“You’re up early.”
She was, and the only reason for that was because Joel was way too loud making his coffee and getting out the pans to cook breakfast for her before he left for patrol.
Joel was never loud, especially never loud enough to wake her.
“I heard you,” she mumbled, trudging over to the kitchen still wrapped in a blanket. She pulled a chair from their table out, facing him at the stove. “Everything okay?”
He nodded.
Everything wasn’t. He dreamed she died. It was a montage of every time it’s ever crossed his mind. Her in that bloody grass. Her skin ravished by an infected child in an abandoned van. Her face ripped apart while trapped underneath Sam. Her body, cold and pale on an operating table. Her, her, her.
Every single one played clear as day in his dreams, tormenting him with every possibility his my mind could conjure.
“Joel-“
“Nightmares. ‘S’all it was.”
“Okay…” she started, rising from the chair. “You always have me talk about mine, so…” Ellie approached the countertop opposite of him, jumping up and sitting atop it, her dangling feet hitting the lower cupboards
He hesitated before turning to her, eyes locking with hers as he sighed.
She was right. She didn’t always go into detail, he didn’t need her to, but he wanted her to release them somehow; and at night when she clings to him immediately afterward, that’s when it’s the easiest. And when she can’t talk to him, she writes or sketches them down when words can’t- don’t suffice. Anything that keeps her from compartmentalizing how they make her feel or what they make her think.
But Joel. He’s always the one to take care of her that he’s never had an out or a way to talk or feel them in a healthy manner, not like he tries to give her. Ellie tries to get him to verbalize something, but Joel is a damn brick wall when it comes to directly talking about his feelings, so it never goes anywhere.
But when it’s 5am and there’s the tiniest glint of sunlight that starts to rise and offers a faint, glowing light to their kitchen as they’re full of sleep and still in the midst of navigating these feelings, it’s easier to talk. They’re more malleable.
“It was you…” he started, doing some lazy hand motions to try and convey the word he desperately did not want to say alongside her name. “Repeatedly. Different scenarios just…over and over again.”
Her eyes went soft, understanding in a way that only they could understand.
She had the same ones. He knew.
“Figured I’d make you breakfast now and leave it in the fridge for you to heat up later so I could get a head start on patrol and… try to forget about it all.”
Joel cleared his throat, kicking up imaginary dust off the tile floor as she watched him.
Ellie reached her hand out and made grabby motions with her fingers. Joel noticed, a light, sleepy chuckle escaping his lips as he stepped towards her, both her hands holding onto his one. He stood beside her, their hands falling against her knees.
She rubbed her thumb over his hand. “Are you okay?”
He smiled. He knew that meant a plethora of other questions that they didn’t have time to cover. “I’ll be alright, Ellie.”
She nodded her head, still rubbing her thumbs across his hand. “I know. Just… wanted to check up on you.”
“And I…” he started, leaning over to kiss the hair above her ear, “am happy you do.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder as he brought his other hand in, covering all three of theirs and squeezing tightly.
“Since you’re up, how about helping me with breakfast? Wouldn’t turn down your old man, would you?”
She smiled, tapping her feet against the cupboards. She squeezed his hands and kissed his cheek briefly before jumping off the counter. “Can’t say I didn’t think about it… but,” she said, opening the fridge door. “Not for the world.”
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okay so trans storytime with s! this one has a happy ending :)
it's october 2021. i have known i was not cisgender for about a year. i've been out as genderqueer for a couple months. due to the previously discussed "men are evil" shit i'd internalized, i am firmly in denial about the fact that i'm a guy even though it's pretty fucking obvious i'm male.
so, i'm at homecoming with my friends, we're vibing, and one friend decides she wants to take photos. we take one photo as a group, then she takes one of the boys, then says we should take one photo of the girls. then she looks over at me in my short-hair-suit-and-tie glory and goes "well, girls and s!"
i appreciate that she's not calling me a girl, but something feels more uncomfortable than if i'd just been left out of the picture altogether. if i had to do gendered photos, i think i would have rather been grouped with the boys. i don't know how to say any of this. i take the girls-and-s photo and wish i had the balls (pun intended) to be in the boys' photo.
somehow i don't recognize this as a sign that perhaps i am a boy.
fast forward to august 2023. i'm at camp and we're having a dance. my group of friends taking photos. after we do one photo all together, the rest of the group splits up by gender. this time, i decide to join in the boys' photo, no one says anything weird, i look great, and now it's one of my favorite pictures. gender wins.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THAT DOES HAVE A HAPPY ENDING!! GENDER DOES WIN!!! that's super duper awesome growth in terms of trans acceptance, vv proud :DD
also. the 'wish i had the balls' joke made me smile. ty
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