PEDRO PASCAL & BELLA RAMSEYfrom Bella's IG

PEDRO PASCAL & BELLA RAMSEY from Bella's IG

My heart!!

These two loving feral men! I don’t think I ever realized how truly similar Ezra and Joel are until this fic. The fear and love and raw emotions are so powerful this chapter! They both love Ellie so much.

“Terrible things have been done for less, songbird.”

I’m especially obsessed with this line! Ezra is so often a man of many words, but this reassurance to Joel is so brief and sweet, yet still captures Ezra perfectly!

i know you by heart - chapter 5

Series Chapter Index | Read on AO3 | In progress

Rating: Explicit, 18+, here be smut Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Prospect, Joel Miller x Ezra, Joel & Ellie, Ezra & Cee, Joel is bad at feelings and relationships, Ellie is a little shit (affectionate), mostly follows canon after season 1, SMUT, gay sex, bisexual!Joel, period-typical homophobia, light angst, angst with a happy ending, romance, age gap (~10ish years), I've probably forgotten some so please let me know <3

Chapter notes: You guessed it, there's more smut here! It's easy to skip.

You may have noticed the number of chapters has decreased, but the word count continues to go up. I'm not as verbose as our dear Ezra, but I think this will be around 35k when all is said and done.

~*~

“Hey, kiddo. Can we talk?”

He’s sitting at the kitchen table when she comes downstairs at a run. He’s going to tell her, he’s decided. It’s been months of sneaking around. He’s gotta do it.

“I’m late, I’ve got patrol training,” she says, grabbing an apple off the bowl on the counter and holding it in her mouth while trying to shoulder her pack and put on her shoes at the same time. “Mermer?”

“Whats’at?”

“Remember?” she says, pulling the apple from her teeth, taking a big bite in the process. “I told you last–”

“Yeah, last night. It can wait. Y’all be back for dinner?”

“Uh-huh sure. But I really gotta go, dude, Jesse’ll have my head if I’m not at the stables, like, ten minutes ago.”

“Alright, I’ll see you tonight,” he says, and then she’s out the door with a wave and a muffled “bye”.

She’d been on him to start patrol training the day after her birthday and he’d obliged despite a million reservations. But Tommy reassured him it was safe; they took the kids on training exercises through areas recently cleared by regular patrols and she’d be partnered with an older, more experienced patroller. She’d been more than capable on the road, and that was before she’d known how to shoot a rifle or ride a horse.

But that was also before he’d cared enough to worry about her like his own.

She’ll be fine , he reminds himself, finishing his coffee. And tonight he’ll tell her about Ezra.

Today he’s at a construction site on the west side of Jackson, working alongside Tommy and a handful of others to repair and restore a cluster of homes for the expanding community. It’s familiar work, the kind that keeps his hands occupied and his mind quiet–just what he needs.

They’re wrapping up leveling the front porch on one of the houses when he spots Maria lingering on the sidewalk. Something in the gravity of her expression has Joel’s hackles up before she can open her mouth.

“There was a…situation.”

He catches fragments of what happened through a haze of barely contained panic.

Patrol training came back with one less kid. The last group had swept the area, believing it to be clear. Trainees were sent out in pairs. A stray infected caught two of the boys by surprise.

One was bit.

“Ellie’s fine, Joel, she’s–”

“Where is she?” he barks.

“She went home, but–”

Joel storms off without waiting for her to finish, without gathering his tools, heart beating Ellie’s name in his throat.

He finds her in her room, whole and unharmed, but his relief is short-lived.

She sits on her bed in a t-shirt, holding out her right arm and staring at her scar. It’s unbandaged, unwrapped, on display. She’s normally meticulous about keeping it covered; the sight of her bare skin and the vining, twisting threads underneath sets a pit of dread to root in his stomach.

“Ellie…?”

She looks up at him, eyes two dark pools of hurt. She doesn’t have to speak the words for him to know that’s what she’s thinking.

I could have prevented this.

It should have been me.

“Hey…”

He steps into the room on tentative feet. She barely acknowledges his presence when he sits beside her, puts an arm around her shoulders, and pulls her to his side. She doesn’t cry, doesn’t say a word, just presses herself against his ribs and lets him hold on.

~*~

The town holds a funeral and she insists on attending, watching as they lower the boy’s roughshod wood casket down. Joel puts a heavy hand on Ellie’s shoulder in sympathy, feels only a flicker of shame when all he can think is that he’s glad it’s not her body going into the ground.

She’s withdrawn in the days following, and it feels like the aftermath of Silver Lake all over again. Instead of stomping around the house in a huff, the place is eerily quiet. There’s no loud music, no swearing, no questions or conversations beyond a simple yes or no, or telling him where she’ll be during the day. Her new guitar gathers dust in the corner of her room, never played.

She goes back to patrol training after four short days. They have a big fight about it, but in the end, Joel doesn’t have the strength to tell her no. She seems determined to make herself useful, though he suspects it’s more a self-imposed penance.

This is the world you wanted , she seems to say with every look, every stilted word. This is the choice you made.

More than once, he catches her staring at her scar.

Now it’s he who can’t sleep at night. He stays awake in a vain effort to keep the bad dreams at bay. He paces the halls of their home and lingers in her bedroom doorway. He takes solace in her sleeping form, her face relaxed, no longer pinched and drawn by the weight of their secrets.

He dreams he’s in a hospital holding Ellie’s bloody corpse, the back of her head cut open and gleaming and horribly empty. It thunks hollowly, sickeningly against his shoulder as he runs through endless hallways from a faceless, nameless thing. He’s never fast enough, never strong enough, never has enough time. Sometimes Sarah is there, mocking him, shaming him, and sometimes he just runs until he wakes, breathing hard, sweating through his bedsheets.

If she has nightmares, she doesn’t tell him.

~*~

It’s been over a week since the boy’s death. Ellie is stony and withdrawn, and Joel is running out of ideas, sleep-deprived and desperate.

He’s headed to see Ezra, surprised to see her coming down the porch steps with her head hung low and hands stuffed in her pockets. She jumps a little when she sees him coming.

“Hey, what’re you–”

“Hey,” she mumbles.

“Thought you had kitchen duty.”

“I do. And I’m gonna be late, so…I’ll see you tonight,” she says, bypassing him and veering up the street toward the caf.

“Ellie, wait–”

She doesn’t answer. He catches motion out of the corner of his eye; Ezra, watching from the door. 

“What was that about?” Joel asks. It comes out accusatory, almost mean.

Ezra bites his lip. “I believe we have what we in the profession call a conflict of interest. I…can’t in good conscience tell you.”

He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or angry as he watches the back of Ellie’s hoodie disappear around the corner.

“Guess I should be grateful,” he sighs finally. “‘Cause she sure as hell ain’t talkin’ to me.”

Ezra bites his lip, steps aside wordlessly and gestures him inside.

“I’m fuckin’ this up, Ez,” he whispers as the door closes behind him, surprised to find his throat thick with tears. “I’m…I dunno what to do.”

A pause, and then Ezra’s arm comes around him wordlessly. Joel ducks his head into the crook of his neck, breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of him, oaky and warm like his favorite whiskey.

He places a chaste kiss on the edge of his collarbone as Ezra’s hand comes up to cradle the back of his head. He mouths at the skin there, drags his lips against the stubble under his jaw, feeling a desperate need to sate something, seeking a kind of comfort he’s only recently become reacquainted with.

“Songbird,” Ezra whispers hesitantly.

“Please,” Joel growls low in his throat.

Ezra takes him by the hand and leads them upstairs.

+++++++++++++++++++++SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++++

Minutes later and he’s buried in Ezra to the hilt, dragging his cock slowly in and out as the shower pelts them with lukewarm water. Ezra braces himself on the tile with his forearm as Joel tries to control his pace, hands on his hips with an iron-tight grip.

“Take what you…need, cher . I like my pleasure…with a little…pain.”

That whittles down the last of Joel’s resolve. He leans forward, braces one hand on the wall while the other grabs at Ezra’s ass, driving his hips again and again, rutting hard until they’re both panting with the effort. Ezra’s grunts and moans reverberate throughout the tiny bathroom, and Joel hopes like hell Cee isn’t home, or at least wearing her headphones, because there’s no way they’re being quiet enough.

His hand finds Ezra’s on the cool tile wall, interlacing their fingers as he hurtles toward his release, pleasure already gathering, licking tendrils of heat up the base of his spine. His other hand slides around to stroke Ezra, to try to bring him along, but he’s too far gone now. The angle and the sweet slick clench around him has him toppling over the edge, spilling into him with a sharp cry.

He wraps one arm around Ezra’s shoulders and hauls him up, front flush to his back, sagging sideways against the wall for support when his legs threaten to give out. He presses a kiss to Ezra’s nape as he comes down, licks the dappled water from the base of his neck.

“Bed, mon cœur ,” Ezra pants, still rock hard in Joel’s palm.

Ezra lies down and Joel crawls over him, settling on top with one thigh nestled firmly between both of his. He’s entranced by the slick slide of Ezra’s tongue between his lips, focused on slow, tender kisses that have Ezra arching his back, rutting his unsatisfied length against Joel’s thick, muscled thigh, seeking friction.

“Alright, alright,” he soothes, nipping at his plush lower lip, swallowing his moans as he grinds down, adding pressure as Ezra’s cock slicks his thigh with precome. If he were fifteen years younger he’d probably be ready to go again, but he’ll settle for taking his time, drawing out every meeting of their lips until Ezra’s wriggling beneath him becomes too insistent.

“ Cher , please, for the love of all that is good and holy, this is torture and I must insist you–ah–give me something more to work–ohhh fuck–work with.”

“Behave,” Joel growls, and he feels the kick of Ezra’s arousal against him in response, the sound of a whimper that makes him feel heady and drunk with power.

He slides down his body, feels the clench of Ezra’s fist in his hair as he takes him in. Watches the other man’s expression, all heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips, when his tongue traces his frenulum, dragging it flat along the head before enveloping his cock completely.

Ezra’s eyes roll back and his head drops to the pillow, the elegant arch of his throat bared with a vulnerability that makes Joel’s heart clench with something like love.

“Songbird, I–Christ, man–“

“I got you,” Joel whispers, taking him as deep as he can, clenching his throat around him until Ezra’s fist tightens its grip. Joel lets out an involuntary moan at the sensation, feels Ezra’s cock throb against his lips, the hot rush of come at the back of his throat.

+++++++++++++++++++END+SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++

In the aftermath, he’s exhausted. The release and the physical exertion coupled with lack of sleep has his eyes threatening to slip shut with his head pillowed on Ezra’s thigh. He feels a hand come around his back, urging him up, and his limbs cooperate long enough for him to settle in the crook of Ezra’s good arm.

He must drift off for a while because the light has changed when he opens his eyes; it’s warmer, richer. Ezra is still there, absently twirling his fingers in the damp curls at the base of Joel’s neck.

Really should cut my hair , he thinks groggily. Gettin’ worse than Tommy.

