dog_eat_dog | OPEN POST

Joel's boots thud on the sagging, creaky stairs winding up to his and Tess' apartment, a heavy sigh flattening out of him. Muffled sounds of people shuttered away in their apartments drift down the musty hallway while Joel rolls his tight, aching neck, rounding the stairwell landing to take the final flight up. The stench of burning flesh stains the inside of his throat and nose like a numb sickness. Lingers on his clothes, too, grim and pungent. Another shit, backbreaking day of hauling dead bodies out of trucks and dumping them in burning piles for yet another a pithy payment of ration cards.

He half hopes Tess isn't home yet so he can be left alone to unwind and drink off the day on his own. He half hopes she is home. Hopes like hell if she is home, that she has some news on that damn shipment of pills they've been waiting on for a few weeks now. Scraping together ration cards to stay afloat these past few weeks has been grinding down on his last nerve, especially with how on edge the whole QZ has been escalating into lately. Joel feels like a loaded gun, ready to fire cold, point-blank rage into anyone who so much as looks at him the wrong way.

He wipes a grimy hand across his sweaty forehead as he finally reaches the door to his and Tess' place. He hears movement inside, sounds like dishes being moved about and a cupboard clattering shut. Opening the door, Joel trudges in with a wordless, weary greeting glance at her, and shuts the door behind him. Digs a hand into his jacket pocket, fishes out a small bundle of crumpled ration cards as he crosses to the table.

"Eleven goddamn ration cards," he announces, flat and shitty, as he throws the ration cards down. They land with a scattering slap across the tabletop. Joel snatches the back of the chair to yank it out, legs dragging churlishly across the floor, and he drops down heavily onto the seat.

She’s got a mug and a dish cloth in her hands, and she turns them together absently, working the cracked ceramic dry even as the door opens. Tess turns just enough to catch that glance; bad day, she knows, before he even says a word. It won’t be the last. Her eyebrows knit together. Her hair is loose and damp, leaving a wet path around the shoulders of her t-shirt. She smells like plain soap. The stench on his clothes has her scrunching up her nose.

But then there’s that bullshit with the ration cards. Autumn is in full swing, but it’s still early in the season for FEDRA to be tightening everyone’s belts; wages getting slim now bodes ill for the winter ahead.

“Jesus Christ.”

She sets the mug down on the counter, draping the cloth over it, and she walks over. She leans across him to pick up the cards; she doesn’t doubt it’s exactly as few as he’s said, but she counts anyway, just to know it’s real, smoothing them out as she goes.

She fixes him with a frown.

“It was twenty-three, two weeks ago.”

"Hm."

Joel could state that he'd said the same damn thing when the FEDRA asshole shilling out the end-of-day ration cards handed him today's joke of a payment. He could snap back that Tess doesn't have to remind him, Jesus Christ; two weeks ago, twenty-three cards should have been twenty-six, and Tess had noted so with the exact same frown she's sporting now. He could state a whole lot of different things - such as how sick of this shit he is, or how much he wanted to shoot the FEDRA asshole in the face, or... ugh. So many things he could say that are pointless to say.

Joel's simple 'hm', grunted like a pissed off scoff under his breath, states all of the above in a single curt breath.

Elbows propping onto the table, Joel drops his head into his hands and stares downward at nothing in particular. Then smears his hands down his face before slumping back in his seat, the chair creaking. His hands fall to his lap.

"Yeah. Well." A continuation of his disgruntled 'hm'. And then, "Any word on those pills?"

Said like he's just daring Tess to say no. Oh boy, that'll just make his damn shitty day even shittier.

She's been stewing on the pills for hours now, roving around the apartment in a dark and stormy mood. For a time she'd busied herself with tidying and inventory and assembling something resembling lunch before retreating to the shower, where a precious thirty seconds of mostly hot water was enough of a relief to untwist her out of a fury.

A reminder threatens to put her right back there, but she knew this was coming.

There's a pause, quiet and slow, where she fixes him with a long look, serious and damning. He knows she's about to piss him off, and she knows it too, but there's no avoiding it.

"Donovan's guy spooked and ran off," she says, matter-of-fact. She drops the ration cards back onto the table in a neat little stack. She promises: "I've got a couple guys tracking down leads, and when one of them turns up something, I'll be back on it, and it'll all get sorted out."

Tess' measured pause, her clocking look, says everything. Oh, fucking great. A dark cloud of anticipatory anger boils low in his chest, simmering over the top of every other shitty thing today that's shut him down into a mood. He watches Tess staring him down. Bracing himself. Who is he going to have to take down? Because he will take them down. The injustice of only eleven ration cards while he stinks of burnt, rotten death and had to sign himself up for yet another six hours of the same shit tomorrow has him right on edge. He's just about had it today.

