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morallyinept · 7 months

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Summary: Joel Miller comes back into your life unexpectedly after a gap of thirty years, and stirs up all kinds of memories and longing. Now, as you're stationed on an outpost for five days alone with the man you stupidly let go of all those years ago, you have a chance to confront him about your past life together and all the things you wished you’d said and done.

But Joel’s different now, and you know you need to tread carefully. Joel Miller is not the same man you once knew in another life.

A slow burn romance set in the post apocalyptic world, approx. twenty or so years after the initial Cordyceps outbreak.

Pairing: Post-Outbreak Joel Miller x MatureF!Reader (No name or physical description of reader. However reader is of a similar age range as Joel; in her late forties/early fifties. Joel is slightly older at 56.)

Chapter Word Count: 5.1k

Series Masterlist

☝🏻See Series Masterlist for full smut warnings & triggers in this story. Chapters that contain smut or triggers will be highlighted in the chapter notes below. 👇🏻

Chapter notes: Descriptions of an animal kill. Mentions and descriptions of suicide/self harm. Tiny mention of smut. You and Joel open up further, with a heavy chat.

☝🏻Some of the tags aren't working, so please ensure you're following me and turn on notifs so you don't miss an update on this story.

Enjoy! 🖤

Previous Chapter

Joel switches on the walkie-talkie and you both wait in suspended silence.

He remains sitting forward; his left elbow on his knee and the other on the arm of the wicker chair. His fingers tap and fidget restlessly, you notice.

You sit back fully in your chair and keep your eye on the green light. Waiting for it to pulse. Waiting for it to crackle into life and deliver bad news.

You can’t help it, years of ingrained pessimism have bludgeoned your optimism down to a flat nub.

It feels like an age before the time passes through midday and Joel switches off the walkie-talkie just after seventeen-past the hour.

“No news is good news.” He reminds you, glancing at your anxious face pulled tight, and you smile faintly, grateful for the ebb of reassurance, even though it barely makes an indent.

Your mind drifts to Kelper and Max in the main group, heading towards the horde with Tommy. To Sal, who’s in the second group bringing up the rear with the explosives. And to Guthrie locked down back in the commune, praying for you all incessantly no doubt. You wonder how he can still have faith, after everything.

You hope they’re hitting their marks, that they're okay and this God forsaken plan of Kelper’s goes off without a hitch.

You rub at the back of your neck and yawn and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Why don’t ya take a beat?” Joel nods over to the cot and the thought is too tempting; you’re tired and feel your eyelids become heavy and swampy.

“Mm,” you agree.

You stand and kick off your boots after unlacing them. The heat in the shack from the sun only makes you more sleepy, and you flake on the cot foregoing any blankets.

You roll onto your front, your head facing the wooden wall. Up this close you can make out the fuzzy fibres in the dark, splintered wood, and your finger runs over the rough surface, back and forth a few times.

“Did you miss me, Joel?” You put out there, pausing with the dull pang in your gut waiting to drop. “When I left, I mean.”

The question had been gnawing away at everything inside you. Now that you’d asked it, you weren’t sure if you wanted an answer.

You know it was a cowardly move; leaving whilst he was at work. Shoving your possessions into bags quickly and removing all trace of you from his life.

You keep your eyes closed, it's better if you can’t see his expression. Especially when his face is knotted up again, like you assume it will be.

You’re pretty sure it's a question that's winded him and it makes guilt sprout like moss somewhere when he doesn’t respond.

Why do you keep torturing him with this, and yourself?

“Sometimes,” he whispers, his voice travelling over towards you.

You hold your breath, your body tensing.

“Sometimes it felt like I never stopped.” You hear the wicker in the chair creak as he moves inside it. “Even if you drove me fuckin’ nuts.” Joel concludes.

You smile, opening your eyes. “I did, didn’t I?” You reply, your shoulders jostling a little as you chuckle.

“I liked it. Kept me on m’toes.” Joel husks from the other side of the room.

“I know.” You confirm, your smile dipping. "Do you..." You trail off and steady your breaths as they find an increasing pace. "Do you ever wish you could just go back, do it all over again?"

"Before the Outbreak?" He queries.

"Yeah. If you got a second chance, would you do it all differently?"

You hear him take in a deep, contemplative breath. "Some of it."

