Author's Note:

After I finished Cover Me Up, I started posting little minifics over on my Tumblr blog (catrionamacwrites) that filled in some holes, answered some questions, or just explored some moments I hadn't had time to explore in the main story. Think of these as my DLC for Cover Me Up.

This story started out as a Tumblr blog post, but I have done some editing and cleaning up since then.

Joel swam toward consciousness through a confusing muddle of images: He was tucking Sarah into bed the night the CBI outbreak hit Austin. He was kissing Tess, and he could taste the shitty bourbon they'd both drunk too much of on her tongue. He was inside Tess, the first woman he'd fucked in years, and she was whispering "If you even think about blowing your load inside me, Texas, I'll put a fucking knife through your ear." He was carrying Ellie through an endless maze of hospital corridors while unseen enemies shot at them, and she looked up at him and said, "Makes me want to kiss you." He was kissing Ellie, pressing her hard against a brick wall. He was holding a naked woman in his arms, and when a moan escaped her lips her voice was Ellie's, and he brushed back the curtain of red hair from her face, and her face was Ellie's and…

Joel's eyes snapped open. Last night. He turned his head to the right and saw her, lying on her back with one arm above her head and the other flung carelessly over the covers. Her breasts were exposed, both her nipples dark and hard from the cool morning air, and the sight of her like that, naked in the bed next to him, made Joel's usual morning erection swell painfully from base to tip, almost like he was a teenager again. She had turned twenty, six months back, but in sleep she looked barely older than when he'd first met her. Joel covered his face with his hands. Oh, god. What have I done?

His hands and his beard smelled like her sex. What the fuck have I done? Joel sat up carefully, not wanting to wake her, and crept into the bathroom, where he gave himself a quick scrub with cold water and lye soap, trying to ignore the growing knot of confused emotion in the pit of his stomach. Quietly, he pulled on his jeans and a clean flannel shirt, and padded downstairs in his socks.

He made coffee from ground chicory, but he couldn't sit still and just drink it after it was brewed; he felt like he was going to jump out of his own skin. He needed to talk to Ellie. He was terrified to talk to Ellie. They needed to talk about what happened last night. He never wanted to think about what happened last night again.

Desperate to have something to do with his hands, Joel pulled out flour, butter, buttermilk, eggs, salt, and baking powder. He'd make pancakes for her. That was something he could do. Saturday morning pancakes had been his weekly routine with Sarah, and he could still whip them up from scratch without even really thinking about it. No maple syrup, he thought. He took the half-full jar of honey from their pantry cupboard and put it on the table. And no bacon, or orange juice. Damn it, I miss orange juice almost as much as I miss real coffee. And bacon...maybe I should talk to Tommy about finding some pigs.

His hands measured out the ingredients into a big ceramic bowl and he started mixing. What am I going to say to her? The dominant emotion in his gut, he realized, was shame. He should have controlled himself better. He should have known she'd developed a crush on him, and he should have nipped it in the bud, before...before…

He had kissed her, he remembered. He had kissed her first. He had been wiping the tears from her face and she had brushed his knuckles with her lips, and he had kissed her forehead, and then her overflowing eyes, and then her cheeks, and he had wanted to kiss her lips so badly, because they were right there, but he'd been controlling himself, just barely, and that's when she had raised her chin and closed the tiny distance between them and sent him spinning straight down into hell.

She's my daughter. No, that wasn't true. She was more than that. As much as he loved Sarah, whatever he felt for Ellie was infinitely more frightening and more complicated. The thought of losing Ellie made him want to howl, but that's what he'd done last night, he'd lost her, he'd gone and fucked everything up between them and if she woke up this morning and hated his guts he wouldn't even be able to be angry about it. How could I have let that happen? I'm supposed to be the adult here.

