Layered beneath that, the scent of her want, the need that buzzes on the surface of her skin. 

Maybe she didn’t think about him all those years, but she certainly never forgot him. Her body folds into his, her other hand curling around his shoulder and digging into his hair. 

Joel hisses when she tugs on the strands, nails raking along his scalp. He fumbles with the button of her jeans, but finds her bare when he shoves his hand between her legs. 

She’s already wet, slick with heat.

It’s unceremonious, the way he shoves his fingers between the lips of her cunt. She buries her head against his shoulder, biting back a whine. “Lemme in honey,” he whispers, winding his free arm around her waist. 

She hikes one knee up against his hip, thighs parting for him. He slips the pad of his middle finger against her clit before thrusting two fingers inside her. A startled gasp echoes around the room, the sound of her wet. His cock strains against his jeans, eager for her, the clasp of her pussy. 

She shifts the hand against his waist to the outline of his dick, teasingly running the pads of her fingers along him. 

The walls of her pussy are soft, the sheath of her warmth clenching around him. “Gonna come for me like this, sweetheart?” 

Her hips buck forward, his fingers sliding deeper inside her with the movement. “Don’t be a fuckin’ tease, Joel-,” He presses his thumb against her clit and her voice clips off in an agonized moan. 

“Mm, you asked for it.” 

He fucks her hard, fast, the squelch of her wet cunt taking his fingers the only sound in the room. She breathes his name out, tugs at his hair, rubs his cock through the thick material of his jeans, but he doesn’t feel it, focused on the way she sucks him in, the press of her breath against his cheek, the damp feel of his skin against his. 

He feels it when she comes, when her cunt clamps down around his fingers and she shakes around him, head thrown back. 

Joel doesn’t give her a moment to breathe, to catch her breath. 

He has to have her, has to feel her around him. 

On watery legs she follows his insistent hand, lets herself be pushed face down on the couch. “Hold on,” she pants, not looking at him. “Christ, Joel.” She shoves his hand away, chest heaving, so she can take off her jeans. This time, she gets her knees under her, positions her thighs wider. 

Joel slides a hand down her spine, rests his hand at the back of her neck. He takes only a second to look at her cunt, the wet glistening strands of her release between the lips of her pussy. 

A thought breaks through the need, a reminder of what she’d been through, but when her hand reaches back for him and pulls him closer, pleas on her lips, he forgets it. She looks back at him, cheek pressed to the sofa. Her eyes are hazy, lids lowered to half mast. 

Joel ignores the flutter of feeling the look in her eyes inspires. 

He frees his aching cock from his jeans and sinks into her warmth, the fit is tight. She feels just like he remembers. She must run hotter than most people, the warmth of her so molten it almost burns.

Summer, he thinks as he presses one hand to the back of her neck, the other traveling to her waist, holding her flush against him. She still reminds him of summer. 

He knocks the thought away, irritated by it. 

Annoyed with the feeling attached to that old sentiment. 

Her fingers clench into fists, when he pulls back and slams into her again. She keens, voice muffled by the cushion she buries her face into. Joel can’t look at her, focuses on the tug of pleasure wrapping around his spine, the familiar way her body feels against his. She bites down the moan that tries to wriggle past her clenched teeth, moving with the press of him against her. 

Joel fits himself against her back, laces their fingers together for just a second before he releases her again and presses a demanding hand to her cheek. She turns her face into his, kisses him hard with tongue and teeth. 

“Joel-,” 

“I know,” he whispers, pressing his other hand against her soaked cunt. “C’mon.” 

She clenches hard around him, her eyes fluttering closed. Joel thrusts hard, sheathes himself inside her and stills, the aftershocks of her orgasm threatening to bring to him his own.  

“C’mere, c’mere,” he hears himself muttering, pulling away and turning her over, tugging her down the couch. “Fuck, c’mere.” 

He goes to his knees on the floor, joints protesting all the way down. Fingers dig into her plush skin, divoting the muscle, when he covers her cunt with his mouth. 

She whines and squirms, his name on her lips, repeated over and over. Her fingers dig into his hair, tugging hard. He moans into her, the taste of her like sin, musky and slightly sweet. 

“I can’t,” she whispers, one hand flying to grip behind her head, scrabbling at nothing, at anything to latch onto. “Fuck, I can’t-,” 

“Yeah,” he lifts himself just far enough away for her wet heat to whisper. “Yeah, ya can.” 

He closes his eyes, unable to look at her, tongue circling her clenching hole, nose bumping against her clit. He fists one hand around his cock, the ache impossible to ignore. He’s going to fucking come in his own hand, face buried between her thighs. 

She pants out his name again, “Joel, please-,” Her fingers push at his head, then tug him closer, pain radiating from his roots. 

Joel slips his other hand beneath her shirt, broad palm resting flat against her belly, the pulsing breath sliding through her lungs vibrating against his fingers. He slides his hand high, to rest between her breasts. He still wants to sink his fingers into her, all these years later, wants to feel the air in her lungs with his own hands. 

When one of her hands presses down on his, holding it against her chest, he sweeps his tongue up through her pussy, seals his mouth around her clit and sucks. 

She goes still, a silent cry frozen in her mouth, back arching away from the sofa. He blinks up at the sight, twists his wrist along his cock and comes hard, eyes fastened on the ecstasy pulled across her face. 

He allows himself to briefly press his forehead to the inside of her thigh, breathing her in deeply, the scent of her skin and arousal, before he staggers to his feet. She’s still shivering, still trembling, but he can’t make himself stay with her. 

Joel doesn’t look at her when he zips himself up and stumbles to the bathroom. 

He can’t decide if it's a mistake, twitching fingers gripping the sides of the sink for a few long minutes as his breathing settles and evens out. Too long, he spends too much time standing alone in the bathroom, trying to crush the familiarity the intimacy has just brought him. 

No time at all might have passed. He might as well still be in Birdie’s bathroom, twenty years ago, still thinking he might have a chance with her. 

He decides not to try to categorize what just happened, or compartmentalize it. He’s a fucking asshole, though, for leaving her shivering half-naked on the couch. 

Joel finds a spare cloth and wets it, intending to bring it back to her to clean up, but when he emerges from the bathroom, she’s already gone. 

The sofa is still warm from her body, but he doesn’t try to go after her. 

It’s a sharp contrast to the first time they’d had sex. The way he’d left her before she woke, but she doesn’t know he’d struggled with it, considered calling Tommy and asking him to pick Sarah up. She doesn’t know about the kiss he’d pressed to her forehead. 

He doesn’t see her after that. Not for a long time. 

Daisy meets with him and Tess, once. 

But that’s it.

It’s winter again, when he finally sees her. 

She’s waiting for him, and doesn’t say anything when she sees him. 

Joel stops, watches her shift from foot to foot on dirty paving stones. “Got somethin’ for you.” 

He doesn’t move, wary of her. 

She just rolls her eyes and steps closer, digging in her bag when she swings it around to her front. This time, unlike the first, he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t reach for his gun. 

“Here,” she pulls out a CD. “Noticed you had a CD player on the radio.” 

Joel takes it from her, flips it around in his hands. It’s blank, so it's clear she’s burned songs onto it somehow. 

“Did you make me a mixtape?” 

“Don’t make me regret it,” she says, arms above her head, clasped hands pressed to her forehead, eyes squeezed closed. 

He chuckles, just a little. “C’mon,” he kicks at her ankle and walks away. 

It takes a second, but she follows. 

This time, when he fucks her, its not so distant. He holds onto her, hard, his grip tight. Fingers that will leave bruises on her skin. He leaves part of himself with her, the part he thought dead and long buried. 

He talks her through it, mouth against her ear, her legs wrapped around his hips. 

“That’s it, beautiful, just like tha’,” he coaxes, forehead against hers. 

She whimpers and clings to him, the knot of her fingers on his skin like burning coals, falling stars. 

Joel tugs her closer after, doesn’t move. His heart races. It feels strange, after all these years, this kind of intimacy. He does better with it this time. 

If it feels strange to her, if there’s been anyone else she’s done this with over the years, she doesn’t mention it. 

“Remember how Tommy called you Birdie?” He asks, her burning fingers tracing over his chest, the cut of his collarbone. “Because of that song?” 

“No,” she touches his mouth. “I remember how you used to, though.” 

“You know,” she starts one morning, her back turned to him. She’s wearing his shirt and nothing else. Joel hasn’t seen her in a month. “Sarah told me she was gonna get you that watch fixed.” 

She turns from the counter, settles at the table, one leg folded beneath her. “For your birthday.”

He glances down at the broken watch on his wrist. Joel knows it's as close as she’ll come to actually asking about her.

“She did,” he says, nodding. “It was.” 

“Uh huh,” she nods. “Asked me about it. Told her about a shop downtown that worked on clocks and watches.” 

Joel closes his eyes, flashes of that evening flashing through his mind. The forgotten birthday cake, the movie, the watch, Tommy’s call. The end. 

“She didn’t make it,” she says suddenly.   

“No.”

She takes a stuttering breath and stands, paces away from him. Joel’s only a little surprised by her reaction. 

He’d supposed - he’d figured - she’d already put it together, that Sarah hadn’t survived. It’s different to know for sure, to know for certain, he supposes. 

She’d spent a lot of time with Sarah, baked cupcakes and bought Christmas gifts even when she didn’t have any money to really be spending. She’d babysat Sarah when she was still a toddler. 

Many nights, he’d come home to the image of her and Sarah together on the couch, book in hand. And when she’d gotten older, music. She’d shared all kinds of music with her, and indulged the new artists Sarah liked. 

Goodnight Moon, he remembers suddenly. It was fucking Goodnight Moon, the book with the mouse they looked for on each page. 

That book that she traded a fortune of Oxy for. It had been the one she read with Sarah when she was still small. 

She turns back suddenly, eyes rimmed red. “I knew. I mean, fuck, of course, I knew. Tellin' myself maybe she was with Tommy or somethin' but-,” 

“I know,” he rumbles. “I know, honey.” 

“I didn’t wanna know what happened to you either, y’know,” she shakes her head, sits close to him. “I told myself you died. Both of you.” She nods. “For a long time. I couldn’t think of it any other way.” 

