#Joel Miller x FMC
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FABLE OF THE DOG : 1. The Two Headed Calf
Series Masterlist;
Pairing: Joel Miller x FMC
Summary: Welcome home and buck up, cowgirl.
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: Cowboy/Heiress AU; Slowburn(ish); Original Characters; Alcohol & Drug Use; Discussions of Grief; Daddy Issues; Graphic Descriptions of Vomiting; Description of a Dead Body; Death of a Parent; Parental Neglect; Older Man/Younger Woman; Jealousy; Past Teenage Crush; Unrequited Pinning; Yearning and Longing Galore; Boss’s Daughter; Complicated Family Relationships; A Home is a Place but ALSO a Person!; Found Family
A/N: Disclaimer, I know nothing about Wyoming and it’s geography, ranching, or being a cowboy and just made all this up. Any and all misrepresentations are fallacy of my laziness.
The FMC tag was decided because she has a last name. It was just too difficult for me to speak in depth about her father without giving him a name, and thus her one too. After that decision was made, she kind of went away from me and devolved into her own person who I have come to be quite obsessed with. It’s still written in ‘you’ format, anyhow.
I’ve been having a whole lot of fun with this, I hope you do too.
Word Count: 10K
Read on AO3
1: The Two Headed Calf
“She’s been shut up in that house goin’ on three days now, Joel,” Tommy says as the two brothers make their way across the lawn.
The ride had been long and hard, and Joel is tired—he levels a dark look at him. “Just sayin’. Nothin’ you find in there’s gonna be pretty to look at.” He raises his hands in surrender at the brooding glare, that non-confrontational shrug that’s set Joel on edge since they were boys.
“One of you’s should’a gone in there. Made sure she’s okay.”
“The housekeepers’ve been keepin’ an eye. And Frank tried to go in there and check on her himself, but she’s angry as a barn cat. Hissin’ ‘nd yowlin’, and just bein’ downright scary as hell, to be honest. You should be prepared is all I’m tryin’ to say.”
“Her father just died, Tommy. I’m not expectin’ pretty sights right now,” Joel gruffs, trying to swallow the panic that flutters in his throat as they crest the final hill up to the big house.
The beautiful stone, oak, glass monstrosity that’s stood as monument to this place, this home that is not truly his, for over a decade now. The Kelly Ranch. The sky above is still a sultry, yawning blue, deep and tired, basking in the throes of dawn as the sun just now makes its way over the crest of the Tetons in the distance so that the house sits for just a moment longer in its pool of shadowed blues.
Joel pauses on the border of that somber darkness, afraid suddenly of what awaits him inside; boots glued to the ground with the gum of cowardice. He doesn’t want to see her broken. He doesn’t want to see her hurting. But there’s no other recourse, he knows this. The death of the estranged father she’d fought with all her life, the inheritance of this world that seems suddenly too big for just one orphaned girl, all alone now.
He’s afraid that he’ll walk into that house he’s always seen as other and home all wrapped into one—that Olympus that was so far removed and out of reach even when he walked through it’s halls to the man who’d given him sanctuary and salvation, to the man he knew mistreated her sometimes, didn’t love her enough—and not have the capacity to recognize her, this girl who’d always been familiar and stranger all in one also.
Joel Miller suddenly feels afraid of the memory she exists as in his mind, in the face of the woman he knows she is now.
When he lets himself in the back kitchen door, it’s still nighttime within. The cool dryness of the AC cranked up to inhuman temperatures makes him shiver once while sprouting a damp sweat along his nape. He should’ve showered before coming, should’ve washed the ride and the days of camp off his skin before walking into her presence, but all he’d managed were his hands and face. There’d been panic to make sure she was well, if not then alive, at least. But he should be more presentable for her.
Hell, he should’ve been here for her when she came home for the first time in two years to the house where her father had died. He should’ve been here when the man died.
But the herd had needed moving. He hadn’t thought it’d all happen so quickly, thought he had more time, that they all had more time. He’d hoped she wouldn’t return at all, if he was being honest. There was nothing here for her. Nothing except memories of a gilded and loveless, already motherless childhood. The reality of all she was set to inherit. The truth of an aloneness Joel didn’t know if she was prepared for.
He moves through the house slowly, afraid to disturb the ghosts and the silence. The interior, immaculate and beautiful and solemn. Something out of a movie picture or the gloss of a magazine. Something covered not in dust but in sadness. The stairs are silent as his spinning mind makes up for the creak, the boots she’d sent him on his last birthday hit the richly piled rug at the top, and the hallway to the bedrooms yawns long and frightening in front of him. Two grand a pop, the boots—Lucchese, he’d looked them up on the iPhone she’d sent him the year before. A gift giver, generous to a fault, kind to a detriment. She sent something to all the ranch hands that’d worked for her father since she was a girl. Something for the entire ranch at Christmas. And all he managed each time was a perfunctory thank you card, like he did every year because he remembered, years ago, in her little voice, polite people send thank you notes, Joel, my grandmother told me so. Last year he’d written that they were too much, that she shouldn’t have, that he was grateful. There wasn’t much else to say.
That was the extent of their communication, familiar and stranger in one, the far removed golden child of the Kelly. They’d all called him that, the Kelly, for as long as he’d known the man. As if he was some Scottish laird of old, ruling over his clan and half the world. Egotistical, was what it really was. He’d thought himself a god among men, in the face of his only child. Ridiculous was what Joel saw it all for, a put on play, a farce.
And wonder of wonders, she was entirely unlike him because of course she would be. Of course a man ruled by nothing more than ego and narcissism had been sent his polar opposite in the form of his only child. Kind hearted, was what she was—sending him a birthday gift every year. Remembering them all here always no matter how far she’d gone. He sent her a thank you note for each benevolence in return, a word of respectful gratitude for the fact that a person like her could ever remember a dog like him.
Sometimes, Joel had wanted to go to him, the old man, Oswald Kelly, and ask him where his daughter was, why he wasn’t looking for her, keeping her closer, caring for her. He wasn’t the sort of man that could’ve ever understood such callous behavior towards one’s child.
The last time she’d been here, over two years ago: less than forty eight hours that had ended in screaming so terrible they’d all heard it down from the barn, sitting in uncomfortable, swollen silence, the spinning of tires ringing as she yelled at her father that he was never going to see her again, the man’s echoing laugh as she’d fled him.
Joel hadn’t seen her on that visit, it’d been so quick and angry. Flying down on the jet from New Haven for her father’s seventieth birthday and not even making it long enough for the festivities. This was what her life was, as he’d observed it from a distance for all these years, the singular daughter of this great house, coming to her father, attempting joy and finding nothing but disappointment at the end of him.
She’d been right, a knowing streak running through her. Kelly had never seen her again, and Joel didn’t know if the old man had regretted it or not, the anger and the estrangement and the lack of love. But the last time he’d spoken to him, hours before setting off on their move, the herd always came before everything else, the ranch was all that mattered is what the man had always said, with death scratching at the window, his frail and withered body licked down to almost nothing from the austere and imposing figure Joel had always known him as, he’d asked for her. His only child. Do you think she’ll come, Joel? The dying man had asked him. My daughter, do you think she’ll come see me? Joel had lied a lie he hadn’t known was one, said she would, that he’d call her as soon as he was back.
In the end, he hadn’t even afforded her that decency, a personal call.
He comes to her open bedroom door now, pitch dark as grief within, and the stench of sorrow and liquor seeping from the living grave. He looks down the long and empty hall for a brief second, wishing it didn’t have to be him, that again, he didn't have to see her any way other than okay. And he realizes that there’s something about her, as she will exist now, that makes him cowardly. Something about this house without the man who’d granted him the absolution of a hiding place all those years ago, who’d understood and sheltered Joel in the midst of his own past grief, that makes him cowardly. The house feels wrong without Kelly within it, wrong with only her as its holder now.
Joel steps into her dark, and it’s a battleground—
—You are silent and motionless in the blue room.
Nothing of the gleaming splendor that dresses the rest of the home sleeps in here. There are clothes everywhere, an exploded suitcase lies open and massacred in the middle of the plush white rug, a turned over bottle of red wine bleeding into your clothes. Shredded pages with scratched on writing slashed across them, the dusted white mounds of crushed pills, as if you’d smashed each one individually beneath the thumb of your grief. The sight makes him more afraid, the scent of weed and cigarettes heavy in the air, as he takes the final step towards the wrecked bed, and a single small foot hangs limply from the edge.
He stares at it long and hard for a second, afraid, afraid again, still, of what he’ll find. He says your name once, short and gruff like a dog’s bark. It’s what he feels like. Animal, bestial, lacking any sort of cognizance amidst this minefield. His heart beats against his spine, and he thinks he should do something else, shake you, check for a pulse, his bones throb inside his skin. He needs to fucking move, but the smell of smoke is so cloying he’s choking on his own tongue.
Your ankle twitches.
And Joel sucks in a sigh of relieved air without panic, saying your name again. His voice is level now, maybe gentle, no more barking dog. His eyes move up the length of one pretty leg, and then quickly, he averts his gaze when he gets high up enough he’s met with soft-creased asscheek covered in silk. Swallowing his tongue, his eyes roll in their sockets, looking for anything else to look at besides the sight of panty clad ass. He steps closer again, gripping the edge of the sheet to pull it over your scantily clad body, eyes flitting to the silver spun clock on the nightstand, the warm glow of the hall light shows that they have two hours to get you sober and presentable before the funeral.
Joel should have been here. He does not feel that he is even here now. And the guilt eats at him like acid. The fear too.
“Darlin’, you’ve gotta get up now,” he says softly, taking hold of your shoulder, scalded by the feel of fragile skin, realizing with the suddenness of a gunshot that you’ll be the Kelly now. He gives you a gentle shake, “We’ve gotta get you ready,” and his heart pumps blood like a machine. The sight of the dry liquor bottle toppled on the nightstand, the shattered glass glittering the floor in crystal, the empty pill bottles, it all taunts him. His guilt is a cacophony in his mind. He knows he’s going to have to stick his fingers down your throat, make you spit it all up, that you’ll hate him for all of this afterwards, but when his gaze meets streaked rust, dark and shocking against the white sheets, he’s kicked into terrified action.
He turns you over, your head lolling sickeningly in unconscious stupor, hair a tangled mess strewn about your face so that he has to dig for your eyes, parting the curtains of your fringe to uncover you. He focuses on your closed eyes, the too long lashes clumped together, lips cracked and parched.
He should’ve fucking been here.
Smoothing his fingers along the lengths of your arms, he keeps his eyes on your face and averted from all the skin that keeps peeking out below, searching the divots and slopes of your arms for hurts. When he gets to your right hand, battleground of a long ago broken hurt, he finds the drying crust of blood, the ragged split in the soft, small palm, thankfully shallow.
His eyes smart, looking down at the broken glass, feeling the tear in you.
Gripping you gently below the elbows he pulls you into his arms, cradled like a child, light as loss. Your head lolls again, neck crooked at an unnatural angle as he carries you into the restroom, careful of your head, knocking the lights on and putting you down in front of the toilet bowl. He pulls your camisole to rights, making sure everything is covered, and gathers your mess of hair as carefully as he can, trying his best to not snag the fragile strands in his too rough hands, but gripping you firmly in position. And ignoring the sound of your awakening cry, he sticks two fingers into your slack jawed mouth and down your throat until he feels the hot rush of vomit.
Crouching behind you, his thighs bracket you, keeping your form from slumping over as you empty the poison from your belly, flushing the alcohol soaked bile as you struggle. He wipes his messy hand on the leg of his jeans and rubs soothing circles on your back, his fingers woven through the soft silk of your hair to keep your head in place and your face clear. His heart thumps in rhythm with your heaves, your too quick, panicked breathing. There seems to be not enough oxygen for the two of you and your grief in the too small room of the commode, and Joel gasps like a dying fish, trying to swallow calm breaths.
When you finally stop your heaving, you rest your arms at the edge of the gleaming porcelain, head hung low, defeated, wracked with shivers or silent sobs, he isn’t sure, a strange and horrible keening noise, so small he barely catches it, held in your throat. There’s the finest down of peach fuzz that covers the tender slope of your vulnerable nape, and it makes Joel feel suddenly, just as vulnerable, just as unprotected. At a complete loss for how to help you.
“Finally decided to show your face,” you croak, voice ragged with your sick.
His fingers tighten once around your shoulder, a panicked tick of reminder that he’s here now, that he’s him. “I was moving the herd. It had to be done. Your father, he—” he stutters, trying explain, tripping over his own guilt ridden words. “I didn’t think it’d happen now, so fast, that you’d get here so soon. I thought we had more time.”
We.
Your skin seems to cool by the second beneath his fingertips, and then you’re shrugging his touch away, huddling closer to the porcelain bowl, further away from him.
“Get out.”
“Let me explain. I—” And he’s begging now. He can hear the note of it in his voice. Begging for forgiveness. For a chance.
“I don’t want to see you.” You don’t say his name. “Get out.” It feels worse than anything.
“I’m here now. I didn’t know— I didn’t think.” He reaches to grab for you again, but you turn to face him suddenly. Wiping the back of your hand against your mouth, pushing your heels at his shins to kick him away. Your eyes are red rimmed, the hollows beneath bruised with lack of sleep. But fire spits from the deep color, all anger and hurt.
“Go deal with your fucking ranch,” you fling the words at him. “It’s all you care about anyways.” And they weren’t shivers, he sees now, they’re tears tracked as proof of all his guilt, all his lacking, along the slopes of your fine grained cheeks.
Your, you say. As if this place and anything in it has ever been his. He’s never wanted any of it like that, only ever seen a thing that needed taking care of, and him, with the ability to care for it.
“I needed you,” you whisper as if the thought comes along on a second wind of anger, a realization that sends your voice breaking, hitching, your chest caving in on itself as the tears come faster and faster now. “He’s dead, and I needed you.”
“I’m sorry,” he begs. “I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks now too. He thinks he’ll cry now too, for the man who he also lost, who despite it all meant something to him, as well. For you, who’s lost even more. For Joel’s own guilt.
But he doesn’t think you see any of that, not his apology, not his regret, not his own grief. You turn away from him again, laying your temple down again on your forearm. “Get out. I’ll be ready soon.”
And so he goes.
-
Your father is made small and withered in death.
One of the wealthiest men in the entire world. A stranger, a titan, a nightmare of a man.
It wasn’t something you’d ever considered, that a human body could look so colorless and frigid and not alive. Like a shock or a ringing bell, it’s a realization that you’re an orphan now. That you’re all alone.
You feel something like a memory of regret. Or something that’s like the idea that you should feel regret, that you should feel guilt for how it was between the two of you. But all that is overshadowed by the reality of what you weren’t. All you feel even more, or in actual reality, is the old loss of what you’d never been to each other. That, you realize, is the seed of your grief. That long ago wound, that child’s understanding that he wasn’t like all the other fathers, that he’d never care for you the way other children were cared for.
Looking down at the frozen face that looks nothing like the one he’d worn the last time you’d seen him, the wispy thatch of hair that hadn’t been so jarringly white before sickness had ravaged his body, you realize that this is no new loss, it is only a continuation, a reopening of a very old one.
The cavernous cathedral at your back is silent, vacated by the sea of people that had congregated here earlier. And with sickening curiosity, you uncoil an arm from where you’ve got it wrapped around yourself, reaching out to press a finger against the ice cold back of his hand. Shockingly not alive; he feels made of rubber.
Everyone that’d been here to bid farewell to this behemoth turned slip of a man, to catch a glimpse of you, packed like teeth into Jackson’s grandest cathedral; business men and heads of state from around the world, the oldest family names in the country, figures of the highest echelons of wealth and society, vipers circling the barrel—half the world here to see this person who was supposed to have been your father but was really only a stranger.
You take your hand back, and you don’t say goodbye as you turn away from his body. There’s no farewell to really tell.
And at the back of the church, hiding in a bright ream of sunlight, Joel stands propped against the face of a saint. Dark and silent and maybe even more far removed than your dead dad. Watching sentinel. Oswald Kelly’s hovering man—come to watch over him one last time.
The silk of your stockings slide against each other at the junction of your thighs, the hiss of your skirt around your calves as your reed thin heels click against the stone, and you pull your armor as tightly around yourself as you can. There’s a hollow echo inside of everywhere and everything, your mind like a gong, reverberating, and his gaze is so steady, hazel bright, deeply shaded by the lip of his dark hat, beckoning you towards him from beneath the brim.
Large and strong and steadfast, your heart gives a painful, longing thump—stupid, writhing thing—and you can only bear to look him in the eye for a second, and if you were to really think about saying goodbye to that father that never really was, lying behind you, slipping further and further away, you’d say it to the man that always stood as his shadow before the world, before you ever said it to the man himself.
-
The drive back home is cast in frigid silence and made all the more uncomfortable because you can practically hear Joel’s brain clicking and ticking away with worry.
He’d sent your car and driver away with a harsh word while you collected your final goodbyes and words of respect from the last smattering of people congregated and waiting for the newly birthed heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the world.
Hovering over your shoulder, he’d kept anyone from stepping too close or getting too friendly, so close you could feel the heat of his chest through the silk of your blouse, and then going suddenly full on aggressive when a reporter from the New York Times had approached, fishing for a quote on the future of the Kelly empire. Ushering you away with a hovering hand at the small of your back before the man could get half a question out, he’s opening the truck’s door for you as a haze descends over your eyes, the distant shutter and flash of cameras bursting in your peripherals, a latent hangover and sleep deprivation and not enough to eat in the last forty eight hours causing you to sag in his hold. Then it’s only his big fist wrapping around the span of your wrist as he lifts you into the truck, your eyes downcast and unable to take in sight or sound, vision all a blur. You murmur a barely there thank you with his hand fitting at the dip of your waist, big body blocking yours entirely from prying eyes trying to catch a glimpse or a stumble, and for a single second, your entire weight is suspended in his hold, allowing you to bypass the struggle of balancing your high heel on the step up, and then you’re sliding onto the leather of the seat, the whisper of your cashmere and silk rustling around you as he handles you like a child being spirited away from the scene of a crime.
The door shuts gently behind you, face turned away from the flashing lights, the watchful eyes of the whole world, and worst of all, the assessment of his concerned gaze. All you’re afforded are thirty seconds of privacy to let out a single gasping sob.
And now, an hour and a half of silent purgatory.
You slip your heels off, flexing your smarting toes against the damp of your stockings and tuck your folded legs beneath you on the seat. Paying the frantic energy of his anxiety and lodged words no mind, you consider instead: your new reality. The burden of it all means very little to you now. The last of your worries is being readied for entombing as the two of you speed down the eighty nine, zinging past the bright Wyoming green. The thrum of his truck drowns out your thoughts, brand new, probably over a hundred grand, only the best for your father’s right hand man, and the Kelly Ranch insignia emblazoned proudly on the sides. A brand for the whole world to see just who exactly is being whisked away to her old home turned brand spanking new grave.
You might be feeling a little bit dramatic. But then again— you’d just put your last remaining parent in an actual grave, surely that provides you some allowances.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his big paw gripping the leathered steering wheel in a death clutch, knuckles white with his frustration at the dilemma you pose, his own discomfort. You’re sure if he thought you wouldn’t catch him, he’d be squirming in his seat.
You do something to him sometimes, you know this. Not in any way you’d like, not in any interesting way, that of a woman affecting a man, but something respectfully harrowing. Maybe something a little bit like fear.
There has existed between the two of you, always, that strange intimacy of two people who’ve known each other for a very long time, and yet, have always remained at a far removed, arms length distance from one another.
A professional intimacy of sorts. Your father’s foreman, shadow, fixer. The man who guarded that treasure trove you’d inherit one day, today; the thing your father loved most in the world. Two people who’ve known each other a long time, and yet, don’t really know each other at all.
There has always been, however, the fact of the birthday.
The birthday. Your birthday.
The way you’d latched onto that small, immense, detail when you’d first discovered it at fourteen, when he’d newly arrived at the ranch and the true weight of your first real crush had really hit you, it was probably not entirely healthy. But you’d thought yourself in love with your father’s man, the first figure of the male species who’d ever drawn your attention in such a way.
He’d never paid you any mind; you were the boss's daughter, a figurehead or a responsibility, maybe a nuisance, although he’d never ever treated you as one. But the day someone had let slip it was his birthday, on the same day as yours, your teenage heart had swelled with the naive hope of fate. It was meant to be, the two of you were connected, so on and so forth, swallowed by girlish innocence and made buoyant by fantasy.
But you’d had something to share with someone, which was what really mattered. Something tangible, even if only in your inexperienced little mind, something to wield as comfort so that the first time your father had forgotten your special day, fifteen, and what a tender age it had been, you’d had something to cling to. That's when your gifts to him had started. It was your way of making sure there was at least one person in the whole world who’d remember that was your day too. That you were alive, that you mattered. A reminder of yourself. And as the years and birthdays passed, sometimes, when he sent those coldly gracious notes of his, you’d wished you could’ve written back with honesty. Said something like, I’m so lonely, wish you were here, wherever it was in the world you’d found yourself at the time.
And of course, he was gorgeous and older, strong and patient and capable, entirely unattainable. Impossible to forget. You’d gone so far, traveled wide, gotten yourself an overpriced education that would probably serve you for nothing, had lovers and parties and splendor, and always, you remembered your gifts for him, you remembered him. It was the single most important detail of your birthday every year.
The leather creaks beneath his fist again, chapped knuckles set to burst before he flexes his fingers out, long and straight. Thickly built hands, strong, made for working or hurting, on a man who you’ve never seen be anything but stoically patient.
He was strange in that way, neither wholly impulsive nor precisely intentional in his mannerisms. More so, it was that there was something extremely neutral about him, a middle buoyancy of personality. Strict with the cowboys, exacting, wielding his title as ranch foreman with an iron fist and your father’s blessing, and yet still, quiet, serious, with that patient gentleness about him. You’d seen it in the way he’d handled Ellie when she’d first come to the ranch, young and skinny with that hollow look of trauma kids who’d seen things they shouldn’t have shamed adults with. She’d been a little older than you, and with an air you’d not understood, a sort of lived past you’d been naive to the existence of, frightened when confronted by it, and yet inevitably, the two of you’d become fast friends eventually.
You’d even experienced it yourself, on two treasured occasions, that gentleness that you’d held onto for years. Nurturing the memory of him in your mind like a delusional bloom.
He stretches his hand again, wheel caught between his thumb and forefinger, cinching it there, back and forth. His nails are meticulously clean, cut to the quick, and you imagine he must spend a great deal of time cleaning himself up when he works so hard at getting himself so dirty most days.
You can see him sneaking glances at you, and he coughs once, a clearing of his nervous throat. Averting your gaze, you turn your face away so that you’ll be able to watch him through the reflection in the window. He monopolizes the space in the cabin of the truck, broad shoulders and hulking form, all the fine leather smell washed away in the scent of him. That bay rum aftershave he’s always worn, the one with the distinctive notes of bay leaf, cloves and citrus. An old fashioned scent, masculine and crisp.
You’d snuck into the bunk once with Ellie, before he’d moved into the foreman’s cabin, before Switzerland, when the two of you were still girls running rampant and free through the ranch, clutching desperately at the last vestiges of any sort of happy childhood you could scrounge up for one another. You’d peeked in his things, found a whole world of Joel shaped curiosities. The glass etched bottle of aftershave, a hole spotted t-shirt with a burnt orange longhorn across the front, Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories—something you found comforting, knowing he could read about the small, the freakish, real life; thinking that perhaps he was homesick for the comfort of the South, hungering for a taste of the life he’d had then, through books. And then, in a spine cracked copy of Suttree, the pages almost falling apart beneath your fingertips, dog eared and well loved, her picture tucked between the pages.
It had been the first time you’d done something you knew you shouldn’t have and actually regretted it, looking down at that green eyed photograph.
You’d run back to your room after that, ashamed and something a little bit like jealous, desperate to know who she was, desperate for someone to keep a picture of you like that—as if they loved you. And years later, you’d found the scent for yourself. The little molasses glass bottle you still have and pull out on occasion, when you’re feeling extra bad, extra lonesome, extra far away from the whole world, just for a reminding of home.
Beside you, he sighs again, coughs again, brings you back to himself and the present. Just spit it out already, you think exasperatedly, say something, anything else besides how sorry you are.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he starts, and you roll your eyes, scoffing quietly.
“You already said that.” Sullen. Mullish. You wish you were a child who could still throw a tantrum and get away with it. Letting your eyes go unfocused from his reflection in the window, you brood at the sight of everything that’s yours now as he turns off the highway, passing below the iron eave of the Kelly Ranch entrance. Eight hundred thousand acres of pristine Wyoming land nestled into the deep valley surrounded by the Grand Tetons mountain range.
“Well, I’m sayin’ it again.” He’s driving too fast, and you refuse to turn and look at his face. Your heart beats blood in your ears, and you screw your eyes shut to the dizzying blur of green legacy, not wanting to see any of it—him.
Your belly swoops, going slightly nauseous and gurgling.
“I didn’t think you’d get here so quick.” He swallows, “Hell, I didn’t think it’d all happen so damn fast.”
“I was already in New York,” you tell him, voice clipped with breathlessness. “I left Paris last week.”
“What? I didn’t know— I—”
“Why would you?”
“I would’ve called you. I would’ve gotten you out here quicker.”
“Ellie called. It’s better like this, Joel.” Finally letting yourself say his name out loud, it feels wrong and molten on your tongue, a heaviness being spit up from the depths of your stomach. “We don’t have to pretend anymore. He’s dead now.”
“There’s no pretending. He wanted to see you—”
“Please, stop.”
But he urges on unheeded: “He told me so before I left. Told me—”
“Stop,” you snap. Finally turning to look at him and hating him for it. For how gorgeous he is, for all the things he’s always made you feel for as long as you can remember what it was to feel something for a man, for all he did or did not have with your father when you had none of it or so much of an entirely different thing. “Stop. I don’t want to hear any of it. It doesn't matter anymore, Joel.”
“But you should know. You deserve to know that—”
“What?” Because that one hurts. “I deserve to know what?” That he actually had loved you but had just never been able to show it? That now it was too late? That the only person the great Oswald Kelly had ever been able to speak to of the supposed care he had for his only daughter was the hired help? You’d read once that one should never let their parents anywhere near their real humiliations. You’d tried your damndest to follow that as soon as you’d grown up. “It’s not your place,” you seethe with teeth bared, an animal shoved into a corner and made to fight for its life, deciding you won’t ever let Joel near them either.
He spits a cursing, growled sound of frustration, but doesn’t continue. The two of you find yourselves at an impasse, and you turn back to your windowed mirror of him, eyes pinching hot, filling with tears. One of the things your father disliked most about you, your easy tears, and a single salt marred inadequacy tracks down the slope of your cheek, dripping off the edge of your jaw into the bandaged cup of your palm, and you breathe slow and measured through your open mouth, watching the fog cloud grow and shrink against the glass obscuring your vision of him.
-
The last time you’d missed your mother, the one you’d never known, in any sort of real and true way, you’d been eighteen. Returning to an empty house after celebrating your high school graduation in a far off school, alone.
In the midst of your sophomore year, you’d been sent away to a Swiss boarding school. It had been something worse than devastating, losing your life in Wyoming, the only home you’d ever know, Ellie, the other people on the ranch… But it was far removed enough that you couldn’t bother, where you couldn’t ask for things like attention or consideration. The education had been excellent, the upbringing desperately lonely ending on a whimpering sigh despite your many accomplishments. You’d wanted her very badly then indeed, your mother. To have been there, to have helped you pick your dress, kissed your cheek after watching you walk across the stage. To have wiped your tears when she told you that your father wasn’t there because he was busy managing the whole world, but that he was proud of you, that he’d have been there if he could. You’d wished she could’ve been there to lie to you so that you wouldn’t have needed to lie to yourself.
Peering down from your balanced perch atop the deck’s bannister, you survey the deep bed of Lily of the Valley, destroyed beneath the vindictive soles of your bare feet. He’d planted them for her all around the house after she’d died, her favorite flower.
You’d always hated them.
And that was the thing of it all, which you’d learned when you grew old enough to recognize such things like disdain. He couldn't stand you because you reminded him of her. Clichéd and old and tired. An excuse for being a neglectful father. The daughter who was too much like her dead mother, and thus did not deserve to be loved.
You tip your head back, nursing at the lip of fine aged Macallan, and the sky is a glass mirror of blackened silver streaks. You’re almost positive that all the stars in the Milky Way are visible from right here at this very spot in the heart of Wyoming. The sight makes your broken heart feel full and falsely mended.
You’re certain you’re painting a pretty picture right now: tipsy on a bottle of your dead dad’s sacredly hoarded whiskey that probably cost as much as someone’s house, staring up at the stars in your newly inherited home with a whole unappreciated life full of possibilities ahead of you. Basking in the title of your newly minted— orphan-hood? Orphan-ness? A peer of the orphans.
You snort softly, sucking on the bottle again, letting the heat of it settle in your belly, smolder in your heart. Your head feels full of bubbles and sugar and sad.
There’s a part of you that feels a little ridiculous, despite the circumstances. You’re good at compartmentalizing, good at being objective of your realities. Obviously: sad because your father is now dead, and it’d been nine months and eleven days since you’d last spoken to him. Sad because he’d never given a shit about you. Sad because you’re alone, dumped by the stupid French jockey boyfriend who you’d not even liked very much, just a few days before this whole pathetic ordeal of acquiring your orphan-hood, yeah, that’s what you’re sticking with, had occurred. Not to mention the army of looming lawyers and financial advisors and various heads of business vying for your attention, waiting for the what next?
And Joel.
A one man army of looming Joel.
So you’re feeling morose, blue, maybe a little spoiled, but brought low and cut short. Depressed and unsatisfied with your life thus far.
Poor little rich girl. Poor little orphan. Poor little me.
What you want?
Someone to care.
Someone to love you.
Hard to come by. Impossible to buy.
The stars gleam purple silver, winking at you. The bracketing black so dark it swallows the eye. Another taste of the nutty bouquet of smoked apple oranges, and soon you’ll be tipsy enough you won’t be able to balance your butt on the bannister’s ledge anymore. Maybe you’ll go humpty dumpty over the edge and crack your skull against your mother’s valley of destroyed Lily’s.
You laugh again with sound now, not crazy, only an orphan, ha, but you think that it’s only that it feels shockingly as if you’ve fallen through the surface of your life. As if you are still falling with nothing and no one to grab on to, to help stabilize you. A really terrible, shit-out-of-luck feeling.
Your eyes continue their infernal leaking, and you blow your nose loudly on the inside of your sweater. You’ve given yourself three days to do whatever the hell you want, be as disgusting as you may. When the three days are up you’ll plan to get your act together, take responsibility and hold of your life and become the woman you should be.
Who that is? Still being decided.
You think that maybe you’ll buy another jet before that time’s up. Or an island. Something ridiculous. Maybe you’ll sell the goddamn ranch.
