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“Tommy.”
This time around, it was said softly, almost a whisper, the exhalation of a tired breath. And this time around, it wasn’t spoken by a man who’d realized his brother was alive, but a man who had finally made it home.
Jackson. It was odd, thinking of it as their home. Back in the QZ, back with Tess, that had never felt like home, more an in-between. Jackson didn’t quite feel like home either -- but Jackson wasn't the reason Joel felt like he could finally take a breath, like maybe he had found a place he could settle down for a while; a sort-of-home.
“It’s not much,” Tommy was saying, unlocking the front door to a small house with faded blue shutters and peeling paint. “But it’s got runnin’ water, and Maria’ll bring supplies around tomorrow, toiletries and food, all that stuff.”
He looked to Joel with about as many unspoken questions as were appropriate in this sort of situation -- showing up out of the blue with a kid who was ten times quieter than before and the feeling of a haunted house between them -- and Joel knew that he owed Tommy some answers. He also knew that, right now, he didn’t have the strength to give them. So he nodded, and understanding crossed Tommy’s face, so he nodded, too.
“Anything you need. Both of you,” he glanced at Ellie, offering her one of those smiles, the kind Joel hadn’t seen since Sarah.
“Thank you,” he managed, and he had enough strength to look Tommy in the eye when he said it. Hesitantly, Tommy pulled him into a hug.
“It’s good to have you back, big brother.”
He gave Ellie a nod in parting, and it had the air of acceptance like she’d made it through an undisclosed rite of passage. Whether it was as Jackson's newest member or as Joel's… just Joel's, he didn't know. She nodded back, and Tommy turned and walked down the porch steps, hands in the pockets of his jacket. They stood and watched him go, and then they stood and listened to the faint buzzing of the porch light. And they waited for the blink that would reveal they were actually in some ditch, or back in that god-awful garage -- somewhere other than here, where it was safe. But they didn't, and the sun continued to set along the rooftops and the dusk bled into the sky, staining it red and orange.
“I’m takin’ a shower,” Joel suddenly said, his voice hoarse, quieter than usual. The space between them both was quieter than usual. “And then you’re taking a shower,” he added, looking down at her. “Because, seriously,” he puffed out a breath, pulled a face, tried to make it just like the one she’d given him back at Bill and Frank’s.
He was rewarded with a faint smile.
“Seriously? You should smell yourself.”
“I can. That’s why I’m goin’ first." He stepped around her and into the house.
Their house. Maybe.
It took them a minute to pull themselves away from each other. They started by going upstairs together, surveying the rooms, scanning them over with the same attentiveness that had kept them alive this long. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Joel tossed his coat on the bed of the bigger room. Ellie dragged a finger through the dust on the vanity, glanced up at her reflection in the mirror. She looked so… different. Sometimes she forgot that she looked any way at all. It was strange, seeing herself, thinking about the way other people saw her.
Joel cleared his throat. He still wasn’t confident that she was hearing him when he talked -- liked to make sure. She turned, raising her eyebrows slightly.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, sort of an order, more a plea. More for himself.
“I won’t,” she replied, sort of a reassurance, more of a promise. Because she knew he needed to hear it. Especially now.
She was still there when he came out of the steamy bathroom, hair slicked back, wearing a fresh pair of clothes Tommy had lent him. Sweatpants. He was wearing sweatpants. All Ellie did was look at him, but he must have been able to read it all over her face.
“Shut up,” he muttered, tossing her a brush he’d found in the medicine cabinet.
“Leave any hot water for the rest of us?”
“There’s plenty,” he squinted. She grinned.
“Okay,” she raised her hands in surrender, stepping around him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” he replied after a moment, softly to the empty room.
For the first time in weeks, Ellie washed her hair. She scrubbed until her scalp burned and tried to rinse every bad memory, every last trace of blood she’d collected during the winter. And slowly, she began to thaw. She let the water run over her head, remembering the way it had felt in Bill and Frank’s shower -- how it was the same sensation in a different place, a different house. Back then everything had been so different. This house, it was different. It wasn’t like Bill and Frank’s. It was smaller, felt more empty. Less like an actual home. There were no paintings on the walls, no piano by the window. No dead flowers on the porch. No sign that it had been lived in. That it had been loved.
