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writefightandflightclub · 1 year

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The light is blinding (Joel Miller x fem!reader)

Summary: When he's hurt, you offer to wash Joel's hair for him. Turns out there may be other forms of comfort you can offer him too.

Genres: character study; angst (sorta); hurt/comfort; SMUT. Joel's POV.

Author's note: I watched TLOU ep 1 last night, then made bad choices today in favour of hyperfocussing on this 8k Joel fic. I mean, this was sort of inevitable tbf. We've been handed a sad, scruffy, brown-eyed, dusty apocalypse DILF, and there was no chance of me not adopting him as a blorbo. Anyway, this is my first attempt at Joel, I wrote this in a trance so god knows what it says and I haven't spent any time on editing/correcting. Can't promise it's any good, but if you want to wash his hair as much as I do (lol) maybe you'll enjoy it, who knows. P.s. I promise it does get super smutty. You just have to survive the extensive internal monologue and many rounds of haircare first. (I'm just like that :P)

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. Minors interacting will be blocked. EXPLICIT SMUT (unprotected p in v sex, totally ignoring practicalities like birth control in the apocalypse bc we can); canon-typical themes such as grief, apocalypse, infection/disease, trauma, injury. SPOILERS - if you know the core plot points or have seen episode one you'll be okay. Joel's POV.

Word count: 8.2k

GIF by @joelmjller (Pls lemme know if you'd like me to remove this!)

How did he get here, exactly? All stretched out on his back, your careful fingers twining through his wetted, grizzled hair?

Well, he supposes he got here because a smuggling deal had gone sideways - like usual.

He got here, because he’s getting too old for this shit, and because someone precisely young enough for this shit had garnered the advantage just long enough to land a gun barrel blow to his head. A blow which then made room for all manner of nonsense, of course; like Joel being teep kicked into a desk. The desk - owing to its sturdy construction and deliciously planed hardwood - had withstood the blow. Joel’s body, however -far less sturdily constructed - had reacted far less favourably to that particular transaction.

Most of all though, cracked ribs and busted shoulder aside, Joel is here, because of you. He is here, because you offered to wash his hair.

Joel isn’t a clean man, by any stretch. Who could be anymore, with the way things are? In truth, he’s forgotten what it’s like not to be coated with a layer of dirt and smoke and ash. But apparently, even in the midst of an apocalypse, the dried-in, caked-up, days old blood matting his hair had left something to be desired.

He’d agreed to your offer only because - honestly - it was starting to itch. Because this time he truly couldn’t do it himself, the searing pain in his ribs seeing to that. Making sure he couldn’t quite raise his arm high enough or dip his head low enough to get the job done.

He’d agreed to your offer, in part, because he thought you would be quick. And - he now realises - you are being anything but.

You have him stretched out on his back, on a repurposed dentist chair. The worn, dark green leather creaks beneath him as he adjusts, positioning himself just so. You’ve installed a makeshift neck rest and basin to the rear of the chair, and Joel’s head is currently dipped backwards into the warm water, your fingers diligently combing through the strands to release the debris and muck.

You use a cup to cascade the water from the basin over his head, cupping it with the other hand to guard his face and neck from any rogue rivulets. Then, you ease your fingertips over his scalp, massaging in circles, being extra careful -he notes- around his recently closed wound.

Yes, to Joel’s dismay, you are taking your time. You are being so thorough and so attentive, in fact, that Joel even wonders if you will end up washing the gray right out of his hair - Joel’d never been wholly convinced that his newly-developed colouring was ever anything more than a thick, impenetrable layer of dirt and ash.

You hum thoughtfully, a sweet, innocuous note as you assess your next step. “I’m switching out the water, okay?”

That doesn’t sound okay at all. That doesn’t sound done. And Joel had thought that this would be quick. Had needed this to be quick.

Before he can grunt an answer though, you are winding a towel around his hair, presumably attempting to save the drips from reaching the floor as you swap out one basin for another, setting down the one now filled with muddy brown water, and bending carefully to lift a second steaming basin of fresh water on to your makeshift plinth.

He needs to stop this here. “That’ll do,” he says gruffly, motioning to sit up -carefully- despite the pain in his ribs.

“Lie back,” you insist, the sound of your voice muffled through the towel wound over his ears but soothing nevertheless. “I’ve only managed to rinse out the blood and bird’s nests so far. We still need to wash and condition.”

Joel would protest more vigorously -means to, in fact- but the soft smile on your face dissolves him like sugar before he can do so.

He frowns though, for good measure. “Fine. Just make it quick.”

“The quicker you relax Joel,” you sing song, “the faster I’ll let you out of my seat. Deal?”

He grunts. He doesn’t relax. He can’t relax.

“And,” you add playfully, as if reading his mind. “If you can’t relax, you’d better learn fast to fake it.”

Joel sighs deeply in frustration as he lies back, and you usher him gently into position. However, the slow, deep breath he expels does genuinely serve to sink him more deeply into the chair. Does force him to release just a jot of the tension snaking through his taut muscles.

You hum again, softly, in satisfaction, and he thinks he can even hear a smile on your mouth as you foam his hair with some sweet-smelling product, your fingers resuming their careful ministrations across his scalp.