And there it is. Donovan's guy got spooked. Joel tuts a disparaging scoff, breaking himself loose from Tess' stare down with a coldly furious shake of his head while she goes on to explain. Tess' final declaring, 'It'll all get sorted out' hangs suspended in the air for an icy second. Then Joel is suddenly bracing his hands on the edge of the table and shoving his chair back, chair legs screeching. He pushes past Tess to start pacing.

"Shit, Tess." A hand seethingly rubbing his beard, his jaw. ""And you're payin' those coupla guys trackin' down leads, how?" That hand on his jaw drops to his hip while he wheels around on the spot to face her, danger flashing in his eyes. "This job was s'posed to have us sorted for the next month, Tess! The way FEDRA's cuttin' down on cards, we won't even got enough to see us through the end of the week."

Joel's hands bunch into fists at his sides, his shoulders tightening, his chest rising. Shit, he'd rather just grab his gun and track this asshole down himself, than sit around waiting one more goddamn minute for their shipment that's owed to them. Shove the barrel of his gun into the guy's mouth until he's gagging on it and blow his brains out. But not before terrifying the shit out of him first. Make the guy piss and shit his pants for screwing him and Tess around.

Tess steps back when he moves, and she stays rooted to the floor. Let him pace. Her anger simmers low in her belly. The shift from bountiful summers to sparing and scraping winters always feels hard, but every year they get a little harder. His rage digs into the soft, fleshy part of her that has her eyes on spring, when they don't starve, when they're be so flush that she can pay people in ration cards for even the littlest thing. The easy times, the times where she can lord over everyone, black market queen, like she isn't just another smuggler scraping to get by.

He asks how they'll pay and she doesn't know, but she thinks she'll figure it out before there are consequences. It's always a rude reality check when he doesn't think so.

"He's in the East district, Joel, FEDRA is all over there right now, I checked myself," she says. She feels midway between pacifying and giving orders. She loves his rage when she's watching him do irreversible damage to some asshole's rotator cuff, especially when said asshole put his hands on her. She feels like the master of it then, but only then; when he starts toeing the line the rage shouldn't cross, the line between them, that's when she gets her hackles up.

She adds, cold and calm, hands on her hips: "These guys are FEDRA, so they blend right in. I'll pay them when the shipment comes in."

It should all work out. And if it doesn't, she'll figure that out, too.

"Oh, Jesus," utters Joel, an acrimonious glance of exasperation thrown heavenward at the peeling, age-worn ceiling. He's not sure what pisses him off more - that Tess thinks being indebted to FEDRA guys for god knows how long is going to work in their favour, or that Tess damn well went scouting FEDRA-infested areas on her own without him there to protect her.

He works his jaw, trying with all his might not to lose his cool. Tess is the one person he doesn't like losing his cool with. Tess is dependable, despite how shitty he gets with her sometimes. She's smart, she's calculating, she's quick to come up with plans, far quicker than him at times. She's not afraid to do whatever it takes to survive, and never questions him doing the same. But she can also be really damn reckless. Sometimes leaps ahead of plans that both of them are supposed to be taking care of. Sometimes makes decisions that piss him the hell off.

"And what's that gonna cost us?" Joel squares a look back onto her, hands likewise still on hips, mirroring her. "Huh? Assuming our shipment even comes in. What then, Tess? We gonna be spending the winter watchin' our backs every time FEDRA guys are lurkin' around?"

Thing is, Joel knows that there isn't any other choice - the shipment of pills is supposed to be their ticket to staying afloat, but what else can they do in the meantime? Nothing. Just bargain their way out of things to buy them some more time.

Still. Joel is looking for an argument now. He's keyed up from the whole damn day. A lot of dead kids in those fucking truckloads of bodies today. It's always him that has to toss them into the fire because nobody else can. Or will. Probably will be a truckload more tomorrow. All for a measly eleven ration cards, maybe even less come tomorrow.

"The hell were you doin', headin' into damn FEDRA patrolled areas alone, anyway?" Joel continues, an accusing cock of his head at her.

On an average day, Tess doesn't think of these moments, these angry and tense arguments that would have most women scurrying out the door. Hell, most people run from him when the temper comes out, and with far fewer words at that. Her eyebrows just go up, but it's disapproval instead of surprise. Her mouth drops open, but it's exasperated rather than at a loss for words.