He nods, inches his hand closer to hers, untangles them and folds one between his. Joel shifts so he can look at her head on, smooth his free hand against her chin and cheek.

There’s nothing to really say about it, and so he doesn’t say anything. “Why’d ya want Goodnight Moon so bad?” He asks instead. 

Her eyes shine, “Me and Sarah always looked for the mouse when you came home late. I still had it when…I took it with me, that night. Read it the same way with Daisy, ‘til we lost it. I needed to have it again. Been lookin’ a long time.” 

So, maybe it was worth that Oxy. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Me too.”

Later that night, when she’s asleep in his bed, he plays the CD you gave him weeks ago. 

The first song isn’t Free Bird. He figures that means you’re sticking around. 

💞 Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

I am very new to this blog, so I’m not sure if anyone will see this but an anonymous on @joelscruff page got me curious…

I am very new to this blog, so I’m not sure if anyone will see this but an anonymous on @joelscruff page got me curious…

please tell me im not the only one who thinks marlene is so fine

AHHHHHHHHHH I JUST FINISHED IT ITS SO FUCKING GOOD THE CLIFFHANGER HOW COULD YOU?!

Apothecary - Chapter Two

joel miller x witchy!reader

series masterlist

everyone's got something to say about her, and Joel doesn't know what to make of it. when he returns the favor he owes her, he tries to get some answers up in the mountains and away from the wagging tongues of Jackson.

warnings | 18+ angst, mentions of death, spooky-ooky vibes, people being superstitious dickheads

a/n | thank you all for the love on the first part of this series! i just got so excited i couldn't help but write the second part :) keep letting me know what you think, my inbox is always open and i love to hear from you!

.................................

“My son had a cough since he was two years old. She cured it with whatever she keeps bubbling on that stove of hers.”

“I had a rash that just wouldn’t go away. She gave me a balm that cleared it right up. A godsend, really.”

“Wouldn’t be alive today if she hadn’t nursed me back to health with all those herbs and plants she tends to.” 

“She talks to animals. Calmed a bucking colt with a whisper– I saw it myself!”

“I heard that infected don’t even notice her. Just walk right past her. That ain’t human, if you ask me.”

“That cat of hers spies on people and brings all their secrets back to her. You can’t tell me that’s a normal cat, not with the way it stares at folks.”

“Some of the women say they’ve seen her out in the middle of the night, dancing naked in her backyard whenever it’s a full moon.”

“I don’t know about dancing naked, but I have seen some strange lights coming from her shop on my way home from the Tipsy Bison. Lord knows what she gets up to in there.”

“She curses men. Lures them up into the mountains and puts them under her spell. But they always end up dead.”

“Dead?”

“As a doornail. It ain’t a coincidence that any man that crosses paths with her seems to wind up with one really unlucky patrol shift. Luck’s got nothing to do with it, lemme tell you.” 

Even though Tommy told him to forget about it, Joel’s been doing a bit of recon, asking people around town about her, and every new anecdote only further confuses him. It seems like everyone’s got some sort of opinion about the resident witch.

It has shocked him, really, how openly folks call her that. Even the ones that speak highly of her. He had asked Ellie about what she had heard one day after she came home from her classes at the community school. She had shrugged, a knowing grin on her face

“Well, she sure helped me out, old man. But yeah, my friends say their moms call her a lot worse names than witch. Personally, I think it’s fucking cool. D’you think she can fly around on a broom like in the movies?” Joel had not been particularly amused by that question.

He’s not sure what to make of any of it. Some people call her a saint. Others call her the devil incarnate. But there does seem to be a general consensus that any man that sets her in his sights is doomed to meet a timely demise.

It’s been two weeks since he saw her at the town market, and he hasn’t even caught a glimpse of her since. According to Maria, she’s been busy with a flare-up of some sort of stomach bug in the community, making house calls and – Joel supposes – working her magic. 

He can’t figure out why he even cares. After all, he’s only met the woman once. But he can’t seem to shake her out of his thoughts, replaying their meeting over and over in his head, particularly the moment she had said Sarah’s name with such certainty.

He finds himself rolling all this over in his mind most nights, sitting out on his front porch as the summer sun turns to thick liquid over the mountains. It’s in such a position that he finally sees her again, approaching his house with a tired smile on her face.

“Hey there, stranger.” She walks up the first step to his porch, leaning against the wooden beam as she speaks. He can’t help the way his eyes trail over her, a pair of coveralls like the kind mechanics used to wear pulled distractingly taut around the swell of her hips and a cloth bag slung over her shoulder, the tops of jars and bottles peeking out of it. When his eyes finally slip back up to her face, the quirk of her eyebrows lets him know that she totally clocked him checking her out, and he has to clear his throat, swallowing his embarrassment before he responds.

“Um, hey– hi. I, uh, haven’t seen you around lately.” She tilts her head at him, smile simmering down to a crooked smirk.

“I’ve been a little busy with all the– y’know, vomiting and diarrhea around town. But I think folks are finally out of the woods now.” Joel has to wonder to himself how she can still manage to look pretty while talking about vomiting and diarrhea.

“How exactly do you help– with that?” Her smile broadens.

“For the stuff coming out the top end, peppermint oil mostly. Ginger is king, but I’ve only got so much of it cultivating at the shop. For the problem down below, you just gotta push fluids and tell them it’ll pass.” 

“Can I ask– how do you know this stuff?” 

“Most of what I know comes from my mom. She was a lady of the plants, knew just about everything about anything that grows.” Fondness laces through her words, a soft smile as she tells him this, and he finds himself mirroring her expression.

“Lady of the plants– that’s a new one to me.” 

“Well, it’s better than witch, right?” Joel’s smile falls, but she just laughs.

“So I take it you’ve heard the rumors about me?” He’s not sure how to respond, a thickness settling in his throat and ice prickling the back of his neck. His voice comes out a bit hoarse when he does finally answer.

“Heard a lot of things about you. Not really sure what to believe though.” Her smile screws up at that, eyes crinkling as she looks at him.

“Why don’t you just ask me what you’re wondering then? Get it straight from the source.” She crosses her arms over her chest, the unbuttoned snaps of her coveralls splaying open to reveal the edge of a white tank-top, the suggestion of cleavage drawing Joel’s eyes before he can help it. He swallows hard, eyes darting back up to hers.

“Is it– I mean– are you?”

“Am I what?” She wants to hear him say it, he can tell by the ghosting curve of her lips. The word feels silly coming out of his mouth.

“Are you a– a witch?” Her smile goes practically radioactive at that, big and bright as she throws her head back in a laugh. She looks back at him, her lips pursed, eyes narrowed.

“Oh yeah, certified. Got the black cat to prove it and everything.” As if on cue, Stevie jumps up onto the railing of the porch, making Joel jump in his seat. She stifles a giggle behind her hand, Stevie nuzzling against her arm that’s wrapped around the porch beam. Joel huffs.

“Look, it seems like everyone’s got something to say about you. But I’m not the kind of guy to buy into a bunch of bullshit rumors.” She hums at that.

“Oh, no? What kind of guy are you then, Joel?” 

“The kind that likes to work things out for himself.” 

“Is that what this is? You working me out?” 

“Sure am trying to.” She sucks her teeth, squinting at him.

“And?” Joel sighs.

“And– I’m thinking it’s gonna take me a while to reach any kind of conclusion.” She nods lightly at that, smiling at Stevie as scratches under the cat’s chin.

“Hmm, alright. You let me know when you reach your conclusion then.” A thick blink of silence falls between them, and Joel finds himself unable to tear his eyes away from hers, only breaking when she lets out a sigh.

“I didn’t just come over here to give you a hard time. Was actually hoping to cash in on that favor you owe me.” He sits up a little straighter at that, nodding.

“Alright, when did you wanna go out– I mean– not– go out– like– not like a–” She laughs, silencing his floundering. 

“I know what you meant. And I was thinking the end of this week? Do you have time on Friday?” 

“Uh-huh, yep. That’s my day off.” Her face falls.

“Oh, I don’t wanna take up your day off, I’m–”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m happy to help, really.” Her frown softens into a suggestion of a smile, and she nods.

“Well, alright. Thank you, Joel. You good to meet at the gates that morning?” 

“I’ll be there, darlin. Sounds like a plan.” She grins.

“Until then, Joel.” She turns, hopping down from the porch step, before glancing over her shoulder to look at him.

“Oh, and don’t worry. I’m not gonna curse you. Not yet at least.” It’s so unexpected, he ends up choking on an inhale, but his coughing doesn’t drown out the sound of her laugh as she slinks away from his house. He’s so busy watching her saunter off that he doesn’t notice the cat jumping down from the railing, startling him when she starts twining between his legs. Stevie looks up at him, yellow eyes unblinking, as if she’s expecting something from him. He tentatively leans forward, holding out his open hand which the cat sniffs at before nudging her head into his palm, a low purr vibrating through her body. 

“You gonna go tell her all my secrets, Stevie?” The cat looks up at him, head tilted. A little too human-like for Joel’s taste. She lets out a small mrrp, before going back to twining between his legs, sleek spine arching up into Joel’s hand. Then, just as quickly as she had appeared, she pads off down the steps of his porch and out into the night. 

…

“Rumor has it you’re helping a certain lady out with some work up in the mountains tomorrow.” Joel huffs at his brother’s cocked eyebrow and crooked smirk.  He takes a sharp swig of his drink before responding.

“Owe her a favor, that's all. And before you tell me I’m not gonna come back alive, I’ve already heard that from four other people this week.” That gets a laugh out of Tommy, his eyes glancing around the bar before focusing back on Joel. 

“Nah, you’ll come back alive. It’s the days after when they always end up dead.” 

“You serious?” Tommy shrugs.

“There’s been a couple of guys, sure. But if you ask me, that has more to do with the stories people believe than it does with her. What we believe, we create, brother. The mind is a powerful thing.” He punctuates his words with a tap of his fingers to his temple. Joel grumbles.

“Yeah, yeah, alright, wise ass. But you’re telling me there really have been men who’ve–”

“It’s all coincidence, Joel. Like I said, there have been a few guys who started chasing after her. Went up into the mountains with her, y’know, all romantic and shit. And then, well, it seems like every time, only a few days later, they wound up dead. But in every instance, it was a bad patrol shift that got them. S’just coincidence that it happened after they got with her.”

