Work Text:
“Brian’s dead.”
The words hung in the air, almost lost behind the shut of the heavy wooden door behind you. Your voice was as frozen as your fingers, snow still stuck to your gloves, your hair, everywhere.
Joel looked up from his spot at the table, whittling at something absentmindedly with his knife.
“What?”
“They got him.” Your voice was just above a whisper, shaky, unsteady. “I couldn’t…I- I wasn’t…I just ran.”
Brian wasn’t your boyfriend, not exactly. Nobody ever got close to you, you made sure of that. You knew you’d lose everyone eventually, it was inevitable in the world now. But over the past few months, you’d grown fond of him, and you’d grown closer than you’d been to anyone in a long time.
But now he’s gone. Your sister, your friends, Brian…now it was only you and Joel.
“You did what you had to do.”
The closeness of Joel’s voice startled you. You hadn’t realized he’d gotten up from the table, and closed the distance between the two of you silently. His hand hung in the air, hovering over your shoulder but not quite making contact, a show of uncertain comfort.
The flush of cold on your nose and cheeks left you feeling completely frozen. You only nodded toward him, not daring to look at his face. With a heave, you threw your snow-soaked backpack onto the floor and moved past Joel without another word. The silence hurt, but how were you supposed to break it?
An abandoned cabin in the middle of a snowstorm, it was just the two of you now, two practical strangers. There were six of you, start. Joel was a late addition to your group of unlikely survivors.
Rebecca, your sister, was the first to die. She fell behind purposefully, to give you a head start. It was a sacrifice you had no idea how to thank her for, since you couldn’t help the anger you felt toward her for leaving you. But she saved your life. Several months later, Erik was bit, and you were all forced to leave him behind. Jason, the man that had been with Joel when they found you, was the next to go. Nothing short of a mercy kill.
And now, Brian was gone, and it was you and Joel alone in the cabin, snowed in and stuck with the heavy silence over you.
The small shelter felt enormous now.
Moonlight cast silent shadows of snowfall on the wooden floor. The uncomfortable cot and thin blanket gave you little comfort in the freezing room, the fire only embers now. But it was easy to blame the shivering on the cold, and ignore the tears welling up in your eyes. You had been lying still for hours, desperately trying to fall asleep so you could just stop feeling. Even if only for an hour or two.
But sleep never came.
A choked cry escaped your lips as you watched the snowflakes falling out the window. How could something so bitter still look so soft?
A creak from the other side of the one-room cabin had you quickly wiping your eyes, clearing your throat as if it had been nothing more than a cough. You’d thought Joel was asleep, as he’d been as silent as you for just as long. You must’ve been wrong.
“You okay?”
Joel’s voice was clear, alert as always. Not muffled by sleep at all.
“Yeah,” you sniffled without turning to face the man across you, now sitting up in his bed.
He’d offered you the bed that night. Of course he had. Joel was soft like that, in his own way. He was gruff, sure, and made of rough edges. But he showed you kindness often, in small gestures that might not mean much coming from anyone else.
But you didn’t want the bed, didn’t think you’d deserved the comfort. You let Brian die. Shouldn’t you deserve to suffer? You insisted on one of the two small cots you’d managed to drag in from a dilapidated shed behind the cabin when you first arrived.
You kept your eyes focused on the dark wall above the fireplace, the embers casting small shadows in a slow dance.
“Just…just cold, that’s all,” you lied.
Another creak filled the dusty air and you shut your eyes tightly, silently begging him to not offer you any help. It was the last thing you wanted now.
“Why don’t you take the bed? S’probably warmer, anyway,” he said, his soft drawl only making the undeniably attractive offer of warmth even harder to deny.
“No, it’s okay,” you insisted, pushing the shiver out of your body and out of your mind.
Quiet filled the room again, and you assumed Joel had given up on his attempt at some absurd southern hospitality. But the shift of weight and the strike of feet on the floor told you otherwise.
“Here, at least take another blanket. Freezin’ in here.”
Finally giving in, you sat up and turned to face him, keeping your coat pulled close to your body as you took the blanket in his outstretched hand.
“Thanks.”
After a heavy moment of avoided eye contact and tense silence, he cleared his throat.
“I know you probably don’t wanna talk about it-”
“You’re right, I don’t,” you replied sharply, shutting him down before he could say anything else, before he could drag out your feelings and force the numbness from your fingers and your brain.
He nodded, strained face obvious even in the darkness.
“Okay, we don’t have to talk about it. But do you…do you need anything? Anything I can do at all?”
It was a simple question, one you could have easily brushed off, thanked away and not thought too much of it. But there was something in his look that made you want to cry. It threatened to overflow everything. The way he so obviously wanted to help, how he was showing you his vulnerable side in a way he knew how. And this was his loss, too, you reminded yourself. He’d known Brian for months now.
