joeltheresa - Tumblr blog

joeltheresa · 1 month ago

Text

as it always was

pairing: joel miller x reader

wc: 6.9k

summary: Joel wants you to come live in Jackson. With him, maybe. But you are stubborn.

warnings: reader's eyesight it failing, two people sickeningly in love, argument and conflict, miscommunication but only very slightly, mentions of canon typical violence, isolation and loneliness, anxiety, fear of being trapped, referenced past torture, reader's age is ambiguous

a/n: this is partially based around the abandoned plot thread from tlou2 where Joel has a partner outside Jackson. thank you for reading! let me know what you think!

There’s a storm coming.

It’s something you feel in your bones, a particular stirring in the air, the smell of ozone electric and pressing on the breeze.

You had always been able to tell when a storm was coming, though the signs you looked for used to echo differently. The smell and caress of the air always, but the shift of the trees too, the underside of leaves thrown to the sky, their veined bellies like the flash of a warning signal.

When the air goes still and soft and silent, there are mere minutes, moments, to take shelter.

Pressing at your memory is like pressing on a bruise, it yields nothing but pain. You’d like to believe someone crouched beside you as a child and pointed the trimmings of the world and its secrets out to you, but you very much doubt it.

The other signs would come later of course, the more obvious ones, great purple clouds blackened at their edges, like a great wave that sought to swallow the world down the long column of its throat.

The sky isn’t clouded yet, just a few dark gray, fuzzed, puffs, but there’s a stirring in the wind, the shuffle of leaves that you sense might be turning over, might be offering themselves to the rain.

You aren’t sure, the horizon is a mass of furred emerald green and brightest blue, suggestions of color and shape and nothing more to your failing eyesight.

Most of the world is a tempestuous blur, blocking and light, shapes and the vague notions of objects, shambling figures, but nothing more, not unless whatever you’re trying to look at is right beneath your nose.

It’s impossible to know why your eyesight started to go, though you can pinpoint when it started to get really bad. Maybe it's just the genetic lottery at play, something passed down through a family tree. You can only trace it back one person, your mother who died before she ever had the chance to lose her vision. Or, maybe, because of the gunpowder once thrown in your face back in the QZ, back when you still thought there was a better world worth fighting for, the black caress of it in your nose and lungs, the burn in your eyes.

When you could still get a good look at yourself in the mirror, you swore the whites of your eyes were gray with the stuff, even all these years later.

You hadn’t thought there was a better world to fight for so much as you needed something to hope for, something to fill the slow, crawling hours, the day by day, piece by piece devastation of the reality of everyday life. Not the Fireflies as Tommy Miller once had been, something revealed to you over tea in your kitchen after you almost blew his head off with a shotgun for creeping around on your porch, but a different group, one that had long ago fallen apart in a QZ that no longer existed.

The air doesn’t smell of rain yet, that morning, just the whisper of the leaves, only a promise of what might come.

For the moment, the sky appears a bright blue, rain clouds only a suggestion on the horizon, morning sun peeking through to burn away the fog left by the night’s cold humidity. \

Rifle in hand, you sit down on the top step of your front porch and breathe in the still chilled air. Fingers of dawn turn the horizon a milky pink. The pistol holstered at your side digs into your hip, so you lie it at your side.

It rained through the night, the world is still a little damp for it, the overgrown grass most likely covered in a dew you aren’t able to see.

The world is still partially caught in the web of night, those sore hours just after the sun has risen and shadows still lie thick between the trees, close to the ground at the bottom of the earth.

You set about taking apart the gun in your hands, cleaning the parts as you go, examining them for signs of wear, of red spotted rust by holding them close to your face.

The day lightens as you work, waiting, spine aching where you’re hunched over, as the clouds gather and the air grows warm and thick with the scent of too familiar rain.

The clouds had cleared through the night just to return and dump on you again, muddying trails, downing branches.

It makes a nerve twinge in your chest, a fluttery anxious feeling that you bat down.

The chatter of insects, the thready trails of thousands of animals suddenly fall silent, noise that hums in the background unnoticed until it suddenly stops. You rely on it, to warn you of someone, something approaching. You listen carefully, fingers shifting to the pistol, quietly pulling back the hammer. Eventually the sound of a horse drawing near reaches your ears, the slight jangle of the rider adjusting in the saddle.

Whispering through the overgrown weeds that choke the back beneath the copse of trees.

A moment later, the horse and rider appear from between the trees. Your eyesight is so poor it should be impossible to tell who is approaching, but you recognize the shape of the man, the blurry outline of him somehow more clear than anything else.

“Quit pointin’ that thing at me,” he grouses, though you have already lowered the gun and though there is affection shelved in his voice.

“You’d be dead if I meant you any harm.”

“Don’t doubt it, sweetheart.”

You stand and shoulder the rifle, shove the pistol into the holster at your thigh, and descend the porch steps into the yard.

The wind is picking up, rustling the world, warmth stroked air stirring around you, scented with pine and rain, the soft, leather, wood oil smell of Joel.

“Hi Joel,” You greet, reaching out to stroke his horse, nosing at the grass at the base of one tree. She makes a soft grunting noise, the vibration of it echoing against your fingers.

