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Spring, Wyoming.
Ellie likes being in the garden on the weekends, she likes being with Joel and completing otherwise mundane tasks that she’s never had the luxury to do before, not like there were ever beautiful gardens in the QZ.
She loves to muck around with the hose and help pot plants, there’s an enjoyment to be had every time she finds an earthworm, she enjoys picking the berries and tomatoes that were once seeds after they’re ripened to a delicious shade of red.
It makes her happy when she finds ladybugs and caterpillars, even though Joel says they’re pests that eat his leaves. She merely shrugs off his grumble and relocates them somewhere else, humming the tune of ugly bug ball to herself as she does so which makes it end up being in Joel’s head too when he’s trying to sleep at night.
She likes the sensation of the sun on her neck and the tip of her nose, she likes the feeling of the grass beneath her bare feet and the slight breeze that goes into the arm holes of the Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt that Tommy gave her. He’d casually said it didn’t fit him no more but Ellie knew better, it had been laying redundant in his drawer and he knew she’d love it; her bright smile and the brief hug to his waist proved right. She loves Tommy, he’s a great Uncle, there’s always a part of her that feels bad Sarah didn’t get to see him settle down and have a baby of his own.
The rays of late afternoon sun make her feel warm as she spins, bare arms out in all their glory. The bite marks concealed by scarred flesh caused by expired drain cleaner, it’s not a pretty sight but compared to the bites it’s nothing; at least nobody is gonna shoot her without a second thought over seeing a self harm scar. It’s cynical, she knows but sardonic humour helps her cope.
The trimmed back apple trees in the backyard rustle with the wind, singing their song of rustles and whistles above her head. She twirls on the spot, a dandelion clutched between her fingers, blowing it and giggling easily when the seeds splatter and float. Joel smiles to himself when he hears the musical noise, momentarily distracted.
She goes to pick another when a cabbage butterfly flies past her ear, she hums a murmur in awe and goes to follow it and it lands on the handle of the shovel propped against a raised flower bed. Ellie sneaks closer, pressing her hand to Joel’s shoulder which makes him look up in wonder from the hammer in his hand and stop banging.
“Look.” Ellie whispers, nodding to the shovel. Joel follows her gaze and breathes quietly, a small smile turning his lips upwards. “Sarah came to visit us.” She says to Joel and he manages to choke down the love that tightens his chest with pain but newness all at the same time.
They both always said the butterflies they saw were Sarah, Ellie had started it and Joel had easily followed, relishing in the comfort that it could be his first born baby girl coming to check in on him and his adopted baby girl all these years later.
“Yeah, I reckon she has, honey.” Joel huffs, keeping a close eye on the white butterfly as it fluttered it’s intricately patterned wings and flew off upwards until it disappeared over the roof of their house. Ellie smiles warmly down at Joel, he gives her a watery one back as he reaches to squeeze her fingers.
Ellie plops to her knees beside him, making him wince as he imagines doing the same and hearing his joints crack but Ellie’s young, he’s not as she likes to remind him multiple times a day. Her skinny legs are covered in bruises of multiple shades of yellow and green, there’s the odd scrape and bump where she’s just so fucking clumsy. Her knees are caked with dirt, her calves are splashed with it too where she was watering the shrubs earlier.
Joel feels his chest go warm, filled to the brim with love for Ellie and the fact she seems so at peace now Winter is far gone.
“Hey, Joel?” She asks in a tone which means she could either ask him something serious or throw a shitty pun his way as he returns to work with fastening some chicken wire over the raised flower bed that’s been scattered with tiny seeds. He eyes her skeptically, she refuses to look at him but the natural father in him begins to fuss before she can carry on her sentence.
He pulls his baseball cap off his head, putting it on hers instead and looping her pony tail through the hole at the back. His hands are mucky like hers and he brushes some dried dirt off her cheekbone with his roughened knuckles, Ellie’s dark eyes flutter at the action.
