theetherealbloom

[theetherealbloom]

It Only Falls Into Place When You're Falling To Pieces

Summary: There are a lot of people you thought would live forever. You swore Joel would be one of them.

Pairing: Jackson!Joel Miller x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+ HEAVY ANGST, Fluff, Crying, Tears, Sadness, Apocalypse, Cordyceps, Infected, Major Character Death(s), Funerals, Grief, PTSD, Depression, Kissing, Blood, Morgue, Star-Crossed Lovers, TLOU 2 Spoilers,

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: Fml. I know that you know I don’t usually write angst, but fuck man, I need to mourn and maybe so do you… God I'm so sad. Like we knew the story and how it would end for Joel. Even if you think you're ready... But I know this from experience, even if you've braced yourself, brutality like this... will hurt a lot.

Side note: I’m dyslexic and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!

Song: Still by Noah Kahan

Joel Miller Masterlist | MAIN MASTERLIST |

WYOMING, JACKSON — 2029

The mornings were slow in Jackson. Slow in a way that made you feel like maybe—just maybe—you weren’t living in the end times anymore.

Joel had a habit of waking up before you. Not out of routine or discipline, but out of muscle memory. The kind that sticks even when the world’s long since changed.

Sometimes, he made coffee. Sometimes, he just sat at the table, plucking at his guitar in soft, incomplete chords while the sun started to push through the windows. The house you shared wasn’t big or fancy. But it was warm. It was quiet. It had his coat always draped over the same chair, his boots by the door, the scent of cedar and pine from the little woodworking studio in one of the rooms.

It had Joel.

You found yourself drifting toward him more often than not. Whether he was sanding a piece of maple or trying to shape a leg for a rocking chair he swore he’d finish someday, he let you linger. You’d sit on the bench next to him, fingers curled around a warm mug. He’d hand you scraps to practice carving, smiling softly when you accidentally broke off a corner.

“‘S alright,” he’d murmur, brushing sawdust off your cheek with a thumb. “Takes time.”

Everything with Joel took time.

Loving him. Learning him. Earning the space between his heart and the pain he never quite put into words.

But the quiet in Jackson gave you time. Time to laugh with him over burned dinners, to slow dance in the kitchen when he played a familiar tune, to lay on the couch with your head on his chest while he told you about old country songs and the guitar he lost in Austin.

And it gave him time, too.

Time to lower his walls. To see you not as a danger, but as something steady—something soft he could rest in. Time to share pieces of himself he rarely offered to anyone, fragile corners he'd kept locked away.

He would look at you and think, If I were braver. If I could just say it.

He’d imagine the words on his tongue, how they’d change everything the second they left his mouth. But he wasn’t ready—not brave enough, not honest enough.

So he just looked at you instead.

And maybe you knew. Maybe you always knew.

Because he did love you.

In quiet, consistent ways. In the way he made your coffee just how you liked it. In the way he memorized the sound of your laugh. In every glance, every softened breath, every moment where he didn’t walk away.

He didn’t love you because he was lonely—Joel had long since learned how to survive in the silence.

He loved you because your light made the dark seem less like a prison and more like a place he could leave behind.

It started small.

A found thing—half-buried in the snow behind the stables. You’d been looking for spare nails in a busted old toolbox when you saw it: a film camera. Dusty, scratched up, but the click still worked. You brought it back like a prize.

Joel looked up from the guitar he was restringing, brow furrowed. “You went diggin’ around in that old junkyard again?”

You grinned, breath fogging the air. “Found treasure.”

He squinted at the thing in your hand like it might bite him. “You sure that ain’t just some broken plastic?”

“Only one way to find out.”

He watched you tinker with it all afternoon, wiping the lens clean with your sleeve, warming the roll of film between your palms to bring it back to life. You caught him staring more than once—chin propped in his hand, fingers idle on the frets of a guitar he’d been meaning to finish tuning.

When it finally worked, you snapped a picture of the sunset from your porch. Then one of his back as he worked, his brow furrowed in concentration, sleeves rolled up, calloused hands steady over the worn wood.

You took one of his profile too. He’d been humming low under his breath, unaware.

“Hey,” he said, catching the click. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You’re handsome when you’re focused.”

He huffed a laugh, but he didn’t stop you when you raised the camera again.

Later that week, you asked him for one together.

“C’mere,” you said, tugging at the front of his jacket. “Just one. You might like the memory someday.”

He looked reluctant, like the idea of being frozen in time made him itch. But he let you lead him into the light. You kissed him on the cheek just as the timer clicked. He smiled, wide and surprised and real.

The photo came out a little blurry. But your mouth was pressed to his skin, his eyes crinkled with something close to joy. You kept it in your coat pocket like it might keep you warm.

Sometimes, he came into the kitchen just to touch you.

No reason. No words. Just drawn to you like muscle memory.

You’d be standing at the counter, elbow-deep in something mundane—rinsing mugs, slicing vegetables, stirring whatever was bubbling in the pot—when suddenly there’d be a shift in the air behind you. A warmth. A quiet presence.

Then, Joel’s arms would wind around your waist, firm and steady, palms pressing low on your stomach, right through the thin fabric of your shirt. His chest would settle against your back like it belonged there, like you were meant to carry each other’s weight.

“You makin’ somethin’ good?” he’d mumble into your hair, voice rough with sleep or fresh air or maybe just the softness you always brought out of him.

You barely had time to answer before you’d feel it—his nose brushing just beneath your ear, his scruff scratching tender against your neck. The kind of touch that made the air feel thick with heat and memory.

“You smell like cinnamon,” he whispered one evening, lips grazing the spot where your jaw met your throat.

You stilled, blinking down at the spoon in your hand. “You been sniffin’ me, Miller?”

A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Can’t help it,” he murmured, slow and sweet, like molasses in summer. “You’re intoxicatin’, darlin’. Makes a man forget what he came in here for.”

His mouth followed the curve of your neck, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse. Slow. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world to worship you.

You laughed then, breath catching in your throat. It wasn’t loud—it didn’t need to be. Just a soft, breathless sound that filled the space between your bodies as you leaned back into him, hips settling against his.

The laughter didn’t last long. It never did when his hands started to move—one curling around your hip, the other slipping beneath the hem of your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin.

The spoon slipped from your fingers and clattered into the sink, forgotten.

You turned slightly, enough to meet his eyes, and whispered, “The stew’s gonna burn.”

Joel kissed the corner of your mouth, smiling just enough to be trouble.

“Let it.”

One night, he kissed you like he had all the time in the world.

It was late, storm tapping at the windows, fire burning low. You were tucked beneath his arm on the couch, legs over his lap, your hand tucked into the worn flannel of his shirt. He kissed you once, then again, then a hundred more times.

Short, sweet little things.

He kissed your cheeks, your eyelids, the corner of your mouth. You giggled, cheeks hurting from how hard you were smiling.

“Joel,” you whispered, nose scrunched, lips twitching. “What are you doing?”

His palms cradled your face like you were something delicate. Like he’d break if he didn’t touch you just right.

“Memorizing you,” he said. Then he kissed the giggle right off your lips.

Your hands curled in his hair, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, soft and slow, lips sliding together like they belonged there.

And when he finally pulled back, his forehead pressed against yours, his voice came out low and honest, barely above a breath:

“You’re everythin’ darlin’.”

He didn’t say he loved you.

Not with words.

But in every quiet moment, every gentle touch, every photo you took that he let you keep—he showed you.

And somehow, that meant more.

Love shows up in the quiet moments with Joel. Always has been.

Not in grand declarations or fireworks. Not in promises whispered beneath starlight or etched into stone. No, with Joel, love slips in softly—through the cracks of everyday life, in the pauses between sentences, in the silence he lets you share without needing to fill it. It’s there when the world is loud, and he chooses to be quiet with you. When everything aches and he doesn’t try to fix it—just stays.

It’s the way your hand always finds his, especially when he’s got that look about him—brows drawn low, eyes shadowed, body still as a storm about to break. You’ve come to know it well, that kind of tension that settles in his shoulders like he’s bracing against something only he can see. The kind of stillness that doesn’t feel like peace, but like he’s waiting to run or fight or fall apart.

So you reach for him.

You don’t announce it, don’t make a show of it. Just slide your hand into his, palm against his rough calloused skin, fingers curling between his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. Because you’ve done this before, countless times. Every time the ghosts get too loud or the silence feels too sharp. You hold his hand and he lets you, and that’s how you know—how you always know—he’s letting you in again.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. Just breathes out slow, like your touch takes some of the weight off, even if it’s just a fraction. His jaw unclenches. His shoulders drop a little. You can feel it—the shift, the surrender, the trust.

“Y’okay?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper, soft enough that it could be mistaken for wind slipping through the seams of the old house, rustling the curtains just enough to remind you that the world is still turning outside these walls.

Joel looks at you. Not a glance. A real look. The kind that lingers. The kind that says more than words ever could. His eyes are tired, but there’s something else there too—something quieter, gentler, something that only ever surfaces around you.

His thumb moves in a slow arc across your knuckles, and when he answers, it’s not just with words. It’s in the way his grip tightens slightly, not desperate, just present.

“I am now,” he murmurs, his voice low and warm, frayed at the edges. Like maybe he’s been holding it in all day, maybe even longer. Like your hand in his unlocked something he didn’t know he needed to say.

You don’t answer. You don’t need to. You lean into him instead, resting your head on his shoulder, letting the weight of you press gently against him like a tether. Like a promise. His arm slips around you, steady and sure, palm settling at your hip. He presses a kiss into your hair—right at the crown of your head, like a seal, like a prayer, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

The room around you is quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the crackle of the fire. Outside, snow falls soundlessly, blanketing the world in soft white. And inside, it’s warm. Not just from the fire—but from him. From this.

From the way he holds you like you’re something he never thought he’d have again. Like the simple act of your hand in his might keep the darkness at bay for one more night.

With Joel, love doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to.

It just stays.

And that’s always been more than enough.

The mornings are always slow.

Time feels syrup-thick when the sun hasn’t fully crested the horizon yet, and sleep still clings to your limbs like molasses. Your body is heavy, cocooned in the tangle of sheets still warm from the man who slept beside you. The air is cool beyond the bed, but the mattress holds the echo of his heat, and it makes you reluctant to move, even as your senses start to stretch awake.

You shift lazily, one arm reaching across the bed to where Joel had been moments ago. It’s empty now, his absence a soft dip in the mattress, but the scent of him lingers—cedarwood, a trace of leather, the faint hint of salt and earth from yesterday’s long walk back into Jackson. Comforting. Familiar.

You pry one eye open, squinting into the low light. Joel’s already sitting at the edge of the bed, the muscles of his back broad and bare, catching a gentle glint from the early morning haze seeping in through the window. He’s halfway through pulling on his shirt, slow and steady, the way he always is in the mornings. A quiet man doing quiet things.

Without thinking, without even fully waking, your hand slips out from beneath the covers and finds him.

Your fingers wrap loosely around his wrist—barely a tug, just enough to let him know you’re there, still tethered to him. And then you shift closer, burying your face against the small of his back, pressing a soft, languid kiss to the warm skin just above the waistband of his jeans.

“Mmm... good mornin’, Joel,” you mumble, voice thick with sleep, muffled by the skin beneath your lips.

He pauses. Still for a moment, like the warmth of your kiss stopped time. Then he breathes out, slow and fond, and turns slightly—just enough to glance at you over his shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the corners, soft with affection, and that familiar crooked smile curves beneath the rough scruff of his jaw.

“Mornin’, sweetheart.” His voice is rough and low, like gravel soaked in honey, warm enough to melt straight through your bones.

You hum in response, already halfway to sleep again, forehead resting against his back. The bed creaks softly as he shifts, brushing his hand over your tangled hair in a slow, affectionate stroke. His thumb lingers at your temple, then trails down to the curve of your cheek, gentle and grounding.

“Go on,” he murmurs, bending down to press a kiss into your hair. “Sleep a little longer. I’ll get the fire goin’.”

You don’t answer, not really. Just let out a sigh that sounds like peace and contentment all wrapped into one. He stands slowly, quietly, careful not to disturb the blankets more than necessary, and as he moves toward the hearth, you stay curled in the warmth he left behind—your hand resting in the space where his had been, eyes slipping closed again.

You listen to the familiar rhythm of him moving through the room—boots being tugged on, the scrape of kindling, the gentle snap of a match. The softest clink of metal on stone. And through it all, the quiet knowledge that this is what love is.

Not always words. Not always fire and thunder.

But this.

These mornings. These moments. Him.

Sometimes, when the world gets too loud—even in Jackson—you find yourself gravitating toward him without a thought.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the bustle of the market, the chatter of passing patrols, or just the quiet hum of a too-long day catching up with your bones. Something in your chest tightens, overwhelmed and aching for something quieter, something still. And so you find Joel.

He’s usually somewhere close—he always is. Maybe talking with Tommy, maybe checking the perimeter, maybe just standing there with his arms crossed like he’s holding up the whole damn sky on his back again. But the moment your arms circle around his middle, everything else seems to fall away.

You press yourself into him, chest to his back, arms around his waist, and your face buries instinctively in the crook of his neck. That space between shoulder and jaw where you swear the whole world could stop and you wouldn’t mind. The smell of him hits you instantly—faint cedarwood, worn leather, a trace of smoke from the fire pit, and something else too. Something warm and steady and Joel.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away or ask what’s wrong. He just lets out a quiet hum, low in his chest, and leans back into your touch. His hands find yours where they’re linked around his stomach, thumbs brushing idly over your knuckles. You feel the weight of his chin as he rests it gently on top of your head, and then the press of a kiss into your hair—soft, unthinking, like muscle memory.

It’s the kind of affection that doesn’t ask for attention. Doesn’t need an occasion. It just is.

You breathe him in like you’re trying to anchor yourself. Let your eyes flutter shut. Let the rest of the world blur into background noise.

“I missed this,” you whisper against the warmth of his throat, the words barely more than a sigh. You don’t even mean the moment, exactly—you mean the peace of it. The quiet. The him of it all.

Joel turns his head just a little, enough for the edge of his beard to scratch gently against your forehead. His voice is soft when he replies, but there’s something thick in it, something full.

“You’re right here,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gotta miss a thing.”

You shift your face closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. “Sometimes I still do,” you admit.

He nods once, like he gets it without needing you to explain. “Yeah,” he says, his hand trailing up to cup the back of your head. “Me too.”

And for a long moment, neither of you say anything more. You just stand there, wrapped up in each other, while the world spins noisily on around you—too loud, too fast, too much.

But here, in the shelter of his arms, in the crook of his neck, everything is quiet. Everything is enough.

Crowds were never your thing.

Too many people pressed in too close, too many voices overlapping, footsteps echoing off wood and brick. Even in a place like Jackson—safe, familiar—it could still feel like too much. You were used to being on alert, always aware of exits and shadows, always bracing for what could go wrong. Old habits from the world outside didn’t die easily.

Joel wasn’t much better with crowds. Maybe a little quieter about it, a little more practiced at hiding the way his shoulders stiffened when someone brushed past too close. But you’d seen it. The way his jaw would flex when he was trying to be polite but already had one foot out the door in his head. The way his hand sometimes hovered near his belt like he was missing the feel of his rifle.

And yet, here you were.

The town hall was full to bursting, the whole place humming with life. It was some kind of celebration—maybe a harvest, maybe a birthday, maybe people just needed a reason to dance and drink and pretend that the world hadn’t ended outside those walls. Whatever it was, it was loud. Laughter spilled from every corner. Music vibrated through the floorboards. Glasses clinked together and boots stomped in time with the beat.

You stood near the far end of the room, half-heartedly nursing a cup of water, swaying just a little in time with the song playing—more to keep your nerves from buzzing than for enjoyment. You scanned the room like you always did. Faces. Movements. That unconscious search for something familiar, something grounding.

And then your eyes found Joel.

He was on the opposite side of the room, shoulder leaning against a wooden support beam, arms folded loosely across his chest. He hadn’t joined the dance, hadn’t made a plate from the food table. Just stood there, scanning the crowd—and you knew in your bones he’d been looking for you.

When your eyes met, the noise dulled. Not all at once. It didn’t go silent or freeze like in the movies. But it faded. As if the current of the room moved around the two of you instead of through.

You were mid-sip when it happened, your fingers curled around the cool tin cup, lips barely brushing the rim. But as soon as you caught his gaze, you paused.

It wasn’t a grand thing. No sweeping declarations. Just a glance. A quiet, steady look that said you’re here, and I see you, and that’s all I need.

You tilted your head a fraction, the corner of your mouth twitching upward into the kind of smile you only saved for him—small, but true. Your chest softened. Your breath eased.

Across the room, Joel’s lips quirked into that familiar little half-smile, the one that never quite reached both corners of his mouth, but you knew what it meant. He gave a subtle nod. Nothing flashy. Nothing for show.

Just,  I see you too.

You held that look for a second longer, your body still surrounded by the warmth and noise and movement of the room, but none of it really touched you. Not in that moment. Not with his gaze wrapped around you like a thread pulled taut across the distance.

And even though no one said a word, something passed between you.

You smile again, this one a little wider, a little softer. A silent message of your own: I’m not going anywhere.

And Joel’s eyes softened like he heard it loud and clear.

You hum sometimes, without even knowing you’re doing it. It just slips out—soft and low, the way wind moves through tall grass. A half-remembered tune from before the world went sideways. Maybe it was from the radio, maybe from your childhood, maybe your mother’s voice singing over the hiss of boiling water. It’s not the melody that matters. It’s the feeling that comes with it—warmth, familiarity, something that once meant home.

Sometimes, when your mind is far away, you whistle it instead. Just a few notes, carried on your breath.

Joel never interrupts. Never tells you to stop or asks you to hush. He just listens—quietly, carefully, like the sound of your humming settles something in him too. Like maybe the song is stitching him back together in places neither of you can quite name.

He’s usually out on the porch when it happens, sitting on the old wooden steps with one of the guitars he’s been fixing up. Strings stretched taut, frets worn smooth by time and hands that once knew chords. His fingers—rough and weathered—move slow and steady as he tunes it. Every so often, he plucks a string, listens, adjusts. The sun casts a soft amber glow across his forearms, painting the scars in gold.

You’re nearby. Always. Curled up with your legs folded beneath you, back resting against one of the porch posts. A blanket draped over your shoulders. You hum like peace lives in your chest and is trying to find its way out.

Joel glances up when he hears it—mid-strum, his brow relaxed, lips parted just slightly like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. He just looks at you for a moment, and everything about him softens. His shoulders drop. The line between his brows disappears. Like the sound of you is the first deep breath he’s taken all day.

“What’s that song?” he asks after a while, his voice breaking the silence like it belongs there. Low and warm, barely above the hush of wind.

You pause, the melody tapering off in your throat. Your eyes flick toward the sky, as if the answer might be waiting somewhere in the clouds.

“Not sure,” you murmur, a smile tugging lazily at the corner of your mouth. “Mama used to sing it when she was cooking. I think it used to be on the radio, too. One of those songs that just… stuck.”

Joel nods, the kind of slow, thoughtful nod that doesn’t need words to follow. He strums another chord, something soft and sweet, and leans back on his elbows.

“Well,” he says, glancing at you with that familiar flicker of something unspoken in his eyes. “Keep goin’. I like it.”

There’s something in the way he says it—something that makes your chest ache in that soft, full kind of way. The kind of ache that’s not about pain at all, but about being known. About being seen and loved for the quiet parts of yourself you didn’t think anyone else noticed.

So you hum again, picking up where you left off. Joel doesn’t look away. He keeps strumming, matching your rhythm now. Not quite harmonizing. Just being there with you, in it.

And for a little while, the world feels like it’s made of nothing but warm wood, old songs, and two people learning how to feel safe again.

You’re curled up together in bed one night, everything quiet except the low pop and crackle of the fire burning in the hearth. The room glows in soft amber and gold, the shadows on the walls swaying like they’re dancing to the rhythm of your breathing. Outside, wind brushes against the windows, but inside, it’s warm. Safe. Still.

Joel lies flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other draped loosely around your waist. You’re pressed into his side, head resting just below his collarbone, your hand lazily combing through his hair—fingertips tracing gentle, aimless patterns. His hair’s soft tonight, freshly washed and still carrying the faint scent of cedar soap and woodsmoke.

Neither of you speaks for a while. There’s no need. Just the hush between heartbeats and the sound of Joel’s steady breathing, slow and even beneath your ear.

“I could stay like this forever,” you whisper eventually, your voice thick with sleep. Each word melts into the warmth of his skin. Your eyes are already slipping closed, lashes brushing his chest. You don’t even know if he hears you.

But then you feel it—Joel’s arm tightening around your waist, his hand sliding up under your shirt just enough to rest against your spine, warm and grounding.

“Then don’t move,” he murmurs, voice rough with tiredness and something gentler, deeper. The kind of softness he only ever shows in moments like this, when the world is quiet and his guard is down. “Ain’t no one tellin’ us to go anywhere.”

You smile into the dark, into the skin of his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath your cheek. His heartbeat thumps slow and steady, and you swear you could fall asleep to that sound alone.

Joel shifts slightly, just enough to press a kiss into the top of your head. His lips linger there—like a promise more than anything spoken.

“You’re warm,” he mumbles.

“So are you,” you say, voice feather-light.

A comfortable silence settles in again. Your fingers slow in his hair, curling around a soft wave near his temple. His hand stays at your back, thumb drawing idle shapes you’re too sleepy to name.

The fire crackles. The wind hums. And you drift off like that—wrapped up in him, hand still in his hair, the weight of his love wrapped around you like a second blanket. Nothing else matters. Not out there. Not tomorrow. Just this.

Just him.

The temperature dips before the sun even brushes the horizon. The last of the daylight clings to the sky in hazy streaks of orange and violet, but the wind has already turned sharp, biting through the seams of your jacket. You and Joel walk side by side down the path back toward Jackson, boots crunching over patches of frost-laced grass and half-frozen dirt.

You don’t say much—patrols tend to leave a certain kind of quiet between you, a silence that doesn’t need filling. But you can feel the chill starting to settle deep in your bones, your fingers stiff and cheeks raw from the cold. You try to rub your hands together for warmth, but it’s useless. The wind is relentless.

Joel notices, of course. His eyes flick over to you, worried in that subtle way he is—more tension in the jaw, more silence than usual. You know he’s about to offer you his coat or tell you he should’ve brought that extra scarf.

So before he can open his mouth, you reach out and grab a fistful of his jacket.

Without a word, you tug him in. Joel stumbles the smallest step forward, surprised but not resisting. You pull until you're chest to chest, until the warmth of his body bleeds into yours. Your frozen hands slip under the back hem of his coat and find the soft flannel of his shirt underneath, palms pressing flat against the heat of his spine.

“Jesus,” Joel mutters, letting out a breath that puffs white between you, his arms automatically sliding around your waist. “You could’ve just asked for my coat, y’know.”

“But then I wouldn’t be this close,” you reply, chin tilting up, a smile tugging at your lips despite your chattering teeth. “You’re warmer than any jacket.”

Joel huffs a soft laugh, the kind that melts around the edges. He leans in, resting his forehead lightly against yours. “You’re a damn menace,” he says—but his voice is warm and low, thick with affection.

You can feel his fingers pressing into your back, holding you tighter. His nose brushes yours as he tilts his head, and then—soft as snowfall—he kisses you. Once. Then again. And a third time, his lips barely touching yours, quick little pecks that make you laugh and shiver all at once.

“Joel,” you whisper, still grinning, your breath fogging between you both.

“I like the taste of your lips on mine,” he murmurs, the words brushing against your mouth like silk. He says it like a secret. Like it’s always been true.

Then he kisses you again—this time slower, deeper, his hand cradling the back of your head as he pours warmth into you one soft press at a time. The world falls quiet. No wind. No cold. No patrols or gates or the threat of anything waiting in the dark.

Just Joel.

Just this.

When you finally pull apart, you don’t go far. He keeps you close, your fingers still tucked against his back, his breath brushing your temple.

You smile into his collar. “Can we stay like this a little longer?”

He kisses your hair, voice barely above a whisper. “Far as I’m concerned, we can stay like this forever.” 

And in that moment, time slows. Your heartbeat settles into the rhythm of his, safe and steady. Warm, despite everything. Because love—real love—isn’t just in the grand gestures. It’s in this. A quiet winter dusk. A jacket shared. The taste of his kiss. The way he holds you like you’re something worth braving the cold for.

Then there’s Ellie.

She was nineteen now. Strong. Sharp-tongued and guarded in the way Joel used to be. You weren’t her mother, and she never treated you like one—but she was curious about you. Distant at first. Then, little by little, she started asking questions. Sitting with you on the porch. Bringing you a book she found and thought you might like.

She and Joel… there were things left unsaid between them. You could feel it like a splinter under the skin. Something tender and unresolved.

He finally told you one night, long after you’d both settled into the quiet comfort of shared sheets and a life you thought might last.

It was after dinner. After the guitar and the laughter. After you’d kissed the corners of his mouth and pulled him into bed.

“I lied to her,” he said, voice hollow.

You blinked in the dark, still half-tangled in sleep. “What?”

Joel’s face was turned toward the ceiling. Still. Tense. “I lied to Ellie. About the Fireflies. About the hospital.”

The room chilled. Your fingers reached for his without hesitation.

“I killed them,” he continued. “Every last one that stood between me and her. ‘Cause they were gonna cut her open. To find a cure.”

He didn’t cry right away. He spoke through gritted teeth, like the guilt was a weight he carried every damn day and had never quite set down.

“She would’ve died. She didn’t know—still doesn’t really. I told her there were others. That she wasn’t the only one. But it was a lie. It’s all a lie.”

You didn’t speak. Just curled into him. Held his hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“She hates me for it,” he whispered.

“No,” you said. “She loves you. She’s angry, but she loves you.”

He shook his head. Silent tears rolled into his hairline. You kissed his shoulder. You stayed up all night, fingers running through his graying hair until his breathing steadied again.

That was the last night he told you something he’d never said out loud.

The screams had long gone silent. All that was left now was smoke. Gunpowder. Blood soaking into snow.

Your boots crunch through it—through the aftermath. Bodies, both friend and foe, lie crumpled like broken marionettes. The streets of Jackson, once humming with quiet life, are now a graveyard.

Tommy had held the line at the south gate. You saw him, blackened with ash and soot, flames dancing in the reflection of his eyes as he lit up a bloater with the last fuel of the flamethrower. His scream—raw, furious—cut through the chaos like a knife. You’d joined the others in the streets, turning bullets on the infected… and eventually, on the bitten.

Some of them you knew by name.

You don’t remember pulling the trigger. You only remember the stillness afterward.

The quiet after the roar.

By the time the last runner was put down, your hands were slick with blood—some of it not your own. And when they called for the dead to be gathered, you helped. You counted.

You lost count.

They winched open the gates sometime after. You were still standing by the old greenhouse-turned-morgue, watching Tommy collapse into Maria’s arms, his body shaking with the weight of what he’d survived.

And then—

The hoofbeats. The shuffle of footsteps. The drag of something heavy behind them.

You turned.

Jesse and Ellie rode in first. Dina followed, all their faces hollowed out by exhaustion and something far worse. Behind their horse trailed a shape wrapped in canvas, dark with frozen blood, limp in the snow.

Ellie’s eyes met yours.

Red-rimmed. Wide. Empty.

And you knew.

You knew.

Your legs gave out beneath you before the thought could fully form. The cold didn’t register. Only the scream that tore out of your throat—animal, guttural. You clawed at the snow, sobbing into the dirt and ice, your lungs heaving like they were trying to break through your ribs.

“No—no—no—!” It came out broken. Like you could undo it just by denying it hard enough.

Tommy grabbed you. Held you back. His own face soaked with tears.

You screamed again. You didn’t care who heard. Didn’t care that you were on your knees in the blood and the snow with your heart ripped open.

Maria stood nearby. Hands pressed to her mouth. Silent.

The bag didn’t move.

He was in there.

Joel.

You want to tear the canvas open. You want it to be a mistake. You want to see his face, alive. Cranky. Loving. Whole.

But you already know.

You don’t know how long you stay like that. How long your sobs echo off the ruined walls of Jackson. You only know this: he felt like home.

And now home is just… gone.

They carry him to the chapel. Ellie disappears inside, Dina trailing her silently. Jesse catches your eye and looks away.

You follow the corpse. Your legs move on their own. There’s nothing left to protect now, no fight to win. You’ve survived—but at what cost?

The snow keeps falling.

And somehow, the world keeps turning.

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. No birdsong, no wind. Just the thick, suffocating kind of silence that wraps around your ribs and squeezes until it feels like you might shatter from the inside out. The kind of silence that doesn’t leave room for breath, or hope.

The makeshift morgue is colder than outside, colder than anything should ever be. Too sterile. Too still. Too many bodies of people you once smiled at in passing. A metal table stands at the corner of the room, and he’s there—Joel—lying beneath a white sheet that feels far too thin. Like if you peeled it back, he’d stir. Grumble about the draft. Ask where his jacket went.

But he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t fucking move.

You sink to your knees beside the table. Wood floor biting into your bones, your hands trembling as they hover just above the edge of the sheet. Your throat burns like it’s been scraped raw from the inside out, but you haven’t said anything. Not really. Not yet.

Tommy sits down beside you, legs bent awkwardly, arms crossed over his chest like if he doesn’t hold himself together, he might fall apart right here with you.

“I don’t wanna say goodbye,” you choke out, voice so broken it barely sounds like yours. Your hands finally touch the edge of the table, and you grip it like a lifeline.

“I know,” Tommy murmurs. He doesn’t say more. Doesn’t try to fix it. Maybe because he knows there’s no fixing this.

You press your forehead against the cold edge of the metal, like maybe if you’re close enough, you’ll feel his warmth again. But there’s nothing. Only the chill of a world that kept turning without him in it.

“I needed him,” you whisper. The words break on your tongue like glass. “I still do. I need his voice—I need his arms. I need him to tell me this is all gonna be okay.”

A sob claws its way out of your chest, jagged and ugly. “He was supposed to be here.”

You think about the way he used to hold you—how his hands fit so easily around your waist, how he’d tug you close like the world outside didn’t exist. You think about his voice, low and rough, whispering “I got you, baby,” when the nightmares got bad. About the way he looked at you, like you were something worth protecting. Like you were home.

He was home.

And now he’s gone. And you’re nothing but a house with the roof torn off, standing in the rain.

“I don’t know how to be in a world that doesn’t have him in it,” you admit, tears falling freely now, soaking into your sleeves. “I was never scared of tomorrow when he was with me.”

