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yelena-bellova · 1 year

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Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve: As We Were, As We Are

Plot: Y/n and Joel work to avoid each other in Jackson, until they’re forced together in their most vulnerable state.

Word Count: 13.9k (longest chapter yet)

Warnings: tlou ep.6 spoilers, canon-typical violence, implied smut, suggestive dialogue, blood, guns/knives, wounds, language, ptsd, anxiety, death of a child, (16+)

A/N: Oh, boy…this is the chapter it’s all been leading up to. Every question will be answered. This is the first part of the series I’ve been genuinely nervous to release because it’s so important, and I hope it lives up to all your expectations.

As always, this series is 16+ and I will not be adding anyone to the taglist unless your age/range is specified in your bio. Gotta look out for younger eyes 👀

I hope y’all enjoy this one, I definitely had the most fun writing it ❤️

—————

December, 2023. Jackson, Wyoming.

For as small of a place as the Jackson commune was, it was very easy for Joel and Y/n to avoid each other.

Soon after she returned from the bar with Tommy, Maria announced that it was the town’s movie night and she was going to take Ellie. While Y/n would have rather stayed at the house and hid herself away, she knew the best place to hide from Joel was anywhere a crowd was present.

Inside the mess hall, they’d organized the benches to create rows of seats for the kids. Ellie was seated in the middle, looking back every once in a while to Y/n, who was stood with Maria and Tommy.

After their conversation, Tommy hadn’t pressed Y/n anymore on the subject of Joel. He had observed them from the night they’d met to the minute he’d left the triage clinic. With his bird’s-eye-view of their relationship, he could tell that the torch they’d carried for one another burned still, purely from the passion in their voices when they spoke about each other. The way their eyes came alive when the other’s name was mentioned.

Y/n had allowed herself to switch off, mindlessly watching the movie. The overwhelming rush of emotions she’d felt from both the domestic beauty of Jackson and the reminder that she could never have it had exhausted her. When Ellie would look back, needing reassurance she was still there, all Y/n felt capable of was a tiny nod. There was nothing left in her to give.

At some point during the film, Tommy reached over to tap Y/n on the shoulder and nodded towards the door. With him being the only person she fully trusted, she followed him out without question.

They walked through the light snowfall in silence, Y/n was under the impression he was trying to get her some fresh air. Even the snowflakes, in all their puritan beauty, couldn’t lift her mood. They just felt cold and annoying on her face.

Tommy guided them back to his and Maria’s house, unlocking the door. “WaIt here a minute.”

Y/n nodded, if it were possible, she never wanted to step foot in the house again.

Tommy disappeared for thirty seconds before emerging with a pair of winter boots in hand. Y/n was beginning to grow curious, but not enough to break her vow of silence.

They resumed their path down the middle of town, the lights strung from rooftop to rooftop combined with the decorated pine tree gave it a true Christmas feel. Tommy led them towards a building Y/n had yet to go into, a cobbler’s workshop.

“You pulled me out to help fix your boots?” Y/n asked as they climbed the steps.

Tommy didn’t answer, only opening the door and gesturing for her to enter. Y/n walked in, her eyes trailing the walls before they fell on the center of the room.

Where Joel was sat.

Joel had done a stellar job of not just avoiding Y/n, but his brother, Maria and Ellie. After his last episode, he hadn’t wanted to be around anyone. His busted boot had brought him to the workshop, he’d been pulling at the sole for nearly thirty minutes with no success. With each fruitless tug, his frustrations grew, and so did his tears. It was the meaningless failures in life that brought the deepest ones to the surface.

Y/n and Joel’s eyes met across the room, realization hitting Y/n as to why Tommy had brought her out. She turned to glare at him, seeing no remorse at all on his face.

“The guys said I might find you here,” Tommy said, brushing past Y/n to Joel and handing him the pair of boots, “Figured I’d save you the trouble.”

Y/n ran her palm across her forehead in both frustration and anxiety, turning on her heel and reaching for the doorknob.

“Hang on,” Tommy called, stopping her from moving any further, “Before you storm out of here…” he looked to Joel, “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I don’t even believe it…I know you’re happy for me, it’s just…complicated for you. And I’m sorry.”

Tommy turned his gaze to Y/n, “And you. I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you, back at the bar, and bringin’ all that up wasn’t my best move.”

Y/n’s hand hovered over the knob, debating whether to run or stay. She didn’t have an explanation for the pull to remain, considering Joel was ten feet away from her, but she listened to it.

Joel didn’t have to question what ‘all that’ Tommy was referring to. If he’d brought it up to him him, he’d surely have brought it up with Y/n. Just knowing they’d talked about it hurt.

“So are you two gonna let me off the hook, or what?” Tommy asked, smiling the same way he had each time Y/n or Joel had bailed him out of jail.

Joel wished with everything in him that Y/n wasn’t in the room. Not with what he was about to say.

“This ride to the university…” he began, “Is it a suicide mission?”

Tommy’s brows lowered, “No. It’s dangerous, but it’s nothin’ you can’t handle. Just prepare and do what you do.”

“You’ve had people go that way and come back?” Joel continued.

“All of ‘em,” Tommy answered, “What is this?”

Joel couldn’t find it in himself to meet Y/n’s eyes. He felt the absence of her gaze, but his drifted in her direction, landing near her boots.

“She’s immune.”

Y/n instinctively tensed up, the two words they’d all swore not to speak suddenly hanging in the air.

“What?” Tommy said in shock.

“Ellie,” Joel replied, “She got infected but she didn’t get sick.”

Tommy flinched, naturally, making Y/n slide her body in front of the door.

“It’s true,” she said, “Fireflies found her up in Boston, she’d just been bit. We brought her in, quarantined her, tested her…” Y/n couldn’t bring herself to look at Joel, only at the floor under his feet, “Then it happened again. I saw it with my own two eyes…that was three months ago.”

A beat of silence added to the tension of the moment.

“She’s immune,” Joel pushed, his voice low and pleading.

Tommy looked between his brother and his almost-sister-in-law, thinking about the stark contrast between the last time it had been the three of them. He crossed the room, reluctantly coming to sit across from Joel.

Y/n, with her hands at her side and her eyes looking anywhere but at Joel, moved to where Tommy had been standing. It was too late to leave now…

“From the beginning,” Tommy requested of them both.

For reasons she couldn’t understand, Y/n’s eyes began to water before Joel even started to speak.

“It was Marlene,” he explained, “She hired us to smuggle her to some Fireflies. It went bad. Tess got bit. She made me swear to take the kid. It was her dyin’ wish,” Joel’s voice wavered slightly, “What the hell was I supposed to do?”

Y/n sunk her teeth down into her bottom lip, that hadn’t been Tess’ final request.

“We made it as far as K.C and then…”

Joel paused, the memories of Kansas City were ones he tried not to look back on, for so many reasons.

“You know, she saved my life there,” he continued, “From another kid.” He intentionally left Y/n out of the story, just addressing the memory of her almost dying overwhelmed him.

“Five years ago, I would have destroyed him,” Joel went on, “But she had to shoot him to save me. 14 years old. Because I was too slow and too fuckin’ deaf to hear him comin’.”

Y/n looked down at the worktable below her, her eyes misting over. It was so easy for Joel to pretend like she hadn’t been there, it almost hurt.

“And I saw…” Joel paused, Henry’s two fatal bullets ringing in his good ear, “I saw a man kill his own brother, to save her, while I just watched.”

Curling her fist against the table, Y/n bit down on her lip until she tasted blood.

“And today, I thought that dog was gonna tear her apart because it smelled somethin’ on her. And all I did was stand there,” Joel’s pace had quickened, “I couldn’t…move. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just…”

Joel, in that moment, wished for a thousand miles of space between him and Y/n. He wished she remained in Jackson and he was back in Boston.

“I was so afraid,” his voice finally cracked.

Two silent tears danced down Y/n’s cheeks like a sprinkle of rain before a thunderstorm.

“You think I can still handle these things, but…” Joel’s voice regained its strength as he watched Tommy take in what he said, “I’m not who I was. I’m weak.”

With all the force inside her, Y/n still couldn’t bear to look at Joel. She couldn’t handle watching him fall apart.

“Lately, there are these moments where the fear comes up outta nowhere and…” Joel took a quivering breath, well aware he was addressing two people, “My heart…feels like it’s stopped.”

The long overdue explanation didn’t feel like a victory to Y/n, it felt hollow. It was coming at the expense of so much.

“And I have dreams,” Joel went on, “Every night.”

“What kinda dreams?” Tommy asked, it was the first time he’d dared to speak.

“I don’t know,” Joel’s tone became breathless with emotion, “I just know that when I wake up…”

Joel paused, trying to gather the strength he’d lacked twenty years ago.

“I’ve lost something.”

There was no longer any story to tell.

This was Joel’s admission of guilt.

“I’m failin’ in my sleep,” Joel cried, “That’s all I do.”

A river now streamed down Y/n’s face, they were addressing all that had happened between them without actually talking about it.

“It’s all I’ve ever done,” Joel whimpered, the faces of the three most important women in his life flashing through his mind, “Is fail her.”

Y/n’s cheeks were red from holding in her screaming sobs.

“Again and again…” Joel trailed off, feeling the weight of Y/n’s pain without seeing it.

“You want me to take her,” Tommy stated, he knew what was coming before they got there.

Y/n’s eyes finally found the courage to fly to Joel, her lips parting in shock.

“I’m just gonna get her killed,” Joel trembled, the fears he’d had to live with the last three months were beating him into cowering, “I know it. I know it.”

Of all the things he’d said concerning the piece of his heart standing across from him, none had hurt Joel as much as the one floating on his tongue, clutching to his throat…begging not to be released.

“I have to leave her.”

In that moment, Y/n was no longer in the shop. She wasn’t in Jackson. Her knees were sitting in dirt, wind whipping at her shirt, her screams echoing off the triage clinic walls…Joel was abandoning her all over again.

She must have gasped or sniffled, because Tommy turned around to look at her. Joel’s tearful gaze finally came up to meet hers, her heartbroken stare piercing his chest. He knew exactly what he was doing to her, the anger that had died out three months ago filling her eyes once again. Except this time, there was so much sadness behind it, Joel’s tears started up again.

Y/n couldn’t stand to hear another word, her own opinion not mattering in the already-made decision. Desperate for Joel not to witness another one of her tears, she went straight for the door, throwing it open and letting it swing shut behind her.

Her mouth hung open, trying to force the winter air in and out her lungs as her head spun. He was doing it, he was leaving her as if she hadn’t ever meant anything to him.

A crunch of snow under another pair of footprints drew her attention to her left. Ellie was moving so fast away from the door, Y/n barely recognized it as her.

“Ellie,” Y/n called, the girl was marching back through town, “Ellie!”

“So he’s just gonna leave us here?” Ellie asked, her voice raised to compensate for the distance between them.

Y/n couldn’t form an answer, she couldn’t defend Joel’s actions.

“You have to talk him out of it,” Ellie said, bitterness seeping into her tone.

“I can’t,” Y/n said, letting the cold freeze what was left of her tears.

“Yes, you can,” Ellie was sounding more and more like the child she should have been, on the verge of losing something important to her.

“Ellie, I can’t,” Y/n practically shouted, the girl was too fast for her, “I can’t make him do anything, you know that.”

Ellie spun around, her face red from the cold air and her anger. “You have to,” she yelled, “He can’t…” her voice nearly caught, “He can’t fucking do that to us.”

Y/n had concealed so much of her history from Ellie, it wasn’t anything she needed to know. The girl looked at Joel like he was everything, she couldn’t shatter the illusion.

With nothing but tears to give as a reply, Y/n watched Ellie storm back off through the snow. She waited, giving the girl a wide berth before heading in the same direction.

When they got inside, Ellie stomped up the stairs, leaving Y/n standing aimlessly in the middle of the living room. She felt so small, so fragile, it was a vulnerability she hadn’t felt in twenty years that only came with someone owning a part of your heart. It was permission she hadn’t realized she’d given to Joel to break her all over again.

Somehow, quite blearily, Y/n made it up the stairs. She stood in the hallway, her eyes drifting between doors. Two options lay in front of her. She could a) knock on Ellie’s door and try to console her or b) go into her room and sleep off the pain till morning.

Despite the twenty years of independence she’d had, Y/n had never felt like she had full autonomy. She was owned by her past, haunted by the choices that she’d been forced to make and the ones that had been made for her. There was a piece of her mind beating her into submission, counting on the trauma to make her cower from facing the truth.

There was a third option, and she strode towards it without hesitation.

—————————

“You’re right. You’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad.”

The words struck Ellie like a blow to the chest.

“Now, come dawn,” Joel finished, “We’re goin’ our separate ways.”

He left her there, knowing there were tears pooling in her eyes, knowing she felt abandoned. He knew all of it, and he still slammed the door shut. He was the only one who could see that it truly was the only option where she kept her life.

Joel glanced down the hall, spotting the bathroom, a closet and a closed door, no doubt a bedroom. He didn’t dare go near it, he couldn’t face the demons that lay behind it. Instead, he made his way to the bedroom at the end of the hallway, nudging the door open…

Y/n was sitting on the bed.

Joel froze.

Her elbows rested on her knees, her hands were clasped together. She stared ahead at the carpet, her stare boring into the beige threads with a fire that was intended for the man standing across from her.

Joel had been running from her all day, it seemed like they both had. If Y/n had thought this was her room and had been caught off guard, she’d have jumped, rushing to leave or forcing Joel out. Her stillness told him that this was intentional.

“I want the truth,” Y/n was the first of them to speak, “About that day.”

Joel had made one of the biggest choices in her life for her and it had ruined the last twenty years. If this was the last time she would ever see him, she was taking what she wanted before leaving.

“I need to hear it,” she continued, her voice thick from crying. She finally dragged her gaze up to him, shooting daggers, “I need to hear you say it.”

Joel’s muscles had locked up, every inch of him suddenly running painfully cold. There was no escaping what she wanted to hear, nor did he have to strength to keep it buried any more. The words lay trapped in his chest, rotting between his lungs.

Joel reached behind him and shut the door, not wanting Ellie to hear what was surely to come. He walked towards the bed hesitantly, the first step sending Y/n across the room. Distance was necessary for such an intimate conversation.

Y/n watched him walk, his posture was more drooped than usual. She’d heard Ellie yelling through the walls, no doubt reading him the riot act for his plans. And whatever Joel had responded with was, undoubtably, worse.

Joel took Y/n’s spot on the edge of the bed, sighing to himself and trying gathering his mind. Were they really doing this?

He paused a good long while before beginning his confession.

“After it…” Joel paused, unable to call on the tragedy by name, “After it happened, I couldn’t…see. I-I couldn’t…breathe. Nothin’ made sense any more,” Joel’s eyes were brave enough to look up at Y/n, “Nothin’.”

Y/n kept her arms crossed over her chest, protecting herself the last way she knew how from the ghosts of the past.

Joel clasped his hands in his lap, as if to pray for forgiveness that wasn’t his to have. There was nothing that could soften the blow he was about to strike.

“Somehow, in my mind, when you told me…” Joel referred to another nameless point in time, “What you told me…I knew it was true.”

There it was.

“You’d never lied to me before,” Joel admitted, tears threatening to reveal all his cards, “You wouldn’t’ve chosen then to start.”

He’d known. He’d known the whole time. And he’d still tried to make her feel like a liar.

“I wasn’t thinkin’ straight,” Joel struggled, his chest trembling as he tried to hold himself still, “The pain was just…I couldn’t handle it.”

With Ellie in the room over, Y/n bit down on her lip to stop whatever violent reaction threatened to escape her mouth.

“So instead, you decided to blow up my life,” she said, nodding.

Joel felt breathless, staring into the same weeping eyes he had twenty years ago, watching her fall apart. Except this time, it was controlled. She wouldn’t let herself break until he broke first.

Y/n couldn’t hold back the river in her eyes any longer, the festering resentment building in her like a hurricane.

“Do you have any idea what I went through after you left?!”

The force of her voice startled Joel, but he didn’t flinch. He deserved every bit of her hate, and he would take it all.

Y/n took a rattling breath, the volume of her tone dropping to a hiss, “Do you have any idea what I had to do?”

—————————

October 1st, 2003. St. Louis, Missouri.

By some miracle, Y/n made it home.

After Joel had abandoned her and she’d cried herself nearly into dehydration, she stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees…and walked away. Her apartment complex was near the clinic and she’d snuck back without coming across any army or Infected.

She promptly packed up her backpack, shoving as many dry goods in as she could. She filled water bottles, rolled a change of clothes, a flashlight, a blanket, and a hammer. She didn’t have any intention of hurting anyone, but she was going to be prepared.

The problem was that her car was parked at Joel’s house.

Unhappily, Y/n had snuck into the neighborhood through the trees, the army was still stationed on the highway directly in front of the entrance. When she arrived, cutting through the shared lawn between the Millers and the Adlers, she kept her eyes down. She didn’t think she could handle the sight. She climbed into her car, which was blissfully still there, and started it up.

It took everything in her not to look up at the house, or go inside to say a goodbye.

To avoid the army, she drove her car through the space between the houses, cutting back through the forest and getting onto a side. She couldn’t save Sarah, Joel had left her for dead, but she was determined to find her family.

It had taken a full day of driving, carefully avoiding the army’s various stations, and when her car had run out of gas, two days on foot. But she’d made it, alive and as well as she could be.

Y/n’s parents owned a plot of land that they’d built her childhood home on. The nearest neighbor was a mile away, giving them a decent chance at survival by isolation. Her sister lived five miles away, her brother twenty minutes, but she knew they’d huddle together in such an emergency.

When her weak limbs and weary eyes reached the property, she huffed a tearful breath. The world may have been falling apart around her, but she was home. The sight gave her a new boost of energy and she quickened her steps across the grass.

“Mom,” she called the closer she got, “Dad!”

Y/n hurried up the front porch steps, finding the door slightly ajar. There had never been a moment in their house where the door hadn’t been locked. Her hand hesitated over the knob, afraid of what she might find.

She didn’t really have a choice.

Y/n cautiously stepped inside, “Mom! Dad!”

Her voice bounced off the hallway, echoing into the house. There was no answer.

“Annie,” she called for her sister, then her brother, “Jason!”

She walked down the hallway, finding the tables and knicknacks that decorated it to be as meticulously straightened as ever. It all looked normal.

“Guys,” Y/n shouted, growing more anxious, “It’s me!”

Through the hall was the kitchen, the counters were covered in dry good wrappers and bags. Clearly they were here, the power had been cut and that would have been their only option for food.

Y/n’s breaths grew quicker, “Guys!”

There was a clatter from upstairs, Y/n spun around to face the staircase. Her worst fear was that someone had broken in, killed her family and was stealing any valuables they could. It was a miracle her apartment had been intact.

Another large thud, followed by a low growl.

She wasn’t even thinking about the other possibility.

A humanistic screech sounded through the house before a blurry body threw itself down the stairs, launching itself towards Y/n.

It was her father.

“Dad!”

As her father’s hand swung at her, she swerved out of the way, the rush of air brushing her face. She stumbled backwards into the living room, blidnly reaching for the edges of furniture to topple in her dad’s path. Undeterred, growling and snarling at his own daughter, he climbed over them effortlessly.

“Dad,” Y/n yelled with tears in her eyes, “Daddy, stop! It’s me!

A snarl and another swipe was all she received.

Until the second growl came.

From the other side of the stairs, Y/n’s mother emerged with the same possessed look in her eye as her husband.

“Mama,” Y/n cried, “It’s me! Stop!”

Her mother ran down the hall, her steps wide and clunky. Y/n’s father was heading towards her too, his movements slower than his wife’s.

There was no time to think her decision over.

Y/n reached for her grandmother’s vase, sitting on the end table by the front door and swung it around, smashing it into her mother’s head.

Her mother let out a scream, one of anger rather than pain, and stumbled back a few steps. Y/n shoved the end table at her father, ramming it into his stomach and causing him to drop to the floor. It gave her time to cut across into the home office, sliding under her mother’s arm as it reached for her.

“Mama,” Y/n cried, her tears were long past restraint, “Mama, it’s me…please.”

Her mother stalked forward, too far gone to recognize her daughter.

“Mama,” Y/n pleaded, “Please don’t!”

Y/n was out of time and out of options.

It was either take action or become one of them.

Y/n yanked the hammer out of the open slit in her backpack and slammed it into the side of her mother’s head.

The woman dropped the floor.

Y/n could barely register what she’d done before her father’s growls neared. She looked up to see him, quickly encroaching on her. She waited until her was close enough before jumping to the side, letting him slam into his bookcase and bludgeoning him with the hammer.

Y/n bolted out the glass doors, sprinting towards the stairs and screaming for her siblings, “Jason! Annie!”

More growling came from one of their childhood bedrooms.

Acting purely on adrenaline, Y/n bolted in the opposite direction of the sound, heading for the master bedroom. She ran for the closet, clearing the top shelf of her father’s side to reach his fireproof safe. Her fingers trembled as she punched in the code, the growling getting closer to the room.

The safe door opened, offering her her father’s hand gun as a blood soaked salvation.

A sickeningly shriek filled the bedroom, the lean body of Jason entering and sniffing Y/n out like a hunter would its prey.

Y/n couldn’t afford to think, but she felt the full weight of her decision as she took off the safety and landed a bullet in her big brother’s head.

She stood over his lifeless body, her breath caught somewhere between her heart and her lungs. From behind her, there was more manic growling.

Y/n spun around to find not only her sister, racing towards her, but her parents dragging themselves up the last steps on the staircase.

“No,” she whispered, “No, Annie, stop. Please!”

Her sister screamed, her eyes completely blackened and her nostrils flared in blind rage.

Y/n fired a shot with a shaking hand, causing the the bullet to hit a decorative plate on the wall, ricocheting back across the room and hitting her in the shoulder.

