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chasedeys · 5 months ago

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HI OKAY so like. in honor of these boyfriends sticking together by the grace of god and just sheer fucking stubbornness and taking matters into their own hands (sooooo sexy and also incredibly leaning to the power-of-friendship ass of them btw) and also because i feel sooo shitty for disappearing all of the sudden and ignoring a whole bunch of you </3 (thank you truly for all the sweet messages in my inbox asking me where and how ive been god yall are so sweet) and also it's such a fucking waste of 7k word vomit if i do end up not finishing this thing and i really do want to finish this but im lacking creative juices and honestly just shit time management but anyways. i present to you the mess of joeteemarr fic in its barely finished glory:

(DOOOO PRAYYY THAT I FINISH ITTTTT (i am on my knees) in spite of all the spoilers (?) you'll read through so it'd be like why the hell would you read this again kind of deal but well ahahahah just let me post this and look away okay 😭♥️)

all on his mouth like liquor —joeteemarr

intro — you came, you saw, you conquered // i couldn’t take my eyes off him, i think i heard a spirit call my name (banana yoshimoto, kitchen)

They’re both still in their leather ensemble—’so, did you coordinate the outfits, or?’ ‘ja’marr copied me.’ ‘excuse me? bitch, i’ll kill you.’—like they zoomed their way to Tee’s place immediately right after the game, after stopping by Judith’s for their usual order of burgers and fries.

Tee pokes at his own order of bacon burger, double helping of cheddar cheese and extra garlic, a wobbly little smile poking through when he spots the lovingly sharpied good game 5! the extra pies are for you!!!! don’t let uno eat them!!!!!!!!! on the crinkly wrapping paper. Judith, Cincinnati native, 57 years old and never takes money from Tee’s mother. Thinks Ja’Marr is the funniest man-child on earth and Joe the sweetest.

Ja’Marr has his jacket off now, tank top stretched tight over his shoulders as he slumps over his burgers snarling at Joe to stop stealing his fries. Tee carefully turns his gaze away from dark of his tattoos, the curve of his shoulders, the flex of his biceps when he tries to smack away Joe’s hand right over his burger.

But the thing is, if he looks away, he’s looking towards Joe—Joe, who’s leather jacket with nothing underneath is zipped down to his navel for some godforsaken reason, miles of pale skin and abs and golden hair and pink nipples flashing everytime he twists his torso to try and take Ja’Marr’s entire dinner or avoid his retaliations. Tee has to take away Ja’Marr’s plastic fork before he stabs Joe with it.

(They didn’t coordinate the outfits, by the way. They just ended up wearing something similar again with their weird otherworldly connection that Tee still tries to wrap his head around even now.)

—----------ja’marrs drops. sensitive,dfksdfkapoeskfo

Ja’Marr skirts his eyes away, mouth curling down, “I don’t wanna talk about it. I’ll deal with it Monday.”

Tee breathes out, extends his knee and presses his socked toes to the younger man’s calves. Ja’Marr twitches his leg against his feet, flicking his eyes at him and shooting him a small smile. He’ll be alright.

“No,” Ja’Marr says evenly, staring right at him even as he slams a hand at Joe’s over his plate, “but you were really fucking sexy.”

Tee startles, several clumps of mashed up potato slipping out of his mouth in surprise—real sexy, there. Ja’Marr really has no filter sometimes, calling any person he finds attractive to their faces with zero shame even in front of his boyfriend of however many years. Joe, ever so possessive, rarely even gets bricked up over it, from sheer assurance of his place in Ja’Marr’s heart. Hard not to be, really, with how steadfast and loud Ja’Marr is with his devotion to him. Tee has been called straight up ‘hot as hell’ by the other man for the past years that they’ve known each other and he still gets flustered over it, mostly because. Well. Whatever.

Joe turns his gaze to him as well, pausing his one-man crusade of pilfering his boyfriend’s fries. Tee slows his bites as he stares back, feeling weirdly caught like a prey in a predator’s gaze, a gazelle looking through the tan of the savanna landscape trying to find the glint of a lion’s eyes lurking in between the blades of grass. Joe’s piercing blues flick between his eyes, then slides down, slow, deliberate, purposeful, over the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, the turn of his chin, the hinge of his jaw still clenched from chewing the meat they bought for him, his—neck exposed by the stretched cotton of his ratty t-shirt, the tangle of his beard, the slight of his Adam’s apple, the nearly healed scar on the left side of his jugular from last week’s razor incident, even the loose hang of his faded clemson t-shirt over his shoulders, the dip of it showing off the skin over his collarbones, not too much to show his pecs, but the sheer force of the older man’s leer makes him—makes him push his fucking tits out like he can’t fucking help himself; shoulders, drawing back; spine, straightening; nipples, pebbling, fucking tingling; goosebumps and hair rising over his arms; toes, curling in—he knows each and every part of his body Joe looks over because the man’s so fucking methodical with it, everything else below his chest hidden beneath the table thank fuck, he thinks, of sorts, maybe, a blessing, a curse, who knows, he’s still trying to chew on his fucking bite of bacon burger the fuck.

Tee chokes on his late swallow—and drinks the puply orange Ja’Marr offers him with an obvious smirk holy shit what the ever living fuck.

Joe goes back to eating his burger like he didn’t just. Undress Tee with his fucking eyes. What the fuck. What the actual fuck was that. Holy shit did he just experience a junior high schooler’s fantastical imaginary eighth grade period axe body spray doped up version of sex daydream or is he just. Insane. Was the burger spiked. What the fuck was that.

Tee feels his lips twitch. Wow. They’re really—unsubtle. But, are they, really?

“

—And Ja’Marr growls. Tee startles, laughing up at him, but it’s all cut off short because, wait, holy shit—-

He’s got a lapful of Ja’Marr Chase, situating his ass snugly all over Tee’s thighs with his own folded on either side of his hips, arms up so he can press his palms on his cheeks, wrapping all the way to the back of his skull because they’re so big, and kiss him.

“Jesus Christ, Ja’Marr,” he hears through muddied ears. Joe, he knows his voice, always, but—everything is—muffled, dark, consumed to a single person over him

He flutters his eyes open and gasps out trying to push air into his lungs and Ja’Marr’s face is right there in front of him—eyes piercing into his own as he purposefully bumps his nose to Tee’s and breathes into Tee’s gaping open mouth.

Fucking hell.

“Ja’Marr,” he breathes out, panic mounting—and: dick hardening in his sweatpants because Ja’Marr fucking Chase is all over his lap grinding down, arms around his shoulders, pretty face right up to his with deep brown eyes staring him down intently—hands trembling, acutely aware that his boyfriend of six fucking years is staring right at them from across the room, still stealing said boyfriend’s fries. That fucking heifer, jesus, his diet always goes out the window in the 24-hour window of post-game leftover adrenaline rush.

Ja’Marr—his best friend, the prettiest motherfucker he’s ever had the pleasure of—doesn’t even do him the honor of replying, lips stretching wide into a pleased smile and keeps bumping his nose to Tee’s over and over like it’s a little game to him. It’s ridiculously cute—the minute touches, the way Tee has to go cross-eyed to see it, the weight of him all over, the heady scent of warm wood basking him, it calms him down, lowers his heart rate, settles his breathing, makes his eyelids flutter, trying to keep himself from closing the distance and kiss the man again, seems terribly unfair to just—only have a single chance in his life to kiss Ja’Marr Chase once when he’s still inches away with his body language so open and willing. Joe, to the side, still fucking eating, not even acting offended even the slightest past the minute exasperated jesus christ, ja’marr, shoots him a weird dorky thumbs-up. The hell.

