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seventeenpins · 3 months

Text

a slight miscalculation - pt. i

pairing: Joel x F!Reader

word count: 8.3k

summary: Sarah is off to college, and Joel is about to be living in an empty nest. They road trip out together, and as she spends her first night in her new apartment, he's staying in a nearby hotel. Letting go of his inhibitions for the first time in a long time, he tumbles into a one night stand that becomes very complicated, very quickly.

content/warnings: smut, age gap, mycologist!reader, dick sucking, implied pussy eating, fingering, no outbreak au, reader likes to hike, reader also infodumps, joel miller has a big cock, he also has anxiety, reader has anxiety too, and a cat, reader is in early 20s--exact age not established, one (1) use of daddy, alcohol and weed consumption, joel is a diligent condom wearer, set in present day, discussion of girl scout cookies, joel is sweet and soft and hasn't been eviscerated by the death of his daughter

a/n: I'm intending this to be about five parts. This may change, but right now it's looking like five. I've been struggling to write for a while, unable to focus, but I think I'm back at it? as always, your feedback is hugely appreciated, and i'm kissing all likers and commenters and rebloggers deeply and with tongue 🩷

check out pt. ii

For the first time in nineteen years, Joel is completely adrift. Sarah's starting college in just two months.

It's the kind of realization that hits him like a bucket of ice water, a sudden shock and then an unpleasant trickling of anxiety wrapping about him in nasty tendrils. And then he feels guilty, because he's so, so happy for Sarah because he knows that she's thrilled, but fuck she's gonna be two time zones away and now what's Joel meant to do on Thursday movie nights when he's here without her?

It's terrifying, and it's new. And it's not that he's new to anxiety. He's usually anxious, and he has the Sertraline on his bedside stand to prove it. But if his general anxiety baseline usually hovered around a 6.4, where he was at now far surpassed a 10. It felt exponential, and totally exhausting.

When he voices his fears to Tommy, to Joel's horror, Tommy just doubles over in laughter.

"Jesus, Joel," he wheezes, wiping fake tears from his eyes in exaggerated movements, "You looked so serious I thought you were gonna say you'd killed someone."

Joel scowls. "The fuck you laughing for?"

"She's going to college, it's not like she's dying!"

"How'm I gonna be there for her? What if she needs me? What if-"

"Joel-," Tommy pats him gently on the shoulder, "She can always call you, and you can always call her. And we both know she's got a good head on 'er shoulders."

Joel snorts in concession. "Yeah, yeah. Better than yours and mine put together, and then some."

"Exactly." Tommy agrees, "And if there's ever anything that really goes wrong, you got me. We can drive out together and make sure she's okay."

Joel nods and feels the tiniest bit of tension leave him. One step at a time.

Just over nineteen years ago he found out he was about to be a dad. Suddenly, he had a purpose. Having a kid at twenty-two wasn't something he'd ever intended, but somehow he knew he loved his baby girl from the moment he knew she was a possibility. He spent a solid seven months running around, hustling, doing everything he could to get the very best for his kid. He'd take on doubles, working himself to the bone to make sure they had the best crib, and the best stroller, too. He was thrilled and terrified and so, so green.

Now, his heart feels so big he doesn't know how to handle it. His baby girl is an honest-to-god adult, moving out and going to college, and he has no idea what he's gonna do with his time now.

He has work, of course. But beyond that? He's really gotta to widen his circle, he realises, because who's he gonna hang out with? His brother?

He'd only just turned forty-one and had absolutely not come to terms with an empty nest--the few friends from high school he'd kept in touch with were so much further behind than him. The ones that had kids had them later in their twenties and thirties, and now they're raising middle schoolers while Joel's kid is a real fucking person, leaving home and everything. All the scrapping and saving he'd been doing since before Sarah was born–for his little girl to be able to follow any dream she chose–it was finally paying off. The precocious young woman she is, she graduated early and spent nearly a year working retail to save up some cash. She'd applied to colleges all across the country, and a few international ones, too. Joel had been crossing his fingers for months, hoping she'd choose something near Austin, but cheered with her all the same when she got her acceptance letter from Oregon State University. The previous summer, just before she'd started her applications, she and Joel and Tommy spent a miserable, wonderful week hiking round the Pacific Northwest. She fell in love with it, and the university offered a few of the majors she wanted to consider.

Joel didn't know what he'd do with his baby girl so far away, his life, his reason, but he sure as hell wasn't gonna tell her that. He will not clip her wings. His baby's gonna change the world and he's not gonna hold her back. He is, though, gonna require regular phone calls and check-ins and god they grow up so fast.

"Y'all should road trip out there," Tommy suggests one night over the dinner table.

Joel knew the conversation of how Sarah would get to the West Coast would come up, and it oughta be sooner rather than later. He was half afraid that she wanted to head out on her own, that she didn't need her dad anymore. Worried she would say she wanted to get a plane ticket, or take the Amtrak all the way to Corvallis. But he knows he needs to loosen his grip a little, so he braces himself when he turns to her.

"What'dya think, Sarah? You wanna be stuck in a car with your old man for a cross-country trip?"

Sarah rolls her eyes, but her face breaks into a grin. "Can we, Dad?"

This was too good to be true, he knew, but he wasn't gonna give up one last opportunity to spend some time with his girl till winter break.

"Course, baby," he tells her, and that flicker of anxiety quells just the tiniest bit.

The next few weeks fly by, and the knot of anxiety in Joel's chest feels like it's consuming him from the inside out. He's taken some time off, more than Sarah or Tommy can remember, but he's constantly trying to suggest ideas for activities to Sarah. For the most part, she's a good sport, understanding how much it means to her dad. She took pity on him, and let him drag her to places that ideally she would've gone to when she was little, but she humored him and he appreciated her dedication. He did his best to step back when she was heading out to spend time with friends--her time here was limited, after all, and she was always a social butterfly.

There are five weeks till classes start, four weeks, three, two, and in the blink of an eye, they're loading up the truck with all of Sarah's things, and Tommy is hugging Sarah goodbye, teary eyed. He gives Joel a hug, too. Joel would never admit it, but fuck he had really needed that hug.

They would take the scenic route. Make a memorable trip of it. Joel would make sure she settles in safe and sound, and then he'd head home.

6am Sunday.

You wake with a start. It's just over a week before term starts and your entire body aches. Fuck, you think to yourself, definitely overdid it with that last hike.

(The hiking part wasn't itself a problem, but one of the trails had washed out. You thought you'd found your way, but the "easy" three and a half mile hike took about five hours, leaving your calves bruised and your heels blistered.)

You roll over in your hotel room bed and, at the sound of a slight yelp followed by a gentle thud, realise with a sudden start that you just catapulted your cat off the corner.

"Shit, sorry goblin," you tell Spatula, who glares up at you with disdain as he licks at his paw. You reach down and, despite your inadvertent cat launch, he immediately rubs up against your fingertips and lets you scratch behind his ears.

"I'm sorry, baby," you soothe.

He meows, loudly. Howls, really. You take it as an apology accepted.

You sit up properly and look at your phone calendar. Nothing immediate. You don't need to get keys to your new apartment till tomorrow, nor do you meet your roommates till then–they're both moving in today, and moving is already horrible without having to navigate around the belongings of two other people. No, thanks. You can afford one more night at the hotel, and it'll make everything go that little bit more smoothly tomorrow. Besides, you have a bit of reading you'd like to get through, maybe stock up on non-perishables till you have a full-sized fridge, and get to know the city just a little.

You move gingerly, testing the ache in your muscles as you unfold yourself from the position you've been sat in and pull yourself from the bed. It hurts, but not something that won't be fixed with a little movement.

A plan forms. First, a walk, to try and loosen up your tight muscles. Then, errands. You have a whole list, with everything categorised by store, but then you enter IKEA and exit fifteen minutes later, only to find that five and a half hours have passed and it's evening now.

How was it that IKEA harnessed such a malicious power. How could anything harness that?

You need a fucking break. And a goddamn drink.

"Hey Dad," Sarah calls from the adjacent bedroom as Joel sweats, hauling another box towards her. The drive has been good, but it has been long. His legs ache. His back aches. There are parts of him that he didn't know existed that now ache.

"Yeah?" he calls back.

"Are you sure you're okay with me staying here tonight?"

Joel lets out a breath. He wants to be okay with it. And there's no way his nineteen year old would want to hang out with her dad when she could be spending the very first night in her brand new apartment. But he also wishes she wanted to spend one last night, hanging out in a hotel room with her dad. They could watch shitty movies together. Make the most of the final night before this cataclysmic shift.

But no.

That'd just be him being selfish. He can handle a night by himself. He's gotta handle a whole lotta them soon enough.

"O'course baby," he nods, hoping the smile he's plastered on his face looks totally genuine. "But we're still doin' breakfast in the morning, right?"

She nods, vigorous, and then waves her phone around. "I was looking up places! There's a diner called Tommy's," she laughs, "Wanna try that? 9:30?"

"Let's do it," he smiles, and this one is a little less forced.

"How much more do we have?" Sarah asks, nodding towards the box Joel's still holding.

"Last box," he grunts, "What else can I help with?"

He places the box down and lets out a slight, almost silent whimper. Sarah catches it, though.

"Maybe you should take it easy the rest of the day, Dad," she tells him, "We both know you have old man back."

He rolls his eyes but nods. "Guess you're right," he shrugs, "That my cue to take off?"

Sarah blushes but turns to him sheepishly. "Yeah, I-"

"No need to explain," Joel assures, "I know you must wanna get unpacked and settle in, get to know your roommates an' all."

She jumps up and, almost startling him, wraps her arms around him in a bear hug.

"Love you, dad," she grins, and she squeezes just a little tighter than usual.

He squeezes back, and they both pretend there aren't tears in his eyes.

As you step through the doors of the hotel bar, you decide you like it. The lighting is comfortably low. It's not loud, but it's not quiet, either. Colorful bottles line the shelves, the light of the filament bulbs glinting off the glass in rainbow prisms.

You take a seat at the bar and give a nod of thanks as the bartender passes you a small menu. It's unsurprisingly extortionate, hotel bar and all, but it'll do.

"Old fashioned, please," you tell the bartender, who nods in response. A minute later, he hands you a glass, delivered with a twist of orange and a cherry on top.

With your first sip, you feel your shoulders start to relax and some of the tension loosen from your body. The warmth of the burn envelops you and your stress starts to unravel, leaving only the buzz feeling good.

You order a second, and as the glass is handed to you, a voice to your right catches your attention.

"This seat taken?" a man asks.

You shake your head and offer a quick smile, gesturing towards it, "All yours."

"Much obliged," he nods, and slips into the backless stool next to yours.

The bartender comes over and passes him the same menu, but without looking at it he asks, "Could I get an old fashioned?"

You smile and catch his eye, tipping your glass towards him. "An excellent choice," you praise, "Though if you don't have a sweet tooth, I'd recommend asking Jeff there if he can go easy on the simple syrup."

"Oh yeah?" He asks, and then he leans in conspiratorially. "T'tell you the truth, I do have a bit of a sweet tooth."

You raise an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Suddenly, he breaks into a grin and it's dazzling.

"Yeah," he laughs, "I've got cookies stashed in secret locations all through my house."

You raise an eyebrow. "If I keep 'em in my pantry, my brother'll find 'em and eat 'em all," he explains, "But ever since my kid was a girl scout, I always get cravings for girl scout cookies, so I buy an armful o'boxes and try and preserve 'em throughout the year, till I can replenish."

"What's your favorite girl scout cookie?"

"Caramel deLites, hands down."

"Oh yeah?"

"Absolutely," he nods.

The bartender, Jeff, sets the man's drink down with a clink. You catch one another's eye and both erupt into a fit of laughter.

You're not even sure what's funny. Maybe it's just been a long day? Maybe the whiskey was getting to you?

Whatever it is, it feels good.

The man takes a sip of his drink and lets out an aaaahh and it's goofy and charming and then he extends his hand.

"Joel," he tells you, "Joel Miller". You shake his hand, introduce yourself, and then take a sip of your own drink.

"So, tell me about yourself," you smile, "You coming from out of town?"

"Yes ma'am," he nods, "Come up here from Austin."

"Texas?"

Joel nods.

"That's a long trip."

"Yeah," he laughs, "It really is."

"So, you're a nice Southern boy, huh?"

"Well," he swishes his glass and tries to bite back a smile, "I don't know that I'd go quite so far, but my mama did raise me to be a gentleman."

"That so?" you ask and his blush deepens.

"I... have been known to get up to some trouble, but I like to think I've mellowed in my old age." He gestures at the beautiful little smatterings of silver at his temples, and you cackle.

"Okay, that's hot," you tell him and he chokes, but you keep going, "Old age, though? What are you, like, forty?"

He exhales, chagrined. "Forty-one."

You roll your eyes. "That ain't old."

"It feels it sometimes," he smiles, "My kid is grown. My little brother's married with a kid of his own on the way. My back hurts, pretty much all the time."

You snort. You also notice, without trying to look, that he doesn't have a wedding band. Doesn't have a tan line for one, either. Interesting.

"But more than that," he continues, "I guess I feel- I don't know. A little... aimless?"

"Yeah," you nod, and you let the moment sit. "I get that."

He lets out a little breath, and then turns back to you, focused.

"What about you? Where're you from?"

"Oof," you exhale, "All over. Spent a bit of time on the East coast. The Midwest. Lived a few months in the South, even," you tease as you bump your shoulder into his and he laughs. It's a surprisingly familiar gesture, but miraculously comfortable.

"Ever make it to Texas?"

"Naw," you shake your head, "My time in the South was all in Mississippi. After that I moved out to California, and I've been slowly working my way up the West Coast."

"And what have you been enjoying about the West Coast?" Joel asks.

"The mushrooms," you grin, and Joel frowns.

"Like, the kind you get in a little baggy from the dealer down the street, or-?"

"No," you laugh, "Or, well- Okay, sometimes. Gotta say it is great out here for that, too. But I mean fungus as a whole--mushrooms, mold, yeast, lichen. But I'm most interested in mushrooms. They're just really fuckin' cool, and there's so much we don't understand about them. And, they're delicious."

"Huh," Joel ponders, "T'tell you the truth, I've never thought much about mushrooms, besides enjoying 'em as a pizza topping."

"Most people don't," you agree, "But fuck, like-- Okay, so we know there are over five million types of fungi on Earth, but we've identified less than two percent of them. Some fungus aids decomposition. Some fungus is bioluminescent. Some are known worldwide for their delicious flavours, and others are known by the slow, horrible ways they kill you."

Joel raises his eyebrows, and suddenly you feel a little self conscious.

"Sorry, I do this," you laugh, rubbing at the back of your neck, "I get very excited about fungus and manage to alienate everyone around me."

You half expect him to stand up and walk away.

Instead, though, he leans in closer. "Don't apologise," he tells you, "I'm learning something new. Tell me more?"

"No, I should stop. Otherwise I'll never stop talking," you wince.

"How about just one more fungus fact?"

You sit for a minute, pondering. "This is- well, I guess this is one of the reasons I find fungus so fascinating. So, fungus can't photosynthesise the way that plants do--they can't produce their own food from sunshine, and water, and carbon dioxide. Instead, their mycelium-- they're these thread-like networks--they branch out beneath the earth, seeking out food, growing in the direction where it can find the nutrients it needs and breaking down organic material all around them, sometimes living organisms, as a parasite, and sometimes dead organisms as a decomposer, or both. And it's just- It's this hidden world, that exists right beneath the surface even in some of the extreme places on earth, temperature-wise. And most days, we don't even think about it."

You punctuate your thought with a large swallow of your drink, which is half-watered down now that the ice is melted, and doesn't hit quite as hard as you'd hoped, but then you look up at Joel and he's smiling at you, pensive, and--

"That's- That's actually really interesting."

Before you can respond, though, Joel glances at his watch and balks. It is getting late. "Shit," he shakes his head, "I think I oughta call it a night," he says, pulling back. "Early morning tomorrow, and if I stay at the bar I'll just keep drinkin'."

Fuck. That's a dismissal. Of course you went on too much about mushrooms. You'd fucked this up. You'd thought this was going well, but now it felt like a bucket of cold water was dumped over you. "Oh," you nod, matching his posture, and try to swallow down the sudden wave of disappointment. "Of course. Have a good night, Joel."

Joel stands up and then looks you up and down, considering. It's not brazen, but it isn't shy, either. And then understanding flashes across his face.

"Wait- Sorry, that's not how I meant it." He reaches out towards you and you melt into his touch. "I'm messin' this up." He chuckles, but it sounds pained. "Now look, I don't wanna make any presumptions. And I'm really hopin' I'm not coming off as some--dirty old man. Jesus, I haven't done this in a while. But I'm in room 308."

Your eyebrows shoot up. What you'd taken for disinterest was just--nerves?

"I reckon I'll be awake for a while yet. You're welcome to... drop by."

The disappointment melts, making way for a fluttering in your stomach.

