Chapter Text
Winter 2033
“Come on, let me see it,” Ellie demands, using that pinprick, know-it-all voice of hers that annoyed the hell out of Joel when they first met.
Now he’s just grateful she's talking again.
They're five days and several miles out from Silver Lake; the first two having been spent with Ellie haunting his side, still and silent as a ghost against the snowy mountainscape. No whistling. No humming. Not even an occasional smart-ass comment. It was actually a relief on the third day when she crawled into his arms and buried her wet face in the crook of his throat to smother her sobs.
Haggard, Joel tries waving her off physically and verbally: “It's fine.”
It's definitively not fine.
He’s swallowed enough oxy that his vision is vignetting, but his stab wound is still throbbing in agony. Every shallow inhale amounts to slow torture. He's been negligent about taking care of himself, and she damn well knows it.
Ignoring his feeble protests, Ellie tuts her lips and pushes on his shoulder, urging him back onto the thin mattress they've been huddled up on side by side all evening. The ceiling is spinning so much that he shoves an arm out to stop it. When that doesn't work, he closes his eyes and rests his forearm over his face, regretting his brilliant decision to wash down narcotics with whiskey.
Rustling noises echo around the dusty one-room cabin: floorboards groaning, a pack zipping and unzipping, pills rattling, the rickety cot creaking beneath her weight. A moment later she's melting into his space, straddling his hips.
Joel's sluggish fingers move to help her unbutton his shirt, but she bats them away. He chuckles softly and opens his eyes to see her grinning down at him.
“We take care of each other, remember? You've been bearing the brunt of the load. It's my turn.”
Before he has a chance to object, an icicle-sharp chill racks through his body. He stifles his cry of pain into a contorted grimace, but it doesn't escape Ellie's keen eye; her bottom lip sticks out into a pout he finds adorable, even now. He reaches out to… he's not sure why he reaches out; he just does. It's an instinct. An automatic response.
One that's interrupted when she catches his wrist and pins it to his side. The cool back of her opposing hand presses against his forehead. Narrowing her eyes, she lets out a low “hmph.”
Joel gives a dazed shake of his head. “I'm not delirious. I'm just…”
“Drunk?” Ellie offers playfully, smirking down at him. It's even prettier than her pout. She pushes dark locks of hair damp with snow and sweat away from his eyes. Her fingertips brushing over his ears sparks a pleasant warmth behind his breastbone, counterbalancing the cold pain from below.
“Slightly inebriated.”
“Sure.” He can hear her eyeroll in the incredulous tone of her voice. “I need to change your bandages. Think you can manage to hold still for me, tough guy?”
“For you, kiddo?” He smiles stupidly and gives her a quick wink. “Anything.”
She scoffs. Almost a laugh. “You're such a dork,” she mutters softly, the insult spilling like a fond endearment from her upturned lips.
Things are running smoothly—up until the dreaded antiseptic. He can tell she's using as gentle a touch as she can, but no amount of tenderness in the world can temper the sting of isopropyl pouring into an open gash.
His torso twists, lifting slightly off of the cot. She grabs at his waist to steady him, and her thumb edges into his waistband, sending the warmth in his chest burning down to where her fingers are splayed out over his hip bone. Suddenly the only feeling he's conscious of is her palm branding his skin.
He holds himself still. Very, very still. Any movement might nudge her thumb deeper into his boxers. Ellie’s tiny fingers curl against his hip, and he's trying so hard not to move, but his body's reaction is involuntary; his cock swells, searching for something wet and warm and tight. Something he hasn't felt in months.
The harder Joel tries to ignore it, the harder his unruly dick grows. His pelvis rolls against every warning his brain is sending south, trying to sneak around his conscientious objections. If I drank more whiskey, this wouldn't be a problem, he thinks ruefully, grinding his teeth together.
Once he thinks he finally has things under control, she presses down to adhere the gauze to his skin, and his hips jump, inadvertently brushing her smooth thumb against the engorged head of his cock. A ragged, embarrassed grunt splits through his lips, pulling all the blood that's not currently rushing to fill his dick to the surface of his face.
Jesus H. Christ.
The mortifying moment is over in an instant. His frame sags with profound relief simmering in shameful disappointment. It felt so fucking good.
“I'm almost done,” Ellie assures him as she finishes applying fresh dressing, sounding very much herself and not like grazing the tip of his penis has left her with life-altering trauma, the likes of which she'll never recover from.
Joel breathes a little easier. Maybe she didn’t notice. Or maybe she doesn't even know what it is. Dear God. Does she even know what it is? Is giving her “The Talk” one of my new responsibilities?