“You’re—“ Tee chokes out finally, acutely aware of every point of his palm pressed against the cotton wrapped around his best friend’s waist. Acutely aware of how his fingers are twitching, wanting, aching—to grip tighter, to drag downwards and under the hemline and then roughly up the warmth of skin, scrub at the expanse of it available and feel it shiver against the skin of his own palm. The only reason he doesn’t is because every joint, every muscle, every tendon in his body is locked up in, what, fear? Sheer desperate want? A man collapsed inches away from an oasis appearing out of nowhere in a once barren desert, heat pouring over his body and making everything wobbly and blurry—his vision actually going a bit blurry because—

Fuck it all to hell, if he cries in Ja’Marr Chase’s face just because he kissed him he’s killing himself and taking everyone with him.

Ja’Marr coos, pretty face closing in again and Tee automatically flutters his eyes shut just for the other man to press his lips softly against the thin skin of his left eyelid, keep dragging them along his lashes, letting his liquid tears seep into the crevice of his lips and pool around the corner of his lips, over the bridge of his nose, again to his right eye, and down to the highest point of his cheek—just to press harder and leave a wet imprint from his own tears.

God, Ja’Marr fucking Chase.

“You really gotta say something,” Tee squeezes out harshly, eyes squeezed shut tight and trying to breathe through his nose.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” is what Ja’Marr says, thumb brushing away the wet spots on his cheeks. Which. Well. Maybe Tee should’ve just told him to shut the fuck up and get off of him before he does something he’d regret, like—like kiss him again. And again. And again. Again, again, again, again, over, and over, and over, and over until he drops dead because he’d never grow tired of it, he doesn’t think.

“I see,” Tee says, not really seeing. He knows he’s ’fucking gorgeous’ but come one now, really.

Ja’Marr grins bright right up against his face, of course knowing what Tee’s not saying.

Joe leans down, nudging his boyfriend to the side, hunching over the two, tucks a palm to the side of Tee’s neck, all nine inches of it spanning across his skin like a hot brand, and kisses him too.

Tee breathes into his mouth, doesn’t even know how to kiss back, flabbergasted as he is, weighted down by his best friend on his lap, a hand on his neck that might as well feel like a noose, buzzing in his ears, a match of want being struck in him and he doesn’t know if it’s by him or if it’s actually the people he wants.

Joe hums against his mouth, lips turning down, “you’re not kissing me back,”

He’s actually fucking pouting against Tee’s mouth, Tee realizes. He doesn’t even want to let go of the kiss to speak, doesn't want to pout away from Tee’s lips. Oh god. What is Tee doing.

Tee surges up, arms clenching around Ja’Marr’s waist, teeth tugging at Joe’s bottom lip, and kisses his quarterback right this time, feels him stretch his lips to a smile even as he licks into Tee’s mouth and sighs into the kiss. He’s relaxing his shoulders, drooping down, evening out—he was tense, he was worried, neck veins slightly popping, Tee realizes. This was important to him. Tee kissing him back—was important. To him.

Oh.

Tee sighs into the kiss, too, relaxes and licks into the space he’s being granted access into, for the first time ever.

Ja’Marr gets handsy, apparently pleased as a peach at the grip Tee has on his waist. He presses his knees harder to the sides of Tee’s hips and grinds his hips down on his lap, palms exploring his torso all over, nails dragging across his nipples over the cotton of his shirt, face all over the skin exposed by the stretched elastic of his t-shirt’s neckline, tonguing his neck, his collarbone, biting his pulsepoint and making him gasp into Joe’s mouth.

next steps — i swell like a late summer jackfruit; my skin roughens, the pulp of my body so thick; i wait to be speared and wanted; if squeezed, i’ll leave my color on your hands (hồ xuân hương, jackfruit)

Joe pushes his back firmly and he follows through blindly. It’s his house, but Joe knows exactly where eveything is and he trusts literally anywhere this man leads him to, and, also, he’s really fucking distracted by this:

Ja’Marr bites at his chin, right by his beard, and Tee gasps—he’s a freak, what is with him, why is that so fucking hot—and he keeps tugging on the strings of Tee’s sweatpants, fingers brushing deliberately over the tent in his pants, then straight up cupping and squeezing his dick through the cotton when Joe makes them stop to turn a corner. Tee has to just shove the little shit towards the wall, press his head hard against it, and sloppily kiss his mouth to teach him some sort of lesson of some success god what is Tee trying to accomplish here Ja’Marr is so fucking—

An arm—Joe—circles his waist, pushing forcefully between the miniscule space between his belly and Ja’Marr’s and wrenches him back from the other receiver. He whines, fingers scrabbling at his best friend—”Wait! No!”—while Ja’Marr is just laughing and tilting his head back into the wall as he grins teasingly at their quarterback, “what, jealous?”

Joe reaches out and twists his left nipple through his tank top. Ja’Marr yelps and starts yelling expletives at him. Tee, leaning back into Joe’s embrace, sighs exasperatedly. Of course they’re doing this, even now.

Ja’Marr steps closer, trying to smack at Joe through Tee, and Tee puts his hands on his biceps to stop him—gets distracted, starts sliding his hands up and down the length of them because, fuck, how can he not, and then just grabs them and tugs him closer to kiss him all over again with Joe’s arm between their bodies. Man, whatever.

Joe sighs exasperatedly, pressed up all against his back, but he really can’t be all that pissed, because he’s mouthing all up Tee’s neck—what is with him and necks, jesus,

He’s shivering, caught in the middle, Joe in front, Ja’Marr behind, hands all over him, standing up but he’s falling, stumbling but he’s being held up. There’s a boy in front of him, and there’s a boy behind him, and who is he but another boy asking to be loved and held.

He’s leaning back to Ja’Marr’s chest now, tilted to the side so he can turn his face and kiss him still, the other man’s hand spanning across his face pinning him to place as he presses his tongue into his mouth and moans into it, as loud as he always is anywhere else. Another mouth is all over his chest, tonguing at his nipples, teeth scraping over the dark of his tattoos, panting all over him like a dog, god.

He doesn’t wear boxers at home, and the two know that precisely, Joe stroking his cock through the cotton of sweatpants like it isn’t even there, the grey fabric getting soaked through. He lowers his mouth over it, eyes looking straight up at Tee and asks if he could. Tee nods frantically, not even knowing what the fuck he wants but it’s Joe Burrow, he could do whatever he wants to Tee and Tee would lay in his arms like a supplicant and rip his chest open all pretty and bloody and let Joe Burrow dip his chin in and lap it all up.

He whimpers into Ja’Marr’s mouth, fluttering open his eyes, eyelashes clumpy with tears, sweat, he doesn’t know, and Ja’Marr coos, brushing kisses over his eyes as he drags his palms all over Tee’s belly, scraping nails over his pubes and pressing down in time with Joe going down on him like he knows the exact rhythm of Joe’s every move and plan, even here, even now, even over the sweat and smell of sex of Tee’s body—especially, Tee thinks, over his body.

that’s one — makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips on my neck, and yes, i do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars (richard siken, crush)

Ja’Marr breathes into his ear, biting at the helix and scraping his teeth over it like a dog. Tee whimpers, turning his head to catch his mouth in his and clack their teeth together, a shock of pain grounding him to earth so he wouldn’t float up to the heavens too high. Ja’Marr huffs out a laugh against his lips, “Knock it off, dickhead, I know what you’re doing.”

Tee scowls at him, hands tightening on Joe’s hair instead of reaching out to twist and pinch on his skin, like punishing one of them is the same as punishing the other, really, an extension of a singular subject. Joe groans around his cock, extremely pleased, of fucking course he is, and Tee keeps tugging at his roots in exasperation. Fucking masochistic little shit.

Ja’Marr snickers, dragging his tongue all over his neck, “See, natural Joe Burrow knower. Made just for him—to be his receiver, just like me.”

Ja’Marr, honestly, why the fuck is he like this—

Joe and Tee both groan in unison, Tee coming off it in a whine because, fuck, Joe’s mouth is still all up around his dick, the vibrations traveling up straight to his brain and fucking him up beyond repair.

Joe pulls off with an actual wet pop! and twists a hand harshly around his cock—which feels really fucking good, the fuck—like an apology that he isn’t sucking Tee’s dick continuously since he got the chance to, and pushes his torso up to prop his face by Tee’s head, cheeks pressed up against his, chin digging into his shoulder, and he can feel him kiss Ja’Marr rough and wet, with tongue and spit and biting at his lips.