You eye the dark rolling hills of the valley with seething suspicion. Let’s see what Joel says about that. You, marching up to the highway entrance and spearing a For Sale sign in the dirt of the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the continental United States. Way more than that God forsaken surly frown is what you’d get.
So long, Joel, it’s been swell. I’m done with this place. It’s time to pack it up and find some new hunk of land to care about more than you care about me or anything else.
Maybe you’ll be real funny and put up a Craigslist ad.
And it isn’t that you don’t love this place, the only home you’ve ever known. You do. In a way that is passionate and consuming and irreconcilable. Everything about it, the serenity, the guarding mountains and the deep woods, the home you’d been born in, that both your parents had died in. You do love it in your way.
It’s only that every man you’ve ever loved—loved—had always cared more about the place than he’d ever cared about you.
For the longest time, most of your youth until you’d decided that you officially felt an adult, you’d thought you’d hated your father. There was just so much anger and resentment and the resound of his ever furious words and insults and endless disappointment. The echo of no mother ringing so loudly in your ears that the confounding feelings had all been mistaken for hatred. But with age and distance and life, you’d realized you didn't hate him. You never had. You thought, actually, and this was a very good and mature thought of yours, that you were the only person in the whole world that had ever seen him as only a man and not a god.
He was only a man, full of greed and grief and missing the mother of the child he’d probably never wanted. Nothing more or less.
Maybe it was that you felt sorry for him. Not in the way of pity, but in the way of one person feeling empathy for another in a clinical and helpless sort of manner. And a numb, detached sort of sadness. A longing for something that you’d never had and had always wanted but eventually learned to live without.
Ultimately, his disappointment had turned on him, and now it was all you felt you had for him at the end of it all.
But, for some reason, and an annoying one at that, you do think that, if you try very, very hard, you could bring yourself to hate Joel Miller. There’s satisfaction in that possibility, vindication—resentment that even now, as practically strangers, you know he’d be able to pull that sort of feeling out of you which could result in hatred. Something strong and overwhelming and not easily escaped.
Your stomach rumbles, and you smile blithely at all your inherited legacy, filling the hollow with more drink. Three days to behave very badly, as badly as you can. The whiskey is so good, and swishing it around in your mouth, you tip your head back further, gurgling it loudly at the back of your throat.
“What the hell are you doing?”
You jerk, scrambling to keep your balance, choking a little on smokey apples and your own spit. A trickle of the golden amber liquor drips out of the corner of your mouth as you find him hiding in the dark across the deck. Accustomed to drooling over him, you wipe it away with the back of your hand.
“Having a party. Would you like to join?”
“Are you drunk again?”
Tough crowd. Ugh. “Never mind. You’re not invited. Go away.”
“You need to go inside and go to bed.”
You tip your chin at him, putting on doe eyes. “Alright. And are you going to be my new daddy also?” You say in a baby voice.
Fucking Christ, you hear him whisper under his breath, turning away to run an exasperated palm over his mouth. Frustration seethes off of him like sulfur. He’s tired. Of you maybe. Of the whole circus this place has become in the past few days—and rightfully so.
“What do you want? I’m extremely busy, if you can’t tell.”
“Just thought I’d check on ya.” Courteous, always the gentleman, bullshit. You roll your eyes at him.
“I don’t need you to check on me.” And you, ever the child. One day you swear you’ll grow up.
But it can’t be said that you’re entirely selfish either. You have considered the fact of Joel’s own grief at the loss of your father. After all, they’d been much closer than you’d ever been to him for many years. And maybe, in his own cold and removed and superior way, your father had seen this man who you’ve thought yourself in love with since you were a teenager, as something like a son.
Probably, that’s just your own wishful thinking: that Oswald Kelly had ever been capable of such tender feelings.
Maybe the fact of Joel’s own grief is the thorn beneath your nail bed that’s making you so angry with him, so needing of his attention. Maybe it’s that he’d failed to fulfill your silly and girlish fantasy that upon receiving the news of your only remaining parents death, he’d have been here waiting for you, at this home he’d guarded for you for so long, ready to take you into his arms and console and care for you.
When instead, he’d been off doing what he’d always done for as long as you’d known him. Protecting your father’s interests, his legacy.
“Is this how it’s going to be?”
“How?”
“You, being difficult.” Driving me fuckin’ crazy— he adds again under his breath.
“I’m an orphan now, Joel.” You’re becoming quickly addicted to the word. “I think I should be afforded a tiny bit of leeway to drive people fuckin’ crazy,” you mock his Southern drawl. Enough of your time had been spent in Europe over the past two years, kissing Europeans, that you’d sloughed off the last of your American twang; something of a vaguely European lilt peppering your words every now and then that Ellie likes to tease you for whenever the two of you speak on occasion.
A muscle under his left eye twitches at the jab, and you take another deep swig of the bottle, provoking him with your gaze. Wishing you had whatever it is a woman needs to entice this man. Like the fucking vet. Fucking world renowned, brilliant, highly coveted, beautiful veterinarian. You know about her. You’re sure he thinks he’s been discreet over the years with their whatever they’ve had, Tess, but you know.
Maybe you’ll be insane and irrational and possessive, taking advantage of your three crazy days, and fire her with your new found power. See what he has to say about that. Ha.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Obviously not.
Despite your current hysteria, your goal is not to send the ranch head over heels into a tailspin.
But the imagining is soothing.
“Want some?” You hold the heavy crystal out towards him in a peace offering, held precariously between two sweaty knuckles. “It’s probably worth as much as your truck. Would be a waste for me to finish on my own.” You eye what’s left of it, about half, and give him a sheepish grin. It really is very good.
He looks at you for one long, solemn moment, always so silent and pensive, this strange enigma of a man. You get to watch in real time as he loses whatever fight it is he’s trying to fight against you, victorious when he shrugs and comes over slowly, resting his butt against the bannister—a carefully respectful distance away from you.
When he takes the bottle from your swinging clutch, gripped from the base, careful not to touch you in any way, you see the real sad in his eyes. The dim lights bleeding out through the big windows of the family room without a family shine on his face in strips and bursts. A shadow here, golden warmth there. He’s got more lines around his eyes than you remember from the last time you’d been this close to him. Smile lines made bright white in the center and gold burnished at the edges from too much sun. There’s little bursts of silver threaded at his temples now too, a gleam here and there in his dark beard. Forty four years old, he’d turned on your last birthday.
You dig your nails into the soft meat of your palms, and your belly smolders as he brings the bottle to his lips, tasting the exact place your own mouth had just been moments ago. You press your knees together as hard as you can, head a little woozy with the color of his eyes; the most gorgeous green, caramel hazel.
You’d graduated two years ago with a degree in art history and had done absolutely nothing with it since. It was just that everything appeared boring and pointless and shallow. Your whole life had one day suddenly seemed just a little silly. Useless, overpriced degree, nothing to be done with extensive knowledge in color theory when your world is expecting such different things from you now.
But you sure as hell can appreciate the color of his eyes in extensive and meticulous detail. There is that.
Watching the slow slide of the amber liquor down the bottle-neck, the long pull of his lush mouth, the ripple of his strong throat, and the way his eyes go a little wider, shocked at how good it is. You laugh soft: “I know, right.”
He takes another pull, another swallow. That’s what you want to be—swallowed just like that. “Damn, that’s good.” His mouth is a little wet, bottom lip shiny with thousands of dollars worth of your father’s favorite whiskey, and his eyes are sad.
You’d said you were going to be bad, but you don’t want to be bad to him. “I’m sorry,” you whisper.
He swallows again, tipping his head towards you, trying to catch your too soft words—he’s got a bad ear, you know why—and turns to peer at you from beneath his low pulled brow, the tip of his tongue peeking out to swipe at the drop of liquor you wish you could suck off his tongue.
“You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for.”
The first time he’d shown you that gentleness of his: You’d fallen from your horse at school in your junior year. Something had frightened the beast, and she’d bucked you, sent you flying ten feet in the air, ragdoll-like, before you’d landed badly on your right arm, a comminuted fracture in your radius that you’d needed surgery to fix. At your insistence, and with only a few weeks left to spare, you’d been sent home for the remainder of the semester. Your father had been incensed but eventually allowed it. He’d been away from the ranch on business, after all, at no risk of being truly disturbed by you. But when you’d been readying to return to Switzerland at the end of the summer, arm healed, courage not, you’d not been able to get back on a horse no matter what you tried. Joel had helped you, before they’d shipped you off again. Trotted the corral with you for hours and hours before you’d finally been able to relax and sit on your own without tears and vertigo. No questions or admonishments, nothing but the quiet burr of his deep voice, guiding you and the mare along.
It had been a kindness unlike any you’d experienced in maybe your whole life.
“I’ve been bad.”
“Nah. You couldn’t ever be.”
The second time: “Did today make you think of Sarah?” Years after you’d found that green eyed photograph, he’d shared her with you.
His gaze turns suddenly sharp, but you’re not worried you’ve stepped in unbreachable territory. “Yeah.” The echo of her name rings around the two of you.
“In a bad way or a good way?” He takes another long swig, a low whistle through his teeth and a shake of his head before he’s handing the bottle back to you—again, carefully.
“Both.”
You take your own swallow, slicking your tongue all around where his just was, and you’re drunk for real now. Drunk on a man.
“Do you ever regret telling me about her?”
“Nah.” He tips his head back, looking up at the thick beams of the deck’s awning. He’s got the longest lashes you’ve ever seen on a man, thick and curling. The deepest voice you’ve ever heard too, sultry, a bedroom voice. A voice for fucking. Your belly swirls and dips, and you want so much you’re dizzy with it.
Heart beating like it’s about to burst, out of breath on the verge of hyperventilating, you can taste his mouth in your mouth, the imagination flavor of it. This is what it must feel like to die. This is what your father must have felt like three days ago, this agony.
His Adam’s apple bobs, and it’s so pronounced, the skin of his throat sun pebbled. There isn’t an inch of him that isn’t all rough-hewn man. “You needed to hear about her then, I s’pose.”
Yes. “You told me when I needed you to.” After that lonely graduation, the last time you’d missed her really very badly, longed for a mother. Alone, alone, alone little girl.
“You were missin’ your momma somethin’ fierce. Needed to know you weren’t the only one that felt like that sometimes.”
You laugh a not-laugh, butt scraping against the railing, slipping off your perch, socked-feet thudding beside his gifted boots. The pleasure you feel whenever you see him use one of the things you’ve given him is indescribable.
“Silly,” you say with barely any sound, his bad ear reaches for your voice again. “At the time it felt like I was the only person in the whole world that had ever felt like that.”
“We all feel like that at one point or another, I reckon.”
“Will you miss him a lot?” You ask looking up at him, the beautiful profile, the strong jaw. You’ve always wondered how he sees you. If he’s ever thought you were beautiful. Other men do, it’s a common thing, a nothing sort of thing. There are always men, there will always be men. But this singular man—this one is not like the rest.
“Maybe. Can’t tell yet, don’t think. But it felt wrong earlier, walking through his house without him in it.” His house, not yours.
“Do you wish he’d been your father?” And he turns to look down at you at that, gaze snapping, and you can tell you’ve shocked him with the question. But you’d always wondered.
“No. Never,” he says with such assuredness, an uncompromising shake of his head.
And the answer doesn't necessarily shock you in turn. You don't think anyone could have ever wanted a father like that. But it also doesn't help you understand what it was that lived between them either.
He sighs, perhaps reading the confusion in your gaze. “He helped me at a time when I needed it real bad. Gave me a place and a purpose and a thing to do and take care of. You get me? It was gratitude—maybe. He saved me in a way, after Sarah. Nothing more.” He thinks for a moment, and then, “Perhaps it was that we understood each other about certain things.”
You gaze across the sprawl of dark land as far as the eye reaches, that point of no return where the earth shoots up into the sky, purple blue behemoths in the shape of mountains.
From this spot, rooted to the deck of your family home, it seems like the whole world is yours to keep. Also, like you’ll never be able to touch any of it with fingers or taste or meaning.
Your love for this place is complicated—tied up in the people, the memories, the could’ves and should’ves, the whole dreamscape idea of the monument of childhood and all it’d really never been. The time away had felt eternal, like you’d never really been here to begin with, like the young girl who’d grown up on this land had never really existed. But you’d not forgotten them, this, despite your distance. Your home, the father that wouldn’t want you, Wyoming and all its splendor, the people you’d left behind, Joel and Ellie and shared birthdays that meant a secret world to you. Morsels of small happinesses interloped amidst a largely lonely and sad childhood. That’s what it was at its core.
“Would you be angry with me if I gave it all away?”
He thinks for a moment, maybe you’re making him sadder, but then finally says with a swallow, “No. It’s yours to do with as you please.”
You eye the quarter of whiskey left, but your belly isn’t hungry for its warmth anymore. You want something heavier now.
“Could you even do that—legally—sell it or somethin’?”
“Probably not. He probably tied it to my fucking life. Sell and die.” You mime your name in an imitation of your fathers deep voice, frowning at yourself the way he’d always frowned when he looked at you, but it pulls a laugh from him, and the painful memory is worth it. “But I have a billion dollars to spend now. More?” You tap your chin—you want to make him laugh again. “Gotta think of something interesting to do with it all.”
His mouth slides into an easy half grin. Like the moon—that beautiful. And he turns to face you fully. “You’re gonna be just fine. You know that, right?”
You turn to face him too, gripping the bannister for dear life. “What? Will you make sure of it?”
“That’s my plan.”
“How’re you gonna do that, d’you reckon?” The American twang bleeds back into your voice, and you’re all swollen lush on the inside, heart a beating fist in your chest.
“Haven’t gotten that far, if I’m bein’ honest with you.” God. His eyes, the strong bridge of his nose, his mouth. He’s so tall your head has to crook back to look up at him. “I’ll figure something out.” And after another pensive second, and still with that soft, sloped eye smile, he asks, and nicely, “Will you stop drinking now—for me?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” you say with the same sort of smile in return.
And then suddenly, like vomit again but maybe more humiliating this time: “Did you respect him?” Because you don’t know all the things about him that there are to know, but you do know that Joel Miller’s respect is a thing hard earned.
He clicks his tongue, and you hear the pop of his jaw as he shifts it like he’s chewing on an honesty. His eyes, his eyes, they’re serious, mercurial, warm and deep also. You worry he won’t answer, that he wouldn’t want to disappoint you or something, but then: “No,” said real simple like.
“Why not?”
And the way he looks down at you, you know already, and it makes that falling through the surface of your own life feeling rise up inside you again, makes your ears pop with embarrassment. Ah. “He never did a very good job of hiding the way he treated you, sweetheart. I couldn’t ever respect a man like that.”
This is reality right here, this is you falling through your life, this is the realization that it wasn’t only you imposing yourself, your existence, on someone with gifts they didn’t want or ask for. Joel had seen. Joel had understood.
Someone else had noticed that you exist, and it had been him.
What else had you ever wanted?
And in the blink of a desperate, yearning eye, drunk on a man still, you’re throwing yourself at him, pressing your mouth hot and heavy to his, kissing him full on the way you’d dreamt of since you knew to dream of such things.
Chapter 2; Sugar, Not so Sweet
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#fable of the dog fic#vic fic#joel miller fanfiction#Joel Miller x FMC#joel miller smut#Joel miller angst#the last of us AU
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❝sweetest pie❞
posting on weekends, other joel fics
─⋆♡ summary: Gordon Ramsey has nothing on Joel Miller. The owner and head chef of a Michelin Star-worthy restaurant couldn't have predicted anyone would give him a bad review. But, the baker who hates his food saw a perfect opportunity to bring him down a notch.
─⋆♡ main tropes: Pre-outbreak!Joel Miller x Fem!Reader, Chef!Joel x Baker! Original Character, Chef x Baker, Grumpy x Sunshine, Joel x Black FMC
─⋆♡ series warnings: smut, fluff, angst, 18+ black!writer, language, mentions of death of parents, fighting, alcohol, physical descriptors (brief), rip sarah, characters affected by symptoms of anxiety or depression.
Faceclaims ෆ Spotify Playlist.
Tracklist:
prelude
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII - coming soon
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
Singles:
The first date - between III and IV
some of my characters are clearly affected by symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. because i want y'all to be healthy and take care of yourselves while reading, here are some resources
take care of yourselves, plz. xoxo, barbie ⋆˙ᵕ˙
#joel smut#joel fanfic#joel tlou#joel miller#joel miller x oc#joel fluff#joel fic#tlou fanfiction#pedro pascal fanfic#pedro pascal#pedro pascal characters#Spotify#joel miller fluff#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller smut#joel miller fic#chef! joel#chef joel miller#chef x baker#pedro pascal x ofc#joel x ellie#pedro pascal x oc#joel miller au#joel miller fanfic#joel miller series#joel miller x black oc#joel x black oc#joel x oc#joel x black! fmc#sweetest pie reputationbarbie
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GUMMY SHARKS
(If you enjoyed this chapter and want to see more, what is posted of the series can be found here Broken Hearts Series)
"What was candy like?" Ellie asks, trailing behind Joel who is trailing behind me. Amir walks by her side, acting ever the child that he isn't/
"I'm not sure.." Amir trails off, a pensive look on his face as he considers her question. "I was born the same year that the world went to shit so I can't tell you what chocolate and what not is," he shrugs as if it doesn't bother him, but I can tell by the lilt in his voice that it does. I keep walking. "Though, my mom always finds some kind of candy for us to share on my birthday. We don't have a calendar or anything, but every year I know that it's my birthday when she brings home candy."
"How does she know?" Ellie wonders, a slight note of awe in her tone.
"Don't ask me," Amir chuckles, "it's like she has a sixth sense for that shit, scary as hell," he grumbles. I fight to keep my face from softening from the scowl it's been stuck in all day.
"Your mom has to be a witch dude. There is no fucking way!" Ellie gasps, kicking a small pebble along the road. Amir nods along with her, his face bright with a beautiful smile, a smile that reminds me all too much of him. The smile that had been tugging at the side of my mouth fades faster than Axe deodorant, which is really saying something considering the fact their advertising used to preach about it not fading away.
(Nightime, the same day)
I watch Amir as he sets up his sleeping bag, my pack being used as his pillow. Ellie simply plops down next to him, stuffing her pack under her head and wrapping herself in her small, thin jacket. Joel, who is sitting on a rock near the opposite side of the small camp we've set up in the woods, looks as if he's about to stand and offer up his jacket as well, but Amir beats him to it. Unzipping his sleeping bag, he opens the flap and waves Ellie in. She gives him a hesitant look, but quickly accepts against the chill of the Missouri night, dragging her pack along the rough ground to cuddle up with Amir like he's been her older brother her whole life. My heart cracks at their interaction, forcing me to look away. He can't get close to these people, we are showing them along their way, and when they eventually leave, he will be crushed.
It's quiet for a long time, long enough that I think that they both might have fallen asleep, but I'm mistaken when Eliie whispers into the night, "what was your favorite candy that your mom brought back?"
Amir is quiet for a while, his eyes closed peacefully, but a small smile curves his lips. "The little gummy sharks." He says simply, as if there is no competition, nothing better to compare it to. After twenty years of life, those stupid, stale gummy sharks that I brought back for his seventh birthday are still his favorite. I should have known.
"Why are they your favorite?" Ellie asks, her voice weak as sleep starts to pull her under against her will.
"Because they were my dad's favorite," Amir responds with a wide yawn and my heart stops in my chest. I close my eyes tight from where I am propped up against a tree, my gun in my lap, sucking in a sharp breath at the mention of Ty. I can feel the sobs building in my throat, the memories flashing behind my eyes, and I abruptly stand, taking off into the woods as fast as my feet will carry me.
I run until I can't run anymore, my lungs heaving as I collapse into a patch of grass and mud, sobs leaving my throat in heavy exhales and wails, tears streaming down my cheeks as I fall into a dark pit of memories, of torture.
Memories of laughs and smiles so wide that eyes crinkle.
Memories of dancing in a kitchen to hums and giggles.
Of kisses shared in the dark.
Of hands caressing with the utmost gentleness.
Of words of admiration.
Of vows spoken is whimpers.
Of tears of joy.
Of rings shared.
Of a life lived.
Of the sound of teeth tearing into flesh
Of screams of agony and blood spraying everywhere.
I cry hard, hard enough to throw up until I can't anymore. Until I am just a numb shell once more, a husk of a soul without him. When I finish, I stand up and dust myself off, saying goodbye to shining brown eyes and gummy sharks. Then I head back to camp, back to Amir, back to protect all I have left.
#joel tlou#joel and ellie#joel x reader#joel the last of us#joel miller fluff#joel miller#joel miller series#tlou ellie#ellie the last of us#ellie williams#ellie tlou#the last of us hbo#the last of us#oc#fmc#chapter 3#gummy sharks#original character#original child character
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Prompt 91 babyyyyy
OMG Hi Bestie
Thank you so much for sending in this suggestion! I LOVED this prompt and @1soff also shared it.
This is starring Joel and a new FMC who you'll likely be meeting soon (probably this fall?) who Joel calls Goldie. This is going to be a no-outbreak modern AU Joel romantic dramady fic. They were best friends in high school but had a falling out at the end of their senior year and went their separate ways until Goldie moves back to Austin when they're in their early 30s. This scene isn't going to be canon for their story BUT you'll at least get a taste for Joel and Goldie!
Thank you for being here! I hope you like Joel and Goldie! Love you so much!
Pick Me
You and your high school best friend, Joel Miller, reconnect after years apart.
Based on Prompt 91: “Don’t go on that date.” “Why?” “You know why.” “Say it.”
Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader (nicknamed Goldie)
Warnings: None :) No use of Y/N.
Length: 1.8K
“You’re not going to make me like this damn town,” you said, taking a drink off the flask and passing it back to Joel. Your legs were dangling over the rock toward the river below, the stars bright overhead. “Doesn’t matter how many times we try to act like teenagers breaking into the state park, it’s not going to work.”
“I’ll wear ya down,” he said, taking a drink himself. “If you’re stuck here, may as well try to enjoy it.”
You sighed, looking out at the Austin skyline as Joel handed the flask back to you. You took another drink.
This stupid fucking city held what seemed like everything bad that had ever happened to you. Your father, how your mother died, Anna’s descent into addiction that you knew was at least partially your fault.
But it also had Joel.
The one, incredibly determined bright spot that had been here even as you tried as hard as you could to run from it. Liking Austin was dangerous. Liking JOEL was dangerous.
“How’s the school treatin’ ya?” He asked after a minute.
“Pretty good, actually,” you nodded. “Better than Ohio did when I started there.”
“Fuckin’ Ohio,” Joel said, glancing at you with a sly smile on his lips. You snorted. He held out his hand. “You’re bogarting the booze, Goldie.”
“What, you think it’s yours or something?” You teased, handing the flask back.
“Unless your last name is suddenly Miller,” he teased back, tapping the engraved side of it. He took a swig. “But they got you teachin’… fuck, whatever the interesting shit is English professors get to teach?”
You laughed a little.
“Yeah,” you said. “I have 18th century British Literature which is a good one for me, anyway. Literature for writers is another one I’m liking so far. Plus some workshops. It’s mostly upperclassmen so they’re all kids who are there because they care about the subject, not just to fulfill some requirements to graduate.
“I think the school is sucking up to me a bit, though,” you said. “I picked a good time to have my life completely implode and need to job hunt. I had some good name recognition from my book. They want to try to keep me around so they’re letting me teach the cool shit instead of needing to work my way up.”
He nodded slowly and handed you the flask back. You ran your thumb over the engraving, watching his name catch the light of the moon. You took another drink.
“You’re still too smart to be hangin’ out with me,” he smiled a little. “Not arguin’, just pointin’ out some truths for you.”
“You’re still too cool to be hanging out with me,” you smiled back. “Think we’re even.”
“I was never that cool,” he replied.
“Oh I know,” you laughed. “I was just a huge fucking loser.”
He laughed at that. You handed him the flask.
Joel was sitting close to you, so close that your leg sometimes brushed his when it swung out over the water below. His hand brushed yours as he leaned back on the rock, his fingertips slipping into the gaps between your own. You took your hand back and lay down on the stone, looking up at the sky overhead.
The whiskey had set in, a pleasant buzz running over you as you watched the lights from distant planes flying overhead. You wondered idly where they were going, if the people aboard were excited for vacation or traveling for business or on their way to a funeral. You always wanted to know things like that. It was your curse, that’s what your mother had called it. That you had all these questions about how the people around you moved through the world, like you wanted to crawl inside their skin and live as them for a day, just to see what it was like to occupy the same space as another person, have their heartbeat, feel the creases in their flesh as it existed to them.
“You ever wonder what would have happened if you’d stayed here after high school?” Joel asked. You looked over at him. He took another drink. “Gone to UT and shit instead of runnin’ off to Columbia?”
“All the time,” you replied. “But I think about a lot of different versions of myself. In some alternate universe there’s a me who went to Iowa for undergrad and never met fucking Brad…”
“Fuckin’ Brad,” Joel echoed. You looked up at him and caught a glimpse of his smile.
“There’s another one who moved to London and never went to college,” you said. “She’s just waiting tables and writing shitty poems in an apartment she shares with three other people. But she’s pretty happy there, so good on her I guess.”
Joel paused before looking down at you.
“The version who stayed?” He asked.
You sighed.
“I’m really not sure,” you said. “I’m sure we would have stayed friends the whole time instead of falling out of touch…”
“We weren’t talkin’ when you left,” he said.
“I know,” you sighed. “But I think we’d have moved past that pretty quick if we were in the same damn city.”
“Makes sense,” he agreed after a moment.
“I’m not sure about her beyond that, though,” you said after a moment of quiet.
He was quiet but lay down next to you on the rock, looking up at the stars. His body was warm, even from a few inches away.
“Missed you, you know,” he said, turning his head to look at you.
“Missed you, too,” you said, smiling a little back at him before looking back at the stars again. “You know, more than I think about staying here, I wonder what would have happened if we’d never… you know. If we’d just stayed friends.”
“Yeah?” He said. His eyes were still on you, you could feel him watching you. “What do you think would’ve happened?”
“I wouldn’t have married fuckin’ Brad,” you laughed. “You’d have seen right through his shit and talked me out of that one real quick.”
He snorted.
“I only met the guy once but he was a fuckin’ dick,” he said.
“See?” You smiled. “I needed someone to point that out to me, I couldn’t see him for what he was. I needed someone who could.”
“I probably wouldn’t have Sarah,” you heard him frown then. “Shit, that’s weird to think about… I doubt I’d have gone to the bar and hooked up with her mom that night if we’d still been friends.”
“That whole ripple effect thing,” you sighed. “Change one thing and the whole world shifts. But assuming you would still have Sarah - that girl is inevitable, you cannot deny her. She’d will herself into existence if you weren’t there to help her along - what would be different for you?”
He laughed a little and then sighed.
“Might have actually done the community college thing,” he shrugged. “You would have been on my ass about it until I fuckin’ enrolled…”
“Damn right I would’ve,” you replied.
“I’d probably have just flunked out though,” he said. “Then I’d have a bunch of loans and nothin’ to show for it.”
“Damn,” you sighed but smiled slightly, turning your head to look at him. “Who knew I’d be such a bad influence on you.”
“Nah,” he smiled. “My mom’s never wrong about that shit and she liked you. It’d be good.”
“Oh, well, if I had Mrs. Miller’s blessing…” you teased.
You just lay there, looking at each other for a bit, the rock cool below you, the river drowning out the sounds of the city that lay just out of reach on the horizon. There was a knot in your stomach when you looked at Joel for too long, something that seemed to want to dig into you, something that had lingered whenever he came to mind for years.
“Oh hey,” you said, desperate to have something else to talk about. “How did your date go the other night? The one girl you were doubling with Tommy and Maria with?”
“Oh,” Joel paused for a moment. “It was fine, I guess, but we didn’t really… I dunno, click or whatever the fuck you wanna call it. We’re not goin’ out again.”
“She was that bad in bed, eh?” You teased. Even in the dark you caught his frown.
“Wouldn’t know,” he said. “Didn’t fuck her.”
“Really?” You frowned a bit, surprised. “Well, good for you.”
“Feel like you’re implyin’ somethin’ about my dating history, Goldie,” he smiled a little.
“Just that you’re good at charming the pants off your dates,” you smiled back. “Which I’d think most men would take as a compliment.”
“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, going quiet again.
He was so close to you, so close it felt dangerous.
“Still talkin’ to that one guy?” Joel asked. “What’s his name?”
“Eric?” You asked. “The guy whose texts I showed you to see if you thought he was a whack job?”
“That’s the one,” Joel laughed a little.
“Yeah, actually,” you smiled a bit. “We’re going out this weekend, some concert he wants to see. Who cares as long as it gets me out of my damn apartment…”
“Don’t go on that date,” Joel cut you off.
“Why?” You breathed, your heart pounding against your ribs. The sad, homesick longing you’d had for him for what felt like your entire life was sharp and hot inside your stomach.
“You know why.”
“Say it.”
“I love you, Goldie,” he said, looking at you so intently that you could feel it in your blood. “I’ve loved you since were fuckin’ 16 years old and…”
“Don’t do this to me, Joel,” your voice broke as you said it. “Don’t treat me like one of the girls you date where you say whatever it is you say to them to get them into bed…”
“You think that’s what this is?” He rolled onto his side so he was looking down at you, his body just inches from your own. “That any of that shit wasn’t to make up for not havin’ you when you left?”
“That’s not…” you began but he cut you off.
“You’re it for me,” he said. “Knew it when we were 16 years old, knew it on prom night, knew it the day you left town.
“Don’t go out with that fuckin’ guy. He seems… fine. He does, Goldie. He seems better than fuckin’ Brad but Jesus, you deserve so much better than fine. Let me try to be somethin’ close to what you deserve. Don’t go on that date.”
“Joel,” you breathed.
“Don’t go on that date.”
“I won’t,” you said softly. “I’ll…”
And, for the first time in 14 years, your best friend kissed you, his hand slipping around to the back of your head, pulling your face closer to his own as his lips met yours all soft and sweet. It left you breathless when he pulled away.
“Good,” he said. “That’s… good."
"Yeah," you said. "I think it is."
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FABLE OF THE DOG : 2. Sugar, Not so Sweet
Series Masterlist; Chapter: 1,
Pairing: Joel Miller x FMC
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: Cowboy/Heiress AU; Slowburn(ish); Original Characters; Alcohol Use; Allusions to Attempted Suicide; Discussions of Grief; Daddy Issues; Parental Neglect; Angst and Fluff; Older Man/Younger Woman; Jealousy; Possessive Behavior; Brat Taming; Extremely Bossy Old Man; Past Teenage Crush; Yearning and Longing Galore; A Home is a Place but ALSO a Person!; Found Family
A/N: This is a deeply, deeply unserious chapter, and I make no apologies—I was taken away by whimsy!!!!
