Tessjoel - Blog Posts

a hint of what I'm working on...

this is for the new Tess Lives / fungus fuckery fic I'm working on. I wanted the first chapter to be up but the fic as a whole is requiring more planning than I expected (read: my science education kicked in and I've had to come up with full fungal evolution plans which has required a shit ton of show research because my brain kept picking wholes in what I had. this is the result of a STEM degree apparently)

the current plan is alongside our favourite characters that each chapter will contain some sort of FEDRA / fireflies notes and or propaganda about what they know about cordyceps, so have the first one now!

A formal announcement of the changes to Quarantine Procedure 48.1.3, 48.2.3, 48.6.2, and 48.6.4, authorised by FEDRA Director for the Denver QZ, Andrew Wirral, 19th January 2024. The new Quarantine Procedures read as follows, with changes in bold, followed by the previous rules in italics: 48.1.3 Testing positive for cordyceps is thus defined as meeting any of the following criteria: - A positive test using a FEDRA regulation scanner. - A visibly infected bite (defined as tendrils further than 3mm (extending) from the teeth marks). - At least two (any of) the below symptoms: Severe and continuous muscle spasms Slurred speech Increased aggression Coughing combined with yellowing eyes 48.2.3 On arriving at a Quarantine Zone, anyone testing positive for cordyceps will be subject to humane euthanasia. If the arrival tests negative for cordyceps, they will be held in a quarantine cell for no less than 72 hours (a maximum of 36 hours), at which point they will be retested. If they test negative again at this time, they will be allowed into the Quarantine Zone for a probationary period of three months, after which they will be recognised as full citizens of the Quarantine Zone. AND 48.6.2 In the event of a suspected outbreak within the rules, FEDRA is explicitly permitted to (may) ignore the normal rights of the residents (detailed in FEDRA Regulations 48.9) until the outbreak is under control and there is no further risk to the integrity of the Quarantine Zone. AND 48.6.4 After suspected contact with an infected in the event of an outbreak, FEDRA retains the right to place the resident into a quarantine cell for no less than 72 hours (a maximum of 36 hours) to ensure no further transmission.

Sense Her is out on AO3!

The first (and last) times Joel sees, hears, smells, touches, and tastes Tess.

This is the prequel of sorts to my new Tess Lives series, I wanted to explore Tess and Joel a bit more before I let them be happy and back together. It focuses on how they met and the very early part of the outbreak.

Rating: M

Words: 3k

Warnings: Major character death (does it count if she's not actually dead?), standard violence levels for TLOU.

Full fic below the cut if you'd rather read it here!

Joel Miller's first sight of Theresa Servopoulos was through a rifle scope, watching her dig a knife behind a man's knee cap until he began to speak. He and Tommy had been tailing her group of eight for a few days now, trying to work out where they were headed. In their experience, a group of that size moving purposefully meant some sort of settlement, and they desperately needed to trade for ammo that would actually fit their guns.

This, though, was a surprise. Tommy had clocked pretty fast that the group was divided into two or possibly three smaller groups, the tension rising steadily as time went on. They'd been expecting some shouting and the group splitting, not the only woman of the group, long auburn hair tied back with a bandanna, to stab someone in a way designed to maximise pain and avoid killing them. Joel should probably have found it less attractive than he did.

He turned to Tommy, who was still watching the scene through his rifle scope.

‘Any idea what's happening?’ he asked his brother, lifting the binoculars back up to his face.

‘Think one of the men made the mistake of coming onto her,’ Tommy answered, ‘definitely put hands on her at least, she didn't start it.’

‘As long as they still head towards the settlement,’ Joel responded, dropping the binoculars and picking up his rifle and heading back to the edge of the woods, ‘you keep watch, I'll sort dinner.’

~~~~~~~

The first time Joel heard Tess speak was three days later, when he was sitting on watch beside his and Tommy's stuff, rifle loose in his hands as his brother slept next to him. She slipped through the trees, silent as a ghost, gun loose at her side, and sat opposite him on the other side of the fire, ignoring the gun pointed at her chest entirely.

‘I’ll tell you where the nearest settlement is if you take me with you. I know you've been tailing the people I'm with, and the amount of firearms you have on you suggests you probably need ammo, as food doesn't seem to be an issue,’ she said, nodding towards the deer carcass hanging across the clearing. Her accent wasn’t local, Joel may have lost track of exactly where they were - Tennessee he thought, but he couldn’t be sure - but she was from significantly further north than whenever they were, most likely Midwestern.

‘How’d you know we were here?’ Joel responded brusquely, gun not wavering at all.

‘The rifle scope is reflective. First couple times I wrote it off, but by the third day it was clear someone was tailing us,’ she said, pulling a water bottle out of her pack.

‘Why wouldn't ya’ just go with your group?’

‘They aren't my group. I've been temporarily travelling with them, and that temporary period is now over, given I stabbed one of them. I'd really rather not travel alone, and since you and your brother haven't tried to kill us, rape me, or steal all our shit yet, you're my best option.’

‘We’re a shitty option.’

‘And that would be why I said best, not good. Try anything, I'll stab you too,’ she said, before picking a pinecone from beside her foot and lightly throwing it at Tommy, who sat up, gun loaded and pointed at her before he was fully awake. ‘Impressive,’ she mused, not reacting to the now pair of guns pointed at her.

‘Oh, it's you,’ Tommy said, blinking sleep from his eyes. ‘Wait, why are you here?’

‘We’re travelling to the next settlement together. I know where it is, you don't, and I would like not to go alone. I'm meeting the rest of my group there,’ Tess said coolly.

‘’Kay. D’ya have to wake me up early for that, though? I was hopin’ for more sleep,’ Tommy said, putting the gun down and going to roll over.

‘Tommy!’ Joel hissed, still holding the gun.

‘What? She knew we were followin’ her and she found us here so she's clearly competent, and besides if she wanted us dead she would have shot ya’ before I woke up. She's goin’ where we want to go and is willin’ to take us there. Plus this way we can split watches three ways, this is a win for all of us. Now pipe the fuck down, I'm sleepin’. We can leave at dawn,’ Tommy said, gesturing vaguely with the hand not holding a gun. Tess may not have had much experience with firearms (she hadn't learnt to use one before the outbreak, and hadn't found someone to teach her properly since. The one she carried was more for show than anything else, her words normally enough to keep her safe and a pair of daggers filling in when words weren't enough), but she knew just enough to be impressed by the younger man's trigger discipline even when half asleep.

‘Works for me,’ Tess said, shrugging and pulling a sleeping bag out her rucksack - a warm one, Joel noted, much thicker than his and Tommy's. She crawled inside (clothes and shoes still on, pack neatly fastened and ready to grab to leave at a moments notice, gun loaded and tucked next to her, same as Tommy's), rolled her eyes at the sight of Joel still staring at her, and rolled away from him.

~~~~~~~

The following morning, Joel learnt what she smelled like. He’d kept his gun on her the rest of the night, splitting his attention between her and the woods in case it was a trap. She’d woken with dawn by herself, slipping out of her sleeping bag and going to relieve herself (taking the gun, but leaving her gear, Joel noted), and had arrived back as Joel began prodding Tommy to wake up. Tommy hadn’t been good with mornings and getting up on time since he was teenager, and despite Joel's hopes time in the army had made that habit worse rather than better. She had pulled a granola bar out of her bag, and set up a pan of water over a small camping stove before heating water up, and pulling out a sachet of instant coffee. As Joel moved past her to get to the rest of their water supply to put out the remainder of the fire, he realised her gear apparently stretched to perfume, the scent of woodsmoke and coffee mixing with lavender and jasmine.

‘Ya’ got a good setup there,’ Tommy said, looking on jealously as she made up a large mug of coffee, adding several packets of sugar to it, as well as what looked rather a lot like long life milk.

‘Lots of stuff around if you know where to look,’ she shrugged, going to sip her drink before realising her coffee was definitely still too hot to not burn her mouth, putting it back down as she rolled up the sleeping bag and tucked it away. By the time her coffee was almost cool enough to drink and poured into a thermos to take with her, she had not only packed up but messed with the leaves and branches so you couldn’t tell anyone had been sleeping there.

They set off soon after, Tess pulling out a compass and a paper map (the same one Joel and Tommy had, not that it seemed to be doing them much good) and striding off past Joel to begin a long day of hiking, leaving nothing but the scent of jasmine in the air.

~~~~~~~

The first time Joel touched Tess beyond shoulders brushing as they walked or made dinner together (they had shared rations in Tess’ group so the food tasted better, plus it was much easier to justify having a decent selection of spices if everyone only had to carry the equivalent to one spice jar) was three weeks into knowing each other, when he ended up holding the skin of her stomach together as someone else stitched up a stab wound. This was certainly not how he wanted to first touch her skin and find out if it was as soft as it looked.

He was careful not to touch anything more than necessary or even look too closely at her mostly naked upper torso, to the point Tess would have thought the blood was making his queasy if she didn't know how little blood bothered him, or her, or Tommy, or the rest of their group. She thought it was funny, in a way, how respectful he was being while she was bleeding out. The group medic, an EMT before cordyceps, had cut her shirt down the front to get to her abdomen as fast as possible, then barked at Joel (the nearest person) to hold her still while he stitched her up, so Joel ended up with one hand on her hip bone, fingers brushing what he recognised as a C section scar, and the other spanning her entire rib cage, covering the pair of tattoos there and holding her still as she tried not to scream, the medic suturing as fast as could before tipping rubbing alcohol on the wound to try to sterilise it.

Tommy, still attempting to cover the four of them from the hunters firing at the them while the rest of their group picked them off one by one, glanced back in panic as Tess’ blood made its way across the floor in a river of blood towards him, soaking his trouser leg as he knelt. Joel, still trying to hold Tess still as she got stitched up, didn't move as her hand clung on to his arm hard enough to bruise, her eyes screwed shut with the pain. Even after the medic sat back on his heels, after Tommy and the others had dealt with the other group, Tess and Joel stayed as they were, his hands on her torso, her fingers digging into his elbow as her forehead moved to rest on his bicep as she breathed through the pain.

