Chapter Text
Winter isn’t kind.
From Joel’s position, flat on his back in bed, covers tugged as high as they’ll go to keep in some semblance of heat, he can see snowflakes dancing outside through the gap in the curtain. It’s cold in Wyoming, colder than he remembered it being in Boston and colder than Texas. He closes his eyes, burying his head back in the pillow and inhaling the scent of the laundry detergent and his own BO to ground himself. The only other place colder that he can remember is that basement in Colorado. His memories of that period of time are patchy and fever-skewed, but full of fear and pain. It’s not a time he wants to think back on.
Stiff with sleep and winter’s chill, Joel rolls over and blinks a bleary eye at the alarm clock on the side table. It’s getting late. He’s got to wake up Ellie. He sends a glare he hopes is withering at the falling snow and rolls out of bed, stumbling sock-footed into slippers, wincing at the queasy roll of nausea and flare of protest from his gut.
He’d had ulcers before, back in Texas, a combination of bad luck, stress, and trying to numb the toll construction had taken on his body with too much over-the-counter pain meds. It’d felt a bit like this – nausea, especially in the morning when his stomach was empty, and a stabbing pain that came and went. He’d ruined Christmas one year when he’d puked up blood and wound up in the ER with a bill they couldn’t pay, not that they had ERs anymore. Joel shrugs on another layer of flannel over his sleep shirt and wonders if there’s anything anyone can do about ulcers these days anyway or if this is just another way his gut will leak out, slowly and more sinisterly until he’s trapped in a haze of pain, fever, and fear on another mattress, dying as fast as the falling snow.
Shuffling down the hall past the bathroom, Joel knocks twice on Ellie’s bedroom door. It swings open at the rap of his knuckles. He can barely make out the shape of her on the mattress, cocooned thoroughly with what looks like every blanket in the house.
“Time to wake up, kid. You got school.” The pile of blankets shifts slightly and groans. Joel smirks.
“I know. I’ll kick up the heat, but you got to get up.” The pile of blankets sighs.
“Fine.” Joel takes the one-word acknowledgment as the best he’s probably going to get and takes off down the stairs.
By the time he’s got the heat started enough to send its rattle through the radiators, has made a pot of chicory coffee for himself, and a bowl of oatmeal swirled through with honey for Ellie, the sun is pouring through the front window, bouncing off the ice-encrusted snowdrifts with a blinding glare. He casts a glance at the clock on the oven. Ellie’s going to be late. Again.
It’s a bizarre concept, to be worried about adhering to a timetable after the world has ended. What did it matter if Ellie slept in when, save for the Jackson of it all, there wasn’t really a society out there to hold to a schedule? Did it really matter if she missed parts of school if she wasn’t going to college or pursuing further degrees and knowledge beyond that which would keep her safe? Was she safer here in bed than out there in the snow? Good things hadn’t happened last winter. It made more sense to hunker down.
The hurried footfall of Ellie’s sock-covered feet on the stairs pulls Joel from his rumination. He barely has time to look up before she’s slid through the kitchen like a whirlwind, sliding loose-limbed and reckless over the floorboards.
“Where’s my other boot? Have you seen it?” Joel hasn’t even blinked fast enough to take in the pile of Ellie’s shoes at the backdoor before she’s holding a matching pair of snow boots together and sliding back out of the kitchen.
“Oh, never mind, I found it.” There’s a slam that sounds like she’s slid into the wall or the table by the door followed by the sound of her shoving on her boots and zipping up her coat. Joel sighs. It’s not like mornings with Ellie were usually without chaos, but they normally weren’t this chaotic.
“Wait, Ellie, oatmeal. You need breakfast,” Joel calls, padding after her down the hall. She’s already got her coat on and her backpack on her shoulder, but what did time matter, after all? Let the kids be late after the end of the world.
“I’m late!” It’s when she turns to protest school attendance that she’s still enough that he finally gets a look at her face. He doesn’t like what he sees. She’s pale, dark circles shadowing under her eyes. She looks haunted, sick even. He wonders if she’s feeling it the same way he is, like the baseball bat is back in his gut and they’re trapped, starving and dying in a moldy basement in the middle of nowhere.
“You okay?” She looks away, turning her back to him and shouldering her way out the door.
“I’m fine.” He doesn’t believe her.
“Alright.” He mumbles anyway as the front door slams closed in his face.
He watches her slip and slide down the icy front steps, hunching up against the Wyoming winter. Then, he slouches back over to the kitchen, puts the oatmeal in the fridge to reheat for her later, and heats more water on the stove to fill the hot water bottle. Pressing the hot rubber against the scar on his gut, he stares down at his undrunk coffee and gives in to the spiral of his thoughts.
They may not be in Colorado anymore, but something’s not right this winter.