bloodshed, crimson clover
Pairing: Joel x Doctor F!Reader
Summary: You run a small practice in the Boston QZ, willing to treat anybody who needs it. After an encounter where you save the life of Joel Miller, you form an unlikely friendship with one of the most notorious, feared men in the QZ, a reputation you didn't realize existed until you come face to face with it yourself.
Warnings: Angst. Slow build. Mutual pining & tension (unresolved). Ambiguous ending. Game!Joel. Canon-typical violence. Reader captured with mentioned physical harm, Feral Joel with descriptions of torture/murder. Vague descriptions of injury treatments (bullet wound with cauterization, cleaning glass/debris from cuts, burn wound). Reader from California & Joel calls her Cali, Reader calls Joel Texas.
Wordcount: 12.1k
A/N: I've had this idea for a while, started it and it sat in drafts, and suddenly I was hit with inspiration again this past week. Also ty @cupofjoel for letting me scream about them to you and all your support, ily!!
In his own ways, Joel Miller was a complete gentleman.
A distinctly Southern one, with a show of selective manners from his upbringing before the world went to hell, paired with a charming ruggedness that pulled your attention to him from the very first time he stumbled through your little clinic’s doors.
You were one of the few legitimately licensed Pre-Outbreak medical professionals left in the QZ, and accepted each and every sick and injured person into your tiny practice. It took a long time and care to get a place out of the view of FEDRA’s ever-looming gaze, but even then you risked the possibility of having a target painted on your back if you treated the “wrong” person.
Somebody always owed somebody else within those tall steel walls surrounding the poor semblances of a society that, in your opinion, should have been left in the dust with the rest of the world. In not discerning who you patched up, you put yourself in danger of getting on the wrong side of someone distinctly more powerful, more violent than you.
But through your diligent work over the years, you’d gained enough of a clientele for your hidden practice to remain largely untouched. There were a few instances with graffiti, but even that wasn’t too terrible—immature Fireflies pissed off that you hadn’t accepted their offer to join them, most likely new recruits trying to earn their place in the rebel ranks.
So when the rickety old doors banged open hard enough to nearly tear them off the top hinge one night, you were up on your feet and running to assist the large body that almost fell to the floor with the momentum of how they had burst in.
There was not an ounce of anxiety in your body other than the familiar adrenaline of assess the damage, stop the bleeding, prevent infection and keep them alive as you wrapped your arms around their waist, using all your strength to pull them up and direct them to one of the two old clinic beds in the dingy old room that you sanitized as best you could between patients.
That was the first thing you noticed about Joel Miller, even though you didn’t know him by name or even face yet—he was heavy. Solid muscle underneath blood-stained fabric that you began to pull away from his torso, hardly paying attention to the low timbre of his pained grunts when the cloth stuck gruesomely to the gunshot wound you finally saw once you got the shirt off.
There were no questions in your mind other than how deep was it, was there an exit wound, did it hit anything vital, not caring how he had gotten it, who had given it to him, or why they had as you paced to your instruments, only taking a moment to make sure they were clean before pulling on a pair of gloves you were running dangerously low on, hoping that they wouldn’t get too blood-soaked in the process of keeping this man alive.
Yes, you would do all you could to save him—but you still knew in the back of your mind that two pairs of gloves spent on him would risk no gloves and losing somebody else further down the line.
It wasn’t a thought you wasted the time to entertain now as you quickly got to work. There was nothing to numb the pain of the man who laid back on the clinic bed, teeth gritted and half-delirious from blood loss, not even bothering to try and say anything to you while you saved his life.
You weren’t offended. In some odd way, it was a breath of fresh air.
Most, if not all patients you treated with this kind of wound, were usually tripping over fast anxiety-fueled words trying to explain to you how they had gotten into this situation. You supposed they were hoping you wouldn’t turn them in for whatever they most likely weren’t supposed to be doing, not knowing that the only thing you truly cared about anymore was keeping as many people as you could alive in this godforsaken dystopia.
This man though, he stayed silent. Not trying to assure you of his goodwill, whether he truly had any or not. He only stared up at the dilapidated ceiling, jaw practically wired shut, maybe to keep in the low grunts and groans that rumbled from his chest, exposed from where you had to remove his denim shirt to treat the wound on his torso.
Unfortunately, you did end up having to switch to a new pair of gloves, the bleeding slowing but stubbornly refusing to stop completely. You were reaching for more of your quickly dwindling supply of gauze to keep pressing against the wound when you heard his voice clearly for the first time.
“Cauterize it.”
You looked back at him with your hand outstretched halfway to the gauze, eyes widening at the simple command that fell from the man’s chapped lips in a low drawl that rasped with pain and dehydration.
Blinking, you looked from his face that was still directed towards the ceiling down towards the wound, a frown pulling onto your lips as you glanced back towards him and began to protest, “I don’t—”
“Cauterize. It.” He repeated firmly, jaw still clenched with the words hissed out through gritted teeth.
You stiffened, not particularly enjoying being ordered to make a medical choice in your own clinic, but then his eyes met yours, filled with an intense determination that had your hand pulling back slightly from its path towards a longer process that would've hopefully let the wound heal naturally.
Then there was a slight shift in the unfathomable depth of that gaze, a fracture in walls even more impenetrable than the ones that had surrounded you for almost half a decade, and his cracked lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them in a desperate attempt for hydration before he gave a quiet murmur of, “Please.”
There was the first hint of those selective manners, emphasized with an underlying sense of unspeakable eagerness, and your face set into your own determination, nodding as you set about preparing for a practice that wasn’t your favorite, but was sometimes necessary.
Maybe this man couldn’t afford the time it would take to stop the bleeding completely, sew it up and let the wound heal on its own. Maybe there was something out there, somebody out to get him.
Or somebody he had to protect, to get home to.
That last thought is what urged you not stop even when the man grabbed the edge of the bed in a large hand, fingers curling so tight around it that you marveled if the rickety old metal would actually break under the strength of that grip. It's what spurred you to keep going even through the sharp shouts of pain muffled around the clean, rolled up washcloth you had gotten him to bite down on through the procedure.
Once the wound was forcibly closed by the red-hot metal of your sterile knife the best you could manage, you found your eyes drawn back to the man’s face, tracing the strength of his features as they relaxed a fraction from relief once the onslaught of pain from the procedure finished.
When you began the process of disinfecting the closed wound, his face had grown so blank that you worried he was on the verge of passing out, but he surprised you by placing his palms flat against the bed, pushing himself up with a loud grunt the moment you were done treating him.
“Sir—”
Any protests towards his movements you were about to make were cut short as he swung his feet over the side of the bed, placing his boots on the ground, heavy-footed and nearly collapsing when he pushed himself up and strode forward anyway, powering through the weakness you would much prefer he would sit in before trying to leave.
