profeshyearner

[profeshyearner]

Humdrum

Chapter 7

Warnings for this chapter: noncon, dubcon, angst, not sure if it qualifies as dead dove but probably triggering for people who have experienced SA, wouldn’t recommend reading if so; homelander being homelander.

Tracklist:

Only Skin - Joanna Newsom

The apartment feels stale. The air carries that thick, lived-in smell of sleep and silence and something sour—maybe old food, maybe your own skin. You’re not sure anymore.

The TV flickers cold blue light across the room. You muted it hours ago, but it keeps playing anyway, mouths moving, voices you don’t need to hear.

Another anchor with perfect teeth. Another update about the country. Riots. Reconstruction. Unity.

The same careful phrases spilling out of mouths across every channel, mirrored in white subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

“Tonight, a nation remembers Victoria Neuman, the late Vice President-elect whose tragic death has left many searching for answers. While the official investigation remains ongoing, Homeland Security has yet to confirm speculation of foul play. In her absence, former Speaker Steven Calhoun has officially been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.”

Calhoun smiles stiffly on-screen, his hand resting on a Bible, tie too rigid. Behind him, Homelander stands with one hand on his shoulder—like a blessing. Or a warning. You can’t tell.

You flinch at the sight of him. Untouchable. Godlike. Still everywhere.

The screen cuts to a flag-waving crowd. A child hoists a plastic Homelander action figure into the air. You feel like you might throw up.

There’ve been rumors. Political dissidents, anti-supe voices, quietly disappearing. Rounded up in unmarked vans by masked men. The White House declines to comment. So does Vought.

“Many Americans say they feel safer than ever before.”

Cut to a street interview: a pale woman clutching a “MAKE AMERICA SUPER AGAIN” sign, knuckles white around the plastic handle.

“I mean… it’s scary, yeah,” she says, voice trembling, “but I trust him. He’s keeping us safe, right? We’re the lucky ones.”

“Coming up next,” the anchor purrs in a voice just a little too bright, “how Vought’s new partnership with the Department of Education is bringing heroism into the classroom-

Your body sinks deeper into the couch, limbs heavy and sluggish, like something dying slowly in the sun. It might be early afternoon. Or late morning.

Time doesn’t feel linear anymore.

You reach for the remote and turn the volume back on.

“Vought Tower is expected to reopen within the next few weeks,” the anchor says, smiling too brightly. “Thanks to leadership from Homelander—”

Mute.

You flick to another channel. Reruns. The same sitcom that used to make you laugh. You wait for the punchline this time. Nothing. Next channel. A pharmaceutical ad. Homelander’s voice narrating about heart health. You clench your jaw to hard you feel like you might crack a tooth.

Mute.

Your arm drops back to the cushion. The fabric smells like sweat and cheap laundry soap. You haven’t changed clothes since—when? God. Since then. Since him.

You close your eyes. Bad idea.

His mouth, pressed against yours like a man starved. His voice, all honey and rot.

Your eyes snap open again.

You swallow. Your throat is dry.

You think back to before the purge, to the night you comforted Homelander in the shower—the most human he’d ever seemed.

The shower is still running in your head. You can feel the tile under your feed. The way the blood stuck in his hair before it washed away. The quiet after. The way you cradled his face like it meant something. The way he let you.

And the worst part?

You want it again.

That heat. That awful, consuming need in his eyes.

You wanted the aftermath of it all too, that sticky, wet sex on the floor of your bathroom.

How he touched you like he didn’t know the difference between sex and worship. Between control and love.

You press the heel of your palm against your eyes. Hard. Until colors swirl behind the lids.

“Stop,” you mutter, to yourself, to no one.

You check your phone. No messages. No missed calls. No angry emails from Vought demanding to know where you are. Not even a calendar reminder.

It’s like you’ve been scrubbed from the system.

You open your inbox again just to stare at the emptiness. You used to get hundreds of emails a day. Now—nothing. It doesn’t feel like neglect. It feels like erasure. Like someone flipped a switch and turned you off.

Maybe he did.

The thought makes your stomach twist.

You haven’t eaten today. You open the fridge, stare at the wilted lettuce and half-eaten sandwich, and shut it again.

You move back to the couch like you’re sleepwalking. The TV is still playing. Homelander’s face this time—some patriotic ad, all red and white and teeth and blue.

America’s Strongest Man.

You watch his smile. His eyes.

God, you hate him.

God, you miss him.

You wonder if he’s done with you.

If it was just a thing he needed to get out of his system. A dark little kink, a curiosity. Maybe he’s already moved on to some other poor girl—someone better. Someone cleaner. Someone who doesn’t cry in bathtubs and flinch at her own reflection.

Maybe you were never special. Just there.

Maybe you’re nothing again.

Outside the window, the streetlights buzz to life. The city looks duller now. You used to dream of escaping it. Now, you can’t even picture the world beyond it. Not really. Not without seeing his face.

Billboards. Commercials. Headlines. Interviews. His voice comes out of car radios and overhead speakers in convenience stores. He’s everywhere and nowhere. Like God. Like a virus.

The couch creaks as you lie back down. The TV flickers again—same commercial, again.

Homelander, holding a small child in his arms. He looks straight into the camera, eyes piercing and soft. A good man. A protector. A lie.

“You’re safe now,” he says.

You mute it and groan.

You don’t remember falling asleep.

The flicker of the television is the only light in the room when your eyes open again. Everything feels murky, thick with the weight of a nap you didn’t mean to take. You blink slowly. Your neck aches. Your mouth tastes like metal and dust.

And then—

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Your body jerks before your mind catches up. A sharp, animal motion—scrambling, instinctive—until you’re half-sitting, half-collapsing against the arm of the couch, your breath ragged. You blink at him like he may just be a figment of your imagination. He’s sitting in the chair across from you like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he’s always been there.

Homelander.

In plain clothes.

Not the cape. Not the suit. Just jeans, a white shirt, faded green zip up, and ball cap—like he could be someone’s boyfriend. Someone normal.

You stare at him. He smiles, not wide, just enough. His eyes crinkle like he finds you funny.

“Jesus,” you breathe.

“Relax,” he says, laughing a little. “You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you.”

He leans back in the chair, one leg crossed over the other. It’s a mockery of casual. He gestures loosely toward the kitchen.

“I brought dinner. It’s on the counter—hope you like Thai. The place down the street’s still open.”

You don’t respond. You’re still trying to catch up to the fact that he’s here. In your apartment. Again. Uninvited. Again.

He looks around like he’s inspecting his own property. Runs a hand along the armrest of the chair. Picks up the TV remote and sets it back down. Every motion says: I belong here.

“I’ve been so busy,” he says, and there’s a dramatic sigh behind it. “New president, new cabinet, new everything—like moving furniture around a burning house. You wouldn’t believe the mess Neuman left behind. Calhoun’s fine, but… well.

You know.”

You don’t move. Your skin feels too tight. Your throat is dry.

“You haven’t been answering your phone,” he adds lightly. “Thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

That gets your attention. You blink slowly at him. “I don’t remember getting any calls…” you trailed off.

Homelander laughs again, brushing you off like you said some stupid joke. His eyes stay on you a second longer than necessary.

Then he pats the side of the chair and says, with the warmth of a man offering a favor:

“Come eat. I hate to think you’re wasting away in here.”

You don’t move. Not at first.

Your body is slow to obey, still caught in that liminal space between sleep and dread. You can feel your heart beating in your throat. You don’t want to go into the kitchen. You don’t want to eat anything he brought. But he’s watching you now, waiting, and there’s that look in his eyes—the one you’ve started to recognize. The one that says he already knows what you’re going to do.

So you stand.

You’re not sure why. Maybe it’s survival. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s that awful, treacherous part of you that still wants him to look at you like that. Like you matter.

Your legs feel weak, muscles stiff and awkward as you cross the room. He doesn’t follow. He just sits back in the chair, perfectly at ease, like this is his living room. Like he’s earned it.

The kitchen light is on. There’s takeout on the counter—pad thai, spring rolls, some kind of curry. Neatly arranged, the way someone might try to impress a date. You wonder if he even paid for it, or if the guy behind the counter handed it over with trembling hands, admiration, whatever people saw when they looked at him.

You stand there for a long moment, arms crossed. The food smells good. Your stomach turns.

Behind you, he speaks again. Calm, conversational.

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself.” An observation.

You can almost hear the smile behind the words, like he finds it endearing. Or pitiful.

You turn slowly. He’s still lounging in the chair, eyes fixed on you, one arm draped over the side like a king on his throne. That hoodie should make him look harmless. It doesn’t. There’s something obscene about it. Domesticity wrapped around a monster.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” he says, like it’s a confession. “A lot.”

Your chest tightens. You don’t answer.

He tilts his head, amused by your silence. “You’ve got that look again. Like you’re trying to figure out what I want.”

You are.

You always are.

He rises from the chair, slow and deliberate, like he knows you’ll flinch. But you don’t. You just grip the edge of the counter behind you, fingers digging into the laminate.

He steps into the kitchen, only a few feet away now, and says—almost tenderly—

“I want you to be comfortable.”

You swallow hard. “Why?”

He smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Because you’re important to me.”

The words land wrong. Off-key. Important like a secret, like leverage.

He tilts his head, studying you like he’s trying to decide what kind of animal you are. Something timid? Something wounded? Something that might bite back?

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he says, like he’s continuing a pleasant conversation. “About the archives. All those files. All those tapes.” His voice is quiet and deep. Be steps closer to you.

Your blood turns cold.

“I bet you read a lot,” he murmurs. “You’re curious like that, aren’t you? You like to know things.”

He takes another step. You don’t move.

“I’d hate for that to become a problem.”

It’s not a threat, not exactly. Not in the way that would let you call it one. But it lands somewhere deep and sharp in your stomach.

You open your mouth to say something—to protest, or lie, or maybe scream—but he just reaches out and touches your face. The back of his fingers graze your cheek, feather-light. You go still. He smells like wind and smoke and faintly, cruelly, like soap.

“But you’re not a problem, are you?” he says, tilting your chin. “No. You’re entertaining. I like you just the way you are.”

He leans in. His breath touches your skin. You can’t breathe.

“You understand, don’t you?”

And before you can answer—before you can even think—his mouth is on yours.

It’s not like last time.

This time, it’s slower. Stranger. Less desperate. It’s not about hunger anymore; it’s about control. He kisses you like he’s claiming something.

There’s no urgency in him. Just patience.

You don’t remember kissing him back, but somehow your hands are in his hair. Not out of want. Just motion. Repetition. Muscle memory. You don’t remember moving, but the counter’s suddenly behind you, pressing into your spine. The cold laminate cuts through your sweater, sharp and grounding.

His hands slide down your arms, slow and almost reverent. He doesn’t touch you like a person. He touches you like a thing. A possession.

He leans in and lifts your shirt—not tugging or tearing, just methodical. His fingers skim your stomach as he pulls it up, exposing skin like it’s some sacred unveiling. You don’t help. You don’t stop him either. You just hold still, letting him peel the fabric off you inch by inch until you’re bare to the waist. His lips, then his teeth graze your collarbone, his hands find your waistband.

You wonder if he’ll be gentle, if he even can be. Last time he had taken so much out on your colleagues, but now you weren’t so sure when the last chance he had to let that side of himself out.

You’re cold. You’re exposed. You’re here.

And he likes that.

He kisses your neck, soft and deliberate, hands roaming like he’s sculpting something out of clay.

He lifts you. Your legs wrap around him automatically. Not out of want—just gravity. Just balance. He carries you to the bedroom like it’s natural. Like you belong to him.

He lays you down like you’re made of glass. Straightens your limbs. Adjusts your hips. Brushes hair from your face.

Then he undresses himself.

You watch through half-lidded eyes as he peels off his shirt, toeing off his boots, sliding his pants down in fluid, practiced motions. Everything about him is choreographed. Measured. Like this is a role he’s played before. Like he’s memorized the blocking.

When he climbs over you, he sighs—deep, content, like he’s come home.

And you?

You float.

Your body knows what to do. It arches. It opens. It moves.

But your mind goes somewhere else.

Dim ceiling. Soft hum of electricity in the walls. The scratch of his breath against your ear. Your own heartbeat in your teeth.

You’re not really here. Not for most of it.

You’re watching from above. Or maybe below.

From somewhere far enough away that it doesn’t hurt as much. Far enough that you can pretend maybe that you’re not in that room.

You weren’t sure what you expected when he came over, maybe that you wouldn’t feel so used. That it would be hot and heavy and the perfect distraction.

When he finishes, he exhales like it’s a relief. Like it’s love.

He buries his face in your neck, still inside you, and whispers your name.

Like a prayer.

Like a promise.

Like a threat.

He comes by again two nights later.

And again, the next week.

After that, you stop keeping track.

There’s no pattern, no warning. No knock. Just the sudden shift in atmosphere, the creak of your door, the familiar weight of him filling the apartment like smoke. He doesn’t explain himself and you don’t ask. Sometimes he brings food. Sometimes he doesn’t. He talks—about politics, about the state of the country, about “keeping things under control.” You listen. Or at least you sit there, nodding faintly while your thoughts drift elsewhere.

But he always fucks you.

That’s the part that doesn’t change.

He treats you like some strange version of an emotional support animal. Something warm to hold, to bury himself in, to talk at when the rest of the world feels too loud. You’re not sure he even sees you as a person anymore—if he ever did. It’s more like he’s decided you’re his now. Something soft and still that smells like safety and sex and silence.

The sex itself blurs.

Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes he kisses your face like you’re precious, like you’re breakable. Other times he doesn’t bother. He takes what he wants, then lies beside you like he’s proud of himself, sighing contentedly, fingers brushing your arm like he’s petting a dog.

You start living around him. Eating when he’s not there. Sleeping when you can. You stop leaving the apartment, not out of fear exactly—but because the world outside feels farther and farther away. Useless. Shrinking. Like maybe he’s right. Maybe he is the only thing left that matters.

You hate that thought.

But it creeps in anyway.

Every time he leaves, the apartment feels colder. Emptier. You stare at the door after it shuts, telling yourself you should be relieved. That you should be packing. Running. Screaming. Something.

But you don’t move.

You just stay there.

Waiting for the next time.

Like he’s trained you to.

The next time you hear a knock at your door, it’s not him.

You feel it immediately—different. The sound is crisp. Intentional. Not the kind of knock he bothers with anymore.

You open the door slowly, limbs heavy, stomach uneasy in a way that hasn’t let up for days.

She’s standing there like she owns the place, some comfortable, so confident.

Sister Sage.

Taller than you. Severe. Her coat tailored, sharp, and her expression sharper. Hair neatly braided against her scalp.

“Well,” she says, looking you over, “You’re exactly as pathetic as I imagined.”

You blink at her, head swimming. You’ve been dizzy on and off all morning, your skin clammy under the too-thick sweatshirt you haven’t taken off in days. You can feel something bitter crawling up your throat—maybe bile. Maybe shame.

“Can I… help you?”

She scoffs, pushes past you without waiting for an answer. The scent of her perfume lingers behind her like a warning, musk, ambergris, and some wood you can’t name.

She walks a slow circuit of the living room, eyeing the mess—blankets on the floor, half-eaten toast on a plate, the television still playing some muted rerun of Vought’s latest press conference.

When she finally turns to you, her eyes narrow.

“I wasn’t expecting you to still be alive.”

You swallow. The nausea is building again, coiling under your ribs.

She steps closer, voice flat. “You were a temporary indulgence. A psychological footnote. I thought he’d be done with you after the purge. A fuck and forget.”

You flinch at the word, but she keeps going.

“I don’t know what he sees in you,” she continues. “You’re not strategic. You’re not particularly intelligent. You’re not even stable.”

She pauses, eyes dragging down your form—sweatshirt, pajama shorts, the way one of your hands rests lightly against your lower stomach without thinking.

“Did you just come here to demean me or-“

“You’re distracting him,” she says, stepping forward. “We’re on the brink of something monumental. He doesn’t have time for pets. And yet…”

Her gaze sharpens.

“…you’re still here.”

You press your hand tighter against yourself. You’re tired all the time. You’ve barely eaten. Your chest aches in a way that’s new, heavy, strange.

Your voice is barely above a whisper. “Why are you here?”

Sage tilts her head.

“Because I’m giving you an out.”

She slips a folded piece of paper from her pocket—an address—and sets it on the counter.

“I don’t care where you go. But if you stay, you’re compromising something bigger than yourself. And believe me when I say—he might not always choose you. Especially when he realizes what a liability you’ve become.”

Your stomach turns.

She looks at the paper once more, then back at you.

“Clock’s ticking.”

Then she’s gone.

The door clicks shut behind her. You run to the bathroom to throw up.

xx

Tag list: @xxyaoi-nationxx @unnisumi

[profeshyearner]

cowboy daddy — bull rider!joel miller x reader

𝒮ummary: At a dusty rodeo under a burning sun, you got lost from your friends and found Joel Miller instead

𝒲arnings: idk how to tag it but reader continues the action after he comes, semi-public sex, oral sex (m! receiving), multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, small town, reader is soft and feral, masturbation, dirty talk, age gap

𝒜uthor’s 𝒩ote: i've been obsessed with elsie silvers' books so i had to do it i'm sorry

𝒲ord 𝒞ount: 14,8k

The sun hung low like a burning brand in the sky, casting gold over the dust that curled and drifted in the air. The grandstands of the fairgrounds were packed, filled with the sounds of country rock and distant hoots from half-drunk cowboys and girls with rhinestones on their jeans. The scent of fried food and sweat clung to everything, thick and familiar.

You hadn’t planned to lose your friends. It was supposed to be a carefree Saturday—a little too much seltzer, too much flirtation, and too many selfies taken under the banner for the “State Bull Riding Finals.” But somewhere between the snack stand and the beer tent, they vanished into the crowd. You didn’t panic, though. You drifted instead, letting the music guide your hips and the heat kiss your skin, your crop top tied just right above your navel, your denim skirt fluttering dangerously high with every step. You knew how you looked, and the trail of glances you left behind proved it.

Then came the roar. A surge of excitement, collective and hungry. You turned, drawn toward it like a moth to fire, and slipped through the crowd until you stood by the edge of the arena fence, right as the announcer’s voice cut clear through the speakers:

“Now y’all hold your breath for this one—eight seconds of hell comin’ up with the one and only, the undefeated, Joel Miller!”

You weren’t expecting him.

The man that strode into the center of the arena wasn’t just some local boy in too-tight Wranglers. No, this one carried the kind of weight that made every inch of the world feel smaller. Broad shoulders, thighs like pistons under faded denim, a salt-and-pepper scruff shadowing a jaw that looked carved out of goddamn Texas itself. His eyes were hidden under the brim of a worn, black hat—but you felt him anyway.

He mounted the bull like he’d done it a thousand times—because he had. The animal twisted beneath him, already wild with rage, hooves gouging the dirt, snorting steam like a demon. The gate opened. Time shattered.

You’d never seen something so fucking beautiful.

The way his body moved with the bull—controlled chaos, all muscle and instinct. Eight seconds felt like a lifetime. The crowd counted down, breathless. He lasted. He always did. And when he dismounted, dust coating the sweat on his arms, his hat flew free—spinning once, twice—before landing at your feet, just on the other side of the rail.

You leaned down, fingers brushing the brim. It smelled like sun, leather, and something darker—masculine in the most dangerous way.

Then you heard his voice. Low and slow, like whiskey poured over ice.

“Looks better on you, darlin’. Keep it.”

Your eyes met his. There was a curl at the corner of his mouth—half smile, half dare.

You gave him a smile as sweet as pie, lashes fluttering just enough to bait the hook.

“Might be the first thing I’ve stolen that no one’s tried to take back.”

He raised a brow, those stormy eyes lingering on you longer than polite. “Well… maybe I don’t want it back.”

Your fingers gripped the hat a little tighter.

And just like that, something started. Not a spark—no, this wasn’t delicate. This was heat and dust and the promise of something wild.

Joel Miller had noticed you. And you weren’t planning on letting him forget.

The fair had started to melt into late afternoon, that honey-colored hour where everything looked softer, slower—like time itself was leaning back with a drink. You’d wandered off from the arena, Joel’s hat snug on your head, brim tilted just low enough to make you feel like trouble. The stalls stretched out along the grass, strung with fluttering pennants and rows of handmade goods—leatherwork, turquoise jewelry, candles that promised to smell like bonfires and bad decisions.

You stood before one of them, idly thumbing a braided bracelet, pretending to care about the craftsmanship while your other hand toyed with a red lollipop between your lips. You liked how it tasted—sugar and cherry—but you liked even more the way men looked at you when you sucked on it slow, tongue tracing the hard curve before slipping it back into your mouth with a soft pop.

That’s when you felt him.

Not saw—felt.

The air changed. Heavy. Like gravity pulled harder when he walked near. You didn’t even have to turn your head to know it was Joel. You felt that same weight you’d felt in the ring—like some old god in denim, slow and carved from dust.

“Heard red’s your color.”

You looked over your shoulder, the sucker shifting between your lips, eyes half-lidded beneath the brim of his hat now snug atop your head. Joel stood there, arms folded across his chest, forearms thick and sun-kissed, his white tee clinging to a chest built to hold sin. He was grinning like he’d been looking for you—and like he wasn’t the least bit surprised to find you right there, in his hat, licking candy like you were born to torment.

“Was wonderin’ when you’d come lookin’,” you said, voice syrupy, playing dumb with your eyes all lit up. “Didn’t think it’d be so soon.”

“Ain’t lookin’ for my hat.” He glanced down at you, gaze slow like a drag off a cigarette. “Figured it found the right head. But I was wonderin’ what a girl like you’s doin’ out here all alone.”

You stepped a little closer to the stall, just enough to make him lean in to hear you better. The lollipop clicked against your teeth as you pulled it free, letting your lips linger on the glossy red tip.

“Didn’t know I was alone. Figured you were watchin’ since the arena.”

Joel’s brows ticked upward, amused. His eyes didn’t move from your mouth.

“Might’ve been. Hard to look away when someone’s wearin’ my hat, suckin’ on candy like that.”

You smiled slow, that soft, sweet expression that always got people to underestimate you. Then, tilting your head, you held the lollipop out toward him between two fingers.

“Wanna taste?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at you, that long, unreadable look that said he was weighing his options—or maybe the trouble you came with. Then he stepped forward, real close, shadows and heat wrapping around you both.

Joel didn’t take the candy. He leaned in, just enough to speak low into your ear, his breath warm.

“Darlin’, if I start tastin’ you, that sucker ain’t the first thing I’ll be wantin’.”

And then he leaned back, not touching you, just looking at you like he already owned your next move. Like he knew you’d follow, whether you meant to or not.

The sucker stayed in your hand. Your heart kicked up under your ribs.

Something in the air snapped tighter between you two.

The tension hummed, a slow-burn kind of heat that didn’t demand anything—it just waited, sure as a storm in a dry sky. Joel stood there in the dying sunlight, all rough edges and coiled charm, and you felt his gaze settle heavy on you again—like you’d been branded by it.

He tipped his chin toward the back of the fairgrounds, where the floodlights were starting to flicker on over a spread of lawn chairs, pickup trucks, and coolers. Laughter drifted through the air, along with the twang of a guitar and the occasional clink of glass bottles.

“We’re settin’ up by the trailers. Cold beer, good company. You oughta come.”

It wasn’t a question.

You twirled the lollipop back between your lips, leaning a little on one hip. That crop top rode higher, teasing the smooth line of your waist. You didn’t say yes right away—no, you let the silence stretch, watching him, letting him want the answer before you gave it.

Then you gave a soft shrug, playful.

“Sure. Long as no one minds me showin’ up lookin’ better than all the other girls.”

Joel chuckled, deep and rough, like a growl wrapped in velvet.

“Sugar, you walked in lookin’ better than the rest. They’ll live.”

You fell into step beside him, the brim of his hat shading your face as you walked across the fairgrounds. He didn’t touch you—but he didn’t need to. The way he moved beside you, easy and tall, the occasional sideways glance full of unspoken things—it was enough.

The closer you got, the louder it became. Three trucks were backed up in a horseshoe around a crackling firepit, chairs and blankets scattered around, and a big cooler overflowing with beer and melting ice. Joel’s buddies were already gathered—broad men with sunburnt arms and worn-out boots, laughing like they hadn’t known hard days.

One of them spotted you and let out a long, appreciative whistle.

“Well damn, Miller. You didn’t say you were bringin’ a dessert.”

Joel didn’t even look at the guy. He just reached over to grab two beers from the cooler, popped them open with a bottle opener hanging from his belt, and handed one to you with a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Play nice,” he told them, calm but firm.

You took the beer, nails clinking against the glass, and let your lips curl slow around the rim before sipping. You could feel every pair of eyes on you, but your attention didn’t stray from Joel. Not for long.

“So,” you said, tilting your head, your voice a teasing whisper meant only for him, “you always share your toys with the boys?”

He grinned, finally letting his eyes drag slow over you.

“Ain’t a toy if it bites back, darlin’. And somethin’ tells me… you bite real good.”

The night stretched ahead, thick with heat and the smell of smoke and beer. Someone strummed a guitar, another tossed firewood onto the flames. But you? You leaned into the curve of your chair, beer in hand, and let the hat tip forward to shadow your grin.

You were right where you wanted to be.

And Joel Miller? He was definitely lookin’ at you like the game had only just begun.

The fire cracked behind you, throwing golden shadows across Joel’s broad chest. The beer bottle in your hand was sweating, beads of condensation rolling over your fingers as you nursed the last few sips. You’d laughed at some story his buddy Tommy told—something about a steer getting loose and chasing a drunk out of a porta-potty—but your eyes had stayed mostly on Joel. The way he sat, heavy and relaxed, one arm draped over the back of his folding chair like he owned the whole damn county. He hadn’t stopped watching you either.

You swirled the last of your beer in the bottle, then let your voice cut low, sweet, just enough to make him lean in to hear.

“So… where does a cowboy like you sleep on the road?”

Joel didn’t answer right away. Just cocked his head a bit, eyes narrowed, amused and curious like he was tryin’ to read your angle.

You smiled, teasing your bottom lip between your teeth, then looked out toward the edge of the field where a row of trailers sat under flickering sodium lights. You nodded toward them.

“I wanna see it,” you said softly. “Your trailer. Where you sleep.”

Joel’s lips curled into something not quite a smirk, not quite a smile. More like a knowing. His fingers reached down into the cooler again, pulling out another bottle—cold and dripping. He popped the cap against the edge of the metal grate by the fire and handed it to you without a word.

You took it, brushing your fingers along his in a way that said this ain’t innocent.

Then he stood. The firelight caught his frame, tall and cut from something older than time—something that didn’t bend easy. He jerked his head slightly toward the trailers.

“C’mon then.”

You followed, your boots crunching soft in the grass, that little skirt of yours swaying with every step. He didn’t walk too fast. Didn’t walk too slow. Just kept beside you, matching your pace like you’d been walking together for years.

When you reached his trailer, it was exactly what you imagined—beat-up in a charming way, streaks of red dust on the aluminum sides, an old Texas flag decal peeling off the back. He swung the door open and motioned you in with that big hand of his, letting you go first.

The inside was dim, a narrow space full of lived-in scent: leather, sweat, and faint cologne. A small bed in the back corner, sheets messy, denim jacket tossed over the edge. There was a shelf lined with personal things—a few old rodeo belt buckles, a photo pinned to the wall of a much younger Joel, clean-shaven and grinning next to a bull the size of a truck.

You wandered in slow, looking around like you belonged there.

Joel leaned against the doorframe, watching you with arms crossed, his beer dangling from one hand.

“Didn’t figure you were the type to get real interested in travel accommodations.”

You looked back over your shoulder, lips brushing your beer bottle.

“Maybe I just wanted to know where the big Cowboy Daddy, Joel Miller, lays his head down after a long, hard ride.”

He laughs. Loud, and it looked like just the view of you amused him.

His eyes dropped to your legs, then to your mouth. Real slow. That silence fell again—thick silence. The kind that begged for something to break it. A breath. A whisper. A touch.

“You always this curious?” he asked, voice rough.

You turned fully, letting the light from the tiny trailer window catch the curve of your waist, the sweet, sharp smile on your lips.

“Only when it’s worth it.”

Joel took a long drink of his beer, then set it down on the counter. You could feel the shift—he hadn’t moved yet, but something in him had. Like a bull behind the gate.

The air inside the trailer felt tighter than it should’ve—low ceiling, narrow walls, but that wasn’t it. It was the weight of Joel’s stare. The way his shoulders filled the doorway like he was trying real hard not to let anything in—or let you out.

You’d wandered your way to the little counter near the sink, fingers dancing along the edge of a battered cutting board, an old coffee mug, a half-used bottle of cologne that smelled like cedar, smoke, and sin. You took a sip from your beer, slow, savoring it like the pause between heartbeats. You could feel him watching your mouth.

“Ain’t much, but it’s home when I’m on the road,” he said.

You looked over your shoulder, head tilted, giving him that same syrupy smile that made most men melt—and always got them to show their hand.

“Not bad. Cozy. Probably gets a lotta use.���

Joel stepped closer, boots whispering across the linoleum. His voice dipped low.

“Only when I got someone worth sharin’ it with.”

Your lashes fluttered just enough to tease, but your mouth quirked into something sharper. You turned, leaning back against the counter, your hip jutting out just enough to catch his eye.

“Lotta women think they’re worth it, huh?” you murmured.

He didn’t answer. Just stepped in, slow and steady, like you were a skittish mare he didn’t wanna spook—but he still intended to saddle. His hand came up to the counter beside your waist, the other brushing a loose strand of hair from your face.

“Can’t lie, darlin’. Ain’t been starvin’ out here.”

Then his eyes dropped to your lips. And he leaned in.

That smell—dust and leather and just a hint of beer—wrapped around you. His mouth hovered a breath from yours, just close enough to make your pulse skip. You let it hang there. Let him think he had you. Then you tilted your head back—not away, but just enough.

Your eyes met his, a flicker of fire behind the softness.

“You fuck a woman in every town you stop in, don’t you?” Your voice was honeyed, sharp beneath the sweetness. “Flash a grin, tip your hat, make ‘em feel special for a night—then ride out like a ghost.”

Joel didn’t blink. But that smile? It changed. Less wolf, more… curious.

“And you think you ain’t like them.”

“No,” you said, voice velvet-wrapped steel. “I know I’m not. You want me, cowboy, you gotta earn me.”

There was a pause. Heavy and deep.

Then Joel laughed—low and warm in his chest, like he hadn’t heard something that real in a long damn time.

“Well,” he said, drawing back just enough to breathe, “guess I picked the right girl to hand my hat to.”

Your lips curved, slow and wicked.

“Guess you did.”

He didn’t try to kiss you again. Not yet.

But the promise hung thick in the air, clinging to every slow glance, every breath.

And Joel Miller? He’d never had to earn a damn thing before.

But he looked at you like maybe this time… he wanted to.

Your phone buzzed against your thigh, tucked in the waistband of that tiny denim skirt. The vibration broke the heat in the air, snapped the taut string stretched between you and Joel. You looked down slowly, reluctant, fingers brushing over the screen.

[Maddie: girl where the HELL are you?? we lost you like hours ago 😭]

[Maddie: we’re at the Ferris wheel—text me NOW]

You smiled faintly, a little breath through your nose. Damn. You’d forgotten they even existed.

Joel leaned back slightly, still close enough to feel the heat of him, his hand resting easy on the counter beside you. He glanced at the phone, then back at you, one brow raised.

“They send out a search party?”

“Somethin’ like that,” you murmured, tucking the phone away again, your fingers brushing over his wrist as you stepped slightly back—not far, but enough to signal it.

He nodded once, jaw flexing like he didn’t love the idea of you leaving—but he wasn’t gonna stop you, either.

“That friend of yours got a leash on you?”

You gave him a slow grin, stepping around him toward the trailer door, beer bottle still dangling from your fingers. The sway in your hips wasn’t an accident.

“No one’s got a leash on me, cowboy.”

You paused at the door, glancing over your shoulder, eyes lit with something dangerous.

“But don’t worry. I remember the way back.”

Joel watched you go, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck, his mouth pulled into a smirk that looked equal parts amused and intrigued.

“I bet you do.”

You stepped out into the thick summer night, the fair still glowing in the distance, the sound of music and laughter calling you back. Joel’s hat still sat snug on your head, brim casting shadows over your grin.

You didn’t look back again.

Didn’t have to.

He was already planning on seeing you again.

The morning cracked open mean and loud.

