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…
The part of parenting that Joel never quite let himself remember is how much he fucking worries all the damn time.
How letting your kid out into the world without you right beside them makes you a ball of nerves.
It had been bad enough before a fucking apocalypse.
It makes him a damn twitchy mess now. The feeling sits in his stomach, turning him inside out with the endless possibilities of what could go wrong. His anxiety prickles along his skin like a tangible thing, keeping him constantly alert and on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the safety of this place to fall through.
Adjusting to life here in Jackson is… hard. Like working muscles that haven’t been used in ages. It’s stretching him more than he’d like to admit.
Having to watch his kid struggle too is impossibly worse.
He’s got a frame of reference for how life was before it all went to hell. Joel sort of knows how this works, it’s like riding a bike. Ellie does not.
It breaks his heart to realize just how little she really knows about living. How she’s never really gotten a chance to be a kid. Already so eager to be grown – she has no clue how young she is. Ellie grates under the rules put in place to keep her safe. She fights him on nearly everything. Going to school and having a curfew and making friends with people her own age.
The dance they’ve been doing around their relationship dynamic has only made things more complicated. More awkward. They don’t talk about it. How he makes her eat her vegetables and scolds her for cussing and packs her lunch for school and fusses when she doesn’t wear the appropriate attire for the weather. They eat with Tommy and Maria once a week, and he tells her not to put her elbows on the table, and he calls it family dinner even though Ellie’s face does something weird every time he says it, like she’s surprised she’s being included. He cooks and cleans and takes care of her, and she looks at him like a damn pod person.
He parents her, blatantly, and he can tell she’s not sure what to do with it. Joel pulls a beanie further down on her head so it covers her ears and watches her flounder, not used to the open display of tenderness.
They bicker and disagree a lot.
Ellie tells him that he’s not the boss of her, even though he kind of is.
And Joel, doesn’t know how to talk about it. The elephant in the room. Even when he sees the what are we in her eyes.
He can’t seem to get the question past his lips. Unsure how to just ask is this okay? Every time he helps her with her homework or puts an arm around her shoulders when she hesitantly presses against his side during movie nights. When people refer to them as father and daughter, and he doesn’t correct them. He lets his chest puff with an aching, familiar pride. When she makes him a bracelet and then calls it stupid, and he doesn’t let her pitch it in the trash. Neither of them comment on the fact that her eyes well up with tears when he slips it on his wrist opposite his watch and never takes it off again.
He hand carves little animals and they make a game out of placing them randomly around the house. And when he sits on one she wedged into the couch cushions, she playfully shoves at him, exclaiming dramatically, dude, you’re squishing Steve with your big ass. And when she falls against him, forehead pressed to his chest, Steve the space cat cradled in her hands, Joel can’t help but pull her closer, and touch his lips to the top of her head and cherish her.
She always startles a bit before sinking into his embrace.
Ellie is surprisingly neat for a teenager. She insists on doing her own laundry and she keeps her bed sheets tucked in with military precision. He assumes that FEDRA must have drilled that tidiness into them for it to be so automatic. She picks up after herself like she’s afraid to leave behind signs that she lives there at all.
Baby, you live here too, it’s okay, he wants to say every time she apologizes for being a kid.
And she never asks him for help.
He learns that the hard way twice after she sprains her wrist falling off the kitchen counter because she’d tried to climb up and get something too high for her, scaring him half to death.
The other when he finds her passed out in the bathroom, delirious with fever, having attempted to make it on her own despite him being just down the hall, in perfect shouting distance. He keeps his door cracked open in case she needs him.
Both times he puts his hand on the back of her head, pressing his own against her forehead, holding her as tightly as he dares. “Baby, why didn’t you ask for me?”
She shrugs and mumbles an I don’t know that cracks his damn heart inside his chest.
“Next time you need me, for anything, you come get me, kiddo. Okay? Anything at all.”
She nods against him, and he squeezes her tighter, kissing her head, but it doesn’t feel like a win. It feels like a habit he isn’t sure how to get her to break before it breaks them. He doesn’t know how to show her that it’s okay to rely on someone when he’s so shit at it himself.
They go around in circles like this for weeks and Joel doesn’t know what to do. Ellie struggles while he worries and hovers and tries to fix what seems impossible to fix. She bucks and bites under his undivided attention like she isn’t used to being anyone’s main priority.
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” she snaps when his overbearing is too much. When he’s suffocating her with the things behind his ribs that make it hard to breathe and he doesn’t know where to place it all anymore.
So, he gives it to her.
Joel doesn’t know how to explain that it ain’t babysitting. It’s being a father. Something he never quite learned how to stop doing.
