#firebreak call of duty | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

insomniamamma · 10 months ago

Text

Spinner: Joel Miller x F!Reader

A/n: Okay, so this one got real personal real fast. Many of Spinner’s insecurities are my own. I meant this to be a soft little snuggling for warmth fic, but then things happened. Even in a world than hasn’t entirely gone to shit, it’s so hard to hang on to doing the things you love even if they don’t make you money or get you likes or clout. Also, I rabbit holed a lot about the spinning process and plant dyes but there’s only so much i can do. Any inaccuracies are on me.

Warnings: slurs. Mentions of past relationships gone bad. Shitty family dynamics. Reader is neurodivergent, diagnosis unspecified. Old enough to be married on outbreak day. Ageism. Bullying. Gruff Joel.

No one in Jackson calls you by your name. You’re Spinner or Weaver or Yarn-lady. Turning wool into yarn into clothing that spills out of your needles when you can’t sleep, socks and hats and mittens. You had a spinning wheel, looted from the historical society, but it was old and dry as a bone and the wheel split the one time you tried to use it despite how careful you were, so now it’s the drop spindle, the endless rhythm of it, a sensation so close to your own pulse that you don’t think much of it any more. Waste of time your father told you when you built a loom in the garage, your useless hobby your ex-husband called it as if he didn’t spend all his free time playing GTA and Zelda and Final Fantasy. Every family gathering since moving out a hybrid of when are you going to settle down, when are you going to give us grandkids, when are you going to get a real job, as if you didn’t spend half the year doing paid demos and plying your wares on the ren-faire circuit, good if not entirely predictable money, but it didn’t count because you didn’t make it in a cubicle farm.

You always knew you weren’t like them but could never quite pin down what made you different, what made you other, your Mom told me not to marry you because you’re a fuckin retard, your ex had spat during the fight that ended your marriage. And, for as shitty as your ex was, you knew he wasn’t lying about that part. Two brilliant sisters and then you. An odd afterthought of a girl. Got yelled at for staring at people when you weren’t looking at anything at all. Got yelled at for not making eye-contact, look at me when I’m talking to you.

Funny how they’re all dead and you’re still alive.

You hear folks talk sometimes. Waste of time if you’re asking me. They drug a whole container of clothes from the old Walmart. In your mind you grab them and shake them and yell in their faces that that world is never coming back, that we’re gonna have to get our shit together real quick or our grandkids are gonna be wearing untanned hides and rotting plastic tarps. But you don’t. You just spin your wool into yarn, and do your assigned tasks. Everyone helps everyone. That’s how things work here. Folks come and help you pick and soak and scour the fleeces. You show them how to card the wool and how to make drop spindles of their own and turn fleece into yarn, but most of them give you odd pitying looks. That world is dead, you want to tell them. It’s been twenty years. It’s not coming back, but you know in their secret hearts they don’t believe it.

Everyone helps everyone. So that means you help with the gardens, help with the harvest, help in the kitchens, reinforcing a gate or raising a barn or clearing brush for firebreaks. You’re at your best when you can work with your hands and not have to talk much. Everyone helps everyone and you know how people think of you with your wool and experimental plant fiber yarn and onion skin dyes and mordants. You can feel it even when they don’t say it right out loud. No place in this new world for people like you. Only the strong survive. So you put yourself on the roster for watch duty and patrols. Watch duty is fine by you. Sit in one of towers along the wall and peer out over the vast and unchanging dark, rifle leaned against the wall in case something happens, two way radio for emergencies only and it’s quiet and unchanging and you don’t mind at all.

Patrol is a different animal. Why do you keep signing up for this? Maria asked you, I know you hate it. Can’t make someone else do something I won’t, you told her, but that’s not the whole answer. You want to feel like you’re doing something real. Like you’re contributing. Like you’re not as helpless, as useless as everyone seems to think.

You show up for your assignment. A foot patrol. Day out and day back. Over night in a shelter house a little over halfway round the trail. You’ve got a bedroll and a change of clothes and the canvas bag you use for foraging. Your patrol partner eyes you skeptically and you curl into yourself. Everyone’s heard the rumors about Joel Miller. People shrink from him. You’ve seen it. When he comes into the tavern or the caff or the lending library people suddenly find someplace else to be. Figures. “You Spinner?” “Yeah.” “I’m Joel.” “I know.” “You good to go?” “Yeah.” He looks at you the way someone might look at an odd bug or a difficult equation, and then turns down the trail and you follow.

