#I will wait another four years if necessary 😌

[cowgurrrl]

Marrow

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader (plus platonic!ellie williams x fem!reader)

Author’s note: thanks for being patient!! I made a new graphic for the in-between parts of When You’re Lost in the Darkness/Look for the Light because I wanted to 😌 (PS this is somewhat of rewrite/reimagining of my first fic Everything Leads to You so if there are some similarities, iTS FINE)

Summary: “This was always going to happen. She’s been dead since the beginning.” - Oresteia as translated by Robert Icke aka the beginning of the journey

Warnings: discussions of Tess, reference to Adam, Joel being stubborn, talking to Ellie about mortality, references to a sexual relationship, the horrors of being seen by someone who could break your heart

"Stay here," you say to Ellie after a full ten minutes of waiting. He didn't even say where he was going. He just left without another word and expects you to be there by the time he returns, which is annoying in its own right.

"What? Where are you going?" Ellie asks before you can even take two steps in the direction he left. 

"To find Joel."

"He said to stay here."

"Joel says a lot of things." You roll your eyes. She didn't try arguing with Joel when he left, but here she is, holding you up. She better hope he's just down there fucking around and not in trouble. 

"What am I supposed to do if someone finds me?"

"No one's gonna find us out here."

"But what if they do?" She asks, and you can recognize the anxiety in her voice. She's a lot like Joel, you've noticed. Fierce and short-tempered but with lots of uncertainty brewing just underneath. You soften just enough to crouch in front of her and open your hand.

"You still got your knife?" You ask, and she nods. "Can I show you something?" She hesitates before pulling the knife out of her jacket pocket and placing it in your hand. You see why she likes it so much. It's a good size, sleek, and perfectly balanced. You open the blade and hold the handle firmly. "If they get close enough, jab at soft parts. Eyes, stomach, throat. It might not kill them immediately, but it'll distract them enough for you to run away and get our attention." 

"Same for Infected?"

"Same for Infected," you say. "Runners are just sick people. They have almost all the same weak points."

"Is it hard to kill them when you know they were people once?" She asks, and your mind immediately goes to that Shell station from all those years ago. Against your will, you remember his groans and the look in his eyes as he pushed you away from the last time. You clear your throat and close the blade to hand it back to her. 

"Not when they come after you first," you say. She eyes you carefully like she doesn't believe you, but you stand before she can see right through you. "Stay here. We'll be right back." She doesn't move from her spot as you walk away, but you catch her changing her grip on her knife to copy the way you held it. 

You find Joel on the river bank you and Tess passed more times than you could ever count. The water is clear and running without a care in the world. It would be peaceful if you weren't strategizing on how to have this conversation with Joel. It's necessary, but if you know him (which you do), you know it'll result in a fight. You decide to approach him gently with empty hands and a soft, if not a little pained, smile. He glances in your direction but doesn't acknowledge you as he reaches into the cold water and pulls a smooth rock from the bottom. He adds it to the stack right next to him and stares at it like it's something more sentimental than just a cairn. Maybe it is. He wouldn't tell you if it was. Not now. Not when Tess hasn't even been dead for twenty-four hours. Finally, he stands and turns to look at you.

"How's your hand?" You ask, breaking the unbearable silence between you. He looks between you and his stained, cracked knuckles and shrugs.

"Fine." He says, his voice deep and rough. You step closer to get a better look at his hand and fight the urge to reach for it to press around for the fracture you're positive is swelling under his skin. 

"You don't have to be a hero about it. I can wrap it."

"I said 'm fine," he snaps. You nod and take a step back. You know, from years of diffusing Joel's anger, this is a delicate dance. "Where's Ellie?"

"Right where you left her. I came down here 'cause I wanted to make sure you were alive." 

"You didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to," you say. The levity in your voice startles him into looking you in the eyes for the first time since you left the destroyed capitol building. The brown of his eyes feels especially heavy and sad, but you don't flinch. You rarely do with him. "Plus, I wanted to see if we could talk."

"Bout what?" He says like nothing in the past few days has been catastrophic enough to require a conversation. 

"About what you think Bill and Frank are gonna do." 

"Take her to the Fireflies or get someone else to do it."

"And if they say no?"

"They won't."