It started with the slamming of a cabinet door. Then the sharp clink of glass bottles rattling in the sink—half-empty, sticky, the smell of stale liquor already thick in the air before the sun had fully risen. You moved through the kitchen with your jaw tight, boots hitting the linoleum with purpose, your little bag slung over one shoulder. Eyes down. Don’t engage. That was the rule.

But of course, your dad was already drinking.

“Where the hell do you think you’re goin’ dressed like that?” his voice slurred out from the recliner, worn leather groaning under his weight.

You didn’t stop moving.

“Out.”

“Rodeo again?” he barked, dragging himself up with a grunt, bottle clutched tight. “What, you think some goddamn cowboy’s gonna fix your life?”

You froze at the door, back to him. Your fingers curled around the strap of your bag tighter.

“You wouldn’t know anything about fixing lives,” you muttered, voice sharp and flat. “You just burn everything down and wait for someone else to clean it up.”

That set him off.

“You little bitch—”

Glass shattered. Something thrown. Not at you—but close enough to make the wall rattle. You didn’t flinch. You’d stopped flinching years ago. Just sucked in a breath, jaw locked hard.

“Mom left you,” you said, voice cold now. “And all you’ve done since is try to drown me in her place.”

Then you turned the knob. Walked out.

The sun outside was blinding compared to the nicotine-stained dark behind you. Your boots crunched the gravel of the drive. But what stopped you wasn’t the light.

It was the rumble of an old truck engine.

And Joel Miller, leaning against the driver’s side, one boot hooked over the other, arms folded across his chest like he’d been there a while. The hat you wore last night still sat snug on your head, shielding your eyes—but you didn’t miss the way his gaze moved over you. Not hungrily. Not like the men who looked too long at gas stations. It was measured. Careful. A quiet, burning kind of look.

“Hey,” he said simply. “Was just about to knock.”

You blinked. A full second passed before your body remembered how to move.

“What the hell are you doin’ here?”

He pushed off the truck, that easy gait of his moving him toward you. He looked good—too good for a morning this fucked. Flannel sleeves rolled to his elbows, jeans dusty, the lines of sleep still soft in the corners of his eyes.

“Asked around town,” he said. “Figured if I didn’t find you, I’d spend the day wonderin’ if you were real or somethin’ I dreamed up.”

Your mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Almost.

He asked for you around the town. Motherfucker.

“You borrow this too?” you asked, nodding to the truck.

Joel gave a low chuckle.

“Yeah. Tommy’s. He’s still drunk from last night. Won’t notice it’s gone ‘til it’s too late.”

The screen door behind you groaned. You didn’t look back. Joel’s eyes flicked to the sound but didn’t say anything—didn’t need to. He’d seen enough.

“You okay?” he asked, voice low now, serious.

You lifted your chin.

“I will be when we’re not standin’ in this goddamn driveway.”

Joel held your gaze for a moment, then stepped back and opened the passenger side door.

“Then get in.”

You didn’t hesitate.

You climbed in, tossing your bag in first. As you slammed the door shut, the house behind you might as well’ve been a hundred miles away. Joel circled the front of the truck, climbing in behind the wheel, the engine growling to life.

The silence between you settled soft. Heavy.

After a minute, Joel glanced over, one hand on the wheel, the other relaxed near the gear shift.

“You don’t gotta talk about it.”

“Good,” you said quickly, cutting him off. Then, after a beat, quieter: “But thanks.”

He nodded. Eyes back on the road.

The truck pulled onto the gravel road, dust trailing behind you like smoke. Ahead, the fairgrounds waited. The noise. The lights. And Joel—Joel wasn’t looking back.

Neither were you.

The truck rolled down the long stretch of two-lane road, the kind that cut through fields and dust like it had nowhere important to be—but today, it had you. The open windows let the wind snake through, lifting strands of your hair, tugging at the brim of Joel’s hat still perched on your head. The same one he’d let you keep the night before.

Your arms were folded tight across your chest, your body turned slightly toward the window, jaw clenched like it had been all morning. That fight still clung to you, like smoke that wouldn’t wash off. Joel didn’t press. He didn’t say a damn thing about the bruised look behind your eyes. But he saw it.

And after a few miles of silence, he decided he’d had enough of it.

“Y’know,” he said, voice easy, drawl thick and smooth, “if you were mine, I wouldn’t let you leave the house wearin’ that skirt either.”

Your head snapped toward him.

He was smirking now, eyes still on the road, like he hadn’t just thrown a match into dry grass.

Your brow arched, mouth twitching like you wanted to be mad—but couldn’t quite stop the smile threatening to crawl across your face.

“You flirt with every girl you pick up outside their daddy’s house, or am I just special?”

Joel let out a low chuckle, one hand drumming against the steering wheel. You saw the way his eyes cut toward you—amused, admiring.

“Nah. You’re special. I don’t chase girls who bite back. Usually I like ‘em soft.”

“And I’m not soft?”

“Not even a little,” he said, slow and glancing at you again, grin spreading wider. “You’re sugar-coated mean, darlin’. All that sweetness up front, but underneath? Ain’t nobody taming you.”

You looked out the window, but the smile finally cracked through. It started small—just the corner of your mouth—but Joel caught it.

“There she is,” he said, real quiet. Like the sound of that smile meant more to him than the rest of the damn day.

You shook your head, huffed a laugh.

“You got a bad habit of knowin’ exactly what to say.”

“No, I just pay attention.”

He reached over, real casual, and brushed his fingers just once against your thigh—low and slow. Not grabby. Not pushy. Just a reminder he was there.

The rodeo grounds were coming into view up ahead. Flags flapping in the breeze, trailers lined up like soldiers, the dust already rising from boots and hooves.

But in that truck, in that moment, there wasn’t any noise. Just the sound of your quiet laughter returning. The faint blush on your cheeks you didn’t bother hiding.

Joel smiled too, his hand slipping back to the wheel.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s better.”

The rodeo grounds came into focus like a scene from some dusty postcard—trucks lined along the fields, folding chairs popped open under shade tents, the air buzzing with the low drone of generators, country music bleeding from too many speakers at once. Dust rose in lazy spirals with every step of a boot.

Joel swung the truck into a gravel lot behind the competitor trailers. The second he threw it in park and stepped out, it was like blood hit the water.

She spotted him fast—a blonde, tan like leather, long legs poured into skin-tight jeans, with lips glossed up and ready to be kissed. One of those rodeo girls who knew exactly what her hips could do when she walked, and she walked straight up to Joel before you had a chance to even get out of the passenger side.

“Well look who showed up early,” she purred, sunglasses sliding down the bridge of her nose as she looked him up and down. “Joel Miller, back again. Still makin’ bulls look tame and hearts look breakable.”

You rolled your eyes. Subtle, but not subtle enough.

Joel stood easy, relaxed in the heat, arms hanging loose at his sides—but you saw the shift in his eyes. He glanced at you through the windshield. Then back at the woman.

“’Preciate the compliment,” he said, voice even. Then, casual as anything: “But I’m here with my girl.”

You blinked. What?

The woman cocked her head, all that sugar in her smile suddenly turning brittle.

“Oh?”

Joel turned then, motioning toward the truck. His eyes met yours through the open door—steady, warm, the barest flicker of something smug just behind them.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s the one wearin’ my hat.”

Your heart did a dumb little flip before you could strangle it.

You stepped out slowly, making sure your boot hit the gravel just loud enough to announce your entrance. You didn’t strut—but you didn’t hurry, either. The sun caught the edge of your bare legs, skirt riding dangerously high as you adjusted the hat slightly, just to drive it home.

“Hey,” you said, keeping your tone mild, but your eyes were sharp when you looked at the woman.

The blonde gave a little smirk, the kind that meant she was chewing on jealousy but didn’t want to choke in public.

“Didn’t know Joel had a type.”

“He didn’t,” you said, stepping up beside him. “I’m the exception.”

Joel gave a quiet chuckle, then reached out and rested his hand low on your back—real easy, real sure.

The other woman’s smile twitched, brittle and breaking. She gave a tight shrug, turned on her heel with a swish of hair and attitude, and stalked back toward the trailers.

As soon as she was gone, you tilted your head toward him, lips curving.

“Your girl, huh?”

Joel looked down at you, eyes dark and amused.

“Would’ve said it earlier, but figured I’d ease you into it.”

You snorted, looking away before he could see the way that heat was crawling up your neck.

“You’re real full of yourself, cowboy.”

“Nah,” he said, leaning in just enough to murmur it against the brim of his hat on your head, “just full’a good taste.”

And with that, he stepped around you, grabbing his gear from the back of the truck like he hadn’t just branded you with two words in front of half the damn rodeo.

But that hand on your back? That lingered.

And so did the grin on your lips.

The rodeo grounds buzzed with noise and heat—riders tightening ropes, bulls kicking up dust in their pens, announcers testing mics with long drawls echoing from the PA. Joel slung his duffel over one shoulder, the weight of it resting against his thick frame like it belonged there. He was already shifting into game-face mode—less flirt, more steel. Focused.

You could see it in the way his jaw set, his shoulders squared. All that swagger he wore like a second skin turned just a little more serious.

“I gotta get over to the prep stalls,” he said, jerking his chin toward the far end of the arena where the riders gathered behind the chutes. “Get my gear set, check the draw. You good gettin’ to the stands?”

“The what?” you asked, squinting.

“The grandstands,” he said, half-smiling. “Where my folks watch. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He reached for your hand without asking, like it was the most natural thing in the world, his fingers curling around yours as he led you through the maze of trailers, hay bales, and riders hollering across the dirt.

The grandstands loomed up ahead—metal bleachers already packed with people in cowboy hats and sunburns, waving programs and drinking from sweaty cups. Joel brought you right up to the fence that divided the crowd from the arena, then turned to face you.

“You sit right up there, center row,” he said, nodding to a spot with the best view of the chutes. “Ain’t hard to find. I’ll be able to see you from the ring.”

You looked up toward the seats, then back at him. His face was in shadow from the sun behind him, but his eyes were clear. Focused. Present.

The air between you turned still for a moment. The sound of everything else—boots stomping, bulls bellowing, distant country music—faded to a dull thrum behind your ribs.

You stepped close.

“Hey,” you said softly.

Joel looked down at you, brows raised.

And then, without asking, you reached up and kissed him.

Not shy. Not sweet. Sure.

Your hand slid up his chest, fingers brushing the collar of his flannel as your lips met his—warm, firm, and steady. Not long. Not sloppy. But full of a promise. You tasted dust and leather and beer and him.

When you pulled back, his eyes hadn’t moved. They stayed locked on yours, quiet heat in every inch of that gaze.

“For luck,” you said, voice low.

He huffed a breath through his nose—half-laugh, half-growl—and smirked.

“If I ride that bull clean, it’s ‘cause of that damn kiss.”

You turned toward the stands, boots clicking against the wood as you climbed the steps. Halfway up, you looked back.

Joel was still watching you.

And even from that distance, you could see it:

That kiss wasn’t leaving his mind anytime soon.

The crowd was already humming before his name was even called.

You sat center row just like he told you, legs crossed, elbows resting on your knees, heart thudding faster than it had any right to. The sun was dipping low, casting long shadows over the arena, and the dust in the air glittered like gold as the announcer’s voice rang out over the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, next up—hold on to your goddamn hats—we got Joel Miller comin’ to the ring!”

The crowd erupted, a swell of hoots and whistles and stomping boots. You didn’t cheer—not yet. You just leaned forward, fingers curling around the edge of the metal seat as the chute gate creaked open and there he was.

Joel.

Mounted on the back of a bull that looked like it was forged in hell—massive, muscles twitching, eyes wild. But Joel sat like stone. Perfect form, one hand in the rope, the other lifted, loose but ready. His legs locked, his core tight. He looked like a man about to go to war with something ancient.

And then the gate blew open.

The bull burst into the ring like a living explosion, hooves slamming the dirt, muscles bucking in furious rhythm. But Joel didn’t falter. Not once. His body moved with the beast like he wasn’t fighting it—like he’d become part of it. The crowd screamed as the seconds counted down, the announcer barking into the mic, but none of that reached you.

You didn’t hear a damn thing.

You just watched him ride.

Eight seconds. Clean. Sharp. Perfect.

When the buzzer sounded, he threw himself off in a practiced dismount, landing heavy in the dirt but already rising again like gravity didn’t matter. The bull stormed off, wrangled by the pickup men, but your eyes were only on Joel.

He looked up toward the stands.

Right at you.

And then, grinning like the devil just gave him permission to sin, he jogged toward the fence—straight across the arena, brushing off the dirt clinging to his shirt and jeans. The crowd was still cheering, but it thinned around you as he stopped right below the railing where you sat.

“Well?” he called up, breathless, chest heaving. “You see that ride?”

You leaned down toward him, your face only a few inches from his. The brim of his hat still sat low over your brow.

“Told you it was the kiss.”

Joel reached up and gripped the top rail of the fence, hoisting himself halfway up with one powerful pull. He was still covered in dust, shirt damp with sweat, curls sticking to his forehead.

“Think I earned another one,” he said, low and rough.

You didn’t make him ask twice.

You leaned in and kissed him right there in front of everyone—hot, full, lips pressed to his like you weren’t in the middle of a cheering stadium. His hand came up, strong and warm on the side of your neck, keeping you there just long enough to turn heads and raise eyebrows.

When you finally pulled away, your mouth tingling, breath caught in your chest, Joel grinned.

“Told you I’d ride clean.”

“Told you,” you whispered, “you had to earn me.”

His eyes narrowed, smirk curling wider.

“Think I’m startin’ to.”

And with that, he dropped back down into the arena dirt, tipping his head once as he turned and walked off—leaving behind a roar of noise, a cloud of dust, and you, heart pounding, smile wide, and lips still tingling with his.

The announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers, barely cutting above the thundering crowd:

“And with a score of 92.7, your winner tonight—Joel Miller!”

The stands erupted, boots stomping against metal bleachers, hats flying into the air, people slapping each other’s backs and hollering like they’d all known him forever. You didn’t holler, though. You just smiled—slow and sure—watching him stand there in the dirt, backlit by the last lick of sunlight, dust curling around his boots like smoke around a flame.

He didn’t milk it. He wasn’t the type to throw his arms in the air or shout victory.

He just looked up toward the grandstands. Toward you.

And that was louder than anything else.

Later, after the arena started to clear out, after he shook a dozen hands and signed a few shirts for sweaty, wide-eyed kids, Joel found you again. You were leaning against the side of his borrowed truck, arms crossed, that crooked smile playing on your lips.

“So,” you said, “gonna ride off into the sunset or what?”

He snorted, grabbing a bottle of water from the backseat and downing half of it in one go.

“Sunset can wait. My back’s soaked through and I’m covered in three layers of dirt and pride.”

You quirked a brow. “What’s your plan then?”

“Trailer,” he said simply. “Gotta get outta these clothes before they stick to my ribs.”

He paused. Looked at you. “C’mon. Ain’t askin’ for anything. Just… I don’t feel like goin’ back there by myself.”

That last part was quieter. Almost under his breath. And it hit a little deeper than you expected.

You didn’t say anything at first. Just pushed off the truck and nodded.

“Alright, cowboy. Lead the way.”

The walk back was quiet, the noise of the rodeo fading behind you like a dying song. The trailers sat in a crescent under strings of yellow lights, buzzing soft with mosquitoes and late-night air. His was toward the end, the same beat-up metal box you remembered from the night before.

He opened the door and stepped inside first, shrugging off his gear and tossing his gloves onto the counter. You followed him in, the door clicking shut behind you.

Inside, it was quiet and warm. The smell of leather and sweat thick in the air, mixed with something softer now—something like soap and the faint echo of cologne on his clothes.

Joel peeled his shirt off with a grunt, the cotton sticking to his back before finally sliding free. His skin glistened, damp with sweat, the muscles in his back catching the low lamplight as he tossed the shirt aside. You watched him without shame, eyes tracing the curve of his spine, the faded scars that whispered stories you hadn’t heard yet.

“Told you I wasn’t gonna do anything,” he said without turning, voice low, rough. “But hell, if you keep lookin’ at me like that…”

You smirked, stepping closer just enough to grab the water bottle he’d left on the counter. You brushed past him, cool plastic trailing his bare side.

“Didn’t say I didn’t want to look,” you said lightly.

He turned then, a towel slung over one shoulder, hair damp with sweat, chest rising and falling slow.

“You want me to step out while you clean up?” you asked, though your voice wasn’t exactly eager to leave.

Joel shook his head.

“You stay.”

And so you did.

You sat at the edge of the bed while he toweled off, pulling clean clothes from the little cabinet above the sink. A fresh shirt, soft with wear. Loose sweats that clung to his hips in the right ways. No tension. No pressure. Just quiet.

He didn’t try to impress you now. He didn’t need to.

He just let you be there.

And somehow, that felt more intimate than anything else could’ve been.

The trailer filled with the soft, rhythmic hiss of running water—the kind of sound that drowned out everything else, muffling the world to a low, warm hum. You sat on the small bench by the narrow bed, one leg crossed over the other, his hat still resting comfortably on your head, tilted just low enough to shade your eyes.

Joel had disappeared behind the thin sliding door at the back of the trailer, the space where the cramped little shower was hidden—barely big enough for a man his size to move in without bumping an elbow or two. You heard the low creak of the faucet handle, the thunk of something (probably his elbow) knocking into the wall, and then the sound of water hitting skin.

The image came easy—him, head bowed under the spray, steam curling around thick shoulders, water gliding down the ridges of his back, dripping over the curve of his spine, soaking into the faint trail of hair that disappeared beneath his waistband. You didn’t try to fight the heat curling low in your belly.

But still, you stayed put.

Mostly.

You glanced at the wall separating you from him, lips twitching as the water shut off with a sharp squeak. A beat passed. Then the door creaked open again.

And there he was.

Joel stepped out, steam rolling into the trailer behind him, clinging to his skin like a second layer. A single white towel was slung low around his hips, barely knotted, just enough to keep from slipping—though not by much. Droplets still clung to his chest, trailing down the defined lines of muscle, soaking into the towel’s edge. His hair was damp, darker with water, a few strands clinging to his temples. His jaw was freshly scrubbed but shadowed, that permanent 5 o’clock scruff giving him a wild, worn edge.

You didn’t look away.

Not even close.

He caught your gaze instantly. And for a moment, he just stood there, towel hanging on his hips, heat lingering on his skin—and something darker sparking behind his eyes.

“You enjoyin’ the view, or should I come back out with jeans on?” he asked, voice low, a teasing rasp undercutting the question.

You tilted your head, slow smile blooming on your lips as you leaned back on your hands, legs still crossed.

“Depends. You plan on droppin’ that towel anytime soon?”

Joel huffed a quiet laugh through his nose, shaking his head as he moved toward the little drawer near the bed, pulling it open and grabbing a pair of soft, well-worn gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt.

“You’re trouble,” he muttered, not even trying to hide the grin.

“So I’ve been told,” you said lightly, watching as he turned just slightly—just enough for the towel to shift low, low enough to flash a dangerous line of hip, the kind of line that invited sin and poor decisions.

You bit your bottom lip and looked away finally—just long enough to breathe.

He noticed.

“Ain’t doin’ it to tease,” he said behind you, voice quiet but rough. “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

You looked back at him. Really looked.

The towel still hung in place, barely. His eyes, though? They weren’t pushing. Not hungry. Not leering. Just watching you like he wanted to be seen, like it didn’t bother him if you looked—so long as you were the one lookin’.

You stood slowly, walking past him to grab the water bottle you’d left on the counter, brushing close enough to feel his damp heat radiating off his skin.

“I don’t mind,” you said, voice soft but pointed. “But you already knew that.”

Joel didn’t move. Just let you pass. But when you turned back, he was still watching you with that low-burning, steady heat.

He didn’t need to touch you to make you feel it.

And even when he turned to pull on his clothes, that damn towel still clinging for its final seconds—your eyes followed.

You weren’t in a rush to look away again.

Joel pulled the soft black T-shirt down over his head, the fabric clinging for a moment before settling across his broad chest. He scrubbed the towel through his damp hair, chest still faintly damp, his scent filling the narrow trailer—soap, skin, something deep and warm that made the air feel heavier.

You sat again, this time perched casually on the edge of the little bench, watching him with that same half-smile playing on your lips. You weren’t trying to be subtle, and he wasn’t pretending not to notice.

As he tucked the last of his things back into his bag, Joel glanced your way.

“Alright,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “You dragged me to the grandstands, into a kiss, and halfway to hell with that look you keep givin’ me. Think it’s only fair I let you pick where we go next.”

You tilted your head, expression thoughtful now. The playfulness dulled just a little as something softer crept into your gaze. Not shy. Just real.

“There’s a place,” you said. “Bit of a drive.”

Joel raised a brow, one arm hooking around the back of his neck as he leaned against the counter, waiting.

“There’s a lake. Little ways outside town, tucked in the woods off the back roads. Ain’t many people know about it. My mom used to take me out there sometimes. After she left…” you hesitated for a moment. “I started goin’ there alone. Just to breathe.”

Joel didn’t speak right away. Just nodded, slow, understanding etched in the hard lines around his mouth.

“Sounds like the right kind of place.”

“It is,” you said, eyes flicking up to meet his again. “I don’t usually bring people there.”

He stepped closer, one hand resting easy on the edge of the counter beside you.

“You don’t usually do a lot of things you’re doin’ lately, huh?”

Your lips curled slightly, and you gave a slow shrug.

“Guess you’re the exception too.”

That earned a real smile from him, wide enough to show the edges of his teeth.

“Alright then,” he said. “Show me this lake.”

You nodded, standing again as he grabbed the keys off the hook near the trailer door.

“You drive,” you said as you passed him, brushing your shoulder just slightly against his chest. “But you better not bitch about the roads. They get rough near the trail.”

Joel opened the door with a huff of amusement.

“Darlin’, you think I’m scared of a little dirt road after ridin’ a thousand pounds of pissed-off bull?”

You glanced back at him as you stepped into the cooling evening, boots hitting the grass with that same lazy sway in your stride.

“Fair. But just wait. This place don’t like to be found easy.”

Joel grinned as he followed you out, locking up the trailer behind him.

“Neither do you.”

And with that, the two of you disappeared into the slow-falling dark, headed down a road most people wouldn’t bother finding… but Joel Miller was already the kind of man who chased what others couldn’t hold on to.

The drive took a while—long enough for the heat between you two to settle into something slow and comfortable, like sun-warmed honey. The roads had narrowed into little more than dirt paths wound through tall trees, the kind that curved and dipped like the woods themselves were trying to hide something.

And then the lake appeared.

It wasn’t big, not something you’d find on a map with a name and a dock and a rules sign hammered into the ground. Just a deep stretch of water nestled quiet among the pines, still and shining under the blush of the setting sky. Fireflies already winked in the tall grass, and the air smelled like earth, summer, and something faintly sweet.

Joel killed the engine.

You slid out first, stepping onto the wild grass barefoot now, your boots left in the truck. The hat—his hat—still sat on your head, tilted at an angle that made your eyes almost smug beneath the brim.

He followed slower, still moving like a man who expected the ground to shift beneath him at any second, always carrying tension in his shoulders. But when he looked around—at the water, the trees, you—some of that weight seemed to roll off him.

“Well,” he muttered, “hell. You weren’t lyin’. Place is damn near perfect.”

“I don’t lie, Joel. I just don’t share easy.”

You dropped into the grass with a soft oof, stretching out on your side before propping yourself up on an elbow. Joel eased down beside you, one leg outstretched, the other bent just enough for balance. His arms rested behind him as he leaned back, eyes on the water.

For a long second, neither of you said anything. It wasn’t awkward. Just… settled.

Then you spoke.

“So,” you said, voice a little softer than your usual sass. “Tell me somethin’. What made you wanna travel the country to get thrown around by angry livestock for a livin’?”

Joel chuckled, the sound deep in his chest.

“You make it sound like I’m out here tryin’ to get killed for fun.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Nah. I’m just too damn stubborn to do somethin’ safe.”

You raised a brow.

“That’s the whole reason?”

Joel shifted, pulled a blade of grass from the ground and started to twist it between his fingers.

“Nah… My brother and I, we grew up rough. Ranch work, every kinda odd job you can think of. When I was sixteen, this old guy down the road—real bastard, had a mouth like a belt sander—he paid me fifty bucks to ride a bull named Whiskey Jack ‘cause his regular guy didn’t show.”

“And you said yes?”

“Hell yeah. I needed gas money and I was dumb as rocks.”

You laughed, leaning into the side of his arm.

“So you just climbed on?”

“Didn’t even have the right boots. Slid right off that bastard after three seconds and nearly cracked my jaw on the chute rail. Thought I’d never do it again.”

“But?”

“But next week I was back. And I stayed on for five seconds. Then six. Then eight.”

You were grinning now, teeth catching your bottom lip.

“So, what—you just fell in love with the pain?”

Joel looked over at you, eyes dark but amused.

“No, sweetheart. I fell in love with the fight. The noise, the crowd, the way it all goes quiet when the gate opens. Nothin’ else exists in that moment but holdin’ on.”

You let that sit for a second, staring at him.

Then you smiled.

“You’re deeper than you look, Miller.”

He snorted.

“Don’t tell anyone. I got a reputation to uphold.”

You scooted just a little closer, your bare leg brushing his denim-covered thigh.

“Don’t worry,” you whispered. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Joel looked down at you, and for a moment, he didn’t smile. Didn’t smirk. Just looked. Like maybe he’d found something even quieter than the inside of that ring.

“Thanks for bringin’ me here,” he said low. “Even if it’s just to make me spill my life story.”

You grinned, head tilted.

“I didn’t bring you here to talk, cowboy.”

Joel’s brow rose, interested. “No?”

“Nah. I brought you here so you’d shut up and let me admire how good you look in the moonlight.”

Joel laughed then—deep and warm—and leaned just a bit closer.

“Darlin’, you keep flirtin’ like that, I’m gonna forget we’re sittin’ next to a lake and not a motel bed.”

You batted your lashes, all mock-innocence.

“Who said anything about stoppin’ you?”

And just like that, the quiet between you turned electric again—laced with heat, with laughter, with something new simmering slow beneath it all.

And the lake just sat there, still and calm, reflecting back the kind of night you both weren’t ready to end.

The air had turned thick with silence again—but not the peaceful kind this time.

It was charged. Hot. The lake shimmered under the rising moonlight, pale and glass-still, but everything between you and Joel felt like it was rolling just under the surface, waiting to break.

You stared at him, really stared. His face softened in this light—less hardened cowboy, more man. His jaw was still shadowed, lips still curled in that half-damn smile, but his eyes had stopped playing games. They were locked on you. Watching you think.

And you’d thought long enough.

Your fingers brushed against his knee, light at first—then firmer, a glide up over the denim toward his thigh as you sat up, knees tucked beneath you in the grass. Joel didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

He was waiting.

And you didn’t ask.

You just leaned in and kissed him.

Hungry. Desperate. Like every look he’d thrown you today had carved away your patience until nothing was left but fire and need. Your lips crashed into his, full and open, tongue sliding against his in the kind of kiss that tasted like possession. Your hand gripped the back of his neck, fingers threading into the damp curls there, holding him close like you’d waited your whole goddamn life to finally stop holding back.

Joel groaned into your mouth, low and broken, his hand coming up to your waist, squeezing—firm, possessive, like he’d wanted to do it since the minute he saw you in that skirt. You didn’t give him room to talk, didn’t give him breath. You kissed him like you were trying to drag something out of him. Something real.

You pulled back just enough to whisper against his mouth, your voice dark and breathless.

“I’m so fucking tired of pretendin’ I don’t want this right now.”

Joel’s chest rose hard beneath your hands, his breath hot as it hit your cheek.

“Then don’t pretend.”

You kissed him again—deeper. Slow but dirty, the kind of kiss that made the world tilt, made your thighs squeeze tight where you knelt in the grass. His hands slid up under your top, rough palms skimming hot skin, but he still held back. Still let you lead, like he knew you needed to.

You dragged your lips down to his jaw, kissed the scrape of stubble, bit lightly beneath his ear.

“You drive me crazy, Joel,” you breathed. “You look at me like you wanna ruin me… and then don’t.”

He laughed—dark and low, voice cracked.

“Don’t tempt me, sugar.”

“Who says I’m temptin’?” you murmured, dragging your teeth over his throat. “I’m beggin’.”

He groaned again, louder this time, and the sound of it settled deep in you. His hands clenched around your hips like he was fighting every damn instinct in his body.

And still… he didn’t pull you down. Didn’t flip you over. He just kissed you back like it meant something. Like he’d waited just as long to feel something real.

The grass was cool against your knees, but your body burned like fire beneath the moonlight. Joel lay back on his elbows, legs spread wide, sweatpants shoved low on his hips, chest rising with uneven breath as you settled between his thighs.

He was already hard—thick and heavy in your hand as you gripped him, your touch bold, unforgiving, like you weren’t here to tease anymore. No more pretending, no more playing soft. You wanted him wrecked—and he knew it.

Your lips hovered just over the head, and you let your breath hit him before your tongue did. He twitched at the heat of it, groaned low in his chest as your tongue flicked once—slow, deliberate—then again, dragging up the underside with purpose, tasting sweat, salt, skin.

“Shit,” Joel muttered, his head falling back, hand sliding into your hair. “You ain’t takin’ it slow tonight, huh?”

You looked up at him through the brim of his hat still perched on your head, eyes glinting, mouth curling just slightly around him.

“Don’t want slow,” you breathed, voice thick. “Want to feel you lose it.”

And then you sank down.

Your mouth took him deeper, stretching wide as your jaw opened around the weight of him. The sound was obscene—wet, eager, your spit mixing with every movement as you took him farther, one hand gripping the base, the other pressed to his thigh to keep him right there.

Joel’s groan was rough and sharp, pulled straight from his gut.

“God damn, girl—”

You didn’t stop. Your head bobbed, slow at first, then faster, your rhythm building with every low curse that slipped from his mouth. You wanted him undone, trembling, wrecked by the feel of your throat tightening around him, by the wet heat and the way your tongue curled under the tip just right.

You moaned around him, and the vibration made him jerk, his hips flexing before he grabbed the back of your head and groaned again—trying not to thrust, not to take control.

“Keep lookin’ at me like that and I swear—fuck—”

You held eye contact, never breaking it, your lips stretched around his cock, cheeks hollowing with effort and hunger. Spit dripped down your chin, shining in the moonlight, but you didn’t wipe it. You let it stay, let him see the mess you were making of yourself for him.

And he watched you—eyes blown wide, mouth parted, chest rising like he was already chasing the edge.

“You want it that bad, huh?” he growled, voice hoarse, fingers tightening in your hair. “You want me to come down your throat?”

You moaned again—louder. A yes without words, mouth full and greedy.

You could feel it in him—the tension, the twitch of his hips, the way his muscles coiled. He was close. You didn’t let up. You sucked harder, deeper, filthy sounds filling the still night around you.

Joel choked out a broken curse, his head falling back as his grip on your hair tightened.

And then he came.

Hard.

His body tensed, jaw clenched, a guttural groan ripping from his chest as you swallowed every bit of it, never pulling back, never breaking eye contact. You kept going until he twitched from overstimulation, until his thighs trembled beneath your palms.

Only then did you finally pull off—slow, messy, a string of spit and release still clinging to your lip.

You wiped it with the back of your hand, licking it off as you grinned.

“Told you,” you whispered, breathless. “I don’t do things halfway.”

Joel was wrecked—chest heaving, eyes dark, his voice barely a growl.

“Jesus… You just ruined me.”

“Good,” you whispered, crawling up to straddle his lap. “That was the plan.”

You were still straddling his lap, the curve of your thighs flush against his hips, your breath ragged, lips wet from where you’d ruined yourself on him. Joel’s chest rose slow beneath you, and he looked up at you like he hadn’t caught his breath yet.

But something had shifted in his gaze.

That control you took? He was about to take it back.

His hand slid up your bare thigh, slow, possessive—fingertips dragging just under the edge of your skirt. He didn’t ask. Didn’t check. He just looked at you, that rough kind of stillness settling over him. One hand cupped your jaw, thumb brushing your lip.

“Open,” he said softly, and when you parted your mouth, he slipped his thumb in—watching you suck it, wet and slow, your eyes locked to his.

“Good girl.”

His voice dropped lower, a gravel drag through your spine.

Then both hands moved. One grabbed your waist, grounding you in place. The other dipped between your thighs, fingers sliding under the hem of your skirt and dragging the soaked cotton of your panties to the side.

“Look at you,” he muttered, voice thick. “You’re drippin’, darlin’. You got that messy just from suckin’ me off?”

You couldn’t answer. Didn’t have to. Your body spoke for you—hips twitching at the first touch of his fingers sliding through your slick, teasing just outside where you needed him.