Your head turns toward Tommy, eyes rimmed red. “How do I do this?”

He doesn’t answer. He just puts a hand over yours, squeezes it tight. It’s all he can give you, and you take it, even though it’s not the hand you want.

You close your eyes, breathing in like maybe you’ll catch some trace of him. Leather. Cedar. That soap he used when he tried to be fancy. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the dull antiseptic of this godforsaken room.

“I thought I knew grief,” you whisper. “But this… this is a whole new kind of broken.”

And it is. It’s grief with no bottom. No edges. No map. Like walking into a fog and never coming back out.

You reach up, finally, trembling fingers lifting the edge of the sheet.

You don’t pull it back.

You just press your palm over where you know his heart used to beat.

And you stay there, frozen in time, whispering his name like a prayer. Like if you say it enough, he might come back.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t.

And you know—no matter how many tomorrows come—you’ll miss him in every single one.

Because he wasn’t just the love of your life.

He was your life.

And now, all that’s left is the silence.

It’s three days later when Tommy finds you.

You haven’t spoken much since that day. Just shadows under your eyes and silence on your lips. People leave flowers near the mailbox. You go through the motions—eating when someone puts food in front of you, lying down when your legs give out—but you’re not really here.

You’re sitting on Joel’s porch when he approaches. Your knees are drawn to your chest, your hands wrapped in the sleeves of a jacket that still smells like him. It’s too big, and it doesn’t make you feel any less hollow.

Tommy stands in front of you for a moment, quiet.

Then he lowers himself to sit on the step beside you.

“I ain’t sure if now’s the right time,” he says, voice low. Rough. “But he… he asked me to give you somethin’. If…”

You look at him. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t have to. You both know how it ends.

Your heart stops. And then starts again, slower. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small envelope—folded and worn soft at the edges like it had been carried for a long time.

Your name is on it.

Your handwriting. Joel’s writing. It’s him. It's him.

Your fingers are shaking as you take it.

“I didn’t read it,” Tommy says, eyes on the horizon. “Didn’t wanna. Figured that was for you.”

Inside the envelope is a single piece of paper, folded once.

And a gold band.

Simple. Plain. No diamonds or carvings. Just a ring. One he probably bartered for quietly. One he probably kept in his pocket, maybe touched it when he thought about you. One he never got to give you.

Your vision blurs instantly.

The paper trembles in your hands as you unfold it. The ink is smudged in one corner—Joel had probably written it with those big hands, careful and slow. Trying to say something final in a way that didn’t feel like goodbye.

Your eyes find the first words.

Hey, baby.

If you’re reading this… then I’m not where I should be. I’m sorry.

God, I didn’t wanna write this. Been puttin’ it off for weeks. But the way this world is… well, you and I both know it don’t always give you time to say things out loud.

So I’m writin’ ‘em now.

First thing—I love you. You probably know that already. Hell, I’ve said it in a hundred different ways without ever sayin’ the words. In the way I hold you. The way I listen to you hum that song. The way I breathe easier when you’re near.

You gave me something I thought I didn’t deserve. Peace. A second chance. A home.

I hope I gave you the same.

Second thing—you’ll find a ring with this letter. Nothin’ fancy. I wanted to give it to you proper. Maybe on the porch. Maybe by the fire. Just… you and me. I had all these words planned. But none of ‘em matter now.

Just know this—I would’ve asked you to be mine. Not ‘cause I needed to prove anything. But because you already were. In every way that counts.

And I wanted the world to know.

I wanted to grow old with you. Wanted to find out what your hair looks like when it’s all grey. Wanted to kiss you goodnight a thousand more times.

I wanted all of it.

But if I didn’t make it—if you’re readin’ this now—I need you to do something for me.

Live.

Please. Don’t let this break you.

You got too much light in you to burn out now.

So wear the ring, if it helps. Or don’t. Keep it in your pocket. Toss it in the river. It’s yours, either way.

You’ll always be mine.

Forever and then some,  

Joel

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until Tommy places a hand on your back, steadying you as the weight of the words crushes you from the inside out.

The ring glints in your palm, catching the dying light of the day.

You bring it to your lips, kiss it once, then curl it into your fist and press it against your heart.

“I would’ve said yes,” you whisper into the air, broken and breathless. “I would’ve said yes a thousand times.”

And the wind moves through the trees like it’s carrying the words to him—wherever he is.

Because love like that doesn’t die.

It just waits.

It lingers in the quiet. In the echo of footsteps that aren’t his. In the smell of cedar and leather that still clings to the collar of his coat. It stays tucked in the corners of every room he touched, every breath he took beside you.

You will mourn him forever. You will miss him every minute.

Your hands will grow old holding a photograph of the two of you—sunlight on your faces, his arm around your shoulders like he always meant to keep you safe. Your bones will ache with the shape of him, your soul carved hollow where he used to be.

And when your time comes, when the world fades soft and slow at the edges, you’ll go with his name dancing on your lips. A whisper. A promise.

Because some loves aren’t meant to end.

Only to be found again.

[theetherealbloom]

Healed Masterlist

"You saved his life. I'm asking you to help him keep it."

Joel Miller x Doctor Reader

Rating: Explicit. 18+ (Minors DNI) Summary: After Joel's suffering at the hands of Abby, he survives. You, a new resident of Jackson, are tasked with healing him, bringing him back to life in more ways than one. Warnings: alternating pov, injury, eventual smut, mutual pining, fluff, domesticity in the apocalypse, joel survives, medical jargon, blood, sponge baths Chapters will have individual warnings.

Masterlist

Chapter 1 - Convalescence

—- Please let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list!

[theetherealbloom]

AWWW MISS MAAM!!!

Ok, first off-- my bad for making you cry! Second, low-key that's like a huge compliment for an author T^T (Like what do you mean my word vomit made you sad! I'm just writing my silly little fics!)

But, for real, thank you so much, that means the world to me that it genuinely had an impact on you, and now we can mourn over Joel together 😭😭😭😭

You are loved, and I'm so grateful that you're here!!!!

It Only Falls Into Place When You're Falling To Pieces

Summary: There are a lot of people you thought would live forever. You swore Joel would be one of them.

Pairing: Jackson!Joel Miller x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+ HEAVY ANGST, Fluff, Crying, Tears, Sadness, Apocalypse, Cordyceps, Infected, Major Character Death(s), Funerals, Grief, PTSD, Depression, Kissing, Blood, Morgue, Star-Crossed Lovers, TLOU 2 Spoilers,

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: Fml. I know that you know I don’t usually write angst, but fuck man, I need to mourn and maybe so do you… God I'm so sad. Like we knew the story and how it would end for Joel. Even if you think you're ready... But I know this from experience, but even if you've braced yourself, brutality like this... will hurt a lot.

Side note: I’m dyslexic and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!

Song: Still by Noah Kahan

Joel Miller Masterlist | MAIN MASTERLIST |

WYOMING, JACKSON — 2029

The mornings were slow in Jackson. Slow in a way that made you feel like maybe—just maybe—you weren’t living in the end times anymore.

Joel had a habit of waking up before you. Not out of routine or discipline, but out of muscle memory. The kind that sticks even when the world’s long since changed.

Sometimes, he made coffee. Sometimes, he just sat at the table, plucking at his guitar in soft, incomplete chords while the sun started to push through the windows. The house you shared wasn’t big or fancy. But it was warm. It was quiet. It had his coat always draped over the same chair, his boots by the door, the scent of cedar and pine from the little woodworking studio in one of the rooms.

It had Joel.

You found yourself drifting toward him more often than not. Whether he was sanding a piece of maple or trying to shape a leg for a rocking chair he swore he’d finish someday, he let you linger. You’d sit on the bench next to him, fingers curled around a warm mug. He’d hand you scraps to practice carving, smiling softly when you accidentally broke off a corner.

“‘S alright,” he’d murmur, brushing sawdust off your cheek with a thumb. “Takes time.”

Everything with Joel took time.

Loving him. Learning him. Earning the space between his heart and the pain he never quite put into words.

But the quiet in Jackson gave you time. Time to laugh with him over burned dinners, to slow dance in the kitchen when he played a familiar tune, to lay on the couch with your head on his chest while he told you about old country songs and the guitar he lost in Austin.

And it gave him time, too.

Time to lower his walls. To see you not as a danger, but as something steady—something soft he could rest in. Time to share pieces of himself he rarely offered to anyone, fragile corners he'd kept locked away.

He would look at you and think, If I were braver. If I could just say it.

He’d imagine the words on his tongue, how they’d change everything the second they left his mouth. But he wasn’t ready—not brave enough, not honest enough.

So he just looked at you instead.

And maybe you knew. Maybe you always knew.

Because he did love you.

In quiet, consistent ways. In the way he made your coffee just how you liked it. In the way he memorized the sound of your laugh. In every glance, every softened breath, every moment where he didn’t walk away.

He didn’t love you because he was lonely—Joel had long since learned how to survive in the silence.

He loved you because your light made the dark seem less like a prison and more like a place he could leave behind.

It started small.

A found thing—half-buried in the snow behind the stables. You’d been looking for spare nails in a busted old toolbox when you saw it: a film camera. Dusty, scratched up, but the click still worked. You brought it back like a prize.

Joel looked up from the guitar he was restringing, brow furrowed. “You went diggin’ around in that old junkyard again?”

You grinned, breath fogging the air. “Found treasure.”

He squinted at the thing in your hand like it might bite him. “You sure that ain’t just some broken plastic?”

“Only one way to find out.”

He watched you tinker with it all afternoon, wiping the lens clean with your sleeve, warming the roll of film between your palms to bring it back to life. You caught him staring more than once—chin propped in his hand, fingers idle on the frets of a guitar he’d been meaning to finish tuning.

When it finally worked, you snapped a picture of the sunset from your porch. Then one of his back as he worked, his brow furrowed in concentration, sleeves rolled up, calloused hands steady over the worn wood.

You took one of his profile too. He’d been humming low under his breath, unaware.

“Hey,” he said, catching the click. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You’re handsome when you’re focused.”

He huffed a laugh, but he didn’t stop you when you raised the camera again.

Later that week, you asked him for one together.

“C’mere,” you said, tugging at the front of his jacket. “Just one. You might like the memory someday.”

He looked reluctant, like the idea of being frozen in time made him itch. But he let you lead him into the light. You kissed him on the cheek just as the timer clicked. He smiled, wide and surprised and real.

The photo came out a little blurry. But your mouth was pressed to his skin, his eyes crinkled with something close to joy. You kept it in your coat pocket like it might keep you warm.

Sometimes, he came into the kitchen just to touch you.

No reason. No words. Just drawn to you like muscle memory.

You’d be standing at the counter, elbow-deep in something mundane—rinsing mugs, slicing vegetables, stirring whatever was bubbling in the pot—when suddenly there’d be a shift in the air behind you. A warmth. A quiet presence.

Then, Joel’s arms would wind around your waist, firm and steady, palms pressing low on your stomach, right through the thin fabric of your shirt. His chest would settle against your back like it belonged there, like you were meant to carry each other’s weight.

“You makin’ somethin’ good?” he’d mumble into your hair, voice rough with sleep or fresh air or maybe just the softness you always brought out of him.

You barely had time to answer before you’d feel it—his nose brushing just beneath your ear, his scruff scratching tender against your neck. The kind of touch that made the air feel thick with heat and memory.

“You smell like cinnamon,” he whispered one evening, lips grazing the spot where your jaw met your throat.

You stilled, blinking down at the spoon in your hand. “You been sniffin’ me, Miller?”

A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Can’t help it,” he murmured, slow and sweet, like molasses in summer. “You’re intoxicatin’, darlin’. Makes a man forget what he came in here for.”

His mouth followed the curve of your neck, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse. Slow. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world to worship you.

You laughed then, breath catching in your throat. It wasn’t loud—it didn’t need to be. Just a soft, breathless sound that filled the space between your bodies as you leaned back into him, hips settling against his.

The laughter didn’t last long. It never did when his hands started to move—one curling around your hip, the other slipping beneath the hem of your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin.

The spoon slipped from your fingers and clattered into the sink, forgotten.

You turned slightly, enough to meet his eyes, and whispered, “The stew’s gonna burn.”

Joel kissed the corner of your mouth, smiling just enough to be trouble.

“Let it.”

One night, he kissed you like he had all the time in the world.

It was late, storm tapping at the windows, fire burning low. You were tucked beneath his arm on the couch, legs over his lap, your hand tucked into the worn flannel of his shirt. He kissed you once, then again, then a hundred more times.

Short, sweet little things.

He kissed your cheeks, your eyelids, the corner of your mouth. You giggled, cheeks hurting from how hard you were smiling.

“Joel,” you whispered, nose scrunched, lips twitching. “What are you doing?”

His palms cradled your face like you were something delicate. Like he’d break if he didn’t touch you just right.

“Memorizing you,” he said. Then he kissed the giggle right off your lips.

Your hands curled in his hair, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, soft and slow, lips sliding together like they belonged there.

And when he finally pulled back, his forehead pressed against yours, his voice came out low and honest, barely above a breath:

“You’re everythin’ darlin’.”

He didn’t say he loved you.

Not with words.

But in every quiet moment, every gentle touch, every photo you took that he let you keep—he showed you.

And somehow, that meant more.

Love shows up in the quiet moments with Joel. Always has been.

Not in grand declarations or fireworks. Not in promises whispered beneath starlight or etched into stone. No, with Joel, love slips in softly—through the cracks of everyday life, in the pauses between sentences, in the silence he lets you share without needing to fill it. It’s there when the world is loud, and he chooses to be quiet with you. When everything aches and he doesn’t try to fix it—just stays.

It’s the way your hand always finds his, especially when he’s got that look about him—brows drawn low, eyes shadowed, body still as a storm about to break. You’ve come to know it well, that kind of tension that settles in his shoulders like he’s bracing against something only he can see. The kind of stillness that doesn’t feel like peace, but like he’s waiting to run or fight or fall apart.

So you reach for him.

You don’t announce it, don’t make a show of it. Just slide your hand into his, palm against his rough calloused skin, fingers curling between his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. Because you’ve done this before, countless times. Every time the ghosts get too loud or the silence feels too sharp. You hold his hand and he lets you, and that’s how you know—how you always know—he’s letting you in again.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. Just breathes out slow, like your touch takes some of the weight off, even if it’s just a fraction. His jaw unclenches. His shoulders drop a little. You can feel it—the shift, the surrender, the trust.

“Y’okay?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper, soft enough that it could be mistaken for wind slipping through the seams of the old house, rustling the curtains just enough to remind you that the world is still turning outside these walls.

Joel looks at you. Not a glance. A real look. The kind that lingers. The kind that says more than words ever could. His eyes are tired, but there’s something else there too—something quieter, gentler, something that only ever surfaces around you.

His thumb moves in a slow arc across your knuckles, and when he answers, it’s not just with words. It’s in the way his grip tightens slightly, not desperate, just present.

“I am now,” he murmurs, his voice low and warm, frayed at the edges. Like maybe he’s been holding it in all day, maybe even longer. Like your hand in his unlocked something he didn’t know he needed to say.

You don’t answer. You don’t need to. You lean into him instead, resting your head on his shoulder, letting the weight of you press gently against him like a tether. Like a promise. His arm slips around you, steady and sure, palm settling at your hip. He presses a kiss into your hair—right at the crown of your head, like a seal, like a prayer, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

The room around you is quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the crackle of the fire. Outside, snow falls soundlessly, blanketing the world in soft white. And inside, it’s warm. Not just from the fire—but from him. From this.

From the way he holds you like you’re something he never thought he’d have again. Like the simple act of your hand in his might keep the darkness at bay for one more night.

With Joel, love doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to.

It just stays.

And that’s always been more than enough.

The mornings are always slow.

Time feels syrup-thick when the sun hasn’t fully crested the horizon yet, and sleep still clings to your limbs like molasses. Your body is heavy, cocooned in the tangle of sheets still warm from the man who slept beside you. The air is cool beyond the bed, but the mattress holds the echo of his heat, and it makes you reluctant to move, even as your senses start to stretch awake.

You shift lazily, one arm reaching across the bed to where Joel had been moments ago. It’s empty now, his absence a soft dip in the mattress, but the scent of him lingers—cedarwood, a trace of leather, the faint hint of salt and earth from yesterday’s long walk back into Jackson. Comforting. Familiar.

You pry one eye open, squinting into the low light. Joel’s already sitting at the edge of the bed, the muscles of his back broad and bare, catching a gentle glint from the early morning haze seeping in through the window. He’s halfway through pulling on his shirt, slow and steady, the way he always is in the mornings. A quiet man doing quiet things.

Without thinking, without even fully waking, your hand slips out from beneath the covers and finds him.

Your fingers wrap loosely around his wrist—barely a tug, just enough to let him know you’re there, still tethered to him. And then you shift closer, burying your face against the small of his back, pressing a soft, languid kiss to the warm skin just above the waistband of his jeans.

“Mmm... good mornin’, Joel,” you mumble, voice thick with sleep, muffled by the skin beneath your lips.

He pauses. Still for a moment, like the warmth of your kiss stopped time. Then he breathes out, slow and fond, and turns slightly—just enough to glance at you over his shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the corners, soft with affection, and that familiar crooked smile curves beneath the rough scruff of his jaw.

“Mornin’, sweetheart.” His voice is rough and low, like gravel soaked in honey, warm enough to melt straight through your bones.

You hum in response, already halfway to sleep again, forehead resting against his back. The bed creaks softly as he shifts, brushing his hand over your tangled hair in a slow, affectionate stroke. His thumb lingers at your temple, then trails down to the curve of your cheek, gentle and grounding.

“Go on,” he murmurs, bending down to press a kiss into your hair. “Sleep a little longer. I’ll get the fire goin’.”

You don’t answer, not really. Just let out a sigh that sounds like peace and contentment all wrapped into one. He stands slowly, quietly, careful not to disturb the blankets more than necessary, and as he moves toward the hearth, you stay curled in the warmth he left behind—your hand resting in the space where his had been, eyes slipping closed again.

You listen to the familiar rhythm of him moving through the room—boots being tugged on, the scrape of kindling, the gentle snap of a match. The softest clink of metal on stone. And through it all, the quiet knowledge that this is what love is.

Not always words. Not always fire and thunder.

But this.

These mornings. These moments. Him.

Sometimes, when the world gets too loud—even in Jackson—you find yourself gravitating toward him without a thought.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the bustle of the market, the chatter of passing patrols, or just the quiet hum of a too-long day catching up with your bones. Something in your chest tightens, overwhelmed and aching for something quieter, something still. And so you find Joel.

He’s usually somewhere close—he always is. Maybe talking with Tommy, maybe checking the perimeter, maybe just standing there with his arms crossed like he’s holding up the whole damn sky on his back again. But the moment your arms circle around his middle, everything else seems to fall away.

You press yourself into him, chest to his back, arms around his waist, and your face buries instinctively in the crook of his neck. That space between shoulder and jaw where you swear the whole world could stop and you wouldn’t mind. The smell of him hits you instantly—faint cedarwood, worn leather, a trace of smoke from the fire pit, and something else too. Something warm and steady and Joel.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away or ask what’s wrong. He just lets out a quiet hum, low in his chest, and leans back into your touch. His hands find yours where they’re linked around his stomach, thumbs brushing idly over your knuckles. You feel the weight of his chin as he rests it gently on top of your head, and then the press of a kiss into your hair—soft, unthinking, like muscle memory.

It’s the kind of affection that doesn’t ask for attention. Doesn’t need an occasion. It just is.

You breathe him in like you’re trying to anchor yourself. Let your eyes flutter shut. Let the rest of the world blur into background noise.

“I missed this,” you whisper against the warmth of his throat, the words barely more than a sigh. You don’t even mean the moment, exactly—you mean the peace of it. The quiet. The him of it all.

Joel turns his head just a little, enough for the edge of his beard to scratch gently against your forehead. His voice is soft when he replies, but there’s something thick in it, something full.

“You’re right here,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gotta miss a thing.”

You shift your face closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. “Sometimes I still do,” you admit.

He nods once, like he gets it without needing you to explain. “Yeah,” he says, his hand trailing up to cup the back of your head. “Me too.”

And for a long moment, neither of you say anything more. You just stand there, wrapped up in each other, while the world spins noisily on around you—too loud, too fast, too much.

But here, in the shelter of his arms, in the crook of his neck, everything is quiet. Everything is enough.

Crowds were never your thing.

Too many people pressed in too close, too many voices overlapping, footsteps echoing off wood and brick. Even in a place like Jackson—safe, familiar—it could still feel like too much. You were used to being on alert, always aware of exits and shadows, always bracing for what could go wrong. Old habits from the world outside didn’t die easily.

Joel wasn’t much better with crowds. Maybe a little quieter about it, a little more practiced at hiding the way his shoulders stiffened when someone brushed past too close. But you’d seen it. The way his jaw would flex when he was trying to be polite but already had one foot out the door in his head. The way his hand sometimes hovered near his belt like he was missing the feel of his rifle.

And yet, here you were.

The town hall was full to bursting, the whole place humming with life. It was some kind of celebration—maybe a harvest, maybe a birthday, maybe people just needed a reason to dance and drink and pretend that the world hadn’t ended outside those walls. Whatever it was, it was loud. Laughter spilled from every corner. Music vibrated through the floorboards. Glasses clinked together and boots stomped in time with the beat.

You stood near the far end of the room, half-heartedly nursing a cup of water, swaying just a little in time with the song playing—more to keep your nerves from buzzing than for enjoyment. You scanned the room like you always did. Faces. Movements. That unconscious search for something familiar, something grounding.

And then your eyes found Joel.

He was on the opposite side of the room, shoulder leaning against a wooden support beam, arms folded loosely across his chest. He hadn’t joined the dance, hadn’t made a plate from the food table. Just stood there, scanning the crowd—and you knew in your bones he’d been looking for you.

When your eyes met, the noise dulled. Not all at once. It didn’t go silent or freeze like in the movies. But it faded. As if the current of the room moved around the two of you instead of through.

You were mid-sip when it happened, your fingers curled around the cool tin cup, lips barely brushing the rim. But as soon as you caught his gaze, you paused.

It wasn’t a grand thing. No sweeping declarations. Just a glance. A quiet, steady look that said you’re here, and I see you, and that’s all I need.

You tilted your head a fraction, the corner of your mouth twitching upward into the kind of smile you only saved for him—small, but true. Your chest softened. Your breath eased.

Across the room, Joel’s lips quirked into that familiar little half-smile, the one that never quite reached both corners of his mouth, but you knew what it meant. He gave a subtle nod. Nothing flashy. Nothing for show.

Just,  I see you too.

You held that look for a second longer, your body still surrounded by the warmth and noise and movement of the room, but none of it really touched you. Not in that moment. Not with his gaze wrapped around you like a thread pulled taut across the distance.

And even though no one said a word, something passed between you.

You smile again, this one a little wider, a little softer. A silent message of your own: I’m not going anywhere.

And Joel’s eyes softened like he heard it loud and clear.

You hum sometimes, without even knowing you’re doing it. It just slips out—soft and low, the way wind moves through tall grass. A half-remembered tune from before the world went sideways. Maybe it was from the radio, maybe from your childhood, maybe your mother’s voice singing over the hiss of boiling water. It’s not the melody that matters. It’s the feeling that comes with it—warmth, familiarity, something that once meant home.

Sometimes, when your mind is far away, you whistle it instead. Just a few notes, carried on your breath.

Joel never interrupts. Never tells you to stop or asks you to hush. He just listens—quietly, carefully, like the sound of your humming settles something in him too. Like maybe the song is stitching him back together in places neither of you can quite name.

He’s usually out on the porch when it happens, sitting on the old wooden steps with one of the guitars he’s been fixing up. Strings stretched taut, frets worn smooth by time and hands that once knew chords. His fingers—rough and weathered—move slow and steady as he tunes it. Every so often, he plucks a string, listens, adjusts. The sun casts a soft amber glow across his forearms, painting the scars in gold.

You’re nearby. Always. Curled up with your legs folded beneath you, back resting against one of the porch posts. A blanket draped over your shoulders. You hum like peace lives in your chest and is trying to find its way out.

Joel glances up when he hears it—mid-strum, his brow relaxed, lips parted just slightly like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. He just looks at you for a moment, and everything about him softens. His shoulders drop. The line between his brows disappears. Like the sound of you is the first deep breath he’s taken all day.

“What’s that song?” he asks after a while, his voice breaking the silence like it belongs there. Low and warm, barely above the hush of wind.

You pause, the melody tapering off in your throat. Your eyes flick toward the sky, as if the answer might be waiting somewhere in the clouds.

“Not sure,” you murmur, a smile tugging lazily at the corner of your mouth. “Mama used to sing it when she was cooking. I think it used to be on the radio, too. One of those songs that just… stuck.”

Joel nods, the kind of slow, thoughtful nod that doesn’t need words to follow. He strums another chord, something soft and sweet, and leans back on his elbows.

“Well,” he says, glancing at you with that familiar flicker of something unspoken in his eyes. “Keep goin’. I like it.”

There’s something in the way he says it—something that makes your chest ache in that soft, full kind of way. The kind of ache that’s not about pain at all, but about being known. About being seen and loved for the quiet parts of yourself you didn’t think anyone else noticed.

So you hum again, picking up where you left off. Joel doesn’t look away. He keeps strumming, matching your rhythm now. Not quite harmonizing. Just being there with you, in it.

And for a little while, the world feels like it’s made of nothing but warm wood, old songs, and two people learning how to feel safe again.

You’re curled up together in bed one night, everything quiet except the low pop and crackle of the fire burning in the hearth. The room glows in soft amber and gold, the shadows on the walls swaying like they’re dancing to the rhythm of your breathing. Outside, wind brushes against the windows, but inside, it’s warm. Safe. Still.

Joel lies flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other draped loosely around your waist. You’re pressed into his side, head resting just below his collarbone, your hand lazily combing through his hair—fingertips tracing gentle, aimless patterns. His hair’s soft tonight, freshly washed and still carrying the faint scent of cedar soap and woodsmoke.

Neither of you speaks for a while. There’s no need. Just the hush between heartbeats and the sound of Joel’s steady breathing, slow and even beneath your ear.

“I could stay like this forever,” you whisper eventually, your voice thick with sleep. Each word melts into the warmth of his skin. Your eyes are already slipping closed, lashes brushing his chest. You don’t even know if he hears you.

But then you feel it—Joel’s arm tightening around your waist, his hand sliding up under your shirt just enough to rest against your spine, warm and grounding.

“Then don’t move,” he murmurs, voice rough with tiredness and something gentler, deeper. The kind of softness he only ever shows in moments like this, when the world is quiet and his guard is down. “Ain’t no one tellin’ us to go anywhere.”

You smile into the dark, into the skin of his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath your cheek. His heartbeat thumps slow and steady, and you swear you could fall asleep to that sound alone.

Joel shifts slightly, just enough to press a kiss into the top of your head. His lips linger there—like a promise more than anything spoken.

“You’re warm,” he mumbles.

“So are you,” you say, voice feather-light.

A comfortable silence settles in again. Your fingers slow in his hair, curling around a soft wave near his temple. His hand stays at your back, thumb drawing idle shapes you’re too sleepy to name.

The fire crackles. The wind hums. And you drift off like that—wrapped up in him, hand still in his hair, the weight of his love wrapped around you like a second blanket. Nothing else matters. Not out there. Not tomorrow. Just this.

Just him.

The temperature dips before the sun even brushes the horizon. The last of the daylight clings to the sky in hazy streaks of orange and violet, but the wind has already turned sharp, biting through the seams of your jacket. You and Joel walk side by side down the path back toward Jackson, boots crunching over patches of frost-laced grass and half-frozen dirt.

You don’t say much—patrols tend to leave a certain kind of quiet between you, a silence that doesn’t need filling. But you can feel the chill starting to settle deep in your bones, your fingers stiff and cheeks raw from the cold. You try to rub your hands together for warmth, but it’s useless. The wind is relentless.

Joel notices, of course. His eyes flick over to you, worried in that subtle way he is—more tension in the jaw, more silence than usual. You know he’s about to offer you his coat or tell you he should’ve brought that extra scarf.

So before he can open his mouth, you reach out and grab a fistful of his jacket.

Without a word, you tug him in. Joel stumbles the smallest step forward, surprised but not resisting. You pull until you're chest to chest, until the warmth of his body bleeds into yours. Your frozen hands slip under the back hem of his coat and find the soft flannel of his shirt underneath, palms pressing flat against the heat of his spine.

“Jesus,” Joel mutters, letting out a breath that puffs white between you, his arms automatically sliding around your waist. “You could’ve just asked for my coat, y’know.”

“But then I wouldn’t be this close,” you reply, chin tilting up, a smile tugging at your lips despite your chattering teeth. “You’re warmer than any jacket.”

Joel huffs a soft laugh, the kind that melts around the edges. He leans in, resting his forehead lightly against yours. “You’re a damn menace,” he says—but his voice is warm and low, thick with affection.

You can feel his fingers pressing into your back, holding you tighter. His nose brushes yours as he tilts his head, and then—soft as snowfall—he kisses you. Once. Then again. And a third time, his lips barely touching yours, quick little pecks that make you laugh and shiver all at once.

“Joel,” you whisper, still grinning, your breath fogging between you both.

“I like the taste of your lips on mine,” he murmurs, the words brushing against your mouth like silk. He says it like a secret. Like it’s always been true.

Then he kisses you again—this time slower, deeper, his hand cradling the back of your head as he pours warmth into you one soft press at a time. The world falls quiet. No wind. No cold. No patrols or gates or the threat of anything waiting in the dark.

Just Joel.

Just this.

When you finally pull apart, you don’t go far. He keeps you close, your fingers still tucked against his back, his breath brushing your temple.

You smile into his collar. “Can we stay like this a little longer?”

He kisses your hair, voice barely above a whisper. “Far as I’m concerned, we can stay like this forever.” 

And in that moment, time slows. Your heartbeat settles into the rhythm of his, safe and steady. Warm, despite everything. Because love—real love—isn’t just in the grand gestures. It’s in this. A quiet winter dusk. A jacket shared. The taste of his kiss. The way he holds you like you’re something worth braving the cold for.

Then there’s Ellie.

She was nineteen now. Strong. Sharp-tongued and guarded in the way Joel used to be. You weren’t her mother, and she never treated you like one—but she was curious about you. Distant at first. Then, little by little, she started asking questions. Sitting with you on the porch. Bringing you a book she found and thought you might like.