He doesn’t say much. Which is a relief. Last time you were on patrol you were paired with Ez who could not shut up for the life of him. That trip out and back was a running commentary of things Ez missed and things Ez remembered and a million other things you could not give the faintest of shits about. Joel doesn’t try to engage you in conversation and you are glad for that. A soft hold up means he needs a moment to go take a leak in the weeds, and you creep off too to do your business. You’ve seen plants along the trail that you could use on other patrols, sumac berries and oak galls, but you never said anything, just tried to remember on the off chance you’d be out here again.

“Joel? Can we stop?” The question surprises you as you ask it. He turns to look at you, “This is curly dock.” You hunker in the tall weeds on the side of the old road, logging trail most likely, frantically clipping stems and pawing roots out of the ground, dirt plating itself under your nails, scrabbling for what you can get before Joel tells you to hurry it. Even dried out and dormant, it’s still good. “What’s it for?” “For making dye. If I can find the right mordants I can get some nice golden yellows from the roots and the seeds. I’m still figuring it out.” “How much you need?” Joel hunkers down beside you and starts slicing off the flower heads that look like clusters of coffee grounds. You shrug. “I was just gonna fill this bag,” you say, “I’m still testing it out.” Joel stands and you yank a few more roots out of the ground. “I’m gonna make a blaze,” says Joel, slicing lines into the bark of a young cottonwood. “Huh?” “So the others’ll know there’s something useful here.” “Thank you.” Joel nods, folds his blade away, puts the knife back in his pocket. He turns and continues along the winding game trail and you follow, small smile playing at your lips. Useful. Not a word often used for you and what you do, you and yours. The other artisans. Figuring out how to tan hides and dye wool and save seeds because that world isn’t coming back. They’ve managed to drag a few trailers of that world from the Walmart, teams of horses foaming around their bits, sweat darkened flanks and for what? Clothing and shoes and cans and dry goods for now. There’s only so much to be looted. And then what? That world isn’t coming back. Even if cordyceps went away, that world isn’t coming back. Who could fix the world? Not Fedra, that’s for damn sure. Not the folks in town who talk too much.

He stops walking and you almost collide with him. “Look.” You follow the track of his raised hand over his shoulder, a herd of deer crossing the path, a buck standing stone still, looking at you with shimmering black eyes, antlers curling up like old tree branches, while the does and yearlings cross behind him, all long limbs and flicking ears and quivering noses, and you feel yourself smile. You remember a time in your life when seeing deer in the back yard was a magical thing, you and your siblings and your parents pressed to the curve of the bay window, watching them pass through the trees like shadows. Even after everything you’ve seen since, your heart contracts with the old wonder. “They’re beautiful.” You glance at Joel and see the curve of his smile, the way it dimples his cheek. “They are.” The buck flicks his ears and springs off into the gray light, the rest of the herd gone like ghosts, and the wind stirs after them, and you pull your coat closer, tuck into yourself. The faint spats of rain against your cheeks have turned into a steady, miserable drizzle. Nothing to focus on but how cold you are and Joel’s retreating back, and you silently curse yourself for not dressing warmer. Bright blue sky scrimmed over and swallowed by low, blank clouds, not quite cold enough to snow, but the damp air makes your knees and hips and knuckles throb. Should’ve dressed warmer. Fall in this part of the world can turn on a dime.

Not too far now, he says, but by the time you reach the shelter little pellets of sleet are mingling with the rain. Shelter is a rough, drooping structure with yellowed plastic sheeting taped over the small windows, crude wood stove blacked with smoke, ugly welded chimney poking up past the sagging roof. Joel hunkers in front of the wood stove. Folded cots lay against the wall and you pull one out and unfold it, smells like mold and motor oil, and you get another one, one for you and one for Joel. “Shit,” he murmurs low, “Wood’s all punky.” “Will it catch?” “Yeah. Maybe.”