She knew this was coming today. She knew it because she could smell it on him. She knew he'd come home with an acrid stink the moment he left this morning because he'd had a bandanna tucked into his belt as he went out the door. And she knew he'd pick a fight because he never comes home from pyre duty without a fight to pick.

These are the motions and they will never be easier to roll with, so she simply chooses not to waste her time waiting for them to be.

"It'll cost what it costs," she tells him, firm. She is not a shouter, rarely even raises her voice, and it is no different here. Calm and firm is the way to go. But an ugly little undercurrent slips in, too, passive-aggressive: "And you went to work. If you wanted to come with me, you could have."

He could have spared them both this bullshit, this self-inflicted torture. Sure, another job would have paid less, but she'd take half-rations for his happiness.

And then there's her parting shot, a broad-armed gesture to Vanna White herself, to demonstrate that she is in one piece. Shower-fresh, marred only by last week's bumps and bruises. Alive. It's supposed to be reassuring.

"I'm fine, Joel."

Edited (accidentally a word) 2023-01-22 03:01 (UTC)

Tess' coldly cut words reach into Joel's simmering anger and pins him still. All at once, he realises he is treading a line he doesn't like. He doesn't like it one bit when Tess' vicious mouth strikes into their arguments with that nasty undercutting tone of hers. It's a side to Tess meant for business dealings, scare tactics, intimidations, fast-thinking threats that work alongside Joel's muscling brutality to make a guy who owes them a debt frantically bargain for his life. He shifts on the spot, hands dropping from his hips as though physically jostled by her passive-aggressive barb.

God, she can be such a goddamn bitch sometimes. He is pissed that she would even suggest he'd shirk her in favour of demeaning quarantine zone labour. Wants to be pissed as all hell that she would take such a low stab at him for taking up soul-sucking jobs in the zone to keep them both afloat.

He holds it back, though, and watches Tess declare herself fine with her indignant presenting show of arms. Tess doesn't scare him, but in moments when her viperous tongue turns on him, it unanchors him a little. Tips the scales towards hostility between them, which terrifies Joel deep down. If things were to ever crumble between them, if he were to ever push it enough with Tess where she pushed back even harder with a stinging death blow that she doesn't need him anymore, it might just be the thing that finally kills what little remaining shred of humanity he has left clinging to him. He's never dared push it that far.

Joel is the first to break eye contact from his staring standoff with her; he tuts an angrily dismissive noise under his breath while throwing a glare off to the side towards their cramped little bedroom. Then he suddenly paces back to the table, snatches the back of the chair he'd been seated on, drags it towards him, drops down onto it. He lunges straight for the half-empty whiskey bottle in front of him and grabs it. Uncaps it, tips a sloshing finger into the glass he'd been drinking from last night. Tess wins; he's surrendered.

Winning is supposed to feel good. Her throat tightens when he breaks off, because that could be a leave me alone or a redoubling of anger for round two. She never knows until it lands, but there it is, and he's slouched at their kitchen table again.

She's quiet. She lets the silence chew at both of them, ugly and mean, for a minute in which she questions if she went too far. With anyone else, she wouldn't bat an eye. Fuck you, asshole. You don't get to treat me like that. It'd be easy. Thoughtless.

But this is Joel, and he is angry and callous and a broken, broken man, and they have not shared this lousy little apartment for so many years out of obligation. She could yell at him sometimes but she has not checked him over for wounds after a brawl for her own self-interest. She could demand some truths out of him, but she has not retreated after treading too closely to the things he won't talk about because she doesn't care. They will probably starve on and off this winter, but they did last year and the year before that and as long as they've been together. They will probably starve next year, too, if they don't leave before it gets worse, and she will not complain as long as he takes the rations she's picky about. He's the most reliable person in her life, and has been for a long time. He protects her.

It does scare her that she's found many ways to comfort him, to ease him down, but she's never figured out a way to protect him. The world is ugly and it sets men like him off. And what if she can't protect him? How can she do that when her picture of where it comes from is so limited?

She takes a couple steps towards him, slow but not particularly cautious. Her hands find his shoulders, and if he does not shrug her off, her thumbs press into the tension in his traps. She's still quiet.

Joel is slugging another finger of whiskey into his glass when Tess' hands find his shoulders. He thumps the bottle down again and draws his drink to him, the glass scraping along the table's chipped, timeworn surface. He wants to be pissed off at her, not placated. He wants Tess to come up with a better plan than It'll cost what it costs. His nervousness about how they're going to make it through the next hard few months would be easier to chew on if he had a purpose to channel it towards: A lead he and Tess could chase down, an arm he could break, a face he could pummel his rage into for the world constantly trying to screw him over. Anything. Idleness sets his teeth right on edge. He wants... shit, he doesn't know what he wants.

