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Joel doesn’t know how to feel right now.
It’s been a few weeks since Ellie’s birthday, where he saw her eyes light up with an innocence he wants to bottle up and keep close to his chest forever, and he thought everything was alright.
She was all smiles for those few days after her birthday, talking nonstop about how nobody else has gotten to see dinosaurs for their fifteenth birthday and staring at the stars like they’re closer to reach than ever, and it made Joel’s heart swell and ache at the same time.
The past couple weeks, though, something’s been off.
Even in the beautiful spring weather, when flowers are blooming by the thousands both in and outside of Jackson, lazy bumblebees higher in population than ever, Ellie seems off.
She’s flighty, in the way she is with everyone except Joel, and quieter than usual, never fully meeting his eyes when he tries to strike up a conversation.
When he and Tommy are out on patrol one morning, Joel finds himself hoisting his gun a lot more, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably, needing to do something with his body to get out these weird feelings.
“Is every—”
“Has Ellie—”
Both of them start at the same time, and Tommy chuckles lowly at the jinx. “After you,” he says lightly, mindlessly plucking a leaf from a low-hanging tree branch.
“It ain’t like you to be a gentleman,” Joel teases.
Tommy scoffs and shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything else, clearly waiting for Joel to say what’s on his mind.
“I think there’s somethin’ bothering Ellie,” Joel grumbles after a brief pause, “Dunno what it is, but she’s actin’ all weird.”
Tommy raises his eyebrows as he scrawls into the notebook. “How so?”
“She barely wants to be in the same room as me, for starters,” Joel begins, toeing the line between concern and complaint, but he doesn’t really give a shit right now, so he just barrels on, “Doesn’t wanna do guitar lessons, sneakin’ off to who-knows-where—”
“Sounds like a pretty normal teenager to me,” Tommy reasons with a shrug.
Joel glares at his super helpful younger brother. “She won’t even finish her plate at dinner, Tommy!” he despairs, and oh, if that isn’t the final nail in the coffin.
Now Tommy looks concerned, biting his lip with worry and furrowing his brows. “That don’t seem like Ellie,” he muses, more to himself than Joel.
“See?”
Tommy grunts and runs a hand through his beard thoughtfully. “Is she…”
Joel looks at Tommy, confused, and his brother just makes vague hand gestures. “Is she on…” he makes an even weirder motion with his hands, and the ridiculousness of it causes Joel to snort.
“Not right now, I don’t think,” he says, “I mean, it ain’t like I keep track. She don’t even keep track.”
Tommy huffs out a laugh at that, smile hidden under all his facial hair but visible in the way his eyes crinkle up. Ever the charming little brother, Joel thinks fondly as the two of them start to make their way back to Jackson.
“You could ask her, y’know,” Tommy suggests, once they’re almost to the gates of the town.
It ain’t that simple, Joel thinks with a tinge of bitterness flaring up in his throat, but he holds his tongue, simply tipping his head in acknowledgement.
“I think she’s worried about somethin’,” Joel confesses.
Tommy taps the side of his gun as the gates groan open to welcome them into the town’s open arms. “Wish I could help you,” he says with a slight grimace, before his eyes widen just a fraction, “Hey, look, speak of the devil.”
Joel turns around to see Ellie reading her wrinkled dinosaur pamphlet facts to a group of little children, if only to give their parents peace of mind for a few minutes.
“Was it big?” one boy’s eyes are as wide as saucers, leaning forward in the dirt like Ellie hasn’t reenacted it a thousand times.
Ellie widens her stance, planting two feet far apart and raising her arms towards the sky to make her look bigger, more menacing (it fails, miserably so, but Joel doesn’t have the heart to tell her that, and neither do the others, it seems).
“The biggest!” she roars, taking a staggering step towards the little kids. “And now this dinosaur’s gonna eat you!”
A triumphant roar rises from her throat as she starts to chase them down the street. The kids shriek and giggle, peals of laughter echoing from the corners of buildings as they expertly weave between the weary but smiling townsfolk.
Joel leans on the side of the tavern to watch Ellie and the kids for a little while longer. Three of the kids manage to get the upper hand, tackling her to the ground with loud shouts of glee and excitement.
“Dino down!” Ellie cries out, clutching her heart and writhing on the ground in a spectacular display of drama that would have caused a theatre club to ask her to audition.
The kids run around her in circles, cheering and whooping and hollering so much that even Maria pokes her head out of the bar in confusion, only for her expression to melt into something soft and warm as she watches the scene.
“Alright, let me up, you jerkwads,” Ellie jokes lightheartedly, jeans covered in dirt and grass patches.
With a quick shout from Maria, the kids scatter this way and that like little bugs, snickering to themselves and trying to find out more ways to cause mischief now that they can’t bother Ellie anymore.
While Ellie is brushing off her shirt, Joel takes the moment to walk up to her. “I was thinkin’, uh…” he shuffles a little bit, unsure of how to approach this, “I got enough scraps to make us some dinner tonight. If you, uh, wanted to, that is.”
For a moment, Ellie seems to forget about her behavior, and she raises her eyebrows teasingly. “Cat got your tongue?” she jokes.