You hear more shuffling in the wicker chair and close your eyes again. You breathe out slowly trying to swim out of all the muddled thoughts pulling you under.

Were ya missin' me too, darlin'?

You can hear him as though he's right beside you. Feel the warmth of his breath in your ear, his lips nipping gently on your earlobe as his scruff tickles the skin on your neck. Feel his swamping hand that’s burning on your thigh as he squeezes and then runs it up your hip, towards your stomach.

Thick, rough fingers trailing along your navel gently, leaving goose bumps and making your nipples peak as he strokes with a featherlight touch around them, under your top, in giddy, teasing circles.

You moan out, biting your lip. Pushing back into him to be met with the swell of his hardness pressing into your ass, and his grunts braiding through your hair as he slowly grinds into you.

“Joel…” You hum, burning up. You turn over in the cot to find his lips, searching for the heat of them.

But you’re met with nothing.

You sit upright, dumbfounded and perplexed as you rub sharp, crusted sleep from your eyes.

You glance over to the wicker chair to see Joel slumped in it. His arms crossed over his chest and his head lolled to one side. His eyes are closed and he snuffles gently. He’s asleep.

Licking around the inside of your cotton mouth, you glance at the clocks that all read past four in the afternoon. The light still floods the shack and it feels stifling.

You sit forward, contemplating whether to wake him or not. Joel looks content, if not for an aching neck to suffer from later.

You smile, observing him and the way his mouth is downturned and pursed under the greying fuzz smattered above it. It suits him, you think. Ageing.

He appears more beautiful now than you remember, and you soon start to feel like you're burring up from the inside the longer you stare at him.

You stand, stretching out, reaching for a bottle of warm water, when you hear it.

You stop, the sound of it rendering you frozen on the spot and your heart racing.

It’s the sound of your own name passing from Joel’s lips in a soft, sleepy moan.

It comes and goes.

Bleeding into your subconscious like a dream, or more of a hellish nightmare lodged between the sinew and muscle.

This time it's the blood from the buck that stirs that sleeping giant.

One moment you're focused on the task of deboning the flesh from a blunt hunting knife that you'd recovered from one of Joel's knapsacks. The next, you're frozen, hunched over the infant carcass of stained, wet fur and reliving through it all over again.

You see it all, hear it in surround sound. Even smell it; the ripeness of it, the rot. Drawn to it like a fruit fly to fetid garbage.

You try to rationalise it; convince yourself that it's just some malignant trauma hovering over you, not done with roughing you up yet and that it’ll settle soon. But it’s hot, searing mercury in your veins, heavy mustard gas in your lungs that chokes you.

Nothing's affected you like this before, like this loss has. Well, that's not strictly true. Losing Joel is right up there. The scars of that run deep, deeper than the one on your wrist.

You glance at it as you carry on with the task at hand, physically shaking your head as though you could empty the incoming white noise out of your ears if you shake hard enough.

But it's still there.

You regard your hands soaked and slippery in the claret. It's so bright, fresh. The metallic scent of copper is tasted on the back of your throat as you breathe in and swallow it down.

You're not sure how it started, how it all went to shit in a blink of an eye. How you were complacent and allowed yourself a few moments of respite; to believe that everything could be alright.

You can see it clearly as you scrunch your eyes tight; willing yourself not to go there, but you do.

It always pulls you under.

You're walking with a basket, laundry maybe. Or is it something else? You look into the basket in your hands, but you don't see it, there’s just a void. A hole where a memory should be. What was in that damn basket?

You pass smiling faces, working hands and chatter. Laughter, such an alien sound, but full of promise and hope. These are your people, people who owe you their lives, but you're insistent they don’t. They really don’t.

The camp is thriving despite its lackadaisical appearance. Clusters of tents, makeshift tarpaulins wound around branches. Old RV’s being picked clean of pipes and bulbs.

It’s a good place to pitch up, rest for a while. Probably one of the better places Kelper has managed to settle you all. It's the longest time you've had to stand still, to soak in the peace. To let it all start to peel away in thin papery layers from your skin as you shed it.

Then you hear it.

Screaming. A single wail at first, but then more; more are mutating into a chorus of shrieks and panic that seem to be coming from all directions like sharp, precisely aimed arrows.

You drop the basket. Or maybe you throw it down, again, you can't be sure. All you know is that once you hear it, it's discarded.

