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exquisiteserotonin · 7 months

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Footsteps to Follow

Part 3: Something Between Us

Series Summary: The loss of a loved one lasts forever and every person finds different ways to heal.

Pairing: Alice York x Foodtruck owner! Joel Miller

Warnings: MATURE, this chapter is mature simply for the use of expletives. As always this series is strictly for adults and will feature violence, sex, and other mature themes. If you are UNDER 18, please DNI. MDNI!!! AU Joel Miller where there is NO outbreak. Also there is roughly a 15 year gap between Joel (42-43) and Alice (27-ish)

Word Count: ~2.3K

A/N: My little Dave York adjacent universe/Alice York's Wonderland (TM) is growing. So much character and relationship building. This is part is pure romance and fluff, mixed in with the tiniest bit of angst. Thank you for everyone who is encouraging me on this series.

So much love to the Collective. 🧃💜

@youandmeand5bucks @magpiepills @pink-whiskey-woman @legendary-pink-dot @arcanefox207 @sparklefarts38 @redhotkitchen @imalrightllama

Taglist: @drewharrisonwriter

Also if you would like to be added to the taglist for updates on this one, please let me know!

The morning sun began to take her respite as the moon began to rise gloriously to the sky. The last beams of sun danced with each wave of the river, their lights shimmering against the dusky sky. City lights zoomed past Alice’s window, becoming colorful neon streamers as she drove. The muffled rumbling of her car’s engine along with the zooms and swooshes of the traffic were the soundtrack to the backdrop of the city skyline. In one place or another along the Eastern seaboard, people were winding down from long workdays, some sitting down to dinner alone, some with significant others, and some with families. Still others were coming alive, freed from the shackles of their 9 to 5 grind, indulging in conversation, drinks, and overnight rendezvous.

Alice was awake and alive by biological standards, well-rested enough from her “excursion” to France to confidently meet her duties at her “day job” as a nurse at one of the biggest hospitals in the city. As far as jobs were concerned, it was the perfect cover for her “contract” work. She was at the hospital less days than she was at home during the week. Her medical knowledge came in handy for any injuries she might suffer in the field. The sharp and painful memories where she had to stitch her own injuries were sparse but unforgettable. She had even worked out that in the unthinkable event she got stuck after finishing a job, she could easily pass herself as a passerby with first responder medical knowledge.

After arriving in the parking garage, Alice walked in through automatic sliding glass doors. Her sneakers squeaked against the clean, beige colored floors of the hospital. The bright lights, tall windows, and light-colored walls stood in contrast to the darkening sky. She made her way to the women’s locker room of her department, tossing her purse and backpack in her locker before making her way to the nurses’ station.

“Hey Alice,” greeted Joanna, a pretty, blonde co-worker with kind blue eyes. “How was your visit with your family?”

“It was…brief,” she answered, carefully choosing the word to describe her time with them.

“That bad, huh?” Joanna grimaced.

“Well, family isn’t always blood, is it?” Alice mused as she rubbed her thumb along the pen in her right-hand pocket. “Anyway, any interesting patients I should be on the lookout for?”

“Nothing terribly interesting,” Joanna replied, but her eyes quickly transformed and glimmered with excitement. “There’s one patient in 512 with a head injury from a bar fight; he’s kinda cute.”

“A head injury from a bar fight?” Alice asked, raising her left brow. “Sounds like a real winner.”

“Ok, Miss Judgey!” Joanna teased. “No wonder you’re single.”

“It’s a valid lifestyle choice,” she shrugged her shoulders with nonchalance. “I’m going to start my rounds.”

A lightness lived within Alice whenever she worked at the hospital. It carried her along to each patient in her care. It often perplexed her how she could so easily flip from one side of a coin to another. Trying to reconcile her violent acts with her duty to treat, save, and comfort patients, some who were even facing death, was a heavy process. The tight feeling of anxiety squeezed at her shoulders and chest, in response she took a few cooling and cleansing breaths in and out through her nose as she walked in and out of patient rooms.