You and Joel sit on your cots and eat, bread and cheese brought from home. The fire in the stove burns low and ugly. Joel has set up lengths of firewood in a straggled ring around the stove, hoping the heat will dry them, but the cold creeps in, unroll your sleeping bag and try to rest. Sleet spats against the roof, against the plastic shrouded windows, wind blows hard enough to send huffs of smoke back down the chimney, not that the fire is doing much, seething hiss and low smolder, sluggish embers, weak orange glow that does little to ease the cold. You jam your hands into your armpits and curl yourself tight, crunch your eyes closed and wait for your own breath to warm you, but there’s no position, no way of tucking your limbs against yourself that does a damn bit of good, the cot creaks and squeaks with each shift of your weight.

“Stop movin around so much.”

You can see the slope of his shoulders picked out in the weak firelight, his back to you. Your throat constricts and tears prick at the corners of your eyes. You lay with your arms crossed, peering up at the cobwebbed beams I won’t cry, I won’t, but the tears slide out of you all the same, fever hot where the rest of you is so cold, close your eyes and try to make yourself stay still, at least until Joel falls asleep. Your teeth chatter. You can’t stop it. You wonder for the millionth time why you’re still here, familiar poisonous rut that your mind runs in, why are they all dead and I’m still alive? Can spin wool into yarn while people snicker behind your back for it, you know that world isn’t coming back, the easy one where you could go to a store and buy a heavy coat to keep you warm, an electric blanket to keep you warm, once this is over, you hear them say sometimes, once this is over I’m gonna eat nothing but rare steaks for an entire year, once this is over I’m gonna buy my girl a ring, once this is over, we’ll never be cold, we’ll never be hungry, we’ll never be hunted once this is over. You feel your chest tighten. Your breath comes hard and fast. Your chattering teeth and ragged inhales betray you. You hear him move and tighten your arms across yourself, try to stop your tears and teeth.

Joel knows the sound of muffled crying. Tess would cry sometimes in the dead of night, curled away from him, when she thought he was asleep. Your shuddered inhale and tight clench of your shoulders give you away. His first impulse is to turn over and ignore you, let you blend into the spackle of rain and sleet and let sleep take him, but a dull spike of guilt lodges in his gut, can’t fix the world, but maybe he can fix this.

“Hey, Spinner, you okay?” You roll on your side, poke your head out of your sleeping bag to look at him, can’t quite meet his eyes, you shake your head. “Can’t get warm,” you say, “It’s stupid. My hands--“ “That wood should be a dried out a little,” says Joel, “Try and see if it catches.” You get up and moving around feels a little better, hunker by the wood stove and tuck a length in, flames licking low and yellow, you blow into the fire, hoping the wood will do more than hiss, more than useless white smoke of escaping water vapor, hold your hands in front of the low lazy flames and grey-ashed coals. You prod at the small nest of logs with a stick, turn one over and the fire licks up bright. You can hear Joel moving around behind you, scrape and rustle and he’s pushed the cots together, he’s unzipping his sleeping bag. “What’re you doing?” “I’m gonna zip these together,” he says, “It’s warmer this way.” Your cheeks and ears burn. You shouldn’t even be out here. Can’t even keep yourself warm. Can’t look at him. “You don’t have to--“ “C’mere.” You glance at him, his dark eyes shining in the weak firelight, “It’s okay.” You nod, more to yourself than him, crawl in beside him and zip the bag around the two of you, and before you can protest, Joel has pulled you half atop him, rubbing his hands briskly down your arms and back. “When we were kids, Ma got it in her head that we should go on vacation for Christmas and see real snow,” he says, the motion of his hands rucks your shirt up a little and he smooths it back down. “Colorado?” you ask. “Maine,” says Joel, and you laugh through chattering teeth, “Ma rented us a cabin out in the ass end of nowhere. I’ve never been so cold in my life. Dad showed us how to zip our sleeping bags together. It was warmer after that, ‘cept Tommy wouldn’t stop kicking me. Here. Give me your hands.” Joel folds your hands into his, squeezes your fingers, and then cups your hands in his, and blows, breathes into the cage of his hands around yours, you remember coming home from a day spent playing in the snow, cheeks and ears and toes and fingers burning as they warmed and your Mom taking your hands like this and breathing into them like this, and your eyes scrim over, sink your teeth into the meat of your lip but it does no good, the tears slip out. “I’m sorry.” “For what?” For everything, you want to say, but don’t. “Weather turned on us, that’s all.” Joel rubs his thumbs over your knuckles, “You don’t need to be sorry.” Presses your hands tight in his, holds them to his chest, and that’s how you fall asleep, warmed by his breath, hands folded together between you.