"Twenty minutes," you assure him, "308?"

He nods and he brakes into a sheepish grin, shedding what you now realise had been something of an anxious wince. "308."

You watch him leave. When he's out of sight, you toss back the rest of your watery drink and go to pay your tab, but Jeff tells you it was already settled. You thank him and tuck your shaking hands in your pockets. You feel an electricity running through you as you take the elevator up.

When you get back to your room, you hop into the shower, just to freshen up--you keep your hair dry but scrub your body. Once you're clean, you brush your teeth.

Stepping back out of the en suite, you survey the hotel room. Spatula is lounging on the corner of the bed, entirely uninterested in your movements. You top up his dry food bowl and place a kiss between his ears before slipping out.

When you knock at Joel's door, you hear a slight rustle and clatter and then the door swings open, Joel's staring a little wide-eyed, like he didn't actually expect you to show. He's wearing grey sweats and a Johnny Cash t-shirt that looks like it's been around nearly as long as you have. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, an anxious tell that's desperately endearing.

"C'mon in," he smiles, and you step in, closing the door behind you.

You reach out to cup his face, delighting in the feeling of coarse stubble beneath your fingertips. Your first kiss is chaste. You both lean forward and press your lips to one another gently, exploring.

Then, you let out a little moan and Joel shudders. Heat surges between you, and his hands are cradling your head and brushing your cheek and he's pinning you against the closed door. You're kissing again, nothing chaste remaining, learning the taste of him, his rhythm, the crashing waves of give and take between you.

You wrap one leg around him and smirk when he lets out a throaty groan as you grind against his hard cock. You're pretty sure he's not wearing underwear, the thick bulge seemingly unconstrained in his grey sweats, the whole length pressing against your thigh.

Your head falls back and you let out soft, breathy noises as his lips trace along your collarbone, up your throat, and against that tender little spot behind your ear. When he puts your earlobe between his lips and presses his teeth gently against the skin, your knees go weak and he chuckles, strong arms wrapping around you, holding you up.

"Bed?" he asks, and you breathe yes and then, with a yelp and a throaty chuckle, you're lifted up and spun around and both tumbling into the duvet.

You're grasping at each other, desperate to keep your hands on one another. The only times you part is when you undress, and even then, you're helping each other--pulling the hem of his shirt over his lifted arms, pressing into him as he reaches around and moves to unhook your bra, but then he realises you're not wearing one and lets out a groan, his thumbs brushing alongside the tender skin along your ribs, moving gently as if to cup your breasts, but then he pulls back.

Normally you might wait, do this part slowly, draw out the tease just a little bit longer.

Tonight, though, you're ravenous.

As you fiddle with the buttons of your pants, you tug at the drawstring keeping Joel's sweats on his hips. The bow comes loose in one smooth motion, and he lifts his hips and you pull the sweats down.

Your mouth immediately waters seeing him bare, laid out for you. You watch a bead of precum drip down the head and pool on his belly. The coarse hair of his happy trail glistens with it. He's thick, uncut, and looks painfully hard, his cock head ruddy. "Fuck, you're beautiful," you tell him, and his cheeks redden but he grins. It's boyish, the way he grins, and devastatingly charming.

And, what you're saying is true. His body is gorgeous, something you wish you could sketch. Soft flesh over hard muscle, visible tan lines where his chest and shoulders are noticeably lighter than his arms. The muscles and veins along his throat are driving you absolutely fucking insane as he swallows and looks up at you.

He's got freckles on his shoulders, too, and without thinking, you lower yourself down to kiss at his shoulder. He shakes, just a little, and lets out the most beautiful gasp. It's addictive, pulling these noises from him. You follow the curve of him, giving him a taste of his own medicine--tracing feather-light kisses along his collarbone, up the tendons of his neck, behind his ear. You can feel the blood pulse in his veins as your lips brush along him. Joel goes from panting lightly to full on groaning, rutting his hips up towards you and, frustrated, meeting only air.

"Can I taste you?", you ask, and Joel lets out a half-strangled sound and nods, vigorous.

You scoot back, lower yourself, poke out your tongue and, without any preamble, lick at the slit of his head, tasting the salty, tangy precum.

Joel tips his head back and groans and you decide to be kind. You grasp onto his hips and take him in your mouth, slowly sinking down, inch by inch by inch and now you can feel him at the back of your throat, your saliva dripping down the shaft and collecting in the hair between his thighs.

You bob your head up and down, taking him deeper with each thrust, but your throat is full and there are still inches to go. You relax, doing everything you can to take him deeper, and he starts to thrust up gently.

You let him fuck into your mouth but release one of his hips, allowing him to move as freely as he needs and freeing up your hand, which you shove into your underwear, rubbing furiously at your clit.

It doesn't take much to lose yourself in it, to focus only on the sensation. You're so wet, slick coating your fingers, making the glide that much smoother as you touch yourself. Joel tastes so good, too, the intrusion of his cock the most delicious thing, feeling the way he shudders when you moan, the way he moans when you shudder.

"Fuck-" Joel gasps, and then there's a hand guiding you gently off of him.

You raise an eyebrow. "You okay?"

He swallows, hard, and nods. "More than okay. Felt too fuckin' good."

"Oh yeah?" and you lean down, as if to take him back in your mouth, but he chuckles and pulls you back again.

"It's been... a while. For me. And-" He drags his palm down his face, wearing an almost pained expression. "Christ, you just look too fuckin' good down there, mouth stretched 'round me while you touch yourself. An' it feels too fuckin' good, too. I ain't ready for this to be over yet but if you keep lettin' me fuck your throat like that it's gonna be over real quick. And I wanna feel that pretty pussy myself."

You sit back up and he pulls you towards him so you're straddling him.

"You gonna fuck me, Joel?"

"Yes," he breathes, "Yes, baby, please-"

You do an awkward wobble and then stand up, shedding your pants and letting your panties drop, stepping out of them, one foot and then the other, and the way he's watching you is addictive. He watches you with beautiful eyes, drinking all of you in, and suddenly the moment has changed into one of those quiet, intimate moments where you both exhale a laugh.

You straddle him again, and lean down to kiss him, and the electric current surges up. He grabs you by the jaw, meeting your desperation. His lips on yours are exactly the balm you need and you can taste the whiskey on his breath.

"Feels fucking good," you tell Joel as you slide up and down his length. He's not penetrating you, not yet, but the lips of your pussy are spread and you're gliding along him, feeling his head at your clit and thrusting back till you're nearly seated on his balls.

He watches you, nearly unblinking, drinking it all in. Then, he lets out a groan, and half-sits up, suddenly focused.

"Shit," he closes his eyes in frustration, "I don't have any condoms. Shit shit shit-"

You push him back down and kiss him again. Then, you hop off the bed and sift around in your jean pockets.

"Ah-ha!," you exclaim, once you've found your treasure. Joel raises and eyebrow and you wink. "Saw they were selling them in the lobby. Figured it might be a good idea."

"Shit," Joel laughs, and presses his lips just to the side of your mouth. "Clever girl," he tells you, and a shiver goes up your spine.

He leans to help, but you shoo him away and he watches, entranced, as you neatly open the condom wrapper and, with a small amount of difficulty, roll it down his cock.

"Feeling okay?" You ask him, "Shit, I shoulda gotten the Magnums. Is your dick okay? It's not being choked to death by an inappropriately sized rubber, is it?"

Joel snorts. "We'll manage," he says, and then he grips you by the hips, lines himself up. He draws his knuckles along your cunt and groans, "Fuck, so goddamn wet for me-" and, the moment you look at him and nod, he holds the head of his cock against your drooling lips and presses into you.

It's a big stretch as he lowers you down onto him, the intrusion almost painful, but before you can even take a breath, it melts into absolute pleasure. You've fucked people with longer cocks before, and you've fucked people with girthier cocks before, but never have you fucked someone with a cock that's both this long and thick and it feels like you're being split in two and it's perfect and you realise, with a sudden flip of your stomach, he isn't even fully seated inside you yet.

Then, you manage to focus on the words Joel is saying-that had really just been background noise for the past ten seconds or so-and suddenly you're tuning back in for "Tha's it," his voice low and hoarse, surprisingly gentle, "Good girl, takin' this cock so well, look at you."

His brow is furrowed and he's looking at you with such dark eyes, nearly black, the pupils are so blown. "Just a little more, that's it, just one more inch, you can do it, christ, look at you, takin' all of me."

His tone is reverent and it sets a fire through you. You can feel more slickness build and drip out of you, and from the way he moans, you're certain he can feel it too despite the condom.

"So fuckin' wet," he groans, "Soakin' my cock- grippin' me so nice-Fuck--"

He leans towards you and cradles your head in his hand, kissing you hard.

When you both pull back, you know your lips must be kiss swollen and red. His are--they're soft and bright, and you want to eat him whole.

"You're gonna be the death of me, woman."

He's thrusting into you lazily, holding you in place, but you need more, you need all of him.

You push forward and move his hand from your waist to your clit. As you manoeuvre him, his nostrils flare, and you'd wonder if he was angry, if not for the way you felt his cock stiffen even further inside of you. You start to move your hips, to rub up against the thumb on your clit, and to feel every fucking inch of him.

Urged on by the way he groans, you start to ride him, properly. Holding each other close, you fuck down onto him and he leans back, awed.

"Enjoying the show?" you ask.

"Damn- right- I- am-," Joel breathes, every word punctuated with a shuddering breath after you drive back down onto his cock, "Jesus- you- look- so- good- like- that."

You like being watched. Being admired. It sent an extra thrill through you, and your hips stutter, just a little, and now you're following a new, faster rhythm.

"Fuck, that's it, baby-" he praises, "Shit, yes- bounce on it."

You lean forward and kiss his throat, and then he makes this noise, half-strangled and beautiful.

"Shit, honey-- honey, honey, hold on-," he holds you still and you're glad he has, because your brain hadn't quite processed his words.

He's looking at you so earnestly.

"Baby, if you keep ridin' me like this I am gonna blow my load in the next twenty seconds and I don't wanna end this quite so soon."

You hum, a moment of consideration. You stare into his eyes, and part of it is calculated seduction, but another part is getting genuinely lost in the way he looks at you. The crinkles round his eyes. The way he seems able to focus on you, in a way that feels as frightening as it is exhilarating.

"How about this," You smile, "You get yours, and then you can eat me out till I get mine. And if you're ready to go again by the time I've come, we can see where we're at then. Hmm?"

You see a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, and take a moment to appreciate how much he's clearly trying to control himself.

After a moments of avoiding your eye, he looks at you again and he looks utterly wrecked. "You- talkin' like that?" He shakes his head and tries to even his breath. "Fuck, I nearly came right there."

"It's okay," you soothe, and you cup his jaw and resume you movements, riding him like you had before. "You can come if you need to-" your fingertips stroke the stubble of his chin, "You're close, huh? It's okay, daddy, you can let go."

Joel lets out a strangled noise and busts immediately.

You savor the way it feels, the pulse of his cock as he spills into you. No, into the condom, you correct yourself, but you can always pretend-

After his balls relax and you can feel him start to get soft, you hold the condom down as you pull yourself off, and you're nearly unseated when there's a sudden squelch noise that sends you both into tumbles of laughter.

It takes a while to calm down, and you find yourselves heaving, tangled in the sheets, and wrapped up in each other. The condom is hanging limply on Joel's now-soft cock and it's oddly cold and gooey as you accidentally roll against it, and that sends you both off again.

"Fuck," Joel snorts, and tugs at the condom, starting to roll it off his length, "I'd almost forgotten the weird texture of a used condom. Fuckin'... Slug-like."

"That-" you declare, "Is visceral. And I hate it. Thanks."

He snorts, and you suddenly have a question.

"Condoms not making too many appearances in your life?"

"Not many, no."

"What, you usually fuck raw?"

"Just haven't been sleepin' with anyone," he shrugs, nonplussed.

"Well, I gotta say, the good people of Austin have been missing out."

Joel shrugs again, and it comes off as casual, but you notice the way his ears tint pink. "Just- not been something I did. But now, I guess, I can. And with way less guilt."

"Why guilt? Are-" you venture, dread pooling in your stomach, "Are you married?"

His eyes flit up to you sharply, and then soften immediately. He lets out a breath and shakes his head. "No. Nothin' like that. I was married, but I've been divorced nearly twenty years now."

The tightness immediately uncoils and you realise how tense you were only a moment ago. I am not a cog in the machine of a collapsing marriage. Thank fuck.

But now your curiosity is piqued. "So... why the guilt?"

"Sorry, I- I really didn't mean to get into it. I'd rather not get into it. It's- complicated."

"Of course," you shrug, and it isn't a problem because this is just a hot fantasy hookup that you'll remember fondly, and it'll be wonderful masturbation fuel for probably the rest of your life, but you don't wanna make the poor guy go into his life's trauma, especially when he's looking at you so fucking earnestly and you are actually really fucking fascinated but no, you would not let this become a problem.

"Thanks," he says, and then steps out of the room. You hear the clang of the bin as he steps on the pedal, then drops the condom, takes a piss and washes his hands.

"You hungry?" He asks, and you realize very suddenly, you're absolutely famished.

"Yes," you jump up and he laughs when you run, bare-assed and shameless, over to the corner of the room filled with brochures and traveller info and finally, you raise it in triumph when you find it, the list of nearby takeaways.

"Okay," you look at the list, "There's one place at the top of the list here that's apparently highly rated, but I actually have plans there soon and I wanna wait till then to eat there. Hope that's okay."

Joel comes over to you and rests his head on your shoulder. "No problem."

"But... alright," you continue. "There's pizza. Or... more pizza. Or, look--there's a Southern-style place, that'll make you feel right at home!" Joel pokes you in the side and you swat at him as he grunts a laugh.

Suddenly, a warning sound starts playing on loop in your brain. It was dreadfully domestic, wasn't it? This was an absolute stranger you'd just met in a hotel bar? But... it also felt... nice? And it felt nice in ways that you'd never found yourself enjoying before. Even with long-term partners. Maybe because this was so low-stakes, you reasoned, such an inevitably temporary situation, so you weren't putting the same kind of pressure on yourself.

As soon as you think that, the eternal curse of overthinking shows itself and you suddenly feel desperately self conscious. Before you can pull away and make some excuse, though, Joel's arm wraps around you and his thumb starts rubbing little circles into a tender bit of skin between your hip and your tummy. The anxiety spiral you'd been teetering on the edge of suddenly vanishes.

"How about-," he nods at the list, "Pizza?"

After Joel calls in your order, the pizza delivery service tells you to expect your food in about thirty minutes. You remember you have a little box of edibles. You ask Joel if he minds if you take one, and he doesn't. You offer him one, and he automatically declines, but then as he starts to explain, he pauses and pivots, goes "Wait, actually. Yeah. Why not?"

A freckled kid who looks no more than sixteen pulls up with a short stack of pizza boxes and a two liter bottle of root beer. He raps awkwardly on the door after exactly thirty five minutes, and it swings open.

The room looks utterly wrecked, clothing strewn along every surface. Joel answers the door wearing a robe, his entire face smelling of sex, and his moustache still shining with the slick of your release.

"Thanks, kid," Joel nods, and hands him a small wad of cash. The kid eyes him and shrugs. "Keep the change," he tells him, and the door swings back shut.

The edibles have hit beautifully. You're both blissed out, comfortably hazy, lost in the sensation of bare limbs on bedsheets and the flavors of the pizza and it's assorted sauces. You lay together on the bed, paper plates strewn between you. In the background, an X-Files rerun plays.

"Ooh!" You sit up as you catch the premise of the episode, "I love this one! See the goo? There's a giant fungal... entity.. that's working on digesting them, and giving them hallucinations as they die."

"You and mushrooms, huh?" Joel laughs, but then looks back at the episode and contemplates the viscous yellow goo. "Jesus christ," he frowns, and sniffs, now contemplating the mushrooms on his pizza slice.

You spot his glare and snort. "I think you're safe."

He takes another bite and shakes his head as if to clear it.

"I'm getting tired," he admits.

"Me too," you agree.

"No pressure, but in case it wasn't clear, you're welcome to stay the night here."

"That's sweet," you tell him, and think it over. "If I took you up on that, would you be offended if I slip out early?"

Joel raises a brow.

"I have a cat," you explain, "And I'm working on moving into a new place, and meeting a friend for breakfast, and then I need to check out after breakfast because I won't be able to get my keys for the new place until the breakfast but I can't take my cat to a diner-"

You take a breath.

"Basically, I've got a bunch of things I need to do in the morning, but if you don't mind me slipping out around, maybe, 5-ish, then I'd love to stay."

He stares at you.

You regret saying as much as you said. You don't need to over-explain yourself to this actual stranger. He doesn't care. There's no reason for him to care. He's probably in it just for the fuck, and it was fun and if you stay then there's a chance the two of you will wake up at some point in the night, still horny and lustful and you might fuck again and you'd be lying if you said that wasn't part of the draw. You realise, though, you'd also be lying if you said you didn't care what he thought of you. All of a sudden, you are overwhelmed with caring what this man thinks of you.

