Chapter Text
“Explain it again.”
Joel sighed as he sat down at the kitchen table in his house in Jackson, Tess lighting the stove and putting a pot of water on. At least now she wouldn’t have to pour shitty whiskey on his wounds, then use the same needle she used to patch his gloves in order to stitch him up, like she had in Boston.
“I told you already,” he said, wincing with the pain.
When an infected pushed him back during his patrol with Tommy, he rammed into a stuck-out pole, and the metal thing had been sharp enough to go through his shoulder. Of course, Tommy called off the rest of the patrol, dragged Joel from the house on their route back to the horses, carried him home on horseback. He’d bled enough to put steaming red patches in the snow.
“And I don’t believe that story.”
Tess dropped scissors and needles into the pot as the water boiled. Ever since they’d come to Jackson, Tess had been vying for a patrol route, and though Tommy trusted her enough from their days together in Boston, Maria needed more convincing. Still, she knit Tess a sweater, black with a white Fair Isle yoke, the yarn scratchy but warm for a Wyoming winter. Tess wore that sweater today, probably in hope that Maria would trust her more, along with a black turtleneck to cover up the bitemark.
Sighing again, he insisted, “I swear to you, it was just something stupid.”
“It would be a shame if something stupid got you killed.”
She drained the pot, left the sterilized tools on a clean cloth on the kitchen table. Long ago, they’d run out of gloves. As she pulled up a chair, peeled away his bloody clothes, he remembered the last time she did this, then the time before that, then the time before that. At this point, he couldn’t recall which of his scars she hadn’t stitched. Though he’d once tried to reciprocate, she’d grown so frustrated with his stitching - his hands were too big and shaky, and he kept closing his eyes whenever he broke skin with the needle - that she pushed him off of her and took over, tugging the stitches tight and only wincing a little.
“It’s not gonna be something stupid,” he said, wincing as she swabbed alcohol over his bare skin, his still seeping wound, “‘cause you’re gonna be the one to kill me.”
She smirked, Kubrick stare, then brought the threaded needle to his skin, ignored him as he flinched at the contact. Though he knew he ought to be accustomed to this kind of pain, living in a house with electricity and a place to bathe had made him go soft. Now, he sometimes overslept in the morning, curled up next to Tess in bed because the fire had gone out hours beforehand and they were both cold, and Tommy would come rapping at the door, shouting up to Joel that they needed to go, no breakfast, they were running behind schedule, why wasn’t he up yet? In Boston, he woke with the sunrise, and it was never a pretty sunrise either, but in Jackson, he overslept. In Jackson, he had spare coats, a pair of work gloves, two pairs of shoes so he never dealt with cold toes in winter. And he brought back books from his patrols. Because he knew Eugene would get pissed about anyone ransacking the library he’d taken over, Joel only took books one by one, rearranging the shelves to look as though they’d never been touched. Though he wasn’t one for reading, Tess always bloomed when he brought her a new book, and he’d even made the delightful mistake of thinking she would enjoy a book on carving, only to find that she didn’t and that he, in fact, did. He didn’t know much about feelings or communities or what it meant to be human, but he watched as they went from living cramped at Tommy’s to having this house, then turned this house into a home, and wondered how he’d gotten by in Boston at all. You hadn’t been happy in Boston, he reminded himself as Tess pulled the stitches tight, but there was something more that he felt he'd been missing. There was something about Jackson that a full apartment in the Boston QZ could never rival.
She tied off the stitches, then patted his arm twice, we’re done here.
“Guess this means I have to make lunch,” she said with resignation as she cleaned off the kitchen table and stood up.
As the weather turned colder, he'd hollowed out some ground outside, then put up a heavy piece of slate as a makeshift hatch; they could save energy by keeping the fridge unplugged and using that to keep eggs and milk cold instead. Yesterday, Tess managed a whole loaf of bread while Joel went out for patrol; he liked watching her saw a knife through something so inconsequential and unliving. She put on one of his coats hanging by the door, slipped into her boots, and headed out for food, Joel watching through the window as she picked up the heavy slate and reached in for two eggs and some ham. He would kill for a cup of coffee right about now, but at least Tess had gotten the fire burning, the house pleasantly warm around them. He wondered how she could wear a sweater in such heat.
“I don’t think I need to say it,” Tess said from the doorway, shedding his coat and her boots.
He huffed as she returned to the kitchen, put a pan on the stove and left the eggs on the marble counter. He liked these counters, especially when the summer fruits were out and he could count on the cold surfaces to make rolling out pie crusts easy.
“If I’d been out on patrol with you,” he said, mimicking her, “then none of this would have happened.”
Smirking to herself, she cracked the two eggs into the pan, said, “Exactly.”
“You have to take that up with Maria,” he said, “not me.”
She brought the ham down on the other side of the pan, making the meat sizzle as the eggs cooked.
“Maria doesn’t trust me,” she said indifferently, as if trust weren’t a kind of currency nowadays.
“What makes you think that?”
“I asked her, and she told me.”
He laughed halfheartedly, for only Tess would ask, and only Maria would say such a thing in response.
“Doesn’t trust you but will make you a sweater,” he said as she plated lunch.
If there was something mundane that Tess truly hated, it was cooking, and admittedly, she wasn’t very good at it, but anything would taste good now, when his stomach was empty, his shoulder achy, and his clothes covered in blood. The most comforting things were always plain and normal, like leaning against his brother atop a horse while they headed home for help, like having lunch set down before him, then a fork, then a knife.
“Enjoy,” she said, bumping his good shoulder jovially and then sitting down with her own lunch, “for this meal might be your last.”
Laughing, he kicked her under the kitchen table, and she kicked him back.