“Sir, I really don’t think—”
But he was shaking his head towards your attempts to get him to rest, fingers fumbling with the buttons of where blood was beginning to dry on the faded denim of his shirt, managing to get it most the way fastened back up as he took increasingly more steady steps towards the door.
What flabbergasted you the most, though, was the way he turned his head back towards you, gaze meeting yours for the second time as he muttered a gruff, “Thank you.”
The second show of those bizarre Southern gentlemanly manners, and you still didn’t have a name for him yet.
And then he was gone.
Time passed, and you allowed the mysterious man with the dark gaze and deep drawl to fade into a memory.
Like with all your patients, you spared just enough thought in the days following his treatment to hope he was alive, even though you knew that any hope to ever get confirmation of survival was fruitless. There was no way to know how much longer somebody survived if you managed to save them.
Other than making that wish of wellbeing for yet another soul, you moved on with your life.
So when the door opened one afternoon weeks later, in much worse wear now than it ever had been from the time that patient had charged through it, you were surprised to see the very same man who was the cause of it standing in your doorway when you looked up.
When you saw him, you paused halfway in rising from your squeaky old rolling stool, remembering his face even from the way his head was turned to the side, observing how the top of the door was nearly coming off its rusty hinges before turning to find you.
With a nod, he stepped further into the room, surprising you with how carefully he shut the door behind him, a direct juxtaposition to his whirlwind entrance and exit when you had treated his gunshot wound.
“Doctor,” he greeted in that same low drawl—Southern, maybe Texas, you thought somewhere in the back of your mind—as you finally rose fully from your seat, returning his nod and automatically moving towards your sparse supplies.
“Take a seat,” you said more kindly than firmly over your shoulder, not in a haste to stop him from bleeding out on your floors this time as he seemed to be relatively fine.
“Sorry?”
You paused, glancing from one of the few pairs of gloves that remained back over your shoulder to see the man staring at you with a slight furrow in his brow, a pinch of confusion on an already severe face that pronounced deep lines of age.
He didn’t seem that old—in fact, you guessed he was perhaps around your age. But then, you supposed you were both old considering the world you had survived in, and even so, there was a haunted look to the man’s intensity that spoke of his longer years, one you weren’t even sure he knew that he exuded as his presence seemed to take up the entire room and all your attention.
“Your wound,” you answered simply, gesturing towards where you remembered the gunshot you had treated to be on his torso, and he followed your gaze to look down at himself, the deep lines on his forehead relaxing a bit when you clarified, “You’re here to have it checked on, no?”
“Uh—no,” he replied, giving a slight shake of his head, his head lifting so his eyes could meet yours again. “‘M healing just fine, ma’am.”
There were the manners you had recognized the first time, more distinct this time, and they drew you a step closer towards the man, your body turning away from your small tray of supplies to face him fully for the first time.
“Oh,” you said softly, head tilting as your own brows furrowed, confused as to what had brought him back to your clinic when he had seemed so desperate to get in, get treated as quickly as possible, and get out the last time. “What brings you back, then?”
There was another flicker of something across his face, some emotion you couldn’t name before he shifted the backpack you just now realized he was wearing off of one shoulder. It slipped to his side, where he balanced it on his hip, drawing your attention to how his broad chest and large arms narrowed down to his waist as he began to rifle through it, the quick flare of some feeling in your stomach shifting to trepidation at his actions.
Oddly enough, you didn’t get blaring warning signals of danger from this man. And besides, if he was trying to rob or kill you, he was going about it in a very odd way.
“Here.” His voice was gruff as he pulled something out of his pack, and you blinked rapidly, eyes widening at the same moment your jaw dropped at the sight of what he was holding out to you.
Supplies.
Medical supplies.
Gloves and bandages and—
“Jesus Christ, is that a stethoscope?” you gasped out, reaching forward to take the items before you could stop yourself, too thrilled by the notion of getting your hands on a crucial medical tool that had eluded you for years.
“That it would be,” the man replied, but you weren’t looking at him anymore, instead unrolling the worn leather pouch to see that there was, indeed, a stethoscope inside—one that had seen better days but, oh, the ways you were going to be able to properly diagnose more patients now because of this was—
You finally paused, back stiffening as you looked back up at the stranger who had so easily handed something this precious to you, a sense of unease finally curling uncomfortably in your gut as you took a step back.
“What do you want?” you asked quietly, uncertain as to the terms of whatever arrangement was happening, even as you were now holding the items close to your chest after rolling the stethoscope back up. Unwilling to give them back, even as you were suddenly daunted by the prospect of what he might want in exchange.
He watched you shift, eyes dropping to where you were nearly hugging the supplies to yourself now, and for a moment you worried he was about to try and take them back before his lips parted and he surprised you yet again by mumbling, “To thank you.”
You blinked, taken aback by the shockingly simple sentiment. The desire to repay kindness with more kindness, despite the kind of world you both lived in.
Despite the fact that just one glance at this man—with his hard muscles and intimidating presence, the grim set of his face and the way his muscles tensed not just with the anticipation of something going wrong at any moment, but almost an eagerness that it would happen, that there would be an outlet for that tension ready to snap—would give one the impression that there wasn’t an ounce of kindness in his body.
“That’s…it?” you ask slowly, still wary, hardly able to believe that there were no strings attached. You weren’t a pessimist, but being an optimist wasn’t exactly an option either, not anymore.
But he just nodded, shifting back on the balls of his feet, hands raising with palms turned out towards you, as if to show he had nothing to take, nothing else to give other than this.
“I repay my debts, ma’am,” he uttered with a deadly seriousness in that low drawl, and this time you definitely settled on Texas as being the origin of such a smooth accent.
“Oh,” you said softly, nodding at the explanation, because now this made more sense. Kindness was a rarity, nearly nonexistent, and it wasn’t what he was showing here.
All he wanted was to repay a debt, one that you weren’t even aware existed.
Though you certainly weren’t one to complain when this was the payment.
Clutching the medical supplies tight to your chest, you reel at how saving this man from an untimely death may have just saved even more lives down the line.
You’re opening your mouth to thank him for his own thanks, but then he’s gone once again, leaving the same way he came in, with more tempered control and less chaotic storm than the first time.
You still don’t have a name.
You settle on calling him Texas.
Not that you say it to his face, or that you even see his face.
More time passes now than those few weeks in between your first two meetings with the Southern stranger. One month goes by, then two, and you once again resign him to the confines of your memories, even though the image of him is much more adamant on breaking out since the second visit.
Second and last, you reminded yourself as you disposed of a used pair of gloves after seeing off a patient, seeing his face flash in your mind’s eye as the cause of why you were able to save this life. Why you could save yet another life after this.