“I can take care of myself,” she insists, all fire and bravado, but still her body cants into his when he opens his arms. When he holds out a hand, she always takes it. Like a gravitational pull.
So desperate to be loved, to be cherished in a way that she has no idea is already hers.
Let me take care of you, his touch says.
I don’t know how to let you, her tentative touch replies, the twitch of her fingers, the quiver of her lip, the crease in her brow that his thumb aches to smooth out. Her irises swim with doubt born from those that let go before.
But she doesn’t pull away, and it’s a start.
He’ll spend the rest of his days proving to her that he isn’t going anywhere. With time he will show her that he will be the thing that never leaves.
…
Things get worse before they get better.
The dark smudges underneath her eyes speak of how little sleep she’s getting.
She wakes him screaming nearly three times a week.
And every time she does, he waits for her to sneak into his room and worm her way into his bed just like she did his heart, with confidence, without permission. He waits, and waits and she never comes and he listens for footsteps on creaky floorboards, but hears nothing.
He gets up and goes all the way to her door, heart in his throat, but doesn’t knock. He paces and second guesses and strains to hear her anguished cries and wrings his hands and wonders why she doesn’t call out for him. She’s scared and alone and obviously upset and he needs to do something but he doesn’t know what and he doesn’t want to invade her space or make it worse for her. The door is probably locked and she probably wouldn’t let him in, and he can’t stand the thought of her pushing him away. So, he doesn't try.
At a loss with heart heavy and hurting behind his ribs, Joel slowly lowers himself to the floor by her door and resolves to remain sentry until morning. Putting his palm flat to the wood, he hopes that she can feel his presence, that she somehow can sense that he’s near.
I’m right here, baby, he thinks at her fiercely. Wild horses couldn’t pull me away. Letting his head thump back into the wall, he slams his eyes shut, refusing to acknowledge the tears that leak through. He stays there until night fades into morning, and he knows that he would do this every night until she opens the door and lets him in.
Until then, Joel does what he knows.
He cooks her breakfast and asks how she slept when she finally comes tromping down.
Sleep rumpled and grumpy, Ellie rolls a shoulder, head ducked and gaze set on the plate of food she’s barely touching. He tries not to worry about how tired she looks, how she keeps trying to handle it on her own.
I’m right here, he wants to say.
“You wanna talk about it?” Joel asks, voice soft in a way that she doesn’t know what to do with.
She squints at him, playing dumb. “Talk about what?”
“I know you’re having nightmares, kiddo.”
Her shoulders tense, and she curls in on herself a bit. Joel aches to hold her, but he’s not sure it would be welcome. His hands twitch and he curls them into fists to keep from reaching out anyway.
“I’m sorry if I woke you,” she mumbles. “I’ll try not to be so loud.” And that’s not the take away here that he wants her to have. He can’t have her thinking she’s disturbing him, that she’s a burden.
“Baby, look at me, please.”
It’s slow but her head does raise and her brown eyes usually so full of light are dull as they meet his own. His heart fractures further.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were having nightmares?” He ducks his head when she tries to glance away.
“It’s not like you could do anything about it,” Ellie mutters, so much doubt in her tone as she scowls down at the table, fingers picking anxiously at a loose thread on her pajama pants. “It’s fine. Besides, you got your own shit to deal with. You don’t need mine too.”
That’s the thing she doesn’t seem to understand just yet. He would take her pain and suffering in a heartbeat if he could. It eats him up inside that he can’t ease any of it for her. He would take it all if it meant she slept peacefully through the night again. If he saw that dimpled mischievous grin tugging at her lips once more. The one that meant she was about to tell him a shitty pun or turn more of his hairs gray. He sees none of that right now. He wishes that she’d let him in. Let him help, but he’s not sure how to get through to her.
No amount of saying anything seems to work.
“If you ever wanna talk about–”
“I don’t,” she says quickly, abruptly getting to her feet. “I gotta go or I’ll be late to school.” She scrapes the food into the trash and puts the plate in the sink like someone lit a fire under her ass and then she’s bounding up the stairs to her room to get ready.
He wishes he knew what words to say. That he wasn’t so damn rusty when it came to talking shit out.
Joel paces the living room floor, debating whether or not to follow her up there and finish their conversation or let it go for now. His decision is made for him when Ellie comes rushing down the stairs and out the front door, calling out a hasty goodbye over her shoulder as the screen door slams shut behind her.
His reminder to be safe falls on deaf ears.
He spends most of his work day distracted and short tempered, his mind constantly stuck on his kid. If she’s okay. If school is tough or easy for her because she never says either way. If she’s making friends and doing extra curricular stuff. If she’s sharing that drawing gift with anyone other than him.
No one calls him out on his behavior but he does get some dirty looks for being so damn waspish.
