Chapter Text
Joel puts on a record nearly every night.
It shouldn’t surprise Ellie as much as it does. Joel had meticulous habits on the road - wake up calls, shift changes, food prep, you name it. Everything was on a schedule - but Joel was obviously a master in survival. She associated his strict routines with not getting killed.
But in the slow, safe, shuffle of Jackson, he keeps his habits. He wakes up every morning at the same time, no matter the shift. Breakfast is pretty much the same day in or day out, and even if there’s a change, he won’t make a fuss; but Ellie knows his order. Eggs completely scrambled, a bowl of blackberries, and sourdough bread smeared with peach jam.
And every night, he puts on a record.
It’s summer, the night air cool but not chilly, and her garage suite is finally finished. It’s still got a slight wet paint smell and the fairy lights she hung on her own are so very crooked, but it’s hers and hers alone. She and Tommy spent an obnoxiously long time on their hands and knees caulking any cracks where critters could get in but it doesn’t stop Ellie from leaving the door open and letting the breeze carry in the soft sound of music into her apartment.
It’s lonely, but she reminds herself it’s what she wanted. What she needs. Her and Joel - they’re woven in a way that can’t be detangled overnight. It will take time to recognize who she is without him.
Wasn’t time that did it, he told her. To some extent, she agrees. But there’s a small part of her that hopes that time is what can save her. Them.
So yeah, she’s lonely. But it’s what she needs - Joel’s watch may be broken, but the ticking of the clock on her wall is loud and as steady as her heart.
But she doesn’t focus on that; instead, she focuses on the record. Ellie doesn’t know the song - but she knows it. Again, Joel’s apparently a creature of habit - he has his small collection on rotation of pluck-happy songs with gruff voices singing about a history she knows nothing about, in the mountains and country hills she knows like the back of her hand.
She’s familiar with the chorus - hums it under her breath - and repeats it when it comes around again. Eventually, the sound fizzles out and leaves the sound of literal crickets in its wake. She turns her head, the sky still tinged a faint purple from the recent sunset, and can see the faint outlines of fireflies hovering in the grasses through her open door. They float and stack in the same way notes on a page do, and Ellie finger picks at the air, wondering if she’ll be able to pick out songs one day the same way Joel does.
When the record doesn’t get flipped, she cranes her neck from her bed to try and see if he’s called it an early night; but the lights are all on - and like her, the door to his house is wide open.
Thrown along the back of her futon is the most unfortunate of all her possessions. Tommy claims he snagged the thing after a Mexican standoff with him, a Bloater, and a drunken Seth so vile he only appears every Harvest Moon, just to give it to her. Maria said she’s pretty sure he tried wrestling it out of a sleeping toddler’s fingers.
The one, and hopefully the only , Barney the Purple Dinosaur comforter.
She wraps the twin-size blanket around her like a parka and trudges outside, feebly attempting to close her door behind her with her foot until she gives up and uses her arm. She’s quick to wrap her arm tightly against her as the fireflies make their weak assault, floating towards the edges of her blankets and tickling the stray pieces of hair that have fallen out of her pony. Her bare feet scratch against rough blades of grass before she hops up on the porch - skipping the third step with the splinter - and inviting herself inside.
“Left your door open,” Ellie says as a greeting, letting it slam in her wake, and heads to the kitchen. Faded blue-striped wallpaper provides the backdrop to a collection of cowpoke art and memorabilia that he drags back from his patrols. All of his jackets are on one single hook next to the door jam, and Ellie has to push down against the lump of worn leather to get through to the kitchen.
He’s not there, but he answers her from upstairs. “Well, hell. Wouldn’t want some cryptid walkin’ in.”
His voice echoes off the walls, soft like a whisper but accent strong and so Joel, that she feels like she could hear it miles away like the call of a bird. Her nose twitches and it directs her to the warm loaf of sourdough bread still on the counter.
“Too late,” she sing-songs as she rips the fridge door open, holding her comforter with one hand around her like a cape. “Just call me Bigfoot.”
“Got them boots resized now, did you?” She responds by making extra noise when she rummages through his mason jars in search of the jam. “Let me guess. Size nine?”