He leaned in, lips grazing your throat, the stubble on his jaw scraping your skin in the best kind of burn.

“Want you to ride somethin’ now,” he murmured. “And I ain’t talkin’ about my cock… not yet.”

His middle and ring fingers slid inside you—slow at first, deliberate, curling deep with that exact kind of pressure that made your spine arch. You gasped, thighs twitching around his wrist, and he grinned.

“There it is,” he whispered.

He didn’t move them yet. Just kept them buried in you, palm flat against you, thick fingers pulsing with subtle pressure—making you feel the stretch, the shape, the slow burn.

“Now ride.”

You met his eyes—your lips parted, chest heaving, legs trembling—and obeyed.

Your hips rolled down against his hand, grinding slow over his fingers, deeper, needier. Joel didn’t move them for you. He just let you do it, watched you work for it, mouth half-open, eyes burning.

“Fuck,” he muttered, watching the way you rocked on him. “Look at you, baby. Filthy little thing, makin’ yourself come on my fuckin’ hand.”

Your hands clutched at his shoulders, fingernails digging into muscle as you moved faster—moaning, riding the pressure, the angle of his palm hitting your clit just right with every roll of your hips. His fingers curled, and you cried out.

“That it?” he growled. “Right there?”

You nodded, desperate, lips trembling.

“Say it.”

“There—fuck, Joel, right there—don’t stop—”

He didn’t.

He kept his fingers steady, curling deep, his thumb pressing tight against your clit, grinding up into you as your rhythm turned frantic—your thighs shaking, body tensing, that release building sharp and fast, right under your skin.

“You gonna come for me?” he growled, lips at your ear now, voice tight. “Right on my fuckin’ hand like a good girl?”

You shattered.

The orgasm hit you hard—hips jerking, hands clutching him like a lifeline, your moan drawn-out, unrestrained, wrecked. Joel held you through it, didn’t pull his fingers out until your body trembled and your head fell against his shoulder, gasping for breath.

Slowly, so slowly, he slipped his fingers free—and brought them to his lips.

Sucked them clean, watching you the whole time.

“Tastes like trouble,” he said, voice hoarse. “Think I’m startin’ to like it.”

You laughed against his neck, dizzy and full of heat, your voice wrecked.

“You haven’t even seen half of what I can do.”

Joel smirked.

“Then don’t stop now.”

The lake shimmered in the dark like a secret, moonlight sliding across its still surface, broken only by the occasional flick of a bug or ripple of wind. Joel sat back in the grass, legs stretched, fingers flexing in the leftover heat of you still pulsing down his hand. His shirt clung slightly to his chest where your body had leaned against him, his breath still ragged, pupils still blown.

You leaned back, breath shallow, looking over your shoulder toward the water. The corners of your mouth curled like you were about to say something wicked.

“I wanna swim.”

Joel raised a brow, still catching up. “Now?”

“Mmhm.” You slowly pulled the hat from your head and set it on his chest. “You stayin’ here, cowboy, or you comin’ in?”

But you weren’t waiting for an answer.

You stood, legs shaky but defiant, skirt still hitched high from where he’d had his fingers buried in you. Your shirt clung to your back, your thighs gleamed in the moonlight, and you walked toward the edge of the lake like it owed you something.

And then—slow, deliberate—you grabbed the hem of your top.

Joel sat forward.

You peeled the shirt off, over your head, dropping it in the grass without looking back. No bra. Just bare skin kissed by the moon, your back arched slightly, your hands slipping down to the waistband of your skirt.

You pushed it down slow. Tantalizing. Unashamed. The cotton panties followed, dragged down over your hips and thighs until you stood at the lake’s edge completely naked, moonlight painting every inch of you in soft silver and shadow.

You looked back over your shoulder, eyes gleaming with something half-feral, half-mocking.

Calling him again, but silently.

Joel was frozen for a second. Just a second. Then he stood, slow and deliberate, his eyes never leaving your body. The shirt was off in one pull. The sweats dropped low. But you were already stepping into the water—hips swaying, the cold making your nipples stiffen, your breath hitch just enough to make him twitch with want.

The lake swallowed you, one step at a time, until the water came to your breasts. You turned, hands skimming the surface, watching him through heavy lashes.

“You gonna keep starin’,” you said, voice low, sultry, “or you finally gonna come in here and do somethin’ about it?”

Joel’s voice was thick, hoarse.

“You keep undressin’ like that in front of me, girl, I ain’t gonna be doin’ a damn bit of swimmin’.”

You gave a dark little laugh, then waded deeper—slowly, deliberately, until you dove under and came up slick with water, your hair darkened and clinging, your body gleaming wet in the moonlight.

You looked like sin. Wild. Untouchable.

Joel stepped into the water, muscles coiled, hands flexing like he wanted to grab you the moment he got close enough. The chill made his breath catch, but his focus never broke—he was locked onto you like a predator scenting blood in the water.

You swam backward, just out of reach, teasing.

“You look like you’re thinkin’ real hard, Miller.”

“Tryin’ to decide if I wanna drag you under or pin you against that rock right there.”

“Who says you can’t do both?”

His eyes darkened further. Your body ached from the inside out—not just from what he’d done, but from what you knew was coming next.

Joel was in front of you now, chest heaving. He reached out, grabbed your waist under the water, and pulled you flush to him with one sharp motion.

Skin on skin. Wet. Hot.

Your legs wrapped around his waist like instinct, and you grinned, wicked and wild.

“Told you I don’t share my lake,” you whispered, mouth against his jaw. “But maybe I’ll make an exception… just this once.”

Joel growled low in his throat, lips finding your neck, his hands gripping your ass beneath the water, dragging your hips tight against the hard length of him pressing into your stomach.

“You’re gonna be the fuckin’ death of me.”

“Then die slow,” you breathed, biting his earlobe.

And just like that—the lake stopped being peaceful.

It became a battlefield.

And you were already winning.

The water wrapped around you both like silk—cool, dark, quiet—but the heat between you was anything but. Joel’s hands were tight on your waist, holding you against him, your bare chest pressed to his, soaked skin sliding on soaked skin, every breath shared, every heartbeat tangled.

You were weightless in the water, legs around his hips, the hard length of him pinned tight between your bodies. And your mouth—god, your mouth—was all over his.

You kissed him like a storm. Not sweet. Not slow. Your lips crushed against his with the hunger of someone who’d waited too long, wanted too hard. His beard scraped your chin, his tongue met yours in deep, messy strokes, and the water sloshed around you as your bodies moved, tangled, greedy.

Joel groaned against your mouth, one hand slipping down to your ass, squeezing hard again, grinding you against him, while the other cradled the back of your head, keeping your mouth right there, right where he wanted you.

“Fuck, baby,” he growled between kisses. “You don’t stop, I ain’t gonna last.”

You smiled into him—wet and smug—then leaned back just enough to see his face. Moonlight cast silver across his cheeks, but his eyes were pure black heat. You dipped one hand between your bodies, under the water.

He gasped—sharp—as your fingers wrapped around him.

“Then don’t stop me.”

Your grip was sure, smooth beneath the surface, the water letting your hand glide effortlessly along the hard length of him. You stroked him slow, tight, then faster, just to feel the twitch in his thighs, the catch in his breath. His head dropped to your shoulder, teeth grazing your skin, groaning like he was pained by how good it felt.

“Goddamn,” he muttered, voice rough in your ear. “You do that again and I’m takin’ you right here in this fuckin’ lake.”

“Thought that was the idea.”

Your hand pumped him harder now, teasing your thumb over the head, squeezing just enough to make his hips stutter in the water. His breath hitched again—sharp, torn from him—and his hands tightened on your waist, fingers bruising as he fought for control.

“You tryna make me lose it, sugar?”

You leaned in, bit his lower lip, then whispered against his mouth:

“I wanna watch you lose it.”

And you kept stroking—relentless, greedy, your own body rocking slightly with the water, breasts pressed to his chest, your core aching against his stomach. You felt the tension coil in him, deep in his abdomen, his thighs starting to tremble under the pressure of holding back.

He kissed you again—hard—like it was the only thing keeping him grounded, like if he let go of your mouth he’d lose himself completely.

And with your hand wrapped around him under the water, you were in control now.

“You close?” you whispered, lips brushing his.

“So close,” he growled, eyes screwed shut, hips twitching under your hand.

You stroked him harder, faster, water slapping softly between your bodies.

“Then give it to me,” you whispered, voice dark, low. “I want it, Joel. Right here.”

The lake no longer felt like water—it felt like heat, like tension about to snap.

Joel snapped.

In a flash, his hand was in your hair, fisting it, dragging your head back with a sharp yank that forced a gasp from your lips. His other arm scooped under your thighs, lifting you in the water like you weighed nothing. He slammed your back against the nearest slick rock jutting from the waterline, your legs still wrapped tight around him.

“You want it?” he hissed against your mouth, hot breath sliding down your throat. “You want it that filthy, that rough? Right here in the fuckin’ lake where anyone could see?”

You nodded, panting, eyes wide, lips parted—shaking and ready.

“Do it, Joel. Take me.”

His hand slid between your bodies, gripped your thigh and yanked it higher, opening you wider as he thrust forward and buried himself in one brutal, claiming push. You cried out—loud, no shame, no restraint. He didn’t wait for your body to adjust—he knew what you wanted.

And he gave it to you.

Hard.

The water slapped against your bodies with every savage roll of his hips, his chest flush against yours, teeth gritted as he fucked into you like he’d been starving. You were already raw, already oversensitive from grinding on his fingers, but now—

His hand stayed tangled in your hair, pulling, keeping your throat exposed while his mouth marked your skin with open, wet kisses and bites that bordered on bruises. You dug your nails into his back, clawing at him as your legs locked around his waist.

“Look at you,” he snarled, voice all gravel and sweat. “So fuckin’ pretty… cryin’ on my cock, beggin’ me like it’s the last thing you’ll ever feel—”

“F-fuck, Joel—yes—yes, I want it like this—don’t stop—don’t you dare stop—”

He slammed into you harder, each thrust driving a helpless sound out of your throat, your voice turning ragged as your body shook against the rock.

“You feel that?” he growled in your ear. “That’s mine. You’re mine.”

“Yours,” you gasped, barely able to speak. “Yours, Joel. Fuck— don’t let me go—”

His rhythm broke, hips faltering, hand moving from your hair to your jaw, gripping your face as he kissed you—devoured you—growling low in his throat like a man unhinged.

“You come with me, baby,” he hissed. “You feel me come inside you—say my fuckin’ name—say it—”

“Joel,” you cried, shaking. “Joel, fuck, I’m—”

You came hard, clenching around him, body arching off the rock as the wave of it hit, loud, messy, feral. Joel followed with a grunt that turned into a half-roar, slamming deep as he spilled inside you, holding your hips tight, driving himself as far as you could take him—like he wanted to leave a mark.

The lake rocked around you, quiet now but for the sounds of panting, the water lapping gently against the shore.

He didn’t pull out right away.

Didn’t speak.

Just held you there in the moonlight, still trembling against him, your lips against his throat, your body wrecked and soaking and satisfied.

“Holy fuck,” he finally whispered, voice rough as sandpaper.

And he kissed you again.

Your bodies stayed locked in the water—his chest heaving against yours, arms still tight around your waist, your thighs wrapped snug at his hips. The night air clung heavy to your wet skin, steam rising between the heat of your breath and the chill of the lake. Moonlight danced on the rippling surface, but beneath it, the tension didn’t fade.

Joel was still inside you. Softening slowly. The aftermath of that raw, ruthless high pulsed through both of you—but you weren’t satisfied. Not really.

Not yet.

He leaned his forehead to your shoulder, chuckling low, exhausted.

“Jesus… I need a fuckin’ minute.”

You smiled, wicked and wet, dragging your fingers through his curls as you whispered close to his ear.

“You’re not gettin’ one.”

“Sugar,” he huffed, voice ragged and rough. “I just emptied every damn drop I had in me.”

You rocked your hips once. Just enough. Felt the stretch of him still inside, not ready… but not unwilling.

“You didn’t pull out,” you murmured, rolling again, slower this time. “You’re still in me. That means I can go on.”

Joel groaned. One of those deep, broken sounds, like your words physically hurt.

“You’re evil.”

“No,” you breathed, biting down on his jaw, “I’m needy.”

You gripped his shoulders and started to move.

Slow.

The water cushioned you, made everything slicker, smoother. His cock wasn’t hard—yet—but it was there, thick and sensitive, twitching with every shift of your hips. You moved carefully, deliberately, grinding yourself against him with slow rolls, feeling him start to twitch, to grow again.

He hissed between his teeth, hands flying to your waist.

You moaned, soft but sharp, mouth right at his ear.

You kissed him—open, messy—tongue sliding against his as your hips kept rocking. The water sloshed between you. You felt him hardening again inside you, inch by inch, your body coaxing him back from that edge of spent exhaustion into something new.

Joel cursed into your mouth, bucked his hips once in reflex. His fingers dug into your ass now, squeezing.

“Goddamn, girl. You ain’t human.”

You laughed—a low, breathy sound against his cheek—and sat up straighter on his lap, water dripping down your chest, your back arching as you ground down harder, the tip of him brushing deep inside.

“Not right now,” you whispered. “Right now I’m just a hole wrapped around your cock.”

His hands snapped to your hips.

And his breath caught like he was ready to burn again.

The water rocked around your bodies, small waves rippling out into the darkness as you rode him—slow, deep, relentless.

Joel leaned back against the rock, lips parted, eyes glassy and dazed as he watched you above him. His hands stayed on your hips, fingers slipping on your soaked skin, but his grip was loose now. Weak.

You were in control.

And you wanted it that way.

He was hard again—not as thick, not as furious as before—but enough. Just enough. Enough for you to keep him inside, to grind down on him and take what you needed while he stared at you like you’d stolen every last thought from his head.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he breathed, voice hoarse. “You’re gonna bleed me dry.”

You didn’t slow. You clenched around him harder, dragging your body in slow, punishing circles, the water rocking with your movement. Your hair clung to your cheeks, dripping onto his chest as you leaned down, breath ghosting over his mouth.

“Good,” you whispered. “I want every last drop.”

Your pace picked up, steady and deep, your thighs trembling now, knees digging into the smooth lake stone under the water. The friction of him inside you was maddening—your body raw from the first time, aching now, but you didn’t stop.

You couldn’t.

You bounced harder, breathing faster, fingers clawing down his chest as you started to unravel again. Joel’s head fell back against the rock, neck exposed, eyes fluttering half-shut.

“You feel so good,” he groaned. “So fuckin’ tight… baby, I can’t—can’t even move…”

“You don’t have to,” you panted, riding him now with broken rhythm, your voice shaking. “Just lay there. Let me come on your cock like it’s mine.”

His hips twitched, barely a thrust, more like a reflex—but it was enough. The extra push made you cry out, your fingers gripping his shoulders, your whole body tensing around him.

“Joel—fuck—I’m coming—”

And you did.

You collapsed against him, arms locked around his neck, your thighs shaking as you pulsed around him, drawing him in deeper, milking every inch. You buried your face in his throat, moaning into his skin, your whole body melting against him as the orgasm shook through you like a fever.

Joel didn’t say a word.

Didn’t need to.

He just held you there—soft, drained, wrecked—his cock still buried in you, twitching weakly, his hands twitching where they gripped your ass.

You stayed like that, tangled and soaked in moonlight, floating half in the water, half in each other.

He finally exhaled, voice a ghost against your cheek.

“You’re gonna be the death of me.”

The lake was still as glass when you finally pulled yourself off of him—slowly, shakily, his cock slipping free with a quiet, spent twitch. Joel groaned low in his throat, head still tilted against the rock, arms splayed out in the water like he couldn’t remember how to move. He looked wrecked. Beautifully, fully wrecked. And you? You were trembling and grinning, your thighs sore, your skin tingling with the kind of heat that lingered long after the fire burned out.

“Stay there a while,” you murmured, breathless, voice tinged with a wicked edge. “You look real pretty like that.”

He gave a lazy half-laugh, half-growl as you turned away, water lapping at your waist as you waded back to shore. Every movement sent more water dripping down your bare skin—between your thighs, down the insides of your legs, slick and unmistakable.

You reached the grassy bank and stepped out, skin glistening in the moonlight. The wind kissed your body and made you shiver, but you didn’t flinch. You just walked with slow purpose across the soft grass to where your clothes lay strewn—discarded like old thoughts.

You picked up your panties first, still damp from before the lake even touched you. Slid them up over your thighs, pulling the soaked fabric snug between your legs, ignoring the slick mess beneath that still clung to you.

Then came the skirt.

It stuck to your wet skin, the denim heavy and damp as you shimmied it up your hips and fastened it. Your shirt followed, clinging to your chest as you pulled it over your head, your nipples pressing clearly against the cotton, soaked through.

No fixing your hair. No shame.

You moved with the quiet confidence of someone who knew they’d been the storm that ruined a man and left him grateful for the wreckage.

You glanced back toward the water as you slid Joel’s hat back onto your head—tilted low, eyes shadowed, smirk curling your lips.

He was finally standing now, sluggishly dragging himself to the shore, water pouring down his body. Still bare. Still caught somewhere between pleasure and exhaustion. His eyes met yours—and lingered.

You held his gaze as you adjusted the skirt’s hem with two fingers, smoothing it over your hips.

“You comin’?” you asked, voice sweet as sin.

Joel exhaled hard through his nose and dragged a hand down his face.

“Hurry up, cowboy. I wanna watch you die slow.”

And with that, you turned away from the lake, walking barefoot through the wet grass—clothed but still wild, soaked to the skin and grinning like a woman who knew exactly what kind of chaos she carried in her hips.

He followed.

The ride back was quiet—but not awkward. It was the kind of silence that came after something intense, after bodies had been pushed past their limits and souls tugged just a little too close together.

You sat curled in the passenger seat, legs pulled up, arms wrapped loosely around your knees. The denim of your skirt was still damp, sticking to your thighs, your shirt clinging to the curve of your back. Your skin smelled like water, grass, and him. Joel’s hat was still on your head, pushed back slightly now, exposing the bruised swell of your lips and the mess he’d left in your expression.

He didn’t talk much. His hand rested on the top of the wheel, fingers drumming every now and then. His other was in his lap, tapping idly, like he had too many thoughts and not enough words. The headlights cut through the darkness in long silver beams, washing the trees in and out of view.

The town came into sight quicker than you expected—familiar signs, empty roads, cheap lights flickering over storefronts that shut hours ago.

And then your street.

He pulled up in front of your house without a word, engine idling.

You didn’t move to open the door.

Just sat there in the hush between you, watching his profile as he stared out the windshield, jaw tight again. The easy charm from earlier had slipped somewhere on the drive. All that slow, hungry mischief replaced now with something heavier.

You finally broke the silence, voice softer than you meant it to be.

“You stayin’ in town? Or was this all just a ride through?”

Joel didn’t answer right away.

Didn’t look at you.

“Nah,” he said eventually, low and blunt. “I’m movin’ on. Next stop’s Amarillo.”

You felt something in your chest shift—small and sharp.

You nodded slowly, turning to look out your own window now. The porch light buzzed, flickering faintly. You hated that sound.

“Figures,” you muttered. “You ride in, break the bull, break the girl, then disappear.”

Joel’s voice came rough beside you.

“That what you think this was?”

You looked back at him, your face unreadable.

“I don’t know what this was.”

He didn’t speak. Just stared at you now, eyes darker than before, not angry. Not sorry either.

Just honest.

“I don’t stay long, sugar,” he said, voice lower. “I don’t belong in one place. And I don’t drag people along when I go.”

You leaned forward, resting your forearms on your knees, watching the keys jingle slightly in the ignition.

“So that’s it?”

Joel shifted in his seat, glancing over at you again. His jaw flexed, lips parted like he wanted to say something else.

But he didn’t.

Just reached up, touched the brim of his hat still on your head—soft, a little trace of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Keep that. Somethin’ to remember the ride.”

You looked at him for a long second. And though you weren’t the crying type, something pulled tight in your throat. Not sadness.

Just… that ache that came when something good wasn’t meant to last.

You opened the door, boots hitting the gravel.

And as you stepped out, you didn’t say goodbye.

Didn’t slam the door.

You just walked up the drive with his hat still on your head, knowing damn well he was watching you the whole way.

And in the silence behind you, the engine eventually rumbled low… and carried him away.

It had been twenty-six days. You’d counted—at first without meaning to, then because you couldn’t stop.

Twenty-six days since you felt his hands on your body.

Since he kissed you like he needed oxygen and you were the only air left in the world.

Since you rode him in a moonlit lake, shaking, soaked, and so wildly yourself it scared you now.

You told yourself it was just a passing thing. He was a drifter, a rider, a man made of dust and distance. Joel Miller didn’t stay. He warned you. And you weren’t the kind of girl who chased after someone who made it clear they wouldn’t look back.

But the hat still sat on your nightstand.

You hadn’t worn it since the night he left. It felt wrong, like it only had power when he put it on you. So it stayed there, untouched, a reminder you pretended not to look at every morning.

And then—on a Wednesday that felt like any other—you walked out the back door of the small diner you worked mornings at, still wearing your apron, the sky thick with heat and early sun, and you saw him.

Leaning against a familiar truck.

Same one. Same dented door.

He was wearing a soft gray shirt, jeans that looked road-worn, and boots with dust that didn’t belong to this town. His arms were crossed, and his eyes—those goddamn eyes—were already locked on you the second the screen door banged behind you.

You froze, one hand still gripping the door frame.

“You son of a bitch,” you whispered, heart slamming against your ribs.

Joel didn’t smile. Not yet. His face was unreadable, jaw clenched, tension in his shoulders. Like he’d driven through three states without breathing right. His voice when it came was low, tired, real.

“Couldn’t get you outta my fuckin’ head.”

Your throat closed up. Everything inside you twisted—heat and ache and something dangerous.

“You said you don’t stay. Said you don’t drag people along.”

“I don’t,” he said, stepping forward. “But I ain’t been the same since I left. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t ride right. Couldn’t even look at another girl without seein’ you in my lap, smilin’ like you owned the fuckin’ world.”

You blinked, breath shallow.

“So what, you here to pass through again? Get your fix, then disappear?”

Joel moved until he was right in front of you, towering, heat rolling off him in waves.

“I didn’t come back to fuck you.”

“No?”

“I came back ‘cause every mile I put between us felt like a mistake. And I don’t do regret. Never have. But you—” he exhaled hard, hands flexing at his sides, “—you got in me. Deep. And I ain’t runnin’ from it anymore.”

You stared at him. Your lip curled into a slow, dangerous smile.

“Took you long enough.”

Joel’s grin broke through finally—sharp, boyish, relieved.

“Still got that hat?”

“Sittin’ by my bed,” you said, stepping close enough for your voice to drop. “Right where I left it.”

He touched your cheek then. Rough hand, gentle grip.

And this time, when he kissed you?

It wasn’t a goodbye.

It was a beginning.

Joel’s lips were still on yours when he pulled back just enough to breathe—barely an inch between your mouths. His thumb was brushing along your jaw, calloused, reverent, like he still couldn’t believe you were standing in front of him again. Like maybe he’d been dreaming you every night on some godforsaken highway, and now he was scared he’d blink and wake up alone again.

“I ain’t good with words,” he murmured, voice thick, low, “but I been drivin’ on autopilot for weeks, thinkin’ about your voice, your laugh, the way you look at me like you know what I’m gonna say before I say it.”

You didn’t move. Just let his words settle over your skin like a second heat.

“Thought if I got far enough, I’d stop thinkin’ about you,” he said. “But you got inside me like roots. Stuck.”

You tilted your head just slightly, teasing, though your voice shook under it.

“You here to tell me you love me, Miller?”

He huffed a dry laugh, but there was something raw under it.

“I don’t know what the hell this is. But I know I don’t want it without you.”

Then he looked at you fully, steady and real.

“Come with me.”

The words hit different. They weren’t casual. They weren’t a question tossed into the wind. They were solid. Heavy. And they landed deep.

Your breath caught, heart skipping once.

“You serious?”

“I don’t say shit I don’t mean,” he said. “It won’t be easy. Livin’ outta a truck half the time. Worn beds, bad food, long roads. I’m not a man who settles—but I’ll make space for you. I want you in my seat. Next to me. Laughin’, bitchin’, wearin’ my damn hat like you own it.”

He stepped even closer, hand curling around your waist.

“You ride with me, I won’t leave again. I’ll stay—wherever you are.”

You blinked once, swallowed hard.

Then you smiled. Slow. Dangerous. Certain.

“Drive me home. Gimme ten minutes to grab the hat and some clothes.”

Joel grinned like the tension finally broke.

“That’s my girl.”

And just like that, your world shifted again. Not by force. Not by fate.

By choice.

His.

And now yours.

[profeshyearner]

Humdrum

Chapter 6

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Warning for this chapter: trauma, violence, full blown smut, taking advantage.

Track list:

Love lives in this house - Sivu

Winter on the Weekend - Julia Stone

Liquid Smooth - Mitski

The city is quiet.

Not silent—never that—but quieter than usual. Like the buildings are holding their breath. Like the streets know the hours of hell you were just put through.

Sirens echo somewhere in the distance, distant and strange, warped by the static in your ears.

Helicopter rotors churn lazily above, pulsing like a migraine behind your eyes. You don’t look up.

You keep your gaze on the pavement, where it feels safer. Flatter. More predictable.

The world around you feels like it’s spinning, and you can’t escape the cloying feeling settling over you that you’re being watched, the feeling reminding you briefly of your childhood.

When you were about 5 or 6 you lived in a small, ranch style home in the country complete with an unfinished cement floored basement your family used as a pantry. The light switch was inconveniently placed at the bottom of the narrow stairway, so you had to climb down and up out for the basement in almost complete darkness, the only illumination coming from the open doorway.

Somehow, you were always the one who had to venture down into the darkness for a can of creamed corn or french cut green beans—and always, every single time, you sprinted as fast as you could up those wooden steps with the feeling of eyes at your back and fingertips reaching out from the shadows.

Your fears of monsters as a child were, in all likelihood, unfounded. No twelve-eyed monster lurked beneath the foundations of your home, and the branches of the willow that would brush your window screen at night were just that… now, when you should be past such child-like dears, you weren’t so sure they were still irrational.

Your footsteps are uneven. Off-kilter.

You only half-hear the sound of them. One foot scuffs louder than the other, and it takes a few blocks before you realize: you’re limping.

Twisted ankle, maybe. You can’t really feel it anymore.

Everything hurts in a distant, hollow way—like your body’s made of glass someone already cracked, and now it’s just waiting to shatter.

There’s blood between your fingers. Still wet. Still warm in the cracks of your knuckles.

It clings to the lifeline of your palm, smeared in lines like someone tried to read your future there—and found nothing worth saving.

Some of it is yours.

Some of it isn’t.

You don’t know how much of each.

You also don’t know how long you’ve been walking. Ten blocks? Twenty? Time doesn’t move the same way anymore—it slips and folds in on itself and swirls around you like a thick viscous molasses.

You cut through alleys without thinking, your body moving on autopilot through motions you made in the weeks prior. Streetlights flicker overhead, their hum loud in the silence. Shadows lean in toward you on both sides, long and too sharp.

Someone shouts something at a corner—your name? a cat-call? a threat? You don’t lift your head. You don’t care. The sounds pass right through you like wind.

The shirt you wore to work that morning is back on, though you don’t remember getting dressed. It clings to your spine with something wetter than sweat.

Your hands feel wrong. Too small. Too cold. The blood has begun to dry in places, making your fingers tacky as you flex them. You can feel each individual crease and fingerprint like it’s a scar.

The back of your throat tastes like copper and smoke—ash, maybe. Or ozone.

You don’t remember leaving Vought Tower. You don’t remember the elevator. Or the street. Or what you might have stepped over.

You just remember screaming. And something wet hitting your cheek…and the sound—God, the sound—of bones breaking like branches.

But you don’t want to remember.

You won’t.

Already you can feel your mind racing to repair the damages made, your memory soft and fuzzy around the edges like you had just woken up from a nightmare.

You stare at the cracks in the sidewalk like they’re a map. Like if you follow them long enough, they might lead you somewhere that makes sense. Somewhere clean. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere not here.

By the time you reach your building, your legs are trembling so badly they nearly give out on the first step.

You grip the railing to steady yourself. The metal is cold and sticky with condensation—or maybe that’s just your hands.

You fumble the keys. Miss the lock once. Then twice. The third time, it turns with a soft mechanical click that feels strangely intimate. Like something yielding.

You push the door open.

Still. Silent. Dim.

Your apartment feels like it’s been holding its breath, waiting.

You close the door behind you but don’t latch it. You can’t be bothered—the lock feels unnecessary now. You’re not sure there’s anything left to protect.

The entryway light hums softly and your feet are heavy against the floorboards. Everything smells faintly of dust and detergent. Your dishes wait to be put away in the rack by your sink.

You strip in the entryway, your movements stiff like an automaton.

You pass the mirror in the hallway as you shuffle toward your bathroom and don’t look. You can feel your reflection like it’s watching you—can sense the shape of your body there in the glass—but won’t meet your own eyes.

You don’t want to know what you look like. You’re afraid you might be someone—something else.

The bathroom light is too bright. It buzzes overhead, casting your skin in sharp relief—every scrape, every smear, every bruise. You turn it off.

The tile is cold beneath your feet. It shocks you awake for half a second before you drift again.

You kneel by the tub like you’re preparing for prayer. Your knees ache. Your back curves. Your hands shake slightly as you twist the drain open and turn the tap.

The water sputters at first, then hisses to life—too hot. Scalding. Steam rises in ghostly tendrils around your arms as the tub begins to fill. You don’t turn the temperature down.

You cross your arms against the ceramic edge of the tub and watch the water climb. You keep your eyes fixed on it, so you don’t have to look at your own reflection, warping beneath the surface and instead choose to fixate on a chip in the tub’s smooth porcelain surface, your fingertip tracing its rough edges.

The water rises higher in the tub, cloudy now—tinged faintly pink with whatever’s still clinging to you.

You don’t watch it. You just listen.

To the groan of the old pipes.

To the steady rush.

To the way the faucet sputters and spits and tries again.

Your head dips forward slightly, chin nearly touching your wrists. The steam curls up around your shoulders and nose, dampening your face and turning your hair to wavy strings against your cheeks.

You slide your hand into the water first. It’s blistering. Your fingers jerk back instinctively, but you don’t adjust the temperature.

You dip your foot in next, then your shin, then your whole leg.

There’s a strange sense of ritual to it. Like you’re preparing yourself for something. Like the water might erase the last six hours if it’s hot enough. Like it might wipe you clean of what you saw.

Finally, you climb in, lowering yourself inch by inch into the steaming bath.

The heat bites you at first. You hiss through your teeth, back arching. The pain is sharp, then dulls. Your skin protests, then yields. It hurts but it feels so good as your muscles unlock one by one and you sink back against the sleek white basin, water climbing just below your collarbones. You close your eyes and breathe, listening to the sound of the faucet and trying to dull the thrumming in your chest.

Time slips sideways.

The water cools.

For the first time in hours—maybe longer—your body doesn’t hurt. Not exactly. It just feels distant. Like it belongs to someone else. You breathe slowly. In. Out. Your ribcage expands beneath the water and contracts again.

You slip beneath the glassy still surface, small bubbles of air escaping from your nose, mouth pressed shut and then parted. The water closes over your shoulders, then your chin, your lips, your nose.

It wraps around your ears and the sound of the world vanishes, sealed in liquid.

Your body floats, suspended. Your back brushes the bottom of the tub.

The silence down here is thick. Like the inside of a womb, or a coffin.

Your heartbeat fills the space.

It echoes in your ears like a drum—thump, thump, thump—too fast, too loud. You try to slow it, like you’re concentrating on dimming a light with your mind. Your chest tightens. Your throat burns. But you stay still.

The water is cooling fast, but your skin feels hot. Almost feverish. Is it adrenaline? Shock? Or something deeper, something worse?

You let your body relax, every limb heavy and boneless. The sting in your lungs grows sharper, but you welcome it. There’s something pure about it. Something simple. It’s a clean pain, unlike the filth smeared through your memories.

You wonder—what would happen if you stayed here?

Just a little longer.

Just long enough.

Your eyes open underwater. Everything above is blurry, warbled with motion and light. The ceiling distorts. Shapes bend. Edges soften.

And then—

Something shifts.

A shape. A flicker of movement. Your heart jolts.

You can’t tell if it’s real.

A hallucination. A shadow. A ghost.

But it’s there.

Your body moves before your mind catches up.

