Evermore

Evermore

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Joel’s your older boyfriend who your parents had a hard time approving of, but you’re engaged now and spending your first Thanksgiving with your family, and well, it’s always fun doing things you know you shouldn’t do under the roof of your childhood home.

-OR-

The Thanksgiving AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No outbreak AU; Thanksgiving AU; Devoted Joel Miller; Established Relationship; Thanksgiving is the most boyfriend holiday and it needs to be discussed; Fucking in your childhood home shenanigans; Pretty soft and sweet; Needy behavior; Older man/Younger woman; Daddy kink; Unprotected PIV; Creampie; Breeding Kink; Oral sex; Fluff and Smut; Praise Kink; Come eating; PWP

A/N: Was thinking yesterday that Thanksgiving is the most boyfriendy holiday, and so this seemed entirely necessary after that epiphany. I’m sick as an old dog right now, and wrote this so quickly and just for fun. Any and all mistakes are property of my NyQuil induced high, apologies and enjoy and happy holidays :]

Word Count: 4.2K

Read on AO3

“You’re doing so good.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, baby. So, so good. It’s going so well.” You drag your nails slowly up the wide expanse of his strong back, feeling the divots and bumps of his spine, the thick padding of muscles that jump and shiver at your touch. He’d donned the nice green and red plaid button down you’d bought him for tonight, and he’s a little damp at the small of his back, giving away the nerves he’s trying to keep hidden from you, but you can tell anyways, sensed them as if they’d been your own fluttering within you. More attuned to another person than maybe is normal, perhaps, but you know this man, your man, your fiance now. You understand him. 

“You think he likes me?” And his voice goes a little gruff, sheepish, words lodging in his throat as he slowly soaps your mother’s special holiday china in the warm sink water. The two of you’d been relegated to clean up duty after you’d finished the beautiful Thanksgiving meal your mother had spent days readying in preparation for your first official visit with Joel as the man you’d soon marry. No longer just the older boyfriend who your father couldn’t stand to hear about, much less bear the sight of. And the come around had been slow going, undoubtedly, tireless work on yours and your mother’s parts trying to get him to relent, to accept the man who you’d chosen to spend the rest of your life with as a good man for his daughter. 

“Yes– yes. Absolutely. You made him laugh so many times. And he was so interested when you mentioned the house.”

You feel him suck in a shaky breath and move to wrap your arms around the strong breadth of his waist, resting your cheek against him, listening to the thud, thud of his beating heart. “Christ–” He gives a tremulous laugh that you follow suit warmly, palms splaying out over his belly. “He was, wasn’t he?” 

“So interested. Please, don’t worry anymore. My mom loves you, and dad’s on his way there too, I know he is, I promise.”

“He’s just protective,” he says, shutting off the water and pulling the plug on the drain. The both of you stand there in the silence together, listening to the little tornado of water suck away the remnants of the perfect dinner you’d just had with your parents and the man you were going to marry. It really had been perfect, and you’re telling him the truth when you say you really do think your father’s coming around. He’d been apprehensive at first, more than apprehensive, perhaps, with Joel being so much older than you, twenty years to be exact. And with a teenage daughter of his own, Sarah, who was spending the holiday with her mother. 

Your mother had always been the easy going one, and she’d taken one look at Joel, the dark, silver threaded curls, the thick shoulders and sparkly, hazel eyes, the too charming smile and had immediately understood. Your father had seen all those same things and seen nothing but trouble immediately deserving of mistrust. Things had been rocky for a time, but when Joel had gotten down on one knee and asked you to spend the rest of your life with him and Sarah, when he’d broken ground on the house he was building you with his bare hands from the dirt up out by the lake, well… your father hadn’t been able to withhold his approval for much longer after that was all said and done. 

“And for good reason,” he continues, reaching for the dish towel, drying off his hands before covering yours over his stomach with his wide palms, pulling your arms tighter around him. He brings one of your hands up to his face, cupping his own mouth with it to press a kiss to the tender cove. “The man should take me out back and drag me through the mud,” he mumbles, muffled into your skin, dragging his mouth slowly from side to side, tickling your palm with his whiskers. 

You press yourself harder against him, shoving him into the edge of the counter, dizzy with the feel of your heart beating so hard against your sternum it reverberates against the ribs in his back. “No, baby. Why? Never.” You press a kiss right over the slope of his spine. 

He gives a soft laugh at the feel of your wriggling against him, trying to find friction anywhere and anyway, not very inconspicuously rubbing your breasts against his back, and he turns slowly in the circle of your arms with that humming laugh still caught in his throat, bending slightly at the knees when he wraps his own arms around your waist to pull you up and into him so that your feet are left to dangle above his own heavy boots. He nuzzles at the warm, fragrant skin beneath the edge of your jaw, a small kiss to the tender spot behind your ear, where he whispers, “‘Cause all I could think about at the goddamn table, sittin’ next to your father, was how pretty your tits look in that dress you wore for me – how much I wish I could kiss that pretty pussy to sleep tonight.” 

You whine low, desperate, needy, wrapping your arms behind his neck to press his face tightly to your throat, breath hitching at the feel of his teeth, sharp at your pulse. “Joel–”

He shakes his head slowly, a long stream of sighing breath warm against your collarbone before he says, “I know– I know, baby. I’m telling ya– your father should kill me for the things I wanna do to his little girl. For the things I do to her already.”

The visit had so far been everything you could’ve wished for, and what you’d appreciated more than anything, more than your father’s very approval of your fiance, or your mother’s happiness for you, was that Joel had found the perfect balance between being respectful, ingratiating even, while still remaining uncowed by your father. Walking into your parents home with your hand in his, a deferential kiss to your mother’s cheek, and a strong, self assured handshake for your father while he’d handed him the bottle of his favorite fine aged whiskey and a demure, I’m glad we could make this work for our girl.

Our girl, he’d said, and it had made everything that lived inside of you with his name on it, everything that was perpetually soft and wet for him, go molten. You loved him. You belonged to him. And you’d chosen him for yourself, and he was sure as hell going to make sure everyone the two of you came across knew what that choice entailed, what it meant to him. Your father had been forced into capitulation, all with the whiskey and the self assurance in Joel’s eyes, your own unbridled elation, and your mother’s giggles and blushing smiles like every other woman who’s ever met this man, unable to resist the charm of that Southern twang and the too gorgeous smile, no other recourse had been left to your poor dad. 

You think of this as you make your way on silent tiptoes through your parent’s dark, quiet home. It had been the one concession you’d not garnered from your father, the sleeping arrangements. He’d absolutely refused to allow you and Joel to share a bed under his roof, no questions asked. And no matter how much you’d pleaded and your mother had cooed and cawed and threatened him, he’d not relented. At this point, you were worried he’d not let you sleep in the same bed as Joel even after the two of you’d been married. But what your father didn’t understand, what even you yourself barely understood sometimes was that you needed Joel. You need him. No one, no one except for Joel himself understood how desperately that ran inside of you. He understood you, he always has. 

You pause as you reach the closed door of his bedroom, splaying a palm against the fine grained wood to take a settling breath, your heart beating so fast you feel it in your throat, chock full of excitement, lust, desperate yearning. To have him here, in your childhood home, where you’d been a teenager, a girl, grown into a woman, you want him so, so badly, inside of you, around you, beneath you. You can never sleep without him anymore, no comfort to be found in the too small bed of your childhood – you turn the knob and slip inside. 

The blue darkness of the guest bedroom paints his form in shadows, big under the pretty quilt your mother has adorning the bed. You can see the heavy mass of his shoulder peeking from beneath the edge of the quilt, the ratty gray t-shirt you know has a faded longhorn stretched across the front; not able to sleep naked and wrapped only in you the way he usually does when under your parents roof. You turn the lock and step carefully on tipped toes, avoiding the creaky bits in the hardwood floor you’re so familiar with after a lifetime living in this house and lift the edge of the quilt to slip into the cocoon of warmth with him. Like a living furnace, you snake your arm over his flank slowly, enjoying the shiver and jerk of his muscles as you stroke him awake. Your palm, passing over thick ridged muscles and soft belly, digging beneath to feel the wispy scratch of hair there. 

He makes a deep sound, low in his chest, legs shifting as he comes to wakefulness, and then the gruff murmur of your name being whispered into the dark, his big, callused palm coming to wrap entirely around your fist beneath his t-shirt, keeping you from slipping it inside his sleep pants. “Baby, what’re you doin’?” He slurs, voice full of sleep and slow waking lust. 

You press your pelvis into his backside, hitching your knee up and over his hip to wrap yourself around him like vines. “I need you,” you mewl, baby voice trying to get ahead of his polite refusal before he’s able to get it out. He’d told you, before the two of you’d embarked on this weekend at your parents house, that there was to be no funny business on your part. As if he didn’t know that that was your favorite kind of business where he was concerned. You press a kiss above his scapula, then open your jaw to drag your teeth against the skin warmed cotton. You rub against him, clutching and pulling at his chest and stomach, biting and kissing as much of his back as you can reach, your foot somehow finding its way into his lap so that you can feel his quickly hardening cock against the sensitive arch of your foot. 

He groans roughly. “You’re gonna get us caught, sweet girl,” he tries to protest, but wraps his hand around the little foot in his lap anyways, pressing the arch of it into that half hard erection, rubbing against it. 

“I need you– I can’t sleep without you,” you whine, and he makes a frustrated sound, turning to face you, gripping your knee as he goes to open the cradle of your hips for himself, drawing your leg over his waist so that you’re suddenly chest to chest, sipping on each other’s warm breath. With a fist in your hair he gives you a hardly believable reprimand, little girl, and presses his lips briefly to yours, quick and damp, barely there, like he can’t help himself, like he knows that if he starts he won’t be able to stop, wandering hands already slipping up the hem of your nightgown, squeezing your panty clad ass. 

“Your parents…” he tries again, the roll of his hips against yours, coupled with a hitched whine, making his objections a little laughable.

“Don’t you miss me? Don’t you love me? Don’t you want me here with you?”

“Of course– of course I do–” You twist your fingers in his curls, the first real press of your mouths, his damp upper lip slotting between both of yours so that you can give it a little suck. Then the tip of his tongue touching yours, and you’re opening all the way for him, moaning wantonly into his mouth, letting him lick and taste behind the line of your teeth. “‘Course I want you here, baby.”

“I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet,” you promise. “Please, please, Joel. Please, just–” The hand squeezing your ass slides between your legs, finds the damp plaquet of panties. Fuckin’ soaked already, needy girl. “Please, just fuck me. I’ll be so quiet, I promise.”

“Baby…”

Please, please, please. He’s always had something about him that turns you into nothing more than a wet little girl desperate for the big, big man’s attention. The impropriety of your surroundings has no bearing on this, the desperation is as present as ever, heightened even, maybe, because of the wrongness of it, because you could be caught red handed at any second if you’re not careful, not quiet enough. 

“‘Course I love you so fuckin’ much. You even need to ask?” He rubs the flat of his palm over your pussy, the tip of his middle finger finding the nub of your clit covered by the soaked wet silk to press lightly on each pass forward.

“No, Daddy. I know,” you breathe soft and secret into his mouth, watch the slight widening of his eyes as you say it. You can picture the flush suffusing his cheeks at hearing you call him so, know the effect the sound of it has on him. 

“Fucking Christ,” he murmurs, pulling you tighter against him, tilting your head back by the grip he has on your hair so that he can deepen his kiss, taste you more thoroughly. “Better be quiet while I fuck you.” He pulls back, mock frown and a note of reprimand in his voice as his fingers dip beneath the silk of your panties to find the wet, swollen mess of you already. He moans into your open mouth, your name and I love you and wet fuckin’ pussy as he starts to pet at you slowly. His fingers swirling at your clit and then moving to your opening, dipping inside just a tiny bit, giving you almost nothing, forcing a frustrated whine up your throat. “I said quiet.”

“Please, Daddy. Please,” you beg, but he returns to your clit, ignoring your whining, pinching the bundle of nerves lightly before he’s back to teasing the mouth of your cunt, dipping the tip of a single finger in shallowly to pull your wetness from you and spread it over your mound, slicking you up for him. 

“We’re gonna go nice and slow. Gonna take my pretty cunt nice and slow, and you’re gonna be good for me, aren’t you? Gonna be quiet – not get us caught, right? Say yes.”

“Yes, Daddy,” you whisper, pressing kisses all along his face and jaw and throat, needy fingers twisting in his curls, scratching at the back of his neck and the hills of his shoulders. He make an approving groan of a sound, rolling the two of you over so that you’re on your back, splayed out beneath him, and he pulls the vee of your nightgown down, bearing your breasts to him, sucking on each nipple, first hard then soft, then with teeth and tongue, slicking you in his spit, and you try and stay quiet, you really, really do, but it’s so hard not to cry out at the sight of his jaw hinging wide, seemingly trying to take the whole heavy weight of your breast into his mouth in one go. 

He always has you like he wants you more than anything else in the whole world, like he’s never wanted anything else in his whole life more than he wants you, and nothing feels better than that, nothing makes you crazier for him than the way he wants you so desperately. 

He makes his way down the length of you with kisses to your breasts, your ribs, your belly, the mound of your pelvic bone, before he’s gathering your knees together and bending them to press against your chest, pulling the lace and silk of your panties over the curve of your bottom and diving nose first into your wet cunt, taking in a deep drag of your scent and then dragging the broad, flat of his tongue from your asshole to your clit in one long, slow swipe. The groan he ends on has you almost coming on his tongue just like that, the sound so hungry it would scare someone who doesn’t want to be wanted as badly by this man as you do. And he eats your cunt like he’s angry, like he’s in love with you, like he doesn’t care if you get caught or not. Tongue plunging into your pussy, sucking on your clit, shaking his head, quick and hard, from side to side so that the obscene sound of your wetness against his mouth is all you can hear over the cacophony sounding in your ears right before you gush for him all wet and sweet and sticky, covering his tongue and beard. His lips wrap around your swollen clit again while it still pulses for him, and you have to shove your fist into your mouth, drooling around it to stifle the sound of your cries for his cock while he sucks you into a second painfully fluttery orgasm, your womb cramping hard and tight around nothing, your cunt clutching desperately at air for the cock it’s about to gladly take. The hum of his movements, of his whines and moans, don’t match his promise for nice and slow. They tell you this is going to be hard and deep and might even hurt, and that you’ll like it all the more for that. This is, after all, what you’d snuck in here for, just exactly this. 