She opened her eyes, blinking the water out of them. And then she looked down at her arm. She scrubbed it until it was raw, and she tried to wash away every scar, every last mark, every person she’d failed.
Joel stared at his pack where he’d left it, sitting on a chair at the kitchen table. He stared at it like it was a bomb about to go off. He stared, and he thought about how he used to leave his backpack on a chair after work. If he let his eyes unfocus, it was almost the same kitchen, and he was waiting for Sarah to complain that it was in her way, give the usual, “Did you get your lunch out of there because it’s totally going to stink if you don’t.”
That, of all things, was what reminded him.
Five minutes later, Ellie came down the stairs to find Joel standing in front of the stove. She paused by the banister and watched him, wondering if he knew she was there yet. If he’d heard her. She took a step forward. A floorboard creaked and he turned.
“Well,” she drawled, swinging her arms awkwardly. “Don’t you look pretty?”
Joel scoffed. “Yeah. All I’m missin’ is the frilly apron.”
“I’m sure Tommy could get one for you if you asked.”
“Ha ha,” he dryly replied, his back turned as he stirred something in a pot.
Ellie tucked her hands into the sleeves of the too-big sweater from Maria. Bare feet padded across the floor, and then she was standing next to him and picking up the empty can of Chef Boyardee.
“You brought the Beefaroni…” She looked up at him in disbelief.
“Yes,” he replied like he was defending his actual honor and not at all like hanging onto a decades-old can of Chef Boyardee through all the shit of the past week wasn’t insane behavior.
“I actually can’t believe it.”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna let it go to waste,” he gestured to the pot.
“You’re telling me that our first night back here, where they have, like, home-cooked meals and shit, we’re gonna eat ravioli out of a can?”
“I thought you liked Chef Boyardee,” he indignantly replied.
Ellie blinked. “Okay. You got me there.”
“Uh-huh. Why don’t you just take a seat? Might not be a home-cooked meal,” he shot her a look. “But at least we can eat it at an actual table.”
“Hell yeah,” she grinned, and then she hunched her shoulders with a defensive "Sorry" when Joel passed another look over his shoulder. Grumpy old man, she thought with a fond smirk. But she had to admit, a kitchen suited him. She made a mental note -- more of a devious plan, really -- to get him that apron. She plopped down into one of the wooden chairs.
Joel stirred the ravioli. Ellie raked her fingers through her still-wet hair, detangling the knots that the brush had missed. There was kitchenware in the cupboards -- plates and cups, all the shit you used to be able to find in kitchen cabinets, and Joel realized he was thinking about Texas again; about how, twenty-some years ago, he would have been making Sarah dinner. He stilled for a moment, brow set, and then he pulled out two bowls. With the bowls and spoons in one hand and a pot of Beefaroni in the other, he turned around to find Ellie sitting with her feet up on the chair, tucked under her with her sweater pulled over her knees. She looked so… young. Like an actual kid.
She watched him set a bowl in front of her. Watched him move his pack to the floor and set the pot on the table between them. And then she watched him spoon half of the ravioli into her bowl, and she was looking at him strangely, with these big, innocent eyes -- the same look that she’d had when he’d buckled her in all those months ago; like she was convinced that what was happening was a dream.
“We’ll get you a real home-cooked meal tomorrow,” he said, filling his own bowl as he filled the empty silence in the air. He left some ravioli just in case she wanted more. He left some quiet space just in case she wanted to say anything -- hoping she did.
“This is alright,” she shrugged. "I mean, like you said, no five-star meal, but… it's good," she nodded decisively, then looked up at him with a tense but genuine smile.
Joel nodded. “Okay."
An unfamiliar silence settled as they ate, sitting at a table in a house that had running water, sitting under the dim yellow light of an electric lamp, the smell of soap and ravioli between them. And it was a stark contrast from that garage where Joel had almost bled out or the hospital where Ellie had almost been dissected. This table, these chairs, they were so different from the nights in the cold, huddled in sleeping bags, listening for the sounds of anything going wrong. Any possible threat. Joel realized that he didn’t even have a weapon within reach -- not unless you counted the fucking pot of ravioli. Ellie had left her hair down. He wasn’t sure why it made his heart ache -- thought maybe the ache was something good.