Apologies however, for the French people slander, I went on a truly heinous date with a oui oui baguette loser last month. I’m still working through my anger.
Word Count: 13.4K
Read on AO3
2. Sugar, Not so Sweet
They appear at the break of dawn, the young man and the boy.
“How many heads’ve you got total?”
Joel appraises him, the fresh-faced look, a boy just crossed over into the cusp of manhood—though he’s large and strong and earnest in the eyes. He’d be a good hire, if not for—
He glances over at the young boy sitting on the bunk’s couch, snickering quietly with Ellie as his brother tries to barter a place for the two of them.
“Near to thirty large about now. We’re fixin’ to breed, but we’re pushin’ our limitations.”
“So you need hands,” he says eagerly.
“We do,” Joel returns slowly, chewing on the mint he’d plucked from out front. His stomach is in knots, has been since—days and days and days ago, last night, and so much worse now. There’s a sick heat settled deep that he doesn’t know how he’ll scourge out and quick.
“Listen, I know it’s unconventional, but—”
“Where’s his parents?” He tips his chin at the boy, and Ellie peers slyly over her shoulder at him. He’ll get hell for this later, he knows, she knows.
“Our momma’s down south—by way of Odessa. She cowboys during the summer too, and—”
Joel sits up in his seat. “Texas?”
“Come on, Texas,” Tommy slinks behind him, sneaking an arm over his shoulder to thump Joel roughly on the chest. “Just say yes.” He lets out a gruff sound masking a cough, fucking Tommy, and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ellie rise from the sofa and leave the bunk quietly with a parting pat on the boy's head.
“You’re from Texas, too?” The young man asks brightly, that look of hope in his eyes that Joel’s about to quash.
“We’re from Austin,” Tommy says from the coffee pot, his mustache spreading wide over a shit-eating grin. “Southerners way up here, we gotta stay united amongst all these Yanks’,” his brother puts on the drawl heavy, and Joel rolls his eyes. Clown.
“Listen, Henry,” he says, trying to turn the conversation back to business. He looks at the boy again, the back of the small head bent and silent and something that could, perhaps, be thought of as guilt pulses through him, but to be honest, there’s so much of that moving about Joel’s system right about now, that it’s just one more drop of poison filling his cup. It doesn’t matter. He needs to do what’s right.
For who? He can’t very well tell yet.
“I’m sure you’re a hard worker, son, and I’d not hesitate to give you a place were we in different circumstances, but I just don’t see how this would work—”
Henry leans forward in his chair too, ready to plead his case, fight for his brother and the generously paying jobs the Kelly’s are famous for. There’s something about the boy newly turned man that reminds Joel of himself. Perhaps during that young and fragile youth of his twenties, when he’d been alone with a newborn baby, trying to figure out the whole world and himself.
“I know it’s unconventional, but he’s a good kid. He’s quiet and keeps to himself, and it’d only be for the summer, sir. We head back down for the start of the school year. It’s difficult, but it’s harder for my momma to get work with a kid than it is for me.” He trips over his words with the speed at which he’s spitting them at Joel, trying to convince him, and he knows that the fair thing would be to take them in. To give this man a chance the way Joel had been given one so many years ago, the mercy of safe harbor. But he’s got a finite amount of goodness in him now, he’s got to save it all for only one person. There’s none left for anyone else. And Joel doesn't want trouble, he’s got enough of that around here right about now. “He’s got his books and his summer worksheets, and he knows how to manage on his own while I work. I swear, he won’t be in any sort of way. You can—”
And then, amidst the young strangers' rambling plea, Joel's heart falls through his stomach. Here comes that trouble anyways.
“What’s going on here?” In that soft, lovely voice that haunted his dreams last night.
All the cowboys rise from their seats at the sound of your presence.
From over your shoulder, Joel sees Ellie’s face twisted in a grimace at him, the flash of her middle finger and then her tongue.
“Goddamnit, Ellie,” he growls low.
You look exhausted, eyes red rimmed and swollen—as if you’d been crying all night, and Joel’s tongue is a swollen, poisoned thing in his mouth—a husk of guilt is all he is. He swallows convulsively, trying to find his words, trying to not scream at the thought of being what’s made you cry, trying not to look down the length of you and failing. Silky sleep shorts end way too high up on the long length of those too pretty thighs, an oversized pullover with Yale emblazoned across the front, a little hole at the neck and a large dark stain marr the front of it. You’ve got on a too big robe, dark and plaid, draped over your shoulders with your hair all a mess. He can see Ellie’s trying to pull it into some semblance of a braid behind your back discreetly while you stare at him with those eyes that, and he’s being damn honest now, fucking terrify him. Those puffy, ridiculous tan boots women wear, the impractical ones that become a sogging mess in the snow or wet despite the fact he understands they’re supposed to be worn in winter, are on your feet, two mismatched socks peek out above the tops.
He’s pretty sure one of them has bombs with a capital ‘F’ in the tiny centers printed over it. The other, some sort of Easter bunny carrot print. Absolutely ridiculous, and he can’t help it, he notices it all.
And worst of all, in your grip is that World’s Best Dad mug you’d sent the old fucker for Christmas several years ago, a little holiday fuck you from his best daughter. It’d been one of the years he hadn’t let you come home for the winter break, forced you to spend the holiday alone at that boarding school of yours. The whole ranch had known and whispered about it, and he’d felt embarrassed and offended on your behalf, that they’d all gossiped about the girl you were behind your back when they should’ve respected you for the woman you’d become one day, the one that’d eventually pay all of their earnings.
And the jackass had the audacity to use the mug all the time afterwards. Joel was pretty sure it’d been his favorite.
“We were just wrapping up,” Joel says, clearing his throat, finally finding his voice. It’s almost physically painful to look at you directly in the eyes, and the heat of shame and regret claws its way up his throat at the hollow look he sees there. You’re so angry at him, and he deserves it.
“This is the new Kelly,” Ellie tells Henry, cutting him off, pressing you forward with her hands wrapped around your shoulders. Your shorts are way too short to be in here right now, and Joel feels something else, even hotter than shame, stirring inside him. “If you want work here, this is who you need to talk to. The big boss.”
“Miss Kelly,” Henry says reverently, pulling his cap off to press against his chest. “It’s a mighty fine honor gettin’ to meet you. I was just telling your foreman here,” he motions the cap towards Joel, and he feels like a bear who’s about to rip it out of his grip and stuff it down his throat. Fucking Ellie going and snitching on him. “How me and my brother Henry travel for the summer. I’ve got letters here, I’ve worked at the King before, and have a number your man can call if he needs more references. I’ve got lots of experience and—”
“What will you do with him?” Your gaze is on the little boy, has been the entire time. Joel steps forward and over the back of the couch he sees the kid, Sam, has a comic book in his lap he’s been reading this whole time, while adults who should have no bearing on his life decide what will and will not be for him. “While you work—”
Joel looks back at you, and he knows already what it’ll be.
Henry’s smile is wide and gleaming, putting on the charm. What he doesn’t see, what Joel does, is that bleak sadness in your gaze that he’d put there himself last night. He needs to speak with you, to explain, to make it right between the two of you.
“He’s good at entertaining himself. I promise he won’t be in the way or nothin’. He’s got books and summer work, and he’s learning to play the guitar. He won’t be in the way,” Henry says again.
“What about school?”
“We only travel during the summer. We’re back in Texas for the school year.” And at that, you finally look back at Joel, and his heart shoots from his belly to his throat, ready to be spit up at your feet.
You watch him for a long searing moment, and there's such sadness there. He doesn’t know what would have been better, what would have been the correct recourse, how to make that look go away. To give you what you want? To do what he thinks is right or what should be right? He’d never thought, never considered anything like this. It’s all too much too fast, and he feels suddenly lost and childlike in the face of you and all you stand for.
“They stay,” you say only for Joel.
Henry lets out a whoop of victory, rushing forward to thank you profusely, but Jesse, who’s standing by the door, blocks his rush forward with a hand to his chest before he can get too close to the new boss. You’re for protecting now, above all else, it’s the unspoken word they all suddenly understand keenly.
You stare solemnly at Joel for only a second longer, those sleep sloped doe eyes, before you’re turning without another word.
-
“He never did a very good job of hiding the way he treated you, sweetheart. I couldn’t ever respect a man like that.”
The cricket song is a symphony of sound around the two of you, and you’re suspended for a second, he sees it come on—a rose hued haze, and then blink-of-an-eye donning a look that spells nothing but disaster. He’s thrown off course by it for a single second, that girl fantasy glow, before you’re launching yourself at him, and then it’s nothing but a soft wet mouth, smoked fruit and fired oak, the slick of your tongue against his bottom lip as you kiss him.
You’re kissing him.
He’s a frozen solid husk, eyes wide open as he stares down at the look on your face—something like agony. The tiny frown between your eyebrows, concentration, and a single diamond tear caught in the web of your lashes, and he can’t help but notice the soft press of your breasts against his chest, you’re not wearing a bra, before he’s shoving you back by the shoulders, scrambling to get as far away from you as quickly as he can.
His back hits the railing before he can get far enough. “What the fuck are you doing?” He spits, but can’t help but lick his tongue along his bottom lip, tasting where you’ve just been.
His stomach is suddenly hot.
You swallow convulsively, bleary eyed look turning to hurt, pressing your palm to your belly, twisting your fingers in the fabric of your sweater there. “I don’t— I didn’t—” Your eyelashes flutter shut, closing the hurt, confused look away from him for one blessed second. You press your other palm to your forehead, gripping yourself as if you’re trying to hold your very skin together.
What do you think you’re doing? He enunciates each word like the lash of a whip, and then licks his lips again to soften those same blows for himself.
Something is about to go inexplicably wrong here. Something already has. A tragedy worse than the death of a father
“I just thought that—” You blink your eyes open and they’re wet, and he’s about to bark at you to not fucking cry or he’ll lose it completely, but he swallows it or loses the thought to madness. He feels incomprehensibly insane, inconceivably triggered.
This is like nothing he’d ever imagined, and it tilts him on his axis, skews his vision, headlights blinding you in a dead-on collision.
What are you doing—thinking?
“I— I watched you grow up. I watched you—” You take an anxious step towards him, some word on your lips he can’t even make out because his hearing has gone out, and now he’s all of a sudden deaf in both ears instead of just one. He hardens his voice further. He makes sure you understand. “This is fucking wrong, and you need to get away from me right now,” reversing his movements, taking a threatening step forward, stomping his heavy boot against the floorboards beneath so that you’re jumping, skittering backwards like a frightened little rabbit.
And Joel, the beast, crushing her beneath his foot.
You wrap both of your hands around the delicate column of your throat; he imagines you’re holding in your hurt sounds, and it makes him even angrier.
“Listen to me—” he starts again.
But you cut him off, shaking your head, the confused sleep-look being blinked away so that now it’s spitting fire that is awake and angry in your gaze. “But you didn’t,” you say. “You barely know me. We’re almost strangers.” A scoff, and then switching again to soft, to girl-like, to hurt: “And I’m all grown up now, Joel.”
“I don’t know what you reckon is happenin’ here between us. Or what you think— what you—” He looks away, can’t bear the sight of it, you, fuck, he spits, again, fuck. “If I gave you the wrong impression, I’m sorry, but—”
Then in a broken little voice grasping for straws, “But we were born on the same day,” and you say it like a question. Like it should mean more. Like, and he realizes it now, like it means the world.
He turns back to look at you, and he feels full of everything but mercy—too much regret. “And what? What do you think that means? That we’re connected—meant to be?” His voice sounds full of cruelty. “Don’t be delusional. It’s also the day my daughter died. D’you know that?”
A blink. “What?”
“She died on my thirty-fourth birthday.”
Again. “But… Wh—at?” Broken up word, and your chin does a little wobbling dance, jutting this way and that, and you have a dimple in your cheek that comes out when you’re happy, but also when you’re sad. When you’re about to cry. He sees it now, and starkly.
He’s ruining something sacred.
Joel steels himself. “Whatever it is you’ve made up in your mind about us, it’s a fantasy. Something not real that you need to let go of. Are you hearin’ me?”
“I— I think…” You won’t stop blinking, your hands look like they’re about to strangle you, and he steps forward as if to stop you or save you from yourself. “Why didn’t you ever say?”
But instead of saving, “Why would I? Why would I ever tell you that?” He does not want to hurt you, and yet he cannot help it, and Joel wonders if this is how your father felt every time he failed you—like a lesser man. “Wasn’t for you to know—it doesn’t mean the same thing to us.” That day. He makes himself clear: “Whatever child’s fantasy you’re still holding onto, you need to let it go.”
-
He rushes out of the bunk after you, a growled, you little shit, at Ellie as he passes her.
“Man, what’d you fuckin’ do?” She calls after him in that tone that tells him that of course she knows what’s happened. You two’ve never been able to keep a single thing from each other. Asshole! She shouts at his back as he catches up to your slowly retreating form. Your movements are sluggish, exhausted.
He calls your name and tries to moderate his tone from being as aggressive as he feels right now. “We gotta talk.” He follows after you, hot on your heels and then jumping back like a scared mut when you spin around on your ridiculous boot to face him.
“Speak.” It’s a high-handed tone, that one. One that says he’s the grunt here, and you the queen, that you’d both forgotten it last night, but the battlelines are clearly drawn now. There’ll be no more forgetting.
And it’s all his fault.
“You can’t—” His heart thumps and thumps and thumps like a pitiful thing. “You can’t undermine me in front of the boys like that. There’s a reason I was saying no.”
“Which is?”
“That the kid’ll be in the way.”
And you flinch and Joel prays for a gun to the back of the skull. Fucking Christ, but this is difficult.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he gruffs. “You know what I mean. This is hard work we do here. I don’t want the kid gettin’ hurt, I don’t want to be responsible for that. What goes on here is on me. The people who get hurt, it’s all on me, and I take that responsibility damn serious.”
You tilt your head at him in that queer, inspecting way of yours. The one he’d watched you pull like a weapon against your father so many times. He finds he hates it now, detests it, being wielded against himself. You ignore his words, “What was your arrangement here—with him? How did this work with the ranch?”
There has been that thought always, and obviously, of you as something higher, that symbol of the family or the safe haven this place has been for Joel. The not-respect he had for your father, but surely the understanding—you've always been all wrapped up in that. He's at times felt grateful for your existence, perhaps, in ways. That something as good, as better, as you could exist in the same world Joel exists in. Perhaps he’d admired you in ways, even as a young girl, for your goodness, your sincerity. But he finds now, at this look of disdain you’re wearing against him, that he hates the feeling of being less than you, of not being good enough to even stand in your presence.
He’s done wrong, marred it all in ugliness. He’s put himself in this position somehow, by hurting you, by confusing you, by wanting—
“I do what I need to, what the ranch needs. Whatever decision I need to make, I call it and it’s on me. Monthly reports to him and that was it. He understood that what happens out here is different to what can be told and sometimes you can’t plan for certain shit. He focused on the business, I focus on the ranch.”
By wanting what?
Bringing the mug to your lips, you take a long sip, humming. It’s all a taunt. Joel realizes, suddenly, and with painful clarity, that this has all been a grave miscalculation on his part.
As uncomfortable as it is for even him to admit, you are, and undeservedly, a person used to not being wanted, used to rejection. Joel understands this with the quick fire blink of an eye. And he has, in his shock, or— or… he doesn't know—instantaneous awakening—unintentionally alienated you, made an enemy.
I see, you murmur quietly coupled with a bitter cough of laughter that doesn’t sound anything like the sweet sound he’s used to hearing from you. Yes, a very bad mistake has been made indeed. “Well, you’re practically king here, aren’t you then? Quite the partnership the two of you had.” You smile wide, all bright teeth.
The coffee sloshes in the mug held in your unsteady hand, and he worries there’s something stronger in there too.
“Not at all. I’m just good at what I do.” He shoves fisted hands into his pockets, trying to keep patient. Trying not to throttle you, check your drink for himself.
“And is this how you’d like to continue going forward? I mind my own business, and you do as you please?”
He shakes his head slow, grinds the pulverized mint between his molars, “I want whatever you think’s best. You’re the Kelly now, after all.” You get a look on your face like you don’t like the sound of that at all, and he turns to spit the greens between his teeth, coughing roughly.
“Yeah, I’m sure of that,” you say with teeth bared, and then whipping your head away from him as if you can’t bear the sight of him a second longer. The coffee sloshes the other way, splashing against your wrist. He hopes it’s not burning you. “You know, you’ve got some fucking nerve, Joel. You—”
The robe—all of a sudden, saturated by the dark liquid, it grabs his attention. It’s in a plaid print, expensive looking, like something you’d see an older man wearing. A man’s robe? He cocks his head, “Whose robe is that?” Cutting your tirade short.
What? You spit, all sass, his stomach burns, turning to look back at him as if he’s gone idiotic, grown a second head. He feels a little bit like he’s in the process of doing so—wracked with growing pains. “It’s my ex-boyfriend’s. Can you focus, please? I’m trying to have a fight with you right now.” And you scrunch your nose too adorably for him to find anything besides endearing. Certainly not intimidating.
He grunts, displeased.
“I know you don’t want to hear it—”
“Then keep it to yourself.” You turn, continuing on your way up to the house, coffee flies with your spin, boyfriend’s robe whipping out in your wake as he follows like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs.
A little desperately, like a dog, too. A begging for scraps imitation game he hadn’t intended to play but feels obligated to now, and by his own doing.
“But I want to say—about last night…”
You turn on your heel out of nowhere again, and he stumbles to not rush head first into you, to not touch you.
The look on your face is all heartbreak. “Do you remember—when I was away at school—and I fell off the horse? When I came home with that broken arm and couldn’t get back on and you helped me? Do you remember that, Joel? How you reminded me how I was supposed to do it—”
He coughs, uncomfortable, shifting like that same scared dog. “You remember these things different than I do.” The words feel cowardly spilling from his tongue, but he should be honest. Shouldn’t he?
This is what he should be doing, isn’t it?
“I remember that you were kind. That you cared. That’s what I remember.” Your eyes are glossed again, and now it’s Joel that has to look away.
-
“I didn’t care. It was my job to serve your father. To do as he’d want me to. It was a responsibility.”
It’s happening again. A tale like any other you’ve too often heard. You know he’s not lying, and yet everything he says feels precariously close to it.
“Why are you being like this?” And you ask it very practically, like you really want to know, like you’ve asked the same sort of question to the same sort of figure before, and so now you’re extremely well practiced, an expert even.
“You remember these things differently. Wrong—That’s not how I meant any of it—whatever you’re thinkin’. It was just a kindness.”
“No, but I— but you…” That’s the point, you want to say, a kindness, but the words stick. You look away again, colored in shame, can’t bear the sight of him. “Maybe you’re right,” you whisper with that very remembered kindness of your lonely childhood thrown back in your face now. “Maybe I do.”
“Listen to me—I’d like for things between us to be— I’m not… I don’t now what to fuckin’ say to you.”
“Honey—” Dina calls from the porch, your father’s assistant, now yours by inheritance, you suppose. “We gotta go soon—gotta get you ready.”
“I have things to do with Dina. I don’t have time for you—for this. Do what you want, run it how you like,” the ranch, “But the kid stays. That’s final.”
You won’t look at him again, you decide. You’ll learn to want a new thing. You’ll learn to love a new thing.
If you had it in you, you’d laugh in his face.
Have you been in love with him? Probably not in any way that could’ve been called mature, it was the girl-fantasy of a neglected child latching on to a man who’d always seemed nothing but steady and kind.
So you’ll learn to grow up now, no choice left in the matter, let the fantasy go.
-
Despite your desire for debauchery and the three days of bad behavior you’d promised yourself, you’ve got shit to do.
An hour after your ridiculous non-conversation with the ridiculous man, you and Dina are stepping back out into the summer sunshine when your phone rings with a call from another ridiculous man for what promises to surely be another even more ridiculous conversation.
Jacopo.
You’d met through the friend of a friend at the party of someone or another in Monaco. Come from an Italian mother and a French father, you should’ve known he was going to be an arrogant asshole from the get go, but he’d been beautiful and momentarily distracting—things you knew you didn’t really want but told yourself would suffice. Really, all he was, was boring, the same as everyone else, wanting something from you without having to truly return anything in full.
Jacopo the jockey—sounds like a goddamn cartoon.
You liked to call him Jack, like he were the same sort of plebeian he saw all Americans as, and which he absolutely loathed with the sort of passion only an uppity French man could possess.
In the distance, you can see Joel, Frank and Bill propped up against the corral watching as Jesse runs Ellie atop a gorgeous chestnut Quarter. Sometimes she likes to compete, when she can get Joel to stop complaining about it for a second.
Dina makes her way towards them, “Tell them we’ll take the Ghibli,” you call after her to which she throws a thumbs up. At the sound of your voice he peers over his shoulder, finding your eyes immediately, catching there—fish on a burning hook. And then turns full around, leaning back to rest his elbows on the iron grate as you take French boys call, settling in to watch you.
“Hi, Jack, sweetie. How’s it hangin’?”
“I do not know what this means.”
Bore. “What do you want, Jacopo? I’m busy.”
“My love, we must speak. I have heard of your father. You should have call me, I will come to be with you now. Tell me where you are.”
“Why the hell would I want you to come be with me? We broke up. Remember?”
Joel watches you as the French idiot prattles on about how he loves you and how you need him and how the two of you belong together, blah blah. Odious man, you don’t know how you ever let him inside of you.
Across the lawn, he isn’t looking away, and his gaze burns where it touches. You feel—humiliated, hurt, rejected, so angry it’s a physical ache.
Not surprised.
Perhaps in some way, his rejection was what you’d wanted, had been looking for. Perhaps, it was your subconscious search for the easy way out. Because, and really, what else had you thought would happen when you’d thrown yourself at him half drunk? That he’d suddenly stop seeing you as the child he’d known you for always, take you as a woman, want you, fuck you right there on your newly dead father’s front deck?
Ridiculous.
You can’t even think about the birthday—about her. It’s a snipped lifeline, a crushed tether.
“Cherie, I must tell you I am feeling very neglected now by you. You don’t call. You do not love me no longer, or what is the problem?” More nonsense and really, this fuckin’ guy needs a boot in his ass pronto.
And the one still watching you—something even worse. He’s got his mangy brown cowboy hat pulled low over his brow, the one for the ranch, not the lovely dark one for escorting orphans to the funerals of dead fathers, and his jaw works the mint leaves you know he’s got between his teeth, slow and steady. You should hiss at him. Instead, your tummy smolders with heat and butterflies.
Stop looking at me, you horrible man, you want to shout.
Humming and hawing at the annoying voice coming through the phone, you smooth your palm over the silk of your dress. You’d wanted to look nice today, your first Kelly meeting. You wanted to look better than you feel, which is like shit, quite frankly.
There are tiny green paisleys patterned over the deep blue of the dress, a shock of dark red maroon for the cashmere knit of the cardigan tied over your shoulders, and a little silken kerchief wrapped around your throat, something from your mother’s things you’d gone through last night after Joel had ordered you to bed with your tail tucked between your legs and tears in your throat.
Twenty four years later, and your father still had all her things preserved in their bedroom as if she’d only stepped out for the afternoon. A veritable mausoleum right there in your house-not-home.
You’d never even stood a chance.
-
He watches you begin to pace across the deck, but the look on your face tells him you aren’t quite listening to whatever it is the person on the phone’s saying to you.
The gold and silver bangles that slide around your fine boned wrists jingle a song of temptation. Siren song, bird song, death march, something he’d follow with blind eyes, recognize deaf. And heavy gold and jeweled rings along your fingers that shine almost as bright as the spilled silk of your hair. Swathed in shades of jewel, you’re all woman, done up and ready to go out and devastate.
He doesn’t know how any man could ever look at you and not want you.
He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be the same from here on out.
“Who’s she talkin’ to?” He asks Dina, tipping his chin over at you. He can hear you raising your voice, something about you fucking French moron, and he doesn’t like the hunch he’s got about who it is.
“Boyfriend,” Dina says while she watches Ellie work the horse with hearts in her eyes.
“Thought he was an ex.”
She peers up at him suspiciously at that, a queer little smile tipping the corners of her mouth upwards. “Well maybe now that he knows how much she’s worth he’ll be coming back, huh?”
Joel swears all these fuckin’ women are conspiring against him, trying to send him to an early grave. “He steps foot on this ranch, and I’ll shoot him in the goddamn ass.”
She laughs, throwing her head back which inevitably draws Ellie’s attention. “You are literally so dramatic.”
“What’s he bein’ dramatic about now?” Ellie calls from behind, trotting up to the corral edge.
“Ohhh, nothin’. Just Joel being Joel. Right, old man?” Dina bumps her hip against his and he grunts, refusing to be goaded. He’s not being dramatic, it’s his responsibility to take care of you now, to watch over you.
That’s all.
“I’m never dramatic,” he tells them very seriously.
On the porch, the spat reaches a crescendo and they all turn to watch the show.
Why don’t you shove the whole Eiffel Tower up your ass, you fucking dipshit. And don’t you ever call me again!
“Little girl’s got a mouth on her,” Bill murmurs.
Ellie lets out a long whistle. Deserved, Dina adds. On the porch, you let out a strangled little screech, stomping the high heel of your boot as if you’ve got half a mind to throw a fit.
Joel feels hypnotized, speared through the gut.
He wants to know what the ex-boyfriend said. What his name is. Where he’s from and who he is and what he does and how he is and every single thing about him and how it was between the two of you.
He is suddenly desperate to know everything there is to know about you in a way that makes his throat feel swollen with guilt. In a way he didn’t ever think he’d want from you.
All the things you keep close, all the small intimacies that make you this person you are now, that’s what he wants.
You stomp down the steps, making your way towards them, eyes directly on his, and you’re too fucking beautiful for his own good, watching you feels like a sin.
Makes him feel in danger, like prey.
“All men should die,” you yell over.
See.
“I agree,” Dina says cheerfully.
“You know you can have a baby with the junk in your bones from another woman now,” Ellie adds helpfully.
“The junk in your bones?” Joel says.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Yeah, like really we don’t even need you for shit anymore.”
“They should all be put in a hole in the ground in the middle of Nebraska and only be let out when a girl wants to bone.”
“To bone—Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Ellie.”
“I love that idea,” you say, finally coming to stand right before Joel. He swallows hard, stays silent—feels like the cat’s finally caught his tongue.
“Why Nebraska?” Franks asks, puzzled.
He’s got to stop looking at you, he’s got to get away from the sight of your eyes, feels like the colors of you seem to pulse brighter, and he feels it all like a touch against his skin. He turns to look at Ellie over his shoulder and with a huge, shit-eating grin she says, “Cause who the fuck knows where fuckin’ Nebraska is, huh?” Her eyes flash to you and then quickly back to Joel, winking, cheeky, knowing. He feels the noose tighten.
They’re definitely conspiring against him.
The three of you cackle—at his expense.
“Where’re you two headed?” Bill asks with a frown when the three little hyenas settle.
“She’s got a meeting in Jackson,” Dina tells him. “First part’ll be quick—she’s just gotta kick some pushy jackass to the curb and tell him we’re not leasing mineral rights to him no matter how hard he begs or how much money he throws at us. Then…” she trails off, throwing you a worried glance, but your eyes are on the far off mountains now, and Joel watches a shaky swallow pass through your throat.
“Then we’ve got the will reading,” you say.
A sharp ache starts up behind Joel’s left eye, all the easygoing laughter of a few moments ago sucked away with a few words and a single reminder. That you’re not the girl you used to be, laughing and playing with Ellie, that your father is dead, that you have a world of responsibility to face now.
“You shouldn’t have to go all the way into town. They should be comin’ to you here.”
“I want to get out—see his office.”
“S’only been a few days, honey,” Frank says gently. “You should take it easy.”
“Thanks, Frank,” you reach out to squeeze his arm, flush of emotion across the bridge of your nose. “I’m okay, promise.”
Joel takes you in, in full. You’ve got something shimmery swept across the highs of your cheekbones and glossy lips, the fine grain of your skin—pristine like you're made of sugar and everything good in the world. The silky wisps of baby hair at your temples that look softer than anything he’s probably ever touched in his whole life. And you’re so beautiful it almost hurts the eye to look at you, beautiful in a way that makes men cower at the sight, like you’d be the strongest thing in the whole world. But he sees all the rest too. The delicate curves of your shoulders, the fine swoop of your collarbone and the quick-fire beat of your pulse beneath the fragile skin of your throat. There’s fear all around you in a way, a desperate sort of sadness.
He wishes there was more he could do for you, that he could bear the burden of all this entirely in your stead, that he could be all you need and want him to be without having to sacrifice his soul to give it to you.
Your eyes flash back to his, and he worries for a second that you can read his mind.
Behind you, Jesse pulls up with the sleek black of your father’s favorite car. Of course you’d choose this for today, bets you’ll find a way to turn it into a pretzel before the days end.
“Take Jesse with you,” he says low at your back as you turn for the car.
You look over your shoulder at him and his spine throbs. “No.”
Following you around the front of the car, he pulls the door open for you. “You’re not moving around alone anymore. He’s going. Jesse—” he whistles, “You’re going into town with Miss Kelly.”
“Yezzir,” he smiles with the sunny easiness only he possesses.
“Excuse me,” you turn to frown up at him, stomping your foot again, and you’re a little bit of a brat, he’s realizing. “There’s no room in the car for him. He can’t come.”
“He’ll take a truck,” he says, leaving no room for discussion, but then gentles his voice again, “Things are gonna be different now. You’re the Kelly, you can’t go on all gung ho about your new reality. You need taking care of. Can you not fight me on this, please?”
“What I need—”
“Is to be protected.”
You give a delicate little huff through your nose that he finds to be just about the cutest damn thing he’s ever seen in his whole life. “Then it’ll be my choice how and who.”
“It’s easier if you just do as I say.” Grasping, grasping, praying for patience.
“You overbearing d—”
“You’ll be okay meeting this jackoff? Don’t need me to come with you?”
You glower at him.
“I’m bein’ serious with you. I know you’re capable,” he puts his hands out, palms up in a conceding gesture, “But this is new, and there’s no shame in asking for support.”
At that, you get a confused little pinch between your brows, softest rose shaped mouth he’s ever seen—felt—all pursed up, and he thinks it’s wrong now, trying to be sweet to you after last night, looking at you this way and seeing the things he’s seeing. He should stay away, go away forever, find a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere to bury himself in like you’d said, but he worries now, and quite desperately really, that he won’t ever be able to leave your side again after all this.
“I have Dina.”
“I know, but—”
“Can you please just… not. I think— I think it’s better if we just steer clear of each other. If I need something,” you look away now, hazy look from last night back in your gaze again, like you’re remembering, like you’re wanting something else he’s not willing, not capable of giving, “I’ll ask for it. Otherwise you can focus on what’s important to you.”
Gut punch.
He soldiers on, can’t help it.
“You feelin’ alright?”