“How many coincidences?” Tommy sighs.

“Four. In the last four years or so.” Joel feels his brows lift at that.

“That’s a lot of fucking coincidences, Tommy.” Tommy shrugs.

“Look, folks always talk about how horrible it is that all these men died. And it is. But no one thinks to mention what that must have done to her. To like someone? Hell, maybe even love someone? And then not only have them taken away from you, but to then be blamed for it too? It’s fucking atrocious, man.” When Tommy finishes speaking, silence falls between them, Joel a bit stunned by the clear compassion Tommy speaks with about her.

“Why d’you even care? Why not join the crowd, huh?” Tommy frowns at that, twirling his liquor in his glass rather than looking at his brother.

“I didn’t tell you this– I mean, why would I? But, Maria had a pretty difficult pregnancy.” He takes a sharp inhale before continuing to speak.

“We weren’t sure if– if the baby– if we were gonna be ok. And she was there for us, through it all.” Joel can see the tears pooling in his brother’s eyes, glinting in the low light of the bar when he finally looks at him.

“I don’t know if we’d have our boy today if it hadn’t been for her. So yeah, I care about her. And I’ll side with her every time. And most folks will too, when push comes to shove. She’s done a lot for this community. But it’s easy to spread poison behind people’s backs. So that’s what they do.” Tommy sits back on his stool, sighing deeply.

“Suppose a lot of the men see her as a challenge, y’know? Steal a cursed kiss and live to tell the tale, or some bullshit like that. And the women see the men pining after her, and they don’t like that one bit. Either way, they talk, way more than they should.” Tommy throws back the last of his drink, wincing at the burn. Joel, meanwhile, is still trying to process everything his brother just told him.

“So should I tell the kid to start planning my funeral, or what?” Tommy laughs, shaking his head.

“Nah, I think you’re too much of a stubborn ass to let a rinky-dink curse sway you. Besides, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.” Joel squints at his brother.

“Why’s that?” 

“You said you’re just doing a favor for her. She might not even like you enough to curse you, brother.”

…

Joel doesn’t sleep at all that night. His mind works over what Tommy told him again and again, trying to reach some sort of conclusion about everything he’s learned, and coming up short every time. He shuffles out in the early morning light, eyes bleary as he nears the gate. She, however, is chipper as anything, smiling broadly when she sees him.

“Hey there, you ready to go?” He nods, grumbling out a quiet affirmation, and then they’re off.

Most of the morning is spent in silence, hiking up into the mountains. Joel knows that it’s not infected they have to worry about, not out here. But raiders are a whole other story, so he keeps a steady hand on his rifle slung over his shoulder, letting her lead them a few paces ahead of him. 

“You’re quiet this morning.” She glances at him over her shoulder as she speaks, eyebrow lifted.

“I’m thinking.” 

“About?” He huffs, stopping where he stands in the underbrush of the woods. When she realizes he’s no longer following, she turns back around, hands on her hips as she looks at him.

“I just– I wish you’d give me some straight answers here. I’ve heard something different about you from just about everyone in town– and I’m not sure if I believe any of it. Just– please.” Her brow is furrowed, eyes squinted at him as she worries her bottom lip between her teeth. 

“What do you want from me, Joel?” He swallows hard, eyes glancing around the thick trees before looking back at her.

“The truth– I want the truth.” She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific than that.” He has to laugh out of frustration at this little game they’re playing, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a low curse before focusing back on her.

“Alright, I’ll be specific. All those men that died. A lot of folks around town are convinced that you had something to do with it. S’that true?” When she speaks, Joel’s taken aback by her tone, her usual lightness replaced by a steeled stoicism.

“I had nothing to do with that. Any of it. The only curse that was on those men was their own goddamn minds buying into the town bullshit.” He’s inclined to believe her, judging by her unwavering gaze and the sure tilt of her chin as she speaks, but there’s still more that he needs to know.

“But you are– different. Aren’t you?” That coaxes a smile out of her, and she steps a bit closer to him.

“Different.” She says the word like a challenge, and he nods, taking his own steps closer to her.

“Is that your conclusion, Joel?” Both of them have their arms crossed over their chests, and they now stand so close that their forearms lightly brush.

“Starting to think I ain’t ever gonna reach a conclusion about you, darlin.” Her eyes crinkle, smile threatening to crook into a full-blown grin.

“Would that be such a bad thing? No conclusion?” It’s like magnets, the way their faces tilt, subtle shifts toward one another until he can feel the light air of her exhale across his mouth. He hums, a low sound in his chest.

“I think I’ll live.” He can practically feel the stretch of her grin at his words.

“I think you will too.” It happens as easily as a tide rolling in, languid in the way their lips slip together. His hands find the sweep of her jaw, pulling her in deeper, her palms splaying over his chest. He’s a little surprised when she swipes her tongue over the curve of his bottom lip, coaxing him open and tangling even closer with him. A woman has never taken charge like this with him, and it’s making his head spin. When she does pull away, he’s only a little embarrassed by the way he chases after her lips, stuttering into some sort of composure when she grins at him.

“For the record, you’re not wrong.” Not entirely sure what she means, he frowns at her, shaking his head. She laughs.

“I am different, Joel.”

“That wasn’t just a lucky guess, was it? About– about Sarah?” Her eyes soften, features dropping into a sad understanding. She slides her palms up from his chest to twine behind his neck. 

“No, it wasn’t.” 

…

“This is lemon balm.” She glances over her shoulder at him from where she’s crouched down, thumbing at a cropping of large, waxy leaves. He’s learned the names of more plants today than he could ever remember, though he still nods when she shows him a new one like he has any clue what it is.

“What do you use that for?” 

“You dry it, and then you can brew tea with it. It’s calming– helps with sleep and stress. Or you can mix it into salve to treat cold sores. Though not many people in Jackson come to me with that problem.” She clips several leaves from the plant, carefully tucking them into her pack and slinging it over her shoulder as she stands back up. 

They’ve been out all day, moving through the woods as she collects various plant snippings, explaining each one to him, how to use it and what its use is. And between them, a silent understanding has settled, even though Joel hasn’t asked anymore questions about her. But he knows that Tommy was right. Whatever she is, she’s a good one.

“We oughta head back soon. Sun’s starting to set.” She nods, wiping her hands off on the front of her jeans, and they easily step into stride with one another. They spend most of the hike back in a comfortable silence. Joel finds himself wanting to say something, ask something more, but always hesitating, mind hazy from the heat of the day, and from the stamped memory of the kiss they shared. Even if it was cursed, he reckons that he wouldn’t mind that.

“Joel? I want to say thank you.” He glances at her walking alongside him, the quick-fading light casting syrupy shadows across her features. He has to blink a few times to keep himself from staring.

“No need for thanks. I was happy to repay the favor.” 

“No, that’s– that’s not what I meant. I mean– thank you for coming out today with me, I appreciate it. But– I wanted to thank you for– thinking for yourself– about me.” That makes him stop in his stride, turning to fully look at her as she does the same. They’ve just crested a hill, the gates of Jackson coming into view, and her eyes keep glancing back toward it, a nervous crease between her brows.

“It’s just– you’re right– I know everyone has something to say about me. And I guess I don’t have too many friends because of it. Most folks make up their minds about me before they even talk to me. So, thank you– for not doing that.” His chest twists at her words, the worried look scrunched across her face. He’d like to take the pain away that’s clear in her expression. And then, that tightness in his chest grows for a different reason, as he realizes that he’s already in far too deep with her. He has to clear his throat to shake away the thickening feeling, tentatively reaching his hand out to her, his fingers skating over the faint dip of her collarbone. He can see her breath catch at his touch, and he revels in it, letting his hand trail down her arm until their fingers are tangling together.

“You shouldn’t have to thank me for that. Whatever may or may not be true about you– no one deserves that. I just– why do you help them– when they treat you the way they do?” She sighs, squeezing his hand in hers, and giving a weak shrug of her shoulders.

“Because it’s what I’m good at. I always wanted to help people– and that’s what I get to do. Even if some of them are fucking dicks about it.” Her crassness catches him off guard, pulling a stuttering laugh from his chest as she grins. But she’s all seriousness again, clearing her throat, her brow pulling down.

“Suppose I should warn you now that they’ll talk about you too– if you stick around me. And I don’t blame you if you don’t want–” He’s heard enough, and does something entirely too bold by closing the distance between them to steal another kiss, her wide eyes meeting his when he pulls away.

“Don’t care what any of ‘em have to say about me, or about you. They can talk all they want, darlin.” He can feel the relief in her sigh. She nods, giving his hand one final squeeze before breaking away, continuing the walk back to town. 

When they get back inside the gates, she offers him a small smile, her hands fidgeting with the straps of her pack.

“Thank you again. I really appreciated your help.” 

“Like I said, it was no–”

“Well, well, well– what do we have here? Looks like she’s got Miller under her spell, boys!” The change in her demeanor is instant, face scrunching up as they both turn to see where the commentary is coming from. Joel recognizes the man, Mason, if he remembers right, and a small group of other guys he knows from past patrol meetings. They’ve all got a similar sneer across their faces, eyes zeroed in on her, and he has to fight the urge to step in front of her to get them to stop looking at her like that.

“Guess we better get another coffin ready, huh? Hate to break it to you, Miller. She may be pretty, but she ain’t nothing but bad news.” Joel’s fists clench at his sides, and as the men break into another howl of laughter, his feet start moving toward them before his brain can catch up. But she’s quick to step in front of him, hands pressing into his chest and eyes fierce.

“Don’t– it’s not worth it.” It’s immediate, the calm that washes over him with her words, though he still glares over her shoulder at the men, whose laughter has only escalated.

“Awww, she got you good, man! Hey, witchy-poo! What kinda magic you got working on Miller to have him so whipped?” And with that, Joel is ready to bash their heads in all over again, though she holds him back with her palms firm against the front of his shirt. 

“Joel, it’s fine. They’re harmless, really.” He glances at the men one more time before finally focusing back on her, huffing as he nods. She gives him what she can of a smile, worry still pressed between her brows. 

