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tlou-1 · 3 years

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Her Own Worst Enemy | Chapter 10 | Resolute. (Joel Miller Fanfic)

Ada awoke to the sound of feet padding across the wooden floor, she looked across at the clock. 6:00, it was still early. She had began to recognise the sound of Joel’s movement and steps across the room, he was a big guy and as much as he could try to be quiet, well it was no good.

“I am off for a patrol with Tommy but I will be back at lunch” he said in a whisper as he sat down on the bed to put on his boots. Ada felt the bed sink beneath him. She moved and perched on her knees behind him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing morning kisses to his neck.

“Don’t make it harder than it already is to leave this bed” He groaned. Ada sighed defeatedly and collapsed back onto the bed.

“Be careful!” She called to him as he left.

“Always am” He said before closing the door behind him.

It was only a few minutes before Ada decided to get up herself, she couldn’t get back to sleep and she should be starting a shift in the greenhouse within the hour anyway. After getting dressed she made her way into Joel’s kitchen to find something to eat before work. Joel had left out a mug with some of his stash of coffee ready for Ada to boil some water. Thinking back to the times Joel had spoken about how much he treasured every cup of coffee he could make from a bag she felt like the small gesture was more than a cup of coffee. As she sipped at her drink her eyes couldn’t help but look at her hands holding the mug, the hands that yesterday had been covered in blood, in the blood of someone she knew, not that she had told a single soul about that part. She kept telling herself she didn’t know who it was when she attacked… but if she had, would she have done anything different? Joel would have died if she hadn’t acted. In any case Owen had travelled to Jackson for one obvious purpose, Abby. She didn’t know if more were behind him but she couldn’t imagine Isaac sending out his recruits after one person a second time round.

“Shit” muttered Ada realising the time, she was late for her shift.

“I am here, I am sorry I am late” she called as she ran to the greenhouses not far from Joel’s. She set to work alongside Dina for the day, Dina was beginning to show. What had been a complicated situation for her, Jesse and Ellie, they had made work. They obviously cared about each other a lot, it was heartwarming seeing them work with each other to raise a baby.

“When do you get maternity leave? Or do you even get that here?” Ada joked with her.

“Soon I hope” Dina smiled. It was then Ada clocked Maria walking past the greenhouses, she tapped on the glass to grab the woman’s attention.

“Maria” called Ada waving the woman over. Maria made her way across to the pair.

“What’s up you two? Working hard I see”

“Do you know what time Joel and Tommy might be back this afternoon? I was thinking it could be nice to invite you all round for a home cooked meal after our shifts today” Ada suggested towards Maria and Dina.

“Tommy? Joel isn’t out with Tommy this morning”

“What do you mean? He said he was on rota with Tommy for Patrol” Ada was puzzled, it didn’t seem like something Joel would lie about.

“He was until Tommy spent last night coughing and sneezing. He’s still In bed, I had to switch the rota around this morning” Maria explained unsure why Ada seemed so bothered, it wasn’t a big deal, usually.

“Who is he out with Maria?” Ada didn’t even notice she had raised her voice, she felt her hands shaking.

“The new girl, Abby”.

Ada dropped spade she was holding and felt the familiar sickness in her stomach from the moment she saw Abby in town.

“Ada? Ada are you alright?” Dina asked wrapping her arm around the woman who was currently not blinking. As if a switch had been flipped in Ada, she snapped right out of it.

“We have to go after them” She dusted off the dirt from her hands and made her way out of the greenhouse.

“What are you talking about Ada? No one is going out there that doesn’t need to” Maria said sternly.

“Dina, go and tell Ellie to get Shimmer and follow the patrol route that Joel is on” Ada called. As odd as it all sounded, something in Ada’s voice made Dina do as she was told.

Maria continued to protest as Ada made her way to the stables.

“Maria!” Ada shouted making Maria go silent, not many people had ever spoken to her like that… actually no one had in a long time.