You start forward towards the screaming, pulling your gun from your back waistband. Instinct fuels you to aid; it’s all you run on these days.

Then you see it.

The blood. It's on their faces as they dash past you, scrambling. On their arms and legs. You don't realise it right now, but the blood is from bites; flesh torn apart by teeth that infect.

It spreads quicker sometimes. Other times it lies in wait, hours of slow torture as the fever turns you out.

You're firing. More gunshots are heard echoing tinny around you. You take a couple out, but more rear through the camp.

Then more, then too many. Herds of them. You've never seen a cluster this big, this co-ordinated. They just keep fucking coming.

You remember being paralysed as they swarmed in like locusts, devouring everything. Taking everything from you in literal moments. You watch helplessly as faces you know are pulled under, devoured.

You try to shoot them, knowing it's too late for them; to end their suffering as a last kindness. They would want that. They would understand.

But your aim is sloppy. They're getting closer. Your gun jams. Shit. There's too fucking many.

Run.

RUN!

A hand yanks you backward, so hard that you're sure your socket has been wrenched out. You grip tightly onto Kelper who drags you away like you weigh nothing; a clumsy kite on the end of flimsy string.

Something clicks in you, brings you back as Kelper screams at the others to run. Some of them do. They scatter like marbles dropped from a little boy's pocket. No clear direction. They run straight into their deaths, with flailing arms and you can't save them.

Stop! You’re going the wrong way!

You run too. Your lungs are on fire already as you yell at people you pass and can't hear your own voice. You reach out for them. You latch onto one, Guthrie.

You toss your gun in exchange for his hand and he keeps that frantic pace with you. He trips, falls and cries out as you lose your grip on his sweaty fingers. You go back for him as he scrambles up.

A bullet passes so close by your temple and hits the infected sprinting for you both. It's thunder cracking in your ears and leaving a tinny din.

You turn to see Kelper aiming and hollering at you; he’s all teeth and spittle at the mouth. A rabid rottweiler unleashed with hackles, barking crazed and panicked.

You run. You and Guthrie together. You follow Kelper, footsteps stampeding as he dashes towards the treeline. Losing them in the camouflage, good idea.

You fucking run.

Your ankles are snapping at you to relent, every breath you suck in feels like liquid fire. You glance over your shoulder to see Max and Sal bringing up the rear. Their faces bloodied and you can hear Guthrie's exhausted moans as he keeps pace with you.

You drag him along. You make him work through the pain. He can't stop. You won't let him stop. You can’t lose another. You won’t.

Stray infected chase you. Kelper points to a clearing where it dips a few yards out. An opportunity to take those bastards on.

He glances at you and you know. You just know it has to be done.

You shunt Guthrie down the hill and he slips, rolling and yelling out. Max dives down after him. Kelper pulls Sal to him. She practically flies around the trunk as he pauses with her in his grip.

You pick a spot and get ready. You reach for your gun behind your back to realise you don't have it.

Fuck.

Seconds. You have seconds to react. Blood thuds inside your ears.

You don't remember, but you lunge.

Teeth are snapping at you as you grapple with the infected. Skin a sallow grey and fungal rot in a sickly pale orange; even its scleras are a disgusting hue.

You remember the smell. The stench of its breath as it comes for you.

You slam it backwards, reaching blinding for something, anything. Your fingers graze a rock and you pummel its head with it and keep going, long after it's dead.

Long after it no longer has a face to haunt you.

It takes Max and Kelper to pull you off as you scream ferally at it. The other infected that chased you have already met a similar fate, and the five of you are left standing there on the edge of the camp, hidden and listening to the sounds of your extended family die.

You pull them away, with Kelper; the sounds of their screams whistling in your ears.

Max wants to be a hero, wants to go back for them. And you love him so much for it, but you can’t let him. He tries to fight against you both, a small tussel, but stops when Sal speaks.

There's no-one to go back for. Her voice is cold, empty. She knows it too.

You walk for hours.

Until the sky is darker and the ringing in your ears stops, or maybe you just learn to accommodate its petulant wail. You walk until the blisters in your boots are plentiful and burst.

Until Kelper spots an old farmhouse up ahead, isolated in the vast fields and valleys.

You and Guthrie keep watch whilst the others do some recon. His arm is busted up pretty bad from the fall down the slope. You apologise to him as you tear a strip from his shirt and create a makeshift sling, and he tells you it's alright; a broken bone is nothing in the grand scheme of things. That you did good. That God was with you.