Your eyes flit back to him for a fleeting second and there’s honesty in your gaze now, maybe something extremely vulnerable too, and then shuttering again, looking away again. He’d demand your gaze if he had the right, insist you tell him everything there is to know with just your eyes if you were his.
But really, he’s got no right to ask anything.
So instead, “Tell me what’s wrong,” he begs, praying you don’t say him.
What’s wrong? A laugh and—nothing. Like your father isn’t dead, like he hadn’t hurt you as he had last night, like you’re looking for answers etched into the mountains or the sky. You bring your thumb to your right temple and his own aches in response, digging there for some unseen pain to be gouged out. “Tired—was having bad dreams.” Your voice sounds full of air, and you’ve got a huge emerald on your ring finger, an even larger turquoise stone beside it, other hand is covered in a row of opals—you’re a treasure of a girl, all the way inside and out, and it’s like he’s staring at a work of art, knowing that if he were to touch, it’d all be ruined. Your voice full of air floats in his bad ear and booms out the good one full of forlorn want.
It feels like you’re the only two people left in the whole of Wyoming, standing here together under the sweet sun, maybe the whole world, and he’s ridden in guilt, wants to tell you he’s sorry again, beg or something, and thinks that God should give you the chance to rewind time when you’ve made someone feel this bad without meaning to.
You whisper at the Tetons, and he’s all but forgotten, “I feel a little bit like I’m the real nightmare.”
“You couldn’t ever be, sweetheart,” he tells you and means it with his whole heart.
It’s all agony swimming in your eyes, and if you don’t stop him, he’s going to take you into his arms right here in front of everyone. You need more than protecting, it’s clear, you need caring for, you need loving—the sort of something he can tell you’ve never had in your whole life.
“Ready to go, honey?” Dina calls from the other side of the car, her canoodling with Ellie finally come to a pause.
You’re snapped out of your reverie, looking down at your feet, impractical boots again, these ones sexy and tall and not for his admiring, blinking away the wash of heat that’s bloomed across the bridge of your freckled little nose.
“Did she eat?” He asks Dina over your head.
“Ehhhhh, but I brought a smoothie,” she pulls out a thermos from her large bag and smiles all beaming and large.
“A smoothie ain’t food. Get something else in town.”
“You're so prepared,” Ellie sighs dreamily beside her.
“You’re annoying me,” you grouch at him, tossing your bag into the backseat, sliding into the luxuriously leathered interior as he shuts the door gently behind you, bending down to brace his palms against the open window.
“Drive careful. Call me if you need anything.”
“You’re kinda a helicopter mom. You know that, Joel?” Dina tells him with that sweet smile of hers.
“Do not entertain his nonsense,” you snap.
“She’s just grumpy because Vogue France posted a piece on her and the funeral—the heiress to watch, they’ve called her.”
“I don’t know who they think I am—Kendall fucking Roy? This isn’t HBO, it’s my goddamn life.”
“It’s fine, drink your smoothie, here,” Dina soothes.
“I don’t got a clue what any of that means,” Joel says. “And do up your belt,” frowning at you and pulling away just in time when you speed off with half the admonishment still on his tongue
-
The bar is loud and sweaty and crowded enough there’s room for your spite, which he knows, is all this night out is.
The day had gone from terrible to horrible to heinous, and he’s officially reached his limit now. You’d returned from your late morning in Jackson toting a gray cloud that’d settled over the entire ranch and everyone in it. All work had come to a slow and grinding halt, the mood morose, knowing that the lady of the manor was grieving and angry.
And then a few hours into the evening, you, Ellie, and Dina had spun into the bunk, already giggling on drinks he was certain were too sugary and way too strong to end in anything good. Looking to rile up the boys into heading back to Jackson and finding a bar to terrorize.
And so here he now finds himself, stepping through the door of The Mushroom, ridiculous name for a bar if anyone asked him, eyes searching for the gleam of your hair, that tiny fucking outfit you’d draped yourself in. You were hunting for trouble, to aggravate him, trying to hurt him with your, you’re not invited, Joel—no one wants you to come.
Angry, angry as a spitting fire.
He’d felt like shit about himself and your upset for a second, and then had thought: Well, are you going to cowboy up, Joel? Or just lay here and bleed?
Now, there’s something sick in him that wants more of it, to take everything you’ve got to give, to see how far you can go, to push you just a little bit further too.
A masochist, is what he reckons he might actually be.
He finds Ellie’s bent head whispering into Dina’s ear, giggling and dragging her fingertips up the other girls bare arm, and he feels a thump of fondness for the two—happier than he can say that they’ve finally worked it all out after months of their will-they-won’t-they struggle.
Making his way over to them, he catches Frank in the distance, dancing to the countryfied Abba cover of Chiquitita the local band’s currently playing while Bill stands nearby, serious and menacing, keeping anyone from getting too close to his partner.
No sign of you, and the backs of his knees itch and burn.
“Where is she?” He demands when he reaches Ellie at their place against the bar.
“Oh, dude. She’s gonna be soooo pissed.”
“Where, Ellie?”
Get you anything to drink, sugar? The bartender calls and Joel shakes her away, panic thumping in his gut the longer he doesn’t have eyes on you.
Dina knocks her head towards the end of the L-shaped bar, closest to the throng of dancing patrons, and there in the last seat and partially obscured by someone’s shoulder and ridiculously feathered hat, you sit.
“Who the fuck is that?”
“Can you please just leave her alone. She needs to blow some steam off.”
“Yeah, Joel, we’re watching her,” Dina adds, always the peacekeeper.
Or blow someone, Ellie adds in a snicker, and he gives her a death glare. “You need to quit the asshole act,” she tells him, purposefully thunking her beer hard enough on the bartop that some of it sloshes over the lip of the bottle onto his hand braced against the edge.
Real mature.
“Changed my mind,” he tells the bartender when she heads back their way, “Shot of Jameson.”
Beside him, Jesse appears, beer in hand as he leans against the bar to watch you also. “That might just be the most beautiful girl I’ve seen in my whole life, honest to God,” he sighs wistfully.
Joel sees red—this is just too much. “Quit fuckin’ lookin’ at her,” he snaps.
Ellie snickers knowingly, and Frank and Bill join the group, picking up on the topic of conversation.
“That little girl can drink a grown man under the goddamn table,” Bill says.
“And looks good as hell doing it too—”
“Eyes off, you little shit,” Joel sends a threatening glance at Jesse again.
Ellie ignores them both. “He’s a finance bro or some shit—from New York—here to play cowboy dress up with the group he’s with. Nothing I can’t handle, and you need to cool it and leave or have a drink and let her have fun.”
“She’s vulnerable right now, Ellie—”
“Yeah, you would know.”
Joel’s turn to do the ignoring, “And she needs someone to watch her back.”
“I’m fuckin’ watching it, man. You’re so annoying, and I’ll have you know that—” The fucker’s got a thick lock of your long hair trapped between his probably manicured fucking fingers, smoothing it between his thumb and index and then looping it around and around, drawing you in closer.
Joel’s about to start howling.
You’ve done something to him, knocked something askew inside him, and he needs you to set it back to rights. Let him out of this saw trap he’s been caught in.
The man says something that has you throwing your head back in an overly eager laugh, loud and melodic in the most hypnotizing sort of way, meant to draw the eye or seduce or send his gut to twisting and aching.
Ellie’s saying something about how you need to have fun, how you need to find yourself, and all Joel can think is that he can be the one to give you that, to help you do all that while still making sure you’re alright, taken care of.
Over the wannabe cowboy’s shoulder, he sees your eyes land on him, and you give him one of those serenely beautiful smiles he knows means he’s about to lose his fucking mind and cause a scene.
A provocation of a smile is what it is.
You cross one long leg over the other, a flash of hot pink his eyes can’t help but flash to beneath the obscene hem of your skirt and lean in to whisper something, glossy lips right at his ear, and a tick starts up below Joel’s left eye. The fuckwit pulls you in closer, and you tip into him, hand on his shoulder—your eyes never leave Joel’s, and then you’re pulling him off the barstool and leading him into the throng of dancing people. He’s desperate to know what the back of your hot pink underwear looks like—string of lace wedged between the cleft of your ass, or silk wrapping around the full cheek like a perfect present? The man pulls you into himself, spinning you around, and you’re made up of blues and purples and pinks, shimmering like something that shouldn’t exist here amongst all the rest of them. Slinky little top made of silk like water and sparkles, your cheeks, flushed with drink or heat, but he’ll tell himself it’s because of him, because you’re still angry at him, thinking of him, and it soothes the tempest that’s brewing in his gut.
He spins you towards himself, the man Joel’s about to beat senseless, shooting the Jameson without really tasting anything but the insane jealousy souring to irrational fury on his tongue, it pulses in his throat once, twice, and the fucker tugs you into himself again by a handful of your ass in that too short skirt and sticks his tongue in your mouth. Joel slams the glass on the bartop, not seeing red anymore, something like dark spots now, he’s so fucking pissed off.
Ellie yelps his name, her and Jesse scrambling after him, but they’re too late and he’s there already, pulling you away, and gently because he might be feeling a little bit like a demon right now, but he knows what you are and how to handle you no matter what—and slams his fist into the fuckers nose, the satisfying crunch of broken bone and a pathetic cry sounds as he hits the sticky bar floor. The people around peer over in nothing more than mild curiosity, this is a cowboy bar after all.
He watches the man for a second, making sure he stays down, and then turns to look at you and isn’t at all surprised when he finds that look of victory on your face.
“Ready to go?” Voice all sweet innocence.
You’re going to kill him.
Spinning around on the toe of your boot, the hem of your little skirt flutters with your movements and he catches a flash of cheek, mystery of your panties still unsolved.
“You’re a real dumbass, you know that?” Ellie snarks as they pass the group of them.
He chooses to ignore that observation. “Don’t stay out too late. And let Bill drive back.”
Following you out into the night, he tries to take control of himself, to lie away the heat he feels sitting heavy in his stomach.
He wishes he had a mint leaf to pulverize between his molars, he wishes he could pull you over his knee and spank your ass for being such a bad girl. And looming behind you, he knows you’re not even a little bit intimidated by his size as you dance and prance across the parking lot towards his truck.
“I know you’re ticked off because of last night and today, but you can’t lash out just because you’re angry with me.”
All he gets in response is that head-thrown-back wind chime laughter—the real one, which is something.
“You need to stop misbehaving,” he breathes down your neck.
“Hmm, I don’t think I will,” you singsong.
“Are you drunk?” Refusing to be distracted, he’s going to stand strictly on business, he promises himself.
You spin around again—always catching him off guard and pissing him off—hooking yourself on his shirtfront, pulling yourself into him like you’re trying to dance some fucked up dance he doesn’t know the steps to.
“Not at all.”
“You need to not be touching me right now,” he warns, the threads of his control dangerously close to snapping, walking you backwards without putting his hands on you. Chest to chest, he feels like he could breathe fire if he really set his mind to it.
“Yes, sir,” you say sweetly, dragging your palms down his chest and belly before letting him go, skipping ahead of him, humming an off-key rendition of whatever kitschy, poor excuse for a country song they’d been playing at the end in there.
The even poorer excuse for a skirt bounces along the curve of your ass, driving him fucking mad—he’s goig to have a heart attack, he’s middle aged, he can’t handle this shit anymore—you.
Stop that, he growls.
“God, you don’t like anything—you’re no fun,” you pout.
Coming to the truck, he yanks the door open for you. “Get in the damn truck.” And he makes sure to turn away and not ogle your ass as you hop in, his palm hovering in the vicinity of your elbow if you need him.
The prospect of an hour and a half of the dark drive and the scent of your musky sweet perfume and sweat soaked skin has his heart pounding. When he pulls his door open, you’re turned in your seat expectantly waiting for him, folded knees up on the seat and pink triangle right there to taunt him.
“Sit right—put on your seatbelt.”
“You’re so bossy.” An exaggerated sigh and your voice is so fucking sassy, a tiny bit of a needy whine threaded through it, he feels his patience snap.
Grabbing hold of your damp cheeks he squeezes hard enough to force your full mouth into a pout and giving your head a little shake he says, “And you need managing, little girl. Put your fucking belt on, or I’ll put it on for you.”
Eyes all pupil and gone blurry, you lick your lips and he can smell the sweet fruit scent of your breath. He groans, pushing you back—mistake, mistake, putting his hands on you at all—and peels out of the parking lot, and he is not hard in his jeans for you.
“Are you mad at me?” You ask after several moments of forced silence.
“No.”
“Not even for last night?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Why not?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it either.”
“Well, now I’ve changed my mind.”
Jesus, he mutters. “There’s nothing to discuss—already told you what I think and how it’s going to be and that’s final. You need to let it go, you hear me?”
You give a little groaning screech through your clenched teeth, turning away from him, still not wearing your goddamn seatbelt, never doing as he says.
Toeing your boots off roughly, the little skirt hitches high enough on your thighs he catches a glimpse of the smooth glowing skin of your hip, eyes trying to watch the road and your thighs at the same time.
“You’re horrible,” you say through a grimace, but your voice cracks a little bit at the end, and you’ve still got your face turned away so that he can’t tell if he’s made you cry or not now.
“Are you cryin’?” He demands.
“No,” you sniffle, wiping your cheek on a lifted shoulder
“Yes you are, liar.” Fuck—fuck, fuck.
“Well you’re bein’ mean,” you whine, finally turning to look at him again, and you’re all rose glow, cheeks flushed and eyes glossy, lips red as a cherry.
No man should be tested like this. It’s wrong—unnatural.
He tries to gentle his voice and steady the pounding of his heart, pressing down on the gas, wishing the road would disappear from beneath the tires of the truck and that he could have you home and away from him already. “Not bein’ mean, sweetheart. Just—just…” He sighs, “Goddamnit, just don’t how how to handle you,” he curses, losing the grasp on his gentleness.
“See—you are angry with me!” A tear slips down your cheek, and Joel’s mouth waters.
His heart kicks up another notch, hypnotized, “You make me fuckin’ crazy—is that what you wanna hear?”
“Yes.” You turn full in the seat to face him, bent knees against the center console block his view of the apex of your thighs. Fucking Christ.
“Sit right. You’re flashing your bits,” he tries and fails to focus on the road.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause I want you to see them, stupid.”
Jesus. “How much did you have to drink?”
“Only one High Noon.”
“The hell is that? And quit lookin’ at me like that.”
“Like what?” Your knees shift against each other, and he’s gripping the steering wheel so tight he feels like he could rip it out of the dash.
“You fuckin’ know like what.”
“Well if you hadn’t been such a cock block earlier, I’d be looking at someone else like this right now.”
And the teasing is too much. The bare legs and the tiny skirt and the hair and the lips and the sound of your voice, the kiss last night replaying in his mind over and over and over again like some lovesick taunt, the look of hurt he’d put on your face and the idea of you bare and slick, taking some other man that isn’t him. It’s too much.
He jerks the truck roughly onto the road shoulder and into the grass, wheels spinning and gravel flying. Joel—you squeal, being jostled in your seat so that all he can see are soft thighs and pretty tits bouncing in his peripheral. He puts the truck in park, ripping his seat belt off, reaching over to tug you roughly forward by the nape, his fingers twisting in your hair in a hold he knows is too hard for something so delicate, his other hand grips below the bend of one knee squeezing hard.
“If you think I’m gonna let you spread your legs for anyone fucking else—” he growls.
“Anyone else?” You laugh in his face, eyes spinning with something a little maniacal.
He thought he’d been worried for his soul, that taking you would be the undoing of everything he’d tried so hard to mend back together after Sarah. And really, he had tried so hard—to be good, to be better, to atone for all he’d not done before her, all he’d done after her. He’d tried to make himself into something that was respectful of her memory and the second chance Kelly had given him.
But right here, and again because anytime he looks at you, is within a mile of your vicinity, it feels like you’re the only two people on the whole goddamn planet, he doesn’t think he really gives a fuck for being good or atoning or souls at all. Not even a little bit.
He follows your lead from last night and kisses you, is sure to take your tongue this time. Forcing his thumb and forefinger between the line of your molars, he presses down hard enough to hurt the baby soft skin, spreading your jaw open wide so that he can lick into your mouth deep and wet. He wants to scare you, cow you, intimidate you into behaving with this hunger that seems to swallow him whole—remind you that he’s let you have your fun thus far, but the both of you know who’s playing games and who’s not.
You let out a shocked little gasp onto his tongue, fingers twisting in the fabric over his shoulder, and he tightens his grip under your knee, tugging you just that little bit further forward, and when he pulls back to look at you, spit slick, swollen mouth and wide eyes, tits about to spill out of your top, you push his face away roughly, dragging your nails down the skin of his cheek with a tiny snarling growl.
Spoiled little brat.
“Don’t be fuckin’ childish,” he snarls back, and pulls you roughly over the console and into his lap.
“I can’t stand you,” you pant, settling above him, coming in to kiss him again, and he can’t deny it anymore. He’s hard as fuck for you.
You moan into his mouth, high and throaty at the same time, girlish little sigh at the end that has him gripping your hip tightly, trying to stop himself from thrusting up against you.
“Can you taste him?” You lick his tongue. “He kinda looked like you, didn’t he? That’s why I chose him.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
He’s going to stop this now, at any moment. He’s going to push you away and tell you this is wrong and that the two of you can’t do this.
Instead, you wrap your arms around his neck, pressing your tits high against his chest and grinding your lace covered little cunt against his cock.
He groans into your mouth, pushed straight over the edge and free falling, cupping your ass to lift you off of himself a little bit, he just needs a second, before he takes a breath and presses you back down harder, rolling your hips against his lap. Little animal sounds, an ah, ah, ah and an oh, coupled with his mewled name. Cupping the soft of your ass in the palms of his hands, his calluses scrape against silken skin, and you fit him as if he’d dreamt you up just for himself; perfectly lush curves he can squeeze as hard as he wants because you’re not getting away from him now that he’s caught you in his snare. He drags his fingertips up the roundness of your asscheeks, and the mystery’s solved, it’s a thong. Catching the lace between his fingers he pulls the flimsy string upwards and tight against your pussy, a pained moan when he pulls even harder, making sure the fabric digs against your skin.
He knows if he cups you there you’ll be wet for him, for him, no one else but him. Knows he could bend you face first over the console, pull the soaked lace aside and suck on your wet little clit, make you come in his mouth.
“Fuck, baby,” he groans.
Joel, Joel, Joel, you hum in a dream voice.
He can feel two little dimples at the low of your back, imagines what they’d look like with his thumbs gripped there as your ass takes his cock.
He can’t say it enough—he feels fucking insane.
“Touch me,” you beg, sliding and pressing against him, long hair like water slipping all over and against him too.
Oh my God, he whisper moans when you spread your knees as wide as the seat allows, rocking your hips in short little hitches against the ridge of his cockhead. He knows your little clit is right there, cunt a knot of indescribable heat against him, and you pull your mouth away from his, letting your head fall back, hair a tangled curtain. He drags his nails back down your ass hard enough he hopes he’s leaving marks, leaning forward to lick along the salt tracks of your tears, watching you use him.
“Do not fucking come,” he orders. He can’t—he can’t watch you do it and not be inside you when it happens, and the two of you absolutely cannot take this that far.
He pulls your hips up again, forcing your movements still and you huff at him, whining.
“We gotta stop.”
Noooo. “No, Joel. Please,” you cry, trying to pull yourself towards him—your mouth is so swollen—trying to escape his hold and get what you want for yourself.
Grasping at the last vestiges of his sanity, “Fuck— No. No more.” He lifts you off his lap and back into your seat, sitting back to press himself against the door and adjusting the throbbing erection in his jeans, so hard it’s making him a little nauseous. If he doesn’t stop, he’s going to stuff his cock inside of you right here and now. He tucks the thick head up under his waistband, trying to find any sort of momentary relief.
There isn’t enough oxygen in this truck. He needs air, space, to taste you.
“Fine,” prim little nose in the air. You stretch one leg out across the console to dangle over his groin and let the other drop to the cab floor. “That’s fine—I’ll just take care of it myself then,” you tease provocatively, fingertips dragging up the inside of your thigh.
He shoots forward to stop your movement, gripping your wrist in a vice—baby bird bones beneath his fist, and you moan at his touch like the little wanton he’s coming to realize you are, writhing in your seat. “Don’t you fucking dare. I swear to God I’ll put you over my knee.”
“Jokes on you, I’d like that shit,” you sass back, ripping your wrist out of his hold, little socked foot kicking towards his face. He catches it, holding it in his grip and squeezing. “And I don’t really care if you’re not mad at me because I’m mad at you.”
“I know you are, sweetheart,” and the mood changes, smolders into something more serious, more honest.
-
“Why didn’t you go today? The lawyer asked you to—” You’d wanted to find him as soon as you’d gotten home earlier, demand he give you an explanation. Cowardice had won over that desire, and going out to find a drink and a replacement man had seemed the easier alternative.
“Wasn’t my place.” Spreading his thighs wider in his seat to accommodate himself, he presses his hips forward, and you can make out the heft of his cock beneath his jeans—your belly twists all full of heat and bubbles.
“Did you know he was leaving you something?”
He laughs a bitter bark of a laugh. “No—never thought—” the words die in his throat and he stares out the window, lost to the memory of your father. “No, I didn’t think he was leaving me anything before I got the call.”
“It’ll make a good nest egg.”
“Don’t want it.”
He won’t turn to look at you now, and you know that this conversation in the aftermath of touching you shames him.
“You’re taking it. You don’t have a choice.” His eyes flash fire at you and then flit away. “He had all your banking information, it’s probably already there.”
Fucking Christ, he spits the murmured curse, bracing his elbow against the curve of the steering wheel, cupping his palm over his mouth as if to keep his anger and frustration in. The bulge of his bicep beneath his dark hoodie distracts you for a moment.
You’d spent enough time watching him over the years that you’d learned all the things you knew he tried to hide in plain sight. That gentleness, that patience, that heart—that he is an inconceivably good and honest man. Things that are ultimately impossible to hide.
Your eyes flash to the temple where a gristle of scar tissues is slashed across his skin. The meaning behind a scar like that, coupled with his bad ear and his green eyed photograph—it’s hard to hide. People can always tell when you’ve tried to kill yourself, you know.
Which all goes to say—and you’re quite certain of this—that yes, the two of you are strangers, in ways, but in others, or in your own way, you know this man. You understand his nature. You know he wouldn’t have ever wanted it—that he does not want it and never will. He isn’t the sort of man who’d ever look a million dollars in the eye and feel moved by them.
His humanity means more to him than his life, you’d heard Tommy say about him once to your father when you’d been an eavesdropping little girl. You hadn’t understood at the time, but now you do.
The dark pullover and jeans, incongruously boyish, the scuffed boots—he’s so himself and so fucking hot and you want him so, so badly, and looking at him sitting here now, gorgeous, hair mused by your fingers, and your slick smeared across his jeans—you look down at your own twisted fingers in your lap, a little ashamed now too—and you can’t fathom why or how he’d ever look at you and feel moved by the likes of you either.
You’re ashamed that you’re even angry at him for it at all, resentful of this gift your father has given him when really it is not only resentment, maybe not even truly that at all. More so, it’s a complicated mixing pot of feelings that these two men seem to have always been twisted up into knots together inside of you. Resentful, not because you don’t want him to have it. You want him to have everything he deserves or could ever think to want and more, but perhaps, because this was the final nail in the coffin scrap of proof that your father had cared about him in a very real way that you’d never experienced—in a way that was entirely Oswald Kelly’s own choice and not because of dead mothers or obligation or legacy.
“It’s good he left it for you,” you say gently and mean it.
He looks at you out of the corner of his eyes, looks away, from under the cover of his palm says, “S’not fair to you.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me. This is about you and you deserving this, and I’m glad he gave you your due. He should’ve left more.”
His eyes flutter shut, sighing deeply and shakes his head. “You’ve made me into something I’m not. You need to see that.”
“You’re not some sort of cautionary tale, Joel.”
“You don’t know a thing about it,” voice like he could he angry but is being very careful to remain not. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, the reasons why I came here. You should look at me and see nothin’ worthwhile.”
“My father saw something,” you argue. “You let my father see that something. And I do too, no matter what you say, no matter what you do or how hard you push me away; I’m used to it, and you won’t change my mind.”
He gives you a look like you’re hurting him, like your truths hurt him. “We’re goin’ home. This is enough,” he gruffs, pulling the truck into drive again and peeling out of the grassy knoll.
Fight dying in your throat, you feel suddenly exhausted, shivering coldly, belly an ember of unsated lust, your orgasm is tight and wet between your legs and you don’t want to argue or impose yourself on him anymore. You don’t want to feel like you’re imposing yourself now when he’d never made you feel like that before.
The night is a pitch dark blur falling away behind your glazed over eyes, and huddling into yourself against the door, you hide your face away in your shoulder, belly swooping with nausea.
“You drive too fast, I’m dizzy,” you mumble, and he immediately slows, foot easing off the gas.
“You gonna puke?”
“Yes, all over your face.”
“I’m serious, darlin’. Need me to stop?”
“No. I just want to be home,” said in as small a voice as you can manage, hoping he won’t catch your words, and soon he’s turning off into the long drive to the house.
When he pulls to a stop, you scramble to grab your boots before he can say anything else, but he’s unnaturally quick for such a large man, out the door and around the nose of the truck, pulling your own door open before you can even get a single boot on. He pulls them from your grasp, and then tugs you bodily out of your seat, slinging you over his shoulder as if you were some sack of nuisance prone potatoes. You screech, flailing, trying to knee him in the gut, but he bands a strong arm across the backs of your thighs, pinning you in obedient place. “Quit.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” You howl, hitting him repeatedly on the ass, trying to wriggle and make his life as difficult as you possibly can.
This man has absolutely no consideration or respect or sense of personal space!
Technically, neither do you—but that’s neither here nor there.
You scream like a hyena, shrill and long and he pinches your ass hard, right at the inner crease of your thigh and ass cheek, too close to your still wet pussy for comfort. “I said quit.”
“Everything alright out here?” You hear Jesse’s voice call from the direction of the bunk, they must’ve beat you two here while you’d been trying to seduce Joel into making you come.
The snap of Joel’s fingers and then, “Mind your own fucking business.”
“You are so rude.”
He bumps you on his shoulder, jostling you on the soft of your belly and making your cunt go even tighter. You hate him. “Quiet, you.”
Letting himself in the dark of your house, he makes his way up the stairs while you hang quietly upside down now, a little astounded, a lot turned on by how strong he is, lugging you all the way upstairs without even a change in his breathing.
But as soon as he steps foot into your bedroom, now set to rights from yesterday’s disaster, you feel the change come on him. The shift and deepening of his breaths, the expanse of his ribs going wide and winglike as he sucks in a big gulp of air. You press your palm flat to the center of his back, feeling the whistle of his breath go in and out of him until he’s slipping you off his shoulder to bounce gently backwards onto your soft bed.
He stands above you for a quiet moment, and you take in the broad shape of him backlit by the moonlight of your open drapes. He’s huge and imposing cast in this darkness, something out of a dream.
Literally—out of your own teenage fantasy dreams.
Has anyone in all the world ever wanted someone as badly as you want him?
You can feel the press of his left knee against the inside of your right one, and you wish he’d put it between your thighs, join you on the bed.
“Can I ask you something?” You reach your fingers out and he tangles his hand with yours and it’s a small victory.
“Yeah.”
“Would you come to my funeral?”
His fingers jolt— “What?”
“If I died.”
“Don’t say shit like that.”
“Tell me that you would—” You tug him forward and he lets himself come, bending over your prone form, braced on one arm and still holding onto your fingers with the other. “—That I wouldn't be alone even there.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Would you?”
“Makes me angry when you say shit like this—as if you don’t believe I’m going to take care of you.”
“Please tell me, Joel. Promise me—” and you reach up to gently touch the scar across his temple.
He goes frozen and understanding. “I’d come,” and you know it costs him something to give in to such an imagining and it makes you all the more grateful for it.
Fingers sliding back into the curls at his temple, silver speckled, you know, you pull him further towards you until he’s close enough to press a softly hot kiss to his mouth. The two of you hold there for a moment, another, another, you can feel the wash of his heavy breathing through his nose, the flutter of his long lashes tangling with yours—you hope he’s searching for you in the dark—and you lift your knee up onto the bed, bending to open yourself to him.
He pulls back, hand shooting to your jaw to grip you tightly in place, breath ragged, animal being hunted.
You smile.
“Not gonna fuck you,” he says low.
“Why not?” It’s what you want, you deserve to have what you want. He squeezes your face once, presses another hard, too quick kiss to your mouth and then flips you over onto your belly, turning your skirt up over your ass to expose you. He tugs once on the string of your thong, drawing his finger along the lace wedged between your ass cheeks and then pulls his hand away for a moment before he’s spanking you hard and quick.
Owwww, you whine, hitching your rump towards him, wanting more despite the sting. He bends his head and bites you even harder at the inner corner of your asscheek, teeth digging hard and long enough to leave a mark. You whine again, high and mewling, trying to escape his meanness and he smacks you again on the other cheek.
“Go to bed, little girl. I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
And he’s leaving you, broad shouldered form slipping out your bedroom door and leaving you aching and angry to scream into your pillow.
You’re pretty sure you hear his deep laugh before the slam of the door sounds below, and you’re slipping your greedy fingers into the ruined wet of your panties, petting away the ache he’s left.
-
The late May night is cool, despite the daytime heat, and Ellie shivers in her Carhartt, watching as Joel slips out the back kitchen door of the big house.
“The hell is going on with those two?” Jesse says beside her, pulling long on his beer. The litter of yellow cans around them speaks to his mullish whining that he’d not been able to pull tonight. Sometimes he annoys her, but in that sort of endearing little brother way that makes her want to kick his ass and protect him at the same time.
“Nothin’, they’re fine—just gotta fuck it out.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Naw—just smarter than you, man.”
“They like each other?”
“God, Jesse, you wouldn’t see an obvious thing if it were a tipsy bison barrelin’ towards you full speed in the middle of the day.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he says a little pathetically. Moping men—Ellie really can’t be assed to deal with them all.
“It’s fine. You don’t need to understand. I do—I see all, I know all. You mere mortals wouldn’t understand.”
“S’kinda weird, no? Them two—him bein’ so much older, her bein’…well, you know— her.”
“Nope. Makes perfect sense—they need each other, you see.”
He shrugs, I guess—“You’re fuckin’ weird, too. You know that?”
She takes a swig of her beer now also, hoping the two idiots she loves most in the world, after Dina of course, figure each other out before the whole ranch has to suffer for it too.
“Wrong again, Jesse. Wrong again.”
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#fable of the dog fic#vic fic#joel miller x FMC#joel miller#joel miller smut#the last of us au#joel miller fanfiction
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❝on my cloud, i got some space for you.❞
read the rest of the series before this chapter or you’re getting spoilers.
