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Joel’s never cared much for his birthday.
It’s an oddity of his Ellie’s had to do some getting used to. Throughout the approaching weeks, he speaks nothing of it, simply lets the days tick away like digits on a countdown clock, and when it strikes zero, silence. No one speaks, no one moves, no one pokes or pries.
The sun rises and falls on the same moment of silence, and Ellie bows her head along with the rest of them, goes on with her day, does well to slip past the elephant in the room every chance she gets.
For years this method has been tried and true, but it seems something’s shifted in the air this time around. It’s been a peaceful stretch for their little town, quiet outside the walls, bustling within. Resources have been plentiful, and with the holidays approaching, hope is in no short supply.
It’s the easiest decision she’s ever made, joining in when Maria suggests they finally put something together for Joel. Something small, she explains. The simpler, the better. And seeing as it’ll just be the four of them, her and Joel, Maria and Tommy, things should work out just fine. After all, it’s nothing they haven’t done before.
Ellie’s over the moon with the news. They’re each assigned a job. Tommy goes around town, collects the necessary supplies. Maria does the planning, the cooking, the decorating, reinforcing their pledge all throughout, minimal effort. And Ellie’s stuck with the worst role of all, getting him there.
She makes a solid attempt at subtlety.
It’s 6 pm on the day of and Joel’s just hopped out of the shower, drooping with the weight of a hard day’s work. Ellie takes him by the arms as she has many times before, leads him to their bed, makes him lie down, and works her palms into the stiff line of his spine until he’s warm and liquidy beneath her fingers.
He melts further into the mattress with each skilled caress, and moments later, when she takes him into her mouth, he’s no better off. He strokes at the loose strands of her hair, mutters a litany of sweet nothings as she sucks gently at the head of his cock, guiding him slowly, softly over the edge.
The cleanup process should be a quick thing. Two swipes, one for her, one for him. But she draws it out, makes sure the towel is nice and warm before using it on him, follows it up with butterfly kisses until he gives her that weighty look of his.
When she finally asks him to go on a walk, she’s sure she’s got this whole surprise thing in the bag. Maria and Tommy couldn’t have done it better if they tried. She’ll have bragging rights until the end of time.
But the second the words leave her mouth, his demeanor shifts.
“A walk…” he sighs, shoulders slumping, eyes shifting to some far corner of the room.
“Yeah…” Ellie frowns. “A walk.”
“Just a walk?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” Ellie shrugs. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”
The man exhales in what sounds like frustration, gives her a reluctant look. “Not on a night like this.”
Ellie nods. So they’re acknowledging it. “First time for everything.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not doin this.”
“Doing what, Joel?” she asks, anger seeping into her tone. “You don’t even know–”
“I don’t know?” he repeats, brows furrowed. “You think I haven’t seen you scheming around with Maria all week? And if you really wanted to keep this whole thing under wraps, Tommy’s the last person you shoulda told. Idiot can’t stay in a room with me longer than two minutes he’s so damn scared he’s gonna slip up and rat you out.”
“Alright…” The girl makes a mental note to shove her foot up Tommy’s ass the next time she gets the chance. “So you know. Big deal. It was gonna be a small thing anyway.”
“Ellie–”
“It’s just a dinner, I swear. You, me, Maria, and Tommy. That’s all. And Maria and I may have whipped you up a shitty little cake, but that’s it. Nothing fancy, nothing big.”
“I’m not interested,” he insists, cold, inaccessible. “I think I’ve made that pretty clear these past few years. Thought we were past this.”
The girl sighs, exasperated. “How could we be past this when you never talk about it?”
“For good reason.”
“What reason?” she pries. “It’s a dinner, Joel. What are you so afraid of?”
The man inhales long and slow, leans back as if to put as much distance between him and this conversation as possible. His patience is a dwindling thing.
“Nothing good’s ever come of this day. I got no interest in celebratin it. That’s final.”
“Joel, c’mon,” she pleads, chest deflating as the disappointment sets in early. “We really gave this thing our best shot. We weren’t supposed to, but you know we did. All you’ve gotta do is show your face.”
“El, I don’t…” He huffs, trailing off.
