To the Light { a joel miller fanfiction }

Chapter Five - Crash

"since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid"
― E.E. Cummings, E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962

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Adeline stood in the cramped confines of her bathroom, adjusting the little headband she was wearing so it didn't make the top of her hair crimp and stand up.

Her costume was relatively low effort— just a black dress and a headband that she had glued felt cat ears to the top of. She didn't really want to go to this party, but she'd promised both Ellie and Laura that she'd be there, and in a town as small as Jackson, her absence would be noticed.

She didn't think Joel would be there, despite him telling her that he would, which made her dread the whole thing even more. It'd been four days since he'd almost kissed her in his kitchen. Since he'd dragged her up the length of his body, latched his big hand to her jaw, and almost, almost given her what she wanted, what she needed, what she craved with an intensity so profound and vital that when Ellie had burst through the door and Joel had released her, she'd felt something inside of her die. It was still there, rotting away behind her ribs, heavy and cold, its decaying, corrupt form constantly expanding, possessing more and more of her as time dragged on.

He hadn't spoken to her since that evening, she hadn't even seen him, hadn't felt the weightiness of his form beckoning her from somewhere in the shadows. It was like he was gone.

Even his house felt barren and empty when she walked by it every day on her way to school. The warmth that normally radiated from it was dulled, masked by a heavy absence that made her feel untethered, adrift again, like her feet were no longer on solid ground.

She didn't understand, then, why it had felt— in that brief moment when he'd lifted her into his arms— like he wanted her just as desperately. Had that solely been a lapse in sanity? A fleeting moment of weakness? Maybe... but god, it hadn't felt like it at the time. How quickly he'd cleared the space between them, the way he'd crushed her to his chest, how his warm eyes had gone all liquidy, needy and hungry, none of it aligned with some momentary flicker of lust. It felt like the result of something that had been building, simmering, something deeply rooted between them that neither of them could escape or dismiss.

And yet here he was, dismissing it by completely disappearing.

She was almost mad at him if the whole of her hadn't been overcome by such crippling shame.

Of course he doesn't want you, random broken woman, too young and naive and cowardly for someone like him, someone who commands the space around him, someone who looks like he could move mountains.

She'd thought about asking Ellie, inquiring whether or not her instincts were correct, and he had run off somewhere, but she didn't want to dig information out of his daughter. That wasn't right and the last thing she wanted to do was make Ellie think that the only reason she talked to her, hung out with her, was because of her dad.

So, she was confined to silently wonder, to ache each day she passed his desolate house, to conjure the gruff sound of his voice, his hands on her skin, the desperate look in his eyes each night she when laid down and slid her hand into her panties to frantically circle her clit while she wished it were his hand, all big and rough and strong, making her cum.

She'd never wanted anyone like this, never had the chance to, was always too busy focusing on things that were more dire than pleasure. Surviving, escaping, running. She'd slept with a few men back in Kansas City, but it had always been rushed and sloppy and more out of convenience and the necessity to touch and be touched than anything else. And furthermore... she knew, deep down, that even if she had been able to rest, even if pleasure had been something she had the privilege to focus on, there wouldn't have been another. It was just Joel that she wanted like this. Could only be Joel. Like his name had been written on her bones, carved deep into her chest, from the very beginning.