“Mornin’,” he answers. “You smell like coffee.”

“I brewed some for you. It’s inside.”

“Didn’t have to do that.”

“Well, you gave it to me, it's only right I share.”

He steps closer and plucks at the shoulder strap of your rifle. You can just feel the pressure of his fingers through your jacket as he takes it from you and slings it over his own. There’s something gravitational about him, the pull of the earth against the moon, tugging you in until you’re close enough to see his features clearly.

Anyone else would find the proximity uncomfortable, but not him, not with you. He knows you like to see, and doesn’t begrudge you his face, though he has insisted it's nothing to look at anyway.

His breath fans over your cheek as he looks you over, gaze a careful assessment of your wellbeing that isn’t entirely necessary.

You reach out and tug the strap of the rifle as he’d done to you. “Come inside,” you murmur, tipping your head toward the house. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Now hold on a minute,” he says, curling his hand around yours, keeping it pressed around the rough cotton rifle strap.

“What?”

He cups your face in his palms, his skin warm against your jaw, looks you over again before tilting your chin toward him gently. Joel kisses you like it means something to be able to. His beard scrapes against your cheeks, fingers tightening against your jaw for just a moment. You choke on the nearness of him, bracing your hand against his chest. The fabric of his coat beneath your fingertips, the silver curl of hair that you stroke behind his ear, the smell of pine and cedar and warm gun oil, is familiar now and so comforting.

Overwhelming, too, in a way that you adore.

It’s possible that your infatuation with him is because you’ve been isolated for so long, but you don’t think so.

There’s too much about him that you like, things you have never noticed about other people.

You like the way he talks, his deep tug of his accent, the bottomless well of his voice and occasional regionalisms he spouts off. Dagum, being your favorite so far. You like the way back of his hands look and the age spots near his temples; the gray hair in his beard, and the way the skin at the small of his back looks when his shirt rides up; the way he smells and grits his teeth and shakes his head when he’s angry, but really just worried and not good at saying so.

You really like how he worries about you, even if you wish he wouldn’t.

It’s been such a long time since anyone cared about you.

You’d forgotten this need, to be looked over and cared for and touched, in the intervening years.

“All right,” you whisper when he pulls back, eyes still closed just to have the sensation last a bit longer, his lips still brushing yours, just a little. His hair feathers against your forehead, face tilted towards yours like the north point of a star. With some pain, you open your eyes, blinking until the map of his face comes into focus again, a highway of scars and weather lines. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

Joel snorts and releases you, crow’s feet deepening at the corners of his eyes with mirth, nudging you back toward the house. “I reckon you’re right.”

You caught him at a good time, Tommy once said to you. My brother ain’t always been so easy.

“I have somethin’ for you,” Joel says, hand against the small of your back, guiding but only lightly. He pauses briefly to hitch the horse in the open air stable, dilapidated but still useful.

With Joel there, you don’t have to pay attention as much. You can let your strained eyes unfocus. The world takes on a softened, wavered quality, like undulating sunshine through stained glass.

The gathering of rapidly purpling clouds gather at the edge of your vision. For the moment, the breeze caressing your face remains soft instead of cutting, the deep green of the furred boughs of ancient pine trees dancing with it. A rabbit darts into the undergrowth around the house ahead of you, a white-gray blur.

You only know which animal the ball of color amounted to because it is so often what you find in your traps.

You think Joel probably knows you give your eyes a rest when he’s around because he offers his hand up the steps, even though you don’t need the assistance, muscle memory and the feel of the railing beneath your palm enough to guide you even in the total dark of night. It’s a good excuse to touch him again, feel the bones of his fingers between your own.

“You do?” You ask. “More whiskey, I hope.”

He chuckles and pushes the ragged screen door open. “Watch yourself here,” he directs and pulls you in front of him, squeezing your fingers again but not letting go until you’ve cleared the raised frame of the door.

“I got it.”

“I know.”

The cabin is warm, the spiral of wind from the front of the house to the back, turning more violent as the storm brewing moves ever closer. Joel hangs his backpack from the back of a kitchen chair, leans your rifle against the door jamb and unholsters his own pistol. The safety is clicked on and the gun laid on the sideboard by the door.

You like watching him, even if his outline is fuzzy at the edges. You hop up onto the counter and swing your legs, watching him.

Every movement of his body is fit with purpose, intentional and lethal. He pays attention to things, even when it seems like he might not be. He’s handsome, too, of course. Beautiful in a way that you will pencil down on paper later, laden with interesting lines that move with each expression.

“You’re outta firewood,” he says when he sits down to tug his shoes off one at a time.

“We’re heading into summer in case you forgot.”

“Still gets cold at night,” he says, unraveling the laces of his left boot, not looking at you.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says, rising from the table with a grunt to place his boots neatly by the front door.

You roll your eyes, “I can do it.”

“I know it. I want to.”

He dusts his hands off on the thighs of his jeans and approaches you slowly. You reach out and tug him closer by the collar of his jacket, pulling the zipper down before glancing into his face again when its descent reaches the middle of his chest. “I mean,” you meet his eyes, click your tongue in sympathy, “unless it’s too cold for you in here—” you murmur and start to drag it back up again.