Selfishly absorbed in his own thought spiral, it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize Ellie hasn't moved. She's looking down between them, her bright eyes frozen in their sockets. Thankfully it's not the haunted, thousand-yard stare he's become accustomed to her wearing over the last few days… but it's close.
Concerningly close.
He remembers a time, not too long ago, when every emotion she felt was splashed across her face like a living watercolor painting. It's hard to reconcile that lively little girl with the solemn, serious thing perched in his lap. But he's trying. She deserves to still feel like herself after everything she's endured.
“Hey, Joel?”
“Mhm?”
“Do you remember when I said he tried to…” Joel can feel the blood drain from his face and his dick. He must look every bit as distressed as he feels because Ellie starts waving her hands around in a panic, explaining and over-explaining, “He didn't! But I think I would have been less scared if I knew what to expect. In theory, I know what sex is–”
“That's not what sex is,” he mumbles, lightheaded. The knot of tension in his chest returns, winding tighter. He's somehow both too drunk and not drunk enough to be having this conversation.
“—but in practice, I don't. And it's the not knowing that's really freaking me out–”
“Ellie…”
“—and I'm not asking you to, like, do anything to me, I just want to see one up close. I'm sure Bill's magazines were like the women's magazines dumb-ass guys traded back at my dorm: all shiny and fake. I–”
“Ellie,” he rasps louder. He goes to rest a hand on her knee, but she flinches away like she doesn't know who he is. When she settles back, her eyebrows are scrunched together apologetically. “Nothing like that is ever gonna happen to you again.”
Her face hardens. “You don't know that! You can't. I've seen how dark the world is now. You won't always be there to protect me.”
Joel wants to tell her that's not true. That she is God's living proof that good, pure things exist. That the world is irrefutably a bright place because she's in it. Unfortunately, there's a gaping hole where he should be able to find those words, a mind-numbing slurry of pills and booze filling its place and making his head swim.
Instead, he croaks out a weak compromise: “It can be.”
Her hands glide down from where they've been anxiously rubbing her thighs to rest on each side of his waist. “Can I just…see it?” She gestures to the fly of his jeans. Casually. Like she's asking him to pass the salt and not commit what in more civilized days would have been classified as a felony.
Joel takes a deep breath in through his nose. Attempts to count to ten. Loses track at four. Lets out a deep sigh. When he does finally speak, he tries to sound like taking a hammer to the head would be less painful than having this very frank discussion.
“Someday—when you're older, much older—you'll feel comfortable enough with a boy that it'll just happen naturally. Okay?” Hopefully by then I'll be resting comfortably in a deep, dark grave.
Ellie huffs out a bitter scoff. “That's never going to happen.”
“You're a catch. Any boy—”
“I don't like boys,” she snaps. “At least, I haven't liked one yet. I like…” Her bangs brush against her flushed cheeks as she averts her eyes. “...girls.”
Oh. Well. “That's okay—”
“Not when it comes to this!”
“Ellie–”
She interrupts him, again , speaking in one long breath that overlaps her words, slurring them together, “I'mnevergoingtofeelmorecomfortablewithaboythanIfeelwithyou.” When she's done, her chest rises and collapses in large heaves beneath hunched shoulders.
This is a bad, foolhardy, and potentially dangerous idea. And yet, something dark and equally dangerous swells in his chest.
“Just a peek?”
Ellie's head bobs up and down enthusiastically.
“Oh-kay,” Joel hears his own hoarse voice say before he can allow any logical thoughts to catch up to him.
At the ready for his submission, she ducks down until he can feel her breath dampening the fabric of his jeans, hot and heavy against his skin. It's all surprisingly clinical at first; the button popping and zipper hissing. There's an awkward song and dance as he lifts his hips so she can slide down his pants. He does a little shimmy and she giggles under her breath.
Her shaking fingers hook into his boxers. This is happening. This is really happening.
In a moment of clarity, he snatches her wrists. They pause to look at each other, silently communicating:
Joel raises his eyebrows. Are you sure?
Ellie drags in a long breath and dips her chin. Yes.
The second he releases her, she lifts the weak elastic away from his skin and begins slowly exposing his barely-erect cock, her eyes widening by small increments until they're cartoonishly large and staring directly at it with shameless curiosity. Her lips purse as her gaze roves over him, but her slight frown isn’t necessarily bad. It's serious. Focused. He's a puzzle and she's attempting to gather all the pieces in her mind before making her first move.
It makes him wary.
She shouldn't be thinking about making any moves.