He pulls away from your cunt with a loud, wet suck, popping your clit from his puckered mouth like a piece of too ripe, too sweet fruit, before crawling up the length of you, pulling your soaked panties and your nightgown from your body as he goes, shucking his own sweat soaked shirt over his head and kicking his pajama bottoms away. When he takes your mouth again, his face and beard are wet and sticky with your slick, all sweet sugared musk and the angry thrust of his tongue, his fingers, too hard and too tight wrapping around your jaw, grunting into your mouth as he sucks on your tongue. His burning hot cock thrusts between your wet cleft, the sound of your leaking pussy loud enough to be heard over the sound of your mingled panting breaths. You feel him grip himself, stroking once, twice, wide, blunt head bumping against slick soaked skin, before he’s notching at your cunt and shoving in, hard and fast. Not giving you a chance to think about it before he’s bumping at the mouth of your womb, a muted bruise you never tire of; his too big cock that still pinches every time, that presses in just on this side of too deep to always be comfortable, but you don’t care. The proof is in the hurt, and you need constant reminding that he’s real, that this is real. It’s your greatest pleasure, after all, the reassurance of him, of the two of you, and he never tires of giving it to you. You know that giving you the things you need and want from him, turns Joel on more than anything else.

He groans long and low into the crook of your shoulder when he bottoms out and holds there for several drawn out moments, both of you enjoying the pulse and throb of your connection. He’s so deep and you’re so wet for him, taking him so, so well, like he always tells you that you do. You’d felt, from the first moment that you’d laid eyes on him, like you’d been made for him. Put on this earth just for him to find and keep, and doing this, having each other like this, even after all the times you’ve done it, always feels like further proof of it. He grinds against you, hips shifting from side to side, tip bumping against the deepest part of you, before he’s clutching at your ass and flipping the both of you over suddenly, cock never slipping from your tight clutch when he settles you on top of him, buried to the hilt. You feel him in your stomach like this, and you tell him so, little hand coming to rest low on your belly where you’re holding him inside of you, pressing down so that the both of you can feel your connection from the inside out, groaning in tandem all wide and sparkly eyed as you look at each other. And he’s nodding his head at you as you start to shift your hips slowly, feeling the wet slide of his length, the grind of your clit against his pelvis, one hand pressing down on your belly, the other anchoring yourself on his own stomach so that you can rock yourself on him. 

He pulls one of your knees up, resting your foot flat on the bed to open you to his gaze, so that he can watch the way the thick root of his cock splits your cunt open for him to fuck up into. The two of you find your rhythm, you rolling your hips down on his upthrust, and he’s still nodding his head at you, mouthing words made of only air at you while you gasp and gulp for breath, I love you and you’re so pretty and yeah, ride that cock, baby. All you can do in return is mumble his name at him over and over again, Joel, Joel, Joel, nonsensical. Your brain doesn't work when he’s got his cock wedged this deep inside of you, it just doesn’t.

There's sweat pooling in the divots of his collarbones, the sun grizzled notch of his throat, and you fold over forward, changing the angle, deepening it, to lick up those little pools of salt, sucking on his neck until he’ll surely have incriminating bruises tomorrow. You don’t care, not even a little bit. He’s so yours in this moment, always really, but right now, Joel feels so, so incredibly yours, and you love him so much, and he’s going to be your husband one day soon and nothing else really matters besides that. 

He wraps both arms around your back, squeezes you to himself tight and starts to fuck up into you, fast, brutal, again, nothing nice and slow about it like he’d promised, and you’re forced to dig your teeth into his shoulder so hard you’re scared for a moment you’ll taste blood on your tongue. You can feel your orgasm crawling up your spine, pooling like liquid heat in your pelvis while everything goes tight and fluttery inside of you. “How mad would he be if I knocked you up right now? If I fucked his baby girl full’a my baby under his roof?” He grunts into your ear, and there’s the dip in your restraint. As much as you want to hold off and wait for him, you clench down hard around him with a sharp cry, mouthful of his skin to muffle you only barely. “Huh? What’dya think he’d say?” He continues, changing the angle so that his pelvis bumps against your clit on every punch in, balls slapping wetly against the curve of your ass while he pets at the tight ring of muscle back there, tempting you with more than you think you can take right now. “If you go all pretty and round and soft for me before our wedding.” 

You can't speak, you’re nothing but air and sticky, sweet wet in the shape of a girl made just for him. Too tight grip in your hair, and he’s jerking your face towards him, grunting into your mouth as he starts to spill inside of you, burning hot come milked out of his cock and deep into you, and he tells you again how much he loves you, tells you that you’re his pretty little wife because it’s already felt like that for so long. A marrying of your very selves despite the lack of legal nothing that means so little to the both of you when you have all this between you already. Tells you that he can’t wait to see his baby all full of his baby. 

When he’s finished pumping you filled to the brim he turns you over again, pulls out slowly so that the both of you can appreciate the sound of his heavy cock slipping wetly from your well used pussy, and when he bends to eat your mingled come out of your puffy cunt, only to then wedge your mouth open so that he can spit your fluids onto your waiting tongue, all here, taste how good we are, the only words left when it comes to this man and this thing you have between the two of you is always simply thank you. 

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog!

oh my gawd

let it snow [joel miller]

It's cold on the trail. Joel keeps you warm.

12 days of pedro masterlist | my masterlist

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+ (mdni)

tags/warnings: an early winter smattering of daddy kink, feel free to picture game!joel or show!joel here, post-outbreak, jackson!joel, christmastime fuzzies, soft old man!joel, self-indulgent age gap (20s/50s), protective!joel, christmas tree hunting, hiking, sex in an apocalypse, snowball play(?), fingering, frostbite does not exist in this universe, thigh fucking, dirty talk, ellie loving dinosaurs, snowball fights, a joel who enjoys what little peace life brings him

word count: ~ 5.3k

read on ao3!

a/n: hi, lovelies - this fic is my contribution to @hellishjoel's 12 days of pedro celebration! everyone please check out the masterlist linked above to check out the other works from all of these amazing authors!! thank you endlessly to my parents @northernbluess and @tieronecrush for beta'ing this fic and reassuring me every step of the way - i love you both to the moon and back. i hope you enjoy and as usual, please mind the tags and please tell me what you think!! ❄️

super cute dividers by @saradika-graphics!!

Fall comes on slow. The leaves begin to bleed orange from the arteries. The air crackles with bright, cold wind that bites and pokes. Debris crunches underfoot and the trees shed their lustrous coats. It’s nothing like the onset of winter in Jackson—the downward crash of an overnight snowstorm that crests too quickly for the residents to prepare. 

It's a crystallised, overrefined flurry of soft flakes that gather on thatched rooftops and bury the barren, browning garden beds in the western corner of the village. It’s a nighttime assault of gnashing wind carrying fractals of ice and snow, and before most are awake, Jackson is snowed in.

The children are thrilled. All of them too small to have known anything but the walls of the town, they burst from their homes, half-zipped coats and bright-and-early tummy-rumblings and wondrous impatience, to stick out their tongue and catch the still-falling snowflakes. Parents and caretakers and teachers straggle, still pulling on their own boots and coats, in the effort to stay close to their charges. Snowballs are packed together and hurled from behind fortified walls of snow; passers-by are pulled unwittingly into the two-sided, relentless barrage; and the shrieks and cries crackling into the dead white air are born from the watery womb of promise, not terror.

There’s some joy yet to be found in this world. 

He isn’t participating in the frozen-water war, but he’s watching from the margins, leaning against the wall of the schoolhouse with his arms folded over his chest and his eyes hawklike as he observes your every move.

A group of young girls has inducted you into the battle and now you’re hiding with one of them behind a wall, packing a tight ball of snow in your hands, barely protected by your threadbare gloves. He can see the grip of the cold on your body, the way your breath circles above your head, a silvery halo. He can see the slight shivers that start in your lower spine and tremble their way up to the back of your neck, and he can see the phantom imprint of his hand resting there, warming your nape, curling his callused fingers around your brain stem and guiding you the way he liked. He can see your gentle touch not only in your hands but in your smile, in the soft application of snow to the top of the wall as it begins to melt, in the sweet curl of your mouth as you help a child who has fallen to their feet. 

Swiping an accumulation of snow from the child’s nose with your thumb, you mouth some words he cannot see. The child sniffs happily and wraps their arms around their mother’s leg. 

You sneak away from the barrage of snowballs and blow some warm air into your cupped hands. He shifts off the wall and begins to prowl toward you. 

When he’s close enough, when no one is around nor awake enough to notice, pulls you into the alley between the schoolhouse and the theatre.

His mouth captures your surprised exhale, stealing the visible puff of warm air for himself, swallowing it down as he pries you open for him. His hand rediscovers the slow, warm pleasure of its resting place on the back of your neck, gently steering you, unkindly pinning your body to the wall. 

He feels the itch of your gloves as you cup his face, and his other hand lifts to circle around both of your wrists, idly pressing them beneath his heavy coat, against his heart. It thuds strongly, pouring its rhythm into the grooves of your palms. 

He crowds you, making you small, his desire for this closeness prodding your inner thigh. You go oh-so easily, the gruff sounds he spills into your mouth tapping, chiselling, knocking down each vertebrae. Carefully, with the slide of his warm, wet tongue along yours and the greedy assault of his mouth, he shapes you for himself and turns you into the pliant little thing he needs you to be. 

You moan softly into his mouth, and his answering groan is something rabid. Your spine curves to him, gravitational pull, wooden slats of the building at your back tugging the fabric of your coat. He will kiss you until you’re breathless and preening under his touch because it’s what he always does. He will inculcate you with the knowledge that you’re for his eyes only. 

When he pulls away, he watches you chase his mouth with lidded eyes and kiss-bruised lips, and he smirks. His hand moves to your head, gently smoothing down your crown to your jaw, the way one tenderly pets a kitten. 

“Got you somethin’.”

You raise your brows. “You did?”

“Mhm.” He nudges his nose against yours and relishes the smile you give him—eyes crinkling at the corners, irises reflecting glistening sky. “Open your mouth for me first. Go on, now.”

You obey, letting your tongue loll out, more from habit than anything. Still, he’s pleased, unfurling the hastily-wrapped paper package in his pocket and placing the small square of chocolate on your tongue. 

You close your mouth with the help of his hand on your jaw, and the gentle snap of the chocolate bleeds the melting centre down your throat, disseminating the oaky flavour on your tastebuds. 

“Y’like it?”

His voice is a carving knife. You're split down the middle by his simple show of affection, spilling out into his arms, wrists still clasped in one of his big hands. 

“It’s good,” you tell him. “I’ve never…”

His smile digs a thumb into your open wound. “I know. Took it from the kitchen.”

You lick your lips and swallow the rest of the melted chocolate. Joel watches the action from the moment your tongue darts out to the moment it retreats. “Maria will have your ass.”

“Hmm, Maria can tell me off much as she wants. Wanted to give you somethin' sweet.” He presses in closer, hands dropping to your hips, kneading the pad of his thumbs over your hips. You're wearing old jeans whose waistband is fraying. “What do you say?”

This is the fun part of the game you play. His thumb brushes your bottom lip, teasing, begging entrance even though he knows there isn't a world in which you would deny him. You part your lips and take his thumb into your mouth, swirling your tongue and cleaning off the taste of leather that still lingers on his skin. 

“Thank you.”

He strokes your jaw with his thumb. “You wanna know what else?”

You're already leaning into his palm as he cradles your cheek, and he’s so proud of the volcanic thaw in your eyes. “What else?”

Joel reaches back into his coat pocket and places something small in your palms. It’s a smooth wooden figurine that smells faintly of sawdust and is carved in the perfect likeness of your home, which sits across the street from his. 

“‘s almost Christmas,” he says, suddenly so unsure of himself as he watches you turn the little shack over in your hands. “Thought you might like—”

But you're leaping onto him like a little monkey, your mouth crashing against his. It’s all lips and teeth and tongue and he can taste the chocolate he placed there just moments ago. The chimney of your miniature home prods his chest as you hold the figure close, tucking it safely between your bodies. 

“Easy, baby girl,” he says with a low laugh, not-quite pulling away, letting you lick into his mouth like a cat after milk. The scratch of his beard will leave patches on your chin and everyone will see them. He grins, tilting your head up and soothing the worried skin with soft kisses. 

“I love it,” you tell him, sighing into his body, “so much. I love it, Joel.”

“Good.” He nudges his nose against your temple. “Take good care of it, now.”

You nod, scratching at the too-long hair curling slightly at the nape of his neck. “How do you know that it's almost Christmas?” you ask him after a moment. 

“Took a guess,” he says, nipping your earlobe. “Y’know, the big tree they put up in the middle of town helps.”

You playfully tug his hair. “Asshole.”

“So goddamn mouthy. Gettin’ spoiled.”

“You're the one spoiling me,” you purr, mouthing wetly along his jaw. 

Joel chuckles. “Yeah. Guess I am.”

“You know”—your voice takes on a musical lilt—“I don't have my Christmas tree yet.”

Joel lifts his brows. “You want a Christmas tree?”

You lift one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t really remember the holidays.”

The watery shimmer under your irises reminds Joel just how much more life he's lived. You were young when the outbreak started, both parents lost to the virus before the first week was out. You’d hid under your bed for three days straight before FEDRA found you. 

They’d taken you, underfed and dehydrated, to the Colorado QZ, where you spend most of your adolescence until it was bombed by Fireflies. You'd managed to sneak away before they could round you up like FEDRA had. You’d travelled with one group to the next before Jackson welcomed you. 

There's a scar on your throat, just below your jaw on the right side, and another at the nape of your neck. You've been held at knifepoint, you told him in the early days of knowing one another, by the very same people who'd taken you in as one of their own. They’d offered you up as trade for some deer meat. Joel traces the mark and feels his throat constrict. 

The kind of life you’d led before Jackson… He’ll make sure you never have to run again. 

“Let’s get you one,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

You pull away from him to meet his eye. “Joel…”

“Tommy’s got a saw behind the bar. I can take down a tree. We’ll bring it back ‘n’ put it up in your place.”

The grin creeps up at the corner of your mouth. “You're going soft, Miller.”

Joel just crowds you back against the wall and slants his mouth over yours. He has no problem going soft when he can feel the wooden edges of his gift to you prodding the flesh of his chest. Let it pierce him. 

Joel has few rules he's willing to push back on. At his age, he's lost some of his jagged edges, compromising on more. When he's got you like this, tucked into his side, wearing only his shirt, he remembers exactly why he enforces these few rules. 

