#Joel's just doing his best

[blackberrydeer]

21 days to find you

Chapter 3/?

The whole ordeal had already flew out of his mind when Joel reached the guard to get his payment. Not a lot, easy work like that never rewarded you any pretty amount of anything other than tired muscles, but two cards were enough for two days, so he could at least pretend he did something useful.

With the rain pounding the way it was, he would have to take the Fedra route, and that meant crossing the whole military school. In normal days Joel would try to avoid the damn place like the plage itself.

But his back hurt like hell, and frankly, chances are, with the way his ankle was aching, he would most likely trip and drown in the shallow street river made by the rain, and right now he doubted he would have enough force or will to get up and walk to his shitty home.

And anyway, it was almost dawn, no kid would be running off the walls to go out. Not anymore, in the middle of the apocalypse, and not with the way the rain had been trying to mimick goddamn hail.

Unfortunately the two decades Joel passed avoiding kids had made him kind of blind to how much a mini-human would go to do something they’d want to, because despite the night, the guards, the curfew, the cold and the rain, Joel did find a kid. I’m fact, he’d been so paranoid about avoiding any kid sneaking out of their rooms that he didn’t even notice the one running right at his direction until said kid crashed straight into him, sending them both to their asses.

Or more accurately, sending him to the floor, back first (and fuck does that hurts, he’s not as young as he once was), the girl (because of course, after avoiding kids for so long, the first time he’d find one would be a little girl) sprawled over his chest, cradling her forehead with a mad scowl.

That is, until she eventually noticed him, and fuck, that was the girl working at the site. She’d been paranoid enough to bolt off the job without even picking up her ration, and he all but confirmed her (inaccurate) suspicions. Now she would think he was actively stalking her, and Joel couldn’t even form an argument that would convince her otherwise.

But despite the worried need to reassure her he offered no danger, the 19 years of surviving and smuggling kicked in first, and before she could think of screaming he held her head in one arm, hand pressed tight against her mouth, careful to not block her nose, the other around her middle in a sick joke of a hug.

The reaction was immediate, the girl starting to thrash and fight and try to bite against his hold. A brief memory of him trying to keep a wild raccoon off his baby brother flashed in his mind, but he brushed it off quickly. That girl looked like more of a wild raccoon than the raccoon itself.

“Calm down, calm do- shit-“ she managed to scratch at his face, barely missing his eyes “ Ow, I’m gonna let you g- ouch, brat, calm down” another pseudo punch, a pressure in his finger that could only be her trying to bite his hand. She twisted her torso, effectively moving so they were face to face, her trying to use his chest to get up and aim a weak punch to his jaw. He tightened his hold around her middle, making her yelp when it forced her to bend her arms and drive another punch to the floor instead.

“Calm dOWN, GODDAMNIT” Joel snapped, at last, when she almost kneeled him in the groin.

Probably a little rougher than what Joel would have been strictly comfortable with while talking to a child, specially a terrified one, but it seemed to do the trick, considering she stopped fighting to stare at him, the surprise in her eyes making him wonder just how much of that reaction was conscious or barely automatic.

Anyway, she stopped.

“Cool off, kid. I’m goin’ to let you go, but” Joel tried to ignore the barely visible flinch “you better not scream when I do it”

Well, at least she lifted one eyebrow, a look in her face that would be just like any other cheeky teenager’s if they were in literally any other situation.

“Don’t know if you noticed, but they have a hang wall they’re more than happy to put to use” that should have been a clear threat, but he felt the gnawing feeling she wasn’t talking about him. The next words pierced at the part of his heart responsible for his ever present anger toward the world “ If they see me, I’d be spending all of tomorrow’s morning hanging there”.

And God, sometimes Joel would curse that little part of him that cared still. What a punch, to hear a young thing saying shit like that with a normal face.

“Let’s just not drag their attention then, okay?” he said, not very keen on keeping hearing the kid talking. Also definitely not keen on keeping holding down a little girl.

Just to be sure she wouldn’t try to alert the guards, he let her go slowly. Not so surprisingly she was telling the truth, and despite still being wary of him, she made no attempts at screaming. Unfortunately for him she kneeled his ribs while trying to get up.

For some reason she stayed put until he got up, urging his body to go back to work with a slowness that he would forever deny.

“Where’s your dorm?” Joel asked, regretting it the moment the words let his mouth. Good job at trying to not be creepy.

The girl seemed to think the same thing.

He instinctively steeped back, lowering his shoulders to try to appear smaller, non threatening.

Before, when kids and babies where guarded by their parents and security laws, it was hard to tell, but two decades in the apocalypse was enough to see just how much humans can rely on their animals instincts.