“I’ll see you soon, ok?” His hands flex at his sides, wanting more than anything to tuck her under his arm and walk off together, but he settles for another nod, and a whispered acquiescence. She’s gone in a blink, walking off to the hollering of the men behind her. Before he can do something stupid, Joel heads off in the opposite direction toward the Tipsy Bison. He needs a fucking drink.

…

Joel is nursing his second tumbler of whiskey when just about the last person he’d like to see sidles up next to him at the bar. 

“Miller.” Mason sits down on the stool next to him, but Joel keeps his eyes on his swirling glass. 

“Look, man, I’m sorry for giving you a hard time out there. But I’m trying to help you out.” Joel rests his elbows on the bar, glancing briefly at Mason.

“Don’t remember asking for your help, man.” Mason laughs, turning on his stool to fully face Joel, a stupid grin across his face.

“Well then you don’t know her as well as we all do. I meant what I said, y’know. She’s bad news.” Joel’s starting to feel that anger creeping up his throat, angling himself just slightly in Mason’s direction to get a good look at him.

“Son, I’ve heard enough stories this week to have a pretty good idea of just how full of shit you all are. I thought this was a community of decent people, really. But after being told one too many times about some ridiculous curse, I realize you’re nothing but fools and cowards.” Mason laughs again, and Joel’s a blink away from slapping the sound right out of his mouth. 

“I’m not talking about that bullshit curse.” Joel squints at him.

“Come again?” 

“That curse you’re referring to? I agree with you that it’s town nonsense. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” When Joel stays silent, Mason’s mouth stretches into a smile.

“She may not be sending men to their graves, but she ain’t so innocent either. See, she likes to meddle.”

“Meddle?” Mason nods.

“In other people’s business. Sure, she helps folks all the time. But that’s not all she’s doing in that shop of hers.” Joel huffs, getting tired of the way this man seems to be stringing him along.

“Talk plainly, son. It’s getting late.” Mason barks out a laugh, sliding off his stool before laying a hand on Joel’s shoulder, a squinted smile on his face.

“Why don’t you go see what she’s got cooking up in that kitchen of hers in the middle of the night. Because I can tell you right now, it ain’t fucking tea.”

✧Apple of my eye✧

{you stress bake an apple pie when Tommy is late returning home that’s it that’s all}

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“Just please be careful Tommy, please” you sigh wrapping a scarf around his neck, it had gotten much colder recently which often meant more ice which came with a multitude of different dangers.

His hands settle against your hips bringing you closer to him, you could feel the warmth radiating from him and you sigh into the feeling, “I’ll be fine baby, promise— I mean always am aren’t I” he presses a reassuring kiss to your forehead.

“That ain’t gonna suffice Miller” you tut as he laughs at you his hands cupping your cheeks before stealing your lips into a loving kiss, he doesn’t want to leave you, doesn’t want to leave the warmth that you bring.

“Honey I gotta go—“ you don’t let him finish his sentence as you pull him down for another kiss, “Alright Honey I really gotta” he chuckles as you open the door for him, the brittle temperature barges its way into the warmth of your home.

That was twelve hours ago, the sun was now setting casting an orange light over the kitchen as you roll out the dough, an unsettling feeling of stress settles into your bones and your brows knit together, you thought baking just might take your mind off of your husband out in a snow storm patrolling the woodlands and how late he was returning home.

You let out a frustrated sigh as scooped the sweet apple filling into the dough-lined pie dish, glancing over at the clock that read ten o’clock the sun had completely gone down now and panic started to rise to leaving a bad taste in your mouth as you put the apple pie in the oven.

A confusing mixture of anger and worry barges through your body leaving an odd weight on your chest and you couldn’t decide whether you wanted to cry or storm up those mountains and drag your husband back home.

You jump slightly as the kitchen timer dings, you take out the apple pie smiling at the homely smell of the sweet treat, “Ooh sumthin smells good honey” Tommy says as takes his snow-covered coat off, his smile falters slightly when he doesn’t get a response.

You turn around facing your stupidly beautiful husband as he smiles at you from the door frame, it’s a sheepish smile and he knows exactly what’s wrong with you as you throw the kitchen towel at him before running over to him and wrapping your arms around his neck brining him into a hug, relief washing over you as he holds you closer into his body his cold nose nuzzling against your neck.

“You're not having any” you mumble holding him tighter and you feel him laugh, “You really scared the fuck outta me Tommy” he pulls away slightly his cold hand cupping your face as he brings your lips into a loving kiss and you can’t help but melt into the tender feeling.

“I’m real sorry sweetheart… it’s a fuckin blizzard out there— I love you” he murmurs the last part against your lips before pressing a soft kiss to them and you can’t help the fluttering feeling that swarms through your chest, his hands settle on your hips and you watch as he glances over your shoulder to the apple pie that sits on the kitchen counter.

“You can have some—” you smile at him your hands threading through his dark hair that’s slightly damp from being outside in the midst of a snow storm, “—on one condition” you add admiring the beauty marks that adorn his skin.

“Mm, what’s that?” He smirks pulling you impossibly closer to his body, stealing your warmth as his hands slip under your jumper, they’re cold against your warm skin and the feeling sends a shiver through you as he draws small circles against your back.

“You take me out once the storms passed… I wanna see the stars” you smile basking in the small loving moment.

His face softens with love as he looks at you with adoration, “Of course, I will sweetheart- I'll do anything ya want” he presses a kiss to your forehead before you pull away to cut him a generous slice of apple pie.

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☾⋆AN/ I want this man so bad. Hope you enjoyed lovelies!! <3 {{requests are more than welcome}} any mistakes let me know!

Pretty angel

{You can’t hide your insecurities from Tommy, not when he’s so attentive with you}

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It starts off with small things, as it always does with this kind of stuff, it happens before you even subconsciously notice and by the time that happens you’re too far gone in your own self-sabotage.

But Tommy notices, he notices how your eyes never linger on the mirror, he haphazardly hung up, almost as if you do everything in your power to not look at it, and when you do he notices the grimace that stains your face, the disgust that tarnishes your eyes and he can’t imagine the words that scratch heedlessly at your mind.

It hurts him more than you know, his heart aches at the thought of you thinking that you’re anything but a downright angel sent from the heavens above, and there’s an odd sense of guilt that squeezes him because maybe he’s not telling you enough?

He watches you intently as you walk into the living room a certain sadness casts over your beautiful face, and he smiles so brightly as he pats the empty seat beside him, and it’s hard not to smile back.

“Hey love bug” he beams like a lovesick puppy pressing a kiss to your cheek and he doesn’t miss the way you almost wince away from his touch, and his heart near enough breaks.

There’s an odd silence that wedges between the two of you, “So, what we watching tonight?” You try and be as chirpy as possible pushing all the negative feelings you have about yourself down and covering them with fake happiness.

But he notices, of course, he does. You’re Tommy’s absolute world, “Your pick baby” he reminds you gently

You nod with a small smile before getting up to where he keeps all the DVD’s and you flick through them before finally settling on the cheesiest romance movie you can find, and you giggle when he lets out a groan, “I know it’s your guilty pleasure, just admit it sweetheart” you laugh and Tommy’s heart blooms at the sweet noise.

“Yeah yeah, you got me, baby, it’s a real guilty pleasure of mine” he chuckles as you excitedly put it on.

However his smile soon falters when you decide to sit away from him, and his chest feels heavy when you slightly shift away as he inches closer.

There’s a silence that stifles the air with tension, and it’s enough to make you feel nauseous. Tommy knows he needs to talk to you he can't let you keep isolating yourself.

His hands take yours carefully, “You gotta talk to me honey— it just feels like you’re tryin' to distance yourself from me, what’s going on sweet thing?” he suddenly asks and your eyes widen in shock as panic seeps into your bones, and there’s a horrible blocky feeling that wedges itself in the back of your throat as tears sting the back of your eyes.

You don’t know what to say you completely freeze up and you look down at your shaky hands determined not to meet his soft gaze.

“I— I just— I don’t—“ you huff out in frustration when you can’t find the words to describe what you’re feeling, and he gives you an encouraging look, squeezing your hand in reassurance, “I don’t feel very pretty” you mumble feeling a little silly.

But it’s true nonetheless, there’s a loud voice in the back of your head that reminds you constantly of all your flaws it repeats in your mind like a mantra and it curses you until you start believing the horrible words to be true leaving you exhausted.

“Oh, Darlin come here” he whispers his brows knit together in sadness, you rest your head against the crook of his shoulder as his arms engulf you in a loving hug.

He doesn’t really know what to say and he’s completely freaking out on the inside. Tommy doesn’t understand, he thinks you’re an absolute angel, the prettiest person to walk planet earth, and his heart shatters at your words.

“I’m sorry it’s silly— I’m being silly” you sniffle wiping away your tears, and you watch the worry pour into his eyes, how his face is full of concern and it makes you feel guilty.

Tommy shakes his head, “It’s not silly baby, it’s not” he promises his tone is so soft and caring, and he presses a kiss to your forehead, his rough hands gently cupping your warm face.

“Tell me what can I do, how do I help?” He asks, “Anything you name it I’ll do, absolutely anything sweetheart” there’s almost a desperation in his tone and it weaves through his face.

And your heart jumps at his words, and you realize that he cares, of course, he cares it was silly of you to think otherwise, but you know there isn’t anything he can do to stop the horrid thoughts that scratch at the back of your mind, “You just being here is enough for me” you smile wiping the tears that fall from your eyelashes.

He nods softly with a somewhat bashful smile, “You’re beautiful you know? I mean absolutely gorgeous, sweetheart” he smiles with a genuine look in his eyes, as he presses a gentle kiss to the corner of your mouth, and you relax into his side his arm hooking around your shoulders bringing you closer to him, and you feel so loved.

His words bring another wave of tears to your eyes, and you can’t stifle the sob that pushes its way out your mouth, “Hey, don’t cry sweet thing” he mumbles against your head, and he can feel the dampness on his shoulder, his hand rubbing the expanse of your back.

“I’m sorry, I just love you, Tommy, so much” you sniffle and his heart melts at your words.