How fucking inconvenient.

"I wouldn't be offended at all," Joel chews, swallows, wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin and speaks again. "What's your cat's name?"

You don't know what you'd expected he'd say, but it wasn't that. You buffer for a moment. "It's- Spatula."

"Spatula?"

"Yep." You feel foolish.

"Huh. Spatula."

A silent moment between you.

"Got any pictures?"

You weren't expecting that, either. "I... do? Do you want to see them?" He nods. You pull out your phone to scroll through.

Joel, suddenly scrambled around for his phone, too. It was late and he hadn't checked it for hours. Had it been on silent? What if Sarah had called and he'd missed it?

His panic eased when he saw he had only two notifications. Both from Sarah, but neither were bad. He hadn't been neglecting any crises. The first text was a selfie of Sarah and an unfamiliar person, which she'd texted to him with the caption New roomie!! The second contained an address to the place they'd have breakfast tomorrow along with Just wanted you to know I've invited a friend to join us tomorrow morning! Is that okay? Realized I should maybe have checked with you? 😬

There was an ache in his chest. He wanted to keep her to himself, get to spend one last day, just the two of them. It was the start of a whole new chapter, but more than anything, he wished he could hold onto the moment for just a second longer.

But Sarah was stressed, he knew this, so he wasn't gonna make it worse and put this burden on her. He could handle it. He had to handle it. He typed back- No problem, baby. Can't wait to meet your friend.

After a moment, he followed up with another text. Gonna turn in now. Good nite!

The less he texted right now, the better. He did not want Sarah to know anything about the night he was having.

His screen lit up a moment later. Night Dad! He takes a deep breath and wills some of the tension away.

He slips his phone aside and you scoot into bed next to him.

"This," you announce, "Is Spatula."

Joel scrolls thru, his brows raising higher with each image.

With a single nod, he opens his mouth and instead of speaking, he collapses into laughter. It comes out a wheeze- "I-- I know this won't make any sense, but your cat looks just like my goddamn brother."

You're laughing now too, both of you almost hysterical, even though you have no frame of reference. You cherish the absurdity.

Then, Joel pulls up a picture on his phone and shows you, and now you're doubling over again because his brother looks exactly like Spatula.

You don't remember falling asleep. You curse your body's internal clock because you wake up right at 5am, and even though you know you should get up and leave, you wish you could have just a little bit longer.

It's such a comfortable way to wake up. One arm is folded under your pillow, and the other is slung over Joel's hip. He's asleep, snoring softly, and strands of his hair are mussed along his forehead. Your hand is holding his tummy, but you realise there's something pressing against the heel of your hand, and then realise, with a delicious jolt, that he's hard and straining against his boxers.

It's so fucking hard to get out of that bed, but with enough barely-effective reminders--you're gonna fuck up your whole day if you're late, gotta make a good impression, Spatula's gonna be so disappointed if you're late with his breakfast--you manage to bully yourself out of the warm and wonderful bed containing blankets and absolutely fantastic dick, and you tiptoe through the room, dress quickly, and, after making a note and leaving it on his bedside stand, you slip out.

Joel wakes up with a jolt, and then rolls over to see that the alarm clock (which he dared not contemplate the number of times he must have snoozed) was telling him it was 9:13.

He was late. Really fucking late. And then the panic made his brain spin faster and that's when he noticed the note on his bedside table.

I had a really good time If you're in town for a little longer, don't be a stranger?

It's followed with your name and phone number, and a rather detailed mushroom sketch across the page. He wasn't sure what kind of mushroom it was, but it was beautiful, and clearly hand-drawn, and for whatever reason you'd decided to tear it out of, presumably, your sketchbook? And you gave it to him, and he's gonna read that note and replay last night for the rest of his fucking life. It felt incredibly precious. He placed it in a book so it wouldn't get creased or folded. Made sure it was all contained and neat, totally flat in between the pages.

Then, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower.

After scrubbing the smell of sex off of his entire body, he dresses quickly and checks his watch again. 9:28.

He texts Sarah and lets her know he's a few minutes behind. She responds with an eye roll emoji.

Joel settles in his truck and pulls up directions. It's only a few minutes away. He won't be too late.

When Joel steps into the diner, he's charmed by it. It's old school, with a checkerboard floor and bright red vinyl seats. He scans the room till he spots Sarah in a booth in the corner. She's laughing over a hot chocolate, and her friend must be in the seat opposite her.

He catches Sarah's eye and she grins at him, waving him over.

You've been at the diner about fifteen minutes, and you and Sarah are already getting along beautifully.

You'd met on a university message board and had become fast friends, but meeting someone in person was always a little terrifying. On top of that, you'd already committed to spending at least one (academic) year with this person, so you were damn sure gonna make it work.

Sarah waves over her dad. You can't see him yet, the back of the booth too high.

But then he's standing right there.

You already have a hand outstretched, but when he sees you and you see him, your stomach flips and dread runs through you. All the color drains from his face. He looks like a deer in headlights, and you'd be surprised if you didn't look the same.

Sarah looks between you, not quite concerned, but definitely confused. Sarah smiles and tries to diffuse the situation.

"Hi dad!" She grins, "This is my new roommate! Well, the other new roommate--the one in the picture, their name is Ellie, they weren't able to make it this morning. BUT. Breakfast seemed like a great time to hand off keys!"

Joel is still frozen and white-faced. Your brain whirs, and you know you've just fucking catapulted yourself into a disastrous mess, but you do your very best to save face.

Reaching your hand out further so he can't possibly miss it, he gives into some familiar social instinct, takes it and you shake. You think of his hands, how they dragged along your body last night, touched you, felt you, wrecked you.

You introduce yourself. He nods, avoiding eye contact.

"Joel." He grunts. "Miller."

Sarah frowns at him, but turns back to the menu.

This- was unexpected. Problematic. Arguably, really fucked up. All of those things and more. But it'll be fine.

All throughout breakfast, you repeat that to yourself, letting the words bounce around your head. It will be fine, you repeat your mantra, it will be fine, and you try not to feel too hurt at the way Joel's avoiding eye contact as if simply looking at you will cause him unimaginable disgust.

Everything will be fine.

Note: The fic's premise is loosely based on the book Mistakes Were Made which is a fucking excellent sapphic romance novel that utilises this trope. Would strongly recommend the book if you're into smutty queer stories.

#joel miller smut #tlou #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #joel miller x f!reader #ok i gotta be honest i was stoned out of my mind for writing most of this #but mostly sober for editing #thank u for bearing with meeeeeee

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rise-my-angel · 1 year

Text

Trembling Havoc

Credit: @knightwayne

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Length: 22.4k

Warnings: Violence, blood, trauma flashbacks, aggressive restraints, non specific depiction of ptsd symptoms, smut, handjob, p in v, canon divergence

Notes: Divergence only applies to discarding all of tlou 2 as canon so no knowledge of it is required. I'm sorry about the length, it's gone beyond my control. Direct continuation of Perilous Companions, part of the Confused Warmth series.

You never quite felt comfortable in other people’s houses. The feeling like you’ve invaded on a space that didn’t want any newcomers encroaching on their privacy, mixed together with a silent curiosity to how each individual choose to express themselves. The tables and walls around you sat clean and free of dust, debris, or even much in the way of personal belongings. Just a clinically organized arrangement of medical equipment along the desk you currently stood in front of.

It was so impersonal looking, no trace of scattered mind busy at work, no passion in the mess left behind in their wake, without even a peep if you touched any of it. Picking up something only to put it down would he reach out without a word and slide it back into place. Quite different from the chaos your home had been growing up. Tools and samples over any rooms surface with seemingly no reason, yet the second you came close to even slightly touching it your father would lash out at disrupting the order of things.

Somewhat similar, but Jerry wasn’t quite like that. No he and your father lived at opposite ends of extremity, and nothing felt more highlighted then how uncaring he was currently. Knelt over his desk looking over the samples laid out on them, a tsk following shake of his head as they told the same story over and over again. Whatever his previous fear of you harming him was, got left behind when you informed him there was a third guest you were waiting for. You wouldn’t do anything rash until she got here.

Having a moment to finally breathe, you leaned one hip against the side of the desk you were opposite of, thumb rubbing back and forth at the red still wanting to poke through from the vein on your inner elbow. You had wanted to push him, prove his delusions wrong, and so he had to squirm as you took a hasty blood sample of your own, before tossing the needle onto his desk.

The sight of blood drips on the metal top disturbed him more then watching it get painfully pulled out of your arm one handed. Were your father here, he wouldn’t have even hesitated the gun on your person to grab his supplies to pull the sample himself.

Both of you knew what it said, knew what everything was. In the early seconds of your arrival, Jerry found enough awareness to try and leap towards the satchel on another side table. He was a doctor not a fighter, not much of a man to put up a fight before getting shoved to the ground. All of it was in there. A thick warn journal stuffed to the brim with notes, overwhelmed with the manic thought patterns of your father. There were a few additions of Jerry’s own.

Trying to put the pieces together that your father left behind, despite knowing there were no blank spots in his research. A deep reaching inside of your chest spoke of what could be your sensibilities, a rational excuse for those you used to know. A plea of how far back your life went with this family should mean something, but there was no mistake in what had been done already. “You really think you know more then he did?”

Jerry raised his head up from his slouched over position, brows furrowed together in confusion as you gestured to the research journal. It had been a fair few minutes at that point since any words had been exchanged. “Last time I checked surgeons aren’t exactly the same as mycologists.”

Fingers tapping at either side of the desk, he twisted his face as if reaching for a memory. “Once things begun to settle, dead and sick people just seemed to fall into our laps and- well, you know what Phillip was like.”

Flickering between him and the door to the dark hallway, you perked up to hear over the low humming whirls of his machines for the signs of outside life. “You just so happened to be around a bunch of sick people willing to be experimented on?”

“Yeah-” Your head turned quickly to him once more, eyes narrow in doubt as he immediately backtracked. Voice lowering to more of a mutter, “Well no actually, but they were already infected it wasn’t like they were too busy.”

Jaw clenching, you glanced at the papers you snatched once more. Trailing over the scratches as you deciphered each page slowly, your father had been thorough even before you. You wished it to be ramblings of a scientist desperate to make the world right, take the immune and create a cure from their DNA to spread amongst the rest of the population.

That’s what it should have looked like, but nothing about your father’s work pointed anywhere near such a goal, and he didn’t care if the ends didn’t justify the means. The bodies they went through didn’t mean a thing to either of them. “The fireflies know what you do?”

Eyes met, but only one held a seed a deceit. Jerry was slow and calm in his speech, but his shoulders almost shrunk in on themselves. “The ones who matter do. I tell them what I need, they go and get it for me. It doesn’t matter what I do with them after that, people like Marlene just-”

“Want to help. Where have I heard that before.” The pleas of a man seconds before the air was flushed from him, but also, the assurances of a governing body that asked of it’s citizens to accept they only wanted to do right by them. FEDRA also wanted to help, but you had seen the bones of it’s untruth over and over spread across the fields of the country. “They know your body piles look a lot like the ones outside by any chance?”

Jerry rolled his eyes, “You really think the fireflies care about what they leave behind? You think their ultimate goal is to treasure our precious lives or to just control the ones left the way they want to? It’s been almost twenty years. They don’t care about being right they care about winning, and winners leave body counts.”

Your arms sat crossed your chest, fingernails digging into the skin of your palm to keep from any kind of lashing out. “My father as wrong.” You both locked eyes as yours stung in tandem with your arm. “And he killed himself over it.”

Jerry tried calling your name but your voice raised as noticeably as it wavered. “That sound like a man who thought he was winning?”

Congratulations on your apt observation skills, because a voice rung out that wasn’t in the home before. So much for waiting to get the jump on them. “If at first you don’t succeed, right?”

Jerry had jumped the same instance you did, turning to the side you looked at the woman now in the doorway. He said he only called her, so you took no chance. Pulling the gun from the back of your waist you pointed it at Jerry, eliciting a protest as he raised his hands in the air.

The woman asked your name in question, watching your free hand twitch at it’s side. Her face was calm and unexpressive, but there was something further deep in her eyes. You couldn’t quite decipher it, but if she was a leader you suppose that was a trained quality. “We didn’t have a chance to meet before, I’m-”

“Marlene. Yeah I know.” The side of your vision moved slightly forcing your head to whip back to the only other person in the room. His hands raising higher with a much clearer fear as the slight clink of the gun moving in your hand startled him still. “FEDRA must be feeding you guys well if you have enough gas to get all the way out here that fast.”

Her face falling just an inch to something akin to bothered but she seemed to swallow it down just as fast as it appeared. “I’m surprised you came back on your own. I was-”

One eyebrow raised as you watched a faux polite demeanour plaster all over her. This wasn’t a woman who got to where she was by being nice to people. “I’m not here for you, I’m here for that.” Your head gestured over to the work on Jerry’s desk. “Why do you want me if you got the samples he needed?”

Marlene tried taking a step to you, but your back straightened, eyes wide and blazing at her own as the gun once again made noise shifting from movement. Enough that she paused. Apparently some human life meant more then others. “It’s not that simple. We’re not Carvel, we don’t have his genius-”

Head shaking you bit the inside of your cheek to keep whatever wanted to bubble to the surface from taking priority. “You have his work though.” Using your other hand you dragged the journal over to you, flipping open a page that seemed to be more worn then others. Glancing down for just a second you barley risked taking your eyes off of her. “Subject failed to produce results. Subject, huh? From the description it sure sounds like me.”

Marlene and Jerry risked glances at each other, whatever unsettling feelings inside of Jerry reflected in her image of poise. “Results just means more testing is required-”

Your voice cut louder through his, causing him to startle back slightly from the angered tone. This time reading straight from the writing as you flipped to another random page. “Once a successful selection is extracted from the bone marrow, introduction of a b cell’s inability to process outside binding traits of unique antigens,”

Your head flew back up to look her in the eye, lungs begging for a deep breathe from how tight the nerves constricted inside you. Slamming the book shut with an aggressive thud you felt a toxicity flowing through your veins. “Now that's a lot of complicated terms, Jerry. You want to elaborate on what exactly he’s getting at?”

Marlene’s own jaw clenched as his patronizing voice explained in what no doubt had already been said to her. You just wanted to rub it in. You were feeling petty enough. “It means the body can’t replicate another persons antibodies. B cells die and when they do, if you don’t produce that exact combination naturally they’ll never come back.”

You didn’t feel it at the moment, but amusingly enough, you didn’t even get to the notes yet of what he was about to add. “Even if they could it wouldn’t matter. Cordyceps are symbiotic once they are in a host that is susceptible to them, brain damage is inevitable, they keep you alive to use your body and by the time you, turn,” The casualness of the man to put the word turn in quotations. “That isn’t the first instance they’ve taken control it just means that they’ve permanently damaged the hemispheres of your brain it doesn’t require for survival.”

The look in her eyes were a pained frustration. This was new to you, but not her. Whether it was Jerry himself, or your father, someone had already explained this to her. Despite that, she tried to reason with what she couldn’t defend. “But if it can’t survive her immune system-”

Jerry, so condescending was ready to outwit another person barley even gave a tone that his life could be at risk. “Oh it survived just fine.” Eyes flying over to him swimming in questions silent. “Technically ophiocordyceps unilateralis acts more like a parasite then a fungus. She’s still infected but something in her system is preventing it from taking control of her brain functions.”

It would have been so much easier to pretend as if you beat it out. That you're immune system was just superior and you never had to worry about it. You shook no, “The bite healed, why would the bite heal if I were-”

Jerry stepped towards you, causing a daisy chain of jumping to action at the sudden movement for all three of you. “I- let me prove it to you. I have a scanner in the drawer if you’d let me-” He looked at the barrel of the gun before waving his hands in defeat. “It’s in the one closest to you, Marlene pull it out and slide it over to her.”

Both of you watched like hawks. Keeping peace, Marlene kept one in the air as she very slowly moved the other to pass the scanner to you. Not a word was spoken, barley a breath echoed out as the pinch screamed in the air before a red positive flashed in your face. His voice was even more grating as you looked at the blank screen in one shining colour. “Like I said, it functions more like a parasite. It keeps you alive and unaffected but you keep it alive by feeding it.”

He looked at Marlene with an uncaring defeat. “She’s not immune. It just exists in her body unable to control anything, you couldn’t even spread it if you bite someone that hard because it wasn’t able to function beyond it’s own internal growth.”

Her face was almost sympathetic, like she understood the reality but was disconnected from it at the same time. “Carvel-”

It took almost too much energy to hold your body from shaking, like a shiver that refused to settle and now lived in your bones. “He said this is the end. He looked at all of this, he told you he couldn’t do it and killed himself over it. Everything this quack says it just off the backbone of my fathers work. What else could you possibly want with me?”