Joel clears his throat. “Okay, you've got your eyeful—”
“Hold up a sec…” Ellie tilts her head to the side, studying him at a new angle, and her mouth opens, revealing a pink slip of tongue. It darts out to wet her lips, shining under the moonlight creeping in through the grungy window above his head. Guilt laps up the back of his throat as desire blooms white-hot under his skin, twisting his insides with reluctant want. A violent throb of pleasure pumps into his cock.
“It gets bigger than this?” Ellie gasps, beyond gobsmacked.
Joel smirks, those five words granting his ego a generous boost that's swiftly cut off at the knees by his own clear-headedness – Of course she's impressed. She's never seen one before, you old fuckin’ pervert.
Still, he can't help sounding smug when he drawls, “It does indeed.”
“How…” Her gaze flickers between his face and hardening cock with naive wonder. “How much bigger?”
His desire cools. This has gone too far, and escalated too quickly. He oughta put a stop to it. Now.
“Ellie, this isn't—”
“Show me.” It's a demand, said in that authoritative tone that he's starting to find less and less cute and more irresistible. “Please,” she adds with a derisive little huff like the word is being pulled from her teeth with pliers. It's the most like herself she's sounded in days.
His conviction dissolves like paper being eaten away by flames.
For a passing moment he's truly terrified of how willing he is to please her. The lengths he'll go to to make her happy. Not even a hundred pounds soaking wet and barely passing five-feet, yet she holds the power to crack his iron-hard will in two with just a single word.
He hopes she'll be merciful.
“Okay, I need to…” Joel starts to sit up, but the soul-sucking pain below his ribs and a firm hand on his sternum force him back down.
“Tell me how.” Another order. Ellie's voice aches with eagerness. She wants this. She really wants this. And, well…it's not like he's making her.
“Spit in your hand.”
The lewd sound of saliva hitting skin heats the back of his neck.
“Now what?”
“Grip it like you would grip a gun—”
A giggle cuts him off, light and crisp and depressingly alien. Shit, when was the last time he heard her laugh out loud like this? Weeks ago, probably.
“Fucking hell, Joel. Of course you would compare your dick to a gun.”
He smiles. “It seemed like an apt metaphor. Now, put your thumb around the base and curl your fingers like–” The pads of her fingertips press into the clammy skin of his shaft, and he almost chokes on his own gasp.
“Like this?”
“Yeah. Jus’ a little more pressure. Here…” Joel dwarfs her hand in his own, squeezing tighter and smearing her cool spit around until it warms, thick and hot in her snug grip. Then he guides her fist up and down in liquid strokes, letting his hand fall away once she picks up the pace on her own. Beguiled, his eyes are stuck on the gap where her flexing fingers fail to close around him. The thrill of it makes him nauseous and dizzy, like drinking too fast on an empty stomach. It doesn't take her long to have him at full-mast.
Ellie swallows. Audibly. “That's supposed to fit inside of someone?”
A strained chuckle rumbles up through his chest. “That's the idea, yeah.”
At her lack of response, he raises his gaze to her face. It's gone pale, her eyes wide, deep, and ringed with an emotion he's come to know too intimately over the last few days:
Fear.
“There are things to do beforehand to… prepare. Ways of warming a woman up, getting her ready so it slides in nice and easy.”
Her wrist starts moving faster, like she's trying to distract herself, twisting on the way down and pulling a groan from him that encourages her to repeat the move again. And again. And fuck if he's not pumping carelessly into her slick hold, putting his stitches at risk as the tension in his spine coils and his pulse climbs.
“What kinds of things?” Ellie asks conversationally, her voice faded by the ringing of his pulse in his ears. He sighs, arching into her touch as she braces a hand on his hip to keep him still. He's not sure anyone has ever touched him with this much consideration.
Joel's brain stutters. “All kinds of things.”
“Geez, that's helpful. Name three.”
Tess edges herself into his mind, that last time he fucked her, bending her over a sink and bargaining gruffly with her to be quiet because the precious “cargo” she insisted they pick up was sleeping soundly on the other side of the door, a closed switchblade clutched to her heart like a teddy bear. His own heart aches as he recalls Tess slotting their fingers together, slipping them into a crumbling public bathroom, pressing her against the wall to kiss her, his warm hands darting under her shirt.
He wanted to cradle her head gently to keep it from touching the filthy tile as he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips before pushing inside. Then he remembered who he was. What they were.
He didn't.
“Kissin’ and touchin’ and…”
Joel thinks about how he dropped to his knees. About how wet Tess already was, high on the electric adrenaline that pushed her arousal higher with each firefight, their captive audience of one making it impossible for her to seek relief until she was soaking her denim. About the heady taste of her as she ground her clit against his tongue. But, more than that, he thinks about her raspy, desperate voice; praising, begging, cursing.