~~~~~~~

The first time he tasted Tess came a few weeks after she got stabbed, when the group found a liquor store. After drawing straws on who got to stay sober and on guard, everyone else had started drinking, enjoying spirits that most of them would never have been able to afford before cordyceps. Tommy was gleefully partaking in the drinking games (truth or dare, never have I ever, spin the bottle, and a bunch of other juvenile shit Joel was pretty sure people only did in college), whilst Joel and Tess passed a bottle of fancy gin between them, sitting next to each other a little further back from the bonfire.

‘God, I remember being young enough to think that was a good idea,’ Tess said, looking at the others playing games and swigging deeply before passing the bottle back to Joel.

‘Ya’ say that like it was a long time ago,’ Joel said, looking at her. She looked younger than him and Tommy, but he couldn't tell anything beyond late twenties.

‘Certainly feels like it, honestly felt like it before cordyceps too. Think I was done after I ended up getting a tattoo on a dare, then just started skipping straight to the drinking or drugs,’ she shrugged. ‘And besides, it's rude to ask a lady's age, Texas, didn't your Ma ever teach you manners?’

‘She did, hence why I didn't ask. Any information ya’ offer up in response to my statement is on you,’ he said, blushing slightly at being caught, his accent thickening.

Tess laughed, deep and full bodied, limbs heavy and loose from the alcohol.

‘I’m 27. Was born in ‘77. You?’

‘Thirty four,’ Joel responded, ‘Tommy turned 30 last month.’

‘Oh, so he's old now!’ Tess grinned.

‘The fuck does that make me?’

‘Distinguished. A silver fox. Han-’

‘I’m ain't going grey!’ Joel protested, cutting Tess off.

‘Oh?’ she said, rolling her eyes and carefully placing the gin bottle down, then twisting to straddle his lap, all her weight on top of him. He froze, before his arms quickly came up to hold her waist as she listed to one side, steadying her as best he could.

‘Then what, pray tell, is this?’ she said, hands finding a lock of hair and gently tugging, ‘because I hate to break it to you, Texas, but this ain't brown any more.’

Joel's breath caught in his throat as her hands gently combed through his her, their bodies pressed together, his mouth at the same height as her collarbone. He had a sudden impulse to lean forward and press his lips to it, and was halfway there before Tess tugged on his hair again, tilting his head up to look at her.

‘And what do you think you're doing?’ she asked, a twinkle in her eye that Joel was coming to realise meant she was fucking with someone (usually him).

‘I - nothing,’ he said, swallowing as one of her hands came down to his neck, her thumb pressing lightly on the side of his neck.

‘Well that won't do at all,’ Tess murmured, looking down at him, ‘if you aren’t doing anything you might have to think for once, and we can't have that.’ She bowed her head so their foreheads were touching, lips almost brushing his as she spoke.

‘Can I kiss ya’ now, darlin’?’ Joel asked, hands tightening slightly on her waist, carefully avoiding any pressure on the still healing knife wound. Tess smiled at him, a different smile to her usual fake one, and pressed their lips together softly for a few moments.

She tasted of the gin they'd been drinking for the last few hours, the stew they'd had for dinner, the spearmint gum she chewed while they walked. Her hand tangled in his hair as she pulled him back towards her, licking into his mouth as her other hand settled along his jaw, thumb brushing his cheek. And while their lips were pressed together, bodies tangling, laughing as they tried and failed to make it to where Tess was sleeping without falling over, Joel felt his world narrow until it contained only the woman in front of him, freckles barely visible and hair redder than normal in the firelight, Tess turned into flames set to burn him up in her wake. He welcomed it.

~~~~~~~

He realised, after he got Ellie to Lincoln, that he could barely remember all the last good times, not wanting those memories to belong to the ending they'd been dealt.

The last time her saw her remained in his head, the image on repeat of her begging him to take Ellie (as though he wouldn't, as though either of them would ever abandon a child, no matter how much it might hurt them to care for someone who wasn't the one child they wanted with them), arm shaking, the bite on her neck angry and fungus tendrils already snaking out from the wound. The scent of blood and dirt covering her jasmine lotion (the one luxury she afforded herself, always keeping it for herself if they found it or traded it), the shake in her voice as she spoke. She'd always had a way with words, a way of telling people what they wanted to hear and making them think her ideas were their own, so it killed him to hear her weakness, hear her losing what made him love her. The salt from the sweat on her forehead as he kissed her there, not wanting to risk pressing a kiss to her lips in goodbye. The feeling of her hand squeezing his as she told him to run.

Instead, he tried to focus on the good memories.

The last time he'd tasted her, a few days before they'd met Ellie, falling into bed together after a successful run, his head between her thighs as her hands tangled in his hair, holding him there until she was sated, kissing the taste of her off his lips.

The smell of her after she'd showered, making use of a rare period of hot water, the scent of her shampoo (rose scented, this time, a gift from Frank from last time they were in Lincoln) and lotion drifting into his nose as she curled around him in bed, her hair falling onto his chest.

The sight of her the morning before Robert’s men had beaten her up, perched on the kitchen counter and laughing at a joke, hair falling loose in waves around her shoulders in a way she never let it when they were working, wearing one of his shirts and a pair of long socks to combat the cold. He was attempting to cook eggs for breakfast, out of practice after so many years.

The sound of her talking to Ellie as they worked their way through Boston, trying to settle the girl (and him, Joel knew) and distract from the corpses littered around. Her voice as she spoke to Marlene, getting exactly what she wanted while Marlene thought she was getting a good deal. Her quiet words as they went to sleep the first night outside the walls, promises that they’d be okay, that the fireflies would take Ellie, that they’d go and find Tommy wherever he’d ended up.

The feel of her head on his thigh, using him as a pillow as he kept watch over her and Ellie, one of her hands curled around his leg as though to keep him close as one of his hands carded through her hair, gently working out the tangles as she slept, the skin on the back of her neck soft and smooth.

~~~~~~~

He clung to those memories later, sitting by the river, recounting them with each stone he added to her cairn - one for each sense, first and last, until ten stones sat neatly, one atop each other, the best grave he could give the woman he'd loved for so long. He briefly wished he would’ve been able to bury her properly, before remembering a long rant she’d gone on at one point about funerals being dumb and pointless. It made him feel better, at least, to know that she wouldn’t have wanted him to make a big deal of it. The way he mourned her was the same way he’d loved her: quiet, understanded, but always present, and always there.

it begins....

Oathbreaker is now live on AO3!

You can find it here: Oathbreaker - elizabethpickett - The Last of Us (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Rating: T

Relationships: Tommy / Maria, background Joel / Tess and Joel / his ex-wife

Word Count: 12987

Summary:

Tommy had never foreseen himself getting married. In his defence, he hadn't exactly grown up with many good examples of what marriage could look like. His parent's marriage was effectively over before he was born, and Joel's marriage to his ex-wife hadn't been great either. After meeting Maria, however, his mind began to change, picturing her wearing his ring.

This is my Tommy x Maria backstory, it's loosely set in the same universe as Blood Runs Red (which you can find here: Blood Runs Red - elizabethpickett - The Last of Us (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own])

Full story below the cut if you'd rather read it on Tumblr.

Tommy had never foreseen himself getting married. In his defence, he hadn't exactly grown up with many good examples of what marriage could look like. 

His parents were already well past falling out of love by the time he was already born, to the point he'd always harboured the suspicion he'd been a last ditch attempt at pulling their marriage back together. It would be an understatement to say it didn't work. By the time he was a toddler, he was well used to the yelling, the fights getting louder and more frequent, the Spanish and Mapuche bleeding together as his parents disagreed about everything they could think of. Joel had tried his best to shield Tommy from the worst of it, but the small two bed flat didn't give them anywhere to go, so under a hastily made pillow fort it was. Joel tried to distract Tommy by making him practise the maths Joel had learnt in school that week, never mind Tommy was four years younger than him, desperate to distract his younger brother. Tommy’s only experience of his mother's first language was through those fights, the only thoughts he could frame those of hatred and disagreement. Joel spoke a little more than him, but still not enough to converse with their grandparents in it. 

After everything happened with his grandfather, his parents had decided to leave Chile behind, head to America, the only thing Tommy could remember them ever agreeing on. He'd clung tight to Joel the whole flight, terrified of how high they were, terrified of leaving everything he'd known behind. 

Unfortunately for Tommy and Joel, four and eight, speaking a half dozen words of English between them (and one of them was football, which apparently did not mean the same as fútbol for some reason), his parents' marriage didn't get any better after they settled on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. 