"How do you know?" You ask, and he rolls his eyes. "Frank's sick, Joel. Really, really sick. He can't just get in a car and take this girl to the Fireflies, and Bill's not gonna leave him."

"How do you know?" He accuses.

"Because I actually talk to them on the radio," you say. "From what he's told me, it sounds like Parkinson's or something. I don't know. I'm not a doctor." 

"Exactly," he agrees with enough tension in his voice to poke at the fiery anger in your belly. "Frank's fine. They'll set him up in the truck and drive her there." 

"What about Raiders? Or Slavers? Or what happens if they run out of gas and can't find more? Frank can't just walk her to Wyoming." 

"Bill'll figure it out." 

"If Tess were that sick-"

"Don't. Don't even start with that." He cuts you off, and you sigh. 

"Is this really how we're gonna do this? Just not talk to each other about anything? Keep our heads in the sand until it's too late?" You ask. "Keep lying to ourselves that everything's normal?"

"You were just fine doin' that not even a week ago." He crosses his arms over his chest and raises his eyebrows at you. You know exactly what he's referring to. It's a tangle of limbs and whispers of so fuckin' pretty, 's like you were made for me, just like that, but you remember. Of fucking course, you remember every time he made you his and left the marks to prove it. Of course, you remember looking at him the next day like absolutely nothing happened, like he didn't fall to his knees in front of you like you were some long-forgotten deity. You and Joel are not people who do long-term relationships, especially not with each other. Still, his comment feels like a jab at the way you got dressed and left not even ten minutes after he came. 

"A week ago, we didn't have a fourteen-year-old to keep alive," you say. He sucks his teeth and looks down at his boots; clearly not a fan of your redirecting. "We're already going west. We might as well just finish this out and get her to the Fireflies. I'll even let you knock a few around if you really want to." 

"'S that supposed to be some kinda incentive?" 

"If finding your brother and doing what Tess asked us to do isn't enough, then yeah," he tenses when you say her name. It hurts to know she's gone. It hurts even more to know she sacrificed herself so you three would have a chance. You'll be damned if you let her death mean nothing. "And if we get to Bill and Frank's, and they won't take her, and you still don't want to do this, I'll take her myself."

"Not a chance." He counters before you can finish your sentence. You fight a smirk, knowing you've got him right where you want him, and he sighs heavily. You know he would never let you do this by yourself. He also knows he can't leave you to go back to yet another empty apartment and wait for him to come back alive or never hear from him again. For all your fighting, secrets, and unspoken agreements, you think there's no one else in this world you know better than Joel. You hope he thinks the same about you. 

"We get to Bill and Frank's, and then we make a decision, but we gotta agree somehow. Fair?" He relents, and you nod. 

"Fair." 

"Anythin' else we need to talk bout?" He asks, looking at you expectantly. Yes, you think. We need to talk about what made you beat the FEDRA soldier to death. We need to talk about Tess. We need to talk about how far we're willing to go to get to Tommy and drop this kid off. We need to talk like real people and not the shells we've been. 

"No," you say. "Nothing else."

"Good," he nods and walks past you, his shoulder brushing yours as he does. "Let's get moving."

TAGLIST: @abbyhaslongshorts @moonandseatgr-yngf @kiwiharrykiwi @sumsworldz @myloveistoolittle @korynnekorynne @anavatazes (please let me know if you want to be added to the tag list/if I missed you!!)

#it ten pm in the uk so I’m posting this #when you’re lost in the darkness #look for the light #joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x reader #the last of us x reader #joel miller fic #joel miller the last of us #joel tlou #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller series #joel miller and ellie williams #joel miller angst #ellie the last of us #the last of us series #the last of us angst #the last of us fic #joel the last of us

[silens-oro]

WIP Wednesday

Jake “Hangman” Seresin x f!Reader

AN: Here is an excerpt from the first part of my Hangman series titled Vertigo that I will be posting relatively soon 😌

Content Warning: Mentions of sex, nothing graphic.