Like her contract work, Alice never knew what one shift would be like from one day to the next. There were days that were more intense than others. Keeping a needle sized focus on treating her patients was the easy part. The sea of emotions that ebbed and flowed, sometimes crashing like in a storm, was the most challenging. There were days when patients wailed out in pain while family members cried, and still others took out their frustrations on her and the other nurses with anger, anxiety, and fear. And then there were the doctors and older nurses, who somehow believed that by mere virtue of their years of experience and so-called ‘seniority’ that they had the right to bark out orders and belittle her. Yet it was the quiet moments that filled her: the simple touch of a patient’s hand as she held it for as long as they needed, the desperate hug a family member fell into when they had no words for their despair or relief, or when she and her coworkers quite literally had to lean each other because the stress was just too much. Truthfully, she’d take this stress any day over her contract work.

Alice tucked her pocket-sized notebook back into the deep, front pocket of her wine-colored scrubs and moved onto the next room, 512. The patient folder was tucked safely into the wall-mounted box just outside the door. The patient’s name was clearly printed on a label on the outside of the file: Miller, T.

Alice read the notes inside his medical record, noting he had been transported to the hospital due to injuries from a bar fight. The scribbled, but legible notes indicated trauma to the head, ribs, and back. The inner monologue in her brain took note of things that she needed to look out for, but walked in with the knowledge that she needed to make sure that the patient was recovering well from his concussion.

The room was mostly dark as she stepped in save for the lights of the monitor her patient was connected to and a dim light behind the bed. Hearing some light snoring, she stepped quietly inside, calling to her new patient from the door.

“Mr. Miller?” she called, “Mr. Miller, are you awake?”

She stepped fully inside, looking behind her as she closed the heavy room door. As she turned around, she heard shuffling and noticed the barely illuminated form of someone in the reclining chair next to the bed. A family member, significant other, or friend she surmised.

“Hi, don’t mind me, Mr. Miller I’m just doing r—rounds and---” Alice’s voice vacillated when she saw a man turn towards her, “oh my goodness---Joel? It’s Joel, right?”

He stopped himself in his tracks, hands smoothing down the back of jeans. His eyes squinted at her in recognition while his mouth dropped open in pleasant surprise.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting,” she stammered. “I’m Alice; do you remember---?”

“‘Course I remember you,” Joel nodded as he stepped towards her. “You’ve got that kinda face---sorta hard to forget.”

Alice looked up at him with half intrigue, half suspicion. She moved past him and quietly approached her patient’s bed, “I’m assuming this is your---”

“Brother,” he answered quickly, with a cough to clear his throat, “Tommy’s my brother.”

The temptation to focus on Joel dangled before her like bait hanging from a hook. Much like her activities in Paris, she dodged it deftly as she lightly pressed the pads of her fingers to Tommy’s wrist to count his pulse. On his face, his injuries weren’t so bad except for a black eye and a lumpy bruise on his forehead. She examined him with gentle touches, brushing a wisp of his black curls from his forehead. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled a temporal thermometer and held it just above the center of his forehead until it beeped.

“No fever,” she related to Joel. “That’s a good sign.”

She looked at the vitals on his health monitor, scribbling in her pocket notebook as Joel watched her intently from the other side of the bed. His hands gripped the handles of the bed so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“How has he been?” Alice inquired, her voice remaining even and professional, leaving Joel noticeably flustered. “Is his head doing OK? Any lingering complaints about headaches or nausea?”

“Uh--um, no ma’am,” he continued politely, “so far, so good.”

“Obviously, concussion is our biggest concern,” she informed. “I was reading the notes, looks like the injury was from a fight?”

“Yeah---it wasn’t his fault, for a change,” he replied, a twinge of frustration rattling his voice. “Some guy took a swing at this waitress. Tommy, dumbass that he is, stepped in and got the worst of it: a punch, a chair to the head. Coulda been worse, somehow me and another fella were able to break it up.”

“It’s a good thing you were there,” Alice stated as she moved in closer to look at him through the stubble on his rugged and handsome face. “Somehow, you managed to get out relatively unscathed. I hope you don’t mind.”

Alice pointed to his cheek bone, and he nodded in acquiescence to her request. She stepped closer and brought the same gentle hand that had just touched his brother’s face to the bruise that colored the left side of his own. The touch she gave him was so soothing that Joel found himself instinctually closing his eyes. Through the quiet examination, she could hear the deep, constant inhales and exhales that came from him as he breathed. It reminded her of evening waves at the beach rolling in and receding. For a moment, their eyes were compelled to meet.