You surge up out of the water with a gasp that shatters the silence, choking violently as air floods your lungs. Your hands slap the edges of the tub, nails scraping porcelain, water sloshing over the rim. You double over, coughing so hard it feels like your ribs might snap.

Your eyes sting with tears. Your vision is a blur.

But even through it—you know.

You’re not alone.

He’s there, you know he is, but all you can do is choke on the air around you, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

He’s there. Sitting on the bathroom floor like he’s been waiting.

Too big for the space, too real, too solid. One leg bent, the other stretched out, as much as it can be, anyway, in the tight space of your bathroom. His boots touch the rim of the tub.

His back is propped against the vanity, one arm resting on his knee, the other braced against the tile. His eyes don’t move from your face.

He says nothing. Just watches. Waits.

Your breath won’t come right. Coughing turns to sobs—sharp, ugly things you can’t control. Your chest convulses with it.

He moves slowly, reaching one gloved hand into the tub and drawing you closer toward him, a touch—almost gentle—on your left tricep.

Your move obedient, too tired to argue or resist, your body folds into his like a drowning thing clinging to driftwood—like some warped, surreal version of a Gustav Klimt painting.

Your wet hair clings to his suit. Your fingers curl around the fabric without thinking.

You feel tired and ashamed and completely, utterly broken.

You’re disgusted with yourself for this brief moment of comfort and you can’t escape the thought that somehow you deserve this, him.

Like you committed some mortal sin in a past life and he is your Devine punishment.

“I hate you,” you whisper, voice broken, unsure if you’re talking to him or yourself. You don’t look up at him, your face buried against his chest like a bruised child.

“I hate you.”

Again.

“I hate you.”

“I hate you.”

He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t flinch.

“I know,” he says.

And holds you tighter as you sob against him.

You’re not sure how long you hold that sad, sorry position, but eventually you pull back—just slightly. Just enough to breathe again.

The sobs slow. Not because they’re done—but because you’re exhausted.

Your forehead rests against his chest for a moment longer, and then you lift your head.

You look up at him like a kicked dog. Dazed. Wary. Hurt.

Your breath still comes in soft, shallow waves. Your lips tremble. Your face is wet with bathwater and tears and snot and shame.

You don’t know what to do now.

You want someone to tell you. To show you. To take this choice away from you. Just one decision—just one moment—where you don’t have to think, don’t have to fight, don’t have to exist.

His hand rises slowly, gently.

He brushes your soaked hair behind your ear with a care that makes your stomach twist. His fingers are warm, human. They linger a moment against your temple and you lean into his touch before you can think about what you’re doing.

You don’t know why you do it. You don’t even think about it. Your body moves and your mind follows after, too slow to stop it.

You kiss him.

At first, it’s a whisper—barely there. Your lips just touch his, uncertain, like you’re testing to see if he’s real. He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t react at all.

Not until you lean in again—this time slower, firmer, and your fingers find the edge of his suit again, curling in.

The kiss deepens, and something breaks open in you. Your fingers find the edge of his suit, the seams of his collar. You grip it like you might fall again. You pull him toward you, and he comes without resistance.

It’s wrong. Every second of it is wrong. And still you kiss him harder, even as more tears flow down your face.

The heat of your skin against his. The cold water around you. You would do anything to be somewhere else right now, to be a different person in another life where there’s no supes or Vought or cold corporate towers.

His hand finds your jaw, cradles it like you might shatter if he presses too hard. The other slides behind your back, wrapping fully around your waist and anchoring you to him, pressing you against his chest until you can barely tell where you end and he begins.

You wish the tub were the ocean. You wish you could drag him beneath the surface and vanish with him forever, like a siren a sailor down, leaving only silence and bubbles behind.

He’s horrifying.

He’s irredeemable.

And you want him now like you’ve never wanted anything in your life.

You hate how much you want him. Hate the need curling like fire in your stomach, rising up like bile in your throat.

You hate that you feel this way about him, even after—especially after what he did, what you saw him do.

But you don’t stop.

And neither does he.

His arms shift beneath you, and before you can even think to resist, he’s lifting you from the water like you weigh nothing.

The water runs off you in rivulets and the air is cold against your skin, but his hands are warm—one at your back, the other beneath your thighs, steady, unyielding.

Your legs wrap around his hips as naturally as breathing, slick skin against the elastane fabric of his suit. You hook your arms tighter around his neck like you’re afraid he’ll let you go.

You can’t stop, feeling like an agent in a reaction that had been set in motion. You’re disgusted by the way your body moves without permission, how easily your mouth finds his again and again.

He lowers you to the floor without a sound, without ceremony. Just smooth, purposeful movement, like this was always going to happen.

The tile is cold against your back. It bites into your spine and your shoulder blades and the backs of your thighs. The contrast makes his heat unbearable. Intoxicating.

He hovers over you, eyes locked to your face as if waiting for a flinch that never comes.

One hand slides under the crook of your left leg, lifting it slightly, and he shifts between your thighs. Not all the way. Just enough for the pressure to make you ache.

You gasp against his lips and he pauses, pulls back from you slightly.

Something flickers in his eyes—something unreadable. Not hesitation. Not concern. Just… patience. A terrible, intimate patience.

You look up at him, blinking through the fog in your head, through the tears still clinging to your lashes.

Half wanting.

Half ashamed.

Your lips part. You swallow. “Please,” you whisper.

It leaves your mouth like a whisper—barely audible, more tremor than word. Your voice is raw, scraped clean by the choking silence of his eyes on you.

He looks at you like you’ve already said it a hundred times. Like he knew you would.

You hate the way your arms tighten around his neck without thinking, the way your body presses into him as you pull him down towards you again. His hair is damp where your fingers touch it and you’re shaking again—not from fear, not from cold, but from the awful rush of relief.

He touches you so gently it makes your eyes sting. His gloved fingers trace your jaw, drag along the side of your throat, and settle at your waist.

You tilt your head back and let your knees fall wider.

He lowers his mouth to yours and kisses you like it’s a secret.

You arch into him without meaning to, your thighs brushing against him, your hands tangling in his collar. You taste blood. You want to be consumed. To be ruined. To give him what’s left of you, because maybe then you won’t have to hold it anymore.

His mouth lingers on yours like he’s trying to memorize the taste—like he’s not sure he’ll ever be allowed to do this again. His hand spreads flat across your waist, warm even through the glove, holding you still. Holding you together.

You gasp against his lips when he presses closer. The tile is merciless beneath your back, but you don’t move. You don’t want to. If you shift, if you speak, if you break the spell—you’ll feel everything too sharply. You’ll remember what brought you here. You’ll fall apart.

So you stay still, except for your mouth against his and the trembling of your hands on him. You let him unfasten his suit—not all the way, just enough.

You bite your lip when his fingers drag between your legs, not to tease or take, but to touch. To feel. And it’s that—the softness—that makes your breath catch. You weren’t ready for that. You didn’t think he could be tender, if that’s even what this was.

Your thighs fall open on instinct, your hips arching into his palm, chasing the sensation. A sob claws its way up your throat and you muffle it against his shoulder. You hate yourself for the sound. You hate that he hears it.

His gloves fingers move inside of you painfully slowly and curling at just the right spot, his thumb making soft circles against your clit. You hate how good the leather feels against you, inside you, knowing all the things those gloves have done, all the things you’ve seen them do.

He watches your face as you twist beneath him, as your breath hitches and your body answers him with a desperate pulse.

“Is this what you wanted?” he whispers.

His voice is low, almost kind. You whimper against him in response.

“Breathe,” he murmurs, like it’s a command. You do. You have to.

You buck against his hand, helpless now. Your chest heaves, slick with sweat and steam, nipples brushing against him.

You think you might come from just his fingers alone, and you’re struck with the thought that you’re not sure you want him to see you like that, in all your vulnerability and fragileness.

He stops then, like he could read your mind. And briefly you wonder if this was all just another sick form of torture. You open your eyes slightly, about to lift your head to look at him when you feel his hands back on you, lifting up your lower back as he presses his lips against your rib cage.

It takes all your self control not to beg for him. You want everything, his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

You feel his hands shift—one sliding beneath your thigh to lift it, the other smoothing slowly down your stomach as he kisses a slow trail lower, nipping at the tender flesh just above your hip bone.

You’re holding your breath again and you don’t realize until your lungs ache.

Your body is trembling again, a heady mixture of anticipation and fear closing in around you.

He pushes your knees farther apart and sinks down between them like he belongs there. Like this isn’t sacrilege.

His gloves are gone. You don’t remember him removing them, but you feel the difference—his bare hands warm and rough on your skin. His thumbs press into your inner thighs, holding you open, and his mouth hovers just inches from where you need him. He breathes in slowly, deliberately, and you swear he shudders.

He lowers his mouth and kisses you there like he’s starved for it.

Your hips buck again and a cry slips past your lips before you can stop it, your head falling back against the tile with a soft thud. Shame floods you—thick, cloying—but it’s buried under something hotter. Wilder. More desperate.

His tongue is slow at first. Deliberate. Like he’s learning you by taste. You feel every flick, every glide, every moment his mouth lingers just a second longer than expected. Your hands reach down on instinct, fingers tangling in his hair. You shouldn’t—

But he moans when you do. A low sound, almost appreciative, like praise from something unholy.

You bite down on your knuckle to keep quiet, but it’s no use. He doesn’t give you space to hide—not from him, not from yourself. He presses in harder, his mouth working you with terrifying precision, the flat of his tongue sliding just right as his hands pin you down, thumb brushing your hip in something almost affectionate.

You’re unraveling.

You can feel it—your body tensing, legs shaking, heat building like something about to break loose.

But part of you resists. Holds back.

You don’t want to fall apart in front of him. Not like this. Not because of him.

You’re a wire pulled taut between craving and revulsion.

Then he moves.

It happens so quickly you barely register the shift—his mouth gone, hands suddenly at your hips. And then he’s flipping you onto your stomach like you’re nothing more than a doll, weightless in his grip. Your cheek hits the cold tile. You gasp and this time it is from pain.

His hands slide beneath your waist and lift you up to your knees. He pushes your thighs apart again, but gently—like he’s adjusting a porcelain figure on a shelf. Reverent. Possessive.

This is the only kind of mercy he knows how to give you.

He leans over your back, breath ghosting across your shoulder blade. For a moment, he doesn’t move—just rests there, his chest pressed to your spine, his hand splayed low across your stomach to keep you still.

You feel his lips brush the back of your neck. Not a kiss.

He doesn’t ask you if you’re okay, he doesn’t say anything. And you wonder when the last time he did this with someone who wasn’t invincible was.

Your mind flickers to an embarrassing tabloid story about Popclaw and you cringe.

He shifts his weight, one hand still braced against you, the other trailing down the curve of your thigh to guide you open beneath him. You gasp as your leg slides awkwardly against the tile, cold biting at your knee. He adjusts you with eerie precision, never stopping to ask if it hurts, never wondering if you’re ready.

You realize you’re shaking again.

Your clammy hands brace against the floor. You turn your head sideways against the slick tile and close your eyes.

The stretch is slow, unrelenting. You bite your lip to keep from crying out—not because it hurts but because the sound feels too raw, too real. He pushes in inch by inch, like he’s savoring every second. Your muscles tense around him, your whole body curling forward. You gasp, knuckles white where your hands clench against the floor.

His breath stutters behind you—sharp, like he’s surprised. Like your body is different from what he imagined.

He holds still once he’s buried in you, deep and full and terrifying. His hand slides up your stomach again, splayed flat like he’s anchoring you to the earth. His other hand braces the floor beside your head, caging you in.

You feel possessed.

He moves—just slightly—and your body jolts around him, your breath catching in your throat. You whimper, helpless. His fingers dig into your hip, keeping you in place as he starts to fuck you in earnest. Slow, but not tender. Methodical. He groans low in his throat, not loud, not dramatic. Like it’s involuntary. Like this is something he needed—not you.

Each thrust pushes you forward on the tile, your knees burning, your muscles trembling from the strain. He leans further over you, his weight pressing you down, and you can feel him—feel him—in your spine, in your ribs, in your teeth.

You don’t know if you’re sobbing or moaning. You don’t know if it matters. Not the noise you’re making. Not the heat blooming low in your stomach. Not the shame crawling up your throat like ivy.

Because it’s starting to feel good. Too good.

Each thrust sends sparks flickering through your body—hot and dizzying. Your breath stumbles in your chest, caught between a sob and something deeper, needier.

Your hips roll back into him, slowly at first, instinct more than decision. The sounds coming out of you are rougher now, more animalistic.

He feels it. The shift.

His grip tightens on your hips, hard enough to bruise, and he pushes you further up against him. You press your hand against the baseboard, wishing there was something you could grab onto.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, barely a sound. “There you go.”

His rhythm changes, pace building, each thrust sharper, more insistent. It knocks the air out of you—shoves you against the tile. And still you meet him, hips pushing back with quiet desperation. You don’t recognize yourself like this.

You hate how much you want to come.

You hate that you’re close already, teetering on the edge.

He grabs your wrist and anchors it against the floor. His grip is firm. Not cruel, not outright painful.

You can hear his breath now, his long drawn out groans.

You whimper, eyes squeezing shut as your muscles tense. Every nerve in your body is pulling inward, tightening around the pressure he’s building in you.

A murmured swear from him is all that it takes to push you over the edge, and you shudder against him, his firm grip on you the only thing keeping you from slumping against the ground.

Your whole body clenches—tight, breathless, broken open by the force of it. It’s not graceful. It’s not beautiful. Climax rips through you like something torn loose.

A sob catches in your throat as you come, eyes squeezed shut, mouth slack against the tile. You don’t want to make a sound, but you do. You can’t help it.

He holds you through it—chest pressing hard into your back like he’s anchoring you to the earth.

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t tell you how good you look, or how sweet you sound, or how incredibly perfect you feel spasming around him. He just watches.

You can feel it—his gaze dragging over your skin like it’s learning you, cataloguing this version of you: wrecked, limp, trembling in his arms.

xx

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx @unnisumi

[profeshyearner]

You Let Me Complicate You

18+ 4k homelander x f!reader. bickering, post-breakup sex, dubcon/coercion, angst, jealousy, emotional manipulation, implied murder, stalking, boundary smashing, breaking and entering, cunnilingus, penetrative sex. read on AO3. written as a follow-up to the breakup, but can be read as a standalone. gif credit.

Breaking up with Homelander is... complicated. After all, it is a god that loves you.

"What do I taste like?" You asked him once, drunk on pleasure and those early honeymoon days of loving him. He’d been slow to answer, thinking it over. "Love," he said at last. "Like you love me." You wonder if that holds true. If he can still taste love in you. If that’s why he’s so eager to devour you, or if the absence of it has made him even hungrier.

Homelander is an aberration.

Stronger than a hundred men, faster than a bullet and sharp as a tack all paired with a teaspoon’s depth of emotional maturity. He’s volatile, twisted, broken in ways no amount of therapy could ever hope to duct tape back together. He’s no better off than a dog that bites to kill. No matter how he got to this point, the best thing for him–for the world–would be to put him down by any means necessary.

Too bad you can’t seem to stop fucking him.

It’s late when you hear the front door open with a distinct crack. You’re sprawled out on the couch in the living room, one leg draped lazily over the armrest. What comes next is no surprise to you–a shock of primary colors filling the narrow doorway, a handsome face made ghoulish by the haunting light of the television in an otherwise dark room.

“You nailed the door shut,” Homelander says, the inflection of his voice somewhere between a question and a statement.

“Because you broke it,” you throw back, a stale Twizzler balanced between your lips. It had tasted good enough when you started eating it, but now–in his presence–the sweetness of it has turned sour.

“You changed the locks,” he says with a light shrug, cape swaying as he meanders towards you. “My key didn’t work.”

“Your key? Stealing a key to my house does not make it your key,” you say tersely, lifting your foot to press it firmly to his thigh, stopping him in his tracks. 

He glances down, a mirthless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he catches your ankle in his gloved hand, yanking you down the couch so suddenly you lose your Twizzler to the floor with a gasp. It’s one thing to know that Homelander has strength enough to throw cars like frisbees. It’s another to feel it. It sends a rush of adrenaline through you like a jolt, followed swiftly by something hotter low in your naval.

“Y’know, I’ve been thinking,” he begins, dropping your ankle. He lifts his knee and slots it between your legs, his opposite boot on the floor, his hand braced on the back of the couch, pinning you in place.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” you cut in dryly, moving to shift up the couch, away from him. He snatches your shoulder, halting you with ease. His thumb strokes your skin idly, goosebumps erupting beneath his touch.

“And I’ve realized that this whole… thing between you and I, this ‘will they, won’t they,’ ” he says, bobbing his head side to side. “It’s getting stale. Don’t you think it’s about time we progressed the plot?” He asks, leaning in close.

You brace your hand against his chest, holding him in place as ineffectually as you did earlier. You both know it’s all a game. It’s all pretense. There had been fondness between you once–love, even–but you’re done with that now. You have to be done with it, or Homelander will swallow you whole. He’s a black pit, a murderer, and his need knows no end. He’ll destroy you and everything you know and love if he thinks it’ll satiate that need.

You’ve lost enough. You can’t afford to lose any more of yourself to him.

“Jesus Christ, you even think in TV script,” you say, pushing on his chest. He leans back, but not by much. It sends a terrible little chill down your spine. “I’m starting to think the only thing that might actually kill you is an original thought.”

His eyes narrow and his bright white teeth flash predatorily in the darkness. “You’re lucky I haven’t broken your neck,” he says, hand slipping from your shoulder to your throat. The sharp press of his thumb into your windpipe steals your breath, makes your thighs tighten on either side of his leg snug between yours. His lips split into an unkind grin. “Or maybe not. You’d probably like that.”

“You’re disgusting,” you spit, gripping his wrist with your other hand. Your pulse is starting to throb against the leather of his glove. He moves his thumb from your windpipe to your jaw and turns your head away, leaning in with a deep, pointed inhale along your neck.

“Is that why your hormones are going haywire? Because I disgust you?” He asks, grinding his thigh between your legs in a way that makes you gasp. “Y’know, given how full of it you are, I was sure I’d smell the bullshit on you. But all I smell… is how fucking wet you are.”

He grabs your hip and the memories come to you like muscle memory. How good it feels to be gripped and fucked and loved by someone beyond your comprehension. To feel as if you’ve stopped the world turning and called the sun itself to shine on you alone.

You twist your chin out of his grip and level him with a heated stare. “I hate you,” you hiss, grasping for the knife you know will twist the deepest. 

It works for a second, his smug expression faltering, but only for an instant. His jaw sets, and his lips curl into that same unkind smile. “C’mon, babe,” he coos, the intimate familiarity woven into that pet name making your skin crawl. “We both know that I can always tell when you’re lying.”

He kisses you like he always has. Like you belong to him. In a way, you suppose you always will. There’s nothing you can do to pry your throat from Homelander’s jaws. Nowhere you can run that he won’t eventually find you. Like quicksand, the more you fight, the tighter he clamps down. Truth be told, though, that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is that the tighter he grips you, the less you want to fight him.

His tongue slithers into your mouth like a serpent into the garden and you bite down hard. While pliant between your teeth, the flesh doesn’t yield. It never will. He never will. Instead he moans a little chuckle that fades into a rumble against your lips.

“That how it’s gonna be?” He asks, the words rasped into your mouth. “Y’wanna bite and claw? Play hard to get?” He laughs, the sound of it reedy and light, like it’s all a silly little game of make-believe. “I can do that.”

He reeks of his own desperation for what he says to be true. More than anything, he wants to dress up his desires as yours. He wants to believe he’s giving you what you want. That way, he can trick himself into believing you need him.

He bites the middle tip of his glove and tugs it off with his teeth, tossing it aside. His bare thumb brushes your lip, smearing his spit and yours. “I saw you with that fucking loser,” he says, the airiness suddenly gone from his voice.

Your stomach drops. Two days ago you’d been with a man. You’d been so desperate to forget him that night that anyone would have done the job. You stumbled out with some nobody from the bar who’d been good enough for a sloppy makeout session in the back of his truck, but not good enough to bring home. It hadn’t ended well.

How close of an eye is Homelander keeping on you?

“I’d be angry if it hadn’t been so fuckin’ pathetic,” he says through his teeth.

“Liar,” you say tightly. You feel his fury in the tension of his body. He’s pissed that you’d seek this out anywhere else. As if he still has a claim over your body. Your pleasure.

His eyes flash up to yours. He sneers, pushing his thumb between your lips. “I watched you bite his lip until he bled. I watched him slap you,” he says, dragging the pad of his thumb along the ridges of your bottom teeth. The memories come to you as he speaks them, every moment of it made bleary by alcohol. “You wanted it rough, but he couldn’t handle you, could he? Because you’re used to something better. You’re used to a god.”

You sneer right back at him, yanking your head to the side, his thumb slipping from between your lips. “Could you be any more in love with yourself? Go fuck yours-”

“I still had to kill him, of course,” he continues nonchalantly, grinding your thoughts to a screeching halt. He laughs humorlessly. “For kissing you. And, well–for everything else, obviously. Slapping you,” he says, brushing his knuckles down your cheek. The same one the man had struck. “Humping your leg like a fucking dog.”

“Why are you doing this?” You ask, throat tight. Bile burns at the back of it. All you wanted was to get away from this. The blood, the horror of it. Yet no matter what you do to dissuade him, he brings death to your doorstep. “You have everything. You could have anyone. Why are you–”

“Because I want you,” he hisses, words so sharp his sharp teeth snap together. “Because I love you, and that’s what you do when you love someone,” he says. You can feel the accusation building in his words. “You don’t give up on them. And if that means cleaning up every dirty little mistake you make,” he says softly, lips brushing the shell of your ear. “So be it.” 

A cold shiver rolls down your spine. You stare woundedly at him, lips parted, brows pinched together, the misery of it all etched into every line of your face. He stares at you in turn, and after a beat, his own hard expression softens.

“Hey, hey,” he says, the heat of his breath a ghostly kiss on your lips. “It’s okay,” he says, brushing the tip of your nose with his. “I forgive you.”

He kisses you again, more tender now. Your eyes prickle with tears. His gentleness hurts so much more than his violence. It disarms you, carries you to a time when things were simpler between you. Sweeter and warmer. 

Homelander makes the world feel wonderful and dangerous, like standing in the middle of an electric storm. Being loved by him is the feeling of having your ribs cracked open, your heart cradled in his bare hands, possessive and bloody. What had been thrilling grew stifling, a feeling you realize now never truly went away.

He’s inescapable, literally and figuratively. Even when he isn’t inviting himself into your home or lurking in the periphery of your vision, Vought’s hero is plastered on every billboard and screen in the city. You haven't been able to breathe without inhaling the thick miasma of him.

Tears roll down to your temples as you kiss him back, both hands fisted in his soft hair, tugging. He makes a pleased little sound against your lips, teeth grazing your bottom lip. He’s always kissed like a man possessed–like every brush of your lips is a drop of salvation–but the hunger he’s developed since you tried to leave him is unparalleled. He kisses you like he means to devour you whole.

You bite back a sob, but the hiccuped noise of it catches his attention nonetheless. He breaks from you, looking down at you with a feverish mix of yearning, impatience and something that almost resembles pity, which might be the closest thing he knows to sympathy.

“Hey,” he coos, dusting your jaw with feather light kisses. “Don’t cry.”

“It’s awful,” you choke out.

“What is?”

“Your love.”

“I know,” he says after a prolonged pause. “It’s all I know.”

You look at him, the image of him bleary through your tears. There’s a morose resignation in his ocean-storm eyes, a distance that makes him seem far, far away from you, even as you taste the heat of his breath on your lips.

Focus returns to his gaze, and suddenly he’s present again. “It’s all I know,” he says again, his tone made of wood, stiff and splintering.

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you lift your palm to his cheek, hovering just shy of touching. He’s pulled to it like a magnet, nuzzling into your palm, eyes closing. His hand slides down the familiar slopes of your body, settling at your hip, where his fingertips sink in like claws, the pressure of them shy. For as vicious as things have gotten between you, he’s never hurt you. A fact he lords over you as if he should be applauded for it.

I love you more than anything. You know that, right? That I would never do anything to hurt you? He’d asked you during that first fight. When everything went wrong. 

You’d only been able to nod then, trapped with a man you didn’t recognize wearing the face of the man you loved.

That’s right. Of course you do. Because if I wanted to hurt you, I would have. It would have been easy, huh?

Despite how desperately you’ve tried to fortify yourself against him, it’s still so easy.

Homelander is an aberration, but so too is he a man, and there was a time when the man was all that you saw. When the monster at the core of him reared its head, bloody and unrepentant, that became all you could see in him. Now, the two are so irrevocably tangled in the sinew of the other, you’re never sure which you’re looking at.

“I miss you,” you confess to the man in him, voice so soft only his ears possibly could have discerned the words. As if you can hide the words from the monster lurking behind if you speak them quietly enough. 

He looks as confused as your own aching heart. “I’m here,” he says, everything in his tone willing you to believe it. He doesn’t understand that you miss who he was before you knew what he was.

A mournful noise swells in your chest, but he kisses you before it can escape. “I’m here,” he says again, the hand at your hip turning into a fist in the fabric of your clothes, tearing them at the seams. “I’ll make you feel better,” he says between presses of his lips, hungry and rushing, like he can outspeed your miserable grief. “Let me make you feel good.”

Sex has always been an avenue of redemption for Homelander. Whether he’s frustrated, anxious, wounded or a combination of them all, he’s sought to remedy it through a good orgasm. He treats you as though the notion should hold true for you: the fight doesn’t count so long as he makes you come.

Yet again, you’re left stricken by him. As you have a dozen times before, all you can do is nod. Deep in your core, you know he’s right. He can make you forget this horrible ache in yourself, the grief and the fear. He can take you away to the dream you’d lived before you met the beast in his shadow. 

Coherent thought turns to water slipping between the cracks of your mind as Homelander’s bare fingers brush your inner thigh. You suck in a sharp breath that leaves you as a shudder and you clutch at his collar, twisting the fabric, unsure if you mean to push him away or pull him closer.

Homelander makes the choice for you, closing the distance and kissing you too gently, too sweetly. You spur him with your teeth, needing it faster, harder. Needing it to hurt just enough to not feel entirely right. He ignores your prompt, focused wholly on tasting you, on sliding his fingers up into the waiting warmth between your thighs. He presses the pad of his middle finger to your clit, deft and familiar.

You sigh, closing your eyes, ready to lose yourself to the feel of something good. He slides serpentine down your body, kissing you through your shirt, nipping at your skin through the fabric for the way it makes you jump. His lips trail down until they pass the hem of your shirt, finding where he’s stripped you. His mouth is unbearably warm, breath hot huffs on your bare skin, goosebumps erupting everywhere.

He mouths at your hip, sucks the skin dark before trailing further down, leaving a constellation with his lips. The scorching wet heat of his tongue feels like a brand on your clit, replacing his hand with his mouth. 

You thread your fingers into his hair, widening the spread of your legs to allow for the way he shoulders under and between them, lifting your lower half. He nuzzles into the nectary sweetness of you, moaning unabashedly for your familiar taste.

What do I taste like? You asked him once, drunk on pleasure and those early honeymoon days of loving him. Everything about him fascinated you; did his super smell lend itself to super taste? Could he pick out each note of you, dissect your profile into sections?

He’d been slow to answer, thinking it over.

Love, he said at last. Like you love me.

You wonder if that holds true. If he can still taste love in you, if that’s why he’s so eager to devour you, or if the absence of it has made him even hungrier. If he plunges his tongue to the core of you in the hopes he might discover lingering shreds of what the two of you once had.

A moan escapes you. His fingers bite into your thighs, tongue coaxing more. Restraint dissipating, you tighten your grip on his hair and tug, grinding hard against his mouth. He knows the stepping stones of your pleasure as well as you know yourself, knowing just when to suck, when to lick. He’s more relentless than any other man could hope to be, never needing to stop for breath, never succumbing to aching muscles. He maintains a pace that sends you careening so viciously towards release, you give a choking gasp when it hits you, your head thrown back against the couch as euphoric relief rolls through you in waves.

Homelander shrugs out from under your trembling thighs, his mouth slick and shining, eyes predator wide. You’re both panting, silently gauging the other. You’re first to break the standoff, his hunger infectious. You climb onto your knees and grab his shoulders, pushing his back to the couch, straddling him. He keens when you kiss him, an addictive sound that gives you a deceptive sense of power.

He murmurs your name in fervent repetition, dragging his mouth along your skin, inhaling you like a drug. You unbuckle his belt with the ease of experience, unzip his pants and slip your hand inside. Curling your fingers around his cock, you find it already hard and dripping in anticipation.

“Anything you want,” he breathes, the words coming between the prayer-like recitation of your name. “Money, diamonds, anything, I’ll make you a queen,” he says, eyelids fluttering at your touch. He pledges these things like an act of devotion, but you recognize this Faustian bargain for what it is. It will cost you your heart and soul.

“I’ll make you a god,” he moans at a particularly deft twist of your wrist.

Making you come will have to be enough for now.

“Fuck me,” you tell him breathlessly. “The way I like it.”

Like flipping a switch, the dazed pleasure in his eyes sharpens. The corners of his mouth tug, his upper lip twitches, eager tension slipping into his touch as his hands slide up your thighs, grasping your hips. His fingers sink in tight enough to bruise, despite the gentleness of his touch. The immeasurable power lurking within his unassuming frame is a novelty that never wears off, a thrill that shocks you to your core no matter how many times you experience it.

Like a vicious storm, he’s beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Caught in the eye of his maelstrom, the only thing left for you to do is weather him.

He guides you down onto his cock in one slow, agonizing pull. Even with his spit and your orgasm easing the way, it’s too much all at once. Relishing the aching burn of being split apart by him, you make a noise that gives him pause. You don’t let him stop. You brace your hands on his shoulders and lift off of him almost entirely before sinking back down deeper than you had before, wringing a moan from him in turn.

Homelander’s fingers dig securely into your back as your bodies slot together and find an old, familiar rhythm. By now he knows exactly the angle to take to best pleasure you. You let out a shaky sigh at the warmth that spreads through you, the pressure of your climax building, his heat sinking into you like the light of the sun itself.

You’re used to a god.

You cup his face and kiss him. You bite his lip until you should taste blood. You dig your nails into his skin so hard your knuckles ache. If he notices it, he’s only pleased by it.

“I’d move heaven and hell for you,” he swears between kisses, ripping the shirt from your body. The cool air hits your damp, hot skin like a shock. 

“I don’t want them,” you say, voice catching on one of his sharp and sudden thrusts. He’s close. You can feel it in the tightness of his muscles, in the erratic, merciless way he drives into you.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, voice reedy, tight. He kisses down your chest, scrapes his teeth over the swell of your breasts. “They’re yours. It’s all yours. I’m yours.”

Those words should hit you like a prison sentence, but they don’t.

They make you come.

Homelander holds you tightly as he, too, breaks into pieces, filling you with light and heat. He chokes more promises against your skin, kisses the salt from your skin and licks it greedily from his lips. You spin in place in his arms, dizzy on your own orgasm, riding out the aftershocks with his cock throbbing against the quiver of your cunt.

For a long while there’s nothing but the sound of your breaths and the distant din of the television. The tremors wracking your body gradually fade, and the chill of the open air begins to set in.

Homelander holds you tight as the sweat on your skin cools. He kisses a trail from your neck to your shoulder, nuzzling there before he rests his head down, face tucked into the crook of your neck. You feel wrung dry, eyelids heavy. You card your fingers absently through his hair, body boneless against his. Your eyes ache from crying, but you don’t mind it. Strung out like this, the aches left in the wake of pain and pleasure both feel equally good.

“It’s late,” he says warmly, a smile in his tone. He sounds lovesick, the way you both did once upon a time. Back then, you thought you knew every dark corner of his insatiable heart. “We should sleep.”

“Okay,” you agree, voice frayed. He lifts you gingerly from his lap, adjusting to cradle your naked body to his chest. Despite how Homelander unspools himself before you, you’re always the one left reduced. Bare and vulnerable both physically and emotionally. You slip your arms around his neck as he stands, resting your head on his shoulder.

“I could take you to the tower,” he whispers, sending a chill down your spine. “My bed’s bigger.”

“No,” you say, remembering a door you cannot reach, no matter how many times you grasp for it, and the god’s hands that sent you spinning. He’s already so capable of turning your home into a prison. You’re not sure you’d ever escape his penthouse. “I want mine.”

Perhaps the most terrible fact of all is that Homelander is neither a god nor a monster. 

He is simply a man without limitation.

“Sure,” he says, kissing your cheek. The touch lingers, dripping with his adoration. “Anything you want.”