She couldn’t feel the pain.

She couldn’t feel anything.

Because the next three shots she didn’t miss.

When it was over, Y/n couldn’t move. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. All she could do was stare at the destruction she’d caused. And in her numbness, she didn’t hear the small footsteps, the heaving breaths coming for her…

Her little nephew, Matty, let out a vicious cry as he lunged for his aunt.

“Matty!” Y/n cried, the boy clinging to her leg and unhinging his jaw, “No!”

Y/n reached down, prying him off her leg and holding him in the air, his little legs flailing and his hands clawing for Y/n’s throat.

“Matty, stop,” Y/n screamed through her tears, her pain rising to match the demonic one of her nephew.

She threw him down on the bed and bolted for the stairs, the gun still in her palm. She knew that the next thirty seconds would decide who she would be in this new world, and whether her soul would retire to heaven or hell.

Her nephew flew down the stairs after her.

Y/n stumbled on the last step, landing on her knees and sliding across the blood slicked hardwood.

Matty shrieked.

Y/n raised her gun.

—————————

December 2023. Jackson, Wyoming.

The soft glow of the lamplight couldn’t help the darkness that filled the bedroom.

Joel’s lips were parted, in horror and in sorrow.

The entire expanse of Y/n’s cheeks were painted with her tears. Not a day had gone by since her tragic homecoming where she wasn’t haunted by her decisions. But the last three months, particularly after Henry and Sam’s tragic endings, it lived at the forefront of her mind again.

“I needed you there,” Y/n whispered angrily, incapable of making any louder a sound, “I needed you there to…”

To save her? To commit the atrocious sin for her? To hold her afterwards and tell her she was still a good person?

“You left me there,” Y/n whimpered, “To die.”

Joel felt the weight of the words, each one slicing through his heart the way he deserved. He deserved so much more.

The worst part, was that in all of Y/n’s twenty years she’d spent wanting to hurt Joel, with the opportunity in front of her, she couldn’t…because she understood. She understood what grief that powerful could do to a person. When she had made the choice to end her family’s lives, she lost herself. She couldn’t make sense of a single part of her mind, her heart, what was left of her soul…and twenty years later, Joel’s delusions were perfectly clear to her.

Despite all her efforts, she couldn’t hate his decision. Only the ramifications.

Joel felt like his entire body was made of led, unable to move so much as a finger. Only his eyes seemed to work properly as they rolled tears down his cheeks.

He had abandoned her in a state of unawareness and had doomed her to a life as broken as his. He had condemned her soul the minute he’d walked away from her. The reason for all her pain was him.

The emotions balled inside Y/n, gathering more and more pressure until she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Screw understanding, she had to get it all out.

“She chose me, Joel,” Y/n cried, “She fucking chose me! And you fucking stole that from me,” she pointed at him, “You tried to take her memory away from me like it was nothing. Why the fuck did you do that?!”

“Because,” Joel’s body shot up off the bed, turning to face Y/n, his voice possessed a strength that only came in desparate sadness, “We were so close! We were so damn close,” he drew a shaking breath and ran his hand through his hair.

Y/n stood as still as she could, nearly relieved that Joel was finally being honest with her, but heartbroken all the same.

Joel had kept so many secrets over the years, from Tess, from Tommy…it was the nature of survival. Keeping your cards close to your chest. But he couldn’t take the physical pain, the sick feeling in his stomach, that came with hiding one in particular.

He lowered his voice, his own pain softening the edges of his tone. “Did you know I was gonna buy you a ring? That weekend?” Joel asked, feeling stupid for posing it as question, “‘Course you didn’t. That’s why I was workin’ all those extra shifts,” he pointed a finger in the distance between them, “I was goin’ to get it the next morning…”

That was it. There was no more pain for either of them to feel. This was the great, whopping, life-stealing heartbreak that would steal the last of them.

“We were so close,” Joel whispered, his lip quivering as he bit back his sobs, “And we lost it all. And I couldn’t handle it…” his voice cracked with his final admission, “And there hasn’t been a day on this godforsaken planet that I haven’t regretted it.”

There was ten feet and two decades of space between them, but their minds were back in Austin on that last night, before tragedy struck. The glow of the TV flickered across their eyes, the soft sounds of Sarah’s breaths against Joel’s legs filled their ears, the phantom weight of Y/n’s head on Joel’s shoulder nudged him. It was the start of the future they were never meant to have.

Y/n stopped any attempt to slow her tears, instead allowing soft sniffles to escape her. She pressed a hand to one side of her face, digging her palm into her cheek. Sarah had chosen her as her mother, Joel had chosen her as his wife. They had been on the verge of…everything she’d ever wanted for them.

Joel watched her process his confession, still tied to her soul enough to feel the pain wash over her as if it was his own, because it was. He had felt the gaping hole of her at his side for two decades, knowing he was the one who caused the vacancy. Regardless of whether he ever saw Y/n again, he would carry that scar for the rest of his miserable life…

Y/n fought to draw a breath deep enough to keep her from losing consciousness. She met Joel’s eyes, wet and bloodshot and with all the strength she could summon.

“We did lose everything,” she agreed, the pressure of the lump in her throat forcing the words out of her, “But we didn’t have to lose each other.”

In the three months they’d worked together, risking their lives for Ellie and each other, they’d fought any and all feelings towards one another that didn’t pair well with Joel’s dishonesty or Y/n’s fury. They’d raged just as hard against their past as they had the violence of those against them. And now, with the truth exposed and nowhere left to hide…they felt it all.

Three months spent carefully considering every move they made towards one another, every word thought over with such consideration…they’d been so committed to keeping up their great divide.

There was nothing left to fight.

Only to feel.

Beautifully in sync with one another, Joel and Y/n surged towards one another, colliding in a kiss that could have stretched twenty years and back.

Joel’s arms wrapped around Y/n’s body, one around her waist and one sliding around her back, anchoring her to him. There was a duality to the way he held her; unbridled passion pressing his fingers deep into her skin, his pained adoration reining in the intensity of the touch, as if he was holding fine china. He practically melted as his hands roamed her, letting the full force of his feelings overwhelm him.

Y/n’s body trembled against Joel, her hands holding his wet cheeks as their lips frantically moved together, clashing and submitting to one another so perfectly. When close became not close enough, she wrapped her arms around Joel’s neck, leaving no space between them. She wept into their kiss, euphoria putting every inch of her at ease. She could feel nothing but him and him alone.

As their touches intensified, their lips digging for more and more of each other, Joel maneuvered them backwards. He blindly guided them until Y/n’s knees hit the edge of the bed, the two of them falling back onto it, never breaking from one another.

They spent their night falling apart and putting each other back together. Twenty years and three months of yearning was spilled out into the darkness of the early morning hours, both Joel and Y/n pouring all the love they’d ever felt for one another into each kiss.

—————————

Y/n’s eyes fluttered open, the clouded sunlight waking her up before anyone could knock on her door.

She could feel the absence of Joel without reaching across the sheets.

Sinking her teeth into her kiss-swollen lip, she shut her eyes and drew a slow breath. The night was never going to change either of their plans, it had been a funeral for all they’d never mourned. Neither of them could have afforded for it to be anything else.

It was a comfortable numbness to settle back into, longing for Joel against the reality of their world.

Y/n dressed in the new clothes Maria had left for her in her room, returning to Joel’s bedroom only to make the bed. It was the least she could do.

While she was tucking the quilt in, a knock on the door drew her focus. It was Tommy. Despite the years of separation, they could still read each other like the siblings they’d almost been. Tommy’s sad eyes registered Y/n’s unusually quiet demeanor and he knew that she was feeling the loss of his brother timelessly, just as she would have in 2003.

“Ellie up?” Y/n asked, finishing up with the blanket.

“I think,” Tommy replied, “Haven’t checked on her yet.”

Y/n settled the pillows back under the headboard, smoothing down a crumbled edge of the quilt and stood up straight. She was making the rest of the journey without Joel, but she was still going to hold her head high.

“Gimme a minute with her,” Y/n said, squeezing past Tommy in the doorway, determined not to look back at the room. She crossed the hall to Ellie’s door, gently knocking.

“Come in.”

The second Y/n walked in the room, she knew that Ellie had been expecting Joel in a new state of mind. There was barely concealed disappointment in the young girl’s eyes. Y/n smoothed her hands over her jeans and came to sit next to her in the bay window. Before they took one more step in their journey together, Y/n needed to make something clear.

“I know you didn’t sign up for any of this,” she began, “I know it’s been hard. You’ve seen things that no one should ever see, let alone someone your age,” Y/n paused, this was as honest as she’d ever been with Ellie, “And I know you’ve lost…so much.”

Ellie’s eyes shifted in Y/n’s direction before darting back forward.

“And it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me any of it,” Y/n carefully reached out and placed her hand over Ellie’s, “But I’m not walking out on you.”

Ellie looked up finally, watching the words fall off of Y/n’s lips.

“I’m with you until you tell me to stop,” Y/n continued, giving a small smile, “Even then...”

The side of Ellie’s mouth barely quirked upwards, that was enough for Y/n to know she had taken the words to heart. Since the beginning of their journey, it had been her and Ellie above all else.

Tommy knocked on the door, poking his head in. “Ready?”

Y/n looked to Ellie to decide, waiting until the girl stood to rise with her. Tommy handed Y/n her backpack which she promptly slung over her shoulders. She was thankful, at least, that Tommy was finishing out the rest of the trip with them.

The three of them filed out of the house, it had snowed heavier at some point in the night, creating an even thicker blanket.

“Stables,” Tommy said, beginning to guide them in the direction.

“Hang on,” Y/n said, cutting across the street in a move that surprised herself, “I’ll be right back.”

She climbed the steps to Tommy’s house, opening the unlocked door and entering. She bypassed the living room entirely, making her way through until she found the kitchen, where Maria was seated with a cup of coffee.

Maria’s fingers traced the handle of the mug, staring down at the liquid, “Are you here to tell me my husband will be fine and I shouldn’t worry?”

“No,” Y/n shook her head, “I mean, he will be, but…no. I came to say thank you.”

Maria dragged her gaze up to Y/n, she’d given enough to warrant wondering what exactly she was being thanked for.

“For…” Y/n exhaled, dancing carefully around the memory of the woman holding her as she wept, “For-“

Maria held up a knowing hand, her voice gaining a softer edge, “You’re welcome.”

Y/n hesitantly smiled, the woman had allowed her to grieve in a way nobody else ever had. A simple thanks seemed too simple, but it was all she had to offer. She turned on her heel to leave and let her have her morning.

“Hang on,” Maria called her back, rising from the table and heading down the hall. She returned with Y/n’s rifle and handgun, extending them out to their rightful owner. As Y/n reached for them, she pulled them back.

“You make sure my baby has a father,” Maria demanded, her eyes pleading with Y/n.

“With my life,” Y/n promised, it was one of the truest things she’d ever said.

Maria handed her the weapons, watching Y/n sling the rifle over her back and holster the handgun. She would never trust her brother-in-law, but she wanted to trust the sister-in-law she could have had.

Y/n exited the house, making her way back to Tommy and Ellie as quick as she could without slipping. Upon seeing the returned firearms, Ellie held up her own pistol, somehow mysteriously returned to her. One look to Tommy’s averted gaze told Y/n all she needed to know.

The three of them strode past the animal pens and into the stables, the same melancholy cloud hanging over them. Y/n was ready to take her night spent with the man she loved and tuck it away in her mind as nothing more than a beautiful moment in time.

When she turned towards one of the stalls, she hadn’t expected to see him standing in front of her.

Joel had made a lot of mistakes in his life, a lot. Most of them spanning over the last two decades, but many had come before. The one that kept him up at night, the one he saw in his dreams, the one that would haunt him every hour of every day would forever be leaving Y/n. Not just because he’d lost the love of his life, but because he’d made the decision for her. He’d played with her life in a way that made her still standing and breathing a damn miracle. Somewhere between leaving the warmth of her body in bed and saddling his horse, he’d realized he couldn’t take that away from her or Ellie.

“You came here to say goodbye or something?” Ellie asked.

“No,” Joel replied, still fiddling with one of the saddle straps, “I came here to steal one of these horses and go.”

“I woulda gave you one,” Tommy said.

“I know,” Joel turned to them, addressing everyone but Y/n, “Anyway…that was thirty minutes ago and I guess…” he stepped forward, finally letting his eyes fall on the woman before Ellie, “You deserve a choice.”

Everything at war inside Y/n settled at Joel’s words.

“I still think you’d be better off with Tommy-“ Joel began.

Ellie had heard enough, shoving the bag of food Tommy had packed them into Joel’s chest, “Let’s go,” she looked back to Y/n as she moved towards the horse, “Say yes.”

Y/n nearly smiled at Ellie’s bossiness, her and Joel’s eyes meeting softly. She hadn’t expected him there, but the change in heart, in the way he was handling the situation was even more unexpected and more welcome. She gave a reserved nod, allowing her cheeks to tug her lips upwards.

Joel could never go make up for what he’d done to Y/n. But whatever time they had left together was going to be spent trying.

Y/n turned to Tommy, “We’re gonna need another horse.”

Tommy nodded, unlatching another stall’s lock, leading one of the horses out and handing the reins to Y/n. “Maybe don’t tell Maria about this…” he smirked.

Y/n nodded, “Gotcha.”

The four of them exited the stables and finished readying the horses. Joel and Y/n both helped Ellie onto the one Joel would ride.

“Hold onto both,” Joel instructed, handing Ellie the reins.

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie nodded, her mood had already perked up.

Y/n and Joel came to Tommy, the three of them standing in a triangle. It was the first moment the three of them had shared since the night before.

“General direction?” Joel asked.

“Head southeast till you hit I-25,” Tommy answered, “It’s right off the interstate, shouldn’t be hard to miss.”

There was a brief pause before Tommy spoke up again, “Promise me y’all are gonna stick together.”

Joel gazed over at Y/n, feeling the history between each of Tommy’s words. Under the cover of night, it would have cut right through him. Now, it was a guarantee he could give both of them.

“I promise,” Joel said, his eyes never leaving Y/n’s. It was the first time she’d smiled at him in a long time, and he felt a new surge of strength through him.

Tommy pulled Joel in first, embracing him with a prayer that this wouldn’t be the last time he laid eyes on his brother. He tugged Y/n into his chest after, wishing the same. He couldn’t regain them only to lose them.

Y/n relaxed in Tommy’s arms, wishing they could stay in the safety of Jackson just a little longer. Twenty years of struggle, a little relief, and then back out into the jaw of danger.

“There’s a place for you here,” Tommy said, keeping a hand on Y/n’s shoulder and looking to Joel, “All of you.”

“Countin’ on it,” Joel said, earning a l eyebrow raise from Y/n. He didn’t feel like explaining his answer any further.

Joel glanced at Tommy’s rifle hitched to his shoulder, “Could I borrow that?”

“Yeah,” Tommy reached for the gun.

“”Cause Maria took mine, you know?” Joel added.

Tommy smiled, “I already said yes, Joel.”

Y/n chuckled, she hadn’t missed Joel scanning the firearms on her person.

“Adios, big brother,” Tommy said, taking one last long look at Joel.

Reluctantly, Y/n and Joel rounded their horses. As Y/n slipped one foot into her stir-up and prepared to swing her leg over, two familiar hands fell on her hips, helping to lift her. When she looked down, Joel was standing below her, his eyes tracing the curve of her calf he was holding. Y/n’s skin tingled under his touch.

They weren’t going to analyze it to death, but things had changed.

Joel saddled his own horse, Ellie wrapping her arms around his body, and the three of them rode through town. Tommy followed them to the gate, a few of the residents opening it up for them. With a final shared look between the three of them, Joel and Y/n led their horses out of Jackson’s borders, parting with Tommy.

Y/n’s chest tightened as soon as the gates slammed shut, they’d had a few wonderful hours of sanctuary. Back in the throes of losing their lives, she wanted to run back.

Joel could sense her anxiety, it was so similar to how he was feeling. If the stakes weren’t so high, he would have never left. He took one foot out of his stirrups and nudged Y/n’s boot with his, dragging her eyes to him. He gave a small nod to let her know he was there, for the first time in twenty years, he was with her in any and all ways she needed him.

—————————

It took them a solid day of travel, with sneaky glances and reserved smiles, for Joel and Y/n to start talking.

Closer to sunset, Joel decided to cave and teach Ellie how to shoot with the rifle. She’d practically fallen off the horse in her rush to get on the ground.

“Wide right,” Joel instructed, after Ellie had missed her fourth shot, “You’re flinchin’.”

“The target’s too small,” she complained.

Y/n watched them from beside her horse, sneaking in a quick bite of food. Ellie and Joel were on their knees with the rifle resting on a log. Their closeness and the way Joel was guiding her through her shots wasn’t lost on Y/n and for the first time, she didn’t think it was lost on Joel either.

“I made it bigger than I should’ve,” he told Ellie, “Eject the cartridge.”

Ellie did as she was told, “And I am not flinching.”

“Mm-hmm,” Joel humored her.

“The rifle just sucks.”

“Okay, give it,” Joel said, reaching for the gun.

Ellie gladly handed it over and switched spots with him, “It doesn’t aim right.”

“Mm-hmm,” Joel adjusted his position.

“You’ll see,” Ellie insisted.

Y/n dusted the crumbs off her hands and came to watch, “How can you tell it’s busted if you’ve used it?”

Ellie gestured to the target Joel and Y/n had made her, “‘Cause I should’ve been able to fucking hit that!”

“Ah,” Y/n smiled, “So you’re just that good? Never touched a rifle in your life, but you’ve got the raw talent.”

Ellie flipped Y/n off, settling in beside Joel with a pair of binoculars to spot the target. Y/n moved to stand a few inches away from Joel.

“A deep breath in, slow breath out,” Joel recited, he was ultra aware of Y/n’s presence beside him, “You squeeze the trigger like you love it. Gentle…steady…” he purposefully paused, unable to help himself, “Nice and slow.”

An involuntary heat creeped up Y/n’s neck and landed in her cheeks.

“You gonna shoot this thing or get it pregnant?” Ellie smirked.

When Joel glared up at Ellie and stopped to see Y/n’s reaction after, she kept her eyes dead ahead on the target. The small smile gracing her lips told Joel enough.

“It isn’t gonna work,” Ellie insisted, looking through the lenses of the binoculars, “It doesn’t aim right.”

Joel took a flawless shot, the bullet cutting through the middle of their target.

Ellie’s jaw dropped, “You dick.”

Proud of himself, Joel casually shrugged it off.

“Okay, okay,” Y/n nudged Joel’s leg with her foot, “Now that the amateurs have had their turn…”

Joel let go of the gun and scooted to the side, allowing Y/n the space to kneel down against the log. Even under the circumstances, teaching a fourteen year old how to defend herself in the worst case scenario, with the wind brushing through her air and her brow knit in concentration, Joel couldn’t help but admire Y/n’s beauty.

They had yet to talk about what had happened between them on their last night in Jackson. He didn’t know where they stood, what she was feeling, or the smartest way to go about finding out. Coming back to her and Ellie had been pure emotion. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to leave them, he couldn’t.

“Hang on,” Joel held up a hand before Y/n took a shot, moving in closer to her, “Posture’s wrong.”

“My posture’s fine,” Y/n said plainly.

Joel decided to test the waters, stretching an arm out around Y/n’s body and sliding his trigger finger over his. His other hand reached forward to envelop hers against the body of the rifle.

Y/n tried to conceal her smirk as Joel wrapped himself around her, her skin felt like it was buzzing and crackling under the pressure of his body.

“Eighth of an inch could be the difference between life and death,” Joel defended his actions, his lips nearly brushing Y/n’s ear.

“Mmm,” Y/n hummed, sucking on her bottom lip and trying to pull it straight.

Carefully, Joel rotated her body a barely imperceptible amount. Through his gloves, he could feel the way Y/n’s pulse sped up under his touch and decided he’d made the right call.

“You gotta think through every move,” Joel said, the depth of his voice rumbling against Y/n’s back, “Don’t rush through it.”

Y/n lined her eye up with the viewfinder, deciding to join in on Joel’s game. “There’s not always enough time. Sometimes you gotta be fast,” she paused, “And firm.”

Joel felt his own heart rate pick up, the adrenaline of their banter sending him back to the night before. But Y/n still hadn’t succeeded in catching him off guard.

“Nobody’s shootin’ back,” Joel said, readjusting his grip on her hands, “You can take your time.”

Attempting to take a steady breath, Y/n fired her shot, the bullet lodging itself a millimeter apart from Joel’s.

Y/n pulled away from the viewfinder, turning her head towards Joel only to find him waiting for her.

“I think I could’ve done that on my own,” she purred.

Joel’s eyes were locked on her lips, nearly admitting defeat and giving into the tension they’d created. “Guess we’ll never know,” he replied huskily.

“Nice and slow, huh?” Ellie interrupted the moment, smirking at them, “Fuckin’ disgusting.”

Y/n smiled as Joel’s head dropped a little, sliding the gun back into his hands and getting to her feet.

“Come on, Cowgirl Jane,” she pulled on Ellie’s shoulders, steering the girl back to the horses, “Saddle up.”

Joel watched the two of them walk back to the horses, his eyes focusing on Y/n’s silhouette as she tugged Ellie’s body into hers. For months, all he could think of was what could have been, what almost had been. He’d never stopped to think that he had something so similar to what he’d lost in front of him the whole time.

—————————

They camped for the night under a rock formation, similar to the one they’d slept at the night before making it to Jackson. Ellie was tired enough to call it a night earlier than usual, leaving Joel and Y/n to themselves…for the first time since their conversation.

They sat across the fire from one another, unable to tear their gazes away for more than maybe five seconds. It had been like that all day, they couldn’t keep their eyes off one another. If a stranger took one look at them, they would never guess they’d been running from each other just 24 hours prior.