It’s nice, he notes, unwilling as he is to admit it. Your touch could knock him out better than a barrel full of oxy and a bottle of the good stuff. He almost lets himself enjoy it - an attractive woman like you working your hands into his hair, massaging with your thumbs, your fingers, your palms. Applying pressure and sensation, even into the tight muscles in his neck. Loosening some of the tension at his temples. He even consciously relaxes his forehead, feeling his frown soften. Closing his eyes instead of fixing his stare on the broken picture rail he’s sure he could fix with a few tools and a little bit of effort.

He breathes more deeply as he closes his eyes, focussing in on the sensation of your touch. On the scents flooding his nose. Floral and sweet and fruity. It smells of you, and he breathes it deeply. He tries not to think about how his pillow will smell of you later.

It shouldn’t be possible for you to smell as good as you do, Joel ponders. You even have him wondering whether perhaps he’s not the only game in town. Whether there’s another smuggler dealing in contraband which hasn’t even occurred to him to barter with. Perfumes and oils and essences. He doubts that you would be mixed up in smuggling, but he doesn’t doubt that you are capable of far more than surface-level assessments might suggest.

After all, people only survive this long with one of two things: brutality, or blind luck - and no-one is that lucky that they’ve never had to dabble in the former. Everyone who has made it this far is only out for themselves.

Therefore, who knows what secrets you hide behind your sweet facade, Joel contemplates. Though, if he did have to believe there was anyone selfless left on god’s blighted earth? If he had to believe in someone, Joel would bet cards on it being you.

He sucks in another long, slow breath, and the scent of you envelops him all over again. For a moment, he finds himself wanting to believe in you. But it’s never too long before he recalls he gave up a long time ago on believing in anything. Anything except his wits and his fists and his gun, at least.

“That’s it Joel,” you praise as he relaxes - uncoils - just a shade, and the smooth tone of your voice slides right under his skin. The thought that you want to make him feel good makes him tingle. Makes him forget - almost - that he doesn’t deserve that.

Meanwhile, your deft fingers and thumbs continue to work nimbly into him, sliding over the contours and bones and ridges of his skull. Applying a warm, steady pressure against the muscles at the nape of his neck. Circling your thumb against a spot that sends a buzzing, suffusing warmth skittering down the length of his spine. Blooming through him - and, it has been so long. So long since Joel felt anything resembling pleasure that when he feels this warm honey trail down his back, an involuntary moan overspills his parted lips.

Shit. There's no chance that you didn't hear that.

The moan reverberates in the tight, quiet room. Lingers far longer than it sounds out for. Lingers, despite how quickly Joel cuts it short - clamping his mouth shut and hoping he can pass it off as a grunt or some expulsion of pain from shifting in his chair.

Your fingers halt, still tangled in his hair. “D-Do you want me to stop?” There is a heat in your tone, Joel thinks, the vowels and consonants warm and full like the pop and crackle of a hearth.

It's new. And it occurs to him, ever so suddenly, that maybe you are enjoying this too? Touching him?

After all, he’s not insisting upon it. Didn’t suggest it. Has not attempted to prolong it. And yet, you continue, working diligently. Soothing him. Freely offering your praise and those little, contented hums - those small, burgeoning sounds which make his fingertips ache to have your skin beneath them, so that he can keep on making your lips overspill with those sweet sounds of satisfaction.

Indeed, Joel’s hair has got to be cleaner now than it’s ever been. He’s been in your chair longer than he ever intended - and you don’t seem to be working any other angle. Don’t seem to be after any contraband that he can get his hands on. Haven’t submitted any requests. Fished for any information.

Perhaps then, you are enjoying him. Enjoying performing this act of service for him - though god knows why. Perhaps you are even looking down at his body right now while he’s all laid out for you in this worn-out chair. His long limbs stretched out, clothes tugging taut over his tight, muscular frame. Perhaps you like looking at him like this, his hair slicked back and away from his sharp face and his hawkish nose, watching the twist and pull of the muscles as he sets his jaw - needing to consolidate all of his resolve simply to resist your sweet, sugary touches. Perhaps you liked when you watched his eyes flutter closed under your touch. When you watched his lips part with that sound. That throaty, undone moan, all for you.

Joel’s not stupid.

He’s clocked the way you look at him sometimes. With this gentle, inviting hunger. The way you always make the effort to come over and speak with him whenever opportunity presents itself. The way your appealing body bends to him like a flower to its sun, as though he has anything nourishing about him. As though he has anything but darkness to offer.

He’s clocked you too. Has seen the way kindness and warmth dance across your features like a living, licking flame. Has seen you glow brightly too with a steady, constant fire, which he is sure must run hotter and more fierce beneath the surface than any would estimate. He had noticed too, of course, the swell and contours of your body, hiding beneath your clothes in all the places he most enjoys.

He’s thought before how he’d like to find out where the hunger in your eyes could take him if he chased it; but in the end he knows there is never any further to go than here. That every road is a dead end since the world ended. That the quarantine zone is the only place with walls more impenetrable than his own.