“Your nose is going red.” Joel says, nudging her out of the daydream with his elbow. She murmurs a thank you but she’s distracted, not in the worrying way that comes with glazed over eyes and a tremble in her bones but that of a hesitant teenager, full of wonderment.
“Joel, can I ask you something?” Ellie wonders, busying her tiny fingers with a leaf that’s been pruned from the growing strawberries in the bed over.
“Of course, honey.” He reassures her, continuing to work with an expression of concentration on his ever aging face. His eyes are squinted and lower lip pouted, the hands that Ellie’s seen him kill people with occupied with a small track pin.
“What was it like? You know, when you had Sarah? How old were you again?” Joel momentarily stops with surprise at her question, thrown off guard completely by her chosen topic to breech. She knew bits here and there of his life with Sarah but not too much, she never liked to pry even though he was more open now to discussions.
“How old was I?” He parrots and Ellie nods, poking at a the frayed hemming of her denim shorts, the ones with the burn mark that coincidentally came around the same weekend Tommy being the responsible uncle he is; showed her how to start fires with a magnifying glass. “I’d just turned eighteen when Jen told me she was pregnant, we’d only been together a few months.” Joel tells her, thinking about that time where it felt like his stomach was going to fall out his ass as he stared at a positive pregnancy test on the pink bedspread of Jen’s bed with her sobbing into her fists.
“Fuck, that blows. What did you do?” Ellie presses, frowning.
“We didn’t tell anyone for a few weeks, I think we thought if we ignored it then it would magically go away but it didn’t. School was hard, I couldn’t concentrate and Jen was always skipping class because she felt rotten.” He recalls, then looks at Ellie in the fatherly way that makes her heart skip a beat. “Ellie if you ever - if you ever get in trouble like that… please don’t try and figure it out on your own. There are good people here, they can help with some type of birth control.” Joel begs seriously, swallowing hard when Ellie looks on with a dazed frown. “Just be sa -“ He tries to choke but Ellie makes a noise, cutting him off.
“No… Jo -“ Ellie begins, face contorting with repulsion, she tries to put her hands over her ears. “No, no, no! Not talking about this with yoooouuuu! Shut the fuuuuck uuuuppppp!” She sings, talking loudly. Joel huffs indignantly and tugs on her boney wrist, she’s easily malleable.
“Hey, listen.” He begs. “Honey, if you’re going to be having sex, you need to be safe. Believe me, it will come and bite you in the ass if you don’t. I know that talking about it with me is probably not on the cards but Maria would always help.” He’s serious now and Ellie is recoiling, still making a face.
“Ew - no. Joel… I don’t - no. Boys are gross.” She huffs, cheeks red with embarrassment even though she knows Joel is being serious.
“Boys are gross.” He confirms, slightly relieved that even at sixteen Ellie seems repulsed by the idea of boys. He understands though, after the incident in Colorado that left her splattered with human flesh and brain matter… she’s never been the same.
Talking about anything related to the reproductive system with Joel made Ellie want to curl up and die. It was bad enough he wasn’t skittish when it came to periods but then again there wasn’t time to be in his life and Ellie guesses she has Sarah to thank for that, it was helpful when he’d come into her room with a fresh hot water bottle and some type of baked good when she was suffering and cursing the world for giving her a uterus.
They’re both quiet for a moment and Joel resumes hammering the pin between a hole in the wire, picking up another to repeat the process when Ellie continues to question him.
“How did you come clean in the end?”
Joel shifts position, sitting back on his haunches and wiping his dampened brow off.
“We were having dinner one night and I couldn’t hold it in any longer, it just came out in a burst over my mom’s beef casserole.” Joel admits. “It’s the only time I’ve seen Tommy speechless.” He cracks and she manages a small smile but she’s not satiated.
“Was she mad?”
“Disappointed mostly but yeah, she was mad. She shouted at me, cussed a lot. Thought she’d taught us to be safe and take the right precautions, guess she was pissed we didn’t wait for marriage either of all things.” Joel said, Ellie nodded slowly.