His finger is tapping an agitated rhythm against the side of his glass, and he stares at it while trying to ignore Tess' thumbs digging into a spot in his shoulders that's knotted up just like the rage bunched up inside his chest.

But after a few long testy seconds, his lungs drag in a deep breath, and with Tess safely behind him where she can't his face, he squeezes his eyes shut. Images of the day race behind his eyelids: the baking and bristling pyre; the taste of smoke and death filling his mouth as he shovelled another body from the back of a FEDRA pickup truck into his arms; the pile of dead kids slumped on top of each other on that one truckload that came in towards the end of his shift.

His breath falls out of him, long and slow. Each kneading prod of Tess' thumbs seems to reach into the ugly knot twisted up in his gut, loosening it little by slow little. All his anger is starting to cool into a dull ache, and he finally submits to Tess' placating hands enough to let his head drop forward in silent contrition. Shit, he realises, he didn't mean to take his shitty day out on her.

Good man.

She continued to work him over with her fingers, even when she feels him let go. The smell of his shirt this close up could turn her stomach, and she imagines the smoke made of people as it settles into the fibres, but she lingers as long as she needs to.

“I know it’s not ideal, but this time tomorrow, we’ll have information, and we can get this shit sorted out,” she says, voice sure. Calm. “It’s just one bad day, Texas.”

Her hands finally slip from him, and she holds the back of the chair with both hands to lean over his shoulder, the side of her face momentarily close to his. Surer still:

“Now get up, go get out of those clothes, and we’ll drink until we pass out. Together.”

The sooner he isn’t wearing horror on his shoulders like a mantle, the better.

[ ...I'm also going to start using Pedro!Joel icons because... just because. This show is killing me, yesterday's fckn episode killed meeeee. 😭 ]

Just one bad day, she says. One bad day in an endless stagnant haze of bad days. Even their good days, when deals go down as planned and merchandise slips smoothly through the corrupt cracks of the QZ into their hands — it's all just wins scored on borrowed time. Slinging pills and contraband keeps him focused on making sure he and Tess see it through another day, keeps their drug-dependent enemies close so there's always a FEDRA pipeline of information funnelling towards them; but for Joel, the rush of scoring a win always bleeds out quickly. He's always the first between him and Tess to sink back into the preoccupying grim prospect that their next win might not go down with a hitch, or might not even go down at all.

Joel allows Tess' measured, persuading reasoning murmured near his ear to settle over him like a swallowed oxy pill waiting to kick in. In drags another breath, deeper this time, and out breathes exhausted acquiescence. It's just one bad day, like Tess says. One bad day. And tomorrow will be... fuck knows. Another day of scraping through and of hoping they'll both scrape through it unscathed, with backbreaking labour and strategising their next violent move, and feeling like it's never enough. At the end of every day, good or bad, all he's done is bought himself more time to keep fighting through a soulless and vicious life he deep down sees no point in fighting for. Constantly outrunning the ghost of himself and everything he failed to keep safe is a soul-crushing business.

Yet he keeps going because Tess keeps telling him to, just like she's telling him now. Tess with her desperate terror of facing death that she keeps smothered underneath her hardline strategising orders and cold, calculated negotiations; Tess with her soft kisses and soothing hands in their quiet, private hours in bed together that Joel pretends doesn't come with feelings for him because he just can't go there. Feelings are never worth what they inevitably always wind up costing. One day, he will lose Tess, too, on top of everything else; all he can do with that desperate inevitable terror is smother it underneath his obsessive focus of keeping her alive and safe at all costs. He can live with himself and the guilty, festering bitterness of surviving all these years so long as Tess keeps giving him a reason to.

Get out of these clothes. Shower. Pour another drink. Drink until they both pass out. Tess' directions are helping to quieten the ugly demoralising pointlessness of 'just one bad day'. Still, he can't help demurring, fatalistic and flat, "Seems we're havin' a whole lot more bad days than good ones lately."

He has no energy to drive that point towards any further arguing, though; he brings his glass to his mouth and tosses it back, sets it back down with an enervated thud and another grimacing swallow. The chair legs then scrape as Joel pushes his seat back and stands. As he passes Tess, he starts unbuttoning his shirt while tiredly ambling towards their cramped, mould-stained bathroom.

"Headin' back out tomorrow." Working pyre duty again, that is. Probably not what Tess wants to hear, especially now she's wrangled him back down into mollified submission, but what else was he supposed to do. "Signed up for the early shift. 5AM start."