It was almost like they were safe. Joel knew that Tommy wanted them to feel safe, that this place was supposed to be safe. But how could they settle into this house, into these dimly lit rooms, when they’d been fighting tooth and nail since the moment they’d left the QZ? How could things be this calm all of a sudden? How could this not be one giant joke? Joel felt like if he focused too hard, it would all dissolve away. Alarmingly, he thought maybe he’d wake up back in the apartment he’d shared with Tess like all of this had been some weird, drug-induced fever dream.
“I was thinking,” Ellie said, scraping her spoon at whatever was left in her bowl. She looked up at him, hesitant. Unsure. “Maybe we could grow flowers like Bill and Frank…”
Joel ran his thumb along the wood of the table. This was real. Everything that had happened was real. And Ellie… she was real.
“We could… we could grow mums," he offered. "They’re supposed to be easy. We’ll have to wait till spring, but…”
“Yeah,” Ellie smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
They stared at the table for a long moment. Outside, Ellie could hear the faint hum of people talking. If she listened close enough, she thought she could hear the crackling of the fires, but it was probably just in her head. The fire pits were all closer to the center of town. Joel shifted and she drew her eyes away from where they’d been wandering blankly over the faded, floral wallpaper of the living room. She found him watching her strangely, with these big, innocent eyes -- the same look he’d given her when he'd asked if she was okay. All the times he'd asked if she was okay since winter.
“All done?” was what he asked this time.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, coming back to herself enough to push the bowl over to him. She wondered if maybe she should help clean up her own dishes, but Joel was already piling their bowls up and doing a balancing act with the pot before dumping it all in the sink, and Ellie thought that it seemed like second nature to him. She’d never seen him so comfortable doing anything before she’d seen him rinse dishes out in the sink. To be fair, she never thought she’d see him rinse dishes out in a sink, just like she never would have guessed that she’d be sitting at their kitchen table, in the house that was “All yours, if you want it,” according to Maria.
She tucked her feet back under her and hugged her knees to her chest.
“Are you tired?” Joel asked, turning half around to spare her a glance.
“I mean, yeah, but… I don’t know…” She picked at a hole in her sweater. “I don’t know if I can sleep,” she said, deciding to tell him the truth. From the looks of it, he’d been feeling the same way.
“Maria says they got movies. We’ll have to look through their stash tomorrow, see if we can’t find something you like.”
They still weren’t used to this, all the talking Joel had started doing. He’d started it because Ellie had gone so quiet after he’d found her outside that burning building, covered in blood, and quiet Ellie had scared the life out of him, and he hadn’t known what to do to make it better so he’d talked. About nothing. Sometimes about everything. Didn’t matter. He’d just tried to make it better. Was still trying. Was probably failing.
“Hey, uh… there’s somethin’ else,” he hung the dishtowel onto the rack below the sink. “Somethin’ serious…” He looked up at her, and Ellie felt her heart sink a little as she tried to prepare herself. Of course nothing could ever go right for this long. Of course some shit had to butt its way into the calm they’d fought so hard to get.
Bracing his hand on the table, Joel stiffly bent down and dug through his pack. Ellie leaned forward, lifting her chin to try and peer over the table for a better view. With a grunt, his head appeared, and then he was tossing something onto the table. A bright orange box. Boggle. Ellie scoffed, shaking her head as she glanced away, trying to hide a smirk. When she looked back at Joel, though, she knew that he’d seen it.
“What is that?”
“That is one of America’s finest word games. Be grateful.”
“Oh, I’m totally grateful,” she raised her eyebrows. Joel fumbled with the box, pulling out a little tray of dice, nearly dumping them across the table.
His brow was furrowed in concentration when he said, “It’s been… a long time since I’ve played this.”
“You used to play it with Sarah?” she suddenly asked, her voice dropping a hesitant octave. Joel glanced up at her.
“Yeah,” he softly replied. “An’ Tommy, too. They beat my ass every time. I’ve never been good with quick thinkin’, especially when it comes to words and such.”
“But, you’re good with numbers, right? Because of the contractor,” she said, and Joel smirked at her silly voice. It never failed, she’d noticed.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Math was my favorite subject, back when I was in high school.”