“Abby isn’t who she says she is okay? If you don’t let me go out there, Joel isn’t coming back, she will make sure of it”. There was a silence between the two head strong women for a moment. Maria looked angry and Ada knew why. For the first time it was now clear Ada had been hiding something and Maria didn’t like the idea that she didn’t know the person standing in front of her.

“If you have brought trouble here” Maria began but broke off, there was more important things at stake right now than an argument, “You go out there and bring Joel back”. She flung a loaded rifle to Ada who caught it with both hands.

“I will” Ada confirmed to Maria but she didn’t feel convinced. How long had Abby been out there with Joel? Had she hurt him? Had she already done what she had come here to do and killed him? Ada had to put those thoughts out her mind for now.

She set off at a pace following the trail to the familiar check point, the ski lodge from when her and Joel first patrolled together. She clocked two Jackson marked horses tied up outside of the building. Ada slowed down on her approach and tied her horse out of view, her foot steps were a lot quieter than that of a hoof. Part of her wanted to run in there, burst the door down, scream at the top of her lungs but her training and years of living in this world had taught her so much better than that. Checking her rifle was fully loaded Ada heard a loud groan, almost a cry, the kind that sent shivers up her spine and made the hair on her neck stand up. The only good thing it let her know was that Joel was still alive, getting low to the ground she lightly pushed the door open hoping it wouldn’t creak.

Between the different tables and chairs she could see Abby crouching next to Joel who was propped up against a wall. She moved quicker now, she had to get a good angle but not get spotted, Abby was too close to Joel and a lot stronger than Ada could ever hope to muster, even with the adrenaline pumping through her veins. Joel’s eyes opened after wincing at the pain he was in, his eyes locked on to Ada’s, she put her finger to her lips pleading him not to give anything away. Ada watched as Abby twisted the knife she had clearly placed in Joels upper leg, “You stupid old man, do you know who I am?”.

Joel groaned in pain, “Whatever you plan on doing, how about you just get on with it?” He spat. Abby then stood, towering above him.

Ada got to her feet “Don’t fucking do anything Abby, don’t move a muscle or I’ll put a bullet right through your skull” she cried.

Abby slowly turned to see Ada behind her, “Of course, you’re here”

“What are you going to do Ada? Save him after knowing everything he’s done?” She continued. Joels gaze went between both woman, as he registered the familiar tone they took with each other. It was then he realised they knew each other and not just from Jackson.

“What he did wasn’t right Abby, but neither is this. What happened to your father was horrible but we have all lost people we love. You have killed so many people, you don’t think any of them had a family?… When it comes down to it we all just want to protect the ones we love and I will too”

“What, you’re going to shoot me?” Abby laughed, “What’s to stop me from pulling my gun on you?”

“Don’t make me! We both know I am the better shot and before your hands reach that pistol, I will have killed you in one clean shot” Ada said as her hands tightened around her rifle.

Abby’s hand moved slightly in the direction of her holster and Ada shot a warning shot so close to her head that if Abby had moved any further the bullet could have hit her.

“I am not messing about Abby!” Shouted Ada. It didn’t matter Abby was resigned to seeking revenge, convinced that killing Joel would bring her peace. Abby turned her back to Ada and facing Joel was about to pull her gun when a second gun shot rang in the air.

Ada exhaled and lowered the rifle that she had been resting against her shoulder. Neither her nor Joel said anything for a moment. She made her way across to Joel trying to avoid looking at Abby’s body, she just couldn’t face that.

“I think I can take this out and bandage it up until we get back home. It’s going to hurt for a moment okay?” She said in a hushed tone and she got ready to remove the knife wedged in Joels upper leg. He winced and shouted as she removed and cleaned the area. Ada was still surprised he hadn’t said or asked anything about what had just happened and as if reading her mind.

“Who was she? Who are you?” Joel asked as she tied the cloth around the injury.

She looked up at him, his eyes meeting hers, she felt ashamed “She was a firefly, from Salt Lake. She met me in Seattle where we trained together”.

Joel scoffed and shook his head, “Fucking Firefly” he muttered.

“You knew who she was and you said nothing?” He continued, his tone was harsh but it was deserved thought Ada.