“Hello, songbird.”

Ezra’s voice is soft.

“Hey,” he rasps. “Sorry. Haven’t…been sleepin’ much.”

“It’s no trouble,” he murmurs. 

“You got any more, uh, clients today?”

“Not a one,” his voice is low and smooth. “I’m all yours.”

Joel is too blurry around the edges to consider the deeper implications there.

He doesn’t know what prompts him to speak, but skin-to-skin in the soft light of the dwindling afternoon, the words come easier.

“Ellie’s immune.”

Ezra raises an eyebrow, but there’s no surprise in his expression.

Joel considers him, makes the connection. “But she told you that already, huh.”

For a man who loves to hear himself talk, Ezra remains infuriatingly quiet.

Joel nods. “Alright then. She tell you anythin’ else? About Salt Lake City?”

Ezra takes a deep breath, lets it out in a rush. “I wouldn’t betray her trust–”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Joel, as much as I–”

The use of his first name sounds foreign, almost like an admonishment, a warning.

“I know ,” he snaps, then softens. “I get it. I’m just…she’s fadin’, Ez. I don’t know how to get her back.”

An awkward quiet settles between them.

“How ‘bout…I’ll tell you,” Joel sighs finally. “Maybe it’ll help you help her. Like…before.”

Ezra bites his lip. “Alright. I’m listening.”

“I used to do a certain kinda…trading back in the QZ. Mostly pills and cigs, booze, sometimes weapons, ammo. Tommy was part of that for a while, then he left on some dumb crusade with the Fireflies. We lost touch an’ I got worried he’d bit off more than he could spit.

“So my, uh, partner an’ I took a job. We were supposed to take this kid to the Fireflies in exchange for a payment, supplies an’ shit, to get us out here to find Tommy. But everythin’ went wrong. Partner got bit first day out. Shit happened. By the end, it was just me an’ Ellie.

“She was a little shit,” he says, chuckling at the thought. “Kept beggin’ me for a gun, askin’ questions about stuff. Never had a minute’s peace. But she…she was smart, too. Saved my ass more than once. Had my back. We figured it out. An’ I guess…after all those months on the road…she wasn’t just a job.”

He swallows hard, suddenly wishing for a stiff drink.

“I had a kid before, y’know,” he murmurs, looking at his wrist, the tan line where his watch would be if it wasn’t sitting on the nightstand. “Didn’t, uh…didn’t think I’d ever have that again. Ellie…she did for me what Cee did for you, I guess. Made me better. Gave me back my life.”

The thought brings tears to his eyes and he pauses to wipe them away.

“Anyway. I got her to the Fireflies like I promised. But the cure they were lookin’ for came at a price. They were gonna kill her, Ez. They were gonna take out her brain and…I don’t fuckin’ know what they had planned, but she wouldn’t survive it. She was just a fuckin’ kid . I couldn’t let that happen.

“So I killed the lot of ‘em. There’s a fuckin’ river of blood on my hands,” he says drily, tilting his head up to gauge Ezra’s reaction.

A fingertip lightly traces the line of Joel’s jaw and his voice is gentle. “Terrible things have been done for less, songbird.”

“Don’t I know it,” Joel sniffs. “But Ellie…she ate it up. She believed it, all that cure bullshit. Now she’s out there thinkin’ she could have saved the damn world, and I’m the bastard who took that away. I got her out. Told her…told her there was no cure. Broke her fuckin’ heart and brought her here, and now…”

“She suspects?” Ezra prompts.

Joel snorts. “You know how she is, Ez. She knows . She knows…even if she won’t admit it. An’ I’m too much of a coward to tell her.”

“Hmm.”

“What would you do?” he asks, looking at him with red-rimmed eyes. “If it was Cee?”

Ezra grimaces, creases pooling between his eyebrows. “It’s not a fair comparison. Cee isn’t my daughter, and–”

“Bullshit,” Joel says flatly. “She’s as much your kid as Ellie is mine.”

A sharp look. “In your position…I suppose I would be reticent. But the truth will out.”

Joel goes quiet.

“Do you want my opinion?” he offers more gently.

“Wouldn’t be tellin’ you this if I didn’t.”

“If I may be blunt…your girl has endured far worse than words. The truth can’t hurt her any more than the world already has. It’s time to come clean, gut the fencer. Tell her.”

“Yeah, an’ what then?” he says.

“She makes a choice. Maybe it surprises you.”

“Are you tellin’ me this as her therapist, or as a…a friend?”

A deep sigh. “Both, I suppose.”

He considers him, then. The long line of his nose, the jut of his chin, so familiar, and yet…there’s a distance in his eyes. He wonders how much Ellie has told him, how much he inferred and intuited.

“I can’t lose her, Ez,” he says roughly. “I won’t survive it.”

“I know,” he whispers. Ezra’s hand finds his back, rubbing slow, careful circles.

“Look, I know you can’t talk about it. I know…she needs her space. But can you…can you just promise me…if she’s gonna do somethin’ stupid, you’ll tell me? Can you do that?”

Ezra meets his eyes, then his gaze darts away. It’s a split second, barely perceptible, but Joel recognizes it as a tell. “If I thought she was in particularly dire straits…yes, I would tell you.”

Joel shifts in the bed and the silence draws out. 

“I should…”

Ezra nods, pulls his hand away, lets him go.

Joel reaches for his jeans and tugs them on, then sits on the edge of the bed. The pit of dread he’s carried for the last week has resettled in his stomach.

“Look…maybe we should, uh…back off a little,” he says, throat tight. “‘Til she’s feelin’ alright again. Ain’t fair to her…or you…”

“I didn’t want to be the one to say it,” Ezra says softly. “Truth be told, I don’t want to do so, but…I understand…needs must.”

Joel leans over and kisses him long and slow, pressing his forehead to Ezra’s, letting himself stay in the moment just a little longer.

“She’ll come around,” he whispers, more to himself than to Ezra. “She’ll come around.”

~*~

But she doesn’t.

By the start of August, it’s clear she’s lost weight. The dark circles under her eyes grow deeper. She sees Ezra every week, and he and Joel pause their regular trysts. They keep things friendly but chaste, sometimes meeting for lunch or dinner, sometimes conversing on the porch while Joel plays music and Ezra rambles. The physical absence hurts like a splinter, like a persistent low-level itch under his skin, but the ache of Ellie’s slow and deliberate withdrawal cuts deeper.

And then, Joel finds himself in possession of a single can of Chef Boyardee ravioli and a sliver of hope. He trades an obscene amount of precious coffee crystals for the cheap canned pasta without batting an eye, happy to have some kind of leverage, tenuous as it is.

When Ellie comes home after her shift at the stables that evening, he’s ready with a plan.

“Hey, kiddo.”

She eyes him warily. “Hey.”

“Thought we could, uh, do dinner at home tonight.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

“Even for your favorite?” he says, holding up the can of Chef Boyardee.

Her eyebrows lift with mild interest; it’s not quite the reaction he hoped for, but it’s a hook.

“I dunno,” she sighs. “Think I’m just gonna–”

“It comes with a surprise,” he tries. “Y’don’t have to eat, just…come see?”

She sighs. “Fine.”

She trudges behind him to the backyard, where he’s set up a shallow fire pit with a bunch of old paving stones he found under the porch. An open fire is already crackling and popping and he’s dragged a big log from the edge of the yard over to use as a seat. On top of the ring of stones, he’s settled an old oven rack, upon which he places the open can of ravioli.

Hands on his hips, he turns to gauge her reaction. Her smile is tight-lipped and forced. “A fire, huh?”

“Yeah. Thought we could eat out here tonight. Kinda like old times,” he says. “‘Cept…”

He holds out a large wax bag, watches her eyes light up as she opens it and looks inside.

“Didn’t have these on the road.”

He’d traded Dina’s sister a week’s worth of work on her kitchen for a batch of homemade marshmallow squares.

“Oh, nice,” she breathes, something a little closer to her usual self. She’s already popped one into her mouth when he sits down.

“Don’t spoil your dinner,” he says, all false admonishment as she takes a seat next to him, handing him a marshmallow of his own. It’s sweet and soft and melts like pure sugar on his tongue as they wait for their canned pasta to heat over the flames.

When the food is warm, they pass the can back and forth, sharing bites of ravioli until it’s gone. He’s heartened when she eats her share and more, if not with the same gusto from before.

Then Joel pulls out two sticks he’s whittled to points and uses one to spear a fresh marshmallow, handing it to her. Her treat catches on fire almost immediately, too close to the flames, burning the outside to a blackened crisp. She eats it anyway, traces of charred goo sticking at the corner of her lips, to the tips of her fingers.

He finally hears her laugh a little when he gets some stuck in his beard. Then she starts a jousting match, trying to knock his second marshmallow into the fire and almost succeeds, leaving him with a dangling gooey mess that he smears into the arm of her sweatshirt.

“You asshole!” she says, giggling. “That’s my favorite one!”

“Yeah, yeah, it’ll wash,” he says, too eager to hear her laughter to care about the laundry.

She wrinkles her nose, pokes at him with her bare stick. “It better, old man.”

She doesn’t eat ten marshmallows, but that doesn’t matter. He hasn’t seen her smile this much in weeks. Her laughter feels like cool water poured over the scorched desert earth.

“Fire pit was a good idea,” she says after a while, arms crossed over her knees.

“Still have those occasionally,” he agrees, then gets to his feet. “Not done yet, though. One more thing.”

“I hope it’s a fucking dinosaur,” she calls, and the levity in her voice could sustain him for a month.

He goes to the back porch and pulls out their sleeping bags from under the bench. He tosses hers over.

“Might be meteor showers.”

“Really? How’d you know?”

“Some space almanac thing. Cee was tellin’ us about ‘em, thought maybe we’d try and see what we can see.”

“‘Us’, huh?”

“Oh, uh, I mean Ezra,” he says, shaking out the sleeping bag and spreading it on the ground. “She told him, he told me.”

“Hmm,” she says, lips quirked in a smile. “Sounds cool.”

He eases down, quietly pleased when she spreads her sleeping bag next to his. She plops down and stretches out with a sigh.

“The sky feels so much bigger out here,” she says.

“Reckon it does,” he agrees.

They watch the navy blue backdrop above them grow dark, stars slowly blinking into existence as the sun dips below the horizon. A bat swoops and dips overhead, black wings barely visible against the darkening sky.

“Oh! See that?”

 “What?”

“You missed it,” she huffs, pointing to their right. “Shooting star.”

“Did you make a wish?”

She looks over at him with a mix of exasperation and amusement. “No, because I’m not five, Joel.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “Never get your wish with that attitude.”

“Can you even see anything? Don’t you need, like, glasses?”

“Can see just fine, brat. Only need ‘em for reading.”

Another star streaks across the sky; Joel catches it this time and points it out, but she’s already looking elsewhere. She traces and names the constellations she recognizes, more than Joel ever knew. In school, they’re learning how to use the sky and the stars to navigate without a working compass.