She and Joel… there were things left unsaid between them. You could feel it like a splinter under the skin. Something tender and unresolved.

He finally told you one night, long after you’d both settled into the quiet comfort of shared sheets and a life you thought might last.

It was after dinner. After the guitar and the laughter. After you’d kissed the corners of his mouth and pulled him into bed.

“I lied to her,” he said, voice hollow.

You blinked in the dark, still half-tangled in sleep. “What?”

Joel’s face was turned toward the ceiling. Still. Tense. “I lied to Ellie. About the Fireflies. About the hospital.”

The room chilled. Your fingers reached for his without hesitation.

“I killed them,” he continued. “Every last one that stood between me and her. ‘Cause they were gonna cut her open. To find a cure.”

He didn’t cry right away. He spoke through gritted teeth, like the guilt was a weight he carried every damn day and had never quite set down.

“She would’ve died. She didn’t know—still doesn’t really. I told her there were others. That she wasn’t the only one. But it was a lie. It’s all a lie.”

You didn’t speak. Just curled into him. Held his hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“She hates me for it,” he whispered.

“No,” you said. “She loves you. She’s angry, but she loves you.”

He shook his head. Silent tears rolled into his hairline. You kissed his shoulder. You stayed up all night, fingers running through his graying hair until his breathing steadied again.

That was the last night he told you something he’d never said out loud.

The screams had long gone silent. All that was left now was smoke. Gunpowder. Blood soaking into snow.

Your boots crunch through it—through the aftermath. Bodies, both friend and foe, lie crumpled like broken marionettes. The streets of Jackson, once humming with quiet life, are now a graveyard.

Tommy had held the line at the south gate. You saw him, blackened with ash and soot, flames dancing in the reflection of his eyes as he lit up a bloater with the last fuel of the flamethrower. His scream—raw, furious—cut through the chaos like a knife. You’d joined the others in the streets, turning bullets on the infected… and eventually, on the bitten.

Some of them you knew by name.

You don’t remember pulling the trigger. You only remember the stillness afterward.

The quiet after the roar.

By the time the last runner was put down, your hands were slick with blood—some of it not your own. And when they called for the dead to be gathered, you helped. You counted.

You lost count.

They winched open the gates sometime after. You were still standing by the old greenhouse-turned-morgue, watching Tommy collapse into Maria’s arms, his body shaking with the weight of what he’d survived.

And then—

The hoofbeats. The shuffle of footsteps. The drag of something heavy behind them.

You turned.

Jesse and Ellie rode in first. Dina followed, all their faces hollowed out by exhaustion and something far worse. Behind their horse trailed a shape wrapped in canvas, dark with frozen blood, limp in the snow.

Ellie’s eyes met yours.

Red-rimmed. Wide. Empty.

And you knew.

You knew.

Your legs gave out beneath you before the thought could fully form. The cold didn’t register. Only the scream that tore out of your throat—animal, guttural. You clawed at the snow, sobbing into the dirt and ice, your lungs heaving like they were trying to break through your ribs.

“No—no—no—!” It came out broken. Like you could undo it just by denying it hard enough.

Tommy grabbed you. Held you back. His own face soaked with tears.

You screamed again. You didn’t care who heard. Didn’t care that you were on your knees in the blood and the snow with your heart ripped open.

Maria stood nearby. Hands pressed to her mouth. Silent.

The bag didn’t move.

He was in there.

Joel.

You want to tear the canvas open. You want it to be a mistake. You want to see his face, alive. Cranky. Loving. Whole.

But you already know.

You don’t know how long you stay like that. How long your sobs echo off the ruined walls of Jackson. You only know this: he felt like home.

And now home is just… gone.

They carry him to the chapel. Ellie disappears inside, Dina trailing her silently. Jesse catches your eye and looks away.

You follow the corpse. Your legs move on their own. There’s nothing left to protect now, no fight to win. You’ve survived—but at what cost?

The snow keeps falling.

And somehow, the world keeps turning.

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. No birdsong, no wind. Just the thick, suffocating kind of silence that wraps around your ribs and squeezes until it feels like you might shatter from the inside out. The kind of silence that doesn’t leave room for breath, or hope.

The makeshift morgue is colder than outside, colder than anything should ever be. Too sterile. Too still. Too many bodies of people you once smiled at in passing. A metal table stands at the corner of the room, and he’s there—Joel—lying beneath a white sheet that feels far too thin. Like if you peeled it back, he’d stir. Grumble about the draft. Ask where his jacket went.

But he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t fucking move.

You sink to your knees beside the table. Wood floor biting into your bones, your hands trembling as they hover just above the edge of the sheet. Your throat burns like it’s been scraped raw from the inside out, but you haven’t said anything. Not really. Not yet.

Tommy sits down beside you, legs bent awkwardly, arms crossed over his chest like if he doesn’t hold himself together, he might fall apart right here with you.

“I don’t wanna say goodbye,” you choke out, voice so broken it barely sounds like yours. Your hands finally touch the edge of the table, and you grip it like a lifeline.

“I know,” Tommy murmurs. He doesn’t say more. Doesn’t try to fix it. Maybe because he knows there’s no fixing this.

You press your forehead against the cold edge of the metal, like maybe if you’re close enough, you’ll feel his warmth again. But there’s nothing. Only the chill of a world that kept turning without him in it.

“I needed him,” you whisper. The words break on your tongue like glass. “I still do. I need his voice—I need his arms. I need him to tell me this is all gonna be okay.”

A sob claws its way out of your chest, jagged and ugly. “He was supposed to be here.”

You think about the way he used to hold you—how his hands fit so easily around your waist, how he’d tug you close like the world outside didn’t exist. You think about his voice, low and rough, whispering “I got you, baby,” when the nightmares got bad. About the way he looked at you, like you were something worth protecting. Like you were home.

He was home.

And now he’s gone. And you’re nothing but a house with the roof torn off, standing in the rain.

“I don’t know how to be in a world that doesn’t have him in it,” you admit, tears falling freely now, soaking into your sleeves. “I was never scared of tomorrow when he was with me.”

Your head turns toward Tommy, eyes rimmed red. “How do I do this?”

He doesn’t answer. He just puts a hand over yours, squeezes it tight. It’s all he can give you, and you take it, even though it’s not the hand you want.

You close your eyes, breathing in like maybe you’ll catch some trace of him. Leather. Cedar. That soap he used when he tried to be fancy. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the dull antiseptic of this godforsaken room.

“I thought I knew grief,” you whisper. “But this… this is a whole new kind of broken.”

And it is. It’s grief with no bottom. No edges. No map. Like walking into a fog and never coming back out.

You reach up, finally, trembling fingers lifting the edge of the sheet.

You don’t pull it back.

You just press your palm over where you know his heart used to beat.

And you stay there, frozen in time, whispering his name like a prayer. Like if you say it enough, he might come back.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t.

And you know—no matter how many tomorrows come—you’ll miss him in every single one.

Because he wasn’t just the love of your life.

He was your life.

And now, all that’s left is the silence.

It’s three days later when Tommy finds you.

You haven’t spoken much since that day. Just shadows under your eyes and silence on your lips. People leave flowers near the mailbox. You go through the motions—eating when someone puts food in front of you, lying down when your legs give out—but you’re not really here.

You’re sitting on Joel’s porch when he approaches. Your knees are drawn to your chest, your hands wrapped in the sleeves of a jacket that still smells like him. It’s too big, and it doesn’t make you feel any less hollow.

Tommy stands in front of you for a moment, quiet.

Then he lowers himself to sit on the step beside you.

“I ain’t sure if now’s the right time,” he says, voice low. Rough. “But he… he asked me to give you somethin’. If…”

You look at him. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t have to. You both know how it ends.

Your heart stops. And then starts again, slower. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small envelope—folded and worn soft at the edges like it had been carried for a long time.

Your name is on it.

Your handwriting. Joel’s writing. It’s him. It's him.

Your fingers are shaking as you take it.

“I didn’t read it,” Tommy says, eyes on the horizon. “Didn’t wanna. Figured that was for you.”

Inside the envelope is a single piece of paper, folded once.

And a gold band.

Simple. Plain. No diamonds or carvings. Just a ring. One he probably bartered for quietly. One he probably kept in his pocket, maybe touched it when he thought about you. One he never got to give you.

Your vision blurs instantly.

The paper trembles in your hands as you unfold it. The ink is smudged in one corner—Joel had probably written it with those big hands, careful and slow. Trying to say something final in a way that didn’t feel like goodbye.

Your eyes find the first words.

Hey, baby.

If you’re reading this… then I’m not where I should be. I’m sorry.

God, I didn’t wanna write this. Been puttin’ it off for weeks. But the way this world is… well, you and I both know it don’t always give you time to say things out loud.

So I’m writin’ ‘em now.

First thing—I love you. You probably know that already. Hell, I’ve said it in a hundred different ways without ever sayin’ the words. In the way I hold you. The way I listen to you hum that song. The way I breathe easier when you’re near.

You gave me something I thought I didn’t deserve. Peace. A second chance. A home.

I hope I gave you the same.

Second thing—you’ll find a ring with this letter. Nothin’ fancy. I wanted to give it to you proper. Maybe on the porch. Maybe by the fire. Just… you and me. I had all these words planned. But none of ‘em matter now.

Just know this—I would’ve asked you to be mine. Not ‘cause I needed to prove anything. But because you already were. In every way that counts.

And I wanted the world to know.

I wanted to grow old with you. Wanted to find out what your hair looks like when it’s all grey. Wanted to kiss you goodnight a thousand more times.

I wanted all of it.

But if I didn’t make it—if you’re readin’ this now—I need you to do something for me.

Live.

Please. Don’t let this break you.

You got too much light in you to burn out now.

So wear the ring, if it helps. Or don’t. Keep it in your pocket. Toss it in the river. It’s yours, either way.

You’ll always be mine.

Forever and then some,  

Joel

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until Tommy places a hand on your back, steadying you as the weight of the words crushes you from the inside out.

The ring glints in your palm, catching the dying light of the day.

You bring it to your lips, kiss it once, then curl it into your fist and press it against your heart.

“I would’ve said yes,” you whisper into the air, broken and breathless. “I would’ve said yes a thousand times.”

And the wind moves through the trees like it’s carrying the words to him—wherever he is.

Because love like that doesn’t die.

It just waits.

It lingers in the quiet. In the echo of footsteps that aren’t his. In the smell of cedar and leather that still clings to the collar of his coat. It stays tucked in the corners of every room he touched, every breath he took beside you.

You will mourn him forever. You will miss him every minute.

Your hands will grow old holding a photograph of the two of you—sunlight on your faces, his arm around your shoulders like he always meant to keep you safe. Your bones will ache with the shape of him, your soul carved hollow where he used to be.

And when your time comes, when the world fades soft and slow at the edges, you’ll go with his name dancing on your lips. A whisper. A promise.

Because some loves aren’t meant to end.

Only to be found again.

[theetherealbloom]

"What remains of us"

outbreak! Joel miller x f!reader

Summary: Joel doesn't die after the brutal encounter with abby because you saved him on time.

wc: 4k>

warnings: angst,mentions of blood, mentions of murder (reader becomes violent), fluff, mentions of broken bones. english is not my first language so excuse my mistakes. Written in a rush.

a/n: so uhmm. How are we feeling? I personally feel broken by the events from episode 2 so I rewrite the story while i was free in the morning to help me cope with the grief and joel is alive.

dividers by @/saradika-graphics

Something felt wrong in your bones the moment the snowstorm hit harder than expected.

Not just the kind of wrong that came with whiteout conditions and freezing wind — this was deeper. Ancient. It whispered through the trees like a secret from another world, brushing icy fingers down your spine. A warning dressed up as weather. You felt it in your chest, in the weight behind your ribs, where your breath stayed too long before escaping.

Your skin burned from cold, your limbs throbbed with fatigue — but none of it compared to the way your heart pounded. Not from exertion.

From fear.

“Hey, you alright?” Jesse called ahead, pulling his scarf down just enough to glance at you.

You nodded too fast. “Yeah, just—cold.”

Ellie was further up the ridge, carving her own path through the deepening snow with the horse, unaware of how your whole body shook with more than frost. You hadn’t told them. Couldn’t. How do you explain that your body knew something your mind hadn’t caught up to yet? That every step forward felt like walking away from safety?

Your heart was screaming in a language older than logic. Since the morning. Since Joel left before you could fully wake up.

The echo of his voice still lingered in your memory — low and warm, brushing against your ear as you stirred under the covers.

“Get some more sleep, darling”

But he hadn’t kissed your forehead like usual. He hadn’t lingered. And when you finally did get up, your gut twisted when you saw the empty space in the stable, the saddle still had damp with snow.

Joel was out there with Dina; you had no idea under what circumstances. And the sky had turned gray with anger.

You shook your head, tried to focus on Jesse’s voice. Tried not to feed the panic unraveling in your chest like a pulled thread. But the cold in your mind spread, and no matter how tightly you gripped the reins, no matter how fast your horse moved, the feeling remained.

Something was wrong.

You finally found a rundown outpost, an old hunting cabin half-buried in snow and swallowed by pine trees. The roof sagged, one of the windows was cracked, and the door barely held on its hinges, but it was shelter. You and Jesse pulled your horses inside the narrow lean-to out back, while Ellie stomped snow off her shoes and kicked the door open with more force than necessary.

Inside, it was cold and smelled like old weed and damp rot, but you didn’t care.

There was a radio.

You didn’t hesitate. Your gloves were off before Jesse could even say anything. Your fingers moved over the knobs, turning dials, trying to find the frequency Jackson always used for patrol check-ins.

A burst of static.

Then another.

Finally, a signal.

Your breath caught. “Jackson patrol, do you copy?”

Ellie moved closer. Jesse pulled his scarf down, suddenly silent.

“Joel? Dina? Come in.”

Only static.

“Come on,” you muttered, heart hammering, twisting the dial again. “Joel, please, respond.”

Nothing.

The silence wasn’t ordinary. You knew silence. This wasn’t delay. It was absence.

Your body went rigid, every instinct screaming louder than your racing thoughts. Your limbs moved before you made the decision. You were out the door and into the snow again before Jesse or Ellie could stop you.

Jesse called after you.

But Ellie was already grabbing her rifle.

“Where are you going?” Jesse yelled, chasing behind.

“Something’s wrong!” you snapped, swinging onto your horse. “I just know it!”

Ellie mounted up beside you, eyes wide and fierce. “Then we’re not wasting time.”

Jesse hesitated, glancing between you both and the radio inside.

“You don’t even know if that’s where they went—”

“I know,” you growled, already riding. “I feel it.”

Ellie followed without a word.

The snow clawed at your skin like it wanted to peel the truth away. The wind howled as if it knew what was waiting ahead. But you didn’t stop.

Because something had happened.

And Joel and Dina were out there.

You and Ellie rode hard, the snow whipping across your faces like knives, the hooves of your horses lost beneath the storm. You could barely see five feet ahead — but then, in the distance, a glow.

“Shit,” Ellie hissed beside you, pulling her hood lower.

You followed her gaze. Through the trees, past the slope of the hill — firelight. Orange, flickering, wrong. It wasn't from a patrol cabin or torch post. It rose in a bloom, too wild to be controlled. You slowed your horse as your stomach dropped.

“It’s from Jackson,” you whispered, more to yourself than to Ellie.

It wasn’t the whole town, not yet. But something was burning. And it was enough to send a coil of panic twisting through your gut, feeding that same deep certainty that had been clawing at you all day.

“Come on,” you growled, spurring your horse harder, cutting off the cold fear before it could settle. “We are too far.”

And it wasn’t long before you saw it, the lodge.

It sat crooked and hunched near a clearing, like it had been dropped there by accident. One of the side windows was shattered. Smoke was seeping through cracks in the boarded upper floor. The front door hung ajar, barely moving in the wind.

You pulled hard on the reins. Your horse bucked a little, skidding in the snow. Ellie drew her rifle and slid off hers.

Your eyes locked on two shapes near the side of the lodge.

Horses.

Your heart stopped.

Joel’s and Dina’s.

Both were tied loosely, their coats soaked with snow, hooves pawing nervously at the ground. Alone. No movement near the front entrance. No voices. No patrols. No sounds but the wind and the creak of the old building groaning under weight it wasn’t meant to bear.

You slid off your horse.

“Ellie…” you whispered, your voice barely audible, breath clouding in front of you.

She already had her knife out.

“Oh shit...”

You didn’t wait for backup. Couldn’t.

Because Joel’s horse was here. And he wasn’t.

And whatever was inside that building, you felt it—It was about to break you open.

The sound of screams of agony and a body hitting the ground echoed down the hallway like a gunshot.

You knew that sound. It was torture. It was pain.

Your boots thundered down the corridor of the lodge, Ellie at your side, a worry and desperate look in her eyes. She’d followed the path like a wolf hunting a pray, her eyes screaming please don’t let it be too late.

You didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Your heart was stuck in your throat, and the only thing that moved was your body, in fast motion, furious, drawn to the man who should have never left your side in the first place.

Then you saw it. The door, a from inside, screaming slipping from the lips you used to kiss every day. Joel’s screams.

You didn’t wait. You didn’t breathe. You kicked the door open and your world shattered.

Joel was on the floor, a mess of blood and pain and something worse. His legs bent at unnatural angles. One hand barely raised in instinct. His face, bruised, bleeding, one eye swollen shut. His body twitched like it wasn’t sure if it should keep trying.

And above him, a woman. Blonde. Rage carved into her face like she’d practiced it. Her arms raised again, a golf club in her grip, stained red.

She didn’t see you at first. Her eyes were solely focus on Joel, but you weren’t having that.

You roared, not screamed, roared and tackled her with everything you had, all your weight, all your fury. You slammed her into the wall with a force that cracked wood. The club dropped from her hand and hit the ground.

“No more.” you growled.

Her people came fast, like shadows. One tackled Ellie to the ground. Another raised a knife.

But they hadn’t counted on you.

You were already moving, eyes wild, mind gone. You fought like someone who had nothing left but him.

You weren’t skilled like Joel. You didn’t need to be. You were desperate. Right now, you were desperate.

Fists cracked bone. You took hits but didn’t stop. Didn’t feel them. You were pulling someone off Ellie, dragging them by their collar, throwing them into a chair that splintered on impact. You used what you had — a piece of wood, a broken lamp, your fists, your fury.

And they couldn’t stop you. Because you couldn’t be stopped.

The blonde tried to rise again. You met her halfway and slammed her back to the floor. She spat blood. You didn’t flinch.

“Get away from him!” you screamed.

The crack of your shotgun echoed like thunder as the first shell slammed into one of the men flanking her. Blood hit the wall. Chaos exploded in every direction.

“Who the fuck—?!” Abby turned, fury and shock colliding in her face.

You dropped the shotgun, drew your blade, and charged.

The first one that tried to reached for you got a knife through the ribs. You shoved him off like he was made of paper. The next came at you with a bat, you caught the swing and used his momentum to slam him face-first into the fireplace bricks.

“You don’t get to touch him,” you hissed. “Not him.”

Abby swung the club toward your face. You ducked.

Then you hit her. Right in the gut. The force of it sent her staggering back, wind knocked from her lungs.

“You wanna kill him?” you growled. “Try me first!”

She looked at you like she wanted to, but she hesitated.

And that was her mistake.

Because Ellie broke free just long enough to grab your dropped shotgun and aim it at her. “Step back,” she spat, blood in her teeth, voice shaking but solid.

“Now.”

Abby looked between the two of you. At Joel — bleeding, still breathing — at her fallen group. Then she backed off, raising her hands slightly.

“This isn’t over,” she said.

“Yeah,” you snapped, “it is.” You said, pointing your gun right between her brows.

Your shotgun echoed in the stillness of the room.

The blast slammed into her chest, and her body jerked back like a puppet with its strings cut. She hit the floor; eyes wide. No final words. No redemption. Just silence.

Ellie flinched.

You stood over Abby’s body, breath hitching, heart pounding in your ears. The room reek of blood and then there was silence, except for Joel’s ragged breath.

You dropped beside as your knees had finally given out.

“Hey,” you whispered, your voice cracking into pieces. “Joel, look at me. I’m here. I got you.”

His one good eye fluttered open, dazed, unfocused. There was blood crusted at his brow, dried and fresh, a cruel mask across the face you’d kissed so many times before.

“Y-you---"he rasped, voice like torn gravel.

You nodded, cradling his face in your hands, not caring that blood smeared across your palms. “I’m here. You’re safe. Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

His breath stuttered, chest rising too slow, too shallow. His eyes couldn’t stay fixed on you. They wandered, like he wasn’t fully in the room anymore.

“I thought I lost you,” you whispered, leaning close. Your forehead rested against his, warm against cold.

“Hurts,” he mumbled, eyes slipping closed again.

“No, no,” you said quickly, your hands gently patting his face. “Stay with me. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay. Help’s coming, okay? Just—just hold on.”

But he didn’t answer. His breathing slowed.

Your heart lurched in panic. “Joel!”

Nothing.

You pressed your fingers to his pulse—still there, but faint.

“Don’t you do this,” you choked out. “You fight, dammit. You’ve been through worse, haven’t you? Don’t you leave me now.”

You’d already faced your worst nightmare. Now you were living in it, holding it in your arms.

Joel lay limp and broken on the floor, his breath rattling against the stillness. His face was swollen and unrecognizable on one side, purple and black with bruising. One eye swollen shut. Blood trickled from his nose, his mouth, the side of his head. His legs—

Don’t think about the legs. Not now.

“Hey,” you whispered again, voice hoarse. “Joel. You still with me?”

A faint groan. Barely audible.

But it was enough.

He was still here.

You pulled off your jacket and shoved it under his head. Your hands were shaking, but your mind was locked in: every first aid trick you’d learned from scraps of survival guides, emergency manuals, anything Joel had ever shown you when he thought you weren’t paying attention. You had paid attention.

You just never thought you’d be using it on him.

Dina stumbled in, still pale and groggy, her hand gripping the wall. “Ellie?” she rasped. “Wh—what the fuck happened…?”

You didn’t look up. “You were drugged. Ellie is moving the bodies. We need the space.”

Dina staggered past, gagging at the sight of blood, but she didn’t hesitate. She knew. The air had changed.

This was a war zone. A zone you had built in seconds because you didn’t know what else to do. You blinded yourself; you had become a murderer monster just to save Joel.

You pulled Joel’s shirt open — shredded, stained with red. Purple splotches across his ribs. Swelling. At least two broken.

Your voice cracked. “You’re gonna hate me for this, Joel. But I have to move you.”

“Don’t…” he mumbled, almost unconscious. “Just… leave me—”

“Shut up,” you said, fierce now, your tears splashing onto his collarbone. “Don’t you dare say that. You don’t get to give up.”

Ellie appeared, face pale, blood on her shirt, Dina behind her with a blanket and an old mattress from the back.

“We cleared the room,” Ellie said. “It’s just us now.”

“Good,” you said. “Help me splint his legs. We need to keep him still until we can get him out of here.”

You tore up a curtain and grabbed two broken chair legs. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing about this was. Ellie held Joel’s leg as steady as she could, while you worked the makeshift splint around the worst of the fractures.

Joel screamed.

It was guttural, raw as if he was being dragged through hell.

You didn’t flinch. “I know,” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his as you tied the cloth tight. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

You felt his breath against your skin, shallow and hot.

His lips moved. “Why?” he whispered.

You leaned back and looked at him. “Because I love you,” you said simply.

His eye fluttered open — just barely. And for one fragile second, the pain slipped away. There was only you and you brush the hair from Joel’s face. He was burning up. You needed to clean the wounds. Stop the bleeding. Keep him warm.

Keep him alive.

And somehow, by the grace of whatever broken god still watched over you all, you would.

You pressed a damp cloth to his temple where skin had split beneath Abby’s final blow. His blood soaked through instantly. You didn’t stop. You couldn’t.

Your hands moved on their own now. Wash. Compress. Tie. Splint. Whisper to him. Stay with me. Please stay with me.

Ellie and Dina had gone quiet. Standing behind you. Watching. Waiting for direction.

Then your voice broke through the stillness.

“Go back to Jackson.”

Ellie flinched, like she hadn’t expected you to speak.

You didn’t look up. You were holding Joel’s hand — limp and calloused in yours.

“We need help,” you said, barely audible. Your voice was shot. A raw whisper. “Tell Tommy… tell him to send help. We need to get Joel back there.”

Silence. Just the sound of Joel breathing. The sound of blood dripping from the club Abby left behind.

“Please,” you added, and that word cracked like bone. “Please. I can’t carry him by myself. He’s—he’s too heavy. He’s—”

You swallowed hard. Your fingers curled tighter around Joel’s hand.

Ellie stepped forward. “We’re not leaving you.”

You finally looked up, eyes glassy and red-rimmed. “You have to. We need a stretcher, a team. Horses. Anything. I can keep him alive for a few more hours. But I can’t move him like this.”

Ellie’s jaw clenched. Her knuckles went white. “I don’t want to leave you with him like this.”

You reached out, brushing Joel’s graying hair from his brow with trembling fingers. “I’ve got him.”

A pause.

Then Dina touched Ellie’s arm. “I’ll go,” she said gently. “I’ll ride. I’m faster. You stay.”

Ellie nodded, eyes not leaving yours.

You left a loud gasp “No,” you said quietly, lifting your eyes once more to Ellie’s. “Ellie… you go with Dina. I’ll stay here.”

Ellie’s shoulders stiffened. Her brows pulled together like she was bracing for another blow. “What? No. I’m not leaving you and him.”

You sat back on your knees, your hands bloodied, trembling. Joel’s chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged motions beneath you.

“You have to,” you said, your voice breaking. “You have to, Ellie. Dina shouldn’t be riding alone.”

Ellie looked at Joel. Looked at you. And shook her head. “I can’t leave him like this. I can’t.”

You grabbed her hand.

That startled her.

It startled you too.

But you held on, grounding her, pulling her attention back to your face. Your voice dropped to a whisper.

“Please,” you said. “Please. Help me save him.”

Ellie’s eyes filled. Not with tears — not yet — but with everything she couldn’t say. The guilt. The fury. The fear that maybe… it was too late.

But you looked at her like there was still something worth fighting for.

And Ellie, for the first time in what felt like forever, let herself believe it.

She swallowed hard. Nodded once.

“I’ll go.”

Your chest caved with relief. Joel let out a faint groan beneath you, and you turned back to him, brushing your thumb against his jaw.

“I’m here, baby,” you whispered. “I’m right here.”

Ellie hesitated at the doorway. “Will he be okay?” she asked before daring to step a foot outside the room.

You nodded, but it was instinct, automatic, hopeful, desperate. The truth lodged in your throat like a splinter you couldn’t spit out.

“I don’t know,” you said softly, voice trembling. “I—I need to stop the bleeding. His leg is bad. His ribs—fuck, I don’t know how much damage they did.” Your eyes flicked over Joel’s body again, breath catching at the way his chest rose unevenly. “But he’s breathing. And that’s something.”

Ellie stepped closer, still pale, still wide-eyed, her clothes soaked with blood—some hers, some not. “What do you need me to do?”

You looked up at her then, and for a split second, she looked like a kid again. Shaken. Haunted. But standing tall.

“Just go back to Jackson and bring help,” you said, your voice barely more than a breath.

Ellie’s eyes burned. She nodded once; jaw clenched. “Okay. Okay. Just hold on, please.”

You gave her one last look. “I’ll keep him breathing.”

She was gone the next second—boots pounding out the door, calling for Dina. You were left in the broken room, just you and Joel and the slow drip of blood on floorboards.

You pressed your hands to the worst of the wounds, breath shaking. “You hear that, Joel?” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his. “Help’s coming.”

He didn’t speak. But his fingers twitched again, slow, and curled around your wrist.

It wasn’t much but it meant he was still here.

That night felt heavy like wet ash. Outside, the snowstorm had died to a bitter hiss. The wind still screamed through cracks in the lodge, but inside, everything had gone quiet—except for the sound of Joel’s ragged breath and the low creak of floorboards every time you moved.

You’d done everything you could.

His legs were splinted crudely with a broken table leg and belts. His wounds were packed with gauze you tore from your own coat lining. You boiled snow over a fire in the next room just to clean the worst of the blood from his side. You weren’t a medic. But you were a woman in love. And that made you terrifying.

He’d faded in and out of consciousness, his lips murmuring your name between groans, sometimes not even sure it was real. You sat beside him, your back against the bloodstained wall, holding his hand in both of yours.

But then it went still.

You hadn’t realized how quiet it had gotten until the sound stopped completely.

“Joel?” you whispered, leaning close.

No answer.

You shook his shoulder, gently. Then harder. “Joel.”

Nothing. His head lolled to the side. His skin felt clammy beneath your palm.

Your breath broke in your throat. “No, no—please, no. Joel—” You cupped his cheeks. “You stay with me; do you hear me?”

Still nothing. And then a twitch.

His brow twitched. His lips parted, barely, and a broken whisper slipped out.

“…Sarah.”

The name came out like a breath lost in time. You froze. Your heart cracked open.

His eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, a flicker of life.

In his mind, it was Austin again.

The smell of smoke and gasoline in the air. Sirens in the distance. Sarah was laughing, running ahead of him, calling back over her shoulder: “Dad, come on!”

And he was smiling. Genuinely smiling. He could hear her. Feel her hand in his again. It was warm. Real.

He turned and they were on the couch. Watching a movie. She was leaning against him, head on his shoulder. He’d just said something dumb. She rolled her eyes. He didn’t want to blink—afraid it’d all vanish.

But then came the gunshot.

Her warmth gone. He spun. He screamed for her. And when he looked down—

You were there.

In the memory. Not Sarah. You. Covered in blood. Crying. Calling his name.

Joel, please. Please.

Your hands were glowing with firelight, trembling as they pressed against his chest.

He tried to reach for you. He couldn’t move. The world was slipping.

And then—your voice cut through the haze.

“Joel, please. Please don’t do this.”

His heart stuttered once. Then again. A sharp inhale tore through his chest as if he’d been drowning.

“Joel!”

He coughed, body shaking, and your hands caught him just in time.

You sobbed, half-laughing as you gripped his cheeks again. “You scared the shit out of me—oh my god” you sobbed.

He looked up at you, dazed, confused. Then his eyes cleared, just a little.

“You were crying…” he mumbled, lips cracked.

“Yeah,” you whispered, brushing your thumb beneath his eye. “Yeah, I was.”

He blinked slowly. “Stop...”

“I won’t,” you promised. “I’m here. I’m staying.”