He didn’t answer this time, she did. “We’ve looked inside dozens of people. Dead, sick, healthy, but none of them had an immunity. We have no idea what we might find if you let us-”

“What? Cut me open? Explore my brain like a fucking science experiment?” She tried murmuring your name almost comfortingly, but your eyes stung too much to hear it. Pressure threatening to pool out of them. “I don’t exist to make everything right. You can’t sacrifice me just because you’re desperate to accomplish something for once in your fucking life, Marlene.” The air felt claustrophobic, closing in like walls as your chest burned keeping it all down.

“Your purpose-”

Liquid spilt down your cheek, not much but enough to have your limbs on edge, itching to run from these people. “My purpose isn’t humanity's responsibility. You don’t have the right to tell me I can’t live just so you can play savior. My father killed himself over the truth, apparently that doesn’t mean anything to people like you.”

For days afterwards, Marlene haunted your waking days. It took one very awful night of locking yourself safe up in a room with far too much of some kind of disgusting barrel made alcohol that you came unknowingly came across to drown it out. “You’re right. We are desperate, but believe us or not, you are for a greater purpose. Do you really want to stop us from doing just that?”

A cold wind swooped over your face, and thus back around you were two very different people. Joel had mentioned to you to bring gloves, but you didn’t realize how much you’d need them until about now. Running your fingers mindlessly over the length of the arrow you could feel how stiff the cold was making their movement, the only thing sparking life into them was the sharpness of the arrowhead point each time you pressed down on it.

You didn’t have many, but each one you tied a bright fabric around an end so it stood out when you shoved one into the ground. Not enough that it would stand out to anyone but when you three would come following the trail later. It was getting too late and the temperature plummeting too low to risk staying out here for much longer.

It had been strange, taking the lead as you had set out that morning. Joel having full trust in letting you sniff out a trail they took until finally, you had come across the fresh remains of what was a campsite. A smirk almost formed walking into the smushed snow, fireflies never had much of a reason to be inconspicuous in the open land, stealth not important when their manpower usually had a lot of firepower.

A fire put out maybe a few hours ago still smelled the burning in the air, and you could only follow the trace as long as the sky remained lit. Abandoned pockets of old homes strayed about close to the state border but you were reasonably sure going any further west wasn’t where they’d go. Most don’t. Only twenty minutes ago explaining to Joel, “She’s probably going to have to stop to regroup or supply, she won’t just throw Owen back at us and knowing I’m with you coming alone isn’t an option. Not much in the way of camps around here anymore, my guess she’ll have to go all the way back to resupply.”

His eyes had narrowed in thought, his own plans mapping out in his head as the both of you had knelt down to the ground, wrapping the arrow in a bright marker to come back too. “We come back tomorrow early as possible then. Between the two of us, going through the night we can reach the border just short of two days.”

Ellie had protested at that one almost instantly, “Hey, I’m not just letting you guys do this on your own you know.” A debate was surely on the horizon between the two of them over Ellie being allowed to come, but you weren’t sure you could handle it right now.

You hadn’t been able to handle much conversation at all the past twenty four hours honestly. Shaking your head, you dragged Joel’s attention back once more as you tapped your finger along the map. “If they’re going all the way back to Salt Lake she won’t go through Idaho, she’s way more likely to cross at Bear Lake. Stop for the night and book it in the morning.”

Now, you stood pressuring your finger close to a little too deep into the arrowhead, the rock your elbows rested on sat high on the edge of a small cliff. You kept your back turned, letting Joel and Ellie fight between them on keeping her behind or not until the noise in your head drowned out their voices.

It was only the sudden appearance of Ellie at your side that brought you back into the stiff freezing of your hands. The agitation wasn’t held in her face, meaning it instead sat on Joel’s shoulders. She wouldn’t slow you both down, that wasn’t the issue. You suspect it was a tearing need on his heart to keep Ellie as far away from these people as he could that conflicted with her desire to stay together.

Eyes both gazed on the snowy view ahead, Ellie broke the silence as usual. “He’s not mad you know.” A ping in your chest risked speeding up to a fast beating heart. “Neither of us are. I mean it took me and Joel way longer to talk then you. And we spent way more time just with each other.”

Jaw clenching and unclenching, your mouth hissed it out as if the only way to force your vocal cords to even cooperate. “That’s not what you should hate me for.” You couldn’t brave looking at her anymore, and luckily Ellie seemed to sense not to push it right now.

The silence between you both blew calmly in the wind for a brief moment before it once again became too uncomfortable for her liking. So she picked at part of her brain that had toiled with her the entire time she tried sleeping the night before. “If they knew it wouldn’t work why kill people over it?”

Chest rising with a deep inhale, you finally moved to tuck the arrow away behind your back. The sting in your eyes either from the wind or the memory you couldn’t be sure. Arms coming back around you to cross your torso. “You ever want something to be true so badly that you’re willing to ignore every part of you yelling the opposite?”

Silence once more. The three of you had more than enough times this was true but for some reason only one came to mind that second. Covering a discoloured mess on a small child’s shin hoping when she woke up everything would be alright. “They had proof-”

Cutting her off you wrapped your arms around yourself tighter. “Knowing what’s true doesn’t mean you can accept it. Marlene, the doctors, they wanted to be right so badly it didn’t matter what they ended up doing. She wanted it, and she wasn’t about to let someone else get it before her.”

“Why?”

Why indeed, you thought. No one answer could cover their spectrum of rationality, but you could say one thing definitively. The one person who you knew perfectly well what lay behind their spoken reasoning. “Whoever gets it first, gets to use it the way they want.” Nails dug into your palms again. “Say what you will about FEDRA but they have the infrastructure to pass a vaccine through their QZ’s on mass. People like Marlene get it first, and suddenly they get to decide who deserves it. And who doesn’t.”

Ellie’s heart begun to beat harder in harmony with yours. “Why would some deserve it but not others, weren’t they supposed to be fighting for freedom or whatever?”

Holding back your bias was a much harder task then one might otherwise assume. Years of being hunted and assaulted by them left a bitter stain on your person for life, but they still were people. Not the one dimensional villains you used to see on television as a child.

Instinctively your brain was forcing you to focus on your breathing, making every inhale and exhale felt through your lungs outward. “People clammer to QZ’s because like it or not they work. Life sucks and they treat you like garbage, but they keep the sick out and try to have anything remotely close to a life as normal as best as people like them can manage.”

Bias, bias, bias. Your mouth was unable to not spew out what very well could be bias but it scratched at you too deeply to not feel it. “Just because the way you use your power is aggressive doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. But, you take that power away and suddenly your left with a void that needs to be taken over. Take FEDRA away and suddenly you have an entire population wanting the freedom to do whatever they want, and you can’t just take over a population and expect to control all of them because you say so.”

Neither had mentioned it, not really, but you knew about Kansas City. Ten days of success wasn’t exactly one for the history of victors. You knew that getting rid of FEDRA wasn’t enough. You had to have a plan for after. If not, you bear the weight of mistakes that came before you. You go in without a plan, you get Kansas City, you start slow and build up on respect, you get Jackson. But everyone there also knew it wasn’t exactly easy for them to get there, or common. Ellie started to speak, wanting to ask how that related but you answered before her anyways.

“You don’t do what Marlene did for twenty years without starting to ignore why you even started in the first place. Fight an enemy for long enough, and you forget you’re not supposed to turn into them.” It wasn’t fair, but valuing all human life was nowhere near as important as some might think.

Ellie was quiet for a bit, maybe a minute maybe more. But something still had a question mark all over it. “Why not just let us live? Just start over like here.”

Jerry had said something that night, a comparison of you few rarely ever saw or felt. But it was there, an echo of a voice that didn’t belong to you, repeating a kind of word that ingrained themselves into the further parts of your brain. Praise for your father almost never reflected the twisting damage sinking his own sanity further away the light still left around him.

Were it possible, one would have suggested it wasn’t really your voice at all that spoke. “Starting over means populations will try and rebuild our old lives as fast as possible. Not everyone thinks that’s a good thing.”

Footsteps in the snow didn’t hit either of your ears, but watchful brown eyes were glued to how much you didn’t bare looking at either him or Ellie. A distance he had seen mere weeks ago that he watched reappear in one fell swoop yesterday.

Joel didn’t interrupt as you spoke, something on your mind needed to get out and if it had to be on Ellie, fine. At least it was coming out.

Blood peeked it’s head from the slices your nails pressed into it’s skin. “Do you know how long it took for us to reach one billion?” Ellie shook her head no, just barley visible from the corner of your eye. “Thirty thousand years. It took thirty thousand years for us to reach one billion. In a hundred years we doubled that, the next billion took thirty years and by outbreak were were at six. Give humanity the chance to prosper and we’ll always found a way to do it on our own terms.”

The sombreness in your own tone sat within Ellie’s as well. “So they make a cure and they get to choose who gets it.” If she saw you nod yes, neither of you acknowledged it. History had always been that way though. Nothing was new. If the ruling class didn’t care enough about you, then who cares if you aren’t there to experience it.

“We’ve covered enough ground for today.” Joel’s deep tone broke through the tense air. Ellie spinning around expecting the same frustration she walked away from, but found instead a softness. Eyes bright and swirling with an affection that she had become so reliant on. “Let’s go. We’ll be walking in the dark if we stick around any longer.”

Nodding, Ellie left your side to grab her bag. Your body turning to follow her departing sight until only the broadness of Joel’s frame was in focus. His posture was antsy, wanting to say something but struggling with how or when to say it. In your mind, it could only be something you should be dreading to hear.

The work Joel had done to coax you into letting him, letting both of them, bring you softly into the life they were trying to make for themselves feeling like it was shattering before his eyes. Trailing behind them as you all treked back to Jackson.

Calling it home felt selfish to you again. A life that you fell back into let you escape once more, giving you a chance to assume you deserved more. But now? It all was converging on the only people who couldn’t bare watching it happen to.

Were you being distant because they couldn’t possibly understand how overwhelming your spinning thoughts were, or were you unknowingly, preparing to soften the blow. You hadn’t slept the night before, too consumed with the torment that this was a sign.

Protect these people, and then leave them alone. For good.

You were present for any conversation of planning, but lost elsewhere. You couldn’t even say if Joel or Ellie spoke to each other at all that night you were just that far away. Your form hunched over the bathroom sink, holding back any pain running water as hot as you turned it right over the cuts in your palms. The scars they’d leave might look noticeable if you could go half a day without digging your nails into them.

The tap had been running for too long. Joel would have known you weren’t in the shower from the way the water running sounded and he wasted no time barging in. Your eyes flickering to the side as you watched him shut and lock it behind him.

Instantly you turned the tap off, reaching to dry your hands with a hand towel but still not looking at him. “We not knocking anymore?” It was hard to determine if playful was intended in your tone.

“I did knock, you didn’t answer.” There was a lightness to his voice that any previous day would sink a smile onto your face but you summoned no such energy for him. Just drying your now already dry hands as if he’d just decide to leave. He murmured your name more then once but it didn’t really register. You heard it but almost in slow motion, and too late for Joel not to step towards you and grab the towel forcing your attention up to him.

Both of your faces steeled with something unreadable, Joel mindlessly tossed it behind you as his hand now hovered close to your face as if begging you to lean into it. But you didn’t. So he flexed it into a twitching fist before letting it just drop back down. “I don’t think you’ve been this quiet since the first day I met you.”

Right. The day you ruined everything by letting Tommy show you around town. Should have just turned away. Your fingertips tapped at the sink counter as you strained yourself to find words that meant anything. “I don’t know what to say.”

Joel’s face scrunched in what looked like anger. His body turning away as he ran a hand down his face for a moment. The agitation in his voice clear as crystal. “You can start with whether or not you’re alright.” The one shoulder you shrugged did not go over well. Joel’s voice this time slightly raising in volume as he said your name. “That’s an Ellie’s annoyed I gave her eighty chores to do in one night answer. Not a I’m worried for your goddamn well being answer.”

You felt bad as soon as it left your mouth, but there was an exhausted attitude you almost couldn’t contain in such a small space between you. “Don’t lecture me.”

His own voice turning more into an anger this time, his face almost irritatedly bewildered at how little he was getting through to you. “That’s what you think I came in here for? To yell at you like you’re a child?”

Your tone opposite, quiet and muttering. “Sure feels like it, Miller.”

Some point in the future you’d become thankful that Joel knew you so well. Pulling out his last name in any tone other then jabbing fun was not a good sign. His hand raised almost to stop you from saying anything, but he pulled back. Instead running it over his coarse facial hair to collect himself first.

Silver lining was that you weren’t an argument person. There wasn’t many times a disagreement between you and Joel turned into anything but silent upset. Yelling wasn’t a thing either of you cared for.

Joel’s large shadow stepped into your personal space as you dropped into an exhaust. Wanting both to sleep it away, and wanting to run forever from this. The warmth that always radiated from his body consumed you so gently as his fingers pushed your chin up to look him in the eye.

He was too kind for your silent, distant facade to handle. Not brave enough to reach out to feel his own skin, but your chest tightened in need as you looked at his face. Eyes way to expressive for his own good and highlighted such handsome features that you knew you’d never see on any other soul. His voice, just as dulcet as it was a raspy whisper. “You’re allowed to not be okay, sweetheart.”

His eyes shifted down and you could tell, somewhat embarrassingly, that he no doubt caught the brief second you considered reaching out for him. “Yeah, well this isn’t about me.”

If Joel were anyone else, he’d take that as bait. Argue with you until there was nothing left to be angry over, but your heart was heavy at how little he misread your signals. Instead he loomed closer into you, closing the gap to barley a foot of space between your bodies.

His large hand sliding up your jaw and cupping your cheek, thumb rubbing back and forth over what he could reach. Were you to wrap your smaller hand around his wrist like you loved to do, you’d have felt the jump in his pulse at how instinctively you leaned into his touch.

Ellie once described to Tommy that Joel was like the angry attack dog that only calmed down for it’s owners, whereas you were far more like a brooding feral cat that secretly yearned for ‘scritches’. A phrasing which made Maria almost spit her drink out at the cartoonish image she conjured in her head.

She wasn’t wrong though. His calming scent and warm closeness never failed to pull out the neediness in you. “I-” Squeezing your eyes shut for as long as stuttering air out your chest took before looking back into Joel’s eyes. “It’s hard to accept that this isn’t my fault, somehow.” Soft eyes squinting in doubt you elaborated. “Like maybe this all comes back to me and if it is then it’s not your responsibility to fix it and it sure isn’t Ellie’s.”

The man before you sighed, leaning down and pulling you up to rest his forehead against yours. Both your eyes closed as now the space between you was centimetres, sharing the shaky air you tried hiding away from him. Joel’s hand sliding to cup the back of your neck as his fingers toyed with the hair within his grasp, keeping you in place.

“You’re a moron.”

Alright, that was not what you were expecting. In fact you weren’t expecting it so much that without even realizing a laugh burst of your mouth, Joel’s own deep chuckle following. “Glad you finally noticed.”

You had a feeling Joel was rolling his eyes along with whatever slurred mumbling to himself he sent you, but he leaned to the side, his face now resting in just one of his favourite spots on you. The crook of your neck where his plush lips left tiny presses. Not quite a kiss, but a poke of attention for you to focus on.

“What did I say the other night?” His voice muffled by your skin, each tickle tempting you to just reach out and rest your hands on him. His other hand grabbed your waist, ready to pull you into him if you’d let him. “We do this together. We all got each other, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

Like years passing in the stars your hand inched over along the counter. The lightest of brush your index finger made with the soft material of Joel’s shirt he flooded your senses. Tipping through your fingers and rushing along your veins to clutch at your heart.

Like memory, as one of your hands reached up more to finally hold at his side, the other grasped gently at the wrist along the side of your head. Before you could speak, Joel wasn’t finished. Leaning back up to look you in the eyes. A seriousness painted across him once more, “Everything that happened, before I mean. None of that matters, not in how we see you and it never will. So if you keep worrying this is your fault, or that we’d be better off without you then you’ve got a hell of a lot of catching up to do.”

You felt the tension in your shoulders dipping, the heavy weight sliding off and down onto the floor like a puddle. Joel’s grip on you loosened, letting you turn with your back to the sink, resting against the uncomfortable edge. “I had a chance once. Not long before,” You paused, head tilting towards him with a pointed glance. “Probably a few months before Ellie got bit if I had to guess, I had him. I was right there, and what did I do? I grabbed what of his work I could get and left.”

Technically it was your fathers work, but both of you knew that wasn’t the point. Joel’s eyes gazed almost analytically. Taking in something and putting it together before jumping in. “If you killed him then none of us would’ve met. Not you, Marlene would’ve had no one to bring Ellie to. So scrap me meeting her either.”

To you, that was almost more devastating. Hints and stories whispered a version of this man you wouldn’t recognize. A hallowed out version of himself that didn’t care about letting people in. That is until he was charged with bringing this weird, loud mouthed kid out west and her very existence sparked something inside of him that no one else had ever come close to doing in twenty years. Not even his own brother.