After a while he tips his head, subtly trying to watch her, more entranced by Ellie’s expression than the night. Her eyes shine, reflecting all the wonders of space.

On impulse, he inches his hand over to take hers, nudging her arm in the dark. She hisses and jerks away at the contact.

“Whoa, easy…”

“It’s fine,” she says quickly. “Hurt it at the stables.”

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing.”

But now he’s sitting up, a nagging, twisting feeling in his gut. 

“Kiddo, if you’re hurt–”

“C’mon, dude, drop it. It’s not that bad,” she says. He can practically hear her eye roll.

“But–“

“Fucking hell, Joel, it’s fine,” she snaps.

“Kiddo, I’m not tryin’ to–”

She’s on her feet with a growl, kicking the blanket aside. He gets up as fast as his knees will let him and follows her into the house. He reaches out to grab her forearm. It’s a light touch, not meant to hold, just to get her attention, but she hisses again at the contact, gives a little moan.

“Don’t!”

“Hey, if somethin’s wrong–”

“It’s nothing,” she says, but there’s a frantic edge to her words now. Something fearful. “Just don’t touch me!”

“Ellie, baby–”

“No!”

She’s almost crying, he realizes, her voice reedy and threaded with panic. His resolve hardens to a fine point.

“Show me your arm,” he says firmly. “Ellie.”

Defiant, chin trembling, she groans and pulls up her sleeve revealing her usual scar covered by a thick piece of gauze.

“What happened?” he tries again. “Did someone–did someone do this?”

She doesn’t answer. When he reaches out, she flinches away as if in fear, and that hurts worse than any silence or lassitude. He takes her firmly but gently by the wrist and holds her arm steady while he peels back the gauze. The skin where her scar used to be is bright red, blistered, and oozing.

“Jesus,” he breathes, brow furrowed. “How’d this happen?”

No answer.

“C’mon, kid. I’m not mad, but you gotta tell me–”

“Lye,” she says flatly. “From the soap place.”

“Lye,” he repeats. “So…so you did this? But why would you–”

She groans and rolls her eyes, yanking her arm back. “You still don’t fucking get it.”

“No, I don’t,” he says, trying not to raise his voice. “I’m tryin’ to understand, but you won’t…you won’t talk to me. You gotta help me out here.”

“I’m tired of hiding,” she grits out. “I’m tired of…of being a fucking freak.”

“You’re not–”

“Oh, fuck off,” she growls. “You said it yourself; they see this, they shoot me. Now they won’t fucking shoot me, right?”

“Yeah, but…you hurtin’ yourself was never the plan, kid. I never woulda–I mean I wish you’d just–why didn’t you–damnit,” he growls. 

“Well, I did it, so it’s done now, okay? You don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

“Ellie, I will always worry about you,” he snaps, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s my goddamn job.”

She’s fumbling to put the bandage back on, re-sticking the medical tape, tugging her sleeve back down.

Then an idea occurs to him; a horrible thought that latches like a leech, ugly and writhing on his conscience. “Did Ezra know about this?”

Her eyes tell the truth even as she spits at him. “Why the fuck does that matter?”

Joel closes his eyes, clenching his jaw. “Because…he’s supposed to look out for you. The same way I’m supposed to look out for you, and he–”

He promised.

“‘The way you look out for me?’ What, by fucking lying to me? How the fuck is that supposed to help me?”

“I didn’t–“

“Then tell me the truth,” she snarls.

“I…did,” he swallows, tasting the bitter swirl of the lie on his tongue.

“Whatever. I have homework. Going to bed.”

“Ellie–”

She doesn’t give him a chance to answer, just stomps up the stairs and slams her bedroom door.

~*~

Ezra is startled from his work when Joel storms into the greenhouse the next morning, door banging harshly against the frame.

“Did you know?” he fires off before Ezra can open his mouth. “Did you know she was goin’ to…to do that to herself?”

A pair of women look up from their conversation, frozen and watching. Ezra eyes them, then Joel, holding up his hand.

“Joel–”

“Answer the fuckin’ question, Ez.”

He doesn’t, and his silence is all the confirmation Joel needs. Red floods his field of vision. His fists clench at his sides.

“Let’s take this conversation somewhere more private shall we?” Ezra grits out, grabbing Joel by the arm and marching them outside, around the corner, until they’re tucked between the two greenhouses and out of sight.

“You were s’posed to tell me,” Joel hisses when they’re alone.

“I tried–”

“You should have said somethin’,” he continues, feeling like a live wire, ready to snap. He pushes in closer, crowding him until he can almost feel the other man’s breath on his face.

Something flashes in Ezra’s eyes, something cold and alien that sends a trickle of unease down Joel’s spine. A subtle reminder that, underneath all the pretense of their domestic lives, they are still two dangerous men.

“Back up, Joel, or I will be forced to make you do so myself,” he says through gritted teeth, calm and cold. His eyes have narrowed to flinty points.

Joel takes a measured step back, jaw working, shame and rage roiling beneath his skin.

“Tell me,” he grits out.

“If I thought she was in any immediate peril…if I had any qualms whatsoever about her intentions…you would have been the first to know. But it was her choice, Joel, made of sound mind and body. And a clever one, too, if I must be frank. She went to the clinic as soon as it was done, saw to it the burn was treated with utmost care.”

“So you were there ?”

“No, but she relayed her plans to me and I simply–”

“So she fuckin’ planned this, is what you’re tellin’ me? An’ you didn’t think I had a right to know my kid was gonna burn off her own fuckin’ arm?”

“She specifically requested I not tell you…for reasons that have just now made themselves apparent,” he grits out.

“Damnit, Ezra,” he spits. “What the fuck kinda therapist are you?”

“The kind that’s trying to keep her safe in a world that would rather see her dead,” he says sharply. “And I believe we share a common goal in that regard, so I’d kindly ask that you refrain from the insinuation that I have anything but her best interests at heart.”

“What about my interests, huh?”

He knows he sounds petty, but he’s no longer fully in control of his mouth. There’s a venomous creature in his chest trying to claw its way out, a panicked thrashing between his ribs that tells him she’s hurt, he needs to protect her, but he can’t, he’s failing again , and Ezra’s found himself in the crossfire.

“The welfare of a child takes precedence over your bruised ego.”

“Fuck you,” he spits out. He means for it to hurt, but the words come out sounding hollow. For his part, Ezra doesn’t fire back, merely glares at him from beneath dark lashes, radiating hurt.

Joel paces like an animal, wipes the back of one shaking hand over his lips. 

“I can’t…this…this ain’t workin’,” he huffs finally, voice breaking. He can’t bring himself to meet the other man’s eyes.

“Then it would appear we’ve reached a certain…conclusion,” Ezra murmurs.

“Yeah,” he whispers, breath hitching in his throat. “Yeah, I guess we have.”

Joel brushes past him none too carefully and stalks off. Ten steps down the road and he wants to take it all back, but Ezra wasn’t wrong about his ego. It keeps him firmly, painfully pointed in the opposite direction.

Father's Day | (joel miller x reader) (18+)

A Meet Me in the Back Oneshot

pairing: sleazy gas station clerk!joel miller x fem!reader summary: Father's Day isn't your favorite day. Joel tries to make up for that. warnings/tags: [18+ MINORS DNI] age gap (no specifics), daddy!kink, praise!kink, ass-eating (f receiving), fingering, a lot of fucking angst and fluff, kind of hurt/comforty ig, reader wears joel's boxers, a lot of Complicated Father Feelings on both sides for these knuckleheads, idk where this came from word count: ~2.1K | ao3 a/n: this came out of NOWHERE but suddenly i really wanted to write a little something for Father's Day. This takes place on their first Father's Day together, so a few months post-part 6. Am I writing this to heal some of my own feelings about this holiday? who's to say, really. but i hope you enjoy this little surprise <3 Un-beta's and barely proofread so I'm sorry if there are glaring mistakes. I just wanted to get this out on Father's Day :)

Series Masterlist | Masterlist | Kofi

“Bit of a weird day for you, I take it?”

You blink out of your zoned-out state, some guy with poofy hair waxing poetic about the Easter Island heads being planted by aliens on Joel’s television (“His name is Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, baby.” “You couldn’t spell that if your life fucking depended on it, Joel. Don’t act like it’s a crime that I don’t remember his name.”).

“Hmm?”

“Today. Father’s Day. Bit of a weird day?” He asks again, pulling one of your bent legs into his lap to stroke his thumb along your thigh.

“Oh,” you say, your mind still drifting back from elsewhere. “Yeah. A bit.”

Joel nods in your peripheral, bending down to place a kiss on the hinge of your knee.

“‘Bit’ might be an understatement, actually.”

Because it is. It’s very difficult to describe your feelings about your father. Even more difficult now that he’s dead, been dead for years. He provided a home for you, bought you the necessities to live, ensured that you never went hungry or thirsty or cold. But he gifted you little else, other than crippling emotional insecurity and an inability to recognize your own achievements as good enough. It’s a bizarre cognitive dissonance that you’ve yet to fully process in your years since he’s been gone.

So, yes. Father’s Day is a bit weird for you.

“You wanna talk about it?”

You worry your bottom lip and start to move your leg out of his lap. “Not particularly.”

“Hey,” he objects, clinging to the back of your knee and hauling it back, “that’s alright with me, little sugarplum. We don’t gotta talk about that fucker if you don’t want. Lord knows I don’t wanna talk about mine.”

And he doesn’t, as far as you’ve noticed. You know barely anything about Joel’s own father. Just that he never talks about him, and he gushes about his mother in contrast. You have some creeping suspicions about his father. The way he was. You have reason to believe that he was significantly worse than your own. But he’s refused to let that get in the way of how he behaves.

Joel has a lot of sides to him, you’ve come to discover. None of them terribly violent, but a very do no harm, but take no shit type of vibe follows him around. You’ve found that other men are not eager to fuck with him. He has this undercurrent of threatening energy when another man starts to act up around a woman. You remember how he was around Nate.

Don’t remember askin’ you a goddamn thing, son.

Those pieces put together lead you to believe that his father was not the most respectful of his mother. Or kind to her at all. He’s never said as much, but you’re pretty good with context clues. You don’t think you’d ever ask, not unless he offered. But you maintain your sensitivity about the subject. He can tell you in time if that’s what he wants.

There’s a sort of comfort in him clinging to your leg, clinging to you in the manner he just did. On any other day, you might not think anything of it. Just Joel, being horny, being himself, wanting to touch you.

But today…today it feels an awful lot like “I want you” and “You’re good enough” and “I’m not leaving”.

A lot like “I’ll be the daddy yours never was”.

You feel a tightness in your throat, a stinging behind your eyes as you study his grip on your leg, his thumb pressing into the flesh, stroking along your skin .

“I want you.”

Stroke.

“You’re good enough.”

Stroke.

“I’m not leaving.”

Stroke.

You mutter, your voice thick, “Daddy?”