So long as it includes him.

[profeshyearner]

HumDrum

Chapter 5

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Warnings for this chapter: emotional abuse

Track list:

Hello Black Dog - Matt Maltese

A Pill to Crush - Evalyn

The archives were down so many levels that none of you knew when it began. No one heard the screaming from the upper floors as employees were chased through the halls and heads were smashed against cement. No one heard the gunfire or the squeak of blood soaked shoes across tile.

You should’ve known that this would happen.

The lab, the election, the rising tensions at Vought and across the country—you should’ve known where this was headed and that your fate would likely be the same as the lab employees from Homelander’s past—but you were too focused on the image of Homelander kneeling in front of you in the shower, like you alone could have absolved him for what he did.

He looked at you like you were a fucking angel instead of something he could crush underneath his boots.

You were too focused on the boy, John, on those tapes. The idea that maybe he was in there, somewhere.

That Homelander was the way he was because of the torture and the experiments, and that maybe a bit of compassion could bring out the humanity in him.

You didn’t consider that it wasn’t there to begin with. The compassion was never taught, the love was never had, no nostalgic memories of a brighter day could make him something…gentler.

This was a man who spent his entire life being treated like a show-pony for a corrupt company that thought they could control him, profit off of him. They didn’t consider that their grip on the supes would slip; they created them. A better race, a stronger version of man-kind. Unsurprising for a company birthed from 1940s German ideology, a company that never had a sense of morality to begin with. And America was the perfect breeding ground for them, for him.

A country that worships the strong and powerful, that puts itself on a pedestal above all other nations. Of course they’d love him, slap the Star spangled banner on a strong, blond haired blue eyed machine of a man and how could they not?

It was only a matter of time before this hostile takeover became a reality and you were too distracted to get the hell out of dodge before their judgement fell upon you.

And he didn’t care about you—you knew he didn’t care about you. You weren’t stupid… but you thought that somehow you’d be spared. Maybe he would forget about you. Maybe he would forget about the department as a whole.

—

You didn’t have time to barricade the doors. You didn’t have time to hide or look for something—anything that could be used as a weapon.

You were training a newer employee—you thought his name was Keith (or something—but were too embarrassed to ask him to tell you for a fourth time) on how to use the microfiche reader when he came in.

You couldn’t tell if it was better or not, that he was alone. The other members of the seven, aside from Sage, had no reason to think of you any differently than any other employees they had killed that day. Then again, the other members of the seven weren’t watching your apartment.

Sandy came out of her office to speak to him first, but it was as if she weren’t there, his eyes glued to you and the way you leaned over Keith.

You thought you saw a muscle—a vein—something, twitch across his face, but it happened so quickly before he composed himself with that fake sharp-toothed smile, that you couldn’t be sure you saw anything at all.

He walked up to you, slowly, Sandy still trying to get his attention in the background. You couldn’t hear what she was saying over the sound of your own pulse. You knew he could hear it too.

You hadn’t seen him in weeks, but you were so aware of the lack of him. At first you thought you were paranoid, he was haunting your thoughts, your dreams. You thought you saw him everywhere you looked, when you turned the corner of the archive shelves, when you left the gym at night.

When you started misplacing things around the apartment, noticing small details that weren’t the same as you left them, you thought you had finally lost it. Until the flower, until the thin, platinum hair in your sink.

Why was he here?

What did he want?

The last couple times Homelander had visited the archives, you were sure he had done it because he knew that only one employee was working; but this was broad daylight, peak hours.

He smiled at you like nothing had happened. Like the day wasn’t soaked in blood and gunfire. Like he hadn’t just come from the upper floors where employees just like you were being hunted for sport for disagreeing with the company, for knowing too much, for having the wrong expression plastered across their faces.

“Teaching the new guy?” he asked, voice smooth, casual. His eyes barely flicked to Keith before locking on you again. “That’s sweet. Real wholesome.”

“Mr. Homelander—” Sandy stepped forward, voice steady but cautious. “We weren’t expecting—”

He didn’t look at her.

“Go on,” he said. Still looking at you. “You were leaning in so close. Don’t stop on my account.”

You opened your mouth. Nothing came out. He looked relaxed. Amused, even. But you could feel the heat rolling off him in waves, like asphalt in the sun.

He moved closer to you, clasping his hand behind his back.

Keith chuckled awkwardly, clearly assuming it was a joke, some CEO-style teasing.

You forced a breath, your voice shaky. “We’re—just going over the cataloging system.”

“Oh, yeah?” His smile widened, not an inch of it reaching his eyes. “Thought it was foreplay.”

Sandy’s voice came sharper now. “That’s enough.”

He turned toward her so fast it made your stomach flip.

“Enough?” he echoed, blinking like she’d spoken a foreign language. “I didn’t realize you were in charge, Sandy.”

She flinched.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, and his smile returned as he looked back at you.

“So.” He took a slow step forward. “You and… what’s your name again?”

“Keith,” the poor guy muttered, barely audible.

“Right. Keith.” Homelander tilted his head, mock-considering. “You two should fuck.”

You blinked. “What?”

“C’mon,” he said, with a mock-encouraging nod. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you? And he’s perfect for you, practically a stranger! Or is he not your type?”

The room was so silent you could hear the low, rhythmic churn of the server fans.

You didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Your brain scrambled to reframe the moment—some twisted joke? A test? A warning?

He turned slightly toward Keith, who had gone pale. “She’s got a thing for charity cases lately.”

“Right here,” he said. “On the desk. Or the floor, I’m not picky.”

“Why are you doing this?” you asked, hating how small your voice sounded.

His smile dropped. Not all the way, but enough to make the room feel colder. The air felt thick, like it was closing in.

“Because I want to see if you’ll listen,” he said simply, his voice now stripped of its usual layers of charm. “Because I want to see what you’ll do when you think I’m going to kill you.”

He took another step, eyes fixed on you.

“Because I’m curious,” he whispered, “what kind of girl you really are.”

Your breath faltered. The words that left your mouth were barely a whisper. “I’m not—” You stopped yourself, that crushing knot of shame clenching tight. “I’m not like that.”

He didn’t even flinch. Instead, a low chuckle escaped him, a sharp, breathless thing that scraped against your skin. You flinched like he had slapped you.

“Oh, don’t act so innocent,” he said, and his voice was like ice. “Not after everything you’ve been doing.”

A knot twisted painfully in your gut. You felt like you were going to throw up. This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be happening.

“I’ve been watching.” His eyes narrowed, gleaming with something dark. “You’ve been lonely, haven’t you? Sloppy. Sad. You can’t hide it from me.” He stepped closer, slowly, forcing you to fight every instinct telling you to back away.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, focusing instead on a spot on the floor where the tile was chipping.

“Bringing home strangers. Letting them touch you. Letting them fuck you.” His voice dropped, stretching the words out. “That wasn’t you, wasn’t it? The real, pathetic, insecure you.”

You felt the heat rise to your cheeks, the burn of humiliation threatening to choke you. Every shred of control you thought you had slipped away, like sand running through your fingers. The room tilted, and you wanted to vanish—wanted to scream, but nothing came out. His words were knives, sinking deeper into you with each one.

“You’re just a toy to them, aren’t you?” he continued, voice like velvet, dragging each word across the air. “They get to use you, take what they want, and leave you empty. But it’s different now, isn’t it?” His lips curled into a smile that was all sharp edges. “I’ve been watching…everything. All of it. I know what you’ve been doing. And now, here you are, acting so innocent, when all I see is someone who’s desperate for validation. Someone who craves the attention of the wrong people.”

You swallowed hard, your throat dry, humiliated, every part of you screaming to get away, to make this stop. But there was nowhere to go.

“Can you just… let them go?” You brought your eyes to his, breathing shaky.

He laughed and looked around, grinning widely and gesturing towards the door, every bit the friendly home grown superhero, “well, I’m not holding anyone hostage! You’re all free to leave.”

Keith started towards the door.

“But… we are doing a bit of reshuffling up there. Filtering out some of you that don’t have Vought’s best interests in mind anymore.”

He tilted his head, eyes scanning the room slowly.

“But you’re right,” he said softly. “Let’s be fair about this. We should do a little vetting before we make any… decisions.”

“Let’s do this properly,” he said, voice chipper now. “I want everyone lined up. Shoulder to shoulder.”

No one moved. Then he clapped—once, loud and sharp.

“Now.”

You all scrambled into position. You stood between Sandy and Keith, your knees weak, hands trembling.

Homelander walked a slow circle around you all, hands still behind his back, humming faintly. It might’ve been the Star-Spangled Banner.

He smiled as he took you all in and you tried to think of what he had planned for the three of you.

“Great. Now… strip.”

Silence. The words didn’t register at first. You felt Sandy stiffen beside you. Keith let out a choked noise.

“Excuse me?” Sandy asked, her voice barely holding.

“You heard me,” he said simply. “Clothes. Off. Down to your underwear.”

“Why—” Keith started.

“Why?” Homelander echoed, raising his brows. “Because I said so.”

He stepped in front of Keith and leaned in slightly, smile gone.

“You don’t want me to get bored, Keith. Trust me.”

He moved away again, arms gesturing grandly now like a game show host. “It’s just a little icebreaker, guys. A team-building exercise! I want to see who’s still loyal, who’s got nothing to hide. Transparency, you know? Good old American values.”

One by one, you heard zippers, buttons, cloth rustling. No one looked at each other. You could feel tears burning in your eyes already.

When your hands reached for your own shirt, they were shaking so badly you could barely grip the fabric.

“Ah, ah—” His voice cut through the room as he walked up behind you. “Nice and slow.”

Your skin crawled.

You tugged at the fabric slowly, pulling your top up over your head, revealing your undershirt—cheap, thin, and already clinging from sweat. You heard someone shift beside you, but no one said anything.

“Keep going.”

You slid your undershirt up over your chest. Your fingers stumbled over themselves, every second dragged like molasses.

You couldn’t stop the tears now. They didn’t fall, not yet—but your vision blurred, your breath stuttered.

He was watching. You could feel it like a burn on your skin.

Goosebumps broke out across your arms, and your cheeks felt like they were on fire. The air felt colder now, even with the blood pounding in your head.

You reached for the button on your pants.

Unzipped.

Down.

You stepped out of them slowly, now standing in nothing but plain black underwear and trembling legs. The harsh fluorescent lights above you hummed loudly, suddenly unbearable.

No one spoke. No one moved.

You could feel the heat of their stares—Sandy’s horror, Keith’s shame. But all you could really feel was him.

Then came the voice, quiet and satisfied.

“There she is.”

He walked slowly around you until he stood in front of you, eyes dragging across your body, face unreadable. No lust in his expression—just power. Domination. Curiosity, like you were a specimen in a glass box..

“Tell me…” he said softly. “How long did you think you’d get away with it? Acting like you were different from the others. Like you were better.”

You looked through him, setting your jaw, anything to keep him from looking so satisfied with himself.

He tilted his head. “You wanted to be spared. Thought I’d make an exception for you. Why?”

Your lips parted, but nothing came out.

He leaned in closer, close enough that, when you dragged your eyes to him, you could see the small flicker of amusement on his face.

“Because you pitied me?”

Sandy’s voice cracked. “Leave her be.”

The sound of her stepping forward was barely louder than a whisper, but it rang like a gunshot in the silence.

Homelander didn’t turn at first. Just stared at you a second longer, the tension in his jaw tight like a wire. Then—slowly—he pivoted toward Sandy, the lazy grin returning like a mask snapping back into place.

“Oh,” he said, voice syrupy with mock surprise. “The boss speaks.”

Sandy stood rigid in her bra and underwear, arms stiff at her sides, trying not to shake. Her chin was raised—but her eyes flicked, just once, to you. You could see it—the fear she was swallowing down, the calculation in her gaze. She was trying to redirect him. To give you a second of air.

“She’s not like the others,” Sandy said. “She’s not… part of the politics upstairs. She just works.”

Homelander raised his brows. “So noble.” He walked over to her, slowly, almost admiringly. “I didn’t ask for a defense attorney, Sandra.”

“I know.” Her voice was steady, but her hands were trembling now. “I just thought… if you’re trying to figure out who’s loyal to Vought, it isn’t her you want.”

A beat. His expression didn’t change. Then:

“You’re right.” He turned away from her, started walking in a slow circle around the group again. “She’s not who I want.”

Relief bloomed on Sandy’s face for just a second—until he stopped behind her.

“I want all of you,” he said softly. “Naked. Honest. Exposed. That’s the point.”

He leaned in, voice at her ear.

“You can’t hide behind your job titles anymore. Or your moral high ground. You’re just part of the machine, like everyone else.”

“And if you interrupt me again,”

“I’m going to blow a hole through the back of your head.”

A beat.

“And if you interrupt me again…”

His voice didn’t rise—it fell, into something colder.

“I’m going to blow a hole through the back of your head.”

Sandy didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

No one did.

His eyes slid to Keith next. Keith, who still clutched to his half unzipped pants.

The poor guy looked like he wanted to disappear—shoulders drawn tight, gaze fixed to the floor, as if maybe if he just stayed still enough, he could pretend none of this was happening.

“Your turn, champ,” Homelander said cheerfully, the mockery in his tone razor-sharp. “Let’s see what kind of man Vought’s hiring these days.”

Keith didn’t move at first.

Homelander tilted his head. “drop em”

Keith swallowed hard. His hands, visibly trembling, released their hold on his slacks.

Keith’s jaw clenched.

Boxers. Pale blue. His knees were knocking together by the time he straightened up.

“Look at that,” Homelander said, circling behind him now. “A real team player. Taking one for the cause.”

He paused. “Really just the three of you down here today?”

“It’s a real shame, I was hoping for more of an audience.”

Homelander wandered to one of the server cabinets, casually tapping on the side.

“You know…” he said, almost absently, “I’ve always liked this place. Archives. Hidden away. Private. Lotta people don’t know how much history is buried down here.”

He glanced back at you, something hungry in his gaze. “Lot of things go unnoticed when you’re under Vought Tower.”

You felt a pit open in your stomach. The way he said it—the way his smile spread, too pleased with itself—made your blood run cold.

He flicked the nearest monitor on. The screen flickered to life.

And then you saw it.

Your apartment.

Your bedroom.

The camera was mounted high—somewhere near the smoke alarm. The footage was dated. A week ago. You were half-dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding your head in your hands.

Another clip followed.

You were drunk. Crying. Muttering something incoherent to yourself.

Another clip.

You bringing someone home. A man. Kissing him at the door.

You couldn’t breathe. You wanted to scream, to deny it—but it was all there. You didn’t know how, or when, but he had been watching you for weeks.

The screen flicked off.

“With all of the reshuffling we’re doing it only made sense to do our due diligence on all of you,”

“You having all of these records on us and all, it’s only fair.”

Keith looked stunned. Sandy’s lips parted in horror.

“All of you, so mundane, so predictable,” he walked over to you, gripping your chin and tilting your face up so that you had to look him in the eyes.

“But you surprised me.”

“What?” You said, gritting your teeth. “Were you embarrassed I saw all of your personal little details? Now you had to manufacture some more trauma and embarrass me too?”

He let your chin go with a flick, and you stumbled back half a step. His smile didn’t fade—it only deepened, sharper now, like a knife sliding in between your ribs.

“You thought you had something on me,” he said, still facing you, but speaking loud enough for the others to hear. “Thought you could look through my past and find some sob story, some broken little boy to justify what I am now.”

He tilted his head, eyes glittering.

“But you never stopped to think what I’d find on you.”

The silence stretched.

You could feel every heartbeat in your throat.

Then he turned slowly, deliberately, his boots echoing against the concrete as he began to circle you all again. Keith flinched when he passed behind him. Sandy didn’t move, but her face was tight, frozen, jaw clenched like she was trying not to be sick.

“I’ve been very generous,” he said, voice lighter now, almost conversational. “Very patient. Letting you all squirm. Barely touching a hair on your fragile human heads.”

He stopped, letting the words settle.

Then, softly:

“Let’s make some new memories.”

xx

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx @unnisumi

[profeshyearner]

Humdrum

Chapter 4

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Warnings for this chapter: violence, stalking, brief smut

Tracklist:

It’s Happening Again - Agnes Obel

I Don’t Smoke - Mitski

The End - LLow

The day Stan Edgar was arrested, no one said anything.

There was no announcement. No internal memo. Not even a leak to the press—which was strange, because Vought lived on press. But this was different. This wasn’t the kind of scandal they could spin with a black-and-white press release and a smile. This wasn’t someone cheating on their taxes. This was rot at the root.

Edgar had been the center of the web. With him gone, the threads snapped one by one.

Meetings got canceled. Floors got shuffled. Entire departments went dark without warning. The cafeteria stopped serving hot food. HR stopped returning emails. People started whispering about contingency plans, but no one knew who was in charge anymore. Not officially, anyway.

And Homelander? He didn’t show up.

That was the worst part. He didn’t yell. Didn’t grandstand. Didn’t march into the boardroom and demand the corner office. No, he simply wasn’t there. Not on the 99th floor. Not on the news. Not even in the building.

You’d think his absence would’ve been a relief.

But it felt worse.

Because absence can be strategic. Absence can be a warning. Absence can mean: I don’t need to be here to control you.

It started small. You’d pass by the glass walls of his penthouse office—always dark, always empty. The elevator dinged like a ghost arriving, but the doors opened to no one. Security started avoiding eye contact. Lower-level analysts left in silent waves. And everyone started watching each other. Like if they just stared hard enough, they could figure out who was next.

You began to unravel quietly.

No breakdown. No scream. Just… a slow drip.

You stopped going home some nights. Stayed late under the cold fluorescence of your office, hunched in front of footage you’d already archived. The tapes played on loop—grainy lab cameras, the same boy, the same voice, the same screaming. You memorized them without meaning to.

You ran on the treadmill in the company gym until your lungs burned. Until your legs gave out and your body felt quiet. You didn’t know why. Maybe you were trying to feel control. Maybe you just wanted to feel anything that wasn’t dread.

You started smoking again. At first, on the rooftop. Then the stairwell. Then your office with the window cracked open, like the smoke might carry your thoughts out and away from you. One morning you woke up with your face pressed to your desk and your fingers stained yellow.

You stopped caring about your appearance. Late to meetings. Hair tangled. Wrinkled blouses pulled from the bottom of drawers. Once, you wore mismatched shoes and didn’t notice until hours later. No one said anything. Maybe they were afraid to.

Sister Sage showed up more.

At first, she lingered in the background—clipboard in hand, eyes flicking from her tablet to you and back again. But then she started sitting. Right there in your office. Watching you work in total silence, like you were part of some behavioral study.

She never told you why. Never gave a reason. She didn’t have to.

Occasionally, she’d speak. Short, clipped observations, usually at the exact moment you felt like unraveling:

“You’re not sleeping.”

“You accessed the same archive file thirty-two times this week.”

“You’re dissociating more frequently. Fascinating.”

You started dreading the sound of her shoes in the hallway. The way she never really blinked. The way she stared at you like she was already three steps ahead of your brain.

One day, you snapped.

“What do you want from me?”

Sage tilted her head, just slightly.

“Data,” she said.

And smiled.

But even she wasn’t the one haunting you.

Homelander never returned. Not in person.

But he was everywhere.

At night, your apartment felt wrong. You swore you’d locked your windows—but one was cracked open when you got home. A coffee mug was moved half an inch to the left. You left a drawer slightly ajar on purpose. The next morning, it was closed.

You told yourself it was exhaustion. That you were imagining things. That the smell of aftershave in your hallway was a coincidence. That the faint shape you thought you saw in the reflection of your television—tall, still, watching—was a trick of the light.

But you started muttering to yourself. Saying his name aloud just to hear it. Just to feel like you had control over it.

You unplugged your television. Removed your phone battery. Started checking every room when you got home. Once, you found a single fingerprint on your bathroom mirror. Another time, you smelled blood, faintly, on your sheets.

And every night, every night, you dreamed of the shower.

Of the red water. The heat of his body behind yours. His voice—low, broken, terrible. The way he held you like you were his.

You woke up gasping more than once. You bit your own hand until it bled just to stay grounded.

You began to miss him. You hated yourself for it.

One night, you couldn’t take it anymore.

You closed your computer without shutting it down. Left the lights on. Walked out of Vought Tower without telling anyone where you were going.

You found a bar on 9th and Halstead—dim, quiet, full of people who didn’t care where you worked. You ordered something strong and fast. Then another. Then something you didn’t ask the name of.

You weren’t celebrating. You weren’t grieving.

You were trying to drown something. Or maybe chase it out.

He wasn’t there. He hadn’t been. Not since the shower.

But it didn’t matter. Your skin still remembered the way the steam clung to his shoulders. The way he stood too close. The broken rasp in his voice. That look—not love, not lust, but need, raw and predatory and childlike all at once.

He hadn’t touched you since. Hadn’t spoken to you. Hadn’t even looked at you.

So why did it feel like he never left?

You drank more. Flirted with a stranger. He had brown eyes and a soft laugh and the kind of hands that weren’t meant to break anything.

You told yourself that was what you wanted. Something human. Something harmless.

You took him home.

You let him kiss you on the elevator. Let him follow you through the door. You smiled when he took off his coat. Tried to feel anything when he touched you.

But everything about it felt… thin. Off. Like wearing someone else’s clothes.

He kissed you like he was grateful. You kissed him like you were hoping it would stick.

You undressed each other in the dark.

When he was inside you, you closed your eyes and tried to imagine it felt like his weight. Like his heat. You tried not to picture the way Homelander looked at you in the mirror. The way he smelled when he was soaked in blood. The way he shook when he spoke your name like he wasn’t supposed to know it.

The man came with a soft groan and whispered something you didn’t catch.

You turned your face away.

—

He left without asking for your number.

You lay on your side, staring at the wall, not blinking. You didn’t bother changing the sheets. You didn’t bother pretending it helped.

It didn’t.

Your apartment used to be quiet.

Now it felt watched.

You started checking the locks three times instead of two. Then five. Then eight. You set up a doorstop under your bedroom door and jammed a chair against the knob. You kept the hallway light on. Slept with your keys clenched in your hand.

But it never felt like enough.

Because things kept moving.

A spoon left slightly askew. The closet door nudged open. A towel, still damp, when you hadn’t showered. Once, you came home to find your favorite mug turned around—handle facing the opposite direction. You knew you hadn’t left it that way.

You told yourself it was stress.

But your hands shook when you unlocked the door.

You started talking aloud just to hear a voice.

Just to prove you were still alone.

Sometimes, you’d come home and smell something faint but familiar. Warm. Sharp. Metallic. Like ozone.

Like blood.

Like him.

You told yourself you were imagining it.

But your cat—who usually hid from guests—started meowing at corners. Sitting in front of empty doorways. Hissing at nothing.

You threw out the flower. The one left on your pillow. You told yourself it had always been there. That maybe it fell out of a book.

But the petals were fresh.

And you didn’t own any white flowers.

You stopped inviting people over. Stopped answering the door at all. Every knock felt like a threat.

You unplugged your TV. Covered the camera on your laptop. Slept in clothes in case you had to run.

Once, you caught yourself whispering his name like a spell, his real name, the one from the tapes

Like saying it might keep him away.

Or bring him back.

You didn’t know what this was.

Not love. Not longing.

It was a cage being built around your mind one quiet hour at a time.

But that didn’t make it easier.

Didn’t stop the fear from curling under your skin like wire.

Because paranoia is only paranoia until you’re right.

You opened your closet and found your drawers rifled through.

Nothing taken.

Just… touched.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t run.

You sat on the floor and stared at your open sock drawer until sunrise.

And when you went to work the next morning, Sage was waiting outside your office.

“You really should stop leaving your windows unlocked,” she said without looking up from her tablet.

You stared at her. Blinked.

She smiled.

—

The next morning, your supervisor called you in.

She didn’t ask how you were. Didn’t mention the dark circles under your eyes or the fact that your shirt was buttoned unevenly. Just said:

“You need to pull yourself together.”

You nodded.

“You’ve been off for weeks. Whatever’s going on with you—fix it. Fast.”

You nodded again.

She waited for you to say something. You didn’t.

Eventually, she sighed and looked back at her screen.

You left her office without another word.

That night, your apartment was quiet.

You moved through it like you weren’t there. Like it wasn’t yours.

You washed a glass in the sink.

You stared at the tile. You checked the window latch again. And again.

Then you saw it.

Not in the living room. Not in the mirror.

In the kitchen.

In the sink.

A single strand of blonde hair, curled against the steel basin. Pale as snow.

—————

Homelander’s Perspective:

There was no announcement.

Not from Edgar. Not from him.

Homelander didn’t need to make one. His silence was enough. Silence carried weight. Power. Fear. He’d learned that in the lab—how silence could make even grown men piss themselves.

So he stayed quiet, pulled back from showy public appearances. Let Vought rot from the inside out.

He knew the workers felt his absence, but he was watching everything.

The glass walls of the bullpen stayed dark. The seven didn’t deserve to see him, the public didn’t deserve to see him. They’d stared too long already. They’d looked at him like a weapon, a freak, a thing to be managed. Edgar had made sure of that.

Now Edgar was gone, out of the picture.

And you—you—you were still here.

You sat in your little office like a soldier bleeding out. Quiet. Unnoticed. Beautiful.

He watched you fall apart in real time. Watched the way your shoulders curled in, how your hair stopped getting brushed, how your eyes stopped shining. It was like watching a candle melt.

And he loved you like that.

Not the way other people love. Not messy or loud. His love was silent. Holy. You were something sacred when you were broken. Fragile. Soft. Yours was a kind of pain that didn’t whine or scream—it endured. And it made him feel clean just watching you suffer.

You were good, then.

Pure.

When you played those tapes—his tapes—he watched the flicker of the screen on your face and imagined crawling into your lap, curling there like something small, something helpless. Maybe you’d run your hands through his hair. Maybe you’d say his name like it meant something. He liked imagining the way his name—his real name—would sound falling from your lips.

John. John. John.

You were the only one who’d seen him—really seen him. And you hadn’t turned away. Not yet.

Sister Sage was just a tool. She thought she was studying you. Observing your decline like data points in a lab. But he didn’t care about her notes. He only cared about what you whispered when you thought you were alone.

Wounded. Perfect.

Untouched.

He went to your apartment when you weren’t there.

At first, he told himself it was for protection. To make sure you were safe. That no one else was watching you the way he was. But that lie didn’t last long.

He memorized your schedule. Knew which days you stayed late at Vought. Which coffee shop you stopped at on the way home. How long you lingered on the sidewalk before unlocking your door.

That was when he’d slip in.

Through the window. Or the balcony. Or the front door.

The first time, he didn’t touch anything. Just stood in your bedroom and listened. The hum of the refrigerator. The faint buzz of the streetlamp outside your curtains. The softness of your sheets, still shaped to your sleeping form.

He stood there for twenty-three minutes.

Didn’t breathe.

The second time, he sat on the edge of your bed.

Ran his fingers over the comforter. Opened your drawers. Touched the silk of your underwear like it was sacred. Lifted a bottle of perfume and sprayed it just once into the air, closing his eyes like it was a prayer.

He found the clothes you wore the night of the shower. Still balled in the corner of your closet. Still crusted with blood.

He didn’t touch those.

He just stared.

The third time, he brought a gift.

A single white flower.

He left it on your pillow.

You never mentioned it.

He started visiting more often after that. When he knew you were out—at work, at the gym, out trying to forget him—he’d come and remind himself who you really were. Before you ruined it. Before you made him think of you with someone else’s hands on your skin.

But then came him.

The stranger. The man at the bar with the soft hands and boring eyes. He watched it all from above—your drink, your smile, the way your body leaned into something less. He thought you were grieving. Thought maybe this was how you mourned.

But when you brought him home, when you let him touch you, when you opened yourself up to him—

That’s when something broke.

He couldn’t look away.

He watched every second.

Not because he wanted to. But because he had to. Because if he turned his back, it might mean you were someone else. Someone unclean. And he couldn’t bear that. Couldn’t stomach the thought that you were like the rest of them—liars with soft skin and open legs and hollow words.

You weren’t supposed to be like that. Not like that. Not dirty.

He stood on your fire escape, hands clenched tight behind his back, heat rolling off him in waves that made the glass fog. He could hear the sounds from inside. The man groaning. You—silent.

Silent like guilt.

He wanted to tear the man apart. Wanted to rip through your door and leave nothing but blood and teeth and whimpers behind.

Homelander stared at the glass like he could burn through it.

Like if he focused hard enough, the heat from his eyes might pass through the distance, through the building, through her chest.

Pop her fucking heart like a balloon.

But he didn’t move.

Not yet.

He was imagining it too vividly.

Not just the kill—but how it would feel. Not just the blood, but the moment before.

That moment when she realized. When she looked up at him, startled, confused. Her brain not catching up to her terror fast enough.

And then—

His hands. Around her neck. Her nails slicing into his forearms. Her knees bucking against his hips. Her mouth open, her wide fucking doe eyes screaming why are you doing this?

But she’d know why.

She fucking knew.

He’d say it to her. Whisper it as she gasped and kicked and bled from her lip when he slammed her head too hard against the floor:

“You were supposed to be mine.”

“I let you see me. I let you touch me when I was broken.”

“And you gave yourself to him.”

Her feet would drag weakly across the floor, scraping hardwood. Her eyes would fill with tears, with blood. With him.

And still—still!—he knew there’d be a part of her that wanted him to stop. That believed he might. That believed he cared.

That’s what made him want to do it more.

To teach her what gods do to liars.

She should have worshipped him.

Instead, she invited some stranger in and let him forget her name while he came inside her.

And now Homelander would remind her who she belonged to.

Not just with fear. Not just with pain.

With total, annihilating clarity.

He’d leave her gasping on the floor, pupils blown wide, throat purpled and slick with his fingerprints. No words. No excuses.

Only silence.

Only truth.

And then, maybe then, he could let her go.

Maybe then he’d finally stop dreaming about her.

He blinked his thoughts away, focusing on you again. The very much alive you, laying there in the bed unmoving.

You didn’t cry.

You didn’t call anyone.

You didn’t even change the sheets.

You just laid there. Quiet.

—

There were rules, at first, to his visits.

He wouldn’t take anything. Wouldn’t leave a trace.

One night, he found a wine glass in the sink. With lipstick.

Not your color.

His jaw clenched.

His vision blurred.

He shattered the glass in one hand and didn’t even feel the cut.

He scrubbed the counter with his bare palm until his blood soaked into the sponge. He left the pieces in the trash but adjusted the bag so it looked undisturbed.

After that, he wasn’t careful anymore.

He opened your bathroom cabinet.

Checked the expiration dates on your birth control.

Counted your razors.

Smelled your pillow.

He found an old T-shirt—yours, worn soft with time—and folded it into his pocket. Not to keep. Just for a while.

And when he left, he always did one thing:

He moved something.

A drawer. A magnet. A curtain.

Just enough to remind you that he’d been there.

That you weren’t alone.

That no matter how far you fell, he was always watching.

Waiting for you to be good again.

He came back that night. Didn’t touch anything. Just stood in your kitchen and watched the sink drip.

Listened to you breathing in the other room.

xx

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx @unnisumi

[profeshyearner]

HumDrum

Chapter 3

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Story will eventually contain smut, dark themes, heavy angst, detailed descriptions of depression etc. Minors DNI, 18+.

Warnings for this chapter: brief nudity I guess

Track list:

Bite the Hand - Boygenius

Penny Sweets - winter aid

I’m your man - Mitski

He came back the same way he’d arrived—without a sound.

One moment you were alone at your desk, still trying to shake off the afterimages of that tape you had seen a day before. The next, he was standing there again, just like the first day you saw him.

The blood was the first thing you saw. Not his face. Not his eyes, just layers of sticky, suffocating blood.

It was soaked into the collar of his suit, streaked down his arms, drying in patches on his gloves and his boots. You had no idea if any of it was his, you were pretty sure it wasn’t.

He looked… wrong.

Not angry. Not pleased. Not even smug, just cold and empty like somebody took the batteries out of him.

You opened your mouth, but didn’t know what to say or if you were supposed to say anything.

He held something out to you.

The tape.

You took it from him, the cold plastic now between your fingers in bed again, and tried not to shudder at the transfer of untried blood from his gloves to your fingertips.

It didn’t feel like he gave it back.

It felt like he was returning something he didn’t want to carry anymore.

The blood made your skin stick slightly to the door handle when you slid it open.

You riled it away like you were clocking out of a job, filing away what was left of someone’s childhood.

When you turned around, he hadn’t moved.

He was just standing there, at the edge of your desk, looking at you like a child lost in a shopping mall.