And it wasn’t just the gloves, but everything he had given you. There was still quite a bit of the stash left, as you were used to knowing how to make supplies last for as long as possible, dividing them and deducing who needed what the most as you saw to patients throughout your days.
You were thankful for him. Even if this was his way of settling a debt, washing his hands of you and moving on with his life, you still felt immense gratitude.
You also felt unbearable curiosity.
Every now and then, you found yourself wondering how he had gotten the supplies, and that much at that. Surely by no legal means, and none of your business at all, but you still couldn't help but wonder.
And so with the gunshot wound he had first stumbled into your life with, you tried to paint a picture of Texas in your head.
When your hands were idle, you created stories in your mind of the life he’d led that brought him from home—or where you imagined his home to be, if you were even remotely correct in dubbing him Texas—to here.
It was an embarrassing pastime, really, and you had no business entertaining anything more than a passing thought of gratitude about him. But still, you imagined.
Sometimes that imagination was of an exciting life for him, one of travel to far places that you never got to go, pretending that this was a man who had lived through better times and had many tales to tell of them. Tales to tell you, if you were being particularly delusional.
Other times, you pictured him with a life much more humble. Born and raised in the Lone Star State, probably proud to be. A family man who yelled at football, loved barbeques and beers with buddies, working a simple 9-5 until the world went to shit.
You liked that imaginary version of him. You liked thinking that Texas wasn’t too different from you, just trying to get by in the old world and the new.
So used to him staying inside of your mind, you were surprised the next time you actually saw him again.
In hindsight, you supposed you shouldn’t have been. With the scars you had seen just on his torso when you were treating his gunshot wound, you doubted this man lived an easy life now, no matter what it had been before.
It was late, well into curfew hours, but your tiny apartment was just a few streets away from your humble clinic, and you knew the best methods to get back and forth without being seen. You liked to stay as late as you could most nights, just in case somebody needed tending to at the odd hours when nobody else would be able to help.
Your eyes were growing heavy, a few persistent yawns you failed to fight off your body’s way of letting you know you were definitely pushing it, but you held on for a little longer.
And you’d be forever grateful you did, when he was the one needing tending to that night.
The loud, metallic creak of those loose hinges pulled your attention up from where you were staring absentmindedly at your small desk, and you were jumping from your stool the moment you saw him.
There was no stumbling this time, but you saw the streaks of red well, cuts across his face and arms, worn flannel shredded around the skin embedded with glass that glinted in the low, fluorescent light of your lamp that lit up the confined quarters.
“Sit,” you were saying before anything else, and you swore you heard a quiet chuckle under a pained breath as Texas moved to sink down onto a clinic bed.
“Good evening to you too,” he mumbled, and you glanced up at the unexpected humor, unsure if it was for your expense or benefit.
Nevertheless, your eyes narrowed slightly, and his mouth snapped shut then. He settled back as you pulled your tray with you, a neat array of the dwindling supplies from what he had given you waiting underneath your fingertips before you pulled on some gloves and began.
Much like the first time, the ruined shirt was removed so you could work, but the lack of the looming threat of immediate death and ample time to wonder about the man between his visits left you now with eyes that wanted to wander.
You hoped Texas couldn’t see each time your gaze flickered across his broad chest in the low light of the lamp, observing the way it illuminated his scarred skin before quickly moving your careful attention back to picking glass and debris from the series of cuts across his body, doing your best to stop more scars from finding a home there.
“Gotta stop meeting me like this, Texas,” you find the words slipping from your lips as you focused on your work, your mind not even catching up to what you had said, too focused on your work until he spoke.
“Texas?”
You pause, feeling a surge of embarrassment at what you let slip, only used to him existing inside your thoughts and not in front of you, warm flesh beneath your hands, the heat of him radiating even through the latex gloves.
Your fingers flexed from where you were bracing yourself against the center of his chest, swallowing thickly when you suddenly noticed the steady beat of his heart underneath your palm. You refocused your attention on picking another shard of broken glass from just below his collarbone, trying to gather your thoughts enough for a somewhat reasonable answer.
“I just—” You bit your cheek, struggling with what to say, a sigh held deep in your lungs before you exhaled it slowly and mumbled, “You are from Texas, aren’t you?”
Your gaze shifted up to his neck, gently cleaning the dirt from a scrape there, your new focus of attention leaving you with a perfect view of the twitch of his lips from the corner of your eye.
“Guilty.” You can feel the rumble of his voice in his chest as he mumbles the word, and you quickly lift your hand from it, not realizing that your touch had lingered there even when you had moved away from that area of his body. “Just surprised you picked up on it, s’all.”
A little smile turned up on your lips; part pleased that you had gotten it right, part embarrassed that you had even thought of it, thought of him, that much.
Quiet fell between you and Texas for a while, as you made sure the cuts on his neck were clean before finally moving up to his face.
Your eyes met with his for the first time since he had sat down that night, and it was also the first time you noticed their color.
All that time he had plagued your mind, and you realized you hadn’t even really seen the color of his eyes. You had settled on brown, but sitting closer now, you saw the green surrounding the warmer color, creating a stunning hazel that was all you could see for a moment before your gaze snapped away, the heat of embarrassment filling you again as you pulled your focus back to his cuts.
You hesitated then, one hand hovering in the air before gently gripping his chin between a thumb and forefinger, tilting his face to different angles as you treated it, a remarkably easy task when he hardly winced with each piece of glass removed, seemingly unbothered by the pain.
Once again, you were sucked into the familiarity of the focus that came with your work, and it was Texas that broke it this time, your brain taking a moment to register what he had said.
“California.”
You paused, tweezers hovering over his cheekbone, eyes meeting that hazel again to see he was watching you, and you wondered just how long he had been doing so—the whole time? Why did you hope he was?
“How’d you know?”
Texas shrugged one shoulder, and you once again forced your attention back to your work, trying to ignore the weight of his gaze on your face now that you knew it was there.
“Lucky guess,” he said in that low timbre, and you laughed softly, shaking your head as you pulled the last shard of glass from a cut above his eyebrow, eyes lingering on a scar near his temple before dropping the glass into your tin of medical waste, full of all the once painful remnants of whatever had brought him back to you tonight.
You felt like an awful person, being glad that it had brought him back to you.
Once all the cuts were properly taken care of, you leaned back with a sigh, snapping the gloves off your hands and dropping them into the rest of the medical waste. By some old habit, you patted Texas on the knee before standing, wheeling your tray away with you as you declared him free to go once again.
“It was the accent,” he says, and you pause, looking back over your shoulder as he pushes himself to his feet, and you’re reminded once again of how big the man is when he’s not sitting still while you treat him. “Your accent gave it away. Sure as hell don’t sound East Coast.”
Another laugh left your lips, curling up into a smile as you shake your head and look back towards your remaining medical supplies. Dangerously low again after tonight, but in this moment now, you found yourself not caring just yet.