A/N: alright, i listened to the poll. this isn’t edited so ignore any mistakes. please leave feedback in the comments ★ ˙ᵕ˙ liv
Chapter Summary: the sweetest baker is surrounded by love on the anniversary of her parent's passing.
Chapter Warnings: language, alcohol, slight age gap (F!MC and Joel are 6 years apart), symptoms of anxiety and depression, panic attacks, grief, fluff, comfort, lmk if i forgot something.
Series Tags: chef! Joel, single! father Joel, no outbreak! Joel Miller, slow burn, dual-pov, fluff, flirting, friendship, eventually established relationship, eventual smut, original character, black!fem!MC, no y/n.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ series masterlist, joel masterlist ⋆ spotify playlist ˖ ݁ 𖥔.
My throat croaks out a couple of notes as I hum along to the song in my ears on Wednesday. The calming smell of lemons wafts through the room reminding me of my mother. She always used to bake lemon cookies and cakes. Now the smell of sugary citrus envelopes me like a hug.
I take a break, reaching for my water bottle when I feel a tap on my shoulder. Abandoning my attempts to take a sip, I take out my earbuds.
When I turn around I see Chloe standing behind me, looking past my body at what I’m making. “I'm not trying to be rude but are we rebranding or something? Everything's lemon-flavored,” she points out with her thumb towards the front of the store.
Perspiration instantly begins collecting on top of my skin. “Oh, shit. No, I’m sorry,” I apologize, wiping my hands on my apron. “I don't know why I did that,” I murmur and my eyes drift behind her.
I’ve been in an odd daze all week, unable to focus and even Joel has noticed. I’m pretty sure he told Ellie to take it easy on me this week since she hasn’t been around much. Then again, she has been hanging at the Austin a lot more since the whole Thanksgiving fiasco. I can’t put my finger on it, but he promised he was going to take off and help support me all day today. I wonder if he likes lemon cakes.
Chloe waves her hand in front of my face, snapping me out of my thoughts. Her brows knit and concern washes over her face. “Are you okay?” she questions.
I nod, stepping past her to wrap up in the kitchen. “Yeah. I don't know what's up with me today. I just feel weird,” I remain vulnerable with her.
Chloe approaches the island I’m standing at, putting her hands on the table and leaning forward. “Ginny, love,” she looks at me as though I should already know what’s going on.
I pick up a sanitization rag and wring it out to begin cleaning the tabletop. “What?” I snip. I hate suspense.
She bites the inside of her cheek, hollowing out her mouth. An awkward silence fills the room and I curse myself for sending the others home so early. “You usually don't work today,” she points out.
I work every day, that’s the perks of owning your own bakery. “What are you talking about? it's just Friday,” I point out when the double doors to the kitchen smack open, letting in a cold gust of air.
Leo stomps in with his arms crossed, wearing black shoes and a matching tie wrapped around his neck. “Why are you working?” he chastizes, as he gets closer.
My once slow movements of cleaning pick up in frustration. I begin furiously scrubbing a stain in the metal that will realistically be there forever. “Why do people keep asking me that?” I groan.
My eyes return to focus on the stain. The fucking stain has to come out. Right now, right now, right now. “Imogen,” Leo sighs kindly. He puts his hands on my waist, pulling me backward from the procrastination. “Let’s go chat, hmm?”
I sigh, passing the cleaning products to Chloe and following Leo into the front of the bakery. He heads straight for my favorite booth, secluded in the back of the bakery towards the widows.
“You're scaring me,” I divulge, sliding into the Tiffany blue pleather seat.
Leo’s eyebrow raises before he seemingly realizes his facial expressions, reeling it back in. Men. “Relax. Have you talked to Joel today?” he questions.
“Yeah, this morning. He said to call him if I needed anything today.”
Leo leans forward across the acrylic table. “Ginny, it's December 18th,” he rasps and his words hit me like a truck.
December 18th. The day that my parents were crushed between two trucks on Interstate 290. It was unexpected and their business ties to Europe left me suddenly alone and having to clean up their shit for myself.
It took months to secure an end to it all. Although I wasn’t as close with my dad as I was with my mom, I still miss him just as much.
They say after traumatic events there’s an increase in marriages, divorces, and disappearances. As soon as I got the call, I quit and became fully invested in doing only the shit I wanted to. One of which included opening my bakery. I divorced nursing, disappeared further from the north side, and married baking.
You knew. Of course, you knew. That’s why you’ve been feeling weird all day. My head innately tilts as I stare off into space.
My spiral of cataloging my every movement to assign guilt to them begins. I should’ve known and now half the day is gone without me honoring my parents. “I’m calling Joel,” Leo’s crip voice snaps me out of my thoughts.
My head begins to shake. I don’t want to worry him for no reason. I just need to take some time away from the bakery, that is all. “No. It's not that big of a deal. I don't want to bother him,” I plead with Leo to spare the poor single father.
Leo ignores it and pulls out his phone, unlocking the device with the face sensor. “You're not bothering. Poor guy is probably just giving you space and waiting by the phone,” he explains.
Leo’s fingers tap on the tempered glass before he puts the device on the table. I look down, seeing it’s already on speaker and the ringing fills my ears.
Joel answers after two trills, per usual. “Hey. Ginny need me?” he suggests, voice dripping with honey.
I open my mouth to decline but before I do, Leo speaks up, “Yes.”
If I weren’t so short I’d reach over the table and smack his head. So instead, I scold him, “Leo!” Why the fuck would he speak for me?
“My bad, Joel. She didn’t know we spoke before I came in. Yes, she does need you. I have a meeting at 1 and I need you to come by. Maybe cook her something,” he requests and the corners of my mouth quirk up in a smile. Despite what I said on the first day of our meeting, I love everything that Joel specifically cooks.
Leo pauses and her eyes look me up and down judgingly. “She doesn’t look like she’s eaten today,” he adds and I scowl at them both.
This time, I’ve had enough of Leo’s bullshit and I kick him beneath the table. He lets out a groan, shooting daggers in my direction with his eyes. But, skipping breakfast due to anxiety isn’t a cause for concern.
Joel doesn’t skip a beat, immediately answering, “Be there in 10.”
“Thanks, man,” Leo exhales, probably glad to be relieved of his suicide watch duties for the day. Maddie and Leo stayed with me during the emotional rollercoaster of this day last year, and although they’re my best friends, I don’t expect Leo to want more. Especially when I have a partner now.
He clicks the red circle on the screen and I practically collapse on the table between us. “God, Leo. I'm going to kill you,” I groan into the hard material.
“He's your boyfriend. He's supposed to be the one comforting you and not me, right?” he questions and I can’t say I disagree.
“You’re right,” I complain one last time before lifting my head and fixing the mess of curls around my head. “Okay, you can go. I’m just going to change my clothes.”
“Are you sure? I can cancel this meeting,” he placates. No, he shouldn’t. And that’s okay. I don’t want his life to stop just because mine is currently.
I try my hardest to plaster on a fake smile, but it causes me mental anguish. “Positive. I’m going to get comfy so Joel can snuggle the shit out of me,” I tell him my plans.
He grimaces, probably from my gushy words. His dark brown eyes search my face for any sign of discomfort. Once he’s satisfied, he nods. “Alright, I’ll call later. I’d stop by but you’ll be getting fucked as a distraction,” he smirks, before standing from the table and darting out of the bakery.
My jaw drops in shock. I most certainly won't be screwing my boyfriend on the anniversary of my parent's death. But maybe tomorrow, like early tomorrow. As soon as the clock hits midnight.
How can I even be horny at a time like this? There’s gotta be some unnatural demon inside of me. I drag my hands down my face, trying to pull myself back into reality before standing from the booth. Walking over to the counter, I lean over to talk to Chloe. There are still patrons in the bakery and I don’t need them hearing about my personal life. “I’m going to retire upstairs. Let me know if you need anything. Joel should be here soon and you can send him up,” I list, quietly.
Chloe nods before taking my hands in hers. “Don’t worry, I got it. This is why I’m your manager,” she eases my anxiety.
I nod, bidding her goodbye before walking towards the back of the bakery. Tears start to collect in my eyes again and I repeat my favorite mantra. No crying in public, Ginny. You just have to get upstairs then you can let it out.
But it doesn’t work.
By the time I’m climbing up the staircase, the tears are already streaming down my face causing an uncomfortable burn on my cheeks. When I reach the top, I slide the barn door open to my living quarters at an alarming rate.
The wood smacks into the door frame and I rush into the space, careful not to let the mewling kittens out behind me. I softly shut the door, watching out for their tails with strained vision.
Okay, you’re alone Ginny. Let it out.
I don’t know what I expected to happen. I couldn’t foresee myself ever falling to my knees and sobbing on the living room floor, but that’s exactly what occurs. My chest becomes tight as I choke on my own spit, babbling niceties about my mother and father.
I don’t know how long I’m crouched on the floor when I hear my living room door slide open. My knees feel sore from the hardened floor beneath me but my tears don’t stop, creating a wet stain on my grey top. “Damn, sugar,” I hear Joel say before he slides the door shut behind him.
I look up to find him rushing towards me, joining me on the floor. His typically messy hair looks freshly cut and I can tell he's used the start of the day to visit the barbershop. His green flannel shirt is opened nice and low, hugging his biceps deliciously. “Deep breaths. Know it’s hard but you can do it,” he encourages, rubbing warm circles onto my back.
His words barely register and as I try to get my breathing under control, hiccuping in between breaths. With each uneven breath, I attempt to keep a hold on my digestive system and not let out a sad fart. Or worse, vomit in his lap.
“After Sarah died, I had panic attacks too. Still get ‘em sometimes,” he divulges.
His hands trail up my spine to the back of my neck. His thumb traces soothing designs into my skin, effectively grounding me. My rocketing heartbeat slowly starts to steady and I allow myself to close my eyes knowing that Joel is here to catch me if I fall. His arms envelop me from behind, pulling my body so I’m sitting in his lap.
He softly caresses my hair and I tune him out as he begins whispering affirmations in my ear. I stare off into space and I jerk slightly in his hold when Joel presses a soft kiss to my neck.
I know where I am, but the last 30 minutes feel like a blur. Disassociation is a bitch.
When I finally feel aware again, Joel is still murmuring into my neck, but this time he’s talking about our future. “We’ll always be here. Me 'n Ellie through whatever,” he promises, pausing to take a breath.
I nod to let him know that I’m actually back this time. He rubs my back and I hear a soft meow coming from the floor. Toph is looking up at me with her green eyes, seemingly afraid. “We’ll have to get a bigger place for the 5 of us,” Joel adds, and I chuckle, scooping the orange kitten into my arms.
“Thank you for coming and just,” I start before gesturing to his body with one hand. “Being you,” I finish before a hiccup roars through my chest.
Joel positions himself more comfortable on the floor so he’s sitting in front of me. “I mean it. Every word,” he emphasizes, pressing a quick kiss to my wet cheeks. I smile at him, grateful for his presence.
Toph paws at my chest, snuggling into my body. Like always, Katara becomes jealous of her sister's attention, and she comes slinking behind the couch up to Joel. She struts up his leg, plopping down in the middle of his lap and shutting her eyes.
“They’re fuckin’ somethin’ else,” Joel sneers, stroking Katar’s grey fur. I snicker in agreeance, setting Toph down in the sunlight on the floor in demonstration. Joel accepts the permission to remove my cat from his personal space, following suit carefully.
I glance at Joel’s face, admiring the constellation of freckles beneath a layer of dark circles. His hair is pushed back neatly with pomade and god, he looks edible. My heart quickens when I realize, I probably look a mess with makeup running down my face.
He catches me staring and he licks his lips before asking, “What do you want for lunch?”
My brain mentally catalogs all the groceries Joe’s bought and stocked in my fridge. He figured if he’s going to make every meal, he might as well have what he needs. He insists he’s content with us staying in our respective lanes. After all, he’s just as excited for the dessert surprise at the end of the meal as Ellie is.
Figuring I can’t be picky since I’m not cooking, I decide to let him choose. “Whatever you want. I’m going to go clean myself up and get changed,” I inform him, frowning at my appearance.
Joel seemingly notices my self-judgment and sits up, pulling my face closer with my hands. “I think you’re gorgeous, sugar,” he compliments before pressing a chaste kiss on my forehead.
My skin tingles from the warmth and I can't help but smile into the sign of affection. However, my insecurity doesn't drown, grabbing my hair and pulling me back from the gorgeous man I call mine. “You’re a liar, but it’s fine,” I murmur, using his shoulders to stabilize myself as I stand.
His strong arms wrap around my body holding me close. “I wudn’t lie to you,” he promises, and I nearly become weak in the knees from that accent.
I hum in reply, deciding it’s my turn to steal a kiss from him. I haven't tasted him in a couple days when I visited him and Ellie, and I’m starting to feel like I'm forgetting a piece of him. My body lowers until we’re at eye level, and the air between us zaps.
He never fails to make me feel this way. Thunder rumbles in my stomach and lightning strikes low in my abdomen. It’s confusing, but I welcome every second of it.
Joel becomes impatient with my hovering and he brushes our lips together. The kiss is sweet and I smile into it before parting my lips. He swirls his tongue around mine while cradling my body into his.
We continue for a few moments before I need to come up for air, and I disconnect immediately looking down at his reddened lips. I press one final peck to them before getting up, for real this time.
Joel pats me on the behind as I walk out of the room before he stands himself with a grunt. Toph trails behind me into my bathroom, brushing up against my leg with a purr as I look in the mirror.
My reflection makes me want to start crying again. My throat fills with ache as I try to stuff the oncoming tears out. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only unattractive person I know.
I push the thought out of my head and for my headband, securing my hair away from my face. After pumping face wash into my hand, I hum while massaging my face. The sticky layer of tear stains rinse down the drain and I feel a sense of relief.
Once my face is clean, I reach for my towel to dry it off when I feel something particularly fuzzy. I open my right eye, peering at the counter to see Toph's tail underneath my hand. “Fuck off, cat. No counters,” I scold my shadow, lifting and setting her on the floor with wet hands.
She wines as her paws hit the floor, and I grab a clean towel from the drawer. Why did I get two cats?
After patting my face dry and discarding the towels in the hamper, I walk out towards the kitchen. As I tip-toe down the hall, I can hear Joel shuffling about. When I round the corner, I lean against the wall with my arms crossed. It’s nice to admire him in moments like this, although he’s bound to look up towards my bathroom any minute.
As if the universe hit the play button on my vision, his eyes snap to mine. “Come,” he waves me over with a welcoming grin.
I stroll over behind him before I snake my arms around his waist. My front presses into his back and I catalog every flex of muscle in his body. His arm begins sliding with precision, perfectly cutting the potato in front of him into thin slices. “Fries?” I question out of curiosity.
“And a burger your way,” he glances over his shoulder at me before returning to his chopping.
I press myself up on my tiptoes, placing a kiss on his shoulder blade. This man is perfect for me in every way. Caring for me, cooking for me, and giving me countless orgasms. My relationship with Ellie is just the cherry on top. Even if Joel and I ended things, I’d still want to be in her life.
The realization hits me like a truck and without thinking I stammer, “God, I lo–” before cutting myself out.
My body chills to ice and the oxygen is sucked from my lungs in an instant. Joel pauses his movements and stands frozen in place. I take a step back from him, turning away from him.
I need to do something to distract him from the fact that I almost just said I love you.
I reach for the kettle to set some water on for tea, fumbling about with the top of the lid. “What’d’ya say, sugar?” Joel asks from behind me.
I shake my head, feeling the hole he’s staring in my head. If I confess right now, he might leave me like everyone does. He’ll call me a crazy person and forbid me to see Ellie.
Joel’s warm hand covers mine and I jerk, before peering down. I blink rapidly at the water spilling over the top of the filled pot. “Fuck,” I swear, turning off the water and dumping a bit out of the metal container.
I shake my hand dry before my eyes meet Joel. “You sure you okay?” Joel questions with furrowed brows.
I nod, putting the lid back on the kettle. It’s a mistake, him seeing me like this. All overwhelmed and in disarray. I obviously can’t even string together a cohesive thought.
My hands fiddle around with the stove, pressing buttons until the electric burners turn red. I set the kettle down on top, turning back to face Joel.
My face turns scarlet when I see he hasn’t moved. He has instead settled into a position with one hand resting on top of the counter and the other on his hip. “I won’t call you a liar. But whatever it is, ’m here when you’re ready,” he offers lowly.
And as if nothing happens, he moves back to preparing the potatoes. I finally exhale the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Thank god he’s not hell-bent on embarrassing me today.
Deciding to take the glorious out he’s presented me, I slide into the bar seat across from him, ready to watch my favorite pass time: Chef Joel Miller cooking in my kitchen. His brows furrow and his tongue sticks out of the side of his mouth when he’s intensely focused.
A lightbulb goes off in my head and I realize, I haven’t checked up on his Michelin Star journey. “Have 3 stars to your name yet?” I ask as he turns to fill a pot with water.
“Not quite. Heard rumors we’ve already got 2 visits though,” he explains and his voice bounces off the large window in front of him.
I nod and the corners of my mouth turn up. All I want is for those around me to succeed and he’s one step closer to his goal. “That’s great, that’s only one more left. It can’t be long now,” I chirp.
Joel leans on his left leg impatiently and I focus on his back. He inhales a long deep breath and I can tell he’s not as confident. “Yeah,” he grunts.
I brush a stray curl out of my face before observing, “You don’t sound so sure.”
He sighs before turning off the water. “I am. Thought about what you said that day and ’m worried my employee's customer service is being affected by my words, Gin.”
Fuck, he’s never called me Gin before. What I said must’ve been weighing on him. Shit, shit. Code red, Ginny. “Joel, it's fine. You’ve made the changes and the reviewers will see that,” I blabber out.
Joel carries the pot over to the stove. “I know, ’m just stressed and all,” he says while fiddling with the same buttons I was moments ago.
My body begins involuntary twisting and turning in the bar stool. Joel takes notice of the fact that I've used the tea water as a diversion, switching off the kettle as he goes. I snort and shake my head at how well he knows me.
“Wait until you actually get the stars,” I emphasize the horror of his future.
Joel picks out a pink towel from the drawer beneath his waist, quickly whipping his hands off. “Yeah, I’ll be busy as hell."
“And it’ll be nice to have Ellie back in the bakery more,” I add excitedly.
Joel sighs and shakes his head. “I’ll have to get her into an afterschool program of some kind,” he responds.
My brows knit on my forehead watching him begin to prep the burger patties. “Why?” I ask.
He sets a bottle of seasoning down with a thunk and I know he means business. His deep chestnut eyes connect with my hazel ones and I know I’m no longer talking to my sweet, timid, Joel. I’m interacting with Chef Miller. “Cause you shouldn’t have to be responsible for her,” he grits through his teeth.
My lips purse and I cross my arms, slightly offended that he’d suggest I can’t handle hanging out with Ellie. “I think I can manage,” I theorize.
“I’m serious, Gin,” he argues.
“So am I. Ellie is the closest thing I have to a daughter. We already–” lied to the principal and staff at her school about our relationship. “Erm, she’s already here until close. What’s a few extra hours?” I finish as smoothly as possible, but I’m not sure Joel is buying it by the look on his face.
He raises a brow and his head tilts ever so slightly. “Are you sure?” he asks and I roll my eyes. If he asks again, my answer may be different.
There’s no reason for Ellie to join an afterschool program when she’s already comfortable here. “Positive. You are my boyfriend, Miller,” I conclude, quite finished with this conversation when the aftertaste from my words hit. “Partner,” I correct myself, looking down shyly.
“I love it when you call me that” I hear him say, causing a chuckle to slip from my throat.
We sit in comfortable silence for the remainder of the time Joel spends cooking. He occasionally glances up at me while bustling around the kitchen. Every time we make eye contact, my skin sets ablaze and I have to look away.
It seems childish to look away when your partner catches you staring. But he’s so goddamn sexy, I can’t help it. If I don’t look away, my carnal desires will replace my grief, and I’m not ready for that.
I wonder if Joel ever felt extremely horny and inappropriately happy in his grief. There’s only one way to find out.
I clear my throat, rapidly blinking away the fuzz of my thoughts. “Joel,” I murmur to get his attention.
He looks up from the set of plates, giving me a half smile. “Hmm. You ready to eat, sugar?” he asks, probably assuming I’m rushing him for food.
I don’t move from my spot to not give him the wrong idea. “Yeah but uh,” I start, pausing to pick at my nail polish. “Can I ask you something?” I question softly.
Joel pops a French fry he dropped on the counter into his mouth. “Anythin',” he utters.
He slides my favorite meal over to me and I just about see stars. It takes everything I have in me to focus on the task at hand and not swallow the burger whole.
“How long did it take you to stop feeling guilty about being happy? You know, after…” I trail off, not wanting to bring up Sarah’s passing so bluntly.
His eyebrows raise and he leans back as if he was physically impacted by my words. Shock etches over his tan face and I immediately pick up a couple of french fries, awkwardly stuffing my mouth full. “Two years and Ellie was the first person I let in. Then you came along shortly after,” he confesses.
I quickly chew my food before gulping harshly. “Oh,” I murmur.
“Oh?” Joel counters with a tilt of his head.
I nod, picking up another fry. “Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s just that I don’t think I have two years,” I think out loud.
My eyes scan the counter for Joel’s signature barbeque sauce, anxious to dip try it with the crispy potatoes. “Be patient, sugar,” he scolds.
Joel seemingly notices my attention is elsewhere and suddenly, a tiny bowl of the brown condiment is set in front of me. I blush and give him a silent thank you with a half smile. “Never been too good at that,” I admit.
Picking up the burger, I examine it to see which side is the best for the first bite. “Oh I know,” I hear Joel say before our eyes connect. He tilts his head with a mischievous smirk on his face that sends fire into my cheeks.
I shake my head at him before taking a huge bite of the juicy burger. The flavors dance on my taste buds reminding me of summer barbeques. “Mmmm, this is orgasmic,” I compliment my sexy chef.
He swallows his bite before asking, “Changed the seasoning. Taste alright?”
I nod, already ready to inhale the entire meal. “Joel, I didn’t know your burgers could get better. This is amazing,” I express.
“Well, if my toughest critic says it’s good, I’ll trust it,” he jokes and I chuckle.
Delicious food, passionate sex, and god's gift to humanity. I am the luckiest woman on earth.
The door flies open sending my eyes flying open and me jerking into Joel’s stomach. He groans before smoothing my curls with his palm. “It’s just Ellie,” he informs me she’s back from school.
I sigh, cuddling further into his body now that my anxiety has eased. “Hey,” his teenage daughter grunts when she comes into view.
Ellie begrudgingly kicks her shoes off and drops her backpack to the side. If her body could talk, it would scream. “Bad day at school?” I observe.
She nods, picking up Toph who’s sitting in her spot on the couch. “Mmhm,” she grunts out just like her dad as she takes a seat.
“Well,” I start, tossing her the remote. “I’ll let you pick,” I offer her the once-in-a-lifetime chance.
She snickers, “No, you won’t.” She gives me a pointed look and asks, “What are my options?”
I purse my lips. She’s right, I’m just shitty she knows me so well. “Grey’s or SVU,” I answer.
Ellie nods, extending the remote in her hand to click through the app. Joel begins practically petting me again. “Sugar, you sure? Don’t wanna see you cryin’ no more,” Joel growls lowly as if seeing me cry and him not being able to control it pissed him off.
I can understand if he needs control over something, but today isn’t that day. “Positive,” I reassure him.
He nods, before placing his hand under my head and gently lifting it. “Sorry, sugar,” he grunts as he stands.
He turns towards the L-shaped couch with his hand on his hip, accentuating his slender waist and I practically start drooling. “What do you two want for dinner?” he questions, looking back and forth between us.
I prop my head up in my hand and look at Ellie who looks particularly glum. She’s curled into the couch, holding Toph like the animal is her lifeline. I sigh, feeling the urge to punch someone for hurting my baby creep into my veins again. “El, you can pick. I already had my favorite for lunch,” I urge her.
“Grilled cheese and tomato soup,” she requests, not even looking up at her father.
Joel clears his throat and raises his eyebrow. Ellie looks up and her eyes dart back and forth between me and Joel. I raise my eyebrow at her because she should know what he’s looking for.
It only takes Elle a few seconds when she gets it. “Please?” she adds, looking at Joel for confirmation.
He nods and walks off to the kitchen, away from earshot. I look over at Ellie whos depressed body language hasn’t changed. My hand pats the couch next to me. “Why are you so far away? We both know this is the best TV-watching spot,” I invite her over.
When she comes over, she’s usually right next to me giving me all the school gossip. But maybe it’s because Joel is here. She slides over, sinking into the cushion. “What’s up, El? You look all…” my voice trails off and I mimic her body language.
She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Dina,” she answers.
“Okay, what about Dina?” I ask. Fuck, teenagers are hard. I wish they’d just tell you the problem the easy way.
Ellie’s head snaps in my direction. “She has a crush,” she snips.
My eyebrows raise and I tilt my head. “And I’m guessing by your body language and your fucking tone, you’re not her crush,” I lightly correct her.
She looks behind me and I assume she’s checking to see if Joel is still making us food. “No,” she states and her entire body shrivels. The rejection washes over her face and I want nothing more than to hug her.
My respect for her boundaries overrides my need for comfort. “Who does she have a crush on?” I counter.
Ellie gnaws on her lip for a moment like she’s reluctant to tell me. I understand, after all, Dina is working downstairs for me right now. “Jesse,” she tells me.
I rapidly blink, stunned by the news. “Jesse, delivery boy, Jesse?”
Ellie nods and my mouth forms an ‘o’ in response. I nod, understanding the gravity of this queer love triangle. Her shoulder hunch over even more and I decide it’s time to cheer her up with some words of encouragement.
“You know when I was a teenager, I had a crush on a girl who was dating our guy friend,” I divulge some of my past. Although she doesn’t know it involves Madi and Leo, she doesn’t need to know that to get the point.
“Really?” Ellie asks dumbfounded.
I answer tight-lipped with a nod, “Mmmhm.”
“What happened?”
“I let it play out between the two of them. If it’s meant to be, it’ll be,” I tell her.
Ellie’s face scrunches and she looks weary of taking my advice. “Look, you don’t know if Dina likes you back right?”
Ellie shakes her head no. “Right, so don’t mess with the universe. If you’re meant to be, you’ll be. You never know, maybe a girl will come into the high school and shock the shit out of you,” I theorize.
Ellie rolls her eyes and scoffs, “I doubt that.”
“Keep your options open, El. Until you put a ring on someone’s finger,” I advise her. She’s a hot commodity and I’m going to tell her that every time she needs reminding.
Joel’s head comes into view as he bends down to press a kiss on top of Ellie’s head. She lets out a blech noise, shrugging as far away from him as possible.
I laugh at the interaction while Joel simply shakes his head. “Dinner’s ready,” he alerts us.
When I peer over my shoulder, I see a delicious spread laid out. As always, Joel has beautifully plated 2 servings of grilled cheese and tomato soup. “Ooh, that looks good,” Ellie compliments her dad, setting Toph down and shooting up from the couch.
She darts into the breakfast nook, diving for the sandwich first. Her head tips back and she groans with satisfaction. “Good?” I slightly shout from the couch.
She nods her head, already moving on to try the soup. Joel chuckles and extends his hand to me. He knows I typically climb over the back of the couch and ever since my foot got caught on the couch that one time, he’s insistent on helping me over.
“Thank you,” I purr lowly, leaning in to press a quick kiss on his lips.
When I lick my lips, I taste savory remnants of tomato from him tasting the soup. I blink rapidly at him stunned, feeling a similar wave of emotion as earlier. My butterflies erupt in my chest and my heart skips a beat, stumbling over the current.
Yup, that's definitely love.
I love Joel Miller and everything that comes with him. I love his deep raspy morning voice and the way his nostrils flare when he can’t quite get a recipe right. I love his southern twang and the furrow in his brows when he’s angry.
The type of love I feel for him possesses every fiber in my body and takes over my brain. It wraps around my nervous system, acting on its own. It takes away all control I have and I don’t mind at all.
I adore Ellie and consider her to be one of my daughters. We’ve become so close these past few months and I can’t imagine a day without them in my routine. They’re the only two people I can stand around me all the time.
Joel clears his throat, bringing me back to the present. Reality smacks me like a truck and I blush. “You alright there, sugar?” Joel questions, voice laced with concern.
The corners of my mouth curve into a smile. “Yeah, I genuinely don’t know what just happened. I look at you and my mind goes blank. I think I'm going nuts,” I chuckle, slightly lying.
When I look at him, my eyes turn into hearts and pop out of my head with my tongue rolled out like the red carpet. When our eyes connect, he makes me feel like I’m the only person he’s ever been interested in romantically. Which can’t be possible considering Sarah came from somewhere.
We join Ellie and the kittens playing by her feet at the breakfast nook and a comfortable silence falls over the table. My mother always said you know the food is good when it’s silent, and we’re not much for dinner conversations around here.
Joel reaches forward and pours me a glass of wine before pouring himself some. “Guess you two are staying the night?” I ask, pointing out that whenever Joel drinks with me, they usually end up crashing.
Joel raises his eyebrows as if he’s daring me to contest, taking a sip of his wine. “If that’s okay with you?” he questions, probably trying to hide the fact that he’s not going to leave me alone tonight.
I pick up my spoon, dipping it into the soup. “It is, but I was thinking I’d come to yours tonight. El has school in the morning,” I attempt to compromise.
Ellie rolls her eyes and groans, “That sucks, my bed here is more comfortable.”
Joel begins prepping to eat and I’ve never seen someone be so meticulous about such a thing. He lays a cloth napkin into his nap and I raise my eyebrow, wondering what hell of a closet he dug those out of.
“It’s not your bed, Ellie. We don’t live here,” Joel corrects her and I shovel the soup in my mouth. It’s the perfect amount of savory and sweet.
Joel picks up the sandwich and takes a bite, nodding at the taste. While his mouth is full, I decide to insert a suggestion, “No, but El, next time you’re here, you should bring some clothes just in case. That way you don’t have to wear my clothes whenever you want to stay over.”
Ellie responds without skipping a beat, “Sounds good.”
I turn my attention back to my meal and my mind mentally drifts off. Christmas is soon so maybe I can tell him then. I don’t want to trauma bond with him right now and Christmas is a happy time. “I cleared a drawer out for you already,” Joel announces and I nearly choke on my sandwich.
“You what?” I blurt, my mind swirling with information.
In my peripheral, I see Ellie’s head going back and forth between me and Joel. “That too much? I’ll fill it back up. ‘s just some of my long sleeves,” he stammers.
“No!” I shout a bit too loudly, my body becoming hot when I realize the gravity of my tone. “I mean no, the drawer isn’t too much. I think it’d be too much if I moved in right now,” I add.
Joel nods, content with my answer, returning to his meal. “When you two move in together, can we move here?” Ellie asks, refusing to read the weight of awkwardness in the room.