“Cute,” he snips, unholstering your gun to place on the counter, hands on your hips.

“Well, I’m being serious, Joel. I’m just thinking of you—” You slide your hand to the back of his neck and pull him that much closer. “I might be feeling a little warm but if you’re—”

He rolls his eyes in such an annoyed and familiar way it makes your chest ache. He returns your hand to the zipper of his jacket and you happily indulge him by pulling it back down, razor teeth coming apart in your hands.

There’s a shush of fabric as the jacket falls away from his body and hits the floor, your hands already occupied with other things, touching the bare skin of his wrists, tracing the thick veins that run beneath his skin to his elbows, feeling the flex of his forearms. He is thankfully only wearing a t-shirt beneath to contend with the warmth that, with luck, will be driven away by the rain drawing closer.

It’s practical of him, to cover his skin. Protection from the sun and the elements and the looming possibility of life ending teeth digging into the soft flesh, but you like him like this better.

His palms are warm and dry in yours, the heat familiar and comforting against your own.

“A storm is coming,” you say.

“That it is.”

“Were the leaves turned over when you rode up?”

“Yep.”

“Your hands are dry. Have you been using that ointment I gave you?”

“Nope.”

“Joel,” you chide. “That hurts my feelings.” You had hunted for herbs, sought out and meticulously cleaned a little tin. And he—

“I gave it to Ellie. She went on patrol when it was real windy. Face and hands was all red. Helped her a lot.”

“Oh.”

It’s a bigger compliment, maybe, that he had given it to Ellie. You have no proof that he isn’t lying, but you don’t think he is.

“Uh-huh,” his eyes are amused. “Besides, how else am I supposed to get you to fuss over me?”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes. “I fuss plenty,” you murmur, sweeping your thumb over the rough skin. You nudge your knees against his hips, tucking him in closer to the cradle of your hips. “Let me help you.”

Joel kisses you instead of answering, hand cupped against the side of your neck, thumb tracing the line of your jaw. You draw your knees in tighter, urging him as close as he can get. His hand slips beneath your shirt, palm flat against your back, tracing the ridges and hills of spine and muscle and fat.

His fingertips skim the hem of your jeans, grip your hips and move you forward to the very edge of the counter. You gasp against his mouth and then laugh when he steadies you. You feel his grin against yours, a strange kind of intimacy accompanies that, that you know the shape of his laugh.

It sickens you sometimes, how much you like Joel, how much you might love him, how much you look forward to his visits and these moments. How you worried he might not make it to you because of the impending rain and the accompanying mud.

Your reality is left behind for moments or minutes or hours; it's just you and him in a quiet world. He groans softly when you cup him through his jeans, dragging your nails against the rough denim.

He groans and drags you ever closer, hands slipping higher, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts.

You arch into him, but when thunder suddenly cracks overhead, you break away with a gasp.

He laughs, the sound hoarse and desperate, caught up in the center of his chest.

You just pant against his mouth, eyes closed, and pull back a fraction. You comb his hair back, feel the strands slip through your fingers, longer than it once was, grayer too, soft under your fingers. You trace his face, aware that it might be your only way of seeing him in the not too distant future. If he continues to visit you, if he still wants you.

“It scared me,” you reproach softly, still cupping his face in your hands, the weight of his head in your palms.

He doesn't move, hands still firm and warm against your spine, thumbs stroking circles into the space beneath your ribs. “I got you.”

“My hero,” you pat his side. “I’ll get you some coffee if you shut the door.”

“That ain’t really a fair trade,” he grouses.

“Sure it is. You love coffee.” He grumbles something under his breath, and you laugh. “What, you’d pick me over coffee?”

“Shit, honey, any day.”

He doesn’t mean it, but it still makes you laugh.

You slide down from the counter and giggle to yourself at the way he walks a little funny. “Problem?”

“You ain’t funny.”

“I’m hilarious. Ask Tommy sometime, or Ellie. I can even get Maria to laugh.”

You don’t see it but you know he rolls his eyes.

“So what’d you bring me?” You ask when he’s settled at your kitchen table with the cup of promised coffee. You lean against Joel’s shoulder, cheek against the side of his head, fingers feathering through the hair at the nape of his neck. “You said you brought me something.”

He digs in his bag instead of answering you, eventually depositing A loaf of bread wrapped in cloth and a jar of conserve on the table. There’s something scrawled on the side of the jar but you can’t make out what it says even when you bring it close to your face, the color of the ink too similar to the contents. Instead you unscrew the jar and sniff. The jam is strawberry, a favorite of yours during the spring and summer months.

The bread is still warm and makes a satisfying crunch when you unwrap it and press a thumb into the crust.

“Well,” you murmur and sit down across from him. “Thank you, but what’d I do to deserve all this?”

Joel just shakes his head, his expression hard to read. “Nothin’.”

You raise a brow but let it go for the moment. If Joel had something he really wanted to say, he’d get it out one way or another, in time. “It’s cause you like me, huh?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Still warm,” you murmur, breaking the crust on the bread. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you.”

“Good, I didn’t bring it to swap for somethin’.”