“Guilty,” you repeated his own affirmation from earlier, and one glance back showed the corner of his lips turning up into a small smirk that had much larger consequences on your heart, racing now at the sight of amusement on his stoic face before you quickly looked away again.
“Long way from home, Cali,” he says slowly, and your heart skips a goddamn beat now at that drawled nickname, as if he wasn’t doing enough already.
“Same as you, huh?” you try to sound casual as you kept your gaze focused on shifting through your supplies, reorganizing them just to keep your mind busy, even as it marveled at how he hadn’t left already,
“Not nearly as much as you.”
At the continued conversation, you finally turn, seeing him bent over at the waist and rifling through the beat-up backpack full of duct-taped holes that he had brought in with him.
You see the gun tucked into the back of the waistband of his jeans then, a sight that wasn’t surprising given the injuries he’d come to you with, but your brows still furrow, mind continuing to create different stories to solve the mystery of him before he straightens up and turns back to you.
He holds out a bundle of bandages and gloves to you, and you try to hold back your excitement at the offering as much as you can, as thrilled by the promise they offered for your work as you were by the idea that he’d already had the supplies ready this time.
The idea that he’d been holding onto them for you.
Delusional, an inner voice chides you, but you smile down at the supplies anyway, rubbing a thumb across the box of gloves and sighing quietly as your mind brings forth a time long gone where you never would have thought twice about the availability of what was once such a common thing.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” you say slowly, pondering how you had recognized his accent, attributed him to a long gone place, as he did you. “How even after all this time, we still remember those little things about a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”
He’s not looking at you anymore when you glance back up. The stoicism you had come to associate with him from just a few meetings was back, and you get the sense you had taken the rare offer of a conversation too far.
You thank him for the supplies, and he nods almost absentmindedly, seemingly half paying attention to you before he moves back towards the door, and you turn back to begin to organize your new supplies, eager to restock your workspace.
The only thing that stops you is—
“What’s your name, Cali?”
Your head lifts, body half-turning around to stare at him in shock.
Nobody has asked for your name in years.
It’s been so long since you’ve said it out loud that the syllables assigned to you at birth feel foreign in your mouth. It taunts you with a time long past, like a bad taste you have to spit out, and when you do, he repeats it back.
The way he says it is…different. He sounds it out just the same as you, but it sounds less wrong leaving his lips. He says it slowly, as if tasting each letter on his tongue, memorizing it before giving a nod and turning to leave.
“Wait.”
He does.
For some reason, he stops when you tell him to, facing the door that he himself was the sole cause of its state hanging off its hinges, something he stares purposefully at when you ask for his own name.
Texas doesn’t look back as his voice wraps around the sounds of his own name, distaste similar to yours when you gave him your own dripping from his mouth as it curves around his syllables.
You start to say it back. The name, his name, Joel leaving your lips quietly, but he’s already back out the door before you can even sound out the M of his last name.
It leaves your lips anyway, his name echoing alone in your clinic, clutching the medical supplies tight to your chest.
Somewhere buried deep in your thoughts, you ponder over the idea that, just from the sheer intensity that radiated from the man the few times you had met him, Joel Miller memorizing somebody’s name feels like irrefutable danger, like you’re in for a very short life span. It’s a feeling you ignore, an instinct you try to forget about as you recall no hostility in his eyes, the hazel sharp as shrapnel you once cleaned from his body with none of the lethality when he repeated your name back to you.
Somewhere, buried even deeper, your heart races instead at the thought that he intends to say it again.
Joel leaves, but he always comes back.
It’s never a social call. The world’s gone to shit; you don’t have the time, and you’re sure Joel doesn’t have the patience.
He shows up in your doorway when he’s injured, and leaves you with enough medical supplies to keep you going until the next time he comes along. At its core, it's a business transaction. He’s just continuing to repay a debt to you so he doesn’t owe you anything. There’s nothing fundamentally personal about it.
That doesn’t stop you from looking forward to those visits. You never know when Joel’s going to show up next, and it does more than keep you on your toes; it holds you in anticipation, keeping those daydreams in the forefront in your mind rather than the back whenever you have time to yourself now.
Because each time he comes through, he leaves you with another snapshot of himself. Another glimpse into the lives he lived once and lives now—usually the former rather than the latter, much to your surprise.
You hold every reveal of the aloof man close; purely off-hand, inconsequential things, like a love for going to the movies now rendered nonexistent, or the time he and his brother rode motorcycles cross country. Those things don’t matter anymore, but you like hearing about them. You like knowing those things about him, fitting the real pieces of him in with your imaginary ones to solve a puzzle that only existed inside your head. It fuels your imagination, spurs on your delusion.
You’re not actually sure if he realizes how much you know about him at this point, while simultaneously knowing nearly nothing about him at all. The important things, like why he keeps showing up with all those injuries, remain unknown.
Joel brings it up, just once, off-hand as you’re wrapping up his shoulder in a spot where you could tell a bullet had grazed him.
“You don’t ask.”
Your hands had paused, eyes lifting from your work to his face, glancing over his side profile before his head turned and he was looking down at you from inches away.
He was waiting for an answer, but your mind was having trouble keeping up with what he had even said, too startled by the swirling of brown and green in his eyes when they were right there. A color as warm and solid as the earth beneath your feet, grounding you to him, pulling you in with that same undeniable magnetism he had first stumbled into your life with.
His facial hair had gotten longer, dark whiskers of hair framing cracked lips, a split down the top one that you had carefully cleaned earlier. You hadn't even thought twice about it when dabbing it clean, but now you couldn’t see anything else, not until—
“Cali?”
You blinked, head snapping up as your back went ramrod straight, and you quickly turned back to where your hands had frozen mid-bandage.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“About what?” you forced the words from your lips, trying not to think about how they ached to have his own pressed to them, split lip and all molding firmly and then gently against yours—
Oh god, no, what were you thinking?
“About any of it,” Joel grumbled, waving a large hand towards his face with a vague gesture, seeming to think you had just been observing his injuries even with the way you’re now staring at thick fingers, long veins, prominent and begging to be traced—
No! Stop!
“You don’t have a policy of asking your patients questions?” he asked, arching a thick brow down at you, and you curse the way your stomach flips at the sight.
“Believe it or not, I actually have a strong one not to,” you finally answered with his shoulder now wrapped firmly, fingers grazing against the gauze before you pushed your stool away from him, gloves snapping off your hands and ignoring the ache to touch him without them. “You do what you have to in order to survive. My job is to make sure you keep surviving. Not to ask questions.”
Joel hummed, and you felt the weight of his gaze on you up until he handed you a new bundle of supplies and left again.
Sometimes, you wonder if he’s picked up anything about you in turn, the way you’ve locked away every small fragment you've learned of him. You wonder if he even cares to listen during those rare moments where you might let something about yourself, past or present, slip.