“You warm enough?” Joel asked, scanning the layers she had on.

“Mm-hmm,” Y/n nodded, heating her hands by the fire.

Joel settled back against his rock, watching the light of the flames dance across her face. It was the same shade of orange as the bedroom lamp had been.

“It’s rude to stare, Miller,” Y/n remarked, feeling the heat of his deep brown eyes on her.

“‘M not starin’,” Joel replied, a lovestruck smile pulling at his mouth.

“Really?” Y/n chortled, finally meeting his gaze, “Then what’re you doin’?”

It had been three months of avoiding looking at her too long, Joel wanted to take his time and admire every inch of her face for as long as she deserved to be admired, “Somethin’ else.”

Y/n felt the blood rush to her cheeks again, Joel could wield sentiment just as expertly as a gun. It was so tempting to just watch him watch her all night.

But they had to face the music at some point.

“Listen,” Joel started, his gaze darting to his hands in his lap, “About last night…”

“Yeah…” Y/n nodded, hugging one of her knees to her chest.

“I, uh…” Joel looked earnestly back up at her, “I didn’t plan that or anything.”

Y/n nearly laughed, “I didn’t think you did. And for the record, that’s not why I was in your room.”

Joel nodded, never in a million years could either of them have guessed how the night would have ended.

“Do you…” he paused, fearing the answer he knew he might get, “Regret it?”

Y/n knew she was well within her rights to resent Joel, in one way or another. But the thing was, she was tired of holding a grudge against him, of pretending like he wasn’t still engrained in her soul. What happened between them had been unexpected, unplanned and…beautiful.

“Y’know,” Y/n began, “I really tried to hate you at the beginning of all this. I mean, there was a part of me that definitely did but…I never could’ve made good on any of those promises to kill you…” she inhaled, “I’ve spent twenty years just…wanting to scream every time I thought about you. And then at some point, one of the many times I ran that day back in my mind…I understood. Why you did it.”

Joel’s amusement was sucked right out of him, a somber expression capturing his face again.

“It made sense,” Y/n nodded, watching the fire instead of Joel, “‘Cause after I…” she stopped short of the horrific memory, “After I did what I did…I broke. I mean, I shattered on the floor and I never found all the pieces…

“You’re still you,” Joel interjected, unable to help himself.

“Joel…” Y/n smiled sadly at him, “I’m not the same. Neither are you. I don’t think you can go through something like what we went through and not come out different…,” Y/n sighed, “And it’s not fair of me to keep blaming you for what I did after you left.”

The last thing Joel was going to let her do was try and make him feel better about what he’d done to her, “Y/n, I-“

“No,” Y/n readjusted herself against the rock, “Stop. I can be upset you left me, I can be sad about it…but I can’t blame you for the choices I made. They were mine to make and…” she sniffled, “I have to live with them.”

“So, no…” Y/n sighed, “I don’t regret it. Any of it.”

Joel shifted, so unsettled by how the air was shifting. He couldn’t handle the way Y/n was treating him. It wasn’t what he deserved.

“Just…please hate me,” he asked of her, his throat forming a lump, “In some way, just…just a little.”

Y/n knew what self-loathing looked like, she practiced it every minute of every day. She’d never felt something stronger than the way she despised herself, and she didn’t want Joel to drown in the same whirlpool.

Picking herself off the ground, she walked around the fire, nudging Joel’s legs flat against the dirt. She lowered herself onto his lap, rendering him still and speechless.

Joel’s breath caught in his chest as Y/n sat atop him, her gaze travelling across his face and her hand coming up to cup his cheek. He nearly flinched at the softness of her touch, here he was begging for her vitriol, and she was bathing him in honey.

“We don’t always get what we want, Joel,” she whispered, her words crossing the small, small distance between them.

Joel could do nothing but tremble at the sentiment, underlying feelings rising to the sentence’s surface and embracing him. None of it was fair, what he’d put her through, what she’d gone through after, and what had put them there in the first place. He knew he didn’t deserve Y/n anymore, if he ever had, but…he wanted to be selfish. He wanted to love her again with the full force that came with twenty years of missing a person.

It all came down to whether or not he would let himself.

And the way her fingers grazed his cheek and her tender gaze flipped his stomach practically threw him into her arms.

Joel leaned forward, pressing his lips to Y/n’s in a passionate, yet slow kiss. She caught his face in her palms, allowing him to drag her closer till their chests were pressed together. It hadn’t taken long for their bodies to remember the feel of one another. Joel inhaled deeply, breathing Y/n in like she was his life support, and she was. He would forever live and die by her.

When they broke, muscle memory brought their foreheads together. The crackling of the fire and their quickened breaths were the soundtrack to their intimate moment. Y/n couldn’t help the tears welling in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Joel’s hands sliding up her back, one coming to cup the back of her neck.

Y/n shook her head, biting back a smile as her eyes travelled Joel’s face. “I just never thought I’d see you again…” she whispered, her thumb gliding over Joel’s beard.

Joel turned into her palm, pressing apologetic kisses to the skin. The same thought had echoed through his mind for two decades.

“You still gotta give me hell,” he said in between kisses, “Make me pay for what I put you through.”

Y/n smiled, her skin tingling at his touch, “Stop.”

Joel’s lips travelled to her wrist, “Fire a warnin’ shot every once in a while, just to keep me on my toes.”

“Shut up,” Y/n laughed softly, pulling his chin up to gain access to his lips.

Under the midnight Wyoming sky, they let themselves fall for each other all over again. It would never be exactly as it had been, they were different people, but the core flame remained the same. Joel and Y/n had travelled for twenty years only to find their way back to one another. In every kiss, every touch, there was forgiveness. There was redemption. Above all, there was love that nothing, not even Cordyceps could lay waste to.

When their kisses began to slow, exhaustion hitting them both, Joel pulled back. “Get some sleep,” he brushed a strand of hair from Y/n’s face, “I got first watch.”

“You don’t fucking wake me up,” Y/n smiled, “Ever.”

“No, I don’t,” Joel ran his hands slowly up and down her back. He had a hard time dragging her from peace to the cold reality they spent their waking hours in.

Y/n rolled her eyes and rolled off of Joel’s lap, crossing the fire to retrieve her sleeping bag. Joel watched her every move in daze, fully consumed by his love for her once again.

She dropped her bag at Joel’s side, pointing to him decisively before sliding in, “Wake me up.”

“Okay,” Joel smiled, humoring her. They both knew he wouldn’t.

Y/n settled in next to him, resting one hand on his thigh. She knew they were too vulnerable to ask him to lay next to her, but she needed some piece of him to fall asleep.

Joel sat there, holding his rifle for the first time with a smile on his face. He had ended up right where he’d tried so hard not to be, exposed by his instinctual need to love someone. He glanced down at Y/n and further away at Ellie. He couldn’t say that he regretted falling captive to either of them.

—————————

The next few days went by in a blur of snow-coated landscapes and trees that all looked identical.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Joel and Y/n’s reunion was the freedom it allowed them. They didn’t have to hide any more behind their shields, they didn’t have to try and find fault in each other. They were unshackled from their grudge and it didn’t just serve them.

“So the way they ran stuff in Jackson,” Ellie asked on their second day of travel, “Was that how things used to be?”

“No,” Joel answered as he guided their horse, “The country was too big for that. Back then, there were basically two main ways of lookin’ at things. Some people wanted to own everything. And some people didn’t want anyone to own anything at all.”

“Most people didn’t even care about the actual issues,” Y/n added, remembering sitting through mind-numbing debates amongst friends at dinner parties or candidates on a tv screen, “They just wanted to argue.”

“So which one were you guys?” Ellie asked.

“Neither,” Joel answered for both him and Y/n, “We just did our jobs.”

“Which was…” Ellie tried to recall the details they’d told them earlier, “Building?”

“That’s right. Houses, stores, that kind of thing. We were called contractors,” Joel replied, nodding to Y/n, “She used to sell me all my supplies.”

“Oh,” Ellie smirked and pumped an eyebrow at Y/n, “That makes sense…you hooked him up.”

Y/n rolled her eyes, “You live in the fucking gutter, child.”

Ellie snickered, before lowering her voice, “‘The Contractor.’ That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, we were cool,” Joel breathed, deciding rewriting an insignificant piece of history wouldn’t stunt Ellie’s growth, “Everybody loved contractors.”

Y/n nearly snorted, turning her face so Joel could maintain his reputation in Ellie’s eyes but earned a light kick from him to the shin. When she looked back, Ellie was resting her face against Joel’s back and Joel was beaming. The lover’s eyes met, a silent understanding passing between them that this was the happiest either of them had been since…

Y/n thought to the plastic butterfly that had survived the last three months in her backpack. Joel still didn’t know it was there.

Each night that they camped, Y/n drifted a little closer to Joel until the second after they’d start their fire, she’d settle right into his arms. Ellie continually took the piss out of them, making a suggestive remark or serenading them with an off-key rendition of an old ballad. Y/n would laugh and throw something at her, Joel would watch them both and try to conceal just how much they were bringing him back to life.

When Joel would stand watch, Y/n would be right by his side, unable to be apart from him even in sleep. On the nights where he’d let her take the second shift, desperate for a moment’s rest, he’d lay his head on her leg. Twenty years of separation were driving them together with a force neither of them could fight.

Each day, Joel and Y/n explained a little more about their lives or how the world had worked to Ellie. She absorbed it all as best she could, but it was naturally difficult to imagine a world different than the only one she’d known.

“Okay, so if you mess up your fourth down,” Ellie recited what Joel had explained to her, “Then you give the ball to the other team?”

“Right,” Joel confirmed, “It’s called a turnover.”

“Turnover,” Ellie tested out the word, “But if you make it to ten yards, then you’re back to first down?”

“Yep,” Joel nodded.

“So, basically just moving in one direction.”

“Basically,” Joel replied, “But violent.”

“Oh, well,” Ellie nodded, “There’s that.”

Y/n guided her horse alongside them, “Do you remember that Cowboys game we went to?”

It was the first time either of them had brought up one of the lighter periods of their past. “Tommy’s birthday?” Joel recalled, “Yeah, they barely pulled through.”

“We made it up on the big screen,” Y/n remembered, a smile coming to her face.

“And Tommy was so fuckin’ wasted, he started dancin’,” Joel continued the memory.

Y/n grinned, “We had to pour him into the car, let him sleep it off on the couch.”

Joel chortled under his breath, for the first time feeling like he could look back on the happier parts of his life without feeling guilt. Y/n represented both the best and worst times he’d gone through, the hope and the fall of all his dreams. The light she was bringing back into his space was illuminating all their history, and they couldn’t sustain themselves anymore on grief.

He wrapped the reins around one fist and reached over to Y/n’s horse, pulling her hand into his. She looked across to him, smiling warmly and tightening her fingers around his.

Ellie groaned, making a convincing gag sound.

“Would you rather us try and kill each other all day?” Y/n asked as Joel scoffed.

“That was easier to stomach,” Ellie remarked, though it didn’t really bother her all that much. She liked Joel and Y/n getting along.

They came up on the I-25, just as Tommy had directed them. The city’s outline acted as a homing beacon.

“Well, how ‘bout that?” Joel said, “Made it in five days.”

“Easy days,” Ellie added, “I don’t know what Tommy was so afraid of.”

“Still time to find out,” Joel commented, he was happy, but he couldn’t be delusional.

Ellie lowered her voice and threw on a bad Southern drawl, “‘Still time to find out.’”

Joel glared back at her before she switched to a strained, creepy whisper, “‘The Contractorrrr.’”

Y/n and Ellie shared a laugh, Joel rolled his eyes and dropped Y/n’s hand, causing them to laugh harder. The sound warmed his chest.

They rode another hour before making it to the outskirts of the university.

“Wow,” Y/n muttered, taking in the corroded architecture.

“I know,” Joel agreed, having not stepped foot on a campus since tours in his junior year of high school, “Been a while.”

“‘Home of the Big Horns,’” Ellie read off the sign, “What does that mean?”

“Team mascot,” Joel explained, “It’s a kind of sheep.”

“Oh, see?” Ellie said, “One step closer to your dream. Don’t see any Fireflies though.”

“They’re gonna be further in,” Y/n said, nudging her horse forward to lead them. It had been three months since she’d actually thought of herself as a Firefly. Being with Joel, taking care of Ellie had made her feel like her old self. To put on her other identity felt…unnatural.

They rode through the dormitory section of campus, of all the abandoned buildings she’d seen over the years, Y/n was sure this was the strangest.

“So these places,” Ellie started, “People would live here and like, what? Go to classes and stuff?”

“Yup,” Joel answered,

“Even though they were adults,” Ellie struggled. FEDRA recruited straight out of high school. College was, truly, an alien concept to her.

“Sort of adults,” Joel clarified, “I think it was just as much about partyin’ and findin’ themselves as anythin’ else.”

“Hey, hey,” Y/n spoke up, “Some of us were studious.”

Joel smiled, “Alright. And figurin’ out what they wanted to do with their lives.”

“What they wanted to do with their lives,” Ellie repeated, chuckling to herself.

“It didn’t always go that way,” Y/n added, “I mean, I went for four years, got a degree and it stayed on a wall. I never used it. Ended up in a hardware store.”

“So why go?” Ellie asked.

Y/n shrugged, “Like he said, you try to find yourself at that age…” she hesitated to continue, “I didn’t find myself till much later in life.”

Joel knew exactly what she was referring to, transporting himself somewhere between their first date and their last kiss.

“So I’ve been thinkin’,” he spoke up.

“Mm-hmm?” Ellie hummed.

“I don’t want a sheep ranch, actually. I mean, if the deal is I can do anything?”

Ellie looked over his shoulder up at him, “That’s the deal.”

“Well…” Joel was about to reveal the very last secret he’d been keeping, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer.”

“Shut up,” Ellie laughed.

Joel looked back at her, “Why is that funny?”

“You gotta sing something now,” Ellie said.

“No.”

“Oh, you can’t just drop that on her and run,” Y/n grinned, “C’mon, hit us with a little Patsy Cline.”

“Yeah, c’mon, man,” Ellie joined in, “I’m not gonna laugh.”

“You’re already laughin’,” Joel pointed out.

“Yeah, okay, true,” Ellie replied, it was just too funny to think about dark, brooding Joel belting out an 80’s pop song or a 90’s grunge anthem, “Well, you’re singin’ for us later. I’m gonna save the fuckin’ world, man. It’s the least you can do for me.”

“I can’t top that,” Y/n smiled, “But I’ll make your life a complete hell if I don’t get to hear that voice again.”

Joel smirked, looking between the two women who could make him do just about anything, “Fair enough.”

Y/n and Joel drove their horses deeper into campus, coming up on what would have once been considered the quad. Now, there were wild animals freely roaming the frozen grass.

“Are those monkeys?” Ellie excitedly asked.

“Must be from the old labs,” Joel considered.

Ellie laughed as they chased each other away, “Look at them go.”

“First time seein’ a monkey?” Joel asked.

“First time seein’ a monkey.”

Y/n was a few feet ahead of them, scanning for her west coast counterparts. Spray painted on some signage, she spotted the Firefly symbol.

“Hey,” she called back to Joel, who was already coming to her side, “Look.”

Ellie sighed, “Here we go…”

Joel and Y/n kept their rifles against their chests as they followed the path, Y/n continued to ride ahead of them to handle any of the talking.

“Guard stations,” Ellie observed.

“Empty,” Y/n added, a twinge of suspicion lacing through her stomach.

“Uh…” Ellie dragged out the non-verbal question.

“Yeah,” Joel confirmed.

“Gun?”

It was foolish to think that their happiness would last the whole way to the base without a hint of trouble. “Yeah,” Joel sighed.

Y/n slid off her horse first, tucking her reins with Joels between a tree and its branch. The two of them shared a look, tender yet hardened as they removed their gloves to handle their guns better.

“Stick behind us,” Y/n ordered Ellie, who already knew the drill.

Joel and Y/n walked side by side, their pistols unholstered, as they entered the main building. The inside was utter destruction, everything from medical equipment to vials and medication bottles strewn across the floor.

“There were definitely doctors here,” Ellie said, picking up a small box from one of the carts left standing.

Joel picked up a file, flipping the manilla folder open and finding a piece of yellow pad paper.

“This is a packing list,” he explained, “Somethin’ you make before moving.”

He turned it to Y/n, who examined the contents of the list. Marlene had moved the Firefly base in Boston a few times before they’d found their home, their lists were nearly identical to this one.

“They just left?” Ellie asked.

There was a metallic clang from somewhere on a floor above them, all of their muscles tensing at the sound.

“Maybe not all of ‘em,” Ellie looked to Joel and Y/n.

The three of them carefully climbed the stairs, following the noise to the third floor. Joel managed to get ahead of Y/n, making himself a human shield. The same mess that littered the ground floor was scattered down the hall. Something, or someone, had cause the Fireflies to leave in a hurry.

Pausing outside the room in which the sound was coming from, Joel held up a hand to Ellie. Y/n scrunched down, sneaking past the doors and coming to stand on the other side. She and Joel shared an affirmative nod, drawing their guns and slowly entering the room.

Where the monkeys revealed themselves as the noisy culprits.

“Jeez,” Y/n breathed.

“Well,” Joel sighed, “At least it ain’t Clickers.”

“Yeah, no Fireflies either,” Ellie began to roam the room, “Maybe in all that research, they turned into fuckin’ monkeys.”

Y/n put her hands to her hips, throwing her head back to stare at the ceiling. She wracked her brain for anything, any piece of information about the base out west. An emergency evacuation plan, a second meeting place…

“You got anything?” Joel asked, seemingly telepathic.

“Nothing,” Y/n replied, scrunching her eyes shut, “I’ve never been privy to all of Marlene’s secrets.”

The two of them began to examine the room, Y/n was drawn to a cork-board with papers pinned to it. There was a map of the country in the middle with thumbtacks leading a path all the way to Salt Lake City.

“Hey,” Y/n called for Joel and Ellie.

“That’s where they went?” Ellie pointed her gun towards Utah.

“All the pins lead there,” Joel observed, “Maybe gettin’ ahead of the weather…better facilities? I don’t know.”

Y/n shook her head, “I mean, I don’t remember there being a base out there but-“

A set of unfamiliar voices interrupted her thought.

Joel and Y/n hurried to the window, barely peeking out enough to spot a group of raiders outside.

“Out the back,” Joel ordered, the three of them quickly rushing out the room.

They filed down the stairs and out the back entrance of the lab, taking shelter behind old sandbags as they listened for the raiding party. When all they heard was silence, Joel led them to the next point of safety.

“Ready?”

Y/n and Ellie nodded, guns drawn and ready to make their grand escape.

The three of them ran across the distance to where they’d left their horses. Joel and Y/n quickly holstered their rifles while Ellie tried to keep their animals calm.

“Joel! Y/n!”

Ellie’s cry caused them to spin around, one of the raiders had snuck up on them. He swung a lead pipe around, Joel pulling Y/n out of the way just in time before it collided with her skull. Y/n reached for her rifle again, ramming it in their attacker’s stomach, causing him to stumble. Joel took the opportunity to lunge at him, slamming him up against the tree. He took a shiner to the chin before flipping the raider in his grip and cutting off his airways with a chokehold.

“Get her,” Joel grunted to Y/n as the man struggled against him.

Y/n ran to Ellie, who had her gun aimed with a shaking hand, and pulled her back from the danger.

Joel waited until the raider was too weak to fight back before snapping his neck with a sickening crack and dropping him to the ground. He turned around to Y/n and Ellie, his chest rising and falling in heaves.

They were both staring at his abdomen in horror.

He looked down in confusion, a knife sticking out of him.

The world seemed to stop, for all of them, as realization hit in different ways. Joel grabbed hold of the dagger’s handle, pulling it out of him with a grunt. His blood began to pour out of him.

Y/n’s slackened jaw trembled, watching it all unfold as Joel’s eyes flew up to hers.

“Joel,” Ellie cried, the only one of them still thinking clearly and spotting the other raiders coming up on them, “Get on the horse.”

Joel managed to take a few steps forward while Y/n rushed to her own horse. He mounted his horse, letting out a blood-curdling cry of pain that, despite all their instincts, neither of them could stop to care for.

“El,” Y/n called as she mounted her own animal, “Go!”

Joel and Ellie began to ride off with Y/n not far behind, she was trying to manage the horse and shoot. Most of her shots landed at the ground around the raider’s feet.

Ellie took a few shots as well, “Get back!”

One fatal bullet hit one of the men, a warning to the others that may try to follow them.

Looking back for a split second, Y/n made a shot that cut through one of the raider’s legs. She spun back around to urge her horse forward.

“Joel,” Y/n shouted, “Ride.”

Through the shock that was beginning to hit his system, Joel could still understand her. He nudged the horse forward, their speed picking up and creating a wider berth between them and the men chasing after them.

It took them twenty minutes of riding until they were sure they’d lost them.

“They’re not following us,” Ellie said, looking to their rear, “I think we’re safe.”

Y/n looked over at Joel, his eyes were glazed over as he hunched over the reins of the horse.

“Joel,” she called, as if she could warn him of what his body had already set in motion.

He slipped from his horse before Ellie or Y/n could do a thing.

“Joel,” the girl cried, “No, no, no, no, shit!”

He fell to the snow with a grunt, his vision going black, the last thing is ears registered being-

“Joel!”

Y/n rushed off her horse, beating Ellie to his body and kneeling over it. His skin had turned three shades paler than his usual glow, Y/n felt his deathly cold cheeks and began to cry.

“No, no, no,” she mumbled, tapping his face firmly, “Joel, wake up.”

“Joel?” Ellie called him, kneeling on his other side, “Joel?”

Y/n was sane enough to examine his wound, blood spilling out of it at an uncontrollable rate.

“Shit,” she whimpered, “Ellie, his hands.”