“I hoped she’d change her mind… I should have known better knowing she travelled here a second time on her own”

“A second time? She was here before?”

“WE were here before…We travelled from Seattle, me and some friends. They had this vendetta against some man who killed their friends, family, people they knew. They said ‘he took away the cure from man kind’.” Ada began explaining, she continued focusing on Joel’s injury so as not to see his face,

“So it was suggested I would travel with them. Help them get where they were going alive knowing I was the best shot out of all of them. We travelled all the way just outside of Jackson before getting stuck in a storm, they left me behind and I was set upon by a hoard of infected. Nearly died too, until the man they were looking for and his brother came across me and saved my life. You know the rest”

Joel didn’t say anything and began trying to get to his feet. Ada offered to help but he shook her off, “I don’t need anything more from you”.

At that point Ellie arrived having caught up with Ada. “What the fuck?” She said quietly looking at the scene she had just walked in on.

“Just help me to my horse Kiddo. We can talk about it back in town” Joel said putting his arm around Ellie for a bit of support as he walked out the lodge. Ada was about to follow when he turned around to look at her. “That’s it now, consider us even” and they left. Ada was still stood in the same spot a few meters from Abby’s body, she could see the blood beginning to stain the wood. She fell to her knees and began brining up the contents of her stomach. She couldn’t believe what she had done and what she may have just lost. Where could she go from here? Could she go back to Jackson or would she be shot on sight like she should have been when she first arrived.

#the last of us #tlou #the last of us part ii #the last of us part 2 #the last of us fanfic #tlou fanfic #joel miller #ellie williams #Joel Miller

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joelmillerthirstqz · 4 years

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Fill for this ask~

(slight liberty taken with request for reader to get excited about the shop; Ellie's working through sixteen-year-old, new-to-commitment-as-a-concept with Cat, pre-dina tattoo girlfriend, so i went with that)

Joel, y/n, and Ellie are all out on patrol and come across a small town. In the town, there’s an abandoned wedding dress shop. Y/n gets all excited and goes inside to see there are untouched wedding dresses. Joel’s slightly annoyed when y/n and Ellie want to try some on for fun. But then he sees y/n in a wedding dress and realizes he sees her as more than a friend.

yeah, of course I wrote with reference images up:

texture/sheerness/skirt shape/front dress ref back of dress ref, specifically the window-back with the little covered buttons up over the lower part of the hips

[I evade y/n as a convention like the plague, it’s really immersion crushing for me. However, I’ll edit it for your OC’s name if you hit the ask box, so.]

There's already a second chapter if you we want to get into this, comment or kudos and I'll get brave!

----

Ellie grimaces, scrunching her whole face. She looks across the main street of the town you’d come to scout out, Joel taciturn on his horse a few yards away, scanning storefronts and alleys.

“What?” you jerk your head to her sightline and back at her, unholstering your revolver on reflex. Your horse snuffles below you, hoofing at the ground. You can never tell if the creature is clueless, indifferent, or confident in his rider, but he would certainly be perturbed if there were infected.

“Dude, people had whole shops just for weddings?” Ellie asks, snorting derisively.

You follow her extended arm to the storefront she points to, a frilly off-white dress draped over a sunken model, glass from the smashed display window embedded.

“I mean, you had to have seen them in Boston, plenty of bored people with money,” you supply warmly. You’d grown up there, a cataclysm between the city you’d known and Ellie’s birthplace. Weddings were for people who’d given up, who’d aged out of chasing their dreams, settled into dull domesticity. People, usually the woman-coded partner, whose parents had quarter of a million to drop on a party with lifelong implications.

You’d been a little relieved when social ritual had been mostly taken off the table by the apocalypse, so the wedding pressure never reached you. Hadn’t thought about the concept in years.

You wondered who in Victor, Idaho, just over the border from Jackson, had kept a bridal shop open even before the outbreak. The demand just couldn’t match thousands of dollars of dress.

“Oh, no,” Ellie said softly.