A crease indents between his brows as his free hand comes to cup your cheek. “What, baby?”

“I’m…I’m good, right?”

Slight confusion crosses his face. “Baby, I don’t…what do you mean? Good?”

Tears prick at your waterline as you say, “Like I’m good. I’m a good girl.”

“Oh, sugarplum,” Joel breathes, shifting onto his knees to straddle your hips and hover over you as he takes your face, framing it in his hands. “You are the goodest fuckin’ girl I ever met. Beautiful-est, sexiest, most perfect girl.”

You blink and a tear breaches containment down your cheek. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. ‘Fact I think the worst thing you’ve ever done is shack up with this ol’ bag o’bones,” Joel jokes, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly.

“I don’t,” you say quietly, lifting your fingers to drag through his beard, and Joel’s eyes flutter closed at the contact. “I think you’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. You make me feel so fucking good. All the time.”

Joel sighs, pivoting his head to the side to kiss your palm and mumble into it, “Man ain’t a man unless he’s makin’ a woman feel good. Don’t matter the kinda woman. If you’re hurtin’ her in a way that don’t feel good to her, you ain’t a man.”

You run your fingers through his hair and dip your fingers under the dangling hem of his shirt, sliding through the delicate wires adorning his rounded belly. “I like how you hurt me, daddy.”

You can see his cock stiffening in his pants, pressing against the seam, and you had already been wet since he positioned himself above you.

“I know you do, darlin’ girl. You like that daddy hurts you real good, huh?”

“Yeah,” you exhale as Joel’s hand creeps between your legs, rubbing circles into your clit through his boxer briefs you had stolen to lounge in.

“Do somethin’ for me, babygirl,” he requests, observing your face as your eyelids dance and your hips surge toward him.

“Anything,” you whisper, bucking into his hand.

He sinks down to press his lips to your ear, his hot breath sending a shiver down your spine. “I want you to forget all about that fucker who called himself your father and didn’t deserve it. You’ve got a new daddy now, don’t ya? And he knows exactly how to treat ya.”

You gasp as two of his fingers slip inside the fly of his boxers, touching your pussy skin-on-skin for the first time since this wretched day began. And it feels healing.

“Yes, daddy,” you pant, rolling your hips into his fingers as they deftly work your clit under them. You can already hear yourself sopping and wet beneath his movements, slipping between your lips and massaging you torturously as you whine.

“This day ain’t for him anymore, babygirl. Not today, not any year after. Who’s it for now?”

You breath hitches on a moan as a finger teases at your entrance, presses inside. “For you, daddy,” you reply, gasping as his thick finger glides inside your slick heat.

“That’s right,” he rasps, fitting his second finger in along with the first and rubbing at your clit with his thumb through the soaked material of his boxers. “Good girls like you who have daddies that care about them, you know what they get?”

You feel yourself barreling embarrassingly quick to your orgasm, but it’s really more of a testament to how well Joel knows your body and your pleasure at this point in your journey together. He tears you apart like wet tissue paper in his hands, like it takes a single brain cell to send you spiraling. And aren’t you blessed that he has at least one to spare.

“Wh-what do they get, daddy?” You manage to moan out, preparing yourself for whatever filth he has prepared to gift you with that will send you floating through space once it leaves his lips.

Joel captures your mouth with his in a sloppy kiss that has you gasping as you edge closer to your climax, then growls against your lips, “Good little girls with caring daddies on Father’s Day get their tiny, wet little slits fucked until they cry. Don’t they?”

Your mouth falls open in a loud, shameless moan as your hips jut forward, pressing into his hand as you feel your cunt pulse against him in powerful waves, your face flooding with heat as he fucks you through it with his fingers, groaning against your mouth as you come for him for what is likely the millionth time since the first. And yet it still rocks through your body like lightning, leaving you boneless and fried at your ends.

Your chest pounds as Joel pulls soaked fingers from your borrowed underwear and shoves them in his own mouth, sucking off the flavor of your pleasure at his hand with a passionate moan.

“Not fuckin’ enough,” Joel grunts, gripping the band of the boxers and jerking them down your hips, tossing them over the back of the couch and situating himself onto his stomach as he spreads your shaking legs wide in front of his eager mouth.

“Daddy, I’m—” you squeak out, your clit still throbbing and sensitive with your first orgasm as he breathes over it hotly.

“It’s Father’s Day, baby,” he admonishes, gazing up at you from between your thighs, “The least you can do is let me stick somethin’ in the pair of socks you got me. Come inside them like a horny teenager alone in his bedroom,” he teases, licking a long stripe from your asshole to your pussy, flicking at your clit.

“Jesus Christ,” you sigh, but you dig your fingers into his hair regardless. “You can come inside one sock. This sock,” you clarify, slipping two of your fingers inside your cunt.

Joel is quiet for a second, something clearly unusual for him, and you lift your head to glance down. And you see a man mesmerized by the motion of your own fingers fucking into yourself, his lips parted and eyes glazed over in lust.

“Fuck me. Keep doin’ that,” he mutters, settling his chin onto the cushion of the couch and spreading your asscheeks to mouth hungrily at your asshole.

“Fuck, daddy,” you whine, tugging at his hair as you fuck yourself with your fingers, thumb finding your clit in tandem.

Joel groans, face buried in your ass as you feel the sharpened tip of his tongue pushing past the tight ring. Heat burns in your stomach at the sensation, something that he doesn’t do often, and you think it’s because he knows it feels too fucking good to indulge all the time.

But he eats at you ravenously, plunging his tongue inside you in staggered tempo with your fingers in your cunt, and another orgasm is building just as swiftly as the first. The bite of his fingernails into the meat of your ass has you keening with overwhelm, so many parts of you being stimulated simultaneously, and it sends you crashing hard. Your clit beats wildly against the pads of your fingers, your cunt squeezing around your fingers, and your asshole contracting on Joel’s tongue as the rush of pleasure floods your body again. Joel’s moans vibrate against the delicate puckered skin, sending shockwaves pulsing through you as you attempt to come down.

Joel emerges from your other hole and bites kisses into the softness of your cheeks, sucking and dragging his tongue along the broken skin that nobody will see but him.

“Fuck,” you gasp, heart pounding in your chest and fingers still wound in his hair. You pull wet fingers from your pussy and brush them over his damp forehead, knowing full well that he doesn’t mind the mess.

“So fuckin’ good for me,” he rumbles against the back of your thigh, continuing a trail of kisses until he’s up your stomach, over your tits, and back at your mouth. And maybe you shouldn’t be kissing him when he just got done tongue-fucking your asshole, but you can’t bring yourself to give a shit when it comes to this man.

His hands glide up the backs of your thighs, reaffirming the spread of them as he tucks them into the hinges at the backs of your knees, his violently hard cock, newly freed of its confines, knocking and dragging at the tired seam of your cunt.

“You heard what daddy said about fucking your slit ‘til you cry?” Joel asks, snagging your bottom lip between his teeth and letting it fall back in place with a wet slap.

You gaze back up at him and nod with a whimper.

“That what you want me to do?”

You nod again. “Yes, please, daddy.”

“Alright then,” Joel says in a low rumble, taking his cock in his grip and lining himself up with your opening as he strokes your warm cheek with his other, “Then Father’s Day ain’t even close to finished yet. And seems like I got buncha shitty ones to make up for. So you better buckle in, my sweet little sugarplum. Daddy’s got a score to settle.”

Please follow @atticrissfinchupdates and opt in for notifications to get notified when I post a new fic! Visit here for instructions on how to get a tab just for the blogs you've subscribed to at the top of your tumblr page!

i know you by heart - chapter 4

Series Chapter Index | Read on AO3 | In progress

Rating: Explicit, 18+, here be smut Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Prospect, Joel Miller x Ezra, Joel & Ellie, Ezra & Cee, Joel is bad at feelings and relationships, Ellie is a little shit (affectionate), mostly follows canon after season 1, SMUT, gay sex, bisexual!Joel, period-typical homophobia, light angst, romance, age gap (~10ish years), I've probably forgotten some so please let me know <3

Chapter notes: Y'all, this whole story is easily the smuttiest thing I've ever written. You're welcome. Look for the ++++SMUT+CUT++++s if you want to avoid it.

Here's some happy stuff before things get a li'l rocky.

~*~

He justifies it by telling himself it was a one-time thing.

When it happens again three days later, this time pinned to Ezra’s bed by his dark eyes and mouth moving over him, he tells himself it’s just sex.

And when it keeps happening with a certain regularity–not frequently, but enough to establish a pattern–he tells himself he’s doing her a favor, not complicating their lives with…whatever this is.

But something in Joel has woken from a long slumber. He and Ezra keep a friendly distance in public, but it’s easy to give in to the want that’s always simmering, and more than once he finds himself pulling Ezra into a secluded alley or the darkness of the greenhouse shed, frantic as teenagers among the rakes and buckets and bags of soil. He feels like a kid again, new and fumbling and overeager. If Ezra notices, he doesn’t seem to mind.

They don’t get much time. Once a week, twice if they’re lucky, on the days when patrols and work assignments line up and Ellie and Cee are otherwise occupied. Ellie has friends now, a group to hang out with after chores and school. Some days it seems like he only sees her as she’s walking out the door. It’s a natural separation that’s healthy for a kid her age…is what he tells himself. But her pulling away from him is almost a physical pain, necessary as it is.

The loneliness needs somewhere to go.

They meet at Ezra’s place more often than not. Cee’s room is in the attic, Ezra tells him, and she likes her privacy. When she’s at home, she spends most of her time with her headphones on. She’s a writer; he says this with more than a note of pride in his voice, and Joel thinks Ezra downplays his fatherly inclinations.

He learns Ezra can wax poetic about everything under the sun. Joel usually isn’t much for conversation, but he finds the constant chatter soothing. He rarely needs to do more than nod or grunt in acknowledgment while the other man listens to himself talk. It’s a lot like being with Ellie…in some ways.

But Ezra likes to use his mouth for other things.

Sporadic days of furtive touches and meaningful glances soon turn into weeks, and eventually, Joel can’t even make the excuses sound legitimate to himself…but he still doesn’t tell her.

~*~

The creek on the far side of the south quadrant is calm and warmer than usual for this time of year; perfect grounds for Ellie to learn. They trod a well-worn path through the overgrown park, past the south fields and grazing area, their towels slung over his shoulder. He’d found a pair of swim trunks and a rash guard for Ellie at the trading post, and he’s wearing the swimsuit of his youth, an old tank top and jeans cut off at mid-thigh.

The air is warm, lush with the scent of green things, early summer temperatures setting everything to bloom. Sun filters through the trees and dapples the ground as Ellie skips ahead.

Last night, limbs heavy and sated and tangled together with Ezra’s, he’d mentioned the creek in the south quad, the swimming lessons, the hope for good weather. He might have set down a time, and if Ezra and Cee happened to join them for an afternoon swim, all the better.

“It’s fucking freezing,” Ellie remarks, wading into the water up to her calves. “Why do I have to do this again?”