The light is soft in the winter; it doesn't quite penetrate his eastern-facing window the way the summer sun does. He blinks awake, feeling you shift next to him, your nose buried in his throat. Your arms are wrapped tight around his middle, one leg hoisted over his torso. 

“C’mon, baby,” he grunts, throwing his arm over his eyes. “Gotta get up.”

He can feel your sleepy pout against his neck. “Mph.”

“Yeah, I know.” Joel chuckles, slumping back into the mattress. You shift so you're on top of him, your thighs bracketing his hips. Sitting up, you explore his bare chest with your soft hands, migrating down the length of his torso and his softening belly. He grabs your hips and soothes himself awake by rubbing his hands up and down your sides. The fabric of his shirt draped over your body shifts under his palms. 

“I’m patrolling with Tad,” you tell him, “so we’ll have to put up the tree when I get back.”

“No, you're not.”

You cock your head. “Tommy told me—”

“Tommy doesn't know what the hell he's talkin’ about,” says Joel. “You and I get the day off. And I”—he pulls you down toward him and secures his hand at the back of your neck—“know a spot.”

Your answering hum is playful. “You know a spot. I had a couple boyfriends back in the QZ who knew a spot, too, Miller.”

“I ain't your old boyfriends,” he says with a faint growl, landing a light smack on your ass. “There’s a good trail west of here. Some trees what would look nice all done up.”

You beam down at him. Your hair is somewhat tousled from sleep and the fuzzy light haloes your head. “You aren't worried about raiders?”

“Don't think I can keep you safe?” He caresses your bare thighs, his cock interested in the warmth of you on his lap. 

Your mouth fits over his, fingers threading through his hair, and Joel settles into the steady rhythm of your heartbeat fluttering against his own chest. 

“I think,” you whisper, “that we're already late. Let's go get a Christmas tree.”

Half an hour later, he’s still yawning on his way to the stables and wishing he was in the warmth of his bed instead of out here in the biting cold. Joel runs his gloved palms together and fixes his rifle over his shoulder. 

You, of course, are fresh-faced and early, securing the saddle over your chestnut mare Princess. Joel pats her snout and inspects your pack where it hangs on the hook nearby. 

“Forgot your bandages again.”

You hum and it's music. “You always have extra. Ready to go?”

“Sure you’re not waiting for Tad?”

You gently pat your horse’s back. “Tad is terrified of you, so he's terrified of me. You're ruining my reputation, Miller.”

“That so?” Joel sidles up next to you, pushing your pack into your arms. “You got a complaint you wanna file?”

“None so far,” you say, biting down on your grin, “but there's always time. Better be careful with me.”

“I’m always careful,” Joel says into your ear. “Now go on. We got ground to cover.”

There is a method to Joel Miller’s madness. Tommy knows damn well he needs to pick his battles. But Joel will always win when it comes to you. That is where he simply does not compromise. 

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Tommy.”

His brother’s hands fly up, palms out, already pleading his case. “Joel, listen to me—”

Joel slaps the book against Tommy’s chest. “I don't need to hear your goddamn excuses. She doesn't go with anyone but me.”

“Listen,” says Tommy, tossing the worn leather agenda aside. “We've got people out sick, and they ain't about to go out in this cold. And you need to be with Flynn, ‘cause Christ knows he ain't trained up enough to handle anything up in those woods.”

Joel scoffs. “And Tad’s trained up enough to go with her? Don't give me that shit, Tommy. She goes with me.”

“Joel—”

“We clear?” He squares up to his brother, folding his arms over his chest. 

Tommy rolls his eyes at Joel’s posturing but concedes nonetheless. “Fine. I’ll take Flynn.”

“Good.” Joel turns to leave for the stables. He’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder. 

“She’s a strong girl,” says Tommy, “and you can't play guard dog forever.”

The snow has settled a bit in the week since the first fall. It's crystallised and hardened underfoot, packed tightly. Icicles dangle from the naked trees on the outskirts of the woods, and your breath mists. The cold penetrates your jeans and the slivers of exposed wrists where your gloves don't quite meet your coat sleeves. Hugging Joel around the middle, your body heat shudders through him. 

“Snow like this is always a goddamn problem,” he mutters. 

“Covers tracks,” you say. 

“That's right. You do listen.”

“Well, when you give me chocolate…”

Joel veers Princess north and brings your gloved palms to his mouth so he can breathe warm air into them. You sigh your thanks, bumping your forehead into his back before returning to your vigilance as lookout. Once you're well out of the way of the city walls, it's easier to get wrapped up in the blistering wind. You bring your bandanna up over your nose and watch Joel do the same as you pass the river. It’s frozen over, not blue but a sheet of miserable white. You mourn the loss of colour as the wind nips at your skin. 

“We’ll have more cover when we break through the trees,” says Joel. “Shuffle closer to me.”

You do, sliding your hips forward. Princess’s reins around one fist, he covers your hands with his other, squeezing you intermittently. His body heat helps you settle comfortably into him. 

“What was your first Christmas like with Sarah?”

Joel chuckles. “She was one hell of a rowdy kid. Had to fish her out of the tree one time—only turned my back for a goddamn second.”

You smile fondly. “Thought you were gonna have to drag Ellie kicking and screaming out of that snowball fight the other day. She was a minute away from nailing your brother in the face.”

“Hmph. Asshole probably deserved it,” says Joel. “Sarah’d never hurt a fly. She saved spiders; threw ‘em outside instead of killin’ ‘em. But she’d get along with Ellie. Sometimes I look at her and see Sarah.” Joel’s quiet for a moment, guiding Princess past the tree line where the wind begins to penetrate in bursts rather than a constant stream of cold. “Do you think that's wrong?”

You frown. “No. I don't think so. Sometimes, I talk to kids in town that remind me of you. They’ll have a nose or eyes that make me think of you, and I’ll think it’s so nice that we’re all still here, still kicking. You know? There are parts of Sarah in Ellie and there are parts of that tree over there in me. When we love someone, we see them everywhere.”

Joel brings Princess to a halt about a half-mile into the woods; a trail veers off to the east next to you. He loops her reins around the branch of a tree and helps you off the horse. “Y’know,” he says, “you're too damn smart for your own good.”

“You’ll do well to remember that, Miller.” You shove your bandanna back down so it lies limp around your neck. “Now show me this spot.”

Joel failed to warn you that it involved a hike. An honest-to-fuck hike. You and your boots are used to traversing long distances, but you hadn't particularly prepared to trek through the frozen woods in December on a few hours’ sleep, a couple hours’ orgasm, and a hastily-chugged cup of coffee. Not had you prepared for an uphill hike in the brutal cold just to find a fucking Christmas tree.

If you didn't like him so damn much, you know for a fact you'd happily throttle your Joel. 

Your Joel, who can't seem to find a tree that's good enough for you. Too tall, he'll say about one, won't fit inside your place. Too skinny, he’ll say about another, you could barely string lights on that. 

Your lungs are burning cold. Every breath you inhale feels like swallowing needles. Your chest heaves and your cheeks are numb and you’re drawing up what's left of your resolve to give him a piece of your mind. 

“Nah, not this one,” he’s saying, knocking his fist against the trunk of another tree. “It’s practically hollow. Would crumble the second we—”

“Joel, if you could find a tree you do like so we can head back and I can stop freezing to death, that would be so, so appreciated.”

Your teeth chatter the whole time, but you get your message across. Joel stops, his hand splayed against another tree, a smaller one with a decent-sized middle, and turns to face you. 

“You cold, baby?”

It's not an innocent question. Around you, the wind whips at the branches of the tallest trees and crackles through the air. But Joel’s voice, slow and gravel-thick, permeates the breeze. It bites deeper, to the gums, latched in your skin. It’s warm. 

No—it's hot. 

Joel’s hand drops from the tree. His foot crunches the snow under his boot as he takes a step toward you. 

Wordlessly, you nod. 

“You had lots to say before, baby girl. Thought you wanted your Christmas tree.”

You do. Fuck, you want to go home. You want to curl up in his bed with another cup of coffee and warm yourself up with his body. But Joel is staring at you, eyes hard, rubbing his gloved hand over his mouth, and the alternative now feels much more tempting. “Uh-huh.” 

“I think you should see for yourself,” he says, “whether or not you want this one. Go on.”

He's playing some game. He’s ringed with silvery light, a soft and hazy glow backlighting his longer hair, threaded with grey, his body so broad, solid, strong—

There’s none of your Joel in the way he stands. This is the Joel who’s used to following orders. This is the Joel he never lets you truly see: the man who has seen so many more years, seen so much more of the world.

You pass him, hiking farther up the trail, to inspect the tree. It is decent; just taller than you, but thick enough to stay upright, plush with needles. A gentle tug at your scalp, a puff of warm air on your cheek, the dizzying weight of him at your back. He’s twirling a lock of your hair between two gloved fingers. 

“You like it?” he says gruffly, his mouth mere inches from your ear. The telltale tingling begins in your core and you swallow hard. 

“Joel, I didn’t mean to—”

“Shhh. None of that. I wasn’t thinkin’, sweetheart.” He nips at your earlobe, hands trailing down your body, underneath your heavy coat, sitting warmly on your hips. “Gotta keep my girl nice ‘n’ warm. Got all caught up in my own head, thinkin’ like a carpenter. Let me make it up?”

He loves so selflessly that it can feel bizarrely like greed. 

Sometimes, you forget that he’s so much older. That he lived his own way of living for a long time before you came along, that he knows this planet like that back of his hand, that you can’t even begin to name a country or a food or a song that FEDRA didn’t teach you. That you’ve only just begun to experience the terror and the pain that’s engulfed this world for so long. 

Joel Miller’s lived a long life. He’s choosing to spend these moments with you, in the cold, dead woods, picking out a Christmas tree. For as long as he’s been waking up with you, his girl, he’s wanted you longer. He’s tired. He’s old. But he’s finally getting to choose. 

He’d like to think he deserves a bit of choice after all this time. So, again, he comes back to you, like the last time and the last, spreading his fingers over your body and cupping you, molten gold, in his hands. 

Settle down, his brother told him a few years back. You deserve this, Joel. To just… settle down, if you can ever find a way.

You’re his way. He intends to make it clear. 

“Need to hear you say yes, baby,” he says, shifting your hair aside, nuzzling his face in the crook of your neck where it’s warm and quiet and smells of the coffee he always makes you.

“Yes,” you whisper, reaching back to fix your hand at the nape of his neck and glue him to you. “Please. Please, Joel.”

He grins, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to your throat, the fluttering veins below your jaw. He steals every one of your heartbeats for himself. 

“All right,” he says. “We’ll get this one.”

Eyes lidded, you watch over your shoulder as Joel fiddles with the button of your jeans and yanks down your panties with them, now hanging limply off your knees. 

“Joel!” you gasp. The cold air bites your thighs, your ass, your poor, slick pussy, as he unwraps his present. Playfully squeezing your ass, he grinds his clothed front against you. 

“Yeah, baby?” he mumbles, the smug bastard, pinning you to the tree by his strong hips, your fingers splayed on the trunk. Above you, pine needles flutter down to the ground around you, but the trunk doesn't budge. 

It is a good tree. 

“‘m cold,” you manage, putty in his hands, under the sweet, slow kisses he's pressing to your jaw. 

Your petulant whine rivals the pitch of the wind off the mountain trail. The whistling air shrieks. The hard weight at your back absconds with the warmth it brought you, and he's bending to one knee, packing a not-quite spherical ball of snow in his gloves. 

“You’re cold?” It doesn't sound like a question and you're nodding anyway, your cheek scraping the bark of the fir tree. It smells of terpenes and the shingles of bark bleed resin.

“I’m so cold, Daddy.”

He stands, and a huge glove is caging your ribs, a bearded cheek nuzzling your temple. “Let’s see, baby girl. Open wide.” 

He brings his other hand between your exposed thighs and, lips prying at the corner of your mouth, cups the feebly-formed snowball against your pussy. 

“Daddy,” you gasp, writhing away and grinding into his hand all the same, your mouth open in a long, pitiful cry. Your silvery breath ascends in a long-limbed dance with his own. 

The snow melts in moments, rubbed firm into the scorching heat of your body, but you feel the biting cold against your clit as if it were pulled between a set of pearly teeth. 

“See?” There’s a cruel tone of mocking in it and you preen like it’s a sweet lullaby. “Nice ‘n’ warm.” 

He mouths at the crook of your neck, hot and wet, tongue dipping into the junction between your ear and your jaw, where it’s soft and does not hurt when he bites down. 

The once-packed snow, now tepid and formless, drips down your thighs, and the air is so cold it begins to freeze again. Joel hears your helpless moan and takes pity, unbuckling his own jeans just enough to pull out his cock. 

But he doesn't slot himself at your needy hole and push slowly inside you the way he did last night. No—he guides the leaking head between your thighs and closes your legs around him, the length of him flush to your cunt. 

“Ohhhh, fuck.” You shiver, dropping your forehead against the tree, as Joel lubricates his cock with the melted water of the snowball and begins to fuck himself between the cushions of your thighs. “Joel… oh my God, Daddy—”

He grunts, taking it slow, the wet slide of his cock electrifying, cold and warm all at once, his body caging yours against the tree. With every thrust, the head of his cock catches on your clit, and he gasps in your ear, nibbling your exposed skin. You grasp at his hair, the hand that presses down on your belly, fixing him to you. 

“That's it, baby. Goddamn, you feel so good. So fuckin’ soft, just for me, all for Daddy, right, baby girl?”

“Yes, yes! I’m yours, all yours, please…” Your thighs twitch when his cock drags along your clit once more, and it's so good—but it's not enough. 

“I know,” groans Joel, lowering your joined hands to your clit and rubbing slow, aching circles over your slick pearl. A strained moan rumbles in your chest and your head grows heavy, falling back on his shoulder. The pleasure, white-hot and insistent, makes you forget all about the cold air savagely biting off chunks of your skin. It's all Joel. “I know, baby girl. That feel good?”

“Mmmm,” you manage, breathless and panting, your exhales swirling up into the air and disappearing in the trees. He keeps your hands joined, working in tandem to pleasure your needy clit. “Mhm, so good. Just like that.”

Joel nods into the crook of your neck, keeping the pressure steady on your clit as he continues to get himself off between your legs. “My pretty girl, so cold,” he rasps, “so needy. Y’know I’d get you anything you wanted.”

You nod vigorously, wetting his cock with your arousal, gloved fingers slick on your pussy. The rough grind of the leather closes an electrical circuit up and down your body. Joel Miller has always known how to make you feel safe, cared-for—sensations you'd never known before Jackson. With him, you're glutted, satiated. With you, he’s begun his long winter’s task of settling down. 

