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theweedisasterxoxo · 6 months ago

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Open My Eyes (So I May See Your Love)

Fic Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Chapter Warnings/Content: mention of canon-typical violence, description of pain, implied intentions of assault (not by Andrew), nicknames/petnames (“Sunshine”, “Babe”, “Kid”, “Doll”), reader is moderately able-bodied, no use of Y/N, no set age for reader but it is implied that she wasn’t born yet or was very young when the outbreak started, mention of prayer (deity not mentioned, nor is the way of praying apart from Andrew being on his knees with his eyes closed) no physical descriptors in terms of reader’s height or weight.

Word Count: 4000 (exactly!!!)

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ii. Amen, Or Whatever

Morning arrives and the sun shines in a way one could only describe as obnoxious, reminding Andrew that he has managed to live another day. He’s grateful for your help, of course, but he is surprised that you managed to pull him back before he plummeted off the ledge leading straight for a dark future.

Perhaps, if this were any other situation or if you knew him better, you might have rubbed in a cheeky ‘I told you so’. You might have gloated over your success, but that felt wrong — premature, almost — because it’s really only been a few hours and you don’t want to set yourself up for that type of heartbreak. You can’t bear to think of how you’d feel if the expectation of him surviving was somehow shattered.

You exhale in one quick whoosh.

Still, you allow yourself to think, trying to keep up the effort of staying positive about the situation, He’s alive. He made it.

By no means had it been easy for him. His night had been filled by painful contractions of his limbs that contorted his body into positions you didn't know were humanly possible. They left him with spasming muscles that guided forced his hands into tightly curled fists, or turned his back into a mighty arch while his face twisted into an ugly expression of his agony. Because it was ugly — none of that could have been considered beautiful, like moonlight reflecting off of a lake — and it was frightening. Sometimes, he tried to vocalise the pain but all that escaped him were hollow exhales that sounded like a dying man’s last breath. No, you didn’t like that comparison at all.

And, as much as he was struggling, it wasn’t easy for you either; you recall how much of a vile thing it was to have watched this stranger be reduced to such a state. How, occasionally, you would reach your hand out to offer him what little physical comfort you could give — a hand on his arm, or wiping the sweat away from his forehead — all while you tried to fill the silence. Perhaps they were silly, the things you spoke about, but he seemed to appreciate it. The idle chatter about things you read from dusty books, or about gossip immortalised in a teen’s writing from journals that were abandoned long ago.

It’s Andrew’s hacking cough that brings you back into the present, reminding you that he’s alive. As your neck turns, snapping your head to look in his direction, it’s like he can sense the question on the tip of your tongue. He answers it before you can even ask, raising his free hand in a conciliatory gesture as he tells you, “I’m fine, Sunshine. I breathed wrong, that’s all.”

You nod and remind yourself, silently, that he’s fine. He’s alive. And it’s that fact alone that brings up a warm and pleasant hybrid-sense of accomplishment and pride. It blossoms deep in your chest — though it is short lived because the feeling withers and shrivels like a rose tossed into a fire, because he speaks up once more. He looks away from you, like he’s ashamed, when he says, “I should go, then.”

And with all of the grace of a goose with a broken wing trying to take flight, one of the most confused honks of a ‘Huh’ escapes your lips.

“I should go,” he finally manages between coughs. When Andrew looks back at you, though, his gaze softens — but only by a fraction. “I’d only slow you down. Ain’t that right, Sunshine?”

You scoff after he says this. The sound leaves you so quickly that, had you not felt the air being forced from your chest and resonating briefly in the back of your throat, you would not have realised it was your own. “No,” you tell him, and your answer is purely for selfish reasons; you have not given up your time or your valuable resources just for him to up and leave, potentially walking himself into his own death. That’s something you don’t want on your conscience. So, you glare at him as you break the silence that has settled between you two, eyes narrowing. “We stick together.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Andrew says, and his voice is as stern as he can possibly get it before a ripple of pain travels through his abdomen, “I never asked for—“

“You absolutely did.” You’re vaguely aware that your voice has grown a little louder, a little harsher, but it’s not what you want to focus on right now. “You asked for my help, so I’m giving it to you… No take-backsies.”

The man begins a gentle protest. He shakes his head while a gentle utterance of the nickname he’s attributed to you falls from his lips, but you’re having none of it.

“Andrew,” a look of utter displeasure tugs at your features. It morphs your lips into a soft frown and furrows the inner corners of your brows. It’s not a look that suits you at all, much too grim and hopeless. “I’m staying with you. End of.”

“Look—“

You raise your hands quickly with your palms facing him, hoping and pleading silently for him to just listen. “One week,” you say, “one week and then I’m gone. I swear.”