You slice the bread with a serrated knife from a drawer in the kitchen and spread strawberry jam over it, a first little taste of summer. You try to pass a piece to him but he shakes his head. “It’s yours.”

“Well, thank you, baby.”

“Mm.”

For a moment, there’s only silence, the crunch of fresh baked bread in your mouth. The whistle of the wind through the trees outside, through the still open windows, bringing the scent of rain and petrichor and earth. You inhale the cool air as the humidity dissipates and the room falls to shadows, clouds gathering thickly overhead.

“How’re you, uh, gettin’ on?” He asks suddenly. “With supplies.”

You wish his face were clearer to you, a clue to what the tension in his voice means. “Fine. Winter depletes a lot, you know that.”

“No firewood.”

“It’s summer, Joel.”

His jaw ticks, your eyes tracing the quick movement, but his expression is still unclear. You drag your chair closer. Joel is hard enough to read as it is, and if he has something to say, you need to see his face.

Often his meaning is hidden in his eyes, his voice is untrustworthy, prone to aggression when anxious or passionate.

His brows are tugged together over his eyes, hard and unrelenting, on a mission you can’t begin to guess at. “It drops below freezing at night, darlin’.”

“Joel,” you start gently, “It’s not like I’m starting fires out here. It’s asking for attention. For trouble.”

“Jesus,” he mutters, swiping a hand down his face before he leans toward you. “That’s the goddamn problem.”

Ah. Now you know what this is about, what the bread and jam, two things you can’t get yourself, are about.

“I’ve been doing this for years, Joel.”

“Ain’t just about firewood,” he starts, tilting his head, eyes locked on yours in challenge, like you don’t know its not about the firewood. “Food, clothes, medicine—”

“Is there an abundance of new clothes and medicine lying around somewhere that I don’t know about?”

“Funny.”

“I have what I have,” you shrug. “It’s always been enough.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek and jaw, teeth ground together to avoid saying something he can’t take back. “All right,” he answers eventually. “Have you been huntin’ lately? I can get you something, bring it up from Jackson—”

“You don’t need to worry, Joel,” you reiterate, feeling as though you’re about to be ambushed. “Really. I have enough.”

“Yeah,” he agrees in a defeated sort of way, rubbing one hand against his jaw. You close your eyes, to savor the sound of his fingers against his beard. It’s like a balm, one of the things you like best about him. It’s indescribably attractive, the sound of the rubbed bristles against the bowl of his palm. “But I do,” he admits. “All the time.”

“But I don’t want you to,” you counter. “You don’t need to.”

You mean it in a reassuring way.

There’s no reason for him to worry. You’re okay. You can take care of yourself just fine.

His shoulders tighten, expression pensive and far away, jaw working slowly, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He’s grinding his teeth, keeping something inside. The room grows steadily cooler in the silence as the rain finally bursts from the clouds in a violent torrent.

You lean closer, peering in at his face, watching the lines by his eyes deepen, waiting for him to loosen up.

It’s a minute before he answers, not looking at you. “If you lived in Jackson, neither of us would have to worry.”

The room grows darker. “So that’s what this is about.”

“What?” He asks, too nonchalantly and a little too loud.

“You aren’t subtle, Joel. You don’t know how to be.”

He grinds his teeth. “Why won’t you come live in Jackson?”

Some vast, nameless fear unfurls in your chest at the suggestion.

You don’t answer him for a long time, not sure what to say, how to explain yourself. There’s some part of you that curls up tight, a protective shell reforming around your heart, because maybe Joel won’t come back, if you don’t explain it right. And you don’t want to be trapped in Jackson, but you don’t want to lose him either.

Maybe that’s unfair of you, vilely selfish, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

“I’m sure Tommy has already told you,” you answer eventually, “that they’ve offered before. Tommy has, Maria has, her dad did before he passed — I’ve always said no. I don’t want to, anyway.”

Joel clears his throat, hesitates for only half a second. “Well, now I’m askin’.”

The words are spoken so softly, a gently sung plea.

He’s asking, and so it should be different, because it's him. It is different, it’s—

“No.”

The word rips from your chest, tears from your mouth. Terrible and mean.

He scoffs. “That easy, huh?”

You bristle. “That’s just how it is, Joel.”

“What happens when I come out here one morning and you’re fuckin’ dead—”

“You bury me and get over it.”

“—or infected?”

“You kill me and get over it.”

He doesn’t laugh and you don’t expect him to but a sour thread of irritation ignites in you anyway. “I don’t know, Joel, just stop coming out here then.”

Joel gives a humorless laugh and drags an exhausted hand down his face. “Yeah.”

You wonder how hard it must have been for him to ask in the first place. “Nobody is dragging you out here but you.”

Your words are dismissive of what you mean to each other. Horrible in how short and clipped they are, how little meaning you assign to them, to him.

For a moment he doesn’t answer as you mindlessly sweep the crumbs leftover from the crust of bread into a little pile.

You make the mistake of glancing up to see the expression on his face, hurt and resignation, but not surprise spread over his features. Something about it is unsurprising to him, that you would say no to him about this.

“All right,” he sighs, “not for me then—”

“That isn’t what I meant—” you try to correct and then stop, not sure how to say what you mean.