[He looks so goooood, I love his casting. I'm gonna need a week to recover from yesterday lol.]

"Two days in a row."

No judgement, at least in tone, but it comes with a purse of her lips. She doesn't want to stare him down across the room, and her hands threaten to drift back to her hips, so she busies herself instead. She tidies things on their table and straightens the shelves, busy until she can't be anymore.

She know she could offer to take those jobs too –– there's nothing stopping her from hefting bodies, just as there isn't anything stopping her from picking through trash bags for reusables or processing cattle. The pay would be better than what she usually takes, or at least more consistent. But the only job she likes is in early fall, when there's seven-day shifts in the cranberry bogs on the south end of Cape Cod. It's an hour-long FEDRA shuttle each way, once a week. She never sleeps well in those fenced-in camping sites, the pay isn't great, she hates being away from home, but it's time out. It's fresh air. It doesn't reek like the city.

Truth is, she'd just rather risk arrest or execution to do something she enjoys, and what she enjoys is smuggling. If they can die any day, she'd rather be shot in the head making a deal, because the only thing more terrifying than death is losing what independence she has. Losing a hand to a rusting thresher or getting held by some desperate asshole who won't take no for an answer at the rations desk isn't on her terms, and her terms pay better than FEDRA's. When it pays, anyway.

Maybe in another week, she'll try convincing Joel of it again. If they invest all their time in deals, maybe they can come out on top. Make counting cards a thing of the past.

There's nothing left to tidy because it never gets too out of order. She watches him, the slice of him she can see through the bathroom doorway.

"Is that a no to drinking?" she asks. You're going to hate it worse hung-over.

[ ME, TOO. lies down and cries. ]

Two days in a row. Joel says nothing to that remark while stripping off his shirt in the bathroom, because there's nothing to say. Nothing he wants to argue about. Nothing to negotiate. It is what it is, and that's the way it has to be.

The shirt is neatly discarded atop their shabby, plastic laundry basket that's splintering with age. His belt buckle is undone next, while he calls out, "No," to Tess' question, his voice boxy to his ears in the tiny bathroom.

'No', meaning 'yes'; no, he wants to keep drinking, whether it leaves him with a hangover tomorrow or not. How else is he going to get to sleep tonight if he's lying awake for hours, worrying about what they're going to do if this shipment of pills all goes to shit? He's out of oxys and benzos to dull his worries away into a sluggish sleep, so it'll have to be booze.

Jeans off and sweaty threadbare socks peeled off, the water shudders through the rusty pipes as the squeaky taps are turned on. An audible gasp, quick as a bitten down hiss, slips out through the ajar bathroom door as Joel steps under the needling cold spray. Shit, the unpleasant shock of it is almost enough to make Joel forget for the moment the whole damn shitty day. He upturns the egg timer kept in the chipped shower caddy that trickles faded blue sand to a countdown of three minutes, the maximum FEDRA-approved time limit for water usage, and begins furiously scrubbing himself down with QZ-manufactured bar soap.

Three minutes later, the taps squeak off and the pipes shudder back into silence. A few minutes after that, Joel emerges with his grey hair tousled dry and a ratty towel around his waist. He heads straight for the table to pour himself another finger of booze. Bottle thumped back on the table, glass snatched up, down it goes, tossed back and swallowed with gritted teeth. The fumes catch in his throat and he bites back a cough.

"What's the plan for dinner?"

Plastered it is. She'd be doing it herself even if he declined.

Those three minutes where he showers see her standing in the living room, zoning out with a shot in her hand, wondering when this day will blur into the others. They'll do this over and over, and though she will keep it to herself on most days, she will do whatever she needs to to be happy with it. It's what she has, her ambition and him and his broad shoulders and this shitty apartment, and it's a life, even if it takes daily moxie.

So Tess takes the shot, quick and burning, and then she's ready to move forward when she hears him come out. It will be an evening that will outshine the day in their memories, or else she'll go to bed miserable, too.

She crosses the floor back to the kitchen, breezing by him, just barely brushing him with her fingertips.

"Well," she says, a hand moving to the first cabinet door, turning so she's facing him, back to the counter. This is a little bit of a show now, the faintest smile on her face. "Behind door number one..."

She opens it to reveal... nothing but their well-worn dishware, three lone plates a two bowls occupying the whole space. She gives a little raise of her brows, oops, and moves to the next cabinet.

"Door number two..."

Three cans, one of beans, one of unlabelled god-knows-what, and one squat little tin of spam. A tragic but not as bad as it could be dinner for two grown adults. She pauses there, her hand on door number three, smiling, sly. Yes? Another cabinet? Are we feeling game, Mr. Miller?