And it's at that point you crack. Fissures start erupting inside you uncontrollably.

You pace away, you don't want him to see it. Any of them.

You don't know where you’re going. You can't feel your feet anymore and you're blinded by tears that won't cease. You try to remember your mantra. Try to remember how you're still here and they're not.

Eventually you walk into something soft, warm. Arms pulling you tight. Telling you he’s got you as you sob, and your cut to shreds and exhausted feet finally give way under you.

He falls with you, settling into the ground and mourns the loss with you.

You don't know how long you and Kelper stayed out in the grass that night. All you know is that you never let go of one another. Even when you fell asleep amongst the tiny bugs.

You stand up; your back aching from being crouched for so long over the buck's carcass, and stare down at the bloodied meat you’ve salvaged from it.

And then it hits you and makes you feel unsteady on your feet. A renegade choke slithers up from the back of your throat and out into the open as your eyes mist over.

You know it with resolution, with utmost conviction.

The loss you suffered that day was insurmountable. The loss you suffered when Raiders came and took more than just scavenged possessions from your people still cuts deep.

The losses since the Outbreak have stacked up against you, that some days you don’t think you can physically take anymore.

Enduring and surviving is taking its fucking toll. The pain garnered from those losses will remain with you always. More scars.

But, as you stand here zoning out into abject realisation and determination, you know that there is a loss that trumps all of that.

And you feel wretched for even comparing them.

A single man for all that bloodshed and carnage? All those innocent lives lost? It's a heinous and selfish thought. One that rises bile to the back of your throat as you try to cough it away.

But you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that losing Joel again would be worse than anything you've endured and survived through. Worse than anything else that's possibly coming for you next.

And you can’t lose him again now that you’ve found him.

You just can’t.

After Joel’s annoyed rantings about you not waking him finally cease into incoherent mumblings, you both settle down to eat some of the venison that you’ve cooked.

Whilst he was asleep, you took the opportunity to hack the buck up outside; a messy job that left your top splattered with blood and your mind stained with rattled recall.

You washed up discreetly in the alcove, replacing it with another simple, long sleeved top from your pack, and then later laid the meat into pans cooking it tenderly.

The sounds of sizzling as the meat cooks stirs Joel at just past six in the evening.

You both sit down to eat as the approaching dusk begins to infect darker blues into the sky.

You share the remainder of the focaccia bread and you watch as Joel winces as his neck aches. He rubs at it listlessly.

“Ya should've woken me.” He pouts again, as he shovels in another mouthful of meat, chewing with a deep frown.

“You needed the sleep.”

“I should’ve been on watch,” he grunts. “Not fuckin’ sleepin’ with a bent up neck.”

You shouldn’t have been moaning my name either, is what you want to say, but you keep it to yourself. A secret that elates you as it thrills.

Your mind can't help but to wade into conjuring up images about what it was exactly that he was dreaming about. You try to contain the small smile ebbing as you chew, but it’s difficult - it pours renegade across your lips anyway.

“S’not funny.” Joel gripes. He reaches for some water still patting at his neck.

“I’m not laughing at you.” You state with a flat mouth free of curves or bends.

He eyes you carefully as he puts down the water bottle.

You clear the chipped plates when you’re both finished, and put the remaining cooked meat inside the Tupperware box. It’ll keep for a day or two.

Joel gets up and disappears outside, and you make the most of the few minutes of silence. Silence that is always somehow interrupted by wayward thoughts or unflinching desires as of late.

You think back to your dream earlier of being wrapped up on the cot with him pressed up against you, and it suddenly feels hotter inside the shack, even though the cooler air of the evening seeps inside now.

Your mind swims with his hands. His hands that were on your hips at the Hootie And The Blowfish concert he took you to as you swayed against him, mouthing the words of the songs into the air.

How his large palm would squeeze your thigh in the passenger seat fondly and you flare at the thought of him rising it higher and higher, until his fingertips would probe the edge of your panties that were always soaked for him.

The taste of his thick, salty fingers as you’d kiss and suck each one gently whilst he lost all his breath and sense of being, drowning in you.

A longing sigh settles in the back of your throat and chokes you.

Joel returns a few minutes later, zipping up his fly as he pulls the door shut behind him, and you turn away feeling as though you’ve been doused in gasoline and set alight.

