#character: moe | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moeswriting · 2 months ago

Text

good morning, miller | mine one-shot

this is a part of my series Mine. i highly suggest reading that first to make sense of the little things in this fic. takes place between chapters three and four.

pairing: mine!Joel Miller x f!reader

summary: mornings with the millers,

or sarah’s first day of kindergarten

warnings: doesn’t really make complete sense unless you’ve read Mine, unbelievable amounts of fluff, joel miller is a grumpy boy without his coffee :(, sarah miller doesn’t need coffee– she’s hoarded all the energy (what the fuck, she just stole mine– SARAH GIVE IT BACK!!!!), reader needs some iced tea and a nap, mention of breakfast food (bacon, eggs, that kinda stuff), reader is wearing Joel’s shirt (described as “fitting you well”, no other description), some subtle hints to Sarah having some really intense ADHD but it’s never said explicitly

word count: 2k

a/n: a little treat for all y’all who waited so long for chapter three <3

series masterlist | read on ao3

✦ ✦ ✦

August 14th, 1995

“DADDY!” With a scream, something light flops down onto his chest, startling him awake.

“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. DAD!” Sarah emphasizes each word with a bounce, pushing the air out of his lungs.

When he creaks his eyes open, dust piled in the corners of them, it’s bright– sun shining through the window on the side of his bed and warming his bare back. He would give anything for another hour in bed.

“Dad,” she draws out, grabbing the sides of his face and pushing his cheeks together, “It’s my first day of school. You need to get up! Sugar is making breakfast, so you need to get up.”

She’s already dressed and ready to go– hair puffy, but pushed out of her face with her favorite pink butterfly clips, a pink shirt with a few Care Bears on it and jean overalls with little strawberries on the front pocket. It’s very clear to him that you’ve done this since everything looks coordinated and doesn’t clash like it usually does when he dresses her and it isn’t her princess dress, which is what Sarah would’ve put on if she had dressed herself. He wishes you were still in bed with him– he can feel your absence like a missing limb, like a vital part of him is gone.

His voice comes out muffled, since she’s squishing his cheeks, when he replies, “O’ay, ‘m up.”

She lets out a yelp of excitement, jumps off him, and slides off his tall bed and onto the floor. The only part of her that he can see as she runs out of the room is the top of her hair as it bounces around the bed and out of the door.

When his feet hit the hardwood floor, he shivers. It’s cold, much too cold without you next to him.

He pulls a pair of jeans off the floor and slips them on. Where’s that stupid shirt he threw last night? Whatever– he’ll put a shirt on later.

Stepping out of his room is heavenly. It smells like the diner, but so, so much better and it’s warmer, so much warmer.

He follows the scent into the kitchen, shuffling his tired feet through the hallway and to the entryway to the kitchen, leaning on the wall.

There you are, humming along with the buzzy radio attached to the bottom of the cabinet and pushing scrambled eggs around a pan. You’re wearing gray sweatpants and a blue shirt that fits you well– that’s where his shirt went.

He thinks it’s a Madonna song playing, but he can’t really tell through Sarah’s rambling she’s spewing at you from the kitchen table.

“Maddie from preschool is going to the same school as me. I think that’s really cool. I wonder if she’ll play princesses with me. Do you think she’ll play princesses with me?”

You turn to look at her over your shoulder and nod, “Yeah, baby. I bet she does. Just make sure you ask, okay?”

“Okay– I think she will too. Remember to ask, remember to ask.” She pushes a finger into the middle of her forehead, as if to force her thoughts to the forefront of her mind.

You nod again, “You’ll remember– just be patient with yourself.”

Sarah starts mumbling to herself and counting her fingers– he cannot even begin to imagine what is going on in her big brain.

While turning your face back to the stove, you catch his eye and a smile takes over your face.

God, what he wouldn’t do to see that smile everyday. He can’t believe that the sight of him makes you look so damn beautiful.

“Good morning, Miller.”

He can’t find it within himself to put effort into forming words with his mouth. Too much energy. He grumbles nonsense instead.

You huff out a breath of amusement, “Come on, grump– I made coffee for you.”

Coffee. That’s what he needs: coffee.

He shuffles further into the kitchen. He feels like a fucking zombie. He’d bet a million bucks he looks like one too.

Without even looking, you hold out a mug of coffee towards him, the other hand pulling the eggs off the heat. He mumbles a thanks and takes it out of your hand.

Oh, he’s so glad you know just how to make his coffee. It’s heaven on his taste buds. Black, not too hot, not too cold. He can already feel the caffeine kick starting his brain.

Placing his mug down, the green one that proudly displays “World’s Best Dad” (something his brother had bought him as a joke when he first found out about Amanda being pregnant– it hadn’t been funny at the time, but he really liked the mug now), he grabs your waist from behind and snuggles his nose into your neck. His eyes slip closed at the comfort he feels being near you.

“G’mornin’.”

You turn your head and press a kiss into his bed-mussed hair, “Morning, baby.”

“Thank you for gettin’ Guppy ready for school.”

You shuffle around in his arms. He’s clearly in the way of you moving around efficiently, but you don’t say anything and neither does he.

“It’s no problem. I woke up earlier than usual and I figured you should sleep in a little. You haven’t gotten enough sleep lately.”