After holding a deep breath, you nodded.
“I just don’t want to be alone.”
Your voice broke on the last word, betraying you despite doing your damnedest to keep it in.
Suddenly Joel’s face was harder to read in the dim light of the fire and the soft moonlight bouncing off the snow. But after a terse nod, he simply said,
“Okay.”
He sat down on your cot, tucking the extra blanket beside you. After a murmured thank you, you laid back down, squeezing as close to the edge as possible to allow Joel room. You expected him to tuck in next to you, to clumsily slot himself next to you on the too-small cot. But he doesn’t. He just sits on the edge, his hand tentatively finding your back.
“It really is freezing in here,” you whisper, facing away from him, a weak chuckle punctuating. “Cover up.”
When he didn’t move, you turned and saw him looking unsure.
“You sure?” he asked, his voice lower than you’d ever heard it. It was soft and sweet and concerned.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” you nodded, making a show of moving as close to the edge as possible. “No need for either of us to freeze tonight.”
“The bed’s-”
“I don’t want the bed, Joel,” you said again, certain, tone ending any discussion there might have been.
He remained still for a moment longer before you felt him hesitantly stretch out on the cot behind you, the sound of shifting fabric, of denim on canvas and bodies shifting close under the cover. Then the room is silent again
“You can put your arm over me,” you said when he hovered uncertainly, unsure of where to move, where to rest his arms and legs and all of him that didn’t quite fit on the cot. “I won’t take it to mean anything,” you attempted to joke, but swallowed the lump that was suddenly in your throat. “Promise.”
He grunts an ascent, then his arm is over your waist, and his body is so close to yours, and the warmth is immediate. You tried to close your eyes, tried to focus on falling asleep. But Joel’s steady breathing next to you was suddenly distracting. Turning away from him didn’t feel any less intimate, so you remained where you were, your face in his chest, the flannel under the opened coat soft against your skin.
In the close proximity, you knew that Joel’s eyes stayed closed, but you were sure that he wasn’t asleep.
“Why did it have to be them?” you asked, surprising yourself. It wasn’t a question you expected Joel to have the answer to. Hell, you didn’t expect anyone to have the answer to it. But it came forth nonetheless. And once you started, you found you couldn’t stop. “Brian, Rebecca, why couldn’t it have been me, Joel? It should’ve been me. Both times, it should have been me.”
Joel opened his eyes slowly, but didn’t quite meet your gaze. Your heart beat loud in your own ears, and the tears began to well up again, one escaping and running down your nose before falling into the fabric beneath you.
“I know it don’t seem fair,” he finally answered, his voice nothing more than a whisper. “None of this is.”
The simple conviction of his words broke something inside of you. The tears came unbidden, and without thinking you buried your face further into Joel’s chest. And you just cried. You cried for Brian and for Erik and Jason and for Rebecca, you cried for yourself, you cried for the rest of your family and for everyone else you’ve lost. You cried until you couldn’t even remember what you were crying about. And Joel’s arm around you, as he held you to his chest and let you cry, was the only thing grounding you.
“Shh, I know,” he whispered, stroking your hair as you buried your face, trying to hide from something, though you knew not what. “I know. It’s okay.”
“How long until it’s us?” you asked when you’ve found your voice through the tears again, hoarse and panicked. “How long until we die, too?”
“Hey, hey,” he said, his voice slightly sterner now. He pulled away from you just enough to look into your eyes, and his voice was so soft but so sure, so confident in a way you couldn’t understand. “You’re safe now.”
But you didn’t have to understand, not with his deep voice, his reassurance, his strong arms and warm embrace enveloping you, it was enough to make you believe.
“I won’t let anythin’ happen to you,” he continued. And you knew it wasn’t a promise he could keep, not in a world like this, but somehow, it soothed you. You believed him, even though you had no reason to.
He stroked your hair once more before pulling you back into his chest, and his hand lingered on your back as you felt his chin rest on the top of your head.
“Just breathe now, alright? Just breathe.”
And so you breathed. You breathed in the scent of him, the warmth underneath the blankets, the dust in the air and the faint smell of cedar and smoke. You breathed in and out, in and out, until your heart began to slow down again.
Sleep eventually finds you, with your arms wrapped around this near-stranger, feeling warm for the first time in days.
It doesn’t find Joel, though. He stays awake, listening to your breathing even out, listening to it deepen in sleep. You know he can protect you, and it helps you sleep soundly for the first time in what feels like a lifetime.
But you don’t know that Joel knows loss, too. It lives in him, heavy and burning and clawing at his chest like a living thing, desperate to get out. But he can’t let it, not while he’s trying to survive. Not while he’s taking care of you. He’d never let you know.