You dare to dream that he does.
Foolish.
You can almost say with certainty that Joel doesn’t realize the things about himself that you’ve picked up on. Like the movies thing—it had been revealed through slurred words at your last-ditch effort to distract him by asking him questions through a particularly painful procedure, and he had rambled in delirium about popcorn and previews for no more than half a minute before promptly passing out beneath your moving hands.
It had caused bubbling panic in the moment, but when the moment had passed and he had awoken with embarrassment about not being able to tolerate the pain, it seemed all recollection of what he had shared had disappeared.
Or maybe he was just embarrassed about that too.
You would surely never admit that the thought of the large, intimidating man even experiencing an emotion as mundane as embarrassment only endeared you to him more.
And the motorcycle trip—well, that hadn’t even been Joel’s choice in revealing.
A few years into gaining your most returning patient—“we have to get your picture on the wall,” you had jested to him about simultaneously having the best (can somehow survive a plethora of injuries) and worst (has a penchant to keep getting them) luck at one point, much to his silent judgment at your attempted joke—he had entered the clinic the same way he did upon that first meeting, and you winced at the way the door banged against the wall in the same place it'd once left a dent during that first visit from him.
A sharp disapproval at treating your humble place of work like this was on the tip of your tongue, before you saw that Joel wasn’t alone, nor was he the one currently injured.
Any questions other than those pertinent for your new patient’s survival were rapidly dismissed from crowding your fast-moving mind, the same way as always. You helped Joel set the man down, hardly even realizing he was talking, that they were both talking, until after you had snapped on your gloves and assessed the burn wound on the back of the man's forearm.
“It worked out, didn’t it?”
“Hardly,” Joel bit back, voice rough with a harsh disapproval bordering on anger, the sound of which made the hairs raise on the back of your neck as you busied yourself getting cool compresses ready. “It was goddamn stupid, is what it was. Nearly got yourself killed.”
“But it worked.”
“Tommy—”
“Lighten up, big brother,” this Tommy said while you checked his pulse and lifted his arm above his chest, and now you understood the energy filling up the entire space of the room.
There was a blood bond between the bickering men, tested by the fraying of nerves and something deeper, some unnamable tension that came from something you didn’t know, maybe wouldn’t even understand. Some after effect of the transition into this world you now lived in, something that was none of your business.
Even then, the way Tommy’s body was constantly shifting and Joel hovering over your shoulder as they kept arguing while you tried to treat the burn is what made you finally snap.
“Hey!”
The clear echo of your voice layered over the argument, and instantly broke it, both men turning down to see your narrowed gaze shifting between the two of them.
“You need to sit still because I’m not fond of breaking burn blisters, and you won’t be either,” you ordered sternly, not wavering under the attention of the man finally focused on you for the first time since coming in, before you whipped around to Joel still hovering behind you. “And you!”
For a moment, you found a bit of humor in the utterly stupefied look on the man’s face that matched that of his brother’s, before you stood from your stool so you were chest to chest with Joel.
“You need to stop breathing down my goddamn neck and let me work,” you said firmly, pointing towards the far wall, the order clear in your eyes without even having to say it at this point.
You knew Joel saw it, and to his credit all you saw was his jaw ticking, a brief flare to his nostrils before he spun on his heel, marching towards the wall to lean against it heavily. His arms crossed across his broad chest while he watched you sit and go back to cooling Tommy’s burn.
Order was regained in your clinic, and you smiled a little to yourself at having established it, before Tommy shifted forward slightly towards you and muttered conspiratorially, but not at all quietly, “No wonder you got even this hardass to like you.”
A tremor briefly overtook your fingers with the shock of the unexpected words before you flexed them, willing your grip to steady before renewing your focus on his burn injury as Joel snarled from his spot you had assigned him against the wall, “Shut the fuck up, Tommy.”
Your gaze snaps up, making sure Joel hadn’t moved, eyes narrowing when you saw he had pushed off the wall just slightly. When he notices your look, he shifts backwards, back hitting the wall again as his glare shifts off to the side, towards the loose hinges on the door now in even worse condition thanks to both Miller brothers.
There’s a chuckle from Tommy, more bristling from Joel, and the illusive taunt of hope wound tight in your chest, but nobody says anything else until you’re sending them off with the rest of your low supply of lotion that would be adequate for burn treatment, along with instructions on how to take care of the now loosely bandaged burn.
Tommy nods, thanking you when Joel snaps at him to show some manners. The younger brother leaves with a pointed look towards your door and an offhand, not unkind comment on getting it fixed, followed up quickly by an offer of doing the work himself to pay back your kindness.
Not a debt, but kindness, the exact verbiage he used himself in a Southern drawl a bit lighter, more intentionally charming than Joel’s rough allure.
Joel is still irritated, more than you’ve ever seen, but he still nods at you with a mumble of “thanks, Cali,” before following his brother as the younger man is saying “so that’s Cali!”
There's a hard smack to Tommy's shoulder to direct him away, Joel's reprimanding tone saying things you couldn’t hear before they disappear around a corner.
It was then that you decided you liked Tommy.
You like him even more when he stops by a couple weeks later to actually fix the door like he mentioned, filling your head with stories about his older brother you could have only ever dreamed of.
Because of Tommy you have reasons to giggle into your pillow that night at the thought of the two born and raised Texas boys racing across the country on motorcycles, smiling stupidly against the coarse fabric at the image of a younger Joel Miller with wind in his hair and a carefree smile on his face.
You’d only ever seen tiny twitches of those lips into halfway smirks, and so you dreamed of a time where they weren’t chapped from the smog of QZ air or split from punches to the face, but soft and pink and curling up into a real smile.
You dreamed of making him smile again.
Sometimes it takes a while for a visit from Joel.
Weeks turn into months in-between those short moments where you see his face for quick patch-ups and restocks of supplies.
Once there was about a year that passed without so much of a glimpse of him, and you had tried to settle yourself into the likely idea that he may have finally gotten himself hurt so bad he couldn’t even stumble into your clinic, when he proved your hidden, greatest fear wrong by turning up again.
He had limped through the door without a word, letting in a cold burst of snow laden air with him before it shut. A sigh of relief was exhaled from your lips, dry and chapped from the harsh winter months, and you hurried to him, slinging his arm over your shoulder as you helped him through the room to sit.
Peeling the blood caked jeans from his legs with a mumbled apology of the chill permeating your clinic this time of year, you barely got out one word out after of, “You—”
“Gotta stop meeting you like this, I know,” Joel sighed, avoiding your gaze as you settled on your stool with a familiar squeak of the old furniture, pulling on a pair of gloves you had set aside specifically for him months ago, ensuring that you’d have at least one left for him in the hopes that he could still make it back to you in one piece someday.