He’s grown tired of playing the villain in this dynamic of theirs, being the final obstacle in her course, but it’s the hand he’s been dealt, his assigned role. He can’t change it anymore than she can change hers.
And he certainly can’t make her understand, why this day is better off ignored, how it keeps them both safe, letting it quietly slip by. He never celebrates another birthday and that night stays right where it is, frozen in time. It never catches up to him. He gets to keep this one.
Each time it goes unnoticed, passes without mention, he makes it through another storm with his limbs still intact.
“You don’t what? Joel, you’ve gotta talk to me. Cause from my end, it looks like all you’ve gotta do is show up. Everybody knows birthdays are more for family anyway.”
He tuts. “From your end, huh?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs. She’s not sure how else to look at it, and he refuses to show her how.
“From your end,” he repeats, shaking his head, finding a wry kind of humor in the phrasing. “You ever stopped to think how this whole thing might feel on my end, El? I mean really thought on it?” he asks, eyeing her with a kind of resentment she’s never been on the receiving end of.
She knows better than to reply.
“I’m turnin 60 today,” he says, exhaling the words like a confession. “60. And you’re not even pushin 30. You’re more beautiful every time I look at you and I wake up some mornins wonderin how the hell I did it the day before.” He swipes at his beard, knuckling harshly at the scruff of his jaw, a force of habit.
“It’s a dead-end street, this thing we got goin, and you’re too smart not to know it. So no, it’s not the kinda thing I wanna celebrate. Bein one year closer to you realizin…” He trails off, does them both a favor. “To losin you.”
The statements hit her in waves, swift, unrelenting. She tries to remember to breathe in between.
“And I see the way you look at some of the other kids around town. The way some of em look at you. I’m not blind. I know I’m not it for you, El. And that’s alright. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. I know I should be grateful for what I got, and I am. God knows I am. It just… Fuck, it still gets to me.”
He eludes her gaze as he speaks. This isn’t a moment he wants to remember.
She shakes her head anyway, wears her shock on her face like a polygraph. He’s wrong, wrong and straying further from the truth with each word. She wants to reach out a hand, place it over his mouth, stop him from sentencing her before she’s had the chance to plead her case.
“Joel…” Her heart is in her throat now. She needs him to know. She doesn’t know where to start. “Joel, that’s not–”
“You don’t gotta – Don’t do that.” He stops her. “I don’t need you to – Look, I know this thing between us is on its last leg. I know that. I just wish you had the heart to be a little… a little fuckin quieter about it is all,” he tells her, and then he’s standing, walking, going, like there’s nothing more to be said, closing the door to the moment like her fingers aren’t still in the frame.
She considers following. It's instinct. He goes, she goes. But it wouldn’t do her any good, trailing after him now. They both need time, her to gather her thoughts, her testimony, and him to gather the patience to listen.
______
The days are long, trailing, tedious without the promise of home driving her every step. She has a system. She wakes up bright and early, heads out, makes herself useful, collects tasks like chips on her shoulder, each with a unique weight of its own. And when she finally heads home, it’s only just arrived.
He smiles at her, a foot on the porch step, cracks a joke about the look of her. Thought I’d have to pull my knife for a minute there, he tells her, and before she can finish rolling her eyes he’s got his arms around her, his nose in her hair. Then they’re inside and they’re alone and somewhere between his skin and her own, she loses that extra weight.
She never notices when he does it, never feels the shift. It’s simply there one moment and gone the next. But she knows in her chest and in her bones it’s something he’s done. She’s never been able to shrug it on her own.
This week has been no exception. Since his birthday confessional, Joel’s made himself scarce. For days now, the greater half of their bed has remained undisturbed. She sleeps in sheets warmed by her skin alone and wakes to the same.
He’s a phantom beneath her roof, heard but never seen, and without his special touch, her load accumulates, builds on itself. It’s been years since she’s had to deal with it on her own, and she has no tolerance for it.
Naively, she’d hoped he’d have caved by now, swallowed his pride, felt his way back to her in the dark. She’d have taken him with ease, without thought. And Joel’s never been one for apologies, but skin would make a fine substitute.