“I love you too, my pretty angel” he smiles as you let out a breathy giggle, and he wipes your tears away with his thumb before placing gentle kisses all over your face, and you go warm under his soft touch, heart full with happiness.

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☾⋆AN this has been in my notes for a hot minute, enjoy my lovelies!! <33

Hi! just wanted to say that i absolutely love your writing and wanted to know if you could do a Tommy Miller x reader, where Tommy has had too much to drink and Joel takes him home to you but Tommy cannot stop talking about how much he loves you and how pretty you are as you take care of him. Like just super fluffy. Thanks so much if you decide to do this! :D

Drunken love sick fool

{Tommy has had one too many, luckily for him he has you}

This is too cute!! Hope you enjoy lovely 💕

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“Don’t let him overdo it, please for love of god Joel.” Is what you had told Joel before the pair of them left for a ‘well-deserved drink or two’ you don’t mind really, in fact, you’re glad they get along so well, but goodness are they bad influences to each other, and before they know it they’ve both drank their own body weight in whiskey.

Joel only chuckled at you, saying something about how he ‘can’t promise anything’ which in turn made you sigh, knowing that tonight you might have to nurse a very drunk Tommy.

“Honey! I’ve missed you!” you hear him before you see him, shouting your name with a thick southern accent that seemed ten times stronger than usual.

You can’t help but smile when you hear Joel trying to shush him, scolding him about how he’s ‘gonna wake up the whole street with his yapping’ as you grab the front door keys from the small bowl.

You wish you could be mad at him, mad at both of them but you completely melt when Tommy’s eyes meet your own, so full of love and joy as he smiles brightly at you and you feel your frustration crumble away.

“Sorry, he just-” Joel tries his hardest to come up with a good excuse as to why he’s returned your boyfriend back home to you as drunk as a skunk, but yet all that comes out is a guilty chuckle as he scratches the back of his neck with a smile.

“It’s alright Joel, but you owe me” You tell him as Tommy wraps his arms around you, nuzzling his nose against your neck as he mumbles something about how you smell like heaven.

He bites back his laughter as you try to keep his brother on both feet, “Well good luck to you, he’s been er- asking for ya” and you can tell by the teasing look that flashes through his eyes that there’s something you're not getting, and you dread to think what exactly he’s said.

You bid him your last goodbyes with Tommy still practically hanging off you before closing the door with a heavy sigh knowing you were in for a long night.

“Mm, honey- I’ve missed you” he whispers against your shoulder, hands soothing against your lower back as they slip underneath your shirt, splaying against your bare skin.

The feeling makes your skin tingle as you pull back slightly, brushing his hair behind his ear, “Missed you too baby” you whisper, breaking out into a fit of giggles as he peppers sloppy kisses all over your face.

“God, you’re so pretty, do y’know that? My lovely girl” he gasps looking at you with soft eyes as he studies your face. His hands come to rest against your hips, squeezing them softly as he continues to admire you.

“Come on let’s go get you some water” you tell him, dragging him to the kitchen. You help him to take a seat at the table before pouring him a glass of cold water.

Although he doesn’t stay seated for long at all, immediately standing back up to lean behind you, his strong arms warped around your midsection.

“Tommy I-” You can’t finish your sentence as peppers more kisses along your shoulder, his rough hands going back underneath your shirt as they rest against your belly.

“I love you” he whispers, voice laced with exhaustion as he goes on, “So, so, so much” he presses kisses between the words.

“I love you too Tommy” you giggle as you try to pry yourself away from him as he lets out a huff of dismay. He doesn't have any of it, taking no interest in your offer of some ice-cold water. No, he's adamant that the only thing he needs is you to cure his drunkness.

Time ticks by and it nears twelve am when you finally get him to drink some water as you go and get him a change of clothes and by some miracle, you’ve finally got him into bed, even if his shirt is inside out.

You sigh as you finally lay down pulling the sheets over the pair of you. Tommy's arms wrap around you as he inches himself closer to you, his head nuzzling against your shoulder as he rambles on and on about how ‘lucky he is to have such a beautiful girlfriend’ as his hands soothe against your stomach and you cant wait to tease him about it in the morning.

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Misc (miscellaneous)

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Mortal Kombat-

A Soft Moment - Liu Kang

Mornings - Bi-Han

The last of us-

Apple of my eye - Tommy Miller

Pretty angel - Tommy Miller

Drunken lovesick fool - Tommy Miller

Saltburn-

Terrible cold - Felix Catton

I just finished reading the "Shut Up" "Make Me" Ellie x Reader fic and it was good. Will there be a part two?

I actually didn't think of writing a part two but guess I'll think about it since I have requests and drafts to write. Glad you liked it btw 😍

How can she be so hot 🥵🤤

WHAT YOU SAY GOES, SIR- part 1

A/N- First chapter is not too smutty but you'll see how dom Joel can be and torture the Reader. If you don't like reading this kind of stuff, then you can read my other fluffy fluff imagine for Joel!

Summary- Reader is being a brat when she's at Joel's class and decides to show how she feels for him and test If he feels the same. Turns out that Joel isn't empty for the Reader.

Warnings- Lots of dirty talk, tigh grinding, daddykink , torturing, age difference , prof!Joel

If there was one thing or person that made history class interesting, it would definitely be Mr. Joel Miller. You liked the history lesson a little bit, but the professor who took your class couldn't explain it well. There was no such thing in man's nature. He also seemed like an interesting man. His hair and beard were white and he was lecturing like a scientist.

But then everyone in his class was overjoyed when they heard he was retiring. And that man was replaced by the most handsome and well-behaved man you've ever seen. From the moment he entered the classroom, you couldn't take your eyes off him. When he gave you assignment, you always wanted to go to him and show him the places you couldn't (although you could) and your desire to see him increased with each passing day. But you knew that nothing like this would be possible between you. It was not age. Yes, maybe there was age, of course, but you didn't know if he was married yet. You hadn't seen a ring on his finger and you couldn't have asked him that either, would you?

There was someone in class who caught Mr. Joel Miller's attention, and it was you, but you didn't realize it until he told you. Two weeks after he came, he called you and told you how well you listened to the lesson and you should continue like this, but you were only focused on his eyes and you weren't thinking about anything else. With his back turned, you were watching how he carried his muscular body, how the veins in his hands moved while writing on the board, his facial expressions when talking to someone, everything, hoping not to get caught by him.

You woke up because of that nightmare you had while you were lying in bed unaware that your alarm went off, and when you looked at the clock, you realized you were 10 minutes late for class. Campus was close to your house, so you dressed quickly and left. The tension was heightened when you remembered that your first lesson was with Mr. Joel Miller as you quickened his steps every second. Depending on his mood, he sometimes took the latecomers, but sometimes he was unforgiving. Hoping that his mood is good and that he doesn't turn you away, you walked through the door and ran down the hallway to the classroom. You were out of breath when you came to the door of the classroom, but that didn't stop you from knocking. When you opened the door, all eyes were on you, including Joel. You felt the need to look around, but you had to explain.

''Sir I'm so sorry I'm late I just didn't hear my alarm and somehow it got under my bed very deeply. I really tried to come here as quickly as I can. I'm so ask-" Mr. Miller interrupted your speech, raising his hand and nodding to the benches. You nodded your head in a thank you and sat down. It felt good to see that there was nothing that made him angry or moody today because you've been thinking about how to explain your feelings for him for a long time, but talking in person would be complete nonsense because you weren't sure if he felt anything like that. So there was only one thing you had to do.

After looking around and making sure no one was looking your way, you took the handout and went to Mr. Miller's desk and whispered to him so as not to disturb anyone.

“Sir can you have a look at my paperwork because I think I did some mistakes and I'm not pretty sure what to write to these blanks” He gave you a smile and gestured for you to sit on the empty chair next to him. This is where the event started. You rubbed your legs, which weren't too far anyway, but Mr. Miller didn't quite grasp it, he was too busy staring at his paper. You rubbed longer this time, thinking he didn't understand what you were trying to do. Sensing a stir on his side, Mr. Miller glanced at you and then realized what you were doing. Your heart was beating so fast as if it was going to explode. There was also a sense of rejection and fear of being disgraced. But as Mr. Miller did something unexpected, he leaned into your ear and whispered these words that got you even more excited:

"Look at you. You can't even sit where you are. What do you want me to do, huh? Fuck you when all of your friends are here? Yeah you would want that, wouldn't you pretty girl? “ You nodded yes, but you knew it wasn't serious. To play even more, you put your right leg on top of his left leg and started rubbing against him with your lower area.

Mr. Miller squeaked in dissatisfaction and placed his hand on your leg, looking around. At that moment, with a glance at you, he lowered his leg over yours and stood up. He said that the lesson was over before the lesson was even over, and everyone could disperse. Although it upsets you that he did such a thing when you thought your plan had worked, you quietly took your bag and stood up. Everyone had left by then, but only you and Mr. Miller remained. He walked forward to the door and locked it. You gave him meaningless looks, but he just grinned.

''You think you would get away with this? You know how inappropriate this is? Snuggling to your professor while you're in class and student are here? But you did like this, didn't you?" You focused on his eyes again, and every word he said made his heart race faster. He rushed over to you and took your chin in his strong, muscular hands. He blew his breath into your face, bringing his face close to it, and it made you shiver. You closed your eyes and waited for his next move. You were literally prey in his hands, and you wanted him to eat you.

''But I want an answer sweet girl. Just talk to me. Tell me what you want. You want me to fuck you on this desk until you're begging me to stop? Or do you really deserve it? Nah you definitely do not. First I have to punish you for being such a dirtly little brat that you're hooking up with me in class. Then maybe you can get reward but first you're going to listen to me little one. Understood?” You swallow hard and shake your head, but not satisfied. Clenching your chin between his hand even more, he turned his face to the side and brought his mouth close to your ear, letting a breath out there.

''You know I don't like it when people don't talk so just say it. Let's try it again, Yeah?' You said 'yes sir' in a low voice, but he didn't like it. ''What did you just say? I didn't hear you kitten. What you should say to me?”

The pain underneath was unbearable and you were writhing in his hand. Now, to put an end to this game, his eyes were shining when you said those inviting words by looking into his eyes.