You’re right. You’re always right. Because Tommy’s been gone for two months now, he’s had to pick up the slack with their contracting stuff. He can’t stop doing it, it’s the only way he can afford to feed Sarah and register her for school and keep up with rent. His income from the diner isn’t enough anymore.

It’s fine though. He’ll do it. Anything to keep Sarah happy, healthy, and fed.

But it’s taking quite the toll on his body. He’s way too young to be feeling this damn old.

All he does in response to you is nod into your shoulder and sigh.

“Go sit. I made you a plate.”

He lets go of you, instantly feeling the loss, before he flops down onto the chair next to Sarah.

“Good morning, Guppy,” he mumbles through a sleepy smile, “What’re you doin’?”

She doesn’t even look up to respond to him, still intensely staring down at her fingers, “Counting.”

“Countin’ what?”

You place his forgotten coffee mug and a plate in front of him. It’s filled with bacon, scrambled eggs, and a handful of cut strawberries. You’ve been getting on his ass about being a good example with his eating habits– “You need to eat more fruit and vegetables or Sarah’s going to think that what you normally eat is an acceptable diet.”

He ate them because you asked him to. He knew you were beyond stressed lately, what with starting your senior year of college and getting ready for student teaching next semester. You didn’t need another thing like what he ate to stress you out even more.

“How many friends from preschool I have in my class. Three.”

He takes another sip of his coffee, “I bet that number goes up a lot by the end of today.”

She smiles up at him as he sticks a strawberry in his mouth, “I hope so.”

You chime in, sliding into the chair across from Sarah, “I know so. You’ll have to tell me all about school and how super cool it is when I come over on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?! You’re not coming back until Wednesday,” she shrieks, throwing her hands up in the air.

He thinks that if he didn’t know that sometimes you needed to be by yourself in your own space and this was the first time you’d told him you weren’t coming back for two days, he would be reacting the same way Sarah was.

You look freaked out for a second with your eyebrows raised and your eyes wide, before your expression cools, “I got school too, Guppy.”

“But– how I supposed remember all the stuff happens today so I can tell you on Wednesday?” She forgets a few words in her need to get out what she wants to say quickly, a common occurrence with his five-year-old.

You shake your head at her, “It’s okay if you forget. That big brain of yours is gonna keep it all stashed in there, you just might need a little reminder to jog your memory.”

Joel butts in, hopefully to take some of the heat off you, “We could write it all down, just in case.”

She takes a minute to think about it, finger pressed into her temple. You both watch as she comes to a conclusion and nods her head definitively. “Okay. But we have to write it down right after school, Daddy. I don’t wanna forget.”

He mimics her nod, “Of course, Guppy.”

You spend the rest of the time that he spends finishing his breakfast singing whatever songs come on the radio and leading Sarah in an uncoordinated dance around the kitchen as she throws her head back with the force of her giggles.

He wishes everyday could be like this. Waking up to you in his apartment. In bed or greeting him in the kitchen– it didn’t matter to him. As long as you were here, he was happy and so was his little girl.

He throws a shirt on (not the one you stole, he insists you keep that one on) and guides his girls out of the second-story apartment and down onto the street. It’s bustling with activity as people come to the busy downtown street to get to work and get errands done.

Sarah’s already hopping down the street, her pink Elmo backpack being jostled up and down with her as she bounces, while he locks the door behind them.

“Sarah,” you call for her, gesturing with the hand you don’t have placed on his lower back for her to come back.

She obeys, but she does so reluctantly. Her hands wrap around her backpack straps and her head faces the concrete below her.

“You gotta hold Daddy’s hand, remember?” He holds a hand out for her to take when she’s standing next to him again. He’s been trying to really hammer this point home to her for years now, to get her to remember, but she has a harder time focusing when she’s really excited. He doesn’t mind– she just needs to be reminded.

“Yes…” She slaps her palm into his and clamps down her tiny fingers in between his thumb and his pointer finger.

“Thank you, baby.”

You start your trek down the street. Sarah was going to the grade school that was on your college campus, the one that the education students helped teach at occasionally. You assured him that you knew a lot of the people that would be interacting with Sarah and that they were all fantastic. It just made him nervous sometimes, but he trusted you.

“Can I hold Sugar’s hand too?”

You beam down at her, “Of course.”

When you give her your hand, she insists that you both swing her, which, of course you do because you both are wrapped around her comically small pinkie finger.

He successfully drops her off with no tears, which he doesn’t know how he managed considering he had cried to you the previous night about how weird it was that his little girl was going to school now and that she wouldn’t have any family around her there like she always did. You had assured him that going to school would be a fun new adventure for her. Sarah was such a social butterfly that she could fit in anywhere. He just didn’t want her to grow up.

He takes you to your dorm room and says good morning to Elaine, who’s snuggled deep in Robin’s chest and barely acknowledges his existence. You give him a long kiss and tell him that you’ll see him on Wednesday. Wednesday could not come sooner.

When he punches his timecard at work later that morning, he sighs in disbelief at how big his little girl was growing– at how much he would give for another morning just like this one. Maybe someday.

series masterlist | masterlist of all masterlists 🌼 | eras masterlist 🌻

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller tlou #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller the last of us #joel miller fic #joel miller x you #tlou #the last of us #ppcu #ppcu fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #pedro boys #joel miller fluff #mine teft #teft #speak now teft #moe's writing #eras fanfic tour

90 notes · View notes