A gaze, even, would suffice, from across the common room, while he and Tommy discuss strategy and Jesse hounds her about he and Dina’s latest clash. Or a nod, a conciliatory tip of the hat like the cowboys in those western novels he can’t seem to get enough of.
Anything. She’d have taken anything.
But he never does. It’s not in his nature. It’s her or nothing, and her hands are splintered from how long she’s been lugging around their olive branch.
He’s settling down on the couch for the fourth night in a row when she decides she’s had enough. He’s squinting down into a paperback, feet propped up on the coffee table, the picture of domesticity.
It makes her chest ache, the sight of him like this, beneath the warm glow of the lamp. The dustings of grey along his scalp, the scruff of his jaw, his fingers, long and sure, plucking away at pages.
She feels it now, all at once, a week’s worth of deprivation. She’s been walking around without a limb and no one knows but her.
He stares at her like a stranger when she climbs into his lap, like she’s got no right, and she has to remind herself she’s the only one who does.
“I don’t want anyone else. I never have. You know that, right?” she asks, and he looks at her like he doesn’t. “And I’m sorry about the dinner. I should’ve talked to you about it first. And if you never wanna go there with me, that’s fine. I’ll stop pressing, I swear. But what you said that night, about there being someone else, you’ve gotta know that’s not true.”
She speaks the words with the utmost sincerity, offers them like an open palm, just waiting for him to meet her halfway.
He doesn’t. His fingers remain in his lap, curved tightly into the safety of his fist.
“El, I don’t wanna get into this,” he tells her, gracing every element of the room with his gaze save for her.
She frowns. “You don’t believe me.”
It’s an odd feeling, being on the receiving end of doubt. If one of them has had to play the role of the deceiver throughout the years, it’s never been her. She’s an open book. So much so, in fact, that she’s always felt a bit silly standing next to him, her ten-page storybook with playground illustrations, dwarfed by his multi-volume hardcovers, all under lock and key, of course.
“Do you love me?”
This catches his eye. “You know I do.”
“Yeah, I do.” Her lips lift into something soft. “I’ve never been able to say that about anyone. No one. And at this point, I don’t want to. You take up so much space in here, Joel.” She takes his fist, opens it, lifts it to her chest. “You give me more than enough.”
He fixes her with that weighty look of his, the one that always lingers, and then his fingers are trailing up to her nape and they’re head to head, a breath away.
“I’ve missed you these past few days,” she admits, cradling his fist, sinking into him, letting him feel how much. “Where’ve you been?”
He sighs. “Keepin busy. Only comin home to sleep.”
“I figured… You upset with me?”
He pauses as if to consider, then shakes his head. “Just myself.”
“Why not talk to me then?”
She feels the frown as it forms. “I can’t, El. Not about this.”
“Why?”
He exhales, pulls away. “What was I supposed to say? Sorry for pushin you to leave me. Truth is, I was just scared you were already plannin on it. ”
“You didn’t have to say anything. Could’ve just came to bed, that would’ve been a start. Joel, how could I ever leave you?”
He scowls. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like–”
“What? Act like what? What do you want me to say?” she asks, tone heating. “Yeah, you’re old, Joel. You’ve got thirty-something years on me, and oftentimes, it shows. Is that what you wanna hear? Is that better?”
He says nothing, eyes cutting into her.
“Wanna know what else you are? You’re my first time, my first love, my first… my first.” She rests her hands on his neck, wondering if perhaps her sincerity would be better conveyed through touch. “No one else has ever seen me like this. No one else ever will. No one else will ever touch me like you do, have me like you do. I’m yours. You’re the only person that gets this from me. You’re the only person that deserves it.”
He won’t hold her gaze, never can in moments like these, but she can feel his pulse rising beneath her palm.
The man’s never been one for words, for softness, the gooey concoction you get when you mix the two. It’s a facet of him she initially found endearing, but with time, less so.
She remembers her first attempt at merging them. She was just a girl then, fourteen and brimming with an affection she couldn’t yet put into words. Still, she tried. Fumbling through a confession, not of love, not yet, but of gratitude, a safer bet.
Though, with Joel, not safe enough.