Fucking helllll, they’re trying to kill him.

The man still twisting his hand around his cock like he’s getting paid to presses his cheek harder against Tee’s, and he’s jawing at Ja’Marr, Tee realizes with a breathless laugh—”Would you quit saying shit like that so shamelessly midsex it ruins the fucking vibe.” “What fucking vibe? If anything I’m adding to it, bitch, get back to sucking his dick, the fuck.”—and Joe slinks back down right after like he didn’t just stop mid-blowjob to argue with Ja’Marr over the receiver’s uncensored prattling.

Tee whimpers, Joe’s mouth enveloping his cock again like it’s made for it, all heat and tightness and perfect

how do you write people getting their dick sucked. exactly. no really.

ja'marr lets him breathe but he's instantly kissing down his neck and biting his collarbones and pushing him down and dragging a tongue over his chest tattoos he's /relentless/ and when he looks to where joe is its to him grinning down at him with a hand guiding ja'marr /down/ 'that's one. you got me three right?'

“That’s one,” Joe says, his little impish smile Tee has recorded into his brain countless of times before shining down at him, lips dark red, chin and mouth all wet with Tee’s spunk, “You gave me three.”

“Three what,” Tee asks, stupidly, ears still ringing from the force of his orgasm. He’s still so focused on the bright wet glint of liquid decorating Joe’s lower face, his come, staining his skin. Joe isn’t wiping it away, letting it dry on his skin, flaking and caking and clumping against the corner of his lips. Tee wants to lick it away, drag it into his mouth with his tongue, switch it up and leave bite marks all around his pretty lips. All the red in the cold, now red from his teeth. Would Joe let him. Would Ja’Marr let him. Would he let himself mark that pale skin up, leave parts of himself all over his quarterback in ways he’s never had the guts to even finish the thought of before tonight?

Joe leans closer, mouth over him, damn the fact that Tee’s own come is all over his mouth now. Three, Joe murmurs as he kisses him filthily, sliding his tongue through the gap of his teeth, over his papillae, staining his breath with something of his own. Tee wants a shot of Joe’s own come down his throat, drenching the lining of his esophagus. The thought makes his moan, makes him choke into Joe’s throat, and the older man swallows him whole.

Fuck, three—do they—are they trying to get him to come three times, the same amount of times he caught Joe’s pass for a touchdown? Christ. He’s getting lightheaded.

He laughs incredulously, flicking his eyes down to Ja’Marr mouthing incessantly at his navel, teeth scraping along the black lines of his tattoos, exactly like he said he wanted too. Makes Tee woozy with want, how Ja’Marr gets needy and desperate for it, thirsting over Tee’s body. How many times has he stared at him naked? Tattoos bared and thought to put his mouth on him? Drag a finger down the lines of stars on his stomach? He has never once caught Ja’Marr’s eyes on them—how sneaky had the other man been?

Joe’s hand is right on the younger man’s head like a brand, like he can’t bear to let go. on his head guiding him

, then back to the blond still staring him down. His smile is just as mischievous as it always is. Are they going to take turns, now? That’s the hottest shit he’s ever thought of, probably.

“What,” he can’t help but say, scoffing and teasing Ja’Marr, reaching a hand to tug on his ear and scratch at his cheek because he’s so fucking fond of this man he can’t keep it in, really, “you looking to suck me off too?”

Ja’Marr tugs on his dick, his sensitive dick—bitch—and Tee hisses at him, stopping his loving scritches to outright pinch at his ear because never the fuck he minds, this man is such a fucking brat, he can’t put this guard down at all.

The younger man jerks his head away, laughing. He grins up at Tee, teeth bright and eyes even brighter. “Nah, I don’t like shit down my throat. Wanna fuck me instead?”

Tee chokes on his spit. He blacks out, he thinks, by the question alone. By the idea alone. By the thought alone. His brain tries conjuring images and then it just short circuits. Where is he. Who is he. Why is he.

His head gets cradled, pulled to the side by a hand and he’s being kissed by a smiling mouth, pulled back down to earth slowly and surely until he’s kissing back voluntarily instead of on autopilot. Joe, hand pressed to his cheek and eyes wide open even as he’s stealing Tee’s breath away by kissing him sweetly and thoroughly. What a freak. Who kisses with their eyes wide open. Joe Fucking Burrow, that’s who. His quarterback who threw him three touchdowns and tried biting his neck on national television. Posted on every NFL official social media accounts and sent to him by his high school friends with the words bruh u fucking ur qb??? Which he apparently is, now.

“He asked you a question,” Joe murmurs against his lips. Right. Sure.

Tee looks down to his lap and, damn, what a fucking image. Ja’Marr Chase, laying belly down on his bed with his torso half over Tee’s thighs, a hand curled loosely around his sensitive dick, the other holding his hand��when did that happen, Tee is squeezing it tight unconsciously and now he can’t let go even if he tried—cheek pressed to his left thigh looking up at him with his pupils blown wide open waiting patiently for Tee to look at him.

Right.

“You get to choose,” Ja’Marr says when he notices he’s got Tee’s attention. He tugs at Tee’s soft cock again—

“It’s not a toy,” Tee yelps, his unoccupied hand automatically curling around the other receiver’s hand around his dick.

Ja’Marr just grins wider up at him, unsticking his cheek from his thigh to press a kiss on the hand wrapped around his wrist.

“You get to choose,” he says again, “Fuck my ass or my thighs?”

Tee lets out a sound only audible to dogs and dolphins and aliens 900 billion light years away, probably. Ja’Marr smiles up at him, looking so shily pleased that he can reduce Tee to such a state by just asking a simple question. He has no fucking business looking so sweetly enamored up at Tee after asking if he would rather fuck him in the ass or his thighs.

He’s jostled around again, Joe tugging at his hips to the side so Ja’Marr can haul his ass up to sit by them. This seems to be a theme, with these two, pushy on the field and off the field and in the bedroom—he can’t even say he’s never even thought of it, Burrow-Chase dynamic duo, in whatever form, whatever shape, whatever way he can have them. In his dreams only, he thought, but. But.

Ja’Marr is spreading open the hand he’s kept on holding since god knows when—like an emotional support hand holding he’s got to keep a hold on to get through sex and that thought genuinely fucks Tee up in ways he’s never even thought of—and he drops a whole packet of lube he procured out of fucking nowhere.

Tee stares blankly down at it. Holy shit.

“Bro, you’re taking too long,” Ja’Marr says. Tee flicks his eyes up to look blankly at him. “I want you in me, like, yesterday.”

He’s trying to fucking kill him, Tee realizes. Calling him bro, asking to fuck him in the ass, the fuck is wrong with him.

“You gonna finger me open or I gotta do it myself?”

NggGgRrrHff.

Tee doesn’t even know what came out of his mouth, surging his torso forward and bringing his hand up to tug at Ja’Marr’s skull, palm all over the back of his head so he can tug him closer to his face and lick his mouth open and just shut him the fuck up.

Ja’Marr whimpers, the cocky slope of his shoulders slumping down like a puppet with its strings cut, hauling closer near desperately to settle over Tee’s lap and press his palms over his shoulders for support—kissing Tee right back, breathing hot haaas over Tee’s mouth as he tries gasping for breath.

Tee tugs on his lips with his teeth, presses wet kisses to the side of his cheeks, drags his own lips over his skin back to the tender spot of his jaw, bites over it, pecks a little kiss in apology, then presses his cheek over Ja’Marr’s hard so he can tug roughly on his earlobe with his teeth—thinks he can devour the other man whole, really, from the sheer hunger in his gut built up from day one of over-familiarly dapping him up and hauling him in for a hug under the then-flickering lights of Paul Brown Stadium in 2021.