Ellie covered Joel’s hands and pressed down on the hole in an attempt to stop the flow.

“Joel, open your eyes,” Ellie ordered, leaning over his face, “Open your eyes. Joel, you gotta get up.”

Panic mounted in Y/n quicker than it ever had, her mind flashing back to Outbreak Day, the last time she’d felt the life slip from someone she loved.

“No,” she begged, her tears falling onto Joel’s cheeks and rolling down his own face, “Joel, come on. Please, wake up.”

“We can’t fuckin’ do this without you,” Ellie began to choke on her own cries, “We don’t know where the fuck we’re going, what the fuck we’re gonna do…”

They needed him.

Ellie let out one more heartbreaking croak of his name, “Joel.”

Y/n pressed her forehead to his as if she could will her life into him. She couldn’t go twenty years missing him, get him back only to have him ripped from her.

“Joel, please,” she whined, “Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me.”

They sat in the snow, begging him to do something he couldn’t.

Y/n fought against the fears bubbling in her throat, ready to swallow her. She had to think clearly and quickly if they had any chance of saving him.

She wrenched her backpack off her body, frantically pulling at her jacket until it was off her too. “Ellie,” she sniffled, “Lift his shoulders.”

Ellie crawled above Joel’s head and strained to lift him, Y/n forced and shimmied her coat underneath him, yanking it until it was around his lwoer back. She pulled the sleeves around to his front, lined them up with the wound and tied a tight knot. A makeshift tourniquet.

“We gotta get him on the horse,” Y/n thought out loud, trying to think of the best way to move him, “Bring one of ‘em down.”

Ellie ran to retrieve Y/n’s horse, leading it back to the dip in the land they were on. Y/n brushed a hand over Joel’s cheek again, praying he stayed unconscious for the next part.

“I’m gonna get him to his feet,” Y/n instructed through her tears, “You’re gonna keep the horse steady, then you’re gonna help me get him on, okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie nodded, just as emotional as Y/n.

“Okay,” Y/n wrapped one of Joel’s arms around her shoulders and hoisted him to a seated position, “C’mon, honey. Come on.”

Joel’s head lolled backwards, his lips were turning blue. It was better to try and keep him awake.

“Joel,” Y/n said into his ear, loudly, “Joel, c’mon, stay awake for me.”

She got to her feet, calling on a supernatural strength she didn’t know she possessed and getting Joel upright, only for his knees to go out. Ellie was quick to take hold of his other side, doing her best to keep him up. She and Y/n strained ahead to their horse, until it was time to lift him.

Y/n mounted the animal first, they’d gotten Joel leaned up against it and Ellie was keeping him steady. “I’m gonna pull, you’re gonna push, okay?”

Ellie nodded.

“Go,” Y/n ordered, pulling Joel by his armpits up onto the horse with her. He let out a muffled groan as they did, a sad, but good sign. Ellie strained as she helped to lift him the rest of the way.

“I got you,” Y/n lowered him onto her back, the full weight of him pressing into her, “I got you.”

Joel’s head fell forward against Y/n’s shoulder, knowing even through his haze that it was a safe place to be.

“Where do we go?” Ellie asked, having grabbed Y/n’s backpack and mounted her horse.

Y/n looked at the area around them, hopelessly clueless as to what their next move was. Joel wouldn’t make the five day ride back to Jackson, and they couldn’t go back to the university. It was uncharted waters, whichever way they went.

“We find somewhere we can hide,” Y/n decided, on the verge of hyperventilating, “Anywhere.”

“We passed that neighborhood on the way,” the girl recalled.

“Yeah,” Y/n tugged Joel’s arms around her waist, “Yeah, let’s try there.”

The two women urged their horses forward, somewhere between a sprint and a trot, cutting through the woods beside them to head back to their original route. Y/n clutched Joel’s hands, interlocking her fingers with his, determined not to let him die in her arms.

She wouldn’t.

She couldn’t.

—————————

TYL Taglist: @bachiracore @stolenxkissess @kayleezra @the-wistful-reader @allthesesonsofbitches @goth-detectives365 @trippovert @rh1nestonecowg1rl @emiliaserpe @khaleesihavilliard @frietiemeloen @gracie7209 @dorck26 @thegirlnextdoorssister @alanis-altair @mariwinns16 @whosscruffylooking @endofthexline @alexiaricciardo @eonnyx @pedrosmexicangf @scarlettequinn @ao-sleepy @toinfinityandbeyonce2 @deanlovescassie @turmoil-ash @sorrowjunky @kpopslur @xxlilyxx90 @midgetpottermills @presidential-facts @scoopsnini @tubble-wubble @jamesdeerest @burninggracesandbridges @star-wars-lover @lucyhotchner @cococola-cocaine @witheringhqarts @fall-writes @alwaysdjarin @xxmoonn @emilia-the-artist @wand-erer5 @boneyarrd @lizard-zombie @itwasallinmyhead1 @cassidylea123 @paleepeaches @mxltifxnd0m @kettlekatie @ultimate-cinephile @gloryekaterina @caramelkatsukis-bitch @whovianayesha @memeorydotcom @deadunicorn159 @get0ut0fmyr00m @siriuslymooned @emmyeed @superbreadsoul @hellu-people1 @ourautumn86 @inas-thing @noraapple05 @givemylovetoall @luvwanda (tags cont. in comments)

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller imagine #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fanfic #joel miller fic #the last of us imagine #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fanfic #the last of us fic #twenty years later

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piratefishmama · 11 months

Text

Nest | Part 7

The cafeteria was… chaotic, on the best of days. You had to have nerves of steel and endless patience to work in those kitchens, they couldn’t just walk around with a list of options for Omegas to choose from for their days ahead, it was a ‘they want this right this minute and it could change in five so be quick!!’ kind of deal.

They were dealing with Heat-minded Omegas, which meant they might as well have been dealing with a whole building full of pregnant people. Cravings right left and centre and none of them made any sense to anyone with working tastebuds.

The only thing they consistently had, was carbs.

It meant they had to get creative sometimes.

Owens had been an absolute genius and had made sure there were a few fridges and cabinets stocked at all times with the base items to make up the ‘weirder shit’ that couldn’t be made on the fly. Like Celery sticks, peanut butter, Nutella, carrots, etc.

Anything vaguely phallic shaped was cut up into chunks, slices, or mashed because heat-minded Omegas were sometimes very stupid.

The cabinets also stocked treats too, various snack foods, chips, candy, cakes, etc. It was mostly carb loading foods, things high in carbohydrates which Omegas needed and often craved during the second stage of their heat.

Owens funded that one himself. Took the cost of whatever went into those fridges and those cabinets right out of his own pocket because it wasn’t industry standard across the clinics to have them, so the government wouldn’t fund the addition to the kitchens.

But that brilliant idea had taken a lot of stress off of the four cooks they had on staff, two betas, one Alpha her Omega mate. All of whom had been so close to quitting before the fridges and cabinets were installed. Overworked and underpaid.

This meant that Steve’s trip to the cafeteria was a quick one. He grabbed snack foods, a few veggie options, and picked up one of each tub of Nutella and Peanut butter, worst case scenario, Eddie wouldn’t want any of it, but at the very least he’d appreciate Steve bringing them to him. Like a good Alpha, providing for his Omega.

He put it all into a little basket, and carried it out with him, paying little mind to the looks he was getting.

He knew what he’d almost done. He knew how close he’d come to doing something he couldn’t take back, and no matter how much Eddie had asked for him to do it… whether he’d be happy about it after his heat cleared… that wouldn’t make a difference.

He’d have assaulted an Omega during their heat.

So he took the looks, kept his head down and quickly made his way back to Eddie’s room, where sure enough two Betas had been posted outside to act as guards given their natural ability to neutralise both heat and rut pheromones with their own.

Alphas were good for strongarming someone, but a Beta would be more useful in a pheromone based frenzy.

“Harrington” one of them greeted him, and for a moment, just a moment, he thought they wouldn’t let him in, but neither of them stopped him from unlocking the door, and neither of them said another word against him going inside.

They were there just in case, to protect Eddie.

Eddie, who was still asleep when he walked in, just as he’d expected him to be, Eddie who’d pulled a blanket free from the structure of the nest to curl around, who seemed to stir the closer Steve got to the nest until he was grumbling, sleepy, his eyes still partially closed but uncurling from his blanket to reach out to him with a soft “Alphaaa” that made Steve’s heart clench.

“M’here Eddie, wakey wakey, Omega, m’here” he had permission to enter the nest already, but he still waited just long enough for Eddie to reach out to him. “I got you some things, Eds” speaking softly, he climbed in, lowering himself to sit beside the sleepy Omega, who peeked at him through thick dark brown curls.

Curls that Steve found himself gently brushing aside behind his ear to see that pretty face underneath, pretty, awake, and smiling at him.

“You got me things?” God he was beautiful. How had he never noticed how beautiful this ridiculous Omega was? How had he been so blind? "Is my big strong Alpha providing for me?"

Focus Steve, he told himself, do not let him rile you up. “Mmhm, some food, snacks really, I wasn’t sure what you’d be hungry for yet, so I got a variety of things just in case” he’d have brought the entire goddamn cafeteria for him had he known it’d make him light up like a few snacks did.

Eddie was up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the back of his hand, smiling, “Oh god m’starving… how’d you know I’d be hungry?” Steve didn’t stop him from grabbing the basket, smiling in warm amusement as he watched Eddie rifle through the goodies picking out the things he actually wanted, thankful that among the things, there were actually things he’d want.

“Stage two. Owens… the director here, he… said something, that how your reactions to things are like you’re skipping heat stages in response to finally having an alpha nearby.” He wouldn’t mention the scent mate thing, not yet anyway, he wasn’t about to get his hopes up and Eddie didn’t need that confusion on top of everything. “I figured since the nest is made up and we’re comfortable with each other, you’d probably jump into the second stage before the days up, very uncommon but not impossible apparently, so you’d start getting really hungry pretty soon.”

“Having it broken down like stages feels weird, like… clinical I guess.”

“We are in a clinic.”

“Touché.” Eddie opened a bag of chips, content to eat those for the time being, but an expression of thought still lingered on his face as he ate before he asked “Did… did you get into trouble?”

“No, I would have… had I not stopped myself, but Owens has faith in my ability to keep my hands and other parts to myself.”

“Boooo” Steve laughed, ducking his head in bashful amusement “think if you got my legal guardian’s permission you’d be able to—”

“Your uncle can't consent for you, not that anyone in their right mind would ask him, plus he’s not even your legal guardian anymore, you’re older than me, Eddie, you’re your own legal guardian.” Unfortunately that meant he was shit out of luck. “I can hold you though… if you’d like that?”

“…Will you?” In response, Steve opened his arms up, giving Eddie the perfect little spot to crawl and snuggle himself back into, tucking his legs in and leaning back into Steve’s warm embrace, releasing the softest hum of contentment as Steve buried his face into the junction between neck and shoulder and just breathed, his arms squeezing gently around him.

He still smelled earthy, like camping in the forest, dirt, moss, everything Steve loved about morning jogs through the woods, or hikes into the mountains, the smells. It filled his senses and left him rumbling, content, purring into Eddie’s neck, delighting at the sound of Eddie’s own matching purr as he relaxed into the embrace, only the crunch of chips breaking those little purrs. “Feel better?” Steve hummed into his neck.

Eddie snuggled himself back, as if trying to climb inside his Alpha, snuggling his head up under Steve’s chin, remnants of sleep still clinging to his mind making it easy to fall into a comfortable doze, even with his chips in his arms. “Mmnhm… promise you’ll do this when I get out of here too?”

“You’ll have to fight me off with a stick.”

“Duel at sunset? I might surrender very quickly if I get cuddles out of it.” Steve pressed a light kiss into the top of Eddie’s hair then nuzzled into his curls.

“Then I accept your surrender ahead of schedule and offer cuddles for as long as you want them.”

“Is forever a good amount of time?”

“Forever is the perfect amount of time.”

Part 9

#PirateWrites #NestFiclet #Steddie #CW: A/B/O #No Upside Down AU #Omegaverse #Omega!Eddie Munson #Alpha!Steve Harrington

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delusionalfanficwriter · 8 months

Text

illness pt. 2

A few days later, Y/N's friends decided to take matters into their own hands. They were deeply concerned about her health and knew that waiting any longer wasn't an option. Jessie, Kristie, and Sam hatched a plan to trick Y/N into seeing a doctor, despite her reluctance.

"Hey, Y/N," Jessie said one morning, her tone casual, "how about we go grab some coffee today? There's this new café I've been wanting to check out."

Y/N, still under the impression that her friends had respected her wish to avoid the topic, readily agreed. "Sure, sounds great. I could use a good cup of coffee."

Little did Y/N know that the coffee shop was just a cover for their true intention—a doctor's appointment that Kristie had secretly scheduled. They believed that once Y/N was at the clinic, she would be more likely to follow through.

As they arrived at the medical clinic, Y/N's confusion and frustration grew. She had expected a coffee shop, not a doctor's office. Her anger flared as they entered the building.

"What's going on here, Jessie?" Y/N demanded, her voice sharp with irritation.

Jessie exchanged a glance with Kristie and Sam, their determination unwavering. "Y/N, we're just taking a little detour. Trust us, it's for your own good."

Y/N felt a surge of anger rise within her. "This is not what I agreed to! You had no right to do this."

Despite her protests and frustration, Y/N found herself sitting in the doctor's waiting room, her arms crossed and her mood decidedly foul. Her friends had tricked her, and she couldn't believe they would go to such lengths.

The minutes ticked by slowly, and Y/N's anger simmered beneath the surface as she waited for her appointment. She shot occasional glares at her friends, who remained resolute in their decision. They knew that Y/N needed to get checked out, even if she was furious with them in the process.

“Y/N?” A nurse came out before Y/N stood up to follow her.

“No, you guys can stay out here,” Y/N snapped when she saw them wanting to go in with her.

… … … … … … … … … …

Y/N continued to seethe with frustration and anger as they left the doctor's office, her frustration simmering beneath the surface. Her friends, Jessie, Kristie, and Sam, walked alongside her, trying to offer words of comfort and support, but her mood remained dark.

"I can't believe you all did this," Y/N muttered, her voice tinged with resentment. "I could have handled it on my own."

Jessie reached out, attempting to hold Y/N's hand, but Y/N pulled away, unwilling to accept their gestures of reassurance. She was furious that her friends had tricked her into the appointment.

The ride back home was tense and filled with awkward silence, with Y/N stewing in her anger. When they finally reached their destination, Y/N stormed inside her apartment, slamming the door shut behind her while Jessie, Kristie, and Sam felt the repercussions of their actions.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done that.” Jessie sighs feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. “We know how much she values trust and honesty and that stunt we pulled wasn’t the right approach.”

“She wouldn’t have gone.” Kristie tries to reason. “It happened before. She refused to seek medical attention during one camp a few years ago despite everyone trying to convince her she needed it. Coach had to give her an ultimatum and it saved her because it turns out she was playing with a broken rib that was centimeters from puncturing her lung. One wrong hit or twist and it would have had terrible circumstances. She’ll refuse doctors until someone forces her.”

“Still feels wrong.”

… … … … … … … … … …

Y/N phone rang a few hours later and when she saw the caller ID, her heart skipped a beat. It was the doctor. She knows better than the doctor's calling after hours. With trembling hands, she answered the call.

As she listened to the doctor's words, her world seemed to spin out of control. Shock, fear, and disbelief washed over her, and she could hardly process the devastating news.

After hanging up the phone, Y/N was in a daze. She needed to clear her head, to escape the suffocating reality that had suddenly encased her. Without a word, she grabbed her shoes and jacket and headed for the door, determined to go for a walk to gather her thoughts.

As Y/N walked past Jessie, Kristie, and Sam, her friends immediately sensed that something was terribly amiss. The weight of their concern bore down on her, but she remained resolute, refusing to acknowledge their inquiries.

"Y/N, is everything okay?" Jessie asked, her voice laced with genuine worry. She exchanged a concerned glance with Kristie and Sam, who were equally perplexed by Y/N's demeanor.

Y/N's steps slowed briefly, a hint of hesitation in her gait, but she quickly pushed it aside. She couldn't bear to let them in, not when her world had just been shattered by the doctor's call. Without a word, she continued to move toward the door.

Kristie reached out, gently placing a hand on Y/N's arm, trying to get her attention. "Y/N, please, talk to us. Something's clearly bothering you."

Y/N jerked her arm away, her emotions boiling over. She couldn't keep up the façade any longer. Her voice trembled as she finally addressed them, her eyes brimming with tears of frustration and despair.

"You want to know what's wrong?" Y/N snapped, her tone bitter and broken. "The doctor called me with the results. You want the answer so bad?!” Y/N paused, “It's cancer. Are you guys happy now?"

Her revelation hung heavily in the air, a crushing weight that sent shockwaves through their hearts. Jessie, Kristie, and Sam were stunned into silence, their expressions shifting from concern to disbelief. None of them had expected such a devastating diagnosis, and they were left grappling with their own guilt and remorse for how they had handled the situation.

Jessie stepped forward, her heart aching for her girlfriend, and she instinctively moved in to offer a comforting hug. But Y/N's reaction was visceral. She pushed Jessie away with a force that surprised them all.

"Y/N…" Jessie began, her voice trembling with concern.

Tears streamed down her face as she lashed out at her friends, her voice filled with bitterness and betrayal. "No, fuck you all for ruining my trust. I need to be alone."

Her words hung heavy in the air, cutting through the tension in the room like a knife. Y/N's anger and pain were palpable, and she felt like her world had crumbled around her.

"Y/N, you shouldn't be alone after that news," Sam spoke up, her voice gentle but firm. She understood Y/N's need for space, but she also recognized the immense weight of the diagnosis and the importance of being there for their friend in her darkest hour.

“I need space. If you have any respect for me and what I need, you will not follow me. Just let me be by myself.” Y/N opens the door to leave before turning back and requesting one more thing. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”

#uswnt x reader #uswnt imagine #uswnt fanfic #jessie fleming #jessie fleming imagine #sam kerr fanfic #kristie mewis #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso fanfics #woso #chelseawfc x reader

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transhuman-priestess · 5 months

Text

Sometimes the struggles we go through to be ourselves can be as rewarding as the end result.

A pretty breezy one here. Only content notes are surgery mention and needle mention. No gore to be found, no sex neither. Just good ol' fashioned yearning.

This is definitely a bit of a right angle to my usual stuff. There's no horror, it's light on dialogue, but its in a very similar space to a lot of the other stuff, just a different way of going at it.

Daughter of Elysium

I scheduled the surgery without telling my parents. They wouldn’t understand.

When I came out as trans they were supportive, in perhaps the slightly awkward way that cis people tend to be when they want to be accepting of things they don’t understand. This was different though.

I sat in the waiting room of the clinic in Montevideo, lined with faux wood paneling and sleek glass. Peak 2010s architecture. An older building, but the clinic’s reputation spoke for itself. There was no way I was going to get this procedure done in North America. Too expensive, too niche.

Too many hoops to jump through, too. Go see this doctor, talk to this therapist. Walk with these crutches. Practice with this fake charger for a year. Bullshit, all of it. I just wanted to be me.

So I saved money where I could. I slept in the heat of the Californian summers, kept the lights off early in the winter, rode the train to work, ate cheap meals, canceled all my subscriptions, lived in a 300 sq foot apartment in Watsonville.

3 years and $100,000 Californian Dollars later, I got on a train in Santa Cruz for a 3-day journey to Uruguay.

It was late June, a few days before the solstice. This far south of the equator that meant the sun rose late and set early. It was early morning, a quarter to 7, and 5 hours ahead of California time. I was used to being awake at night, but that only made the early sunrise more disorienting.

“Lewis, Kara,” a thrill of adrenaline rushed through me as the receptionist called my name. After reciting my birthday to confirm my identity, I was taken back to preop. I changed into a surgical gown and then lay down on a gurney while a nurse ran an IV to my arm and started saline. I thought about asking what happened once the arm was removed, but I figured it wasn’t worth the explanation.

For the next 10 minutes I stared at the clock. I hadn’t brought anyone with me. This was something to do for me, by myself. No partner, no friends. I had brought a bag with one change of clothes, my passport, and my phone. I thought about calling my friend Cory, but decided against it. No sense in getting anyone worried. As far as the outside world was concerned, I was on vacation.

I guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.

At 7 sharp, a couple of orderlies came in, checked my name and date of birth, and released the brakes on the gurney. They wheeled me out into the chilled hallway, and through the double doors into the operating room.

Inside the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and several techs were waiting. A nurse placed a mask on my face and told me to count backwards from ten. A sweet, chemical smell filled my nostrils, and the world faded out.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time I’d had surgery, so the novelty of coming up from the anesthesia surprised me. Rather than the slow, heavy feeling I’d expected, it was like waking up from a nap. Disorienting, but in a cozy way. Nothing hurt. I hadn’t expected that. Probably the painkillers were still feeding in.

I tried to open my eyes, but my lids only twitched slightly. I heard one of the nurses say “You’re awake! The doctor will be in to see you soon. Everything went well, congratulations.”

I tried to reply, but my jaw moved jerkily and I had trouble forming words. The result was a disjointed grunt emerging from my mouth. But I could tell that I had a mouth, which was good.

The nurse left. I could hear his shoes squeaking off into the distance. As they faded, the thrum of the HVAC replaced it, and an occasional mechanical whirring near me. My eyes were still closed, and for the first time I noticed the green letters in the corner of my vision. Instinctively, I tried to look at them, but they moved with my eyes. After a time I was able to make them stay put long enough to look at them.

ARLINGTON ROBOTICS SYSTEMS

BANGOR, WASHINGTON, CASCADE REPUBLIC

I managed to open my eyes after a few minutes. At first it was all much too bright, everything blown to white, but after a few seconds my vision dimmed to a comfortable level. I focused on a tiny hole in the floating ceiling above. After a moment, I managed to zoom my vision in.