“What you say goes, Sir” With these words, he grabbed your waist and laid you on the table with a lithe motion and made you turn your back. You shivered as the cold table skin touched your skin, but you didn't move.

''Now I want you to say to me how bad do you want this. You gotta earn your reward so behave , yeah? Are you gonna behave little girl? Are you gonna be daddy's kitten? Tell me how bad do you want me to punish you. “ You quickly said the words he wanted with a groan. A whimper came out of your mouth as he grabbed you by the hair and pulled you to him, but it was replaced by the sound of kisses on each other's lips. It was almost like time stopped, everyone disappeared, it was just the two of you, but that didn't change the fact that you were in school. And he left you with a knock on the door reminding you of that, and you looked into the mirror beside the table to tidy up and straightened your hair. When you looked towards the door, Mr. Miller was opening the curtain of the door and there was a knock on the door. Eventually the sound stopped and Mr. Miller had opened the door and was talking to the professor who had knocked on the door.

'' Hey, sorry I was having a private talk with my student and I actually didn't want anyone to interrupt us. We were just leaving. “ After picking up his purse from the table, he took one look at you before leaving and hurried out the door. Taking a deep breath, you went to the bathroom and splashed water on your face before entering the next lesson. What you went through was not easy and everyone could see it if you didn't forget that you did it in a public place .Although your inner voice said that there was no such thing, it was an unacceptable thing. Just as you were coming out of the toilet, you were startled by the message on your phone and you took it out of your bag to read it. It was a number you didn't recognize, but you knew immediately who it was because of what he wrote.

*Meet me outside of campus after your classes are over. I'll take you.*

You read the message at least ten times to make sure you saw it, and each time your excitement grew. You went to your next lesson wishing it would pass quickly and Mr. Miller became the prince of your dreams.

WHAT YOU SAY GOES, SIR- part 2

A/N- Some of you may wonder why I republish my fics. I wanted to start from the beginning and I really want ya'll to see them because we rarely have game imagines around here. I'm not implying that I write good but thanks to some of you, I know I'm good enough and I'll keep writing no matter what. This is not my job, this is my hobby and I won't stop. Thank you for supporting me both on here and AO3! Love ya'll 💜

Warnings- SMUT, daddykink , prof!Joel , age difference, a lot of dirty talk. 🥵

After leaving classes, you quickly made your way towards the campus exit. The thought of what Mr. Miller might do to you was eating away at you. You knew you'd lose your mind if you thought too much about it, but you couldn't help it. This was wrong. Yes, but you were both adults. Maybe you shouldn't care what anyone says. But how absurd would it be to reveal it in a public space. He could lose his job. What happened that day should have remained a secret and should not happen again. As you grapple with your thoughts, you realize that you have came all the way outside the door. When you got to the parking lot, you sat on a pavement and waited for that familiar face. You didn't know how it was going to unfold and maybe what you did was momentary, but Mr. Miller wasn't going to stop.You didn't know that you didn't provoke him until now and why you waited until this moment. It wasn't really your intention to do this, but a little fun never hurt anyone, right?

Suddenly, a shadow formed in your surroundings and when you looked down you saw a pair of black sporty but stylish shoes and knew he was coming. He held out his hand for you to hold as your heartbeat quickened with his presence, and you stood up with his help. Maybe Mr. Miller wasn't a gentleman, but he was never the type to fuck you and sleep with other women another evening. As you let go of your hand and walked to the place where he parked his car, you kept looking back to see if anyone could see it.

When you suddenly turned in front of you, you bumped into his huge body, causing you to retreat. He was laughing. Ahh he had that damn smile of course.That famous Texas grin and the way he supports his fingers on his belt. You just nodded when he looked at you from the side and asked if it was okay, but you knew he didn't like it. You knew very well that if you were a good girl he would reward you because for God's sake, what century are we in and didn't we watch Fifty Shades of Grey? He turned towards you and raised an eyebrow as if asking a question.

''What were we saying little girl? Yes or no right? Use your words for me. “ How did he expect you to answer when your heart raced so fast every time he spoke? Didn't he see the effect on you? Maybe he did, but for now he just ignored it. You muttered “yes” silently, and he slowly nodded his head okay.

The drive was quiet except for the country music on the radio. Occasionally he would open his mouth as if he wanted to ask you something, but then he would give up and close it.

Maybe he was saving what he wanted to say for later. Your hands were sweaty from playing with your hands from tension. When he came to his house, he said that you came with a quiet but full tone and you got out of the car with that. While you were opening the door of the house, your tension was not gone, but one of you had to attack and this tension, this silence should be replaced by better things. So after closing that outer door, you literally jumped on him and took those hot lips between yours. A few minutes later, his hands were roaming your entire body. Deciding to provoke him a little more, you grabbed his cock and groaned. He took you in his arms with this gesture and when you thought he was taking you to the bedroom, you hugged him even more and started kissing him again. No matter how close you were, even a centimeter between you was hurting. You both wanted more.

He threw you briskly onto the bed and climbed on top of you. He was kissing your neck and walking with both hands in other parts of you.

''You think you just gonna get away with this little one? After what you did in front off the whole classroom? Nah I don't think so. You deserve every punishment I'll give it to you. “ However, he grabbed your neck hard and pulled you towards him. You just groaned in a way that didn't know what to do as you became more aroused with every move.

“Please Daddy. Please have me right now. I'm begging you. I'm so sorry." No, you weren't sorry, you just wanted him to put out his current fire. The sooner this was over, the sooner you could cut ties with him. It couldn't be love or anything more.

With that, he started kissing your lips even harder and trying to take off your panties. You lifted your butt to help him and he impatiently pulled it off your leg. After that, the bra joined the panties. Mr. Miller seemed to have obeyed, for he was slower, but his movements were fine.

''Well then. Since you begged for me good, I'll give what you want but let me hear your little words. all right? If I don't then I stop immediately.'' You purred yes daddy a few times before you saw him take off his pants. You both threw your heads back and groaned as he slowly entered you, but Mr. Miller quickened his movements, supported by your voice.

He was kissing your neck and saying dirty words to you like these.

‘’ Yeah just like that kitten.’’

‘’ You’re gonna cum for me?’’

‘’ Let me hear you little girl.’’

‘’ Let them hear your little moans princess.’’

‘’ Daddy is so proud of you little one.’’

You both ended up saying dirty words to each other. When you lay next to him and look at him through your light hair, you see him breathing heavily and you rest your head on his chest. He gave you a kiss and started stroking your hair. Even though you didn't want this moment to end, it had to be when you woke up. But who knows? Maybe it wouldn't end. After throwing your thoughts away, you fell asleep in his arms.

New imagine for Ellie x reader is coming today!!!! Stay tuned ya'll.

The Unusual

   A/N- In my opinion, this was the best smut I’ve ever written and I hope you like it too :) We are such a simp for Ellie Williams ya’ll :)  You also can send me requests, don’t be shy <3 I’m sorry If there are any grammar mistakes, I’ll try to come back and correct them.

   Warnings- SMUT, Modern!Ellie, drink of alcohol, fingering, dirty talking.

   Request from- Anonymous

   Summary- After their meeting at the bar, what is usual for Reader and Ellie gets boring after a while and they decide to do something a little unusual.

   A blinding light from the window shone into the room where you slept. The pain between your legs was enough to bother you more than ever, but you laid still and let the morning sun hit your face. You turned your head in that direction with the rustle coming from your side and you couldn't help your grin both because you saw the person you saw and because you remembered that wonderful moment you had last night.

         A WEEK AGO

   Again, when you went to the bar you always go to, this time there was a little movement in it. In this place where you went to clear your mind, you met a lot of people and learned more stories than you wanted to know. Sometimes you had to choose between many people, but you could not find the right one for you.   Could such a thing have happened that day?

  When you entered the bar, you laughed inwardly as the familiar smell hit your nose. Maybe it was a little silly, but everyone had different ways of distracting them. Yours wasn't a one night stand. You had never even tried this. You thought the important thing was to find someone you could feel safe with.

  You stood in the bar chair to get a drink, stood out from the crowd, and looked around as you couldn't quite decide what you wanted to get. Everyone was having their own fun. When you looked a little more carefully, you saw that no one came here alone. You would give anything to come with your friends, but they had more important things to do. At least that's what they told you.

 “Hey. Ready to order yet? “Y ou turned your head towards the sound and you were almost speechless by that perfect face you saw. Your hands tangled, and you accidentally knocked the finished glass which the man beside you had. You silently cursed yourself. The red-haired girl laughed at you. You looked at her and saw that she was busy cleaning the glass in her hand. You laughed embarrassingly and decided to have your usual drink so you wouldn't keep her waiting any longer.

 " What. Uhm the usual, please? “ There was a problem that this girl had just started a job here and she didn't know what drink you were talking about. She frowned, but didn't seem to mind at all, as she immediately grinned and leaned over the table. “What about I give you my usual?”  You nodded your head and watched in surprise as she took the drink . You have never seen a girl as attractive as this girl in all your life.

  She placed the drink in front of you and, winking at you, moved to the side to take her next customer's order. When you looked at the drink, it was clear that you were not going to spend the night alone anymore. The girl, who hadn't even told you her name yet, looked at you from time to time, checking how you got the drink out of the corner of her eye. When you caught her staring at you, she smiled shyly with her perfect dimple and went back to her work. Your night was going to be great. You were sure of that.

     LAST NIGHT

   You tried to go to the bar almost every day after meeting the red-haired girl, but all this college stuff was throwing you off. It was getting harder for you to do the assignment given to you without being sober, but luckily, you somehow finished them all, or rather you had them done, and the only thing left was that you owed a meal to the people you had them do. It wasn't much of a problem either, you weren't really interested in school anyway. If there' was one thing you were really into right then, it was that bartender whose name you finally learned. Ellie.

   You had a more than good relationship with Ellie. After the bar closed, you or she were always so busy telling each other things that you didn't even know how the time passed. Sometimes one of you said something embarrassing and you blushed up your ass, but you got used to it. Ellie was a really nice person. Although what he's been through isn't very good. You loved her. You actually thought there was something more than something. Maybe love?