He slouches down back in the chair and sighs listlessly. His hand is rubbing again at the back of his neck as he peers out the small window.

He tries to crack it out, bending his head from side to side and growls under his breath when it doesn’t release.

“Want me to massage it for you?” You offer after he grunts in frustration again.

His brown eyes dart to you as though you just shot him in the gut.

Your own mouth is appalled at the suggestion, and the origin of it, but the mutiny in your chest spurs you on.

“Might stop you complaining?" You suggest, standing and not giving him much of a choice. Or yourself, for that matter. Driven on drunk autopilot as you're there in a blink of an eye.

He caves, nodding hesitantly and scooches his chair forward a little.

"Ya sure?" Joel questions, a small voice that cracks like glass, flows out of him. His eyes are furtive, widening and he looks acutely terrified. His posture is suddenly more rigid, if such a thing were possible.

You nod like it's nothing, but it’s everything. A small reassuring smile greets him behind a skull of chattering teeth.

You step behind him, flooded with gumption, despite the fact your body is yelling at you that this is probably a disaster waiting to happen.

You feel him hitch a breath as soon as your skin makes contact with him. Yours does too. It stops time, space and gravity no longer exist.

Coherent thought dissipates and you're left with a head full of iridescent bubbles, floating with them. The sweat beads at your neck, you feel your spine pull tight. You clench between your legs.

His neck is hot and red from the constant pawing at it; the skin in his hairline feeling rougher and bobbly with large pores and coarser hairs, as your fingers sink slowly into it.

You press your thumbs at the base and wiggle them around in slow moving circles, applying gentle pressure.

Joel groans out immediately; a noise that is all too familiar to you, and so uniquely new. His shoulders instantly deflate.

“That’s the spot, huh?” You smile, wrangling it all out of him.

“Fuck,” you think you hear him murmur, as you knead and roll your thumbs across the top of his spine.

“Ya too good at this,” Joel says after a few minutes. You can see he has his eyes closed in the window’s reflection.

You beam, enjoying that he’s enjoying it, as you’re all fingers and thumbs, albeit with a tremor in them.

“Ya used to do this thing, you’d scratch ya nails into m’head.” Joel lets slip through a deep sigh.

“You remember that?” You ask, smirking.

“I 'member a lot,” he groans, as you push your fingers up the back of his scalp, snaking to his crown and then dragging them down again. Letting your nails rake through his salt and pepper waves and scratch against his skin.

“Yeah... like that.” Joel whines; a long, laboured husk pulling from his chest that causes devastating explosions inside of you, ten million Hiroshima’s.

You continue circling around his crown, behind his ears, to the front of his forehead, and back down his nape where your fingers knot around his unruly curls.

You let your dexterous digits run through the silk of them. You see goosepimples flood across the back of his neck and you pulse.

You could just lean forward and plant a tender kiss there. You can see yourself do it in your mind's eye; taste his skin, and you lick your lips unconsciously.

“God, I fuckin’ missed this.”

It makes you fly to hear it, fireworks sparking inside your core. The hairs stand up on your arms and your own scalp tingles. A deep ache pulls on your clit as you squeeze your thighs together again and try to stifle your own groans.

“Yeah?” You manage to swallow.

He nods slowly, pushing his head back into your fingers to get more of them. Chasing the sensations that leave prickles all over his scalp, running down his spine and into the end of his hardening cock.

“Feels good?” You prompt.

“So fuckin’ good, darlin’.” He croons with his eyes closed and jaw slack. "I could fall asleep again."

Joel Miller is literal putty in your hands. A stark contrast from a few minutes ago when the grump wouldn’t stop griping into the air. Now he’s languidly panting into it with soft breaths that move up in octaves when you find a good spot that makes him melt further.

Your hands slip down onto his broad, thick shoulders and knead with the pressure there, working him out. You’re no professional, but the amount of knots in his shoulders pains you a little.

He’s been holding on to a lot of tension for so long.

Your brain wanders off to wondering about how he releases some of it. The back of your own neck becomes saturated as you linger in that wanton territory of Joel with those hands wrapped around his large, thick cock and grunting as he comes.

You wonder if he still makes the same face...

The sting of you biting down onto your lip pulls you out of that illicit thought. You can't help it; touching him again, finally having your hands on him, brings it all back and makes your need physical and corporeal. It's been so long.