“...Talkin’.”
“Talking?” Ellie snorts, arching an eyebrow and fixing him with her most sarcastic look. He wants to hold her face in his hands. “How sexy. So, for research purposes, how do you… measure up? Next to other guys, I mean.”
“This really ain't appropriate.”
“Uh, dude. I think we're way past ‘ appropriate.’ And if you don't give me an answer, I'll be forced to draw my own conclusions and assume you're on the smaller side, which is an objectively horrifying prospect–”
“Bigger than most, smaller than some,” Joel grumbles modestly.
Ellie exhales another tinkling laugh and whistles. "Now we're talking.”
She pauses to spit on his cock, letting a string of saliva descend slowly from her parted lips. Grinning merrily, she watches it spill down the underside of his shaft. He can't see it, but he can feel it pooling where the root meets his balls. He shudders and fails to stifle a moan, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. It's almost unstoppable, the urge to take himself in hand. Squeeze the tip. Just an ounce of pressure, something–
Then her hand is back on him, clenching tighter to regain her grip. Her tugs are a little clumsy. A little slow. But she's obviously enjoying her exploration, and he's enjoying her smile too much to interrupt. Slippery pre-cum pulses from the slit of his cock and his heart slams into his throat. He doesn't want her to see it, it's too much. He's going to scare her—
Her index finger glides through the clear fluid. Gleaming on her fingertip, she rubs it experimentally between her thumb, regarding it carefully with squinted eyes like she's a scientist who’s just discovered a new periodic element.
Then she pops it into her mouth.
Her strokes have gotten lazy and distracted—soft, short tugs—but when he watches her baby cheeks hollow out as she sucks, humming appraisingly at the taste of him, he knows his orgasm is imminent. There's no going back.
He needs to warn her, or at least explain it to her in terms she can understand. But his mind is slipping into a hot haze, laced with throbbing, unbridled lust. “Ellie, if you keep doing that, I'm going to…You see, when sexual gratification reaches its peak—” A second hand curls around him, meeting and twisting in unison with the first. Christ Almighty. There's nothing clumsy or slow about the way she's working him with both hands, staring down at his dick with her brows pulled together in fiery determination.
“You're gonna come?” Ellie says excitedly, reminding him of the unforgettable ‘why are the pages all stuck together?’ quip she made in the back of Bill's truck. She appears to have a grasp on the rudimentary concept of what's supposed to happen at least.
His abs tighten, drawing the tender flesh around his stitches taut and steeping his pleasure in pain. “Yuh,” Joel grunts, thighs twitching.
“Can I watch?” she asks eagerly, her sharp eyes meeting his and holding firm like a knife pressed to his throat, slicing deeper with each ragged breath. "Pleeease," she adds with a soft, impatient whine.
It's not like either of them has a choice at this point.
He gives her a stiff nod and she shifts closer. Her warm breath teases the throbbing tip of his cock as she mutters, “I don't think I could ever fit something that big inside of me.”
The illicit visual that floods his brain sends a bolt of arousal zapping down his spine that explodes as it reaches his core, tightening his balls before relief rushes over him like shattering through the surface of ice cold water. He gasps for air like a drowning man as cum splashes high across his chest, his fingers scrabbling at her knees in a desperate attempt to anchor himself to something solid. Ellie angles him thoughtfully away from his fresh dressing, pumping him through his orgasm.
After the screeching of the cot beneath his shaking quiets, the room lapses into silence. It drags on, sharp and stinging. A slap on the cold air.
Any satisfaction he feels is short-lived; shame nibbles at his consciousness through the veil of his opioid stupor, the revolting realization of what just happened piercing through it in sharp, staticky pricks.
Jesus Christ, he can still feel her little fingers squeezing around his cock. Overstimulated and oversensitive, it's almost too much. More hot cum oozes from the tip and trickles over her knuckles, aiding his feverish humiliation.
When Joel finally lifts his weary eyes to face her, Ellie is flushed hot pink and trembling, breath coming out in short little puffs. She unpeels a hand to wipe at the sweat beading on her forehead, grimacing once she notices it's slick with saliva and semen. His semen.
He feels sick and dirty. Unclean. And his fifth has spilled onto Ellie, infecting her.
His numb, uncoordinated fingers fumble to tuck himself away.
“Wait, your stitches! I'll get it.”