Still; he’s thought about you more than he’d care to admit. To Tommy. To Tess. To you. To himself. Has thought about the way your lips might feel on his. How soft and warm your body might be if he held it up against him. The way his calloused hands might look with his fingers sunk into your flesh, grabbing up handfuls of you like you are his daily bread - the very thing he needs to survive.

Of burying his head between your thighs for hours and trying to suck the impossible sweetness out of you, as though, somehow, he could then begin to understand how someone as good as you is capable of existing in a world as shitty and cruel as this.

He’s had darker thoughts too though. Thoughts of filling you rough and sudden - if you’d let him. Of burying his anger in you with every thrust, deep enough that he could attempt to forget it. Of letting you take his rage from him for just a few moments - as if it could ever truly leave him for a moment longer than that.

But of course, in actuality, he’s done none of that. Joel hasn’t pulled on a single one of those threads. He hasn’t unravelled.

Instead, for the most part, Joel has simply ignored you. Ignored you, because that’s the precisely the last thing he wants to do. Ignored you, because the safest option - Joel has established - is usually to give himself the opposite of whatever he thinks he wants.

That is… he’s ignored you until today. Until you offered to wash his hair. A simple yet towering offer of kindness in a world blighted by dark and rot. An offer that feels like more than he deserves when all he’s ever done for you is to give you the brush off. To answer you tersely, his aim with every interaction to have it over quick.

Still… he’d said yes. Or, at least, he’d declined to protest. Had nodded. Had followed you.

If he’s being honest with himself, he could have asked Tommy to help him, even if he was trying to obscure the severity of his latest injuries from his dear ol’ brother. Even Tess - she’d have done it. With plenty of griping, but she would have done it.

The truth is though, that he wanted it to be you. Needed it to be you. He’d gravitated towards you, even before he knew what you might be prepared to give him. Even without any trade to offer. For you, he’d unravelled. Just a little; in a moment of weakness. He hasn’t slept and he hasn’t succeeded and he hasn’t succumbed for so long, that he finally slipped. Finally gave into one of his wants. Finally gave in to what he wanted most. To seat himself in front of the warm hearth of you and to feel a little god dang comfort.

Joel opens his eyes, expression washing clean with a new resolve, and your fingers still frozen in his hair. He fixes his gaze on the broken picture rail. Precisely at the point where it fractures. Where it needs fixing. He needs a little fixing too, he thinks. He’s sure now, that he’s chosen the right tool for the job, when not another damn thing could do it.

“No,” he finally responds, his voice unwavering, blinking his bitter coffee eyes, sweetened already by your sugar. A gentle gulp sinking down the corded column of his neck. “I don’t want you to stop.”

From behind and above him, he hears you release a breath as though you may have been holding one, tight in your chest, and you slide your fingers from his hair. “Good.” Good. The word rattles pleasantly in his chest when you say it. “We’ll do your conditioner next.”

And, for the first time, Joel unclenches his fingers from where they have been curled around the arm rests of the chair, clinging on to the lip until his knuckles had turned white.

This time - for all he can tell via his scalp - your touch feels a little bolder. A little looser. You even drag your nails over his head now, applying long, sizzling scratches which send that same buzzy warmth snaking down his back. You massage him more eagerly, blood flooding to his crotch as he thinks about having your strong, supple, precise hands work him in other places. He imagines, as your nails graze over him, how you might claw harsh stripes down his back in a moment of ecstasy. As your thumb massages a circle into the spot behind his ear, imagines how you might circle the soft pad of it around the swollen head of his cock, collecting up the glistening bead of precum as he leaks for you. Imagines, as you carefully pour a cup of warm, cascading water over his head, how he could bathe himself with the warmth of your skin on his. Imagines, as he hears the subtle wet sounds created as you scrunch sweet-smelling elixirs into his hair, how it might sound if your own juices were being coaxed out of you by his fingers until they began to drip, working down his veined, muscled forearm.

He allows himself to imagine everything he plans to deny himself. He at least allows himself to have that.

“That temperature still okay for you?” you ask as you lift the cup of water once again, fracturing his sordid daydreams.

Joel gives a terse grunt. It’s all he can manage.

“So,” you ask breezily. “Are you going anywhere nice for your holidays?”

It takes Joel a few moments to realise just what you’re doing. To twig. It’s a decade - shit, more - since he had a haircut like that, so it takes him a while to pick up that you’re echoing the banal small talk which used to occur as you sat down in the barber chair. Those memory cogs are stiff. He hasn’t turned them in a long time. He doesn’t want to remember that there was anything before. At least, not a lot of it.

Still, your bit takes him by surprise. It’s such a ludicrous contrast that it makes him laugh to think about how things have changed. Who can even go on holiday now? You can’t even leave the quarantine zone. Shit. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. And so, Joel laughs. He laughs and he barely recognises the sound from his own mouth. He laughs… and he instantly regrets it, because he knows better than to pull on any of those threads.

But; it’s too late now.

He laughs and you mirror him, the sound melodious and hopeful, and all of a sudden Joel can imagine everything he’s been avoiding you for.

He hasn’t been avoiding you because he wants to fuck you - not really. He’s fucked plenty of folk, and he’s moved on.