And as the fire cracked quietly, Joel leaned ever so slightly into your palm, the pain pulling at him, but your voice anchoring him.

The night lingered like a wound that wouldn’t close.

You didn’t sleep.

Your body screamed for rest, but you stayed next to Joel—watching the way his chest rose and fell, slow and shallow, praying it wouldn’t stop again. Every time his breath caught or he groaned too hard, your stomach twisted into knots.

The lodge was cold. Blood had dried into the floorboards. The fire in the next room was too far away to warm either of you, and you didn’t dare move him to get closer.

So you pressed your body to his side gently, just enough to share warmth without causing him pain.

“Still with me?” you whispered.

His eyes fluttered open, sluggish and heavy. “Yeah…” His voice was more gravel than sound.

You breathed out a shaky laugh, your forehead resting lightly against his temple. “You’re stubborn as hell, y’know that?”

Joel let out a faint puff of breath—maybe a laugh, maybe a wince. “…Learned from the best.”

Your throat clenched. You reached for his hand again, interlocking your fingers with his—gingerly, so you wouldn’t brush the torn knuckles.

“I thought I lost you,” you whispered.

His eyes moved—slow, searching—until they landed on you again. Then he mumbled something you barely heard.

Silence settled like snow. You closed your eyes, listening to the wind groaning against the walls. Time stretched, only broken by Joel’s breath stuttering again.

Then—his fingers twitched around yours.

Then you whispered, “Joel?”

He made a sound.

“I love you.”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were glassy with pain. But then he squeezed your hand, and his voice came soft, barely a breath.

“I love you too.”

It felt like the first time he had told you those three words and that had broken you in the gentlest way.

You buried your face in his shoulder, careful of the bruises, and let yourself cry—not in panic, not in fear. But in overwhelming, soul-shaking relief. He was alive.

He was alive.

Joel woke to the soft hum of voices and some old machines. The scent of cleaner stung his nose before the light even reached his eyes.

His body was pain, muted but deep, like a dull echo in his bones. He tried to move, but something warm and heavy rested on his side.

Your head.

You were slumped in a chair beside him, your cheek pressed gently to his arm. Your fingers were laced with his, your grip loose with sleep but still holding on. Still there.

The light in the room was soft, filtering through the curtained window like morning fog. Outside, life stirred in Jackson. But here, it was quiet. Just the two of you.

Joel blinked slowly, his throat dry, the taste of cotton still on his tongue. His gaze drifted down to you. There was a crease between your brows even in rest. You looked exhausted. Pale. Eyes ringed with shadows.

But you were here.

He breathed your name, raw and hoarse.

You stirred at the sound, your head lifting slowly as if from the depths of a dream. Your eyes met his, still sleep-warm but wide with shock. Disbelief flickered, then relief so powerful it made your lips tremble.

“Joel…” you whispered, leaving a sob behind.

His smile was small. Barely there. “You didn’t leave.”

Your hand came up to cup his cheek. “Never,” you said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

He swallowed hard, his hand tightening weakly around yours. “How long?”

“Three weeks,” you said, voice shaking with the memory. “You were unconscious the first few days back. Fever wouldn’t break. They weren’t sure if you’d make it through the second night…”

He looked at you again, really looked. “And you sat here the whole damn time?”

You gave a soft, broken laugh. “Where else would I be?”

His good eye softened. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

You leaned closer, resting your forehead to his. “You promised me once you wouldn’t leave me.”

He nodded faintly, his eyes closing for a moment as your breath mingled.

Your fingers brushed his temple, so gently, as if afraid he’d fade again like some half-formed dream. Joel’s skin was warm beneath your touch, warmer than it had been in days, and that alone nearly broke you all over again.

“It’s going to take time,” you whispered, your voice barely louder than the hum of the machines. “To heal. For everything.”

Joel didn’t say anything, but you felt the tremor in his breath.

You threaded your fingers more tightly with his. “But I’m not going anywhere. You hear me?” you said, firmer now, voice catching on the tears in your throat. “I’m not leaving your side. You will get sick of me.”

His lips parted like he wanted to argue, maybe even protest, but then he looked at you again. Really looked. The cut on his brow. The bruising on his cheekbone. The pain behind his eye, and beyond that, the softness that only came when it was just you.

“You shouldn’t have had to—”

“I had to,” you cut in, gently but unshakable. “Because I love you. Because I couldn’t lose you. And I won’t.” you paused to take a deep breath before continuing, “You and I will grow old together, and we will die peacefully in farm, together.”

Joel blinked. His hand tightened slightly in yours again, like the only strength he had left was meant for that one touch. His voice was barely a whisper when he said, “I don’t deserve you.”

You leaned in and kissed his forehead, bruised, stitched, healing. “You’re mine, Joel. And I’m yours. That’s not about deserving. That’s just how it is.”

Silence fell, heavy but not suffocating. The kind of silence where you could finally breathe again. Where you knew, he was going to live.

Joel let his head rest back into the pillow, the edge of a tear slipping from the corner of his eye.

“Okay,” he whispered, smiling at you.

You smiled through your tears, the kind that burned hot down your cheeks but carried no pain—only release. Relief. Love.

You shifted in the chair, reaching up to brush a bit of hair back from his forehead, careful not to touch where it was most tender. His skin warmed beneath your fingertips. Alive. He was alive. The reality of that still hadn’t fully settled in.

“I’m gonna be here when you wake up,” you promised, voice like a hush of wind through leaves. “Every morning. Every damn day if I have to. You focus on getting better.”

Joel's smile trembled, worn and crooked, but it was his. The first real smile you'd seen in so long it felt like a lifetime ago. His good eye drifted shut, but not before his fingers gave yours one more squeeze, like he couldn’t bear to let go even in sleep.

You watched him as his breathing evened out again, slow and steady, like the beat of a familiar song you never thought you’d hear again. The machines hummed softly beside him. The faint glow of a streetlamp outside filtered through the hospital window, painting golden lines across the bedsheets.

You rested your head by his side again, your cheek brushing his arm, eyes closing just for a moment. Not to sleep, but to hold the feeling. The warmth. The miracle.

He was still here.

And you would be, too. Always.

[theetherealbloom]

me too T^T

It Only Falls Into Place When You're Falling To Pieces

Summary: There are a lot of people you thought would live forever. You swore Joel would be one of them.

Pairing: Jackson!Joel Miller x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+ HEAVY ANGST, Fluff, Crying, Tears, Sadness, Apocalypse, Cordyceps, Infected, Major Character Death(s), Funerals, Grief, PTSD, Depression, Kissing, Blood, Morgue, Star-Crossed Lovers, TLOU 2 Spoilers,

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: Fml. I know that you know I don’t usually write angst, but fuck man, I need to mourn and maybe so do you… God I'm so sad. Like we knew the story and how it would end for Joel. Even if you think you're ready... But I know this from experience, but even if you've braced yourself, brutality like this... will hurt a lot.

Side note: I’m dyslexic and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!

Song: Still by Noah Kahan

Joel Miller Masterlist | MAIN MASTERLIST |

WYOMING, JACKSON — 2029

The mornings were slow in Jackson. Slow in a way that made you feel like maybe—just maybe—you weren’t living in the end times anymore.

Joel had a habit of waking up before you. Not out of routine or discipline, but out of muscle memory. The kind that sticks even when the world’s long since changed.

Sometimes, he made coffee. Sometimes, he just sat at the table, plucking at his guitar in soft, incomplete chords while the sun started to push through the windows. The house you shared wasn’t big or fancy. But it was warm. It was quiet. It had his coat always draped over the same chair, his boots by the door, the scent of cedar and pine from the little woodworking studio in one of the rooms.

It had Joel.

You found yourself drifting toward him more often than not. Whether he was sanding a piece of maple or trying to shape a leg for a rocking chair he swore he’d finish someday, he let you linger. You’d sit on the bench next to him, fingers curled around a warm mug. He’d hand you scraps to practice carving, smiling softly when you accidentally broke off a corner.

“‘S alright,” he’d murmur, brushing sawdust off your cheek with a thumb. “Takes time.”

Everything with Joel took time.

Loving him. Learning him. Earning the space between his heart and the pain he never quite put into words.

But the quiet in Jackson gave you time. Time to laugh with him over burned dinners, to slow dance in the kitchen when he played a familiar tune, to lay on the couch with your head on his chest while he told you about old country songs and the guitar he lost in Austin.

And it gave him time, too.

Time to lower his walls. To see you not as a danger, but as something steady—something soft he could rest in. Time to share pieces of himself he rarely offered to anyone, fragile corners he'd kept locked away.

He would look at you and think, If I were braver. If I could just say it.

He’d imagine the words on his tongue, how they’d change everything the second they left his mouth. But he wasn’t ready—not brave enough, not honest enough.

So he just looked at you instead.

And maybe you knew. Maybe you always knew.

Because he did love you.

In quiet, consistent ways. In the way he made your coffee just how you liked it. In the way he memorized the sound of your laugh. In every glance, every softened breath, every moment where he didn’t walk away.

He didn’t love you because he was lonely—Joel had long since learned how to survive in the silence.

He loved you because your light made the dark seem less like a prison and more like a place he could leave behind.

It started small.

A found thing—half-buried in the snow behind the stables. You’d been looking for spare nails in a busted old toolbox when you saw it: a film camera. Dusty, scratched up, but the click still worked. You brought it back like a prize.

Joel looked up from the guitar he was restringing, brow furrowed. “You went diggin’ around in that old junkyard again?”

You grinned, breath fogging the air. “Found treasure.”

He squinted at the thing in your hand like it might bite him. “You sure that ain’t just some broken plastic?”

“Only one way to find out.”

He watched you tinker with it all afternoon, wiping the lens clean with your sleeve, warming the roll of film between your palms to bring it back to life. You caught him staring more than once—chin propped in his hand, fingers idle on the frets of a guitar he’d been meaning to finish tuning.

When it finally worked, you snapped a picture of the sunset from your porch. Then one of his back as he worked, his brow furrowed in concentration, sleeves rolled up, calloused hands steady over the worn wood.

You took one of his profile too. He’d been humming low under his breath, unaware.

“Hey,” he said, catching the click. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You’re handsome when you’re focused.”

He huffed a laugh, but he didn’t stop you when you raised the camera again.

Later that week, you asked him for one together.

“C’mere,” you said, tugging at the front of his jacket. “Just one. You might like the memory someday.”

He looked reluctant, like the idea of being frozen in time made him itch. But he let you lead him into the light. You kissed him on the cheek just as the timer clicked. He smiled, wide and surprised and real.

The photo came out a little blurry. But your mouth was pressed to his skin, his eyes crinkled with something close to joy. You kept it in your coat pocket like it might keep you warm.

Sometimes, he came into the kitchen just to touch you.

No reason. No words. Just drawn to you like muscle memory.

You’d be standing at the counter, elbow-deep in something mundane—rinsing mugs, slicing vegetables, stirring whatever was bubbling in the pot—when suddenly there’d be a shift in the air behind you. A warmth. A quiet presence.

Then, Joel’s arms would wind around your waist, firm and steady, palms pressing low on your stomach, right through the thin fabric of your shirt. His chest would settle against your back like it belonged there, like you were meant to carry each other’s weight.

“You makin’ somethin’ good?” he’d mumble into your hair, voice rough with sleep or fresh air or maybe just the softness you always brought out of him.

You barely had time to answer before you’d feel it—his nose brushing just beneath your ear, his scruff scratching tender against your neck. The kind of touch that made the air feel thick with heat and memory.

“You smell like cinnamon,” he whispered one evening, lips grazing the spot where your jaw met your throat.

You stilled, blinking down at the spoon in your hand. “You been sniffin’ me, Miller?”

A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Can’t help it,” he murmured, slow and sweet, like molasses in summer. “You’re intoxicatin’, darlin’. Makes a man forget what he came in here for.”

His mouth followed the curve of your neck, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse. Slow. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world to worship you.

You laughed then, breath catching in your throat. It wasn’t loud—it didn’t need to be. Just a soft, breathless sound that filled the space between your bodies as you leaned back into him, hips settling against his.

The laughter didn’t last long. It never did when his hands started to move—one curling around your hip, the other slipping beneath the hem of your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin.

The spoon slipped from your fingers and clattered into the sink, forgotten.

You turned slightly, enough to meet his eyes, and whispered, “The stew’s gonna burn.”

Joel kissed the corner of your mouth, smiling just enough to be trouble.

“Let it.”

One night, he kissed you like he had all the time in the world.

It was late, storm tapping at the windows, fire burning low. You were tucked beneath his arm on the couch, legs over his lap, your hand tucked into the worn flannel of his shirt. He kissed you once, then again, then a hundred more times.

Short, sweet little things.

He kissed your cheeks, your eyelids, the corner of your mouth. You giggled, cheeks hurting from how hard you were smiling.

“Joel,” you whispered, nose scrunched, lips twitching. “What are you doing?”

His palms cradled your face like you were something delicate. Like he’d break if he didn’t touch you just right.

“Memorizing you,” he said. Then he kissed the giggle right off your lips.

Your hands curled in his hair, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, soft and slow, lips sliding together like they belonged there.

And when he finally pulled back, his forehead pressed against yours, his voice came out low and honest, barely above a breath:

“You’re everythin’ darlin’.”

He didn’t say he loved you.

Not with words.

But in every quiet moment, every gentle touch, every photo you took that he let you keep—he showed you.

And somehow, that meant more.

Love shows up in the quiet moments with Joel. Always has been.

Not in grand declarations or fireworks. Not in promises whispered beneath starlight or etched into stone. No, with Joel, love slips in softly—through the cracks of everyday life, in the pauses between sentences, in the silence he lets you share without needing to fill it. It’s there when the world is loud, and he chooses to be quiet with you. When everything aches and he doesn’t try to fix it—just stays.

It’s the way your hand always finds his, especially when he’s got that look about him—brows drawn low, eyes shadowed, body still as a storm about to break. You’ve come to know it well, that kind of tension that settles in his shoulders like he’s bracing against something only he can see. The kind of stillness that doesn’t feel like peace, but like he’s waiting to run or fight or fall apart.

So you reach for him.

You don’t announce it, don’t make a show of it. Just slide your hand into his, palm against his rough calloused skin, fingers curling between his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. Because you’ve done this before, countless times. Every time the ghosts get too loud or the silence feels too sharp. You hold his hand and he lets you, and that’s how you know—how you always know—he’s letting you in again.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. Just breathes out slow, like your touch takes some of the weight off, even if it’s just a fraction. His jaw unclenches. His shoulders drop a little. You can feel it—the shift, the surrender, the trust.

“Y’okay?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper, soft enough that it could be mistaken for wind slipping through the seams of the old house, rustling the curtains just enough to remind you that the world is still turning outside these walls.

Joel looks at you. Not a glance. A real look. The kind that lingers. The kind that says more than words ever could. His eyes are tired, but there’s something else there too—something quieter, gentler, something that only ever surfaces around you.

His thumb moves in a slow arc across your knuckles, and when he answers, it’s not just with words. It’s in the way his grip tightens slightly, not desperate, just present.

“I am now,” he murmurs, his voice low and warm, frayed at the edges. Like maybe he’s been holding it in all day, maybe even longer. Like your hand in his unlocked something he didn’t know he needed to say.

You don’t answer. You don’t need to. You lean into him instead, resting your head on his shoulder, letting the weight of you press gently against him like a tether. Like a promise. His arm slips around you, steady and sure, palm settling at your hip. He presses a kiss into your hair—right at the crown of your head, like a seal, like a prayer, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

The room around you is quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the crackle of the fire. Outside, snow falls soundlessly, blanketing the world in soft white. And inside, it’s warm. Not just from the fire—but from him. From this.

From the way he holds you like you’re something he never thought he’d have again. Like the simple act of your hand in his might keep the darkness at bay for one more night.

With Joel, love doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to.

It just stays.

And that’s always been more than enough.

The mornings are always slow.

Time feels syrup-thick when the sun hasn’t fully crested the horizon yet, and sleep still clings to your limbs like molasses. Your body is heavy, cocooned in the tangle of sheets still warm from the man who slept beside you. The air is cool beyond the bed, but the mattress holds the echo of his heat, and it makes you reluctant to move, even as your senses start to stretch awake.

You shift lazily, one arm reaching across the bed to where Joel had been moments ago. It’s empty now, his absence a soft dip in the mattress, but the scent of him lingers—cedarwood, a trace of leather, the faint hint of salt and earth from yesterday’s long walk back into Jackson. Comforting. Familiar.

You pry one eye open, squinting into the low light. Joel’s already sitting at the edge of the bed, the muscles of his back broad and bare, catching a gentle glint from the early morning haze seeping in through the window. He’s halfway through pulling on his shirt, slow and steady, the way he always is in the mornings. A quiet man doing quiet things.

Without thinking, without even fully waking, your hand slips out from beneath the covers and finds him.

Your fingers wrap loosely around his wrist—barely a tug, just enough to let him know you’re there, still tethered to him. And then you shift closer, burying your face against the small of his back, pressing a soft, languid kiss to the warm skin just above the waistband of his jeans.

“Mmm... good mornin’, Joel,” you mumble, voice thick with sleep, muffled by the skin beneath your lips.

He pauses. Still for a moment, like the warmth of your kiss stopped time. Then he breathes out, slow and fond, and turns slightly—just enough to glance at you over his shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the corners, soft with affection, and that familiar crooked smile curves beneath the rough scruff of his jaw.

“Mornin’, sweetheart.” His voice is rough and low, like gravel soaked in honey, warm enough to melt straight through your bones.

You hum in response, already halfway to sleep again, forehead resting against his back. The bed creaks softly as he shifts, brushing his hand over your tangled hair in a slow, affectionate stroke. His thumb lingers at your temple, then trails down to the curve of your cheek, gentle and grounding.

“Go on,” he murmurs, bending down to press a kiss into your hair. “Sleep a little longer. I’ll get the fire goin’.”

You don’t answer, not really. Just let out a sigh that sounds like peace and contentment all wrapped into one. He stands slowly, quietly, careful not to disturb the blankets more than necessary, and as he moves toward the hearth, you stay curled in the warmth he left behind—your hand resting in the space where his had been, eyes slipping closed again.

You listen to the familiar rhythm of him moving through the room—boots being tugged on, the scrape of kindling, the gentle snap of a match. The softest clink of metal on stone. And through it all, the quiet knowledge that this is what love is.

Not always words. Not always fire and thunder.

But this.

These mornings. These moments. Him.

Sometimes, when the world gets too loud—even in Jackson—you find yourself gravitating toward him without a thought.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the bustle of the market, the chatter of passing patrols, or just the quiet hum of a too-long day catching up with your bones. Something in your chest tightens, overwhelmed and aching for something quieter, something still. And so you find Joel.

He’s usually somewhere close—he always is. Maybe talking with Tommy, maybe checking the perimeter, maybe just standing there with his arms crossed like he’s holding up the whole damn sky on his back again. But the moment your arms circle around his middle, everything else seems to fall away.

You press yourself into him, chest to his back, arms around his waist, and your face buries instinctively in the crook of his neck. That space between shoulder and jaw where you swear the whole world could stop and you wouldn’t mind. The smell of him hits you instantly—faint cedarwood, worn leather, a trace of smoke from the fire pit, and something else too. Something warm and steady and Joel.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away or ask what’s wrong. He just lets out a quiet hum, low in his chest, and leans back into your touch. His hands find yours where they’re linked around his stomach, thumbs brushing idly over your knuckles. You feel the weight of his chin as he rests it gently on top of your head, and then the press of a kiss into your hair—soft, unthinking, like muscle memory.

It’s the kind of affection that doesn’t ask for attention. Doesn’t need an occasion. It just is.

You breathe him in like you’re trying to anchor yourself. Let your eyes flutter shut. Let the rest of the world blur into background noise.

“I missed this,” you whisper against the warmth of his throat, the words barely more than a sigh. You don’t even mean the moment, exactly—you mean the peace of it. The quiet. The him of it all.

Joel turns his head just a little, enough for the edge of his beard to scratch gently against your forehead. His voice is soft when he replies, but there’s something thick in it, something full.

“You’re right here,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gotta miss a thing.”

You shift your face closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. “Sometimes I still do,” you admit.

He nods once, like he gets it without needing you to explain. “Yeah,” he says, his hand trailing up to cup the back of your head. “Me too.”

And for a long moment, neither of you say anything more. You just stand there, wrapped up in each other, while the world spins noisily on around you—too loud, too fast, too much.

But here, in the shelter of his arms, in the crook of his neck, everything is quiet. Everything is enough.

Crowds were never your thing.

Too many people pressed in too close, too many voices overlapping, footsteps echoing off wood and brick. Even in a place like Jackson—safe, familiar—it could still feel like too much. You were used to being on alert, always aware of exits and shadows, always bracing for what could go wrong. Old habits from the world outside didn’t die easily.

Joel wasn’t much better with crowds. Maybe a little quieter about it, a little more practiced at hiding the way his shoulders stiffened when someone brushed past too close. But you’d seen it. The way his jaw would flex when he was trying to be polite but already had one foot out the door in his head. The way his hand sometimes hovered near his belt like he was missing the feel of his rifle.

And yet, here you were.

The town hall was full to bursting, the whole place humming with life. It was some kind of celebration—maybe a harvest, maybe a birthday, maybe people just needed a reason to dance and drink and pretend that the world hadn’t ended outside those walls. Whatever it was, it was loud. Laughter spilled from every corner. Music vibrated through the floorboards. Glasses clinked together and boots stomped in time with the beat.

You stood near the far end of the room, half-heartedly nursing a cup of water, swaying just a little in time with the song playing—more to keep your nerves from buzzing than for enjoyment. You scanned the room like you always did. Faces. Movements. That unconscious search for something familiar, something grounding.

And then your eyes found Joel.

He was on the opposite side of the room, shoulder leaning against a wooden support beam, arms folded loosely across his chest. He hadn’t joined the dance, hadn’t made a plate from the food table. Just stood there, scanning the crowd—and you knew in your bones he’d been looking for you.

When your eyes met, the noise dulled. Not all at once. It didn’t go silent or freeze like in the movies. But it faded. As if the current of the room moved around the two of you instead of through.

You were mid-sip when it happened, your fingers curled around the cool tin cup, lips barely brushing the rim. But as soon as you caught his gaze, you paused.

It wasn’t a grand thing. No sweeping declarations. Just a glance. A quiet, steady look that said you’re here, and I see you, and that’s all I need.

You tilted your head a fraction, the corner of your mouth twitching upward into the kind of smile you only saved for him—small, but true. Your chest softened. Your breath eased.

Across the room, Joel’s lips quirked into that familiar little half-smile, the one that never quite reached both corners of his mouth, but you knew what it meant. He gave a subtle nod. Nothing flashy. Nothing for show.

Just,  I see you too.

You held that look for a second longer, your body still surrounded by the warmth and noise and movement of the room, but none of it really touched you. Not in that moment. Not with his gaze wrapped around you like a thread pulled taut across the distance.

And even though no one said a word, something passed between you.

You smile again, this one a little wider, a little softer. A silent message of your own: I’m not going anywhere.

And Joel’s eyes softened like he heard it loud and clear.

You hum sometimes, without even knowing you’re doing it. It just slips out—soft and low, the way wind moves through tall grass. A half-remembered tune from before the world went sideways. Maybe it was from the radio, maybe from your childhood, maybe your mother’s voice singing over the hiss of boiling water. It’s not the melody that matters. It’s the feeling that comes with it—warmth, familiarity, something that once meant home.

Sometimes, when your mind is far away, you whistle it instead. Just a few notes, carried on your breath.

Joel never interrupts. Never tells you to stop or asks you to hush. He just listens—quietly, carefully, like the sound of your humming settles something in him too. Like maybe the song is stitching him back together in places neither of you can quite name.

He’s usually out on the porch when it happens, sitting on the old wooden steps with one of the guitars he’s been fixing up. Strings stretched taut, frets worn smooth by time and hands that once knew chords. His fingers—rough and weathered—move slow and steady as he tunes it. Every so often, he plucks a string, listens, adjusts. The sun casts a soft amber glow across his forearms, painting the scars in gold.

You’re nearby. Always. Curled up with your legs folded beneath you, back resting against one of the porch posts. A blanket draped over your shoulders. You hum like peace lives in your chest and is trying to find its way out.

Joel glances up when he hears it—mid-strum, his brow relaxed, lips parted just slightly like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. He just looks at you for a moment, and everything about him softens. His shoulders drop. The line between his brows disappears. Like the sound of you is the first deep breath he’s taken all day.

“What’s that song?” he asks after a while, his voice breaking the silence like it belongs there. Low and warm, barely above the hush of wind.

You pause, the melody tapering off in your throat. Your eyes flick toward the sky, as if the answer might be waiting somewhere in the clouds.

“Not sure,” you murmur, a smile tugging lazily at the corner of your mouth. “Mama used to sing it when she was cooking. I think it used to be on the radio, too. One of those songs that just… stuck.”

Joel nods, the kind of slow, thoughtful nod that doesn’t need words to follow. He strums another chord, something soft and sweet, and leans back on his elbows.

“Well,” he says, glancing at you with that familiar flicker of something unspoken in his eyes. “Keep goin’. I like it.”

There’s something in the way he says it—something that makes your chest ache in that soft, full kind of way. The kind of ache that’s not about pain at all, but about being known. About being seen and loved for the quiet parts of yourself you didn’t think anyone else noticed.

So you hum again, picking up where you left off. Joel doesn’t look away. He keeps strumming, matching your rhythm now. Not quite harmonizing. Just being there with you, in it.

And for a little while, the world feels like it’s made of nothing but warm wood, old songs, and two people learning how to feel safe again.

You’re curled up together in bed one night, everything quiet except the low pop and crackle of the fire burning in the hearth. The room glows in soft amber and gold, the shadows on the walls swaying like they’re dancing to the rhythm of your breathing. Outside, wind brushes against the windows, but inside, it’s warm. Safe. Still.

Joel lies flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other draped loosely around your waist. You’re pressed into his side, head resting just below his collarbone, your hand lazily combing through his hair—fingertips tracing gentle, aimless patterns. His hair’s soft tonight, freshly washed and still carrying the faint scent of cedar soap and woodsmoke.

Neither of you speaks for a while. There’s no need. Just the hush between heartbeats and the sound of Joel’s steady breathing, slow and even beneath your ear.

“I could stay like this forever,” you whisper eventually, your voice thick with sleep. Each word melts into the warmth of his skin. Your eyes are already slipping closed, lashes brushing his chest. You don’t even know if he hears you.

But then you feel it—Joel’s arm tightening around your waist, his hand sliding up under your shirt just enough to rest against your spine, warm and grounding.

“Then don’t move,” he murmurs, voice rough with tiredness and something gentler, deeper. The kind of softness he only ever shows in moments like this, when the world is quiet and his guard is down. “Ain’t no one tellin’ us to go anywhere.”

You smile into the dark, into the skin of his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath your cheek. His heartbeat thumps slow and steady, and you swear you could fall asleep to that sound alone.

Joel shifts slightly, just enough to press a kiss into the top of your head. His lips linger there—like a promise more than anything spoken.

“You’re warm,” he mumbles.

“So are you,” you say, voice feather-light.

A comfortable silence settles in again. Your fingers slow in his hair, curling around a soft wave near his temple. His hand stays at your back, thumb drawing idle shapes you’re too sleepy to name.

The fire crackles. The wind hums. And you drift off like that—wrapped up in him, hand still in his hair, the weight of his love wrapped around you like a second blanket. Nothing else matters. Not out there. Not tomorrow. Just this.

Just him.

The temperature dips before the sun even brushes the horizon. The last of the daylight clings to the sky in hazy streaks of orange and violet, but the wind has already turned sharp, biting through the seams of your jacket. You and Joel walk side by side down the path back toward Jackson, boots crunching over patches of frost-laced grass and half-frozen dirt.

You don’t say much—patrols tend to leave a certain kind of quiet between you, a silence that doesn’t need filling. But you can feel the chill starting to settle deep in your bones, your fingers stiff and cheeks raw from the cold. You try to rub your hands together for warmth, but it’s useless. The wind is relentless.

Joel notices, of course. His eyes flick over to you, worried in that subtle way he is—more tension in the jaw, more silence than usual. You know he’s about to offer you his coat or tell you he should’ve brought that extra scarf.

So before he can open his mouth, you reach out and grab a fistful of his jacket.

Without a word, you tug him in. Joel stumbles the smallest step forward, surprised but not resisting. You pull until you're chest to chest, until the warmth of his body bleeds into yours. Your frozen hands slip under the back hem of his coat and find the soft flannel of his shirt underneath, palms pressing flat against the heat of his spine.

“Jesus,” Joel mutters, letting out a breath that puffs white between you, his arms automatically sliding around your waist. “You could’ve just asked for my coat, y’know.”

“But then I wouldn’t be this close,” you reply, chin tilting up, a smile tugging at your lips despite your chattering teeth. “You’re warmer than any jacket.”

Joel huffs a soft laugh, the kind that melts around the edges. He leans in, resting his forehead lightly against yours. “You’re a damn menace,” he says—but his voice is warm and low, thick with affection.

You can feel his fingers pressing into your back, holding you tighter. His nose brushes yours as he tilts his head, and then—soft as snowfall—he kisses you. Once. Then again. And a third time, his lips barely touching yours, quick little pecks that make you laugh and shiver all at once.

“Joel,” you whisper, still grinning, your breath fogging between you both.

“I like the taste of your lips on mine,” he murmurs, the words brushing against your mouth like silk. He says it like a secret. Like it’s always been true.

Then he kisses you again—this time slower, deeper, his hand cradling the back of your head as he pours warmth into you one soft press at a time. The world falls quiet. No wind. No cold. No patrols or gates or the threat of anything waiting in the dark.

Just Joel.

Just this.

When you finally pull apart, you don’t go far. He keeps you close, your fingers still tucked against his back, his breath brushing your temple.

You smile into his collar. “Can we stay like this a little longer?”

He kisses your hair, voice barely above a whisper. “Far as I’m concerned, we can stay like this forever.” 

And in that moment, time slows. Your heartbeat settles into the rhythm of his, safe and steady. Warm, despite everything. Because love—real love—isn’t just in the grand gestures. It’s in this. A quiet winter dusk. A jacket shared. The taste of his kiss. The way he holds you like you’re something worth braving the cold for.

Then there’s Ellie.