Even avoiding kids, nowdays it was easy to see just how much kids are affected by wild instincts. Monkey brain and all, Tommy had said once.

“Why?” good job at not being a creepy, really good job.

“It’s way too late for a girl your age to be walking alone” he may loathe seeing kids, his own never failing to cross his eyes, but even him wouldn’t want to have to deal with the guilt of seeing some dead naked kid floating somewhere in the sewages.

The girl seemed to disagree, looking over his shoulder with excessive attention. He caught on the act pretty quickly, though.

Not safe.

Just to humour her, be lifted a eyebrow, before doing a whole turn over to look at what she had been supposedly staring at.

To his very little surprise, there was nothing, but he kept staring until the sounds of quick footsteps started to fade.

What was she, teen?

[raticalshoez]

i'm having hyperfixation drought so i did what i did best and created a crossover episode

[mbirnsings-71]

guys I am once again just saying- I just wanted to draw wings again-

[mariatesstruther]

okay but a version of events in which tommy takes ellie to the fireflies, but NEITHER of them come back. and maria joel have to work together to get them back

[chemdisaster]

thinking about other characters, whose experience with watching their alliances get consumed by the cruel nature of the game grew on them like scar tissue and made them shy away from freely giving up all of themselves to someone else like that again, and about joel, who got burnt over and over in the worst possible way, but held on to that memory of something good in a world turned against them and only became more acquainted with loyalty, against everything he used to be

[crossbackpoke-check]

the pics of morgan and joel are from travis sanheim's wedding this weekend!

^^^me experiencing the one-two knockout punch of “oh they WERE each other’s wedding date” followed by the realization that sanny finally got married 🥹😭 cheers indeed!!!

[sugarcoated-lame]

should be asleep bc i have to be up in like 5 hours, but instead i’m awake and thinking about an idea for a best friend’s brother/college!joel au fic 👀

[foodlesoodlesdoodles]

Unfortunately for all of you this is a blog with OCs in it until the end of time

[dirt-str1der]

Random people put a like on my ryusen marriage post every once in a while this makes me happy i like ryusen

[blackberrydeer]

It has come to my attention that if I want people to give me requests for writing, I should first post my own writings here so

If you want to read them in a more solid form, I have a AO3 account... that, by the way, is pretty much empty right now because I wrote all my histories in a notebook and now I'm too lazy to decipher my own calligraphy to put it on the web.

Anyway, the history

Prompt: different first meeting inside Boston's QZ.

21 days to find you

Chapter 1/?

The day had been relatively good.

Or as good as a apocalyptic world inside a fucking facist Q.Z can be, at the very least. Joel was able to find easy work, a small favor asked from Tess: Lay low for, at least, one week.

He had been reluctant to follow said favor.

Sure, he was healing after being shoot, his ankle still hurt like hell from the small marathon they had done during their last job (which should have been goddamn easy peasy, Tess, you fucking said so) inside a Fedra’s facility, even more considering he had a sprained ankle earlier (from tripping in the damn stairs), but they were low on food, and supplies, and their ammo was no more than some kind of sweet dream at this point.

They weren’t open to take a rest, he had said, in very meaner words, when they started to discuss what to do next.

At least he won part of the argument. Joel was working, still, bad ankle and shoot and all. Unfortunately it was a Fedra’s work, and Tess was only-god-knows-where, doing a trade he’d been planning for months.

Despite the cold making his teeth chatter as an nonstop background sound, and despite the worries of not knowing where Tess was, (of course Joel trusted her, but she had been gone for two days, the 3° already ending) it was a good day, Joel thought to himself, bending in half to pick up more debris. The Fireflies had just bombarded a dozen Fedra’s supply deposits, what matched perfectly with the “Go fuck off to at least one easy job, Texas, you’re limping like a damn newborn” request.

Despite the cold, making all of his joints creak like boiling oil, it was a good day, he thought, carrying a piece of broken window, using his non-shoot shoulder to carry the heavier stuff.

Despite the cold, the day would have been good. Unfortunately Joel lived inside a goddamn apocalyptic world, and that world deemed acceptable to leave kids rotting in the rain, and despite everything, his only thought at the moment was a simple, instinctive:

She’s gonna catch a cold

Most of the people in the area had retreated at that point, scared away by the heavy rain, looking for refuge in their shit homes. Of course, the best decision he could make would be doing the same, but the prospect of doing absolutely nothing except stare at the walls of his shitty home was simply asking the universe to make his head think, and thinking was synonym for remembering, and he was not in the mood to do that.

