(no subject)

[vaccination]

The sun hasn't been up for an hour before the daylight sees Ellie pounding her fist on Joel and Tess' door. She knows it'll only be Tess in. She saw Jesse speaking to Tommy and Joel by the stables. They'll be out for hours, and Ellie imagines this conversation will only take minutes.

When the door doesn't immediately open, Ellie knocks louder and calls up towards the upstairs windows.

"Tess! Tess, get up!"

She doesn't give a fuck if it sounds like something's wrong because something is wrong. She's known it since they returned to Jackson. It's been eating at her, always in the back of her mind, and that last outing with Joel has lit a fire. She hasn't been sleeping. Last night, she couldn't manage more than a few minutes at a time before the conversation would replay in her mind, over and over and over.

Not so much the words, but the look in his eyes as he said them.

She's always been able to tell when Joel is lying to her even before she realized it.

Comments

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess doesn't figure she's spent more than a couple hours at home at a time since this started, nipping in just to pick things up, shower, change her clothes, pick up the casseroles already appearing on the porch. She meets Ellie's eye and knows the kid's ready to argue with her regardless of what Joel wants. What's good for him is another matter, though.

She squeezes Joel's shoulder and then moves to the head of the bed to lay it down again.

"If you want some time alone, big guy, I'll drag this one home," she says to Joel, but her eyes flick over his head to Ellie. "Be back first thing in the morning, bring you a fresh shirt. We're both settled here otherwise."

If he's sleeping, he won't know the difference if either of them stay.

[funguy]

It’s not worth the argument. It rarely was, with either of them.

Joel feels the bed lay back with more of that nausea, and he closes his eyes through it. He’s pretty sure his pride won’t survive being sick in front of them on top of everything else.

It abates again, and when Joel opens his eyes again, he feels the overhead light bore more bright pain into his brain. Fuck, he does want to sleep. He's hurt and tired, his face is still all fucked up and he's down a damn limb, but he’s… fine. Alive and awake, apparently two things that hadn’t been a sure thing until about an hour ago.

“Nah.” He speaks quietly enough not to carry. She’s right there, in easy reach, and Joel lifts his hand up to brush his knuckles against Tess’ bicep. “Thanks, babe.”

Tess can pretend he means for the fresh shirt, if she’s got to.

“I’ll send her home in a bit. You both look beat as I feel.” That, he says loudly enough to be heard.

But first... Joel turns his head to look at Ellie all sprawled out in her uncomfortable looking chair, the stubborn way she's set herself in it. He squints and frowns, then points to the pitcher of water and glass waiting on the side table. “Wouldja mind, Ellie?”

[vaccination]

It's a dirty trick to put the decision on Joel, and Ellie doesn't eye Tess very kindly when she does that. She knows how they all tick. If Joel wanted her to go, she'd go. She'd do anything he'd ask.

Which is why she practically jumps to her feet. Her bruised ribs don't appreciate her eagerness to be helpful but she ignores them as she has been.

"Couldn't have asked when you were upright, huh?"

It's a gentle tease. It's about all she can muster. She only opens her mouth at all to distract from the way her hands shake as she carefully pours water into the glass. Luckily, there's a bendy straw to go with it. Good thing those things take hundreds of years to decompose.

"Here," she says, standing beside the bed and holding the glass so that he can easily drink from the straw. No way did he think she was not going to do that, right? "Not too fast."

feel free to skip tess for a bit! getcha daddy-daughter time

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess nods and stoops to press a kiss to Joel's cheek, a little any time that goes back years and should go on a great many more.

It's easy to shrugs off Ellie's look; none of them are running on perfect judgement, and with the way things have been between the kid and Joel the past few years, she doesn't trust that Ellie's not going to go off half-cocked. Almost anyone would, given the circumstances, but Ellie's got fire even on a good day.

"I'll see you soon, then," she says. Give these two some time. "I'll leave the porch light on, Ellie."

She'll be up anyway, still be getting things done for her family.

thanks ma <3

[funguy]

Joel’s got good timing, even when his head is all… swimmy. It’s almost instinct, by now – juggling Ellie and Tess the way that Ellie and Tess juggled Joel. God, but sometimes it was like a damn circus, but he’d meant what he’d said to Ellie.

No way he would have done it any other way.

“’S not my fault. These damn drugs make me feel like I’ve got mush for brains.”

Tess retreats while Joel is being all but taunted by the dumb little crooked straw, and he gives Ellie a grumpy look over it. His hand feels unsteady as hell even trying to lift it above his shoulder, so he relents. It’s worth it – four days of dry, sticky mouth washed away. He only coughs a little after draining half the glass, waves Ellie off before she can fuss.

“How you doin’? You takin’ anything for all of –” he sort of lifts his hand off the blankets, gestures vaguely at Ellie, but his eyes are on her busted cheek and other visible scrapes, “that?”

[vaccination]

Soon, Tess says. Even if Joel manages to chase her out of the room, she'll camp in the hall. Tess can yell at her for it later.

She frowns--more at the comment about mush for brains than the coughing, because in the dark of that room she thought she was looking at his brains splattered on the floor--and gingerly sits on the edge of the bed, facing him. No fussing. She leans over to put the glass down within reach on the bedside table, and lies even as her ribs protest again.

"I'm fine." She didn't want anything for the pain. She didn't want anything to make her drowsy, in case something happened. It's why she's been afraid to sleep or even rest her eyes for long.