“Let go for me, baby,” he says, taking your jaw between his teeth as he feels his stomach tighten, his balls pulling up. “C’mon, baby girl, let me feel it. Get yourself all warm with me.”

He rubs your clit faster until you're seizing, core tensing, your mouth open in a long, low cry that echoes down the trail. Joel talks you through it, good girl, that’s it, I know it’s a lot, honey, just let go, and your fingers flex, trapped in his, as you come until your legs are trembling. 

Joel hums like he's satisfied, his hips pummeling into your backside in stuttering thrusts that indicate he's coming, too. “You gonna let me come, baby girl?” he says, baring his teeth against your cheek. “Gonna forgive me?”

“Yesyesyes! Fuck, you’re so good. Please come for me, Daddy, please!”

“Fuck, baby, I will. I will.” And he does—stuffing his cock between your thighs, it begins to pulse beneath your cunt, spilling hot cum all over your legs, your pussy, the tree he’s pinned you against. All the while, he holds you tight, his mouth greedy on you, words coaxed into your ears that aren't meant for another soul. 

“You’re mine. All fuckin’ mine.” He's rambling as he comes down, spurts of cum still dribbling from his cock down your thighs. “Goddamn perfect.”

You shiver as the cold begins to seep back in through your skin, even as Joel helps pull your jeans back up over your ass. It's a bit uncomfortable, feeling the slide of his cum on your legs underneath the denim, but you smile anyway, letting him guide you to face him, your foreheads pressing together. 

“I like this one,” you tell him. Joel laughs, bringing your mouth to his for another kiss. 

“Dude, where the fuck did you get this?” 

You look over your shoulder at Ellie, who inspects your miniature figurine, now with a home just inside your foyer. 

“Joel gave it to me,” you tell her. 

“Whooooa. You think he could make me a dinosaur?”

You turn to Joel, who's nursing some bourbon and hiding a smile in the rim of the glass. “That's a great question, Ellie. What do you think, Joel?”

“C’mon, man, when do I ever ask you for anything?”

Joel chokes into his glass. “Every goddamn day of your life, Ellie.”

“Okay, well, just think about how cool it would be to have a dinosaur. It’s basically the real thing.”

Joel shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Maybe next year.”

“Ugh. Fine. But don't think I’m not gonna remember.”

Idly rubbing his back, you lean into him and turn your head toward the tree. It sits tall and proud in the corner, strung with a couple coloured lights Maria had found for you, hung with baubles that some of the schoolchildren had been thrilled to make. It's a bit bare in spots, haphazardly decorated, prickly to the touch.

“You like it?” asks Joel, nudging his nose against your temple. 

“It's perfect.”

He grins into your cheek. “You think she’ll like the dinosaur?”

Your eyes fall to the smattering of gifts under the tree, tossed into spare crates and bags.  

“Ellie, why don't you open first?”

follow @kiwisbellupdates and turn on notifs to be updated when i post a fic!

oh yeahhhh

SAFE AND SOUND. coriolanus snow

description. coriolanus has finally received the life he deserved. and he will do anything to keep it.

includes. 17+ fem!coded reader (clothing wise) but no pronouns, dark!coriolanus, allusions to being robbed, allusions to non-con (absolutely no non-con involved), controlling!coriolanus, sex, spitting in mouth, pet names !!, possessive!coryo, breeding kink, slight pregnancy kink, manipulation

wc. 1.2k+

a/n: this is a req that got out of hand so it's a full fic now yay !

Coriolanus has finally gotten the life he believed he deserved.

He has an apartment on the Corso not far from his childhood home, yet it's like he's entered an entirely new world. No water damage along the ceilings and walls, there's no need for rat poison that could harm either himself or you, the bathroom walls aren't chipped for tesserae for his shirts. Instead, everything is pristine, the four walls showcasing a perfect harmony between you two.

He has a spot at the University, he studies under Doctor Gaul, his voice matters when it comes to the making of the Games. 

And most importantly, he has you.

Someone by his side who trusts him, and in turn he trusts them. Someone to play with his hair late at night and style it back to perfection in the morning. Someone to come home to in the evenings, smelling like the finest of meats prepared by the cook and not like cabbage prepared in order to suffice.

You're always there, standing in the kitchen with a book, wearing a pretty outfit that Coriolanus always compliments. Of course he liked them. He was the one to buy them, even going as far as to alter everything to fit you perfectly.

The bum of your bottoms always fit snug. The hem of your dresses and skirts were always low. The sleeves of every top and sweater stopped at the wrist, as to not cover the ring that would soon be on display on your left hand.

Coriolanus has everything he could ever want. and he's not going to let it get away from him.

"I was thinking about going out next week maybe. There are a few girls I see in the gym and they invited me out for lunch." You tell him in the bathroom, sitting on the counter while Coriolanus brushes his teeth.

He's staring at his own reflection as you speak, but he can clearly see how nervous you are from his peripheral vision. You're playing with your nails, starting to dig into the small chip in the polish that Coriolanus noticed this morning. He wants to tell you to stop, but his mouth is full of toothpaste foam.

Coriolanus doesn't respond until he's spat into the sink and rinsed his mouth out. "Really?" It's all he says at first, prompting you to lift your head to look at him as he approaches you. He stands just a few feet in front of you, and your legs instantly part to welcome him in.

You've been well trained.

While he hadn’t disagreed outright, you still respond as if he has. 

"Why not, Coryo?" Your head tilts and your eyes watch him. The pair shines in the white light in the bathroom, making you appear even more pretty and innocent. His to contort into whatever image he desires. And right now, he wants someone to always be there for him.

His hand cups your cheek. "I mean you can. It's just ..." He takes a second, pretending to be hesitant enough to make you ask him to speak. "It's dangerous out there, my star. Just yesterday, a woman was attacked by two strangers. they robbed her, my love. I just wouldn't want that to happen to you."

He catches sight of himself in the mirror behind you and his face is a perfect mixture of sadness and worry. He has to fight off the smile that threatens to spread across his lips.

You rest your hand over his, leaning even more into his embrace as you turn your head and press a kiss into his palm. "I'll be careful."

He internally sighed, already upset since he was going to have to take matters into his own hands. Still, he says, "promise?"

Your smile almost makes him reconsider. Almost.

"Promise."

When you're in bed later the same night, slipping off into a peaceful rest, Coriolanus slides out from your embrace and makes his way to the living room. He dials a number he never thought he would need to use, speaks the directions clearly into the receiver, makes an arrangement for payment, and then hangs up only to go back to you. You snuggle further into his side, humming gratefully with no idea of what's to come.

Coriolanus comes home earlier the next day, prompted by your almost hysterical tears on the other end of the phone. He reaches your shared apartment quickly, letting you run into his arms without truly caring about the tears that stain his pristine shirt.

When he asks you what happened, he sits there patiently as you walk him through it. He sees it all in his head: you in your pretty dress with your hair and makeup completed for the day, heading out of the apartment complex to meet your friends. Only getting five minutes down the street before some men pulled you into an alleyway, holding a knife a respectable distance from your body (Coriolanus had made sure of that with threats that were prepared to be filled) as they forcibly took the purse from your arm. You walk him through the fear in your body, the terror racing through your mind, and how you desperately wanted to see him one more time, still intact with your purity, still having the ability to choose who you open your legs for. 

Only him.

"It's okay now. You're safe with me. I won't let anyone hurt you." The words spill so easily from Coriolanus' mouth that he even believes them himself. Because although your afternoon of fright was his doing, he had not let anyone hurt you. Your body was still as pure and beautiful as it was last night, and the night before that. You still possess your autonomy, and you choose to use it now.

Pressing your lips into Coriolanus'. Letting him lead you back to your bedroom. Allowing him to take your clothes off of your body and thanking him throughout, satisfied that the man you trusted with your entire being was the one doing this to you.

And while he rocks his hips into yours, pushing you up the bed with strong thrusts, he whispers promises into your ear.

"I could never hurt you, my star. I'll always protect you. you know that, right? As long as you're with me, nothing could ever hurt you." And when you've nodded and agreed with his affirmations, he adds on to them. "Would never let our child be hurt either. Would you like that? Having a baby of our own?"

You're fucked out, still attempting to subdue the remnants of adrenaline that coursed through your body. You seem confused for a second, perhaps wondering how you'd gotten here, but you agree after a second.

"Yes, Coryo," spoken in a whine as you arch your back, your hand wrapping around Coriolanus' forearm. He slips a free hand between your legs, probing your already full entrance with his fingertips. He starts to stretch you out even more, and your hiss melts into a whine. Your mouth falls open, with a gasp, and Coriolanus stares stares deep into your eyes. He purses his lips, and a drop of saliva falls into your cavern.

It's not until you've closed your mouth and your throat has bobbed with a swallow that he continues:

"Yeah? You want me to put a baby in you? Fill you up? I think you would look so pretty like that, baby." The use of the pet name has you mewling. It's one Coriolanus only pulls out for times like this, when he's fucking you to the point where you're no doubt close to seeing stars.

Eventually he can't help how his words start to reveal his true motives. "It'll give you something to do, my love. Keep you busy in the house. You'll never have to go out again. You'll never have to worry about being attacked again. Just keep you inside of here. Safe and sound."

the search for glory

pairing: luke castellan x ares!daughter reader

summary: you're stubborn and relentless; he's calm and taunting. two opposites put aside their differences after years to meet in the middle to understand what glory truly means, and in the meantime, they start to question why drifted apart in the first place.

—or: desperate, you ask luke to help you learn how to fight with a sword so that you can be the best, he sees it as a way to spend time with you.

word count: 6.9k (i need help)

warnings: luke castellan, violence, long reading time, rivals to lovers, teenage angst, tooth-rotting fluff, angst, clairsse and annabeth being done with reader, percy and grover being the best duo, i used the fuck outta a thesaurus website, percy being head over heels for annabeth, kinda angsty ending... sorry not sorry!!

explicit warnings: allusions to sex, mentions of sex, kissing, kissing and more yearning!!!

a/n: luke castellan has been plaguing my mind. i need that evil man in my BONES!! INSTANTLY. charlie bushnell as ruined me like i need to remind myself who the enemy is like i'm tryyyinggg :( anyways this is a fic i wrote based on this request! i clearly got ahead of myself and once i started i couldn't stop. enjoyyy :)

You hate swords. 

They were too long and heavy, an extra weight for you to carry on your body that only slowed you down. Your preferred knives, daggers you can throw with perfect precision, blades you can tuck in your boots and hide anywhere on yourself. 

For years your ego had you refuse to ever touch a sword. You knew your weakness, and there was no need for anyone else to know. 

"Again."

The rain pours nails against the trees. It's cold and seeping through your clothes, yet you are still outside, circling the head of the cabin and eldest son of Hermes in Camp Half-Blood. In the summer, there are storms so strong that pass by that not even the Mist can deflect. Luke Castellan has a smug glint in his eyes, directed at you, at the sword clutched in your hands and the way you still cannot control your swing. He's been trying to teach you the art of swordsmanship for days now, a necessity, he claims. 

You only agreed because you thought you could've mastered it easily, much like everything else you've ever done in your life. You wanted to spite Luke and be the best, even where he thrives. But you were too rash, too much in a hurry to end things.

"Again." He repeats.

"No," you say. 

"No?" 

He almost laughs at you.

He's doing it to wound your pride, you know it. For years, Luke Castellan has been an itch on your back, crawling under your skin, setting everything in its path ablaze until there was a wildfire in the pit of your stomach. 

"A daughter of Ares can't wield a sword?" He teases.

You take honour to your father's name. It makes you feel worthy of something, a strength that fuels your ambitions. Luke knows this; he had been there when you got claimed after a month of moping like a kicked puppy in the Hermes cabin. He'd seen the way it gave you purpose. He told you he had seen it coming from miles away--from the moment you first met eyes.

"You have the battle of fire in your soul," he said to you after the ceremony, and you never knew if he meant it endearingly or to mock you. You remember glancing at him, and the warm light of the lantern sitting on the dockside between you flickered before the flame cracked to life again. The moon hung low when he continued, "Now you need to find your glory." 

And then Luke reached over to push you into the lake. You had grabbed onto the collar of his shirt, bringing him down with you. Luke spluttered when he emerged, shoulder-deep in the lake as he stared at you, hair dripping into his eyes, and oh, he was mad.

But that was years ago when you were kids. 

But even then, you would have done anything for Ares. The loyalty you harbour for your father was one of the things Luke held against you. He hated it. You never knew why. You didn't care enough to ask him. 

The blades of the daggers gifted to you by or father, Ares, burn against your skin, tucked away by your waistband as you tremble in the cold rain. Your fingers twitch, eager to grab and launch them in Luke's direction when he stands tall and repeats himself one more time.

"Again."

You leap at him. A shout rips from your throat as your feet stomp against the muddied ground, splashing over puddles while raising your arms to swing your sword at him. 

Luke saw your attack coming from miles away. He swats you, kicking your stomach. It sends you to a tree trunk, your sword falling out of your hands. You were panting and shaking from the cold or anger or both. You slowly get back up on your feet, jaw clenched and knuckles white.

"Again."

"Fuck you!" You explode, walking angrily towards him. You've had enough of him and stood your ground. It's been hours. You missed dinner, and you were hungry and tired and sick of his shit. Once you're close enough, you shove Luke with all your might, and he stumbles into the mud. 

It almost makes you smile when he looks up at you, his face twisting into something between shock and a tinge of annoyance.

"What's the point in all this, huh? Make me catch a fucking fever? Hypothermia?"

"You don't know how to use a sword," He says simply. 

It spurs you further. "So what? I don't need a stupid sword to beat you."

He stays quiet for a beat, then two. The rain continues to fall as he looks up at you again, squinting as water falls into his eyes, dripping from his dark hair. "I know," Luke says. "You gotta do something about that anger, though. Restrain it."

You take a step back, watching him closely as he pushes himself back on his feet. "You said you wanted to learn." He tells you and picks up the sword you've discarded by the tree. Luke hands it back to you, shoving it into your hands. "So, I will teach you and you will learn."

The blade is heavy in your hands. 

"Maybe after this, you'll be the second-best swordsman in camp."

Your eyes snap to him. "Second?"

He smirks, amused, "You didn't think you'd be better than me, did you?"

When you don't answer, his smile widens. Luke holds his sword up, nodding at you to step closer. "C'mon. Let's go again."