“Oh, so, like, a million years ago.”
“Hey,” he glared up at her, lacking even an ounce of malice. “Respect your elders, you little shit.”
“Okay, but does that mean I have to pretend to let you beat me at this, what's it called, 'Wobble’?”
“Boggle. And yes, actually. Give an old man some sympathy.”
“Alright,” she insisted, raising her eyebrows in begrudged agreement. “But just know, there’s only so much I can do to stop myself from kicking your ass.”
“How ‘bout we quit talkin’ and play the game,” he replied, looking her in the eye as he lifted the little box of dice and shook it.
“Uh, wait, but I don’t know how to play."
He raised an eyebrow. “Huh? That so?”
“You dick,” she grinned.
Joel spent the next ten minutes squinting at the little instruction pamphlet despite the fact that he kept insisting he knew how the rules worked. It didn’t help that half the instructions were illegible from water damage and the other half had been eaten by rats.
“Okay, so it says here that you shake all the dice inside this little grid thingy, and then you set a timer for,” he leaned closer.
“You need your readers?”
He turned his squint to her, lips pursing. “Three minutes,” he ignored. “We don’t have a timer, and I don’t think either of us is good enough to get much done in three minutes--”
“Speak for yourself.”
“--So we’ll just wing it.”
“But, like… what do you do?” she asked, leaning her elbows on the table. She’d thought this was going to be stupid, but she was actually kind of interested. It was taking her mind off of things. It was doing the same for Joel.
“You have to make words out of whatever letters the dice land on,” he explained, leaning over the table to mirror her. He held the grid out. “They have to connect, so down like this, or diagonal. And you can’t repeat letters, or cross back over yourself. Has to be connected lines.”
“Huh… cool,” she nodded. “Do the honors?”
Leaning back, Joel shook up the dice. Then he hid the grid behind his hands and glanced down at them.
“Hey!” she grabbed his arms. “No fair, you got a head start!”
“Spare me, I need one,” he insisted, smirking as she tugged his arms down, forcing him to set the grid on the table.
They leaned over it, heads nearly bumping. Ellie, now fully committed to beating Joel’s ass, scanned the letters hastily.
“‘No!’” she yelled, yanking an arm out from under her to point at the dice. “‘N,’ ‘O.’”
“It has to be at least three letters.”
“What? Bullshit! That wasn’t part of the rules.”
“Uh-huh. The rats must've eaten that part.”
“Un believable -- fine,” she huffed, leaning back over the table, butting the top of her head softly against his to push it out of the way.
He let out a scoff, and she felt more than saw him shake his head. She hadn’t noticed that her sleeves had ridden up, hadn’t even thought about it. Joel had noticed, though, and while Ellie stared at the dice, he stared at the bites on her arm -- at the raw, red patches that were new. Looked like she’d tried to scrub it right off. He couldn’t help it when reached out and brushed a thumb along the irritated skin, frowning.
Ellie glanced up, confused until she saw what he was looking at. Their eyes met. With a look, she tried to tell him that it was okay, that it was nothing. With a look, he tried to believe her. For her sake, he tried not to worry. Tried to just let them have one goddamn normal night after so many shitty ones. Ellie slowly nodded, and Joel drew his hand away as she looked back down at the dice, trying so hard to make everything seem normal and fine. Trying just like he was.
They were silent for a long moment. Then,
“Oh, oh! ‘Zone!’”
“Where?” he demanded, and when she pointed it out to him, he shook his head in exasperation.
“How the fuck are there any other words?” she muttered, leaning closer, nearly on top of the table at this point. Joel looked up at her and his eyes softened at the intense concentration on her face -- intense in the way that it should be for a kid. Intense because she was trying to beat someone at a word game.
With a sly grin, he reached up and covered her eyes with his palms.
“Asshole!” she yelled, smacking her hands over his, tugging only lightly, not really trying to pull away as he hunched over the dice and tried to find a word to one-up her with.
“You’re such a cheater, holy shit. I should have suspected as--”
“‘Win,’” Joel blurted, pulling his hands out from under hers and pointing at the dice. “‘W,’ ‘I,’ ‘N.’ ‘Win.’”