“Well, it was a whole thing. Get some champagne, drag a bunch of girls with you, try on all the shapes and get yelled at by your mom, make jokes about the wedding night. Mostly pointless rituals,” you explain.

“You ever go to one?” Ellie asks.

“I mean, I was my cousin’s bridesmaid, so I got drunk in one and shoved into a blue satin thing, if that counts,” you clarify, shifting in your saddle.

Ellie nudges Shimmer forward, Joel drawing up to your position with a helpless shrug to you.

“It was strange. Were you in Jackson for Tommy’s?” you ask. Maria and Tommy still have that thing where they see each other and tune everything else out, even for a beat, seeming like every sense recognizes the other, no matter what else they’re doing. It feels so belligerently normal, and you watch the younger couples in the town taking note to emulate it, like they knew what they were doing because they were born before.

“No,” Joel says, looking wistful. “Seen pictures,” he adds.

“Imagine they were a bigger deal in Texas,” you say, your horses trotting a few paces behind Ellie.

Joel looks at you, face cycling through the decision to keep speaking, the same circuit you always saw him loop before he bit down on a memory and fell silent. You let the afterimage of a smile cross your face before looking down, feeling like he needs the same privacy he’d proven skilled at respecting in your own expression.

—Yesterday—

“Ask you a favor?” you feel your bones leave your body and slam back into place with fear, registering Joel’s low drawl. You’d groggily found your way into the stables to start patrol, hoodie tucked over a beanie, praying not to be seen. Nobody was supposed to be awake this early—you were avoiding a less experienced, loquacious patrolmate you’d been sentenced to and your throat clasps around itself to find that the previous night’s team, Joel’s, was only just returning.

“How bad was it?” you tip your head at the blood spatter on the side of his jacket, reddened bucket and sponge set where he’d been cleaning the infected byproduct off of his horse.

“Oh, I straggled, rest gone home. Patrol route’s quiet now, though,” he non-explains. You’re not sure if he’s trying to keep his voice low out of respect for the early hour or if that’s just his usual rumbling tone resounding it in the stark, chilly air.

“Mhm. What’s the favor?” you ask, busying yourself with saddling your own horse.

“About scouting that town for the group to search, tomorrow. Ellie’s comin’ and…” he trails off, looking at the wood-plank wall, blinking an eye at the fierce early morning sun beaming through a sliver.

You’ve learned not to rush him, learned he’s easier to talk to with his hands full, and he finishes scrubbing off his horse’s bridle while you tack up your own.

“She talks to you, easier,” Joel admits, face obscured behind his horse, taking his time to brush through the animal’s fur, obliviously slurping hay into its mouth before crinkling it in its teeth.

“Huh?” you ask, marvel of articulation that you are.

“Ellie, she’s more talkative,” he repeats himself.

“No, I mean, what?”

You hear a sigh and he leans around his horse, hands on his hips.

“Please?” he asks, slightest edge of irritation at having to say more than he’d practiced. It's all insecurity, not directed at you, but you bristle anyway.

“Alright. It’s your business, but I’ll lend my girl talk instinct,” you prod with bite, stuffing your foot into a stirrup and swinging a leg up onto Clover, who’d been named before you got to Jackson. Your emotional labor threshold never existed, and Joel was fucking pushing it.

“That’s not what I meant,” he sounds defeated as you look down at him, Clover slowing helpfully. His eyes look full, and you peer at him. He looks a little vulnerable—even if your worst anxieties read it as him noticing that you squint to avoid looking at his mouth—which is parted a little, black beard flecked with, for you, exactly the correct amount of grey. Joel rubs his lips together three times, quick, the way you’d seen when he wanted to stop talking at town meetings, shy of the eyes on him.

You soften, aware you’re irritable from lack of sleep and scarcity of good caffeine. You look ahead, reins creaking in your gloves conspicuously in the still space.