Lightning strikes as the metal of the swords clash against each other again. And again. There are grunts of effort coming from you, of exhaustion, and a great fury to see that Luke's barely broken a sweat, that he's enjoying every second spent with you under the rain.

With a gaze as sharp as your blade, you were fueled by the inexplicable thirst for excellence in swordsmanship; you know it was out of your expertise. Luke Castellan was the first person you turned to, despite your best efforts. And you're not surprised when he agreed, and he was shocked, yes, but he agreed nonetheless. 

You only chose him because you knew he wouldn't go easy on you and that maybe, once you lash out at him enough times, stubborn, testing his patience, he would give up and leave you be. 

But it's been weeks, and he's still here.

The clash of blades between you two isn't just about skill anymore; it's pride, it's a puzzle of the invisible line between the two of you, testing the boundaries, toeing at them. 

And you still can't help but imagine the look on his face once you finally beat him. So you swing harder, move faster.

Luke has trouble catching you off guard or forcing you on the defensive side or even finding an opening to sweep your feet. But you were getting frustrated again, every time the two of you met in the middle, every time your shoes stepped into another puddle, every time he blocked your hits, or if the wind blew too strong. He finds your gaze when it happens, catching the way your lips twist into a deeper frown and the way your brows furrowed, how your jaw clenched and unclenched, huffing as you pick up your pace again. 

In your haste to beat him, your restraint evaporates, leaving your movements once again sloppy and uncalculated. It isn't hard for Luke to knock the sword out of your hand, sending it flying backward. But you don't stop, you only grab his by the blade and throw it aside as well. 

Before Luke knows it, your fist collides with his cheek. He blinks as his body registers the pain, wiping the warm wetness dripping down his nose. The rain washes the blood from his hands quickly.

His eyes trail up your tense form to settle on your face, then your eyes. His fingers flex in restraint against engaging in close combat with you. He knows he can't win this one. So he waits for the explosion that will come. And it does. 

It comes in a blur of vengeful fists, kicks and grunts.

In a flash, he jumps back to avoid your hook punch, then your uppercut. He rolls to avoid your kick, but he doesn’t see your hands coming up to grab his throat and slam him back into the same tree he kicked you to. 

Your hands are tight on his throat, but your rage blinds you to the knife he draws from your own waistband. In a quick motion, he slashes your forearm. You draw back your hands and release his throat at the same time. 

Luke jumps out of the way. He sees the defiance in your eyes, as well as the satisfaction.

"What the fuck was that?" He sputters, tossing your dagger by your feet.

"Are you angry?" You taunt. 

Finally, you think when you can see that familiar flare in his eyes once he realizes you've been meaning to rile him up. The same flare you saw when you dragged him into the lake with you. You tuck your dagger back in its place.

Luke crouches to pick up both swords again, then he throws one at you. "I showed you what restraint looks like. Lesson over." He wipes the blood from his face again, "Now, let me teach you channelled anger."

Whatever you expected, none of it prepared you for the beating you were about to receive. 

The next morning, you owned bandages, bruises and healing cuts. Your foot bounces restlessly under the table as you glare at the breakfast in front of you. You have no appetite, not after last night, not after Luke had crushed every inch of your pride with every hit from the back of his sword to each time his blade would slice your skin just enough for it to leave a scar. 

Clarisse was grinning, a wide knowing smile that sets your own teeth on edge when she sits next to you, your headache worsening when you catch sight of Luke slouched a few tables away.

He has a purple mark on the side of his face where you had hit him, his bottom lip split, and he has a bandage wrapped around his bicep. He doesn't look at you, eyes on his food, wincing. 

It makes you feel better, knowing you had gotten a few good hits back before you threw your sword at him and stormed off.

"A little birdy told me Castellan could barely get out of bed today," Clarisse snickers. She reaches to your plate, taking a strawberry. She bites into it, humming while nudging your arm playfully. 

You roll your eyes, "whatever Chris told you--"

"Annabeth, actually." Clarisse corrects you, her voice cutting through the air with a touch of authority. "She also told me she saw you two walk out of the infirmary late last night. Look, I know you guys are just sparring, but there's a line and you need to set limits and bring it down a notch. You're going to kill each other one day."

It's troubling when Clarisse, the epitome of combat resilience, steps in to address things that are becoming too violent. Her concern is a rarity, a signal that a boundary has been pushed. You do need to bring it down a notch. And you want to try. You really do. But there's this persistent itch in your bones, a phantom tug on your finger that refuses to let go.   

"Whatever," you say, because you cannot find a way to explain it. You want to be the best, but Clarisse knows that. Everyone at camp wants to be the best, everyone has that craving for glory stitched into their veins with golden string. But your hunger doesn't stop there, you didn't want to be better than anyone, you wanted to be better than Luke. At everything he does. 

There's an intangible presence that envelops Luke Castellan, an invisible aura that chases him through the air, and you're pulled to it with an almost magnetic pull. It's something you desire, something you want to claim as your own, willing to be consumed entirely by its intriguing draw. This unsaid yearning has been simmering in your mind from the moment he shoved you into the lake.

Last night, in the cold grip of the rain-soaked ground, whatever it is that chases him, slipped through your fingers. Your back against the wet earth, teeth chattering in the cold, you held your sword defensively, trying to fend off his strike from above. It was in that unsettling instant, as the rain mingled with the blood from a thin cut on your cheek, that you felt it—the pulse of something profound. That's your glory.

When he froze, your eyes brimming with angry tears, a sudden softening overtook Luke's face as he looked at you. For a fleeting second, you almost felt a twinge of remorse for your earlier outburst. That brief vulnerability, however, vanished as fast as it appeared. In the next heartbeat, your sword lay discarded on the ground, and the cold steel of his blade pointed at your neck.

"Honestly..." Clarisse starts, pulling you out of the memory. "The way you guys flirt is concerning. I think you just need to work out that sexual tension without killing each other." She grabs her empty plate and begins to stand. "Just don't do anything I wouldn't."

You would've laughed at her joke if you didn't burn at the insinuation of flirting. And sexual tension. With Luke fucking Castellan. 

It makes you think of every time he's made you curse, scream, bleed, cry and laugh. You can't even say anything because Clarisse walks off, dumping her strawberry stems into the fire and disappears to meet Silena, probably. 

Suddenly, you can feel your stomach twist into ugly shapes when you accidentally catch Luke's gaze. Of course. Just your luck. He's already looking at you when you're flustered. You bite down the inside of your cheek and start to stand, hoping Clarisse hasn't gone too far yet. Or maybe you could find Grover and see what he was up to. 

The boy beats you to it, as always, already making his way towards you before you can even pick up your plate, still full of food.

"Hey," Luke says breathlessly. He looks smug as he stands in front of you. Too smug, you realize, for someone who has an equal amount of wounds as you do. 

You hate it.

You hate his brown eyes, the way they catch the sun and look like honey. You hate the smattering of freckles he gets every summer, the scar on his face, the ones you know litter the rest of his skin. You hate his hair, how it falls into his eyes when he gets mad at you, how he gets too focused on you to push it back. 

The way he holds the fresh ice pack between you irks you, a gesture that feels more like a taunt than sincere worry. "In case you need it," he says with a smile, and you can't help but think he's teasing, revelling in the fact that he got the upper hand last night. The unspoken message lingers—that you lost, that he's superior with a sword.

Nonetheless, a voice of reason nudges you to reconsider. Maybe just maybe, he's offering the ice pack out of genuine concern, untainted by the competitive undertones. Maybe you're reading too much into it, and his smile is merely a sign of kindness rather than a subtle mockery. 

It still hurts your pride. "I don't want it."

"I didn't mean it like that," Luke says hastily, as if he can sense the turmoil of thoughts crossing your mind. "I just... I feel bad. I was too hard on you."

His words catch your attention, and you finally meet his gaze, a curt nod recognizing the rare admission of wrongdoing. It's remarkable for Luke to admit regret, and the weight of this confession lingers in the air.

"You were."

"But you can't really blame me," He adds. And, of course, he finds a way to turn it back on you. “You kinda started it."

"I know."

"So, I think we're even."

"You think?"

"You literally went ballistic."

You huff out a breath, annoyed, "I get it." And you finally take his stupid ice pack. 

When he doesn't move, you look at him again, squinting at the early morning sun, "What do you want?"

He smiles again, swaying on his feet. "I'm taking a few kids hiking."

"Okay?"

"I need another counsellor to look after them. If you wanted to come with me," he suggests, the words carefully chosen.

"Why?" You raise a brow, hoping to hide your initial shock. 

"Because the weather's nice," he shrugs, "And Annabeth said she found a waterfall somewhere off on the other side of the mountain and I've been meaning to check it out for a while-"

"No," you interrupt, shaking your head, "I meant why me."

Mischive sparks in his eyes, reminiscent of your earlier years at Camp Half-Blood, before you were claimed. Back in the short time when the two of you would wander away from the group, charting your own course, or setting up silly pranks for Mr. D. A particular memory resurfaces—your favourite prank involving filling bottles of wine replaced with soy sauce, left for the camp director to discover. 

"For old time's sake." He says. 

You're still apprehensive, "The last time we went hiking together, Chiron shunned us to the get-along-cabin." 

It was three years ago, and you don't remember it as clearly as you hoped, but you can still recall teasing, poking each other with sticks, swearing and the nasty names, and racing to see who would find the young camper you lost first after spending ten minutes fighting over it. 

Fortunately, you did find Apollo's young daughter, but not before rumours of a missing camper reached Chiron's ears. He had assigned you two cleaning jobs at the same time you were compelled to stay at the small cabin in the middle of the forest till you weren't neck and neck with each other.

"And that wasn't the best week of your life?"

You can't help but roll your eyes. "When are we leaving?"

Soon enough, you're busy smearing another layer of sunscreen on Grover's nose when Percy appears at your side. 

Two groups of kids under thirteen had made it halfway up the trail, the sun lazy and warm, the way it could only be on a late morning hike. The kids are still quiet with sleep, trailing happily behind each other, trading secrets and sips of water with their assigned hike buddies. 

It was nice. And a part of you was happy you've agreed to tag along. The smell of fresh pine needles, like forest floor and mountain air, makes you smile.

"Are you and Luke fighting?" Percy asks, twigs and leaves already poking out of his curls.

You finish patting Grover's forehead as you turn to the other boy with a soft frown, pulling out the small sticks. But the two kids stare up at you expectantly, as if waiting for some sort of answer. 

"I don’t know if you've noticed, Percy, but Luke and I fight all the time."

Grover rolls his eyes as he falls back into step beside you, the three of you continuing up the path a little behind the rest of the group. But Percy tugs at your arm, clearly not finished with the conversation, nor satisfied with your answer. 

"But that's the point," he says, and you huff as you pull him out of the way of a fallen branch, his attention focused too much on you to notice it in his way. "You haven’t been mean to each other all morning."

"Or called each other names," Grover pointed out from the other side of you. 

"You call each other names all the time."

Annabeth Chase appears beside Percy, tucking her hat into her pocket as she sets you with a knowing look. Percy grins at the girl's arrival, cheeks pink as their shoulders brush together on the narrow path. 

“So what?” you mutter.

You glance up ahead, over the crowd of children’s heads to see Luke bickering with the smaller kids, a boy from Dionysus' cabin poking him in the back with a long stick as he trudges behind them. You have to bite back a smile, but only because you had offered to lead with the younger kids, because you know they like you more than they like him, but Luke, stubbornly, refused your offer. He's an idiot.

"We're adults, we can call each other names."

Percy scoffs loudly, and all three kids stare at you, less than impressed. 

“Have you and Luke ever kissed?” Grover suddenly asks, letting the words burst out from his chest like he knew he shouldn’t have asked. 

You trip over a branch, the same fallen sticks that scattered the trail that you’d pulled Percy away from. You turn to look at the boy so fast that your neck protests, your eyes wide.

"Because Luke looks at you like he wants to kiss you all the time."

"Of course they've kissed," Annabeth grumbles. "Don't act all shocked," she tells you, "I watched you guys last night."

"Ew," Percy makes a face.

Annabeth wacks the back of his head, and while Percy winces, she continues, "Not like that. I noticed neither of you were at dinner. So, I went to check on you. I found them sparring."

"In the rain?" Grover's eyes widen. 

"Stop stalking people, Annie," You warn, but there's no bite to your words.

"I'm being observant," she declares.

"It's definitely stalking..." Percy mutters, kicking a small rock down the trail.

She decides to ignore his remark this time and looks up at you. "I always thought it was ridiculous whatever you and Luke had against each other. I hoped you'd do something about it before you both imploded because you're too horny to come to terms with normal emotions."

Your jaw drops, a small noise of indignity and humiliation comes from you, and Grover looks mortified. Percy lets out a loud, obnoxious laugh, nearly doubling over as if Annabeth has said the funniest thing he's ever heard. 

There's a faint smile on her lips when Percy puts his hand on her shoulder as his laughter dies to quiet, amused snickers. It eggs Annabeth to keep going, "I'm sure your kiss was romantic. Glad it took you guys a week of almost killing each other to realize you actually have feelings for one another."

You feel it again, that itch and wildfire that spreads in your stomach whenever Luke gets too close or says something that irks you. You find yourself fumbling with your words; no comment about how wrong she was, or how disgusted you were, or a snarky, awfully rude remark as a way to deflect. No, your voice starts to betray you. You only hope your father can't see you now as you grow flustered (this is something you will never admit). 

"We never kissed."

Annabeth hums, raising one brow as she nods. She pulls her hat back out again, unfolding it as Percy drops his hand from her shoulder. When she looks at you, she has a similar smug look on her face, akin to the one that adorned Luke's face earlier that morning during breakfast. 

"You know, Luke said the same thing when I asked him. But he never denied he doesn't like you, and neither did you." 

With that, Annabeth puts on her hat and disappears. 

You watch branches move and footprints left behind on the dirt in her wake, and you hate that Percy and Grover are smiling at each other as she leaves. They share knowing looks, speaking in a silent language only they understand and it puts you on edge.

Suddenly, you have to remind yourself that the kids are twelve. They have no idea what they're talking about. 

Thankfully, Grover and Percy never bring it up again. It's as if they've forgotten about it after spotting a pegasus within the trees. Percy instantly named it Bob, and when Grover disagreed, he named it Peter. 

"Seriously?"

Percy shrugs, "Spider-Man's cool."

When the group arrives, you still can't get Annabeth's words out of your head. It makes you uneasy, and you don't feel like yourself as you watch the kids gasp and gape at the sight of the hidden waterfall tucked away behind so many trees and bushes you would have thought it was sacred to Gaia. The waterfall appears to be any other cascade in a forest, but the fact that it is concealed under the Mist that protects the camp makes it so alluring. 