You didn’t know why he was still here or why he even came back in the first place.

“Come on,” you said, before you could stop yourself.

Your voice didn’t sound like your own. Thin. Hollow.

You didn’t know what you were doing—not really. Your hand found his again, he let you take it.

He followed you.

Not a word.

—

The elevator ride was the worst part.

It was one of those high-speed, whisper-quiet models Vought used for the executive floors. You weren’t even supposed to be able to press the button to the penthouse. But when he stared at the panel, it lit up, retinal scanners or some fancy Vought tech, no doubt.

You stood beside him, stiff as a board, trying not to breathe too loudly. The space felt too small, too quiet. His cape still dripped blood onto the polished floor and you considered how many times the building janitors had to clean up the aftermath of a Supe’s mental breakdown, no questions asked.

You didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at you.

You didn’t ask where the blood came from, but your mind filled the silence for you. Did they scream? Was it fast, or did he make them remember everything they’d done? Were the same people even working there anymore—or did he go and massacre the lab’s new workers for the sins of its past?

You stared straight ahead and tried not to think about the people on the tape. You failed.

The floor numbers blinked upwards. Too fast. Too slow.

The doors opened with a soft chime.

You’d never been to the top floor before. You hadn’t even realized there was one above the executive suite.

His penthouse was exactly what you’d expect if someone told you it belonged to Homelander—but nothing like a real home. It was cold, cavernous. Bleached white and navy, everything trimmed in gold and red and an almost comical overabundance of flags. A giant eagle statue loomed over the sitting area like a hunting hawk.

To be honest, you were surprised there wasn’t the real, live thing up there.

It felt staged. Like a theme park version of a home, something you’d see at Vought-world.

He didn’t pause. Just walked past the glossy foyer like he was on autopilot.

You followed, hesitating at the door to the master bath.

“Can I…” you started, then stopped. What were you asking permission for?

He looked at you over his shoulder. And nodded.

You weren't sure what gave you the nerve to keep moving.

Maybe it was the blood. Maybe it was the silence.

Maybe it was that little boy’s scream, still echoing in your skull like a siren you couldn’t turn off.

You turned the water on first.

The sound filled the silence in the bathroom, steam already beginning to rise. Everything in here gleamed. The marble. The mirror. The massive walk-in shower with glass doors that stretched nearly to the ceiling.

You turned to him, gesturing to the suit but unsure how to tell him he needed to strip.

His gaze didn’t shift as you walked over to him and reached out to figure out how to get the layers of blood soaked fabric off of him. You hesitated before touching him, almost expecting some kind of electric shock when you made contact.

His cape hit the floor with a wet, heavy sound. Like a carcass.

You tried not to flinch.

The blood clung to the fabric, seeping into the grout. It would stain. You wondered if anything he touched didn’t.

He didn’t resist as you peeled the fabric away. You didn’t want to think about how close you were. Or how warm his skin was under the fabric. Or what he’d just done with those hands.

Up close, it was surreal. All that blood, and underneath—nothing. No wounds. No bruises. Not even a scratch or scar in sight.

You looked at his face.

He wasn’t looking at you. He wasn’t looking at anything.

You stepped into the shower with one foot as you fiddled with the dial. Stranger’s showers always felt so foreign to you, and this one was certainly no exception. You turned on the water and tested it with your finger to make sure it wasn’t too hot, too used to your own human sensitivities.

You stepped aside as he entered the glass enclosure, in the back of your mind unsure of how he could stand to be in something so eerily similar of the confines of the lab he grew up in.

The water hit his skin, streaming off him in waves and washing off the remainder of blood that wasn’t crusted to his skin.

You knew he was the furthest thing from fragile, but he didn’t seem like it, not in that moment.

You didn’t know if you were helping him or waiting to be hurt—

Maybe both.

You scrubbed his skin in slow circles, watching the pink water trail down his chest, over his arms. His eyes fluttered shut, just for a moment.

Not in pleasure. In something else. Something… quiet.

You didn’t speak. Neither did he.

He didn’t touch you, he didn’t stop you, either. Despite the intimacy of the moment, it felt sterile, something akin to cleaning your kitchen counter. You moved like a nurse prepping a patient for surgery.

By the time you reached his face, your sleeves were soaked through, your own clothes clinging to your skin.

You raised one hand to wipe the blood from beneath his eye and that’s when something… changed.

From anyone else you’d expect a more emotional response, especially after… well, you weren’t exactly sure what events had passed from the last time you saw Homelander, but given the sheer amount of blood on him, and those tapes-

Those tapes.

Well, whatever had happened it was certainly a traumatic event for someone.

There was no sobbing, no gasping. Just a kind of folding inward, like something inside him gave out. His knees hit the tile with a sickening thud. You didn’t expect the sound. You didn’t expect any sound at all. He folded in on himself like something brittle.

His head touched the soaked him of your shirt, and you went perfectly still, like a deer caught in headlights. His breath was warm through your shirt, unsteady, human.

That scared you more than anything.

His arms limp at his sides, he looked like a child.

You didn’t speak. Hesitant, you brought your hand to rest on top of his damp blond hair.

You just stood there, soaked to the bone, blood and water pooling around you both.

In that moment, he wasn’t the monster smiling on cereal boxes or the glowing-eyed god in the skies.

He was just a boy who never got out of that laboratory.

And you didn’t know how to save him. Or yourself.

—

It was quiet when you left.

No words passed between you—not even a glance. He didn’t tell you to go, and you didn’t ask if you could.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed. Twenty minutes. An hour. Maybe more. The water had stopped at some point. Your clothes had dried in patches. The hem of your shirt was still damp where he’d pressed his head.

You didn’t say goodbye. That felt like the wrong word for whatever this was.

The penthouse door clicked shut behind you.

The elevator was still waiting, as if it knew you’d need it.

You stepped inside, and this time the silence didn’t feel heavy—it felt hollow. Like everything had already been said without a single word spoken.

The blood was gone from your hands. You’d scrubbed them in the marble sink, but it felt like it was still there. Under your nails. In the creases of your knuckles. In your mouth, metallic and imagined.

The elevator dropped like a stone, smooth and fast.

You stared at your reflection in the mirrored walls. You looked like someone else. Someone who knew too much.

You didn’t remember walking through the lobby, or down the garage steps. Just the soft slam of your car door as it closed out the rest of the world.

You sat in the driver’s seat with the engine off, fingers slack on the wheel.

The silence was different here. Realer, maybe. Your own.

A strip of dried blood curved around your wrist like a bracelet. You wiped at it with the heel of your hand and it smeared.

You didn’t cry.

You didn’t feel anything yet. Just tired and empty.

There was a hum in your ears, like static. Like the tail end of a scream.

You let your head fall back against the seat and closed your eyes.

𓌜

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx

[profeshyearner]

HumDrum

Chapter 2:

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Story will eventually contain smut, dark themes, heavy angst, detailed descriptions of depression etc. Minors DNI, 18+.

Warnings for this chapter: descriptions of torture consistent with the show. S4E4.

Track list for this chapter:

Neurosis - Oliver Riot

Ptolomea - Ethel Cain

Crack Baby - Mitski

You turned, expecting Sandy. A reprimand, maybe—your filing was moving too slowly, to stop chewing on the eraser of the yellow number two pencil you kept in your mouth…

But it wasn’t Sandy.

It was him.

Homelander.

There was no warning. No footsteps, no sharp clearing of the throat. One moment you were alone in the archives, working well past the rest of your colleagues had left for the night, and the next… he was there. Standing perfectly still, maybe five feet away, as if he’d materialized out of thin air.

You froze, resisting the urge to rub your eyeballs into the back of your skull. You weren’t entirely sure you weren’t hallucinating—what with the daily eye-strain you faced from scanning tiny cursive scribbles all day under the harsh fluorescent laughing.

It took your brain a full ten seconds to even register that homelander was indeed standing infront of you, in the flesh.

You’d seen him before, of course. Everyone had. On TV. In press junkets. His face was plastered all over Vought’s branding, stamped onto cereal boxes, looping through training videos in the upstairs lobby. America’s Son. Bright, smiling, heroic.

But up close—he didn’t look like that.

He didn’t feel like that.

He looked like something carved, not born. Skin too perfect. Hair unnaturally gold under the artificial light. His eyes weren’t blue—they were glacial. Flat. Not lifeless, exactly, but… withholding. Like they could erupt at any second, and you’d never see it coming.

You felt it then. The thing no one ever really talked about. The thing everyone knew, deep down, when they saw him on Vought’s constant stream of promotional videos or up on stage (no matter how hard they tried to hide it). That he could kill you before you blinked.

That no one could stop him.

That he knew it, just as well as you did.

Vought treated him like a prized new puppy, when he was a snarling feral dog at best, no matter how much they dressed him up in stars and shining blue spandex.

He was taller than you expected. Broader. More… there. The space around him felt wrong somehow, like gravity bent differently for him than it did for everyone else. You could feel your heart beating in your throat, hear it pounding in your ears like a drum—you were pretty confident he could hear it too. Fight, flight, freeze.

Is this what the zebra you watched on your nature documents felt like the moment they perked up and felt that a predator was nearby—weighing their options for where they could run and how fast they’d have to be to escape?

You were pretty sure you weren’t getting away from this one.

You didn’t realize you’d taken a step back until your shoulder hit the filing cabinet.

He watched you.

Not like a person looks at another person. There was no warmth. He looked at you like you were an insect that found its way inside and couldn’t figure out that it couldn’t escape through glass… something his hands could break if he pressed just a bit too hard.

He tilted his head slightly, and something in your stomach dropped—like you were standing at the edge of a cliff and suddenly realized the ground beneath you was crumbling.

“Where are the tapes?,” he said. Voice quiet. Calm.

Not a request.

You opened your mouth, but no sound came out.

He blinked, slowly. Not impatient. Just waiting.

And that, somehow, was worse.

“What tapes?” you finally got out—not that you meant to question him. Christ, you hoped he could tell you weren’t, that you genuinely had no idea what tapes he was referring to and anything that brought him down here in person had to be buried under at least three levels of clearance.

Sandy would have lost her mind if she knew he down here. But Sandy wasn’t here, and Homelander certainly didn’t seem like the patient type.

His eyes didn’t move. “From the lab.”

The lab.

Vought had a dozen labs. Maybe more. The archives were flooded with documents from them—drug trials, internal investigations, black bag operations filed under euphemisms you couldn’t begin to understand. You’d cataloged thousands of files you weren’t allowed to read, stacked miles of tapes marked with dates and department codes and clearance levels so high they may as well have been written in another language.

You didn’t know what he meant.

And you couldn’t ask. The way he said it… calm, flat, almost bored… told you everything you needed to know.

He expected you to know. He expected obedience..

Your mouth was dry. “There are… a lot of tapes.”

A breath passed between you.

He smiled.

It was thin. Almost amused.

He took a step forward—not threatening, but deliberate.

“I’ll wait.”

No clarification. No help.

Sandy made it clear enough how replaceable you were, and if you were replaceable to her, you were definitely replaceable to Vought, to Homelander.

You forced your legs to move.

Your fingers trembled as they hovered over drawer after drawer—knowing he was watching your every move and that every second brought you closer to the end of an imaginary rope—actual fucking noose was more like it. Too close.

He hadn’t said a word since asking for the tapes. Just stood there, like a monolith. Watching. You could feel it, the weight of his gaze like static on your skin.

You swallowed. Kept your eyes on the labels.

Pain threshold studies. V stabilization trials. Tissue regeneration.

And then—

Subject J2.01-01

Controlled Environment: 1988–1996

Clearance: Level 7

You froze.

This wasn’t even a file you were allowed to touch. The drawer itself should’ve been locked—biometric. Restricted. And yet, when your fingers brushed the handle, it opened with a soft hiss, dust curling into the air like smoke.

Inside: a row of unmarked VHS tapes. Black spines, white labels. Numbers. Dates… Old.

You reached out and slid one free, hands cold with sweat. The plastic felt heavier than it should’ve.

You stared at it, trying to make sense of what you were holding.

You didn’t even notice you had stepped away from the drawer until your back bumped into something solid.

You didn’t have to turn.

The heat of him was sudden and all-consuming, radiating off him like a furnace. You froze in place as a breath ghosted against your ear—not a sound, just the movement of air—and then his arm reached around you, slow, unhurried.

His hand brushed yours as he took the tape. His skin was dry. Warm. Inhuman.

You didn’t breathe.

He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t say anything.

He just stepped away, and you felt the space between your bodies flood with cold again.

Then: the soft click of the tape sliding into the AV player.

And his voice.

Quiet. Flat.

“Stay.”

—

You didn’t know what you expected him to do once he had the tape.

Maybe leave; vanish the way he’d appeared—without warning, without explanation. A hallucination you could chalk up to too many hours underground and too little sleep.

Instead, he sat down right there. In one of the shitty old metal chairs meant for interns or delivery boys waiting to be signed in. He leaned back like it was a throne, legs spread comfortably, one hand holding the tape like it was nothing more than a mildly interesting magazine.

He pointed to the console.

“Play it.”

Your hand hovered over the machine, unsure.

“You do know how to use it, right?” he asked, voice low and calm.

Like a joke. Like a test.

You pressed the button and stepped back so that you were behind him, out of site, out of mind—and so you were out of view when you saw whatever was on screen.

The player clicked. The tape whirred. You held back the bile rising in your throat.

The screen came to life.

The first image was clinical. Neutral. A sterile white room under harsh lighting.

A child sat cross-legged on the floor. Maybe five. Maybe six. Blond. Pale. So small in the center of the frame, swallowed by the space around him.

You felt your breath catch in your throat.

A man in a lab coat entered frame. Kneeling. Talking. The child didn’t respond, just looking at the man.

He handed the boy a small metal ball.

The boy took it. Held it.

Then his fingers clenched and the object crumpled like a piece of aluminum foil. You were sure it was something much stronger.

Then, a cut, a new scene, a new date in the corner in white numbers. Homelander didn’t say anything, didn’t move. You weren’t sure whether to watch him or the screen.

The boy was standing in a sealed glass chamber, not unlike an oven. The temperature readout ticked up slowly in the corner. A group of people, maybe five of them, stood around the chamber with clip boards, jotting down notes and numbers. There was some chatter in the background, but you couldn’t make out what was being said.

A man walked over and turned the dial to the left of the glass up, the boy on the screen began to scream.

You flinched.

“You know,” Homelander murmured, you couldn’t tell if he was talking to you or himself, “my skin didn’t even char.. hurt like hell, though. My tears sizzled off my cheeks, just dried up almost as quickly as they fell out of my eyes… smelt like hell in there too,” You swallowed, mouth dry. Homelander didn’t look at you, and you could tell he wasn’t looking for a response.

You weren’t sure how long you stood there, too afraid to move and too horrified to look away from the screen. Homelander didn’t move either and didn’t speak aside from the occasional quip.

Where you were tense, the supe in front of you was as relaxed as someone watching a reality tv program; you guessed it was because he already knew what was going to happen next.

You tried to find something—anything—to say. But there was no safe sentence. Nothing that would make sense of this or erase what you were seeing. If this was anyone else, you’d want to comfort them.

He finally looked up at youc but you couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

You didn’t recognize your own expression, reflected faintly in the glass of the monitor. You felt detached from your body.

Homelander stood slowly, and you didn't move as he picked up the tape and slid it into his coat pocket, walking out without another word.

You stood there long after the door closed behind him, staring at the static on the screen. Your hands were shaking at your sides.

You were going to be sick.

You spend the next hour throwing up in the bathroom toilet.

You washed your face with shitty bathroom foaming soap, scrubbed until the skin went pink and raw.

That night, you lay in bed with your eyes open, staring at the ceiling and hearing the echoes of the little boy’s screams in your mind…John.

𓌜

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx

[profeshyearner]

HumDrum

Chapter 1:

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Story will eventually contain smut, dark themes, heavy angst, detailed descriptions of depression etc. Minors DNI, 18+.

Warnings for this chapter: none.

The hum of fluorescent lights overhead was constant—faint, but ever-present, like an over-zealous fly trapped between the glass pane of a window and the screen.

You’d grown used to it, just like you’d grown used to the recycled air and the blinding white of the cinder block walls and cement floor. Down here, in the lower levels of Vought Tower, there were no windows, your only dose of sunlight on your commute to work and rare evenings when you didn’t stay late. No sound except the buzz of electricity, the quiet shuffle of papers, and the occasional click of your computer’s outdated keyboard.

You were an assistant archivist at Vought—just a name on a file. A pair of hands to catalog, organize, and refile partially blacked out records you weren’t even allowed to read.

And most days, that suited you just fine.

It hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when you might’ve said you were proud to work for Vought. Not out loud, but maybe to yourself, at night, staring at the clean lines of your new apartment and thinking about how far you’d come.

Two years ago, you had traded the tall wooden stacks of your local natural history museum’s collections library for Vought’s sterile halls.

Your life before New York was collections work, mostly. Handling preservation of insects in glass tubes filled to the top with ethanol, and pencil scratch scientific notebooks from researchers long gone—real tangible things with weight and texture and meaning. You had loved it, the quiet reverence of it. The way time softened in archive rooms, how it felt like you were brushing fingertips with people whose lives had played out decades before you were even a thought in your parents’ heads.

But it didn’t pay well. And after the breakup—seven years, shared apartment, shared bookshelves, shared pet fish named Ronald—you wanted out of that city. The quiet hours in a space you once spent daydreaming of wedding cake flavors and next steps were too overwhelming to bear, and you couldn’t face another awkward hangout with your mutual friends who you were painfully aware only entertained you out of pity. Your own friendships had fallen apart slowly after college, and it was easier to fall into place in your boyfriend’s already needly planned out life, like you were the missing piece of an already completed puzzle.

You told yourself it was a fresh start. Something practical. A pivot.

Stacks of papers and old VHS tapes certainly weren’t as exciting as the shiny, luminescent exoskeletons of foreign insects, but you had always wanted to see New York City and were looking forward to a fresh new life.

So when Vought International posted an opening for archival staff—government-adjacent, private sector, full benefits complete with a much better healthcare package than your current job—you applied.

You figured it’d be similar enough. Data management, handling historical records, artifact storage. You didn’t ask too many questions. You didn’t want to. You just needed a job that felt stable. Unshakable. And Vought… well. What could be more permanent than them?

The interview process was clinical. Fast. You passed your background checks with flying colors–speeding ticket from two years ago be damned–showed up to orientation in navy trousers, and signed an NDA the size of a novella. It wasn’t until the door clicked shut behind you on sublevel 3 that you started to realize what you’d gotten yourself into.

The Vought archives were nothing like the museum stacks. No curiosities on shelves, no faded photographs or war medals or fragile manuscripts.

Here, everything smelled like metal and chemical sealants. Like secrets you weren’t actually sure you wanted to unearth; so unlike the magic and mystique of the natural history archives.

Most of the documents you were allowed to handle were redacted so thoroughly you could barely tell what department they belonged to. Your direct supervisor was a woman named Sandy—stern, silent, impossibly sharp—and she made it very clear from day one:

You are not here to learn. You are here to file.

You do not ask questions. You do not read past the titles.

You never, ever wander.

And you stay out of the Seven’s way–not that you would ever see them.

Most of Vought’s employees never directly dealt with Supes, and in your position, you weren’t sure if you wanted to.

They seemed like shiny, unmovable metal statues. Not people, not kind, not compassionate; more machine-like than man, Vought’s showy pageants always felt like some strange attraction rather than something genuine, but then again, you didn’t take the job for the proximity it brought you to a man who could talk to fish.

You spent your first few weeks on edge. Constantly second-guessing yourself, afraid of Sandy looking over your shoulder, silently judging every wrong move. But over time, you settled into the rhythm of the place.

There was comfort in repetition. Wake up. Coffee. Sublevel 3. Paperwork. Return files. Sign-out. Sleep. Repeat. You didn’t really know anyone in the city. You told yourself you’d make friends when you were ready. There were a few casual connections—Kara from intake who sometimes ate lunch in the lounge with you, the barista at the coffee shop near your apartment who always remembered your order (cold brew with one pump of pistachio, one pump vanilla, and 2%), but mostly, you kept to yourself.

It wasn’t that you didn’t want to connect. You just didn’t know how to explain the feeling that had crept into your chest since joining Vought—the way the building itself felt like it was breathing and alive in a way you didn’t trust.

Sometimes, late at night, you wondered if you were being watched.

You told yourself it was just paranoia. That it was just the adjustment—new city, new job, new you.

But you never shook the feeling.

Classified files were stacked floor-to-ceiling in steel cabinets that locked themselves shut with a biometric hiss. You never tried to open them. No one in your position would. Requests for access went through Sandy and Sandy only, who kept her office locked and, after your first week, only ever came out to tut at you for taking too long to find the right stack. She ran the archive like it was maximum fucking lockdown, and you were just a lowly guard.

You handled requests mostly from admin staff—people like Madelyn Stillwell, early on, or someone on Stan Edgar’s team; a summer intern working for higher-ups who didn’t know what half of what they were pulling even meant. Occasionally, Queen Maeve would come down–she was the first Supe you had actually ever seen up close much less spoke to–granted, your exchanges didn’t expand beyond “Here’s your file” and “Please return it by Thursday.”

She was always polite, though. Tired-looking. Like someone who’d stopped expecting answers a long time ago.

Then, a long time of nothing; you had seen on the news the Maeve had died confronting Soldier Boy (the archives were the busiest they had ever been when he popped back up on Vought’s radar); but eventually things quieted down again and life became business as usual.

Then Sister Sage started showing up.

And everything changed.

She didn’t have clearance—technically—but after Homelander started putting eyes in every hallway and his supporters ran rampant, fueled by Firecracker’s newest piece of propaganda, no one really enforced protocol anymore. Especially not on the lower floors, especially not to Supes. You weren’t stupid. You saw the way people flinched when Homelander’s name came up. You heard the stories—the ones that didn’t make it to VNN.

Still, it wasn’t until he showed up in person that you understood what real fear felt like.

It was late—a Thursday, you think, it was hard to keep track of time when every day felt the same and you couldn’t even peek out a window. You were alone in the records room, cataloging entries from the Compound V case releases–stuff for the FDA mostly. Dry reading. Boring. Which made it all the more noticeable when the door opened behind you without warning.

You turned, expecting your supervisor and ready to hear another jab about what you had done wrong this week, when you looked up and came face to face with him, the man no one wanted to get on the wrong side of.

Homelander.

[profeshyearner]

[profeshyearner]

me when the READER in the X READER has a name:

like babe the fic ate but i do NOT look like an Aurora🙁

[profeshyearner]

SO MUCH TO LOSE MASTERLIST - ONGOING

So Much to Lose - ONGOING

For readers 18+ only please!

summary:

Newly settled into Jackson city and forced to go on patrols with the miserable Joel Miller sets off a chain of events and encounters that have you questioning everything, including your own heart.note: Featuring Dark!Joel

story trailer

note: the gal in this is just a stand in, because the Reader is YOU in it.

Chapter 1 : Patrols

Chapter 2: The Doe

Chapter 3: You Make the Rules, Remember?

Chapter 4: Early Riser

Chapter 5: You still want this?

Chapter 6: Trapped Inside

Chapter 7: Spoiled

Chapter 8: Shoulder to Shoulder

Chapter 9: Repairs

Chapter 10: Rancher Street

Chapter 11: Snow

Chapter 12: Town Meeting

Chapter 13: Family Dinner

Chapter 14: Coffee Flavored Kisses

Chapter 15: Going Quiet

Chapter 16 : Will you tell me?

Chapter 17 : Pockets of Beauty

Chapter 18 : Useless: part one / part two

Chapter 19: Under the Lights

Chapter 20: Footprints in the snow

Chapter 21: The Red Scarf

Chapter 22: Looking Forward

Chapter 23: Charlie's

Chapter 24: Reunited

Chapter 25: My Only - part one | part 2

Epilogues: through the seasons with SMTL

Be my Valentine? SPRING

Summer Vacation SUMMER

Screamin' Halloween FALL

A New Year WINTER

EXTRAS

"Chapter 7 Joel" by @loveIvyxxx

Story MoodBoard by @angelbabysblog

Joel Miller Moodboard by @angelbabysblog

SMTL meme by @pedrito-is-punk

SMTL Soundtrack by @lovely-vamp-princess

Fan Art by @almostempty

Fan Video by @shessweetsour

Fan Video by @ziggycowboyz

Fan Art by @mushgloomz

[profeshyearner]

Not So Heavenly Surprise

prompt: you share exciting news with your husband but don't receive the reaction you thought you'd get. and then, the Outbreak.

pairing: Joel Miller x female!wife!reader only height mentioned: you're shorter than Joel

fandom masterlist: HBO's The Last of Us

word count: 7.2k+

warnings: angst, angst, angst, slutty angst club, cursing, character death, major major major spoilers, death of a child, descriptive language - we talk about death and dead bodies!!! canon-level violence! NOT edited!!! (will get around to it) this work is super NOT FOR MINORS ❗️season one, episode one spoilers

September 02nd, 2002 one year before Outbreak Day

"You're going to have to tell him," you sighed to your reflection, trying to amp up the bravery. "He's gonna notice, you don't want him questioning anything, now do you? No, nope, no way, you don't. Okay, so, that's it - you're gonna tell him when he gets home. No big deal."

There was a knock at the door, Sarah calling, "Are you okay in there?"

"Girl!" You laughed, reaching for the knob and opening it to see her. "Ever heard of this thing called 'privacy'?"

"Not in this house," She smirked. "Can I get in? Wash my face?"

"Oh, yeah, totally," you moved out of her way, continuing with your nightly routine.

"So, who were you talking to?"

"Myself," you mused. "It helps me work out big decisions."

"Oh, so, you're finally gonna tell Dad you're pregnant?"

"What!?" You yelped, dropping the jar of night cream and groaning when it dolloped out from the fall - landing on your foot. "What the hell, Sarah?"

"What? You're surprised I figured it out?" She teased. "I found the pregnancy test."

"What? You were digging in the trash?"

"Well, if you must know, I dropped the toothpaste in there and found it when I was fishing it out..."

"Sarah," you sighed.

"You know he's going to be really happy, right?" She smiled at you, massaging her cheeks to curate foam from her face wash.

"Maybe," you sighed, stooping to clean your mess. "But I've been trying to figure out what to say."

"What's to say? Just tell him," she giggled. "C'mon, you guys have been married 8 years now! Isn't this, like, what was supposed to happen?"

"Well, yeah, but - "

"But nothing," Sarah laughed. "You're getting all nervous for nothing. It's just Dad, he loves you. He's going to be happy, I promise."

You sighed, nodding slowly, "All right, well, I'll try to tell him tonight."

"There is no try, only do."

"You did not just quote Star Wars to me!"

"Well, is Yoda wrong?"

You whined a little, "No..."

"So, get it done," she smiled. "This is really exciting."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she smiled, "I've always wanted to be a big sister."

"You'd kick ass as one," you agreed.

"Think how upset and flustered Dad will be when I teach Baby to curse!"

"Sarah, you teach the kid any curse words and I'll wash your own mouth with soap," you teasingly warned with a pointed finger. "I'm a little nervous, I think," you admitted.

"Why? Daddy loves you, he'll be really happy," Sarah defended. "Maybe a little shocked, but he'll be over the moon with joy."

"You think?"

"I know," she nodded. "Tell him tonight!"

"Tell who, what?" Tommy asked, appearing in the doorway to make you both shriek.

"What happened!?" You heard Joel, but then, everything was drowned out as you and Sarah started yelling at Tommy for scaring the shit outta you both. Joel appeared in time to see his little brother throw his hands up in defense, laughing at the two of you.

"Not cool, man!" You barked, shaking your head. "Didn't hear y'all come in, the hell's wrong wit'chu?"

"Y'all didn't lock the front door, again," Tommy smirked. "I came up real quick and quiet."

"Jackass," you muttered, wiping your hands on a towel before exiting the room. "Hi, baby," you muttered to Joel, pausing to rock onto your toes and plant a kiss to your husband's lips.

"Hi, honey," he mused, arm anchoring your waist. "What's with the screamin'?"

"Your brother's an ass," you pouted, giving your best exaggerated bottom lip.

"You had it comin', darlin'," Tommy teased. "Told you to lock up, huh?"

"Why're you even here? Why are you always! Here!?" You whined lightly. "Go home!"

"I'm staying the night," he mocked gently.

"You better not clean my fridge out," you warned him with slitted eyes. "I just went to the shop."

"You get them cookies you like?" Tommy perked a brother, watching your eyes widen a small fraction. "YOU DID!" Tommy laughed, turning, and bolting down the stairs - making you yelp and start yelling after him, following closely.

Joel and Sarah could be heard laughing from upstairs.

It was close to midnight by the time you and Joel finally settled for bed. Sarah's homework was done, whole family fed, Tommy was nursing a bonked head with a small ice pack, and you and Joel were turning your bed down.

"Hey, uh," you cleared your throat as you both got in the sheets, "so, I was wonderin' somethin'."

"What's that, sugar?"

"What do you think of when you consider the future?"

Joel paused, then shrugged, "We go to Nashville with Sarah this summer."

"No, baby, I mean the future - like, years from now."

Joel chuckled, "Uh, I don't know, baby, I just think of you and Sarah and Tommy... There's not many others left 'round."

"That's all?"

"I don't know, I think sometimes when Sarah goes off to college, that girl's goin' on a scholarship, you know? So, you and I could maybe take some time for a vacation. Finally take you on that honeymoon I promised."

You hummed, settling against his chest, "Where we goin'?"

"You know I'd take you wherever you wanted," he sighed, "but maybe we could afford... I don't know, trip to... Vegas?"

"So we can renew our vows with Elvis?"

"Why not?" He chuckled, squeezing your hip. "Might be fun, right?"

"You just wanna see the strippers."

"Can you blame me?"

You laughed and smacked his chest, "Easy, mister, you're on thin ice."

Joel laughed lightly, "You know I'm teasin', darlin'. C'mon, anywhere we could, where would you go?"

"Oh, the Maldives, without a doubt.," You smirked. "But how about we keep it simple? Go to, say, Paris?"

Joel snickered, "That's simple?"

"City of Love for our honeymoon? Baby, I'd say that's more cliché than anything. Besides, don't you wanna kiss me at the top of the Eiffel Tower?"

"'Course, sugar, but the food there?"

"Oh, like you've ever been!" You laughed, looking up at him. "Don't talk shit when you don't know."

"Hmm," he considered, "solid advice, sweetheart."

He reached out to caress the side of your cheek, making you sigh, "One thing's missin' though..."

"What's that?" Joel smirked.

"We'd have to find a babysitter."

"Sarah will be older than - "

"No, no, baby, not talkin' 'bout Sarah."

"Who, then?" He chuckled. "Tommy? Though he likes proving us wrong, he can take care of himself."

"No, I'm talking about a babysitter for us."

"Lost me again, sweetheart."

You stared at him for a moment, then admitted, "I'm pregnant. So, we'd need to find a sitter 'cause we'd have a little one by then." However, Joel just stared down at you, brows slowly furrowing as he processed your words. "Joel?" You wondered when he didn't answer, but instead, looked off past you. "Honey, you still with me?"

"I heard you," he grit, making you instantly sit up and off of him.

"Joel?"

He sighed deeply, "Why'd you have to do that?"

"I'm sorry?"

Joel sat up and swung his legs from bed, making you feel instantly smaller than you actually were. "Why'd you have to go and do that? Huh? Get pregnant?"

"Joel - "

"No, what the hell's this!?" He demanded, looking far too upset than you ever considered. "You're pregnant? You're really pregnant?"

"Yes - "

"God fuckin' damn it!" Joel swatted at a lamp, knocking it over, and waking the entire house - not that either Tommy or Sarah were asleep yet. "You can't seriously be pregnant!" Joel barked at you, and if he could, you knew he'd be gnashing his teeth.

"Why is this such a shock?" You asked. "This is what happens when you're married - "

"You were supposed to be on birth control!"

"It's only so much effective when you're cumming in me like some sex doll!" You snapped back, aware of your loudness.

"Don't turn this on me!"

"I'm not! Fuck's sake, I'm happy about this!" You stood from the bed, too. "I'm happy we're havin' a baby! Why're you reacting this way?"

"We can't afford a baby right now!" Joel looked enraged now. "We don't got the space - fuckin' Tommy crashes the couch! Where we puttin' a whole baby, huh? Where we puttin' a kid? How're we gonna afford more groceries? More schoolin'? You didn't think this through, now, did you!?"

"Fuck's sake, Joel, do I need to give you a sex-ed course? Explain how you're just as much in this as I am? I didn't do this to myself, we both took risks - but I didn't think this was gonna be an issue! I thought you'd want this!"