A long, icy, stubborn and stupid, silence persists for so long you start to wish he’d just storm out, just leave. You expect it, because Joel is like a kicked dog sometimes, mean and avoidant when he’s scared or hurt.

Instead, he says, accusing, voice a harsh slice through the air, “I know your eyes are gettin’ worse.”

You freeze, lightning forks through the sky, thunder shakes the walls of the house as the rain drums down harder.

“You can’t see and it’s gonna get you killed. If it don’t get you killed, somethin’ else will. You won’t be able to hunt if you can’t see. You ain’t gonna last by yourself much longer.”

The words are calm, but bordering on a snarl, the shift of old fear just below the surface of his voice.

“And you’re askin’ me to just ignore it. Pretend like you ain’t sittin’ out here in the goddamn dark, alone, all the time.”

You don’t reply, because that is what you’re asking. You don’t want him to think about it because the notion scares you. Not being able to hunt anymore, losing your vision entirely, feeling like living on your own might be a death sentence you willingly walk toward, terrifies you. You try to avoid thinking about it most days, telling yourself that you would manage somehow, you always have, that finally losing your sight would just be a new challenge.

You have survived much worse after all.

“I don’t need to hunt. I trap—”

“Jesus,” he mutters, shaking his head. “That ain’t the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

You don’t mind living close to Jackson, having people nearby isn’t such a bad thing. Their patrols help with curbing the hoards of infected that sometimes passed through, help with culling and discouraging raiders in the area.

It’s nice, you suppose, to know you aren’t totally alone in the world.

Jackson is nice enough. The few times you visited felt like stepping onto another planet, or maybe into the past.

Smiling people, folks that helped each other out, a school and a store and food to go in the store. Greenhouses and stables and laughter.

Strange.

But the walls are enough to frighten you.

The walls are suffocating as much as they are protective. They remind you of gunfire and smoke and screaming; of a weapon in your hands and blood on your skin and gunpowder in your eyes, a viselike grip on your arm dragging you down, into a basement where screams bounced off the walls.

It had been hard to shake the feeling of surveillance there, of being watched. Of being trapped, doors and walls closing in on you that could not be opened again. Of being at the mercy of other people.

Maria had offered you a place there a long time ago. Long before Joel, long before Tommy, even. You had always declined, and it wasn’t until Joel arrived one spring that you spent more than an hour there.

Joel has spoken your worst fears aloud. You’re afraid of losing your vision more than you’re willing to admit, terrified and in denial about it. Pressure builds in your ears, the walls squeezing in tight around you, helplessness of learning to navigate without sight and take on a new, strange world, of not being able to see his face again, even close up, a filmy white blur and nothing else.

“You can’t take care of yourself out here alone,” he repeats, gentler this time, evidently thinking he’s broken through to you in the interim of your silence, that you don’t already know and aren’t petrified of it, incapacitated with fear when you think of being blind and alone, maybe not adjusting to it, maybe needing help and being killed over it.

“I can,” you insist. “I always have.”

He huffs, annoyed or maybe scared, and looks away from you, shaking his head. “Can you see the goddamn spores?”

You swallow and answer honestly. “No.”

“Jesus.”

“Spores are usually underground,” you defend, “so I don’t have to worry about them.”

He sits back, one hand braced on his thigh, brows tilted up, watching you with eyes that say he knows you know it’s bullshit. “And infected. . .” He says slowly, not looking away from you. “How close they gotta be before you can tell they ain’t people?”

“Well I can tell from the sound—”

The sound of their shuffling gait, the pounding of runners’ feet against the ground, the clicks and groans.

“If you couldn’t hear ‘em,” he interrupts loudly, “could you tell them apart? Stalkers are quiet.”

You don’t answer because the truth is worrying and doesn’t help your case. It doesn’t matter to him that stalkers are also usually inside, and hide. It doesn’t matter, because he knows the truth. He’s making a point.

You press your lips together and Joel shakes his head, jaw gritted, the tension pooling into his neck.

“You can’t.”

“So go, if it bothers you so much,” you deflect. “It’s not your problem. I’ll manage. I’ve been fine for years. I will keep being fine.”

“That’s not what I—” He sighs.

“Joel.” Your voice raises a panicked octave that you can’t hold back. His name tastes like acid and fear, like the rotting carcase of a dead world closing in on you, just like it always had and always would. “I can’t, okay? I just can’t.”

If he hears the fear in your voice, he doesn’t fold to it. “Why?” He demands, a touch of exasperation in the hard edge of his voice.

You don’t answer for a moment and then remember his hands. It’s a good enough excuse to walk away. You need to walk away from just a moment, to gather yourself.

When you stand, Joel’s fingers closer around your wrist, a soft, pleading hey, sweetheart on his tongue.

“I’m just getting something for your hands.”

He releases you and your hands shake as you navigate the rain darkened hallway to your bedroom, to the oil in your bedside table.

The trees outside appear to be taking a beating, bending in the howling, unrelenting wind. Rain lashes the window panes and the roof in a violent tattoo.

You return to Joel, and let your eyes focus on him. Even if he’s angry with you, you want to see his face. The scar over the bridge of his nose, other little marks against his cheeks, the warmth of his eyes, the lines in the palms of his hands, the patch of gray in his beard.