Joel was put in charge of Ellie, but they made each other their purpose to move forward in life. Taking that away from them? Who knows where they would be by now, and what people they’d continue to let the angry world around them become, and god knows what Marlene would do with Ellie if you killed her only remaining medical professional.

His voice rumbled in his chest, you now close enough to feel it vibrate through you. “I can’t stop you from blaming yourself, but that doesn’t mean you’re right. Can’t say the same for Ellie though. She’s ready to blow a gasket if you even try walking away from us again.”

For whatever reason, that made you laugh again. Rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palm you failed to sense Joel moving right in front of you until he startled you with hands on your hips. Opening them back up you felt surprised if not bemused at the sparkle in his eye that trailed over where he could see.

Squeezing your hips, he started moving you up and onto the counter. Quickly catching on you hopped back yourself, only to get pulled close into Joel’s grasp when you got too far. His knee pushed yours open enough for him to force his way in between them, making you spread them on either side of his hips to accomodate.

The rough texture of his thumbs snuck under your shirt and tucked into the fabric of your waistline, but went no further. Shivers crawling the length of your spine as your neck craned to take him in from his hips to the soft hair that begged to be ruffled. Something in the tightness of his grip spoke to you what he was guiding you to.

It made you laugh again, more then you’ve laughed in days. “You can’t be serious.”

Joel raised his eyebrows with a troublesome smirk on his face. “Oh no, sweetheart I’m dead serious. Seems like you need a reminder how much you belong with us.”

You wanted to make a joke about this being why he locked the door, but you knew the truth was he was just impatient. His mind and body begging for you to let him come closer and you felt little obligation to turn him away.

Hand trailing up your body, smoothing the length of your arm Joel reached the side of your face to pull up into his own. Wasting no time as he kept your lips pressed against his. The front collar of his shirt grasped in your fingers within seconds while the other finds home on his waist.

His lips switching between soft and demanding felt more home then any kind you’ve tried to find before him. A rhythm of him deepening it, only to tease you with almost pulling away just to press his lips to you harsher. You could lose yourself in Joel’s touch.

Fall trap to a dark pit and remain stuck down there for as long as he leads you into it. Your nails reach up to trail over his neck, feeling a slight shiver poke it’s head though his confidence before mixing a hum with a groan as your nails slid to the back of his neck and up into the strands of hair they could reach.

Your free hand sliding down, teasing the bottom of his shirt unable to gain the advantage. His teeth sinking into your bottom lip, a ploy just to make you gasp. His hands moved to the sides of your jaw to tilt you up into his mercy as he brushed his tongue into yours just like he planned.

Your fingers trickling under his shirt, smoothing over the soft skin by his waist and almost smiling into the kiss when you felt his stomach muscles twitch under them. Joel almost seemed to struggle with pulling away from your mouth long enough to press a kiss anywhere else, and he certainly didn’t make it easy for you to pull away either.

A tiny gasp of breathe filled the space between you when Joel gave you just a second away, but you pushed back into him with a bite to his own bottom lip. A hiss leaving him gave you the chance to press your lips to his jaw.

Facial hair scratching at your touch all the way down to kissing down his neck. Knowing the burn his own beard would give you as it moved along your neck you nibbled gently to give a similar sting. Unable to see, you missed Joel craning his neck up slightly as his eyes fluttered shut. His lips much more plush from the force of his kiss parted slightly.

The quiet needing peace didn’t last long though. Your hands moved quickly to his belt and tried making fast work of it, but his large hands both encompassed yours. Keeping them in place as he pulled away from you. A disapproval in his eyes that mocked his frown.

Yanking your hands over to rest on his shoulders, he shook his head as his hands moved back down to do the work himself. “Is this all I am to you, just a piece of meat?”

The playful display of disappointment contrasted with the clink of him undoing his belt. The sound so much louder in your ears then perhaps was out loud, but he went no further as pulling his zipper down before pulling you into his own hips with a hand pressed to the middle of your lower back.

So badly you wanted to goof right back at him, tease and poke at his resolve until he had enough and just flipped you over but so much caught in your throat, too many emotions choking you up. The only response you mustered up was just a nod as you ran your thumbs over his cheeks like he did you.

Joel rid you of your shirt in no time, left only in a tank top where he almost smirked boyishly at your nipples through the fabric. “Fuck, good.” Finally recapturing your lips with a response as his large hands yanked down the material just enough to force your tits to spill out the strained fabric.

The warmth of his rough hands grasping at your chest in the cold winter air had you give close to whine in his kiss only to be made a moan as his fingers grabbed and toyed with both nipples at once. Your hands greedily pulling his hips into you more Joel let you pull his jeans down as much as you could manage from your position.

The scratch of his facial hair too much like the hair leading down his waist surrounding his cock. One hand let your fingers trace the very edge of his base while the other wrapped around his neck once more. Forcing his hands to leave your chest but finding a new task in pulling your own pants down as much as he could.

Finding just enough room to wrap what your hand could reach around the unfairly thick base of his cock, Joel muttered under his breath tensely. Not asking you for help, he let out a moan when the movement of yanking your pants totally down your thighs to your knees, caused your soft hand to grip him tighter and twist from the jostle.

His eyes were dark and the pupil threatening to take over any colour left in them, only to yank the grip of your pants he still had just enough for him to gesture down to your hand. Letting go you still hovered in the air almost ready to immediately return to him, but Joel slowed down.

Stepping back out of your reach to pull each leg off without ever taking those dark eyes off of yours, his much deeper yet thoughtful compared to the floating feeling in your veins. Your bottom half now exposed to the cold air, your hands dropped to your thighs with a slap. Your own gaze now greedy watching him pull his shirt off. His unfairly broad torso yet soft skin atop it as alluring as his lips.

Joel didn’t move to grab at you again, but slowly joining your thighs sliding his palms soothingly along each side. Just up and down, your own palms exploring his chest, like each time you’d discover something new. Both of his hands eventually finding their way to the edge of your tank top but never breached touching the bottom of the fabric.

Your heart racing in your chest, worried you should be used to it by now but Joel refused to chase that down tonight. Instead pulling you off the counter, and turning you to face the mirror.

The sight was just as strange to you as the one you kept trying to cover. Tits spilling out of your tank top, now with one of Joel’s hands groping and rubbing along your nipple, the other keeping you pulled into his chest as he ran his nose along the side of your head, eyes almost shut. Reaching your ear he pressed a kiss just under it before the bass in your ear sending your limbs into a frenzy to move somehow.

“Tell me where you belong, sweetheart.” Rumbling in your ear causing you to bit your lip, but the messy fluff of hair raised to show his soulful eyes yearning for yours. His hands firm on you and now unmoving as he waited you to make the next move.

Looking at the pair of you, you weren’t even the real equation. It was how much you fit in Joel’s arms, not how he moulded his chest against your back. Maybe being home for him, should be enough, face hopeful that you’ll see it too. A small smile gracing your face you reached behind you, wrapping one arm again behind his neck as the other grabbed at the hand on your chest.

Pulling up to kiss each knuckle you could only notice the faintest of scars along them, so it wasn’t his chest you found anything new this time. But you watched his reflection the entire time, each knuckle kissed ever so lightly before flipping to press a kiss to his palm. “I-”

Joel’s brows falling instantly grumpy, “If you say you’re sorry I swear to god.” His eyes rolled up into his head as did his head fall back in exasperation. There was the annoyed glare you were so used too. So you leaned back into him, letting yourself memorize how his chest feels against your back as Joel held one of your hips and slid the warm wrapped around you to do the same to the other.

“I was going to say here. I belong right here, right now.” Both of you looked at one another for a moment before a spark fired. Joel seemed to mumble something sounding like ‘damn right’, but how swiftly he found your clit distracted you.

One finger stretching down gather your wetness, he slid it through your folds with a grin at how easily it made you gasp. Rubbing tight circles into your clit he pushed his front against your ass. Keeping you trapped between him and the counter, unable to do anything but have your hands braced against the edge.

Joel’s fingers rubbed into you, slid down to tease at your slit and leaving the much more raw friction of rubbing the heel of his palm against your clit. The pressure much harsher as he did so you felt your chest bursting out of you.

The coiling in your pelvis burned so hot so quickly an inflamed burst was too sudden to even brace him for. Pleasure snapped through your core as you barley had breathe left to speak at all, “Joel- oh god, fuck.”

The stinging of his beard made itself known as his teeth scraped your own neck, unafraid to mark it up in his name like he was a goddamn teenager again. As if he needed to give Tommy anymore reason to poke fun at him for it, but the gasps and moans was a siren song to his ears.

His teeth almost bearing and his hair a mess in the mirror, you shook from the aftershocks in buzzing need for more. Joel’s appearance was an utter mess with narrowing eyes as he looked you over. Running his nose over your cheek he read his concern. Twisting just enough, you could feel Joel’s breathe on your face as one of his hands slid up your spine. You smiled gently, nudging your nose back at his best you could. “Anything you need.”

A light kiss as best you could was the cherry on top. Joel’s face twisting as he failed to contain himself, “Jesus fucking christ-” pulling back the hand on your spine grasped at the back of your neck and pushed down, moving your entire front to press against the cold counter.

Glancing up you panted watching Joel keep one hand possessively on you as the other pulled his jeans halfway down his thighs. The tip was leaking precum, as the rest of his cock sat thick between him. It’s girth almost enough to hide his balls just as thick and full as his cock throbbed like.

You bit your lip hard the second you cried out, his cock slapping up between your own legs, sliding between your almost wet folds and rebuilding that pleasure inside you. “Please Joel, please, I need..”

If the sight of his cock slowly getting covered by your own wetness wasn’t making his head spin so fast he might have slapped your ass for not telling him what it is that you needed exactly. But he couldn’t focus. Not while watching him slide so close to where he always dreamed about. “I need to get you ready first, sweetheart.”

The hand on your neck moved to cup your mound, but Joel found himself still as stone. Your own heart racing, almost too fast to be healthy but not having him right inside you was sending you too deep into your mind. Almost lost in a panic attack kept at bay by his touch. “Do you?”

Your thighs clenched around his cock as if they would get you what you needed. Your breathing harsh as Joel paused. His eyes shut closed, and dropped to rest near the back of your spine. “Jesus, you’re going to make me lose it,” He muttered with gritted teeth into your skin.

So lose it he did. It took the span of an inhale for Joel to grip his cock and push himself inside you. In a quick thrust he smoothly sunk as deep as he could get inside of you. The hand on your mound reaching up and slamming onto the counter beside your own tight grip. Both of you holding back a needlessly loud moan.

Joel’s first thrusts were shallow, deep inside of you and more like a grind as his chest pressed into your back. Then you moaned his name almost in a whisper, and he lost more of his control. Standing upright Joel roughly yanked your hips back into his with such force you felt the slap of skin jiggle across your ass as you bit down on your lip harder.

Then Joel pulled you again, and again. Thrusting his cock deep inside of you as each time he pulled you back onto him, smacking against the sensitive spots inside of you over and over with a rough force that gave you no room to get used to it.

Your breaths turned to gasps, and as the slamming of his cock got harder, and your skin smacked against his more aggressively they almost turned to cries. Joel’s teeth bared like an animal as the veins in his arms flexed from the strength.

The orgasm he already gave you not at all gone down to a reasonable level you wanted so badly to cry out at how much his cock made your insides burn and how badly you never wanted to let go of that feeling. Your walls fluttering against his cock and how much you soaked it with every brush inside of you, the sound of how wet you were just as audible as your skin pounding into one another.

You think Joel talked, your eyes barley able to stay open could see his mouth moving in some form between falling open. His neck taunting you as his head fell back just slamming his cock into you over and over without any thought to slowing down.

Your orgasm was less sudden but faster then you assumed it would be for a second time, the burning noise inside of you and weight in your chest had you clenching so tight around him that Joel found he had to work harder to pull part way out of you each time. His own length throbbed inside of you, so he pressed his body over your back once again, his hand pulling your chin to the side to kiss you.

Tongue and saliva between you making a true mess, a kiss as wet as how much you covered his cock with. The hand of Joels pressed into the counter slapped down onto your pussy, the force of it almost making you sob in need. His voice gritting in your own mouth, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He slapped again, not hard, but enough to match the slap of your ass against his hips. He did it twice more in tandem with his thrusts.

Keeping his fingers this time rubbing fast into your clit, a roughness to the touch that pushed you over the edge as soon as his voice spoke once more. “My perfect fucking girl,” Joel’s own voice strained and pitching higher.

A reoccurring problem, Joel almost letting it slip right as he feels you tighten so much around his cock it almost hurt. But he fucked you harder, pounded your orgasm with no gentleness whatsoever. His hand slid to cover your mouth as an actual sob left you.

Pushed over the cliff’s edge your second orgasm washed over you this time not like a sparking fire but flames spreading across your skin intending to cripple you. You moaned Joel’s name into his hand, as Joel’s hips punched into you once, twice and finally your own name fell from his lips in a needy moan.

The sight of brown and grey hairs hiding his face tucked into your neck you felt your orgasm soaking his cock along with the warm cum spilling inside of you. Grinding deeply into your cunt, Joel couldn’t even conceive pulling out of you until you took everything he could possibly cum into you with.

You both laid there for quite a while, possible longer then it took to fuck you both to that point. Joel’s head leaning up to rest against yours as you wrapped your fingers around his and rested his head just above where your heart pressed into the hard surface.

His cock stayed as deep and as soaked with cum inside of you for however long he needed. You almost said it. A lightness in your heart that brought you close to tears before your orgasm overcame your senses.

You didn’t know when it would be time to say it, but both of you held off. You felt it, and it weight so deeply on Joel’s soul that not saying it was starting to get harder even just waking up next to you tempted him.

Your hands barley left the other most of the night, but not in a lust field frenzy. Just soft strokes of skin against skin with your lips both finding the other again and again. Saying it was the hard part. But this?

Laying on your sides in bed, your hands both trailing over the others cheek, neck, shoulders, or tits in Joel’s hands case. This part you both were good at. Laying under the sheets, no light but the moon shining a glow around his profile? Large smoothly shaped nose the perfect frame for a drawing, if Joel didn’t glare and grumble at any mention of drawing his portrait.

Losing this would be catastrophic for all three of you. It was easy to understand how Joel felt that day, not getting there in time and losing Ellie? He might not have survived losing someone he felt in his heart as a daughter for a second time. And you were starting to realize having someone who finally showed you love and family would have you just the same.

Joel is a good man, a protector and he only did what his heart commanded of him. That’s what you needed to focus on. You weren’t sure when this is all over, Joel would let you walk away if you were honest with yourself.

He’s not an unhealthy or dangerous man, but someone, somewhere knows the word to describe Joel’s current supposedly unlabelled love for you, as soulful and possessive. To no ones surprise, Maria’s the one who was thinking of the word unable to figure out why neither of you could say it despite how clear it was.

Too bad Joel already said it twice, but didn’t actually realize it and neither did you. A fact which was starting to weigh more frustratingly the only other person in the house’s mind in particular who was more determined then all combined to make this family true.

That one person however, was probably more determined then that in arguing she should come along on journey. It resulted in the early hours of the morning Joel and Ellie having a stand off about her safety as you and Tommy both leaned back against the counter watching Joel fail to reason with a child.

Tommy originally walked in intending to offer backup for you two, but Ellie insisted it be her and all of you knew if you were hoping to sneak up on them more than three would be pushing it. “It’s nice to see that even after twenty years, Joel’s will power is just as bad at fifty six as he was at thirty six.”

A comment that distracted Joel with a flat glare long enough that she snatched her bag and the map on the table before walking out the front door. All with a satisfied smirk and Joel left with a loud sigh. Moving to grab his own bag Joel grumbled, “Just taking turns seeing whose more stubborn at this point.”

It took considerably less time to get to the cliff side again now that you all knew where to start. At least thankful your starting point was close to the part of the borders that lay mostly empty now. You had spent most of that time in silence. Spending those few hours trying to map out in your head the right route to take. What Abby was most likely to do with just two of them, one of which likely needing extra time to rest.

The first day was relatively easy. Travelling south meant you could still cut through the mostly empty towns with little risk of incident. Most places in Wyoming seemed to be less populated in the winter times, honestly the Northwest was just that way in general nowadays. The terrain was too rough in some places, and there just wasn’t a lot of access to easy resources if you weren’t acutely familiar with the area.

The quiet ease left your travelling companions less on edge as well. Their back and forths glimpsing small insights to the lives they led together when they travelled the country before you. The echo of the streets had Ellie’s voice carry the more riled up she and Joel made each other.

It was a kind of travel that wasn’t familiar anymore Once finding a life on your own to be a necessity, you had only two stages of it. One with music, and one painful silence. It was a miracle you even kept that tiny music player alive as long as you did, by the time it finally broke for good the quiet of nature almost begun to frighten you.

The closer to big cities you got, the more you remembered how skin crawling the screeches were as they howled out into the daylight. It’s why you ended up travelling at night so often, people were far less likely to go out in the dark and so the infected had little reason to be active. Now though it was still daylight as you walked behind the pair.