Head spinning, Joel squeezes his eyes shut against her attentions. Unless he wants to keep lying there with his cock out – damp and soft against his belly – there's nothing else he can do. The cool press of the wet rag. Her low, soothing voice urging him to stay still. The gentle way she redresses him. He doesn't deserve it. Any of it.
The bottle of whiskey on the windowsill above his head whispers to him through the darkness, promising to blunt the barbed edges of his pain. All he has to reach behind him for that sweet single-malt salvation that Ellie malevolently refers to as “assoline”.
But Joel is paralyzed. It's like the weight of her slight frame is pressing down on his chest, pinning his arms down with her lean legs. Crushing him.
In reality, she's flitting around him cautiously, tucking herself between his body and the wall. After spreading a scratchy woolen blanket over them, Ellie pulls his lax arm around her waist, prompting him to curl lazily around her, notching her head under his chin per their new nightly routine. It's only practical, after all; sharing body heat.
He keeps his eyes closed. Lets the screaming wind and soft creaking of rotting wood fade into the background as he focuses on her choppy breathing. Normally by the time they collapse into whatever makeshift sleeping arrangements they've cobbled together, she's already half-asleep.
He should have known tonight wouldn't be like every other night.
Tonight she's restless. Squirming and shifting, her bony shoulder digs into his chest at a new angle every few seconds. A strangled half-breath, half-groan grinds through her lips, setting his teeth on edge.
“Are you alright?” Joel manages to ask after several failed attempts to pull his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Yeah, yeah. I'm just kind of warm and… sticky.” Ellie draws one of his legs between her own, and even through the layers of clothing separating their skin, he can feel the sultry heat of her core grinding against his thigh. The term she's obviously searching for cleaves to the forefront of his mind: horny. “You know I've never, uh, never done that before.”
“I kind of gathered that.”
They're pressed so close together, he can feel every raspy hitch in her breathing and slight shift of her body. “No, I mean what you did. I've never…” She rocks against him and clenches her thighs, squeezing and relaxing, trying to act out the words she can't bring herself to say.
“Had an orgasm?” he whispers into her ear. Smoke from the fire they burned earlier is trapped in the strands of her hair, tickling his nose as he breathes.
“Yeah.” She leans back and he moves with her so she's draped halfway over his chest, still twisted around his leg. “At least, I-I don't think I have. I would know, right?”
He thinks he's choking on air. “You would know.”
“I've tried a few times, but it just feels off. At best, I feel nothing. At worst, it kinda hurts.”
“It takes practice. You'll get there eventually.”
“I thought…I thought, maybe, you could teach me?”
No. Nope. Absolutely not. The slope he's barreling down isn't just slippery; it's a goddamn oil slick. Being a passive participant in Ellie's sexual exploration was bad enough. Passive? You shot a load all over yourself like a goddamn teenager.
The hand he has curled beneath her glides under her shirt, and she shivers as his calloused fingertips brush across her abdomen. Then she squeals as he gives her a chiding pinch at what little of her waist there is. “I really don't think that's a good idea, kiddo.”
She twists in his arms, tilting her chin to give him a pleading look, those round puppy-dog eyes putting in overtime. “Oh, come on! You could just start me off. It probably wouldn't even take you that long. I know you're really good at it.” She's laying it on thick, but there's a certainty underlining the statement that gives him pause. It's more earnest than simple flattery.
Foreboding dread sinks in his stomach. “Ellie, what makes you say that?”
She flashes him a guilty grin. “Remember when you and Tess snuck off and left me sleeping on those subway benches? ” Oh no. Oh no no no— “Well, I wasn't actually asleep. I kind of… followed you.”
Joel groans from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Don't worry! I didn't see anything, but it certainly sounded like you knew what you were doing.”
“You shouldn't have heard anything. Stuff like that ain't for kids, which, contrary to what you believe, you still are. Look, what you're feeling is normal. Experimenting with your own body is normal. But doing this kind of thing with adults is—” A thought so sinister it curdles his blood latches onto his mind. He tightens his grip on her waist and drops his voice to a serious whisper, “Has another adult ever touched you that way?”
“What? Like—ew.” Her features scrunch up, like the thought of anyone – anyone but him – touching her is disgusting and shakes her head. “No.”
“Oh, thank God,” he breathes, his voice heavy with relief as he pulls her closer when he really ought to be pushing her away.
Her tentative fingers find his hand. “I just thought, ya know, I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I jerk you off, you…” She strokes the inside of his wrist. “It only seems fair.”
He freezes. Did she plan all of this? Make him feel indebted to her so she could swoop in and—
No.