He doesn’t protest when you pick up his hand and spread lavender oil over his knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

The lines around his eyes soften, just a little. “That’s all right.”

His face could be lost to you someday, only a picture in your memory. Are you willing to lose him sooner over something like this? Would he make you choose? Say he can’t come back to you anymore?

Joel lets you rub the oil into his hands, the joints of his fingers, massaging until your own hurt, warm oil finally soaked into his skin. You sit on the very edge of the chair next to him anxiously, spine stiff. “I’ll give you some, to take with you,” you say instead of what you need to. “It's different to the one you gave to Ellie.”

And enough to last a while, you think, just in case.

You can’t make yourself look up from his hands. Hands that you know better than your own these days. Thick fingered, broad palmed, lined, calloused, spotted, sun roughened. Some of it gleaned from careful examination, the rest from memorization of touch you’d know anywhere.

His hands in yours are a touchstone, a grounding force. You know what they feel like almost everywhere, what sounds they can dredge up out of you, how carefully they treated animals and instruments.

Joel says your name, the sound of it so soft in his mouth, a pleading thing, but you don’t look up. There was a time you wouldn’t have believed him capable of this, but he’s changed, different since you first met him and Tommy introduced you on one of his first patrols, new to Jackson and still half feral, untrusting.

You suspect, though you are sure you’ll never know, that Joel had told Tommy you needed to be dealt with, living so close to their little haven, but not apart of it. And here he is, months and years on, wanting to deal with your outsider status in another way.

“I’m scared,” you admit to his hands, the softened skin beneath your own. “Really scared.”

Joel retracts one of his hands from between yours to tilt your chin up.

Your faces are close together. He’s never particularly minded your need to be close, to see.

He blinks, surprise registering. It reminds you that he’s right. “You ain’t scared out here?” His voice is troubling, supplicating in a way that Joel simply isn’t. He’s needling you, lulling you into complacency, because the surprise belies worry. He’s worried about you. “Infected and raiders and slavers that a whole damn town has trouble fendin’ off sometimes?” Hius voice raises as he speaks, not in volume but agitation, aggression pooling in his tone like poisoned honey.

“That’s nothing,” you murmur. “It’s nothing compared to not being able to take care of myself.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand you.”

“Yes you do, Joel. You understand, and you know you do. You just don’t want to because it's me.”

“‘Course it’s different because it's you,” he snaps.

You balk. “What does that mean?”

He doesn’t answer, shaking his head. Joel takes his hands from yours and stands and walks a few steps away, toward the door.

He stops, one hand scraping over his beard, the other anchored on his hip. You can tell he wants to walk away.

But, he doesn’t.

He doesn’t say anything either.

“It’s not Jackson that scares me,” you say, finding the gentle voice trapped in your chest. “It’s not you that scares me. It’s losing my sight there and not being able to get out. It’s getting trapped somewhere again. It’s not being able to take care of myself.”

“Honey,” he says and turns back to you.

You meet his gaze as best you can. The edges of him are grainy, blurry, like a dream. “I ain’t done much beggin’ in my life. But I am now. Please. Please, come live in Jackson. I worry—I worry all the goddamn time.” He walks closer again. You know he does it so you can see his face, shame welling up terribly in the back of your throat. “And I don’t like sayin’ it. It don’t have to be with—I just need to know you’re all right.”

“Joel—”

“It’s not like out there,” he gestures vaguely outside, to the still swirling storm. “It ain’t like in the cities.” He takes your hands in his, warm, the scent of the first of summer’s lavender lingering in the air, twinning with Joel’s familiar smell, the fresh scent of rain washing through the open windows. “Whatever happened to you there, it won’t happen in Jackson.”

The way he says it gives you pause, such intense sincerity, so much desperate need. He means it. Not just that it wouldn’t happen, but that he would not let it happen. “You really care about me, Joel Miller.”

“Shit, was I not makin’ it clear before?”

“You have your ways.” You pat the chair. “Can I tell you what happened?”

He takes the chair again, knees pressed together like children sharing secrets.

The rain abates, a little, slowing to a downpour instead of a deluge.

“You tell me anything you want.”

Finding a foothold for your voice is hard. The threads of your like hard to weave together, to pick up where one thing begins and another ends, where it all leads.

But he’s patient, for once, hopeful, maybe.

You tell him.

About the gunpowder, about the many bombs and firefights, about the basement and the walls. The leaving that came later when you were so sure you would die there, ribs bruised, face a mess of wounds and popped blood vessels.

The room feels calmer, after you say it, like not so much is at stake anymore, like he might understand your irrational fear of gates shut behind you, why your vision failing feels like a different kind of wall.

“And then I had to figure out so much on my own. I didn’t know how to trap or hunt or garden, but I couldn’t go back. And I didn’t trust anyone. The first time I had to break down a rabbit, I threw up, and I was so proud of the little trap I’d caught it in. A trap that took days to get right. The first deer I shot. . .half the meat was wasted because I was so squeamish. How could I kill people like nothing and an animal made me sick?”

You look at him, and Joel squeezes your hand but doesn’t answer.