I marveled for a time at the detail in the ceiling. This mass-produced object, fiberglass and paper, contained so much beauty. How many times had I stared a ceiling like this without noticing?

The doctor came in and reaffirmed that everything had gone well. She told me that rehab would start in a few days, once my new body’s systems stabilized and adjusted to neural commands. I tried to smile but couldn’t manage to get my face to move right.

The doctor chuckled and plugged a display into a port on the back of my new neck. She held it up to me, and I watched as the words “What is this for?” appeared on it. She explained that until my vocal rehab started to kick in, this display would help me communicate.

She told me to raise my arms out to my sides. I struggled with this task for a moment before finally managing to do so. For the first time I got a look at the body I’d picked out from the inside.

Gray plating, seams that slid over each other, an unapologetically mechanical body. I’d wanted that. They’re getting good at synthetic skin these days, but I wanted to distance myself from humanity. There was nothing wrong with humanity, but it never spoke to me. I’d always been somewhat apart.

* * *

I slept most of that first day. The next day they let me eat. The bioprocessor seemed to be working, the staff said, but I should keep it light, and stick to carbs rather than fat and protein until the new tract could build up a sufficient biome to support those.

Odd as it sounds, it was 36 hours post-op before I realized I hadn’t peed. The charging station that I hooked into took care of filtration and detox of what little biomass I had left. I felt suddenly elated. I actually tried to get up out of bed, and promptly tripped over my own foot, smashing my face against a wall.

The nurses rushed in, worry on their faces, but I couldn’t stop laughing, and that’s when I heard my voice.

It wasn’t like my old voice. It wasn’t cold and computerized, but warm, and rich, like an old Roland Jupiter, full of dense harmonics, singing highs, and comforting, enveloping lows.

Soon I was sitting on the floor, sobbing. My eyes didn’t water anymore, but I still went through the motions. I held my gray plastic hands to my face, and touched them to my cheeks. I felt the subtle vibrations as motors moved my eyes around. I had never felt so happy, so myself. So real.

* * *

After a week I was able to clumsily walk around the hospital room, and they moved me to the recovery house. I met a few other converts there. There was a girl named Morgan from Seattle, a guy named Case from Kansas City, a few others. I mostly kept to myself.

I started speech therapy shortly after the move. Lots of reading convoluted sentences, but also singing, reading poetry, even some play-acting. I grew to love my voice. It was obviously synthetic, but that only made it feel more like a part of me.

Motor therapy was interesting. They asked me if I played any instruments. I told them I played bass. The therapist walked to a closet and returned with a bass made entirely out of carbon fiber. I asked why they made it from that, the therapist told me I’d see shortly, and handed me the Bass.

I immediately gripped the neck with far more force than I’d intended, denting the frets and the strings. I said I understood now.

Time flew. The solstice came and went, and by August I could speak clearly, play “Highway Star,” and wash my own chassis without damaging it. I could dress myself. I could walk without tripping over my feet.

On an evening in early August, I bade farewell to my fellow converts at the recovery house, and made my way to the train station. I could have taken a cab, or the bus, but I opted to walk. It was 8 miles and took all night, but I enjoyed every moment of it. Never tiring, stopping for food to recharge myself here and there at convenience stores and night markets.

I settled into my roomette for the trip back to Santa Cruz, looking out at Montevideo Bay. I saw my reflection in the window of my train, and for the first time, really took it in, with eyes that were my own.

#ivy michaels writing #robot girl #cyborg girl #cyborg #transhumanism #cyborg conversion

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alwaysshallow · 7 months

Text

gorgeous, part 4

Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!reader

You decide to have some fun; you also talk to old friends. (3,3k)

READ ON AO3

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It's surprising how many times you see him, actually.

It's surprising because you thought – if you're lucky – it's gonna be after six months, on a check-up visit. Technically, he had no business to be here, especially considering how hidden he was, how he wasn't the type to chit-chat. It was okay, you didn't mind it.

And the day after he texted you, when you close clinic, you could see him right in front of the building, his hands in pockets, looking straight at you. It was a hypnotising experience though, especially when you walked in his direction, your knees like marshmellows, and he was still looking.

"Your mechanic was pretty nice." you said, tilting your head. "He said it's gonna be done in two weeks or less since he has work to do."

"Mhm." he matched your pace, walking with you side by side. "Finally doing something with it, aren't we?" he raised his eyebrow.

You laughed. "You make me look like I'm a bad car owner."

"Am I? Or that's just your thoughts?"

His comment made you open your mouth in pure disbelief at his honesty – you nudged him with before realizing how he could react at that gesture. He wasn't exactly a touchy-feely person, but there was no comment from him, so you were glad.

"Mean." you murmured, amused.

"'st speaking my mind, Addison."

"Uh-huh. That's why you're here? To speak your mind?"

He sighed, his eyes on the road in front of you. "You really like asking questions, don't you?"

"I like knowing things. Don't you?" you mimicked his low tone.

"I like knowing things. But I don't ask questions if I'm certain." he answered, straightening his back; a cracking sound that came out automatically made you shiver. "It's just walking you home. 's all, as I said, Sparkles would hate to have another vet."

"Right. Safety reasons, yeah?"

"Good girl. Learning so fast."

Motherfucker knew how to get to you – just after this comment, you had absolutely nothing to say, which made him visibly amused; his brow cocked, and he let out a low chuckle, looking away from you again. Thankful for the darkness, you just walked with him to start another topic after a while – about his cat, of course.

You had to leave 'good girl' behind, to not provoke him to say more because he could easily find out that nickname works for you perfectly. Especially if someone is British, especially if someone is just alluring as him.

And he had blonde hair. A bit curly. That's literally the recipe for a disaster.

After that interaction, he was walking you off to your apartment, day by day. It wasn't surprising after three first times – you just knew he's gonna be here, but you caught yourself looking for him, interested.

Not like you cared – at least that's what you told yourself – but it was curiosity speaking since you knew he was doing that just because of your car. Just because he somehow cared, just because he wanted to know you're safe.

Cute.

What was less cute though, you had to talk with Celia. You just had to and there was no excuse since your car already was in another mechanic's garage. And, Simon knew that you needed to talk with her, so he would ask about it eventually, so dodging the situation wasn't a plan, no. Not when he'd laugh the shit out of you, he did enough with implying you're not taking proper care of your car.

He had a point, though.

You took a few hours off in the morning, leaving Bernie on her own, just to see Celia – you even had your guilt cookies, big jar in your purse. It's not a surprise for anyone who knows you that you bake when stressed, and you certainly were stressed before this meeting. She could tell you anything; and it wouldn't be such a surprise if she'd tell you to go to hell.

A hope was there, though. Not only Simon said it, but when you thought it, it would be a real shame to ruin a friendship, running ten years, just because of a toxic guy that wasn't worth it. Not only that, your best friend had all the right to say I told you so.

You knew you kinda deserved that for being such a blind bitch.

Knock to her door came after a minute of staring dumbily at them, like it would help in something, or if she would magically open it without you knocking. It was a quiet knock though; shy one because, truthfully, you wanted to sprint from her house as far as possible. Confrontation? Not your best quality, no. Not at least in situation like these, when you know you have to apologize from the bottom of your heart.

A minute passed, and you knocked again, louder this time. You started considering walking away you thought maybe she wasn't home, but right after that, no one but Celia opened the door. Her eyebrows furrowed, arms were crossed against her chest, and you immediately knew what her attiude is.

Jesus Christ, it couldn't be easy, could it?

"Hi, Celia. Got a minute?" you asked; hesitantly. She could slam her door in your face, after all.

"Depends. You here because of the car?"

You sighed. "I'm here because I want to apologize, actually."

She seemed surprised as you said it; nonetheless, she let you in, leading you to kitchen. It was the main place of talks in her house, you could say that – not living room, not dining room, kitchen. Very big one, pretty, a table with two seats by side, so you sat there with her, clearing your throat. Wondering how to start.

How do you start conversation like that?

You had the simplest words on your mind. "I was a bitch." rolled off your tongue without even thinking. "I still am, though – but I was a bitch to you when I shouldn't have been. You wanted the best for me, and I just... well, I'm not proud of what I did. I should listen, not throw hands at you. It's not how it was supposed to be, it's not how I wanted it to be. Like, I know also that I should apologize way, way earlier, but-"

"Addie, c'mon." redhead interrupted you with a wave of her hand. "We're both bitches, we literally fought like fuckin' kids. Let me ask you one thing, you done?"

"With him?"

"Yeah, with that scumbag."

"Funny. You're the second person who talks of him this way" you mused, remembering this one situation with Simon. "Done, yeah. For five months right now."

Celia was silent for a moment, obviously analyzing the situation she found herself in; then, with a sigh, she looked again at you, her expression unreadable.

"Good to have your ass back on board, sister." she murmured, smiling a bit.

Next thing she did, was hitting your arm with such power that you let out a little 'ow', laughing with her in the same moment.

"Deserved." she pointed at you. "I apologize too, though. I could be better, I could just... well, tell you everything a bit differently. Not so harsh, you were in love with that prick." your friend muttered, rolling her eyes. "Okay, enough of apologies, though. Who said he's a douche, though? That person might be my second best friend."

So, you told her – almost everything, saving little details about his appearance or aura to yourself; Celia was a pretty fan of him, especially his snarkiness and comments. Yet, she was a bit jealous that you had the audacity to bring your car to other mechanic; mostly, she was jealous of the car, not you.

Her baby, as she liked to tell everyone. She picked it out for you from her uncle, repaired it, added some "cool shit" (it's a mystery what cool shit is, you didn't ask though).

Nonetheless, she was more than glad that you managed to find someone who's gonna help you with that, and you came to her purely to fix something between you two.

A friendship that – you promised yourself – would live through everything, no matter what would happen, no matter of circumstances. She was your person, just like Rosalie.

Who, speaking of, left million voice messages on your phone on your way back to clinic, so you considered it the perfect ocassion to listen to them all.

Apart from her excitement on your car situation, she invited you to her local bar for... a party. You didn't exactly know what party was about, or if it was just a casual hangout, but you agreed to go. It's been a while since you took a break from clinic and actually spent your night out, not under some blanket, watching movies with a bowl of chips or icecream.

Not like it was bad. Not at all. Sometimes you just needed a... change in your routine.

Rosalie promised to pick you up since your car was still at mechanic's – so, your only task was to look good, but not too good. Bar was something else than club; more casual, but you really wanted to at least flirt a little or to catch an eye on someone, even if your mind was... pretty occupied with certain someone.

Maybe your best friend would bring someone worth your time, yeah? She usually had some ideas and wanted to play as your little matchmaker, so you never knew what was coming.

That being said, you opened your closet.

It was almost embarrasing how many clothes you had that you didn't even wear more than one time; mostly, cocktail dresses for fancy ocassions since your parents insisted on buying something new. People of business, someone would say – always having a whim about their galas and shit like this, it was hard not to hate it, considering that business comes before family, mostly.

Maybe that's why you limited contacts with them, sending them a text or two of what you're doing, how's the clinic going. And, of course, Christmas with them or Thanksgiving was a must if they weren't on some fancy vacations abroad.

With a thought in your mind that you have to go through those dressed, you decided to pick something simple to bar. Black tank-top, a simple baby blue shirt on it (unbuttoned, of course) and a pair of simple jeans worked in your mind, as well as in reality, so you found yourself quickly putting on a pair of sneakers.

Your make up took a little longer; you paid attention to your skin, the perfect eyeliner, a delicate lipgloss bringing out the shape of your lips. Everything had to look effortless, even if it wasn't; your motto, basically.

As promised, Rosalie picked you up; and you've talked with her the whole road, almost two hours to be exact. You haven't seen her for two months straight and even if you were updating her as much as you could in a day, it wasn't even close to your sincere talks. She asked a whole palette of questions; how's your car, how's that Simon who rescued you from jerky ex; she looked a bit amused when topic was on him, but you had no idea why.

"Man that has good ideas is rare" she summed up, chuckling, when you catched her up with Celia situation and told her your car is going to be fine, you just have to pick it up in the next week. "Don't tell him that by any means. His ego wouldn't take it."

"Oh, you have no idea."

Soon enough, you arrived. Bar was cute; not too large, but with big-ass bar table and glass shelves behind it with amount of alcohol that you couldn't count, even if you wanted to. Dim, orange lights just added to the view, and you smiled under your nose instincitvely, happy that you've decided to go there.

Tables weren't occupied as you thought they would be; Rosalie mentioned earlier it's gonna be a private party, but you didn't think that private, considering that you could count like... maybe ten, eleven people. Military men with their significant others, as you saw when you walked up to the barman, ordering a drink for you and your best friend.

You couldn't obviously ignore that someone was discussing with MacTavish near you; seemed like a heated discussion, until they looked right at you.

Guy with a skull mask. Full-ass skull mask like Simon had this one day when you two...

Fuck, could it be him? Maybe he was in unit that wore masks like these, you thought. It would be a strange coincidence, wouldn't it? And, Rosalie for sure would tell you that her comrade is the guy you are talking about sometimes since he adopted a cat, Sparkles, yeah?

Rosa had her significant smirk when she looked at you, and it was all you needed to know, especially when men approached you both.

Trouble in a person, that would be on your best friend.

"He gets a bit shy around strangers. Ain't your fault" Johnny joked, nudging you with his shit-eating grin, as he gave his friend a look.

"Mm, I bet. Good to see you, MacTavish." you murmured, which made "stranger" roll his eyes and grumble something under his nose. "And what's your friends name?" you raised an eyebrow, making eye-contact with those brown eyes you wouldn't forget ever.

"His name-"

"-you know my name, doc." Simon said, interrupting Soap. He took off his mask with one, swift movement, to reveal to you his scarred face and disheveled, blonde hair that you wanted to dip your fingers in so desperately.

To say that Johnny was shocked, was the understatement; he looked at his comrade in shock, opening and closing his lips, like he wasn't exactly sure what to say, considering that he took off his scary mask.

"Didn't know you have friends in military."

"Apparently, we're both full of surprises" you sipped a bit of your margharita, shrugging, like you two meeting here was the most normal situation that could happen.

"You two know each other, no?" Soap meddled in conversation, observing you two. It was obvious that he doesn't really know how you two could met, and honestly, no one could blame him. He was in military, barely going out, and you were a simple vet.

You nodded. "We met, yeah."

"Oh, I'd really want to hear it."

"Simple help. Nothin' too fancy, MacTavish" he pointed out, taking a sip of his alcohol.

Soap's look was piercing in you, though. "Helped him with a cat. Simple, like he said." "Fuckin' cat? Ghost is a cat mom now, eh?" he chuckled, which made Simon roll his eyes.

You wondered if Ghost was something they named them in the field, and if yes, why? After all, everything always was supposed to fit. As Rosalie said to you, even if she couldn't tell you everything (classified, of course) every nickname had a meaning behind it.

Ghost... seemed ambigious. You couldn't put it anywhere.

"Better than you'd be, John. Let's drink, shall we?" you raised your eyebrow, trying to lead the conversation elsewhere; looked like your companion thought the same way.

Rosalie introduced you to rest of the team – they all told you their names, but you were sure as hell that you're not gonna remember that, considering your memory was shit, especially to people that you don't see often. Either way, they were nice; very nice, after a few drinks with them you were pretty sure that your platonic soulmate is Kyle Garrick, who was the best partner in karaoke. And, he was also such a gossiper, finding every ocassion that he could to talk to you about something.

Not military related, though; only "things for civilians" as he giggled to you after fifth shot of tequila, telling you something about a girl that he had eye on. Curiosity piqued in the moment he confessed that she was 'out of reach' for him, and it was no chance that he could get together with her.

Hell, for you "no chance" before even trying was non-existent. You loved to prove people wrong, to make them watch you accomplishing various of things just to rile them up, or to reach your goal.

"Don't say that" you pointed at him. "There's always a chance for something. You won't try, you won't know. That's it."

"It's the same chance, as the chance that Ghost will get any of us to that fancy gala. Non-existent." he groaned, burying dramatically his head in his hands. "And like his driving skills."

"Garrick" he murmured; low, rumbling voice made sergeant straighten a little. "'s enough talkin' of it, yes?"

You chuckled. "What gala? And what, your driving skills are that bad?"

"I have rather..." Simon played with glass filled with alcohol "...complicated relationship with cars, I'd say. I prefer walking."

You raised your eyebrow a little, amused; what does it mean his relationship with cars is complicated? You couldn't help but think, as you nodded your head with faked understanding. It was hard to believe that his ass in military didn't have a driving license, so it only meant that his ability to drive was...

Different, maybe. And for his own safety, as well as yours and anyone on the road, he picked out walking instead of driving. Smart, though.

"That's why you've walked me home."

"Affirmative."

"Walked you home?" Kyle looked at both of you in shock, laughing to himself. "Oh, fuck, man. So many things are happening on leave, ain't it?"

"Gaz." Price shot him a look.

"I can't even-"

"Gaz."

"Fuck, okay" he rolled his eyes, shaking his head to himself. "Just so you know, if Johnny wouldn't be so caught up in Ros, he'd back me up."

Your gaze automatically went to Rosalie, who talked with her bartender friend. Johnny, right next to you, was looking at her with slightly darker eyes, leaning his head against palm of his hand. It was... a view, honestly; friends, but not admitting to something more, even if everyone else saw their bond is beyond simple "best friends".

Something that you considered as cute.

You couldn't help but wish that they will be together soon enough; the way they cared for each other... Hell, probably everyone wanted something like this for themselves, as well as you; something so pure with longing glances that would make you weak in your knees.

A sigh of annoyance came out of you – where the hell you were supposed to find something like this when you spent most of the days in the clinic? Tinder or any portal like this wasn't even an option.

Mostly because you met your crazy ass ex here, but also you wanted to... hell, get past that online dating stage.

Was it too much to ask?

"Another round?" Kyle's voice brought you back to earth; you nodded immediately, standing up from your seat. "Captain, Ghost, you comin'?"

"Mm, no. 'm gonna make a call." Price shook his head. "You go. Another one will be on me."

You looked at Simon.

"I'll pass too." he murmured, coughing. "

"Oh, come on! You have to do one shot with me. Please."

"Addison-"

"Please?" you pleaded, extending an arm to him, so he could grab his hand. "Just one."

Simon sighed. "You're not gonna let it go, eh?"

"No, not really. I owe you for that mechanic, don't I?" you tilted your head, smiling a bit. "Come on. Please. Just one shot. Or one drink, anything, really."

He didn't say anything; just followed you to the bar with boys, while you babbled about your work, when Gaz asked what does exactly vet do, besides controls and all.

And it felt really good to feel Simon's eyes on you the whole time. How he keeps his rich, brown eyes at you, while you tried desperately to keep yourself together, just in case - because after alcohol, you were the touchy-feely version of yourself.

He had some time to learn it.

#simon ghost riley #simon riley x reader #cod x reader #simon riley #ghost x reader #ghost x you #cod fanfic #simon riley fanfic #cod mw2 #ghost cod #simon ghost riley x you #call of duty fanfic #call of duty ghost

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 3 months

Note

would i be the asshole for contacting my ex to ask them if they could stop talking about me online to a community that knows who i am? (🥐)

tw: kinda emotionally abusive relationship

bg info

me (24f) and my ex (28) were in a three month relationship three years ago following a whole year of friendship. they were my first partner and i came out as a lesbian to everyone during our relationship. when we were together, they were 24 and i was 20. i was very emotionally dependent on them when i was 20 due to mental health issues and so were they which is probably one of the reasons why our relationship was as explosive as it was. i looked up to them, my whole emotional world revolved around them, and our friendship/relationship was the only thing i had in my life at the time. they constantly asked me "hey is it even ethical that im dating you, im 4 years older, you tell me please, oh i feel like such a bad person", yet, they still continued dating me every time they would ask.

our fights were horrible and truly explosive as they broke their stuff in front of me out of anger, threw things at me and insulted me as stupid, amongst many other things. our fights usually ensued because i would ask them for reassurance and they would start panicking and screaming at me to shut up. to be fair, i would cry every time i was asking for reassurance which probably made them feel scared about losing me, so i consider myself 50% at fault for everything that happened in our relationship, i shouldve been able to talk to them in a secure manner that wouldnt trigger their abandonment issues. our fights were quite jarring and made me walk out on them several times out of fear. yet i always came back and apologized and took the whole accountability, even though i dont consider myself the only one at fault. walking out several times during fights was probably one of the worst things i could have done but at the same time i was simply scared. even when i walked out after our last fight, they begged me to come back, which i did, i apologized under tears, and yet, told them that i cant promise them to stay no matter what.. and left.

we met through tumblr and were in a medium distance relationship. after our relationship, i went to a clinic and had to learn a lot about myself, what i experienced and what i want from life. im in a very happy and healthy place now and since the end of 2021 im with my current partner whom i want to be the love of my life and whom ive started to build a life with.

context

i have my ex blocked on all social media because they used to do hour long deep dives into my blog, even as of recently (i have statcounter installed for my safety bc im paranoid about them sending me anonymous asks). at first i also used to visit their blog after our break up but stopped doing so after moving on with my life. one year after breaking up i temporarily unblocked them and explicitly asked them not to look at my social media (or at least to do it in a way in which i dont notice aka asked them not to watch my instagram stories).

while i dont visit their blog/social media because i dont want to know whats going on in their life, tumblr mutuals frequently dm me stuff like "hey i think you should know that your ex posted about you/shit talks about something that you posted". i havent asked my mutuals to tell me whenever this happens but i imagine they do so because within the tumblr space we exist, everyone kind of knows everyone (so my ex doesnt have to mention my name for people to know who theyre talking about). sometimes mutuals send screenshots of the posts so that i dont have to visit my ex's blog. last ive heard my ex joked about throwing jewelry at me and posted extensively about a tattoo that i got. my ex's behavior makes me uncomfortable and feel just as helpless as i did back then.

why i might be the asshole

im scared that they might be venting because i was more at fault in the relationship than them and that i am unconsciously deflecting. however, i talked about every detail of the relationship and this fear extensively with my therapist, friends, and partner who are of the opinion that i was young, scared, and intertwined in a relationship that was incredibly toxic. im still unsure though because my emotions frequently triggered theirs.

why they might be the asshole

i asked them once to stop visiting my social media and i feel like venting about our relationship that broke off 3 years ago to a tumblr community of friends and acquaintances is kind of unfair. however, i might be the asshole and they might just need the space for venting. i could just ignore the vents and let them heal in their own way from what ensued.