Joel and Tommy picked up English fairly quickly, both bright and in a school well used to children only speaking Spanish, even if their variety of Spanish wasn't the one the ESL teachers were most familiar with. They played football (soccer, the other kids insisted), they did just enough homework to stay off their teachers radar, they spent as long as possible walking home and left as early as they could in the morning. Three years after they first arrived in Texas, they started showing up to school with bruises. The teachers didn't even raise an eyebrow, just shook their heads when Joel started picking fights with the kids who gave Tommy a hard time seeing the ring of blue around his wrist. 

Their parent's marriage only splintered further the longer they stayed in their little two bed flat above some distant relatives garage. Their father stayed out later and later, returning angry and his breath stinking of vodka. Their mother retreated further and further into herself, trying to make not enough money go far enough for herself and two growing boys. 

Joel let slip when Tommy was 11 that part of the issue was their father coming home with lipstick on his collar, having successfully hid that facet of their parents' marriage from Tommy for three years. 

And then, after the broken arm, after their father was killed (passed, the other ladies from church saying, as though that made it any better, as though they hadn't already seen death much worse than a drunken car crash), he watched his mother bloom again. Tommy saw her get more involved in church when she had time around the two jobs she worked, saw her eyes get brighter and her jokes become more frequent, the hair ruffling and cakes baked following Tommy's abuelas recipes appearing more often. Tommy saw how much happier she was, no longer married, her rings neatly tucked away in a box at the bottom of her dresser, looking younger than she had in years. 

And so Tommy, alongside the lessons of how to take a hit, how to read a room better than anyone else in it (except Joel, but he didn't count), learnt that marriage was a thing that made you miserable. 

Joel's marriage to Julia didn't exactly change that lesson in his mind, older though he was as he watched it end almost before it had begun. 

He was vaguely aware Joel had been seeing someone, mutterings making it across to his middle school from the high school next door, that one of the choir kids was dating some cheerleader. He hadn't thought anything more of it until he wandered over to the high school to see where Joel had got to as he wasn't waiting by the gate for Tommy as usual, where he found his brother with his tongue down said cheerleader's throat. (And oh, thought Tommy, I can hold this one over him forever). After extracting a promise from Joel that he'd get Joel's dessert the next three nights in return for not telling their mother about Joel's new girlfriend (not girlfriend, Joel muttered, which made Tommy burst out laughing because that would be so much worse according to their mother). 

Six months later, Tommy had managed to extract the girls name (‘Julia’), how Joel had met her (‘we sit next to each other in chemistry class’), the nature of their relationship (‘friends who made out sometimes but also weren't seeing other people’), and why Tommy hadn't been officially introduced to her (‘which bit of not girlfriend is hard for you to understand, Tomás, honestly’). Joel never had been good at saying no to Tommy, even when it was clearly information he would clearly have rather not shared with his fourteen year old brother who was altogether too invested in his love life. 

Three months after that, Julia appeared on their doorstep, blood dripping down her face, just as Joel was heading out to take her to a football game at school. Her belongings were moved into Joel's room two weeks later after a brief standoff between Joel and her father, his mother shaking her head and commenting that normally she'd make them sleep apart but it was a bit too late now wasn't it.

Julia and Joel got married on a quiet Saturday afternoon two months after they graduated, with Isabella and Tommy as their witnesses, in a small ceremony at the church Isabella helped organise. Julia wore a white dress her mother had brought over one day without a word to anyone except Isabella. She was holding a bouquet of daisies, Joel in one of their fathers tuxes that didn't fit quite right around the shoulders, as they put on a matching set of gold rings (the cheapest they could find).  Joel had gone straight from the ceremony to a job site, desperately trying to bring in enough money to cover all the costs being a new parent would bring. 

Within three months of Sarah being born, Tommy could tell it was a matter of time until Julia left. Joel had thrown himself fully into being a father, happiest with his daughter in his arms, throwing her up in the air and catching her, reading to her whenever he could, even as exhausted as he was with the long hours he was working. Julia, on the other hand, seemed to want nothing to do with Sarah, hating the time she had to spend with her daughter instead of her friends. Tommy knew she had planned to go to college, but her father had made it clear she'd get no more support from them so it wasn't an option anymore. In hindsight Tommy knew Julia was suffering from postpartum depression and the inevitable after effects of having her entire life turned upside down at 18, but to 15 year old him he just watched Sarah struggle as she got no more attention from her mother than absolutely necessary. Tommy had started going straight to their flat after school to play with Sarah while he did his homework, leaving Julia to her own devices while he entertained his niece and tried to remember how to balance a chemistry equation. 

Julia and Joel had never been properly together before Sarah was born, something Tommy had always thought was fairly mutual given the very different directions of their lives. After Sarah, though, Joel had tried his best to make it work with Julia - date nights (with Tommy babysitting, sometimes accompanied by their mother and sometimes not), bringing things back from work to try and make her smile. Julia had just retreated into herself, rarely showing any affection at all to her husband or daughter. 

Tommy had sworn to himself at that moment that if this is what a better marriage than his parents’ looked like, he never wanted to get married. Never wanted to watch himself or his partner fade, living separate lives in the same house, passing without speaking like ships passing at night. 

Julia left shortly after Sarah’s third birthday, divorce papers on the kitchen table, her belongings packed and gone. Joel had panicked at first, not knowing where she was, worried about her spiralling yet again and showing up drunk or high or hurt, so Tommy got handed Sarah and an overnight bag while Joel went to go and try to find his wife. He eventually got word through a chain of people that Tommy had never quite got his head around that she was in Washington with a cousin, at which point Joel rushed straight home to Sarah. It took three days for Joel to manage to explain to Sarah that her mother wasn't coming back this time, unlike the other times where she'd disappeared overnight with no proper warning. Sarah had started sobbing, too young to fully understand what was happening, inconsolable despite Tommy's best efforts to get her to bed. Once he eventually got settled, he'd called his mother and asked her to try and get Julia to give up custody of Sarah. He'd never fully understood the extent to which Isabella and Julia's mother were in contact, but a week after the divorce papers were finalised, a set of custody documents arrived at Joel's flat, Julia giving up all parental rights.

A month later, Tommy graduated high school and shipped out to the army two weeks after that, Sarah clinging to his leg as needed to leave for basic, sobbing that she didn't want him to leave too. Tommy eventually managed to explain that he wasn't going away forever, just to work for a bit, and he'd visit her soon and call her lots. Then he ended up in Kuwait, out of bad luck with when he'd enlisted rather than a particular desire to be there, and he didn't see his niece for eight months. When he got back, PTSD already reading its ugly head, Joel had told him that he was moving in with him and Sarah. A few months after he got back, still waking up with nightmares of blood soaking his hands, he started working on the same construction sites as Joel and helping as much as he could raising his niece, teaching her letters and how to kick a football and learning to how to braid her hair from one of their neighbour's. 

When Sarah was eight, looking more like Isabella every day and capable of making herself a sandwich, Tommy moved into his own flat, keen to try to be an adult for once without Joel there to pick up the pieces. As it turned out, Joel managed to do that fairly effectively even if they were no longer living together, sending Sarah in to wake him up when he was hungover and due at a job site, knowing full well Tommy would rather die than snap at his niece. 

Tommy had a few girlfriends on and off in the years before the apocalypse began, always ending when they started asking questions about long term life goals and settling down. One of them had got mad at him at one point, yelling at him from across the room that 

‘Would it kill you to commit, Tommy? What's so scary about considering what our lives could be like together?’ Tommy had frozen, rooted to the spot, his mother with a black eye and Julia's dead expression and Joel's desperation to make it work when it clearly wouldn't all flashing through his mind, unable to speak as his now ex-girlfriend stormed past him, never to be in his living room again. He hadn't known how to explain to her that he liked how they were in that moment, that taking it further would end up with them both sad and miserable and wishing they hadn't. Tommy wasn't about to make the same mistakes his mother and brother had. 

And then after the apocalypse, after he lost Sarah, it took him years to even consider anything more than the odd one night stand, relationships just making him think of his niece and who his brother had been broken first by Julia leaving him and then by losing his daughter. 

He'd seen someone on and off in Boston while he was there, a smuggling contact who Tess had referred to, on several occasions, as ‘the most inept drug dealer I've ever met Tommy, Jesus fucking Christ I am begging you to have better taste in women’. Eventually deciding to heed her advice and call it off (he'd long since realised that Tess was the smartest of the three of them, could read people and get what she wanted from them better than anyone he'd ever met), he'd then ended up in Marlene's bed, to which Tess had raised an eyebrow and asked why he was so keen to remake her mistakes. This subsequently led to them both getting drunk off some truly horrific tequila and bonding over shitty ex girlfriends, confusing the hell out of Joel who arrived back at his flat to find his brother and partner drunk out of their minds on his living room floor, both bursting out laughing as he got in from a drop. Tommy had never quite understood the nature of Tess and Joel's relationship, whether she was his girlfriend, partner in all senses of the word, soulmate, or wife in all but filling out the paperwork. To be fair to his brother, Tommy was also aware that Joel probably was terrified to label it the same way he was, too scared of messing up a good thing. 

And then, he met Maria. 

The first time he met her, he was bleeding profusely out of a knife wound in his arm courtesy of a group of raiders when he suddenly had two guns pointed at him. The man he'd written off immediately as someone he could overpower without much effort, an itchy trigger finger and the lack of a proper beard showing his youth. The woman, however, wrapped in a navy coat and a red bandanna covering most of her face, holding a rifle that Tommy could only describe as beautiful, had kept the gun levelled at his face and told him to kneel. Tommy had done so instantly, not even really realising what he was doing until he felt his knees begin to go numb, the snow soaking through his jeans and thermals. The woman had raised a singular eyebrow, and then promptly knocked him out with the butt of her gun. He decided not to hold it against her.  