“You cheated.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I just won.”
“I’m never forgiving you,” she insisted, teeth flashing with a wide smile. It was beautiful, that smile. He’d missed seeing it, had been scared he wouldn’t get to again.
He smiled back. “That’s okay. Besides,” he added, feeling like he’d said the first part too earnestly so now he had to keep talking to bring up the mood. “There’s plenty of time to beat me in the next round.”
“Oh, I will,” she insisted, eyebrows raised.
She shook the dice this time. It made her laugh, and she shook them again, definitely harder than she needed to. Joel didn’t say anything -- couldn’t because he was smiling like a fool.
“Ready?” her lips curled in a wicked smirk as she held the grid hidden against her chest.
“Do your worst,” he replied, nodding to the table.
She slapped the grid down. They both looked at it.
“‘Josh,’” he almost immediately said, pointing at the letters.
“Dick!” she shoved him in the shoulder. “How’d you even see that so fast?”
He wasn’t sure he knew that himself. “I used to work with a Josh," he shrugged.
“Yeah? He did the contractor thing?”
Joel glanced up at her. “Mhm. He did the contractor thing. He was also kind of an asshole.”
“Oh, yeesh,” she grimaced, then smiled softly. “Hey, you know… you’re actually not too bad at this.”
Joel scoffed, glancing down at his crossed arms. “Don’t start butterin’ me up now just ‘cause I’m winnin’.”
She gasped. “I was not. But fine. Now I really won’t hold back.”
“Okay then,” he replied, matching her teasing. It felt good, the lightheartedness settling between them again.
Ellie found the next word, ‘rot,’ and the one after that -- “Look! ‘Ashy,’” she grinned.
“Dammit -- you’re too good. All I keep seein’ is ‘hoah’ and… ‘rye,’ but it’s ‘R,’ ‘I,’ ‘E’ so it doesn’t count.”
“ Hoah ,” Ellie said like she was hocking up a lung, and Joel looked up to see her giggling.
“You’re a weird kid,” he said, but it lacked any malice. Instead, it was fond, and quiet, like he hadn’t even really meant to say it out loud. Like he’d just meant to admire her in silence.
Her smile softened a bit as she caught his eye. “You’re a weird kid,” she retorted, just as quiet.
Then she was shaking up the dice again, “So you can find something other than ‘hoah,’” she explained. “That round was bullshit, anyway.”
So they played another round, and Joel found a few words, and Ellie waited until he did even when she saw them first. And outside the house, the night grew darker, and the moon climbed higher above their heads, and Joel’s eyes began to close. It happened once or twice, but then Ellie would shake up the dice and he’d sit back, peeling them open and shaking his head. Eventually, though, he wasn’t as quick to recover.
“Look, ‘heap.’ Joel?” she shifted, glancing at him.
He was leaning on his propped-up arm, lips parted slightly and face slack, and she was pretty sure he was asleep.
“Joel,” she said, a little louder this time as she leaned toward his good ear. Without thinking, she reached out and brushed her fingers across his forearm, grabbing softly at the fabric of his sleeve.
Joel’s eyes blinked open and he tensed for just a moment, shook it off quickly enough, but she’d noticed it.
“Hey," she greeted. "Tired?”
“Hm?” he ran a hand down the side of his face. “No, I’m fine.”
“Joel,” she insisted. “Looks like your head is about to hit the table.”
“We can do another round, if you want.”
She believed him. Even when he was sitting there with bags under his eyes, running on about three whole nights of sleep since she’d met him, she knew that he would have stayed up for her, even if it was just to play a stupid game. She knew that he’d stayed up for her for more important reasons, too.
“Actually, I think I’ll just… head to bed,” she hesitantly started, because she didn’t actually want to go to bed -- too much had happened, too much was on her mind -- but Joel was tired, and she didn’t want him to have to stay up for her anymore.
Taking a deep breath, he nodded. She went to gather up the dice, but he stopped her.
“Leave it. We can clean up tomorrow.”
“Okay…”
This was weird. It was weird being in a house and knowing that this was probably where they’d stay for the unforeseeable future. It was weird that they were both clean and full, and about to go upstairs and sleep in beds. It was weird because Joel hadn’t lived like this in over twenty years. He’d never thought he’d be doing this again; clearing up a kitchen table, leaving dirty dishes in the sink, herding his daughter up to bed.