Watching not the events that forced them together, but the ease and affection between them which set their true foundation in the first place. Your own lack of voice stuck out, like it was louder then their own. There was still at least another day before you reached the state border so why bother interrupting things with what couldn’t possibly be much in the way of positivity to include.

The first night was trickier however. Once it grew too dark and your trio had settled it was much harder to act as if your silence wasn’t bothering them. Small sprinklings of conversation planning the next day gave way to what should feel like a normal night you had experienced with hem time and time again. It didn’t though.

Between how much you zoned out and how long it took for you to eat even the small portion of what you had, kept Joel’s eyes on you. The tension in your bones only worsened as you failed to even try and sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, Joel had awoken to you with your back up against a tree with almost everything on you ready to go. He didn’t in any way believe your claim that you hadn’t been up long, but it was too early to confront you about it, and not in front of the Ellie.

Lucky for him though, she was asleep first on the second night. You were close to the border, and once you crossed it there was no question of where to go. Both you and Abby knew it like the back of your hand and where it made sense for her to go. There was no point in going deep into the state when everything in her life was situated in and around one city.

In the darkness, you could see the a shine of light faint in the distance, the moon reflecting in the water. From your position it would take maybe a few hours, get there midday but being so close made your nerves fire alight in your body.

Joel’s footsteps coming up beside you as the corner of your eye caught his large figure copying your position. Back against a tree with arms protectively across your torso, looking off into the distance.

“I’d ask if you want to rest for a bit while I keep watch, but I’m guessing even asking if you plan on sleeping tonight would be stupid.” Layers over your skin and the cold sting on your face from standing directly in the wind path had you missing how little space he typically stood by you with.

His shoulders close enough to bump into you as his voice rasped the quieter he spoke. Your throat not wanting to spill anything, you shook your head slowly but not much else. Hoping the light in the sky didn’t give away the tearing fear wanting to spill over.

For a few minutes the silence between you was comfortable, a peace that flowed naturally as long as you were just close to one another. It wasn’t often you broke it first, but it boiled inside. You couldn’t even look at him, you didn’t want to. The soft gentleness he always gave you when something was wrong inside would be too much to take right now, and breaking down felt like humiliation.

“I have no clue what we’re going to walk in on tomorrow.” Joel’s head turned to look at you but ignoring the movement was necessary if you wanted to keep yourself together. “I don’t even have a plan when we get to her. I only shot her last time because she surprised me around a corner.”

Dulcet comforts of Joel’s deep tone softened the tightness in your chest that for days now had threatened to suffocate you. It always did in the quiet of the night. “It depends on her.” Your own brows narrowing, he continued. “This isn’t an ‘it ends one way or another’ type deal. We can all just walk away from this. Him being her dad doesn't mean saving Ellie’s life was wrong.”

Your hand twitched, thinking for the briefest of seconds that you’d reach out to grab his hand, but decided against it. If Joel wanted to be touching him, he’d already have found a way to initiate it himself, so you stayed put. Eyes forward on the lake you had no plan for. “Whatever she thinks he was, she’s wrong. Just because he loved her doesn’t mean he cared about her. That’d require him to care about anything other then himself.”

Joel didn’t need to know the man to be fully aware of how true that really was. “Seems to be a common thread in their types.”

If your question caught him off guard, Joel didn’t show it. “What happened? When you got there?”

It played in his head, the images, the sounds, the overwhelming emotions. You wonder just how often it’s been in his mind like that, or if it was saved for his dreams. “Nothing that even stood out, no one that mattered. He tried to get me away from him, then he was dead. Just another person who saw her as an a tool, not a girl.”

You knew that all too well. He wasn’t good at defending himself and he didn’t think twice about the people around him. Or the lives he had to kill along the way. You could still feel his voice echoing in the room, unashamed of laying out exactly what would happen were you to agree.

“I’d say we probably would’ve started with pieces of the optic nerve, chiasma, medulla and the brain stem.”

Marlene questioned that one, genuinely confused. “The optic nerve?”

“I mean if I was going to be in there anyways, could even take part of the thalamus.” His thoughts trailing off, almost talking to himself like outlaying a schedule.

You had to escalate to get anything of substance out of him. Gun pointed at Marlene slowly losing her calm while only the threat of an unknown filled needle stuck into his neck in threat did he have any emotions whatsoever. Even if it was only aiding you into getting out in self preservation. You could only be left to wonder if that day was the reason security was so much worse months later when he became the end of Joel’s story. Not that it worked, mind you.

Joel stayed up with you long into the night. Once the words started sharing from his mouth, you couldn’t prevent them from also spilling from yours. Most of it he either put together for himself or suspected, but it came out all the same. Not even giving you the chance it turns out, to return to the fear of the truth ruining what was between you.

His hand reaching over to turn your head to face him, hard to make it out in the dark. But behind the sharp seriousness on his face, still sat that underlying softness that was kept reserved for not many, yet somehow included you. “Would you tell me this is all my fault?”

Your heard skipped a beat in shock, almost pulling back if Joel didn’t turn to pull your waist close into him. “Joel-”

“Answer the question.”

A commanding presence that you yourself, suspected was given full force to not very many. So you shook your head no. Face fallen at the idea you’d blame him for what was out of his control- and then your face fell further with a new emotion.

A flatness with your eyes playfully rolling to the side before looking back up. His own face could just show you what likely was a hint of a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Alright, point made.”

Joel wasn’t going to start a losing battle, trying to convince you to get some sleep. For a while though, he was up with you. Pulled into his side as his soothing touch and warm voice eased a bit of that anxiety before he went to get some rest himself.

The panic returned the second he left your side, and yelled all the louder once you no longer could hear his shuffling about. Unlike the previous two days though, that panic never simmered even once they were both awake again. As the hike moved further, that feeling only pained.

You always hated Bear Lake. It was vast and open, rolling hills on one side and open spaces on the other that was densely populated during the summertime. The bright blue shined moreso in the sun then smaller bodies of water around. You were almost never allowed to go, and the only time you did?

Your father had given strict rules to the parent in charge of what you were allowed to do. Don’t let her sit in direct sunlight, she can only eat what’s been specially made from home, no letting her neighbour who asked her to come, to roughhouse with her, and no going anywhere near the water. Which also meant even being granted the fun of owning a bathing suit was out.

Yet you were excited that your neighbour asked because they wanted to finally have a day with you and their own friends without having your fathers obsessive eye. Of course though, the mother who took all the kids to the lake knew Carvel well, and so listened to his instructions to a tee.

It didn’t do anything for you now. The snow covering the ground with ice covering the bluest section of the water, and the flourishing nature that reclaimed the land would be picturesque to any casual passerby's on any other day.

Something was off here. The only still almost completely in tact buildings had debris and what looked like burned scraps littered around it. Inside of it was dark, from what was visible at a distance.

Joels eyes met yours with a weary hesitation, his chin gesturing to you before nodding over your shoulder. Both of you electing to obviously keep Ellie at his side, her own eyes wide as her hesitancy read much closer to an unsure fear then plotting concern.

Tents were on either side of the area, ones by Joel were old and rotting, while the ones you approached were fresher. Clean yet disturbed in some way. Crouching down in front of one close to the remains of a fire pit, you could see slashes. Cut into the tent with it’s inside contents strewn about to the furthest side of the tent. Almost as if pushed away if trying to get out.

Dried blood stained the front of the tent leading out into what now was covered by fresh snow. Pushing yourself up you glanced over at Joel and Ellie who were finding older traces of what you found. Signs of struggle that wasn’t quite clear of cause.

You couldn’t recall buildings around the more barren surroundings beforehand. They looked shabby, mostly wood and not particularly fortified. This was put here deliberately. Half buried you could see a combination of supplies and personal belongings.

Traces of people, impossible to know when they had been here and gone. Joel however, was finding a story he dreaded much more. The first sign being a scanner, screen busted and without power, only to follow the path of dumped out equipment.

Eyes flickering over to Ellie, it was recognizable what kind of equipment this was. All around the clearing they stood in was old FEDRA stuff. Her mouth opening in question, only for Joel’s hand to fly out, signalling her to turn far down how loud she was about to ask. Realizing what he meant, she stepped in closer to him. “Why would FEDRA be all the way out here if there’s no base or anything”

The dark colour in his eyes started to scare Ellie. Joel’s entire body almost frozen for a moment as it tensed up in anticipation. For some reason, her mind flashed her right back to a moment that look in his eye stood out for the first time.

In the middle of a Kansas City street after they both realized the QZ was wide open, and that exact intensity filled Joel until seconds later everything about the city exploded onto them. Everything in Joel’s chest pounding with the knowing that what it appeared to be, didn’t add up.

The whisper scratched at his throat as he looked at the seemingly abandoned area. “This wasn’t FEDRA.”

Making your slow way up to the largest building, it was dilapidated and dripping wet from melting snow making it’s way inside through the cracks. Similar to an L shape, there was a sheltered corner you couldn’t see from where you stood. Hiding a lurking figure that made no sound until something was close enough to set it off.

It was a shuffle that caught you. Such a light thump of something pressing snow down packed into the earth. The blood, the chaotic nature of what seemed to occur to whomever stayed in the area previously? Your findings told a different story then the worrying one Joel and Ellie had uncovered.

A free hand flexed as it readjusted the strap over your shoulder, not quite ready to put it at aim without knowing what you were walking in on. It wasn’t what you expected though. Hand gun held tight at one side, with a now much cleaner looking Owen at the other, both pressed up against the wall.

But not hiding from you, because as soon as you and Abby made eye contact? The realization of something about to happen proved Joel right in more ways then one. You had two different sides of a story in searching the area, and were it not what it was, it almost could be seen as fate that you had separately uncovered a tale twisted around your own ones.

Abby tried reaching out to gesture you to stop with a fear in her eyes, and just as your head tilted, jaw clenching in a rising fury of distrust, a bang rang out. Not just one, and not the sounds of weapons you knew were spread amongst you, Joel, and Ellie.

The same instance shots screamed out, so did a clicking screech from inside the dilapidated building you were closest to an open entrance too.

You wished you had a solid memory of what happened, or just all the details to understand. It flashed by so quickly. The yelling, shots ringing out. You used to wonder why people who witness or were victims of crime never seem to get their story straight, but it makes sense once you’ve lived the chaos for yourself.

Back slammed against a wall, you could see Joel completely covering Ellie. Pulling her into cover as bullets shot holes into the snow where they missed. One shot close to them, one near you causing you to duck not just out of aim but losing sight of the two of them.

Handgun pulled out at the ready, you turned in time to hear five shots. Three sporadic, and two no doubt from Joel followed by the smashing of glass. The clicking screech sounded once again as an infected seemed to fling itself into the daylight.

It’s attention caught not by you, but a shot hitting into it’s shoulder and a “Fuck,” that drove it’s attention. Leaping onto Owen it’s screeched so loudly it hurt. Your eyes, trying to push away the aggressive sickness inside your chest, turned back to the shots firing on the other side, Joel and Ellie had moved.

A fight all of their own, Ellie crouched behind scrap, eyes wide as you could both see Joel get the upper hand of someone who had gotten too close. Vision catching your eye from behind a building just enough for you to get them first.

If it wasn’t going wrong before, then everything fell to pieces just then. Ellie yelled your name as Joel had his own target, you yelled. “Ellie stay there, its o-”

Words stopping in your tracks, you felt it before you realized what happened. Your head slammed into the ground and a heaving musk in your face of rotting teeth and it’s screeches ringing in your ear. If not for your layers it would have dug it’s scratching fingernails into your skin as it thrashed on top of you.

The scene around you happened without your agency. Screeching from another one, more shots, tires, and Joel and Ellie yelling desperately. But you couldn’t hear what, or see beyond the splattering of mutating colours weighing the creature down on top of you.

Your knee rose up, hitting the creature enough to jostle it off for just seconds that let you kick. Multiple painful slams into it’s face to knock it back only to have it twitch it’s body to reorient itself. Head whipping to the side you could see the shotgun thrown to the side.

It jumped for you, you jumped for the gun. Flipped partially on your back to face it, you didn’t need wait for a close shot, it was already there. One shot pounded out of the barrel, splattering it’s head with blood as it’s momentum dropped. Scrambling to sit up you turned to the other screech and used your only other shot at the one focused on Abby just feet from you.

You didn’t need to look back after. Behind you, she took care of the one still fighting with Owen as you forced yourself up and out. Instead of seeing them, you could only hear the final muffled screaming of Ellie calling your name, and a retreating vehicle fading the voice alongside.

You got as far as the edge of what could be considered this property before the panic twisted inside of you so tight you felt dizzy. Throat closing in as you limbs filled with lead begging you to fall to the ground. This time the stinging behind your eyes didn’t care to hide.

Your stuttering gasps for air with eyes reddening with tears that free fell. You could only ask yourself, what the fuck happened? The image around you wasn’t clear, but Ellie tired to get to you, got grabbed, and well Joel wasn’t about to let them leave with her.

The anxiety overloading your system let drops of anger fill you. Unsure if it was really your plan, but turning in place you yanked your knife from it’s sheath and felt the need to scream fill you. Only, turning around, gave you something that didn’t look right.

Owen with his arm out trying to keep Abby away from him, his other painted in red. Neither of them noticed your slow quiet steps, grip on the knife no longer tight and a face twisted in thought as you took it all in.

Her face was distressed, but her voice was what only could be described as utterly pissed as she replied to something looking like a beg. “I’m not fucking-”

Close enough to catch Owen’s attention his hand outstretched to Abby dropped, but the other stayed up, covering him up. Your eyes narrowed and blood cooled trying to see if the covered bite was on his shoulder, or if this was far more urgent then that.

One step further, Abby pulled her own gun on your approaching figure. “Don’t.” Her own eyes were red but without any hint of the tears you refused to bother hiding. Her arm shook as she stared at you with fury, “Show me your side.”

You had to handle this now, you had to go after them. There was no time for this. “Abby, it’s too late.”

She just shook her head, “It’s not too late. Dad said you’re supposed to be the fucking answer, so answer.” Gun twitching in her hand gesturing to Owen. “Do something,” It almost was a shriek, and your bones jumped in startle.

You though, just looked at Owen. Face falling into a defeat as he did acceptance. Slowly dropping his hand down to his side. The meat of his neck filthy. Covered and so discoloured it almost appeared decomposing were it not also fresh with blood. While Abby said something more, you and him just shared a pointed stare.

You had turned to them angry and furious but not for this. No one, neither of them deserved this. But you suppose that’s why she wanted you to make this all right. “Abby,”

Her nostrils flaring, jaw tensing up to hold back a thought she yet didn’t want to divulge. Owen called her this time, a second time until the third shouted. Whipping her head to Owen he looked at her with a disapproval you expected towards yourself. “She can’t do shit, Abby. None of them can.”

Gun still pointed at you, but no longer staring you down with blazing expressions. Giving you the chance to move slowly, just putting the knife back. “What do you mean-”

Owen yelled over top her, “It means it doesn’t fucking work. There’s no cure in her blood or anything, okay? Your dad lied to you, all of us-”

One hand ran over her forehead and the other dropped to her side. Likely along the thoughts of who even cares now. “No, he told me okay? He told me, her, and that fucking kid are the key,”

Sickness bubbled inside of you. None of this was supposed to be about you, and truly it wasn’t. More akin to a denial masquerading as desperate anger. You didn’t blame her, not for this. The swollen red tear in his neck made you yearn for it to work. But what would you even do if it would?

Throat somewhat scratching at you, unfamiliar to the kind of yelling needed to over shout these two powder-kegs. “My father already knew it wasn’t possible.” Owen didn’t look over, at least you could confirm his honesty about reading it. Abby’s hand shook at the sudden move to take your bag off. One hand of yours raising as you slowly knelt down to go through it. “He knew people like me couldn’t be any cure way before your dad ever even had Ellie on his table.”

Pulling the journal out you stayed to the ground. Only reaching forward to let her grab it. It like the weapon, shook in her grasp but stayed closed. Her voice dropping to mutters as she stared at the worn cover. “Abby. I don’t have time, you-”

Her face whipping up at Owen incredulously. “I-no, I won’t, what?”

They went back and forth for more then a few seconds. He didn’t look good, the shake in Abby’s hands at least simmered the more the adrenaline pumping through her veins wore off. Owen’s only got worse the closer the doomsday clock stroked towards midnight. “He can’t be one of them.”

Hand pressed into you're forehead did little to alleviate the dizzying fog, your other hand rested on your thigh with little will to push you back standing. “You don’t die when you get infected. They take control of your brain and when they say you turn, it really just means the cordyceps take over your actions.”

“So they’re all still in there?”

Owen looked worried, but you refused to lie to him at his zero hour. “For a while. It-” Finally you just pushed yourself up from your thighs to stand. “No one can say when, but you’re still in there, just not in the pilot seat. Eventually you do sort of stop being aware of things, but only if you live that long.”