“How long was she pissed for?”
“She didn’t talk to me for a few days, one night I found her downstairs in the kitchen - it was real late at night. She had our family photo album out, looking through the pictures. She sat me down and I cried, then she cried. It was good to get it out, y’know. I was scared and she was scared for me, understandably.”
“You were scared to be a Dad?” Ellie pressed, squinting as though she couldn’t believe Joel was ever not a Dad.
“Scared shitless, honey.” He said simply and Ellie was stunned, it seemed like Joel was a natural father, he parented (and still does it) effortlessly. “Even more so when we found out it was a girl, I had a full blown panic attack in the ultrasound room.” He chuckles quietly, shaking his head to himself, snorting.
“That sounds like you.” Ellie snorts, rubbing her nose with her knuckles, narrowly missing rubbing dirt into her freckles. “So what did you do after telling your Mom?”
“Well, I dropped out of school and got a job on a building site that was knocking up a CVS I think, I was basically an apprentice for awhile but any money I made went towards buying things for Sarah. We had help too from my mom and Jen’s parents, got some things thrifting too. By the time August came, we were mostly set. Jen had moved in with us after our parents made us get married at the courthouse, there wasn’t much space mind.” Joel shrugged, snipping a stem neatly with his pliers. “We made it work, then Sarah came - best night of my life.”
“Was there ever a time… um… when you thought about not having her?” Ellie winces as she asks, regretting it immediately when she sees Joel stiffen at the wrist but he quickly relaxes and sighs.
“Yeah, there was. We talked about it, we tried to figure out the logistics of getting a termination in a different state without our parents finding out and then we made a list of pros and cons. The positives outweighed the negatives, obviously.”
“It must have been fuckin’ scary for you both, being so young and having a strict time limit to figure things out.”
“It definitely wasn’t easy, honey.” Joel confesses, his mind wandering back to the sleepless nights that felt like they went on forever when he was fighting to save a marriage he didn’t want to be in with a baby in the crook of his elbow looking up at him like he’d hung the stars and the moon despite the fact he was basically still a kid himself.
“Shiiiiiiiiit.” Ellie huffed, taking it all in. She was glad now, that she and Joel could talk easily like this, it felt like a privilege.
“Mmm.” Joel grunted, banging in another nail.
Ellie sat occupied beside him, still fiddling with the leaf and when he chanced a glimpse from the corner of his eye, he noticed that she was gnawing on her lip repeatedly.
She notices him staring and freezes, clamming up protectively with a stiff back.
“What?” She spits defensively, he chuckles with an eye roll. “What, fucker?” She growls.
Joel turns to her, tilting his head which he does when he’s analysing her and it makes her skin prickle with irritation.
“You got somethin’ on your mind, kiddo?” Joel wonders, giving her time to speak and watching for the obvious signs of her being nervous.
Her defences drop just as quickly as they went up, she throws the leaf away in frustration but can’t help but admire the way it flutters like it’s the lightest thing on earth.
She’s jealous; it feels like she’s carrying the weight of an army’s worth of PTSD on her back.
Joel continues to wait.
“Maybe.” She deflects, evading his fatherly stare and the way he sits so relaxed and patient, waiting for her to continue when she’s ready. “We don’t have secrets, right?”
“That’s right.” Joel confirms, giving her a confident nod. “What’s on your mind, honey?” He gently pushes, Ellie’s shoulders sag after a shrug and she won’t look at him in the face.
“I don’t want you to hate me.” She whispers and Joel instinctively reaches out for her hand, he runs his thumb over her knuckles reassuringly.
“I could never hate you, baby. Never.” He assures her, slightly worried now and he hates that the first thought that comes to mind is that she’s hurt herself again.
She stares at him with trepidation, worrying her bottom lip again until she tastes the sickliness of copper on her tastebuds.