She was nineteen now. Strong. Sharp-tongued and guarded in the way Joel used to be. You weren’t her mother, and she never treated you like one—but she was curious about you. Distant at first. Then, little by little, she started asking questions. Sitting with you on the porch. Bringing you a book she found and thought you might like.

She and Joel… there were things left unsaid between them. You could feel it like a splinter under the skin. Something tender and unresolved.

He finally told you one night, long after you’d both settled into the quiet comfort of shared sheets and a life you thought might last.

It was after dinner. After the guitar and the laughter. After you’d kissed the corners of his mouth and pulled him into bed.

“I lied to her,” he said, voice hollow.

You blinked in the dark, still half-tangled in sleep. “What?”

Joel’s face was turned toward the ceiling. Still. Tense. “I lied to Ellie. About the Fireflies. About the hospital.”

The room chilled. Your fingers reached for his without hesitation.

“I killed them,” he continued. “Every last one that stood between me and her. ‘Cause they were gonna cut her open. To find a cure.”

He didn’t cry right away. He spoke through gritted teeth, like the guilt was a weight he carried every damn day and had never quite set down.

“She would’ve died. She didn’t know—still doesn’t really. I told her there were others. That she wasn’t the only one. But it was a lie. It’s all a lie.”

You didn’t speak. Just curled into him. Held his hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“She hates me for it,” he whispered.

“No,” you said. “She loves you. She’s angry, but she loves you.”

He shook his head. Silent tears rolled into his hairline. You kissed his shoulder. You stayed up all night, fingers running through his graying hair until his breathing steadied again.

That was the last night he told you something he’d never said out loud.

The screams had long gone silent. All that was left now was smoke. Gunpowder. Blood soaking into snow.

Your boots crunch through it—through the aftermath. Bodies, both friend and foe, lie crumpled like broken marionettes. The streets of Jackson, once humming with quiet life, are now a graveyard.

Tommy had held the line at the south gate. You saw him, blackened with ash and soot, flames dancing in the reflection of his eyes as he lit up a bloater with the last fuel of the flamethrower. His scream—raw, furious—cut through the chaos like a knife. You’d joined the others in the streets, turning bullets on the infected… and eventually, on the bitten.

Some of them you knew by name.

You don’t remember pulling the trigger. You only remember the stillness afterward.

The quiet after the roar.

By the time the last runner was put down, your hands were slick with blood—some of it not your own. And when they called for the dead to be gathered, you helped. You counted.

You lost count.

They winched open the gates sometime after. You were still standing by the old greenhouse-turned-morgue, watching Tommy collapse into Maria’s arms, his body shaking with the weight of what he’d survived.

And then—

The hoofbeats. The shuffle of footsteps. The drag of something heavy behind them.

You turned.

Jesse and Ellie rode in first. Dina followed, all their faces hollowed out by exhaustion and something far worse. Behind their horse trailed a shape wrapped in canvas, dark with frozen blood, limp in the snow.

Ellie’s eyes met yours.

Red-rimmed. Wide. Empty.

And you knew.

You knew.

Your legs gave out beneath you before the thought could fully form. The cold didn’t register. Only the scream that tore out of your throat—animal, guttural. You clawed at the snow, sobbing into the dirt and ice, your lungs heaving like they were trying to break through your ribs.

“No—no—no—!” It came out broken. Like you could undo it just by denying it hard enough.

Tommy grabbed you. Held you back. His own face soaked with tears.

You screamed again. You didn’t care who heard. Didn’t care that you were on your knees in the blood and the snow with your heart ripped open.

Maria stood nearby. Hands pressed to her mouth. Silent.

The bag didn’t move.

He was in there.

Joel.

You want to tear the canvas open. You want it to be a mistake. You want to see his face, alive. Cranky. Loving. Whole.

But you already know.

You don’t know how long you stay like that. How long your sobs echo off the ruined walls of Jackson. You only know this: he felt like home.

And now home is just… gone.

They carry him to the chapel. Ellie disappears inside, Dina trailing her silently. Jesse catches your eye and looks away.

You follow the corpse. Your legs move on their own. There’s nothing left to protect now, no fight to win. You’ve survived—but at what cost?

The snow keeps falling.

And somehow, the world keeps turning.

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. No birdsong, no wind. Just the thick, suffocating kind of silence that wraps around your ribs and squeezes until it feels like you might shatter from the inside out. The kind of silence that doesn’t leave room for breath, or hope.

The makeshift morgue is colder than outside, colder than anything should ever be. Too sterile. Too still. Too many bodies of people you once smiled at in passing. A metal table stands at the corner of the room, and he’s there—Joel—lying beneath a white sheet that feels far too thin. Like if you peeled it back, he’d stir. Grumble about the draft. Ask where his jacket went.

But he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t fucking move.

You sink to your knees beside the table. Wood floor biting into your bones, your hands trembling as they hover just above the edge of the sheet. Your throat burns like it’s been scraped raw from the inside out, but you haven’t said anything. Not really. Not yet.

Tommy sits down beside you, legs bent awkwardly, arms crossed over his chest like if he doesn’t hold himself together, he might fall apart right here with you.

“I don’t wanna say goodbye,” you choke out, voice so broken it barely sounds like yours. Your hands finally touch the edge of the table, and you grip it like a lifeline.

“I know,” Tommy murmurs. He doesn’t say more. Doesn’t try to fix it. Maybe because he knows there’s no fixing this.

You press your forehead against the cold edge of the metal, like maybe if you’re close enough, you’ll feel his warmth again. But there’s nothing. Only the chill of a world that kept turning without him in it.

“I needed him,” you whisper. The words break on your tongue like glass. “I still do. I need his voice—I need his arms. I need him to tell me this is all gonna be okay.”

A sob claws its way out of your chest, jagged and ugly. “He was supposed to be here.”

You think about the way he used to hold you—how his hands fit so easily around your waist, how he’d tug you close like the world outside didn’t exist. You think about his voice, low and rough, whispering “I got you, baby,” when the nightmares got bad. About the way he looked at you, like you were something worth protecting. Like you were home.

He was home.

And now he’s gone. And you’re nothing but a house with the roof torn off, standing in the rain.

“I don’t know how to be in a world that doesn’t have him in it,” you admit, tears falling freely now, soaking into your sleeves. “I was never scared of tomorrow when he was with me.”

Your head turns toward Tommy, eyes rimmed red. “How do I do this?”

He doesn’t answer. He just puts a hand over yours, squeezes it tight. It’s all he can give you, and you take it, even though it’s not the hand you want.

You close your eyes, breathing in like maybe you’ll catch some trace of him. Leather. Cedar. That soap he used when he tried to be fancy. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the dull antiseptic of this godforsaken room.

“I thought I knew grief,” you whisper. “But this… this is a whole new kind of broken.”

And it is. It’s grief with no bottom. No edges. No map. Like walking into a fog and never coming back out.

You reach up, finally, trembling fingers lifting the edge of the sheet.

You don’t pull it back.

You just press your palm over where you know his heart used to beat.

And you stay there, frozen in time, whispering his name like a prayer. Like if you say it enough, he might come back.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t.

And you know—no matter how many tomorrows come—you’ll miss him in every single one.

Because he wasn’t just the love of your life.

He was your life.

And now, all that’s left is the silence.

It’s three days later when Tommy finds you.

You haven’t spoken much since that day. Just shadows under your eyes and silence on your lips. People leave flowers near the mailbox. You go through the motions—eating when someone puts food in front of you, lying down when your legs give out—but you’re not really here.

You’re sitting on Joel’s porch when he approaches. Your knees are drawn to your chest, your hands wrapped in the sleeves of a jacket that still smells like him. It’s too big, and it doesn’t make you feel any less hollow.

Tommy stands in front of you for a moment, quiet.

Then he lowers himself to sit on the step beside you.

“I ain’t sure if now’s the right time,” he says, voice low. Rough. “But he… he asked me to give you somethin’. If…”

You look at him. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t have to. You both know how it ends.

Your heart stops. And then starts again, slower. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small envelope—folded and worn soft at the edges like it had been carried for a long time.

Your name is on it.

Your handwriting. Joel’s writing. It’s him. It's him.

Your fingers are shaking as you take it.

“I didn’t read it,” Tommy says, eyes on the horizon. “Didn’t wanna. Figured that was for you.”

Inside the envelope is a single piece of paper, folded once.

And a gold band.

Simple. Plain. No diamonds or carvings. Just a ring. One he probably bartered for quietly. One he probably kept in his pocket, maybe touched it when he thought about you. One he never got to give you.

Your vision blurs instantly.

The paper trembles in your hands as you unfold it. The ink is smudged in one corner—Joel had probably written it with those big hands, careful and slow. Trying to say something final in a way that didn’t feel like goodbye.

Your eyes find the first words.

Hey, baby.

If you’re reading this… then I’m not where I should be. I’m sorry.

God, I didn’t wanna write this. Been puttin’ it off for weeks. But the way this world is… well, you and I both know it don’t always give you time to say things out loud.

So I’m writin’ ‘em now.

First thing—I love you. You probably know that already. Hell, I’ve said it in a hundred different ways without ever sayin’ the words. In the way I hold you. The way I listen to you hum that song. The way I breathe easier when you’re near.

You gave me something I thought I didn’t deserve. Peace. A second chance. A home.

I hope I gave you the same.

Second thing—you’ll find a ring with this letter. Nothin’ fancy. I wanted to give it to you proper. Maybe on the porch. Maybe by the fire. Just… you and me. I had all these words planned. But none of ‘em matter now.

Just know this—I would’ve asked you to be mine. Not ‘cause I needed to prove anything. But because you already were. In every way that counts.

And I wanted the world to know.

I wanted to grow old with you. Wanted to find out what your hair looks like when it’s all grey. Wanted to kiss you goodnight a thousand more times.

I wanted all of it.

But if I didn’t make it—if you’re readin’ this now—I need you to do something for me.

Live.

Please. Don’t let this break you.

You got too much light in you to burn out now.

So wear the ring, if it helps. Or don’t. Keep it in your pocket. Toss it in the river. It’s yours, either way.

You’ll always be mine.

Forever and then some,  

Joel

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until Tommy places a hand on your back, steadying you as the weight of the words crushes you from the inside out.

The ring glints in your palm, catching the dying light of the day.

You bring it to your lips, kiss it once, then curl it into your fist and press it against your heart.

“I would’ve said yes,” you whisper into the air, broken and breathless. “I would’ve said yes a thousand times.”

And the wind moves through the trees like it’s carrying the words to him—wherever he is.

Because love like that doesn’t die.

It just waits.

It lingers in the quiet. In the echo of footsteps that aren’t his. In the smell of cedar and leather that still clings to the collar of his coat. It stays tucked in the corners of every room he touched, every breath he took beside you.

You will mourn him forever. You will miss him every minute.

Your hands will grow old holding a photograph of the two of you—sunlight on your faces, his arm around your shoulders like he always meant to keep you safe. Your bones will ache with the shape of him, your soul carved hollow where he used to be.

And when your time comes, when the world fades soft and slow at the edges, you’ll go with his name dancing on your lips. A whisper. A promise.

Because some loves aren’t meant to end.

Only to be found again.

[theetherealbloom]

same anon, lmao! but I totally understand what you mean. There have been times when I've gotten so attached to a character to the point i feel physically ill when processing extreme angst with the character. its part of the reason i've lowkey been hiding from season 2/debating if i really want to watch it at all (i am far too attached to ellie and joel's dynamic)

but to make it even more sad, then there's also me as an actress! who's thinking about how heavy the tones probably were on set!! and making myself even more sad imagining the toll that scene might have taken on pedro and bella considering how close their relationship is

A lot of yapping down here ahem:

Being human is so weird. I am literally in a constant state of contradictions and the embodiment of everything in between.

You and I are so similar anon!! I was hiding from S2 for a while and then my curiosity got the best of me. I genuinely get nauseous and sob uncontrollably over characters in movies, tv shows, books, and plays. 😭

Holy shit, yes. Here’s like something Pedro said in a recent article from Entertainment Weekly about Episode 2:

"The location lived up to the expectation of being a really tough terrain," Pascal remarks. "It was freezing cold."

The day of, he didn't notice any kind of energy shift until he emerged in the room in his final "bloody pulp" look, complete with a throbbing shiner on his left eye and blood stains on his body, courtesy of the craft team.

"I've never experienced anything like I did that day where I stepped onto set in full makeup and then killed the vibe completely as soon as anyone set their eyes on me," Pascal says. "This kind of shock and heartbreak… it was weird to be on the receiving end of that. It's like the extreme version of, 'Is there something on my face?' I really could see this sort of grief take over everyone's look in their eyes."

LIKE DAMN.

If I was on set that day I’d be crying before the fucking take and need to be put in the time out corner and sedated.

Also, oh god, I have an actress reading my fics help—-

[theetherealbloom]

the way you reblogged a bunch where he lived before posting one where he didn't

PFFT LMAO WAIT-- I CAN EXPLAIN!

I really needed to process what the fuck I just watched this week so badly man. So then I wrote it all down.

I'm in this weird state of being, like gaslighting myself, knowing he's still alive in our own little AU/fandom. Then you have the other half of my brain, hearing the agonizing screams of Pedro, and I would like those minutes of my life back omfg. 😭

Like what the fuck, where do I put all these emotions?? 😭😭 Where do I go from here?? Why do I have so much grief in my body for this fictional man??

I know it's not "real", and I know how it all ends... and yet it didn't soften the blow. I thought I was ready, and I believed I was prepared. But then, like I said, even if you've braced yourself, brutality like that... it hurts a lot.

I wrote the fic with the hope that it would help someone who feels somewhat similar to me right now and gives them the reassurance that they're not alone in "grieving "over Joel. (if that makes sense ifykyk)

[theetherealbloom]

It Only Falls Into Place When You're Falling To Pieces

Summary: There are a lot of people you thought would live forever. You swore Joel would be one of them.

Pairing: Jackson!Joel Miller x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+ HEAVY ANGST, Fluff, Crying, Tears, Sadness, Apocalypse, Cordyceps, Infected, Major Character Death(s), Funerals, Grief, PTSD, Depression, Kissing, Blood, Morgue, Star-Crossed Lovers, TLOU 2 Spoilers,

Word Count: 7.7k

A/N: Fml. I know that you know I don’t usually write angst, but fuck man, I need to mourn and maybe so do you… God I'm so sad. Like we knew the story and how it would end for Joel. Even if you think you're ready... But I know this from experience, even if you've braced yourself, brutality like this... will hurt a lot.

Side note: I’m dyslexic and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!

Song: Still by Noah Kahan

Joel Miller Masterlist | MAIN MASTERLIST |

WYOMING, JACKSON — 2029

The mornings were slow in Jackson. Slow in a way that made you feel like maybe—just maybe—you weren’t living in the end times anymore.

Joel had a habit of waking up before you. Not out of routine or discipline, but out of muscle memory. The kind that sticks even when the world’s long since changed.

Sometimes, he made coffee. Sometimes, he just sat at the table, plucking at his guitar in soft, incomplete chords while the sun started to push through the windows. The house you shared wasn’t big or fancy. But it was warm. It was quiet. It had his coat always draped over the same chair, his boots by the door, the scent of cedar and pine from the little woodworking studio in one of the rooms.

It had Joel.

You found yourself drifting toward him more often than not. Whether he was sanding a piece of maple or trying to shape a leg for a rocking chair he swore he’d finish someday, he let you linger. You’d sit on the bench next to him, fingers curled around a warm mug. He’d hand you scraps to practice carving, smiling softly when you accidentally broke off a corner.

“‘S alright,” he’d murmur, brushing sawdust off your cheek with a thumb. “Takes time.”

Everything with Joel took time.

Loving him. Learning him. Earning the space between his heart and the pain he never quite put into words.

But the quiet in Jackson gave you time. Time to laugh with him over burned dinners, to slow dance in the kitchen when he played a familiar tune, to lay on the couch with your head on his chest while he told you about old country songs and the guitar he lost in Austin.

And it gave him time, too.

Time to lower his walls. To see you not as a danger, but as something steady—something soft he could rest in. Time to share pieces of himself he rarely offered to anyone, fragile corners he'd kept locked away.

He would look at you and think, If I were braver. If I could just say it.

He’d imagine the words on his tongue, how they’d change everything the second they left his mouth. But he wasn’t ready—not brave enough, not honest enough.

So he just looked at you instead.

And maybe you knew. Maybe you always knew.

Because he did love you.

In quiet, consistent ways. In the way he made your coffee just how you liked it. In the way he memorized the sound of your laugh. In every glance, every softened breath, every moment where he didn’t walk away.

He didn’t love you because he was lonely—Joel had long since learned how to survive in the silence.

He loved you because your light made the dark seem less like a prison and more like a place he could leave behind.

It started small.

A found thing—half-buried in the snow behind the stables. You’d been looking for spare nails in a busted old toolbox when you saw it: a film camera. Dusty, scratched up, but the click still worked. You brought it back like a prize.

Joel looked up from the guitar he was restringing, brow furrowed. “You went diggin’ around in that old junkyard again?”

You grinned, breath fogging the air. “Found treasure.”

He squinted at the thing in your hand like it might bite him. “You sure that ain’t just some broken plastic?”

“Only one way to find out.”

He watched you tinker with it all afternoon, wiping the lens clean with your sleeve, warming the roll of film between your palms to bring it back to life. You caught him staring more than once—chin propped in his hand, fingers idle on the frets of a guitar he’d been meaning to finish tuning.

When it finally worked, you snapped a picture of the sunset from your porch. Then one of his back as he worked, his brow furrowed in concentration, sleeves rolled up, calloused hands steady over the worn wood.

You took one of his profile too. He’d been humming low under his breath, unaware.

“Hey,” he said, catching the click. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You’re handsome when you’re focused.”

He huffed a laugh, but he didn’t stop you when you raised the camera again.

Later that week, you asked him for one together.

“C’mere,” you said, tugging at the front of his jacket. “Just one. You might like the memory someday.”

He looked reluctant, like the idea of being frozen in time made him itch. But he let you lead him into the light. You kissed him on the cheek just as the timer clicked. He smiled, wide and surprised and real.

The photo came out a little blurry. But your mouth was pressed to his skin, his eyes crinkled with something close to joy. You kept it in your coat pocket like it might keep you warm.

Sometimes, he came into the kitchen just to touch you.

No reason. No words. Just drawn to you like muscle memory.

You’d be standing at the counter, elbow-deep in something mundane—rinsing mugs, slicing vegetables, stirring whatever was bubbling in the pot—when suddenly there’d be a shift in the air behind you. A warmth. A quiet presence.

Then, Joel’s arms would wind around your waist, firm and steady, palms pressing low on your stomach, right through the thin fabric of your shirt. His chest would settle against your back like it belonged there, like you were meant to carry each other’s weight.

“You makin’ somethin’ good?” he’d mumble into your hair, voice rough with sleep or fresh air or maybe just the softness you always brought out of him.

You barely had time to answer before you’d feel it—his nose brushing just beneath your ear, his scruff scratching tender against your neck. The kind of touch that made the air feel thick with heat and memory.

“You smell like cinnamon,” he whispered one evening, lips grazing the spot where your jaw met your throat.

You stilled, blinking down at the spoon in your hand. “You been sniffin’ me, Miller?”

A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Can’t help it,” he murmured, slow and sweet, like molasses in summer. “You’re intoxicatin’, darlin’. Makes a man forget what he came in here for.”

His mouth followed the curve of your neck, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse. Slow. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world to worship you.

You laughed then, breath catching in your throat. It wasn’t loud—it didn’t need to be. Just a soft, breathless sound that filled the space between your bodies as you leaned back into him, hips settling against his.

The laughter didn’t last long. It never did when his hands started to move—one curling around your hip, the other slipping beneath the hem of your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin.

The spoon slipped from your fingers and clattered into the sink, forgotten.

You turned slightly, enough to meet his eyes, and whispered, “The stew’s gonna burn.”

Joel kissed the corner of your mouth, smiling just enough to be trouble.

“Let it.”

One night, he kissed you like he had all the time in the world.

It was late, storm tapping at the windows, fire burning low. You were tucked beneath his arm on the couch, legs over his lap, your hand tucked into the worn flannel of his shirt. He kissed you once, then again, then a hundred more times.

Short, sweet little things.

He kissed your cheeks, your eyelids, the corner of your mouth. You giggled, cheeks hurting from how hard you were smiling.

“Joel,” you whispered, nose scrunched, lips twitching. “What are you doing?”

His palms cradled your face like you were something delicate. Like he’d break if he didn’t touch you just right.

“Memorizing you,” he said. Then he kissed the giggle right off your lips.

Your hands curled in his hair, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, soft and slow, lips sliding together like they belonged there.

And when he finally pulled back, his forehead pressed against yours, his voice came out low and honest, barely above a breath:

“You’re everythin’ darlin’.”

He didn’t say he loved you.

Not with words.

But in every quiet moment, every gentle touch, every photo you took that he let you keep—he showed you.

And somehow, that meant more.

Love shows up in the quiet moments with Joel. Always has been.

Not in grand declarations or fireworks. Not in promises whispered beneath starlight or etched into stone. No, with Joel, love slips in softly—through the cracks of everyday life, in the pauses between sentences, in the silence he lets you share without needing to fill it. It’s there when the world is loud, and he chooses to be quiet with you. When everything aches and he doesn’t try to fix it—just stays.

It’s the way your hand always finds his, especially when he’s got that look about him—brows drawn low, eyes shadowed, body still as a storm about to break. You’ve come to know it well, that kind of tension that settles in his shoulders like he’s bracing against something only he can see. The kind of stillness that doesn’t feel like peace, but like he’s waiting to run or fight or fall apart.

So you reach for him.

You don’t announce it, don’t make a show of it. Just slide your hand into his, palm against his rough calloused skin, fingers curling between his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. Because you’ve done this before, countless times. Every time the ghosts get too loud or the silence feels too sharp. You hold his hand and he lets you, and that’s how you know—how you always know—he’s letting you in again.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. Just breathes out slow, like your touch takes some of the weight off, even if it’s just a fraction. His jaw unclenches. His shoulders drop a little. You can feel it—the shift, the surrender, the trust.

“Y’okay?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper, soft enough that it could be mistaken for wind slipping through the seams of the old house, rustling the curtains just enough to remind you that the world is still turning outside these walls.

Joel looks at you. Not a glance. A real look. The kind that lingers. The kind that says more than words ever could. His eyes are tired, but there’s something else there too—something quieter, gentler, something that only ever surfaces around you.

His thumb moves in a slow arc across your knuckles, and when he answers, it’s not just with words. It’s in the way his grip tightens slightly, not desperate, just present.

“I am now,” he murmurs, his voice low and warm, frayed at the edges. Like maybe he’s been holding it in all day, maybe even longer. Like your hand in his unlocked something he didn’t know he needed to say.

You don’t answer. You don’t need to. You lean into him instead, resting your head on his shoulder, letting the weight of you press gently against him like a tether. Like a promise. His arm slips around you, steady and sure, palm settling at your hip. He presses a kiss into your hair—right at the crown of your head, like a seal, like a prayer, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of you.

The room around you is quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the crackle of the fire. Outside, snow falls soundlessly, blanketing the world in soft white. And inside, it’s warm. Not just from the fire—but from him. From this.

From the way he holds you like you’re something he never thought he’d have again. Like the simple act of your hand in his might keep the darkness at bay for one more night.

With Joel, love doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to.

It just stays.

And that’s always been more than enough.

The mornings are always slow.

Time feels syrup-thick when the sun hasn’t fully crested the horizon yet, and sleep still clings to your limbs like molasses. Your body is heavy, cocooned in the tangle of sheets still warm from the man who slept beside you. The air is cool beyond the bed, but the mattress holds the echo of his heat, and it makes you reluctant to move, even as your senses start to stretch awake.

You shift lazily, one arm reaching across the bed to where Joel had been moments ago. It’s empty now, his absence a soft dip in the mattress, but the scent of him lingers—cedarwood, a trace of leather, the faint hint of salt and earth from yesterday’s long walk back into Jackson. Comforting. Familiar.

You pry one eye open, squinting into the low light. Joel’s already sitting at the edge of the bed, the muscles of his back broad and bare, catching a gentle glint from the early morning haze seeping in through the window. He’s halfway through pulling on his shirt, slow and steady, the way he always is in the mornings. A quiet man doing quiet things.

Without thinking, without even fully waking, your hand slips out from beneath the covers and finds him.

Your fingers wrap loosely around his wrist—barely a tug, just enough to let him know you’re there, still tethered to him. And then you shift closer, burying your face against the small of his back, pressing a soft, languid kiss to the warm skin just above the waistband of his jeans.

“Mmm... good mornin’, Joel,” you mumble, voice thick with sleep, muffled by the skin beneath your lips.

He pauses. Still for a moment, like the warmth of your kiss stopped time. Then he breathes out, slow and fond, and turns slightly—just enough to glance at you over his shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the corners, soft with affection, and that familiar crooked smile curves beneath the rough scruff of his jaw.

“Mornin’, sweetheart.” His voice is rough and low, like gravel soaked in honey, warm enough to melt straight through your bones.

You hum in response, already halfway to sleep again, forehead resting against his back. The bed creaks softly as he shifts, brushing his hand over your tangled hair in a slow, affectionate stroke. His thumb lingers at your temple, then trails down to the curve of your cheek, gentle and grounding.

“Go on,” he murmurs, bending down to press a kiss into your hair. “Sleep a little longer. I’ll get the fire goin’.”

You don’t answer, not really. Just let out a sigh that sounds like peace and contentment all wrapped into one. He stands slowly, quietly, careful not to disturb the blankets more than necessary, and as he moves toward the hearth, you stay curled in the warmth he left behind—your hand resting in the space where his had been, eyes slipping closed again.

You listen to the familiar rhythm of him moving through the room—boots being tugged on, the scrape of kindling, the gentle snap of a match. The softest clink of metal on stone. And through it all, the quiet knowledge that this is what love is.

Not always words. Not always fire and thunder.

But this.

These mornings. These moments. Him.

Sometimes, when the world gets too loud—even in Jackson—you find yourself gravitating toward him without a thought.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the bustle of the market, the chatter of passing patrols, or just the quiet hum of a too-long day catching up with your bones. Something in your chest tightens, overwhelmed and aching for something quieter, something still. And so you find Joel.

He’s usually somewhere close—he always is. Maybe talking with Tommy, maybe checking the perimeter, maybe just standing there with his arms crossed like he’s holding up the whole damn sky on his back again. But the moment your arms circle around his middle, everything else seems to fall away.

You press yourself into him, chest to his back, arms around his waist, and your face buries instinctively in the crook of his neck. That space between shoulder and jaw where you swear the whole world could stop and you wouldn’t mind. The smell of him hits you instantly—faint cedarwood, worn leather, a trace of smoke from the fire pit, and something else too. Something warm and steady and Joel.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away or ask what’s wrong. He just lets out a quiet hum, low in his chest, and leans back into your touch. His hands find yours where they’re linked around his stomach, thumbs brushing idly over your knuckles. You feel the weight of his chin as he rests it gently on top of your head, and then the press of a kiss into your hair—soft, unthinking, like muscle memory.

It’s the kind of affection that doesn’t ask for attention. Doesn’t need an occasion. It just is.

You breathe him in like you’re trying to anchor yourself. Let your eyes flutter shut. Let the rest of the world blur into background noise.

“I missed this,” you whisper against the warmth of his throat, the words barely more than a sigh. You don’t even mean the moment, exactly—you mean the peace of it. The quiet. The him of it all.

Joel turns his head just a little, enough for the edge of his beard to scratch gently against your forehead. His voice is soft when he replies, but there’s something thick in it, something full.

“You’re right here,” he murmurs. “Ain’t gotta miss a thing.”

You shift your face closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. “Sometimes I still do,” you admit.

He nods once, like he gets it without needing you to explain. “Yeah,” he says, his hand trailing up to cup the back of your head. “Me too.”

And for a long moment, neither of you say anything more. You just stand there, wrapped up in each other, while the world spins noisily on around you—too loud, too fast, too much.

But here, in the shelter of his arms, in the crook of his neck, everything is quiet. Everything is enough.

Crowds were never your thing.

Too many people pressed in too close, too many voices overlapping, footsteps echoing off wood and brick. Even in a place like Jackson—safe, familiar—it could still feel like too much. You were used to being on alert, always aware of exits and shadows, always bracing for what could go wrong. Old habits from the world outside didn’t die easily.

Joel wasn’t much better with crowds. Maybe a little quieter about it, a little more practiced at hiding the way his shoulders stiffened when someone brushed past too close. But you’d seen it. The way his jaw would flex when he was trying to be polite but already had one foot out the door in his head. The way his hand sometimes hovered near his belt like he was missing the feel of his rifle.

And yet, here you were.

The town hall was full to bursting, the whole place humming with life. It was some kind of celebration—maybe a harvest, maybe a birthday, maybe people just needed a reason to dance and drink and pretend that the world hadn’t ended outside those walls. Whatever it was, it was loud. Laughter spilled from every corner. Music vibrated through the floorboards. Glasses clinked together and boots stomped in time with the beat.

You stood near the far end of the room, half-heartedly nursing a cup of water, swaying just a little in time with the song playing—more to keep your nerves from buzzing than for enjoyment. You scanned the room like you always did. Faces. Movements. That unconscious search for something familiar, something grounding.

And then your eyes found Joel.

He was on the opposite side of the room, shoulder leaning against a wooden support beam, arms folded loosely across his chest. He hadn’t joined the dance, hadn’t made a plate from the food table. Just stood there, scanning the crowd—and you knew in your bones he’d been looking for you.

When your eyes met, the noise dulled. Not all at once. It didn’t go silent or freeze like in the movies. But it faded. As if the current of the room moved around the two of you instead of through.

You were mid-sip when it happened, your fingers curled around the cool tin cup, lips barely brushing the rim. But as soon as you caught his gaze, you paused.

It wasn’t a grand thing. No sweeping declarations. Just a glance. A quiet, steady look that said you’re here, and I see you, and that’s all I need.

You tilted your head a fraction, the corner of your mouth twitching upward into the kind of smile you only saved for him—small, but true. Your chest softened. Your breath eased.

Across the room, Joel’s lips quirked into that familiar little half-smile, the one that never quite reached both corners of his mouth, but you knew what it meant. He gave a subtle nod. Nothing flashy. Nothing for show.

Just,  I see you too.

You held that look for a second longer, your body still surrounded by the warmth and noise and movement of the room, but none of it really touched you. Not in that moment. Not with his gaze wrapped around you like a thread pulled taut across the distance.

And even though no one said a word, something passed between you.

