Joel x Tess

Joel x Tess is the het ship between Joel and Tess from the The Last of Us fandom.

Canon
Twenty years after Joel's daughter's death, Joel is living with Tess in the Boston quarantine. There they smuggle illegal goods and dispose of infected bodies, the latter requiring Tess to keep an eye on Joel. When she sees a child among the corpses, she doesn't want Joel to look, thinking about how touchy this subject is for him, knowing he lost his own daughter. After this, Tess gets beaten up by a group of men, and she mentions Joel as someone that will inevitably find out about this.

At night, Joel is sleeping in bed when Tess crawls into bed with him, hugging him from behind as "the big spoon." Tess silently bops Joel's foot before crawling into bed, so he'll make room for her. Tess doesn't knock at Joel's door and wait for him to unlock because they seem to be living together. The next morning, Joel realizes the bloody scrapes on Tess' face from the beating the day before. Tess had kept her bruised face concealed until she couldn't because she's well aware of how intensely Joel will respond. He proves her right, halfway out of his chair in distressed shock before she placates him. Then, Joel softly cares for her wounds.

Later on, they end up being assigned the mission to take care of Ellie to take her to a Fireflies' outspot. On their way there, two clickers attack them in an abandoned museum in Boston. Both Tess and Ellie get bitten. Ellie is safe thanks to her immunity, but then Tess reveals her neck to Joel, showing she's infected. In the short process of them escaping and trying to get to their next location, Tess’ infection has progressed to the point where it’s clear that her time is numbered. But Ellie’s bite is already healing. It only furthers her belief that Ellie is a beacon of hope for humanity, and Tess pleads with Joel to get her to the Fireflies. To help Joel and Ellie escape, Tess sacrifices herself and blows up the museum with all the clickers inside.

Moments
Episode 3


 * Tess and Joel's first friends after the outbreak, Bill and Frank, invited them to their house, to share a meal and get to know each other better, and Bill instantly thought Joel and Tess were a couple. However, he remained respectful of not speculating about it with Joel himself.
 * After Bill died, he left all his resources to Joel and Tess, not knowing Tess was dead, and writing a letter where he wrote: "to keep Tess safe."
 * After Ellie reads Bill's letter out loud, Joel goes outside, overwhelmed with emotions, and when he comes back, he tells Ellie to never bring Tess up again, ever.

Fanon
is one of the most popular ships for Joel and the most popular ship for Tess. For the longest time, ever since the first TLOU game was released, fans of the ship speculated that Tess and Joel were a couple. However, this was merely implied in the game, and never confirmed. With the release of the HBO series, fans of the ship rejoiced seeing Tess confirming her feelings for Joel, as well as their relationship being explored in more depth and in a more nuanced way.

Fandom
FAN FICTION