The lube’s gone from his fingers. He realizes this because someone is tugging Ja’Marr’s hips up so he’s kneeling over him, then pressing a finger in without so much as an ’excuse me’.

Christ, Joe is so fucking.

Tee can't even find the words, really, to describe his quarterback.

Ja’Marr yelps, gasps, clutches tighter at Tee’s shoulder, eyelashes fluttering close as he tries to keep kneeling but Joe is apparently ruthless when he's opening someone up because the younger man just collapses all over Tee, Tee letting his weight down him as drags both hands over the other man’s back to soothe him.

“Want—” Ja’Marr chokes out against the skin of Tee’s neck, “—want you.”

Joe huffs out a laugh as he mercilessly twists two fingers inside his receiver’s ass. Tee feels dizzy looking at the

“Oh I see,” Joe says, dangerously amused, “I see how it is, can't even settle for me no more, huh, when you got Tee Higgins at your beck and call?”

His fingers slip out, shining under the dim lighting of Tee’s night settings, and then he slaps a hand over Ja’Marr’s ass like every part of him is for him to toy over. Tee is still so fucking woozy from the image of it all, his hand rubbing at Ja’Marr’s back sliding lower to smooth over the sting from Joe’s palm.

(god, what an ass. tee can't help himself, grabs a handful of it and tugs it to the side to show his hole, shining wetly from joe’s fingers, a whole invitation for him. tee wants to put his whole mouth on it. lick him open nice and easy. press a finger in and watch as his entire body tremble and shake.)

Joe grins at him, wide and a bit mean, cocky and soooo full of himself, precisely like every other time he makes an insane throw, a run further than his usual short stops, a little overtime nail-biter win like just hours ago: his ice-in-my-veins shot that Tee paused and contemplated jerking off to hours before this.

He reaches over Ja’Marr's body between them, kisses Tee like he’s giving him his approval, then turns and presses the sweetest kiss to Ja’Marr’s nose, damn the fact that the other man is glaring and outright pouting at him.

“Bro,” he croaks out, talking to Tee but trying to shoot daggers at Joe with his eyes, “let me up, let me take this bitch down for one second then we can go right back.”

Joe giggles bright like an actual child, keeps pressing kisses over whatever parts of Ja’Marr’s face he could reach until the younger man’s lips stretch out wobbly for a smile that he can't help, still whining at Joe to shut the fuck up, would he, just for one day.

Tee grins wide in spite of himself too, hands still all over his best friend’s ass and lips still tingling from a kiss from his quarterback.

He drags his arm up so he can cradle Ja’Marr, fingers reaching over to grip at his jaw and twist it until he's looking right at him and putting all that focus on Tee, murmurs low and raspy: “you said you want me?”, and shamelessly delights in the way the other man’s pupils dilate wide and gorgeous.

“Fuck you,” Ja’Marr says, jaw working against Tee’s grip, “Get your fucking fingers in me before i force myself on your dick, damn it.”

that’s two — from the base of her neck, to the arch of her eyelids, her beauty made a slave of me (adonis, transformations of the lover)

Ja’Marr nestles himself on his mound of pillows—Tee’s pillows. The pillows Tee sleeps with. His favorite pillows. The dark maroon sheets caressing his bare skin as he lounges on his self made throne, as he spreads open his legs, slipping one more pillow under his hips so he can present his ass to Joe and Tee and look expectantly at them. Tee is still so fucking lightheaded. How did he go from scoring three touchdowns to scoring a whole other touchdown? Ja’Marr—his best friend—who ducked his head to grin slilly up at him not four hours ago, telling him the next round of WR room steak dinner was on him.

Joe pours lube all over Tee’s fingers,

Joe’s plastering himself all over his back, but he isn’t pushing him at all. He’s just—there. Pressed up all over him, moving with him, breathing over the skin of his neck, nosing behind his ear. He’s letting Tee control how he wants to fuck his man, Tee realizes with a jolt, trusting him with Ja’Marr.

joe plastered all over tee's back, cock nestled against his ass but he's not pushing tee around he's just following his movements, letting tee control how he wants to enter ja'marr and that also fucks tee up because joes trusting him with ja'marr!! with how he treats ja'marr at his most vulnerable!!!! telling him he can go harder, ja'marr likes whatever, can take whatever, joe leaing a hand in his belly and pushing to add in extra sensation of pleasure when tee pushes /in/ for the first time and he just collapses all over ja'marr and they're all groaning hoarsely in unison because fuck tees in ja'marr and he just pushed his ass back all over joes dick

Joe snickers at the other receiver. Tee feels him lift up an arm, nails scratching at his scalp. He’s murmuring softly at him, but Tee doesn’t think Ja’Marr is really computing any of it.

“Aren’t you being so agreeable tonight? Some Tee Higgins magic keeping you all pliant and malleable?”

Ja’Marr whimpers, lifting his chin and biting at Joe’s fingers. Joe huffs, chest vibrating against Tee’s back, and every square inch of Tee’s body is filled with warmth.

calls him baby

ja’marr gets fucked up when tee calls him baby because joe calls him baby btw so

that’s three — to love someone is firstly to confess: i'm prepared to be devastated by you (billy-ray belcourt, a history of my brief body)

He’s leaning all over Ja’Marr now, gazing down the man who’s grinning woozily up at him

Joe, nosing the back of his neck and palming his ass cheeks asking him if he likes to be fucked. Ja’Marr, hands still shaky coming up to drag over his sides and settle over his ribs like a key settling into a lock and clicking into place. Tee himself, chest expanding with breath and skin bristling with want from so deep within him it feels like it’s bursting out and changing the hue of his skin to red, to blue, to orange and black, purple and green, magenta and cyan, a kaleidoscope of colors like the big bang theory—he’s a new universe stretching and expanding and these two are his first and only planets, never to be let go.

He feels stripped bare in front of these two—is his every thought and want obvious in his face and every motion now? Do they see, now, how much he wants them? How much he—loves them? Is it obvious, now, that when he speaks to them he’s speaking like there’s a lodge of do you think of me when you’re alone without me wanting to burst out from his throat? That he aches alone in the center of a crowd when he doesn’t have them beside him? When he has them beside him, even, because they’re not really his to have? Does it show? Do they know? Do they care to know? Does he care to show them?

Tee breathes out loudly, ragged and deep. Joe shushes him, blows air against the curve of his C7. Ja’Marr surges up, presses kisses against his wet cheeks and babbles unknown words to him like he’s speaking through his shitty mic on stream. Tee would miss it, if their randomly scheduled streams were ever to peter off. Tee would miss them, if they were ever to fade away from him.

“Baby,” Ja’Marr coos, “sweetheart, my sweet, my love, my heart, my gorgeous,”

Tee shudders away against his lips and feels the man behind him curve a smile against the skin stretched over his cervical spine.

“My baby,” Joe joins in, voice jokingly grave, “my gorgeous, my sweet—”

“—quit copying me,” Ja’Marr whines, cutting him off, but he’s grinning against Tee’s lips, so he knows he’s just doing so to be annoying—just to put a smile on Tee’s face and it’s working, Tee huffing wetly against the stretch of his grin.

“—my number five,” Joe continues on without pausing, barely a fletch in his voice, “my silly rabbit, best hands in the league, insane body control, prettiest smile in the whole fucking world, favorite receiver to throw to—”

“Hey now,” Ja’Marr whines in earnest now, hands reaching around Tee’s body to stab around blindly at their quarterback. Tee breaks down in laughter for real this time, collapsing fully on the man in the bottom of the pile, letting Ja’Marr find a whole other thing to whine about—’teeeeee you’re crushing me you ass, joe don’t you fucking try it!’—and there was ice creeping from every distal edge of his limbs to the core of him, but there’s nothing but warmth now, chasing it away, clouding his head, keeping him sane.

“But really now,” Joe interrupts, tugging his hips up impatiently, “I really wanna fuck you, do you wanna?”

Right. Jesus. Joe fucking Burrow, everyone.

Ja’Marr hums, peppering his cheek with kisses again, ever so free with his sweet affections. “Ten out of ten,” he says, “would recommend.”