Joel calls it a day a few hours early before Rodney can throttle him for biting his head off for the millionth time, hoping to get himself cleaned up and Ellie’s favorite pie baking in the oven before she gets home.
“Sorry about the mud,” she says, grimacing at what got tracked in on her sneakers even as she gingerly pulls them off and places them on the shoe rack by the door. “I’ll clean it up, I swear.”
He waves her off. “It’s what rugs are for, kiddo, don’t worry about it. I’ll throw ‘em in the wash later.” Joel is trying desperately for her to get used to making a fuss, to making messes like kids her age should be doing. Not being so damn careful all the time.
She still looks unsure, chewing on her lip, and he redirects her gently with a ruffle of her hair that has her playfully scowling and sliding out of his reach. “Dude.”
“How was school?”
This earns him a half hearted shrug as she moves to hang her backpack on the stair bannister. “School is school,” she dismisses, already headed in the direction of the kitchen because she’s a bloodhound. “Is that… pie I’m smelling?” she wonders in disbelief.
“Your favorite,” he confirms softly, skin crinkling around his eyes, enjoying the way her whole face lights up with the brittle sort of hope that he wants to bottle up and keep safe inside his chest.
Ellie turns back to him, face screwed up. “But why? There’s no special occasion or whatever.” Her gaze immediately goes to the calendar on the wall, double checking she didn’t miss anything important.
He quirks a brow at her, putting his hands on his hips. “So? What if I just wanted to bake a pie for my best girl? How ‘bout that, hm?”
She blinks rapidly at this, rocking back on her socked feet, suddenly shy and unsure. Like she can’t believe he means her. “C’mon,” he murmurs, jolting her out of the way she was watching him with wide doe eyes. “It’s almost done. I’ll let you slice it once it cools. You can give yourself the biggest piece.”
Ellie doesn’t say anything, but when he tucks her into his side on the way to the kitchen, she doesn’t pull away. If anything, she shifts closer, and his eyes slip shut when he feels her fingers tangle in the bottom of his flannel like she needs to hold him in place. He’ll give her whatever reassurance she needs that this is real.
“Can I use that huge ass chef’s knife?” she feels brave enough to ask.
“The one that’s sharp as hell and definitely not for cutting pie, that one?” he checks, frowning. “Absolutely not.” Her face drops and he pinches her side gently and knocks his head against the side of hers. “I happen to like my kid with all ten of her fingers.”
This gets him a smile and an eye roll and a flush she tries to hide by looking away.
He lets her have pie before dinner, and he can tell she’s searching him for a trick. Like she’s waiting to get in trouble or something.
“My abuela always had a philosophy about having dessert first,” he tells her when she hesitates. “Always have the best thing first so you have room to enjoy it. She never did like eating sweets on a full stomach.”
He sticks his fork in his own slice of pie and brings it to his mouth. “I reckon she was right.”
Ellie grins at him when he winks and that seems to be all the assurance she needed to dig into her own slice. “Your abuela sounds cool as fuck.”
His lips twitch. “That she was.”
“What other cool shit did she teach you?”
This is the most interest in anything Ellie has shown since they got to Jackson, and with a pang in his chest, Joel realizes that maybe this was all that was needed. If he could get his head out of his ass long enough to realize that he couldn’t expect her to tell him anything if he didn’t offer up stuff too. Share parts of himself that he hadn’t given anyone in decades.
“Well, she taught me to sew for one,” he says, rolling his eyes a little when she makes a face at him. “Don’t knock it, till you try it, kiddo. It’s a damn good survival skill to have. One that saved my neck a time or two.”
Putting her elbows on the table in a way that always gets her scolded, she asks, “really, how?”
And so, he tells her about that job in Atlanta with Tess and Tommy and sewing up bullet wounds. Ellie stays transfixed the whole time, hanging on every word. Like every piece of information about his past is a sliver of trust he’s giving her, a piece of who he is. They’re just stories, but they seem to mean a hell of a lot to her. And when they get her eyes to light up like that, he can deny her nothing.
And when they’re done, she asks, so tentatively, “will you teach me to sew?”
“Sure thing, baby.”
“I wanna be a badass like your abuela.” God, she makes him laugh. This kid. His wonderful kid.
She falls asleep on him during the movie she picked for them to watch after dinner.
Despite his old man knees and his creaky back, he hoists her up into his arms and cradles her close his chest, putting his nose in her hair and breathing her in. Joel thinks, is this okay? as he carries his precious cargo up to her room and tucks her into bed.
He kisses her head and brushes the fly away hair out of her eyes, and wishes her good dreams to be of the moon and space cats and sheep.