Ellie's smart as a whip and clever to boot, but she's not manipulative. She doesn't scheme. Hell, she rarely even plans. He'll be strategizing how to take out a room full of armed assholes while she's already plowing through the front door, guns blazing. “What?” she'd shrug innocently afterwards, surrounded by the lifeless corpses of said assholes. “I knew we could take ‘em.”
Her proposition is heat-of-the-moment organic. And there's something tempting about it; her fingers tracing the veins of his arm as she wriggles in his lap, begging him to get her off. Plus, maybe it will cancel out what just happened. An even exchange.
“It only seems fair.”
Is he really going to let her boss him around? He's an adult. She's a child. He knows nothing good can come out of this. Nothing good at all.
But…the way Ellie’s looking at him right now, it's all pitiful politeness that slips every now and then, revealing just a hint of cockiness. A momentary uptick of her lips. A flicker in her eyes. Because she knows something, too: He'd do anything for her.
“Please?”
Ah, screw it.
Joel covers her hand with his and guides it down the flat plane of her belly, slipping their joined hands into her underwear. The supple flesh of her thighs brushes past, but he maintains a barrier with her hand; his fingers covering her knuckles. He knows she's found the right spot when she sucks in a sharp breath. He puts the faintest amount of pressure on her clit and she cries out, jerking her whole body.
“How does that feel?” He could get this over with fast, but he'd rather do it right. Take his time to show her what he's doing. Teach her how to do it herself, the way she asked.
“I…” She swallows and he watches her jaw go slack. “I saw this old cartoon once where a cat shoves a fork into a live socket and gets electrocuted. It feels like what I imagine that felt like, but in the best fucking way.”
I'll take that as a positive.
“You say the word, and we stop. Alright?”
“Sure, whatever,” she replies dismissively. “Now could you kindly hurry the fuck up?”
He starts to trace slow circles, pressing harder and lighter, wider then tighter, gauging what she likes best based on her delightful and near-constant commentary: “Oh, oh fuuck. That's…wow. Holy—holy shit.”
After a couple minutes of experimenting, she's fully in control, but he still keeps his hand over hers; he doesn't want to distract her. That's all. It's not like the thought of not touching her makes him want to die. She squirms around and the tips of his fingers overlapping hers slip lower, grazing the apex of her soaked slit. She keens out a breathy, broken sound before going still.
He waits for her to start moving again.
And waits.
And waits.
“Are you okay?”
“I…I've never felt this empty before.”
His dick stirs with the immediate urge to remedy her problem, his mind screams at him to stop this conversation in its tracks, and his traitorous mouth asks, “What do you want?”
Several breaths pass through her lips before she answers his question with a question, “The angle would be awkward for me; could you…?”
“You need to tell me, Ellie.” He doesn't mean for his words to bite out in a clipped growl, but this is serious. He can't make a move without her explicit consent.
Not that she's nearly old enough to give it, his sobering conscience reminds him. He smothers it with her erratic, almost panting, breaths. The louder she is, the quieter his voice of reason becomes. That knowledge makes his next move easier.
She screws her eyes shut as he slides his fingers lower, tracing the seam between her legs with the softness of a sigh. Mewling whimpers warm his cheek and he's barely touching her. He curves his wrist on the way back up, dipping into her slickness and spreading her swollen lips. She tilts her body towards his touch. Spreads herself wider. Then the pad of his finger grazes her tight little hole and she flinches, shaking all over.
His gaze ventures up from where he's been peeking into her panties—catching glimpses of her smooth pubic mound—to her face. He almost swallows his tongue.
She looks terrified.
What the hell am I doin’? This is insane. I oughta be quartered and hung—
The pleading lilt of her voice snaps him out of his self-flagellation. “Could you put a finger inside of me? Just one? It doesn't have to be deep—”
He inserts the very tip of his middle finger, just barely breaching her opening, and her eyes fly open, staring at him with that same electrified amazement from earlier. Her lips quiver, mouthing silent sounds, but she seems too stunned to speak. The muscles at her entrance pulse, suckling at his finger to draw him deeper. Begging for more. He complies, sinking down to the first knuckle.
Christ, is she tight. Virgin tight.
Ellie reacts enthusiastically, canting her hips to bury him in her viselike warmth and belting out a moan that fills the tiny cabin. Knuckles pressed flush against her sodden sex, Joel forgets how to move. How to think. How to breathe. Fortunately, she's putting in enough work for the both of them—using his finger as a stationary object to fuck herself and being unabashedly vocal about it.
He feels her start stroking her clit again and it pushes him into action; when he meets the next audacious glide of her hips and curls his finger ever-so-slightly, her back arches off the bed and her string of lowly moaned curses is punctuated by a high-pitched cry of ecstasy.
