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