He woke up in what was quickly identifiable as a doctor's office, even 12 years after he'd last been in a medical centre (and he desperately tried not to focus on that, on the feeling of Joel's blood coating his hands, under his fingernails, begging the doctors to do something, anything). There was the strong smell of antiseptic, and looking down he saw an IV in his arm hooked up to a blood bag and the wound on his arm was neatly dressed. Looking around, Tommy's gaze settled on the two people sitting next to his bed: the woman from the woods, who now she wasn't wearing the bandanna appeared to be about his age, and an older gentleman, deep wrinkles carved into his face revealing a life spent in the sun, his cheekbones the mirror image of the woman's sat next to him - his daughter, Tommy realised. 

‘Well, you've certainly done well to make it this far north with such terrible winter gear,’ the man said wryly, his accent revealing himself to be from somewhere near the where Tommy had found himself. ‘I’m George, one of the council members of this here town. And who might you be?’

‘Tommy Miller, sir,’ Tommy replied, his voice cracking from disuse. The woman reached over to the table beside the bed and handed Tommy a glass of water which he took gratefully, nodding his thanks to the woman. He may not have been Texan originally, but his mother had drilled southern manners into him and Joel within a few years of their arrival to Austin. ‘If you don't mind me asking, exactly how far north have I got? I know I crossed the state line into Wyoming, but I lost track of exactly where I was soon after.’

‘This is Jackson. You made it near enough two thirds of the way up to Montana. You heading somewhere in particular?’ the man questioned, and Tommy sensed a different undercurrent to this question. They may have taken him in and patched him up, but they were now trying to figure out what to do with him now, and judging by the tension between George and his daughter, he got the sense that bringing him in may have not been a decision made by whatever sort of council ran this place. 

‘Just wandering, taking the opportunity to see some more of the country. Was trying to avoid Denver and Salt Lake City, and heard mutterings of a settlement up this way, figured I'd come see if I could find it. At this point, I'd mainly just like to find somewhere with a roof and food for the winter. If I can't find that here I'm happy to get out of your hair as soon as someone unhooks me from all this,’ Tommy said, gesturing with his injured arm to the tubes coming out of his arm. 

‘Avoiding FEDRA and the Fireflies then I see. A man after my own heart. What'd you do for a living before the end of the world?’ George queried, the woman looking closely at Tommy, and he felt her stare down into his very soul, stripping him bare before her. 

‘Military and then contracting, sir. Owned a construction firm with my brother down in Austin,’ Tommy explained, a slight frown on his face as George ignored his comment about leaving and then recognised exactly what those two cities meant. 

‘Well, if you're looking for somewhere to spend the winter, we always need more hands here, and someone who knows how to build would be most appreciated as our electrician keeps threatening to turn off my hot water if I make him frame another house. You'd be on probation for three months before you get to vote on the council members and in any town wide votes, and there's a strict no firearms rule unless you're on guard duty or on patrol. We also request no weapons of any other kind, but given my daughter has at least three knives on her person right now, that rule does have some more flexibility providing they don't get used on other people.’ George offered. In that moment, Tommy realised what else felt wrong at the whole situation - his fireflies dog tags weren't sitting on his chest. He'd kept wearing them even after he left out of a vague hope that word would get back to Joel if anything did happen to him, but given George's implication that leaving Jackson wasn't an option, he began to question whether that had been a smart move. The fireflies had made a lot of enemies over the last five years, and Tommy had helped make some of those enemies personally. 

‘I’d be happy to help with building here. It's been a while since I framed out a house but I'm sure I can contribute,’ Tommy said slowly, trying to keep his voice even. 

‘Wonderful. In that case, I'll leave you in Maria's capable hands to show you around the town and get you settled down in one of the open houses. I do hope you settle in well here,’ George said, carefully pushing himself up from the chair he was sitting in, his creaking joints audible to Tommy, who suddenly realised this man looked to be in his eighties, had entered the apocalypse most likely already a retiree and had somehow not only survived but helped set up a town. He glanced at his daughter, Maria, he'd said her name was, on the way out, quietly murmuring something to her, her only response being an eye roll that made Tommy's heart clench in his chest as he remembered Sarah doing the same thing when Joel asked her to help out at home. 

‘Well that went better than expected,’ Maria said, grinning at Tommy after her father left the room, before standing up herself, ‘let me go find one of the nurses and see if you have enough blood in you now to be able to have a tour’. 

Ten minutes later, Tommy was walking down the main street of Jackson, wrapped up in a stranger's clothes, as Maria pointed out the walls they were trying to build, the schoolyard, the cafeteria, before leading him over to one of the residential streets and nodding at a pale yellow house. 

‘This one is yours for the time being, it's where we put all the new arrivals so they can get their heads around Jackson before they pick where they want to live,’ Maria explained, stepping up onto the porch and leaning against the railings, looking down at Tommy beneath her. ‘I do have to ask, though, are you still running with the fireflies? Because you said you were avoiding Denver, but you were wearing fireflies dog tags when I found you,’ she queried, surprising Tommy with the bluntness of her question. 

‘Uh, no ma’am, ain't been runnin’ with them for near enough a year now. Kept them in the hope word would get back to my brother if anything happened. Got no love lost for ‘em now,’ Tommy explained, catching a glimpse of the second knife (one on her hip, one in her boot, and a mystery third one somewhere), ‘and I meant what I said about leaving if y'all don't want me here. I ain't trying to impose.’

Maria looked at him then, her eyes locking onto his as she searched for an answer in his, clearly weighing him up. Tommy kept his expression neutral, staring back at her, taking in her dark eyes and sharp cheekbones. 

‘I’ve worked damn hard getting this town up and running without you fucking it up by bringing the outside world here, alright? I brought you in because despite actively bleeding out you'd still managed to kill that whole group of raiders, and frankly we need more manpower on patrols and wall duty, or more specifically, we need people with combat experience. And you held yourself like a soldier. So do me a favour and don't fuck up while you're here, it'll make me look bad’, Maria said, appraising his face, his hands, one holding the banister and the other with a thumb tucked into a belt loop. 

‘I’ll try my best not to fuck up then, ma’am, I wouldn't want to risk your good reputation,’ Tommy replied, toeing the line between respectful and flirtatious, to which she laughed, before telling him to go wash up and take a shower before heading to the cafeteria for dinner.

Over the next few weeks, Tommy began to settle into Jackson, taking his meals in the cafeteria, Maria making him sit with different groups of people (but normally staying with him too), and helping out with various jobs. It turned out contracting came back easily, and soon people were coming up to him on the street to ask him to fix steps, kitchen cupboards, and a leaky roof. Jackson had a hardware store that was still mostly intact so he didn't struggle for supplies. He'd asked Maria if it was okay he wasn't actually working on getting the new buildings up as he kept ending up fixing various things in the older houses, to which she’d said that if he was helping people build things it didn't really matter the order. He'd asked about patrol shifts or guard duty, but had been told it'd be at least two months after his arrival before he got hold of a firearm. He carefully didn't mention the pistol and ammo he'd found when inspecting a potential building for the new community co-op, now safely tucked away in his bedroom drawer. And wasn't that a luxury, getting his own bedroom, with a bed, and a thick duvet, and space to put things. He reached the point of knowing people's names and socialising without Maria, heading to the Tipsy Bison after finishing up work for the day with whoever ended up on the ‘help Tommy fix shit’ shift that day. 

By the time spring finally arrived, the snow dissipating and early bulbs beginning to show themselves in the grass, Tommy knew he would stay in Jackson. He'd started working on the walls more, making them stronger, had almost finished plans for redoing the main town buildings and making sure they were strong enough to stand for a long while yet. It was quieter there than anywhere he'd found after the end of the world, made of people who just wanted to live as best they could, who didn't ask questions about each other's pasts unless information was freely given first. He moved out of the yellow house and into a small townhouse a few roads over (nearer Maria, a small voice in the back of his head said), and had gotten into the habit of sitting on his porch in the evenings with a cup of herbal tea that one patrol woman made. Soon enough, Maria began to join him, first standing on the steps to ask him what he'd been fixing that day, but soon it had progressed to them sitting on the pair of chairs and both sipping from mugs of tea.

Maria had always felt easy, to Tommy, in a way he hadn't really ever felt before. Her only expectation of him was that he'd do his fair share of the work of Jackson, but beyond that, she didn't want anything from him. He could be himself around her, joke, recollect stories of before the world ended. He learnt she'd been a lawyer, same as her father, which made sense given she could read people better than anyone he'd met other than Tess. He learnt she used to visit Louisiana every summer to visit her grandparents, and had gone to college in New York on a full scholarship. In return, he told her about growing up with Joel and their mother, of playing football at school, desperate to spend as little time inside as possible. Told her about his love for peppermint sweets, and the first record he remembered ever hearing. 

Six months after Tommy first met Maria, they were sitting on his porch enjoying the warm summer evening, both distinctly tipsy from a night at the bar with friends that had somehow involved multiple tequila shots and several bottles of wine. He wasn't entirely sure where the tequila had even come from if he was being honest. He'd looked up to see a moth sitting on the railing across from him, and said, quietly, 

‘Sarah always did love butterflies. Used to insist that moths were just sleepy butterflies, that the wing shape was different because they were too tired to hold their wings up. Took until she was six to convince her they were different animals, though I think she was fucking with me on purpose by the end of it’. 