Tess fluttering past him to demonstrate a flourishing game show presentation of their cupboards is a reassurance Joel didn't realise he needed: Tess goofing around, breezing past their earlier heated exchange like it never happened, means they're okay. Means he can pretend it never happened, too.

The lingering tension clinging to him that his dissatisfying shower failed to wash away loosens a little as he watches Tess make a whoopsie show of opening the crockery cupboard before moving on to reveal the unexciting contents of the next. Joel snorts under his breath at her, his grimness caving to subtle wry fondness. Thank Christ. They had both scraped a little too close towards unleashing something ugly between them before; another long dragging night of ruminating over shit neither of them can do anything about while held hostage to curfew would drag a hell of a lot longer if that ugliness were given any further oxygen to fan its flames.

As shitty as his day has been, as shitty as he is about their shipment getting screwed over, as determined as he'd been when he first arrived home to fester in his shitty mood... he dreads the thought of a long, shitty night. He's too damn tired. And deep down, in spite of the dark cloud he'd brought home with him, coming home to Tess puts him at ease. She's familiar and safe. The one constant he has left in the world.

The sly mystery Tess makes of the last cupboard has Joel reluctantly deciding to play along. He raises his brows, waiting. At the same time, he's reaching for the bottle again. The pungent taste is the only thing strong enough to wash away the remnants of burning death still scorched in the back of his throat.

"Judging by that shit-eating grin," remarks Joel, uncapping the bottle, "I'm gonna go with door number three."

He may not be a big smiler, but he doesn't need to be: she knows that face and that look in his eyes and she knows she's got him. She stands taller with a little toss of her damp hair, letting the smallest of wins seize upon her mood.

"Well, you just hit today's jackpot, Texas."

Behind door number three is a stack of four MREs, packaged in their unprinted tins. They get traded in to be refilled every time rations go out, and every year they get a little more scratched and dinged up. There four are what's left before they have to wait it out in the rations line again, a process that will absorb someone's whole afternoon, and they'll do it again and again until the whole fucking thing collapses.

Tess pulls two out and brings them over to the table, where she stands over Joel with a look of anticipation on her face. She is no longer Vanna White, elegant in her stretched-out t-shirt and threadbare lounge pants. Now she is Suzy Homemaker, barefoot and ready to have a luxurious dinner on the table. No one else gets to be in on this joke, just him.

"I slaved over a hot stove for this, you know," she confides to him, as she opens the first. Turkey. Again. Thank you, remnants of Massachusetts's former turkey industry.

Edited (nitpicking my own writing lol) 2023-01-26 17:11 (UTC)

Well, he has to hand it to Tess: she's stoked his curiosity in spite of himself about what's behind cupboard three, with the way she builds up the grand unveiling of what their dinner is going to be. And lo' and behold, she reveals... Heh, meals ready-to-eat. Refilled glass brought back to his mouth, Joel snorts around the rim before taking a sip as Tess approaches with their meal 'prizes'. Jackpot indeed. A questionable jackpot at that, being there's never any knowing what the hell is in any of those MRE tins until they're opened. Sometimes it's actually kind of decent, relative to their usual staple options. Sometimes not.

Trust Tess to turn their dwindling food supply into a joke, though. A grim yet still kind of dryly amusing joke. It's really not funny, just like their whole life in this autocratic quarantined shithole isn't funny, but Tess always has a way of somehow lightening the mood with her observational sarcasm and off-the-cuff remarks. Pisses him off at times, sometimes a lot, when she's being flippant about things that Joel doesn't want to be flippant about. Other times, though, like right now... well, somebody has to take the burden of their shitty lives and turn it into a joke sometimes, because god knows Joel can't.

Truth is, Tess has carried a lot of that burden for the both of them over all the years they've survived together. If Joel actually allowed himself to think deeply about that, really think deeply, he'd realise just how much Tess is the whole reason his existence all these 20 years on hasn't swallowed itself up in complete darkness. Pity Joel isn't one to examine himself too deeply.

He watches Tess peel back the tin to reveal... turkey? Okay, that is actually a win, even if that win comes in a shitty dented can. At least that's one little win today. One is better than none. Sure felt like none when he'd first came through their front door clouded with the demoralising heaviness of the whole exhausting day.

"Classy," he states, all dry humour to both the tinned turkey and to Tess' claim that she slaved her day away for their meal. "Almost beats dinner at Bill an' Frank's."