But he had needed her so much. Once that door had opened, once she had kissed him back, he hadn't been able to help himself. He'd tried once, on the walk home, to talk some sense into her, but all he'd been able to do was make was some lame comment about how she should maybe pick someone her own age for her first time with a man, and that wasn't at all what he'd wanted to say to her. He'd wanted to say: I'm too old for you. You're too young to really know what you want. He'd wanted to say: This will change everything. We shouldn't do this. I shouldn't feel like this about you.

He'd wanted to say: You should pick someone less broken.

But he didn't say any of those things. He should have put a stop to it, before it ever got so far as…

The memory of Ellie's face, flushed and wanton as she lowered herself down onto him last night flashed through his mind, and he shuddered with desire. He placed both hands on the counter on either side of the mixing bowl to steady himself and took a deep breath. He was well and truly fucked, was what he was.

"Hi."

He jumped six inches at the sound of her voice and turned around to see her leaning in the kitchen doorway wearing only his discarded shirt from last night. Her hair was adorably mussed and her green eyes were still glazed with sleep. She yawned and stretched, and Joel looked away as the hem of the shirt she was wearing rode up and revealed a positively indecent amount of smooth white thigh.

"Hey, baby girl." He cursed the slip of the tongue. He was so used to calling her that, it was practically ingrained in his speech patterns. But now, after last night, calling her what he'd called Sarah felt extremely wrong.

Ellie's eyes flickered, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she sidled over to the stove, giving him a wide berth, and said, "Is that coffee? Score." She poured herself a cup, her hands fluttering like nervous butterflies, betraying her anxiety.

Joel's heart sank into the pit of his stomach. It was like he could already feel her slipping away, but he didn't know what to say to make things better. Really, after what he'd done last night, there was nothing to say. And the worst thing was, he still wanted her. He wanted to take her right back up to bed and do everything they'd done last night all over again, and then do it again. He wanted to kiss her until her lips were swollen and fuck her until neither of them could move. He knew he would never be able to trust himself to touch her again. Maybe she would want to move out. The thought sent a spike of pain directly through the center of his chest.

"Watcha making?" She was leaning against the stove now, the mug of coffee held protectively in front of her.

"Uh…" Joel's mind was blank. He looked down at the bowl on the counter in front of him. "Pancakes." Right. Pancakes.

"Oh, man. You are the best!" And suddenly she was herself again, just Ellie being Ellie. "I fucking love pancakes! Do we still have any of those blackberries from yesterday, because I bet those would be really fucking good on pancakes, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I think...I don't know. Check the fridge." She wasn't herself, not really. The bright prattle was just another way for her to mask her anxiety. She was also trying to ignore the elephant in the room.

We slept together last night. Oh, fuck.

Joel put the griddle on the stove and turned the gas up underneath it.

"Fuck, I guess we ate all the blackberries after all." Joel grunted in response, and Ellie was silent for a second. "Well...I guess I'll go clean up while you cook those."

Joel nodded. He couldn't quite bring himself to look at her. "Yeah, okay. I'll keep 'em hot."

As he poured the batter onto the hot griddle, Joel realized he both wanted her to come back down and dreaded it. Wanted her to because being in the same room as Ellie was a better feeling than just about anything he'd felt in the past twenty-five years, and dreaded it because eventually one of them would break the silence and they'd have to acknowledge everything that had happened, and at that point life as they knew it would be over. It was already over, really. There was no taking back what he'd done.

Ellie was more subdued than normal when she came back into the kitchen, wearing jeans and a clean long-sleeved t-shirt, her wet hair screwed up into a messy ponytail. She sat down at the kitchen table and waited in silence while Joel brought the plate of pancakes from the stove and sat down opposite her, clenching his coffee mug in both hands.

"Eat up," he said, forcing a smile that he could tell didn't look quite right. God damn it.

He watched her as she forked two pancakes onto her plate and then drowned them in butter and honey. She shoved a big forkful into her mouth, and he couldn't help but smile, a genuine one this time. She always stuffed her mouth with as much food as she could, until her cheeks bulged out and she could barely chew. It was a habit, he was sure, that she developed back at the QZ, when she could never be sure when her next meal would be edible, or if it would be coming at all.