This time around, she wasn’t technically his daughter. This time around, it felt a lot more like she was the one herding him to to bed.
They climbed the stairs side-by-side. How could they not, when they’d done everything almost attached at the hip since winter? In the dark hallway, they stood side-by-side, and both of them realized that for the first time since they’d met each other -- for the first time since Joel had been injured and Ellie had been taken by David -- they were about to sleep apart. Ellie stared at the door to what had unofficially become her bedroom, eyes wide and contemplative. Joel picked at the fraying wood at the top of the banister, one hand propped on his hip as he stared at his socked feet.
“Well, goodnight,” she said, forcing something into her voice that was meant to trick both of them into thinking that this was somehow normal.
“Night,” he softly replied, head still ducked as he looked up at her. “If, uh… if you need anything, you yell. I’ll be just across the hall.”
“Yeah, right. Of course,” she agreed, waving her hand in a half-gesture before reaching across to grab her opposite arm. She swayed awkwardly. “Uh, you too.”
Joel looked back at his feet and nodded.
They weren’t good at this.
As Ellie gave him one last look and turned to head into her room, Joel told himself that he needed to let her go. He couldn’t always be by her side, hovering over her. She needed her own space, and besides, there wasn’t any danger anymore. She was safe here. She didn’t need him to protect her. So why did he feel like his heart was about to tumble right out of his chest? Why did he feel so awful as he dropped his pack by the door and settled onto the bed?
And, after trying to catch Joel’s eye, failing because he seemed so intent on not looking at her before he turned to head into his room, Ellie told herself that this was how it was supposed to work. She couldn’t always be with him, couldn’t be in the same room as him every moment of the rest of her life. He was his own person, and he’d had a life before he’d met her -- most of it spent alone. Or, at least without some random kid clinging to him like he was the last real thing in the world. And besides, they were safe here. Nothing was going to happen. He was just right across the hall, like he’d said.
She told herself that as she stood in the empty hallway, and again in the empty bedroom. She repeated it in her head as she crawled under the covers. And then she told her brain to shut the hell up, please. It didn’t work, so she closed her eyes, and that didn’t work, either. She could hear the rustling of the wind outside, every little creek the house made, and it was like she was just waiting for the sound of Joel getting up, or calling for her, or getting murdered in his sleep. She blinked her eyes open and looked around. And it hit her, then, that she was alone. She didn’t want to be alone.
She pulled the covers off of her legs, yanked at her oversized sweater when it got all caught up in the blankets as she crawled out of bed. And she stood there for a moment, shivering against the cold draft of air coming from the hallway. Joel hadn’t even closed his door. She could see right into it from where she was standing, could see the edge of the bed but nothing more. And she tried to give herself one good, logical reason to do what she was about to do, but she couldn’t. Not one reason.
She stopped in the hallway, glancing into the bathroom. Through the grey darkness, something caught her eye. Joel’s clothes were hanging on a hook by the shower, all nice and tidy in a way that made her smile because that was just something he’d do. She was surprised he hadn’t folded them. Her own clothes were in a pile under the sink, discarded the moment she’d been able to tear them off and swap them for clean ones. She stepped around the door, moving silently, somehow thinking about how she didn’t want to wake Joel above everything else going through her head.
The bathroom was small. It wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t dirty, either, and, despite some spots of dirt that hadn’t washed off and a few cracks along the edges, the mirror was all in one working piece. She hadn’t put her hair back up. It was a little frizzy from being washed for the first time in ages, and the way it had settled around her face was unfamiliar. She looked unfamiliar. She turned away from her reflection and ran her hand along the still-damp towel hanging on the rack. It was soft, softer than anything they’d had back at the QZ. She paused in front of Joel’s clothes.
The shirt smelled familiar when she tucked her nose into it. It smelled like Joel. She took it off the hook before she even knew what she was doing and pulled her arms through the holes, tugging the front of it tight around her. She took a deep breath, and she let it out slowly. And then she went back into the hallway.