WIBTA if i confronted them again and told them that i want them to stop talking about me online? or would i be a party pooper because every person needs a space for venting?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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thesoftboiledegg · 22 days

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Rick and Morty if Autism Speaks and Autism Moms focus-grouped it to death:

Rick: Everyone, I have a terrible confession to make. Summer [scrolling through her phone]: Sure, Grandpa Rick. How many planets did you blow up today? Rick: No, Summer, it's much worse than that. I... [sighs and sticks his hands in his pockets] I just got back from the doctor's office. I...I have autism. [The entire family gasps in shock. Summer drops her phone. Morty's hands fly to his mouth.] Beth: No! Rick! Why didn't you ever tell us? Rick: I didn't know, sweetie. Bird Person noticed that I'd been flapping my hands a lot and said, "Mubba rubba nub nub," which means, "I'm going to give you a referral for an autism diagnosis." I just got back from the clinic. I'll be honest with you--when the word "autism" came out of the doctor's mouth, I couldn't decide if I wanted to hide the truth from you or crash my ship directly into the building, killing me instantly. [Jerry stares at him. Summer starts sobbing. Beth glances at Morty with horror and disbelief.] Beth: But--what about Morty? He flaps his hands sometimes, too. Do you think that--maybe--oh God, I don't even want to say it-- Rick [looking at her sadly]: I don't know, sweetie. Autism is a genetic disease, and it's not looking good. Morty: No! NO! Why, Rick? This is the worst thing you've ever done! Rick: I'm sorry, buddy. I wish I could go back in time and delete the autism from my genes. Summer [sobbing]: You've ruined our family! I always knew I was the one normal child, and now you've just confirmed it! Beth: I'm sorry, Morty, but I won't be able to look at you the same way again. I knew there was a reason I favored Summer all these years. And Rick, well--I don't know if you can keep living here. Our budget is already tight without you spending $500 a month on math textbooks and model train sets. Jerry: Wait, hang on. If I can get meta here for a second--doesn't Dan Harmon play Bird Person? And isn't he, you know...in that way? Rick: Autistic? [Beth and Summer gasp at the sound of the word.] I don't know, let me check. [He opens a portal and disappears, then returns a few seconds later, his eyes heavy with sadness.] Yes. Dan Harmon is autistic, which means...Bird Person is autistic, too. I'm sorry. [The entire room is silent.] Beth: Well...at least you'll be able to get together now. I know you autistics can't date normal people. Summer: Autistics can't date anyone, period. Sorry, Morty, but I guess Jessica and Bruce Chutback both dodged a bullet. [Morty bursts into tears. Beth rubs his shoulder.] Beth: It's okay, honey. Look at it this way--you'll be able to go on lots of adventures with Grandpa since we have to separate both of you from the general population. Jerry: And "different" doesn't mean "worse." I mean, in this case, it absolutely does, but it doesn't mean that in other contexts. Morty: I'm sorry that I'm burdening everyone. [glances up] Hey, um, Rick--maybe you can find a cure, right? [smiles weakly] Some planet out there must've found a cure for autism by now, right? Rick [forces a smile]: You've got it, buddy. I'm sure there's a universe out there that's...found a cure for this tragic disease. [Everyone looks silently down at the table. Morty stands up.] Morty: I'm going to sit in my room for a while. Let me know when you've decided if you're going to keep me or put me up for adoption. Beth: We'll let you know, honey. [Morty walks upstairs. The rest of the family turns to Rick, who sighs.] Rick: Well...I guess I'll go to the garage. The noise-cancelling walls will protect you from the sounds of my incessant stimming and hand-flapping. I know you don't want me back in the house, so you can turn my room into extra storage space. Jerry can even turn it into a man cave if he wants. I don't care if he does. I don't care about anything anymore. Summer: Neither do we, Rick. Neither do we... [Rick walks into the garage and sits quietly on the stool. After a few minutes of silence, he hesitates, then reaches inside his coat and applies a sticker to his ship. The camera zooms in to reveal a puzzle piece that reads Autistics On Board.]

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith #jerry smith #summer smith #beth smith #autism #dan harmon #bird person #meme

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angryschnauzer · 5 months

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January 11th 2024

Yeah its been a while since i updated. I haven't had the energy to if i'm honest, but here we go.

Hubby had his brain surgery end of November '23. The tumour they took out was a nasty one, somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a kiwi fruit. The wound has healed well with little to no side affects apart from some double vision, but he was checked out for that and it is a common after affect of brain trauma and was remedied with an eyepatch for a few weeks.

We met with the Neuro Oncology team at Royal Marsden Hospital in London. They are one of the best (if not the best) cancer treatment centres in the whole country, and we worked through a treatment plan.

Just before Christmas hubby was also cleared to have shoulder reconstructive surgery (he broke his shoulder bone in the original seizures back at the end of October '23). There was a really small window of time between it being enough time after the brain surgery that he could go back under general anaesthetic, but also enough time to mostly heal before he started Radiotherapy and Chemo, so just 5 days before Christmas hubby was in and out of our local hospital in a single day to have that surgery.

Christmas was a quiet and subdued affair. I also herniated a disk in my back the day Hubby had surgery (i was clearing the deep freeze out ready for grocery delivery), so it meant both he and I were dosed up to our eyeballs on strong painkillers for most of the holiday, and Little Dude spent the majority of the break either playing video games or building his new lego sets.

Two days before Christmas i also had to have emergency dental work (i had been grinding my teeth and had previously cracked a tooth) and whilst i was in the dentists office some utter idiot crashed into my car. That was the last thing i needed but i simply handed it all over to my insurance company (who are aware of my husbands situation) and they arranged a hire vehicle and sorted repairs.

Onto the start of 2024. This is the first week of Radiotherapy and Chemo for Hubby. He is getting very tired and fatigued already from the Radiotherapy, but thankfully no nausea from the chemo as yet, but that could change over time. He is scheduled for a full schedule of 6 weeks of this dual treatment, where we are having to visit Royal Marsden every day Mon - Fri for the six weeks, and then he also takes the chemo 7 days a week for the six weeks.

He'll then have 4 to 6 weeks 'off' treatment for his body to relax and recuperate, but will have scans and MRI's during that time to gauge what further treatment will be, but its likely to be just chemo but a stronger dose, but no radiotherapy. The chemo is to be 3 weeks off one week on, so a 4 weekly cycle.

The one thing we have discovered isn't done is prognosis's. When we first got to Royal Marsden we were shocked as they started talking about years, and explained that although it was a really nasty tumour, it was found very early and whilst it was still relatively small for its kind. They've discussed things like 'this years treatment plan then we'll look at next years', and also for a while Hubby was being considered for a clinical trial which candidates who have prognosis's of 12 months+ are only considered for. In the end he didn't meet the criteria (his cholesterol was too high). The Macmillian Nurses also have been talking to us about Mobility Car assistance schemes where you can get govt assistance financially and get an adapted vehicle on a 2 year rolling lease. All these timings are reassuring in one way, but worrying in another - we have no idea what the future holds and it really does cement in stone that our time is limited and could end any moment, and makes it very difficult to make any long term plans. You don't realise how much of your life is preplanned until you end up in this situation and aren't sure if you can book your kid onto the school residential trip in 5 months time.

Should anyone want the mundane daily day-to-day life updates you can follow me on my personal instagram @simone_with_an_e its generally a load of utter boring bollocks, but i try to keep it updated daily with updates when i can as its a lot easier to do 1 short paragraph than a big update.

For me my mental health is a little better now that i've had time to process Hubby's diagnosis and that he is getting treatment. There are still days or hours when i fall apart, and it could be something as simple as listening to a song on the radio as i drive back from dropping Little Dude at school and i realise the song would be lovely at his funeral. I end up having to pull over and have a cry whilst switching the radio off. I'm loosing weight and aging quickly, my hair is turning grey from stress and i realised i've aged about 15 years in the last 3 from stress. My appetite comes and goes, and things like red meat now turn my stomach and i can't digest it. But i also haven't drunk alcohol since the day before Hubby had his seizure back in October. I feel like i need to stay 'alert' in case i need to rush him to the hospital for something. I don't miss it as such, but I miss the ability to fully relax. Its hard to describe but i feel like at the moment i've lost myself and am just functioning to care for those around me, going through the motions as such.

Anyway, this has been a long update. I do still lurk here, you may see me pop up in notifications liking something, but at the moment i don't feel its right to start putting fandom stuff back on here yet. I do hope to get back to writing at some point. I miss it and the unfinished stories plague my mind as i have such lovely plans for story arc's and really want to finish them.

Take care all,

Schnauz

xxx

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thalialunacy · 3 days

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[for the @calaisreno May Promptosaurus Rex; cw for toddler stuff, eg 💩 & 🤮]

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) 19: weather (20)

'A-ha! We did it!' John says, possibly too chuffed as he holds up a freshly changed and dressed Rosie. 'We--'

She makes a very distinctive face, then grunts. John eyes her. 'Tell me that face doesn't mean what I think it means.'

Then he does the sniff test, and yes. Yes, it does mean that.

He lays her down yet again, fond exasperation tugging at his lips. 'Wee girl, why do you do this to me?' His mum has used the endearment on Harry their whole lives, so it's comfortable on his tongue as he reaches for wipes and a new nappy -- only to discover the stashes depleted. As in… nill.

John rolls several expletives around his teeth. But then Rosie giggle-gurgles up at him, and he swoops in to expel his breath instead on her cheek in the form of a huge raspberry. He almost doesn't hear the knock on the door.

He pauses, but then shrugs and picks her up. 'Sorry, sweetheart. Let's go see who's at the door, yeah?'

She is notably non-nonplussed. 'Livery?'

'Might be,' John replies as he reaches the building door and opens it. 'And it is!' His daughter claps and immediately reaches out for the spotty young man trying to wrestle a rather large box. 'Whoa, there.' John reins her back in; she wants to be friends with everyone, which is both endearing and alarming.

'Do I need to sign?' he says to the carrier, who, now that John's looking, isn't wearing any sort of uniform. He looks like a dishboy haphazardly and temporarily promoted.

'No, sir. I'm to bring it up to the flat.'

A seed of a thought germinates in John's head. 'That was your instruction?'

The lad nods, clearly trying not to show his impatience. John holds back a sigh, and opens the door wider to let him pass. 'By all means.'

And it's as John expected: Wipes, diaper rash cream, and nappies. They're even--though he really shouldn't be surprised--the correct size.

As soon as Rosie's changed (again), he's got his phone out.

'I trust the delivery made it in time?' Mycroft answers.

John spares them both the niceties. 'How?'

'Nothing untoward, I assure you. Sherlock texted me.'

'Right. And where is he?' They may have an… evolving relationship, but Sherlock is still Sherlock, and John can also admit he only vaguely remembers what the detective had said when he'd left earlier in the day.

'I believe the words "spleen" and "unidentified poison" are involved.'

'Excellent. Listen.' He clears his throat. 'I'll pay you back.'

'My mother would call that "vulgar," as you know.'

'And she's a lovely woman, but--'

'Discuss it with Sherlock, please. I've got work and must get back to it.'

He rings off. John stares at his phone.

Death by Holmes. That's it. That will be how his life ends.

---

Rosie has broken the laws of physics and/or cloned herself. She has. She must have done.

That's the only explanation for the sheer reach of mess he finds waiting for him after his clinic hours the next day. 'Bloody hell,' he breathes, standing in the flat's doorway and taking it in.

It's more than the usual whirlwind that happens when Sherlock's between cases and takes Rosie for the day - He claims loftily that he's putting her through intellectual paces, but really he just indulges her every whim, including her lack of enthusiasm for cleaning up. And it's not as if the flat was shining and organised to begin with.

John doesn't even have the bandwidth to log all the bits of chaos surrounding him. For heaven's sake, he hadn't even known they owned bubble solution. But, then again, they don't now, judging by the rather large soapy stain on the rug in front of the window, and the family of tipped-over empty bottles next to it.

'John!' he hears from Sherlock's bedroom. 'Come join us!'

He rolls his eyes, but goes anyway. The noises make it clear as to what they're doing, and John hangs his head before pushing open the door. He'd been hoping to at least have one nice mattress in the flat for a bit longer.

But no, currently Sherlock is holding onto an absolutely delighted toddler while, obviously, jumping up and down on the bed like he's seven. Actually, John fleetingly wonders if Sherlock even got to do such things when he was seven--

'Come on, John!'

--and the unabashed joy in Sherlock's eyes tells him his answer. With that, the resistance whooshes out of him. He toes off his shoes and joins them.

'We're testing the durability,' Sherlock explains, loudly, then swoops Rosie like an aeroplane.

John laughs, huffs of air as he jumps and watches his daughter. She seems to be enjoying herself, except-- 'I think she might--' He stops, reaches out. 'Sherlock, she's going to v--'

With a small noise of surprise, Rosie is, indeed, sick. The remnants of whatever they'd had for tea form a lovely puddle on Sherlock's expensive sheets.

The grown-ups both manage to avoid it, scrambling backwards and into each other, somehow. John, lungs tight, reaches for his daughter, not caring that she's got sick all down her front. 'My girl,' he says, going for soothing, knowing her reaction could go either way. 'Did that surprise you?'

Rosie, wide-eyed, lets out a small hiccough. Then her face crumples, and she starts to sob.

'Oh dear,' Sherlock says faintly.

John, because he's a bastard, feels laughter start to bubble up in his lungs.

Then he hears Sherlock repressing chuckles next to him, and the floodgates are open, them laughing together like errant schoolboys.

'We musn't giggle near an ill child!' Sherlock admonishes, but it works no better than it had the week they met. John bumps Sherlock's shoulder and curls Rosie into his chest, rubbing her back and putting his lips to her forehead in between breaths. She's not feverish, she just likely got swooped about like an aeroplane too soon after tea, so John relaxes and lets himself go, laughing like an idiot in dirty sheets with a dirty baby and a spotless Sherlock (somehow, the bastard).

Then there's a knock at the door. The door of the flat, not the ground floor.

He and Sherlock exchange glances, no longer laughing; even Rosie has geared down from wailing to whimpering. John shrugs.

'Come in,' Sherlock says, loudly, because of course he does; he doesn't give a toss what people think of his cleaning habits. 'We're in the master bedroom.'

A formidable grey-haired woman with a tight chignon and very no-nonsense shoes appears in the bedroom doorway. She takes in the situation, and then she tuts. Actually tuts, in a distinctly Edwardian way that John hasn't heard since his grandmother passed. 'Just as Mr Holmes suspected.'

Sherlock purses his lips. 'Mycroft sent you?'

'He certainly did. Now, out of those clothes and into the bath, please, all three of you.'

Sherlock opens his mouth to protest but the Look she gives him has him shutting it with a snap.

John would laugh if he had the fortitude. 'Beg pardon, ma'am, but he sent you because…?'

'Because you lot are a mess, a fact of which you seem to be unaware.'

John and Sherlock exchange another look. 'Fine,' Sherlock says curtly. 'But could you be so kind as to leave the room while we undress?'

'Certainly.' She gives a short nod, then turns on her heel and exits down the hall.

'Hang on,' John whispers loudly as they start to unbutton and unzip. 'Mycroft sent us a nanny?'

'I'm relatively certain she's his housekeeper, and just on loan for this evening.'

'I guess I should be surprised.'

'No, you shouldn't, as you're not entirely without wits.'

'Such flattery.'

'Dull.'

'It's almost sweet of your brother, really.'

Sherlock points a finger at him. 'Don't you dare.'

John's lips quirk. 'Don't worry, I won't send him a fruit basket or anything. I just-- I appreciate that he indulges a child he hardly knows, that's of no relation to him.'

Sherlock clears his throat. 'Yes, well, be that as it may, I say we take full advantage.' He pulls the now-naked toddler out of John's hands and heads towards the loo.

John watches them go, feeling quite swirled around by the last half an hour's events. But then he shakes his head at himself and his navel-gazing, and follows them.

---

John's phone buzzes while he's at work the next day, and he doesn't pay it much mind until he sees it's the day nursery. After he reads the message and is able to breathe again-- Jesus, being a father is not for the weak, is it-- he thumbs one to Sherlock.

Did you get the updated pickup address from the minder? Trip to park rained out.

He doesn't get a reply, not right away or in the next few hours.

This could, of course, mean a few things. John firmly puts away the worst case scenario, and reckons a case has taken priority, seeing as Sherlock knew John was available for pickup if necessary.

So, needless to say, he's surprised when he arrives at the given address. One, because Sherlock is there waiting. And two, because it's…

John stares.

'John,' Sherlock says after a moment. 'I'm afraid my brother has outdone himself.'

'Yes, well.' He coughs. 'I'm afraid he's turned an indoor football pitch into a Disneyland for toddlers.'

'As I said.'

'Jesus Christ.' He wonders how long Mycroft's been planning this. 'Wait-- Was this just because of the rain today?'

'Knowing Mycroft? Yes. Is that not a proportional response?'

John can hear the amusement in Sherlock's voice. 'Definitely not,' he replies, but his cheeks hurt from repressing a smile. 'Hang on,' he says. 'Why are you here? You didn't return my texts, I figured you were in the middle of a corpse or something.'

'Mycroft told me to stay put.'

John snorts. 'Didn't you think he might be using trick psychology to get you here?'

Sherlock scoffs. 'Soft science, that.'

'Sure.'

'Daddy! Sherlock!' John looks away from Sherlock at that particular mispronunciation of his flatmate's name, and is barreled into by a clumsy sparkly dervish.

'What--' He automatically reaches down to pick her up, then does a double take at the elaborate butterfly painted onto nearly her whole face. It's basically a work of art, honestly, and he has no idea how someone got her to sit still for that long.

'They are hired for speed,' Sherlock says to him, and he laughs, still impressed after all these years.

'Incredible.'

Sherlock glances at him. 'Whether you mean the artwork or my deducing your question about the artist, you are correct.'

John ignores him and listens to his daughter chatter enthusiastically. The words "bouncy castle" and, somehow, "golf" filter out of it, and John chuckles.

Then he hears her say something that makes him double-take. 'Pardon? Say that once more, sweetheart.'

'Uncle Mycroft!' she repeats. Or at least, most of those letters. Enough to confirm.

John's jaw clenches. 'Did he tell you to call him that?'

She nods enthusiastically. 'He's fun!'

This jars John from his confused dismay, and he hears Sherlock snort, too. 'I suppose he can be, in his own way.'

'Don't lie to your daughter, John.'

John tries not to laugh, and nearly succeeds.

You're going to have a hard time topping this for her next birthday, he writes to Mycroft. He doesn't get a reply, but he supposes that's fair.

They get halfway through the relatively short walk home. Halfway. Before the heavens open up, changing from an aggressive mist to actual splotchy rain.

John swallows a curse, ducking under an awning and already anticipating Rosie wailing about prematurely losing her face art, about being cold and wet and out of doors.

But when he looks at them, at Sherlock swinging his daughter down from where she'd been perched on his shoulders, he sees nothing but joy on her face.

Joy, and wet streaks of glittery violet paint. She's clinging to Sherlock's hands, and Sherlock looks -- Well, he looks really bloody happy, if John had to label it. But he hesitates in doing so, and resigns himself to just enjoying the moment.

'What,' he says once he's recovered his voice, 'Mycroft can't have a drone deliver us an umbrella?'

Sherlock chuckles, then sobers. 'He does adore her, you know.'

John looks at Sherlock, not quite hiding his surprise. 'And you're alright with that? With "Uncle Mycroft"?'

Sherlock's eyes flash with something, but John isn't quick enough to categorise it. 'A child should have a variety of influences in their life.'

'True, but--'

'And an expanded support structure they can rely on. I daresay Mycroft qualifies, don't you?'

John nods shortly, finding himself unable to form useful words.

Luckily, Sherlock does it for him. He sweeps Rosie back up into his arms and boops her nose, which makes John's eyes cross with cognitive dissonance but there it is all the same. 'Shall we continue walking and enjoying the rain?' the detective asks Rosie. 'And then have a nice bath and some tea? I'm sure your father will make up a fire, too.'

John swallows. 'Sure, yeah.'

Heart warm enough to hurt, he follows them out from under the cover and into the storm.

Time's too short, he reckons, to fuss about dreary weather.

[ <3 ]

[inspiration: Richard Shindell's 'The Weather'. Also consulted bubbleinc.co.uk, obviously.]

#it's gonna be MAY 2024 #May Prompts 2024 #MayPrompts2024 #Johnlock #Parentlock #BBC Sherlock #This is just meandering Parentlock folks

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surgerypatient · 3 months

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Joseph’s dental surgery

Joseph had long wondered how long he could go without brushing his teeth, unbeknownst to him he would soon find out in a “routine” visit to a new dental clinic in his town after his previous one had closed down some years prior, they didn’t look horrendous- to him- of course most others opinions would vary from bad to worse. as it happened his appointment was scheduled to be the last of the day- this was because they knew of his attempting to avoid brushing as long as possible. The time finally came for him to go over, the building it was in was very nice, new, sterile feeling as many doctors offices are- part of the reason he picked this facility was their offering general anesthesia for dental phobia patients among other things he was not a fan of dental work done to him. He walked up to the door opened it and was greeted by Suzie the busty brunette receptionist wearing pastel blue scrubs and a scrub cap

Hi you must be Joe ❤️ she chimed

yeah that’s me, here for my appointment with Dr Grace Wheeler.