…
She wakes him screaming later that night, and this time he doesn’t stop himself in the hallway or at the edge of her doorway. He doesn’t camp out against the wall and listen to her shaky inhales and stifled cries.
His hand reaches for the knob and nearly goes shaky with relief when it turns easily in his grasp.
Joel finds her tangled in the sheets, panting and almost hyperventilating and he feels himself cracking apart at the tears on her cheeks. Her puffy, bloodshot eyes wild with terror and need as she gasps and sobs, fighting an invisible foe that is long since dead.
“Hey,” he says, voice cracking as he raises his hands when her gaze snaps his direction, still caught up in the haze of her nightmare. Lost to another place and time.
“Baby girl, hey,” he says again, louder this time. “It’s me. It’s Joel. Your safe in your room here in Jackson.” He waits impatiently for recognition to flood her face before moving toward her, arms still outstretched. “It’s okay. You’re okay, honey. I’m right here.”
Her expression shudders and then she’s reaching for him, clawing and desperate. “Joel,” she keens, rough and broken and wanting him, and that’s all the permission he needs to cross the rest of the short distance in three big strides and to her side, like a magnet.
She grabs and clings to his shirt, yanking until he gets the memo and climbs up onto the mattress too. She barely gives him time to settle before she’s collapsing into him, burrowing further into his chest like she could get deep enough to hide away from the horrors that chase her. He folds himself around her like a shield and wishes fervently that he could give that to her, that he could wrap her up and never let anything hurt her again, impossible as that is.
“I gotcha,” he mumbles into the crown of her head.
“Please don’t go,” she whispers into his collarbone where she’s pressed her face.
“I ain’t going anywhere,” he swears, and he feels her relax a fraction at the words. And he thinks that maybe she is finally starting to believe him.
Joel pulls her in tighter, murmuring senseless words of comfort and rocking them until he feels her body release the last bit of tension and the tears have begun to dry on her face. Ellie goes slack against him, breathing deep and even once more, but still he doesn’t let go.
Even though, he’ll be sore in the morning, Joel holds her for the rest of the night. And for the first time in forever, Ellie sleeps and doesn’t dream.
…
And when they have dinner that next night, Joel stops short when he sees she’s already getting out the pie from the day before.
Glancing his way, she grins widely, eyes twinkling. “Dessert first, remember? Abuela knew what the fuck she was talking about when she made this rule.”
His heart flutters in his chest and he has to turn away just to wipe at the moisture that’s gathered at the corner of his eyes. Ellie doesn’t even seem to realize what she said and he decides to leave it be for now.
“What?” she says, eyeing him strangely.
“Nothing, kiddo,” he says gruffly, shaking himself before she can call him out about being weird. “You better not be skimping on my slice, ya hear, or I’ll have your hide.”
Ellie doesn’t freeze like she used to at the false threat, already having called his bluff long ago.
“I’m just trying not to let you get any slower, old man. I’m doing you a favor by hogging all the sweets. You’ll thank me one day,” she says, waving the knife around a little too carelessly for him.
He narrows his eyes. “Oh I’m sure you are – now careful girl before you cut yourself – gimme that.”
Ellie sticks her tongue out at him but dutifully hands over the weapon, giggling when he hip checks her gently out of the way. “Let an old pro show you how it’s done, now scooch your boot.”
She groans dramatically, and Joel thinks that maybe she’s starting to understand what being a kid is all about. Maybe he needs to show her more often that a good majority of it is spent being embarrassed and frustrated by their parent. Guess that means he oughta crank it up a bit.
Even though, he makes sure she has the bigger slice, she makes a show out of stealing a bit of his too, and he lets her, hoping she gets what all he isn’t saying.
Joel thinks that maybe she does or at least, she’s starting to get what it means to be a part of a family, to be a part of a community like Jackson, to be a kid again. To live.
And the most important one of all – that no matter what happens she’s got him. Forever.
Shoving playfully at her forehead makes the piece she stole from his plate fall off her fork, and she scowls at him, clearly fighting a smile despite it all.
“You dick,” she exclaims.
“Says the pie thief,” he replies dryly, belly laughing when she lunges for another.
…
And when Joel thinks about how easily she went to him that night, the reaching and the whimpering of his name, how she gripped onto him like she was drowning – the way he realizes her door had been unlocked all along – that maybe that was her way of telling him that yeah this, what we are, it's okay. That line in the sand he’d been so scared of crossing had disappeared long ago.
He just didn’t know how to read all her signals, but now he sees all the little things she doesn’t know how to say any better than he does.
So, when she inevitably falls asleep on him again, and he picks her up to carry her to bed. Joel doesn’t wonder anymore if it’s okay. He knows now that they’re gonna be okay.
He knows there’s never been anything more right than this right here.
…