She wasn’t used to inside darkness. It was different from outside darkness. The last place she’d slept in inside darkness had been in a cage, right before her life had gone up in flames. She wondered if that building was still burning, all those miles away. She knew it wasn’t, that the snow would have snuffed it out eventually, but it felt like it still was. She felt like she was still breathing in the smoke and the fear and… David. Ellie pulled her hands into the sleeves of Joel’s shirt and lifted them to her face, taking a deep breath of Joel, instead. Joel, who was sleeping a few feet in front of her.
She stopped in the doorway of what had unofficially become his bedroom, eyes wide as she sought out his form in the darkness and the blankets that they weren’t used to having. And she hugged her arms around herself and struggled with the tug-of-war inside her. One side was pulling her toward Joel with the alarming desire for him to hold her like he'd held her in the snow. The other was pulling her back to her room with the insistence that they didn’t do those sorts of things, and Joel needed sleep, and she wasn’t a baby, and she was pretty sure he’d lied to her.
But he was still Joel. Fucking Joel, who’d taught her how to hunt and how football worked and how to kill a man with a knife when your bullet misses. Who’d saved her more times than she could count. Who’d stayed up even though he was exhausted to play fucking Boggle with her and eat twenty-year-old ravioli that he’d held onto because she’d vaguely enjoyed it once.
And she knew she couldn’t ask anything more of him, even if she missed him with her whole chest. Even when he was right there. She’d done so much alone. She could do this, too. So she turned around and--
“Hey…”
Fucking Joel, who was always just in time.
“What're you doin', kiddo?”
She heard the rustle of sheets and that painful softness in his voice and turned around to find him sitting up already, hair all ruffled and face drawn. His eyes were alert, though. Ready. Always so ready for whatever she’d throw at him.
“El--"
“Yeah, no, I’m alright,” she said, the casual tone sounding lame even to her, and she realized that he’d ruined it, all that energy she’d needed to convince herself to turn around and leave.
She saw him tilt his head, couldn’t read the expression on his face, but he was still looking at her. She looked back at him.
“You know, I just,” she started like they were talking about the weather or something. “Its, um… ”
It's so different here. My room is cold. I haven't slept alone since I met you.
"I just wanted to check that…"
That you're here. That you won't leave. That you… love me.
The realization was fucking terrifying.
"I just wanted to check that you're okay." It came out in a rush. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t his fucking daughter, he’d said so himself, and nothing he could do for her was worth his rejection.
“Anyway, uh, ni--”
“Ellie,” his voice stopped her where she’d turned. She stared across the hallway, stared through her open door to the window. The curtains fluttered softly. She could almost see the outline of the moon.
He said her name again. She turned around and looked at him.
A single tilt of his head. That was all it took. Ellie walked into his room with the knowledge that something had changed, somewhere between the QZ and Marlene and the Fireflies and here. Someyhing fucking big. She walked around to the other side of the bed, hesitant and silent and sort of afraid because she wasn’t sure how this was supposed to work, between the two of them. She knew that most kids didn’t share a bed with some random guy they’d met -- but, Joel wasn’t just some random guy anymore. He was Joel. Her Joel. But she was also just Ellie, just some kid he’d met. She wasn’t his daughter. Hell, she didn’t even know if this was a thing people did with their kids. She didn’t know how any of this was supposed to work .
So she just stood there until Joel pulled the covers back in a quick yank, then turned onto his side. His right side, facing away from her. That was familiar, at least. She could almost pretend that they were in their sleeping bags out in the woods, back somewhere between there and here, laying on the cold ground, and “Hey Joel, why did the scarecrow win an award?” She remembered how her sleeping bag had smelled -- kind of floral, like it had just been washed or something, and “That must be Frank’s, then.”
When she crawled under the covers, all she could smell was Joel. Through the sheets and the shirt she was wearing and him , right next to her. Always right next to her. Joel, who was doing so much thinking he thought he might fall right through the floor. And, as had become so common since Ellie had scared him with her silence, Joel found himself talking more than he had ever thought he would in those twenty years of silence.
“Sarah was scared of thunderstorms, when she was a kid,” he said. Ellie blinked up at the ceiling. “A little younger than you, maybe nine or ten. She was a little firecracker, that girl -- a lot like you,” he smiled softly. “But, loud noises… she used to hate ‘em.”