“I went hungry because I didn’t know how to feed myself.” You close your eyes. “It’s no different than what anyone else has been though. But I figured it out and I didn’t have to rely on anyone. I didn’t have to rely on favors or shitty ration cards or—”

You open your eyes again, that careful, steady gaze of his on you, accessing. You already know what he’s going to say.

“But it got better and I was free. Then my sight started to go. And I feel trapped again. I don’t want to owe anyone; I don’t want to rely on anyone. I don’t want walls around me again. So I have to figure it out, like I did before because I can’t go back.”

He shakes his head. “But you don’t gotta now. I know—” he emphasizes before you can interrupt, “I know how it is. I know what you mean. Jesus, I know. But it don’t have to be that way. It ain’t that way.”

You shake your head, not sure he really understands.

The rain continues to slow, pattering to a tiny, insignificant drizzle. He urges you up, into the cradle of his body, arms curled around you. “Can you visit me?” Joel offers, a desperate olive branch. “Ain’t even gotta be overnight.”

You chew on it for a moment, the anxious pulse of your heart slowing as his hands rub the base of your spine. “I’m not saying yes, but maybe I can visit.”

He breathes out. “Well, all right.” There’s such stark relief in his voice, it makes the middle of your chest ache. “That’s a start.”

“I’m not—I can’t promise you anything.”

“I know it.”

You blink. “We’re okay? You’re okay with—”

“For now. Ain’t gonna leave it alone neither.” He pats your hip. “And you’ll let me bring supplies.”

It’s not a question. You smile and duck your head. “I guess I should be flattered. Will you still come hunting with me?”

“‘Course I will. Will you come home with me tonight?”

You hesitate, but only for a moment. “Of course I will.”

It’s not as hard as you think it is, climbing atop the horse with Joel at your back in the evening sunshine that turns the world into a slipshod mullion of orange and yellow peeking through still dripping trees.

His arms branch around you to hold the reins, tucking you close to his chest. He promises to bring you back before nightfall and you believe that he will never become something that might make you feel trapped, even if you never learn to live in Jackson.

#shut UUUUP this is so good

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joeltheresa · 2 months ago

Note

i feel like cherry would still endlessly tease joel and joke about the sugar baby stuff after they’re properly together

or when someone talks behind his back to her like they’re grocery shopping and a judgy person comes up like “he’s so OLD though” and she just stares at the love of her life and goes “god fuck i know right he’s so perfect”

meanwhile joels in total bliss probably picking cherry flavor gummy bears for her and waving them up to her to ask if she wants them

your honor they are my entire life 😝

pairing: joel miller x former f!sex worker!reader

wc: 1.6k

part of the cherry verse - cherry masterlist

warnings: overly concerned and condescending lady at a gas station, old man joel, flirting, protective cherry, unedited

a/n: I don't think you meant this ask as a request anon but it inspired something anyway so I hope you enjoy it <3

“Baby?”

Joel glances up from the gas pump, his brows furrowing, eyes narrowing into a squint against the late afternoon sun so he can meet your eyes.

You cross your arms over the open window and lean your chin against them. He looks pretty, in the fading summer light, in a dark blue t-shirt that you had bought for him with your own money, grudgingly but proudly accepted by him, wrapping paper torn off in careful strips.

“Cherry?” he answers.

You reach one hand out and Joel immediately raises his own to hold it against the side of the truck, rubbing his thumb over the back of your knuckles.

“Get me a drink for the road?” You ask sweetly as a car pulls up to the other side of the pump and a woman clambers out of the driver’s seat. Her eyes flash to yours before she disappears behind Joel’s back, the white metal tower of the gas pump.

He chuckles and squeezes your fingers. “Should I ever bother askin’ what it is you want to drink?”

“I think you know by now, cowboy.” You swing his hand a little, the metal of your charm bracelet clanking lightly against the door. “And a snack, please.”

“Well, you don’t have to beg for it,” he says, thumb still tracking over your knuckles. He looks so handsome, standing in the wake of golden hour sunblades. Prettier, handsomer with each passing year. He’s nearer to sixty than fifty now, as you edge closer to thirty.

You sit up a little straighter, push your shoulders back and lean forward so he can look at you. Showing off, just a little. You want him to look. “I can do some begging for you. Or just flash you. If you need enticing, or paying.” A teasing echo of your past that makes him roll his eyes.

“That’s all right, Cherry,” he says as the gas clicks off in his other hand. His fingers tighten on yours again before he releases your hand and attends to the truck, replacing the nozzle into the pump and screwing the gas cap back into place.

You're on your way home from visiting Ellie and Dina at their new place, making a mini road trip of the short drive by taking back roads and lesser known highways, stretching the drive into a hour or two.

You watch him with covetous eyes, possessive pride. The stretch and bunch of well worked muscle in his shoulders and back, the exposed backs of his biceps, the dent and roll of flesh beneath skin.

“I’ll probably see ‘em later, anyway.”

“Ha. Funny.”

He kisses you on the top of the head before he starts to walk toward the convenience store, skirting between the pumps as the streetlights start to pop on. “And a snack?” You call.

“What kind?” He asks, turning to walk backward and meet your eyes.