Even if that meant one less for someone down the line, potentially sacrificing a life for the uncertain possibility of saving somebody else.
It was unlike you.
Selfish, the inner voice of reason chides you again, as it always speaks in his presence.
And as always, you ignore it.
Your eyes flickered up from critically observing the stab wound haphazardly sewn above his knee—his own work, no doubt, and you were surprised at your frustration that he hadn’t come to you instead. You figured it must have not been an option, some reason having kept him from you, but you still fixed him with a hard look that the surly man actually shifted under, wary under the weight of your scrutiny, for whatever that was worth.
Shaking your head, you turned back to set about the process of thoroughly cleaning the wound, checking for any sign of infection and treating his body properly, because somebody had to do it if he wasn’t going to.
It wasn’t like he was reckless. Despite your visits with the man being few and far between—if they could even really be called visits in the first place—you had caught enough of a glimpse of who he was to know he was far from irrational. He wouldn’t have made it this far if he was.
Joel Miller could keep himself alive, of this you had no doubt.
But the repercussions that came with his survival, infection of the body or wounds that went deeper than that of flesh or blood, were things that you learned he merely shouldered as a consequence.
A burden you would lessen, even if all it meant was making sure one wound out of many wouldn’t fester, if he came to you with it.
It wasn’t until this one was treated and redressed, and he was pulling his pants back on while you stared down at the gloves on your hands—a pair that he had given you, that you had saved to save him, now speckled with his blood, a reminder that he was still alive but maybe just barely—and the words you had actually wanted to say when he came in, the ones that you had held back when he interrupted you, echoed through your mind again.
You scared me.
They aren’t spoken, not with words. Instead, your hand pats his knee again after his jeans are zipped up, fingers brushing against where his properly tended wound is now hidden beneath the heavy fabric.
The touch lingers, for just a second, before you’re up and moving away.
To your surprise, Joel follows.
He rifles through his backpack, and you notice a few new holes, more spots where there’s recently applied duct tape. You absentmindedly wonder why he sticks with this one. If he’s able to find and trade other sorts of goods, couldn’t he get a new backpack?
Thanks is given by reflex when he gives you the supplies, even though you know with this trade, you’re even once again. He doesn’t expect your gratitude, maybe doesn’t even want it, but there’s a sure cause for it this time as you shift through the pile to observe the weight of what you felt sitting unassuming at the bottom, but couldn't discern until you saw it.
Gloves.
Not thin latex, but heavy fabric, fitting in the palm of your freezing hand.
Not medical, but practical, even as the promise of warmth had now become a luxury.
Not for patients, but for you.
Joel had gotten this for you.
When you look back up at him, eyes wide with shock, he’s already explaining it away with a dismissive wave of his hand and gruff drawl, “Gotta keep those fingers in proper working condition, right?”
Your brow furrows then, more gratitude trapped inside your mouth as you notice something again that had lingered in your mind since he had shown up that night, something you couldn’t ignore anymore.
That this Joel in front of you now was different.
Joel had never been a beacon of warmth, but he’s never been colder.
He won’t meet your eye, doesn’t even seem bothered by his lack of ability to keep eye contact now. He’s rigid and tense, something pent-up deep inside of him, worse than ever before, and that’s when you know that whatever had happened since you saw him last had taken another piece of whatever he was. Another part of whoever you dreamed about once existing, gone.
“Hey,” you mumble, and he glances back at you, surely seeing the way your brows are knitted above eyes that put your concern on full display, just judging by the way he stiffened.
He waves another dismissive hand, looks away with arms crossed over his chest in a way that you’d seen before. It was like he was physically containing whatever emotions he was experiencing to his own body, holding them in with the flex of his muscles through his beat up winter jacket. A silent show of his strength, trying to protect himself with it, even if it couldn't stop whatever it was he was feeling.
You expect him to leave then, but his weather and time worn boots are glued to the ground, unmoving.
Eventually, he speaks, and the two words with the flat affect shake you to your core.
“Tommy’s gone.”
Fear blankets your body and sets every nerve on fire, pain flashing across your features as Joel sees it and quickly shakes his head, adding simply, nearly without emotion, “Left.”
The daunting grief at the possible death of the younger Miller brother fades, even as an emptiness remains when you softly say, “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Silence fills the space, and tension with it, setting you on edge with Joel in a way you’d never felt with him before.
“Fireflies,” he finally supplies, and you nod, looking down to the winter gloves you still held tight in your grasp, even as you set the rest of your new stock down.
So that was what had happened. The last thread holding the brothers together had snapped, and Tommy had left, taking a part of Joel with him. Maybe the last part of him, of who he had once been.
No wonder the man before you was even more hardened than you had ever seen him before.
“I see,” you whisper, and neither of you says anything more after that.
Not until you look back up at his face, refocus on the familiar features, noticing a few new lines of age in the year that had passed since last seeing him, some white whiskers in the edges of his beard, and—
Your hand is reaching out before you can stop to think, gripping his chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting his face down towards you in a way similar to when you’d treated him in the past.
Maybe by reflex from those moments, he lets you do it, even as the sharp clarity of his hazel eyes meet yours in confusion.
“What’s this?” you ask, fingers hovering over the new red line of scarring across the bridge of his nose, tracing the length of it without touch.
His eyes flash, not with anger, but with an emotion you don’t recognize. He tries to pull away, but your grip tightens, keeping him in place as you wait for an answer.
“Nothin’,” he mumbles, your eyes narrowing at the evasive answer, the way his gaze shifts away.
“Texas, this isn’t—”
Joel’s hand finds yours then, thick fingers wrapping around your smaller ones to pull them away from where you were still holding his chin, and the warmth of his skin seeping into yours hits you with a jolt as you only then realize this was touch.
Skin on skin, the very thing you had been aching for, dreaming of, for years. Those thoughts of him that kept you going on lonely days and cold nights, longing for something you could never have, an impossible reality now on the edge of your fingertips as he enveloped them in a rough palm, in his touch.
Touch.
Touch you had instigated, without the barrier of medical gloves between you. Without the clear lines that defined all you were to each other—doctor and patient, business transactions, a debt repaid again and again. Lines that now blurred when he didn’t drop your hand right away.
Blurring further, obscuring your vision in a rose-tinted blush when his grip tightened, and your breath caught in your throat at the feeling of him holding on to you.
“‘Ts fine,” Joel assures quietly, your fingers finally slipping from his, the clear hazel of those eyes you had spent a year waiting and hoping to see again, not meeting yours even once.
He hasn’t looked at you even once.
Just like that, you snap from a slow motion daze back to true reality. Your fantasies hit the ground hard, leaving you shattered with the empty aches of your heart forever unfulfilled in the dark crevices of your mind.
But even then, you can’t look away.