The hankering of panic in her gut intensifies by a ten fold, there’s a tremble in her usually steady hands.
“Do you think you’d have been mad at Sarah for telling you something like that?” She spits.
Joel is so completely baffled, he thinks he has whiplash from this conversation.
“What? For telling me she was having a baby at the age I was?” He asks slowly, Ellie nods firmly. “Er - it’s hard to say. Sarah always knew she could talk to me, I was a pretty cool dad in that respect.” He pokes Ellie’s grubby knee, trying to keep the tone light because he can physically see her withdrawing and he’s desperate to get to the bottom of what’s gnawing away at her. He finally grunts and gives in. “Look, Ellie. I’d of probably been angry and disappointed, I’d have wanted to kill the fucker who thought it was okay to lay their hands on my baby girl but I’d have figured it out with her. I’d never have disowned her or anything like that, just like I’d never do with you.” He comforts, Ellie murmurs something he doesn’t catch but she seems more satisfied now at the honesty he’s projecting.
“So If I had something big to tell you… you wouldn’t get mad? Or shout?” She questions, one eyebrow raises in response. “Would you get mad, Joel?” Her voice has gone up an alarming amount of decibels, she’s squeaky and agitated.
“No! I won’t be mad. Come on, baby. You gotta talk to me here. What’s going on?” Joel feels that sickening feeling of doom in his stomach, settled right over the red lentil curry he and Ellie had for lunch. “Ellie.” He urges firmly, tilting her chin with a dexterous finger since he can’t fully gauge her expression beneath the baseball cap. She squints back at him against the sun, seemingly stubborn as ever and Joel is sure she’s going to disappear any minute without giving him a single hint as to what’s wrong.
“I’m gay - er, a lesbian! I like girls.” She stutters, Joel’s hand drops and his mouth gapes. Suddenly the cogs in his old man brain start to turn, he slouches back and stares through Ellie. “Wait, I lied! I take it back! April Fools!” She tries but Joel makes a strange noise back, unresponsive. “Joel! Please!” She begs, yanking on his forearm.
Boys are gross.
Boys are gross.
Boys are -
“Joel!” He snaps out of the trance, peering at a panicking Ellie before he surges forward and grabs her. She’s pulled to his chest and he falls backwards onto his ass, he crushes her against him wordlessly. “Joel?” She asks hesitantly, he pulls back and cups her face in his hands. “Are you mad?” She’s wincing, Joel’s hazel flecked eyes are filled with adoration and softness.
He looks relieved?
“Of course I’m not mad. Jesus fuckin’ christ, I thought you were going to tell me something well - not that! Jesus.” Joel definitely is relieved, Ellie hadn’t read his face wrong. She’s relieved too, she feels lighter now, like there’s less weight bundled on her shoulders taking up all her energy for normal adolescence.
“I thought you’d be mad, I know Texas wasn’t exactly forward thinking.” She admits into his chest, snuffling against the worn fabric. He’s rubbing her back, his chin resting on her head. “Thank you for not hating me.” Ellie says it so timidly and he takes her by the cheeks so she has no choice but to look him dead in the face, she wavers slightly.
“I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, you know that? Ellie, you can like whoever you fuckin’ want and that’s nobody’s business, do you hear me? You don’t have to apologise or thank me or nothin’! I love you for whoever you are, I always will.” Joel promises, hand on heart. “You’re so brave, baby girl.”
His chest feels full, his brain is relaxed and his adoptive daughter is cradled to his chest after confessing the biggest (or second biggest) secret of her life to him, and yeah, she did interrogate the fuck out of him to build herself up but she did it and he was bursting with pride.
“Hey, Joel? I love you too.” She snuggles back into him, the bill of her cap bumping his collarbone and he blinks back tears. His girl. His feral little street cat. Happy and safe and… gay.
Joel grins out of view; no boys, no more unexpected teenage pregnancies in his lifetime. A winner.