"When have I ever said I wanted another kid? Huh? Don't put words in my mouth, woman! I got Sarah, ain't no kid better than that! Why would I even want to bother? Knowing our situation!? You think you're ready to be a mom? All you do is work, and it makes you a pretty shaky stepmother! Neither of us are in a place to just stop and take care of a kid, we're in too deep with our current bills!"

You felt too stunned to speak, every defense you had lowering in pure sadness as tears collected in your eyes. "You serious, right now?"

"Completely," he sighed, hands to his hips.

"So, you... You don't want this baby?"

Joel's jaw flexed. "Not right now, no."

"Okay," you sighed.

"I can't take care of another kid," he shook his head. "Look, why can't Sarah be enough? You've known her her whole life."

"Why is it so wrong to wonder what it's like to be pregnant? To have my own child? Since you have Sarah."

"We have Sarah," he snapped.

"No... We don't, since I'm only a shaky stepmother."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"No? How'd you mean it?" You wondered sarcastically. "Maybe that I won't be a good mother? That you don't want a kid with me, is it? Whatever, Joel, look, there's no compromise here. You don't want this baby, but I do... So, this it is."

"What is? To what?"

"Us," you sighed, gesturing between you. "If you really don't want this baby, then I don't see how we can still participate in a marriage."

"The fuck - "

"I won't stay where I'm not wanted."

"I want you, just not the baby!"

"So, understand this. Because I'm growing that baby currently, you simply don't want me. So, it's all right, now. I'll get my shit and get out, figure out what to do movin' forward, and I'll have the divorce papers sent - "

"Like hell, you are!" Joel raged.

"How're we gonna fix this then!?"

"Fuckin' Christ, woman, you really know how to piss me off! This ain't my issue - this is your problem. But we ain't gettin' a divorce, so, you better figure it out."

You scoffed, "Who the hell even are you?"

"Come again?"

You gestured at him, "This is not who I married."

"Neither are you. When we got married, you said Sarah was more than enough - "

"You know what? Feelin's change!"

Joel scoffed, "Yeah, fuckin' tell me 'bout it."

"Wow," you sighed, turning for the closet, muttering, "wow, wow, wow, wow, WOW!"

"Fuck!" Joel snapped. "C'mon, doll, don't do this."

He watched you pack a suitcase frantically, the fight continuing to wage farther into the night. Back and forth, you two went round after round after round, trying to make the other understand and see reason. To Joel, it was a matter of financials and space. To you? It was everything else.

By 3 am, you had finally packed your necessary belongings into two bags - a suitcase and purse - before you were charging down the stairs with Joel still hollering after you. Tommy was in the living room, pacing, and Sarah was laid on the couch, eyes red and swollen as she clutched a pillow to her chest. You came to a halt when you saw them both, Joel still sneering but silencing himself when he saw what you stared at.

Just like that, he understood his brother and daughter had heard every word he shouted at you, and never had he felt such shame. You swallowed harshly, nodding at Tommy before looking to Sarah. With a wobbling smile, you managed to garble, "I'm sorry."

"Mama, wait!" Sarah gasped, shooting off the couch as you fled for the front door; Tommy catching her around her waist. "No! No! Daddy, go get her! Don't go! Mama! Please! What's happening? Why won't you go after her!?"

But to Tommy's shock and horror, Joel silently descended the stairs to push the front door closed and locked it - bolting them inside and his wife outside. "Joel," Tommy shook his head, confusing marring his features. "The hell happened?"

But Joel only sighed, turned, and headed up the stairs again. Not a moment later, his bedroom door closed - making Tommy release Sarah. She rushed to the door but stopped, only staring out, and Tommy understood she could no longer see your car.

"Hey, Sarah?" Tommy called softly. "You can stay home from school tomorrow. All right?"

She only nodded silently, taking a seat at the front door and just watching. He frowned, wanting to shoo her off to bed, but understood that her child-like mind could only understand so much. She wanted to wait for you to come home, she wanted to see you coming... However, the following morning, Joel found his daughter slumped against the front door and his brother on the stairs from watching her.

His heart had plummeted to his feet when he saw them, more so when he understood you weren't home. The house already felt colder.

September 26th, 2003 Outbreak Day

Your daughter was barely a few months old by the time "it" happened. After leaving Joel, you went home to your parents and they were gracious enough to welcome you and the babe growing in your womb.

They made up your childhood bedroom into a nursery and let you transform their home office into a spare bedroom as your little brother was living in the guest room and older sister in the basement. It was an incredibly tiny room, but it worked for now; and your little girl was a ray of sunshine that you barely noticed how miserable you truly felt.

You hadn't seen Joel since the birth... And before that? Not since your fight. He really didn't want shit to do with your daughter, and while you always told him when your appointments were, he never showed. When you went into labor, your father was the one who called him because you only sobbed through the pain that you wanted your husband. So, Joel showed that day, but didn't go into the delivery room. He just waited outside it, listening, feeling his heart shatter again and again as you begged someone to find your husband, but no matter how your mother and father begged him to go in, he wouldn't. He couldn't.

It was only after the baby was born did he venture in.

You looked beat to hell and the sheets seemed bloodier than usual, but he didn't want to linger. He only nodded at you, hands in his pockets, "Good job... She's real beautiful."

You blinked, glancing over to where a nurse was swaddling the just-cleaned baby. "Thank you," you whispered. Then, he turned to leave, "W-Wait!" You begged, making him pause. "Don't you... I-I don't know, want to help name her?"

Joel sighed, glancing at you over his shoulder, "No, 's all right. Whatever you want, she's your daughter."

Your heart broke all over again, watching him leave. So much so, when the nurse brought your daughter over for you to hold, you broke down in horrendous sobs that the nurse actually shied away. You couldn't breathe from the pain, and it actually set off a few alarms on your hospital monitors.

Your mother watched in despair as a team of professionals had to sedate you in order to calm you down enough; holding her grandbaby and rocking her arms. She waited for days, hoping you'd ask to hold your daughter, but never did. Only when the lactation expert came in to help you nurse your daughter did you actually "willingly" hold her.

It just broke your heart to even look at her because she looked so much like Joel that it should've been illegal. Eventually, you came around and felt as if you couldn't set the baby down, but for the first few days were exhaustingly tough. Your parents were a huge help, but that didn't make it easier on you to try and process life without Joel. You loved your husband, wanted him back, but after his behavior, you couldn't fathom being within 6 feet of him again.

However, life had much different plans.

You didn't feed your baby formula, opting for breast feeding. Ironically, during your pregnancy, you had developed an intolerance to gluten and never wanted flour-products even after giving brith to your daughter. However, your father loved your mother's cookies...

It was nearly 2 am when it happened.

Your father had been the first "Infected" of the family, and only your mother was in their room with him. You heard the thumping and screams, peering out of your room only to see blood pooling from under your parent's closed bedroom door. "Get back," you hissed at your little brother, darting down the hall to your daughter's nursery.

"DADDY! NO!" You heard your brother scream a minute later, panic enveloping you as your daughter started to cry.

"No, no, no, it's okay, hey, hey, it's okay, sweetheart," you whispered, trying to shush her. There wasn't time to spare, and just as you secured your daughter to your chest with tight arms and made it from her room, your father came barreling out of your little brother's room - scaring the shit outta you. "D-Daddy?"

He snarled, neck snapping when he looked at you - but that wasn't your father. No, this creature was something else and while it was in your father's body, it wasn't your Daddy, and you weren't safe here.

"Down here! NOW!" Katie, your older sister called, making you shoot off down the stairs in a blind panic. Your father came crashing down behind you, knocking into your legs as you reached the bottom - forcing you to turn over and land on your back to protect your kid.

"OH MY GOD!" You screamed when your father bolted upright.

"STAY DOWN!"

Your sister swung her softball bat, knocking your father's head back with a sickly snap. He went down, and for a moment, it was all quiet. "What the fuck?" You panted, baby still crying.

"I don't know," Katie panted, reaching for your arms and helping you up. "I-I didn't - I didn't think," she stuttered, looking at your father, who's head was split open and spewing blood. "I-I killed him."

"Between us?" You nodded, "Think he was already dead."

"Where's Mommy? And Billy!?"

"Upstairs..."

"You don't think...?"

"Should we check?"

"What if they're alive and we just left them?" She worried, blinking back tears. "I-I don't know what to do."

"I think we need to get the fuck outta here," you admitted, looking around you two. "We aren't safe here, Katie, we should move."

Just then, there was a thud from upstairs. Your sister uttered your name in fear, and you had to steel yourself. "What do we do?" She whispered.

"Kitchen, there's only one door and the basement," you nodded, the two of you turning and hustling into the room. You looked around and found a long cerated knife, standing at the ready with one arm around your baby.

"What's gonna come for us?"

"Whatever the hell happened to Daddy," you gulped. "I still think we should run for it."

"But Mama - "

"She's probably dead!" You snapped. "But we aren't. We don't have to die if we play smart. I say, we get what we need and get the fuck out of here."

However, before she could answer, there was a snarling from outside the door. Your baby still cried, and soon, the door was bursting open with your mother's Infected body being hurled through the door. Your sister begged your name in a yell and you repeated at her that it's not really your mother - keeping the kitchen island between you three - and that she needed to swing the bat.

However, your little brother came barreling inside right after and knocked into you. It was a struggle as you had to let go of your baby to keep the 10-year-old demon off your body; hip teeth gnashing as pale tendrils came curling out of his mouth.

"NO!"

You couldn't look back at your sister, struggling to keep the suspiciously-strong boy at bay. You used your feet to kick him off you, snatch up the knife, and as he came back - snarling and screaming - you only stabbed the knife up into the underside of his jaw. Yanking free, blood and more came gushing out, and your brother when down.

When you turned, your sister was panting and leaning against a counter. Mother laid dead at her feet. "You good?" You asked.

"Yeah... You?"

"Yeah," you sniffled, moving to collect your baby from the bloody linoleum floor. "Can we get the fuck outta here now?"

"There's no more threat."

"Seriously?" You snapped. "Honey, if it happened here, it's happenin' elsewhere and we need to fucking move before we get left behind. Understand me?"

But then... There was a sickening sound from the only other door in the kitchen... The one leading to the basement...

"Katie?" You called your sister's name, "it's time to run."

"GO!" She screamed when a new body, that of your next door neighbor, came bursting through the door. You both ran, your daughter tight to your chest, and just made it outside your family home when a truck was screeching to a halt.

Joel leapt from the passenger seat, hollering your name in panic, and making you shoot off like a Roman Candle towards him. He caught you easily, holding you and your infant close to his chest as Katie came sprinting from behind you - taking cover behind Joel.

"What - "

"JOEL!" Katie screamed, pointing towards the body rushing from your home.

"Tommy!"

There came a gunshot, making you flinch into his chest as he turned you from the sight. "Get in the truck," Tommy called, Sarah opening the door from the inside to invite Katie in.

"We gotta go, darlin', it's time to go, let's go," Joel muttered to you.

"What the fuck is happenin'?"

"We don't know, but it's bad," he nodded, looking around frantically. "We need off the streets, baby, please, get in the truck."

But you paused, asking him, "You came back for me?"

"For the both of you," he sighed, caressing the top of your daughter's head - who still wailed in fear. "Please, baby, it's time to go - get in the truck." When you did, he rambled, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, all right, Tommy! Let's go!"

When everyone was in and doors shut, a new game began: Get the Hell Outta Dodge.

During the ride, Tommy and Joel filled you and Katie in with what they knew from the broadcasters that were once on the airwaves. Sarah held onto you tightly, infant child still wriggling in your lap and arms. You were trying to flee the suburbs, making for the highway, but it seemed, everyone else who hadn't been killed off had the same idea and created intense traffic.

"We're okay," you whispered to Sarah on repeat, almost in a chant. Katie frowned and slowly reached over Sarah's lap, taking hold of your daughter. You slowly let go only to latch full onto Sarah and try to comfort her with slow rocking and cooed words of encouragement. Joel knew that in your time apart, you and Sarah saw each other often - nearly on a daily basis - and could understand that you were her mother, through-and-through.

You both needed the comfort right now.

Someone to lean on.

Someone to be scared with you instead of saying "buck up."

"Take the field, Tommy!" Katie barked from the back, holding your screaming baby to her shoulder and trying to offer her warmth and comfort. However, it was impossible with the tangible panic and loud blaring of horns and cursing voices. "We can cut across and pick the road up on the west side."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. West, West, all right. All right, hang on," he turned the wheel, everyone bracing for the sharp movement before the bumping of the terrain became wildly uneven.

Around them, other cars followed suit, and the field was soon flooded with civilian cars trying to flee. "The fuck could be happening?" Katie asked you, gulping, "You're the doctor!"

"I-I don't fucking know, Katie, please," you whispered back, gulping in nerves as Tommy drove you all over the grass.

However, when they came over the hill to catch sight of their destination, there was a flooding of lights and choppers in the air. Tommy cursed, "Shit! Fuckin' Army!"

"Isn't that good?" Sarah asked from your embrace.

"It's good for them, but that's the highway we're tryna get to," Tommy explained, coming to a halt as cars flooded past them.

"All right, keep movin'. Head north," Joel advised quietly, his mind trying to settle.

"Could be a lotta people," Tommy argued lightly.

"Well, we can't go south, we can't go east, we can't go west," Joel pointed out. "Hell else we supposed to go?"

"Tommy, fuckin' drive!" You grit, Katie joining you in on the last word.

"Tommy, c'mon!" Joel followed right after. The tires squealed as Tommy pressed on the gas while turning his wheel, making the truck turn and speed off for a distant suburban town; lights in the distance guiding you. "Yeah," Joel muttered. "Yeah, I know that place. This can work."

"Yeah, all right, fine, cool, but then what?" Katie asked. "Where are we supposed to go then?"

"I don't know. Mexico. Just far, far as we can," Joel answered uneasily. "How much gas?"

"Three-quarter tank," Tommy answered.

"Go through town," Joel advised. "Golf course by the river, straight across, we pick up the highway on the other side of the blockade, then we're out."

"I'm gonna throw up," Katie whispered, head tilted back with her eyes closed.

"If you're feelin' sick, hand me my baby," you snapped, looking at her with fear.

"No, girl, it's anxiety," she snapped back. "I'm not sick."

"How can you be sure?" Sarah wondered.

"Cause it would've hit us the same as it did our family..."

"Who'd it hit?" Tommy wondered, looking back.

"We're all that's left," you sighed, saving your sister from answering. "Daddy turned first, then Mama... Billy after... We got out."

"They bite 'chall?" Tommy asked, glancing back.

"No," you answered, looking at Katie. "You bit?"

"Nope, I beat 'em to the punch," she sighed. "Ah, fuck, my stomach."

"Throw up in my truck, darlin'," Tommy muttered, sucking his teeth.

"Throw up on my baby, Kate, and I'll beat 'cho ass," you snipped, perking a warning brow at her.

"Girl," she sighed, glancing at Sarah - who had sat off you in contemplation. "Sarah?" She whispered in wondered.

"Maybe it's everywhere," she voiced, glancing at the two of you sat on either side of her. "Maybe there's nowhere to go..."

"Well, hey, we'll just have to find somewhere safe," you nodded back at her, but furrowed your brow. "Anyone hear that?"

"Oh, shit - "

"What the fuck!?" Tommy called over Katie, glancing up towards the roof as there came a deafening sound of a plane flying far too low to the ground.

"Cover her ears!" You begged Katie, reaching for Sarah to press your hands over her ears. Your sister held your daughter's ears closed - her still screaming bloody murder - as the plane flew over the truck.

"Fuckin' hell!" She looked back, noting the sky. Sarah whipped around, too, only to spy two more planes in the sky - all flying low and at odd angles.

However, ahead of them, cop cars were speeding around the streets and cutting off any route. "Son of a bitch," Tommy cursed. "Gotta go around. Grab somethin'!"

You held onto the designated 'oh shit!' bar over your head as Sarah leaned over to hold Katie and your baby. Tommy took a sharp right into an alley, between buildings. When you all rightened, it was only to see the people on the street running around, screaming, cars zooming past them all. Tommy took a left, then another right, and joined the bustle of the street.

"All right, keep goin', keep goin'," Joel pointed ahead, but tommy blew past a stop sign. "Shit - TOMMY!"

Another car came to a screeching halt, barely missing T-boning the Tommy's truck. They moved on, only to discover people mauling each other in the street - blocking most of their path. "Oh, my God," Sarah whispered, reaching for you as your arm came around her shoulders again as Tommy came to a stall.

"Tommy, you can't stop here," Joel reminded.

"I can't drive through 'em all!"

"Are you serious?" Joel barked. "Just keep goin'!"

However, ahead came the smashing of glass and a stampede of people - all running wildly and making you assume they were Infected, too. "Ohhhhhhh, shit," Katie whimpered.

"Go, go, go, go, back, back, back, back, back, back," Joel encouraged his brother, who hastily switched gears.

"I'm trying!"

However, when you and Sarah looked back to watch the crowd and stay out of Tommy's range of sight, you saw a distant threat and tuned everything else out. "Joel!" You begged, reaching for his arm as the sight of an airborne plane turning in the sky to head back your way was far too pressing right now.

"Dad!" Sarah echoed.

"Holy shit," Katie sobbed, cradling your baby tightly and without you even noticing, put her seatbelt on.

"Move. MOVE!" Joel told Tommy.

The plane took a nosedive into the ground, exploding, and send a flurry of parts around the surrounding area. One of those areas happened to the building you were driving past, and one of the steel parts ricocheted off it and into the truck.

Everything went black.

"Baby? Baby, can you hear me? Hey, hey, hey, darlin', c'mon, open them pretty eyes for me, c'mon, baby, please."

"Fuck," you wheezed, eyes slowly opening.

"Hey, hey, hey, there you are, hey," Joel whispered, Tommy, Katie, and Sarah already out of the truck. "There you go, c'mon, you all right? You hurt?"

"No," you blinked a few times, wiggling your toes and fingers. "Fuck's sake, what happened?"

"Car accident," he nodded, "c'mon, sugar, gotta get up for me," he looked around. "We ain't safe here, c'mon, baby, that's it."

You nodded and let him pull you from the wreckage, grunting when shattered glass pressed into your skin to create long drips of blood that resembled a child's melted-crayon canvas from elementary art class. When out, Sarah kept weight off her ankle and wobbled in her stance, making you frowned, "All right?"

"Ankle," Sarah sniffled.

"We gotta get off the streets!" Tommy called from the other side of the car.

"KATIE!?"

"I got her!" She called back, and then, you could distinguish her shrill crying. You sighed with relief before Tommy was profanely screaming and Joel turned you and Sarah from the car just as an out-of-control police car came smashing into the truck.

"I got her," you told Joel, taking hold of Sarah in full as he nodded in thanks before turning for the wreckage they couldn't get around.

"Tommy!? Tommy!? Katie!? TOMMY!"

The brothers found a glimpse of each other through the flames, Tommy telling his brother, "Head to the river! We'll find a way! Get them outta here, Joel! Go!"

"Take care of my daughter," he nodded back.

"C'mon," Tommy told Katie, and the two were taking off with Tommy's gun slung over his shoulder.

Joel turned back for you and Sarah, gulping nervously at you, "Darlin', listen, I'm so sorry - "

"Joel, now's not the time," you panted. "We gotta go. Okay? We're good right now, but we gotta stay good. Let's get the fuck outta here, please. We can talk later!"

He nodded back, looking at Sarah, who refused, "We can't leave them! K-Katie has D - "

"They'll be fine," Joel insisted. "Tommy's with 'em, they'll look after each other. Can you run?"

"No," she shook her head, making Joel sigh.

"Can you?"

"I'm good," you nodded, worryingly looking at Sarah. "I can carry her - "

"'S all right, darlin'," he muttered, sweeping Sarah into his arms and making her arms latch around his neck. "You keep your eyes on me," he told his daughter. She nodded. "Okay?"

"Okay," Sarah breathed.

"Okay," Joel nodded. "And you don't look anywhere else." Sarah buried her head in her father's neck, his eyes meeting yours. "And you..." He panted, swallowing nervously. "You stay with me, you stay right with me, all right?"

"All right."

"All right," he agreed, hurrying off down the alley. You were true to your word, keeping up with him easily, but both slowing when the end of the alley only lead to a group of Infected motherfuckers feasting on the flesh of other humans.

You panicked for a moment, looking around you, and nearly missing the sound of the a distant explosion - sounding more like a crack from this distance. However, it was enough of a sound to draw the attention of at least one Infected Fucker - who looked up to stare at you, Joel, and Sarah.

Joel lead you to a building behind you - but the Fucker followed. "Joel, go, go, go," you hissed, easily taking the lead to use your body to burst through doors. Joel followed, understanding that because he was carrying Sarah, you had assumed the role of "guide" and wanted to clear his path - but it also cleared a path to be followed.

It made horrendous sounds as it chased you three, literally hauling it's body around as if it had no real control over it. The feeling inside your chest was chaotic, the tension tangible through the air as you lead Joel through the closed-diner.

The creature still followed.

Finally outside, you didn't have to restrict yourself but couldn't find it in you to leave Joel and Sarah behind. If this was the end, it was only right you fell as a family - and while deeply stupid of you, it was oddly poetic. However, as you heard the beast in pursuit just nipping at your heels, so sounded a reverberating gunshot.

It made you pause, looking back to see a headshot had taken the Infected Fucker out, and yet, no obvious sign of the shooter. Joel comforted Sarah, looking down at you - making you nod, telling him you were okay - before looking around again.

Then, a flashlight blinded you as a Humvee's lights flashed on, a voice demanding, "Don't move!"

"Joel..." You whispered, holding onto his elbow as he readjusted so he was slightly in front of you.

"My daughter's hurt!" Joel called to the military man. "Her ankle!"

"Stop right there!" He barked again.

"Okay," Joel muttered, nerves being shared as you had a bad feeling about this. "Easy now. We're not sick!"

But the solider, instead, radioed in, "I got three civilians by the river, one of 'em injured... Ankle..."

"What about Uncle Tommy and Aunt Katie?" Sarah asked her father.

"We're gonna get you somewhere safe first, with your Mama. Yeah? Then we'll come back for 'em, okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry, repeat?" The solider asked into his comms system - earning your attention again. Joel tried to step forward, but the flashlight was right back up into your face, the man snapping, "Hey! No one told you to move!"

"Joel," you worried. "They have shoot-to-kill orders."

"What?" He whispered.

"In the event of extreme violence, similar to this, they have orders to shoot-to-kill," you told him shakily, watching the man. "I know you wanna trust 'em, but they're not our friend right now. Get ready to run..."

"Darlin' - "

"Joel," you hushed, squeezing his elbow.

The solider answered his commanding officer with three, spaced out, "Yes, sir's," before he was slowly picking up his firearm and the light was again in their eyes.

Joel realized how right his estranged wife was in that moment. "We're not sick," he tried to remind. But the man approached, making Sarah's breathing pick up as she held on tighter to Joel's neck - blindly reaching out for you. "Sir," Joel begged, "we are not sick!"

But just like you had said, the orders were shoot-to-kill, and the rapid gunfire sounded in the knight - only barely masked by Sarah's high-pitched scream. You felt a searing burn in your thigh, all three of you toppling over down the short hill you were heading towards; all three rolling away from one another.

When you came to a halt, you seethed in pain, holding your thigh, but hearing a much worse sound. Sarah hyperventilating. You looked up as the solider leered over Joel, army-crawling towards her just as a gunshot sounded. However, when you weren't struck, you kept going, and reached your stepdaughter.

"Baby?" You whispered.

"Mama," she begged. "Mama, Mama," she repeated, barely able to swallow her saliva - much less her fear. "Hurts," she grunted, soon losing the ability to form words.

Tommy had seen the scene and rushed forward to shoot the solider, leaving Katie at his side with your infant daughter still in arm. "I got'cha, hey, hey, hey, I"m here," you whispered, literally whipping your shirt off to press into her stomach. "JOEL!" You cried, looking over your shoulder to spy him on the ground.

He quickly scrambled to Sarah's other side, taking in the situation, and looking at you with absolute devastation. You cried as you held pressure, but you knew, from the entry wounds, Sarah didn't stand a chance. Her aorta artery had been hit and shredded by a bullet, only giving her moments left in this life.

Watching Joel was possibly harder than watching him walk away from you in the birthing room. He was desperate, trying to save his daughter but only being able to hold her as she grunted and sobbed in pain; bleeding out in her father's arms. Joel begged you to help but you couldn't, unable to form words, so, he turned to his brother and screamed at him - and your sister - to help him.

But in that moment he had looked away, Sarah's life had left them. "Joel," you whimpered, making him look down and realize what happened. He sobbed, drawing her in tightly; rocking helplessly on the ground as he couldn't fathom what had just happened.

However, amongst his mourning, there came a sound you never wanted to hear again. Whipping around, you caught sight of your sister starting to twitch and leapt to your feet; limping in hurried motions to snatch your screaming baby from her tightening grip.

"Katie," you begged in a sob, backing up towards Tommy, "oh, God, no... No, please."

But the bite on her forearm had turned a sickly black-and-blue, alerting she had been bit at some point and never voiced it. Before your very eyes, she turned from your dear, sweet older sister into a blood-thirsty monster. Yellowed and dead eyes, snarling and uncontrollable twitching, limbs that turned up in odd angles as the infection took over completely.

When done, you sister gave a shriek before you pleaded, "Tommy!"

He took aim and fired once, putting Katie out of her misery; sending her corpse crumbling to the ground. You panted, tears in your eyes as you couldn't process this night, but then... The unexpected.

"Oh, God, no," you gasped, wrenching your daughter from your chest as she started wriggling uncontrollably. "No, no, no, no, no, no," you sobbed, dropping to your knees and laying her down. Quickly opening her baby blanket, you noted the adult-sized bite on her whole shin, sobbing harshly. "Delilah! No, not my baby, no, no, oh, fuck, no, c'mon, not you, too. Not you, too, Delilah, please, my angel, oh, fuck, no, God damn it!"

"Darlin'," Tommy stuttered from behind you. He looked up in fear, finding his brother's confused gaze and calling, "J-Joel!"

"Delilah, please, fuck, h-how do I fix this!?" You begged. "No, fuck, God damn it! Why can't I help my daughters!?" You snarled at Tommy, sobbing until your chest hurt. "Why!? Why can't I save them!?"

"Doll," he whispered, his older brother slowly letting go of Sarah to lay her down, shut her eyes, and rest her arms over her stomach before turning for you.

"Not her, too, please," you begged. "That's everyone, please, no, please, th-this can't - please, this can't be happening! How do I help, Delilah, baby, please?" You still begged, looking at her bite. "I-I can - I don't know what to do! Wo-Would amputation work? Oh, fuck, no, no, it's - no, please!"

Joel stumbled to his feet, nearing you, but pausing as he could only stare as his infant daughter, whom he had only just seen, twitched and convulsed as the infection proved too great for her little body. It also wasn't lost to his that you had name her after his own mother, long since departed from this world and who would never meet her granddaughter.

"Oh, my God," Joel whispered, slowly nearing you as you sobbed over your daughter; hands hovering all over as you weren't sure where to touch her.

"Please!" You begged nobody, sobbing uselessly as Delilah came to a slow but jarring halt. "Oh, my God," you squeaked, leaning back in shock. "Oh... Oh, my fuckin' God, no... Not our kids, c'mon, no, God, please, fuck - this has to be some fucked-up nightmare. Right?" You looked desperately at Joel. "This... This isn't real, right? This isn't really happening? Please, Joel, you have to fucking tell me this isn't real - this can't be real."

"I'm sorry," Joel wheezed, slowly reaching for you.

"This didn't happen," you shook your head. "O-Our daughters - what the fuck just happened?"

Tommy slowly took the seat on your other side, Joel easily tugging you into his embrace as your sobs wracked your whole being. There were no words to be shared, only the grief of two parents who had just lost everything. Sarah's blood stained both your skin, Delilah laid perfectly still in her baby blanket right in front of you, and Tommy, who felt his gun weighed more than himself after failing to protect those he loved most in this world.

Joel, who lost his daughters but kept his brother.

And you... Who lost your husband a year ago and both your daughters, your mother, father, little brother, and older sister all in a single night. You, who would carry this night of great loss with you, for life. You, who felt confused on how "moving forward" was ever possible. You, who would eventually lose feeling in your head and heart that would result in years of violent turmoil.

You, who would eventually find a path to redemption, but for tonight, you, who grieved loudly and openly in the bloody arms of your estranged husband.

requesting rules and masterlist

TLOU masterlist

[profeshyearner]

late nights

pairing: joel miller x f!sex worker!reader

wc: 7.6k

summary: You never expect Joel to come back, let alone to search for you.

part 2 to cherry

warnings: age gap (20s/50s), smut [f!masturbation, voyeurism aka joel watches reader self pleasure, piv sex, f!receiving oral, clothed man, naked woman], praise kink, a little bit of a voice kink, reader is a sex worker, poverty and issues and dangers that come along with that, smoking (reader and joel), mentions of violence and self destructive tendencies

a/n: please let me know what you think! this chapter is a lot of character establishment and, ahem, smut. maybe some of you can guess where this is going, id love to hear if you have theories even if its a little early to have them. thank you for reading!

You don’t think about Joel. 

He was unexpected and rare, and you would never see him again, nor be with that kind of man in a place like this ever again, and daydreaming about it wouldn’t help anyone. It would make everything that much harder.

A couple weeks go by and you forget about him, just another in a long line of men. 

The only time you dare to let your mind drift to him is late at night in your own bed, fingers between your legs in the dark, the remembrance of his voice whispering praise. 

It always pushes you over the edge. 

It’s not the first time you’ve tucked away an unexpected part of a man, kept in your imagination, to get off. That Joel’s voice keeps cropping up when you’re alone, least expecting it, for much longer than some others, means nothing. 

But then, one evening, things change. 

“Cherry!” Chastity hisses your name as soon as you cross the threshold into the club, metal hinges squeaking as it swings shut behind you. It’s a little conspicuous, to be flocked together like a bundle of flighty hens near the doors. She’s standing with Crystal, cigarette hanging from the side of her perfect pouty lips, looking distinctly unhappy. 

It makes you nervous. The owner of the club knows you operate there, but he doesn’t like you being too obvious about it, and you would not put it past him to call the cops. He has the benefit of denial, and safety of his sex, that you don’t. 

“That fella is back. Asked for you by name at the bar.” 

“Who?” 

“I never got his name that time he was here.” She taps her chin, thinking. “Older, real deep accent, kinda gruff,” she muses. “Ringing any bells?” 

A blankness sweeps though your mind, shuffling through the last few men you’ve been with, unable to pin down who she’s talking about. It’s such a remote possibility that it doesn't even occur to you, until—

“Oh, c’mon, Cherry, that real sad one everybody talked to—”

“Joel?” 

Her eyes flash, face lighting up. “Is that his name?” 

You blink at her tone, the excitement in it. 

Crystal tilts her head at you, cool and assessing. “What's your deal with him?” 

You shake your head, meeting her gaze head on. “Don’t have one.” 

“He’s at the bar,” Chastity chirps, nudging you. “Don’t keep him waitin’. Go on.” 

Surprise sends a thrill swirling up from your belly when you peek out onto the floor and catch sight of a familiar silhouette. “Damn, he really is.” 

“Bad thing?” Crystal asks as Chastity’s fingers dig into your arm. 

“I just didn’t think he’d come back.” And you are good at this, good at reading men, knowing things about them, and he’s surprised you. A vinegary squirm of worry twists in your belly. A man fixated on one prostitute never bode well. 

Joel is sitting at the bar, leaning against the wooden countertop like he never left in the first place. “Did you fuck him?” 

“Blew him,” you answer distantly, trying to decide how to feel. 

“Must have been some head.”

Maybe you’d been a little more enthusiastic than usual, but at the end of the day it had just been a blowjob. No reason not to put his dick in whoever was available. 

Maybe it had more to do with the other stuff. The dead wife stuff, the guilt stuff. The telling him he was special stuff. 

Fuck. 

Crystal looks on, her gaze heavy and disapproving. “Be careful,” she advises, head tilting, eyes narrowing. “Remember what I told you.” 

You need no reminders, no cautioning. 

Still, you cross the floor, navigating tables, girls carrying drinks, dancers leading men away for private dances, the raucous laughter of tables full of drunk, reaching hands, though not for you, not yet. 

Maybe not at all, at least not tonight. 

And, despite yourself, despite the worry like a lead balloon in your chest, you feel an undeniable thrill. A ribbon of need unspools in your belly, slips lower between your legs. 