"All that matters now is that you get better, okay? So we can go home."

[funguy]

He’s stupid glad when she sits on the edge of the bed. Foolish to read into it, but he’s been left frozen out for a year and it’s like fucking springtime to have Ellie not looking at him with anger or apathy. Joel softens up, smiles a little.

“You are goin’ home. And don’t give me any crap about it, kiddo. It’s a big house to wake up in alone, and Tess needs you there. Think all this might have knocked her off her game.” Joel sighed. “Do it myself, but apparently I am stayin’ here until the doc relents… or you help me stage a breakout.”

His eyebrows lift, and he gives her one of those familiar looks – half joke, half double-dog-dare-ya, but fond all the way through.

[vaccination]

Both he and Tess know how to pull her strings. She hates it, but she can't even really say shit when he's smiling at her and calling her kiddo and alive. Fucking joking around. It feels like everything is going to be okay, and Ellie blinks rapidly, not wanting to bawl again like a child.

It's there in her voice when she speaks, that struggle not to cry.

"I'll go when you get to sleep," Ellie relents. Just like that. "But I'll be back first thing in the morning. You've gotta at least try to be a good patient. I'll break you out when the doctor says I can."

[funguy]

“Yeah, yeah. Best behavior,” Joel relents. Just like that.

He means it, just like Ellie… And like Ellie, it might also end up a lie. His reputation as stubborn has been hard-earned, after all.

He can hear those bitten back tears in her agreement. If he weren’t so tired, so stoned, he’d be weepy too. Joel’s smile flickers away, and he’s back to frowning, trying to read her clearly when all his thoughts feel like they’ve been wrapped in gauze.

“You were there, weren’t you?”

[vaccination]

Even doped up, he can see it. Ellie wishes she was better at hiding it, or they gave him more pain killers. Both, preferably. It's hard to look at him, but she can manage it--until she nods, and she keeps her head bowed.

"Yeah." Sometimes she feels like she's still in that room. It's all so vivid and fresh behind her eyelids. "Dina and I had to take shelter during our patrol because of the storm. Jesse found us, said you and Tommy hadn't come back. So we went looking for you. Split up."

Ellie had the misfortune of finding them first. Had Tess not shown up, they'd probably all be dead.

[funguy]

That was a foolish thing to do, he wants to chide. Jackson’s made them soft, trusting – or maybe he’s just freshly paranoid – but the idea of Ellie walking into that fucking vipers nest alone? He watches her stare at the linoleum as she talks, taking in her bruises all over again, but after a second Joel looks away, too. Stares at her hand curled up on the blankets.

It’s almost as hard to see her in this state as it is to be seen in his own state.

“I remember… some of it.” Joel shrugs, or tries to. Hard to do much of anything but lay there and listen to her choke back tears. “Enough to know I wish you hadn’t seen any of it. I’m okay, Ellie.”

His hand rolls over, nudging against hers.

[vaccination]

She wishes he didn't remember any of it. It'd be a kindness if those violent strikes took that from him. Because of that, here he is, trying to comfort her when he's the one looking like a mummy and missing a leg. It's enough to get some of the emotion over the dam. There's a fight in her chin against the slight tremble as everything just wants to come out all at once.

Ellie reminds herself he's drugged to high heaven and probably won't even remember this exchange, tomorrow.

"I've never been so fucking scared. I don't know what I'd do if--"

She feels like she's about to hyperventilate. It feels selfish. If he had died, before they even got a chance to fix things... there would be no coming back from that. It makes her overeager, wanting to say she forgives him for it all, even if she doesn't. It all seems so fucking stupid now. All that wasted time, all the shit she's put him through just by shutting him out.

Ellie shakes her head before taking Joel's hand. The warmth of it is a reminder that he's here and alive and she doesn't need to freak out over what could have happened. It's just more time lost if she does, right? She manages to look at him.

"I promise. I'm not gonna go anywhere. I'm gonna be here. For you, and for Tess." No running off.

[funguy]

“Hey,” he says, drawing the word out. Joel squeezes her hand, stronger now than when he’d first woken up, but still not all the way there. “It didn’t happen like that.”

And if it had… best not to think about. He feels an ugly sort of helplessness to hear her breathing start to quicken and catch. It reminds him so much of how she had cried at St. Mary’s. That had been the last real conversation they’d had until the other night: he’d thought about it a lot.

And now she was holding his hand. Making promises.

“Ellie… I’m real glad you’re here, but you don’t…” you don’t owe me, he thinks to say. Joel forces himself to meet her eyes, but it’s hard. He’s so tired. “You don’t gotta worry. Like the doc said: couple tests and I’ll be home in a few days, drivin’ Tess up the walls.”

That had not at all been what the doctor had said, and he couldn’t even really blame the chemical fog for that particular lie. Even when he wasn’t high, Joel had always drawn pretty deeply from his well of denial.

[vaccination]

He looks like hell. Hurt, and probably twenty years older than he was that night of the dance. It makes her heart ache so much she consistently feels out of breath.

"No," she says, shaking her head again. It's not going to be that simple. He's going to hate everything about the healing process, and he's going to get frustrated, and maybe he'll go to some unpleasant places. She can't sit back, knowing that. "We're done with that shit, Joel. Okay? Just... you've gotta let me help you."

She sighs, looking at their hands.

"Please."

It's not a word she uses often.