Tee stares sideways at him, still settled with his weight fully on him. “That a full Yelp review for a Joe Burrow fuck?”

Ja’Marr sighs dreamily, scratching at Tee’s sides, “Do you really want one?”

Jesus.

Tee wiggles around, dragging his body against Ja’Marr’s and the man beneath him giggles when he brushes his fingers deliberately against his sides. He twists until he’s peering at Joe, squinting at him and pretending that the man didn’t just suck his dick so good Tee cried and stared at him like a second coming of Christ. Blasphemous, sacrilegious, irreverent, and yet, he has yet to be struck down and smitten—or perhaps he already has, and this is all a byproduct of his imaginary ruin.

“Think you can make it good?” He asks imperiously, already knowing in his bones this man would be as good at fucking as he is at literally anything else, as well evidenced by his previous attempt at giving Tee what was possibly the best blowjob of his life just, what, 40 minutes prior?

Joe scoffs, ducking his head down and pecking at his lips. “I just sucked your dick to incoherency, the fuck do you mean ‘can i make it good’? I got a pretty mouth and a pretty dick, think for yourself.”

Tee chokes in sheer disbelief—heart stuttering a bit at the brief press of lips but what-the-fuck-ever—the ego on this man, jesus. He flicks his eyes to the pink of his lips—shining, distracting, real fucking pretty—then, well, down past the puffy nipples and golden dusting of chest hair and layer of fat over abs to the nice curve of a cock—thick and long, veiny, a blushy pink head, a weirdly sexy little jolt like it’s show-ponying, like it knows he’s watching it and wants to show it likes it—that Joe likes Tee watching him. Yeah, real fucking pretty dick, too, damn it, fuck Joe Burrow.

Tee whines, turning back around to bury his face—knowing damn well it’s burning red even through the dark of his skin—in the curve of Ja’Marr’s neck and tries not to let the dual laughter of the boys who’ve quite literally captured his heart stutter it too much. Failed, but whatever, he’s got way too much practice over the years regulating his heartbeat to normalcy around these two.

Joe goes to scrape his teeth along the top his spine again and Tee shivers, feeling like prey caught in the maw of a tiger, which really won’t do—he’s a fucking bengal too, damn it. He bucks his hips back firmly, makes sure to rub the curve of his ass against the hard of his quarterback’s dick and hides his satisfied smile against his fellow receiver’s jaw when Joe gasps loud and startled, hand coming to grip at his hip hard, probably leaving bruises for him to brush his fingers wonderingly over later on.

Ja’Marr snickers approvingly, pressing his jaw back firmly against Tee’s mouth, “Yeah, tell him who’s boss, make him work for it.”

Tee presses a kiss right to the tender skin below his jawbone, leaves it there for a beat, two, three, feels like maybe he can make out the faint fluttering of his heartbeat against his lips, then lets up to say drily, “Pretty sure all your raving reviews does wonders for his ego. Don’t act like you’re not to blame here, Mr. Joe Burrow’s Numero Uno.”

Ja’Marr just shrugs unapologetically the best he could, pressed down as he is with Tee’s full weight all over him to the bed, never really one to be shy about his near piety to one Joe Burrow when it’s just them three. He’s been circling indistinct little patterns on the skin of Tee’s hips the whole time, but he stops for a minute to reach a hand up and tap a little rhythm teasingly over Joe’s thigh, now kneeling to the side, the only one still hard and with zero orgasms to his name that night, pouting but not admitting it.

Tee very obviously wouldn’t say no to having Joe’s dick inside him but playing hard-to-get just so Joe Burrow would pout and whine about not getting to fuck him is really—really fucking cute, actually, wow. Wow, god, Tee is so gone for him, he should really take a step back and regulate his entire life and emotional capacity, wow. Wow.

and in the end — over a distance of four hundred miles, her yearning and his yearning are intertwined, as though there were no spatial or temporal interval between them (jenny erpenbeck, kairos)

After it’s all done and not said, then, Tee’s left naked in the middle of the hallway leading to his bathroom, unable to take the steps back to his own room where his best friends are, clutching at his towel after having just pissed, and having orgasmed three fucking times by the combined willpower of his two closest teammates, all because he scored three touchdowns for a game—that might possibly be his last home game with them—that had playoff stakes. Fuck.

Heavy footsteps come up to him and he flicks his eyes up to see Joe staring him down—naked, gorgeous, sweat-slicked, his quarterback, his friend. Who had just fucked the bejeesus out of him.

Tee drags a hand down his face harshly. Stupid. So fucking stupid.

The lilt of Ja’Marr’s voice when he says my sweet, when he’s referring to Tee as my heart, when he’s saying Tee as my gorgeous. When Joe says gravely, jokingly, possessively, my number five, he’s saying that about Tee.

Joe catches his hands—both of them—towel slipping away, and holds them and tugs at them until Tee is stumbling into him, lifting his chin up awkwardly so he won’t slam it into Joe’s nose but Joe doesn’t even do him the honor of avoiding it. He just tucks it into the curve of his Adam’s apple and breathes in deep like a weirdo. How many times has Tee just caught him with his nose buried in Ja’Marr’s neck as he hugs the receiver—how many times has he caught the man nudge his nose to the curve of Tee’s shoulder, right at the base of his neck, after a game when he comes to him for a hug. Oh.

“Joe,” Tee breathes out, trembles, wonders how he’s supposed to word this out, how he’s supposed to say how he feels, how he’s supposed to say t

Ja’Marr, breathing in his air and telling him he doesn’t want him to leave.

Tee sees Joe grin down his phone at ass o’clock in the morning and knows he’s reading i love you in between the letters of Ja’Marr’s why the fuck is all of cincy awake at 7 in the morning.

Ja’Marr says hey, all sleepy with the vowel dragging and it sounds like come here, you two. Tee goes, Joe right behind him a half step away.

a little more down the line — the only heaven i’ll be sent to, is when i’m alone with you (hozier, take me to church)

you do like all those pet names

he calls me all that all the time joe says nosing behind tees ear

i like calling you that too tee says, amused. letting his neck bend even more, what even are the words uncomfortable stretch when joe burrow has his nose buried in the curve of it.

you called me baby, ja’marr says then, shy and a little quiet, like he’s saying something he keeps close to him and isn’t sure how he should breach it out of him.

i call him that, joe says next, grin audible even if its not visible from where he’s pressed up behind tee

oh. tee called him baby, told him to come for him, and ja’marr gasped into his mouth and bursted all over tee’s belly, drenching him in white, whimpering as he stared into tee’s eyes with his own watering but still kept it open, didn't even close it because he didn’t want to. couldn't, maybe, tee thinks again.

oh, tee says out loud for real then, bumping his nose forward to ja’marr like he's learning that ja’marr likes to do, okay then, baby, come here, baby, let me see you, baby.

ja’marr laughs, bumps his nose right back. don't wear it thin.

never, tee swears.

my baby, my baby, joe murmurs finally into the back of tee’s neck, pressing his fingers into the insides of ja’marr’s elbows.

i want more thumps. i want more time. i want to waste my love on everything. give me a heart for ohio. —(joy sullivan, instructions for traveling west, an octopus has three whole hearts)

more time together for these three, please.