He grumbles at this, which you translate him as weighing out his options; he can stay with you for a better chance of survival or he can wander off alone and face the probability of kicking the bucket. Eventually, he looks back into your eyes. The nod he gives looks as if he’s been forced at gunpoint, but it’s a nod nonetheless. “One week, Sunshine.”

\\\\\

“Is it true that people really used to drive miles and miles in these things?” You ask, watching Andrew as he settles himself in the driver’s seat next to you after firmly closing the door behind him. Rain falls heavily outside and bounces off the windshield.

He leans his head against what’s left of the headrest, hands gripping and gliding over the faded, worn faux-leather of the steering wheel in some sort of muscle memory. “If they had a licence and the gas for it, yeah.”

“Did you?”

He repeats the question with a chuckle and turns his head to cast his dark eyes on your face, watching as your own eyes flit over his features with an eagerness for him to continue. So he acquiesces, “Yeah, I did.”

“Where’d you go then?”

“Honestly,” he says, looking back at his hands as they go still on the wheel, thinking back to Before, “not very far. Work, shops, home, perhaps a late-night drive if I felt so inclined.”

“Well, that’s boring,” you promptly tell him. You shuffle your body in an attempt to get more comfortable but this car is decades old and the interior has definitely seen better days. Then, after a few seconds, you add, “I would have.”

Andrew laughs at this statement from you. It’s a proper, full-on belly laugh more similar to a dog’s bark. You’re glad to hear it, though. To see it, because you know that he would not have dared to laugh like that a few months ago. Not when every breath he took seemed like it could be his last. You only know this because you’ve been travelling with him for well over a week now because, by the end of his third day with you in the initial time period you had set, he realised that your only motivation was to help him. He couldn’t hold a grudge against you for that (not that he’d want to, anyway). Then, by the end of the first month, he had made peace with the steadily growing companionship between the two of you. Andrew had even been so kind as to restring your bow to give it a faster draw speed. After that, as much as he would have hated to admit it, the idea of parting from you seemed wrong. Staying with you felt much more natural.

“Nah,” he tells you, “you’d have gotten bored after the first ten minutes of driving.”

With a mock-scandalised expression pulling at your features, trying desperately to hide your smile, you raise one of your hands to your chest. “Nuh-uh!”

To combat this, Andrew employs the eternally convincing and very adult argument of ‘Yuh-huh’ in between his steadying wheezy laughs. “Look at yourself right now, Sunshine,” he chuckles. “You can hardly sit still.”

There’s an amicable silence that grows between the two of you while you lean forward to explore the dashboard with your hands, running your fingers over the grooves and suspiciously-shaped indents. Only a few moments pass before you find the glove compartment and try to open it, eagerly pulling at it. When it doesn’t budge you hear a sort-of scoff from Andrew, who reaches over and pushes the compartment’s cover inwards before it springs open. There’s nothing special inside it aside from a few stiff tissues that you’d rather not know the contents of, so you sigh and lean back against the carseat again which is when you catch the sliver of silver metal. Then, despite the fact that you’re living in a dangerous world where people set traps in the most mundane and unassuming places, you reach in and pull the object out. You’re almost excited to find that it’s a small gun, perhaps a little smaller than a revolver and it doesn’t share the trademark cylinder of a revolver. Instead, there’s a short barrel with two bores.

“No way!” You all but exclaim as you weigh it in your hand, using a light bouncing motion, feeling the cool metal in your palm.

“You gotta be careful with that,” Andrew warns, his brows beginning to furrow when he reaches out to carefully remove the gun from your barely-there grasp. “Jeez.”

“I wasn’t even touching the trigger.”

“Accidents happen, kid,” he says, even though it’s more of a grumble, as he checks the glove compartment for any additional ammo. He’s pleased to find that there is, disregarding the convenience of it, and he tucks the small box away into one of his pockets. Then, he continues speaking, “And I, for one, don’t feel like havin’ any more holes forced into my body — or yours for that matter.”

“So,” you murmur, drawing out the ‘O’ when you turn to look at him again, ignoring what he’d just said. You cast your gaze down to the gun. “Can I keep it?”

Both of his eyebrows raise when he hears your question. Despite still being focused on the weapon in his hand, he tilts his head towards you. “That depends,” he starts as his nimble fingers work to put on the Safety and discard the old ammo, “do you know how to use it?”

Your silence tells him your answer.

“Then, no, you may not keep it.”

“But what if we get into trouble again? What if—”

He cuts you off by speaking up, resting his none-weapon-bearing hand on your knee in a comforting gesture, “Have I let anything happen so far, Sunshine?”

His question leaves you retreating into silence with your lips pressed in a tight line because you both know the answer to it is a hard no. To his credit, he’s strong willed and would much rather have blood on his hands and guilt on his conscience than see you in danger.