You don’t speak of what happened. Just pack up your gear and head home, following him down the trail, it feels like he turns to check in with you more, but maybe you weren’t paying attention on the way out.

“Hey you got a package!” says Ellie. Joel misses coffee. Almost killed a man over a dented can of Folgers, misses the taste and smell and waking slow with a cup cradled in his hands. He’s barely staggered into the kitchen, barely nursed the coals in the stove into life, waiting for the kettle so he can have some herb tea that warms his hands at least, but Ellie is up and bright eyed and talking a mile a minute. “Package?”

“On the front step, stupid.” Joel rubs at his eyes.

“Why don’t you quit yappin and bring it in for me?”

“Lazy ass,” says Ellie, but Joel hears her grin, hears the door open, feels the puff of frigid air. Ellie plops an irregular bundle wrapped in string and old newspaper on the table. “I gotta go,” she says, “Gonna be late for school—“

“Hey! Did you eat?” But Ellie’s already out the door, leaving Joel to examine the lumpy parcel, rain-dotted darkening newsprint scavenged from God knows where. Joel unties the string and winds it into a careful coil, turns the bundle over to unwrap it. Thought I’d return the favor, the note reads. No name, but who else could it be? Broad scarf of thick cream colored wool with a pair of socks to match. He runs the pads of this thumbs over the precise rows of stitches, brings the bundled scarf to his face and breathes in, not unpleasant smell of sheep and grass.

“Oooooh, looks like Christmas came early!”

“Ellie!” Joel feels his face going hot.

“What? I forgot my bag,” she says, scooping said backpack off it’s hook by the door, heads back out into the bright, bitter day, frigid air blowing loose snow across the threshold, turns to grin at him, her split eyebrow quirked up. “You know she likes you, right? She actually smiles when you’re around—“

“Git! You’re letting all the warm air out.”

“If those socks fit you can thank me!” And then she’s gone, door closed behind her.

“Jesus Christ,” Joel says to his empty kitchen. Wraps the scarf around his neck, just to see how it feels, imagines your hands busied with knitting needles, maybe a spinning wheel like in Sleeping Beauty, hands that felt like ice in his, the uncertain way your eyes would fix on his and flick away, didn’t say more than three words to him until you happened on that patch of weeds in the ditch along the trail. Burdock? Curly dock? It looked like used coffee grounds on stems, but you were so happy about it. Your face lit up. You smiled. He sits at the kitchen table, hoping that Ellie hasn’t forgotten anything else, and peels his socks off, threadbare, thinning at the heels, so he can try on the ones you made for him. They fit perfectly. Gonna have to talk to that girl about prying into grown-ups business, the thinks.

You wouldn’t be here if not for Lina’s birthday, she came to your place with three cakes of beeswax, knows you need it for waxing the finer threads you spin, the ones for leatherwork, for sewing book pages onto spines, we’re getting together at the Bison! You should come! And Lina is one of the few people in town you like. She’s always been kind to you, never seems to mind when you start talking scouring and lanolin and how you want to start working with plant fibers. She’ll talk endlessly about her hives and how the weather effects the honey, what’s in bloom and what isn’t and how it changes the taste. So you sit with Lina and her handful of friends, drinking hard cider and wishing you were home sitting in front of your wood stove drop spindle in your hand, endless, thoughtless repetitive motion until sleep calls you. When you spin the things you’ve seen recede, slows your ever racing heart. You fidget, calloused fingers rubbing together, the motion you make when you spin, not wanting to be there, but not wanting to let Lina and the other half-dozen people you interact with down, an impromptu artisans meeting, you and Lina, Jimbo the paper-maker and his daughter, Tim who used to teach high school chemistry before everything went to shit. Joel’s here, him and his brother seated at the bar, talking over their drinks, faces serious. You feel yourself start to smile. You’re not sure if he’s been around more, or if you’ve started noticing him more, like playing punchbug when you were kids, there were Volkswagen Beetles everywhere if it meant getting to hit your cousin as hard as possible without getting in trouble for it—