Maybe he’ll fuck you this time. 

Joel turns when you near the counter, like he senses you behind him. He straightens and nods, appraising eyes falling over your body. You tuck your elbows in delicately and tick out your hip when you stop next to him. 

“Hi, sweetheart. Didn’t expect to see you here again,” you smile and lean against the counter, crossing one heeled foot behind the other. 

“Howdy,” he greets. “I’m sure you’ll tell me why you didn’t expect it. Teach me some kinda lesson.” 

You smile and press one hand over his forearm. He’s wearing an olive green t-shirt that softens his eyes. “Lesson? Did I learn you somethin’ mister cowboy?” 

He ignores your jibe. “Suppose you did.” 

“Hm,” you lean in. “Is that an invitation?” 

“Yeah. If you’re willin’.”

“Oh, well, of course, Joel, anything for you.” 

Joel eyes you for a minute and you just smile at him. “I swear, I have never met a man that didn’t take a whore at her word.” 

That gets you a surprised laugh. “Now, darlin’—”

“C’mon,” you interrupt, “let’s get a move on.” You tilt your head and glance around. “Unless you’d like to peruse your options a little more—” 

He rolls his eyes and places a hand against your back, guiding you back toward the entrance you’d just come through. You aren’t sure you’ve ever had such a quick turn around. 

Crystal and Chastity have blessedly already departed from their station just inside the door, though you can feel their eyes on your skin, somewhere in the shadows of the club behind you.

Joel holds the door open for you and ushers you through it ahead of him, fingers light on your spine. 

The air is warm, the still setting sun an orange flame on the horizon, coating the parking lot in shades of rose and salmon. The smell of warm asphalt and gasoline rises up to meet you, settled between the dust of the wasteland beyond the town. 

“I came back twice, and you weren’t here,” he says as you cross the lot toward his truck. “Or, maybe, you was busy with, uh, somebody else.” 

You frown. “Didn’t someone else offer?” 

“Yep. Wasn’t interested.” 

“Really?” 

“Figure we kinda got an understanding about each other. After the last time.”

Hm, so you were right. It was the emotional unloading that brought him back, not the head he’d gotten. 

It was probably easier not to have to explain everything again. Not that he would have had to, the second time around. He could have just fucked someone, since his secrets were safely lain with someone else. 

And was it really easier to come back three times? To this desolate stretch of highway? That fancy hotel he stayed in could probably press a button and get him an escort. 

“Well,” you answer. “Just for any future endeavors, you should know I’m strictly only there on weekends, usually only Fridays and Saturdays.”

Joel opens the passenger door for you. You slide into the shadow of it, leaning back against the seat, the fabric cool on the backs of your thighs. 

“All right,” he leans one forearm against the side of the open door, opposite hand on his hip. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

He’s close to you. The frame of his body blotting out the streetlight behind him. The evening light softens his features a little, rounds out his jaw, lightens the color of his eyes. 

A soft tug behind your navel gives rise to worry in your chest. 

You’re glad he came back, more than that, you’re flattered by it. Your thirst to be praised slaked by the knowledge that he had come back for you, waited for you. 

The rational part of you knows it means nothing at all. You’ve spent enough time with enough men, to know they’ll fuck pretty much anything.

You lean forward and loop your fingers into his jeans, tugging him toward you as dusk settles in, a quiet yawn of the day slotted between you and nothing else. If you offered, would he let you get him off right here? 

His skin is warm against your fingers, the wings of his hipbones muted through a layer of fat and muscle. 

There’s a decision to be made here, how close he wants you to actually get. Does he want to talk about his wife again? Does he want you to know more about him? There’s always the possibility they turn violent, if they thought you were treading where you shouldn’t be. A hard lesson learned and never forgotten. 

A sudden thought occurs to you as you ponder, tugging and touching until his hips are flush with yours. The hand on Joel’s hip moves to brace against the top of the truck. “Were you there through the week? Joel, everybody knows a club like that on a weekday is just sad.”  

“All right,” he mutters, and, you notice, rolls his eyes. It makes you smile. “I’ll keep Saturdays in mind.” He slides out of your grip and instead offers you a hand to balance on. You accept it, arranging yourself delicately on the seat, tucking your legs to the side, as Joel watches. 

You lift a brow when he doesn’t shut the door, eyes hooked into your legs, the fabric of your dress bunches the very tops of your thighs. At the very least, he’s letting himself look at you freely this time. “I can flash you if you want.” 

His gaze jerks up to yours. “I have really pretty panties on today,” you offer. 

There’s a startled quality to his features that makes you laugh. He doesn’t know how to handle you, what to make of you, and you like that. 

But then he leans down, his face very near to yours. He’s looking at you, eyes hungrily sliding over your skin. Joel palms your thigh, the tips of his fingers slipping beneath your dress. “Why don’t you save it for me?” 

“So you can guess the color?” 

“Mhm.” His hand curves over the top of your leg, between your thighs. “Somethin’ like that.” 

You uncross your ankles and let them fall open a little. “Look at you,” you tease. “What happened to all that guilt?” 

“Trust me it’s there.” 

“But?” 

He pulls back and closes the door. 

The cab is warm with trapped spring air. Joel settles in beside you, sticking the keys in the ignition without looking over at you. “She’s been gone for a little more than a year,” he says to the windshield, the falling darkness. The truck rumbles to life, the neon lights of the club passing by in a flash, the glow sprinting over his features. You notice that the box of cassette tapes is gone. “And I had my kids young.”

You nod, not sure what to say, waiting for a little more before hazarding a reply. 

He struggles with it for a moment, grapples with his own thoughts and how much he wants to tell you. “You was right,” he glances back at you and away. “About bein’ lonely,” he hesitates, thinking for a long moment, “so this ain’t a bad thing.” 

And that’s all you get, left to twist apart the lines and find meaning. You wring the sentences dry, looping them around your fingers, counting the words. 

It strikes you suddenly that there’s something more going on. He lost his wife, the relationship more like a partnership than anything romantic. But he has children, a family, and a man that had been fulfilled for years on that alone, wouldn’t suddenly be desperate to get his dick wet. 

Something else happened. Besides the loss of his life partner, that constant presence, he’d lost something else too. 

You don’t dare ask. It’s too complicated and close, especially when he’d gone to such lengths to bring up the fact that at least one daughter is older than you, and possibly the other, considering you’d lied about your age. 

Night falls in a blue-gray sheaf around you, casts him in shadow and light as you pass beneath streetlights. A chord in his throat strains, jaw clenching and releasing as he drives, no doubt thinking about what he’d just said to you, agonizing over it again. 

You can only think about how your mouth had touched him there, had tasted the salt of his skin beneath his jaw, how you’d like to do it again. Tell him to pull over and climb into his lap and make out with him on the side of the road. 

You wonder what it’s like to kiss him, to feel the scratch of his beard against your cheeks and lips. 

“There’s nothing wrong with this,” you soothe, curling up on the bench seat. “Really. And I’m not just feeding you a line.” 

He nods, and you reach to take his hand, put it back between your legs. “Jesus,” he mutters, but his thumb strokes the inside of your thigh. 

“Am I really your first?” 

“First, uh,” he pauses and doesn’t seem to know what to call you, clearly not wanting to call you what you are.

“Whore?” You offer with a grin. “Hooker? Call girl? If prostitute isn’t to your taste, of course.” 

He mutters something under his breath, takes his hand from between your legs and rubs it over his chin. You like the sound it makes, the scratch of his beard against his palm. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, you’re my first.” 

A laugh lurches out of you, a brighter sound than you intend. It’s genuine, and by the way his mouth twitches up, he knows it. 

He puts his hand back on your leg, though not on the inside of your thigh where it had been. 

The last few minutes of the drive are silent. You run your nails over the inside of his wrist, distractedly looking out the window, watching nice neighborhoods roll past until the hotel appears, it’s beacon of warm white light like a homing signal. 

His hand leaves a warm imprint on your leg, like a suddenly removed branding iron, the air cool in the space left behind. 

Joel once again rounds the truck and a hand down  before you have a chance to even open the door. He balances his hand against your spine like you’re a lady and not a whore he’s paying for, no matter what he wants to call you.

A curl of rarely felt embarrassment slices through your chest when you cross the lush, posh lobby. The same woman is at the front desk, and she and Joel repeat their exchange from the previous time. Her face remains pleasantly professional, but you can sense her distaste this time around. A thick cloud of judgment wreathes her.

There are people milling around the lobby, perched at the bar, and thankfully none of them spare you a glance.

He’s in the same room as before, the brass plated 202 winking at you in the low light of the hall before the door swings open. 

You perch on the bed like the first time and wait. He takes his time about sitting down next to you and taking off his shoes, workman’s boots, you notice, still at odds with the hotel he stays in. 

Curiosity burns bright in your chest. To ask him what he does for work to dress like that and drive the truck he does, but stay at a hotel like this one. 

“First whore,” you muse when he sits back with a groan. “Hm. Can I ask how I’m performing so far? Living up to the fantasy?” 

He ignores your jabbering, shaking his head in a defeated, embarrassed kind of way. “Can I ask—”

“What? How I ended up fucking strangers for money?” 

He rakes a hand through his hair, then rubs it over his jaw. The silvered strands stand up, mussed. You lie your hand on his thigh, reaching to push it back into place. You’re close, nearly nose to nose.  “Jesus. Yeah. If you wanna put it like that.” 

“What other way is there to put it?” 

“Well, you been usin’ the word whore a whole lot.” 

There’s the beginning of a joke there, but you take it out at the knees. 

“You wanna call me a whore?” 

Something dangerous and unsure bleeds into the air. You wonder if he does. 

Does he want to indulge that side of himself? 

It doesn’t matter to you either way. Most of them like some element of that. Degrading you in some way because they all believe you’re beneath them. The receptionist’s face flashes through your mind. 

To your surprise, he brushes over it. “How’d you end up doin’ this?” 

The truth burgeons at your lips and flutters free before you can think better of it. It’s rare that your tongue gets the better of you. “I need to pay for school.” 

“School?” He asks, sounding genuinely miffed.

“College,” you clarify, then tilt your head at him. “Please tell me I don’t look that young.” 

He rolls his eyes. It’s starting to become a familiar gesture. “You screwin’ with me?” 

“Don’t you want me to screw you?” You purr. When he just gives you an unimpressed, flat stare you sigh and then stifle another laugh. “What? What do you want me to say?” 

“No, it makes a whole helluva lot more sense than—” He looks at you again and you grin. You both know that whatever he says next will get him in trouble. “I was just thinkin’ when you first sat down next to me that you don’t really fit in.” 

You open your mouth and he holds up a finger. “Don’t.” 

“Fine,” you smirk. “I’m very privileged that I don’t . . . fit in, I suppose. I very easily could have.” You think about leaving it at that but figure you might as well just tell him. “I grew up poor. I worked all through undergrad, forty hours a week and classes and everything. And then. . .by some miracle I get into my dream grad program. No one else in my family has ever gone to college. My assistantship takes up any time I’m not working on my dissertation but it also doesn’t pay nearly enough.” 

You feel something tinge in the pit of your belly when you realize he’s actually listening to you. Paying attention to the words coming out of your mouth, gaze intently focused on you. “Dissertation,” he mutters. Then, “Workin’ in retail not stimulatin’ enough for you?” 

If anyone else had said it, maybe you’d take offense, but it comes out of his mouth like a lighthearted joke not a judgment. Though maybe he’s judging you, too. You tell yourself you don’t really care if he is, but it’s not quite ever true. 

And, the people who use your services are very often the ones who judge and detest you most.  

“Too much time for too little money,” you dismiss with a wave of your hand, as nonchalantly as you can. “I waited tables for a while but. . .I don’t know. I was tired and falling behind because the shifts were so long and. . .more money, I guess, for less hours, doing this. I thought about being a stripper but I’m not athletic enough.” You tack the joke on at the end, to redirect him away from what you’d just revealed. 

It gets a laugh out of him. “You lyin’ to me about all this?” 

“Cross my heart it’s all true. That kind of sob story only works on the very worst kind of man.”  

So many of them want to hold the misery of your life in the cup of their palm, taste the daddy issues and loneliness and poverty and think themselves better, and believe you broken and easy, something they could close their fist over and feel the shards of your life bite into their hands. 

“Guess I’m not that kind of man, since you told me.” 

“I don’t get that sense.” You smile, “There’s time for you to disappoint me yet, though.” You expect it. His lust will eventually turn to disgust. 

Joel just nods, and then touches your knee with the backs of his fingers. “You want these shoes off, darlin’?” 

“Do you want me to take them off?” 

“Not what I asked,” he corrects. “They look mighty uncomfortable.” 

“Actually they’re not too bad.” Still, you nod, and he kneels to take them off for you. He slips one heel off, then the other, and you still can’t believe you’re here with him again. Your rarity, kneeling in front of you.

His thumb divots the flesh of your ankle, the scrape of the calloused pad tracing over your skin. 

You tilt back as he works his way higher, lying against the softness of the comforter somehow already imbued with his scent. It’s cool against your skin, against the flushed and warm feeling sweeping over your skin. 

Was he here the night before? Did he nap there earlier? Leave his clothes on the bed while he showered? You imagine all the paths his hands might have taken, all the ways he might have led himself back to that skeevy club. Did he have to convince himself to come back? Had he looked for you again the very next night? 

Anticipation makes you squirm, and he chuckles under his breath. 

Maybe there’s more to him than you thought. 

Good. It just means there’s more to discover, more to dig your teeth into. 

“So, what do you want from me tonight, Joel?” You stretch your arms behind your head and arch your back, lifting one foot onto the bed to tuck beneath your opposite knee. 

Joel presses his fingers higher until they catch under the hem of your dress. “I wanna watch you.” His fingers touch your underwear and a knot of anticipation curls in your belly.

You hadn’t expected an answer, not when you’d done most of the leading the time before. 

“Watch me?” 

He doesn’t elaborate and you sense he’s a little remiss to actually ask it of you, whatever he wants. 

“Like with another person or—” 

“No,” he clips in, hooks his fingers in your panties but doesn’t pull them off. His hands are warm on your hips, against the curve of your ass. You want him take them off, want him to tug them down your legs and spread you open. You help him along, folding your legs open until your dress is bunched entirely around your hips. “No, nothin’ like that.”

He shifts one hand to your core, rubs your pussy through the thin fabric still covering you, not looking away from your face as he does.  

It takes you a moment to realize what he means. “Oh. And you’ll just watch?” Hesitation works over his face, then something else you can’t quite put a finger on. “Just want to make sure you don’t want to fuck me.” 

He snorts. “Not that I don’t.” 

“Then what’s this about?” You coo, gripping his forearm, pressing his hand harder against your core. Just the pressure makes your pussy clench. “I promise I can do better if you let me touch you.” 

He leans over you, one hand braced against the mattress. “I wanna know what you look like when you come. You didn’t last time. Couldn’t get it outta my mind that I don’t know. That I didn’t get to see it.”

Oh. 

“I’m sure you could make something up. Surely your imagination isn’t that poor?”

He just shakes his head, looks you over. Indulging in the simple act of looking at you, gaze hooked into your skin and tangled in your hair. It’s delightful. 

The ghost of his voice praising you echoes through your mind, whispered words you’ve replayed when you’re alone. You arch your back, not willing to admit that you desperately want him to tell you how pretty you look.

“I could fake it,” you tease, voice breathless to your own ears. 

“I’d know.” 

You roll your eyes. “Sure, sweetheart.” He doesn’t answer, eyes flicking over you again. You’ve been looked at a lot over the last year, but this is something different.

It’s heavier. 

Needier, somehow. 

Like he’s not just finally looking at you but really seeing you. Seeing more than a warm hole at the very least. 

“How do you want me, Joel?” 

His eyes drift to yours, something hungry and wanting deep in his gaze. Joel’s hand caresses your hip, slips unhurriedly down your thigh, and comes to a stop at the hinge of your knee. His thumb slides against the back of your knee, against the sensitive, oft untouched spot. A shiver traces gooseflesh along your skin, nipples stiffening against the fabric of your dress.

Joel watches you closely and doesn't immediately answer.

It’ll be agony to touch yourself for him when you want so badly for him to do it for you.

“This will be the second time you don’t touch me,” you say archly, tone just a little haughty, just a little whiny. 

“Didn’t say nothin’ about not touchin’,” he teases, blunt nails tracing up your side to cup your tit in his hand, tweaking your nipple sharply. 

You gasp and push your chest into his hand. He squeezes the supple flesh, big hands trailing down your body again, fitting against the curve of your waist. “Lift your hips.” 

It’s easy to oblige, and you’re rewarded with a warm, “Good job.” It makes your belly clench like nothing else. He slides your panties off, leaves them caught around your ankles, a desperation fixed in his gaze when he pushes his fingers between the folds of your cunt.

His thumb finds your clit, swirling slowly against you, the pressure and pace agonizingly slow, but expert.

Your eyes roll back, lips parting, and a distant flutter of thought murmurs in the back of your mind that his wife had been a lucky woman. 

He abruptly takes his hand away, leaving you chasing nothing, hips bucking toward an invisible master for a long moment. 

“You comfortable here?” 

“Ye-ah.” 

His chin tilts down. “I’m really askin’ you here, darlin’.” 

You feel flushed and stupidly horny but manage an inkling of sass in response. “And I really am.” 

He chuckles. “You wanna get undressed for me?” 

Actually, you’d love nothing more than to have the warmth of his gaze settling heavily over your naked skin.

You sit up slowly, and he pulls away as you do, staying nose to nose with you for a long moment before he’s gone, plucking your underwear from around your ankles before he goes. 

He sits in the chair in the corner of the room, folds his hands together across his belly and waits, head tilted. It’s a go on then kind of look. It’s kind of infuriating, and more than a little hot. 

“Hm.”

“What?” 

“Nothing. Just wondering about that guilt again,” you smile and curl your fingers around the hem of your dress and shift onto your knees. Your thighs feel damp; you wonder if he can see it. 

He raises a brow at you. “I’m ignorin’ my better judgement.” 

“You must want this pretty bad then.” 

He dips his head once in a nod, eyes fastening to the carpet. “I really wanna know.” 

“So I shouldn’t start begging for your huge cock to be inside me?” 

He laughs, the sound genuine and thick. “You don’t want that?” 

“Penetration doesn’t do much for me.” 

“Ain’t that honest of you.” 

“I thought that was what you wanted? Thought you really wanted to know?” 

He nods, jaw ticking in clearly repressed amusement. “Yeah. So only beg for it if you really want it, I guess.” 

You peel your dress up and over your head, letting it fall to the floor at your side, leaving you bare. You draw your hands up your side to cup your tits in your hands. Joel just looks eyes hooking into different parts of you, the meat of your thighs, the curve of your waist, your breasts when you let your hands drop, nipples hardening in the cool air of the room. 

You fold yourself backwards against the headboard and prop your legs open wide. “So?” 

Being naked in front of veritable strangers has become a strange but regular part of your life. You’re almost used to it. Still, some part of your mind breaks off from the rest of you, walling off the mortification at being that exposed. At times, it’s like you’re gazing down at yourself, floating above it all.  

His eyes slide up from your cunt to your face, gaze working across you in starts and stops when he suddenly stands. 

You frown and start to draw your legs in but—

It’s that fucking pillow situation all over again. He gives you the cushion from the chair, so your arm and elbow are supported. It’s a much more comfortable position if a little less sexy. “Gentleman,” you say softly when he moves away again. 

He snorts, and you understand how rare a man you have with you. Not just for someone like you, but at all. He doesn’t just look, he sees. It makes you feel more vulnerable than sitting naked in front of him does. 

But somehow not in a bad way.

You swallow and try for levity, to chase away that ache behind your breastbone, of being seen. “I bet you wish I’d left the heels on.”

He doesn’t answer and your cunt pulses. “What do you want from me, Joel?” 

“Do it like I ain’t here.” 

“That is a tough ask.” 

And a vulnerable one. It feels more intimate than if he was inside you. 

“Just wanna know what you look like.” 

You shift your hips, heat blooming in your belly at the look on his face, the way he just sits there, hesitantly leaning forward. “Okay,” you murmur. You let your eyes flutter shut, running one hand down your belly to your pussy, spreading your legs wide. 

All in all, not the weirdest demand you’ve ever gotten. It is the first time a man has insisted on knowing what you really look like when you come. It’s also not really a demand. If you’d have said no, you doubt he would have tried to convince you otherwise, or made a fuss at all. 

But why? Why does he need to see so badly?

Because. . .what? You made him come? It’s a little funny.

And you want to fake it, just to know for yourself that he wouldn’t be able to tell. But something in you really wants him to know too, so you won’t. He wants to see? Fine, you’ll show him. 

Still conscious that he’s there, that it’s a show too, you push out your chest, part your lips, hope you look sufficiently like you might be in a porno. 

It helps that he teased you, touched you. God, you’d like to know what his fingers feel like inside you. His are bigger than yours, would stretch you wider, reach deeper parts of you. 

The wet sound of your cunt fills the room, the quiet pant of your breaths clouding the air. You start with one finger and quickly press another inside. You wish he would have let you come before, that he would have kissed down your body and put his mouth on you. 

Your whole body clenches tight, pussy contracting around your fingers, when you think of him lifting his head, mouth wet from you, to say you were doing good. 

He could just talk and you’d probably find a way to have an orgasm without any touching at all. 

You slide your other hand from your belly to your chest, thinking of his hand there earlier, squeezing, how much skin he’d covered, and pluck at your nipple. The image of his mouth there follows, the sound of his voice vibrating against your chest, his cock at your entrance, slowly pushing forward, giving you time to adjust to his size because of course he’d do that. 

Good girl. 

You can practically taste the words. 

You arch your back and moan softly, lips parted to the cool, filtered hotel air, thrusting your fingers steadily. 

Even in the fantasy, he doesn’t kiss you. 

“Christ. Open your eyes.” 

The demand is a grunt pierced with want. 

You blink into the dim light of the room that suddenly feels brighter than the sun. Blinking is like reentering Earth’s atmosphere. It’s too warm, the cascading rush and ache of pleasure intensifying when you meet his eyes. A hot flushed feeling rushes into your chest, makes you feel like all the air was suddenly sucked out of the room. 

“Will you touch yourself too?” You ask, sliding your fingers out, spreading yourself for him, the slick pooling between your thighs, the clench of your pussy around nothing. “Please?”

He shakes his head again. “You ain’t came yet.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“I do.” Then, a little hesitantly, “What are you thinkin’ about?” 

You hesitate, watching him rub a rough palm against his jeans, the prominent bulge forming there. If you tell him the truth, that you’d been thinking about him, he probably wouldn’t believe it. 

“You aren’t going to believe me,” you murmur, curling your fingers, thumb sweeping messily over your clit. 

“Try me.” 

“You.” 

“Now that’s a damn line if I ever heard one.” 

But there’s a pretty flush in his cheeks, a desperation in the way he shifts his hips. He doesn’t give much away, but not everything can be hidden. “It usually is a line. But right now, it isn’t.” You let your eyes flutter shut again. 

“What about me, darlin’?” His voice is strained, and you want to look at him so badly but don’t.

You don’t answer immediately, thinking about him fucking you again, calling you good, saying you were doing good. 

“Thinkin’ up somethin’ believable?” 

You look at him again, and bite your lip. “It’s just that you told me not to beg for your huge cock,” you say breathlessly, pinching your nipple, hips thrusting against your own hand. “But that’s what I want.” 

“What?” He laughs a little, the sound choked. “Though it didn’t do nothin’ for you.” 

“You’re using your hands, too.” And then, almost without meaning to, you continue, “Wanna know what it feels like inside me.” You moan the last word and don’t mean to, the line between your own desire and this being work becoming more blurred by the second. It isn’t supposed to feel this good, you aren’t supposed to actually want him.

“What else, honey?” 

“I’m thinking about you eating my pussy.” 

The image comes suddenly to the front of your mind again, the bow of his head between your legs, the strain of his vocal chords when he groans into you, the scrape of his beard against your thighs. You know he’d make it good, that he’d use his fingers too, push them so deep inside you you’d discover new corners of yourself. You see him kneeling, his clenched eyes and his hand fisting around himself, the tilt of his brow when he touches himself because he just can’t help it. 

“Oh, fuck—” You mutter and then the quiet, fuzzy crash of your orgasm floods your veins, cunt pulsing. You rub your clit through the pleasure, a noisy little whine bringing you back to yourself, that you pinch off, throttling it midair. 

Too real, you think distantly, muscles spasming and then going loose in bliss. 

A few minutes pass in silence, the sound of your breathing and his and the shush and hum of the central air. 

“You were quiet.” 

You blink lazily at him, stretching so your back arches, trying to remember that you’re just his whore right now. It’s work, it’s now about you. 

“I thought you wanted authentic?” The corner of his mouth curls, and worry creeps into your throat. Stupid, to really show him. Every ounce of bliss is suddenly sucked from your veins. “Was that not good? Let me make it up to you—” 

“No,” he interrupts, sounding very serious about it. “No. Nothin’ like that. You did real good.” 

Good. 

“Oh,” you breathe. “Okay.”  

You watch him shift uncomfortably and rub a palm against the bulge in his jeans again and imagine him stroking his cock, his hand so much bigger than yours on it. Your mouth waters, but you feel unmoored, adrift. You try to shake yourself, get a handle on yourself and climb back into the cradle of this role you know so well. You’re not you right now. “C’mere, darlin’.” When you look at him, he just says, “Said you wanted it.” 

A command, this time. 

Better, you don’t have to think, don’t need the moment to shake yourself. 

You rise and saunter over to him, bracing one hand against his shoulder to go to your knees. Joel stops you, presses his hand to your hip, fumbles in his back pocket for a wallet, from which he pulls a condom. 

“Let me,” you coo, sinking to your knees between his spread thighs, feeling the tense, thick muscle beneath your fingertips. 

Joel hisses when you unzip his jeans and pull his cock from the confines, giving it a few strokes, tracing the weeping slit at the head with your thumb. He’s silken and firm in your hand and part of you just wants him to ask for your mouth again so you can taste him. 

You tear open the foil and roll it on with deft fingers, eliciting a groan that makes your cunt leak. “My, my, sweetheart, you are so sensitive.” You climb onto the chair with him, straddle his lap. He looks up at you with a faraway look in his eyes. 

You stroke one hand through his hair, the delicious realization that he’s still fully clothed making you drip, though you wish to feel his skin against yours.

Joel is gentle with you when he guides you onto his cock slowly, hands anchored on your hips, fingers denting your flesh.

You breathe through the slight burn of the intrusion, the angle, until it subsides into that heavy, full feeling. 

You want to languish in the feeling, just stay seated there, but this isn’t for you. 

Before you can lift your hips, Joel’s hand is sliding along your spine, up and down, over the blades of your shoulders, down the middle of your spine and back up. “Stay there,” he mutters. “Just like that.” 

Your nipples harden, a groan gets caught in your chest. “Joel,” you whisper, just to say something, clenching around him. “Fuck.”

“Thoght penetration didn’t do anything for you?”

It doesn’t. But usually when you’re getting fucked it isn’t like this. “I—” 

His palm fits against the back of your neck, right where your skull meets your spine. A bolt of pleasure races down your spine, curling hungrily in your lower belly, waiting.

He tilts your head back gently, carefully, while his other hand explores your body, touching all the places you take for granted. It’s demanding and you like that it is. 

His hands are hungry, greedy in their exploration. And you love it. You want him to want to touch you. 

It’s a part of this that you like, that you don’t like to admit that you like. That fucking stranger, losing control, is like a drug. It’s heady. Fucked up, sure. But it makes you feel good in the moments you don’t think about it. It only sometimes ends badly. 

Joel’s hand settles at the dip of your waist and slowly traces its way upwards. 

You let your eyes flutter shut when he circles your nipple slowly with his thumb, cupping your tit in the wide expanse of his palm. When he leans in and sucks the taut peak into the warmth of his mouth, you groan and dig your nails into his bicep. 

Wet rushes between your thighs, hips involuntarily rolling forward. 

The rough denim feels good, and the destructive part of your brain hopes that it leaves a mark on your flesh.

Joel gives your other breast the same treatment, suckling at your nipple until you whine this time, fingers of pleasure racing across your skin like licks of lightning. 

“Keep doin’ that,” he commands.

You push your hips against his, setting a slow, rolling pace. From the angle he holds you at, you can’t shift your weight onto your knees to really fuck him. 

His hand slides back down, across your belly to the apex of your thighs. He leans back, to look at his cock disappearing inside you, you would guess. You hear more than see him lick his thumb and press it to your clit, an immediate, steady, heavy pressure that makes you jerk in his arms. 

“Careful there, darlin’,” he mutters before his mouth closes around your nipple again. “Said I was using my hands too, right? When you were thinkin’ about me.” 

He releases your neck then, and you tilt forward to brace your hands against his shoulders. You set a steady pace.

There are parts of this you have to fake. 

Sometimes, oftentimes, it’s all fake. 

It frightens you a little that none of this is. 

The moan that looses from your throat is yours, the words you want to beg him with are your own. 

His hips lift to meet yours, and the room grows warm, the salty, musky scent of sex blotting out the astringent, cleaner smell. It mingles with his cologne and you hope it sticks to your skin. You hope it says layered on your skin, that you can bring it all the way back to your apartment with you. 

It makes you feel insane. 

Your pussy contacts around him, the beginnings of an orgasm tightening your core. “Come, baby,” he says. “I can feel it.”

A desperate plea catches in your throat, your thoughts a tangled mess of confusing want and knowledge that this isn’t supposed to be something you want. “Please,” you murmur. “Joel.” 

The sound of his name on your lips sets him into a frenzy. Thrusting harder, fingertips more searching, more demanding. 

“I got to see it, now lemme feel it.” 

Your second orgasm makes your vision flash white, swirling around you in waves as Joel groans in your ear and rocks your hips against him until he stills, coming hard. You reach between your bodies and touch where you connect, some insane part of you wishing you could have felt him come inside you. 

You ache, in a good way. 

Joel tucks his arms around you and you have no choice but to lie your head against his shoulder, kissing the space, your taut nipples brushing against his shirt.

Minutes pass in silence as you both come down, breath evening, pulses slowing, Joel’s palm keeping a steady pressure against your spine. 

“Stand up for me?” He asks. His hand stills, and you realize you were about to fall asleep on his chest. 

You’ve fallen asleep with clients before, but not like this, not in their arms and int their laps. Embarrassment flashes through you with a vengeance. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” you mutter and pull back. “I’ll go, I meant to—” 

“No.” He breathes the word out quick. “No. Just want to clean you up.” 

When his cock slips out of you, you feel empty. Still, you lie back on the bed, naked and touch yourself, feeling the mess he’d made of you. 

He ties off the condom and trashes it before zipping himself up. Your muscles ache, a wrung out feeling. 

Joel returns to you and hands you a washcloth. You’re grateful he doesn’t try to do it for you. The intimacy of that might have actually killed you. 

You pull your dress back on and wait, expecting him to hand you money and see you out. 

“You mind if I smoke?” You ask.

“Go on.: 

You lean over the side of the bed and feel his hand brushing against the back of your thigh, pushing your legs open. A whine pushes past your lips when he touches your pussy. “Can I see you next weekend?”

“I’m still here right now,” you turn on your back and light your cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. “You can fuck me again, Joel.” 

You like the way his hands look on your thighs, the way your knees look against his hips. 

“Might be too old for that right away.” 

“Ah.” 

“Can I taste you?” The question is quietly murmured, his eyes still locked on your cunt. “Then I can fuck you again.” 

Your body clenches and you grab his wrist. “Yeah. Please.” 

He does just that, eats your pussy and then fucks you again. He grips your hips in his hands and fucks you slow and deep from behind. It takes everything in you not to lose your head and drool into the pillow he places beneath your chest, nipples brushing the sheets. 

You smoke again and Joel asks you something about school, about your life. 

When he finally drives you back to your car, insistent on it, frowning when you tell him you’d taken a cab the last time, fingers of sunshine are reaching across the empty, desolate lot. 

He catches at your elbow, there’s a flush of something in his face, something you can’t quite put your finger on. 

“Will I see you next weekend?” 

You blink. “Do you want to, Joel?” 

“Cherry,” he takes your chin in his hand then strokes your cheek, saying your name just to say it. “Yeah.”  

“Okay. Then I’ll see you next weekend.” 

“You’ll wait?”

You raise a brow and push open the door. “No. Just don’t be late.” 

He doesn’t drive anyway until you wave, safely inside your car. 

[profeshyearner]

unknown source ₊ ˚ ⊹ ♡

[profeshyearner]

[profeshyearner]

Trojan Condoms, 2004