You smile again, this one a little wider, a little softer. A silent message of your own: I’m not going anywhere.

And Joel’s eyes softened like he heard it loud and clear.

You hum sometimes, without even knowing you’re doing it. It just slips out—soft and low, the way wind moves through tall grass. A half-remembered tune from before the world went sideways. Maybe it was from the radio, maybe from your childhood, maybe your mother’s voice singing over the hiss of boiling water. It’s not the melody that matters. It’s the feeling that comes with it—warmth, familiarity, something that once meant home.

Sometimes, when your mind is far away, you whistle it instead. Just a few notes, carried on your breath.

Joel never interrupts. Never tells you to stop or asks you to hush. He just listens—quietly, carefully, like the sound of your humming settles something in him too. Like maybe the song is stitching him back together in places neither of you can quite name.

He’s usually out on the porch when it happens, sitting on the old wooden steps with one of the guitars he’s been fixing up. Strings stretched taut, frets worn smooth by time and hands that once knew chords. His fingers—rough and weathered—move slow and steady as he tunes it. Every so often, he plucks a string, listens, adjusts. The sun casts a soft amber glow across his forearms, painting the scars in gold.

You’re nearby. Always. Curled up with your legs folded beneath you, back resting against one of the porch posts. A blanket draped over your shoulders. You hum like peace lives in your chest and is trying to find its way out.

Joel glances up when he hears it—mid-strum, his brow relaxed, lips parted just slightly like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. He just looks at you for a moment, and everything about him softens. His shoulders drop. The line between his brows disappears. Like the sound of you is the first deep breath he’s taken all day.

“What’s that song?” he asks after a while, his voice breaking the silence like it belongs there. Low and warm, barely above the hush of wind.

You pause, the melody tapering off in your throat. Your eyes flick toward the sky, as if the answer might be waiting somewhere in the clouds.

“Not sure,” you murmur, a smile tugging lazily at the corner of your mouth. “Mama used to sing it when she was cooking. I think it used to be on the radio, too. One of those songs that just… stuck.”

Joel nods, the kind of slow, thoughtful nod that doesn’t need words to follow. He strums another chord, something soft and sweet, and leans back on his elbows.

“Well,” he says, glancing at you with that familiar flicker of something unspoken in his eyes. “Keep goin’. I like it.”

There’s something in the way he says it—something that makes your chest ache in that soft, full kind of way. The kind of ache that’s not about pain at all, but about being known. About being seen and loved for the quiet parts of yourself you didn’t think anyone else noticed.

So you hum again, picking up where you left off. Joel doesn’t look away. He keeps strumming, matching your rhythm now. Not quite harmonizing. Just being there with you, in it.

And for a little while, the world feels like it’s made of nothing but warm wood, old songs, and two people learning how to feel safe again.

You’re curled up together in bed one night, everything quiet except the low pop and crackle of the fire burning in the hearth. The room glows in soft amber and gold, the shadows on the walls swaying like they’re dancing to the rhythm of your breathing. Outside, wind brushes against the windows, but inside, it’s warm. Safe. Still.

Joel lies flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other draped loosely around your waist. You’re pressed into his side, head resting just below his collarbone, your hand lazily combing through his hair—fingertips tracing gentle, aimless patterns. His hair’s soft tonight, freshly washed and still carrying the faint scent of cedar soap and woodsmoke.

Neither of you speaks for a while. There’s no need. Just the hush between heartbeats and the sound of Joel’s steady breathing, slow and even beneath your ear.

“I could stay like this forever,” you whisper eventually, your voice thick with sleep. Each word melts into the warmth of his skin. Your eyes are already slipping closed, lashes brushing his chest. You don’t even know if he hears you.

But then you feel it—Joel’s arm tightening around your waist, his hand sliding up under your shirt just enough to rest against your spine, warm and grounding.

“Then don’t move,” he murmurs, voice rough with tiredness and something gentler, deeper. The kind of softness he only ever shows in moments like this, when the world is quiet and his guard is down. “Ain’t no one tellin’ us to go anywhere.”

You smile into the dark, into the skin of his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath your cheek. His heartbeat thumps slow and steady, and you swear you could fall asleep to that sound alone.

Joel shifts slightly, just enough to press a kiss into the top of your head. His lips linger there—like a promise more than anything spoken.

“You’re warm,” he mumbles.

“So are you,” you say, voice feather-light.

A comfortable silence settles in again. Your fingers slow in his hair, curling around a soft wave near his temple. His hand stays at your back, thumb drawing idle shapes you’re too sleepy to name.

The fire crackles. The wind hums. And you drift off like that—wrapped up in him, hand still in his hair, the weight of his love wrapped around you like a second blanket. Nothing else matters. Not out there. Not tomorrow. Just this.

Just him.

The temperature dips before the sun even brushes the horizon. The last of the daylight clings to the sky in hazy streaks of orange and violet, but the wind has already turned sharp, biting through the seams of your jacket. You and Joel walk side by side down the path back toward Jackson, boots crunching over patches of frost-laced grass and half-frozen dirt.

You don’t say much—patrols tend to leave a certain kind of quiet between you, a silence that doesn’t need filling. But you can feel the chill starting to settle deep in your bones, your fingers stiff and cheeks raw from the cold. You try to rub your hands together for warmth, but it’s useless. The wind is relentless.

Joel notices, of course. His eyes flick over to you, worried in that subtle way he is—more tension in the jaw, more silence than usual. You know he’s about to offer you his coat or tell you he should’ve brought that extra scarf.

So before he can open his mouth, you reach out and grab a fistful of his jacket.

Without a word, you tug him in. Joel stumbles the smallest step forward, surprised but not resisting. You pull until you're chest to chest, until the warmth of his body bleeds into yours. Your frozen hands slip under the back hem of his coat and find the soft flannel of his shirt underneath, palms pressing flat against the heat of his spine.

“Jesus,” Joel mutters, letting out a breath that puffs white between you, his arms automatically sliding around your waist. “You could’ve just asked for my coat, y’know.”

“But then I wouldn’t be this close,” you reply, chin tilting up, a smile tugging at your lips despite your chattering teeth. “You’re warmer than any jacket.”

Joel huffs a soft laugh, the kind that melts around the edges. He leans in, resting his forehead lightly against yours. “You’re a damn menace,” he says—but his voice is warm and low, thick with affection.

You can feel his fingers pressing into your back, holding you tighter. His nose brushes yours as he tilts his head, and then—soft as snowfall—he kisses you. Once. Then again. And a third time, his lips barely touching yours, quick little pecks that make you laugh and shiver all at once.

“Joel,” you whisper, still grinning, your breath fogging between you both.

“I like the taste of your lips on mine,” he murmurs, the words brushing against your mouth like silk. He says it like a secret. Like it’s always been true.

Then he kisses you again—this time slower, deeper, his hand cradling the back of your head as he pours warmth into you one soft press at a time. The world falls quiet. No wind. No cold. No patrols or gates or the threat of anything waiting in the dark.

Just Joel.

Just this.

When you finally pull apart, you don’t go far. He keeps you close, your fingers still tucked against his back, his breath brushing your temple.

You smile into his collar. “Can we stay like this a little longer?”

He kisses your hair, voice barely above a whisper. “Far as I’m concerned, we can stay like this forever.” 

And in that moment, time slows. Your heartbeat settles into the rhythm of his, safe and steady. Warm, despite everything. Because love—real love—isn’t just in the grand gestures. It’s in this. A quiet winter dusk. A jacket shared. The taste of his kiss. The way he holds you like you’re something worth braving the cold for.

Then there’s Ellie.

She was nineteen now. Strong. Sharp-tongued and guarded in the way Joel used to be. You weren’t her mother, and she never treated you like one—but she was curious about you. Distant at first. Then, little by little, she started asking questions. Sitting with you on the porch. Bringing you a book she found and thought you might like.

She and Joel… there were things left unsaid between them. You could feel it like a splinter under the skin. Something tender and unresolved.

He finally told you one night, long after you’d both settled into the quiet comfort of shared sheets and a life you thought might last.

It was after dinner. After the guitar and the laughter. After you’d kissed the corners of his mouth and pulled him into bed.

“I lied to her,” he said, voice hollow.

You blinked in the dark, still half-tangled in sleep. “What?”

Joel’s face was turned toward the ceiling. Still. Tense. “I lied to Ellie. About the Fireflies. About the hospital.”

The room chilled. Your fingers reached for his without hesitation.

“I killed them,” he continued. “Every last one that stood between me and her. ‘Cause they were gonna cut her open. To find a cure.”

He didn’t cry right away. He spoke through gritted teeth, like the guilt was a weight he carried every damn day and had never quite set down.

“She would’ve died. She didn’t know—still doesn’t really. I told her there were others. That she wasn’t the only one. But it was a lie. It’s all a lie.”

You didn’t speak. Just curled into him. Held his hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“She hates me for it,” he whispered.

“No,” you said. “She loves you. She’s angry, but she loves you.”

He shook his head. Silent tears rolled into his hairline. You kissed his shoulder. You stayed up all night, fingers running through his graying hair until his breathing steadied again.

That was the last night he told you something he’d never said out loud.

The screams had long gone silent. All that was left now was smoke. Gunpowder. Blood soaking into snow.

Your boots crunch through it—through the aftermath. Bodies, both friend and foe, lie crumpled like broken marionettes. The streets of Jackson, once humming with quiet life, are now a graveyard.

Tommy had held the line at the south gate. You saw him, blackened with ash and soot, flames dancing in the reflection of his eyes as he lit up a bloater with the last fuel of the flamethrower. His scream—raw, furious—cut through the chaos like a knife. You’d joined the others in the streets, turning bullets on the infected… and eventually, on the bitten.

Some of them you knew by name.

You don’t remember pulling the trigger. You only remember the stillness afterward.

The quiet after the roar.

By the time the last runner was put down, your hands were slick with blood—some of it not your own. And when they called for the dead to be gathered, you helped. You counted.

You lost count.

They winched open the gates sometime after. You were still standing by the old greenhouse-turned-morgue, watching Tommy collapse into Maria’s arms, his body shaking with the weight of what he’d survived.

And then—

The hoofbeats. The shuffle of footsteps. The drag of something heavy behind them.

You turned.

Jesse and Ellie rode in first. Dina followed, all their faces hollowed out by exhaustion and something far worse. Behind their horse trailed a shape wrapped in canvas, dark with frozen blood, limp in the snow.

Ellie’s eyes met yours.

Red-rimmed. Wide. Empty.

And you knew.

You knew.

Your legs gave out beneath you before the thought could fully form. The cold didn’t register. Only the scream that tore out of your throat—animal, guttural. You clawed at the snow, sobbing into the dirt and ice, your lungs heaving like they were trying to break through your ribs.

“No—no—no—!” It came out broken. Like you could undo it just by denying it hard enough.

Tommy grabbed you. Held you back. His own face soaked with tears.

You screamed again. You didn’t care who heard. Didn’t care that you were on your knees in the blood and the snow with your heart ripped open.

Maria stood nearby. Hands pressed to her mouth. Silent.

The bag didn’t move.

He was in there.

Joel.

You want to tear the canvas open. You want it to be a mistake. You want to see his face, alive. Cranky. Loving. Whole.

But you already know.

You don’t know how long you stay like that. How long your sobs echo off the ruined walls of Jackson. You only know this: he felt like home.

And now home is just… gone.

They carry him to the chapel. Ellie disappears inside, Dina trailing her silently. Jesse catches your eye and looks away.

You follow the corpse. Your legs move on their own. There’s nothing left to protect now, no fight to win. You’ve survived—but at what cost?

The snow keeps falling.

And somehow, the world keeps turning.

It’s quiet.

Too quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. No birdsong, no wind. Just the thick, suffocating kind of silence that wraps around your ribs and squeezes until it feels like you might shatter from the inside out. The kind of silence that doesn’t leave room for breath, or hope.

The makeshift morgue is colder than outside, colder than anything should ever be. Too sterile. Too still. Too many bodies of people you once smiled at in passing. A metal table stands at the corner of the room, and he’s there—Joel—lying beneath a white sheet that feels far too thin. Like if you peeled it back, he’d stir. Grumble about the draft. Ask where his jacket went.

But he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t fucking move.

You sink to your knees beside the table. Wood floor biting into your bones, your hands trembling as they hover just above the edge of the sheet. Your throat burns like it’s been scraped raw from the inside out, but you haven’t said anything. Not really. Not yet.

Tommy sits down beside you, legs bent awkwardly, arms crossed over his chest like if he doesn’t hold himself together, he might fall apart right here with you.

“I don’t wanna say goodbye,” you choke out, voice so broken it barely sounds like yours. Your hands finally touch the edge of the table, and you grip it like a lifeline.

“I know,” Tommy murmurs. He doesn’t say more. Doesn’t try to fix it. Maybe because he knows there’s no fixing this.

You press your forehead against the cold edge of the metal, like maybe if you’re close enough, you’ll feel his warmth again. But there’s nothing. Only the chill of a world that kept turning without him in it.

“I needed him,” you whisper. The words break on your tongue like glass. “I still do. I need his voice—I need his arms. I need him to tell me this is all gonna be okay.”

A sob claws its way out of your chest, jagged and ugly. “He was supposed to be here.”

You think about the way he used to hold you—how his hands fit so easily around your waist, how he’d tug you close like the world outside didn’t exist. You think about his voice, low and rough, whispering “I got you, baby,” when the nightmares got bad. About the way he looked at you, like you were something worth protecting. Like you were home.

He was home.

And now he’s gone. And you’re nothing but a house with the roof torn off, standing in the rain.

“I don’t know how to be in a world that doesn’t have him in it,” you admit, tears falling freely now, soaking into your sleeves. “I was never scared of tomorrow when he was with me.”

Your head turns toward Tommy, eyes rimmed red. “How do I do this?”

He doesn’t answer. He just puts a hand over yours, squeezes it tight. It’s all he can give you, and you take it, even though it’s not the hand you want.

You close your eyes, breathing in like maybe you’ll catch some trace of him. Leather. Cedar. That soap he used when he tried to be fancy. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the dull antiseptic of this godforsaken room.

“I thought I knew grief,” you whisper. “But this… this is a whole new kind of broken.”

And it is. It’s grief with no bottom. No edges. No map. Like walking into a fog and never coming back out.

You reach up, finally, trembling fingers lifting the edge of the sheet.

You don’t pull it back.

You just press your palm over where you know his heart used to beat.

And you stay there, frozen in time, whispering his name like a prayer. Like if you say it enough, he might come back.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t.

And you know—no matter how many tomorrows come—you’ll miss him in every single one.

Because he wasn’t just the love of your life.

He was your life.

And now, all that’s left is the silence.

It’s three days later when Tommy finds you.

You haven’t spoken much since that day. Just shadows under your eyes and silence on your lips. People leave flowers near the mailbox. You go through the motions—eating when someone puts food in front of you, lying down when your legs give out—but you’re not really here.

You’re sitting on Joel’s porch when he approaches. Your knees are drawn to your chest, your hands wrapped in the sleeves of a jacket that still smells like him. It’s too big, and it doesn’t make you feel any less hollow.

Tommy stands in front of you for a moment, quiet.

Then he lowers himself to sit on the step beside you.

“I ain’t sure if now’s the right time,” he says, voice low. Rough. “But he… he asked me to give you somethin’. If…”

You look at him. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t have to. You both know how it ends.

Your heart stops. And then starts again, slower. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small envelope—folded and worn soft at the edges like it had been carried for a long time.

Your name is on it.

Your handwriting. Joel’s writing. It’s him. It's him.

Your fingers are shaking as you take it.

“I didn’t read it,” Tommy says, eyes on the horizon. “Didn’t wanna. Figured that was for you.”

Inside the envelope is a single piece of paper, folded once.

And a gold band.

Simple. Plain. No diamonds or carvings. Just a ring. One he probably bartered for quietly. One he probably kept in his pocket, maybe touched it when he thought about you. One he never got to give you.

Your vision blurs instantly.

The paper trembles in your hands as you unfold it. The ink is smudged in one corner—Joel had probably written it with those big hands, careful and slow. Trying to say something final in a way that didn’t feel like goodbye.

Your eyes find the first words.

Hey, baby.

If you’re reading this… then I’m not where I should be. I’m sorry.

God, I didn’t wanna write this. Been puttin’ it off for weeks. But the way this world is… well, you and I both know it don’t always give you time to say things out loud.

So I’m writin’ ‘em now.

First thing—I love you. You probably know that already. Hell, I’ve said it in a hundred different ways without ever sayin’ the words. In the way I hold you. The way I listen to you hum that song. The way I breathe easier when you’re near.

You gave me something I thought I didn’t deserve. Peace. A second chance. A home.

I hope I gave you the same.

Second thing—you’ll find a ring with this letter. Nothin’ fancy. I wanted to give it to you proper. Maybe on the porch. Maybe by the fire. Just… you and me. I had all these words planned. But none of ‘em matter now.

Just know this—I would’ve asked you to be mine. Not ‘cause I needed to prove anything. But because you already were. In every way that counts.

And I wanted the world to know.

I wanted to grow old with you. Wanted to find out what your hair looks like when it’s all grey. Wanted to kiss you goodnight a thousand more times.

I wanted all of it.

But if I didn’t make it—if you’re readin’ this now—I need you to do something for me.

Live.

Please. Don’t let this break you.

You got too much light in you to burn out now.

So wear the ring, if it helps. Or don’t. Keep it in your pocket. Toss it in the river. It’s yours, either way.

You’ll always be mine.

Forever and then some,  

Joel

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until Tommy places a hand on your back, steadying you as the weight of the words crushes you from the inside out.

The ring glints in your palm, catching the dying light of the day.

You bring it to your lips, kiss it once, then curl it into your fist and press it against your heart.

“I would’ve said yes,” you whisper into the air, broken and breathless. “I would’ve said yes a thousand times.”

And the wind moves through the trees like it’s carrying the words to him—wherever he is.

Because love like that doesn’t die.

It just waits.

It lingers in the quiet. In the echo of footsteps that aren’t his. In the smell of cedar and leather that still clings to the collar of his coat. It stays tucked in the corners of every room he touched, every breath he took beside you.

You will mourn him forever. You will miss him every minute.

Your hands will grow old holding a photograph of the two of you—sunlight on your faces, his arm around your shoulders like he always meant to keep you safe. Your bones will ache with the shape of him, your soul carved hollow where he used to be.

And when your time comes, when the world fades soft and slow at the edges, you’ll go with his name dancing on your lips. A whisper. A promise.

Because some loves aren’t meant to end.

Only to be found again.

[theetherealbloom]

"What remains of us"

outbreak! Joel miller x f!reader

Summary: Joel doesn't die after the brutal encounter with abby because you saved him on time.

wc: 4k>

warnings: angst,mentions of blood, mentions of murder (reader becomes violent), fluff, mentions of broken bones. english is not my first language so excuse my mistakes. Written in a rush.

a/n: so uhmm. How are we feeling? I personally feel broken by the events from episode 2 so I rewrite the story while i was free in the morning to help me cope with the grief and joel is alive.

dividers by @/saradika-graphics

Something felt wrong in your bones the moment the snowstorm hit harder than expected.

Not just the kind of wrong that came with whiteout conditions and freezing wind — this was deeper. Ancient. It whispered through the trees like a secret from another world, brushing icy fingers down your spine. A warning dressed up as weather. You felt it in your chest, in the weight behind your ribs, where your breath stayed too long before escaping.

Your skin burned from cold, your limbs throbbed with fatigue — but none of it compared to the way your heart pounded. Not from exertion.

From fear.

“Hey, you alright?” Jesse called ahead, pulling his scarf down just enough to glance at you.

You nodded too fast. “Yeah, just—cold.”

Ellie was further up the ridge, carving her own path through the deepening snow with the horse, unaware of how your whole body shook with more than frost. You hadn’t told them. Couldn’t. How do you explain that your body knew something your mind hadn’t caught up to yet? That every step forward felt like walking away from safety?

Your heart was screaming in a language older than logic. Since the morning. Since Joel left before you could fully wake up.

The echo of his voice still lingered in your memory — low and warm, brushing against your ear as you stirred under the covers.

“Get some more sleep, darling”

But he hadn’t kissed your forehead like usual. He hadn’t lingered. And when you finally did get up, your gut twisted when you saw the empty space in the stable, the saddle still had damp with snow.

Joel was out there with Dina; you had no idea under what circumstances. And the sky had turned gray with anger.

You shook your head, tried to focus on Jesse’s voice. Tried not to feed the panic unraveling in your chest like a pulled thread. But the cold in your mind spread, and no matter how tightly you gripped the reins, no matter how fast your horse moved, the feeling remained.

Something was wrong.

You finally found a rundown outpost, an old hunting cabin half-buried in snow and swallowed by pine trees. The roof sagged, one of the windows was cracked, and the door barely held on its hinges, but it was shelter. You and Jesse pulled your horses inside the narrow lean-to out back, while Ellie stomped snow off her shoes and kicked the door open with more force than necessary.

Inside, it was cold and smelled like old weed and damp rot, but you didn’t care.

There was a radio.

You didn’t hesitate. Your gloves were off before Jesse could even say anything. Your fingers moved over the knobs, turning dials, trying to find the frequency Jackson always used for patrol check-ins.

A burst of static.

Then another.

Finally, a signal.

Your breath caught. “Jackson patrol, do you copy?”

Ellie moved closer. Jesse pulled his scarf down, suddenly silent.

“Joel? Dina? Come in.”

Only static.

“Come on,” you muttered, heart hammering, twisting the dial again. “Joel, please, respond.”

Nothing.

The silence wasn’t ordinary. You knew silence. This wasn’t delay. It was absence.

Your body went rigid, every instinct screaming louder than your racing thoughts. Your limbs moved before you made the decision. You were out the door and into the snow again before Jesse or Ellie could stop you.

Jesse called after you.

But Ellie was already grabbing her rifle.

“Where are you going?” Jesse yelled, chasing behind.

“Something’s wrong!” you snapped, swinging onto your horse. “I just know it!”

Ellie mounted up beside you, eyes wide and fierce. “Then we’re not wasting time.”

Jesse hesitated, glancing between you both and the radio inside.

“You don’t even know if that’s where they went—”

“I know,” you growled, already riding. “I feel it.”

Ellie followed without a word.

The snow clawed at your skin like it wanted to peel the truth away. The wind howled as if it knew what was waiting ahead. But you didn’t stop.

Because something had happened.

And Joel and Dina were out there.

You and Ellie rode hard, the snow whipping across your faces like knives, the hooves of your horses lost beneath the storm. You could barely see five feet ahead — but then, in the distance, a glow.

“Shit,” Ellie hissed beside you, pulling her hood lower.

You followed her gaze. Through the trees, past the slope of the hill — firelight. Orange, flickering, wrong. It wasn't from a patrol cabin or torch post. It rose in a bloom, too wild to be controlled. You slowed your horse as your stomach dropped.

“It’s from Jackson,” you whispered, more to yourself than to Ellie.

It wasn’t the whole town, not yet. But something was burning. And it was enough to send a coil of panic twisting through your gut, feeding that same deep certainty that had been clawing at you all day.

“Come on,” you growled, spurring your horse harder, cutting off the cold fear before it could settle. “We are too far.”

And it wasn’t long before you saw it, the lodge.

It sat crooked and hunched near a clearing, like it had been dropped there by accident. One of the side windows was shattered. Smoke was seeping through cracks in the boarded upper floor. The front door hung ajar, barely moving in the wind.

You pulled hard on the reins. Your horse bucked a little, skidding in the snow. Ellie drew her rifle and slid off hers.

Your eyes locked on two shapes near the side of the lodge.

Horses.

Your heart stopped.

Joel’s and Dina’s.

Both were tied loosely, their coats soaked with snow, hooves pawing nervously at the ground. Alone. No movement near the front entrance. No voices. No patrols. No sounds but the wind and the creak of the old building groaning under weight it wasn’t meant to bear.

You slid off your horse.

“Ellie…” you whispered, your voice barely audible, breath clouding in front of you.

She already had her knife out.

“Oh shit...”

You didn’t wait for backup. Couldn’t.

Because Joel’s horse was here. And he wasn’t.

And whatever was inside that building, you felt it—It was about to break you open.

The sound of screams of agony and a body hitting the ground echoed down the hallway like a gunshot.

You knew that sound. It was torture. It was pain.

Your boots thundered down the corridor of the lodge, Ellie at your side, a worry and desperate look in her eyes. She’d followed the path like a wolf hunting a pray, her eyes screaming please don’t let it be too late.

You didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Your heart was stuck in your throat, and the only thing that moved was your body, in fast motion, furious, drawn to the man who should have never left your side in the first place.

Then you saw it. The door, a from inside, screaming slipping from the lips you used to kiss every day. Joel’s screams.

You didn’t wait. You didn’t breathe. You kicked the door open and your world shattered.

Joel was on the floor, a mess of blood and pain and something worse. His legs bent at unnatural angles. One hand barely raised in instinct. His face, bruised, bleeding, one eye swollen shut. His body twitched like it wasn’t sure if it should keep trying.

And above him, a woman. Blonde. Rage carved into her face like she’d practiced it. Her arms raised again, a golf club in her grip, stained red.

She didn’t see you at first. Her eyes were solely focus on Joel, but you weren’t having that.

You roared, not screamed, roared and tackled her with everything you had, all your weight, all your fury. You slammed her into the wall with a force that cracked wood. The club dropped from her hand and hit the ground.

“No more.” you growled.

Her people came fast, like shadows. One tackled Ellie to the ground. Another raised a knife.

But they hadn’t counted on you.

You were already moving, eyes wild, mind gone. You fought like someone who had nothing left but him.

You weren’t skilled like Joel. You didn’t need to be. You were desperate. Right now, you were desperate.

Fists cracked bone. You took hits but didn’t stop. Didn’t feel them. You were pulling someone off Ellie, dragging them by their collar, throwing them into a chair that splintered on impact. You used what you had — a piece of wood, a broken lamp, your fists, your fury.

And they couldn’t stop you. Because you couldn’t be stopped.

The blonde tried to rise again. You met her halfway and slammed her back to the floor. She spat blood. You didn’t flinch.

“Get away from him!” you screamed.

The crack of your shotgun echoed like thunder as the first shell slammed into one of the men flanking her. Blood hit the wall. Chaos exploded in every direction.

“Who the fuck—?!” Abby turned, fury and shock colliding in her face.

You dropped the shotgun, drew your blade, and charged.

The first one that tried to reached for you got a knife through the ribs. You shoved him off like he was made of paper. The next came at you with a bat, you caught the swing and used his momentum to slam him face-first into the fireplace bricks.

“You don’t get to touch him,” you hissed. “Not him.”

Abby swung the club toward your face. You ducked.

Then you hit her. Right in the gut. The force of it sent her staggering back, wind knocked from her lungs.

“You wanna kill him?” you growled. “Try me first!”

She looked at you like she wanted to, but she hesitated.

And that was her mistake.

Because Ellie broke free just long enough to grab your dropped shotgun and aim it at her. “Step back,” she spat, blood in her teeth, voice shaking but solid.

“Now.”

Abby looked between the two of you. At Joel — bleeding, still breathing — at her fallen group. Then she backed off, raising her hands slightly.

“This isn’t over,” she said.

“Yeah,” you snapped, “it is.” You said, pointing your gun right between her brows.

Your shotgun echoed in the stillness of the room.

The blast slammed into her chest, and her body jerked back like a puppet with its strings cut. She hit the floor; eyes wide. No final words. No redemption. Just silence.

Ellie flinched.

You stood over Abby’s body, breath hitching, heart pounding in your ears. The room reek of blood and then there was silence, except for Joel’s ragged breath.

You dropped beside as your knees had finally given out.

“Hey,” you whispered, your voice cracking into pieces. “Joel, look at me. I’m here. I got you.”

His one good eye fluttered open, dazed, unfocused. There was blood crusted at his brow, dried and fresh, a cruel mask across the face you’d kissed so many times before.

“Y-you---"he rasped, voice like torn gravel.

You nodded, cradling his face in your hands, not caring that blood smeared across your palms. “I’m here. You’re safe. Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

His breath stuttered, chest rising too slow, too shallow. His eyes couldn’t stay fixed on you. They wandered, like he wasn’t fully in the room anymore.

“I thought I lost you,” you whispered, leaning close. Your forehead rested against his, warm against cold.

“Hurts,” he mumbled, eyes slipping closed again.

“No, no,” you said quickly, your hands gently patting his face. “Stay with me. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay. Help’s coming, okay? Just—just hold on.”

But he didn’t answer. His breathing slowed.

Your heart lurched in panic. “Joel!”

Nothing.

You pressed your fingers to his pulse—still there, but faint.

“Don’t you do this,” you choked out. “You fight, dammit. You’ve been through worse, haven’t you? Don’t you leave me now.”

You’d already faced your worst nightmare. Now you were living in it, holding it in your arms.

Joel lay limp and broken on the floor, his breath rattling against the stillness. His face was swollen and unrecognizable on one side, purple and black with bruising. One eye swollen shut. Blood trickled from his nose, his mouth, the side of his head. His legs—

Don’t think about the legs. Not now.

“Hey,” you whispered again, voice hoarse. “Joel. You still with me?”

A faint groan. Barely audible.

But it was enough.

He was still here.

You pulled off your jacket and shoved it under his head. Your hands were shaking, but your mind was locked in: every first aid trick you’d learned from scraps of survival guides, emergency manuals, anything Joel had ever shown you when he thought you weren’t paying attention. You had paid attention.

You just never thought you’d be using it on him.

Dina stumbled in, still pale and groggy, her hand gripping the wall. “Ellie?” she rasped. “Wh—what the fuck happened…?”

You didn’t look up. “You were drugged. Ellie is moving the bodies. We need the space.”

Dina staggered past, gagging at the sight of blood, but she didn’t hesitate. She knew. The air had changed.

This was a war zone. A zone you had built in seconds because you didn’t know what else to do. You blinded yourself; you had become a murderer monster just to save Joel.

You pulled Joel’s shirt open — shredded, stained with red. Purple splotches across his ribs. Swelling. At least two broken.

Your voice cracked. “You’re gonna hate me for this, Joel. But I have to move you.”

“Don’t…” he mumbled, almost unconscious. “Just… leave me—”

“Shut up,” you said, fierce now, your tears splashing onto his collarbone. “Don’t you dare say that. You don’t get to give up.”

Ellie appeared, face pale, blood on her shirt, Dina behind her with a blanket and an old mattress from the back.