  You drank as you spoke , even drank to the hilt, and didn't hesitate to do silly things. It's like you were made for each other. The way Ellie looked at you in those eyes was so deep, longing and eager that you couldn't help yourself. She had no intention of keeping it to her either.

 That evening, you happily entered the bar again, with the comfort of finishing your homework. Before you walk right in, you take a look at yourself in the mirror and rejoice at how sexy you look. Impressing Ellie was easier than you thought.   It had already been so easy for her to influence you, which was an indisputable issue. Since the moment you saw the girl, or rather every time you saw her, your palms were sweating madly and you were trying hard not to jump on her.

  Sensual and insane.

  You quickened your steps towards where she was, but it wasn't that easy from the people dancing around you. You wanted to go to her right away and explain why you didn't come yesterday. You sat down on the chair in disappointment when you looked to the side where she always stood and saw that she wasn't even there, that there was no one in her place. However, you wanted this evening to be different from other evenings. You looked around with hope.

  "Lookin' for me, babe? “ Your eyes widened at her voice and you almost jumped on her, but that was not possible because of the table in front of you. If you had done something like that, you would probably have gone to the ground with embarrassment. “ Where were you? “ He shrugged his shoulders and waved her hand as saying never mind.

   “ Usual? “ “ Yeah, but your usual. I- I want yours. “ She nodded and quickly prepared the drink and placed it in front of you. This attraction between you was driving you crazy, you wanted it more and more each time. You wanted to explain yourself. “ I had some work to do yesterday, so- “ “ It's okay. You don't have to explain yourself to me.” 

  You took a sip of your drink and nodded at her understanding. You didn't even know exactly what was going on between you guys, and what was this willingness to explain yourself? You may have been nothing more than a friend to her, but at the same time, it didn't feel that way at all. Maybe you were having such thoughts in your head. You couldn't even taste the drink you were drinking properly anymore because of the tingling in your stomach. With a grimace, you pushed the drink away from you. “Hey. What- what about doing something different tonight? I mean If you want to. “ She smiled and nodded as her beautiful dimples came out.

  “Yeah, of course babe. “ You were used to her calling you babe, it didn't seem like anything different anymore. She started saying this word the day after you met, but each time it aroused different feelings in you. It's like the pain you feel in your lower side. Every time you tried to ignore it,  was difficult as Ellie talked or touched somewhere on you. You didn't want this night to be the usual. You wanted tonight to be different.

  “ Well, let's not drink the usual one then If we're doing the different things.”

 In a sexy stride that makes you feel like it's slow motion ,she leaned in front of the table, leaned close to your ear, and in a sexy voice, she said "Let our bodies talk If we're doing the unusual, baby. " . She bit your earlobe without pulling back. You shuddered and your eyes opened wide at what he said. That's when you realized that your feelings were not reciprocated. You were happy about this and with the excitement and some joy inside you started to wait for the closing of the bar with excitement.

  After a few hours of waiting, it was finally the closing time of the bar and almost everyone had left. Ellie had taken you and herself to her apartment above the bar to change, and you were watching her take off her clothes on the edge of her bed. She was moving slowly again, but you couldn't really stand it anymore.   The pain under you was growing more and more, it was making you squirm badly.

 Just as she was taking off her pants, you jumped on her and quickly pushed her onto the bed. You pulled off the trousers that she had taken off in half and took them off her feet and immediately started to take off your own top. She put her hands on top of your, tooking off your shirt, tossed it aside to be not found in the morning. Her eyes lit up when she saw your breasts overflowing from the edge of your bra. She lifted her head from the bed and  sucked on there, turning you into a whirlwind with little kisses. “ Fuck baby you're so fuckin' beautiful and you're mine, right? “ You nooded your head and kissed her as you leaned down on her and moaned to her lips. Your kiss was soft but sensual. It was almost unbearable, and you both knew it.

 “ I want to fuck you, Ellie. “ “You and me both , babygirl. “ You groaned against her word. You split both of Ellie's legs, kissing both of them separately before coming to her clit. It was like she was writhing on you. You are satisfied. You quickly peeled off her panties from her leg and buried your mouth there in no time. “Fuck, baby your mouth. Fuck it's so good. “ She ran her fingers through your hair and made you press yourself against her. You pulled your mouth out of there and spit on your fingers and stuck two fingers in her hole without practice.    Although she cried out in pain, she got used to it later and this time she started to moan with pleasure.

  “Y/N, I don't wanna come yet. Please let me fuck you too. “ Without raising your mouth too much, you said ” Me first, Ellie. I want to devour you. You're so tasty. “

 “ I want to know how you taste too, baby. Please. “ You groaned and let her lay you on your back.

  You can't remember when you got so undressed and came close to having an orgasm, but the best orgasm of your life was about to await you.

   She sat with her legs spread out and took you in her lap. You brought your hands to her beautiful little face and deepened your kiss. You took your place by her leg and started rubbing yourself on her. “Yes babygirl, keep goin'. Good girl. “   Saying these things only made you go faster. Her leg was terribly wet, but she didn’t even care.

  When she least expected it, you stuck your fingers in her hole as you continued to kiss her. She groaned and thrust her hips against your fingers, which also made your leg wobble, making it even easier for you to rub. You were so close. Your moans and pleasure screams filled the room.

   “Fuck baby. Yess. Come on. Cum for me. “

   “Ellie!” you shouted, mixed with a moan. “I can't no more. “

   “I know baby. Cu-Cum for me. “

  After that, you both came convulsively. Your legs were sore and cramped from too much rubbing. Ellie had already thrown herself  into bed and she was out of breath. You laughed and got on top of her. After placing one last small kiss on her lips, you wrapped your arms around each other and surrendered yourself to sleep.

Guys give this guy what it needss!! It's one of my fave writings so far.

The Unusual

   A/N- In my opinion, this was the best smut I’ve ever written and I hope you like it too :) We are such a simp for Ellie Williams ya’ll :)  You also can send me requests, don’t be shy <3 I’m sorry If there are any grammar mistakes, I’ll try to come back and correct them.

   Warnings- SMUT, Modern!Ellie, drink of alcohol, fingering, dirty talking.

   Request from- Anonymous

   Summary- After their meeting at the bar, what is usual for Reader and Ellie gets boring after a while and they decide to do something a little unusual.

   A blinding light from the window shone into the room where you slept. The pain between your legs was enough to bother you more than ever, but you laid still and let the morning sun hit your face. You turned your head in that direction with the rustle coming from your side and you couldn’t help your grin both because you saw the person you saw and because you remembered that wonderful moment you had last night.

         A WEEK AGO

   Again, when you went to the bar you always go to, this time there was a little movement in it. In this place where you went to clear your mind, you met a lot of people and learned more stories than you wanted to know. Sometimes you had to choose between many people, but you could not find the right one for you.   Could such a thing have happened that day?

  When you entered the bar, you laughed inwardly as the familiar smell hit your nose. Maybe it was a little silly, but everyone had different ways of distracting them. Yours wasn’t a one night stand. You had never even tried this. You thought the important thing was to find someone you could feel safe with.

  You stood in the bar chair to get a drink, stood out from the crowd, and looked around as you couldn’t quite decide what you wanted to get. Everyone was having their own fun. When you looked a little more carefully, you saw that no one came here alone. You would give anything to come with your friends, but they had more important things to do. At least that’s what they told you.

 “Hey. Ready to order yet? “Y ou turned your head towards the sound and you were almost speechless by that perfect face you saw. Your hands tangled, and you accidentally knocked the finished glass which the man beside you had. You silently cursed yourself. The red-haired girl laughed at you. You looked at her and saw that she was busy cleaning the glass in her hand. You laughed embarrassingly and decided to have your usual drink so you wouldn’t keep her waiting any longer.

 " What. Uhm the usual, please? “ There was a problem that this girl had just started a job here and she didn’t know what drink you were talking about. She frowned, but didn’t seem to mind at all, as she immediately grinned and leaned over the table. “What about I give you my usual?”  You nodded your head and watched in surprise as she took the drink . You have never seen a girl as attractive as this girl in all your life.

  She placed the drink in front of you and, winking at you, moved to the side to take her next customer’s order. When you looked at the drink, it was clear that you were not going to spend the night alone anymore. The girl, who hadn’t even told you her name yet, looked at you from time to time, checking how you got the drink out of the corner of her eye. When you caught her staring at you, she smiled shyly with her perfect dimple and went back to her work. Your night was going to be great. You were sure of that.

     LAST NIGHT

   You tried to go to the bar almost every day after meeting the red-haired girl, but all this college stuff was throwing you off. It was getting harder for you to do the assignment given to you without being sober, but luckily, you somehow finished them all, or rather you had them done, and the only thing left was that you owed a meal to the people you had them do. It wasn’t much of a problem either, you weren’t really interested in school anyway. If there’ was one thing you were really into right then, it was that bartender whose name you finally learned. Ellie.

   You had a more than good relationship with Ellie. After the bar closed, you or she were always so busy telling each other things that you didn’t even know how the time passed. Sometimes one of you said something embarrassing and you blushed up your ass, but you got used to it. Ellie was a really nice person. Although what he’s been through isn’t very good. You loved her. You actually thought there was something more than something. Maybe love?

  You drank as you spoke , even drank to the hilt, and didn’t hesitate to do silly things. It’s like you were made for each other. The way Ellie looked at you in those eyes was so deep, longing and eager that you couldn’t help yourself. She had no intention of keeping it to her either.

 That evening, you happily entered the bar again, with the comfort of finishing your homework. Before you walk right in, you take a look at yourself in the mirror and rejoice at how sexy you look. Impressing Ellie was easier than you thought.   It had already been so easy for her to influence you, which was an indisputable issue. Since the moment you saw the girl, or rather every time you saw her, your palms were sweating madly and you were trying hard not to jump on her.

  Sensual and insane.

  You quickened your steps towards where she was, but it wasn’t that easy from the people dancing around you. You wanted to go to her right away and explain why you didn’t come yesterday. You sat down on the chair in disappointment when you looked to the side where she always stood and saw that she wasn’t even there, that there was no one in her place. However, you wanted this evening to be different from other evenings. You looked around with hope.