It was peaceful but not quiet with the roar of water, droplets pattering against the rock at the bottom of the falls. All nature and life near the waterfall seemed to grow in size, and more birds called and sang—more snakes that twisted around the branches of the tall trees and frogs that softly croaked as they soaked under the cool water. 

The afternoon sun sparkles over the water and the small frothy cascade of a plunge pool. Everyone starts to scatter, Demeter's children running off to climb trees, Artemis' kids rushing to chase after the few lizards and bugs tucked under wet leaves; they all find a place to be, one they all know they will thrive most in.

"Annabeth sold this place short. It's way better than she described it."

When Luke appears at your side, a conscious effort keeps you from growing stiff. There's an obvious warmth flowing from him, a subtle tug inviting you to come near him. But you resist, steadfast in denying yourself that proximity.

"Yeah. It's nice." You say, aiming to keep it short.

"Just nice? Is that all you've got?"

You shrug, crossing your arms around yourself. "It's okay." But the truth is, it's more than that. It's beautiful. Words fall short of capturing the essence of the waterfall before you, the mist delicately kissing your skin or the laughter of the kids transforming the wildfire in your chest into a warm and comforting glow.

Luke's brows furrow, tilting his head at you. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." 

You're not. It has been hours since you've fought, yet you can't get it out of your head. Shit, you can barely go on with the day without someone reminding you of it; Clarisse, Annabeth and even your mind wanders back to it, how he's been so persistent in making sure you'll be able to wield a sword, a silent promise.

In all honesty, since you've started, you could barely recognize yourself, and you knew it had the potential to be disastrous, but you weren’t sure you disliked the feeling. It was just new (it really isn't) and foreign (you've known, you've just refused to accept it), and you felt like you had to go to it rather than run away from it. 

When Luke utters your name, the resonance carries an unfamiliar softness and tenderness, diverging from any way you've previously heard him speak it. The rhythm prompts you to turn your head to look at him.

The sun, in its glorious descent, casts a warm glow across the water, creating a tapestry that highlights the tan of his skin earned through long days under its unforgiving rays. His hair, in a charming disarray, falls across his forehead, and within the depths of his dark eyes, a fondness surfaces.

"Something's bothering you," he observes.

It's a statement that goes beyond mere recognition; it's an acknowledgment of his innate understanding of you. His ability to see you. He wants you to know he can see right through you. That's his glory.

“And how would you know that?”

"Maybe because I spend every waking moment of the last, what, four years, in your close proximity." As for emphasis, he moved closer to you, as close as he was the other night but without the blades of swords between you.

You'd usually have countered, perhaps by tripping him or tugging on his ear to coax him to step back. But this time, you don't. You can't bring yourself to. You find yourself strangely incapacitated, torn between the impulse to push him away and the undeniable desire to punch him again.

"And don't forget that week in the cabin. Best week of our lives, right?"

It takes him some time to react, "Sorry did you just make a joke?"

“No. I’m always serious,” you don't concede, but you did suppress a smile. You turn the rest of your body, finally fully facing him. "Listen, Luke..."

He goes to say something at the same time, but he closes his mouth and looks at you. His eyes are wary of you. It was like he was expecting you to pull a knife out of thin air and attack him. 

"LUKE!" 

Percy Jackson's voice echoes, a thunderous announcement as he cups his hands around his mouth, sending a mighty shout from the waterfall's peak. Your eyes widen at Percy's reckless display, a mix of respect and wonder washing over you. The boy, sitting on the treacherous ledge, dares you to wonder how he managed to get up there. But knowing him, Percy Jackson finding a way to reach to the top of the waterfall makes perfect sense.

"LUUUKE! LOOK AT ME! GROVER!"

His voice carries a blend of disbelief and excitement as if Percy himself doesn't believe he's climbed to the top while he waves his arms. Luke steps away from you, moving closer to the cascading water out of concern. The other kids begin to gather, their curiosity piqued by Percy's boisterous display. Grover walks up to you, tugging at your shirt to bring you to the edge of the natural pool.

When Annabeth suddenly appears at Luke's side, you can hear him asking why Percy was up there. 

"Well, he said he could flip off the waterfall. I told him he didn't have the guts. So, here we are."

"Reminds me of someone." Luke smirks, eyeing from where he stands, Grover grinning between you both.

Percy lets out a loud battle cry from the top of the waterfall, smacking his fists against his chest. A responsible head of cabin would have told him to get down, or else he would be shoving pegasus shit for the rest of the week. But Annabeth is the one who drove Percy to the top of the waterfall, and whenever you and Luke were together, everything else was a second thought. 

The kids collectively ignite, encouraging Percy with animated cheers, urging him to jump. Stepping back from the edge, he bursts into a sprint, the excitement evident as he hurtles off the rocks. Percy's arms flap for a heartbeat before effortlessly accomplishing two flips, resulting in a thunderous splash as he plunges into the brilliant blue waters.

A symphony of cheers erupts, the youngest kids bouncing in excitement as Percy emerges from the water, shaking his head to rid his curls of excess water, a gleeful grin stretched across his face. His eyes meet Annabeth's first, and his wild grin widens as she nods in approval, her own smile radiating with bright satisfaction.

Grover is the next one to jump in, tucking his legs to his chest before gracefully splashing into the water beside his best friend. The infectious spirit of adventure spreads like wildfire, and soon, a cascade of laughter and giggles fills the air as all the kids join in, frolicking in the embrace of the water.

At that moment, you feel an unexpected force crashing into your side. It startles you, and you instinctively shove the prying hands away. It's only upon a closer look that you realize it's Luke. He's looking at you with raised brows in a way to taunt you.

You aren't arguing, not quite, not yet. But the buzz in the air still feels fun. 

His expression suddenly turns playful. Without warning, he seizes your arm, yanking you closer. Luke grins, that wide, bright kinda smile that shows off the dimples you almost forget he has. He looks boyish like this, pretty in a way that's soft and full of sun. Maybe it's because he is looking at you without the lines between his brows, the downturn of his lips, a cold glare in his eyes.

The toes of his shoes teasingly brush against yours, prompting your chin to tilt up defiantly as you lock eyes with him. You can smell the forest on him, campfire smoke and pine, leftover rain and something minty. He looks too happy, excited even.  

You narrow your eyes at him, gaze lingering on the bruise you left on his cheek. "You're wrong, you know."

Luke tilts his head, intrigued, "About what?"

"What you said earlier. About being even."

"Oh?"

You hum, a subtle melody lingering in the air, your hands resting gently on Luke's arms. His attention is diverted as he holds his breath, waiting for what you'd say next as he stares at the softness of your skin in the sun and the beads on your camp necklace.

In the midst of this, a wide grin flashes across your face, a mischievous spark in your eyes. A sudden, forceful shove against Luke's chest disrupts the moment. Caught off guard, he stumbles backward, tripping over his feet and thrusts into an unexpected fall.

He hits the water with a splash, and to the rowdy sound of whoops and cheers, a wolf whistle from Percy when Luke emerges, top soaked and clinging to the ridges and dips of his muscles, tangled at his waist. 

He sputters as he stares back up at you in shock, treading the water around him. "Seriously?"

You're fucking joyous, wrapped up in the way everyone is laughing, and you don't break eye contact with the boy as you bend at the waist and hold your hand out for him.

"I'm sorry," you manage to utter amid giddy giggles. It's a peculiar sensation—this feeling of not quite being yourself. For goodness' sake, you're giggling! It's as if you've been gently enveloped by something sweet and affectionate, a touch so tender that it feels as if Aphrodite herself has graced you with a kiss on the cheek.

But really, it was Luke. He takes your hand and tugs hard, pulling you straight into the water with him. You hit the water on the side and swam back to the surface with a gasp.

He stares at you with a devious grin, daring you to do something about it. You push your hair out of your face and lung at him. 

You have to admit, sparing in water isn't something you have ever done, and the attempts to avoid any of the kids are getting to you. You are better at hand-to-hand, but now Luke has the absolute advantage. His longer limbs allow him to move better and to pull himself up on rocky ground when you try to push him down.

He places you in a headlock and presses your back into his chest. You quit struggling at that point, knowing it was over for you. But he doesn't let go, and you don't move when he slightly loosens his hold.

You spot Annabeth's gaze from the other side of the pool. She sits by the waterfall with Percy and Grover, adorning a knowing look as she raises her brows at you again.

Both of you are panting from the effort, his chest heaves against your back, a synchronous beat. The water adds a chilly bite to your and Luke's skin, but his breath is warm on the crook of your neck. Usually, you would have tapped out, or more commonly flipped him over. Yet, you find yourself in a trance, and you don't understand why you can't move away.

Why can't you move away?

"Gotcha."

The faint chuckle in his voice sends a shiver down your spine.

His breath stills on your neck, and you gulp. You clear your throat, and he drops his arm but doesn't step away, letting it hover around your waist. You laugh, and it sounds nervous, a soft noise of embarrassment, like a girl with a crush. 

You don't know how to feel about it when you turn to face him, chests almost touching from the proximity, and so do your noses. You can feel your heart beating so loud in your ribcage that you think he can hear it too.

You can feel the sting of the cut on your arm, and it pushes you to ask, "Why'd you agree to teach me how to use a sword? Was it pity?"

It takes him time to answer, his hand brushes against your hips underwater, but he doesn't move it, and neither do you. The droplets of water on his skin sparkle under the sunlight. "No," He finally says after a moment. "Not pity."

"Why, then?" You ask, not looking away. "Wanted a good reason to beat me up without getting in trouble?"

He laughs a genuine burst of amusement from his lips that doesn't sound sarcastic for once. It's a great contrast to how he laughed the night before under the rain, where it was taunting and he was in his element, the thrill of a sword in his hands crushing his veins. Glory.

"Yeah, that's it."

You can't hide the smile growing on your face. "I knew it."

You float around each other in a few beats of silence, the chatter of children in their own worlds buzzing away. His hand caresses your shoulder like a feather, and you lean into his touch. It is familiar and comforting, and it makes you realize that you might have needed it more than you ever thought you would. 

"No, uh," Luke shakes his head, and you find it endearing. He looks a little pink around the cheeks, his smile nothing short of scandalous. "I actually wanted to spend time with you. Fighting's just a bonus."

His admittion makes your mouth fall open. His teasing words are no longer a taunt, and the conversation is no longer an argument. Luke Castellan looks at you with the same fire he always had though, a challenge in his eyes that you desperately want to rise to. 

"You like fighting with me?"

He smirks. "Best part of my day, honestly."

"Don't lie."

"I'm not."

"What's next?" You tease, "Pulling my hair at recess?"

"Would that do it for you?"

"No," you whisper because you don't think your voice should be any louder when he's so close. "This works just fine."

His lips are lightly touching yours, hovering as a ghost of a desired kiss. You hold your breath and close your eyes. 

Ever so slowly, he tips your chin up and leans in to capture your lips in a sweet kiss. His free hand circles your waist and brings you flush against him as you curl your fingers into the front of his shirt, pulling him even closer to you. Luke gladly presses up against you, his fingers trailing from your chin and moving to curl into your hair, easily deepening the kiss. 

Despite the prickling of your scars and the shallow cut in your forearm, you let yourself to the electric tingle of the kiss, the way it steals your breath and fills your chest with a million exploding fireworks. 

You allow yourself a selfish moment to indulge in the way you can feel his heart pounding against your chest, the barely-there press of his thigh between your legs, the scrape of his bandages beneath your fingers. 

You're both crossing the unspoken line, his breath warm against your flushed skin. What happened to your pride? Your glory?

He pulls back, meeting your eyes again and gently combing your hair back. There's a sick smile plastered on your face, and you watch his lips turn up, dimples creasing his cheeks. You have a swell in your chest, and it makes you acknowledge that even if you never beat him with a sword, that satisfaction would never come close to this.

A chorus of "eww's" comes from the kids, only the twins from Aphoridite's cabin are kind enough to coo and "aw". And you have to take a moment to catch your breath, fingers slipping from his shirt when he drops his arms. 

Luke lets himself fall back, the water lapping at his shoulders, and he grins at you, the soles of his feet brushing up against your thighs, just for a second. He clears his throat and lets his hot gaze linger on you for just a moment too long before he turns to splash water at anyone close enough.

"Mind your business, you little Krakens!"

You believe you've stumbled upon something greater than glory, a thought that's never once crossed your mind before Luke Castellan emerges as the sun illuminating your darkest nights. It's a poetic dance, a celestial symphony where every note he strikes resonates with the promise of warmth and brightness.

His laughter becomes the melody that accompanies your every step, and the moments shared feel like constellations etched against the canvas of time. Luke, the sun in your dark nights, bathes you in the comforting glow of his presence.

But there is an inescapable inevitability that shadows his light—a matter of time until the searing flames envelop you. A war catches on, and in its path, Luke Castellan sets ablaze everything his touch graces. He becomes the harbinger of impending reckoning, and you will be forced to pick up a sword once again.

Candy Girl [joel miller]

The before and after. Or, Joel fucks his friend's daughter for the first time.

my masterlist!

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+ [mdni]

tags/warnings: daddy kink, baker!reader, age gap (20s/40s), (sort of) dbf!joel, daddy dom!joel, soft!joel, angst, self-loathing, waxing poetic about eating pussy, unprotected piv (wrap that shit up like a pastry), creampie, cream pies, dirty talk, pet names, forbidden romance, tw for occasional stylistic omission of quotation marks, moodboard for aesthetics only

word count: ~ 6k

read on ao3!

a/n: hi, all!! please, as always, mind the tags for this fic - it's quite a departure from what i typically write, but daddy joel has set up shop in my brain and he won't leave. if this isn't for you, that's cool - you don't have to read it. i hope you'll be kind, and as always, i hope you enjoy!! xoxo

thank you HUGELY to my dear mya @cavillscurls for the absolutely stunning moodboard!!! i love you and i'm obsessed with you and you're crazy talented 🫶 and thank you endlessly to my parents sam and el @tieronecrush and @northernbluess for being AMAZING betas and always supporting me and my silly fics!!

CANDY GIRL

What have I done, he thinks, parting your dewy folds with two fingers and sliding his tongue through the glistening mess between your thighs, to deserve this?

He certainly can’t think of some good-enough deed to warrant him being here, tucked warmly in this apex, kindling a fire, rubbing his hands over the red of the flame, breathing sighs and gasps and groans into the sweet-smelling flesh of your thighs as if he were destined to arrive here. As if it were a mere quirk of fate, and now everything is gently settling into motion. 