“Owe me a beer when I’m back tonight, okay?” you nod at him and press into Clover’s flank as Joel silently assents, focus snapping back to brushing out his horse. You risk looking back as Clover picks up, relieved and let down to see Joel doggedly focused on his task. You’d taken to drinking with the other patrolmen in the Tipsy Bison, edging into something resembling a social life borne of something like mutual responsibility. The group repeatedly made plain his welcome over the last few months until Joel had started to show up routinely, even murmuring a few words here and there, coming to the point that you’d notice when he wasn’t there.

—

“Okay but, why, though?” Ellie paws at a veil as you enter the store, pompous fabric ballooning halfway down the mannequin’s back.

“Dunno, it’s what people wore. I think that was for modesty, symbolically. Only went to a couple. My friends never hit the ‘wedding season’ stride. Too young,” you explain, your senior year of college on outbreak day. A look crosses Joel’s face and he spins the barrel of his revolver, leaning against the counter, trying to look busy checking the register, just in case something helpful lingered.

“Go try one on, Ellie,” you try, unsure what the sixteen-year-old is working through. Her attention hasn’t drifted to the next shops to explore, yet, so it clearly matters.

“Not for me,” she protests, hands raised. “Will you?”

You laugh ruefully, years away from the last time you’d put on something close to a dress, much less something formal, and you'd certainly never thought about being a bride. Not materially.

“C’mon, I’ve never seen like, a normal human in one,” Ellie pouts. You narrow your eyes for a second, lightly dubious.

“That’s not the best idea,” Joel grouses next to you, looking over both his shoulders like he was expecting an ambush even though it had been placid the whole way up here. Two of your three horses nudge each other for space near the tree you’ve secured them too, whinnying.

“I’ll keep my boots on for running. And you’ll keep a lookout,” you reply blithely, rolling your eyes at him.

“Yell for help!’ Ellie still discovering nuptial detritus she’d seen alluded to in comics at most.

You busy yourself finding something not set through with rot, moving towards the back of the store. Ellie swings open a display case and picks up a circular, springy fabric, a pale blue garter, squinting with the effort of discernment.

“Were the hair tie things a thing for a reason?” Ellie asks Joel, looping the blue-ribboned elastic around her wrist for later. Joel’s eyes widen in horror, ready to run towards the nearest infected to avoid explaining the whole garter thing to Ellie.

A second, more frigid wave hits him, remembering his own wedding day, Tommy helping him get just drunk enough to go through with the embarrassing ritual that complemented the bouquet toss. Sarah’s mom had loved all the stupid little wedding-day-things, though, so he’d accepted the shot(s) his brother snuck him and was grateful his red face would be under a skirt. He’d barely been eighteen, doing the right thing with Sarah’s mom pregnant, and two-years-younger Tommy held it together for him the whole day. He thought of not being here for the day his little brother had gotten hitched, a candid Polaroid in focus in the reel of guilt he’d built for himself these last twenty-some years. Tommy looked like his brother as he was before in it, looking up Maria with rapt awe as he accepted her hand to be led back to the dance floor. The crinkling at the corner of his eyes, though older, looked like Tommy again, and the joy Joel felt for him was dulled by the impossibility of ever speaking enough words to draw a partner near.

“Joel?” she pokes, twanging the elastic a little to jar him. He eyes it warily, expression the most intimidated you'd ever seen him.

You trudge past Ellie, awkwardly dragging a plastic-encased parcel of a voluminous dress, the best-preserved and least yellowed you’d found. You really didn’t relish the idea of figuring out how to get it on alone, but seeing their exchange, you fully self-preserved your way away from that particular explanation to the changing space.

“Fuck me,” you grimace, noticing the trail of covered buttons leading from the open mid-back to the very last point it could presentably grace between the dimples on your back. Wrestling this on would be a chore.

Before you shuck everything but your boots and socks, you try to smooth your hair down, the moss-flecked mirror of the changing space indicating how hopeless it is. You re-strap your pistol holster to your thigh, an overabundance of caution rubbing off on you from Joel's mere anxious proximity.