  “Lookin’ for me, babe? “ Your eyes widened at her voice and you almost jumped on her, but that was not possible because of the table in front of you. If you had done something like that, you would probably have gone to the ground with embarrassment. “ Where were you? “ He shrugged his shoulders and waved her hand as saying never mind.

   “ Usual? “ “ Yeah, but your usual. I- I want yours. “ She nodded and quickly prepared the drink and placed it in front of you. This attraction between you was driving you crazy, you wanted it more and more each time. You wanted to explain yourself. “ I had some work to do yesterday, so- “ “ It’s okay. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” 

  You took a sip of your drink and nodded at her understanding. You didn’t even know exactly what was going on between you guys, and what was this willingness to explain yourself? You may have been nothing more than a friend to her, but at the same time, it didn’t feel that way at all. Maybe you were having such thoughts in your head. You couldn’t even taste the drink you were drinking properly anymore because of the tingling in your stomach. With a grimace, you pushed the drink away from you. “Hey. What- what about doing something different tonight? I mean If you want to. “ She smiled and nodded as her beautiful dimples came out.

  “Yeah, of course babe. “ You were used to her calling you babe, it didn’t seem like anything different anymore. She started saying this word the day after you met, but each time it aroused different feelings in you. It’s like the pain you feel in your lower side. Every time you tried to ignore it,  was difficult as Ellie talked or touched somewhere on you. You didn’t want this night to be the usual. You wanted tonight to be different.

  “ Well, let’s not drink the usual one then If we’re doing the different things.”

 In a sexy stride that makes you feel like it’s slow motion ,she leaned in front of the table, leaned close to your ear, and in a sexy voice, she said "Let our bodies talk If we’re doing the unusual, baby. ” . She bit your earlobe without pulling back. You shuddered and your eyes opened wide at what he said. That’s when you realized that your feelings were not reciprocated. You were happy about this and with the excitement and some joy inside you started to wait for the closing of the bar with excitement.

  After a few hours of waiting, it was finally the closing time of the bar and almost everyone had left. Ellie had taken you and herself to her apartment above the bar to change, and you were watching her take off her clothes on the edge of her bed. She was moving slowly again, but you couldn’t really stand it anymore.   The pain under you was growing more and more, it was making you squirm badly.

 Just as she was taking off her pants, you jumped on her and quickly pushed her onto the bed. You pulled off the trousers that she had taken off in half and took them off her feet and immediately started to take off your own top. She put her hands on top of your, tooking off your shirt, tossed it aside to be not found in the morning. Her eyes lit up when she saw your breasts overflowing from the edge of your bra. She lifted her head from the bed and  sucked on there, turning you into a whirlwind with little kisses. “ Fuck baby you’re so fuckin’ beautiful and you’re mine, right? “ You nooded your head and kissed her as you leaned down on her and moaned to her lips. Your kiss was soft but sensual. It was almost unbearable, and you both knew it.

 “ I want to fuck you, Ellie. “ “You and me both , babygirl. “ You groaned against her word. You split both of Ellie’s legs, kissing both of them separately before coming to her clit. It was like she was writhing on you. You are satisfied. You quickly peeled off her panties from her leg and buried your mouth there in no time. “Fuck, baby your mouth. Fuck it’s so good. “ She ran her fingers through your hair and made you press yourself against her. You pulled your mouth out of there and spit on your fingers and stuck two fingers in her hole without practice.    Although she cried out in pain, she got used to it later and this time she started to moan with pleasure.

  “Y/N, I don’t wanna come yet. Please let me fuck you too. “ Without raising your mouth too much, you said ” Me first, Ellie. I want to devour you. You’re so tasty. “

 “ I want to know how you taste too, baby. Please. “ You groaned and let her lay you on your back.

  You can’t remember when you got so undressed and came close to having an orgasm, but the best orgasm of your life was about to await you.

   She sat with her legs spread out and took you in her lap. You brought your hands to her beautiful little face and deepened your kiss. You took your place by her leg and started rubbing yourself on her. “Yes babygirl, keep goin’. Good girl. “   Saying these things only made you go faster. Her leg was terribly wet, but she didn’t even care.

  When she least expected it, you stuck your fingers in her hole as you continued to kiss her. She groaned and thrust her hips against your fingers, which also made your leg wobble, making it even easier for you to rub. You were so close. Your moans and pleasure screams filled the room.

   “Fuck baby. Yess. Come on. Cum for me. “

   “Ellie!” you shouted, mixed with a moan. “I can’t no more. “

   “I know baby. Cu-Cum for me. “

  After that, you both came convulsively. Your legs were sore and cramped from too much rubbing. Ellie had already thrown herself  into bed and she was out of breath. You laughed and got on top of her. After placing one last small kiss on her lips, you wrapped your arms around each other and surrendered yourself to sleep.

Dating Joel Miller

  A/N- Guys, I do not want to talk about smut in this, but I may have sprinkled it a little. You’re welcome :) I won't go without mentioning, Joel has been my comfort character for almost 4 years and I don't remember a day without him. I see him always by my side and I miss him very much so I'm looking forward to The Last of Us part 1. I hope you enjoy this headcanon style thing. Your comments and feedback are very valuable to me. I hope you have a good day/night <3

  Warnings- mentions of blood, implied smut , mentions of violence, domestic stuff basically. ( is that supposed to be a warning? Idk )

 - I can't think much about asking Joel out because it's obvious, the guy looks so annoying and grumpy from the outside.

 - But what matters to us is how Joel is inside. Remember: don't judge a book by its cover.

  - With this advice, I have a lot to say about joel and being with him.

  - At first , I see Joel as a man of his word. If Joel says he loves you, he really does. Don't even think otherwise.

  - I want to talk a little bit about Joel in the house. While at home, Joel obviously has the right to be a little messy because he is a single man, but after you enter his life, he starts doing housework more regularly and learning to cook.

  - Even if you mess up the house together from time to time, it would be great for you to tidy the house together and finally drink a coffee of tiredness.

  - We didn't see much of Joel carving wood, but we know his arts. I have to admit, it wouldn't hurt to disturb him even a little while he is doing his work . :)

 - I said Joel might be messy, but that doesn't mean he's dirty. Yes, he and Ellie were out for a long time and even long before that they lived in a not-so-clean area, and maybe there was no such thing as a washing machine. Guys, the man is a clean man at his core, and anyone who claims otherwise, well, you can do it If you wanna lmao.

  - Joel, of course, also smells of freshly carved wood and coffee, and I hope we all know that. At least that's how our dream Joel is.

  - Sitting on his porch with Joel, watching him play his guitar with those dexterous fingers, then sitting on his lap and kissing him deeply.

  - Although he is tired after he comes from the patrol, he will make time for you and let you massage him. At first he doesn't really want it because it's in his nature to be grumpy and he doesn't want you to get tired any more because you're tired too.

 - You hold him by the hand, after you put him on the couch, you rub his shoulders well and do not forget to put kisses once in a while. The man rewards you in different ways after this compassionate act. :)

-  I'm not going to talk about how Joel is in bed for now, because I want to provoke you with a little preview :)

 - But know that you will definitely be pleased with Joel in bed. His skilled fingers, his muscular body above you, and his care for you are enough for you. The man is experienced enough in these things and knows how to treat you or when he hurt you.

  - Although from the outside, Joel may seem very cold and uncaring to others, he started to change after meeting you. Instead of the man who walked in a dazed manner, he became an unyielding and lively man who was even more brave against life. Tommy and Maria are surprised by this change, but they also know that you are the reason. Tommy or Maria didn't actually introduce you. Classically, while you were on the road and he was on the road, his eyes touched yours and you were drawn to each other. Of course, Joel didn't think at first that you would be the person who would make his life so beautiful, but gradually he was more and more attracted to your smile, touch, speech, look.

 - The man was afraid to ask you at first. In this case, I can say that he got some support from Tommy, but he didn't do everything he got adviced.

  - On a typical Jackson evening, Joel came to your door and said he wanted to talk a little. Since winter was about to come, you put on a jacket and followed him outside. You were wondering what he was to say. Your eyes  looking at him with hope. He suddenly pressed his lips to yours under those gorgeous, bright, colorful Jackson lights. This romantic moment for both of you ended with a great night, but you still carry this moment in your hearts.

 - Going to the patrol together. I can't think of anything as great as going on patrol with him. Yes, maybe I'm thinking about it, but his sexy but angry looks towards runners and the others . Blood is not something any of us like, but sweat mixed with blood on him...I'm having a hard time telling friends because I have a bad temper when I imagine Joel like that.

  - While on the patrol, Joel tries his best to protect you and not go to far places, but he also realizes that you’re not a child. He knows you can take care of yourself. Knowing this, he doesn't think much of it, but if he senses danger around, he won't hesitate to pull you to his side, tuck you , and put your head on his chest. Joel is very possessive and protective and that's why I love Joel so much.

  - After you return, you clean yourself first, and after you get out of the dust, you go under the same blanket, he tucks you well, puts  little kisses on your forehead, and then you both fall asleep in front of the fireplace.

  - I don't think much of Joel dancing, but I have a few ideas of how he was convinced by the Jackson people to play the guitar at every Jackson family event. When you entered the crowded area you saw Tommy and Maria sitting in front of the bar chatting and Ellie and Dina laughing as well. Holding Joel's hand tightly and taking a look around, you went to Maria’s and sat on the empty chairs next to them. After some talking and laughing, a young man who understands music came up to Joel and asked if he could play the guitar.  

 - At first he refused, but  when you went to him and told him you had a surprise, he gave up and walked towards the stage with a sigh of relief.

 - When he got to the stage, no one spared their adoring applause. He looked around with a nervous look, and lastly he looked at you, smiled. You waved at him and  all watched in admiration as he played the guitar.

  - At the end of that evening, when you walked into the house with Joel and told you what your surprise was for him and that he wanted it now, you couldn't help running back. Before you could even climb the stairs, he grabbed you by the waist and turned you towards him. Taking you on his shoulder, he quickly climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom and threw you onto the bed.

 - That wonderful evening ended, once again, with your moans in bed, climbing to your peak together and snuggling into each other.

The father-daughter relationship I want to have 😪