“Oh look it’s the Artists.” You feel your jaw clench and Lina puts on her brightest, cheeriest, go-fuck-yourself smile. “Hi, Kev,” Lin chirps, “To what do we owe the pleasure?” “Maybe I want to wish you a happy birthday,” he says. Kevin and his lot. Supposed crack-shots. Take every opportunity for long patrols, ex-military if you believe their yap. Picked off some clickers and expect everyone to kiss their asses. “Consider it wished—“ “And maybe I’d like to know what we’re risking our necks out on perimeter for--“ And this shit right here is why you rarely leave your house, if it’s not Kevin it’s some other jerk wanting to know what you’re here for. Same question you’ve asked yourself so many times. Why are they all dead and you’re still alive? What are you here for?

“Maybe I want to know what you ar-teests are doing while me and my boys our out risking our lives in the dark.” You know how this will play out, how it always plays out, Lina will placate him with offers of hot honey and soap, the rest of you will bend the knee, make polite noises about how you wouldn’t be able to do what you do without people like him keeping you safe. Never mind that no one’s seen a proper pod of clickers or runners in months, a few lone stragglers and that’s it, your eyes flick up to Jimbo’s and you see the resignation there. Let him have his say, take the ribbing and move on, and you see Joel, pushed back from the bar, looking your way. Your face goes hot and your neck goes tight and you are angry, Kevin and his bullshit always makes you angry, but this is different, brighter and sharper, and before you really know what you’re doing you are up in moving yourself into Kevin’s personal space.

“How those Walmart socks holding up? Your little toesies start poking through yet? Getting a little thin in the heels?” He grins wide, hands on his hips, “You offerin to mend my socks, Spinner? Got a girlfriend for that. ‘Less you think you can do better-“ He laughs and his dumb buddies do the same— “What’s this shirt made of?,” you pinch a bit of his yellow and black flannel between your fingers, “Feels like a cotton poly blend. Probably more poly than cotton. Too bad.” “You tryin to flirt with me, here, Spinner? Bit long in the tooth for all that aren’t cha-“ “You know why wool is so much better than poly-cotton blends like this? Wool holds its heat even when it gets wet. You can wear wool in a rainstorm—“ “So what?” “So you’re gonna have a cold walk home.” You dump your nearly full pint of cider down the front of Kevin’s cheaply made flannel shirt, turn tail and bolt for the front doors.

“Woo!” “You tell im, Spinner-“ “You fucking BITCH!” “Don’t.” Joel’s voice the last one you hear before bursting into the snow-shot night.

You fetch up near the huge pine tree in the town square all lit up for Christmas, on the steps of the gazebo where the choir’s set to sing a few days from now, a rag-tag group led my Moira who’s got to be pushing ninety and teaches the kids how to read music and pick out middle C on the desperately out-of-tune piano in the Hall. They sound so sweet together. For now the square is silent save for the gentle ticking of snow falling on snow. You’re cold and you should go home, but your rolling gut says to sit right here and wait, a couple pints of cider and spent adrenaline roiling your insides. Stupid, you think. You’ve made things worse, Kevin and his goons will just double down, but you were so angry— “Hey.” You glance up from the nest of your hands and the gathering snow, feel Joel settle beside you on the step. “Hey.” “That was brave, what you did in there.” “How come I feel like I’m gonna throw up, then?” “You want me to break his legs?” You look up at him and he’s smiling, a little one that just curves his cheek. “You’re joking.” “Mostly,” says Joel. “If Kevin bothers you again, you come tell me-“ “You’re wearing the scarf,” you say, and feel yourself smiling wide, and now his eyes flick to the side. “It’s real warm,” he says. “I’m glad you like it.” And you sit in the silence together for a beat, mesmerized by the slow falling flakes, catching and haloing the strung lights. A few years from now, these bulbs will be candles, but for now it feels a little bit like it used to. Joel stands and offers his hand. “Can I walk you home, Spinner?” You let him pull you up off the step. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Tagging @oonajaeadira @grogusmum @sp00kymulderr @boliv-jenta @writeforfandoms @quicax3 @fromthedeskoftheraven @artemiseamoon @the-blind-assassin-12

#pedro pascal #joel miller x f!reader #tlou

101 notes · View notes