In fact, it was only a week ago that you watched in horror (and morbid fascination) as Andrew took the life of a man who had ambushed you. Of course it wasn’t your first time seeing death, but to have seen it being carried through on your behalf was different. You’d been ambushed by what Andrew called a hunter, a man who’d taken you both by surprise and tried to enact his scheme to rob you of your supplies. However, when he saw you, his plan changed and he’d uttered the most vile things about you. The hunter had even attempted to bargain with Andrew for some one-on-one time with you, but had just… stopped all of a sudden. Your companion had not only crossed the space in what must have been a record time, but he’d manoeuvred himself to be in front of the hunter so that you couldn’t see exactly what was happening. It was obvious from the sickening crunchy-crack of his neck bone that Andrew had broken it. One second, filth had permeated the air and the next the only sound that you could determine was a wheezing, gurgling breath as the light left the hunter’s eyes. It may not have been entirely necessary but Andrew sealed the deal with the heel of his boot to the dead man’s skull, before turning back to lead you away from the corpse. His words had been so tender in comparison, ensuring that you were okay despite not having been touched.

“Then you know you can trust me,” Andrew says gently, and you snap back to reality once more. A deep sigh builds up and then escapes. You do trust him and you want to tell him as much, but he gives a single shake of his head in a gesture that tells you everything that you need to know: you’re young and he understands how scary that is, much more with how confusing and terrifying this world has become, but he has things under control.

\\\\\

It’s been a few weeks since you found the gun in the glove compartment of that car. Andrew told you it’s a Derringer and you nodded along, as if that meant anything to you in the first place.

In between hikes across Idaho and pinky promises the pair of you had made in the dead of night, you found yourself sending up your thanks to a nameless deity in a silent expression of your gratitude that you had survived thus far. Perhaps it’s Andrew’s influence, you reason. You've heard him pray enough times now, and you can’t deny that it sometimes brings comfort to your soul when you hear the way he carefully offers up his words, with his head bowed down and eyes closed in focus.

Now, you stand beside him in front of a large wooden gate, trying desperately not to cast your mind back to another time Andrew needed to protect you. Of course, he’d taught you how to defend yourself properly but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t strive to keep you safe like he promised. It’s admirable that he always kept the promises he made to you, and you always return the favour. Still, you hope for two things: the first being that the guards in the watchtower don’t take this as an ambush attempt and open fire on you before figuring the situation out; the second being that at least one person recognises you or is able to recall your name from the many years you lived there.

As the silence stretches on after you call out your name, you begin to worry. It doesn’t seem likely that your hopes will be met by a receptive audience until you hear the latch of the gate being lifted, preceded by a rough ‘Let them in!’

You’re surprised (moreso, grateful) when the gate opens, so you take hold of Andrew’s arm and pull him in with you before the guards change their minds. Someone — Earl, you manage to remember — checks you over to make sure you’re both okay. Not bitten.

It’s not long later that you’re making your way through the streets of the thriving community, your companion following closely behind you. He looks very much like a guard dog, if that dog had a look of wonder and excitement on his face at seeing a settlement that hadn’t collapsed or fallen into a routine of deep-rooted bitterness. The people on the streets that know you offer friendly smiles, while the ones who don’t offer slightly timid waves. It’s not a secret that the people of Jackson open up their community and their hearts to stragglers who have no ill-intentions.

\\\\\

Life is nice, you come to realise over the course of the month. There’s a balance that you had so painfully missed and now, even though it took longer than you would have liked for you to settle back into Jackson, it’s back. You manage to fall into your old routine and, considering the difficulties of re-entering such a tightly-knit community, you find it pleasant. You even pick up your old greenhouse duties and you enjoy going through the motions. You enjoy the repetitiveness — you take comfort in the knowledge of the predictability of the mundane actions you commit day in, day out. They ease your anxieties and help you to remember that none of the harshness of the ‘Outside World’ can be carried into the walls of Jackson.

It’s not just the gardening duties that you like, but the domestic life that you and Andrew have built together. Both of you live in the house that you resided in before you ran away, and you wonder what strings Maria had pulled to make sure your house stayed unoccupied throughout your absence. Regardless, it was cosy and familial, the routine you have created. Since you always worked late Andrew laid out a dinner for you both to enjoy upon your return, and you’d discuss the ins and outs of your days before hunkering down to play Boggle (he always lost). Sometimes he’ll tell you an idea he’s got for a bouquet and you get lost in your mind, thinking it’s strange that he uses his hands — those hands that once killed people who wanted to lay their own on you — to arrange such gorgeous bouquets out of the flowers that grow in and out of the Settlement’s walls.

More often than not, you catch yourself thinking about how nice it is to be back. Nothing mattered anymore; not your past, not the reason you ran away, nothing except the present.