He’s avoiding you, because of how easily he can imagine you in a summer dress, twirling in the yard to show it off to him. How easily he can imagine you sitting on a front porch gripping your morning cup of coffee and the sun shining on your face as you smile up at him. How easily he can imagine you lifting a tray of freshly baked cookies out of the oven, batting his hand away as he steals one before it cools.

Truthfully, he has no idea whether you ever did a single one of those things before - before all this. He doesn’t even really care whether you did. He knows it’s a flat, idealised, empty picture postcard version of you.

But, even so, it still hurts.

It still hurts, because of just how easily he could imagine waking up beside you in his house.

The house that no longer exists.

The house with Sarah in it.

And that’s why he never pulls on that thread.

That’s why he avoids you.

That’s why this can never work.

Because you?

You make him remember all the sweet things. All the sweet things the world used to contain before the rot and the death and despair painted over everything. Infected it.

You make him remember the taste of fresh mangoes. The feeling of sand beneath his feet and waves washing over his toes. Saturdays at the mall. Picking away at his guitar in the living room. The easy jubilation of ball games on the TV on Sundays, with Tommy in the kitchen plating up chicken wings. Of bad movie nights. Of mornings spent around the kitchen table, and his daughter cooking up birthday pancakes.

That’s why he can’t ever start to be happy with you. Why he can’t pull on that thread; because all the good things in life are attached to it. All tied and knotted and tangled up with “before”.

When he dreams of you - when he lets himself - he dreams of then too.

He has to, doesn’t he? Because the past is the only place to build a future when the present is apocalyptic, isn’t it? When you are the only thing he hasn’t lost yet, and everything else -pretty much- is already dead and gone.

It kills him that he found you now.

Found you too late.

It kills him because Sarah would have loved you, and because he thinks he could have too.

You don’t know all of this, of course. You can’t ever know this. And so, your oblivious fingers continue touching him, until he feels another moan begin to spool itself tight in his chest, getting ready to unravel. This time though, he is less sure whether it is a moan of pleasure or of anguish. More and more these days, those two feelings have been starting to feel precisely the same.

“Can we move this along?” he asks gruffly, some of the weight settling back into his brow. He asks, predictably, for the opposite of what he wants. It has to be like that. There’s no other road anymore.

“We can stop whenever you like but… that’s a shame.”

His frown deepens. “Why?”

“Because your hands had only just started to unclench.”

Joel’s heart clenches at the thought you were watching him that intently. That you were weighing the state and tension of his body. Valiantly trying to release some of that weight from him, even when you must be so heavy too.

And of course, knowing this, he only tries to push you further away. Before his dreams of you are seared even more brightly under his skin.

“You know what. I should go.” His chest constricts - throat grows tighter, a lump forming.

Joel idly wonders if his grief will ever stop feeling so raw. That’s the second disease, he thinks. The other monster infecting everything around it. The shadow of the original cloud. He wonders if it will always be this debilitating, even after he’s pushed it down as far as it can go. It’s not only a grief for what was lost, he ponders. It’s also a grief for what he can never have again. It's a grief for you and all the ways he could have loved you.

He sits up -carefully but abruptly, hand clamped over his aching ribs- and his wetted hair sends rivulets snaking down his face, his neck, his chest. Inching beneath the collar of his green button down shirt. Collecting on his shoulders like a pattern of indoor raindrops.

“Joel,” you scold, tutting lightly. Following quickly after him with the towel, trying to mop up after him. Hastily, you towel off his hair. Sneak your hand beneath his collar, gathering the drops up from his chest and neck.

With effort, and a grimace, Joel swings his legs around, until he is sitting upright, feet planted on the floor. But, whether for the pain or for the promise of pleasure - he’s not sure - he can’t bring himself to move any further than that. Especially not as you finally round from the basin, the damp towel slung over your shoulder, your hands and wrists still shined and wet from caressing his hair in a way he can only describe as reverent.

You kneel before him, drying your hands off and setting the towel down before boldly sliding your palms up his denim-clad thighs. “Joel. Would you just let me take care of you?"

He meets your eyes and finds them soft but determined. Empty of darkness, even with the black expanding abyss of your pupil eating away at the colour of your iris.

Joel looks down at your hands as you begin to smooth them up and down, inching slowly up towards his crotch before retreating - repeating the pattern. He looks at you in displeasure, but there’s nothing about your touch which is unwelcome - and that’s exactly the problem. He swallows. Gathers his question up in his throat before he offers it to you gently, as though in cupped, outstretched palms. “How?”

Your beautiful eyes flash with pity then, he thinks, or something like it. It seems like a silly question, but after all this time he doesn’t recall what it’s like to be cared for. He doesn’t know how to let you.

Your palm reaches up to the scruff on his cheek. You smooth it fondly. “Lie back,” you encourage, with a soft smile which seems to glow from the inside, like a porch backlit with the glow of home. “And just let me take care of the rest.”

Joel has always found something to fight for, but today, he has no fight left in him. In truth, he doesn’t want to fight this. To fight you. It is easy to give in to you. In fact, it's too easy. That has always been the problem.

Your hands continue to travel up and down his thighs, and he feels the warmth of you bleed through the fabric.