It takes a few more clumsy seconds for their actions to sync, but when they do it's a well-tuned ensemble of shaky hands, trembling limbs, and desperate noises. Bent at an awkward angle to avoid her hand, his wrist starts to ache from keeping up with the urgency of her fingertips as they sweep faster and faster over her clit, refining their movements. Smaller. More precise.
A flutter. A whimper. A threat.
She's going to come—
“Wait!” Ellie shouts through a gasp that's almost a sob. Her fingers grasp at his elbow, trembling and wet.
Joel goes to withdraw his hand, but she slams her legs shut, having to twist one over the other to properly trap him on account of how skinny her thighs have gotten. She's squirming against his forearm aimlessly and he doesn’t know if she's trying to get away from his touch or lean into it. By the looks of it, she doesn't know either; her clenched fist has gone white against the moth-bitten pillowcase, and there's tears jeweling the corners of her closed eyelids.
He sweeps his hand over the white slash cutting through her eyebrow and tucks some runaway hairs behind her ear. He wonders how she got her scar. Who stitched it up. If there was someone there to hold her hand and kiss her forehead and tell her how brave she was. Probably not.
But he's here now.
“Ellie, look at me,” he says softly. It takes a few more moments to finally coax her damp eyes open. “It's just you and me, kid. What's wrong?”
“N-nothing,” she struggles to get each syllable out, her voice a fit of tremors. She sniffles.“I-It–”
“Take a deep breath.”
When Ellie inhales it outlines her taut, tiny nipples through her sweater and he has to swallow the sudden, sickening impulse to suck on them through the fabric. “It was starting to feel really intense. Don’t get me wrong; it was good, like really fucking good, but it felt like I was…I—”
“You were going to lose control?” Nodding, she digs her teeth into the soft pink of her bottom lip. Joel thumbs it free before she can make it bleed. “And that made you scared?”
“No!” she knee-jerk reacts defensively at the implication that she would ever be afraid of anything, then lifts her eyes to the ceiling and sighs. “It…it was just a lot all at once.”
“Okay, we can stop—”
Blunt nails bite into his skin. “No,” she growls. “If we stop now I'm going to spontaneously combust.”
“Technically, that wouldn't be spontaneous combustion.”
Her eyes roll back down to lock onto his, shimmering with amusement instead of tears. “Screw you, old man,” she says around a smirk.
He pinches one of her red cheeks. “Now there's the little brat I've been missing.”
Her smirk lifts into a small, cheeky smile and he can't help but think that what he's doing can't be that terrible. Not if she looks this happy.
“I just need a minute.”
Joel nods, trailing the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. He stops at her neck and holds his thumb over her jumping pulse, counting the beats of her wild heart. Feels it start to slow. Eventually her legs release him, lounging back against the stiff cot, and he immediately misses the sticky heat of her thighs.
“What were you doing to Tess for her to make those noises? Were you inside of her? Or…?”
“I was usin’ my mouth on her.”
Tess could get off from penetration alone, but it usually took more time and focus than they could spare on the job. That didn't stop her from wanting to be fucked hard and often, though. Usually with his fingers gagging her and his teeth buried in her shoulder to keep quiet. She claimed it wasn't so much about the pleasure as it was the control. Giving it, getting it. A sordid push and pull.
Sex with Ellie would be different. It wouldn't be about power or control, it would—
Joel nips the inside of his cheek, killing that thought in its cradle. Sure, he's a bad man who's done bad things. But always out of necessity, never for the sake of sadism. Never just because. Fucking a fourteen-year-old kid who's been charged in his care would be several shades darker than the murky, gray space he exists in.
Ellie's cunt clenches and she makes some kind of strangled whimper that stokes the flames of his arousal. “People do that?” she whispers, hooking a leg over his knee to spread herself open so she can press her frustrated little bundle of nerves against his wrist. Wait, not press. Rub.
He drags his finger out slowly, and when he pushes back in there's a wet squelch that he can tell she's embarrassed about. She nuzzles her cheek against his chest to hide her face, but he can feel her blush searing through his flannel.
He grazes her temple with his lips to soothe her unwarranted shame. “Yes, they do.”
Her hand travels up his arm, curving over his shoulder to pull him closer. One hard nipple grazes the underside of his bicep and his free hand climbs the ladder of her ribcage, stopping frighteningly close to her breast. Touching the soft, underdeveloped swell would only remind him of how young she is. How wrong this is.