Ah, he better throw some clothes on, he supposes as he tips the remainder of his drink down his throat. The glass strikes a decisive thud on the table when he sets it down, and he leans a sudden step forward to Tess to drop a kiss of quick affection to her cheek. Unspoken display of gratitude for dinner, or unspoken apology for coming home in such a foul mood? Impossible to say.

The kiss is a surprise, and it's over before she can translate that surprise into pleasure –– the delightful scruff of his beard on her skin, the warmth of his whiskey breath. It leaves her with a vague smile in the aftermath, her gaze fixed on him.

She's long accustomed to getting by on the bare minimum, shitty rations and an apartment with peeling walls and meticulously inventoried bullets. It's enough, and that quick kiss feels like just enough, too. It may not be an apology or a thank you, but she doesn't have to wring it from him –– it's what he gives, and she'll take any affection he gives her readily.

But she knows where the lines are, over a decade in. She knows where she needs to play it cool.

"I always thought rabbit's too fucking gamy anyway," she says, playful. "This is where it's at, Texas, this is real luxury."

Tess' understated affection gazed at him soothes like a reassuring and caressing hand. Joel tends to close himself off from initiating outward displays of sweetness; it's Tess who initiates their candid moments, mostly. Tess, who seems, somehow, to be able to read him like a book when he's stuck too deep inside his own head; Tess who comes at him with the nurturing back rubs, the mollifying hand-holding when his hackles are up, the forcefully gentle clutch of his face in her hands when she wants him to listen closely to her. Joel selfishly takes what Tess offers and often doesn't think to return her needs.

When they fight, though, or when they come too close to tipping over an ugly edge of wounding, vicious words... A cheek kiss, a reach for her hand with beseeching apology in the subtle lace of his fingers within hers, a longing look for Tess to reassure him that they're good tends to spill out of him. Anything to melt her familiar nearness back to him, safe and sound. And then she usually gives him looks like this.

Joel snorts softly to her remark about luxury, returning her understated gaze of affection with an unsmiling but still soft, understated one of his own. Then, turning a retreating step towards their shabby little excuse for a bedroom, he answers a mildly joking as he strips off his towel and tosses it aside, "Heh, turkey-in-a-can for two. Yeah, real romantic. S'pose I'd better get my best suit on."

He returns her look and no matter how cool her expression is, there's something in her eyes that betrays her, soft and tender and needed. It's almost a relief when he turns away; she could get cocky, feeding off anything resembling affection, taking care of him the way he needs to be cared for, his comfort metamorphosing into comfort for her, too.

Having someone to look after other than herself is the best survival tactic she knows, and it plays out between them every day, month after month and year after year. No matter how much he pisses her off sometimes, no matter how many times she lobs some pithy line at him before storming out, no matter how many times she grits her teeth when his voice rises, she is fine, better than fine, when the dust settles and he's still there, still giving her that look.

She's done this for so long that she thinks she could do it for another ten, twenty years without batting an eye. However long they have.

"Black tie," she agrees, casting a lingering glance through the doorway as he drops the towel. She easily settles into a smile as she sets about heating up dinner, a glamorous affair in which the contents of the can are dumped into a pan on the stove. She scrapes out every last bit dutifully, nothing going to waste. She adds: "What show are you taking me to after, huh?"

They're dinged up, creaky dresser Joel restored several years ago, crammed in the corner of their drab bedroom, squeaks on its brackets as Joel jiggles the drawer open. At the same time, he throws a quick dubious glance at Tess out in the kitchen scraping their dinner out into a saucepan.

"Show?" he echoes. Followed by an equally dubious snort to himself under his breath. A show. Like a musical? Or some classy stage thing that's way out of Joel's scope of what he deemed 'entertaining' back in the day? Yeah, right.

He digs through his sloppily folded clothes. A scraggy blue t-shirt, faded and washed out with time, is pulled out first, followed by a pair of even scraggier grey sweatpants. He shoves the squeaky drawer shut and tugs the pants on first and reemerges from the bedroom with shirt in hand.

"A movie, not a show," he corrects her. "Somethin' like..." He threads one arm into his shirt, followed by the other, and then pauses in thought, thumbs hooked into the collar of his shirt ready to be tugged over his head. "I dunno. Con Air. Or Face/Off. Somethin' like that." Because that's the kind of high-brow, brainless entertainment that enthralled Joel back in the day.

Over his head his shirt goes and he yanks it down over his bare chest, adding in a little dismissive mutter that borders on mocking, "Pfft, 'a show'."