His pills were all but used, no escape to sweet no-dreams sleep, so he stayed to finish the rest of the work. They were low on supplies, he’d be paid twice if he worked double.

The prospect of working till his body was ready to give out was a very attractive one.

Point is, Joel wasn’t alone, and while that was generally for the better in most cases, right now he was the only witness to the kid collecting pieces of what used to be a door, despite the heavy rain and despite every piece of wood being half of her size (what, honestly, wasn’t a very difficult size to reach, scrawny and small as she was). Young enough to have kid fatness (not that she had a lot of that, he concluded, going by what he saw in his side glances).

Joel also concluded that he should have went right back home after the first drops of rain, memories be damned. Now he was soaking wet, cold, tired, and remembering a small girl in the rain, running and playing and carrying all the light of the universe plus his heart in her eyes, not like the one currently carrying fucking debris with stick-like arms.

She’s gonna catch a cold, his currently not working mind repeated, and he took that as his clue to get out and lie in his bed until sleep came from sheer force of will.

He’d done his part of the work, anyway, certainly enough to get the damned ration card.

Despite the cold, making his lungs burn with the effort of breathing, it would have been a good day, if Joel had dragged his sore ass right back to his shitty home, and not to the kid carrying debris and the certainty of a fucking cold.

“Ki-“ like a deer caught in the headlights, she bolted, quicker than the blink of an eye, and the day would have been good if her memory had left with her.

Now he was alone, soaked wet, cold, tired, and doing nothing in the jobsite, and remembering fucking memories.

Without giving the universe another thought, he left.

[theflyingfeeling]

” #they all look submissive but some of them look submissiver than the others 😌 ”

Wanna elaborate who do you think looks the most submissive? 👀

I mean

look at this absolute dirty napkin of a man <3 he's just waiting for you to boss him around

although ngl I was as surprised as the rest of you to notice how good Tommi looks on his knees 😳

he looks like a man full of regret about his life decisions and is ready for the inevitable punishment 😔

Joonas, on the other hand, looks like if they made a limited edition Dance Moves Barbie™ but instead of dancing, all the kids make him do this:

Niko just looks like a rejected character from a Magic Mike sequel

...and then we have these fuckers who are probably just experiencing a normal Tuesday

[skoulsons]

.

[mariatesstruther]

mega famous a-list socialite badgirl tess servopoulos becoming friends with mega famous punk rocker frontman tommy miller. their publicists maria and joel have to work overtime together to keep the two from blowing up their respective careers

it gets a lil difficult when they start falling a lil bit in love with one another’s clients

[dindadjarin]

like if I’m completely honest with myself, yes I would have done the same thing. especially if the person who I love didn’t choose to die themselves. it would be different tho if said person got a choice in the matter, if they said “I want to do this, even if I die, I want to try and you have to accept that” I would have done it for them but if they explicitly told me so even if it crushed my heart.

[britneyshakespeare]

i listened to the fall out boy version of we didn’t start the first (listing 1989-2023 world events) and can i just say. first of all the original song is silly and not that deep in its commentary but at least it was like an original idea. there’s a reason your 11th grade history teacher played it in your class in the cold war unit, right? it sets a scene and a mood without even having to do anything but listing a bunch of pop culture and political iconography. but there’s also like, a sequence of events. fob’s really just throws events and names of things together sloppily in no particular order other than if they kinda rhyme. it has a lot less impact when thinking about the recent historical or present moment bc it’s just like “thing you remember, other thing you remember, other thing you remember” but from one object to the next they have no particular connection to each other in space or time. it’s poorly associated. 

[the-somwthing]

Poorly describing the life series players to help people pick which pov they want to watch

Grian: acts like he really cares about the rules but he doesn’t

Joel: probably on his red life right now

Jimmy: The Underdog

Cleo: arsonist in a constant state of divorce

Scar: just wants friends and money, but uses money-making tactics to make friends and friendship-skills to make money

Bdubs: extremely devoted, But Watch Out

Tango: least careful guy out there

Impulse: his series never has any form of betrayal in it trust

Etho: watch in real time as his reputation as a cool guy gets washed away

Skizz: wholesome and vicious but tends to mix up when he should be which

Martyn: funnyman lore guy theater kid

Scott: thought this was a house building competition. always killing himself. wins.

Pearl: watch in real time as she slowly goes insane

BigB: adhd but not in the overstimulating way. Watch in real time as he slowly becomes a compulsive liar

Ren: theater kid SUPREME

Mumbo: the least loyal guy in the whole series imo

Lizzie: doing her best to understand what’s going on at any given moment, terrified

Gem: (I wish I had more than one season to go off of) likes to make fun of people