Maria stilled at his words, turning to look at him, seeing the grief writ large on his face. 

‘How old was she? When you lost her?’ she asked, her voice settling into something softer than usual, a tone he was quickly realising only seemed to appear around him. 

‘She was 14, final year of middle school. Already had her high school picked out, some science specific one. It was going to be a nightmare for Joel and I to get her there it was so far away, but it was academically selective and she was so smart, always wanted to learn more about everythin’,’ he said, finding the lump in his throat beginning to get smaller as the words started coming out. 

‘Was she yours or Joel's?’

‘She was Joel's daughter. But Julia took off pretty early, and Joel had been keeping a pretty close eye on me for years because our dad wasn't around, so it was me and him raising her mainly. Our mum helped as well, but we lost her when Sarah was six, so then it was only us two. Lived with them for a while as well to make it easier when I for back from the army.’

‘So she was yours, then, as well,’  Maria stated quietly, meeting Tommy's eyes as he looked up, a tear glistening on his cheek. 

‘Yeah. She was mine. Felt like I buried half my heart when we had to bury her,’ he managed to choke out, realising how little he'd actually grieved her in the twelve years since her death, realising that Joel's insistence of shoving the feelings down had left him without any closure, any sense of being able to lay his niece to rest in his mind. 

Maria got up, then, moving to sit next to him, and just held his hand as he sobbed silently, waiting for him to be done before helping him inside and up to his bedroom, squeezing his hand as she grabbed an extra blanket for him out of his cupboard (and he wondered then, how she knew where it was. She was in his house a lot, often chatting over lunch or planning new stages of development for Jackson, but he hadn't realised her familiarity with his home had reached knowing where the spare bed linen was). 

‘Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about Sarah,’ Maria whispered from his bedroom door, just loud enough for Tommy to hear it even as he slipped towards sleep. 

‘Trust you with everythin’, darlin’,’ he replied, drifting quickly off. 

It was easier, after that, to talk to Maria about Sarah, to be able to remember her life and all she had done with it, to finally come to terms with what had happened. 

Maria, then, slowly started sharing stories of Kevin too. Less, as he was so much younger when he died, but stories of ever taller building block towers, of wanting to ‘help’ his mother with work which resulted in a separate firm branded notebook for him after he'd scribbled over her case notes when drawing a picture in her normal notebook. Stories of long nights with a colicky baby, giving way to longer days as she balanced being a DA with being a parent and being married to a surgeon. It had taken Tommy by surprise, a bit, hearing she had been married, which she was confused by. 

‘I was in my thirties with a kid and a career and everything, why's it so surprising I was married?’ she asked, undoing a chain around her neck to show Tommy the three rings threaded onto it, her engagement ring sparkling in the lantern light. 

‘Just never pictured you that way, I guess,’ he'd replied, twisting the rings back and forth between his fingers. 

‘Not something you were ever interested in?’ Maria had asked, reclasping the necklace before sipping her tea as it steamed gently. 

‘Saw what it did to my parents, and then to Joel and his ex-wife. Figured it was something I was probably better without’, he said, shrugging.

‘That’s, that’s not what marriage is supposed to be like,’ Maria said, reaching over to turn his face towards her so she was sure he heard her.  ‘Marriage is supposed to make you happy. It's about finding someone you are so happy to spend the rest of your life around, and then promising each other to try and make that happen.’

Tommy had just given her a cocky grin, one she recognised now as the face he made when thinking over new information, before smiling up at her, her fingers still on his jaw. 

‘I'm glad you were happy. That your husband made you happy,’ he'd said quietly before going back to drinking his tea. 

By the time the next winter came, when Tommy reached a year in Jackson, he realised that Maria probably knew more about him than anyone other than maybe Joel. She knew his life before, knew some of his life afterwards (she knew about the Fireflies, the smuggling. He still hadn't managed to vocalise the details about him and Joel being hunters for a while, though she knew that's what they'd done. He just couldn't share exactly what happened, and she didn't push) and had taken it all into her stride. Had looked at him with her dark brown eyes glinting in the sun and seen him, all of him. 

In return, he'd got to know her pretty well too. Knew how college had been, so desperate to do as well in law as her father, about the realities of living so far from home as an eighteen year old. Knew she'd met Michael on a blind date set up by a mutual friend from her law school, that it had ended with red wine on his shirt, his hands on her arms as he kissed her goodnight, and them trading numbers to meet up again somewhere less stuffy and more them. He knew how much she'd wanted a child, and how worried she’d been about what it would do to her career if she took a year off, only to have got bored out of her mind within two months, Michael and her adjusting plans so she could go back to work full time while he took a step back to look after Kevin more. He knew how terrified she'd been to vocalise what she wanted to her husband, how terrified she'd been that he would say looking after Kevin was her job, only for him to hand her a new job contract from the hospital for reduced hours that would let him do the bulk of childcare, him smiling and telling her he didn't marry her to make her miserable, and that if he hadn't wanted to split childcare in a way that might include him being the one to take a step back career wise he wouldn't have married a woman with a career more impressive than his. 

It still had taken him by surprise when she’d sat down next to him one evening and told him she wanted to tell him how she lost Michael and Kevin, not even waiting for him to make their tea first. He'd offered to go and make it but she'd just shook her head, said it needed to be now, so he just held her hand and sat next to her as she got the words out in fits and starts, tears shining bright on her face. 

Maria told him that her husband had been the one to go and get George when they realised something was wrong on outbreak day, while she stayed at home with Kevin, frantically packing bags so they could leave town and get somewhere quieter. She told him Michael had arrived at George's house to find him being attacked by an infected, that he had got bit getting George to safety. How he'd kept quiet about the bite on his ankle until George was safely with Maria and Kevin, then had pulled her aside and told her what happened, touching foreheads with her before taking his father in laws pistol and going to put a bullet in his head, refusing to let anyone else do it. She told him, voicing catching on the words, how much she regretted not even being able to kiss him goodbye, unsure as they were of how the infection spread. 

He pulled her close at that point, letting her head burrow into his neck, his arms falling around her as she clung to him. 

She managed to explain that Kevin had been bit three days later in an army camp, the quarantine protocols proving insufficient, and that after that she and George had stayed far away from anything government run. 

She’d explained, then, that it would have been his sixteenth birthday that day, and Tommy, who'd spent the nights that would've been Sarah's 18th and 21st drunk and high out of his mind, understood suddenly why she needed to say it then. To make her son real and tangible in the world, to make sure he didn't live on just in her head but in someone else's too. 

He’d offered, then, to go and fill their mugs with whiskey instead of tea, if that was more what she’d wanted, getting a laugh out of her with that joke. 

‘I think I just want to sleep. Walk me home?’ she asked quietly, lifting her face to look up at his. Tommy nodded and unwrapped her arms from around him, keeping hold of her hand as they slowly walked (the extremely short distance) to her house. 

Seeing her face tighten as they reached her door, Tommy squeezed her hand, 

‘Want me to stay until you fall asleep?’ he offered, quickly seeing it was the right thing to say as Maria’s shoulders dropped several inches in relief. And so he took her upstairs, awkwardly hovering as she got changed and got into bed, an odd mirror of what she'd done for him when he'd told her about Sarah. Maria curled up into Tommy’s chest, his hand settling on her hair as she slowly drifted off to sleep. He’d meant to slip out as soon as she was fully asleep, but instead he woke up to the sun coming in through her window, Maria’s face still buried in his chest, his back aching and reminding him that the apocalypse hadn’t been kind to his joints. Maria stirred against his chest rolling over so she was fully on top of him, and Tommy froze, not entirely sure what to do now, lying trapped under his best friend who’d given him a home and helped piece his broken parts back together. Thankfully, Maria awoke fairly soon into his small existential crisis, looking up at him, hair messy and neck cracking, a quiet ‘hey’ leaving her lips as she got up and headed for the bathroom. Tommy took the opportunity to stretch his back and readjust his clothes, still not sure what to say. 

‘You want coffee?’ Maria’s voice broke through the fog coating his brain, emerging from the bathroom with water dripping down her neck from where she’d splashed her face.

‘That would be great. Look, I’m sorry about stayin’, I’d meant to go once you were settled-’

‘It’s fine, Tommy. Really. You were a surprisingly good pillow. Eggs for breakfast okay? She said, seemingly confused why it was such a big deal, as though he hadn’t just spent the night in her bed.

‘Uh, yeah, eggs work. Any chance ya got any of that hot sauce Lauren made?’ he said, shrugging and following her lead as she headed through to her kitchen, filling the kettle.

That afternoon, while working on fixing the roof, Tommy almost fell off said roof when Jon, one of the only other men with any sort of construction experience, suddenly spoke,

‘So you and Maria have finally decided to stop sneaking around huh?’ he asked, smirking and sitting to look over at Tommy.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Tommy asked, confused as to why anyone thought he and Maria were hiding being friends when they regularly sat on his porch together in full view of anyone who walked past. 

‘Denise saw you doing the walk of shame this morning leaving Maria's house,’ Jon told him, clearly delighted at the efficiency of Jackson's gossip network. 