God. He’s already hard for you. Already full and throbbing in his jeans. Already, he is imagining your hands wrapping around the thick, straining mass of him. Imagining the way that -in moments - you may be unloosing his belt, threading leather through denim loop. The way you might pop the button keenly with your thumb, and he might groan as you relieve the pressure. The way you might unzip the straining fly to have his substantial length spring free, so rarely touched and so so ready to be taken care of.

At the thought of that alone, he’s straining against the seams of his pants, a pressure which sits smack bang between pleasure and pain.

“Joel,” you whisper softly, and he realises he hasn’t yet moved from his position.

“Right.” He swallows. He lies back. Stretches himself out, feeling far more exposed this time, even if he is still fully clothed.

You stand, quickly disappearing the basin away and soon you’re back, standing over Joel and watching him laid out all needy like this. His eyes travel over you, entranced by your form, and he suddenly needs friction. Needs the relief he didn't even know he was waiting for until you offered it - or, implied it. He bucks his hips up, not even caring if he’s being subtle, and the denim and leather creak as he shifts. He punches out a breath as he strains in his pants, chasing any morsel of friction he can. The feeling of his shaft pushing harder against the seam as his whole cock twitches for you. For those hands. For that plush mouth. Maybe for that cunt of yours.

As usual though, when Joel feels anything good, there is a familiar swell of guilt too; this time, riding in on the flood of arousal to his cock. This time, there’s something new to be feeling guilty for too. Something to add to that already long list. He feels guilty for having all of these thoughts about you, despite never having asked you where you were from. Before. What you used to do. Who you lost.

“I’m sorry,” Joel offers, before he even knows that his mouth is moving. Before he’s even figured out what it is he’s sorry for.

Truth is, he’s sorry for so many reasons. For what he’s done. What he’s lost. Whatever you’ve lost. For not asking you about it. Mainly, he realises, because he can’t make you any promises. None that he could keep. Not to keep you safe. He can’t promise you that.

He thinks you’ll ask him what for - why he’s sorry. But instead, you say something else.

“Don’t be.”

If only it was that easy.

Even so, he looks into your eyes as your hungry gaze skims the length of his body, settling at the bulge at his crotch as you drag your tongue along the pillow of your lower lip. You’re beautiful. Vibrant. Full of life and lust and hunger. Alive in a dead world; and suddenly, it doesn’t matter one bit to Joel where you came from. It doesn’t matter what happened before. It only matters where you’re going. What you want. How he can give it to you.

But it is you who gives him something.

You hinge at the hips, slanting your mouth against Joel’s, and he feels your lips brush up against the scruff on his top lip. Feels the pillow of your plush mouth meet his before your tongue fleets out, licking into him like a searing, dancing flame. You hum hungrily into his mouth and his lips chase you as you pull away, another backlit smile dancing on your face, your features already beginning to resemble home to him in a world where there's no such thing.

Joel watches you move now, with quiet fascination, as you kick off your boots. As you wiggle your pleasing hips, untying then easing your cargo pants and panties down your thighs. His tongue curls around his lip as he is gifted glimpses of your skin - although you are still covered to your upper thigh by the yellow tunic top you’re wearing - and now he can’t help but palm himself through his jeans for a morsel of relief.

Still. What you're about to offer him? It feels like far too much. “What are you doing? You don’t have to-“

“-Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll stop,” you promise, meeting his eyes, open and honest and ready to back off if he doesn’t want this. But shit, how could he not want you? Look at you - and so he can’t. He can’t possibly tell you that, even though he thinks that he should.

“No. God, I want you,” Joel pleads, voice hollowed-out with need. All spent, like ash.

“And you’re going to have me.”

You kick your pants and panties off, leaving them to pool discarded on the floor, and Joel palms himself a little harder, grabbing the fat roll of himself through the denim as he catches a glimpse. They’re nothing sexy, of course; but from the way they’ve fallen he is able to note the telltale wet spot on the crotch. It looks like you’ve soaked them through, and God he wants to feel your wetness for himself.

You ease over him, settling your knees on to either side of the leather chair, where Joel’s legs are stretched out before him, sturdy thighs slightly parted to accommodate the arousal between his legs.

You’re still wearing your tunic top, bright yellow like sunshine, and the length of it dances and clings at intervals to your hips and thighs as you move. It’s driving him wild that you are bare beneath. All he can think about is that warm, delicious wetness of yours spilling over him. God, he wants to hear it. Wants to squeeze it out of you. Wants it to drip down the veined shaft of him.

You straddle his thighs, knees folded, the soles of your feet pointed up towards your ass cheeks, and your heat settles just below his own - not quite grinding over him, but tantalisingly close.

You take a moment like this to simply look at him. To gaze into his coffee brown eyes as though there’s something more to him than being sorry and bitter. Like you could see anything sweet there. Anything worth wanting. Then, you comb his damp hair back with your fingers, drawing the strands back from his forehead. Tucking and curling them around his ears.

Your touch - your tenderness - makes him ache. Makes him throb. Makes him want to bury himself in you. His tongue, his fingers, his cock, his feelings - anything of him you’ll take. And, as he wraps his arms around you a wracked moan unspools from his chest as his rough fingertips find the soft skin beneath your yellow tunic. As his touch traverses the contours of you he’s always admired from a distance.