“We cleared the room,” Ellie said. “It’s just us now.”

“Good,” you said. “Help me splint his legs. We need to keep him still until we can get him out of here.”

You tore up a curtain and grabbed two broken chair legs. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing about this was. Ellie held Joel’s leg as steady as she could, while you worked the makeshift splint around the worst of the fractures.

Joel screamed.

It was guttural, raw as if he was being dragged through hell.

You didn’t flinch. “I know,” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his as you tied the cloth tight. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

You felt his breath against your skin, shallow and hot.

His lips moved. “Why?” he whispered.

You leaned back and looked at him. “Because I love you,” you said simply.

His eye fluttered open — just barely. And for one fragile second, the pain slipped away. There was only you and you brush the hair from Joel’s face. He was burning up. You needed to clean the wounds. Stop the bleeding. Keep him warm.

Keep him alive.

And somehow, by the grace of whatever broken god still watched over you all, you would.

You pressed a damp cloth to his temple where skin had split beneath Abby’s final blow. His blood soaked through instantly. You didn’t stop. You couldn’t.

Your hands moved on their own now. Wash. Compress. Tie. Splint. Whisper to him. Stay with me. Please stay with me.

Ellie and Dina had gone quiet. Standing behind you. Watching. Waiting for direction.

Then your voice broke through the stillness.

“Go back to Jackson.”

Ellie flinched, like she hadn’t expected you to speak.

You didn’t look up. You were holding Joel’s hand — limp and calloused in yours.

“We need help,” you said, barely audible. Your voice was shot. A raw whisper. “Tell Tommy… tell him to send help. We need to get Joel back there.”

Silence. Just the sound of Joel breathing. The sound of blood dripping from the club Abby left behind.

“Please,” you added, and that word cracked like bone. “Please. I can’t carry him by myself. He’s—he’s too heavy. He’s—”

You swallowed hard. Your fingers curled tighter around Joel’s hand.

Ellie stepped forward. “We’re not leaving you.”

You finally looked up, eyes glassy and red-rimmed. “You have to. We need a stretcher, a team. Horses. Anything. I can keep him alive for a few more hours. But I can’t move him like this.”

Ellie’s jaw clenched. Her knuckles went white. “I don’t want to leave you with him like this.”

You reached out, brushing Joel’s graying hair from his brow with trembling fingers. “I’ve got him.”

A pause.

Then Dina touched Ellie’s arm. “I’ll go,” she said gently. “I’ll ride. I’m faster. You stay.”

Ellie nodded, eyes not leaving yours.

You left a loud gasp “No,” you said quietly, lifting your eyes once more to Ellie’s. “Ellie… you go with Dina. I’ll stay here.”

Ellie’s shoulders stiffened. Her brows pulled together like she was bracing for another blow. “What? No. I’m not leaving you and him.”

You sat back on your knees, your hands bloodied, trembling. Joel’s chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged motions beneath you.

“You have to,” you said, your voice breaking. “You have to, Ellie. Dina shouldn’t be riding alone.”

Ellie looked at Joel. Looked at you. And shook her head. “I can’t leave him like this. I can’t.”

You grabbed her hand.

That startled her.

It startled you too.

But you held on, grounding her, pulling her attention back to your face. Your voice dropped to a whisper.

“Please,” you said. “Please. Help me save him.”

Ellie’s eyes filled. Not with tears — not yet — but with everything she couldn’t say. The guilt. The fury. The fear that maybe… it was too late.

But you looked at her like there was still something worth fighting for.

And Ellie, for the first time in what felt like forever, let herself believe it.

She swallowed hard. Nodded once.

“I’ll go.”

Your chest caved with relief. Joel let out a faint groan beneath you, and you turned back to him, brushing your thumb against his jaw.

“I’m here, baby,” you whispered. “I’m right here.”

Ellie hesitated at the doorway. “Will he be okay?” she asked before daring to step a foot outside the room.

You nodded, but it was instinct, automatic, hopeful, desperate. The truth lodged in your throat like a splinter you couldn’t spit out.

“I don’t know,” you said softly, voice trembling. “I—I need to stop the bleeding. His leg is bad. His ribs—fuck, I don’t know how much damage they did.” Your eyes flicked over Joel’s body again, breath catching at the way his chest rose unevenly. “But he’s breathing. And that’s something.”

Ellie stepped closer, still pale, still wide-eyed, her clothes soaked with blood—some hers, some not. “What do you need me to do?”

You looked up at her then, and for a split second, she looked like a kid again. Shaken. Haunted. But standing tall.

“Just go back to Jackson and bring help,” you said, your voice barely more than a breath.

Ellie’s eyes burned. She nodded once; jaw clenched. “Okay. Okay. Just hold on, please.”

You gave her one last look. “I’ll keep him breathing.”

She was gone the next second—boots pounding out the door, calling for Dina. You were left in the broken room, just you and Joel and the slow drip of blood on floorboards.

You pressed your hands to the worst of the wounds, breath shaking. “You hear that, Joel?” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his. “Help’s coming.”

He didn’t speak. But his fingers twitched again, slow, and curled around your wrist.

It wasn’t much but it meant he was still here.

That night felt heavy like wet ash. Outside, the snowstorm had died to a bitter hiss. The wind still screamed through cracks in the lodge, but inside, everything had gone quiet—except for the sound of Joel’s ragged breath and the low creak of floorboards every time you moved.

You’d done everything you could.

His legs were splinted crudely with a broken table leg and belts. His wounds were packed with gauze you tore from your own coat lining. You boiled snow over a fire in the next room just to clean the worst of the blood from his side. You weren’t a medic. But you were a woman in love. And that made you terrifying.

He’d faded in and out of consciousness, his lips murmuring your name between groans, sometimes not even sure it was real. You sat beside him, your back against the bloodstained wall, holding his hand in both of yours.

But then it went still.

You hadn’t realized how quiet it had gotten until the sound stopped completely.

“Joel?” you whispered, leaning close.

No answer.

You shook his shoulder, gently. Then harder. “Joel.”

Nothing. His head lolled to the side. His skin felt clammy beneath your palm.

Your breath broke in your throat. “No, no—please, no. Joel—” You cupped his cheeks. “You stay with me; do you hear me?”

Still nothing. And then a twitch.

His brow twitched. His lips parted, barely, and a broken whisper slipped out.

“…Sarah.”

The name came out like a breath lost in time. You froze. Your heart cracked open.

His eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, a flicker of life.

In his mind, it was Austin again.

The smell of smoke and gasoline in the air. Sirens in the distance. Sarah was laughing, running ahead of him, calling back over her shoulder: “Dad, come on!”

And he was smiling. Genuinely smiling. He could hear her. Feel her hand in his again. It was warm. Real.

He turned and they were on the couch. Watching a movie. She was leaning against him, head on his shoulder. He’d just said something dumb. She rolled her eyes. He didn’t want to blink—afraid it’d all vanish.

But then came the gunshot.

Her warmth gone. He spun. He screamed for her. And when he looked down—

You were there.

In the memory. Not Sarah. You. Covered in blood. Crying. Calling his name.

Joel, please. Please.

Your hands were glowing with firelight, trembling as they pressed against his chest.

He tried to reach for you. He couldn’t move. The world was slipping.

And then—your voice cut through the haze.

“Joel, please. Please don’t do this.”

His heart stuttered once. Then again. A sharp inhale tore through his chest as if he’d been drowning.

“Joel!”

He coughed, body shaking, and your hands caught him just in time.

You sobbed, half-laughing as you gripped his cheeks again. “You scared the shit out of me—oh my god” you sobbed.

He looked up at you, dazed, confused. Then his eyes cleared, just a little.

“You were crying…” he mumbled, lips cracked.

“Yeah,” you whispered, brushing your thumb beneath his eye. “Yeah, I was.”

He blinked slowly. “Stop...”

“I won’t,” you promised. “I’m here. I’m staying.”

And as the fire cracked quietly, Joel leaned ever so slightly into your palm, the pain pulling at him, but your voice anchoring him.

The night lingered like a wound that wouldn’t close.

You didn’t sleep.

Your body screamed for rest, but you stayed next to Joel—watching the way his chest rose and fell, slow and shallow, praying it wouldn’t stop again. Every time his breath caught or he groaned too hard, your stomach twisted into knots.

The lodge was cold. Blood had dried into the floorboards. The fire in the next room was too far away to warm either of you, and you didn’t dare move him to get closer.

So you pressed your body to his side gently, just enough to share warmth without causing him pain.

“Still with me?” you whispered.

His eyes fluttered open, sluggish and heavy. “Yeah…” His voice was more gravel than sound.

You breathed out a shaky laugh, your forehead resting lightly against his temple. “You’re stubborn as hell, y’know that?”

Joel let out a faint puff of breath—maybe a laugh, maybe a wince. “…Learned from the best.”

Your throat clenched. You reached for his hand again, interlocking your fingers with his—gingerly, so you wouldn’t brush the torn knuckles.

“I thought I lost you,” you whispered.

His eyes moved—slow, searching—until they landed on you again. Then he mumbled something you barely heard.

Silence settled like snow. You closed your eyes, listening to the wind groaning against the walls. Time stretched, only broken by Joel’s breath stuttering again.

Then—his fingers twitched around yours.

Then you whispered, “Joel?”

He made a sound.

“I love you.”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were glassy with pain. But then he squeezed your hand, and his voice came soft, barely a breath.

“I love you too.”

It felt like the first time he had told you those three words and that had broken you in the gentlest way.

You buried your face in his shoulder, careful of the bruises, and let yourself cry—not in panic, not in fear. But in overwhelming, soul-shaking relief. He was alive.

He was alive.

Joel woke to the soft hum of voices and some old machines. The scent of cleaner stung his nose before the light even reached his eyes.

His body was pain, muted but deep, like a dull echo in his bones. He tried to move, but something warm and heavy rested on his side.

Your head.

You were slumped in a chair beside him, your cheek pressed gently to his arm. Your fingers were laced with his, your grip loose with sleep but still holding on. Still there.

The light in the room was soft, filtering through the curtained window like morning fog. Outside, life stirred in Jackson. But here, it was quiet. Just the two of you.

Joel blinked slowly, his throat dry, the taste of cotton still on his tongue. His gaze drifted down to you. There was a crease between your brows even in rest. You looked exhausted. Pale. Eyes ringed with shadows.

But you were here.

He breathed your name, raw and hoarse.

You stirred at the sound, your head lifting slowly as if from the depths of a dream. Your eyes met his, still sleep-warm but wide with shock. Disbelief flickered, then relief so powerful it made your lips tremble.

“Joel…” you whispered, leaving a sob behind.

His smile was small. Barely there. “You didn’t leave.”

Your hand came up to cup his cheek. “Never,” you said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

He swallowed hard, his hand tightening weakly around yours. “How long?”

“Three weeks,” you said, voice shaking with the memory. “You were unconscious the first few days back. Fever wouldn’t break. They weren’t sure if you’d make it through the second night…”

He looked at you again, really looked. “And you sat here the whole damn time?”

You gave a soft, broken laugh. “Where else would I be?”

His good eye softened. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

You leaned closer, resting your forehead to his. “You promised me once you wouldn’t leave me.”

He nodded faintly, his eyes closing for a moment as your breath mingled.

Your fingers brushed his temple, so gently, as if afraid he’d fade again like some half-formed dream. Joel’s skin was warm beneath your touch, warmer than it had been in days, and that alone nearly broke you all over again.

“It’s going to take time,” you whispered, your voice barely louder than the hum of the machines. “To heal. For everything.”

Joel didn’t say anything, but you felt the tremor in his breath.

You threaded your fingers more tightly with his. “But I’m not going anywhere. You hear me?” you said, firmer now, voice catching on the tears in your throat. “I’m not leaving your side. You will get sick of me.”

His lips parted like he wanted to argue, maybe even protest, but then he looked at you again. Really looked. The cut on his brow. The bruising on his cheekbone. The pain behind his eye, and beyond that, the softness that only came when it was just you.

“You shouldn’t have had to—”

“I had to,” you cut in, gently but unshakable. “Because I love you. Because I couldn’t lose you. And I won’t.” you paused to take a deep breath before continuing, “You and I will grow old together, and we will die peacefully in farm, together.”

Joel blinked. His hand tightened slightly in yours again, like the only strength he had left was meant for that one touch. His voice was barely a whisper when he said, “I don’t deserve you.”

You leaned in and kissed his forehead, bruised, stitched, healing. “You’re mine, Joel. And I’m yours. That’s not about deserving. That’s just how it is.”

Silence fell, heavy but not suffocating. The kind of silence where you could finally breathe again. Where you knew, he was going to live.

Joel let his head rest back into the pillow, the edge of a tear slipping from the corner of his eye.

“Okay,” he whispered, smiling at you.

You smiled through your tears, the kind that burned hot down your cheeks but carried no pain—only release. Relief. Love.

You shifted in the chair, reaching up to brush a bit of hair back from his forehead, careful not to touch where it was most tender. His skin warmed beneath your fingertips. Alive. He was alive. The reality of that still hadn’t fully settled in.

“I’m gonna be here when you wake up,” you promised, voice like a hush of wind through leaves. “Every morning. Every damn day if I have to. You focus on getting better.”

Joel's smile trembled, worn and crooked, but it was his. The first real smile you'd seen in so long it felt like a lifetime ago. His good eye drifted shut, but not before his fingers gave yours one more squeeze, like he couldn’t bear to let go even in sleep.

You watched him as his breathing evened out again, slow and steady, like the beat of a familiar song you never thought you’d hear again. The machines hummed softly beside him. The faint glow of a streetlamp outside filtered through the hospital window, painting golden lines across the bedsheets.

You rested your head by his side again, your cheek brushing his arm, eyes closing just for a moment. Not to sleep, but to hold the feeling. The warmth. The miracle.

He was still here.

And you would be, too. Always.

[theetherealbloom]

Them or Us

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: Let's rewrite Joel's story together, shall we?

Warnings: language, graphic violence, character death (not Joel or Ellie), blood, guns, knives, angst, guilt, reader is a badass

A/N: if you are an Abby fan, I suggest skipping this one.

"Ellie! This way!" you shout over the howling wind. She twists around in her saddle and yanks on the reins, steering Shimmer towards you through the blistering snow.

You point towards the ground — horse tracks, two sets — that head up the mountain.

"Maybe they found shelter there!" she yells, pointing towards an abandoned ski lodge. Years ago you remember clearing it of infected but it isn't part of your usual patrol routes. You nod and dig your heels into the sides of your horse, urging the poor thing through the blizzard and up the treacherous terrain.

You ride the rest of the way in silence. Not that you could hear her anyway, but you both seem to have the same heavy pit in your stomach. You haven't checked out this place in a long time. Anything or anybody could be in there. But Joel and Dina might be in trouble. You had to go.

When you approach the lodge, you bring your horses inside. It's quiet when you slide down from your horse. You exchange glances with Ellie and jut your chin upwards.

"They'd go up high," you say softly. "So they could get a good look at the land."

She nods in agreement before equipping herself with her rifle. You each check that your guns are loaded — long range and side arms — and double check your knives are still hidden in your boots and belts before advancing towards the massive staircase.

Foolishly, you allow yourself to think everything is fine. That they just came in to warm themselves up and wait out the storm. But as you approach the double doors, you hear voices. Ones you don't recognize.

You look at Ellie once again and she shoulders her rifle. You press a finger against your lips and she nods as you creep quietly over the ancient floorboards. Holding your ear up to the door, you listen.

"Because it doesn't matter if you have a code like me, or you're a lawless piece of shit like you," you hear a woman's voice say. You swallow nervously and grip your revolver tighter in your hand.

"There are just some things everyone agrees are just fucking wrong."

You hear footsteps slowly cross the room. It sounds like they are heading in your direction, towards the doors. Your heart slams loudly against your ribs but you are laser focused. The adrenaline in your body sharpens your senses and it's like you can practically see through the doors. You can imagine whoever this is stopping near something by the wall, just feet away from the door where you stand ready on the other side.

You give Ellie one more nod, confirming you're both ready to do what it takes to save the ones you love, and you take a deep breath.

Ellie is first. She kicks the door in and almost immediately gets knocked down by some man standing guard, but somehow you know it's fine. She's not hurt, she just got the wind knocked out of her.

You don't even see Joel or Dina yet. You only see the girl in a grey henley shirt, tucked into her oversized khaki pants, standing in front of a set of golf clubs.

She swivels around in surprise and you lock eyes for one devastating moment. She seems to understand her fate before you. Maybe she sees the pure rage and anger written on your face, one that she herself harbored for five years. Maybe she always knew it would end this way, same as her father.

You raise your revolver and slide one eye shut. It feels like it takes an eternity but it's really only a split second. The girl in front of you no older than Ellie holds her breath. You see fear and helplessness flicker across her eyes before your finger curls around the trigger and a loud bang echos through the vast, open ski lodge.

Blood sprays everywhere and her body drops to the floor with a thud. It seems to have shocked the other four members of the group because there's a moment of hesitation. A small hole burns right between her eyes and thick, sticky blood begins to pool underneath her braid. Her eyes remain open, staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

Ellie is still on the floor, but the man who knocked her down isn't paying attention. You shoot him in the knee and step into the room. Behind you, the man shouts and drops to the floor. You hear the sickening sound of Ellie's switchblade sink wetly into his ear, then the yelling stops.

It feels like you're on autopilot. Like you are barely aware of what you're doing. You feel shockingly calm. Looking back on it, you chalk it up to some primal, baser instinct. You've always heard people are capable of doing impossible things when they are under extreme duress.

This was one of those times.

Ellie clambers to her feet behind you. You can hear her fumbling with her gun, but you pay it no mind.

Three people left.

There's a woman with no hair reaching for a gun leaning against the fireplace. You exhale steadily and take aim — another loud blast, dark red blood sprays the light stone wall, and another heavy body hits the floor.

The last remaining man and woman begin to scream.

The girl with the black hair and bangs charges you with a knife. You turn, expression blank, and raise your gun, but Ellie gets there first.

A bullet lodges itself into the side of her head. You see her face go slack and her eyes roll back before she crumples to the ground. Warm mist sprays you, covers your face and neck, but you don't care.

You swivel on your heel when you hear footsteps running towards the door. The last man. He kind of looked like Tommy, you notice idly. You roll your shoulder, loosening it up, and raise your gun.

You feel completely at peace when you pull the trigger and your bullet sails through the final man's cheek. He yelps and falls to the ground. He stays alive for about thirty seconds, howling in pain, until finally his body stills and silence fills the room.

It was done. Not what you expected to do today, but it's what you trained for — the unexpected. To do what it takes to save your own.

"Oh, shit," Ellie says, holstering her gun and rushing across the room. You turn, heart rate spiking when you snap out of your haze. Ellie is crouching over Joel on the floor. She is hovering over his leg and it's only then when you notice blood pooling underneath him.

"Joel!" you cry out, dropping your gun to rush to his side. With an indescribable amount of relief, you notice aside from the fucking shotgun that blew a hole in his knee, he's otherwise untouched.

"They— they wrapped it up," he stammers. You look and see the belt wrapped tightly around his leg for the first time. You frown, confused, but shake it off.

"Okay," you breathe, "can you walk?"

He nods but his face is prickled with sweat and he looks pale.

"We got the horses downstairs. We- you can ride back with me. We'll be alright," you assure him with a small smile. Next to you, Ellie jumps up. She rushes over to Dina and begins to shake her shoulders, yelling her name.

"She's gonna be out for a bit," Joel grits. You lean down and offer him your shoulder. He wraps an arm around you and you hook your own arms under his to pull him up with a loud groan. He makes a pained sound but he finally is able to stand, leaning against you with his wounded leg hovering in the air.

"They sedated her," Joel explained when Ellie shot him a panicked look. Dina looked pale too, but she was breathing.

"Why?" Ellie asked. Joel shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Can we talk 'bout this later?"

"Ellie, help me get him down to the horses," you say. She begrudgingly stands and gives Dina one more look. "We'll get him on mine and then come back for Dina," you assure her. She nods and ducks underneath Joel's other arm, supporting his weight as all three of you slowly make your way down the stairs to the horses.

It takes a while, but when you have both of them ready, you finally are ready to leave behind the nightmare you almost walked into.

"Jackson," Joel says weakly behind you. You're leading your horse down the mountain, towards the town currently engulfed in flames. You swallow and square your shoulders.

"Tommy's there," you say confidently, "he knows what to do. I'm— I'm sure it's fine."

Half a mile passes in the worst blizzard you've seen in years before Joel speaks again.

"You saved me."

You stiffen but otherwise remain silent, focused on the trail ahead. So he speaks again.

"She was gonna kill me," he continues. Tears well in your eyes and you shake your head.

"But she didn't."

His grip around your middle tightens.

"I killed her father," he adds solemnly. You shrug.

"We've all killed people."

A beat passes between you.

"Her father was— was the doctor."

It takes you a moment, but you connect the dots. You remember what Joel told you about that day in Salt Lake City. What he did to save Ellie. What he swore he would do again, if given the chance. A decision you agreed with and still do.

"Well," you sigh, "it was either them or us."

"I deserved it," he says firmly. You nearly turn around a deck him, but you stop yourself.

"Shut the fuck up, Joel."

"It's true," he urges.

"I don't give a shit," you seethe over your shoulder. "We all do bad shit to save the ones we love. It's the world we live in now. Anyone in your position would have done the same thing."

Joel goes quiet again and you glance to the side. Ellie is nearby but the wind is too loud. She can't hear you. Besides, she's too worried about Dina to care.

"Would you have done it?"

"What?" you scoff, "kill whoever stood in my way to protect the one I love?"

You feel him nod against your back.

"Isn't that what I just did?"

You steer your horse through the trees. You're about halfway to Jackson now. The fires have almost been put out. Whatever happened is coming to an end. The next few months will require a lot of work, a lot of rebuilding. Your lives are all once again forever changed, but you've been through worse.

Everything will be fine.

"C'mon," you say to Joel, "let's get you home."

[theetherealbloom]

JOEL MILLER COULDN’T SAVE HIS DAUGHTER SO HE PROTECTED EVERY TEENAGED GIRL UNTIL IT KILLED HIM

[theetherealbloom]

𝐖𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐲 || 𝐉𝐨𝐞𝐥 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

summary_ you ran through the frozen woods, believing Joel was dead, your daughter and Ellie in the falling town, attacked by infected, only to wake up to a much worse scenario, Joel was taking care of you, with no mobility in one leg, a deformed face and the need to never let go of his wife.

warnings_ age gap (late 20s/joel’s age in s2), GORE, HEAVY ANGST, reader vomits and faints, fallacy references, canon divergence, medical inaccuracies in the following parts, anxiety, overthinking, trauma, panic attack, short part and no proofreading.

Notes_ JOEL IS NOT DEAD, HE GOT UP

「 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐲: 𝐑𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐦𝐞, 𝐈 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐭 」 (part one)

「 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐫: 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 」 (part two, which fic this belongs to)

♫ ♪ the worst playlist 4 Pedro

✰ Index (+ fics here)

୨ৎ───୨ৎ───୨ৎ———୨ৎ───୨ৎ

The morning after breakfast, Joel and you went out on patrol. Since the moment you woke up, your heart was pounding already.

Your hand was placed near your heart, as the other was doing everything to keep riding your beloved horse; star.

“Is everything okay?” Joel asks, riding beside you.

“I think I’ve been feeling some arrhythmia since I woke up…”

“Do you think your anemia is back?” He asks, worriedly.

“I don’t know, love” your voice showed some defeat for some reason.

Your health had improved since you arrived in Jackson five years ago. You looked healthy, even in shape after many patrols, hunting, and escapades with your family. Maria had been strict about you going to a doctor each year to check on your blood tests and cross out any anomalies. You would live with many issues, but you doubted you’d ever touch base like you did almost a decade ago in Boston.

After giving birth to Cerise, you promised to be healthy for your baby. And each time you had to leave her, your heart ached.

You constantly look back at Jackson. Worried and hoping that the drill was over.

“Cerise is going to be fine, baby,” Joel says, knowing you were worried about the little girl.

Joel loved his daughter, he was beyond overprotective with her. But he trusted Tommy, Maria, and his friends. Dina swore to take care of Cerise during the drill and that relieved both you and Joel.

“Yeah, she’s safe no matter what…” you say trying to convince yourself.

But your face demonstrated you were not pleased at all. Joel also knew his wife was protective of her family. So the best he could attempt to do was to distract you.

“You look very pretty today,” Joel said with a playful smile. He was trying to get you in a calm mood despite the worry of the drill, the snowstorm, and Ellie likely in a different patrol.

“You think so?” There was nothing special about your look that day.

Loose jeans, boots, a black turtleneck top with a heavy jacket, and earmuffs.

“Yeah, baby” The way he eye fucked you set your cheeks on fire.

As the years passed, Joel grew confused. When Ellie distanced from him, you and him separated for two months. After getting back together, he had been debating whether to return to his usual loving self he grew out to be after couple therapy or not. But you had proven him to be willing to be just as doting as he could be.

“Love you!” You said, blowing a kiss to him.

“I love you too, dear,” Joel said back.

It didn’t matter how much your body changed over the years if you grew your hair long or decided to cut it short. Whether it was summer or winter, Joel Miller would cherish you every single day. Even on the worst possible day, your husband would always come back to you.

…

Joel had grown trustful. It wasn’t a coincidence that the moment he took the hand of the random woman about to be eaten by the infected, your heart started pounding faster.

You said no when she offered to take you both to the place she had spent the night, but Joel made you a sign with his head that it was okay.

Now, you are being held by two people, looking at Joel and his bleeding knee, fearing the worst.

Who the fuck was Abby? And why she was so mad at your husband?

“She’s the wife? Attractive too” she says eyeing you with a fake smirk.

“Aren’t you a little too young for an old man like him?” You could kill her, but she was a stranger, whom you couldn’t feel anything towards.

But she revealed the truth, giving you flashbacks of Salt Lake City. And how the fireflies were going to experiment with you and your unborn child.

You don’t say anything, you barely eye her, the only thing that made you have some click with her was that she also lost her family at a young age.

“How could you marry a cruel man like him? Let alone let him give you a child?” Your eyes snapped open at the mention of Cerise. “Your daughter is not of my concern”

Joel wants to run and tell you it’s going to be fine, but seeing your bloody face and fingers purple and swollen, he started to feel like that was it.

“Answer me. Why him?” Abby asked, standing in front of you. She was taller than you; just a few years younger.

“He unfairly ruined your life. But he saved mine…” her bitter smile turned into a chuckle full of hate.

“I bet he did,” she said before turning back to Joel.

You could understand her pain, but she would never know all the things you endured.

You don’t give a fuck whatever the woman is saying, you just exchange looks with Joel and he was trying to calm you, but you couldn’t feel anything but panic.

To her, Joel ruined her life, but he saved yours. Joel was your savior and the reason why you had everything you always wanted. You refused to let her take that away from you.

But there wasn’t much you could do to stop it. You couldn’t do anything and that was killing you. Time was passing so rapidly and so slowly at the same time.

Her hand touched his forehead like she was trying to prove one last time that it was real. You started squirming when the woman started beating Joel.

“I sympathize with your daughter, Joel” she whispered in his ear. “She will also know what it feels to lose her father”

His screams and groans of pain started mixing with your sobs. He tried to crawl away but it was useless.

The woman and man holding at you were failing to keep you still. Nothing had prepared you to see the horrific sight of Joel covered in blood, his face swollen and barely breathing.

Your screams were bothering everyone, giving them heartache for the future widow and single mother you were gonna be.

“JOEL!” You yell his name over and over. Your heart, mind and soul breaking each time more and more.

“PLEASE! HE’S MY HUSBAND!” You begged over and over as more blood pooled around the man you loved. “STOP! PLEASE, JUST STOP!”

“We should’ve sedated her,” said one of the girls in the group, but nobody answered her.

One guy entered the room panicked and everyone turned to look at him.

“The horde is coming this way” everyone panicked.

But Abby hadn’t finished until the same guy went to grab her by the waist.

“ABBY, IT’S OVER! HE’S DEAD” He screamed at her. “WE HAVE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW!”

Your tears didn’t let you give Joel one last glance before you started running towards the door after the man and woman holding you flickered in panic due to the news.

“Let her go. She will live to tell the tragedy of her husband” Abby said to her mates after they tried to go after you. “Let’s go!”

Your boots were sinking in the snow, it was nearly impossible to run.

You started hearing the screams and grunts of the infected. Your hands clumsily pull out your walkie talkie and you try to reach out for somebody.

“TOMMY?” nothing, not a single glitchy sound of hope. “TOMMY! Do you copy me? Please…”

It was too much to handle. Your tears couldn’t stop, blinding your vision, the beating of your heart pounded and you could hear it.

As you ran, the pain of having just lost your husband assaulted you. You couldn’t say goodbye. You couldn’t grab his corpse to give him a proper funeral.

If Jackson was alive, you’d return to an empty house, where you’d raise Cerise… without his father.

You ran away without looking back for Cerise and Ellie. For them and only them.

You started hearing a ringing in your ears, your arms felt heavy and before you could control your body, you fell on your knees to vomit, with your eyes hurting and still squeezing more tears.

You scream.

Everything you wished for had been taken away from you twice.

You sob loud enough to draw the attention of some infected. What was once a pair of two women a teenager run after you. But you aren’t able to run so far.

They tackle you and start biting your body as you scream and cry. You feel them sinking their teeth in your skin, wounding like sharp knives. You feel how two of your fingernails are pulled off and how the fingers begin to go numb.

At that moment, you started closing your eyes. You swore your life flashed before your eyes. Every moment of happiness in your life appeared in your eyes. Your family made you happy. The one that brought you the world and the one you started on your own. You thank having the chance to experience being a mother with Cerise and Ellie and you thank life for pairing you with Joel.

And the last thought that ran through your head before losing consciousness, was that you despised death, but you weren’t afraid of it.

…

Your eyes snap open and you are blinded by the sun. You want to move but you can’t. As your vision starts gaining light, your head also gains sense.

You can’t breathe, it hurts to fill your lungs with air. You don’t feel your left hand and all of your extremities burn.

You are at the entrance of the gold club. But how did you get there if you ran down the hill the day before?

You hear a pair of boots and your head turns alert.

A figure gets closer, limping and taking a very long time to sit beside you.

You force your eyes to focus, but when a pair of hands start caressing your face, tears start running through your cheeks.

“Oh my god! Joel!” you can barely focus your mind and gaze on him.