Tommy blinked several times, ‘Wait, what? That wasn't a walk of shame. Firstly, because it's not like that between us, I just fell asleep. Secondly, a walk of shame implies I'd feel shame, which is yet to be something I’ve ever experienced.’

‘Wait what do you mean it's not like that? You're not together?’

‘No? Wait, did you think we were?’

‘Alongside everyone else in Jackson, dude, yeah I did. Are you seriously telling me that you spend all your free time together, and you're not sleeping together?’ Jon asked him, beginning to look as confused as Tommy felt. 

‘Yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Can we get back to finishing this roof now? I'm meant to be meeting the woman I'm in no way sleeping with for lunch in an hour’. 

Turning away from Jon and getting back to laying shingles, Tommy thought about what he'd said, the assumption that he and Maria were together. To be fair, men had stopped asking her to dance at the Tipsy Bison pretty soon after they'd started spending more time together, and he had quit flirting with women in front of Maria, and given he was basically always with her, that meant he'd stopped flirting completely with the other women of Jackson. 

Two hours later, and God, Tommy missed competent coworkers who knew what to do and could be trusted not to fuck everything up the minute he looked away, he fell into a chair opposite Maria in her kitchen with a loud thump, her raising an eyebrow at the interruption from her work. 

‘So Jon asked me about that fact I supposedly did the walk of shame this morning, apparently Denise saw me leave yours,’ he said, reaching over the table to grab her sandwich and start eating it. 

‘That would imply shame is something you'd feel after sleeping with somebody,’ she said, not even looking up from the large stack of papers in front of her. 

‘That’s what I said!’ Tommy replied, gesturing to her with her own sandwich, which she plucked out his hand to grab a bite of herself. ‘But also, apparently the whole town thinks we are together.’

‘I mean to be fair we spend all our free time together and neither of us have been seeing anyone else, it's not a wild conclusion for them to draw,’ Maria replied, somehow managing to hold a conversation, eat a sandwich, and continuing working on what looked like a patrol schedule all at once. 

‘That doesn't bother ya’?’ Tommy asked, confused by how nonplussed she seemed.  

‘Tommy I'm 44 and we are living through the apocalypse, I'm rather a long way beyond caring what anyone else thinks about my sex life,’ she said, pushing the patrol schedule away and setting down the sandwich. ‘Does it bother you that other people think we are together in that way?’ she asked, staring at him with what he had long ago termed her ‘lawyer face’ where he knew he couldn't hide anything from her even if he wanted to. 

‘No? Maybe? I don’t know, Maria, just feels a little weird that they'd think a guy like me had a chance with a woman like ya’ is all.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, her voice sharper than he remembered it being while directed at him for months.

‘What do ya’ think it means? You were a fuckin’ DA with a surgeon for a husband and a kid and a life and everythin’ before, and now you've helped set up one of the only non FEDRA settlements in the whole US and despite what ya’ tell people about the council everyone knows that people will vote for what you and ya’ daddy decide is best. I barely graduated high school and spent my life before the end of the world pickin’ dumb fights at bars and having to get bailed out by my brother with my niece in tow, and after the outbreak I've done a whole lotta awful things. You managed to build somethin’, I just hurt a lot of people who didn't do anythin’ but get in my way. You never woulda looked at a guy like me before even if ya’ weren't happily married, and god knows you'd never look at me like that with everything I've done since.’

‘Is that seriously what you think? That you wouldn't be good enough for me?’ she asked him, her voice keeping the hard edge even as she reached over and took his hands. 

‘Ya’ know what I've done, darlin’. Don't think I'm good enough for anyone, don't think I was before the world ended, let alone now,’ Tommy said quietly, looking her in the eye to show he wasn't hiding anything. 

Maria picked up his hands and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, hands holding tight to his. 

‘You listen to me, Tomás Miller. You are worth loving. I know what you did and who you are, and I haven't turned away from you yet. If I didn't think you were good enough for me, I wouldn't be spending all my time with you and letting you steal my sandwiches, okay?’ she said, staring deep into his eyes to make her point. 

‘Yeah but that's different, we’re friends. It's not the same.’

‘Am I seriously going to have to explain to you how platonic relationships are just as important and fulfilling as romantic ones? It doesn't matter exactly what our relationship is, it wouldn't change how I looked at you. How much I love you.’

Tommy blinked, ‘you love me?’ 

‘Of course I do, you moron. Now help me with the patrol schedules,’ she said, squeezing his hands before pushing half the schedule over to his side of the table. He just sat there, trying to process the fact that a woman as wonderful as Maria apparently loved him. 

About two minutes later, the room having been silent until then, he broke it by asking,

‘We can start fucking with people if they all think we are sleeping together, right? This could be hilarious.’ 

‘Oh definitely. They want to make dumb assumptions instead of asking questions, we get to fuck with them,’ Maria answered instantly. ‘Now, thoughts on sending Silas and Eugene out on the northern route?’

‘Absolutely not, the levels of common sense on that patrol would be so low as to be nonexistent. Also, I love ya’ too, darlin’. I hope you know that.’ 

Maria smiled over at him, squeezed his hand, and went back to work. 

Things changed after that. They'd been close for a while, spending a lot of time together, but after naming what was between them they lived practically on top of each other, constantly in each other's houses, every so often both falling asleep while watching a movie or working late and moving, groaning at aching joints, towards whichever bed was closest and curling up in it. Tommy hadn't thought much of it, Maria not being one to snore or steal the covers, until George cornered him after a patrol shift one day after he'd finally been cleared to handle a gun and head out. 

‘So what exactly is going on between you and my daughter?’ George said, standing just outside the stables and waiting for Tommy to walk out, making him jump out of his own skin as he quickly looked around for George. 

‘I… I feel like that's somethin’ you'd need to ask her, sir,’ he said, feeling like he was fifteen and had been caught sneaking around with his girlfriend again (Isabella, having had one grandchild from a child barely out of high school, had no interest in there being a second and had been extremely strict with doors open and rules like that. Tommy, having acquired a niece from a high school relationship, had no interest in giving her a second grandchild, so this caused significantly less issues than everyone seemed to expect given his reputation as a womaniser). 

‘I did. She said to ask you,’ George responded, his eyes narrowing. 

‘I… She's the best thing in my life, sir. I like havin’ her around.’

‘Hmm. Break her heart and we will have a problem,’ George responded, his voice taking on the same edge that Maria's did when she was serious. 

‘That feels fair, sir,’ Tommy said, very aware that Maria had learnt most of her lawyering at his feet, including the ability to read people. 

When he mentioned the conversation to Maria that evening over dinner she laughed, apologising for not giving him advance warning of the impending shovel talk as George had asked her the same thing that morning. 

‘What did ya’ tell him? About us?’ Tommy asked.

‘That I was a forty four year old woman and thus rather beyond having to justify my relationships to him,’ she replied dryly. ‘No, I told him you were important to me and I love you and if you break my heart I can kick your ass myself.’

‘That’s my girl.’

Three months later, Tommy and Maria were frantically shovelling down breakfast after sleeping in late, one of them having turned the alarm clock off and rolled back over without thinking. When Maria stood up to leave, grabbing her bag and coat, she dropped a kiss on Tommy's lips as she ran out the door to a council meeting seemingly without thinking about it. 

Tommy blinked several times, decided he quite liked that, and finished eating his toast before heading out to his patrol shift. 

That lunch time, when Maria didn't come to his house like usual, he walked over to her house to find her having a panic attack in her kitchen. He filled her up a glass of water and sat next to her, hand palm side up in an offer to hold hers if she wanted. Maria didn't often have panic attacks, certainly had them less than he did, but she had a tendency to freak out if she was touched unexpectedly, so he waited until she made the first move towards him before pulling her onto his lap and wrapping his arms around her. 

‘I'm sorry,’ she choked out, face buried in his chest as her breathing slowly evened out. 

‘For what exactly?’ Tommy asked gently, not entirely sure what had set this off, and not wanting to guess wrong. 

‘Missing lunch, kissing you, freaking out? Some combination of all the above?’ she said, still not looking up at him. 

‘Okay, addressing those one by one. Firstly, ya’ don't ever gotta apologise for having a bad day. Panic attacks are shit but they happen, we didn't get through more than a decade of the apocalypse without a fuckton of trauma. Secondly, I don't care if you missed lunch, I just wanted to check ya’ were okay as ya’ don't normally bail on me without letting me know something has come up. And thirdly, you do not in any way need to apologise for kissin’ me, okay?’ he said, arms still wrapped tight around her. They'd worked out months ago firm pressure grounded her faster than anything else when she panicked. 

‘It was… okay?’ 

Tommy huffed out a laugh and pressed a kiss to her hairline. ‘Yeah, darlin’, it was okay. Though I certainly wouldn't mind you doin’ it again to be sure. But also if you wanna just forget it ever happened, that's all fine with me too. Whatever you want.’

‘I think I'd like to try again,’ Maria answered, shifting so she was looking up at him, her hands coming up to either side of his face as she kissed him again, gently, giving him enough time to respond this time. His hands shifted to her waist as she looked down at him, the light shining in through the window giving her a soft halo, and Tommy thought, in that moment, that she'd never looked more beautiful. 

She didn't make her afternoon meeting. 

The hickey she had accidentally left on Tommy's neck, right above where his collar could cover, made it pretty clear to everyone what they'd been doing. She wasn't quite sure whether it was better or worse for a hickey to be on him rather than her, but she quickly came to the conclusion she didn't really care. It's not like anyone was going to say anything to her, one of the advantages of good social standing and an ability to set her face in such a way that people tended to decide it wasn't worth crossing her. 