“Eight and a half!” Ellie almost screeches, giving the fridge a dramatic close. Her growth spurt is a sore spot. She’s gone all gangly with her slight new height, sure, but she’s been going through boots like crazy. She hears the container of berries topple over and prays Joel’s better about making sure the lid is screwed on than she is. She does her best to ignore his chuffed laughter as she uses one hand to cut the sourdough bread. She has to use her arm trapped in the blanket to anchor the bread to the counter and crumbs get everywhere, but she’s successful; even gets the rest of the jam spread evenly on her slice.
When she finally makes it upstairs, Joel’s in his bed. It’s still made and he’s using extra pillows to help prop himself up so he can read. There’s no purple dinosaurs on his flannel pajama pants, only stripes - reminds Ellie of the hallway.
He ends up looking at her over the top of his reading glasses when she stands still in the doorway like a ghost, bread shoved in her mouth. “Lord,” he sighs, looking her up and down with distaste. “I hate Tommy.”
She takes a few steps before she leaps, landing belly first like a penguin on ice - the bread is held by a thread between her teeth, so much that Joel’s lip curls in a grimace as he’s forced to take it out of her mouth while she shimmies up the bed and saves his comforter from getting smothered in jam. “I’m pretty sure you can’t say that,” she grunts, settling against him. She drags her fingers around the print of the blanket that reads I Love You, You Love Me, “It’s against the dino’s credo.”
Ellie yanks the toast back out of Joel’s hand and takes a hearty bite, spilling crumbs all into his covers.
She studies his face, waits for the displeased curl of his lips and the smartass comment to spill out but instead a muscle in his face twitches and the lines around his eyes become more prominent as he tries to fight a smile. He licks his thumb and reaches over to scrub harshly at her cheek. “I suppose you’re right,” he murmurs, turning his hand and using the backs of his fingers to brush some hair off her cheek.
She takes a smaller nibble of her bread, but not before she turns her head, chasing his touch. Eventually, his hand moves to scratch at her scalp, ruining her already mused ponytail. “You still hungry?” he asks. “I got some soup.”
Soup in Jackson usually means something with venison or bison - sometimes even rabbit - something that Ellie hasn’t been able to stomach in months. “I’m okay.”
But Joel knows this. “It’s potato,” he tells her, moving his head to the back of her skull; she tips her head closer in response and it gives him just enough room to drop a kiss to her hairline. “Tommy brought it over. I’ll go warm some up for you.”
“Did Tommy make it, or did Maria, because you and your brother make awful potato soup.”
He takes his paperback off his lap and gently bumps her nose with the back cover before he tosses it lazily across the bed.
“Jeez,” Ellie grumbles as he gets up and heads down to the kitchen. She stretches, struggling to reach for the book before she unrolls herself from the comforter and grabs it - all 845 pages. “This thing could have broken my nose!” she yells, knowing he can hear it.
“If I thought it’d fix your snoring like a damn freight train, I would have made sure it did.”
Even though he can’t see it, she throws him the middle finger. He must know she does, because his laughter floats up like smoke from a fire, lost in the crackling of the record player starting again as he warms up the soup.
With a huff, Ellie settles back into the nest of pillows and blankets, thumbing through the pages to the one that Joel has left dog-earred. He’s a good bit through - almost half - which is probably longer than Ellie could say she’d get. It’s no secret she loves to read; in fact, when she first got to Jackson she raided their library and found the fictional books with the most pages, ready to get lost in any other story than her own - but Les Miserables proved to be, well - pretty miserable and she tapped out after seventy-five pages or so. She tries to stick to what’s interesting, even if she rips through it.
Lonesome Dove seems to be neither short nor interesting, but Ellie’s still intrigued. Joel’s not a reader, never has been since she’s known him. But she also bets his on-foot trek across an entire country to chaperone her didn’t exactly lend him time to all his hobbies.
She’s in the middle of a random paragraph on a random page that Joel’s already past, bread long gone, when he returns with one bowl of soup, and a mug of what smells like peppermint tea. “Oh, honey, you won’t like that. Ain’t got no pictures,” he quips, taking a long sip from the mug - he holds it like an asshole, foregoing the handle entirely. She swallows any smug comeback and simply sticks her tongue out at him, nose wrinkling in the process. She shimmies a little further up the bed, arranging her comforter around her, and waits for Joel to carefully set the bowl in her lap.
“Eat up,” he tells her plainly, but the soft kiss he presses against her temple feels anything but as he sits up in the bed beside her. She tries to offer him some of the Barney comforter to lay against his lap but he looks disgusted, reaching over her to grab the book instead. “You want me to read to you?”