You look at your reflection a minute, appraising heavy breasts, softer hips than before. You’re proud that your abdomen and arms remain taut and toned from a combination of riding and patrolling, sprinting for your life, and helping around Jackson. For once in your life, you fall asleep at night when you hit the pillow, naked and alone, no longer captive of the ceiling’s backlighting of unidentifiable darting thoughts. Blinking your musing away, you remember how your cousin’s bridal attendant had made a circle of the dress for her to step into, and do your best to prepare it so you can slide it up and ask Ellie to help.

—

Ellie slingshotted the something-blue at Joel’s face as he finished explaining the garter tradition, hushing her ferociously and finally placing both palms over his whole face, crossing and re-crossing his ankles where he leant against the counter, rifle over his shoulder.

Ellie rolled her eyes, haughtily full of recent knowledge of thighs and what they connect to from Cat, fern and moth tattoo freshly peeling over her acid burn.

—

“Ellie!” you call once the skirt is over your hips, bodice with laced cap sleeves over your shoulders. You feel a little bad stepping past the carefully sewn fabric in your hiking boots and high socks, grimy from the trail’s dust, trying to hold it up while keeping the bodice straight.

She smiles wryly as her head pokes around the corner.

“I’ll help if you tell me if people really launched their bouquets at people and one person really pulled a—uh, shit, uh, thigh lingerie thing—off of the bride in front of everyone?”

You honk a laugh, a horrible sound, thinking of the velocity with which you’d seen Ellie launch bricks, knowing she has no sense of the soft lob of flowers at friends that she refers to. You guess she's picturing a full-bodied overarm spike ending in flower shrapnel instead of the over-the-shoulder choreography towards the bride's most single friend that happened in reality. You clasp the delicate buttons at your lower back together as best you can with your palms.

“Sounds like that was regionally universal in America, yeah, but—”

“Holy shit,” Ellie comments, suddenly shuddering in a very teenage, possibly exaggerated ripple of disgust. “Looked like a hair tie,” she mutters.

“Just—please help,” you hold the tulle and hand-cut lace near the buttons out to her.

“Wow, this was for everyone to see you in?” Ellie asks, alluding to the sheer fabric that gave the impression that the lace filigrees were directly applied to your skin. Asymmetrical, hand-sewn flowers cinch around your breasts and middle when she finally secures it.

You turn to the angled three-part mirror, noticing where your epaulet tattoo complicates the sheer effect the designers intended by the lace, nose bunching up. Not the flesh of the intended buyer of this thing, for sure.

“Come on, in the light!” Ellie goads gently.

Bracing to self-deprecate, you tuck your hair up in one hand and hold the front of the dress up and away from your muddy boots. You and outward, finding the weird little podium that was apparently customary—you remember your cousin twirling on it a similar one in delight when she’d found the right dress.

“Yeah, fuck, I can’t do this for long,” you bristle, feeling ungainly in the garment, dropping the skirts around your feet.

“And you’d just walk up to someone and kiss them in front of everyone and that worked?” Ellie prattles, tailing you closely.

Joel’s retreated to the store entrance, hunting rifle comfortable in his hands but pointedly ready.

He turns in the middle of running some sort of ten foot patrol route along the length of the store’s entrance, inevitable that he’d face you eventually. You realize he’s just pacing, the town quiet, stuck in a situation he accidentally created.

Ellie gives you a look that looks through you, and you recognize the contemplation in it. She’s thinking of someone, and what formalizing intimacy means, probably. Certainly where your mind was at around her age. Fuck, you’d not go back to sixteen for all the pre-outbreak world.

“I’m gonna go check the horses,” she mumbles, maybe in her own head, maybe more deliberate than that.

Your eyes bulge as you realize you’re stuck in this fucking thing and Ellie’s across the street.

You turn to Joel with a prepared face, tugging your dimples into a self-effacing “look at this shit” face.

“Wanna try one on?” you jab first, trying to get there before Joel can make this worse, more stupid. He’d kind of asked you, or asked for a favor that led to this, so you felt contented blaming him for it. You definitely will if his slight over-caution is vindicated and you get rushed by anything hostile while you're wearing this. Your holster may feel comforting, but the weight of the skirt would put a real drag on any reflexes you had if you actually needed your pistol.