WHICH APPARENTLY HEY THEY DID IT 😭😭👍👍👍👍 GOOD FOR THEM!!! trey next so help me!! when treys news comes out (🙏) maybe ill post that treymarr unfinished oblivious courting fic idk we'll see that ones more of a mess than this and also wayyy shorter lmao but anyways:::: thank u for reading through this all if u made it to this end note 😇🫶 goodbye see u again whenever i have it in me to show up again akdhsjdjdj love yall bengals super bowl 2k26 Believe! or whatever it is they all say in that 2021 run 💖

thank you for every one of you who've come into my inbox to ask how i am by the way!!!! adore and miss you all very much <33

#my writing #ignore the shittiness of format and mess of words that don't cohere to the previous paragraphs i beg #and a whole lot of gaps between some scenes lmao well.#this is unedited and unrefined and unfinished and all those other uns #some of the paragraphs with all the // for italics are what i sent to casey in our chats btw if ur confused 😭 used it as guidance or smth i #joeteemarr #fic: all on his mouth like liquor #oh wait ifeel like i should present some excuse as to why i checked out for a long while here #started my clinical rotations!! currently going through obgyn and dying from it bc if im being honest no one here is sane #i literally have a test tomorrow and am prepared to get yelled at for being a dumbass to my face so #cheers ♥️ would try to be more active but no promisea ahahahahahshhs #and im actually getting ready for my night shift please pray that it goes well so i can study for my minicex through it god i am soo fucked #but i wanted to do /something/ for the teemarr contract extension!! so. well.#god they really said take both of us or not at all thats /crazy/ btw like #tee changed AGENTS so theyd construct their contracts easier and probably added each other to some unspoken clauses or whatever idk how #contract negotiations work but like this is genuinely something you only read about in football au fics thats genuinely crazy of them #ja'marr clinger extraordinaire and tee whos supremely unselfish and clings back bc ja'marr wants him to like thats fucking /crazy/ oh my god #also confessing i do still stalk here sometimes to chat with casey to get my rpf fix and i do send anon messages when i can ahhaahha :")))#hilarious if some of you can guess which ones i sent btw #ANYWYAS GOODBYEN😭😭🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

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ziyechs · 2 months ago

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okay i'm here i'm sat i would love to hear more about this au!! as i said in my tags just now WHY would joe have left and drifted with someone else?? how could he do that to ja'marr like...no wonder he's upset!! and again i'll say that drift compatibility for them is SO perfect because i mean tbh the closest thing to that irl would HAVE to be the chemistry of a QB/WR relationship. especially one as unique as their's!

ohh boy okay strap in this got kind of long (plus this first part of it is almost entirely unnecessary world-building lmao so bear with me)

also here, here and here are my previous posts about joe'marr pacrim au in case anyone is curious as to what the hell i'm even talking about here

nowwwww, first things first: joe and ja’marr meet sometime in ja’marr’s first year at the jaeger academy and get paired up pretty much immediately due to their insanely high drift-compatibility

i was doing a bit of Professional Research (scrolling tumblr) and stumbled upon this incredible post, which i’m gonna be using as a reference when talking about drift compatibility and whatnot

now. important to note that joe, for the sake of kicking the plot of this whole thing into action, has an unusually high dci

(ja’marr’s compatibility index isn’t super low or anything, just in the lower range somewhere, which limits his ability to drift with other people and also restricts the number of potential drift-partners that are theoretically available to him)

(meanwhile someone like justin probably has a higher-ish dci, as evidenced by his ability to thrive in minnesota while playing under 293849074583274 different, questionably talented quarterbacks lol)

(sidenote, i reckon their respective compatibility indexes are somewhat allegorical to how the nature (and role demands) of their positions differ irl: quarterbacks need to have a pretty good, mutual connections with all of their potential receiving targets (which includes receivers, but also tight ends, or running backs). need to be on good terms with their o-lines, the people they rely on for protection, and have at least a basic awareness/understanding of cornerbacks/safeties to make accurate reads in the pocket)

(comparatively, receiver is much more of an isolated position, i would say. they obviously have to work closely with their quarterbacks (and some of the main back-ups), but apart from that it’s a very lonely position with few relationships you gotta maintain in order to be successful)

but, yeah, all of this is to say that joe would probably be a highly sought-after commodity in this universe due to his ability to sustain a stable neural handshake with pretty much anyone

probably gets fast-tracked through the academy and sent to one of the more prestigious shatterdomes (LA), in a move that’s honestly mostly a PR-strategy (i’m assuming this takes place around the time where the wall starts getting built and the public has begun losing trust in the jaeger program)

obviously gets sent out on missions pretty much immediately

helps with some of the developmental work necessary to refine the pons-interface and gets his ears talked off by a bunch of engineers who want to hear his opinion on this entirely insignificant piece of jaeger technology they have been working on

but they also task him with training the younger recruits that are arriving at the shatterdome (since it’s advantageous for them to have amore experienced partner to enter a drift simulator with when trying to fine-tune some of their abilities), so during his first year joe enters a lot of different simulators with a lot of different people

now, it’s been a while since i’ve actually watched the movies so i’m not entirely sure in how far (if at all) this is supported by the canon, but i would imagine that it’s probably not recommended to switch your drift partners very often due to some obscure neurological reason

(maybe it just takes too much of a mental strain on the brain when it is constantly being tasked with adapting (and reacting) to multiple drift partners with vastly disparate backgrounds, cognitive architectures and experiences? might also be important to take into account that he’s entering a lot of simulators with inexperienced pilots and young recruits. which most likely puts a comparatively high mental strain on joe’s brain, since he’s the one that's primarily responsible for stabilizing the drift and maintaining the connection)

i would also imagine that there’s probably not an awful lot of research on this particular topic, since joe is one of the first pilots who have had a high enough compatibility index, number of different drift partners and usage rate to trigger this phenomenon

the symptoms are barely noticeable at first: maybe a few minor migraines. his vision going a little blurry at the edges whenever he spends too much time staring at his ipad screen. tiny fissures in his memory; things he used to know blindly suddenly start slipping his mind—the access code to his room, the name of the new recruit he’s meant to be mentoring

but he hides it fairly well—probably doesn’t even really notice it in the beginning, chalks it up to the stress he’s been under recently, to the poor sleep he’s been getting. doesn’t mention it to anyone because what’s the point, really, it’s nothing bad, he’s doing alright, doesn’t want to worry anyone when there are much, much bigger problems that require dealing with (namely: the end of the world lol)

until it starts getting worse: he begins having more severe memory impairments. wakes up in the mornings with a headache that’s bad enough to make him dry heave into the toilet bowl. stays right there on the cold bathroom tile, desperately trying to breathe through the nausea, just keeps pulling air into his lungs—slow and deep and steady—, blinking red-hot, bleeding pain out of his eyes. cuts himself while trying to shave because he can’t stop his hands from trembling. gets out of the simulator one day and just. collapses.

obviously immediately gets rushed to the medical department where they spend the next twelve hours conducting various neurological assessments on him (asking a bunch of questions, checking for balance and attention and memory, trying to construct a timeline of his symptoms) until deciding that the whole thing is serious enough to warrant functional/structural neuroimaging. in order to assess the full extent of the damage iykwim

all of which ultimately culminates in joe sitting in a tiny, tucked-away room somewhere, listening to one of the doctors—an older woman with a steady voice and kind eyes—as she’s saying words like neuronal cell death and brain atrophy and protein aggregation like any of it means anything to him

joe doesn’t say a single word, just stares blankly at this horrible, multi-coloured PET-scan of his brain; black splotches where there used to be neural activity, like a lease that has run out

finally, weeks later, he receives official confirmation that he’ll be allowed to continue piloting as long as he restricts his partners to people he has previously drifted with: people he has no issues maintaining a stable connection with, people he knows well enough to ensure that the neural handshake is stable and balanced enough as to not cause any further mental deterioration

which, obviously, leaves a somewhat restricted number of people: tee, tyler, a few people he drifted with back in the academy (justin, clyde, terrace), and, of course, ja’marr