As his jaw falls open, slack with desire, you drink down his moan, catching the resonant sound in the cave of your mouth. Kissing him with a gentle yet constant hunger. With a red hot spark of deviance in your sweet eyes which almost makes Joel spill creamy ropes into his pants there and then. Your tongue travels along your lower lip. Your gaze drops, lust dark and heavy to the bulge at his crotch, and you unloop his belt with those hands of yours. They'll look small next to the size of him, he thinks. He likes that thought a lot.

“Let’s see what contraband you’re smugglin’ in these pants of yours, cowboy," you smile, and Joel's eyes crinkle with rare amusement. His face tips up with a lopsided smile which is quick to drop - all of him focussed on where you're about to touch him.

He twitches eagerly in his jeans thinking about how tight you will grip him, but you don’t touch him just yet. Instead, you shuffle yourself back, down his legs, giving yourself enough space to tug on his clothing and to ease it down his thighs. Once his pants and his boxers have reached his knees you stop there, abandoning them almost as soon as his thick, veined length is sprung free, nestling all tender against the hatch of greying hair trailing down his abdomen - where his shirt is lifted.

He’s flushed a deep colour already. Veined and needy and weeping for you. His need becomes even more urgent yet as he thinks of your hands and the way they move - the way they might touch him. Take care of him. As he thinks about you sliding your thumb over the pearl of precum at his head.

Still, he is not quite ready for the feeling when you dip forward to slide your tongue around the head of him instead, gathering that salty bead with your tongue, lapping it up with relish. He feels you hum around the head of him, the vibration sending a zip of pleasure flooding along his length. Making his balls tighten and ache already.

He wants you. He needs you. He wants you with an urgency, and yet here you are, still taking your time. Taking your time to suck at him and feel him weigh heavy over your tongue until your jaw aches from it. To grip him in your hand and marvel at the girth of him. At the way he is so sensitive that every motion and shift of your pattern makes him melt into the chair, increasingly boneless, his brow burdened with need.

You are tender with him. Careful, of his injuries. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You touch him like he’s wounded; everywhere. His whole body. His whole soul too. And he is, isn’t he? All of him is hurting? Has been for so long?

Joel groans, his lip almost splitting from biting down and stifling his moans. He never was a vocal lover but God, it’s different for you. And this time, the sound punches out of him as you shift. As you settle your cunt over him and he feels your sopping heat glide along his length for the first time. It is a non-descript sound, halfway between pain and pleasure; and instantly, concern flashes in your eyes. You pause; lift off of him with a rise of your thighs and check-in with him.

“Joel. Are you okay? Am I hurting you?”

Are you? His breath is searing in and out of his lungs. Ragged breaths, jolting his pained ribs. You have him on the edge and so alight with desire for you that his need feels unbearable. He’s aching to fill you up. His face is contorted and crumpled by his need, brows drawn down, eyes half-lidded. But is this pain? Or is this something else? Something he has forgotten.

For a moment, then, he almost answers “yes”. Yes, because he doesn’t remember anything else but pain and so, the sensation he’s feeling now? Isn’t that pain too? Is there anything else?

He’s almost grateful when he shifts slightly, writhes against the chair to buck his hips keenly up in search of you as you withdraw so cruelly from him, his muscles coiling up. He’s grateful that the shift does indeed send pain blooming through his side; because he knows then, with certainty, that you are bringing him nothing but pleasure.

He’s grateful too though, for the pain, because a pleasure like this? A pure hit of it, not cut through with anything he's more used to? Joel thinks it would be too much for him to take. Joel thinks you are too much for him. Far more than he deserves.

“Joel?” you prompt, sliding your palm against his scruff. He hears it rasp like a scraped match. “I want you.”

You don’t want me, the voice in his head sounds out. I have nothing I can give you. But those are not the words that make it to his lips. Those are not the words at all. “Then have me, sweetheart.”

Joel may have nothing he feels he can give you, but holy shit he wants everything you are offering. He wants your plush, velvet mouth. Your smooth thighs. He wants the pooling slick between your legs - and for once, just this once, he intends to allow himself to satisfy his needs.

He figures he will simply owe you a debt. Find something that you want or need and acquire it for you. He simply has to think of this like a transaction, doesn’t he? Something familiar. Something he knows. That way, he’s not taking anything he doesn’t deserve - and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve you.

Once invited back to his body, sure of what he wants, you kiss him. Deeply, hungrily, your tongue rolling and writhing against his. Your breaths just as ragged as his. Your thighs quaking next to his, your want more than evident.

You break for air and you rise up on your knees again so that you can settle over him, notching the fat, swollen head of him against your folds.

You look like a dream on top of him, and with this yellow fabric dancing about your thighs, you look to Joel like you’re wearing a sun dress. Indeed, when he looks up at you - when he blocks everything else out - you make it feel like nothing ever happened. Like nothing was ever lost.

You look just like you’re about to fuck him on his bed on white crisp sheets. Like you’ll fall asleep beside him and in the morning he’ll make you breakfast.

