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Sweat beads at the nape of his neck.
The days have started growing shorter, as the leaves have started to fade into shades of gold and copper.
But the weather still clings onto the last dregs of summer. A morning chill that melts under the heat of the afternoon sun, settling over your skin.
He used to like this time of year.
Barbecues and football. An evening spent in front of Tommy’s new big screen, splitting a six-pack of some cheap, shitty beer - something that would feel like a luxury now.
Back-to-school shopping, the twist in his heart as he pulled up to the old brick building on the first day of school. The smile and wave that he had always tried to match, though she was far braver than he was.
That was a long time ago. The memories have become blurry, ones he reaches for in his sleep. Slipping through his fingers.
Still trying desperately to forget what came after.
His birthday. The outbreak. Sarah.
A permanent stain, ink red. For years there had been a desire to just skip these months. To go to sleep in the heat of the summer and wake up in winter, instead.
But even that wish has started to fade, but only just. Though, it wasn’t time that did it.
Now, layers are shed as the early patrol comes to an end - a reprieve taken within the wall of an abandoned house you’ve come to know well.
The flannel you now wear around your waist bunches in his fist. Using it as leverage, the jerk of his hand as he pulls you back to meet his thrust.
His flannel.
Joel recognizes it. A relic from Lincoln, the green and reds fading with the trail long since traveled. Patched sewn over holes that match scars carved into his own flesh.
His fingers had fumbled, not more than a week ago. Flattening over the curve of his chest, as he peered at himself the in cracked mirror.
Where the fabric pulled a little too tightly over his back. The buttons straining across his stomach. Hard labor in Jackson had thickened his shoulders. The food you made with so much care had nourished him.
Finally a chance to breathe in twenty years - to not rely on ration cards, or his own skill with a gun to guarantee a hot meal.
You had found him like this, your soft smile reflected in the mirror.
He had forgotten all about it, by the time you stripped the shirt from him.
There’s something inside of him that burns, to see the fabric tied around you now. The strips of skin above and below - the catalyst that had kicked off this unexpected break.
Tempted by your bare legs, kicked up on the broken coffee table. A peek of your stomach, as you stretched - before knotting your stolen flannel around your waist.
A reprimand had been on his tongue since this morning. That only layers could prevent a bite, the scrapes and scratches of being in the woods. His own too-hot canvas jacket a sacrifice he was used to making.
Disappearing from his tongue somewhere between the look you had given him, and the floor you’re now pressed against.
That canvas jacket discarded, slipped beneath your knees. Your cheek pressed against the sleeve, the button like a brand against your jaw. A mark indenting your skin, as your eyes screw shut.
His own knees ache, where they knock against the wooden floor. The creak of his leather boot as he adjusts the angle - a leg rising, a heavy foot pressing firm and flat against the ground as he arcs over you.
Your lips part with moan beneath him, the sound strangled as the air is pushed from your lungs.
So deep. So warm - his breath coming in a rough rush as he leans into you. Nudging himself just a little bit deeper, a palm pressing between your shoulder blades for balance.
It had been barely winter, when he’d first found this place. Another month before he brought you here, sheltering from a storm.
Eyes still fixed out the bare windows, at the skeleton-fingers of trees as you had rode him. Your own head thrown back, chest heaving against the mouth that teased at your tits - too intent on your own movements to notice the way his eyes drifted.
Fixing out, into the forest. Unable to help the split attention, with wounds still fresh from Salt Lake City. Hands that had taken, too harsh in the way they had bit into your skin.
The rough slap of his thighs when the sliver of control had been wrenched from you - rolling you beneath him to finish the job.
Now, with the golden sun overhead, the gentle sway of the leaves in the breeze - he gives.
Eyes fixed only on you.
He’s spent too much time looking away. Almost realizing it when it was too late. All those weeks of looking anywhere but at you.
It had been easier, that way. Maybe a part of him had known, deep down. An instinctual inkling of what you’d become to him.
He hadn’t been ready.
Content to know the scuffs on your boots better than the color of your eyes, missing the way they crinkle when you smile at him.
The way they widen, flutter, squeeze shut - just for him. Only for him.
It’s always taken him a little time to come around.
It was winter when you had fallen together. But it had been earlier that spring when the seed had been planted, first taking root.
His first true spring in Jackson - getting to see the shoots push up in the community garden. The main road slowly waking after a cold winter, filling out with people and stalls and coming to life, again.
You were new, slipping in while the town had still slept.
Easily winning Ellie over with your baking, simple cakes made from what they had. Learned from those who had still remembered the before, passing down their memories.
He had been won over, later.
As the days had slowly grown longer, and then short again. Tentative smiles in the summer turning into excuses to stay just a couple minutes longer - when you showed up on his porch, something saccharine wrapped up in the wicker basket at your elbow.
The memory lingers on his tongue.
As sweet as the taste he had gotten between your thighs no more than a few minutes ago, your little gasp as he had groaned into you.
Unable to resist, as his thumbs had hooked around the elastic waistband of your shorts. Pushing them down your legs, letting them twist near your knees.
Seeing how you already arched for him, legs nudging wider for balance. Waiting for his fingers, but he had dipped - ignoring the dull stretch of his back as his lips had ghosted across yours.