“Swimmin’s a good skill to have.”

What he doesn’t say: There’s a museum on the outskirts of Yellowstone. Someday he’ll take her to see the dinosaurs, and she’s gonna need to be able to swim to get there.

What he definitely won’t say: He’ll take any chance to spend extra time with her.

“On your back,” he says, now waist-high in the water, and Ellie scowls.

“You’re gonna drown me, aren’t you? Finally had enough of me. Gonna leave my body in the river and let it wash out to sea to cover the evidence.”

“You seen any oceans around here? No, I’m gonna teach you, if you’d stop yappin’. C’mon, lean back. M’not gonna let you go under.”

One hand behind her shoulders, the other under her thighs. “Take a deep breath. Put your arms out. There ya go.”

She lays back, squints up into the sky, winces and flounders to put her feet down when she feels him pulling away.

“You’re floatin’ already,” he grins. “Stop flailin’ around and you’ll stay up.”

“No, I won’t!”

“You will,” he says. “Try again.”

She does. She’s on her back, gentle current lapping at her prone form as Joel’s hands slowly retreat, leaving her buoyant.

Footsteps on the path, a familiar tuft of white hair and tan skin emerging onto the pebbled beach. 

“Hello, young prodigy…and just Joel.”

“Hey Ezra! Look, I’m–”

She turns her head and raises her hand to wave, upsetting the delicate balance, immediately plunging beneath the surface of the water. She’s sputtering and swearing as Joel pulls her up.

“Told you to stay flat,” Joel says mildly. “Hey, Ez.”

Ezra peels off his t-shirt and tosses it on the shore, then dives under, coming up and shaking the water off his hair like a dog.

“How do you even swim like that?”

“Jesus, Ellie,” Joel sighs.

“Quite easily, gem,” Ezra says, turning on his side and gliding through the water, moving toward the deeper part of the creek.

Ellie wrinkles her nose. “Show off.”

“If I can do it one-armed, I suspect you can best me with two,” he says, flicking water in her direction, making her giggle.

“You ready to try again?” Joel asks her.

“Ugh, fine,” she says, but she’s on her back and floating within minutes, grinning up into the bright blue sky.

Joel shows her how to backstroke, then she gets brave and turns to her front. Joel keeps one hand under her belly at first, but soon she’s kicking away from him with a laugh, pulling herself through the water without touching the creekbed.

Eventually, Joel excuses himself to the pebbled beach, spreads his towel out, peels off the wet tank, and lets the sun beat down on his bare shoulders while he watches Ellie practice her dog paddle. Ezra swims alongside her like a seal, encouraging and–though she insists it’s not necessary–spotting her. Sometimes he meets Joel’s eyes and his smile is warmer than the mid-summer sunshine.

Ezra joins him a few minutes later, sprawling wet and dripping on his towel with a satisfied grunt.

“Cee couldn’t make it?”

“She’s an introverted sort. Likes her solitude and quiet.”

Joel arches an eyebrow. “An’ the poor girl ended up with you?”

Ezra pulls a face. “I can’t deny, the fates have a peculiar sense of humor.”

“Joel, look!”

Ellie dives under and the water churns around her, then pops up a few feet downstream. 

“Told ya you’d float, kiddo. Keep your legs straight when you kick.”

“I do believe your young prodigy has taken to the water like the finest of aquatic mammals.”

“You could just say she likes to swim, Ez.”

“I scrimped and saved my hard-earned pay for the use of these academic adverbs, songbird, and I intend to get my money’s worth.”

“Y'know those student loan assholes are all dead, right?”

Ezra grins. “And a well-deserved death it was, the bastards.”

Joel feels Ezra’s hand slip gently over his and squeeze. Joel squeezes back before pulling away reluctantly, nodding toward Ellie.

“She, uh…she don’t know…yet.”

“All in good time, then,” Ezra says easily, tucking his arm under his head and closing his eyes. Joel tucks his chin on his shoulder, watches the man’s chest rise and fall as the water makes little tracks down his sides, feels a gentle tug of longing in his gut.

When he looks back to the water, Ellie is nowhere to be seen and the creek is quiet.

“Ellie?”

Look away for one goddamned second…

“Ellie!”

He’s up and waist deep in the water when her head breaks the surface to his left.

“Gotcha, motherfucker,” she crows.

Joel’s heart restarts in his chest. “Christ, kid, don’t fuckin’ do that to me.”

She giggles. “Got you back in here, didn’t it?”

“Shaved a few years off my life, y’mean,” he growls, hands darting out to grab her around the waist before she can get away. He lifts her up as high as he can and tosses her unceremoniously into the water to the sounds of her shrieked protests.

“You jerk!”

A small tidal wave slaps him in the face, leaves him swiping at his eyes and making for the shore. She tackles him from behind, arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, leveraging herself onto his back like a baby monkey.

Joel catches Ezra’s eye, head rolled to one side, watching them with a smirk. Joel throws him a wink before turning his attention back to Ellie, hooking his hands under her knees and easily tossing her off his back.

“Dude, it is on ,” she says when she can speak again.

And if the swim practice eventually dissolves into a splash fight, well, that’s alright by him.

~*~

“Are you, like, seeing Ezra or something?”

Ellie meets him at the stables after patrol to help settle the horses. They walk home together, Joel achy and tired from a full day on the trails, Ellie talking about the latest drama among her friends, when she asks the question.

Joel has to force himself to keep walking and not trip over his own feet, finding it suddenly hard to make his mouth formulate a response and move his body at the same time. “I don’t–we aren’t–”

“I mean, it’s fine if you are, dude,” she shrugs. “You’re just over there every week.”

“How did you–”

“He’s good to talk to,” she continues, kneeling to examine something on the road; a caterpillar. Joel watches as she picks up a nearby leaf, carefully scoops up the critter, and carries it safely to a patch of grass.

“You don’t…you’re okay with that?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Why would I care if you’re talking with him?”

“Right,” Joel rasps, tongue like sandpaper in his mouth. “Talking. Right, yeah. We…talk.”

It’s not a lie, Joel decides, because they are technically talking.

In bed.

Naked.

After all the not talking.

Fuck.

He needs to tell her. He’s going to tell her.

“Ellie, I–”

She spins on her heel, walking backward to listen to him, head cocked. “What?”

Before he can figure out what to say, she stumbles on a large rock, flailing. He’s just barely fast enough, grabbing her by the arm before she falls on her ass. She laughs as he pulls her close to steady her, keeps her there in a one-armed hug.

“Watch where you’re goin’, kid.”

When she looks up at him, her eyes are bright with affection. There’s color in her cheeks and she’s filled out with three square meals a day and a routine and she looks so…happy.

Maybe it’s the way her head tips back against his shoulder, reminding him of how it laid almost that way when he carried her from the hospital. His throat closes with shame at the thought.

Swear to me.

He can’t do it. Can’t tell her, not yet. Not when she has something–someone–stable for the first time in her life.

“S’nothin’,” he mutters, gently dislodging her from his arm, steadying her on her feet. “Let’s go home.”

~*~

Joel returns home from a late-night patrol shift exhausted and ready to fall into bed. He trudges through the door to a note on the kitchen table. 

“At D’s, Tommy said was OK - Love Ellie”

Love Ellie.

He smiles at that, feels the warm fuzzy grip of it resonate in his chest.

Suddenly not so tired, he takes a quick shower to wash off the day and goes to Ezra’s. He lets himself in, tiptoeing up the stairs, undressing in the dark.

“Songbird?” Ezra murmurs just as he’s slipping under the covers, curling naked around his lean body and nuzzling the back of his neck.

“Sorry,” Joel whispers. “Was tryin’ not to wake you.”

“On the contrary, mon cœur , I’m glad you did,” Ezra mumbles, reaching behind them to press the length of Joel’s body closer. Joel lets his hand trail up and down Ezra’s stomach and chest, firmer than his own, not as softened by middle age. His finger grazes the pebbled skin of one nipple and Ezra sucks in a breath.

“Mmm, I do hope you’ve crept into my bed tonight with less than gentlemanly intentions.”

“Think we can make that work,” he grunts, letting his fingers travel further south, slipping beneath the waistband of Ezra’s boxers.

“Ahh, delightful,” he groans as he takes him in hand.

+++++++++++++++++++++SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++++

Joel growls in wordless agreement as he cups the velvet-soft skin of Ezra’s growing erection, holds him, traces the line from the tip of his head to the base of his shaft. He plants open-mouthed kisses along the column of his neck, the planes of his shoulderblades, tasting the salt and sweet of him. He drags the rough of his stubble against the shell of his ear until Ezra’s hips jerk forward of their own volition. With his own arousal aching and nestled between Ezra’s thighs, he sets a steady, easy rhythm with his hand, relishing every little moan and gasp of pleasure as he whispers nonsense and filth into his ear until he spills warm and sticky into Joel’s palm.

+++++++++++++++++++END+SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++

After, he falls asleep with the younger man on top of him, Ezra’s cheek pressed to his stomach, fingers threaded in his curls.

He wakes some unknown time later, momentarily confused. The sex is familiar but the staying after is new. It takes another few seconds to get his bearings. Ezra is gone, and somewhere a girl is crying. Ellie? No…Cee.

He catches faint sounds overhead; Ezra’s baritone, low and soothing. Cee’s voice fading to quiet. Eventual footsteps.

Joel is still sitting up in bed when he returns. Ezra looks surprised to see him.

“I hope the little bird didn’t wake you.”

Joel shrugs. “Nothin’ new. She alright?”

Ezra nods and bites his lip. “She’ll make do. Fragments of the past come back to haunt us in dreams. We do our best to banish them, but…”

He trails off, lingers at the side of the bed, troubled.

“Ellie has ‘em,” Joel says, settling back against the pillows. “The nightmares. Not as bad now, but it was rough for a spell.”

“Mmm. The child suffers the sins of the father,” Ezra murmurs, as if lost in his thoughts.

“Thought y’said you ain’t her father,” he says, arching an eyebrow.

“I’m not. But I knew her father…in a different life. And his sins were none too dissimilar to my own...”

After a pause, Joel puts out a hand. “You gonna stand there and sulk or are you gonna get over here and tell me about it?”

“Shall I regale you with the tale of your favorite one-armed scoundrel and his trusty sidekick?” Ezra sighs, allowing himself to be pulled into bed.

“Who says you’re my favorite?”

That draws a dry laugh. “I wasn’t aware Jackson had another such resident traipsing about to compete for my affections.”

“Y’don’t,” he mutters, kissing the bridge of Ezra’s nose.

“Very well. But I’ll warn you, this story doesn’t paint me in a respectable light. In fact, I do believe it might cause you to–”

“Ez,” he says pointedly.

This earns him a side-eyed glare. He clears this throat.

“Cordyceps certainly brought out our baser instincts, and I was no different. We’re all apex predators underneath this…gauze of societal finery. Some of us are just better at it than others,” Ezra says, leveling his gaze at Joel. “Do you understand me, songbird?”