You look like everything he wanted and found far too late.

You are beautiful. You are good. You are gentle. Gentle still. Gentle despite everything. And where on earth did you learn that from - how on earth did you hang on to it - in a world like this? A world which has not been gentle with him. Which has been out to get him at every turn.

You are gentle with him, even when he is undeserving. Even when he has been anything but.

Gingerly then, you settle yourself over him, and once his head is notched there and your slick hand is guiding him home, he slips easily past your folds. His eyes flutter closed as he feels your warmth wrap around him, the tightness of you hugging his girth. You’re so tight that he feels like he must be splitting you apart, but the way you’re shaking for him, the way these delicious moans unravel from your mouth tells him it feels just as good for you too.

You’re gentle with him. Sinking down on him slowly. Being ever so cautious of his ribs and his bruises and scrapes. You’re making him feel so good. So close to coming undone.

But god, he’s not planning on being gentle with you.

There’s a part of Joel that wants to make love to you, sure; but he’s not even sure he’d know how to do that anymore. How to be tender. How to be gentle. And so, he reaches for you in the only way he knows how. Reaches for you with his arms, his hands. With a body that doesn’t remember pleasure - not really. With a soul that doesn’t remember anything good - not really. He reaches for you, with hands that only know how to kill things.

In the end, it’s clunky, when he extends his touch towards you. Rough - and far too desperate. He reaches for you like it’s survival - the one thing he knows how to do - and he claws at your hips, the rough pads of his flesh sinking into your skin like dough. He has the sense, at least, to check with you, to ask with words rasped through gravel in his throat if he can fill you up. And as soon as you say yes, as soon as your breathy affirmatives and pleas lilt to his ears, Joel is dragging you down on him. Spearing you -abrupt and sudden- with the fat length of his dick, surging into you all at once.

The motion, along with the sudden swell of him punches a breath from your lungs, your rib cage flaring with quick short pants. Your eyes, rolling back into your skull as you mewl his name, and god, if he wasn’t hurt he’d be drilling into you already, fucking himself up into you at a brutal pace, so long as you’d let him.

“S-sorry,” he stutters, with effort. “Too much?”

“Almost. Joel - fuck. I’m so full of you.”

He stills as you breathe around him, adjusting to his size, and as soon as you’re ready you rise up on your knees, dragging electric pleasure all along his shaft as your cunt strokes and grips him tightly.

Then, when you sink yourself down once more, impaling yourself on his length, Joel screws his eyes shut as he eases -glides- into the wet, warm cushion of you all over again. You’re so soft and tight and forgiving, your walls relenting to the girth of him, yet providing such glorious friction that it makes his head spin. Makes him see spots, the edges of his vision whiting out.

Next, Joel moves too, adjusting his hips slightly. Helping you impale yourself on him over and over like this. He keeps it going, despite the burn of pain in his ribs and his shoulder. He tries to guide you with the claws of his hands at your hips, until it begins to hurt him too much. Until all he can do is lie back and take it from you. All he can do is feel it, emitting gusty, billowing breaths from the shocked “o” of his plush lips as he attempts to stave of his end. To do all he can to take care of your end too before he spills himself.

He needs to. Needs to take care of you like this, because he can’t offer you any other damn thing.

He can’t promise to take care of you.

He can’t promise that to anyone ever again.

He will only break it.

So, no promises. But surely, he can feel pleasure, for these fleeting moments? Surely, he can give you that too, because even if he doesn’t he’s damn sure you deserve at least that much.

He reaches for you. In desperation again. Like it’s survival. Like he can’t live without this. Without you. Even though he has already. Even though he'll have to again.

For now though, for right now, he's filling you all the way up. Squeezing your juices out of you. Pushing them out with every thrust until he’s fucking you with wet, obscene sounds. Until your slick is coursing down his shaft, coating his balls, inching over him.

With a grunt, Joel gathers some slick with the two forefingers of his left hand, and he rubs the calloused pads of his fingers into your clit. You yowl at the pressure -the pleasure- and then you guide him with your hand over his, Joel quickly learning your pace and your patterns, replicating it perfectly when you release your guiding touch.

It feels so good. It feels so good and your eager, pleasured moans are billowing down to him, your cunt clenching down on him and his dick is feeling fucking blissful as you repeatedly sink yourself. It feels good - so good - and it’s more than he deserves but god, he’s going to take it. He's going to take it even if he has to be punished for it later.

He’s pretty sure the world has been punishing him for years anyway. Pretty sure it’s keeping score and will be sure to let him know about it if he dares to take too much.

For now though.

Holy shit.

It feels so good and you’re so beautiful. So perfect. Better than he could have imagined, his flattened daydreams of you nothing compared to the real thing. You’re a vision, and you’re too good for this blighted earth and you’re every bit deserving of the life Joel knows he can never give you.

It’s bittersweet and you’re beautiful; but you’re too beautiful to look at - bright like the sun in your yellow tunic, fabric moving around your thighs like a sun dress, like something you might have worn in the before times. Like you might have worn in his yard if he’d still had a home to offer you. Maybe. Maybe you would've. It kills him that he'll never know. Never know what you could have had. What he could have given you.