Again, you hear the admission aching to be revealed, slipping from the back of your mind to the forefront on waves of anxiety and need that grew larger, more disastrous, crashing through all your thoughts as you watched him looking away, but not leaving.
You scared me.
The words fill your mouth, waiting to be spoken.
But they aren’t.
Even though you wanted to tell him how his absence had filled you with fear, terror that only abates whenever he’s with you until he inevitably leaves again, you don’t dare to say it. Not when he doesn’t even look at you, even though you can’t bring yourself to look away.
The only thing you do say is an assurance that you’d make it home safe when he tells you to before he’s finally gone again.
It’s the first time that you notice that each time he leaves you with a new piece of himself, he takes a piece of you with him.
“You’re scaring my patients, Texas.”
“Good.”
“Joel.”
It’s been like this since Tommy left.
Joel visits you now when he’s nothing less than the perfect picture of health.
At first, he brings you things—the usual, necessary items that keep your unsanctioned practice running. You thank him each time, albeit with puzzled looks when there’s no visible harm on his body, confusion that only furthers when he lingers.
Eventually, he drops by without anything at all. Nothing in hand, sometimes no backpack in tow, but always with that gun tucked into the back of his waistband.
For a while, you think nothing of it. You’re glad that he’s showing his face, that you’re not glancing up with baited breath each time your door creaks open, hoping for just a glimpse of the man to assure you that he was alright.
Joel lets you see often enough now that he’s still in one piece, and for a while, you’re foolish enough to think that it’s purely for the benefit of your peace of mind.
Then one day, when he’s walking out, a patient is walking in—a younger man you’ve seen more than once, treating wounds similar to those that Joel’s had, though not quite as severe.
What is severe is the look Joel instantly shoots at him as they pass by each other, your heart sinking when the injured man scurries towards the available clinic bed while the door shuts.
You try to push it out of your mind, try to ignore the way your patient keeps watching the closed door with baited breath, until he breathes out with certain trepidation, “That’s Joel Miller.”
Pausing in the middle of splinting his broken finger, your brow furrows, glancing up at the nervous scrunching of his face as you reply slowly, “Yes, it is.”
His gaze finally shifts from the door towards you, then back again quickly, like he’s afraid the mentioned man will burst through the moment he’s not looking.
“You—” A gulp, and then the shaky question of, “You know him, don’t you?”
You finish bandaging his injury, gently placing his hand back in his lap and replying honestly, even with your uncertainty lingering at his tone, “Of course I do.”
He doesn’t say anything more until he’s leaving, glancing back at you warily, seeming to struggle over what he wants to say before settling for, “He’s…he’s got a reputation, you know. Lots of folks are scared of that Joel Miller.”
With a nervous wringing of your hands behind your back, and a calm smile on your face, you assure him, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Of course, you don’t know that Joel’s been waiting.
There’s no way to be aware that he’s been in the alley next to the clinic the entire time you treated your patient, no way to know that he trails the man the moment he leaves the safety of your building.
You’ll never know that the man you treated isn’t so good either. Or that he’s not nearly as bad as Joel.
Somebody always owed somebody else, after all. You knew it well, knew that Joel paid you back for this very reason.
But you didn’t know what happened when you owed him.
Or what happened when he went to collect.
And Joel ensured you were never getting anywhere near it.
A sentiment made clear with another broken finger for the lackey of a rival smuggler late on a payment that had sought you out for the last time that day, along with a painful promise made that he and his buddies would never step foot in your clinic again.
There was no way for you to know what happened that day, but you noticed the shift afterwards.
The way Joel takes up residence along the wall of your clinic and doesn’t leave when patients come in. How he watches them, the mere weight of his sole attention setting them on edge.
You tell them it’s fine, shoot him a glare that tells him to back off. And maybe it works for a little, but not for long.
You assure yourself that it’s fine. A reputation means nothing, and you know Joel Miller, don’t you? Or you know all that matters. And you know that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Until there is.
You’re gone.
It’s the first time since meeting you that Joel stops by the clinic, and you’re not there.
Well into the morning, and you’re not sitting there at your little makeshift desk. At this time, you should be half-rising from your stool he’s been meaning to find a replacement for just at the sound of the door opening.
You're always ready to spring into action, to save a life or make one better. Like you’ve done for him, time and time again.
It’s also the first time since before Tommy left that the door is swinging off its hinges again, and that’s when Joel knows.
You’re gone.
He doesn’t need to see the ransacked clinic, but he looks anyway. Searches frantically through the overturned furniture, your well-organized stock of supplies now a mess, some missing because he knows how much you have of everything, he silently keeps track along with you so he knows what to pick up when he and Tess go on runs.
There’s a panic settling in his gut, a burning ache crawling its way up his throat, and his hands twitch with the need to do something, to make somebody hurt, make them pay, make them talk to bring you back.
Back to the work that is your pride and joy, the four walls that have been your safety for years, a safety you’ve only ever extended to others, one you offered to him.
Joel needs to bring you back to him.
No time is wasted when he gets back to Tess. She knows you by now, having visited the clinic herself with or without Joel, for injuries or for chats. He’s noticed his partner always smiling after, the two of you forming a kinship that warms what fragments remain of his heart like so little else can.
Tess is taking charge in a way that’s familiar, and Joel is grateful for that. He doesn’t know what he’d do if left to his own devices right now, uncertain who’d wind up dead in the streets if let loose to find you on his own terms.
But he takes solace in knowing that Tess will let him do what he does best when it's time.
And when it is time, when they’ve cornered the last person who’s had your name leave their lips, the bone of their arm shatters underneath a brutal stomp and twist of Joel’s heavy boot after a series of ruthless hits that have left them begging for mercy on the ground.
But it gets them what they need—a location, information on a deal gone south for a specific kind of medicine that these smugglers had a monopoly on, medicine you most likely needed to save one patient, and deemed it a risk worth taking just for that.
Smugglers that Joel had very specifically warned to stay the fuck away from you.
The whimpering man under his boot gets a bullet to the head for not heeding his warning, for taking you from him, and they’re on their way without another word.
Fear burns so hot that it singes his veins, making him move faster, hit harder when they get to the warehouse. Red is all he sees and it’s all he feels, running through his fingers as he pulls triggers and chokes windpipes before twisting, snapping. Blood, hot and metallic, staining his skin in splatters up to his forearms as he moves from one to the next.
Joel has lost too much to make it quick, and the thought of losing you too only adds to his rage, making his preemptive vengeance all the more deadly. He lays waste to them all, sparing not a soul of his brutality.
His shiv sinks into a neck, and he leaves it there for too long before pulling it out, leaving a streak of evidence of another life he’s stolen across his face as he turns, more than ready for the next one.
Movement catches the corner of his eye, and he’s lifting his gun towards where he sees legs pushing against the ground, a body scuttling away into a corner out of his sight, cowering behind a tower of boxes.
