Work Text:
Joel asks her to cut his hair somewhere in the middle of Iowa. Or maybe they're in Nebraska already. The backroad they've been following for the last few days is sparse -- a rusted out car every few hours, if they're lucky, and they haven't seen a gas station in days. Ellie can tell Joel is itching to look at a map.
"Really?" she says, surprised. Because while Joel trusts her -- she knows he trusts her -- he's been gruff since Pittsburgh. Well, he's always gruff, but her efforts to get him to talk about anything have been unsuccessful. It's going to be a long walk. If he was anyone else, she'd think he was feeling guilty about Sam's bite. Did it happen when he was with Joel? Or when he was picking their enemies off one by one, trying his best to keep them safe and failing in the end?
But he's Joel. So it's probably not that.
"So long as you don't cut off an ear." He looks at the horizon, eyes squinting. "Should have an hour or two of light left. Let's make camp early and use the last of it." Joel rarely lets them stop before nightfall. She doesn't mind. She's eager to get to Tommy's, to meet Joel's mysterious estranged brother and to get one step closer to the Fireflies. But camp means sitting down, means some food, means trying to make Joel laugh. She's found that she can get a chuckle out of him when they're taking a break from this fucking insane journey.
"Okay," she says. They walk for about a half hour more until they find a spot off the road in the woods that he deems decent. It's not cold enough for a fire, and they can eat the mushrooms she found yesterday raw, but pretty soon they'll have to play the game of making one to stay warm. Ellie hopes they find a town soon so she can look for a jacket.
She and Joel move a few logs around and set up some sound traps, just in case, before he sits down on the wood with a groan. "You okay, old man?" she asks. He ignores her, digging around in his pack for something. Ellie rocks back and forth on her heels and stretches, hands high in the air. The doctor at school had told her she had a few inches left to grow, and she's starting to feel it in her back, her shoulder blades. She absently wonders how tall her mom was.
"Ellie," Joel says. She looks down at him on the log and he's holding out a pair of intact scissors. Rare, from Joel, since he almost always splits the blades as soon as he finds them to make something deadly. How long as he saved this one?
She takes them, stepping behind him. "Uh..." She's not sure where to start. Cutting her own hair is simple -- just a straight line between her fingers. But Joel seems to think she can do this without maiming him.
"Just pull it -- gently -- between two fingers and snip off some of the ends."
"Easy enough." She rolls her shoulders again and snips the scissors in the air. "Welcome to Ellie's Salon, sir," she says, trying her best to sound something close to fancy. Joel huffs. "What can I do for you today? A mohawk? Bald, maybe?" The hand not holding the scissors hovers above his scalp before she just goes for it and runs her hand through his hair. It is long, she can see that now from this angle. It's mostly clean -- they both are, thanks to a stream a few days ago.
Joel sits up straighter. "Just...cut it closer at the bottom. And on the sides. So it's out of my eyes."
"But of course, sir," she continues in her stupid accent, and Joel huffs. She counts that as a victory. This close she can see that he's greying -- it's mostly in his beard, still, but the dark is laced with silver on top of his head, too. She tells him so.
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles. "You're puttin' 'em there." She starts at his neck, tidying up the bottom and brushing the hairs from his collar as she goes.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ellie says, innocently, accent dropping. "I'm fucking delightful." Joel hums. She cuts carefully around his ears and moves to trim the front. She peeks at his face and sees that his eyes are closed and his hands are relaxed on his knees. He really does trust her.
"What was it like before?" she asks. There's no way talking about hair is an off-limits topic, right? "Getting your hair cut?" They've been in a few barber shops to look for supplies, and she once met a lady back in Boston who said she cut hair professionally before the outbreak.
"Why don't you focus on cuttin'?"
She rolls her eyes, even though he can't see. "I can multitask, Joel." She thinks he'll ignore her, but he sucks on his teeth and starts talking.
"It was expensive if you went to a nice place," he says. "You could get your hair washed, too. They always used nice products on you to try to get you to buy 'em."
"I'm going to guess and say you didn't go to a nice place very often."
"You'd be right," he says. He sighs. "I went sometimes for...other people, but usually I went to a guy who took walk-ins for $10, which was pretty cheap." Another small window in to his life before. She tucks it away in the Joel file she keeps in her mind.
"You could get it dyed too, right?" She's seen old magazine pictures of people with streaks or whole heads of bright colors.
"Yep." She wants to ask more, as usual. But Joel seems to sense it and decides he's had enough. "How's it going back there?"
Ellie sighs lightly. He's so annoying. She observes the back of his head and deems it passable. "I don't know...is there supposed to be this much blood?"
"Ha, ha," Joel says. "You done?"
"Yeah," Ellie replies. She steps over the log and stands in front of him, admiring her handiwork. He looks a little more like he did back in Boston -- still gruff, still sour, but now she knows how to look underneath that. He runs his hands through it and shakes off the remaining loose hairs. "Is it okay?" she asks. "I don't think we have a mirror, or anything."
"Nah," he says, feeling the back of his neck. "I trust you. Thanks, kiddo." She stands a little taller as he says it. See Joel? she thinks. I can do shit.
She hands him the scissors, handle first, and he looks at her for a moment, eyebrows furrowed. "Want me to do yours?"
"Have you ever cut hair before?" She realizes after she's said it that it's toeing the line of too personal. But Joel's eyes don't shutter, he doesn't turn away from her.
"A few times," is all he says. "Only if you want, though." He shrugs, like it's no big deal. Ellie reaches back to feel the length of her ponytail and pulls out the string holding it up, tucking it in her pocket.
Why not? she thinks. She's almost certain that she'll never muster the courage to ask Joel to cut her hair without his offering first, so she should probably take what she can get. "Yeah," she says. "Okay." They swap places. "But just a few inches so I can still tie it back."
"Sounds to me like you just said mohawk," he drawls, snipping the scissors in the air. She whips her head around to look up at him. He's smirking.
"Don't you dare," she growls before facing forward. "Asshole," she mutters.