You’re beautiful, and god you’re too beautiful to look at and so he drags you down to his lips as you clamp down around him, squeezing him like a vice, causing pleasure to sear white hot from his middle, creamy ropes of cum filling you up as you convulse. Your spasming cunt sends jolting aftershocks zipping through his length, ekeing every last drop from him, draining him dry.

You’re too beautiful. Too good of a thing for him to hold on to - and so Joel keeps kissing you, his hands coming to cup your face as tenderly as his killing hands know how. Kissing you, for long enough that he can quash the tears which threaten to squeeze out from the corners of his eyes. He kisses you softly, his sentiments dissolving like sugar against your mouth - as sweet as he can muster.

He kisses you, until he feels the shape of your mouth morph into a smile, and that’s it. That's when he stops.

That’s when he stops, because he can’t let himself feel this. He can’t let himself feel this because he can’t pull on that thread. Not when everything he has worked so hard to push down is all knotted and tangled together. Everything he’s loved and everything he’s lost, all bundled up in his chest.

He can’t let himself feel this because it was far more than he expected to feel.

He’d thought that you would be quick. Thought -hoped- you were just using him. Like this was a transaction. That maybe this was how you collect advantages. How you’ve managed to survive. Instead though, you gave, and you took, but it was not transactional in the slightest. And Joel has nothing left in his heart or his pockets except ration cards. Nothing he can give you in return.

Most importantly though, he can’t let himself feel this, because happiness died when the world did.

Died when she did.

And, happiness?

Well - Joel doesn’t believe he deserves to feel it again.

That’s why he encourages you off of him a little too quickly, even when you pepper kisses along the column of his neck. Why he moves away a little too abruptly, even when you tongue hungrily at the salt-slick sweat which has pooled in the hollow of his throat. Why he sets his face, all stern again even as he’s still leaking out of you.

Anyway, he stands, grunting out in pain. Maybe in anguish. Pulling his pants up with his good arm, and preparing to go.

He sets his face, and he looks back at you, where you have huddled yourself in his spot on the chair, your makeshift yellow sun dress hitched up around your hips, exposing where you glisten, all slick with the evidence of what he just did with you.

You're beautiful. Too beautiful. You look like summer when he meets your eyes. A sun that is bright and constant, like it used to be before the rot clouded over the skies.

A light that is far too bright for him.

Part of him expects you to look sad. To look surprised that he has leapt up like this, motioning to leave so violently. Expects you to plead with him to give you more; but instead, you look at him levelly. Knowing, not naive. Maybe you too are clear on the limits of what’s possible. Clear that there are some things that can never be.

Still, as that soft smile plays over your face, as Joel holds the memory of your touch over his body, the bitter coffee look in his eyes sweetens just a little.

“Listen. Thanks," he states brusqely. It’s not enough. Not by any stretch. But unless you want some contraband or some shit, it’s all he’s got.

“No problem, Joel-y. I... I just wanted to take care of you. I thought you deserved that - at least once.”

Tears prick at the corners of Joel’s eyes. Stinging; but pushed down and flattened before you can even notice it. He’s not quite sure. Not quite sure whether hearing you say he deserves something he’s sure that he doesn’t counts as pleasure or pain, but he supposes that it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. He’s back to not knowing the difference. Not recognising pleasure or happiness when they stare him in the face, because now they have become strangers.

Joel nods efficiently at you. Picks up his rucksack and moves towards the doorway, trying not to think about the fact you’re still full of him. About the fact that you’re still smiling, that backlit glow of home imviting him in.

Truth be told, he can’t imagine ever being happy again.

If he could imagine it though? If he could imagine being happy, he’s sure as all hell that it would be with you.

You’re like summer, he thinks. Bright. Luminous. It's just that Joel’s not looking for the light.

For someone who’s so used to the dark? Like him? The light is blinding.

Still, he pauses in the doorway, turning back towards you for one moment more. From the surprise on your face now, he can tell you didn’t even expect that much from him - and by God, you deserve so much better.

His eyes sweeten, just a little further, and his face sets - now with a different kind of resolve. He offers his words, like they’re cupped in outstretched palms. Like he could be gentle. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“You don’t owe me a debt, Joel.”

He nods, but that doesn’t mean at all that he accepts your assertion.

His eyes tick over to the broken picture rail, right where it fractures. His gaze lingers on it for a moment, cataloguing what tools he might need to fix it. Clocking the picture frames of salvaged art you have leaning up against the wall, not yet hung.

“I said, I'll make it up to you.” You nod efficiently back at him, and Joel drinks one more long measure of you in before he leaves. Maybe it's not quite a promise, but right now, it's all he's got.

He’d burn the world down for you, he thinks, if it could change a damn thing.

Thing is though, the world has already burned.

He can’t make you many promises. Can’t keep you safe. Make you happy. Offer you a home.

He’ll only let you down.

Maybe all of that is true. Maybe it is - but Joel knows one thing for sure. You’re brighter than the sun, and, in a world full of darkness? He just can’t look away, even though you’re blinding.

#joel miller x reader #tlou #pedro pascal #the last of us #tlou spoilers #the last of us spoilers

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