Joel sighs out again; the sound speaking to the ache between your legs, communicating with it as you feel it more intensely.

More contented hums follow from him, putting invisible smooches on your skin as they land on you and flower.

And then Joel reaches for your right hand, pulling it round to his face and goes to run his nose against it, inhaling the natural perfume of your skin.

An action driven unconsciously in that dreamy moment of his hedonism and own need. You're certain he's going to kiss you there.

But he stops.

You hitch your breath at the contact of his hand on yours, so familiar, and yet so new. His hand is so warm, a little rough on the fingertips that grip gently around your wrist.

You close your eyes as you feel his breath waft over your palm.

Then you freeze when you feel his fingers push up your sleeve and catch him staring at the scar on your wrist as it’s revealed.

It’s long, puckered and massively obvious. The skinny, zagged pink line is vertical and was once dangerously deep.

Joel twists in the chair, the sound of the wicker slicing through you. His brown eyes are back in that alcove of his frown as they ward up at you questioning, swimming in fury, and it instantly becomes too much.

You snatch back your wrist, breaking all contact with him as the dreamy spell shatters in reflective shards at your feet.

“What happened?” He asks gently, tentatively.

You can still feel it, the strange lack of any pain sensation; just the release of pressure as the blade slid up and into your wrist with ease. You’d thought it would at least sear or burn. That you’d scream out in agony as it ripped apart the fibres of your sinewy flesh.

But you didn’t. Instead you just watched, with some acquired peace; peace that you’d longed for so desperately at the time, and welcomed it, as you slowly bled out. It felt like you were high, floating almost.

Kelper had saved you, the bastard. You’d beaten against his chest, crying and cursing him for doing so, but in hindsight, you know why he did it. It was so you could save him later. Save the others.

Even save yourself in some way.

And as you breathed life back into his body, you understood that it was just a cheat’s way out of this world. Although the world was scorched and desolate, there was still love and connection to be found.

And that was fucking worth living through it all. Had to be. Because there was fuck all else.

You swallow thickly, unsure of where to begin, how to revisit that fertile ground that you've dug up and re-soiled over again and again.

“The same thing that happened there,” you swallow, tapping your right temple at him, and Joel senses the damage it would cause the both of you if he digs around that grave site, so he presses no further; just leaves withered roses on the ground before walking away.

Instead he sighs, and the frown that is so moulded into his features returns. “Ya needed me, so many times n’ I wasn’t there.” Joel utters.

The scar, not leaving his sight, taunts him of his failures to protect yet another person he’d cared about from all the rot in the world.

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” You sigh gently. "Supposed to, anyway."

You turn your wrist around and look down at the scar that you used to loathe. You try to remember what your skin looked like before it was there and you come up blank. It feels like it's always been a part of you, even before it was physical.

“I haven’t felt strong in a long time.” Joel whispers out, and your head turns to him.

Jaded from years of craggy, cemented trauma, a hardened shell like the shirt pulled taught on his back sits heavy on him; even if it crushes him most days.

It's impenetrable, solid steel. Nuclear bomb proof. But you just witnessed him take the weight of it off for a second, lighten the load, and it leaves you paralysed to hear him say it.

In your head, you’re yelling at yourself to rush forward and scoop him up in your arms. But you sense he probably doesn't want that. Wouldn't know how to accept it and it pains you further.

“You’re stronger than you know. That’s why you’re still here.” You say, weakly. It's hard to believe that yourself some days.

He drops his head, his hands now a thick, clumsy ball of knots inside his lap and mulling over your words. He offers no words, but just the subtle shaking of his head as though you're wrong about that.

“Joel, I have to tell you something.” You begin with a little hesitation. But you can’t keep this from him. Not now.

He looks up at you with some mild concern. “What?”

You roll your lips over one another; they’re dry, chapped and don’t taste like your own anymore. You feel your heartbeat quicken.

“Tommy told me about Sarah.” You reveal in a low tincture.

You see Joel's cheekbones flex by his ears as he grinds his teeth. “I figured he might.”

His own voice is toneless and it makes your bones ache to hear no music in it.

“I know there’s nothing I can say-”

“I can’t,” he says, holding up a large palm and shaking his head.

“You don’t have to.” You confirm. “You don’t ever have to. And I’ll never…” You trail off. Perhaps you should heed him and actually stop as you fumble around your words.

