Hello and welcome to my very first fic! This was inspired by a “Joel Miller x doesn’t know you’re dating” writing prompt. I’d hit the writer’s block wall pretty hard on another project but was encouraged to get some practice in by doing this. I’m so glad I did. This was really fun for me to write and I hope you have just as much fun reading it. And let’s face it, now that season 2 is out I think we all need to see this man happy.
Huge HUGE thank you to the incomparable @djarins-cyare for lovingly forcing me to write this, being my beta reader, AND making the gorgeous header!
A quick note:
This is mostly canon-compliant with TLOU with one very glaring exception: Joel doesn’t go golfing. This takes place after Joel’s talk with Ellie on the porch. My man can be traumatized but he will be breathing.
No use of Y/N. Reader is female but there are no physical descriptions other than words like “pretty” (and yes, that does describe you if you’re reading this, I don’t make the rules).
Tags:
The Last of Us, Joel Miller, Joel Miller x f!reader, fluff, angst, fluff and angst, my precious traumatized Joel is just kind of an idiot sometimes, give the old man time he’’l figure it out, gratuitous mention of flannel shirts
Word count: 2148
It’s not that you aren’t grateful to have a house in Jackson.
When you’d first arrived here—after a horde of infected had attacked your group and you’d become its only survivor—you’d been under the impression it wasn’t even possible to have a house anymore. Maria handing you those keys had felt like a fever dream.
You’re insanely grateful to have a house in Jackson.
But after the third consecutive leak in your bathroom sink, you’ve just about had it with houses.
“My brother Joel and his kiddo will be livin’ right across the street from ya. If ya need anything fixed, go bug him. He needs the socialization,” Tommy had said when he and Maria had helped you move in. You think they knew you’d be needing the socialization, too. A week of wandering the forest and convincing yourself that starving to death might actually be the least awful way to die out of all of your options will do that to you.
You’ve seen Joel coming in and out of his house, taking note that he doesn’t do it nearly as often as your other neighbors do. He largely keeps to himself, aside from the young woman who appears to live in a makeshift apartment behind the property, who you assume is the kid Tommy had referred to. You’ve been too intimidated to walk over there yet. He isn’t nearly as approachable as the other people here, but then again, neither are you. You’re still a bit jumpy after a few too many dreams about gnawing teeth and endless forest.
But when your bathroom floods for the third time, you get over it.
To say that Joel isn’t used to visitors is an understatement.
He’d had another night of fitful sleep. Even though they’ve slightly improved since moving to Jackson, he’s convinced he’ll never be rid of the nightmares. He has even more reasons for them now, after all.
His relationship with Ellie is barely getting off the ground again, but he’ll take what he can get. After their talk on the porch, at least she isn’t completely ignoring him anymore.
He still dreams of sheep being stolen in the night, hearing their cries from afar as he tries and fails to find them. The endless pit of regret grows and grows in his stomach until his eyes open and his heart is racing. Usually, he has to look around the room, count the number of panes in the windows, squeeze and release his fingers and toes–anything to help him remember where he is.
Today, the knock at his door serves as a much quicker method. Grumbling but unable to not check it, he rolls out of bed and tosses the nearest shirt on. Eyes still bleary, he opens his front door. He blinks a few times, making sure he’s seeing it right. There you are, the pretty new neighbor, standing on his porch first thing on a Thursday.
It comes out almost mumbled, his Texas drawl heavier in the morning.
You must have woken him up.
“I’m uh–god, I’m so sorry. Hi. I live, uh, over there…”
“Across the street, yeah?” Joel saves you, seemingly choosing to have mercy on you while your mouth stutters open and closed like a fish.
“Yeah! That gray one. I’m um, I’m new here.”
“Only a couple’a weeks, right?” Joel asks, eyebrow quirking. He leans against the doorway with his arm above his head, and for a split second, you completely forget why you came over here.
“Yup. Fresh off the…forest.” Oh, god. Really?
Joel chuckles, and you nearly want to thank him for it.
“I take it my brother told you to come bug me if somethin’ was off in your house, yeah?”
You nod, trying not to make it any worse.
“I’ll come by later this afternoon.”
He keeps his word, and you make him dinner as payment.
He tries to refuse, but you insist, handing him a plate of the best-smelling food he’s had in years.
“You can’t refuse. My house, my rules. Eat.”
He nods and obliges. It’s clear he isn’t used to this. What you’d originally thought was a coldness in his eyes looks a lot more like sadness this close, and you wonder if that’s why he doesn’t let people get close often. You don’t bring it up.
“I haven’t had someone else to cook for in years. And I’ve never had a proper kitchen to do it in. This is very exciting for me.”
Joel chuckles, a little bit of life briefly lighting up his face.
“Don’t mind bein’ your test subject,” he says. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Oh god, ew. Please do not call me that, it makes me feel eighty years old.”
Joel breaks into a full-body laugh. You catch a hint of surprise in his eyes before he settles into it, and you wonder how long it’s been since he’s gotten to laugh like that.
He keeps coming back for dinner long after the sink is repaired. He always finds something in your house to fix, but you still always end the evening eating dinner together. Joel is surprisingly funny, his laugh lines well-earned. You learn that he worked as a contractor with his brother for over a decade before the outbreak, and he tells you stories about some of the strangest things he found in people’s drains. He tells you a lot of stories. None of them go beyond a certain depth. You don’t push it.
Because you want him to keep coming back. Because you desperately like him.
You frequently get distracted by the way his shoulders shake when he laughs, how he rubs his chin when he’s thinking, the gray hair growing in at his temples.