His tongue following, where you’re plush and wet as the tip slipped against your slit. Pretty, he had thought, like he had a hundred times before.
You always were.
Under the sun, with the flash of your teeth, the cock of your head.
When your forehead wrinkled with worry, the urge always rising to press his thumb against them - wiping them away.
In sleep - with the flutter of your eyelashes and soft sigh, as you burrowed against his chest.
Your muscles had tensed - shoulders stiff and thighs trembling as you had taken him. A held breath hissing through teeth, turning into a sharp groan as the tip of his cock nudged its way inside.
As he enveloped himself in you, his own words near-stuttered with the way you immediately clenched down around him. Warm and wet and made for him.
“Come on, honey. You can take it.”
“That’s my good girl.”
That last one had you softening. Unable to hide the way his words affected you, your head lolling against your shoulder as his hips finally pressed flush to yours.
The sight will be one that he thinks of often. That twist of green and grey and red around your waist. The arch of your back, already a little shift of your hips as you encourage him to move.
All that soft skin, not nearly as marred as his. His palm flattened over the curve of your ass, a smack that is more sound than pressure.
Your groan filled the room, as he finally began to move. The soft snap of his hips turning sharp, as the memories had washed over him.
The shift of your arm brings him back, now. Eyes half-closed in bliss, the curl of your shoulder as your hand moves to slip between your legs.
Something pricks at him then, the bite of possession sinking its teeth into his skin. An ache to do this himself.
Though he might not need to - he can tell from the way you meet him, the bitten-back sounds you make, that the move was in desperation.
He should have been paying more attention.
No use thinking about the past, when he’s got you here now.
Joel catches your fingers, a broad hand curling around your wrist. Pinning it back against the floor as his knee drops to the ground again.
“Y’ don’t need it.” His chest presses into your back as he leans over you. Close enough for his stubble to scratch against your cheek, feel his weight as he cages you in, “Can come like this, can’t you?”
He says it like a question, but it’s not. Not really. An edge to his voice, your knees inching wider as they scrape against the floor. As his rhythm ticks up - sharper and faster than his lazy rhythm earlier.
Stroking against that spot inside you. Just a tease before, when his mind had wandered. Now he knows he has you there, right at the edge. Just needing a little more.
Something he’s sure he can give you, if you let him.
“Joel.” His name is broken, whined through your teeth. Laced with awe, as if he hadn’t done the same thing with his fingers - teased at your inner walls until you soaked them.
“I think I’m… oh my god-”
Breathless, as his nose ghosts against your neck. As he pins you further, arching your back more. Open-mouthed kisses pressed to your throat, as he feels you shiver beneath him.
“That’s it.” His teeth scrape skin, a ragged edge to his voice, “Know you are.”
Something that tips close to a plea, with the way he needs to feel it, with the way it punches from his lungs, “Lemme feel you come on my cock, sweetheart. Come on-”
Your fingers squeeze around his, clinging to him. A lifeline, as the feeling swells and then breaks - as he rips your orgasm from you. That warmth around him turning molten and wet as he feels that tight pulse, how you drip down his cock.
Down to where his balls grow tight, a sharp coiling in his belly. A feeling he tries to hold back, but you’re still moaning his name, eyes screwed shut as each pump of his cock draws your pleasure out.
Each thrust pushes the air from your lungs in a pretty gasp, too far gone to do anything but press your cheek to his coat. Hands trapped in his - one still pinned to the floor, the other biting into his wrist.
He’s too busy watching you to notice the way his thrusts have grown sloppy, off-rhythm in the way he’s racing to meet you.
“Fuck-” Joel’s jaw grits. There’s barely enough time for his hips to move - to pull his length from you, leaving you clenching.
Slick with your release as his fingers closes around his cock. Barely managing two pumps of his fist before he’s spilling over the swell of your ass, dripping down damp thighs.
His groan rough and broken in the empty house, panting breaths with the slick slide of his fist as he works himself empty.
Making a mess of you, your skin streaked with him, shining and glossy. It makes him he almost regret starting this here - that he can’t pull you into the shower, and then bed, after.
Instead, he hovers over you until his heart no longer races. Until he can push himself onto unsteady feet, finding an old rag in the kitchen.
Wiping your skin clean, as you sigh - boneless against the worn floor. Content as the sun streaks through the windows, warming patches of bare skin.
Sweat clings to his skin after, leaving him sticky. Heart still fluttering in his chest as you both finally move - backs pressing against the threadbare couch, clothes mostly fixed in place.
Your head presses against his shoulder, a loose little lean as your legs stretch out. Still just as bare as before, his hand curving around your thigh and squeezing.
Letting time pass, for just a little bit longer.
“Tommy said we would stop by for dinner,” You eventually break the silence - flashing a still-dazed smile, as your fingernails scratch into his forearm, “You wanna go? Ellie said she’d meet us there. Think she’s bringin’ a friend.”
So casual in the way you say it - as if they weren’t going to show up with bruised knees, still wearing his shirt. As if your skin wasn’t still stained with him, patches and still-drying streaks he might have missed.
Moving up to rub at the joints that grow sore with the heat and the cold. Such a small thing to remember, but you always do.
“Sounds good.” He sighs into your touch.
It ain’t a barbecue, but it’s close enough.
Joel used to hate this time of year.
But today… it doesn’t seem all that bad.