Your fingers are curled in his hair and your chest—bare, smattered with a faint sheen of sweat and reflecting moonlight, illicit—is heaving. You have no instinct to steer him. Your hand knows no guiding push or pull. Your back is bowing off the mattress and your mouth is emitting needy little whines and whimpers and pleas for mercy, more, please, Daddy. 

And he’s acquiescing, toppling slowly into that heady pull of sticky wet warmth between your thighs, and all he can think is that you smell like cherries. 

And you are messy. Fuck, you’re dripping onto his chin as he licks through you, languishing in the prickling taste as if he's guiding his tongue along the salt rim of a glass. His fingers absently dimple your thighs, bruising, forcing them to fall open, part wider, for him. 

Let me in, baby girl. 

Thaaat’s it. My sweet girl. My pretty girl. 

So goddamn beautiful like this. 

You just relax, baby, and let me in. C’mon, now. 

You obey every muffled order like it’s law, letting him shoulder his way between your legs, his hand pressing firm on your belly, pinning you. The answering mewl he hears from your parted lips is the sweet slide of your strawberry icing along his taste buds. He buries his tongue between your wet folds and holds you tighter, dizzied with the smell and the taste and the feel of finally taking what he wants. What you've given him. 

Joel licks self-indulgently through your slit until your pretty cunt is slathered in his spit and glistens with your own juices. When he sees your clit, puffy and fucking needy and shining at him like a goddamn pearl, he licks his lips. 

Look at her. She’s fuckin’ cryin’ for me, baby girl. You need your Daddy to kiss it better? 

You whine, grasping his locks, still never quite urging or pushing, but begging: Daddy, I’ll do anything. Please, I’ll do anything.

Shh, sweetheart. Don’t have to do anything. Just keep ‘em open for me. I’ll make it good. Hear me?

A frantic nod. A reflexive squeeze of the hand on your belly. Eyes, watery and butter-soft in the darkness—wrong, risk—meet his own. 

Yes, Daddy. 

It didn't begin this way. 

Some of the edges are blurred with time. He vaguely recalls the time before you—mornings alone at the breakfast table, intermittent calls to Sarah all the way in College Station, long days on the job site because he had nothing else to come home to—and he’s bitter. It tastes nothing like the after: strawberry icing, vanilla perfume, cherries. 

It must have begun when Chris slapped him on the back after the scaffolding on the Queen Street job was taken down and said, “Couple of us are grabbing coffees at the Morning Star. You should come along, man. Get outta the house.”

The Morning Star. A slightly weathered pink awning and a varnished oak interior, a couple small tables (occupied), a flurry of activity in front of and behind the counter. A glass display case brimming with cakes and croissants and macarons. Glass vases filled with pink roses whose stems have been neatly trimmed. A pretty girl working behind the counter, tending to customers with an irradiating smile, a tender hand, the blinding glint of a bracelet, a pair of earrings, glowing. 

“What can I get for you this morning?” you asked him, like it was some secret spilling from the torso, a heart lurching from its cage, spread out on the ground. 

Petal-pink flowers painted on your fingernails. The aching attentiveness of your stare. Ekphrastic turns of phrases pasted to the wall behind the counter, in the form of a mural, crowd-sourced poems and letters and works of art. Lived-in, loved. The smell of cherries as you approached.

And then it was Chris, clapping Joel on the shoulder, a jolt of good-natured violence turning to torrent as he said, “The usual for me, honey.”

It's been wrong since that moment. Maybe it's been wrong all along. That doesn't stop him from ending up here. And it doesn't stop you from following. 

On your back, in Joel’s bed, your legs spread wide to accommodate his broad shoulders, welcoming the face-warming intrusion of his mouth between your slick folds. Bold in the way you curl your pretty polished fingers in his greying locks—he’s too old, much too old for you—and receptive in your soft moans and your uttered hexes of yesyesyes. 

Bewitched, he flattens his tongue against your pulsing clit and latches his lips around it, his eyes fixed on the way your head falls back, the length of your throat exposed, the evidence of your beating heart laid bare for him in the tremble of your pulse. 

He sucks on your clit until your legs begin to shake, and it’s the telltale squeeze of your thighs around his shoulders, the way you reflexively kick his back with your heel. But he’s pulling away, crushing his nose in the flesh of your thigh, nipping your soft skin, and the cry that leaves your mouth carves a tremor down his spine. 

Your tight little hole flutters with the need to be filled, to take him inside you, to make him wholly yours, the way he already is, the way you can never know. 

So he slides his tongue over your clit and lathers you in his spit and digs his fingertips into your thighs as if he owns you—because he never can. 

The flickering burn of regret and shame soothes when he's between your thighs, sucking your clit into his mouth and making you come so hard that you weep—leg kicking out, shackled by a firm hand around your ankle, back arching, fingers grasping, flexing, at whatever you can touch. You pour into him, molten gold, recast in his likeness, and he doesn't deserve this but he will take it. 

Instinctively, he pushes deeper, lapping your release from your messy hole, his nose pressed against your oversensitive clit—and he can’t resist, has never been able to, gently coaxing you through it, Poor baby, so goddamn needy for Daddy, sweetheart. Taste so fuckin’ sweet.

You’re whining, finally pushing at his head as the pleasure notches too high, and he presses a soft kiss to your clit before dragging his lips up your belly, between your tits, pulling you upright to sit you in his lap. You grin lazily and drop your forehead against his. 

Fuck, he's so proud. He smooths his hand down the crown of your head and skates his fingers down your sweat-slick spine. 

You tired, baby?

You nod, and he nips at your pouting bottom lip.

Hmm, but you ain't a quitter. You can give me another, can't you? You wanna be good for me. 

He whispers it all against the curve of your throat, into your collarbones, fitting his rough palm against your lower back and pulling your body flush to his. He sweats through all his layers and bleeds his warmth into you, but you don't care, grinding down on his lap, sliding your wet pussy along the hard length in his jeans. 

Your hand is slippery at the back of his neck and your eyes are lidded, sleepy, near-black, as you take what you need because you're a greedy girl when it comes down to it, and he's holding your bloody beating heart in his palms. 

I’ll be so good, Daddy. 

He knows. God, he knows—his lips find your temple, hair matted with sweat, and he can feel your tits pressing up against his chest, the erratic melody your heart sings to him, for him, through him. And he doesn’t deserve this.

Gonna need to take me out, baby girl. Go on, now.

You scramble, reaching between your bodies and unbuttoning his jeans, your hand teasing down the waistband of his boxers. Joel groans when you squeeze him, his teeth catching on your earlobe, nibbling from your jaw to your chin. He watches your manicured hand with its pretty pink polish wrap snugly around the base of his cock—you give him a firm, slow stroke, and he curses at the sight of your oh-so eager gaze.

Shit, baby. You're grinding your hips, smearing your wetness along his length, and he kneads your hip like dough while you grasp his shoulder, your head lolling. He bares his teeth, growling and snapping like a dog at the hot, slick slide of your cunt, his eyes a pendulum between the joining of your bodies and the heavy gaze you give him. That’s it, that’s fuckin’ it, take what you need. 

Your legs are trembling, too weak to hold yourself upright, and he knows, as always, exactly what it is you want. 

You’ve always been spoiled, because he’s let it happen. 

“Just a coffee,” he said, his third consecutive day in the Morning Star. “Please.”

He felt the twist of your lips in his ribcage. “I promise we have more than just coffee.”

“‘s good coffee,” he said. “Why spoil a good thing?”

He liked your pale pink hat and apron and the colour of your nails. He liked the way you feathered your fingertips over the till while you waited patiently for orders, the way you dealt so kindly with indecisiveness, the way your heart-shaped pendant glimmered when the sun dipped low in the western sky. 

He only knows it glows like that because you let him stay one night, long after close, to fix the hinge on the front door.

He’d known the Morning Star for a month. He knew it better than he knew you. 

“You don’t have to do this, Joel.”

An anxious shifting of your weight from one foot to the other, an intermittent four-fingered tap of your nails on the countertop, a soft weariness blurring the edges of your irises, as you tried to tell him you were fine, you could call your dad in the morning, please don’t worry about me.

The gentle in-and-out of your chest as you breathed, the golden near-evening light trickling the sun into the whites of your eyes, where it belonged. When you inhaled, he exhaled, the rhythmic pulse of life dancing between you, twirling carelessly on the edge of something neither of you could explain. 

“I wanna help,” he said. “And you should let me.”

You sighed, little of the charging bull and more of the huffing kitten, and his stomach lurched painfully. He wanted to touch you. He wanted to rest his hand at the crown of your head, soothe the tension in your shoulders with a measured press of his fingertips, unearth the blood-flecked bones that heralded emotions he could not yet name. Later, he would know them intimately; later, he would set his teeth in the white marrow and lick the blood from his chops. 

He wanted to ask all of his questions with his fingers, not his mouth, let you answer them the way you saw fit, giving that silent, haptic space the power it needed to pry open the parts of your life he could only guess at. 

But he did not touch you. 

Then, a time firmly lodged in the hazy somewhere of before-and-after, he could only pretend. And he could fix the door. 

Now, he’s gazing in disbelief at the way your tight little hole wrenches open around the weeping tip of his heavy cock, his sweaty body sliding along yours as you hastily shove the buttons of his flannel out of their slits and shuck off his shirt. Skin-to-skin, he feels your pulse ever stronger, licking and sucking at the juncture of your neck and shoulder. His palm is flat between your shoulder blades as he eases you open, helping you take his big cock. 

Daddy…

I know, baby girl, I know. Just a little more. That’s it—keep holdin’ onto me, baby. 

Petting you like a domesticated cat, fitting his fingers in the grooves between your ribs, feeling his own heartbeat settle into the rhythm of yours. You grasp his shoulder, the nape of his neck, your lips parting against his forehead, pressing feverish kisses to the space where his greying curls stick to his skin. 

You can take me, sweet girl. My baby. So good for me—

—the way you always have been.

“When my mom left, she gave the bakery to me.” Guiding the pink icing onto the small fluffy cakes, you moved seamlessly. Second nature, like laying mortar and brick. Your hands were speckled with flour and frosting. 

The vanilla cupcakes, robed in white paper, were a commission for a young girl’s sixth birthday. “Pink was Sarah’s favourite, too,” he’d said when he walked in that morning—perhaps too needy for a reason to connect. Blindly tossing a fishing line into a murky lake. 

But you still glowed when you had beamed up at him: “And now? She still a pink lover?”

“Haven't asked in a while,” he’d said, “but I’d reckon so.”

“She’s smart.” You had slid the black coffee across the counter and placed a cupcake next to it. Joel frowned. 

“What's this?”

You had lifted your brows, your eyes telegraphing a challenge. He had sunk neck-deep into your emboldened gaze. “This is a cupcake.”

“Smartass,” he’d huffed. “You got a reason for givin’ me a cupcake?”

You’d gently pushed them closer to him and given him that blinding, tempting grin, and how could he ever hope to decline you when you looked at him like that? 

“I value your opinion, Joel,” you’d told him, “and if you don’t eat it, you’ll hurt my feelings.”

He'd taken the cupcake and sunk his teeth into its pillowy flesh right there in front of you. 

“And your dad?” asked Joel, on his knees under the counter, replacing the latch on the display door’s hinge. “He help you out a lot?”

 An intrusive figure, playing unwitting God in the budding flower bed, picking petals before they were dead. He would always inflate the distance between you, assert his right to decide who you wanted, dated, fucked—he would always be Joel’s judge and jury. 

The executioner’s axe he’d take up himself. 

You topped off a row of cupcakes with little candied cherries. “He couldn't afford to quit, so I’m running the place. So much for school.”

Joel didn't like that. He didn’t like the way you let it all slide gently down your spine. There was a quiet defiance in the way you spoke—some simmering anger you buried deep in the earth where the colours weren't bright and your heart wasn't so naked. He could feel its veins as if holding it in his palm, the gentle ba-dum, ba-dum of a vulnerable organ so acquainted with disappointment.

“What do you want to study?” he asked. 

“Don’t know. Never got the chance to think about it.”

Never got the chance to find yourself. To learn. To grow. You had simply stepped into another’s body, a ghost, occupied endlessly with the next task and the next and then one more. You should've been spending your early twenties partying and studying and crying your eyes out over idiot boys who didn’t know how good they had it. You shouldn't have to be here, decorating cupcakes for a six-year-old while some old man fixed yet another broken hinge, latch, bulb. 

“I became a dad pretty young,” said Joel. “Thought I was gonna lose my whole life, all my opportunities, not that I had any.”

He did not deserve the empathetic shimmer in your waterline. “Joel, that's not true—”

“But,” he said with a faint groan as he rose, “I got to make a life of my own, with my kid, and I was happy.”

“You were happy?” you said wearily. “You aren't anymore?”

“I’m…”

He caught your eye and felt the plates far beneath his feet dislodge. Quantum shift. You held his gaze as if you were waiting for some truth to crawl from his sockets—like he was your answer. And Joel did not know what to do with that, but if you would keep looking at him this way, he would tell you any false truths you wanted to hear. 

“I’m lonely,” he said at last. Joel reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind your ear. A shiver coursed through your heart which lay in his palm, warm crimson blood trickling down his wrists. “And you shouldn't have to be. You’ve got so much life ahead of you, sweetheart.”

Some glacial melt keeled the weight of your head toward him, and your cheek was resting in the pool of his palm. Joel did not care for the hand of God whose fingers would inevitably squeeze the life from whatever this was. The jigsaw fit of your bodies felt so right in this incomprehensible sliver between before and after.

“You're not old, Joel,” you said softly. 

“Too old for you.”

He didn't know why he said it, but it made you smile. 

“You keep lying to me, Mr. Miller, and I’m not going to trust you anymore.” A wry twist of your lips. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Is this flirting? he thought to himself, so fucking out of practice that the concept felt altogether foreign. But you were giving him that foxlike look and his hand was still cupping your cheek and he could feel the flutter of your pulse, and he didn’t want to stop.

“No, baby. I don’t want that.”

Flesh meets flesh. Your hips drop, and you’re sitting so prettily on his cock, the whole of him buried inside you, stretching your capacities, shifting the dichotomy of right and wrong. He stares up at you—lips parted, eyes lidded, heart beating JoelJoelJoel—and pleasure pinballs down each knob of his spine. He’s locked in the tidal push-and-pull with your body, gravity sucking him into you, or sucking you down onto him. It doesn't matter. 

