borderline - the last of us.

41. house-husband.

DAY BY DAY, this place becomes more like a home. A home that Joel would've ever thought himself living in? Not exactly, but alas, it's the home he's found himself in. The one with the carpenter desk in the corner, sculptures of biblically accurate, miniature bears and various different creatures. The one with dumb animal books as a centre piece on the coffee table, the ones that are only for display and never to be read for fear of damaging their integrity. The one with the six bowls of water on the back porch for the strays that always conveniently make their way back to their place. (Ralph feeds them. Joel feels it in his bones.)

The one that stinks of burning bacon and egg yolk right now.

It's a natural alarm, or maybe a survival instinct, for Ralph to rise from their cocoon of covers that smell like them and lumpy pillows that they really ought to get rid of whenever Joel tries to take over food duty. It's for both of their best interest, really. That dumbass couldn't cook cup noodles if a gun was to his head and he was reading a step by step instruction manual.

Rising with a laboured grunt, stretching his arms above his head and rolling his head on the stump of his neck, Ralph blinks as aimlessly as a blind man, ridding the fog of his vision as he tries to work out the kink towards his right shoulder. His withering biceps flex slightly, a faded, swirly R in the centre of the one that reaches up to toy with his dark grey locks, layers of snowy white and almost raven grey flopping unceremoniously around his scrunched up face.

"You think you can ask Maria to do my hair?" He calls out, over the sound of distant sizzling and their busted radio chiming out some Johnny Cash. Joel doesn't respond, the serenity of the spilling sunlight and the lonesomeness only severed by his own voice. "Joel?"

Silence, again. Ralph stands regardless, touching his elbows behind his back and finally working out that uncomfortably heavy bump. He sighs through parted lips as he reaches down to tug a pair of boxers on, and with the way they hang low on his hips, they're Joel's. A t-shirt comes next, and it smells like Joel and has some stupid American band on it, so it's his too.

Waddling down the stairs, wrenching a deft hand up to scrub at the gunk in either of his dark brown eyes, Ralph only stops whenever he's directly behind the scent of charred pig and chicken babies put to shame. Loudly, as if he's speaking to a particularly slow child, he repeats himself. "Could you ask Maria to do my hair? She's the only barber here who doesn't expect me to make small talk. Or gossip."

"Uh, hey, you... You can ask her," Joel responds, his voice tinged with a hint of embarrassment as he squares his shoulder in an attempt to hide his culinary disaster. "I thought you loved gossip."

"She'll say no if I ask. And I do, just not when it's with a bunch of superstitious Christian ladies. To them, I am the gossip." Ralph mumbles, laying a scarred cheek against a big shoulder blade and staring out into the sliding glass door towards the back of the house. A chunky squirrel is lapping up the water from one of the dog bowls, its dark, matted fur sticking out like a sore thumb against the winter wonderland it finds itself in. A thumb hooks in the clunky buckle of Joel's belt, toying absently. His wedding ring clinks against it. "Maria and Tommy hate my guts."

"Tommy and Maria don't..." Joel's not a big liar.

"I can't ask her, baby, I gotta, uhm... I got work later. I gotta monitor the site for the houses we're renovating 'cause Tommy can't, remember? He's going out hunting, or whatever it is he does up on them hills by himself." The Texan continues, pursing his lips at the pan of disappointment before eventually setting down his spatula and pushing back. Ralph takes a groggy step backwards to accommodate the older man's rotation, before he melds back against him, a lovable ball of heat. With a moan of feigned anguish and a laugh from the older man, Joel cards his hands through this greying hairs and shrugs to himself. "I like your hair when it's that bit longer. 'S nice."