“Yeah…I hear ya.”

“No clinical text can prepare one for the end of polite society. I have, perhaps, walked the hair’s breadth of a line between lawful and not, but the end of the world turned a new page in the story of my life. Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed…and I knew which side of that equation I preferred.

“I fell in with a rough and tumble crowd after I found the overbearing drudgery of the Atlanta QZ…not to my tastes. At times, I could perceive my life as an observational case study in human behavior. I could separate myself from the…humanity of it. It was almost too easy to detach.”

His eyes have gone cold and pensive, his jovial, boyish mask forgotten as he speaks. 

“There were a number of us…mostly men, a few women. The leader of our group was a man named Damon, and one of the women bore him a daughter before she passed. No doubt you see where this is going.”

Joel absently traces the lines and ridges of his hands, their warmth and softness in stark contrast to his words.

“That young girl’s name is Cee. And though the life of a raider was no place for a child, Cee was afforded a certain degree of…protection. But her father was a self-obsessed fool, too concerned with holding onto whatever meager power he could lord over the rest. Textbook narcissist, if you’ll allow me to don my psychotherapist’s cap for a moment. Cee was but another resource he could use to his advantage, and when he couldn’t…he didn’t give a shit, if you’ll pardon my French.

“He didn’t see the way the other men looked at her, or if he did, he didn’t…care to see,” he says, swallowing hard.

“I feel I should clarify before I continue that I’m not a good man, songbird. I was party to some abominable acts of treachery. I sat idly by while our women were used as toys, as bait…often worse. I had no interest in the fairer sex, but I was hardly their knight in shining armor.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a controlled rush.

“I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. She was cornered. One of the brutes clearly intended to have his way with her. So I disposed of him…my knife found the socket of his eye,” he says coldly. “To this day I harbor no regrets, but I knew we would both regret the punishment when it came.

“I admit, I wasn’t in my right mind. Or perhaps I was. I was seeing clearly the man I had become, the lows to which I had sunk, and I…couldn’t fathom being at my own mercy any longer.

“So I stood at the precipice of a new life and I…I offered her a choice. Stay with her father and his ilk to suffer the same fate, or come with me. And though I still don’t pretend to understand why…she chose yours truly.

“We all have our lines in the sand, songbird. Cee was mine.”

“I dunno,” Joel murmurs. “Think she did alright.”

Ezra offers a soft, sad smile. “It was winter. We were unprepared. We left what little we had behind and stole away that very night. But Lady Luck has followed me most of my life, and we always seemed to find a little extra, my birdie and I. We made it further than we had any right to.

“When the fine citizens of Jackson stumbled upon us, your esteemed sister-in-law among them, we were in a very sorry state indeed. I was ready to succumb to whatever whimsies they fancied. I suspect they might have preferred to put me down like a rabid dog, and I could scarcely blame them. But then…Cee protected me. Threw herself in front of a cocked gun and begged for my life.

“And so I remain steadfastly in her debt, songbird. I can’t claim to understand how to…to care for a girl like Cee, not in the way she deserves to be cared for. Truth be told, she’s wiser and more courageous than I could ever hope to be. But I have to try. She’s brought out something better in me, something…something I hardly know what to do with. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Joel whispers.

“I know you do. When I told you I sensed a kindred spirit, I didn’t just mean this,” he whispers, bringing Joel’s hand to his lips, brushing the faintest kiss along his knuckles. “I see the same in you and your young prodigy. Am I wrong?”

Joel purses his lips. “No.”

He nods. “Then I suppose the question becomes, how much good must one do to make up for a lifetime of atrocity? And will they understand when it’s time for us to pay the piper?”

Joel thinks of the long hospital hallways, the easy dependability of his hands as he fired round after round, each shot an echo of his own steady heartbeat, every one bringing him closer to Ellie. He tries and fails to find a shred of remorse in it, even now.

“We did the worst so they don’t have to,” Joel says softly. “If that ain’t a kind of forgiveness…I don’t know what is.”

~*~

Ellie’s 16th birthday is a barbeque in the backyard. Her friends come over–Dina and Jesse and Cee and a couple others, all of them clustered around games of horseshoes and cornhole, sneaking sips of beer when they think the adults aren’t looking.

Joel gives her her present the morning before the party when it’s just the two of them; a refurbished guitar upon which he’s carved twining vines and butterflies. He’d spent hours that winter in his workshop, sanding it smooth and coating it with stain and replacing the strings.

He ties a piece of ribbon around the fret and presents it to her with a shrug, her eyes shining as he holds it out.

“Offer still stands. I’ll teach you if you want–”

She wraps her arms around his neck before he’s even finished talking; not that he could with the lump in his throat.

“You promise?”

“Pinky promise,” he smiles into her shoulder.

She wrinkles her nose, pulls back to look at him. “What?”

“Y’know…pinky promise…?”

“Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Sometimes he forgets there are so many things she never knew; pinky promises and Christmas presents and birthdays in the backyard.

“Oh…it’s, uh, somethin’ Sarah used to do. It’s like a handshake. But…I dunno. Here.”

He takes her hand, pulls at her pinky finger to extend it, then wraps it around his own, tugging lightly. “See? Pinky promise.”

“That’s…so lame,” she says, but she’s giggling as she says it, still holding on.

Sixteen , he thinks later, dazed by the sun and the sound of her laughter. Sixteen means patrol training. Sixteen is two more years than he got with Sarah. It’s both too much time and not enough.

Ezra shows up with a flat square of a package, something on vinyl that Ellie unwraps and fawns over. When she hugs him, his look of frank surprise catches Joel’s from across the lawn. Even Tommy didn’t get that treatment, and his birthday gift was probably the favorite–he’s chaperoning an overnight camping trip outside the wall.

“Now that’s a sight I never expected to see when I signed off on mandatory counseling,” Maria says, sidling up to him at the grill. “Thought for sure she’d fight him tooth and nail.”

Joel rumbles a quiet acknowledgment, poking at the venison sausages. “Not the only one.”

“She’s a good judge of character, though,” she says quietly. “Present company included.”

“That your way of sayin’ sorry?”

“It’s my way of saying I’m glad you’re both still here.”

Just a year ago, he and Ellie had crossed the threshold into a whole new life. There were times when he was sure Maria would have preferred he turn around and go back to Boston and stay there. As many times as Tommy tried to convince him otherwise, it’s still a shock to hear it from the source.

He clears his throat. “Heard Tommy’s takin’ ‘em camping tonight. Can’t tell if that husband of yours is crazy or stupid or both.”

Maria laughs softly. “He’s desperate to make your kid like him, Joel. I swear, sometimes I think he’s more invested in Ellie than his own daughter.”

“Dunno ‘bout that. Izzy has him wrapped around her little finger,” he says, reaching for his beer. “Ellie’s just a little harder to win over.”

“Worth it, though,” Maria says.

He watches as Ellie successfully makes a ten-point shot with a beanbag, pumps her fists in the air and lets out a crude, “hell yeah!”

“Yeah, I reckon she is.”

Later, he’s trapped in a stilted conversation with one of the neighbors–a woman he doesn’t know but he’s pretty sure Maria invited on purpose if the way she’s hanging off him is any indication–when he sees Ezra head into the house.

Relieved to have an excuse to get away, he says a terse goodbye and makes his way inside. He finds Ezra at the kitchen sink.

“Songbird,” Ezra murmurs.

“How’d you know it was me?” Joel leans against the counter, arms folded, getting as close as he can without being too obvious. He watches Ezra plunk a handful of plates into the soapy water.

“You have a very particular tread.”

“I do, huh?”

“Mmm. I apologize for ducking out. I would have said something out there but it seems you were otherwise…preoccupied,” Ezra says with a hint of amusement.

“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that,” he says, frowning at the floor. “Think Maria keeps tryin’ to set me up.”

“Maybe you should tell her you’re already spoken for.”

Joel swallows hard. “That right?”

There are moments where Joel has imagined something more. Moments when they’re tangled up and sweaty and soft in a way he thought he’d forgotten how to be, where he thinks they could have…something. The kind of something he hasn’t felt in decades.

“I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t enjoy a more exclusive arrangement. I fear we’re both getting too long in the tooth to keep sneaking around like a pair of star-crossed lovers.”

“Who you callin’ long in the tooth?” he mutters, bumping his hip into the other man’s side.

“I do believe you have a solid few years on me, songbird,” 

“Haven’t heard you complainin’.”

“And you most certainly will not,” he grins. “I like my men fully fledged.”

“Christ,” Joel says, biting back a smile. “So, uh…you think I invited you over here to do my dishes?”

“Is that a euphemism, cher ?”

Joel rolls his eyes, suppresses a shiver of pleasure at the endearment, usually spoken behind closed doors.

“No, I realize you haven’t solicited me for my housekeeping services,” Ezra continues. “But I thought you might appreciate a hand.”

“Ain’t that a euphemism?”

“Depends,” Ezra lowers his voice. “Will I have the pleasure of your company tonight?”

Joel looks around, suddenly self-conscious even though they’re alone. He chucks Ezra gently on the chin, eliciting a soft grin. It’s not a parting kiss, but it will do.

“I’d like that.”

That evening, he and Ezra stand at the gate to see Ellie, Cee, Tommy, and their crew off after extracting multiple reassurances that they’ll stay within radio distance and be back before noon. Joel swallows a healthy dose of fear, claps Tommy on the shoulder, and gives Ellie a side hug that goes on for just a beat too long.

Sixteen. Christ.

But then Ezra is by his side. They walk down Rancher Street together, anticipation blooming in the early evening glow. The door has barely closed behind them before clothes are divested, and a shared shower quickly devolves. They don’t bother drying, just fall into Joel’s bed wet and naked and pliant.

+++++++++++++++++++++SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++++

Joel’s cock hits the back of Ezra’s throat, and he barely restrains himself from lifting his hips to push himself deeper. It’s too good, the hot, wet silk of Ezra’s mouth sliding over him. He brings Joel to the brink and back again, and again, and again, drawing out his pleasure until he finds himself making sounds he’s never made before.

Whining. Whimpering. Pleading .

At one point, he’s braced against Joel’s cocked knee, hand cupped around Joel’s shaft as he laps hungrily at his head, taking him in as deep as he can before pulling back and swirling his tongue. Then one slick finger presses in, curls up deep, and Joel’s groan is a full-throated animal cry. Caught in the throes, he shifts his knee and Ezra loses his balance, pitching forward, nose to Joel’s stomach.

“Shit,” Joel hisses, contrite. “Shit, Ez, I didn’t–”

But Ezra is laughing, righting himself and leveraging Joel’s shoulder to crawl up the length of his body until they’re chest to chest.

“Could have just said you wanted a kiss, songbird,” he murmurs, capturing Joel’s lips before he can apologize, making him forget why he was sorry in the first place. Then his fingers are trailing a slow but steady path between his legs and pressing inside again.