He sat through her little speech. No one’s ever done so much for me , she said, and she meant it. His devotion, then, as a stranger, awes her to this day. I’ll go anywhere in the world with you.
Then he responded in kind, gave just enough to placate, to bring the moment to a close, and in the week that followed, he could hardly bring himself to look at her.
Another facet of Joel.
He hates eyes on him. Glancing, staring, studying, it never fails to set him on edge. He has no tolerance for it, but it’s all she does. She can’t help herself. She’s never had so much.
She looks at him now, her lucky strike, and feels a familiar crowding in her chest.
His eyes, dim and weighty, shadows of a past she’ll never know. Though she’s sure she could catch a glimpse, if only she could hold them for a moment longer. Maybe that’s why they’re always running from her. Maybe she’s better off.
And the surrounding lines, they’re no different. Every stressful little indent, a story never told, a stranger she never forgets to kiss goodnight.
But his lips, they’re a special case. She knows them well. There isn’t a part of her that doesn’t. And the snowy strands just below, where frost has overtaken earth, she knows them too.
“You’re so beautiful,” she says, because she has to. And when he shifts away a fraction, furrows his brow, mutters her name like a warning, she doubles down. “You are.”
She puts her mouth on his like she’s been meaning to for days, does away with any further distance. She strokes her fingers along his scalp, gives her tongue the company it’s been craving, and it’s not long before his hands rise to their rightful place.
His grip on her hips is solid, sure. He may have his doubts, but his body knows as well as hers where it belongs.
“You’re so strong,” she says as he pulls away, gets his lips on her neck. “You’re all I want, all I think about.” He sucks at her skin tenderly, like he hears her, like a reward. “Tell me you believe me.”
“Show me,” he says instead, and then he’s tugging at her sweats, her panties, dragging them off of her, and she’s helping him.
She takes his hand, brings it to the place she’s missed him most. “Feel,” she tells him, and he does, glides his fingers along her seam, where she’s soft, warm, and wet, where he knows her inside and out. “Look what you do to me,” she says, and it shouldn’t still stagger him the way it does, the correlation.
His presence, his touch, begetting this, he still struggles with it.
But she’s always there, his brave girl, with enough heart for the both of them, enough patience to remind him.
“You take such good care of me. You’re so good to me,” she exhales, and she’s at his ear now, breathing life into his cock. “Can I, please?” She drags her palm along his bulge, lets him hear what it does to her. “Can I touch it? Just a little?”
And she knows she can have it, of course she does, but she wants him to watch her beg, needs him to know that if she had to, she would. And it’s been a while since she’s needed to, but she remembers her roots. She’s never too big to say please.
He groans, concedes, chases her touch. There isn’t a man alive that wouldn’t.
Then her hands are on him, firm and sure, no less than his own, and he’s half the man he was moments ago.
“You’re so hard, so big,” she moans, soft and sweet, and he finds solace in the crook of her neck, out of sight. She has him down to a science. Simple words, token praise. Cheap, easy, pitiful.
He needs to hear it, more often than he’d like to admit, that he’s enough, that he’s still what she wants, that he still does it for her. And he’s never asked, never once. But she knows, she always knows.
“You’re so good,” she says, and he needs her to show him. She knows that too.
“You want me to put it inside?”
He’s got his hands under her shirt, stroking over her waist. “Please, baby.”
She drags him through her slit, coats him in her arousal, gets him nice and wet – a reminder of what he’s been missing, what he never has to.
“It’s yours, you know that?” She asks him with sincerity. “You’re the only one.”
He nods. “I know.”
“Say it.” She needs to hear it. She needs him to remember.
“I’m the only one.”
It shouldn’t please him the way it does, but it does. Knowing that even after he’s long gone, he’ll be her first and last, her only.
It’s the pinnacle of privilege, and he’s not sure if he’ll ever be worthy of it, but he can try.
When she finally takes him in, he gives thanks to a god he doesn’t believe in.
He’s always loved it like this, her on top, riding, trembling, taking. He loves getting to see it, how much pleasure she’s able to seep from him, how much she needs it, no less than him.
No better off, his girl. They’re just the same.
He wants her bare. “Let me see you,” he tells her, and she knows exactly what he means, he so often requests it.