Two years after Tommy arrived in Jackson, almost fifteen years after his world ended as his niece bled out in front of him, a second too slow to save her, Maria moved her things into his house. It hadn't really made sense for them to keep separate houses before they'd got together given how much time they spent together in on or the other, but after George had seen the mark she'd sucked into his collarbone and rolled his eyes, muttering something about her always being possessive about what was hers, he'd told them they needed to pick which house they wanted and move out the other so new people could move in, the increasing flow of people into Jackson putting pressure on the housing situation. 

Neither of them had particularly cared which house they kept, so they ended up in Tommy's as it had better water pressure and one fewer bedrooms to keep clean and dusted (he and Maria were good at most parts of running a house, between them, but keeping on top of dusting was definitely something they needed to work on). She brought over the stuff she cared about most, keeping the better bits of furniture and leaving the rest for whoever moved in after her. 

They still had plenty of bad days between them - what should have been Maria's twentieth wedding anniversary, the day Sarah was officially gone longer than she'd been alive. But they got through them, together, holing up in their bedroom on the days it was too much to go outside. 

But they also had a lot of good days. Patrols together outside the walls, getting to enjoy a picnic in meadows full of wildflowers, evenings spent dancing in the Tipsy Bison as Tommy attempted to teach the townspeople how to line dance. Evenings spent with him trying to recreate his mother's recipes with whatever the gardeners had managed to grow in the greenhouses, Maria laughing as his attempts to make corn tortillas ended in crumbly messes until she stepped in and helped, explaining she'd had a Puerto Rican roommate in grad school who taught her to make proper tortillas. Lazy days when they didn't have shifts or meetings spent laying in bed, kissing and dozing and not worrying about what was outside Jackson's walls. 

That summer, after a family dinner with George at his house, because that's something they did now, family dinners, he'd pulled Tommy aside to help with dishes. 

‘I want you to have this,’ he said, handing a small redvelvet box over to Tommy. Inside was a gold ring with a green stone flanked by two small diamonds. ‘It was my wife's, before she passed. We offered it to Maria last time but Michael had a family ring she fell in love with. You don't need to use it if you don't want to, but I wanted to give it to you so you could consider it.’ 

Tommy ran his fingers over the gold band, catching sight of an engraving on the inside. 

‘It’s the coordinates of where I first met my wife, and where Maria was born. Caleb’ll replace it if you ask him nicely, especially if you have a rabbit to trade with him.’

‘Thank you. For giving this to me. I feel I should say though that we haven't even talked about marriage, so maybe don't expect her to be walking around in the ring next week,’ Tommy said, an image of Maria in nothing but his ring flashing through his mind. 

‘It’s there for when you want it, Tommy. You're a good man, and you're good for my daughter. She laughs more with you than I've seen since she lost Kevin, and what more could a parent want than a happy child.’ 

‘I appreciate it, sir. And for what it's worth, I’m grateful you think I'm good for her.’

When Tommy and Maria got home that night, he slipped the box into his bedside table beside the picture of Sarah from her final birthday party, and if he clung a little tighter to Maria that night then she just tucked her face into his chest and let him hold her as she drifted to sleep. 

He'd sworn, on multiple occasions, that getting married wasn't something he ever wanted. But he'd also been so afraid of getting anywhere near that point with anyone before, and here he was living with Maria and spending all their time together. The only thing that's be different if they got married was that he'd wear her ring, make it visible to other people just how much he loved her. 

But even if it was something he wanted, there was still the question of whether it was even something she'd be interested in. Tommy knew she mourned the life she could've had if cordyceps hadn't happened, knew that there wasn't a day she didn't wear her rings on a chain around her neck. 

He still hadn't worked out what to do about the ring, how to even bring it up, when a few months later she’d asked if he cared that she still wore Michael's rings when they were lying in bed together one evening.  

‘Why would I care that you want to remember someone you loved? Someone who loved ya’? I love ya’, darlin’, and I'm glad other people did too before I got to meet you,’ he'd said, touching their foreheads together lightly. 

‘Someone said something in town today, that it was weird I wore wedding rings to another man while I lived with you.’ 

‘Well, they can go fuck ‘emself.’ Tommy replied, having very little patience for other people's expectations of his jealousy, especially when it was over things like his partner's dead husband. Getting jealous of a trader who decided to flirt with Maria right in front of him despite his arm around her waist? Reasonable, not that he'd ever do anything, knowing full well the man was one more suggestive comment away from getting kicked out of Jackson with a broken nose courtesy of his partner. Getting jealous over the man Maria had expected to spend her life with, who's child she'd carried, who was gone years before he even met Maria? Dumb as hell. 

‘Then they asked me if I planned to keep wearing them if we got married,’ she continued, pausing as Tommy choked on the water he was drinking. ‘You okay?’

‘Maybe don't bring up marriage for the first time when I'm in the middle of drinking something?’ he requested, sipping his water and trying not to think of the ring still sitting beside his bed. 

‘That feels like a fair request. Anyway, at that point I told them to go fuck themself,’ Tommy smirked at that, amused with the image of Maria putting someone in their place. ‘Made me think, though, that we hadn't talked about whether that was something we wanted. Getting married.’

‘Bored of living in sin with me?’ Tommy said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, earning himself a roll of her eyes. 

‘Bored of my father telling me he wants to see me married again before he dies,’ she said, her tone of voice suggesting that this was a conversation she was having with George fairly frequently. 

‘For the sake of honesty I feel I should tell you I have your ma’s engagement ring sitting in a box in my bedside table. George gave it to me, said I should use it if we got married,’ Tommy said, wanting all the cards on the table if they were going to have this conversation. 

‘He’s really been playing both sides here then. Sometimes I forget how many years he spent as a lawyer and getting people to do what he wants. I’m just amused he's decided that what he wants us to do is get married,’ said Maria, glad her father had found something to sink effort into, even if it was her love life. He had slowed down a lot even since Tommy had arrived, his mind as sharp as ever but his body struggling to keep up any more. 

‘Is that… is that something you'd want? Getting married again?’ Tommy asked, reaching out for her hand, squeezing it gently. 

‘What happened to you swearing to never get married?’ she asked him quietly. 

‘I met you,’ he said simply, tilting up her chin so he could see her face, ‘until you, every experience I had with marriage was bad. Hearin’ you talk about Michael made me realise it wasn't always shit, that it could be somethin’ worth doing. I love ya’, Maria, with my whole heart, and I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with ya’. If I had the opportunity to do so as your husband I'd be honoured, but if that's not something you want then I'll give your daddy back the ring and tell him it won't happen. I'm happy with us now, I'd rather have us like this than you unhappy.’

‘The way they said it in town, it sounded like they expected to just replace his rings with yours. Replace him with you, trade one husband out for another,’ Maria said, leaning her cheek into his hand. 

‘You know you could wear both, right? Wearin’ my ring on your finger wouldn't stop ya’ wearing Michael's rings around your neck. I don't expect you to just give them up for me,’ he offered. 

‘You'd be okay with that?’

‘I would be honoured if ya’ loved me enough to wear my ring, Maria, but I’d never expect you to stop wearing his.’

‘Tommy?’

‘Yeah, darlin’?’

‘I expect a proper proposal. This doesn't count, alright?’ Maria said, smiling at him, laughing as he leant over to press their lips together, pulling her back against him to enjoy the feel of their skin pressed together. 

‘I love ya’, Maria’, he said, pulling just far enough away from her to speak, their lips still brushing as he tried to pour everything he was feeling into his words. 

‘I love you too, Tommy,’ she replied, pressing their lips back together. 

Three weeks later, more nervous than Tommy ever remembered being before, he and Maria rode out north of Jackson on a patrol shift together. They didn't often go out together, more because Maria's council work and his contracting tended to happen on opposite shifts, so it'd taken some doing (he now owed several people unspecified building favours) to get them on a two person shift together, especially given he wanted a specific route that went past the lake. 

They'd gone on a date to the lake fairly early on in being romantically together (rather than just attached at the hip as they had been before), as it froze deep enough to skate and Jackson had a surprising number of ice skates. Tommy, having never had the opportunity to skate before, protested 

‘Of course I can't fucking skate, Maria, Texas doesn't get this cold!’

‘Boston does though.’

‘Yeah and in Boston I was busy trying not to get shot by FEDRA for smuggling, we didn't exactly have time for family outings to find a pond to skate on!’, he complained, falling over again. He fell over a lot that day, laughing until his chest his hurt as he clung to Maria's hands and tried to stay upright. And then, once he managed to learn to go places, Maria quickly realised she'd forgotten to teach him to stop when he went careening into a snowbank. His head had popped back up, snowflakes clinging to his mustache, an indignant look on his face that Maria had laughed at until his arm reached out to pull her down on top of him. He rolled them over so he was hovering above her, arms braced on either side of her head. 

‘Now, I'm begin to sense this was all a plot to get me on my ass repeatedly,’ he said, his voice dropping lowing, teasing, eyes darkening as he looked down at her. 

‘Can’t have you getting too cocky sweetheart, and besides, you look so delightful underneath me,’ she'd replied, her eyes glinting bright and her cheeks flushed from the cold. 

‘I think we have well established that you only have to ask if that's what you want,’ he said, kissing along her jaw before moving down to her neck where it wasn't hidden behind a thick scarf. 