Joel clears his throat and he straightens his posture a bit. Sensing his uncomfortability, I step in to talk for the both of us, “We haven’t talked about that yet, El. But when it comes to it, I’d be happy to have you here.”
“Yay!” Ellie celebrates and I take a bite of my grilled cheese. It has the perfect amount of pull and my eyes are probably sparkling with admiration for Joel at the moment.
I chew and swallow before adding, “We’ll have to move eventually though. We need a house that we’ve all picked.” I would never sign a dotted line on a new place without Ellie and Joel’s approval at this stage in our relationship. I think we’ll be together for a long time, so I want to be considerate.
Ellie perks up again, “Really?”
I nod, glancing at Joel who has completely stopped eating at this point. “Mmhm, by then you’ll be 18 and you can have this place,” I continue my conversation with Ellie, knowing he’ll holler at any time he feels I’m overstepping.
Joel’s jaw clenches as I fight a snort, assuming he’s started stewing. “The bakery?” she asks, voice laced with confusion.
I set my spoon down and give her a knowing look. “No, El. Do you like baking?” I quip.
She shrugs, dipping her sandwich into her bowl. “Eh, it’s not my calling,” she admits before taking a bite.
“Exactly. I was talking about the apartment. You can have it when we eventually move out,” I foretell, motioning between me and her father with my hand.
“Gin,” Joel pulls my attention to him. When I glance down, his hands are balled tight into a fist, one wrapped tightly around a stainless stem spoon.
If he squeezes any more, he’ll bend my cuterly. And it’s completely unnecessary. “Joel, I’m not letting your child pay $1,000 in rent when we’ll have at least one empty apartment that’s completely paid off. Try again,” I dare him to argue.
Joel sighs but his body stays wound up. “She’s gonna be spoiled.”
I whip my head in Ellie's direction. “I don’t think you’re spoiled, are you, El?”
“Not in the slightest,” Ellie says through a shit-eating grin.
My head whips back toward Joel who isn’t the slightest bit amused by our display. “See, she gets the apartment, we get a new house,” I pause waiting for his face to change. When it remains stone cold, I add my secret tactic by purring, “alone,” into his ear.
When I straighten my back, his eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his head. Anticipation flickers in his eyes and I know I’ve hooked him to the idea.
Joel’s body slowly starts to relax, but Ellie puts the cherry on top. “And everyone’s happy. Maybe Dina would move in with me. Holy shit this is gonna be awesome,” she practically bounces, and the wood beneath her creaks.
“Slow your roll, kiddo. You’ve still got 4 years,” Joel warns and I kick him lightly under the table for taking the excitement out of everything. I want her to keep a hopeful possibility of romance with Dina and he’s ruining it.
Ellie opens her mouth but I step in before the pair can start arguing. “Speaking of totally awesome, what do you want for Christmas, El?”
“I’m getting something for Christmas?” asks dumbfoundedly.
“Umm, yeah. Why wouldn’t you be?”
Ellie shrugs and a rain cloud of trauma drifts in over her head. I watch as the sorrow rain falls on top of her head and my heart drops to my ass. “I don’t know. Guess I’m just not used to it.”
I bite my lip, trying to keep it together for her. No child should have to go a December without a gift. I try my best to plaster on a fake smile to perk her up. “Well, I already have most of your gifts but I thought I’d ask you,” I tell her.
As if on command, the cloud of depressing memories is swapped for a blazing sun. “Really?” she gleans.
“Really. I love Christmas. It’s the busiest holiday for the bakery though.” I mentally curse the upcoming bustle, taking a sip of my wine.
Ellie chomps the last of her sandwich down, chewing slowly like she’s in deep thought. A sparkle comes over her eyes when it looks like she’s finally got it. “Well, some new paintbrush sets would be nice. I saw some watercolors on Instagram that are cool,” she hints.
“Send them to me,” I request.
“Okay,” she smiles, reaching into her back pocket to pull out her phone.
I smile at my hunky boyfriend, ready to point out the receipts of Ellie’s personality traits. “See, Joel. That is not a spoiled child. Madi would’ve asked for a Gucci bag and a stamp on her passport when we were younger.”
Ellie’s head perks up from her phone. “Wait, that’s an option?” she clarifies sarcastically.
“No,” Joel barks at the same time as I offer, “Ask Madi.”
Joel frowns in my direction and I quickly add, “We don’t have that type of money but Madi does and she’s always ready to spend it on someone. If you want something really expensive, she’s the one to ask.”
Joel's elbows come down on the table quite hard and he puts his head in his hands. “Gin,” he groans.
“What? Madi’s like her aunt or whatever now. She’s obligated by girl code to help her out,” I inform him, picking up my spoon. At this point, the utensil is useless. The food’s so good, I’m ready to drink the rest of the bowl down.
“Spoilin’ her ain’t helpin’,” he scolds me.
I blow the steaming liquid in front of my face. “No, but Ellie knows the value of money to know the difference between dinner at the estate versus dinner at the breakfast nook,” I say before taking a bite.
“Yeah, this sucks,” Ellie sarcastically grumbles, before picking up the soup and slurping the last bit of it.
I snicker, dipping the last of my sandwich into the soup. I never thought I could be this content after my parents passed but here I am, enjoying the anniversary of their death with my two favorite people.
I peer under the table at the sleeping cats and smile. I need to focus on the two people that I have a future with and a life with, not the two who are long gone. It’s what my mother would want for me, anyway. The girl that hooked me onto the man that I love. Fuck. I’ve got to find a better time to tell him.
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❝baby, i'm the sweetest.❞
read the rest of the series before this chapter or you’re getting spoilers.
A/N: i just got through midterms so sorry this chapter took so long. enjoy this chapter of interactions between the delicious trio. this also isn't edited so ignore any mistakes. enjoy ★ ˙ᵕ˙ liv
Chapter Summary: ellie gets into a fight at school and calls the sweetest baker for help.
Chapter Warnings: fighting, bruising, language, alcohol, slight age gap (F!MC and Joel are 6 years apart), threatening (brief), arguing (brief), symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Key Tags: chef! Joel, single! father Joel, no outbreak! Joel Miller, slow burn, dual-pov, fluff, flirting, friendship, eventually established relationship, eventual smut, original character, black!fem!MC, no y/n.
⋆ word count: 4.7k ⋆
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ series masterlist, joel masterlist ⋆ spotify playlist ˖ ݁ 𖥔.
For the next three weeks, I had fallen into a routine of seeing Joel every day at 10 p.m. when he’d come over to cook dinner and pick Ellie up from my house. Although I love baking, I detest cooking. Maybe it’s my sweet tooth, but I’m grateful that Joel has taken over that role in my life. If it weren’t for him I’d be eating takeout every day.
I’d lay awake every night and think about the details of his face. His salt and pepper facial hair, his rough hands, the burns on his forearms. My thoughts swirled with Joel as I tossed and turned in bed. I’d repeat the same words to myself over and over again until my face turned blue.
We’re just friends, Ginny. He doesn’t want you that way.
As the owner, I rarely take days off work from Daylight. But, on days like today, my body informs me that I’ve reached the end of my rope. Burnout.
The rain falls softly outside against the window and I moan at the feeling of the cool glass on my temple. My eyes dart down to the bustling city, hoping to have my mind on anything but this recipe for a while.
Suddenly my phone starts ringing, sending me jolting upright. My hands feel in the blankets for the slender device. Once I find it, I don’t check the caller ID before picking it up.
“Hello?” I say into the receiver.
I hear a voice on the other side clear their throat. “Hi, is this Ginny?” I hear a fake sweet voice come through the speaker.
My face screws when I try to pin the voice down to a person. “Ellie?” I question the other person on the line.
I hear a loud sigh, simulating the wind blowing in my ear. “Yeah. Thank fuck you answered,” she counts her blessings.
Taking the phone away from my screen, I look at the random numbers I’m familiar with. “Why are you calling me from the Principal’s office?” I ask her.
Ellie shuffles and I hear the office chair beneath her squeak. “About that…” she starts.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes. “Cut to the chase,” I rush her so I can get back to my day of relaxing.
I hear Ellie inhale a sharp draw of breath. “Joel is super busy because he has a fucking tasting event going on right now. This is gonna sound crazy so first you have to say no and then you have to say yes,” she rambles quickly.
My eyes roll as I stand from the comfort of my window seat. “Land the fucking plane, El,” I goan.
There’s a momentary pause where I think I’m going to reach through the phone and strangle Joel’s crotch child if she delays any longer. “I got in a fight and I need you to pretend to be my mom or something so you can pick me up from school,” she explains.
My jaw drops as soon as I register the words. “You what? Argh, Ellie,” I complain. I love the kid but I have boundaries, and this is not how I wanted to spend my day off.
“Please, Ginny? Please? Please? Please?” she begs and I shake my head.
My feet shuffle up the steps to my bedroom so I can change into more acceptable clothing. “Fine, but only because I don’t want to think about apple pie for a little while,” I conceded, trying to figure out how long it would take me to get to Jackson High.
My hands push on the bar into the office. Crinkling my nose at the LED lights above me, I walk up to the person at the desk. “Hi. I’m Imogen Miller. I’m here to pick up my daughter, Ellie Williams,” I introduce myself, lying a bit. I can’t fight the feeling that Joel’s last name sounds good with my first.
The woman in front of me raises an eyebrow at me. “Oh,” she says almost in disgust, looking me up and down. Fucking cunt. “Let me go get her from in-school suspension,” she grumbles, taking her leave.
Fuck you you fucking bitch. “Yeah, you do that,” I snip lowly at her.
I pace around the room, anxiously waiting to see the brunette girl walk through the door. Fuck, I will burn down this whole school if she has so much as a cut on her lip. “So you’re Ellie’s mom,” I hear a curious voice come from behind me.
When I turn around, an older lady is standing with her daughter. The kid can’t be much older than Ellie and she’s covered in stitches. “And you are?” I ask with attitude. After being in this school for 10 minutes I don’t want to interact with another person for the rest of the weekend.
She crosses her arms and purses her lips at me. “The mom of the girl your daughter attacked,” she accuses Ellie.
My first ball so tightly, I think I might draw blood. You can’t fight a mom in a school, Imogen. You’re an adult. “My daughter wouldn’t attack anyone,” I defend Ellie, though I know nothing about the fight.
I will always defend the ones I love in public, then scold them later about the situation. And that’s exactly how I plan to handle this situation.
“Are you kidding me? Look at her face?” The blonde woman hisses.
My eyes roam up and down her daughter’s body. The kid is as tall as me and Ellie only comes up to my chest. “I’m more so looking at her stature. You let a little girl do all that?” I taunt gesturing towards her face.
The blonde rolls her eyes. “It’s obvious we’re not going to get anywhere. Your kid is just as crazy as you,” she scoffs.
My blood boils and I can feel the steam coming from my ears. “Again, my kid. Who I will choose how to discipline. Now you have a nice day,” I finish her.
She sticks her nose up as high in the air as it’ll go, turning around.
Shaking my head, I decide it’s probably best to find a water fountain as soon as possible so I can cool down. Just as I come up for air from the short fountain, another person approaches me. “Hi, are you Ellie’s mom?” the tall black man asks.
I shift putting one hand on my hip. “Yes. What is it now?” I dig at him.
The man’s cheeks fill with a soft plum color. “Nothing, Mrs. Miller. I’m Mr. Henry, the freshman art teacher,” he introduces himself with a hand extended. “Nice to meet you,” he
My eyes widen and my skin boils with embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry. I met a rude parent. She still has my head frazzled. It’s nice to meet you too,” I politely shake his hand.
He pivots to stand next to me as I start walking down the hall. “Your daughter is quite the artist,” he compliments Ellie.
A smile covers my face thinking about how others see the brilliant girl. “Thank you,” I murmur.
“Must run in the family. What do you do?” He asks.
“Oh, I– Ellie’s not,” I babble, pausing to clear my throat. Get it together and play your role, Imogen. “I’m a baker,” I answer confidently.
Mr. Henry nods, pausing by the door of the office. “Wow. A baker for a mom and a chef for a dad. She must have the best school lunches,” he ponders.
I shrug, reaching for the door handle. “Something like that. Although Joel has a bias against too many sweet treats,” I joke, stepping into the office.
Mr. Henry smiles, holding the door open for me. “I could see that,” he murmurs.
Across the room, the opposite set of double doors open. Ellie strolls in behind the office assistant. “Here she is. You can go ahead and sign her out for me,” the assistant instructs me.
“It was nice meeting you,” Mr. Henry offers a smile before turning towards Joel’s daughter. “Try to stay out of trouble, Ellie,” he advises.
Ellie’s hand goes up and she gives a small wave. “Bye, Mr. Henry. See you Monday,” she bids him a goodbye.
Once my signature is on the paper, I don’t bother waiting for the ink to dry. I’m nearly ready to drag Ellie out of here. “Done. Let’s go, El,” I announce, slamming the pen down on the desk.
Ellie looks up at me, practically bouncing with excitement when I wrap my fingers around her arm, pulling her out of the office. As soon as we make it outside, I bring us to a screeching halt. “The fuck happened to your eye? Was it that cunt’s daughter? I will fuck both of them up, Ellie. I swear to god,” I rant, patting her body for any more signs of damage.
Ellie grabs my wrists to stop me. “Dude, calm down. I handled it. She had to get 15 stitches,” Ellie boasts proudly.
Instead of checking for bruises, my hands smooth out her school uniform. “That’s fuckin right. I ain't raise no bitch,” I grumble.
Ellie sighs while I fix her sweater. “Um, Ginny. You didn’t raise me at all,” she points out with a raised eyebrow.
A flush creeps onto my face as I realize my mistake. Ellie’s not my kid. “You’re right. Don’t tell Joel I said that,” I beg her to cut me some slack.
After all, it’s the least she can do for me. I did pick her up from school. “Actually, don’t tell Joel about any of this shit,” I clarify with fear that Joel will be angry with Ellie.
We begin to walk towards my tiny Volkswagen Bug. Ellie throws her head back in frustration. “Ugh, what am I gonna do? He’s going to notice my eye,” she groans.
I click the unlock button on the key. “What happened?” I ask.
Ellie’s head turns back towards the school. “That cunt, Bethany, wouldn’t leave me alone,” she says as though she’s waiting on Bethany to come after her.
I put my hand on the top of her head, turning her head back towards me. “And what did she say?” I ask.
Ellie shrugs and she stops to kick some dirt on the path. “I don’t know,” she lies, head hanging low.
Once we reach the car, I move my hands to her shoulders. “El, you do know,” I reiterate so she knows I’m serious.
Ellie nods, and her eyes dart towards the ground. “I know…. She wouldn’t stop telling me I was a pussy and I couldn't handle shit myself. I told her I didn't want to fight but she shoved me,” she explains.
My hand yanks on the handle of the passenger side. “That’s good enough for me. You were defending yourself from a bully. I’m sure your dad will see it the same way,” I say to Ellie as she slides into the seat.
Once we’re both in the car, I pull up the McDonalds app on my phone. “Now, it’s free fries Friday. Shall we?” I ask, starting the ignition.
I hear Ellie click her seatbelt before shifting towards me. “We shall,” she responds with a slight small.
I shift the gear into drive. “That’s fucking right. I knew you were my kid,” I cheer, pulling off onto the main road.
Ellie lays in my bed, cuddled up with a Grogu stuffie around 10 pm that night. The light from the TV in my room fills the room and the noise of medical machines beeping layers perfectly with Ellie’s snores. We haven’t left the bed since we got back from Jackson High. As soon as we got back, we immediately turned on Grey’s Anatomy and gorged on snacks.
Now hours later, my phone buzzes repeatedly and my head snaps over, hoping it won’t wake the traumatized child up. I quickly crawl to the end of the bed, swiping my phone up from the ground before lowering my feet to the floor. I quickly scurry across the room to my on-suite bathroom, sliding the door closed.
A picture of me and Joel on Halloween covers the screen and I smile a bit. He’s just here to pick up his daughter, Imogen. Not to see you.
My finger presses the green button, and I bring the phone up to my head. “Hey,” I say lowly.
“Sugar, I’m outside your back door,” Joel's husky voice dances on my ear drums.
My feet tip-toe across the tile to the window that faces the back. Pulling the curtain to the side, I look down at where Joel is standing with a wine bottle in his hand. He’s patiently waiting for me or Ellie to open the door. “Spare key is under the mat,” I direct him.
He shifts a bit and tucks the bottle under his arm. “You’re jokin',” he sighs.
My head shakes and then I realize, he can’t see me. “No. I don’t feel like coming down 3 flights of steps so, let yourself in,” I tell him.
He groans, before reaching down to lift the mat. He picks up the pink sparkly key, holding it in the air before shaking his head. “That’s not what I meant but I’ll be up in a second,” he grumbles, sticking the key into the door.
“Sounds good, we’re in my room,” I inform him before clicking the red button on the screen.
A minute or two passes and I turn to my side, checking to make sure Ellie’s still asleep. Her brows furrow in her sleep and I gnaw on my lip watching her struggle, even in her dreams.
Joel’s footsteps slowly make their way closer to my room and I see his shadowy figure slowly push the door open. He pokes his head in, surveying the room when his eyes land on mine. “Hi,” he greets me with a small smile.
Dear god, he’s going to give me a heart attack. He’s so fucking cute and I find myself lighting up when I see him. A smile creeps onto my face when Joel steps into the room. “Hi,” I whisper before looking back down at Ellie.
“How long's she been out?” I hear Joel ask.
“Only 30 minutes,” I huff out.
My eyes find Joel’s again as he sets the bottle of wine down on my mantel. “Damn it. She’s gonna be mad when I wake her,” he foretells.
My eyes roam up and down his body, savoring how good he looks in the moonlight. His hair has grown a bit longer since Halloween, curling up slightly at the ends. “Maybe she should stay tonight,” I suggest.
Joel shrugs his jacket off, hanging it on a wall hook. “Why?” he asks.
“Come. Sit,” I demand, patting the empty spot at the end of the bed.
Joel kicks his shoes off by his jacket before sauntering over. He lowers his body awkwardly onto the edge of the bed with clasped hands. My hand reaches out towards him and he takes it, allowing me to pull him closer to me.
The warmth of his hands has me reluctant to let go. “Don’t freak out,” I preface once he’s close enough.
His eyes observe my face, and I assume he’s looking for any sign of emotion. “Darlin’, whenever you start a sentence like that I lose my shit,”
“Well, don't,” I command him before my hands slowly move to Ellie’s hoodie. She’s lying on her side with her back facing the both of us, so Joel can’t see her bruised face. I grab the edge of the fabric, pulling it back just enough to reveal the purple circle on her face.
Joel sucks air in through his teeth and his upper body tenses. He leans over a bit more to get a better look at the black eye, dramatically dipping the bed. Ellie seemingly senses this and her body shifts to face us.
Neither I nor Joel take a breath, waiting to see if Ellie’s going to wake up. She lets out a small grunt and her eyes flutter open. “Joel?” she whispers, squinting up at him.
Joel pulls the blanket up, tucking her in. “It’s okay, baby girl. You can go back to sleep,” he reassures her.
“Mmmm okay,” Ellie sighs, snuggling into the pink silk.
I slide towards the end of the mattress, grab Joel's wrist, and pull him into the ensuite bathroom. As soon as the door is closed, I turn around to face him.
The first thing I notice is the prominent scowl on his face and his tense shoulders. “The hell happened to her face?” he grits.
My nose scrunches with disdain. “Don’t fucking snap at me, Joel,” I whisper yell at him.
He crosses the room, trapping me in between the counter and his body with nowhere to move. There’s nowhere for me to move and even if I wanted to, I’m frozen in place. “Fuck. I’m sorry, sugar,” he apologizes, putting his hands on my hips.
His fingers slightly slide under my shirt and I shiver before he lays his full palms on my waist. His eyes flutter closed and he leans closer to me, resting his forehead on mine.
He hums and I know this is just platonic. He doesn’t want you Imogen, he’s just trying to ground himself. “She called me to pick her up around 11. Said the girl was an antagonistic bully. She shoved Ellie and called her a pussy,” I ramble while Joel’s thumbs trace a comforting pattern onto my skin.
He sighs and his eyes stay closed. “Ginny,” he says lowly.
“and Ellie rightfully beat her ass. I’m just saying to go easy on her for the next few days. Bitches are mean and I would’ve fought at 14 too if that cunt stepped to me like that. Did you teach her how to fight? Because she wiped the floor with that girl,” I continue, getting irritated about the situation all over again.
Joel opens his eyes, leaning back a bit. “Ginny,” he repeats.
“Oh, the school probably called you already. If they say I cussed out a parent, they’re fucking liars,” my nostrils flare, but Joel’s no fool. He probably already knows the truth.
My eyes search Joel’s face for any type of reaction before I continue. His face is entirely blank, confusing me more. “Gin—“
“What Joel?” I annoyingly cut him off.
He clears his throat, tucking a stray curl behind my ear. “Thank you,” he says calmly.
I chuckle, shaking my head. “You don’t have to thank me,” I tell him, looking away.
Dejavu clouds my brain when Joel bends his knees, forcing me to look at him. “I do. Ellie’s not your responsibility and she shouldn’t have called you. She should’ve called me,” he reiterates and I try not to get lost in his chocolate irises.
My head nods and I lick my lips, still salty with chip remnants. “Yes but Joel, I would much rather her call me than not say anything at all. What if she got arrested or worse? At least she’s safe. A win is a fucking win,” I argue.
He nods, scratching his eyebrow. “She talk to you after?” he asks.
“Mmhm,” I answer.
“How was she?” he follows up.
I shift to lean on my other leg. “Quiet. Usually, the first thing she does when she sees me is regurgitate one of your dad jokes, but she’s barely said a word since we got back,” I note.
“Damn it,” Joel swears, pacing around the large bathroom. “Damn it,” he grits a little louder.
He runs his hands through his hair, slightly tugging at the roots. “What should I do?” he asks, voice laced with concern.
I gnaw on my lip faced once again with the fear of telling Joel how to parent. He stops pacing, waiting for me to answer. “Joel, I don’t know,” I sigh, quite frankly stressed the fuck out.
He shakes his head and lets out a client grunt. “You do. You’re just bitin' your tongue because you don’t want to step on my toes,” he speaks with his hands.
I step forward, grabbing his hands to try and soothe him. His calloused palms feel rough against my smooth moisturized ones. “Just be there for her and love her. Just keep loving her Joel,” I advise.
He adjusts our palms so his hands are on the outside. “Okay. Thank you, again,” he grunts.
The silence between us is comfortable, but Joel’s blinking is slow. “You look tired. Go lay down next to Ellie while I make my bed in the spare room,” I instruct him, pulling him towards the door.
His feet drag on the tile beneath us. “I can help you,” he offers.
I release one of his hands, sliding the door open. “You can help me by making me breakfast in the morning. I’m sleepy too,” I bargain, hoping he’ll make some bacon.
“Okay,” Joel whispers as we leave the bathroom. I part ways with him, heading down the hall to make up the extra bed for him. It only takes a few minutes and when I get back to my room, I catch a glimpse of Joel lying horizontally over my footboard.
As I come closer, I see both he and Ellie are asleep. He’s on top of the covers, having shed his jeans, holding Ellie’s feet through the duvet.
I shake my head, too tired to bother waking him. He grumbles as I slide into the warmth of the bed and I roll my eyes. I didn’t expect to share my bed with one human tonight, let alone two.
I pull the covers up, careful not to kick Joel in the face as I situate myself. Like magic, my eyes close and I’m asleep within minutes.
As soon as I can form a thought, I feel a chill hit my feet. I instantly swipe them around the sheets, searching for my electric blanket. My legs intertwine a warm item and I attempt to hide my face behind Ellie’s body.
A few moments pass and I hear snickers in the room. “Go back to sleep, sugar,” I hear the man’s voice say and I try my best to ignore it.
I groan, melting further into the warm body next to me. It’s far too early to be thinking about anything but more sleep. “Shut up, then,” I mumble.
This time the laugh is loud and deep, and it comes from underneath me. The realization that I’m curled into Joel right now sends panic up my ass.
My eyes open wide and I shoot up into a sitting position, scrambling back away from Joel. Joel reaches out to grab me but I underestimate how big my bed is when I’m suddenly tumbling backwards on the floor.
My body connects with the ground with a loud thud. “Oooo,” I hear Ellie groan.
Joel peers over the edge of the mattress. “You alright?” he checks, voice laced with concern.
My hand pushes his out of the way. “I’m fine. Just got spooked. Not used to people being here is all,” I partially lie.
The problem isn’t with them staying here, it’s my feelings for Joel. “Sorry we scared you darlin’,” Joel apologizes.
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I stand from the floor. “It’s okay. Shit. What time is it?” I ask the two sitting on top of my bed.
Ellie shovels another forkful of pancakes into her mouth. “11:30,” she mumbles through chewing.
My eyes go wide and I feel an oncoming spiral approaching. My chest gets tight as the panic sets in. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I swear, looking for my phone under the 5 layers of blankets. “The bakery opened 3 hours ago,” I tell them, patting the top of the covers to find my phone.
Joel grabs my wrist, ceasing any movement I’m making. “Relax. I checked with Grace. They’re doin' fine,” he reports with a small smile.
The gaze lingers between us for a moment too long causing a sizzling feeling to linger in the air. Joel looks down at where we connect, quickly pulling his hand back. “Ginny, come on. Joel made breakfast,” Ellie beams before popping a crispy slice of bacon in her mouth.
I rub my eyes, trying to get out any crust that might be in them. “You did?” I ask.
Joel nods and I admire his bedhead. “Least I could do, sugar,” he says nonchalantly.
Ellie stands from the bed, holding her empty plate in her hands. I follow after her, excited to soothe my rumbling stomach.
Once we’re in the kitchen, I’m hit with the realization that I hate cooking. There hasn’t been food in my house since last Thanksgiving. “Where did you get the bacon?” I ask Joel over my shoulder.
“Stopped by my place earlier,” Joel discloses.
My heart warms and a smile so big covers my face it hurts. “Joel, that’s so nice,” I remark.
Ellie darts past us, putting her dishes in the dishwasher. “I have to keep working on the wall. Thanks for breakfast, Joel,” she bids us goodbye, rushing across the room.
Joel hands me a plate and I accept it, loading it up with some fresh fruit first. “You’re welcome, kiddo,” Joel replies.
“See you in a bit, El,” I call to her.
“Look, I have to go. My brother Tommy is comin' round and he doesn't come round often,” Joel says, awkwardly tapping the counter with his pointer finger.
My jaw drops and I peer up at him with regret. “Oh fuck, Joel. You should’ve woke me up,” I whine.
Joel slowly shakes his head. “Mmm, didn’t want to. You look cute when you sleep,” he compliments.
My eyes widen and I look down at my plate, praying I don’t drop it. Joel fucking Miller just called me cute. “I’m sorry,” I apologize.
“Don’t apologize. I made the decision,” Joel’s morning voice sounds like a melody to my ears.
I nod, unsure of what to say. I pick up a piece of bacon, moaning at the perfect crispiness of the meat. “Well, enjoy breakfast. Thanks again for Ellie,” Joel pipes up.
“Of course. Bye, Joel,” I wave at him as he follows his daughter.
“Bye,” Joel calls over his shoulder with a smile.
My head throws back with a groan as I shuffle towards my couch. A faint knocking sound rasps on the wooden door and I pause my movements. I wait for another knock and when I don’t hear anything, I dust it out of my mind. I sit on the couch before I hear a knock again, this time louder. My feet carry me down the stairs to my back door and when I turn the corner, I see Joel’s side profile.
He looks stressed so I quickly yank the door open. “Did you forget your knife again?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry for botherin’ you,” he apologizes, putting one hand on the door frame.
He leans onto the side of the bakery and the wood groans beneath him. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
He clears his throat, seemingly uncomfortable. “Are you free tomorrow?” he asks.
My brows furrow and I pull my cardigan closed over my inevitably hard nipples. “Uh, I can be. Why?” I sputter.
He closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling a harsh breath. “Maybe I’m readin’ this wrong,” he sighs.
“Reading what wrong?” I ask.
Joel removes his hand from the wall, straightening his back. “Nevermind. I’ll see you later,” he mumbles.
My eyes dart left and right. Am I in the fucking twilight zone right now? “Umm okay,” I utter.
“Bye, sugar,” he says before taking a step back, putting what feels like a mile in between us.
Somehow, I feel a pang of disappointment in my stomach that I’ve missed something. “Bye,” I say to him, stepping back and shutting the door.
Ginny without a kiss - 2, Ginny with a kiss - 0
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❝i got cake and i know he want a slice.❞
read the rest of the series before this chapter or you’re getting spoilers.
A/N: we're back, barbies! i successfully survived midterms so now I can breathe!! i've been working on this all week and tomorrow i promise, i'll work on my requests. a lot of y'all have been in my comments and reposts with pitchforks because joel didn't kiss ginny yet and all i have to say is, same babes. i don't make the rules (yes i do) i just enforce them. this isn't edited so ignore any mistakes. please leave feedback in the comments ★ ˙ᵕ˙ liv
Chapter Summary: the sweetest baker enlists joel to help her volunteer at ellie's school.
Chapter Warnings: language, alcohol, slight age gap (F!MC and Joel are 6 years apart), racial descriptions (tommy says black girls are his type basically), symptoms of anxiety and depression, lmk if i forgot something.
Series Tags: chef! Joel, single! father Joel, no outbreak! Joel Miller, slow burn, dual-pov, fluff, flirting, friendship, eventually established relationship, eventual smut, original character, black!fem!MC, no y/n.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ series masterlist, joel masterlist ⋆ spotify playlist ˖ ݁ 𖥔.
“Taste this,” I demand Joel, shoving the spoon of icing towards his mouth.
Joel stops stacking the plastic plates, looking down at the utensil. “What did you say?” he asks with scrunched eyebrows.
I shake the fork impatiently. “Try,” I demand. He looks at me skeptically before leaning forward and taking a bite of the warm sugary liquid.
His mouth moves slowly as tastes. “Mmmhm, that’s good,” he compliments.
I want to put my hands up to hide the blush that’s inevitably covering my face right now. But I don’t want Joel to notice my reaction. “Thank you. I tweaked the recipe last week,” I say quickly, turning around so I’m not facing him.
“That’s why I’m here,” I hear Joel say.
Shaking my head, I pour the icing over the cakes. “No, you’re here because I didn’t want to be the only one working the booth today,” I defend myself.
“You would’ve called someone else,” Joel points out.
My shoulders rise with my eyebrows. “You’re probably right,” I conceded.
I enlisted Joel to do a booth with me instead of having two separate booths. Neither of us wanted to pull staff from the floor but still wanted to participate for Ellie’s sake. The two of us could handle it, with the help of some friends.