They’re so distracting that you start to tell him things about you. He catches you off guard, and suddenly, you’re being vulnerable.
He listens. He doesn’t share a whole lot about himself, but boy, does he listen. He doesn’t try to placate you with the same sappy bullshit everyone else tries to give you. He doesn’t do a lot of comforting at all. It’s downright refreshing.
You think that, at some level, he knows how it feels to be pitied, and it probably makes his skin crawl, too.
You think that’s why your relationship works so well.
This time, you’ve come over to his house bearing a pot full of something that smells heavenly.
Joel watches closely as you take the cover off of it.
“Chili,” you say proudly. “You said you grew up in Texas and ate stuff like this, right?”
His crooked, boyish smile makes all that effort crushing tomatoes and chopping onions worth it.
Ellie, who up until this point has simply been a person you know exists because you see her going in and out of her little apartment in the backyard, walks down the stairs, her hair wet from an apparent shower.
“I knew someone else made that. Nothing he’s ever cooked has smelled that good,” she says as she walks into the kitchen.
“You wanna have some?” you ask. “I made plenty.”
“You haven’t even introduced us, and she’s offering me homemade food. This is finally the treatment I deserve,” she declares.
“I like her, Joel,” Ellie’s sing-songy voice echoes as she walks out the door.
Joel runs his hand through his hair.
“Your kid is funny,” you comment casually. “She must get that from you.”
He knows he’s fucked up by the look in your eyes.
He doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings, he just wasn’t expecting…this.
After dinner, as he stands up to start doing the dishes, you walk over to him and put your hands on each of his cheeks before tilting up your head and trying to bring your mouth to his.
When he physically recoils, it really has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the fact that no one has tried to kiss him in years.
You curl in on yourself as you walk–more like scurry–out of his house. He hates every second of it, most of that hate directed at himself.
When Tommy opens his front door, seeing a shell-shocked Joel on his doorstep, he assumes the worst.
“That’s it?” Tommy asks Joel when he explains the situation, trying to hold back a chuckle.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?” Joel snaps his eyes back up from the floor.
“Your girlfriend tried to kiss you. It ain’t exactly news,” Tommy shrugs.
Joel feels like he’s been stabbed in the gut.
There it is again, that feeling in his chest. The rising panic. The bile coming up from his stomach and scratching the back of his throat. The sweat in his palms. He stops talking for a solid minute.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.” Tommy chuckles incredulously.
If Joel thinks about it hard enough, maybe the floor will open up and swallow him whole.
“What happened?” Maria’s voice floats in from the hallway before she walks into the kitchen.
“Joel’s lil girlfriend tried to kiss him, and he freaked out and scared the poor thing off.”
Maria laughs. “No kidding? I told you she’d be the one to try first,” she says unceremoniously, giving Tommy a pointed look.
“Yeah, yeah, I owe you two loads’a laundry.”
Joel wonders if he can vanish into thin air if he just concentrates on it really hard.
Tommy groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do not say that to the poor girl.”
Maria pretends to look at a nonexistent watch on her wrist. “By my math, you’ve got about twenty minutes to apologize before she rightfully never talks to you again,” she advises.
Joel thinks back to all the times you’ve spent together. The way you pay attention to which foods he likes. Your insistence on standing closer and closer to him. The way you light up when you look at him. How has he been this stupid?
Even the way Ellie had talked about you earlier should’ve clued him in: I like her, Joel.
“Did everyone know but me?” Joel asks, sounding pained.
Maria and Tommy nod, a slight cringe on each of their faces.
“Go get ‘em, tiger!” Tommy yells out the door behind him. Joel rolls his eyes and wonders if they’re already placing bets on how it will go.
It’s your turn to be surprised by a knock at the door.
You desperately try to wipe the tears from your face, but it’s no use. Joel gets to see you in your full, heartbroken glory.
He’s fidgeting as he follows you into the living room, his hands clenching and unclenching. He takes a deep breath. “You may have picked up that I’m a little stupid when it comes to…this kinda thing.”
Your eyebrows furrow in confusion. What kinda ‘thing’?
“I ain’t had anyone…interested in a long time. I think I forgot it was possible.”
He looks down at his hands, then back up at you. Wait, is he serious? There’s no way he’s just now realizing that you’re interested.
Joel approaches you slowly, his hands out as if in surrender, until he’s just a foot away. You can tell that his mouth is moving and that he’s probably saying words, but hell if you know what they are. What is he talking about? Why is he acting like this? You’ve been dating for weeks. Right?
“Honey, you hearin’ me?” You snap back when his thumb brushes your chin. His hand is gently resting on the back of your head, the other around at the small of your back.
“I asked ya if we can try that again.”
You’ve barely finished nodding when his lips touch yours. His flannel shirt smells like the laundry you imagine hanging from a line across the backyard of your shared home. You picture coffee in the mornings on the porch, getting a dog together, what kind of wedding dress you can find in an apocalypse, how it feels when he wraps his arm around you in bed on cold mornings…
You don’t even realize you’ve moved your hands to grab at the front of his shirt until he pulls away, an infuriatingly smug chuckle coming out of him.
“I ain’t gonna float away, sweetheart.”
You relax your grip a little but don’t move your hands entirely.
“So…does this mean we can keep havin’ dinner?” He asks, the usual sadness in his eyes replaced by something softer.
“Yeah, Joel. We can keep having dinner.”
You tug him in by his shirt to kiss him again. He’s not about to complain.
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