“Surprise me.”

He nods and turns again, a bell chiming above the door as he pulls it open and disappears inside.

You close your eyes, peace settling around your bone in a warm and cottony. The air is warm on your face. The smell of another approaching summer thick on the air, scented with bluebonnets and gasoline undercut by the roiling scent of you and Joel in the cab of the truck.

“Excuse me?”

You open your eyes and jump, finding the woman at the next pump standing beside the door.

“Can I help you?” You ask, lifting your head.

She smiles at you. The kind of quietly judgemental smile you used to get a lot, from hotel receptionists and cashiers, anyone who saw you and knew instinctively that you sold yourself. Smiles that had continued after you left that life and began another with Joel, which no amount of explaining, no amount of evidence could convince them you weren’t a victim and a sin rolled all into one, desperately needing to be led back into the flock of good sense.

It doesn’t help that the truth you’d once given to Joel bundled neatly with a lie, is still true. You look younger than you are.

“Do you need help?”

“Help?” You ask, feigning confusion at her well meaning condescension, the accusation in her eyes that said even if you did need help you should have known better. “With what?”

It’s easier to stomach strangers’ worry when you could tell it was genuine concern, usually from women your own age who giggled and laughed when you winked and promised you were okay.

The judgement translates to embarrassment when she realizes you won’t be cowed or humiliated. “Well, honey, he’s a lot older than you. I was just worried you were being taken advantage of.”

The bell above the convenience store rings again and Joel exits, holding the door for a mother and a little girl just behind him, eyes snagging on you and the woman, brows drawing together as he frowns, blinking away and down when the little girl garbles something at him that you can’t hear.

“Him? No. Afraid not.” You smile at her, a warning, and a threat. She hears it in your voice and her eyes turn flinty in response. “I’m probably taking advantage of him, if anything.” You lean in, whisper, with a shrug, “He’s probably the love of my life. Old or not.”

“You’ll realize when you're older that he’s taking advantage of you. A man his age has no business with you.”

You shrug, “I am older and I don’t think I’ll ever realize. I’m not the one to lecture. Don’t let me hear another bad word about him.”

She looks scandalized, and you can imagine the incensed facebook post that will be made in your honor, the sinful little girl at the gas station she was just trying to help as she turns away and returns to her car. Oh well.

No one would speak about Joel that way to you. No one who actually knew you would think something like that about either of you.

Where once it might have itched, stung, worried you, that someone could think that, that Joel might hear it and hear the truth of it, now you feel the heavily weighted sincerity of what you answered her concern with.

He’s the love of your life, probably. There will never be another that sinks beneath your skin like him, understands you, accepts you like he does.

Joel tugs open the driver’s side door and slides into his seat. He jerks his chin at the woman, furiously typing on her phone. “What was that about?”

“Nothing. Just giving her directions.”

“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t look convinced but doesn’t push it. You’d tell him if it mattered, and he knows that, all these years on. You hold out your hands for his and rub hand sanitizer into his hands, massaging joints that you know are starting to ache more and more.

“What’d you get me?” You ask softly, reaching out to push gray hair behind his ear when you’re finished with his hands, sliding the backs of your fingers against his cheek briefly, feeling affectionate and protective of him.

He passes you your drink, bottled and cold, then holds up his other finds. “That candy you like,” he says, like a dog with a kill at your back door, “them chips you ate for three weeks straight and nothin’ else.”

“Hey! I was stressed out.” It had been at the end of another academic year, a deadline approaching, and Joel had had to coax you to the dinner table to eat real food many evenings in a row.

“You had blisters on your tongue.” Salt and vinegar, additive but acid.

“And yet you still got them for me,” you answer happily, tearing into the packet. “Thank you, Joel.”

He starts the truck, and then takes your face between his hands and kisses you before you can get a chip into your mouth. “Anything for you, Cher,” he murmurs, mouth brushing yours. “Now what’d that lady say to you?”

You bark out a laugh as he pulls away and shifts into drive, streetlight flickering over you, competing with the dying sun. “She thought I was stealing your innocence.”

“My innocence?” He asks incredulously.

“Because you’re just a frail old man I’m taking advantage of.”

“That so?”

“Yeah,” you say sadly, and crack open the bottle of coke. “Remember when I was your sugar baby?”

“Jesus, Cher.”

But he’s laughing, glancing at you from the corner of his eye with a smile. “Thanks for lyin’ to me.”

“I defended your honor.”

“Mm,” he grunts, still sounding amused.

You pass him chips and unwrap candy and watch the sunset, occasionally letting him steal a sip of your coke. At a stoplight, you kiss him and only taste the wax of your lipstick and cherry coke. “I told her you’re the love of my life.”

He looks surprised, eyes traveling over your face, flicking to your eyes and away. “Did ya?”

“And that you’re good to me.” You touch his cheek. “You’re the only thing I’ve never needed saving from.”

His skin goes hot beneath your hand. “All right,” he says, truck lurching forward again when the light flashes green.

But he pulls your hand into his, holds it tight on his thigh. You hear his unspoken answer in the cup of his palm, his unflinching heartbeat against yours.

#SHUT UUUUUUP I love this

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