“Fuck, Ez, I–I can’t–”

“Shhh,” Ezra whispers in turn, two fingers now working in deeper, deeper. “Relax, cher . All that tension will make it mighty hard to do what I intend to do.”

“Fuuuuuck,” Joel growls, leg thrown over Ezra’s hip. His hands slide over his body without aim, finally settling on his face, pulling him in for another kiss, letting his tongue trace the plush bottom lip, nipping and supping until he’s dizzy and aching for more.

Then he’s suddenly, brutally empty, and he groans at the absence.

“Patience is a virtue, mon cœur ,” Ezra whispers, lining himself up, the hot length of him pressing inside.

Joel’s eyes are squeezed shut. He’s so full he’s forgotten how to breathe. When he opens them, Ezra is watching him with that look, the one that cuts him open and shines a light on all his most vulnerable parts. He groans, lets his thumb wander to the curve of Ezra’s lips, the corner of his mouth. Ezra takes it in, sucking hard until Joel’s cock kicks against his stomach.

“There he is,” Ezra pants, withdrawing and sinking back in. “So tight, songbird. Oh, mon amour , you do know how to treat a gentleman.”

“Ez, fuck–” he grits out, unable to focus enough to form a coherent thought, but Ezra’s mouth is on his again and he doesn’t need to think, doesn’t need to breathe, doesn’t need anything except the hot weight of his body rolling him onto his back, grinding into him, cock leaking and aching with the friction.

“Touch yourself, mon amour ,” he grits out. “I find myself lacking a hand with which to do so or I would happily make myself of service to the cause–”

“Ezra,” Joel pants, desperately trying to concentrate on adjusting to the aching, throbbing fullness within him. “Do you…ever…shut…up?”

Laughter, cut short as Joel clenches around him. “I suspect…you already know the answer–ohh yes –to that question.”

Ezra nudges that spot deep inside that makes Joel’s breath catch. He can’t resist any longer, palming his cock roughly as Ezra continues that slick, delicious slide, sawing over that spot again and again.

“Ez, ‘m gonna–”

But Ezra is preoccupied with the hollow of his throat, lips and tongue suckling, so sensitive it makes him keen. Joel lets out a cry as his cock throbs and throbs and spurts of come glaze Ezra’s stomach.

“Oh, oh, oh songbird that’s–”

Three sharp, almost painful thrusts and he’s there, spilling inside, then barely holding himself up. Joel pulls him down, revels in the weight of the other man’s lanky body on top of his sturdier one, stuck together by their shared mess.

+++++++++++++++++++END+SMUT+CUT++++++++++++++++++++

“Fuck,” whispers Joel into the white-blonde tuft of Ezra’s hair when his heart rate has finally returned to a reasonable cadence.

“Words…fail me,” Ezra mutters into his throat, and Joel grins and barks a laugh, full-throated and raw. 

“That’s not fuckin’ possible.”

“Aha, so there is a sense of humor somewhere under that brutish demeanor,” Ezra says, audibly delighted.

“Shuddup,” he mutters, nosing at the other man’s cheek until he tips his head up and kisses him with all the tenderness he can muster, which, as it turns out, is a great deal.

he just needed the right motivation was all 🥹

The Mandalorian — 2.05 The Jedi The Book of Boba Fett — 1.06 From the Desert Comes a Stranger

i know you by heart - chapter 1

Series Chapter Index | Read on AO3 | In progress

Rating: Explicit, 18+, here be smut Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Prospect, Joel Miller x Ezra, Joel & Ellie, Ezra & Cee, Joel is bad at feelings and relationships, Ellie is a little shit (affectionate), mostly follows canon after season 1, SMUT, gay sex, bisexual!Joel, period-typical homophobia, light angst, romance, age gap (~10ish years), I've probably forgotten some so please let me know <3

~*~

“Tell me again how it happened.”

It’s a standoff in the kitchen. Ellie’s face, flushed and furious, twists in a pout. Joel grips the back of a dining chair with one tight fist.

One week. It’s been one fucking week since school started, and Ellie has already come home with the pink slip of all pink slips.

“She tried to take my pen. Twice.”

“And?”

“So I…I took my knife out…”

“Uh-huh.”

 “...and I stabbed it into her desk…”

Joel winces.

“...and I told her if she tried that shit again I’d do the same to her fucking finger.”

“Ellie–”

“It’s not my fucking fault no one taught her to keep her hands to herself!”

“I know, and she–she shouldn’t have done that, Ellie, but you can’t just–”

“It’s not like I actually stabbed someone, Joel!”

“Doesn’t fuckin’ matter, kid. You can’t–you can’t do that shit here. This ain’t FEDRA. There’s no hole. Keep it up and they’re liable to put us outside the damn wall.”

“Tommy wouldn’t–“

“He doesn’t run this place. An’ Maria’s already on my ass about…everythin’.”

“Maybe we should leave, then,” she huffs.

“You don’t mean that.”

“We made out okay. We could do it again.”

“Ellie,” his voice softens. He draws his palms down his face. The start of a headache pulses behind his eyes. “Look, I know it’s…different. But we’re here now. We gotta make do.”

Four months in Jackson. Four months since he shot his way out of a hospital in Salt Lake City and carried the unconscious girl to safety. Four months since she asked for the truth and he told her the whopper of all lies instead.

When he thinks about it that way, things are going about as well as he has any right to expect.

He’d hoped going to school would give her some structure, that she’d make a few friends, but so far, every morning has been a trudge, every night a standoff. When she’s not clinging to his side like a lost lamb or waking from nightmares to crawl into his bed, she’s hurling sharp words and slamming doors and stomping around.

Months on the road together, but he’s never seen her so goddamn bratty.

He’s taking a lot of deep breaths. He’s counting to ten. He’s trying not to see the judgmental frowns from his sister-in-law when Ellie storms out of a family gathering or calls him an asshole at the caf in front of the whole fuckin’ town.

She’s never had the space to act out, he reminds himself. She’s never been fed enough, warm enough, safe enough, loved enough, and he gets the brunt of her anger. The way Sarah would come home after a long day at school and turn into a grouchy wildebeest for him after being an angel for her teachers.

It’s normal, he tells himself on the worst nights. Ellie’s making up for fourteen years of repression.

But he’s tired and she’s strumming his last nerve like it’s a fuckin’ guitar.

She’s holding out another note, this one hand-written and co-signed by members of the council. He notes Maria’s signature at the top with some disdain.

“Counseling,” Joel sighs, skimming it. “Mandated. Twelve weeks.”

“You’re not really gonna make me go, are you? C’mon, man, it’s a death sentence!”

“Hardly. You’re lucky they didn’t suspend you.”

“I wish they had. Then I wouldn’t have to go to that stupid fucking school.”

“Ellie–”

“I hate it here,” she spits out. Her lower lip trembles and he has to look away, eking out a tight breath.

“Yeah, kid. I know. But you gotta give it a chance.”

“I did, and it sucks.”

“You’re not giv–”

“Going to my room,” she huffs, already moving for the stairs. 

“You need to eat first,” he says, gritting his teeth when she rolls her eyes. “And you’re grounded.”

Those words have never come out of his mouth. He doesn’t even know what being grounded looks like in this day and age.

“What?! Joel–”

“You heard me,” he says, making it up as he goes. “Two weeks. You’re back here every night after your assignments. No wanderin’ around with your friends.”

“Lucky for me I don’t have any fucking friends.”

“That ain’t–“

“This is bullshit,” she seethes, then turns on her heel and stomps up the stairs.

“Damnit, Ellie, you need to eat–”

“I’m not hungry!”

The door at the top of the stairs slams shut, ending the conversation and leaving Joel to collapse into a chair with his face in his hands.

“Yeah,” he mutters to himself. “Yeah, this is bullshit.”

~*~

One week later she’s sulking over breakfast at the house.

“The guy wants to talk to you,” she says through a mouthful of eggs.

“‘The guy’? And close your mouth when you chew.”

Ellie wrinkles her nose, opening her mouth wide to show him her half-chewed breakfast, a move that’s painfully reminiscent of a different time, a different kid.

“I told you at dinner. The counselor guy.”

He frowns. “It’s a guy?”

She rolls her eyes. “And women can even be doctors! Dude, you are so old .”

“S’not what I meant, smartass,” he mutters. “I just…I know you’ve had some, uh…issues with…guys.”

Since Silver Lake , he doesn’t say.

“Only the creepy ones,” she says, stabbing a piece of potato. “Ezra’s not creepy. He’s, like, cool. He has a huge record collection.”

“Uh-huh. An’ he needs to see me why?”

“I don’t fucking know, dude. Unlike you, I didn’t give him the third degree.”

He bites his tongue. “Alright. When?”

“Before school. Today.”

Joel looks at the clock, then back at Ellie. 7:50 .

“So we need to go…right now,” he mutters, draining his coffee and gathering his dishes to put them in the sink. “Thanks for the notice.”

“I told you last night! Not my fault you’re deaf.”

Admittedly, she’d talked a lot at dinner last night. Mostly about how some kid named Dina was a jerk who deserved to have her finger taken off for being a ‘fucking klepto’ with her pen. But he’d been so tired and the headache behind his eyes won’t give him a rest.

“Alright, let’s go,” he sighs. “Don’t forget your bag.”

They step out into the streets of Jackson on a mild September morning. It’s the rush hour–if a town of a few hundred can be said to have a rush hour–with shift changes on the wall and everyone off to their assigned duties. They pass familiar faces; neighbors Joel still doesn’t have names for, kids he recognizes from Ellie’s school who give them a wide berth. Joel hunches inward, following the maroon cast of her sweatshirt through clusters of Jackson residents.

“You don’t have a brother, do you?” she says out of the blue.

“You know I do,” he frowns.

“No duh. But you don’t have another brother, right?”

“Not that I’m aware of, kid.”

“Like, what if your dad had a secret family–”

“Christ, where do you come up with this stuff?”

“C’mon, it can happen! I just–I wondered–”

“What the heck are you gettin' at, kid? Spit it out.”

“It’s nothin’,” she says, but there’s a weird little smile on her face. “You’ll see.” 

She leads him to the little house at the other end of town and knocks on the blue door. Ellie keeps looking up at him with the same funny smirk.

A dark-eyed man answers, peering through the screen. Dark, fitted T-shirt, slim black jeans. Younger than Joel by at least ten years, probably more, with a wide smile and messy black-brown curls with an odd streak of white at his temple.

He looks like a fuckin’ punk.

“Hi, Ezra,” Ellie says breezily. “This is Joel.”

“Hello, young prodigy,” he smiles, drawling in a southern accent that Joel can’t quite place. “Come in, come in both of you…join me in my humble abode.”

He leads them inside and to the right, to a little den just off the entry. It’s a snug office with a couch and chair, a coffee table in the center, and bookshelves lining the walls on either side. A record player sits on a podium in one corner.

Joel puts out his hand, realizing too late the other man isn’t able to reciprocate, lacking an arm with which to do so. Ellie watches with a smug smirk, lips twitching a little as Joel drops his right hand and fumbles through a handshake with his left. He shoots her a glare.