Ellie didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. She watched his back.
“Anyway,” he continued, lost in a memory -- still trying to tell her something with it. “Some nights I’d hear the rumbles and I’d just sit there in the dark and wait. The older she got, the longer it took, but every time, without fail she’d wind up in my doorway starin’ at me with these big… scared eyes…”
Ellie thought maybe her heart was going to explode, or melt like he was pouring battery acid on it, or something. Joel turned enough to spare her a look, eyebrow raised as he tried to make her out among the sheets and her too-big clothes. He noticed that she was wearing his shirt, and he thought maybe his heart was going to break, or shatter like she’d just smashed it with a hammer, or something.
“So,” he continued, unsteady -- but there was a point to this. “She’d show up, and she’d look at me with those eyes, and I always knew right then I’d never be able to tell her no.” He smirked faintly. “She’d sleep right next to me all night, covered up by half a dozen blankets -- hogging ‘em,” he twisted around to grin at Ellie. Ellie, who was watching him.
Ellie, who now had her answer. Apparently this was a thing people did with their kids. Joel had done it with Sarah, so it must be. And now, Joel was doing it with her. And Ellie didn’t know what that meant.
Or maybe she did.
“I’m not tryin’ to compare you to her, or anything. I don’t want you to feel like you have to… like…” He was struggling. She could hear it. But he was trying.
So she said, “I know.”
“It’s just…” he continued anyway. “What I’m tryin’ to say is that I understand.”
Ellie wondered if he did. Thought that he wanted to, at least. She shifted, and Joel rolled over.
“Okay,” she whispered, and after another moment she twisted onto her back, scooting close enough to lean her head on his shoulder. Joel let her, and then he reached down and traced a soft line along her arm, brushing the mark of her bite through the fabric of his shirt and her sweater. And she could feel the unspoken worry that was still lingering.
“Okay,” he replied, an afterthought. Maybe an assurance -- maybe a question, too.
There were a lot of questions, and a lot of answers unwilling to be given, and just as much silent apprehension between them -- a thing that had gone away for a while and was back under new circumstances. But for now, maybe they'd just pretend things were the way they’d used to be.
“Hey Joel, why did the scarecrow get an award?”
“Because he was outstanding in his field.”
Ellie found Joel’s hand where it was still tracing lines over her arm. He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it until she stopped him to wrap her fingers around his. He glanced down at her. She was staring across the room, eyes wandering blankly over the wallpaper.
“Okay,” she finally responded, an afterthought. He didn’t believe her. He knew that he’d keep on being here anyway, no matter what. Even if things were different between them -- even if something had shifted, or broken, or got twisted unrecognizable from the way it had been before. The way they'd been -- both of them by themselves, and who they were together. It didn’t matter, because Joel would be here. And, all over again, he felt so much like a father. That pain of someone being hurt beyond repair and knowing you can’t do anything to make it better. Knowing that they’ve got to repair it on their own.
But Ellie was here. Even if things were different between them, she’d still come to him when she was scared of the thunder, the loud noises -- the silence. She’d still come to him, and she held onto him tight, and even when she was staring so blankly at the wall in a way that scared him because it reminded him so much of winter, her cheek brushed against his shoulder as she shifted closer. And she was here. And Joel felt so much like a father that he thought it might actually kill him.
“Try and get some sleep, kiddo,” he hummed, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand.
"Okay," she whispered -- so small, so like a child. So much like his daughter.
She nuzzled her cheek into his shoulder, tucking herself closer, something Joel had never even thought she'd do. This, all of this, he never thought he'd have. He took a deep breath and pulled their intertwined hands onto his stomach while his heart ached something warm.
"Thanks, Joel," Ellie suddenly said, a breathy murmur.
"Always, baby girl," he replied, voice hitching, softening, enveloping them both like a blanket. And God, did he mean it.
Ellie drew in a breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. And then she rolled onto her side, nose searching out his neck. She closed her eyes.
And she slept. And for the first time in a long time she dreamt. Not of darkness or nightmares, but of Riley’s smiles, and Bill and Frank’s quiet front porch, and sheep ranches on the moon.