“We’re alive…” it’s all he said, with a dry voice. You feel his hands holding yours but you are very disoriented to properly identify his touch.

His face is swollen. There was a lot of dry blood across his face, some of his hair frozen along more blood, his under eye purple and black.

He had broken his skull.

More tears pool in your eyes as you try to reach his face to touch it. He gently pushed your hand away. The air wasn’t enough after doing that movement.

“Joel… I think my ribs are broken” you said, noticing it’s taking a lot of strength to breathe and talk.

“Breathe slowly,” Joel says.

Tears start flowing down your cheeks as rage invades you.

Your husband was hurt, you were hurt. Your babies were gone from your side.

You can’t understand what’s happening.

“I can’t do this,” you say between sobs, feeling like your ribs are going to explode. “Not again…” you start mumbling, feeling exhausted even though you had just opened your eyes.

“We’re alive, Ellie and Cerise are alive too” Joel repeats. “It’s all that matters…”

You see Joel’s deformed face because of the swollen areas covered in blood, his left eye barely visible and his hair a mess of blood and frozen sweat. You cry harder, feeling an unbearable pain flowing all across your body, shattering your soul.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere” you sob harder at his words, ignoring the excruciating pain in your ribs.

Once again, you have been traumatized. Just like the time you woke up after having to kill your family when they got infected. You feel your legs are bandaged and you wonder how long had passed since you were bitten and had fainted. You have so many questions. And you can’t wait to feel better to have a proper conversation. Although it would only make knowledge of the tragedy that had happened.

You have lost your family. Your husband was barely alive, you were nearly dying.

You never thought you would experience so much misery since you killed your family. You feared this time was worse. Your husband was excruciatingly wounded, you were dying if you didn’t stop crying.

And that would be a problem. The waves of agony were taking you, threatening to drown you to death. Even if Joel was alive, breathing by your side, the image of him being hit and punched would never leave your mind, the image of Jackson in flames, knowing Cerise was there and knowing Ellie was somewhere else, it was more than enough to shatter you once again.

The days would pass and you knew the tears would not stop. But the thought of Joel being alive and breathing made you realize, you could bear it.

Your agony would not kill your hopes of restoring your family. At that point, nothing could be worse.

“Stop crying or I’m losing you, y/n”

“Never,” you say through sobs and huffs of pain. “You’re not losing me, Joel”

Joel can articulate any expression on his face. But you know he tried to smile.

He was breaking your heart by being alive.

______________

I cried the whole time I was taking a shower after watching episode two 🚬

Taglist: @just-mj-or-not @mmkkzz @hiroikegawa @nosebeers @glitterspark (tell me if u want to be added or removed from masterlist)

[theetherealbloom]

idk what to tell you abby, the nurses missed the fact that your dad, the doctor, threatened joel with a scalpel soooooooooo…. :/

[theetherealbloom]

NONONONO JOEL PLEASE NO

[theetherealbloom]

Sweet on You - Masterlist

pairing: Jackson!joel miller x baker!reader

summary: In the quiet routine of Jackson, you bake bread and try to keep your distance—from your past, from attention, from him. But Joel Miller keeps showing up, and when a snowstorm leaves you alone together one night, the line between safety and temptation begins to blur.

Tags: Joel Miller x Reader, Age Gap, curvy/plus-size reader, Jackson Era, Bakery AU, Slow Burn, Emotional Tension, Abusive Ex, Protective Joel, Snowed-In, First Time, Heavy Smut, Praise Kink, Dirty Talk, Aftercare, Angst & Comfort, Possessive Joel (will be updated as chapter progress)

Chapter 1: Bread and Butter

Chapter 2: Kneaded You

Chapter 3: Burned at the Edges

Chapter 4: Sweet Enough

Chapter 5

Updated 04/17/25

Series Playlist <3

[theetherealbloom]

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU - CH.9

Chapter Nine: The Silver Lining's I'll Be There With You

Summary: You find yourself sharing a hotel suite with Pedro Pascal while working on the set of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Despite your different roles—he’s the star, and you’re behind the scenes. Nothing could ever happen between you two… right?

Pairing: Pedro Pascal x F!Reader

Warnings: Age-Gap Romance (Not Specified), Eventual SMUT, Crush, FLUFF, Slight Angst, Trope(s), Swearing, Anxiety, Lots of Cliches, Cheesy Dialogue, Romance, Kissing, Real People Fiction, Cameras, Paparazzi, Social Media, Swoonworthy, One-Room Trope, They were roommates, Strangers-to-Lovers, Actors, Hallmark Tropes, the reader can sing and play guitar, the reader is shorter than Pedro, the reader has hair, Alternate Universe, Awkward!Reader, Shy!Reader, Fan Girl!Reader, Cringe, Embarrassment, Starstruck, Heavy Overthinking, Cecilia deserves her own warning lol, Confrontation,

Word Count: 4.7k

A/N: SOOO… lol, this is the longest I’ve gone without writing/posting, I deeply apologise and I’m so sorry T^T I literally had to lock the fuck in with school, each week I had at least two exams/deadlines. I blame our profs for their poor planning lol. Anyways, I have a little bit of a lighter load now since it’s almost finals season… I’ll keep ya’ll posted, and I humbly ask ya’ll to be patient for the next update and oh god, TLOU season 2… Uneven Odds… My backlog is insane right now, oh naur. Pedro babes I love you, but go on vacation boo. 

Side note: I’m dyslexic and English isn’t my first language! So I apologize in advance for the spelling and/or grammatical errors. As always, reblogs, comments, and likes are always appreciated. Thank you and happy reading!

Song: Silver Lining by Laufey

Previous Chapter → Next Chapter | Series Masterlist |Main Masterlist|

PINEWOOD STUDIOS, LONDON — MORNING

You were hella nervous. Pedro held your hand the entire car ride to the studio, his thumb softly brushing over your knuckles, grounding you even as your stomach twisted itself into knots.

"You're quiet," he murmured, watching you from the corner of his eye. "You okay, baby?"

You forced a smile. "Yeah. Just… y’know. Nervous."

"About what?"

You shrugged, trying to play it off. "I dunno. Just… going back on set. Seeing everyone. After, y'know…"

The accident.

Pedro squeezed your hand tighter. His jaw clenched, and you could tell — he was still haunted by it too. The way you had thrown yourself in front of him. The way he had watched you collapse under the rig. The way he had screamed for help — like his entire world was falling apart.

"Hey." His voice was soft. "I'm not leaving your side, okay? The second you wanna leave — we leave. I don't care what anyone says."

And you believed him. God, you did. But there was still this gnawing pit in your stomach. Something you couldn't shake.

Because something still didn't make sense.

The rig was never supposed to fall like that.

The air in the studio felt wrong the moment you stepped inside.

Too still. Too watchful.

The crew was polite — too polite — but cagey. Their gazes flitted toward you, then away. Conversations hushed behind clipboards. Even your supervisor couldn’t meet your eyes. Something was off.

And Pedro… he never let go of your hand.

“Hey.” His thumb brushed against your knuckles, voice low. “You okay?”

You weren’t sure. Your stomach coiled, dread sinking deep into your bones. “Yeah. Just—”

“—Glad you could make it,” a voice interrupted.

You both turned.

Rob, the production’s safety manager, stood stiffly at the entrance. His face was a heavy mask of professionalism, but his eyes… there was something hard in them.

“Rob?” Pedro said, stepping forward slightly. “What’s going on?”

Rob’s jaw flexed. “We need to speak with you both. Privately.”

Your stomach flipped. “Both of us?”

A beat of hesitation. “Yes. It’s regarding the rig accident.”

Pedro’s grip on your hand tightened.

The meeting room was small and clinical. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, washing the walls in a cold, sterile glow. A long table stretched across the center, surrounded by a few empty chairs — and at the end of it, a large television screen.

You sat next to Pedro. His knee pressed against yours, grounding you — or maybe grounding himself.

“What’s going on?” you finally managed, trying to sound casual despite the dread in your throat.

Rob didn’t answer immediately. He set his clipboard down and exhaled heavily, gaze flicking between you and Pedro. We reviewed the footage from the accident. We also conducted a full inspection of the rig.”

Your chest tightened. “And?”

Rob hesitated, his throat working. “We found something.”

Silence dropped like a hammer. Your pulse pounded in your ears.

“What did you find?” Pedro’s voice was tight, protective.

Rob didn’t respond. Instead, he grabbed a remote and clicked it. The television flickered to life.

And there it was.

The accident.

Your throat closed.

You watched yourself on the screen — laughing softly as you secured the cast into their harnesses. Pedro stood beside you, his hand resting on your shoulder as he said something that made you smile. The light rig swayed subtly above you, unnoticed.

And then—

It happened.

The exact moment the rig detached.

A sharp, metallic snap. Your body jolted, instinctively pushing Pedro out of the way as the light came crashing down.

Your mouth ran dry. Every muscle in your body seized.

“Wait—pause it,” Pedro rasped, his voice cracking. “Right there.”

Rob froze the footage. Pedro shot to his feet, pointing at the corner of the screen. “Zoom in.”

The image expanded.

And there — in the background — was someone.

Half-hidden behind a metal panel. But unmistakable.

“Cecilia,” you whispered, ice flooding your veins.

Pedro went rigid beside you. “What the fuck—”

She was watching you. Her gaze locked solely on you. And then — her hand moved.

A deliberate pull.

And that’s when the rig snapped.

“No.” Pedro’s voice broke, his entire body jerking back as though burned. “No — she—” His hand raked through his hair. “She did that on fucking purpose.”

You couldn’t breathe. “Why—why would she—”

And then Rob’s voice cut through. Low. Grave.

“…She wasn’t trying to kill Mr. Pascal.”

The room dropped into an unbearable silence.

Your head snapped toward Rob. “…What?”

Rob’s throat worked. “The investigation revealed the rig was deliberately tampered with during your lunch break. Cecilia was on set when no one else was. We believe she… adjusted the release on the rig.”

Your entire body went cold. “But it didn’t fall on me,” you rasped. “It— it almost hit him—”

“Because the timing was off.” Rob’s voice was heavy. “…It was meant to fall when you returned. She was waiting for you to get under it.”

Pedro’s hands were shaking. “You’re saying—”

“She was trying to kill her,” Rob confirmed grimly. “And when it didn’t happen — she didn’t react. She just… watched.”

Your stomach lurched.

Pedro stumbled back a step, his face ashen. “Where the fuck is she?” he demanded, voice raw.

“We have her in a separate room. Security’s questioning her now.”

Rob’s words sat heavy in the air.  

The room was suffocating. You could hear the hum of the air conditioner, the faint chatter from outside the closed door, the scratch of Rob’s pen against his clipboard. Everything felt too loud and too quiet at the same time.  

You exhaled slowly, trying to ground yourself.  

"I know she and I don’t get along…” you started, your voice unsteady. “But this is a lot.”  

Pedro’s head snapped toward you. His eyes—wide, dark, still brimming with the horror of what he just saw—searched yours like he couldn’t believe you were saying that.  

“A lot?” he repeated, voice tight. “A lot?”  

You swallowed.  

“Pedro, I—”  

“No.” He let out a humorless laugh, running a hand through his curls before gripping the back of his neck, his whole body strung tight with barely restrained fury. “She tried to fucking kill you. And you’re standing here acting like it’s just—what? Office drama?”  

Your stomach twisted. “That’s not—”  

“No,” he cut you off, stepping closer. “She planned this, waited for the right moment, rigged that thing to fall exactly when you’d be standing there—” He sucked in a shaky breath. “She watched it happen.”  

The words made your blood run cold.  

Because he was right.  

She had watched. You’d seen it in the footage—the way her head barely moved as the rig came loose, how she didn’t even flinch when it nearly crushed Pedro.  

If anything… it had almost looked like satisfaction.  

A chill ran down your spine.  

Pedro saw your expression shift, and his own softened just a fraction. He sighed, running a hand down his face before reaching for you again, his fingers sliding against yours.  

“Amor,” he murmured, his voice low and pleading. “You can’t downplay this.”  

You hesitated—but you didn’t pull away.  

“I just—” you licked your lips, eyes darting toward Rob. “I need to know why.”  

“Then let’s find out.” Pedro’s grip tightened. He looked at Rob. “I want to see her.”  

Rob hesitated.  

"Mr. Pascal, I don't think—"  

“We need to see her.”  

There was no room for argument.  

Rob exhaled sharply, glancing between you both before nodding. "Follow me."  

SECURITY ROOM — PINEWOOD STUDIOS

The moment you stepped inside, the air felt wrong.  

Cecilia didn’t look up at first. She just sat there, fingers tapping lazily against the metal table, the picture of boredom. But when the door clicked shut behind you, her lips curled into something sharp, something mocking.  

“Well, well.” She leaned back, exhaling a slow breath through her nose. “Look who survived.”  

Pedro’s hands clenched into fists.  

You swallowed hard, trying to ignore the way your pulse pounded in your ears. You had questions—you had so many questions—but standing in front of her, seeing the absolute lack of remorse in her expression, your stomach twisted into knots.  

“You were trying to kill me.” It wasn’t even a question.  

Cecilia tilted her head, her eyes gleaming with something twisted. “You make it sound so dramatic.”  

Pedro lunged.  

Security was on him before he could reach her, two guards stepping in to block his path. His breathing was ragged, shoulders heaving, but he didn’t take his eyes off her.  

“You tried to fucking kill her!” he spat, voice raw with barely restrained rage.  

Cecilia let out a soft, breathy laugh.  

And then she looked at you.  

The intensity of it made your stomach churn. There was something ugly in her gaze, something simmering beneath the surface.  

“Don’t act so shocked,” she mused, her voice sickly sweet. “You had to know I hated you.”  

You took a shaky step forward. “Why?”  

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”  

“Why, Cecilia?”  

Her smirk dropped.  

And then—  

"Because you don’t belong here," she snapped.  

The air seemed to still.  

Pedro stiffened beside you.  

Cecilia leaned forward, her nails scraping against the metal table. "You’re nobody," she sneered. “Some random, awkward little nobody who just lucked her way into all of this.” Her eyes flicked to Pedro with something scathing. “And somehow, you have him wrapped around your pathetic little finger.”  

Your breath hitched.  

Pedro’s hand found yours, squeezing tight.  

She saw it. And laughed.  

"Oh, wow," she drawled. “That’s fucking hilarious.”  

You opened your mouth, but she cut you off.  

"You walk onto this set like you belong here, like you’re one of us—but you’re not." Her voice was venomous now, her eyes wild. “You think people don’t talk about you? You think we don’t see it? The way you cling to him like some shy, pathetic little puppy?”  

You flinched.  

Pedro stepped in front of you instinctively, his body a shield. “You don’t get to talk to her like that.”  

Cecilia rolled her eyes. "Look at you. Protecting her. It’s honestly nauseating."  

Pedro’s grip on your hand tightened.  

"Here’s what really pisses me off," she continued, voice low and sharp. "I worked my ass off to get where I am. I have connections, I have talent, I belong here. But you—" her lip curled "—some quiet, nothing of a girl, you get handed everything. People like you shouldn’t get to win."  

Your throat tightened.  

Cecilia sat back, exhaling through her nose. "So yeah," she murmured. "I wanted you gone."  

Silence.  

And then Pedro moved.  

Not toward her—but toward you. His hand came up, cupping the back of your neck, his thumb brushing softly against your jaw. His touch was gentle, but his voice was firm.  

“She’s everything you’ll never be,” he said quietly.  

Cecilia’s eyes darkened.  

Rob, who had been silent up until now, finally spoke. His voice was sharp, cold.  

“You’re done.”  

Cecilia blinked, her head snapping toward him.  

“Legal is handling the rest,” Rob continued. "You’ll be formally charged. The company will pursue legal action for endangering crew and tampering with safety equipment. And as for Mr. Pascal and Miss—”  

Pedro cut him off. “We’re filing charges too.”  

Your heart skipped.  

Cecilia laughed. "We’re?” Her eyes flicked to you. “Oh my god. You’re actually letting him do this for you.”  

Pedro didn’t even hesitate. "No," he said. “She’s not letting me do anything. I’m doing this because she deserves better.”  

Cecilia scoffed, but it was weaker now.  

Security moved in. "Time’s up," one of them muttered, gripping Cecilia’s arm.  

She didn’t fight them. Didn’t struggle. But as they led her out, she turned, eyes locking onto yours.  

And then she smiled.  

A chill ran down your spine.  

Pedro felt it. You knew he did—because his hand never left yours.  

Rob cleared his throat. "You two need to come with me. Legal will brief you on the next steps."  

Pedro nodded, already leading you toward the door.  

But your feet felt heavy.  

This wasn’t over.  

Not by a long shot.  

And somehow… you had a terrible feeling that Cecilia wasn’t done with you yet.

PINEWOOD STUDIOS — LATER THAT DAY

To say the rest of the workday was exhausting was an understatement.  

The meeting with legal had been a blur—signing statements, reviewing footage again, going over protocol and next steps. There was so much red tape, so much legal jargon, that it all started to bleed together in your head.  

And then there was Cecilia.  

She was officially gone. Fired. Out of the studio.  

No one was exactly mourning her departure. In fact, you quickly realized that she hadn’t been all that liked to begin with. Crew members exchanged knowing glances, a few even muttering things like, “About damn time.” It was a strange kind of relief, knowing you hadn’t imagined the way she’d treated you—that you hadn’t been overreacting.  

Still, you couldn’t shake the sick feeling in your gut.  

There was something about the way she had smiled before she left.  

Like she knew something you didn’t.  

But you pushed it down. You had to. There was still work to be done, cameras to prep, lights to check. The show had to go on, and the last thing you wanted was to make everything about you.  

So you pretended.  

You focused on your job, gave polite smiles when necessary, forced your hands to steady when they trembled. If anyone noticed how stiff you were, they didn’t say anything. And if Pedro noticed—well.  

He was watching you.  

Constantly.  

Even as he ran through his scenes, even when he was talking to the director, even when he was across the damn set, you could feel it—his eyes lingering, his brow furrowed in quiet concern.  

And honestly? It was starting to make you nervous.  

So, during a break between shots, when he finally cornered you near the equipment table, you weren’t exactly surprised.  

"Are you okay?"  

You swallowed, forcing a small smile. "I’m fine."  

Pedro raised an eyebrow.  

Damn it.  

"I’m trying to be fine," you amended, shifting awkwardly under his gaze.  

He sighed. "You don’t have to try with me, you know."  

Your stomach twisted.  

Because that was the thing about Pedro—he was safe. You had known that since the moment you met him. It was in his voice, in the warmth of his touch, in the way he never pushed too hard, never made you feel like you had to be anything other than what you were.  

And that—that terrified you more than anything.  

Because what if you fell into that safety? What if you leaned too hard? What if you needed him too much?  

You bit your lip, glancing down. "I just... I don’t want to make this a big deal."  

Pedro was silent for a beat. Then—  

"But it is a big deal," he murmured.  

Your breath caught.  

Pedro reached out, his fingers ghosting over your wrist before he really touched you—slow and gentle, like he was giving you the chance to pull away.  

You didn’t.  

"Someone tried to hurt you," he continued, voice low, careful. "I need you to understand that I—" He broke off, his jaw clenching like he was trying to rein himself in. "I don’t take that lightly."  

You exhaled shakily.  

"I know," you whispered.  

His fingers tightened around your wrist, warm and steady.  

For a second, neither of you moved.  

And then—  

Someone called Pedro’s name from across the set.  

He swore under his breath but didn’t let go right away, his thumb brushing absently against your pulse.  

"We’re not done talking about this," he murmured.  

And before you could protest, he was gone.  

Leaving you standing there, heart racing, hands aching with the ghost of his touch.

PINEWOOD STUDIOS — EARLY EVENING  

The day dragged on like a ghost of itself.

After Cecilia was escorted off set and Pedro’s legal team assured you everything would be handled, you forced yourself to keep working. You were quiet. Careful. Mechanical. Going through the motions like a wind-up version of yourself.

People tried to be nice. Someone handed you a protein bar. Someone else asked if you were okay in that awkward, nervous way people do when they don’t know how to talk about something awful.  

You smiled. Nodded. Said, “Yeah. I’m okay.”

You weren’t.

By the time the lights dimmed and crew started packing up, the hum of the studio felt deafening. Pedro had been across the lot filming a short pickup scene—he’d looked back at you three times as he walked off, like he didn’t want to leave you alone, but you waved him on with a soft, forced smile. Told him you’d be fine.

You lied.

Because now you found yourself sitting on a lonely bench just outside the studio’s back lot, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself. The sun was low in the sky, casting everything in golden haze, but none of it touched the growing pit in your chest.

Your hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

You almost died.

He almost died.  

You didn’t even remember moving—your body just acted, just lunged toward him before the rig collapsed. You could still feel the heat of it brushing past your back as you shoved him out of the way. The sound of it crashing. Pedro yelling your name. The weight of it all hadn’t sunk in until now.

You sat there, heart pounding, staring at your hands like they belonged to someone else.

Then—Footsteps. Familiar ones. Heavy boots on pavement.

Pedro.

“…There you are,” he said softly.

You looked up too fast, eyes wide. He frowned when he saw your face.

“You said you were going to the parking lot,” he murmured, kneeling down in front of you instead of sitting beside you. “You’ve been out here alone?”

You nodded. Barely. “Yeah. I just… I needed a second.”

His gaze flickered over you, reading all the things you didn’t say.

“You’re not okay.”

You tried to smile again. Failed. “No.”

That one word cracked something open. Your voice wobbled. “I’m really not.”

Pedro didn’t say anything—he just reached for your hands, gently prying them from where they were clutched around your middle. His thumbs brushed your knuckles as he held them, grounding you with his warmth.

“I keep thinking,” you whispered, “If I was just a few steps slower—if I hadn’t looked up, if the timing was different… you could’ve been—”

“Hey.” He reached up, cupping your cheek. His voice was low and firm and steady. “But I wasn’t. You were there. You saved me.”

You blinked hard. Your throat tightened. “But you shouldn’t have been in danger in the first place. None of this should’ve happened. I don’t know how she—how someone I used to know—could hate me that much. It’s like… like I did something wrong just by existing.”

Pedro’s brow furrowed. His thumb brushed gently under your eye where a tear had slipped free. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “You’re not the problem, cariño. She is. Whatever’s broken in her, it has nothing to do with you.”

You dropped your gaze. “I’ve always been the weird one. The quiet one. The ‘who even let her in here?’ kind of girl.”

Pedro let out a breath like it hurt to hear you say that. Then he sat beside you, pulling you into his chest without hesitation. You didn’t even think—your body just curled into him like it was home.

“I don’t know who made you feel like that,” he said quietly, “but they were all wrong.”

His arms were wrapped around you tight. Solid. Safe.

“You belong here,” he whispered. “You’re good at your job. You’re kind. And brave. You didn’t even hesitate today. You didn’t think about it, didn’t flinch—you just moved.”

You felt the warmth of his breath against your temple.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life,” he admitted. “Watching that rig come down, seeing you throw yourself toward me—” His voice cracked, just a little. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you got hurt.”

Your heart thudded painfully at that.

You shifted slightly, your face still tucked against his shoulder, your voice small. “But I’m okay.”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “But that doesn’t mean it’s okay.”

Silence fell for a moment. But it wasn’t heavy this time. It was full of unspoken things. Of feeling.  

You pulled back just enough to look at him. He didn’t let go.

“…You really scared me too,” you whispered. “More than I expected. And I—I don’t think it’s just because I like working with you.”

Pedro’s eyes softened.

“You don’t?” he asked gently.

Your cheeks flushed. You glanced down, shy and awkward. “No. I think… I think I like you in the stupid romantic way.”

Pedro didn’t answer at first. Instead, he leaned in—slow, careful, giving you every chance to back away.

You didn’t.

And when he kissed you, it was soft. Warm. Like the sun finally touching your skin after a long, cold day.

He pulled back just enough to whisper, “That’s not stupid.”

You smiled, still tearful, still trembling—but for the first time all day, the weight on your chest felt just a little bit lighter.

CHILTERN FIREHOUSE HOTEL — EVENING

The car ride back to the hotel was quiet.

Not uncomfortable—just… full. The kind of silence that settles in after your body’s been wrung out by adrenaline and nerves. You stared out the window, your hands fidgeting in your lap. Pedro sat beside you, his fingers gently tracing the curve of your wrist with his thumb, like he needed to keep reminding himself you were still there.

He didn’t ask you anything. Didn’t push. Just stayed close.

By the time the keycard clicked and the hotel door swung open, your shoulders felt like they were being held up by thread.

Pedro locked the door behind you. You stood there for a beat too long, not sure what to do with yourself. Like you were suddenly a guest in your own body.

“Hey,” his voice came from behind, soft. “Why don’t you sit down, okay?”

You nodded, toeing off your shoes and sinking onto the edge of the bed. The moment your weight settled into the mattress, your spine curled forward. You didn’t cry. Didn’t break. Just sat there, small and still, trying to hold it all in.

Pedro crouched in front of you.

You didn’t realize your hands were shaking until he reached for them.

“Can I?” he asked quietly.

You looked up, eyes glassy, and gave the smallest nod.

He took your hands into his, warm and steady, his thumbs brushing slow circles over your knuckles.

“Pedro…”

He hummed, tilting his head slightly, eyes focused entirely on you. “Hm?”

You hesitated. Your heart fluttered in your chest—nervous, raw, still carrying the weight of everything that had happened. But his hands felt like an anchor. His eyes were kind and open and safe.

“Thank you,” you said softly. Barely more than a whisper.

His lips parted—just the smallest bit—and then curved into something achingly tender.

“Anything for you, mi amor,” he murmured.

Your breath caught.

The way he said it—it wasn’t casual. It wasn’t performative. There was no teasing lilt in his voice. It was soft and full of meaning, like every word had been carefully chosen. Like he meant it with his whole chest.

You tried to look away, but he was already watching you with that gaze that always made you feel like the most precious thing in the room.

“I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me,” you said quietly, your voice cracking just a little. “I’ve been weird all day, I barely said anything, and I just—there was this moment where I couldn’t stop shaking. I still feel like I can’t breathe right.”

Pedro didn’t respond right away.

Instead, he brought your hands up and pressed a kiss to your fingers, slow and reverent. Like you were something delicate and sacred.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he said gently. “I know what today was. I saw what it did to you. And I saw how hard you still tried.”

Your throat felt tight.

“You didn’t shut down,” he continued. “You showed up. You protected me. And then you went right back to work like nothing happened. But sweetheart… that wasn’t nothing. That was a lot.”

Your lips trembled.

He let go of your hands just long enough to cup your face, his thumbs stroking along your cheeks. “You don’t have to be okay right away. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I didn’t think it’d affect me this much,” you whispered. “It’s just… I felt so stupid for freezing up earlier.”

“You weren’t stupid,” he said immediately. “You were brave. You were human.”

You looked down, unsure of what to say to that. You were still getting used to how he talked to you—like you mattered. Like your feelings were real and valid and worth holding space for.

Pedro tipped your chin up with a gentle finger. “Hey.”

Your eyes met his again.

“I mean it,” he said softly. “You don’t owe anyone a perfect reaction. You don’t owe me anything except exactly who you are.”

“I don’t know how to be that around you,” you admitted, cheeks burning. “I still feel like I’m tripping over my own feet when I talk.”

His smile turned playful—just for a second.

“I think it’s cute.”

You groaned, burying your face in his chest. ��Don’t say that.”

He laughed softly, arms wrapping around you again.

“I’m serious,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re so hard on yourself, mi amor. But I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

Your heart fluttered painfully in your chest. You stayed like that, pressed close against him, letting his warmth sink into your skin like sunlight through linen. Your fingers curled into the hem of his shirt, and he held you like you were something he didn’t want to let go of.

Eventually, you pulled back just enough to meet his eyes again.

“Will you stay?” you asked softly.

Pedro’s expression didn’t even flicker. “Of course.”

“No, I mean…” You hesitated. “All night.”

He reached up, brushing your hair behind your ear. “You want me here?”

You nodded. “I feel safe when you’re here.”

His chest rose with a quiet breath, and then he leaned in to press a kiss to your forehead—slow, lingering, warm.

“Then I’m staying,” he said simply.

And he did.

You both climbed under the covers a few minutes later, your back to his chest, his arms around your waist. He held you gently, like a promise. You were still a little shy, still unsure of how close to be—but when he murmured, “I’ve got you,” into your shoulder, something deep in you finally let go.

You fell asleep wrapped in his warmth, the world softening around you.

End Notes:

I know, it's not a super long chapter update, for that I am so sorry, but I swear the next one will be longer tehe!

Will they catch a break?!?! I dunno. There’s a lot of things that come with dating a celebrity… and soon enough, the public will find out. I’m sure it will be fine! ...Right?

Anyways, I apologize once again for the wait and thank you for your patience! See you soon 🤍

TAGLIST: @comfortzonequeen @christinamadsen @liciafonseca @greenwitchfromthewoods @iqr-x @southernbe @maryfanson @brittmb115 @taytay0403 @whimsiwitchy @zymiii @sarahhxx03 @leilanixx @lilasskicker-23 @https-murdock @barnescamboy @widowsvail @senhoritamayblog @morganlolitta @suzysface @reidsworld @xmaykeca @dontlookatme121 @mandaloriankait @picketniffler @pedrofan @mystickittytaco @enchantingchildkitten @seven-seas-of-fuck-you @ro-nahime-things @senhoritamayblog @hermionelove @ashhlsstuff @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall @youusunshineyoutemptress @klajmekkk @aomi-nabi @churchofjoemiller @pascalitobarnes @ccmoonshine @its-different-for-girls66 @bunniboo0015 @kneelforloki @sarcasticamentegiulia @joelmillerpascal

[theetherealbloom]

Just giving a shout out to your fantastic fic 'It Could Happen To You' !

I don't normally go for Real Person x Reader type fics, but yours is the best Pedro Pascal x Reader fic I've come across. Well done!

(Also bless Pedro and his 50th birthday. He had such a blast in the club. His back is gonna hurt for a while. May he get a good rub down.)

AWWW

Thank you for giving It Could Happen To You a chance!

I try my best to write RPF fics "respectfully" as I can (I don't know how else to explain it). For me, personally, fiction is supposed to be fun, a place to rest your bones for a while and travel to somewhere where you can be free to hope and love whoever you want. (Cause we know there are too many sad endings in real life.)

So I'm glad it got to be that for you!

ALSO YES LMAO, Pedro's 50th Birthday was such a party, we love him loads and I hope he got all the presents and hugs he could ever ask for. He deserves it. 🤍

We love to see him happy!