Joel and I mirror each other's movements in the kitchen. He makes sure the COVID-safe fall fest meals are ready and me adding something sweet into the mix. The hum of Taylor Swift plays in the background and I catch Joel slightly humming to ‘Welcome to New York.’ A snicker involuntary leaves my throat and I shove it down, hoping he didn’t pick up on it.
Once my job is done, I allow the dishes to clatter in the sink. The worst part about baking is the prep and the cleaning and I don’t have the energy for that right now.
“Hello?” Madeline’s voice rings through the stairwell.
“Don’t shoot us,” Leonardo’s voice follows shortly after.
A scoff leaves my lips and I near the island to watch Joel skillfully move around the kitchen. Every move has a crafted purpose and I can practically see the blood pulsating through his veins.
My breathing hitches and I shift in hopes of gaining composure. “I don’t even have a gun,” I pipe up.
Joel walks in front of me and motions behind me. We dance around for a little before he grunts in frustration and puts his hands on my waist. My eyes go wide as Joel easily lifts me onto the cold island before reaching behind me. “I do,” he murmurs, sliding the pan of bundt cakes toward his muscled torso.
His smirk has me wanting to strip my clothes off and give it to him in the nastiest way possible. Bad, ginny. He was just sick of you being in the way. “I don’t think that applies to this scenario, Joel,” I stress.
Joel moves from in between my legs and I turn my head to watch Leo strolling into the room confidently. “Hey, Miller,” he boasts.
“Hey,” I hear Joel respond next to me.
Maddie follows shortly behind him, wearing brown leather pants and high-heeled boots. She’s overdressed for a school event, but knowing her she’s probably looking for a husband. “Hi, Joel,” she purs, flashing him a smile.
My body turns to survey Joel’s reaction, but his poker face is stone-cold. “Nice to see you, Madeline,” he tries his hardest to force out through a smile.
It’s not that Joel doesn’t like Madeline, she’s just an acquired taste. Too much time around her can drive you crazy and sometimes when Joel picks Ellie up from the bakery, Madeline is sobbing her eyes out with a glass of wine in her hand.
“Didn’t know you were working the party, man,” Leo notes once he and Madeline cross the large open floor plan into the kitchen.
“Joel’s daughter, Ellie, goes to school with Dina,” I tell Leo, motioning towards Joel.
Madeline nods, sliding into the bar stool and putting her shiny silver purse on the counter. “That makes sense. What are you making?” she leans forward and asks Joel.
Joel rolls his shoulder forward, hunching over to plate the food. “Thanksgiving meals. Each meal comes with turkey and 3 sides. My brother Tommy’s bringing the rest,” he informs her.
Maddie's eyes light up and a smirk creeps onto her face. “I didn’t know you had a brother. Is he a chef, too?” she asks, voice laced with mischief.
Joel shrugs, not bothering to make eye contact with her. “Mostly just a pain in my ass but, yeah. He helps out at the Austin from time to time,” he grumbles.
“That's awesome! Is he cute?” Maddie asks excitedly.
“Maddie!” I hiss towards the blonde.
Joel’s phone buzzes on the counter next to us and he picks it up, turning the screen towards the group. “That would be him,” he says, shaking the device lightly.
Once Joel exits the room, I hit Maddie on the arm with the back of my palm. “What?! Not everyone has a Michelin-star chef whipping meals in their kitchen trying to get in your pants,” she frowns.
My eyes widen and I feel the sudden urge to yank my hair out. Now I know why Joel tugs on his roots. “Joel’s not– he’s not,” I stammer, pausing to collect my breath. “Joel’s not trying to get in my pants,” I sigh.
Maddie raises a brow, looking me up and down. “I beg to differ,” she counters.
Jumping down from the counter, I start to pick up where Joel left off with the meals. “He doesn’t have time to– Leo, don’t eat that,” I swat Leo’s hand, stopping him from picking up a bundt cake prematurely.
Leo winces, putting his hands up in defense before sliding into the bar stool. “So, how’s things been between you two?” he questions.
My brows furrow and I feel confusion wash over me. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean, you’ve been seeing each other for what, a month. Right?” he asks.
Maddie snickers next to me and I shake my head, resuming my careful placing of the assorted dessert flavors. “No, Leo. We literally haven’t even been on a date,” I point out.
Leo twists back and forth in the spinning chairs like a child who’s bored out of his mind. “That means nothing,” he scoffs.
My head tilts and I point the spatula at Leo. “To you, you whore. To me it means something. We’re just friends,” I inform him.
Leo purses his lips and his brows furrow. “Oh, fuck off,” he nips at me.
“What?” I ask him.
Leo rolls his eyes and I want to lean forward to snatch them out of his socket. “I still don’t know how you’re blind to him flirting,” he complains.
Maybe I am reading things wrong. Maybe Joel is interested. “If he flirts with me so much, why hasn’t he asked me out on a date or kissed me?” I ask the pair confused.
My head darts back and forth between my friends. “Maybe he just wants to take things slow,” Maddie tries to explain.
Leo clears his throat and my head whips to face his. “Yup. You said yourself he has a daughter,” he shrugs.
My eyes look at the clock to check and see if we’re doing good on time. Ellie and Dina will be bursting in at any moment. They don’t need to be privy to this conversation.
Once I have my confirmation, I refocus on the to-go containers in front of me. “Then why would he and his daughter sleep in my bed with me the other night?” I ask.
Maddie's jaw drops and her eyes widen. “You slept in the same bed together?!” She practically shrieks.
“Yeah, I told you,” I remind her.
Maddie shakes her head in disbelief. “No, you told me they stayed the night. Not that you were cuddled up with Joel Miller,” she hisses.
I shake my head and begin pleading my case, “I wasn't cuddled up with him. Ellie had a sit–”
Joel walks in and I shut myself up, my eyes immediately finding his. “Hey y’all, I want to introduce you to my brother, Tommy,” he bellows with a smile, stepping to the side.
A man a bit younger than Joel steps through my entryway, his hair slightly slicked back. He’s not my type, but he’s definitely Maddie’s. I stop placing the cakes in the to-go boxes, crossing the floor to meet them halfway. “Come on in. It’s nice to meet you,” I smile, putting my hand on his arm to pull him into the kitchen.
Tommy looks down at me and smiles. “Likewise. Heard a lot about you,” he confesses with warmth in his voice.
Fucking attractiveness and charm must run in the family. “Good things, I hope,” I suggest to Tommy, peering up at him.
Tommy nods, chuckling a bit. “Fantastic things, darlin’,” he assures me and I almost melt. It’s good to know that Joel and Ellie talk about me positively.
When we get to the kitchen, Maddies is already standing seemingly posing by the counter. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Madeline,” she flirts, extending her hand for him to shake.
I let go of his jacket, sliding into Maddie’s seat at the bar. “Tommy,” he shakes her hand before awkwardly turning toward me.
He raises his brow almost as if he’s asking how I know them silently. “Madeline and Leo are my friends from elementary school,” I quickly explain.
Tommy lets out an ah sound, nodding a bit before Leo clears his throat. “Nice to meet you, man,” Leo chimes.
“Likewise,” Tommy returns.
I clap my hands softly, clasping them together in front of my chest. “Now, Tommy. I hate to put you to work but can you help me carry this stuff out to the van?” I request.
Tommy smiles, pushing his hair back with his fingers. “Of course,” he agrees.
My body turns towards my best friends. “Maddie, can you and Leo grab the cookie tubs and put them in the other van?” I ask the pair.
“I can do it by myself,” Leo grumbles and I realize I’ve hurt his ego.
“I know you can. Maddie is just the brains of the operation,” I soothe him.
Maddie snickers and Leo rolls his eyes. “Fine, let’s go brain,” he says, putting his arm around her shoulder.
“Aye aye, Pinky,” Maddie salutes him as they stomp out of the room.
Tommy and I get to work grabbing the Fall Fest dinners and putting them into a large box. After they’re stacked on a dolly, we begin to load them one by one onto the first bakery van. A comfortable silence fills the van as we secure the last of the food. “So, are you single?” I ask Tommy, attempting to play matchmaker for Maddie.
Tommy wipes his hands on his pants and my nose scrunches. Later he’s going to wonder where that stain came from… men. “Depends on who’s asking,” he drawls suspiciously.
I scoff, hopping down out of the van. “You and Leo are the biggest whores I’ve ever met. It’s a simple question Tommy,” I rant before forcefully pushing another box towards him.
Tommy stops the box from moving so quickly across the large metal floor paneling. “Who’s asking, Ginny?” he directs.
My leg bounces and the ways Maddie will kill me for this runs through my brain. “Madeline,” I jabber, hoping he won't tell her.
Tommy looks up at me blinking rapidly. His mouth forms a large o and his brows furrow. “I’m single, but I’m not interested,” he declares.
I put my hands on my hips. “What do you mean you’re not interested? She’s literally perfect,” I say, pointing out the fact that she’s a blonde with blue eyes. She’s every man in America’s dream.
Tommy shrugs. “Hate to say it but we Millers have a type. She’s beautiful, just not my cup of tea if you catch my drift,” he explains resuming his work.
Ohhhh. I didn’t know the Millers prefer brown women. But then again, I’ve never actually been to Joel's house or seen a picture of Sarah, or his exes. How the fuck was I supposed to know? “100%” I confirm, pushing him another box. “Can I ask you something?” I ask.
“Depends-” Tommy starts and I cut him off.
“On what it is I know,” I snap, gnawing on my bottom lip. “How do I say this?” I think out loud.
Tommy's choleric disposition takes over his face, similar to Joel's when he’s had enough. “Whatever it is spit it out,” he growls lowly.
The sweat on my forehead collects and I feel like hot water is being poured onto my scalp. But I have to know how Joel feels about me, and Tommy would know. “Is Joel interested in me?” I blurt, feeling like I’ve finally submerged myself in a cool bath.
Tommy doesn’t say anything, he just purses his lips. The comfort I felt turns into pain when the water turns into ice. My body is frozen and I’m rendered speechless.
I want to flee. I need to get out of here. I shouldn’t have asked. “Oh my god,” I finally speak.
“Mmmhm,” Tommy hums, motioning for me to pass him another box so I can continue t
I rub my eyebrows as the pit in my stomach fills with anxiety. “Oh god, Tommy. What am I gonna do?” I ask, unable to stand anymore with the alley seemingly spinning.
I take a seat in the back of the truck, putting my head in my hands. “What do you want to do?” Tommy asks.
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you,” I groan towards the ground.
“Well the way I see it, lean into it or tell him so he doesn’t fall harder for ya,” he advises.
My brain runs through all the moments that I’ve had with Joel. How the first day we met he offered to cook for me. Every lingering touch, all the compliments he’s given me, when vulnerable he’s been with me. You don’t do that with someone who’s just a friend.
I peel my hands away from my face with realization. “Oh my gosh, he’s been sending so many signals. I’m going to throw up,” I groan.
Tommy steps out of the van, looking down at me. “Please don’t,” he pleads.
Suddenly, Joel comes around the corner at the most inappropriate time. These Millers just pop up anywhere and one day, they’re going to make me piss myself. They need a bell on their ankles. He hands the last boxes to Tommy and I pray to the gods above he didn’t overhear our conversation. “Don’t what?” Joel asks.
Fuck. My body tenses and I try to focus on containing the bile rising in my throat. “Ginny’s feelin’ dizzy. I’m almost finished here. She’s just gonna sit for a second,” he tells his brother.
Joel sits down on the metal butt of the truck next to me. He puts his hand in my lap, palm facing up towards me. I accept his offer, intertwining our fingers. “You need anything, sugar?” he asks sweetly, and I sigh.
I nod, running the back of his hands with my thumb. Attentive Joel is my favorite, but only because I’m an attention whore. “Can you get me a Coke from the fridge? Maybe I just need some caffeine,” I request.
Joel nods, trying to let go of my hand. Although I don’t want him to, I allow him to disconnect from me. “Of course, I’ll be right back,” he says, petting my head before turning around and disappearing behind the van.
A sigh of relief slips my lips and I try to refocus on calming my breathing. “So are you?” I hear Tommy say behind me.
I scoot back against the inside of the van walls, allowing the sides to cool me down. “Am I what?” I ask him with a raised brow.
“Are you single?” he reiterates.
A smirk creeps onto my lips. “Depends on who’s asking,” I taunt him.
“Joel,” Tommy cuts straight to the point, unlike me.
I giggle and I feel like the panic has finally subsided. “Yeah, I’m single,” I tell him.
Tommy finishes securing the last box and he turns around to face me. He puts his hands on his upper thigh, leaning on one leg. Jesus Christ, now that’s attractive. “And open? Ready?” he interrogates.
I nod, sliding out of the truck. “Tommy, I mean it. Make sure Joel knows how ready,” I say to him as he shuts the back doors.
Joel turns off the engine to the bakery van, having pulled into the spot at the school where vendors unload. He turns to me and flashes me a smile. “You alright?” he asks concerned.
After that conversation with Tommy, I needed more than just a Coke. I needed multiple shots of tequila. I forced Tommy and Maddie to join me, leaving Joel and Leo the only sober people to drink the trucks.
I nod, and my body bobs unstabily. “Yes,” I slur.
Joel shakes his head and his head falls back. He lets out a loud bellowing laugh, holding his stomach and I know he’s caught me in the lie. “Well, you are not talking to any parents tonight,” he chuckles, wiping his hands over his face.
I roll my eyes at him. “I wasn’t planning on it. Besides, all the moms are going to be all over hot Chef Miller,” I complain, hoping he doesn’t notice my jealousy.
He laughs again and it’s so beautiful, I want to make his laugh featuring Ellie’s giggle my alarm clock so I can wake up peacefully. Snap the fuck out of it, Imogen. “That’s not going to happen,” Joel says, opening his door.
I don’t get to respond before he shuts it, jogging over to my side to retrieve me. Joel opens the door and I’m reading to pounce. “Yes, the fuck it is,” I counter, feeling my emotional drunk alter ego arise.
Joel leans against the door frame, extending his hand to help me down. “Well good thing I don’t want any of them,” he claims.
I accept his hand, looking at him with hope in my eyes. “Really?” I ask.
Joel’s pupils dilate and he flashes me a smile. “Really,” he confirms, putting his hands on my hips.
He guides me until my back is pressed against the cool metal of the truck. His eyes flicker down to my lips before back up to me. If he’s going to do anything, he better do it now before someone sees us.
“Joel!” “Ginny!” I hear Ellie and Dina’s voices call from behind Joel. Fuck, scratch a bell bracelet. They need a fucking air horn.
Joel steps back, putting some space between us. “Hey kiddo,” he greets her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder.
Fucking cock blocking crotch demons. Let it go, Imogen. He was probably just trying to perform a wellness check on you. “Hey, Dina,” I say, teetering over to her in my heels.
“Thanks for coming,” I hear Ellie say to her dad.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I hear Joel say before the second van pulls up in the spot next to us.
Ellie gasps when she sees who’s in the passenger seat. She slams her hand on the glass window, effectively scaring Leo who’s on the other side. “Uncle Tommy!” she cheers before running over to the passenger side.
Joel leans over until his lips are touching my ear. “It’s always ‘Uncle Tommy, Uncle Tommy.’ But never ‘Dad’,” he complains in a whisper.
I sway a bit, unstable from the drinking. “Patience, young padawan,” I quote Star Wars to him.
Joel wraps his arms around my waist to stabilize me. Dina’s eyes look us up and down. She leans forward and sniffs the air in front of my face. “Ginny, are you drunk?” she asks loudly.
“Shhhhh. You’ll tell the whole fucking school,” I shush her, pulling her towards me so Leo can get out of the car.
Dina snickers, lacing her hand in mine. “Come on, we’re walking to the corner store for snacks before it starts,” she enlists me.
I nod excitedly, thinking about the possibility of having slushies and Hot funyons. “Count me in. Got any cash, Joel?” I ask the resourceful man. He’s bound to have something on him and I don’t feel like bringing my purse.
He nods, reaching into his back pocket to pull out a brown leather wallet. “Mmhm. Take Tommy with you, Sugar,” he hands me back two twenties and I gladly accept them, slipping them into Dina’s hands.
I wine, squirming a bit. “But Joel, Maddie will be with us. All girls with Tommy would just be weird,” I complain.
Joel brushes past me, heading towards the back of the trucks. “I don’t care, you’re both drunk. You need someone out there lookin’ after y’all,” he says over his shoulder.
Dina tugs my hands a couple of times, dancing in place. “Awwww,” she coos.
I cover my mouth to try to stop the giggle that slips out. He’s cute when he’s all protective and shit. “Hehe. Does he have a gun?” I ask, pulling Dina towards the back with me.
Joel grabs the handle, opening the heavy doors. “Yes,” he answers.
“Well okay, as long as he doesn’t bother us,” I conceded.
The 3 others from the van join us along with Ellie. Dina immediately ditches me, joining her now best friend. “Tommy, walk with them to the store,” Joel commands his brother.
“Why can’t Leo do it?” Tommy groans like a child.
Joel takes out the Dolly to start unloading the items. “Because Leo’s sober, and I need his help with this shit,” he states frustratedly.
Leo snickers, walking over to the truck to start unloading the boxes. “Ahem,” I clear my throat at Joel.
That fucker forgot one crucial part. “And stay ten paces behind them,” he adds.
Tommy puts his hands up. “Fine by me. I don’t wanna know you’re girly bullshit anyways,” he jeers.
Madeline pats him on the shoulders. “That’s what they all say, Tommy,” she argues.
Maddie links her arm with mine. “We’ll see you guys later,” I say to Joel before joining the teenagers for the walk down the block.
We walk through the parking lot for a bit before entering the school. Whenever I have a drop of liquor in me, I have the urge to Irish goodbye. I drag Maddie with me until were walking closer behind the girls. “We should really lose him,” I suggest.
Ellie looks over her shoulder at Tommy before nodding at Dina. “Okay, follow us,” Dina intrusts.
I nod as we move quickly through the hall taking a left and running into a room. We quickly shut the door behind us, and I peer out the window waiting for Tommy to walk by. When he does, he looks confused turning around in circles. I snicker and he seemingly hears. I quickly pulls my head away from the small plexiglass, hoping he didn’t notice me. “Did we lose him?” Ellie asks, looking over my shoulder.
Maddie takes matters into her own hands, stepping past me to check. “Coast is clear,” she informs us with a smile.
We break out into laughter and I feel like I’ve just pulled off the greatest inside job ever. “Let’s go,” Dina says, reaching for the door handle.
When we get to the store, I bolt toward the Slurpee machine. I grab the largest cup size, filling it with cherry and coke flavors. Once my drink is secured, I grab and fill two cups for Tommy and Joel. Ellie finds me, grabbing Joel's cup, and together we wander the store looking for the spicy chips.
I snatch three bags from the top shelf, figuring someone will stick their fingers in my bag and piss me off. It’s always good to have extras. “You know, I’d be okay if my dad dated someone like you,” Ellie pipes up randomly next to me.
I almost drop the Slurpee onto the tile floor beneath me. “Oh. Where is this coming from?” I ask her with a raised brow.
She grabs some chips before we walk towards the candy aisle to meet with Maddie and Dina. “He asked me if I was okay with him dating someone the other day,” she leaves me hanging on her every word.
“What’d you say?” I dig deeper.
She turns towards me with a smirk on her lips. “I said I wouldn’t care as long as it was you,” she admits.
The door to the corner store dings and Tommy is pushed in by the windy city. He looks pissed as fuck as he stomps over towards us. “The hell? Your dad is gonna kill me if he finds out–” he starts before Ellie cuts him by shoving a Slurpee in his hand.
“He’ll be fine. Let’s go, Uncle Tommy,” she motions towards the counter.
By the time we’re back in the gym, everything is set up. Joel graciously accepts the Slurpee, which turns his tongue blue, sending Ellie into a fit of giggles. Now hours later, I walk around the gym shopping at other booths with Madeline. I can’t deny that every time I look at Joel, our eyes link for a second too long. The simple interaction causes my breath to catch in my chest every time, and I try to ignore it.
After some time, we’re finished looking in the main gym, and we head into the hall to see the art auction pieces. Eligible students can create anything they want; a poem, a painting, or a sculpture to put up for action. The people who come to Fall Fest pledge money towards an art piece, and the money earned goes towards the student’s college tuition.
We stroll down the hall, mindlessly chatting about which pieces we want to bid on before Maddie points at a specific piece. “That’s fucking gorgeous,” she blusters.
A smile creeps on my face when I look closer at the signature. The familiar white calligraphy makes my heart sing. “It’s Ellie’s,” I boast about the talented young girl.
“Now I see why she’s painting the mural. This is some good shit. I’ve gotta commission her for some art,” Maddie rambles, seemingly entranced by the swirls of paint before her.
I nod, smiling at the though of Ellie becoming an artist of some kind. “She’d probably love that,” I tell her.
When I turn around, I see Joel walking through the door of the large hall. His eyes dart around till he finds me, b-lining for us. He stands in front of me awkwardly and when Maddie turns around, she jumps from being startled a bit. “Well, I’m gonna just go look…” she trails off, effectively excusing herself.
“Can we talk?” Joel asks, tilting his head towards a darker secluded hall.
“Yeah,” I say to him, pulling him into the area not lit by prison lighting.
Once we’re alone, I lean back against the wall. “What’s wrong?” I tilt my head attempting to cajole him into telling me.
“Nothin’ it’s just, I’ve bit my tongue 'cause I was unsure if–” he pauses and takes a deep breath. “I enjoy spendin’ time with you, Ginny. You’ve become important to me and you should know that I care about you deeply, sugar,” he confesses.
Oh, I wasn’t expecting that. This train has a one-way route towards the friend zone. “I care about you too Joel! And I like spending time with you too. And Ellie,” I sadly follow his lead.
Joel steps closer, putting his hand over my head and leaning forward. “I just really don’t wanna lose you,” he expresses, voice laced with sincerity.
My hands snake up around his waist and I grip the grey shirt he’s wearing. “How would you lose me, Joel?”
Joel's eyes stay fixed on mine and the brown in his eyes swirls like hot chocolate. “Sugar, I feel more than just a friendship level for ya. I like you,” he stresses.
“Oh, Joel. I’m not going anywhere. I wouldn’t,” I promise him, pulling him closer so our upper bodies are pressed towards each other.
He sighs, looking down at the ground between us. “I know, but telling you that means changing our relationship. I don’t want to scare you and I didn’t know–” he starts before I tap his side, cutting him off.
“Joel, I like you too. Like… a lot,” I confirm.
His head quickly rises and he sighs, “Oh.”
I’m starting to feel embarrassed by the whole situation. “Dear, god. I-I don’t know why my brain goes blank when I look at you. I think I’m going crazy. I feel like a high schooler,” I falter.
Joel chuckles, leaning forward to press his forehead onto mine. I clear my throat, impatient tugging at his side. “So, I think this is the part where you’re supposed to kiss me,” I murmur.
Joel takes his forehead off of mine, searching my face seemingly wary of crossing the line. All he’s going to find is my stupid shit-eating grin. “Are you sure?” Joel asks for consent and I think it’s the most sexy thing I’ve ever heard leave a man's lips.
“Positive,” I nod, radiating with excitement.
“Okay,” he sighs and a wolfish grin creeps onto his face.
His hands slide up to my neck, pulling me closer. “Okay,” I murmur.
He grabs the back of my neck, crashing his lips onto mine. We both smile into the kiss and I force a giggle back down my throat. My lips open slightly, granting him entrance. His warm tongue dances with mine and I marvel at the taste of whiskey and apple on his lips. It’s filled with so much passion, that I feel like my heart is about to explode.
His fingers thread into my hair, massing my scalp as he kisses me. I moan into his mouth and my clit pulsates with a hunger for him. He disconnects our lips, leaving us both panting because of the other. “Was that as good for you as it was for me?” I murmur against his lips.
“Probably better,” Joel grunts before pulling back and motioning towards the hard member protruding through his jeans.
“Joel, oh my gosh,” I giggle, stepping forward and wrapping my arms around his torso. “Can I have one more?” I practically salivate, batting my lashes at him.
Joel nods, snaking his hand back around my neck. His thumb strokes my jaw and I lean into him. “Mmmhm,” he hums, dipping his head back down.
His lips connect with mine and my tongue continues to explore his map. I want to stay in this moment forever. It feels like a dream and I don’t want to wake up. His lips are surprisingly soft and I kick myself for not doing this months ago.
The smacking of our lips is apparent when we pull back this time and I know my face is covered in pink flush. “Damn it. I was supposed to do this right. Date first, then kiss,” he curses himself.
I giggle, standing on my tip-toes to press a kiss against his cheek. “Joel, I asked you to kiss me. Besides, we’ve known each other for months,” I acknowledge our past.
Joel nods, but he doesn’t seem ready to let it go. “You’re right, but still. Can I take you out on a date?” he pleads.
I’m practically bouncing on my toes, my mind racing with thoughts of my future with Joel. Relax Ginny, he just asked you out on one date. “Yes,” I blurt.
Joel chuckles at my excitement, taking a step back and lacing his hand with mine. “When are you free next?” he turns to me and asks as we walk back to the gym.
“Thursday, but it’s Thanksgiving. After that, on Friday. Speaking of, do you guys have any plans for the holiday?” I inquire.
Joel shakes his head, confirming my suspicions. “No, just me, Tommy, and Ellie eating at an undecided time,” he informs me.
“How about you join me at Maddie’s house? Her family always orders catering for Thanksgiving,” I offer, hoping he’ll grace me with his presence sooner than a week from now. I get we’re both busy food industry owners, which I love, I just don’t think I can wait that long to be in a romantic setting with him.
“I know. They’ve put in an order at The Austin for the past two years,” Joel dictates and I nod. Just my luck, the man’s food I’ve been shoveling into my mouth for the past 6 holidays is also the man I’m trying to date.
I poke his muscular bicep with my free hand. “Even better, you can personally deliver it and tell everyone who doesn’t like it that they’re wrong. Just like you did on my birthday,” I joke with him and he puts his hands on his chest, seemingly hurt by my statement.
“I’m sorry about that, darlin’. Really I am,” Joel apologizes.
I tug on his hand, trying to grab his attention and snap him out of a spiral. “I’m fucking with you, Joel. Please come. I’m sure Ellie would love it,” I practically beg him.
Joel pauses, looking up to think about it. He’s probably worried about how unpredictable his two family members would be in this setting. “Okay, we’ll come,” he concedes, finally.
“Good. I’ll text you the details. You’re standing straighter,” I beam, pointing out his posture change.
Joel chuckles, rubbing his thumb across mine soothingly. “I feel like a house just lifted off my back. I’ve had my eyes on you since June 30th,” he confesses.
I smirk, leaning closer to him. “So Maddie was right, you were practically drolling on my shoulder,” I taunt.
“She said that?” he asks with furrowed brows.
I nod, attempting not to give him too much information. “Mmmhm,” I hum.
He tugs on my hand, stopping me in my tracks before I reach the entryway. “I’m not going to deny that, Sugar,” he looks me up and down like I’m a meal he wants to ravish.
The thought of us fucking turns me on even more, and I have to remind myself we’re in a high school. “Okay, one last kiss before we’re back in the gym?” I use my siren eyes against him, peering up at him through my lashes.
“I like how you think,” Joel mumbles, sliding his free hand up and around the front of my neck. He gently pulls me forward, connecting our lips one final time. A wave of relief hits me, and I moan as his tongue dances with mine in the filthiest way. Me and Joel Miller are going out on a date.
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❝one thing about me, i aint taking no shit❞
read the rest of the read the rest of the series before this chapter or you’re getting spoilers.
A/N: hi. did y'all hear 1989 tv? it was really good. also, i blacked out (happy halloween) so, sorry this chapter is late. i really have nothing to say other than this isn’t edited so ignore any mistakes. please leave feedback in the comments ★ ˙ᵕ˙ liv
Chapter Summary: joel and the sweetest baker have their first fight. the sweetest baker rethinks if she wants to be with joel.
Chapter Warnings: angst, language, alcohol, slight age gap (F!MC and Joel are 6 years apart), symptoms of anxiety and depression, lmk if i forgot something.
Series Tags: chef! Joel, single! father Joel, no outbreak! Joel Miller, slow burn, dual-pov, fluff, flirting, friendship, eventually established relationship, eventual smut, original character, black!fem!MC, no y/n.
⋆ word count: 4.6k⋆
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ series masterlist, joel masterlist ⋆ spotify playlist ˖ ݁ 𖥔.
Time seemingly taunts me on Tuesday afternoon with a slow bakery and 3 employees. The fretting about the pie recipe paid off and the bakery made it into the Chicago Tribune for best fall treats. We sold out of pickup orders the next day but no one wants to get their pies this early in the week.
My mind drifts watching Ellie’s slow and methodical paint strokes. I wonder what her biological parents did to have that much talent weaved through her DNA. Dina sits on the floor next to her, reading her an astrology book. The two girls appear sickly in love and I smile, standing from the chair.
The iPad next to me dings and I'm reminded that it’s 11:15 a.m., time to start baking birthday treats for Mayor Thomas’ annual fall bash. I mentally run through the list in my head. They asked for chocolate cupcakes with pumpkins on them. It’s simple, Imogen.
I feel like I’m losing it as I walk back towards the kitchen. When I enter the room, two of my employees are sitting, aimlessly tapping away on their phones. Furying climbs up my shoulders when I realize I’m paying them to play video games on their phones back here. “Look alive, ladies,” I snip, walking over to the cupcake storage.
They both both their phones away, apologizing profusely. “It’s fine. You can make up for it by helping me ice two hundred cupcakes,” I say nonchalantly and I hear nothing but groans in return.
I shuffle around the kitchen grabbing all the necessary tools before popping my headphones in. If I have to ice two hundred cupcakes, I’m damn sure going to be doing it while listening to “1989 (Taylor’s Version).”
I click my favorite vault track and smile when the music fills my head. My body uses muscle memory as I buzz around, filling the piping bags with icing. Since the cupcakes are already done and cooled, it takes little to no effort for me to decorate them. Nearly half of the album plays and my pan is done in half of the girls' time. But I created the recipe so of course it is.
Carefully, I place the cupcakes aside until they’re ready for pickup. My heels click on the pink tile beneath me as I walk back to the front to check on the girls. When I round the corner, I hear Chloe talking on the phone. Her shoulders are hunched over; her body language for ‘I’m dealing with a shitty customer.”
I creep behind her as best as possible but she hears the sound of my shoes against the floor, slowly turning around. She tries her hardest to manage the situation herself but after seeing her struggle, I extend my hand for the phone. She puts it in my palm, giving me a silent thank you before returning to her task.
“I’m sorry, this is Imogen Scott. I’m the owner. Can you explain the situation again?” I speak into the receiver.
“Hi Imogen, it’s Rebecca. Mayor Thomas’ assistant,” she speaks frantically.
I nod, pacing slightly around the bakery. “Oh hi, I just finished the cupcakes. You’re still scheduled for the 2 p.m. pickup, right?” I confirm with her.