Joel wants to cry with relief. “Sure, kid. By the way, you, uh…”
He shifts uncomfortably and Ellie tilts her head, not too dissimilar from how a cat would. I wonder if she’s ever met a cat before, he thinks idly. “You feelin’ alright?”
Ellie’s expression quickly shuts down into the same uncertainty from before. “Yeah, fine! I’ll see you for dinner, Joel!”
Quicker than ever, she bounds away, scampering off to go do anything that’ll get her away from Joel. It stings a little, knowing she would rather be anywhere than with Joel.
He doesn’t understand what’s wrong, though, not really. Did he say something to upset her? Is she worried about something?
The thought eats away at Joel’s conscience as he goes to his house, pulling some frozen rabbit out and getting started on the only dish he was ever alright at cooking—stew.
It’s a good thing it’s springtime now, seeing as he can get a bunch of vegetables to offset how horrible he’ll be at cooking the meat. Carrots, snap peas, some nice Swiss chard that someone started growing not too long ago, and some spring onions.
Maybe not the best combination, but it’s what he can get, and with a little satchel of aromatic herbs Maria gave him not too long ago, Joel thinks it’ll make a damn fine stew—better than whatever he and Ellie ate on the road, anyway.
Just like he predicted, Joel overcooks the rabbit, and the carrots turn into a gross mushy texture that contrasts everything else, but overall? Not too shabby.
He can imagine Sarah nodding her approval, trying to stick a finger in the burning hot stew and squeaking in both pain and delight when it burns.
Joel is ladling the stew into two separate bowls when the door opens. It’s quiet, nothing like the way Ellie used to barge into the house at full speed, shouting or complaining about something or other.
Alright, that’s it—Joel’s getting down to the bottom of whatever’s been eating at Ellie once and for all. He can’t stand to see her act so unlike herself.
“Smells good,” Ellie murmurs softly as she walks into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table and immediately digging into the bowl of stew.
No amount of scolding has gotten her to stop eating like it’s her last day on earth, but at least Maria has managed to somehow get her to stop chewing with her mouth open, scarfing down the food rather than inhaling it.
Instead of worrying about Ellie spitting out her food or choking on it, Joel just digs into his own bowl, taking care to use his best manners in the hopes that his table etiquette will enter Ellie’s brain via some osmosis shit or something.
Ellie scrapes the last bit of rabbit out of her bowl in record time, patting her stomach with a forced smile. “That was great, Joel, but I should—”
“Hold on, now,” Joel raises his hand and pretends not to act surprised when she doesn’t bolt at the first opportunity, “We got somethin’ to discuss.”
Ellie pales.
“We do?” she squeaks out.
Joel crosses his arms in a way that he hopes is less intimidating and more scolding. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you actin’ all weird around me,” he begins, taking a deep breath to gather up the courage to continue, “If I did somethin’, I need you to tell me, ‘cause I don’t—”
“I kissed someone!” Ellie blurts out.
Those words come entirely from out of left field, leaving Joel feeling almost disoriented for a moment. Seriously? Her kissing a boy has put her in that much of a tizzy?
Sure, he might get a little grouchy about the fact that his fifteen year old girl is already dating people, but there were plenty of people even younger than her who kissed people! Why is she so upset about it?
“Why would I care about you kissin’ someone?” Joel asks, thoroughly stumped. There’s absolutely no reason she should be this freaked out about it, not unless something happened to her.
Jesus Christ, did something happen to her?
Joel quickly reaches across the table and gently, gentle as ever so as not to spook her, puts his hands on Ellie’s face, turning it as he searches for any injuries. “Oh, babygirl, did he—”
“She,” Ellie corrects, and if Joel weren’t so worried about the disgusting possibility that she didn’t consent, he would’ve caught on faster.
“Did she do it without your permission?” Joel worries, desperately searching her expression for fear, or disgust, or that haunted, empty look that tore his heart into shreds that he had to deal with for so many weeks.
None of that seems to be there, though, nothing but uncertainty and nerves.
Ellie rears back in shock.
“What? No! No, she didn’t—of course not!” she splutters out, batting away Joel’s fretting hands with a lightheartedness he’s missed so dearly.
Joel practically heaves out a sigh of relief, almost thunking his head right into the stew bowl. Boy, wouldn’t that be a sight to see?
Ellie fidgets with her spoon when it becomes obvious that Joel hasn’t connected the dots. “Dina told me—”
It takes everything Joel has in him not to ask an accusatory “who’s Dina?”.
“—she told me that, before the outbreak, there were a lot of people where you lived who didn’t like people who…”
Joel frowns even deeper.
Somehow.
“People who what?” he urges her to continue with a soft voice.
Ellie won’t meet his eyes, too ashamed or embarrassed to meet his gaze properly. “Ugh, seriously, Joel?” she complains.
“What?!” Now Joel is getting frustrated, too, not used to someone as blunt as Ellie beating around the bush like this.
“Dina said that, where you’re from, before the outbreak, people didn’t like it when girls…”
“When girls what?”
“When girls kiss other girls! And date them! And give each other longing looks when the other isn’t looking!”