Turning away you let them talk, this- this wasn’t your business. Instead drawing yourself to the road beyond. If they weren’t Abby’s people, and they took Ellie and Joel it had to be fireflies. Who else has any interest in kidnapping a random teenager and a fully grown man out of nowhere.

Spinning around, routes and plans created a whirl of noise in your head as you only came to one conclusion. The hospital. It always came back to that place. The building you thought their torment had escaped for good.

Gut twisting uncomfortably, you couldn’t help but fear the proposal you needed to lay out on the table to present. You can’t do what Joel did, you’re nowhere near the kind of person he is to do anything like that let alone by yourself. He was better then you, but getting to him and Ellie was supposed to be in your hands now?

You fight to survive, not to protect. It’s never been something you’ve truly had to do, not for others. No one until Joel and Ellie existed to give you a reason for the fight.

One shot fired out, breaking the air’s thick silence. It took you more then a few minutes to even summon up the courage to turn around. Abby more then a few feet away from where you presumed Owen now lay out, knelt on the ground with her head in her hands. You refused to look further. This wasn’t about him, or either of them. You had to go, now.

Breathing deeply in and out, she didn’t hear you until the gun clicked. Muscle’s getting as far as twitching only to be pushed down with your demand. “Whatever you have, put it all on the ground and step back.” Her head half turned to look at you. Still no tears but a conflict on her face that none would envy. “There’s no negotiation this time, Abby. Either you drop your weapons or just you.”

Abby’s eyebrows narrowed as her face fell back for a second, “Did you r-”

Your face fell flat with a bit of an eye roll. You weren’t proud of it either honestly. In another lifetime you could hear Ellie already using her mocking tone on you, despite being the exact kind of thing idiocy that comes out of her mouth on a daily basis. “I spend half my time with a fourteen year old, shut up.”

With a roll of her eyes, she relented. Slowly standing to reveal what she had hidden and place it gently onto the ground, doing you the courtesy of showing the insides of her coat as well. Nodding to her, she stepped back far out of reach of you.

Standing quite still as you packed up some of the bulkier ones in your bag, before tucking the small handgun into the back of your waist. “Here’s what’s we’re gonna do. You’re going to help me get Joel and Ellie, and I let you walk away from all of this-no, I said we aren’t negotiating. You help me get them back, and all of this, you, me, Joel it’s behind us. You leave us alone, and we leave you.”

Her face scrunched in frustration. “What makes you think I even know where they’re going? Or that I’d even want to-”

“Listen, you want to be mad at Joel? Fine. I’m not here to tell you how to feel, but you’re going to help me find them because I’m doing you the courtesy of not pointing a gun at your head. I can’t change that you lost yours, and I’m sorry, I really am. But tearing apart my family isn’t going to fix the fact that Jerry’s dead.” Were it not for the body in the background, you might have felt angry enough to rub salt in the wound harder.

But the wound isn’t even fresh, it’s still bleeding copiously into her heart and someone needs to care even slightly about that. “This isn’t about revenge, Abby. This is about family. You had decades with him, I’ve had months.”

Your mind burned with questions about how she didn’t know. How she could spend all that time with her father and not know a real thing about what as behind the curtain? Not know what kind of man he was and why she didn’t see it.

But she nodded. And between your familiarity of the area, it was quick and easy to route a way towards Salt Lake City, and no doubt the one functioning firefly base that had any reason to house an immune fourteen year old girl for a second time. You knew as far as dwindled firefly numbers in the area, so there wouldn’t be many of them.

Still, Joel is the man who can brave a daring rescue because he’s strong and capable. You aren’t either of those things, so if there were enough of them keeping guard? You were going to need your own muscle to help, and that just so happened to be the one person who wanted your rescuee dead. Funny how tortuously cruel life is when it chooses to shove you down and laugh at the agony it ‘s caused.

It should have stuck out to you how easily she agreed in comparison to the vile anger she held Joel at gunpoint with just days prior. How willing she was to give her guns up, but honestly? Her about to make fun of you for just saying something stupid? It reminded you of those days on this very lake more than a lifetime ago.

How funny and innocent it used to be. A still way taller and stronger than you Abby dragging your arm over to the water trying to get you to dip your toes in, and making fun of you when you kept saying no.

Holding onto memories of two kids who have found new lives. Rebirthed as different souls of people that only have found each other at the ends of a gun. Fates sealed with blood once you made the grand mistake of returning to Utah not too long before an infected sunk it’s teeth into your arm.

The past didn’t bring you joy, nor even make you want to smile. You didn’t do much of it when you had been living through those years but your heart pleaded to think of anything else, because if you think anything near how real losing Joel might be? Especially knowing Abby’s own companion now lay out behind your path?

Dwelling on the worst path your anxieties could take you would only lead you down a darker route.

There were far too many similarities between now, and, well, far too many past incidents combined to let Ellie feel anything away from unsettled. The table this time around was dirty but at least she was sitting upright and more importantly, not unconscious for it.

Her arms had little ability to move, strapped at the wrists along with her ankles they were also at least less uncomfortable then having an actual chain handcuffed to her. Though it also meant she couldn’t do anything but sit there and try to figure out what the hell she was going to do when the guy came back.

The biggest obstacle besides confinement obviously was that she had no idea where anyone was or how many there were. There had been at least one driver, and two other guys who grabbed her and Joel separately. Ellie didn’t know just how close to this place they had been, but the washing alertness on his face when the two of them were looking at tossed equipment made sense now.

The fireflies used repurposed FEDRA stuff all the time, and now she’s here. There was a twofold fear of where was Joel and was he even okay and she didn’t even know what happened to you. Ellie hated this feeling, a gut twisting upset that maybe she was the reason this all went wrong. An infected jumped you, she yelled in terror causing Joel’s attention to shift and it all went wrong from there.

If fireflies were behind this why would they also take Joel? If they just wanted her why bring him too, or really why bother with any of it. All of this was just a big lie, or trick, or whatever in the end. She wanted to ask you more about it all, but Ellie had no idea where to even start or if she was brave enough to start.

It likely wasn’t a coincidence that she hadn’t brought it up since that night. Joel saw right through how much she was trying to hide being upset and it took just a small mumble of her name and Joel’s tall frame to break it all down until she was so exhausted she passed out. Ellie just wasn’t quite ready to risk going through all that again with you but now she doesn’t know what she’d do if you weren’t here anymore.

But she couldn’t do a thing. She was strapped in place, waiting in an empty room surrounded by an even more silent building. Only able to wait for something to happen, just hoping Joel was in the building somewhere, fairing far better then she was.

Whoever these guys were, they weren’t as dangerous as they thought they were. If they knew who Joel was and weren’t smart enough to put any substantial effort into restraining him, or they thought he was just some guy and severely underestimated what they had just started.

There were only three of them, yet they brought them both to the one place that circled everything that had been going on the past few days. Not nearly enough manpower was involved to indicate this was something more then personal, and the lack of experience these guys had? Joel had started putting the pieces together, and the word bait came to mind.

This hospital was just a beacon of nightmare. It had seen and perpetrated more blood then it had any right too. Bodies laid about in the hall at the hands of a man just protecting his own wasn’t even the most of it. You still had memories of being surrounded by blood and rot as you snuck out the only way you could on your own.

Testing on healthy dead people, a wide variety rang of infected, recently infected who still had some time left, and anything in between produced no results so they all were uncaringly dumped into the same disposal shoot that Jerry had unwillingly provided as your only means of escape. Realistically there were probably other ways, but knowing the building at the time would be crawling with guards and not knowing the layout?

Your key to escape was given to you by the hands of an immoral surgeon with a needle in his neck. So least to say sneaking in wasn’t something you knew the place well enough either for if it were crawling with fireflies.

The aforementioned temporary companion was crouched next to you gauging how many people were likely inside. You had no view of the front of the building from here, but climbing higher onto the cliff behind gave a better view of what surrounded it.

She was muttering to herself, mapping plans but in just barley audible whispers instead of silently in her head. Abby in fact, said a lot out loud. The lengthy time it took to get here was filled with interrogations that she failed to realize you were under no obligation to answer. Questions of you, your life, what you’d been up to were so silently shut down after the first hour that she ended up trying to bombard you with demands of information.

The fresh wound of losing Owen was looking less and less like a reason to hold back. As if telling you what kind of father Jerry was would change anything he’d done. Eventually her voice grated your ears so much, a typically non existent attitude shot out of your mouth as you walked.

“If he was such a stand up guy why did the hospital fire him right before outbreak?” Abby had stopped and turned with an eyebrow raised in confusion. You just walked right past her, bending down under a low branch as you continued. “Oh right, could have something to do with falsifying research results.”

There was a heavy quiet and it didn’t take looking back to understand that she had no idea what you were talking about. “That’s how they started working together. Two men pretending they understand diseases better then all doctors. Makes sense if you think about it.”

Once the courage to glance back at her, Abby’s eyes were trained to the side. Jaw clenching and unclenching in thought but still didn’t speak. If you kept going now, this was just going to make you feel rude and petty. “Trusting the guy who claimed a disease that infected around nine thousand people was man made, and basing a cure for humanity based on research from a man who was so wrong about it he killed himself.”

Were you not in this situation because of her and her family, you would be ashamed of how unfair you were being. “How can you talk about him like that?”

Rolling your eyes, your own expression was just confused. “Abby he almost killed El-”

Her voice raised this time, the crunch of snow stopping as she did so. Your own body turning back partway to face her. “No, about your dad. Do you really give that little of a shit about your own goddamn family?”

Glaring nothing was spoken for many moments. Your heart clenched and only two faces could be seen in your minds eye. She had no right to tell you who was your family when she was trying to destroy the only one that ever cared. She showed up at Joel’s own home and held him at gunpoint for something she knew nothing about. “Mine is in there, and yours is out in the snow over a mile back. Remember that.”

It had been silent since. Now you both were crouched looking inside the building from afar getting impatient with her lack of action.

Flipping off your bag, you dug through it without any acknowledgement of her. Pulling out a flashlight before flinging the pack behind you once again before looking up into what was now a growing dark.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

If she wanted a response, Abby would just have to follow. The closer you got to the hospital the more something felt wrong but there were too many already terrifying fears swirling in your head to know if this was instinct or just panic.

The closer you got to the back walls, it almost became nauseating. The lack of trepidation and confidence in your words dropped out of you with a slap to the face. If the fireflies were in any decent numbers, would they kill Joel before you even saw him? They’d just take Ellie but they’d leave Joel bleeding on the ground too horrify you long enough to force you into the same fate.

It was easier when you thought you could just abandon them to protect their life together from your consequences. When did that become so much more complicated? Why weren’t you just a stronger person and brave the fear like he had?

Shining your flashlight into the nearly blacked out window from filth, you saw nothing in the hall of your view. Abby’s approaching steps behind you moved much slower. “I don’t suppose giving me a flashlight is an option?”

Directing the light up to higher windows, everything in sight was just lifeless. No sounds were heard through your ear straining for hints. Little added up, why on earth would there be so little security for keeping prisoners like this? No sliver of view inside, no outer wall you turned had life.

Looking around for a second, you spotted a larger side entrance door. Cracked and covered in discoloured growth from nature and below, the door was blocked off from the outside but a window that was more then large enough to fit through sat by.

Grabbing a rock, you had barley just gotten up to it’s edge when Abby called your name softly. Your head turning with brows furrowed, her back was resting somewhat against a tree as her own gaze pointed to the text of the journal. Her first time actually reading it’s contents. “He was really going to do it? Even if it wouldn’t work?”

A single nod was all your will could summon despite her not even looking up at you but she had more to say anyways. “We uh, no one really knew anything. Most of the guards knew something was going on but no one really knew what. I mean in my defence I didn’t really go out of my way to find out after the fact. Guess it spared me from getting shot twice.”

Maybe not so long ago, the memory of shock as she looked at her bullet wound and back to you would be the haunting tormentor. But it wasn’t, what your mind mocked you endlessly so much it kept you awake most of the past seventy two hours wasn’t even what you saw. It was the feeling. Shaking in a panic so forceful you could pass out at the silence.

Praying that you would hear Joel coming down the hall at her threat and not the bang of a gun. You felt bad leaving her behind that day, a fleeting attachment to a life you once had. But now? She wasn’t any semblance of belonging in your life. A parasite leeching off of a trauma that sent not one, but three people in their own versions of a hellish nightmare.

She and her father were the reasons for how often you, Joel, and Ellie would wake up in the middle of the night almost desperate to make sure the other two were still there. It all cut too close to the edge, and wasting what little traces of calm left in your heart weren’t worth spending on that kind of baseless guilt.

You could feel the inside of your cheek screaming for you to let up, not even aware you had been biting down on it but the pressure only swam from your mouth to your veins and tightened the air in your lungs. “You just keep missing the fucking point.”

Abby’s head shot up, eyes flashing with a startlingly quick rising anger. “Excuse me?”

Eyes falling shut as you exhaled, you didn’t even return back to her own self once reopened. Just a spot on the snow below you. A passing sensation of cold shivering your bones and gone as quick, thinking of the high pitched laughter that erupted from Ellie days ago when her snowball hit you square in the face.

“Joel doesn’t give a shit about what they wanted. He never did, he went in there to protect Ellie. That’s it. They had her laid out, unconscious and ready to kill her just to get what they wanted and that’s what he did. He saved her from that.” You finally looked up, the sting behind your eyes hidden in the dark and the wind.

“He didn’t know your father, or me or anything about what this was all about, Abby. Joel protected Ellie and that’s it. So, if you’re going to stand there and tell me how shocked you are at what Jerry was doing then you sure as hell better leave Joel the fuck out of it. He was protecting his child. You think ours would ever do the same for us?” You risked losing your sensibility. Going off on emotion that risked turning into vile spite for the sake of hurting her feelings and that’s the life you wanted to avoid.

Letting Abby turn you into her isn’t what Joel saw in you. Turning back to the window, you eyed a larger rock to pull over that could help boost you. One last thought struck your mind, but didn’t turn, and muttered just loud enough that if she wanted to hear it she would.

Hopping up onto the rock, you leaned away with a wince to smash out enough to crack the integrity of the glass. Using your elbow to cut a hole big enough before tearing out a safe enough hole. Stepping over, you held a hand out to Abby.

Your ears straining for a noise that still never came, in either expected manner. You pulled one leg over, hovering above the frame as you turned your head. Tilted just to let your ear strain less as you then threw the rock as much as you could. Letting it smash into whatever remnants of decoration remained in the room.

No voices, but so far the more important? No shrieks into the dark and no echoing click to follow. Hand continued to stay out towards her as you found footing on the ground. If there were infected, they didn’t appear to be on this floor, but there was a distinct lack of humans as well which concerned you in a different way.

Head turning you shined your flashlight down the long hallway, seeing the edges of urgent care and all the way to the main lobby at the other end. Turning to Abby’s figure outside you put a finger to your lips and gestured with your free hand for her to come in.

Eyes pointed all the way down the halls. There weren’t many offshoot areas until the lobby but the ones there were existed in the pitch black. The main lobby however, glowed in a sort of yellowish orange, fueled by a generator if you were to wager. A generator that wouldn’t be on all alone. At least someone was here.

You didn’t bother waiting for her to catch up. Making your way slowly down the hall with a hand free to signal her to stop. Were you to look back, you’d see a clear agitation on her face and tensed in her every move.

Weapons all on you, but none out. Some in your bag, one strapped at your thigh and her own tucked behind your back. Guns were a no go in buildings for you. Years spent alone, shooting infected in a dark building was the backup of backups. You worked in total silence, having it out would be tempting to use it in fear.

Abby’s agitation kept on the gun behind your back. Your slow silence with watchful eyes forward unknowingly stirring something deep in Abby’s chest.

By the time you reached the main lobby, you shut your light off and tucked it into your side, assuming you might need it for higher floors. Your steps thudded louder as you walked freely towards the entrance, blocked off with wood except one door that sat free but kept shut with a heavy lock. One that you reasonably assumed was also FEDRA’s once, and looking up was a car haphazardly parked out front that you knew the two people you loved were brought in from. They were here, they had to be, and your heart sped up harshly.

Posted on a wall was a map, internally outlining what floors had what as you walked right up already making sure Abby was on the same level as you. “They’ll be on that floor.” Your finger reaching up to tap at a section, glancing to make sure she was looking.

Now that it was safe to speak, she was the one choosing not to. But it didn’t stick out, and maybe it should have. Joel and Ellie was all you could think about. Pulling back your hands rested on your hips as your jaw clenched thinking it through. “There’s only two labs they’d bring Ellie into if the fireflies know who she is. Joel might be more tricky, if he’s here he’ll go for Ellie. So it’s possible they locked him up in one of the old patient rooms.”

Pacing back you turned to her, still not quite registering what was going on. “They wouldn’t take him if they just wanted him dead, but I don’t get what they want from him.”

Abby's voice was tight, restrained to something that seemed to scratch at the force needed to push it out into her words. “They know its you.”

