what to expect
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expect(ing)(ations) by PenAndInkPrincess
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
11 May 2023
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“And what if…” She pauses, biting the inside of her cheek for a moment. “What if I wanna be a mom?” She asks, and when she looks up, his face has gone soft in a way that makes her feel so loved and so warm inside.
“Well, I think you’d be one hell of a mom,” he says, and she smiles a little shyly, her chest feeling fuller at the vote of confidence from someone who would know. “More ways to have kids than from scratch, you know,” he says, indicating her with his mug with a small smile. “As you’re well-aware of.”
“I know,” she says, and she does. As an adoptee, it had been one of her first thoughts, but she wants, without really being able to explain why, to have at least one from babyhood. It was a vague idea she’d first felt when she held Maria and Tommy’s baby, Oliver, after he was born, the rightness of a warm little bundle in her arms.
And there’s another advantage to building one herself.
“I think my immunity would be passed on if I had kids,” she says, and Joel sits a little straighter.
(set about ten years after the original storyline) (ellie, now grown and married, decides she wants to have a baby so she can pass her immunity on to her kid)
Series
- Part 1 of what to expect
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Summary
Ellie’s sense of humor does not improve with age, even when she becomes a mother.
For example, her favorite new “joke” is putting Chloe in her Moses basket on his porch and then ding dong ditching him when he babysits, as if he can’t hear her laughing as she runs off, ducking behind a bush where she clearly thinks he can’t see her.
“Well now,” he says, playing along for Ellie’s sake, to the baby blinking up at him placidly in her basket, “how’d you get here?”
He rolls his eyes fondly at the still-quivering bush showing exactly where his kid is, laughing to herself. Weirdo.
“Your mama is the weirdest person in the world,” he coos to Chloe as he picks her up. The baby kicks and squeals happily. She’s a vocal little thing, always talking up a storm because it’s not just Ellie’s nose she inherited. He can only pray that shitty puns aren’t genetic.
“Hey!” The bush calls, offended.
(slice of life ft. THE SOFTEST OF SOMFT with grandpa joel and the family settling into their newest member)
Series
- Part 2 of what to expect
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Summary
He’d been a nervous wreck at Sarah’s birth, having already wound himself up so badly before it was even close to happening that Tommy, a junior in high school at the time, had confiscated all of the books on pregnancy in the house for three weeks, partially to make him calm the fuck down and partially–he suspects–so he could stop getting about five phonecalls a day about the latest crisis he was worried about happening.
“You’ve done the research, big brother,” Tommy had said in a rare moment of absolute seriousness. “All you can do now is wait and stop driving yourself crazy.”
(It had been a good plan wrecked by the existence of library cards and the ability to check out a dozen new pregnancy books the next day with no little brother to stop him, but he had appreciated the sentiment.)
As it turns out, though, even more nerve wracking than his wife having a baby?
His baby having a baby.
(Joel's POV of Chloe's birth)
Series
- Part 3 of what to expect
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fretting and other forms of love by PenAndInkPrincess
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
13 May 2023
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"I'm just saying, how the hell did we create the world's most pint-sized escape artist?" She complains after Chloe’s third breakout, which none of them have worked out the mechanics of yet and their beaming three year old isn’t fessing up to. She'd done her fair share of sneaking around at FEDRA school, but that had been when she was fully potty trained and capable of tying her shoes. And then there’s her daughter, a goddamn protège of sneaking around. She's already afraid of what her teenaged years are going to bring.
"Because a daddy's girl had a grandaddy's girl?" Jesse teases, reaching around her to grab a muffin from the container on the counter.
Which also leaves him open to a pinch to his side that makes him laugh and dodge.
“Rude ass motherfucker,” she grumbles, snatching away half of his muffin as an asshole tax.
(as it turns out, ellie has given birth to the world's tiniest houdini)
Series
- Part 4 of what to expect
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heavy-trod paths by PenAndInkPrincess
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
14 May 2023
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Summary
They haven’t gotten a shipment of flu vaccine yet this year, and it hits Jackson hard about a month after Vivienne’s arrival, knocking Dina, Maria, and Ollie all out of commission in the same week. The flu also means it isn’t really the best time for Chloe to start doing brief shifts at pre-school, but she knows it’s important for her wild child to socialize, Chloe’s a little social flubberby who loves ‘big kid school’ to quote her, a brief break to let Dina rest without an energetic three year old running around is a Godsend, and at the end of the day, what’s the harm in a couple hours of letting her rugrat run around with the rest of her kind?
The harm, she realizes on the day she goes to pick up her daughter and finds that someone else has already taken her out for the day, is that an entire world can shatter in a couple of hours.
(chloe is kidnapped by the fireflies) (ft. ruthless joel and ellie)
Series
- Part 5 of what to expect
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baby steps (and stumbles) by PenAndInkPrincess
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
14 May 2023
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Summary
“Hey, you beautiful hardhead,” Dina says, kissing her nose because she knows it makes her smile. “We’re a two person operation here, you know.”
She knows. She just wishes she had the reassurance of knowing that she could be a one person operation if she needed to.
She’s gotten better, she thinks, about leaning on people. She leans on Joel like he’s a fucking bike stand and she’s gotten better about admitting weaknesses to Dina, but she still has these moments, when she’s sick or she’s injured, that she feels the need to test herself, to prove that she could do it all on her own if she absolutely had to.
It’s what worries her, depending on people: what if she gets used to it? What if she forgets how to do it all on her own, just in case?
(after having chloe, ellie learns how to ask for help)
Series
- Part 6 of what to expect
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of a different sort by PenAndInkPrincess
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
19 May 2023
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Summary
Their walk home is significantly less fun than their walk to the dancehall, but she still loops her arm through Joel’s and holds Dina’s hand with her free one. At the intersection, Jesse and Dina peel off to go retrieve Chloe.
“Staying the night again?” She asks Jesse. He’s done it more and more often the past few months, staying in their guest room almost every night instead of going back to his little apartment above the old shop the town uses for clothing repairs. It’s been nice, really, being their own weird little family as a unit.
“If you don’t mind,” Jesse says with a smile, and it must be the alcohol that makes her want to say ‘I’d never mind.’ She bites it back and just returns the smile.
“It’s not a problem. You snore quieter than my wife anyway,” she says with a shrug, laughing and letting go of Joel to keep him from becoming an innocent casualty when Dina tries to get revenge by manhandling her into a ditch.
(ellie, jesse, and dina settling into their lives and chloe turning one) (ft. protective joel punching a bigot)
Series
- Part 7 of what to expect
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Summary
It figures a good morning was a set up for a fucking disaster.
Dina had said she’d get the laundry when she got home, but she’s had such a good morning that she decides to go ahead and knock it out. She gathers the laundry from their room and even throws in the towels from their bathroom, resting the basket on her hip. She’s humming a tuneless sort of song under her breath, something she’s heard Joel singing to himself before when he’s carving, and she’s so focused on trying to peer around her belly to the side that she doesn’t check what’s right in front of her.
Not until she feels what has to be a Hot Wheels car send her foot out from beneath her, sending her toppling forward onto the stairs.
(Ellie has a fall during her second pregnancy that requires her staying in the clinic for observation) (luckily she has her family to help her through)
Series
- Part 8 of what to expect