"Mmmm. Mmmf ngnnd," she said.

Joel rolled his eyes. "Ellie…"

She swallowed, with an effort. "I know, I know, don't talk with my mouth full. I just said it's good." She gave him a tiny smile. "Thanks."

He smiled back. And then the elephant reared its head again. "Ellie, I…"

"I just wanted to…" she said, at exactly the same time. She smiled again, but this time he could clearly see the anxiety was back on her face. "Go ahead. You first."

Great. "I, uh…" he started, then stopped to swallow. Once he said something, they weren't going to be able to pretend nothing had happened. He looked down at the wood grain in the table. "I wanted to say I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" He looked up again at the strange tone in her voice. All the blood had drained out of her face, and it was whiter than a sheet.

"About last night. It shouldn't have happened." There it was. He felt the strongest urge to cry, or punch something, because he didn't want to give up what he'd tasted last night, as much as he knew he should. He would just have to live with wanting her, because he couldn't bring himself to take advantage of her again like he had.

"I...I…" She was having trouble getting the words out, which made Joel feel like even more of an asshole. "I'm sorry too," she finally managed. When she finally looked up at him, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I'm gonna go...see if I can get some hunting in before my shift tonight, we could use the meat and I think Maria said there was a lot of quail out by the meadow, you know, the one the leads up the south side of the mountain, so I think I'll head out there, okay, I'll see you later, but maybe not before my shift, I'll be home late because I don't get off until three, so don't wait up or anything…"

During this long run-on sentence, Joel watched as Ellie pushed her plate of mostly uneaten pancakes back, and then trailed helplessly after her as she walked down the hall, picked up her pack and her hunting rifle from where they rested by the front door, and then walked out of the house. She didn't look him in the eye again.

Joel stood in the hallway and stared at the door after she shut it, and made no move to open it even though he knew as well as she did that the gun she'd taken was all wrong for hunting quail, which probably meant she wasn't going hunting at all. She just couldn't get away from him fast enough. Maybe she'd thought they could just pretend it hadn't happened.

God damn it. He'd done the right thing, he was sure of it, so why did it feel like his heart was being ripped out of his chest?

Joel cleaned up the breakfast dishes and then sat for a second in the empty kitchen. He had no idea what to do with himself, but he felt like ants were marching around under his skin. Tommy, he thought. I'll go talk to Tommy.

On the short walk over to Tommy and Maria's house, he almost turned around twice. Even after knocking on the door, the urge to just go back home was so strong he almost ran and hid around the side of the house, like he was pulling some doorbell prank right out of his teenage years.

When Tommy answered the door, his face was drawn into a thundering frown. "Joel," he said, "You wanna tell me why the fuck your daughter is in my living room, crying her fucking head off?"

"She's not my daughter," Joel snapped, with more force than he meant to. No, if she was his daughter, then he was pretty much the lowest fucking monster on the face of the earth. She wasn't his daughter.

"Is that Joel? Send him in here," came Maria's voice from inside the house.

Joel stepped through the doorway and headed to the living room, trailed by his brother who said, "Does somebody want to tell me what the fuck is going on?"

Joel's heart sank even lower when he saw Ellie sitting on the couch, her shoulders shaking and her head in her hands. "Ellie and I…" He couldn't finish. He suddenly didn't want his brother to know this about him. Tommy already knew a lot of the reprehensible things Joel had done, but things between them the last few years had been good, and Joel didn't want him to know what an utter asshole he'd been. Coming here had been a huge mistake.

Ellie raised her tear-streaked face and said, "I slept with Joel last night. And he said...he said…" Her chest heaved with sobs. "He said...he was sorry!" She buried her face in her hands again. Maria, sitting beside her on the couch, rubbed Ellie's shoulder and gave Joel a pointed look that wasn't exactly a glare but wasn't exactly friendly either.

"What?" Tommy said. Joel could hear the disgust in Tommy's voice. "Joel, how could you..."