\\\\\

“D’you have any screwdrivers?” You ask the woman manning the desk at the Jackson Trading Centre; she’s an old friend, one who had acted like a family member to you before you fled the scene, but she smiles at you like you never left. Still, she shakes her head and politely lets you know that the last time they had any screwdrivers in was last week. You sigh, If only the door screwed up last week, and you bite back a wince. You hate to be this person, the one who asks in the middle of a literal apocalypse, as if someone could simply nip out and restock, “Do you know when you might get any more in?”

She taps her nails on the desk, silent for a few seconds. You wonder if she’s thinking of telling you exactly what you just thought, but she just shrugs. “M’sorry, babe. I think the next supply run’ll be focusing on medical equipment and batteries.”

“Am I also out of luck for screws, then?” You ask. Behind you, a man joins the queue and you feel mildly sorry that you’re holding him up.

“Mm-mm,” she hums softly, “we’ve got plenty. What size do you need?”

At the utterance of that question you freeze because you aren’t entirely sure. You do know that it needs to be big enough to fit in part of a door, but only because that’s what Andrew told you. Andrew. Oh, how you wish he was standing with you now — or even instead of you — because he would know what to do. Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. He’s off outside the Walls exploring a patch of recently-bloomed flowers. When you don’t answer, the man behind you shifts his weight from one foot to the other and you wonder if he’s getting impatient.

“I don’t know,” you finally say, wringing your hands nervously. “I just know I need it for my bathroom door because it keeps sticking and—”

“Babe, slow down, you’re talking a mile-a-minute. I can hardly understand what you’re saying.”

“My bathroom door keeps sticking,” you reiterate after taking a deep, shaky breath. “The guy I live with, Andrew, said we should get replacement screws t’see if it’d help. I don’t know what size.”

The man behind you leans forward until you can feel his breath just barely grazing past your ear. “Three inches,” he whispers softly but you can’t deny how much of a growl it sounds like. His Southern drawl brings the start and end of his words together.

“‘Scuse me?” You turn your head to look at him.

He’s standing up straight again, scratching slightly at his patchy beard. You don’t recall ever seeing him before. He’s older but is in mysteriously good shape, his broad frame taking up and catching your attention with how his brown T-shirt stretches over his torso and how his jeans cling to his legs. The scar over his nose is what catches your attention next, deep set and dark pink against his pale skin.

“Three-inch screws, doll. S’what you’ll need for your door.”

With a hope that he’s not messing with you, you turn back to relay the information to the woman at the counter. The silence, though not uncomfortable, permeates the air between everyone in the ‘shop’ — everyone being three people — as she pulls out an old tape measure to find the right size for you.

“Hey, uh, I could fix your door if you want,” the man says after a few moments of what you consider to have been quiet deliberation.

“Oh…” you murmur and it’s clear that you’re unsure of what to do; you know that Andrew could probably do the job himself, seeing as he’s the one who gave you the instructions, but you’re also aware that he has enough on his plate. Since he started working at the Florist’s, people have shown a massive appreciation for his work and it steadily built up into a never-ending workload. You look at the man in front of you again — he looks like a man who knows things, despite his intimidating appearance, and he can obviously be trusted because Maria would have sent him on his way if she suspected the slightest bit of danger from him.

“Consider it a welcome gift. No strings attached or nothin’.” The way his mouth forms the words makes it seem like his offer of kindness is a foreign concept to him. He continues, “Just one neighbour helpin’ out another neighbour.”

“I’m not new to Jackson.” You don’t mean to sound so defensive. You sigh. “I grew up here.”

“Well, I ain’t never seen you ‘round here in the last year, kid.” Now you understand. He must have arrived in the settlement ‘round about the same time you made your way out. So you did seem new to him. “Consider it a welcome back gift, then.”

“That’s very kind of you, uh…”

“Joel,” he tells you. “Joel Miller, if we’re bein’ all proper about it.”

In response you tell Joel your own name and he offers you a friendly smile before nodding in the direction of the counter. The woman - your old friend - has finally sorted out the screws for you so you pull out some fabrics from your bag and set them down for her to collect, picking up the screws swiftly afterwards. You’ve had the fabrics lying around for so long now that they’re no use to you at all, which is why you’re trading them in.

Before you leave, you shoot them both a ‘Thank you!’ and set a date for Joel to swing by. Then you rush home so you can get into your ‘work’ clothes for an afternoon in the greenhouses. As you do, you thank that nameless deity for having that man — that Joel — cross your path when you found yourself in a time of need… or maybe he was just there to trade things.

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we finally have a joel!! i wanted to write more for this chapter to get super in depth with andrew but it exhausted me to write this much with so many time skips!

tags!: @endlessthxxghts @strang3lov3 @joelsflower @beefrobeefcal @janaispunk

#joel miller #x reader #fanfic #slow burn #cold weather #cars #idk about home repairs #or guns #my search history looked so dodgy after this #no y/n #writing #mdni #tired writer

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