Joel’s finger is already on the trigger before he sees the shoes peeking out behind the cardboard, the tips of well-worn sneakers that he knows well, having seen them turn and move quickly around one tiny room for years.
Relief doesn’t rush to him yet, not until he’s rounded the boxes, not until he really sees you.
There’s an angry purple bruise forming along your jaw, and fury burns hotter, seeping through the edges of sweet relief that you’re okay, although injured.
You whimper, and his heart breaks, reaching out a hand towards you to help you up, to bring you back to him.
At the movement, you press your back against the wall, cowering away even further as your eyes fix onto his face.
Joel’s brow furrows, anger and relief both ebbing away slowly, and he says your name, holding his palm out further for you to take.
You whimper again.
Eyes wide and clouded with fear, lip quivering as you shrink away from the hand that he had stained with blood again and again to find you, to bring you back.
Above where your back is pressed to the wall, there is a line of windows. They offer a view to the first floor of the warehouse, now littered with bodies he had left, a clear trail of evidence of his path of destruction from the moment he had entered the building.
And that’s when Joel realizes you’re afraid of him.
The worst part is, he’s not surprised, not even in the slightest.
On the contrary, he thinks some part of him had been waiting for this. Waiting for you to finally open your eyes and see him for what he is.
Someone like you, who has spent her whole life patching up the kind of wounds he inflicts, who saves lives and gives while all he does is takes and takes, by his own choice or some kind of curse—of course you’re afraid.
Joel’s bloodstained fingers twitch, remembering the softness of your own the one and only time he had held them that cold winter night. His hand hovers in the air halfway to you, yearning to comfort a hand that heals with one that only knows how to kill.
But then you flinch at the twitch of his fingers, having witnessed their deadliness, and he pulls back.
When Tess arrives a moment later, you turn to her, allowing the other woman to pull you to your feet. You lean heavily on her as she helps you leave, takes you back, but not to him.
Because Joel knows now with certainty that it's a distance that was never meant to be closed.
He knows it's for the better.
Weeks turn into months once again.
Joel doesn’t come back.
As time passes, you reflect on the man you’d known, and the one everybody else knew. You compare the image of those half-smirks that you always hoped would turn into a smile to the face splattered with blood as he ruthlessly murdered any man in his path.
You feel like a fool. For more reason than one, but mostly because you knew.
You had seen the signs of just who Joel Miller was from the first time you met him, signs that you had ignored every time they lit up right in front of your face, blaring signals that you replaced with the naïve images you had created in your mind’s eye. Fantasies of a man that may have existed once, long ago, but not anymore.
It wasn’t the killing that bothered you. You knew what people had to do to survive, and you had always known just from his injuries that this was an indisputable truth heavily ingrained in Joel’s life, no matter who you imagined him to be before.
No, it wasn’t the killing that scared you, but the slaughter.
What you were afraid of was his lack of mercy. His lethality. His intent to make them suffer.
After days of being held at the whims of dangerous men, only to discover that the only man you had come to consider a safe space in years was just as, if not more dangerous than them…
It rattled you.
Changed you.
Left a scar that even you didn’t know how to heal.
In the days that followed, you were glad that Joel kept his distance. You needed time to recover, to process what you had gone through, what you’d seen.
After a few weeks passed, you found yourself staring at the door, waiting once again for him to come back. Waiting to talk to him for once, to say the words that had plagued your mind once again. Even if they had shifted, they still rang true.
You scared me.
Because he did.
Joel Miller himself scared you, and you didn’t want him to.
Because you knew, you knew, that he’d done it for you. He'd done it to save you.
He’d saved you the same way you saved him, in the only way that he knew how.
Maybe it was senseless. Maybe it was wrong, and horrible, and unforgivable.
But he had done it for you.
So you wait for Joel to come back.
Months fade into years; one, and then two, then five and still counting.
Joel Miller never comes back.
At some point, you hear that he’s gone. Left the QZ completely with Tess at his side and never looked back.
You hope that they made it, wherever they were going.
You hope that he doesn’t think of you the way that you think of him. The image of him plaguing your mind every night, broken memories of everything you had memorized about him constantly shifting through your mind, a lonely ache filling in your heart that you knew was your own fault.
He had bloodied his knuckles for you, and you had turned away.
God, you hated yourself for turning away.
You missed him, with every breath, with every moment the door of your clinic opened and you glanced up with the automatic reflex of hoping it was him, even though he was long gone.
You know it's for the better.
Joel is not supposed to be here.
Any form of radio communication is strictly forbidden. He knows this well, knows that if he’s found here, he could be risking everything, even if his brother is married to the woman who keeps Jackson up and running smoothly.
But he’s here anyway, hands trembling with the cold and something else, something that settles deeper into his bones as he holds the microphone in hand.
Waiting.
It’s his second time up here in a week, and though he’d been lucky enough to not be caught the first time, he wasn’t an optimist.
You’re a cynic, a voice echoes in the back of his head, and his eyes flutter shut with the image of you that never seemed to quite leave him, even with the years that have gone by.
But you’re not, his own voice, younger, replies to you in his memories.
I try not to be, you replied honestly, one of your first discussions when you had begun to settle into each other’s presence. Don’t think I could keep doing this if I was.
Joel’s gaze darts down to the small notepad he had brought with him, the pages where he had written one message only to cross it out, rewrite it, and torn pages of it to throw away in frustration.
In front of him was the one left uncrossed, his eyes scanning the words he could only hope had gotten relayed to you, the message he had left for the black market radio specialist in Boston earlier that week.
Found a nice place that could use a doctor, followed by a date and time for a conversation, not wanting to air Jackson’s location without hearing confirmation from you yourself.
Following that sentence, another one, the last thing he had said: they could use you.
And another, crossed out after, the last thing that he would never say: I could use you.
Joel’s head lifts when the static on the old machine clears, a click resounding through the speakers of the radio, and his heart races with the weight of the microphone in his hands.
It’s lifted halfway to his mouth before he hesitates. Your name hangs heavy in his mouth, syllables he had not sounded out in years, but when he finally says it, it feels…natural. Like not a day has passed since the letters of your name were hanging on his lips, the way he always longed for you to be.
There is a pause, long and heavy, and Joel feels his heart sink with every second that passes.
This was stupid. So incredibly stupid.
The last time he had seen you, there was fear in your eyes. Fear of him, well-placed at that, and surely he had taken up no voluntary thoughts of yours ever since other than your worst nightmares.
Surely you were—
“...Hey there, Texas.”
When your voice crackles to life through the speaker, Joel sighs, a sound filled with relief and a rush of longing he thought his mind had forgotten, but his body—no, his soul—had not.
And then a whisper, softly in return, with a smile on his lips.
“Howdy, Cali.”
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