‘Does it help if I promise to kiss all the bruises better?’ she'd asked, smiling up at him. 

‘That does help, yes. Now what say you we start heading back so you can started on that?’ he'd said, standing up and pulling her with him and towards the horses. 

As they rode up the same path a year later, the weight of the ring box in Tommy's pocket seemed to grow the closer they got to the lake. It felt odd to be this nervous, given she knew the question was coming, and he what her answer would be. They settled for lunch, eating some sandwiches that they'd made from the cafeteria, and passing a flask of tea back and forth, coffee being too rare a treat to take on a standard patrol. 

The day was cold but bright, frost sparkling on the trees and lots of wildlife around, suggesting they likely wouldn't find too many infected on patrols. The animals were a pretty good indicator of how bad things were llikey to be, though not foolproof. 

Tommy waited until Maria was turned around, packing their lunch back into his saddlebags as he pretended to retie his shoelaves, and instead got out the ring from the box in his pocket, kneeling down so she'd see him when he turned back around.  

She turned around, clapping her hands together and ready to get going, before freezing as she took in the sight of Tommy kneeling before her in the snow, a perfect parallel to how they'd met, albeit with her gun slung over her back instead of pointed at him this time around. 

‘Maria, darlin', I love ya’, and I'd be honoured to spend the rest of my life loving ya’ as my wife. Will you-’ Tommy began, getting cut off as Maria dropped to her knees to get them at the same height, and pressed her lips to his. 

‘Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Tommy Miller,’ she said, eyes bright and a huge smile on her face as he slipped the ring onto her left hand, bringing her hand up to kiss it. 

They finished up the patrol (thankfully uneventful), and then headed straight to George's house to tell him. 

Five months later, on a warm afternoon in May, (between a flood of new arrivals meaning more council work for Maria and new houses needing to be built by Tommy, their plans of a quick, small wedding had been shoved on the back burner for a while), they got married. 

Tommy was in a dark blue suit he’d borrowed from one of the other patrollers, the same one that got brought out for anyone who had big events. He had opted to skip a tie, but had a daisy tucked into his suit jacket as he stood in the yard of his and Maria's house. Given the legal framework behind marriage had disappeared along with the rest of civilisation, weddings in Jackson were more for the couple themselves, with whoever they wanted acting as the officiant, and the after parties often held in the Tipsy Bison so the whole town could celebrate. 

He stood next to George, who'd started using a wheelchair that spring, who’d had teary eyes all day at the idea of his daughter marrying again. They'd asked George to officiate the first night they'd told him, and he'd said he'd be happy to say a few words, but given Tommy's family were catholic and his and Maria's was baptist he would be making it as ecumenical as possible. Tommy had laughed and pointed out he’d stopped going to church as soon as he moved out of his mother's house, after which Maria had looked at George and reminded him that they hadn't gone to church since she was a child and Michael’s family were Jewish, so they'd just followed those traditions the last time she was married. George had thrown up his hands and asked what they wanted, and they'd just asked for something short, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. 

A few of he and Maria's friends were there too, on a hodgepodge of chairs taken from various neighbours houses - Eugene, another patroller, Jon, who Tommy had worked with for a while and continued to claim partial responsibility for Tommy and Maria getting together, and Edith, a friend of Maria's who'd helped set up Jackson, who was responsible for somehow making a wedding cake in the apocalypse. It was amazing to Tommy how many people had pitched in for the wedding - his clothes were borrowed, he knew Maria's dress was from the school teacher though he hadn't seen it, there were bouquets of ox eye daisies everywhere that a patrol group had picked. They had a cake, and there was some sort of food buffet planned for the Tipsy Bison, Caleb had used his blacksmithing abilities to make a pair of gold wedding bands, pressed into Tommy's hands and the rabbit he'd brought in payment refused. A friend of George's, another council member, had found a guitar and was going to play it when Maria walked down their version of an aisle. Jackson worked as a settlement because everyone contributed, and the inhabitants loved nothing more than contributing to a party. 

Tommy was pulled out of his thoughts of how lucky he was to have found Jackson when the guitar began playing, and Maria began walking through the garden towards him. She was wearing a knee length yellow dress (she'd asked if he cared if she didn't wear white, but Tommy didn't care. If it meant he got to marry her, he'd be happy if she showed up in dirty jeans and one of his old shirts), buttons in a line up the front up to a gentle v-neck that showed her collarbones. The sleeves came down to her elbows, cuffed at the ends with the same white ribbon that adorned the hem and neck of the dress. Maria was holding a bouquet of the same daisies they'd used for decor with ferns mixed in, her dreads in an updo that seemed to have small crystals in as well as flowers. She’d even found lipstick for the occasion, darkening her lips to a deep red. Tommy, looking at her, was dumbstruck at how beautiful she was. He'd known she was gorgeous even since they first met, even if all he could see were her eyes and all he could hear was the barked order to kneel. He remembered waking up in the clinic, his eyes tracing over her cheeks and noses. In hindsight, he'd been in love with her for months before they'd said it to each other, and now, he got to marry her. 

Maria walked herself up the makeshift aisle, taking Tommy's hands as she reached the front and pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. 

‘Pretty sure you're meant to do that after I marry you both,’ George said dryly, Tommy breaking away from Maria's lips to flush up to his ears. 

‘Well then you'd better get on with it, because I would like to kiss my husband now,’ Maria snarked back, resting her forehead against Tommy's. 

‘Do you, Maria, take Tommy to be your husband?’ George asked, smiling up at his daughter and soon to be son in law. 

‘I do.’

‘Do you, Tommy, take Maria to be your wife?’

‘I do.’

‘Then by the power invested in me by myself, I pronounce you husband and wife,’ George finished, smiling as Maria and Tommy looked at each and then to him, surprised at the brevity. 

‘What? I told you, it needed to be ecumenical, and you said you wanted short! Besides, you seem to have the love and care for each other down already, and my daughter seems to be in a hurry.’

Tommy huffed a quick laugh before grabbing Maria's waist in one hand, the other coming up to touch her cheek as he pulled her towards him, pressing their lips together hungrily as their friends cheered behind them. He even heard a click, the type from a camera, but ignored working out where someone had got a camera to keep kissing his wife. They only stopped when George tapped them both on the thigh with a book and reminded them they had a wedding party to attend. 

As everyone began to return the chairs to their rightful places (a challenge, as no one had thought to label them, and it wasn't as though people had matching sets to begin with), people slowly started heading towards the Tipsy Bison to celebrate. Before he left, Jon handed over a small piece of paper to Maria, grinned, and then ran off to follow Eugene to the bar. Looking down, Maria and Tommy saw a polaroid photo of them - they hadn't even known anyone had managed to find a working camera, and had assumed they wouldn't be able to have wedding photos. They headed inside to put the photo on the mantelpiece, Tommy scooping Maria up into his arms to carry her over the doorway. 

‘What? I get to do some traditional things!’ he protested at Maria's squeak at being suddenly picked up, before she silenced him with a kiss. 

‘Ready to go see how fast we can sneak out of our own wedding party and come home?’ Maria asked, smoothing her dress with her hands, trying and failing to get the wrinkles out of the linen. She hadn't realised how thankful she was they'd finally got the dam up and running until she was ironing the dress, so thankful she didn't have to try and discover how people ironed clothes before electric irons. 

‘We could just skip it entirely,’ offered Tommy, stepping close to his wife, arms coming up around her waist, lips dipping to brush along her cheekbone. 

‘Tommy, darling, we have to show up for a little bit. First dance and all that jazz,’ she said, gently pushing his chest until he let her go.

‘Wait we are actually doin’ the first dance? I thought you were fuckin’ with me. Maria, darlin’, you know damn well the only dance I can do is line dancing,’ Tommy said, slightly freaking out. 

‘Tommy we just sway together for thirty seconds, you can manage that,’ Maria reasoned, soothing her husband. He sighed, grabbed their jackets in case they stayed longer than expected and the temperature dropped, and they headed to the Tipsy Bison. As well as the people who'd been there for the actual ceremony, most of the rest of the town seemed to be there. The alcohol was flowing, with glasses of champagne pressed into both of their hands, and there was a huge spread of food as well as the wedding cake. 

In the end, it took them an hour and a half to make their escape, Maria being the one to break first, grabbing Tommy's hand where he was chatting to a few of the patrol team, and bodily pulling him out the door, to the cheers and whistles of their fellow partygoers. Tommy, pressing Maria into their front door and kissing her deeply, commented smugly,

‘I win the bet on who breaks first then,’ he laughed, referencing his promise on the way to the Tipsy Bison that he could persuade her to make them leave before she persuaded him. 

‘You started telling me what you wanted to do to me in Spanish, that's cheating,’ Maria said, breathless and unbuttoning Tommy's shirt as she pushed him in the direction of the stairs. 

‘No, it's making use of what you have. And I have a wife who thinks it's sexy when I speak Spanish,’ he responded, picking her up to carry her up the stairs, before pausing for a moment,

‘I love ya’ so much, Maria.’

‘I love you too, Tommy.’

Tommy had always tried to keep his promises, but laying next to his wife, a gentle sheen of sweat on both of their skins, matching rings on their left hands, he didn't regret breaking the promise to his younger self to never marry for a moment. It was an oath sworn on incomplete information, but now he knew what he was missing, how wonderful it could be. And having finally got married himself, he decided that marriage was actually a pretty good idea.