Joel halted at the midpoint of his circling, rifle slack in his hands, hanging limp before him. The light from outside rings his form, broad shoulders and imposing frame worn uneasily in his posture.

His mouth parts the way it had when you’d ridden past him in the stables, chest expanding and falling in quick iterations, hazel eyes stranded on you.

You breathe as you hold his eyes, unable to back down from any time he proved capable of holding direct eye contact. Now that you had it, you realized you’d been teasing it out of him for months, forcing him to look right at you, any creative way you could, driving him up the wall.

Joel might as well have been waist-deep in water for how slowly he moves towards you.

“Sorry, not meaning to bring up anything—” you swallow the word painful, revising quickly, “from before,” you finish weakly. Gold star, idiot. You had no idea, but what if it had been a wife he’d lost? Fuck’s sake. Though, Ellie wouldn't be cruel like that—

Joel shakes his head absently, dismissive. He was run aground, captive to taking you in. The dress made no overtures to performative modesty, sheer tulle slits up to the edge of your hipbones, catching on your holster where you shift. Joel assesses the fabric spread over your chest quickly, mouth upturning too subtly for you to feel 100% confident you’d seen him do it. You’d seen him get the lay of a whole horde in a split second, and stood curious what it was he’d noted from the two and a half seconds his eyes drifted over you.

“‘m here, now,” he mumbles, looking down and pulling the bolt back, a dull click as it confirmed he’d chambered this particular round ten times in the last five minutes. If a weapon could sound exasperated with him, it did, and he jerks his head without turning it to Ellie’s retreating form.

Joel’s mind sprints between stations, picking up an artifact of your expression at each one: your body, your easy conversations on patrol, fumbling between them all, not sure where to start.

Ellie wasn’t far enough away for Joel to start this now, to cross the shop and kiss you, podium leveling you to the perfect height for him to lean into, hands on your face. Something in his posture looks ready to move quickly, and it's not to use the weapon his knuckles whiten around.

The edges of his eyes pinch, like he’s struggling to make sense of an indescribable noise. The tendon running from your ear to collarbone stands out as you look to the side, pretending to appraise the way the dress fits over your hips, snugly buttoned. Joel’s face shifts from startled to starved while you take reprieve from his focus.

Your furrowed brows while you watch Joel watch you spark understanding of the mechanics of a constant, firm draw towards your person. He’s recognizing you as more than a formidable shot he can be at ease with, not just a pleasant confidante with different but complementary pre-outbreak life experiences and a healthy sense of privacy.

Joel glances down one more time, catching your eyes on the way back up as he clears his throat, finding you looking at him sheepishly. He hadn’t tried to say a word in minutes.

“I’m. I’m stuck in here. Ellie—” you stammer, face reddening viciously. This was going to be a long, tiring patrol excursion, and you worried you had already made it weird.

You idly wonder where he might put his hands on you if you were alone, right now, and your terror is visible as the thought drifts by. If he would.

Joel doesn’t look back at Ellie where you’d normally expect a concerned jolt at her name, hazel eyes heatedly dark. You can chalk it up to the dimmed interior of the shop, but enough sunlight streams in to make you doubt its just the environment.

Grimacing at a clearly out-of-earshot Ellie, you need to be out of this fucking thing and redouble.

“Joel, can you? I feel bad ripping it and would really like my jeans again,” you offer weakly.

Joel’s fingertips, fingertips you wish you didn’t know were callused and so goddamn cautious when they’d had the occasion to meet yours, flex on his gun.

“Not sure I know how to, I mean, those seem—special?” he stammers at the prospect, you having turned to bare your back to him.

Joel breathes in a way you can hear on the silent street, usually so contained.

She’s just helping you see the buttons. Joel thinks, counting out twelve of them, in total.

