This is just a little fic that I came up with after playing The Last of Us a while back.

TLoU is really a depressing game mixed in with beautiful plotline and scenery. Shit fuck.


Bet.

The red-headed woman swore colourfully as the grey mare galloped over the line first. The crowd erupted into chaos, which was saying quite a lot when there were barely thirty people gathered along the long-abandoned racetrack. Tommy had managed to talk a few of the boys into cutting the grass, as long as they were allowed to race the damned beasts and get the prizes. The grass lining the track along the sides were as tall as Ellie, and hid all sorts of nasties.

Cale, one of the said guys, held out his scarred palm and grinned. Ellie glowered as she handed over the chocolate. It had been part of the bet, after all.

.

.

Try.

Calvin was tall, taller than Ellie was anyway. Vaguely attractive.

Ellie was a little past her nineteenth birthday, if she remembered it right. Though her memory with time was shitloads worse than Joel's, she was pretty sure that she'd had her birthday a week or so ago.

Joel had scored her that chocolate she'd lost in a bet a few days ago, though Cale-tall-guy-Calvin's younger brother-had insisted to share it with her.

Ellie had declined, but hadn't told him why. She just didn't want it, nope not at all.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't know if she could even share food with anyone else-was the infection passed on through saliva or blood, or hell, even both?

It didn't.

Ellie didn't want to hurt anyone else, because the odds of them being like her-being immune- were pretty crappy; she didn't care what Joel had told her about others being like her. Immune.

It was a load of bullshit when he'd told it to her the first time, and the smell still hadn't changed.

She wouldn't ask him about it, not yet. They both deserved some happiness after all the shit they'd been through.

So she would try.

.

.

Numbers.

'You're getting up there, Old Man.'

And it was true. Ellie had watched as Joel's hair turned from 'salt and pepper' to grey, but she would find that he'd never go bald.

Their house wasn't overly large, and had a few cracked windows, but it was enough. It was home, and had been for nearly six years.

Joel turned to her, an affectionate smile on his weathered face. 'Yeah, s'pose I am.'

Ellie handed him the coffee she had scavenged from a café a few towns over, and the smile turned to a look of confusion and surprise. 'What's this, kiddo?' he asked, gruff voice rumbling in his chest.

Ellie grinned. 'Remember how you said you missed coffee?'

Joel's brows knitted together, but Ellie cut him off before he told her off for doing "somethin' dangerous".

'I was fine,' she told him quickly. 'I had Cale and Calvin with me-and you know that they're both pretty good shots-as well as Tommy.' She stopped and puffed out a breath. 'I was fine,' she repeated softly.

A moment passed, and then Joel laughed.

'What?' she asked.

He shook his head, took a sip of the coffee and said, 'I was only gonna say thanks for the caffeine.'

Ellie scowled and pursed her lips.

Joel took another sip, savouring the taste. 'God it's been nearly, what? Thirty years since I've had coffee.'

Ellie's scowl disappeared into a small smile. 'What's it like?'

Joel glanced up from his cup. 'What's what like?'

Ellie nodded to the coffee. 'That. What's coffee taste like?'

She saw as he frowned; trying to give her the explanation in a way that made some sense. After a second, the old man simply shrugged.

'Coffee tastes like coffee.' He blurted out.

Ellie rolled her eyes.


D.P~

Also. Now, the reason she doesn't have any coffee at the end is because; a) she didn't find enough to make two cups of the stuff. Only a small amount at the bottom of a jar she found in a house. and b) what if she did actually infect David back at the Ranch Restaurant?
Say that she did, then the virus would be in her saliva as well as her blood, so it wouldn't really matter if she bit them or shared food or even kissed with another person; they'd still get infected.

Oh, I made myself sad.