This is the after, and you're drunkenly nudging his nose with yours, trying to kiss him, and he's taking you. Running with the diamond. Sliding his tongue into your mouth, tasting cherries and frosting and giving you a piece of what he's already taken from you. You're sighing and moaning and greedily opening your mouth into him to swallow down your own taste. 

His hand slides up your spine to the sticky nape of your neck as he presses you to him, joined by every joint, every pound of flesh. 

And when he begins to move, to grind up into you and draw gooey, cloying gasps from your mouth, Joel thinks he briefly sees white. 

Jesus. Been waitin’ so goddamn long for this. You're so fuckin’ soft, baby girl. So fuckin’ beautiful. 

His teeth in your throat, around your earlobe, scraping your jaw, pleasure pinching, recapitulating, recovering only to start again. Your name on his tongue, passing from his mouth to yours, the anchor of your hand around his neck, the other on his shoulder, reciprocal re-stabilising. 

He needs you just as much as you need him, and he shows you in the way he pulls you firmly to him, because he cannot bring himself to whisper it into the barely-there space between your bodies.

“Joel, I’m sorry to call you so early, but I’m out of options, and the party starts in two hours, and my delivery guy flaked, and—”

“Honey, slow down. Lemme wake up, okay? I’m comin’ to you.”

“Oh, God, just forget I said anything. Go back to sleep. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

He still remembers the break in your voice, the fragile warble of your resolve cleaving down the middle. He remembers the sting in his own chest like it was his wound, not yours. He was awake before the sun began to climb.

You had to personally drive the cake you’d made for a ten-year-old’s birthday party all the way across town now that your delivery service had fallen through. You didn’t even have a car; you took the bus everywhere, which Joel had chewed his tongue to pieces over for months. Things could happen in the dark. Public transport was no different. But your own father didn’t seem to take issue with it, so how could Joel?

“Don’t say a word,” he told you when you hopped up into his truck and opened your mouth to apologise. “I don’t mind. You know damn well I don’t mind.”

“You should mind,” you said, instinctively picking a piece of lint from his flannel with that miserable little pout on your face. “All I’ve ever done is ask you for things.”

“And if I like doin’ things for you?”

“Then I’ll put you on my payroll,” you countered.

Joel shook his head fondly. You cleaned when you were anxious; grooming and picking at him like a monkey should not have surprised him. “Well, I got a birthday comin’ up, if you wanna thank me.”

“Yeah?” You bit your lip and some of the heaviness sitting on your shoulders lifted, the promise of getting to repay him for his altruism at last eliciting the smile he wanted. “What would you like?”

You take me so well, baby girl. Goddamn meant for me.  

The hot, wet slide of your cunt up and down the length of his steel-hard cock has him doubling over, mouthing sloppily at your tits, sucking and nibbling on your stiff nipples as you cry and whimper: Oh, Daddy, please… fuck, that feels… I can’t—

He’s blinking hard to squeeze the bleeding edges of fantasy away—because this is real, and he cannot know if he will ever have this again. I know you can. You can take me.

A nod, frantic and sick with desire, slips against his temple. I can take it. Please—let me be your good girl. I’m good, good for you. 

I know you are, baby girl. So good for Daddy. 

“Joel!”

He had never heard his own name infused with such thrill. It settled in the pool of his gut and oozed out past his ribs. 

You beckoned him to the counter and placed a steaming mug between the pair of you. The umber liquid sloshed gently in the cup. “It’s a macchiato. And don’t worry”—you caught him before the gash between his brows could deepen worriedly—“it’s nothing like that sugar heap you'll get at a Starbucks. Two shots of espresso, balanced with the milk foam.”

Joel tried to smile, but he was sure it looked more like a grimace. “Milk… foam.”

“I know you're a coffee purist, Joel, but hear me out.” You scurried to the large black boards on the back wall and flipped one over to reveal the bright white writing—stark, vibrant, a proclamation you should’ve had no business making, not when it was so bold as this. 

NEW, it read in a pretty, looping font. THE MILLER. 

His heart leapt to his throat. And there you were, gesturing to the board with his name—Joel’s name—on it, and he was lifting the confounding liquid to his lips. 

Some of the foam accumulated in his moustache as he tentatively sipped and rolled the flavour over his tongue. It wasn't… bad. Not at all. A little too sweet where he preferred the bitter drag of a dark roast. A few too many frills. But—

“It’s good,” he said. Your answering smile decided it for him. He would never go back to black coffee. 

Fuck, baby, that's it. Keep on ridin’ me just like that. Oh, Jesus—

The slow, rhythmic slap of your thighs against his as you lock your arms around his neck and lift yourself up and down on his dick. Your head lolling around your shoulders, your brows drawn up in the middle. The squelch of your creamy cunt as you take him to the hilt and bring your hips down in measured, grinding motions. 

You’re getting yourself off, too, your clit rubbing against the hairs at the base of his cock, and Joel groans, Fuckin’ hell. Christ, that’s good. That’s it, that’s—

“Think I’m gettin’ fat on all these sweets, baby.”

He’d begun to come into the bakery on Saturday mornings, too, even though he didn’t work. With Sarah no longer in Austin and a dreadfully empty house whose groans and creaks only kept him up all hours, he had little to do but work, maintain the lawns, and, well…

Sat together at the table by the window, you shared a leftover slice of rich cherry pie. The awning outside fluttered gently in the breeze, cutlery and ceramic softly colliding as folks indulged in your treats. You beamed at Joel and reached out to swipe some foamed milk from his moustache. 

“I like you this way,” you said, your thumb coasting along his jawline, your eyes like jewels. The pendant on your throat dipped as you swallowed, settling in the hollow like a perching bird. 

Joel, white-knuckling his fork, felt his cock grow hard in his boxers, a heavy weight against his leg. The rapid shuttering of your eyes left him feeling inexplicably panicked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep—”

“No,” said Joel, his hand covering your knee beneath the table. You were wearing a little skirt that day. The silky fabric shifted under the coarse texture of the pads of his fingers and he wondered if the softness would be akin to the flesh of your thighs, your belly, your tits (sitting so pretty in that plain T-shirt: pink, of course). “No, you didn’t… You know I…”

And what could he say?

You know I’ve wanted to slip my hand down each one of those pretty skirts you wear since the first day I saw you. You know I take my cock in my hand and jerk off in the shower and I picture your lips around it. You know you’ve fucking infected me. You know I’m poisoned. You know I ain’t good enough. Youknowyouknowyouknow I can never have you.

“Joel, man, I’ve been calling your cell.”

His hand smacked the underside of the table in its hasty retreat as Chris rounded the corner and clapped Joel on the shoulder. “Hey, kiddo. You mind if I have a bite?”

And because you were so goddamn sweet, because you were a smart girl and knew how to play it cool, you gave your father your fork with a big smile and said, “All yours. I should get back. Thanks for the taste test, Joel.”

Chris easily occupied your seat at the table and Joel, adjusting his pants discreetly, was struck by how wrong this had been. To sit with you, sharing a pie, touching, wanting—

He was fucked. And he didn’t care. He only wanted more. 

“Cowboys kick off next Sunday,” said Chris through a mouthful of baked cherries. The warm, cloying scent reminded Joel of your perfume. “You want to come over for dinner? We’ll order takeout, grab some beers.”

Joel swallowed, rubbing his fingers over his mouth. He felt the phantom touch of your thumb lingering just above his Cupid’s bow. “Yeah, man. Be fun.”

Chris grinned over the pie—now his, no lingers yours and Joel’s. “Hope you don’t mind that I invited my kid, too. She needs the break.”

You’re close, baby. Can fuckin’ feel it. Feel you squeezin’ me.

Thighs trembling, muscles gooey, you struggle to lift yourself up, and it's Joel who scoops you up with a hand on your ass and lies you on your back, never once pulling out. He doesn't think he can. How did the first man to discover fire ever snuff it out?

He bends over you and thrusts deep, punching a sob out of your throat. Joel groans, nipping your chin as you toss your head back, his mouth trailing down the hollow of your throat, latching around one of your sore nipples, already abused by his attention. You rake your fingers through his tousled greying locks and lift your legs up around his hips as he fucks you slow, hard, deep enough that your heart begins to bruise. 

Joel hisses when he feels your fingernails scratching down his spine, between his shoulder blades, pulling him close to you. He dulls his pain in your flesh, open-mouthed kisses soothing the biting bruises he's left on your throat. 

Your cunt rhythmically pulses around his cock and Joel grunts, driving deeper, hand fisting your hair, and Daddy, I’m so close—!

Friday night. Joel’s birthday. 

He’d spent it on the job site, laying brick, then at home, cracking open a cold beer and calling Sarah, whose gift hadn't arrived yet. She sang him “Happy Birthday” from her dorm room and Joel smiled. All things considered, it wasn't a shitty day. Just…

Lonely. 

And you—

You were at his door at ten o’clock, shrouded in night in a way he'd never seen you. Not dressed in pink but black: sweatpants and a tight little tank top that made him swallow his tongue. You were holding a goddamn cake. 

You'd had a stressful day. He could tell. Eyes a little sunken, shoulders a little rounded, but you were still smiling, still holding up that cake—chocolate, circled with candied cherries, of course—and singing a weary “Surprise!”

Joel laughed—in shock, maybe—and rubbed his hand over his beard. “Jesus, baby,” he said. “C’mon in; it’s cold out.”

He helped you secure the cake in the refrigerator and offered you dinner: leftover pad thai and a beer. You accepted the former with a grumbling stomach and politely declined the latter. Of course, you were a wine girl. 

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” you told him, sitting across the couch while reruns of Happy Days idly played on the television. “Shit goes down at the Morning Star when you're not there.”

Joel shook his head. “I run a tight ship. You doin’ okay?”

“I’m strung-out, Joel, as ever. But fine.” Your conciliatory smile was so fucking cheeky he had half a mind to put you over his knee. “I hope your birthday wasn't a disappointment.”

“Couldn't have been,” he said. “You brought me a cake.”

You beamed. And the cord wrapped around both of your bodies jerked tighter. Joel was hiding his erection with the takeout container, too humiliated to let you see the hard band of his cock in his jeans. You'd run. You'd think he was a freak, a perv, a sleaze. 

He was all three, of course. Didn't stop him from wanting—

His cock driving deep inside you, achingly slow, back screaming for relief. Daddy, please, I’m… nnngh, please let me come! Daddy, I’ll do anything, please!

Shhh, baby girl. He rises to his haunches and dips his hand between your joined bodies, rubbing your slick little pearl in fast circles. Your eyes roll back and your head collided with the pillow once more. Thaaat’s it, baby. You gonna come for Daddy? Be a good girl for me?

“Joel,” you said softly, your food forgotten on the table, your body inching closer to his, now two feet apart at best. Your eyes buttery in the darkness, lips dewy with some pinkish gloss you always wore, gloss he knew tasted like cherries. He licked his lips. 

His hands flexed. “Yeah.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” you said, bridging the gap, placing your hand on his knee, pink nails and soft skin and vanilla perfume. Joel sets his container aside, swallowing hard. 

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.” You were tentative at first, scooting closer, your hand gingerly exploring the length of his strong thigh, against the grain of the denim. 

“Baby,” said Joel, more a long-bated exhale than a word at all. Gritting his teeth, hands at his sides, he watched in disbelief as you explored him, your manicured hand gently palming the hard length in his jeans. The moan he let out surprised himself. 

“Tell me to stop,” you whispered, pulling yourself onto his lap, straddling his hips, your arms winding around his neck, perfumecherrieslipgloss—

“Tell me to stop and I will.”

Joel’s hands, no longer balled into fists, flattened against your arms and travelled their length, exploring your contours, dipping his palms into the curves of your shoulder blades, lodging himself firmly in the after with you. 

You shivered, and he liked it. 

“You need someone to touch you, too, baby girl.”

Not a question. You nodded anyway. 

“Words,” he demanded. 

Your lips parted and suddenly your noses were brushing, the pupils of your heavy eyes expanding, taking all of him in. 

“I need you to touch me, Joel.”

“I know,” he said, one hand smoothing down the crown of your head, the other trailing featherlight up your spine. “I’m gonna kiss you, baby.”

You nodded again, a little feverish, pulling yourself closer to him, your thighs squeezing his. “Please.”

The after began with you, the way it will end with you. And he's kissing you now, too, swallowing the sounds of your orgasm as you hold him so tightly to you there's no escape. Not that he wants to leave. Not that he finally has this. 

He's breathing life into your climax and burning it bright, hot, endless—that’s my good girl, coming so much for me, I know it's a lot, baby girl, just keep holdin’ me, that’s it, sweetheart. 

And he's coming, too, grasping your hips so hard they'll bruise, nipping your earlobe and your jaw and leaving sloppy kisses on your neck, spiralling out of control, squeezed so tight by your hot, wet pussy. He comes with a pinch of pain in his lower back, groaning your name into you, pitching up into a near-whine as you milk him, guide him, coax him. 

Fuck, fuck… goddamn—

Daddy, I need your cum. Please come inside me. 

I will, baby girl, I will… Jesus—

It's so warm and slick where his cock begins to pulse inside you that he couldn't pull out if he wanted to. He empties himself, absolves himself, no longer a sinning man but one cleansed. Your body begs for it, your cunt pulling every drop from him, letting him make a mess of your used hole. Joel grinds absently until it's too much, until he’s sensitive and softening and trying not to collapse on top of you. 

Your lip gloss is smudged. He licks his lips and tastes cherries. 

“You okay, baby?”

You wince as he pulls out of you, globs of cum pooling at your hole and dripping onto the bed sheets. “Mhm.” You pull him closer, asking for a kiss he happily gives you. 

“I feel good. I feel happy.”

He grins into your throat, littering meagre kisses in the junction there. “Did so well for me,” he mumbles.

“Tell me something,” you whisper, combing your fingers through his hair. 

He purrs at the satiating scratch of your nails, his head resting on your chest. “Mmm.”

“Do you really like the Miller Macchiato, or are you just ordering it to make me happy?”

Joel chuckles, playfully taking your nipple between his teeth. “It's grown on me.”

From here, where he can feel the thrum of your settling heart reverberate through his skull, Joel gently tucks the beating organ back between your ribs for safekeeping. Here, in the clear-blue space of after, he doesn't need to hold it to know he's got it. He only needs to lower his ear to your chest and hear it sing his name. 

tagging some friends who showed interest in the wip!!: @casa-boiardi @swiftispunk @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @cool-iguana @morning-star-joy @party-hearses @5oh5 (i love you all 🫶)