—

okay, i’m gonna go on a quick tangent here, so bear with me for a minute. i was trying to figure out a semi-logical reason for why (and how) excessive drifting with a multitude of different drift partners would cause this kind of decline in joe’s cognitive abilities (and, ultimately, would have most likely rendered him unable to drift entirely, had they not caught it in time)

the movie references the term ‘mental load’ a lot when talking about drifting. which, like, as far as i understand it, doesn’t really mean anything except for serving as a sort of blanket term for the mental effort it would require to pilot a jaeger. (but it doesn’t offer any actual explanation to how exactly it works)

so, naturally, because i am kind of an insane person, i read this paper on the basic mechanisms of neurodegeneration to come up with an (honestly still kind of questionable) explanation

now, from what i know, certain neurodegenerative diseases are in parts caused/exacerbated by high levels of stress (activation of the hpa axis, which elevates circulating corticosteroid levels in the brain, blablabla, the whole shebang)

soooo, maybe there’s an interaction between the high levels of cortisol in joe’s brain and the depletion of specific cognitive resources associated with maintaining the neural handshake

which could cause something like protein aggregation (a process in which mutated or improperly folded proteins accumulate and form aggregates), which ultimately results in a disruption in the mechanisms that are responsible for neural growth, recovery, neurogenesis and whatnot

like i said previously all of this is very Biologically Questionably (i am Not an expert) but whatever lol it’s good enough for me

i also feel the need to emphasise that joe should probably not be drifting At All anymore at this point, but i highly doubt anyone in this universe feels like they have the luxury of issuing joe burrow a permanent, blanket ban on piloting

(also, if anything, medical malpractice is kind of a prerogative when writing nfl fanfic lol)

ANYWAY like i said, all of this leaves joe with limited options: justin (who got stationed up in anchorage and has grown into an exceptional pilot and, like, has become an essential part of the organisation up there, so honestly good luck convincing KOC to ever let him go), tee, tyler, some of the guys that are still back at the academy and ja’marr

cue: joe starts not-so-subtly lobbying for ja’marr

the higher-ups in LA aren’t entirely convinced on him; he’s just coming off an injury that has sidelined him for months and—even though his and joe’s sim performances last year had been nothing short of excellent: thirty-seven drops and thirty-seven kills—ja’marr hasn’t been in a simulator for over a year now

but at the end of the day joe does get his wish and ja’marr is sent to LA

—

NOW. MEANWHILE. as all of this is happening, ja’marr is busy doing his final year in the academy

and he is Not Having A Good Time

it’s a really difficult year for him because so many of his friends have graduated, been scattered all across the globe, living lives that ja’marr only ever catches glimpses of through interviews on TV or hushed gossip in the hallways

and of course they all try to stay in contact as much as possible—justin tries to visits him every second weekend, their group chat is active enough that ja’marr has to comb through over two-hundred messages each evening before going to sleep, clyde sends him pictures of the sunset in melbourne, grant plays call of duty when ja’marr has trouble falling asleep—but it’s different

joe also comes by a lot in those first few months, but eventually his visits turn sporadic and increasingly short-lived as he starts climbing the ranks in LA

they don’t do much—ja’marr is still nursing a leg injury he got during combat training and it’s not like there’s much to do at the academy anyway—so they mostly just hang out in ja’marr’s room

ja’marr’s getting joe up to date on the latest gossip and how rehab is going

joe reciprocating by telling ja’marr about this hidden cove he found on one of his morning runs, how much ja’marr would like LA, how he can’t wait to show him one day

they have sex that leaves ja’marr feeling horrible and scooped-out, emotions all tangled up, spilling out wrong

(i don’t have a concrete idea of what exactly their relationship status would be like at this point in time. it’s a little complicated—except for all the ways in which it really isn’t; they probably started sleeping with each other sometime in the middle of ja'marr's second year in the academy and just. never really stopped. took a break for a few months, maybe, during that period of time when justin and joe were teaming up fairly regularly in the simulator)

but it probably started kind of like this:

they’re in ja’marr’s room after a session in the simulator. both of them on his bed (joe reading, ja’marr playing some random video game), legs tangled because it’s important to have that mutual point of contact when their minds are still reeling after a drop, trying to remap the boundaries of their own bodies

there’s still some residual shared sensory overlap:

ja’marr's trying to focus on his game but every couple of minutes he’ll be blinking and opening his eyes to a flicker of what joe is currently looking at; a page of his book—the letters all inky viscosity, blurring together, bleeding into one another, because joe’s too stubborn to wear his glasses—, a different angle on the TV screen—just off enough to make his body sway in place trying to compensate for the shift in perspective—, the shape of his own body—joe’s glance that’s climbing up the notches of his spine that are faintly visible through his t-shirt

before long ja’marr has given up on trying to play his game

is lying on his bed instead

head somewhere right next to joe’s heartbeat, one of his legs hitched over his thighs. nose brushing joe clavicle on every uptick of his breath

and it’s easy. uncomplicated, in a way that it normally isn’t because he doesn’t have to worry about plausible deniability in moments like these—there’s no need to masquerade the longing in his chest as anything other than not is

not when joe’s hands are quietly tightening around his hips like he’s scared ja’marr might slip away from him if he doesn’t hold onto him. not when ja’marr can feel each individual fingertip through the fabric of his shirt, can feel every point where their bodies are connected

it’s easier, in moments like these—when the aftereffects of the drifts are still clinging to his bones like wet cloth—, when both of them want nothing but being close to each other, closer closer closer, like the parts of their consciousness they had borrowed from one another are desperately trying to crawl back home

ja’marr still hasn’t opened his eyes

there’s no need to; not with joe’s eyesight that’s surging through his mind every few minutes

he sees his own eyelashes that are fluttering against his skin, long shadows bleeding all the way down his cheekbones

one of joe’s hands that is stubbornly curled into the hem of his shirt

his thumb pressing into the indentation right below ja’marr’s ear

and then suddenly

he hears his name being called; gentle and steady, quiet like a secret joe’s been carrying around for years and is only now entrusting to him

palm sliding down ja’marr’s face and curving around his jaw, heavy with the weight of something that has been building, building, building for months now

and then joe is leaning in and ja’marr is rising to meet him

feels himself kissing and being kissed at the same time—still halfway in between their two minds—and it’s barely more than a tentative brush of lips at first but it feels more intimate than anything they’ve ever done

because ja’marr makes a tiny, desperate noise in the back of his throat and joe licks it right ouf of his mouth and the possessiveness of it settles somewhere deep in his stomach

and it’s the closest ja'marr has ever felt to him, even though they’ve been in the drift enough times that he feels like he has known joe forever. carries a permanent imprint of him beneath his skin

anyway. from this point on. well. pretty regular post-drift sex that slowly turns into regular sex just. whenever they both feel like it. and it’s very messy because obviously they don’t talk about any of it

gets even worse after joe leaves for LA. their communication takes a big hit (both the frequency and the ease of it), since so much of it was predicated on living in each other’s pockets, seeing each other five hours a day during training and sim sessions, and literally dripping into each other’s consciousness for the majority of it all

like, if you’ve spent literal years living in the back of someone’s mind, i just feel like it would be so strange to suddenly not have that anymore

and having to sort of relearn how to communicate outside of the drift. figuring out how to read one another without the added help of that mental connection

ja’marr’s throat is closing up anytime he wants to speak up because everything feels strange and unsure and unspeakable now that they actually have to put it into words instead of letting the silent, unacknowledged truth of it ebb and flow through their shared consciousness

anyway, like i said, joe still comes by whenever he can make the time

all of their conversations are stilted and unsure

and it feels especially awful sometimes because joe will be talking to him and halfway through his sentence his accent slips into something else entirely—a pronunciation he borrowed from tyler, or that liquid drawl tee’s voice carries sometimes when he’s half asleep and his syllables start bleeding into each other. and ja’marr suddenly can’t bear to look at him anymore because it feels like the person he loves is slipping away from him minute by minute; like anytime they see each other there is another part of him that got lost in translation and ja’marr doesn’t know how to undo this slow, monstrous unraveling

doesn’t know how to love joe anymore, not when he’s like this—barely half of how ja’marr remembers him, almost a stranger, someone who has given so many pieces of himself away to others for safekeeping

doesn’t know how to hold onto him anymore, doesn’t even know if joe still wants him to

so, yeah, all in all ja’marr would not have a great time during that year, trying to rehab his fucked up leg and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge how lonely and heartbroken he feels

and some nights—in the privacy of his room, when he allows those feelings of abandonment and bitterness to bloom in his chest instead of closing his fist around them and suffocating them right there and then—he watches interviews with the people joe is drifting with in LA

and it makes him feel even more horrible about himself because they seem nice

(people he could have been friends with in a different life, under different circumstances)