Edited 2023-02-07 01:00 (UTC)

Tess pads around the kitchen, getting plates and two forks –– two forks from the same set, no less! –– while the food heats up, the congealed fat and water snapping and bubbling long before the chunks of turkey heat through. She rolls her eyes to herself when her back is to him, but it's with a vague smile. Even if there was a show to go to, he would gripe the whole way through. Typical. But she won't take Con Air.

She gestures towards him with their cracked wooden spatula.

"If you ever make me watch a Nick Cage movie, I am making you sit through Save the Last Dance or something."

Not that they've had a working TV for the last couple years, but if they somehow did, they've got an old DVD player in the closet. Tess thinks about the cold nights through the earlier winters of this apartment, sometimes, when they'd while away the season with the TV set up at the foot of the bed and every blanket they owned piled up on top of them. What else was there to do?

There's a long winter ahead of them. The turkey continues to fry.

Dressed now, Joel returns to the table and reaches for the whiskey. "Save The Last what now?"

Is that a film? Must be, if Tess is mentioning it in context with Nicholas Cage. What would Joel know about dance films. Aside from, say, Flashdance, way back when he was a teenager, which he definitely didn't watch for the plot. In any case, Save The Last... whatever it was Tess just said, sounds bad.

A wildly trivial and stupid issue next to their almost-fight earlier, but oscillating from stewing tension erupting between them to casually threatening each other with bad films and acting like nothing happened, is how he and Tess are. It's how it's been for years. Doing awful shit in order to get by and then carrying on like it's all just business as usual, is how they've always worked. They fuck people over, they take what's theirs without mercy, they kill, and then they come home and make dinner, talk shit and fuck. And sometimes make love, too. Sometimes.

And then the next shitty day rolls around and they do it all again without questioning themselves, because survival is cruel, ruthless and unsparing, and so are he and Tess. That's just how it has to be. He and Tess carry each other through it all and that's all that matters.

Bottle uncapped, Joel sloshes a helping into his glass, then Tess'. He returns the bottle to the table and gathers both glasses in his hands. He sidles towards Tess.

"I'm already bored to tears just hearin' the name," he retorts. Then he goes on to argue, stopping alongside Tess at their cramped kitchen counter to set her drink down in front of her, "Con Air is a masterpiece, I'll have you know. But I guess you wouldn't get it, bein' a woman and all."

Is Joel being a deliberately goading dick or actually casually sexist? Again, like his little kiss to Tess' cheek earlier that didn't clearly define his true intentions, it's impossible to say. Perhaps it's a little of both.

Edited 2023-02-07 05:16 (UTC)

Tess bets goading —— not that he’s immune to that ol’ Texas brand of paternalism, but this many years in, it slides off her like nothing. She’s the one pretending at being a homemaker, anyway, they each have their parts.

If it left this shitty little apartment, she’d have words, but here she laughs dismissively, leaning a hip against the counter.

“A masterpiece of what, over-acting?” she drawls, picking up her glass and raising it to his in a silent cheers. “Isn’t it just Die Hard on a plane? Come on, Tex.”

She knocks back half of her drink.

She will fight with him over movies any day, without hesitation, but it is more fun drunk.

"Die Hard on a plane? Seriously?" Joel challenges, likewise leaning a hip against the counter and fixing Tess with an oppugning look as she tosses her drink back. The smell of their dinner wafts to him, igniting hunger that's been knotted up like gritty tiredness in his gut most of the afternoon. The smell awakens a slight further shift in his mood, from grim surliness towards relief that he's home. Home with Tess.

He, too, takes a swig of his drink. This would be, what — his third finger of whiskey now? Fourth? He wasn't keeping count when he was slugging them back. Whatever. The booze's warming, dulling effects is beginning to soften the jagged, brittle edges of his shit-kicking day.

"Now you've crossed a line," Joel declares, glass lowered with a (playfully) threatening finger outstretched and pointed at Tess. "You asked me what show I'm takin' you to, and this is how you respond: With blasphemy."

She has to stir the food before it burns, and she does that, barely taking her eyes off him for more than a glance.

"But you are taking me to a show?" she asks, with a little quirk of her eyebrows and a broad grin.

He's going to be plastered before long, and Tess will take her time catching up, at least until dinner's done. When the stove is off, so are the last vestiges of responsibility before caving into pure hedonism. She imagines them drinking everything they could sell, stumbling into bed too drunk to fuck, and spending all that time grinding on each other anyway. Whatever. They've earned it. They can always make more deals. Let this day die.

She dumps the turkey onto the plates.

OPEN POST

inspired by that first amazing episode, hope you don't mind a random starter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Always down 💗

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God I love your writing

aww jeez, thank you <3 i love your tess so much, she is just... chef's kiss

💕💕💕💕

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