“You must be pretty skilled. Tess didn't seem like a woman who was easily impressed. And, Jesus, the way she was moaning–” A sharp breath hisses through her gritted teeth.
“I couldn't hear her very well with her thighs pressed against my ears—”
“Fuck,” Ellie gasps. He can feel her shifting, planting her heels flat on the bed to buck against his wrist harder and faster, chasing something he's eager to help her reach.
“—but I'd say I do alright,” Joel drawls, working his finger in and out of her. “I've had a lot of experience.”
She shivers as wetness pools into his cupped palm. It certainly seems like she's come around on the concept of talking as foreplay. “Can you tell me what you were doing, or show me, I don't know, I just want to—” Without thinking, he places his open mouth to her throat the way he'd place it over her dripping sex and sucks gently. Kissing would be too intimate. This is just… his mouth making contact with her skin. Her flushed, bare, sweet-smelling skin.
“Oh my fucking God. That's–shit, Joel I…” she babbles as he works his lips higher, nibbling into the side of her neck. He laps at her. Suckles. Then he gives her a flat, wide lick through the dip behind her ear and flicks at its lobe like it's her throbbing clit before sucking it between his teeth, continuing to massage it with his tongue.
She goes silent, every muscle rigid. He can feel the tendons in her neck strain, fighting against the pleasure instead of welcoming it in.
“Relax,” he orders, leaning back to study her flushed face. “I'll take it from here. You've been doing such a good job.”
A guttural keen drags up through her throat as her hips sink down into the crook of his body and her walls flutter around him. She's always been malleable to his words, eager for his approval. Starved for it.
He uses that to his advantage.
“You've been so brave, but I'm here now. I'll look after you.” Arousal seeps around his finger, leaking out of her. Joel flicks his wrist one last time, burying himself as deep as he can and whispers, “Let go, baby girl.”
He watches the moment her orgasm crashes into her, tossing her head back with a shout that shakes the foundation of his fractured soul. He's snorted, huffed, and swallowed more than his fair share over the last couple of decades—but never shot up. “Don't ruin those pretty arms with track marks, Texas,” Tess always said. But feeling Ellie clamping down on him can only be described as mainlining sunshine straight to his veins.
As with all good highs, the comedown is just as violent.
“That was—” Ellie heaves an airy laugh. “That was awesome.”
“Ellie.”
A jaw-cracking yawn. “What?”
“Could you…” Joel wiggles his finger, still trapped inside of her.
“Oh, yeah,” she says sheepishly.
Her inner muscles cling to his fingertip, milking him as she pulls his hand out into the cool air. Before he has time to adjust to the sudden temperature change, he's being submerged in her mouth. The shock of her hot tongue lapping around his finger, tasting herself, pulls a harsh grunt from his chest.
She smacks her lips. “Not bad.”
The sweet scent of her has soaked into his palm, his wrist, the nylon threads of his watchband. He shoves his hand under the pillow between them to bury it, but it's too late–Sarah's smile flashes in his mind, lovely and blindingly bright. Crippled by booze and exhaustion, his usual defenses can't block her out. Even within the relative safety of his own imagination, he can't meet her eyes.
What if a man had done this to Sarah? A man she trusted?
Joel tries to shunt the thought. Scribble over it. Relentless, it buzzes around his brain like a fly trapped in an upside-down cup, violently bouncing back and forth against glass walls.
He's disgusted. He's ashamed. At himself. At how far he allowed things to go. He wants to blame it on the whiskey, on the opioid buzz, on the shitty set of circumstances that led them here. Anything other than his own weakness.
Oblivious to his inner turmoil, Ellie curls up like a cat against his chest, all but purring with satisfaction. She mumbles sleepily, “Good night, Joel.” Her little hand fists the fabric of his shirt, clutching him close like a man-sized security blanket as he curves around her like a shield, his battered body yielding to every inch of her, offering comfort and protection. Here she's safe and warm and loved. Here no one can hurt her.
No one except for him.
Joel's vision blurs. He cradles the back of her neck, his trembling lips pressed to the top of her head. “G'night, Ellie,” he whispers thickly through the burning in his throat.
Once he's positive she's asleep, he drinks until it softens the pain enough to let his tears fall silently. Maybe if he drinks enough it will blot out the wrongness pumping through his heart. Maybe his guilt will dissolve into alcohol and spill from his pores come morning, purging him of it. Maybe then he can forget this whole damn thing.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
It's hopeless.
An honest part of Joel—the part he's trying desperately to drown out—knows the truth: At the very end of his life, when all his other memories have been eaten away by time, he'll still remember the messy, devastating moment she came undone in his arms.