I’ll let them know youre here

I sat down in one of the tiny chairs and picked up an old magazine to flip through and before long they came for him.

“Hello, Joe “Dr Wheeler greeted and retrieved him personally wearing her wine red scrubs and glasses framing her face under her dirty blonde hair tucked in a cap.

those scrubs are cute Joe said

“Thanks, you won’t be seeing them much though!”

”Why would that be?”

you’ll see, come on back with me, gotta get you ready for your sleep!

“That’s why, I’ll be asleep, alright” I follow her down a long hallway with doors lining each side of the hallway until we arrive at the last one which looks different from the others!

I see some a teal gown, purple cap and blue grippy socks on the big navy blue debtal surgery table with a cup shaped headrest with a loaded mayo stand next to it full of tools and supplies but covered with a green towel. Next to it, a quite advanced looking large anesthesia machine

Just undress and put those clothes on and leave your belongings in this bin please! I’ll be back shortly!

I started to undress all the way and put on the patient attire before sinking into the immense surgery table awaiting my sleep

Then Dr Wheeler came back this time with 2 scrubbed-in figures in tow, they were wearing pale green gowns, blue, full head hoods and white tie-on surgical masks. you could tell they were women, busty at that.

“oohhh, is it time?”

I make myself still on the table, arms on the armrests, as one grabs a wipe and wipes his arm, before sticking a needle in and attaching a bag of saline to the new port in the crook of my elbow.

Then the other one grabs a big fluffy blanket and puts it over me , securing straps over my torso down to my feet.

“We don’t want you falling out now, do we?” Wheeler says, now dressed similarly to her helpers in a green gown, white mask and dark purple gloves

time to sleep you hear as a scrubbed figure places a mask over your face, at first it tastes normal but quickly you feel the flow change and become more chemical smelling, we’re just giving you some nitrous now, as she loads a syringe into your port filled with a strange white liquid

“this may burn or sting slightly”

she was right and soon in addition the back of your throat tasted a bit coppery, before long your vision began to blur as well.

you’re falling down so good, joe, keep falling ❤️ only a matter of time now!

pretty soon what was left of your vision finally faded out and you were in a state of anesthesia.

alright, he’s out , ladies get to work

the mask was renoved from your face then the restraints on your lower body loosened before your legs were moved into the frog pose and your groin shaved and wiped with warm water then painted with betadine followed by a syringe of sterile lubricant injected into your urethra and a catheter placed before the blanket and restraints were replaced.

While that was happening a nasotracheal tube was being introduced into your right nostril, and attached to the ventilator to keep you under and a ring mouth-gag sewn in place simultaneously, before a tube of opthalmic ointment was squirted over each of your corneas and they were sealed with surgical dressings then green towels were placed around your mouth and secured around the tube to keep it in place followed by the mayo stand being wheeled to hang over your insensate body and your chair was raised to just over 4ft off the ground before one of the assistant’s began painting the lower portion of your face with antiseptic, then placed a throat pack with the surgical clamps.

Now it was time to work, Dr Grace Wheeler made quick work of your full clearance, removing each tooth individually before leveling the bone along your gumline with the piezoelectric grinder and sewing your new gums shut, who knows you might just learn a thing or two from being toothless now

hope you all like this story, i wrote it in one take, i know the grammar a d whatnot aren’t all there but the concept sure is

#anesthesia #intubated #surgery #medfet #surgeon #intubatedlover #female surgery #medical equipment #anesthesia mask #intubation #dental surgery #tooth extractions #dental implants

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sam24 · 5 months

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Hearts on Ice (1/2)

Summary: You absolutely loved shadowing at Dr. Framer's physical therapy clinic. Except for whenever Bucky Barnes, injured star hockey player, came in for his 4:30 appointments.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!reader

enemies to lovers | college au | athlete bucky

part two

*****

“Ow.”

“That did not hurt.”

“What if it did, huh?”

“Then you’re a wuss.”

Bucky Barnes cried as he clenched his chest dramatically with a pained expression. “Oh heavens, I’m a wuss according to the wussiest girl alive, whatever shall I do?”

“How about sitting still for starters?” You rolled your eyes.

“I only sit still for people that are actually doctors,” Bucky said matter-of-factly. “Not for little college girls who’ll do anything to make their résumé look a little less pathetic.”

“I’ll let you know that I actually love shadowing here, not just for the resumé, thanks.” You narrowed your eyes at him, pushing his knee into his chest with an extra shove for good measure (not enough to injure him more, of course.)

“Oh, so you love tenderly massaging my knee every Wednesday for an hour?” Bucky raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“When have I ever had to tenderly massage your knee during a session?” You made a face. “And if I have, I am extremely grateful that I lost that memory.”

“ Right, my bad, must have been that other girl who shadows here during my Sunday appointments. You know, the pretty blonde one who’s much hotter than you.”

“Hotter than me? Impossible.”

“Please,” Bucky snorted. “You are the most mediocre girl I have ever met.”

“Wow, Barnes,” You smiled wide at him. “You certainly know how to win a girl’s heart, don’t you?”

“Keep your heart, Dr. Mediocrity, I don’t want it.”

You ignored him. “Let’s try this new exercise. It should build balance and stability on your bad knee.”

“As you wish. Impress me with your astounding lack of skill. Maybe one day, you’ll reach the lofty heights of acceptable.”

“And maybe one day, you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut. Until Dr. Framer gets back, enjoy my mediocre expertise, Barnes.”

🎕

“LET’S GO PIETRO! SHOW ‘EM HOW IT’S DONE!”

You joined in with Wanda’s enthusiastic scream, teeth slightly chattering from a mixture of the cold air and the excitement of the game.

The roar of the crowd blended seamlessly with the rhythmic scraping of blades against the ice, and the loud cheers reverberated against the cold walls of the arena. The stadium pulsated with the hollers of extremely loud frat boys, and you and Natasha cheered loudly along with Wanda.

You looked around a little, trying to spot the injured Bucky Barnes, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Bucky Barnes?” You heard the girl behind you ask out loud, having the same thoughts as you.

“He’s injured, silly. He’s not playing,” Her friend replied with a giggle.

“Yeah, I know that,” The girl rolled her eyes. “But where is he? He’s so fucking hot, I need to see my daily eye candy.”

You rolled your eyes so hard they might’ve done a full 360.

Sure, Bucky was objectively good-looking, and sure he had a nice jawline and cheekbones, and sure, he was built like a Greek god, and sure, you might have had a big fat crush on him in the past, but in reality, he was just an annoying pain in the ass.

Yeah, you knew you weren’t the hottest person in the world, but it certainly wasn’t helping your ego to literally be called “mediocre” repeatedly by the most sought after boy at NYU.

Your Bucky-hating-monologue was soon interrupted by the ringing of your phone.

“Hey, I need a favor.”

10 minutes later, you were trudging to the concession stands, silently cursing out Maria in your head. She had pulled the classic “I need someone to cover for me”, which roughly translated to “I want to sneak away for a make out session with my girlfriend.”

You sighed, desperately hoping for a miracle that you’d be paired with someone nice, tolerable at the least.

You were utterly wrong.

As soon as you turned the corner, you scowled. You could recognize those annoyingly muscular broad shoulders anywhere.

“Oh, fuck me,” You muttered under your breath.

Bucky looked up from his phone, surprise lighting up on his face, but he quickly hit you with a cheeky smile. “Hey there, PT girl. Craving a snack, are we?” He leaned back with a lazy stretch. “Lucky for you, you just stumbled upon one.”

“Well aren’t you just hilarious, how long did it take you to think of that one?” You took the chair next to him, making a point of scooting it far away from him before sitting down. “But no, I’m covering for Maria.”

“So I’m stuck with you until Maria gets back?” Bucky grimaced. “Fantastic.”

“Well I’m not exactly throwing a party over here either, Barnes,” You huffed.

“Speaking of parties, you going to the one after the game?” Bucky looked at you with a glint in his eyes. “Actually, never mind, you won’t. You’re too much of a goody two shoes.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Actually, I was planning on coming.”

“Really?” Bucky blew an eyelash. “Someone on the team invited you to the party?”

“Don’t sound so shocked.” You sneered.

“Well who is it then?” Bucky raised his eyebrows, slightly leaning in closer.

“What’s it to you?” You shot him a sickeningly sweet smile. “Jealous?”

“Please,” Bucky straightened his shoulders and looked away quickly. “Just wanna warn the poor fella.”

“Aw, how sweet.” You pouted sarcastically. “But no need to warn him, it was just Pietro.”

“Oh.”

Was that a slight scowl on his face? He leaned back into his chair, and it seemed like the playful mood went out the window. You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. Men and their damn mood swings.

After a bit of silence, Bucky grumbled something out. “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

You arched an eyebrow, taking in his grim expression. You decided not to tease him this time. “No, absolutely not. He’s my best friend’s brother, so he’s like a brother to me too now.”

Bucky looked over through the corner of his eye, and you could’ve sworn something lit up on his face.

Or it was just you being delusional. Probably the latter.

“So do you get asked out to parties by all your friends’ brothers, or just this one?” Bucky smirked.

Apparently his brooding period was over.

“There was no ‘asking out’ involved, stupid.” You rolled your eyes. “He just said that there was a party after the game, and to come if I wanted.”

“If you wanted, huh?” Bucky feigned a swoon. “What a consensual king.”

“Consensual? Wow sweetie, such big words you’re using!” You shot back with a faux impressed expression.

Bucky chuckled. “Well, you know, I like keeping it classy. Unlike some people.” He gestured towards you.

“Yes of course. Bucky Barnes, the epitome of class and perfection, using big boy words like ‘consensual’. I’m honored to be in your presence.”

He bowed dramatically. “Yes, you should be. It’s not everyday you’re graced by this charm and wit.”

Before you could retort back, an annoyingly high-pitched voice interrupted.

“Hey, Buck.” The girl laid her chest on the counter strategically so her boobs were placed directly in Bucky’s eyeline.

You recognized her as the girl sitting behind you in the stands earlier, the one talking about her ‘Bucky eye candy’ and what not.

“Sup, Stacey,” Bucky nodded, seemingly not noticing the literal set of boobs in his face.

She frowned, and you almost felt pity for the girl. Almost.

Her friend next to her giggled. “How’s your knee doing, tough guy.”

“Pretty good, thanks for asking, sweetheart.”

You made a face, but the girl continued giggling. “Well that’s good.”

The first girl (Stacey?) shoved her friend behind her, fighting for Bucky’s attention. “Why are you here with this girl instead of watching the game, Bucky?” She looked at you with contempt, and you glared back at her.

Bucky seemed to not notice the malice in her voice directed towards you. You didn’t expect him to notice anyways.

“Watching makes me kinda sad, because it reminds me that I can’t get out there and play with my team.” Bucky shrugged.

“Aw, my poor baby,” Both girls cooed dramatically, and Stacey reached over the counter to stroke his chest. You watched with disgust as they both acted like Bucky was the first person in the world to ever discover what it felt like to be sad.

Suddenly, Stacey made eye-contact with you. “The hell are you staring at?”

You couldn’t resist a sarcastic smile. “Just marveling at the display of empathy. It’s truly heartwarming.”

Stacey’s eyes narrowed, and her friend giggled nervously.

“Let’s go Bucky, come hang with us,” Stacey flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I still don’t understand why you’re willingly sitting with this girl.”

“I’m just making new friends, spicing it up a bit from the usual party folk,” Bucky shot her a charming smile while you shot her the exact opposite.

“Spicy, huh?” She looked you up and down. “She looks more like a bland vanilla to me.”

“Good one, Stace,” Her friend giggled.

“Yeah, Stace, good one,” You mocked. “Must’ve taken all three of your brain cells working overtime for that masterpiece.”

“C’mon Bucky,” Stacey swiveled on the heel of her Uggs back to Bucky. “You’re way out of this girl’s league, come join us.”

Bucky’s easy-going demeanor seemed to falter, and something in his eyes swished with irritation. Unless you were imagining things, Bucky seemed to scoot his chair a bit closer to yours. “I don’t remember signing up for any leagues, Stacey.”

“You know what I mean, Bucky bear,” She pouted. “Stop slumming it with whatever this is, and have fun with us.”

You bit back a snarky retort, and Bucky’s jaw clenched. “She’s a person, not a ‘whatever’. She’s my friend, and I don’t put up with people that crap on my friends.”

Since when were you and Bucky friends? Since when did he start defending you from annoying blondes? What happened to the whole hating thing you two had going on?

“You’ve changed, Bucky.” Stacey turned on her heel and stomped in, her friend closely following.

Bucky slumped back in his chair with the roll of his eyes. An awkward silence settled between you two.

“We’re friends?” You blurted out.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Doc,” Bucky smirked. “I just said that so she would get off our backs.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

Bucky shot you a side glance. “Don’t mention it. I’ve got a reputation to maintain, and hanging out with you is not doing wonders for it.”

You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, yeah, wouldn’t want hockey star Bucky Barnes to be seen with the ‘bland vanilla’, right?”

“Exactly.” He winked.

Suddenly, two boys entered, clearly your age, arguing about something.

“No, you dingo, fudge M&M’s are obviously better.”

“Those taste like dirt. The peanut ones hit so hard.”

“How about we let the pretty lady decide what we should buy.” The first one pointed at you, and you looked at them in surprise as Bucky snorted.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.” He grinned. “It’s the perfect excuse to start a conversation with a pretty girl.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Well since you asked so nicely, I would say fudge M&M’s are for the win.” You smiled at the boy.

“Told you, Scott.” The boy stuck his tongue out at his friend.

“Shut up, Quill. Whatever the flavor is, you’re paying anyway.”

“How much for a bag of fudge M&M’s, cutie,” The boy, who his friend called Quill, winked.

Bucky pretended to throw up all over the counter.

“Two dollars.” You ignored Bucky’s antics. Quill handed you two dollar bills, brushing your hand with his own as he did.

“Watch the hands, I don’t even know your name yet.” You raised your eyebrows playfully as Bucky shoved the M&M’s into his hand.

“It’s Peter, and behind me is Scott,” He reached out to shake your hand with a flirty smirk. “And you are?”

“Not interested,” Bucky interjected loudly.

“A bit possessive, aren’t we?” Peter arched an eyebrow.

“Nope. Just wondering why you’re still here after you’ve received your candy,” Bucky deadpanned.

“He’s right, we should get back,” Scott piped in from behind.

“Alright then,” Peter straightened his shoulders and turned back over to you. “Hopefully I’ll see you at the party later? Only if your friend here gives you permission to attend, of course.”

“We’re not friends,” Bucky barked, seemingly scooting a bit away from you.

Even though you knew that you two weren’t actually friends, it hurt a bit to hear him respond with such venom laced in his voice.

Peter, undeterred, shot you a charming smile. “Well, if you find yourself free later, swing by. I’d love to learn more about you.”

You nodded, giving a small smile. “Sure, maybe I will.”

As Peter and Scott left, a heavy silence settled between you and Bucky. The air seemed charged with unspoken tension, and you couldn’t quite decipher the emotions playing across Bucky’s face.

“So, you’re not going to the party, right?” Bucky muttered, avoiding eye contact.

You sighed, feeling a strange combination of frustration and disappointment. “Why does it matter to you? We’re not friends, remember?”

Bucky’s jaw tightened, his gaze flickering with something you couldn’t quite place. “Yeah, I remember.”

The exchange left you both in an uncomfortable silence, the unspoken feelings lingering in the air like a heavy fog. The dynamics between you and Bucky had taken an unexpected turn, and neither of you seemed quite sure how to navigate the uncharted territory.

Your phone buzzed, and you fished it out of your pocket, reading the message.

“It’s Maria,” You waved your phone. “She’s coming back.”

“Okay.”

You gritted your teeth in frustration, getting up from the chair. “Bye.”

No response.

Fine, you thought as you stomped back to your spot next to Wanda and Natasha. Be that way.

🎕

Natasha’s eyes blazed with a fierce intensity, her hand gripping yours as if to channel her frustration through the connection. “Men are stupid,” she declared, a mixture of anger and exasperation evident in her voice. “He’s got the nerve to get mad at you just because another dude was flirting with you. I’m so tired of men getting mad at women for absolutely no fucking reason.”

You nodded along, finding comfort in Natasha’s solidarity, and you laid your head on Wanda’s shoulder as your friends tried to process the breathless story you’d just told them.

“Calm down, both of you,” Wanda interjected with a soothing voice, a stark contrast to her previous loud and enthusiastic support for Pietro from just a minute ago. “Men are just bad with feelings. Trust me, I know. He’s not actually mad at you or anything, he’s obviously just got a crush on you. He just got really insecure when he saw the girl he likes being flirted with right in front of his face.”

“Bucky Barnes? Insecure of some random guy flirting with me of all people?” You shook your head. “Fat chance, Wan.”

“Stop selling yourself so short,” Natasha chided, delivering a playful kick to your foot. “You said it yourself, there was a random guy flirting with you literally 10 minutes ago.”

“He probably was blinded by Bucky’s godly radiance and it ruined his eyesight.” You snorted.

“No one needs to get blinded by ‘Bucky’s radiance’ in order to think you’re cute,” Natasha rolled her eyes, her tone a blend of sincerity and amusement.

“Men can be pretty dense when it comes to expressing their feelings,” Wanda chimed. “I doubt he even realized he was acting out of jealousy. Sometimes they just need a little shove in the right direction.”

“Does that mean I can shove his annoying butt from the top of the stands?” You quipped, a mischievous glint in your eyes.

Wanda nudged her shoulder into yours with an amused huff. “Maybe later. Go talk to him first.”

Natasha leaned in with a wicked grin. “And if talking doesn’t work, then you have my full permission to go for the shove. Sometimes actions speak louder than words.”

The three of you shared a conspiratorial laugh, the tension from earlier dissipating as you contemplated the various ways to handle the perplexing enigma that was Bucky Barnes.

“Just be honest with him about your feelings,” Wanda advised, her eyes reflecting a genuine concern. “He might be a pain, but he’s a good guy.”

“Weren’t you the one who pointed him out and told me to stay away from him when we came to their first game?” You arched your eyebrow, a hint of skepticism in your voice.

Wanda chuckled, a sheepish smile tugging on her face. “Well, yeah. But people change, you know? He’s still a pain, but he’s our pain now. And if he's acting strange, it’s for a reason.”

You sighed, grateful for your friends’ support. “Fine, fine, I’ll talk to him. But if I end up shoving him, you both are witnesses that it was for the greater good.”

Natasha mockingly saluted. “Loud and clear. Just make sure it’s a spectacular shove.”

As you stood up, Wanda called after you. “Don’t forget to tell him how you actually feel about him, don’t just play Miss Tough Girl!”

“I myself don’t know how I feel about him,” You called back, a sense of honesty laced in your words.

🎕

Bucky was literally nowhere to be found. He wasn’t at concessions anymore, he wasn’t anywhere in the crowd, and if he was in the bathroom, you definitely weren’t checking there.

You debated going back to your friends and telling them you searched everywhere (despite only looking in two places) and that you couldn’t find him, but you were sure Natasha would throw her Twizzlers at you, and then come along with you to search for him.

Sighing, you decided to make one final loop around the arena, hoping to spot the familiar mop of brown hair or a glint of his pearly white teeth. As you walked through the crowd, your mind seemed to replay the scenes from earlier. The strange emotions on his face seemed to confuse you as much as they confused him.

After a few minutes of weaving through excited hockey fans holding hot nachos, you finally spotted his sweatshirt clad elbow sticking out from around the corner, his back facing you.

As you made your way closer, almost close enough to touch him, you quickly pressed yourself against the wall, realizing there was a girl who you didn’t recognize, who was facing you. She was pressed against him, giggling repeatedly and stroking his muscles.

“So, Bucky, I heard from Stacey that you were being all buddy buddy with some random chick at the concession stands,” She fake pouted with a flirty glint in her eyes.

“Oh her?” You heard Bucky say. “Just some random girl. The only reason I talked to her was because I felt bad she had no friends. She’s kind of a nerd, you know? She’s obviously crushing on me hard.”

Your heart sank as you listened to Bucky’s words, feeling a mixture of hurt and anger. The words resonated with a sharp sting, and you steadied yourself on the wall.

In fear of Bucky seeing tears well up in your eyes as you confronted them, you decided to retreat quietly. You weren't about to show him how much his words actually had an effect on you.

“Oh, Buck, you’re so sweet, talking to the weirdos,” The girl giggled.

Turning on your heel, you walked away, the echo of their conversation fading as you distanced yourself. The arena seemed to close in on you, and you quickened your pace, trying to shake off the hurt and betrayal that threatened to consume you.

#bucky x reader #college au #enemies to lovers #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes #protective bucky barnes #athletebucky

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justagalwhowrites · 1 year

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Lavender - Ch. 30

You, Joel and Ellie come to new understandings following Tess' death. A continuation of Lavender Ch. 1-29 found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: None for this chapter! No use of Y/N. Whole fic is violent and smutty so Minors DNI, 18+ only.

Length: 4.7k

“Should stop here for the night,” Joel said.

It was the first thing any of you had said in hours. The sun was setting, the woods around you were stilling.

You’d made it a few miles outside the city, the three of you trudging more than walking. You were glad that Ellie had been quiet. It wasn’t her usual way and you really didn’t want her pushing Joel’s buttons, not right that moment. You only really needed to get through the next day with him, that was all. Even though thinking of everything after that made your chest hurt.

The two of you followed Joel off the trail to a level patch of ground. He dropped his pack and just looked at you for a moment.

“Need a minute,” he said eventually, stalking off in the woods.