"Tommy, shut up," Maria said cooly. "You," she pointed Joel to the cushion next to Ellie, "sit the fuck down."

When Maria spoke in that tone of voice, there was no other option but to obey. Joel sat down on the couch next to Ellie, not touching her, but every cell in his body was aware of her closeness beside him. Maria stood up and handed Ellie a handkerchief, and waited until Ellie had wiped her face and blown her nose before she spoke again.

"You two are the biggest fucking idiots I've ever met."

"Hey!" Ellie said.

Maria held up one hand and Ellie subsided, a scowl on her face.

"Ellie, did you, or did you not, just spend the past month coming up with a plan to get Joel into bed?" Maria said.

Ellie nodded, tears spilling out of her eyes again. "Yes! But I shouldn't have...I shouldn't have forced it on him like that," she whispered.

What? She'd been planning this? For a month? It startled Joel out of his deep guilt. For the first time that morning, his heart felt like it wasn't being crushed under a giant rock.

"I cannot believe I'm fucking hearing this," Tommy said.

"Shut up, Tommy," Maria said. "And are you both not consenting adults?"

"Yeah, but she ain't…" Joel started, but Ellie interrupted him.

"Yes, but I took advantage of him! He hadn't had sex in like a hundred years, and I practically jumped him!"

Joel turned to her. "You...think you took advantage of me?" The absurdity of the situation was starting to hit him. Maria was right. They were the biggest fucking idiots in town.

"Am I the only person in this room who thinks there's a problem with this scenario?" said Tommy.

"Tommy, just...lay off. You don't understand what's going on here." Maria said.

"Gimme a little fucking credit, Maria. I understand that my big brother just fucked a girl he's treated as his daughter for years—a girl who's damn near young enough to be his goddamned granddaughter, I might add—and that she came here crying her head off, not because he fucked her but because she thought he rejected her afterwards, which is so messed up I don't even wanna get into it. Yeah, I think I understand just fine. The only thing I don't understand is why the fuck you seem to have been helping this along." Tommy's fists were clenched and he was breathing hard through his nose.

"They love each other," Maria said simply.

"Yeah, like family! Like a…"

"Tommy." Joel interrupted his brother, because he couldn't bear to hear Tommy call Ellie his daughter again. She wasn't his daughter. And his feelings for her were far from fatherly. "You know exactly what I've done to protect Ellie. You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt her." He looked a Tommy in mute appeal, silently begging him to understand. "And I love her like...there ain't a word invented yet that describes how I feel about her." Tommy just glared at him.

Joel gave up on Tommy and turned to Ellie. "I thought I'd lost you because of what I did last night."

Ellie's eyes were bright, but she shook her head. "I thought the same thing. When I woke up and you weren't there...and then I came downstairs and you were so damn jumpy, when you said you were sorry, I thought you meant..." She took a deep breath and gave him a half smile. "I guess we're stuck with each other now."

Tommy looked at Joel and Ellie for a long moment before shaking his head and saying, "I need a fucking drink." He left the room, muttering to himself.

"Joel, do you regret it...what happened?" Ellie's voice was quiet, but he heard the intensity in her question.

Joel thought of everything they'd been through together, all the times they'd saved each other. He wondered fleetingly what Sarah would think of all this, and then he put that thought away. Sarah was his daughter, the sweet baby he'd rocked in his arms, smelling of No More Tears and baby powder. Ellie was...Ellie was something completely different. "No," he said finally. "I don't regret a second of last night." Ellie flushed. Her green eyes were wide and her face so close, all he'd have to do was tip his face forward, just a little bit…

"Will you just fucking kiss her, already?" Maria said, with an exasperated smile.

Joel stood up, laughing. "I'll, uh...let's wait till we get home, yeah?" He reached out to Ellie, and sighed in relief when she placed her hand firmly in his.

This is part of a series of stories set in the universe created in my full-length story, Cover Me Up. For a complete list of the series and links to stories, please see my author page.