•

“Can I get four Buds, sweetheart?” Hangman flashed you his signature dazzling smile with the request. You had to hand it to yourself; the amount of self restraint you were displaying by not immediately launching yourself over the bar and strangling the bastard at just the mere sight of Jake’s stupid, stupid face was something you didn’t even know you possessed. The fact that he felt like he could just waltz back into The Hard Deck like he didn’t play the long con to inevitably hump and dump you before disappearing for six months without a courtesy “have a nice life” nearly set you over the edge.

To anyone else in the bar, Hangman’s team excluded after witnessing it with their own eyes, they wouldn’t have thought either of you were interested in one another. Of course there was the usual flirting found in this type of establishment; you flirted for better tips and Jake flirted with anything that had tits and walked on two legs.

You -not once in your entire adult life- had ever given guys like Jake Seresin the time of day -and for good reason. What changed for you to go back on your own ground rules? I’m sure you could take a wild guess.

The phrase ‘opposites attract’ was so clichéd, and you hated to think on it a second longer than you needed to, but that’s exactly what your “relationship”with Jake was. It started out with friendly teasing while he spent his free time in the bar, and that slipped into more intimate banter, which then moved on to Jake slipping into you…

It was a slippery slope.

“What can I get you?” You asked the patron to the right of Hangman, completely ignoring the pilot. The customer shifted his eyes between the two of you, clearly feeling the growing tension, and cleared his throat before ordering a couple of drafts.

“$12 even,” Setting the glasses on the bar top with a smile, you offered to start a tab for him. The man nodded and handed his card over before scurrying off to his friends to avoid whatever was happening between the both of you.

“Come on, babe,” Hangman brought a hand up to his heart and gave her a pained look. “You wound me.”

“Not enough to keep you out of here, apparently,” The glare on your face was enough to make Jake’s cocky grin slip just the tiniest bit as you stuffed the credit card in the bar’s rolodex with a little more force than necessary. You leaned yourself on the bar in your elbows and pointed your trusty bar key threateningly at the pilot. “You want a drink? Get it from Jimmy,” You tilted your head to the 76 year old barkeep who was puttering around at the other end of the bar pushing a yellow mop bucket around and definitely not making drinks. “Or Penny, if you can find her.” Penny actually had the night off, but you weren’t going to let Jake know that.

Moving on to take the order of the sailor to the left of Hangman, you didn’t wait for him to respond. Hangman groaned and fixed you with a look.

“Don’t be like that! We had fun!” You placed the pint of beer on the bar and the man handed over a ten with a wink. “You know how it is,” Jake said with an innocent shrug.

“All set, sweetheart,” The man said with a charming smile. “Give me a holler if you need me to take care of this for you, ma’am,” His eyes shifted to Jake assertively, then back to you.

“Thank you,” You replied sweetly to the man and returned his smile with a dazzling grin of your own just to irritate the pilot in front of you. The stranger swept his eyes over Hangman once more to size him up before shaking his head and scoffing lightly before taking his drink back to his buddies.

“What the hell was that?” Hangman asked, absolutely beside himself. “You know that guy?” He gestured his thumb over his shoulder.

“Do I know who?” You replied dumbly, getting an absolute thrill out of this. Hangman’s jaw dropped ever so slightly.

“Really?” He had the balls to look mildly irritated with the bartender. “What the hell did he think he was going to do?” You grabbed the empty glasses a few spots down from Hangman that had recently been vacated by a group of girls, but stopped in front of him on your way over to the sink.

“I’m sorry, who are you again?” You asked with your best customer service voice and smile before setting the drinkware in the sink.

“He was flirting with you,” Jake stated, but it sounded like more of a question than anything else. You groaned and turned around to face Hangman with a very dramatic roll of your eyes.

“Yeah, that’s how it goes here. You think you’re the first person in the Navy to bat their pretty eyes at me? Flash their pearly whites? Ha!” You took a checkbook from a freshly vacated area on the bar and placed the cash left in the black book into your tip jar next to the register before continuing to serve the other customers. You made one more stop in front of Jake, your eyes cutting straight through him. “You’ve never been my only option here, nor my best one, Bagboy.” Your tone was like ice, sending a chill down Jake’s spine. Then it’s of it was making him second guess coming up here to bother you. “Remember that.”

#jake seresin x reader #Jake seresin imagine #top gun imagine #top gun one shot #top gun: maverick #jake seresin #jake hangman seresin #wip wednesday