“Is he gonna be alright?” Joel asked as he opened his eyes, wide and almost pleading.

“It’s a good sign that he hasn’t complained much, and he has no fever,” she answered with an informative but comforting tone. “We just have to keep monitoring him, wake him up maybe every two hours to check on him.”

Joel placed his hands at his hips, breathing out a sigh composed of equal parts hope and fear. His eyes moved to his brother becoming glassy with the inevitable onset of tears. With a long deep inhale through his nose, he fought to stifle their arrival. Alice looked carefully into his eyes, sensing a sudden familiar feeling within her. His eyes glimmered with the familiar memory of loss. She walked towards the foot of the bed as she reached into her pocket to retrieve a tissue for him. As she handed it to him, her fingers brushed lightly against the palm of his hand in understanding.

“You’re a good brother, some of us aren’t so lucky.” Alice declared, looking up at him through her lashes. “I’m on this shift until the morning; so, if Tommy, or you, need anything just buzz me.”

“I really, really appreciate it, Alice,” he said with a deep and grateful nod.

She stood in front of him, her feet moving to the side a few centimeters as they both looked at each other in an awkward silence. It was the kind of silence where the words from two people fought to fill the space between them, instead they flitted around like two birds chasing each other. A low, rumbling groan filled the space where their words wouldn’t.

“I swear to God, Joel.”

It was Tommy, speaking with exhaustion roughing up his voice,

“If you don’t fucking ask this girl to go with you for a coffee during her break, I will personally kick yer ass.”

“Mr. Miller,” Alice smiled at his interjection nearly jumping as she parted from the closeness of Joel. “You’re awake! I’m Alice, one of the nurses. How are you feeling?”

“Well, his mouth ain’t broken that’s for sure,” Joel grumbled, but at a volume loud enough to hear.

“Don’t you listen to a thing he says about me, ma’am,” Tommy sighed, grogginess still overtaking him, “it’s all a lie.”

She met Joel’s eyes with a smile and then looked back at Tommy, letting the warmth of their banter fill the air.

“Is he always this charming?” Alice asked Joel, her laugh ringing out like a melody.

“Well, that’s a helluva way to put it,” Joel replied as he rubbed his forehead.

“This conversation is a good sign,” she affirmed with a comforting nod of her head, “Mr. Miller, I already told J---I mean, your brother, that if you need anything that you can buzz me.”

“Just give him your number so he can do that, all right?” Tommy added as a grin formed on his sleepy face.

Alice laughed with a scrunch of her nose as she tucked the blanket tightly at Tommy’s sides, looking back to see Joel rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. After ensuring Tommy had everything he needed, she quietly made her way towards the door, Joel following behind her. A polite, southern sort of thing to do, she assumed. He opened the door for her, both lingering for a moment.

“So, um, coffee---,” Joel started and then squeezed his eyes closed, “shit, I’m no good at this sorta thing.”

“Ethically, I really shouldn’t,” she spoke, almost laughing at the ridiculous juxtaposition this request posed against her life itself.

No distractions, no distractions, no distractions. She heard her own voice trying to remind her, to convince her to protect herself.

“Since your brother is a patient,” she added, “some people might say I have a conflicting interest.”

“Well, my brother ain’t asking you out,” he added with a charming smile revealing itself to her, “and technically we knew each other before this; that’s gotta count for something, don’t it?”

“Ok, well, there is that loophole,” Alice entertained his thoughts with her words.

With a tenderhearted sigh, Alice reached into her pocket for her notebook and opened it to a blank page. She looked to her left and right, assuring herself that no one was observing them. The last thing she needed was a nosy nurse or doctor writing her up for an ethics violation. Quickly, she wrote her cell phone number inside along with her name before tearing it out and pressing it to Joel’s chest.

“Don’t lose this, Joel Miller,” she teased, her smile soft, refreshing, and authentic.

He watched her walk down the hall as he leaned against the doorway, “I swear on my life, I won’t, Alice York.”

#juice collective #pedro pascal character fanfiction #dave york #equalizer 2 #joel miller fanfiction #pedro pascal fandom #joel miller fic #joel miller tlou #alice york's wonderland #alice york #murder daughter

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