Joel steadies his gaze, tipping his head forward and choosing to take in the slope of your back, mostly bare and deep-dipping expanse scantly wreathed in lace. His face looks like he’s staring something potentially fatal down, gritted jaw muscles pulsing. He steps towards you, though. He’d never done anything in the right order, not Sarah, not with Tess, not a bit, one single time. Might as well get you dress off before he can even get the courage to kiss you.

Slinging his rifle’s strap over his shoulder, Joel keeps his fingers at a careful angle, purposefully not against your skin. Pushing the top button through the satin loop containing it, he steps up on the podium with you, only because it puts his lips well out of an easy distance to drag along the nape of your neck. Hoping he can feel his way down the buttons without touching or looking at you, he fails three buttons down, knuckles brushing the bottom of your spine.

You laugh nervously, looking back at Joel. Every part of your core is twining into a spiral, abdomen first, then a layer deeper, then a clench you won’t register because then you’d have to admit that something was going on.

For his part, his dark brows are furrowed in effort, decidedly back in the realm of watching every movement to avoid the electrocution he’d just experienced from grazing you. Now was the time for accuracy, not speed.

Joel takes in your little cap sleeves between buttons, down to the eighth of twelve. The hand-cut lace outlines your shoulders, leading to lean skin below, dipping lower in the front than he should be noticing now that you’ve turned away from him—but he’s too tall to miss it once you’re standing on level ground. He wonders what you would do if he pulled you against him now, back pressed to his front, his mouth on your neck before your own.

‘Thank you,” Joel says.

You crane your head to meet his eyes again, hands pressed to opposite shoulders to prevent the now-loosened dress from slipping all the way. Maybe you didn’t need the rest of the buttons, but there they went. You blink at him, wondering what would happen if you leaned against him.

“What?” you feel all wrapped in half-fabric, half-suggestion, no idea what the fuck he means.

“For comin’,” he gives. “Didn’t, uh, thanks for…” he trails off, so unaccustomed to indirectness and illocution that he doesn’t know what to call it. He clears his throat.

Joels hits the tenth button and breathes deep, flicking through the last two like he’s reloading, stepping back to reclaim his rifle and get so, so many feet away from you.

You turn to him, holding the weighty dress flush against your skin with both hands.

Joel’s chest is rising and falling every three seconds in rapid cycles, peculiar as you’d patrolled enough together to hear how he can silence his breath, the infrequent draws of someone yards underwater. He either can’t control this or made a choice to stop, and you can only think that the rust colored plaid he’d worn today was truly nice on him.

The rest of your scouting trip is deafeningly quiet, like Joel riding next to you and his surly expression produce volume equivalent to standing under a roaring set of falls. Ellie punctures it every few minutes with an attempted joke and you can almost feel Joel groan before you hear it each time, thoughtful.

Notes:

Here's the meta you didn't ask for

In current 2020, hard to see in weddings as anything other than class signifiers/routes to wife-n’ up, but:

holy shit does the apocalypse , esp. Tommy’s hope-imperative thing, make room for meaningfully coded rituals and aspirational ideologies not hijacked by the wedding industry’s profit motive.

Joel’s coming from the context of a wife who left Joel alone because having Sarah ruined her young life, so his view of it is understandably dismissive. Reader was more interesting to make opposite—college-aged asshole without responsibilities on Outbreak Day, less room for traditions.

But: Jackson is frozen in time and CRAVES ritual. Where it was meaningless in a world of abundance, you need markers of the years and ways to say “that person is my person;" it's joy as resistance.

For instance, something about Christmas hits different when you’re not fist fighting consumers for prelit trees after scuttling past a Salvation Army Santa in a mall. Jackson feels so sincere, every decoration scavenged or hewn with love, with purpose and forethought.

There’s joy in scarcity and glut in abundance is my point, I guess. Joel gets that on a basic level, even though he’s obstinate as hell about letting himself have anything good or even open to the idea.

#prompt fills #joel tlou #tlou #tlou ii #dumb epiphanies #joel miller #joel x reader #joel miller x reader #the last of us joel #the last of us #the last of us fic #the last of us ii #the last of us 2 #asks #filled prompts #prompts #joel/reader

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