All the gears working overtime in Joel’s brain grind to a halt as he attempts to process Ellie’s words. What the… is this some roundabout way of asking Joel if he’s homophobic?
Does Ellie think he’s homophobic?
Joel wants to bark out a laugh at the ridiculousness of the question, but any humor is wiped from the moment when he sees the trepidation in Ellie’s round eyes.
“Never really gave it much thought,” he admits with a shrug, being as honest as possible, “I s’pose I’m lucky for that, huh? What gender someone loves really ain’t my business.”
Ellie huffs out irritably, like Joel’s being the difficult one here. Which, really, is a preposterous thought.
“What if it was your business?” she questions.
When Joel doesn’t seem to be getting it, her voice turns quieter, so unlike her usual spitfire self that it hurts to watch.
“What if a girl you knew liked girls?”
Ellie keeps worrying her lip between her teeth, which is a bad habit Maria keeps trying to rid her of, as the first time Joel saw her lip bleeding, all he could see was red as he threatened to kill whoever split Ellie’s lip.
Oh.
“She,” Ellie had corrected him just moments ago.
Oh.
Once again, Joel feels the urge to laugh bubble up in his gut.
“Is that what’s been worryin’ you all this time?” Joel asks gently.
He can’t help the sting that he feels from her uncertainty, all because of a stupid rumor about Texas someone said. Which, the rumor isn’t entirely untrue, there were some pretty bad people, but it still hurt.
He wonders, if Ellie never knew about that, if she would have even given it a second thought.
Ellie nods, still avoiding his gaze, and it breaks Joel’s heart to see it.
“Do you know what we used to call this?”
Ellie finally blinks up at him, a spark of hope entering her eyes when she realizes he hasn’t immediately told her to fuck off.
Joel can’t believe he’s having a conversation as domestic as this in the apocalypse. He supposes it’s proof that happy endings are possible, maybe even reachable.
He thinks about the hospital, about Ellie’s arms turning bruised and bloody from all the needles and tests being done on her left and right, and the woozy smile on her face when the doctor shouted something about a treatment.
He thinks about the car ride to Jackson, of Ellie passed out from exhaustion yet smiling in her sleep for the first time ever.
He thinks about everything that’s happened to lead up to this moment, and he wonders if Ellie will ever be able to comprehend just how much he loves her.
“It was called ‘coming out’,” Joel explains, watching fondly as Ellie soaks up any information about the pre-outbreak world she can grasp, “The full term was ‘coming out of the closet’, I think, but, uh, don’t quote me on that.”
Joel rubs a hand on his neck awkwardly. “Basically, if a kid was… uh… oh, I don’t know how to explain, you know what I mean. They’d tell their parents, or friends, or someone they cared about. It was a big deal, usually, scared ‘em half to death out of fear of what their loved ones would think.”
Not the best execution of an explanation, but good enough, he supposes.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Ellie wonders out loud. “Coming out?”
Now it’s Joel’s turn to feel awkward. “Are you?” he asks.
“I think so,” Ellie murmurs, her voice turning more confident by the second, “Yeah, I am. I like girls. Like, I like girls.”
“Alright,” Joel says.
“And… you’re okay with that?” Ellie presses. “You won’t think of me any differently?”
Joel can’t help the smile that breaks out on his face like an infect—er, maybe a little too soon for a joke like that.
“Of course I’m okay with it. You’ll always be the same Ellie to me,” he vows, holding out a hand halfway across the table, “No matter what.”
“No matter what,” Ellie echoes, taking his hand and squeezing it like a lifeline.
Nothing will ever change that, Joel doesn’t say out loud, holding onto Ellie’s hand just as tightly as she is.
I love you, he doesn’t say, but from the way Ellie smiles at him, all wide and happy without any of the past nervousness, he thinks that she knows.
I love you, he doesn’t say two weeks later, when he drops a book about LGBT history that has more knowledge than he’ll ever know on her bed.
I support you, he doesn’t say two years later, when he sees her give Dina a chaste kiss on the cheek before patrol, flushing red the entire time.
“I’ll always support you,” he does say five years after that, when they’ve decorated the canteen for a makeshift wedding, and Ellie and Dina get married in flannel shirts and dirty boots.
“No matter what?” Ellie asks as staticky music blares from one corner of the canteen.
Joel had to blow his nose into the sleeve of his shirt and pretend like he wasn’t crying during the vows earlier, which Tommy had laughed at for ten minutes straight when he realized, hollering up a storm until his face went red.
In the center of the room, Dina is dancing up a storm, capturing the attention of everyone in the room but only having eyes for Ellie.
“No matter what,” Joel agrees, pulling Ellie into a side-hug that she curls into, and for a moment she’s fourteen again, and it’s just the two of them against the world, fighting infected and kicking ass like they did for so long.
They don’t have to fight the world anymore, Joel thinks, watching with a smile on his face as Ellie breaks away from him to dance with Dina, some ridiculous jumble of her arms and legs that will most likely end with her falling on her ass.
It’s not just the two of them anymore, and, to his surprise, Joel is more than okay with that.