(watches so many interviews and talkshow appearances that it almost feels like he knows them—and it’s easy to feel like he actually does because he has listened to tyler boyd talk about the drawing his daughter brought home from daycare the other day and the book he’s been reading to her over facetime whenever he knows he won’t make it home for bedtime. when he’s watched tee higgins ramble about cars and the jellyfish aquarium he’s been secretly keeping in his room in LA and how he got into sooo much trouble for it once it got discovered)

and, like i said, all of them seem sweet and kind and genuine

but every now and again ja’marr’s gaze catches on the way tee’s eyes go all squinty and tight when a camera shutter goes off right in his face, or when the beam of the studio lights hits him at a certain angle

or how tyler’s lower lip pushes forward into the little pout joe does sometimes when he’s been asked a question he doesn’t know if he has an answer to

all of which are mannerism that are so painfully familiar to ja’marr because it used to be him that was borrowing them

who traced the shape of them in the mirror; fingers trembling, each touch laced with reverence and awe

and suddenly there’s all this anger coiling up tightly in his stomach when he thinks about how much of joe he used to have—and how much of him is being stolen away from him

and ja’marr tries really hard not to think about how much time tee and joe must be spending together

how many hours in the simulator it must have taken for joe’s frown to leave such a permanent imprint on the ridges of joe mixon’s face

but i suppose it would also go the other way around:

one of the interviewers asks tee a question—softball, about growing up in tennessee, or his favourite restaurant in LA—and right before tee goes to answer, he does that little thing: a barely-there tilt of his head, shy smile stretching the corner of his mouth

and ja’marr suddenly feels like he might throw up

because he has seen joe do that exact thing before

in the privacy of ja’marr’s room, one of those weekends joe had come to visit, one of those afternoons they had spent in each other’s orbits, so close they were practically sharing breaths

when he thought that the world had narrowed down to the intimacy of that moment: joe’s fingers curled losely around his wrist, thumb pressed to his pulse point until ja’marr could feel his heartbeat resonating through both of their bodies—a steady badum, badum, badum—, his chest tight and heavy with the significance of the moment; like he was breathing for both of them, somehow, like he had two hearts pulsating against his ribcage

but in reality it hadn’t been private or intimate at all. instead tee higgins had been there with them; clawing at parts of joe, ripping him away rib by rib until there had been nothing left of him for ja’marr

—

ANYWAY fast forward to when ja’marr arrives in LA

gets brought up to date regarding joe’s health situation (and obiously clocks immediately what role they expect him to play in all of this. categorically refuses at first and it probably takes, like, an honestly absurd amount of doctors and neurologists and drift-scientists to convince ja’marr that joe is stable enough to enter a simulator/jaeger without putting him at risk of worsening his current condition)

i also think that this probably opens another whole can of worms where ja’marr is kind of beating himself up over the whole thing

lot of complicated emotions going on in his head—cause we obviously all know just how seriously he takes health issues—most likely some frayed anger at joe for being this careless, putting his body on the line without considering any of the long-term effects it may have on him. without considering what it would do to his loved ones (to his friends! his family! to ja’marr!!) if anything were to happen to him

and like, you know, it’s like. death is somewhat of an expected outcome in this universe, something that’s always lingering right at the edge of everyone’s awareness

and there is probably this small, angry, selfish part of ja’marr that’s like

i love joe and it should be MY privilege to die with him. if that makes sense lmao like hes soooo mad just thinking on repeat that

if joe so insists on doing all of this self-sacrifial bullshit, he should’ve at least do it with me, he should’ve done it with me so that i can have something of his when he is gone, something permanent, wallpaper in my mind or an oil stain on my fingertips or a tattoo something permanent something painful something real

and the more ja’marr is thinking about it, the more unfair it feels to him that he has spent all these years loving joe and how he barely has anything to show for it now: no biochemical traces in his brain’s anatomy, their ghost-drift long ameliorated, no physical scars to prove how well he has loved him, how much it has ruined him, how much of joe has shaped him into the person he is today

(he is VERY dramatic here lmao just imagine nineteen year old ja’marr chase at 2am furiously scribbling all of these thoughts into his diary lmao)

but yeah, i reckon there’s probably also a fair amount of guilt masquerading as some of that self-righteous anger

like maybe he should have realised that joe was not doing well, should have noticed that he wasn’t being himself those past few months

and he kind of did

(could tell that joe had been distracted and tired. not fully filling out the shape of who ja’marr knows him to be)

but piloting can have a big toll on the mind and he knows how hard joe was working and how many expectations had been placed on his shoulders, so he probably just attributed it up to stress

—

at some point—once ja’marr’s leg has fully healed and a little bit of colour has returned to joe’s face—they enter the simulator together for the first time in a year

and ja’marr shuts down entirely within the first few seconds, like the neural handshake just doesn’t work at all because you can’t take secrets into the drift

but ja’marr is so helplessly in love with joe by this point (and simulateneously absolutely convinced that joe doesn’t feel the same) that he can’t bear the humiliation of joe finding out like this, in the drift, probably hating him for it, never wanting to speak or drift with him again etc etc

(sidenote, literally none of this would ever happen lmao joe is pretty obviously to everyone except ja’marr very much in love with him too but like. they’re both kind of stupid lol)

so, yeah, their first drift attempt fails pretty spectacularly

and ja’marr pretty much runs away

(this is where all of this would take place, i suppose)

joe finds him a few hours later and they talk

and it’s very stiltled and strange and overall kind of horrible because they haven’t really talked in a very long time and ja’marr can still feel joe’s presence in the back of his mind

uncomfortable and misplaced and intrusive, scratching across the inside of his skull, the way it sometimes is after a failed drift

he used to be pretty good at reading joe but right now he kind of feels like a stranger around him, like there’s a language barrier between them for the first time ever

and no matter how hard ja’marr tries the words just won’t come out right, all of it strange and stilted and unfamiliar; sharp edges and ragged shapes that he’s cutting his tongue on

—

i do think they figure it out eventually

their drift compatibility probably takes a while to get back to where it used to be

but now

whenever they get out of the simulator

after the drift has dripped out of their bones and left behind two minds instead of one

joe will come up to him

brush their shoulders together, silent and deliberate, and as they walk back to their room, he doesn’t let go of ja’marr hand even once

and for the first time in a very long time ja’marr braves the thought that, maybe, they’re going to be alright

ANYWAYYYYY thank you soooo much for the ask and sorryyyyyy that it's taken me such a long time to get back to you 🥲🫶❤️ omg also re: what you said about drift compatibility being the closest thing to a qr/qb relationship I AGREEEEEE truly i am always thinking about that one poem by pablo neruda that goes like: I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love, / except in this form in which I am not nor are you, / so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, / so close that your eyes close with my dreams. like!!!!!!!!!!

#this does have a happy ending btw it just takes them a long time to actually get there #tee is probably like #sooooooo invested in this #meets ja'marr for the first time and says something funny and charming something that makes ja'marr do that #hyena cackling laughing noise of his #and tee's eyes light up eyebrows raised all the way up to his hairline #glances meaningfully at joe who's standing off to the side somewhere #involved in a conversation he seems to be actively trying to escape from #then looks back at ja'marr and then goes—all smug and self-satisfied—“oh so it's like THAT”#and ja'marr doesn't know what he means until later that week when he hears joe laugh at something #and it's the exact same way he does it; all nasally and bright #and he feels something settle deep inside of him #like #yeah #maybe it IS like that #makes him feel all soft and tender that joe had kept something of his #even after months of being apart #anyway i gotta find that oneeeee videoooo of joe laughing at like???? that random ass bowling ball story or whatever the hell that was #sounding EXACTLY like ja'marr cause that's what im kinda visualising here iykwim #joe'marr pacrim au #asks

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