She kisses her teeth and lets out a small sigh. “About that,” she starts.
I shake my head, panic starting to cause a tightening in my chest. “No. No, no, no. Don’t do this to me, Rebecca,” I plead.
“I’m sorry. The Thomas’ just tested positive for COVID,” she elaborates and I sigh.
I can’t be mad because someone is sick but what are we supposed to do with two hundred cupcakes? “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I express sympathy for the family.
“Mayor Thomas sends his sincere apologies and promises to pay for the full order,” Rebecca apologizes for her boss.
Oh, he doesn’t have a choice. I understand emergencies but I’m definitely charging every last penny to the government. “That’s great but I still have… you know what, it’s not your problem. Have a good afternoon,” I say clicking the end button on the phone.
When I turn around, Chloe is still standing nearby, awaiting the tea. “So I have some good news and some bad news,” I tell her.
“Good news first,” she requests.
I press my eyes closed, trying to push away the oncoming migraine from this fiasco. “Situation is handled and they’re still paying for the full order,” I tell her, and she high-fives me for charging them my worth.
Chloe smiles and nods. “Awesome! Now the bad,” she waves for me to continue with her hand.
“We have to figure out how to distribute two hundred perishable cupcakes before closing,” I quickly spit out.
Dina seemingly overhears my phone call and stands while Chloe greets the customers who’ve just entered the shop. When Dina is in front of me, she shrugs. “That’s easy, every customer gets a free cupcake with purchase,” she says nonchalantly.
“That’s great for 50 of them. It’s so slow and I don’t want to count on that,” I explain, gesturing towards the bakery.
Chloe hums in response before taking care of the customers who’ve just approached the counter. “What can I get y’all today?” she asks gleefully.
“Two dozen cookies. Half sugar, half chocolate chip,” the woman speaks for the group.
“Wow, sounds like you’re going to a big party,” I say over Chloe’s shoulder, handing her some boxes.
A younger and quite frankly attractive man steps up in front of me. “Office meeting,” he flirts with a wink.
On any other day, I might flirt back with him out of boredom. But the more I look at his smirk, the more I find it disgusting. Joel’s smirk is suggestive like he already knows what I want. I’m starving to wake up next to Joel and I’d rather die than wake up to the man in front of me.
My vision blurs as I allow Chloe to get them checked out and out of the store with their box of free cupcakes. After she wipes the glass counter top she pauses, turning around to face me. “What about Dina’s book club at the school?”
I think back to my drunk shenanigans and the fact that I almost laid hands on a parent while in that building. “I’m not going back into that place until Christmas time,” I complain before turning my head towards Dina.
“Either you take them or have James bring them to you when he clocks in,” I urge her to pass on the directions and Dina mutters agreeing responses.
I step in front of the counter, surveying what supplies we have left. We’re almost sold out, so the cupcakes will come to good use. “I’m going to drop some off at the Austin. Maybe their employees can take them home,” I tell her, rotating on my heels to face Ellie and Dina. “Girls, no–”
“Drinking, drugs, sex. Got it,” Ellie groans the mantra I’ve drilled into her head from her spot on the floor.
Chloe’s face lights up with a smile after processing the information. “That’s a good idea,” she praises.
“Thanks! Text me if you need anything. I shouldn’t be long,” I tell her, grabbing a large pink box to put the sweet treats in.
My body is filled with a giddy feeling thinking about the possibility of seeing him for the first time since Friday. And honestly, I’ve never been more excited to see someone.
The elevator dings to let me know that I’m on the floor of the Austin. I step off confidently carrying the boxes of treats up to the host stand. “Welcome to the Austin. I’m assuming you have a reservation,” he welcomes me into the restaurant.
The deja vu from my birthday hits me like a truck and I shake my head. “Oh, no. I’m here to see Chef Miller,” I reply.
The host looks at the boxes in my hands and then back up at me. “Do you have an appointment?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
“No, but,” I start before I’m cut off.
“I’m sorry. I can’t let you back there. If you want to schedule an appointment with him, maybe he’d be willing to try your,” he pauses to look skeptically through the clear cover on top of the pink box. “Cupcakes,” he says disappointingly.
Yeah, well no fucking cupcakes for you asshole. “He’s already tried my cupcakes, his daughter–” I cut myself off to take a deep breath and compose myself. “Look, Joel’s my boyfriend,” I try the last-ditch effort. Hopefully, Joel will hear baker and girlfriend then have a fucking clue.
The host’s eyes widen and he clears his throat. “Oh, let me go check with him then,” he dismisses himself.
Another host quickly replaces him, keeping the front of house running smoothly. I step out of the way, allowing customers to file in from the cool autumn afternoon. I pace around the lobby, watching my heels click on the marble floor. The toes of my shoes kiss the window and as I peer down below, I can see the masses of people crossing the clogged city streets.
That annoying throat-clearing noise sounds out again from behind me. I turn around to show this prick that he has my full attention. I’ve been nothing but fucking nice to you, asshole. “I’m sorry. Chef Miller is predisposed and every employee I passed said he doesn't have a girlfriend,” he tilts his head and patronizes me.
“Fuck this, I’ll go talk to him myself,” I grunt, stepping past him and quickly walking towards where I suspect the kitchen is.
“Ma’am,” I hear the host call over my shoulder as I make my way through the restaurant. My eyes quickly scan the room, finding the pattern of employees flowing in and out of the kitchen. I beeline confidently towards their path. “Ma’am you can’t go back there,” I hear the host repeat and he confirms I’m correct.
I shrug, fed up with the bullshit. Joel might be mad but I can explain later. “I can and I will,” I call over my shoulder.
As I’m walking down the hall, I hear crashing in the kitchen. The employee doesn’t let up with harassing me to the door. I pause for a second contemplating if this is the right thing to do.
Fuck it. You’re already here, Ginny.
I push through the double doors and the first thing I see is a white wall. But the crashing of dishes and the screaming doesn’t pause. “Y’all need to take your head out of your fuckin’ asses and start realizing what the hell is goin’ on here,” he barks, as I round the corner.
The chefs and employees are wide-eyed, some of them in tears. Nobody speaks, just accepting the abuse from the older irate man. “Most chefs I’d know would be fuckin’ embarrassed,” he reaches in front of a chef with a plate sitting on the table in front of her. He snatches it, crashing it down on the metal surface. It hits the tabletop and the porcelain and food scatter on the grey tile beneath it.
The noise causes me to jump ten feet in the air, nearly dropping the box of cupcakes. “Do you think we’re gonna get a fuckin star with this shit,” he growls.
Joel doesn’t stop there, picking up the next closest plate of food he’s determined uneatable and chucking it across the room. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,” I watch as Joel points in each of their faces, spitting the degrading words.
The feeling of sympathy for the chefs weighs heavy on my heart. None of them can be older than 25. They’re babies and he just crushed their dreams of becoming chefs in 20 seconds flat.
Joel’s back rises and falls rapidly, as though he’s on the tip of a spiral. “Get your shit together!” he swears, removing the towel from his waist and slamming it down on the counter.
My feet quickly and quietly start moving backward in hopes of avoiding Joel. Tears well into my eyes and I trip on my own feet. I don’t know Joel. Not this one. This can’t be the same Joel who offered to whip me up something special on my birthday. Now I realize that whoever made my food on that day probably got fired.
Up until this point he’s been nothing but sweet to me. He’s shown me nothing but his good side. The first time he got angry with me, I checked him. But that’s not an option for his employees.
When Joel rounds the corner, his eyes meet mine and he stops in his tracks. His breathing hitches before he inhales a sharp breath. “Ginny,“ he utters lowly almost as if he’s afraid. It’s a complete 180 from his previous behavior.
I set the stack of pink boxes on the shelf next to me. “Here’s the cupcakes I brought for you, because I care about you, Joel. I care for you and Ellie and I wanted to see you. Come to find out you’re treating your employees like the shit on your shoe. That’s fucked up Joel,” I fume.
Joel purses his lips before stepping forward, attempting to box me in like her always. “You weren’t–”
“No,” I hiss, sidestepping out of the way. The simple yet quick action causes the tears to spill over my brim. “Ellie’s at the fucking bakery right now. Does she know? Is that why she didn’t want to work for you? I treat my employees with kindness and you rule with fear. The fuck are you doing, Joel?” I croak out, attempting to hold on to the last sliver of composure I have left.
You just don’t treat people like that. I don’t give a fuck about a star or a stripe. “I don’t know,” he sighs, rubbing his eyebrows with frustration.
I shift, leaning on my opposite leg with my hand on my hip. “You don’t know what?” I articulate sharply.
Joel throws his hands in the air. “Fuck, sugar. I don’t know anything. I was just trying to teach them how I was taught,” he argues.
My eyes flicker back and forth between Joel’s brown ones. They’re full of regret and my shoulders soften. “You don’t have to be the abusive boss your head chef was to you, Joel,” I explain.
Joel’s eyes dart towards the ground like an ashamed puppy. “Here, take these.” I place my hand gently on the top of the box. “Maybe share them with your staff. It’s a step in the right direction at least,” I advise, walking out of the kitchen.
I don’t turn around when I hear Joel following me and calling my name. I don’t speak to him when he picks up Ellie that night. And I’m unsure if I want to anymore.
Thanksgiving Day
Tommy clears his throat before he shovels a spoonful of pie into his mouth. “Mmmm,” he moans. “This is good, Ginny,” he compliments happily.
The rest of the table chatters in agreement. After being stuffed full of Joel’s meal, they needed a warm dessert before bed. The fluffy layers of the crust flake apart perfectly in my mouth; taste buds bursting with cinnamon and apple. Fuck, this is going to knock me smooth out after Joel’s meal.
I can feel him staring at me. He wants me to look at him, but I can’t. If I look at him, we have to have a conversation. I don’t want to do that in front of our friends and family. This entire Thanksgiving has been awkward as fuck between us. But god, I miss his lips, his smirk, his tan fingers interlocked with mine.
Maddie and Leo made themselves useful and created a burier in between me and Joel. But Ellie and Tommy are seemingly oblivious to our little spat, which I’m grateful for.
“No wonder this made it into the Chicago Tribune. This is divine, Ginny,” Mrs. Crown compliments, pointing towards the dessert with her fork.
I smile, bashfully looking down at my palms locked in my hands. “Thank you, Mrs. Crown,” I murmur.
Someone drops their utensil and it clatters against their dish. “You made it into the Tribune?” I hear Joel ask in shock.
I glance up at him for the first time tonight, studying his bug-eyed disposition. “Uh, yeah. Forgot to tell you,” I come up with a quick excuse.
Joel gave my face a once over before sitting back in his seat. “Hmph,” he grunts and I can tell he’s not buying the diversion.
Ellie had celebrated with me all week, having already been at the bakery. But when I found out, I told her I wanted to tell Joel on my own time. We just never got to that after the Monday fiasco.
Ellie slyly leans over and whispers to the disgruntled man, “Joel, say congrats.”
Joel’s head slowly rises until he’s peering at me. He’s pissed and I can practically see the steam exiting through his pores; his blood is boiling. “Congrats,” he mutters.
I take the cloth napkin out of my lap, leaving it on the table before standing. “I’ll be right back,” I mumble, swiftly walking out of the dining room. Before I fucking cry again in front of Joel.
I feel like the small hall is swallowing me whole. My head is pounding, and the tears begin flowing down my cheeks. I never want someone I care about to be mad at me.
Bursting through the kitchen door, I stare at the staff wide-eyed. They whisper to each other before exiting the large space, leaving me alone to calm down.
Once they’re gone, I crouch on the ground with my back against the cold wall. And only then do I allow myself to let go, crying until I feel like I’m suffocating on my own tears. My chest tightens, and I hear ringing in my ears, unsure of what just happened.
I’m brought out of my thoughts when I hear the kitchen door creek open.
“Ginny?” I hear Ellie’s voice ring through the room.
I hear her footsteps walking over to me and I quickly brush the tear stains away, praying she doesn’t notice my tomato face. I reach my hand out to grab the counter next to me and use it to support me as I stand, grabbing a bowl to use as a cover.
I plaster on a smile, putting the bowl in front of me. “What’s up, El?” I ask.
Her head tilts and she walks closer to me. “Is something going on between you and Joel? You’re both being weird as fuck with each other,” she speculates. Fuck. Ellie’s no idiot and I know that.
My nostrils flare and my vision blurs. I’ve always been great under pressure, but talking to Ellie feels heavier than a rude customer. “Well, you’re not wrong…” I trail off, abandoning the bowl. “Uh, we just had a heated conversation,” I confess.
Ellie’s brows knit and the curiosity seeps through her pores. She’s not gonna let it go. “About what?” she asks.
“Nothing, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll all blow over tomorrow,” I reassure her, shifting awkwardly to lean on my other leg.
Ellie’s lips part and I know she’s about to argue when Joel appears through the doorway. “Ellie, time to get going,” he waves her towards him.
The air in the room is thick and I feel like I’m drowning in the swimming pool that is the tension between Joel and me. Ellie apparently senses the same feeling I do, and she scrunches her nose. “Okay…” Ellie elongates the word, tip-toeing out of the kitchen.
I avoid Joel’s gaze to no avail when I see his tattered brown boots before me. He inhales a sharp breath, causing my hair to scatter around my forehead. “Sugar,” he rasps, and his fingers touch mine.
My eyes latch with his and I have to remind myself not to melt in the amber waves. “Joel,” I mutter.
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, his shaking fingers toying with mine.
I gnaw on my lip, leaning back a little so there’s space between us. “I know, Joel,” I reiterate.
He curses under his breath, abandoning his attempt to slyly hold my hand. “What can I do to make it up to you?” he asks.
And here we are again, back at the beginning. What doesn’t he get? The people working for you are human. “Treat your employees with respect,” I instruct.
“I’m trying that. We’ve had a good day, let me show you,” Joel stresses.
I shake my head, slowly blinking from exhaustion. “You can’t do it in one day,” I remind him.
Joel takes a step forward to box me in. “I know,” he sighs.
I reach my hand up and caress the skin on his face with the back of my hand. He leans into my touch, humming softly. “You have to change the culture of your business,” I gently remind him.
Joel nods, and his hand slides up my waist. “I will. It’s just, I need you, sugar,” he emphasizes with so much need, I’m eager to forgive him. “This week has been shit without you. Every time Ellie mentions you, I feel like hell,” he continues.
We’re adults; There’s no reason for us to go back and forth. “Okay,” I conceded.
Joel’s face twists and he jerks his head back slightly. “Okay?” he asks, his voice thick with confusion.
I nod, feeling my jaw relax from previously being clenched. “I don’t wanna fight with you. I missed you a lot,” I admit.
Joel’s mouth curves into a small smile. “I missed you too,” he returns the sentiment. “Those pretty eyes, your perfume,” he says, putting his hand under my chin. “Missed these,” he finishes, dragging his thumb over my bottom lip.
“How about you kiss me since you’ve missed me so much?” I offer, with a raised brow.
His face lights up with excitement. “I can?” he asks for consent.
I nod, returning the small smile. “Please,” I stand on my tiptoes, giving him better access.
Joel leans down, connecting his lips with mine. My eyes flutter closed and I give into him, allowing him to take full control of the kiss. He hungrily dips his tongue into my mouth, seemingly desperate for more. I oblige him, craving the same thing. Maybe more than I can get right now.
His tongue swirls with mine and I moan quietly. Joel lightly squeezes my neck, tilting my head back. The feeling of the counter-pressing into my back gives the sharp pain to the pleasure I so often crave. My hands find their way into Joel’s head, tugging on his root. He groans into my mouth, deepening the kiss.
Suddenly, I hear a throat being cleared behind me. Joel takes a step back, parting our physical connection like the Red Sea. When I turn around, I’m embarrassed to find Tommy, Maddie, and Leo standing near the entryway. “Finally, you two made up,” Tommy throws his arms up dramatically.
Maddie dramatically rolls her eyes, walking over towards me. “I honestly couldn’t take it anymore,” she complains.
Leo awkwardly scratches the back of his neck. He’d been a dick to Joel all evening and the guilt is written all over his face. “Sorry for harassing you tonight, man,” he apologizes to Joel.
Joel shrugs and I’m grateful that he understands Leo’s protectiveness over me. “I get it, you care about her. Too much to lose,” he empathizes.
Ellie comes around the corner with her burgundy coat zipped up. The fabric makes a swishing sound as she walks, reminding me of my own childhood. “I’m ready,” she announces, a hat secured on top of her head.
We all file out of the kitchen, bidding the Miller’s a goodbye before I realize, I should probably go home too. Grabbing my coat out of the closet, I struggle to get it on successfully. Joel comes up behind me, gabbing the shoulders of the jacket to assist me. “You want a ride home?” he asks lowly.
Maddie picked me up so I assumed I’d leave with the first person out. Happy that it’s The Millers, I nod. “Yeah, I’ll ride with you guys,” I graciously accept his offer.
The four of us file out of the house on the chilly evening. The physical manifestation of my breath floats in front of me with each rise of my chest. Maddie and Leo wave goodbye from the front door before shutting it once we’re on the curb.
Joel unlocks the black truck, opening the back for Ellie to climb in. “Tommy, in the back,” he barks at his brother.
I put my hand on Joel’s bicep, attempting not to fantasize about him picking me up and fucking me against a wall. “No, Joel. Tommy’s legs are longer than mine in the truck,” I let Tommy take the front seat.
“You sure, sugar?” Joel confirms.
I smile, stepping up on the side rail. “Positive, sweetness,” I respond, sliding in next to Ellie.
Joel raises his brows, before nodding. “Mmm, sweetness. I like that,” he says.
“I bet you do,” I murmur back before he shuts the door.
After dropping Tommy off at his place, Joel invited me over to his for a glass of wine. I’d never seen his place, so I gleefully took him up on the offer.
My eyes scan the room and I notice the dust covering the top of the blinds, as if they’ve never been moved. There’s barely anything on the walls that accompanies the neutral paint, aside from a few art pieces I assume are Ellie’s.
The kitchen is humongous with an identical double oven like mine. There are pictures on the speckled kitchen counter and when I look closer I see Ellie, Tommy, and a little girl I’ve never seen before. My head tilts as I take in her brown curls and freckled face. She looks like she could be related to me. “Woah,” I breathe out, sliding into the seat next to me.
It’s uncanny, and it’s making me queasy. “Fuck, right? Joel doesn’t see it,” Ellie startles me a bit, adding her two cents.
“Ellie,” Joel scolds his daughter.
I turn toward Ellie, thinking of the best way to explain this to a kid. “I don’t think he wants to compare his daughter to anyone, El,” I start. But, I wonder if that’s why he was so drawn to me in the first place.
Ellie plops down onto the worn leather couch in the living room. “No shit. I don’t like it when people compare things to my mom’s,” she says over her shoulder before clicking the TV on.
“Ellie,” Joel grunts before opening the fridge.
Fed up with his repetitiveness, I groan at the two. “Joel, she’s expressing herself in the way she can in an appropriate space. Let her swear now so she can learn codeswitching,” I rant, pausing to take a deep breath.
My attention turns toward Ellie who is now fully invested in me ripping her father a new asshole. “Now school? No fucking way, kid. I don’t need to come up there and cuss someone out again,” I warn her.
Ellie puts up her hands in defense. “Sounds like a sweet fucking deal to me,” she smiles maniacally.
Joel shakes his head, popping the reusable cork out of a wine bottle. “Hell, you two are going to be the death of me,” he predicts before pouring a glass for me.
Ironically, Joel and Ellie are the only daily sparks of life I have left.
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rest of the series.
#joel x reader#joel fanfic#joel miller#joel miller x oc#joel miller x reader#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller x you#joel miller fic#joel miller angst#joel miller smut#joel smut#joel fluff#joel fic#joel x ellie#joel and ellie#joel x black! fmc#x black reader#x black oc#black fanfic#black fanfic writer#black female writers#x oc#x reader#x fem oc#black tumblr#ellie williams x platonic!reader#joel miller series#joel tlou#sweetest pie barbieliv#tlou fic
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❝sweetest pie❞ faceclaims
─⋆ a/n: Joel and Ellie are obvious but here are some I've been imagining.
Imogen Scott
Greta Onieogou
Madeline Crown
Sabrina Carpenter because I saw her for Lollapalooza
Leonardo Torres
Taylor Zakhar Perez because Red, White, and Royal Blue
#joel miller#joel fanfic#joel fic#joel x ellie#joel and ellie#joel the last of us#joel fluff#joel x black! fmc#joel miller x oc#joel smut#joel miller fluff#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller smut#barbieliv#joel miller imagine#joel miller fic#joel miller father figure#sabrina carpenter#sabrina carpenter gifs#taylor zakhar perez#taylor zakhar perez gifs#red white and royal blue
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❝joel miller masterlist❞
Albums
╰ ★ ❝sweetest pie❞
summary: Gordon Ramsey had nothing on Joel Miller. The owner and head chef of a Michelin Star-worthy restaurant couldn't have predicted anyone would give him a bad review. But, the baker who hated his food saw a perfect opportunity to bring him down a notch.
key tags: Pre-outbreak!Joel Miller x Fem!Reader, Chef!Joel x Black! Original Character, Chef Joel x Black FMC
Singles
╰ ★ nothing yet, coming soon.
#joel miller#joel tlou#the last of us#joel fanfic#joel smut#joel x reader#joel x y/n#joel x you#joel fluff#joel fic#joel miller x reader#joel miller x you#joel miller x oc#joel miller x y/n#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller smut#tlou hbo#pedro pascal x reader#pedro pascal fanfic#pedroispunk#pedro is daddy#pedro pascal#joel miller fluff#joel and ellie#joel the last of us#chef joel x baker#joel x ellie#joel miller x black!reader#joel x black! fmc#joel x f!reader
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FABLE OF THE DOG : Masterlist
Pairing: Joel Miller x FMC
Summary: The sky is a glass mirror of blackened silver streaks, and you’re almost positive that all the stars in the Milky Way are visible from right here at this very spot in the heart of Wyoming. The sight makes your broken heart feel full and falsely mended.
And then there is Joel Miller, too.
-OR-
the cowboy/heiress AU
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: Cowboy/Heiress AU; Slowburn(ish); Original Characters; Fluff and Angst; Alcohol & Drug Use, Discussions of Grief; Death of a Parent; Parental Neglect; Daddy Issues to the Max; Older Man/Younger Woman; Jealousy; Explicit Sexual Content; Size Difference; Past Teenage Crush; Unrequited Pinning; Yearning and Longing Galore; Possessive Behavior; Boss’s Daughter; Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy!; Complicated Family Relationships; A Home is a Place but ALSO a Person!; Found Family; X Fell First/Y Fell Harder
Read on AO3
The Two Headed Calf
Spice, Sugar Not so Sweet
Little Freak
Figs
Edit 1
💋 Updates Blog
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Masterlist:
Updates Blog : Follow and turn on notifications for new writing!
All works are 18+
Fear of God : Joel Miller x OFC
Summary : What was monstrousness? What was it, but a certainty that there existed within you multitudes of desires, needs, guilts, impulses – humanity? At the end of the world, when the dust has finally settled, Joel grapples with what it is to take hold of your own monstrosity – your own humanity – and live with it. And what it is to bear that truth in the palm of your hand held towards the person you love, offer it to them, and have it be accepted for what it was. Courage, above all else, it is courage that is necessary to go on.
-OR-
Big bad Joel Miller falls in love and doesn't know how to deal with it.
Someone's Wife in the Boat of Someone's Husband : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: What do you do when you meet a woman, have a child, get married, and then find the love of your life?
-OR-
A Joel infidelity AU
The Cassandra Complex : Ongoing : Din Djarin x F!Reader
Summary: Enter: A man who is not so much a man, but an effigy, a wound of steel and armor and Creed – secrecy and masked faces, above all else.
Enter: A girl who is not a girl, but a creature helmed in darkness and spit out unto the galaxy broken and unmoored.
Enter: the creation of myth.
-OR-
the mandalorian / dark sider au
Fable of the Dog : Ongoing : Joel Miller x FMC
Summary: The sky is a glass mirror of blackened silver streaks, and you’re almost positive that all the stars in the Milky Way are visible from right here at this very spot in the heart of Wyoming. The sight makes your broken heart feel full and falsely mended.
And then there is Joel Miller, too.
-OR-
the cowboy/heiress AU
Pink : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: The story of a son who won’t love you, and his father, who will.
-OR-
the father-in-law AU
Honey, Stomach, Mine : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Existence is a needful thing. Choice is fickle, nature inescapable. Run to the end of the world, Joel, all those things will still find you.
She'll still come for you.
-OR-
the A/B/O outbreak AU
One Shots :
bétteln : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary : You really want Joel to give you a baby. You don’t really care what he has to say about it.
biéten : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary : Now that you have his baby in you, you’re Joel’s most special girl.
Kiss, Kiss, Kill, Kill! : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Joel is a long haul truck driver. One day he finds a pretty girl in a diner and decides he’d like to keep her.
Murder and sex ensue!
Greener Memories of Better Men : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Best Story of the Day! South Austin elementary school started a “Breakfast With Dads” program but many dads couldn’t make it and several students didn’t have father figures. The school posted fliers at the local YMCA’s for 50 volunteer fathers… 600 different people from all backgrounds showed up…
Joel Miller is one of them.
-OR-
Sarah’s gone and Joel wants to feel close to her again. He reconnects with someone he used to know along the way.
I urge you: Bite me : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Sometimes love hurts like a split nail, and sometimes we like it like that.
Sometimes Joel hurts like a split nail, you like him like that too.
With Mercy for the Disturbed : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: He's a father and then he isn't, and then he's in the perfect place with the perfect girl, and he's done so many bad things that terrify the both of them. And then, finally, he's saved and there are dancing bears and doors newly opened, and everyone's a little mad at the end of it all.
-OR-
the Hannibal/Alice in Wonderland AU wherein Joel loses his mind
Evermore : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: The Thanksgiving AU
Meet Me in the New Year : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: The New Year’s Eve AU
10:05 PM : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Joel is exhausted, you’re there to make him feel better.
How to Endure Ardor : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: Joel teaches you how to love him.
Notes On a Virtuous Affair : Joel Miller x F!Reader
Summary: One would think this road ends in something virtuous—a greenness so dazzling it hurt the eyes—and not the sort of man waiting in his far out removed solitude.
At the Restaurant : Din Djarin x F!Reader
Summary: It’s three days til Christmas, and you’ve never known want like this, and his eyes are glossy with emotion and everything he won’t ever let himself tell you or anyone else, and you so badly want to tell him that it’s only that it’s hard to be casual when your favorite bra lives in his dresser, and also that you’re in love with him.
-OR-
the Christmas situationship AU
Forfeiting My Mystique : Ezra x F!Reader
Summary: You're a girl made of golden gossamer, a work of art come to life, and Ezra, well, he's dedicated his life to collecting beautiful things.
-OR-
An Ezra Art Collector AU
Austerlitz : Simon (Ghost) Riley x F!Reader
Summary: The day he left for his hideous war, the dream changed. The house was still there, but now neither of us lived in it anymore. And when he finally came back, if that’s what you could even call it, he was nothing but a Ghost.
-OR-
Ghost goes away, comes back in a maybe dream.
#pedro pascal#joel miller#the last of us#joel tlou#pedro pascal characters#joel x reader#joel miller/you#joel miller fic#joel miller imagine#joel miller x reader#joel miller smut#joel miller x you#pedro pascal fanfiction#ezra prospect fanfiction#ezra prospect x reader#the last of us fanfiction#tlou fic#joel miller fanfiction#din djarin x you#din djarin#din djarin fanfiction#the mandalorian fanfiction#star wars fanfiction#call of duty fanfic#ghost x reader#simon ghost riley fanfiction#simon ghost riley#simon riley x reader
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Hi Kit I was just wondering why for all of your stories you tag them as character x reader / character x you when in lavender and beskar doll and now in yearling, they aren't actually reader inserts? They have names or descriptions or face claims so they are OCs. As someone that has been reading fic for a long time, it can be disappointing when you go into a story based on tags and then the tags are misleading because writers are trying to get around the use of the "OC" tag so that more people will read their story.
Hi Bestie!
So I tag them that way for a few reasons! The big one is because I write it in the you format with the intention of people inserting themselves into the story.
I do try to keep descriptions to a minimum (which I know that I don’t do the BEST job at? It’s an adjustment from writing books which is where I’m approaching fic writing from but I’m trying to get better at it.) I usually limit it to the FMC is shorter than the Pedro character (this is because he tends to play physically imposing characters so I imagine him as being the tallest person in just about every room) and then amount of hair (which is generally variable from person to person, assuming they’re able to grow hair.) I did include things like “blushed” early on and I’m making a more conscious effort to avoid that kind of language because it didn’t occur to me before! That’s on white privilege, yo! They have FCs for me but I don’t share them unless people ask as that’s who I picture when writing, not how I describe the character. I don’t think I could write a character without knowing how they looked, it’s just not how I create characters! But they’re intended to be however you picture them. For example, my mom is reading Lavender but isn’t on Tumblr and she asked how I pictured Doc. She was shocked when I showed her the FC as it didn’t line up with what she had in her head at all and I think that’s great!
When it comes to physical description and inclusivity in the reader insert space, it’s an interesting dynamic to me. I minimize descriptions (or feel like I do anyway!) but it’s still all predicated on reader being able to walk, to use both hands, to be able to see and hear. Reader inserts are kind of inherently ableist - it would be pretty impossible to write an insert that accounted for every disability! - we just tend to be more ready to draw the line at other aspects of physical description. (Probably because it impacts more people!)
As far as names go, the only character who has a published name is Doll (and I only included that because she abandoned that name when she went into hiding, all her other names she adopted and has no attachment to, like reader would in her position) and even then, you hear her real name I think 3 times? Otherwise, they all have nicknames and nicknames only. I do have names for them in my head (just part of how I develop my characters, I know everything about them before I write them) but they’re not included in the story. I haven’t ever shared them on Tumblr, either. Doc goes by Dr. Miller after she marries Joel but that’s because she took his name so it would be the same for reader. Otherwise, she goes by Kid, Doc, Teach, Baby, Love, Sweetheart, etc. Doll is usually Doll, Cyare, Mesh’la, an adopted name, or Sister. In Yearling, Bambi is just what Joel calls her because she reminds him of a frightened, wild deer. That’s definitely not her actual name and I think that’s mentioned in chapter one.
I will admit, I give my characters very vibrant backstories which might nudge them more into OC territory and I do include the x OC tag on AO3 because of that. I’m definitely not trying to mislead anyone to get more readers! I’ll be honest, I figured like a dozen people tops would ever read anything I wrote, it didn’t even really cross my mind. I wrote it for me because it was fun and felt good to do, everything else has just been a bonus.
All that being said, I am sorry I misled you! That wasn’t my intention and I hope you don’t feel like you invested too much time or emotional energy only to be let down.
I appreciate you reaching out and I hope this was helpful! Love you!
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