“You can say it.” Joel nudges you, his eyes sinking further back into his skull.

You sit in the other chair beside him, dragging it close.

“I’ll never understand what it’s like. What it’s been like for you, without her."

"Ya never had any?" Deapite his warning, he asks you, and you shake your head.

"I bet she was incredible… But I do understand why-” you tap your scar, and he looks at it with a deeply etched sadness drawn on his face. “-Why you tried to make it stop.”

His expression makes your eyes water and you tell yourself to not falter, to not crack or break when he needs you now.

Endure and survive. Endure and fucking survive!

Joel reaches for your hand, resting it upright on his knee and trails his index finger lightly across the trench of the scar. It makes you shiver as you both watch him do it.

You feel the warmth flood through your body at breakneck speeds. Live through the way you shudder as your spine resets itself and you swallow like you're choking, dying.

He's killing you with a bare, featherlight touch and you can't abnegate yourself from heading to the light.

"Sometimes... it feels like we were never there. Was a dream, that life. I dreamt it. All of it. I dreamt her up... Must've, to have been so happy, so content. So fuckin' unprepared." Joel sniffs. "Then we just... lost it all. Everythin'. N' for what?"

His eyes find yours, his face softens and his fingers continue that gentle, heady contact. And you both sit there for what feels like an age, not speaking whilst he familiarises himself with your own pain.

"This ain't survival. This is fuckin' Hell. And I couldn't even..." You hear him whisper to you as he shakes his head recalling his own failure. "I flinched. The bullet missed. I don't know why. Somethin' kept me here. Punishin' me."

You soon feel your fingers brushing against his wrist, and then interlocking with his digits. You both squeeze tightly against one another and neither one of you falters that grip.

Not even for a second.

Not even when your palms sweat and your fingers ache under the crush of him.

“I wish ya both could've met.” He utters, head bowed in the direction of your scar, and you see a single tear drip from his face and land on the thigh of his worn jeans. "She would've liked ya."

You squeeze his hand tighter, and he squeezes back.

You don't say anything, because honestly, what can you say? Mere words are destitute. He carries more anger, more remorse; more guilt than a human being could ever drag the weight of behind them. It's crushing him on the daily.

Joel Miller had already crossed over into Hell and eternal damnation the moment Sarah was taken from him. He'd lost his baby girl. Ripped from his arms as he’d yelled at Tommy to help him frantically as she slipped away from her daddy's embrace; bled out all over him and he'd never felt more helpless. More alone.

He'd resided in that Hell on a daily basis; adding to his heavy life sentence with the onerous deeds he'd committed since. Heathen atrocities, blood stained hands, and stacks of faces haunt the darker trenches of his mind. Joel can never escape them.

There were things - depraved and animalistic things - you could never know about Joel, for he would never burden you with the horrors of their weight. Some of it's from a selfish point of view; he wouldn’t be able to stand the pity you’d tarnish him with.

Or the forgiveness.

He’d carry it all himself and save you that pressure, save you from the nightmares soaked in an iron tasting sweat. He'd been lost for a while, knuckles sheathed in the crimson of the innocent.

He had wielded a scythe and dealt the cards in the House’s favour. Death's bitch, who refused him an easy way out when he'd finished with him.

He’d done heinous, despicable things all in the name of survival and base instincts, that he was inherently ashamed of; carried demons that wouldn’t let him rest or sleep as they clawed at his face continuously.

And when he looks at your scar, it’s another thing to add to the pile of calcified bones that have mounted up behind him.

He should have been there for you. Should have fought harder to find you. Tore up the world in his search. He should never have let you fucking go in the first place.

You can’t pull him out of that fiery torment, walk across the hot coals and lead him out by the hand, not fully. Your comprehension of it wouldn’t even begin to pierce through that layered steel.

But you offer a moment’s calm in the swirling hurricane as you reduce it to a gentle breeze. You stop that ice from creeping up into his heart and denying it of it's beating.

You silence that voice that convinces him he's going to die, alone.

You squeeze Joel's hand and offer a moment or two for the hellfire to stop burning him and blistering his skin. You take his pain and pull blood soaked threads from it, finally speaking in a language that he can understand and respond back in fluently.

For a moment, you squeeze back. And that’s more than Joel will ever be able to ask for.

To be continued...

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