“Shouldn’t have just left her like that,” Ellie muttered, plopping down by a tree and leaning back against it with a sigh.

“There’s nothing we could have done,” you said quietly. She looked at her own arm, which you’d patched up once you were clear of the city. “Ellie.” She looked at you. “You couldn’t have fixed her. It’s not on you. None of this is on you.”

She tensed her jaw and looked back down at her arm. You sighed.

It wasn’t Ellie’s fault but it was yours. You sat down, away from Ellie, and leaned back against a tree, closing your eyes. If you weren’t so fucking useless out here…

You saw the infected go for Joel and you’d just reacted. Shooting it probably hadn’t been smart but it had been instinctual. He was in danger. It didn’t matter that Joel would have been better at handling it than you, you had a gun and you could handle it now, you could kill it or draw it away from him and that’s what mattered. For a second, you forgot that you had to protect Ellie, too. For a second, you’d only been worried about him.

And then the gun jammed.

All you’d been able to do was watch the clicker come for you and throw Ellie out of the way. You hadn’t thought to try to reach your knife after you threw her, didn’t have any other option but to try to hold the clicker back, you weren’t strong enough to shove it off you. Its snarling, gnashing teeth and fungus enveloped face were inches from your skin when Ellie hurled herself at it, her insignificant weight nothing when compared to the large, now inhuman body that was crushing yours. Tess had been all but forced to step in, knocking the thing away from you. All because you’d been fucking stupid.

In hindsight, your last conversation with Tess made infinitely more sense.

You’d sent Joel and Ellie on ahead - wanting to put distance between both of them and the museum - while you worked on Tess’ ankle.

“Let me know if what I’m doing hurts,” you said, gently taking off her battered boot. “The goal is to make sure we can get you to walking comfortably. We’ll see if the Fireflies have something that can set you up better for a long trip…”

She looked you over for a moment, her back against the building as you checked her ankle.

“Shouldn’t have yelled at you,” she said. You glanced up at her. “That day, at the clinic. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

You shrugged, going back to work.

“Wasn’t like I was being a particularly nice person,” you replied. “I deserved it.”

She looked at you again.

“He did it to protect you,” she said. You looked up from her ankle. “Joel insisting on taking Andrew. He did it to protect you. The raiders were getting bad and the worst thing a raider will do to a man is kill him. Maybe torture him first if he’s got something they’re after but shot quick is how it goes. Women they take. He wasn’t willing to risk that, not with you.”

“Why are you telling me this?” You asked after a moment, grabbing a bandage from your pack and starting to wrap her ankle now that it was properly aligned.

“Because he’s too much of a fucking idiot to tell you himself,” she said. “He’s always been an idiot when it comes to you. He’s my best friend, he’s been my best friend for a decade and a half and one of the most consistent things about the man is that he’s a fucking idiot when it comes to you.”

“Are you sure he’s not just an idiot when it comes to most things?” You teased, glancing up at her, but her face was serious. You frowned, pausing your work, holding her ankle. “Tess, are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m just tired of him fucking things up with you. If everything is going to change then you should at least know that he wasn’t trying to be an asshole. He was trying to protect you.”

You sighed and went back to wrapping her ankle. When you finished the job, you helped her put her boot back on, tying the top as snug as she could bare to help support the wrap.

“At least you’re going to have at truck and you won’t be walking it to wherever the hell Tommy wound up,” you said, helping her to her feet. “And now you have a great excuse to just make Joel drive the whole way…”

She smiled grimly at that. You took a few practice steps with her to make sure her feet were under her before you started going over the board, Tess taking the crossing one slow step at a time.

When you were both across, she looked at you again.

“I feel like if things had been different, you and I would have been friends,” she said. And then she frowned. “Or better friends, I guess. You’re kind of the closest thing I have to a friend besides Joel.”

“Me too,” you half smiled at her. “We can always try now. Bit hard given everything but…”

“You still care about him,” she said. “Don’t you?”

You frowned at her.

“Are you sure, you’re OK?” You asked.

“Doc.”

“Yeah,” you looked straight ahead. “I’m always going to care about him, I’m always going to love him…”

She nodded before cutting you off.

“I need a favor,” she said, stopping in the street and looking at you. You stopped, too, your frown deepening. “If… If something happens to me, I need you to make sure he’s OK.”

“Tess, I’m not exactly a survivalist…” you replied but she shook her head.

“Not that way, he’ll be fine that way,” she said. “He needs someone. Right now, I’m who he has but he can’t survive without both of us. He needs someone. If something happens to me you need to make sure he’s OK.”

“Tess…” You were going to fight her on it. Tell her that you were pretty sure he didn’t WANT you to be someone to him, but she didn’t let you.

“Promise me.”

You sighed but she squared her jaw and fixed her eyes on you, like she was ready for a fight.

“Promise me!”

“OK!” You said quickly. “OK, I’ll make sure he’s OK. I’ve come running to patch him up enough times. I think you know that I’m always going to try to make sure he’s OK.”

She looked relieved.

“Good,” she nodded, a sense of finality to it, and she headed for the statehouse.

She had known, of course. She’d been bitten and she had hours left, at best. And she’d tried to make sure Joel was going to be OK.

How the fuck were you supposed to make sure Joel was OK?

He eventually returned from wherever he’d gone, still silent. He sat against a tree. After a bit, you went in your bag and got out what food you had. You gave some to Ellie, who crinkled her nose a bit at it, and tried to hand some to Joel. He just stared at it.

“You’ve got to eat something,” you said. He looked up at you. You wanted to apologize but didn’t want to push him too far. “It’s been a long day.”

He took it. You sat down again.

It was so quiet you could hardly bear it, Ellie eventually sighing and laying down, using her backpack as a pillow. Joel got up and draped his jacket over her before turning to you.

“Get some rest,” he said, his voice flat. “I’ll keep watch. Won’t be able to sleep anyway.”

“Joel,” you said softly. He just shook his head.

It wasn’t a restful night for you. Your dreams were filled with snarling, inhuman things that were always outside your control but never outside someone else’s. When you jerked awake, the sun was just starting to rise, the horizon blood red and purple.

Ellie was still asleep under a tree, her face tight. She probably wasn’t sleeping well, either. Joel was sitting, back to you, on a log.

You quietly got into your bag and found the notebook you’d tucked your pictures into. You found the one with Tess before heading for Joel.

He glanced up at you when you went to join him but didn’t say anything.

“I’m really sorry, Joel,” you said quietly. He sniffed, staring straight ahead. “She really cared about you. I know you cared about her…” You weren’t sure what to do with the gnawing guilt inside you, just that you couldn’t give it to him. “I’m here, if you need it.”

You handed him the picture. He looked at it and it hurt too much to be beside him then.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” you said. You didn’t wait for a response, desperate to put some space between you and Joel while you could get it.

***

“Where’s Doc?”

The kid’s voice was sleepy. The sun was fully up now.

“Said she’d be back soon,” he said gruffly.

“Oh,” she slumped back against the tree, the hair that had come out of her ponytail frizzy and wild around her face. She looked down at her lap, frowning for a second before looking back at him. “Want your jacket back?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t particularly feel like saying anything. The kid just sighed heavily, got up and brought him the jacket, dropping it on his pack before stomping back toward the tree she’d slept against. He ground his teeth.

Where the fuck were you?

He wasn’t sure what time it was. He wasn’t great at gauging how much time had passed since you’d left camp that morning. His mind wasn’t quite keeping up with things. He’d looked at the picture of Tess for a long time. She looked happy there. Happier than she ever really looked in the years he’d known her.

“About Tess,” the kid said.

“Don’t want to hear it,” he snapped.

“Well that’s too damn bad,” she snapped back. “It sucks that she’s dead but it’s not my fault and it’s not Doc’s. You and Tess decided to take us, we didn’t make you and Marlene didn’t make you. So don’t blame us because shit got bad. It’s not our fault so don’t pretend like it is.”

He just looked at her for a moment. She was right. He knew she was right. But then, he hadn’t planned on blaming either of you, anyway. No, this fell on him.

Him, stepping on the fucking glass. Him, not able to kill the damn thing before you intervened. Him, giving you a gun that jammed. Him, not able to get to you in time so Tess stepped in.

Him failing, failing, failing. Tess dying.

You came out of the trees, arms crossed tightly over yourself.

“Let’s go,” he said, voice gruff. “We’ve got about a five hour hike ahead of us.”

Joel led the way. Ellie had, apparently, decided one day of quiet was enough and started asking questions.

Mercifully, most of them were directed at you. The kid had never been out in nature before and it seemed like she had every fucking question in the world about it.

“So why haven’t we seen more animals?”

“How old are these trees, anyway?”

“Why was it just humans and not deer and shit who got infected?”

It was almost like watching you teach a class. You patiently answered all her questions, making sure she understood the root concepts you were using to respond to her. Part of her, it seemed, was just hungry to be acknowledged, have her thoughts recognized and understood. He could understand that. Sympathize with it.

And then she turned to the more personal questions.

“So,” she turned at walked backwards, facing the two of you. “Who’s Tommy?”

She raised her eyebrows, almost singing his name. Like she was trying to get under your skin. You groaned.

“It really doesn’t matter,” you said.

“I mean I think it does since you were apparently fuck…”

“What have I said about language?” You cut her off.

“That you don’t like swearing in your classroom and that there are appropriate times to swear,” the kid said matter-of-factly. “But we’re not in your classroom and that seemed appropriate to me.”

“Ellie,” you sighed.

“What?” She said. “C’mon, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!”

“He hadn’t been my boyfriend in a very long time,” you replied. “There was no reason he would have told me where he was going. He would have been more likely to tell Joel…”

“Joel,” her nose crinkled. “Why.”

“He’s my brother,” he ground his teeth.

“Ohhhhh,” she said, turning back around to face forward again. “So THAT’S how you know each other, OK…”

“That’s not…” you began and then seemed to think better of it. But you didn’t stop yourself fast enough for Ellie.

She turned back around.

“So how DO you know each other then,” she asked.

“Why do you want to know?” Joel asked, before looking at you. “Kids always ask this many questions?”

You just raised your eyebrows at him.

“If I’m going to be traveling with you two for a while…” Ellie began.

“Just goin’ to Bill and Frank’s,” Joel cut her off.

“Whatever,” she waved him off. “I’m the one stuck traveling with you two and you’ve got some kind of problem with each other. Kinda shitty for me to have to tiptoe around a problem when I don’t even know what the problem is.”

She just looked at you both, brows raised, thumbs looped through her backpack straps. You glanced at Joel. He sighed.

“Knew each other before,” he said eventually.

“Like you were friends?” She asked.

Joel ground his teeth.

“We were friends,” you replied.

“Just friends.” She sounded skeptical. You glanced at him again and it was a long enough pause that her mouth formed a small “o” before she started to laugh. “And you went out with his brother! Man, Doc, who knew you had it in you…”

You groaned. Joel resisted the urge to smile. Maybe the kid’s questions weren’t ALL bad.

“So is that how you got that scar on your head?” She asked Joel. “Get punched by your brother over a girl?”

She was teasing him. He ground his teeth.

“No,” he said, looking for something to say. He had never even told you what happened, certainly wasn’t about to tell some fuckin’ kid. “Someone shot at me and missed.”

“Did you shoot him?” She asked, voice serious again.

“No,” he replied. “I missed, too. Happens more often than you’d think.”

“Because you suck at shooting?”

Joel glared at her. She just rolled her eyes, facing forward again.

Joel led the three of you to a gas station that had become a hiding spot for supplies between Boston and Lincoln. Ellie went deeper inside while you looked over the shelves, not that there was much left. You picked up an old magazine, idly flipping through it.

“Anything good?” Joel asked.

“JLo and Ben Affleck called off their wedding,” you said, turning a page. “Too bad, too. Thought those kids were going to make it…”

Joel snorted.

It took Joel a second to find just where he’d stashed things, but an overturned shelf was on it now.

“Help me move this,” he called you over. You just nodded and picked up one side of it, getting it just far enough that he could access the floorboard. He kicked aside some of the remains from the shelf - mostly trash - but stopped when he noticed you staring down at something.

You’d all but frozen where you stood, a granola bar wrapper crumpled on the floor. You looked like you were about to cry.

“You OK?” He frowned.

“Fine,” you said quickly, picking up the wrapper and booking it for the door. “Just need some air, I’ll be outside.”

Joel looked toward the door Ellie had gone through for a moment before going after you.

You were pacing the parking lot, looking at the fucking wrapper. You were crying.

“Hey,” he said. Your head snapped up. You sniffed and wiped your tears, trying to hide it. “What’s going on.”

“Nothing,” your voice was thick.

“Not nothing.” He nodded to the wrapper. “Why’s that upset you.”

“Just haven’t seen one of these in 20 years, that’s all,” you said, not looking directly at him.

“Never seen you cry over trash before,” he said. “Why’s it upset you.”

“These stupid things are all I could eat when I was pregnant, OK?” You said quickly, almost angrily. But then you looked up at him, almost like you were scared of what he’d say. “I’m sorry, I know it’s… it’s a sore subject but… I had just fucking awful morning sickness, I couldn’t hold down anything but Clif bars and I haven’t seen them in 20 years and I hadn’t thought about that in so long and… It’s probably the reason I wasn’t infected to begin with, these were all I was eating. It’s what me and Andrew survived on, I had a whole stash at the house that I brought with me… It just caught me off guard, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

He just stood there, looking at you for a moment, the wrapper still in your fingers. He realized then that he’d actively avoided picturing you at that time. What it would have been like for you to make your way to Boston 20 years ago, especially knowing all that he knew now. But he imagined that you would have looked then much like you did now - small, vulnerable, scared. Part of you hurting and trying to hide it. It made his heart ache.

“Can I hold you?” He asked. Your eyes met his, surprised.

“You don’t have to…” you said, but he shook his head.

“I want to,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”

You didn’t say anything. You just kept your eyes on him and moved slowly, cautiously, until your face was against his chest, his chin on top of your head. His arms went around you, pulling you tightly to him. He could feel you breathing like this, the shuddering of you against him as you cried. He cradled your head to his chest and breathed you in, the last of the smell of your shampoo clinging to your hair through the wilderness and smoke and sweat.

“Ew!” Ellie came stomping outside a few minutes later. “See, this is why I needed to know what the problem was, apparently can’t leave you two alone for five fucking minutes…”

You pulled back from him, still sniffing a bit but no longer crying. You tucked the wrapper in your pocket.

“What, Gremlin? Want a hug, too? Feeling left out?” You smiled at her, your arms out. Ellie backed away, shaking her head, trying not to smile. “Come on…”

You drew the last word out and jumped at her, making her yelp and laugh before hiding behind a dilapidated gas pump. Joel felt himself smile a little before he realized he was doing it as he went inside to find his things.

“Are Bill and Frank nice?” Ellie asked as they neared Lincoln.

“Frank is,” Joel muttered. “Bill’s… Bill.”

“I’m surprised you don’t get alone with him better, honestly,” you said, looking up at Joel. He frowned. “Birds of a feather and all that.”

“Oh so Bill’s an asshole,” Ellie nodded sagely. “Got it.”

You snorted. Joel glared at you. You smiled a little back at him. It felt almost normal, almost like how life had been before. He’d missed it.

Lincoln was oddly quiet when the three of you arrived. Joel glanced down at you and he knew you felt it, too, a slight frown on your face. He waved to the camera but didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he just keyed in the code Bill had given him.

“Don’t leave the fenced area,” he ordered Ellie. “Not only are there sometimes infected and raiders in the woods, Bill’s got the perimeter booby trapped to hell and back…”

“Right, stay in town and don’t go looking for any fucking clickers,” she rolled her eyes. “Got it.”

Joel kept his weapon drawn as he made his way toward the house, looking behind him to make sure you’d shut the gate and were following, too.

He realized then some of what had made him uneasy. The plants in the planters had gone brown and were drooping. The grass was yellowing. Things that Frank never would have let happen.

“Shit,” he muttered. He looked behind him again. “Stick close.”

He knocked, hard, on the front door. There was no response but it was unlocked. He let himself in.

“Frank?” He yelled. “Bill?”

There were still plates on the table, the remains of the food rotting.

“Ugh,” Ellie crinkled her nose.

You frowned, going for the kitchen. You opened the fridge.

“Definitely been a bit since they were here,” you said. “Probably a week at least, you know how Bill was with cooking and labeling things…”

Joel started peering through the house, searching for some sign of where they’d gone, when they might return…

“Hey guys?” Ellie called from the dining room. He got to the room at the same time as you. Ellie was sitting at the table, her legs propped up on another chair. She held up a piece of paper and you frowned, going to look over her shoulder. “It said ‘to whomever but probably Joel’ so… I figured I was allowed to open it.”

He came to her shoulder as well. She looked up at the two of you before she started reading.

“If you find this… please do not come into the bedroom. We left a window open so the house wouldn’t smell, but it will probably be a sight.

“I’m guessing you found this, Joel, because anyone else would’ve been electrocuted or blown up by one of my traps. Hehehehehehehehe. Take anything you need. The bunker code is the same as the gate code but in reverse. Anyway… I never liked you, but still, it’s like we’re friends… almost. And I respect you. So, I’m gonna tell you something because you’re probably the only person who will understand. I used to hate the world, and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong because there was one person worth saving. That’s what I did. I saved him. Then I protected him.

“That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do. And God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way. I leave you all of my weapons and equipment. Use them to keep…”

You were gone before she could say Tess’ name. Ellie just looked up at him, her eyes wide. Almost like she wanted to say she was sorry but wasn’t sure how.

He took the letter from her and went outside, too. He looked for you for a moment and caught a glimpse of you heading for the pharmacy. He took a deep breath, looking down at the paper again, remembering what you’d said about him and Bill. That they were the same.

He may have been different once, back when he first fell in love with you. Back when he felt capable of it. He’d become more like Bill since then. But there were still small glimpses of who he’d been before, of the man who thought that life was worth it. They were almost all with you.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Tess. He did. There was a knot in his chest, knowing that he’d failed her. If he could have changed it, traded places with her, he would have. In a heartbeat. And the world would have been better for it.

But she wasn’t who he was here to save. She never had been, and both of them had known it.

He still felt it when he held you. That there was something he’d been built for, made to do: protect you. Before, that meant picking you up after a shitty date with a bad guy or making sure you didn’t overdo it when you got your appendix out. It had meant lifting your suitcase onto the scale at the airport when you flew home because he didn’t want you moving something heavy. Now, it was different. Now, it meant killing what scared you or threatened you.

Now, it meant getting you and an immune girl across a wasteland of infected and raiders in one piece.

He poked his head back in the house and found Ellie, now standing at the piano.

“Stay in the house,” he ordered, before going to find you.

He found you quickly. You were in the pharmacy, rifling through the shelves. Because Bill had locked down the town so early, there was still plenty left. Almost everything you hadn’t taken after FEDRA had stopped producing certain things was still there, minus what Bill and Frank had used through the years.

You turned and jumped when you saw him, your hand going to your heart.

“Scared me,” you said. Your eyes were shiny with tears, rimmed in red.

“You OK?” He asked. You just nodded, going back to sorting through medications, your back to him. “Hey,” he said after a minute. “Talk to me.”

“I’m sorry, Joel,” you said, turning to face him. You leaned back against the counter behind you, your fingers digging into it so hard your knuckles were white. “I fucked up, I got her killed…”

“No,” he shook his head. “You didn’t.”

“If I’d just…”

“Not your fault,” he said again. His voice was gentle, his eyes wide and you couldn’t seem to bring yourself to look at him. You were looking at a half empty shelf of drugs instead, your cheeks wet.

You took a deep, shaky breath, before actually looking at him.

“I’m going to get her there,” you said, your voice surprisingly steady. “I’m not sure how yet but I can take a few days here, make a plan…”

“I’m taking you,” he cut you off. You frowned at him.

“Joel, no,” you shook your head. “No, I can’t ask you…”

“You’re not,” he replied. “I’m tellin’ you. You’re not doing this just you and her, you’ll get yourselves killed and then what the fuck would be the point. I’m takin’ you.”

You took a deep breath and he could tell that you were getting ready to argue with him so he cut you off.

“I already need to find Tommy,” he said. “Come with me. He knows where the lab is, right? You said he tried to get you to come there, said it was nice? We’ll find him, he can get you to the lab.”

You looked at him for a moment, eyes still glistening.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Joel,” you whispered.

“Then let me get you there,” he said softly, stepping closer to you until he was right in front of you. “Don’t make me lose you, too.” He could feel the heat of you against him, could smell your skin. You looked up at him for a moment before you just nodded and pressed your face into his chest. He put his arms around you for the second time that day.

“I’m going to get you there,” he said. “I promise.”

A/N: About to get on the road to Kansas City! As an FYI, we're going to get some stuff fairly in line with canon through that, then have a stretch of all OC shit for a bit. I hope everyone is enjoying this weird smushing it together thing I'm doing because I'm having fun with it!

I have a taglist, please comment below if you'd like to be added or if you've already asked but I slacked off and didn't add you like a chump.

Thank you, as always, for reading and spending time with these characters and my work! All your love for it has made this such a joy to share and I couldn't love you more!

Taglist: @paleidiot @ayamenimthiriel @ginger-swag-rapunzel @drewharrisonwriter @flugazi @pedropascalsbbg @taoyuji @starstruckmusiciansartghost @splendsay @bigboiseason123 @jpbplvr @ashleyandring @mrsyixingunicorn10 @sloanexx @ninaminaromina @lady-bellyn @hufflepuffriver @sarap-77 @storyarcscribe @mellymbee @jasminedragoon @lemonmeli @reds-ramblings @arizonadaydreamer @mumma-moonchild @blackroseguzzi @candypeaches16 @kittenlittle24 @wrappedinfiction @oatmeaiboy @pedritosdarling @winchestergypsy90 @imnotdatboii @lalalalemonade11

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #enemies to friends to lovers

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