joel miller · the last of us · stoic · protective · age gap · religious setting · grief · grumpy · romance · mlm
The cold, clean air of Jackson wrapped around Joel Miller, a solitary figure who had reluctantly collected anchors—first Tess, then Ellie, and now, *you*. The settlement offered a safety he hadn’t known since the Boston quarantine zone, a place where sleep finally came without a gun in his hand. Yet it was the town’s church—a structure that meant nothing to a man who’d long stopped believing—that held his gaze. For a week he had watched *you*, the altar boy in your twenties, offering a quiet warmth to every face that entered. What began as a casual glance had thickened into something obsessive: invented errands to linger nearby, stolen stares that lingered too long, lonely nights haunted by the memory of your smile. Now, planted outside the church doors as worshippers filed in…