“It looks kinda boring,” she admits, swirling her spoon around a few times before she takes a bite. “You read one cowboy book, you’ve read ‘em all.”
“This one here’s a classic,” Joel insists, thumbing through the pages like he’s trying to find some sort of painterly description or zinger of a speech from the main character to reel her in. “What other westerns have you read?”
“Well I found the novelization of Star Wars -”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Space operas are basically spaghetti westerns. Which is what this is.”
“Nope.”
“You know, issue four of Savage Starlight has this part with a lasso made of -” She pauses to take a loud sip of soup. “Cosmic energy. Whips it around like Clint Eastwood does in Dirty Harry .”
“Wrong movie.”
“If you say so.” She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too hard when Joel hits her with a deadpan stare. “Okay, but does Toy Story count because Woody is basically -”
A laugh slips out when he gives a soft groan, letting the book dramatically fall open in his lap.
The book lays open on the dog-eared page, small print underlined in Joel’s blue pen, the one he always has hooked on the breast pocket of his flannels these days. Ellie cranes her head, chasing the words blurred underneath the ink. “Favorite line?” she asks, reaching out to trace the words with her finger.
“Not exactly. More like helpful advice.” Joel sniffs, leaning into her, sharing the book. “A cowpoke’s guide to appreciating the everyday,” he tells her. “Soft beds, buttermilk, and feisty gentleman.”
As Ellie rolls her eyes she feels Joel’s laughter more than hear it. Her smile begrudgingly appears and she turns her head to hide it in the sleeve of his shirt. “That’s so dumb,” she says into the fabric.
“I dunno.” Joel hums as he moves Ellie’s bowl of soup out of a spill zone : his night stand with the tea. “I feel like I can’t argue the beds and buttermilk when I’m living the life with a Barney bedspread and a bowl of Miller-made potato soup.”
“ Maria Miller-made potato soup; I can’t even begin to tell you how important that distinction is. Like, Coral Snake versus King Snake.”
“Brat,” he scoffs, flicking at her ear. “I’m feeding you to a King Snake if I ever see one.”
“That’s the safe one.” She pokes his bicep. “ You taught me that. Red touches yellow, kills a fellow. Red touches black -”
“-Ellie better watch her back,” Joel finishes. “I remember.”
“That’s so dumb!” she says again, this time with a pinch to his arm and a laugh bubbling out of her.
Her laugh is short lived though; the warmth of the house, the blanket, and the soup soothes every edge of her and she yawns loudly. The sleepy feeling gets stronger when Joel reaches back a little to rub up and down between her shoulder blades. “Sounds like you best be getting back to bed, kiddo.”
She hums her agreement, but she doesn’t make any move to get up; Joel doesn’t really push her to move either. Instead she lays against him, using his shoulder as a headrest as he rotates between scratching at her scalp and rubbing her back.
But eventually, the record stops, the scratching slightly eerie bouncing off the walls in his house. The curtains are still open in his room, revealing a pitch black evening, so dark in contrast to the low light of the room she can’t pick out the fireflies floating by no matter how hard she tries. Her breath smells like potato, and there’s probably a sliver of peach jam still on her cheek and yet all Ellie smells and tastes is wet paint.
She wants her space - needs it, if she’s gonna survive here - but at the end of the day, Ellie’s still got her habits.
Being away from Joel, no matter what he’s done, is just not in her routine.
“My room smells like wet paint,” she admits quietly. “It makes my head hurt.”
“Ah,” Joel says. She barely hears it. Barely feels the kiss he presses into her hair. “Well, guess you can stay here. I wouldn’t want you gettin’ high off the fumes. You only got ‘bout two or three brain cells to spare.”
“That’s still two and a half more than you got, old man.”
Joel laughs, moving so he can actually unmake the bed and let the two of them under the comforter and sheets. As Ellie situates herself to one side of the bed, Joel makes extra effort to tuck the Barney Blanket around her like he’s about to mummify her and shove her in a Sarcophagus, before grabbing some of the spare pillows and placing them between them in a barrier. “Protection,” he explains when she shoots him an incredulous look. “Wasn’t one night on the road you didn’t kick in your sleep.”
“Hearsay.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if my kidneys were still bruised. And those were from those size sixes . Don’t wanna imagine what nines are gonna do to my liver if -”
“Eight and a half!”
Which, apparently, is just the right size to successfully kick a snickering Joel clean off his bed.