Turning to her, your heart paced a bit faster then before. “What does that-”

Her hands moved to her hips, down at her sides, the back in a nervous fidget. Eyes looking elsewhere trying to rationalize what spun in her mind currently. “They know you’ll come for them, they probably figure they can get you to trade. Yourself for Joel and Ellie, or just one.”

A cold flash started to find it’s way winding up your spine. You weren’t a rescuer, you aren’t a savior you don’t have the mind for this. Something was screaming at you but your heart was tearing at you the second you lost them. Did what she say make sense or were you too distracted to dissect something you were missing?

Nodding you glanced one side of the room where a stairwell sat. Door blocked from the window you couldn’t see inside of it, but it wasn’t like the elevators were there for the taking. “Okay. So, we go up check that floor and if they aren’t there we just make our way to the next.”

Her voice shouted just as you tried to turn, “You really think he’s just going to let me go if I help you?”

It depends on exactly how much or how little these men hurt Ellie to be honest, but it wasn’t worth putting an unknown onto the equation. So you shrugged. “You know why he did what he did, Abby. And you at least helped me get this far. Everything is to protect Ellie, if you understand that so will he.”

Again, that was debatable but it was all to protect her. If she was hurt because of all this? Then no. Joel won’t be so forgiving, but there was a flicker of hope inside you at her nod, “I’m..yeah, okay. It-protecting family.”

That flicker wavered though, something in her tone set a sharp part of your brain on edge. She watched you watching her, a doubtful suspicious wave in your eyes as you stood still. A tingling in your limbs that told you to brace yourself. But you needed to get to them before someone else did. Deal with that later.

Joel didn’t recognize the man coming around the corner, but the aloof nature in his pace spoke of a casual uncaring that wasn’t what he recognized in any of the fireflies he’d met. But there was also a distinct lack of numbers here. Joel counted three walking around, only one with a weapon visible.

It was about ten minutes ago when he managed to undo the zip ties behind his back, and fifteen minutes since he heard two of the men arguing about what to do with them. “They should’ve been here by now, man. What are we supposed to do, I don’t know where the fuck to take her.”

The other voice was more muffled, further down the hall and harder to hear but the sound bounced off the empty walls giving Joel a better shot. “I have an idea, how about if they don’t show up we, wild idea stay with me man, fucking leave.”

The other one snorted while the muffled one’s voice grew more incredulous, “I’m serious man. We’re supposed to stay up here and what? Guard some kid and her scary ass dad until Anderson shows up to throw herself a fucking tantrum? Who cares he was an asshole-”

If Joel had one major advantage, it was knowing this had nothing to do with the fireflies, or Ellie. This was just some nobodies and one person with a grudge. Joel side stepped to press up against the wall right out of view of opening the main door when they spoke again.

“Jesus christ, okay no one is going anywhere okay? I don’t care what her problem is with these people and neither should you. We have orders to follow. Go switch with Bejan if you’re too fucking scared. I’ll be out on the landing if you need me.” The louder one must have made some kind of gesture in protest only to get shot down again. “Just fucking do it, Ian.”

That one sounded slightly older, but without any real firepower on them Joel was pretty certain these were far closer to angry street thugs then a level like fireflies or mercs. Not exactly high planned strategy to take them by surprise.

Steps coming back towards the door were brought along with mutterings under the mans breath. Posed like stone, even Joel’s broad frame wasn’t immediately spotted once the door opened but it was too late when the man did. Shorter and much leaner, Joel wrapped his head and airway in a lock, but didn’t quite tighten down yet.

Joel’s teeth bared as he all but spat in the mans ear with impossibly low bass, “All you have to do is tell me where you’re keeping the girl.” The young man shook, wanting to yelp but unable to get much past out of his mouth from Joel keeping his breathe short.

“Down the hall, exam room on the left- we didn’t do nothing to her. I’m just following orders man I don’t even know you people” Asking how many of them there are, he relented more. “Me and two others, one of them with the kid look man I didn’t do-”

Joel’s eyes narrowed darkly at him, the shooting was chaotic and fast but that didn’t mean he missed any single time one of those bullets came anywhere near where Ellie had been hiding. “So it was another guy with your face who shot at my daughter.”

Any chance the young man thought he had time to plead or cry, he was mistaken.

If this were a trap set by Abby then she would have to have planned it knowing you were going to be with them. Luckily for Joel, he had just enough of an ear for firearms to know what sounded what.

Two shotgun shots rang out at the lakeside, one ending a screech and another shot ending another followed by smaller ones. Ellie might not but Joel knows exactly what weapons you have on you at all times, and typically what you preferred for what.

He knew Ellie would be and probably still is terrified of what happened, and now especially not knowing where he was either. But he’d get to her. There was zero chance of anything else possible then getting her and him out in once peace.

Thing’s had been rough the past few weeks, but Joel is also certain that you weren’t about to let anything make today the last time you’d ever be with the two of them. Ellie more then once now had bugged him about telling you he loves you, but he knows you both sense it.

You knew and you felt it, and that’s the love that counts. You can say you don’t belong as much as you do, but none of that changes the true love between you three, that’s what you keep going for. Family.

Something Joel’s been trying to help convince you that you aren’t just like family, but you’re apart of theirs and he is no more sure then now, that you feel that was as well.

He grabs Ellie and finds you. All the plan needed, save for the current one as Joel gauges which scrap of sharp wood or metal, would do best for getting the jump on the remaining ones.

Counting on Abby just following suit, stopped a fair few feet before the stair door, and crouched down to get at your bag. Spare ammo sat in one internal pocket you moved your jacket to transfer it into there, just in case there was a clicking in the dark that might need more force in a tight stairwell.

The trouble was, that deep emotion of distrust growing in your stomach? In an instant, you felt Abby approaching your back and in a second, the gun in your back waist pulled out. Just as fast came the distinct metal clinking of having one pointed right at you.

Your head slowly raised as every bone chilled over in a freeze. Your heart leaping from your chest so wild you could feel the physical beat in your throat. Turning your head slowly, Abby stood a few feet from you. Standing tall with no shroud of shame, or hesitation.

Abby was still, and confident with the gun now pointed right at your head like she had been preparing for just this moment. And you realized, were just stupid enough to fall right into that trap.

Those men had shot at all three of you, but not the seemingly two random strangers whom also had been right in their sights. She let you turn, standing up with your hands, not up in surrender. But at your sides, spread enough for her to still see before letting them down entirely.

It wasn’t shock that left you feeling breathless, but the now torrential panic burning through your veins like wildfire, that you had let Joel and Ellie walk right into a trap, and you had been blind enough to bring the mastermind along for what she never planned as a rescue.

Abby inhaled deeply, collecting whatever spiteful excuses she was about to convince herself with no doubt. “Those were my guys.” Nerves shaking on the inside, you stood without moving on the outside.

“You’re right. You were always right when we were kids, you still are. Doing all of this for one man just trying to get his kid? It’s probably not right.” Shaking her head once as it to rid herself of conflict. Her back straightened as she stretched her arm out more to keep your unmoving self at bay. “But I don’t care.”

You stood, pounding heart blasting into the air and bursting through the roof leaving a tremble in it’s wake. Your words never even tried to reason, you felt sick and it overwhelmed you. No one cared about Ellie and that was the problem. Only Joel cared, and the sure of herself smug look on getting the better of you only told the tale that it didn’t matter how hard you tried.

In that story of their lives, Joel still is the only one who cares. Ellie didn’t mean anything to those people. Not to Marlene, not to Jerry and clearly, the same vile morality was formed perfectly into his daughter. They didn’t care about Ellie, and Joel was the only one who did. Someone had to do the same for him now.

Your eyes felt the pressure, unquestioning tears that were preparing to glisten over as you both watched the other. Like she couldn’t bring herself to just do it, like she was delusional enough to think she could convince you. “Neither of us had a choice in losing our dad. Neither should she.”

Ellie scrambled up straighter as the door opened, the creep’s face looking cleaner then when he walked out. Her own face, slightly red on one side with the vibrations still moving through the skin from how hard he slapped her. An instant response to having her spit in his face when he got too close.

Now, he stood straight. Huffing with his hands on his hips as he looked her over with contempt. “Listen kid, the next time you try that shit I’ll leave a worse mark then that. So how about you cooperate this time?”

Bejan wasn’t the most observant, so he missed the darting look she gave just before landing on his person. Guns in their holsters didn’t match with the wide eyed almost lecturing tone to his voice as he walked up to her. “My friend just wants a chat with your dad, okay? They’re just fighting, sometimes it can get a little intense between adults, okay? There’s no need for that fucking attitude you were giving me.”

She wanted to glare at him like nothing before her, but she was the one strapped to a table and he wasn’t. “You usually tie up your own kids?”

One eyebrow raised as he laughed dismissively. Pacing slowly towards you one hand tapped at one of his guns. “People out there do a whole lot worse things then we do. People like your dad. Did a bad thing to my pal’s own dad, it’s why she’s so mad.”

Stepping close into her space, Ellie tried backing away but strapped to nothing it just shook the surface under her. That glare much more like a shaking mask of fear, only to dart back out and remind herself to keep her heart in her chest.

“I know what kind of people are out there, and they all deserved what they got too.” The man towered over her, but she needed just a few seconds more of his attention.

“That poor doctor deserve to be shot too?” His face both pissed her off, and shook her insides cold but one step, two steps more was all she had to do.

Ellie didn’t feel brave, but she was finally starting to understand what Joel kept telling her. She didn’t always have to be brave. The water in her own eyes stung, just wanting to be back home with Joel, with you. Not back in this place. Her voice warbled, but it was enough. “Joel was protecting me,”

The hand by the gun moved slightly, and so did behind him. A figure shoving them self up against their back, one large hand covering his mouth and before any defence could be made, a sharp metal scrap already painted with the red of another, punched up into his chin.

Joel’s face twisted and seething as he fights against the twitches and jerks fighting the mans last tries at a fight. He could feel blood asking to spill out of his mouth, spits that would have covered her face and just given her one more image for a sleep filled with nightmarish dreams.

Pulling him down to the ground Joel waited until the shaking stopped. Shoving the man onto the floor, face slamming into the filth with a thud. Joel’s hands shook from the straining tension he held them in, and his face faring no better. Breathe heaving to relax the burning adrenaline in his veins as he looked up to Ellie.

Your lungs burned as you exhaled shakily from your nose. “Would Jerry do it for you?” Abby’s eye twitched slightly, “Put you on that table, ready to cut you open. Would your father rescue you? Kill whoever tried to stop him from protecting you, from saving you? Or would he just let you die because you meant nothing to him.”

The arm holding the gun shook, her eyes narrowing in flashes of indeterminate anger. “You have no idea what was between us, I don’t care what he did to you or some kid.”

You felt her anger radiating from her body, she could see the tears washing over your eyes that wanted to fall from it’s stinging home. If the building weren’t empty, she may not have even heard you. “I know exactly who he was, his life isn’t worth anything close.”

Abby faltered, watching you slowly pull the knife out of it’s sheath on your side. The grip of your hands so tight your knuckles bordered on snapping. “Please. Just let me do this.”

Looking down at her face, Joel watched the tears spill over as they both looked over one another for anything worse. Leaning down to her, Joel undid one of the straps of her wrist. Ellie going for the other with shaking hands and Joel tearing through the ones at her ankles like paper.

All four straps free, for just a second Joel and Ellie looked at one another. Words weren’t always their strong suit, but this was. Both wrapping their arms around each other the same instance. Joel pulling Ellie into his chest, keeping her in the safety of his arms.

Both of them needed to get out of here and find you, but only when both of them had the strength to pull away from the other.

Abby couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t live in the thick silence of air for more then a few seconds. “I said he did the right thing, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t want him dead for it. If that makes me a bad person, fine. I’m sorry. But I’m not giving this up. I want this.”

Nerves in your body screamed out in agony, the memories of two little girls with no idea what kind of people they called family, and unable to fathom anything beyond the jokes between you.

But that wasn’t you. That wasn’t your life, just a ghost. A haunting image that tormented you with what it would become, and how it refused to let you go. You walked into Jackson wanting to breathe before finding that new life.

Joel wanted that life with you. Abby wasn’t from this life, she was like a poltergeist dragging you back into the house screaming that you belong in the angry darkness she pretends to thrive in. She was the disaster threatening to destroy what love you so desperately wanted.

Voice tattered to a painful whisper your eyes grew dark looking at her. “I’m not giving him to you.”

In an instant though, both of your heads turned at the creaking of a door opening. The stairwell door found itself opening from the inside, with the sight of Joel coming through the darkness, with one arm holding Ellie to him.

Abby turned, outstretched arm aiming for him. Joel ducking as he covered Ellie’s body with his as he shot. It already would have missed from how fast he moved, but it missed even more drastically because you didn’t.

The second you saw him, feet moved on your own accord, throwing yourself at Abby and didn’t think twice before thrusting your knife into her stomach. Her shot rang off a wall and everything in her hold dropped to the ground.

You pulled it out just as fast, blood dripping from the blade just as it poured form her. Body knelt over before collapsing to the floor, sputtering and groans hardly able to come out.

Ellie darted out, grabbing the gun that fell to the floor and pointed it at the bleeding tormentor before them. Joel had both hands on her shoulders as they moved into the room, now stood hovering in the air as she scrambled closer to stand by you with a weapon.

Your eyes stung so much that it was maybe a miracle there were no tears, but perhaps because Abby didn’t deserve them. You shot her in the stomach once to save your own life, now you reopened that wound instead with a slice deep into her body the same place. Only not for you.

Looking over to Ellie, her eyes were wide and if not so fraught with anxiety, she might be able to say she was thrilled to see you. You grabbed her and pulled her back into your chest as you stepped back away from the red painting helpless on the floor as you put the knife back.

Turning to Joel you had nothing in your throat. Neither of you did that wouldn’t bubble over into something breaking. Whatever tears that wanted to fall from the events forced on you, none of them meant anything until looking at Joel standing before you. His beautiful brown eyes looking in only marginally better shape then yours.

You and Joel grabbed the other at the same time. Pulling you tightly into each others arms, his head diving into your neck as he breathed deeply your own forehead on his shoulder. Your hands holding him tighter then you had the knife.

You could feel his heart beating in his chest, his and yours the same. When you pulled away, all you did was drag Ellie back over. Her tucked between the middle of you and Joel as you took just a second to look at the one person who wanted to take it away like she had the right to dictate everyone else’s lives from her own anger.

Ellie darted forward once more but to the journal splayed out. Joel wrapping an arm around your stomach with his other hand on your hip as you held what you could reach watching her search for a something.

Her eyes still red and wet from tears, she tore out multiple pages and shoved them into her jacket as she slowly turned away. Your heart full at how she still tried giving the journal back to you. But in your hand? It wasn’t yours, not anymore.

The air filled with an alarm that day. The last time you were in this position. An ear bursting sound that blared atop flashing red for whatever was used in the building before. Someone came across Abby, bullet in the same place your knife now pushed into, and pulled the alarm.

You took off down the hall in a run, on what looked like a second floor you’d have to risk finding a place to jump out. Gun tucked back behind you, the harsh stomping of your feet against the steel floors didn’t even pick up no you or the other man who you came cross.

He thought you were one of them for maybe a second until he saw what you’d later burn over. A mark that told you they did in fact know what they were holding you for. But you needed to get out, and you pulled a shot before he did.

The halls, the alarm the nightmare like red glow cast the building like a maze you couldn’t decipher. A window with a hint of landing your only hope just ahead, and that’s where you went. Your fingers straining to yank it up enough to slip through, a voice called your name over the deafening sounds.

Your head turning back to the present, yet switching between in your vision. Enough blood to tell you what was her fate, and this time, there was no one left here to save what you had done to Abby. The smallest tugs in your soul at a life you once owned. People who held a place in a world that hadn’t existed for a long time, yet wanted to drag you back in tooth and crawl.

Was it really her there? In your sights beyond the water spilling down your cheeks? Or was it the memory of someone you already left in a nightmare, a ghost of your former self. The dull glow of the hospital tinged everything in a quiet yellow, but you saw flashing red and screaming blares above.

Your father hardly changed in those years apart. A twisted sorrow in his eyes as he stood helplessly meters away. Was it regret? Or just defeat that you weren’t fooled by the conjuring of a man who abandoned you until once more of use.

Your body part way out the window, one foot already on the landing you both casted in loud red, watching one another as your face sharpened. He wasn’t worth a goodbye, he wasn’t anything in your existence but a monster now. So you left him there. The final time you’d see each other.

Joel’s hand tight on your waist, you gripped it with your free one as you looked to another for the final time. Chucking the journal back onto the ground near Abby, she was still breathing but the blood said a story that didn’t harmonize with the kind violent lust she carried with her.

It would pool out until there was none left but a stain on a place that did nothing but haunt the ones you loved. She’d bleed out there, and you let her.

She was a ghost. Both of them were. Your fathers memory left in an alarm painted red, and Abby slipping away on the floor with her own for no one to see after you.

Both this silence and the phantom alarm fading behind you.

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