At the best of times, kneeling between her thighs for the very first time, her very first undoing. And at the worst of times, tugging her aside on a late night stroll, far off from the town square, but never far enough, slipping his hands beneath her shirt like he does now, breathing hushed pleas into her neck. Let me see you. Holding her in his palms, kneading with restraint. Please, baby, let me see.
And convenient or not, she’s never been able to tell him no. She tugs up her shirt, tosses it, lets him see her in full.
She’s all skin now, a perfect display. He’s level with her chest, his kryptonite, these smooth, creamy mounds, pretty, pink pebbles. He puts his mouth on them, holds her steady, suckles like he wants for sustenance.
It’s a snug kind of comfort, having her like this, holding home in his hands, his lap, between his teeth. It tugs at something in the both of them. It’s the only time she calls him baby .
And it always does it for him, hearing the word on her tongue.
He drags his palms along her ass, strokes, grasps, dimples the flesh, guides her along his cock, reminds her how he likes it. She whines at the feeling, and he groans into her chest as she picks up on his chosen rhythm.
He’s closer than he’d like to be, satisfied from all ends. She’s so tight around him, feels so good in his hands, in his mouth. He’s never been able to hold off, not with her.
He feels her climbing, spasming around him, crying his name like she’s splitting right down the middle, like it’s all his fault, and he’s close, too close.
“Baby, hop off,” he sighs, squeezing at her thighs, giving her the signal. She knows the drill.
“It’s okay,” she says, and the words come too quickly. He thinks she’s misheard him. He goes to repeat himself.
“El–”
“I want you to,” she cuts him off, pink with arousal, and the look he gives her is stony.
“El, I’m serious.” His grip tightens on her waist.
“So am I,” she tells him, and she’s still at it, still riding, trembling, taking.
“Hop off,” he grits, firmer this time. “I mean it.” He goes to stand, to lift her, but she resists, puts more force behind it than he expects, more than he’s ever used on her. Then she’s wrapping her legs around him, clinging like she’s willing to fight him on it, and he’s not fit for much of anything right now, let alone a spar.
“Stop,” she pleads, like the roles are reversed, like he’s the one above her, taking what he wants, disregarding her protests, crossing every line they’ve drawn in the sand.
It shouldn’t feel as good as it does.
She tells him to stop, and god help him, he does. He’s never had to tell her no, not like this. He has no protections put in place. She moves atop him like she has every right, and down to his bones, it feels like she does.
She grinds into his lap hard and slow, lets the feeling wash over him languidly, lets it trail on, just how he likes it.
“Please, baby,” he begs, because he can’t, he can’t be the one. He doesn’t have it in him. It’s her or nothing.
“I want you to,” she says again, soft and sweet, even in this. “You want to, right?” she asks, and he does, he does. He’s losing his grip. She’s his home. How could he not?
“It won’t take.” The words are a last-ditch effort, they both know it.
“That’s okay.” She doesn’t mind.
Then he’s spilling into her for the very first time, coming apart with her walls caging him in, milking him dry, and it’s never felt this good, never once. Not with anyone. He squeezes at her hard enough to bruise as it hits him, like she’s not of this world, like she’ll dissipate if he doesn’t hold her steady.
And he doesn’t want it to take. He doesn’t. But he pulls her down onto him, thrusts up, fucks her hard, deep, full, like he needs it to.
He regains his bearings slowly when he finally comes down. He pulls away, leans back to look at her, and when he catches her eye, she’s hesitant, cautious, treading lightly, but she’s not ashamed. She never is, his brave girl, his little lionheart.
He could be upset, could give her another week of silence, more, even. He’d be justified. It was a rash move, the stunt she just pulled, one without thought, one she may very well regret.
But what’s done is done, and they’re in the thick of it now. He doesn’t want to be without her, not for another week, not for another second.
He sighs, traces a thumb along her brow, across her cheek, and watches as relief pours into her. Her eyes fall closed as she deflates, melts into the phantom touch.
“What am I gonna do with you?” he asks, and it’s not the kind of question you answer, but she shrugs anyway, tells him she doesn’t mind. As long as she’s his, as long as he’s hers.