Couldn’t have mentioned that?

She shrugs, feigning a wide-eyed innocence, then looks between the two men with a kind of manic glee, as if waiting for something.

“...what?” Joel finally asks.

“You don’t see it?” She gestures to the other man.

“I don’t–”

“Jeez, I know you’re deaf but I didn’t think you were blind, too,” she groans. “He looks like you! If you weren’t, like, ancient.”

Joel’s face flushes as Ezra tries to hide a smile behind his hand.

“Enough of that, you little shi–smartypants,” Joel mutters.

“I suspect your young prodigy here gets the sense we might be of blood relation based on a similar, uh, distinguished profile.”

“That’s not, uh…that’s not possible, kid.”

“I agree,” Ezra says smoothly. “The universe is rife with serendipitous occurrences, and I do believe that’s what we have here. The mind is a funny thing. We see what we want to see, Ellie.”

“Seriously?!”

“Your dad here–”

“He’s not my dad,” Ellie corrects automatically. Joel can’t help but feel a pang of indignation at the speed with which she pipes up.

“My apologies,” Ezra murmurs. “I stand corrected. This is your…?”

“He’s just Joel.”

“Of course, gem. Just Joel,” Ezra smiles in his direction. “So I asked your Joel here to ensure you understood what we’re doing. As your guardian, Joel needs to be an integral part of this process.”

“Yeah, ‘bout that–what exactly are we doin’ again?” Joel asks.

“I suspect your young prodigy here is finding the adjustment to life in Jackson a bit…finicky. I’m here to help ease that transition in whatever way I can.”

“You can start by telling the other kids to stop fucking touching my stuff,” Ellie adds.

“Christ, Ellie–”

Ezra holds up his hand, cutting off Joel’s growl and addressing the girl. “Let’s not get weighted down by the minutiae of the situation we find ourselves in, gem. Suffice it to say, we have some work to do, and we need to do it cooperatively.”

Ellie crosses her arms and huffs, but Ezra’s easy manner seems to soothe something in the girl.

“Now that you’ve delivered your…Joel…to me, he and I are going to have a little tête-à-tête . Nothing damning, just the facts. And you, if I’m not mistaken, will be late to school.”

He leans down to scribble something on a notepad, then hands it to Ellie. “Give this to your teacher.”

“You go straight to school an’ home after chores,” Joel adds, watching the late slip disappear into the pocket of Ellie’s jeans. “You’re still grounded, ‘member?”

“Like you’d let me forget,” she mutters, trudging out the door, leaving it cracked slightly.

They hear the front door open and shut, but Ezra holds up one finger, watching the entry with sly eyes.

Wait.

Joel catches his drift.

“Ellie,” he says.

“Aw, c’mon, man,” she grumbles from the entry. “If you’re gonna talk about me, I should get to hear it.”

“We’re not going to talk about you, gem,” Ezra says. “But this is a private conversation between your esteemed guardian and myself. Please give us your discretion and make haste.”

“Ugh, fine.”

Ezra goes to the office door and gently shuts it. Suddenly closed in the small room with a stranger, Joel feels a familiar but unwelcome prickle of fear take root. It’s the same feeling that has him sleeping with a gun under his mattress and locking his door at night, despite Tommy’s assurances that Jackson is safe as houses.

Without thinking, he reaches for his holster–the holster that isn’t there, because he doesn’t wear it unless he’s on patrol, because Jackson is a community and not the fucking QZ. It’s a subtle tic, but Ezra notices.

“We can open it if you’d prefer to partake of the fresh air.”

Joel swallows his fear with a dollop of shame. “S’fine.”

Ezra nods. “Have a seat if you like.”

He takes the chair across the small room, considering Joel through thick lashes. His face is kind, but something about the man’s gaze leaves Joel uneasy, like a bug under a magnifying glass. There’s a warm, simmering coil of tension in his gut that he can’t place.

Indigestion , Joel decides. Too much coffee.

He settles on the couch, old cushions and springs protesting, then leans forward on his knees, glancing around.

“You, uh…you like music?” he says, gesturing to the shelves of vinyl just behind Ezra.

“I do,” he says. “I was fortunate to find this sizable collection in the attic upon being assigned a house. I’ve added to it as I find new treasures to trade. And you?”

“Huh?”

“Do you enjoy music, Joel?”

“Uh, sure, yeah,” he says, rubbing at his lips self-consciously. “Play a little here and there. Guitar.”

Ezra’s face lights up. “Ah! A musician!”

“Hardly.”

“Speaking as one who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, color me impressed.”

The office window is wide open, a cool autumn breeze floating through and rifling the other man’s already unruly hair, but a deep heat has settled at the base of Joel’s neck and the room suddenly feels like a hot summer’s day.

He clears his throat. “So, uh…Ellie says you’re a counselor?”

“Indeed.”

“An’ you have, uh, qualifications? Somethin’ that says you’re the man for the job?”

Ezra grins at this. “I know I don’t look the part of the sage, and I can appreciate your frank concern. I do have some experience in this area, surprising as that may be. Before the outbreak, I was a Master’s student in clinical psychology. Although I didn’t get much opportunity to practice for reasons that should be quite obvious.”

“Right.”

“The fine folks of Jackson have been kind enough to give me a place and a profession that suits my abilities. I’m not much use drawing a plow or riding a horse, I’m afraid,” Ezra continues, nodding to his right shoulder.

“But before we proceed, I should like to understand your expectations and to set a few of my own. For one, I’m not here to play Freud. And I’m hardly qualified to make a diagnosis of any sort,” he continues. “A diagnosis isn’t worth a damn in this day and age, and I suspect you’d agree.”

Joel bites his lip. “Look, uh, I’ll be honest. Last time I set foot in a place like this, it did jack shit and ended in a divorce. So you’ll forgive me if I ain’t entirely comfortable with my…with Ellie…comin’ in here and talkin’ your ear off.”

“Trust that you are not the first to express concern or have a, let’s say, downright suspicious quality about this particular practice. But I hope you’ll humor me when I say that I, like you, only want what is best for Ellie. She’s a bright girl, that one. Very perceptive.”

Joel huffs softly. “Too damn smart for her own good sometimes.”

This elicits a tiny smile, leaving Joel worried he’s spoken too harshly.

“But she’s a good kid,” he adds quickly. “A really…good kid.”

Ezra nods. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I think she could benefit from the ear of a friend. As I said, she’s bright. I wanted to try to get a clearer picture of her through your eyes. Your family dynamic, if you will. I take it there’s no Mrs. Joel? Or…Mr. Joel?”

Joel snorts. “Just me an’ her.”

“And she’s adopted?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Joel murmurs, scratching his chin. “We, uh…I had a job to move her out here. From Boston. Was supposed to find, uh…her relatives…but that didn’t work out and my brother, Tommy, gave us a place here.”

Ezra nods but doesn’t say anything further. He sprawls in the chair, legs spread, almost slouched, one forearm draped over the side. Relaxed but intent, eyebrows drawn together with an unspoken question. Joel swallows, finding his mouth suddenly dry.

“You, uh, need to write this down or anythin’?” Joel coughs, gesturing to the notepad on the coffee table in front of them.

Ezra shakes his head, smiling slightly. “No…no, we’re just having a conversation. No need to put it on the record for now. So…Boston to Jackson. That must have been quite the excursion.”

“You could say that.”

“I expect it wasn’t exactly uneventful?”

“No,” Joel says, almost too quickly. “No, it was, uh…she went through a lot. Stuff no kid should have to see…to do. You’ll have to ask her about it, though. S’not my place to talk for her.”

“I intend to do that,” Ezra nods. “I look forward to getting to know her over the next twelve weeks. And hopefully beyond, if she’ll give me the chance.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Joel mutters. “She’s a bit…gunshy. Especially around, uh, men. Even Tommy…she can’t be alone with him, an’ he’s about as tame as they come.”

“But she feels safe with you?”

“Think so. I mean, I’m all she had for months…out there,” he shrugs. “But that went both ways. We’re prob’ly what you shrinks call, uh…codependent.”

Ezra nods, voice softening. “A little codependency can mean the difference between life or death in a difficult time. And I imagine it’s been an adjustment…all this. I know we–I–found it difficult at first. Even the thickest of walls aren’t enough if we don’t feel truly safe in the heart and mind.”

Joel bites his lip. “Yeah…yeah. It’s different.”

“And how about you, Joel?”

“How ‘bout me what?”

“You’ve been through a similar ordeal, I presume, traveling together. And now you find yourself the unexpected father figure to a dynamic and spirited young lady–”

Joel bites back a scoff. “This ain’t about me.”

Ezra shrugs. “I don’t mean to pry, and you’re free to pass on anything you don’t feel comfortable answering, of course. I’m just trying to build a picture in the interest of aiding my work with Ellie.”

The temptation to pass is strong, but that heat in his gut is still there, a distraction loosening his tongue. 

“Yeah, I guess it’s, uh…it’s been a lot. For both of us, but mostly her,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “She’s not used to havin’ someone in her corner. She’s…she was an orphan…before.”

He sighs, allowing himself to sink back into the couch cushions, shoulders loosening a fraction.

“I told her not to bring that damn knife to school in the first place,” he says, glancing down at his broken watch. “But she needed it when we were on the road. She’s prob’ly needed it all her damn life. Seems wrong to ask her to give that up when we’ve only been here a few months. Not that she’s s’posed to be waving it around at folks, or…y’know.”

“Mmm,” he says. “Well, I don’t intend to lay blame here. Raising a child…alone…comes with its fair share of hardships and trials. Regardless, it’s a noble endeavor, to take one into your care.”

He snorts. “Think she’s done more to take care of me than the other way around.”

“If I may be so bold…I suspect you’re not giving yourself enough credit.”

“I’m sure she’ll tell you,” Joel says drily. “Kid’s not one to hold back.”

Ezra grins. “I sensed as much.”

He stands, offering his hand, and Joel takes it. The man’s grip is firm and warm and the memory of his touch lingers on Joel’s skin long after he’s left. That warm flare in his gut throbs, a not-unpleasant heat licking gently at the base of his spine, and he finally places it.

It’s been so damn long since he’s felt that particular burn, being on the road for months, never safe, never alone given Ellie’s constant companionship. There was probably a time or two in his early days with Tess when he found himself surprised by desire, but it was easily smothered, tamed, wrested into submission.

That night, Joel tosses and turns and finally gives into the low-level arousal that’s plagued him all damn day, palming himself roughly through his sweats until he’s fully hard.

He imagines Ezra’s eyes on him, watching, remembers the feel of the man’s skin against his palm. He bites back a groan of pleasure when he eases his waistband over his cock and takes himself out, allowing his grip to tighten and find a familiar, easy rhythm. He can’t get the younger man’s voice out of his head, that low, rumbling baritone, so oddly soothing.

He presses his face into the pillow to muffle the sound when he comes.